09-29-2017, 10:30 AM
(09-28-2017, 10:22 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > To be fair, the Khmer Rouge's genocidal religion was Communism,
> not Buddhism.
> I'm still not seeing how the Burma situation triggers a crisis
> war. Bangladesh invading Burma, triggering an Indian invasion of
> Bangladesh, in turn involving Pakistan? Maybe, but it would
> require serious stupidity on the part of Bangladesh.
> Or do you think jihadists could become powerful enough to be party
> to a crisis war? Maybe, but they'd probably have to get nuclear
> weapons - which, granted, isn't that far fetched.
Well, the importance of Buddhism as the Khmer Rouge religion is not
that there's something special about Buddhism that leads to the
Cambodian Killing Fields. In fact the Khmer Rouge were apparently
learning from Communist Mao's Great Leap Forward genocide, in the same
way that children might learn carpentry from their parents.
What makes Cambodia's Buddhism important today is that there's a
religious identity group connection between the people of Burma and
the people of Cambodia, and there may even be familial connections.
Today's Burmese Buddhist leaders may be learning from the Khmer
Rouge's Killing Fields genocide from their Cambodian cousins, which
would make Mao's communists the grandparents, the Khmer Rouge the
first generation children, and the Burmese the grandchildren, creating
a kind of family tree of horror.
The way that a war could arise is if some nation takes some military
action to right the situation. There will soon be close to a million
Burmese Rohingyas in Bangladesh, and I could easily imagine Bangladesh
doing something to force these refugees to return to Burma, or at
least to stop the flow.
Another possible way is another Muslim nation taking some action.
Here's an article that describes how Muslims in Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Malaysia and Chechnya are holding
large anti-Burma protests, sometimes demanding that the government
cut diplomatic relations. Imagine, for example, if a jihadist
militia from one of these countries goes to Burma, and they're captured
by the Burmese, and their government demands that they be returned,
and Burma refuses.
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-...story.html
So it's not that the Burma situation could lead overnight to a crisis
war. It's that there may be a typical "regeneracy" scenario, where
one country crosses a red line, and another country (Burma) crosses a
red line in response, creating a ping-pong escalation process that
leads to a war.
