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  #31  
Old Sunday, August 07, 2011
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Default @Yusa84

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Originally Posted by yusra84 View Post
the file on filesonic -why nations fight has been deleted.plz refer to some other site.thank you
Yes your are right the file has been removed from the website .... I have a copy with me in my PC inshallah i will try to share it soon.... and thanx for the info and your interest...
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  #32  
Old Monday, September 12, 2011
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Default Iran-Pakistan Partnership

Closer Iran-Pakistan Partnership and its Implications for the US
By
Abolghasem Bayyenat

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari paid a second visit to Tehran last weekend after having been there only three weeks ago. Various speculations have come out as to what may have motivated Zardari to pay two official visits to Tehran within just three weeks. Official reports by Pakistani and Iranian sources broadly characterized the visit as “part of the on-going process to strengthen bilateral ties, step up consultations with countries in the region for peace and stability at a time when tension was developing in some parts and for promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan and fighting militancy.” But this rationale hardly warrants two official visits at the level of head of state in such a short span of time. After all, such concerns could be dealt with by lower-level officials as in the past.

Some other speculations presented around the web seem too farfetched to merit any serious scrutiny. Playing a mediating role between Iran and the West, while Pakistan itself is currently embroiled in a crisis with the United States, or acting as a mediator between Saudi Arabia and Iran, while the tensions between the two countries have largely subsided and while the two parties themselves can discuss their problems directly or, if needed, lower-level third party actors can do the task, are among such speculations made around Zardari’s recent visit to Tehran.

In light of recent developments in Pakistan’s foreign policy, it seems more plausible to think that, more than any other factors, Zardari’s last two visits to Tehran are explained by the unfolding political crisis between Pakistan and the United States which was provoked by the US raid on Al-Qaeda leader’s hideout near Islamabad in early May, drawing Pakistan’s strong condemnation as a blatant violation of its national sovereignty. The fallouts from the raid including Pakistan’s decision to restrict access of the US military to its soil for conducting drone strikes on suspected militants and reducing the number of American military advisors in Pakistan and the recent US decision to freeze $800 million worth of military aid to Islamabad have provided further incentives for Pakistan to seek or make the impression of seeking closer partnership with its Western neighbor.

Given the recent history of tensions in US-Pakistan relations, the question poses itself as to what the recent apparent warm-up in Iran-Pakistan relations signify and what its implications might be for US interests in the region? To begin with, it should be noted that even in the absence of a crisis in US-Pakistan relations, Iran and Pakistan have abundant rationales for establishing a dependable framework for closer bilateral relations. Without going into detail, it is clear that apart from cultural and religious bonds between the two nations, economic and security considerations are the driving force behind the relations of the two countries.

Due to conflict of interests between the two countries in certain policy areas in the past, they have not been able to fully realize their potentials in forging a strategic partnership with each other. Their divergent foreign policies towards Afghanistan have long been a major source of tensions between the two countries. These tensions were at their peak in the second half of the 1990s when the Taliban had captured most parts of Afghanistan. While Pakistan had lent its full support to the Taliban , Iran was at odds with the group and had instead given its weight to the Northern Alliance forces, a coalition of Persian-speaking and other non-Pashtun ethnic groups in Afghanistan. While creating a host of other problems, the US invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban regime put an end to the proxy wars between different regional powers in Afghanistan and subsequently removed a source of tensions in the relations of Iran and Pakistan at least on a temporary basis.

Both Pakistan and Iran have also needed to balance their relations with each other against their interests in cultivating friendly relations with the regional rivals of each other. Iran has attached importance to its relations with India and has not wished its relations with Pakistan to come at the cost of alienating India. Similarly, Pakistan maintains important economic interests in its relations with Iran’s regional rival, Saudi Arabia and most importantly Iran’s arch foe, the United States. These considerations have precluded the emergence of a full-fledged strategic partnership between Iran and Pakistan even after Afghanistan has ceased to be a major source of tensions in the relations of the two countries over the past decade.

Under normal conditions, the United States does not have much to worry about any warm-up in the relations of Pakistan and Iran. But the combination of cold US-Pakistan and warm Iran-Pakistan relations can have significant implications for US interests in the region. Given its present military presence in Afghanistan and its continued fight against the Taliban and the remnants of Al-Qaeda, the United States simply cannot afford to simultaneously antagonize Pakistan and Iran. It will either need to engage Iran over Afghanistan and play down other contentious issues in its relations with Iran, or buy Pakistan’s friendship and alliance back.

Given the current level of US hostility and confrontation with Iran, Iran will surely welcome any opportunities to cultivate a coordinated Afghan strategy with Pakistan, should it be sincerely interested in a strategic partnership with Iran. While Iran has welcomed the overthrow of the Taliban regime and has lent its support to the central government in Afghanistan, it would better serve Iran’s security interests if the United States withdraws from Afghanistan and removes its military bases from across the Iranian border in that country. A close partnership with Pakistan at the background of cold US-Pakistan relations will significantly facilitate the realization of that objective for Iran.

Iran will naturally not hesitate to embrace Pakistan in light of its alienation from the United States. The recent statement by Iran’s supreme leader in his meeting with Pakistani president that the United States is the real enemy of Pakistan was meant to further feed into this alienation. Such representation of the United States also resonates well with some segments of the Pakistani political elites and it is also not entirely alien to the Pakistani public in light of the recent developments in US-Pakistan relations and the close US-India partnership in recent years . This explains why some members of the Pakistani parliament recently echoed Khamenei’s statement and branded the United states as “the common enemy of both Iran and Pakistan” and called upon the Pakistani government to abandon its friendship with the United States.

Having said this, it is unlikely that the United States and Pakistan will allow further fallout in their bilateral relations and will most likely strive to patch up their differences. It thus seems more plausible to attach symbolic significance to the recent warm-up in the relations of Pakistan and Iran. Pakistan is genuinely interested in cultivating closer relations with Iran for various reasons, including energy cooperation with Iran, but it seems unlikely that it will seek this relationship at the expense of its relations with the United States.

