Acting by decree, an updated national security strategy, has been implemented which fundamentally redefines US-Russia relations. 

It addresses significant threats Russia faces – notably US-led NATO encroaching on its borders, stating:

“The buildup of the military potential of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and vesting it with global functions implemented in violations of norms of international law, boosting military activity of the bloc’s countries, further expansion of the alliance, the approach of its military infrastructure to Russian borders create a threat to the national security.”

It accused Washington and it allies of “seeking to keep up their domination in global affairs,” risking greater conflicts than already.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement, saying

“(t)he course NATO has assumed towards ‘deterring’ Russia, materialized as a buildup of military presence in countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, increase in the number and intensity of exercises close to the Russian border, necessitated measures to counter the threats that NATO creates for Russia’s national security.”

“The remaining channels of a political dialogue with NATO and bilateral contacts with the leadership of the key member countries of the organization have been used for the explanation of negative consequences and potential risks from changes to the existing configuration of forces in Europe.”

The Ministry noted the “confrontational nature of the Alliance’s decision to invite Montenegro to the start of talks on its accession to NATO, leading to a further fragmentation of the European security space, creation of new demarcation lines on the continent.”

Are plans to incorporate Ukraine next not yet revealed? Will US-led NATO divisions be deployed along Russia’s borders more than already? Pentagon tactical and strategic nuclear weapons target its heartland.

Are things heading recklessly toward direct confrontation? Russia’s warning against deploying nuclear weapons in Europe to avoid “dangerous consequences” went unheeded.

Former German Defense Ministry Parliamentary State Secretary Willy Wimmer called “new attack options against Russia a conscious provocation of our Russian neighbor.”

Despite Bundestag members overwhelmingly ruling for the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany earlier, new ones are being deployed, sparking outrage in Russia.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called it “an infringement of Articles 1 and 2 of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”

Putin responded to Washington’s provocative Eastern European expansion, saying Russia “will be forced to aim our armed forces…at those territories from where the  threat comes.”

“It is (US-led nuclear armed and dangerous) NATO that is moving towards our border, and we aren’t moving anywhere.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Washington of “inciting tensions and carefully nurturing (its) European allies’ anti-Russian phobias (as a pretext for) expanding its military presence and influence in Europe” – threatening world peace.

Key US NATO allies Britain, France, Germany, Turkey and others march in lockstep with its aggressive anti-Russian policy. Its officials have just cause for concern.

Russian lower house State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin called NATO a “cancer tumor” in Europe. World peace depends on its “disband(ment).”

“This could be done in several stages,” he said. First “expel” America. Disbandment could “painlessly” follow – a vital step toward “strengthening security and stability on the European continent,” he stressed.

Russia’s updated national security strategy cited other significant threats – including internally or externally instigated color revolutions, a US specialty, threatening its sovereignty by undermining and destabilizing its political integrity.

US bioweapons threaten its security, the document saying its “network of…biological military labs is expanding on the territories of countries bordering Russia.”

Its “independent foreign and domestic policy has been met with counteraction by the US and its allies, seeking to maintain” unchallenged global dominance, including by marginalizing, containing, weakening and isolating Russia, a high-risk confrontational policy assuring no winners.

US-installed fascists in Ukraine pose a direct threat to Russia’s security. Their regime represents a “long-term source of instability in Europe and directly at the Russian border” – an intolerable situation forcing Putin to respond appropriately, at the same time fostering peace and stability.

Moscow wants nuclear proliferation constrained, urging “the creation of appropriate conditions that will enable a reduction of nuclear weapons without damaging international security and strategic stability” – perhaps a first step toward eliminating these hugely destructive weapons once and for all.

Its document explained “(a)n entire spectrum of political, financial, economic and information instruments has been brought into struggle for influence in the international arena.” America’s agenda threatens world peace.

Russia only intends using force when other options to “protect the national interests” fail, a possibility it hopes won’t be necessary.

It’s concerned about its resource-dependent economy, noting a need to become more diversified and competitive.

It cites “a lag in the development of advanced technologies, the vulnerability of the financial system, the imbalance of the budgetary system, the economy going offshore, the exhaustion of the raw materials base, the strength of the shadow economy, conditions leading to corruption and criminal activities, and uneven development of regions.”

It intends initiatives designed to deal with these and other significant issues – planning social and economic policies to strengthen its financial system, as well as “ensur(e) its sovereignty and the stability of the national currency.”

It understands the threats and challenges it faces – intending to address them effectively, permitting no outside forces from compromising its sovereignty, especially US-led Western ones.

Whether its efforts will be enough to avoid potentially catastrophic global war is the most pressing issue of our time.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. 

The power-brokers who influenced congress to support nuclear Israel’s illegal settlements in 2015 and war with non-nuclear Iran in 2016

In 1933, a baby was born into a low-income family and grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. His family was of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry whose father drove a taxi, and his mother ran a knitting shop. Currently he is the owner of an Israeli daily newspaper as well as being boss of an LA gambling casino group and is the major founder of the Republican Party.

It is, of course, a matter of global bemusement that the government of the most powerful Western democracy, the United States of America, is elected not on the basis of political acumen, education or intelligence but on the amount of money that specific individuals have either amassed or inherited. Barack Obama, of course, being the one exception.

This political aberration has, in the recent past, given us such incompetent nonentities as George Bush who personified the ultimate in inept leadership,  and which currently showcases a television host and hotel owner, a certain Mr Trump.

Whilst this aberrant behaviour on the part of the American public may seem to the outside world to be a rehearsal for another TV show, in fact it is a tragedy of global proportions whereby casino bosses and the like use their gambling or other profits to ensure that they control or heavily influence the supposedly democratically elected US congress. The result is, that wherever we live in the world – in Europe, Asia or North America – our lives are circumscribed by the antics of such American nonentities who have managed to obtain huge political influence by the power of money alone.

One of the consequences of such a flawed system is that foreign states such as Israel are able to send politicians such as Binyamin Netanyahu to demand of congress $6 billion a year as an involuntary gift from the American electorate to support his own government and to keep him in power. That huge sum includes vast amounts of arms and military equipment to support the Israeli government’s policy of illegal settlement on Palestinian land.  A policy for which Mr Adelson uses the considerable clout of his (unelected) power to support.

Such corrupted methods of allegedly democratic government are of immense disadvantage to global peace and prosperity and should be banned by the UN in the interests of the international community of nations.

(C) [email protected]  London.
1st Jan 2016

Records of events are very important. They serve as not only historical documents but a guide for the future. The book, Revolutionary Pen has done it properly as it chronicles events of struggles of the working people, youth and the poor, that emanated in almost all facets of the encounters of the working masses and the society at large; at every serially and not seemingly ending periods of attacks by the state on  them. It does not stop at reporting these events, but goes further to analyse the way forward the working masses and the society in general can take to end these state attacks and also to realise their own inherent political power, which can and only give them the panacea, to rebutting the system of oppression, and take charge of their patrimony.

It should be put rightly on record that events happen almost every second but many are missing in history. This is the main reason the book, Revolutionary Pen, which is a compilation of many articles on the field of struggle of the working people, epitomizes and accurately gives proper records of how these events happened, and also the way out of the problems associated, which makes it a resort for researchers and activists alike.

Far from a conventional write up, the book touches on the much awaited and “hoped for” 2015 Elections, which majority of the Nigerian masses reposed their belief for “Change” from the rotten and corrupt past Jonathan/PDP-led government in. It also x-rayed the similarities, nexus and the profit-oriented coloration of both Jonathan and nascent Buhari governments.

We are now in the aftermath of the elections, and the new ‘Change’ government and agenda are unfolding in the eyes of Nigerians. But before mentioning the tumultuous struggles of workers and pensioners for a living wage and pensions, it is necessary to say a few words on the current and unabated Boko Haram terror camapign in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. The book actually explains in clear terms, the roots of militancy and insurgency in the Nigerian society, the creators of this menace, the reasons behind their rise and how these terror groups and terrorism can be subdued, through the mass actions of working people, youth, labour movement and community movements. I believe that if the solutions proffered in this book can be put to practice by those affected and involved, our society, Nigeria in particular, would have less to bother about rightwing militancy and terrorism.

According to the book, the region where the menace of Boko Haram terrorism is rampant (the North East Nigeria) is the most underdeveloped part of the country where an average youth hardly knows the wonders or the efficacy of science and techniques. The book put forward that the reason is not far-fetched. It explains how these north-eastern youth could not get access to quality education, while the bulk of their endowments and patrimonies are being shared as take-home by rich few in corridors of power. Furthermore, these rich few utilize divisive instrument of religion and ethnicity to subjugate the mass of people, as expressed in the use of Sharia by northern ruling elites when they lost control of political power. The monster of religious division and radicalization thrown to the society is now confronting the country through the Boko Haram terrorism.

Anyone could try to denounce the plight of workers and their senior brothers, the pensioners, especially when one enjoys a juicy contract sum from government or when one is not so ‘lucky’ to be in the employment of capitalist class – either in the state establishment or private sector. The reality of mass suffering of workers and pensioners was clearly expressed in the struggle for implementation of N18, 000 minimum wage and the continuous battle of pensioners for their pittance called pensions, after they have committed their adult lives to the public and private establishments.

The fact that the fate of the working class and those of other oppressed and exploited class is interwoven was recently expressed in Osun State where, as a result of the non-payment of salaries for several months, other oppressed strata, including market women and artisans, find it difficult to sustain a decent living and regular income. This underscores the essence of the book’s serious and detailed analysis of the struggle of workers and pensions, and linking it with the general economic straitjacket the capitalist system, nay its neo-colonial type in Nigeria, has pushed the working and poor people into.

It also explores the role of labour leaders and labour movement in the struggle for living wage and pension payment; drawing out the lessons and errors of the leadership. The leadership of labour had earlier requested a N52, 200 minimum wage in 2010 only to settle for N18, 000 minimum wage in early 2011. Interestingly, when most of the state governments, federal government and private sector employers refused to implement or properly implement the meagre wage law, the labour movement could not defend the wage effectively.

The same story could be said of pension of retirees where the labour movement, instead of defending living pension based on cost of living and other economic and social indices, supported the fraudulent contributory pension scheme that deduct from workers’ salary in order to pay them pension. The recent attack on pensioners by state-sponsored gangsters in June 2015 in Osogbo, Osun State, who protested non-payment of their pensions for up to a year, and stories retirees dying on the queues in the process to collect their meagre pensions, reflect serious suffering pensioners are undergoing. On the other hand, very few in control of retirees pensions are looting en mass billions from these funds.

Today, there is serious attack on N18, 000 minimum wage as many state governments are planning to cut the workers’ salaries while some like the Osun State government have resorted to paying half salaries for workers. There are also plan to sack several thousands of workers by public and private sector. This section of Revolutionary Pen, under the title Workers’ and Pensioners’ Struggle, is a vital material for working people and activists searching for tactics and methods of defending a better living wage for workers and pensioners. More importantly, it underscores the need for labour movement to build a new mass party of working people, youths and the oppressed as a way of permanently ending the misery and sufferings of workers and pensioners. The writer, Kola Ibrahim, has since 2012 written a book on Minimum Wage struggle where all issues pertaining to minimum wage were clearly explained.

The mass misery and squalor ravaging workers and the entire peasantry at large is not limited to Nigeria or Africa alone; it spreads across the entire globe. This itself the working masses must realize that it is a virile tool in the hands of the state. Examples are not far-fetched. We have cases in the northern part of Africa and Middle East where youths and working people, fed up with the failure of global capitalism and their sit tight rulers to improve their lots, took the road of mass revolts and revolutions against their ruling classes. This saw the defeat of decades-old regimes such as those of Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali in Egypt and Tunisia respectively.

Aside spreading like wildfire, the revolts and revolutions also show the limit of terrorism as a tool of fighting the ruling class. Regimes that used terrorism as a tool to drive through anti-poor policies and sustain their rule were overthrown by mass revolts and revolutions. Of course, most of these revolutions have been derailed with counterrevolution taking deep root. This is a product of failure of these revolutions to end the rule of capital and establish a government of workers, youths and poor. This book underscores the fact that concessions are not won on a platter of gold, but fought for and won by mass of people organized in their common struggle to break the stranglehold of ruling class and improve their conditions.

This book under the section, International Issues, addresses the rise of revolutionary movements in Egypt, Senegal and Burkina Faso, and the continued Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It draws on various international issues and the struggles of the working people globally to underscore the uniformity of struggle of the working people and the need for international mass movement of working and oppressed people. It also exposes the hypocrisy and the failure of global capitalism and imperialism to solve political, social and economic crises facing humanity.

The book also put in proper perspective how the economy has been bastardized by selling off public properties to private individuals at a give-away prices all in the name of obnoxious privatization. Example is when Prof. Barth Nnaji who owns a private electricity firm was made a Minister of Power by the Goodluck Jonathan government. The resultant effect is that the public power sector was sold off to private firms close to corridor of power but with no serious plan to undertake massive long-term investments in the power sector. The same power sector today has not been performing better than before it was handed over to private shylocks. The case has been a sorry one with poor people paying the price with skyrocketing and estimated bill for unavailable electricity. The country after committing over $20 billion to the sector since the civil rule began in 1999 can only boost of about 4,000 megawatts of electricity for a population of over 170 million. Meanwhile, South Africa with around a quarter of Nigeria’s population generates more than 40, 000 megawatts. Even at that, millions of working class South Africans do not have access to electricity.

Revolutionary Pen submits that only when our economy is nationalized under democratic public control and management can we have serious plan of massive development of the power sector as part of the holistic plan to develop the economy and the society. The book explores various capitalist options propounded by bourgeois strategists and clearly shows how Nigeria cannot get out of its underdevelopment under this system.

Addressing the educational crisis in the country, the book provides analysis on how governments at various levels and at different times have neglected the education sector through under funding and capitalist policies of commercialization, rationalization and privatization. The chapter on education titled Education Sector, addresses various issues ranging from analysis of the education sector especially in view of the 2013 six-month strike of the university lecturers’ union, ASUU, to attempt of the Fashola government to totally price education out of the reach of the poor by hiking fees in Lagos State University (LASU), the only state owned university by over one thousand percent. It also addresses the issue of private university education that is becoming a significant feature of education system in Nigeria; while the book also addresses the problem of non-functioning library system in Nigeria, which as the author noted, mirrors the crisis in the education sector as a whole. The author was himself a proven student leader and activist during his days as a student; therefore, his proposals and analyses clearly expressed those of an insider, who has been part and parcel of the struggle and debate about proper funding and management of education sector.

The economic analysis ranging from the global economic meltdown that started in 2008 to the banking crisis in Nigeria in 2009 and the fraudulent bailout system under Jonathan administration, give vivid view of the future of Nigeria, nay the world under the current capitalist system. Not to be forgotten also is the analysis on the health sector vis-à-vis the Ebola virus disease and the attack on doctors in Lagos State by the Fashola government. The health sector analysis clearly delves into the root of the crisis facing the health sector such as inadequate funding and mismanagement of health institutions by government appointed managers. In the analysis on Ebola, the book also dwells on the role of global political economy and especially the pharmaceutical companies in the health crisis especially in Africa and third world countries. The author, just as he did in the education sector, challenged the in-house unions in the health sector to rise to the occasion by building a united platform of struggle to seek improvement in the health sector. The book conclusively links this with the ultimate political challenge before the working and poor people, by linking the health sector crisis with the political economy of Nigeria, nay Africa.

Finally, the book is a library material for students and academics seeking historical analyses and alternative narrative on the political, social and economic issues in Nigeria, Africa and the world. The ending chapter on politics, which includes an essay on the politics and personality of the late pro-democracy activist, Gani Fawehinmi, a discourse on the undemocratic nature of Nigeria’s electoral system, and the debate on the political crisis generated by the health problem and eventual death of the late president Umar Yar’Adua, is also worth reading.

It is an honour to write a review of such an important historical book as Revolutionary Pen. The book is both revolutionary in its analyses and alternative approach to documenting political, social, economic and historical issues. Of course, I hope the publisher will improve on the quality of the book in terms of its production including its cover and graphics. However, the content and the historical value of the book far outweigh in manifolds, the shortcoming of the production. I therefore recommend the book to activists and civil society community; students of politics, history and economics; researchers and academics; labour leaders, journalists/media practitioners, and all those interested in alternative and leftwing understanding of Nigeria’s and global political economic issues.

Revolutionary Pen: Collected Essays on Nigeria, and Global Political-Economic Issues, through the eye of a socialist, by Kola Ibrahim, 2015

Abiodun S. Falodun is Coordinator, Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR), Osun State Chapter

Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari’s recent comment made during an interview with the BBC that the Islamist terror group Boko Haram had been “technically defeated” has unsurprisingly brought a high level of criticism – not least in the light of the massacre of 80 people shortly after.

Some have been quick to draw analogies with US President George W. Bush’s now infamous victoriam declarationem aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1^st, 2003 that brought an end to what he said would be “major combat operations” in Iraq. His televised address, dubbed the “Mission Accomplished” speech was of course followed by a Sunni insurgency which claimed many civilian and military lives. Twelve years later with the rise of several Islamist insurgent groups including al-Qaeda in Iraq and the so-called Islamic State, that country has defied attempts at being militarily pacified.

Buhari was referring to the re-conquest of Nigerian territory acquired by Boko Haram. The distinction is a subtle one and affords little comfort to the relatives of those who have lost their lives in the recent terror outrages.

It is instructive to remember that given the inherent dynamic related to asymmetric warfare, many insurgencies, including those which were successful in destroying the will of a national army or an army of occupation, have not had the goal of territorial conquest. The goal is often to sap the will of the opponent -politically, militarily and morally- in order to extract the relevant concessions among which ultimately would be the ceding of power. Thus Britain withdrew from Palestine in the face of unceasing attacks from the main Zionist terror groups: the Irgun and the Stern Gang.

Buhari may need reminding that the damage capable of being inflicted by a determined guerrilla movement which does not acquire territory is no less of a challenge than one attempting to challenge a national army for territory.

‘Strong ideologies’ such as those which are religiously motivated cannot be defeated without a coherent plan aimed at counter-acting the ideology and merely by the re-conquest of land or the disruption of the activities of the group’s cells.

There needs to be something more tangible in terms of ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of the population in the north east of Nigeria, especially among the disenchanted youth who form the recruiting fodder for Boko Haram.

The Nigerian military may have recaptured land ceded to the insurgents and may have muted, to use Buhari’s words, their ability as an “organised fighting force” in the battlefield, but it is only when there is demonstrable progress in the civic, psychological and economic spheres of counter-insurgency that Buhari should mention the word “defeat” albeit that it is presently qualified by the term “technically.”

From Burundi to Ghana and beyond the intervention of western states continues as an impediment to genuine development

One of the major issues gaining international attention during 2015 was the political crisis in the Central African state of Burundi stemming from a dispute over whether incumbent President Pierre Nkurunziza could pursue a third term in office. Mass demonstrations took place in the capital demanding that the president reverse his decision to run for a third term.

Nkurunziza was appointed as the head-of-state over Burundi in the aftermath of a negotiated transition process aimed at ending a twelve year civil war during 1993-2005. The president said that the first term resulted from an appointment by the parliament and the second election was the first one where he had to stand before the electorate. A Burundi Constitutional Court decision on May 5 upheld the position of Nkurunziza in the disagreement.

The National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) ruling party won the elections held on July 21 guaranteeing Nkurunziza another five year term of office. Burundi is considered a lesser developed state with an economy based on agricultural production and exports.

Nonetheless, the unrest inside the country has continued. A disaffected military officer, Gen. Godefroid Niyombara, attempted to stage a coup on May 13 which did not succeed in part due to the condemnation of the effort by the African Union (AU) and East African Community (EAC) regional organizations. It has been estimated that 280,000 people have fled Burundi to neighboring states in response to the growing extra-judicial killings in the capital of Bujumbura and other areas.

In recent weeks there have also been clashes between rebels opposed to the Nkurunziza and Burundian security forces in the southwestern Rumonge district of the landlocked state. Similar attacks were launched near the capital of Bujumbura on Dec. 11.

According to UPI.com,

“Rebels in Burundi attacked military installations surrounding the capital of Bujumbura on Friday (Dec. 11), a sign from the opposition to the president that the conflict is becoming a rebellion. The coordinated assaults at dawn by heavily armed insurgents on military sites, security encampments and a prison left 12 rebels dead and 20 under arrest, an army spokesman said.”

Many Burundian refugees have re-located in neighboring Rwanda where claims indicate that armed opposition forces are being recruited. The government in Kigali has denied these suggestions and says that it is neutral in the conflict.

Rwanda and Burundi have a near-matching ethnic composition with Hutu majorities and Tutsi minority groups. However, in Burundi the head-of-state Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader during the 1993-2005 civil war, is from the Hutu majority whereas in Kigali, President Paul Kgame is Tutsi and the former leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the guerilla army that took control of Rwanda amid the genocide of 1994 that killed an estimated 800,000 people.

Burundian Foreign Minister Alain Nyamitwe spoke during a press conference on December 19 in Bujumbura saying “There have been reports that some Burundian refugees have been recruited and went for military training to attack the country. We call on these illegal activities to stop. We needed the truth to be brought to the table as to whether the allegations are false or true.” (The East African)

Refuting these assertions, Rwandan Minister for Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs, Seraphine Mukantabana, stressed “These are the same baseless accusations that different people keep on trading. There is no proof to it, like the names, pictures or other details of refugees they allege were recruited so that we can go and check if they ever lived in the camp and left as a result of recruitments. I don’t see anything factual except just hearsay, and idle word of mouth.” (East African, Dec. 19)

Meanwhile, amid the failure of the Nkurunziza government and the opposition to reach a political agreement, the AU, which is seeking the support of the United Nations Security Council, has pledged to deploy 5,000 peacekeeping troops into Burundi. The Burundian leaders in Bujumbura are in complete opposition to this proposal.

Despite efforts by AU Commission Chair Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to reassure the Burundi government that it is only concerned with preventing the full eruption of a civil war and has no hidden agenda as it relates to regime-change, Nkurunziza refuses to entertain any foreign occupation of the country and is blaming the former colonial power of Belgium in conjunction with Rwanda for the rising instability. Dlamini-Zuma in a statement on the Burundi crisis  “expressed the AU’s readiness to rapidly initiate discussions with the government of Burundi to devise the best ways and means of facilitating the deployment of the mission, in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation”.

The AU Commission Chair encouraged the Burundi government to participate fully in peace talks that were scheduled to take place on December 28 in Uganda. However, the political character of the proposed intervention by the AU in Burundi remains to be determined.

Such an intervention would undoubtedly be reliant upon assistance from western imperialist states based in Washington, London, Paris and Brussels. With this type of deployment the potential for a conflict framed within the context of national sovereignty and the role of western states could prove problematic and protracted.

West Africa 50 Years After the Coup Against Nkrumah: Economic Dependency and the Ebola Crisis

Nearly five decades ago on February 24, 1966, a right-wing police and military coup guided and coordinated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and State Department was staged against the Convention People’s Party (CPP) of the First Republic of Ghana. Nkrumah had studied for a decade in the U.S. and two years in England where he attended Lincoln University, the University of Pennsylvania and the London School of Economics.

During his tenure oversees in the years of 1935-1947, Nkrumah was associated with the Marxist left and African nationalist movements in the U.S. and Britain. He was an organizer among African students, reading and learning from the work and personal association with luminaries such as W.E.B. Du Bois and C.L.R. James along with being a reputed member of the Garveyite Universal Negro Improvement Association, African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) while he lived in Pennsylvania.

After completing his studies in the U.S. during 1945, he traveled to Britain where he participated in the organization of the Fifth Pan-African Congress held that October, working with Du Bois, veteran communist and Pan-Africanist George Padmore, among others. By the end of 1947, Nkrumah had returned to the Gold Coast (colonial name for Ghana) becoming an organizing secretary for the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), a moderate organization which hired Nkrumah to develop a mass base for the group.

By mid-1949, Nkrumah had broken with the UGCC taking its Committee on Youth Organization (CYO) which he founded and the Accra Evening News publication conceived by him as well. The CPP was initiated on June 12, 1949 at a rally attended by tens of thousands of Ghanaians.

The Positive Action campaign of January 1950 landed him in prison for a year when he was released after the CPP won governmental elections established by the British colonialists to reform the system of imperialism. After his release from prison, Nkrumah was named Leader of Government Business by the British Governor General Sir Arden-Clark.

During the years of 1951-1957, Nkrumah described this period as moving from Positive Action to Tactical Action. The independence years of 1957-1966, witnessed tremendous strides in the areas of national development, support for other independence struggles through the CPP press and the foreign ministry and efforts designed to bring about the realization of a United States of Africa.

Socialism under an All-African union government was the strategic objective of the CPP. Nkrumah argued that in a 20^th century international context of large-scale economic production within both the socialist world and the decaying imperialist system, Africa, in order to develop rapidly, required the consolidation of its nation-states, integrating small-scale neo-colonial dominated micro-national structures into a large continental political construct that could engage in centralized planning and development.

The Congo crisis of 1960, resulting in the imperialist-backed coup against national liberation leader and first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, leading to him being kidnapped and assassinated in January 1961, illustrated even more starkly to Nkrumah and other anti-imperialist governments in Africa, that an independent military force was needed to safeguard the sovereignty of the post-colonial states. These progressive governments led by revolutionary parties and organizations such as in Guinea, Algeria, Mali, Egypt along with Ghana, took a different line than the majority of the moderate and conservative post-colonial states which were divided into two blocs known as the Monrovia and Brazzaville groups.

Of course in Ghana, it was the military and the police that were utilized against the socialist-oriented state led by the CPP. Nonetheless, it was the economic dependency of the state in relationship to neo-colonialism, which Nkrumah described in his seminal 1965 book, as being “The Last Stage of Imperialism” that provided the ideological underpinning of the regime-change tactics utilized by Washington under the administration of the-then President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The citadel of neo-colonialism is the U.S. and its multi-national corporations and banks. Nkrumah writes in the introduction of “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism”, that “Foremost among the neo-colonialists is the United States, which has long exercised its power in Latin America. Fumblingly at first she turned towards Europe, and then with more certainty after world war two when most countries of that continent were indebted to her. Since then, with methodical thoroughness and touching attention to detail, the Pentagon set about consolidating its ascendancy, evidence of which can be seen all around the world.”

Nkrumah goes on to ask “Who really rules in such places as Great Britain, West Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal or Italy? If General de Gaulle is ‘defecting’ from U.S. monopoly control, what interpretation can be placed on his ‘experiments’ in the Sahara desert, his paratroopers in Gabon, or his trips to Cambodia and Latin America? Lurking behind such questions are the extended tentacles of the Wall Street octopus. And its suction cups and muscular strength are provided by a phenomenon dubbed ‘The Invisible Government’, arising from Wall Street’s connection with the Pentagon and various intelligence services.”

Ghana’s first attempt at securing a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was during the last several months of the Nkrumah administration in 1965. The Ghana government was severely impacted by the decline in cocoa prices on the global market. In addition, petty-bourgeois class interests within Ghana, allied with neo-colonialism and imperialism, worked incessantly to undermine Socialism and Pan-Africanism.

After the coup and the installation of a puppet regime composed of a group of lower-level military officers and police, the IMF granted a series of loans to Ghana under terms that proved quite disadvantageous to the interests of the workers, farmers and youth of the country. Consequently, Ghana has never regained its political and social status attained during the Nkrumah government of the 1950s and 1960s.

Today under the leadership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) ruling party headed by President John Dramani Mahama, Ghana faces the continuation of the post-colonial crisis. The IMF is preparing to extend further credit to the government despite the hardships the people have suffered since 1966.

The economic dependency and military subordination of Africa could not be more clearly revealed than when the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic erupted during 2014-2015. These developments represented the largest outbreak of this virulent form of a Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF) on the continent of Africa in 40 years, when it was first identified in the former Zaire, now-known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia were the most severely impacted by the EVD outbreak. It has been reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) that over 11,000 people died, most of which were in the above-mentioned states. Small incidences were reported in other states including Nigeria, Senegal and Mali but were rapidly contained and eradicated.

All three of these states, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia maintain close economic, political and military links with imperialism. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) engages in military operations alongside these West African governments whose people are among the poorest on the continent and the world.

Absent of a firm Pan-African system of healthcare, economic production and communication, the devastation of this EVD outbreak could not be properly tackled. Even if Pentagon-based bioweapons research centers were the cause of this pandemic, the failure of Africa to squelch the spread in its infancy is a reflection of the current status of neo-colonialism well into the second decade of the 21^st century.

Then it was the military apparatuses of Washington, London and Paris which were given permission by the neo-colonial dominated regimes to intervene. Cuba also deployed but solely with medical personnel and played a significant role in stemming the spread of EVD, even prompting recognition by imperialism through its corporate and state-controlled media.

Revolutionary Cuba has been subjected to biological warfare by the CIA and the Pentagon for decades. Nonetheless, the socialist state has been able to overcome these assaults and emerge even stronger as an anti-imperialist country.

The only medium and long-term solution to the healthcare crisis in Africa lies within a Pan-African planning framework. There must be an integration of the medical and scientific infrastructure to facilitate the sharing of investigative and research methodologies.

The need for an All-African military high command is as necessary in 2015 as it was during the early and mid-1960s during the times of Nkrumah, Ahmed Sekou Toure (Guinea), Modibo Keita (Mali), Ben Bella (Algeria), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) and the other anti-imperialist leaders of the period. Nonetheless, this continental command must be independent of imperialism, distinguishing it from the current collaborative efforts led by AFRICOM and NATO which characterize the operations now in effect in Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, the Gulf of Guinea, the Gulf of Aden and other geo-political regions on the continent.

Neo-Colonialism: 1965-2015

Over the period of fifty years, Africa has experienced numerous crises involving food deficits, unsustainable national debt, periodic and consistent proliferations of infectious disease epidemics, ongoing series of military interventions both domestic and western in orientation as well as political efforts aimed at exerting continental influence upon the UN Security Council and other multi-lateral structures controlled by the imperialist industrialized states. In 2015 yet another African debt crisis is developing due to the precipitous decline in commodity prices including oil and strategic minerals.

This crisis comes in the almost immediate aftermath of AU member-states being hailed for their phenomenal economic growth. Events in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, the Republics of Sudan and South Sudan and other countries illustrates how precarious these assessments of the financial status of neo-colonial dominated states are in actuality.

These challenges on the economic front are not limited to Africa. Many of the so-called “emerging countries” are facing the same problems such as Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Russia and China. Beijing with its social constructs utilizing the commanding role of the Communist Party and its planned economy under socialism with Chinese characteristics has proven to be in a better position to address the current crisis.

Xi Jinping’s recent state visits to the Republic of Zimbabwe and the Republic of South Africa, along with the second full summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), noted that the desire for closer ties between Beijing and AU member-states was cognizant of the new situation within the global economy still dominated by imperialism. Africa needs infrastructural development in order to secure genuine growth and development in the short, medium and long-term political and economic trajectories.

The fact that prices for oil have ranged from $34-38 per barrel in December 2015, down by over two-thirds in the last year-and-a-half, provides a glimpse into the current situation involving the international division of labor and economic power. The U.S. under the administration of President Barack Obama has strongly emphasized domestic oil production and along with ally Saudi Arabia, has over-produced petroleum resulting in a glut in the market and a rapidly declining economic situation in the other producer-states including Russia.

Other prices for commodities have also gone down significantly. For example platinum, in which the Southern African states of South Africa and Zimbabwe constitute approximately 75 percent of the world’s production, has also declined in price impacting foreign exchange earnings and the labor market.

Bloomberg in an article published on September 29, stated that “Platinum extended its slump to the lowest in more than six years amid concerns demand from automakers will slow as investigations into the Volkswagen AG scandal deepen. Volkswagen cars with diesel engines rigged to cheat on emissions tests are being pulled from markets in Spain, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, while prosecutors in Sweden consider opening an investigation on potential corruption. About 42 percent of platinum demand comes from its use in pollution-control devices in diesel engines, according to Morgan Stanley.”

This same article continues saying “Platinum futures for January delivery fell 0.5 percent to settle at $918.10 an ounce at 1:23 p.m. (Sept. 29) on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after touching $899.60, the lowest for a most-active contract since December 2008. Palladium advanced. Gold futures for December delivery slipped 0.4 percent to $1,126.80 an ounce on the Comex in New York. Prices are set for a fifth straight quarterly loss, the longest losing streak since 1997. Silver gained. Platinum is trading at a discount of about $210.50 to gold, the biggest since August 2012. Some investors who had been betting on platinum outperforming gold are now exiting that trade, David Govett, head of precious metals at broker Marex Spectron Group in London, said by telephone.”

As Nkrumah pointed out in his book “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism,” some five decades ago, “On the economic front, a strong factor favoring Western monopolies and acting against the developing world is international capital’s control of the world market, as well as of the prices of commodities bought and sold there. From 1951 to 1961, without taking oil into consideration, the general level of prices for primary products fell by 33.l per cent, while prices of manufactured goods rose 3.5 per cent (within which, machinery and equipment prices rose 31.3 per cent). In that same decade this caused a loss to the Asian, African and Latin American countries, using 1951 prices as a basis, of some $41,400 million. In the same period, while the volume of exports from these countries rose, their earnings in foreign exchange from such exports decreased.”

Consequently, the cycle of dependency in Africa upon the imperialist states must be overturned in order for real growth and development to occur and maintain its sustainability over a period of decades. This cannot be realized under the current system of global capitalism, also referred to as international finance capital and imperialism.

The realization of the aims and objectives of the African Revolution requires socialist construction. Until the character of development is viewed and analyzed within an anti-capitalist framework, the actual solutions to these crises will remain elusive.

Part 3 of 3. Read part 1 and part 2.

Documents released by Edward Snowden brought fresh questions about GCHQ involvement in US drone strikes outside conflict zones.  MPs took the unusual step of writing to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, suggesting  it was time “to consider and issue clear guidance on the law, policy and procedure concerning the investigation of complicity into extraterritorial targeted killing.”  Qatar continues to be an important hub for US and UK drone operations with the Al Udeid base hosting the Combined Air Operation Center (CAOC).  British military operations against ISIS are also run from ‘RAF Al Udeid’ in Qatar.

Military officials from the US, UK, France and Italy began to meet as the Reaper Users Group during 2015.  The group is aimed, we are told, at enhancing interoperability and reducing costs.   More details emerged during the year of the role of the US air base at Ramstein in Germany in the on-going drone wars.  The base is a key communications hub linking the US with its armed drones around the globe. Hundreds marched on the base in September in response to the revelations. The debate over whether the use of drones for targeting killing is effective at reducing terrorism or a recruitment tool for terrorist groups continues. This year, former military officers have been most vocal in arguing the latter.

Around forty alleged militants were killed in a single reported US drone strike in Somalia at the end of January.  Although the Pentagon publicly denied carrying out that particular strike, they were happy to confirm that US drones had struck Somalia on the very same day, targeting a senior leader of al-shabab.  There seems to have been a real change of tactics and an increase in drone strikes in Somalia as Jack Serle of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism noted early in the year.  Perhaps inevitably the increasing use of drones has been followed by the rise in numbers of military drones being shot down.  US, Russian, Israeli and Saudi Arabian drones have all reported been downed during the year although it is impossible to confirm all these reports.  The safety and security threat from small civil drones began to be recognized during the year. As sales of these small cheap drones takes off, the threat will simply grow.

The normalisation of drone targeted killing took a step forward in 2015 as the UK wholeheartedly embraced the tactic.  Parliamentarians, US Senators, the United Nations and civil society groups continue to struggle to, at the very least, limit such activity and gain some oversight of the process.  Transparency, however, is in short supply and government contempt for proper public oversight, never mind curbing the practice, is obvious. Meanwhile BAE Systems’ Taranis combat drone continued its test programme with a third (and reportedly final) set of flight tests in November. The drone, or a derivative of it, is likely to be a contender for the UK’s Future Combat Air System (FCAS) likely to see some funding decision in 2016.

British-based Israeli-owned UAV Engines attempts to curb protests at its factory in Staffordshire were botched during the year when the company failed to abide by court rules. In February the CPS dropped a case against nine protesters when the company refused to co-operate with court mandated disclosures.  In July protesters successfully overturned in the courts a ‘forbidden zone’ around the factory, and then in October the High Court threw out an injunction as the company had in effect misled the court. This led to the collapse of the caseagainst a further 19 people arrested for breach of the injunction at a protest in July. Maybe UAV Engines should join US drone manufacturer General Atomics in setting up shop in theUnited Arab Emirates (UAE).

The UK MoD has suddenly developed a taste for releasing videos of British drone strikes. Since March 2015 there have been nine videos of such strikes published online as opposed to just six released over the past seven years.  While the Vatican has long opposed the use of armed drones and the development of autonomous weapons, drones have this year been banned from flying over Vatican City due to security fears.

Whistleblowers helped us have a better understanding of the drone wars during 2015 with the release of a set of documents that have become labelled ‘The Drone Papers‘.   Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations also revealed GCHQ links to US drone strikes and that personnel from project Widowmaker were based at Menwith Hill. Finally, former US drone pilots went on the record to detail the horrific consequences of the US drone targeted killing programme.   The information released by whistleblowers is crucial to the public’s understanding of drone warfare – thank you.

The manifest failings of the UK’s Watchkeeper drone were laid bare this year.  After spending almost £1bn on its development, the UK got barely six days use out of the (ahem) state of the art drone in Afghanistan.  Army training with the ‘all weather’ drone is now being conducted in the Ascension Islandsas the weather in the UK is not, er, suitable. Wimbledon was not immune to the intrusion of rogue drones, something that occurred at numerous sporting events during the year.

While Northrop Grumman was happy to feature the X-47b drone in its Super Bowl ad, the much more mysterious X-37b drone took off on another classified mission into space in May 2015.  Don’t expect it back any time soon – the previous secret mission lasted almost two years.  Despite the chaos and horror of the on-going war in Yemen – in which more than 90% of the casualties are civilians – the US continues to launch drone strikes, with the Bureau reporting around 20 confirmed and an additional 10 possible strikes. The extremely high-altitude Zephyr drone was purchased by the UK for use by its Special Forces. Airbus executives, mistakenly, let the cat out of the bag ahead of the SDSR in September. After a rushed Airbus retraction the deal was discretely confirmed as part of the SDSR in November.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde offered a bleak economic forecast for 2016 and beyond in a guest column published Wednesday in the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt .

The IMF head wrote that global economic growth next year would be “disappointing” and the outlook for the medium term had also deteriorated. Lagarde pointed to the continuing slowdown in China and the prospect of rising interest rates in the US as major factors leading to a continued slowdown in world growth rates and the potential for financial shocks.

Lagarde also noted the substantial decline in the growth of world trade, the ongoing fall in oil and other commodity prices, and the worsening economic and financial crisis in so-called “emerging market” and “developing” countries whose economies are heavily dependent on commodity exports and expanding trade.

“All of that means global growth will be disappointing and uneven in 2016,” Lagarde said. She warned, in particular, of “spillover effects” resulting from the decision of the US Federal Reserve Board earlier this month to begin raising its benchmark interest rate from near zero, the first Fed rate increase in over nine years.

Lagarde and the IMF had lobbied against the Fed move, warning that it could spark a panic outflow of capital from emerging market countries with high levels of dollar-denominated corporate debt such as Brazil, Turkey and South Africa.

In the Handelsblatt article, Lagarde said that she was concerned about the ability of such countries to absorb “shocks,” citing in particular an increase in financing costs for corporations that sold large volumes of dollar-denominated bonds during the emerging market and oil boom that followed the financial crisis of 2008. The rise in the dollar means the real cost of debt repayment for these companies, whose revenues are in sinking local currencies, increases.

Lagarde hinted that the crisis could spread more broadly across the financial system, suggesting that emerging market and energy sector companies defaulting on their payments could “infect” banks and state treasuries.

On Wednesday, oil prices resumed their slide to their lowest levels in eleven years after the Saudi oil minister said the kingdom had no intention of scaling back petroleum production in 2016. Since the middle of 2014, oil prices have plummeted by two-thirds. In 2015 alone they have dropped by 35 percent.

But the oil price fall is only part of a broader collapse in industrial commodity prices. Nickel has dropped by more than 40 percent. Zinc, which was widely expected to rise in price this year because of the signaled closure of large mines in Australia and Ireland, has fallen 28 percent. Iron ore has also plummeted.

The new drop in oil prices and Lagarde’s pessimistic forecast combined to push down global stock prices Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 117 points (0.66 percent), in line with other major indexes in the US and Europe.

The continuing decline in commodity prices is a sharp expression of a deepening crisis in the real economy internationally. The slowdown in China is the most prominent factor in the fall in these prices, as its previously voracious appetite for industrial commodities propped up global demand.

But China’s slowdown is itself an expression of more fundamental processes and contradictions in the world capitalist economy. An indication of the systemic nature of the current malaise is the forecast released this week by OPEC that petroleum prices will not return to the $100-per-barrel levels of 2013 and early 2014 until 2040 at the earliest.

In October, the IMF released a report predicting world economic growth of 3.5 percent for 2016, the slowest rate since the immediate aftermath of the September 2008 financial meltdown. Last April, it warned that the global economy would remain locked in a pattern of slow growth, high unemployment and high debt for a prolonged period, acknowledging that there was little prospect of a return to the growth rates that prevailed prior to the 2008 crash.

In the April report, the IMF focused on a sharp decline in business investment during the so-called “recovery” that officially began in June of 2009. It noted that business investment in North America and Europe had declined by 20 percent, twice the fall that followed previous recessions.

While the IMF chose not to make the connection, this figure points to a basic feature of the global capitalist crisis—the enormous growth of speculation and parasitism. The same tendencies that triggered the 2008 crash—the reckless and largely criminal speculative activities of the financial elite that have come to dominate economic life—have only intensified in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Far from reining in the banks and hedge funds, the IMF, the major central banks and governments in the US, Europe and Japan have bailed them out to the tune of trillions of dollars and subsidized a further orgy of speculation. By means of ultra-low interest rates and central bank money-printing operations, known as “quantitative easing,” finance capital has been encouraged to inflate new financial bubbles—from the stock market to the oil sector, junk bonds and emerging market economies—which have further enriched the wealthy and the super-wealthy while diverting resources from the productive forces and impoverishing the working class.

While the real economy has remained depressed, stock prices have soared. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index in the US has risen by more than 200 percent since 2009.

Corporations and banks have starved the real economy of productive investment, instead seeking higher profits from risky investments that are entirely parasitic. These include speculation in high-yield, high-risk “junk bonds” linked to the oil and commodities industries. After the implosion of the subprime mortgage market in 2007-2008, money has flooded into this area of speculation. High-yield assets at US mutual funds hit $305 billion in June 2014, triple their level in 2009. Outstanding debt in the US junk bond market has soared to more than $1.2 trillion from less than $700 billion in 2007—an increase of 71 percent.

Now, under the impact of the collapse in industrial commodity prices, the ratings agencies are warning that 50 percent of energy junk bonds could default, along with 72 percent of bonds in the metals, mining and steel industries.

The mounting crisis of the emerging market economies is similarly bound up with massive inflows of hot money seeking high rates of return during the oil boom and China’s post-Wall Street crisis rapid economic expansion. Between 2004 and 2014, emerging market corporate debt increased from $4 trillion to $18 trillion, with much of the increase taking place since 2008.

One figure highlights the further growth of economic parasitism since the 2008 crisis: global debt has increased by 40 percent to $200 trillion, almost three times the size of the world economy.

To pay for this exercise in recklessness and greed, the working class all over the world has been hammered with austerity programs, mass layoffs and cuts in wages, pensions and health benefits. This has only deepened the stagnation and decline in the real economy. But these attacks will continue and intensify in 2016 and beyond, in tandem with the deepening of the crisis of the capitalist system.

Perhaps the sharpest expression of the explosive growth of parasitism is the record increase registered in 2015 in mergers and acquisitions and stock buybacks. US corporations that amassed trillions from cost cutting, wage cuts and the benevolence of the Obama administration and the Fed, rather than invest their cash hoards in job-creating, productive areas, have instead plowed it into stock buybacks to increase the payouts to big investors, and in mergers, which result in downsizing and job cutting. This past year, $4.7 trillion worth of mergers and acquisitions were announced in the US, a record.

One day prior to Lagarde’s column in Handelsblatt, the initial fruits of one of the biggest mergers of the year, the $130 billion deal involving the chemical giants DuPont and Dow, were announced. DuPont said Tuesday it would cut 1,700 jobs in its home area around Wilmington, Delaware. This is part of a $700 million cost-cutting plan that will reduce the firm’s 6,100-strong work force by 10 percent.

In  Dara’a province, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the National Defense Forces (NDF) with the Russian Air Forces’ support are advancing in the town of Sheikh Miskeen clashing with the Free Syrian Army’s “Southern Front Brigades”. The pro-government sources report that the SAA took control of the Battalion 82 base and the hilltop of Tal Al-Hish overlooking the northern flank of the town. The clashes are continuing.

Sheikh Miskeen is located along the Quneitra-Sweida Highway and overlooks a way on the Al-Quneitra Governorate and the city of Nawa.

According to the field reports, the SAA liberated the town of Maheen, 25 kilometers from the vital M5 highway, and the town of Huwwarin after the heavy clashes with ISIS. The towns were taken by the terrorist group in late November. It is expected that the SAA will continue their offensive onto the town of Quryatayn.

The Syrian government has essentially avoided clashing with the Syrian Kurds which are a major part of the SDF.

However, as the Kurdish forces and the Russian-backed government forces meet up, the question of developing joint strategy arises. Moreover, Ankara already concerned by the growing Kurdish clout on the border and definitely is preparing actions to stop the Kurds in their offensive actions. Such an action would also push the Syrian government and the SDF to coordinate their actions in fight against foreign-backed terrorists.

Arizona Senator John McCain’s crusade to rid the US space industry of Russian rocket engines by 2019 could be scuppered by a devious provision placed in the upcoming defense spending bill.

The 56TH year of the Cuban Revolution, 2015, has been a year of more inspirational achievements in health, education and internationalism — despite the ongoing US blockade.

In June, Cuba became the first country in the world to receive validation from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to successfully achieve the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis.

Given the global scale of the HIV/Aids epidemic, where an estimated 1.4 million women living with HIV become pregnant each year, the potential global health impact is phenomenal if the world can learn from Cuba.

The WHO said: “Eliminating transmission of a virus is one of the greatest public health achievements possible. Cuba’s success demonstrates that universal access and universal health coverage are feasible and indeed are the key to success, even against challenges as daunting as HIV.”

This year also saw the largest contingent of health workers who were fighting the Ebola outbreak in west Africa return home after completing their successful missions.

These world-leading achievements are from a very long list of Cuban healthcare accolades — and are a testament to the Cuban revolution and its people.

Cuba has created a world-class healthcare system and is at the forefront of biotechnology and medical research, despite being under blockade for over half a century, which prevents access to many crucial medicines and equipment.

According to the World Bank, the United States spends almost 20 times what Cuba spends per head per year ($8,553 to $431) on healthcare and yet Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the US and a similar life expectancy.

