Re-heating a Cold War

This little article details how the Russian military is souping itself back up, heating its leftovers and stirring up trouble. It continues the speculation in my little post on Iran and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, about how Asia is not laying low, as the War on Terror may have us believe.

Not that I think the Cold War is going to reheat, but I think that when Americans talk and think about Asia they only think about the Middle East, and maybe Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. The fact is Asia is huge, there are a lot of people there, and most of them are not content to let America run the world. Considering how the Project for a New American Century (the hardcore neocon crowd, look it up, it's an interesting conspiracy in itself) have dropped the ball with their "New Pearl Harbor" that was supposed to steel American ideology towards global dominance, I would say an increasing conflict with Asia will not be our finest hour either.

Basically it looks like trouble, from which no country will probably end up really doing much better. Instability is bad for most parties and peoples--not that stability is always better. But, while it happens we might as well take our historical lessons where we can, so that they tragedy of history is not a total loss. Most people probably won't take it to heart though.

But if you might, fair reader, listen: "Terrorism" is a flash in the pan. Not a harmless flash in the pan, because it can certainly cause damage, and not a simple flash either, because it is a tactic near impossible to defeat. But, what lasting conflict encompasses is always economics. Ideology is transitory: fleeting and fickle. Powerful, sure, but large groups of people with always come back to the oikos. Economy, that is. Guns, butter, rice, toasters. Will a billion Chinese people simply go without their cars? Will a nation spanning 14 time zones simply ignore their military as a economic stimulus? Will the countries holding petroleum reserves refuse to control the buying and selling of it? No, no, no. Terrorists will terrorize, but without the big armies, there will be no one for them to rebel against.

Watch, and learn. States, armies, banners will rise and fall again and again, and the stock market will love it (and hate it).

Kissies!