The Dragon Covets the Arctic

The Dragon Covets the Arctic
by Dr. A. Adityanjee http://councilforstrategicaffairs.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-dragon-covets-arctic.html
http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=14232 China’s lust for oil, minerals, rare earths, fish and desire for an alternative northern sea route boils the Arctic Geopolitics! Introduction: Iceland is a small, sparsely populated island nation with a population of only 320,000 and area of 40,000 square miles. It is the only member of the NATO that does not have an army of its own. Icelandic banks were part of the 2008 global financial crisis and meltdown when they exposed the Icelandic government of huge financial risks by indulging in risky loans and speculative foreign currency transactions without having enough liquidity and capital reserves. The fiscal crisis led to a former Icelandic prime minister losing his job and being hauled to court of law for not supervising the banks enough. In an international capitalistic, mercantile system, if Iceland were a company, it was “sitting duck” for outright purchase and acquisition. Fortunately, foreigners are not allowed to buy any property or real estate in Iceland and need a special permit.   And here comes the Peoples’ Republic of China, rich with $ 3.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves in its kitty. It has built a palatial embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland worth $250 million with only 7 accredited diplomats. China is negotiating a free trade area with Iceland, the first with any European nation. Former Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao even paid a state visit to Iceland for two full days in 2012. Other Chinese ministers and officials have also been very active in Iceland with bilateral visits and cultural events. In 2010, Huang Nubo, a “poetry loving” Chinese billionaire and former communist party official visited Iceland to meet his former classmate Hjorleifur Sveinbjornsson, a Chinese translator with whom he had shared a room in 1970s in the Peking University. He expressed his intense love for poetry and put up $ one million to finance Iceland-China Cultural Fund and organized two poetry summits, the first one in Reykjavik in 2010 and the second one in Beijing in 2011. Last year (2012), Huang Nubo and his Beijing based company, the Zhongkun group offered to buy 300 sq km of Icelandic land ostensibly to develop a holiday resort with a golf course. This Chinese billionaire wanted to pay $7million to an Icelandic sheep farmer to take over the land and build a $100 million 100-room five star resort hotel, luxury villas, an eco-golf course and an airstrip with 10 aircrafts. A state owned Chinese bank reportedly offered the Zhongkun group a soft loan of $ 800 million for this project. The deal was blocked by the Icelandic Interior Minister who asked many pertinent questions but reportedly got no answers. Huang would not take no for an answer and has submitted a revised bid for leasing the land for $ one million instead of outright purchase. He makes an unbelievable assertion that there is a market demand for peace and solitude: “Rich Chinese people are so fed up of pollution that they would like to enjoy the fresh air and solitude of the snowy Iceland”. The current Icelandic government, a left-of-center coalition has given this proposal a cold shoulder. But, with elections due in April 2013 in Iceland, China is hoping for a more sympathetic government to approve the project. Iceland looks like an easy bird of prey for the wily red Dragon with insatiable appetite. China is showing generosity to another poor and sparsely populated, self-governing island of Greenland by offering investments in mining industry with proposal to import Chinese crews for construction and mining operations. Greenland is rich in mineral deposits and rare earth metals. China wants Greenland to provide exclusive rights to its rare earth metals in lieu of the fiscal investments. Under one such proposal, China would invest $2.5 billion in an iron mine and would bring 5000 Chinese construction and mining workers whereas the population of the capital of Greenland, Nuuk is only 15000. Arctic Council Membership: There are eight members of the Arctic Council that includes Canada, Denmark (including Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the USA. All these eight countries have geographic territories within the Arctic Circle. It was constituted in 1996 as an intergovernmental body but has evolved gradually from a dialogue forum to a geo-political club and a decision making body. There are continuing territorial disputes in Arctic Circle. Ownership of the Arctic is governed by the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, which gives the Arctic nations an exclusive economic zone that extends 200 nautical miles from the land. Member countries signed their first treaty on joint search and rescue missions in 2011. A second treaty on cleaning up oil spills is being negotiated. The group established its permanent secretariat at Tromso, Norway in January 2013. Arctic Melting and Opening of Newer Sea Lanes: With global warming becoming a reality, the Arctic ice has started to melt rapidly opening the northern sea-lanes that were frozen earlier. In summer of 2012, 46 ships sailed through the Arctic Waters carrying 1.2 million tonnes of cargo. There are legal questions about the international status of the northern sea lanes. China’s Lust for Arctic Resources: The Arctic has 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of gas