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It is hard to imagine that anyone could have dismantled the Soviet Union from the inside faster or more comprehensively than Mikhail Gorbachev, a man who had no such intention. Its crumbling is both Gorbachev’s singular achievement and his personal tragedy.
It is also the most important moment in history since 1945.
Popular perceptions have transformed the former Soviet leader into a kitschy icon, remembered as much for starring in an advert for no-crust pizza, as for picking up a Nobel Peace Prize.
But in the demise of ‘The Evil Empire’ he was no naïf, nor a catalyst for generic historic inevitabilities. Almost every single event in the countdown to the fall of communism in Russia and beyond is a direct reflection of the ideals, actions and foibles of Mikhail Gorbachev and those he confronted or endorsed.
This is the story of a farm mechanic who managed to penetrate the inner sanctum of the world’s biggest country, an explanation of what drove him once he reached the top, and an attempt to understand whether he deserves opprobrium or sympathy, ridicule or appreciation.
If not me, who? And if not now, when?
— Mikhail Gorbachev
Born in 1931 in a Ukrainian-Russian family in the village of Privolnoye in the fertile Russian south, Mikhail Gorbachev’s childhood was punctuated by a series of almost Biblical ordeals, albeit those shared by millions of his contemporaries.
His years as a toddler coincided with Stalin’s policy of collectivization – the confiscation of private lands from peasants to form new state-run farms – and Stavropol, Russia’s Breadbasket, was one of the worst-afflicted. Among the forcible reorganization and resistance, harvests plummeted and government officials requisitioned scarce grain under threat of death.
Gorbachev later said that his first memory is seeing his grandfather boiling frogs he caught in the river during the Great Famine.
Yet another grandfather, Panteley – a former landless peasant — rose from poverty to become the head of the local collective farm. Later Gorbachev attributed his ideological make-up largely to his grandfather’s staunch belief in Communism “which gave him the opportunity to earn everything he had.”
Panteley’s convictions were unshaken even when he was arrested as part of Stalin’s Great Purge. He was accused of joining a “counter-revolutionary Trotskyite movement” (which presumably operated a cell in their distant village) but returned to his family after 14 months behind bars just in time for the Second World War to break out.
Just in time for the Second World War to break out. For much of the conflict, the battle lines between the advancing Germans and the counter-attacking Red Army stretched across Gorbachev’s homeland; Mikhail’s father was drafted, and even reported dead, but returned with only shrapnel lodged in his leg at the end of the war.
Although Sergey was a distant presence in his son’s life up to then and never lived with him, he passed on to Mikhail a skill that played a momentous role in his life — that of a farm machinery mechanic and harvester driver. Bright by all accounts, Mikhail quickly picked up the knack — later boasting that he could pick out any malfunction just by the sound of the harvester or the tractor alone.
But this ability was unlikely to earn him renown beyond his village. Real acclaim came when the father and son read a new decree that would bestow a national honor on anyone who threshed more than 8000 quintals (800 tons or more than 20 big truckloads) of grain during the upcoming harvest. In the summer of 1948 Gorbachev senior and junior ground an impressively neat 8888 quintals. As with many of the agricultural and industrial achievements that made Soviet heroes out of ordinary workers, the exact details of the feat – and what auxiliary efforts may have made it possible – are unclear, but 17-year-old Gorbachev became one of the youngest recipients of the prestigious Order of the Red Banner of Labor in its history.
Having already been admitted to the Communist Party in his teen years (a rare reward given to the most zealous and politically reliable) Mikhail used the medal as an immediate springboard to Moscow. The accolade for the young wheat-grinder meant that he did not have to pass any entrance exams or even sit for an interview at Russia’s most prestigious Moscow State University.
With his village school education, Gorbachev admitted that he initially found the demands of a law degree, in a city he’d never even visited before, grueling. But soon he met another ambitious student from the countryside, and another decisive influence on his life. The self-assured, voluble Raisa, who barely spent a night apart from her husband until her death, helped to bring out the natural ambition in the determined, but occasionally studious and earnest Gorbachev. Predictably, Gorbachev rose to become one of the senior figures at the university’s Komsomol, the Communist youth league — which with its solemn group meetings and policy initiatives served both as a prototype and the pipeline for grown-up party activities.
Upon graduation in 1955, Gorbachev lasted only ten days back in Stavropol’s prosecutor’s office (showing a squeamishness dealing with the less idealistic side of the Soviet apparatus) before running across a local Komsomol official. For the next 15 years his biography reads like a blur of promotions – rising to become Stavropol region’s top Komsomol bureaucrats, overseeing agriculture for a population of nearly 2.5 million people before his 40th birthday.
All the trademarks of Gorbachev’s leadership style, which later became famous around the world, were already in evidence here. Eschewing Soviet officials’ habit of barricading themselves inside the wood-paneled cabinets behind multiple receptions, Gorbachev spent vast swathes of his time ‘in the field’, often literally in a field. With his distinctive southern accent, and his genuine curiosity about the experiences of ordinary people, the young official a struck chord as he toured small villages and discussed broken projectors at local film clubs and shortages of certain foodstuffs.
His other enthusiasm was for public discussion, particularly about specific, local problems – once again in contrast with the majority of officials, who liked to keep negative issues behind closed doors. Gorbachev set up endless discussion clubs and committees, almost quixotically optimistic about creating a better kind of life among the post-war austerity.
By the 1970s any sign of modernization in Soviet society or leadership was a distant memory, as the country settled into supposed “advanced socialism”, with the upheavals and promises of years past replaced by what was widely described as ‘An Era of Stagnation’ (the term gained official currency after being uttered by Gorbachev himself in one of his early public speeches after ascending to the summit of the Soviet system).
Without Stalin’s regular purges, and any democratic replacement mechanisms, between the mid-1960s and 1980s, almost the entire apparatus of Soviet leadership remained unchanged, down from the increasingly senile Leonid Brezhnev, who by the end of his life in 1982 became a figure of nationwide mockery and pity, as he slurred through speeches and barely managed to stand during endless protocol events, wearing gaudy carpets of military honors for battles he never participated in. Predictably, power devolved to the various factions below, as similarly aged heavyweights pushed their protégés into key positions.
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov, CPSU CC Politbureau member, CPSU CC secretary, twice Hero of Socialist Labor.
RIA Novosti.Leonid Brezhnev, left, chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium and general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, with Alexei Kosygin, chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, on Lenin’s Mausoleum on May 1, 1980.
RIA Novosti.The Soviet Communist Party’s politburo member Konstantin Chernenko and central committee member Yury Andropov attend the Kremlin Palace of Congresses’ government session dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the USSR.
RIA Novosti.Yuri Andropov (1914-1984), General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (since November 1982).
RIA Novosti.
With a giant country as the playground, the system rewarded those who came up with catchy programs and slogans, took credit for successes and steered away from failures, and networked tirelessly to build up support above and below. Gorbachev thrived here. His chief patrons were Brezhnev himself, purist party ideologue Mikhail Suslov, who considered Stavropol his powerbase, and most crucially the hardline head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov. The security chief referred to the aspiring politician as ‘My Stavropol Rough Diamond’ — another rejoinder to those seeking to paint Gorbachev as a naïve blessed outsider, a Joan of Arc of the Soviet establishment.
After being called to Moscow in 1978 to oversee Soviet agriculture — an apocryphal story suggests that he nearly missed out on the appointment when senior officials couldn’t find him after he got drunk celebrating a Komsomol anniversary, only to be rescued by a driver at the last moment — Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed to the Politburo in 1980.
The Politburo, which included some but not all of the ministers and regional chiefs of the USSR, was an inner council that took all the key decisions in the country, with the Soviet leader sitting at the top of the table, holding the final word (though Brezhnev sometimes missed meetings or fell asleep during them). When Gorbachev became a fully-fledged member he was short of his 50th birthday. All but one of the dozen other members were over sixty, and most were in their seventies. To call them geriatric was not an insult, but a literal description of a group of elderly men – many beset by chronic conditions far beyond the reach of Soviet doctors – that were more reminiscent of decrepit land barons at the table of a feudal king than effective bureaucrats. Even he was surprised by how quickly it came.
Brezhnev, who suffered from a panoply of circulation illnesses, died of a heart attack in 1982. Andropov, who was about to set out on an energetic screw-tightening campaign, died of renal failure in 1984. Konstantin Chernenko was already ill when he came to leadership, and died early in 1985 of cirrhosis. The tumbling of aged sovereigns, both predictable and tragicomic in how they reflected on the leadership of a country of more than 250 million people, not only cleared the path for Gorbachev, but strengthened the credentials of the young, energetic pretender.
The decorations of General Secretary of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev seen during his lying-in-state ceremony at the House of Unions.
RIA Novosti.Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and the last Soviet president (second left in the foreground) attending the funeral of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Konstantin Chernenko (1911-1985) in Moscow’s Red Square.
RIA Novosti.The funeral procession during the burial of Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the CPSU central committee, chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.
RIA Novosti.The funeral of Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The coffin is placed on pedestal near the Mausoleum on Red Square.
RIA Novosti.The funeral procession for General Secretary of the CPSU Konstantin Chernenko moving towards Red Square.
RIA Novosti.General Secretary of the Central Comittee of CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev at the tribune of Lenin mausoleum during May Day demonstration, Red square.
RIA Novosti.
On 11 March 1985, Gorbachev was named the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR.
As often in history, the reformer came in at a difficult time. Numbers showed that economic growth, which was rampant as Russia industrialized through the previous four decades, slowed down in Brezhnev’s era, with outside sources suggesting that the economy grew by an average of no more than 2 percent for the decade.
The scarcity of the few desirable goods produced and their inefficient distribution meant that many Soviet citizens spent a substantial chunk of their time either standing in queues or trading and obtaining things as ordinary as sugar, toilet paper or household nails through their connections, either “under the counter” or as Party and workplace perks, making a mockery of Communist egalitarianism. The corruption and lack of accountability in an economy where full employment was a given, together with relentless trumpeting of achievement through monolithic newspapers and television programs infected private lives with doublethink and cynicism.
But this still does not describe the drab and constraining feel of the socialist command economy lifestyle, not accidentally eschewed by all societies outside of North Korea and Cuba in the modern world. As an example, but one central to the Soviet experience: while no one starved, there was a choice of a handful of standardized tins — labeled simply salmon, or corned beef — identical in every shop across the country, and those who were born in 1945 could expect to select from the same few goods until the day they died, day-in, day-out. Soviets dressed in the same clothes, lived in identical tower block housing, and hoped to be issued a scarce Lada a decade away as a reward for their loyalty or service. Combined with the lack of personal freedoms, it created an environment that many found reassuring, but others suffocating, so much so that a trivial relic of a different world, stereotypically a pair of American jeans, or a Japanese TV, acquired a cultural cachet far disproportionate to its function. Soviets could not know the mechanisms of actually living within a capitalist society — with its mortgages, job markets, and bills — but many felt that there were gaudier, freer lives being led all around the world.
And though it brought tens of millions of people out of absolute poverty, there was no longer an expectation that the lifestyles of ordinary Soviets would significantly improve whether a year or a decade into the future, and promise of a better future was always a key tenet of communism.
Several wide-ranging changes were attempted, in 1965 and 1979, but each time the initial charge was wound down into ineffectual tinkering as soon as the proposed changed encroached on the fundamentals of the Soviet regime — in which private commercial activity was forbidden and state control over the economy was total and centralized.
Gorbachev deeply felt the malaise, and displayed immediate courage to do what is necessary — sensing that his reforms would not only receive support from below, but no insurmountable resistance from above. The policy of Uskorenie, or Acceleration, which became one of the pillars of his term, was announced just weeks after his appointment — it was billed as an overhaul of the economy.
But it did not address the fundamental structural inefficiencies of the Soviet regime. Instead it offered more of the same top-down administrative solutions — more investment, tighter supervision of staff, less waste. Any boost achieved through rhetoric and managerial dress-downs sent down the pyramid of power was likely to be inconsequential and peter out within months.
His second initiative, just two months after assuming control, betrayed these very same well-meaning but misguided traits. With widespread alcohol consumption a symptom of late-Soviet decline, Gorbachev devised a straightforward solution — lowering alcohol production and eventually eradicating drinking altogether.
“Women write to me saying that children see their fathers again, and they can see their husbands,” said Gorbachev when asked about whether the reform was working.
Opponents of the illiberal measure forced Russian citizens into yet more queues, while alcoholics resorted to drinking industrial fluids and aftershave. Economists said that the budget, which derived a quarter of its total retail sales income from alcohol, was severely undermined. Instead a shadow economy sprung up — in 1987, 500 thousand people were arrested for engaging in it, five times more than just two years earlier.
More was needed, and Gorbachev knew it.
“We must rebuild ourselves. All of us!”
Gorbachev first uttered the word perestroika — reform, or rebuilding — in May 1986, or rather he told journalists, using the characteristic and endearing first-person plural, “We must rebuild ourselves. All of us!” Picked up by reporters, within months the phrase became a mainstay of Gorbachev’s speeches, and finally the symbol of the entire era.
Before his reforms had been chiefly economic and within the existing frameworks; now they struck at the political heart of the Soviet Union.
The revolution came from above, during a long-prepared central party conference blandly titled “On Reorganization and the Party’s Personnel Policy” on January 27, 1987.
In lieu of congratulatory platitudes that marked such occasions in past times, Gorbachev cheerfully delivered the suspended death sentence for Communist rule in the Soviet Union (much as he didn’t suspect it at the time).
“The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its leaders, for reasons that were within their own control, did not realize the need for change, understand the growing critical tension in the society, or develop any means to overcome it. The Communist Party has not been able to take full advantage of socialist society,”
said the leader to an audience that hid its apprehension.
“The only way that a man can order his house, is if he feels he is its owner. Well, a country is just the same,” came Gorbachev’s trademark mix of homely similes and grand pronouncements.” Only with the extension of democracy, of expanding self-government can our society advance in industry, science, culture and all aspects of public life.”
“For those of you who seem to struggle to understand, I am telling you: democracy is not the slogan, it is the very essence of Perestroika.”
Gorbachev used the word ‘revolution’ eleven times in his address, anointing himself an heir to Vladimir Lenin. But what he was proposing had no precedent in Russian or Soviet history.
The word democracy was used over 70 times in that speech alone.
The Soviet Union was a one-party totalitarian state, which produced 99.9 percent election results with people picking from a single candidate. Attempts to gather in groups of more than three, not even to protest, were liable to lead to arrest, as was any printed or public political criticism, though some dissidents were merely subjected to compulsory psychiatric care or forced to renounce their citizenship. Millions were employed either as official KGB agents, or informants, eavesdropping on potentially disloyal citizens. Soviet people were forbidden from leaving the country, without approval from the security services and the Party. This was a society operated entirely by those in power, relying on compliance and active cooperation in oppression from a large proportion of the population. So, the proposed changes were a fundamental reversal of the flows of power in society.
Between Gorbachev’s ascent and by the end of that year, two thirds of the Politburo, more than half of the regional chiefs and forty percent of the membership of the Central Committee of Communist Party, were replaced.
Gorbachev knew that democracy was impossible without what came to be known as glasnost, an openness of public discussion.
“We are all coming to the same conclusion — we need glasnost, we need criticism and self-criticism. In our country everything concerns the people, because it is their country,”
said Gorbachev, cunningly echoing Lenin, at that January forum, though the shoots of glasnost first emerged the year before.
From the middle of 1986 until 1987 censored Soviet films that lay on the shelves for years were released, the KGB stopped jamming the BBC World Service and Voice of America, Nobel Peace Prize winner nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov and hundreds of other dissidents were set free, and archives documenting Stalin-era repressions were opened.
A social revolution was afoot. Implausibly, within two years, television went from having no programs that were unscripted, to Vzglyad, a talk show anchored by 20 and 30-somethings (at a time when most Soviet television presented were fossilized mannequins) that discussed the war in Afghanistan, corruption or drugs with previously banned videos by the Pet Shop Boys or Guns N’ Roses as musical interludes. For millions watching Axl Rose, cavorting with a microphone between documentaries about steel-making and puppet shows, created cognitive dissonance that verged on the absurd. As well as its increasing fascination with the West, a torrent of domestic creativity was unleashed. While much of what was produced in the burgeoning rock scene and the liberated film making industry was derivative, culturally naïve and is now badly dated, even artifacts from the era still emanate an unmistakable vitality and sincerity.
“Bravo!” Poster by Svetlana and Alexander Faldin. Allegorically portraying USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, it appeared at the poster exposition, Perestroika and Us.
RIA Novosti.Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, talking to reporters during a break between sessions. The First Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR (May 25 — June 9, 1989). The Kremlin Palace of Congresses.
RIA Novosti.
Many welcomed the unprecedented level of personal freedom and the chance to play an active part in their own country’s history, others were alarmed, while others still rode the crest of the wave when swept everything before it, only to renounce it once it receded. But it is notable that even the supposed staunchest defenders of the ancien régime — the KGB officers, the senior party members — who later spent decades criticizing Perestroika, didn’t step in to defend Brezhnev-era Communism as they saw it being demolished.
What everyone might have expected from the changes is a different question — some wanted the ability to travel abroad without an exit visa, others the opportunity to earn money, others still to climb the political career ladder without waiting for your predecessor die in office. But unlike later accounts, which often presented Gorbachev as a stealthy saboteur who got to execute an eccentric program, at the time, his support base was broad, and his decisions seemed encouraging and logical.
As a popular politician Gorbachev was reaching a crescendo. His trademark town hall and factory visits were as effective as any staged stunts, and much more unselfconscious. The contrast with the near-mummified bodies of the previous General Secretaries — who, in the mind of ordinary Soviet citizens, could only be pictured on top of Lenin’s Mausoleum during a military parade, or staring from a roadside placard, and forever urging greater productivity or more intense socialist values — was overwhelming.
Gorbachev was on top — but the tight structure of the Soviet state was about to loosen uncontrollably.
USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev visits Sverdlovsk region. Mikhail Gorbachev visiting Nizhnij Tagil integrated iron-and-steel works named after V.I. Lenin.
RIA Novosti.CPSU Central Committee General Secretary, USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev in the Ukrainian SSR. Mikhail Gorbachev, second right, meeting with Kiev residents.
RIA Novosti.
In the late 1980s the world appeared so deeply divided into two camps that it seemed like two competing species were sharing the same planet. Conflicts arose constantly, as the US and the USSR fought proxy wars on every continent — in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan, with Europe divided by a literal battle line, both sides constantly updated battle plans and moved tank divisions through allied states, where scores of bases housed soldier thousands of miles away from home. Since the Cold War did not end in nuclear holocaust, it has become conventional to describe the two superpowers as rivals, but there was little doubt at the time that they were straightforward enemies.
“The core of New Thinking is the admission of the primacy of universal human values and the priority of ensuring the survival of the human race,” Gorbachev wrote in his Perestroika manifesto in 1988.
At the legendary Reykjavik summit in 1986, which formally ended in failure but in fact set in motion the events that would end the Cold War, both sides were astonished at just how much they could agree on, suddenly flying through agendas, instead of fighting pitched battles over every point of the protocol.
“Humanity is in the same boat, and we can all either sink or swim.”
Landmark treaties followed: the INF agreement in 1987, banning intermediate ballistic missiles, the CFE treaty that reduced the military build-up in Europe in 1990, and the following year, the START treaty, reducing the overall nuclear stockpile of those countries. The impact was as much symbolic as it was practical — the two could still annihilate each other within minutes — but the geopolitical tendency was clear.
President Reagan: Signing of the INF Treaty with Premier Gorbachev, December 8, 1987
Military analysts said that each time the USSR gave up more than it received from the Americans. The personal dynamic between Reagan — always lecturing “the Russians” from a position of purported moral superiority, and Gorbachev — the pacifist scrambling for a reasonable solution, was also skewed in favor of the US leader. But Gorbachev wasn’t playing by those rules.
“Any disarmament talks are not about beating the other side. Everyone has to win, or everyone will lose,” he wrote.
The Soviet Union began to withdraw its troops and military experts from conflicts around the world. For ten years a self-evidently unwinnable war waged in Afghanistan ingrained itself as an oppressive part of the national consciousness. Fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers died, hundreds of thousands more were wounded or psychologically traumatized (the stereotypical perception of the ‘Afghan vet’ in Russia is almost identical to that of the ‘Vietnam vet’ in the US.) When the war was officially declared a “mistake” and Soviet tanks finally rolled back across the mountainous border in 1989, very few lamented the scaling back of the USSR’s international ambitions.
Driver T. Eshkvatov during the final phase of the Soviet troop pullout from Afghanistan.
RIA Novosti.Soviet soldiers back on native soil. The USSR conducted a full pullout of its limited troop contingent from Afghanistan in compliance with the Geneva accords.
RIA Novosti.The convoy of Soviet armored personnel vehicles leaving Afghanistan.
RIA Novosti.
In July 1989 Gorbachev made a speech to the European Council, declaring that it is “the sovereign right of each people to choose their own social system.” When Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, soon to be executed by his own people, demanded — during the 40th anniversary of the Communist German Democratic Republic in October 1989 — that Gorbachev suppress the wave of uprisings, the Soviet leader replied with a curt “Never again!”
“Life punishes those who fall behind the times,” he warned the obdurate East German leader Erich Honecker. Honecker died in exile in Chile five years later, having spent his dying years fending off criminal charges backed by millions of angry Germans.
Russian tanks did pass through Eastern Europe that year — but in the other direction, as the Soviet Union abandoned its expensive bases that were primed for a war that neither side now wanted.
By the time the Berlin Wall was torn down in November, Gorbachev was reportedly not even woken up by his advisors, and no emergency meetings took place. There was no moral argument for why the German people should not be allowed to live as one nation, ending what Gorbachev himself called the “unnatural division of Europe”. The quote came from his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
Ethnic tensions on the outskirts of the empire lead to full-scale wars after USSR’s collapse. Towards the end of his rather brief period as a Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev had to face a problem many thought of as done and dusted; namely, ethnic strife, leading to conflict and death.
By the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union was officially considered by party ideologists to be one multi-ethnic nation, despite it being comprised of 15 national republics and even more internal republics and regions, with dozens of ethnic groups living there in a motley mixture. The claim was not completely unfounded as the new generation all across the country spoke Russian and had basic knowledge of Russian culture along with Marxist philosophy. In fact, the outside world confirmed this unity by calling all Soviet citizens “Russians” — from Finno-Ugric Estonians in the West to the Turkic and Iranian peoples of Central Asia and natives of the Far East, closely related to the American Indians of Alaska.
At the same time, the concept of the single people was enforced by purely Soviet methods — from silencing any existing problems in the party-controlled mass media, to ruthless suppression of any attempt of nationalist movements, and summary forced resettlement of whole peoples for “siding with the enemy” during WWII.
After Gorbachev announced the policies of Glasnost and democratization, many ethnic groups started to express nationalist sentiments. This was followed by the formation or legalization of nationalist movements, both in national republics and in Russia itself, where blackshirts from the “Memory” organization blamed Communists and Jews for oppressing ethnic Russians and promoted “liberation.”
Neither society nor law enforcers were prepared for such developments. The Soviet political system remained totalitarian and lacked any liberal argument against nationalism. Besides, the concept of “proletarian internationalism” was so heavily promoted that many people started to see nationalism as part of a struggle for political freedoms and market-driven economic prosperity. At the same time, the security services persisted in using the crude Soviet methods that had already been denounced by party leaders; police had neither the tools nor the experience for proper crowd control.
As a result, potential conflicts were brewing all across the country and the authorities did almost nothing to prevent them. In fact, many among the regional elites chose to ride the wave of nationalism to obtain more power and settle old accounts. At the same time, the level of nationalism was highly uneven and its manifestations differed both in frequency and intensity across the USSR.
In February 1988, Gorbachev announced at the Communist Party’s plenum that every socialist land was free to choose its own societal systems. Both Nationalists and the authorities considered this a go-ahead signal. Just days after the announcement, the conflict in the small mountain region of Nagorno-Karabakh entered an open phase.
Nagorno-Karabakh was an enclave populated mostly, but not exclusively, by Armenians in the Transcaucasia republic of Azerbaijan. Relations between Armenians and Azerbaijanis had always been strained, with mutual claims dating back to the Ottoman Empire; Soviet administrative policy based purely on geography and economy only made things worse.
In spring 1989, nationalists took to the streets in another Transcaucasian republic — Georgia. The country was (and still is) comprised of many ethnic groups, each claiming a separate territory, sometimes as small as just one hill and a couple of villages, and the rise of nationalism there was even more dangerous. Georgians marched under slogans “Down with Communism!” and “Down with Soviet Imperialism.” The rallies were guarded and directed by the “Georgian Falcons” — a special team of strong men, many of them veterans of the Afghan war, armed with truncheons and steel bars.
“Down with Communism!”
“Down with Soviet Imperialism.”
This time Gorbachev chose not to wait for clashes and a Spetsnaz regiment was deployed to Tbilisi to tackle the nationalist rallies. Again, old Soviet methods mixed poorly with the realities of democratization. When the demonstrators saw the soldiers, they became more agitated, and the streets around the main flashpoints were blocked by transport and barricades. The soldiers were ordered to use only rubber truncheons and tear gas, and were not issued firearms, but facing the Georgian Falcons they pulled out the Spetsnaz weapon of choice — sharp shovels just as deadly as bayonets.
At least 19 people were killed in the clashes or trampled by the crowd that was forced from the central square but had nowhere to go. Hundreds were wounded.
Moscow ordered an investigation into the tragedy and a special commission uncovered many serious mistakes made both by the regional and central authorities and party leaders. However, at the May Congress of People’s Deputies, Gorbachev categorically refused to accept any responsibility for the outcome of the events in Tbilisi and blamed the casualties on the military.
Further on, the last Soviet leader persisted in the kind of stubbornness that inevitably must have played a part in his fall. In February 1990, the Communist Party’s Central Committee voted to adopt the presidential system of power and General Secretary Gorbachev became the first and last president of the USSR. The same plenum dismantled the Communist Party’s monopoly of power, even though the country had no grassroots political organizations or any political organizations not dependent on the communists save for the nationalists. As a result, the urge for succession increased rapidly, both in the regional republics and even in the Soviet heartland — the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
In 1990, the Republic of Lithuania was the first to declare independence from the Soviet Union. Despite his earlier promises, Gorbachev refused to recognize this decision officially. The region found itself in legal and administrative limbo and the Lithuanian parliament addressed foreign nations with a request to hold protests against “Soviet Occupation.”
In January 1991, the Lithuanian government announced the start of economic reforms with liberalization of prices, and immediately after that the Supreme Soviet of the USSR sent troops to the republic, citing “numerous requests from the working class.” Gorbachev also demanded Lithuania annul all new regulations and bring back the Soviet Constitution. On January 11, Soviet troops captured many administrative buildings in Vilnius and other Lithuanian cities, but the parliament and television center were surrounded by a thousand-strong rally of protesters and remained in the hands of the nationalist government. In the evening of January 12, Soviet troops, together with the KGB special purpose unit, Alpha, stormed the Vilnius television center, killing 12 defenders and wounding about 140 more. The troops were then called back to Russia and the Lithuanian struggle for independence continued as before.
Vilnius residents gather in front of the Lithuanian parliament following the takeover of the Radio and Television installations by Soviet troops.
AFP PHOTO.An armed unidentified man guards the Lithuanian parliament on January 19, 1991 in Vilnius.
AFP PHOTO.Vilnius residents holding a Lithuanian flag guard a barricade in front of the Lithuanian parliament on January 20, 1991.
AFP PHOTO.Soviet paratroopers charge Lithuanian demonstrators at the entrance of the Lithuanian press printing house in Vilnius. January, 1991.
AFP PHOTO.
Gorbachev again denied any responsibility, saying that he had received reports about the operation only after it ended. However, almost all members of the contemporary Soviet cabinet recalled that the idea of Gorbachev not being aware of such a major operation was laughable. Trying to shift the blame put the president’s image into a lose-lose situation — knowing about the Vilnius fighting made him a callous liar, and if he really knew nothing about it, then he was an ineffective leader, losing control both of distant territories and his own special forces.
The swiftly aborted intervention — troops were called back on the same day — was a disappointment both to the hardliners, who would have wanted Gorbachev to see it through, and to the democratic reformers, horrified by the scenes emerging from Vilnius.
This dissatisfaction also must be one of the main factors that provoked the so-called Putch in August 1991 — an attempt by die-hard Politburo members to displace Gorbachev and restore the old Soviet order. They failed in the latter, but succeeded in the former as Gorbachev, isolated at his government Dacha in Crimea, returned to Moscow only because of the struggles of the new Russian leader Boris Yeltsin. When Gorbachev returned, his power was so diminished that he could do nothing to prevent the Belovezha agreement — the pact between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine that ended the history of the Soviet Union and introduced the Commonwealth of Independent States. All republics became independent whether they were ready to or not.
