Sam GhandchiIslamism Wants to Lead Redivision of the World

Sam Ghandchi

http://www.ghandchi.com/472-ww3-plus.htm

 

If the goal of First World War was targeting re-division of the world after over a century of serious changes in the reality of distribution of actual economic and political power of various countries in the world, including developments ranging from the expansion of British and French colonialism and the fall of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism to the rise of Russia and Germany in Europe, Versailles Treaty had also become the final document of this new division of the world being arrived at by war and not through negotiations and diplomacy.  Following WWI the rapid growth of the United States on one side and the revival of the defeated powers such as Russia and Germany brought the issue of re-dividing the world to the international discourse.  In fact the strategic focus of Hitler from the beginning on rejecting the Versailles Treaty showed that re-division of the world was the issue that formed the worldwide unity against the victors of WWI.  Also the diplomacy of Great Britain and France was focused on appeasing Hitler and not on resolving the demands for re-division of the world through diplomacy.  And this was the reason that finally Second World War occurred and the strange historical event was that the allies of UK and France became two countries namely the US and Russia which were both claimants for re-division of the world at that time because the power of UK and France had fallen between the two world wars whereas the United States and the Communist World with the leadership of Russia had soared during that period.  But to confront Germany which wanted to re-divide the world with Russia and the US, by first swallowing Great Britain and France, no other choice was left for UK and France other than to extend their hand to US and Russia for alliance and this is how the allies were formed in  WWII confronting the axis of that period and the world was re-division of the world was again achieved by military force.

 

After WWII and the passing of areas of British influence to the US while US guaranteeing the British interests, it was clear that the new division of the world between the victors could not be acceptable by the Communist World despite Soviet’s taking over half of Europe and in countries like Iran these conflicts between the victors of WWII continued for many years after the end of the war.  Of course, the great schism between China and Russia helped that this discontent of the Communist world during the Cold War did not end in an all-out war and one should definitely acknowledge that United Nations played an important role to prevent the flames of another world war to rise.  And the fact that China later joined Security Council was not only the expression that division of the world after the WWII was being challenged by the new economic and political developments of the Communist countries but also was the expression of the fact that the needed adjustment was achieved through diplomacy.  Of course prior to it, the coming to power of Khrushchev in Russia and finally later on the growth of pro-democracy movement and its victory in the Eastern Bloc prevented another world war catastrophe to happen following the challenges of the new communist states towards the division of the world that had happened in the aftermath of WWII by the victors.

 

As I have noted in the past, the Nation States and Global Lineups [http://www.ghandchi.com/326-GlobalLineupsEng.htm[ in the global of the last quarter century have made drastic changes. In my opinion, besides the countries I already mentioned there are other groups of countries in the world that have had tremendous changes in their economic and political power since WWII and the Islamist movement by challenging the post WWII division of the world is trying to achieve the leadership of this discontent.  I believe the statements of Mahmoud  Ahmadinejad questioning the structure of permanent membershi of UN Security Council must be understood in this framework that the current international structures, do not reflect the economic and political power of countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran which have had tremendous growth in the last half century, and the closeness of existing Arab states with the US does not guarantee that the current division of power will not be challenged, rather it means that these governments themselves are in danger of falling by forces from within their own countries, forces that do not accept the post-WWII divisions of the world and all its amendments by Communist countries and their inheritors, and the most important ones among these countries are the group of countries that are gathered under the umbrella of Islamic countries and the second group are the Latin American countries.  In my opinion in this situation if a major change in the structures of division of economic and political power in the world such as the structure of United Nations does not happen, the danger of a third world war will be increased.

 

It is true that a country like the United States pays the main expenses of UN and many of the claimants of seats in the UN in practice do not take such duties and only talk of rights and not of responsibilities, but the issue is not whether Chavez or another head of state is throwing slogans but the issue is to have the courage to change the current structures of this organization.  It is better to take the pain of changing UN than to be trapped in the pain of a world war.  Islamists by spearheading their attack towards the current division of the world and their efforts to unite the opponents of the post-WWII division, are endangering the world.  The solution is not a military challenge and is a diplomatic one but if the cause which is the outmoded distribution of power inherited from WWII is not removed, in practice the world will move towards a military confrontation for this issue which will be more catastrophic than the resistance to Hitler’s attack on the victors of WWI and will not be limited to a few terrorist attacks here and there around the world.  To build a world Beyond War [http://www.ghandchi.com/357-BeyondWarEng.htm] requires active efforts to reform the existing international structures and to form new effective institutions in the world and not to ignore this real issue which is related to fairness and justice in the division of economic and political power in today’s world.  As I have noted in Islam and Globalization [http://www.ghandchi.com/437-GeographyEng.htm], Islamism because of its ideological retrogression is at war with globalization but lack of attention to reforming the obsolete division of the world can easily make this retrogressive force the leader of an all-out world war to lead the re-division of the world.  Denial of this reality of injustice in the world and making war is not the way to confront Islamism but efforts to confront the injustices with a Futurist Vision [http://www.ghandchi.com/401-FuturistVisionEng.htm] is what can become the positive alternative to the false utopia of Islamism.

 

Hoping for a Federal, Democratic, and Secular Futurist Republic in Iran,

 

Sam Ghandchi, Publisher/Editor
IRANSCOPE
http://www.iranscope.com
April 28, 2007

 

Text in Persian

http://www.ghandchi.com/472-ww3.htm

 

 

Related Articles:

http://www.ghandchi.com/437-GeographyEng.htm

http://www.ghandchi.com/index-Page19.html

 

 

 

-------------------

Theoretical Articles

http://www.ghandchi.com

 

All Articles

http://www.ghandchi.com/SelectedArticles.html

 

 

 

Web ghandchi.com