Hopefully this will all be hypothetical, but if the middle east troubles blow out into full scale war what are the implications for the rest of the world?
Will ther be a nuclear glow from Tripoli to Bombay?
Scenario: Israel doing poorly (Due to involvement by Iraq, Iran, Syria et al,) launches a nuke. Pakistan sells a nuke or two to an arab state. Tel Aviv goes up!. Israel launches all its got! Pakistan launches against India (use em or lose em).
Does U.S. get involved?
Does Russia get involved?
Does Europe or China get involved?
Does Indonesia (largest population muslim nation)?
And the three big Arab military threats, Syria, Egypt and Jordan, apparently want no part of the current troubles. Iraq can’t do much of anything and noisy Iran, Libya and Yemen have too many fence lines to cross for their (light) weight to be brought to bear in a physical sense.
I could be wrong, but from what I’ve read of the Seven Days war, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the current state of the Israeli armed forces…
Well, I think it would take an NBC attack from an Arab nation to put Israel in a bad position. The Arab nations are almost all armed with state of the art Soviet equipment (read: outdated by almost a decade, and not the best stuff to begin with} while the Israelis are armed with some of the best the US has to offer, as well as their own “not to be looked down on” equipment.
However, the thought of an Arab power A-bombing the Israeli’s is scary. I can think of 3 possible outcomes on that one…
Israel responds with a similar attack against the aggresor nation. Agressor is wiped out, and Arab nations back down.
Israel (after fierce negotiating by the US and others) does not respond in kind, and proceeds to mop up the Arab forces using conventional means.
Israel counter attacks, other nations get involved. After that, the gods themselves look through the glass darkly. I don’t think there’s a lot Indonesia could do… the war would be fast paced, and it could all be over before they got there.
It’s a scary situation… but I think it would take a lot more for the Arab nations to get involved to that extreme… I hope.
These guys always have a pretty informed view on world events. I enjoy reading their take on different hot spots and comparing it to published reports of what is happening. You can get info on all the world players and hotspots there.