Category Archives: Russia

03.10.22
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This war is perfect for the US and UK. That’s why they goaded Russia into waging it.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Russia has been baited into a repeat of the Afghan Trap: first time as tragedy, second time as sickening farce.

The term ‘bait and bleed’ was defined by International Relations theorist John Mearsheimer in 2001 as a military strategy that “involves causing two rivals to engage in a protracted war, so that they bleed each other white, while the baiter remains on the sideline, its military strength intact.” 

The current National Defence Strategy (NDS) of the USA explicitly endorses such a strategy, and it makes no bones about who it is aimed at. The NDS, authored by then Secretary of Defence James Mattis in 2018, describes itself as “a clear road map for the Department of Defense to meet the challenges posed by a re-emergence of long-term strategic competition with China and Russia,” adding that “interstate strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security.” On p.5 of the summary document, under the heading “strategic approach,” the NDS vows that “with our allies and partners, we will challenge competitors by maneuvering them into unfavorable positions, frustrating their efforts, precluding their options while expanding our own, and forcing them to confront conflict under adverse conditions.” There it is, in black and white: it is official US policy to bait Russia into conflict. 

The US certainly has form in this regard. Until 1998, the mainstream view of US support for the anti-communist insurgency in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s was that it had been a response to the Russian invasion of December 1979. But in an interview in 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter, admitted that the truth was the exact opposite. In fact “it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention…The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.’ Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.” Asked whether he regretted the move, which plunged Afghanistan into a conflict which is now into its fifth decade, he replied “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?” Plunging the Afghan people into a half century of devastating war was of no consequence for the likes of Brzezinski. His successors clearly have the same attitude towards Ukraine. 

In a widely viewed 2015 lecture on Ukraine, Mearsheimer noted that “If you really want to wreck Russia, what you really want to do is encourage Russia to conquer Ukraine.” The US and the UK – the latter in particular – appear to have been taking this advice very seriously. 

NATO’s expansion into the former Soviet ‘sphere of influence,’ beginning with Bill Clinton in 1997, has always been recklessly provocative, as widely noted even way back then. A widely circulated letter by fifty leading academics, diplomats and retired military officers called the move a “policy error of historic proportions” which will “unsettle European stability” and “ultimately diminish the sense of security of those countries which are not included.” Even George Kennan, whose ‘long telegram’ in 1946 is viewed as a founding document of the post-WW2 strategy of Soviet containment, warned that NATO expansion eastwards would result in “a new Cold War, probably ending in a hot one.” Each round of NATO enlargement deepened Russia’s suspicions, but it was the Bucharest agreement of 2008 that really ratcheted up the tension. The US and UK had been pushing for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO as soon as possible, but France and Germany resisted the move, viewing it as gratuitously provocative. Russia had, after all, been invaded three times via its western border during the previous century, the most recent, well within living memory, costing it an unfathomable 27 million lives. The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO – that is, becoming a giant military base for Britain, Germany and the US, the very countries that had built up and unleashed the fascist war machine in the 1930s – was understandably considered a red line, given Ukraine’s 2000km land border with Russia, penetrating deep into its territory. The compromise, if you can call it that, was an agreement that Ukraine (along with Georgia) would not join NATO immediately but definitely would do so in the future. Georgia’s government took this as a green light to make moves against Russian interests there, and got a shock when NATO support was not, after all, forthcoming against Putin’s predictable response. Following that episode, wrote Richard Sakwa, “British foreign secretary David Miliband visited Kiev and pledged Britain’s support, dooming the country to become the next epicentre of the artificially constructed struggle for mastery in Europe.” 

Russia’s concerns were allayed for a time during the period 2010-14, during the presidency of Yanokovych, whose mandate was to keep Ukraine neutral – militarily allied to neither Russia nor the west, but with good diplomatic and trade relations with both. Unfortunately this policy was thrown into reverse following the 2014 coup, egged on (and immediately recognised) by the US and UK, and carried out with neo-Nazi paramilitaries as the vanguard force. Following an unsuccessful attempt to impose the writ of the coup regime on the Russian-speaking east of the country, those paramilitaries were, under US prodding, integrated into a new ‘National Guard’ which has been the spearhead of the war effort ever since, at the cost of 14,000 lives. Following the coup, noted Professor Sakwa, and “as if to rub salt into the wounds, NATO staged the Rapid Trident military exercise on Ukrainian territory on 15-16 September” of that year, a war gaming exercise involving fifteen countries “designed to enhance interoperability with allied and partner nations.” Since then, plans for NATO incorporation have proceeded apace. A British government document listing British support for the Ukrainian military outlines these plans in detail. In 2016, NATO outlined its Comprehensive Assistance Package of 16 “capacity building programmes and several trust funds” for military modernisation, whilst “NATO allies also participate in a wide range of military exercises with Ukrainian armed forces through the Military Committee with Ukraine Work Plan.” 

  But it was in June 2020 that this process was really ramped up, when Ukraine was offered “Enhanced Opportunity Partner status” with NATO.  Notes the British document, “this status provides Ukraine with preferential access to NATO’s exercises, training and exchange of information and situational awareness, in order to increase interoperability. In September 2020 Ukraine hosted Exercise Joint Endeavour, with British, US and Canadian troops.” This was “the first exercise conducted under Ukraine’s new enhanced status,” but far from the last, with another ten planned, involving tens of thousands of NATO troops, for 2022 alone. 

If Russia was going to enforce its red line, time was fast running out. From spring 2021, it began a counter-provocation of its own, building up a huge armed presence on the Ukrainian border, in what was widely interpreted as a show of strength to scare Ukraine into backing down from this suicidal course. Mearsheimer’s warning in 2015 that “the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and Ukraine is going to get wrecked” looked ever more ominous. 

This cycle of provocation and counter-provocation continued throughout the year. In June 2021, Britain sent HMS Defender, part of its Carrier Strike Group’s Indo-Pacific mission, into the Black Sea “in a show of solidarity with Ukraine and regional NATO allies.” This sabre-rattling agitprop was presumably intended to fool Ukraine into thinking this equipment might actually be used in the event of a showdown with Russia, and that they should therefore press on with NATO membership safe in the knowledge that Britain would bring its full force to bear should it trigger a reaction. It was an intentionally misleading and irresponsible message; but, for years now, and as Mearsheimer had noted, “What we’re doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians.” 

Even the EU, which, notes the British document, has traditionally left “military reform” as an issue for “NATO and bilateral cooperation,” joined in the Russia-baiting. In December 2021 it announced a new militarist turn, with “a package of measures to help strengthen the capacity of the Ukrainian armed forces,” worth €31million. US, UK and the EU were united, it seemed, in sending a clear message to the Russians: ‘we’re gonna build up a massive military force on your doorstep, you losers, and there’s nothing you can do about it’. Such wilful humiliation can only be aimed at one thing: triggering a response. 

But the militarisation of Ukraine was only one part of the ‘bait and bleed’ strategy. Alongside the goading to invade came, in November 2021, a more or less open invitation to do so. In a sharp reversal of the message sent by the HMS Defender visit in June – that Britain would ‘have Ukraine’s back’ in the event of war – came the opposite signal – that NATO would not defend their plucky new partner should Russia choose to invade. Reported Bloomberg on the 30th November 2021, “President Vladimir Putin warned the West not to cross the Kremlin’s security “red line” as the U.S. and the U.K. said any Russian incursion into Ukraine would trigger serious diplomatic and economic responses.” Serious diplomatic and economic responses means, of course,  zero military consequences. Moscow was being told openly that, should they choose to settle the issue by force, the only response from the west would be “diplomatic and economic,” that is to say – not military. At a stroke, US and UK statements had undermined NATO chief Jans Stolzenberg’s attempts to leave a military option on the table. Whilst NATO had no Article Five obligation to militarily defend Ukraine, Stolzenberg had been attempting to deter a Russian invasion by leaving its potential response ambiguous; when asked by reporters whether he ruled out a military intervention by NATO in the event of Russian incursions, his reply was “We have different options,” referring to “the fact that we have increased our presence here, in the region, both in the Black Sea region and in the Baltic region, in the air, on land and at sea.” That ambiguity was ended by the USUK guarantee that they would not militarily oppose a Russian invasion. Russia was being simultaneously goaded into conducting an invasion and openly invited to do so. The trap was set. 

From the moment that invitation was issued, the character of the Russian troop buildup began to change. What started off in spring as a show of strength, designed to coerce Ukraine into respecting its security needs, began to look like something very different. Noted Gustav Gressel at the time, “Compared to the situation in March and April 2021, when it last moved troops close to the Ukrainian border, Russia seems to be making much less effort to ensure the current assembly is visible. This may hint towards a significantly more serious intention than simply a wish to appear threatening.”

Nevertheless, noted strategic analyst and former Ukrainian Defence Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk, “The fact that they’re getting ready [for an invasion] does not mean that they will start it.” Rather, he suggested, the objective  might still have been to apply pressure for a negotiated settlement that meets Russia’s security needs. Indeed, concurrent with its buildup, Russia continued to push hard on the diplomatic front. Putin began by reminding the world that, as far as the expansion of western  military infrastructure into Ukraine goes, “This creation of such threats for us is the red line,” before on 17th December, laying his demands for de-escalating tensions with NATO: the ruling out of NATO membership for Ukraine, NATO forces to return to their 1997 positions, no new NATO members and an end to NATO drills in countries bordering Russia. These were simply dismissed and derided by the US. Putin’s basic error was to attempt to use as leverage the threat of the very thing US planners were attempting to goad him to do in the first place – invading Ukraine. 

From that point on, it was a simple matter of calling his bluff. USUK ‘intelligence’ and media playing up of the co-called ‘planned invasion’ only added to the pressure on Putin to follow through, ensuring the world’s attention would be entirely focused on the humiliation of any ‘climbdown.’ 

Right up to the last minute,  despite the west’s ‘warnings’, many were convinced that such a climbdown was on the cards, myself included. The danger it held, of course, was that USUK and the Ukrainian National Guard would take full advantage of this moment of Russian ‘weakness’ to launch a major military escalation in the Donbass, attempting to finally impose the military solution they had been denied for the past eight years, before moving to finalise Ukraine’s integration into NATO in short order. Literally hours before Putin’s announcement of a ‘special military operation’ on February 21st, I posted the following message on a political discussion forum, in a response to a question about whether Russia would invade: “Putin is not gonna do it. He blinked and now NATO and their fascist mercenaries are taking full advantage. This is the beginning of the end for Putin and the start of a devastating war to retake the Donbass.” in hindsight, however, that was simply not an option Putin was willing to accept. He would risk everything – and everybody – rather than accept humiliation and defeat. As Patrick Cockburn put it, “For Putin, having gone as far as he had, the choice was starkly posed between escalation and capitulation. It was at this point that method turned into madness, and the murderous, strategically disastrous Russian land invasion of Ukraine began.” And madness it was – as Richard Sakwa had pointed out in 2016, Putin “was well aware that the US had lured the Soviet Union into the Afghan quagmire, precipitating its collapse” and was “well aware of the dangers of being sucked into a war over Ukraine, which would be unwinnable and disastrous.” The US and UK had achieved what once had seemed impossible – goading Russia into a battlefield on which they could be crucified. They had been baited. Now they would be bled. 

