Sri Lanka and conflagration in West Asia: Need for delinking

WITH the stunning escalation of Israeli aggression against Iran, the wider world is headed towards disaster. Conflict in the region may be temporarily contained by Iran's military difficulties in responding.

- By Devaka Gunawardena

Alternatively, it could explode into a full-scale war of attrition with immediate and bloody consequences. Either way, Israel's actions are further evidence to regimes all over the globe that the multilateral order under US hegemony has well and truly collapsed. That system was extremely unequal and violent in its own way, to say nothing of its role in the unravelling that is happening today. But aside from US imperial intervention in other countries, it generally inhibited open war between states with the capability of provoking planetary destruction. The contemporary shift to greater interstate conflict creates new existential dangers.

Meanwhile, the current conjuncture of unravelling is incomparable even to the height of the Cold War. Back then, the West had the capacity to manoeuvre the split between the Soviet Union and China while promoting 'peace' between regional dictatorships in West Asia and Israel, such as the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty in 1979. In addition, the crisis conditions today do not fall into neat lines of geopolitical division. It is doubtful that countries will organise into clear blocs in the coming conflict, which is likely to deepen in its international ramifications. Regardless, smaller countries like Sri Lanka must prepare themselves for the uncoordinated yet dramatic world war that is likely to be unleashed.