The US balks at thriving UAE-Russia relations

April 21 2023

The leak of classified documents suggesting Emirati-Russian intel against the US has caused uncertainty about the future of US-UAE relations amid significant shifts in the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf.

Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Stasa Salacanin

The leak of highly classified Pentagon documents, including reports of the UAE’s alleged intelligence collusion with Russia against the US and UK, has captured headlines both regionally and globally.

According to the US intel reports leaked to the Associated Press, a document implicating the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) entitled “Russia/UAE: Intelligence Relationship Deepening” states:

“FSB officials claimed UAE security service officials and Russia had agreed to work together against US and UK intelligence agencies, according to newly acquired signals intelligence.”

However, while US officials have declined to comment on the document, the Emirati government has vehemently denied any such accusation, calling it “categorically false.”

Although it is impossible to verify the authenticity of the leaked report, western officials and analysts have nonetheless been closely following increased cooperation between Abu Dhabi and Moscow, particularly since the outbreak of conflict in Ukraine.

Ties flourish between Russia and UAE

The claims are certainly credible, as close personal ties exist between the Kremlin and the Emirati ruling elite, and the two governments share similar views on several regional issues. The war in Ukraine has further boosted mutual commercial ties and cooperation between the Russia and the UAE, with non-oil trade increasing by 57 percent during the first nine months of the last year.

In early December 2022, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov estimated that mutual trade between Russia and the UAE will exceed $7.5 billion by the end of 2022 compared with $5.5 billion in 2021, reaching an all-time record in the history of their trade relations.

Additionally, UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan’s (MbZ) decision to support the OPEC+ move to slash oil production by two million barrels a day (bpd) in October despite pressure from the US and other countries, has been greatly praised by Kremlin.

It’s worth noting that the emirate of Dubai has witnessed an uptick in investments from affluent Russians, as real estate purchases by Russian nationals in Dubai surged by 67 percent year-on-year. Furthermore, the UAE continues to rank high on the list of preferred travel destinations for Russians, with over a million Russians having visited or relocated to the Emirates in 2022 – an impressive 60 percent increase from the previous year.

In light of the UAE having emerged as a significant destination for wealthy Russians seeking to circumvent western-imposed sanctions, Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College in London, has labeled the UAE as “the most crucial strategic partner for Russia in both the Middle East [West Asia] and Africa.” 

A ‘country of focus’ for the US

This flourishing partnership between Moscow and Abu Dhabi has not gone unnoticed in the west, and there are concerns about how cozying up with Russia may affect the UAE’s relations with the west, especially in light of the recent leak of compromising Pentagon intel.

As evidence of this, US Treasury official Assistant Secretary Elizabeth Rosenberg has explicitly designated the UAE as a “country of focus,” noting Russia has been able to evade sanctions and “obtain more than $5 million in US semiconductors and other export-controlled parts, including components with battlefield uses.”

While the UAE has historically been aligned with the US, it has developed its own foreign policy in recent years, according to Dr. Giuseppe Dentice, an expert on International Relations of the Middle East from Centro Studi Internazionali Ce.S.I and a teaching assistant at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. As Dentine explains to The Cradle:

“The UAE has positioned itself as a free rider in the international arena, able to dialogue with the west and Russia and China. This has led the UAE to pursue its own agenda increasingly distant from the US and western interests, but in any case still extremely connected to many of Washington’s objectives in the large quadrant between the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia.”

For Joost Hiltermann, program director of the Middle East and North Africa section at the International Crisis Group think tank, Abu Dhabi is not likely to turn against the US in a major way. Despite pursuing closer ties with Beijing and Moscow, the UAE and other Persian Gulf states have emphasized that the US remains their primary external security partner.

Persian Gulf states pursue strategic balancing

In essence, “the UAE and other Gulf Arab states pursue a foreign policy of strategic balancing and hedging among both regional and global actors,” he tells The Cradle.

Yet, the UAE, along with other Persian Gulf countries, has refrained from aligning with the US in the new cold war, which has become evident in the case of US escalation over Taiwan and the war in Ukraine. In this context, the UAE does not want to miss out on the lucrative opportunity to engage with wealthy Russians, even if it means turning down the west and its preoccupation with the proxy war in Ukraine.

Dentice observes that many regional powers, especially those in the Persian Gulf have taken advantage of this new competitive environment to raise their own ambitions and develop their interests. The case of Russia and its businessmen is emblematic of this condition.

While the US does not necessarily oppose Russians visiting and residing elsewhere, Hiltermann notes that:

“They have an issue with the UAE becoming a hub for sanctions-busting and illicit economies, and they’ve had this concern for some time as US concerns relate to Russia sanctions violations and Iran and Syria sanctions violations.”

However, Hiltermann points out that the US has not always been clear on its sanctions policies and enforcement, which has confused and frustrated regional actors like the UAE. He says “Gulf Arab officials express significant dissatisfaction with US sanctions politics in the region, and often underline their lack of impact and how much they hurt local populations.”

Feeling the pressure

Additonally, Dentice emphasizes that the “UAE must be very careful to balance its own interests with the ambitions of the great powers.” Abu Dhabi should avoid any unnecessary confrontations or the risk of being labeled as a “pariah state” as this could harm its development and reputation as a commercial hub.

Irrespective of growing ties, the UAE has introduced some strict requirements for Russian businessmen and real estate investors who find it ever more difficult to purchase or rent space in Dubai. According to reports, financial and consultancy firms have are being closely observed by US financial regulators, so country business subjects have to be more cautious when dealing with Russia.

Also, despite its “free-rider” foreign policy approach, which requires a difficult balancing act, the UAE as well as other Persian Gulf states still heavily rely on US security arrangements, so many observers believe that sooner or later the UAE will have to agree on some compromise related to western sanctions issues.

Due to US pressure, the UAE has already canceled a license it had issued to Russia’s MTS Bank, and Russia’s largest bank Sberbank was also forced to close its office in Dubai.

Abu Dhabi’s diplomatic dilemma  

Despite efforts by Abu Dhabi and other Persian Gulf capitals to appeal to Washington about the importance of maintaining ties with Moscow by supporting de-escalation measures between Russia and the west – such as prisoner exchanges – it is becoming increasingly challenging to maintain good relations with a Russia so profoundly vilified in western capitals.

Hiltermann doubts whether this approach will be effective in the long run. He points out that while the “US claims that it does not push Gulf Arab states to choose sides, Russia has turned into an existential issue for the US and Europe in many ways, and sooner or later western pressures on the UAE will increase.”

It is clear that the UAE’s foreign policy approach is complex and involves a delicate balancing act between its own interests and the ambitions of great powers. Withstanding its efforts to maintain good relations with both Washington and Moscow, the UAE is increasingly feeling the western pressure to untangle from Russia, especially in the form of sanctions threats.

While Abu Dhabi’s strategic partnerships with a broad range of countries have reaped economic benefits, in the foreign policy realm, the same choices have caused acute diplomatic challenges.

But the UAE cannot merely focus on the great power contests unfolding abroad. Closer to home, Abu Dhabi has had to navigate the changing dynamics in West Asia, including peace talks to end the conflict in Yemen and the game-changing, Beijing-brokered rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The UAE’s success and stability in its own region will ultimately hinge on its proficiency in managing these local shifts. Meanwhile, the entry of China and Russia into West Asia offers Abu Dhabi some further leverage in managing Washington’s demands. Unless and until the US decides to draw a hard red line, the Emiratis will likely play all their cards in all arenas.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Russiatourismtrade and investmentUAE

Saudi security versus petrodollar

ِApril 12, 2023

Source: Janna Kadri

By Al Mayadeen English 

Breaking the link between the oil and the dollar is a project that has been in the making for quite some time.

Breaking the link between the oil and the dollar is a project that has been in the making for quite some time

On March 10, China brokered a peace agreement between rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, a move which left the West baffled. Some suggested that the world had witnessed the slow and gradual collapse of the old world order. Although the deal may not necessarily achieve full normalization, still points of contact were restored. Such had vexed policymakers while at the same ushering in an era of Chinese diplomatic victory in the area most crucial to US global dominance. The implications of such an agreement are multiple, but the potential loss of Saudi to the US, and the gradual dissolution of their institutional ties, especially the long-standing agreement by which Saudi sells its oil for dollars, may yet prove to be a world significant event.  

This detente is a breakthrough in terms of heralding peace and development in the region. It comes at a time when relations between China and the US have reached all-time lows. After several months of provocations aimed at disrupting Beijing through provocations around Taipei, it appears that China had turned the tables on the US’ most sensitive point, which is its hegemony over the gulf. The ramifications are too broad, but here I address the implications of the petrodollar system.

The petrodollar system was born of an agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia to peg the sales of oil in exchange for security guarantees and Saudi assistance with US foreign policy missions. Aside from petrodollar recycling, the benefit of pricing oil in dollars has all to do with increasing US indebtedness in the dollar, which in turn increases its wealth, since the US prints the ‘paper dollars’ as the equivalent of world wealth. This also means that the US must lay control not only over current world assets, but must also own the future work and assets of humanity to underwrite its massive wealth. For this, The US must be in control of the world’s strategic resources, choke points, and foremost the ideological production that cripples anti-systemic thought. On a more concrete level, since OPEC entities get paid in none other than the dollar, the profits earned from oil revenues are re-invested in US treasuries and other instruments so as to avoid the loss of value in times of economic downturns. The constant flow of dollars channeled into bonds, allows the US to finance its deficits and to be in a position to trade debts against their future values.

The depth of the US financial market, and the ability of the dollar to be a world medium of savings in addition to world means of exchange, are tied to the global demand for dollars. If the dollarization of oil lessens, then demand for dollars lessens, and the dollar as a safe refuge from financial turmoil abroad also lessens. As can be seen, the US must reconstitute its powers in the military and ideological fields to reinstall the dollar and siphon world wealth through it. Incidentally, the China-sponsored deal represents an image or ideological blow to the US because it has shown China as a peace-maker and the US as war monger. The implications of slow de-dollarisation are that the US may no longer be able to build its wealth by borrowing against a world it controls. 

Read – De-dollarization, Slowly but surely

Pricing oil to the US dollar has proved efficient to underwrite the wealth of the US-allied financial class. The equation more control equals more wealth meant that the US’s engagement in imperialist politics has always been about power first, especially ideological power wrought by beating and sanctioning people abroad. The US hegemony is first a hegemony over the global mind of defeated people. As the Arab proverb goes, one makes a friend out of beating him first.

The Saudis were pivotal in the ascent of the US. In addition to the many examples, like aiding the contras to fight Abdel-Nasser in Yemen, and the list goes on, they essentially helped the US win the Cold War because the dollarization of oil permitted them to financially contain Eastern European countries as they overburdened them with dollar debts. Lending to cripple an economy is just as good a weapon as any.  Not to forget, the Saudis also allowed the price of oil to be listed on the commodity market by weakening OPEC at the behest of the US. Direct producers of oil lost control of oil prices. Saudi pumped oil earned fewer profits than it should have as a part of the power game with the Soviet Union then. This was owed to a meeting held in 1985 between King Fahd and William Casey, the former CIA director, in which both agreed to increase oil production from 2 billion bpd to 10 billion bpd, leading oil prices to fall from $30 to $10 and eventually resulting in the fallout of the Soviet economy.

In the region, the Saudis assisted US aspirations through the numerous wars against more autonomous states across the region. The proliferation of Salafism and the financing of disruptive militias instigated wars that were a win-win situation for the US. It weakened opposing regimes and made money off military spending. 

Yet with war waged on Yemen, tensions with Iran, and a balance of forces tilting in favor of the axis of resistance, it is only rational for the Saudis to forfeit the US and seek longer-term stability through negotiated dialogue. The deal that the US provides Saudi with security as Saudi prices its oil in the dollar seems to be no longer valid.  The US is retreating around the globe, and while it cannot afford Saudi security, the Saudis will rethink their pricing oil only in dollars. Add to that the personal vilification of MBS and the openly anti-Arab racism practiced daily in Western media and other channels. 

On a more detailed level, Saudi security demands are threefold: first, to grant a major non-NATO ally status; second, to receive additional sales of advanced US weapons; and third, to receive US support for a civilian nuclear energy program. With the first condition fulfilled and the second being contested, the third would evoke the possibility for Saudi authorities to develop their own fissile material, hence enabling the capacity of building a nuclear weapon. The US is less concerned with nuclear proliferation than the military autonomization of Saudi Arabia as this would jeopardize the agreement that safeguards the petrodollar system. US reluctance to respond to Saudi Arabia’s security needs was made obvious when Democrat lawmakers urged US President Joe Biden to discourage Saudis from enhancing their own ballistic missiles and drone capabilities in 2022. A letter was issued just a few days prior to Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia in June 2022, and highlighted concerns from the Pentagon that the Gulf state was planning to manufacture solid fuel missiles with assistance from China.

Another relevant factor to consider is threats issued by the US that it would pull away military support following the announcement of the OPEC cut in October 2022, as well as the introduction of the NOPEC bill which would enable lawsuits to be filed against Saudi Arabia and OPEC entities for controlling oil prices. If such a bill would come to pass, it would highlight the possibility of Saudi Arabia being slapped with sanctions. With the Iran-Saudi deal announced, it appears that China has rocked the foundations on which the petrodollar system rests. This was further evidenced by the introduction of a Privileged Resolution by Senators Murphy and Lee calling for a complete halt of US military assistance to Saudi Arabia, noting that “US weapons do not belong in the hands of human rights abusers.”

Breaking the link between the oil and the dollar is a project that has been in the making for quite some time. Both Russia and China have been buying immense amounts of gold to rid their foreign reserves in US dollars and back their own currencies on the gold standard. With their BRICS allies, they are contemplating a common currency that would shift away from transactions carried out in US dollars. Although many signs seem to be pointing out the gradual decline of the petrodollar system, it is unlikely that it may happen in the short run.

The petrodollar will remain the dominant currency as long as the dollar is recognized as the world reserve currency. As we speak, the global share of foreign reserves denominated in US dollars currently fell to slightly below 60%. States and companies across the world are still required to own dollars in order to purchase oil – the most strategic commodity on the global market. After all that is said and done, the decline of the dollar is tied to the decline of the US’s control of the planet, which until now was de-facto ownership of the planet.

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TWO DECADES AND $90 BILLION US DOLLARS LATER: DISSECTING THE AFGHAN MILITARY’S TOTAL COLLAPSE

MARCH 27TH, 2023

Source

By Kit Klarenberg

In February, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) published an extensive investigation into the spectacular collapse of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces’ (ANDSF), which the U.S. spent two decades and $90 billion building. In common with previous SIGAR reports, it offers a remarkably uncompromising, no-punches-pulled assessment, exposing corruption, incompetence, lies, and delusion every step of the way.

At the report’s core is a highly detailed timeline of the ANDSF’s – and, therefore, the Afghan government’s – disintegration. That SIGAR was able to construct such a painstaking obituary is nothing short of miraculous, for the Special Inspector General was stonewalled and obstructed at every turn by the agencies it is officially charged with scrutinizing.

The Pentagon and State Department rejected SIGAR’s jurisdiction over them, declined to review interim drafts of the report, denied access to their staff, and “mostly” refused to answer requests for information. “Very few” documents SIGAR asked for were turned over, and material disclosed “was often not materially relevant to our objectives.”

In lieu of cooperation from the guilty parties, SIGAR conducted a panoply of probing interviews with U.S. and Afghan officials. While often unnamed, their admissions and analysis provide stunning insight into conversations, deliberations, and machinations hidden from public view at the time. Together, these accounts help explain how the ANDSF, much-vaunted by the White House until its demise, failed so spectacularly.

It is a highly cinematic retelling that is part thriller, part farce. Take, for example, a former “senior Afghan national security official” recounting the morning of August 15, 2021, the day Kabul fell. As Americans rushed to depart the country, en route to a meeting with President Ashraf Ghani, he was told by the Presidential Protective Service chief that the Taliban, contrary to promises not to enter the city, had done so.

In the president’s office, the pair scrambled to draft an official statement to be transmitted domestically and internationally on the group’s unwelcome arrival. A secretary was asked to request some green tea from catering, as was customary in such meetings:

He went and brought the tray himself. Wait a minute, what happened to the server? He said, there’s no one left. People in our offices had abandoned and they had gone…[By around] 10 or 11, we no longer had a consolidated security force.”

This mass walkout was evident in every state apparatus. The president contacted the head of the National Security Directorate, the Afghan government’s primary intelligence service, which was created in the early 2000s by the CIA, requesting he rally operatives “to keep order in Kabul.” The Directorate chief regretfully informed him that the formerly 500-strong force tasked with managing the city’s defense now numbered less than 20 people.

Back at the President’s office, as word spread of police units all over the city summarily abandoning their posts en masse, the few in-house security officers who had come into work that day began shedding their official livery, which they’d pre-emptively donned over civilian clothes. By 11 am, all their uniforms were literally consigned to the garbage – and with that, the Afghan government ceased to exist.

“A CONSPIRACY THEORY”

This cataclysm came to pass first gradually, then rapidly.

Despite the vast financial, material and practical assistance Washington provided to the ANDSF over the years, the force was throughout its life completely dependent on the U.S., not only for anti-Taliban military operations but to make sure the Kabul paid soldiers’ salaries. Its undoing was ensured in February 2020, when the Doha Agreement was reached by the Taliban and Trump administration, which set a blueprint for eventual American withdrawal.

This concord immediately led to a drastic, total scaling back of Washington’s assistance, in particular airstrikes, which were fundamental to the ANDSF’s ability to stop the Taliban’s encroachment. The previous year, the U.S. had conducted 7,423 airstrikes on the force’s behalf, the most since 2009.

Overnight, though, this ceased outright, leaving air defense the exclusive responsibility of the Afghan Air Force, as per the agreement. In practice, Kabul’s fighter fleet consisted of just two A-29s, aging propeller-toting Brazilian-made light aircraft designed to operate in low-threat environments.

This also immediately crippled the ANDSF’s logistical capability. Weapons and supplies could not be ferried by ground quickly enough to meet operational demands, leading to the force lacking ammunition, food, water, and other vital resources necessary to sustain anti-Taliban military engagements.

Muddying matters even further, the full terms of the Doha Agreement were seemingly kept confidential from local police, security forces, and even the government. A former Afghan army general quoted by SIGAR suggests U.S. forces on the ground were likewise “confused about what to engage and what not to,” and thus forced to coordinate with the Pentagon and State Department “on an hourly basis…to get clarification on what they could do.”

A Taliban fighter holds an American-made M16 rifle in Kabul, December 12, 2021. Photo | Sipa via AP

“They would see the Taliban attacking our checkpoints. They would have videos of the Taliban doing it. But they would say we are not able to engage because we have limitations,” he records. “The Taliban started moving around connecting their small pockets of fighting groups across the country, uniting them and making the fighting units bigger and bigger. The U.S. would watch but do nothing because of the Agreement.”

Come May 2021, when the Taliban offensive began, demoralized, ill-equipped protective forces – who, in some cases, hadn’t seen their families or been paid for over six months – offered little resistance. Some of them joined the Taliban, and others were bribed to give up their positions. The ease with which the group breezed through fortified territory gave rise to a “conspiracy theory” circulating through state institutions that “the Americans wanted the Taliban to come back to power,” according to a former government minister.

The Taliban purportedly seized upon this development, publicizing they had “some kind of a secret deal with the Americans…under which certain districts or provinces would be surrendered to them” to facilitate ANDSF capitulations, according to an ex-Afghan national security official:

[Defeat] was going to happen anyway, so why would they want to die… they used that tactic very well throughout the country, they used it with local commanders, leaders in their areas, parliamentarians.”

