The US would look into ways of “taking out” new Russian missiles if they become operational, the US envoy to NATO said, accusing Moscow of developing a weapon that “violates” the Soviet-US nuclear arms treaty.
US Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison didn’t miss an opportunity to fire a warning shot in the direction of Russia when accusing it of building new nuclear missiles that would allegedly be pointed at Europe. Should such missiles be completed, she said at the Tuesday briefing, “at that point, we would be looking at the capability to take out a [Russian] missile that could hit any of our countries.”
Hutchison then doubled down on the threat, saying: “Counter measures [by the United States] would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation of the treaty.” She added: “They are on notice.”
Hutchison was referring to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which bans the use of all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, that have ranges of between 500km and 5,500km. The US has claimed that Moscow is not complying with the INF treaty, an accusation that Russia has repeatedly rejected.
“We have been trying to send a message to Russia for several years that we know they are violating the treaty, we have shown Russia the evidence that we have that they are violating the treaty,” Hutchison maintained.
The Russian Foreign Ministry blasted the statements made by the US envoy as “aggressive and destructive,” adding that they will get a detailed response from Russian military experts. NATO doesn’t understand the degree of its responsibility and the danger posed by such aggressive rhetoric, the ministry said.
Hutchison’s comment came several weeks after President Donald Trump signed the US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2019. The document contains, among other things, allegations that Moscow violated the INF Treaty.
Moscow, in turn, accuses the US and “some of its allies” of knowingly violating the INF by deploying Mk-41 launching systems close to Russian borders. These can be easily repurposed for firing banned ground-based cruise missiles, it says, while Washington denies the accusations.
Under the 2019 NDAA, US legislators allocated $58 million to counter Russia’s alleged non-compliance with the INF Treaty. The measures to counter the alleged activities include a “research and development program on a ground-launched intermediate-range missile,” which, somehow, should not itself violate the treaty.
Russian lawmakers have also promised countermeasures. “If the missile announced by Congress indeed makes it into the American arsenal, we will have to develop and adopt the same thing. Russia has the military and technical capacities for that,” Viktor Bondarev, the head of the defense committee of Russia’s Federal Council, has said.
October 2, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Afghanistan, Michael Flynn, NATO, Russia, United States |
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Last week Washington threatened Iran, Syria, China, Venezuela and Russia
The nuclear war doomsday clock maintained on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists website has advanced to two minutes before midnight, the closest point to possible atomic apocalypse since the end of the Cold War. In 1995 the clock was at fourteen minutes to midnight, but the opportunity to set it back even further was lost as the United States and its European allies took advantage of a weakened Russia to advance NATO into Eastern Europe, setting the stage for a new cold war, which is now underway.
It is difficult to imagine how the United States might avoid a new war in the Middle East given the recent statements that have come out of Washington, and, given that the Russians are also active in the region, a rapid and massive escalation of something that starts out as a minor incident should not be ruled out.
President Donald Trump set the tone when he harangued the United Nations last Tuesday, warning that the United States would go it alone in defense of its perceived interests, with no regard for international bodies that exist to limit armed conflict and punish those who commit war crimes.
Trump’s 35-minute speech featured an anticipated long section targeting Iran. He commented that:
“Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death, and destruction. They do not respect their neighbors or borders, or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran’s leaders plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond… We cannot allow the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism to possess the planet’s most dangerous weapons. We cannot allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America,’ and that threatens Israel with annihilation, to possess the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth.”
There are a number of things exaggerated or incorrect in Trump’s description of Iran as well as in the conclusions he draws. The Middle East and other adjacent Muslim countries are in chaos because the United States has destabilized the region starting with the empowering of the Islamist Mujadeddin in the war against Soviet Afghanistan in the 1980s. It then invaded Afghanistan in 2001 followed by Iraq in 2003, enabling the rise of ISIS and giving local al-Qaeda affiliates a new lease on life, before turning on Damascus with the Syria Accountability Act later in the same year and then destroying the Libyan government under Barack Obama. These were, not coincidentally, policies promoted by Israel that received, as a result, bipartisan support in Congress.
The emotional description of disrespecting “neighbors, borders and sovereign rights” fits the U.S. and Israel to a “T” rather than Iran. The U.S. has soldiers stationed illegally in Syria while Israel bombs the country on an almost daily basis, so who is doing the disrespecting? Washington and Tel Aviv are also the principal supporters of terrorists in the Middle East, not Iran, – arming them, training them, hospitalizing them when they are injured, and making sure that they continue their work in attacking Syria’s legitimate government.
And as for “most dangerous weapons,” Iran doesn’t have any and is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Israel and the U.S. have not signed. Nor would Iran have any such weapons in the future but for the fact that Trump has backed out of the agreement to monitor and inspect Iranian nuclear research and development, which will, if anything, motivate Tehran to develop weapons to protect itself.
Trump also elaborated on the following day regarding Iran’s alleged but demonstrably non-existent nuclear program when he indicated to the Security Council that Washington would go after countries that violate the rules on nuclear proliferation. He clearly meant Iran but the comment was ironic in the extreme, as Israel is the world’s leading nuclear rogue nation with an arsenal of two hundred nuclear devices, having stolen the uranium and key elements of the technology from the United States in the 1960s.
Trump’s new appraisal of the state of the Middle East is somewhat a turnaround. Five months ago he said that he wanted to “get out” of Syria and bring the soldiers home. But in early September, the secretary of state’s special representative for Syria engagement, James Jeffrey, indicated that the U.S. would stay to counter Iranian activities.
And John Bolton has also recently had a lot to say about Iran, Syria and Russia. Last Monday he confirmed that Washington intends to keep a military presence in Syria until Iran withdraws all its forces from the country. “We’re not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders, and that includes Iranian proxies and militias.” On the following day, speaking at a Sheldon Adelson funded United Against Nuclear Iran Summit, he said the “murderous regime” of “mullahs in Tehran” would face serious consequences if they persist in their willingness to “lie, cheat and deceive. If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens there will indeed be hell to pay. Let my message today be clear: We are watching, and we will come after you.”
John Bolton also warned the Russians about their decision to upgrade the air defenses in Syria in the wake of the recent Israeli bombing raid that led to the shooting down of a Russian intelligence plane. He said absurdly and inaccurately “The Israelis have a legitimate right to self-defense against this Iranian aggressive behavior, and what we’re all trying to do is reduce tensions, reduce the possibility of major new hostilities. That’s why the president has spoken to this issue and why we would regard introducing the S-300 as a major mistake.”
Bolton then elaborated that “We think introducing the S-300s to the Syrian government would be a significant escalation by the Russians and something that we hope, if these press reports are accurate, they would reconsider.” And regarding who was responsible for the deaths of the Russian airmen, Bolton also has a suitable explanation “There shouldn’t be any misunderstanding here… The party responsible for the attacks in Syria and Lebanon and really the party responsible for the shooting down of the Russian plane is Iran.”
Bolton’s desire to exonerate Israel and always blame Iran is inevitably on display. He is curiously objecting to the placement of missiles that are defensive in nature, presumably because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked him to do so. The only way one can be threatened by the S-300 is if you are attacking Syria, but that might be a fine point that Bolton fails to grasp as he was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War and has since that time not placed himself personally at risk in support of any of the wars he has been promoting.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also spoke on Monday, at the Pentagon. His spin on Iran was slightly different but his message was the same. “As part of this overarching problem, we have to address Iran. Everywhere you go in the Middle East where there’s instability you will find Iran. So in terms of getting to the end state of the Geneva [negotiations] process, Iran, too, has a role to play, which is to stop fomenting trouble.”
To complete the onslaught, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking at the same United Against Nuclear Iran Summit as Bolton, accused European nations seeking to avoid U.S. sanctions over the purchase of Iranian oil as “solidifying Iran’s ranking as the number-one state sponsor of terrorism. I imagine the corrupt ayatollahs and IGRC [Revolutionary Guards] were laughing this morning.”
Even the U.S. Congress has figured out that something is afoot. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, who were carefully briefed on what to think by the Israeli government, warned after a trip to the Middle East that war between the United States and Iranian proxies is “imminent.”
Iran is fun to kick around but China has also been on the receiving end of late. Last Wednesday the U.N. Security Council meeting was presided over by Donald Trump, who warned that Beijing is “meddling” in U.S. elections against him personally. It is a bizarre claim, particularly as the only country up until now demonstrated as having actually interfered in American politics in any serious way is Israel. The accusation comes on top of Washington’s latest foray into the world of sanctions, directed against the Chinese government-run Equipment Development Department of the Chinese Central Military Commission and its director Li Shangfu for “engaging in significant transactions” with a Russian weapons manufacturer that is on a list of U.S. sanctioned companies.
The Chinese sanctions are serious business as they forbid conducting any transactions that go through the U.S. financial system. It is the most powerful weapon Washington has at its disposal. As most international transactions are conducted in dollars and pass through American banks that means that it will be impossible for the Chinese government to make weapons purchases from many foreign sources. If foreign banks attempt to collaborate with China to evade the restrictions, they too will be sanctioned.
So if you’re paying attention to Trump, Bolton, Mattis, Pompeo and Haley you are probably digging a new bomb shelter right now. We have told Iran that it cannot send its soldiers and “proxies” outside its own borders while Syria cannot have advanced missiles to defend its airspace, which Russia is “on notice” for providing. China also cannot buy weapons from Russia while Venezuela is also being threatened because it has what is generally believed to be a terrible government. Meanwhile, America is in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to stay while nearly all agree a war with Iran is coming soon. Everyone is the enemy and everyone hates the United States, mostly for good reasons. If this is Making America Great Again, I think I would settle for just making America “good” so we could possibly have that doomsday clock go back a couple of minutes.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org .
October 2, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, NATO, United States |
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British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson says UK forces stationed in Germany will continue to stay in the country after Britain’s pending exit from the European Union (EU).
“We are increasing our British points of presence across the world,” Williamson told the Telegraph on Sunday as he announced the UK’s new military strategy in the Arctic. “We will not be closing our facilities in Germany, and instead use them to forward base the Army.”
There are 185 British Army personnel and 60 Ministry of Defense (MoD) staff currently based in the 45-square mile Sennelager Training Area in near the western city of Paderborn.
The UK and the US-led NATO military alliance have been using Sennelager as an expansive live firing training area over the past years.
The personnel would continue to occupy the adjacent Athlone Barracks for housing and schooling, the MoD said in a statement.
The British army would also keep control over the Ayrshire Barracks in Mönchengladbach, which can house around 2,000 military vehicles. They will also maintain a presence at the German Wulfen Defence Munitions Storage Facility, which holds operational ammunition.
According to the MoD statement, British military personnel will also stay in Germany to support NATO’s other critical infrastructure and assets such as the combined river crossing unit based in Minden.
Williamson also announced that that London was planning to send around 800 troops to Norway as a warning shot to Russia.
The decision was part of the UK’s plan to step up its military presence in the Arctic region in order to address concerns about growing Russian aggression “in our back yard,” he said.
The UK Royal Navy and its Norwegian counterpart have already purchased a large fleet of US-made P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft to stop what they call Russia’s growing submarine activity near their territorial waters.
“We see Russian submarine activity very close to the level that it was at the Cold War, and it’s right that we start responding to that,” Williamson said.
October 1, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Germany, NATO, Norway, UK, United States |
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The US military practice of placing nuclear weapons in five other countries (no other nuclear power does this) is a legal and political embarrassment for US diplomacy. That’s why all the governments involved refuse to “confirm or deny” the practice of “nuclear sharing” or the locations of the B61 free-fall gravity bombs in question.
Expert analysts and observers agree that the United States currently deploys 150-to-180 of these nuclear weapons at bases in Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Turkey and Belgium. The authors of the January 2018 report “Building a Safe, Secure, and Credible NATO Nuclear Posture” take for granted the open secret that nuclear sharing is ongoing even though all six countries are signatory parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
In a paper for the journal Science for Democratic Action, German weapons expert Otfried Nassauer, director of Berlin’s Information Center for Transatlantic Security, concluded, “NATO’s program of ‘nuclear sharing’ with five European countries probably violates Articles I and II of the Treaty.”
Article I prohibits nuclear weapon states that are parties to the NPT from sharing their weapons. It says: “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly….” Article II, the corollary commitment, states says: “Each non-nuclear weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly … or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices….”
What nuclear sharing means in practice
The five NATO countries currently hosting US H-bombs on their air bases are officially “non-nuclear weapons states.” But as Nassauer reports, “Under NATO nuclear sharing in times of war, the US would hand control of these nuclear weapons over to the non-nuclear weapon states’ pilots for use with aircraft from non-nuclear weapon states. Once the bomb is loaded aboard, once the correct Permissive Action Link code has been entered by the US soldiers guarding the weapons, and once the aircraft begins its mission, control over the respective weapon(s) has been transferred. That is the operational, technical part of what is called ‘nuclear sharing.’”