If the US had the same infant mortality rates as Cuba, it would save thousands of US children’s lives each year.

Cuba’s achievements clearly go beyond simple statistics and are a product of its socialist system. How society is organised, for whose benefit is public spending and the goal of a healthy, educated population all need to be considered.

The fundamental difference is that in the United States, healthcare spending funds huge profits for a wide range of companies that profiteer along the supply chain of the created health sector market.

Cuba, by contrast, has a centrally planned system where different public-sector departments work highly effectively with one another, in pursuit of the public health of its people, rather than a pursuit of profit.

Cuba’s vaccine development continues to be among the best in the world. Cimavax is a lung cancer vaccine that can suppress the growth of tumours in the lungs allowing for a stable stage of the illness, prolonging life.

The Molecular Immunology Centre of Havana, a Cuban state-owned organisation, is the creator of Cimavax and has also developed vaccines for meningitis B, hepatitis B and dengue fever. These drugs are free and universally available for patients in Cuba.

Cimavax has been available in Cuba for several years, but has gained more global attention since the US-Cuba rapprochement on December 17 last year. There has been hope for improved co-operation between the US and Cuba on health and Cimavax is now undergoing clinical trials in the US, which does signify a step in the right direction on this particular issue.

However, progress elsewhere has been limited.

Embassies opened in Washington and Havana this summer, symbolising the formal re-establishment of diplomatic relations. Despite these positive developments, the blockade is still in place, Guantanamo Bay is still occupied and US aggressive policies towards Cuba continue.

Only the United States and Israel now stand isolated in support of the blockade. Twenty-fifteen saw the largest-ever majority in the UN vote to end the blockade with a total of 191-2, with no abstentions.

The financial impact of the blockade has been devastating — $833 billion since its introduction. The blockade costs lives, and that was its intention.

Former Cuban diplomat Dr Carlos Alzugaray said at this year’s Cuban Futures conference: “One can never forget the original motives — hunger, desperation and the overthrowing of the Cuban government. They are the exact words used by the State Department in 1960.”

In October, a Cuban seven-year-old cancer patient Noemi Bernardez was denied access to Temozolomida, a drug which could radically improve her survival chances, as Cuba cannot directly purchase drugs from US manufacturers.

This is just one example from an endless list from over five decades of US aggression against Cuba, costing the health and lives of the Cuban people.

As part of the post-December 17 relations, President Barack Obama has authorised limited trade. But the devil is in the detail — only US companies are allowed to supply certain goods to privately owned properties or enterprises in Cuba. Cuba still cannot export to the US.

The US strategy of exclusive private-sector trade is a deliberate attempt to undermine the Cuban government and its social achievements, including free universal healthcare.

The US Treasury guidelines give examples such as not permitting US companies to provide air-conditioning to Cuban hospitals because they are publicly owned.

The methods have changed but the objective remains the same. US interference in Cuba clearly continues, with regime change being the goal and to roll back the achievements of the revolution.

Another year of revolution has continued to improve the lives of Cubans and the wider world — from Ebola sufferers in west Africa to post-earthquake Nepal, Cuban internationalism continues to direct resources to where they are needed.

Cuba continues to be an inspiration for those who strive for a better world and international solidarity with Cuba is crucial in the struggle to end the blockade. Ending the blockade could unleash Cuba’s vast potential and help improve and save yet more lives across the world.

Ollie Hopkins is campaigns officer for the Cuba Solidarity Campaign (www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk).

Part 2 of 3. Read part 1 and part 3.

Reported Israeli drone strikes in Syria and Sudan received scant attention as Israel simply refuse to acknowledge such operations.  India abandoned development of its indigenous Nishant drone and turned its sights on procuring armed drones from Israel while Italy received permission from the US to arm its Reaper drones. The Pentagon’s Inspector General launched an investigation into allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence reports to provide more positive accounts of the progress of the campaign against ISIS.  Some suggested that documents have subsequently been destroyed seemingly as part of a cover up.

US officials confirmed in September that Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in conjunction with the CIA are conducting drone operations aimed at killing ‘high value targets’ in Syria.  21-year old British hacker Junaid Hussainwas said to be one of the first targeted.  Mohammed Emwazi, the British ISIS militant known as Jihadi John, was also killed in a US drone strike in the centre of Raqqa in November.  Despite strong lobbying from Republicans, Jordan was refused permission to purchase US drones – Israel has stepped in to supplythem instead.

The ‘Killer Robots’ campaign continues its efforts to ensure a preventative ban on the development of autonomous weapon systems. While US and UK diplomats insist that such weapons are not being pursued, simultaneously military officials argue that drones, “particularly autonomous ones,” have to be “the new normal.”  Officials repeatedly refuse to disclose where British drones are currently based in the Middle East although several reports – and satellite photos – suggest they are at the Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait.

Both the Israeli military and US Special Forces operated drones over Lebanon during the year while US drones also deployed to Latvia as part of a ‘European Reassurance Initiative’.  Drone industry lobbyists were as active as ever behind the scenes aiming to ‘relax’ controls on drone exports while also challengingrestrictions on drones flying in domestic civil airspace.  Although US drones have been flying some surveillance missions over Libya (and apparentlycrashing) such operations are likely to increase during 2016

Hollywood’s discovery of the drone wars has resulted in several movies including Ethan Hawk in ‘Good Kill’ and Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman in the forthcoming ‘Eye in the Sky.  Many more are apparently in the pipeline.  Michael Fallon, the British Defence Secretary changed the methodology for calculating British drone and air strikes during the year, leading to ‘less’ strikes on paper, if not on the ground.  Leaked NSA documents showed clear links between the North Yorkshire US spy base, Menwith Hill, and US drone strikes in Yemen.

Nigeria’s acquisition of Chinese armed drones was a complete surprise and clearly showed the global spread of drones, with The Netherlands being one of a number of European countries gaining  US approval to purchase Reaper drones. Naming continues to be an issue for the industry with the UK choosing to re-christen the Predator B (Reaper) drone as the more soothing and acceptable ‘Protector drone’.  The preposterously named  European combat drone prototype, nEUROn, continued its test programme during the year with test flights in Italy and Sweden.

A number of commentators highlighted that President Obama’s much promised openness on US drone strikes outside of conflict zones has failed to materialise. In fact there has probably been even less oversight of the targeted killing strikes within Iraq and Syria. Authors George RR Martin and Will Self as well as retired General Stanley McChrystal were among a diverse and growing number of people voicing opposition to the way that drones are lowering the threshold for war.

The pressure on pilots due to the ever-increasing demand for drones was a regular new item during the year.  In December the USAF announced changes that will now see enlisted personnel (and not just officers) fly drones – surveillance flights at first but this will also likely change.  Police use of drones has taken a significant  step forward in 2015 with many local forces announcing they are to trial the use of drones.  At the same time, the number of drone incidents being reported to the police has rocketed.  Protests at drone bases and factories continued during the year withCreech in Nevada and Waddington in the UK being a key focus of attention.

Heightened visibility alone, however, has not effectively ended such slayings or brought justice to victims

The Black Lives Matter movement that swept the country in 2015 has—among other accomplishments—forced global media outlets to afford victims of police killings the most basic acknowledgement: a public record of their names and deaths.

Such a grim tally was maintained this year by both the Guardian and the Washington Post, following the consistent failure of the U.S. government to keep adequate records.

African-American Chicago resident Betty Jones, pictured on the left, was killed by Chicago police while attempting to help a neighbor, who was also killed. (Photo: Facebook). Native-American Alaska resident Larry Kobuk, pictured on the right, died in police custody this year. (Photo: Alaska Native News).

According to the Guardian, 1,126 people were killed by police so far in 2015, averaging more than three a day, with 27 percent of those slain facing mental health issues.

The numbers confirm the racial injustices highlighted by nationwide protests. Among black people in America, 6.9 per million were killed by police, compared to 2.86 white people per million. In other words, African-Americans were nearly 2.5 times as likely to be killed by police as their white counterparts.

Native-Americans and Latinos were also disproportionately likely to have their lives taken by law enforcement, with 3.4 per million and 3.35 per million killed respectively.

The high number of killings was corroborated by the Washington Post, which only tracks fatal police shootings—not killings by taser, beating, and other forms of force, such as the high-profile death of African-American man Freddie Gray in Baltimore. The paper concluded, nonetheless, that nearly 1,000 civilians were shot and killed by police this year.

What’s more, the Post‘s analysis found that the FBI, which is tasked with tracking such shootings, is dramatically undercounting killings because “fewer than half of the nation’s police departments report their incidents to the agency.”

“The Post documented well more than twice as many fatal shootings this year as the average annual tally reported by the FBI over the past decade,” journalists Kimberly Kindy, Marc Fisher, Julie Tate, and Jennifer Jenkins reported this week.

However, Jim Naureckas, editor of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting’s watchdog journal Extra!, argued Tuesday that the Post also “held back” key information by downplaying the connection between the high number of police killings and the grievances issued by racial justice movements.

For example, Post journalists wrote that “the kind of incidents that have ignited protests in many U.S. communities—most often, white police officers killing unarmed black men—represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings.”

But in fact, the Black Lives Matter movement has condemned killings by officers of all races, killings of people who were armed, and killings of black women—such as Mya Hall and Rekia Boyd—by police as well as vigilante violence.

Even still, the Post‘s numbers are damning.

“Although black men make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 40 percent of the unarmed men shot to death by police this year,” the paper’s database found. “In the majority of cases in which police shot and killed a person who had attacked someone with a weapon or brandished a gun, the person who was shot was white. But a hugely disproportionate number—3 in 5—of those killed after exhibiting less threatening behavior were black or Hispanic.”

There are many things that the databases don’t track, including beatings, abuse, and sexual assaults. For example, police officer Daniel Holtzclaw’s serial raping of African-American women would not make it on this list of atrocities.

But perhaps, more than anything, both databases show that heightened visibility, in itself, will not end police killings or bring justice to its victims.

The end of 2015 is being marked by ongoing protests demanding “Justice for Tamir Rice,” a 12-year-old African-American shot to death by a white police officer while playing with a toy gun. An Ohio Grand Jury decided Monday not to indict officers Timothy Loehmann or Frank Garmback, despite video evidence that neither provided first aid to the dying child.

In a statement released Monday night, Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, declared: “I don’t want my child to have died for nothing and I refuse to let his legacy or his name be ignored. We will continue to fight for justice for him, and for all families who must live with the pain that we live with.”

The Southern California gas company is now claiming they’ve “pin pointed” a massive methane leak in Porter Ranch, California. This methane leak has led to thousands of displaced families. Of course, the term “pin pointed” is being applied in a liberal sort of way. According to the LA Times.

Workers were continuing to drill a relief well and had reached a depth of 3,800 feet about midnight Saturday when they discovered the site of the target well using a magnetic ranging tool, said Anne Silva, a spokeswoman for SoCal Gas. The well extends more than 8,000 feet below the surface.

The company is still “not sure of the exact location of the leak,” Silva said, “but suspects it is within a shallow level — within the first several hundred feet of the 8,700-foot well.”

This is a leak that the Gas Company feels could go on at least into March. Methane freely polluting the air until at least March. Have we yet to grasp the severity of this? This is a man-made natural catastrophe that may well turn out to be larger in scale than the BP oil spill. According to Erin Brockovich, the side effects, which are deep and involved, take less than a week to start feeling.

After only a week of visiting families in Porter Ranch, I am already experiencing the headaches, nausea and congestion that have plagued this community living at the center of one of the most significant environmental disasters in recent history.

We can’t even begin to fathom what the serious longterm consequences over this matter will turn out to be. Making matters worse, SoCalGas has essentially REFUSED to release information on the surrounding air quality, so we have no way of really grasping how bad this really is. The leak is supposedly residing at over 8000 feet underneath the ground, making it a complicated, complex problem to solve. With the potential of liability and litigation, attorneys are filtering responses on both sides. In just one month, this leak will have accounted for 1/4 of the total estimated methane emissions in the entire state of California.

Vomiting, nosebleeds, trouble breathing, are just the beginning of what these people are experiencing on a daily basis. The community has begun the act of transferring school children out of the area. While SoCalGas has helped with some relocation efforts, it hasn’t been nearly enough. Many people have been stuck waiting on a list to be assigned relocation, all the while, their respiratory systems being decimated by infectious gases.

And all the while, a refusal to release air quality data remains on the part of the company responsible for it all. Sick people only know they are sick, but confirmations of why seem to be vague and protected by a wall of legal jargon and advisors. SoCalGas needs to come out and take responsibility. They need to address the people who are sick and with great urgency resolve their issues. This can’t continue to go on.

What shocks me the most is that while this story has received a great deal of coverage, it really hasn’t been the top story. Maybe the holidays? Maybe people just aren’t interested? All the same, this affects us all. This could (and likely is) happen in any of our communities. Want to see what it looks like using infrared? What are people breathing in?

Four more months of this? This is unacceptable. Why do you think they declared a no-fly zone? Is it really for pilot safety or is it more that they don’t want people seeing what’s actually happening on the ground? I would go with the latter and strongly encourage any of you reading to make similar considerations. Of course, pilots likely could get sick flying over it, but this sounds a lot more like a corporation covering up a disaster of epic proportions. There is no end game here. There is no reason to believe that this gas leak won’t be responsible for mass deaths, near and far in years.

Here is Erin Brockovich speaking on behalf of the people of Porter Ranch.

In the wake of the 1917 Revolution, when the Soviet Union replaced Tsarist Russia, both the US and Britain wanted regime change. 

Three months before WW I ended, Britain led a multi-nation force against Soviet Russia. At the time, Lloyd George was Prime Minister. Churchill was UK Minister of War and Air. Woodrow Wilson was US president.

Thousands of US marines were involved. They invaded Russia, intervening against Bolshevik forces, remaining until April 1920, an early example of imperial American lawlessness.

On the one hand, Soviet Russia and today’s Russian Federation land mass represents a huge prize, rich in valued resources, America perhaps willing to go to war for control.

On the other, Russia today is a far cry from Soviet days:

• hugely powerful militarily with state-of-the-art weapons, likely important ones kept under wraps; and a thermonuclear arsenal matching America’s capability – able to strike targets worldwide with precision accuracy and hugely destructive force;
• spending judiciously – a small fraction (maybe 10%) of Washington’s bloated defense budget, wasting trillions of dollars in recent decades, money literally down the drain, one of many examples of wrongheaded US policies;
• able to match US might, perhaps exceeding it in some respects;
• technologically sophisticated, the equal of any potential adversary;
• advancing politically and economically at America’s expense, a slow, steady process under Putin’s stewardship, one nation rising, the other declining, some observers believe significantly in the post-9/11 era, a process begun years earlier.

America’s rage for power is delusional, showing it failed to learn the lesson of past empires, gone on the rocks of their hubris and arrogance, the eventual fate for the self-styled “indispensable nation,” increasingly seen more as a liability than asset in the eyes of growing numbers of nations, wanting peace, stability and prosperity, not endless wars of conquest, one nation after another systematically destroyed.

America has interests, not allies, using nation states to serve its imperial agenda, mainly Pentagon controlled NATO, Israel and rogue Arab states, an alliance for endless wars of conquest, mass slaughter and destruction, countries systematically ravaged, their resources stolen, their people exploited.

Major flashpoint areas risk igniting global thermonuclear war – Ukraine, Syria, and other Middle East areas where US/Russian interests clash.

Washington transformed Ukraine into a Nazi-infested fascist dictatorship – used as a dagger targeting Russia’s heartland, along with other Eastern countries close to its border, pressured to play America’s dirty game, no matter the harm to their interests.

Preserving Syrian sovereignty is key to preventing Iran’s isolation, and the entire region becoming a US/Israeli colony, partnered with Saudi tyrants and the Erdogan-led international criminal organization running Turkey.

Riyadh and Ankara are ruthless rogue states, threatening regional peace, stability and security. They’re creating a so-called “strategic cooperation council,” focusing on military, political and economic issues.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced the scheme, omitting explanation of the imperial aims of both nations – saying things were arranged this week during discussions between Erdogan and Saudi King Salman in Riyadh – meeting for the third time this year, united against Syria’s Assad.

Wanting him ousted is consistent with US objectives, using these and other countries as instruments of anti-Russian policies, wanting its sovereign independence destroyed, risking possible thermonuclear confrontation to achieve its maniacal aims – a clear agenda of madness.

In a letter to the world body, Syria’s UN envoy Bashar al-Ja’afari accused Erdogan of high crimes against the Syrian Arab Republic – covertly supporting ISIS and other terrorist groups, warning of his delusional goal to “revive” the Ottoman Empire.

“Since 2011, an unprecedented terrorist war has been waged against the Syrian Arab Republic by armed terrorist groups, the members of which come from more than 100 countries,” Ja’afari explained.

Those groups are being provided with funding, weapons, materiel and logistical support by states and regimes from the region and beyond.

Bordering on Syria and Iraq, Turkey is playing a leading role, Ja’afari stressed. It’s “interference in Syria’s internal affairs t(akes) many forms including direct involvement of the regime of Erdogan, the Turkish armed forces in offensive military operations in support of terrorists.”

They’re “providing covering fire for the terrorists’ movements inside Syrian territory or along (border areas) to facilitate the infiltration of terrorist mercenaries from Turkish (to) Syrian territory.”

Erdogan continues committing heinous high crimes – with full support and encouragement from Washington. Russia’s anti-terrorism intervention foiled his northern Syria no-fly zone/safe haven scheme.

His designs on Mosul, Iraq oil fields remain, Baghdad committed to liberate the area from ISIS control and get world support against Turkish forces operating illegally cross-border.

Ja’afari’s call for the UN “to take a firm stand (to) put end to (Ankara) violations and crimes falls on deaf ears with Washington calling the shots. Its Security Council veto power lets it continue pursuing its regional agenda without official world body condemnation.

At the same time, Russia’s intervention changed things dramatically. Syrian forces continue making slow, steady gains, ISIS and other terrorist groups very much on the back foot.

Defeating them is another issue, no simple task as long as US and other outside support continue. They control Iraqi and Libyan territory, infiltrated into Central Asia, have safe havens outside Syrian territory, new recruits apparently keep coming, and their revenue sources keep supplying millions of dollars daily.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Sino-US relations still considered most important: poll

A new poll shows that some 78 percent of Chinese believe Western countries intend to contain China.

Some 36.5 percent said the West intends to and have already moved to contain China. Some 41.7 percent say Western countries have such intentions but there exists no obvious action, according to a survey released by the Global Times’ Poll Center Tuesday.

The annual survey, “How Chinese people view the world,” involved telephone responses from 1,530 people from seven Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Changsha.

Jin Canrong, deputy dean of the School of International Studies at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Tuesday that this is how the Chinese feel, following the past year’s events.

Relations between China and the US have been strained in 2015 due to issues like the South China Sea disputes and cyber security. China and Japan locked horns in disputes around the Diaoyu Islands and Japan’s attitude to face up to its wartime history.

“The US and Japan did things aimed at China, but China is not that easy to contain,” he said.

The poll also finds that some 69.4 percent consider Sino-US relations China’s most important bilateral relations. However, the number has dropped from 81.3 percent in 2009, 74.6 percent in 2012 and 72.3 percent in 2014.

Bilateral relations with Russia, Japan, and the EU ranked as China’s second, third and fourth most important diplomatic relations.

“It is no surprise to see Chinese pay more attention to Sino-US relations since it influences their lives as the two countries share common interests,” Jin said.

The survey showed that 27.8 percent agree that the South China Sea disputes have been affecting relations, while 10.5 percent think the cyber security issue soured Sino-US relations.

Other issues that may strain the Sino-US relations are the Taiwan issue, 22.6 percent, and the Diaoyu Islands, 22.1 percent.

According to the survey, 56.9 percent, most of whom are young people, are optimistic about the future of Sino-US relations while 28.5 percent believe relations will be strained.

Jin said that the positive views on the development of Sino-US relations reflect the respondents’ confidence in China.

“The conflict between China and the US is more about national interests than ideology,” Zhang Jiehai, a sociologist at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

Ambivalent relations

Meantime, 28.6 percent said bilateral relations with Russia are China’s second most important, and 24.9 percent said relations with Japan are the third most important.

“Sino-Russian and Sino-Japanese relations are considered the most significant neighborly relations. China and Russia have been in recent years moving in a good direction, while Japan and China are still locked in feuds, including historical issues and disputes over the Diaoyu Islands,” Zhou Yongsheng, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.

Zhou said that although Japan is China’s second largest trade partner, the disputes between the two countries involve national honor and interests, leaving most Chinese with little faith in the future of Sino-Japanese relations.

People who think relations between China and Southeast Asian countries remain important to China dropped by 2.5 percent, compared to 2014. And 53.6 percent agree that disputes in the South China Sea were the main cause of strained relations.

The survey also showed that 53.9 percent are optimistic about the future of China’s international relations, while 37.6 percent are concerned.

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Truth in media is a powerful instrument, which counters mainstream media disinformation.  There can be no half-truths in our coverage of  World events.

A Worldwide “economic war” resulting in unemployment, poverty and disease is carried out through the “free market”. People’s lives are in a freefall and their purchasing power is destroyed.

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The mainstream media will tell us that the West is involved in a humanitarian undertaking: US-NATO is waging a “global war on terrorism”.  “The forbidden truth”, however, is that Western governments routinely provide support to the same terrorist entities which are the object of their fake “counter-terrorism operations”.

Ultimately all the topics which have been the object of Global Research 2015 articles are interrelated:

War, terrorism, the police state, the global economy, economic austerity, financial fraud, corrupt governments, poverty and social inequality, police violence, Al Qaeda, ISIS, media disinformation, racism, war propaganda  weapons of mass destruction, the derogation of international law, the criminalization of politics, the CIA, the FBI, climate change,  nuclear war, Fukushima, nuclear radiation, crimes against humanity, The China-Russia alliance, Syria  Ukraine, NATO, false flags, 9/11 Truth, ….  

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Michel Chossudovsky, 30 December 2015

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On the 29th of November, 2015, Foreign Affairs – the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – published an article titled: Divide and Conquer in Syria and Iraq; Why the West Should Plan for a Partition. It was written by Barak Mendelsohn, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Haverford College and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. In the article, he argues that the “solution” to the current crisis in Syria and Iraq is the creation of an “independent Sunni state” (or Sunnistan), in addition to separating “the warring sides:”

“The only way to elicit indigenous support is by offering the Sunnis greater stakes in the outcome. That means proposing an independent Sunni state that would link Sunni-dominated territories on both sides of the border.Washington’s attachment to the artificial Sykes–Picots borders demarcated by France and Britain a century ago no longer makes sense. Few people truly believe that Syria and Iraq could each be put back together after so much blood has been spilled. A better alternative would be to separate the warring sides. Although the sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shias was not inevitable—it was, to some extent, the result of manipulation by self-interested elites—it is now a reality.”

Mendelsohn’s so-called “solution” for the region is in fact the strategy Western powers have been pursuing in the Middle East for years. His proposal is pretty much identical to the preferred “outcome” for Syria articulated by the former US Secretary of State and CFR member, Henry Kissinger. Speaking at the Ford School in 2013, Kissinger reveals his desire to see Syria Balkanized into “more or less autonomous regions (from 27.35 into the interview):

“There are three possible outcomes. An Assad victory. A Sunni victory. Or an outcome in which the various nationalities agree to co-exist together but in more or less autonomous regions, so that they can’t oppress each other. That’s the outcome I would prefer to see. But that’s not the popular view…. I also think Assad ought to go, but I don’t think it’s the key. The key is; it’s like Europe after the Thirty Years War, when the various Christian groups had been killing each other until they finally decided that they had to live together but in   separate units.”

Carving out Sunnistan in the region was also recently advocated by the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, in his NY Times article: To Defeat ISIS, Create a Sunni State. Bolton wants to create an“independent Sunni State” to act as a “bulwark” against Bashar al-Assad and Baghdad. Make no mistake about it; the strategy of the US had always been to create a Sunni micro-state in Eastern Syria and Western Iraq to isolate Assad. In the 2012 declassified report from the DIA, the document reveals that the powers supporting the Syrian opposition – “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” – wanted to create a “Salafist principality in Eastern Syria in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

Obviously, Salafism (which some argue is synonymous with Wahhabism; whilst others argue that Wahhabism is a more extreme form of Salafism) is a branch of Sunni Islam. Many have argued that “violence” is “central” to Wahhabism and Salafism, as Catherine Shakdam expresses in her article, Wahhabism, Al Saud and ISIS – the Unholy Trinity:

“Wahhabism is no more than an engineered perversion, a division, an abomination which has but spread like a cancer onto the Islamic world and now threatens to destroy all religions… Wahhabism is not of Islam and Islam will never be of Wahhabism – it is a folly to conceive that Islam would ever sanction murder, looting and atrocious barbarism. Islam opposes despotism, injustice, infamy, deceits, greed, extremism, asceticism – everything which is not balanced and good, fair and merciful, kind and compassionate. If anything, Wahhabism is the very negation of Islam. As many have called it before – Islam is not Wahhabism.”

Shakdam continues:

“Wahhabism is merely the misguided expression of one man’s political ambition – Mohammed Abdel Wahhab, a man who was recruited by Empire Britain to erode at the fabric of Islam and crack the unity of its ummah (community). Wahhabism has now given birth to a monstrous abomination – extreme radicalism; a beast which has sprung and fed from Salafis and Wahhabis poison, fueled by the billions of Al Saud’s petrodollars; a weapon exploited by neo-imperialists to justify military interventions in those wealthiest corners of the world. ISIS’s obscene savagery epitomises the violence which is inherent and central to Wahhabism and Salafism, its other deviance. And though the world knows now the source of all terror, no power has yet dared speak against it; instead, the world has chosen to hate its designated victim – Islam.”

Fracturing Iraq

In relation to Iraq, the plan to split the country into three parts has been publicly advocated by US officials ad nauseam. The President Emeritus of the CFR, Leslie Gelb, argued in a 2003 article for the NY Times that the most feasible outcome in Iraq would be a “three-state solution: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.” In 2006, a potential map of a future Middle East was released by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters which depicted Iraq divided into three regions: a Sunni Iraq to the West, an Arab Shia State in the East and a Free Kurdistan in the North.

The current US Vice President, Joe Biden, also penned an article which was co-authored by Gelb titled: United Through Autonomy in Iraq. The 2006 article argues for a decentralized Iraqi state where power is held by three “ethno-religious” groups: “Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab.” Furthermore, the NY Times published an article in 2013 titled: Imagining a Remapped Middle East; How 5 Countries Could Become 14, which envisages the Middle East and Libya completely Balkanized.

Responding to the strategy of the West in Iraq, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, called the division of the country “unacceptable.” Lavrov stated that this was “social engineering” and “state structure manipulation from far outside,” adding that Russia believes “Iraqis – Shia, Sunnis and Kurds – should decide for themselves how to live together.”

The Western elite’s strategy is to create a Middle East (and a world for that matter) devoid of strong, sovereign, independent nation-states that can resist imperial advances.

Fracturing countries into feuding micro-states ensures Western interests are not confronted with a cohesive entity which can collectively unite to oppose this belligerent force. “Divide and conquer” as Mendelsohn’s article is titled, the ancient strategy used by an array of imperial powers, from the Roman’s to the British, remains the strategy of the Western Empire today.

The new year traditionally is a time for hope and change, a new beginning, a shift from policies causing so much harm to many millions worldwide – nameless, faceless victims of imperial ruthlessness. 

Instead of sounding the alarm and urging a call to action, presstitutes masquerading as journalists support what demands condemnation.

Ordinary people are manipulated by bread, circuses, and daily misinformation – mindless of the dangers they face, indifferent to the risk of ending life on earth, ignorant of the pure evil Washington represents, complicit with its rogue partners.

Each new year begins with the threat of US-launched nuclear war, the unthinkable possibility able to kill us all. Power-crazed lunatics make ruthless choices.

Witness them in one war theater after another – endless mass slaughter and destruction, making the world safe for monied interests.

Madness defines US policies. Its criminal class is bipartisan. Whoever succeeds Obama in January 2017 will exceed the worst of his homeland and geopolitical agenda.

America already is thirdworldized, on a fast track toward a ruler-serf society, unfit and unsafe to live in, fundamental freedoms eliminated in plain sight, run by a gangster class serving its own interests exclusively.

It devotes more resources to homeland and foreign militarism, belligerence and confrontational policies than the rest of the world combined.

Expect more of the same in the new year, likely more than ever before, maybe looked back on as the year WW III began – if anyone survives the onslaught, a long shot at best.

Another holiday season brings no joy to the vast majority of people worldwide. Human suffering remains extreme.

US policymakers consider it a small price to pay, nothing too outlandish in serving their interests.

The horrors of their maniacal agenda is airbrushed from official and scoundrel media reports – on New Year’s and every other day.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. 

The weapons are foreign, the fighters are foreign, the agenda is foreign. As Syrian forces fight to wrest control of their country back and restore order within their borders, the myth of the “Syrian civil war” continues on. Undoubtedly there are Syrians who oppose the Syrian government and even Syrians who have taken up arms against the government and in turn, against the Syrian people, but from the beginning (in fact before the beginning) this war has been driven from abroad. Calling it a “civil war” is a misnomer as much as calling those taking up arms “opposition.” It is not a “civil war,” and those fighting the Syrian government are not “opposition.”

Those calling this a civil war and the terrorists fighting the Syrian state “opposition” hope that their audience never wanders too far from their lies to understand the full context of this conflict, the moves made before it even started and where those moves were made from.

When did this all start? 

It is a valid question to ask just when it all really started. The Cold War saw a see-sawing struggle between East and West between the United States and Europe (NATO) and not only the Soviet Union but also a growing China. But the Cold War itself was simply a continuation of geopolitical struggle that has carried on for centuries between various centers of power upon the planet. The primary centers include Europe’s Paris, London and Berlin, of course Moscow, and in the last two centuries, Washington.

In this context, however, we can see that what may be portrayed as a local conflict, may fit into a much larger geopolitical struggle between these prominent centers of special interests. Syria’s conflict is no different.

Syria had maintained close ties to the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. That meant that even with the fall of the Soviet Union, Syria still had ties to Russia. It uses Russian weapons and tactics. It has economic, strategic and political ties to Russia and it shares mutual interests including the prevailing of a multipolar world order that emphasizes the primacy of national sovereignty.

Because of this, Western centers of power have sought for decades to draw Syria out of this orbit (along with many other nations). With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the fractured Middle East was first dominated by colonial Europe before being swept by nationalist uprising seeking independence. Those seeking to keep the colonial ties cut that they had severed sought Soviet backing, while those seeking simply to rise to power at any cost often sought Western backing.

The 2011 conflict was not Syria’s first. The Muslim Brotherhood, a creation and cultivar of the British Empire since the fall of the Ottomans was backed in the late 70s  andearly 80s in an abortive attempt to overthrow then Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, father of current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The armed militants that took part in that conflict would be scattered in security crackdowns following in its wake, with many members of the Muslim Brotherhood forming a new US-Saudi initiative called Al Qaeda. Both the Brotherhood and now Al Qaeda would stalk and attempt to stunt the destiny of an independent Middle East from then on, up to and including present day.

There is nothing “civil” about Syria’s war. 

In this context, we see clearly Syria’s most recent conflict is part of this wider struggle and is in no way a “civil war” unfolding in a vacuum, with outside interests being drawn in only after it began.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its Al Qaeda spin-off were present and accounted for since the word go in 2011. By the end of 2011, Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise (Al Nusra) would be carrying out nationwide operations on a scale dwarfing other so-called rebel groups. And they weren’t this successful because of the resources and support they found within Syria’s borders, but instead because of the immense resources and support flowing to them from beyond them.

Saudi Arabia openly arms, funds and provides political support for many of the militant groups operating in Syria since the beginning. In fact, recently, many of these groups, including allies of Al Qaeda itself, were present in Riyadh discussing with their Saudi sponsors the future of their joint endeavor.

Together with Al Nusra, there is the self-anointed Islamic State (IS). IS, like the Syrian conflict itself, was portrayed by the Western media for as long as possible as a creation within a vacuum. The source of its military and political strength was left a mystery by the otherwise omniscient Western intelligence community. Hints began to show as Russian increased its involvement in the conflict. When Russian warplanes began pounding convoys moving to and from Turkish territory, bound for IS, the mystery was finally solved. IS, like all other militant groups operating in Syria, were the recipients of generous, unending stockpiles of weapons, equipment, cash and fighters piped in from around the globe.

The Syrian conflict was borne of organizations created by centers of foreign interests decades ago who have since fought on and off not for the future of the Syrian people, but for a Syria that meshed more conveniently into the foreign global order that created them. The conflict has been fueled by a torrent of weapons, cash, support and even fighters drawn not from among the Syrian people, but from the very centers of these foreign special interests; in Riyadh, Ankara, London, Paris, Brussels and Washington.

How to settle a civil war that doesn’t exist?

If the Syrian conflict was created by foreign interests fueling militant groups it has used for decades as an instrument of executing foreign policy (in and out of Syria), amounting to what is essentially a proxy invasion, not a civil war, how exactly can a “settlement” be reached?

Who should the Syrian government be talking to in order to reach this settlement? Should it be talking to the heads of Al Nusra and IS who clearly dominate the militants fighting Damascus? Or should it be talking to those who have been the paramount factor in perpetuating the conflict, Riyadh, Ankara, London, Paris, Brussels and Washington, all of whom appear involved in supporting even the most extreme among these militant groups?

If Damascus finds itself talking with political leaders in these foreign capitals, is it settling a “civil war” or a war it is fighting with these foreign powers? Upon the world stage, it is clear that these foreign capitals speak entirely for the militants, and to no one’s surprise, these militants seem to want exactly what these foreign capitals want.

Being honest about what sort of conflict Syria is really fighting is the first step in finding a real solution to end it. The West continues to insist this is a “civil war.” This allows them to continue trying to influence the outcome of the conflict and the political state Syria will exist in upon its conclusion. By claiming that the Syrian government has lost all legitimacy, the West further strengthens its hand in this context.

Attempts to strip the government of legitimacy predicated on the fact that it stood and fought groups of armed militants arrayed against it by an axis of foreign interests would set a very dangerous and unacceptable precedent. It is no surprise that Syria finds itself with an increasing number of allies in this fight as other nations realize they will be next if the “Syria model” is a success.

Acknowledging that Syria’s ongoing conflict is the result of foreign aggression against Damascus would make the solution very simple. The solution would be to allow Damascus to restore order within its borders while taking action either at the UN or on the battlefield against those nations fueling violence aimed at Syria. Perhaps the clarity of this solution is why those behind this conflict have tried so hard to portray it as a civil war.

For those who have been trying to make sense of the Syrian “civil war” since 2011 with little luck, the explanation is simple, it isn’t a civil war and it never was. Understanding it as a proxy conflict from the very beginning (or even before it began) will give one a clarity in perception that will aid one immeasurably in understanding what the obvious solutions are, but only when they come to this understanding.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

So much has been said of the “white man’s burden:” namely, how the collapsing American Empire and bygone British Empire have shouldered the burden of civilising Africa and driving the global economy for centuries. The opposite is true. The fact of the matter is that not only was Western civilisation invented by black Africans in ancient Egypt, Africa has driven global economic growth for centuries.

African natural resources, labour, land, slavery and skilled émigré – as any decent economic historian will tell you – have fueled the world’s economy for many, many decades. To this day, Africa is the world’s engine-room for growth. In short, driving global economic growth abroad, whilst benefiting little at home is the “black man’s burden.” That Africans know that there are immense riches just beneath their feet as well as just above their heads in High Office, only adds to the burden.

The roots of “Western” civilization, technology, religion, culture and science are to be found not in Greece, but in Black Egypt. Infact as early as 9,000 BC to 500 A.D. black empires, from the prehistoric Zingh Empire of Mauritania to ancient Khemet of Egypt, were at the forefront of development in technology, politics and culture. Far from “civilising the natives,” Europeans replaced communitarianism, cooperation and spirituality – that prevailed across Africa – with a corrupt, aggressive and inhumane form of civilisation.

First there was the brutal kidnapping of millions of Africans, so as to replace the indigenous Americans that Europeans had wiped out. The slave trade broke the back of African economies whilst creating capital for plantation owners that kick started Europe’s industrial revolution.

Africans were stripped of their land and forced down gold mines and onto rubber plantations. The naked theft of African land and minerals including gold, copper, rubber, ivory and tin continued ravenously throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This culminated in the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884, where Europe gleefully divied up Africa and formalised the “Scramble For Africa.”

After World War Two, Europeans were severely weakened by years of unremitting industrial slaughter of each other. To make matters worse, liberation movements were gaining momentum. This ultimately made the cost of containing “restless natives” greater than the benefits Europeans could extract from them. As British power wained the baton of colonialism was passed to American imperialism.

Poverty and disunity have been the essential ingredients that have allowed this neo-colonial exploitation to continue. But, thanks largely to soaring mineral prices and Chinese win-win investments, poverty levels are beginning to tumble.

Disunity however persists. America is making sure of it. Washington is fomenting disunity by funding reactionary neo-liberal political parties across the continent as well as the odd “good dictator.” A bad dictator however, named Muammar Gaddafi, was hunted down and assassinated by Washington. Not least because of his plans for an African IMF, gold backed Afro-currency and a United States of Africa. In essence, Colonel Gaddafi’s plans for African unity were as good as a hand written suicide note addressed directly to NATO. By losing Gaddafi, Africa may also have lost Libya. For, NATO will ensure that Mr. Gaddafi’s plans for African unity will be smothered in their crib.

Then ofcourse there is United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) which will almost certainly establish a military base in Libya. Infact any African government that America offered money to host AFRICOM, Mr. Gaddafi would offer double the amount to refuse.

Mr. Obama would have us believe that hundreds of highly trained US Special Forces are braving tsetse flies, dengue fever and are running around in the African bush to flush out Ugandan rebels. All for freedom and democracy. Coincidentally in one of the most oil rich enclaves on earth. Home to Sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest onshore oil discovery in 20 years of two billion barrels.

The new cold war between America and China will be over resources, not ideology. Africa will take centre stage. Should America’s hard power and divide-and-rule approach triumph, Africa may descend into one large theater of war with many actors, chapters and a tragic ending. Should China’s soft power and win-win economic approach triumph, this may end up becoming a truly African Century.

To this day, Africans produce cheap, often slave labour and ship raw materials north for peanuts. In return Africans purchase finished products at a premium from the north. This skewed trade relationship is what helped build the west and underdeveloped Africa for centuries.

Reversing this trend would allow the black man to free himself of a centuries old burden. Reversing this trend is this generation’s struggle. That said, Africa’s future looks bright, for the ingredients are present for an economic boom, which actually benefits Africans: favourable demographics, a commodities boom, a burgeoning middle class and growing enthusiasm for technology with more than 600 million mobile-phone users—more than America or Europe.

If Africans resolutely build the capacity to refine their own crude oil, gold and platinum as well as the capability to cut and polish their diamonds, they will certainly turn this into an African century. If Africans staunchly defend their resources and turn them into finished products, they will finally turn the “black man’s burden” into Africa’s renaissance.

Following a series of disastrous failures in India, one of Coca-Cola’s most important markets, the company is desperate to rebuild its reputation by claiming ‘water neutrality’. But the idea is absurd, writes Amit Srivastava, and does nothing to benefit the communities that suffer from the depleted aquifers it pumps from.

The Coca-Cola company is planning to announce that it is close to replenishing all the water it uses“back to communities and nature” by the end of 2015, well ahead of schedule.

It will take more than PR puff to restore Coca-Cola’s reputation in India. Wall-painted sign in Bangalore, India. Photo: Syed Nabil Aljunid via Flickr (CC BY-NC).

As campaigners that have closely scrutinized Coca-Cola’s operations in India for over a decade, we find the company’s assertions on balancing water use to be misleading.

The company’s track record of managing water resources in and around its bottling operations is dismal, and the announcement is a public relations exercise designed to manufacture an image of a company that uses water sustainably – far removed from the reality on the ground.

The impetus for Coca-Cola to embark upon its ambitious water conservation programs globally stems from its experience in India, where the company has been the target of communities across the country holding it accountable for creating water shortages and pollution.

The company has faced crisis in India due to their mismanagement of water resources, including

• the forced closure of their bottling plant by government authorities in Kerala in 2005,
• the closure of its 15 year old plant in Varanasi last year,
• the refusal by government authorities to allow a fully-built expansion plant to operate in Varanasi in August 2014,
• a proposed plant in Uttarakhand cancelled in April 2014,
• and the withdrawal of the land allocated for a new bottling plant by the government in Tamil Nadu due to large scale community protests in April 2015.

Coca-Cola’s operations in Jaipur in India are also now used as a case study in colleges and universities on the company’s profound impact on water resources.

The myth of ‘water neutrality’

The suggestion that the world’s largest beverage company can become “water neutral”, as Coca-Cola has suggested, is impossible and deceptive, as the India Resource Center has pointed out in the past. It is not possible for a company whose primary raw material is water, to have ‘neutral’ impact on water resources.

Such a disingenuous suggestion by the world’s largest beverage company is a disservice to the public, and without admission of the massive impact the company has on water resources, there can be no genuine discourse with Coca-Cola on water management.

The company’s claims of having ‘neutral’ impact on water resources are misleading for two principal reasons.

First, water issues are local in their impact unlike, for example, climate change. When Coca-Cola extracts water from a depleted aquifer in Varanasi or Jaipur, the impacts are borne by the local communities and farmers that depend upon it to meet their water needs.

Replenishing an aquifer hundreds of miles away from the point of extraction, as Coca-Cola has often done to ‘balance’ their water use, has no bearing on the health of the local aquifer which Coca-Cola depletes through its bottling operations, nor the privations suffered by those who depend upon it.

Second, the amount of water used to make Coca-Cola products, referred to as the ‘water footprint’, is much more than the water used in the bottling plants. Cane sugar is a major component of Coca-Cola products in India, and as one of the largest procurers of sugar in India, Coca-Cola is well shy of achieving any balance with the water used the production of its sugar sweetened beverages.

The Water Foot Print Network has estimated that it takes 442 liters of water to make one liter of Coca-Cola using cane sugar, and 618 liters of water to make one liter of Coca-Cola product using High Fructose Corn Syrup.

These astounding numbers are not factored into the water replenishment announcement, and Coca-Cola’s claims fall flat if they were to be included – as they ought to be. The numbers used for their announcement are about 200 times less than the actual water footprint of Coca-Cola products.

No more pumping of depleted aquifers!

One of the continuing challenges being faced by communities across India is that the Coca-Cola company has continued to operate its bottling plants in severely water-stressed areas, as well as propose new plants in water-stressed areas where the communities have very limited access to potable water – a fundamental human right.

Any company that wants to establish itself as a responsible user of water would begin by not operating in water stressed areas, a demand that has been made of Coca-Cola but which the company seems to ignore because it will deprive it of profits and access to markets.

Coca-Cola is in the habit of making tall claims and generating false opinions favorable to its own cause, whether it is on water use or public health, and this announcement on water replenishment is just that. Just last week, the company was exposed for setting up a front group, Global Energy Balance Network, to confuse the science around obesity.

Attempting to confuse and mislead regulators and scientific opinion is not new to Coca-Cola. In 2006, one of Coca-Cola’s lobbyists in India admitted that his job “was to ensure, among other things, that every government or private study accusing the company of environmental harm was challenged by another study.”

If Coca-Cola truly wishes to rebuild its reputation in India and mitigate the massive environmental damage caused by its operations, it must stop the greenwashing, stop exploiting depleted aquifers, and engage seriously with its critics and impacted communities.

Amit Srivastava is director of India Resource Center, an international campaigning organization.

A recently announced Saudi-led “anti-terror” coalition was met with great skepticism recently.

This is not because of doubts over Saudi Arabia’s sincerity alone, but because of the fact that much of the terrorism the “coalition” is allegedly to fight is an intentional creation of Saudi Arabian foreign policy to begin with.

Image: Saudi Arabia, indisputably the premier state-sponsor of terrorism on Earth, and supplying the ideological “source code” carried forth by Al Qaeda and the so-called “Islamic State,” claims it wants to lead an “anti-terror coalition.” The world is reasonable to call this disingenuous at best, a ploy to continue, or even expand terrorism at worst.

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CNN’s article, “Muslim nations form coalition to fight terror, call Islamic extremism ‘disease’,” claims:

Calling Islamic extremism a disease, Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a coalition of 34 largely Muslim nations to fight terrorism.

“This announcement comes from the Islamic world’s vigilance in fighting this disease so it can be a partner, as a group of countries, in the fight against this disease,” Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman said.

Asked whether the new coalition could include ground forces, Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat told reporters in Paris on Tuesday that “nothing is off the table.”

In reality, decades of documented evidence reveal that the Saudis are the primary conduit through which Western cash, weapons, support, and directives flow into mercenary armies of extremists, indoctrinated by Saudi Wahhabism – a politically-motivated perversion of Islam – and sent to execute joint Western-Saudi  geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and beyond.

In fact, over the decades, one can see a direct relation to the increasing impotence of Western conventional forces and their ability to project power across the planet, and the rise of unconventional terrorist forces that reach into otherwise inaccessible regions in their stead.

Image: The seats were still warm in Riyadh where representatives from Al Qaeda affiliates fighting in Syria sat, discussing with their Saudi sponsors future collaboration as Saudi Arabia announced its “anti-terror coalition.”

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This does more than the West’s feigned ignorance and surprise to explain why, after a year of allegedly battling the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) in Syria, the United States made little progress and only after Russia’s recent intervention, has the terrorist organization’s existence been put in jeopardy.

The rise of ISIS, turns out to be the premeditated machinations of the West and its regional partners. A Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA) report drafted in 2012 (.pdf) admitted:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

To clarify just who these “supporting powers” were that sought the creation of a “Salafist” (Islamic) principality” (State), the DIA report explains:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

The DIA report makes it clear that Saudi Arabia’s “coalition” is the source of all terrorism, not the solution, and that there already exists a coalition sincerely committed to exterminating the scourge of militant extremism in the MENA region – Russia, China, Iran, and of course Syria itself.

A Facade to Hide Continued Terrorism Behind 

Likely what Saudi Arabia is doing, is attempting to reboot a narrative that, as of late, is increasingly implicating it and many of the members of its “coalition” as the very source of global terrorism. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has become increasingly involved directly with military operations beyond its borders. Its forces are fighting in neighboring Yemen, and military forces from Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf neighbors have been fighting covertly and semi-covertly in operations stretching from Libya to Syria.

Creating a “coalition” to fight “terrorism,” would give the Saudis another rhetorical ploy to hide their increasingly direct role in supporting militarily the terrorist proxies they have deployed and who are now being defeated across the MENA region. Just as the US has done in Syria, using ISIS as a pretext to involve itself directly and militarily in the Syrian conflict without ever actually fighting ISIS, Saudi Arabia is seeking to create a plausible cover story to do the same.