according to the US Geological Survey. Greenland alone contains approximately one tenth of the world’s deposits of rare earth minerals. China which already has a monopoly on world’s rare earth metal trade wants to continue controlling this global trade. China piously claims that the Arctic resources are the heritage of the entire mankind while insisting that the South China sea is its exclusive sovereign territory. In 2004, China set up its first and the only Arctic scientific research station, curiously named “Yellow River Station” on the Svalbard Island of Norway. China, so far, has sent 6 arctic expeditions. China plans to build more research bases. In 2012, the 170-meters long ice-breaker “Snow Dragon” (MV Xue Long) became the first Chinese Arctic expedition to sail along the Northern Sea Route into the Barente Sea. Incidentally, as early as 1999, this 21000 metric ton research ice-breaker Xue Long had docked in the Canadian North-Western territory unexpectedly. China is building another 120-meter long ice-breaker with the help of Finland while the Polar Research institute in Shanghai trains scientists and other personnel for Arctic expeditions.   China’s Previous Use of Deception: There is no mandarin character for word transparency. China has been known to use duplicity and deception since the Art of War was written by Sun Tzu. China’s rhetoric of “peaceful and harmonious rise” and hegemonic behavior are predictably diametrically opposite to each other. China’s use of deception to camouflage its intentions in geopolitical matters is not surprising. While China joined the NPT in 1991, it provided 50 kg of highly enriched uranium to Pakistan, provided that country with a nuclear weapon design and supervised Pakistan’s first nuclear test at the Chinese nuclear testing site of Lop Nur. China purchased in 1998 an unfinished aircraft carrier from Ukraine after the break-up of Soviet Union ostensibly for developing a floating casino. The same “floating casino” is now China’s first aircraft carrier projecting Chinese naval and maritime power in the South China Sea.   China’s Application in Arctic Council Membership: China currently has an ad hoc observer status with Arctic Council. China’s application for permanent observer-ship was denied by Norway in 2012 owing to bilateral dispute over awarding of Nobel peace prize to China’s Liu Xiabo in 2010. China still has a pending application to be decided in May 2013 Arctic Council summit in Sweden when Canada takes over the chair for the next two years. With a permanent observer status, China would get full access to all Arctic Council meetings. Permanent observers do not have voting rights in the council but can participate in deliberations. China is trying to distinguish itself from the rest of the applicants as a “Near Arctic State” on the perniciously clever but fallacious grounds that the northernmost part of China in the province of Manchuria (the Amur river) is only one thousand miles south to the Arctic circle. The fallacy is that Manchuria was a separate, independent country that was annexed by China after the Communist take-over. Manchus had ruled over China for centuries during the reign of Manchu dynasty and last Chinese Emperor Pu Yi was actually the last Manchu emperor. Chinese ownership and annexation of Manchuria (Manchu-Kuo) is still not settled. A disputed territory cannot be used by China to make a geo-political claim for being a “Near Arctic State”.   Other Pending Applications: Other countries or non-state actors with pending applications for permanent observer-ship status include Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore, European Union, and non-state actors like Greenpeace and the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers. All these applications will be decided one way or the other in May 2013. The vote has to be unanimous for acceptance and how the US and Russia will vote is the crucial issue. In the past, Norway had vetoed China’s membership application. Some of the Arctic Council members may not approve European Union’s application because of EU’s penchant for restrictive and narrow rulings. Whereas Sweden, Canada, Iceland and Denmark may support China’s application, there are doubts about Norway, Russia and the US. Russia is currently the most vociferous member of Arctic Council that has serious reservations in expanding the Arctic club.   Strategic Issues: China has voracious appetite for new territories and has been seeking new frontiers for the last three hundred years with Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, Xinjiang and Tibet. China’s list of “core issues” is ever-expanding, starting with Taiwan and Tibet. China has included the whole the South China Sea and its islands as a core issue. China is aggressively claiming sovereignty on these islands based on historical maps and manufactured mythological evidence. China has now a license from the UN for deep sea bed mining for minerals in the Indian Ocean and has developed naval bases in Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea ports. If China manages to get a toehold in Arctic Circle, its behavior will become as belligerent in Arctic as it is in the South China Sea. It might claim sovereignty over the whole of the Northern route sea lanes based on “historical evidence”. If in 22nd century, China decides that the Arctic Circle is its core national issue, one would be seeing Chinese aircraft carriers in the Arctic Sea and Chinese nuclear powered submarines in the Barente Sea along with military bases with “Chinese characteristics” in the Iceland and Greenland.
