Thought 2017 was bad? Wait ’til you see what’s coming next year

THIS should be the season of comfort and joy, as we prepare to wish each other a happy New Year.

But simmering tensions around the world  may mean the next 12 months are far from peaceful.

Here, DOUGLAS MURRAY,  author of The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, picks out the top five potential global flashpoints.

Pakistan

PAKISTAN may be the most unstable country on Earth. It is a sham democracy, held hostage by religious maniacs,  and already has what North Korea wants – nukes. Although the news rarely breaks through to the West, Pakistan is forever on a precipice.

Last month there were  riots across  the whole country that took in capital city Islamabad. Extremist clerics claimed a tiny change in the electoral oath was a secret sop to the minority Ahmadiyya community and thus blasphemous to Islam.

There were threats of fatwas being issued against members of the government. Radical clerics got their supporters out on the streets. A minister resigned.

The authorities had to shut down internet and mobile phone networks in a desperate effort to stop a full-scale revolution. Westerners were advised to keep off the streets. The army clashed with the radicals and they won this time. But one day they may not.

Pakistan is a powderkeg, and the fanatics who want to make it go up will, if they ever seize power, have the power to make mushroom clouds.

Saudi/Iran

THE Middle East is always a mess. But in recent years one big conflict has become clear. Not the Israeli-Palestinian dispute – but the 1,400-year-old split in Islam between Sunni and Shia.

Today  it is epitomised by a Sunni side led by Saudi Arabia, and the Iran-led  Shia side. They hate each other more than anyone else and it is also political.

Iran is  the only winner in all the events that have rocked the region in recent years. Who won Iraq in the end? Iran. Who won the Syrian civil war? Iran.  On and on it goes. Iran moves in when anyone else moves out and from Yemen to Lebanon they are getting a whole continent under their fanatical control.

Saudi is determined to stop this and has the cash to throw at it. But Iran keeps poking them.  This month an Iranian rocket was fired from Yemen right at Saudi capital Riyadh. It was shot down. The Iranians deny it but it  is obvious where these missiles come from.

2018 may be the year these two big powers stop fighting in private and have it out in the open.

Europe

WITH daily Brexit news, it’s easy for us to forget about the troubles still rocking Europe.

Terror attacks are part of everyday life. The political mainstream is paying every-where for its policy of mass migration and open borders.

The voters’ response means German Chancellor Angela Merkel  still can’t put a government together.

In Austria, the far-right party has entered government as a result of voters’ migration worries. With massive youth unemployment in all the southern countries, political extremism is on the rise on both Right and Left.

There is a feeling that the continent is never more than a few major terrorist attacks away from turning really nasty. Parts of the public may lose patience with  communities from which the terrorists come as well as the politicians.

Recent decades have seen unusual peace in Europe. At some point that will stop.

North Korea

NORTH KOREA’S dangerous relationship with the US shows no sign of abating.

This year US President Donald Trump’s tweets upped the ante against feisty North Korean leader  Kim Jong-un. He  called him “Rocket Man” and “short and fat”, further rattling the preposterous dictator.

But this may be the year the dispute becomes more than words.  Kori Schake, who worked at the National Security Council in President George W Bush’s first term as US President, recently said the debate on North Korea sounds “eerily familiar” to the run-up to the start of the Iraq War in 2003.

If Trump thinks Kim’s about to get nukes, he’ll take them out. Which won’t be easy or pretty.  The Kims – a Marxist monarchy now into its third generation – have kept their people at a high pitch of hatred towards the entire outside world, and America in particular. They have spent years seeking nuclear weapons, knowing a regime with nukes is secure.

And they keep getting closer. As well as carrying out further nuclear tests in 2017, the rogue regime test-fired its most advanced rockets to date, which, if we believe North Korea, could soon reach the west coast of the US.

For America, this is not negotiable. Sanctions,  already heavy, will increase – further testing the famously erratic Jong-un.

China/Vietnam

THE only global power likely to overtake America in our lifetimes is China. It is huge and hungry to grow.  Everywhere, it attempts to probe and push to see where it can expand. This year saw a tense stand-off at Doklam, on the China-India border.

China may resist picking a fight with such a major power.

But elsewhere there are fights it might yet be very willing to pick.

In the South China Sea, the Chinese search for strategic vantage points has already led to severe tensions.

Vietnam, a socialist republic, is one of the few countries which China might yet decide to provoke and punish.

The country is non-aligned –  meaning it has no formal link with a major power bloc such as  China – and is bolshy on issues of sovereignty.

China took an island from Vietnam in a naval battle over the Spratly Islands 30 years ago.

But China needs to send a warning to other ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries.

And it may be that this is the year when it decides to do this.