This flaunting of the NPT is what peace activists on both sides of the Atlantic refer to when calling the US bombs in Europe “illegal.” Nassauer notes, “The pilots for these aircraft are provided with training specific to use nuclear weapons. The air force units to which these pilots and aircraft belong have the capability to play a part in NATO nuclear planning, including assigning a target, selecting the yield of the warhead for the target, and planning a specific mission for the use of the bombs.”
“NATO nuclear sharing,” Nassauer writes, “was described in 1964 by one member of the US National Security Council … as meaning that ‘the non-nuclear NATO-partners in effect become nuclear powers in time of war.’ The concern is that, at the moment the aircraft loaded with the bomb is on the runway ready to start, the control of the weapon is turned over from the US, a nuclear weapon state, to non-nuclear weapon states. … To my understanding, this is in violation of the spirit if not the text of Articles I and II of the NPT.”
How Do the US and its Allies Explain their Lawlessness?
An undated, 1960s-era letter from then-US Secretary of State Rusk explained the US ‘interpretation’ of the NPT. The pretext for ignoring the treaty’s plain language, the Rusk letter “argues that the NPT does not specify what is allowed, but only what is forbidden. In this view, everything that is not forbidden by the NPT is allowed,” Nassaure explained.
In its most absurd section, Rusk simply denies the treaty’s obvious purpose and intent. “Since the treaty doesn’t explicitly talk about the deployment of nuclear warheads in countries that are non-nuclear weapon states,” Nassaure writes, “such deployments are considered legal under the NPT.”
It is so easy to show that the United States and its nuclear sharing partners are in violation of the NPT, the governments involved work hard pretending there is nothing to worry about, no lawbreaking underway, no reason to demand answers. This is why so many activists across Europe have become nonviolently disobedient at the air bases involved.
The transparent unlawfulness of NATO’s nuclear war planning is also the reason why prosecutors in Germany don’t dare bring serious charges against civil resisters; even those who have cut fences and occupied hot weapons bunkers in broad daylight. Some Air Force witness might testify at trial that US nuclear weapons are on base.
John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.
September 27, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism | Belgium, Germany, Italy, NATO, Netherlands, Turkey, United States |
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The onset of the so-called Arab Spring in late 2010 took governments around the world by surprise, and Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) government was no exception. Repositioning itself to meet new circumstances, it gradually turned its back on some of the defining principles of its previous policy. Opposed to outside military intervention anywhere in the Middle East, it came in behind the NATO attack on Libya. Committed to “soft power” and dialogue, it substituted engagement with Syria in favor of confrontation and “regime change.”
In supporting the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which launched murderous assaults across the Syrian border, as well as other armed groups seeking to pull down the Syrian government, the AKP government took foreign policy in a radically new direction, leading eventually to the occupation of Syrian territory. Not since the establishment of the republic in 1923 had a Turkish government interfered so openly and aggressively in the affairs of a neighboring state. Balancing risks against opportunities, its choices seemed a signal to the world of how it saw Turkey, no longer just as a regional power but one intent on playing a more influential role on the global stage and prepared to act accordingly.
In 2011, following the collapse or overthrow of governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the “Western” and Middle Eastern regional coalition calling itself the Friends of the Syrian People set out to destroy the government in Damascus. Initially, it hoped to achieve this through an aerial offensive launched under the aegis of the UN Security Council. With Russia and China making it clear that they would not allow a no-fly zone to be established over Syria, and with Russia going on to veto a French resolution (October 2016) demanding an end to air strikes on “rebel” positions in and around Aleppo, the Friends of the Syrian People had to resort to the use of proxy forces that it armed and paid. Given Turkey’s long border with Syria, its role in this project was of critical importance; without its participation, it is doubtful this onslaught on the Syrian government could have gone ahead.
Some of the fallout could have been predicted. Shia Iran — and Iraq, with its predominantly Shia government — were hostile from the start. A refugee flow from Syria into Turkey was inevitable, but possibly not to the extent it reached: according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 3.5 million people by May 2018, maintained in and out of more than 20 camps near the Syrian border, at a cost to the Turkish government alone, according to its own figures, of about $30 billion. The refugee situation ultimately gave rise to friction with the EU. Turkey complained that the EU was not delivering the aid it had promised, and President Erdogan warned in 2018, as he had in 2016, “We are the ones feeding three million to 3.5 million refugees in this country. You have betrayed your promises. If you go any further, those border gates will be opened.” [1] These angry words fed into anti-Turkish sentiment developing in Europe over other issues, namely Turkey’s deteriorating human-rights situation and President Erdogan’s labeling Dutch and German authorities “Nazi remnants” and “the grandchildren of Nazis” for refusing to allow Turkish electoral campaigning within their borders. Against European protests, he insisted, “I will describe Europe as Nazis [sic] as long as they call me a dictator.” [2]
Turkey’s involvement in Syria led to accusations of widespread plunder from East Aleppo when it was occupied by takfiri jihadist groups, with factories allegedly being dismantled and the parts transported across the Turkish border for sale. The sale of oil from territory conquered by the Islamic State was another issue. According to reports, a company with links to President Erdogan’s son-in-law and cabinet minister, Berat Albayrak, was transporting contraband oil from territory conquered by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria across the Turkish border, along with oil from Iraq’s Kurdish north — which was in dispute with the government in Baghdad over oil rights. [3] The oil was allegedly moved to the southeastern Turkish oil terminal at Ceyhan for onward sale. Russian drone surveillance footage showed hundreds of tankers lined up in the Iraqi desert or clustered around the Turkish border, some of them crossing it. Large-scale aerial bombing of the tankers after Russian intervention in Syria appears to have brought the trade to an end.
An MP of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Eren Erdem, was charged with treason after alleging that President Erdogan himself benefitted from Islamic State oil sales. Erdem also claimed that the sarin nerve gas allegedly used against civilians in the Ghouta outer district of Damascus in August, 2013 was transported across the border from Turkey (a charge also made by the veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh [4]). Erdem’s parliamentary immunity from prosecution ended when the CHP failed to renominate him ahead of the June 2018 elections and he was banned from leaving the country.
Ankara’s Syria policy also led to serious complications with Moscow, especially the shooting down of a Russian Sukhoi SU-24 by a Turkish F16 fighter aircraft near the Turkish-Syrian border on November 24, 2015. Trade sanctions by way of punishment continued until most had been lifted by May 2017, in tandem with the progress of the Astana “peace” talks involving Russia, Turkey and Iran.
In the wake of the decision to confront the Syrian government, uncounted numbers of takfiri jihadists traveled across Turkey from around the world to join the fight in Syria. Some entered Turkey by land from the Caucasus. Others flew into Istanbul and then moved by bus or plane to safe houses in the southeast before crossing the border. As they entered the country legally, and as journalists were able to locate them, it could scarcely be argued that the government did not know who they were or where they were going. At the same time, Islamic State (IS) cells were forming in various parts of the country.
Between 2013 and 2016, suicide or car bombings caused havoc across Turkey. Some were the work of the Kurdish Freedom Hawks (TAK), retaliating for Turkish military action against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the southeast and the civilian casualties that were caused inside Kurdish towns and cities as a result. Others were bombings connected with the Islamic State. The TAK bombing of buses carrying military and civilian personnel from army headquarters in Ankara on February 17, 2016, was followed on March 13 by its bombing of civilian buses on Ataturk Boulevard in nearby Kizilay. More than 60 people were killed in the two bombings. Later that same year, on June 7, 12 police were killed when the TAK bombed a bus in central Istanbul; and on December 10, a car bombing and a suicide bombing in the central Istanbul Bosporus suburb of Beşiktaş, both claimed by the TAK, killed 48 people.
Attacks by the Islamic State include the suicide bombing of a police post in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet tourist district in January 2015. The bomber, the Daghestani widow of a Norwegian-Chechen IS fighter, and one policeman were killed. In July 2015, a student from the city of Adiyaman, a known center of IS recruitment, killed 32 Turkish and Kurdish students in a suicide bombing in the border town of Suruc. In January 2016, a Syrian IS suicide bomber killed 13 people, all of them foreign tourists, in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district. In March, a suicide bombing killed five people, three of them Israeli, in the fashionable Beyoglu quarter. In June, Russian and Central Asian IS attackers killed 45 people in an attack on the international terminal at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. On January 1, 2017, an Uzbek national killed 39 people and wounded dozens with an AK-47 assault rifle during an attack on the Reina nightclub in the Bosporus suburb of Ortakoy. He was captured and more than 50 alleged accomplices were later arrested. The attack was claimed by IS.
In some cases, no responsibility was claimed, and the perpetrators were never clearly identified. These attacks include the bombing of a peace demonstration outside the central Ankara railway terminal in October 2015, in which 109 people were killed. One of the bombers was allegedly identified as the younger brother of the perpetrator of the Suruc bombing. However, as the demonstration had been organized by the largely Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), along with civil-society groups, and as general elections were to be held in three weeks time, suspicions were also raised of “deep-state” involvement. The first, and worst, of the atrocities were the two car bombings on May 11, 2013, which killed 51 people, wounded scores of others and caused massive destruction in the Hatay Province town of Reyhanli, adjacent to the Syrian border. Responsibility was never claimed but suspicions rested on the Islamic State or Jabhat al-Nusra.
Turkey had wanted a physical presence inside Syria from the beginning of the crisis, a “safe” or “buffer” zone or “humanitarian corridor.” Ankara had already sent troops across the border on one specific mission — to relocate the historic Suleyman Shah tomb to a new site only a few hundred meters from the Turkish border — when in 2016 it launched the large-scale Euphrates Shield operation in the name of driving the Islamic State and the Kurdish militia (the People’s Protection Units, YPG) out of the border region.
Disagreement between the United States and Turkey over the status of the YPG, a “terrorist” group allied with the PKK, according to the Turkish government (though not in the eyes of the U.S. administration) led to heated rhetoric, with Turkey threatening to extend its military operations to Manbij and even across the Euphrates to the Iraqi border. Daily control of Manbij by the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an ally of the YPG, further inflamed relations between Washington and Ankara, until the two governments reached agreement on the withdrawal of the SDF and joint patrols by their military forces. Other issues dividing the two NATO members included the refusal of the United States to extradite the Muslim guru Fethullah Gulen, accused of orchestrating the failed coup of 2016; the arrest of a U.S. pastor in Izmir accused of fomenting terrorism through his alleged links with the Gulen movement; the prosecution in the United States of a senior Turkish Halkbank (People’s Bank) executive on charges of money laundering for Iran; the charges laid against 12 members of Erdogan’s security detail, filmed brutally kicking and beating demonstrators outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence during the president’s visit to Washington in May 2017; and the strengthening of Turkey’s relations with Russia — despite the near crisis in 2015, when Turkey shot down a Russian jet along the Syrian border, and its decision to purchase Russian S-400 missiles.
The exclusion of the United States from negotiations over Syria in Astana by Russia, Iran and Turkey, and the purchase of Russian missiles were followed by hints from President Erdogan of increased “defense” cooperation with Russia, putting further strains on the NATO alliance. Along with developing trade relations was the issue of Russian support for Turkish nuclear development. In April 2018, in line with an agreement signed by the two governments in 2010, work began on the construction of a nuclear power plant at Akkuyu, on the Mediterranean coast in the southern province of Mersin. The plant will be built, owned and operated by the Russian state energy corporation, Rosatom.
In early 2018, Turkey launched a second military operation (Olive Branch) in the Afrin region of northwestern Syria, culminating in the routing of the YPG militia and the occupation of Afrin city. As a result of these two operations, Turkey and its Turkish Free Syrian Army (TFSA) auxiliaries — many recruited from armed groups involved in the fighting against the Syrian government — control hundreds of villages and towns in 3,460 square kilometers of northwestern Syria. The occupied zone stretches as far south as Al Bab, 40 kilometers north of Aleppo. Within this region, Turkey has set up a full range of administrative services, from police and post offices to schools (where Turkish is now taught as a second language) and local councils operating under Turkish control. Harran University, in Turkey’s southeast, will also be opening a branch in the Turkish-occupied zone. Following his victory in the presidential elections, Erdogan said he would take further measures to “liberate” Syria.
The infrastructure at Al Bab includes the establishment of an industrial zone north of the city. Representatives of the governor of Gaziantep were present at the laying of the cornerstone on February 10, 2018. Built over 56 hectares, the site will include factories, hotels, four mosques, power stations and the provision of all utilities as well as the construction of a road network connecting Al Bab to other parts of the territory Turkey has occupied. Turkish control extends to Idlib province, where in the name of “de-escalation” it has established at least 12 “observation posts,” as sanctioned by its partners in the Astana negotiations. Large parts of the province plus Idlib city itself are controlled by the takfiri Hayat Tahrir al Sham. In the regions brought under Turkish control, Kizilay (the Turkish Red Crescent) and the Turkish Directorate of Emergency Management (AFAD) have prepared camps and assistance for tens of thousands of refugees from other parts of Syria, including takfiris and their families removed from cities and regions recaptured by the Syrian army.