Given the current confrontational US approach towards Iran and its tendency to picture everything about Iran in a zero-sum game framework, Pakistani leaders may have intended to raise the alarm for the United States by making the impression of seeking closer partnership with Iran. It is plausible that Pakistani leaders may have wished to exert pressure on the US government by sending the signal that any further alienation with the United States would amount to closer Iran-Pakistan relations. This development shows once again how far the US confrontational approach towards Iran has created unnecessary costs for its foreign policy and has limited its room for maneuver in the region.

Abolghasem Bayyenat is an independent political analyst writing mainly on Iran’s foreign policy developments. He is currently completing his Ph.D studies in political science at an American University. His latest articles can also be read on his own blog at Iran Diplomacy Watch

Source: Middle East Online
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  #33  
Old Thursday, September 15, 2011
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Default Nuclear Security Summit 2012

Nuclear Security Summit 2012: The Challenges Ahead
By
Siddharth Ramana


The Washington Nuclear Security Summit in 2010 brought international consensus on the issue of nuclear terrorism through an unanimous acknowledgement of the need to secure fissile materials and nuclear stockpiles from non-state actors. Significantly, the success of the Summit is gauged from over 50 specific commitments to secure or eliminate nuclear materials from 29 countries. Primary focus during the last Summit was on eliminating Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) stockpiles, which underlines one of the arguments that nuclear disarmament advocates. As the Summit prepares for its second meeting, the threat posed by nuclear terrorism remains predominant and three interrelated nuclear safety and security aspects can be discussed.

1. Nuclear Terrorism: Insider Threats and Safety
The Nuclear Security Summit 2012 in Seoul, South Korea, will be held in a region that has faced disturbing nuclear developments including the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The Fukushima disaster publicized the damages caused by a nuclear accident. Terrorist groups celebrate the publicity that accompanies the damage caused by their actions, and therefore, while Fukushima was a natural disaster, the fears of nuclear terrorism perpetuated especially by insider threats, have gained greater concern. A terrorist attack, for example, on nuclear spent fuel rods or even the sabotaging of a nuclear plant or storage facility can create a disastrous situation. What compounds fears of nuclear terrorism is the fact that easily accessible radioactive material can suffice for such acts.

Instances of mischievous activity in nuclear installations have been reported worldwide with varying fatality. They have however merited the lowest incident rating concern level. Although the foucs post Fukushima has been to assess seismic damage to nuclear reactors, the continued threat posed by insider access to nuclear plants and facilities continues to remain of vital concern. For example, Kenneth N Luongo of the Arms Control Association highlights that different countries hold different operational standards of security clearances for nuclear facilities and no standardized approach to nuclear security exists. While technical guidelines are governed by the IAEA, the pressing need is to strengthen individual security facilities at all installations where highly radioactive substances are located. This would include laboratories, hospitals, and other facilities where such substances can be found.

2. Nuclear Proliferation
While the main focus of the Summit is on nuclear safety and security, there is an additional underlying theme of the elimination of nuclear weapons stockpiles to further minimize the threats posed. Developments in East Asia and North Africa highlight the failure of the international community in advocating this measure. North Korea, for example, has shown that it cannot be conventionally deterred anymore, after it sank the South Korean naval ship Cheonan, and shelled Yeonpyeong Island in 2010. It has even threatened to test a nuclear device later this year, possibly in response to being kept out of the 2012 Summit.

Similarly, sustained NATO action against Libya in 2011, after it voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons programme, underlines the vaunted deterrence capabilities through acquisition of nuclear weapons. Therefore, the continued success of nuclear-armed states in dealing with conventional threats leads to further proliferation and underminesthe Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Consequently, an increase in states producing fissile materials will flood the already existing high stockpiles of these resources, which returns to the focal point of the Summit: safety and security. Tellingly, there have been three cases of nuclear fuel being held for ransom.

3. Global Nuclear Disarmament: For a Better Future

As per figures released by the International Panel on Fissile Material, 1,670 tonnes of HEU exist worldwide. Over 95 per cent is divided between the US and Russia, and worldwide stock of separated weapons grade plutonium is about 500 tonnes, of which again Russia and the US have the largest amounts. Only a fraction of this nuclear material is needed to produce a nuclear weapon, and therefore, if smuggled to a rogue state, the threat of a nuclear conflict increases. Consequently, nuclear security cannot be de-linked from the larger objective of moving towards Global Zero.

The US was understandably wary of pushing countries on the contentious issue of fissile material in Washington, since it was then battling domestic opposition to the New START agreement with Russia. The passage of the treaty in December 2010, and the present economic crisis in the US, however, presents opportunities for it to lead from the front. The United States should focus its defense spending on warhead and delivery system upgradation, while simultaneously securing its national interests by working with the international community in securing nuclear materials worldwide, instead of the current situation where it is pursuing cost cutting in nuclear security. Given that America usually leads, presumably other major powers would follow.

Conclusion
The Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul presents opportunities to learn from the developments in the region where it would be hosted. The interrelation between the three aforementioned aspects indicates that focus is not limited to nuclear terrorism alone; there are also pressing concerns of nuclear proliferation and global disarmament, which could possibly widen the ambit of all future Nuclear Security Summits.

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  #34  
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hi
can u send me book y nations fight on my id *********@gmail.com

Last edited by Predator; Monday, September 26, 2011 at 03:11 PM. Reason: share email through profile only
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  #35  
Old Sunday, September 25, 2011
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Default Why Nations Fight

@baqya
@Yusra
@furqan
@all those members who emailed me and asked for the above book, first of all sorry for late reply. Infact I tried a number of times on the forum to share it with all members but failed. I think forum server has got some technical problem anyways here I am sharing it for all you people. I have uploaded it on scribd.com. Here is the link:

Why Nations Fight

enjoy it.
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Old Monday, September 26, 2011
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Default The South China Sea

The South China Sea Is the Future of Conflict
BY
ROBERT D. KAPLAN

The 21st century's defining battleground is going to be on water

Europe is a landscape; East Asia a seascape. Therein lies a crucial difference between the 20th and 21st centuries. The most contested areas of the globe in the last century lay on dry land in Europe, particularly in the flat expanse that rendered the eastern and western borders of Germany artificial and exposed to the inexorable march of armies. But over the span of the decades, the demographic and economic axis of the Earth has shifted measurably to the opposite end of Eurasia, where the spaces between major population centers are overwhelmingly maritime.

