Turkey: France’s buildup in Syria will amount to ‘invasion’
Press TV – April 8, 2018
Turkey which has deployed troops to northern Syria says if France steps up its military presence in the Arab country, it will amount to an “invasion.”
“If France takes any steps regarding its military presence in northern Syria, this would be an illegitimate step that would go against international law and in fact, it would be an invasion,” Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli said Saturday.
Turkey sent troops to the northern Syrian region of Afrin on January 20 to force out Kurdish militants, known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which it suspects of having ties with anti-Ankara separatists.
France, which has criticized Ankara over the offensive, operates in Syria as part of the so-called US coalition.
French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a delegation of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which has the YPG as its backbone, at the Elysee Palace on March 29.
On Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan railed against Paris. “France, you are abetting terrorism, supporting it by then hosting them at the Elysee Palace,” he said.
“Especially, if they intend to support terror group elements or give direct or indirect protection with armed forces, this would be a really calamitous step,” Canikli said during a visit to the northeastern province of Giresun.
After the Paris meeting, Kurdish officials said France was planning to send new troops to the city of Manbij, also in northern Syria.
Paris has also threatened to attack Syria if it was established that Damascus had deployed chemical weapons in its military operation, an accusation strongly rejected by the Syrian government.
Turkey, which has pushed the YPG out of Afrin, has also threatened to extend its operation to Manbij, which hosts American forces.
Ankara has further locked horns with Washington on several occasions over the latter’s providing arms, training, and logistical support to the Kurds.
‘Netanyahu, Trump clash over early Syria withdrawal plan’
Press TV – April 6, 2018
A recent telephone conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump grew tense over Trump’s earlier expression of his tendency to withdraw US forces from Syria “very soon,” according to two US officials.
Netanyahu and Trump discussed regional developments over the phone on Wednesday, according to the official account from the United States.
But two unidentified US officials said later that Netanyahu had objected to Trump’s remark that he would like US forces out of Syria shortly, according to The Times of Israel.
There were no more details on the give-and-take between the Israeli prime minister and the US president.
On March 29, Trump said the US would “be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.”
The US has reportedly more than 2,000 troops stationed in eastern Syria, in addition to several thousand others in the Arab country’s north.
“We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. And you know what we have for it? Nothing,” Trump said.
Other US officials have since been attempting to walk back Trump’s remarks, which had already been in contrast to the mainstream US position.
Just on Friday, the Pentagon sounded differently from Trump, saying the American military plans in Syria remained unchanged.
On April 3, Trump also signaled that countries that wanted the US to remain in Syria would have to pay for that presence, singling out Saudi Arabia.
“Saudi Arabia is very interested in our decision, and I said, ‘Well, you want us to stay, maybe you’re going to have to pay,’” he told reporters at the White House. “We do a lot of things in this country. We do [them] for a lot of reasons, but it’s very costly for our country and it helps other countries a hell of a lot more than it helps us. So we’re going to be making a decision.”
The Israeli prime minister’s objection to Trump’s stated Syria plan came despite reassurances by US officials that Trump has changed his mind.
Apart from the troops on the ground, the US and a number of its allies have been bombarding what they say are Daesh positions inside Syria since September 2014, without any authorization from the Damascus government or the United Nations.
After the Wednesday telephone conversation between Netanyahu and Trump, a White House statement said, “President Trump reiterated the commitment of the United States to Israel’s security,” and that “the two leaders agreed to continue their close coordination on countering Iran’s malign influence and destabilizing activities.”
Netanyahu later tweeted that he had “thanked President Trump for his commitment to Israel’s security and America’s support for Israel at the United Nations.”
Neither of the official accounts referred to the tense moments of the conversation.
Unlike the US and its allies, Iran and Russia have government-authorized advisory presence in Syria. Israel has attempted to portray Iranian advisory assistance to Damascus as an attempt at spreading its regional influence, which Iran has consistently denied.
Trump challenges the Russian-Turkish-Iranian alliance
By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | April 5, 2018
Three is company. But if the trilateral dialogue format in international diplomacy seldom produces concrete results, that is because it cannot be sequestered from external influences. Besides, the three participants are bound to have specific interests and priorities. The long-awaited Turkey-Russia-Iran trilateral summit in Ankara on April 4 has been no exception.
The summit didn’t end as a damp squib but its outcome has been measly. Three reasons can be attributed to this. First and foremost, the US President Donald Trump might have been responsible.
The Ankara summit’s main agenda was Syria, but Trump’s “very-soon” remark in Ohio last Thursday introduced a strategic ambiguity into the Syrian situation. And he deepened the ambiguity further on the eve of the summit by stating on Tuesday at a meeting at the White House that he wanted to immediately withdraw US forces from the war-torn country, arguing that the US had already won the battle against the Islamic State.
