January 16, 2006

www.latimes.com/

Niall Ferguson:

Tomorrow's world war today
ARE WE LIVING through the origins of the next world war? It's certainly
easy to imagine how a future historian would deal with recent events in
the Middle East:

"With every passing year after the turn of the century, the instability
of the Gulf region grew. By the beginning of 2006, nearly all the
combustible ingredients for a conflict =E2=80=94 far bigger in scale than=

wars of 1991 or 2003 =E2=80=94 were in place.

"The first underlying cause of war was, of course, the increase in the
region's relative importance as a source of petroleum. The rest of the
world's oil supplies were being rapidly exhausted, while the breakneck
growth of the Asian economies had caused a huge surge in global demand.


"A second precondition of war was demographic. While European fertility
had fallen below the natural replacement rate in the 1970s, the decline
in the Islamic world had been much slower. In Iran, the social
conservatism of the 1979 revolution conspired with the high mortality
of the Iran-Iraq war and the subsequent baby boom to produce, by the
first decade of the new century, a quite extraordinary surplus of young
men. More than two-fifths of the population of Iran had been aged 14 or
younger in 1995. This was the generation that was ready to fight in
2007.

"The third and perhaps most important precondition for war was
cultural. Since 1979, not just Iran but the greater part of the Muslim
world had been swept by a wave of religious fervor. Although few
countries followed Iran down the road to theocracy, the feudal
dynasties or military strongmen who had dominated Islamic politics
since the 1950s came under intense religious pressure.

"The ideological cocktail that produced 'Islamism' was as potent as
either of the ideologies the West had produced in the previous century
=E2=80=94 communism and fascism. Islamism was anti-Western, anti-capitali=

and anti-Semitic. A revealing moment was Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's intemperate attack on Israel in December 2005, when he
called the Holocaust a 'myth.' The state of Israel was a 'disgraceful
blot,' he had previously declared, to be wiped 'off the map.'

"Prior to 2007 the Islamists had seen no alternative but to wage war
against their enemies by means of terrorism. From the Gaza to
Manhattan, the hero of 2001 was the suicide bomber. Yet Ahmadinejad, a
veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, craved a more potent weapon than
strapped-on explosives. He aimed to give Iran the kind of power North
Korea already wielded in East Asia. The power to defy the United
States. The power to obliterate America's closest regional ally.

"Under different circumstances, it would not have been difficult to
thwart Ahmadinejad's nuclear weapons program. The Israelis had shown
themselves capable of preemptive air strikes against Iraq's nuclear
facilities in 1981. Similar strikes against Iran's were urged on
President Bush by neoconservative commentators throughout 2006.

"But the president was advised by his secretary of State, Condoleezza
Rice, to opt instead for diplomacy. Americans did not want to increase
their military commitments overseas; they wanted to reduce them.
Europeans did not want to hear that Iran was about to build its own
WMD. Even if Ahmadinejad had broadcast a nuclear test live on CNN, they
would have said it was a CIA trick.

"So history repeated itself. As in the 1930s, an anti-Semitic demagogue
broke his country's treaty obligations and armed for war. Having first
tried appeasement, offering the Iranians economic incentives to desist,
the West appealed to international agencies =E2=80=94 the International
Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council. Thanks to
China's veto, however, the U.N. produced nothing but empty resolutions
and ineffectual sanctions.

"Only one man might have stiffened President Bush's resolve in the
crisis. But Ariel Sharon had been struck down by a stroke just as the
Iranian crisis came to a head. With Israel leaderless, Ahmadinejad had
a free hand.

"As in the 1930s, too, the West fell back on wishful thinking. Perhaps,
some said, Ahmadinejad was only saber-rattling because his own domestic
position was so weak. Perhaps his political rivals in the Iranian
clergy were on the point of getting rid of him. People crossed their
fingers, hoping for a homegrown regime change in Tehran.

"This gave the Iranians all the time they needed to produce
weapons-grade enriched uranium at Natanz. The dream of nuclear
nonproliferation, already half-broken by Israel, Pakistan and India,
was now irreparably shattered. Soon Tehran had a nuclear missile
pointed at Tel Aviv. And the new Israeli government of Benjamin
Netanyahu had a missile pointed right back at Tehran.

"The devastating thermonuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not
only the failure of diplomacy; It marked the end of the oil age. Some
even said it marked the twilight of the West. Yet the historian is
bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-11 war
was to vindicate the Bush administration's principle of preemption.
For, if that principle had only been adhered to in 2006, Iran's nuclear
aspirations might have been thwarted at minimal cost. And then =E2=80=94 =

though it is to imagine now =E2=80=94 the Great Gulf War might never have
happened."

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

That would mean that the Iraninan Government would rather be bombed than
change their course of contempt for the UN, EU and the entire Western
world?.

That would men that the Iraninan Government would rather be bombed than
change their course of contempt for the UN, EU and the entire Western
world?.