Because of the way geography illuminates and sets priorities, these physical contours of East Asia augur a naval century -- naval being defined here in the broad sense to include both sea and air battle formations now that they have become increasingly inextricable. Why? China, which, especially now that its land borders are more secure than at any time since the height of the Qing dynasty at the end of the 18th century, is engaged in an undeniable naval expansion. It is through sea power that China will psychologically erase two centuries of foreign transgressions on its territory -- forcing every country around it to react.

Military engagements on land and at sea are vastly different, with major implications for the grand strategies needed to win -- or avoid -- them. Those on land enmesh civilian populations, in effect making human rights a signal element of war studies. Those at sea approach conflict as a clinical and technocratic affair, in effect reducing war to math, in marked contrast with the intellectual battles that helped define previous conflicts.

World War II was a moral struggle against fascism, the ideology responsible for the murder of tens of millions of noncombatants. The Cold War was a moral struggle against communism, an equally oppressive ideology by which the vast territories captured by the Red Army were ruled. The immediate post-Cold War period became a moral struggle against genocide in the Balkans and Central Africa, two places where ground warfare and crimes against humanity could not be separated. More recently, a moral struggle against radical Islam has drawn the United States deep into the mountainous confines of Afghanistan, where the humane treatment of millions of civilians is critical to the war's success. In all these efforts, war and foreign policy have become subjects not only for soldiers and diplomats, but for humanists and intellectuals. Indeed, counterinsurgency represents a culmination of sorts of the union between uniformed officers and human rights experts. This is the upshot of ground war evolving into total war in the modern age.

East Asia, or more precisely the Western Pacific, which is quickly becoming the world's new center of naval activity, presages a fundamentally different dynamic. It will likely produce relatively few moral dilemmas of the kind we have been used to in the 20th and early 21st centuries, with the remote possibility of land warfare on the Korean Peninsula as the striking exception. The Western Pacific will return military affairs to the narrow realm of defense experts. This is not merely because we are dealing with a naval realm, in which civilians are not present. It is also because of the nature of the states themselves in East Asia, which, like China, may be strongly authoritarian but in most cases are not tyrannical or deeply inhumane.

The struggle for primacy in the Western Pacific will not necessarily involve combat; much of what takes place will happen quietly and over the horizon in blank sea space, at a glacial tempo befitting the slow, steady accommodation to superior economic and military power that states have made throughout history. War is far from inevitable even if competition is a given. And if China and the United States manage the coming handoff successfully, Asia, and the world, will be a more secure, prosperous place. What could be more moral than that? Remember: It is realism in the service of the national interest -- whose goal is the avoidance of war -- that has saved lives over the span of history far more than humanitarian interventionism.

EAST ASIA IS A VAST, YAWNING EXPANSE stretching nearly from the Arctic to Antarctic -- from the Kuril Islands southward to New Zealand -- and characterized by a shattered array of isolated coastlines and far-flung archipelagos. Even accounting for how dramatically technology has compressed distance, the sea itself still acts as a barrier to aggression, at least to a degree that dry land does not. The sea, unlike land, creates clearly defined borders, giving it the potential to reduce conflict. Then there is speed to consider. Even the fastest warships travel comparatively slowly, 35 knots, say, reducing the chance of miscalculations and giving diplomats more hours -- days, even -- to reconsider decisions. Navies and air forces simply do not occupy territory the way that armies do. It is because of the seas around East Asia -- the center of global manufacturing as well as rising military purchases -- that the 21st century has a better chance than the 20th of avoiding great military conflagrations.

Of course, East Asia saw great military conflagrations in the 20th century, which the seas did not prevent: the Russo-Japanese War; the almost half-century of civil war in China that came with the slow collapse of the Qing dynasty; the various conquests of imperial Japan, followed by World War II in the Pacific; the Korean War; the wars in Cambodia and Laos; and the two in Vietnam involving the French and the Americans. The fact that the geography of East Asia is primarily maritime had little impact on such wars, which at their core were conflicts of national consolidation or liberation. But that age for the most part lies behind us. East Asian militaries, rather than focusing inward with low-tech armies, are focusing outward with high-tech navies and air forces.

As for the comparison between China today and Germany on the eve of World War I that many make, it is flawed: Whereas Germany was primarily a land power, owing to the geography of Europe, China will be primarily a naval power, owing to the geography of East Asia.

East Asia can be divided into two general areas: Northeast Asia, dominated by the Korean Peninsula, and Southeast Asia, dominated by the South China Sea. Northeast Asia pivots on the destiny of North Korea, an isolated, totalitarian state with dim prospects in a world governed by capitalism and electronic communication. Were North Korea to implode, Chinese, U.S., and South Korean ground forces might meet up on the peninsula's northern half in the mother of all humanitarian interventions, even as they carve out spheres of influence for themselves. Naval issues would be secondary. But an eventual reunification of Korea would soon bring naval issues to the fore, with a Greater Korea, China, and Japan in delicate equipoise, separated by the Sea of Japan and the Yellow and Bohai seas. Yet because North Korea still exists, the Cold War phase of Northeast Asian history is not entirely over, and land power may well come to dominate the news there before sea power will.

Southeast Asia, by contrast, is already deep into the post-Cold War phase of history. Vietnam, which dominates the western shore of the South China Sea, is a capitalist juggernaut despite its political system, seeking closer military ties to the United States. China, consolidated as a dynastic state by Mao Zedong after decades of chaos and made into the world's most dynamic economy by the liberalizations of Deng Xiaoping, is pressing outward with its navy to what it calls the "first island chain" in the Western Pacific. The Muslim behemoth of Indonesia, having endured and finally ended decades of military rule, is poised to emerge as a second India: a vibrant and stable democracy with the potential to project power by way of its growing economy. Singapore and Malaysia are also surging forward economically, in devotion to the city-state-cum-trading-state model and through varying blends of democracy and authoritarianism. The composite picture is of a cluster of states, which, with problems of domestic legitimacy and state-building behind them, are ready to advance their perceived territorial rights beyond their own shores. This outward collective push is located in the demographic cockpit of the globe, for it is in Southeast Asia, with its 615 million people, where China's 1.3 billion people converge with the Indian subcontinent's 1.5 billion people. And the geographical meeting place of these states, and their militaries, is maritime: the South China Sea.