SAME OLD STORY

It is tantalizing indeed to consider whether, far from “conspiracy theory,” the Doha Agreement did indeed amount to the Taliban being given free rein to take back control of Afghanistan and the apparent surprise of U.S. officials at the pace of the government’s collapse was just for show.

However, SIGAR outlines a total lack of professional oversight on the ANDSF’s development and capabilities, which “prevented a clear picture of reality on the ground” from emerging to any relevant party before it was too late. This was no accident, though; the Afghan government and military, their trainers and the Pentagon alike were all heavily incentivized to lie to one another, and political leaders in Washington, who were in turn motivated to mislead the public and justify the enormous investment.

This deceit also conveniently obscured industrial-scale corruption and embezzlement within the ANDSF. As prior SIGAR reports also found, so much money and equipment were flowing into Afghanistan without any supervision whatsoever, and weaponry and other aid were misused, stolen or illegally sold off with ease by Afghans, U.S. personnel and Pentagon contractors.

SIGAR ominously warns that a similar absence of accountability is evident in the “unprecedented” U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022.

“Diversion to illicit markets, misuse amongst groups fighting in Ukraine, or their acquisition by Russia or other non-state actors” are resultantly considered “likely unavoidable” consequences of this wellspring. Despite U.S. leaders promising a keen eye is being kept on the weapons shipments, SIGAR’s report makes clear these same officials did not even know what was being sent to Afghanistan. Is the same true for Kiev?

In a perverse irony, some of the American military equipment rescued from capture by the Taliban has been dispatched to Ukraine – specifically, fighter jets that could not be used by the Afghan Air Force. For the most part, though, what ended up in Kabul is now in the hands of a formerly sworn enemy, with armored vehicles and military aircraft featuring prominently in the group’s propaganda and training videos.

There are disturbing historical echoes in this. In the 1980s, the CIA and MI6 provided Afghanistan’s Mujahideen with 600 Blowpipe anti-aircraft missiles to take down Red Army jets and helicopters. Following the 2001 NATO invasion, these weapons were routinely found in Taliban and Al-Qaeda arms caches across the country. As late as 2010, Western media was reporting the shoulder-fired Blowpipes were a major threat to American operations there.

In the present day, the U.S. has provided 1,400 MANPADS – another shoulder-fired missile – to Ukraine. The State Department believes these weapons “pose a serious threat to passenger air travel, the commercial aviation industry, and military aircraft around the world.” Since the 1970s, over 40 civilian aircraft have been hit by MANPADS.

“CLOSE FRIENDS WITH SENATORS”

One of the SIGAR report’s most striking sections documents the Afghan government’s failure to dedicate any time or resources at all to planning how the country’s assorted U.S.-created and sustained political, judicial, security and military institutions might operate post-withdrawal. Refusal might be more accurate – for as August 2021 approached, Ghani and his men remained implacably convinced the U.S. was not going anywhere and acted accordingly.

The reasons for this catastrophic oversight were manifold. First and foremost, neither President Ghani nor his administration at any point considered the prospect of total U.S. withdrawal to be remotely credible or even possible. They reasoned that Washington had expended so much blood and treasure over so many years, and the country was so strategically significant it would never be fully jilted by its generous benefactor.

In fact, they were certain the U.S. could not leave without the government’s express consent under the terms of the Bilateral Security Agreement inked in September 2014 by Kabul and Washington. It enshrined a permanent American troop presence in the country “until the end of 2024 and beyond” unless terminated by either side with two years’ notice.

Taliban fighters patrol in front of a torn photo of Ashraf Ghani on the wall of a city hall, Aug. 21, 2021. Photo | Kyodo via AP

As such, when U.S. officials began warning Afghan ministers the withdrawal would very much be total, they simply were not listened to. A State Department official despairingly recalls how Ghani interpreted his repeated cautions of what was to soon come as a mere diplomatic bluff intended to “shape his behavior.” Declaring Afghanistan to be “the most important piece of real estate in the world,” he asked the official airily, “how could you leave a territory as important geopolitically?”

“That [sic] was some of the toughest conversations I had with the President of Afghanistan,” the State Department official lamented. “I tried to plead with him, saying I know he’s very well-connected but, in our system, the President ultimately decides, and he should take this seriously not to miscalculate.”

A staggering blunder indeed, but in their defense, Ghani et al. were encouraged in their delusion by contradictory and conflicting messages, both private and public, from U.S. officials.

“They refuted profusely any argument their negotiations with the Taliban and their subsequent deal…was essentially a guise to withdraw all of their troops,” a former Afghan national security advisor alleges, adding:

We were constantly reassured the [U.S.] was committed to the partnership with the Afghan government. They insisted they wanted a peaceful Afghanistan in which the gains of the last 20 years would be preserved. They maintained this position until the very end.”

Ghani’s close personal connections to the U.S. power elite also helped foster the sense he was a “made man” and wouldn’t be discarded by his fellow gangsters. Hekmat Karzai, former Afghan deputy foreign minister, records how the president “thought he knew Washington, though many of these senators were his close friends…he was able to address both houses of Congress, and he thought he had lobbyists in Washington that were pulling for him.”

“SLOWLY CRACKING APART”

The SIGAR report offers no formal recommendations for the U.S. government. It is simply intended as a comprehensive postmortem to enhance public understanding of how unaccountably vast American taxpayer funds were spent on a nation-building project thousands of miles away from home, which ultimately failed miserably.

Yet, the lessons for all U.S. allies, particularly those heavily dependent on Washington’s diplomatic, financial and military backing, could not be starker. SIGAR’s findings are particularly relevant to consider in the context of the Ukraine conflict, given there are increasingly unambiguous indications the day Kiev is thrown under a bus by its Western sponsors rapidly approaches.

At the end of January, influential Pentagon-funded think tank RAND published a report, “Avoiding a Long War,” which concluded the risks and costs of keeping the conflict grinding on through endless weapons shipments and bottomless financial aid far outweighed any benefits to the U.S. It accordingly urged policymakers to immediately start laying foundations for a future “shift” in support for Ukraine, nudging Kiev to rein in its ambitions and rhetoric and initiate peace negotiations with Moscow.

It may be no coincidence that in the RAND report’s wake, public pronouncements by U.S. officials are no longer tubthumping and bullish, and there has been a marked shift in media reporting on the conflict. Stories of Ukrainian battlefield success and heroism and Russian incompetence and embarrassment, a daily staple for much of 2022, have suddenly become rather scarce.

In their place, numerous outlets have published detailed accounts of the bleak reality of the frontline, with poorly equipped, untrained Ukrainian conscripts forcibly marched into a relentless, highly lethal deluge of artillery fire while Russian forces steadily gain ground. Kiev’s personnel losses, a closely guarded state secret hitherto consistently downplayed by the media, are now widely acknowledged to be catastrophic and unsustainable.

On March 12, Politico reported Washington’s unity with Ukraine was “slowly cracking apart,” and administration officials privately worry so much manpower and ammunition is being expended that no counteroffensive can ever be mounted. It was also claimed – contrary to Biden’s explicit pledge to support the proxy war “as long as it takes” – Kiev had been plainly informed that U.S. support would not continue “indefinitely at this level.”

If true, there is no indication that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received the memo. He recently hailed Kiev’s “invincibility” and dubbed 2023 “the year of victory.” His military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov has even suggested Ukrainians will be vacationing in Crimea this summer.

Maintaining the morale of one’s citizens, soldiers and foreign backers during wartime is absolutely essential, and the former comedian has proven himself highly adept in this regard. Yet, the same U.S. figures who not long ago readily echoed and legitimized this optimism are now actively repudiating Zelensky’s swagger. On February 15, Secretary of State Antony Blinken gravely warned Ukraine that its dream of retaking Crimea was not only fantastical but even trying would inevitably lead to a severe counter-response from Moscow.

This unprecedented intervention was in direct keeping with the RAND report’s contention that Kiev regaining territory from Russia was of “debatable” value to American interests, given “the risks of nuclear use or a Russia-NATO war would spike.” Ukrainian land being considered so expendable raises the obvious prospect Washington could compel Kiev to cede even more to Moscow in a peace deal.

One cannot help but wonder if, behind closed doors, Zelensky is in the manner of Ghani, being warned that Washington’s total withdrawal from the proxy war impends, but these entreaties are similarly falling on deaf ears.

If so, the Ukrainian president can be forgiven for similarly thinking the prospect to be inconceivable. Pan-Western public and political sympathy, fawning profiles in prominent newspapers and magazines, unrelenting positive media coverage, high-level visits to and from Washington, London and other centers of power, and ceaseless statements of solidarity from overseas would convince any leader they were eternally indispensable. But the U.S. abandoning Afghanistan entirely was likewise beyond belief to all concerned until it happened.

It is easily forgotten that in June 2021, Ghani flew to Washington for a well-publicized personal summit with Biden as the Taliban simultaneously surged across the country, inexorably seizing district after district. Widely reported as a strong signal that the White House still steadfastly supported Kabul, a government spokesperson said the visit would “highlight the enduring partnership between the U.S. and Afghanistan as the military drawdown continues.”

Less than three months later, Ghani would unceremoniously flee Kabul for the United Arab Emirates, where he has languished in almost total obscurity ever since, completely forgotten by the Western media and forsaken by his former “friends.” The “most important piece of real estate in the world” likewise almost instantly vanished from headlines and mainstream political discourse following the Taliban’s takeover, never to return.

This time round, U.S. investment is lower, the stakes far higher, and extrication considerably easier. And as the RAND report argued, the Ukraine conflict is taking up valuable time and energy of military chiefs, which could instead be more fruitfully devoted to planning a war with China, a horrific prospect now openly mooted in Washington. The only question is how many more Ukrainians will needlessly die before the forewarned “shift” in American policy comes to pass, and Beijing is in the firing line.

Biden to Order US Dollar Replaced with Trackable “Spyware” Version?

April 01, 2023

Former Advisor to Pentagon and CIA: “Your life savings and freedoms are at immediate risk. Do THIS today…”

By James G. Rickards

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy, Intelligence

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Selected text from Transcript

Minor Edits by GR. Important text.

We do not concur with all the statements. It is not an issue of party politics.

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Where were you on March 9, 2022…

…when President Biden signed the death warrant on American freedom?

Click here or the photo to view the video.

On that day, in a hushed ceremony at the White House… without the approval of Congress, the states, or the American people… Biden signed into law Executive Order 14067.

Buried in his Order are a few paragraphs, titled Section 4… The language in Section 4 makes Order 14067… the most treacherous act by a sitting President in the history of our republic.

Because Section 4 sets the stage for…

• Legal government surveillance of all US citizens…
• Total control over your bank accounts and purchases…
• And the ability to silence all dissenting voices for good.

They’re coming for your money.

And it’s already started.

My name is Jim Rickards.

I’m a former advisor to the Pentagon, the White House, Congress, the CIA, and the Department of Defense. I’m also an attorney, investment banker… and author of 7 books on currencies and international economics.

When places like Fox, CNBC or Bloomberg want to know what’s about to shakeup the global economy, they call me.

Most of all, like you, I’m a proud American patriot.

The disturbing predictions you’re about to see are based on my independent research and my contacts in the intelligence community.

I’ve never made this kind of public announcement before… But it’s my duty to pull the alarm.

This is what I believe Section 4 of Biden’s Order means for all Americans…it is laying the groundwork for…

The US dollar being made obsolete.

Soon, your cash will be confiscated – or will simply be worthless paper.

The cash currency we have now will be replaced with a new, programmable digital tokens.

But the truth is, few outside the deep state recognize Biden’s move for what it really is.

If my predictions are correct, this so much more sinister than simply replacing the cash dollar with a new digitized version…

Friend, this new currency will allow for total control of all American citizens.

Because every “digital dollar” will be programmed by the government… that means they will be able to “turn on or off” your money at will.

Not only that, but they’ll be able to TRACK and RECORD every purchase you make.

This is very different when compared to “online banking”… And it has nothing to do with crypto.

I’ll explain everything in a moment, but what you need to know now is…

AOC has already publicly declared her support for a government controlled “spyware” currency…

The digital dollar means Dems [Deep state] would be able to punish any contribution, purchase, or even social media comment they don’t like.

And this isn’t something years away… It’s starting now.

Biden’s secret army has been hard at work, and… US trials are already well underway.

In fact, our government is racing to catch up…

China and Russia have already launched pilot programs for their own digital currencies.

More than half the countries in the world and almost 90% of central banks are testing or exploring a digital currency right now.

In my opinion, it’s not a question of “Will the US implement a digital dollar?”

It’s just a question of “When”…

And the answer to that is… It’s already happening.

Under Project Lithium and Project Hamilton, the new “spyware” currency has been quietly tested for several years.

There’s no stopping it.

I predict we’ll see a digital dollar hit circulation next year – or 2024 at the latest.

But I do have some good news for you.

It’s almost too late, but you can still protect your assets and your freedom…

…if you know exactly what to do.

In the next 84 seconds, I’m going to show you everything. [See video]

You’ll see the ugly proof of their plan. You’ll see what this could mean for you and your life savings.

I’m also going to show you the ONLY way I trust to protect your money and your freedom from Biden’s new surveillance machine.

I call it “Asset Emancipation” – and it’s easy to do and understand.

If you choose to take advantage of it…

Asset Emancipation is a way to legally secure – and even GROW – your wealth…

While hiding it safely away from surveillance and control.

It’s a loophole designed to outsmart a new spyware currency…

While potentially increasing your personal wealth.

But you must know exactly how to do it.

And that’s what I’m going to show you today.

I must warn you – some of this will be difficult to watch.

But if you care about your money and your freedom, please do not turn away.

Thanks to what you’ll witness here…

You’re about to be much more prepared for the coming storm than your neighbors…

…and that’s a very powerful position to be in.

Imagine if you were German in 1923 and able to somehow avoid the 29,500% hyperinflation that made their money worthless…

Or if you could have “opted out” of Roosevelt’s confiscation of all private gold in 1934…

That’s the power of Asset Emancipation.

And I’ll show you everything right now.

Thanks to Section 4 of Biden’s Order 14067 ordering urgent research into developing the digital dollar…I believe the US dollar, the standard of the world since 1792…

…will be REPLACED by a new currency, the digital dollar.

These new electronic currencies are called CBDCs – or “central bank digital currencies”.

(I call the digital dollar “Biden Bucks” because I want him to take full credit for what I consider to be crimes.)

This is not like the money in your online bank account… No, this is new and different.

Every digital dollar will be a programmable token, like bitcoin or other crypto currencies.

But there’s a big difference…

Cryptocurrencies are decentralized digital currencies. Instead, if it plays out the way I see it…

Biden Bucks will have the full backing of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

They will REPLACE the cash (“fiat”) dollar we have now…

And will soon be the sole, MANDATORY currency of the United States.

When Biden Bucks are rolled out, many experts – myself included… …believe they will begin an era of total government control and surveillance.

This is not hyperbole.

This would dramatically expand the power and influence of the federal government… essentially acting as a new type of “spyware”.

With Biden Bucks, the government will be able to force you to comply with its agenda.

Because if you don’t, they could turn off your money.

This won’t be like freezing a bank account, it will be so much easier.

Because Biden Bucks will be “digital tokens” programmed at the source…

…they could be “turned on or off” at will, with just a keystroke.

And they could be reprogrammed at any time.

With Biden’s secret surveillance army running the show, the anti-freedom implications are almost limitless…

For example, Biden Bucks could be programmed to allow only certain kinds of purchases…

Imagine what this new world could look like…

You want to keep your internal combustion engine car?

Your digital dollars suddenly won’t pay for gas.

Instead, you can be forced to buy an electric vehicle…

That’s just the tip of the fascist iceberg…

• They can force you to get vaccinated…
• They can force you into solar…
• They can force you to use less water or heat…
• They can force you to eat fake, plant-based meat…
• They can control where you are allowed to travel…
• They can stop you purchasing certain items – like guns, ammo, or survival supplies.
• They can control to which candidates you are allowed to donate.
• And they’ll know every single place you ever spend money. Forever.
• America would become a surveillance state.

Every single aspect of your life could be controlled…

Because they’ll control your money.

In fact, I fully expect them to implement a “social credit rating” like in China.

• Say the “wrong” thing on social media…
• Buy the “wrong” thing…
• Subscribe to the “wrong” news channel…
• Give money to the “wrong” candidate…
• And your rating drops…

Suddenly, your Biden Bucks are frozen or disappearing from your account…

There, a low social score gets you officially labeled “untrustworthy”.

• They can take away your ability to travel…
• …restrict your internet access…
• …deny your family the best schools or jobs…
• They may even take away your pets.

I’m not kidding.

All of this is going on today.

Could this really happen in a democracy?

Just ask the truckers in Canada.

Because that’s exactly what happened to them.

Their Prime Minister Trudeau was granted “special emergency powers” during the peaceful trucker protests over his forced vaccination law…

He then ordered all banks to freeze the accounts of the protestors…

AND anyone who aided them in any way.

And it wasn’t just a threat… That fascist froze the bank accounts of non-violent protestors.

He locked up over $6 million in private accounts for protesting a forced vaccination law the truckers believed violated their sovereign human rights.

Think about that… They protested his policies…

So he took away their money.

Think our current government would love to do that?

Me too.

Under Biden Bucks, we’ll lose many of our God-given American rights.

They’ll be replaced by total government surveillance and control.

For almost all Americans, this will be the death of freedom.

Forever. Almost all Americans…

Not you.

You won’t be a victim.

You can beat Biden’s surveillance army at its own game.

The key is what I call “Asset Emancipation”.

Asset Emancipation was created to help you maintain and even grow your personal wealth…

…regardless of what happens to the cash dollar.

Even better…

It’s designed to legally hide your assets away from government surveillance…

And allow you to potentially profit from the turmoil.

For the record…

Asset Emancipation has nothing to do with giving up your passport or fleeing the country…

It also has nothing to do with offshore banks or foreign currency trading…

And you won’t hear about it from your financial advisor, because it’s almost certain…

…he has no clue about this loophole for legally “opting out” of the Biden Bucks surveillance program.

I’ll reveal everything in a moment, but I want to expose how deep this new conspiracy runs…

Programmable currencies will soon replace ALL the cash currencies on earth.

More than HALF of countries and almost 90% of central banks are exploring or testing a digital currency right now.

This includes Japan, Germany, India, France, the UK, Russia, Australia, Brazil, Canada, and China.

In fact, China’s new digital currency – the e-yuan – was used for millions of dollars’ worth of transactions at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

The Economist has announced the rise of government-backed digital currencies, warning they will “shift power from individuals to the state”.

Even an institution as conservative as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) admits these new currencies are “The future of money”.

Make no mistake…

No matter the outcome of any future elections…

This is happening.

The storm is closing in.

If my research and predictions are correct…

Soon, there will be no more cash.

The dollar we know will be dead and buried.

Replaced by programmable Biden Bucks.

The secret surveillance army has been working on this for years…

The U.S. Federal Reserve has been quietly partnering with scientists at MIT to develop a digital currency to replace the dollar.

They call this initiative Project Hamilton.

Then, this year, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, the clearinghouse for US stocks, bonds, and other security trades…

…quietly launched Project Lithium.

Project Lithium is testing how a digital dollar will work in the financial markets once the current dollar is dead.

Project Lithium is partnering with the Digital Dollar Project…

…a joint effort started in 2020 between Accenture, US regulators, and tech leaders to create the digital dollar…

Then, on March 29, 2022, just days after Biden’s Order 14067 was signed…

Representative Stephen F. Lynch introduced H.R. 7231, the Electronic Currency and Secure Hardware Act.