31-Mar-2013
More by :  Dr. A. Adityanjee

Securitisation of the BRICS

Securitisation of the BRICS
A Adityanjee
http://councilforstrategicaffairs.blogspot.com/2013/03/securitisation-of-brics.html
http://www.claws.in/index.php?action=master&task=1337&u_id=144 http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=14207  Since independence India has traditionally shied away from joining security based pacts or military blocks. Chanting the same mantra, India refused to join ASEAN when membership of the ASEAN was being offered to India as a founding member. India’s political leadership at that time naively but wrongly assumed that the ASEAN is a successor organisation to SEATO (South East Asia Treaty Organisation). A non-aligned and pacifist India used to reflexively sermonise against military pacts in international fora. In the last decade or so, we have surprisingly grown fond of calling every bilateral relationship as “strategic partnership” devaluing the concept of strategic relations.However, this initial geo-strategic reticence and subsequent schizophrenia of Indianforeign policy is bound to change after the fifth summit of the BRICS in Durban, South Africa on March 26-27th 2013. Starting from a catchy acronym (BRIC) coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, an international banker from Goldman Sachs, the grouping of 4 emerging economies has evolved and enlarged. Russia under Putin became the prime mover of the BRIC as previously in 1990s, former Russian Premier Yevgeny Primakov had already suggested formation of RIC (Russia, India, China) grouping directed against the US. Owing to divergences in respective national strategic interests, RIC never became prominent. Primarily the BRICS has remained merely as a “talking shop” with economic agenda hoping to replace the Western dominated Bretton-woods institutions. India has persistently articulated the need to establish a “BRICS Developmental Bank” but differences in perceptions and power motives have prevented it from materialising. Last enlargement of BRIC to BRICS was smartly schemed by China during the Beijing Summit in 2011 in order to make IBSA (India, Brazil, & South Africa) grouping irrelevant. South Africa aspired to join the BRIC but was nowhere near any of the 4 emerging economies club members economically. China had felt excluded from the group of three large “developing democracies” and unilaterally invited South Africa to the BRIC summit. There are others who may be interested in joining the BRICS. Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi came recently to New Delhi seeking economic and defense cooperation with India. He also advocated for enlargement of the BRICS to include Egypt as well thereby changing the grouping to E-BRICS. Divide Loyalties and Heterogeneity BRICS is a serendipitously created international grouping without any serious initial thoughts about its charter. Having said that it is a reality now and we must maximise our participation and derive maximum geo-political benefit from it. The five members grouping inadvertently have two tiered membership de facto. Russia and China are the permanent members of the UNSC and the other three are aspiring candidates for permanent membership. Both Russia and China are major partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) an anti-West multilateral security framework in Central Asia. Both of them conduct joint annual military exercises under the framework of the SCO to develop inter-operability of armed forces. Russia is still China’s largest arm supplier as China remains under Western arms embargo following the Tiananmen Square massacre of protesting students. India has only an observer status with the SCO and has been made to wait on sidelines. China has steadfastly refused to increase the active membership of the SCO with a view to denying India a larger sphere of influence. Since the strategic interests of these two dominant members of the SCO converge and their policies are much more harmoniously coordinated in the UNSC by virtue of their being permanent members, one wonders if these two SCO members will become the puppet masters of the BRICS driving its strategic and security agenda. US Pivot to Asia and Emerging RCP Axis India must remain aware that following improvement in bilateral relations between India and US, both Russia and China have grown concerned about India’s strategic intentions and aspirations though for entirely different reasons. Moscow is miffed because India no longer offers a ready and automatic market for Russian substandard military hardware.Repeated delays in the delivery of refurbished Admiral Gorshkov or INS Vikramaditya is indicative of Putin’s displeasure conveyed diplomatically. China remains paranoid about being contained by the nascent but de facto G-2 of India and the US especially after the US pivot to Asia and its strategic retreat from South West Asia. China has