The South China Sea joins the Southeast Asian states with the Western Pacific, functioning as the throat of global sea routes. Here is the center of maritime Eurasia, punctuated by the straits of Malacca, Sunda, Lombok, and Makassar. More than half the world's annual merchant fleet tonnage passes through these choke points, and a third of all maritime traffic. The oil transported through the Strait of Malacca from the Indian Ocean, en route to East Asia through the South China Sea, is more than six times the amount that passes through the Suez Canal and 17 times the amount that transits the Panama Canal. Roughly two-thirds of South Korea's energy supplies, nearly 60 percent of Japan's and Taiwan's energy supplies, and about 80 percent of China's crude-oil imports come through the South China Sea. What's more, the South China Sea has proven oil reserves of 7 billion barrels and an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, a potentially huge bounty.

It is not only location and energy reserves that promise to give the South China Sea critical geostrategic importance, but also the coldblooded territorial disputes that have long surrounded these waters. Several disputes concern the Spratly Islands, a mini-archipelago in the South China Sea's southeastern part. Vietnam, Taiwan, and China each claim all or most of the South China Sea, as well as all of the Spratly and Paracel island groups. In particular, Beijing asserts a historical line: It lays claim to the heart of the South China Sea in a grand loop (widely known as the "cow's tongue") from China's Hainan Island at the South China Sea's northern end all the way south 1,200 miles to near Singapore and Malaysia.

The result is that all nine states that touch the South China Sea are more or less arrayed against China and therefore dependent on the United States for diplomatic and military support. These conflicting claims are likely to become even more acute as Asia's spiraling energy demands -- energy consumption is expected to double by 2030, with China accounting for half that growth -- make the South China Sea the ever more central guarantor of the region's economic strength. Already, the South China Sea has increasingly become an armed camp, as the claimants build up and modernize their navies, even as the scramble for islands and reefs in recent decades is mostly over. China has so far confiscated 12 geographical features, Taiwan one, Vietnam 25, the Philippines eight, and Malaysia five.

China's very geography orients it in the direction of the South China Sea. China looks south toward a basin of water formed, in clockwise direction, by Taiwan, the Philippines, the island of Borneo split between Malaysia and Indonesia (as well as tiny Brunei), the Malay Peninsula divided between Malaysia and Thailand, and the long snaking coastline of Vietnam: weak states all, compared with China. Like the Caribbean Sea, punctuated as it is by small island states and enveloped by a continental-sized United States, the South China Sea is an obvious arena for the projection of Chinese power.

Indeed, China's position here is in many ways akin to America's position vis-à-vis the similar-sized Caribbean in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The United States recognized the presence and claims of European powers in the Caribbean, but sought to dominate the region nevertheless. It was the 1898 Spanish-American War and the digging of the Panama Canal from 1904 to 1914 that signified the United States' arrival as a world power. Domination of the greater Caribbean Basin, moreover, gave the United States effective control of the Western Hemisphere, which allowed it to affect the balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere. And today China finds itself in a similar situation in the South China Sea, an antechamber of the Indian Ocean, where China also desires a naval presence to protect its Middle Eastern energy supplies.

Yet something deeper and more emotional than geography propels China forward into the South China Sea and out into the Pacific: that is, China's own partial breakup by the Western powers in the relatively recent past, after having been for millennia a great power and world civilization.

In the 19th century, as the Qing dynasty became the sick man of East Asia, China lost much of its territory to Britain, France, Japan, and Russia. In the 20th century came the bloody Japanese takeovers of the Shandong Peninsula and Manchuria. This all came atop the humiliations forced on China by the extraterritoriality agreements of the 19th and early 20th centuries, whereby Western countries wrested control of parts of Chinese cities -- the so-called "treaty ports." By 1938, as Yale University historian Jonathan D. Spence tells us in The Search for Modern China, because of these depredations as well as the Chinese Civil War, there was even a latent fear that "China was about to be dismembered, that it would cease to exist as a nation, and that the four thousand years of its recorded history would come to a jolting end." China's urge for expansion is a declaration that it never again intends to let foreigners take advantage of it.

JUST AS GERMAN SOIL constituted the military front line of the Cold War, the waters of the South China Sea may constitute the military front line of the coming decades. As China's navy becomes stronger and as China's claim on the South China Sea contradicts those of other littoral states, these other states will be forced to further develop their naval capacities. They will also balance against China by relying increasingly on the U.S. Navy, whose strength has probably peaked in relative terms, even as it must divert considerable resources to the Middle East. Worldwide multipolarity is already a feature of diplomacy and economics, but the South China Sea could show us what multipolarity in a military sense actually looks like.

There is nothing romantic about this new front, void as it is of moral struggles. In naval conflicts, unless there is shelling onshore, there are no victims per se; nor is there a philosophical enemy to confront. Nothing on the scale of ethnic cleansing is likely to occur in this new central theater of conflict. China, its suffering dissidents notwithstanding, simply does not measure up as an object of moral fury. The Chinese regime demonstrates only a low-calorie version of authoritarianism, with a capitalist economy and little governing ideology to speak of. Moreover, China is likely to become more open rather than closed as a society in future years. Instead of fascism or militarism, China, along with other states in East Asia, is increasingly defined by the persistence of old-fashioned nationalism: an idea, certainly, but not one that since the mid-19th century has been attractive to intellectuals. And even if China does become more democratic, its nationalism is likely only to increase, as even a casual survey of the views of its relatively freewheeling netizens makes clear.