This act, co-sponsored by 4 other Democrats…

…ORDERS the Secretary of the Treasury to develop a digital dollar.

I believe we’ll see the first rollout of the new digital dollar – Biden Bucks – in 2023 or 2024.

And it’s right on schedule.

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Xi’s ‘Chilling’ Remarks: A Multipolar World Offers Challenges and Opportunities to the Middle East and Africa

March 28, 2023

Chinese President Xi Jinping with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Photo: Presidential Executive Office of Russia, via Wikimedia Commons)

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

By Ramzy Baroud

The final exchange, caught on camera between visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian host and counterpart, Vladimir Putin, sums up the current geopolitical conflict, still in its nascent stages, between the United States and its Western allies on the one hand, and Russia, China and their allies, on the other.

Xi was leaving the Kremlin following a three-day visit that can only be described as historic. “Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years and we are driving this change together,” Xi said while clasping Putin’s hand.

“I agree,” Putin replied while holding Xi’s arm. ‘Please take care, dear friend,” he added.

In no time, social media exploded by sharing that scene repeatedly. Corporate western media analysts went into overdrive, trying to understand what these few words meant.

“Is that part of the change that is coming, that they will drive together?” Ian Williamson raised the question in the Spectator. Though he did not offer a straight answer, he alluded to one: “It is a chilling prospect, for which the west needs to be prepared.”

Xi’s statement was, of course, uttered by design. It means that the Chinese-Russian strong ties, and possible future unity, are not an outcome of immediate geopolitical interests resulting from the Ukraine war, or a response to US provocations in Taiwan. Even before the Ukraine war commenced in February 2022, much evidence pointed to the fact that Russia and China’s goal was hardly temporary or impulsive. Indeed, it runs deep.

The very language of multipolarity has defined both countries’ discourse for years, a discourse that was mostly inspired by the two countries’ displeasure with US militarism from the Middle East to Southeast Asia; their frustration with Washington’s bullying tactics whenever a disagreement arises, be it in trade or border demarcations; the punitive language; the constant threats; the military expansion of NATO and much more.

One month before the war, I argued with my co-writer, Romana Rubeo, that both Russia and China might be at the cusp of some kind of unity. That conclusion was drawn based on a simple discourse analysis of the official language emanating from both capitals and the actual deepening of relations.

At the time, we wrote,

“Some kind of an alliance is already forming between China and Russia. The fact that the Chinese people are taking note of this and are supporting their government’s drive towards greater integration – political, economic and geostrategic – between Beijing and Moscow, indicates that the informal and potentially formal alliance is a long-term strategy for both nations”.

Even then, like other analysts, we did not expect that such a possibility could be realized so quickly. The Ukraine war, in itself, was not indicative that Moscow and Beijing will grow closer. Instead, it was Washington’s response, threatening and humiliating China, that did most of the work. The visit by then-US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan in August 2022 was a diplomatic disaster. It left Beijing with no alternative but to escalate and strengthen its ties with Russia, with the hope that the latter would fortify its naval presence in the Sea of Japan. In fact, this was the case.

But the “100 years” reference by Xi tells of a much bigger geopolitical story than any of us had expected. As Washington continues to pursue aggressive policies – with US President Joe Biden prioritizing Russia and his Republican foes prioritizing China as the main enemy of the US – the two Asian giants are now forced to merge into one unified political unit, with a common political discourse.

“We signed a statement on deepening the strategic partnership and bilateral ties which are entering a new era,” Xi said in his final statement.

This ‘no-limits friendship’ is more possible now than ever before, as neither country is constrained by ideological confines or competition. Moreover, they are both keen on ending the US global hegemony, not only in the Asia and Pacific region, but in Africa, the Middle East and, eventually, worldwide as well.

On the first day of Xi’s visit to Moscow, Russia’s President Putin issued a decree in which he has written off debts of African countries worth more than $20 billion. Moreover, he promised that Russia is “ready to supply the whole volume sent during the past time to African countries particularly requiring it, from Russia free of charge ..,” should Moscow decide “not to extend the (grain) deal in sixty days”.

For both countries, Africa is a major ally in the upcoming global conflict. The Middle East, too, is vital. The latest agreement, which normalized ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia is earth-shattering, not only because it ends seven years of animosity and conflict, but because the arbitrator was no other than China itself. Beijing is now a peace broker in the very Middle East which was dominated by failed US diplomacy for decades.

What this means for the Palestinians remains to be seen, as too many variables are still at work. But for these global shifts to serve Palestinian interests in any way, the current leadership, or a new leadership, would have to slowly break away from its reliance on western handouts and validation, and, with the support of Arab and African allies, adopt a different political strategy.

The US government, however, continues to read the situation entirely within the Russia-Ukraine war context. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded to Xi’s trip to Moscow by saying that “the world should not be fooled by any tactical move by Russia, supported by China or any other country, to freeze the war (in Ukraine) on its own terms.” It is rather strange, but also telling that the outright rejection of the potential call for a ceasefire was made by Washington, not Kyiv.

Xi’s visit, however, is truly historic from a geopolitical sense. It is comparable in scope and possible consequences to former US President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing, which contributed to the deterioration of ties between the Soviet Union and China under Chairman Mao Zedong.

The improved relationship between China and the US back then helped Washington further extend its global dominance, while putting the USSR on the defensive. The rest is history, one that was rife with geostrategic rivalry and divisions in Asia, thus, ultimately, the rise of the US as the uncontested power in that region.

Nixon’s visit to Beijing was described by then-Ambassador Nicholas Platt as “the week that changed the world”. Judging that statement from an American-centric view of the world, Platt was, in fact, correct in his assessment. The world, however, seems to be changing back. Though it took 51 years for that reversal to take place, the consequences are likely to be earth-shattering, to say the least.

Regions that have long been dominated by the US and its western allies, like the Middle East and Africa, are processing all of these changes and potential opportunities. If this geopolitical shift continues, the world will, once again, find itself divided into camps. While it is too early to determine, with any degree of certainty, the winners and losers of this new configuration, it is most certain that a US-western-dominated world is no longer possible.

Biden’s Second ‘Democracy Summit’

28 Mar 2023

Source: Al Mayadeen English

Atilio A. Boron 

History and the present show that an imperial republic like the United States needs vassals, not partners, especially in current times in which the empire is going through its irreversible decline.

Between March 28 and 30, the Second Summit on Democracy will take place in Washington DC. Wednesday, March 29, will be the day of the plenary meeting. The event is convened by the United States government through the State Department but, as usual, it will have some “associated governments” that will also summon the meeting and whose mission is to disguise that the Summit is entirely a Washington project. The goal is crystal clear: to recover ground in the dwindling international prestige of American democracy, heavily damaged by the increasing levels of popular dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy (over fifty percent of the surveyed population), as revealed by a host of public opinion polls; and by the unprecedented incidents surrounding the storming of the Capitol, the seat of the U.S. Congress, in Washington on January 6, 2021.

As announced, the Summit for Democracy has ”five co-hosts:  the United States, Costa Rica, Netherlands, Republic of Korea, and Zambia and representatives of their governments will officially kick off the Summit, with each co-host leader hosting a live, fully virtual, thematic.” The day before, the Department of State will host a panel session, chaired by Secretary Antony Blinken, about the need for a “Just and Lasting Peace in Ukraine” featuring President Volodymyr Zelensky as its main speaker. Supposedly, Zelensky and Secretary Blinken will discuss, alongside Foreign Ministers from a regionally diverse group of countries, the steps to be taken to reach a ceasefire and a “lasting peace” in Ukraine, although all the policies promoted by the Biden Administration run exactly in the opposite direction. Apparently, gone are the days when the European, and partly American, press characterized Ukraine as the most corrupt country in Europe and Zelensky himself as a despotic and equally corrupt leader. In 2015, the British newspaper The Guardian described it as such. Almost a year after the start of the war in Ukraine other press reports said that “the war with Russia hasn’t changed that.”

Unfortunately, at the time of writing these lines, the complete list of the countries invited to the Summit was unknown. However, an indication may be offered by the fact that the day after the plenary session, dedicated to digital technologies for the advancement of democracies and the dangers of digital authoritarianism, the keynote speaker will be no other than the Minister of Digital Affairs of Taiwan, Audrey Tang. This is a frontal attack on China because the guests at the Summit are supposed to be representatives of independent countries, and Taiwan certainly is not. It is not even recognized as such by the US government itself, but the intention is clear: to promote Taiwanese separatism, harass China, and provoke it into having a military response that would then justify US aggression.

We Latin Americans know very well that if there is a government in the world that cannot give lessons on democracy, it is precisely the government of the United States. Since the beginning of the American imperial expansion the U.S., has been renowned for its permanent attacks against the establishment of any democratic government in the region.  When Cuba and Puerto Rico were leading a liberation struggle against Spanish oppression, during the so-called “Spanish-American” war, the United States captured Cuba in 1898 after the Treaty of Paris and spoiled the Cuban victory. If we make a list of coups sponsored or directly carried out by the United States in our countries, we would run the risk of turning this note into a voluminous essay. We are just going to mention a few cases. 

In Argentina, the bloody military coups of 1966 and 1976 were sponsored and protected by Washington. In Chile, the brutal coup and subsequent assassination of Salvador Allende, perpetrated on September 11, 1973, was directly orchestrated from Washington by President Richard Nixon himself and his National Security adviser, and later Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. The coup d’état that took place in Brazil in 1964, and which lasted until 1985, had the enthusiastic support of Washington, as did the 1973 military coup in Uruguay, which also lasted until 1985 when Washington realized that its undisguised support for the ferocious Latin American dictatorships was damaging its international image and that the time had come to bet on democracy, but taking due precautions. We should not forget that Washington prepared an armed confrontation that lasted ten years (1979-1989) against the Sandinista government and used all the means at its disposal to destabilize the government of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador, in recent years

The worn-out democratic rhetoric of the United States is not enough to disguise the wicked intentions of its new strategy based on the possibilities opened by the use of “soft power” and the new devices to put pressure on progressive or left-wing governments: from the World Bank and IMF “conditionalities” to the oligopolistic control of the media and the indoctrination of judges and prosecutors to put into practice “lawfare” ploys to eliminate undesirable leaders for the empire from the field of the electoral politics, such as Lula in Brazil, Correa in Ecuador, Cristina in Argentina, Lugo in Paraguay, Zelaya in Honduras, Evo in Bolivia and just a few months ago Pedro Castillo in Peru.

History and the present show that an imperial republic like the United States needs vassals, not partners, especially in current times in which the empire is going through its irreversible decline. At times like these, democracies, as an expression of popular sovereignty and self-determination of nations, could not be more dysfunctional for the empire. That is why the Summit for Democracy will be one more farce, a propaganda montage whose real objective is to consolidate a “new cold war” divide between the friends and allies of the United States, who will be considered as democratic, and the adversaries of Washington, demonized as perverse autocracies that will be necessary to fight against by all available means. 

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

Missiles hit two US occupation bases in Syria, casualties reported

March 25 2023

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

The Pentagon says its illegal bases were targeted by drones in the third attack against US troops in Syria within 24 hours

ByNews Desk 

Two military bases of the US occupation army in Syria came under heavy attack late on 24 March, leaving multiple casualties among the troops stationed at Al-Omar and Conoco oil fields in Deir Ezzor governorate.

BREAKING NEWS: US bases directly targeted by drones and missiles in oil rich northeast Syria.

Casualties reported among the US forces. pic.twitter.com/eqyST5Bhzj

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) March 24, 2023

According to local reports, flames rose from inside the occupation base at Al-Omar, Syria’s largest oil field.

No group has taken responsibility for the daring operation. According to the Pentagon, one attack was carried out with rockets, while the other “involved multiple Iranian drones.”

Friday night’s attack marked the third armed operation against US troops within 24 hours.

Late on 23 March, a drone strike hit the US occupation base at Kharab al-Jir military airport in Hasakah governorate, leaving at least one US contractor dead and several troops injured.

US jets bombed several locations in the city of Deir Ezzor in retaliation, targeting the Syrian army and Iranian advisors. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the F-15 jets were deployed from the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

In response to the airstrikes, a rocket barrage hit the US base at Al-Omar just hours later.

Commenting on Friday’s airstrikes, US President Joe Biden said his country is “prepared for us to act forcefully to protect our people,” adding that the US will “continue to keep up our efforts to counter terrorist threats in the region.”

He also stressed that the US “does not, does not seek conflict with Iran.”

His comments come at a time when both Iran and Syria have welcomed overtures from Washington’s most valued Gulf ally, Saudi Arabia, under the auspices of Russia and China.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has played an instrumental role in helping the Syrian and Russian armies push back against ISIS and other extremist groups in Syria over recent years.

US military bases in Syria regularly come under attack by local resistance groups, as popular discontent has grown significantly over their ongoing theft of Syria’s natural resources.

Earlier this month, the US Congress voted against ending Washington’s illegal occupation of Syria.

Related News

• US attack on Syrian army leaves several dead, occupation base bombed in response
• US Strikes Eastern Syria: Several Syrian Soldiers Martyred
• Rockets Target US Occupation Base After Airstrikes against Syrian Troops
• Biden says ‘We’re not going to stop’ as Syria occupation bases get hit
• Iran International: Inside the “Saudi-Funded” Network Promoting Regime Change in Iran

US ‘obviously’ behind Nord Stream bombing: French The Patriots leader

March 17, 2023

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

The politician bases his conviction on a Biden statement in early February of 2022, in which he publicly declared that Americans had the ability to make the pipelines go away.

Florian Philippot, leader for The Patriots, April 17, 2021, Lyon (AFP)

The United States was “obviously” behind the bombing of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines since they’ve been fighting the pipelines for years, said the leader of France’s The Patriots, Florian Philippot. 

Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist, wrote in February that US navy divers had laid bombs under the pipelines during their summer training and exploded them remotely at the order of US President Joe Biden while citing a familiar source.

Hersh referred to US officials who may have carried out the act as “lunatics”, while reiterating. “He did it. He did it,” referring to President Biden‘s involvement.

“Even before the theory put forward by Hersh, who is a very reputable journalist, it was obvious that the Americans were behind the bombing. Even before the war in Ukraine, the US had been fighting the Nord Stream pipelines for years, it had become a permanent element of their policy,” Philippot said.

The French politician added that in early February of 2022, Biden publicly declared that Americans had the ability to make the pipelines go away, which happened, highlighting that the act was in America’s interests.

Philippot now questions whether Washington planned and executed the bombing alone, or together with Norway.

“And there is nothing absurd about this because Norway is Russia’s gas competitor, and Russian gas has been replaced by Norwegian gas in many countries. So they also had their own interests and enriched themselves at this expense,” Philippot explained.

The Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines were built to deliver gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. They have been out of action since they were hit by explosions last September. 

Nord Stream AG, Nord Stream’s operator, described the damage as unprecedented and deemed it impossible to estimate the time repairs might take.

Related Stories

• Denmark not to allow Russia joining Nord Stream attack investigations
• Seymour Hersh: Biden bombed Nord Stream, ‘everyone’s on our hit list’
• Nord Stream blasts carried out on ‘state level’: Putin
• Seymour Hersh: Biden bombed Nord Stream, ‘everyone’s on our hit list’
• New Nord Stream reports part of disinformation campaign: Kremlin

Syrian sanctions relief: An ‘American trick’

March 14 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The temporary lifting of Washington’s sanctions on earthquake-stricken and war-torn Syria is ‘misleading’ at best, and stands in the way of relief efforts.

By The Cradle’s Syria Correspondent

Four days after the devastating earthquake that struck southern Turkiye and northern Syria on 6 February, the US announced it would temporarily ease its Syrian sanctions in an effort to speed up aid deliveries to the country.

Specifically, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued Syria General License (GL) 23, which allows a 180-day Syrian sanctions exemption for “all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts.” The EU followed suit later by also freezing some of its sanctions on Damascus.

But do these measures really represent a comprehensive freeze on sanctions against Syria? And are these partial suspensions proportional to the scale of the disaster that leveled the Syrian north?

A more detailed examination of these US “sanction exemptions” reveals that this humanitarian gesture was little more than a public relations stunt to placate growing Arab and Global South displeasure with Washington’s efforts to starve out Syria – sentiments that spiked quite notably after the earthquake.

The US sanctions suspension, for all practical purposes, is limited to the sending of emergency funds from “acceptable” sources. Washington, after all, still controls the process entirely – sanctions can be imposed on remittance senders at any time.

Furthermore, US sanction exemptions have not reduced the reluctance of foreign institutions and individuals to participate in Syria’s economy – even in sectors that are not explicitly targeted by the US and EU. The UN calls this unfortunate byproduct of western sanctions regimes “excessive compliance with sanctions,” because of the fear of running afoul of western financial regulators.

Suffocating sanctions

Damascus has been targeted by US sanctions since 1979 for siding with Tehran in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). With the outbreak of the war in Syria in 2011, US President Barack Obama expanded previously imposed sanctions under the Syria Accountability Act (2004) as part of a western effort to create political, economic, and military pressures on the Syrian government.

These new sanctions covered practically all sectors, imposing financial restrictions on individuals, entities, facilities, institutions, ministries, the medical sector, and state banks. They were pervasive and punished all Syrians: banning passenger flights, restricting oil exports (the US, through its Kurdish proxy, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), controls the oil fields in northeastern Syria), preventing the export or re-export of US goods to Syria, preventing the export of Syrian products overseas, freezing Syrian assets abroad, and severing diplomatic relations with Damascus.

This sanctions overload reached a climax with the ominous Caesar Act (2019) and Captagon Act (2022). The former granted Washington the power to impose sanctions against any individual or entity, regardless of their nationality, who engages with Syria in infrastructure and energy projects, provides financial, material, or technological support to the Syrian government, or provides the Syrian military forces with goods or services.

In 2022, the US Congress passed the Captagon Act, which targeted Syria’s pharmaceutical industry, one of the country’s most successful commercial sectors, which provides more than 90 percent of Syria’s medicine needs. This US domestic legislation grants itself the authority to monitor Syrian borders, and seeks to “legitimize” its military forces’ illegal presence in Syria.

License to chill

On 10 February, the administration of President Joe Biden issued Syria General License (GL) 23, which temporarily eases sanctions on Syria and allows for the additional flow of much needed humanitarian aid into the country. However, the statement issued alongside the decision indicates that this “exemption” has many limitations.

While removing sanctions entirely requires US congressional approval, suspending the ban on certain financial transactions with Syria for a short duration is the prerogative of the American president, and is often used as leverage to gain political concessions from US-sanctioned states.

An example of this is the 2015 nuclear negotiations with Tehran, when Obama issued licenses to freeze some US sanctions on Iran before his successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and reactivated the sanctions.

A press release issued by OFAC stated that GL 23 “provides the broad authorization necessary to support immediate disaster relief efforts in Syria.” It added that “U.S. and intermediary financial institutions should have what they need in GL23 to immediately process all earthquake relief transactions.”

The GL 23 “authorized all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts in Syria that would be otherwise prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations (SySR).” Importantly, it also states that “US financial institutions and US registered money transmitters may rely on the originator of a funds transfer with regard to compliance with this general license, provided that the financial institution does not know or have reason to know that the funds transfer is not in compliance with this general license.”

This language ensures that Washington retains the authority to investigate any transfers and punish money senders at any later date, on charges that the transfers are not related to relief efforts.

Another caveat, as per OFAC’s press release: “The Department of the Treasury will continue to monitor the situation in Syria and engage with key humanitarian and disaster assistance stakeholders, including NGOs, IOs, and key partners and allies.”

