Spengler on Xinjiang

David P. Goldman:

The world looks radically different than Washington thinks — or thought under the Bush administration. The encounter of Central Asian Turkic Muslims with modernity via China is tragic, and the Chinese will take whatever steps are required to ensure that the tragedy is not theirs. The human rights organizations who squeaked and gibbered over Israel’s incursion into Gaza are about to learn the meaning of the word “crackdown.” Iran is not the pillar of stability for the region that the Obamoids hallucinated, but a dying society flailing out as it falls.

Large tracts of the world are becoming unmanageable. Looming above all these other issues as truly frightening threat is Pakistan, which cannot be stabilized by any measures Washington might undertake. Look for a quiet conversation between India and China as to how to dry this problem out.

Obama’s obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian issue has made him slightly worse than irrelevant. If you betray your friends (as Obama surely did by ignoring agreements with Israel on “organic growth” of settlements) and propitiate your enemies (as Obama attempted to do with Iran and Syria) you merely make yourself an object of ridicule and contempt. The rest of the world is taking measures to address real problems in the absence of American help, and in the fear of American maliciousness.

Never in history has a great power cast away so much influence in so short a period of time. More>>