done anything and everything to deny India a significant role in the international arena whether it is the UNSC permanent membership, membership of NSG, MTCR, Australia Club or enlargement of ASEAN plus frame work to ASEAN plus six instead of ASEAN plus three. China is already the largest arms supplier to Pakistan and has several thousands of PLA soldiers in POK. China has started to use the Gwadar and Karachi ports as naval bases. Both Russia and China have overtly expansionist aims. Putin doctrine envisages re-establishment of the former territory of the Soviet Union under Russian control. Xi Jin-Ping’s signature slogan of “China dream” involves grabbing land, sea-based and other natural resources under the elastic concept of “core issues” and protecting “Chinese sovereignty”. Russia has also started to engage Pakistan both economically and militarily. President Putin visited China as the first foreign country after re-claiming the presidency of Russia. Hu Jintao’s first stop was also Russia when he assumed Chinese leadership. Similarly, Xi Jin-Ping ‘s holy pilgrimage to Russia (just before the Durban summit of BRICS) after becoming the new paramount leader of China is worth taking notice. What we are witnessing is essentially an emerging RCP (Russia, China, & Pakistan) geo-political axis with wider strategic implications for India. BRICS: Identity Confusion In the Durban summit of the BRICS, securitisation of this group is bound to happen though primarily it is an economic grouping. The issues of security and combating terrorism may become formal part of the BRICS agenda. President Vladimir Putin wants the BRICS to broaden its role and cooperate collectively on geopolitical issues. Putin wants to transform the group into a new mechanism of “global governance”. In a pre-summit interview with Itar-Tass news agency and following a bilateral meeting with Xi Jin-Ping, he disclosed that the BRICS members are working on joint communiques on the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear program and other issues including the middle-east. The group members have not voted together consistently in the UN on strategic issues in the past though Russia and China have adopted similar positions and policies. According to a Kremlin transcript of this interview, Putin exhorted “We invite our partners to gradually transform the BRICS from a dialogue forum that coordinates approaches to a limited number of issues into a full-scale strategic cooperation mechanism that will allow us to look for solutions to key issues of global politics together”. Putin also plans to announce the creation of a BRICS Business Council to promote trade and investment within the group and help launch multilateral business projects. The group leaders will also endorse plans to create a joint foreign exchange reserves pool and an infrastructure/development bank besides promoting intra-group trade and investments. Other Russian suggestions include creating a network of “informal political and working-level mechanisms to strengthen coordination”, introducing rotating presidency, drafting a long-term “BRICS development strategy” and launching “a dialogue on ways, pace and concrete forms of possible institutionalisation of the BRICS”, including the establishment of a “permanent secretariat”. India’s analysts and strategic thinkers have either been very gloomy or very “naively musical” in embracing the BRICS and its future agenda. A balanced, cautious, middle of the road and well calculated strategic response to the BRICS challenges is required without having “great expectations” for the moon. Instead of shying away with security based multilateral groupings, time has come for India to embrace such groupings to safeguard India’s strategic interests. A resurgent India must learn to be proactive and not reactive in execution of her foreign policy. India should present a formal charter for the BRICS and minimum criteria for future membership. Future membership of this group should be criteria based and not driven by Chinese or Russian strategic interests.Here one would agree with the Russian suggestion for freezing the BRICS membership for next 3-4 years. India, simultaneously must do the necessary ground work and home work so that the “enhanced” BRICS does not end up swallowing and eventually digesting the “IBSA” where India has been one of the prime movers. India must enlarge the “IBSA” to “IIBSAA” (India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa & Argentina) in order to make this block of democracies more relevant in the international fora. This would require two other “developing democracies”, namely Indonesia and Argentina to be invited to join the “IBSA”. Both China and Russia are not true democracies and do not deserve a seat on the enlarged “IIBSAA”. In bilateral meetings with Putin and Xi Jin-Ping on the sidelines of BRICS, Prime Minister Dr. Man Mohan Singh must demand