In Brief... World News Review: Kashmir Crisis Was Defused on Brink of War
Easily could have escalated.
Two months ago, as fighting raged between Indian and Pakistani forces in the disputed province of Kashmir, American spy satellites revealed a new and alarming development hundreds of miles to the south. In the desert state of Rajasthan, elements of the Indian army's main offensive "strike force" were loading tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment onto flatbed rail cars.
India, it seemed, was preparing to invade its neighbor.
At least in the short term, President Clinton helped avert that prospect during his widely reported Independence Day meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who agreed after hours of tense discussions to withdraw the forces that had triggered the flare-up in early May.
But the full dimensions of the crisis are only now coming to light. According to senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the latest conflict over Kashmir came much closer to full-scale war than was publicly acknowledged at the time-and raised very real fears that one or both countries would resort to using variants of the nuclear devices each tested last year.
"This is one of the most dangerous situations on the face of the earth," said a senior administration official who closely tracks the issue. "It was very, very easy to imagine how this crisis…could have escalated out of control, including in a way that could have brought in nuclear weapons, without either party consciously deciding that it wanted to go to nuclear war." The danger is far from over (John Lancaster, Washington Post, July 26, 1999).
An Article from:
World News and Prophecy: August 1999
Course Content
Darris McNeely
Darris McNeely works at the United Church of God home office in Cincinnati, Ohio. He and his wife, Debbie, have served in the ministry for more than 43 years. They have two sons, who are both married, and four grandchildren. Darris is the Associate Media Producer for the Church. He also is a resident faculty member at the Ambassador Bible Center teaching Acts, Fundamentals of Belief and World News and Prophecy. He enjoys hunting, travel and reading and spending time with his grandchildren.
John Ross Schroeder
John died on March 8, 2014, in Oxford, England, four days after suffering cardiac arrest while returning home from a press event in London. John was 77 and still going strong.
Some of John's work for The Good News appeared under his byline, but much didn't. He wrote more than a thousand articles over the years, but also wrote the Questions and Answers section of the magazine, compiled our Letters From Our Readers, and wrote many of the items in the Current Events and Trends section. He also contributed greatly to a number of our study guides and Bible Study Course lessons. His writing has touched the lives of literally millions of people over the years.
John traveled widely over the years as an accredited journalist, especially in Europe. His knowledge of European and Middle East history added a great deal to his articles on history and Bible prophecy.
In his later years he also pastored congregations in Northern Ireland and East Sussex, and that experience added another dimension to his writing. He and his wife Jan were an effective team in our British Isles office near their home.
John was a humble servant who dedicated his life to sharing the gospel—the good news—of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God to all the world, and his work was known to readers in nearly every country of the world.
Peter Eddington
Peter serves at the home office as Interim Manager of Media and Communications Services.
He studied production engineering at the Swinburne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, and is a journeyman machinist. He moved to the United States to attend Ambassador College in 1980. He graduated from the Pasadena campus in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and married his college sweetheart, Terri. Peter was ordained an elder in 1992. He served as assistant pastor in the Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo, California, congregations from 1995 through 1998 and the Cincinnati, Ohio, congregations from 2010 through 2011.
