The SINK threat

There are three countries left in the world that are causing great consternation and could potentially precipitate war.  They are Syria, Iran and North Korea.  Its easy to pick them out not only because of their threats and actions, but last week the UN General Assembly passed a resolution supporting an international arms control treaty covering conventional weapons, something that has never existed before. Only three countries voted against the treaty (although some abstained) and they were of course, SINK.

The use of an acronym is appropriate (like BRICS for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) because there are nefarious links between these three renegade countries.  NK has developed nuclear weapons and has given information and support to Iran that in turn is supplying the Assad regime in Syria with conventional weapons.  All three countries are against any limitation in the arms trade, while all other countries in the world are now required to control their arms exports to prevent their use for illegal means, such as human rights abuses of civilians.  Of course, this is precisely what the Assad regime is doing in Syria where ca. 60,000 people have been killed with Iranian support.  NK is the last Stalinist country in the world and is not only suppressing its own population, but is now threatening war against South Korea and the US.  This is variously interpreted as a show of force by the relatively new leader Kim Jong-un or an expression of madness by a self-deluded regime.  In either case, S. Korea has announced that any military attack will be resisted by force and the US has flown in stealth bombers that could be very effective against the newly activated nuclear program in N. Korea.  Iran is, of course, threatening to obliterate Israel with nuclear weapons. 

There was a time, remember it fondly, when there were many other rogue regimes.  Once the Soviet Union with Cuba and its European satellites, such as East Germany and Poland, were a communist threat to world peace.  But, that has all gone now.  There were also such maniacs as Qaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Idi Amin in Uganda who were unstable actors on the world stage.  They too are all gone.  Now we are left with SINK and such unknown entities as Egypt under the Moslem Brotherhood, and the terrorist groups of Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon.  Let's hope that we will gradually whittle them down to a few ineffectual entities and then they will be gone and we can all live in peace.  But, until then there may be more dangers on the horizon.