We often think of nationalism as a reactionary sentiment, a relic of the 19th century. Yet it is traditional nationalism that mainly drives politics in Asia, and will continue to do so. That nationalism is leading unapologetically to the growth of militaries in the region -- navies and air forces especially -- to defend sovereignty and make claims for disputed natural resources. There is no philosophical allure here. It is all about the cold logic of the balance of power. To the degree that unsentimental realism, which is allied with nationalism, has a geographical home, it is the South China Sea.

Whatever moral drama does occur in East Asia will thus take the form of austere power politics of the sort that leaves many intellectuals and journalists numb. As Thucydides put it so memorably in his telling of the ancient Athenians' subjugation of the island of Melos, "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." In the 21st-century retelling, with China in Athens's role as the preeminent regional sea power, the weak will still submit -- but that's it. This will be China's undeclared strategy, and the smaller countries of Southeast Asia may well bandwagon with the United States to avoid the Melians' fate. But slaughter there will be not.

The South China Sea presages a different form of conflict than the ones to which we have become accustomed. Since the beginning of the 20th century, we have been traumatized by massive, conventional land engagements on the one hand, and dirty, irregular small wars on the other. Because both kinds of war produced massive civilian casualties, war has been a subject for humanists as well as generals. But in the future we just might see a purer form of conflict, limited to the naval realm. This is a positive scenario. Conflict cannot be eliminated from the human condition altogether. A theme in Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy is that conflict, properly controlled, is more likely than rigid stability to lead to human progress. A sea crowded with warships does not contradict an era of great promise for Asia. Insecurity often breeds dynamism.

But can conflict in the South China Sea be properly controlled? My argument thus far presupposes that major warfare will not break out in the area and that instead countries will be content to jockey for position with their warships on the high seas, while making competing claims for natural resources and perhaps even agreeing to a fair distribution of them. But what if China were, against all evidential trends, to invade Taiwan? What if China and Vietnam, whose intense rivalry reaches far back into history, go to war as they did in 1979, with more lethal weaponry this time? For it isn't just China that is dramatically building its military; Southeast Asian countries are as well. Their defense budgets have increased by about a third in the past decade, even as European defense budgets have declined. Arms imports to Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia have gone up 84 percent, 146 percent, and 722 percent, respectively, since 2000. The spending is on naval and air platforms: surface warships, submarines with advanced missile systems, and long-range fighter jets. Vietnam recently spent $2 billion on six state-of-the-art Kilo-class Russian submarines and $1 billion on Russian fighter jets. Malaysia just opened a submarine base on Borneo. While the United States has been distracted by land wars in the greater Middle East, military power has been quietly shifting from Europe to Asia.

The United States presently guarantees the uneasy status quo in the South China Sea, limiting China's aggression mainly to its maps and serving as a check on China's diplomats and navy (though this is not to say that America is pure in its actions and China automatically the villain). What the United States provides to the countries of the South China Sea region is less the fact of its democratic virtue than the fact of its raw muscle. It is the very balance of power between the United States and China that ultimately keeps Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia free, able to play one great power off against the other. And within that space of freedom, regionalism can emerge as a power in its own right, in the form of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Yet, such freedom cannot be taken for granted. For the tense, ongoing standoff between the United States and China -- which extends to a complex array of topics from trade to currency reform to cybersecurity to intelligence surveillance -- threatens eventually to shift in China's favor in East Asia, largely due to China's geographical centrality to the region.

THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE SUMMATION of the new Asian geopolitical landscape has come not from Washington or Beijing, but from Canberra. In a 74-page article published last year, "Power Shift: Australia's Future Between Washington and Beijing," Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, describes his country as the quintessential "status quo" power -- one that desperately wants the situation in Asia to remain exactly as it is, with China continuing to grow so that Australia can trade more and more with it, while America remains "the strongest power in Asia," so as to be Australia's "ultimate protector." But as White writes, the problem is that both of these things cannot go on. Asia cannot continue to change economically without changing politically and strategically; a Chinese economic behemoth naturally will not be content with American military primacy in Asia.

What does China want? White posits that the Chinese may desire in Asia the kind of new-style empire that the United States engineered in the Western Hemisphere once Washington had secured dominance over the Caribbean Basin (as Beijing hopes it will over the South China Sea). This new-style empire, in White's words, meant America's neighbors were "more or less free to run their own countries," even as Washington insisted that its views be given "full consideration" and take precedence over those of outside powers. The problem with this model is Japan, which would probably not accept Chinese hegemony, however soft. That leaves the Concert of Europe model, in which China, India, Japan, the United States, and perhaps one or two others would sit down at the table of Asian power as equals. But would the United States accept such a modest role, since it has associated Asian prosperity and stability with its own primacy? White suggests that in the face of rising Chinese power, American dominance might henceforth mean instability for Asia.

American dominance is predicated on the notion that because China is authoritarian at home, it will act "unacceptably abroad." But that may not be so, White argues. China's conception of itself is that of a benign, non-hegemonic power, one that does not interfere in the domestic philosophies of other states in the way the United States -- with its busybody morality -- does. Because China sees itself as the Middle Kingdom, its basis of dominance is its own inherent centrality to world history, rather than any system it seeks to export.

In other words, the United States, not China, might be the problem in the future. We may actually care too much about the internal nature of the Chinese regime and seek to limit China's power abroad because we do not like its domestic policies. Instead, America's aim in Asia should be balance, not dominance. It is precisely because hard power is still the key to international relations that we must make room for a rising China. The United States need not increase its naval power in the Western Pacific, but it cannot afford to substantially decrease it.

The loss of a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group in the Western Pacific due to budget cuts or a redeployment to the Middle East could cause intense discussions in the region about American decline and the consequent need to make amends and side deals with Beijing. The optimal situation is a U.S. air and naval presence at more or less the current level, even as the United States does all in its power to forge cordial and predictable ties with China. That way America can adjust over time to a Chinese blue-water navy. In international affairs, behind all questions of morality lie questions of power. Humanitarian intervention in the Balkans was possible only because the Serbian regime was weak, unlike the Russian regime, which was committing atrocities of a similar scale in Chechnya while the West did nothing. In the Western Pacific in the coming decades, morality may mean giving up some of our most cherished ideals for the sake of stability. How else are we to make room for a quasi-authoritarian China as its military expands? The balance of power itself, even more than the democratic values of the West, is often the best safeguard of freedom. That, too, will be a lesson of the South China Sea in the 21st century -- another one that idealists do not want to hear.