full membership for India in the SCO with a change in its charter to rename it as Solidarity and Cooperation Organization instead of Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Such a deft move by India will prevent “the SCO tail wagging the BRICS dog” in contentious geo-political issues and will simultaneously increase India’s strategic footprints in Central Asia. India must ensure that she does not endorse either Chinese or Russian hegemonic claims or ambitions as the BRICS takes a higher geo-political profile. As a precondition for securitisation of BRICS, India should also demand that BRICS formally adopt a joint declaration on the enlargement of the UNSC at the conclusion of the Durban Summit. India should insist that all the BRICS members must categorically endorse the UNSC permanent membership for India, Brazil and South Africa with full veto powers. There should not be mere platitudes coming from China and Russia on this important issue if the BRICS has to assume a greater role in international geo-political affairs. In the final analysis, India must systematically strengthen up her comprehensive national power (CNP) in order to have gravitas in international arena whether it involves UN, BRICS, SAARC, APEC, AEC, ASEAN or ARF. India must do multi-dimensional internal reforms, improve the infrastructure, energize the manufacturing sector, harness her youth power, modernize her armed forces, increase the budgetary allocation for her security needs and develop a rational and pragmatic pro-active foreign policy in order to safeguard her geo-political interests. References: Adityanjee: Invading the strategic space: the Dragon fires another salvo at India http://www.claws.in/index.php?action=master&task=722&u_id=144 Adityanjee:: Tales from the Dragon Kingdom http://www.claws.in/index.php?action=master&task=1071&u_id=144 Jaswant Singh: Crumbling BRICS http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-brics-s-separate-paths-to- development-by-jaswant-singh Shyam Saran: BRICS and premature orbituaries http://smartinvestor.business-standard.com/market/Marketnews-166137- Marketnewsdet-BRICS_and_premature_obituaries.htm Tarun Vijay: The BRICS dynamism and the musical chemistry for India http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indus-calling/entry/the-brics-dynamism-and-the- musical-chemistry-for-india MK BhadraKumar: Great Expectations http://www.deccanherald.com/content/320819/expectations.html RN Das: BRICS Baby Steps: The Challenges Ahead http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/BRICSBabySteps_rndas_220313 Radyuhin, V: Russia for a more powerful Brics http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/russia-for-a-more-powerful-brics/ article4538795.ece Dr A Adityanjee is President, The Council for Strategic Affairs, New Delhi. Views expressed are personal

So-Called Spring; Su-Shi Strife and The South-West Asia

So-Called Spring; Su-Shi Strife and The South-West Asia
by Dr. A. Adityanjee
http://councilforstrategicaffairs.blogspot.com/2013/03/so-called-spring-su-shi-strife-and.html http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=14117 Arab Spring, Arab Winter, Arab Summer, Arab Renaissance, Arab Awakening, Islamic Awakening and Islamic Rise are just few of the epithets used to describe the complex and multidimensional geopolitical changes in the middle-east region that comprises of West Asia and Northern Africa. Depending upon one’s perspective, each of these adjectives is inadequate to describe the complex geopolitical phenomena that have engulfed the region. It is important to recapitulate that barring three nations, viz. Iran, Turkey an Israel all other countries in this region are Arab. Despite Francis Fukuyama’s puerile musings about the “end of history”, we are now witnessing tectonic changes of historic proportions. However, it will be a very slow and bloody change that would be unstoppable despite numerous western interventions. As the geopolitical events unfold, we will witness a quasi-permanent fratricidal intra-Islamic sectarian war for decades in the west Asian region culminating in major cartographic changes. The genie of historic change had been unleashed much earlier in 2003 when the Baathist regime was toppled in Iraq ostensibly to chase the now non-existent “weapons of mass destruction”. The ten year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq and “the ensuing mother of all battles” does not witness peace and tranquility in that nation, divided de facto, on sectarian and ethnic fault-lines. The Iraqi Kurdistan, nominally under the central government of Iraq is on a rapid trajectory to peace, prosperity and development while Baghdad continues to witness sectarian violence and bomb attacks. The Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is grabbing executive powers and has inadvertently encouraged sectarian divide and Shia identity politics. Besides the Iraqi