The Six Most Dangerous Regions On The Planet -- A Commentary

The State of the Nations -- Wall Street Journal

A primer to the six most dangerous regions on the planet

On the start of 2009, the world seems dauntingly unstable. The Western industrial economies face perhaps several years of zero growth in the worst crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression. While the economies of rising Asian giants like India and China will still grow, they, too, face severe challenges as their industrial output slows and they deal with workers' protests in this global crisis.

Palestinian-Israeli peace talks are stalled, not least because of bitter divisions among Palestinians themselves, while Israel has launched a massive air assault on Gaza in retaliation for rocket attacks that has killed hundreds and raised tensions throughout the Middle East. Iraq is improving but frightfully fragile. The specter of an Iranian terrorist-cum-nuclear empire looms large, reaching from Lebanon with its Hezbollah legions to western Afghanistan, over which Kabul exerts no real authority. Afghanistan itself threatens to return to the blind neglect of the Taliban. The India-Pakistan rivalry has never been so explosive since both sides became nuclear powers.

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My Comment:Many of these problems are intractable .... they have been here for centuries, and there are no "easy fixes". With the U.S. and President Obama now focusing more on their domestic situation, I predict that this fragmentation of the world is going to accelerate. This "fragmentation" will occur along economic, racial, tribal, and religious lines. In other words .... we are descending to what the planet was like before the growth and spread of cohesive empires and power blocs.

Will peace be the result of this trend .... I can predict not. The latter half of the 20th century put a stop to the many conflicts that have been breeding for centuries. But once there is a realization within a region that a conflict will ultimately break out .... like the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s .... such a breakup will be fast and brutal.