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Sleep-walking to Armageddon?

BY REITERATING his administration’s stance through a speech at the US National Defence University, President Bush has effectively ruled out the last chance of preventing further chaos and confrontation, in the Middle East and Europe.

Again relying on intelligence agencies’ take (like before the Iraq war), the White House seems convinced that Iran will not only possess nuclear armament by 2015, but will also develop intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting America and all of Europe. Hence the decision to deploy the controversial missile defence shield in Europe will go ahead as planned.

In the world of international diplomacy, Bush’s strong words indicate his administration had decided to give little attention to Russian concerns regarding the deployment in Europe. And even though US and Russia are both right in ruling out a return of sorts of Cold War dynamics, there can be no denying that whatever friendliness remained in the post-’91 bilateral equation has now all but evaporated.

President Putin is not only enjoying unprecedented popularity in New Russia by playing the energy card to good political advantage, but is also among the few international leaders to have stood up to some of America’s unfair foreign policy excesses. And since he finds himself handling careful political transition, most likely from president to prime minister to remain Russia’s most influential man, he cannot let international developments call his bluff. Therefore, it is difficult to see any other response from Moscow to Washington’s show of muscle than walking out of the arms reduction treaty and turning its missiles to Europe.

Should such a scenario materialise the sole superpower’s foreign policy would be responsible for unrest in Asia and Europe too, effectively upsetting much of the global equation during the eight-year neocon stint.

For those who believed the unipolar era would be a welcome break from super-power confrontation of the past, Western hegemonistic designs have come as a very rude awakening. Rather than overcoming pressing global economic/social concerns, the Bush administration will leave behind a legacy revolving around terror – having mishandled Iraq, pushed Iran, Syria, etc, to further upset the Middle East equation, unrest in Africa and finally pushing the Russian bear’s weight on Europe.

If cooler counsels can still not have a calming influence in Washington, then the fateful tick-tock towards unnecessarily hastened Armageddon may already have begun.