Re: Without doubt, the long-standing Sunni-Shiite rivalry is still the most significant rift in the Islamic world.
Actually, that's the way US and Israeli policymakers would LOVE it to be --their worst nightmare would be an impregnable, faultless, Muslim monolith to deal with... Hence their unrelenting, desperate attempts to drive a wedge between Sunnis and Shiites. But the truth is, as most Arab/Muslim commentators acknowledge(*), that the whole Sunni-Shiite "chasm" is more Zionist daydream and wishful thinking than reality. It's as if some foreign power bent on ruling and subjugating Europe figured out that the best way to achieve it would be to play on the Catholic-Protestant divide!?! That might have worked five hundred years ago, in XVIth-century France(**)... but today? Bar Ulster/Northern Ireland, Europeans are unlikely to wage another St. Bartholomew(***).
(*) Message 23222381
(**) en.wikipedia.org
(***)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew's_Day_massacre
Re: So, as I see it, the problems the US has are (1) how to get to the Shiite oil without giving Iran too much power and (2) how to get that Shiite oil without upsetting the Sunnis, and especially the Saudis?
Oil?!? There you are at it again! As you likely remember, I've posted scores of messages debunking what I dismiss as the "Oil Myth":
Message 21298816
The oil/natural gas market has been an oligopsony all along. Only recently did the Chinese and Indian demands upset the US-European-Japanese oligopsony over oil and gas.... As I said, what are Arab oil producers gonna do with their oil&gas riches? Just sit on them, removing their reserves from world supplies and wait for the US, Europe and Japan to slide into economic chaos?!? Let's be serious... And what are Arab oil producers going to trade/export instead of oil and gas? Household appliances? automobiles? Corn? Wheat? Textiles? Computers?
Now, you might argue that the US wants control over oil&gas supplies to China in order to exert some leverage on the latter. That makes sense but then again, choking the Chinese economy would be suicidal for the US itself, if only because it would precipitate and strengthen the Arab-Asian bloc....
Gus |
