** 18-Jan-2021 World View: Sunni vs Shia
DaKardii wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 2:14 am
> John, you frequently say that in the upcoming world war, the
> situation in the Middle East will be Shia vs. Sunni and Arab
> vs. Jew.
> If the Shias and Sunnis will be fighting each other, that
> presumably means the fault lines will apply to the Arab
> countries. So, which ones are Israel's allies, and which are its
> enemies?
I always try to hedge this prediction. The following is fairly
standard paragraph of text that I've used in one form or another for
several years:
> "As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics
> predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world
> war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim
> countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran.
> Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs,
> re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the
> partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
> The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional
> war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various
> ethnic groups against each other."
In recent years, you can see how some of these alignments are working
out.
First, there will be a war between Israelis and Palestinians. That's
an ironclad guarantee.
Among the Shias, you have Iran, Afghanistan's Hazaras, Syria's
Alawites, Yemen's Houthis, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Shia groups
all appear to be monolithic, as far as I can tell. The exception is
that the Shias and Sunnis in Iraq are mostly united against Iran.
It's different with the Sunnis, who are badly splintered. The purpose
of organizations like the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League
was to keep the different Sunni or Arab aligned with each other.
However, there have been many problems. Syria was banished from the
Arab League for years because of Bashar al-Assad's genocide.
In June 2016, several Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
Egypt and United Arab Emirates (UAE), broke relations with Qatar.
Amazingly enough, that blockade is still in place. The core of the
disagreement is apparently related to Arab tribal differences that go
back to World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, including
the Sauds vs the Wahhabis.
Then there's Turkey. Erdogan would like to revive the Ottoman Empire.
At the same time, he's taking money from the Chinese Communists in
return for ignoring the arrest, torture and enslaving millions of
ethnic Turkic Uighurs in China.
The recent conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over
Nagorno-Karabakh has revived Turkey's historic hatred of the Armenians
who are, in turn, aligned with the Russians -- who have fought
multiple wars with Turkey in Crimea, and are now fighting Turkey in
Syria and Libya.
So, DaKardii, you seem to be someone who likes to connect the dots
historically. Maybe you can take the above list of alignments and
make something of it.