U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Christopher uses hand signals to marshal an MQ-9 Reaper for end-of-runway checks on Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, Dec. 6, 2015. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Robert Cloys
Jean-Marie Guehenno, Foreign Policy: 10 Conflicts to Watch in 2016
From Syria to the South China Sea, the conflicts and crises the world will face in the coming year.
Pulling together a list of the wars most in need of international attention and support in 2016 is challenging for all the wrong reasons. For 20 years after the end of the Cold War, deadly conflict was in decline. Fewer wars were killing fewer people the world over. Five years ago, however, that positive trend went into reverse, and each year since has seen more conflict, more victims, and more people displaced. 2016 is unlikely to bring an improvement from the woes of 2015: It is war — not peace — that has momentum.
That said, there are conflicts whose urgency and importance rise above. This year’s list of 10 is weighted toward wars with the worst humanitarian consequences: Syria and Iraq, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and the Lake Chad basin. It includes those in influential and functioning states, like Turkey, as well as those that have collapsed, like Libya. It features conflicts that are already bad but are poised to get much worse without intelligent intervention, such as Burundi, as well as tensions, such as those in the South China Sea, that are simmering but have yet to boil over. The list also considers the hopeful example presented by Colombia, where considerable progress is being made toward ending a 51-year insurgency.
WNU Editor: This is one of the best summaries that I have seen in the past few weeks.
1 comment:
The establishment loves to focus on conflicts, because that's what sells news-space. It also pumps up "defense" stock prices and spending which profits the politicians which steal our money and pass it over to the likes of Lockheed.
The good news is that there are no major international conflicts, and for the first time in many years the U.S. seems disinclined to commit its ground forces for yet another humiliating loss.
The young people in the towns and villages seem less inclined to enlist in pseudo-patriotic efforts, and many of them are ineligible to do so for various reasons including they are too fat. So they need women in the infantry now! That should cause consideration. The ladies sometimes need lactation rooms for their young-uns, for one thing, and it can't be a foxhole.
So I would take these listings of "10 conflicts to watch" with an understanding that while the watching might appeal to war nuts like us, the general populace can be forgiven for not caring about them. South China Sea?? --What's on TV tonight?
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