Re: Future Thirld World War
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.
For Russia, Hamas is a power play. they get to show the Islamic world how they accept Palestinian democracy and how they sympathize with their plight. In return, Russia gets a free hand in Chechnya. That is all this was. If there was more to it, Russians would be willing to financially support the Hamas government.
In terms of Kargil, Pakistanis claim it was a low grade conflict and that it was largely insignificant. By and large, this is done to placate the Pakistani leadership. The architect of Kargil just happens to be Pakistan's dictator who took control just when the world learned how close this low level conflict came to a very large conflict and how many Pakistani regulars were killed. Moreover, even in this insignificant conflict, China did nothing to give Pakistan a face saving way out. Simply, there is nothing in history, wether low level or large scale, to demonstrate that China would do anything to tilt the favor of battle towards Pakistan.
The central Asian states don't have the same anomosity towards the Americans that the Russians or the Chinese do. Most of them see their large neighbors as much more hegemonic than the US. Needles to say, they have no want to be a part of any republic anymore, nor do they particularly want to be China's backyard power resource. Most of them see relations with the US as a much more stablizing factor. Just take a look at Belaruss to see how Russian relations can be destablizing.
China and Russia are more competitive than India and China are for energy. They may, at times, have interests that converge but that is not too often. Russia sees itself as a part of Europe and China is firmly pacific rim. They converge when they try to oppose the US, but that is all. Hardly a reason for battlefield allies. If anything, Russia is allied with the Europeans.
Conjecture is all good and dandy, by predicting a world war with the forces of good against the evil American imperialists is nonsense. I think it is about time the Islamic mindset stops looking at allies in war and acting in a manner that is more conducive with progress.
If there is a world war, it does not matter who the hell wins, because there won't be Islam or anything else that matters.