For those interested in truly defeating terrorism globally – recognizing the state sponsors of terrorism and excluding them categorically from solving the problem until they are held responsible for creating it in the first place is essential. Saudi Arabia’s announcement was met with skepticism, even ridicule for this very reason. Second, to defeat terrorism globally, those truly interested in investing in such a battle, should do so with those demonstrating a sincere desire to eradicate this scourge.

Thanks to the US DIA, a list of nations leading the fight has already been provided.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

Russian air strikes had destroyed 556 militant targets in 164 combat sorties conducted since December 25. Successfully hit targets were located in Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Hama, Homs, Damascus, Deir ez-Zor, and Raqqa provinces. The Russian air support helped the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to stage offensives to the north and east of Latakia Province. Three significant plateaus towards Kabbani and Sirmaniyah fell into the army control.

Separately, the pro-government forces have continued successful advances in the province of Aleppo. The SAA liberated the village of Doudyan and destroyed militant outposts and supply routes in the villages of Tal Jebin, Tal Meseybeen, Shwehene, Maaret Artiq and Shimaeya. The SAA also took control of the village of Sharba.

On Dec. 27 the Iraqi Security Forces declared victory over ISIS militants in the city of Ramadi. The declaration comes after the Iraq forces encircled the city and seized the central administration complex. However, there are many pockets of militants still entrenched in various positions throughout the city. The Iraqi security forces will also have to spend significant time to clear out the remaining improvised explosive devices that infest the city.

Pentagon confirmed that militants were cleared from the government complex. But some US experts have already noted that the Ramadi’s strategic value is repeatedly overestimated. According to them, Ramadi is just one location in the contested Anbar province and the Iraqi army will face serious problems in attempts to clear nearby ISIS locations in Fallujah, Hit and areas west of Haditha. This rapidly reaction marks that Iraq made a serious step in war on ISIS. A series of such steps could increase the Iraqi security forces independence from the US-led coalition support what definitely isn’t a goal of the US political leadership.

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The Iraqi government and its prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, have announced that its troops, backed by US air strikes, have driven Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) out of Ramadi, the capital of the country’s western province of Anbar.

Abadi’s boasting on Twitter of the “liberation” of Ramadi, combined with celebrations on state media, follows months of intense bombardment by US war planes and weeks of street-to-street fighting by US armed and trained Iraqi special forces units.

US military spokesman Colonel Steven Warren revealed in a press statement that at least 630 air strikes had been launched against ISIS targets in Ramadi since July. More than 30 were carried out in the past week to support Iraqi troops as they pushed toward the main government complex in the city centre.

No official estimates have been released of either government or ISIS casualties, or the death toll among the Ramadi residents who had not fled. As few as 400 ISIS fighters were estimated to be defending the city, seeking to prevent the government advance with little more than explosives and sniper fire. Reuters was told that 93 government troops were admitted to Baghdad hospitals on Sunday alone.

The city itself is in ruin. Even the sanitised media footage shows utter devastation to blocks of residential housing. A spokesman for the government-endorsed Anbar provincial council, Eid al-Karboly, told the Washington Post: “All the infrastructure of the city has been destroyed. It will take years to return life to the city.” Karboly estimated that 80 percent of all homes are damaged to some degree.

Many of the buildings that have been destroyed in the current efforts to retake Ramadi were only rebuilt in the last seven years, after being reduced to rubble during the US occupation of Iraq.

Anbar province was one of the centres of resistance to the US invasion. Both Ramadi and Fallujah, the other major city in the province, were bloody battlefields between American troops and Iraqi insurgents on repeated occasions between 2004 and 2007. Fighting was only brought to an end by the so-called “Awakening” policy of the US military, which effectively involved buying off the tribal leaders of many of the insurgents and placing tens of thousands of resistance fighters on the US-funded Iraqi government payroll.

The growth of support for ISIS in western Iraq stemmed in large part from the decision by the Baghdad government, which is dominated by religious-based Shiite parties, to systematically reduce support for the predominantly Sunni militias in Anbar after the US withdrawal at the end of 2011. Sunni-based political parties and Anbar tribal leaders were subsequently persecuted.

Amid hostility toward the sectarian policies of the Shiite government, areas of Fallujah and Ramadi were taken over by fighters declaring allegiance to ISIS in early 2014. At the time, the actions of the extremist Sunni movement against the Baghdad regime enjoyed the tacit sympathy, if not overt support, of many of the tribal leaderships that had enlisted into the US “Awakening.” Former US-funded tribal fighters provided much of the manpower and military expertise that ISIS employed to capture most of Anbar and the key northern Iraqi city of Mosul in July 2014, where they routed tens of thousands of poorly-motivated, US-trained government troops.

The last sectors of Ramadi came under complete ISIS control in May 2015. As in Mosul, government forces retreated in disarray, provoking US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to publicly denounce the Iraqi Army for “a lack of will to fight.”

The recapture of the city appears linked to a new set of deals and pay-offs that US officials have struck with the Anbar tribal leaderships, who either have been alienated by ISIS or have concluded it is a lost cause. Daniel Byman, an American analyst of Islamic extremist movements, told the New York Timesyesterday that the Anbar tribes “want a high degree of independence, but they also want to be on the side of the winners.”

The Iraqi government has stressed that the forces used to assault Ramadi were not made up of the largely Shiite troops, some commanded by Iranian officers, which have borne the brunt of defending Baghdad and surrounding areas from ISIS over the past year. Instead, they were a combination of units that have been “retrained” over recent months by US and Australian advisors and what the Wall Street Journal described as a US-backed “thousands-strong force of local Sunni tribal fighters.”

Preparations are now underway for offensives by the same forces to seize back control of Fallujah, as well as, ultimately, Mosul and other ISIS-held towns and villages in the northern province of Nineveh.

Reports indicate that the Sunni tribal force will be handed control of Ramadi once it is fully cleared of ISIS fighters and that the Iraqi Army will withdraw. Such a policy dovetails with the widespread discussion in US and European military and strategic circles that the only way to maintain control over the oil-rich Middle East—after more than a decade of military setbacks and debacles for US policy—is the partition of Iraq and Syria into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish mini-states.

US-Israeli strategist Barak Mendelsohn bluntly headlined a comment in the November edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, “Divide and Conquer in Syria and Iraq: Why the West Should Plan for a Partition.” Mendelsohn declared that the US and the European powers should carve out an “independent Sunni state that would link Sunni-dominated territories on both sides of the border,” while leaving the Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad in control of a small Shiite and Christian enclave centred on Damascus.

Other proposals include carving out the majority Kurdish-populated northern provinces of both Iraq and Syria into another statelet—a prospect that is ferociously opposed by the Turkish and Iranian governments, which fear an upsurge of separatist sentiment in their Kurdish regions.

The divisions that were fomented by the US occupation in Iraq to weaken resistance, and then to provoke civil war in Syria against the Assad government, are already responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and forcing millions in both countries to flee their homes. The fact that American and European strategists are contemplating redrawing borders, entrenching sectarian and ethnic conflicts and, most likely, triggering new wars, is testimony to the sheer criminality of imperialist policy in the Middle East.

Book Title: Boko Haram in Nigeria: Historical and Political-Economic Exploration, by Kola Ibrahim, 2015

As a testament to Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisation theory, which is also manifesting in what Mary Kaldor describes as ‘new wars’, a new dimension of conflicts has established itself in International politics. These conflicts now come in form of armed insurgency, violent secessionist, ethno-religious conflicts etc. Africa, no doubt occupies an important seat in the theatre of war.

In Nigeria, Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’ Awati Wal-Jihad popularly called Boko Haram has been responsible for the death of over 14,000 people (both combatants and civilians), displacement of over 1.5 million persons, destruction and loot of properties worth billions of naira, abduction of over 220 school girls from Chibok secondary school, bombings of several high profile institutions amongst others. With the Nigerian government and their International principals bereft of any practical solution on how to curb the menace, Kola Ibrahim’s work ‘Boko Haram in Nigeria: Historical and Political-Economic Exploration’ comes to their rescue.

The book provides a scientific analysis of the causes, escalatory factors, response efforts targeted at the conflict and chart a way forward out of this seemingly hopeless state. In what appears to be a complete departure from the conventional method of analysing the conflict, he contends that any investigation into the conflict should not be done outside of the political economy of the society. In total conformity to his hypothesis, Boko Haram and other various ethno-religious terrorist groups are offspring of capitalism and imperialism, the current socioeconomic system embraced by Nigeria and their international principals and not until this system is overthrown all efforts at combating terrorism will only be tantamount to enclosing water in a basket. Even if the government manages to defeat Boko Haram under this current arrangement, it will only enthrone negative peace if the underlining causes of the conflict are not addressed.

However, it is my view that any effort at understanding the trajectory of religious fundamentalism in Nigeria should not ignore the rise and fall of the Maitatsine movement. In the same manner that Boko Haram rise was traced in scientific details to the Uthman dan Fodio Jihad, a detailed analysis of the Maitatsine movement should be done while drawing out similarities with Boko Haram. This work provides little insight into the movement. Of course, this is compensated for by the deep and detailed analyses from various angles, of the rise of terrorism, religious fundamentalism and terrorism, and Boko Haram in particular. This gives a general understanding of various strands of religious fundamentalism and terrorism, including Maitatsine movement.

Also, the use of the word tribe in describing the uniqueness of our culture and relations may not be accurate. Of course, the author used ‘tribe’ and ‘ethnic groups’ interchangeably, which may seem simple and easy to use, especially when writing for general and varied readers, it is however necessary to state that there is a serious debate on the use of tribes in Africa ethnographic analysis. In my view, tribalism is an important element in the racist ideology of colonialism and imperialism. If not what is it that make about 14 million Hausa/Fulani a tribe and less than 4 million Norwegians an ethnic group. If looked at properly, all the characteristics that qualify a group to be tagged as a tribe also existed among the colonial/European people, ethnic groups not tribe is used to describe them. Therefore, tribalism, as much as it is not used to describe western ethnography should not be used in Africa.

Irrespective of these few observations, the book passes as a reference and important library material for understanding our society, even beyond the Boko Haram terrorism or global terrorism. The book utilized various tools to analyzing terrorism and the rise of Boko Haram. Starting with the philosophical, historical and sociological analysis of religion and the tendency of violent and fundamentalist trends developing religions, the book gave a brilliant insight into understanding religious terrorism.

Terrorism is not only a feature in Nigeria; therefore, the effort of the writer in analyzing terrorism from a global perspective gives a better understanding of the rise of religious terrorism in Nigeria in recent times. The role of capitalist geopolitics and imperialism in the rise of religious terrorism and especially Boko Haram is well documented and explained in Chapter 3 of the book.

Furthermore, a deep analysis of the rise of radical religious consciousness in the northern Nigeria, tracing it to the Usman dan Fodio jihad campaign also helps to understand the sociology and historical background to rise of various religious tendencies in the north, and the role of various actors. The book also did a political-economic analysis of Nigeria from the colonial period to the current period. This understanding is necessary in order to understand how Nigeria’s political economy provides the background to radical religious consciousness and the use of religion for political purposes.

The book also looks at the immediate causes of the rise of Boko Haram tendency especially since the beginning of civil rule in 1999 in Nigeria. It explains the role of the political actors and the Nigerian state in providing the breeding ground for the rise of Boko Haram. Furthermore, the military terror against the group, mirroring the neo-colonial and repressive nature of capitalist armed forces, is a refreshing and vivid angle to understanding the rise of Boko Haram tendency.

The book, in conclusion, just like it has provided the clues in the two articles of the Introduction, gave various proposals to the working class, labour movement and civil society in defeating the ogre of terrorism in Nigeria on a permanent basis.

By and large, in a period when scholars in terrorism studies are lost on whether terrorism could ever be abolished or defeated from our society, whether negotiations and mediations, or the killing of the leaders of terrorist organisations could save the world from its self-made mess, Kola Ibrahim brings to spotlight once again that for Boko Haram and global terrorism to be defeated on a permanent basis, we must first of all defeat capitalism. This can only be done when workers take over their unions and rebuild on democratic, anti-capitalist and revolutionary basis. Only a revolutionary socialist government that will put the commanding heights of the economy under workers control can guarantee positive and lasting peace.

I therefore recommend this classic book to students, researchers, policy makers, journalists, politicians and all those who seek alternate narrative and crave for a deeper understanding of Boko Haram, global terrorism and its relationship with capitalism beyond the current peripheral analysis found in literature.

Lawal Rafiu Adeniran, M.A Peace and Conflict Studies, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Image: USS Stethem

An apparent trend in many navies of the world today is the fielding of multi-purpose vessels along the lines of the traditional LHD platform, but with added capabilities. It appears that in an age of increasingly asymmetrical warfare or limited conflict, both highly modernized and developing navies are acquiring these vessels. These multi-use vessels are being built to provide their nations a power projection capability that is well suited to the likely asymmetrical nature of modern conflict. These vessels can respond quickly to both natural and man-made disasters, providing peace keeping troops, relief supplies, hospital facilities, water purification and helicopter rescue and evacuation. They can also respond quickly to a localized military threat, bringing a significant fighting force to bear in a short interval of time.

In an age of increased state sponsored terrorism these vessels can act as effective offshore command and control stations for anti-terrorism operations. They can accommodate and facilitate the insertion of special operations forces both via air and sea. They can support special operations teams once in the field with air support, up to date reconnaissance, logistical support, and emergency extraction in short duration. In light of the flexibility inherent in these vessels and the power projection capabilities they possess they are a force multiplier in a modern conflict.

Written by Brian Kalman and Igor Pejic exclusively for SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence. 

Introduction

The many varied nations of the world that have maritime borders operate navies of equally varied composition and capability. From the imperial monolith of the United States to the small island nation of the Philippines or Taiwan, all such nations must maintain navies to ensure their defense, access to trade, relief in events of natural and manmade disaster and to protect their national interests. Regional powers such as India, China and Japan have different security interests and strategies, and their naval composition and capabilities reflect these realities.

China and India are growing in influence and are accordingly investing in modernizing their navies in order to protect expanding interests and to facilitate power projection capabilities. Russia finds itself in similar circumstances, and has spent decades rebuilding a viable and capable naval arm that more apply reflects its proud naval heritage. Japan has found that it must increasingly rely more on itself to ensure its defense in a region of potential adversaries that possess increasingly more capable navies and ballistic missile forces. The offensive military strategies of both the United States and NATO are fueling the decision of many nations to start new building programs, whether they are allied with these institutions or are their targets. China and Russia are reacting to an ever more obvious strategy to contain and control their national growth.

The past fifteen years has seen the United States and its allies engage in numerous military invasions and interventions in the Middle East. All of these operations have utilized strike aircraft, special operations forces and armed and unarmed UAVs as force multipliers. These force multipliers have allowed for successful prosecution of offensive operations while reducing the conventional military forces required, as well as reduced the duration of operations. The success of such operations in localized, low-intensity conflicts is especially evident. Warships that can provide a platform to transport and support small, combined arms units of strike aircraft, helicopter assault or amphibious assault infantry or marines, special operations units, and reconnaissance and attack UAVs are seen as an essential tool in prosecuting the low intensity conflicts of the future.

It is quite evident with minimal research to find that every nation with a significant naval footprint in the world is investing in new multirole vessels. These vessels come in a number of different forms and can be built to particular specifications. The military operations of the past decade and a half are influencing the naval strategy of many nations with the backdrop of two major geo-political centers of tension: the South China Sea and Syria. Conflict or future conflict in these areas will require the forces engaged to utilize these new and flexible tools of power projection in order to prevail.

The Multirole Naval Platform

There are a number of different designs that fit into the category of the Multirole Naval Platform (MRNP). Some of these designs optimize flexibility and provide a balance of command and control, strike aircraft, air and amphibious assault, or cargo space while others are designed to maximize the effect of only one or two of these capabilities. For example, the Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) is very flexible, with helicopter and amphibious assault capabilities, ample cargo space and medical facilities for Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations and even accommodation of VSTOL strike aircraft. The Helicopter Dock Destroyer (DDH) is aviation-centric, with no amphibious capability. More space is allotted to aircraft and the fuel and armaments they require. The Landing Platform Dock (LPD) is a smaller version of the LHD in many respects, being under 20,000 tons displacement. These vessels are a good alternative to the LHD when the nation lacks the operational or economic ability to maintain the larger LHD, or the vessels will most likely be operating in shallower or more confined waterways. Greater speed and smaller size (stealth) are also benefits of this design. The Landing Ship Tank (LST) is designed to transport and land a combination of infantry and tanks or other heavy vehicles. They may also possess a small number of aircraft for reconnaissance, support and air assault.

Landing Helicopter Dock LHD

The LHD is the most balanced, and thus flexible of all of the MRNP designs. The LHD is the largest design, requiring the dimensions and space to accommodate a large number of aircraft, troops, light and heavy vehicles, cargo and amphibious assault craft. As a result, the displacement of these vessels is usually between 25,000 and 40,000 tons. A good examples of an LHD are the HMAS Canberra L02, USS Wasp LHD1 and SPS Juan Carlos I L61.

Juan Carlos I LHD

These vessels have to be large enough to accommodate the following features:

• Large flight deck to allow helicopter assault operations and or humanitarian support/evacuation.
• Large internal aircraft hangar deck.
• Heavy/light vehicle deck. Often doubles as a cargo deck.
• Floodable well deck for the launching and recovery of landing craft, LCACS and/or amphibious vehicles.
• Accommodation and facilities for between 500 and 2,000 troops.
• Hospital facilities.

Landing Platform Dock

The LPD is a well-balanced multirole vessel; however, on a smaller scale than the LHD. It has comparable flexibility, but at a much smaller scale it lacks the power projection capability of the LHD. It has a small aircraft component, a smaller troop carrying capacity, and less long term self-sustainability. They are designed to provide more amphibious capability than air assault. It is of smaller dimension and displacement than the LHD, coming in at between 8,000 and 20,000 tons. Although their smaller size limits the scope of their operations, they gain the benefit of being able to operate more easily in littoral waters and are less costly to build and maintain. They have a shallower draft and smaller dimensions that lend to them being more suited to more constricted coastal waterways.

San Antonio Class LPD

The vessels of the LPD pattern possess the following characteristics:

• A flight deck that allows for limited helicopter assault and or humanitarian support/evacuation.
• Small internal hangar deck.
• Heavy/light vehicle deck.
• Floodable Well deck for the launching and recovery of landing craft and LCACs.
• Accommodation and facilities for between 200 and 1,000 troops.
• Hospital facilities.

Helicopter Dock Destroyer

The DDH is a relatively new adaptation of the MRNP. The DDH abandons all amphibious capabilities in favor of aircraft assault and aerial strike capability. The only two nations to build and operate DDHs are the United States and Japan. The JMSDF operates three DDHs currently, with a fourth vessel to enter operation in 2016. The United States has only one DDH, the USS America with another the USS Tripoli slated to be commissioned in 2018, if construction and sea trials go according to plan. Although the USS America and USS Tripoli are designated LHAs, they lack the amphibious capabilities of all other LHAs before them and should not be categorized as such. The displacement of a DDH ranges between 19,000 and 46,000 tons.

The Japanese DDHs lack a well deck and all space that would be devoted to amphibious equipment is utilized to support helicopter operations. These vessels act as command vessels in the JMSDF Escort Fleet Flotillas, are loaded with ASW helicopters and other ASW countermeasures along with a full complement of helicopter assault troops. The larger Izumo class DDHs have a large enough flight deck and internal hangar space to equip them with fixed-wing VSTOL aircraft, most likely the F-35B, if so decided in the future. The smaller Hyugaclass DDHs have both been used in HADR operations over the past few years in response to an earthquake and a major hurricane, where their helicopter support and evacuation capability proved of benefit.

Rendering of America Class LHA equipped with F-35B VSTOL strike aircraft

The notable characteristics of the DDH are as follows:

• Very large flight deck that can accommodate medium and heavy helicopters and VSTOL strike aircraft and UAVs.
• Large internal hangar decks to service aircraft.
• Accommodation and facilities for between 300 and 1700 troops.
• Hospital facilities.

The USS America LHA6 has proven to be a controversial topic amongst the US Navy and Marine Corps. Many see the vessel as a small aircraft carrier and do not see the need for such a vessel for the USMC. The USMC’s traditional role as an amphibious force should not be abandoned, and the flexibility exhibited by the force of LHAs and LPDs already operated by the force offer far more flexibility to USMC expeditionary forces than theAmerica Class vessels. Why remove a tool from your toolbox? The USMC has traditionally relied on the US Navy to provide aerial strike capability when so required, and the US Navy has ten aircraft carrier strike groups in service. It has largely been accepted that the USS Tripoli LHA7 will be the last vessel in this class to lack a well deck, with all other vessels in class being redesigned to allow for amphibious operations.

Landing Ship Tank

While traditionally designed to be beached bow-first to discharge tanks and heavy combat vehicles, the LST design has matured to allow for discharge via bow ramp or well deck like the LHA and LPD. Although not really an MRNP due to the limits in its capabilities, more modern LSTs share more in common with the LPD or LHD than in the past. The Navy of the Republic of Korea operates 4 modern LSTs with bow ramps of the Go Jun Bong class, and is currently in the second phase of LST development (LST-II), having designed more capable ships. These vessels usually carry a mixture of tanks, AAVs, and small landing craft as well as support vehicles along with 200 to 300 marines. These vessels lack helicopter assault capability, with only a small helicopter deck fitted.

The JMSDF operates three LSTs; however, their design is more akin to an LPD or LHD, having a stern well deck that houses two LCACs for transporting tanks (up to 10 Type 10 MBTs), vehicles and troops ashore. The Osumiclass vessels also can carry up to eight helicopters for transporting troops or for support and evacuation in HADR operations. Funds have recently been allocated to study the feasibility of refitting these vessels with V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and AAV7s for amphibious assault.

ROK Navy Seong In Bong LST685 discharging a K1 MBT

The LST is usually close in size and displacement to the LPD, though slightly smaller. The bow-ramp LST has a very shallow draft in comparison to its size, due to the requirement to beach the vessel bow-first in order to discharge vehicles. Displacement ranges between 4,000 and 14,000 tons. The characteristics of the LST include:

• A large bow ramp for discharging tanks, vehicles and troops while beached or a well deck for launching amphibious forces and tanks via LCAC or landing craft.
• Limited aircraft capability.
• Ability to carry approximately 10 to 12 MBTs and other vehicles.
• Accommodation and facilities for between 250 and 1,000 troops.
• Limited hospital facilities.

Naval Arms Race in Asia and the Mediterranean

It is obvious to see the benefits of the MRNP with their inherent flexibility, humanitarian support and power projection capabilities. Such vessels would be of benefit to any nation with an extensive maritime border. The benefits are obvious, but why are so many vessels now being built in such a short span of time? These naval building programs are being driven by geo-political developments in two main regions of the globe, the Mediterranean and the Asia-Pacific. This is in direct relation to the wars of regime-change and disruption in the Middle East and the U.S. “Pivot to Asia” and the disputes over contested areas in the East and South China Seas.

When identifying the driving cause, a common denominator is the hegemonic foreign policy of the United States. The wars of regime change that wrought chaos in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and now Yemen and Syria were all spearheaded by the United States and NATO. The result of these operations has been failed states and humanitarian catastrophe for those nations targeted. Syria has been laid waste by a Wahhabist invasion that was created by Saudi Arabia and their emirate allies in conjunction with the United States. The threat of direct military intervention in Syria by the United States in 2014, turned the Mediterranean into the largest possible naval battle ground in recent times.

Nations building/acquiring MRNPs in the Europe/Mediterranean:

France: 3

• 3 x Mistral Class LHDs built between 2004 and 2012.

Spain: 3

• 1 x Juan Carlos I Class LHD, 2 x Galicia Class LPDs built by Navantia recently acquired (2010 to present).

Russia: 2 (planned)

• 2 x Mistral Class LHDs built by France and sold to Egypt. Sold to Egypt in 2015. Now seeking 2 x LHDs of indigenous design and manufacture.

Turkey: 1

• Building 1 x LPD based on Juan Carlos I Class of Spanish shipbuilder Navantia starting 2015.

Egypt: 2

• Recent purchase of 2 x Mistral Class LHDs from France in 2015.

In East and Southeast Asia the reality of a resurgent China, a nation that can trace its civilization back for over five thousand years, has been met with open hostility on the part of the United States. Apparently, the U.S. government believes that China should be allowed to expand its economic power, but not its military ability or geo-political influence. In an attempt to hamper Chinese expansion in these areas, the United States has decided to aid China’s potential adversaries at every turn. Nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines, wary of any Chinese expansion in the South China Sea and with equal claims to islands and oils and gas fields there, have been on the receiving end of U.S. support and even military assistance.

Nations in Asia building/acquiring MRSVs:

India: 1 (of 4)

• Acquired 1 x Austin Class LPD from the U.S. in 2007. Plan to acquire a total of 4 x LPDs of a new design by 2020.

China: 4 (of 12)

• 4 x Type 071 Class LPD built between 2007 and 2015, with 2 more being constructed. Plans to build 6 x LHDs have been in the works since 2005.

Japan: 7

• 2 x Hyuga Class DDH and 2 x Izumi Class DDH built between 2006 and the present. 3 x Osumi Class LST built between 1998 and 2003.

South Korea: 1 (of 2)

• 2 x Dokdo Class Landing Platform Helicopter (LPH) built between 2007 and the present. The second in class planned to handle VSTOL strike aircraft. A newer LPX design is also in the planning stage.

Indonesia: 4

• 4 x Makassar Class LPD built between 2007 and 2011.

Philippines: 2 (of 4?)

• 2 x LPD being built on the Makassar Class pattern in Indonesia. Delivery planned between 2016 and 2017. The Philippine Navy may decide on a total complement of 4 such vessels.

United States: 30 (of 34)

• This includes 9 x San Antonio Class LPDs built of a planned 12 total vessels between 2006 and the present, as well as 1 x America Class LHA built of a planned 2 total vessels between 2015 and the present.

(It is important to note that the United States is building more new MRNPs than any other nation in this analysis by a wide margin. These new vessels will be added to the older class of LHDs and LSDs that were built and commissioned between 1985 and 2002.)

Geopolitical Flashpoints

There are a number of territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and a number of other nations. These disputes are ostensibly matters of exerting sovereignty over historical territories; however, the likely presence of oil and natural gas and highly prized fishing rights are of far greater importance. The same issues are at the root of the dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands.

The war in Syria that has claimed over 250,000 lives and devastated arguably the last secular nation in the Middle East, is another volatile geo-political flash point that has absorbed the efforts of most nations in the Middle East, Russia, the United States and many NATO member states. This is also a conflict centered determining what nations control the flow of oil and natural gas, in this case from the Middle East into Europe, as well as cornering that market as a whole.

The current conflict in Yemen started out as an internal one until Saudi Arabia decided to intervene on the side of the deposed Hadi administration. The Saudis refuse to allow a non-Sunni power friendly to Iran to exist in the region, especially one located on their rebellious southern border region. This conflict has continued to escalate, with numerous allies to Saudi Arabia engaging in airstrikes and naval shelling of the Houthi controlled areas of the country.

The Senkaku Islands

The sovereignty of the Senkaku Islands, known as the Daioyu Islands in China, has been in dispute for centuries. China claims that the islands were their territory centuries before they were illegally annexed by Japan at the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894. Japan asserts that the islands were ceded to Japan as part of the ceding of Taiwan “in perpetuity” at the conclusion of the war. Japan surrendered Taiwan to the Chinese Nationalists at the conclusion of World War II, who ended up retreating to the Island at the end of the Chinese Civil War and establishing the Republic of China.

The Senkaku Islands remained in limbo as far as their ownership was concerned, until the government of Japan reasserted sovereignty when they purchased three of the islands from a private Japanese citizen in 2012, effectively legally nationalizing them. China responded by creating a new air-defense identification zone over the islands the following year. Japan upped the ante by forming the Amphibious Preparatory Unit (APU) of 700 men (to be expanded to 3,000), a force of marines that could be dispatched by air or sea to respond to any attempts to occupy the islands. The two nations have sent military aircraft over the islands, and Chinese civilian and auxiliary/research vessels have spared with Japanese Coast Guard vessels in the islands’ waters. China sent an armed vessel to the waters of the Senkakus for the first time in late December of 2015, resulting in a formal diplomatic complaint from Japan.

Senkaku Islands detail

It is easy to see how Japan’s new DDHs and LSTs could be utilized in responding to further moves by the Chinese to exert their sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands. The new APU could be deployed to the islands in short order aboard either an Osumi class LST or Hyuga or Izumo class DDH acting as part of one of four Escort Fleet Flotillas. The large DDHs could be equipped with VSTOL F-35B in such a theoretical future conflict over the islands. China would likely use any number of the six Type 071 LPDs in a fleet of escorting warships to occupy the islands and force the issue. It is; however, unlikely that China would attempt to settle the issue militarily before the larger LHDs it has planned for the PLAN come into service in 2020.

South China Sea Disputes

A detailed explanation of the many interlaced territorial disputes in the South China Sea by all the nations involved is beyond the scope of this analysis. There are two main areas of contention: the sovereignty of the entire South China Sea and its legal status as an international waterway for purposes of uninhibited trade, and the sovereignty of particular island chains and shoals. It is theorized that a great deal of oil and natural gas are in abundance under the seabed in many of these disputed areas. Oil and gas exploration and drilling has been underway for a number of years now, most notably in waters south of Vietnam/north of Malaysia and in waters north of Brunei. In pressing its claims of sovereignty China went as far as anchoring an oil exploration rig within the EEZ of Vietnam in May of 2014. Vietnam has a conflicting claim to much of the South China Sea, including the Spratley and Paracel Islands. Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines also have disputed claims in the area .China has taken the unprecedented decision to construct man-made islands at three locations in the Spratly Islands as well as construction in the Paracel Islands and Scarborough Shoal.

China most likely started dredging and land reclamation on the first of three man-made islands in the Spratleys sometime in 2011 or 2012. Construction efforts have steadily picked up pace since 2014 and the small reefs and atolls have morphed into artificial islands of thousands of acres in size. China has been building airstrips and port facilities on Fiery Cross Reef, and both Subi and Mischief Reef are undergoing major reclamation. In addition, China is building a fuel depot on Woody Island in the Paracels. China has fought naval skirmishes with Vietnam over control of the Paracel Islands on two separate occasions, one in 1974 and another in 1988.  China has also constructed military outposts in Scarborough Shoal which is also claimed by the Philippines, the islands clearly located within that nations EEZ.

South China Sea conflicting claims

China submitted a formal claim to the United Nations to virtually the entire South China Sea in 2009, which was rejected by that body as it does not comply with established international law governing the establishment of territorial waters. All nations with conflicting claims protested, along with the United States and Indonesia who hold no claims. The building of artificial islands is obviously either an attempt by China to press their claim by occupying and utilizing these islands, or to militarily exert control over the South China Sea as their long term goal. In order to protect these holdings and to react to any threat from prospective adversaries, a navy equipped with LPDs and LHAs is essential. China undoubtedly had this in mind when it started building six LPDs of the Type071 class and designing the new LHAs. The new LHAs are comparable to the Canberra or Mistral class, but are said to be much larger in size, with a displacement approaching 40,000 tons.

The Philippine Navy has received military aid from both Australia and the United States in the face of greater Chinese resolve to solidify their claims. Australia has donated two fully refurbished Balikpapan Class heavy landing craft (LHC) to the Philippine Navy while the U.S. has announced plans to donate two vessels, a decommissioned USCG cutter and a research vessel. Two LPDs based on the Indonesian PT PAL built Makassar are already under construction and should be delivered between 2016 and 2017.

Makassar Class LPD Banda Aceh LPD593.

It is easy to imagine a future conflict in the South China Sea where all major parties to the conflict will benefit from utilizing newly acquired MRNPs. Vessels that can land marines or assault troops via landing craft or AAVs complete with armored support, combined with air assault elements and that can provide aircraft to provide ground attack and air superiority cover to the attack force are a tool that both China and those aligned with the United States in this dispute have decided they must have. Any asymmetrical warfare that might take place could be commanded and coordinated from LHAs or LPDs. Special forces can operate from these platforms with insertion and extraction by sea or air, with reconnaissance support from the advanced sensors and information systems onboard as well as from UAVs launched and recovered from their flight decks. If a military confrontation happens, whether a result of miscalculation or by design, these new vessels will likely play a large part. As the United States ratchets up pressure in continuous “freedom of navigation” missions with armed warships and strategic bomber forces, the Chinese will be forced to either respond in kind or back down. Hopefully, statesmanship and compromise will prevail.

Chinese Type 071 LPD underway

The War in Syria

The war that has raged in Syria for 5 years now has taken a decisive turn since Russia started its air campaign to aid the Syrian Arab Army in its fight to regain the initiative in the war and destroy the mostly foreign Wahhabist elements fighting the state on behalf of foreign interests. Russia is undoubtedly aiding a longtime ally in a time of desperate need, as well as ensuring its own defense in the long run. Russia has been fighting equally unsavory and illegitimate Wahhabist forces in its own Caucasus republics, and it is reasonable to believe that those forces fighting in Syria, if victorious would turn their sights north toward Russia. They would find willing allies in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE (all of which are funding and aiding the various terrorist groups fighting against the Syrian state) and Russia cannot allow this to come to pass.

A very defined delineation of adversaries has begun to emerge in this conflict in the form of three distinct blocks. One side is made up of those forces that aim to reestablish the legitimate sovereign state of Syria. They also aim to establish a mutually beneficial logistical route of oil and natural gas transport through their nations to the European market. These nations are Syria, Iraq, Iran and Russia. Russia, most importantly seeks to maintain balance.

On another side there are the nations that aim to overthrow the government of Syria and render the nation impotent and malleable to their wishes. They hope to be able to control the groups that they have armed and funded to overthrow the legitimate government in Syria, so that after the war they can leverage beneficial oil and natural gas transit contracts that will allow them to control the transport of oil and natural gas from the Middle East to Europe, while cutting out Iran and Iraq, and undercutting Russian prices. These nations are Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

The third side is comprised of nations that hope to continue the destabilization of the entire region to the detriment of Russia and Iran. They would rather see the Saudi alliance gain control of oil and natural gas transit to Europe than the Syria-Iraq-Iran alliance. This forces Russia and Iran to invest resources into fighting regional conflicts, while they continue to militarily surround them and fund internal forces to destabilize them. This side is composed of the United States and NATO.

The Case of the Russian Mistrals

Although the much hyped reason that France reneged on the contract to deliver two Mistral Class LHDs, theVladivostok and the Sevastopol, to Russia was the Russian “invasion” of the Ukraine and the “annexation” of the Crimea. Although the invasion and annexation were the fantasy creation of a concerted western media and White House propaganda campaign, they were just a convenient cover for the real reason that the Mistralscould not be delivered to Russia. The true reason was a very possible, and by September of 2015, real Russian intervention in Syria.

The United States and NATO, at times in coordination with the Saudi Arabia/Gulf emirate alliance, had been deeply invested in the overthrow of the Syrian government since the start of conflict in 2011. Turkey, also a member of NATO, is deeply involved in the conflict for a number of reasons, and due to its geographical location stands the most to lose from a Russian intervention. It became apparent when Russia responded to a very possible direct military intervention by the United States and NATO in 2013 by moving a large number of warships into the Mediterranean, that it wasn’t just the U.S. that had a red line that could not be crossed. Russia was ready for war, but fortunately Russia was able to broker a deal to exchange Syrian chemical weapons for de-escalation. The U.S. administration should have understood at this juncture that Russia would not allow the Syrian government to be overthrown by an unlawful military campaign. If Russia was to intervene as a collapse of the Syrian government seemed likely, the addition of two Mistral Class LHDs to their naval assets could not be tolerated.

Naval variant Ka-52 Alligator landing on Mistral Class LHD during trials

It is arguable that at least one of the Mistrals, the Vladivostok would be available to take part in Russia’s current operations in Syria. The crew had been training for over a year in preparation for its commissioning in 2014. This vessel would have been a great asset positioned off the Syrian coast, being able to respond to support the airbase in Lattakia or to deliver ground attack support and troop transportation along the entire Syrian coast. It could act as a powerful joint naval/land force command ship and could support aerial operations with a force of reconnaissance UAVs. If need be, Russian marines and Spetsnaz could also deploy from this floating base of operations. It would have been a force multiplier in the region, and would definitely have influenced any calculus on the part of Turkey. It could also have been position in the Black Sea or close to the Bosporus to influence the decision making of the Erdogan regime or to react to any Turkish provocations.

Russia is determined to acquire LHDs or LPDs for the Russian Navy. It has announced with the cancellation of the Mistral deal that it will be asking indigenous ship builders to provide the government with designs for a similar platform to meet the needs of the Ministry of Defense (MoD). It is interesting to note that Turkey signed a contract in May of 2015 with Navantia of Spain to build an LPD based on the Juan Carlos I LHD design. This is the same design that was used as the basis of the Royal Australian Navies newly commissioned HMAS Canberra and soon to be commissioned HMAS Adelaide. Apparently, Turkey will be receiving one of these modern power projection vessels before Russia does. Russia lost a valuable head start when they decided to trust France to honor a basic contract. Apparently two centuries of peaceful relations between the two nations after the defeat of Napoleon mean little to the French leadership of today.

The Yemen Conflict and the Indian Ocean

It appeared, with the overthrow of an illegitimate ruler who gained office in an election where there was only one candidate that Yemen was moving towards stability, after a period of civil war and terrorism. Not long after the forces of the Houthi and Saleh aligned factions forced the Saudi aligned Abd Radduh Mansur Hadi to flee the country in February of 2015, the Saudi Arabian Airforce started bombing the impoverished country. It was clear that Saudi Arabia would not tolerate a predominantly Shia Houthi movement that shares good relations with Iran to take control of the nation that is on their disputed southern border. A coalition of nations under the leadership of Saudi Arabia has since been formed partly due to Saudi inability to prevail militarily and partly to add an air of legitimacy to the illegal Saudi invasion. The Houthis have been able to hold roughly a third of the country, with the other two thirds are controlled by the Hadi government and Ansar-al Sharia and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). It is interesting to note that the Saudi-proxy terrorist groups have flourished in Yemen since Saudi Arabia started their campaign.

It was announced in September of 2015, that the two Mistral Class LHDs that were denied to Russia were purchased by Egypt. Egypt is a member of the Arab League sanctioned coalition that is engaged in the conflict in Yemen and currently has air and naval assets engaged. It remains to be seen if the conflict will see the use of the two LHDs at some future date. With the Saudi led coalition making little headway in the conflict, even with the aid of terrorist bombings by their allies in Ansar al-Sharia and AQAP, there may be time remaining to the Egyptian Navy to take delivery of the vessels, train the vessel crew and Ka-52 air crews and add these powerful vessels to the naval assets already engaged in the conflict.

It is important to note that the entire Indian Ocean is growing in strategic importance in light of developments over the past three decades. India is positioned between a volatile Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa to the west and a traditional enemy in Pakistan and an ever increasingly assertive China to the east. India has wisely responded by modernizing its aircraft carrier force with the acquisition of a Soviet Era Kiev Class aircraft carrier, which was heavily modified and commissioned into the Indian Navy as the INS Vikramaditya in 2013. The INS Viraat, a former British Centaur Class aircraft carrier HMS Hermes, is also in service, but is slated to be replaced by the indigenously designed and built INS Vikrant by 2018. INS Vikrant will commence sea trials this coming year. The Indian Navy has called for proposals for its Multirole Support Vessel (MRSV) project, and has specified an LHD design of between 20,000 and 27,000 ton displacement. It appears that Navantia is the leading contender to win the contract; however the DCNS designed Mistral 140 concept, at a much smaller displacement of 14,000 tons may be a contender.

Conclusions

The world is currently faced with a number of regional conflicts that could easily and regrettably become conflicts of global proportion. Nations as small and as economically limited as the Philippines to the military juggernaut that is the United States, have moved in recent years to acquire vessels that allow them flexibility, power projection capability, and asymmetrical warfare options in an ever increasingly complex geo-political landscape. From the Middle East to East and Southeast Asia to the Indian Ocean, the world is challenged by conflicts that defy international law regardless of the claims of the perpetrators. All of these conflicts have been decades in the making.

As the nations on every side of these conflicts plan their strategy, both diplomatically and militarily, one fact stands out loud and clear. They have all either acquired or are in the process of acquiring multirole naval platforms such as the LHD,LPD,LHA or DDH to empower their navies and to provide more options to diplomats, military planners and warfighters to stay one step ahead in an ever changing geo-political landscape. These vessels are not game-changers on their own, but when employed as a component of a modern naval force, they provide an added power projection capability and a host of options to naval strategic planners. They are a force multiplier in 21st century naval warfare.

It remains to be seen how the current conflicts and disputes will be resolved by all of the assorted stakeholders. The fact that these vessels are being added to the naval inventories of many of the real or potential belligerents of these conflicts and disputes carries the probability that they will be used in the future. All we can do is hope that their inherent power and capabilities will work as a deterrent to conflict and war, and that they will one day be looked on in awe as a tool ultimately left sheathed, while intimidatingly ensuring peace.

Brian Kalman is a management professional in the marine transportation industry. He was an officer in the US Navy for eleven years. He currently resides and works in the Caribbean.

Igor Pejic graduated Political Science Foreign Affairs Department at the Faculty of Political Science and now he is a postgraduate student on the MA Terrorism, Security and Organised Crime at the University of Belgrade, Serbia.

Part 1 of 3. Read part 2 and part 3.

Despite the end of NATO combat operations in December 2014, US drones continued to launch strikes in Afghanistan throughout 2015 as part of its (ahem) non-combat mission. British drones departed Afghanistan for the Middle-East with Adrian Chiles giving us an inside view of RAF Waddington, home of British drone operations. Meanwhile, in a classic example of having your cake and eating it, defence companies are now unashamedly marketing anti-drone devices to protect us from the drones that they are selling. With all the money sloshing around the industry, it’s perhaps no wonder that the ASTRAEA programme was denied further government funding.

2015 saw the publication of a number of excellent new books examining the technology, politics and ethics of the growing use of armed drones.  Also expanding are the number of US drone bases around the globe, with Africa being a particular focus (recent reports also suggest Suffolk in the UK is to be the site of a new US drone operations centre). Pakistan surprisingly joined the armed drone users club in 2015 with its Burraq drone launching strikes in North Waziristan.  Less surprising perhaps is the fact that despite all the media hype, Britain’s Brimstone missile has yet to be integrated onto British drones.

Civilian casualties from drone and air strikes in Iraq and Syria are mostly invisible in mainstream media reports, yet casualty recorders like Airwars report they are growing week by week. The use of civilian contractors to maintain US military drone programs came under the spotlight in a TBIJ investigation this year – and is likely to increase with the push to increase Combat Air Patrols.  In the UK, project Claire  (CiviL Airspace Integration for RPAS in Europe) took a worrying step forward with the first flight of a military drone in unsegregated civil airspace.

More British drones deployed to the Middle East for operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria at the beginning of the year. Despite calls for greater openness and transparency, the number of British drones in use against ISIS is officially asecret (but Shhh! the Defence Secretary seemed to have forgot when he told the French press that all ten are in operation).  David Cameron committed to again double the UK’s armed drone fleet (after doubling the number in operation in 2014) as part of the strategic defence and security review.  David Davis took over as Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones and initiated an important debate around the use of drones for targeted killing. The UK’s Cross Government Working Group on drones promised a public dialogue on drones which so far at least, has been neither public nor a dialogue.

The debate on whether the growing use of armed drones is an effective means of creating peace and security continued throughout the year with the rancorous TV debate between Glen Greenwald and Christine Fair being an extreme example. A US government report meanwhile found that the use of Reaper drones by US Homeland Security to protect US borders had been largely ineffective.  Enrique Iglesias needed surgery on his hand after grabbing a drone during a concert in May, one of numerous reports of injuries from civil drones.  At the end of the year Germany announced that it was taking over the leadership of the European combat drone development programme.

Funding for drone development and operations seems limitless despite on-going spending cuts in the UK and the US.  Leaders from different faith communities spoke out against the use of drones for targeted killing with leaders writing a joint letter to President Obama and Congressional leaders.  Despite the ‘pinpoint precision’ of drone strikes, there have been a number of reported friendly firedeaths from strikes in Iraq during 2015.  Meanwhile the organisers of theFarnborough air show are keen to have a Reaper or Global Hawk drone take part in the flying display next year to “help people get comfortable with the idea” of drones.  Chances of either the drones flying, or the public being comforted, are slim to non-existent.

A new report from Corporate Watch detailed the impact of Israeli drones in Gaza – an issue that gets little attention from most drone watchers – while Israeli security services began to use surveillance drones to monitor protests in the West Bank.  We learnt this year that RAF pilots are lent as a ‘gift of services’ to the USAF in order to operate US armed drones, while leaked documents suggested GCHQ also gifting intelligence to the US for its drone strikes.  Google’s attempts to steal Amazon’s thunder ended in tears as its massive solar-powered drone crashed shortly after take-off.

The USAF’s main drone training centre, Holloman AFB in New Mexico, is to undergoing a dramatic expansion in 2016 to match the ever expanded need for drone pilots.  21-year old British hacker Junaid Hussain was killed in a US drone strike in Syria in August 2015, one of ten Britons killed in such strikes according to TBIJ figures.  After president Obama apologised and promised an investigation into the deaths of two western hostages in a US drone strike, a coalition of human rights groups urged the same treatment for all civilian victims of US drone strikes.

The city that never sleeps? Well, this Christmas eve New York is defying that moniker.

Although the metropolis may awaken after midnight, it’s presently deserted. Park and Fifth Avenues twinkle on through the evening while their residents abandon streets and highways, malls and markets, parks and bike lanes to join family and friends indoors, even on this warm winter night. Up and down the wide avenues of Manhattan millions of miniature lights still sparkle, embracing tree trunks and reaching through invisible, naked branches. Dazzling decorations that lured shoppers are now but shadows behind dimmed window panes. Curbside parking space is plentiful; taxi drivers have burrowed their cars in suburban garages; fruit vendors, the only merchants in sight, are shuttering their vans.

I pass Symphony Space with its marquee in darkness. Starbucks at 95th is lifeless; although I see lights on atMcDonalds on 96th.  Their coffee maker is off; and those employees chatting inside must be waiting to be paid their bonus. (Does McD give Christmas bonuses?). One working mother guarding McD’s door against any new customers unapologetically announces that she’s heading home early today.

Forget any last minute stocking stuffer, a bottle of perfume, chocolates, or wine. Shoppers had their chance; now workers deserve some respite. Do I detect an uncharacteristic respect for workers’ family needs this night? “We’re closed”, whispers a silent Wall Street. For one evening and a day, this mercilessly capitalist center succumbs to ‘tradition’, if not religious conviction.

I don’t remember New York streets as vacant like at 9 pm today. Broadway in lockdown! South Asian cooks in masala bars, Japanese sushi roll wrappers, and Afghan taxi drivers all bend to America’s Christmas (if not Christian) tradition and depart for distant lodgings. No quick pickups from cheap Chinese fast food joints or the Halal shawarma street-carts tonight.