This essentially excludes dealings with Syrian government institutions, and prevents money transfers directly to state entities, including the Central Bank of Syria. Keep in mind that the distribution of all international humanitarian aid is directed via the Syrian government, as per the regulations and laws of the state.

This US “sanctions relief” caveat elicited a high-pitched response from the Syrian Foreign Ministry, in which it described Washington’s offering as “misleading, and aims to give a false humanitarian impression.”

Last May, the US lifted sanctions on foreign investments in areas outside of Syrian government control. The Treasury Department issued an authorization that now allows for “activities” in 12 different economic sectors in parts of northeast and northwest Syria without fear of US sanctions. This move was aimed at stimulating economic growth in areas controlled by US-backed Kurdish militias and Turkish-backed militants.

Hindering relief efforts

Washington’s sanctions have had direct consequences on international relief efforts following the earthquake. The United Nations and relief organizations were delayed in providing urgent life-or-death assistance to Syria, which the UN blamed on road and infrastructure obstacles and a “lack of fuel” – an implicit reference to the western sanctions that have deprived the country of its critical oil wealth.

Syria’s entire health sector has suffered directly from US sanctions because of power outages and the inability to purchase vital medical equipment needed to treat patients. According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), around 20 medical facilities were damaged by the earthquake and need rehabilitation, but US sanctions prevent the restoration of these facilities, either through a direct ban or because foreign medical companies fear sanctions repercussions for dealing with the Syrian Ministry of Health.

Sanctions have doubled the suffering of Syrian earthquake survivors in terms of securing urgent relief materials and rehabilitating their damaged housing units. As such, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for the lifting of sanctions that impede relief efforts.

“This is a moment in which everybody has to make very clear that no sanctions of any kind interfere with relief to the population of Syria in the present moment,” he said.

A Syrian relief source, who asked not to be named, informs The Cradle that the response of international organizations to the Syrian disaster still remains below standard due to poor funding and the difficulty of sending relief and medical materials because of the sanctions.

He explains that the impact of the US exemption license is almost negligible, as “the disaster will have a very long term impact. In normal circumstances, we need years of work, let alone the [additional burden of] sanctions.”

US ignores global calls to lift sanctions

In her preliminary report after a 12-day visit to Syria in November 2022, UN Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures and Human Rights Alina Dohan presented detailed information about the catastrophic effects of unilateral sanctions on Syrian citizens and the decline in their living standards.

Douhan called for the western sanctions imposed on Syria to be lifted immediately and stressed that they are illegal under international law.

The goal of US sanctions is to continue the wholesale destruction of a regional adversary that it wasn’t able to achieve during a decade-long, brutal war. Millions of Syrians were killed, injured, and displaced in a conflict funded and armed by external parties.

The February earthquakes just exacerbated the suffering that Syrians have endured for years, with official Syrian statistics claiming around half a million people affected, in addition to the damage of tens of thousands of housing units.

In a preliminary report, the World Bank estimates the direct damages of the earthquake in Syria at $5.1 billion. The destruction has affected four of Syria’s 14 governorates, which are home to approximately 10 million of the country’s population. These include Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia, which are under the control of the Syrian government, and Idlib, which is under the control of Al-Qaeda-affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Aleppo, with a population of 4.2 million people, was the most affected ($2.3 billion), followed by Idlib ($1.9 billion) and Latakia ($549 million).

Despite exemptions for humanitarian aid, the impact of US sanctions on Syria has been significant, hindering the ability of humanitarian organizations to operate effectively in the country. The negative impact of these sanctions undermines any claims by Washington to support the Syrian people, especially in light of the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Banks Collapse Indicates Major Economic Crisis in USA and Europe: Expert Tells Al-Manar

13 Mar 2023

Source: Newsweek

By Al Mayadeen English 

Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna confesses that “Syria is a prime example of America’s flawed foreign policy status quo, kept alive by warmongers on both the Right and Left.”

Syrian schoolchildren walk as US troops patrol near the Turkish border in Al-Hasakah, November 4, 2018. (Reuters)

In an opinion piece for Newsweek, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna — who serves as the Representative for Florida’s Thirteenth Congressional District. Rep. — lashed out at the foundations of US foreign policy, calling for redirecting “US’s foreign policy away from a failed internationalist foreign policy consensus.”

This comes shortly after The Intercept highlighted in a new report that the Obama administration’s senate representative, a strong advocate in support of aggressively challenging Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, is now backing a push by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. to force the US to leave the country within 180 days.

The Republican’s introduction of the resolution, most notably with such a short timetable that would doom it to a lopsided defeat, sparked a flurry of lobbying to turn it into a bipartisan coalition, including progressive groups like Just Foreign Policy and Demand Progress, as well as conservative groups like FreedomWorks, Concerned Veterans for America, and Citizens for Renewing America.

Opposition to US meddling in Syria has been bipartisan since the beginning of the war. In 2013, Daily Kos and HuffPost produced whip counts before an Obama-called vote to authorize the use of force, urging progressives to vote no. Before Obama pulled the legislation from the floor, HuffPost counted 243 members of Congress who planned to vote no or lean toward no.

The Congresswoman openly backs Gaetz’s proposal, arguing that the policy of “keeping Americans overseas is necessary for stopping terrorist attacks is absurd.”

“Frankly I’m tired of hearing, if we don’t fight them there, they’ll come here,” she said.

Luna acknowledged that “Syria is a prime example of America’s flawed foreign policy status quo, kept alive by warmongers on both the Right and Left.”

She blamed former US President Barack Obama for what she described as a “naive campaign for regime change in the Middle East which fundamentally misunderstood the region at large and was a futile experiment.”

“Obama’s half-hearted slogan, “Assad must go,” raised false hopes among a certain section of Syrians that only extended the civil war. Worse, it resulted in a civil war which directly resulted in the rise of ISIS.”

The Congresswoman also asserted that distant countries pose no existential threat to the United States and can be adequately managed through long-distance capabilities and cautious alliance policies. 

She also criticized the US Congress urging its members to genuinely worry about “terrorists in America.”

“We need to focus on the two problems our foreign policy pundits have consistently ignored, misread, and downplayed: our nonexistent southern border and the influx of terrorists coming into our own country, and the rise of a peer rival in China”.

In her opinion piece, she also raised the following questions: “Why aren’t the billions of dollars spent in the Middle East being invested in guarding our own border? Why are American forces patrolling distant nations yet not our own, which is under threat? Why was the equipment left behind during our botched withdrawal from Afghanistan not sold or shipped to Taiwan?”

Luna further confessed that the US’ “nation-building” in the Middle East was not “a prudent policy.”

The Congresswoman explained that the US grabbed billions of dollars from taxpayers and diverted them to NGOs, the military, failed governance projects, and foreign assistance waste while leaving many places in shambles.

“All that has resulted from this failed mission is the Middle East emerging as a region of permanent protectorates, with zero upsides and no measurable benefit to the United States. In fact, it has only increased local hostility.”

She also warned that China has been benefiting while the US has been meddling in the affairs of countries in the Middle East, most notably Syria.

The Congresswoman stressed that “the era of utopian foreign policy ideas based on faulty theories is over,” although Gaetz’s resolution to withdraw soldiers from Syria did not pass. Luna further hailed that one in every four of our Congress members backed the proposal from both the Republicans and Democrats.

“Members of Congress don’t swear an oath to the people of Syria, Ukraine, or anywhere else. They swear an oath to the people of the United States,” she concluded.

Why does the US continue to station troops in Syria?

Since ISIS has been defeated in Syria and Iraq, many analysts argued that the reasons for the US to remain stationed in Syrian territory have been left unclear. 

The US frequently loots oil from Syrian gas fields and transports them to other occupation bases in Iraq via illegal crossings. Syrian news agency SANA reported last Saturday that US occupation troops have looted a new batch of oil from Syria’s Al-Jazeera fields. The convoy was on its way to US military bases in Iraq via the illegal Al-Mahmudiya crossing in Al-Yarubiya region.

According to civilian sources, the convoy comprises 23 vehicles and includes covered trucks and tanks filled with stolen oil. The sources further added that an additional convoy made up of 34 trucks exited the illegal Al-Walid crossing in Al-Yarubiya. 

The last time US troops plundered Syrian oil was on February 27. The oil was looted from the same Al-Jazeera fields and was transported to Iraq via illegal crossings. US troops claim to be occupying the area in order to rid the region of terrorists, yet the US has strategically implanted itself there for the purposes of stealing Syria’s oil, as well as destabilizing President Bashar Al-Assad’s government. 

In December of 2022, Syria’s Foreign Ministry said the US occupation forces and their affiliated military groups’ systematic lootings of Syrian oil, wheat, and other national resources have amounted to direct losses valued at $25.9 billion and indirect losses valued at over $86 billion.

It further estimated the total value of the Syrian oil sector losses to amount to $111.9 billion.

Read more: Russian-Syrian coordination: The US is looting Syrian oil

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Endgame for Ukraine: America vs America

February 13, 2023

Former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.

Alastair Crooke

Bill Burns travelled (in secret) in mid-January to meet Zelensky. Was it to prepare Zelensky for a shift in the American stance?

Hysterics at the Chinese balloon overflying the U.S. – taken to volume 11 – through scrambling a hush-hush Raptor jet (F-22) to ‘pop’ it, and then bally-hooing the ‘pop’ as Raptor’s first ever ‘air-to-air kill’, may be a source for quiet derision around the world, yet paradoxically this seemingly trivial event may cast a long shadow over the U.S. war-timetable for Ukraine.

For it is the U.S. political calendar that may yet determine what happens next in Ukraine – from the western side.

Seemingly nothing important occurred – it was an instant of spy frenzy, leaving Biden’s ‘tough task’ unchanged: He needs to convince the American voter, facing collapsing standards of living, that they misread the ‘runes’; that rather than gloom, the economy – contrary to their lived experience – is ‘working well for them’.

Biden needs to perform this magic against polls that say only 16% of Americans feel better off since the start of his tenure, and 75% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters wish him to not stand in 2024. Significantly, this message is coming today from the Democratic-leaning media, suggesting thoughts of replacing him are already in circulation.

For now, Biden’s allies in the party establishment (the DNC) continue to clear the way for his candidature – postponing initial primaries (in which Biden could be expected to be trounced) for a later South Carolina primary election, where Black and Latino voters would reflect demographics in which Biden might (possibly) shine. It may work; it may not.

Simply put, against this highly sceptical Party backdrop, Biden will have to change American perceptions of the economy at a moment when many indicators signal further deterioration. It will be a ‘heavy lift’. The economic team, for sure, will be insisting: ‘Keep the focus on economic achievements! We don’t want distractions from any foreign policy débacles; We do not want the TV debates to centre on Balloons, or around Abrams tanks: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’’.

The ‘Chinese balloon’ was popped, yes, but similarly popped was Team Biden’s hope to negotiate a limited understanding with a tetchy President Xi that could stop China tensions becoming a spoiler issue in the primary debates. The balloon incident obliged the U.S. to cancel Blinken’s appointment with Xi (even though such a meeting with the head of state would be a rare event).

The powerful ‘China hawk’ faction in the U.S. was ecstatic. The China balloon ‘kill’ inadvertently, and in an instant, elevated China to ‘Main Threat’. It was the chance for these hawks to ‘pivot’ foreign policy back from Ukraine and Russia – to fully focus on China.

They make the case that Ukraine was ‘eating’ too much of America’s arms inventory. It was leaving America vulnerable; already, it would take years for the U.S. to make up for this equipment loss by reinstating weapons supply-lines. And there is ‘no time to spare’. The military ‘deterrence fence’ around China has to be in place – ASAP.

Naturally, the tight neo-con circle around Biden – some of whom have invested in the ‘Destroy Russia’ project for decades – is not ready to ‘let go’ the Ukraine project, for China.

Yet, the Ukraine narrative ‘bubble’ has been punctured, and has been leaking helium for some time. The Beltway – and even the MSM narrative – has pirouetted from ‘Russia losing’ to an ‘Ukrainian defeat is inevitable’. Indeed, Kiev is defeated, and is hanging by the slenderest of threads.

Olexii Arestovich, Zelensky’s senior adviser and former ‘spin doctor’ in the Presidential office, speaking in late January this year, was candid in his assessment:

“If everyone thinks that we are guaranteed to win the war, then it is very unlikely. Since January 14, it has ceased to be like this. What do you think, that the assessment from the President of Poland, Duda, not only did he say this about the decisive months. That it is generally unknown whether Ukraine will survive …

“The war may not end as the Ukrainians expect, and as a result, Ukraine may not return all its territories, and the West is ready to follow such a scenario … What will happen to the society that raised its expectations too high, but will receive a conditional Minsk-3? This recoil of unfulfilled expectations will hit us so hard – morally and everything else – that we will simply be stunned.

“The way out of this war may not be at all what it seemed to us three months ago, after the success of the Kherson operation. And not because the insidious Americans do not give weapons or delay, but because success requires 400 thousand of perfectly trained soldiers with NATO weapons to grind it all up and liberate the territories. Do we have it? No. Will it be next year? Will not be. There will not be enough training facilities…

“We as a society are not ready for such an outcome. I decided to say it as the expectation of the Russian side. But the most unpleasant thing is that in the West they think the same way, and we are totally dependent on them. What should the West do? The scenario of two Koreas. Create South Korea with guarantees”, Arestovich said, adding that with this option, Ukraine can get a lot of bonuses.

Put bluntly, if Biden is to avoid a repeat of the humiliating Afghan débacle, America needs urgently to to move-on before the 2024 Presidential calendar kicks-off this summer – with Ukraine/Russia sucking all the oxygen out from the coming economic debates.

But that is not what is happening. Victoria Nuland – who has been ‘capo’ in Kiev for a decade – is overseeing a purge: Unreliables are ‘out’, and pro-American radical Ukrainian hawks are ‘in’. It is a make-over of the Kiev mafia, which leaves Zelensky without friends – and wholly dependent on Washington. It looks to be preparation for the U.S. to attempt a double-down in Ukraine.

Seymour Hersh’s detailed article on the backdrop to the Nordstream pipeline sabotage by the U.S., on which Hersh worked for many months (though his assertions have been denied by the White House), tells us something highly significant.

All the familiar, anti-Russia neo-cons (Nuland, Sullivan and Blinken) were part of the Nordstream sabotage plot – but the impulse for it came from Biden. He led it. And just to be plain, Biden is just as emotionally invested in Ukraine as his team mates; it is likely that he too cannot ‘let go’ in Ukraine.

BUT, doubling down now, in Ukraine, won’t work for Biden. It would be highly reckless (although the Nordstream plot was nothing, if not reckless).

Doubling-down will not bring his hoped-for ‘win’, because its logic is based on an egregious mis-analysis.

Olexii Arestovich, Zelensky’s former ‘spin doctor’ and adviser, has described the circumstance of the Russian SMO first entry into Ukraine: It was conceived as a bloodless mission and should have passed without casualties, he says. “They tried to wage a smart war… Such an elegant, beautiful, lightning-fast special operation, where polite people, without causing any damage to either a kitten or a child, eliminated the few who resisted. They didn’t want to kill anyone: Just sign the renunciation”.

The point here is that what occurred was political miscalculation by Moscow – and not military failure. The initial aim of the SMO didn’t work. No negotiations resulted. Yet from it flowed two major consequences: NATO controllers pounced on this interpretation to trumpet their pre-conceived bias that Russia was militarily weak, backward and stumbling. That misreading underlay how NATO perceived Russia would prosecute the war.

It was wholly incorrect. Russia is strong and has military predominance.

On the presumption of weakness, however, NATO switched plans from a planned guerrilla insurgency, to conventional war along the ‘Zelensky Defence Lines’ – thus opening the path for Russia’s artillery domination to attrit Ukraine’s forces to the point of entropy. It is an error that cannot be rectified. And to try it might just lead to WW3.

The Abrams M1 tank will not save Biden from débacle in the lead-up to the U.S. election debates:

“It was designed for the kind of tank-on-tank combat that hasn’t happened since WW2. It’s huge, expensive, full of sorts of electronics. And powered by a repurposed jet engine. It breaks down quickly and needs its own army of mechanics, runs out of gas quickly and at almost 70 tonnes, it is too heavy to cross most bridges and needs specialized bridge crossing equipment. And it sinks in the mud. The Saudis used Abrams tanks in Yemen – and lost 20 to the Houthis, not exactly the most sophisticated military force”.

So, how does this all pan out? Well, the fight is on – in Washington. The China hawks will try to wrench the U.S.’ full attention back to China. The Biden neo-cons may try for some escalatory tactic in Ukraine that makes war with Russia unstoppable.

However, the reality is that the Ukraine ‘Balloon’ is popped. Military and civilian circles in Washington know it. The ‘elephant in the room’ of inevitable Russian success is acknowledged (albeit, with the compulsion to avoid seeming ‘defeatist’ – that persists in certain quarters). They know too that the NATO (as ‘formidable force’) ‘balloon’ has popped. They know that the balloon of western industrial capacity to manufacture weapons – in sufficient quantity and over a long duration – has popped also.

The consequences are the risk of severe U.S. reputational damage, the longer the war persists. These circles do not want that. Perhaps they will conclude that Biden is not the man to lead the U.S. out of this blind alley – that he is the part of the problem, and not the solution. If so, he must be gone in good time for the Democrats to work out who they want to lead them into the 2024 Presidential election (no easy prospect).

They may sense too, that the 2024 campaign lines already are coalescing for the Republican Party, which has its own reading of the Ukraine débacle – ‘Let’s exit from Ukraine to confront China’ (with full bi-partisan support). This means firstly, that the thread of U.S. financial support for Ukraine – as Bill Burns (CIA chief) reportedly told Zelensky on his last visit – likely will taper this summer. And secondly, it hints that any bi-partisan support for further arming Kiev may be over by the time the primary season will be in full swing.

Bill Burns travelled (in secret) in mid-January to meet Zelensky. Was it to prepare Zelensky for a shift in the American stance? Burns, the long-standing U.S. quiet negotiator, is not party to the Nuland programme. The former said at Georgetown Universityin early February that “China remains the biggest geopolitical challenge the U.S. faces in the decades ahead, and the biggest priority for CIA”. His framing, ‘was not a bug, but the substance’ in his address.

Nuland may be planting U.S.-aligned hawks around Zelensky in order to continue the war, but there are other, wider interests within Washington. Financial circles are worried about a market collapse that could lead to the dollar haemorrhaging value. There are worries too, that the Ukraine war is contributing to a serious weakening of America’s standing in the world. And there are concerns that a reckless Team Biden could lose control and take the U.S. into a wider war with Russia.

In any event, time is short. The Election Calendar looms. Is Biden to be the Democratic candidate? Whether or not he will be a candidate in 2024 needs to be resolved before the early primaries to allow any successor to demonstrate his or her paces in good time.

Also by this author

• Russia’s Strategic Aims – In Consequence to a Collapsing U.S.
• Empire‘At War with Russia’, Europe Peers Down the Abyss
• The Most Egregious Mistake
• The 2023 War – ‘Setting the Theatre’
• U.S. Strategic Aim: Break and Dismember Russia; Or Maintain U.S. Dollar Hegemony? 

U.S. Declares War on Turkish Tourism Economy

February 7, 2023

Source

Steven Sahiounie is a Syrian American award-winning journalist based in Syria. He is specialized on the Middle East. He has also appeared on TV and radio in Canada, Russia, Iran, Syria, China, Lebanon, and the United States.

By Steven Sahiounie

On February 3, the Turkish interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, blasted the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Jeffry L. Flake, saying, “Take your dirty hands off of Turkey.”

