"We have on the one side Ukraine, whose situation is not improving; in Israel and Palestine things are getting worse; the disaster the Americans left in Iraq, the atrocities of Islamic state and the problem of Syria,". "There is war everywhere; we run the risk of committing the same mistakes as before; so without realizing it we can get into a world war as if we were sleepwalking,". Of course, there were plenty of US interventions in those days too, but they tended to be covert or exercised through proxies. The Cold War and the existence of a powerful superpower rival served as a restraining influence. Now, just when we thought we had a handle on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, we have to sign up for crash courses on Syria and Iran, then UKRAINE – and now YEMEN. Meanwhile, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan refuse to go away. What is an anti-war campaigner to do? It’s hard to keep up. US allies among the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Saudi Arabia, are bombing Yemen, with the US-allied Egyptian dictatorship prepared to send troops to join in the attack — all with many billions of dollars of US-supplied arms. US weapons manufacturers are no doubt ecstatic. The Obama administration is cheering on the attack, invoking – along with a unanimous trumpeting in the media – the alleged “Iranian-backed Shi’a” Houthi rebels. This framing comes straight out of the Israeli-Saudi playbook and is utterly false, according to experts on Yemen. The Houthis do not need arms from Iran because Yemen is awash with US weaponry supplied to the deposed regime “for counter-terrorism.” The military intervention is aimed at re-instating the deposed President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who was installed in Yemen through a 2012 “election” in which he was the only candidate and there wasn’t even an option to vote “No.” Hadi received an enviable 100% of the vote (or 99.80% to be exact, but who’s counting). Hadi replaced an earlier US-Saudi client dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced out in 2011. The Saudi intervention now puts the US effectively on the same side as “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),” which is the enemy of the Houthis. The Arab world’s turmoil deepened: The Islamic State captured large swathes of Iraq and Syria, much of Gaza was destroyed again, Egypt turned toward authoritarianism and repression, and Libya and Yemen drifted toward civil war. In Africa, the world watched South Sudan’s leaders drive their new country into the ground. The optimism of 2013 faded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ebola ravaged parts of West Africa, and Boko Haram insurgents stepped up terrorist attacks in northern Nigeria. The international legal order was challenged with the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and war is back in Europe as fighting continues in eastern Ukraine. The struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia shapes the contours of violence between Sunnis and Shiites across the Middle East. Major Sunni powers are themselves divided: The contest between the Saudis, Emiratis, and Egypt on the one hand, and Qatar and Turkey on the other, plays out across North Africa. Also, the North Korea situation doesn't look good with Kim Jong Un threatening a nuclear war at the drop of the hat. All in all, the world awaits a bleak future with ominous signs of destruction and end of the human race.

• published: 20 Apr 2015
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