After finishing my radio special after 7 o’clock, I head towards Brooklyn’s Schermerhorn subway station. The streets have emptied. Seeing a handsome brightly lit store selling fresh produce, juices, and organic cereals, I step inside for some bulgar wheat—$8.00. a pound!– but I’m unlikely to find it anywhere else tonight. Four attendants hover in the aisles with no one to serve. (Are they too awaiting their yearend bonus?)

At least the A train to Manhattan is still running and I board a near empty car. Beside me, a groggy fellow, in laborer’s clothes is either drugged or he drank too much at his company party; he teeters beside me all the way out of Brooklyn, then finally stretches himself out over five empty seats as we tunnel towards Manhattan. Three other passengers across from me emit the ambience that identifies ‘tourist’ to any native New Yorker. They’re conversing in French, as are two casually dressed men seated nearby. I spot a young woman an orange hijab browsing through her phone: intense, but not French.

That’s it. What a reversal of mood since I traveled on this very route only 6 hours earlier! Then, subway platforms on the A-Line were not only jammed with commuters; they thrummed with seasonal music proffered by a variety of ‘holiday’ entertainers who know we’re especially generous these days. A cacophony of sound behind me stirs my curiosity and, walking along the platform, I find its source– a man plucking a guitar and stomping his tambourine-wrapped foot while mouthing some unrecognizable tune. Awful. Yet a surprising number of people stop to photograph his pitiful drama. The man’s disharmony is surely a ploy to draw us to his ‘stage’, a presentation as crude as his music and unarguably below NYC’s street-music standards.

There in front of him, and us, five foot-high dolls are perched, each dressed in a colorful bra and skirt. Electrically animated by the man’s vigorous foot slapping, they shake and shimmy, while on a shelf above them, three furry toys– a rabbit, a bear and a monkey– twirl. “Oh look!” squeals a young mother, parking her baby in its stroller. Calling two older children towards the display, the enthusiastically snaps a photo. (Her daughters are less impressed.) Meanwhile passing travelers drop dollar bills into a bowl at the man’s elbow. Others raise their phone cameras towards the makeshift stage, then move on.

I step into the next train to join workers and shoppers heading to Brooklyn. The train car is crowded but four tall men somehow make their way among us, three wearing red Santa caps, followed by one shaking a small brown bag at us. The singers start with “Jingle Bells”, then shift to “Silent Night” in the genre of African American gospel music. I can’t find any singles when I reach into my purse, but the fellow handling the quartet’s ‘donations’ rushes to assist me. Seeing my $10. note, he smiles: “I can give you change”, and reaches into his own sack to help me out. Am I to announce my contribution, divided by four, to the whole train? The carolers, waiting, are into a second verse of Silent Night. An awkward moment.  How can I ask for change? So I drop my tenner into the proffered bag forthwith and murmur a blessing to his “Merry Christmas” thankyou.

News of the death of prominent anti-Assad commander (or ‘terrorist,’ ‘rebel,’ ‘opposition commander,’ etc.) Zahran Alloush has the potential to radically alter the nature of the war in Syria. 

Considering Alloush and other senior members of the leadership of the Salafist militant group Jaish al-Islam were killed in a major airstrike carried out by the Syrian air force, there is undoubtedly going to be a transformation on the ground as initiative on the battlefield, particularly in Southern Syria, shifts still further to the Syrian Arab Army and its allies.

With Alloush out of the picture and, based on reports coming from sources inside the opposition, significant disarray at the uppermost echelons of leadership of the barely cohesive “Islamic Army,” it seems clear that the Syrian government is likely to move in to reestablish control of Douma, Ghouta, and other rebel-held suburbs of Damascus.

However, while many international observers lament the loss of this “iron-fisted leader” less than a month ahead of planned peace talks set to take place in late January 2016, nearly all analyses of this development have failed (deliberately omitted?) to elucidate just what the rebel groups under his command were doing in Ghouta and Douma, the nature of the ongoing war within the war between the Syrian military and the factions in control of these key suburbs, and the propaganda about the key strategic corridor and the events that have taken place there, including the infamous “Douma market attack” of August 2015 (which I debunked here).

By examining the wealth of information about Alloush, his ideology, his organization, and their activities in the rebel stronghold suburbs of Damascus, it becomes clear that the airstrike that ultimately killed him and many of his Salafist comrades did far more than simply kill a leader of an important rebel group.  Rather, this was a monumental, and perhaps mortal, blow to an entire segment of the rebel-terrorist coalition fighting against the Syrian government and people.

Zahran Alloush: Reality vs Perception

In the days since Alloush’s death there have been, rather predictably, numerous articles written about the assassination, nearly all of which portray Alloush as something of a ‘moderate,’ a man who by the sheer force of his personality and will led an armed faction which stood as “defenders of the true revolution” in their steadfast opposition to both Assad and the Islamic State.  One could be forgiven for thinking that Alloush was a patriot doing his part to defend Syria from the Islamic State and the brutal dictator^TM rather than a vicious Salafist who committed countless war crimes against the Syrian people, among others.

Take for instance the New York Times, writing just hours after the assassination was announced:

Mr. Alloush led the Army of Islam, a group that had recently agreed to participate in a political process seeking to end the five-year-old conflict…Analysts said the strikes were in keeping with longstanding efforts by the Syrian government and its allies to eliminate groups claiming to occupy a middle ground between Mr. Assad and the Islamic State. The efforts are part of a broader objective to improve Mr. Assad’s standing among Western governments, which despise him but also see the Islamic State as an increasing menace.

Consider the implication of the phrase “groups claiming to occupy a middle ground between Mr. Assad and the Islamic State.”  While this is classic corporate media faux-objectivity, the reality is that this is cleverly constructed misinformation designed to validate and legitimize an absolutely discredited notion, namely that there is a significant difference between the ideology of Alloush’s organization and that of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).  Indeed, the NYT here is unsurprisingly bolstering official Washington’s line that the US must support “moderate opposition” which, in the subtext of that phrase, is everyone who is not ISIS/ISIL.  But real experts on Syria recognize that this is merely political window-dressing, that in fact the difference between Jaish al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate), and the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is just words; these organizations compete for influence and control, but do not truly differ ideologically.

Joshua Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on Syria, suffers no such delusions about Alloush.  In December 2013, Landis wrote:

Zahran Alloush’s rhetoric and propaganda videos provide much insight into his world view, attitude toward Syria’s religious minorities, and vision for Syria’s future. The difference between his ideology and that of al-Qaida groups is not profound. Rather, it is one of shades of grey. [The video linked in the article] is an anti-Shiite tirade and “bring-back-the-Umayyad-Empire” propaganda piece. It shows how sectarian Alloush is. He refers to Shiites, and reduces the Nusayris into this grouping, as “Majous”, or crypto-Iranians…  Here it is an Islamic term of abuse meant to suggest that Alawites and Iranians not only have the wrong religion but also the wrong ethnicity—they are not Arabs, but crypto-Iranians…[This] demonstrates how demonized the Alawites are in the propaganda of the new Islamic Front.  Zahran calls for cleansing Damascus of all Shiites and Nusayris… On hearing this sort of talk from the leaders of the revolution, Alawites and other non-Sunni sects worry that their struggle is a fight for their very existence [emphasis added].

This video and the language of Alloush demonstrates [sic] how difficult it is to draw a clear line between the ideology of the Islamic Front and that of the al-Qaida groups [emphasis added]. They both embrace foreign jihadists and encourage them to come Syria to join the fight. They both call for the resurrection of an Islamic Empire and they both look back to the Golden Age of Islam for the principles upon which the new state will be founded. Their political philosophy and blue print for the future is largely based on a similar reading of Islamic history and the Qur’an.

Some analysts try to draw a clear line between al-Qaida and the Islamic Front, insisting that the former support changing Syria’s borders and seek to establish a Caliphate while the latter are Syrian Nationalists. Unfortunately, this distinction is not evident in their rhetoric. Both idealize Islamic Empire, both reject democracy and embrace what they call shari’a, both welcome jihadists from the “Islamic Umma,” both fly the black flag of Islam rather than the Syrian flag as their predominant emblem. The Islamic Front is dominated by Syrians who do have clear parochial interests, whereas ISIS is run by an Iraqi. Foreigners play a dominate role in its command, but this is not so with the Islamic Front. All the same, their ideologies overlap in significant ways.

Landis, well known as a fierce critic of Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian Government, here removes the mask from Alloush and quickly debunks and thoroughly discredits any attempts to manufacture moderation in the figure of Alloush.  Far from being one of the mythical “moderates” that Obama & Co. are always prattling on about, Alloush is unmistakably a jihadist of the first order, one whose ideology, as Landis correctly noted, is not at all different from that of Al Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL.  Indeed, this is only further confirmed in this video where, as Landis points out, Alloush:

“goes to some lengths to explain that his relationship with Nusra [al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria] is one of brotherhood with only superficial ideological differences that can be settled with shari’a and discussions. This supports my argument that the ideological differences between the Front and al-Qaida are not deep.”

Of course, rhetorical flourishes aside, the question of actual crimes committed by Alloush and his jihadi comrades is critical to examine.  In late 2014 and early 2015, Alloush commanded Jaish al-Islam to fire rockets indiscriminately onto Damascus, a blatant war crime.  Many Syrians were killed in these attacks.   It is important to note that while the pro-rebel media outlets would make an equivalence between such attacks and the infamous “barrel bombs” of the Syrian Arab Army, the reality is that these are simply not comparable.  The aerial offensives carried out by Syria’s air force have targeted rebel strongholds with clear military and strategic targets, while the Jaish al-Islam rocket attacks were fired at civilians without any specific targeting.  This is not to say one has to sanction the SAA’s tactics, just to understand the difference between them and those used by the rebels.

Whether one wants to use this to absolve Assad and the Government of blame or not, the inescapable fact is that bombardment by the military was never indiscriminate.  By contrast, the purpose of Alloush’s bombardment of Damascus was solely to inflict terror on the population of Syria’s capital, and to take revenge for attacks carried out by the Syrian armed forces.  Charles Lister, a vehemently anti-Assad analyst with the Brookings Doha Center, noted in a tweet that referenced an announcement by Alloush via twitter, that “Jaish al-Islam has begun a massive mortar & Grad rocket attack on central #Damascus, to ‘cleanse the capital.’”  Indeed, the use of the word “cleanse” is instructive as it illustrates the attitude and ideology of Alloush as it is practiced on the battlefield.  His desire to ethnically cleanse Syria was never mere rhetoric.  Any way you slice it, Alloush and Jaish al-Islam committed this act that constitutes a war crime.

Interestingly, Alloush’s ideological and rhetorical brotherhood with the Nusra Front translated into on-the-ground collaboration, particularly at the infamous massacre in the Damascus suburb of Adra.  While pseudo-alternative media propagandists such as James Miller at The Intercept callously claimed that no massacre occurred at Adra, instead claiming that RT and other non-Western media that reported it were simply spreading disinformation, Miller and his ilk’s attempts to cover up what truly happened fell flat.

Award-winning journalist Patrick Cockburn, writing in the UK Independent on February 9, 2014, painted a chilling portrait of the horrors of the Mhala family and others in Adra.  Cockburn wrote:

Accounts of what happened to the rest of the population of Adra are confused. I spoke to some of the 5,000 refugees who had been allowed to leave by Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic Front on 30 December and some of whom are now squatting in a giant cement factory. They said the jihadis had ordered them to their basements and had kept them there. The number singled out for execution is put at between 32 and 80. There are accounts of the doctor in the local clinic, a Christian known locally as Dr George, being decapitated. Bakery workers who resisted their machinery being taken away were roasted in their own oven. Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic Front fighters went from house to house with a list of names and none of those taken away then has been [sic] since. This includes the head of the legal department at the Information Ministry who disappeared with his wife and daughter and whose phone is now being answered by a man saying he belongs to Jabat al-Nusra.

It is critical to note the close collaboration here between Nusra and the Islamic Front, the coalition in which Alloush’s Jaish al-Islam is a founding member and plays a central role.   A resident of Adra, the wife of a doctor in town, explained that,

“The armed men were non-Syrians. We lived terrible days, before we could escape with only the clothes that we wore…We woke up at dawn with the sound of bullets… we saw men carrying black flags of Jaish al-Islam and Jabhat al-Nusra. Some of them were singing ‘Alawites we have come to cut off your heads’ song, and this was the song they first sang at the start of the war in Idlib.”

Such egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity are par for the course for Jaish al-Islam.  In early November 2015, just weeks before Alloush was finally killed, Jaish al-Islam made international headlines after parading caged civilians through the streets of Ghouta, with cages of women being placed atop the organization’s headquarters and other key buildings to act as human shields against possible Syrian or Russian airstrikes.

According to the corporate media’s own darling, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (the one-man anti-Assad operation run by Rami Abdel Rahman which has become the primary source for much of the western media’s reporting on Syria), Jaish al-Islam “spread cages over several areas and squares in the Eastern Ghouta putting inside them regime forces’ officers, soldiers and their families.”   Despite the attempt by SOHR to soft-peddle the war crime by characterizing the victims as “regime forces and their families,” the obvious barbarity of such an act is not lost on any genuine political observer.  Such actions certainly go a long way toward debunking the spurious assertion that Alloush and Jaish al-Islam (or Alloush’s original group Liwa al-Islam) are anything that could be described as “moderate.”

Their terrorist credentials are further bolstered by the dastardly role they played in the chemical weapons attack, and subsequent attempts to derail the dismantling of the chemical weapons stockpile by the Syrian Government.  Even if one were to dispute the very provocative alleged video evidence (here, here, and here with excellent, balanced analysis here) of Alloush’s Liwa al-Islam (his organization before consolidation as Jaish al-Islam) there are clear and unmistakable connections between Alloush and the entire chemical weapons saga in Syria.

According to military and strategic analyst, and retired Brigadier General, Ali Maqsoud, the Liwa al-Islam forces arrayed in Jobar included “the so-called ‘Chemical Weapons Front’ led by Zahran Alloush [the supreme leader of Liwaa al-Islam]. That group possesses primitive chemical weapons smuggled from al-Qaida in Iraq to Jobar, in the vicinity of Damascus…[they used]rockets [which] were manufactured domestically to carry chemicals. They were launched from an area controlled by Liwaa al-Islam.”

Maqsoud’s analysis was substantiated by a comprehensive report released in January 2014 (more than four months after the incident), by former UN weapons inspector Richard Lloyd and Prof. Theodore Postol of MIT which effectively debunked the claims of the US government (along with Human Rights Watch and a number of other organizations) that the Syrian military carried out the attack.  The Lloyd/Postol report showed definitively that US intelligence and conclusions regarding the incident were grossly inaccurate. The report, entitled Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013, notes that:

The Syrian improvised chemical munitions that were used in the August 21 nerve agent attack in Damascus have a range of about 2km…[The evidence] indicates that these munitions could not possibly have been fired at East Ghouta from the ‘heart’, or from the eastern edge, of the Syrian Government-controlled area shown in the intelligence map published by the White House on August 30, 2013…The UN independent assessment of the range of the chemical munitions is in exact agreement with our finding.

In other words, Lloyd and Postol confirmed with their findings that the chemical attack of August 21, 2013, which almost led to a direct US military intervention, was carried out from area controlled by Alloush and Liwa al-Islam.  This is further substantiated in Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh’s infamous April 2014 exposé The Red Line and the Rat Line which noted that:

The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons… Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing…[which] drew on classified intelligence from numerous agencies: ‘Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,’ it said, ‘were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large-scale production effort in Syria.’

Naturally, this must be seen in connection with the now well established fact that Alloush is essentially an agent of Saudi Arabia.  Without funding and support from Riyadh, Alloush’s organization would never have even gotten off the ground at the outbreak of the war in Syria in early 2011. Christof Lehmann of nsnbc wrote in October 2013 that:

Several commanders of al-Qaeda brigades in Syria have stated that Zahran Alloush receives his orders directly from Saudi Intelligence. Russian diplomatic sources stated… that people of many different political observances have provided information to Russian diplomats.  Statements to the effect that Zahran Alloush receives his orders directly from the Saudi Intelligence are corroborated by the fact that both Alloush and the Liwa-al-Islam are financed by the Saudi Interior Ministry. The group was literally established with Saudi money after Alloush was released from prison in 2011 [just weeks before the first unrest in Syria began].  According to international law, this fact alone is sufficient to designate Alloush and the Liwa-al-Islam as Saudi mercenaries.

There was an obvious direct line between Riyadh and Ghouta with Alloush and his organization.  That line has now been permanently severed with his death and those of other key figures of the organization.  This will have major implications for the future of the war in Syria, especially with the beginning of a peace process coming at the end of January 2016, less than four weeks from the time of publication.

Part Two of this article will focus on the implications of Alloush’s elimination for the future of this war.  How will this major setback for the rebel/terrorist factions impact any negotiations?  How will it affect the military situation on the ground?  The article will also attempt to place into a broader narrative the “war within the war” between the Syrian military and the Alloush-led rebel groups in the Damascus suburbs.

For now, one thing is certain: this assassination marks a major turning point in this bloody, nearly five year old war.

In last week’s review of the Russian military intervention in Syria I wrote that Kerry had lost every single negotiation he ever had with the Russians and that he had a record of agreeing to A only to come back to the US and then declare non-A. This time again, the Americans did not change their modus operandi, except that it was Obama himself who declared, yet again, that Assad must go, resulting in some commentators speaking of a “White House Schizophrenia”. Others, however, noted that this could be simply a case of face saving denials. Personally, I think that both of these explanations are correct.

There is no doubt that Obama is an exceptionally weak, and even clueless, President. The man has proven to have no vision, no understanding of international relations, his culture is minimal while his arrogance appears to be infinite – he is all about form over substance. This is the ideal mix to win a Presidential election in the USA, but once in the White House this is also a recipe for disaster.

When such a non-entity is placed at the top of the Executive branch of government, the different part of government do not get a clear message of what the policy is and, as a result, they each begin doing their own thing without worrying too much about what the POTUS has to say. The recent article by Sy Hersh “Military to Military” is a good illustration of that phenomenon. Being weak and lacking vision (or even understanding) Obama’s main concern is conceal his limitations and he therefore falls back on the oldest of political tricks: he tells his audience whatever it wants to hear. Exactly the sames goes for Kerry too. Both of these man will say one thing to the Russian rulers or during an interview with a Russian journalist, and the exact opposite to an American reporter. That kind of “schizophrenia” is perfectly normal, especially in the USA.

Christmas celebration in the streets of Latakia, Syria. Credit: The Saker.

To use the expression coined by Chris Hedges, the USA is an “Empire of Illusion”. The US society has an apparently infinite tolerance for the fake as long as the fake looks vaguely similar to the real thing. This is true on all levels, ranging from the food Americans eat, to the way they entertain themselves, to the politicians they elect and to the putative invincibility of the armed forces their taxes pay for. It is all one gigantic lie, but who cares as long as it is a fun, emotionally reassuring lie. In the Syrian context, this ability to ignore reality results in the support of terrorism in the name democracy, the conduct of an “anti-Daesh” campaign which results in Daesh dramatically increase its territory, the accusation that Assad used chemical weapons and now the “Assad can stay but he must go” policy. This ability to completely decouple rhetoric and reality can sometimes have a positive side-effect. For example, even if this week saw a Zag! From the US Administration in terms of rhetoric, this does not necessarily mean that the USA will continue to attempt to overthrow Assad. The opposite is also true, however. The fact that the US has said that Assad can stay in no way implies that the US will stop trying to overthrow him.

The bottom line is this: yes, there was definitely a Zag! this week, but only time will tell how much of a zag we are dealing with.

In this context I highly recommend the recent article by Alexander Mercouris entitled “Russian diplomacy achieved a trio of Security Council Resolutions over the last month which give Russia a decisive advantage” in which he explains how Russia has achieved victory after victory at the UN Security Council. What is important here is that with each of these Russian-sponsored Resolutions the number of available options for the USA are gradually reduced.

Another factor also reducing the US options are all the tactical successes of the Syrian military whose progress is slow, but steady. The intensive pace of Russian airstrikes is having an effect on Daesh and the Syrians are slowly advancing on all fronts. There has been no Daesh collapse yet, but if the Syrians continue to advance as they have done so far their offensive will eventually reach a critical point when the quantity of their small (tactical) victories will end up triggering a qualitative (operational) reaction and Daesh will begin to collapse. Of course, the Daesh fighters will have the option of finding safety in Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and elsewhere, but the psychological impact of a Daesh defeat in Syria will be huge.

So far there are no signs of a possible Turkish invasion of northern Syria, no signs that anybody is still thinking about imposing a no-fly zone, and besides the murder of Samir Kuntar in an Israeli airstrike (which I discussed here), it appears that the S-400s are achieving the desired deterrent effect.

In other words, while US leaders have their heads stuck deep up into their own delusions, the events on the ground are slowly but steadily reinforcing the Russian position and vindicating Russia’s stance.

In the meantime, the Syrian Christians who follow the Gregorian Calendar are celebrating Christmas in the streets of Latakia in a clear sign that a multi-confessional Syria still exists and has a future.

The year 2015 will be remembered as a year of expanding global warfare and militarism. It began with discussions of the possibility of “total war” against Russia over the Ukraine crisis, saw new provocations against China in the South China Sea, and draws to a close amid the escalation of the US and European war in Iraq and Syria and the spread of conflict to Yemen, Libya and other parts of Africa.

The imperialist powers are determined to make 2016 an even bloodier and more dangerous year. Germany and Japan are openly remilitarizing, as their governments seek to whitewash and rationalize the crimes of the World War II era. All of the imperialist powers have seized on the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino to place their populations and economies on a war footing.

The most dangerous factor is the US drive for global domination. The United States has its hands in virtually every country, employing drone assassinations, Special Forces operations and a network of military bases and agreements aimed at establishing unchallenged military domination over the planet, along with cyberspace and outer space.

More plans are afoot. Washington is preparing to expand its global basing system through the addition of a “larger network envisioned by the Pentagon,” which will include at least four new Special Forces hubs and numerous new “spoke” bases, according to a New York Times article published Monday.

The commando network will be centered on Eurasia and Africa but will be global in scope, according to Pentagon officials. Among the new bases will be a permanent establishment in Afghanistan, which will function as “a hub for Special Operations troops and intelligence operatives throughout Central and South Asia.”

The record of the US special units, which have emerged as the spearhead of the so-called “war on terror” since 2001, makes clear the murderous nature of the escalating commando war. US Special Forces have been granted a general license to carry out violence and mayhem in every part of the world with total disregard for international law. Thousands of US commandos are already operating in between 85 and 130 countries worldwide, according to varying estimates by US media sources.

The enlarged Special Forces network is only one element of a broader strategic escalation by Washington. US weapons manufacturers are collaborating with the government to channel an expanding war chest of arms to allied governments and proxy forces, with American weapons sales surging in recent years. In 2014, total US arms sales jumped by $10 billion to a total of $35 billion, giving US corporations control over 50 percent of the world weapons market, according to a congressional report released last week.

The intensified drive for a redivision affects every region of the world.

Europe

Washington is pre-positioning military equipment and deploying conventional forces and military “advisors” and trainers throughout Europe in preparation for war against Russia.

The US Army plans to double the number of tanks it has deployed to Europe, sending another full armored brigade to the continent, accompanied by infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons as well as an additional full Army division dedicated to joint operations with NATO and European militaries.

In Ukraine, US Army forces are training five battalions of active-duty forces and US Special Forces are partnering with the Ukrainian military to develop Ukraine commando units.

Asia Pacific

South Korea, a country that has been tapped to serve as a staging area for US war preparations against China, was the leading importer of US arms in 2014, purchasing nearly $8 billion worth of American-made weaponry.

In December, the Obama administration approved the sale of $1.8 billion worth of weapons to Taiwan, including warships previously used by the US Navy and several advanced missile systems. The sale was the first weapons transfer to Taiwan in years and was clearly intended as a provocation against Beijing.

In the Pacific, the US Army’s “Pacific Pathways” program is coordinating joint operations with Asia-Pacific militaries. In the course of 2015, the program saw the US conduct joint drills with units from Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Mongolia, South Korea and Thailand.

Middle East

Leading purchasers of US weapons in 2014 included the ultra-reactionary regimes of Saudi Arabia, which purchased $4 billion worth of TOW missiles, and Qatar, which purchased $9.8 billion worth of US arms. Qatar has been a major backer of Islamist forces in Syria in the US-backed civil war against Assad.

The US has spearheaded a new imperialist carve-up of the entire region, with Britain, France and Germany piling into the wars in Iraq and Syria toward the end of 2015 and Saudi Arabia leading a US-backed war in Yemen.

Africa

Total arms sales to Africa—particularly in the oil-rich regions—increased by 50 percent between 2010 and 2014 over the previous five-year period. Cameroon and Nigeria, which are collaborating with the growing US intervention in West Africa in the name of the “fight against Boko Haram,” were among the leading importers of weapons. Preparations are underway to relaunch military operations in Libya, already devastated by the US-NATO war that overthrew and murdered Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Cyber and outer space

Even cyberspace and outer space are not exempt from the US-led militarization drive. In November, the US was one of only four countries to vote against a United Nations resolution, “No First Placement of Weapons in Outer Space,” which was supported by more than 120 member states. In a presentation earlier this year, US Undersecretary of Defense Robert Work outlined Pentagon plans to deploy a range of space weapons, which Work claimed are necessary to ensure military dominance over Russia.

***

The experience of the Obama administration has underscored the impossibility of opposing imperialist war outside of a struggle against the capitalist system and all of its political representatives. Having won office in 2008 as an antiwar candidate, presenting himself as an opponent of the war in Iraq and an antidote to the militarism of the Bush administration, President Obama has presided over an escalation of the war in Afghanistan, wars for regime change in Libya and Syria, and a new war in Iraq.

Obama’s talk about ending the war in Afghanistan has been exposed by his decision to keep thousands of US troops in the country and the plans to establish permanent US bases there. All of his pledges of “no ground troops” or “boots on the ground” in Iraq and Syria have been exposed as lies.

The divisions that exist within the US ruling elite and the state over foreign and military policy concern the focus and methods of US efforts to dominate the territory and resources of the world, with the Obama White House arguing for a concentration on the struggle against China and his opponents demanding a larger commitment of troops and weapons to turn the Middle East into a de facto US colony. But there is no “peace faction” within the corporate and political establishment, or either of the two big-business parties.

One side of the global crisis is the slide toward a new world war. The other is the development of revolutionary struggles by the working class. Vast resources are allocated to destruction and war, while growing sections of the US population are pushed into poverty and forced to struggle for basic necessities such as housing, education, nutrition and health care.

The struggle against war can be conducted only on the basis of the independent mobilization of the working class in the US and internationally against imperialism on the basis of a socialist and internationalist revolutionary program.

Hilary Wainwright and Leo Panitch in conversation with Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the UK Labour Party. They talk about the meaning of ‘new politics’, Tony Benn’s legacy, and opening up Labour’s policymaking to the people.

Hilary Wainwright is a member of Red Pepper‘s editorial collective and a fellow of the Transnational Institute. Leo Panitch is distinguished research professor at York University, Canada. This interview was conducted on a train ride from Birmingham to London, 12 November 2015.

Leo Panitch (LP): Your remarkable campaign for the leadership not only doubled the party membership but galvanized some 400,000 people overall to associate with the party. This is frankly unheard of anywhere in terms of party mobilization on the left in recent decades. What do you think this reflects about the possibilities for a new politics, not only in Britain but more broadly – especially in Europe?

Jeremy Corbyn (JC): I think our campaign excited people who were very depressed by the election result and very depressed by the analysis that was being offered at the end of it, which was essentially that Labour wasn’t managerial enough and we had to be better managers in order to do better in the future. I only really got on the ballot paper because of a combination of people – from those who just absolutely wanted an alternative to be put, to those who thought that there ought to be a democratic debate in the party. This kicked off the social media campaign that encouraged others to get involved.

We finally made it into the ballot – which required 35 MPs to sign on to a nomination – with one vote to spare and one minute to go. Then at the hustings where the party leadership debates were held, the point of view I put got quite a good reception. And as we started organizing fringe meetings around them, the campaign suddenly took off. The first one was Nottingham, where we organized a meeting in a room for 100, and 300 turned up. From then on they just grew and so by the end of July, beginning of August, we were getting 1,000 people at every rally we organized. Most of them were filled up with one day’s notice. One place, we filled a hall for 1,500 with only four hours of notice on Facebook.

LP: Is it your sense that the same type of thing is happening elsewhere?

JC: Yes. Because this wasn’t anything to do with me. This was to do with people wanting a different way of doing politics – particularly the young people who came in and were very enthusiastic. Our campaign was a combination of the young and the old, very little in between, the middle-aged weren’t there. They were either under 30 or over 60, most of the people that came in to work on the campaign, and the phone-banking they did was quite extraordinary. There was one of them where I witnessed this 18-year-old Asian girl with a burka explaining to a 90-year-old white woman how to operate the mobile phone to make calls, and they were both getting on just fine. And it was kind of lovely.

We had 400 people on a phone bank one night. It was quite extraordinary. I’m not sure how much phoning they did – they did a great deal of chatting to each other. Most of our funding was raised by crowd-funding, small donations, the average donation was £25, and we got union money in. So about half of it was union-funded and the other half was fundraised.

Hilary Wainwright (HW): What was it exactly that you were tapping in public consciousness?

JC: The basis of the campaign was anti-austerity – that was the whole basis of it.

HW: And the appeal for the ‘new politics’, the new way of organizing politics – how do you see the connections between these two themes?

JC: Oh, they’re two sides of the same coin. Austerity is essentially making the social systems of all of Europe pay for the banking crisis, and with this comes a popular sense of either resignation or anger. So the idea that there is an alternative, that we can do things differently, is very important. That is why we have had the most unremitting attacks on me from day one of the campaign. Some of it is so bizarre it’s funny.

LP: Worse than what Tony Benn experienced?

JC: Hard to tell, different time, different age. It feels bad at times, although I just never respond to any of it, whereas Tony tried to at times and I think that’s a mistake. I mean, I don’t blame him for it. At that time, those days, I was with Tony in responding to all this. But if you respond to these kind of ludicrous personal attacks you then end up in a swamp or a trench with these people.

I’ll give you an example… I was accused of not bowing properly to the queen. I decided I wouldn’t respond. Had I responded, the debate would have been about at what angle one should bow. And by now, five days on from it [at the time of this interview], anyone who hadn’t followed the story closely would say, why is the leader of the Labour Party engaged in a public debate about how one should bow to the queen? They’d think, is that all he’s interested in? I’m about to lose my house and he, the leader of the Labour Party, has got nothing to say about that. So I just took the view from the very beginning that I’m not responding to any of it.

HW: That links to a question I was going to put, which was that you have this reputation that’s sometimes symbolized – for example in Steve Bell’s cartoons in the Guardian by you facing Darth Vader in Star Wars – or as the wise wizard in Harry Potter. You appear fearless. Have you always been fearless, is it something that comes from your family and background – or is it something you’ve gradually, intuitively learned or cultivated through your experiences, your 30 years as an MP? When you’ve been taking on powerful interests, diving in at the deep end every day as an MP, have you ever been fearful?

JC: There’s two points here, really. One is that I have this 18th century religious view that there is some good in everybody. Sometimes you have to search quite hard for it. Sometimes it’s very hard to find and you wonder if it really is there. Secondly, because I’ve never had any higher education of any sort, I’ve never held in awe those who have had it or have a sense of superiority over those who don’t. Life is life. Some of the wisest people you meet are sweeping our streets.

A friend of mine, a building worker – he sadly died, committed suicide last year, I was very sad about that and I’m very sad I wasn’t there for him at the time – whose house was very simple, lots of reused this and reused that, and somebody said to him: “Jim, why do you live like this?” He said, very wise, he said: “I live simply, that others might simply live.” And you think, hang on, that’s actually very profound. So you’ve got to have a bit of respect for people. I do have a respect for people and I actually, genuinely enjoy meeting the wide variety of people I do. My constituency has probably about 70 different languages spoken within it, people from all over the world. There’s the great, there’s the good and there’s lots of people who have been in the prison system. They’re all there.

What is fundamental is the attitude with which you approach people, it’s an attitude toward your environment, your attitude toward other people. Interestingly, the first leader of the Labour Party, Keir Hardie, who was a more thoughtful man than he’s often given credit for, was much more bothered about education and opportunities for women than about nationalisation.

LP: It’s interesting in that connection that before you were elected in 1983, you were already associated with the attempt to change the Labour Party’s old statist and parliamentarist politics. Tony Benn had articulated very well in the 1970s the notion that the real problem is not about more state or less state, it’s about a different kind of state and, above all, a much more democratic British state that would be capable of introducing a cooperative, egalitarian and democratic economy. He would be so proud of you for having achieved what he wanted so badly – to be the Labour Party leader committed to this.

JC: I wish he was still here. I knew Tony very, very well for a very long time. The difference between Tony and me was that whereas he was one of those very unusual politicians who was actually very successful in a conventional career pattern, I have been monumentally unsuccessful in the conventional career pattern.

The first time I met Tony was 1969-70 period, when he was reflecting on his experiences as a cabinet minister in the 60s. What was interesting about him then was that, whereas most of the cabinet ministers reflecting on the experience talked about the ministerial car, the mendacity of the opposition, and how they were going to win again, Tony had quite different and more interesting personal reflections on what he had done or not done.

LP: Yes, and on the basis of such reflections, he wrote a Fabian pamphlet in 1970 called The New Politics: A Socialist Reconnaissance, in which he surveyed all the anti-authoritarian social movements in the late ‘60s – black power, women’s movement, anti-Vietnam War – and said, we need to bring that spirit into the party, that’s what we’re missing.

JC: I remember those discussions with him, and then I worked very closely with him in the mid-70s on industrial democracy. Sometimes he was idealistically too excited. He’d sort of say: “Yes, it’s all going to happen now.”

LP: You were quoted in Tony’s diaries as saying that you attributed the defeat in the 1983 election to “the great incompetence of the party machine.” So what I want to ask you is, did you mean this in the sense of its incapacity to project the promise of the new politics you shared with Tony beyond the active party membership – and does this remain the case today?

JC: I honestly can’t remember saying that but I can imagine the thought-processes I was having, which was that the party in ’83 presented a very interesting electoral platform but lots of people in the party were quite frightened of it, and the Tories were running essentially a fairly xenophobic election surrounding the Falklands war which we never challenged. We also were faced with the SDP being set up by those leading Labour parliamentarians who left the Labour Party at that time, so it was a very interesting period. I felt the party didn’t really understand what was happening.

LP: But what about the incompetence of the machine?

JC: In some cases just the actual organization on the ground was very poor.

LP: Are you worried about this now?

JC: No, not at all. The party now is in a very different place. The ground operation, as we call it, in the General Election was actually very good.

LP: Was it?

JC: Oh, yeah. We had more people active than many I can remember. I went to quite a lot of constituencies, key constituencies. And the membership is now much bigger, it’s double what it was. What I am worried about now is that the party needs to reach out and involve a wider range of people. That’s my main message.

I’ve just been speaking in Birmingham, to a very big Unite shop stewards’ conference. I said actually every one of you in this room is an expert, every one of you has an opinion, every one of you has optimism, every one of you has hopes. I want a party structure and a union structure that allows your intelligence to come forward and be part of our policy-making. So we don’t go through to 2020 where I, as the leader, go away and write a manifesto. We go through to 2020 where its patently obvious to everyone in the country what our manifesto is going to be – on housing, on health, on jobs, all those things – because everybody’s had a part in it. So the need is to reach, to widen our organization to make us a community-based party.

LP: And you think the party’s regional organizers know how to do this?

JC: Well, it’s not so much do organizers know how to do it – do we all know how to do it? I’m not an expert on this but I’ll try. We’re going to try various experiments in how we reach out and how we involve people, how we use social media, how we use digital tools to share ideas and knowledge. The idea is that we have a community conference on policy in which some people are there, some people are on Skype, some people are on a livestream feed, some people are sending in emails, whatever. All saying something, because they’ve all got something to say.

It’s reaching out to people and understanding that what we couldn’t do in ’83 was win parts of the national media because the story was written by the Radio 4 Today programme and The Sun. Radio 4 Today is still there and it’s influential, The Sun is still there and it’s influential, but they’re both much less influential than they were.

I do this weekly YouTube video, the lowest viewing figures we’ve had have been 400,000, the highest we’ve had is over a million. That’s the numbers of people who want to watch it. So, we’re doing all of that, and I’m spending a lot of time as well travelling around on trains, like this.

HW: This links in to what we’ve done to prepare this interview. Inspired by your approach to Prime Minister’s Question Time in the House of Commons, we’ve asked people what questions they want us to ask you.

JC: Dave from Witney, what’s his question?

HW: Well, Dave from Witney did not come up with anything, but Tim, from Barking, has a question about democratization of the state: he asks what your views are on a federal UK, given that new politics and democratization surely involve sharing power?

JC: Yeah, I’m glad that question has come up because of the problems that have arisen out of the UK being such a highly centralized state. It is changing, because Scotland is obviously very different now – as government in Scotland is devolved, it now has tax-raising powers which they may or may not want to use. But whatever the outcome in Scotland – whether independence or otherwise – England is still not decentralized at all. [Secretary of State] George Osborne is offering city-devolution to some places – over which I have some concerns because it is devolution to big cities and it doesn’t necessarily include adequate funding of the services that have been devolved. So you could end up with a form of devolution that doesn’t include any kind of financial autonomy or alternative source of income. You negotiate every year on limited funding with a central government which relies on you running even more services on its behalf.

The other end of the scale is the total federal model that Germany has, with not only the very powerful ‘Lander’ levels of regional governments but also very powerful cities and a relatively weak federal state. I think there is a very interesting debate on federal models to be had here. I don’t want us to go into government in 2020 saying simply that we are going to think about it. So I’ve asked Jon Trickett to set up a constitutional convention, which he’s doing – it’s under way now. It is looking at powers of government, powers of parliament, powers of the House of Lords, an elected second chamber. Then issues of rights and accountability in society, bill of rights kind of thing – protecting the Human Rights Act but moving on from that, of course, to how you sort English regional government.

Because there are no effective regional voices it means there is a disproportionate level of capital investment in London and the south-east compared to the north-west and north-east, for example. The East Midlands actually does the worst of every region. I put some ideas together on this during the leadership campaign as one of our consultative papers. I did 13 consultative papers on lots of different stuff. They are on the Jeremy4Leader website. Look at those and you’ll see some ideas there. All of those are open to comment. The difficulty we have at the moment is simply the capacity we have to respond to all this, because of the volume of stuff we’re getting in.

LP: And to raise the stakes even higher, what about democratizing European institutions?

JC: Well, European institutions – I want us to approach the European referendum on the basis of demands for a social Europe, demands for workers’ rights across Europe, demands for environmental protection across Europe, and turn it into a debate about: do you want a free market Europe that controls people or do you want a Europe where the people control the market? Essentially advancing that kind of alternative.

Now I’m not sure how far we’ve got with that debate, there’s a long way to go. I’m having a lot of discussion with a lot of union people on this at the moment. Our problem is simply the capacity to respond to everything. After only two or three weeks in office we discovered we had a backlog of a hundred thousand emails sent to me. We had a backlog of a thousand invitations to speak at places all over the country, and all over the world for that matter. We started from scratch with our office, so just the sheer management of issues off this is huge. It’s now much better, it’s getting better. We’ve got more staff in place, a better team in place, it’s growing but it is quite difficult.

Also I’m quite concerned that if I spend time in the office someone will always find something for you to do. There’s always a crisis that needs your urgent attention. If I wasn’t there, either the crisis wouldn’t happen or it wouldn’t need your urgent attention. But the fact I’m there means that it becomes my problem, not somebody else’s. So I’m quite assertive about the need to ensure I go travelling round the country. I’m doing basically three days travelling every week. So we’re going everywhere. I did over a hundred events during the leadership campaign and by the end of the year I will probably have done 400 to 500 public meetings.

HW: How do you organize the input you get through those meetings?

JC: That’s the hard part. That is the hard part. It can’t all reside in my brain – it’s not capable of retaining all this information. That is actually the problem area, how we deal with all this. And so, when we’ve finally got the rest of the team in place, we’re going to look at much more interactive websites and interactive ideas. A lot of it is depending on computers and social media. You couldn’t do this without computers and social media.

I think back to the Tony Benn deputy leadership campaign in 1981. I think of the miners’ strike in 1984. I think back to the industrial democracy movement in the early 1970s. All of which I was very involved with, but they would have been so much more successful and so much better if we’d had better forms of communication. We had to write letters to everybody, and spent a lot of time licking stamps.

HW: This leads into another question concerned with the party. It’s from Thomas Barlow: his question is how are you going to open up the party – both the party apparatus and the Parliamentary Party – to democratic inputs and participation in policy-making? And I might add, how far could your own Islington North constituency party be a participatory model for the rest of the party?

JC: There’s no perfect model, but what I say to anyone active in the party is that we’ve recruited 200,000 new members, but please don’t take them to the branch meetings. You get to your average branch meeting and you’re discussing the minutes of the last meeting but one, it’s not necessarily very attractive. My constituency party is not perfect but we have a very large membership. We’ve got 3,300 members in my CLP and 2,000 registered supporters. So we’ve got 5,000 people and the Labour vote is 30,000 – so one in six of the Labour vote are members of the party.

HW: So how do you involve them?

JC: We have thought a lot about how we conduct meetings. Our normal monthly meeting has a guest speaker, a discussion, a report from me and then after an hour and three quarters, we do the business in 20 minutes.

LP: So have you sent this out to other CLPs, to the regional organizers?

JC: This is where it’s going. We’ve organized a very interesting national executive ‘away day’ where I’ll be presenting ideas on this.

LP: This isn’t widely known…

JC: It will be, don’t worry. The word will get out there and one day the BBC will mention it.

HW: Maybe you could do a little film of sort of your local party in action showing what meetings could be like…

JC: Yeah, but the whole thing should not be personal around me…

HW: Then, moving on beyond the personal, how far could this model influence the Parliamentary Labour Party – so the issue is less whether MPs will be reselected as candidates for the next election by each of their constituency parties, but more that they face local parties that are so full of energy and capacity that they can’t resist the new politics agenda by clinging to the old politics.

JC: Abraham Lincoln had a point when he said: “With charity to all and malice toward none, we go forward.”

LP: Are there red lines you won’t cross, apropos of this?

JC: Yeah, I mean, my views on nuclear weapons are very well known. My views on social justice are very well known. My problem is all my views are extremely well known on everything. To be fair, you get a lot of noise from a small number of members of the Parliamentary Labour Party. But there’s a much larger group that are actually very interested – very interested in who has joined the party, very interested in the fact that their membership has doubled. Some are nervous, some are concerned, some are excited. We’re all humans. We have to try and understand people. My natural, default position is to work with somebody, not against them. It does make my life quite busy.

HW: So this relates to another crowdsourced question which is from Finn Smith, who is asking how you envisage changing the present political culture? He says that you’re “respected because you’re humble, modest and caring but you’re up against a dominant narrative of personal gain, competition, private entrepreneurship. How do we change the mentality of this neoliberal sort of narrative?”

“Is socialism just about state power, state control, state ownership and so on, or is socialism about a state of mind of people.”

JC: Well it’s about the psychology of our society. It’s exactly where we started. Is socialism just about state power, state control, state ownership and so on, or is socialism about a state of mind of people. I think the response across Europe to the humanitarian crisis of Syrian refugees is very interesting. The Hungarian government are not very nice people, and very nasty toward asylum seekers and refugees. But when those poor Syrians were trying to walk through Hungary to get to Austria, ordinary people came out and gave them clothes and water. They could’ve been throwing rubbish at them. They could’ve been attacking them. They weren’t. There is a basic humanity toward other people.

Of course, you have to unlock this when young people are brought up to understand their history and their culture largely in terms of consumerism, competition and self-advancement. So my absolute passion is that, starting with pre-school facilities, the emphasis should be on schools as places of social interaction, where people learn to play together, and where they are asked, is the advance of a community the ability of somebody to get very rich at the expense of others; or is the advance of the community when there is nobody homeless, nobody unemployed, nobody sleeping rough? We have to insist it is only about ‘getting ahead’ if we all get ahead.

Somebody said to me “you don’t speak for aspiration.” So I said, “Oh yeah I do, I’ve got a real aspiration.” And he said: “Okay, so what’s that?” And I said: “Everybody to have a house.”

HW: What about how to appeal to UKIP voters. Does it require redefining patriotism?

JC: No, it just requires reaching out and saying, well actually, the housing shortage is created by not enough houses, the doctors shortage is created by not enough doctors, the limits on school places by not enough schools. Stop blaming people. Look to ourselves how we solve it.

LP: So, it sounds like you are actually enjoying yourself in this new leadership position?

JC: Yeah, of course I am.

LP: Seriously?

JC: Yeah, I was pushed into this, but I’m happy I was.

HW: Are there any surprises? I mean, is it as you expected? Or are there things that are different, for good or ill?

JC: I feel constantly concerned that I’m spending all this time doing everything involved in all my leadership activity and sometimes I feel a tear between that and my responsibilities to the community that I represent. So I have a weekly fight over the schedule set out in my diary. That’s where I do get quite assertive, because I insist on spending time with those people and groups I always have represented even while now also travelling across the country – and also I make sure that I have time for myself. Half a day, or a day a week, so I can dig my allotment.

HW: OK, just one final question. You are known for your exemplary lack of sectarianism. You work with whoever is on board for the cause. You worked with the Greens, for example, in Stop the War, on anti-austerity platforms and so on. Now people are worried – and this is reflected in the crowdsourced questions – about the party’s electoral approach to the Greens, and in particular whether the Labour Party should stand down in the next election from challenging their leader, Caroline Lucas, in the Brighton constituency she is MP for. How does a non-sectarian ethic extend to that level as a party leader?

JC: That’s tomorrow’s problem, that’s not today’s. We’ve got to build the ideas, then develop the movement, and then we’ll see. Today is what we’ve achieved so far. •

This interview is jointly published with Red Pepper and Jacobin.

It is 70 years since large parts of Europe lay in ruins. Great power aspirations, nationalism and fascism made the continent the focus of two world wars, which together claimed nearly 100 million victims. Now, these same tendencies are spreading once again.

Everywhere in Europe, the ruling elites are moving sharply to the right. They are boosting military spending, taking part in the imperialist wars in the Middle East and Africa, sealing up borders and inciting xenophobic sentiments against refugees. They are developing authoritarian forms of rule and building up a police state in order to suppress growing social tensions.

After the attacks in Paris, the Socialist Party government imposed a state of emergency for three months, stationed thousands of soldiers on the streets and deployed the military’s only aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf to bomb Syria. The beneficiary of this policy has been the right-wing National Front, which became the strongest party in the first round of the recent regional elections.

In Hungary and Poland, governments openly profess their admiration for the authoritarian regimes of the 1920s and 1930s.

In Germany, leading politicians and academics demand that the country again take on the role of a “hegemon” and “disciplinarian” in Europe and aspire to be a major power in the world, as if the crimes of the Nazi regime never happened. The austerity policies that Berlin has imposed on the economically weaker EU members for years have aggravated social and political tensions throughout Europe.

