Human Wrongs Watch
By Johan Galtung* – TRANSCEND – The state system at its worst: trading insults and threats, sanctions, readiness to use extreme violence, forward deployment of US troops in Israel as hostages to guarantee US involvement, disregard for common people and the effects of warfare in the Middle East and the world.
The options are harder sanctions, or war. The far better option, sitting down, with mediators, talking and searching for solutions, is absent.
Polarization, escalation, the material of which wars are made fill the media. What a shame.
Indeed, there are multiple underlying conflicts. Take the nuclear issue: two haves against one have-not. But the USA lived with Soviet and Chinese nuclear bombs for a long time before they learnt to talk. Israel has lived with Pakistani nuclear options, referred to as “Islamic”, even with the bomb. Of course, the real, longer term goal could be that Pakistani bomb.
But then, with no proof of an Iranian nuclear arms capability, why Iran?