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Default Pak-China friendship

Pakistan-China friendship faces test
By
SUI-LEE WEE

Pakistan, facing a crisis with the United States, has leaned closely to longtime partner China, offering its “all-weather friendship” with Beijing as an alternative to Washington. But Pakistan will be disappointed if it hopes to replace American patronage with the same from China.

While China does not welcome the US presence near its border, it wants stability on its western flank and believes an abrupt withdrawal of Washington’s support for Pakistan could imperil that. It also does not want to upset warming relations with India by getting mired in subcontinent’s security tension.

Maintaining that delicate balance, China will continue supporting economic cooperation with Pakistan but will go slow on defense cooperation. While outwardly all smiles and warm pledges of friendship, China will quietly keep things at arms length.

“I think they see what’s going on in the US-Pakistan front at the moment as reason to tread very carefully,” said Andrew Small, a researcher at the German Marshall Fund think-tank in Brussels who studies China-Pakistan ties and often visits both countries.

“They are taking extra care to make sure that what’s going on in the relationship is correctly understood, not reflecting any willingness to rush in or fill the gap or exploit differences.” Pakistan’s brittle relationship with the United States, its major donor, has turned openly rancorous. Washington accused Pakistan’s powerful ISI spy agency of directly backing the Afghan Taleban-allied Haqqani network and of providing support for a Sept. 13 attack on the US mission in Kabul.

Pakistan has angrily rejected the accusation and warned the United States that it risked losing an ally if it kept publicly criticizing them over militant groups.

Meanwhile, as it often does in times of crisis, Pakistan has been trumpeting its ties with China.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani declared Beijing and Islamabad were “true friends and we count on each other” after talks with China’s visiting public security minister, Meng Jianzhu.

President Asif Ali Zardari stressed the point last week that Pakistan had other options should its deteriorating relationship with Washington prove beyond repair, and pointedly praised China for its assistance in “stabilizing the situation.”

Publicly at least, China has gone out of its way to reassure Pakistan.

In May, just weeks after US forces killed Osama Bin Laden on Pakistani soil, Premier Wen Jiabao reassured visiting Gilani of their longstanding friendship and spoke of the “huge sacrifices” Pakistan had made in the global struggle against terrorism.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman echoed that line just last week, saying “Pakistan is on the front lines in the fight against terrorism” and China hoped “the relevant countries respect every country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” But China’s assistance also has limits.

“The ‘all-weather friendship’ doesn’t mean that all of Pakistan’s bills should be paid by us,” said Zhao Gancheng, director of South Asia studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.

“China does not have that ability, nor does the US or any other country. It all depends on Pakistan itself.” China regards Pakistan as an important strategic counterweight against its longstanding rival, India, and a hedge against US influence across the region. It also wants to use Pakistan as a gateway to the Muslim world and needs Islamabad’s help to combat separatists in its far-western Xinjiang region on their common border.

China is a major supplier of military hardware to Pakistan and also a major investor in areas such as telecommunications, ports and infrastructure.

But China’s leaders have no desire to turn that limited stake in Pakistan into a heavy security footprint.

“The partnership is as deep as it needs to be for China,” Scott Harold, associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation, said. “They’ve got what they want diplomatically and economically.” During Meng’s visit last week, Beijing bolstered its cooperation with Pakistan, with the signing of $250 million in economic and technical agreements, Zardari’s office said.

Many of Beijing’s deals with Pakistan have had a strategic payoff in helping to balance US influence in the region.

China invested more than $200 million to help build the deep-sea Gwadar port on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, partly with a view to opening an energy and trade corridor from the Gulf, across Pakistan to western China.

China also helped Pakistan build its main nuclear power generation facility at Chashma in Punjab province. Two reactors are in operation and two more are planned. Analysts say China pointedly agreed to expand the Chashma complex to counter a 2008 nuclear energy deal between India and the United States.

But Beijing appears much less interested in a bilateral defense accord, despite a report by Pakistan media that Islamabad had been secretly lobbying for such an agreement.

“I don’t think that’s the sort of space that the Chinese want to get into,” said Small of the German Marshall Fund. “I don’t see why they would suddenly want to be stuck with the liability of Pakistan, particularly vis-à-vis India, given the way Pakistan has behaved in a number of crisis situations.” In each of Pakistan’s wars with India, China has been fairly restrained, to the point of being almost neutral.

Analysts say China is wary about tilting the relationship too much in favor of Pakistan, to avoid offending India, with which China wants to develop better economic ties.

Annual two-way trade with India was worth $65.2 billion in 2010, compared with bilateral trade with Pakistan of $8.7 billion, according to Chinese statistics.

Ultimately, Beijing has little to gain from a rift between Islamabad and Washington, experts say. “If US-Pakistan relations deteriorate, and the region falls into instability, China will not be able to shoulder the responsibility by itself and other regional actors will have a difficult time cooperating to restore stability,” said Hu Shisheng, an expert on South Asia at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations think-tank.

“The US still has to be responsible for the stability of this region.”

Source: ---Arab News
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Default End Game

India, Afghanistan and the End-Game
By
Ehsan Mehmood Khan


There are no permanent friends or foes in international politics, but the interests are. It has been amply displayed by India and Afghanistan while dashing another move on the strategic chessboard of South Asian Region. It is same Mr. Hamid Karzai, whose election to the Presidential slot of Afghanistan for the second time had been silently opposed by India in opposition to Abdullah Abdullah, the Tajik titan, while Pakistan was reported to be in side with the former. During one of his visits to Pakistan, Mr. Karzai had passionately stated that “Pakistan and Afghanistan are conjoined brothers.” Today, he is again in India seen signing a strategic partnership pact. At the agreement signing ceremony, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Indian premier, said that terrorism was being used “as an instrument of policy against our citizens,” again maligning Pakistan without naming it. “The deal,” he said, “creates an institutional framework for our future cooperation.” He also notified that agreements on energy and mining add a new dimension to our economic relations and that, “India will stand by the people of Afghanistan as they prepare to assume the responsibility for their governance and security after the withdrawal of international forces in 2014.”