Trump said, “I want to get out — I want to bring our troops back home. It’s time. We were very successful against ISIS.” Trump literally barged into the Istanbul tent and hijacked the mind of the three presidents.
What is the Syria that Erdogan, Putin and Rouhani would discuss – a Syria with open-ended US military presence or a Syria denuded of the Americans? That is now the big question.
Pentagon and White House split on what to do?
Even then, it is very unclear whether Trump himself is free to make up his mind. A former British ambassador to Syria Peter Ford framed the paradigm this way: “I have a feeling that there are divided counsels within the Pentagon, definitely in the White House (regarding US troop removal from Syria). Trump sincerely wants to get out since it’s what he campaigned on, but whether he’ll be allowed to by elements of the ‘deep state’ is the question.”
The good thing is that there could be elements within the Pentagon who too aren’t necessarily happy about an open-ended military presence in Syria without a clear-cut objective. The military mind cannot focus well when there are gnawing doubts.
Second, the disclosure (by the Kremlin first) that Trump has invited Putin to the White House has opened a vista of new possibilities. What if a joint Russian-American peace initiative in Syria gets revived? Trump now becomes a “stakeholder” in a Syrian settlement.
On the contrary, if the trilateral Russian-Turkish-Iranian dialogue on Syria (known as the Astana process) has gravitas today, it is mainly due to the Trump administration’s retrenchment from the Syrian peace process. The dalliance that the Obama administration (secretary of state John Kelly) kept going with the Kremlin (foreign minister Sergey Lavrov) has petered out and what remains today is the military-to-military “deconfliction” mechanism between the US and Russia to ensure that they don’t shoot at each other in Syria.
But, if Trump and Putin breathe new life into a Russian-American joint enterprise to choreograph a Syrian settlement, the Astana process gets relegated to the backburner. Participants at the Ankara summit agreed to hold the next meeting in Astana in mid-May, but much water might flow under the bridge by then.
Decision on Iran deal due by May 12
Third and finally, the fate of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) remains the “known unknown.” Trump is due to make a decision on the Iran nuclear deal by May 12. And the geopolitics of the Middle East could change dramatically, depending on what he decides to do – especially if Trump were to pull the US out of the JCPOA.
The conventional wisdom is that changes at the US State Department and the National Security Council presage a more hawkish US foreign policy toward Iran. But there are weighty arguments too as to why Trump may not sound the death knell of the JCPOA and opt instead to simply give the nuclear deal a fresh lease of life, as he has done twice already.
To be sure, depending on the state of play in US-Iranian relations, the geopolitics of the Middle East could change and Syria is the theatre where this could see visible impacts in the near-term. So it was notable that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani didn’t go for Trump’s jugular at the Ankara summit. Iran also refrained from pushing any fresh initiatives and seemed more or less happy with a passive role – biding its time and brooding, as it were.
Given the above, what did the summit actually achieve? For a start, trilateral dialogue is always primarily a statement. What emerges from yesterday’s summit on the Bosporus is that the western influence in Syria (and the Levant) is inexorably on the wane. The summit underscored that the three countries intend to reinforce their influence in Syria.
Having said that, while the summit flagged the intention of the three countries to deepen cooperation, they also have divergent goals. For instance, the Turkish priority was that Russia and Iran continued to acquiesce with its military operation. Erdogan stated at the joint press conference, “Turkey will not stop until all regions under PYD/PKK (Kurdish militia) control, including Manbij, are secured… Turkey values Russia and Iran’s solidarity with its Afrin operation, we will establish grounds for peace in Afrin.” Rouhani and Russian President Vladimir Putin neither nodded agreement nor dissented.
The single most important outcome of the summit where all three countries have shared interest is in their forceful affirmation of the unity and territorial integrity of Syria and their rejection of “all attempts to create new realities on the ground under the pretext of combatting terrorism.”
The bottom line is that Russia, Turkey and Iran have a strong convergence of interests in the termination of the US military presence in Syria. Paradoxically, here again the Trump factor comes in. Their brittle alliance faces an existential threat if Trump somehow realizes his dream of bringing the US troops in Syria back home “where they belong.”
West Uses Skripal Row to Boot Russia From Syrian Chemical Weapons Issue – Moscow
Sputnik – 04.04.2018
Blaming Skripal’s poisoning on Moscow, Western states are trying to push Russia aside from discussion of cases of chemical weapons usage in Syria, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman.