The political complexities in this situation include the “green light” given by Russia for Turkish military intervention in Afrin, including the use of air power. Through the Astana talks, Russia had also sanctioned the stationing of Turkish troops in Idlib to monitor the “de-escalation” zones, transforming Turkey through these maneuvers into an ostensible partner for peace talks even as it continued to consolidate its occupation of Syrian territory. With all takfiri groups cleared out of the Damascus region, the Syrian army turned its attention towards the armed groups operating near the Jordanian border and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and campaigned against U.S.-backed forces in Deir al Zor province. Eventually its attention must swing towards the northwestern and northeastern regions occupied by Turkish and U.S. forces and their proxies. In early June 2018, President Assad, determined to restore his government’s authority over all of Syria, warned that force would be used against U.S. troops if they were not withdrawn voluntarily.
The Turkish government says return of the territory it holds to the Syrian government is “completely inconceivable,” as Deputy Prime Minister Recep Akdag has remarked of Afrin. According to President Erdogan, “We will solve the Afrin issue and the Idlib issue, and we want our refugee brothers and sisters to return to their country,” adding that Turkey would not shelter them forever. [5] To whom the occupied territory would be returned if not the Syrian government remained an unanswered question.
Against the background of all the developments since 2011, a central question is how or whether intervention in Syria can be said to have served the Turkish national interest, as assessed on the basis of costs and benefits to the Turkish state and its people. The course of Turkish involvement in the war in and on Syria, as examined in the foregoing pages, may point to some answers.
TURKEY’S NEW DIRECTIONS
The election of the AKP in 2002 signaled radical, if not counterrevolutionary, changes in Turkey’s social and political fabric as well as redirections in its foreign policy. As early as 1994, the success of the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party in local elections was a sign that Turkey was breaking away from its Kemalist past in favor of a political model that would place greater emphasis on Muslim values and closer connections with the Muslim world. The military had intervened in 1960 and 1980. Then, in 1997, less than a year after Refah had become the dominant partner in a coalition government with the True Path Party (Dogru Yol Partisi), it intervened again, not by putting tanks on the streets but by squeezing Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan out of office in what has often been called a “soft” or “post-modern” coup.
With the Constitutional Court closing down the party and Erbakan banned from taking part in politics, the military fixed its sights on Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Refah mayor of the greater Istanbul municipality. He was jailed for reciting a poem considered to be incitement to religious or racial hatred; released after six months, he went on to co-found the Justice and Development Party in August, 2001. His rhetoric was that of a changed man. While not retreating from his conservative religious convictions, Erdogan insisted that his party was on a different path from its Refah forerunner. “We have opened a new page with a new group of people, a brand new party…. We were anti-European. Now we’re pro-European.” [6] Although the new party was committed to enlarging democracy within the secular framework of the constitution, doubts remained, usually summed up with mystical references to a “hidden agenda” that would only become clear once the party had consolidated its position in power.
Cutting the head off the Refah hydra made no difference; other heads quickly grew in its place, first the Fazilet (Virtue) Party and then Erdogan’s AKP. In the 2002 general elections, the party won 34 percent of the vote, enough to give it a majority in the Grand National Assembly. In 2007, it took 46.7 percent of the vote, and in the 2011 elections — after narrowly surviving an attempt by the Constitutional Court prosecutor to close it down in 2008 — increased its lead still further to 49.8 percent. In the June 2015 elections, the AKP lost its majority but regained it when fresh elections were held in November to resolve the parliamentary deadlock. The party also won a series of constitutional “reform” referendums in 2007, 2010 and 2017, centering on the establishment of an executive presidency, the authority of which Erdogan had already de facto assumed. In 2014, he was elected president by popular vote, replacing the parliamentary mode. This election was marked by numerous reports of irregularities, including the use of unofficial unstamped ballot papers. In an unprecedented move, the head of the Supreme Electoral Board, refusing to investigate complaints about the conduct of the elections, declared that they should be regarded as valid. In 2017, constitutional changes diminishing the power and prerogatives of parliament and tightening government control of the judiciary while greatly increasing the authority of the president were narrowly passed by referendum. Again, many irregularities were reported but not investigated. On June 24, 2018, Erdogan was re-elected as president in the new constitutional system on 52.59 percent of the vote.
In the early years, the AKP government worked hard for EU accession. It brought hyperinflation to a halt and stabilized the currency, but perhaps its most startling achievement was the way in which it took on its primal enemy — the military — and won. Hundreds of senior army officers were accused of being part of a “deep-state” network known as Ergenekon [7] and charged with plotting to overthrow the government. These measures were taken when the AKP government was cooperating with the Gulen movement. The latter’s methods (the slow indoctrination of society through a countrywide network of dershane preparatory schools) were different from the political route followed by the AKP, but their aims were the same: the gradual re-Islamization of Turkish society and the slow whittling away of the Kemalist heritage. However, by 2013, the relationship between the government and the movement had broken down. From that time onwards, the Gülen movement became the “parallel state” and finally the Fethullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), which the government accused of launching the failed coup of 2016.
Reconnecting with Turkey’s Ottoman past, and seeking to use the historical and cultural connections between Istanbul and the Muslim world as a foreign-policy tool, the government tilted towards closer relations with Arabs and Muslims, while still proclaiming its commitment to the goal of EU accession. An early sign that Turks were prepared to take a more independent stand on the Middle East was the decision by the Grand National Assembly in 2003 not to commit Turkish troops to the war on Iraq. Another was Erdogan’s close identification with the Palestinian cause. In 2004 Erdogan called Israel a terrorist state after a missile attack killed the eminent Gazan religious scholar Ahmad Yassin. He sharply criticized Israel during its attacks on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008 and later said that “a slow and methodical massacre has been taking place in Palestine since the early 20th century.” [8] Taking part in a panel discussion at Davos in January 2009, he turned on Israeli President Shimon Peres with the words: “When it comes to killing you know well how to kill.” After the 2010 attack on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, Erdogan said the Israeli government was inhuman, aggressive, brazen, irresponsible, despicable, cowardly, reckless and vicious. [9]
While Turkey had been moving towards a major policy reorientation ever since the AKP government came into office, it was Ahmet Davutoglu who set its contours. An academic and former senior adviser to the prime minister, Davutoglu was appointed foreign minister on May 1, 2009, subsequently serving as prime minister from 2014 to 2016, when he decided not to stand for office again. The phrases associated with his approach to foreign policy were “soft power,” “strategic depth,” “dialogue” and “zero problems” with neighboring states. While Turkey suffered some setbacks (including the rejection in 2010 by the White House of a nuclear agreement with Iran brokered by Turkey and Brazil), soft power was extremely successful as a diplomatic tool.
Dialogue was especially marked in the case of Syria, with senior officials from both countries making a flurry of visits to each other’s capitals and cementing both political and commercial ties. By 2010, trade between the two had jumped to $2.5 billion, a 43 percent increase over the previous year. The lingering aftereffects of previous problems — especially Syria’s support for the PKK and the sanctuary given to its leader, Abdullah Ocalan — appeared to have been smoothed over, with the lifting of visa requirements for Turkish and Syrian citizens putting the seal on the process.
By late 2010, however, the onset of the Arab Spring had rocked the foundations on which Turkish foreign policy had been built. Within a few months, soft power began to look more like old-fashioned hard power. Having initially opposed outside armed intervention anywhere in the Middle East, the AKP government ended up coming in behind the NATO air attack on Libya and backing armed groups seeking to overthrow the Syrian government, from within Syria and through attacks launched across the Turkish border. Where Syria’s president was concerned, the language of dialogue and mediation gave way to threats, warnings and insults.
“WE ARE NOT IMMORTAL”
In the years leading up to the Arab Spring, the AKP government had given no signs of disapproval of Arab governments, even though their abuses of human rights and — in the case of some Gulf states — lack of democratic infrastructure were matters of global concern. Erdogan had developed a close working relationship with both Bashar al-Assad and Muammar al-Qadhafi, from whose government he had received, as late as December 2010, the Qadhafi International Prize for Human Rights (worth $250,000). Like governments everywhere, however, the AKP was caught on the back foot by the rapid developments in Tunisia, where the death of Muhammad Bouazizi on January 4, 2011, triggered demonstrations that precipitated the flight of President Zine el Abidine bin Ali 10 days later. In the Turkish government’s view, Tunisia was the start of a widespread regional revolt to which it should respond by supporting the people. This would accord with being on “the right side” of history as depicted by Davutoglu. [10]
Although Davutoglu described Turkey’s intervention in Egypt as “a risk,” [11] the government only intervened after even Husni Mubarak’s chief sponsor, the U.S. administration, was getting ready to abandon him. Addressing his party’s parliamentary caucus in early February 2011, Erdogan called on the Egyptian leader to listen to his people… “Mubarak, we are human beings. We are not immortal. We will die one day and we will be questioned for the things that we left behind. The important thing is to leave behind sweet memories.” [12] The crisis in Egypt was followed by the crisis in Libya, beginning with protests in Benghazi on February 17. This further upheaval involved very practical considerations for Turkey, given the $15 billion investment of close to 200 Turkish companies in Libya and the presence of about 25,000-30,000 workers (mostly employed in construction). Turkey’s immediate concern was their repatriation, effected by ferries from Benghazi or overland to Alexandria and home by sea from there.
The steady escalation of the crisis in Libya paved the way for resolutions passed by the UN Security Council deploring the “systematic violation” of human rights in the Libyan jamahiriyya, many of them grossly exaggerated by the media, but still forming the body of accusations at the UN. Resolution 1970 referred the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC), and Resolution 1973 authorized member states to take “all necessary measures” to protect civilians, including the establishment of a “no-fly zone” in Libyan air space. On March 19, the United States, Britain and France, using the pretext of a no-fly zone, launched an aerial assault on Libya that was to last for seven months. A week later, the operation was transferred to NATO, immediately involving Turkey.
Initially, Turkey opposed the imposition of the no-fly zone. On March 14, Erdogan warned that military intervention by NATO in Libya would have “dangerous consequences.” [13] On March 19, he called for an immediate end to the bloodshed and violence against civilians: “We expect steps to be taken right now without losing any time and expect the people’s demands for change and transformation to be met.” [14] Only reluctantly and under pressure from its allies did Turkey throw its weight behind military action, authorizing the dispatch of a naval mission to the Libyan coast. For columnist Semih Idiz, “Turkey was confused and late, … [but] joining the game was inevitable. It could not have stood against its NATO allies.” With the approval of the naval mission, “Turkey will effectively have joined the military operation. If the soldiers are fired upon they will respond.” [15]
Having taken the decision, the Turkish government moved quickly to support the Libyan National Transitional Council. On May 2, it closed its embassy in Tripoli, and the following day Erdogan called on Qadhafi to cede power. Turkey moved quickly to consolidate its support for the “rebels,” irrespective of the fact that there was no countrywide popular uprising against the Libyan leader, only demonstrations in Benghazi. The “civil war,” such as it was, had been created by external intervention, with the “rebels” on the ground sheltered and advancing only under the umbrella of French, British and U.S. air power.
In September, Erdogan made a triumphal trip across North Africa. His strong support for the Palestinians prepared the way for what Time magazine called the “rock star” reception he was given by thousands of people at Cairo airport. [16] Building on his forceful previous intervention on the Palestine question, he told a session of the Arab League that a Palestinian state was “not an option but an obligation.” [17] Later he coupled criticism of Israel with a call on Arab leaders to accept democracy and freedom, which “is as basic a right as bread and water for you, my brothers.” [18] In Libya, he told a crowd chanting anti-Assad slogans that “those who repress their own people in Syria will not survive. The time of autocracies is over. Totalitarian regimes are disappearing. The rule of the people is coming.” [19] What could not escape notice was that, when it came to the crushing of the protest movement in Bahrain and the autocratic nature of other Gulf regimes, the Turkish government’s language was noticeably more restrained and at most only mildly critical. It responded to the crackdown on demonstrators in Bahrain by calling on “all parties” to refrain from violence. Davutoglu spoke of the need to “complete” reforms through a social compromise and for the intervention of Saudi and UAE forces in Bahrain to be a “temporary measure.”
Only in Syria did “soft” power give way to hard. Conforming to its self-image as a world power in the making, Turkey began acting like one. In principle, as explained by the foreign minister, Turkey was opposed to foreign intervention but, “if there is an oppression by an autocratic leader against the people, nobody can expect us or [the] international community to be silent.” [20] Apparently deciding that the government in Damascus could not long resist the wave of demonstrations spreading across the country, the Turkish prime minister and his foreign minister washed their hands of President Assad, whom Erdogan had only recently been addressing as “brother.” Their stand reinforced the position Turkey had already taken against Libya inside the U.S.-EU-Gulf-state bloc, the difference being that, whereas the Libyan government did not have strong international support, the Syrian government did. Iran, Iraq, Russia and China all opposed foreign intervention in any form. The regional and global stakes were much higher, as President Assad made clear when referring to the regional “earthquake” likely to follow an attack on his country.
