On Global Security

The demographic crisis >

International terrorism >

The environmental crisis >

Crisis of values >

Mass starvation >

Terrorism threat >

Islamic extremism >

Holocaust >

Nuclear crisis >

New invasion >

Militant Islamism >

Environmental crisis >

Neo-fascism >

Nuclear crisis >

The economic crisis >

politicians, especially those in the European Union, have been cultivating tolerance of Islamic radicalism and even justifying terrorist attacks of Islamic extremists against peaceful citizens of Russia and Israel. Far from appeasing extremists, such elevation of terrorists to the rank of “freedom fighters” will merely kindle their aggressive aspirations. In the 1930s Western countries and the Soviet Union tried to channel fascist aggression against each other. Now the US, Europe, Russia, China and India are making advances to some radical Islamic regimes and organizations due to geopolitical, economic and military competition between each other, and in the hope that militant Islamism will assault their rivals rather than themselves. Human conscience, which was stirred up by the twentieth-century Holocaust, seems to have fallen asleep in this century. Israel has managed to defend its right to exist in five wars over the past sixty years. Now Europeans and, increasingly, Americans have of late thought that they need not worry about that any more and that the main thing is to reach consensus with the Islamic world whatever the cost. As one generation gives way to another, the memory of the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald fades away. Moralizing demagogy and manifestations of Western solidarity with radicalism in the Middle East are becoming all the more popular since they, as a rule, cloak fairly material “hydrocarbon” interests. Making use of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Nazi regime recruited allies and satellites, while Nazi ideology prepared a justification for the blitzkrieg, world war and Holocaust. Now the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, constantly urging the destruction of the Big Satan (the US) and the Little Satan (Israel), are preparing to justify ideologically any provocation and terrorist acts that the terrorist networks, led and financed by Tehran, are capable of staging. With the connivance of the governments of Islamic states that are regarded as Western allies, there have appeared dangerous seats of international terrorism in the north-western provinces of Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, in northern Yemen, and in some countries of the Sahara region and South East Asia. The Taliban, who are controlling most of Afghanistan and escalating their strikes against the UN military contingent and humanitarian aid organizations, continue, as before, to challenge the entire world community. In the 1930s US, British, French and Soviet concessions to Germany entailed a chain of diplomatic defeats and nurtured Hitler’s impunity and increasingly arrogant policy. The situation is now repeating itself. The UN World Conference against Racism held in Durban (South Africa) in 2001 in fact turned racist, as it focused practically exclusively on Israel: it passed a resolution equating Zionism to racism and called Israel an “apartheid state”. That conference served as an ideological platform for the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The appeasement policy might have suffered another defeat when the 2009 UN conference in Geneva stopped short of becoming another anti- Israeli forum thanks only to international solidarity efforts. Guided by obviously ideological motives, the NPT Review Conference of 2010 has selectively focused on criticizing Israel alone of all the countries either violating the treaty or not party to it. What next? What are the limits of tolerance in interstate relations? How much longer are UN and UN-sponsored conferences, called with the noble aim of combating racism, xenophobia, national and religious enmity, as well as the spread of mass annihilation weapons, to serve as detonators setting off mutual hatred and encouraging irresponsible actions by extremists? What is to counter the spread of xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism in the world in addition to UN commission activities that increasingly look like attempts to put out fire with gasoline? The less pressure that is brought to bear on conservative regimes in Islamic countries regarded as Western allies, the more confident all sorts of extremist groupings and political and financial circles maintaining radicals feel in their bid to use the latter as a political instrument for pressuring the West and Russia. The longer fruitless negotiations continue with Tehran on its nuclear programme, the closer Iran comes to developing nuclear weapons. These negotiations have of late been focused not on the demand that the five resolutions of the UN Security Council be implemented and uranium enrichment stopped, but on talking Iran into accepting the proposals of other nations that Iran enrich its uranium to a higher degree. Under the guise of similar negotiations hundreds of European companies are engaged in financial and business operations with Iran, making economic sanctions of the UN Security Council absolutely senseless. Some states are trying to ease these sanctions in order not to “turn” Iran away from the negotiation process, while simultaneously claiming sanctions to be inefficient. They thus send the UN Security Council policy around a vicious circle and provide Tehran with a lever to escalate its nuclear course. The USA and some European countries have as a result introduced tougher unilateral sanctions, which sap the unity of the permanent UN Security Council members. This policy of “economic pragmatism” and the desire not to miss their opportunity for short-term profit prompted the Soviet Union, Britain, France and the US to compete with each other in cooperating with the booming economy of Nazi Germany seventy years ago. However, what seemed to be a policy of realism and sound pragmatism proved to be the main mistake of the twentieth century, and entailed unheard-of dramatic consequences in world history. In 2010 the world marked the sixty-fifth anniversary of victory in that most horrible war. But that war could have been averted! Yet, by making advances to radical Islamist forces, the world seems to be ready to repeat that fatal mistake again. In his time Hitler fostered Nazi fifth columns in many countries. Today, world terrorist networks are operating in all regions, and their ideologists and commanders use computer programs, camcorders and satellite antennas to supervise their commandos and control them from mountain caves or secret residences. The Iran-sponsored Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas pose a tremendous terrorist threat. Meanwhile, as it were, keeping in the background and without bringing fire upon itself, Iran is steadily preparing to destroy Israel, an aim that the Iranian leaders have more than once publicly proclaimed. The US, EU and Russia – the pillars of world politics – recognize Israel’s right to counter terrorism but have so far failed to check effectively Iran’s aggressive plans. What will happen if Israel is left in the position of a sacrifice intended to appease the appetite of a new aggressor? That was how the appeasement policy towards Hitler that got the upper hand in Munich in 1938 left Czechoslovakia in the lurch. The following year (1939) Poland was sacrificed with the same aim. As is known, instead of “peace for generations to come”, that policy brought about the most gory and destructive war in human history. Should this ideology and practice of the Iranian extremists meet with no rebuff, as Nazi ideology failed to be rebuffed in its time, Israel will not be the only one to face the new threat. Like Czechoslovakia seventy years ago, Israel is the first but not the last target of Islamic extremism, terrorism and programmes to obtain nuclear weapons. Their aim is to subordinate or destroy the entire modern European civilization, with which the US and Russia unconditionally associate themselves despite the attempts of certain circles in these countries to pose as friends of the Islamic world or to serve as go-betweens in its relations with the West. For all the similarities and analogies with the 1920s and 1930s, history never exactly repeats itself. Today Israel has to tackle a mission of universal importance virtually singlehanded. Although in the past millions of unarmed people, elderly citizens, women and children were annihilated in death camps with impunity, Israel will now be able to defend itself in case of need in the face of nuclear holocaust. Anyway, the problem is not only the Iranian nuclear programme, nor even the threat of a clash between Iran and Israel. An attempt to repeat in the early twenty-first century a political scheme implemented in the second quarter of the twentieth century with other parties but similar aims is truly the most alarming reality of our day. The world paid dearly for having underestimated the plans of the Third Reich leaders. The main problem of our day is the possibility of a replay of the political mistakes of the past on a far larger scale due to the spread of nuclear weapons.