The agreement should not be viewed and analyzed on face value. There are yawning motivations for it. On the one hand, American people are too wary of the “3-Trillion Dollar” War, which brings home nothing but coffins of the American youth with not even a meagre yield of the gory toil in sight, let alone a politico-military victory. Americans want to go home in a state of stalemate before that it turns into a recorded rout or semblance of defeat. America’s drawdown diagram has upset both India and Mr. Karzai. India looks at the US presence in Afghanistan as a license to its presence therein. For Mr. Karzai, the presidential palace is assured haven till such time that the Americans are operating at full strength in Afghanistan. If they go home, Mr. Karzai may have to take the last flight of US Army to run his restaurant in New York again. New Delhi too is not a bad option. This is how the interests of India and Mr. Karzai are seeking convergence in regional politics. Thus, the End-Game in Afghanistan is heralding a new Start-Game.

India is seeking an enhanced role in Afghanistan. It has already made noteworthy inroads into Afghan polity and society spending nearly US$ 2 billion out of the coffers that could have been spent on well-being of the socially deprived, economically underprivileged and homeless Indians who sleep in their millions on the footpaths of major metropolitans like Bombay, Kolkata and New Delhi. Geo-politics has prevailed over human security, courtesy to the expansionist Indian mindset. Anyway, Indian polity is leaving clear signatures that it is not going to leave space for anyone else on the podium of regional strategic speech-board. Certainly, it is trying to heap up political capital against none else but Pakistan. Principally, Pakistan cannot object to Afghan alignment with anyone including India. Yet, it has to keep note of any such move or arrangement that could breed a snake in its backyard. India understands that Mr. Karzai, though a Pashtun, does not represent popular Pashtun sentiment in Afghanistan. But a “strategic partnership” would keep the glow of India’s case alive under the ashes of history that could be set ablaze any time the sun of India’s goodwill shone in the heart of an Afghan polity in the days to come. This would let India keep a strong foot in Afghanistan. It has already deployed an Indian Air Force squadron on Ayni Air Base of Tajikistan. Deployment of one more on Bagram Air Base after American retreat would sound even more viable! India-Karzai agreement has also shown that they would continue to project “terrorism” as “instrument of Pakistan’s Pakistan.” Actually, this is what all India wants Karzai to do; continue crying wolf and we would do the remaining part of the job.

What Pakistan needs to do under the present circumstances is not far from one’s reflection. It needs to create stronger-than-ever nexus with Afghan populace irrespective of their caste or creed. Meagre Kabul-Jalalabad Highway would not do enough to reach out to the spectacles of Afghan mind. They need more. Our politico-bureaucratic institutions need to think beyond political and military lines. There is abundant room along societal welfare line. It is indeed irony of the fate that while millions are Afghans are still living in Pakistan as refugees and their president, who too reportedly owns property in Quetta and Peshawar, goes and signs an agreement with India, which bears anti-Pakistan smell. We must remember that clock never clicks the same hour again in the gallops of history.

The writer holds masters degree in Strategic Security Studies from the College of International Security Affairs, Washington D.C. and is pursuing M. Phil in International Relations from Faculty of Contemporary Studies, Islamabad.
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Default democracy

Our experience in democracy
By
Shamshad Ahmad

Ever since the emergence of the nation-state, the world has experienced many forms of political systems ranging from monarchies to republics; from aristocracies to oligarchies and from tyranny to democracy. The explanation and appraisal of democracy has been a favourite theme of ever-ongoing discussion since the earliest times of political speculation. After centuries of trial and error, democracy has emerged as the preferred choice. It is now considered universally applicable and is also the most prevalent model of government in our era.

The modern version of democracy is a representative system in which the problem is how to secure a system of voting that ensures the election of representatives who reflect as completely as possible the varieties of opinion of the electorate. The question of representation is thus the most fundamental problem of today’s democracy. “Pure” democracy, in which the politically qualified members of the community meet together for the discussion and decision of public questions, is universally regarded as suitable only for small communities with simple collective needs. It has never widely existed and has now generally disappeared, even from societies that claim to be democratic to their core.

There may be no ideal state but in his Social Contract, Rousseau had visualised his own ideal of a state with a democratic system in which the sovereign power rests with the people, for they alone are in possession of an inalienable ‘general will’. In his view, only a popularly elected government can implement the general will. Hegel, a 19th-century philosopher, glorified the state power beyond limits but also recognised people’s general will.

Government by ‘popular majorities’ means rule by the average man, who is generally less intelligent, controlled in his opinions and conduct more by emotion than by reason, of limited knowledge, lacking the means of leisure necessary for the acquisition of information, knowledge and understanding, and suspicious of any superior ability in others. What political virtue, it is asked, is there in mere superiority in numbers? Our own philosopher poet Allama Iqbal acknowledged this by saying that “democracy is a form of government in which heads are counted, not weighed.”

In practice, therefore, democracy is the most difficult and risky of all forms of government since it requires the widest spread of intelligence and education. In the words of a cynic, “you must not enthrone ignorance just because there is so much of it.” But all this notwithstanding, in today’s civilised world, there is no alternative to a democratic form of government. This, however, necessitates a state and methods of its governance to be based on a “social contract” to provide for the security and protection of its citizens and their property by utilising the whole force of the community.

No doubt, on their emergence as two independent states on the map of the world as a result of a democratic political process, both India and Pakistan inherited a parliamentary tradition and began their independent statehood with a democratic path clearly charted out for them. To start with, however, there was no level playing field for the state of Pakistan which had to build an entire government from the scratch in 1947 under a state of emergency whereas India was born with an intact bureaucratic apparatus in Delhi. In India, on the other hand, the Congress emerged after independence as virtually a mini-parliament, with habits of debate, argument and negotiation. India managed to forge a democratic constitution by 1950, and despite its huge size and socio-economic challenges, has been holding elections every five years.

