DeeKnow’s Grotto

According to an article on the BBC site yesterday..."Both Pakistan and India say they have carried out test-launches of short-range, nuclear-capable missiles on Wednesday".

This is just great, escalated tensions again, between another pair of long time rivals. This means we now have an almost unbroken belt-of-conflict (you can quote me as coining that :-) stretching all the way accross Asia from one end to the other.

Starting with the Israel/Palestine conflict in the West, up a little to Turkey and the Kurds, accross to Iraq and its neighbours (and their current millitary guests), Afghanistam and its Al Qaeda, India and Pakistan, Sri Lanka and its Tamil Tigers, Indonesia and its Muslim seperatists, Phillipines and its guerilla problems, North and South Korea as close as possible to nuclear war with one another and hostilities between the North and nearby Japan, and finally China and its recent threats against Taiwan.

But there's one country I think stands out the most given its proximity to nearly all of these conflicts and its suspiciously low level of involvement with any of them at the moment?

...Russia

Putin voiced his nations concerns during the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, and his popularity seems to be on the rise amongst the Russian people, but there are obviously a few distracting things (despite Chechnya) that needing sorting out on the domestic front for Putin at the moment.

If we were back in the cold-war days I reckon we'd be sweating a bit over this hornets nest that America and others are helping stir up through Asia at the moment.

11:56:22 PM