On Issue of Chemical Weapons
Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that chemical weapons remain a key issue in the decision-making process for all countries, as the legitimacy of Bashar Assad’s power in Syria is always being linked to it by Western countries and the US-led coalition.
“Before, we were told that Assad just had to leave, because he was bad but then this concept was abandoned. Now they say that he is bad and must leave because he violates international law using chemical weapons in Syria,” she said.
The representative went on saying that the West is trying to play the same card in the current row over Skripal’s poisoning.
“Thus, inventing the story about the alleged use of chemical weapons by Russia on British soil, Western countries are trying to push Russia aside from the legal field of discussion of issues pertaining to the chemical weapons in Syria. Under the pretext that there is nothing to talk about with Russia, as they claim Russia has used chemical weapons in Europe,” Zakharova added.
Earlier in the day, the British side presented its own version of why Russia proposed to convene an extraordinary session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Council. According to the UK permament representative to the OPCW John Foggo, Russia wants to use the organization’s meeting scheduled for April 4, the date on which a year ago a chemical attack in Syria’s Khan Sheikhoun took place, in order to make a political statement.
“For all of us gathered here, it is very sad to admit that chemical weapons attacks continue not only in Syria. Today marks exactly one month since the usage of the nerve agent here in Europe,” he said.
After the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta in January, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Damascus of using chemical weapons and also claimed that Russia was responsible for the victims because of its engagement in Syria.
The Russian Foreign Ministry back then said that Washington was spreading propaganda against Moscow in an attempt to demonize the Syrian government and subsequently topple it, underscoring that the information on the chemical attacks used by the United States was uncorroborated.
In October 2017, the OPCW report alleged that the Syrian government was responsible for the April 4 sarin attack on the Syrian city of Khan Sheikhoun, claiming that the nerve gas used during the attack had been taken from stockpiles belonging to the Syrian government. However, the latter was destroyed as part of a 2013 deal with the US and Russia — a process the OPCW itself signed off on as having been completed that November.
Damascus has constantly denied being in possession of chemical weapons, the destruction of which had been confirmed by the OPCW.
On Russian Media
Russia would like to receive clarifications from the US State Department after accounts of Russian media outlets were blocked on Facebook, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.
“We expect an official reaction to this situation from US authorities … we would very much like to hear official comments from the US State Department,” she told a briefing.
She called on Facebook to specify its issues with Russian media accounts and explain reasons behind its decision to block them.
On Tuesday, Russia’s Federal News Agency (FAN) said that Facebook had blocked its official page without any warning. Also on Tuesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company blocked more than 270 accounts and pages run by Russia’s Internet Research Agency.
On Russian Vessel Detained in Ukraine
Moscow summoned the Ukrainian temporary charge d’affaires in Russia on Wednesday to protest the detention of a Russian ship and to demand the release of its crew as well as the return of the vessel, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
“On April 3, the charge d’affaires ad interim of Ukraine in the Russian Federation was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry where he was handed a protest note in connection with the illegal detention of Russian fishing vessel Nord by the Ukrainian Border Guard Service on March 25 in the Sea of Azov, the transfer of the vessel to the port of Berdyansk and illegal custody of its 10 Russian crew members,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted.
According to Zakharova, Moscow demanded the immediate release of the illegally detained crew and the return of the vessel to its legitimate owner.
On March 26, Ukrainian border guards detained the Russian ship Nord, claiming that its crew had violated the sea border. The Russian Foreign Ministry demands the Ukrainian side to return the captured ship, which is in the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk, and to release the crew.
READ MORE:
Russia’s Offer for Joint Probe Into Skripal Case ‘Perverse’ – UK OPCW Delegation
Russia Concerned, Outraged Over US Claims on Attacking Syria — Moscow
Facebook, Instagram Delete Dozens of Russia-Linked Accounts
Russian Navy Disproves Dangerous Manoeuveres between Russian and UK Vessels
America Faces a Vietcong Style Genuine Arab Rebellion in Syria
By Adam Garrie | Eurasia Future | 2018-04-02
While the Syrian Arab Army has liberated all of Eastern Ghouta from pro-western Takfiri terrorists and Turkey continues to be unable to get the US to agree on a disarmament agreement regarding YPG/PKK terrorists in Manbij, in Raqqa, a genuine Arab rebellion is taking place against the United States and their YPG proxies.
While the word “rebel” has been used throughout the duration of the Syrian conflict to describe heavily armed and handsomely paid terrorists whose loyalty is to foreign powers and whose citizenship is often not Syrian, in Raqqa, one is witnessing an organic uprising of indigenous Arabs against the American military and the SDF flagged YPG terrorists who have worked with the US to occupy Arab majority lands in the Syrian Arab Republic.