This move, while granting people freedom from Soviet rule, also triggered a sharp rise in extreme nationalist activities — the stakes were high enough and whole nations were up for grabs. Also, in the three years between Gorbachev’s offering of freedom and the collapse of the USSR, nothing was done to calm simmering ethnic hatred, and with no directions from Moscow or control on the part of the Soviet police and army, many regions became engulfed in full-scale civil wars, based on ethnic grounds.
Things turned especially nasty in Tajikistan, where fighting between Iranian-speaking Tajiks and Turkic-speaking Uzbeks very soon led to ethnic cleansing. Refugees had to flee for their lives to Afghanistan, which itself witnessed a war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.
Two fighters of the Tajik pro-Communist forces engage in a battle with pro-Islamic fighters 22 December 1992 in a village some 31 miles from the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.
AFP PHOTO.Tajik women cry over the dead body of a soldier 29 January 1993. The soldier was killed during fighting between Tajikistan government troops and opposition forces in Parkhar.
AFP PHOTO.
The long and bloody war in Georgia also had a significant ethnic component. After it ended three regions that were part of the republic during Soviet times — Abkhazia, Adzharia and South Ossetia – declared independence, which was enforced by a CIS peacekeeping force. At some point, Georgia managed to return Adzharia but when Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, backed and armed by Western nations, attempted to capture South Ossetia in 2008, Russia had to intervene and repel the aggression. Subsequently, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent nations.
As Stalin and Trotsky, or Tony Blair and Gordon Brown could attest, your own archrival in politics is often on your team, pursuing broadly similar — but not identical aims — and hankering for the top seat.
But unlike those rivalries, the scenes in the fallout between Mikhail Gorbachev, and his successor, Boris Yeltsin played out not through backroom deals and media leaks, but in the form of an epic drama in front of a live audience of thousands, and millions sat in front of their televisions.
The two leaders were born a month apart in 1931, and followed broadly similar paths of reformist regional commissars – while Gorbachev controlled the agricultural Stavropol, Yeltsin attempted to revitalize the industrial region of Sverdlovsk, present-day Yekaterinburg.
Yet, Yeltsin was a definitely two steps behind Gorbachev on the Soviet career ladder, and without his leg-up might have never made it to Moscow at all. A beneficiary of the new leader’s clear out, though not his personal protégé, Yeltsin was called up to Moscow in 1985, and the following year, was assigned the post of First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party, effectively becoming the mayor of the capital.
Yeltsin’s style dovetailed perfectly with the new agenda, and his superior’s personal style, though his personal relationship with Gorbachev was strained almost from the start. Breaking off from official tours of factories, the city administrator would pay surprise visits to queue-plagued and under-stocked stores (and the warehouses where the consumables were put aside for the elites); occasionally abandoning his bulletproof ZIL limo, Yeltsin would ride on public transport. This might appear like glib populism now, but at the time was uncynically welcomed. In the first few months in the job, the provincial leader endeared himself to Muscovites — his single most important power base in the struggles that came, and a guarantee that he would not be forgotten whatever ritual punishments were cast down by the apex of the Communist Party.
Boris Yeltsin, left, candidate member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, at lunch.
RIA Novosti.Voters’ meeting with candidate for deputy of the Moscow Soviet in the 161st constituency, First Secretary of the CPSU Moscow Town Committee, Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet, Boris Yeltsin, centre.
RIA Novosti.People’s deputy Boris Yeltsin. Algirdas Brazauskas (right) and chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council Mikhail Gorbachev on the presidium.
RIA Novosti.
But Yeltsin was not just a demagogue content with cosmetic changes and easy popularity, and after months of increasing criticism of the higher-ups, he struck.
During a public session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in October 1987, the newcomer delivered a landmark speech.
In front of a transfixed hall, he told the country’s leaders that they were putting road blocks on the road to Perestroika, he accused senior ministers of becoming “sycophantic” towards Gorbachev. As his final flourish, Yeltsin withdrew himself from his post as a candidate to the Politburo — an unprecedented move that amounted to contempt towards the most senior Soviet institution.
The speech, which he later said he wrote “on his lap” while sitting in the audience just a few hours earlier, was Yeltsin in a nutshell. Unafraid to challenge authority and to risk everything, with a flair for the dramatic, impulsive and unexpected decision (his resignation as Russian president in his New Year’s speech being the most famous).
Footage shows Gorbachev looking on bemused from above. He did not publicly criticize Yeltsin there and then, and spoke empathetically about Yeltsin’s concerns, but later that day (with his backing) the Central Committee declared Yeltsin’s address “politically misguided”, a slippery Soviet euphemism that cast Yeltsin out into the political wilderness.
Gorbachev thought he had won the round — “I won’t allow Yeltsin anywhere near politics again” he vowed, his pique shining through — but from then on, their historical roles and images were cast.
Gorbachev, for all of his reforms, now became the tame, prissy socialist. Yeltsin, the careerist who nearly had it all, and renounced everything he had achieved at the age of 54 and re-evaluated all he believed in. Gorbachev, the Politburo chief who hid behind the silent majority, Yeltsin the rebel who stood up to it. Gorbachev, the politician who spoke a lot and often said nothing, Yeltsin, the man of action.
Historically, the contrast may seem unfair, as both were equally important historical figures, who had a revolutionary impact for their time. But stood side-by-side, Yeltsin — with his regal bearing and forceful charisma — not only took the baton of Perestroika’s promises, but stole the man-of-the-future aura that had hitherto belonged to Gorbachev, who now seemed fidgety and weaselly by comparison.
While he was stripped of his Moscow role, Yeltsin’s party status was preserved. This had a perverse effect. No one stopped Yeltsin from attending high-profile congresses. No one prevented him from speaking at them. It was the perfect situation — he had the platform of an insider, and the kudos of an outsider. Tens of deputies would come and criticize the upstart, and then he’d take the stage, Boris Yeltsin vs. The Machine.
On June 12, 1990 Russia declared sovereignty from the USSR. A month later, Yeltsin staged another one of his dramatic masterclasses, when he quit the Communist Party on-stage during its last ever national congress, and walked out of the cavernous hall with his head held high, as loyal deputies jeered him.
In June 1991, after calling a snap election, Yeltsin became the first President of Russia, winning 57 percent — or more than 45 million votes. The Party’s candidate garnered less than a third of Yeltsin’s tally.
By this time Gorbachev’s position had become desperate. The Soviet Union was being hollowed out, and Yeltsin and the other regional leaders were now actively colluding with each other, signing agreements that bypassed the Kremlin.
The Communists and nationalists — often one and the same — had once been ambivalent about Gorbachev’s reforms, and anyway had been loath to criticize their leader. But inspired by Gorbachev’s glasnost, and with the USSR’s long term prospects becoming very clear, they now wanted their say as well. A reactionary media backlash started against him, generals pronounced warnings of “social unrest” that sounded more like threats, and some had begun to go as far as to earnestly speculate that Gorbachev was working for the Cold War “enemy.”
The junta that tried to take power in the Soviet Union on the night of August 18th is one of the most inept in the history of palace coups.
On August 18, all phones at Gorbachev’s residence, including the one used to control the USSR’s nuclear arsenal, were suddenly cut off, while unbeknownst to him, a KGB regiment was surrounding the house. Half an hour later a delegation of top officials arrived at the residence in Foros, Crimea, walked past his family to his office, in their briefcases a selection of documents for Gorbachev to sign. In one scenario, he would simply declare a state of emergency, and proclaim control over all the rebel republics, in another he would hand over power to his deputy Gennady Yanaev, due to worsening health.
Genuinely angry at their disloyalty, the Soviet leader called them “chancers”, and refused to sign anything, saying he would not have blood on his hands. He then showed them out of the house with a lengthy tirade — clearly recollected by all present in their memoirs — in which he crowned the plotters a “bunch of cocks.”
The plotters were not prepared for this turn of events. Gathering once again back in Moscow, they sat around looking at their unsigned emergency decree, arguing and not daring to put their names on the typewritten document. As midnight passed, and more and more bottles of whisky, imported from the decadent West they were saving the USSR from, was brought in, the patriots found their courage, or at least persuaded Yanaev to place himself at the top of the list of signatories. The Gang of Eight would be known as the State Committee on the State of Emergency. Accounts say that by the time they were driven to their dachas — hours before the most important day of their lives — the plotters could barely stand. Valentin Pavlov, he of the unpopular monetary reform, and the prime minister, drank so much he had to be treated for acute alcohol intoxication, and was hospitalized with cardiac problems as the events of the next three days unfolded.
But orders were issued, and on the morning of the 19th tanks rolled into Moscow. While news suggested that nothing had gone wrong — and at this point it hadn’t — the junta made it seem as if everything had. Not only were there soldiers on street, but all TV channels were switched off, with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake iconically played on repeat. By four o’clock in the afternoon, most of the relatively independent media was outlawed by a decree.
But for all their heavy-handed touch the putsch leaders did nothing to stop their real nemesis. Unlike most coups, which are a two-way affair, this was a triangular power struggle – between Gorbachev, the reactionaries, and Yeltsin. Perhaps, like Gorbachev, stuck in their mindset of backroom intrigue the plotters seemed to underrate Yeltsin, and the resources at his disposal.
Russia’s next leader had arrived in Moscow from talks with his Kazakhstan counterpart, allegedly in the same merry state as the self-appointed plotters. But when his daughter woke him up with news of the unusual cross-channel broadcasting schedule, he acted fast, and took his car straight to the center of Moscow. The special forces soldiers placed around his dacha by the conspirators were not ordered to shoot or detain him.
Yeltsin’s supporters first gathered just a few hundred yards from the Kremlin walls, and then on instruction marched through the empty city to the White House building, the home of the rebellious Russian parliament. There, in his defining moment and as the crowd (although at this early hour it was actually thinner than the mythology suggests) chanted his name, Yeltsin climbed onto the tank, reclaimed from the government forces, and loudly, without the help of a microphone, denounced the events of the past hours as a “reactionary coup.” In the next few hours, people from across Moscow arrived, as the crowd swelled to 70,000. A human chain formed around the building, and volunteers began to build barricades from trolleybuses and benches from nearby parks.
Moscow residents building barricades next to the Supreme Soviet during the coup by the State EmergencyCommittee.
RIA Novosti.Thousands of people rallying before the Supreme Soviet of Russia on August 20, 1991.
RIA Novosti.
Though this seemed as much symbolic, as anything, as the elite units sent in by the junta had no intention of shooting, and demonstrated their neutrality, freely mingling with the protesters. Their commander, Pavel Grachev, defected to Yeltsin the following day, and was later rewarded with the defense minister’s seat. The Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov also supported Yeltsin.
Realizing that their media blackout was not working, and that they were quickly losing initiative, the plotters went to the other extreme, and staged an unmoderated televised press conference.
Sat in a row, the anonymous, ashen-faced men looked every bit the junta. While Yanaev was the nominal leader, he was never the true engine of the coup, which was largely orchestrated by Vladimir Kryuchkov, the KGB chief, who, with the natural caution of a security agent, did not want to take center stage. The acting president, meanwhile, did not look the part. His voice was tired and unsure, his hands shaking — another essential memory of August 1991.
In another spectacularly poor piece of communications management, after the new leaders made their speeches, they opened the floor to an immediately hostile press pack, which openly quoted Yeltsin’s words accusing them of overthrowing a legitimate government on live television.
Referring to Gorbachev as “my friend Mikhail Sergeevich,” Yanaev monotoned that the president was “resting and taking a holiday in Crimea. He has grown very weary over these last few years and needs some time to get his health back.” With tanks standing outside proceedings were quickly declining into a lethargic farce in front of the whole country.
Over the next two days there was international condemnation (though Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat supported the coup) the deaths of three pro-Yeltsin activists, and an order by the junta to re-take the White House at all costs, canceled at the last minute. But by then the fate of the putsch had already been set in motion.
Meanwhile, as the most dramatic events in Russia since 1917 were unfolding in Moscow, Gorbachev carried on going for dips in the Black Sea, and watching TV with his family. On the first night of the coup, wearing a cardigan not fit for an nationwide audience, he recorded an uncharacteristically meek address to the nation on a household camera, saying that he had been deposed. He did not appear to make any attempt to get the video out of Foros, and when it was broadcast the following week, it incited reactions from ridicule, to suspicions that he was acting in cahoots with the plotters, or at least waiting out the power struggle in Moscow. Gorbachev likely was not, but neither did he appear to exhibit the personal courage of Yeltsin, who came out and addressed crowds repeatedly when a shot from just one government sniper would have been enough to end his life.
On the evening of August 21, with the coup having evidently failed, two planes set out for Crimea almost simultaneously from Moscow. In the first were the members of the junta, all rehearsing their penances, in the other, members of Yeltsin’s team, with an armed unit to rescue Gorbachev, who, for all they knew, may have been in personal danger. When the putschists reached Foros, Gorbachev refused to receive them, and demanded that they restore communications. He then phoned Moscow, Washington and Paris, voiding the junta’s decrees, and repeating the simple message: “I have the situation under control.”
But he did not. Gorbachev’s irrelevance over the three days of the putsch was a metaphor for his superfluousness in Russia’s political life in the previous months, and from that moment onward. Although the putschists did not succeed, a power transfer did happen, and Gorbachev still lost. For three days, deference to his formal institutions of power was abandoned, and yet the world did not collapse, so there was no longer need for his dithering mediation.
Gingerly walking down the steps of the airstair upon landing in Moscow, blinking in front of the cameras, Mikhail Gorbachev was the lamest of lame duck leaders. He gave a press conference discussing the future direction of the Communist Party, and inner reshuffles that were to come, sounding not just out-of-touch, but borderline delusional.
Gorbachev resigned as the President of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.
“The policy prevailed of dismembering this country and disuniting the state, which is something I cannot subscribe to,” he lamented, before launching into an examination of his six years in charge.
“Even now, I am convinced that the democratic reform that we launched in the spring of 1985 was historically correct. The process of renovating this country and bringing about drastic change in the international community has proven to be much more complicated than anyone could imagine.”
“However, let us give its due to what has been done so far. This society has acquired freedom. It has been freed politically and spiritually, and this is the most important achievement that we have yet fully come to grips with.”
“Because of him, we have economic confusion!”
“Because of him, we have opportunity!”
“Because of him, we have political instability!”
“Because of him, we have freedom!”
“Complete chaos!”
“Hope!”
“Political instability!”
“Because of him, we have many things like Pizza Hut!”
Thus ran the script to the 1997 advert that saw a tableful of men argue loudly over the outcome of Perestroika in a newly-opened Moscow restaurant, a few meters from an awkward Gorbachev, staring into space as he munches his food alongside his 10 year-old granddaughter. The TV spot ends with the entire clientele of the restaurant getting up to their feet, and chanting “Hail to Gorbachev!” while toasting the former leader with pizza slices heaving with radiant, viscous cheese.
The whole scene is a travesty of the momentous transformations played out less than a decade earlier, made crueler by contemporary surveys among Russians that rated Gorbachev as the least popular leader in the country’s history, below Stalin and Ivan the Terrible.
The moment remains the perfect encapsulation of Gorbachev’s post-resignation career.
To his critics, many Russians among them, he was one of the most powerful men in the world reduced to exploiting his family in order to hawk crust-free pizzas for a chain restaurant — an American one at that — a personal and national humiliation, and a reminder of his treason. For the former Communist leader himself it was nothing of the sort. A good-humored Gorbachev said the half-afternoon shoot was simply a treat for his family, and the self-described “eye-watering” financial reward — donated entirely to his foundation — money that would be used to go to charity.
As for the impact of Gorbachev’s career in advertising on Russia’s reputation… In a country where a decade before the very existence of a Pizza Hut near Red Square seemed unimaginable, so much had changed, it seemed a perversely logical, if not dignified, way to complete the circle. In the years after Gorbachev’s forced retirement there had been an attempted government overthrow that ended with the bombardment of parliament, privatization, the first Chechen War, a drunk Yeltsin conducting a German orchestra and snatching an improbable victory from revanchist Communists two years later, and an impending default.
Although he did get 0.5 percent of the popular vote during an aborted political comeback that climaxed in the 1996 presidential election, Gorbachev had nothing at all to do with these life-changing events. And unlike Nikita Khrushchev, who suffered greater disgrace, only to have his torch picked up, Gorbachev’s circumstances were too specific to breed a political legacy. More than that, his reputation as a bucolic bumbler and flibbertigibbet, which began to take seed during his final years in power, now almost entirely overshadowed his proven skill as a political operator, other than for those who bitterly resented the events he helped set in motion.
Other than in his visceral dislike of Boris Yeltsin — the two men never spoke after December 1991 — if Gorbachev was bitter about the lack of respect afforded to him at home, he wore it lightly. Abroad, he reveled in his statesmanlike aura, receiving numerous awards, and being the centerpiece at star-studded galas. Yet, for a man of his ambition, being pushed into retirement must have gnawed at him repeatedly.
After eventually finding a degree of financial and personal stability on the lecture circuit in the late 1990s, Gorbachev was struck with another blow — the rapid death of Raisa from cancer.
A diabetic, Gorbachev became immobile and heavy-set, a pallor fading even his famous birthmark. But his voice retained its vigor (and accent) and the former leader continued to proffer freely his loquacious opinions on politics, to widespread indifference.
Gorbachev’s legacy is at the same time unambiguous, and deeply mixed — more so than the vast majority of political figures. His decisions and private conversations were meticulously recorded and verified. His motivations always appeared transparent. His mistakes and achievements formed patterns that repeated themselves through decades.
Yet for all that clarity, the impact of his decisions, the weight given to his feats and failures can be debated endlessly, and has become a fundamental question for Russians.
Less than three decades after his limo left the Kremlin, his history has been rewritten several times, and his role bent to the needs of politicians and prevailing social mores. This will likely continue. Those who believe in the power of the state, both nationalists and Communists, will continue to view his time as egregious at best, seditious at worst. For them, Gorbachev is inextricably linked with loss — the forfeiture of Moscow’s international standing, territory and influence. The destruction of the fearsome and unique Soviet machine that set Russia on a halting course as a middle-income country with a residual seat in the UN Security Council trying to gain acceptance in a US-molded world.
Others, who appreciate a commitment to pacifism and democracy, idealism and equality, will also find much to admire in Gorbachev, even though he could not always be his best self. Those who place greater value on the individual than the state, on freedom than on military might, those who believe that the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the totalitarian Soviet Union was a landmark achievement not a failure will be grateful, and if not sympathetic. For one man’s failure can produce a better outcome than another’s success.
The history of rulers is littered with tales of devoted wives and ambitious women pulling strings from behind the throne, and Raisa was often painted as both. But unlike many storybook partnerships, where the narrative covers up the nuances, the partnership between Mikhail and Raisa was absolutely authentic, and genuinely formidable. Perhaps the key to Mikhail’s lifelong commitment, and even open deference to his wife, atypical for a man of his generation, lay in their courtship.
In his autobiography, Gorbachev recollects with painful clarity, how his first meeting with Raisa, on the dance floor of a university club, “aroused no emotion in her whatsoever.” Yet Gorbachev was smitten with the high cheek-boned fellow over-achiever immediately, calling her for awkward dorm-room group chats that went nowhere, and seeking out attempts.
— Raisa Gorbacheva
“We were happy then. We were happy because of our young age, because of the hopes for the future and just because of the fact that we lived and studied at the university. We appreciated that.”
It was several months before she agreed to even go for a walk through Moscow with the future Soviet leader, and then months of fruitless promenades, discussing exams at their parallel faculties. With candor, Gorbachev admits that she only agreed to date him after “having her heart broken by the man she had pledged it to.” But once their relationship overcame its shaky beginnings, the two became the very definition of a Soviet power couple, in love and ready to do anything for each other. In the summer vacation after the two began to go steady, Gorbachev did not think it below him to return to his homeland, and resume work as a simple mechanic, to top up the meager university stipend.
The two were not embarrassed having to celebrate their wedding in a university canteen, symbolically, on the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7, 1953. Or put off when the watchful guardians of morality at Moscow State University forbid the newlyweds from visiting each other’s halls without a specially signed pass. More substantial obstacles followed, when Mikhail’s mother also did not take to her daughter-in-law, while Raisa agreed to a medically-advised abortion after becoming pregnant following a heavy bout of rheumatism. But the two persevered. Raisa gave birth to their only child in 1955, and as Gorbachev’s star rose, so did his wife’s academic career as a sociologist. But Raisa’s true stardom came when Gorbachev occupied the Soviet leader’s post.
Raisa Gorbacheva, the wife of the Soviet leader (left), showing Nancy Reagan, first lady of the U.S., around the Kremlin during U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s official visit to the U.S.S.R.
RIA Novosti.General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev (center left) and his spouse Raisa Gorbacheva (second from left) seeing off US President Ronald Reagan after his visit to the USSR. Right: The spouse of US president Nancy Reagan. The Hall of St. George in the Grand Kremlin Palace.
RIA Novosti.Raisa Gorbacheva (left), wife of the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and Barbara Bush (right), wife of the U.S. president, attending the inauguration of the sculptured composition Make Way for Ducklings near the Novodevichy Convent during U.S. President George Bush’s official visit to the U.S.S.R.
RIA Novosti.Soviet first lady Raisa Gorbacheva meets with Tokyo residents during Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachyov’s official visit to Japan.
RIA Novosti.The meeting between Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, President of the USSR and the heads of state and government of the seven leading industrial nations. From left to right: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, Norma Major, Raisa Maksimovna Gorbacheva and John Major.
RIA Novosti.Soviet president’s wife Raisa Gorbacheva at the 112th commencement at a female college. The State of Massachusetts. Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev’s state visit to the United States.
RIA Novosti.
In a symbol as powerful as his calls for international peace and reform at home, the Communist leader was not married to a matron hidden at home, but to an urbane, elegantly-dressed woman, regarded by many as an intellectual equal, if not superior to Mikhail himself. Gorbachev consulted his wife in every decision, as he famously told American TV viewers during a Tom Brokaw interview. This generated much ill-natured mockery throughout Gorbachev’s reign, but he never once tried to push his wife out of the limelight, where she forged friendships with such prominent figures as Margaret Thatcher, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush.
Raisa was there in the Crimean villa at Foros, during the attempted putsch of August 1991, confronting the men who betrayed her husband personally, and suffering a stroke as a result. It was also Raisa by Gorbachev’s side when they were left alone, after the whirlwind settled in 1991. Despite nearly losing her eyesight due to her stroke, Raisa largely took the lead in organizing Mikhail’s foundation, and in structuring his life. In 1999, with his own affairs in order, not least because of the controversial Pizza Hut commercial, and Russians anger much more focused on his ailing successor, Gorbachev thought he could enjoy a more contented retirement, traveling the world with his beloved.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (center), Soviet first lady Raisa Gorbacheva (right), Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Kazakh first lady Sara Nazarbayeva during Gorbachev’s working visit to Kazakhstan.
RIA Novosti.General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev (left) and his spouse Raisa Gorbachev (center) at a friendship meeting in the Wawel Castle during a visit to Poland.
RIA Novosti.Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa during his official visit to China.
RIA Novosti.An official visit to Japan by USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev. He with wife, Raisa Gorbachev, and Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu near a tree planted in the garden of Akasaka Palace.
RIA Novosti.Mikhail Gorbachev (center), daughter Irina (right) and his wife’s sister Lyudmila (left) at the funeral of Raisa Gorbachev.
RIA Novosti.Last respects for Raisa Gorbacheva, spouse of the former the USSR president in the Russian Fond of Culture. Mikhail Gorbachev, family and close people of Raisa Gorbacheva at her coffin.
RIA Novosti.Mikhail Gorbachev at the opening of the Raisa exhibition in memory of Raisa Gorbacheva.
RIA Novosti.
— Raisa Gorbacheva
“It is possible that I had to get such a serious illness and die for the people to understand me.”
Then came the leukemia diagnosis, in June of that year. Before the couple’s close family had the chance to adjust to the painful rhythm of hope and fear that accompanies the treatment of cancer, Raisa was dead. Her burial unleashed an outpouring of emotion, with thousands, including many of her husband’s numerous adversaries, gathering to pay their sincere respects. No longer the designer-dressed careerist ice queen to be envied, resented and ridiculed, now people saw Raisa for the charismatic and shrewd idealist she always was. For Gorbachev it made little difference, and all those around him said that however much activity he tried to engage in following his wife’s death, none of it ever had quite the same purpose.
“People say time heals. But it never stops hurting – we were to be joined until death,” Gorbachev always said in interviews
For the tenth anniversary of Raisa’s death, in 2009, Mikhail Gorbachev teamed up with famous Russian musician Andrey Makerevich to record a charity album of Russian standards, dedicated to his beloved wife. The standout track was Old Letters, a 1940s melancholy ballad. Gorbachev said that it came to him in 1991 when he discovered Raisa burning their student correspondence and crying, after she found out that their love letters had been rifled through by secret service agents during the failed coup.
The limited edition LP sold at a charity auction in London, and fetched £100,000.
Afterwards, Gorbachev got up on the stage to sing Old Letters, but half way through he choked up, and had to leave the stage to thunderous applause.
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الجمعة 11 شباط 2022
عجزت أميركا التي قادت الحرب الكونية على سورية، عن تحقيق أهداف هذه الحرب التي اندلعت نارها منذ 11 عاماً وحشد لها خلال تلك المدة اكثر من 360 ألف مسلح وإرهابي من 83 دولة، وسخرت لأجلها المئات من المنصات العالمية المتنوّعة بين المكتوب والمرئي والمسموع واعتمدت فيها أساليب وأنواع الحروب من الجيل الثالث الى الخامس، ورغم كلّ ذلك فشلت تلك الحرب التي تحلّ الذكرى الحادية عشرة لإطلاقها بعد شهر من الآن. حرب فشلت في تحقيق أهدافها وتمكنت سورية بقواتها الذاتية أولاً ثم بمساعدة من الحلفاء في محور المقاومة ثم الأصدقاء الروس، تمكنت من صدّ العدوان واستعادت السيطرة الكاملة على معظم الأرض السورية (75٪ من مجمل المساحة السورية) وأن تتواجد بمستويات مختلفة في القسم الذي يمارس الاحتلال الأميركي او الاحتلال التركي السيطرة عليه، او في المنطقة التي أفسد الإرهاب أمنها او زوّرت النزعة الانفصالية الكردية هويتها.
ومع هذا النجاح المميّز وضعت الدولة السورية استراتيجية وطنية من أجل استكمال النجاح واستعادة او العودة الى الحياة الطبيعية بالمقدار الذي تتيحه الظروف المتشكلة. واقامت تلك الاستراتيجية على قوائم أربع سياسية وعسكرية ومجتمعية ـ مدنية واقتصادية.
ففي السياسة قامت الحكومة السورية بإجراء الانتخابات في مواعيدها رغم كلّ العراقيل التي وضعت أمامها، كما راعت انتظام الحياة القانونية في البلاد وانتظام الحضور الفاعل في المنظمات الدولية واتجهت لاستغلال أيّة فرصة تلوح لاستعادة العلاقات مع الدول العربية بخاصة المجاورة منها كلبنان والأردن والعراق، سعي جاء معطوفاً على مسعى جزائري لتهيئة البيئة المناسبة لعودة سورية لإشغال مقعدها في الجامعة العربية بدءاً من اجتماع القمة المرتقب انعقاده في الأشهر الثلاثة المقبلة.
وفي الشأن الأمني والعسكري حرصت الدولة السورية على الاستمرار في مدّ الجيش والقوات المسلحة الأخرى بكلّ أسباب القوة المادية والمعنوية من أجل استمرار النجاح في أداء المهام الوطنية واتجهت الى إجراء عملية تحشيد عسكري فاعل في محيط المناطق الخارجة عن سيطرة الدولة؛ عملية ترمي الى العمل على خطين خط المشاغلة العسكرية لتعهّد الميدان تحضيراً ليوم التحرير بالقوة ان فشلت مساعي التحرير الأخرى ودعماً للمقاومة الشعبية بوجهيها المدني والمسلح، والتي تشكلت في المناطق المحتلة.
أما على الصعيد المدني ـ المجتمعي والملاحقات القضائية فقد عملت سورية بقواعد العدالة الانتقالية والمتضمنة العفو والمصالحة وأطلقت ما أسمي «التسويات» لأوضاع الفارّين من الخدمة العسكرية او من وجه العدالة خاصة ممن لم تلوّث أيديهم بسفك الدم السوري. وقد نجح مسار التسوية هذا في استعادة أجزاء من الشعب خاصة الشباب منهم الى حضن الدولة فتوقفت الملاحقات بشأنهم ووفر ذلك للدولة أكثر من منفعة ومصلحة وحرم أعداء سورية من مصدر مهم لتحشيد المقاتلين ضدّ دولتهم.