Still referring to President Assad as a “good friend,” Erdogan said they had had “long discussions about lifting the state of emergency [and] the release of political prisoners. … We discussed changing the election system [and] allowing political parties; … however, he was late in taking these steps … and that’s how unfortunately we ended up here.” [21] According to Davutoglu, President Assad had agreed to introduce reforms but “never delivered.” [22] He would not spell out what these reforms were on the grounds of “diplomatic propriety,” but Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem said they centered on a political role for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Syria. Erdogan “kept asking Assad and Syrian officials in every meeting they held to establish dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood. We kept telling him that the disagreement between the Syrian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood goes back to the 1980s and cannot be resolved that easily.” [23]
Claiming to have visited Syria more than 60 times in the previous eight years, in August 2011, Davutoglu made a final attempt to bring President Assad around to his government’s way of thinking. The core message carried to the Syrian leader in Damascus was that Turkey had “run out of patience.” [24] Back in Ankara, Davutoglu told reporters that “this is our final word to the Syrian authorities. Our first expectation is that these [military] operations stop immediately and unconditionally. … If the operations do not end, there would be nothing more to discuss about steps that would be taken.” [25] In the coming weeks he said that, while “we hope military intervention will never be necessary,” Turkey was preparing for any scenario. [26] In the Syrian capital, however, President Assad continued to insist that his government would not relent “in pursuing the terrorist groups in order to protect the stability of the country and the security of the citizens.” [27]
The “steps that would be taken” by Turkey were already taking shape. On August 23, the government threw its weight behind the establishment of the Syrian National Council (SNC) in Istanbul and the operations of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Hatay province, allowing the group “to orchestrate attacks across the [Syrian] border from inside a camp guarded by the Turkish military.” [28] For his interview with a New York Times reporter, the leader of the FSA, former Syrian army colonel Riad al Assad, arrived under a guard of 10 heavily armed Turkish soldiers and wearing a business suit that “an official at the Turkish Foreign Ministry said he had purchased for him that morning.” [29]
Increasing the pressure on Damascus, the AKP government imposed a range of sanctions against the Syrian government and senior officials, consolidating measures already taken by the United States and the EU. The sanctions included a travel ban, a freeze of Syria’s financial assets, an embargo on weapons deliveries by third countries transiting Turkish land and sea space, and a trade ban that forced trucks crossing Syria to and from Jordan and then on to the Gulf countries and Yemen to take the longer and more costly route through Iraq. The government seemed to be preparing itself for all contingencies, including the establishment of a “buffer zone” across the Syrian border and “a huge influx of refugees after a massacre, for example, as happened at Halabja in Iraq.” [30] Needless to say, Turkey’s role in the unfolding of the Syrian crisis was strongly supported by the United States. [31]
The breakdown of relations with Syria was followed by dire warnings of what President Assad could expect if he did not leave office.
If you are such a hero that you are willing to fight to the death then why didn’t you fight to the death for the Golan Heights? Are your heroics only against your oppressed public? This isn’t being a hero. This is being afraid. … Quit power before more blood is shed, … for the peace of your people your region and your country. [32]
President Assad should learn from the fate of Hitler, Mussolini, Ceausescu and much more recently, Muammar al Qadhafi, “who was killed just 32 days ago in a manner none of us would wish for and who used the same expression you used” [to “fight and die for Syria”]. [33] Davutoglu compared the situation in Syria to Srebrenica: “If Assad could have been a Gorbachev he would have succeeded. But he chose to be a Milosevic. It is now too late for him to transform, to become a Gorbachev. He has lost his credibility.” [34] He described the situation in Syria as
a confrontation between a whole community and a theocratic regime whose suppression does not affect just the Sunnis but also the Christians and Alawites. … For us the confrontation in Syria is not a civil war or sectarianism, it is a confrontation between a society that is trying to decide its fate and a theocratic regime that is trying to save itself and preserve the status quo by persecuting large sections of the [Syrian] people. [35]
In fact, Syria does not have a “theocratic regime” but a secular government, and while Alawis are influential inside the Syrian political, military and intelligence system, for reasons that go back as far as the French mandate, the system could not have survived without a high degree of support among Sunni Muslims. The foot soldiers in the army are overwhelmingly Sunni, yet through eight years of severe conflict sectarian divisions were unknown, undermining the hostile narrative centering on “the Alawi regime.” Their imperative was clearly not the survival of the “regime” as such but the survival of the country, against the most determined attempt ever made in modern Middle Eastern history by foreign governments, their regional allies and their proxy forces inside Syria to destroy an Arab government.
ONE-SIDED NARRATIVE
Absent from the rhetoric of Turkish government leaders was any acknowledgement of the personal popularity of President Assad and the scale of violence being directed against the army and civilians by the armed takfiri groups. Early in the conflict, arms streaming into Syria across the borders of neighboring states included AK-47 assault rifles, Cobra anti-tank missiles and Sam-7 surface-to-air missiles. Libya was another source of weaponry, following the destruction of its government and the murder of Qadhafi. In November 2011, Abdulhakim Belhaj — head of the Tripoli Military Council until his resignation to enter politics, and previously the commander of the Islamic Fighting Group in Libya (IFGL) and widely regarded as an al-Qaeda proxy — met leaders of the FSA in Istanbul and along the Turkish border with Syria. Libya was also an early source of recruitment, with groups of men flown to Turkey before crossing the border to take up arms against the Syrian government. Staying in luxury hotels, they were a common sight in Ankara, Antalya and the cities of the southeast.
While the FSA and the Turkish foreign minister, speaking to members of the U.S. Congress in Washington, claimed that about 40,000 Syrian soldiers had defected,[36] defections were, in fact, few in number. From the start, Russia and China made it clear they would not allow the UN Security Council to be used as a mechanism for open intervention in Syria, as it had been against Libya. In October 2011, they vetoed a European-sponsored resolution that would have imposed sanctions on Syria (as distinct from the sanctions already being imposed by individual UN members). In early February 2012, they vetoed another resolution, this time based on an Arab League initiative calling for President Assad to step down. The decision infuriated the United States; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked that, faced with a “neutered” Security Council, “we have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people’s right to have a better future.”[37] All measures taken by the Syrian government to create a new political environment were dismissed out of hand by the Friends of the Syrian People as cosmetic or a “cynical ploy.”[38]
The Turkish government continued to play a central role in all these events, though at a mounting internal and regional cost. In the southeastern provinces bordering Syria, economic sanctions declared by the government crippled cross-border trade and tourism emanating from Jordan and the Gulf countries. In Antakya, restaurants, small shops and truckers were all badly affected; informal trade of goods across the border via private cars stopped altogether. In Gaziantep, the cross-border trade in Turkish electrical goods, cosmetics, textiles and carpets destined for sale in the Gulf all but dried up. The ethno-religious makeup of these border regions added another dimension to the government’s policy. Both the Alevis (Alawis) of Hatay (estimated at more than 50 percent of the province’s 1.5 million population) and the Christians maintain close ties across the Syrian border dating back to the French mandate for Syria. By and large, they shared the view that the present Syrian government was the best protector of minority interests against the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood-type government. Alevi sensitivities were further aggravated by the pointed references Erdogan made to the Alevi background of CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, seven times alone during the election campaign of 2011… [39] “Mr Kilicdaroglu, you should say openly what you really mean to say in regard to Syria. Say openly why you sympathize with the Syrian regime and why you are turning a blind eye to the oppression.” [40] Taken together with the prime minister’s known sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood, Alevis suspected the government was aiming to oust not only Bashar al-Assad, “but the Alawis as a whole and to replace them with the pro-AKP Sunni Ikhwan movement.” [41]
Turkey’s confrontation with Syria inevitably led to difficulties with Iran and Russia, both of them already critical of Turkey’s decision to host a NATO anti-missile radar base in Malatya province. Visits by Davutoglu to Tehran and reciprocal visits by senior Iranian officials to Ankara had no effect on Iran’s basic position of support for the Syrian government. Iraq remained equally critical of Turkish policy, relations worsening after Turkey decided in 2015 to open a military base at Bashiqa, Mosul. Turkey’s reasons were twofold: the occupation of Mosul by the Islamic State and the presence around that city of Kurdish peshmerga forces. Although the Islamic State had been driven out of Mosul by September 2017, the Turkish parliament still voted to maintain the troop presence at Bashiqa, described by the Iraqi parliament as a “hostile occupying force.” The peshmerga were to be withdrawn a short time later, following the collapse of the Kurdish drive for independence.
With the Iraqi government opposed to Turkish intervention in Syria, Turkey reoriented its Iraq policy towards the strengthening of relations with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). As interpreted by the Istanbul academic Soli Ozel,
Ironically, after years of writing off the Iraqi Kurdish leadership as simple tribal leaders, Turkey has established the closest of relations with the KRG. The Kurds have emerged as Turkey’s natural ally in Iraq, its most important trading partner and investment destination, not just regionally but globally, and a partner in containing the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), whose stronghold is the Kandil mountains inside the KRG. [42]
Trade relations included the signing of extensive oil and natural-gas agreements, over the protests of the government in Baghdad. Accusations against Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi of Iraq further complicated the tripartite relationship among Turkey, the KRG and the central government. In December 2011, Hashimi, a leader of the Sunni Muslim Iraqiyya political bloc, fled to the Kurdish north after being accused of sponsoring an anti-Shia “death squad.” He then shuttled among Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the governments of all three countries declining, along with the KRG, to extradite him. Although Iraq’s Shia prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, said a judicial inquiry had confirmed the substance of the evidence against Hashimi, statements from Ankara implied that he was the victim of a Shia witchhunt.
Turkey’s emphasis on relations with the KRG, at the expense of its relationship with the government in Baghdad, was severely undermined in the first place by Masoud Barzani’s support for the Syrian Kurds, whom Barzani encouraged to overcome differences and work together for autonomy, much to the chagrin of President Erdogan. The isolation of the KRG by Turkey and Iran after the independence referendum in 2017 was followed by the Kurdish abandonment of Kirkuk and the restoration of the authority of the central government there and elsewhere. These developments, along with the death on October 3 of Jalal Talabani, founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the decision of Masoud Barzani on October 30 not to stand for reelection as the Kurdish region’s president, threw the Kurds’ national cause into disarray. These events turned Turkey’s Iraq policy upside down, compelling it to repair its damaged relationship with the central government. The triumph of the Sadrist bloc in the Iraqi elections of May 2018 added to the uncertainties of Turkish policy.
In 2012, Erdogan remarked that “Bashar is losing blood day by day. … Sooner or later those who have oppressed our Syrian brothers will be called to account before their nation. Your victory is close.” [43] While Turkey represented itself as being on the right side of “the people” and “history” in Syria, there was never any evidence that the bodies it backed — the SNC, the FSA and other armed groups — had any support in Syria beyond the marginal. Throughout the crisis, it was clear that Syrians, overwhelmingly, wanted an evolved political solution to the crisis shattering their country, not a solution imposed through violence and outside intervention. In parliament, Davutoglu said a new Middle East was about to be born, and “we will be the owner, pioneer and servant of this new Middle East.” Domestic critics had not understood the zeitgeist and had failed to understand what was happening in Syria. “The era of policies [such as] ‘wait and see’ and following behind big powers has ended …. Turkey is no longer a country which does not have self-confidence and is waiting for foreign approval [of its policies].” [44] However, six years later, Bashar al-Assad remains in power, and the takfiri armed groups have been largely routed. Looking back from 2018 to the beginning of the crisis in 2011, it seems that it was Davutoglu who had put himself on the wrong side of history.
IN LIEU OF A CONCLUSION
Within a year of the launch of the proxy war against it in 2011, Syria was not so much collapsing as being collapsed by a war of attrition funded and coordinated by outside governments. Turkey’s role in this war was pivotal. As the dangers increased, critics were wondering precisely where Turkey’s policies would end. For Gokhan Bacik, the implications of the Turkish position were revolutionary. Not since the foundation of the republic in 1923 had a Turkish government been party to “an aggressive foreign policy strategy that urges regime change in another country.” [45] Some criticisms centered on how Turkey seemed to have positioned itself at the vortex of other agendas, principally a Saudi-dominated Sunni Muslim agenda and a Western/Israeli agenda determined by Syria’s alliance with Iran. [46] For the veteran journalist Cengiz Çandar, the question was whether the Arab Spring was not turning into a Turkish autumn. [47]
Challenging Turkey’s support of the FSA, Faruk Logoglu, the CHP’s deputy chairman, said Turkey “has taken a one-sided approach to the Syrian case from day one. The Turkish government has excluded the regime directly and positioned itself on the side not only of the political figures of the opposition but also military figures of the opposition. Facilitating the military arm of the opposition which aims to destroy the regime of a country is against international law and regulations.” The notion that Turkey had a pioneering role to play in the “new” Middle East was a “dangerous fantasy.” In another view, while Turkey’s strong position on the question of Palestine had been greatly appreciated across the Middle East, it was not an Arab country, and any attempt to play a leadership role would be resisted, apart from which Turkey needed to solve its own problems before setting itself up as a model for anyone else. [48]
Within a short time of intervening in Syria, Turkey’s zero-problems policy had turned into an accumulation-of-problems policy. Russian aerial intervention in 2015 helped to turn the corner for the Syrian government, which by early 2018 had regained control of most of the country. However, statements that “the war is over” or “all but over” will remain premature as long as Turkey occupies northwestern Syria, the United States occupies the northeast and maintains military bases there and elsewhere, and the United States and Israel continue to launch air attacks on Syrian military positions or against what Israel claims are Iranian positions or Hezbollah weapons-supply routes.