Even the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who otherwise is a political follower of the German chancellor, criticized Angela Merkel in the Financial Times this week for pushing economic policies that are fanning the flames of populism and damaging incumbent governments across the continent—and are based on double standards favoring Germany and hurting Italy. Governments in Warsaw, Athens, Lisbon and Madrid had lost their jobs because they followed the policy of fiscal discipline without true growth, Renzi complained.

Numerous recent comments in the media focus on the potential break-up of the EU under the pressure of growing contradictions and tensions.

Reuters correspondent Paul Taylor writes under the headline “Europe’s year from hell may presage worse to come”: “The crises of 2015 have threatened to tear the Union apart and left it battered, bruised, despondent and littered with new barriers.”

EU Parliament President Martin Schulz warned in Die Welt that no one can say “if the EU will exist in this way in a decade”. The alternative, he writes, is “a Europe of nationalism, a Europe of borders and walls. That would be devastating, because such a Europe has led our continent in the past repeatedly into disaster.”

An editorial in the Süddeutsche Zeitung even demands a “Plan B” in the event that the EU breaks apart. The main danger comes less from Greece and the refugee crisis or an exit of Britain than from “neo-nationalism”, the newspaper states.

While these and other comments warn of a break-up of the EU and the possible consequences, they do not answer the question of why nationalism and militarism are flaring up again in Europe. Indeed, they do not even pose the question.

Contrary to the claims of official propaganda, the EU has never overcome the conflicts that made Europe the center of two world wars. The EU does not unite the peoples of Europe, but has always been a weapon of the most powerful economic and financial interests against the working class at home and international rivals abroad. It is a hotbed of nationalism, inequality, dictatorship and war.

The EU is living proof that it is impossible to unite the continent on a capitalist basis. The defence of capitalist private property and the free movement of capital and profits, which are the focus of the EU treaties, inevitably have the consequence that the most powerful corporations in the EU set the tone and the strongest states impose their will on the weaker. Instead of alleviating national and social contradictions, the EU exacerbates them to the extreme.

The enlargement of the EU into Eastern Europe a decade ago did not bring democracy and prosperity. The new members have served the major European corporations as a source of cheap labor. Their welfare programs are being destroyed, wages kept low and unemployment high, while a small corrupt elite enjoy prosperity.

The EU, and especially Germany, took advantage of the financial crisis of 2008 to dictate unprecedented social cuts in the name of fiscal consolidation. In Greece, which was made an example, the average standard of living declined by 40 percent in a few years.

The EU and its members have responded to the growing social tensions with militarism and increased repression. The real or supposed danger of terrorist attacks have served as a pretext for further anti-democratic measures.

With the refugee crisis, the consequences of imperialist wars in the Middle East and North Africa have returned to Europe. The refugee issue has further polarized Europe. While large sections of the population react with solidarity, the ruling circles have unleashed a furious campaign against refugees, building up border fences and fighting each other.

The dangers arising from the break-up of the EU are very real. New wars and dictatorships, even within Europe, loom. This danger cannot be prevented by defending the EU, but only in a relentless struggle against it and the capitalist system upon which it is predicated.

The only way to unite Europe in the interests of its peoples, to use its vast resources in the interest of all and to prevent further wars, is through the United Socialist States of Europe. Only the independent mobilization of the European working class on the basis of a socialist programme can halt the impending disaster.

Peter Schwarz

Aparentemente, o ano de 2015 marca o início da revolução no interior do FMI. Primeiro, se aprovou a inclusão do yuan, a moeda chinesa, entre os DEG, a cesta de divisas criada em 1969 para servir de suplemento das reservas oficiais dos países-membros. Agora, graças à aprovação do Congresso dos Estados Unidos, o FMI poderá implementar finalmente a reforma do sistema de quotas de representação, com o qual a China e outras potências emergentes ganharão peso na tomada de decisões, enquanto os países do continente europeu perderão relevância. Não obstante, ainda é prematuro concluir que se trata de uma transformação radical na correlação de forças dentro do FMI: os Estados Unidos continuarão mantendo seu poder de veto.

Os Estados Unidos parecem ter compreendido que para conservar sua liderança global é impossível desconhecer o crescente protagonismo da China e outras potências emergentes, e que é preciso compartilhar responsabilidades na gestão das finanças internacionais. Por isso Washington não teve outra alternativa senão outorgar importantes concessões aos seus adversários através do Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI).

Na última semana de novembro, o FMI adotou a decisão de incorporar o yuan nos Direitos Especiais de Giro (DEG, sigla traduzida do nome em inglês ‘Special Drawing Rights’), a lista de divisas criada nos Anos 60 para complementar as reservas oficiais dos seus membros. Embora vários funcionários estadunidenses do Fundo tenham tentado se opor à medida desde um princípio, no final Pequim se comprometeu a seguir avançando na liberalização do seu setor financeiro.

Até agora, o Banco Popular da China já assinou cerca de quarenta acordos bilaterais de permuta de divisas (‘currency swaps’). Este ano, os bancos centrais do Suriname, África do Sul e Chile começaram a promover o abandono do dólar entre as empresas dos seus países. Aos poucos, o yuan vai suplantando a moeda norte-americana nos intercâmbios comerciais do gigante asiático.

Essa estratégia permite que o yuan seja hoje a segunda moeda mais utilizada no financiamento comercial, e a quarta nos pagamentos transfronteiriços, segundo os dados da Sociedade de Telecomunicações Financeiras Interbancárias Mundiais (SWIFT, por suas siglas em inglês). E, mais cedo que tarde, a moeda chinesa será plenamente conversível, ou seja, intercambiada livremente no mercado, sem nenhum tipo de restrição.

Assim, os dirigentes do Partido Comunista da China conseguiram acabar com as suspeitas da diretora executiva do FMI, Christine Lagarde: a partir do dia 1º de outubro de 2016, o yuan se tornará a terceira divisa mais relevante na composição dos DEG. A “moeda do povo” (‘renminbi’) terá um peso maior dentro da lista do FMI que o yen japonês e a libra esterlina, embora ainda deva se manter abaixo do dólar e do euro.

No dia 18 de dezembro, o Congresso dos Estados Unidos deu luz verde para que o FMI implemente a reforma do sistema de quotas de representação. Sem dúvidas, é a mudança mais importante dentro do FMI desde 1944, o ano em que se construíram os acordos de Bretton Woods. O novo sistema de quotas significa um grande respiro para o Fundo em termos de legitimidade.

Depois do colapso econômico de 2008, ficou evidenciado que o FMI não contava com os recursos suficientes para encarar às crises de liquidez. Nenhum país soberano tinha intenções de solicitar ajuda. O FMI se desprestigiou por completo após sua atuação nas crises de dívida na América Latina e no Sudeste asiático: havia demostrado que operava como o braço armado do Departamento do Tesouro dos Estados Unidos, e não como um fundo multilateral encarregado de estabilizar as balanças de pagamentos dos seus aderentes.

Por isso, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, diretor do FMI entre 2007 e 2011, convenceu os países emergentes a realizar novos depósitos em troca de incrementar suas quotas. O Diretório Executivo do FMI aceitou a proposta em 2010, durante a XIV Revisão Geral das quotas.

Logo depois, foi apresentada a iniciativa de reforma, diante da Junta de Governadores (integrada por todos os membros), para se submeter à aprovação dos parlamentos nacionais. Então, o governo dos Estados Unidos fez valer seu poder de veto – para uma decisão ser adotada pelo Fundo precisa de uma maioria de 85% da votação, e os Estados Unidos sozinho conta com 16,7% dos votos.

Porém, há alguns dias, após cinco anos de fervente oposição do Congresso norte-americano, a inércia finalmente se rompeu. A reforma do sistema de quotas será uma realidade. Os recursos à disposição do FMI se duplicarão, elevando-se a 659,67 bilhões de dólares. Vale destacar que a quota que se entrega a um país determina o nível máximo dos seus compromissos financeiros com o FMI, e o seu número de votos na instituição, sendo um fator determinante no acesso ao financiamento.

O avanço mais importante é o da China, cujo direito de voto passará de 3,8% a 6%, com o qual, será o terceiro país com mais poder, atrás somente dos Estados Unidos e do Japão. O Brasil subiu quatro posições, enquanto Índia e Rússia entraram na lista dos dez mais influentes. Por outra parte, a participação da Europa caiu. Com exceção à quota da Espanha, que passará de 1,68% a 2%, Alemanha, França, Itália e Reino Unido diminuirão sua participação.

“As reformas incrementam significativamente os principais recursos do FMI e nos permitem dar uma resposta mais eficaz às crises, e ao mesmo tempo melhoram la estrutura de governo institucional, ao refletir melhor o crescente papel que desempenham os países emergentes e em desenvolvimento, e a dinâmica da economia mundial”, disse Lagarde num comunicado à imprensa.

Contudo, lamentavelmente, os Estados Unidos conservará seu poder de veto: seu direito de voto diminuirá dois décimos, de 16,7% para 16,5%. Até agora, tudo parece indicar que os dirigentes de Pequim não desejam confrontar a dominação dos Estados Unidos no FMI, instituição que há mais de setenta anos se mantém como o “prestamista de última instância” mais importante na escala mundial, tendo em conta o volume de recursos que maneja.

A disputa entre China e Estados Unidos é somente tangencial. Pequim busca incrementar sua influência financeira através dos seus poderosos bancos estatais (Banco de Desenvolvimento da China, ICBC, Banco da China, etc.), e através dos bancos regionais de desenvolvimento nos que participa: o Banco Asiático de Investimentos em Infraestrutura (AIIB, por sua sigla em inglês), o Banco da Organização de Cooperação de Shanghai (SCO, por sua sigla em inglês) e o banco dos BRICS (que reúne Brasil, Rússia, Índia, China e África do Sul).

Tanto na Ásia-Pacífico quanto na África e na América Latina e no Caribe não há dúvida de que a China compete cara a cara com o Banco Mundial e os bancos regionais de desenvolvimento respaldados por Washington (Banco Asiático de Desenvolvimento, Banco Africano de Desenvolvimento, Banco Interamericano de Desenvolvimento, etc.) no financiamento de projetos de infraestrutura e extração de matérias-primas (‘commodities’).

Entretanto, os mecanismos de cooperação financeira impulsados por Pequim que oferecem liquidez aos países em conjunturas críticas, tais como a Iniciativa Chiang Mai (integrada por China, Japão, Coreia do Sul e dez economias da ASEAN) e o Acordo de Reservas de Contingência dos BRICS (também conhecido como o “mini-FMI”), possuem escassos recursos monetários, operam em dólares, e dependem do aval do FMI para outorgar empréstimos a partir de certo limite.

Portanto, se bem é uma excelente notícia para o mundo que China e outros países com elevadas taxas de crescimento do Produto Interno Bruto (PIB) consigam ver incrementada sua participação no FMI, com dois postos a mais entre os vinte e quatro do Diretório Executivo, os Estados Unidos continuarão exercendo uma dominação esmagadora.

Se Washington não concordar com algum mínimo detalhe poderá rechaçar qualquer proposta dos países emergentes, graças ao poder de veto. É claro que em algum momento, a China deverá exercer pressão para evitar que um só país escreva as regras do jogo, mas até lá dará tempo ao tempo…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Tradução do espanhol : Victor Farinelli.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez : Economista formado pela Universidade Nacional Autônoma do México.

Gracias a las redes sociales y los cables desclasificados por Wikileaks, es que la población mundial sabe hoy que cuando los movimientos populares ponen en entredicho la presencia hegemónica de Washington y el lobby pro-Israel en sus países de origen, entonces muy posiblemente se convertirán en víctimas de la intervención foránea.

El modus operandi imperialista consiste en financiar y entrenar guerrillas internas y grupos rebeldes locales que, a través de  la insurrección armada, la violación de los derechos humanos y el ataque a organizaciones y grupos con vocación democrática, consigue destituir los liderazgos locales y, de paso, atemorizar a la población para que sea ésta quien clame por la intervención occidental.

Entre estos grupos armados se encuentra Daesh (ISIS en inglés), secta fundamentalista sunita que es liderada por el yihadista Abubaker al Bagdadi desde el año 2010, y que busca consagrar el califato mundial. La ortodoxia de esta minoritaria organización militar autoriza el castigo y el exterminio de todos los infieles que no comulguen con la interpretación literal del Corán.

De esta manera, entre los “infieles” no solamente se encuentran todos aquellos que se niegan a alabar a Alá (las principales víctimas del mal denominado “Estado Islámico”), sino los más de dos billones de musulmanes chiítas o sunitas que entienden al Islam como lo que es: una religión absolutamente pacifista.

Su entrenamiento, que se remonta a la guerra afgano-soviética (1978-1992), ha sido similar al que recibieron grupos militares latinoamericanos bajo la denominada “Doctrina del shock”  promovida desde la Escuela de las Américas, que ejercía la tortura a sangre fría a quienes osaran apoyar a los gobiernos populares en las décadas de 1970 y 1980.

Esta organización mercenaria prefabricada ha recibido una instrucción militar brutal por parte de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia (CIA, por sus siglas en inglés), el MOSSAD y el M-16 que, al despojarlos de su condición humana, les permite perpetrar atrocidades bélicas contra todos los “infieles”.

Fundamentalmente, en contra de quienes están más cerca: el pueblo sirio y su gobernante chiíta, Bashar al-Assad, confirmado por el electorado nacional como Presidente de Siria en los años 2000, 2007 y 2014.  Esta guerra civil mantiene a la población atemorizada y luchando desesperadamente por exiliarse en algún país de Occidente.

Cabe destacar que para concretar las acciones bélicas de Daesh no sólo se requiere instrucción, sino también financiamiento. El derribo del avión ruso Su-24 por parte de Turquía ha develado un torrente de información suministrado por el Gobierno ruso y sus aliados sobre las estrechas relaciones entre el Daesh y la Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte (OTAN), organización en la que Israel y Turquía juegan un rol clave.

Los pozos de petróleo incautados al gobierno sirio de Bashar al-Assad y a los campos petrolíferos iraquíes de la región de Mosul por ISIS, son explotados y su crudo es enviado a Turquía en caravanas de  camiones-cisterna. Una vez en los puertos de Beirut y Ceyhan, el hidrocarburo es vendido a países de Asia y el Medio Oriente, principalmente a Israel, a través de la naviera BMZ Group Denizcilik, entidad de la cual Bilal Erdogan, hijo del actual presidente turco Recep Tayip Erdogan, es propietario mayoritario con casi un 30% de participación.

Esta compra de petróleo a Daesh permite el flujo millonario de dinero que es destinado a financiar la insurgencia y los atentados perpetrados por los yihadistas. Es así como se puede comprender entonces por qué ISIS nunca ha atacado Israel, Turquía, Arabia Saudita, Dubai, Bahrein, Estados Unidos o Qatar.

¿Quiénes resultan beneficiados de las atrocidades cometidas por Daesh? Definitivamente, los musulmanes no.  La creciente ola de islamofobia ha incentivado el cierre de fronteras, el agudizamiento de la política migratoria y la discriminación hacia la población árabe.  Además, ha permitido el surgimiento de grupos racistas que avalan el apartheid y las atrocidades cometidas por Israel en contra del pueblo palestino. La población mundial, cegada por la manipulación mediática, contempla con terror a las naciones y grupos libertarios que componen el Eje de la Resistencia.

El pasado jueves 17 de diciembre, en una encuesta realizada por la compañía Public Policy Polling (PPP) de opinión ciudadana estadounidense, un 30% de los simpatizantes del partido republicano votó a favor de bombardear Agrabah (la ciudad ficticia de Aladdín). Gracias a la campaña comunicacional global constante respecto al “islamismo radical” es que la respuesta instantánea de la población es apoyar la invasión, la protección y el cierre fronterizo, sin cuestionar el sentido de la acción, ni tomar en cuenta las miles de vidas de civiles que están en riesgo. Basta con que una palabra suene a origen árabe para que parezca peligrosa.

Sin lugar a dudas, el acto más representativo de la artillería comunicacional islamófoba es el haber denominado “Estado Islámico” al principal grupo insurgente Yihadista-Taliban-Al qaedista, designación ilegítima desde su origen ya que este grupo de sicarios, tal como lo menciona la corresponsal argentina Karen Marón “no posee ni la estructura organizacional de un Estado, ni está sujeto a derecho internacional, es decir que, Estado no es, islámico tampoco, porque contradice todo lo que señala el Corán y lo que profesa Mahoma”.

Sus actos tampoco son terroristas, puesto que el término “terrorismo” hace referencia a una sucesión de actos de violencia ejecutados con el único objetivo de infundir terror; mientras que para las cúpulas que están detrás de los atentados, el fin último de sus actos no es el provocar pánico, sino generar repercusiones políticas y acciones armamentistas concretas con el consentimiento de la población acosada por la sensación de vulnerabilidad.

Es así como el atentado a las Torres Gemelas perpetrado por Al-Qaeda en septiembre de 2001, así como los atentados a París en noviembre de 2015 por Daesh, legitiman los bombardeos e invasiones a Irak y a Siria respectivamente. El leitmotiv  de la OTAN por lo tanto, no es tanto detener a Daesh, sino contenerlo.

En definitiva, Estados Unidos, Israel, la familia real saudí –que es sionista– y Turquía, esta última motivada por los intereses económicos y la posibilidad de ampliar su territorio a Siria, han logrado consagrar que entre los 6 puntos que estableció la comunidad internacional de las Naciones Unidas en el Plan de Solución Política a la Crisis en Siria suscrito recientemente en Nueva York,  se le exija a Damasco la elaboración de una nueva constitución política que rija al país en un plazo máximo de seis meses y celebrar, además, elecciones presidenciales antes de año y medio.

En suma, hay que destacar que los atentados son completamente premeditados. A través de un pretexto, buscan legitimar la intervención, con lo cual, construyen un nuevo ordenamiento geopolítico acorde a sus intereses. ISIS es una organización mercenaria instrumentalizada para responder a un mandato específico.

En los atentados a París la víctima no fue el Estado galo, sino los ciudadanos franceses utilizados como carne de cañón. Los atentados están inmersos dentro de un contexto geopolítico bien delimitado, y sobre todo, guardan un origen espurio que debe combatirse. Nuestra tarea pendiente es diseñar un mundo más justo y seguro para todos sin intervención imperialista, sí es posible…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Gabriela Riveros Medina

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez es economista, egresado de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Gabriela Riveros Medina es economista, egresada de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

Fuente: Agencia Latinoamericana de Información (ALAI).

La Risoluzione 2254 sulla Siria, approvata all’unanimità dal Consiglio di sicurezza dell’Onu, sottolinea «lo stretto legame tra un cessate il fuoco e un parallelo processo politico». Disinnescando il conflitto, ciò favorirebbe un allentamento delle tensioni in Medio Oriente. C’è però un problema: sui cinque membri permanenti del Consiglio di sicurezza, tre – Stati Uniti, Francia e Gran Bretagna – sono quelli che hanno più pesantemente violato «la sovranità e integrità territoriale della Repubblica Araba di Siria», che nella risoluzione dicono di «sostenere fortemente». Quelli che hanno organizzato «il crescente afflusso di terroristi in Siria», per il quale nella risoluzione «esprimono la più grave preoccupazione».

Il «cessate il fuoco» dipende quindi soprattutto da queste tre potenze della Nato e dalla Turchia, avamposto della guerra coperta contro la Siria, e dagli altri membri dell’Alleanza a partire dalla Germania. Dipende anche da un’altra potenza, Israele, che ha le mani in pasta in questa e altre guerre. Quali sono le loro intenzioni? Più delle parole valgono i fatti.

Il 18 dicembre, il giorno stesso in cui il Consiglio di sicurezza varava la «road map per la pace» in Siria, la Nato annunciava l’invio di navi da guerra tedesche e danesi e aerei radar Awacs in Turchia per rafforzare le sue «difese al confine con la Siria», mossa diretta in realtà contro la Russia il cui intervento contro l’Isis sta cambiando l’esito della guerra a favore di Damasco. E il giorno dopo la Nato annunciava che è pronto il primo dei droni Global Hawk che saranno schierati a Sigonella, insieme a quelli Usa, per la «sorveglianza terrestre», ossia per lo spionaggio nei paesi inquadrati nel mirino strategico Usa/Nato. Sempre lo stesso giorno in cui il Consiglio di sicurezza varava la «road map per la pace» in Medio Oriente, la Germania annunciava la consegna a Israele del quinto sottomarino da attacco nucleare.

Come documenta Der Spiegel, sono Dolphin modificati per il lancio di missili cruise nucleari, i Popeye Turbo con raggio di 1500 km, derivati da quelli statunitensi. Con il nuovo sottomarino ribattezzato Rahav (Poseidone) – il cui costo supera i 2 miliardi di dollari, un terzo dei quali finanziato dal governo tedesco – Israele rafforza la sua posizione di unica potenza nucleare della regione, mentre l’Iran (che a differenza di Israele aderisce al Trattato di non-proliferazione) rinuncia alle armi nucleari e la Siria consegna le armi chimiche costruite quale deterrente contro quelle nucleari di Israele.

Il 19 dicembre, il giorno dopo che il Consiglio di sicurezza aveva riaffermato «la sovranità e integrità territoriale» della Siria, Israele distruggeva a Damasco un intero palazzo con missili lanciati da due caccia, assassinando (insieme a diversi civili) il militante libanese Samir Kuntar: dopo 30 anni di carcere in Israele per aver combattuto per l’indipendenza del Libano e della Palestina, rilasciato in uno scambio nel 2008, aveva aderito agli Hezbollah andando a combattere l’Isis e per questo era stato iscritto da Washington nella lista dei «terroristi globali».

Contemporaneamente la Francia, sostenitrice al Consiglio di sicurezza del cessate il fuoco in Siria, annunciava di aver ricevuto l’acconto sui 7 miliardi di dollari per la fornitura di 24 cacciabombardieri Rafale al Qatar: il regime che ha alimentato, anche con commandos infiltrati, la guerra in Siria dopo quella che ha demolito la Libia. Insieme all’Arabia Saudita che, dopo aver finanziato con miliardi di dollari l’Isis e altri gruppi terroristi, partecipa alla coalizione a guida Usa «contro l’Isis» e ha promosso una «coalizione islamica anti-terrorismo».

Manlio Dinucci

Mentre la parola «sicurezza» ci rintrona gli orecchi amplificata dai megafoni politico-mediatici, le parole del ministro della difesa russo Shoigu sul sempre più pericoloso confronto nucleare in Europa sono cadute nel silenzio. Nessun allarme, nessuna reazione governativa in Italia riguardo a ciò che ha detto: «Circa 200 bombe nucleari Usa sono schierate in Italia, Belgio, Olanda, Germania e Turchia, e questo arsenale nucleare è soggetto a un programma di rinnovamento».

Per tale ragione, «le forze missilistiche strategiche russe mantengono oltre il 95% dei lanciatori pronto in ogni momento al combattimento». E mentre un sottomarino russo lancia dal Mediterraneo contro obiettivi Isis in Siria missili cruise Kalibr (che percorrono circa 3mila km a bassa quota accelerando nella fase finale a tre volte la velocità del suono), il presidente Putin avverte che «i missili Kalibr possono essere armati sia con testate convenzionali sia con testate nucleari», aggiungendo che «certamente ciò non è necessario nella lotta ai terroristi, e spero non sarà mai necessario». Questo chiaro messaggio diretto in realtà alla Nato, in particolare ai paesi europei in cui sono schierate le armi nucleari Usa, viene presentato dai media come la «battuta» di un Putin che «mostra i muscoli». Non si allarma così la popolazione, lasciandola all’oscuro del pericolo cui è esposta.

Le circa 70 bombe nucleari Usa B-61, pronte all’uso nelle basi di Aviano e Ghedi-Torre, stanno per essere sostituite dalle B61-12. A tale scopo — documenta la Federazione degli scienziati americani (Fas) con foto satellitari — è stato effettuato l’upgrade delle due basi, dove nel 2013 e 2014 si è svolta la Steadfast Noon, l’esercitazione Nato di guerra nucleare con la partecipazione anche di caccia F-16 della Polonia, che si è offerta di ospitare le nuove bombe nucleari Usa.

La B61-12 è una nuova arma nucleare che, sganciata a circa 100 km dall’obiettivo, è progettata per «decapitare» il paese nemico in un first strike nucleare. Si cancella così la differenza tra armi nucleari strategiche a lungo raggio e armi tattiche a corto raggio.

Non si sa quante B61-12 saranno schierate in Italia ma, con una stima per difetto, si calcola che la loro potenza distruttiva equivarrà a quella di circa 300 bombe di Hiroshima. Secondo le regole del Gruppo di pianificazione nucleare della Nato, di cui fa parte l’Italia, i paesi che ospitano le armi nucleari Usa «mettono a disposizione aerei equipaggiati per trasportare bombe nucleari e personale addestrato a tale scopo», ma «gli Stati uniti mantengono l’assoluto controllo e la custodia di tali armi nucleari». La Fas conferma che a Ghedi sono stoccate le bombe nucleari Usa «per i Tornado italiani» e che piloti italiani vengono addestrati al loro uso.

Poiché si prevede di sostituire i Tornado con gli F-35, i primi piloti italiani, che hanno completato in novembre l’addestramento sugli F-35 nella base Luke della U.S. Air Force in Arizona, vengono addestrati anche all’uso delle B61-12.

L’Italia viola così il Trattato di non-proliferazione ratificato nel 1975, che la «impegna a non ricevere da chicchessia armi nucleari, né il controllo su tali armi, direttamente o indirettamente» (Art. 2). È divenuta di conseguenza base avanzata della strategia nucleare Usa/Nato e, quindi, bersaglio di rappresaglia nucleare. Vitale è la battaglia per la denuclearizzazione dell’Italia, senza di cui la generica richiesta dell’abolizione delle armi nucleari diventa copertura demagogica per chi non vuole affrontare la questione nodale. A dimostrazione che l’assopimento delle coscienze ha portato anche alla perdita dell’istinto di sopravvivenza.

Manlio Dinucci

La «storica» decisione del Consiglio Nord Atlantico di invitare il Montenegroa iniziare la procedura di accesso per divenire il 29° membro dell’Alleanza, costituisce una ulteriore mossa della strategia Usa/Nato mirante all’accerchiamento della Russia. Che importanza ha per la Nato il Montenegro, l’ultimo degli Stati (2006) formatisi in seguito alla disgregazione della Federazione Jugoslava, demolita dalla Nato con l’infiltrazione e la guerra? Lo si capisce guardando la carta geografica. Con una superficie un po’ inferiore a quella della Puglia (a soli 200 km sulla sponda opposta dell’Adriatico) e una popolazione di appena 630 mila abitanti (un sesto di quella della Puglia), il Montenegro ha una importante posizione geostrategica. Confina con Albania e Croazia (membri della Nato), Kosovo (di fatto già nella Nato), Serbia e Bosnia-Erzegovina (partner della Nato). Ha due porti, Bar e Porto Montenegro, utilizzabili a scopo militare nel Mediterraneo. Nel secondo fece scalo, nel novembre 2014, la portaerei Cavour.

Il Montenegro è strategicamente importante anche come deposito di munizioni e altro materiale bellico. Sul suo territorio si trovano dieci grandi bunker sotterranei costruiti all’epoca della Federazione Jugoslava, dove restano oltre 10mila tonnellate di vecchie munizioni da smaltire o esportare, e hangar fortificati per aerei (bombardati dalla Nato nel 1999). Con milioni di euro forniti anche dalla Ue, è iniziata da tempo la loro ristrutturazione (i primi sono stati quelli di Taras e Brezovic). La Nato disporrà così in Montenegro di bunker che, ammodernati, permetteranno di stoccare enormi quantità di munizioni, comprese anche armi nucleari, e di hangar per cacciabombardieri.

Il Montenegro, la cui entrata nella Nato è ormai certa, è anche candidato a entrare nell’Unione europea, dove già 22 dei 28 membri appartengono alla Nato sotto comando Usa.

Un importante ruolo in tal senso lo ha svolto Federica Mogherini: visitando il Montenegro in veste di ministro degli esteri nel luglio 2014, ribadiva che «la politica sull’allargamento è la chiave di volta del successo dell’Unione europea — e della Nato — nel promuovere pace, democrazia e sicurezza in Europa» e lodava il governo montenegrino per la sua «storia di successo». Quel governo capeggiato da Milo Djukanovic che perfino l’Europol (l’Ufficio di polizia della Ue) aveva chiamato in causa già nel 2013 perché il Montenegro è divenuto il crocevia dei traffici di droga dall’Afghanistan (dove opera la Nato) all’Europa e il più importante centro di riciclaggio di denaro sporco. Una «storia di successo», analoga a quella del Kosovo, che dimostra come anche la criminalità organizzata può essere usata a fini strategici.

Continua così l’espansione della Nato ad Est.

Nel 1999 essa ingloba i primi tre paesi dell’ex Patto di Varsavia: Polonia, Repubblica ceca e Ungheria.
Nel 2004, la Nato si estende ad altri sette: Estonia, Lettonia, Lituania (già parte dell’Urss); Bulgaria, Romania, Slovacchia (già parte del Patto di Varsavia); Slovenia (già parte della Jugoslavia).
Nel 2009, la Nato ingloba l’Albania (un tempo membro del Patto di Varsavia) e la Croazia (già parte della Jugoslavia).

Ora, nonostante la forte opposizione interna duramente repressa, si vuole tirar dentro il Montenegro, seguito da alcuni «Paesi aspiranti» – Macedonia, Bosnia-Erzegovina, Georgia, Ucraina – e da altri ancora cui viene lasciata «la porta aperta».

Espandendosi ad Est sempre più a ridosso della Russia, con le sue basi e forze militari comprese quelle nucleari, la Nato apre in realtà la porta a scenari catastrofici per l’Europa e il mondo.

Manlio Dinucci

Aparentemente el año 2015 marca el inicio de la revolución en el interior del FMI. Primero se avaló la inclusión del yuan en los DEG, la canasta de divisas creada en 1969 para servir de suplemento de las reservas oficiales de los países miembros. Y ahora, gracias a la aprobación del Congreso de Estados Unidos, el FMI podrá implementar finalmente la reforma del sistema de cuotas de representación, con lo cual, China y otras potencias emergentes ganarán peso en la toma de decisiones, mientras que los países del continente europeo perderán relevancia. No obstante, todavía es prematuro concluir que se trata de una transformación radical en la correlación de fuerzas dentro del FMI: Estados Unidos seguirá manteniendo su poder de veto.  

Estados Unidos parece haber comprendido por fin que para conservar su liderazgo global resulta más contraproducente desconocer el creciente protagonismo de China y otras potencias emergentes, que compartir responsabilidades en la gestión de las finanzas internacionales. Por esa razón, y muy a su pesar, Washington no ha tenido otra alternativa que otorgar importantes concesiones a sus adversarios a través del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI).

En un primer momento, la última semana de noviembre, el FMI adoptó la decisión de incorporar el yuan en los Derechos Especiales de Giro (DEG, ‘Special Drawing Rights’), la canasta de divisas que creó a finales de la década de 1960 para complementar las reservas oficiales de sus miembros. Aunque en el interior del Fondo varios funcionarios estadounidenses se opusieron desde un principio, al final de cuentas Pekín se comprometió a seguir avanzando en la liberalización de su sector financiero.

Hasta la fecha el Banco Popular de China ha firmado cerca de cuarenta acuerdos bilaterales de permuta de divisas (‘currency swaps’). Este año los bancos centrales de Surinam, Sudáfrica y Chile comenzaron a promover entre las empresas de sus países el abandono del dólar. De modo creciente, el yuan suplanta a la divisa norteamericana en la facturación de los intercambios comerciales del gigante asiático.

Esta estrategia ha permitido que el yuan sea hoy la segunda moneda más utilizada en el financiamiento comercial y la cuarta en los pagos transfronterizos, según los datos de la Sociedad de Telecomunicaciones Financieras Interbancarias Mundiales (SWIFT, por sus siglas en ingles). Y más temprano que tarde la moneda china será plenamente convertible, es decir, intercambiada libremente en el mercado sin ningún tipo de restricción.

Es así como los dirigentes del Partido Comunista [de China] consiguieron echar abajo las suspicacias de la directora ejecutiva del FMI, Christine Lagarde: a partir del próximo 1º de octubre de 2016 el yuan se convertirá en la tercera divisa más relevante en la composición de los DEG. La “moneda del pueblo” (‘renminbi’) tendrá un peso mayor dentro de la canasta del FMI en comparación con el yen japonés y la libra esterlina, aunque se ubicará todavía por debajo del dólar y el euro.

Y en un segundo momento, el pasado viernes 18 de diciembre, el Congreso de Estados Unidos dio luz verde para que el FMI implemente la reforma del sistema de cuotas de representación. Sin lugar a dudas, es el cambio más importante dentro del FMI desde 1944, el año en que se construyeron los acuerdos de Bretton Woods. El nuevo reparto de cuotas significa, además, un gran respiro para el Fondo en términos de legitimidad.

Es que después del colapso económico de 2008 se puso en evidencia que el FMI no contaba con los recursos suficientes para hacer frente a las crisis liquidez. Ningún país que se dijera soberano tenía intenciones de solicitar su ayuda. El FMI se desprestigió por completo tras su actuación en las crisis de deuda de América Latina y del Sudeste asiático: había demostrado que operaba como el brazo armado del Departamento del Tesoro de Estados Unidos, y no como un fondo multilateral encargado de estabilizar las balanzas de pagos de sus adherentes.

Por ello, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, quien se desempeñó como director gerente del FMI entre 2007 y 2011, convenció a los países emergentes de realizar nuevos depósitos a cambio de incrementar sus cuotas. El Directorio Ejecutivo del FMI avaló la propuesta el año 2010 en el marco de la XIV Revisión General de cuotas.

Luego se presentó la iniciativa de reforma ante la Junta de Gobernadores (integrada por la totalidad de los miembros), para someterse por último a la aprobación de los parlamentos nacionales. Y entonces el Gobierno de Estados Unidos hizo valer su poder de veto. Es que para que una decisión sea acreditada por el Fondo necesita una mayoría del 85% de la votación, y Estados Unidos por sí solo contaba con 16.7% del total.

Pero hace unos días, tras cinco años de ferviente oposición de parte del Congreso norteamericano la inercia finalmente se rompió. La reforma del sistema de cuotas será una realidad. Los recursos a disposición del FMI se duplican, se elevarán a 659,670 millones de dólares. Cabe destacar que la cuota que se asigna a un país determina el nivel máximo de sus compromisos financieros frente al FMI y su número de votos en la institución, y es un factor que determina su acceso al financiamiento del FMI

El avance más importante corresponde a China, cuya derecho de voto pasará de 3.8 a 6%, con lo cual, será el tercer país con más poder, únicamente por detrás de Estados Unidos y Japón. Brasil sube cuatro posiciones, mientras que India y Rusia lograron entrar en la lista de los diez más influyentes. En cambio, las asignaciones de Europa cayeron. A excepción de la cuota de España, que pasará de 1.68 a 2%, Alemania, Francia, Italia y el Reino Unido disminuirán su participación.

“Las reformas incrementan significativamente los principales recursos del FMI y nos permiten desplegar una respuesta más eficaz ante las crisis, a la vez que mejoran la estructura de gobierno institucional al reflejar mejor el creciente papel que desempeñan los países emergentes y en desarrollo dinámicos en la economía mundial”, apuntó Lagarde en un comunicado de prensa.

Con todo, lamentablemente Estados Unidos conservará su poder de veto: su derecho de voto disminuirá únicamente dos décimas, de 16.7 a 16.5%. Hasta ahora todo parece indicar que los dirigentes de Pekín no desean confrontar la dominación de Estados Unidos en el seno del FMI, institución que a más de setenta años de ponerse marcha, se mantiene como el “prestamista de última instancia” más importante en escala mundial tomando en cuenta el volumen de recursos que maneja.

La disputa entre China y Estados Unidos es solamente tangencial. Pekín ha buscado incrementar su influencia financiera a través de sus poderosos bancos estatales (China Development Bank, China Ex-Im Bank, ICBC, Bank of China, etc.), y a través de los bancos regionales de desarrollo en los que participa: el Banco Asiático de Inversiones en Infraestructura (AIIB, por sus siglas en inglés), el Banco de la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghái (SCO, por sus siglas en inglés) y el banco de los BRICS (acrónimo de Brasil, Rusia, India, China y Sudáfrica).

Tanto en Asia-Pacífico, África, como en América Latina y el Caribe, no hay duda de que China compite cara a cara con el Banco Mundial y los bancos regionales de desarrollo respaldados por Washington (Banco Asiático de Desarrollo, Banco Africano de Desarrollo, Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, etc.) en el financiamiento de proyectos de infraestructura y extracción de materias primas (‘commodities’).

Sin embargo, los mecanismos de cooperación financiera impulsados por Pekín que proveen liquidez a los países en coyunturas críticas (problemas de liquidez), tales como la Iniciativa Chiang Mai (integrada por China, Japón, Corea del Sur y diez economías de la ASEAN) y el Acuerdo de Reservas de Contingencia de los BRICS (también conocido como el “mini-FMI”) poseen escasos recursos monetarios, operan en dólares, y además dependen del aval del FMI para otorgar préstamos a partir de cierto límite.

Por lo tanto, si bien es una excelente noticia para el mundo que China y otros países con elevadas tasas de crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) hayan conseguido ver incrementada su participación en el FMI y tener dos puestos más entre los veinticuatro del Directorio Ejecutivo, Estados Unidos seguirá ejerciendo una dominación aplastante.

Si Washington no está de acuerdo en algún detalle, por mínimo que sea, podrá vetar cualquier propuesta de los países emergentes gracias a su poder de veto. Es indudable que en algún momento, China deberá ejercer presión para evitar que un solo país escriba las reglas del juego, tiempo al tiempo…

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez : Economista egresado de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Image: Ellen Brown

While the mainstream media focus on ISIS extremists, a threat that has gone virtually unreported is that your life savings could be wiped out in a massive derivatives collapse. Bank bail-ins have begun in Europe, and the infrastructure is in place in the US.  Poverty also kills. 

[Featured image: Head of US armed forces General Martin Dempsey, Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman Senator Lindsey Graham and US Vice President Joe Biden have all admitted that their close regional allies (especially the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey) finance ISIS.]

“It is always difficult to play a double game: declaring a fight against terrorists and simultaneously trying to use some to place pieces on the Middle Eastern chess board to pursue their own interests … [but do the] so-called moderate bandits behead people moderately?” – Vladimir Putin (2015)

Reports that US and British aircraft carrying arms to ISIS were shot down by Iraqi forces (Iraqi News 2015) were met with shock and denial in western countries. Yet few in the Middle East doubt that Washington is playing a ‘double game’ with its proxy armies in Syria. A Yemeni AnsarAllah leader says ‘Wherever there is U.S. interference, there is al Qaeda and ISIS. It’s to their advantage’ (al-Bukaiti 2015). However key myths remain important, especially to western audiences. Engaging with those myths calls for reason and evidence, not just assertion.

There is no doubt that the Arab and Muslim peoples of the Middle East hate the terrorist monstrosity called ISIS, ISIL or DAESH. Polling by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre found that 99% of Lebanese, 94% of Jordanians and 84% of Palestinians had an ‘unfavourable’ view of ISIS. As Lebanon’s constitutional system requires sectarian identification it was also found that 98% of Lebanese Sunni Muslims rejected ISIS (Poushter 2015). That latter finding discredits the common western assertion that ISIS somehow springs from Sunni communities. Less than 1% in Lebanon, 3% in Jordan and 6% in Palestine viewed the banned terrorist group favourably. The remainder did not express an opinion. Of all Syria’s neighbours, Turkey had the lowest ‘unfavourable’ view of ISIS, at 73%; the favourable score was 8% (Poushter 2015). The aim of this chapter is to help clarify what role Washington has had in creating or turning loose this Frankenstein’s monster.

Washington maintains two closely linked myths as regards terrorism in the Middle East. Then there is a ‘fall-back’ story. The first ‘existential myth’ is that, from 2014, the US became engaged in a war against extremist terrorists, in both Iraq and Syria. This followed several years of trying to topple the Syrian Government by backing illegal armed groups, which it calls ‘moderate’. Through this myth the US claims to be playing a protective role for the benefit of the peoples of the region. The second myth is that there is a significant difference between the ‘moderate rebels’ the US arms, finances and trains, and the extremist terrorists (DAESH or ISIS) it claims to be fighting.

These claims represented a shift in the rationale for the war on Syria, from one of ‘humanitarian intervention’ to a revival of the Bush era ‘war on terror’. The ‘fall back’ story, advanced by some of Washington’s domestic critics, is that US practice in the region has created a climate of resentment amongst orthodox Sunni Muslim communities, and the extremist groups emerged as a type of ‘organic reaction’ from those communities to repeated US interventions. This story hides the more damaging conclusion that Washington and its allies directly created the extremist groups.

However there is little point in simply asserting that last version, without evidence. The ‘existential myth’ of a western war on terrorism is so insistent and pervasive, and backed by such a commitment in political capital, arms and finance, that it is very difficult for western audiences to accept this new ‘war’ might be a charade. Further, diplomacy requires that stated policy positions be pursued to their logical conclusions, and that the aims be tested. For these reasons I suggest we should document the key elements of evidence, on Washington’s relationship with the sectarian terrorists. After that we can draw better informed conclusions.

It is certainly true that prominent ISIS leaders were held in US prisons. The Afghan recruiter for ISIS, Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, spent three years in the US prison at Guantanamo (Bienaimé 2015). ISIS leader, Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) is said to have been held for between one and two years at Camp Bucca in Iraq (Giovanni 2014). In 2006, as al-Baghdadi and others were released, the Bush administration announced its plan for a ‘New Middle East’, a plan which would employ sectarian violence as part of a process of ‘creative destruction’ in the region (Nazemroaya 2006). While there have been claims that al-Baghdadi is a CIA or Mossad trained agent, these have not yet been backed up with evidence.

Nevertheless, according to Seymour Hersh’s article, ‘The Redirection’, the US planned to make use of ‘moderate Sunni states’, in particular the Saudis, to contain alleged ‘Shiia gains’ in Iraq brought about by the 2003 US invasion. These ‘moderate Sunni’ forces would carry out clandestine operations to weaken Iran and Hezbollah, key enemies of Israel (Hersh 2007). This plan brought the Saudis and Israel closer as, for somewhat different reasons, both fear Iran.

In mid-2012, US intelligence reported two important facts about the violence in Syria. Firstly, most of the armed ‘insurgency’ was being driven by extremist al Qaeda groups, and second, the sectarian aim of those groups was ‘exactly’ what the US and its allies wanted. The DIA wrote:

‘The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria … There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers [The West, Gulf monarchies and Turkey] to the [Syrian] opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime’ (DIA 2012).

The US also observed (and certainly did not stop) the channelling of arms from Benghazi in Libya to ‘al Qaeda groups’ in Syria, in August 2012. These arms were detailed as including 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 rounds and 400 howitzers missiles, of 125mm and 155mm calibre, all shipped to the Ports of Banias and Borj Islam, in Syria (Judicial Watch 2015). According to Michael Flynn, the former head of the DIA, and consistent with that intelligence, President Obama made a ‘wilful decision’ to support al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and other ‘jihadist’ groups (Newman 2015). This all confirms motive, complicity and consistency of the process, from the early days of the Syrian conflict, building on former President Bush’s ‘New Middle East’ plan. Washington covertly approved the arming of al Qaeda groups in Syria, seeing its own advantage in that.

Probably the most convincing confirmation of US complicity with its terrorist ‘enemy’ has been the admissions from several senior officials that their main regional allies have financed ISIS. Those officials include the US Vice-President, the head of the US Armed Forces and the Chair of the US Armed Forces Committee. In September 2014 General Martin Dempsey, head of the US military, told a Congressional hearing ‘I know major Arab allies who fund [ISIS]’ (Rothman 2014). Senator Lindsey Graham, of the Armed Services Committee, responded with a justification, ‘They fund them because the Free Syrian Army couldn’t fight [Syrian President] Assad, they were trying to beat Assad’ (Rothman 2014; Washington’s Blog 2014). These were honest, if criminal, admissions.

The next month, US Vice President Joe Biden went a step further, explaining that Turkey, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia ‘were so determined to take down Assad … they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad … [including] al Nusra and al Qaeda and extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world … [and then] this outfit called ISIL’ (RT 2014; Usher 2014). Once again, these were consistent and credible admissions, except that Biden sought to exempt the US from this operation by blaming key allies. That caveat is simply not credible. The Saudis in particular are politically dependent on Washington and could not mount any major initiative without US approval. Not only that, the US systematically controls, by purchase contract and re-export license, the use of its weapons (Export.Gov 2015).

Washington’s relationship with the Saudis, as a divisive sectarian force in the region against Arab nationalism, goes back to the 1950s, when Winston Churchill introduced the Saudi King to President Eisenhower. More recently, British General Jonathan Shaw acknowledged the contribution of Saudi Arabia’s extremist ideology: ‘this is a time bomb that, under the guise of education. Wahhabi Salafism is igniting under the world really. And it is funded by Saudi and Qatari money’, Shaw said (Blair 2014). He was right.

Other evidence undermines western attempts to maintain a distinction between what came to be called the ‘moderate rebels’, by 2013 openly armed and trained by the US, and supposedly more extreme groups such as Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS. While there has indeed been some rivalry, the absence of real ideological difference is best shown by cooperation and mergers. For example the collection of US-backed groups called the ‘Free Syrian Army’ fought alongside ISIS and against the Syrian Army for several months in 2013, to gain control of Syria’s Menagh air base, near Aleppo (Paraszczuk 2013). Hoff points out that one of the ISIS commanders in the Menagh operation, Chechen Abu Omar al Shisani, ‘received American military training as part of an elite Georgian army unit in 2006’ and continued to receive US support in 2013, through his FSA alliance (Hoff 2015).

Long term cooperation between these ‘moderate rebels’ and the foreign-led Jabhat al-Nusra was seen around Daraa in the south, along the mountainous Lebanese border, in Homs-Idlib, along the Turkish border and in and around Aleppo. The words Jabhat al Nusra actually mean ‘support front’, that is, foreign support for the Syrian Islamists. Back in December 2012, as Jabhat al Nusra was banned in various countries, 29 of these groups reciprocated the solidarity in their declaration: ‘We are all Jabhat al-Nusra’ (West 2012). Soon after the 29 group signatories became ‘more than 100’ (Zelin 2012). There was never any real ideological difference between these sectarian anti-government groups.

The decline of the ‘Free Syrian Army’ network and the renewed cooperation between al Nusra and the string of reinvented US and Saudi backed groups (Dawud, the Islamic Front, the Syrian Revolutionary Front, Harakat Hazm) helped draw attention to Israel’s support for al Nusra, around the occupied Golan Heights. Since 2013 there have been many reports of ‘rebel’ fighters, including those from al Nusra, being treated in Israeli hospitals (Zoabi 2014). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even publicised his visit to wounded ‘rebels’ in early 2014. That led to a public ‘thank you’ from a Turkey-based ‘rebel’ leader, Mohammed Badie (Israel Today 2014). Semi-covertly, Israel backed all the armed groups against Syria, occasionally assisting them with its own missile attacks (Kais 2013).