The outrage was prompted after Washington and eight European countries issued travel warnings over possible terror attacks in Turkey. The U.S. and its western allies have attempted to connect a recent Quran burning in Sweden with travel danger inside Turkey. Muslim countries worldwide have denounced the burning as hate speech, not free speech, but this has no apparent connection to travel safety issues inside Turkey.

The U.S. travel warning is tantamount to a declaration of economic war on Turkey who is in an economic downturn of its tourism sector, which was 11 % of the GDP in 2019, representing $78.2 billion, and rose to $17.95 billion in the third quarter of 2022, of which 85.7 percent came from foreign visitors. In 2018, tourism directly accounted for 7.7% of total employment in Turkey.

“Every American ambassador wonders how they can hurt Turkey. This has been one of Turkey’s greatest misfortunes over the years. It gathers other ambassadors and tries to give them advice. They are doing the same thing in Europe, the American embassy is running Europe,” said Soylu.

Soylu has criticized the U.S. and blames Washington for the 2016 Turkish regime change attempt, and has accused the U.S. of ruling Europe. In foreign policies, the EU follows U.S. directives implicitly.

“I’m being very clear. I very well know how you would like to create strife in Turkey. Take your grinning face off from Turkey,” said Soylu.

Ankara warned its citizens abroad to be aware of possible anti-Islamic attacks in the U.S. and Europe following the burning of the Quran in Sweden. Turkey later summoned the nine ambassadors, including Flake, for talks over the warnings.

Soylu condemned the European consulate closures in Turkey as an attempt to meddle in campaigning for Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for May 14.

Soylu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have suggested that the western states had issued the security warnings in order to pressure Turkey to tone down its criticism of the Quran burning and resolve the NATO dispute in which Erdogan has voiced opposition to Sweden joining the bloc.

After a right-wing Swedish Radical Christian burned the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, Erdogan threatened that he would never consent to Swedish accession.

Sweden previously has refused to extradite the 120 terrorists Turkey has demanded, and the U.S. Senate has made it clear that if Turkey does not approve Swedish accession, arms sales to Turkey, specifically F-16s, will not be authorized.

Turkish elections

Turkish elections are scheduled for May 14, and will be the toughest reelection fight of Erdogan’s career, and he and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) may lose the election.

The six-party opposition coalition, composed of two larger and four smaller parties, has managed to present a unified front. The opposition to Erdogan support the restoration of Turkey’s parliamentary system and the curtailment of presidential powers.

Erdogan’s fear has grown so strong that he used the courts to ban a leading potential opposition candidate, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, from running for the CHP. However, polls suggest that Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavas, could beat Erdogan.

The state has more overtly targeted some political parties, especially the pro-Kurdish, People’s Democracy Party (HDP). This left-leaning party was not invited into the opposition coalition, but HDP supporters will vote against Erdogan.

Biden supports opposition to Erdogan

U.S. President Joe Biden hosted an emergency meeting on Nov. 16 in Bali, Indonesia, with NATO and EU leaders to discuss a response to a missile blast in Poland, but Turkey was not invited. The meeting was held during the Group of 20 summit, and Turkey was present, but Biden snubbed them from the emergency meeting.

Turkey has been a full-fledged member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 1952, commands its second-largest military and has protected the southern flank of the alliance for 70 years.

Erdogan was again snubbed by Biden in December 2021 at the U.S. hosted virtual ‘Summit for Democracy’. In a New York Times interview published in 2020, the then candidate Biden called Erdogan an “autocrat.”

“What I think we should be doing is taking a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership,” Biden said.

“He has to pay a price,” Biden said, adding that Washington should embolden Turkish opposition leaders “to be able to take on and defeat Erdogan. Not by a coup, not by a coup, but by the electoral process.”

Turkey recognized a clear attack by Biden using election meddling as a tool.

“The days of ordering Turkey around are over. But if you still think you can try, be our guest. You will pay the price.” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted.

The main opposition CHP party quickly distanced themselves from Biden’s remarks of election meddling, calling for “respect for the sovereignty of Turkey”.

Turkey’s six-party opposition will select its candidate to run against Erdogan on February 13, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said.

Obama and Erdogan

When President Obama conceived of his attack in Syria for regime change in 2011, using Radical Islamic terrorists as his foot soldiers, he called upon Erdogan to play a crucial role. Turkey hosted the CIA office which ran the Timber Sycamore program which trained and provided weapons for the Free Syrian Army. Erdogan also took in over 3 million Syria refugees fleeing the violence. Erdogan authorized his security forces to transport weapons to the terrorists in Syria.

Erdogan was a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood who provided the political ideology for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), who were terrorists attacking unarmed civilians, but were reported by the U.S. and western media as ‘rebels’.

However, the FSA disbanded due to lack of public support in Syria, and Al Qaeda stepped in the take its place, and finally ISIS emerged as the toughest terrorist group.

In 2017, President Trump cut off the CIA program in Turkey, and supporting of the Al Qaeda branch in Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was left to Erdogan. The U.S.-NATO attack on Syria failed to produce regime change, but the country was partly destroyed in the process. Now, Erdogan proposes a reset in relations with Damascus, and is on track to establish business and diplomatic ties once more.

The U.S. State Department has issued warnings and threats to Erdogan if he follows through on his plan to have a neighborly relationship with Syria. Erdogan needs to make peace with Syria to return the 3.6 million Syrian refugees back home, and revive exports to Syria which will be a huge boost to the Turkish economy. If he accomplishes this soon, he has a good chance at winning reelection in May.

Kurds-PKK-YPG

A deadly terrorist bombing of a shopping district in Istanbul last November was carried out by a Syrian Kurd. The message was directed at Erdogan: don’t attack the YPG in north east Syria, or else. Those Kurds are supported by the U.S. military illegally occupying parts of Syria.

The U.S. partnered with the YPG to fight the ISIS, and both Erdogan and the opposition view that as a betrayal of a fellow NATO member, and U.S. ally. The YPG is directly linked with the PKK, an internationally designated terrorist organization and a threat to Turkey’s national security.

Erdogan has threatened a new military operation in Syria to disarm the YPG regardless of their U.S. partnership. The Syrian special enjoy under Trump, James Jeffrey, advised the Kurds to repair their relationship with Damascus, as the U.S. was not going to fight any war to defend them. The Kurd’s usefulness to the U.S. was over. Recently, the Turkish air force has been bombing them, with shells falling a few hundred feet from U.S. personnel stationed there.

Erdogan has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for a green light to attack the Kurds in Syria, but was cautioned against it. However, the time might be ripe for a Turkish attack on the Kurds, which would disarm them and probably would lead to a withdrawal of the 200 American troops.

Turkey removed M4 outpost

On February 2, Turkish troops in Syria evacuated a military outpost near the M4 highway that connects the cities of Aleppo and Latakia. The former Al Qaeda branch in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), occupy Idlib, the last terrorist controlled area in Syria.

Turkey had been defending the HTS from attacks from Syrian Arab Army, and the Russian military. However, Erdogan has decided to drop his support of the armed opposition as he repairs his relationship with Syria.

On January 31, Ankara informed the HTS leadership of its plan to conduct patrols on the HTS-controlled portion of the M4 (Aleppo-Latakia) road, which “may be followed by joint patrols with Russia, and eventually with Syria.”

ماذا بعد الحرب في أوكرانيا…؟

 السبت 21 كانون الثاني 2023

زياد حافظ

في هذه المحاولة الاستشرافية في مطلع 2023 قراءة وتساؤلات لمرحلة ما بعد الحرب في أوكرانيا. ننطلق في هذه القراءة من فرضية نناقشها في ما بعد أنّ روسيا ستحسم المعركة العسكرية في أوكرانيا ما قبل نهاية ربيع 2023. لكن هذا لا يعني انّ الصراع مع الحلف الأطلسي بشكل عام والولايات المتحدة بشكل خاص قد ينتهي. فالسؤال يصبح كيف سيتعامل الحلف الأطلسي وخاصة الولايات المتحدة مع الحقائق الميدانية التي تكون قد تحقّقت في الميدان؟

هناك عدة حالات ممكنة ولكن باحتمالات متباينة مبنية على قراءة في ذهنية القيادات الغربية والإمكانيات المتوفرة ضمن ميزان قوّة مختلّ لصالح روسيا بشكل عام وخاصة لصالح المحور العالمي الرافض للهيمنة الأميركية و/ أو الأطلسية. وما يُعقّد المشهد هو اعتبار الطرفين المتخاصمين أيّ روسيا والحلف الأطلسي أنّ الحرب في أوكرانيا حرب وجودية وبالتالي لا يمكن لأيّ طرف أن يتصوّر مخرجاً إلاّ النصر القاطع. وبما أنّ فرضية هذه القراءة تتبنّى حتمية النصر الروسي ما يبقى علينا هو تصوّر ما يمكن أن يقدِم عليه الأطلسي. وعندما نتكلّم عن الأطلسي نقصد بالدرجة الأولى الولايات المتحدة، ثم الاتحاد الأوروبي كمؤسسة، ثم الدول الأوروبية التي تماهت مع سياسات الولايات المتحدة وأخيراً بيروقراطية الحلف الأطلسي كمؤسسة قائمة بحدّ ذاتها. غير أنّ الحلقة الأساسية هي الولايات المتحدة لأنّ ما يمكن أن تقدم عليه سينجرّ بشكل أو بآخر على مؤسسة الحلف الأطلسي والاتحاد الأوروبي.

أما الحلقة الأضعف فهي الدول الأوروبية التي ستتعرّض إلى اضطرابات اجتماعية وسياسية بسبب التراجع الاقتصادي الناتج عن سياسة العقوبات المفروضة على روسيا وخاصة في قطاع الطاقة التي كانت تستوردها بشكل رخيص من روسيا دون أن تجد البديل الاقتصادي الذي يحرّرها من الاتكال على روسيا. والنتائج البنيوية على الاقتصاد الأوروبي هي تفكيك البنية الصناعية التي كانت ركيزة الطبقة الوسطى والاستقرار الاجتماعي. ليس هناك من آفاق إيجابية للاقتصاد الأوروبي في ظلّ ذلك التحوّل البنيوي خاصة مع صعود دول الجنوب الإجمالي وفي مقدّمته الصين والهند والبرازيل الذين سيتقاسمون الناتج الصناعي العالمي. دول أوروبا قد تكون دول متاحف التاريخ وللسياحة والترفيه وليس أكثر. فتصبح دولاً لا وزن لها في إدارة شؤون العالم. وهذا الهبوط لن يكون سهلاً بل ترافقه توترات اجتماعية وانتفاضات سياسية تعيد النظر في البنى السياسة والاقتصادية والاجتماعية لهذه الدول. وما سيساهم في ذلك الانحدار الكارثي هو الرداءة غير المسبوقة للقيادات السياسية سواء كانت في الحكم أو في المعارضة. المشهد البريطاني يتلاقى مع المشهد الألماني والمشهد الفرنسي، تلك الدول التي كانت تتصدّر المشهد الأوروبي. فأما دول الأطراف في أوروبا فقد تغرق أيضاً في حروب عرقية ودينية دون أن تكون لها ركيزة تستند إليها. فعلى سبيل المثال وليس الحصر اسبانيا تواجه حركة انفصالية في منطقة كتالونيا، وإيرلندا الشمالية قد تنفصل عن المملكة المتحدة لتلتحق بالجمهورية الإيرلندية، واسكتلندا قد تستقلّ عن المملكة المتحدة، وكورسيكا عن فرنسا، وبلجيكا تنقسم إلى قسم فرنسي وقسم فلمنكي. وما تبقّى من أوكرانيا خارج القبضة الروسية قد يذهب قسم منه إلى بولندا، والقسم الآخر إلى رومانيا ومولدوفيا. خارطة أوروبا مُعرّضة لتغيير جذري أسوة بما نتج في الحروب الأوروبية في القرون الماضية. كما هناك كلام عن انشطار إيطاليا بين جنوب فقير وشمال ثري. أما النعرات الطائفية في منطقة البلقان فمن السهل إشعالها مجدّداً مع سقوط الحكومات المركزية في حقبة الضيق الاقتصادي.
تصدّعات أوروبا

أما الاتحاد الأوروبي كمؤسسة فيشهد تصدّعات داخلية عززتها الإجراءات العبثية بحق روسيا وارتداداتها على الاقتصادات الأوروبية. فالزمرة الحاكمة في مؤسسة الاتحاد الأوروبي ملتزمة عقائدياً بمقرّرات دافوس لإعادة التعيين للاقتصادات القائمة نحو اقتصادات أكثر «لطفاً بالبيئة» على حدّ زعمهم. وهذا التوجه إلى مصادر طاقة نظيفة ومتجدّدة بشكل قسري وسريع سيؤدّي حتماً إلى تفكيك البنية الصناعية القائمة ما يوقع دول الاتحاد في حالة فقر وتراجع حضاري شبيه بالقرون الوسطى. فالطاقة هي مصدر الحضارة والعبث فيها له ارتدادات خطيرة على سكّان هذه الدول. لكن عدداً من حكومات دول الاتحاد يتململ من طغيان الزمرة المسيطرة على الاتحاد خاصة أنها لا تخضع لمساءلة ومحاسبة. وحكومة فيكتور اروبان المجرية تقود حملة التمرّد ضدّ الاتحاد قد تتبعها حكومة صربيا. من جهة أخرى أبدت بعض الدول الأوروبية كألمانيا وفرنسا امتعاضها من استغلال الولايات المتحدة للشحّ في قطاع الطاقة لفرض أسعار اضعاف ما كانت تدفعه لروسيا. ونعتت هذه الدول الولايات المتحدة بالتصرّف «غير الصديق» مع الحليف!

أما الدول الأوروبية فالتصدّعات التي أحدثتها الحرب الأوكرانية تتفاقم خاصة أنّ النموذج الاقتصادي النيوليبرالي المسيطر بعد سقوط الاتحاد السوفياتي وصل إلى طريق مسدود. كما أنّ النظام النيوليبرالي حوّل السلطة الفعلية للشركات الكبرى وخاصة بيوت المال التي لا تكترث لحال المواطنين. وهذه القوى المسيطرة على القرار السياسي والاقتصادي والثقافي في تلك الدول تستولد نخباً وقيادات من المستوى الرديء على صعيد العلم، والفهم، والأخلاق. وبالتالي ليس في الأفق المنظور إمكانية بروز قيادات أوروبية تضع مصلحة دولها فوق أيّ اعتبار وخاصة تلك الاعتبارات التي تريد إعادة الهندسة الاجتماعية وفقاً لمقرّرات منتدى دافوس. لذلك لا يمكن أن نتوقع خلال السنة الجديدة أيّ تغيير جذري في المشهد الأوروبي إلاّ ربما المزيد من التوترات والفوضى الأمنية والاقتصادية والاجتماعية ما يجعل أوروبا تفقد دوراً كانت تقوم به على الصعيد العالمي. فكيف يمكن وصف سلوك القيادات الأوروبية التي حوّلت أوروبا من ثاني كتلة اقتصادية في العالم، وربما في بعض الأحيان الأولى، إلى مجموعة دول مترهّلة. هذا انتحار جماعي أقدمت عليه قيادات حمقاء بكلّ معنى الكلمة.

تبقى الولايات المتحدة العنصر الأساسي في الحلف الأطلسي. والمشهد الأميركي معقّد حيث الخطاب السياسي السائد لدى المؤسسة الحاكمة وخاصة عند المحافظين الجدد الذين قبضوا على القرار السياسة الخارجية لا يسمح بأيّ تراجع أمام روسيا. لقد أصبحت الطبقة الحاكمة والمحافظون الجدد أسرى الخطاب السياسي حيث الانتصار على روسيا بات شرط ضرورة للبقاء. فلا يتصوّر المحافظون الجدد عالماً وروسيا موجودة على الأقلّ بشكلها الحالي. فلا بدّ من قلب النظام القائم في روسيا والإتيان بنخب سياسية تساهم في تقسيم روسيا إلى عدّة ولايات أو دول ضعيفة تحول دون إمكانية نهوض لدولة لها وزن على الصعيد الدولي. والمحافظون الجدد يحرصون على إجهاض أيّ محاولة للتفاهم مع روسيا تفادياً لحرب قد تخسرها حتماً الولايات المتحدة مهما كانت الكلفة عالية على روسيا. فعلى سبيل المثال وليس الحصر تسبّب المحافظون الجدود تسريب خبر لقاء بين مدير وكالة المخابرات المركزية وليم بيرنز ونظيره الروسي في أنقرة لإجهاض أيّ محاولة لمنع التصعيد في أوكرانيا الذي إذا ما استمرّ سيضع الجيش الروسي في مواجهة مباشرة مع الجيش الأميركي. وهذا الأمر لا يريده الطرفان سواء كان الرئيس الروسي بوتين أو الأميركي بايدن. لكن المحافظين الجدد لهم أجندة مختلفة ولا يكترثون لنتائج حتمية عن مواجهة عسكرية مباشرة بين الدولتين.

أجندة المحافظين الجدد!

السؤال المطروح هو هل يستطيع المحافظون الجدد تجاوز التحفّظات داخل الإدارة الأميركية التي لا تريد المواجهة المباشرة مع روسيا؟ ليس من السهل الإجابة خاصة أنّ المرحلة السابقة شهدت نصر المحافظين الجدد في توريط الولايات المتحدة في الصراع الذي كان بالإمكان تجنّبه مع روسيا. فهم من رفضوا التعامل مع العروض الروسية لحلّ الأزمة في أوكرانيا، وهم بالأساس من قام بالانقلاب على الحكومة المنتخبة شرعيا في أوكرانيا في 2014 وفي مقدمتهم فيكتوريا نيولند زوجة روبرت كاغان كبير المنظرين للمحافظين الجدد. وهم من استعمل اتفاقات منسك في 2015 للمراوغة لتمكين القوّات الأوكرانية لمواجهة روسيا. وهم من أجهضوا الاتفاق الذي تمّ الوصول إليه في أنقرة بين روسيا وحكومة زيلينسكي في نيسان/ ابريل 2022 بعد 3 أشهر من بدء العملية العسكرية الروسية في أوكرانيا. وهم من يدفعون إلى تفريغ ترسانات الدول التي كانت في كنف حلف وارسو وإرسال السلاح والذخائر لأوكرانيا. وهم من يدفعون البنتاغون لتفريع ترسانة الولايات المتحدة من الأسلحة المتطوّرة وإرسالها إلى أوكرانيا. النتيجة لكلّ ذلك هو تدمير كلّ السلاح المتوفر لأوكرانيا وقتل الجنود ودون تحقيق أيّ تقدّم على الأرض. فسجل المحافظين الجدد هو تراكم هائل من الفشل ولكن لا يوجد من يُسائل ويحاسب. ولذلك ستستمرّ إدارة بايدن في ارتكاب الحماقات تلو الحماقات دون تحقيق أي نتيجة لصالح الولايات المتحدة حتى يصبح تحطّم أوكرانيا أمراً واقعا لا يمكن الهروب منه.

المحافظون الجدد لهم أجندة من بند واحد وهي فرض هيمنة الولايات المتحدة على العالم وإنْ أدّى ذلك إلى تدمير الحلفاء وتهديد العالم بحرب نووية لن ينج منها أحد. فهم لا يكترثون لآثار سياساتهم طالما كانوا متمسكين بمفاصل صنع القرار في الولايات المتحدة سواء في الإدارة أو مراكز الأبحاث أو الجامعات أو الإعلام المرئي والمكتوب. وشبكة علاقات المحافظين الجدد لا تقتصر على الولايات المتحدة بل امتدّت إلى دوائر القرار في مكوّنات الحلف الأطلسي وإنْ كانت سياساتهم تدمّر تلك المكوّنات.