Real moderate rebels finally emerge
As geopolitical expert Andrew Korbyko recently wrote in Eurasia Future,
The American President made global headlines once again after he seemingly veered off script at a political rally in Ohio by declaring that the US will be ‘coming out’ of Syria ‘very, very soon’ in order to ’let the other people take care of it now’. Trump didn’t elaborate, but his surprise announcement came on the heels of Turkish President Erdogan threatening to expand his country’s anti-terrorist campaign into the part of northeastern Syria that the Russian Security Council previously said hosts as many as 20 American bases, which could potentially lead to a ‘war by miscalculation’ between the two nominal NATO ‘allies’ if the American forces remain there during this time and are caught in the Turkish-Kurdish crossfire.
Within a day after Trump’s statement, the Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff informed the world that Raqqa’s native majority-Arab population had begun to rise up against the US-backed Kurds that are in control of the city, thus heralding in the beginning of the “Rojava Civil War” that the author first predicted more than a year ago and which was undoubtedly further provoked by the anti-Arab ethnic cleansing campaign that the Kurds commenced over the summer. It can’t be known for certain, but Russia and Turkey likely have a favorable attitude towards the Arab revolt against the pro-American Kurds because it dovetails with their interest in seeing this disruptive power removed from the agriculturally and energy-rich corner of northeastern Syria.
The key elements of Korybko’s observations are as follows:
1. In spite of some disagreements regarding a post-war settlement, Russia, Syria, Iran and Turkey are all opposed to the illegal US presence in Syria, although none seek a direct confrontation with US forces.
2. It is not clear if the indigenous Arabs of Raqqa are loyal to Damascus, Ankara or some other power, but what is clear is that they are united in a common objective of exorcising the US and its proxies from their homeland.
An Arab Vietcong
While the issue of the Arab rebels of Raqqa’s loyalty to one state or another is a key mystery, ultimately the most immediate threat to the always flimsy US narrative regarding the region, is that the US and their allies may face a Vietnam war style combat situation against the Arab rebels, assuming the US doesn’t “pull out” of Syria as Donald Trump recently indicated.
In the American war in Vietnam, the US found itself facing not only regular troops from Northern Vietnam but indigenous Vietcong rebels in the South whose fight was first and foremost against a foreign occupier. The Arab rebels in and around Raqqa likely feel the same way, as for example did the Algerian fighters who rebelled against French rule between 1954 and 1962. While the US did have Southern Vietnamese allies on its side, such troops were in the minority and ultimately faced ostracism after the US loss. Just as some South Vietnamese and other minorities who sided with the US during war, typically out of opportunism, attempted to run away from Vietnam when the war was lost by the US, so too might many YPG militants attempt to flee along with their US masters when defeat is imminent as it could be in short order.
A French connection
Prior to the US entering Vietnam, indigenous Vietnamese (referred to as Indochinese at the time) rebels fought a colonial French occupation between 1946 and 1954. After the French were vanquished in 1954, the US began gradually sending so-called “military advisers” to Vietnam before the situation spiraled into a full-scale US invasion after the Gulf of Tonkin false flag incident in 1964.
Today, there is discussion that US troops in north-eastern Syria will be replaced by French and/or Saudi troops. The irony here is that while the US went into Vietnam only to repeat the loss of their French predecessors, now it appears as though France may enter north eastern Syria only to inherent a rebellion against the US and its Kurdish proxies that neither foreign army is likely to win.
As French President Macron has publicly come out in support of Kurdish radicals in Syria, it is unlikely that a French strategy in Raqqa would look significantly different than the US strategy. Moreover, the presence of Saudi troops in the region would only have the effect of making apolitical rebels likely to side increasingly with either Turkey or Damascus, were a fellow Arab army to fight along side infamously anti-Arab Kurds against indigenous Sunni Arabs.
Syria remains an Arab Republic
With the defeat of Daesh in Syria, many Arabs have attempted to return to their homes in places like Raqqa, only to find that they are being abusively occupied by US backed Kurdish militants. This is a classic recipe for rebellion and while the world is focused on Eastern Ghouta and Manbij, the Arab rebellion against the USA and YPG is already underway, as has been confirmed by the Russian military.
Now a spokesman for the Arab rebels has issued the following statement,
“Following the intelligence activities, the militia of Raqqa waged a special operation targeting the US Staff located at the former base of the 93rd Brigade in the district of Ayn Issa, 43 miles north of Raqqa. Several mortar shells were fired on individual targets without any casualties on our side”.