Kurds, the real beneficiary of the US invasion worth $ 870 billion has been the Islamic Republic of Iran. If one chooses to be historically correct, the Islamic revolution of 1979 in Iran is the real harbinger of the so-called Arab spring. A US supported dictator was overthrown by popular revolt in Iran. The popular revolution was usurped and captured by Islamist Ayatollah Khomeini leading to a lot of blood-shed and massacre of democratic and liberal sections of the Iranian society in a targeted manner. A mini-version of this so-called (“Persian”) spring was again manifest in Iran, a non-Arab Shia theocracy in 2009 under the name of “green revolution”. However, the US administration led by Barak Hussain Obama “rightly” failed to capitalize on the situation leading to brutal suppression of young Iranians by the theocratic regime and its revolutionary guards. For the first time the US and its cronies missed an opportunity for externally driven regime change in Iran. Starting with Tunisia, the Arab Spring phenomena later on engulfed Egypt and Yemen. In Yemen, an extended “managed” political change was indeed brought in grudgingly under the patronage of Western imperialistic powers. Both Tunisia and Egypt saw subsequent take-over by Islamists in democratic elections. After over-throwing of Ben-Ali, the fundamentalist An-Nahda Islamists were the victors of the Tunisian democratic elections in October 2011. The Jihadists and the Salafists are now working in tandem with the conservative An-Nahda Islamists to infiltrate the previously secular Tunisian state from within. The story in Egypt is not very much different where the popular revolution against Hosni Mubarak and the Armed Forces has already been annexed by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and Mohammad Morsey. The Egyptian judiciary, especially the Supreme Court has resisted the Muslim Brotherhood and its attempts to foist an Islamist constitution. Furthermore, the Egyptian Supreme court has postponed yet again the parliamentary elections denying the MB an opportunity to control the entire state. Parts of the civil police force have already stopped obeying orders of the Islamist government to fight against fellow citizens forcing the MB to spare its cadre for law enforcement duties. Using the fig-leaf of so-called Arab Spring, the opportunistic Western powers militarily intervened in Libya, another socialist Baathist party ruled Arab dictatorship and brought out a regime change they had craved for long. The subsequent Islamist take-over of Libya, the barbaric treatment (victor’s justice) given to the quixotic dictator Col Mommar Gadaffi and killings of the US ambassador and other personnel by Al Qaeda in Ben Ghazi is illustrative of the nature of the beast. Interestingly, the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussain and Col Mommar Gadaffi, all three had indeed served with great distinction as the “useful idiots” of the Western imperialism. The ideological hollowness of the West and the cheer-leaders of the so-called Arab Spring was noted again in Bahrain where popular and public demands for political change were exterminated brutally by foreign military intervention undertaken by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Pakistan in order to prevent take-over of the Sunni ruled nation by a Shia majority population. Syrian example shows the true colors of the cheer-leaders of the so-called Arab spring. Another socialist and secular Arab country ruled by the Baath party is being systematically destabilized from outside intervention for the last two years and sacrificed at the altar of Sunni-Salafi-Jihadi-Wahabi (SSJW) geopolitical interests. Foreign Sunni fighters are leading the war against the Assad regime, fully supported by the regional Sunni monarchies. What we see now is essentially a Sunni-Shia (SU-SHI) sectarian power struggle in the Islamic nations of the West Asian region with Western imperialistic intervention in a systematic manner to defeat the secular and socialist Baath party regimes and of course to safeguard the interests of the Sunni-Salafi-Jihadi-Wahabi (SSJW) alliance. This bloody sectarian conflict will not be resolved in next few months or years. As the geopolitical events unfold, we will witness a quasi-permanent fratricidal intra-Islamic sectarian war for decades in the west Asian region culminating in major cartographic changes. There will be multiple incarnations of Arab & Islamist “Tianamen Squares” during which the despotic rulers will brutally suppress the revolting citizens. The US strategic retreat from the middle- east and pivot to Asia will finally allow the history to emerge in the middle-east uncontaminated by the hegemonic order imposed by the US hyper-power. Right now all the Arab monarchies have tried to buy out the demands for freedom and socio-political change by bribing their respective populations with yet more goodies