The events
surrounding Syria have been unfolding very tragically over the past week,
mostly along the lines startlingly reminding the logic of the all but forgotten
Cold War era, the times famously marked by global rivalry between the two
blocks of nations, frenziedly involved in arms race and localized but fierce
armed conflicts the world over generally conducted by proxy and used as test
grounds for the strategic opponents’ weapons systems and military equipment as
well as their overall battle-fighting capabilities.
The
difference between the old ideologically constrained times and recent history
is in the way such conflicts are waged. Cold War political correctness and
ideological lines urged the global rivals to conceal, at least officially,
their direct or indirect involvement. These days, all masks of civilized façade
have been almost completely removed. The world is witness today how sheer power
of arms and military might, and strategic planning decide finally who is right
and who is dead.
Numerous multinational
terrorist groups, some as notorious as the CIA-controlled “Al-Qaeda”, and local
paramilitary criminal element in Syria have increased their bold and mindlessly
and overtly violent attacks against local civilian population openly bragging
that their strategic guidance, tactical coordination and control, and overall
information and moral support is provided by the governments of US, Great
Britain, and France, whereas most sophisticated weapons are shipped in from the
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Libya, the staunchest allies of the lone hysterically
power grabbing “superpower” left over from the Cold War era. The Western
governments not only admit their dominant role in those tragic events, even in
the face of the most horrendous crimes and atrocities performed by their
protégés, getting increasingly drunk on blood and violence, but blatantly
insist on some moral grounds which they have long lost. As lies and
misinformation become hard and harder to pass for what is really going on, the
leading NATO member-states accelerate their efforts at building a strong
up-to-date coalition of nations bound to contribute to the military might of
the organization.
The power
and military capabilities of NATO have become far greater since the end of the
Cold War era not only in terms of materiel but from the number of states that
are supposed to provide their support in times of need. NATO summit in Chicago (20-21
May 2012) had drawn together not only the heads of state of its 28 member
states but also the delegates of 32 other countries, revealing the global
dimensions of the organization.
The choice
of Chicago for the NATO summit is also obvious given President Obama’s
political origins and that it is today governed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former
Obama chief of staff, hawk and Israeli army officer. The host committee was
composed by the Bilderberg Group centered around Madeleine Albright, Chairman
of the NDI/NED and John H. Bryan, who sits on the Board of Directors of Goldman
Sachs.
NATO summit
was officially to consider three main issues:
1. How to exert control over Central
Asia to ensure efficient military crackdown on those areas that could be
actively resisting or subverting international political and economic
developments projected in that region.
2. How to deal more efficiently with
the budget restraints in current global financial situation.
3. How to deploy effectively offensive
weapon systems in potential military campaigns against Russia and China as the
primary and ultimate opponents in terms of overall military capabilities.
Given the
fact that NATO leaders look upon Russia and China as the only remaining hurdles
in the Anglo-American-French-German financial and corporate capital’s endeavor
to subdue and redesign global economy according to their needs and intrinsic
interests, the future dynamic of US – Russia relationships lies in the standoff
and strategic confrontation between two major power blocks of nations. On the
one hand it is going to be a NATO-based alliance of nations depending for their
military security on the core member-states, namely the US, the UK, France, and
Germany; on the other hand there are going to be nations coalescing around
Russian efforts to ensure collective security within their borders.
The Summit of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO), meeting on May 15, 2012 may have been less grandiose than
NATO but it is capable of mounting resistance to it.
Current
developments in Central Asia and the Middle East are best viewed from the
standpoint of this strategic confrontation, which has always been there, ever
since the United States has become a nation, and most probably will never go
away given the current carbon energy-based economy and fundamentally flawed financial and monetary system.
Controlling
Central Asia is of paramount importance to anyone who wants to control the
world today. The allied intervention in Afghanistan was planned by the NATO
leadership even before the September 11, 2001 attacks, used to justify it and
bring its Allies on board. It was tailored to respond to specific interests of
the Coalition. It was a strategic maneuver against Iran once Iraq was invaded.
It was also a way of restricting the Russian “zone of influence” in the Muslim
states, former members of the Soviet Union. It also helped to open a pathway
for the exploitation of Caspian petroleum. It gave unique opportunities to
establish a global control on the world market of drugs derived from poppies.
Finally, the invasion of Afghanistan gave NATO leading member-states access to
huge reserves of precious minerals there.