The UK, in particular, had been preparing for this war for years. Even whilst Obama had banned lethal military aid to Ukraine (a ban overturned by Trump in 2018), Britain was running a military training programme for Ukraine called “Operation Orbital.” Beginning in 2015 with 75 UK military trainers focussed on  “medical, logistics, general infantry skills and intelligence capacity building,” since then it has “been expanded and extended several times.” By 2018, it also involved “training for defensive operations in an urban environment, operational planning, engineering [and] countering attacks from snipers, armoured vehicles and mortars,” and had been expanded to cover “all branches of Ukraine’s armed forces,” including the Ukrainian navy. In October 2020, the UK and Ukraine agreed to proceed with a new Naval Capabilities Enhancement Programme, which would involve, amongst other things, “Ukraine’s purchase of two refurbished Royal Navy Sandown-class minehunters…the sale and integration of missiles on new and in-service Ukrainian Navy patrol and airborne platforms, including a training and engineering support package, assistance in building new naval bases in the Black Sea and Azov Sea, the development and joint production of eight fast missile warships, and participation in the Ukrainian project to deliver a modern frigate capability.” In November 2021, the UK released £1.7billion of financing for the project, and had, according to a Downing Street press release, trained a total of 22,000 Ukrainian military personnel by January 2022. The Naval initiative already seems to be paying dividends, with evidence emerging that a Russian warship was destroyed by the Ukrainian navy in early March. 

The trick for the US and UK now is to make sure the war lasts as long as possible, to maximise Russian casualties and trigger economic collapse. In other words, having goaded the Russians into starting the war, the aim is now to goad the Ukrainians to keep it going, resisting the temptation to come to terms with the Russians and make peace. This part of the operation was termed by Mearsheimer ‘bloodletting,’ in which “the aim is to make sure that any war between one’s rivals turns into a long and costly conflict that saps their strength.” Senator, later President, Harry Truman had this strategy in mind, Mearsheimer noted, in his infamous reaction to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941: “If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible.”

Countering a perceived wobble from Ukrainian President Zelensky, who seemed to imply he would, now he finally understood the Russians were serious, consider returning Ukraine to a non-aligned position, the British government made clear there was to be no such compromise. On the first day of the invasion, February 24th, Foreign Office minister Lord Ahmed told parliament that “we remain committed to the 2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration in which all NATO allies agreed that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance.” A negotiated settlement is, it seems, unacceptable to the UK, who are willing to fight Russia, as the saying goes, down to the last Ukrainian; their vision was spelt out by Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who told Sky News that the conflict could last ‘years’ and the UK needs to be ‘prepared for a very long haul’. Western media, meanwhile, have clearly been instructed to play up the supposed successes of the “Ukrainian resistance” and the chance, therefore, of a total military victory against Russia, to stave off the chances of serious negotiations. 

The Ukraine trap is being modelled on the Afghan trap right down to the weapons being sent. Stinger surface-to-air missiles played a crucial role in the CIA-MI6 backed anti-Soviet insurgency in the 1980s; the Times reported on 9th March that Ukraine has now received 17,000 anti-tank and 2000 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, most from Germany, Belgium and Britain, with huge US and British cargo planes full of them being sent every 90 minutes, day and night, from an undisclosed airfield. The US Department of Defence has, since September 2021, provided Ukraine with “Stinger missiles, Javelin missiles, anti-tank rocket systems, grenade launchers, more than 2,000 tons of ammunition, including mortar and artillery rounds, small arms, machine guns,” according to the assistant secretary of Defence, Mara Karlin, with a total of $1billion in military equipment provided over the past year and $2billion over the previous seven. “Taken together, the variety, volume and potency of firepower being rushed into the war zone illustrate the extent to which the United States [and the UK] sought to prepare the Ukrainian military to wage a hybrid war against Russia,” suggests the Washington Post article. An additional $13.6 billion of supplies was approved by Congress, on March 9th, with Britain announcing it will send state-of-the-art laser-guided “Starstreak” anti-missile systems to Ukraine on the same day. 

On top of the weapons deliveries, Buzzfeed has reported that a small group of NATO special operations forces have been sent into Ukraine:

“The group, composed of six US citizens, three Brits, and a German, are NATO-trained and experienced in close combat and counterterrorism. Two former American infantry officers are also making plans to come to Ukraine to provide “leadership” for the group.” They are hoped to be the first of many volunteers who will arrive in the country to fight the Russians, in a replay of the ‘international jihad’ that was fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Indeed, NATO member Turkey is already thought to be sending Syrian militants, with combat experience against Russia, to the frontlines in Syria, whilst “groups like the Georgian National Legion,” through whose ranks which “more than 300 Western foreigners have passed” since its formation in 2014, many “from NATO countries and with prior military experience… help pave the way for people to sign official contracts with the Ukrainian military.” The Ukraine war thus already appears to be becoming a magnet for both far right and ‘radical Islamist’ fighters to join the war against Russia, providing the double benefit  for US and Britain of bleeding Russia and removing potentially destabilising elements from their territory.

Should the Zelensky government collapse, and be replaced by a pro-Russian administration – presumably propped up by the Russian military – the plan is for a long insurgency, again modelled on 1980s Afghanistan. UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey told Forces News that the MoD had been asked by Boris Johnson to “look at and plan for” British assistance to any future resistance movement if Ukraine was captured, whilst according to the Washington Post, “Ukraine’s allies are planning how to help establish and support a government-in-exile, which could direct guerrilla operations against Russian occupiers, according to several U.S. and European officials… As early as last December, some U.S. officials saw signs that the Ukrainian military was preparing for an eventual resistance, even as Zelensky downplayed the threat of invasion. During an official visit, a Ukrainian special operations commander told Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and other lawmakers that they were shifting training and planning to focus on maintaining an armed opposition, relying on insurgent-like tactics.” But key to this outcome is scuppering any moves towards a peaceful settlement: “The number one thing you have to have is people on the ground who want to fight,” said Jack Devine, a retired senior CIA officer who ran the agency’s successful covert campaign to arm Afghan fighters who drove out the Soviet military in the 1980s…. If Russian and Ukrainian negotiators who have been meeting near the border in Belarus reach some settlement, that will likely diminish the momentum for an insurgency and support for it, Devine predicted.” 

Again, Washington has form here. The Bosnian war could have been prevented altogether, saving tens 

of thousands of lives, had the Carrington–Cutileiro peace plan ever been implemented. The plan had been signed by the leaders of all three sides in the conflict, but fell apart after Bosnian leader Izetbegovic withdrew his signature immediately after a meeting with US ambassador Warren Zimmerman. It is thought Zimmerman had pushed him to fight for a better deal with the promise of lavish US military support. We are likely to see much of this in the months and years to come; watch in particular for announcements of increased military or economic escalations around the time of peace talks taking place. Already, the announcement of $13.6billion additional US aid and UK delivery of the “Starstreak” anti-aircraft system on the very day of the first talks between the Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers was unlikely to be a coincidence. 

The benefits of this prolonged war to the USUK bourgeois establishment are clear. But this is not only about the ‘bleeding’ of a strategic competitor, whose hampering of regime change in Syria and alliances with Iran and China had made it an increasing thorn in the side of western hegemony. It is aimed not only at Russia, but at Europe, at China, and at Ukraine itself. 

The driving of a wedge between Russia and Europe, in order to weaken both, and heighten European dependence on the US, has long been a goal of US foreign policy. Yet Germany and France, in particular, have, for obvious reasons, been unwilling to play ball. That is why, throughout the Russian troop buildup, those countries consistently advocated talks and compromise in direct contrast to the belligerent sabre-rattling of their Atlantic partners. Germany has always had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the economic war against Russia, for the simple reason that that war constitutes an act of serious self-harm for Germany, which, unlike the US, is deeply dependent on Russian energy and markets. It took the downing of the MH17 aircraft to arm-twist them into joining the first round of USUK-led sanctions following the 2014 coup, and it took the Russian invasion of Ukraine for Germany to finally accede to US demands to cancel the NordStream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which had been completed and ready to begin operations since September 2021. As Immanuel Wallerstein wrote back in 2014, “What haunts the Nulands of this world [a reference to the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Victoria Nuland] is not a putative “absorption” of Ukraine by Russia – an eventuality with which she could live. What haunts her and those who share her views is a geopolitical alliance of Germany/France and Russia.” The Ukraine trap has certainly put paid to that prospect – and the collateral damage to Europe from the economic war on Russia is only a benefit to US hegemony. NATO’s raison d’etre in Europe, as described by its first Secretary General Lord Ismay, was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” and the war in Ukraine is already well on the way to achieving all three. 

Then, of course, there is China. China has condemned the sanctions on Russia as economic warfare against the population, but as the bloodshed mounts, so too will the pressure on China to join in with them, or risk being treated in the same way itself; this war is increasingly being portrayed as a Manichean struggle of good versus evil in which bystanders are not allowed. Of course, the US economy is far more entangled with that of China than it is with that of Russia, making an all out boycott a trickier prospect – but there is little to stop the US simply freezing Chinese dollar assets in the same way as they have done with Russian. The Russian central bank’s $630billion in foreign reserves were frozen almost immediately after the invasion, eliminating at a stroke Russia’s painstakingly built up insurance policy to protect the ruble. Its value has fallen continuously since then and is now worth barely half of what it was a month ago. What is to stop the US doing the same to China, eliminating a quarter of its foreign debt, and greatly pumping up the value of the dollar, into the bargain? This will be the real worry for Beijing right now, and there is every reason to believe that this is the direction in which we are headed. The Ukraine trap has been designed ultimately to ensnare China as well; we may very well be witnessing the start of the ‘final showdown’ aimed at extending US dominance for another fifty years by ending the Russia-China challenge once and for all. 

As for Ukraine itself, its ruined economy and infrastructure will leave it utterly dependent on foreign support for reconstruction. If this does turn out to be Russia, the costs to the Russian economy will be crippling, and ongoing with an insurgency to deal with; if the West, Ukrainian policy will be completely under their control, with reparations likely to be forced out of Russia to pay for reconstruction anyway. Either way, the Russian economy and Ukrainian sovereignty are both finished. 

