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The Tribune

It has become customary to assert that the centre of gravity of world politics has shifted to the Asia-Pacific region. The ascent of several regional states such as China and India has made this notion almost indisputable. But is this popular cliché crowding out attention on geopolitical issues elsewhere?

Recent months have shown that West Asia remains at the fulcrum of world politics and the arena of the next hot war. The West’s conflict with Iran has been extended to the latter’s regional ally Syria in what appears as a serious thrust against two uncooperative but pivotal states in an otherwise vast sphere of Western influence in the Greater Middle East.

Syria’s geopolitical importance is two-fold. First, Syria serves as a strategic and logistical rear base for the Hezbollah in Lebanon to resist Israeli power. Second, Syria is a potential outlet for Iraqi oil and gas resources into the Mediterranean and onto Europe. Iran as an aspiring regional power with the world’s second-largest gas reserves, the second-largest Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) producer and a capable military-industrial nation is a spoiler to the Western-allied Sunni Arabs and an obstacle to America’s Afghanistan strategy and access to Central Asia’s and the Caspian basin’s energy wealth. Iran also sits on the mouth of a vital maritime chokepoint — the Strait of Hormuz — through which 35 per cent of the world’s oil tanker traffic passes.

RT

Throughout history, military attacks on sovereign nations have always meant death, destruction and chaos which don’t end once invasion is complete. Look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Vietnam, Northern Ireland - even World War II and the Cold War. So why should Libya be any different?

Today, the Western media are “appalled” at the continued gunfights among warring factions; Reuters reports that “clashes between rival Libyan militias have killed two people and wounded 16, in the latest violence involving armed groups refusing to hand in their weapons.” What did the West expect?

A sovereign country – Libya – was attacked and overrun by NATO forces, based on false pretexts supported by a hypocritical UN Resolution, that led to tens of thousands of Libyans being killed, maimed, their homes and infrastructure bombed; their country ransacked and thrown into utter chaos, its leaders and their children and grandchildren murdered on live TV causing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to publicly roar with laughter…It sounds a lot like the eight years of the Iraqi invasion where hideous violence reigns to this very day… Which sounds like Afghanistan… Which sounds like 60 years of daily life in Palestine… Which sounds like Serbia two decades ago…Which sounds like Vietnam four decades back…Did the West blow it yet again!?

I don’t think so….The boys and girls doing geopolitical planning at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Trilateral Commission, American Enterprise Institute and AIPAC, have far too much experience to stumble over the same stone time and again.