The UN peacekeeping force based in the occupied Golan reported its observations of the Israeli Defence Forces ‘interacting with’ al Nusra fighters at the border (Fitzgerald 2014). At the same time, Israeli arms were captured by Syrian forces from the extremist groups (Kais 2012; Winer 2013). In November 2014 members of the Druze minority in the Golan protested against Israeli hospitals being used to help wounded al Nusra and ISIS fighters (Zoabi 2014). This led to questions by the Israeli media, as to whether ‘Israel does, in fact, hospitalize members of al-Nusra and Daesh [ISIS]’. A military spokesman’s reply was hardly a denial: ‘In the past two years the Israel Defence Forces have been engaged in humanitarian, life-saving aid to wounded Syrians, irrespective of their identity’ (Zoabi 2014). In fact, not even a humble farmer gets across the heavily militarised Occupied Golan border to retrieve a stray goat. ‘Humanitarian’ treatment for al Qaeda terrorists is different.

The artificial distinction between ‘rebel’ and ‘extremist’ groups has been mocked by multiple reports of large scale defections and transfer of weapons, to the extremists. In July 2014 one thousand armed men in the Dawud Brigade defected to ISIS in Raqqa (Hamadee and Gutman 2014; Ditz 2014). In November defections to Jabhat al Nusra from the US-backed Syrian Revolutionary Front were reported (Newman 2014; Sly 2014).

In December, Adib Al-Shishakli, representative at the Gulf Cooperation Council of the exile ‘Syrian National Coalition’, said ‘opposition fighters’ were ‘increasingly joining’ ISIS ‘for financial reasons’ (Zayabi 2014). In that same month, the Al Yarmouk Shuhada Brigades, backed and trained for two years by US officers, were reported as defecting to ISIS, which had by this time began to establish a presence in Syria’s far south (OSNet 2014). Then, over 2014-2015, three thousand ‘moderate rebels’ from the US-backed ‘Harakat Hazzm’ collapsed into Jabhat al Nusra, taking a large stock of US arms including anti-tank weapons with them (Fadel 2015a). Video posted by al-Nusra showed these weapons being used to take over the Syrian military bases, Wadi Deif and Hamidiyeh, in Idlib province (Bacchi 2015). Debka File, a site linked to Israeli intelligence, says the heavy weaponry provided to the Syrian ‘opposition’ by the USA, Israel, the Saudis, Jordan, Turkey and Qatar includes tanks, armoured vehicles, rockets launchers, machine-guns, anti-aircraft weapons and ‘at least four types of anti-tank weapons’ (Debka 2015). The scale and consistency of the ‘defections’ strongly suggests management to channel these arms, along with fighters, to make ISIS the best equipped group. A similar conclusion was noted by US Senator John Kiriakou (Sputnik 2015b).

Recruitment of fighters for ISIS was certainly a heavily financed affair, and not an ‘organic’ drift of resentful ‘Sunni’ youth. In late 2014 the Afghan Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost was said to be ‘leading efforts in northern Pakistan to recruit fighters for ISIS’ (Bienaimé 2015). Soon after this report, Syrian jihadist Yousaf al Salafi, arrested in Pakistan, said he had been hired to recruit young men in Pakistan to fight with ISIS in Syria. He says he received $600 for each fighter he sent, working with a Pakistani sheikh and using US money (Variyar 2015). Who knows what the middle-men took, but this sum is several times the salary of an average Syrian soldier. As with Jabhat al Nusra, recruits came from a wide range of countries. Cuban journalists interviewed four captured ISIS jihadists from Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. They were recruited in a larger group which had passed freely through Turkey and across the border into Syria. They were assisted to participate in this ‘holy war’ by offers of a house, a good salary and a bride. More than 300 people were killed by their car bombs (PL 2015).

ISIS had US weapons by various means in both Iraq and Syria when, in late 2014, a ‘non-aggression pact’ was reported in the southern area of Hajar al-Aswad between ‘moderate rebels’ and ISIS, as both recognised a common enemy in Syria: ‘the Nussayri regime’, a sectarian way of referring to Alawi Muslims. Some reported ISIS had purchased weapons from the ‘rebels’ (AFP 2015).

With ‘major Arab allies’ directly backing ISIS and a steady stream of fighters and arms passing to ISIS from the collapsing US-backed ‘moderate rebel’ groups, it is a small leap to recognise that US and ‘coalition’ flights to ISIS areas (supposedly to ‘degrade’ the extremists) might also have become covert supply lines. That is precisely what senior Iraqi sources began saying, in late 2014 and early 2015 (Iraq News 2014). In mid-2014 ISIS began seizing US weapons, but this was put down to incompetence on the part of the Iraqi Army (Sharma and Nestel 2014).

However, soon after that, US air drops of arms were seized by ISIS troops on the ground. Was this US incompetence or US planning? As reported by both Iraqi and Iranian media, Iraqi MP Majid al-Ghraoui said in January that ‘an American aircraft dropped a load of weapons and equipment to the ISIS group militants at the area of al-Dour in the province of Salahuddin’ (Sarhan 2015). Photos were published of ISIS retrieving the weapons. The US admitted seizures of its weapons but said this was a ‘mistake’ (MacAskill and Chulov 2014). Then in February Iraqi MP Hakem al-Zameli said the Iraqi army had shot down two British planes which were carrying weapons to ISIS in al-Anbar province. Again, photos were published of the wrecked planes. ‘We have discovered weapons made in the US, European countries and Israel from the areas liberated from ISIL’s control in Al-Baqdadi region’, al-Zameli said (FNA 2015a).

The Al-Ahad news website quoted Head of Al-Anbar Provincial Council Khalaf Tarmouz saying that a US plane supplied the ISIL terrorist organization with arms and ammunition in Salahuddin province (FNA 2015b). Also in February an Iraqi militia called Al-Hashad Al-Shabi said they had shot down a US Army helicopter carrying weapons for ISIL in the western parts of Al-Baqdadi region in Al-Anbar province. Again, photos were published (FNA 2015a). After that, Iraqi counter-terrorism forces were reported as having arrested ‘four foreigners who were employed as military advisors to the ISIL fighters’, three of whom were American and Israeli (Adl 2015). Israel’s link to ISIS seems to have passed well beyond its border areas. In late 2015 an Israeli Colonel Yusi Oulen Shahak was said to have been arrested with an ISIS group in Iraq.

The Iraqi Government linked militia said Shahak, from the Golani brigade, was a colonel who ‘had participated in the Takfiri ISIL group’s terrorist operations’ (FNA 2015c). Six senior Iraqi officials have been cited detailing US weaponry and intelligence support for ISIS. Captured ISIS fighters said the US had provided ‘intelligence about the Iraqi forces’ positions and targets’ (FNA 2015d). The western media avoided these stories altogether, because they are very damaging to Washington’s ‘existential myth’ of a ‘War on ISIS’. However they certainly help explain why Baghdad does not trust the US military.

In Libya in 2015 a key US collaborator in the overthrow of the Gaddafi government announced himself the newly declared head of the ‘Islamic State’ in North Africa (Sputnik 2015a). Abdel Hakim Belhaj was held in US prisons for several years, then ‘rendered’ to Gaddafi’s Libya, where he was wanted for terrorist acts. As former head of the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, then the Tripoli-based ‘Libyan Dawn’ group, Belhaj was, in the past, defended by Washington and praised by US Congressmen John McCain and Lindsey Graham (Sputnik 2015a).

Evidence of the covert relationship between Washington and ISIS is substantial and helps explain what Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mikdad called Washington’s ‘cosmetic war’ on ISIS (SANA 2015). The terrorist group was herded away from the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq but allowed to operate freely in Eastern Syria, against the Syrian Army (Fadel 2015b). The extremist group is used to justify a foothold Washington keeps in the region, weakening both Syria and Iraq. But Washington’s ‘war’ on ISIS has been ineffective. Studies by Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgent database showed that ISIS attacks and killings in Iraq increased strongly in the months after US air attacks began (Lestch 2014). The main on-the-ground fighting has been carried out by the Syrian Army, with its allies, and the Iraqi armed forces, with support from Iran (Lister 2015).

All this has been reported perversely in the western media. The same channels that prominently report (virtually celebrating) the ISIS killing of Syrian soldiers have also claimed the Syrian Army was avoiding or ‘not fighting’ ISIS (Richter 2014; Vinograd and Omar 2014). That alleged ‘unwillingness’ was part of the justification for US bombing inside Syria, another false pretext. While it is certainly the case that Syrian priorities remained in the heavily populated west, multiple media reports make it clear that, well before the strikes by the Russian air force in October 2015, the Syrian Arab Army was the major force engaged with ISIS (YNet 2014; al Arabiya 2014; Reuters 2015), as also suffering the worst casualties from that terrorist group (Webb 2014). When it comes to avoiding ISIS, the reverse has been the case. The evidence tells us that Washington’s lack of will against ISIS is linked to the fact that the terrorist group remains a key tool against the Syrian Government. That also explains why the US refuses to coordinate with the Syrian Army against ISIS (King 2015). This is consistent with the central ongoing aim of ‘regime change’ in Damascus or, failing that, dismemberment of the country. Such an aim was rejected by the US and others at a Vienna conference (Daily Star 2015); but US practice speaks louder than its words.

The contradictions of the US position – of claiming to fight ISIS while covertly protecting it – were thrown into sharp relief when in late September 2015 Russia decided to add air power to the Syrian Army’s efforts, against all the terrorist groups. When the US refused to cooperate with Russia, Washington’s media and NGO cheer squads immediately shifted their chorus of Syrian Government ‘killing civilians’ to that of Russia ‘killing civilians’. That had little effect on matters. At the time of writing, with that powerful Russian assistance, ISIS and the others are retreating and the Syrian Arab Army and its allied militia are gradually reclaiming areas that have been occupied for some time (AFP 2015).

Closer cooperation between Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah threaten to seriously degrade US dominance in the region. In the Iraqi military’s recent offensive on ISIS-held Tikrit, the Iranian military emerged as Iraq’s main partner. Washington was sidelined, causing consternation in the US media. General Qasem Suleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force was said to have been a leading player in the Tikrit operation (Rosen 2015). Not least amongst the new developments has been the creation of an intelligence centre based in Baghdad and shared by Russia, Syria, Iraq and Iran plus Hezbollah (4+1). This signals a new measure of independence for the Baghdad government, long thought to be a puppet captured by Washington (Boyer and Scarborough 2015).

This article has presented sufficient evidence for us to safely draw these conclusions.

First, Washington planned a bloody wave of regime change in its favour in the Middle East, getting allies such as the Saudis to use sectarian forces in a process of ‘creative destruction’.

Second, the US directly financed and armed a range of so-called ‘moderate’ terrorist groups against the sovereign state of Syria while its key allies the Saudis, Qatar, Israel and Turkey financed, armed and supported with arms and medical treatment every anti-Syrian armed group, whether ‘moderate’ or extreme.

Third, ‘jihadists’ for Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS were actively recruited in many countries, indicating that the rise of those groups was not due to a simple anti-western ‘Sunni’ reaction within the region.

Fourth, NATO member Turkey functioned as a ‘free transit zone’ for every type of terrorist group passing into Syria.

Fifth, there is testimony from a significant number of senior Iraqi officials that US arms have been delivered directly to ISIS.

Sixth, the ineffective, or at best selective, US ‘war’ against ISIS tends to corroborate the Iraqi and Syrian views that there is a controlling relationship. In sum we can conclude that the US has built a command relationship with all of the anti-Syrian terrorist groups, including al Nusra ISIS, either directly or through its close regional allies, the Saudis, Qatar, Israel and Turkey. Washington has attempted to play a ‘double game’ in Syria and Iraq, using its old doctrine of ‘plausible deniability’ to maintain the fiction of a ‘war on terrorism’ for as long as is possible.

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The protracted conflicts in Syria and many parts of West Asia have been a fertile ground for the rise of extreme militants professing their own barbaric distortion of the Islamic Faith. The involvement of two major powers in what can only be described as a cold war of attrition against these militants further highlights the complexity of the issue and the many secret hands that are exploiting the conflict in Syria in particular as a means to their own ends.

Whichever side of the fence one may be aligned to, it cannot be denied that these issues are in many ways connected, and even crafted.

From the rising trend of Islamophobia that has blighted the Western world through many burgeoning right –wing groups, to the aforementioned war in Syria that has sparked one of the most catastrophic human tragedies of the 21^st century, these issues are all connected in some form or another, weaving a tale of a perpetual conflict reflective of a grand strategy which seeks to dominate the world through the exercise of power and hegemonic influence.

Daesh and Geopolitics.

Daesh, also known as IS or ISIS or ISIL, has risen to become the new face of terrorism in the modern world, outshining Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

While the group claims to be Islamic, their practice and rhetoric strikingly resembles the caricatures of Islam in medieval Europe to the point that it is almost cartoonish in nature, perfectly fitting the bill of the stereotypical evil Muslim bogeyman.

Daesh has struck with remarkable efficiency in many corners of West Asia and North Africa (WANA). Libya, Iraq and Syria have seen swathes of their territories fall under its occupation, and the group, having established a sophisticated media network, training camps and even administrative structures, continues to exert authority and control. From a military standpoint, the terrorist group has been able to hold on to its conquest — though it has in recent weeks lost some land to the US led coalition bombarding the areas it controls in Iraq and Syria.

However, the real challenge to Daesh particularly in Syria is not from the US but Russia. The effective air-cover afforded by the Russian air force since September 2015 has enabled the Syrian army of Bashar Al-Assad and its ally, Lebanon’s Hezbollah to regain control over significant parts of Homs, Latakia and parts of Aleppo from Daesh and other terrorist outfits closely linked to either Saudi Arabia, or Turkey or Israel or the US and other Western powers. It is because outfits linked to them are losing control of parts of Syria that some Western and Turkish leaders have launched a massive propaganda war against Russia. The downing of the Russian military plane in Syrian airspace by the Turkish air force in November 2015 should be viewed in this context.

Indeed, the battle-lines are clearly drawn now with Syria as the battlefield in a new confrontation between the US, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other. In a sense, this is the first major conflict between the two protagonists of the 40 year Cold War that ended in 1989. On the side of the US are other Western powers such as Britain and France, backed by their regional allies such as Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. On the side of Russia, is of course the Syrian government, Iran, the Hezbollah and increasingly, the Iraqi government in Baghdad which feels that Russia is more sincere in fighting the terrorism that threatens Iraq and the region than the US or Turkey.

The conflict involving these two sides, which unfortunately also exhibits a Sunni-Shia dimension,   could potentially engulf the whole of WANA and indeed the world in a huge conflagration leading to even a world war. For the time being that danger has been checked by the UN Security Council Resolution on a Syria Peace Plan adopted unanimously by the Council in December 2015.  Resolution 2254 (2015) not only calls for a ceasefire and negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition but also expresses its support for free and fair elections within the framework of a sovereign, independent, and territorially united Syrian nation.

If it is implemented successfully, the death and destruction that has been Syria’s fate for the last four years may come to an end. It will certainly bring to an end the tragic sight of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing hearth and home, trying to reach safer shores in Europe.

From another perspective, it is this refugee crisis which also includes Iraqis, Libyans, Afghanis, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, apart from Somalis, Malians and Nigerians, among others, that is now impacting upon politics in Europe and the United States.

The Refugee crisis, Right Wing Politics and Donald Trump

In the initial stages Germany was the most open among European countries to the refugees from WANA and other parts of Asia and Africa. Chancellor Merkel garnered much praise among the international community for Germany’s “Willkommenskultur” (Open Door Policy). This charitable endeavour was short lived however. Almost overnight, border control measures were implemented, train services to Germany were temporarily halted, and tens of thousands of refugees found themselves stranded in other European countries.

Still, the situation in Germany was not as bad as in the rest of Europe. The border control measures of countries like Hungary had left 170,000 refugees stranded, sparking diplomatic tensions with its neighbours, such as Croatia and Slovenia. This had also sparked criticisms from the international community many of them condemning the reprehensible manner in which the Hungarian government had treated the refugees.

Countries like France, on the other hand, had opened their borders to the refugees. Nonetheless, there has been criticism of France’s policy seen as discriminatory since it allegedly favours only the Christian groups who are viewed — wrongly — as being more persecuted than other religious groups.

This discriminatory attitude is obviously directed against Muslim refugees who are in the majority. It is a reflection of the growing anti-immigrant sentiment fuelled by a number of radical right-wing groups in Europe in recent years. There is perhaps a historical root to this. It is embedded in Islamophobia, an irrational fear of Islam, which has been part of the European consciousness for more than a thousand years.

What has exacerbated Islamophobia especially in France is the 13 November terror attack by Muslim extremists in Paris which resulted in the death of 130 innocent civilians. Because it happened on the heels of the refugee crisis, it has also led to renewed fears about Muslim migrants. Politicians and media analysts are now speculating that some of these refugees may be “terrorists”.

Such senseless speculation has only strengthened popular sentiments against Muslims. Unpleasant incidents that target Arab looking males or hijab clad females have become more rife and rampant. It has further widened the chasm between the communities.  Right-wing activists are even pushing for a movement to stem the “Islamization of Europe.”

In the US, Islamophobia is having a direct impact upon the presidential elections. The front-runner in the Republican camp has been quite candid about his fears of Muslim immigrants and the threat of Muslim terrorism. He has called for the outright ban of Muslims from entering America, for mosques to be torn down or monitored, and for Muslims in America to have special IDs.

Trump, it is apparent, has an audience. His anti-Muslim rhetoric resonates with a big segment of the middle and lower income White population. Victims of economic and social stagnation in the last two decades, scapegoating “the other” in this manner appeals to these Whites because they feel that once these “threats” are dealt with, “America will be great again”, which is Trump’s slogan, and their own situation will improve tremendously.

Thus we see how the exploitation of domestic fears rooted in the socio-economic situation by politicians seeking high office can actually serve the hegemonic agenda of a superpower. The Trump slogan of making America great again has widespread appeal within the populace since American dominance of the world is accepted as a given, as something good for humanity. Both Republican and Democratic aspirants recite this mantra about America’s leadership of the planet.

TPPA and Economic Hegemony

In what can be considered the other side of the world, there is another event which highlights another part of the grand strategy to assert the hegemonic power of the United States of America.

The controversial Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is a “trade” agreement among 12 Asia-Pacific countries helmed by the US which has negative ramifications for copyright laws, health care costs, local industries and national sovereignty. The TPPA excludes China, the Asia-Pacific’s most important economic power in every sense. This is why the TPPA is not so much about trade or economics. It is essentially about power and politics. It is a well-orchestrated strategy to contain and curtail the rising power and influence of China within its own neighbourhood. Two important signatories to the TPPA, Australia and Japan, have recently declared openly that they support the US “pivot to Asia” to contain “China’s aggressive influence and posturing.”

The TPPA may mask itself as a trade deal (and a bad one at that), but it cannot disguise its ulterior geopolitical motive. It is a motive that may subject its signatories, including Malaysia, to external hegemonic agendas that may undermine the interests of our own people.

Conclusion

The tentacles of the hegemon are spread across two fronts. One, in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) where it is determined to maintain its dominant power and influence. The stakes are high. It is not just oil and gas. It is the only region in the world where three continents meet and where some of the world’s most vital waterways are situated. But most of all, WANA is where Israel is. No other country is as important to the US and the West. The US is prepared to confront a big military power like Russia and a middling regional power like Iran in order to perpetuate its hegemony in the region.

Two, in the Asia-Pacific region where the hegemon seeks to contain and curtail the ascendancy of the world’s most dynamic economic power. For the US, the economic challenge posed by China has political and military significance in the medium and long-term which is why it wants to ensure that its own economic clout in the Asia-Pacific region which is still considerable will remain and expand.

For the hegemon, WANA and the Asia-Pacific are two regions where its right to rule the world has come to the fore. It will not allow anyone to question, let alone challenge, that right.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Hassanal Noor Rashid is Program Coordinator of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). Malaysia.

A Turkish court on Dec. 5 arrested an Israeli organ trafficking suspect, who was sought by Interpol’s red notice and detained at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport on early Dec. 4.

He was reportedly in Turkey to convince struggling Syrian migrants to sell their organs.

Boris Walker was detained over alleged “organ trafficking” and “fraud” at 2:40 a.m. immediately after he arrived in Istanbul on a flight from Bangkok.

A court ruled for Walker’s arrest for 40 days, after which he is expected to be extradited to Israel.
According to a report by daily Vatan, Walker wanted to expand his illegal business in Turkey, targeting struggling Syrian migrants.

According to the report, the international organ trafficker had already contacted some Syrian migrants in Istanbul to buy their organs, while he was also making arrangements to have the illegal operations in some small private hospitals in Turkish cities.

This is a rumination on lies — layer upon layer of lies — told by US intelligence agencies and other officials about what Lee Harvey Oswald, or someone pretending to be him, was allegedly doing in Mexico City just weeks before the Kennedy assassination. The original goal, it seems, was to associate Oswald, in advance of the events of Dealey Plaza, with the USSR and Cuba.

The essay focuses on tales told by Richard Helms, a top official of the CIA in 1963 who later became its director — and  is based on a talk given by Peter Dale Scott.

Scott is the popularizer of the expression, “Deep Politics,” and a virtuoso when it comes to what sometimes seems like grabbing smoke — capturing proof, however elusive, of motives and objectives that could explain  the machinations of US intelligence agencies — and then analyzing the residue.

Not all of the chicanery Scott describes is subtle. For example, in an apparent attempt to bring the Russians into the picture, someone delivered to the FBI’s Dallas office a purported audiotape of Oswald calling the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. That failed, though, when FBI agents decided that the voice did not seem to be Oswald’s.

Then,  two days later, the FBI got on board the subterfuge by falsely reporting that “no tapes were taken to Dallas.” Because of this lie, an investigation more than a decade later by the House Select Committee on Assassinations would erroneously declare that there was no “basis for concluding that there had been an Oswald imposter.”  (The existence of an Oswald impersonator in the months before the president’s murder would in and of itself have been prima facie evidence of a conspiracy in Kennedy’s death.)

And then there was the attempt to set up a Soviet agent…

You will probably not be able to keep up with each tall tale, nor does it matter. They have a cumulative effect, one that explains why it is impossible to study these documents without coming away believing in conspiracy.

There is dark humor here — reminiscent of the television sit-com of the 1960’s, “Get Smart” —

about a secret agent who was always telling one lie after another, blissfully unaware that each new lie not only undermined the last one, but any new one that came after:

Smart:      I happen to know that at this very minute seven Coast Guard cutters are converging on this boat. Would you believe it? Seven.

Mr.Big:     I find that pretty hard to believe.

Smart:      Would you believe six?

Mr.Big:     I don’t think so.

Smart:      Would you believe two cops in a rowboat?

Would you believe that the US intelligence community has been telling us the truth all of these years?

Essay based on talk given by Peter Dale Scott at Third Annual JFK Assassination Conference in Dallas, 2015. (Produced by TrineDay Books, Conscious Community Events, and the JFK Historical Group.)

—WhoWhatWhy Introduction by Milicent Cranor

(This is Part 2 of a three-part series. For Part 1, please go here, and for Part 3, go here.)

Helms’s Rationale for Committing Perjury

We can begin to understand Helms’s behavior from his repeat performance in the Watergate era, when he was fined $2,000 and given a suspended sentence of two years in jail, for failing to tell the Senate Foreign Relations committee about CIA operations in Chile. As the Washington Post reported at the time, Helms’s oath to the committee to tell the truth was at odds with an earlier oath he had taken when he was CIA director never to divulge classified information.

Helms had no hesitation in choosing to protect the CIA and its secrets, rather than serve the goals of truth and law and an open society. After exiting from the court, Helms promptly “described the conviction to the media as ‘a badge of honor.’”[1]  (Although the Post did not mention this, the CIA was also charged by the National Security Act of 1947 with the protection of its “sources and methods”.)

Helms faced the same legal dilemma after he swore to the Warren Commission to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (5 AH 121). Helms was then asked “Can you tell the Commission as to whether or not you have supplied us all the information the Agency has, at least in substance, in regard to Lee Harvey Oswald?” Helms’s answer was, “We have, all” (5 AH 122).[2] This was, I submit, both perjury, and obstruction of justice.[3] In 1964 the CIA secrets he protected concerned an operation involving the name of the man reported to have been the president’s assassin.[4]

I am certain that lawyers had prepared the qualified question about “all the information the Agency has, at least in substance.” It echoes Helms’s earlier lawyerly language about “substantive developments… in the matter of Lee Harvey Oswald,” that had bearing “on the substance of the Commission’s request.”[5] From the CIA’s perspective, it was was not a “substantive” fact that the CIA, five weeks before the assassination, was engaged in an operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald. But for those seeking a solution to the assassination, this fact was, and still is, not only substantive, but crucial.

This can be said confidently on the basis of records since released. But there is also strong evidence that there were still more CIA records regarding Angleton’s Oswald operation than the ones up to October 16 that the CIA chose to release in CD 347. A classified memo of 1975 from Angleton’s newly appointed successor, George Kalaris, noted that “subsequently [to these records] there were several Mexico City cables in October 1963 also concerned with Oswald’s visit to Mexico City, as well as his visits to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies.”[6] However, as of 2015, the CIA has not yet released any cables which talked of Oswald in the Cuban embassy.[7]

As John Newman has noted, Win Scott, the CIA Chief in Mexico City, later wrote that he had sent cables on Oswald’s contacts “with both the Cuban Consulate and with the Soviets.”[8] But Ed Lopez of the HSCA staff stated in the Lopez Report that if any such cable was sent, “it is not in the files made available to the HSCA by the CIA.”[9] In a 1994 interview, Newman asked Helms if it would be fair to say that in fact there hadbeen “several cables” about Oswald’s being in “both the Soviet and Cuban places.” Helms’s nonchalant reply was, “Sure.” Helms’s nonsensical explanation of their non-release: “they [sic, “they,” not “I”] didn’t want to blow their source.”[10]

James Jesus Angleton Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy fromNational Counterintelligence Center / Wikimedia

It will be most interesting to see if the CIA will finally release such cables in 2017, as required by law. Almost certainly, I believe, they would throw more light on the Angleton operation involving Oswald. Almost certainly, also, some key mysteries will probably remain.

Was the Lee Harvey Oswald of Dallas also the man identifying himself as Lee Oswald in Mexico City; or was the latter, as I strongly believe, an impostor who spoke broken English as well as broken Russian?

Was the Lee Oswald in Mexico City himself part of the Angleton operation, or was he someone sent by the assassination plotters to blackmail the CIA into a cover-up?

Did the Lee Oswald in Mexico talk in the Cuban Consulate about assassinating President Kennedy, as many have independently alleged, including former FBI director Clarence Kelley?[11]

Answers to these three questions would, I believe, lead us much closer to understanding both the assassination in 1963, and the cover-up ever since.

Even if we ignore the alleged missing cables, Helms was guilty of perjury that had a major political consequence. If he had told the truth, I doubt very much that the American public, already doubtful, would have been satisfied with the Warren Commission’s banal assurance that it “found no evidence that…Lee Harvey Oswald… was part of any conspiracy” (WR 21). Helms’ behavior, while understandable and even predictable given his institutional loyalty, was part of what I would have to call a systematic obstruction of justice.

Obstruction of Justice by Others in the CIA

 For Helms was assuredly not alone in concealing relevant information about Oswald. According to an FBI Report, CIA Counterintelligence Officer Birch D. O’Neal, on November 22, 1963, told the FBI that “there is nothing in CIA file regarding Oswald other than material furnished to CIA by the FBI and the Department of State.”[12] John Newman’s book, Oswald and the CIA, gives examples of CIA dissembling and outright falsehoods extending over the subsequent decades.[13]

Here is another relevant example. To obscure the outright CIA lie about “Latest HDQS info was… dated May 1962,” someone rearranged the order of documents in the file prepared for the Warren Commission.

One cannot tell that from Warren Commission Document 692, “CIA Helms Memo to Rankin of 06 Mar 1964 with CIA’s Official Oswald Dossier,“ at least not in the hopelessly garbled form of CD 692 that was deposited in the National Archives in 1975.

Here pages have been randomly shuffled, so that, for example, one page of a 1961 Moscow Embassy dispatch is page 93 of the file, and the next is page 108. The first UPI story about Oswald in Moscow, which should have been page 2 of CD 692, is instead page 122.[14]

We could not know the true order of the file prepared for the Warren Commission until it was re-released by the CIA in 1992. Then it became clear that the September 24 FBI report on Oswald’s arrest had been relocated out of chronological order, to make it appear that it had been received after, and not before, the cable about “latest HDQS info.”

This deception was compounded by an outright falsification, if not forgery. The FBI report had actually been read in the CIA in September and October.[15] However it was now preceded by an FBI cover slip from another report (the so-called de Brueys report), dated November 8.[16] To the November slip was added the CIA’s label of the September report, DBA 52355.[17]

I would submit that whoever falsified the cover slip was also part of a systematic obstruction of justice.

Moreover the October 10 cable to the FBI made a significant omission, one that demands explanation. Ostensibly the message was to inform the FBI and other agencies that “an American male, who identified himself as Lee Oswald,” had “contacted the Soviet embassy in Mexico City.”[18]

One would expect that what the FBI most urgently needed to know was that the contact had perhaps been with Kostikov, whom the FBI believed was from the “wet” or assassination section 13 of the KGB. Yet the cable, inexplicably, suppressed any reference to Kostikov, while transmitting misleading details about the American’s age and height.

This omission is highly suspicious. If the FBI had known about Kostikov, one would normally expect Oswald to be, at a minimum, placed on the Security Index and put under surveillance by the FBI in Dallas, and for the Secret Service to be warned about him.[19] If these events had happened, the events in Dallas would have been different; and Oswald could not have served as (what I believe him to be) the “designated culprit” in the assassination plot.

(The whole process is very reminiscent of the CIA’s culpable failure, in 2000, to notify the FBI of the presence in America of two al-Qaeda members, Mohamed al-Mihdhar and Nawaz al-Hazmi, who would later be two of the alleged hijackers, or “designated culprits,” on 9/11.)[20]

It would appear that the Angleton operation, for whatever reason, wanted Oswald not to be surveilled or detained. We cannot leap to the conclusion that the intention was for Oswald to be a free man in Dallas on November 22; the ostensible purpose could well have been, for example, to protect the behavior of “Lee Oswald” in Mexico.

But here the illicit assassination plot may have been piggy-backed on the Angleton operational plot. For it is clear that, if there was an assassination plot against Kennedy with Oswald as designated culprit, Oswald needed to be free of detention or surveillance in Dallas on November 22.

The three cables suppressed and lied about by Helms were most relevant to an investigation of the assassination. Shortly before it the FBI had intercepted a letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, allegedly from Oswald. The letter referred to “my meetings with comrade Kostin” and noted that “had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business.”[21]

Whether you believe this letter to be genuine or (as I do) false, it is prima facie evidence of a conspiracy – either a conspiracy involving Oswald and the Soviets (if true), or a conspiracy to frame Oswald (if false).

The Warren Commission came up with an elaborate explanation that the letter was both genuine and innocuous, by relying on a belatedly discovered “draft” of the letter that I believe to be even more demonstrably false than the letter itself.[22] To sum up, this conspiratorial letter from Oswald should have been more fully investigated, and it was inextricably linked to the cables suppressed by Helms.

I believe that some of those involved in all of this, possibly including Angleton, may have been culpably involved, not just in the cover-up, but in preparations for the assassination itself. And Helms may have known this, for he certainly took deliberate steps to protect whatever machinations CI was up to with the suppressed CIA cables.

We know that after the assassination, contact with the Warren Commission was initially assigned to John Whitten of the CIA’s Mexico desk, one of the signers of one of the October 10 cables. Then Helms, according to Whitten, transferred this responsibility to Angleton and the CI staff.[23]

We have a CIA memo written after a meeting chaired by Helms in March 1964, reaffirming “the CI staff’s responsibility for coordinating all aspects of the Agency’s work on the Oswald case.”[24] A key person assigned to this task was Ann Egerter of CI/SIG, the Counterintelligence Special Intelligence Group.[25]

Ann Egerter had previously been one of the three people who signed off on both of the two mutually contradictory cables on October 10. In other words, those we know to have been responsible for lying about Oswald (in the two conflicting cables of October 10) were among those picked out by Helms to be in charge of the CIA’s response to the Warren Commission.

.Notes

[1] Timothy S. Robinson, “Helms Fined $2,000, Term Suspended,” Washington Post, November 5, 1977.

[2] Helms’s reply requires the belief that all the substantive information in the cables was contained in the CD 347 summary. I submit that the most important information was not transmitted: the suppressed evidence that information that Oswald’s name was being used in an operation was not only substantial, it was most pertinent to determining Oswald’s status in the weeks before the assassination.

[3] In lying to the Commission, Helms may have been mindful of a decade-old agreement with Eisenhower’s Attorney General, exempting the CIA from reporting crimes of which it was aware to the Justice Department. This agreement was so secret that for almost two decades successive Attorneys General were unaware of it. See Scott,Dallas ’63, 11; citing Dorothy J. Samuels and James A. Goodman, “How Justice Shielded the CIA,” Inquiry (October 18, 1978), 10-11. Samuels and Goodman summarized a little-noticed Report from the House Committee on Government Operations that I (even with the help of university librarians) have been unable to locate in Congressional Research Service indices. I have however located a second, follow-up report: U.S. Cong., House, Committee on Government Operations, Justice Department Handling of Cases Involving Classified Data and Claims of National Security. 96th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. Rept. No. 96-280. Washington: GPO, 1979.

[4] In lying to the Commission, Helms was following the precedent of Allen Dulles, who in the early 195os had “lied to Congress about the agency’s operations in Korea and China” (Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 107).

[5] Warren CD 692, 3.

[6] Confidential Memorandum of September 14, 1975, for Executive Assistant to the DDO, from George J. Kalaris, Chief, CI Staff, re Lee Harvey Oswald, NARA #104, 20051-10173; in Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 462.

[7] Here, and elsewhere in this talk, one must keep in mind that Angleton allegedly had his own communications network. This was established for the legitimate purpose of counterintelligence, which amounted in practice to spying on the CIA itself.

[8] Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 416.

[9] Lopez Report, 176; Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 417.

[10] Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 417-18; citing interview with Richard Helms, August 23, 1994. The source for the missing records was presumably the same as for the records released.

[11] Scott, Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics, 93-99; citing Clarence Kelley, Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director (Kansas City: Andrews, McMeel & Parker, 1987), 268-69.

[12] Warren CD 49, FBI Graham Report of 02 Dec 1963 re: Oswald/Russia, 22. In addition to the cables, the 201 file also contained a CIA memo on “Oswald, Lee Harvey” CD 692, p. 112 (in Newman, 470, cf. 466)]

[13] E.g. the February 1995 reply to Jefferson Morley from the CIA Public Affairs Office concerning the October 10 cable discussed in this talk: “The cable referred to in your letter appears to focus only on the status of Oswald’s citizenship” (Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 404).

[14] The order of documents in the NARA serial sequence 104-10015- (where records from the Oswald 201 file are deposited) is also garbled.

[15] Cover slip for FBI Letterhead Memorandum of September 23, 1963, NARA #104-10015-10046.

[16] That November 8 is the date for the de Brueys report can be learned from the Russ Holmes work file, 104-10406-10096. In CD 692, the de Brueys report lacks its cover slip, which has been moved.

[17] Oswald 201 File, Pre-Assassination File, September 1992 release, p, 177; Warren CD 692, p. 72.

[18] NARA #104-10015-10052.

[19] Without giving any reasons, the Church Committee categorically denied this in 1976: “It is important to note, however, that under the procedures then in effect, the inclusion of Oswald on Security Index would not have resulted in the dissemination of Oswald’s name to the Secret Service“ (Church Committee, “Final Report, Book V – The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies,” 51n29. One would like to know the process by which they arrived at this unexplained conclusion.

[20] Scott, The American Deep State, 86-95.

[21] Warren Report, 309; Warren CE 15, 16 WH 33; Scott, Deep Politics and he Death of JFK, 39-40.

[22] See my argument in Dallas ’63, 26-28.

[23] Philip Shenon, A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination(New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2013)..

[24] Memo for the Record by Lee Wigren, C/SR/CI/R, March 16. 1964, NARA #104-10007-10205: “Dooley also mentioned a meeting with Mr. Helms…. Dooley [C/CI/R&A] reiterated the CI staff ‘s responsibility for coordinating all aspects of the Agency’s work on the Oswald case.”

[25] See e.g. “Office of Security Report Re Lee Harvey Oswald Address Book,” Memo for the Record of 31 January, 1964, by Ann Egerter, CI/SIG, NARA # 104-10021-10009.

Israel has announced the construction of a new, Jewish-only road that will connect two Jewish colonies, according to a report by the Middle East Monitor.

“The new proposal includes banning the Palestinians from using the road,” said Hannna Sweed, director of the Arab Centre for Alternative Planning.

Sweed added that Jewish-only roads already exist in the occupied West Bank.

The proposal comes as no surprise to scholars well versed in the supremacist ideology of Judaism, on which the state of Israel is founded.

According to the Talmud, all intermixture between Jews and non-Jews is strictly forbidden by divine law, except in cases in which Jewish men rape non-Jewish children, a behaviour explicitly permitted in the Talmud.*

In Talmudic belief, non-Jews are made only in the “likeness” of humans. They were created, says the Talmud, for the sole purpose of serving Jews, as it is beneath the dignity of a Jew to be served by anything that looks like an animal. Since non-Jews are not humans, they are not protected by divine law. It is even permissible to kill non-Jews. The Jewish Encyclopaedia quotes the Talmud as stating, “Even the best of the goyim [non-Jews] should be killed”.

It is thus not by accident that segregation is openly practiced by the Israeli government; that Palestinians are regularly murdered by Jewish settlers; and that over 50% of Palestinian children that have been sent to Israeli detention centres claim to have been sexually molested by Israeli police officers. Racial supremacism, genocide and child molestation are all behaviours that follow inevitably from Jewish ideology, as explicated in the Talmud.

Notes

* The reasons given are threefold: 1. Children cannot produce offspring; 2. Even Jewish toddlers are not yet humans, and therefore may be freely molested. 3. Non-Jews are not humans. Since toddlers and non-Jews are not humans, according to Judaism, they cannot receive the protection of divine laws; a Jew can therefore use them for his own sexual gratification.

On January 1, 2016 the bilateral ceasefire between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – Peoples Army (FARC-EP) comes into effect. A final peace accord by March 23, 2016 is, however, unlikely due to the complicated final issues that have to be resolved after more than five decades of civil war. 

Colombia has had peaceful Christmas holidays, as much without fear as it is possible in a country that has experienced more than five decades of civil war. The relative calm during the holidays is widely regarded as a positive sign, suggesting that the bilateral ceasefire may come into effect and be kept. Both the government and the FARC-EP agree that the most serious threat to security is posed by ultra-right-wing militants.

Jesus Santrich, member of the FARC-EP‘s peace negotiators in the Cuban capital Havana stressed, however, that expectations that a final peace accord would be reached by March 26, 2016, as agreed, may be overly optimistic. In statements aimed at the public both the government and the FARC-EP position one another as being responsible for stalling the peace process. The matter of fact is that there remain a number of immensely complicated issues that cannot be easily resolved. Issues which cannot be rushed without risking a backlash.

The final point that is currently being negotiated pertains the end to the conflict, and among the issues that need to be resolved are:

The logistics of the disarmament of the FARC-EP. Both sides recognize that the issue is complicated and that the disarmament of FARC-EP units makes both FARC-EP members as well as populations in FARC-EP controlled areas vulnerable to violence and atrocities committed by right-wing militants. There are practical issues which cannot be rushed without risking serious unintended consequences – besides the fact that there is need for trust-building. The government insists that the FARC-EP guerrilla surrender their weapons to the State while the FARC-EP insists that the weapons be surrendered to a third-party.

The FARC-EP also stresses the need for decisive government action with regard to dismantling right-wing neo-paramilitaries which were established after the demobilization of the AUC between 2003 and 2006.

Fmr Colombian President Uribe. Will his house of cards come down?

The government and the FARC-EP have agreed to maximum prison sentences for war crimes committed during the over five decades-long civil war. One point of serious contention, however, is that President Juan Manuel Santos is seeking presidential immunity as part of the final peace accord.

This immunity would not only exempt Santos from eventually facing justice. More importantly, it would exempt former president Alvaro Uribe who stands accused of involvement in or responsibility for massacres committed in 1997.

Another issue is economic compensation for the victims of the conflict. The FARC-EP insists that it does not have the finances to pay economic compensation. International experts have recommended a government-funded compensation fund as a possible solution. Tax revenues from now FARC-EP controlled regions could in part finance the fund.

One further and important issue is the interference of foreign NGO’s like Human Rights Watch who insist that the final peace accord should follow the Anglo-American understanding of justice rather than an approach based on Colombian initiatives and concepts of justice. Human Rights Watch accused the government and the FARC-EP of “agreeing on impunity” to find a solution to end the civil war and recommended that both Colombia’s Constitutional Court and the International Criminal Court (ICC) carefully review the situation.

Ironically, HRW would not mention any of the atrocities committed by the United States, which include child sexual abuse, thousands of rapes and other serious war crimes. No US citizen is subject to prosecution by the ICC. Internationalizing the peace process according to an Anglo – American concept of international justice would, according to several experts in conflict resolution – the author included, complicate actual justice and reconciliation after more than five decades of civil war where crimes and atrocities have been committed by all of the conflicting parties.

Christof Lehmann – Dr. Christof Lehmann is the founder and editor of nsnbc. He is a psychologist and independent political consultant on conflict and conflict resolution and a wide range of other political issues. His work with traumatized victims of conflict has led him to also pursue the work as political consultant. He is a lifelong activist for peace and justice, human rights, Palestinians rights to self-determination in Palestine, and he is working on the establishment of international institutions for the prosecution of all war crimes, also those committed by privileged nations. On 28 August 2011 he started his blog nsnbc, appalled by misrepresentations of the aggression against Libya and Syria. In March 2013 he turned nsnbc into a daily, independent, international on-line newspaper. He can be contacted at nsnbc international at [email protected]

Since 1991, and United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, which authorized the US-UK attack on Iraq, which, in the words of Marti Ahtissari  “destroyed the infrastructure necessary to support human life in Iraq,” the United Nations has been dragged into destructive “adventures” that have literally created the crises it is now trying to resolve. 

In 2011, the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized NATO’s attack on Libya.  The attacks and sanctions in Iraq and Libya have so devastated both countries that it is impossible to resurrect a viable government in either country, and both remain incubators of terrorism which is spreading throughout the Middle East, Africa and beyond.

While Syria and Iran have been demonized by US-NATO powers, and until December 18, and the adoption of SC Resolution 2254, relentless efforts were made by US-NATO to repeat the same pattern of ravaging Syria by a military approach which resembles the scourge of Attila the Hun, the recognition of the limits of hegemonism is  beginning to be shared by UN member states witness to this ill-advised militarism.  This was stated, explicitly, when the Security Council celebrated the success of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action which confirmed Iran’s commitment to eschew efforts to construct a nuclear weapon.  The Security Council meeting 7488, July 20^, 2015, announcing this success was not, however, free of the contentious accusations and counter-accusations which characterize many important Security Council meetings.  The Iranian delegate pushed back eloquently, stating:

“It is ironic that the Ambassador of the United States accused my government of destabilizing the region and of terrorism.  The country that invaded two countries of our region and created grounds favorable to the growth of terrorism and extremism is not well placed to raise such accusations against mine.  The feckless and reckless actions of the United States in our region over many years are at the root of many challenges that we are now facing in our neighborhood.”

On November 25, the Security Council held a meeting that addressed some of the tragic and deadly consequences of destructive UN authorized interventions in the Middle East.  The meeting, 7566 on Peace and Security in Africa:  Report of the Secretary-General on the Progress Towards the United Nations Integrated Strategy for the Sahel (S/2015/866) described the menace to surrounding countries and throughout the entire area that Libya has become following the US-NATO attack authorized by UNSC Resolution 1973.  Following UN authorized “regime change,” Libya is an incubator of terrorism so lethal that the representative of Chad stated:

“The major source of the terrorist threat in the Sahel is Libya, which is engulfed in total chaos and where a multitude of heavily armed terrorist groups find safe haven and flourish.  Moreover, the absence of a government of national unity that is capable of restoring security in the country is fueling the threat to security in the Sahel.  In that regard, Chad is deeply concerned by the establishment and entrenchment of a Daesh stronghold in Southern Libya.”

Venezuela’s representative, Mr. Ramirez Carreno stated:

“These efforts should be focused on sustainable development in the region and not purely a military vision.  It is only with sustained attention to the root causes of conflict – such as poverty, lack of access to basic services and education, can we ensure strong and sustainable peace and security.”

Ms. Hiroute Guebre Sellassie, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General to the Sahel powerfully addressed the root cause of the problem in her report:

“Up to 41 million young people under 25 years of age in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and the Niger alone face hopelessness and are at risk of radicalization or migration.  If nothing is done to improve access to education and increase employment, integration and opportunities for young people, the Sahel, I am afraid, will become a hub of mass migration and recruitment and training of terrorist groups and individuals, which, as Council members know, will ultimately have grave consequences for global peace and security.”

The United Nations is at a crossroads.  There is increasing recognition of the disastrous consequences of the UN Security Council authorization of the US-NATO instigated military onslaught on Iraq and Libya.  This is undeniable even by the US-NATO countries themselves, and even had there not been the Benghazi attack on the US Embassy, which led to the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, and three other personnel.  Prior to the US-NATO attack, both Iraq and Libya were implementing progressive social programs, in many areas, and had viable state infrastructure, albeit somewhat independent of multinational corporate control.  Both countries are now in a devastated condition that may be beyond repair.

The three Russian-Chinese vetoes of US-NATO’s attempt to gain Security Council authorization for yet another abhorrent military adventure, this time blowing up Syria, were sanctimoniously deplored by the West, as the cause of inactivity and paralysis at the Security Council.  Now, with the December 18 adoption of Security Council Resolution 2254, affirming the imperative of a political solution as the only acceptable method of resolution of the crisis in Syria, the wisdom of the Russian-Chinese vetoes must be obvious.  With Russia’s, China’s and Iran’s participation, it may be possible to salvage what was once an important country, Syria, and prevent the further noxious spread of chaos and terrorism throughout the region.  Russia’s and China’s principled opposition to wanton militarism, opposition hitherto deplored  by the West, may have served to halt the deadly march toward World War III.

Last weekend, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies continued their counter-attack at the Al-Sina’a District (Industrial District) in the Deir Ezzor province’s capital, striking ISIS militants at east of this area. According to the ground reports, the Syrian forces advanced at the Al-Sina’a District, capturing several buildings including the welding and sewing factories. The clashes are continuing.