Finally, quite apart from all the geopolitical machinations, are the straightforward capitalist economic interests. In times of economic crisis and stagnation, war becomes an ever more tempting prospect for capitalist powers, providing opportunities to capture state markets (eg for weapons), rather than having to rely on stagnating private consumer markets, organise political boycotts of rival producers in areas where you cannot compete economically, and gain from inflated commodity prices affected by the war (eg oil and gas, of which the USA is a net exporter). Michael Hudson has analysed how the three key economic sectors in the USA – that is, the military-industrial complex; the oil, gas and mining industry and the banking and real estate, which between them control the purse strings of virtually every member of Congress – have all had their strategic goals served very well by this war. 

If anything, then, the Ukraine trap looks set to be even more beneficial for the US than the Afghan trap – and even more devastating, not only to Ukraine and Russia, but to China and even the EU as well. 

But, as Marx told us long ago, when history repeats itself it does so “first time as tragedy, second time as farce.” In Afghanistan, Soviet forces were fighting to defend a genuine popular socialist revolution, which had liberated women and ended feudal oppression, against a vicious sectarian obscurantism that was utterly dependent on MI6, CIA, Pakistani and Saudi largesse. The popularity of Najibullah’s communist government was revealed by the fact that it hung on against this combined terror operation for a further three years after being abandoned by the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. 

This time around, there is no such emancipatory project to defend, quite the opposite. Putin’s war is a grotesque caricature of the Soviet intervention, little more in fact than a mirror image of the western warmongering he claims to oppose, replete with obviously fraudulent claims put forward to justify the unjustifiable. His ‘denazification’ programme amounts to the replacement of ‘pro-Ukrainian’ fascists with ‘pro-Russian’ fascists, his vision of Ukraine essentially another Syria – a patchwork of dysfunctional ethno-nationalist statelets, each to be used and abused by their own regional power patron, the whole mess overseen by Grand Master [sic] Putin. 

The tragedy of Putin’s Russia has been its crippling desperation to be accepted by ‘the west’. Like Israel, Russia is offended that its right to dehumanise and exterminate – the very essence of whiteness – seems to be constantly called into question, as if their very identity as white nations is being denied. Why are you allowed to shit on international law, to invade sovereign states, to starve and beseige, to use thermobarbaric weapons, to bomb hospitals, and we are not? What is this Russophobia, this anti-Semitism? Am I not a white man and a white brother?   

Farce indeed. And utterly sickening to watch.

05.29.19
by

The browning of the left part two: Alexander Dugin and the rise of ‘politically correct’ fascism

 

Image result for fascist dugin

Dugin, clever dickhead posing as a threat to US imperialism but ultimately sharing its goals

Alexander Dugin is quite possibly, after Steve Bannon, the most influential fascist in the world today. His TV station reaches over 20 million people, and the dozens of thinktanks, journals and websites run by him and his employees ultimately have an even further reach. You yourself have probably read pieces originally emanating from one of his outlets.

 

His strategy is that of the ‘red-brown alliance’ – an attempt to unite the far left and far right under the hegemonic leadership of the latter. On the face of it, much of his programme can at first appear superficially attractive to leftists – opposition to US supremacy; support for a ‘multipolar’ world; and even an apparent respect for non-western and pre-colonial societies and traditions. In fact, such positions – necessary as they may be for a genuine leftist programme – are neither bad nor good in and of themselves; rather, they are means, tools for the creation of a new world. And the world Dugin wishes to create is one of racially-purified ethno-states, dominated by a Euro-Russian white power aristocracy (the ‘Moscow-Berlin axis’) in which Asia is subordinated to Russia by means of a dismembered China. This is not an anti-imperialist programme. It is a programme for an inter-imperialist challenge for the control of Europe and Asia: for a reconstituted Third Reich.

 

Dugin represents a strain of fascism known as National Bolshevism, which first emerged in the years following the Bolshevik revolution and subsequent civil war. Some of the defeated remnants of the white army began to believe that if Bolshevism could not be overthrown by force, then perhaps its authoritarian currents could be developed and gradually pushed towards right wing ultranationalism. This was a classic infiltration strategy of taking over the left and destroying it from within. Under the leadership of Stalin, some of the National Bolsheviks were allowed to return to the USSR, and were partially rehabilitated in an effort to bring nationalist and patriotic credibility to Stalin’s government; essentially, both sides were using each other to legitimise and expand the appeal of their respective projects.

 

The current remained relatively marginal, however, until the Brezhnev era. Then, in the 1980s, the National Bolshevists joined forces with other ultranationalist trends to form ‘Pamyat’, an anti-Semitic and monarchist association which blamed a Zionist-Masonic plot for the Russian revolution, and indeed for pretty much all of Russia’s problems. Dugin joined its central council. But he apparently found it too ‘modern’, and sought to develop a more mystical and ‘traditionalist’ form of fascism. Following his expulsion from Pamyat in 1989 – after a failed attempt to change its direction – he embarked on a tour of western Europe, where he became influenced by French fascist Alain de Benoist’s Nouvelle Droite and developed close relationships with leading figures such as Jean-Francois Thiriart, Robert Steuckers, and Benoist himself. These figures had been instrumental in a developing a strategy of whitewashing and rehabilitating fascism by appropriating the slogans and concepts of the left and even liberals (see my piece in the last edition of Counterpunch), and were to be hugely influential on Dugin’s own political trajectory. De Benoist had advocated stepping back from the overt promotion of a fascist programme in order to focus instead on cultivating the intellectual terrain in which such a programme would again become acceptable. To this end he created a think-tank, GRECE (the “Research and Study Group of European Civilisation”) to wage a long-term ‘cultural-ideological struggle’ he termed ‘metapolitics’, based on a strategy originally advocated by the Italian communist leader Gramsci. Dugin, following some abortive attempts to enter politics directly (receiving less than 1% of the vote when he stood as a candidate to the Russian State Duma in 1995, for example), soon began to employ a similar strategy. His first journal, Elementy, founded in 1993, praised the Nazis and the Conservative Revolutionaries which preceded them, and published the first Russian translations of esoteric interwar fascist Julius Evola. Since then, he has founded or developed dozens of journals, think tanks, publishing houses and web platforms to spread his ideas, including Katehon, Geopolitika, Arktos, Eurasia journal, Editions Avatar, Voxnr.com, Arctogaia, Fort-Russ, the Centre for Syncretic Studies, the Duran, New University, Vtorzhenie (invasion), Eurasianist Review, Evrazia.info, Russian Time journal, the Global Revolutionary Alliance, The Green Star, New Resistance/ Open Revolt, the Centre of Conservative Research at the Faculty of Sociology of Moscow State University, the St Petersburg Conservative Club at the Faculty of Philosophy of St Petersburg State University, and the Amphora publishing house. A worrying number of them have gained traction amongst some on the left, their articles shared and posted unsuspectingly on social media by people who would never have dreamed of circulating material by more overt white supremacists like the KKK.

 

Much of this work is financed by the Russian billionaire Konstantin Malofeev, and the various platforms cover a wide base in terms of their appeal and intended audience. Some sites are more traditionally right-wing, whilst others appropriate more anarchist and workerist imagery and language. The US-based New Resistance is a case in point. New Resistance was founded by James Porazzo, previously leader of the more openly white supremacist American Front (modelled on the UK’s National Front) who once described Jews as “a filthy, evil people the world would be better without”, and is clearly part of Dugin’s global network, frequently republishing Dugin’s pieces, and with links to the site prominently displayed on Dugin’s Centre for Syncretic Studies and in his books. New Resistance issues classically leftist-sounding phrases like “Too often we in the working classes internalize the zero-sum, dog-eat-dog ‘logic’ of capitalism” and “Workers of all nations are cynically pitted against each other by the ruling classes, forced to wage military and economic warfare that is contrary to our own class interests” and even publishes stickers of communist freedom fighter Leila Khaled for its supporters to download. Their 11 point programme is a classic fascist mish-mash of traditional socialist wishlist, return-to-the-land tribalist nostalgia and right wing dogwhistles like gun ownership and overpopulation, and it is only when you get deep into the manifesto that the demands for ethnic purity and segregation become more apparent. Elsewhere, Gramsci’s understanding of ‘organic intellectuals’, rooted in the working class, gets twisted into support for a ‘New Aristocracy’.

 

Alexander Reid-Ross explains how these Duginist sites and think tanks then amplify their influence across the rest of the web: “Dugin’s thought pieces are read by journalists and editors with other sites like Fort-Russ, which claims to receive some millions of views per month. RT and Sputnik pick up stories and writers from sites like Fort-Russ and Katehon, elevating the Kremlin’s “spin” to more and more users. They then bring on leftist journalists from North Atlantic countries in order to make that spin more attractive to larger audiences in the West.” Fort-Russ’s own website confirms this strategy: “With 3 million readers a month, we have often featured ‘uncomfortable truths’ which ‘mainstream’ Kremlin backed sources like RT and Sputnik were unable to. We gave the raw story to readers before RT and Sputnik found the right angle to couch it in. As a result, many of our features and breaking stories have been featured by both of these outlets later on.” In December 2013, Dugin compiled a list of hundreds of politicians and intellectuals he sought to cultivate through involvement with RT, entitled “Countries and persons, where there are grounds to create an elite club and/or a group of informational influence through the line of Russia Today”. The list included rightwingers like Viktor Orban and de Benoist as well as leftwingers such as Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras.

 

At the same time as following this ‘metapolitical’ strategy, Dugin also had a role in developing and influencing almost every far right Russian formation that now exists. After co-founding the National Bolshevik Party in 1993, he went on to write the programme of the (grossly misnamed and deeply anti-Jewish) Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), and served as advisor for Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s (similar misnamed and fascistic) Liberal Democrat Party. Subsequently he has been advisor to the Speaker of the Duma and has established the Eurasia Party (2002) and the Eurasian Youth Movement (2005), whilst also briefly a leading member of the overtly fascist Rodina party. In 2008, he gained a professorship at the prestigious Moscow State University, and his textbook “Foundations of Geopolitics” is apparently required reading in Russia’s military academies. He is also close to the American far right, with links to former KKK leader David Duke, whilst one of his disciples, Nina Kouprianova, is married to leading US fascist Richard Spencer and him and Alex Jones feature on each other’s TV shows. But he has also attempted to develop links with left groups such as Syriza, whose former foreign minister Nikos Kotzias invited him to give a lecture on Eurasianism at the University of Piraeus in 2013 according to the Financial Times. Dugin even appears to have a role as ‘unofficial envoy’ of the Russian government, allegedly helping to broker the rapprochement between Turkey and Russia following Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian fighter jet in 2015.

