Re: Future Thirld World War
I highly appreciate your point of view despite having major diversions. At least, I agree with you that economics and self interest prevail over religious ideology in the modern politics. But the recent invitation by Russian administration to Hamas leadership is a loud indication that Russians are not averse to the idea of accomodating religious extrimists if they are in direct conflict with Americans.
Kargil was a very low grade war fare and was too insignificant for China to put its nose into it. China has never accepted Mcmohan lines and has inherent border dispute with India. During recent major port trust contract, Indian govt conveniently filtered out chinese companies. India is strongly averse to chinese manufactured goods in the Indian market. I don't think China and India would ever become allies unless India give up those areas acquired because of humiliating treaties between British India and China.
Chinese and Russian relationship is gradually warming up. In central asean politics both have similar political goals of driving out Americans. This will gradually build up further. As you say of war between China and Russia, it was a very low grade conflict in the past. While Japan had a bitter war with Americans and faced a humiliating nuclear attack. Despite this, Japan is now one of the staunchest ally of U.S. after Britain. Even Germany and other western nations cannot claim to be as close to U.S. as Japan.
I am not claiming that my predictions are correct and absolute. But the serious cyber brainstorming will certainly produce a logical conclusion of how things would go in the future. It's certain that the future thirld world war is not very far. The seed of this war was sown in 2002 when the U.N. resolution was thrown to the garbage on the pretext of Weapon Of Mass Destruction theory for personal gain. This completely changed the mind of staunchest opponent like me of nuclear arm. I was one of the strongest critic of India having nuclear weapon. But after the invasion of Iraq, I realized how unsafe it was to be without nuclear weapons. Saddam complied with most of the U.N. resolution, but Iraq was attacked on false pretext. If Iraq had nuclear weapons, then U.S. wouldn't have dared (North Korea is an example). On that day, I felt that India must develop nuclear weapon if it wants to be safe from Chinese threat. The same is true for Pakistanis and will be true for many other countries in the future. The ultimate outcome will be a future thirld world war. Future generation will blame Bush and American voters for sowing the seed of the thirld world war by establishing an extremely harmful precedent of ignoring the wishes of international community. Many countries in the future will cite this precedent for their personal gain. This will weaken U.N. and other such bodies further and further until third world war breaks out.
It's like a situation in a civilised society where a powerful person breaks the law for self gain and then more and more people are tempted to do the same. Eventually this leads to anarchy where nobody cares for the law and the civilized society transforms into a jungle law of MIGHT IS ONLY RIGHT.
Iran nuclear issue is a fine example of this. Iranians know that if they comply with U.N. then they would be committing the same error done by Saddam and so the best option for them is to be totally defiant and face whatever comes. They haven't moved an inch from their position and are rather giving equal counter threat. This kind of incident will now magnify in numbers thanks to Bush.