End of 2021 and another crisis prone year gone by

Almost at the end of the 2021, its been fun year with 2 variants of Covid creating a global havoc on travel economy and life in general. Delta literally was the Personality of the Year and now Omnicron seems to be usurping the coveted honors with a viral spread 5 times that of delta. Only hope is that it remain less severe than Delta and makes this less damaging over time. 

Lets get back to geopolitics and see where it has evolved.. The hardening of conflict between Democracies and the Rest groupings is making further headway as I had long predicted would happen and the foundation  for middle east falling into the Chinese grouping is now truly underway. 2 changes signify this, first obviously US has lost its protective mantle that it had long kept in the Middle east with its withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now both UAE and Saudi are testing US's role as their protector with overtures to China (Check articles on the Saudi Ballistic missile facility- https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/23/politics/saudi-ballistic-missiles-china/index.html) and the UAE snub ( https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/22/opinions/france-uae-us-arms-deal-andelman/index.html). In a pre Iraq war era this would have been unimaginable to see US being pushed back by normally docile kingdoms who are keen to keep their non democratic oil fueled kingdoms alive through a don who is willing to sell them weapons and protects them in turn.. Now a viable alternative has risen who not just can protect but also help them build their own missile capabilities. This now truly marks a change and rise of Islamic kingdoms who not just have the money and ambition to have a bigger say in world affairs but now have a communist nation supporting them as Russia once meddled as long as Middle east looks away from their own internal issues with Muslim Uighurs.

Take Chinese money and weapons, a supportive Russian influence in Middle east and an increasingly unstable Nuclear islamic neighbour(read Pakistan) keen to get any funds to keep their army & fledgling economy afloat and last not the least a paranoid set of Islamic kingdoms trying to maintain their relevance between the 2 poles, a deeply Nationalistic , cashed up Left and an Increasingly Conservative democratic set of nations. We will see a bonhomie of Islamic nation states hand in glove with a China/Russia combine at its peak. European Union will grow weak , deeply divided and wont mustle any strength to change these dynamics.This will play out over the next few decades before both US and eventually China starts to decline and India rises as the new power. It will be only at the start of the decline of India that the roots of 3rd world war will take seed. All we see now are the build up to those events over the next few decades.

Till my next post.