The Syrian forces have continued offensive operations in the Deir Hafer Plains in the Aleppo province. Since last Friday, the pro-government forces seized the villages of Jarouf, Tal Al-Sharbi, and ‘Umm Kharwah and continued their advance towards Al-Bab. Additionally, the SAA is adancing in the direction if the city of Deir Hafer.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which include Syrian Kurds supported by separate Arab units have been continuing military operations to capture the area of the Tishreen Dam which links the Aleppo and Al-Raqqa provinces. By Dec.26 the SDF has captured the Tishreen Dam and continued offensive operation in the direction of the Aleppo province. Separately, the SDF took contol of several villages in the province including Al-Waysi located near the vast Euphrates River, in few kilometers from the Turkish border.

The most possible aims of the SDF in East Aleppo are the ISIS stronghold of Menbeij near the Turkish border and the Jarabulus border-crossing. Thus, the US-backed forces are clearly threatening Ankara’s interests in Syria. It could lead to a new phase of cooling of the US-Turkish relations. Also it provokes Turkey into additional militarybuild-up and into increasing its support of terrorists on Syrian territory.

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2015 has proven to be a monumental year full of geopolitical surprises, with Russia’s anti-terrorist intervention in Syria being chief among them. The old world order is changing at a rapid pace as rising multipolar forces push outwards against the resistant unipolar establishment. Just as much as Russia, China, and Iran are endeavoring to change the global system, the US and its Lead From Behind proxies are ferociously fighting to retain it, and this engenders a serious escalation of geopolitical tensions that can appear to be largely unpredictable to many. Nevertheless, while accounting for unexpected developments that are always guaranteed to pop up, it’s still possible to identify some of the most impactful international processes that are currently reshaping the world and use them as the starting point for forecasting upcoming events.

The exercise is formatted whereby all of the Eurasian supercontinent is analyzed in five separate chapters. The first part of each section begins by describing the overall state of play there before pinpointing a couple key trends that have defined the past year there. Afterwards, it then segues into a forecast about where the aforementioned processes are headed and lists a few disruptions that could occur to offset the course of events. Whenever possible, it also highlights key geopolitical fault lines and hot spots that interested individuals can monitor throughout the coming year.

I Europe: State Of Play

The homeland of Western Civilization has seen its fair share of turbulence and destabilization throughout the past year, largely owing to the large-scale and purposefully intended geopolitical blowback of the US’ regime change operations in the Mideast. The overwhelming “refugee” crisis has unbalanced the origin, transit, and destination states, and in each instance, it works out to the US’ grand strategic advantage. Concurrent with the internal weakening of Europe via the ambitious demographic transformation that the US has been engineering over the past year, American control over the continent was also promulgated via the direct form of NATO expansionism. The establishment of NATO command centers in the Baltics, Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Balkans were a move in entrenching Washington’s supremacy over the EU. So as to safeguard its full-spectrum hegemony for decades into the future, the US also made progress in pushing forward the TTIP, a coercive ‘economic governance’ tool designed to prevent Brussels from ever negotiating any independent trade agreements outside of Washington’s explicit purview. In more ways than one, 2015 can be described as the year that the US made one of its strongest power plays against Europe ever since the end of World War II.

The “Refugee” Crisis:

This US-designed and Turkish-assisted operation aims to demographically plant the seeds for long-term identity conflict in key EU states, most of all Germany, so that Color Revolution-like social conditions can be manufactured upon demand as a form of ‘bottom-up’ pressure against any forthcoming uncompliant administrations. Along the way, the disruption that this created in the Balkans upset the social and political equilibrium (already tenuous as it was) in Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia, thus furthering the chaotic conditions under which American influence is best promoted.

Schengen Shutdown:

In a surprising about-face, Germany, the EU’s most fervent guardian of the organization’s supposedly ‘cherished’ principles, essentially dismantled the Schengen Zone in one swift move when it re-established ‘temporary’ border checkpoints with Austria. This was a direct repercussion of the “refugee” crisis and served to demonstrate the enormous pressure that it had placed on the EU if even its most staunch advocate and de-facto leader would be compelled to retreat somewhat from part of its long-standing ideological convictions.

Hyper Liberalism Is On The Run:

All told, Germany’s relative backtracking from hyper-liberal policies set the stage for its affiliated ideological adherents to do so as well. Sweden reintroduced border checks and said it would no longer follow its blanket-acceptance policy for “refugees”, while Denmark went as far as order the confiscationof money and valuables from “refugees” as compensation for their taxpayer-provided accommodation in the country. Tellingly, there’s no denying at this point that hyper liberalism is on the run and that EU-member states are generally tempering their previously blind conviction to such radical ideals.

Anti-Establishmentarianism Grows:

Growing elements of the public in some of the most key EU states are becoming increasingly disenchanted with their leaders and the former manner of handling affairs. This in turn has supported the rise of anti-establishment parties and voices all across Europe, with Le Pen’s National Front being the most recent posterchild. Syriza had the potential for manifesting such strongly held sentiment in Greece, but it discouragingly proved itself to be an alternative (albeit electorally exciting and rhetorically innovative) form of conventional establishment politics, showing that such movements can successfully be hijacked. The anti-establishment fraud of Viktor Orban is an excellent case in point as well.

Russophobia Is Revived In Full:

Ironically, while some Western, Southern, and Central Europeans are pushing back against the EU establishment (whether sincere in these efforts or fraudulently doing so like Orban and Syriza), their Eastern European and Eastern Balkan counterparts have fully embraced the historical hate of Russophobia and are actually playing a vanguard role in lobbying the rest of the establishment to follow their lead. Nowhere is this more evident than in US-occupied Ukraine, the Baltics, and Romania, but it’s also powerfully felt in Poland as well. Finland and Sweden have jumped on the bandwagon as of late, too, although they’re slightly (key word) less obsessive than their peers.

Europe: Where It’s Headed

Broadly speaking, Europe is becoming even less independent than it’s ever been before. Internal divisions between the elite and the electorate, and “Old Europe” and “New Europe” are evident in all ways, and it’s clear that the continent is undergoing a systemic transformation. The institutional (normative, political, economic, etc.) monopoly that Germany used to have over its subordinates is now lessening to a degree, and this is creating opportunities for other aspiring leaders to assert themselves in their respective historical spheres. The consequence of this process is the fulfillment of the Intermarum project of dividing Europe from Russia by means of a contiguous belt of Russophobic and German-skeptic states stretching from Sweden to Romania, and considering recent developments, one can even include Turkey into this geopolitical construction. The Intermarum has already succeeded in cancelling South Stream and suspending Balkan Stream, and it’s thus predicted to strike at the third and last large-scale prospective energy project that remains, and that’s Nord Stream II. Poland, now equally Russophobic and German-skeptic under the PiS leadership, is leading the Intermarum’s charge against this pipeline, and while it’s uncertain whether or not they’ll full succeed, it’s already self-evident that it’s created a polarizing problem that is turning anti-Russian “New Europe” even further away from their “Older” peers.

The “New Europe”-“Old Europe” Divide Widens:

For the reasons explained above, the Intermarum members of the EU will continue moving progressively further away from Germany and Western Europe. Normatively speaking, they will publicly espouse of a form of “conservatism” that stands at odds with “Old Europe’s” traditional liberalism, and the attractive appeal that this has will pressure the latter to continue moderating its policies so as to ideologically compete in this changing ‘values-based’ environment (which includes promotion of the Russophobic “value” as well).

France Splits From Germany:

Paris has largely been seen as the junior partner to Berlin for quite a few years already, but that’s all beginning to change nowadays. While Germany will clumsily try to ‘balance’ between progressive and so-called ‘conservative’ ‘values’ and embarrassingly fail in doing so, France will bunker down in support of the liberal rhetoric that normatively endears it to the general public in the PIGS states of Southern Europe. France wants to carve out its own sphere of influence along the Mediterranean, but this of course isn’t anything new in fact.

What’s changing, however, is that France is differentiating itself from Germany in rhetorical, economic, and military manners, with the latter evidenced by its enthusiastic role in the Wars on Libya and Syria. Paris’ recent moves against Syria are the reason why Berlin felt compelled to up its aggression there as well and play catch-up, in probably the first-ever observable instance in a very long time of Germany undoubtedly following France’s lead. Although far-sighted as of now, there is of course the potential for this to create an intra-EU division between the bloc’s two leaders that would hamper its already-derailed efficiency and inadvertently facilitate the continued rise of the Intermarum.

The Underbelly Bursts:

The Balkans are under tremendous and unprecedented pressure as a result of the “refugee” crisis and the chain reaction of distrust that this unleashed between most of its regional states. The only two that are not presently in some sort of spat with one another are Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia, the geo-critical members of the Central Balkans that incidentally are the key transit points for China’s Balkan Silk Road project. They are, however, exceptionally vulnerable to internal destabilizations within their borders, brought about by a combination of Color Revolution technology, “refugees”, and Islamic-affiliated terrorism (most likely practiced by the Albanian ethnicity). Macedonia’s upcoming early elections at the end of April 2016 present a perfect scenario for reheating the frozen Hybrid War attempt from last May via a renewed Color Revolution/Albanian Unconventional War combination.

Montenegro’s people are also presently struggling to free themselves from Djukanovic’s yoke, urgently realizing that the longer they reside under his decades-long rule, the more their traditional spiritual and geopolitical identity is being eroded. The protest movement in this country could potentially escalate into a civil war if excessive state brutality continues to be used. It’s not for sure that this will happen, but it can’t of course be discounted. Montenegrins know that they absolutely must act before their country formally joins NATO in order to preserve their Orthodox Christianity and historically fraternal ties with Russia, while similarly the ruling clique understands how imperative it is for them to make sure NATO membership happens so as to destroy these two forms of national identity. The friction between the two could realistically give way to all-out conflict between both parties, ergo the fears of civil war.

Finally, Bosnia is being pushed into an unbearable domestic crisis, with Sarajevo obsessively doing whatever it can to infringe on Republika Srpska’s sovereignty. The country is currently in its worst crisis since the end of the 1994 civil war, as the Serbian representatives proudly cut ties with SIPA, the nation-wide court and prosecution organ, in protest after the latest blatant infringement against their entity’s sovereignty. The US is pushing the country back to the brink of warfare, seeing the incitement of regional violence as dually accomplishing the goals of sabotaging China’s Balkan Silk Road project through the enticement of Serbian involvement and the resultant geopolitical consequences this will entail and weakening the EU via an explosion of conflict and a renewed humanitarian crisis. As with the previous forecasts, it’s not for sure that this will fully transpire as feared, but the signs are undoubtedly there that this is a trend that should surely be monitored in the coming months. In all three instances, the use of terrorism could be strategically applied in order to set off a domino chain of destabilization.

Europe: Disruptors

The following are three events that could change the game in Europe:

Belarussian Backstabbing:

Lukashenko has been cozying up quite close to the West over the past year, having gained enough of their approval to even have some of the sanctions suspended against his country. It’s not known whether there’s a link between the two, but it was also around that time that Belarus began fussing about the air base that Russia had purportedly wanted to open up there. While Moscow publicly appears unmoved by the stalemate, it’s bound to have resulted in the Kremlin reconceptualizing the nature of relations that it has with its nominal “ally”. The West wants nothing more than to drive a wedge between the two and Russia is fully aware of this, hence why it doesn’t publicly respond to Lukashenko’s ego-tripping outreaches to Europe, but it’s possible that the Belarussian leader might overstep his position one day and disastrously himself in a situation where the West prompts him to choose sides. Predictably, he may let his ambitions of personal glory get the best of him and opt to join forces with the West if the economic price is right, and doing so would completely disrupt Russia’s post-Soviet integrational projects with the Eurasian Union and the CSTO.

Ukrainian Uprising 2.0:

First written about in August, the author still holds true to the thesis that Ukraine is progressively becoming more susceptible to a legitimate people’s revolution against the Kievan authorities. Whether it’s of Neo-Nazis turning on their former patrons, the country’s disparate regions pushing for federalization, or average citizens that have just plain had enough of the economic and physical destruction of the past two years, it’s more likely than ever that some sort of domestic disruption aside from a renewed civil war against Donbass (which is also a possibility) could occur. No matter which form it takes, this would instantly become Europe’s number one foreign affairs priority and would temporarily reorient (or rather, disorient) attention from the Mideast back to Eastern Europe. The effects that this would have on the New Cold War are dependent on the circumstances under which this event transpires, so if it’s a civil war against Donbass, it would be to Russia’s disadvantage, but if it was a patriotic rebellion against the Western-controlled government, then it would play to Russia’s benefit.

Croatian-Serbian Conflict:

The last disruption that might (but does not necessarily mean it will) happen would be a Croatian-Serbian War provoked by a breakdown of stability in Bosnia and exacerbated by both sides’ current missile race. For the moment, this isn’t doesn’t seem to be a likelihood for 2016, but the odds could turn against this forecast’s favor if unexpected developments (i.e. Western-supported terrorist attacks) break out in the country and quickly unravel the peace between all parties. A domestic destabilization in Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, and/or the Republic of Macedonia (separately or in some sort of combination) would be unsettling enough for the EU and would already greatly undermine whatever remaining independence (mostly in name only at this point) it retains, but a conventional state-on-state conflict between two Balkan nations would maximize the respective effects even more.

II Eurasia: State Of Play

In this context, Eurasia refers to the former Soviet space and concerns Russia’s reintegration efforts over this wide region. Belarus and Ukraine were already mentioned in the previous section, so this one speaks on the Russian Federation itself, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Overall, one can see that Moscow has successfully consolidated its position, although two significant holdouts refuse to enter into pragmatic cooperation with it. These are Georgia and Uzbekistan, with the latter engaging with Russia through the SCO but not at all in the formerly close nature that it once did when it was part of the CSTO. These two states are the US’ ideal points of strategic entry in their respective regions, and more progress has been made on this front with Tbilisi than Tashkent. Other than the competing institutionalism between the Eurasian Union and EU in the Caucasus and Uzbekistan’s stubbornly ‘independent’ position, things in general have been very positive for Russia. The Pivot to Asia is proceeding apace, although of course this is a long-term strategic complementary diversification to Russia’s foreign policy and will take a lot more than a single year or two to physically actualize. That said, the commencement of the first-ever Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok was a welcome sign, and Russia looks to be advancing towards the fulfillment of the “Asian Sea Arc” project in enhancing maritime trade with ASEAN.

Eurasian Union Enlargement:

2015 was important for the Eurasian Union because it saw the formal incorporation of Armenia and Kyrgyzstan into the economic bloc. This gave the group a presence in the South Caucasus and expanded its position along the Chinese border, along with bequeathing it with the institutional experience necessary for managing future enlargements. The fact that both of these cases proved to be a success without any notable problems or bottlenecks demonstrates that the Eurasian Union is working effectively at its highest levels.

Tbilisi’s Intransigence:

Armenia is formally a member of the Eurasian Union and CSTO and rival Azerbaijan has been moving a lot closer to Russia over the past year, but Tbilisi has yet to improve its ties with Moscow. President Putin said during his yearly press conference recently that he’s ready to move forward with this process, provided that his Georgian counterparts seize the moment and move forward with him, but despiteformally agreeing to his visa-abolishment proposal, they seem unwilling to moderate their pro-NATO stance. Earlier this year, the military bloc even opened up a joint training base in the country, demonstrating the extent of influence that Brussels has over Tbilisi at the moment. When speaking of Brussels, that can be taken in more ways than one, since Georgia still wants to join the EU, which has the distinct possibility of creating a customs crisis in the Caucasus in the future.

CSTO/SCO Security Interplay In Central Asia:

Both integrational organizations rehearsed their contingency planning for dealing with a breakout of terrorist violence in Central Asia. ISIL’s expansion to Afghanistan and the Taliban’s latest propensity for renewed offensives raises the risk of chaos spilling across the borders and into the former Soviet periphery. Thankfully, as The Saker noted in his detailed piece from May, Russia has hardened her southern border and is prepared for dealing with most conventional scenarios that could transpire. China’s involvement vis-à-vis the SCO is important as well, since Beijing has enormous energy and forthcoming market interests there that it is eager to have defended.

The Caspian Takes Central Stage:

Complementing Russia’s anti-terrorist intervention in Syria, the Caspian Flotilla has played a very strategic and supportive role, one which transcends its counter-terrorist success and sends larger statements to the rest of the world. Russia is signaling that the inland lake, previously written off by Western military ‘experts’ as near-useless in the modern-era, is actually quite an advantageous position for launching operations in the Mideast and potentially even Central Asia. The munitions that were used surprised and the accuracy with which they were fired surprised Western observers and proved just how wrong they were in earlier harking on about Russia’s ‘decrepit’ naval resources.

The Pacific Pivot:

Russia has resolutely shifted a large amount of its formerly European-concentrated attention towards entering into tighter relations with the Pacific economies, specifically in ASEAN. Working with China is wonderful, but by itself it cannot function as a full-on pivot unless diversified to other partners as well. Vietnam forms the lynchpin of Russia’s ASEAN strategy, but even this could be endangered due to its partner’s cooperation with the US-led TPP. Be that as it may, Russia has clearly demonstrated its intent to engage the Pacific states and re-establish a mild presence in the region, be it in the diplomatic,military, and/or economic senses.

Eurasia: Where It’s Headed

The present security configuration in Central Asia is disproportionately dependent on the continued and stable rule of the countries’ leaders, but with transitions being inevitable sooner or later due to the advanced age of the various Presidents, it’s possible that everything Russia has worked for could become undermined if this changing of the guard descends into a bloody inter-factional battle. This isn’t so much a risk in Kazakhstan, and one could even perhaps say in Tajikistan (which has the memory of a recent civil war behind it), so much as it is in Uzbekistan, where the clan-based nature of society is prime for external manipulation. There are only two ways in which power transfers can take place in these three states, and that’s through de-facto ‘succession’ (the predecessor appoints a political heir before passing and/or stepping down) and/or a Color Revolution, both of which could intertwine once a ‘successor’s’ legitimacy is put to vote afterwards. These destabilization scenarios could occur at any time, not just next year, but because they the situational trip wire might be broached with one of the elderly statesmen’s passing, it’s worthy to have offered those view words about the possibility.

The Russian-Iranian Strategic Partnership Integrates Azerbaijan:

Long seen as the West’s prized partner in the Caspian, 2015 saw a remarkable cooling of Azeri-Western relations over the latter’s strong criticism of Baku’s human rights record. While political and non-energy economic ties (e.g. EU membership) appear to be at a standstill, oil and gas still flow unimpeded through its territory, and Azerbaijan is expected to be the main source for the EU’s anti-Russian Southern Energy Corridor. Interestingly enough, Azerbaijan has moved considerably closer to both Russia and Iran in the past year, excitedly raising the prospects that a trilateral partnership between the three (perhaps via the North-South Corridor) could neutralize the unipolar intentions of the US and EU and flip Baku into a becoming a multipolar pump of energy influence towards the West. Of course, the US would never allow Azerbaijan to become a strategic weapon against it, Turkey, or Israel’s interests (the latter of whichreceives 40% of its oil needs from the country) without some sort of Color Revolution disruption first, so as this realignment scenario moves forward, one can simultaneously expect more Western hostility towards Azerbaijan and friendly outreaches towards Armenia.

Barbarians At The Turkmen Gates:

The author wrote a prognosis in summer 2014 about the institutional vulnerability that Turkmenistan has towards any ISIL-like offensive streaming across its joint border with Afghanistan, and the assessment is still very relevant going into 2016 (and it could also affect Uzbekistan and Tajikistan too, especially if they’re in the midst of their own domestic crises at the time). Just in October there was an incident with the Taliban being caught in no-man’s land along the Turkmen border, and as the terrorist group regroups for what seems to be an imminent series of offensives earlier next year, it’s likely that their presence will only increase along the shared frontier. Any spillover of terrorist bedlam into Turkmen territory could quickly lead to a spike in global energy prices, principally because the world’s second-largest gas field in Galkynysh is very close to Afghanistan and could be affected by the turmoil. Even if the terrorists don’t occupy or destroy any of its facilities, but simply make a move in that direction, it’s predictable that gas prices (and in turn, perhaps even the oil prices to which they’re pegged) could increase, since speculators might prepare for Beijing to commence the emergency purchase of LNG to substitute for any forthcoming disruptions from its main foreign energy supplier. Although the LNG sales would take time to finalize and deliver, if a China made a large enough play in this market at a single, concentrated time, then it would inevitably have an impact on price.

Russian-Japanese Outreaches:

While it may seem unlikely to many, there’s a strong chance that the two sides will engage in behind-the-scenes diplomacy to pragmatically rectify their outstanding bilateral issues (if they haven’t begun such talks already). Shinzo Abe is indisputably a pro-American stooge that’s currently overseeing one of the US’ most cherished Lead From Behind proxies, but there are still apolitical non-governmental interests that are eager to intensify ties between the two. Russia’s Pivot to Asia needs foreign investment and management experience in order to be fully successful, hence the reason why Vladivostok and the nearby environs were recently declared a free port in order to assist with this. It’s not to suggest that a breakthrough needs to be reached on the Kuril Islands issue in order for this to happen either, as the only thing that needs to occur is for the profit-minded business elite in Japan to successfully lobby their government backtrack on their unreasonable anti-Russian policies out of economic motivations, convincing them that there is more self-interested gain in working with Russia than working against it.

From the Russian perspective, aside from the Far Eastern foreign investment interests that it has, Moscow would like to strategically and pragmatically diversify its Asian Pivot beyond China and to the Pacific’s third-largest economy, Japan. Additionally, some in the Russian establishment conceivably hope that progress could be made in exporting the country’s resources to the energy-deprived island chain. On a grander level, the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership tacitly implies that both sides can cooperate with the other’s rivals (in this case, Russia working with Japan just as it does with Vietnam and India) out of the shared vision of using its newfound position to promote its partner’s interests wherever possible. This policy doesn’t always work as theorized and isn’t infallible, but the general concept is that each of the two trusts the other enough so as not to be perturbed by their external dealings and to never suspect treacherous intentions from them. If anything, such interactions can boost the cohesiveness of the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership, but this is only because of the unique nature of their bilateral relations. The same template, for example, can’t be superimposed on Russian-Belarussian relations, as was earlier discussed.

Eurasia: Disruptors

Other than the Hybrid War regime chance scenarios touched upon earlier, here are several ways in which the ongoing trends in Eurasia could severely be disrupted:

Nagorno-Karabakh Continuation War:

This was previously elaborated upon by the author before, but it still remains an ever-present possibility. The specifics of a 2016 scenario would probably be a bit modified than what was earlier written, making due for the changed geopolitical position of both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia’s Eurasian Union and CSTO ally is moving towards the West at the same time that the West’s energy-exporting bastion is looking towards Russia and Iran. While Azerbaijan routinely threatens Armenia and continuously boasts about its military potential, it realistically doesn’t seem inclined to provoke Russia, which has a contingent of troops based there. It’s possible that a second hurrah of Western influence and/or false-flag provocations could be used to lure Baku into this anti-Russian trap, but it’s more feasible that a second round of Color Revolution fervor would hit Armenia and destabilize its government. In the event that it falls to Ukrainian-style hard-core nationalists, then the presumably pro-Western authorities that would take their place could likely initiate the catastrophic scenario on their own, thereby opening up a new anti-Russian hot front in the New Cold War and potentially turning Moscow and Baku against one another.

Uzbekistan Goes Full-On Rogue:

Islam Karimov has been somewhat courting President Putin’s approval over the past year, trying to convince him that Uzbekistan isn’t going to totally turn against Russian interests and actively disrupt them in the region. The Russian leader visited the Central Asian state in December 2014 and wrote off some of its debt, and he even invited Karimov to visit Russia after the two met in Ufa over the recent summer. Still, these friendly and welcome outreaches don’t change the fact that Uzbekistan is looking to warm up its military relations with the US and potentially becomes its Lead From Behind partner in the region in exchange. Uzbekistan might even be under some form of implicit blackmail, getting the hint that failure to work with the US would guarantee that a Hybrid War scenario breaks out after Karimov’s passing. Whatever the reason may be, there’s plenty of reason to suspect that Uzbekistan could one day play a similarly anti-Russian position as its unipolar Ukrainian and Turkish counterparts presently do.

Japanese-Russian Naval Tensions:

Disturbingly, it appears as though the world has entered a renewed era of naval tensions, with the East China Sea, South China Sea, and Turkey’s foreboding potential in the Bosporus being the prime examples. In a similar vein, it’s possible for the US to command its Japanese satellite to enact a comparable provocation against Russia just as it does against China at the moment. It’s not guaranteed that Japan would fall for this bait, but Abe might be tempted to go along with this in order to create the ‘convincing’ justification that Japan needs to unreservedly and immediately revise its pacifist constitution. Staging some kind of stunt in the Kuril Islands would create the global fanfare necessary to ride the anti-Russian wave into general international (Western) acceptance of his actions, and it might even be enough to scare the Japanese population into largely accepting his dictates on this matter. The media-manipulated and absolutely false perception of Russia and China ‘teaming up’ against Japan would also excite American military planners into beefing up their presence in archipelago on the fabricated grounds of ‘protecting an Asian democracy’.

III Mideast: State Of Play

The latest year was one of the most historically transformational for the region ever since the 2003 US War on Iraq, with the argument perhaps being made that 2015 was even more impactful because it heralded Russia’s long-awaited return to the Mideast and the formal (key word) end of the US- and Israel-manufactured Iranian nuclear ‘scare’. There’s no debating that the entire regional paradigm was turned upside down by these two developments, and the author’s earlier analysis about “The New Middle East: Russian Style” goes in-depth by explaining what’s changed and what it will likely lead to. Therefore, this section is mostly a reiteration of that research, albeit partially modified for the specifics of the 2016 Trends Forecast. Other than these two globally renowned events whose impact doesn’t require any further explanation beyond the afore-cited link, there were three other developments that marked the key Mideast processes of 2015:

The War On Yemen:

Saudi Arabia fell into a tantalizing trap after it decided to invade its poorer and comparatively weaker neighbor to the south. The Ansarallah had been waging a liberation struggle against the pro-Western and Saudi-imposed proxy that was controlling the country, but the Saudi establishment fell for their own prejudices and sincerely thought that this was some sort of covert Iranian conspiracy against their interests. That definitely wasn’t the case whatsoever, but the fact remains that this paranoid fear is what prompted the Kingdom to enter into what could indisputably be labeled as a quagmire right now. In the over 9 months since their bombing campaign and invasion started, Saudi Arabia and its contracted GCC allies and other mercenary partners have not been able to achieve their main objective of defeating the Ansarallah and regaining total control over the country. In response, the Saudis felt pressed to further internationalize the War on Yemen under the pretext that it’s a subsect of the larger “War on Terror”, hence the recent creation of the Riyadh-led “anti-terrorist coalition” (examined in-depth by the authorhere). Going into the new year, there’s no concrete indication yet of whether or not this will change the Saudis’ disastrous fortunes and be enough to turn the tide of the war to their favor, although it will likely fulfill some role in trying to do so.

Kurdistan Calling:

Having been predicted years ago and previously with much Western backing (although now with possible Russian-Iranian support as well), it now looks like the time has come for “Kurdistan” to take on a heightened international role (even if sub-national and spread across Syria-Turkey-Iraq). The Iraqi Peshmerga and Syrian-based Kurdish militias have been very successful in fighting against ISIL, and this has won them international approval from all forces except Turkey, which is fearful that this sizeable minority group (estimated to be around a quarter of the country’s population) may rebel against Ankara once more for increased rights, representation, and perhaps even autonomy or independence. It was this fear, combined with Erdogan’s catastrophic electioneering efforts, that led to Turkey provoking the Kurds into restarting their military operations against the state, all with the intent of sparking a preplanned offensive to cripple that ethnic community. The resultant Turkish Civil War that followed and Erdogan’s divisive efforts to split the transnational community by buying out their Iraqi counterparts will obviously be major factors in determining the legal status of transnational “Kurdistan” in the coming future.

Turkey Backstabs Russia:

One of the most dramatic events to happen ever since the end of the Old Cold War occurred when Turkey shockingly shot down a Russian anti-terrorist bomber over Syria. This unparalleled aggression was especially jaw-dropping given that the two sides, despite their disagreements over Syria, were steadily moving towards a pragmatic partnership with one another. In the aftermath that followed, Russia maturely resisted the legitimate urge for war that it had and patiently set about planning the long-term destabilization of Erdogan’s government, with travel and trade sanctions being but the first counter-salvo in what is expected to become a protracted proxy struggle between both sides. The US ultimately benefits from this, but curiously enough, it also seems inclined to passively turn a blind eye to what Russia might be planning against Turkey, with the afore-cited link providing more details about this interesting development.

Mideast: Where It’s Headed

The Mideast will continue its geopolitical transformation in the coming year, with ongoing events helping to reshape its overall contours. This next year will be but one in a series of several coming more that will determine what will then be the lasting status of the Mideast. This transitional time is turbulent and racked with violence, and it can be said to have begun in earnest in 2014 with the rise of ISIL. It’s not known exactly when this period will end, but the region could realistically stabilize by 2018 or 2019, depending of course on whether or not key pillars (Turkey and Saudi Arabia) implode, which in that case could indefinitely prolong this history-making era.

Reaching A Syrian Settlement:

The dynamic interplay of various global forces that have converged over Syria is totally unparalleled in recent history but also completely untenable in its present form. There are now three coalitions nominally fighting terrorism in Syria (with only the Russian one being sincere in its stated objective, while the US- and Saudi-led ones actually support terrorism) and a slew of foreign aircraft flying over its skies. The accelerated diplomacy that’s been happening as of late indicates that all sides want to see some sort of settlement soon, likely agreed to by the middle of next year, in order to de-escalate and pull back from the brink of all-out conflict. Each side will probably resort to non-conventional means to support their given side(s) after the conventional de-escalation begins, meaning that any possible surface indication of a settlement might be illusory and misleading. Nonetheless, it seems like an agreement between most of the Great Powers currently involved in the war in one capacity or another will come sooner or later, and it’s very probable that 2016 will be the year they finally hammer the details out.

It’s impossible at this moment to fully articulate a post-conflict vision for Syria since so much is dependent on the Race for Raqqa. The respective coalition that gains control over ISIL’s ‘capital’ will have a deciding voice in stipulating the constitutional direction of the country afterwards, and with that document’s legal revision being a central element of the UNSC’s conflict resolution efforts, it means that control over this city will be pivotal. The US would ideally like to create a transnational sub-state “Sunnistan” (likely through a ‘federal’ model) between eastern Syria and western Iraq in order to revive the Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline that had originally been at the root of the war in the first place, while Russia and Syria want to preserve the unity of the state. It’s appropriate at this moment to remind the reader that Turkey’s recent invasion of northern Iraq was likely meant to further the goal of a “Sunnistan” in that theater in anticipation of a complementary unit being constructed in Syria.

Turkish Turmoil:

The author has written about this on many occasions before, but the gist is that Turkey is leaping towards an all-out domestic crisis as anti-government sentiment spikes and the Civil War wages on. With Russia now opposed to Erdogan’s government, it’s likely that it will take some moves to increase the level of domestic dissent against the authorities (e.g. sanctions and potential gas disruptions), but it must be reminded that Turkey’s present turmoil is all Erdogan’s fault. A dangerous cocktail of destabilization is now brewing inside the country, and it’s very probable that the civil war could spill over out of the southeast and into the heartland and/or coastal areas. It doesn’t even have to be Kurdish-inspired in this case, as if the legitimate institutional opposition continues to feel oppressed to the strong degree that they presently do, some of their members might peacefully organize against the government. If the state brutally crushes their demonstrations (which is all but guaranteed), some of the protesters might resort to taking up arms against the government, with a few possibly linking up with radical left-wing militants in the process. As violence spreads across the land, Erdogan might feel compelled to enact a wide-ranging martial law decree, but doing so would also place the military in a heightened position to enact a coup against him if they were both inclined to do so and physically capable of it (after Erdogan ‘cut their wings’ in the past). It doesn’t look like things will calm down anytime soon in Turkey, and even if they appear to do so, there’s a definite level of intense discontent lying just below the surface that could be reactivated at any time.

The Saudis’ Sinking Ship:

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has never been in such dire straits before. The country is embroiled in an unnecessary, bloody, and ever-expanding quagmire in Yemen, and its own borders are now being threatened by the blowback overspill that it unintentionally engendered. The Saudis can’t even fight the war they started on their own and have been pressed into assembling an “anti-terrorist” coalition (in reality a ‘legitimated’ and integrated mercenary marketplace) to provide the necessary backup support that its forces need to sustain their aggression. Concurrent with this, falling energy prices have forced the Kingdom into its largest-ever deficit that raises serious questions about the potential for social unrest in the future. Along with that, there’s also the prospect of a broad Shiite uprising in the Eastern Province if the Kingdom’s authorities continue to blatantly disregard that minority’s basic human rights and interests. All told, the Saudi ship appears to be sinking, but it doesn’t mean that its problems can’t theoretically be patched up. As difficult as it might be, they may find a way to avert what looks to be a looming disaster, although at present it’s unknown exactly how they could realistically do this (but they never tire the world with their ‘surprises’). Therefore, the Saudis’ forecast for 2016 is unusually grim, and it’s predicted that one or more of the aforementioned destabilizing factors will contribute to a larger systemic crisis inside the country, perhaps culminating in a royal and/or military coup attempt (whether or not it succeeds is another matter).

Mideast: Disruptors

The Saudis Win The War On Yemen:

This does not seem all that possible at this given point, but if the Saudi’s “anti-terrorist” coalition is somehow able to provide the necessary personnel and firepower support that Riyadh so desperately needs, then it’s conceivable that it might irreversibly change the balance of power there and lead to a full-out ethnic cleansing campaign against Shiites and northern-based Yemenis. That’s probably the only way that the Saudis could ever secure their ‘win’ over Yemen, and they know they can only do it if they have multilateral support and partners in crime. Doing it by themselves, which they’re theoretically capable of it, isn’t something that they want to do primarily since they want to forge a ‘blood bond’ between their mercenary forces in committing them to further anti-Shiite genocidal campaigns afterwards. A Saudi ‘win’ in the War on Yemen would be a loss for the multipolar world and would immediately raise the chances that the “anti-terrorist” coalition is redirected northwards against Syria and Iraq with full force. These two targets might see some low-scale, light-intensity engagements prior to this, but the real nightmare would occur after the ‘problem’ in Yemen is ‘dealt with’ according to the Saudis’ vile designs.

Omani Sultan Qaboos Passes Away:

The leader of Oman, the most pragmatic and non-radical member of the GCC, has been sick for years and is already of advanced age. He will eventually pass away, whether it’s next year or sometime afterwards, but there’s no apparent heir or elaborated successionist process for what will come next. The author wrote about the possible scenarios in an earlier piece for The Saker, but to concisely summarize, one of three possibilities will happen – succession will occur unimpeded and Oman will remain a pro-Saudi (albeit pragmatic) kingdom; the Muslim Brotherhood attempts to sabotage the leadership transition; or Islamic Republicanism (in the vein of the Iranian manifestation) takes hold among the populace and becomes a rallying cry for change. The latter two events would likely result in some form of a Saudi military intervention, whether unilaterally or through the “anti-terrorist” coalition (minus the Muslim Brotherhood-supporting states of Qatar and Turkey). This is a whole new can of worms that the Saudis definitely do not want to deal with at the moment, and it could be the decisive straw that breaks the camel’s back. On the other hand, if a rabidly pro-Saudi ruler comes to power in Qaboos’ wake, it’s possible that he may reorient the Kingdom’s foreign policy away from its pragmatic base and more towards the unipolar subservient status of his royal peers, which would thus have direct consequences for bilateral ties with Iran (including in the energy sphere).

Muslim Brotherhood-Wahhabist Fallout 2.0:

Most of 2014 was marked by a the Gulf Cold War between Saudi Arabia and Qatar that was finally ended when the latter strategically surrendered to Riyadh and was forced to kick the Muslim Brotherhood outto Turkey. Since then, however, and with Saudi Arabia’s relative weakening over the past year, Qatar has moved so close with Turkey (the new formal patron of the terrorist movement) that it’s going to host a military base for Erdogan in the coming future. This is obviously aimed at making sure that the US doesn’t ever sell Qatar out to Saudi Arabia in whatever forthcoming Mideast realignment it may be planning, so Emir Thani is trying to proactively secure his survival in the face of changing American strategic priorities. Remarkably, both Turkey and Qatar are part of Saudi Arabia’s “anti-terrorist” coalition, but sooner or later, it’s all but certain that the two ideological strands of competing Islamic terrorism will come to blows again, perhaps in the abovementioned Omani scenario. No matter how it eventually plays out, the stakes are a lot higher now than they were in 2014, since Qatar is now aligned with Turkey, which foolishly doesn’t understand when it’s necessary to back away from a flawed policy (the aggression against Russia being the premier case in point). Erdogan’s arrogance would play out to the advantage of the multipolar world, however, since a Turkish-Saudi conflict (whether physical or played out via a region-wide Cold War) would further weaken the US’ two pillars of regional support and create unprecedented opportunities for the Resistance Bloc. It might even speed up one or both of their internal disintegrations if the scenarios proceed along a certain trajectory.

IV South Asia: State Of Play

The situation in South Asia has changed dramatically over the past year, although most people likely have been oblivious to this owing to the relative lack of global news coverage that all but the most dramatic events receive. Mostly everyone is aware of the Taliban and its steady advances in the Afghan countryside, as are they knowledgeable about India and Pakistan’s ascension to the SCO, but comparatively less people heard about the Indian-Chinese Cold War that’s progressively unfolded throughout 2015 or about the heated proxy rivalry between the two over Nepal. These interconnected events are very important, yet they regretfully didn’t receive the widespread exposure that they deserve. Along the same vein, Bangladesh’s rising Islamic terrorist problem has also been swept under the rug, despite clear indications that it is turning into ISIL’s latest frontline state.

When assessing the year in review as it relates to South Asia, one mustn’t also forget to speak about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, perhaps one of the most critical spokes of the New Silk Road, nor must the stunning pro-Western electoral reversal in Sri Lanka go undescribed either. The Hybrid War threat in the Maldives only made the news because the island chain is a popular and elite tourist getaway, but aside from that, most people would never have heard about developments in this geostrategic Indian Ocean state. Last but not least, the long-held dream of constructing a pipeline from Turkmenistan to India (what some have suggested was partially behind the US’ decision to occupy Afghanistan) finally moved forward for the first time in its history with the project’s official consecration in early December.

It’s worthwhile to shed some additional light on these neglected geopolitical developments in order to educate the reader about their existence and significance, and also to set the stage for explaining how they’ll impact on the region in the year to come.

Taliban On The March:

To refresh everyone’s memory, the US and NATO severely decreased the size of their occupation forces in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, meaning that 2015 was bound to see an increase in Taliban activity one way or another. To clarify, the West did not fully withdraw their forces, but merely reduced their presence out of strategic considerations, but this was enough to embolden the terrorists later on in the year. During the fall, the Taliban shocked the world by temporarily capturing their first provincial capital since the 2001 invasion ousted them from power. This dramatic event captured global attention and proved that the Taliban was significantly more powerful (both in terms of physical forces and intelligence networks) than was previously thought, and their follow-up attacks all throughout the country at the end of December took most experts off guard. After all, the Taliban previously ‘hibernated’ during the winter, with the spring and summer being routinely identified as the traditional ‘fighting season’, but it seems as though the group is switching up its strategy so as to score unexpected battlefield ‘points’.

It’s incontestable that the Taliban are in the process of undertaking a nationwide offensive aimed at finally overthrowing the Kabul government, but this has significantly destabilizing consequences for all of Afghanistan’s neighbors. As was discussed in the earlier section about Eurasia, there’s the real risk of terrorist violence spilling over into Central Asia, especially in the event that any of the border countries experience their own separate forms of destabilization. Likewise, the violence could also spill across into Pakistan, which has traditionally felt the brunt of the Taliban’s wrath over the past decade. And, making matters even more complicated, ISIL has finally established a presence in the country and is lethally competing with the Taliban. It’s very probable that if these two groups don’t cooperate (and even if they do so, it would be under ISIL’s leadership, not the Taliban’s), then they’ll savagely be at each other’s throats in a bloody terrorist civil war.

This could create the opening needed for Afghanistan’s anti-terrorist forces to eliminate both groups in one fell swoop, but unfortunately the national forces are largely corrupted and trained to insufficient standards to take advantage of this opportunity, and more than likely the two terrorist sides would fight to the death with one another. If ISIL emerges victorious, then the territorial expansionism that’s been trademarked by the group in Syria and Iraq will likely become transplanted in the Afghan theater, raising the very real risk that that a transnational ‘caliphate’ could emerge between Afghanistan and Central Asia (perhaps making its first inroads in Turkmenistan and/or Tajikistan), Afghanistan and Pakistan, or between all three regions in connecting Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhstan, Afghanistan’s Wakkhan Corridor and nearby environs, and Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. If the Taliban is really as divided as some rumors speculate, then it’s possible that ISIL could gain the upper hand against them in any prospective conflict and take steps to actualize these transnational terrorist plans.

Pakistan And India Join The SCO:

This was a huge move and one that should likely reverberate for years to come. The two regional nuclear-armed rivals began their ascension into the Russian- and Chinese-led organization during the SCO Summit in Ufa back in July. On paper at least, this was supposed to herald a new political-strategic order in Eurasia, with all of the continent’s primary forces (save for the EU, of course) party to the group in one capacity or another. It still remains to be seen whether the optimistic assessments about the SCO will bear any major fruit, as the Indian-Chinese Cold War (which will be described shortly) threatens to put all of that on hold for the indefinite future except for select publicly presentable statements and cooperative efforts (like multilateral humanitarian and social programs. On the other hand, India and Pakistan’s joint ascension to the SCO may have played a role in New Delhi trusting Islamabad enough to go forward with the TAPI Pipeline project, which in and of itself is a very historic development.

TAPI:

This far-reaching project has finally seen the light of day after its formal beginning at the start of December. If everything goes according to plan (a big “if”, of course), then the gas pipeline from the world’s second-largest field should go online by 2019. TAPI’s saliency cannot be overstated, since not only would it bring Turkmen gas on to the global market via LNG near Gwadar, but it would also make India partially dependent on Pakistan’s goodwill in supplying its partial energy demands. Never before have the two rivals agreed to cooperate so closely, which of course harbors well for the future stability of the subcontinent. Anything can come up between then and now, however, so it’s not a guarantee that the project itself will be completed or that India and Pakistan will enjoy the level of trust necessary to actualize their envisioned energy plans, but the idea itself is unprecedented and certainly deserves mention in this end-of-the-year review of South Asia.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor:

One of the largest economic announcements made in 2015 came from President Xi Jinping’s proclamation that his country would be investing $46 billion in constructing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) between the two countries, thus confirming China’s desire to fully integrate its decades-long Pakistani ally into its New Silk Road dreams for the supercontinent. Importantly, the successful completion of this project would not only add to the development of Xinjiang (already the hub of Chinese-Central Asian trade and through which Chinese-Pakistan trade would also pass), but it would de-facto give China an Indian Ocean presence in the southern port of Gwadar. Strategically speaking, although being a long-stretched overland detour, this would partially (but not fully) ease China’s dependence on the US-controlled Strait of Malacca and increasingly unipolar-crowded South China Sea, thus signaling that CPEC is of the highest significance for Beijing. Somewhat for this reason, it can be expected that the US will do its best to continue the destabilization of Pakistan, but in a way so that the Indian-destined TAPI isn’t that negatively affected. Considering these self-imposed situational constraints, it’s possible that the Province of Balochistan (the location of Gwadar) might undergo a renewed period of unrest sometime in the future.

The Indian-Chinese Cold War:

In speaking about unrest and destabilization, it’s timely to raise general awareness about the Indian-Chinese Cold War. The author meticulously explored the details of this South Asia-wide proxy rivalry in anearlier piece for Oriental Review, but the overall idea is that the two Asian Supergiants are fiercely competing in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, and that while neither of them makes this fact public, it’s impossible for objective observers to deny the existence of their mutual geopolitical tension in these areas. Due to the rapidity in which the competition spread (four countries over the course of only one year), it’s logical to conclude that this state of strained relations will carry over into at least the next couple of years, if not outright develop into a ‘formal’ Asian Cold War sometime in the future. The relevant article mentioned above has information about the specifics of the how this power struggle has played out in each of the aforementioned states.

Bangladesh Turning Into Bangla-Daesh:

As was spoken about in the lead-in, Bangladesh is quickly turning into a frontline state in the War on Terror, with ISIL feverishly working to build a few nests within the country. It’s relevant to note that Bangladesh is the world’s most densely populated country and is overwhelmingly almost entirely Muslim, meaning that not only could ISIL wrack absolute havoc with even the most ‘small-scale’ terrorist attack, but that there’s bound to be a statistically significant percentage of the population that sympathizes with the group.

Even if this is only 1% of them, in a country of over 150 million people, that’s still one and a half million people, which is a wildly uncontrollable number of terrorist supporters to have in general, let alone in the same country at the same time. Bangladesh is critically located between India’s state of West Bengal and its ‘Seven Sisters’ in the Northeast (whose stability is a prerequisite for India’s “Act East” towards ASEAN), thus translating into the country having a unparalleled importance on India’s geostrategic security as well.

Any large-scale terrorist chaos inside Bangladesh, not to mention if this produces a massive humanitarian crisis and hundreds of thousands of refugees, would directly have a destabilizing impact on these Indian territories, and thus, on India’s own national security. The quirk here is that despite India being so vulnerable to Bangladeshi-originated destabilization, it is almost powerless to directly determine the course of events there and remains somewhat of a ‘geopolitical hostage’ to whatever transpires. It goes without saying that this fact is obviously understood by outside powers as well, and it can’t be precluded that the US might seek to take advantage of it in order to increase the leverage that it has over India in the future.

South Asia: Where It’s Headed

The Asian Cold War Heats Up:

India and China are not expected to significantly improve their bilateral relations in the coming year. Of course, they might make highly publicized statements of rhetorical support for one another in one of the two major multilateral organizations that they’re a part of (BRICS and the SCO), but bilaterally, little will probable change between the two. Furthermore, the Cold War between them isn’t going to go away on its own, and both sides are increasingly viewing the other as an emerging security threat to their respective interests. The Indians likely harbored this sentiment ever since their defeat in the 1962 war with China, but it’s only this year that those feelings have returned front and center for both camps. The way that the Indians see it, China is encroaching in their traditional sphere of civilizational interests in South Asia (Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives), while China sees the latter three states as essential nodes in its One Belt One Road (“New Silk Road”) policy. Inevitably, given these competing interests (India wants China out of South Asia, China sees a pressing need to boost its presence there), the two Asian Supergiants are bound to continue their Cold War no matter what.