استطاع المحافظون الجدد أن يفرضوا سردية بين النخب الحاكمة في الولايات المتحدة والدول الأوروبية المتحالفة معها مفادها أنّ الصراع مع روسيا هو صراع بقاء بينما في الحقيقة هو صراع لتدمير روسيا والاستيلاء على ثرواتها الهائلة من المواد الخام، والطاقة، والمعادن الثمينة والنادرة. كما أنّ حجم روسيا الجغرافي يهدّد مصالح الولايات المتحدة فلا بدّ من تفكيك الدولة الاتحادية. وتعمّ مراكز الأبحاث في الولايات المتحدة عن خرائط محتملة لروسيا المفككة. وبالنسبة للولايات المتحدة فإنّ الهدف الحقيقي هو الحفاظ على هيمنتها وخاصة هيمنة الدولار الذي يواجه تحدّيات من اقتصادات ترفض تلك الهيمنة. والطابع الوجودي لهذا الصراع مبني على ثقافة الفكر الرأس المالي أن التوسّع هو الوسيلة الوحيدة للبقاء. وتاريخ الولايات المتحدة مبني على التوسّع الجغرافي، في البداية تجاه الغرب حتى الوصول إلى المحيط الهادي ومن ثمّ القفز إلى الجزر في ذلك المحيط وصولاً إلى الفليبين والشاطئ الشرقي للصين.

أما جنوباً، فكانت نظرية مونرو التي منعت الدول المستعمرة في القرن التاسع عشر من التواجد في أميركا اللاتينية وجعلها الحديقة الخلفية للولايات المتحدة. وتحفظ في أدراج الإدارات المتتالية خطط احتلال كندا إذا ما اقتضى الأمر! والآن تعمل الولايات المتحدة على التوسع في القطب الشمالي حيث توجد ثروات نفطية وغازية وشرقاً نحو القارة الآسيوية. وبالتالي لا بدّ من وضع اليد على روسيا.

المشروع الأميركي لوضع اليد على روسيا كان مكتوماً بعد سقوط حائط برلين. لكن سرعان ما تبدّدت الوعود المقطوعة للقيادات الروسية بعدم التوسّع شرقاً للحلف الأطلسي. وحجر الزاوية في مواجهة روسيا هو أوكرانيا وفقاً لنظرية زبغنيو بريجنسكي الذي اعتبر أوكرانيا ضرورة أساسية للقضاء على روسيا. المهمّ هنا أنّ التوسع الشرقي للحلف الأطلسي تجاه روسيا يشكّل خطراً وجودياً على روسيا لا يمكنها تجاهله خاصة إذا ما تمّ نشر الصواريخ البالستية النووية فيها كما يدعو إليه قادة النظام الانقلابي في أوكرانيا. حاولت القيادة الروسية إقناع الإدارات المتتالية بعدم التوسع شرقاً لكن العنجهية الأميركية لم تكترث للهواجس الروسية. لسنا هنا في إطار سرد تطوّر العلاقات الروسية الأطلسية/ الأميركية بل لنؤكّد أنّ صوغ الخطاب السياسي يدعو إلى المواجهة لدرء خطر وجودي يعني الوصول إلى الحرب لحلّ المشكلة. الحرب هنا لن تقتصر على الحرب بالوكالة كما هو الحال الآن في أوكرانيا أو ربما عبر بولندا في ما بعد بل في المواجهة المباشرة العسكرية مع روسيا.

ما يؤكّد عمق الأزمة بين النخب الأميركية مقال صدر يوم السبت في 7 كانون الثاني/ يناير 2023 في صحيفة «واشنطن بوست» والموقع من كوندوليزا رايس وزيرة الخارجية السابقة في ولاية بوش الابن وروبرت غيتس وزير الدفاع السابق في كلّ من ولايات بوش الابن وباراك أوباما. في المقال اعتراف واضح أنّ الوقت هو لصالح روسيا ولا بدّ من زيادة الجهود الأميركية (أيّ زيادة التمويل والإمداد لأنها مربحة للمجمّع العسكري الصناعي) وذلك لمنع النصر الروسي. فهذا الأمر سيكون له تداعيات كارثية بالنسبة للولايات المتحدة (خاصة للمجمّع العسكري الصناعي) وأنّ إمكانية تغيير تلك النتائج ستكون صعبة للغاية إنْ لم تكن مستحيلة. والهيمنة الأميركية على العالم أصبحت مطلباً «وجودياً» بالنسبة لتلك النخب التي لا تكترث لنتائج تلك الطموحات والتي لا تأخذ بعين الاعتبار التحوّلات التي حصلت في موازين القوّة. فمقال رايس وغيتس دعوة صريحة لاستمرار الحرب مهما كانت النتائج.

فما هي إمكانيات مواجهة مباشرة بين الحلف الأطلسي وروسيا، وبالأخصّ بين الولايات المتحدة وروسيا؟ حقيقة، إنّ المواجهة في أوكرانيا لها طابعان: الأول مع الحكومة الأوكرانية والثاني الذي تمّ إعلانه منذ بضعة أيام على لسان وزير الدفاع الاوكراني أنّ المواجهة هي بين روسيا والحلف الأطلسي. هدف العملية العسكرية الروسية في أوكرانيا هو تدمير الجيش الأوكراني وخلع النازيين من الحكم في أوكرانيا ومنع الحكومة من الالتحاق بالأطلسي. التطوّرات الميدانية أبرزت تدفق السلاح والذخيرة من مجمل دول الحلف الأطلسي دون أن يغيّر في ميزان القوّة في المعركة الذي كان ولا يزال لصالح روسيا. واليوم تعلن هذه الدول عن نفاذ سلاحها وذخيرتها لتزويد القوّات الأوكرانية بما كانت تملك من بقايا سلاح حلف وارسو. أما السلاح الغربي الذي يسيطر على معظم دول أوروبا الغربية فإنّ معرفة القوّات الأوكرانية بذلك السلاح ما زالت محدودة وتحتاج لوقت طويل للتتأقلم معها.

لكن هل تستطيع الولايات المتحدة الاستمرار بسياسة حرب رغم ضعف الجهوزية. ولا نقصد هنا الجهوزية العسكرية فحسب بل الجهوزية الاقتصادية. يشير الستير كروك وهو دبلوماسي سابق ومن أهمّ العقول السياسية المحلّلة للمشهد السياسي في آخر مقال له بتاريخ 13 كانون الثاني/ يناير 2023 على موقع «ستراتيجك كلتشار فوندشن» إلى أنّ الغرب يتجه تدريجياً لتحويل اقتصاداته لاقتصادات حرب وخاصة في ما يتعلّق بسلسلة التوريد في الإنتاج الصناعي. لكن في رأينا هذه عملية طويلة المدى خاصة بعد تفكيك البنية التحتية الصناعية في الولايات المتحدة والمملكة المتحدة وبالتالي القدرة على تحويل الطاقة الصناعية إلى طاقة إنتاجية حربية كما حصل في الحرب العالمية الثانية أمر مشكوك به في المدى المنظور. فاستبدال سلسلة التوريد التي اعتمدت خلال العقود الأربعة الماضية لتوطين مفاصل عديدة من القطاعات الصناعية في عالم الجنوب الإجمالي لا يمكن إنجازه بفترة قصيرة. فروسيا، ومعها الصين وسائر دول الجنوب الإجمالي لن يتركوا المجال لذلك التحويل.

لذلك نعتقد أنّ المعركة العسكرية الاستراتيجية بين روسيا وأوكرانيا قد حسمت في رأينا لصالح روسيا وأنّ ما تبقّى هو ترجمة الحسم الاستراتيجي إلى معالم مادية سواء في التقدّم الجغرافي أو في التغيير النظام السياسي في أوكرانيا وإنْ اقتضى الأمر دخول كييف لفرض نظام جديد. وقد يحصل ذلك خلال سنة 2023.

المواجهة مع الأطلسي طويلة

أما المواجهة مع الأطلسي فقد تطول خاصة أنّ الغرب يراهن على إطالة الحرب دون تدخّل مباشر للولايات المتحدة وسائر دول الحلف الأطلسي. ويعتمد المحافظون الجدد على سيطرتهم على الإعلام والسردية التي تقول بأنّ أوكرانيا «تنتصر» والقضية مسألة إمدادات فقط لا غير. لكن بدأت النخب الحاكمة تواجه معضلة تفسير انهيار خطوط الدفاع الأوكرانية وخاصة في منطقة سوليدار وباخوت. فهل ستتخذ الخطوة التالية بدخول جيوش الأطلسي بشكل مباشر في أوكرانيا؟

المزاج السياسي المعادي لروسيا في دول أوروبا غير مؤيّد للدخول في حرب مع روسيا. استطلاعات الرأي العام واضحة بهذا الشأن. فالمواطن الأوروبي بغضّ النظر عن رأيه في روسيا وحكّامها لا يريد ولا يتحمّل ثمن المواجهة. ولقد بدأت تظهر معالم «التعب» من أوكرانيا. ولكن المنحى الذي نشهده هو عدم اكتراث الحكومات الغربية للرأي العام الداخلي كما جاء على لسان وزيرة الخارجية الألمانية أنّ المانيا مستمرّة بدعم الجهود الحربية في أوكرانيا وأنها لا تكترث لآراء المواطنين وهذا بكلّ وضوح. لكن العديد من المؤشرات تفيد بأنّ الدول الأوروبية غير جاهزة وغير راغبة للدخول في حرب. أما الولايات المتحدة فهناك من يدفع إلى الدخول المباشر إلى أوكرانيا وإنْ كان الوجود العسكري الأميركي كـ «خبراء» و «مدرّبين» و «مستشارين» أصبح من المسلّمات. والمحافظون الجدد يدفعون إلى المواجهة المباشرة بعد استنفاذ الوكلاء علماً أنّ الجهوزية العسكرية الأميركية غير متوفّرة كما جاء على لسان رئيس هيئة الأركان المشتركة مارك ميلي في جلسة استجوابه في لجنة الدفاع في الكونغرس عند استلام مهامه. قال آنذاك في 2018 إنّ الجهوزية الأميركية لا تتجاوز 40 بالمائة وإنّ هدفه هو إيصال الجهوزية الأميركية إلى 60 بالمائة بحلول 2024.

وتأكيداً على ذلك يصدر معهد «أميركان هريتاج فونداشن» تقريراً سنوياً عن الجهوزية العسكرية الأميركية. وعلى مدى السنوات الخمس الماضية لم يتجاوز تقييم تلك الجهوزية مرحلة «الهامشية» أيّ لا تستطيع الحسم في أيّ مواجهة. وإذا أضفنا المحاكاة النظرية للمواجهة العسكرية مع أيّ من روسيا أو الصين أو إيران فكانت النتائج دائماً لصالح خصوم الولايات المتحدة. صحيح أنّ الولايات المتحدة تنفق أكثر من أيّ دولة في العالم لكن هذا الانفاق لا يعني تفوّقاً في الجودة كما تظهر التقارير حول فعّالية ركائز السلاح الجوّي أو البرّي الأميركي. وإذا أدخلنا في المعادلة السلاح المتفوّق الروسي خاصة في الصواريخ الفائقة لسرعة الصوت وغياب وسائل دفاع مضادة له فإنّ التفوّق التكتيكي والاستراتيجي للسلاح الروسي أصبح كاسراً.

وهناك خبراء عسكريون كـ اندري مرتيانوف يشكّكون بالقدرات البشرية لقيادة الأعمال العسكرية حيث خبرة القادة العسكريين الأميركيين في خوض حروب حقيقية ضدّ خصوم لديهم الحزم والعزم لا يُشجّع على إمكانية نصر عسكري. فتجربة الحرب الكورية والفيتنامية والعراقية والأفغانية تدلّ بوضوح إلى أنّ التفوّق الناري لا يعني بالضرورة النصر. لكن بعيداً عن هذه الاعتبارات ما نريد أن نقوله إنّ الولايات المتحدة غير جاهزة على الصعيد العسكري لخوض حرب طويلة مع دولة من طراز روسيا أو الصين على الأقلّ في المدى المنظور. لدى الولايات المتحدة قدرة نارية تدميرية هائلة تستطيع تدمير المعمورة آلاف المرّات ولكن ليس لديها كيف تترجمها في السياسة.

هناك عقول باردة خارج البنتاغون كدوغلاس مكغريغور او لاري جونسون أو فيليب جيرالدي أو راي مكغوفرن أو لاري ويلكرسون على سبيل المثال وليس الحصر تعي هذه الحقائق وتحاول ضبط إيقاع مسار السلطة السياسية. لكن المحافظين الجدد يتربّصون بها ويمنعون أن تصل تلك الآراء إلى مركز القرار. لذلك سيحتدم الصراع داخل الدولة العميقة بين من يؤيّد توجّهات المحافظين الجدد ومن يخشى من الوقوع في الهاوية. ولا نستبعد تكرار مشهد إنشاء لجنة بيكر ـ هاملتون جديدة التي كفّت يد المحافظين الجدد في إدارة بوش بعد الفشل في العراق. البديل عن كفّ يد المحافظين الجدد هو الحرب التي ستكون مدمّرة للولايات المتحدة وللعالم.

وهنا يكمن العامل الداخلي في الولايات المتحدة الذي قد يغيّر المعادلات بين الدولة العميقة والبيت الأبيض. مسلسل الفضائح التي تطال الرئيس الأميركي يتنامى ما يعني أنّ الدولة العميقة تريد التخلّص من إمكانية ترشّحه مجدّداً في 2024. فتعيين محقق خاص جمهوري الانتماء السياسي للكشف عن تفاصيل «الفضائح» يؤكّد أنّ المؤسسة الحاكمة بما فيها قيادة الحزب الديمقراطي تريد التخلّص من جوزيف بايدن والآتيان بـ كمالا هاريس في حال تنحّى بايدن عن منصبه، أو فتح الطريق لترشيح ميشال أوباما في 2024. في مطلق الأحوال فإنّ التطوّرات الداخلية قد تحوّل الأنظار عن الإخفاق في أوكرانيا ويتيح الفرصة لصوغ خطاب جديد يتجاهل الإخفاق في أوكرانيا. التغيير في السياسة التي تفرضه الوقائع يحتم تغيير في الأشخاص وهذا ما يمكن توقّعه في الأشهر المقبلة لمنع التدهور الذي الكارثي الذي يهدّد الجميع.

في الخلاصة نرى ما بعد الحرب في أوكرانيا الانتصار الكاسح لروسيا وتصدّع الاتحاد الأوروبي. كما سنرى تصاعد النقاش حول الدخول الأطلسي بشكل عام والولايات المتحدة بشكل خاص في حرب نووية محدودة بالنسبة للمحافظين الجدد. لكن في المقابل لا يستطيعون ضبط إيقاعها لأنّ روسيا لن تستجيب لرغبات المحافظين الجدد. فليس هناك من مواجهة نووية «محدودة»! لذلك لا نتوقع الوصول إلى تلك المرحلة بل ربما بداية تفكيك الحلف الأطلسي الذي فقد جدواه ومصداقيته. أما على صعيد الوضع الداخلي في الولايات المتحدة فتراكم الفشل في السياسة الخارجية سيظهر الحاجة للتغيير. من سيقود التغيير وكيف فهذا حديث ليوم آخر. الرهان هو على ما تبقّى من عقول باردة خاصة في أجواء التردّي لمستوى النخب السياسية في الغرب…

*باحث وكاتب اقتصادي سياسي والأمين العام السابق للمؤتمر القومي العربي وعضو منتدى سيف القدس

Biden ‘sleepwalking into disaster’: Experts

January 21, 2023 

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

US President Joe Biden could go down in history for allowing his failed policies to trigger a world war, experts say.

US President Joe Biden, January 19, 2022 (Getty Images)

US President Joe Biden’s policies toward Russia, China, and Iran, among other countries, have the US on the verge of disaster as he begins the second half of his first term, experts told Sputnik.
 
Biden reached the midpoint of his presidency earlier today, a period in which the White House has claimed economic successes while critics have slammed him for record-high inflation, the border crisis, and a foreign policy that has escalated tensions with both Russia and China.
 
“I think he’s done better than some of us expected, but he’s still sleepwalking into disaster,” political commentator and US constitutional historian Dan Lazare told Sputnik. 
 
Like all US presidents, Biden was the victim of forces beyond his control, Lazare cautioned. He said that Biden entered the White House promising to be a big-spending FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] and thus succeeded in pushing through his $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan less than two months after taking office. However, it backfired due to mounting inflationary pressures, which it undoubtedly helped aggravate.
 
Lazare acknowledged that the “rapid and humiliating Taliban conquest of Afghanistan” in July 2021, during Biden’s first year in office, was a disaster that nearly everyone in Washington contributed to over the previous 40 years.
 
“Instead of fiddling while Rome burned, he flipped burgers while Kabul collapsed. The result was the worst foreign-policy setback since Vietnam from an imperial point of view,” he said. 
 
The Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed in November 2022, put new strains on the Atlantic Alliance, according to Lazare. “[The act] has left Europeans unnerved due to its outrageously protectionist industrial policies,” he added.

Dangers of Ukraine

The Biden administration announced on Thursday another $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine, bringing the total to around $27.5 billion since Biden took office. According to Lazare, the United States is on the verge of a world war.
 
He stressed that Biden looks pretty good “shepherding one military aid package after another through Congress,” warning that the longer the conflict goes on the more apparent it becomes that NATO’s “aggressively expansionist policies are leading to another 1914.”
 
Lazare predicted that Biden’s failure to pursue any serious means of resolving the conflict would exacerbate it, adding that “just as the Entente more or less maneuvered Austro-Hungary into going to war against crazy little Serbia, the Atlantic Alliance maneuvered Russia into going to war against Ukraine by engaging in actions that were increasingly provocative and confrontational,” he said. 
 
Biden risks going down in history alongside disastrous UK leader Herbert Henry Asquith, who led his country into a disastrous world war with Germany in 1914, according to Lazare.

Read next: Poll: Biden receives ‘failing grade’ in leadership and management

“I think history will, thus, end up looking at Biden the same way it looks at Asquith, the UK prime minister who thought he could get away with playing with fire in the Balkans. Once again, short-sighted imperial ambitions are plunging the world into catastrophe,” he said. 
 
Lazare believed that despite all this, the US media had covered Biden sympathetically so far in contrast to their unrelenting attacks on his predecessor. He added that Joe Biden may be a “B- president so far, but I’m sure his report card will be bristling with F’s before too long.”

Feckless mediocrity 

Retired Ambassador Chas Freeman, who served as the Democratic Clinton administration’s assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, noted that the Foreign Policy had assembled 20 analysts who had nothing but praise for Biden’s diplomatic performance.
 
Freeman told Sputnik that no oriental potentate employing praise singers could ask for more, but the Biden administration didn’t produce a ‘foreign policy for the middle class’, only one for what he described as feckless mediocrity.”
 
He added that Biden has also recklessly sparked conflict and crises with major superpowers. 
 
“Biden and his team have catalyzed and subsequently escalated a dangerous proxy war between the United States, Western Europe, and Russia in Ukraine [and] escalated tensions with China amidst rising concern about the possibility of a war over the status of Taiwan,” Freeman said. 
 
He also abandoned diplomatic efforts to limit Iran’s nuclear weapons development, which has brought Russia, China, and Iran together, according to Freeman.
 
Furthermore, Biden has increased protectionism and rejected the World Trade Organization’s “rules-based order,” causing friction with US allies in both Europe and Asia, he claims.
 