ويبقى الشأن الاقتصادي الذي شكل الخاصرة الرخوة في الوضع السوري بسبب الحرب الاقتصادية الظالمة والإرهاب الاقتصادي الوحشي الذي تمارسه أميركا ومَن معها ضدّ سورية، وتحاول سورية استعمال المتاح من الإمكانات وما يتوفر لها من مساعدات من الحلفاء والأصدقاء تحاول وضع الخطط الاقتصادية التي تتكيّف مع الواقع الصعب القائم تكيفا يخفف أولاً من سلبياتها ثم يخرجها منه بعد حين.
في مقابل الاستراتيجية الوطنية التي أطلقتها سورية لاستعادة الحياة الطبيعية في البلاد بعد انكسار وهزيمة من شنّ الحرب الكونية عليها. في مقابل ذلك يبدو أنّ أميركا التي تكابر وترفض الإقرار بالهزيمة رغم انّ إعلامها يصرّح بذلك، يبدو أنها وضعت استراتيجية عدوانية مضادة بدأت ملامحها تتبيّن في الميدان وهي استراتيجية عدوان متجدّد، وصحيح أنها لا تتمادى لتصل بأهدافها الى حجم أهداف الحرب الكونية الأساس التي رمت الى إسقاط الدولة السورية كلياً وتفكيكها ثم إعادة تركيبها بما يناسب المشروع الصهيوأميركي في المنطقة، استراتيجية ترمي الى منع سورية من استثمار انتصارها والحؤول دون عودتها للحياة الطبيعية.
وعليه يبدو أنّ أميركا اعتمدت في سورية استراتيجية عدوان يمكن تعريفها بانها «استراتيجية استمرار العدوان وتعهد الإرهاب لمنع العودة للحياة الطبيعية» وهي تنفذ على الوجه التالي:
ـ على الصعيد السياسي ترمي الى الحدّ من تفعيل علاقات سورية بالخارج دولاً ومنظمات، ولذلك نجد كيف انّ أميركا عبر قطر تعارض عودة سورية الى مقعدها في الجامعة العربية وتراوغ لتعرقل العلاقات السورية مع دول الجوار. والمثل الأخير هنا عرقلة مسعى لبنان للاستفادة من الغاز المصري والكهرباء الأردنية رغم كلّ الوعود الأميركية التي أطلقت منذ عدة أشهر.
ـ أما على الصعيد الاقتصادي فهي تستمرّ بالتشدّد في الحرب الاقتصادية تحت عنوان «قانون قيصر» وتتوخى مزيداً من الضغط على الشعب السوري حتى لا يثق بحكومته او يعود للميدان احتجاجاً على النقص في الخدمات. فالحرب الاقتصادية هي ركن أساس من أركان العدوان الأميركي المستمر على سورية.
ـ اما التسويات المدنية القضائية فإنّ أميركا تنظر اليها بعين الخشية والرفض لأنها ترسي دعائم السلام المدني بين الشعب والدولة وتستعيد من غرّر بهم او أخطأوا بحق وطنهم تستعيدهم الى الوطن ليساهموا في إعماره من جهة، ويفقدوا أعداءه منجماً ومصدر تحشيد وتجنيد لذلك تعمل أميركا بشتى الطرق لعرقلة مسار التسويات تحت شعار «الحرب لم تنته بعد». وهو كلام يجافي الواقع.
ـ على الصعيد الأمني والعسكري، اتجهت أميركا الى تفعيل تنظيم داعش الإرهابي وأعادت انتشار عناصره بعد ان أطلقت العدد الكثير منهم من سجن الصناعة في الحسكة، ونقلت المئات من إرهابيّيه بطائراتها ونشرتهم في ميادين إرهاب محدّدة من قبلها في العراق وسورية ثم قامت بمسرحية قتل القرشي زعيم داعش في عملية عسكرية لم يطلع على تفاصيلها أحد من غير الأميركيين مما جعل الكثيرين من العقلاء يشككون بحدوث القتل ويتجهون للقول بانّ أميركا أرادت ان تسجل انتصاراً وتظهر عزماً على قتال داعش فنظمت هذه المسرحية الوهمية وهي تشتهر بالتلفيق وإخراج المسرحيات الوهمية.
إنّ الموضوع الأمني هو الآن الى جانب الإرهاب الاقتصادي هو الركن الأساس في استراتيجية العدوان الأميركي، وهو موضوع بدأت أميركا بالعمل عليه وتنفيذه منذ ثلاثة اشهر تقريباً وبات في مراحل متقدمة ويهدف الى زعزعة الأمن والاستقرار في المناطق المطهّرة وإشغال القوى العسكرية والأمنية السورية لمنعها من استكمال عمليات التطهير والتحرير لما تبقى من أرض سورية، وتعطيل الحياة وعجلة الإنتاج في المناطق التي تحكم الدولة سيطرتها عليها خاصة في المدن الكبرى، ولذلك جاء التحذير الروسي من هذا الأمر تحذيراً صدر عن المخابرات الروسية التي اعتمدت هذا الأسلوب في الإعلان لتبلغ أميركا بأنّ خططها الإرهابية العدوانية هي تحت مراقبة العين الأمنية الدفاعية السورية والحليفة.
أمام هذا المشهد يطرح السؤال ماذا تتوخى أميركا من خططها الإجرامية تلك؟ وهي تعرف انّ هجومها الأساسي الذي كان قد حشدت له كمّاً أكبر من المشاركين وسخرت له الأموال الأكثر ونفذته قواعد أوسع من الإرهابيين ورغم ذلك لم ينجح في إسقاط سورية، فما الذي تبتغيه الآن من استئناف العدوان المتجدد؟
لا نظنّ انّ أميركا تريد في نهجها الجديد «إعادة إحياء ما تسمّيه الثورة السورية» وهي أعجز من ذلك ولا يمكن ان تتصوّر أنها بهذه الاستراتيجية وفي ظلّ المشهد الدولي المتغيّر لغير صالحها فضلاً عن المناعة السورية الأساسية والمكتسبة قادرة على تعويض ما فاتها في الحرب الكونية الفاشلة، يبقى أن نظنّ او نعتقد بأنّ أميركا تريد من فعلها العدواني المتجدّد بالصيغة المتقدّم ذكرها تبتغي ان تبعد عن نفسها أولاً كأس الهزيمة في سورية لأنها لا تحتمل ذلك الآن بعد الخروج المهين من أفغانستان، ثم تريد أن تشغل سورية وحلفاءها بورقة ضغط عليهم لإعطائها شيئاً ما في المشهد السوري، فأميركا تريد أن تمتلك أوراق ضغط للتنازل السوري ولا نعتقد أنها تطمح بتحويلها الى عناصر تغيير وانتصار استراتيجي ضدّ سورية وحلفائها الذين يعملون مطمئنين لإنجازاتهم ولمستقبلهم الواعد خلال الأشهر الآتية… أشهر لن تحمل لأميركا ما يسرّها في الميدان او السياسة.
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Filed under: American Aggression, ISIS – Daesh, kurds, Qatar, Russia, Syria, Takfiris, War on Syria | Tagged: American "Muslim" Brotherhood, Proxy War, Syria reconciliation, Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF], Turkish Aggression, US’ Caesar Sanctions Act on Syria | Comments Off on ما الاستراتيجيّة الأميركيّة الجديدة ضدّ سورية…؟
The Annual Strategic Assessment by the “Israeli” Institute for National Security [INSS] concluded that the essence of the crises facing Tel Aviv revolves around determining its course of action against Hezbollah. The questions hanging over “Israel” are presented as follows:
– How can one contribute to improving the situation of the population in Lebanon without indirectly strengthening Hezbollah? Is this possible?
– How can Hezbollah and Iran be prevented from taking full control of the Lebanese state?
– On the military level, should “Israel” change its methods against Hezbollah, and in particular, under what conditions is it required to directly target its precise capabilities in Lebanon?
Lebanon’s crisis: An “Israeli” proxy war
The questions – the crisis that “Israel” is facing – confirm that what Lebanon is going through is part of a war waged by the enemies of Lebanon and the resistance to subjugate it and strip it of its elements of power.
The questions reveal that Lebanon’s exposure to alternative methods to those of a military confrontation, which are still in the service of “Israel”, do not depart from the main role of corruption and the economic and financial policies of the post-Taif regime in pushing Lebanon towards collapse.
– These questions show the American role in creating the crisis, its continuation, and its aggravation, in protecting the regime and its policies and key figures who pushed the country in this direction.
– They also reveal the role of the United States in explicitly preventing Lebanon from any radical treatment, away from its political and economic influence. Moreover, it exposes US contradictions in its management of the crisis, which are designed to impose American hegemony over Lebanon and achieve “Israel’s” interests.
– “Israel’s” crisis surrounding its dilemma over effective options confirms the extent of the fears that the collapse of Lebanon will not achieve the desired goal in preoccupying the resistance, altering its direction, and draining it.
– The dilemma over options also confirms that the complete collapse of Lebanon will not result in the resistance losing its grassroots support. Hezbollah’s support base is aware of the background and objectives of the American-“Israeli” plan and recognizes it in terms of awareness, position, choices, and sacrifices.
– The questions – the crisis – also reveal “Israel’s” fears that the collapse will also strengthen the broad popular legitimacy of the alternatives offered by Hezbollah to reduce the suffering and rebuild again. This is what “Israel” called Hezbollah’s control of the state.
One of the dilemma questions points out that “Israel” does not hide the fact that it is constantly studying the possibility of launching an act of aggression against Lebanon in order to destroy the that provide the county with protection, defense, and deterrence.
In this context, refraining from the loud military option against Hezbollah in Lebanon and asking questions in every strategic assessment in recent years about this option reveals the state of hesitation and deterrence planted in the awareness of the decision-makers about confronting Hezbollah.
Furthermore, the annual strategic assessment does not hide the fact that “Israel” faces structural difficulties when it comes to tackling challenges.
The assessment also confirms the need for “Israel” to deepen coordination with the United States, which is implementing an “Israeli” policy in Lebanon.
Recognizing the limitations and effectiveness of “Israel’s” choices, the intelligence assessment calls for the need to crystallize an American-“Israeli”-French alliance aimed at weakening Hezbollah and strengthening its opponents inside Lebanon.
After all of the foregoing, there is no need for more questions about the Lebanese crisis.
It is enough for us to read the intelligence report to know the cause, the instigator, and the reasons.
Filed under: Lebanon, Lebanon Islamic Resistance - Hezbollah | Tagged: Lebanon’s financial collapse, Proxy War, The Zio-temporary entity | Comments Off on The Questions Hanging Over “Israel” in Face of Hezbollah: The Answers Point to a Proxy War on Lebanon
October 17, 2020
Turkey’s outsize role in fueling the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is becoming more apparent. That’s why a peace deal will be hard to cut and indeed the conflict may blow up further into a protracted regional war. A war that could drag Russia into battling in the Caucasus on its southern periphery against NATO proxies.
In a phone call this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly backed Moscow’s efforts at mediating a ceasefire in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Notwithstanding, Erdogan appeared to deliver an ultimatum to his Russian counterpart. He said that there must be a “permanent solution” to the decades-long territorial dispute.
Erdogan and his Azerbaijan ally have already made it clear that the only solution acceptable to them is for Armenian separatists to relinquish their claim to Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey and Azerbaijan – bound by common Turkic culture – have long-called the Armenian-held enclave an illegal occupation of Azerbaijani territory since a border war ended in 1994.
When hostilities flared again last month on September 27 initial reports suggested the clashes were of a haphazard nature with both sides trading blame for starting the violence. However, it has since become clear that the actions taken on the Azeri side seem to have been a planned aggression with Turkey’s full support.
Following a previous deadly clash on July 12-13 involving about a dozen casualties among Armenian and Azerbaijani forces, there then proceeded massive military exercises in Azerbaijan involving 11,000 Turkish troops beginning on July 29. For nearly two weeks into August, the maneuvers deployed artillery, warplanes and air-defense units in what was evidently a major drive by Ankara and Baku to coordinate the armies from both countries to fulfill joint operations. Furthermore, reports indicated that Turkish forces, including F-16 fighter jets, remained in Azerbaijan following the unprecedented military drills.
Alongside the drills, there was also a dramatic increase in military arms sales from Turkey to Azerbaijan. According to Turkish export figures, there was a six-fold increase in weapons deals compared with the previous year, with most of the supply being delivered in the third quarter of 2020 between July and September. The armaments included drones and rocket launchers which have featured with such devastating impact since hostilities erupted on September 27.
A third factor suggesting planned aggression was the reported transport of mercenary fighters from Syria and Libya by Turkey to fight on the Azerbaijani side. Thousands of such militants belonging to jihadist brigades under the control of Turkey had arrived in the Azeri capital Baku before hostilities broke out on September 27. The logistics involved in organizing such a large-scale deployment can only mean long-term planning.
Armenian sources also claim that Azeri authorities had begun impounding civilian vehicles weeks before the shooting war opened. They also claim that when the fire-fights erupted on September 27, Turkish media were present on the ground to give live coverage of events.
It seems indisputable therefore that Turkey and Azerbaijan had made a strategic decision to implement a “final solution” to the protracted dispute with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.
That’s what makes Russian efforts at mediating a cessation to hostilities all the more fraught. After marathon talks mediated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a ceasefire was introduced on October 10. However, within hours the truce unravelled with reports of resumed exchange of fire and shelling of cities on both sides. The main violations have been committed by the Azerbaijani side using advanced Turkish weaponry. Armenian leaders have complained that the Azeri side does not seem interested in pursuing peace talks.
More perplexing is the widening of the conflict. Azerbaijan air strikes since the weekend ceasefire broke down have hit sites within Armenia, extending the conflict beyond the contested enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has also claimed that Armenian missiles have hit cities within its territory. Armenia flatly denies carrying out such strikes, which begs the question: is a third party covertly staging provocations and fomenting escalation of conflict?
What is challenging for Russia is that it has a legal obligation to defend Armenia as part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (1992). With Armenia coming under fire, the pressure will be on Moscow to intervene militarily.
This would see Russia being embroiled in another proxy war with NATO-member Turkey. But this is not in Syria. It is the Caucasus region on Russia’s southern border. There are concerns among senior Russian military figures that such a scenario is exactly what Turkey’s Recep Erdogan is aiming for. Turkey was outplayed by Russia in the proxy war in Syria. Erdogan and NATO’s plans for regime change in Damascus were dealt a bloody nose by Russia. It seems though that conflict in the Caucasus may now be Erdogan’s revenge.
Moscow may need to seriously revise its relations with Ankara, and let Erdogan know he is treading on red lines.
Filed under: America, Russia, Turkey, US-led NATO Alliance | Tagged: Caucasus, Finian Cunningham, Nagorno-Karabakh, Proxy War, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian-led CSTO, Syrian mercenaries | Comments Off on Why Conflict in Caucasus Is Erdogan’s Revenge for Syria
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah stressed Sunday that the United States of America has recently committed two major crimes, the assassination of the head of IRGC’s Al-Quds Force general Qasem Suleimani as well as the deputy chief of Iraq’s Hashd Shaabi Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis and the announcement of Trump’s Mideast plan.
Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that those two crimes had ushered a direct confrontation with the axis of resistance in Lebanon, calling for forming a comprehensive (political, economical, cultural and legal) resistance front, against the United States all over the world.
The military choice will never be abandoned, according to the Resistance Leader who pointed out that the US tyrant has not left for the regional peoples except holding guns to fight it.
Delivering a speech during Hezbollah’s “Martyrdom & Insight” Ceremony which marks the anniversary of the martyrs Sheikh Ragheb Harb, Sayyed Abbas Al-Moussawi and Hajj Imad Mughniyeh and the 40th day after the martyrdom of General Suleimani and Hajj Al-Muhandis, Sayyed Nasrallah emphasized that in this confrontation with the United States, we have to trust God’s help, keep hopeful for a bright future and challenge our fear.
Sayyed Nasrallah considered that the confrontation between the United States and the forces which reject to surrender to its will is inevitable, adding that Washington is who has led the region to this conflict, not the resistance.
All the regional peoples must be prepared for the key confrontation, according to Sayyed Nasrallah who added that Trump’s administration is the most arrogant, unjust, Satanic and corrupt in the US history.
Sayyed Nasrallah held the United States responsible for all the Zionist crimes against the Arab people “because it provides the occupation entity”, adding that Washington supports and protects the Saudi-led war on Yemen in order to sell arms for the coalition forces.
“US is responsible for the ISIL’s atrocities in Iraq and Syria. Thank God, the terrorist group was confronted and blocked on Lebanon’s border.”
Sayyed Nasrallah clarified that the US may resort to direct or proxy wars, assassinations, sanctions, and financial as well as legal pressures in order to carry out its schemes, adding that “we have to employ the same means in the comprehensive resistance across the Arab and Islamic World.”
Hezbollah Chief suggested boycotting all the US goods or at least the products of some (e.g. Trump’s) firms, adding that the US point of weakness is its economy.
“The Israeli enemy has a major weakness which is the human losses; similarly, the Americans have their economic and financial situation as a point of fragility. Hezbollah hit the Israeli enemy at its weakness, so, likewise, we can concentrate on the US economic interests.”
Sayyed Nasrallah called on the elites, scholars, companies and governments in the region to get involved in this comprehensive confrontation with the United States, suggesting that lawyers file lawsuits against the US officials accused of committing crimes.
Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out that the so-called “deal of the century” cannot be described as a ‘deal’ because it refers merely to the plan of the US president Donald Trump’s plan to eradicate the Palestinian cause.
All the Palestinian forces have rejected and may never approve Trump’s scheme, according to Sayyed Nasrallah who considered that this is basic in frustrating the US plan.
Sayyed Nasrallah noted that consistency of stances which reject Trump’s plan is required to frustrate it, adding that the US will is not an inevitable destiny and citing previous cases of Washington’s failure when opposed by resistance.
No one approved the US plan except Trump and Netanyahu, according to Sayyed Nasrallah who underscored the Palestinian, Arab and international rejection of the scheme.
Hezbollah leader hailed the consensus of the Lebanese political parties which have rejected Trump’s plan, attributing this attitude to the recognition of the dangers of the scheme to Lebanon and the entire region.
Sayyed Nasrallah noted that Trump’s Lebanon affects Lebanon because it grants the occupied Shebaa Farms, Kfar Shuba hills and the Lebanese part of Al-Ghajar town to the Zionist entity, stipulates naturalizing the Palestinian refugees and impacts the border demarcation.
“The spirit of Trump’s plan will be decisive in the issue of demarcating the land and sea borders with occupied Palestine and will affect Lebanon’s oil wealth.”
Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out that what reassures the Lebanese about the rejection of the naturalization of the Palestinian refugees is the consensual attitude of all the parties in this regard and the prelude of the Constitution, calling for respecting certain groups’ fears related to this issue.
We should not be outraged by the fears and concerns of some Lebanese parties about the naturalization, the farms and hills, and oil resources, according to Hezbollah Chief who also asked about the guarantees for the consistency of the stances which reject Trump’s deal.
“Who can guarantee that the attitude of certain Lebanese parties may not change in favor of Trump’s plan, especially if their approval gets linked to financial aids to Lebanon which is facing a serious economic crisis?”
“Trump plan does not guarantee Palestinian refugees the right of return to their homeland, instead calling for them to be granted citizenship in the states they currently reside in.”
Sayyed Nasrallah considered that the Arab attitude towards Trump’s plan is excellent, adding but some said that it can be studied being the only choice.
“This is how surrender begins. It is scary that some Arab, especially Gulf, regimes may individually approve Trump’s deal.”
“It’s right to say that Trump’s deal was born dead, but it’s also right to say that Trump insists on implementing it.”
Meanwhile, Sayyed Nasrallah fraternally addressed the Iraqi people, calling on them to respond to the US crime of assassinating the two martyrs Hajj Al-Muhandis and General Suleimani, preserve the Popular Mobilization (Hashd Shaabi) in spite of the US scheme to eradicate it, expel the US forces of Iraq, and strengthen the Iraqi role in the region.
Sayyed Nasrallah started his speech with felicitations on the birthday of Sayyeda Fatima Al-Zahraa (P), the daughter of Prophet Muammad (PBUH).
Hezbollah leader also congratulated Imam Khamenei and all Iranians on the 41st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution’s victory, adding that Iran has remained strong and will never stop supporting the oppressed people all over the world and recalling the enemy’s bets on the collapse of the Islamic regime.
Sayyed Nasrallah further felicitated the Bahraini people, led by Sheikh Issa Qassem, on the ninth anniversary of their peaceful revolution which seeks democracy and freedom
Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that the martyrs General Qasem Suleimani, Hajj Abu Mahdi Al-Muhanidis, Al-Muhandis, Sayyed Abbas al-Moussawi, Sheikh Ragheb Harb and Hajj Imad Mughniyeh had faith, loyalty and honesty as common traits, adding that they assumed responsibility and showed willingness to make limitless sacrifices.
Sayyed Nasrallah highlighted that the resistance is not a matter of speeches separate from the reality, calling for reading the will of martyr Suleimani who used to assume the responsibility of his people and Umma.
It is worth noting that the ceremony started with a blessed recitation of Holy Quranic verses before Lebanon’s and Hezbollah’s anthems were played.
February 16 is the martyrdom anniversary of Hezbollah’s Leaders, Sheikh Ragheb Harb, Sayyed Abbas Al-Mousawi and Hajj Imad Mughniyeh, all were assassinated by the Zionist enemy throughout different years of confrontation, but in the same week.
Sheikh Ragheb Harb was assassinated by an Israeli agent on February 16, 1984.
Late Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Abbas al-Mousawi was martyred, along with his wife and son, when an Israeli airstrike attacked his convoy as he was attending the commemoration anniversary of Sheikh Harb on February 16, 1992.
Later on February 12, 2008, Hezbollah’s top military commander Hajj Imad Moghniyeh was martyred in a car bomb attack carried out by Israeli Mossad agents.
On January 3, 2020, a US drone attack targeted a vehicular convoy for the head of the IRGC Al-Quds Force General Qassem Suleimani and the deputy chief of Hasd Shaabi Committee Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, claiming both of them in addition to a number of their companions.
Source: Al-Manar English Website
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Filed under: American crimes, Deal of the Century, IRAQ, ISIS – Daesh, Lebanon Islamic Resistance - Hezbollah, Martyrdom, Palestine, Palestinian people, Syria, USA, Yemen | Tagged: AngloZionist Empire, Boycott, Donald Trump, Martyrdom anniversary of Hezbollah Leader, Palestinian's Resettlement, Proxy War, Ragheb Harb, Resistance option, Right of Return (ROR), Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah | Comments Off on Sayyed Nasrallah: Trump’s Two Recent Crimes Usher Direct Confrontation with Resistance Forces
January 04, 2020
by Pepe Escobar – posted with permission and x-posted with Consortium News
There cannot be a more startling provocation against Iran than what happened in Baghdad.
It does not matter where the green light came from for the US targeted assassination of Quds Force commander Major General Qasem Soleimani and the Hashd al-Shaabi second in command Abu Madhi al-Muhandis.
This is an act of war. Unilateral, unprovoked and illegal.
President Trump may have issued the order. Or the US Deep State may have ordered him to issue the order.
According to my best Southwest Asia intel sources,
“Israel gave the US the coordinates for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani as they wanted to avoid the repercussions of taking the assassination upon themselves.”
It does not matter that Trump and the Deep State are at war.
One of the very few geopolitical obsessions that unite them is non-stop confrontation with Iran – qualified by the Pentagon as one of the five top threats against the US, almost at the level of Russia and China.
And there cannot be a more startling provocation against Iran – in a long list of sanctions and provocations – than what happened in Baghdad. Iraq is now the preferred battleground of a proxy war against Iran that may now metastasize into a hot war, with devastating consequences.
We knew it was coming. There were plenty of rumbles in Israeli media by former Defense and Mossad officials. There were explicit threats by the Pentagon. I discussed it in detail in Umbria last week with sterling analyst Alastair Crooke – who was extremely worried. I received worried messages from Iran. The inevitable escalation by Washington was being discussed until late Thursday night here in Palermo, actually a few hours before the strike. Sicily, by the way, in the terminology of US generals, is AMGOT: American Government Occupied Territory.
Once again, the Exceptionalist hands at work show how predictable they are. Trump is cornered by impeachment. Netanyahu has been indicted. Nothing like an external “threat” to rally the internal troops. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei knows about these complex variables as much as he knows of this responsibility as the power who issued Iran’s own red lines. Not surprisingly he already announced, on the record, there will be blowback:
“A forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of other martyrs last night on their hands.”
Expect it to be very painful.
I met Muhandis in Baghdad two years ago – as well as many Hashd al-Shaabi members. Here is my full report. The Deep State is absolutely terrified Hashd al-Shaabi, a grassroots organization, are on the way to becoming a new Hezbollah, and as powerful as Hezbollah. Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the supreme religious authority in Iraq, universally respected, fully supports them.
So the American strike also targets Sistani – not to mention the fact that Hashd al-Shaabi operates under guidelines issued by the Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi. That’s a major strategic blunder that can only be pulled off by amateurs.
Major General Soleimani, of course, humiliated the whole of the Deep State over and over again – and could eat all of them for breakfast, lunch and dinner as a military strategist. It was Soleimani who defeated ISIS/Daesh in Iraq – not the Americans bombing Raqqa to rubble. Soleimani is a superhero of almost mythical status for legions of young Hezbollah supporters, Houthis in Yemen, all strands of resistance fighters in both Iraq and Syria, Islamic Jihad in Palestine, and all across Global South latitudes in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
There’s absolutely no way the US will be able to maintain troops in Iraq, unless the nation is re-occupied en masse via a bloodbath. And forget about “security”: no imperial official or imperial military force is now safe anywhere, from the Levant to Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf.
The only redeeming quality out of this major strategic blunder cum declaration of war may be the final nail in the coffin of the Southwest Asia chapter of the US Empire of Bases. Iranian Prime Minister Javad Zarif came out with an appropriate metaphor:
The “tree of resistance” will continue to grow.
The empire might as well say goodbye to Southwest Asia.
In the short term, Tehran will be extremely careful in its response. A hint of – harrowing – things to come: it will be blowback by a thousand cuts. As in hitting the Exceptionalist framework – and mindset – where it really hurts. This is how the Roaring, Raging Twenties begin: not with a bang, but with the release of whimpering dogs of war.
Filed under: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, IRAQ, ISIS – Daesh, The Islamic Republic of Iran, War on Iran, War on Iraq | Tagged: Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Benjamin Netanyahu, Deep State, Donald Trump, Hajj Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Impeachment of Trump, Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Israeli MOSSAD, Michel Suleiman, Pepe Escobar, Proxy War | Comments Off on US starts the Raging Twenties declaring war on Iran
January 1, 2020
Any observer, biased or not, can clearly notice that the east was always unstable throughout history, however, what puts someone in awe is the relative stability in the west and the insusceptible regimes there.
After the Middle East’s borders were drawn relatively randomly between weird zigzags in the deserts and strange lines in mountains, the years of peace there can be counted to a number less than 10. East Europe and South East Asia are no different, with proxy wars and regime changes every now and then.
However, the thing is that these countries, from Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq to Yugoslavia, Romania, and Ukraine, to Vietnam and such, is that they lack a national identity and common conscious causing them to shift from a camp to another with every regime change. These countries with time proved to be no more than puppet states where the supreme leader, king, or dictator can dictate the foreign policy and type of governance then get scratched and set on different grounds and political camps by the successor.
Modern Middle Eastern politics, or to be more precise and free this area from this dehumanizing phrase by calling it southwest Asia, was shaped after Egypt signed the peace treaty with Israel and Iran emerged as a counterbalance in the Arab – Israeli conflict after the 1979 revolution. During those days, the central and most agonizing political and military crisis was the ongoing tug of war between Israel, an irregular entity in the east, and the homogenous Muslim Arab nations.
With Egypt out of this war along with Jordan and Lebanon sinking deeper in its own political sectarian war, the Palestinian nation and resistance groups found themselves vulnerable to a final attack by the Israel army, IDF, strong enough to end the core of this struggle and finally integrate Gaza and the west bank into the so-called ‘state of Israel.’ And as events unfolded, the IDF triumphed through its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and laid the foundation of the day of victory against what it called ‘terrorist Palestinian groups’ that threatened the security and well being of the citizens in the Galilee. Yet what no one expected is the emerge of non-state actors that one day with the help of a new emerging regional power to challenge Israel and not only the Galilee with few unguided and ineffective M-21OF 122mm missiles launched from southern Lebanon.
When SL Khomeini’s long fought for revolution overthrew the US assigned and backed dictator of Iran, kings of the kings “Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi”, Iran like almost every eastern nation not only shifted political camps but changed its Persian identity to an Islamic identity. Yet Khomeini did not lead an Islamic revolution to end it at the borders of Iran, his ideology was a region-wide anti-oppression anti-imperialist Islamic movement aimed to aspire the Muslims in the east.