financed by petro-dollars. This monetary intervention would at best delay the clamor for freedom and political change only by a few years in the oil-rich nations. There will be Islamist take-over of one-kind or other in all these countries. But political Islam would not be able to provide stability and strategic security to these nations. Just like in the communist countries as they vied with one another for title of the adherents of the true nature of communism practiced in the former communist countries, one would witness competitive claims of “true or genuine Islamism” by various ruling dispensions in this region. Fundamentalist competitive “political Islam” in alliance with Jihadis would hijack liberal and democratic popular uprisings. Indeed, there will be immense loss of human life and Jihadi terrorism will rule the roost. Transfer of power and change of regimes will be an inherently bloody process. There will be serious human rights violations and genocide by all the sides in the name of “true Islam”. Western apologists and backers for these despotic countries under severe financial crunch would no longer be interested in maintaining the geo-political status quo ante. These geopolitical tectonic changes are likely to result in emergence of new nation states. Syria might be balkanized into multiple small entities or state-lets analogous to the former Republic of Yugoslavia. One would not be surprised if an Independent Kurdistan finally emerges as the 4th non-Arab country in the middle-east. Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey may lose their respective Kurdish populations to a newly independent and democratic Kurdistan. Since the fall of the Ottoman empire, the Western imperialistic powers while arbitrarily carving out state-lets to safeguard their own economic and hydrocarbon interests, chose to sacrifice the Kurdish national interests and denied them right to a state. West Asia has app 35 million Kurdish (non-Arab) people with app half (18 million) in Turkey, 8 million in Iran, 7 million in Iraq and 2 million in Syria. Unraveling of Syria will serve as a catalyst for Turkish Kurds to revolt against the increasingly Islamist Sunni dispension of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara that has systematically deviated from the secular ideology of Kemal Ata-Turk, the founding father of modern Turkey. Both the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) and its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan have successfully orchestrated staggered, coordinated hunger strikes for more than two months by thousands of Kurdish prisoners in Turkish jails. Turkey is going through a schizophrenic struggle between its European aspirations and Islamic moorings. However, political Islam will not be able to hold the Turks and the Kurds together. With increasing Sunniazation of the Turkish polity, this large ethnic and linguistic Kurdish minority will eventually assert itself in this chaotic geopolitical transition. Islamic glue will not be able to hold together Turkish and Kurdish ethnic identities and a volcanic eruption of nationalist fervor will unravel Turkey as we know it. If Turkish and Syrian Kurds turn more nationalistic and declare an independent Kurdistan, Iraqi and Iranian Kurds will be forced to follow suit. As a result of this, a truncated Iraq would eventually come out as a Shia-Arab theocracy with a Sunni minority supported by the neighboring Shia-Persian theocracy, Iran. Iran would not be insulated from demands of political freedom and change if there is no external intervention. Young, educated and emancipated Iranians will eventually overthrow the conservative Ayatollah-cracy leading to a more democratic and liberal regime change. A non-theocratic and more democratic and liberal Iran will re-emerge as a major regional power with friendly Shia majority governments in Iraq, Azerbaijan, Bahrain and elsewhere including in Lebanon. Iran will be a long-term winner in the despite losing some territory to Kurdistan and Baluchistan. A loose federation of Shia states may become a power grouping in the region. In such a geopolitical scenario, the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) would no longer be safeguarded by a strategically retreating USA. By 2017, the USA will surpass the Saudis as the largest petroleum producing nation that will become a net exporter of hydro-carbons in 2020. Future US administrations will be forced by domestic isolationists to give up the stability mantra leaving the middle-east region to its own devices. The ultra-geriatric conservative clan of Saudi princelings with all their extremities in the grave will not be able to hold the country together especially in the face of increasingly restive and un-employed young men. Increasing modernization and “secularization” of this tribal society will be resisted violently by the ruling political establishment. There have