What's happened within the space of a week is that Pakistan's bad actions in Pakistani held-Kashmir, Saudi Arabia's illegitimate claim to being the guardian of Islam, and America's support for terrorists in Syria -- three longstanding situations -- have crashed into the news.
It's a trifecta. Yet beyond the one I noted on the first day of this blog I can't see a direct connection between the three situations, even though the governments involved have old and strong connections.
In "Not Clockwork Orange Century" (11/04) I pointed out that in the era of globalized 24/7 news and the internet, actions of governments were getting increasingly hard to cover up; for this reason it was vital that my government, the American government, leave go of covert tactics developed during the Cold War and play it straight.
My warning went unheeded but with hindsight it was mooted. Since 2010 it's been very evident that so many nongovernmental players -- globalized business/financial interests, criminals, and terrorist networks -- had joined the game of covertly destabilizing foreign governments that the power traditionally held by influential governments was fragmenting.
This state of affairs set off the hue and cry that the Westphalian state was dead. I venture it's more that the entire world is becoming one big African state -- the kind of state where the normal state of affairs is coups and counter-coups.
Well, I don't know what else to say about the eerie confluence of events. It simply happened, that's all.
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