And regardless of how the post events of the revolution happened, between unfair excluding of several political parties and the exile after intimidation of thousands connected to the murderous dictatorship of the shah, the new regime in Iran was not established by force but rather with a national referendum with a 98% turnout and 99% support. Yet for a first glance, these numbers might look odd, but their genuineness was demonstrated by the internal unity and cooperation during the Iraq – Iran war. Khomeini set the foundation of a democratic state supervised by an Islamic constitution written by the elite from Iran, Iraq and even Lebanon. Add to that anyone can argue that Iran is a dictatorship, but why bother with biased prejudiced DC-based think tanks that never studied law or understood the power limitation of each official in the republic.
The foundation of the current work of the current IRI foreign policy started in the late 1960s-1970s before the establishment of the republic itself by educating the masses and building up a conscious. It started with the work and words of the unjustly killed Shia scholars Sayid Mohamamd Baqr al-Sadr and Sayid Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim by the then supported USA president Saddam Hussein and with the work of the prominent scientific and military figure Mustafa Chimran in Lebanon. Mohammad Baqr was laying the foundation of an Iraq free from the Baathist regime who not only oppressed a whole religious sect in Iraq but rather genocided a race and forcefully created a refugee crisis in northern Iraq by Arabizing Kurdish cities.
While in Lebanon, the Lebanese Resistance movement Amal, was founded by Lebanese, born in Iran, scholar Sayid Moussa al Sadr, who arrived in Lebanon in 1959 to lead a civil revolution in the favor of the marginalized and poor Shia citizens of south and north Lebanon. Although these two causes might be different in detail, they were related in one thing: “Western-backed regimes”. Saddam enjoyed a healthy relationship with the USA, France, and the USSR who assisted him with weapons and experts from Europe to fortify his rule. Germany had its fair share of experts in Saddam’s MOD too.
Similarly in Lebanon, the USA initiated for the first time its Eisenhower Doctrine in which the U.S. announced that it would intervene to protect regimes it considered threatened by international communism on the 17th of July 1958 and later in assisting against the SSNP led coup. And thinking about it, it was the 1950’s the decade when the USA became a hated nation for Iranians when it led a coup against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The USA in this decade took UK’s rule and became the new world police deciding who is fit for democracy and who is not.
Therefore, throughout the ME and Asia, several nations were being nourished on the hate of the United States of America whom they considered a force that is willing to battle every movement and government it considered unfit to its ‘standards of democracy.’ And so it was, and events started to unfold with coups orchestrated by the CIA in more than 15 nations and invasions that went deep even into the jungles of Vietnam.
However, what sets the atrocities and brutality of what the USA did from those done by China or Russia or any other regime in modern times is that they were done under the banner of democracy and free rights and free speech.
It’s the hypocrisy and lies of the West that made it impossible to feel warm-hearted toward them again. Add to that, it’s the selectivity of how Americans deals with state and non-state groups and the unjust naming of groups on the terror list that made things worse. For example, it seems that the USA is fond of the Gulf states that have a very bad human rights record, no elections, and a long list of minority persecution and murder, while it seems to be going against Iran and Syria with maximum pressure through sanctions and limited confrontations although both have elections and remarkable minority coexistence.
Moreover, the USA labels Hezb Allah on its terror list way back from 1996-1997, although Hezb Allah was formed as a reaction to the USA backed IDF invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Hezb Allah kept resisting up to the year 2000 when IDF left Lebanon on the 25th of May. Hezb Allah, unlike the IDF, never deliberately killed civilians during its wars with Israel.
On the other hand, USA labels Kataeb Hezb Allah, Asaeb Ahl Al haq, and other Iraqi groups as terrorist although they were created only as a response to USA’s invasion to Iraq in 2003. The Invasion led by USA and its allies that not only killed and injured up to a million Iraqi, but devastated Iraq and crippled the state till today. Kataeb and Asaeb, Hezb Allah, and the likes did turn to Iran for help in military aid, but does this mean that Hezb Allah, Asaeb, and the likes are Iranian proxies?
Generally speaking, a proxy is a group of pawns doing the work on the behalf of another. However, it seems that the word proxy in Middle Eastern politics has taken a more dehumanizing and mercenary vibe to it aimed to underestimate and devalue the effort and work of a certain group and shorthand it into a sectarian maniac tier groups used by Iran to spread its ‘terror’ in the middle east. Yet this term that sounds childish to use in international circles, became the dominant word used by American foreign policymakers today. Although if anyone read the 2019 American MOD report about Iran, they’d notice that the term partner is used to describe Hezb Allah and other groups in the middle east that are aligned with Iran ideologically. Thus we can conclude without any doubt that the USA has chosen to put its political interest and bias ahead of any reasonable and fair understanding of events in a show of arrogance and childish understanding of the complexity of the Middle East. USA is failing in the exact way the UK failed to understand the Middle East when it tried to shape its boundaries and future.
What happened today in Iraq and the march on the American embassy by the families of the 30 Kataeb Hezb Allah members killed by USAF ‘in retaliation’ is another example of how dangerous things can escalate to. Kataeb Hezb Allah and Asaeb Ahl Al Haq have more than 60,000 veteran soldiers who are ready to storm every single American base in Iraq and massacre the soldiers in retaliation of the unjust killing of Iraqi and PMF soldiers but chose not to. They even refrained from entering the embassy compound and chose to pressure a parliamentary resolution that forces USA forces to leave. If the USA was wiser they would have asked the Iraqi security forces to investigate the 107mm missile launches and capture the people responsible.
Not only would they have respected Iraq’s sovereignty, but rather actually knew who is really after these attacks and presented them as the criminals for attacking an Iraqi base and killing Iraqi and American soldiers.
Things kept evolving and events unfolding to a day when the USA is being challenged by Russia and China over world power, and its ally KSA in Yemen over influence, and its ally Israel by Hezb Allah over existence. The Anti-American axis today massed power and strength enough to challenge the existence of Israel and USA in the Middle East, with only time that will show how the limited attacks by both sides will lead to the war that will end one of the two combatants once and for all.
Filed under: Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Lebanon, Lebanon Islamic Resistance - Hezbollah | Tagged: 1982 Invasion of Lebanon, Amal Movement, Camp David, CIA's Coups, Eisenhower Doctrine, Iran Islamic Revolution, Iraqi Hezbollah, Proxy War, regime change, Saddam’s Ba’ath, Sectarian Wars, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran Imam Khamenei, The Zio-temporary entity | Comments Off on The Instability of the East: Between Western Arrogance and Iranian Influence
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Updated, July 21, 2019
In this article, we examine America’s war strategies, including its ability to launch an all out theater war against the Islamic Republic on Iran.
A follow-up article will focus on the History of US War Plans against Iran as well as the complexities underlying the Structure of Military Alliances.
**
Under present conditions, an Iraq style all out Blitzkrieg involving the simultaneous deployment of ground, air and naval forces is an impossibility.
For several reasons. US hegemony in the Middle East has been weakened largely as a result of the evolving structure of military alliances.
The US does not have the ability to carry out such a project.
There are two main factors which determine America’s military agenda in relation to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
1. Iran’s Military
There is the issue of Iran’s military capabilities (ground forces, navy, air force, missile defense), namely its ability to effectively resist and respond to an all out conventional war involving the deployment of US and Allied forces. Within the realm of conventional warfare, Iran has sizeable military capabilities. Iran is to acquire Russia’s S400 state of the art air defense system.
Iran is ranked as “a major military power” in the Middle East, with an estimated 534,000 active personnel in the army, navy, air force and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It has advanced ballistic missile capabilities as well as a national defense industry. In the case of a US air attack, Iran would target US military facilities in the Persian Gulf.
2. Evolving Structure of Military Alliances
The second consideration has to do with the evolving structure of military alliances (2003-2019) which is largely to the detriment of the United States.
Several of America’s staunchest allies are sleeping with the enemy.
Countries which have borders with Iran including Turkey and Pakistan have military cooperation agreements with Iran. While this in itself excludes the possibility of a ground war, it also affects the planning of US and allied naval and air operations.
Until recently both Turkey (NATO heavyweight) and Pakistan were among America’s faithful allies, hosting US military bases.
From a broader military standpoint, Turkey is actively cooperating with both Iran and Russia. Moreover, Ankara has acquired (July 12, 2019) ahead of schedule Russia’s state of the art S-400 air defense system while de facto opting out from the integrated US-NATO-Israel air defense system.
Needless to say the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is in crisis. Turkey’s exit from NATO is almost de facto. America can no longer rely on its staunchest allies. Moreover, US and Turkish supported militia are fighting one another in Syria.
Moreover, several NATO member states have taken a firm stance against Washington’s Iran policy: “European allies are grappling with mounting disagreements over foreign policy and growing irritated with Washington’s arrogant leadership style.”
“The most important manifestation of growing European discontent with U.S. leadership is the move by France and other powers to create an independent, “Europeans only” defense capability” (See National Interest, May 24, 2019)
Iraq has also indicated that it will not cooperate with the US in the case of a ground war against Iran.
Under present conditions, none of Iran’s neigbouring states including Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia would allow US-Allied ground forces to transit through their territory. Neither would they cooperate with the US in the conduct of an air war.
In recent developments, Azerbaijan which in the wake of the Cold War became a US ally as well as a member of NATO’s partnership for peace has changed sides. The earlier US-Azeri military cooperation agreements are virtually defunct including the post-Soviet GUAM military alliance (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova).
Bilateral military and intelligence agreements between Iran and Azerbaijan were signed in December 2018. In turn, Iran collaborates extensively with Turkmenistan. With regard to Afghanistan, the internal situation with the Taliban controlling a large part of Afghan territory, would not favor a large scale deployment of US and allied ground forces on the Iran-Afghan border.
Visibly, the policy of strategic encirclement against Iran formulated in the wake of the Iraq war (2003) is no longer functional. Iran has friendly relations with neighbouring countries, which previously were within the US sphere of influence.
The US is increasingly isolated in the Middle East and does not have the support of its NATO allies
Under these conditions, a major conventional theater war by the US involving the deployment of ground forces would be suicide.
This does not mean, however, that war will not take place. In some regards, with the advances in military technologies, an Iraq-style war is obsolete.
We are nonetheless at a dangerous crossroads. Other diabolical forms of military intervention directed against Iran are currently on the drawing board of the Pentagon. These include:
US Central Command Forward Headquarters Located in Enemy Territory
Another consideration has to do with the crisis within the US Command structure.
USCENTCOM is the theater-level Combatant Command for all operations in the broader Middle East region extending from Afghanistan to North Africa. It is the most important Combat Command of the Unified Command structure. It has led and coordinated several major Middle East war theaters including Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003). It is also involved in Syria.
In the case of a war with Iran, operations in the Middle East would be coordinated by US Central Command with headquarters in Tampa, Florida in permanent liaison with its forward command headquarters in Qatar.
In late June 2019, after Iran shot down a U.S. drone President Trump “called off the swiftly planned military strikes on Iran” while intimating in his tweet that “any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force.”
US Central Command (CENTCOM), confirmed the deployment of the US Air Force F-22 stealth fighters to the al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, intended to “defend American forces and interests” in the region against Iran. (See Michael Welch, Persian Peril, Global Research, June 30, 2019). Sounds scary?
“The base is technically Qatari property playing host to the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command.” With 11,000 US military personnel, it is described as “one of the U.S. military’s most enduring and most strategically positioned operations on the planet” (Washington Times). Al-Udeid also hosts the US Air Force’s 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, considered to be “America’s most vital overseas air command”.
What both the media and military analysts fail to acknowledge is that US CENTCOM’s forward Middle East headquarters at the al-Udeid military base close to Doha de facto “lies in enemy territory”
Since the May 2017 split of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Qatar has become a staunch ally of both Iran and Turkey (which is also an ally of Iran). While they have no “official” military cooperation agreement with Iran, they share in joint ownership with Iran the largest Worldwide maritime gas fields (see map below).
The split of the GCC has led to a shift in military alliances: In May 2017 Saudi Arabia blocked Qatar’s only land border. In turn Saudi Arabia as well as the UAE have blocked air transportation as well as commercial maritime shipments to Doha.
What is unfolding since May 2017 is a shift in Qatar’s trade routes with the establishment of bilateral agreements with Iran, Turkey as well as Pakistan. In this regard, Russia, Iran, and Qatar provide over half of the world’s known gas reserves.
The Al-Udeid base near Doha is America’s largest military base in the Middle East. In turn, Turkey has now established its own military facility in Qatar. Turkey is no longer an ally of the US. Turkish proxy forces in Syria are fighting US supported militia.
Turkey is now aligned with Russia and Iran. Ankara has now confirmed that it will be acquiring Russia’s S-400 missile air defense system which requires military cooperation with Moscow.
Qatar is swarming with Iranian businessmen, security personnel and experts in the oil and gas industry (with possible links to Iran intelligence?), not to mention the presence of Russian and Chinese personnel.
Question. How on earth can you launch a war on Iran from the territory of a close ally of Iran?
From a strategic point of view it does not make sense. And this is but the tip of the iceberg.
Notwithstanding the rhetoric underlying the official US-Qatar military relationship, The Atlantic Council, a think tank with close ties to both the Pentagon and NATO, confirms that Qatar is now a firm ally of both Iran and Turkey:
Put simply, for Qatar to maintain its independence, Doha will have essentially no choice but to maintain its strong partnership with Turkey, which has been an important ally from the perspective of military support and food security, as well as Iran. The odds are good that Iranian-Qatari ties will continue to strengthen even if Tehran and Doha agree to disagree on certain issues … On June 15 [2019], President Hassan Rouhani emphasizedthat improving relations with Qatar is a high priority for Iranian policymakers. … Rouhani told the Qatari emir that “stability and security of regional countries are intertwined” and Qatar’s head of state, in turn, stressed that Doha seeks a stronger partnership with the Islamic Republic. (Atlantic Council, June 2019, emphasis added)
What this latest statement by the Atlantic Council suggests is while Qatar hosts USCENTCOM’s forward headquarters, Iran and Qatar are (unofficially) collaborating in the area of “security” (i e. intelligence and military cooperation).
Sloppy military planning, sloppy US foreign policy? sloppy intelligence?
Trump’s statement confirms that they are planning to launch the war against Iran from their forward US Centcom headquarters at the Al Udeid military base, located in enemy territory. Is it rhetoric or sheer stupidity?
The Split of the GCC
The split of the GCC has resulted in the creation of a so-called Iran-Turkey-Qatar axis which has contributed to weakening US hegemony in the Middle East. While Turkey has entered into a military cooperation with Russia, Pakistan is allied with China. And Pakistan has become a major partner of Qatar.
Following the rift between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is in disarray with Qatar siding with Iran and Turkey against Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Qatar is of utmost strategic significance because it shares with Iran the world’s largest maritime gas fields in the Persian Gulf. (see map above). Moreover, since the GCC split-up Kuwait is no longer aligned Saudi Arabia. It nonetheless maintains a close relationship with Washington. Kuwait hosts seven active US military facilities, the most important of which is Camp Doha.
Needless to say, the May 2017 split of the GCC has undermined Trump’s resolve to create an “Arab NATO” (overseen by Saudi Arabia) directed against Iran. This project is virtually defunct, following Egypt’s withdrawal in April 2019.
The Gulf of Oman
With the 2017 split up of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Oman appears to be aligned with Iran. Under these circumstances, the transit of US war ships to the headquarters of the US Fifth fleet in Bahrain not to mention the conduct of naval operations in the Persian Gulf are potentially in jeopardy.
The Fifth Fleet is under the command of US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT). (NAVCENT’s area of responsibility consists of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea).
With the split up of the GCC, Oman is now aligned with Iran. Under these circumstances, the transit of US war ships to the headquarters of the US Fifth fleet in Bahrain not to mention the conduct of naval operations in the Persian Gulf would potentially be in jeopardy.
The strait of Hormuz which constitutes the entry point to the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman is controlled by Iran and the Sultanate of Oman (see map, Oman territory at the tip of the Strait).
The width of the strait at one point is of the order of 39 km. All major vessels must transit through Iran and/or Oman territorial waters, under so-called customary transit passage provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
More generally, the structure of alliances is in jeopardy. The US cannot reasonably wage a full-fledged conventional theatre war on Iran without the support of its longstanding allies which are now “sleeping with the enemy”.
Trump’s Fractured “Arab NATO”. History of the Split up of the GCC.
Amidst the collapse of America’s sphere of influence in the Middle East, Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) consisted at the outset of his presidency in an improvised attempt to rebuild the structure of military alliances. What the Trump administration had in mind was the formation of a Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), or “Arab NATO”. This US-sponsored blueprint was slated to include Egypt and Jordan together with the six member states of the GCC.
The draft of the MESA Alliance had been prepared in Washington prior to Trump’s historic May 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia, meeting up with King Salman, leaders of the GCC as well as “more than 50 high-ranking officials from the Arab and Islamic worlds in an unprecedented US-Islamic summit.”
The Riyadh Declaration, issued at the conclusion of the summit on May 21, 2017, announced the intention to establish MESA in Riyadh.” (Arab News, February 19, 2019). The stated mandate of the “Arab NATO” was to “to combat Iranian hegemony” in the Middle East.
Two days later on May 23, 2017 following this historic meeting, Saudi Arabia ordered the blockade of Qatar, called for an embargo and suspension of diplomatic relations with Doha, on the grounds that The Emir of Qatar was allegedly collaborating with Tehran.
What was the hidden agenda? No doubt it had already been decided upon in Riyadh on May 21, 2017 with the tacit approval of US officials.
The plan was to exclude Qatar from the proposed MESA Alliance and the GCC, while maintaining the GCC intact.
What happened was a Saudi embargo on Qatar (with the unofficial approval of Washington) which resulted in the fracture of the GCC with Oman and Kuwait siding with Qatar. In other words, the GCC was split down the middle. Saudi Arabia was weakened and the “Arab NATO” blueprint was defunct from the very outset.
May 21, 2017: US-Islamic Summit in Riyadh
May 23, 2017: The blockade and embargo of Qatar following alleged statements by the Emir of Qatar. Was this event staged?
June 5, 2019: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt sever diplomatic relations, cut off land, air and sea transportation with Qatar accusing it of supporting Iran.
June 7, 2017, Turkey’s parliament pass legislation allowing Turkish troops to be deployed to a Turkish military base in Qatar
January 2018, Qatar initiates talks with Russia with a view to acquiring Russia’s S-400 air defense system.
Flash forward to mid-April 2019: Trump is back in Riyadh: This time the Saudi Monarchy was entrusted by Washington to formally launching the failed Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA) (first formulated in 2017) despite the fact that three of the invited GCC member states, namely Kuwait, Oman and Qatar were committed to the normalization of relations with Iran. In turn, the Egyptian government of President Sisi decided to boycott the Riyadh summit and withdraw from the “Arab NATO” proposal. Cairo also clarified its position vis a vis Tehran. Egypt firmly objected to Trump’s plan because it “would increase tensions with Iran”.
Trump’s objective was to create an “Arab Block”. What he got in return was a truncated MESA “Arab Block” made up of a fractured GCC with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Jordan.
Egypt withdraws.
Kuwait and Oman officially took a neutral stance.
Qatar sided with the enemy, thereby further jeopardizing America’s sphere of influence in the Persian Gulf.
An utter geopolitical failure. What kind of alliance is that.
And US Central Command’s Forward headquarters is still located in Qatar despite the fact that two years earlier on May 23, 2017, the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, was accused by Saudi Arabia and the UAE of collaborating with Iran.
It is unclear who gave the order to impose the embargo on Qatar. Saudi Arabia would not have taken that decision without consulting Washington. Visibly, Washington’s intent was to create an Arab NATO Alliance (An Arab Block) directed against Iran “to do the dirty work for us”.
Trump and the Emir of Qatar, UN General Assembly, October 2017, White House photo
The rest is history, the Pentagon decided to maintain US Central Command’s forward headquarters in Qatar, which happens to be Iran’s closest ally and partner.
A foreign policy blunder? Establishing your “official” headquarters in enemy territory, while “unofficially” redeploying part of the war planes, military personnel and command functions to other locations (e.g. in Saudi Arabia)?
No press reports, no questions in the US Congress. Nobody seemed to have noticed that Trump’s war on Iran, if it were to be carried out, would be conducted from the territory of Iran’s closest ally.
An impossibility?
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Part II of this essay focuses on the history and contradictions of US war preparations directed against Iran starting in 1995 as well as the evolution of military alliances.
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Filed under: Afghanistan, American Hegemony, Eurasia, False Flags, IRAQ, Pakistan, Qatar, The Islamic Republic of Iran, Turkey, US-Iran Relations, US-led NATO Alliance, USA | Tagged: America's War on Iran, American Hegemony, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Color Revolutions, Cyberwars, Donald Trump, Iran-US Relations, Persian Gulf, Proxy War, S-400, The Islamic Revolution Guard [IRGC] | 2 Comments »
Libyan National Army leader General Haftar ordered his forces to attack Turkish ships and companies that he accused of helping the internationally recognized Government of National Accord, as well as to arrest Turkish citizens in the country, which is nothing short of an effort to trick Turkey into overextending itself by provoking it into “mission creep” so that it ends up trapped in the Libyan quagmire.
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The Libyan Civil War might be entering a new phase if the forces led by Libyan National Army (LNA) leader General Haftar do good on their leader’s threats to attack Turkish ships and companies that he accused of helping the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), a well as to arrest Turkish citizens in the country. The popular warlord has already succeeded in capturing most of the country with the notable exception being the capital of Tripoli, which has only held out as long as it has supposedly because of Turkish support.
The Libyan Civil War was directly caused by NATO’s 2011 War on Libya and the subsequent scramble for influence in the energy-rich and geostrategically positioned North African state, with Turkey playing a leading role in the latter because the de-facto Muslim Brotherhood-led country envisions restoring its Ottoman-era empire through the establishment of ideologically allied governments in this vast trans-continental space. The GNA is comprised of Muslim Brotherhood fighters and their offshoots who came to power after 2011, which is why Erdogan supports them so strongly and has a stake in their continued leadership of the country, something that Haftar is adamantly opposed to because he sees his countrymen’s collaboration with Turkey as treasonous.
The LNA leader is now threatening to impose serious physical costs to Turkey’s unofficial intervention in the Libyan Civil War, hoping that this will either compel it to retreat or counterproductively dig in through “mission creep” and risk overextending itself in what has become a regional proxy war between secular and Islamist forces backed by the UAE/Egypt/France and Turkey/Qatar/Libya respectively. Nevertheless, Erdogan’s ego, his ambition for regional influence, and the domestic political pressure that he’s under after the latest mayoral election rerun in Istanbul are responsible for Turkey’s vow to retaliate against the Libyan warlord.
Should Turkey suffer highly publicized losses at the hands of Haftar’s forces, then it might embolden the country’s Cypriot, Greek, Kurdish separatist, and Syrian enemies in its immediate neighborhood if they interpret those developments as a sign of weakness proving that the Turkish military is just a “paper tiger” incapable of properly defending its interests and/or defeating its first conventional military adversary in decades. Erdogan is therefore in a classic dilemma since he’s damned if he retreats but equally damned if he doesn’t and ends up being humiliated by Haftar. It’ll remain to be seen what ultimately happens, but Turkey is in a very tricky position nowadays and needs to be careful that it doesn’t get trapped in the Libyan quagmire.
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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Filed under: Egypt, France, Libya, Qatar, Turkey, United Arab Emirates UAE, US-led NATO Alliance | Tagged: Haftar, Libya, Libyan war, neo-Ottoman, Proxy War, Recep Tayyip Erdogan | Comments Off on Haftar Is Trying To Trick Turkey Into Overextending Itself In Libya
A senior member of the Iranian Parliament says the United States does not seek a military confrontation with Iran and is only waging a “psychological war” against the Islamic Republic.
Head of the Iranian Parliament’s Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh made the remarks after a closed-door meeting of lawmakers with the new chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, Major General Hossein Salami, on Sunday.
“Analysis of the behavior of Americans shows that they do not seek a military confrontation with Iran and are only waging a psychological war against the Islamic Republic,” the Iranian lawmaker said, adding that the US government is trying to combine its psychological war against Iran with sanctions and other forms of economic pressure.
Referring to heightened presence of American forces in the Middle East, particularly in the Persian Gulf, Falahatpisheh noted that Iran is capable of hitting its targets from a distance of 2,000 kilometers in line with its defensive policy, while American warships will be at a maximum distance of 500 kilometers away from Iran and they know that in no other war, their defeat will not be so evident.
The United States is ratcheting up economic and military pressure on Iran, with US President Donald Trump on Thursday urging Tehran to talk to him.
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Filed under: American Aggression, Economic war, The Islamic Republic of Iran, USA, War on Iran | Tagged: American Aggression, AngloZionist Empire, Donald Trump, Economic siege, Economic war, Proxy War, sanctions, The Islamic Revolution Guard [IRGC], Wars for Israel | Comments Off on US Not Seeking Military Confrontation with Iran, Only Waging Psywar: Senior MP
Read Part I from the link below.
Afghanistan, the Forgotten Proxy War
By , April 30, 2019
The original “moderate rebel”
One of the key players in the anti-Soviet, U.S.-led regime change project against Afghanistan was Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born millionaire who came from a wealthy, powerful family that owns a Saudi construction company and has had close ties to the Saudi royal family. Before becoming known as America’s “boogeyman”, Osama bin Laden was put in charge of fundraising for the Mujahideen insurgents, creating numerous charities and foundations in the process and working in coordination with Saudi intelligence (who acted as liaisons between the fighters and the CIA). Journalist Robert Fisk even gave bin Laden a glowing review, calling him a “peace warrior” and a philanthropist in a 1993 report for the Independent. Bin Laden also provided recruitment for the Mujahideen and is believed to have also received security training from the CIA. And in 1989, the same year that Soviet troops withdrew, he founded the terrorist organization Al Qaeda with a number of fighters he had recruited to the Mujahideen. Although the PDPA had already been overthrown, and the Soviet Union was dissolved, he still maintained his relationship with the CIA and NATO, working with them from the mid-to-late 1990s to provide support for the secessionist Bosnian paramilitaries and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the destruction and dismantling of Yugoslavia.
The United States would eventually turn Bin Laden into a scapegoat after the 2001 terrorist attacks, while still maintaining ties to his family and providing arms, training, and funding to Al Qaeda and its affiliates (rebranded as “moderate rebels” by the Western media) in its more recent regime change project against Syria, which started in 2011. The Mujahideen not only gave birth to Al Qaeda, but it would set a precedent for the United States’ regime-change operations in later years against the anti-imperialist governments of Libya and Syria.
Reagan entertains Mujahideen fighters in the White House.
Furthermore, proxy warfare enables control of public opinion, thus allowing the U.S. government to escape public scrutiny and questions about legal authorization for war. With opposition from the general public essentially under control, consent for U.S.-led wars does not need to be obtained, especially when the U.S. military is running them from “behind the scenes” and its involvement looks less obvious. Indeed, the protests against the war on Vietnam in the United States and other Western countries saw mass turnouts.
And while the U.S.-led aggression in Vietnam did involve proxy warfare to a lesser degree, it was still mostly fought with American “boots-on-the-ground”, much like the 2001 renewed U.S.-led aggression against Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In contrast, the U.S. assault on Afghanistan that began in 1979 saw little to no protest. The Mujahideen even garnered support from large portions of the Western left who joined the chorus of voices in the Western mainstream media in demonizing the PDPA — a relentless imperialist propaganda campaign that would be repeated in later years during the U.S. wars on Libya and Syria, with the difference being that social media had not yet gained prominence at the time of the initial assault on Afghanistan. This leads to the next question: why recruit some of the most reactionary social forces abroad, many of whom represent complete backwardness?
In Afghanistan, such forces proved useful in the mission to topple the modernizing government of the PDPA, especially when their anti-modernity aspirations intersected with U.S. foreign policy; these ultra-conservative forces continue to be deployed by the United States today. In fact, the long war on Afghanistan shares many striking similarities with the long war on Syria, with the common theme of U.S. imperialism collaborating with violent Sunni extremists to topple the secular, nationalist and anti-imperialist governments of these two former ‘Soviet bloc’ countries. And much like the PDPA, the current and long-time government of the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party in Syria has made many strides towards achieving national liberation and economic development, which have included: taking land from aristocratic families (a majority of whom were Sunni Muslims while Shia Muslims, but especially Alawites, traditionally belonged to the lower classes and were treated as second class citizens in pre-Ba’athist Syria) and redistributing and nationalizing it, making use of Syria’s oil and gas reserves to modernize the country and benefit its population, and upholding women’s rights as an important part of the Ba’athist pillars.
Some of these aristocratic landlords, just like their Afghan counterparts, would react violently and join the Muslim Brotherhood who, with CIA-backing, carried out acts of terrorism and other atrocities in Hama as they made a failed attempt to topple the government of Hafez al Assad in 1982.
The connection between the two is further solidified by the fact that it was the Mujahideen from which Al Qaeda emerged; both are inspired by Wahhabist ideology, and one of their chief financiers is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (as well as Israel, a regional imperial power and a key ally of the United States). In either case, these Wahhabi-inspired forces were vehemently opposed to modernization and development, and would much rather keep large sections of the population impoverished, as they sought to replace the PDPA and the Ba’athists with Sunni fundamentalist, anti-Shia, theological autocracies — Saudi-style regimes, in other words.
