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by James Corbett
GRTV.ca
December 23, 2011

A series of steps toward open confrontation with Iran, Syria and Pakistan have been making headlines for months now in both the alternative and mainstream media.

Covered as essentially separate stories, however, few have so far connected these supposedly isolated incidents into a larger story about the creation of a zone of instability that is in fact engulfing all regions of the globe. When such a picture is assembled, it becomes evident that any number of skirmishes and power grabs taking place around the planet are sparks that could eventually light the fuse on open confrontation of the world’s nuclear superpowers.

In Iran, the US State Department is now admittedly working with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq to relocate the Mujahedeen e-Khalq to a former US military base. The MEK is listed as a terrorist organization on the State Department’s own watch list, but Foreign Policy magazine is reporting on the State Department’s moves to work with the organization, which has been used as a proxy force to attack Iran in the past.

This is in addition to the US’ open cooperation with Jundullah, a Balochi terrorist organization responsible for the deaths and woundings of over 500 Iranian citizens in the past eight years, including confirmed CIA ties to the group.

The MEK revelation comes on the heels of the downing of a US reconaissance drone in Iran, a drone that was initially said to have been operating exclusively in Afghanistan when it suddenly veered off course, but later admitted to be conducting spying operations on Iran.

Now the Iranians are announcing a 10-day drill in international waters near the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic choke point for ships transporting petroleum out of the Persian Gulf, a tiny passage through which fully 17% of the global oil transport trade passes each year.

This comes days after fresh reports of live fire maneuvers by the Syrian Air Force and Air Defence, which included tracking and destroying hostile targets and firing real missiles.

In Pakistan, tensions still simmer from a US/NATO air strike last month that left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead, and caused Pakistan to completely close its borders to NATO, causing a supply-chain nightmare for NATO forces in Afghanistan

Now Pakistan is rejecting a US probe into the air strike which found that US and Pakistani forces shared blame for what the report called a “tragic” series of mistakes, saying:

“Pakistan’s army does not agree with the findings of the US/NATO inquiry as being reported in the media. The inquiry report is short on facts.”

Meanwhile in East Asia the North Korean military has raised its alert status again today despite no signs of provocation from its neighbors. Tension has flared up across the region as the infamously reclusive North Korean State goes through a precarious handover of power to Kim Jong Il’s elusive son, Kim Jong Un.

In the Indian Ocean, tensions remain high as China has begun quietly increasing its military presence in the region. Ostensibly there to help fight pirates and protect Chinese export interests, the Chinese navy has already deployed three vessels in the Gulf of Aden to combat Somali pirates, and the Seychelles asked the Chinese to establish a military presence in the region during an unprecedented visit by the Chinese Defense Minister earlier this month. Shortly thereafter, a US MQ-9 Reaper drone was downed in the area.

This comes on the heels of President Obama’s recent trip to Australia, where he announced the establishment of a permanent US Marine presence in Darwin in what is being seen as the latest step toward a Chinese-American confrontation in the South China Sea.

Even the Arctic is becoming a potential flashpoint for military conflict as Canada , Denmark, Russia and Norway have begun a scramble for increasingly prized Arctic resources.

Earlier this month I had the chance to talk to Michel Chossudovsky, director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, about the various conflicts taking place around the globe right now, and how they represent the most worrying moves yet toward a full-scale implementation of World War III.

Now, many are asking what can be done to avoid this seemingly inevitable march toward full-scale military confrontation in what could easily become the most devastating conflict in the history of the globe.

According to Rick Rozoff of Stop NATO International in an interview conducted last week, the fact that the anti-war movement has essentially abdicated its responsibilities since the Obama regime came to power means that it will be almost certainly unable to avert this impending crisis.

As the bleak picture emerges of a world at the point of total war, it remains to be seen what notice, if any, the media will pay to these worrying developments, and whether the public is willing to expend their time and energy on putting together an effective resistance to the global war machine.