Pakistan Becomes More Multipolar, India Goes Unipolar:

As a consequence of the Indian-Chinese Cold War, it’s likely that Pakistan will move closer to the multipolar camp at the same time as India drifts towards the unipolar one. The reason for this is obviously, and it’s that there will probably be a direct correlation between a worsening of Indian-Chinese ties and Indian-Pakistani ones, with China and Pakistan correlating their actions as per the strategic partnership between them. Nobody wants to see South Asia become a flashpoint in the New Cold War, and it’s not to say that it’ll become a ‘hot spot’ necessarily, but that each of the two sides (China/Pakistan and India) will progressively diverge in their strategic visions until it becomes clear after a few more years that India is a lot more closely aligned with the US and Japan (foreseeably in containing China, perhaps even in the South China Sea) than it is with China and Russia in BRICS. India will probably still remain in BRICS and the SCO, and ties with Russia might be largely unaffected by everything, but it’s the bilateral issues between India and China that will be disruptive for the world.

As a strong example in proving the direction that India’s headed, Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe, probably the most anti-Chinese leader in the world today, visited New Delhi earlier this month and signed a raft of strategic agreements with his Indian counterpart, Modi. As a result, Japan will now be supplying India with military technology, cooperating with it in nuclear energy projects, and building its first high-speed railroad. In one quick move, India demonstrated to the rest of the world that it was unreservedly siding with Japan (and by implied extension, the US) against China, even going as far as directly addressing“freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea in a euphemistic swipe against Beijing. The Indian establishment has made its choice and charted its future for the next couple of years at least, so there’s no use speaking about any substantial Indian-Chinese détente in the coming future. It doesn’t mean that they’ll come to direct blows or have a dramatic falling out akin to the Sino-Soviet one of the Old Cold War (although that’s certainly possible with time, with India becoming the West’s ‘China’ in this neo-era of containment), but that their cooperation in BRICS and the SCO is predicated solely on the least common denominator of self-interest and that all other pretenses of ‘friendship’ and ‘cooperation’ are mere illusions.

Nepal Cracks:

Concerning Nepal, the circumstances of the Indian-Chinese Cold War are slightly different and take on a unique form. The only reason that China has been able to make sure strategic headway in the Himalayan state over the past couple of months is because of the flat-out failure of India’s foreign policy there. New Delhi enacted a de-facto blockade in support of the culturally, religiously, and ethnically similar Madhesi group that was protesting against the country’s new constitution, ostensibly on the grounds that it dilutes their political power. India, likely wanting to institutionally deepen its grip over its proxy, sought to aggressively blockade goods (and especially fuel) from entering the state, hoping that this would pressure the government enough that it would quickly backtrack and amend the constitution. Long story short, Kathmandu pushed back and quickly pivoted to China to help, which has now formally broken the decades-long monopoly that Indian fuel suppliers had over the Nepalese market, thus irreversibly taking the former Kingdom out of India’s full sphere of influence. Even if Nepal does tactically backtrack on the constitution and implements the pro-Madhesi ‘reforms’ that India supposedly wants (which is whatappears to be happening), then that still can’t shake off the strategic hold that China has now gained.

Instead, a resolution of the Nepali Constitutional Crisis according to India’s vision could paradoxically prompt a civil war inside the country. If the Madhesi use their possibly newfound powers to obstruct state mechanisms and/or make a pro-Indian power play against the government, then Kathmandu would be forced to fight back in one way or another. Similarly, if the Madhesi are successful in carving out their own ethnic-based federal state, then this would inspire other, smaller groups to do the same thing, thus potentially catalyzing the Somali-like decentralization of the country along ethnic-regional lines. The federal forces probably wouldn’t let it get to that point, and the other ethnic groups have weaker economic levers to pull in pressuring Kathmandu, but all the same, the destabilization would have to be dealt with, and the course of events that could predictably ensue might exacerbate domestic tensions even more push the country further along the path to another civil war, albeit this time ethno-regional based as opposed to a Maoist ideological struggle.

Bangladesh Begins Its Descent:

Barring a miracle (which can of course happen), it doesn’t seem likely that Bangladesh will pull out of the destabilization trap that it’s seems to inevitably be descending towards. The political crisis between the ruling government and the ‘opposition’ has already led to an increase in tension between both camps, and the involvement of ISIL-related terrorism is one of the most inopportune developments that could happen to the country at this critical time. The pace and intensify at which Bangladesh slips into chaos is dependent on the following factors: the level of violent Islamist infiltration and sympathy levels in the country (no reliable quantitative data exists although it’s presumed that the ‘opposition’s’ supporters are favorable towards these ideologies); the ‘opposition’s’ desire to seize power and possibly resort to violent means in doing so; and the involvement of the US in destabilizing the present Bangladeshi government (which, while being pro-India at the moment, is ‘uncomfortably’ too ‘pro-Chinese’ for Washington). It already seems as though all of the criteria are reached to some degree or another, meaning that it’s quite likely that Bangladesh will experience a wave of destabilizing events sometime next year, with Saudi Arabia and/or Qatar fulfilling the necessary Lead From Behind roles in clandestinely supporting the Islamist ‘opposition’ (be it ‘legitimate’ political figures or outright terrorists).

Struggling With The ‘Seven Sisters’:

India’s seven Northeast Provinces are the most unstable region in the country, located in a geographically inconvenient area for the central government to enforce and comprised of many different (and oftentimes, feuding) ethnicities. While there are many ethnic-based insurgencies and terrorist groups active in the region, two of the most notorious are the Bodo and the Naga. The author wrote extensively about the former one year ago when they launched their last high-profile attack, while the latter were discussed in June after India staged a cross-border raid into Myanmar as a reprisal for the group’s last anti-government ambush. While both groups have laid low ever since their respective headline-grabbing attacks, it doesn’t mean that they’ve technically gone anywhere, and the threat that each of them represents is still very real. The Nagas are particularly dangerous because they are part of an umbrella separatist/terrorist organization called the United Liberation Front of West South East Asia (UNLFW). The author also examined this topic in-depth in an earlier piece for Oriental Review, with the main conclusion being that the union of ethnic anti-government forces represents a very destabilizing development in Northeast India that New Delhi must neutralize at all costs. Failure to do so would absolutely undermine its Act East strategy and stall any forthcoming effectiveness of the ASEAN Highway to Thailand.

It might not necessarily be next year, but there’s a high probability that the ethnic cauldron that’s brewing in Northeast India will naturally overflow sometime soon, and if large-scale inter-ethnic fighting commences, it might be very difficult for the central government to quell. The Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, and Naga might become entangled in a horrific humanitarian catastrophe if the armed groups among them experience a falling out, although for now everything seems relatively stable between them owing to the existence of the umbrella UNLFW. This is yet another reason why the situation is so particularly tricky for New Delhi: on the one hand, it needs to defeat the separatists/terrorists, but on the other, by breaking the militant bonds that unite each of these disparate ethnic groups, it might unintentionally prompt a nightmare scenario where they turn against one another in a deadly blame-game and start wantonly killing each other’s civilian population. One of the only ways to preempt this, aside from militarily squashing the groups, is to place a heightened military focus on the area and commence renewed anti-insurgent operations for rooting out these movements and their supporters, but that might unintentionally provoke even more endemic anti-government suspicion that could serve to further legitimize the demands of the separatist non-terrorist voices there. All in all, India’s Northeast is definitely it’s most vulnerable region, and one could go as far as saying that it’s perhaps the entire country’s Achilles’ heel it not properly dealt with.

Sri Lanka Stays The Course:

While not as “sexy” of a forecast to make as any of the earlier ones, it should still be documented that the author believes that Sri Lanka will not drift from its current pro-Western course. Rajapaksa’s political comeback was sorely squashed earlier this year in a clear sign that the current administration has largely succeeded in blackening his name and maligning his reputation ever since they came to power. However, there is also the possibility that the present leadership might be convinced to pragmatically reengage with China in developing select projects, but they’d have to walk an extraordinarily fine line in doing so in order to not anger their new Indian and American patrons. For the most part, despite China’s earlier plans for Sri Lanka to be a its Indian Ocean ‘jewel’, it’ll now likely only be a routine stop-over point with much less of a strategic significance than was previously assumed. The only thing that could change this is a worsening of Indian-Sri Lankan ties and/or a revival of the Sri Lankan nationalist movement, but both don’t seem to be on the horizon going into 2016.

The Maldives Move To The Middle Of A Saudi-Chinese Rivalry:

It may come off as surprising to some, and it will be admitted that the author himself also didn’t quite see it coming until after the fact, but the Maldives are now smack dab in the middle of a Saudi-Chinese rivalry. In explaining how this came to be, it’s relevant to quote the author’s latest article from Katehon that touches on why the island nation decided to join the Saudis’ “anti-terrorist” coalition:

“The Maldives are another member of the Saudi-led coalition, and its incorporation is equally controversial for how it raises questions about the country’s strong partnership with China. The author exhaustively elaborated on the Maldives’ geopolitical role and relationship with China in a previous three-part series for Oriental Review, but to summarize, Beijing has made rapid and strategic inroads in the island chain nation that have resulted in a close geostrategic partnership between both countries.

All of that’s being endangered now because of the Saudis’ outreaches to the archipelago, and it’s very probable that the forces behind the assassination conspiracy that earlier wracked the country might have made one of their demands to stop conditional on the government moving away from China and closer to Saudi Arabia instead.

Riyadh announced in early 2014 that it would invest $100 million in the country and it opened its first-ever embassy in the Sharia-adhering state back in August. Almost right after the assassination scare suddenly ended, the two states signed an agreement to boost religious ties (i.e. institutionalize Wahhabist influence) and the Maldives then asked Saudi Arabia to develop a special economic zone in the country.  All told, just like in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia is wrestling with China for influence in a state that had hitherto been under Beijing’s sway.”

When one thinks about it, this makes for a very interesting dynamic, as Saudi Arabia and China have never previously entered into a proxy competition anywhere, let alone out of both of their respective home theaters. It’ll be curious to see how this develops in the future. The Saudis are obviously ingraining themselves deep enough in the Maldives so as to make their future departure all but impossible without massive bloodshed and a spree of terrorist attacks, but at the same time, the Chinese are such prized partners of the island nation’s elite primarily because they present an alternative to otherwise inevitable Indian domination.

If the Chinese ever got dislodged, perhaps through a similar neck-and-neck pro-Western electoral shift like in Sri Lanka or an outright Color Revolution, then the Saudis could easily compensate for the lost capital investment, thus meaning that Chinas’ only real anchor in the country is the loyalty that certain elite have towards it. One would like to believe that the Maldivian elite fear Saudi Wahhabism just as much as they do Indian domination, but that regretfully doesn’t seem to be the case, and Riyadh might just gradually push Beijing out with the wink-and-a-nod approval of their newest bought-and-paid-for lackeys there. It’s still too early to tell if this is exactly what can happen, but all indications seem to point in this direction, thereby making it worthwhile for the interested observer to casually monitor events in this geo-strategic island nation.

South Asia: Disruptors

“The Asian Frown”:

The author’s neologism refers to the shape of the northern reaches of the Bay of Bengal between the Indian state of West Bengal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar’s Rakhine State. This patch of territory is also inhabited almost completely by ethnic Bengalis, with the exception of Rakhine State where they form a substantial and much-publicized minority otherwise known as the “Rohingya”. It’s not the aim of this piece to debate the merits of Myanmar’s citizenship law and this group’s lack of legal status in the country, but simply to raise awareness of the potential for Islamic radicalization among them. As regards Bangladesh, this has already been elaborated upon earlier, but there’s also the eventuality that a transnational ‘patriotic’ movement forms between Bangladesh and the majority Bengali/”Rohingya”-inhabited borderland areas of Rakhine State in the future, whether in response to any Buddhist nationalist-driven violence or a state-directed crackdown (no matter if it’s provoked or unprovoked). If this demographic is pushed or tricked into taking up arms against the state, then there’s a high likelihood that cross-border supporters in Bangladesh will be assisting them to some capacity (even if they are not state-sanctioned), thus internationalizing what otherwise would have been a local and largely isolated domestic crisis into something much larger.

West Bengal is included in the analysis because of the ethnic and of course civilizational similarity that it has with Bangladesh proper. The key difference, however, is that most West Bengalis are Hindu, not Muslim, and that with Bangladesh on the edge of descending into an Islamic pit, it’s possible that some of the ‘anti-infidel’ violence might predictably migrate cross-border against the Hindu-espousing Bengalis. For convenient reference, Wahhabis fiercely hate Hindus more than any other group because they believe in multiple gods, thus making them infinitely higher level of ‘evil’ than Christians, Jews, or Shiites/Alawites/other Muslim minorities that believe in the same God from the Holy Books. Hindus are even seen as worse than atheists who plainly reject god, as they believe it is worse to worship multiple gods than to reject the one true God. The ethnic similarities but confessional discrepancies between the people of West Bengal and Bangladesh might spur Wahhabi-affiliated terrorists in the latter (or even indigenous to West Bengal) to go on a fierce jihad against their compatriots. Bengali-on-Bengali violence (prompted by Wahhabi-on-Hindu motives) would present yet another domestic headache for India to deal with and could lead to the rapid deterioration of positive relations that it the Modi government has thus far cultivated with Bangladesh.

Additionally, as regards all of the preceding “Asian Frown” scenarios, a crisis in one could lead to a humanitarian crisis in the others with Bengali refugees fleeing for safety in one direction or the other, and these resultant human flows could further exacerbate domestic tensions in the host area and trigger the said conflicts that were just discussed. For example, a large-scale outbreak of terrorism in Bangladesh could lead to Muslim Bengalis flooding into majority-Hindu West Bengal or Bengali/”Rohingya”-minority Rakhine State, disrupting the present balance and enflaming sectarian/ethnic tensions there. Likewise, if the Bengalis/”Rohingya” in Rakhine State were pushed out towards Bangladesh, Bengali nationalists would allege ethnic cleansing and possible genocide and these non-state actors might intervene in the situation and contribute to its spiraling deterioration. In West Bengal, if Hindu nationalists get on the ascent, any anti-Muslim violence or provocations linked to them could trigger pro-Islamist sympathies among the minority population or even the entirety of Bangladesh, undermining bilateral relations and raising the chances of identity (and perhaps even state) conflict.

A Serious Security Dilemma Between India and China/Pakistan:

This disruption possibility isn’t that likely in 2016, although it may become an eventuality further down the line, but since it’s theoretically possible given the current trend of proxy hostility in Indian-Chinese relations, it should at the very least be mentioned in this analysis. It doesn’t see all that likely, barring an unforeseen event such as a state-sponsored terrorist attack (even if the state sponsoring it isn’t native to the region, such as the US), that India and Pakistan will naturally deteriorate the recovering relations between them, especially since so much money and strategic benefit depends on their positive cooperation in TAPI.

Therefore, it looks more probable that Indian-Chinese relations would be the ones that lessen to the point of creating a massive security dilemma between the two parties, possibly even involving border buildups or outright skirmishes. In any event and regardless of which party is responsible, China is predicted to call upon its Pakistani ally in coordinating its supportive response, and it’s very likely that Islamabad will be there to assist its ally out of decades-long loyalty, no matter if this might temporarily endanger its own self-interest through TAPI.

Beijing wouldn’t’ call upon this ‘favor’ unless it was serious about sending a message because it understands the strategic benefit that TAPI indirectly provides to it by having its ally control part of India’s energy flow, so only under certain circumstances would it ask Pakistan to join it and basically freeze the project as a result. Should it happen, though, that India gets into a serious security dilemma with China/Pakistan, then it would only accelerate New Delhi’s unipolar shift and result in the Indian-Chinese Cold War going public. At this stage, it would become all but irreversible and might even lead to India’s full-fledged and formalized membership in the China Containment Coalition.

Even though India is already a de-facto member (especially after Abe’s visit), it hasn’t yet sent its forces to the South China Sea or engaged in any of the border provocations that Japan and its ASEAN allies (Vietnam and the Philippines) have, which it theoretically could do along the disputed frontier that it has with China. On the other hand, it might even be for these reasons (border provocations as a means of proving loyalty to the Chinese Containment Coalition) that India decides to initiate conventional tensions with China and set the whole security dilemma into stage-managed motion. In such an event, the US would surely find a way to strategically capitalize off of it and might even try to have India host some of its military forces.

The Maldives Get Mangled By Hybrid War:

It looks for now like the Maldives’ political crisis (earlier discussed in full here) has subsided for the time being, with the earlier-cited Saudi-affiliated deal probably having something to do with it. Even though things appear calm on the surface, there’s always the risk that the Saudis have a seemingly unexpected trick up their sleeve and might be plotting the islands’ full-scale destabilization this very moment. One of the reasons might be to drive out all Chinese investment and replace it with capital from the Saudi royal family. Another possibility might be that India wants to support the already existing Color Revolution forces there out of the general uneasiness that the ‘pro-Chinese’ leadership makes it feel. At any rate and no matter the motivation, India and/or Saudi Arabia could each initiate their own or joint destabilization, with New Delhi focusing more on the Color Revolution aspect and Riyadh on the Unconventional War one. Put together in a chaotic continuum, then this creates the perfect recipe for Hybrid War. Not only would this probably succeed in dislodging the Chinese from their geostrategic Indian Ocean outpost, but the resultant fight for the spoils might even put Saudi Arabia and India directly at odds with one another, thereby increasing the chances that the Kingdom supports Wahhabi terrorism in West Bengal or elsewhere.

V ASEAN: State Of Play

Southeast Asia didn’t just experience another year of robust economic growth (as it always does), but this time it saw the US doubling down in its “Pivot to Asia” and tangibly affecting the regional security architecture there. Although not a geographic part of the region, Japan began to take on an enhanced role there through its militant revision of the pacifist constitution. It now seems likely that Tokyo will deepen its military partnership with the Philippines and perhaps even expand it to Vietnam as well, witharms sales expected to play a leading role in Japan’s “Pivot to ASEAN”. Speaking of the former American colony, the US and the Philippines inked a deal euphemistically called the “Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement”, which basically heralds the formal return of military occupation to the island chain under the auspices of ‘countering China’.

Parallel to this, the US has sought to expand its strategic dealings with the other side of the South China Sea by pledging $18 million worth of patrol boats to Vietnam. A symbolic and insubstantial gesture to be sure, but one which indicates that the two formerly bitter enemies are now close enough in their shared anti-China policies to enhance their cooperation to further unprecedented heights in the coming year. Taken together, the US-supervised gathering of Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam composes the core of the China Containment Coalition (CCC), a proto-‘Asian NATO’ that it hopes will become the proxy vanguard force in offsetting Beijing. In a more asymmetrical sense, the US’ ‘electoral coup’ in Myanmar via the victory of Aung San Suu Kyi advances Naypyidaw’s several-years-long policy of moving away from China, representing yet another emerging geopolitical complication for the People’s Republic.

Economically speaking, there’s also been a lot of activity in ASEAN that quite naturally takes on New Cold War contours. India and Japan are ‘tag-teaming’ China in the Greater Mekong Subregion (the Tokyo-led Asian Development Bank’s neologism for mainland ASEAN) through a series of complementary East-West infrastructure projects. India is making progress on the trilateral highway with Myanmar and Thailand (referred to by the author as the ASEAN Highway) while Japan is clinching deals to build a high-speed rail network along the East-West and Southern Corridors (map of all projects here, with the ASEAN Highway being referred to as the Western Corridor). At the same time, however, China is rushing to break out of the containment trap being set up against it and is streamlining the North-South Corridorthrough Laos and Thailand in order to connect to Singapore, possibly even planning to detour the route to Thailand’s Indian Ocean coast if unforeseen disruptions occur (Southern Thai terrorist insurgency, Malaysian Color Revolution) that prevent it from linking with its terminal destination. As part of this overall grand strategy, China and others are deepening their partnerships with Thailand, the anticipated infrastructure hub for the Greater Mekong Subregion.

The final big move that happened in ASEAN over the past year was on the institutional front. The TPP made significant headway in growing acceptance among the Vietnamese, Bruneian, Malaysian, and Singaporean members of the US-controlled trade pact, showing that American influence is deeply is about to become deeply entrenched in part of the overall trade bloc. This bodes quite ominously for ASEAN as a whole, since the entire organization is integrating into the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and may try to ‘standardize’ its trade pacts by applying the TPP to each of its members. While the AEC has the potential to become a multipolar, or at the very least, relatively neutral actor in the New Cold War, this possibility becomes more diminished as the TPP continues to make inroads throughout the bloc.

The Empire Of The Rising Sun Returns:

Up until this year, it wasn’t guaranteed that Japan would return to its militaristic pre-1945 roots, but Shinzo Abe made it his primary objective to make sure that this revisionist objective was achieved. Not only has Japan unilaterally ‘reinterpreted’ its pacifist constitution to enable international military operations, but it’s also lifted its self-imposed moratorium on arms exports as well. These two historic decisions mean that Japan is taking determined steps to assert its military presence abroad, most likely with the intent being to focus on ASEAN (which it had formerly colonized in full during World War II) and the South China Sea. Already, Japan has partaken in provocative joint exercises with the Philippines and signed a new military deal with it back in November. Similarly, Tokyo has moved a lot closer to Hanoi as well, showing that its vision of an ‘ASEAN Pivot’ has concrete policy applications to back it up. Last but not least, Abe just returned from a visit to India where he signed a bunch of agreements with Modi, erasing all doubt that an Indian-Japanese anti-Chinese partnership is definitely in the works.

The US Is Back In The Philippines:

The Pentagon was ingloriously kicked out of it colony in 1991, but it made a stunning return in 2015 with the so-called “Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement”. The specifics are that the US isn’t allowed to have its own sovereign base in the country, but that it can ‘rotate’ troops in and out of at least 8 different Filipino facilities. For all intents and purposes, this amounts to the exact same thing as basing rights and should accordingly be treated as such. The US knows that the Philippines is by far the weakest of the anti-Chinese states, but the opportunity that this provides Washington is to sell it battered, second-hand military wares that other states would ashamed to purchase. It also gives the US the opportunity to retrain the Filipino Armed Forces ‘from the ground up’, thus providing them with valuable experience in ‘nation building’ from the military-structural sense. As a final point, the Philippines present the perfect convergence point for all the other elements of the China Containment Coalition (CCC) to coalesce, and any preplanned provocation on that country’s part (carried out at the US’ behest, of course) could be the trigger that’s necessary to kick the CCC into high, formalized gear in Southeast Asia just as Ukraine’s aggression against Donbass was for NATO in Eastern Europe.

The Chinese Containment Coalition Takes Shape:

The author explored this geopolitical project in a recent publication for Oriental Review and will elaborate on it more specifically in an upcoming article, but to briefly rehash the idea, the US has assembled a diverse array of Asian states in jointly working to contain China. For the most part, it involves Japan and India as the Lead From Behind partners , Vietnam and the Philippines as the geopolitical proxies, and Australia and Indonesia as auxiliary support members. The general concept is that Vietnam and the Philippines, as the two South China Sea states having the strongest maritime disagreements with China, form the vanguard component of this undeclared alliance, and the US, Japan, and to a degree, India, support them to varying degrees, with the first two providing military equipment while the latter seems poised to diplomatically enter the fray sometime soon. Australia’s contribution is more symbolic than substantial, and Indonesia’s role is expected to only be purely economic and as an emerging regional counterweight to China. As was said, this will be described more in a forthcoming Oriental Review piece, but for the meantime, it’s simply important to understand that 2015 was the year in which the CCC finally began to take significant shape and dole out its envisioned roles among the selected participants.

Myanmar Moves Westward:

This process was in the works ever since the 2010 election, but it uncontrollably accelerated with Aung San Suu Kyi’s victory. It’s still not yet 100% sure that Myanmar will completely abandon its formerly close ties with China (Beijing courted Suu Kyi over the summer in an unprecedented outreach to a foreign “opposition” candidate), but it can be safely assumed that the relationship is irreparable and that the country has ‘opened up’ to a wide enough degree that Chinese businesses are being dislodged and replaced by their Western, Indian, Japanese, and ASEAN competitors. China still has its oil and gas pipeline corridor running through the country and which opened only in January, but with all of the political changes that have taken place since it was originally conceived of a years ago and the rate at which it’s happened, it looks to be an insurmountable challenge for China to convert this into a full-scale economic corridor akin to India’s ASEAN Highway. So long as the pipeline infrastructure remains secure, then China doesn’t have too much to seriously fret about, but if Suu Kyi’s government starts trying to blackmail Beijing by using this infrastructure project as a vulnerable soft target, then bilateral relations could suddenly deteriorate to the point where Naypyidaw formally joins the CCC (which might be the predetermined point of any provocation).

The Indo-Japanese ‘Tag-Team’ Arrangement vs. The ASEAN Silk Road:

India and Japan are entrenching themselves into mainland ASEAN through the construction of large-scale infrastructure projects meant to promote their interests. India’s ASEAN Highway is slated to be completed in 2019 and will intensify New Delhi’s influence in this neighboring region, while Japan just completed the East-West and Southern Corridors earlier this year. Taken together, these two Lead From Behind partners in the CCC are aiming to branch ASEAN’s trade off to the west and east, respectively, in an effort to siphon it off from its conventional northern route in order to economically compete with China. As it stands, China is currently the number one trading partner for ASEAN, but the whole point of the Indian and Japanese ‘tag-team’ arrangement is to change that through the construction of facilitative infrastructure, thereby presenting an asymmetrical containment of Beijing’s influence predicated on stopping or diminishing the impact of the ASEAN Silk Road from Kunming to Singapore.

Concerning China’s ambitious designs, it just began the first step of its project by breaking ground in Laos, with further plans to link the envisioned road to Thailand, Malaysia, and finally to Singapore. Theoretically speaking, it’s possible for the unipolar (the Indo-Japanese ‘tag-team’ arrangement) and multipolar (ASEAN Silk Road) projects to peacefully coexist in the same region, but the US has a strategic interest in seeing China’s be stopped dead in its tracks. India and Japan’s projects can’t directly do that (only a regime change or Hybrid War in the transit states is capable of this), but they could possibly become so lucrative that they shift Thailand’s decision-making priorities and lead to the North-South Corridors indefinite stalling. It doesn’t look like this will happen right away, but it’s certainly on the mind of strategists in Tokyo and New Delhi.

All Roads Lead Through Thailand:

Continuing off of the analysis above, it’s clear that Thailand is at the literal center of every non-regional Great Powers’ interests. The US is furious that it’s previously preeminent position was downgraded after the military coup against its proxy designate, and China knows that this is the precise window of opportunity for it to deepen its full-spectrum relations with this geostrategic state. Similarly, India and Japan recognize Thailand’s importance in also accommodating their respective regional infrastructure visions and thus can’t be too publicly harsh on it for Bangkok’s warm ties with Beijing. Russia’s even involved in this to a minor extent, with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev offering Thailand a free trade agreement with the Eurasian Union during his visit to the country last April. No commitment was made at the time, but the two sides agreed to study it further in the future.

Intermixing The TPP With The AEC:

Some of the most crucial regional developments to occur in Southeast Asia took place at the tail end of the year, with the four regional TPP-party states agreeing to move forward with the US-led project and the entire ASEAN organization finally making the decision to integrate into the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Like with many of the most important stories of 2015, the author also analyzed both of this in yet another of his Oriental Review articles, with the earlier warning that the TPP might take over the AEC being the dominant theme throughout. Without a doubt, the US’ efforts to integrate the rest of the AEC into the TPP (using the organizational states already party to the agreement as valuable instruments) will become a defining theme in the coming years.

ASEAN: Where It’s Headed

The State Of Play section located just above touched heavily upon the direction that the existing regional trends are headed, but to expand slightly on what was mentioned, the following is necessary:

The CCC Gets Stronger:

The interaction between the US, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines is expected to become one of the most defining elements of Southeast Asia’s political development in the next year. Both regional states (Vietnam and the Philippines) will predictably feel more emboldened by the international support that they’re receiving, especially since it’s coming from such big-name actors as the US and Japan, and might even take more aggressive moves in asserting their South China Sea claims. Bilateral, trilateral, or quadrilateral military drills could take place here, too, and this would definitely be done in as flamboyant of a manner as possible so as to irk China to the maximum. All of the sides will continue coordinating their policies in ‘containing’ China, and the CCC is expected to get stronger as a result.

This will make it a lot easier for Australia and India to play more active roles when they’re ready, and some quasi-formalization of this military bloc might also occur next year as well. With the US now back in the Philippines and Japan’s pacifist constitution ‘reinterpreted’ and allowing for arms sales to these two states and perhaps even a military presence in the Philippines, the two Pacific Powers won’t be able to help themselves and will exploit the situation as much as they can. China, as anyone could predict, will be very upset by all of this and will begin to fully feel the pressure of containment in the South China Sea, thereby prompting it to accelerate its plans for the ASEAN Silk Road as a suitable ‘escape plan’ from the maritime containment belt being built around it.

Vietnam Retraces Its Cold War Sphere Of Influence:

Buoyed by the support it’s receiving from the US and Japan, Vietnam will feel confident enough to reassert itself in its Cold War-era sphere of influence in Laos and Cambodia. Hanoi is still a strong actor in each, but its influence has been on the decline since the end of the Cold War and each of its two neighbors’ strategic and economic realignment towards China. However, these two are also part of the East-West and Southern Corridors, both of which are financed by Japan, so Vietnam has the potential to use its East Asian ally’s infrastructure investments as a springboard for reinserting its pecuniary influence into these states. In relation to this, Vietnam just announced a “Development Triangle” between itself and its two neighbors, and this trend of Hanoi’s shift to the west will definitely grow stronger in the next year. The whole point of it, one must remember, is to compete with China to the point of making both countries ‘contested’ geopolitical territory between the two and hopefully offset the viability of the ASEAN Silk Road through Laos. Concerning Cambodia, Vietnam would like for the government to be wooed away from China and brought closer to India, Japan, and itself, with the Southern Corridor being envisioned vehicle for doing so.

Myanmar Continues Its Pro-Western Pivot, Relations With Military Get Tense:

There’s no way that Aung San Suu Kyi will not behave as the West’s most vehement advocate in mainland ASEAN, but the only question is the pace and degree to which she pivots away from China. It’ll probably be that she takes moves to restrict China’s resource extraction businesses in the frontier regions, but she might even do more than that by trying to quickly seal trade deals with other parties, all as part of a larger effort to replace Chinese investment with that of her new patrons. The one thing that needs to be watched is how she interacts with the military and how pliable they are to her rapid foreign policy shifts. Of course, they were the ones who took the decision to ‘democratize’ and move away from China in the first place, but it could be that they naively underestimated the quickness with which certain changes would be made once they formally lost control of the government. If they feel themselves being sidelined too much (and the self-enrichment that their highest leaders have made since ‘opening up’ isn’t satisfactory ‘compensation’ to ‘stand down’), then they might make an attempt to push back. It probably won’t take the form of a coup (there’d be too much international condemnation and they’d lose all the ‘progress’ they believe they’ve made so far), but they could possibly take to ‘playing the game’ in parliament to undermine anything Suu Kyi wants to pass through.

Additionally, there’s always the lingering threat of a military conflagration between the warring ethnic parties along the periphery. The Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (analyzed here) that was signed in October didn’t have the full participation of several key anti-government groups, and the nightmare scenario would be if these parties team up to take on the military and/or government. More than likely, if they do in fact coordinate past the nominal sense, they’d fight back against the military, but it would make for an interesting development if some of them, feeling ostracized by the new authorities or unhappy with Suu Kyi’s lack of progress in ‘reforms’ (a keyword for federalization, and potentially stonewalled by the military via the previously mentioned scenario), could revolt against her government. Even more curiously would be if the military refused to squash the rebels as they normally would be accustomed to doing and instead allowed the crisis to spiral more out of control in order to delegitimize Suu Kyi and pave the way for a forthcoming return to martial law. The chances for this aren’t likely, but developments in Myanmar’s civil war are always difficult to predict, and with scant reliable information coming out of this theater, observers should be prepared to read between the lines and decipher what may be truly going on behind the scenes. Nonetheless, Myanmar’s Civil War, the longest-running domestic conflict in the world, didn’t go away just because Suu Kyi won, and it should continue to be monitored going into the next year.

Thai Tumult:

Things might not go so smoothly for Thailand next year, but it wouldn’t be because of lack of trying on its part or that of its partners. If anything, despite being geopolitical rivals, China and Japan & India want to see the crucially located infrastructure hub remain stable and peaceful for the years to come, owing to each of their respective investments (quite literally) in its key transit role status. The only actor that would be content with its destabilization is the US and it already looks to be testing the water. 2015 saw a suspicious instance of Uighur terrorism occur in Central Bangkok and Shinawatra’s “Red Shirts” seem ready for a renewal of their ritual destabilization. Interested readers are strongly suggested to follow Tony Cartalucci’s writings, since this Thai-based journalist has done an unparalleled job at exposing the US’ destabilization mechanisms in his host country. Keeping in mind that the US both wants to punish Thailand’s military leaders and create the conditions to where China’s ASEAN Silk Road is unviable, it’s conceivable that it’ll resort to its tried-and-tested tactics of Uighur terrorism, Color Revolution incitement, and Hybrid War threats.

To very briefly elaborate on the last one, the northeast province of Isan is known as a bastion for the Shinawatra clan and its “Red Shirt” cronies, and it could become the center of a concentrated anti-government push. The distinct regional identity (somewhat more comparable to Thailand’s civilizationally similar Laotian neighbor than the rest of Thailand itself) could be used as a rallying cry for encouraging “separateness” and enflaming (NGO-riled up) ‘grassroots’ anger against the authorities. This same template can be used by regime change-supporting NGOs in the country’s south, albeit much more violently. The Muslim and ethnic Malay population there already feels sidelined from the rest of the state for a variety of reasons, although terrorist attacks there haven’t been as frequent as in years past. However, with the rise of ISIL in the region, it’s possible that the group’s template of transnational territorial-administrative expansion might transplant itself along the Thai-Malay border if the structural conditions are amenable. Transnational ethnic-affiliated terrorism would be a major destabilizing force in the region and could seriously jeopardize bilateral relations between Thailand and Malaysia, especially as neither government wants any part in this pandemonium.

Ultimately it would be the US that would benefit from either (or both) of these scenarios if they come to fruition, since it wants to undermine the military government so as to return the “Red Shirt” proxies to power, whether they are led by a Shinawatra figurehead or some ‘new blood’. The US is also not beyond sabotaging its Lead From Behind allies’ infrastructure projects if they become ‘necessary’ collateral damage to fulfill the regime change goal and stop China’s ASEAN Silk Road.

ASEAN: Disruptors

Each of the three regionally disruptive scenarios mentioned below involved Indonesia, the ‘rising giant’ upon whose shoulders ASEAN’s macroeconomic stability depends. The author endeavors to explain some of these scenarios and their strategic impact in a more detailed fashion later on next year:

The Mindanao-Sulawesi Arc:

The author raised awareness of this geopolitical concept as part of a larger article written back in June, but it was originally articulated at the Shangri-La Dialogue earlier in the year when a participant voiced nervousness that terrorists might seek to exploit this regional ‘blind spot’. To succinctly bring the reader up to speed, the tristate maritime region between the southern Philippines, the Malaysian state of Sabah, and the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has a comparatively lesser governing and security presence than anywhere else in insular Southeast Asia, and there’s already the precedent of Filipino terrorists trying to storm Sabah in 2013. Malaysian authorities were on alert for a repeat of this scenario just at the end of November, showing that the threat still remains. Additionally, the island of Sulawesi might provide terrorists (be they Filipino, native Indonesians, or non-regional ones) with a relatively unrestricted access point to the rest of the Indonesian archipelago owing to proximity of this location to Mindanao and Sabah, so it’s possible that a tristate terror threat might take shape in this region one day.

A Sumatra-Java Terror Spree:

While being geographically large, the vast majority of Indonesia’s population is concentrated mostly on the neighboring and densely concentrated islands of Sumatra and Java. Australia has voiced concernabout ISIL trying to establish a caliphate here and Indonesia is “keeping an eye open” for terrorist returnees from the Mideast. Russia has even raised the terror alert for its citizens at the end of December, fearing an imminent attack. All of these factors, including the countless soft targets available around Jakarta, point to a terrorist incident occurring sometime next year in Indonesia, with it mostly be a matter of time before one of the many threats is actually carried out in practice. It was earlier analyzed that Bangladesh might become the next front line state in the War on Terror, but the same could likewise also be said about Indonesia, although mostly in this sense restricted to Sumatra-Java and northern Sulawesi (with the former being more likely than the latter). An eruption of terror in one of the most population dense places in the world and the economic engine of ASEAN/AEC would easily have global repercussions.

West Papua Revolts:

The West Papua conflict is decades-old but is one of the world’s least well-publicized issues. Basically, it boils down accusations that the local population is being oppressed (and sometimes outright killed) so that the Indonesian state can continue harvesting valuable mineral deposits from their land. It’s an unfortunate twist of fate that both Papuas (Indonesian-controlled West Papua and the independent state of Papua New Guinea) are dirt poor despite their well-endowed mineral wealth, but it can largely be attributed to poor governmental planning. Jakarta has progressively taken steps to split the western part of Papua into three separate states so as to dilute the formerly unified identity there, but that hasn’t fully quelled the separatist movements endemic to the area.

Without outside patronage, they’ll likely never achieve any substantial victories, but if an outside force decides to support it and throws their full weight behind it (such as the US, foreseeably in that case using Australia as the Lead From Behind actor), then it could severely unbalance the Indonesian military at the precise time that they need to be concentrating on Wahhabist terrorist threats. It’s therefore not forecasted that a renewed revolt in West Papua would occur in isolation, but that it could be provoked so as to distract the Indonesian authorities from a forthcoming terrorist offensive in order to create maximum destabilization. That being said, there’s no clear indicators that this could happen next year or even at all, which is why it’s in the disruptor category and not the previous one, but interested individuals should still keep an occasional eye on developments in this part of ASEAN for next year.

Foreign and Expatriates Ministry on Monday sent two letters to the UN Secretary-General and President of UN Security Council regarding the persistence of ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and other terrorist organizations in committing crimes against civilians in Syrian cities.

The Ministry said that terrorist organizations are targeting Syrian cities with suicide bombing and arbitrary shelling in a bid to disturb the state of tranquility and stability which had prevailed in several Syrian cities that witnessed successful national reconciliation efforts in recent days.

The letters asserted that this terrorism is the result of the open and generous support in funds, arms, and munitions provided to terrorists by states like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, who are complicit in the terrorist attacks carried out against the Syrian people.

Foreign Ministry went on to say that on Monday, terrorist explosions took place in the cities of Aleppo and Homs, claiming the lives of many civilians, while the terrorist gangs of so- called “Jaish al-Islam”, sponsored by Saudi Arabia, targeted Damascus city with different forms of mortar and rocket shells.

The ministry added that on Monday morning, terrorists blew up an explosive device in a car in al-Zahraa neighborhood in Homs city; saying that the explosion was followed by another attack with an explosive belt that went off amid the crowds of civilians and members of civil defense and medical teams who rushed to the place to rescue the wounded civilians.

The two explosions claimed the lives of 19 civilians while 43 others were injured.

The letters affirmed that today’s attacks come after many terrorist bombings, most recently, an explosion which targeted medical clinics on Saturday December 12^th, killing 16 civilians and injuring 54 others and causing massive material damage to private and public properties.

The ministry said that the terrorists on Monday also targeted Aleppo city with various shells, killing 11 citizens, including a child and injuring more than 40 others, 11 of them are in a critical condition.

It added that Government of the Syrian Arab Republic affirms that terrorism which has targeted Syrian cities and villages for more than four years, is an outcome of support provided by countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia to terrorist organizations, in a flagrant violation of UN Security Council resolutions, mainly No. 2170, 2178, 2199 and 2253.

The ministry said that the continuation of US, Britain and France, which are permanent member states at UN Security Council, in preventing the council from adopting stances that condemn those terrorist crimes encourage terrorists to mount their attacks and reflect the non-seriousness of these countries in the fight against terrorism.

It concluded by saying that the Syrian government, while affirming its commitment to combat terrorism and assume its constitutional and legal duties to protect its people and sovereignty, calls on Security Council and UN Secretary-General to condemn the terrorist acts and assume responsibilities in combating terrorism.

“‘Trust Me’ might be just the most manipulative thing a politician can say.  It means leave me alone in secret to operate without proper challenge.” Tom Watson, UK Deputy Labour Leader, Dec 18, 2015

Many government policies are advertised as useful for broader safety – till they are reversed to apply to the very officials who create them.  The UK Home Secretary is very much of that school. Readers will be aware what Theresa May has done her invaluably bit to undermine privacy on the broader pretext of protecting security.

Central to this is the Home Office’s insistence on the Investigatory Powers Bill that seemingly insists on more intrusion than investigation.  The bill, in rather futile fashion, will compel phone and web companies to retain records of every citizen for at least a year, providing a data pool which police and security services could access when required.  The legislation goes further, enrolling the relevant service providers in a pseudo-police role that will override encryption if needed.

May has found herself having to sugar coat the bill with some decent premise, and has decided to go the cyber bullying card, a view she outlined to South Suffolk MP James Cartlidge.[1]

The tactic is standard: if people are misbehaving on the internet, those on facilitating its use should be made responsible for moral behaviour.  Accordingly, “Internet connection records would update the capability of law enforcement in a criminal investigation to determine the sender and recipient of a communication, for example, a malicious message such as those exchanged in cyberbullying.”

The response by The Independent has been an attempt to pull the history of Theresa May’s browsing history for the last week of October, a freedom of information request that purposely excludes any information directly concerned with security matters.

What is good for the goose of inquiry is also grand for the gander placed under the scrutinising eye of the state.  In short, if you are going to be equal before the law, then by golly even ministers should have their browsing history on the internet made available for the public gaze.

Not so, according to the Home Office.  The FOI request has been dismissed as vexatious. In other words, the request was dismissed on grounds of an action “brought without sufficient grounds for winning, purely to cause annoyance to the defendant.”

The Home Office’s response, drawing upon section 14(1) of the Act, insisted that the department had “decided that your request is vexatious because it places an unreasonable border on the department, because it has adopted a scattergun approach and seems solely designed for the purpose of fishing for information without any idea of what might be revealed.”

The response provides a suitable template for critics of the surveillance state, if only because it demonstrates the hopeless rationale for the entire metadata retention regime.  If the request by The Independent was, by its nature, scattergun, one could hardly assume that the security state’s behaviour in this regard is anything but scattergun.

This legal excuse remains one of the least convincing in the area of information law.  It is, however, used repeatedly by states who have freedom of information regimes, providing slivers when asked, but generally withholding the bulk of what is deemed too sensitive for release.

The point is often the same: we will have a regime to allow information for the public precisely because we are intent on disallowing much of it. Regulation, in other words, is constriction, measured in the name of protecting that great, inscrutable fiction known as the public interest.  You are kept in the dark because ignorance is necessary bliss.

In the case of the Home Office, there could be few things more fundamentally vexatious than a metadata retention regime premised on the nonsense of combating trolls and bullies on the world wide web.

The efforts on the part of The Independent have at least demonstrated to British citizens that this regime has other purposes, managing to get some egg onto the faces of Home Office officials.  It is by no means the only quarter targeting the potential consequences of the bill.  Labour’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson has argued that the bill’s supposed self-guarding mechanisms and oversight simply do not go far enough in protecting privacy.

In Watson’s mind, there was merely a “very limited review of the Home Secretary’s warrants by a judge appointed by a Commissioner who is appointed by the prime minister.”  It was a “false choice to say that these massive extensions of state power must be introduced without checks and balances.”

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook finds its provisions similarly repellent for privacy.  “We believe it would be wrong,” went a company statement, “to weaken security for hundreds of millions of law-abiding customers so that it will also be weaker for the very few who pose a threat.”[2]Given this government’s supposed love of the corporate sector, big business and all, David Cameron and his Home Secretary have their work sharply cut out for them.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

Notes

I wonder how many Americans find themselves in the same predicament as I do:—there’s an election next week and we have little idea about the issues being debated there and whom we might vote for.

Yes, elections are happening all across this country now. But would we know about it from our mass media? No.

In my upstate New York district, it’s not always apparent which candidate is Democrat and which is Republican. Some places have legislative elections; some don’t; my county has a state senate seat up for election, but I don’t vote there. Elsewhere (in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi) important races for governorships and some US senate seats are being contested. If it weren’t for Rachel Maddow’s discussion on national TV http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-2015-gubernatorial-races-enter-the-home-stretch , out-of-staters wouldn’t know about them at all.

Meanwhile, through this bizarre American system of early party primaries, Iowa and New Hampshire, both small states, seem to dominate and skew our current democratic process. Ignoring local races which affect our daily lives (this mythical middle-American family beloved by all politicians), tens of millions of Americans obsessively watch, debate and quote statements by presidential candidates, men and women whose success down the road will have little to do with this week’s nationwide elections.

Who are those residents of Iowa and New Hampshire who get so much attention from the big parties and our media and the political analysts? Why do two low population (IA with 3,100,000 and NH with barely 1,300,000)  http://www.enchantedlearning.com/usa/states/population.shtml arguably marginal states, define our presidential nominees? If they really do. Outside of these presidential campaigns every four years, one hears little from them. How could their views of presidential contenders be as critical to the rest of us as the fierce competition underway suggests they are? And why can’t the major parties assign some of the tens of millions in their campaign coffers to local contests?

Two weeks ago, lawn signs began to appear on roadsides in my neighborhood; they were announcing candidates for local judgeships, and for town mayors, councilmen and road supervisors. Thus I learn an election is imminent.

I normally vote by party, but none of those candidates’ flyers specify party affiliation. What about information from a local paper? I find only personal ads in this week’s edition. So I turn to my county Board of Elections webpage; on its home page appear the names of a bunch of committee heads. I click the link to my town but information is sparse. On the ballot I’ll mark next Tuesday are 12 candidates running for 9 posts. Six of these candidates, all on the Republican ticket, are unopposed. None are from my party. I’ve not found even a resume of any candidate.

A neighboring county held a public candidates’ night with the local radio station airing contestants’ statements and Q&As from the public. Some of those candidates are running for seats in the county legislature. Hmmm, I consider jealously: what about my county legislature? There is none, I learn. We have what’s called a Board of Supervisors. So are those seats up for election this week? It’s uncertain.

Can you blame me for turning to the national scene? I’ve been watching the Republican presidential debates (the Democratic too) for the past 2 months–it seems like longer– followed by hours comparing my responses to the endless musings of our multitude of talk show pundits. (They keep themselves gainfully employed through this process.) The candidates –we all know the handful of four or so who stand out– are certainly entertaining and at times infuriating, even frightening, to any non-Republican. And if they can’t provide the level of comedy we need, corporate media will find a way to arouse us. And however outrageous, limp or impoverished these candidates may be, it’s our income-generating media that will keep this circus spinning for another year, all 365 of it.

In case I become excited over someone to cast my vote for, from among the finalists who survive through to next autumn, I’ll be told that the outcome for the post of the “most powerful person in the world” will be in the hands of residents of the “swing states”-Florida, Pennsylvania and perhaps Colorado or Virginia–where competition is always close. We in the remaining 46 states will not count much. So, our costly, time-consuming election process comes down to media offerings. It’s good entertainment, I give our democracy that.