Barry McGuire's classic 1965 song was one of the first protest songs of the Vietnam War-Cold War era. It is bleak. "You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction" goes the chorus. The message is still applicable today.
As of now, the Israel army continues to march on into the heartland of the Gaza Strip. Some might say this is a bit of an extreme reaction to a series of missile attacks, but really this conflict has been inevitable ever since Hamas took over control of Palestine. Hamas continues to refuse to admit defeat, and I doubt they will until Israel hunts down and kills them all off. Of course, genocide would be frowned upon as Israel has a lot of friends in the West who think that genocide is a bad idea. Strangely enough, genocide was an option for the west only a short time ago. Although I do doubt that genocide will happen in this case, some other areas of the world are not so lucky.
At present, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues to escalate, after several years of relative peace. There have been millions killed in the Congo since the late 1990s, all in the desire of neighbouring nations such as Uganda lusting for their plentiful natural resources. The war in the DRC makes the Palestine-Israel conflict look like a minor skirmish. It doesn't help that China is in there stirring things up.
Africa is just full of bad things happening. Zimbabwe's despair is not going away, though it is off the front page headlines. Robert Mugabe's refusal to step down has amounted to the deaths of thousands of people, and the cholera outbreak is just the latest part of this. I remember when the Iraq invasion was about to happen, Mugabe's forces were committing mass genocide, and it was just a footnote. Don't forget that China's all up in there too.
Let's not forget Darfur. Probably the largest genocide in recent history, just because there is a lull now does not mean that this battle is done. As climate change forces nomads onto farmers' land, we have seen hundreds of thousands dead in ethnic conflicts. I truly believe that the situation will continue to be tenuous for the year or 2009.
Afghanistan is another conflict that is escalating. During my holiday, my uncle remarked that his son in law (who just got back from his third tour there) said that things are worse there than ever, and that they had translators quit because the people they were fighting did not speak the local languages. Who are these so called insurgents? Apparently they speak Russian. Maybe Russia feels bullish about their ability to invade after the success in Georgia last summer? Or perhaps they are Chechnyan rebels? I really don't know as there is not much coverage on this. At any rate, the mission in Afghanistan has been a failure for the West, as it was for the East previously. The situation will most likely continue to degrade this year.
Iraq continues to be a hotbed of suicide attacks and other extreme acts. The US intends to retreat, but ironically Iraq is probably more stable than the aforementioned Congo or Darfur. Iraq does have the semblance of a government, which is more than can be said about Afghanistan. Out of all the conflicts, I expect Iraq to be the one to be tempered the most this year.
And who can forget about Burma? Well, I guess all of the rest of the world. Burma is a full fledged Orwellian society where all political descent is jailed or executed. There was a brief spell of interest after a cyclone killed off a bunch of people and a mockery of an election was held shortly after, but that has since gone away.
The biggest brewing conflict has to be the Pakistan-India conflict. India has gone so far as to accuse Pakistan of being involved in the bombings in Mumbai. This is all coming to a head right now, but the conflict between Pakistan and India has been happening ever since the Kashmir refused to join Pakistan after the dissolution of the United Kingdom. Look for this to become the big new war in the next year.
As you can see, there are lots of battles brewing for 2009. And this doesn't even count nations with extreme governments like Iran or Venezuela, or countries that have growing instability such as Mexico or Ukraine, or the growing lust for power of countries like China or Russia. The West has seen their considerable leverage erode since the the start of the decade, and the democratic ideal may be waining. With poor turnouts in the last elections in the West (including in the US), maybe people just don't care anymore.
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