While the authors of this statement claimed they were opposed to both the US and Turkish presence in Syria, seeing as they are operating in an area far from any Turkish troops, the likelihood is that this group of rebels is centred around a pro-Damascus and anti-US political/military agenda. Indeed, as the government in Damascus remains the only legitimate Arab representative of the Syrian people, the rebellion in Raqqa may prove to help reconcile formerly anti-government forces with the government, as indigenous Arabs displaced by American troops and their proxies look to restore Syrian Arab rule over the Syrian Arab Republic.
While Turkey has said countless times that it does not intend to stay in Syria beyond a reasonable timeline for orderly withdrawal, the US has stated that it plans to stay in Syria for an extended period of time. Recent statements from the so-called SDF saying that they are unaware of Donald Trump’s proposed “pull out”, indicate that the veracity of the US President’s statements are far from certain. Thus, whatever faction the Arabs of north eastern Syria are ultimately loyal to, the fact remains that the US and its allies will be the primary targets and in the context of Syria, this excludes Turkey.
Conclusion
Thus the likelihood is that the Arab rebellion against the US and its proxies will only grow, perhaps especially if the US troops in the region are replaced by generally less capable French or Saudi troops. In this sense, whoever seeks to occupy Arab land in north eastern Syria whether Kurdish terrorists, the US military, French military or Saudi military – they will ultimately be doomed to failure for the same reason the US failed in Vietnam and Iraq and likewise, for the same reasons that the French failed in Indochina and Algeria.
The difference between a fake rebellion against a legitimate government funded by outsiders, as was seen in Eastern Ghouta, Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Deir ez-Zor, versus a genuine indigenous rebellion against an occupying foreign army and a minority of non-local militants whose loyalty (in terms of cooperation) is to the invader, is clear enough. The fake foreign funded “rebellions” historically lose battles while organic rebellions against an imperial occupier tend to eventually win, often with very decisive results.
Raqqa’s Militia Attacks US Coalition Base in Northern Syria
Sputnik | April 2, 2018
DAMASCUS – The militia of the Syrian city of Raqqa fired mortars on the US-led coalition base in the town of Ayn Issa, the press service of the movement said on Monday.
“Following the intelligence activities, the militia of Raqqa waged a special operation targeting the US Staff located at the former base of the 93rd Brigade in the district of Ayn Issa, 43 miles north of Raqqa. Several mortar shells were fired on individual targets without any casualties on our side,” the statement said.
The militia noted that they do not tolerate “the occupational forces” of the United States, Turkey, and their allies in northern Syria.
The statement read: “Do not relax night and day, wherever you are.”
On March 25, the indigenous Arab population launched an uprising against armed groups supported by the United States in the town of Al-Mansura in the suburbs of Syria’s Raqqa, opposing a forced mobilization conducted by the Syrian Democratic Forces and local self-governing bodies appointed by the United States. The uprising came as result of a 4-year-long military campaign, carried out by the United States and its allies against Daesh in Syria, without the approval of either the Syrian official government, nor the United Nations.
Last October, the coalition drove Daesh out of Raqqa that had been previously served as the de facto capital of the terrorist group’s self-declared caliphate. According to the United Nations, the humanitarian situation in the city is disastrous and the infrastructure is completely destroyed.
READ MORE:
Violent Clashes Between US-Backed Kurds and Locals Reported in Raqqa
Trump is the most peace-loving US president Putin will ever know
By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | April 1, 2018
A fortnight after sacking Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and a week after kicking out Lt. General HR McMaster from the National Security Council in the White House, President Donald Trump has made his first major foreign policy move. He announced on Thursday in front of cheering supporters at a rally in Richfield, Ohio,
- “We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. By the way, we’re knocking the hell out of ISIS. We’re going to be coming out of there real soon. We’re going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.”
In sheer power play, Trump has shattered the coalition between the US foreign and defence establishments, which Tillerson and Defence Secretary James Mattis assiduously built to usurp policymaking. (Read my column in Asia Times dated March 15, Deconstructing the sacking of Rex Tillerson.)
Trump made his announcement on Thursday without consulting the state department or Pentagon. The state department spokesperson admitted ignorance. The Pentagon spokesperson mumbled that “important work remains to guarantee the lasting defeat of these violent extremists” in Syria. But, on Friday, the White House chief of staff John Kelly in a phone call to Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan conveyed Trump’s decision ordering a hold on more than $200 million in recovery funds earmarked for infrastructure projects in northeastern Syria in territories under US military control. This freezes a pledge made by Tillerson in support of Pentagon’s plans for an open-ended military presence in Syria.