Through the agreement with Turkey to remove Kurdish forces from the city of Manbij, the United States undermined the Kurdish rationale for its presence in northeastern Syria. In response, the Syrian Democratic Council, an umbrella group representing both the YPG and the U.S.-sponsored Syrian Democratic Forces, entered into negotiations with Damascus centering on the Kurds returning to the Syrian national fold in return for a decentralized form of government in the north. Of necessity, such an agreement would end the U.S.-Kurdish tactical alliance. With the Islamic State largely suppressed and the Kurds falling away as an ally, the rationale for a continuing U.S. presence in Syria is reduced to limiting Russian gains and holding Syria hostage to its strategic alliance with Iran. With no exit point in sight, the continuing occupation of Syrian territory, by the United States or Turkey, is a formula for future conflict.
The costs to Turkey of intervention in Syria — not to speak of the catastrophic effects on the Syrian people — through armed proxies have been enormous. These include civilian deaths from Islamic State suicide bombings, a refugee influx of more than three million people, the cost of maintaining them (running to tens of billions of dollars), domestic discontent over their presence at a time of developing economic crisis, and strained relations with Iran, Iraq, the EU, Russia and even the United States. If riding the wave of reform set off by the Arab Spring was seen as a “national-interest” benefit, the wave has long since receded, taking with it Davutoglu’s aspirations to “serve and lead” the Arab world. If overthrowing the Syrian government in the interest of democracy was a national interest, there were other targets far less democratic with which Turkey continued business as usual.
The intentions of other members of the collective calling itself the Friends of the Syrian People were clear. The dominant partners in this alliance are the traditional enemies of national independence in the greater Middle East: the United States, Britain and France, and Gulf states attaching themselves to these powers. Iran was their ultimate target, and Syria the central pillar in the strategic alliance among Iran, Syria and Hezbollah that they hoped to destroy. It is difficult to see how Turkey’s national interest was served by joining this company and helping it to achieve goals that clearly are not Turkey’s.
As the YPG is an ally of the PKK, there was a credible national interest in routing it. However, it was intervention by Turkey and other countries that empowered the YPG in the first place. Formed in 2004, it played no significant role in Syrian politics until the destruction of the government’s authority in the north by proxies of the Friends of the Syrian People created the opportunity. Ironically, Bashar al-Assad was just as opposed to Kurdish autonomy in the north as Tayyip Erdogan.
All Turkish opposition parties are opposed to the AKP government’s Syria policy. The CHP’s presidential candidate, Muharrem Ince, said before the June 2018 elections that his government would restore relations with Syria, a step that would have had to include the withdrawal of Turkish forces. The party’s defeat closed off this exit route. In the long term, historians are likely to regard the Syria policy of the AKP government as a violent rupture of Ataturk’s guiding principle of “peace at home and peace in the world,” and as misguided adventurism unprecedented in Turkey’s republican history.
[Note: In March 2016, the Turkish government took over Zaman newspaper. Its digital archive was destroyed and all its subsidiary news outlets subsequently closed down on the grounds that they were part of the Gülenist “terror organization.” Zaman files are no longer accessible within Turkey. Zaman reports cited in these endnotes were accessed before 2016.]
[1] “Erdogan Threatens to Let 3m Refugees into Europe,” Financial Times, November 25, 2016.
[2] “I Will Describe Europe as Nazi as Long as They Call Me a Dictator: Erdoğan,” Hurriyet Daily News, March 23, 2017.
[3] Of many reports on these allegations, see Ahmet S. Yayla, “Hacked Emails Link Turkish Minister to Illicit Oil,” World Policy, October 17, 2016.
[4] Seymour M. Hersh, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” London Review of Books 36, no. 8 (April 17, 2014).
[5] “Turkish Efforts in Afrin, Idlib Will Allow Syrians to Return Home,” Daily Sabah, February 8, 2018.
[6] Hugh Pope, “Erdoğan’s Decade,” Cairo Review of Global Affairs, March 29, 2012, www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/europe/turkey-cyprus/op-ed/pope-turkey-e….
[7] The mythological “happy valley” in the Altay mountains where Turkish tribes stopped during their migration westward.
[8] Elad Benari, “Erdoğan Accuses Israel of Massacre in Gaza,” March 14, 2012, www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/153740#.T8ES2sWICEc.
[9] See “Full Text of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Speech on Israel’s Attack on Aid Flotilla,” June 2, 2010, www.dissidentvoice.org/2010/06/full-text-of-recep-tayyip-erdogans-speec….
[10] From the address given by Mr. Davutoğlu at the Statesmen’s Forum, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC, February 10, 2012, www.csis.org/event-turkeys-foreign-policy-objectives-changing-world.
[11] Ibid.
[12] “Erdoğan Urges Mubarak to Heed People’s Call for Change,” Sunday’s Zaman, February 2, 2011.
[13] “Turkey Opposes No Fly Zone over Libya,” Habertürk, March 14, 2011, www.haberturk.com/general/haber/610359-turkey-opposes-no-fly-zone-over-….
[14] “Turkey Calls for Cease-fire in Libya, Opposes Intervention,” Today’s Zaman, March 19, 2011.
[15] Burak Akıncı, “Turkey Reluctantly Joins Libya Military Action,” Defense News, March 24, 2011, www.mobile.defensenews.com/story.php?i=6050807&c=MID&s=SEA.
[16] Rania Abouzeid, “Why Turkey’s Erdogan Is Greeted like a Rock Star in Egypt,” Time, September 13, 2011.
[17] “Recognising Palestinian State ‘an Obligation’: Erdoğan,” Hürriyet Daily News, September 13, 2011, www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=recognising-palesti….
[18] “Turkey’s Erdogan Tells Arabs to Embrace Democracy,” Reuters Africa, September 13, 2011, www.af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFL5E7KD42M20110913.
[19] “Syria’s Oppressors Will Not Survive, Erdoğan Says in Libya,” Today’s Zaman, September 16, 2011.
[20] Speech made at Statesmen’s Forum, op.cit.
[21] “Erdoğan: Assad Is a Good Friend but He Delayed Reform Efforts,” Today’s Zaman, May 12, 2011. Erdoğan was speaking on PBS’s Charlie Rose Show.
[22] Ernest Khoury, “Davutoglu: Assad Not Reforming despite Our Best Efforts,” Al Akhbar English, January 16, 2012, www.english.al-akhbar.com/node/3411/.
[23] “Syria Rejects Imposed Reforms, Muslim Brotherhood not to Form a Party: Syrian FM to Turkish Newspaper,” Al Arabiya, February 28, 2012, www.english.arabiya.net/articles/2012/02/28/197511.html.
[24]Nada Bakri, “Turkish Minister and Other Envoys Press Syrian Leader,” New York Times, August 9, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/world/middleeast/10syria.html.
[25] Anthony Shadid, “Turkey Warns Syria to Stop Crackdown,” New York Times, August 15, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world/europe/16turkey.html.
[26] “Turkey Says Ready for ‘Any Scenario’ in Syria,” Haaretz , November 29, 2011, www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/turkey-says-ready-for-any-scenario-in-….
[27] “Turkish Leader and Other Envoys Press Syrian Leader,” op. cit.
[28] Liam Stack, “In Slap at Syria, Turkey Shelters Anti-Assad Fighters,” New York Times, October 27, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/world/europe/turkey-is-sheltering-antigovern….
[29] Ibid.
[30]]Ernest Khoury, “Davutoglu: Assad Not Reforming Despite Our Best Efforts,” Al Akhbar English, January 16, 2012, www.english.al-akhbar.com/node/3411/.
[31] Emre Peker and Nicole Gauoette, “U.S. Supports Turkey Playing a Leading Role on Syria Crisis,” Bloomberg, February 9, 2012, www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-10/u-s-looks-to-ally-turkey-to-build-int….
[32] “PM Erdoğan Warns Assad, ‘You Reap What You Sow,'” Sabah, February 8, 2012. www.english.sabah.com.tr/2012/02/08/pm-erdogan-warns-assad-you-reap-wha….
[33] See “Erdoğan Tells Assad to Draw Lessons from Fate of Gaddafi, Hitler,” Today’s Zaman, November 22, 2011.
[34] Soli Özel, “Turkish Foreign Policy Losing Ground in Syria: Davutoglu Calls Assad a ‘Milosevic,'” Al-Monitor, posted January 31, 2012. Originally published in Habertürk under the title ‘Before Losing the Ball Bearings.’ www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2012/01/before-losing-the-ball-bearin….
[35] Tha’ir Abbas, “Al Sharq al Awsat Interview: Turkish FM Ahmet Davutoğlu,” Al Sharq al Awsat, April 1, 2012, www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=3&id=29084.
[36] “U.S. Supports Turkey Playing a Leading Role on Syria Crisis,” op.cit.
[37] Glen Carey and Elizabeth Konstantinova, “Clinton Calls for ‘Immense Pressure’ on Assad,” Bloomberg, February 6, 2012, www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-05/clinton-calls-for-immense-pressure-on….
[38] These measures included the decree (August 2011) allowing every Syrian to form a political party, the subsequent registration of eight political parties (January-March 2012), the constitutional amendment removing the Baath Party as the “leading party in society and the state,” overwhelming popular support for this amendment through a referendum and parliamentary elections in May 2012.
[39] Sedat Ergin, “Erdoğan and the CHP leader’s Alevi Origin,” Hurriyet Daily News, May 18, 2011. www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=erdogan-and-the-chp….
[40] “Erdoğan Lambasts Opposition, Says Syrian Crisis not Sectarian,” Today’s Zaman, May 15, 2012.
[41] Nazim Can Cicektan, “Turkey and Syria: the Alawite Dimension,” Foreign Policy Association, contained in a blog posted by Akin Unver, March 18,2012, www.foreignpolicyblogs.com.
[42] Soli Özel, “Turkey, Syria, Iraq and the Kurdish Issue,” Hurriyet Daily News, March 26, 2012, www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-syria-iraq-and-the-kurdish-issue.aspx?…ID=449&nID=16842&NewsCatID=396.
[43] “Syria Crisis an International Challenge, Erdoğan says,” Today’s Zaman, May 7, 2012.
[44] “Turkey Owns, Leads, Serves to ‘New Mideast’: Davutoğlu,” Hurriyet Daily News, April 27, 2012, www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-owns-leads-serves-to-new-mideast-davut….
[45] Gökhan Bacik, “The Syrian Revolution in Turkish Foreign Policy,” Today’s Zaman, March 25, 2012. See also the similar criticism of Kadri Gürsel in “Ikinci yeni dış politika [A second new foreign policy],” Milliyet, December 15, 2012. In seeking regime change in Syria, he wrote, Turkey had joined the side of the west in a cold war against the Tehran-Damascus axis, www.dunya.milliyet.com.tr/ikinci-yeni-dis-politika/dunya/dunyayazardeta….
[46] Nuray Mert, “Süriye, ‘güzel ve yalnız ülke'” [“Syria ‘a beautiful and lonely country'”], Milliyet, April 28, 2011, www.gundem.milliyet.com.tr/suriye-guzel-ve-yalniz-ulke/gundem/gundemyaz….
[47] Cengiz Candar, “Arap Baharı, Türk Sonbaharı’na dönüşür mü?” [“Is the Arab spring turning into a Turkish autumn?”] Radikal, November 11, 2011, www.radikal.com.tr/Radikal.aspx?aType=RadikalYazar&ArticleID=1069159&Ya….
[48] Hakan Yilmaz, quoted by Kadri Gürsel, “Ilımlı Islamcılara 10 puanlık soru” [“A ten point questionnaire for the moderate Islamists”], Milliyet, December 8, 2011, www.dunya.milliyet.com.tr/ilimli-islamcilara-10-puanlik-soru/ddunya/dun….
September 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Ergenekon, FETO, Israel, Middle East, NATO, Turkey, United States |
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In their obsession for regime change, Ottawa is backing talk of an invasion of Venezuela. And the New Democratic Party (NDP) is enabling Canada’s interventionist policy.