 

Dugin’s outlook essentially boils down to a combination of “ethnopluralism” and what he disingenuously terms Neo-Eurasianism. Both ideas lend themselves well to the building of a ‘red-brown’ fascist-led alliance, as both have elements which are superficially appealing to the left whilst in fact providing theoretical cover for genocide and imperial war.

 

Following de Benoist, ethnopluralism purports to be based on a respect for the unique cultures of all peoples, urging an end to the high-handed universalist arrogance of imperial liberal modernity. Politically-correct fascists in the Benoist-Dugin mould often claim to support ‘Black Power’, ‘Red Power’ and so on, along with White Power: Africa for the Africa; Europe for the Europeans. The corollary of both, of course, is that non-Europeans should get the hell out, and immigration is presented as a threat to, or even a plot against, the essentialised traditional European culture Duginists support. Indeed, a key strategic aim of the Duginists appears to be the morphing of the antiwar movement into an anti-refugee movement, portraying war refugees as a weapon employed by Jewish financiers such as George Soros to dilute and weaken European culture.

 

Nevertheless, this hostility towards migrants as an impure degenerate influence on pristine European cultural tradition is matched with a flattery towards other ‘traditional cultures’, Islam in particular. Dugin has had some major successes in co-opting Muslims to his cause, his close collaborator (and fellow former Pamyat member) Geydar Dzhemal having set up his own fascist think-tank the Florian Geyer Club. Dugin’s 2014 book Eurasian Mission also claims that Sheikh Talgat Tadzhuddin, Chief Mufti of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate, is a supporter. Whereas the mainstream hard right have shifted, post 9/11, to a superficially ‘pro-Jewish’ (or at least pro-Israeli) position of unity against Islam, the Duginists appear to want to return the far right to its pre-9/11 tradition of courting right wing Muslims into a joint anti-semitic programme. Ethnopluralism is, by definition, antisemitic, for what Dugin calls “subversive, destructive Jews without a nationality” are, by their very existence, a threat to its conception of racially-purified, culturally homogenous, ethno-states. This does not, of course, rule out support for Israel as the potential basis of such a state itself, and Dugin’s Arctogaia has indeed cultivated links with ultranationalist Zionist groups whose conceptions of cultural purity resonate with his own.

 

What Dugin calls ‘Neo-Eurasianism’, meanwhile, builds on US fascist Francis Parker Yockey’s advocacy of a grand coalition against ‘Atlanticism’ and US power. Again, this is at first sight appealing to genuine anti-imperialists; after all, what could be more anti-imperialist than a policy to isolate and weaken the world’s leading imperial power? On closer inspection, however, Dugin’s Eurasianism amounts to a crude attempt to form a Russian-led white power bloc aimed at destroying China and preparing for grand inter-imperialist world war. Dugin’s Manichean and occultist view of world history posits an eternal struggle between a degenerate ‘sea empire’, a ‘Leviathan’ represented today by the Atlanticism of the US and UK in particular, and a Russian-led ‘land empire’ – a ‘Behemoth’ upholding traditional Slavic and European culture, and defending it against the Muslim and Chinese hordes unleashed by Atlanticist globalisation. Dugin’s “Foundations of Geopolitics”, whilst advocating a propagandistic focus on the USA (“the main ‘scapegoat’ will be precisely the U.S.”, as he succinctly puts it), sees the real enemy as China, which, he writes, “must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled”. Thus, despite its apparent hostility to the US, Duginism’s immediate goal is in fact precisely the same as that of US imperialism – the destruction of China.

 

In fact, Neo-Eurasianism is a euphemistic misnomer for this project. The original Eurasianists of the interwar period – who, like the National Bolsheviks, arose from the remnants of the Russian white army in exile – were inspired by the Mongol Empire, and sought in some ways to recreate it. Dugin’s project, however, as Edmund Griffiths has pointed out, is essentially the reconstitution of the territories of the Third Reich (including the parts of Russia it never conquered) under joint German-Russian tutelage (the ‘Moscow-Berlin axis’ as he terms it). In this, he is close to his mentor Thiriart’s conception of a ‘white-power bloc’ from Lisbon to Vladivostock (and excluding all of Southwest and Southeast Asia). The real inspiration Dugin appears to have gained from classic Eurasianism was its strategy of the infiltration and colonisation of the left rather than direct confrontation with it.

 

Like Hitler, Dugin’s model for his future ‘Eurasian empire’ appears to be the British empire. Following the First War of Indian Independence of 1857 – the largest anti-colonial uprising of the nineteenth century, which took the British three years to quell – Britain began to focus more on cultivating ‘traditional’ (and preferably sectarian) leaders for the outsourcing of some of empire’s dirty business, with the ruling families of much of today’s Arab peninsula a still-existing product of this period. In the same fashion, Dugin’s vision for ‘Eurasia’ appears to be a vast collection of cultural-nationalist bantustans controlled by Russian-anointed gangsters (or representatives of the traditional, patriarchal natural hierarchy, to use Dugin’s own formulations) under overall Russian control. At the same time, Dugin’s flattery of Islam has a geopolitical corollary in his advocacy of a “continental Russian-Islamic alliance” – with Iran in particular – based on the “traditional character of Russian and Islamic civilisation”. None of this flattery, it should be noted, has prevented Dugin from applauding a US President who has made the strangulation of Iran a defining feature of his foreign policy, just as it has not prevented Putin from collaborating with this strangulation of his supposed ‘ally’, both by greenlighting Israeli airstrikes on Iranian forces in Syria, and by pumping extra oil to allow Trump’s blockade of Iranian oil. Far from it; indeed such actions only increase Iran’s dependence on Russia, illustrating the chauvinist nature of the ‘alliance’, both as it appears in Dugin’s philosophy and its realpolitik manifestation today.

 

Where ‘Neo-Eurasianism’ really reveals its compatibility with its supposed Atlantic enemy, however, is in its attitude to China. The dismemberment of China – identified in “Foundations of Geopolitics” as Russia’s chief regional rival – should begin, Dugin suggests, with the Russian annexation of Tibet, Xinjiang and Manchuria (as well as Mongolia) as a “security belt”. The ‘metapolitical’ cultivation of hostility towards Russia’s supposed rival is subtly but clearly underway throughout Dugin’s networks, as even a cursory glance at the Katehon website reveals. One article, entitled “China is on the warpath: who will be the first victim?”, tells its readers that “ the Chinese army [is] preparing for war…breaking the delicate balance that has developed in the world after the Second World War” as “One by one it pinches off the territories of the countries of the former USSR – Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan”. Its “aggressive aspirations” are also apparently revealed by its role in the South China Sea, though the article completely airbrushes out of the picture the increasingly belligerent US military encirclement and attempts to gain control over crucial naval ‘choke holds’ which are the obvious context and cause of China’s defensive actions. As such, the piece, with a little subediting for grammar, could easily have been a straightforward US neocon oped. Another piece – “Is there an alternative to the Chinese New Silk Road?” – attempts to discredit China’s Belt and Road Initiative as against the interests of the partner countries, and openly salivates about opportunities for Russia opened up by Trump’s economic war on China. In the sense Dugin’s geopolitics is little different from those of Kissinger, Brzezinski, Clinton or Trump: the sowing of division between Russia and China. The only difference is which of the two they flatter and which they attack at any particular moment.

 

Thus, ‘Neo-Eurasianism’ is far from being the anti-western, even pro-global South, initiative it is sometimes falsely seen as. It is the polar opposite of the ‘tricontinentalism’ of the 1960s and 70s, seeking instead to unite with one section of western imperialism (Europe) whilst actually fulfilling the geopolitical goals of the other (the destruction of China). This may well ultimately backfire for Russia. Indeed, the very fascist militias now waging war against ethnic Russians in the Donbass were but a few short years ago part of Dugin’s ethnopluralist networks.  

 

Given the lack of a social base for genuine socialism (anti-imperialist and internationalist) in the west, leftists can be utilised by fascism without fear. By helping to delegitimise liberal democracy, leftists can inadvertently help lay the basis for fascism, which is, I believe, the natural home of the western masses in eras of crisis. Dugin is in this way in some ways similar to Trotskyist groups such as the British Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) – harnessing anger at the injustices of capitalism and imperialism but using this anger to actually further imperialist aims, whilst never challenging, and in fact perpetuating, colonial attitudes. In the case of SWP, for all their revolutionary spiel, when push comes to shove, they support Brexit, campaign for imperialist parties at election time, oppose all successful third world revolutions, etc. With Dugin, meanwhile, his programme amounts to a geopolitical attack on the USA’s chief rival combined with the scapegoating of migrants for the cultural depredations of capitalism. Duginism is a classic fascist blend of ‘anti-elite’ rhetoric, demands for ethnic purification, and an imperial foreign policy agenda, all dressed up in politically-correct appeals to cultural distinctiveness and anti-western tubthumping. Its particular danger comes from the deep inroads it has made into anti-imperialist and leftist circles.

This piece originally appeared in Counterpunch magazine

 

11.15.18
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Brexit, Russia and neofascism – my last ever appearance (presumably) on RT