Trump’s move may gain traction with 2 American soldiers reportedly killed and four injured in an IED explosion near Manjib on Thursday. Mattis won’t undermine Trump’s decision. That is simply not the military man’s style, which is always to use “front men” (like Tillerson.)
John Bolton, McMaster’s replacement, isn’t a military man. Bolton has a terrible reputation in the Beltway, which will sap his effectiveness. But Bolton is a rank opportunist who’ll know what is good for him under a Boss who is moody and volatile in turns. Also, Mike Pompeo, the incoming secretary of state, is a close pal of Trump’s and there is no daylight possible between the two.
Thus, Trump’s foreign policy agenda is becoming “kinetic”, finally. The speech in Ohio is vintage Trump. He has returned to his golden theme of mending America’s decaying infrastructure “with American heart, and American hands, and American grit.” (White House readout) This is also Trump’s campaign plank in the 2020 election: No more wars abroad unless US interests are directly threatened.
My gut instinct says that an overall easing of tensions with Russia is also to be expected. Trump is not seeking a fight with Russia. Arguably, he is the most peace-loving American president Vladimir Putin will ever know.
The exact circumstances of the Skripal spy case will never be known but following a phone call Trump made to British PM Theresa May on March 28, some sort of a cooling off period may have begun. The White House readout said,
- Both leaders agreed on the importance of dismantling Russia’s spy networks in the United Kingdom and the United States to curtail Russian clandestine activities and prevent future chemical weapons attacks on either country’s soil.
The above formulation by no means constitutes an “anti-Russian” articulation. Rather, it is a statement on national security priorities.
Hasn’t Britain begun “soft-pedaling” already? Contrary to the gloomy news Wednesday that the chances of Yulia Skripal, the ex-spy’s daughter, surviving was only 1 percent, London announced on Friday that she is “out of danger”, is eating and drinking. And Skripal himself, though “critical”, is “stable”.
Equally, the British FO said on Saturday, “We are considering requests for consular access in line with our obligations under international and domestic law, including the rights and wishes of Yulia Skripal.” The Russian embassy has sought consular access. (Yulia is a Russian citizen.)
Moscow must be sensing new stirrings in the air. The latest remarks by the Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov were spoken more in sorrow than in anger. Antonov said on Saturday,
- “We want everybody to understand that we (US and Russia) are destined to become friends again. Only close interaction between our countries can help maintain international strategic stability and find mutually beneficial solutions to global and regional challenges.”
- “Relations between ordinary people shouldn’t suffer. We’ll do everything in our capacity to make sure that Americans have zero problems with trips to Russia.”
Winston Churchill once compared Russian politics to a “dogfight under a carpet”. That is an apt description of Trump-era Russian-American spats as well.
How the Guardian became the West’s Pravda
By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | March 31, 2018
Here is a good example of pure, unadulterated western propaganda from the Guardian, written by one of their most senior journalists, Julian Borger. This could be straight out of of the old Soviet mouth-piece Pravda.
According to the Guardian :
China and Russia are leading a stealthy and increasingly successful effort at the United Nations to weaken UN efforts to protect human rights around the world, according to diplomats and activists.
The article continues in similar vein, blaming the two official enemies of the west for the increasingly degraded status of human rights at the UN.
As far I can tell, none of the facts in the Guardian’s story is untrue. But that does not stop it from being a blatant lie. Providing only a partial account – one serving western interests – of what is happening to human rights at the UN is not only a distortion of the truth but outright propaganda.
The only allusion to the truth – possibly inadvertent – is to be found in this quote from Louis Charbonneau, the UN director for Human Rights Watch:
The fifth committee [the UN budget panel] has become a battleground for human rights. Russia and China and others have launched a war on things that have human rights in their name.
Yes, did you spot it? You have to be quick. It was there in that word “others”. Easy to miss.
Reading between the lines of this article, one can understand that Russia is causing problems to western interests at the UN because it has an agenda – in supporting the Syrian government of Bashar Assad – that conflicts with Washington and Israel’s agenda of breaking apart the central authority holding Syria together.
Both sides are dressing up their own, self-interested agendas in the language of human rights. A real journalist should be wary of taking either side’s word at face value on this matter.
But the failure of this article as journalism goes way beyond this kind of one-sidedness.
How can a supposedly serious journalist in a supposedly serious liberal newspaper write about current threats to the protection of human rights at the UN and refer only to Russia and China? It is possible only if Borger sees his job not to act as a watchdog on power but as a promoter of a western diplomatic agenda intended to stoke anti-Russian and anti-Chinese sentiment.
Right now, the United States is defunding a vital UN institution, the refugee agency UNRWA caring for millions of Palestinian refugees. Their rights are being trampled underfoot by Israel and the US.