Last week 11 of the 14 member states of the anti-Venezuelan “Lima Group” backed a statement distancing the alliance from “any type of action or declaration that implies military intervention” after Organization of American States chief Luis Almagro stated: “As for military intervention to overthrow the Nicolas Maduro regime, I think we should not rule out any option … diplomacy remains the first option but we can’t exclude any action.” Canada, Guyana and Colombia refused to criticize the head of the OAS’ musings about an invasion of Venezuela.
In recent weeks there has been growing tension on the border between Colombia and Venezuela. Some believe Washington is pushing for a conflict via Colombia, which recently joined NATO.
Last summer Donald Trump threatened to invade Venezuela. “We have many options for Venezuela including a possible military option if necessary,” the US President said.
Talk of an invasion encourages those seeking regime change. At the start of August drones armed with explosives flew toward Maduro during a military parade in what was probably an attempt to assassinate the Venezuelan president.
Two weeks ago the New York Times reported that US officials recently met members of Venezuela’s military planning to oust Maduro. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for the military to oust Maduro in February and other leading Republican Party officials have made similar statements.
Alongside these aggressive measures, Canada has sought to weaken the Venezuelan government. Since last September Ottawa has imposed three rounds of sanctions on Venezuelan officials. In March the United Nations Human Rights Council condemned the economic sanctions the US, Canada and EU have adopted against Venezuela while Caracas called Canada’s move a “blatant violation of the most fundamental rules of International Law.”
Over the past year and a half Canadian officials have campaigned aggressively against the Venezuelan government. Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has prodded Caribbean countries to join the Lima Group’s anti-Venezuela efforts and made frequent statements critical of Caracas’ democratic legitimacy and human rights record. In June Freeland told the OAS General Assembly, “we must act immediately on the situation in Venezuela to force the exit of the dictatorship.”
Ottawa has encouraged its diplomats to play up human rights violations and supported opposition groups inside Venezuela. A 27-page Global Affairs report uncovered by the Globe and Mail noted, “Canada should maintain the embassy’s prominent position as a champion of human-rights defenders.” Alluding to the hostility engendered by its interference in that country’s affairs, the partially redacted 2017 report recommended that Canadian officials also “develop and implement strategies to minimize the impact of attacks by the government in response to Canada’s human rights statements and activities.”
As part of its campaign against the elected government, Ottawa has amplified oppositional voices inside Venezuela. Over the past decade, for instance, the embassy has co-sponsored an annual Human Rights Award with the Centro para la Paz y los Derechos Humanos whose director, Raúl Herrera, has repeatedly denounced the Venezuelan government. In July the recipient of the 2018 prize, Francisco Valencia, spoke in Ottawa and was profiled by the Globe and Mail. “Canada actually is, in my view, the country that denounced the most the violation of human rights in Venezuela … and was the most helpful with financing towards humanitarian issues,” explained Valencia, who also told that paper he was “the target of threats from the government.”
In another example of anti-government figures invited to Ottawa, the former mayor of metropolitan Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, called for “humanitarian intervention” before the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development last week. He said: “If the international community does not urgently activate the principle of humanitarian intervention for Venezuela — which developed the concept of the responsibility to protect — they will have to settle for sending Venezuelans a resolution of condolence with which we will not revive the thousands of human beings who will lose their lives in the middle of this genocide sponsored by Maduro.” In November Ledezma escaped house arrest and fled the country.
The NDP’s foreign critic has stayed quiet regarding the US/Canadian campaign against Venezuela’s elected government. I found no criticism by Hélène Laverdière of US/OAS leaders’ musing about invading or the August assassination attempt on Maduro. Nor did I find any disapproval from the NDP’s foreign critic of Canadian sanctions or Ottawa’s role in the Lima Group of anti-Venezuelan foreign ministers. Laverdière has also failed to challenge Canada’s expulsion of Venezuelan diplomats and role in directly financing an often-unsavoury Venezuelan opposition. Worse still, Laverdière has openly supported asphyxiating the left-wing government through other means. The 15-year Foreign Affairs diplomat has repeatedly found cause to criticize Venezuela and has called on Ottawa to do more to undermine Maduro’s government.
Is Canadian political culture so deformed that no party represented in the House of Commons will oppose talk of invading Venezuela? If so its not another country’s democracy that we should be concerned about.
September 24, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Canada, Latin America, NATO, United States, Venezuela |
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Many progressives call for Canada to “do more” around the world. The assumption is that this country is a force for good, a healer of humankind. But if we claim to be the “doctors without borders” of international relations, shouldn’t Canada swear to “first do no harm” like MDs before beginning practice? At a minimum shouldn’t the Left judge foreign policy decisions through the lens of the Hippocratic oath?
Libya illustrates the point. That North African nation looks set to miss a United Nations deadline to unify the country. An upsurge of militia violence in Tripoli and political wrangling makes it highly unlikely elections planned for December will take place.
Seven years after the foreign backed war Libya remains divided between two main political factions and hundreds of militias operate in the country of six million. Thousands have died in fighting since 2011.
The instability is not a surprise to Canadian military and political leaders who orchestrated Canada’s war on that country. Eight days before Canadian fighter jets began dropping bombs on Libya in 2011 military intelligence officers told Ottawa decision makers the country would likely descend into a lengthy civil war if foreign countries assisted rebels opposed to Muammar Gadhafi. An internal assessment obtained by the Ottawa Citizen noted, “there is the increasing possibility that the situation in Libya will transform into a long-term tribal/civil war… This is particularly probable if opposition forces received military assistance from foreign militaries.”
A year and a half before the war a Canadian intelligence report described eastern Libya as an “epicentre of Islamist extremism” and said “extremist cells” operated in the anti-Gadhafi stronghold. In fact, during the bombing, notes Ottawa Citizen military reporter David Pugliese,Canadian air force members privately joked they were part of “al-Qaida’s air force”. Lo and behold hardline Jihadists were the major beneficiaries of the war, taking control of significant portions of the country.
A Canadian general oversaw NATO’s 2011 war, seven CF-18s participated in bombing runs and two Royal Canadian Navy vessels patrolled Libya’s coast. Ottawa defied the UN Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians by dispatching ground forces, delivering weaponry to the opposition and bombing in service of regime change. Additionally, Montréal-based private security firm Garda World aided the rebels in contravention of UN resolutions 1970 and 1973.
The NATO bombing campaign was justified based on exaggerations and outright lies about the Gaddafi regime’s human rights violations. Western media and politicians repeated the rebels’ outlandish (and racist) claims that sub-Saharan African mercenaries fuelled by Viagra given by Gaddafi, engaged in mass rape. Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser Donatella Rovera, who was in Libya for three months after the start of the uprising and Liesel Gerntholtz, head of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch, were unable to find any basis for these claims.
But, seduced by the need to “do something”, the NDP, Stephen Lewis, Walter Dorn and others associated with the Left supported the war on Libya. In my new book Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada I question the “do more” mantra and borrow from healthcare to offer a simple foreign policy principle: First Do No Harm. As in the medical industry, responsible practitioners of foreign policy should be mindful that the “treatments” offered often include “side effects” that can cause serious harm or even kill.
Leftists should err on the side of caution when aligning with official/dominant media policy, particularly when NATO’s war drums are beating. Just because the politicians and dominant media say we have to “do something” doesn’t make it so. Libya and the Sahel region of Africa would almost certainly be better off had a “first do no harm” policy won over the interventionists in 2011.
While a “do more” ethos spans the political divide, a “first do no harm” foreign policy is rooted in international law. The concept of self-determination is a core principle of the UN Charter and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Peoples’ inalienable right to shape their own destiny is based on the truism that they are best situated to run their own affairs.
Alongside the right to self-determination, the UN and Organization of American States prohibit interfering in the internal affairs of another state without consent. Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter states that “nothing should authorize intervention in matters essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”
A military intervention without UN approval is the “supreme international crime”. Created by the UN’s International Law Commission after World War II, the Nuremberg Principles describe aggression as the “supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” In other words, by committing an act of aggression against Libya in 2011 — notably bombing in service of regime change — Ottawa is responsible not only for rights violations it caused directly, but also those that flowed from its role in destabilizing that country and large swaths of Africa’s Sahel region.
If Canada is to truly be the “good doctor” of international relations it will be up to Left foreign policy practitioners to ensure that this country lives up to that part of the Hippocratic oath stating, “First do no harm”.
September 20, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Canada, Libya, NATO |
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There is one thing that Israel fears more than anything else in Syria. The loss of its ability to fly its F-16’s with impunity and hit whatever targets it wants claiming defensive measures to stop Iran, their existential enemy.
Israel finally admitted to carrying out over 200 such missions over the past 18 months, only a few of which ever made any kind of international media, recently.
And with the sneak attack on Latakia which involved using a Russian IL-20 ELINT war plane as radar cover Israel has now not only raised the stakes to an unacceptable level, it has also ensured that this may be the last such aerial assault it will ever be able to carry out.
The setup is pretty clear. Israel and France coordinated an attack on multiple targets within Syria without US involvement but with absolute US knowledge of the operation to provoke Russia into going off half-cocked by attacking the inconsequential French frigate which assisted Israel’s air attack.
Any denunciation of sinister intent by Israeli Defense Forces is hollow because if they had not intended to provoke a wider conflict they would have given Russia more than one minute to clear their planes from the area.
That would constitute an attack on a NATO member state and require a response from NATO, thereby getting the exact escalation needed to continue the war in Syria indefinitely and touch off WWIII.
This neatly bypasses any objections to a wider conflict by President Trump who would have to respond militarily to a Russian attack on a NATO ally. It also would reassert NATO’s necessity in the public dialogue, further marginalizing Trump’s attacks on it and any perceived drive of his for peace.
That this took place within the 60 days window of the mid-term elections should also not be discounted.
This attack took place just hours after Presidents Erdogan and Putin negotiated a ‘peaceful’ settlement for Idlib province by declaring a De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) 15-20 kilometers wide which everyone, including Erdogan’s pets Jabhat al-Nusra would have to abide by.
Peace was breaking out in Syria and Israel and the war-hawks in D.C. weren’t standing for that.
By conducting this attack like this Israel and the NATO crowd figured it would be a win/win for them.
If Russia strikes back at France, then NATO invokes Article 5 and they get their wider war.
If Russia doesn’t strike back Putin loses face within Russia, his popularity drops 5 points and John Bolton begins salivating at the prospect of regime change in Russia. Yes, they are that insane.
It was a neat piece of geopolitical maneuvering, almost judo-like. Russia and Syria looked to be on the verge of victory, extending themselves in a major conflict that would result in months of bad press. We were expecting a possible false-flag chemical weapons attack, cries of humanitarian crisis and all the rest of the tired virtue-signaling we can expect by US ‘diplomatic’ officials that has been all too common even under Trump.
What we got was the opposite, a carefully-crafted assault on Russian military forces wherein Russia’s vaunted air-defense systems would be blamed for its own people’s deaths and a mistaken counter-attack that justifies the “Putin is a Vile War-Monger” narrative to justify a US invasion of Syria which has been held in amber since 2013 and Putin’s skillful defusing that situation via diplomatic means.
For once, this almost looked like a well-thought out plan. Not the usual ham-fisted crudities we’ve been treated to over the last few years. But, here’s the rub.
It didn’t work.
By naming names and immediately not responding militarily during the ‘fog of war’ Russia and Putin again prove to be more skilled at this than their adversaries.
Because none of what I just outlined will come to pass. And France, Israel and the US will be the ones to lose face here. And with Israel betraying Putin’s forbearance after April’s air strikes on Damascus, he will have no choice but to upgrade Syria’s air defense systems from S-200’s to S-300’s and possibly S-400’s.
This is Israel’s worst nightmare. A situation where any aerial assault on targets within Syria would be suicide missions, puncturing the myth of the Israeli air force’s superiority and shifting the delicate balance of power in Syria decidedly against them.
This is why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked Putin so hard over the last two years. But, this incident wipes that slate clean. This was a cynical betrayal of Putin’s trust and patience. And Israel will now pay the price for their miscalculation.
Giving Syria S-300’s does not avenge the fifteen dead Russian soldiers. Putin will have to respond to that in a more concrete way to appease the hardliners in his government and at home. His patience and seeming passivity are being pushed to their limit politically. This is, after all, a side benefit to all of this for the neoconservative and globalist hawks in D.C., Europe and Tel Aviv.
But, the real loss here for Israel will be Russia instituting a no-fly zone over western Syria. Any less response from Putin will be seized upon by and the situation will escalate from here. So, Putin has to deploy S-300’s here. And once that happens, the real solution to Syria begins in earnest.
Because at that point it will be the US’s move to flat-out invade without provocation, now that a solution is in place in Syria between Russia and a NATO member, Turkey.
The only good news in all of this is that US forces were not involved. This still tells me that Trump and Mattis are still in charge of their chain of command and that other forces are conspiring to drag them into a conflict no one in their right minds wants.
