بیشترتوضیحاتافزودن یادداشت جدید Japan The United States is also concerned about the increasing power of Japan. Commenting on the threats pose by Japan, a former Pentagon official and US designate ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, writes: In case of US withdrawal from East Asian region, Japan will try to ensure its own security; and relying on its own technological capabilities, it will expand its military power which will in turn lead to an arms race in the region. The arms race may lead to war and the domination of one belligerent country over the region which will threaten the US interests. During the Afghanistan war, Japan extended its diplomatic and political support to the United States, but refrained from sending its troops to that country. Tokyo announced that its support will be confined to financial contribution to the campaign against terrorism, while it refrained from active participation in operations against terrorism and in the Afghan war. Thus the United States in its militaristic policy faces serious opposition from Europe and Asia and will not be able to convince the great powers of these two regions to support it. In other words the United States will not enjoy the support of these states in its confrontation with the Islamic world under the umbrella of so-called campaign against terrorism. These countries will at least theoretically oppose the United States and will not cooperate with Washington in this regard. The term Islamic World was not taken seriously before the Islamic Revolution and the Muslim regions were basically divided on the basis of their geographical and geopolitical conditions to the Middle East, Northern Africa, Southeast Asia and Far East. The term Islamic World became well known in international relations just after the victory of the Islamic Revolution. In his octagonal classification of the great civilizations of the world, Samuel Huntington names the Islamic civilization as one of the great civilizational units, which is in confrontation with the superior Western civilization. The geography of this civilizational unit extends to the Gibraltar Strait in the west and the Madagascar Peninsula in the east, forming a mosaic of 60 political components. However, despite enjoying universal awakening and Islamic revivalism, the nation-state system still looms large on this civilizational unit. For more than fifty years in Middle East mainly consisting of the Arab countries the Arabs have been having a serious problem with the Untied States, that is, Washington's unequivocal support for Israel under the influence of the Zionist lobby. The Indifada in two phases indeed infused fresh blood into the veins of struggle against the Israeli regime. Inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the victory of Hizbullah in Lebanon, various Islamic resistant groups in Palestine by relying on their faith have seriously embarrassed the Zionists. This movement has raised hope not only among the Palestinians but also among all Muslims, particularly in such Arab countries as Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The rumbling of the drum of anti-American movements reverberates across the Arab world, but the people of this region did not imagine that the September 11 events could leave such a vigorous impact on the developments of the Arab world. The US had been turned into a giant and there was a feeling among the Arabs that this giant would soon unleash horrible bloodshed in the region. However, the Islamic and Arab countries since the early '90s had made their stance towards the US objectives and expedition clear. The 1990s marked the outbreak of another war and during this decade the Arab Muslims dealt serious blows on the US. The first attack was launched on the World Trade Center by a truck bomb in 1993. The US officials claimed that Shaikh Umar Abdul Rahman had planned and directed the attack. In fact the struggle of the Arab Muslims was sparked off by the attack on the World Trade Center and continued until September 11, 2001. There is rarely any Muslim or Arab family in which hatred against the US culture and policies do not exist. The peoples of this region maintain that relations with the United States, a symbol of global infidelity, should come to an end. Likewise, they hold that cultural contamination disseminated by the Western satellites should be cleansed. In order to achieve these goals, they argue, the US presence in the region should be uprooted and American forces must withdraw from the region. Overall, it seems that the September 11 events have left the following three impacts: 1 Spread of anti-American sentiments or hatred against the United States almost among all social and political groups whether Shia or Sunni. In effect considering the US threat as a common threat, they have closed ranks and got more united. 2 The pro-Western, pro-American secular, liberal intellectual trends have been pushed to the isolation and their social base has eroded. 3 The conservative governments are under dual pressure of the US on the one hand to join its camp and acknowledge its militaristic policies and that of social groups, particularly the Islamic, traditional ones, to confront US policies and take part with the earlier conservative policies on the other. The outcome of these two pressures will be a change of policy in the interest of the people and confrontation with the United States. The continuation of crisis-instigation by the United States in the region and incorporation of some Arab countries such as Yemen, Sudan and Somalia into the US hit list next to Afghanistan and Iraq has caused the augmentation of pressure on these governments to announce their open, serious opposition to the US policies. For instance, the Saudi Crown Prince, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, threatened to distance his country from the US if the latter continued the policy of crisis instigation. The US was even asked to dismantle its military bases in Saudi Arabia. Three developments in the Arab world, that is, spread of public hatred against the US policies, continuation of the Intifada movement in Palestine, and increasing US pressure on the Islamic groups in the region, will widen the gap between the Arab states and the United States, leading to the formation of a united front to confront US increasing demands. In the Far East, where Malaysian and Indonesian governments rule over a vast Muslim population and play the main role, particularly after the economic crises of 1996-97, the anti-American atmosphere has become widespread, for the economic crises in these two countries stemmed from the supremacy of US dollar which could easily leave an adverse impact on their national economies, leading to crises and causing popular unrest in Indonesia which in turn caused the collapse of Swharto s government. The anti-American waves have been strengthened in this region of the Islamic World since September 11. For instance, anti-American demonstrations became widespread during the US attack on Afghanistan and some US symbols, including MacDonald restaurants, were set ablaze. Also the policies of experienced former Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Muhamad became more and more anti-American and he openly criticized the US policies. In the long-term, the US will not be able to easily influence the countries of Central Asia and Caucasus. Indeed the geographical conditions of these countries as well as increasing Russian military influence in this area on the one hand and their dependence on Iran for an access to the high seas for the export of their oil and gas to the world markets on the other will retard the pace of US influence and its attempts to acquire military bases in these countries. The economic problems as well as border disputes, like the one between Azerbaijan and Armenia or Abkhazia and Georgia, will further dent US attempts to widen its sphere of influence in this part of the world. In any confrontation with the Islamic World, the Islamic Republic of Iran will be without any doubt the pivot and center of all related developments. Due to its ideology, as the sole government and state that has implemented the Sharia (Islamic canonical laws) and its revolutionary, anti-arrogance stances on the one hand, and its geopolitical, geo-strategic, geo-economic position on the other, the Islamic Republic of Iran is the hub of the Islamic World.
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