We haven’t posted much lately not because there is a paucity of news but because we simply don’t know quite what to make of current events. Though the news is chock-a-block with stories of the Office of the President Elect, the financial crisis, and even the Blagojevich scandal…as far as we can tell, no single unequivocal sign as to the general direction of the state of the U.S. and the world has yet to emerge.
On a positive note, we gain some comfort from knowing that others are also perplexed as to the general pattern of world events. In that vein, an article published today by Spengler seems well worth chewing on. Here is an excerpt and link to the article in today’s Asia Times…
Financial crises, like epidemics, kill the unhealthy first. The present crisis is painful for most of the world but deadly for many Muslim countries, and especially so for the most populous ones. Policy makers have not begun to assess the damage.
The diplomatic strategy of the industrial nations now resembles a James Clavell potboiler, in which an earthquake interrupts a hopelessly immured plot. Moderate Islam was the El Dorado of the diplomatic consensus. It might have been the case that Pakistan could be tethered to Western interests, or that Iran could be engaged peacefully, or that Turkey would incubate a moderate form of Islam. I considered all of this delusional, but the truth is that we shall never know. The financial crisis will sort them out first.
As I commented in the late autumn, the world is not flat, but flattened (see Asia Times Online, October 28, 2008), leaving the economies of the largest Muslim countries in ruins. It is hard to forecast the political fallout, for when each available choice leads to a failed state, it is a matter of indifference which one you adopt. As state finances crumble, states will become less important, and freebooters will seize the stage. Think of the Mumbai terrorists as a political cognate of the Somali pirates, and the character of a Middle East made up of failed states comes into focus.
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