September 19, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | NATO, Russia, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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There’s never a shortage of commentators reporting on how Russia planned the attack on the Skripals, or how Syria planned its chemical weapons massacres. So let’s just turn the tables on these prejudiced and blinkered proponents of the Western narrative…
The current impasse between the UK and Russia, initiated by the Skripal poisoning on March 4th and crystallized by the identification of two Russian “suspects” this week, calls for new thinking. Despite what appears to most Russians as the complete exposure of the UK’s dirty game, where its “smoking gun” evidence has been trashed by the appearance of the two “guns” on Russian TV, the UK’s leaders and their dutiful media remain unrepentant.
Worse than that, the “spycatchers” are re-invigorated with passionate Russophobia, full of indignation over the “brazen appearance” of their assassins on the BBC’s nemesis, RT. After they spent so many months combing through 11,000 hours of CCTV footage to put together a picture of the men, whose recorded movements almost coincided with the location and movements of the Skripals, it would be vexing to see that work squandered in less than a week.
Or so it might seem.
But before we feel too sorry for those unnamed individuals who finally found the proverbial needles in the haystack of Russians visiting Salisbury, albeit, at rather a quiet time, we might consider this inconvenient detail: “Novichok” was found on swabs taken at the City Stay Hotel on MAY 4th.
This, of course, was only two months after the attack on the Skripals, when the nerve agent might have been considered “fresh” and possibly dangerous; more recent re-testing found no trace of Novichok, though it was suggested this was because all of the substance had been removed on the swabs in May. Yes.
Given that no-one at the hotel reported being affected by Novichok, one must conclude that police had already identified Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov by the end of April, as Russians who had flown into London on that snowy weekend in March, and who had visited Salisbury while staying at City Stay Hotel.
But before we waste time speculating how and why it took them another four months to release the mug-shots of the suspected “GRU agents”, we should consider how much earlier the two Russians may have been under suspicion as the possible culprits and purveyors of the Nina Ricci perfume “Nouveau Truc”.
If authorities assumed the assassins had come from Russia, with the extensive monitoring and searching capabilities now available to them, might Petrov and Boshirov (their real names) not have been identified within days?
But now here’s the rub.
Accepting that the “Novichok” poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal did NOT take place, neither as claimed by the UK from contact with a Novichok-smeared doorknob, nor in fact from any contact at all, we should now logically consider if these two Russian guys were identified before they came to London.
This is not some “conspiracy theory” – because it’s clear that there was a conspiracy. And with every new piece of “evidence”, and every repetition of the original false and fabricated claims against Russia this conspiracy becomes deeper and more malignant.
It is often useful when accusations are made against countries of – for instance – military expansionism, to reverse the protagonists; would the US be happy to see Chinese warships “maintaining freedom of navigation” between Cuba and Florida? While building military bases in neighboring countries and installing anti-missile defense systems in them?
So in considering the attack on the Skripals, and the apparent connection with false-flag chemical weapons attacks in Syria, it is useful to take what we may call a “conspirator’s eye view”.
Despite the credulity of Western media and its audience in the fabricated stories of chemical weapons use both in Syria and in Salisbury, there is now no alternative but to count these Western populations amongst the victims of a massive conspiracy by the UK and its allies; one that threatens to even exceed the criminality and deception involved in that “Mother of all Conspiracies” that launched the Imperial Wars of Terror seventeen years ago.
Considering this conspiracy, or operation – as it may appear to those who planned and executed the whole deception – from their perspective, opens up a whole new line of inquiry, and interest in past events that may have otherwise been overlooked. It may also take us into a realm of human psychology that is highly discomfiting, and for which it may be better to pretend that this is simply an academic inquiry.
A “what if the Skripal poisoning was staged by GCHQ to frame the Russians and provide a pretext for sanctions, because of their support for the Syrian government?” inquiry. But just remember this is a pretense.
First, we must assume that this operation was well-planned, and at least some months in advance. While considerations of the coming Russian Presidential election and the World Cup Football may have figured, along with Russia’s resistance in Ukraine and on its borders, the key driver behind “Operation Nina” (as we may choose to call it after the UK’s choice of “perfume”) must surely have been the situation in Syria.
This became quite clear when Theresa May delivered the “first use of a chemical weapon in Europe since WW2” accusation against Russia, timed as it was so cleverly only weeks before the staging of the Douma gas attack. Rather than simple guilt by association – supporting the “murderous Assad regime” – Russia could now be framed as a collaborator and user of chemical weapons.
One need only look at the rise in toxic Russophobia, and support for extreme measures against Russia which are entirely unjustifiable, to realize just who benefits from this framing of the West’s chief bugbear, and thus who might consider such an operation.
Russia’s enormous commitment to restoring peace and justice in Syria for the last seven years, and dedication to diplomacy and negotiation, with military action as the last resort, has been completely obscured by the NATO campaign of disinformation and subversive action, and to an extraordinary degree.
Clearly from the conspirators’ point of view, “Operation Nina” and the concomitant “White Helmets” and “Doctors Under Fire” operations in Syria have been a resounding success – even though the presumed goal of regime change still eludes them, whether in Damascus or Moscow. Certainly in terms of intent, and what the opposing parties stood to gain from assassinating Sergei Skripal there can be no argument – Russia only stood to lose, a little or a lot, while the UK and its allies stood to prevail both militarily and politically in their own interests, however morally repugnant and legally unjustified these were.
So we have the motive, and know the details of the bizarre method; what of the planning?
Is it possible that the unwitting Russian “agents”, whose visit to Salisbury has now become the clincher of the UK’s Novichok case, were actually lured to the vicinity of Sergei Skripal’s home, with the conveniently placed chemical weapons labs at nearby Porton Down? Without doubting the innocence of Petrov and Boshirov over any involvement in the BZ attack on the Skripals, might we consider if they were on a different mission, and victims of a “honey trap” not involving women?
This possibility – including their comment that “a friend suggested we visit Salisbury” could explain their slightly evasive and unconvincing answers on why they returned to the city for a second time. While we know that they weren’t caught on CCTV walking along Wilton Road “near the Skripal house” because that was their destination, it’s fair to ask why they chose to walk that way rather than the road north to Old Sarum, which they professed a desire to see.
Old Sarum is about two miles from the city center, so Petrov and Boshirov could have easily visited the site. But perhaps their friend had a different recommendation, and one they understandably would be reluctant to reveal – a venue which appears to be about the same distance from the center, along Wilton Road.
If this explanation for some anomalies in the Russians’ story is true, then it has an ironic twist; at the same time as they were striding off down Wilton Road, the final moves of the conspiracy to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter were taking place back in the city center.
The exact circumstances and timing of the attack – presumably on the park bench on which they were discovered incapacitated – may only be known to those who set it up, but we may be sure nothing was left to chance. This is in contrast to the apparently haphazard behavior and conflicting reports afterward, despite some serious preparations just beforehand.
To anyone familiar with Salisbury, its proximity to the largest Chemical and Biological Weapons research facility in Europe ranks alongside its ancient cathedral and prehistoric sites as a subject of interest, if not as a destination. For some in the past, it proved a final destination, as revealed at an inquest in 2003, fifty years after the death of a MoD guinea pig, RAF volunteer Ronald Maddison, from Sarin poisoning.
The UK government and its agencies will, of course, assure the public that “nowadays” Porton Down is merely involved in research into protection and defense against other states’ chemical, biological and nuclear agents. It gave similar assurances to the 3000 odd volunteers in the ‘50s, telling them they were helping to develop a cure for the common cold, as drops of Sarin were put on their skin.
It seems that nothing much has changed, except that in those days – like Soviet propaganda – no-one really believed Whitehall’s bland reassurances or imagined that Porton Down was full of harmless boffins working for the common good.
What has changed is that the “elite” at the helm of today’s conspiracies has become supremely confident in its ability to deceive the public into believing whatever story best suits their special interests. As is illustrated by the whole crazy “Novichok” story – which has appeared as barely believable even to those who would readily blame Russia for it – the public can now be made to believe in anything, and with conviction.
And so it seems that as in Mossad’s motto – “By way of deception though shalt wage war”; this has become the modus operandi for the UK and its allies in their war on Russia and Syria, and anyone else standing in the way of their hegemonic and demonic ambitions.
September 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | NATO, Syria, UK, United States |
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CENTO – the Central Treaty Organization launched by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1958 is totally forgotten now. Even most regional experts on the Middle East and South Asia remember nothing about it. But it had a surprisingly long afterlife of 60 years, and its final, complete dissolution happening now before our eyes marks an epochal transformation of the Eurasian-Southwest Asia World Island.
CENTO – originally known as the Baghdad Pact or the Middle East Treaty Organization (METO) – was formed in 1955 by Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey and the United Kingdom with the blessing of the United States. The British saw it – farcically as it turned out – as an attempt to retain the phantom, craved after “influence” of their vanishing empire, which had left Pakistan in 1947.
METO did not last long. Within three years, the British –imposed and directed monarchy of the Hashemite dynasty in Baghdad had been literally wiped out in a bloody massacre. Iraq immediately pulled out of METO as fast as it could. METO was renamed CENTO with Eisenhower’s approval in 1958. One of the four “pillars” of the Anglo-American world order in South and Southwest Asia was down: Three to go.
Next to go was Iran in 1979. Its last Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was a megalomaniac egged on by American liberal social engineers who farcically imagined they could recreate President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in Tehran. Millions of people were upended from their homes in enormous industrial and relocation programs while SAVAK, the Shah’s notorious secret police inflicted a reign of torture and terror.
The end result was the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that swept away the Shah and took Iran forever out of the Anglo-American orbit. After that, CENTO was finally officially dissolved. Eisenhower’s dream was dead and gone. But its ghost would endure for another 39 years.
Two down and two to go: For the next 40 years Pakistan and Turkey both remained strong, consistent and important US allies. After 2001, tensions between Washington and Islamabad inexorably grew as the US invasion of Afghanistan and its following endlessly bungled policies to build a so-called modern, democratic and centralized nation backfired in endless war.
This year, Pakistan joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), simultaneously with its next door neighbor India. Both nations turned their back on US claims of global hegemony and opted instead for a future of cooperation and security with Russia and China in the SCO.
That left only Turkey of the original METO or Baghdad Pact four still in the US orbit. Turkey remains a NATO member as it has been since 1955: The same year it also joined METO. However, since the failed Turkish military coup of June 2016, US –Turkish relations have plunged to their worst state ever. The US Congress seems intent on pouring ever more gasoline of the funeral pyre of the relationship.
Yet Turkey is vastly more important to US, European, NATO and Middle East security than all the tiny and ludicrous nation-building schemes Washington has pursued in the region over the past 25 years put together.
US policymakers – Republican and Democrat alike – remain obsessed with “creating” new “showcase,” supposedly “modern” and “democratic” states in Kurdistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. They see the tiny three Baltic States, Georgia and even Ukraine with its neo-Nazi militias as shining examples that are supposed to inspire the rest of the world to follow the same Washington-directed paths.
None of these American visionary “geniuses” ever stops to remember why Iraq and then Iran opted out of METO/CENTO as fast as they possibly could. None of them stops to consider what the consequences of losing the friendship and trust of nuclear-armed Pakistan with its population of 200 million will be. None of them has ever raised publicly the issue of how totally untenable the reckless US forward naval and strategic deployment in the Black Sea will be if Turkey finally turns its back on the US and NATO.
CENTO is gone. The Baghdad Pact is dead. Now even CENTO’s ghost is dying: The four great buffer powers that the US and the UK looked upon to dominate the northern tier of Southwest and South Asia have abandoned Washington or are about to do so. The consequences of this development – born of a generation of stupid, heedless and selfish US policy bungles – will reshape the world.
September 14, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Iran, Iraq, NATO, Pakistan, Turkey, United States |
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Like all foreign policy and military think tanks, the Atlantic Council exists to manufacture consent for the goals of its paymasters. It hit the jackpot when the world’s largest social media network put it in charge of censorship.
While the ubiquitous presence of Atlantic Council lobbyists across the information space already imperilled fair discourse, Facebook’s May move empowered it to endanger freedom of expression. And founder Mark Zuckerberg’s reference to an information “arms race” in a Washington Post op-ed last weekend exposes the grim reality behind the move.
That said, the spin has been impressive. Headlines such as “US think tank’s tiny lab helps Facebook battle fake social media (Reuters )” and “Facebook partners with Atlantic Council to improve election security (The Hill )”.
But the truth is very different. The Atlantic Council is effectively NATO’s propaganda wing. And it’s funded by arms manufacturers, various branches of the US military, and Middle Eastern autocratic regimes, among others, as it promotes the alliance’s agenda – which was best described by its first secretary-general, Hastings Ismay, as “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”
Let’s be clear. If people don’t believe in the “Russian threat,” NATO is essentially rendered useless. Promoting tensions with Europe’s largest country is an existential matter for The Atlantic Council. And now Facebook has effectively placed the lobby group in charge of political censorship on its platform. This presents chilling dangers to free speech and should worry anybody who believes in fairness and balance in the media. Especially after Zuckerberg admitted in the Washington Post piece how his company is being used by US authorities to control information and combat “foreign actors.” The tech boss also boasted that “we’ve worked with law enforcement to take down accounts in Russia.”