The Trump administration is also threatening to quit and defund the UN Human Rights Council, one of the most important international bodies monitoring human rights abuses. It is targeting the UNHRC because it regularly highlights Israel’s abuses of Palestinians under belligerent occupation.
This is the start of a report in Israel’s liberal Haaretz newspaper this week over the decision of the US yet again to threaten the Human Rights Council after it passed a resolution on Israel’s illegal settlements, which steal land and water from Palestinians and whose inhabitants regularly attack Palestinian men, women and children:
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley slammed the UN Human Rights Council on Friday, saying that “the United States would continue to examine our membership” in the organization following a series of decisions the council took against Israel’s policy in the occupied territories.
Sources in Brussels told Haaretz that most European countries supported decisions only after their wording was softened so as not to evoke immediate practical significance.
In short, spineless European diplomats are toning down the UN’s monitoring of Israel for its human rights abuses in an effort to stop the US from pulling down the whole edifice of the Human Rights Council.
None of this is secret information. The Trump administration has been throwing temper tantrums against the UN over its human rights work out in the open.
So was this information and context not vitally relevant to a report considering threats to the status of human rights at the UN? Or do Borger and his editors think his job is only to parrot what western officials tell him is important?
‘NATO Member is at War With Another One’ – Analyst on Turkey-France Relations
Sputnik – March 31, 2018
According to the French media, French president Emmanuel Macron is planning to deploy troops to Syria’s Manbij to help local Kurds in resisting Turkish forces. The move has reportedly been coordinated with Washington. Sputnik discussed relations between France and Turkey with Gearóid Ó Colmáin, Paris-based geopolitical analyst and journalist.
Sputnik: What can you say about the conversation between the Turkish and the French presidents? It seems that there is quite a bit of disagreement. Do you think that there are issues other than cooperation with the SDF that they are in disagreement about when it comes to Syria?
Gearóid Ó Colmáin: If you look at the history of French-Turkish relations even going back to the sixteenth century, France generally used the Ottoman Empire as a stick with which to beat the central European powers, the Habsburgs in the sixteenth century and later — Austria. I think French policy towards Turkey in the current context is similar with important differences in sense that France sees Turkey as an emerging imperial power and as a rival. It is probably one of the reasons for France’s hostility towards Turkey’s entry into European Union, because the Turkish military is extremely powerful, it’s reputed to be even more powerful than the French military and the French want military dominance in the European Union context.
That’s one tension between France and Turkey, and with respect to the Kurdish problem, the US is supporting the YPG forces, which are linked to the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] in Turkey, so, from the Turkish perspective, it is a national security threat to have a buffer state, develop in northern Syria, which will have access to the eastern Mediterranean. But the western side of the NATO coalition clearly wants that to happen. That has been the case throughout the war. The have supported the Kurds and that has been to the chagrin of the Turks. We now have a situation whereby Turkey is at war with France, effectively over the Kurdish issue. It is a proxy war. The French recently, in the mold of Francois Hollande, the former French president, accused Russia of allowing Turkey to enter Northern Syria in order to weaken and divide NATO. The French and the Americans are clearly concerned about Turkey’s rapprochement with Russia, its recent agreement to cooperate with Russia.
So Turkey is kind of in a difficult position right now — on the one hand it’s cooperating with Russia, on the other hand it’s NATO member who is effectively at war with another NATO member, i.e. France and possibly the US. We don’t know what the United States really means, what Trump really means, when he says the US is going to pull out of Syria. They reportedly have 20 military bases in the country right now. […] It looks like the French are taking over, or at least offering to take over, where the Americans are leaving off.
Sputnik: So that was the gist perhaps of Trump’s statement saying that “We’re going to be leaving Syria very very soon and let the other people take care of it.” Do you think France was intended as “the other people”?
Gearóid Ó Colmáin: It looks to me to be the case. The French are clearly pursuing US policy in Syria and have been from the very start of the war. They don’t have an independent policy in the Middle East and haven’t had an independent policy since Chirac. France is clearly working on behalf of the United States and I think that will be my reading of it right now.
Sputnik: Does France have any of its own interests in the Syrian conflict? Other than what is dictated by American policy.
Gearóid Ó Colmáin: France was traditionally the protector of Christians in the Middle East. That was the case in Lebanon, but it hasn’t been the case for a long time. France hasn’t protected anyone in this war. They have been supporting terrorism from the very start. Now not only have they been supporting terrorism against the Syrian state. […] But now they are being accused by their cohorts in terrorism, i.e. Turkey of supporting terrorism against them. France has really been in a mess since this war began. […]
Sputnik: The proposal was already declined by Ankara. They said that those who cooperate with terror groups against Turkey will become a target for Turkey. How is that going to impact Turkey’s relations with France and the EU in general?
