Laundry List !

Canada provides a unique perspective to see rest of the world and its happenings. It is the America which is not! Obviously being just north of the USA has its pros and cons. Jury is still out to decide which is more numerous. Guess they frequently change the top position depending on the issue at hand and party at the helm of their respective governments.

Much as everyone dismisses Canada as the 51^st province of the US; it certainly is not. Although there are massive similarities in the character, thoughts, beliefs, processes, systems and the people. Sometimes a mirror image of each other, most times a reflection. There is a shared history, shared peaceful open border as well as rather a long laundry list of contentious disputes between the two. Both in terms of Trade as well as politics.

From this vantage point it is obvious that despite the end of the cold war and the sad demise of the Soviet Union it is quite not such a unipolar world as America would have liked it. Challenges abound. Newer, vigorous and markedly virulent threats question them regularly. 

US can safely blame the duo of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon for letting the China genie out of the bottle. It probably was a smart thing to do at the time. US needed someone to lick its Vietnam wounds and China needed someone to help loosen the Russian bear hug. One less Soviet friend suited US as well so …. Today an eagerly expansionist Communist China is providing the stiffest challenge; at times acting surreptitiously, suspiciously and ominously.  US currently owes China about a trillion dollars. Some fiscal experts say it is a problem for China, some say it is a problem for the US. However, all agree that it is a massive problem and a huge lever.

Many moons ago US went willingly into the quagmire of Afghanistan to stop Soviet Russia’s access to the Indian Ocean. Today it is faced with the spectre of a communist China right on the mouth of Indian Ocean in Gwadar Port, Baluchistan.

As if it was not enough there is that throbbing pain on the other side of their head called North Korea. Kim may be a megalomaniac that needs to keep up his boasts, but I really doubt if he is foolish enough to let ballistic missiles fly over the Korean peninsula.  He certainly will remain an imminent danger to Japan and South Korea and keep threatening the US. Then there is China. Again! A lot of Kim’s bluster and capabilities stem from the support it receives from China. The sole major nation to do so.

It serves certain quarters to propagate the myth that Afghan’s can’t be defeated.  Anybody can be and so can they. Their History is proof enough.  It is an ancient land that has been inhabited for thousands of years. Arabs invaded them a little more than thousand years ago. Their entire society and ruling kingdoms capitulated. Now it is not my proposition that they should be defeated but the false self-serving narrative mostly touted by the Pakistani establishment needs to be countered. It essentially is a smoke screen to hide their keystone role in keeping the pot boiling. Ironically US paid Pakistan handsomely to execute this diabolical plan against itself!

Who other than China supports Pakistan in this endeavour? And really guess how North Korea got its nuclear capabilities? If you guessed Pakistan; you are right. Remember Father of the Islamic bomb; A. Q. Khan was running a nuclear Walmart under the watchful eyes of ISI!

It is rather easy to connect these dots. There are several other issues at hand like Saudi Arab’s penchant for promoting Wahhabism. Its rivalry with Shia Iran and the attendant fallout in the middle east. Mexican immigrants; Colombian drug cartel etc. Good lord! at the time of writing the whole US government was shut down because of funding issues.

 Talk about problems! US has got aplenty. Someone the other day said that the biggest problem they have is ‘Trump’! Now if he has seen through Pakistan’s game in Afghanistan; he is not such a dolt! Is he now? Only thing I am confused about is that if  this is the beginning of the end; the end of the beginning or the beginning of a beginning?