Roll of horror
Founded in 1961, with the mission of “encouraging the continuation of cooperation between North America and Europe that began after the Second World War,” the Atlantic Council slowly evolved from being a sort of forum for socialising to a pseudo-academic lobby group. While it professes to be a “think tank,” its lack of genuine debate and tolerance for dissent means in practice this description isn’t accurate in the classical sense of the term, as the Atlantic Council is clearly more interested in creating a market for tanks than thinking.
Funding comes from dozens of foreign governments and also individual vested interests. They include arms makers Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, plus wealthy private backers such as Ukraine’s Viktor Pinchuk and Saudi billionaire Bahaa Hariri. State institutions who plough in funds vary from the National Endowment for Democracy to the British Foreign Office and the US Army itself.
The money is mainly used to hire lobbyists, who are known as “fellows.” And some of them are occasionally outsourced to cutouts like the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) – the department which works with Facebook.
Some of the Atlantic Council’s hires have significant media profiles. For instance, Dmitri Alperovitch (of DNC hack fame), Anders Aslund (a radical economist who has predicted Russia’s collapse twice, and been wrong both times), Michael Carpenter (Joe Biden’s, usually misinformed, Russia-baiting sidekick), Borzou Daragahi (Middle East correspondent of Buzzfeed ), Maxim Eristavi (a pro-American Ukrainian activist), Evelyn Farkas (a rabidly anti-Russian Obama adviser), and Michael Weiss (a CNN ‘Russia analyst’ who has never been to Russia and can’t speak Russian). The DFR Lab is comprised of 11, almost uniformly young, tech enthusiasts from the US and Eastern Europe and previously worked to support NATO narratives in Ukraine and Syria.
Some are long-time Atlantic Council bodies, and others are some fresh recruits. The main men are Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, which specialises in media-friendly investigations of wars from the perspective which suits British and American interests, Aric Toler (a former private intelligence specialist who spent time in Russia on State Department-funded study programmes) and Ben Nimmo, a one-time NATO press officer.
Other censors include ex-Obama administration and NATO staff, with the managing editor, Graham Brookie, having previously worked at the US National Security Council. There is nobody listed as an employee who could be considered, in any way, neutral on Russia. This betrays the unit’s confidence in how the mainstream media won’t scrutinise them, as normally you’d expect at least one token dissenter.
Different times
In normal circumstances, Facebook’s engagement of the Atlantic Council to decide standards of permissible information would seem bizarre. But, in the current US climate, Zuckerberg’s motivations are quite obvious. Betrayed by the speed with which he engaged the pressure group shortly after his testimony to Congress on “election meddling” was widely derided by the establishment last Spring. And how better to avoid a repeat, and turn down the heat, than to engage the ultimate DC insider institution?
After all, an organisation that has helped to rehabilitate George W. Bush can probably rescue any reputation in the American capital.
Some of the stuff the Atlantic Council itself gets away with serves to show its power over the mainstream media. For instance, when Nimmo himself earlier this year ludicrously insisted grammar mistakes were “proof” that social media users critical of NATO were paid Kremlin trolls, and later when he smeared a British man by labelling him a Russian bot, the popular press didn’t bother to question whether he was a fit and proper person for Facebook to engage as a censor. Even after the victim appeared on Sky News to prove he was a real person. Thus, what should have been a warning of the dangers of DFR Lab was essentially ignored.
At the time, after Nimmo, instead of apologising, wrote “interesting to see the real face of Ian56789, rather than the David Gandy one, at last (referring to his Twitter avatar). Not a troll factory account. Rather, a pro-Kremlin troll(definition based on [sic] use of someone else’s picture, systematic use of Kremlin narratives, and repetitive abusive behaviour),”
WikiLeaks challenged the lobbyist. “You literally produced, with money from weapons companies and dictatorships, a fake news story that spread all over the world, defaming a very British retiree, who wants to reduce arms company profits, as a Kremlin bot,” its editors wrote. “So who’s the paid troll?”
Again, despite WikiLeaks’ prominence, no mainstream outlets connected the dots.
Higgins and Nimmo also focused on attempting to discredit the Twitter user ‘Partisan Girl’ (real name Maram Susli). Susli herself insisted an associate of Higgins had even written to her university accusing of her of plotting to make Sarin gas, and she provided evidence to back up her claims.
Susli was also insulted by Atlantic Council “fellow” Michael Weiss. After a group of pro-Syrian jihadist agitators accused her of having had cosmetic surgery, she responded with a photo of herself as a child to prove them wrong. Weiss interjected by asserting how the young Maram looked like a prostitute, writing “so, your parents raised you as a streetwalker? Honey, no wonder you are pro-Assad.”
The CNN contributor seems to have a habit of commenting on women’s physical attributes. A few months earlier, well-known Lebanese American journalist Rania Khalek accused Weiss of promoting a smear about her appearance on Twitter, falsely claiming she used funds donated to her journalistic work to get a nose job. The fact he has received no blowback, in this ‘MeToo’ era, again speaks volumes.
Deflecting dunces
Meanwhile, Higgins himself has been shy about taking on real experts. In Spring, he refused to debate Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at MIT, instead labelling him “an idiot.” Which led to a strange situation where a man with no training in science, whose background is in finance and administration, was smearing a skilled specialist from one of the world’s best universities. Perhaps this is the confidence a man gains by working for NATO’s propaganda adjunct.
His colleague, Weiss, also has a habit of insulting academics with genuine bona fides, running a long campaign of character assassination against Stephen Cohen. Cohen is professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University.
Of course, to advance the goals of its paymasters, the Atlantic Council also needs to shape the media narrative, and influence journalists, which is presumably why it has engaged the likes of CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto and Buzzfeed Foreign Editor Miriam Elder to moderate panels, in what amount to very profound conflicts of interests.
Nevertheless, while plenty of its press outreach is smooth, sometimes it can appear clumsy and amateurish. Take this tweet from lobbyist Agnia Grigas, for instance. Firstly, she misrepresents Vladimir Putin’s stated goal of making Russia a top five economy by using raw GDP, where the country currently scores badly due to weak exchange rates. In reality, economic experts regard purchasing power parity as a fairer snapshot of fiscal heft and by this measure, Russia was only $163 billion behind fifth-place Germany last year ($4,007.831 billion v $4,170.790 billion, IMF)so it doesn’t have much catching up to do. What Grigas does next with her disinformation is instructive. Because she tags the Financial Times’ news editor, Peter Spiegel, on the tweet alongside other Atlantic Council lobbyists . Which blurs the lines between supposedly independent media and propaganda, dressed up as scholarship.
Tail wags dog
Anyway, now that you’ve seen the nature of these lobbyists, let’s circle back to the DFR Lab/Facebook link up, and the extraordinary power the social media giant has handed to this gang. Only last month, the same Reuters report quoted at the outset dropped this nugget.
“Facebook is using the group to enhance its investigations of foreign interference. Last week, the company said it took down 32 suspicious pages and accounts that purported to be run by leftists and minority activists. While some U.S. officials said they were likely the work of Russian agents, Facebook said it did not know for sure.”
Read the last line again. “Facebook said it did not know for sure.” But the accounts were removed anyway. Presumably, at the Atlantic Council’s behest.
Here we see the fallout of Mark Zuckerberg’s knee-jerk reaction to pressure from congressional leaders and prominent media talking heads. Instead of asserting his independence, the Facebook founder buckled. And the stakes are impossibly high. Put plainly, this amounts to a merger of the US national security state and Silicon Valley. With implications far beyond American shores.
Read more:
September 13, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Atlantic Council, Facebook, Human rights, NATO |
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There is a direct link between Britain’s sensational allegations against Russia in the Skripal affair and NATO’s losing covert war in Syria.
That’s not just the opinion of critical observers. Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations made the explicit link when she called an “emergency meeting” of the Security Council earlier this week.
The Security Council meeting was convened only hours after British counter-terrorism police released video images claiming to identify two Russian men, whom it said were responsible for the alleged poison assassination attempt on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in England earlier this year.
The council meeting also followed swiftly on the heels of British Prime Minister Theresa May telling her parliament that the culprits were Russian military intelligence officers acting on orders from the Kremlin. May did not give supporting evidence. It was bald assertion.
In this short clip, Britain’s envoy to the UN Karen Pierce tells reporters the rationale of the British government in convening the emergency session at the Security Council. The envoy reveals more than she intended.
She says that the United Kingdom and its allies would “continue to contest the Russian view of the world in which their state operatives can carry out these sorts of attacks [in England] and can encourage and support the Syrian authorities in their attacks on civilians.”
Pierce added: “So this is actually a continuum, if you like, of contesting that view of the world where you can act outside the norms of international rules and civilized behavior.”
Evidently, the British government is trying to criminalize both Russia and Syria at the same time, over the same alleged crime – unlawful use of chemical weapons.
That would account for why the British authorities have been unduly hasty in accusing the Russian state of culpability in the Skripal affair. By undermining and smearing Russia as a “pariah state”, it is then possible to stifle Russia’s crucial military support for Syria. This is especially urgent given the juncture in the Syria war where NATO-backed militants are staring at final defeat.
The US, Britain and France have all recently threatened to use military power against the Syrian government forces “if” the latter launch chemical weapons attacks. That of course is a cynical pretext for the NATO states to find a legal cover for aggression against Syria.
The allegations of “imminent” chemical weapon use by the Syrian government are also baseless since Damascus no longer possesses any such munitions, or indeed has any military need for such weapons.
What the Skripal affair is therefore trying to do is inculcate in the public mind that Russia has no scruples about using chemical weapons to kill people, which in turn reinforces the notion that Moscow’s Syrian ally also has no scruples about killing people with toxic materials.
The NATO claims of Syrian national forces using chemical weapons have been shown to be false. In recent days, Russian envoy to the UN Vasily Nebenzia demanded that the US present details of a Pentagon target list of chemical weapons sites in Syria. The US balked.
By contrast, there is a healthy skepticism among the Western public about official allegations against the Syrian government. Pink Floyd’s legendary singer-songwriter Roger Waters speaks for many when he recently called out the NATO-backed so-called rescue group, the White Helmets, as being implicated in orchestrating chemical attacks for propaganda purposes.
In order to overcome the propaganda problem of demonizing the Syrian government and giving itself a pretext for launching military strikes on Syria, the NATO powers therefore have to boost their flagging “false flag” narrative of chemical weapons responsibility.
By criminalizing Russia for allegedly using chemical weapons “on the streets of Britain”, it is a ploy to augment the dubious narrative criminalizing Syria.
Here is British envoy Pierce speaking again: “The reason the Security Council has not been able to act on CW [chemical weapon] use in Syria is because of Russia. There is a circularity here. Russia is the key to upholding the universal ban on CW use. And the world would be better if Russia would join us in making that ban absolutely watertight.”
Britain’s use of the word “circularity” is certainly apt – albeit for a completely different reason. The actual circular logic is to criminalize both Russia and Syria over chemical weapons. Russia, it is calculated, will then not have the authority to use its veto power at the Security Council in order to prevent the three NATO powers on the council from launching their much-desired military attack on Syria to salvage their losing covert war.
The reckless haste by which the British authorities are accusing Russia over the Skripal affair – a haste which makes a mockery of legal due process and diplomatic norms – can plausibly be explained by the urgency of the NATO powers to free up their military plans on Syria.
How can the release of video images allegedly of two Russian nationals in Britain be possibly attributed to the Kremlin? Two Russian men – if indeed that is genuine information – are supposed to be “compelling evidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an assassination. It is a preposterous leap of imagination and a travesty of legal process, but it is revealing of an execrable British prejudice of Russophobia.
One possible theory in the Skripal affair is that the two alleged Russian men were members of organized crime. Reports emerged this week that former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal was working with Spanish state security services to crackdown on Russian underworld gangs. It is possible that the gangs uncovered Skripal’s meddling in their illicit business model, and simply sent a couple of heavies over to Britain to deal with him. But how such a hypothetical account can be twisted by the British authorities to be “proof” of Kremlin involvement is a telling question.
It is significant that the British authorities have flatly refused requests from the Russian side for information to identify the alleged Skripal hitmen. For example, British regulations require fingerprints to be submitted by all visitors to the country. Why have the British refused to give fingerprints to Russian authorities which could then lead to an identification and perhaps explanation of the two alleged suspects?
The British don’t want to know the truth, because their official narrative of criminalizing the Russian state is the imperative one. And that is because of the urgency for NATO to find a legal, political cover for its military aggression against Syria.
September 10, 2018
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | France, NATO, Syria, UK, United States |
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