The Final Nuclear Battle: The Sunni Shia Divide (Dan 7)

 
Nukes Along the Sunni-Shia Divide

June 1, 2015
By Dr. Terry Simmons
Contributor, In Homeland Security

When the Saudi Royal House snubbed President Obama with their low profile attendance at the GCC conference recently, there was a de facto quid pro quo in play based on an old axiomatic formula in Middle East politics. The Sunni-Shia Divide is the lowest common denominator in the Islamic World and is still not well understood by the West, especially by the United States. International relations are spinning around a new formulaic that promises to involve the historically dominant United States.

The pseudo super-power states, China, The Russian Federation, India and the remaining BRIC countries such as Brazil, are consistently transmitting a political message to America. The quid pro quo is this: We will trade you cooperation for an effective re-alignment of post WW2 and post Cold War geopolitical architectures and security arrangements for a global political system based on multi-polarity and reduction of American hegemony both militarily and financial institutionalism. Ending a sustained period of global dominance by the United States is the coordinated goal.

The new reality manifests itself in current alignments between Washington-Riyadh and Washington-Iran. Ostensibly centered over the emerging American-Iranian nuclear agreement, the Realpolitik type struggle is a traditional one. Who is the dominant force in the pan-Islamic world? Is it a Sunni force or a Shiite force? It is a classic ideologically based contest for hearts and minds reminiscent of the ideologically centered Cold War struggle between Christian-based democracy and Godless communism? It too is a zero-sum game.

Saudi Arabia (KSM) is capable of procuring advanced nuclear weaponry from Pakistan on short notice for quick delivery from the Kingdom. Months of rumors regarding such transfers have now been confirmed by recent Saudi authoritative and attributable announcements in the international press. What was once conjectural has now become state-sponsored policy through declaratory state policy. The decision-tree rationale offered is that the Kingdom must protect itself from the inevitable impending nuclear breakout by Iran on the heels of an ill advised course of action by the Obama White House. As Pakistan has a long history of political indebtedness to the Saudi Royal House, weapons of mass destruction are a guaranteed reciprocal-strategically significant commodity owed to KSM from the massive nuclear repository in Islamabad.

This emerging political reality changes the perennial power arrangements of the region and the entire Middle East. With a nuclear armed Israel backed by the world’s most advanced nuclear regime, the United States, and Iran backed by the world’s second most advanced nuclear power, The Russian Federation, a dangerous new world based on the threat of WMD usage by previously conventional power users, has emerged in a rapidly alarming fashion along an ancient fault line of a divisive religious-based endemic struggle-the frozen culture wars between Sunnis and Shiites throughout the Islamic world..

What is perhaps more striking is the evolving re-alignment of operational partnerships. Even if undeclared, for the sake of keeping domestic audiences at bay, Tel Aviv and Riyadh are finding common cause in their evolving security parameters. Sunnis and Jews are traditionally antithetical in security symbiosis but consider this: Washington declares the unbreakable historical bond between Tel Aviv and Washington in American declaratory policy but Obama’s perceived apparent tilt toward Tehran has caused a major security shift never deemed remotely possible before the tectonic plates of geopolitics based on a new field of possibilities shifted under the Obama Doctrine of “talking to our enemies.” What is perhaps more remarkable in view of the revolutionary direction of these dramatic shifts is that the ideologues on all sides appear largely muted. No cries of “apostates” have rung out.

These facts are current realities on the ground as we speak and portend a dangerous combination of factors creating massive instabilities in the world’s most volatile zones. When overshadowed by the majors, the United States, the Russian Federation and the potentially the PRC with their new littoral imperialism in the South China Sea and Russian revanchism in re-securing their Near Abroad in the FSU through a newly emboldened militarism,

SUMMARY OBSERVATIONS:

In the waning days of the Obama government, prospective presidential successors from both American political parties are faced with stark choices both at home and in American foreign policy abroad. Will Hillary Clinton practice “smart power’ and formulate a more practical, less ideologically based, approach to international relations? Will Jeb Bush return American military and strategic nuclear posture to the traditionally robust defense-first legacy of superior American firepower? Will either abandon the soft power demilitarization of American foreign policy of the Obama Doctrine that has spurred the global rush to deconstruct traditional American hegemony and fill the power extant power vacuum that has created massive instability throughout the world?

The Sunni-Shia Divide is historical and apparently irreversible. Its recalcitrance is arguably what makes it inevitable and ultimately dangerous, accelerated and magnified by WMD. As Putin attempts to redraw the map of Europe and Eurasia, the map of the countries surrounding the Arabian Peninsula will be affected in a similar manner if the current political dynamics are allowed to manifest themselves. The problematic momentum of the dangerous new polemics in the region may already be irreversible. The overriding security concern is those potential changes do not usher in uncontrolled calamity through miscalculation and force proximity of the world’s most destructive strategic forces.