These reactionary forces are useful tools in the CIA’s anti-communist projects and destabilization campaigns against independent nationalist governments, considering that the groups’ anti-modernity stance is a motivating factor in their efforts to sabotage economic development, which is conducive to ensuring a favourable climate for U.S. capital interests. It also helps that these groups already saw the nationalist governments of the PDPA and the Syrian Ba’ath party as their ‘archenemy’, and would thus fight them to the death and resort to acts of terrorism against the respective civilian populations.
Zbigniew Brzezinski stated in a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in response to the following question:
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
[Brzezinski]: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Once again, he makes it clear that the religious extremism of the Mujahideen fighters was not an issue for Washington because the real political value lay in eliminating the PDPA and putting an end to Soviet influence in the Greater Middle East, which would give the U.S. the opportunity to easily access and steal the country’s wealth. And in order to justify the U.S. imperialist intervention in Afghanistan, as well as to obscure the true nature of the Mujahideen fighters, the intervention needed to be accompanied by a rigorous mass media campaign. The Reagan administration — knowing full well that American mainstream media has international influence — continued the war that the Carter administration started and saw it as an opportunity to “step up” its domestic propaganda war, considering that the American general public was still largely critical of the Vietnam War at the time.
As part of the aggressive imperialist propaganda campaign, anyone who dared to publicly criticize the Mujahideen was subjected to character assassination and was pejoratively labelled a “Stalinist” or a “Soviet apologist”, which are akin to labels such as “Russian agent” or “Assadist” being used as insults today against those who speak out against the U.S.-backed terrorism in Syria. There were also careful rebranding strategies made specifically for Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen mercenaries, who were hailed as “revolutionary freedom fighters” and given a romantic, exoticized “holy warrior” makeover in Western media; hence the title of this section. The Mujahideen mercenaries were even given a dedication title card at the end of the Hollywood movie Rambo III which read, “This film is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan”; the film itself added to the constructed romantic image as it portrayed the Mujahideen fighters as heroes, while the Soviet Union and the PDPA were portrayed as the cartoonish villains. The Rambo film franchise is well known for its depiction of the Vietnamese as “savages” and as the aggressors in the U.S. war on Vietnam, which is a blatant reversal of the truth.
The Hollywood blockbuster franchise would be used to make the Mujahideen more palatable to Western audiences, as this unabashed, blatantly anti-Soviet propaganda for U.S. imperialism attracted millions of viewers with one of the largest movie marketing campaigns of the time. Although formulaic, the films are easily consumable because they appeal to emotion and, as Michael Parenti states in Dirty Truths, “The entertainment industry does not merely give the people what they want: it is busy shaping those wants,” (p. 111). Rambo III may not have been critically acclaimed, but it was still the second most commercially successful film in the Rambo series, grossing a total of $189,015,611 at the box office. Producing war propaganda films is nothing new and has been a long staple of the Hollywood industry, which serves capitalist and imperialist interests. But, since the blockbuster movie is one of the most widely available and distributed forms of media, repackaging the Mujahideen into a popular film franchise was easily one of the best ways (albeit cynical) to justify the war, maintaining the American constructed narrative and reinforcing the demonization campaign against Soviet Russia and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Now, outside of the cinema, CBS News went as far as to air fake battle footage meant to help perpetuate the myth that the Mujahideen mercenaries were “freedom fighters”; American journalists Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, although decidedly biased against the Soviet Union and its allies, documented this ruse in which the news channel participated. In terms of proxy warfare, these were just some of the ways used to distract from the fact that it was a U.S.-led war.
The dedication title card as it originally appeared at the end of the film Rambo III.
In Afghanistan, proxy forces provided a convenient cover because they drew attention away from the fact that U.S. imperialism was the root cause of the conflict. The insurgents also helped to demonize the targets of U.S. foreign policy, the PDPA and the Soviet Union, all the while doing the majority of the physical combat in place of the American military. In general, drawing attention away from the fact that it has been the United States “pulling the strings” all along, using proxy forces helps Washington to maintain plausible deniability in regard to its relationship with such groups. If any one of these insurgents becomes a liability, as what had happened with the Taliban, they can just as easily be disposed of and replaced by more competent patsies, while U.S. foreign policy goes unquestioned. Criminal gangs and paramilitary forces are thus ideal and convenient tools for U.S. foreign policy. With the rule of warlords and the instability (namely damage to infrastructure, de-industrialization, and societal collapse) that followed after the toppling of the PDPA, Afghanistan’s standard of living dropped rapidly, leading to forced mass migrations and making the country all the more vulnerable to a more direct U.S. military intervention — which eventually did happen in 2001.
Zbigniew Brzezinski: godfather of colour revolutions and proxy wars, architect of the Mujahideen
The late Brzezinski was a key figure in U.S. foreign policy and a highly influential figure in the Council on Foreign Relations. Although the Polish-American diplomat and political scientist was no longer the National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan’s presidency, he still continued to play a prominent role in enforcing U.S. foreign policy goals in upholding Washington’s global monopoly. The liberal Cold War ideologue’s signature strategy consisted of using the CIA to destabilize and force regime-change onto countries whose governments actively resisted against Washington. Such is the legacy of Brzezinski, whose strategy of funding the most reactionary anti-government forces to foment chaos and instability while promoting them as “freedom fighters” is now a longstanding staple of U.S. imperialism.
How were the aggressive propaganda campaigns which promoted the Mujahideen mercenaries as “freedom fighters” able to garner support for the aggression against the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from so many on the Western left who had previously opposed the war on Vietnam? It was the through the CIA’s use of ‘soft-power’ schemes, because leftist opinion also needed to be controlled and manipulated in the process of carrying out U.S. foreign and public policy. Brzezinski mastered the art of targeting intelligentsia and impressionable young people in order to make them supportive of U.S. foreign policy, misleading a significant number of people into supporting U.S.-led wars.
The CIA invested money into programs that used university campus, anti-Soviet “radical leftist activists” and academics (as well as artists and writers) to help spread imperialist propaganda dressed up in vaguely “leftist”-sounding language and given a more “hip”, “humanitarian”, “social justice”, “free thinker” appeal. Western, but especially American, academia has since continued to teach the post-modernist “oppression theory” or “privilege theory” to students, which is anti-Marxist and anti-scientific at its core. More importantly, this post-modernist infiltration was meant to distract from class struggle, to help divert any form of solidarity away from anti-imperialist struggles, and to foster virulent animosity towards the Soviet Union among students and anyone with ‘leftist’ leanings. Hence the phenomenon of identity politics that continues to plague the Western left today, whose strength was effectively neutered by the 1970s. Not only that, but as Gowans mentions in his book, Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom:
“U.S. universities recruit talented individuals from abroad, instill in them the U.S. imperialist ideology and values, and equip them with academic credentials which conduce to their landing important political positions at home. In this way, U.S. imperial goals indirectly structure the political decision-making of other countries.” (pp. 52-53)
And so we have agencies and think-tanks such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which has scholarly appeal and actively interferes in elections abroad — namely, in countries that are targets of U.S. foreign policy. Founded in 1983 by Reagan and directed by the CIA, the agency also assists in mobilizing coups and paid “dissidents” in U.S.-led regime change projects, such as the 2002 failed attempt against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, as well as helping to create aggressive media campaigns that demonize targeted nations. Another instance of this “soft power” tactic of mobilizing U.S.-backed “dissidents” in targeted nations are the number of Sunni Islamic fundamentalist madrassas (schools) sponsored by the CIA and set up by Wahhabi missionaries from Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan — which started to appear in increasing numbers during the 1980s, reaching over 39,000 during the decade. Afghanistan’s public education institutions were largely secular prior to the fall of Kabul in 1992; these madrassas were the direct, ideological and intellectual antitheses to the existing institutions of education. The madrassas acted as centres for cult-like brainwashing and were essentially CIA covert psychological operations (psy-ops) intended to inspire divisiveness and demobilize younger generations of Afghans in the face of imperial onslaught so that they would not unite with the wider PDPA-led nationalist resistance to imperialism.
The NED’s founding members were comprised of Cold War ideologues which included Brzezinski himself, as well as Trotskyists who provided an endless supply of slurs against the Soviet Union. It was chiefly under this agency, and with direction provided by Brzezinski, that America produced artists, “activists”, academics, and writers who presented themselves as “radical leftists” and slandered the Soviet Union and countries that were aligned with it — which was all part of the process of toppling them and subjugating them to U.S. free market fundamentalism. With Brzezinski having mastered the art of encouraging postmodernism and identity politics among the Western left in order to weaken it, the United States not only had military and economic might on its side but also highly sophisticated ideological instruments to help give it the upper hand in propaganda wars.
These “soft power” schemes are highly effective in masking the brutality of U.S. imperialism, as well as concealing the exploitation of impoverished nations. Marketing the Mujahideen mercenaries as “peace warriors” while demonizing the PDPA and referring to the Soviet assistance as an “invasion” or “aggression” marked the beginning of the regular use of “humanitarian” pretexts for imperialist interventions. The Cold War era onslaught against Afghanistan can thus be seen as the template for the NATO-led regime change projects against Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, which not only involved the use of U.S.-backed proxy forces but also “humanitarian” pretexts being presented in the aggressive propaganda campaigns against the targeted countries. It was not until 2002, however, that then-American UN representative Samantha Powers, as well as several U.S.-allied representatives, would push the United Nations to officially adopt the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine into the Charter — which was in direct contradiction to the law that recognizes the violation of a nation’s sovereignty as a crime. The R2P doctrine was born out of the illegal 78-day NATO air-bombing of Yugoslavia from March 24 to June 10, 1999. And although plans to dismantle Yugoslavia go as far back as 1984, it was not until much of the 1990s that NATO would begin openly intervening — with more naked aggression — starting with the funding and support for secessionist paramilitary forces in Bosnia between 1994-1995. It then sealed the 1999 destruction of Yugoslavia with with the balkanization of the Serbian province of Kosovo. In addition to the use of terrorist and paramilitary groups as proxy forces which received CIA-training and funding, another key feature of this “humanitarian” intervention was the ongoing demonization campaigns against the Serbs, who were at the centre of a vicious Western media propaganda war. Some of the most egregious parts of these demonization campaigns — which were tantamount to slander and libel — were the claims that the Serbs were “committing genocide” against ethnic Albanians. The NATO bombing campaign was illegal since it was given no UN Security Council approval or support.
Once again, Brzezinski was not the National Security Advisor during the U.S.-led campaign against Yugoslavia. However, he still continued to wield influence as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a private organization and Wall Street think tank. The Council on Foreign Relations is intertwined with highly influential NGOs who are essentially propaganda mouthpieces for U.S. foreign policy, such as Human Rights Watch, which has fabricated stories of atrocities allegedly committed by countries targeted by U.S. imperialism. Clearly, unmitigated U.S. imperial aggression did not end with the destruction of the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, nor with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The post-Cold War years were a continuation of U.S. imperialism’s scramble for more spheres of influence and global domination; it was also a scramble for what was left of the former ‘Soviet bloc’ and Warsaw Pact. The dismantling of Yugoslavia was, figuratively speaking, the ‘final nail in the coffin’ of whatever ‘Soviet influence’ was left in Eastern Europe.
The demise of the Soviet Union and the “Afghan trap” question
Image on the right: Left to right: former Afghan President Babrak Karmal, and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Karmal took office at around the same time (December 1979) the PDPA requested that Moscow intervene to assist the besieged Afghanistan.
The sabotage and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that only one global hegemon remained, and that was the United States. Up until 1989, the Soviet Union had been the barrier that was keeping the United States from launching a more robust military intervention in Afghanistan, as well as in Central and West Asia. While pulling out did not immediately cause the defeat of Kabul as the PDPA government forces continued to struggle for another three years, Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to withdraw Soviet troops arguably had a detrimental impact on Afghanistan for many years to come. Although there was no Soviet military assistance in the last three years of Najibullah’s presidency, Afghanistan continued to receive aid from the USSR, and some Soviet military advisers (however limited in their capacity) still remained; despite the extreme difficulties, and combined with the nation’s still-relatively high morale, this did at least help to keep the government from being overthrown immediately. This defied U.S. expectations as the CIA and the George H.W. Bush administration had believed that the government of Najibullah would fall as soon as Soviet troops were withdrawn. But what really hurt the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan’s army was when the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1991; almost as soon as the dissolution happened and Boris Yeltsin (with U.S. backing) took over as Russia’s president, the aid stopped coming and the government forces became unable to hold out for much longer. The U.S. aggression was left unchecked, and to this day Afghanistan has not seen geopolitical stability and has since been a largely impoverished ‘failed state’, serving as a training ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. It continues to be an anarchic battleground between rival warlords which include the ousted Taliban and the U.S. puppet government that replaced them.
But, as was already mentioned above, the “Afghan trap” did not, in and of itself, cause the dismantling of the Soviet Union. In that same interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski had this to say in response to the question about setting the “trap”:
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
[Brzezinski]: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Likewise with Cuba and Syria, the USSR had a well-established alliance with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, one of mutual aid and partnership. Answering Kabul’s explicit request for assistance was a deliberate and conscious choice made by Moscow, and it just so happened that the majority of Afghans welcomed it. For any errors that Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary at the time, may have made (which do deserve a fair amount of criticism, but are not the focus of this article), the 1979 decision to intervene on behalf of Afghanistan against U.S. imperialism was not one of them. It is true that both the Soviet and the U.S. interventions were military interventions, but the key difference is that the U.S. was backing reactionary forces for the purposes of establishing colonial domination and was in clear violation of Afghan sovereignty. Consider, too, that Afghanistan had only deposed of its king in 1973, just six years before the conflict began. The country may have moved quickly to industrialize and modernize, but it wasn’t much time to fully develop its military defenses by 1979.
Image below: Mikhail Gorbachev accepts the Nobel Peace Prize from George H.W. Bush on October 15, 1990. Many Russians saw this gesture as a betrayal, while the West celebrated it, because he was being awarded for his capitulation to U.S. imperialism in foreign and economic policy.
Other than that, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Soviet Union imploded due to an accumulating number of factors: namely, the gradual steps that U.S. foreign policy had taken over the years to cripple the Soviet economy, especially after the deaths of Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov. How Gorbachev responded during the U.S.-led onslaught against Afghanistan certainly helped to exacerbate the conditions that led to the dissolution. After the deaths of Brezhnev and Andropov, the Soviet Union’s economy became disorganized and was being liberalized during much of the 1980s. Not only that, but the Reagan administration escalated the arms race, which intensified after they had scrapped the ‘detente’ that was previously made in the mid-1970s. Even prior to Reagan’s hardline, bombastic rhetoric and escalation against the USSR, the Soviet Union was already beginning to show signs of strain from the arms race during the late-1970s. However, in spite of the economic strains, during the height of the war the organized joint operations between the Soviet army and the Afghan army saw a significant amount of success in pushing back against the Mujahideen with many of the jihadist leaders either being killed or fleeing to Pakistan. Therefore, it is erroneous to say that intervening in Afghanistan on behalf of the Afghan people “did the Soviet Union in.”
In a misguided and ultimately failed attempt to spur economic growth rates, Gorbachev moved to end the Cold War by withdrawing military support from allies and pledging cooperation with the United States who promised “peace”. When he embraced Neoliberalism and allowed for the USSR to be opened to the U.S.-dominated world capitalist economy, the Soviet economy imploded and the effects were felt by its allies. It was a capitulation to U.S. imperialism, in other words; and it led to disastrous results not only in Afghanistan, but in several other countries as well. These include: the destruction of Yugoslavia, both wars on Iraq, and the 2011 NATO invasion of Libya. Also, Warsaw Pact members in Eastern Europe were no longer able to effectively fight back against U.S.-backed colour revolutions; some of them would eventually be absorbed as NATO members, such as Czechoslovakia which was dissolved and divided into two states: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Without Soviet Russia to keep it in check, the United States was able to launch an unrestrained series of aggressions for nearly two decades. Because of his decision to withdraw from the arms race altogether, in a vain attempt to transform the Soviet Union into a social democracy akin to those of the Nordic countries, Gorbachev had deprived the Russian army of combat effectiveness by making significant cuts to its defense budget, which is partly why they were forced to evacuate. Not only that, but these diplomatic and military concessions with the United States gave them no benefit in return, hence the economic crisis in Russia during the Yeltsin years. Suffice to say, the Gorbachev-Yeltsin years are not remembered fondly in Russia and many regard Gorbachev as a traitor and Western agent who helped to bring the Soviet Union to its collapse. In more recent years, efforts are being made to assess the actions taken by Gorbachev with regards to Afghanistan; this includes going against and revising the resolution put forth by him which suggested that the USSR intervention was “shameful”.
In short, Afghanistan did not cause the Soviet Union’s demise even if it required large military spending. More accurately: it was Gorbachev’s impulsive decision to quickly discard the planned economy in favour of a market economy in order to appease the United States, who made the false promise that NATO would not expand eastward. If there was a real “trap”, it was this and Gorbachev played right into the hands of U.S. imperialism; and so, the Soviet Union received its devastating blow from the United States in the end — not from a small, minor nation such as Afghanistan which continues to suffer the most from the effects of these past events. For many years, but especially since the end of WWII, the United States made ceaseless efforts to undermine the USSR, adding stress upon stress onto its economy, in addition to the psychological warfare waged through the anti-Soviet propaganda and military threats against it and its allies. Despite any advances made in the past, the Soviet Union’s economy was still not as large as that of the United States. And so, in order to keep pace with NATO, the Soviet Union did not have much of a choice but to spend a large percentage of its GDP on its military and on helping to defend its allies, which included national liberation movements in the Third World, because of the very real and significant threat that U.S. imperialism posed. If it had not spent any money militarily, its demise would most likely have happened much sooner. But eventually, these mounting efforts by U.S. imperialism created a circumstance where its leadership under Gorbachev made a lapse in judgment, reacting impulsively and carelessly rather than acting with resilience in spite of the onslaught.
It should also be taken into account that WWII had a profound impact on Soviet leadership — from Joseph Stalin to Gorbachev — because even though the Red Army was victorious in defeating the Nazis, the widespread destruction had still placed the Soviet economy under an incredible amount of stress and it needed time to recover. Meanwhile, the convenient geographical location of the United States kept it from suffering the same casualties and infrastructural damage seen across Europe and Asia as a result of the Second World War, which enabled its economy to recover much faster and gave it enough time to eventually develop the U.S. Dollar as the international currency and assert dominance over the world economy. Plus, the U.S. had accumulated two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves by 1944 to help back the Dollar; and even if it lost a large amount of the gold, it would still be able to maintain Dollar supremacy by developing the fiat system to back the currency. Because of the destruction seen during WWII, it is understandable that the Soviet Union wanted to avoid another world war, which is why it also made several attempts at achieving some kind of diplomacy with the United States (before Gorbachev outright capitulated). At the same time, it also understood that maintaining its military defenses was important because of the threat of a nuclear war from the United States, which would be much more catastrophic than the Nazis’ military assaults against the Soviet Union since Hitler did not have a nuclear arsenal. This was part of a feat that U.S. imperialism was able to accomplish that ultimately overshadowed British, French, German, and Japanese imperialism, which Brzezinski reveals in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives: an unparalleled military establishment that, by far, had the most effective global reach which allowed the U.S. to “project forces over long distances”, helping it to assert its global domination and impose its “political will”. And what makes the American Empire distinct from the Japanese Empire, British Empire, and other European empires is that one of the bases for its ideology is the socially constructed international hierarchy of nations, and not races as was the case with the other aforementioned empires. This constructed international hierarchy of nations is more effective because it means not only greater expansionism, but also the greater ability to exercise global primacy and supremacy. More specific to Central Asia and the Middle East, the Wahhabist and Salafist groups propped up by the CIA were always intended to nurture sectarianism and discord in order to counter a mass, broad-based united front of nations against imperialism — an example of divide-and-conquer, which is an age-old tradition of empire, except this time with Neoliberal characteristics.
Cold War 2.0? American Supremacy marches on
The present-day anti-Russia hysteria is reminiscent of the anti-Soviet propaganda of the Cold War era; while anti-communism is not the central theme today, one thing remains the same: the fact that the U.S. Empire is (once again) facing a formidable challenge to its position in the world. After the Yeltsin years were over, and under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s economy eventually recovered and moved towards a more dirigiste economy; and on top of that, it moved away from the NATO fold, which triggered the old antagonistic relationship with the United States. Russia has also decided to follow the global trend of taking the step towards reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar, which is no doubt a source of annoyance to the U.S. capitalist class. It seems that a third world war in the near future is becoming more likely as the U.S. inches closer to a direct military confrontation against Russia and, more recently, China. History does appear to be repeating itself. When the government of Bashar al Assad called on Moscow for assistance in fighting against the NATO-backed terrorists, it certainly was reminiscent of when the PDPA had done the same many years before. Thus far, the Syrian Arab Republic has continued to withstand the destabilization efforts carried out by the Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups and Kurdish militias at the behest of the United States, and has not collapsed as Libya, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan did.
But what often gets overlooked is the repeated Brzezinskist formula of funding highly reactionary forces and promoting them as “revolutionaries” to Western audiences in order to fight governments that defy the global dictatorship of the United States and refuse to allow the West to exploit their natural resources and labour power. As Karl Marx once said, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Such a phenomenon is no accident or a mere mistake. The geopolitical instability that followed after the overthrow of the PDPA ensures that no sound, united, and formidable opposition against U.S. imperialism will emerge for an indefinite number of years; and it seems that Libya, where the Brzezinskist-style of regime change also saw success and which is now a hotbed for the slave trade, is on the same path as Afghanistan. This is all a part of what Lenin calls moribund capitalism when he discussed the economic essence of imperialism; and by that, he meant that imperialism carries the contradictions of capitalism to the extreme limit. American global monopoly had grown out of U.S. foreign policy, and it should go without saying that the American Empire cannot tolerate losing its Dollar Supremacy, especially when the global rate of profit is falling. And if too many nations reject U.S. efforts to infiltrate their markets and force foreign finance capital exports onto their economies in order to gain a monopoly over the resources, as well as to exploit the labour of their working people, it would surely spell a sharp decline in American Dollar hegemony. The fact that the United States was willing to go as far as to back mercenaries to attack the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and fight the Soviet Union, as well as to spend billions of dollars on a highly elaborate but effective propaganda campaign, shows a sign of desperation of the American Empire in maintaining its global hegemony.
Since the end of World War II the United States has been, and is by and large still, the overwhelming world-dominating power. It is true that the American Empire is in decline, in light of increasing trends towards “de-Dollarization,” as well as the rise of China and Russia which pose as challenges to U.S. interests. Naturally, Washington will desperately try to cling on to its number one position in the world by accelerating the growth of its global monopolies — whether it is through placing wholly unnecessary tariffs against competitors such as China, or threatening to completely cut Venezuelan and Iranian oil out of the global market — even if it means an increasing drive towards World War III. The current global economic order which Washington elites have been instrumental in shaping over the past several decades reflects the interests of the global capitalist class to such an extent that the working class is threatened with yet another world war despite the unimaginable carnage witnessed during the first two.
When we look back at these historical events to help make sense of the present, we see how powerful mass media can be and how it is used as a tool of U.S. foreign policy to manipulate and control public opinion. Foreign policy is about the economic relationships between countries. Key to understanding how U.S. imperialism functions is in its foreign policy and how it carries it out — which adds up to plundering from relatively small or poorer nations more than a share of wealth and resources that can be normally produced in common commercial exchanges, forcing them to be indebted; and if any of them resist, then they will almost certainly be subjected to military threats.
With the great wealth that allowed it to build a military that can “project forces over long distances,” the United States is in a unique position in history, to say the least. However, as we have seen above, the now four decade-long war on Afghanistan was not only fought on a military front considering the psy-ops and the propaganda involved. If anything, the Soviet Union lost on the propaganda front in the end.
From Afghanistan we learn not only of the origins of Al Qaeda, to which the boom in the opioid-addiction epidemic has ties, or why today we have the phenomenon of an anti-Russia Western “left” that parrots imperialist propaganda and seems very eager to see that piece of Cold War history repeat itself in Syria. We also learn that we cannot de-link the events of the 2001 direct U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and what followed from those of 1979; Afghanistan’s colonial-feudal past, its break from that with the 1978 Saur Revolution, and the U.S.-led Mujahideen are all as much of a part of its history (and the Greater Middle East, by extension) as the events of 2001. It cannot be stressed enough that it is those historical conditions, particularly as they relate to U.S. foreign policy, that helped to shape the ongoing conflict today.
Obviously, we cannot undo the past. It is not in the interests of the working class anywhere, in the Global South or in the Global North, to see a third world war happen, as such a war would have catastrophic consequences for everyone — in fact, it could potentially destroy all of humanity. Building a new and revitalized anti-war movement in the imperialist nations is a given, but it also requires a more sophisticated understanding of U.S. foreign policy. Without historical context, Western mass media will continue to go unchallenged, weaning audiences on a steady diet of “moderate rebels” propaganda and effectively silencing the victims of imperialism. It is necessary to unite workers across the whole world according to their shared interests in order to effectively fight and defeat imperialism and to establish a just, egalitarian, and sustainable world under socialism. Teaching the working class everywhere the real history of such conflicts as the one in Afghanistan is an important part of developing the revolutionary consciousness necessary to build a strong global revolutionary movement against imperialism.
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Originally published by LLCO.org on March 30, 2019. For the full-length article and bibliography, click here.
Janelle Velina is a Toronto-based political analyst, writer, and an editor and frequent contributor for New-Power.org and LLCO.org. She also has a blog at geopoliticaloutlook.blogspot.com.
All images in this article are from the author; featured image: Brzezinski visits Osama bin Laden and other Mujahideen fighters during training.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, House of Saud, Libya, Syria, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Takfiris, US-led NATO Alliance, USA, USSR | Tagged: AngloZionist Empire, Bin Laden, Bosnia, Brzezinski, Carter, CIA, Color Revolutions, Gorbachev, hollywood, Hugo Chavez, Kosovo, Leonid Brezhnev, Libya, Moderate Terrorist, NED, NGOs, Proxy War, Ronald Reagan | Comments Off on Afghanistan, the Forgotten Proxy War. The Role of Osama bin Laden and Zbigniew Brzezinski
Written by J.Hawk exclusively for SouthFront
At one time, specifically during the post-World War 2 Bretton Woods era, it looked like as if the capitalist model could be indefinitely sustainable and avoid plunging the world into major world conflicts. That era began to come to an end during the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, and came to a complete end at the end of the Cold War which ushered in the era of the so-called “globalization” which took form of unbridled competition for markets and resources. At first this competition did not show many signs of trouble. There were many “emerging markets” created as a result of the collapse of the Soviet bloc into which Western corporations could expand. However, the law of diminishing returns being what it is, the initial rapid economic growth rates could not be sustained and attempts to goose it using extremely liberal central bank policies, to the point of zero and even negative interest rates, succeeded in inflating—and bursting—several financial “bubbles”. Even today’s US economy bears many hallmarks of such a bubble, and it is only one of many. Sooner or later the proverbial “black swan” event will unleash a veritable domino effect of popping bubbles and plunge the global economy into a crisis of a magnitude it has not seen since the 1930s. A crisis against which the leading world powers have few weapons to deploy, since they have expended their monetary and fiscal “firepower” on the 2008 crisis, to little avail. The low interest rates and high levels of national debt mean that the next big crisis will not be simply “more of the same.” It will fundamentally rearrange the global economy.
While the 1944 Bretton Woods conference sought to re-establish a global economic order that was destroyed in the Great Depression, the formation of the United Nations served a rather different aim. The UN Security Council, with five veto-wielding permanent members, meant that for as long as these five countries abided by its rules, there would be five spheres of influence and therefore also five relatively exclusive economic zones. British leaders in 1945, for example, hardly desired the dissolution of their empire; records of wartime discussions between FDR and Churchill show the two clashed repeatedly over the tariff barriers separating British colonial possessions from international trade. That which became known as the “Iron Curtain” was a feature, not a bug, of that system—Churchill himself wanted one for his empire, after all. However, is the apparent multi-polar system of today any more viable than the one which appeared to emerge after 1945?
The post-WW2 multipolar world did not come to pass because the French and British empires collapsed and its newly independent states became aligned with either the United States or the USSR, and the PRC was in no shape to exert much power outside of its own borders since it was recovering from decades of civil war and foreign occupation. Seven decades after WW2’s conclusion, however, one can readily see that the era of US and European economic dominance is giving way to a multipolar world in which Russia and China are once again capable of standing up for their economic interests.
However, a return to genuine multipolarity does not appear very likely. Russia and China need each other too much to risk conflict by pursuing their own separate and mutually exclusive economic spheres of influence. Rather, we can expect a gradual merger of the two, with Russia playing the leading role in certain geographical areas (for example, the Middle East and the Arctic), while China in others. When it comes to the US and the EU, the situation is slightly more complicated.