Full transcript (including bits not broadcast on the video) 
Q: So Theresa May called it [her Brexit deal with the EU] a decisive step. Is this really the breakthrough she’s claiming, or could it all fall apart?
A: It could certainly fall apart. The deal itself is no surprise really. It basically amounts to the UK effectively staying in a customs union and Northern Ireland effectively staying in the single market – some version of which was always bound to happen since the government decided they didn’t want to reimpose a hard border in Ireland. There was going to be no other way round it really. So the deal is no surprise, and of course it will be spun by the Brexiteers, and is already being spun, as a major betrayal.
But the important thing about Brexit is that it has been a major victory for the far right. It’s a project of the far right and it’s already been a victory for them: it’s normalised virulent anti-immigration discourse, and whatever kind of Brexit happens now or doesn’t happen, it will for sure be spun as a betrayal, which will be used to further mobilise ultra-nationalist revanchist sentiment.
So when the annals come to be written of Europe’s second descent into fascism, which is what we are living through right now, then Brexit will be a majorly important milestone. It’s given a huge shot in the arm to the neofascist movements that are on the rise in Europe – and, since the Brexit referendum, many have actually entered government – but the really tragic thing about this is how Russia and yourselves at RT are actually supporting this neofascist upsurge, giving platforms regularly to these movements. The Soviet Union lost 27 million people to fascism last time around, so this does not end well for Russia. Already we see Russia is supporting Trump’s war plans on Iran, facilitating the oil sanctions by pumping extra oil, quietly facilitating US-Israeli plans to drive Iran out of Syria. This is very self-defeating for Russia, and it is very tragic to watch. And we are already seeing this policy coming back to bite Russia with Putin’s United Russia party actually losing out in elections to the fascist parties in Russia. So this is a really tragic part of this whole episode; the role that Russia and yourselves at RT are playing in pushing this neofascist upsurge of which the Brexit vote was in many ways the trigger.
Q: Something you mentioned before is that a key sticking point so far has been Northern Ireland. Is there any real clarity over how this could be resolved?
A: Well, there’s clarity; it’s clear that this was going to have to be the case from the get-go. If there was not to be a reimposition of a hard border in Ireland, and there was not to be a border within the Irish Sea, then the whole of the UK would have to accept the rules and regulations of the EU to continue trading with them without a border, that was always going to have to be the case; the chequers agreement confirmed that, and ever since, Theresa May has been trying to fudge that issue and has still tried to fudge it with this agreement. But it’s clear enough, and it was always going to be that way. But like I say, the genie’s out of the bottle with Brexit: it’s been a far right driven project from the get-go – however much leftists might want to delude themselves that it’s their project, it’s not – and they’re driving the agenda. The government didn’t really want to leave the EU so they are following as close as they can to a Brexit in name only, and this was always going to be the case. But the danger is, by capitulating to this far right project, they are only mobilising it further still and giving it further grist to the mill.
Q: My thoughts were that most of the British politicians and the British citizens as a whole somehow betrayed by this deal because – don’t you think that it doesn’t match the expectations that people and the politicians had when they voted for Brexit?
A: Sure, that’s true, because everyone deluded themselves: everyone who supported Brexit projected their own fantasies of what Brexit would be and decided that was Brexit. But in fact – and I’m not a supporter of Brexit – but as the Leavers have pointed out, the government is not really committed to Brexit, so it is trying to achieve a fudge where Britain will remain as close as possible to the EU without actually being in it. But the desires of many of the Brexiteers were projections of their own fantasies. There is a parallel to be drawn with the Arab Spring. When the Arab Spring, so called, happened, people in the West, of all different political hues, just projected their own fantasies as to what it was: so liberals thought it was a liberal democratic uprising, socialists thought that it was a great class struggle, and so on. The reality is that it was none of those things; and it is the same for Brexit: Left Brexiteers delude themselves that it is this great anti-neoliberal upsurge, the far right believe there is going to be this great British Empire 2.0 nonsense; so the reality is that actual Brexit is never going to meet people’s crazed delusional fantasies; how could it ever do that?
Q: Don’t you think that tomorrow another parliament session will take place, Theresa May is going to be attacked from both parties, because – well, I don’t expect anyone to praise her and say that it is the best deal ever.
A: Absolutely not. Well it’s really down to Labour now. Because it is unlikely the DUP will support this because, contrary to the promises made to the DUP – that there would be no separate arrangement for Northern Ireland – there will be a separate arangement for Northern Ireland, in which Northern Ireland effectively remains part of the single market, whilst the rest of the UK does not. That breaks the DUP’s red line, so they’re unlikely to support it: so straight away there Theresa May has lost her majority. And, of course, we already know that quite a sizeable handful at the least of Tory backbenchers – it could be anywhere from 30 to maybe up to 100 – will almost certainly vote against a deal – Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson have already put their cards on the table and said they’re against it, they’re not going to vote for it. So if the opposition parties oppose it then the deal is dead. So really it is up to Labour now, and there is quite a strong likelihood that, if not the official leadership, then at least a sizeable, perhaps the majority of Labour MPs, might end up supporting this deal. So Theresa May, her future and the future of her deal, is now in the hands of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party.
Q: And what do you expect – what are your forecasts on a short term perspective?
A: Well it is very difficult to predict. There are a number of possibilities. One is that MPs are effectively emotionally blackmailed, or economically blackmailed, into voting for the deal. The threat from the markets, of course, will loom very large. The idea would be that if you don’t vote for this deal then we are back to the cliff-edge no-deal scenario, the pound might plummet and so forth, so there will be a lot of pressure on MPs along the lines of ‘if you don’t vote for this deal, then you will bring about an economic catastrophe on our head’. And MPs might just capitulate to that logic and just vote it through, that’s possible. The other option, of course, then is that MPs vote it down. And then where do we go from there? The option is then a no-deal or reverse Brexit. And to be honest, I think all three options are really on the table. It’s impossible to predict. I think the majority of praliamentarians – the vast majority of whom were remainers – would obviously prefer to reverse Brexit than to have a no-deal Brexit. But how they bring that about, through another referendum, through another election, is very hard to foresee. But I still think that it is quite likely, still, that article 50 is revoked. If the deal is not voted through, and Theresa May’s government falls, then the new government may just decide to rescind article 50 and say, look, we can’t go for a no-deal Brexit, it’s too damaging, there’s no parliamentary majority for the deal, so that leaves only – we’ll just have to reverse article 50. And the post-Theresa May government – of whatever political party – may well consider that the only viable option. So i think that is still a very realistic possibility.
Q: And how likely is it that Theresa May’s government will fall?
A: Well, as I say, it’s really on a knife edge. If the deal doesn’t win parliamentary support, I think it will be difficult for Theresa May to carry on. However, of course, then there is the issue of – would her own party risk seeing her government fall, potentially triggering a general election that they might lose? But the [Brexiteer] conservative backbenchers – they play a long game. They were willing to sit back and let Theresa May dig her own grave; I think they may well be willing to sit back and let Jeremy Corbyn dig his own grave as well. People like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg are strategic thinkers, very machiavellian, and they play a long game. So I think these kind of people would be willing to risk even a Labour government if they believed that that government itself would fall over the issue of Brexit, allowing them to then come back in the future and pick up the pieces. There are precedents for this. The Tories did this in the early 1920s: they handed over power to Labour, when they didn’t have to, knowing that Labour would alienate its own supporters, demoralise its support base, and then they could storm back into power, which is exactly what happened. So I think Theresa May’s government could fall – on its own sword – because these guys play a long game.
09.09.18
by

Was Trump’s attack on the lira Putin’s idea?

 

Trump Impeachment Odds Slashed to Shortest Ever After ...

What did Trump and Putin agree in their secret meeting in Helsinki in July? Trump’s attack on the Turkish economy has given Putin just the leverage he needs with Erdogan over Idlib.

Trump’s critics warn us that his belligerent policies towards Iran and Turkey are pushing them into Moscow’s arms, even as they seek evidence of ‘Russian collusion’ in all the wrong places. This collusion is not to be found in shady backroom campaign meetings; it is hiding in plain sight.

“He does things the right way” Trump said of Erdogan last month. It shouldn’t have been a surprise; the two men have much in common after all: nationalist tubthumping autocrats with a contempt for constitutional limits on presidential might, who see few problems which cannot be solved through the right combination of willpower and firepower. His comment specifically referred to Erdogan’s ability to ignore his own parliament, and was followed up with a mutually aggrandising fistbump. Yet the budding bromance was to be short-lived.

 

Days later, Trump entered his now infamous two-hour private meeting with Putin in Helsinki. According to their own account, one of the main items on the agenda was Syria, which for seven years has been the battleground for a proxy war between (among others) the two men’s respective countries. In this war, Turkey and the US were supposed to be on the same side; yet Trump, on Syria as so many issues, has been ambivalent as to US goals in the conflict. The original objective, of course, was to transform Syria – an independent regional power allied to both Iran and Hezbollah – into a failed state on the Iraqi/ Libyan/ Afghan model. Yet the Syrian state – with a level of popular support surprising to those western observers susceptible to their own propaganda – stubbornly refused to be destroyed. Russian intervention helped turn the tide in September 2015, and since then, one victory after another – most notably in Aleppo – has made it clear that not only will the Syrian government survive, but that it will very likely restore its authority nationwide. Most rebel-held cities have now been retaken by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), whilst the Kurdish YPG – who have always, correctly, feared the US-backed sectarian insurgency far more than they have feared Assad – have entered into negotiations with the government, leading to a growing role for the SAA in YPG-held areas as well. The only major population centre still fully outside government control, then, is Idlib, home to almost 3 million, and largely under the control of Hay’et Tahrir Al Sham, the latest rebrand of Syria’s Al Qaeda franchise.

 

All the signs are that a government offensive on this last rebel stronghold is imminent, with government forces amassing at the western edge of the province near Jisr al Shughour. Yet one major obstacle remains. Turkey.

 

Turkish troops are now present on the ground in Idlib at around a dozen ‘observation posts’ set up under the terms of the ‘de-escalation zones’ agreed by Iran, Turkey and Russia at the Astana conference, making a direct assault on the governorate very difficult without risking a major escalation with Turkey – still, despite everything, a NATO member. Furthermore, Turkey wields extensive influence over many of the rebel groups present in Idlib. Back in May, Turkey formed a coalition of around a dozen anti-government militias there under the banner of the ‘National Liberation Front’. Earlier this month, they persuaded two HTS splinters – Nour al-Din al-Zenki, the US-UK-funded group infamous for their livestream beheading of an 11 year old, and Ahrar al-Sham, another Al-Qaeda in all but name and attitude to the west – to sign up. Through this force, Turkey now claims to control up to 100,000 fighters in Idlib, in addition to its own troops on the ground. In other words – Turkey has positioned itself to act as a major spoiler to any forthcoming Idlib operation.

 

Russia, then, seeks to pressure Turkey into agreeing to, if not a surrender of the province, then at least the removal of its troops, and a negotiated settlement with its NLF proxies – perhaps even a joint operation against HTS by the SAA, the NLF and Russia. This might be acceptable to Turkey – given a guarantee of influence in the aftermath – and Russia, but would be very hard to swallow for the Syrian government, who have no desire to share power with Al Qaeda lite. What Russia needs, then, in order to oversee an Idlib settlement on its own terms, is some kind of leverage over Turkey.

 

Enter Trump. Trump’s attack on the Turkish currency – already under pressure from the rising dollar due to its huge mountain of debt – precipitated an unprecedented decline in its value, only stemmed by a $15 billion loan from Qatar. But this is likely to only be a temporary solution. Cut out of US markets, and facing further sanctions over its purchases of Iranian oil, what Erdogan needs is a new, more dependable ally than his volatile erstwhile buddy in the White House.