In Pakistan, the vision of a democratic and progressive future was unambiguously articulated in a resolution adopted at the first meeting of the Council of the Pakistan Muslim League in December 1947, when it pledged “to work for an ideal democratic state based on social justice, as an upholder of human freedom and world peace, in which all citizens will enjoy equal rights and be free from fear, want and ignorance.” This vision, however, remains unfulfilled. With its founder’s early demise in September 1948, the new State of Pakistan lost the promise of healthy political growth with acute systemic deficiencies and frequent leadership miscarriages, restricting its transition to democracy.

After the Quaid, it was left without any sense of direction, and came to be possessed by a corrupt political hierarchy of no more than a bunch of self-serving, feudalist and opportunistic politicians who were to manage the newly independent Pakistan in collusion with civil and military bureaucracy. In the process, we saw a continuing cycle of governmental changes by non-political means. Machiavelli’s political philosophy based on the “doctrine of necessity,” became an integral part of our body politic. Democracy was never allowed to flourish in the country. Pakistan experienced frequent political breakdowns, long spells of military rule, institutional paralysis, endemic corruption, and general aversion to the rule of law.

Given the common history of the twin neighbours, one wonders why India is democratic and Pakistan is not. What after all is wrong with Pakistan? For us, it is not sufficient only to attribute Pakistan’s failure in democracy to its leadership miscarriages and military take-overs. There are in fact deep-rooted historical, socio-cultural and geo-political factors that have been conditioning the post-independence democratic tradition in Pakistan. Since independence, the politics and governments in Pakistan have also remained hostage to the elite classes which have been inimical to any political liberalisation in the country.

Historically, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the British had been gradually devolving power to local authorities in several provinces across India but those reforms were never extended to the North-West Frontier Province and Punjab, the territories that later made up the bulk of Pakistan after the 1947 partition. Thus several of the provinces India inherited from the Raj already had some experience in democracy, Pakistan inherited two highly militarised provinces with no such tradition. This unpalatable colonial legacy in conjunction with the country’s feudalised political parties, social conservatism, and outside influences provided a fertile ground for Pakistan’s army to grow in size and scale and gain an increasingly strong influence over the state.

The overbearing feudal power structure in Pakistan is also the cause of our political decay. It has always resisted land reforms in the country which it sees will strike at its own roots. Unlike India’s Congress Party, the Muslim League, Pakistan’s founding party was almost wholly dominated by a few feudal families, which the British had patronised before partition and were powerful enough to retain control over national affairs through the bureaucracy and the armed forces. Even after the Muslim League’s disintegration, the same feudalised oligarchy consisting of different men at different times under different political flags remained in power with or without military collaboration.

The most important factor circumscribing democracy’s growth in Pakistan has been its geopolitical location which not only shaped its personality as a state but also conditioned its domestic as well as external behaviour. In that intensely bipolar world, the young state of Pakistan, faced with the stark reality of its geo-political environment, gravitated naturally to the pole that it thought stood for freedom and democracy. The West, however, looked at Pakistan solely as a strategic asset in its “containment” policy against Soviet expansionism. The ensuing sequence of history speaks for itself in determining what really happened to democracy in Pakistan.

For us, the concepts of a good society and a good state or for that matter ‘good methods of government’ remain merely philosophical expressions with no practical relevance. With an ingrained culture of political opportunism and greed, we have yet to discover a theory of state and methods of government which will suit the genius of our nation.

The writer is a former foreign secretary. Email: shamshad1941@yahoo.com
Source----The News
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Default Top 5 Causes of World War 1

Top 5 Causes of World War 1



World War 1 is actually much more complicated than a simple list of causes. While there was a chain of events that directly led to the fighting, the actual root causes are much deeper and part of continued debate and discussion. This list is an overview of the most popular reasons that are cited as the root causes of World War 1.

1. Mutual Defense Alliances
Over time, countries throughout Europe made mutual defense agreements that would pull them into battle. Thus, if one country was attacked, allied countries were bound to defend them. Before World War 1, the following alliances existed:
  • Russia and Serbia
  • Germany and Austria-Hungary
  • France and Russia
  • Britain and France and Belgium
  • Japan and Britain
  • Russia and Serbia
  • Germany and Austria-Hungary
  • France and Russia
  • Britain and France and Belgium
  • Japan and Britain
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia got involved to defend Serbia. Germany seeing Russia mobilizing, declared war on Russia. France was then drawn in against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Germany attacked France through Belgium pulling Britain into war. Then Japan entered the war. Later, Italy and the United States would enter on the side of the allies.

2. Imperialism
Imperialism is when a country increases their power and wealth by bringing additional territories under their control. Before World War 1, Africa and parts of Asia were points of contention amongst the European countries. This was especially true because of the raw materials these areas could provide. The increasing competition and desire for greater empires led to an increase in confrontation that helped push the world into World War I.

3. Militarism
As the world entered the 20th century, an arms race had begun. By 1914, Germany had the greatest increase in military buildup. Great Britain and Germany both greatly increased their navies in this time period. Further, in Germany and Russia particularly, the military establishment began to have a greater influence on public policy. This increase in militarism helped push the countries involved to war.

4. Nationalism
Much of the origin of the war was based on the desire of the Slavic peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina to no longer be part of Austria Hungary but instead be part of Serbia. In this way, nationalism led directly to the War. But in a more general way, the nationalism of the various countries throughout Europe contributed not only to the beginning but the extension of the war in Europe. Each country tried to prove their dominance and power.

5. Immediate Cause: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

The immediate cause of World War I that made all the aforementioned items come into play (alliances, imperialism, militarism, nationalism) was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. In June 1914, a Serbian nationalist assassinated him and his wife while they were in Sarajevo, Bosnia which was part of Austria-Hungary. This was in protest to Austria-Hungary having control of this region. Serbia wanted to take over Bosnia and Herzegovina. This assassination led to Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. When Russia began to mobilize due to its alliance with Serbia, Germany declared war on Russia. Thus began the expansion of the war to include all those involved in the mutual defense alliances.

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