While George Orwell imagined the future of Russia (Eurasia) and China (Eastasia) as imperial entities unintegrated with one another, a prediction that does not appear to be coming true, the establishment of Oceania, governed from the United States and UK playing the role of “Airstrip One” seems to be looming every closer. Only the status of Europe remains unclear at this point. The European Union is still unfit to shoulder world power responsibilities, it has barely weathered the last economic crisis, and the next one could easily be the final nail in its coffin. It certainly does not help that the United States is attempting to thoroughly economically dominate the European Union in order to deal with its own economic problems. Reducing European exports to the US and expanding US energy exports to the EU is very high on the list of White House priorities, to the point of risking trade war. Europe’s behavior following the US unilateral JCPOA withdrawal shows that the Europeans are incapable to oppose US power, even if it means defending important economic interests.
On the other hand, and in response to the Trump administration increasingly brazen attempts to subjugate Europe in political and economic terms, France and Germany are pursuing efforts to establish a solid EU “core”. This “core” would boast a European army, a concept whose popularity has grown in recent years, and be capable of collective action in the event of a crisis even if it means shedding the less well integrated eastern and southern EU members or at least relegating them to second-class status. However, it remains to be seen whether anything viable can be created before the next crisis topples the European house of cards and leads to power struggles over the political and economic alignment of the individual European states.
Once that process of coalescence is complete, proxy wars will continue over certain parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, even Latin America, as the two power blocs will struggle over vital markets and resources, using the full array of military, political, economic, cyber, and information weapons that we have seen used in Libya, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela. This hybrid warfare will be accompanied by a level of official propaganda that will make the current “Russiagate” reporting pale in comparison, however, at the same time, the rhetoric will be considerably more heated than the actual level of hostilities between the two nuclear weapons-wielding power blocs. Instead, that propaganda will be used to justify internal political censorship and repression, on a scale even greater than we have seen used against the Yellow Vests protests in France. Deprived of the ability to expand into ever new territories, the West will gradually sink into stagnation , poverty, and domestic disorder. At that point, the world will be in a state of a genuine bi-polar Cold War, a war of political and economic attrition whose outcome is currently impossible to predict.
Filed under: China, EU, Eurasia, Europe, Multipolar World Order, USA, USSR | Tagged: cold war, Great Depression, Iron Curtain, JCPOA, Proxy War | Comments Off on THE NEXT ECONOMIC CRISIS AND THE LOOMING POST-MULTIPOLAR SYSTEM
The soft power of the US coalition has been undermined domestically and abroad from the blatant deceit intrinsic in the project of supporting jihadist takfiri gangs to terrorize, rape and kill Christian, Sunni, secular, and other civilian populations while allegedly fighting a global war on Islamic terrorism.
The small countries targeted by the US coalition are theoretically and strategically important due to their vicinity to Israel. Notwithstanding the scarcity of their resources and their relatively small number of allies in comparison with the opposite camp, they have rejected any reconciliation on the terms offered by Israel.
Israel itself is progressively revealing more overt reconciliation and ties with oil-rich Arab countries: we see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strolling in Warsaw, discussing and shaking hands with Arab leaders. These are obviously not first meetings: recent years have shown a progressively warming rapport and openness between Israel and many Arab leaders.
These Middle East countries have long been supportive of Israel’s aggression against Lebanon and its inhabitants. And in the last decade, this support expanded to include a plot against the Palestinians, Syria and Iraq.
The US has exerted huge pressure on Syria since 2003, following the invasion of Iraq. During Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to Damascus in March 2003 he offered long-lasting governance to President Bashar al-Assad in exchange for submission: Assad was asked to sell out Hamas and Hezbollah, and thus join the road map for the “new Middle East”.
When Powell’s intimidation failed, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the US’s main Arab allies and the countries responsible for cash pay-outs to help the US establishment achieve its goals (and those of Israel), promised to inject untold gold and wealth into Syria.
Assad was not willing to comply with this US-Saudi influence and pressure. The influence belonged to the US; Saudi Arabia and Qatar stood behind, holding the moneybags. A war against the Syrian state became essential, and its objectives and prospective benefits immense.
In a few paragraphs, this is what the seven years of war in Syria were about:
The Palestinian cause was pushed to the periphery by the mushrooming of ISIS, a group that terrorised the Middle East and participated in the destruction of the region’s infrastructure, killing thousands of its people and draining its wealth. It was also responsible for numerous attacks around the globe, extending from the Middle East into Europe. ISIS didn’t attack Israel even though it was based on its borders under the name of “Jayesh Khaled Bin al-Waleed.” Nor did al-Qaeda attack Israel, although it also bordered Israel for years, enjoying Israeli intelligence support–and even medical care!
All this was done in order to destroy Syria: dividing the state into zones of influence, with Turkey taking a big chunk (Aleppo, Afrin, Idlib); the Kurds realising their dream by taking over Arab and Assyrian lands in the northeast to create a land of Rojava linked with Iraqi Kurdistan; Israel taking the Golan Heights permanently and creating a buffer zone by grabbing more territory in Quneitra; creating a failed state where jihadist and mercenary groups would fight each other endlessly for dominance; gathering all jihadists into their favourite and most sacred destination (Bilad al-Sham – The Levant) and sealing them into “Islamic Emirates”.
It also involved, strategically, stopping the flow of weapons from Iran through Damascus to Hezbollah in Lebanon; weakening the Iranian-Syrian-Iraqi-Lebanese “Axis of Resistance” by removing Syria from it; preparing for another war against Lebanon once Syria was wiped off the map; stealing Syria’s oil and gas resources on land and in the Mediterranean; building a gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe to cripple Russia’s economy; and finally removing Russia from the Levant together with its naval base on the coast.
At no point in the Syrian war was a single leader proposed to rule the country and replace Bashar al-Assad. The plan was to establish a zone of anarchy with no ruler; Syria was expected to become the jungle of the Middle East.
It was a plan bigger than Assad and much bigger than the Syrians. Hundreds of billions of dollars were invested by Middle Eastern countries – Saudi Arabia and Qatar – to kill Syrians, destroy their country and accomplish the above objectives. It was a crime against an entire population with the watchful complicity of the modern and “democratic” world.
Many pretexts were given for the Syrian war. It was not only about regime change. It was about creating a jungle state. Think tanks, journalists, academics, ambassadors all joined the fiesta by collaborating in the slaughter of Syrians. Crocodile tears were shed over “humanitarian catastrophes” in Syria even as the poorest country in the Middle East, the Yemen, was and still is being slaughtered while the same mainstream media avert their gaze and conceal the nature of the conflict from the general public.
Anyone who understood the game, or even part of it, was called “Assadist”, a designation meant as an insult. The savage irony? This epithet “Assadist” was freely wielded by the US chattering class- who themselves have evidently never publicly counted and acknowledged the millions killed by the US political establishment over the centuries.
So, what has this global intervention brought about?
Russia has returned to the Levant after a long hibernation. Its essential role has been to stand against the US world hegemony without provoking, or even trying to provoke, a war with Washington. Moscow demonstrated its new weapons, opening markets for its military industry, and showed its military competence without falling into the many traps laid in the Levant during its active presence. It created the Astana agreement to bypass UN efforts to manipulate negotiations, and it isolated the war into several regions and compartments to deal with each part separately. Putin exhibited a shrewd military mind in dealing successfully with the “mother of all wars” in Syria. He ventured skilfully into US territory against its hegemonic goals, and he has created powerful and lasting strategic alliances with Turkey (a NATO member) and Iran.
Iran found fertile ground in Syria to consolidate the “Axis of the Resistance” when the country’s inhabitants (Christian, Sunni, Druse, secular people and other minorities) realised that the survival of their families and their country were at stake. It managed to rebuild Syria’s arsenal and succeeded in supplying Hezbollah with the most sophisticated weapons needed for a classic guerrilla-style war to stop Israel from attacking Lebanon. Assad is grateful for the loyalty of these partners who took the side of Syria even as the world was conspiring to destroy it.
Iran has adopted a new ideology: it is not an Islamic or a Christian ideology but a new one that emerged in the last seven years of war. It is the “Ideology of Resistance”, an ideology that goes beyond religion. This new ideology imposed itself even on clerical Iran and on Hezbollah who have abandonned any goal of exporting an Islamic Republic: instead they support any population ready to stand against the destructive US hegemony over the world.
For Iran, it is no longer a question of spreading Shiism or converting secular people, Sunni or Christians. The goal is for all to identify the real enemy and to stand against it. That is what the West’s intervention in the Middle East is creating. It has certainly succeeded in impoverishing the region: but it has also elicited pushback from a powerful front. This new front appears stronger and more effective than the forces unleashed by the hundreds of billions spent by the opposing coalition for the purpose of spreading destruction in order to ensure US dominance.
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Filed under: Bloody Gas, kurds, Levant, Qatar, Russia, Syria, Syria Golan Heights, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Takfiris, Turkey, Vladimir Putin, War on Syria | Tagged: “Ideology of Resistance”, Proxy War, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Syrian Arab Army SAA, Syrian Resistance, The Axis of Resistance, Warsaw Conference | Comments Off on Reshaping the Middle East: Why the West Should Stop Its Interventions
February 7, 2019 (Tony Cartalucci – NEO) – At face value – the notion that the US occupation of Syria is key to preventing the return of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) to Syrian territory is unconvincing.
Regions west of the Euphrates River where ISIS had previously thrived have since been permanently taken back by the Syrian Arab Army and its Russian and Iranian allies – quite obviously without any support from the United States – and in fact – despite Washington’s best efforts to hamper Damascus’ security operations.
Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies have demonstrated that ISIS can be permanently defeated. With ISIS supply lines running out of NATO-territory in Turkey and from across the Jordanian and Iraqi border cut off – Syrian forces have managed to sustainably suppress the terrorist organization’s efforts to reestablish itself west of the Euphrates.
The very fact that ISIS persists in the sole region of the country currently under US occupation raises many questions about not only the sincerity or lack thereof of Washington’s efforts to confront and defeat ISIS – but over whether or not Washington is deliberately sustaining the terrorist organization’s fighting capacity specifically to serve as a pretext for America’s continued – and illegal – occupation of Syrian territory.
The US Department of Defense Says It Best
A recent report (entire PDF version here) published by the US Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General himself would claim:
According to the DoD, while U.S.-backed Syrian forces have continued the fight to retake the remaining ISIS strongholds in Syria, ISIS remains a potent force of battle-hardened and well-disciplined fighters that “could likely resurge in Syria” absent continued counterterrorism pressure. According to the DoD, ISIS is still able to coordinate offensives and counter-offensives, as well as operate as a decentralized insurgency.
The report also claims:
Currently, ISIS is regenerating key functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria, but absent sustained [counterterrorism] pressure, ISIS could likely resurge in Syria within six to twelve months and regain limited territory in the [Middle Euphrates River Valley (MERV)].
By “continued counterterrorism pressure,” the report specifically means continued US occupation of both Syria and Iraq as well as continued military and political support for proxy militants the US is using to augment its occupation in Syria.
The report itself notes that the last stronghold of ISIS exists specifically in territory under defacto US occupation or protection east of the Euphrates River where Syrian forces have been repeatedly attacked – both by US-backed proxies and by US forces themselves.
The very fact that the report mentions ISIS is “regenerating key functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria” despite the US planning no withdrawal from Iraq seems to suggest just how either impotent or genuinely uninterested the US is in actually confronting and defeating ISIS. As to why – ISIS serves as the most convincing pretext to justify Washington’s otherwise unjustified and continued occupation of both Syria and Iraq.
US DoD’s Own Report Exposes Weakness, Illegitimacy of “Kurdish Independence”
The report is all but an admission that US-backed militants in Syria lack the capability themselves to overcome the threat of ISIS without constant support from Washington. That the report claims ISIS is all but defeated but could “resurge” within a year without US backing – highlights the weakness and illegitimacy of these forces and their political ambitions of “independence” they pursue in eastern Syria.
A Kurdish-dominated eastern Syria which lacks the military and economic capabilities to assert control over the region without the perpetual presence of and backing of US troops – only further undermines the credibility of Washington’s Kurdish project east of the Euphrates.
The Syrian government – conversely – has demonstrated the ability to reassert control over territory and prevent the return of extremist groups – including ISIS.
Were the United States truly dedicated to the destruction of ISIS – it is clear that it would support forces in the region not only capable of achieving this goal – but who have so far been the only forces in the region to do so.
ISIS as a Pretext for Perpetual US Occupation
In reality – the US goal in both Syria and Iraq is to undermine the strength and unity of both while incrementally isolating and encircling neighboring Iran. The US itself deliberately created ISIS and the many extremist groups fighting alongside it.
It was in a leaked 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo that revealed the US and its allies’ intent to create what it called at the time a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria. The memo would explicitly state that (emphasis added):
If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).
On clarifying who these supporting powers were, the DIA memo would state:
The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.
The “Salafist” (Islamic) “principality” (State) would indeed be created precisely in eastern Syria as US policymakers and their allies had set out to do. It would be branded the “Islamic State” and be used first to wage a more muscular proxy war against Damascus – and when that failed – to invite US military forces to intervene in the conflict directly.
Several years onward, and with the abject failure of the US proxy war in Syria all but complete, the shattered remnants of ISIS are sheltered exclusively in regions now under the defacto protection of US forces and are being used as a pretext to delay or altogether prevent any significant withdrawal of US forces.
While many see the announcement of a US troop withdrawal from Syria by US President Donald Trump and attempts to backtrack away from the withdrawal as a struggle between the White House and the Pentagon – it is much more likely the result of a collapsing foreign policy vacillating between bad options and worse options.
The inability – so far – of Israeli airstrikes to even penetrate Syrian air defenses let alone cause any significant damage on the ground in Syria has further highlighted Western impotence and complicated Washington’s plans moving onward into the future.
Turkey’s teetering policy regarding Syria and the prospects of it being drawn deeper into Syrian territory to“take over” the US occupation – as described by the DoD Inspector General’s report – will only further overextend and mire Turkish forces, creating vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited by everyone sitting at the negotiation tables opposite Ankara.
It is still uncertain what Ankara will do, but as an initially willing partner in US-engineered proxy war in Syria – it is now left with its own unpalatable options of bad and worse.
It is interesting that even the DoD Inspector General’s report mentions ISIS’ continued fighting capacity depends on foreign fighters and “external donations” – yet never explores the obvious state sponsorship required to sustain both. The DoD report and US actions themselves have all but approached openly defending the remnants of ISIS.
While the prospect of violently overthrowing the Syrian government seems to have all but passed, the US is still trying to justify its presence in Syria at precisely the junctions ISIS and other terrorist organizations are moving fighters and weapons into the country through – in northern Syria, in southeast Syria near the Iraqi border, and at Al Tanf near the Iraqi-Jordanian border.
Were the US to seek to consolidate its proxies and initiate a “resurge” of ISIS – the very scenario it claims it seeks to prevent – its control of these vital entry points into Syria and Iraq would be paramount. Allowing them to fall into Syrian and Iraqi forces’ hands to be secured and cut off would – ironically – spell the end of ISIS in both nations.
While Washington’s words signal a desire to defeat ISIS – its actions are the sole obstruction between ISIS and its absolute defeat.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Filed under: Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), IRAQ, Kurdistan, kurds, Russia, Takfiris, The Islamic Republic of Iran, Turkey, US-led NATO Alliance, USA, War on Syria | Tagged: America's Dirty Wars, Donald Trump, East Euphrates, ISIL, Proxy War, Syrian Arab Army SAA, Tony Cartalucci | Comments Off on The US Syria Withdrawal and the Myth of the Islamic State’s “Return”
Mohsen Abdelmoumen: In your masterful book “Britain’s Secret Wars”, you demonstrate the hidden face of British politics and its direct involvement in major conflicts via its intelligence services. Do not you think that Britain is responsible, like its US ally, for the chaos that reigns in areas like the Middle East and the Sahel?
Dr. T. J. Coles: Yes. Britain has both historic and contemporary responsibilities for much of the carnage in the Middle East, Central Asia, and elsewhere. There are different degrees of responsibility. When a gang commits a crime, for example, a murder and armed robbery, each member of the gang is sentenced by a court of law in accordance with the degree of their participation in the crime. The person who pulled the trigger is the murderer, their associate is the accomplice, and so on. The same principle applies, or if we care about morality should apply, to international affairs. At the moment, the US is the global superpower, so the US bears most of the responsibility for invading Afghanistan, firing drones at Pakistanis, Somalis, and Yemenis, invading Iraq, and using proxy terrorists in Syria and Libya.
But Britain and more recently France are also involved. So, the leaders of these countries must also take responsibility for their actions.
As far as Britain is concerned, the UK has a long history of using violence against Arabs, Kurds, and other peoples of the region. Afghanistan has never invaded the UK, yet Britain’s recent military operations in Afghanistan mark the fourth invasion of that country in less than 200 years. Historically, the UK wanted to ensure that Afghanistan would serve as a trading route with and a bulwark against invasions of its main colonial prize, India. With the Third Anglo-Afghan War (1919), colonialists using the newly-created British air force were asking about “the rules for this kind of cricket” (Sir John Maffey), meaning the casual murder of Afghans by air power. The same applies to Iraq. Britain essentially invaded Iraq in the late-1830s, when armed trading ships sailed the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, bringing what the colonialists called “civilization” to “the sons of lawlessness” (later private secretary to Sir Percy Cox, R.E. Cheeseman). By the 1920s, British air power was being used against Iraqis, too. The colonialists of the time called this “spanking” the naughty Iraqis, whom they regarded as children (colonial administrator B.H. Bourdillon). By then, Britain’s interests in Iraq, Iran, and what became Saudi Arabia concerned those nations’ oil reserves.
This kind of direct responsibility for atrocities against colonial subjects continued until after the Second War World, when the US became the superpower and subjugated growing numbers of people, particularly in Latin America but increasingly in the Middle East, which was recognized to be the oil-center of the world. Britain and the US killed at least half a million Iraqi children in the 1990s with the blockade and then went on to murder another million people with the US-led “shock and awe” invasion (2003) and the destabilization of the already fragile country that followed. Western media simply suppressed the news that the US-British puppet governments, especially that of Nouri al-Maliki, were as bad in terms of human rights abuses as Daesh (Islamic State), which arrived on the scene a few years later. Under al-Maliki, whose forces were armed and trained by Britain and the US, a thousand Iraqis were put on death-row, many of them students, trade unionists, activists, and so on. The police tortured prisoners with broken glass and drills. Many journalists were killed. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reported on this, most of the media did not.
In fact, the British public, thanks to the media’s omission of facts, underestimates the level of the damage wrought upon Iraq after 2003: and even before with the sanctions. Most Britons, when polled a few years ago, thought that 10,000 Iraqis had died when epidemiological studies estimate that over 1 million lost their lives.
Among the so-called intelligentsia, there is a slight recognition that the kind of crimes committed over a century ago did indeed happen and that they were morally unacceptable. Richard Gott is one such historian. Others, however, like Niall Ferguson, continue to use racist language. He described Iraq as a “sun-scorched sandpit” and ridiculed what he called the Middle East’s “retarded political culture” (quoted from his book, Colossus).
But try to find any sustained criticism of British foreign policy when it comes to more modern wars, particularly less known ones. Just ten years ago, the UK, quite apart from supporting US interests, participated in ethnic cleansing. In 2013, I was the first researcher or journalist (writing in the US journal Peace Review) to document British arms supplies to the Sinhalese government of Sri Lanka. Britain sold the arms before, during, and after the Sinhalese government’s ethnic cleansing of 40,000 Tamil civilians between March and April 2009. Since then, only one other person, journalist Phil Miller, has documented British involvement. But Miller’s research has appeared in alternative media, not in the mainstream. Miller (who hates me for some reason) was recently able to publish a piece in the Guardian about Britain’s historical role in Sri Lanka (in the 1970s), but he could not say much about current or recent crimes there. This is the nature of the media. The same is happening now in Burma (Myanmar). Nobody is reporting the fact that the British armed forces are training the Burmese Army at a time when it is committing an ethnic cleansing of Rohingya people.
The French-British intervention in Libya that has destabilized the Sahel and all Africa and caused chaos is it not a serious political mistake whose political leaders must answer in courthouse, namely President Sarkozy for France and Prime Minister David Cameron for Britain?
There is a pattern. It is also recognized by the Belgian journalist, Michel Collon. First, the US and Britain organize, train, arm, and instruct a terrorist network. Next, they label that terrorist network “freedom fighters” or “moderate rebels.” They then instruct or authorize that network to attack the government of a sovereign nation. None of this is reported in Western media, so politicians and the public who might otherwise know what’s really going on and oppose war remain ignorant of the geopolitical turmoil being created by Western proxies. The sovereign government under attack by the terrorists then tries to defend its interests, using violence to do so. Only then do Western media report on the situation. They report the violence of the government defending itself, ignoring all of the provocations of the terrorist proxies. Finally, a plea for “humanitarian intervention” is issued by the Western governments working with the proxies. The plea is to save innocent civilians from the foreign government, which is, in fact, defending its own interests.
As far as I can tell, this pattern was laid in Serbia in 1999. There was a region of Serbia, Kosovo, comprised mainly of Kosovar-Albanians. These were ordinary civilians who were not particularly nationalistic. The majority seemed to want to remain Serbian. But the US and Britain wanted to break up Serbia because an energy pipeline intersected there, hence the US constructed the military Camp Bondsteel on the intersection. Future-NATO Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Schefer, said years later that energy companies essentially lobbied NATO to “intervene” in Serbia. “Let’s be glad that the gas is flowing again,” he said. So, the US and Britain, using the public relations company Ruder Finn, put together the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to stoke secessionist sentiments in Kosovo. The KLA leaders were quite open about their intentions to attack government and even civilian targets. Furthermore, several British House of Commons Library reports published prior to the NATO bombing confirm this.
When Serbia’s leader Milošević responded with violence, the US and Britain, or “international community” as the media claim, made increasingly absurd allegations, that tens- to hundreds-of-thousands of Kosovar-Albanian civilians had been killed by Milošević. No evidence was provided. The British government at the time confirmed that 2,000 people on both sides had been killed in the civil war: not the hundreds of thousands of Kosovars, as we were told. In violation of international law, NATO began bombing Serbia in March 1999. NATO killed a couple of thousand people (we don’t really know because we don’t investigate our own crimes) and has left tens of thousands of cluster bomblets (little, cluster-type bombs which can be carried by the wind) scattered all over the fields of Serbia for children to step on and get blown up, according to the Red Cross. So much for humanitarian intervention.
The same pattern was repeated in Libya. For years, the UK sheltered Islamist fanatics like Anas al-Libya and Ramadan Abdei in London and Manchester. The right-wing Daily Mail newspaper reported that in October 2010, the British were training anti-Gaddafi forces on a “farm” (which means training camp in intelligence nomenclature). At the same time, the British continued training and arming Gaddafi’s forces because, in 2004, Gaddafi had agreed to let Western energy companies exploit Libya’s resources. But the same companies involved in the exploitation of Libyan energy complained that Gaddafi’s privatization “reforms” were too slow. At the same time, the US was pushing for regime change in Syria by funding the opposition to Bashar al-Assad. The date of October 2010 is important because it predates the Libyan Arab Spring by about four months. So, contrary to media claims, the anti-Gaddafi “rebels” were not part of the Arab Spring. These and other terrorists, or “rebels” as the Western media called them, essentially hijacked the otherwise peaceful Libyan Arab Spring. With British weapons and training, Gaddafi’s military used force to crush the protestors, but also the terrorists who were also being trained and armed by Britain. This is the old divide and rule tactic. As with Serbia in 1999, Western politicians claimed, again with no evidence, that Gaddafi was about to launch an “ethnic cleansing” in Benghazi (which just happened to be where most of the Islamists were based. In reality, Gaddafi might have defeated the Western proxies). On this lie, 30,000 Libyan civilians were wiped out by NATO and the terrorists, according to the puppet TNC government installed by Britain, the US, and France.
The only difference with the pattern in Syria is that NATO did not get involved and Daesh clashed with the “moderate rebels” (terrorists) used by the US, France, and Britain to depose Assad.
As far as international law is concerned, each of these actions are war crimes. The British government still refuses to release in full the advice given to it by the Attorney-General over Libya, which suggests that the Attorney-General had advised the Prime Minister, David Cameron, against the invasion in March 2011. But powerful people do not face justice from the very courts that they create and support. The International Criminal Court at The Hague has lost all credibility if it even had any. Tony Blair and George W. Bush committed the most blatant act of aggression by invading Iraq in 2003. Ministers try to argue, not very convincingly, that “humanitarian intervention,” as in the cases of Serbia and Libya, are different; that they are somehow at least legally questionable. But the reality is that these were war crimes. Iraq, though, is an even more blatant case. Blair and Bush were never tried, even though the UN Secretary-General at the time, the late Kofi Annan, said that the invasion was a war crime, and even the British government’s Chilcot Inquiry said so, using polite language. It’s mostly Balkans war criminals and Black people from African being put on trial at the Hague. It’s a neo-colonial arrangement. In response, Uganda led the call for other African nations to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Court, citing its hypocrisy.
The United States and Great Britain, supporting and arming terrorist groups that ended up bombing Europe, are they not guilty before their people for having made a pact with the devil?
There’s even a semi-official name for it. Extremist preachers, like Omar Bakri, call it “the covenant.”The unwritten arrangement is that they work for the British intelligence services and in exchange, they are left alone to preach their extreme interpretations of Islam, free from legal prosecution and deportation. But it’s not really a covenant, given that Britain has been successively attacked, supposedly by associates of these people; assuming we believe the official story, of course. Bakri himself left the UK and has access to mainstream media, supposedly from Lebanon. Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada have also been extradited. So, the “covenant” is just a smokescreen for journalists or politicians who ask too many questions. The reality is that these men are just proxies of the intelligence services.
The most blatant case was that of Salman Abedi.I mentioned his father Ramadan above. Then-Home Secretary and now PM Theresa May had, what former MI6 officer and intelligence expert Alastair Crooke called, an “open door” policy on migration for jihadis. The Abedi family were allowed to travel from the UK to Libya, even being rescued by the Ministry of Defence, apparently, during and after the 2011 war. By the time Daesh was a significant force in Libya, Salman had come of age and went to train with them. If we are to believe the media, he murdered 22 British people in May 2017 in an alleged suicide bomb attack. That single act alone should have collapsed the British government. Newspaper headlines should have read: “PM Theresa May had ‘open door’ policy for suicide bomber.”But nothing was said. A few people on the fringes, like Nafeez Ahmed (an excellent journalist) and Mark Curtis (a brilliant historian) noticed. John Pilger on the progressive left and Peter Oborne on the libertarian right were only mainstream voices.
But this is just one case. Extremists have been linked to the intelligence services for a long time:Abu Qatada (described as “bin Laden’s right-hand man”); Abu Hamza (of the Finsbury Park Mosque); Haroon Aswat (a suspect in the London 2005 bombings); Michael Adebolajo (alleged co-killer of Fusilier Lee Rigby); and so on. The right-wing screams that the government of the day (even if it is a right-wing government) is “too soft” in allowing these extremists to live in the UK. The left-wing replies, “Well, these people don’t represent Islam.” But neither side can admit that these people are puppets of the intelligence services. The services use them for a variety of reasons, including as proxies. What is particularly disturbing is that in open-source Ministry of Defence documents, which the media don’t report, it is acknowledged that “proxies” will be used by states where direct warfare cannot be engaged in and that such proxies “may prove difficult to control,” hence the risk of blowback to domestic civilians.
We should also remember that, as horrifying as the London 2005 attacks and Manchester 2017 attacks were, people in the Middle East and North Africa endure this kind of terrorism every day, namely from US-British-French drone strikes. But in the UK, we don’t think of daily drone blasts and the threat of being eliminated at any second as terrorism. By 2014, around 2,500 people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan had been murdered by US drone operators: the overwhelming majority were civilian and the rest were suspects, not “terrorists.” Calling them terrorists is a matter for international or domestic law courts, not media propagandists. Many of the peoples in those regions live in constant fear of being instantly incinerated by machines called Predators and Reapers that fire missiles called Hellfire in operations like “Widowmaker.” Western media carefully shield domestic publics from the reality of what drones do to the flesh and bone of men, women, and children, as well as to their mental health. So, when revenge acts of terrorism occur in Europe and the US, to the domestic populations it seems as if these acts have come out of nowhere. The explanation offered by the right-wing is that Muslims hate our freedoms, and so on.
You wrote the book very interesting and very researched “Real Fake News: Techniques of Propaganda and Deception-based Mind Control, from Ancient Babylon to Internet Algorithms”. The mainstream media have been involved in imperialist wars by relaying propaganda from the US military and its allies. Today we notice that there is a debate about the fake news. Have mainstream media kept their credibility? Do not they serve the dominant interests and is this debate on fake news not just wrong and biased? Can we receive journalistic ethics lessons from some media that claim to be references like NY Time, CNN, BBC, etc. while they are propaganda media of dominant interests, watchdogs?