 

Enter Putin. On August 10th, following the Trump tweet that triggered the lira’s plunge, Erdogan immediately spoke to Putin to discuss “trade and economic cooperation”. 3 days later, Erdogan explained that he had “made advancements in our ties with Russia in accordance to our benefits and interests”. This was followed up with a visit to Ankara by Foreign Minister Lavrov the next day and then, at the end of last week, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was received in Moscow by Putin himself. Russia had already reaffirmed its commitment to the delivery of its much-feared S-400 missile system by early next year, and made some vague promises to use the lira in its transactions with Turkey at some unspecified point in the future. But nothing new, nothing concrete. Russia was signalling that it was ready to come to Turkey’s aid; but at a price. That price may well be Turkish support for Russian proposals in Idlib, which Putin will be hoping to finalise in the forthcoming Syria summit between Turkey, Russia and Iran next week. Already, the statements coming out of Turkey following the various meetings which have taken place have indicated something of a shift in the Turkish position, with Cavusoglu admitting the presence of “terrorist groups” in Idlib, which need to “neutralised” – “to alleviate the concerns of our Russian counterparts”. At the same time, Putin can use the prospect of Turkish acquiescence to an operation in Idlib as leverage on the Syrian government to accept both its own proposals for recognition of Kurdish autonomy and Israeli demands on the Iranian presence in Syria. Such an outcome would allow both Netanyahu and Trump to claim a much-needed victory in their campaign to ‘rollback’ Iran, whilst simultaneously increasing Iranian and Syrian dependence on Russia. Trump’s attack on the lira, in other words, by throwing Turkey into Moscow’s arms, may have been the key to unlock the final stages of a Syria settlement under Russian tutelage. This is the real Trump-Russia collusion: not in backroom campaign meetings, but hiding in plain sight.

This article was originally published on Middle East Eye 

07.31.18
by

Is Russia facilitating Trump’s strangulation of Iran?

Image result for trump putin

Since the earliest days on the campaign trail, it has never been in doubt who Trump and his team have had in their sights. “Iran is the biggest destabilizing force in the Middle East and its policies are contrary to our interests,” Defence Secretary Mattis told his Senate confirmation hearing, having previously claimed the country posed a bigger security threat than either ISIS or Al Qaeda. Mike Pence called Iran the “leading state sponsor of terrorism” whilst new National Security Advisor John Bolton has for years called for Iran to be bombed. Trump himself, in his own little remix of Pence’s phrase, has called Iran “The Number One State of Sponsored Terror”, which presumably means something derogatory.

 

China, of course, was famously accused of “raping our country” by Trump in 2016, whilst White House aide Peter Navarro claimed the country was waging “economic aggression” against the US. Former National Security Advisor Steve Bannon announced this week that “we are at war with China”.

 

Iran and China, then, have been favoured rhetorical targets since day one – but this year that rhetoric has morphed into all-out economic warfare. This month alone, Trump has unleashed tariffs on $60 billion of Chinese goods, threatened to do so on $500billion more, and announced his intention to cut Iranian oil exports to zero by November. These weapons of financial destruction are openly aimed at crippling and sabotaging China and Iran in order to stymie their development and bring them to their knees. Yet at the same time as this is happening, the leader of Iran and China’s major geopolitical ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, has continued to be courted and flattered by Trump. What is going on?

 

On the face of it, these hostile acts against two of Russia’s key allies have, as one might expect, been condemned by Putin’s government. Prior to Trump’s May announcement that he would intended to violate the Iranian nuclear deal by restoring sanctions, the Kremlin warned of “harmful consequences” should he do so. And following the recent Helsinki summit between the two leaders, Putin continued to back the deal (albeit on the grounds of limiting Iranian sovereignty rather than defending it) stating that “The Russian position remains unchanged regarding the Iranian nuclear program, and we believe that the JCPOA is an instrument that makes it possible to guarantee the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons in general and in the region in particular,” adding that the deal had turned Iran into one of the most heavily IAEA-monitored countries in the world. Russia similarly denounced the tariffs slapped on China earlier this month.

 

Yet, behind the rhetorical opposition, Russian actions are facilitating Trump’s aggression. Following 18 months of oil production cuts agreed by Russia and Saudi Arabia in 2016, which had successfully raised oil prices out of the slump into which they had fallen, Russia last month proposed an unexpected and immediate reversal of this policy. The low oil prices which had plagued oil markets before the 2016 cuts were agreed had caused huge problems for producer countries such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, leading many to believe that the Saudis had been ordered by the US to flood the market in order to sabotage the economies of its geopolitical foes. The new production quotas, then, had given these countries some much-needed breathing space; yet, this June, Russia put forward a proposal to OPEC to increase production by 1.8million barrels per day (bpd) – and, unusually, proposed that these increases were to start kicking in within weeks. In the end, a pact to increase production by 1 million barrels per day – spearheaded by Russia and Saudi Arabia – was agreed by OPEC and non-OPEC countries in late June. The rise was opposed by Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Algeria, with Iranian oil minister Bijan Zanganeh commenting ahead of the meeting that “OPEC is not the organization to receive instruction from President Trump … OPEC is not part of the Department of Energy of the United States”.

 

Within days of the adoption of the Russian-led production increase, the Trump administration announced its plans to “reduce Iranian oil exports to zero” by November 4th. Questioned on whether such a policy might cause disruption as countries scrambled to replace supplies, State Department policy director Brian Hooks remarked that “we are confident there is sufficient global spare oil capacity.” Russia’s push for increased production had, in effect, smoothed the path for the next round of Trump’s strangulation of Iran. It was precisely this deal which lay behind Trump’s brazen claim that world oil supplies would plug the gap created by the loss of Iranian crude; without the end to Russian-Saudi production limits, this would have been unthinkable. As things stand, however, all the pieces are in place for Trump to apply serious pressure on all importers of Iranian oil. Whilst the Russian-Saudi deal offers alternative sources of supply, the trade war now underway demonstrates Trump’s willingness to use tariffs against those who do not bend to his geopolitical will. Whilst Trump has openly threatened sanctions against those who do not heed his call to end their dealings with Iran, it is quite possible that those who do heed it will be rewarded with tariff exemptions. China, in particular – Iran’s biggest trading partner, and now threatened with tariffs on all $500bilion of their exports to the US – will be particularly under pressure.

 

On the surface, then, Russia’s actions appear self-defeating. The end to the, hugely successful, production quotas of the previous 18 months immediately triggered a drop in oil prices – Russia’s main export commodity – whilst facilitating the escalation of US economic warfare against key Russian ally Iran. Yet there are several reasons Russia may be supporting Trump’s moves.

 

Most obviously, Iran is a major competitor with Russia for oil export markets – especially in Europe. European hopes to reduce dependence on Russian energy supplies are likely to be seriously dashed if they can no longer turn to Iran as an alternative supplier. Quite simply, Russia will sell more oil without Iranian competition.

 

More than this, however, even Trump’s use of tariffs as leverage to push countries away from Iran could be to Russia’s benefit. If Trump does indeed make tariff-free access to the US market conditional on cutting investment and trade with Iran, China would face a major dilemma.

 

China has for some years been not only Iran’s major trading partner, but investment financier as well. In 2011, China  signed a  $20 billion  agreement  to  boost  bilateral  cooperation  in Iran’s industrial and mining sectors. Today, China is poised to take over development of the massive South Pars oil and gas field should the French company TOTAL pull out, as they are widely expected to do, whilst a $3billion deal was recently signed giving SINOPEC the right to expand the Abadan oil refinery in Khuzestan Province. Meanwhile, reports Fox News, “With the U.S. Treasury putting pressure on Western banks to not make any deals with Iran, the Chinese state-owned CITIC bank is extending lines of credit worth $10 billion for Iranian banks. This funding will finance water, energy and transport projects. To bypass U.S. sanctions, the lines of credit will use euros and yuan currencies”.

But most significant for Russia is the 2017 $1.5 billion deal made by the Chinese Export-Import Bank to finance a high-speed railway between Tehran and Mashhad. The railway is envisioned to become part of China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ , creating a high-speed transit route between central Asia and Europe that will shave weeks off current travel times.

This May – in a clear act of defiance to the US – China opened a new train line between China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Tehran, shortening travel time by 20 days compared to cargo ship. Once the full vision of  a Chinese built high-tech, high-speed rail network across central Asia is realised, however, the current ‘Northern route’ through Russia is likely to be rendered all but redundant.

 

Could it be, then, that Russia sees it as in its own interests to facilitate Trump’s quest to chase Chinese investment out of Iran in order to preserve its trade routes and access to European oil markets?

 

If so, it is likely to be disappointed. For Iran is central not only to the Belt and Road Initiative – China’s multi-trillion, multi-decade long ‘geoeconomic’ programme – but also to its defence strategy. As correctly observed in a recent piece published by The Diplomat, “Iran constitutes [China’s] true priority. China has nurtured bilateral relations with Tehran for decades, leveraging a common resentment toward Western dominance. This partnership has great geostrategic importance to both nations. Thanks to its oil and gas reserves, Iran could help Beijing withstand a U.S. attack on its SLOCs (Sea Lines of Communication).”

For China, much as it naturally seeks to avoid further punishment from the US, Iran is simply too important to be bargained away. Unfortunately not so, it seems, for Moscow.

Originally published in Middle East Eye, July 2018

05.03.18
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The war on Iran has begun. Russia must end it.

Things are escalating again in one of Syria’s many wars. Last Sunday, 29th April, two massive strikes – presumed by Israel – reportedly hit the Syrian Arab Army’s 47th Brigade military base and arms depots near Hama, as well as Nairab Military Airport in Aleppo. The attack, thought to have been carried out using powerful ‘bunker-buster’ missiles, created a fireball which could be seen for miles, and triggered a shock measuring 2.6 on the Richter scale, felt as far as Turkey and Lebanon.  It is thought the strikes targeted Iranian surface-to-surface missiles intended for deployment in Syria, and killed 26 – 38 people, including 11 Iranians.

 

The attack appears to have been coordinated with the USA, coming just hours after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left Jerusalem – where, according to Haaretz, he had “thrilled Netanyahu with hawkish talk on Iran”. That same day, noted the Times of Israel, “news also broke of a phone call between Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump”, whilst Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman was meeting his US counterpart James Mattis in Washington. This feverish activity came less than a week after “Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of the US army’s Central Command, or CENTCOM, whose sphere of responsibility includes Syria and Iran, made a largely unpublicized visit to Israel.” The article concluded that “All this is beginning to look rather like a coordinated Israeli-American operation to limit Iran’s military activities in Syria — simultaneously conveying the message to Moscow that Russia’s green light for Iran to establish itself militarily in Syria is not acceptable in Jerusalem and Washington.” The war on Iran, in other words, has begun.

