The Slippery Slope to WWIII
By
Howard Bloom
There are new fears that the war in the Middle East between Hamas and Israel could spill over into a wider conflict. And there is reason to fear that, in the end, the conflict could go nuclear and kill us all.
Here’s what’s happened in the last few days.
· Early on Saturday, December 23, a chemical tanker just 200 miles off the coast of India was hit by an attack drone from Iran.
· Then, on Christmas morning, in Iraq the Kata’ib Hezbollah attacked Americans at Erbil Air Base, wounding three. Kata’ib Hezbollah is backed by Iran.
· Later on Christmas day, America counter-attacked with airstrikes on three Kata’ib Hezbollah facilities and killed eight people.
· The same day, Christmas, a commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp, Iran’s army, was killed in an airstrike near the Syrian capital of Damascus. The blame was pinned on Israel. And Iran swore it would get revenge.
· What’s more, on Tuesday, the day after Christmas, Houthi rebels in Yemen sent 17 drones and missiles over the Red Sea as part of their non-stop, 100-missile campaign to hit commercial tankers and cargo ships that they believe are somehow connected to Israel. Who arms and controls the Houthis? Iran.
In other words, Iran is using its proxy armies to expand the war that Hamas started with Israel. Which should not be surprising. Hamas is also one of the armies Iran supports and sometimes controls.
So why not simply attack the command and control of Iran’s proxy army operation and be done with it?
It’s not so simple. Iran is part of an unpublicized alliance, the Axis of Evil. Which means that Iran’s allies include China, Russia, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Hit one, and you may face retaliation from them all.
In other words, the real danger is knocking over the lead domino in a line of dominos. Knock one over and you just may knock over all of them.
Which leads to the real problem. Toppling lines of dominos can lead to world wars.
In 1914, the Western world was stacked in two opposing domino lines. In one line were England, France, Russia, Italy, Japan and the United States. In the other were Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.
Then, on June 28th, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s throne was assassinated in Bosnia by a Bosnian nationalist. The incident should have been trivial. But it wasn’t. Why? Because of the stacks of dominos.
The Austrians declared war on the tiny territory of Bosnia. That led one of Bosnia’s allies, Russia, to mobilize its military to defend its pipsqueak ally.
So Austria’s ally, Germany, declared war on Russia. Then Germany began to invade France. Which led France’s ally, England, to declare war on Germany.
The two lines of dominos fell. And we had the planet’s first ever world war. A war that lasted six years and killed 22 million people.
Today the dominos are stacked again.
In one line of dominos is the quiet alliance of the authoritarian nations, the Axis of Evil. In the opposing line is the democratic alliance, the free world–USA, England, France, Germany, and the rest of the NATO nations. Not to mention Japan and South Korea.
World Wars also start when rising nations feel that they can knock the global leader off the top of the heap and take over. We have been the global leader ever since the end of World War II, 78 years ago. And right now both Russia and China feel that the days of American power are over and that they are destined to take over the leadership of the world. With China on top and Russia as its sidekick.
Which means that on October 7th, Hamas pulled off its equivalent of assassinating a prince. It attacked 20 communities in southern Israel and raped, tortured, and burned alive 1,200 Israelis.
Hamas hoped to pull off a domino effect in a world we seldom think of, the 57-nation, 1.9-billion-person Islamic world. A massive wave of support. And an end to the peace deals with Israel being struck by a growing number of Muslim nations. Hamas got the wave of worldwide support it called for.
But it also may be toppling the dominos of the Axis of Evil versus the Free World.
Which may be why China expert Gordon Chang in the Epoch Times, says that “Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are contemplating starting World War III, driven by their shared vision for the future world order.” An order in which China and its sidekick, Russia, would come out on top.
And no wonder Reuters reports that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un—who is allied with Russia and China–has ordered his military to accelerate its preparations for war, too.
***
If the authoritarian alliance goes up against the democratic bloc’s alliance, we could have the nuclear annihilation we’ve been fearing ever since atomic bombs showed up in the hands of Russia in 1949 and produced the possibility of a nuclear Armageddon.
References:
https://english.almanar.com.lb/1964910
https://www.dni.gov/nctc/ftos/kh_fto.html
https://www.ynetnews.com/category/3089#byc6gbqda
https://www.history.com/news/did-franz-ferdinands-assassination-cause-world-war-i
https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/reperes112018.pdf
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/27/politics/fears-middle-east-war-biden
https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/hamas-says-another-war-of-liberation-is-coming-dbj7e4px
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Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. One of his seven books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. He has appeared over forty times on Saudi and Iranian TV. He does news commentary at 1:06 am Eastern Time every Wednesday night on 545 radio stations on Coast to Coast AM. For more, see http://howardbloom.institute.
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