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Post by 101ABN on Dec 4, 2014 21:05:17 GMT -8
The world is changing and becoming even more dangerous — in a way we’ve seen before. In the decade before World War I, the near-hundred-year European peace that had followed the fall of Napoleon was taken for granted. Yet it abruptly imploded in 1914. Prior little wars in the Balkans had seemed to predict a much larger one on the horizon — and were ignored. The exhausted Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires were spent forces unable to control nationalist movements in their provinces. The British Empire was fading. Imperial Germany was rising. Czarist Russia was beset with revolutionary rebellion. As power shifted, decline for some nations seemed like opportunity for others. The same was true in 1939. The tragedy of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 was not that it had been too harsh. In fact, it was far milder than the terms Germany had imposed on a defeated Russia in 1918 or the requirements it had planned for France in 1914. Read the rest here... www.nationalreview.com/article/393896/war-clouds-horizon-victor-davis-hanson |
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Post by Sailor on Dec 5, 2014 9:18:51 GMT -8
Indeed. Many of the signs that presaged both World Wars are there; China already has an Army larger than our own, an Air Force and Navy that are growing, their Navy may outnumber the entire USN within 10 to 15 years minus carriers. But as a regional force they really don't need carriers, just high performance fighter/bombers and long range bombers and missiles. Beijing certainly has territorial ambitions and is pushing its neighbors.
Word broke in the media this morning that ISIS is claiming to have built a "dirty bomb" utilizing about 40kg of uranium obtained (stolen) from Mosul University, usable only as a terror weapon which they clearly acknowledge.
Iran is becoming increasingly desperate as it's oil revenues continue to shrink, and it's economy as well as a result.
Pakistan is no more stable (probably less so) than it has been in the past, and it HAS nukes and the capability to deliver them regionally.
And let's not forget the little wacko in North Korea.
Old Chinese curse - "May you live in interesting times." The times they are getting very interesting.
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