MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 6/29: In a sense there is an arms race under way at this time of a different kind -- a race for whether weapons of mass destruction will be used in a serious and ongoing way should a new war break out first in the Subcontinent over Kashmir or in the Middle East over Palestine.

In the past there was the famous "nuclear alert" ordered by Henry Kissinger at the time of the 1973 War -- the Russians said at the time to be shipping nuclear weapons to Egypt and the Israelis threatening to preempt with their own. The Americans began a massive airlift of military supplies to Israel, warned Moscow that what was happening could result in devastation to the Soviet Union, and forced the Arab states to back down when they had the upper hand.

The Israelis of course attacked the Osirak nuclear reactor outside of Baghdad in 1981 within months of that plant going on line when it would have been too late.

And there have been secret joint Indian-Israeli attempts to destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, past attempts that failed and now it is probably too late.

One of the main goals the U.S. and Israel have at the moment is to prevent the Iranians from achieving weapons of mass destruction -- as well as the Iraqis, Libyans, and Algerians who have a secret nuclear weapons program rarely discussed. Other countries in the region, including Egypt and Syria, have major programs to rush development of ballistic missiles capable of delivering chemical and biological weapons, as well as nuclear.

Especially with Sharon at Israel's helm, the region is in a rush to arm and prepare. Indeed, it was precisely movement toward a situation of possible use of weapons of mass destruction in the future against Israel that propelled the other top General, Ehud Barak, to take such seemingly desperate steps to get Yasser Arafat to sign some kind of "final peace" and head of the bleak future that is now coming into better focus.

The Americans, having contributed all these years to actually nurturing these conflicts -- picking up where the British left off in both cases of course -- are working feverishly to prevent further development of weapons of mass destruction (except for Israel of course whose substantial nuclear arsenal and chemical/biological weapons programs are only partially known). Even so, at the same time the Americans are the region's largest arms merchant for conventional and high-technology weapons.