Fake news isn’t confined to the media. The medical industry spreads fake news about the brilliance of its products, even going so far as setting up fake journals to give their drugs positive reviews. Industry experts write papers and hire academics to put their names to them. In the early days of war reporting, when film and photography came into use, the technology was so novel that war correspondents could get away with faking battle scenes, using actors. Many “classic” war photos are actually re-enactments. Today, we can tell that some images are frauds, but at the time they looked real to an audience unfamiliar with the new technology. Then there’s colonial fake news: that the famines in Ireland in the 19th century were caused by potato blight, when in fact colonial Britain understood perfectly well that the blight was merely a trigger. The underlying causes of the famine were the transformation of Irish agriculture by the British into monocultures for export and domestic markets, like potatoes, as well as the exportation of food to the UK during the starvation period.
So fake news is nothing new and its general aim is to keep the public subordinated to power.
Has that changed with the internet, where information can come from the ground up? Not much. If you look at the most popular blogs and websites from ten or 15 years ago – Huffington Post, Politico, the Daily Beast, Vice — you find that many were set up by figures who worked for mainstream newspapers. Ariana Huffington, for instance, was already a millionaire when she co-founded the Huffington Post with Andrew Breitbart, who, with the backing of the billionaire Robert Mercer, later established Breitbart News. So, under the pretense of using this revolutionary new medium, the “alternative” sites were dominated by establishment figures. In addition, it’s important to remember that we hear claims that the mainstream media–CNN, BBC, New York Times, etc,–have declined in audience ratings. It’s true that print revenues for newspapers are down, but if you look at the rankings online, the most popular news sites are not generally the alternative sources, they are the establishment: Daily Mail, BBC, New York Times, Yahoo!(which sources from the Associated Press, Reuters), and so on.
Trust in mainstream sources has been declining for years. Some polls suggest that even the respected BBC is now less trusted than Wikipedia, which is itself a source of disinformation, as journalist Helen Buyniski has documented. This steady decline in trust has occurred for the very simple reason that media coverage of events do not reflect the everyday experiences of ordinary people. In the US and Britain, most media are private corporations that have an interest in presenting to people a picture of the world that reflects the interests and, crucially, experiences of the major shareholders and CEOs of corporations. Occasional articles here or there present a different picture, but the general tone is one conducive to elite interests. The so-called “liberal” media, like the New York Times, tend to be culturally liberal in terms of supporting gay rights or empathizing with refugees. This annoys the right-wing, whose media are culturally “conservative” (meaning antihuman). But when it comes to key issues, such as workers’ rights or economic regulation (the kind of things that could really help ordinary people), neither left nor right media reflect most people’s major concerns.
If we look at the issues that matter to most people, they are the economy, employment, and migration. A study by the Reuters Institute and Oxford University analyzed hundreds of media articles published after the financial crisis of ’08. They found that the vast majority of reporting was either neutral or pro-financial sector. That simply didn’t reflect reality, so why would anyone trust that kind of reporting, either on the left or on the right? This generalizes. When it comes to foreign policy, the mainstream consensus is that war is good. The “conservative” Fox News sold the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on a pack of lies, just as much as the “liberal” New York Times did. More recently, President Trump’s rhetoric, though not the reality, has been against foreign wars. The alternative far-right media support this narrative, but they do so with strong anti-Islamic bias, to the point of Islamophobia, in fact. Take, say, Breitbart News’ coverage of Daesh. Breitbart claimed that in its Issue 15 of its jihadi magazine Dabiq, Daesh said that it will always attack Westerners because most of us are non-Muslim. The BBC, which is considered to be a liberal news organization reported on it, too. The only difference between the reporting is that the BBC implied that not all Muslims are extremists, whereas as Breitbart implied that Issue 15 of Dabiq was typical of Islam.
The trouble is that Issue 15 was a fraud, probably published by US intelligence. Daesh issued a statement warning its followers not to read Issue 15. So, the BBC a respect organization was quoting from a fraud as if it was real. This important revelation about the fakery was reported in a single news outlet, as far as I can see: Vice online. So, we cannot trust the so-called alternative any more than we can trust the mainstream. We have to evaluate evidence and be skeptical about everything we see, hear, and read—including about what I’m saying.
We should also be wary of self-appointed fact-checkers. You shouldn’t let some else check facts on your behalf. How do you know if they’re telling you the truth? Take Snopes and its article on the Iran nuclear deal. Nowhere in that article do you see the reports from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists or other experts who say that not only does Iran have a right to develop nuclear energy but various UN reports have confirmed that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. The Bulletin’s reporters also note that the US has pressured the UN to unconstitutionally probe Iranian weapons facilities to a greater extent than the agreements require. So, as usual, the US is a bully. But an even bigger question is, what right does the US have to impose any kind of “deal” on Iran or indeed any country? If we want to follow international law, that’s for the UN to decide. The idea that the US has an inherent right to make Iran or North Korea adhere to a deal is also fake news.
About your enlightening book “Great Brexit Swindle“, do not you think that the vote for Brexit was a scam that serves the interests of the ruling classes, bankers, billionaires, the 1%, at the expense of the disadvantaged classes?
The British elites, including politicians and businesses, are split over whether to Leave or Remain in the EU. A majority of elites clearly favor Remain, hence the Leave agenda has stalled, for the time. However, a powerful lobby wants to exit the EU for its own financial interests, not in the interests of ordinary working people, or even in the class interests of fellow elites. I call the two camps the Heseltine Faction, after the neoliberal Remainer, Michael Heseltine: and the other, the Lawson Faction, after the ultra-neoliberal Leaver, Nigel Lawson; both of whom are former Conservative cabinet ministers. So, the pro-Leave agenda was a scam by a small number of the ruling elite, namely those who want to deregulate financial markets (the Lawson Faction).
It’s important to remember that more than 50% of Conservative party funding comes from hedge funds and other financial institutions, so Remain politicians are financially blackmailed to push through Brexit by the financial institutions and party donors that want to Leave.
It’s pretty clear that the majority of business owners and politicians wanted to Remain in the European Union. For them, slow economic growth in a neoliberal Union was preferable to the uncertainty of Leaving. Investment banks call this “stability” and “predictability,” which is why they like to promote multilateral trade and investment deals or unions, like the EU, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and so on. But for the last 20 years or more, a new breed of profiteer class has grown in importance: financial services and their specialists. Financial services include insurance companies, hedge funds, liquidity firms, and so on. They have an opposite view to the more traditional neoliberals. They believe that bilateral trade and investment work best because they aren’t importing and exporting products that need assembling and reimporting, the way traditional producers are. They rely on digital transactions that require very little human resources. For them, the new and more profitable economy is pure money: making money from money. They see lucrative markets in the growing economies of Asia. These are ultra-neoliberals. So the neoliberal EU is terrible for working people, but the ultra-neoliberal financial markets economy is even worse.
Brexit and the political fallout is due to this battle between the status quo neoliberals who think they ought to Remain part of the EU and the ultra-neoliberals who want to Leave. Elements of the Conservative party in the UK have always hated Europe because some of the strongest players, notably France, have retained some state controls over their economies. The ultra-neoliberals in the UK want as few state controls as possible, except where state controls benefit their cronies. For example, they were happy to have state intervention to bail out the banks after the crisis in ’08-09. But they were not happy when the EU imposed some rules (MIFID and MIFID II) on financial transactions. The government’s Bank of England was not under the control of the European Central Bank, contrary to what a lot of Britons thought. But private financiers were constrained by EU directives.
The interests of the ultra-neoliberal faction coincided with the anger of a large number of working-class Britons who were conditioned by media propaganda to believe that the EU was responsible for their economic misery. Had the British been Greek or Irish, it would have been true. In those countries, the deliberate choice to impose brutal financial austerity on the public of Europe came from the EU bureaucrats and Troika: the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the US-led International Monetary Fund. But British fiscal and monetary policy is not determined by the EU due to the fact that Britain never accepted the euro as its currency or accepted European Central Bank jurisdiction. In fact, Britain was, in some ways, never really part of the EU. It never accepted the euro as its currency, never signed onto the Schengen Area of free movement, and it opted out of a record number of agreements. On occasion, EU Directives are cited by the British government as the pretext to privatize public assets. For example, the privatization of Royal Mail, the British postal service, was enacted under an EU Directive that made privatization mandatory. But successive British governments were committed to privatization anyway, regardless of EU membership.
As this was going on politically, serious public discontent over the status quo was brewing among working-class Britons, particularly Northerners. The City of London, in the South, has disproportionate influence over people’s lives. It is in London where policy is set and budgets are finalized. Ordinary people who have little control over their lives are at the mercy of hated, London-centric political elites. There’s also a lot of racism and xenophobia in the UK. People say that foreign workers are taking “their” jobs and “their” housing. There’s some truth to that. There is a shortage of affordable housing and decent, well-paying jobs. But instead of pushing the government via local political representatives to spend more money building council houses and investing in skills for British working people, the public have been trained by the right-wing media–the Sun, the Daily Mail, and others–to blame economically vulnerable people (the immigrants) for their plight.EU arrangements on freedom of movement made it possible for migrants from Poland and elsewhere to get easy access to the UK. It was after the mid-2000s that the real Euroscepticism (i.e., hatred of Europe) accelerated among the British working-class. The lack of government investment, particularly in the North, an aging population (people tend to get more right-wing as they get older), and an influx of migrants created a powder keg.
After the financial crisis in 2007-08, the EU imposed some very minor financial reforms on the institutions that caused the crash. Some of them didn’t like this and lobbied the Conservative party in the UK to Leave the EU in order to avoid the regulation. They were able to exploit working people’s hatred of the EU and thus we have Brexit. It’s very easy to prove what’s going on, but try finding a mention of it in the media.
US politicians have always been in the pockets of big business. But Trump has taken it even further, writing in his book The America We Deserve (2000) that “nonpoliticians,” meaning businessmen (and most of them are men) “represent the wave of the future.”So, Trump is what happens when big business takes over.
Trump portrayed himself as a rebel, an outsider. That’s nonsense. Trump is or was friends with the Clintons. There are photos of him golfing with Bill. He went from “lock her up” (referring to Hillary) on the campaign to, “They’re good people. I don’t wanna hurt them…”(the Clintons) as President-elect. The Trump supporters and fanatics like Alex Jones like to ignore these facts. Trump is also a pure opportunist. He’s not a far-right ideologue like Steve Bannon. Back in 1999 with Tim Russert on Meet the Press, Trump was asked what he thought of the Republicans. He said that they were “too crazy right.” Trump’s view at the time simply reflected the mood of the country, not his personal ideology. Most Americans were relatively Democratic, hence the electoral win of Democrat Al Gore a year later, which was stolen for George W. Bush by the electoral college. But as the Democrats under Obama and candidate Hillary Clinton moved further to the right, many potential Democrat voters gave up on the party. As this was going on, an insurgency in the form of the Tea Party was taking place on the right, and gaining momentum. Although he distanced himself from the Tea Party because it was not right-wing enough, Steve Bannon associated with them for a while. Trump sensed that enough of the country had been radicalized against the Democrats and against the so-called “moderate Republicans” (whom he called “crazy right” in the late-90s) to make his presidency tenable. It’s pure careerism.
How did Trump succeed? He won, technically, because of the electoral college system. But the roots go deeper. Why were there enough Americans willing to vote for this disgusting figure? From the end of the Second World War until the mid-to-late-1970s, the US was a kind of state-capitalist nation. Banks invested in communities: in housing, cars, people’s futures, and so on. The economy was relatively stable, minus a couple of comparatively small recessions. To counter those, there were some significant social programmes, like President Johnson’s Great Society project, or “war on poverty.” Even President Nixon was forced to enact legislation written by progressives like Ralph Nader. But the financial elites also pushed for economic deregulation. Over the next few decades, the entire political spectrum drift further to the right, where the Democrats became Republicans and Republicans became far-right lunatics, or at least the Trump faction.
The socioeconomic consequences were serious. The poor largely gave up voting as the Democrats, their traditional representatives, simply turned to the Wall Street elites for funding. The middle- and upper-middle classes, the kind of people who voted for Trump in the 2016 election, not only saw their share of the wealth decline over the previous few decades, they also saw demographic changes. The Bill Clinton-signed NAFTA “free trade” deal led to an increase in Mexican migration, as 2 million Mexican farming jobs were wiped out. NAFTA was actually finalized by George Bush I, but Trump supporters dismiss that by saying that Bush was really too left-wing(!). In addition, the Black population has continued to grow. So, many white, middle-class Americans, particularly rural ones, see their income decline, their quality of life suffer, their children’s lives get harder, and what they see as “their” country being taken over by “illegals” and Blacks. Until Trump, the Republican voters and backers were split over Tea Partiers and those who held less extreme views. But neither faction particularly appealed to the kind of voters whose lives had been getting progressively worse, hence the major hedge fund backers gave up on candidate Ted Cruz and reluctantly shifted their money over to Donald Trump, who appealed to these generations of unfortunates with his catchy slogans: “lock her up!”, “Drain the swamp!”, “Make America Great Again,” etc.
Trump’s only “rebellious” qualities are his public displays of vulgarity. In the real world, his major donors were the very same people who deregulated and wrecked the economy; the financial sector. As the media eat up the nonsense about his alleged senility, sex life, dietary habits, and so on, the real policies, his Executive Orders, are signed behind closed doors with little comment:the setting up of a task-force on more financial markets and financial technologies (which will ultimately lead to another crash in thirty or so years’ time);the ripping up of climate regulations to make air quality even worse and extract more fossil fuels;the renegotiation of NAFTA to make it easier to export more US biotech (which could include genetically-modified goods);expanding the bombing of the Middle East; and the continuation of the missile system aimed at Russia, which could lead to nuclear war.
In your book “Fire and Fury”, you make a statement of what is happening in Southeast Asia. In your opinion, what is behind the Trump administration’s dubious game targeting China and North Korea?
Trump is being berated by the “liberal” mainstream media for doing what any sensible politician would do (not that Trump is sensible!), namely making moves to de-escalate tensions with North Korea. The situation is extremely precarious, with US-EU sanctions on North Korea pushing the population literally to the edge of survival, plunging many (we don’t have the exact numbers) into famine; and with North Korea test-firing missiles over Japan, a close US-ally.
There is a history behind this. After WWII, the US carved Korea into two entities, North and South. In the South, the US worked with a dictatorial regime that murdered tens of thousands of Koreans. The pretense for supporting this regime was anti-communism. The North was essentially ceded to Soviet control in the form of US appeasement to Stalin. Now-declassified US military documents reveal that Western war planners understood that Stalin did not want to invade the South. Other declassified documents reveal that the North’s invasion of the South in 1950 was a response to US-South Korea military build-ups. Not that it was justified, but it could be read as a form of pre-emptive war; the mantra of George W. Bush in 2003 when he invaded Iraq. In response to the North’s predicted invasion of the South, the US, by its own military records, wiped out 20% of the population of the North and destroyed 90% of its buildings. Other documents reveal that, having learned its lesson about the sheer brutality of the US empire and war machine, the North Korean regime built fortified subterranean bunkers in case of future attacks.
Since then, the US has violated treaty after treaty with the North. Far from being this weird country closed off to the world, as Western media claims, North Korea has been deliberately isolated by the US. Violating the Armistice Agreement, the US positioned weapons, possibly nuclear, in South Korea in the 1950s. Despite this, a CIA report says that there was a “decade of quiet,” until the US invaded Vietnam and provoked North Korea into starting tit-for-tat maneuvers as a warning to the US. This began four phases of build-ups, mainly involving US-South Korean military exercises which have increased in size since the 1960s. The US even war-games nuclear attacks on the North. The right-wing Heritage Foundation acknowledges that it was as late as 1994 that the US attempted diplomacy with the North. But when George W. Bush came to power and labeled North Korea part of the “Axis of Evil,” the diplomacy vanished. The US never lived up to its commitments to replace North Korea’s nuclear reactors, supply fuel, and so on. So, in response, North Korea re-initiated its nuclear weapons programme, which even US military experts—like the annual threat assessments to Congress—agree are designed to deter US attacks against it. Try finding that in the media.
But it’s important to remember that the US has no legal or moral right to make North Korea give up its nuclear programme, any more than North Korea has a right to make the US give up its own.
In terms of Trump’s strategy, I think we need to look at the bigger picture. When it comes to foreign policy, the Pentagon is in charge. There are lobbyists and the media are very pro-war. Congresspeople who vote against military budgets and war, if there are any, are told that they’re being unpatriotic. The Pentagon sees itself as the military guarantor of a global architecture that enables the US to run the world. They call it “full spectrum dominance” and cite the satellites that enable our internet, banking, GPS, air traffic control, shipping, and so on, to operate. Their mission is to “protect” this infrastructure and in doing so shape the world for US corporate interests. Until the 1980s, South Korea was a kind of capitalist economy. It had some state controls and traded and exported via relatively normal tariffs with the rest of the world. But by the 1990s, that had changed. South Korea is now a neoliberal economy. The same pattern is repeated, but less successfully in China, which is now a semi-neoliberal economy with state controls. North Korea is getting there, very slowly. So the entire region is shifting toward US-led neoliberalism.
I can’t prove it, but I suspect that the US wants a united, neoliberal Korea to act as a strategic bulwark against China: to make China continue with the kind of neoliberal policies that benefit US corporations like Apple and to ensure that, militarily, China doesn’t get too big for its boots. The US wouldn’t suddenly allow peace and the possibility of reunification between the two Koreas unless it served some, as-yet unclear, interest.
Your important book “Human Wrongs: British Social Policy and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” goes against the popular belief relayed by propaganda and the media lies (you mention the deaths of 20,000 pensioners a year who can not pay for their heating, 40,000 people who die every year from air pollution, the limits on freedom of speech, the massive surveillance of the British by deep State, etc.). This book has the merit of showing the true face of Britain. Do not you think it’s nonsense to talk about human rights and democracy in Britain?
It’s not nonsense to talk of human rights in Britain. Britain has more domestic human rights than, say, Saudi Arabia. But it is nonsense to think that rights were given by elites. The history of rights is a long one. In various history books like A.L. Morton’s A People’s History of England or E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, we see that the origins of trade unions, the women’s movement, enfranchisement for working people, and so on, were hard-won by popular resistance. For example, by the year 1700 just 3% of the population, the aristocratic class, had the right to vote. By 1800, so-called Combination Acts were passed in order to prevent working people from forming associations. These became known as trade unions. Next year will mark the 200thanniversary of the Peterloo Massacre—the massacre of 15 people who had protested the socioeconomic conditions of the time. It was as late as 1884 with the passing of the Third Reform Act that working-class men over the age of 21 won the right to vote. The rights that exist today should not be dismissed out of hand, but more rights need to be won. The elites can pass more laws to hinder unions, but they can’t, for example, massacre Britons in the street as they did 200 years ago.
However, by comparison to other European countries, Britain’s rights are seriously lacking. On all sorts of measures, from maternal and infant mortality to child well-being and life expectancy, Britain’s level is very low. In fact, Britain is like an Eastern European, ex-Soviet country. The reason for this is economic neoliberalism and, unlike European countries, which are also neoliberal to an extent, the dissolution of state controls over the economy. After the Second War World, Britain was so wrecked that national investment and rebuilding was required. The nascent Labour Party, then just 45 years old, succeeded in convincing enough people to back comprehensive state reconstruction. The National Health Service was established and social security guaranteed for everyone. The Conservatives (Tories) hated the idea but conceded that both had popular support. By the 1970s, the so-called New Conservativism was established. The Labour Party moved further to the right, with the help of American money (Giles Scott-Smith has good material on this). By the 1980s, socialism was old-hat and even derided as dangerous. Increasingly brutal financial austerity and anti-union laws were passed against the backdrop of a “greed is good” culture.
The socioeconomic consequences have been horrendous. Since the year 2010 and with the imposition of more austerity following the financial crisis, 120,000 people have died due to social cutbacks. It’s a death-toll that Islamic State could only dream of inflicting. And it is a choice. If we compare Britain to other economies like Germany, France, and Italy, those which have tighter controls, we see fewer deaths and less social misery. That’s changing now with the neoliberal Macron in power in France, but the situation continues to remain markedly better for Britain’s counterparts in Europe.
I wrote the book Human Wrongs in response to this year being the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The kind of social policies that I mentioned have extreme consequences for the poorest. In fact, Britain has violated all 30 articles of the UDHR in recent years; and that’s on domestic issues alone, never mind foreign policy. These include the right to life and the right to be free from torture, to more subtle rights, like the right to decent housing and the right to adequate pay. The people in power want to exploit the population as much as possible, even if societal collapse is the result. Dominic Raab, a Tory and ephemeral Brexit Secretary, is a lawyer by training. He wrote a book explaining that in his view (typical of a Tory), rights should not extend beyond vagaries like “liberty.” In his book The Assault on Liberty, Raab is quite clear that free healthcare and decent housing should not extend to the level of rights, contrary to what the UDHR says.
Do not you think that the dramatic situation in which Julian Assange is left since years is inhuman and that the incredible fury that targets him reveals the true face of these false Western democracies?
Assange’s mental torture at the hands of the UK, which has effectively imprisoned him, and the US, which has not withdrawn the threat to arrest and possibly execute him, sets an example to potential whistleblowers: do this and be punished.
But WikiLeaks has a background. There is a global movement, much of it funded by the same kind of elites who gave us Donald Trump, to bring down governments. It’s ridiculously called “anarcho-capitalism,” as if anarchism and capitalism could ever go together. WikiLeaks began in this context. As far as I know, the organization has not received a penny from Trump’s backers, but these self-styled “libertarians” and “anarchists” are the same kind of people that supported WikiLeaks. Vaughan Smith in the UK is one such example; a wealthy, land-owning elite who wants to shatter the system and who offered Assange some protection for as long as possible. If you look at WikiLeaks’ earliest exposés, they tended to focus on the governments of poor countries, like Somalia and Kenya, exposing corruption there. This, presumably, interested the US State Department, which likes to condemn the corruption abroad as a weapon against countries that do not have or do not honor business contracts with the US. However, WikiLeaks also exposed the US. Their aim was to expose everyone. Assange didn’t seem to care from whom he received funding. Emails reveal that he was perfectly happy to “fleece,” in his words, the CIA and other organizations. Assange’s handle was “Mendax” which means Liar in Latin.
Nobody asked why the elite mainstream media was paying attention, i.e., giving a platform, to WikiLeaks and ignoring more significant whistleblower sites, like Cryptome.
It seemed that Assange thought that he could use the system, but the system has used him. Don’t get me wrong: WikiLeaks has done fantastic work. I visit the site frequently and quote its leaks in my own books. But being interested in so-called libertarian causes meant that Assange was expected to back those claiming to be libertarian. Notice that WikiLeaks has little dirt on Trump. WikiLeaks released carefully-timed emails during the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign that caused her approval rating, which was already low, to drop even lower. This played a part in Trump becoming president. Progressives were alarmed by this, including the great journalist Allan Nairn and Democracy Now! presenter, Amy Goodman (both of whom are old colleagues).They raked Assange over the coals during an interview because of his politicization of WikiLeaks. At that point, WikiLeaks basically exposed itself for what it is: a tool for more anarchic elites, as I’ve been trying to tell people for years(no one on the “left” would publish my findings because everyone wants to believe in a hero; Assange in this case).
But, as I say, regardless of its politics, WikiLeaks has done great work and put the mainstream to shame. Initially, the New York Times and Guardian rode the coattails of Assange’s success. Then, they turned against Assange. The only people sticking up for him were the progressives. But when he pulled that trick and released the Clinton emails in time for the presidential elections, the progressives turned against him. If self-styled libertarians who support Trump thought that Trump would save Assange, having previously declared his “love” of WikiLeaks, they were horribly mistaken. Assange is now trapped in some kind of legal limbo. The British have violated articles of the UDHR, mentioned above, by detaining Assange; a point flagged by the UN, which declared that his treatment by Britain is contrary to international law.
You draw attention to activism against free trade agreements in “Privatized Planet: Free Trade as a Weapon Against Democracy, Healthcare and the Environment“. Do not you think that we need a united front of resistance against the globalized capitalism and ultra-liberalism that lead the human race to extinction and the planet to death? Is it too late to influence the balance of power and to bring people back to decide their future?
It’s difficult to form a united front against corporation globalization for a number of reasons. The major one is that people’s jobs rely on corporations. In the UK, and I assume it’s similar elsewhere, 9 out of 10 businesses fail in the first couple of years. Eight out of ten businesses, roughly, employ fewer than 20 people. So globalization is a privilege of the large, monopolistic employers. That means that most people rely on larger businesses for their employment. How are people to protest against the very system that employs them? That’s a crucial catch-22.
Next comes the issue of advantage. Until the 1970s, roughly, most Americans and Europeans benefited from corporate globalization and a regulated economy. Most people were middle-class. They had opportunities to buy a home and raise children, who would go on to have an even better future. That wasn’t true of everyone, of course: ethnic minorities were, on the whole, the major exception. But generally, the picture is correct. By the 1970s, that started to change. In response, self-styled heroes like Donald Trump come along and appeal to core elements of the shrinking middle-class; the very people who could once again benefit from corporatism. So, how can we appeal to people like that and encourage them to push for a more equal form of grassroots globalism?
There are all kinds of events taking place around the world. If working people could learn about these events via democratized media, there might be a greater chance of solidarity and cooperation against elites. In the early-2000s, there were textile strikes in Bangladesh over the awful working conditions there. Had British workers, who sell the garments made in Bangladesh, been aware of these conditions they might have been able to lend their support. Instead, the Bangladeshi military was called in, Operation Clean Heart, to suppress the social uprising. Britain supplied the arms. A few years later in neighboring India, women protested outside one of the central banks of India to cancel the debts that are leading Indians to sell their body organs to survive. That was reported by Reuters, if I recall, but received little attention elsewhere. Unionization is one of the key tools in overcoming the corporate abuses of human beings and the environment. Colombia is one of the worst cases. The UK’s companies, or at least co-owned companies, have really exploited the civil war and government oppression of self-styled Marxist elements. Oil giant BP, brewer SABMiller, and mining firm AngloGold Ashanti operate in Colombia. The Colombian military and its links to paramilitaries (now gangs) have set conditions in which corporate operations are highly profitable. Unionists, students, left-wing politicians, environmental activists, and others, are bullied, intimidated, kidnapped, tortured, and even killed. There are some links between British unions and Colombian unions; a link which raises awareness of Colombians’ plight in the UK.
But we should be careful not to believe the professed aims of leaders like Trump. Trump tore up the corporate globalization treaties like TPP and renegotiated NAFTA for a simple reason: those “deals” weren’t profitable enough for US businesses. TPP contained tax loopholes to allow foreign countries to charge the US hidden value-added taxes. The public who don’t know or care about the details of so-called free trade deals were duped into believing that Trump cares about American workers. The fact is that Trump’s team prefer one-on-one or bilateral deals. In a bilateral set-up, the US is the dominant of any two countries, including China. (China’s economic rise is largely a myth, given that major investors are US-based.) But in a political union, like the EU or the TPP, the US is weaker. The interests of working Americans, i.e., not to sign on to TPP, coincided with the interests of big business; to have a “free trade” deal that included provisions against hidden taxes. It was a bit like Brexit: it benefited some elites and coincided with public opinion. In addition, growing numbers of corporations are relying on automation. Foreign countries simply haven’t the infrastructure to assemble US products with robots, so US companies are on-shoring (coming home). Trump can claim credit for this by claiming that he’s bringing jobs back to America.
The major hope and indeed action comes in the form of political engagement. Syriza of Greece totally sold the Greek people out to the IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank—the Troika. But at least it has some leftist policies. Its failings have led the way for the right-wing New Democracy, which is currently leading in the polls. Podemos in Spain is another example of moderately leftist progress which, if successful, could be pushed even further by grassroots activism. Though not yet in power in the UK, Corbyn’s Labour Party is by now the biggest political party in terms of grassroots membership in Europe. There are dangers, too, with Austria and Italy now led by far-right governments. Both far-right and far-left parties profess an anti-globalization agenda but neither fully commit to ending their support for corporate globalization.
We need to act fast because it’s not at all certain that a neoliberal corporate agenda can survive. Last year, I wrote an article for Truthout documenting the numerous indigenous peoples around the world, “tribes” as we dismissively call them, who are literally facing extinction. That’s what our civilization and its reliance on corporate greed has done, driven thousands of endangered peoples to the edge of literal extinction. Their plight is a taste of things to come. If we look at social data in societies that have been first hit with financial crises and then by neoliberal programmes, we see massive mortality rates. Neoliberalism literally kills. Neoliberalism is a system of institutionalized greed which measures everything in terms of its financial value. A global system based on those inhuman principles can’t survive for long.
You have published “Voices for Peace”, a book co-authored by several personalities of which I interviewed some of them, such as Kathy Kelly and Noam Chomsky.According to you, are the voices of these personalities not very important in the fight of the resisters around the world?