already been small demonstrations by Sunni Muslims calling for the release of people held on security charges. Saudi women will demand equal rights and driving privileges. The Saudi women would like to emulate their more emancipated Iranian counter-parts in public discourse. If Al Qaeda or its various mutants take-over the Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud will be brutally slaughtered in the name of “liberating Islam”. The internal strife in Saudi Arabia will manifest openly in an explosive manner when the oil-fields dry up in few decades. The only unrest to hit Saudi Arabia during the so-called Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings was among its Shi'ite Muslim minority. The Shia populations in the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia will eventually revolt against a Sunni-Salafi-Jihadi-Wahabi (SSJW) complex leading to emergence of another Shia state-let. Bahraini Shia population is likely to over-throw the ruling Sunni dynasty, leading to emergence of another Shia nation. A Palestinian state-let may eventually be established as a joint protectorate of Egypt and Jordan. Egypt and Turkey will have much diminished geo-political influence. Egypt will have to deal with the issue of human rights of an increasingly vocal Coptic Christian minority. Some countries might eventually disappear by 2030. The most putative candidates are Lebanon, Kuwait and the Palestine. The impact of these geo-political changes will without doubt creep eastwards towards the Af-Pak region of the South-Asia leading to cartographic changes in national boundaries. Pakistan-occupied Baluch principalities, exploited by the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani army will successfully revolt for an independent Baluchistan as the Chinese footprint increases in the Gwadar port. After taking over the Gwadar port, China will seriously attempt to exploit the mineral and hydrocarbon wealth of Pakistan-occupied Baluch areas, thereby, increasing the sense of alienation and marginalization amongst the Baluch tribes. The separatist Baluchistan Liberation Army will target Chinese companies and personnel in the ensuing war of independence. The Sistan-Baluchistan province of Iran will take its own time joining an Independent Baluchistan. The consequent undoing of the artificial geographic boundaries arbitrarily determined by the British colonialists will lead to emergence of newer states carved out of the Af-Pak region. Another fall-out of these changes would be emergence of an independent and greater Pakhtoonistan comprising of the Khyber-Pakhtoonwah province of Pakistan and the Pakhtoon areas of the Afghanistan across the now defunct Durand line. The result would a truncated but more stable Afghanistan controlled by the northern alliance comprising of the Tajeks, Hazaras and Uzbeks. A truncated Pakistan will continue to remain as a rent-seeking failed state. It may implode eventually, leading to its fragmentation followed by multi-lateral external intervention under supervision of the UN and the IAEA to secure the nuclear weapons and the fissile materials. Further to north-east, a restive Uighurs’ population will force the emergence of Eastern Turkistan while throwing away the 300 years’ old occupation by the Han Chinese and subsequent annexation by the Communist China led by Comrade Mao. Will this tectonic change engulf the central Asian states or the “stans” is not clear at this time as the geopolitical dynamics are entirely different in the Central Asia in comparison to the South and West Asia. There will be following major discernible evolutionary geo-political trends underlying the so-called Arab spring. The despotic regimes headed by dictators, monarchs, military strongmen, presidents-for-life and supreme leaders-for-life would eventually be overthrown by the popular revolt. The middle-east is surely due for a major cartographic make-over in the next few decades. The fault-lines would be sectarian, ethnic and linguistic. The glue of Political Islam supported by embedded Jihadi elements would be torn asunder while facing the sectarian, ethnic and linguistic divide. Whether some kind of democracy will eventually prevail in this region in near future is doubtful, at best. Political Islam with its Jihadi mutant will be on the ascendance temporarily as an essential bloody interim phase in the long-term development of liberal democracy in the West Asia, North Africa and Af-Pak regions of South Asia. Increasing modernization, secularization and intellectual emancipation of the common masses will eventually defeat the Islamist counter-reaction in each of these countries. Iran which is way ahead in the trajectory of civilizational change and democratic evolution will emerge as the most influential regional player while Egypt, Turkey and the KSA will eclipse relatively. References: Arab Spring, Arab Barbarism and the Victor's Justice