While
ripping the benefits of the current situation in Afghanistan, the organizers of
this adventurous Central Asia campaign are trying to secure their strategic
position and lay grounds for its next steps planned for the future. Ten years
have passed since the invasion and the imminent attack on Iran remains
postponed while the relations of the U.S. with Russia and China have become
ever more strained. Just before the NATO summit, Washington concluded an
emergency strategic pact with Kabul. But the recent troop withdrawal cannot
conceal the Pentagon’s long-term plans to remain in-country. Ironically, the
Western countries need to maintain troops in Afghanistan to threaten Russian
interests in Central Asia but also need to pass through Russian territory in
order to provision those same troops.
The
principal question of the Chicago summit was not to establish if Allied troops
are necessary for the stabilization of Afghanistan or whether their mission is
finished, though, but whether the Allies are prepared to carry forward an
encroachment on Russian territory (and Chinese while they’re at it). Since
then, the decision of President Francois Hollande to pull French troops out as
soon as possible should be understood for what it is, not an attempt to bring
an end to an aberrant colonial expedition but a situational refrain from a
particular operation for reasons of national operative capabilities as well as
for political reasons, regarding the overall increasingly hostile position
taken by the NATO against Russia and China in Central Asia.
The
Pentagon has succeeded in modifying the rules that govern the internal functioning
of the Alliance to ensure the possibility of using NATO more leanly in the current
environment of rapidly developing and changing political landscape in Europe
and other parts of the world. Historically, the organization was established to
mobilize itself as an ensemble if one of its members was attacked. These days,
Washington initially determines its colonial objectives and then creates a
coalition ad hoc. For example, an alliance centered on France and the United
Kingdom was formed to destroy Libya. The Germans did not participate. Yet they
did assemble the fleet of AWACS surveillance planes. The Pentagon has the right
to requisition materiel from their Allies should they refuse to take part in a particular
coalition.
In order to
eliminate the Russian and Chinese nuclear deterrent, the United States
envisions protecting itself from enemy missiles to be able to launch theirs
without fear of reprisals. This is the underlying principle of the “missile
shield.” There are no interceptor missiles capable of destroying the highly sophisticated
Russian and Chinese anti-ballistic missiles in flight. The Pentagon plans to
deploy a radar system capable of surveying global airspace and installing as
closely as possible a ring of threatening missiles aimed at Russia and China.
The U.S.
Defense Department has already negotiated with a great number of countries
agreements to install the missile shield. It also promotes military pacts among
those states that enter into them. For example, the U.S. invited Jordan and Morocco
to join the Cooperation Council of the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), making it
into a sort of refurbished Bagdad Pact.
To counter
NATO’s de-facto global expansion, Russia has made a military pact with its old
Soviet partners, the Collective Treaty Security Organization, the CTSO.
Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan joined, but without Azerbaijan.
Moscow and Beijing then established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Its
initial goal was narrowly conceived to prevent potential NATO interference in
Central Asia but it is evolving into a military pact. The SCO also includes,
either as observers or partners, Mongolia and the states of the Indian
sub-continent, still without Azerbaijan.
In view of
these developments, according to the NATO leadership, any international
military intervention there on their part might unleash a genuine civil war in
Syria. That would mean turning Syria into another Vietnam for the United States
with much graver consequences for the latter, though. Although Russia has done
everything necessary to prevent the destruction of Syria by the Libyan
scenario, it is too early to say that the danger of national destruction for
Syria is over. What is clear is that the world is faced by a new phase of global
confrontation between the West and Russia. And the testing ground of their
resolve has come to be on the Syrian soil. The West has been losing its moral
grounds rapidly in view of the recent events the world over and now in Syria
and this fact, supported by Russia’s active position with regard to Syria, has
created a shift in the balance of power. Russia has deployed in Syria one of
the world’s best systems of anti-aircraft defenses. It may not prevent the
bombing of the country but is capable of inflicting severe losses on NATO air
forces.
The final
declaration of the NATO Summit, “We are following the evolution of the Syrian
crisis with growing concern and firmly support the current efforts of the U.N.
and the Arab League and the full implementation of the Annan 6-point plan”
demonstrates that military intervention in Syria in the nearest future has been
ruled out. The global standoff between the two geostrategic nemeses has taken
an all but forgotten form of permanent proxy armed conflicts of varying
intensity, without outdated ideological masks, the overall narrative boiling
down to a story as old as the world itself: two greater powers fighting for the
spoils of a lesser one, ultimately fighting for their survival. As the old story
goes, when the rival powers are matching, the moral aspect determines the
winner and it is the moral grounds that the NATO member-states and their
cronies have none left to stand on.
