Analyst's note: Here is good advice when it comes to evaluating world events. While you're at it, don't miss the "Related articles" that I provide at the end of this article.
{....] when I see the North Koreans jumping up and down and threatening to nuke us, I ask myself what's in it for the Iranians? And I add the others in the global anti-American alliance. What's in it for the Chinese? The Russians? The Venezuelans, Bolivians, Ecuadorians and Nicaraguans? Because all these guys coordinate so many of their activities that I can't understand important events in any one of them without putting those events in the big context. When I see the Russians and the Chinese fighting against anti-Iranian sanctions, I remind myself that they, along with the Latin Americans, are in a banking network with Iran. When the Iranians sit down to negotiate about their nuclear program, I ask myself: what do the Russians want? And so it goes.
[....] if I were the head of an intelligence service I would ask my smartest people to test an hypothesis: what if it's misdirection? What if there trying to get us to focus on them, when something else is in the works someplace else?
Don't ask me what the something else is, or the location of the someplace else. I don't know. It's only a theory after all. And I agree that the North Koreans may well be crazy enough to attack us. But if this is all part of a strategic operation by the anti-American alliance, then we should carefully go down our list of likely targets, and see what the major terrorists are up to.
I would ask my smartest people to pay special attention to people and communications moving north from Venezuela, where a very important election campaign has just begun to choose the successor to Hugo Chavez. The bus driver who served as his vice president would benefit from some dramatic event inside the United States, and the Russians, Iranians and Chinese are actively working for his victory.
However this all turns out, the basic point is valid and important: I don't think we can understand the world anymore if we take it country by country. We have to look at bigger pictures.
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