Image by Ran Liwen.

Although the global dominance of the US is crumbling and China is emerging as a rival, the unilateral world order remains intact, according to historian Vijay Prashad. In this interview, he explains why he considers NATO to be the most dangerous organization in the world.

David Goeßmann: Iran has been bombed by Israel and also the U.S. without any credible pretext. Tehran responded with missiles on Israel and on a U.S. base in Qatar. The genocide in Gaza by Israel is still going on, no end in sight after over 600 days while the IDF keeps hitting Lebanon. All these attacks by Israel and the U.S. are aggressive acts and illegal under international law. And of course, they destabilize the region. What is your assessment of the current conflict situation and the future of the Middle East?

Vijay Prashad: Let’s go to India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan went to war for three days. In fact, in the previous month and in those three nights, it became clear that if two military powers both with what are known as 4.5 generation weapon systems, that means really good air defenses, drones, a system with the capacity to integrate with the jet fighters and so on. If two powers have similar 4.5 generation weapons, nobody can win. So neither India’s air force nor Pakistan’s air force were able to penetrate and destroy the other’s air defense systems. In fact, Indian jets didn’t cross into Pakistan, Pakistani jets didn’t cross into India. They sent drone swarms across the border.

Why I’m saying that is that in fact if you look at the conflict between Israel and Iran, just in terms of military capacity, it becomes clear that neither can prevail, that both can hit each other, but neither can really win a conflict. Israel is not going to invade Iran, Iran is not going to invade Israel with ground troops. But when it comes to air defense systems, missiles and so on they’re pretty much even balanced, just like India and Pakistan. The only thing that tips the balance is the entry of the United States, which has just the most overwhelming firepower, much more than either Iran or Israel or India or Pakistan.

But if it’s just Israel and Iran, nobody can prevail. That was clear in fact on day one and two of the fighting. And then the United States comes in to do three bombing runs. But also what seemed to be pretty inconsequential bombing runs. Iran responds with an attack on Al-Udeid [U.S. military base in Qatar], which was basically choreographed to say: “We’ve struck back”. So my feeling is that military planners in these countries are sitting down and saying, unless we have a major military technological breakthrough or Israel uses a nuclear weapon against Iran, it is impossible for these countries to prevail.

That’s the military’s perspective. From the context of a political perspective, Israel has been conducting a genocide against the........

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