These voices are important representatives. Each author has contributed different things to humanity in different ways. In the 1970s, journalist John Pilger raised millions of dollars to help Cambodian famine victims. He literally saved lives. Today, John does other vital work in raising awareness about the lies of government. Kathy Kelly is associated with numerous groups, particularly Voices for Creative Non-Violence, in Afghanistan, providing blankets, emotional support, and more. Brian Terrell is a dedicated anti-war, anti-drone activist who has been arrested on multiple occasions. Bruce K. Gagnon pioneered raising awareness about the weaponization of space and continues to keep the momentum going by organizing protests, doing interviews, and writing articles. For Palestinians, it’s an important psychological boost to have Israeli Jews like Ilan Pappé speaking up for their rights.
The book begins by talking about grassroots activists, like those who drop water bottles in the deserts of the border between the US and Mexico, so that dying refugees might survive,or the brave volunteers who take boats out into the waters of Europe to look for men, women, and child refugees who would otherwise drown or catch hypothermia. These grassroots activists have an acute sense of humanity and compassion. They don’t need high-profile figures like Chomsky to motivate them, but high-profile names are important to represent them and their causes, directly or indirectly, to wider audiences. Featuring big names is a way of attracting attention to important, on-the-ground work often done by others; but also done by many of the people featured in the book.
You are the director and founder of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research. Can you introduce your organization to our readers?
PIPR was founded in 2014 by my partner and I to commemorate the start of the First World War and to draw attention to the wars and oppression going on today. PIPR is a website. It is an independent organization funded out of pocket; in other words, it has close to zero funding. This was a deliberate choice, as I did not want the agenda to be shaped by financial backers—not that I had any offers. Unlike war, peace is not a profitable pursuit. The only thing for sale on the site are my books. There is no advertising. The site has a document archive consisting of what I consider to be the most important documents: The US military’s drone expansion plan; the US Army-Air Force “owning the weather” agenda to test climate-change technologies; the US Space Command’s declaration of war on the world, it’s “full spectrum dominance” agenda; and others.
The site also hosts videos, in particular, a BBC documentary acknowledging MI6 and CIA terror attacks across Europe after World War II, Operation Gladio. There is a Links page to other (what I regard to be) progressive and anti-war organizations, like Amnesty International and Code Pink. There is an Honorary Members page. Honorary members include: Suaad Genem, an Israeli-Palestinian who was basically bullied out of her homeland due to her commitments to secular political parties advocating Palestinian rights; Kathy Kelly, whom I mentioned above; John Pilger; and Dr. Cynthia McKinney, former Congresswoman and activist. Some Honorary Members contributed nothing to the site and were removed. Others turned out to be charlatans and were also removed. The Events page supports Bruce K. Gagnon of Space4Peace. We also publish articles on a range of topics. Over the last few years, we’ve acted as a mirror site for Kathy’s group, Voices for Creative Non-Violence by re-publishing the articles on their site, most of which concern their on-the-ground work in Afghanistan.
PIPR was established when my partner and I lived in Exeter, UK, and were involved in a number of peace-related activities close to or inside the city: Palestine Solidarity, anti-slavery, the Campaign Against Nuclear Disarmament, and so on. It seemed sensible to establish and use PIPR as a kind of hub in which these seemingly disparate activities could coalescence under the general banner of peace. In terms of practical, grassroots activism: We marched in protest and held vigils against Israel’s further demolition of Gaza in 2014; joined the protests against the drone factory UAV Engines in Shenstone, UK; supported Exeter’s Music for Peace events; manned stalls to sell books and distribute peace-related leaflets at the Exeter Respect festival; spoke at the local Tolpuddle Martyr’s Festival in Dorset, UK; and gave talks elsewhere, including to the Cambridge Stop the War Coalition.
Moving from Exeter to a more rural area has made it more difficult to keep up the grassroots activism, hence my current focus on writing. As the First World War commemorations, such as they were, come to an end, the site has served its purpose. At its peak, we were getting around one thousand unique hits per day, with no advertising or promotion. This resulted solely from the popularity of interviewees and contributors, including those mentioned above as well as Ilan Pappé. Our biggest academic successes included interviewing Noam Chomsky and publishing Bruce K. Gagnon’s article which was cited by Sonoma State University’s Project Censored in its Censored 2016 book. Public attention was drawn to PIPR by accident when Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury, which shares its title with one of my books, received publicity from Newsweek. The latter ran a story on books with the same title as Wolff’s. PIPR was mentioned in the article. It’s a shame that the mainstream considered us to be of peripheral interest piqued by the coincidence of the success of Wolff’s mainstream book. Wolff’s book is mostly unsubstantiated gossip. But that says a lot about the culture of fame and the respect and attention given to people of high status.
Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen
Dr. T. J. Coles is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University’s Cognition Institute, working on issues relating to blindness and visual impairment. A columnist with AxisOfLogic.com, he has written about politics and human rights for a number of publications, including CounterPunch and Truthout. Books include Union Jackboot (with Matthew Alford), Manufacturing Terrorism(Clairview Books), Britain’s Secret Wars, Human Wrongs, Real Fake News, Voice for Peace, The Great Brexit Swindle, President Trump, Inc.and Fire and Fury.
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Written by Brian Kalman exclusively for SouthFront; Brian Kalman is a management professional in the marine transportation industry. He was an officer in the US Navy for eleven years.
The world is once again witnessing the height of U.S. hypocrisy as members of the U.S. State Department ratchet up anti-Russian and anti-Syrian rhetoric surrounding the use of chemical weapons in Syria and the UK. Ambassador Nikki Haley has warned Syria, Iran and Russia that they will be held accountable for their pre-determined use of chemical weapons in Idlib on innocent civilians. No evidence was provided to support her threats. The United States carried out cruise missile strikes on two previous occasions, and each time provided no evidence to prove their assertion that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in attacking civilians, nor was any rational reason given for such an obviously irrational decision on the part of the Syrian state. No evidence has ever been provided to justify the clear international crime of aggression committed by the United States on these two earlier occasions. Now, the UK and the U.S. are both attempting to accuse the Russian government of using chemical weapons in an alleged attempted assassination of a Russian national on UK soil. Once again, no real evidence has been presented, only assertions and hearsay.
On Thursday September 13th, Assistant Secretary of State Manisha Singh declared before the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee that the United States would level the most severe of sanctions against Russia, including breaking all diplomatic ties, if Russia refused to admit its guilt in perpetrating the Skripal assassination fiasco and refused to submit to International inspections by the OPCW of its alleged chemical weapons and biological weapons programs. She stated that Russia would have to meet this requirement by an arbitrary November 4th deadline, set by the United States in accordance with a U.S. law, not an international law. H.R. 1724 – Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 specifies in part:
Title III: Control and Elimination of Chemical and Biological Weapons – Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 – Declares it is U.S. policy to: (1) seek multilaterally coordinated efforts with other countries to control the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons; and (2) strengthen efforts to control chemical agents, precursors, and equipment.
Requires the President to use the U.S. export control laws to control the export of defense articles, defense services, goods, and technologies that he determines would assist a country in acquiring the capability to produce or use such weapons.
Amends the Export Administration Act of 1979 to require the Secretary of Commerce to establish a list of goods and technology that would assist a foreign government or group in acquiring chemical or biological weapons. Requires a validated export license for the export of such items to certain countries of concern.
Requires the President to impose certain sanctions against foreign persons if he determines that they knowingly contributed to the efforts of a country to acquire, use, or stockpile chemical or biological weapons. Declares such sanctions to include: (1) denial of U.S. procurement contracts for goods or services from such foreign persons; and (2) prohibition against importation of products from such persons. Authorizes the President to waive imposition of such sanctions if he determines that is in the national security interests of the United States.
Amends the Arms Export Control Act to set forth similar provisions.
Requires the President to make a determination with respect to whether a country has used chemical or biological weapons in violation of international law or has used lethal chemical or biological weapons against its own nationals. Authorizes specified congressional committees to request the President to make such determination with respect to the use of such weapons.
Requires the President to impose the following sanctions against foreign countries that have been found to have used such weapons: (1) termination of assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (except humanitarian assistance and agricultural commodities); (2) termination of arms sales and arms sales financing; (3) denial of U.S. credit; and (4) prohibition of the export of certain goods and technology. Directs the President to impose at least three of the following additional sanctions unless such countries cease the use of such weapons and provide assurances that they will not use, and will allow inspections with respect to, such weapons: (1) opposition to the extension of multilateral development bank assistance; (2) prohibition of U.S. bank loans (except loans for food or agricultural commodities); (3) further export prohibitions; (4) import restrictions; (5) suspension of diplomatic relations; and (6) termination of air carrier landing rights. Provides for the removal and waiver of such sanctions.
Requires the President to submit to the Congress annual reports on the efforts of countries to acquire chemical or biological weapons.
Repeals certain duplicative provisions of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993.
It is important to note that nowhere in this law is there a legal commitment made by the United States itself, to eliminate its own chemical and biological weapons capabilities. This is not an oversight, yet speaks to the imperial hypocrisy of the United States and an acknowledgement that it alone has been the largest perpetrator of chemical weapons use and proliferation for more than 50 years. It currently maintains the largest stockpile of both chemical and biological warfare agents of any nation on the planet, and continues to expand its biological weapons research and development on a scale far larger than any other country.
While the U.S. Department of Defense maintains that its massive biological research programs are meant to counter and defend against new biological weapons being developed, they are in fact developing bio-weapons in the process.
Russia is one of 192 signatories (state and non-state parties) of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, along with the United States. On September 27th, 2017 it was announced by Russia and the OPCW, that Russia had verified the total destruction of its large chemical weapons stockpile dating from the years of the Soviet Union, estimated at 39,967 metric tons of chemical agents. Russia was obligated to do this by 2020, yet was able to accomplish the task three years ahead of schedule. Under the original agreement, both the U.S. and Russia were obligated to accomplish this by 2007, but both nations required an extension of the deadline.
Although admitting to a total stockpile of 28,000 metric tons of chemical agents, the U.S. admits to destroying 90% of its chemical arsenal. The U.S. requested and was granted an extension out to 2023 to achieve verified elimination of 100% of its chemical weapons. The only other signatory of the law other than the United States not to have already met the requirements is Iraq. It must be stated that much of the chemical weapons in the Iraqi arsenal are based on the chemical warfare agents supplied to the Saddam Hussein regime during the height of the Iran-Iraq war by the United States and other western nations. Saddam used some of these U.S. supplied weapons to murder thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988. Estimates range between 3,000 – 7,000 deaths and over 10,000 injured.
Saddam Hussein was a valued asset of the United States and its Western allies for decades. Hussein pictured above with former French President Jacque Chirac and U.S Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Not only did the United States, and France for that matter, provide chemical weapons to the Saddam regime, but the U.S. intelligence agencies provided the Iraqi military with vital battlefield intelligence, including satellite imagery in aiding them in the war. The U.S. was well aware that the Saddam regime had used chemical weapons in at least four offensives during the war. Of course they knew, they had facilitated the transfer of these weapons to help the Iraqis prosecute a war of aggression against Iran. Declassified CIA documents clearly show that the United States was well aware that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons at least four times between 1983 and 1988. Iran had accused Iraq of using chemical weapons, and tried to build a case to bring before the United Nations. The United States withheld its knowledge of course, and continued to aid its ally in perpetrating these crimes against humanity.
Perhaps the most powerful photo taken of the Halabja chemical attack perpetrated against Iraqi Kurds. This woman died running with her child in an attempt to save her, yet could not escape the deadly effects of the chemical agents used. Their embrace will forever symbolize both human love and sacrifice, and unfathomable human cruelty.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has lied through her teeth repeatedly in her statements before the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly. She has stated repeatedly that Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people in Ghouta in 2013, Khan Shaykhun in 2017 and Douma in 2018, yet has not supplied one shred of evidence beyond dubious social media posts of unknown provenance. She has also stated that the United States is certain that it could only be the Syrian government, as no other party in the conflict zone could possibly possess chemical weapons. Here’s the problem with her statement. Firstly, the United States and the OPCW verified that Syria destroyed or surrendered all of its chemical weapons agents. On its official website, the OPCW states:
“Veolia, the US firm contracted by the OPCW to dispose of part of the Syrian chemical weapons stockpile, has completed disposal of 75 cylinders of hydrogen fluoride at its facility in Texas.
This completes destruction of all chemical weapons declared by the Syrian Arab Republic. The need to devise a technical solution for treating a number of cylinders in a deteriorated and hazardous condition had delayed the disposal process.
Commenting on this development, the Director-General of the OPCW, Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, said: “This process closes an important chapter in the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapon programme as we continue efforts to clarify Syria’s declaration and address ongoing use of toxic chemicals as weapons in that country.”
Secondly, the OPCW and the UN have both verified that opposition forces within Syria have used chemical agents as weapons on numerous occasions during the conflict. Not only has Carla Del Ponte, UN human rights investigator, former UN Chief Prosecutor and ICC attorney stated that opposition forces had used chemical weapons, but also the former OPCW head field investigator in Syria Jerry Smith stated to the BBC that he found it very unlikely that the government perpetrated these chemical attacks.. As recently as October of last year the U.S. State Department itself seemed to acknowledge the same truth in its warning to U.S. citizens traveling to Syria. The travel warning stated:
“Tactics of ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and other violent extremist groups include the use of suicide bombers, kidnapping, small and heavy arms, improvised explosive devices, and chemical weapons.
They have targeted major city centers, road checkpoints, border crossings, government buildings, shopping areas, and open spaces, in Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr provinces.”
The last country in the world that should lecture anyone on the possession and use of WMDs is the United States. Not only is the United States the only country in history to ever target civilians with multiple atomic bombs, it has used chemical weapons against the populations of Southeast Asia and Iraq in the past. Now, they were smart enough not to use mustard gas and anthrax, but the accumulative effects of Agent Orange and depleted uranium in these populations has been devastating, and will not only cause great harm and pain for these populations, but will leave the land poisoned for generations.
The United States sprayed copious quantities of TCDD (dioxin tetrachlordibenzo-para-dioxin), a class 1 carcinogen all over regions of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in an attempt to defoliate the jungle environment, and thus rob their enemy of an environment they excelled at fighting in and hiding in as part of Operation Ranch Hand. Known as Agent Orange, the chemical was banned in the U.S. in 1970. Although extremely hard to quantify, the devastating effects of dioxin exposure in the Vietnamese population are easily identifiable, as the same effects were observed in U.S. veterans that returned home after exposure to the toxin. Abnormally high levels of various cancers and debilitating birth defects are present in Southeast Asian populations in areas of greatest use of Agent Orange. Dioxins remain in the soil and water table, as they do not degrade naturally. Dioxin also bio-accumulates in the fatty tissues of animals and thus remains in the food supply.
One of the many young Vietnamese born long after the war with debilitating, neurodevelopmental diseases and birth defects due to Agent Orange exposure of their parents.
The United States learned little from the crime it perpetrated in Southeast Asia, nor did it seem to care as it repeated a similar offense in two successive invasions of Iraq. Having failed to achieve its aim of defeating Iran through its brutal Iraqi proxy, even after helping the Saddam Hussein regime in chemical warfare attacks against Iranian soldiers and Iraqi Kurdish civilians, the United States largely ignored the numerous atrocities carried out by one of its favorite dictators. The U.S. would turn on its erstwhile henchman in 1990, after Saddam decided to attack one of its favorite corrupt emirates in the region. The resulting 1991 invasion of Iraq saw the heavy use of depleted uranium armored piercing rounds. Depleted uranium is extremely dense, and thus good for piercing hardened steel or composite armor. The follow-on invasion of 2003 brought more death and destruction, and more depleted uranium.
Locations of depleted uranium munitions used by U.S. Airforce A-10 ground attack aircraft in Iraq during the 2003 invasion. Depleted Uranium is also used in anti-armor munitions utilized by all U.S. tanks and armored fighting vehicles as well, so the true breadth of distribution and employment of depleted uranium in the above map are understated.
The U.S. has not funded the reclamation and disposal of depleted uranium contaminated scrap in Iraq. The new Iraqi government has started cleaning up the approximately 350 sites identified as having depleted uranium contamination in the country, mostly around Basra and Baghdad, yet also scattered over the entire country. It is estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 metric tons of depleted uranium used in various munitions fired during the invasion of 2003 alone. It is hard to narrow down the exact amount as the U.S. military has failed to provide any definitive numbers. Iraqi doctors have recorded and reported higher cases of cancers in adult patients and increased birth defects in children being born in Iraq since the invasion took place. The U.S. government seems determined to undermine any attempts to draw direct correlations between this recorded phenomenon and its use of depleted uranium in two successive wars in Iraq. It has also fought all attempts by U.S. war veterans suffering from various cancers and neurological diseases from their similar exposure in both wars.
Nikki Haley fails to acknowledge the historic role of the United States government’s support of some of the world’s most horrible regimes in the past. From the Khmer Rouge and Saddam Hussein then, to Saudi Arabia and Tahrir al-Sham now, the United States has supported many of the world’s most deplorable violators of human rights. Yet Nikki Haley has the arrogance and delusional belief that she has the moral high ground in chastising Syria and Russia before the U.N.?
Just this week U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo clarified that the Saudi and UAE have acted in good faith in taking steps to reduce civilian casualties in their military operations in Yemen and that the U.S. military would keep providing both material and direct support to both nations in prosecuting their illegal war. U.S. manufactured and supplied bombs are being used to kill civilians in Yemen regularly, amounting to an estimated 15,000 killed or injured civilians over a period of three years. This does not take into account the deaths and suffering associated with the humanitarian crisis that has resulted from the Saudi-led coalition destroying virtually all infrastructure in the Houthi controlled part of the country. I am sure that it is also just another “unintended consequence” that al-Qaeda has expanded and strengthened its position in Yemen as a direct result of the conflict. When will any member state in the U.N. finally tell Nikki Haley that the Security Council must acknowledge that al-Qaeda has always been a proxy of Saudi Arabia and the United States?
Children injured when a Saudi airstrike targeted a school bus in Saada, Yemen. A total of 51 civilians, 40 of them children below the age of 15 were killed in the strike. The United States supplies the aircraft, bombs, aerial refueling and intelligence gathering resources to support the bombing campaign.
Nikki Haley continues to claim that Russia is directly facilitating an impending humanitarian disaster and war crime in the impending Syrian military operations to retake Idlib province, destroy a host of ISIS and al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups and liberate hundreds of thousands of civilians. She said the same thing during the battle to liberate Aleppo. Her lies were revealed when the SAA and Russia finally liberated the city and Syrian civilians who were kept as prisoners there by the Islamic terrorists were finally free of the horror of their captivity. Is it no wonder that tens of thousands of Syrian refugees displaced by the conflict are now returning to their home country?
Apparently Nikki Haley sees no issue at all in Imperial America supporting Saudi Arabia and the UAE killing Yemeni civilians by the thousands in Yemen. The U.S. not only supplies the bombs, but directly provides in-flight refueling of the aircraft and the intelligence used to conduct the “precision” strikes that target schools, hospitals, funerals, and even school bus loads of children. Does this surprise anyone? U.S. coalition airstrikes against ISIL in Raqqa and Mosul killed an estimated 6,000 civilians. In Raqqa, U.S. aircraft conducted 90% of the airstrikes, and the U.S. fired at least 30,000 artillery rounds into the city. The U.S. has yet to pay any political or legal price for its indiscriminant destruction of these cities.
One of thousands of airstrikes carried out on the Syrian city of Raqqa. The U.S. led coalition was widely criticized for its blatant disregard for civilian casualties in its targeting of the city as part of its offensive to destroy ISIL. They have yet to be held accountable for the estimated 800-1,000 civilians deaths caused.
Russia needs to finally accept the reality that there is nothing to be gained by negotiating, or attempting to collaborate with the United States in solving problems. It’s like a shepherd using a wolf to defend his flock, or a detective enlisting the aid of a criminal to solve a crime that the criminal is a co-conspirator in perpetrating. It is illogical in the extreme. The Russian U.N. mission needs to call out Nikki Haley and the U.S. on its own deplorable record and hypocrisy and while seeking the aid of other member states, must also realizing that most of them are bought-off by Washington. Hasn’t Haley repeatedly threatened to stop giving money to nations that do not support her resolutions?
The Russians need to realize that they can never have a mutually respectful and beneficial relationship with the political and financial elites that control the United States. Russia will always find a friend in the American people, but Washington? This same elite despises the American people more than it does Putin or Assad. If it wasn’t for working class American citizens fed up with the U.S. establishment elite, we would likely already be in a direct war with Russia, China and Iran. I hope that the Russian political and military leadership understands this. Stop trying to placate Washington and start preparing to defend your nation. The Deep State will not stop at Ukraine or Syria. They desire the complete subjugation of Russia and a return to the Yeltsin days, or worse
Filed under: False Flags, Russia, US Foreign Policy, USA, War Crimes and Criminals, War on Syria, WMD | Tagged: Chemical Weapons, Proxy War, Wars for Israel | Comments Off on Before pointing the finger at Russia and Syria, the U.S. should answer for its own record in regard to chemical weapons
While seven years have come and gone since the leaked document was written by USMC intelligence, little has changed when it comes to the U.S.’ long-standing goals in Syria and its callous disregard for the will of the Syrian people and Syrian democracy.
by Whitney Webb
WASHINGTON — A recently uncovered U.S. government document published by WikiLeaks has revealed that the U.S. directly advocated for undermining “democratic” elements of the so-called Syrian “revolution” of 2011 in order to ensure the dominance of authoritarian, sectarian Sunni groups within the Syrian opposition.
The document, written by the United States Marine Corps (USMC) Intelligence Department in late 2011, further asserts that empowering these radical Sunni groups over democratic and secular ones would be ideal for the United States and its regional partners, as ensuring the decline of the current Syrian government, and with it a secular Syria, would harm Iran’s regional clout.
In other words, the U.S. openly supported undermining democratic opposition forces in Syria in order to challenge Iranian influence and, with it, the influence of the Middle East’s “resistance axis” that obstructs the imperialistic agendas of the U.S. and its regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.
According to the document, which was buried in a previous WikiLeaks release and recently uncovered by journalist Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, U.S. military intelligence was well aware that the Syrian opposition movement in 2011 did not pose “a meaningful threat against the [Syrian] regime,” given that it was “extremely fractured” and “operating under enormous constraints.” It also noted that “reports of protests [against the Syrian government] are overblown,” even though “the exiled [Syrian] opposition has been quite effecting (sic) in developing a narrative on the Syrian opposition to disseminate to major media agencies.”
That narrative — which was subsequently promoted by several foreign governments, including the U.S., the U.K., Turkey and France — falsely claimed that the protests were massive and involved largely peaceful protestors “rising up” against the “autocratic” government led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This document, as well as substantial evidence that has emerged over the last several years, shows that this narrative, of a “peaceful uprising” seeking to establish a secular and “democratic” Syria, has never been true, as even U.S. military intelligence knew that the reports regarding these “peaceful” protests were highly exaggerated.
Given that the USMC intelligence considered the Syrian opposition movement in 2011 to be an ineffective force for effecting change in Assad’s status as Syria’s leader, the document notes that it was in the U.S.’ interest for Turkey to “manage” efforts to destabilize the Assad-led government, as Turkey “is the country with the most leverage over Syria in the long term, and has an interest in seeing this territory return to Sunni rule.”
Those Turkish-led efforts would involve gradually building up “linkages with groups inside Syria, focusing in particular on the Islamist remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood in trying to fashion a viable Islamist political force in Syria that would operate under Ankara’s umbrella.” This ultimately came to pass, as the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army – previously promoted as the main force of the “democratic” Syrian opposition but now well known to be a radical, sectarian group – still takes its marching orders from Ankara.
Turkey-backed Syrian rebels and Turkish troops secure the Bursayah hill, which separates the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin from the Turkey-controlled town of Azaz, Syria, Jan. 28, 2018. Photo | AP
The document advocates for these efforts to mold the “fragmented” elements of the 2011 Syrian opposition into an “Islamist” puppet force of Turkey in order to support the gradual “weakening of the Alawite [i.e., Assad] hold on power in Syria,” as well as because “Turkey, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others have a common interest in trying to severely under[mine] Iran’s foothold in the Levant and dial back Hezbollah’s political and military influence in Lebanon.”
Also notable is the fact that USMC intelligence at the time knew that these efforts to undermine the current Syrian government would have a disastrous impact on the country and its civilian population. Indeed, the document notes this on two separate occasions, stating first that “any political transition in Syria away from the al-Assad clan will likely entail a violent, protracted civil conflict” and later adding that “the road to regime change will be a long and bloody one.”
Thus, not only was U.S. military intelligence advocating for the undermining of democratic and secular forces within the Syrian opposition, it was also aware that the U.S.-backed efforts to undermine Assad would have “bloody” consequences for civilians in Syria. These admissions dramatically undercut past and present U.S. claims to be concerned with Syrian civilians and their “call for freedom” from Assad, showing instead that the U.S. preferred the installation of a “friendly” authoritarian, sectarian government in Syria and was uninterested in the fate of Syrian civilians so long as the result “severely under[mined] Iran’s foothold in the Levant.”
For much of the last two decades, but especially since the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the “resistance axis” — led by Iran — has emerged as the greatest threat to the hegemony of the United States and its allies in the Middle East. A power bloc composed of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas in Palestine, the “resistance axis” as a term first emerged in 2010 to describe the alliances of countries and regional political groups opposed to continued Western intervention in the region, as well as to the imperialist agendas of U.S. allies in the region like Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iran’s role as the de factoleader of this resistance bloc makes it, along with its main allies like Syria, a prime target of U.S. Middle East policy.
Washington’s support for a future authoritarian Syria may come as a surprise to some, given that the U.S. has publicly promoted the narrative of a “democratic revolution” in Syria from 2011 to the present and has used calls for the establishment of a “new” secular democracy in Syria as the foundation for its agenda of overthrowing the current Assad-led government.
However, powerful individuals in Washington have long promoted an “authoritarian” and “Islamist” state in Syria with the goal of countering Iran, much like the plan detailed in the USMC intelligence document.
For instance, current National Security Adviser John Bolton called for the establishment of such a state in Syria back in 2015, stating on FOX News:
I think our objective should be a new Sunni state out of the western part of Iraq, the eastern part of Syria, run by moderates or at least authoritarians who are not radical Islamists.”
A U.S.-backed anti-government fighter mans a heavy machine gun next to a US soldier in al Tanf, a border crossing between Syria and Iraq. Hammurabi’s Justice News | AP
A few months later, Bolton – this time in a New York Times op-ed – detailed his plan to create a sectarian Sunni state out of northeastern Syria and western Iraq, which he nicknamed “Sunni-stan.” He asserted that such a country would have “economic potential” as an oil producer, would serve as a “bulwark” against the Syrian government and “Iran-allied Baghdad,” and would help ensure the defeat of Daesh (ISIS). Bolton’s mention of oil is notable, as the proposed territory for this Sunni state sits on key oil fields that U.S. oil interests, such as ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers, have sought to control if the partition of Iraq and Syria comes to pass.
Bolton also suggested that Arab Gulf States like Saudi Arabia “could provide significant financing” for the creation of this future state, adding that “the Arab monarchies like Saudi Arabia must not only fund much of the new state’s early needs, but also ensure its stability and resistance to radical forces.”
Yet Bolton fails to note that Saudi Arabia is one of the chief financiers of Daesh and largely responsible for spreading “radical” Wahhabi Islam throughout the Middle East. Thus, any future state that the Saudis would fund would undoubtedly mirror the ethos of Saudi Arabia itself – i.e., an authoritarian, radical Wahhabist state that executes nonviolent protesters, oppresses minorities, and launches genocidal wars against its neighbors in an effort to control their resources.
Furthermore, the ultimate goal outlined within the USMC Intelligence document of undermining Iran’s regional clout continues to be the guide for the U.S.’ current Syria policy, which recently changed yet again to include regime change in Damascus as part of its goal. For instance, earlier this year, Bolton – in his capacity as National Security Adviser – stated that U.S. troops would remain in Syria “as long as the Iranian menace continues throughout the Middle East.”
More recently, the Trump administration “redefined” its Syria policy to include “the exit of all Iranian military and proxy forces from Syria” as the administration’s top priority, while also calling for the installation of “a stable, non-threatening government” that would not have Assad as Syria’s leader.
Thus, while seven years have come and gone since the leaked document was written by USMC intelligence, little has changed when it comes to the U.S.’ long-standing goals in Syria and its callous disregard for the will of the Syrian people and Syrian democracy.
Filed under: House of Saud, Turkey, USA, War on Iran, War on Syria, Wikileaks | Tagged: Iran-US Relations, Proxy War, Syrian opposition, Syrian Resistance | Comments Off on Wikileaks: To Weaken Iran, US Undermined Democratic Elements of Syrian Opposition to Empower Radical Groups
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UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 