 

In hindsight, it has been underway for some time. Israel has reportedly conducted over 100 airstrikes in Syria since 2011, but a stepchange occurred last July. On July 9th 2017, Russia and the US agreed on a de-escalation zone in Southwest Syria, which, according to Foreign Policy journal analyst Jonathan Spyer, Israel believed “could seriously complicate the de facto Israeli safeguards in place against Iranian infiltration of the border”. In the four months which followed this agreement, Israeli jets made over 750 incursions into Syrian airspace, an average of six per day, and totalling 3200 hours in the country. Clearly, some serious reconnaissance activity was taking place. Then on October 16th, Israeli jets struck a Russian-supplied S-200 air defense battery in the Damascus area. The attack took place during a meeting in Tel Aviv between the Israeli and Russian Defence Ministers, and was perhaps calculated to send a message to Syria that they can not rely on Russian protection.

 

Then, in January 2018, with the battle against IS almost won, Rex Tillerson announced new goals for the 2000 US troops in Syria, vowing that they would remain until “Iranian influence in Syria is diminished, and Syria’s neighbors are secure from all threats emanating from Syria.” This was followed in February by calls by the French foreign minister for Iran to ‘leave Syria’, and a warning from the International Crisis Group that Israel had “updated its red lines – signalling it would take matters into its own hands if necessary to keep Iran from establishing a permanent military presence in Syria”.

 

Since then, Israel has moved from targeting Syrian army and Hezbollah convoys to the directly targeting of Iranian personnel and facilities.It’s shooting down of an Iranian drone on February 9th led to one of its own F-16s being downed by the Syrian army after it bombed the drone’s command centre, the first time an Israeli warplane had been shot down since the 1980s. Yet, in a very rare admission of responsibility, Israel still called the mission a success, claiming that between one third and one half of Syria’s air defences had been destroyed in the strikes.

 

Two months later, on April 9th, Israeli missiles again struck the same ‘T4’ military base they hit in February. The target this time, however, was specifically Iranian installations and equipment, and 14 Iranian soldiers were killed. According to one Israeli official, this was first time Israel had attacked ‘live Iranian targets’. It was also, apparently, the first time Israel had failed to inform Russia to provide advance warning of an upcoming strike, breaking the ‘de-confliction’ agreement made between Israel and Russia right at the start of Russian entry into the Syrian conflict in 2015.

 

Russia’s response was similarly unprecedented, with Russia immediately revealing Israel’s role in the attack, and Putin calling Netanyahu to warn him that Israel can no longer expect to be able to attack Syria with impunity. Then, following the US-UK-French airstrikes on Syria on 13th April, the chief of the Russian General Staff’s main operations directorate, Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy, floated the idea of providing Syria with the powerful Russian-made S300 air defence system. The S300, capable of tracking up to 100 targets simultaneously over a range of 200km, “would create a no-go situation for Israel if allowed to be made operational by the Syrian regime”, according to former US naval officer Jennifer Dyer, adding that “The kinds of low-level, preemptive strikes (in Syria) the IAF [Israeli Air Force] has executed in the last few years, against Hezbollah targets and the special weapons targets of Iran and the Assad regime, would become virtually impossible. Israel would lose the ability to preempt the ‘build-up’ to war ”. Russia had originally signed a contract with Syria to deliver the S300 system in 2010, but this was scrapped after pressure from Israel. But, on April 23rd, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that the decision to reverse that suspension and supply the S300 had now been made, with only the technical details left to iron out. Two days later, the Syrian embassy in Moscow claimed that the S300 had in fact already arrived a month ago and was being deployed. The Russian authorities immediately denied this, and reiterated that no final decision on whether or not to supply the S300 had in fact been taken. A few days later, the Israelis struck again, this time with their earth-shaking bunker busters, directly targeting Iranian troops and equipment for the second time. No S300, you see.

 

Media reports, both mainstream and alternative (my own included!), are increasingly nervous about the scenario now unfolding, and rightly so. Yet, whilst the danger of escalation and miscalculation – and specifically, the drawing in of Russia into the Israeli-Iranian conflict developing in Syria – remains real, many analysts have overstated the friction between Russia and Israel – and, indeed, the convergence of interests between Russia and Iran.

 

Despite both being opposed to western-backed regime change in Syria, Russian and Iranian objectives in the region are in fact very different. According to intelligence analysts Stratfor, “Russia’s strategic vision is chiefly focused on eliminating sources of instability and preventing U.S.-led military interventions”, with a “broader goal of establishing itself as an indispensable guarantor of collective security in the Middle East”. In Syria, therefore, the Russians have the “limited objective of ensuring that Assad controls enough territory to negotiate with Syrian opposition factions from a position of strength” in order to create a mediated, negotiated settlement, overseen and guaranteed by Russia.

 

The Iranians, however, are more focused on “containing Saudi Arabia’s power projection capacity across the Arab world”, leading to an “unwillingness to suspend military operations in Syria until Assad has completely vanquished opposition forces….Iran’s belief in the feasibility of a military solution in Syria has made it less willing than Russia to diplomatically engage with Syrian opposition or Kurdish factions during diplomatic negotiations, limiting the scope of the Moscow-Tehran partnership.” Furthermore, “Iran’s use of Syrian territory to create a permanent transit point of weaponry to Hezbollah has alarmed Russian policymakers who seek to preserve strong relations with Israel.”

 

From this point of view, far from seeking to protect Iranian entrenchment in Syria, Russia has a direct interest in restricting it. Israel’s strikes may thus serve a function for Russia, putting pressure on Iran to ‘rein in’ the activities Russia views as disruptive to its own aims. Furthermore, Russia may believe that the Iranian presence in Iran – as an alternative source of support for President Assad – makes the Syrian government itself less willing to sign up to Russia’s diplomatic initiatives. Indeed, on a very basic level, a reduced Iranian presence leaves Assad more thoroughly dependent on Russia – a point, no doubt, made by Netanyahu on at least one of his seven meetings with Putin over the last year. And anyway, a cynic might argue, now the rebellion has been all but quashed, haven’t the Iranians served their purpose?

 

Many people claim that the alliance with Iran is too important for Russia to risk a gambit like this. And no doubt it is. But what if there is no risk? Whilst the Russian-Iranian alliance remains crucial for Moscow’s projection of power into the Middle East, Russia may well calculate that Iran has no interest in jeopardising this however poorly they are treated by their Russian ‘ally’ in Syria. After all, the provision of protection against a US attack on Iran is hardly a buyer’s market – Russia is a monopoly supplier. Safe in the knowledge that Iran really has no-one else to turn to, Russia can afford to let Israel loose on them.

 

Certainly, Israel’s belligerent Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman does not appear to see Russia as an obstacle to Israeli plans for Syria. “What is important to understand is that the Russians, they are very pragmatic players,” he said in Washington recently, “At the end of the day, they are reasonable guys, it’s possible to close deals with them and we understand what is their interest,”. He certainly doesn’t sound like he is referring to a steadfast ally of Israel’s number one foe.

 

It may even be that Russia are still, against all hope, expecting to get something out of the Trump administration, in the form of sanctions relief, or at least some recognition of their security concerns in Ukraine and eastern Europe. Such hopes are surely forlorn.

 

I would like to think Russia is not so cynical as to stand back and allow Israeli aggression against Iran in order to gain leverage in its own relationship with both the Iranians and Syrians, nor so naive as to expect anything from the US. But the omens are not good. The failure to deliver the S300s, or to create any other meaningful deterrent, even after the opening shots in this new war on Iran were fired on April 9th, suggests either cowardice or collusion. And the Russians are not cowards.

 

Yet acquiescing to western aggression has not turned out well for the Russians in the past. Their failure to veto the UN-blessed crucifixion of Iraq in 1991, let’s not forget, was rewarded with nothing more than an economic straitjacket leading to the biggest collapse of living standards (outside of war) in recorded history. Twenty years later, when Russia agreed not to veto the west’s destruction of Libya, what followed was not gratitude, or acceptance, or respect, but western support for an anti-Russian fascist coup on Russia’s western flank, followed by the imposition of a vicious sanctions regime.

 

If Russia really are going to allow their erstwhile Iranian comrades to get wiped out, they really should understand that this is not simply a matter of Israel’s ‘legitimate security concerns’. This is about eliminating Iran’s chance of building up a deterrent in advance of an all-out war against Iran itself. And the destruction of states such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Iran is, in turn, about isolating Russia when its own turn comes. This year will see the 80th anniversary of the Munich agreement, another occasion when major powers sacrificed supposed allies in the hope of saving their own skins. That didn’t go so well. Never mind the S300s, Russia need to provide S400s to the Syrian Arab Army and put a stop to this new war before its too late.

 

04.18.18
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Yes, a world war is imminent

Image result for warships mediterranean syria
Just over a quarter-century before the outbreak of the First World War, global capitalism was in the throes of a deep economic crisis. This original ‘Great Depression’, which lasted from 1873 to 1896, saw tens of millions perish from famine as the ‘great powers’ shifted the burden as far as possible onto their colonies; whilst, at home, anti-systemic movements such as the ‘New Unionism’ burst onto the scene in the capitalist heartlands, presenting a serious challenge to bourgeois rule. Africa was torn apart by imperial powers desperate to secure monopoly access to its riches, and rivalries between these powers constantly threatened to erupt into outright war. In the midst of all this, one particularly astute political commentator gave a disturbingly prophetic insight as to how the crisis would ultimately be resolved, predicting a: “world war of an extent and violence hitherto unimagined. Eight to ten million soldiers will be at each other’s throats and in the process they will strip Europe barer than a swarm of locusts. The depredations of the Thirty Years War compressed into three or four years and extended over the entire continent; famine, disease, the universal lapse into barbarism, both of the armies and people, in the wake of acute misery; irretrievable dislocation of our artificial system of trade, industry and credit, ending in general bankruptcy; collapse of the old states and their conventional political wisdom to the point where crowns will roll into the gutter by the dozen, and no one will be around to pick them up; the absolute impossibility of seeing where it will all end and who will emerge as victor from the battle; only one consequence is absolutely certain: general exhaustion and the conditions for the ultimate victory of the working class.”

The commentator was Marx’s lifelong collaborator Friedrich Engels. The accuracy of his prediction – right down to the numbers killed and the length of the war, not to mention the revolutions and collapse of empires that would result – is truly remarkable. Yet Engels had no crystal ball. What he foresaw was nothing more than the logical outcome of the workings of the global capitalist-imperialist system, which constantly and inexorably pushes towards world war.

The logic is basically this. Capitalism, with its combination of rapid technological progress plus derisory wage payments – both tendencies a ‘natural’ result of competition – leads to a situation where markets cannot be found for its goods. This is because capital’s capacity to produce constantly outstrips the capacity of consumers to consume, as these consumers are, in the main, the very workers whose wages are driven down, or who are made redundant altogether, by improved technology. Ultimately, this results in a crisis of overproduction, with markets glutted, and workers thrown out of work in their millions. Already in 1848, four decades before his prediction of world war, Engels (and Marx) had written that such crises tended to be “resolved” through “the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces” – in other words, the wholesale closure of industry. Through closures of the most inefficient industries, surplus production would eventually be reduced, and profitability restored. But in so doing, capitalists were effectively increasing the concentration of capital in the hands of the most ‘efficient’ industries, whose productive capacity in the future would render the underlying contradiction yet more insoluble still, and were thereby “paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and diminishing the means whereby crises are avoided”. For Engels, the crisis underway by the 1880s was so extensive that the destruction of capital required to overcome it would take more than mere closures – it would take all-out war.

