by Sir Arthur Foulkes
When those of the Northern Pole are united,
In the East will be great fear and dread …
One day the two great leaders will be friends;
Their great powers will seem to grow.
The New Land will be at the height of its power:
To the man of blood the number is reported.
Those words from Nostradamus and some words in the Revelation of St. John, together with currents events, have convinced some people that we are on the verge of World War III, the great apocalyptic Battle of Armageddon, the end times.
The two great leaders of the Northern Pole, it is said, are the leaders of Russia and the United States of America. The New Land, the United States, is certainly at the height of its power. As a matter of fact, it is the only superpower in the world.
Both Russia and the US, while not yet on the very best of terms, have a common worry about the rise of an uncompromising and militant Islamic fundamentalism that is unalterably committed to the destruction of Western culture.
The US is also concerned about the security of its ally, Israel, in the middle of a hostile Muslim region and, of course, the possible interruption of the flow of Arab and Iranian oil to the West.
Russia is concerned about the Muslim states that used to be a part of the Soviet Union and are now independent, and another state, Chechnya, which it wants to keep as a part of the Russia Federation.
Some people do not put much stock in the prophecies of Nostradamus. They are too obscure and lend themselves to convincing interpretation only after the event. The skeptics are equally unimpressed by the modern prophets who claim they can divine the timing of the end from scripture.
It would appear from some of his writings that St. Paul expected Jesus Christ to return in his lifetime, but it did not happen. There have been many predictions since the time of St. Paul and, up to now, all have been wrong.
People have gathered on hilltops to greet the dawn of the last day and some sold all their belongings in preparation for the big event. It is not clear what they wanted with money if the world was coming to an end.
But we are not out of the woods yet. There are some prophecies that relate to beyond 2006. A British group, the Lord’s Witnesses, predicts that there will be a terrible war and the end will come in 2008.
The ancient Mayans, who were not Christians, also mused over this problem in their calendar of events and gave us an additional four years – until 2012; and no less an authority than Pope Leo IX predicted in 1514 that the world had 500 more years to run – until 2014.
According to some interpretations, the Koran, the Muslim holy book, is more generous than all of them and gives us until 2280. Others are content with the admonition that we know not the day nor the hour.
The world may not be working up to Armageddon or the end of time but it looks very much like the stage is being elaborately set for World War III.
Nothing happens out of the blue, and wars, like other coming events, often cast their shadows. But why is it that some people can see these ominous shadows and others – especially those in position to do something about it – cannot, or will not?
The single shot that rang out in the town of Sarajevo in June 1914 was heard around the world, it is said, because it was the beginning of the Great War. But before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian nationalist, the stage had been set for World War I.
In Europe there were territorial disputes left over from previous wars; the Germans and the French were at odds over Alsace Lorraine; the Russians, the Austrians and the Turks were competing for control of the Balkans, and the British and the Germans were locked in a race to see who would have the most powerful navy.
Then there was the already prostrate and despoiled continent of Africa over which the imperial powers were snarling at each other like hungry wolves. So by the time Adolf Hitler strutted onto the scene, the setting of the stage for World War II was already much advanced.
There is one lesson we humans never seem to learn and it is that history is always very much alive in the present. The history we make today will almost certainly come back to curse us or bless us sometime in the future.
After World War I the victors, more so the Europeans than the Americans, humiliated and heavily penalized Germany. Germany was stripped of its African colonies, had to give up considerable territory to its European neighbours and had to pay ruinous reparations.
So they were ready for the charismatic Hitler who took aim at the hated Treaty of Versailles, the instrument used by the Allies to impose their will on the defeated nation. Furthermore, Hitler provided them with a very convenient scapegoat -- the Jews.
Other things were happening as well. The League of Nations had been created by the Treaty to mediate between nations and avoid war, but it proved impotent in the face of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1933 and Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1936.
So Hitler went about building one of the most fearsome war machines in the history of humankind. When he started to gobble up territory, the Europeans went from one extreme to the other.
Those who had been so exacting with Germany after the World War I now collapsed into an appeasement mode. By the time Hitler got around to Poland it was too late to avoid World War II.
In the Pacific, the Japanese, who had been eyeing the vast resources of their neighbours, took advantage of the European war to challenge American power in the Pacific and Asia. So for six bloody years the war raged, and when it ended 50 million people had lost their lives.
Now, more and more international observers are talking about World War III. Are they right? Has the stage been set yet again for another global conflagration?
The most obvious danger is, of course, in the unstable Middle East where territorial disputes, racial, cultural and religious differences -- and oil -- all combine to make a highly volatile mix. There have been any number of small explosions over the last half century and one of them could easily spill over to the rest of the world.
Disputes over dwindling resources such as fish stocks and fresh water are potential causes of future wars, but if the present crisis is not managed with great wisdom and skill, the world could be enveloped in a conflict over oil.
Oil is a finite nonrenewable resource but the demand for it is growing by leaps and bounds as a result of the rapid industrialization of the developing world, particularly very populous countries like China and India, and the inability, or unwillingness, of the developed world to curb its consumption and develop sustainable energy sources.
Make no mistake about this: the developed countries of the West will go to war to protect the flow of oil. No powerful country will stand idly by and watch their industries grind to a halt, their economies collapse and the lights in their cities go out for lack of oil.
But it need not come to that. After World War II the Europeans and the Americans took a lesson from the mistake they made after World War I. Instead of punishing their former enemies, the Allies rebuilt their cities and their economies and set about creating a new Western Europe.
But there were great leaders on the stage at that time: Winston Churchill, Franklyn Roosevelt, Harry Truman, George Marshall and Wendell Willkie. Maybe that kind of leadership -- leadership with vision, imagination, intelligence and moral courage -- is somewhere out there waiting to walk onto the stage, waiting to change the course of history.
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