According to Freeman, Biden’s erratic policies had also resulted in a visible reduction in US influence in the Middle East, including a rift with Saudi Arabia and a failure to counter the replacement of apartheid in “Israel” with renewed ethnic cleansing.

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Biden in newly surfaced video: Iran nuclear deal is “dead”

21 Dec 2022

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

US President Joe Biden confirms that the Iran deal “is dead”, but then tells people that they will not announce it.

President Joe Biden. Dec. 16, 2022. (AP)

President Biden declared on the sidelines of a Nov. 4 election rally that the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran is “dead,” according to a new video that surfaced on social media late Monday, but stressed the United States won’t announce it.

This counts as the Biden administration’s strongest confirmation that there’s no path forward for the Iran deal, which leaves key questions about the future of the JCPOA.

The US envoy for Iran Rob Malley, in late October, said that the administration is not going to “waste time” on trying to revive the Iran nuclear deal at this time considering that the US finds the Iran riots as a more important development, in addition to Iranian support for Russia in Ukraine, and Iran’s positions on its nuclear program.

#BREAKING: @POTUS is asked when he’s going to declare #Iran JCPOA dead and he says: “It is dead but we’re not gonna announce it.” 😂 pic.twitter.com/YjZGmsP5lW

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) December 20, 2022

Biden made the statement in a brief exchange with a woman who was present at an election rally in Oceanside, California. She requested that Biden declare the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the official name for the Iran deal, to be null and void.

The president responded that he would not “for a lot of reasons.” But then he added: “It is dead, but we are not going to announce it. Long story.”

The woman then said that the current Iranian government “doesn’t represent the people.” In response, he said, “I know they don’t represent you. But they will have a nuclear weapon that they’ll represent.”

“The JCPOA is not our focus right now. It’s not on the agenda,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson told Axios.

“We don’t see a deal coming together anytime soon,” the spokesperson said, pointing at the Iran riots and alleged support for Russia vis-a-vis the war in Ukraine, “Our focus is on practical ways to confront them in these areas.”

Read next: Gantz advises using Iran’s ‘tough times’ to push it into nuclear deal

Yesterday, National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said that the prospects for the JCPOA deal to be renewed are nowhere near sight, citing reasons related to the alleged crackdowns on protesters in Iran.

“We simply don’t see a deal coming together anytime soon while Iran continues to kill its own citizens, and selling UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles or drones] to Russia,” Kirby said during a press briefing. “Now we don’t anticipate any progress anytime in the near future. That’s just not our focus.”

This comes in the backdrop of a statement issued by US President Joe Biden at a political rally in California in early November in which he said that the Iran deal was “dead” and that the issue of reviving it was a matter of a “long story”.

Commenting on these statements, Kirby said what Biden said was “very much in line” with the White House’s position on the nuclear deal. 

As efforts were underway to revive the nuclear agreement, the US decided to stall the negotiations on the grounds that Iran is allegedly exercising measures of repression on protesters.

But Iranian authorities found that networks of protesters were in fact financed by several western countries to fulfill imperialist aspirations of implementing regime change in the country. 

Related

• US envoy for Iran: US focused on supporting riots, JCPOA not priority
• Iran, EU Foreign Ministers discuss JCPOA revival in Jordan
• Iran, P4+1 near last stage of Vienna talks: FM
• Glimmer of hope remains on restoring JCPOA revival talks: IAEA chief

The Complete Destruction of Ukraine is Unavoidable (Douglas Macgregor)

December 09, 2022

Germany’s position in America’s New World Order

November 02, 2022

Source

by Michael Hudson

Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies.

President Biden has characterized this split as being between democracies and autocracies. The terminology is typical Orwellian double-speak. By “democracies” he means the U.S. and allied Western financial oligarchies. Their aim is to shift economic planning out of the hands of elected governments to Wall Street and other financial centers under U.S. control. U.S. diplomats use the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to demand privatization of the world’s infrastructure and dependency on U.S. technology, oil and food exports.

By “autocracy,” Biden means countries resisting this financialization and privatization takeover. In practice, U.S. rhettoric means promoting its own economic growth and living standards, keeping finance and banking as public utilities. What basically is at issue is whether economies will be planned by banking centers to create financial wealth – by privatizing basic infrastructure, public utilities and social services such as health care into monopolies – or by raising living standards and prosperity by keeping banking and money creation, public health, education, transportation and communications in public hands.

The country suffering the most “collateral damage” in this global fracture is Germany. As Europe’s most advanced industrial economy, German steel, chemicals, machinery, automotives and other consumer goods are the most highly dependent on imports of Russian gas, oil and metals from aluminum to titanium and palladium. Yet despite two Nord Stream pipelines built to provide Germany with low-priced energy, Germany has been told to cut itself off from Russian gas and de-industrialize. This means the end of its economic preeminence. The key to GDP growth in Germany, as in other countries, is energy consumption per worker.

These anti-Russian sanctions make today’s New Cold War inherently anti-German. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that Germany should replace low-priced Russian pipeline gas with high-priced U.S. LNG gas. To import this gas, Germany will have to spend over $5 billion quickly to build port capacity to handle LNG tankers. The effect will be to make German industry uncompetitive. Bankruptcies will spread, employment will decline, and Germany’s pro-NATO leaders will impose a chronic depression and falling living standards.

Most political theory assumes that nations will act in their own self-interest. Otherwise they are satellite countries, not in control of their own fate. Germany is subordinating its industry and living standards to the dictates of U.S. diplomacy and the self-interest of America’s oil and gas sector. It is doing this voluntarily – not because of military force but out of an ideological belief that the world economy should be run by U.S. Cold War planners.

Sometimes it is easier to understand today’s dynamics by stepping away from one’s own immediate situation to look at historical examples of the kind of political diplomacy that one sees splitting today’s world. The closest parallel that I can find is medieval Europe’s fight by the Roman papacy against German kings – the Holy Roman Emperors – in the 13^th century. That conflict split Europe along lines much like those of today. A series of popes excommunicated Frederick II and other German kings and mobilized allies to fight against Germany and its control of southern Italy and Sicily.

Western antagonism against the East was incited by the Crusades (1095-1291), just as today’s Cold War is a crusade against economies threatening U.S. dominance of the world. The medieval war against Germany was over who should control Christian Europe: the papacy, with the popes becoming worldly emperors, or secular rulers of individual kingdoms by claiming the power to morally legitimize and accept them.

Medieval Europe’s analogue to America’s New Cold War against China and Russia was the Great Schism in 1054. Demanding unipolar control over Christendom, Leo IX excommunicated the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and the entire Christian population that belonged to it. A single bishopric, Rome, cut itself off from the entire Christian world of the time, including the ancient Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem.

This break-away created a political problem for Roman diplomacy: How to hold all the Western European kingdoms under its control and claim the right for financial subsidy from them. That aim required subordinating secular kings to papal religious authority. In 1074, Gregory VII, Hildebrand, announced 27 Papal Dictates outlining the administrative strategy for Rome to lock in its power over Europe.

These papal demands are strikingly parallel to today’s U.S. diplomacy. In both cases military and worldly interests require a sublimation in the form of an ideological crusading spirit to cement the sense of solidarity that any system of imperial domination requires. The logic is timeless and universal.

The Papal Dictates were radical in two major ways. First of all, they elevated the bishop of Rome above all other bishoprics, creating the modern papacy. Clause 3 ruled that the pope alone had the power of investiture to appoint bishops or to depose or reinstate them. Reinforcing this, Clause 25 gave the right of appointing (or deposing) bishops to the pope, not to local rulers. And Clause 12 gave the pope the right to depose emperors, following Clause 9, obliging “all princes to kiss the feet of the Pope alone” in order to be deemed legitimate rulers.

Likewise today, U.S. diplomats claim the right to name who should be recognized as a nation’s head of state. In 1953 they overthrew Iran’s elected leader and replaced him with the Shah’s military dictatorship. That principle gives U.S. diplomats the right to sponsor “color revolutions” for regime-change, such as their sponsorship of Latin American military dictatorships creating client oligarchies to serve U.S. corporate and financial interests. The 2014 coup in Ukraine is just the latest exercise of this U.S. right to appoint and depose leaders.

More recently, U.S. diplomats have appointed Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s head of state instead of its elected president, and turned over that country’s gold reserves to him. President Biden has insisted that Russia must remove Putin and put a more pro-U.S. leader in his place. This “right” to select heads of state has been a constant in U.S. policy spanning its long history of political meddling in European political affairs since World War II.

The second radical feature of the Papal Dictates was their exclusion of all ideology and policy that diverged from papal authority. Clause 2 stated that only the Pope could be called “Universal.” Any disagreement was, by definition, heretical. Clause 17 stated that no chapter or book could be considered canonical without papal authority.

A similar demand as is being made by today’s U.S.-sponsored ideology of financialized and privatized “free markets,” meaning deregulation of government power to shape economies in interests other than those of U.S.-centered financial and corporate elites.

The demand for universality in today’s New Cold War is cloaked in the language of “democracy.” But the definition of democracy in today’s New Cold War is simply “pro-U.S.,” and specifically neoliberal privatization as the U.S.-sponsored new economic religion. This ethic is deemed to be “science,” as in the quasi-Nobel Memorial Prize in the Economic Sciences. That is the modern euphemism for neoliberal Chicago-School junk economics, IMF austerity programs and tax favoritism for the wealthy.

The Papal Dictates spelt out a strategy for locking in unipolar control over secular realms. They asserted papal precedence over worldly kings, above all over Germany’s Holy Roman Emperors. Clause 26 gave popes authority to excommunicate whomever was “not at peace with the Roman Church.” That principle implied the concluding Claus 27, enabling the pope to “absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.” This encouraged the medieval version of “color revolutions” to bring about regime change.

What united countries in this solidarity was an antagonism to societies not subject to centralized papal control – the Moslem Infidels who held Jerusalem, and also the French Cathars and anyone else deemed to be a heretic. Above all there was hostility toward regions strong enough to resist papal demands for financial tribute.

Today’s counterpart to such ideological power to excommunicate heretics resisting demands for obedience and tribute would be the World Trade Organization, World Bank and IMF dictating economic practices and setting “conditionalities” for all member governments to follow, on pain of U.S. sanctions – the modern version of excommunication of countries not accepting U.S. suzerainty. Clause 19 of the Dictates ruled that the pope could be judged by no one – just as today, the United States refuses to subject its actions to rulings by the World Court. Likewise today, U.S. dictates via NATO and other arms (such as the IMF and World Bank) are expected to be followed by U.S. satellites without question. As Margaret Thatcher said of her neoliberal privatization that destroyed Britain’s public sector, There Is No Alternative (TINA).

My point is to emphasize the analogy with today’s U.S. sanctions against all countries not following its own diplomatic demands. Trade sanctions are a form of excommunication. They reverse the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia’s principle that made each country and its rulers independent from foreign meddling. President Biden characterizes U.S. interference as ensuring his new antithesis between “democracy” and “autocracy.” By democracy he means a client oligarchy under U.S. control, creating financial wealth by reducing living standards for labor, as opposed to mixed public/private economies aiming at promoting living standards and social solidarity.

As I have mentioned, by excommunicating the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and its Christian population, the Great Schism created the fateful religious dividing line that has split “the West” from the East for the past millennium. That split was so important that Vladimir Putin cited it as part of his September 30, 2022 speech describing today’s break away from the U.S. and NATO centered Western economies.

The 12^th and 13^th centuries saw Norman conquerors of England, France and other countries, along with German kings, protest repeatedly, be excommunicated repeatedly, yet ultimately succumb to papal demands. It took until the 16^th century for Martin Luther, Zwingli and Henry VIII finally to create a Protestant alternative to Rome, making Western Christianity multi-polar.

Why did it take so long? The answer is that the Crusades provided an organizing ideological gravity. That was the medieval analogy to today’s New Cold War between East and West. The Crusades created a spiritual focus of “moral reform” by mobilizing hatred against “the other” – the Moslem East, and increasingly Jews and European Christian dissenters from Roman control. That was the medieval analogy to today’s neoliberal “free market” doctrines of America’s financial oligarchy and its hostility to China, Russia and other nations not following that ideology. In today’s New Cold War, the West’s neoliberal ideology is mobilizing fear and hatred of “the other,” demonizing nations that follow an independent path as “autocratic regimes.” Outright racism is fostered toward entire peoples, as evident in the Russophobia and Cancel Culture currently sweeping the West.

Just as Western Christianity’s multi-polar transition required the 16^th century’s Protestant alternative, the Eurasian heartland’s break from the bank-centered NATO West must be consolidated by an alternative ideology regarding how to organize mixed public/private economies and their financial infrastructure.

Medieval churches in the West were drained of their alms and endowments to contribute Peter’s Pence and other subsidy to the papacy for the wars it was fighting against rulers who resisted papal demands. England played the role of major victim that Germany plays today. Enormous English taxes were levied ostensibly to finance the Crusades were diverted to fight Frederick II, Conrad and Manfred in Sicily. That diversion was financed by papal bankers from northern Italy (Lombards and Cahorsins), and became royal debts passed down throughout the economy. England’s barons waged a civil war against Henry II in the 1260s, ending his complicity in sacrificing the economy to papal demands.

What ended the papacy’s power over other countries was the ending of its war against the East. When the Crusaders lost Acre, the capital of Jerusalem in 1291, the papacy lost its control over Christendom. There was no more “evil” to fight, and the “good” had lost its center of gravity and coherence. In 1307, France’s Philip IV (“the Fair”) seized the Church’s great military banking order’s wealth, that of the Templars in the Paris Temple. Other rulers also nationalized the Templars, and monetary systems were taken out of the hands of the Church. Without a common enemy defined and mobilized by Rome, the papacy lost its unipolar ideological power over Western Europe.

The modern equivalent to the rejection of the Templars and papal finance would be for countries to withdraw from America’s New Cold War. They would reject the dollar standard and the U.S. banking and financial system. that is happening as more and more countries see Russia and China not as adversaries but as presenting great opportunities for mutual economic advantage.

The broken promise of mutual gain between Germany and Russia

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 promised an end to the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was disbanded, Germany was reunified, and American diplomats promised an end to NATO, because a Soviet military threat no longer existed. Russian leaders indulged in the hope that, as President Putin expressed it, a new pan-European economy would be created from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Germany in particular was expected to take the lead in investing in Russia and restructuring its industry along more efficient lines. Russia would pay for this technology transfer by supplying gas and oil, along with nickel, aluminum, titanium and palladium.

There was no anticipation that NATO would be expanded to threaten a New Cold War, much less that it would back Ukraine, recognized as the most corrupt kleptocracy in Europe, into being led by extremist parties identifying themselves by German Nazi insignia.

How do we explain why the seemingly logical potential of mutual gain between Western Europe and the former Soviet economies turned into a sponsorship of oligarchic kleptocracies. The Nord Stream pipeline’s destruction capsulizes the dynamics in a nutshell. For almost a decade a constant U.S. demand has been for Germany to reject its reliance on Russian energy. These demands were opposed by Gerhardt Schroeder, Angela Merkel and German business leaders. They pointed to the obvious economic logic of mutual trade of German manufactures for Russian raw materials.

The U.S. problem was how to stop Germany from approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Victoria Nuland, President Biden and other U.S. diplomats demonstrated that the way to do that was to incite a hatred of Russia. The New Cold War was framed as a new Crusade. That was how George W. Bush had described America’s attack on Iraq to seize its oil wells. The U.S.-sponsored 2014 coup created a puppet Ukrainian regime that has spent eight years bombing of the Russian-speaking Eastern provinces. NATO thus incited a Russian military response. The incitement was successful, and the desired Russian response was duly labeled an unprovoked atrocity. Its protection of civilians was depicted in the NATO-sponsored media as being so offensive as to deserve the trade and investment sanctions that have been imposed since February. That is what a Crusade means.

The result is that the world is splitting in two camps: the U.S.-centered NATO, and the emerging Eurasian coalition. One byproduct of this dynamic has been to leave Germany unable to pursue the economic policy of mutually advantageous trade and investment relations with Russia (and perhaps also China). German Chancellor Olaf Sholz is going to China this week to demand that it dismantle is public sector and stops subsidizing its economy, or else Germany and Europe will impose sanctions on trade with China. There is no way that China could meet this ridiculous demand, any more than the United States or any other industrial economy would stop subsidizing their own computer-chip and other key sectors.^[1] The German Council on Foreign Relations is a neoliberal “libertarian” arm of NATO demanding German de-industrialization and dependency on the United States for its trade, excluding China, Russia and their allies. This promises to be the final nail in Germany’s economic coffin.

Another byproduct of America’s New Cold War has been to end any international plan to stem global warming. A keystone of U.S. economic diplomacy is for its oil companies and those of its NATO allies to control the world’s oil and gas supply – that is, to reduce dependence on carbon-based fuels. That is what the NATO war in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine was about. It is not as abstract as “Democracies vs. Autocracies.” It is about the U.S. ability to harm other countries by disrupting their access to energy and other basic needs.

Without the New Cold War’s “good vs. evil” narrative, U.S. sanctions will lose their raison d’etre in this U.S. attack on environmental protection, and on mutual trade between Western Europe and Russia and China. That is the context for today’s fight in Ukraine, which is to be merely the first step in the anticipated 20 year fight by the US to prevent the world from becoming multipolar. This process, will lock Germany and Europe into dependence on the U.S. supplies of LNG.

The trick is to try and convince Germany that it is dependent on the United States for its military security. What Germany really needs protection from is the U.S. war against China and Russia that is marginalizing and “Ukrainianizing” Europe.

There have been no calls by Western governments for a negotiated end to this war, because no war has been declared in Ukraine. The United States does not declare war anywhere, because that would require a Congressional declaration under the U.S. Constitution. So U.S. and NATO armies bomb, organize color revolutions, meddle in domestic politics (rendering the 1648 Westphalia agreements obsolete), and impose the sanctions that are tearing Germany and its European neighbors apart.

How can negotiations “end” a war that either has no declaration of war, and is a long-term strategy of total unipolar world domination?

The answer is that no ending can come until an alternative to the present U.S.-centered set of international institutions is replaced. That requires the creation of new institutions reflecting an alternative to the neoliberal bank-centered view that economies should be privatized with central planning by financial centers. Rosa Luxemburg characterized the choice as being between socialism and barbarism. I have sketched out the political dynamics of an alternative in my recent book, The Destiny of Civilization.

This paper was presented on November 1, 2022. on the German e-site
https://braveneweurope.com/michael-hudson-germanys-position-in-americas-new-world-order. A video of my talk will be available on YouTube in about ten days.

1. See Guntram Wolff, “Sholz should send an explicit message on his visit to Beijing,” Financial Times, October 31, 2022. Wolff is the director and CE of the German Council on Foreign Relations. ↑

From Ally to Enemy: Australia Hammers Final Nail in US ‘Deal of the Century’

October 26, 2022

Abraham Accord signing ceremony in Washington. (Photo: Wikimedia)

By Ramzy Baroud

US President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ was meant to represent a finality of sorts, an event reminiscent of Francis Fukuyama’s premature declaration of the ‘End of History’ and the uncontested supremacy of western capitalism. In effect, it was a declaration that ‘we’ – the US, Israel and a few allies – have won, and ‘you’, isolated and marginalized Palestinians, lost.

The same way Fukuyama failed to consider the unceasing evolution of history, the US and Israeli governments also failed to understand that the Middle East, in fact, the world, is not governed by Israeli expectations and American diktats.

The above is a verifiable assertion. On October 17, the Australian government announced that it is revoking its 2018 recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Expectedly, the new decision, officially made by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, was strongly criticized by Israel, celebrated by Palestinians and welcomed by Arab countries who praised the responsible diplomacy of Canberra.