Gearóid Ó Colmáin: Turkey has already threatened the EU on several occasions — last year, year before Turkey threatened to unleash an avalanche of migrants on Europe, to intensify the migrant crisis in Europe, if the EU would not concede to their demands, regarding funding and accession conditions [to the EU]. Turkey has already basically threatened Europe with coercive engineered migration, as a form of warfare, if the European Union doesn’t fully cooperate with Turkey’s demands. That is something that you could see escalating.
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Saudi crown prince wants US military to maintain presence in Syria
Press TV – March 31, 2018
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says he wants the US military to extend its presence in Syria, despite American President Donald Trump’s declaration that US forces will withdraw from the war-torn Arab country in the near future.
“We believe American troops should stay for at least the mid-term, if not the long-term,” bin Salman said in a wide-ranging interview with the Times on Thursday, a few hours after Trump told a cheering crowd in Richfield, Ohio, that American troops would soon be pulled out from Syria.
The US and its allies have been bombarding what they call positions held by the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.
The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying Daesh.
“We’re coming out of Syria very soon. Let the other people take care of it (Daesh) now, very soon. Very soon, we’re coming out.”
The US currently has some 2,000 ground troops inside Syria in a declared aim of crushing the terror group, which is no longer in control of any urban center and is considered to be totally defeated in the Arab country.
Washington also maintains a military base in Syria’s eastern Dayr al-Zawr province, serving as a checkpoint through which it coordinates with anti-Damascus militias to launch purported attacks against the remaining Daesh terrorists holed up in a series of localities along the Euphrates River and a stretch of desert straddling the Iraq-Syria border.
“If you take those troops out from east Syria, you will lose that checkpoint,” bin Salman further said in the interview, which was published on Friday, adding, “And this corridor could create a lot of things in the region.”
The Syrian government and Russia, which has been engaged in an anti-terror campaign in the Arab country since September 2015 upon an official request from Damascus, have time and again called on the US to pull out its troops from the Arab country as Daesh is no longer considered a significant threat.
Syria has repeatedly blamed Riyadh of supporting anti-Damascus militants and of destabilizing the Arab country.
In late 2016, Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry acknowledged that more than 1,500 of its citizens were fighting alongside anti-Damascus militant groups in Syria.
Syria: Is Trump Finally Putting America First?
By Thomas L. Knapp | William Lloyd Garrison Center | March 29, 2018
During a visit to Ohio to promote his infrastructure plan on March 29, US president Donald Trump dropped one of the bombshells that Americans have become accustomed to over the last year and a half: “We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon …. Let the other people take care of it now.”
If he’s serious, if the more hawkish members of his administration don’t dissuade him, and if he follows through, Trump will be taking a giant step in the right direction on foreign policy. The US never had any legitimate business in Syria. Its military adventurism there has been both dumb and illegal from the beginning.
Yes, illegal. Congress has never declared war on, or against any force in, Syria. For that matter, it hasn’t even offered the fig leaf of an extraconstitutional “Authorization for the Use of Military Force.” Former president Barack Obama just decided to go to war there, did so … and got away with it.
And yes, dumb. The rise of the Islamic State in Syria was a direct consequence of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. American military intervention in Syria using the Islamic State as an excuse simply doubled down on that previous mistake.
While I carry no brief for the Ba’athist regime headed by Bashar al-Assad, that regime has never offered the US or its allies anything resembling a legitimate casus belli. US calls for “regime change” and backing for anti-Assad rebels (many of whom seem to be foreign jihadists rather than domestic dissidents) remind one, as they should, of similar calls regarding the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. After nearly two decades of “war on terror,” following through on those calls would just add a third quagmire to the set.
Then, of course, there are the Russians. Russia and Syria have been allied since the days of Assad’s late father. Syria provides Russia with its only naval base on the Mediterranean (at Tartus), and the two states have been linked by a “Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation” since 1980. Among areas where the new Cold War could turn hot in a hot minute, Syria stands out.
Trump’s first year and change as president has been marked by a bellicosity at odds with his sometimes non-interventionist statements on the campaign trail. Around the globe he has continued and sometimes escalated the war policies of his predecessors. But between a prospective summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and now talk of withdrawal from Syria, perhaps those of us who have considered him “business as usual” on foreign policy, and his remaining non-interventionist supporters naive, will get a big plate of crow to eat. If so, I’ll gladly have seconds.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).
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Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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