Any serious analysis of the Australian move, however, must not be confined to Australia’s own political shifts but must be extended to include the dramatic changes underway in Palestine, the Middle East and, indeed, the world.

For many years, but especially since the US invasion of Iraq as part of the politically-motivated ‘war on terror’, Washington perceived itself as the main, if not the only, power that is able to shape political outcomes in the Middle East. Yet, as its Iraq quagmire began destabilizing the entire region, with revolts, social upheavals and wars breaking out, Washington began losing its grip.

It was then rightly understood that, while the US may succeed in waging wars, as it did in Iraq and Libya, it is unable to restore even a small degree of peace and stability. Though Trump seemed disinterested in engaging in major military conflicts, he converted that energy to facilitate the rise of Israel as a regional power, which is incorporated into the Middle East’s political and economic grids through a process of political ‘normalization’, which is wholly delinked from the struggle in Palestine or the freedom of the Palestinians.

The Americans were so confident in their power to orchestrate such a major political transformation to the extent that Jared Kushner – Trump’s Middle East advisor and son-in-law – was revealed to have attempted to cancel the very status of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, an attempt that was met with a decisive Jordanian rejection.

Kushner’s arrogance reached the point that, in January 2020, he declared that his father-in-law’s plan was such a “great deal” which, if rejected by Palestinians, “they’re going to screw up another opportunity, like they’ve screwed up every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.”

All of this hubris was joined with many American concessions to Israel, whereby Washington virtually fulfilled all Israeli wishes. The relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem was merely the icing on the cake of a much larger political scheme that included the financial boycott of Palestinians, the cancellation of funds that benefited Palestinian refugees, the recognition of the illegally occupied Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel and the support of Tel Aviv’s decision to annex much of the occupied West Bank.

The then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies had hoped that, as soon as Washington carried out such moves, many other countries would follow, and that, in no time, Palestinians would find themselves friendless, broke and irrelevant.

This was hardly the case, and what started with a bang ended with a whimper. Though the Biden Administration still refuses to commit to any new ‘peace process’, it has largely avoided engaging in Trump’s provocative politics. Not just that, the Palestinians are anything but isolated, and Arab countries remain united, at least officially, in the centrality of Palestine to their collective political priorities.

In April 2021, Washington restored funding to the Palestinians, including money allocated to the UN refugees’ agency, UNRWA. It did not do so for charitable reasons, of course, but because it wanted to ensure the allegiance of the Palestinian Authority, and to remain a relevant political party in the region. Even then, the PA President, Mahmoud Abbas, still declared, during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazakhstan on October 12, that “we (Palestinians) don’t trust America”.

Moreover, the annexation scheme, at least officially, did not go through. The rejection of any Israeli steps that could change the legal status of the occupied Palestinian territories proved unpopular with most UN members, including most of Israel’s western allies.

Australia remained the exception, but not for long. Unsurprisingly, Canberra’s reversal of its earlier decision regarding the status of Jerusalem earned it much criticism in Tel Aviv. Four years following its initial policy shift, Australia shifted yet once more, as it found it more beneficial to realign itself with the position of most world capitals than to that of Washington and Tel Aviv.

Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ has failed simply because neither Washington nor Tel Aviv had enough political cards to shape a whole new reality in the Middle East. Most parties involved – Trump, Netanyahu, Scott Morrison in Australia, and a few others – were simply playing a political game linked to their own interests at home. Similarly, the currently embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss is now jumping on the bandwagon of relocating the British embassy to Jerusalem so that she may win the approval of pro-Israel politicians. The move further demonstrates her lack of political experience and, regardless of what Westminster decides to do next, it will unlikely greatly affect the political reality in Palestine and the Middle East.

In the final analysis, it has become clear that the ‘Deal of the Century’ was not an irreversible historical event, but an opportunistic and thoughtless political process that lacked a deep understanding of history and the political balances that continue to control the Middle East.

Another important lesson to be gleaned from all of this is that, as long as the Palestinian people continue to resist and fight for their freedom and as long as international solidarity continues to grow around them, the Palestinian cause will remain central to all Arabs and to all conscientious people around the world.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

Opec+ row: The US has lost control of its Gulf allies

13 October 2022 

David Hearst

The Biden administration is now paying the price for its chaotic and inconsistent policy on Saudi Arabia

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden issued his national security strategy, which boasted, among other things, of his country’s unique capacity to “defend democracy around the world”.

US President Joe Biden at the White House, on 4 October 2022 (AFP)

One of the standout phrases of this unashamed piece of geopolitical fiction was this one: “We are forging creative new ways to work in common cause with partners around issues of shared interest.”

This statement was released just days after Opec+, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, unleashed the biggest shock to oil markets this century by cutting production by two million barrels a day.

It’s chaos – not in the unstable Middle East, but in the corridors of the National Security Council

Despite Riyadh’s latest protestations that the decision was based only on “economic considerations”, the move has triggered a tidal wave of anger among Democratic members of Congress, who are now threatening to suspend arms sales to the kingdom for a year. National security adviser Jake Sullivan has also said the White House was looking into a halt to arms sales. As 73 percent of the kingdom’s arms imports come from the US, this is no mere rhetorical threat.

“If it weren’t for our technicians, their airplanes literally wouldn’t fly… We literally are responsible for their entire air force,” Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California, told reporters. “What galls so many of us in Congress is the ingratitude.”

Incidentally, the same is true of the British firm BAE Systems, which supplies and maintains aircraft for Saudi Arabia, but the UK government is staying silent. 

It should not. Because the national security strategy shows that, among other things, the US has lost control of its allies, especially in the Middle East and particularly in the Gulf.

Courting a ‘pariah’

To take Biden’s tenure as an illustration, one of the first things he did upon taking office was to appoint Brett McGurk, a diplomat who had served under previous presidents, as his National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East.

McGurk is famous, or rather infamous, among Sunni political circles in Iraq – let alone pro-Iran Shia ones – for being rather too close to Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and latterly its prime minister. McGurk set up the disastrous “fist bump” encounter between Biden and Mohammed bin Salman by negotiating an agreement between Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt over the transfer of two uninhabited but strategically placed islands in the Red Sea, Tiran and Sanafir.

How, then, could Mohammed bin Salman poke such a large finger in Biden’s eye just before the midterm elections, if McGurk had been doing his job? It’s chaos – not in the unstable Middle East, but in the corridors of the National Security Council.

Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on 16 July 2022 (AFP)

Or take the decisions that Biden made over Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and Middle East Eye columnist murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Biden abandoned the principles he touted as a presidential candidate to treat the Saudi crown prince as a pariah, the moment he took office. 

Upon the publication of a summary of a CIA report on the murder, which concluded that Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing, Biden had an opportunity to put US weight behind a UN investigation into the killing. He notably declined to do so.

The US announced visa restrictions against 76 Saudis implicated in the plot, but did nothing against the man its intelligence services said was behind it. 

“The relationship with Saudi Arabia is bigger than any one individual,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the time of the so-called Khashoggi ban. “What we’ve done by the actions that we’ve taken is really not to rupture the relationship, but to recalibrate it to be more in line with our interests and our values.”

Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator, applauded Biden for “trying to thread the needle”, telling the New York Times that the affair was “a classic example of where you have to balance your values and your interests”.

Not unnaturally, Mohammed bin Salman concluded that he had gotten away with it. Now, Biden is paying the price.

State of surprise

The American foreign policy establishment has been, since the end of the Cold War, in a permanent state of surprise.

There was surprise that it had “lost Russia” at the end of the 1990s; surprise at the devastation caused by its invasion of Iraq; surprise over Vladimir Putin’s 2007 Munich speech, in which the Russian leader called out the US’s “almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations”; surprise at Putin’s intervention in Syria; surprise over the fall of Kabul; and surprise that strategic decisions such as expanding Nato eastwards would ultimately lead to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

At least the US is showing consistency in its faulty analytics and strategy, and massive blind spots. You can now rely on it to make the wrong choice

A world power that, until Putin’s intervention in Syria, held a monopoly on the use of international force but has squandered its authority in a series of mainly unforced errors. That is why it can no longer lead the democracies of the world.

Alienating China at the very time the US needs President Xi Jinping to contain Putin and stop him from using battlefield nukes, which he is quite capable of doing, is perhaps the biggest strategic mistake it is currently making. 

At least the US is showing admirable consistency in its faulty analytics and strategy, and massive blind spots. You can now rely on it to make the wrong choice. 

But what of its wayward allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates?

Saudi miscalculations

Saudi foreign policy cannot be untangled from the personality of its de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman. He is to international relations what a Nintendo game console is to careful reflection. He presses a button and thinks it can happen. He has an idea, and it has to be true.

I recently met an academic in Tehran who believed Mohammed bin Salman had moved beyond his Game Boy past. He is involved in backchannel negotiations with the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia: Mohammed bin Salman is now the state

Read More »

“A senior Saudi diplomat told me that MBS started as a kid playing video games,” he told me. “Killing Khashoggi, starting a military intervention in Yemen which would last ‘two weeks’, the siege of Qatar, getting rid of [Lebanese Prime Minister Saad] Hariri were all video games for him, buttons you can press, enemies disappearing from the screen. Out of necessity, he is becoming more strategic.

“Strategic maturity does not come from what you would like to have. It comes out of necessity,” the academic added. “I don’t think the Saudis decided to move beyond that strategic relationship with America. The American hand is still strong. But there are differences happening. The Americans are not seen with the same confidence that was seen in Riyadh.

“Where does it leave the Saudis? The Saudis have been trying to build relations with China and Russia and in the region. Vision 2030 cannot move without calm all around the kingdom. The Saudis see Yemen in two tracks: one, the Saudi-Yemeni track [with the Houthis]; two, the national reconciliation track. But the two rely on each other, and MBS is moving towards a compromise.”

The Iranian academic admitted that this was music to his ears, which was why he thought his Saudi counterpart was playing it, but nor could he discount the temptation to believe it.

Machiavellian tutor

Mohammed bin Salman admires Putin personally. Multiple sources have told me that the inspiration for the Tiger Squad – which killed and dismembered the body of Khashoggi and tried to do the same to Saad al-Jabri, a former minister of state and adviser to deposed crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef – came from the killing of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko in London and the attempted poisoning of defector Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.

But beyond that, Mohammed bin Salman sees the limits of the kingdom’s ties to the US. He used former President Donald Trump as his ticket to the top of the Saudi royal family, but now that the Trump clan is – for the moment – out of power, he sees no reason not to court Russia. 

But he remains impulsive, and his tutor in the modern art of Machiavelli, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed, is more astute.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (left) with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi, in November 2019 (AFP/Saudi Royal Palace)

In distinction to his pupil, Mohammed bin Zayed still sees his country’s growing trade alliance with Israel as his ticket to influencing US policymakers. It was his ambassador in the US, Yousef al-Otaiba – not the Saudi ambassador – who introduced Mohammed bin Salman to the Trump family and to Washington.

But Mohammed bin Zayed hates being told what to do. One official familiar with relations between the Saudi and Emirati crown princes told me of a plan Mohammed bin Salman once had to run a maglev railway around the Gulf. Only a few of these systems, such as the Shanghai Transrapid, are running in the world, due to the enormous cost of construction. 

“MBS makes a plan and tells everyone else how much to invest without consulting them,” the official said. “He had an idea to run a maglev train going around the Gulf. Its [cost] was $160bn, because it’s $1bn a mile. Abu Dhabi’s share was huge. They were furious and stopped the plan.

“MBZ resents being told what to do by MBS, because he thinks he created him. MBS could not conceive of a relationship to him where he is subservient.”

New era of power projection

So while Mohammed bin Zayed went to Russia courting Putin, his officials distanced themselves from the Opec+ oil cut. The Financial Times reported that the UAE and Iraq had “expressed misgivings”.

Foreign policy in the hands of Mohammed bin Zayed is more nuanced than in those of his Saudi protege. This means that every move Mohammed bin Zayed makes is reversible, and therefore tradeable. He calculates each move before he makes it.

Although the two men look in public to be close to each other, in reality, Mohammed bin Salman is moving faster than his neighbour wants him to. The one thing that Mohammed bin Zayed does not want is for Mohammed bin Salman to become his own man. At the same time, the one thing that Mohammed bin Salman will not tolerate is for anyone else to issue him orders. 

The US is being tested as much by its allies as by its foes. And for good reason

It happened once over Yemen, where the announcement of the pullout of UAE troops left the Saudi crown prince on his own.

Biden and his advisers may be tempted to take a successful pushback of Russian troops in Ukraine as a starting gun for a new era of American power projection around the world – one whose target is China. But even if Putin is turned back in Ukraine, they would be profoundly wrong to do so.

The US is being tested as much by its allies as by its foes. And for good reason: they sense that the US won’t resume the role of unchallenged leader, which it held briefly for three decades.

The US has learned no lessons from the fall of Kabul. It reacted to its military defeat in Afghanistan by trading up. A geographically limited conflict in Central Asia was replaced by a potentially much larger conflict with China. Large parts of the world have rightly lost faith in this type of leadership.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. 

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. He was the Guardian’s foreign leader writer, and was correspondent in Russia, Europe, and Belfast. He joined the Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

Read more

•  Opec+ oil cut: Are Saudi Arabia and UAE testing the limits of a new world order?
•  Biden in the Middle East: Following Trump’s lead toward regional disaster
•  US-Saudi Arabia: Has Riyadh become irrelevant?
• Jamal Khashoggi’s long shadow

Oil cuts: A perfect storm in US foreign policy

The Biden administration’s poor dealings with oil producing countries will have major political and economic ramifications for the west

October 11 2022

By MK Bhadrakumar

The old adage is that a good foreign policy is the reflection of the national policy. In this sense, a perfect storm is brewing on the foreign policy front in the US, triggered by the OPEC decision on 5 October to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day.

On the one hand, this will drive up the gas price for the domestic consumer and on the other, will expose the US administration’s lop-sided foreign policy priorities. 

At its most obvious level, OPEC’s move confirms the belief that Washington has lost its leverage with the cartel of oil-producing countries. This is being attributed to the deterioration of the US’ relations with Saudi Arabia during the presidency of Joe Biden. But, fundamentally, a contradiction has arisen between the US interests and the interests of the oil producing countries.

Petro-diplomacy

That being said, contradictions are nothing new to the geopolitics of oil: the 1970s and 1980s witnessed two major “oil crises.” One was man-made while the other was an interplay of historical forces — the Yom-Kippur War of 1973 and Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979. In the downstream of the former, the Arab nations weaponized oil and proclaimed an oil embargo on western nations which were perceived to have supported Israel in the war.

The result was that the price of oil rose nearly 300 percent in less than six months, crippling the world’s economy. In the US, President Richard Nixon asked petrol stations not to sell gasoline from Saturday night through until Monday morning to cope with the crisis, which affected industry more than the average consumer.

In 1979, the Iranian Revolution hit oil production rates and the world’s oil supply shrunk by 4 percent. As panic set in, demand for crude oil shot up and prices more than doubled.

Biden’s folly

The Biden administration has tempted fate by underestimating the importance of oil in modern diplomacy, and ignoring that oil will remain the dominant energy source across the world for the foreseeable future, powering everything from cars and domestic heating to huge industry titans and manufacturing plants.

Even the steady transition to green energy over time is largely dependent on the continued availability of plentiful, cheap fossil fuel. However, the Biden administration overlooked the fact that those who have oil reserves wield a huge amount of power over our oil-centered energy systems, while those who buy oil are, on the contrary, cripplingly dependent on the market and the diplomatic relations which drive it.

The western powers are far too naive to think that an energy superpower like Russia can be simply “erased” from the ecosystem. An “energy war” with Russia is therefore destined for failure.

Historically, western nations understood the imperative to maintain good diplomatic relations with oil-producing countries. But Biden threw caution into the wind by insulting Saudi Arabia – when in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections, he vowed to make the kingdom a “pariah” state.

Despite his highly-publicized visit to Jeddah in July 2022 to mend fences, the Saudis distrust American intentions, and we are unlikely to see any improvement in US-Saudi relations under Biden’s administration.

The congruence of interests on the part of the OPEC to keep the prices high is essentially because they need the extra income for their expenditure budget and to maintain a healthy investment level in the oil industry. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in April projected Saudi Arabia’s breakeven oil price — the oil price at which it would balance its budget — at $79.20 a barrel.

Although the Saudi government does not disclose its assumed breakeven oil price, a Reuters report suggested that a preferred price level would be around $90 to $100 a barrel for Brent crude — at which level, it won’t have a huge impact on the global economy. Of course, anything over $100 will be a windfall.

Dictating who can and can’t sell oil

Meanwhile, a “systemic” crisis is brewing. It is only natural that OPEC views with skepticism the recent moves by the US and the EU to curtail Russia’s oil exports. The west rationalizes these moves as being aimed at drastically reducing Russia’s revenues from oil exports (which translates into resilience to fight the war in Ukraine.)

The latest G7 move to put a cap on the prices at which Russia can sell its oil is taking matters to an extreme.

OPEC regards price caps as a paradigm shift, as it implicitly challenges the cartel’s assumed prerogative to ensure that global oil supply matches demand, where one of the key measures of supply-demand balance is price. Arguably, the west is de facto setting up a rival cartel of oil-consuming countries to regulate the oil market.

No doubt, the west’s move is precedent-setting — namely, to prescribe for geopolitical reasons the price at which an oil-producing country is entitled to export its oil. If it is Russia today, who is to say it will not be Saudi Arabia or Iraq tomorrow? The G7 decision – if it gets implemented – will erode OPEC’s key role regulating the global oil market.

OPEC fights back

As such, OPEC is proactively pushing back with its recent decision to cut down oil production by 2 million barrels per day and keep the oil price above $90 per barrel. OPEC estimates that Washington’s options to counter OPEC+ are limited. Unlike in the past energy history, the US does not have a single ally today inside the OPEC+ group.

Due to rising domestic demands for oil and gas, it is entirely conceivable that the US exports of both items may be curtailed. If that happens, Europe will be the worst affected. In an interview with the Financial Times last week, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo warned that as winter approaches, if energy prices are not brought down, “we are risking a massive deindustrialization of the European continent and the long-term consequences of that might actually be very deep.”

He added these chilling words: “Our populations are getting invoices which are completely insane. At some point, it will snap. I understand that people are angry . . . people don’t have the means to pay it.” De Croo was warning about the likelihood of social unrest and political turmoil in European countries.

The economic and political fallout

Without a doubt, this is a tectonic shift in geopolitics which may probably turn out to be more important than the conflict in Ukraine in the making of the multipolar world order.

This perfect storm in Biden’s foreign policy can also impact the US midterm elections in November and deliver a Republican majority in the Senate, which could set the tempo for the 2024 US presidential election.

The Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that by turning away from Russian energy, Europe has become a captive market for the US oil companies which are now making “crazy money,” but the high cost of it is draining away the competitiveness of the European economy.

“Production is collapsing. Deindustrialization is coming. All this will have very, very deplorable consequences for the European continent over probably, at least, the next 10-20 years,” Peskov said.

Incidentally, Russia stands to gain the most from OPEC+cuts. The expert opinion is that oil prices will move higher from current levels through year-end and next year. That is to say, Russia will not cut any output while the price of oil is set to rise in the coming months.

As oil prices rise, Russia will not have to cut even a barrel of its production so long as it has a big enough market after December to sell the crude now going to Europe. Again, Moscow, for its part, reiterates that it will not supply oil to countries that would join the G7 price cap. In doing so, it is matching the Biden administration’s non-market instruments.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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