The destruction of capital, however, is not the only means by which to overcome overproduction crises. The other option, said Marx and Engels, is “the conquest of new markets or the more thorough exploitation of old ones”. The period of the late-nineteenth century saw a renewed ‘Scramble for Africa’ as each imperial power sought to grab territories which might one day serve as both sources of raw materials and markets for surplus capital. In North America, the USA was completing its own colonisation of the West and South in imperial wars against the Native Americans and Mexico. By the close of the century, however, all the ‘available’ territories had been conquered. From then on in, argued Lenin, the capture of new colonies could only be at the expense of another colonial power – ushering in a new, imperial, phase of capitalism with an inbuilt drive towards world war.

We have now witnessed two episodes of this cycle of capitalist crisis mutating into world war, the second much more successful in terms of the destruction of capital than the first. Indeed it was so successful that it paved the way for a ‘Golden Era’ of capitalist prosperity lasting almost three decades. But then, once again, the inevitable crisis tendencies began to set in.

The colonial, imperialist nature of postwar capitalism has, to some extent, been disguised by the formal political independence of most of the formerly colonised world. With an unambiguous and unrivalled lead in technological capacity, the Western nations have not required direct colonisation in order to guarantee essentially ‘captive’ markets for their goods and capital. The former colonies have largely been dependent on products, finance and technology from the imperial world without the need for formal political control – and this dependence has been backed up with economic blackmail through international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank where possible, and direct military force against resistant nations where necessary.

Such dependence, however, has been decisively eroded since the beginning of the new millenium. The rise of China, in particular, has completely destroyed the West’s monopoly on finance and market access for the global South: African, Asian and Latin American countries no longer have to rely on US markets for their goods or on World Bank loans for their infrastructure development. China is now an alternative provider of all these, and generally on far superior terms of trade than those offered by the West. In times of continued economic stagnation, however, this loss of their (neo)colonies is entirely unacceptable to the Western capitalist nations, and threatens the entire carefully crafted system of global extortion on which their own prosperity is based.

Increasingly unable to rely on economic coercion alone to keep countries within its ‘sphere of influence’, then, the West have been turning more and more to military force. Indeed, the US, UK and France have been permanently at war since the eve of the new millennium – starting with Yugoslavia, through Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria and Yemen (to say nothing of proxy wars such as that in the Congo, or the ‘drone wars’ waged in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere). In each case, the aim has been the same – to create, as far as possible, conditions of total state collapse. For the creation of ‘failed states’ serves not only to thwart any genuinely independent development, but also to restrict the flow of resources to China (by disrupting nationally-controlled production and facilitating western-run private piracy), create new markets in private security, and provide liquidity for the western banking system through facilitating major criminal enterprises (such as growing heroin, recruiting private sectarian armies to use against other states, and people smuggling). And ultimately, state collapse is deemed a necessary imposition when even the CIA-favoured anti-communist strongmen of the past can no longer be relied on to snub China in favour of the West; indeed, it is entirely indicative of this new era of decreasing western economic power that several of these wars were waged against states whose leaders were once in the pocket of the US (Iraq and Afghanistan) or who they had hoped to buy off (Libya and Syria).

Thus, where it was once, at least in part, the product of productive superiority, the continued supremacy of the West in international affairs is increasingly reliant on military force alone. And even this military superiority is diminishing daily.

Predictions of the length of time left before the Chinese economy overtakes the US economy continue to shrink. In 2016, China’s share of the world economy had grown to 15%, compared to the USA’s 25%. But with a growth rate currently three times that of the USA, the difference is expected to decline rapidly; at this rate, the Chinese economy is on course to overtake that of the US by 2026. In fact, once adjustments are made for purchasing power parity and differential prices, the Chinese economy is already larger. Furthermore, Chinese manufacturing output has been higher than that of the US for over a decade, and exports are one third higher, whilst China produces double the number of graduates annually than the US.

Such developments, however, are not of economic significance only: for it is only a matter of time before economic superiority is converted into military superiority. And this gives the US and its hangers-on an ever-diminishing window of opportunity in which to actually USE their military superiority in order to preserve their deteriorating global power.

Clearly the strategy hitherto has been to avoid direct war with China and its key ally Russia, and instead to focus on ‘taking out’ its real or potential allies amongst states less able to defend themselves. But Russia’s role as a spoiler in the regime change operation in Syria has demonstrated to the US that this may no longer be possible. This has led to a split within the US ruling class on the issue of how to deal with Russia, with one side seeking to purchase Russian acquiescence to wars against Iran and China (advocated by the faction supporting Trump) and the other aiming to simply ‘regime change’ Russia itself (advocated by the Hillary faction). At the heart of both is the attempt to break the alliance between Russia and China, in the case of Hillary by pulling China away from Russia, and for Trump, pulling Russia away from China.

The point is, however, that neither strategy is likely to work, as clearly the breaking of the China-Russia axis is aimed at weakening both of them. Furthermore, even if Putin were prepared to ditch Iran, or even China, for the right price (such as lifting sanctions, or recognising Russian sovereignty over Crimea), there is no way Congress would allow Trump to pay such a price. Trump would dearly love to offer to lift sanctions – but this is not within his gift; instead he can merely offer sops such as withdrawal from Syria, or pre-warning of missile attacks on Russia’s allies – hardly enough to lure Russia into the suicidal severing of alliances with its most important allies.

This conundrum puts the unthinkable squarely on the agenda: direct war with Russia. The last month has shown clearly how, and how rapidly, this is developing. Britain’s carefully calibrated efforts to create a worldwide diplomatic break with Russia can now clearly be seen as a prelude to what was almost certainly planned to be – and may yet become – an all-out war with Iran on the Syrian battlefield. This scenario appears to have been averted for now by Russia’s refusal to countenance it, and the West’s fear of launching such an operation in the face of direct Russian threats, but such incidents are only likely to increase. It is only a matter of time before Russia will be put to the test.

It is easy to see how the Syrian war could lead to a major escalation: indeed, it is difficult to see how it could not. In Washington, there is much talk of the need to ‘confront’ Iran in Syria, and recent Israeli attacks on Iranian positions in Syria indicate that they are itching to get this confrontation under way, with or without prior US approval. Once underway, however, an Iranian-Israeli conflict could very easily draw in Russia and the US. Russia could hardly be expected to stand back whilst Israel reversed all its hard fought gains of the past two and a half years – whilst demonstrating the feebleness of Russian ‘protection’ – and would likely retaliate, or at the very least (and more likely) provide its allies with the means to do so. Indeed, Putin reportedly warned Netanyahu last week that he can no longer expect to attack Syria with impunity. And once Israelis start getting killed by Russian hardware, it is hard to see how the US could not get involved.

This is just one possible scenario for the kind of escalation that would lead to war with Russia. Economic war with China is already underway, and US warships are already readying themselves to cut off China’s supply lines in the South China Sea. Each specific provocation and escalation may or may not lead to a direct showdown with one or both of these powers. What is clear, however, is that this is the direction in which Western imperialism is clearly headed. It has built up its unparalleled armoury for one reason only – to protect its dominant world position. The time is soon coming when it will have to use it – and use it against a power that can actually fight back – whilst it still has a chance of winning.

An edited version of this article was originally published on Middle East Eye

06.14.17
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The West clearly now has Iran in its sights (March 2017)

iran road to sea

Tehran’s road to the sea

The British-US plan to weaken Iran via the proxy war on Syria has spectacularly backfired. Now they are more desperate than ever to bring Iran to its knees.

Western think tanks and ‘strategic institutes’ have been getting themselves in a cold sweat about Iranian influence for some time. In 2012, Frederick Kagan (former Bush advisor and Project for a New American Century neo-con) co-authored a report for the Institute for the Study of War warning “the US and its allies and partners in the region and beyond must not only understand Iran’s regional strategy and influence but also develop a coherent strategy of their own with which to confront them. Considering the religious, economic, political and diplomatic power of the two sides, it is simply unacceptable for the US and its allies to allow even such progress as it has [already] made in these realms.” Since Kagan made those comments four years ago, Iran’s “unacceptable…progress” has continued apace.

Its military cooperation with Russia, Syria, Iraq and Hezbollah has developed into an increasingly formalized alliance (the so-called “4+1”), in which it played a leading role in the liberation of the Syrian city of Aleppo earlier this year. In Iraq, the Shi’ite militias it sponsors have been the indispensable vanguard of many of the battles against Islamic State, and it wields considerable influence over the rebel forces in both Bahrain and (supposedly) Yemen. The fall of Mosul will only consolidate this power.

Indeed, according to the Guardian, the territory west of Mosul that is currently being secured by the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization forces is one of the final pieces of a jigsaw completing an arc of influence stretching all the way from Tehran to the Mediterranean. Such a ‘land bridge’ to the Mediterranean would significantly strengthen Iran’s independence and ability to withstand, for example, any future blockades or sieges. This is making Western planners particularly nervous, as it significantly weakens the West’s ability to control and corral the Iranians; with a long time Centcom advisor Ali Khedery, for example, claiming that such a development “should trouble every Western leader and our regional allies because this will further embolden Iran.”

Forbes, meanwhile, wrote that “Iranian influence in Iraq has the potential to destabilize global oil policy and the global oil market” given that the two countries combined oil reserves almost equal those of Saudi Arabia.

For here, as ever, lies the empire’s real fear – that the people of the Middle East might actually gain control over their own resources, and start using them strategically for their own development. Genuine independence has always been the fear of the region’s British, US and Israeli overlords. And Iran’s potential makes this independence a greater threat than most.

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons spelled this out in a report in 2014: “Iran has the potential to be a major international power… it could be the “engine room” of the Middle East. It lies in a very significant strategic position, with Iraq to the west, former Soviet states to the north which have only relatively recently gained independence, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to the east and the Persian Gulf—a prime route for oil exports—to the south. It has a large and youthful population—75 million or more, of whom 55 percent are aged under 30. Iran ranks 76th out of the 187 countries classified under the UNDP Human Development Index, based upon assessments of life expectancy, access to knowledge and standard of living, placing it higher than any of its land neighbors. Youth literacy is near-universal. The country’s economy is relatively diverse, with supplies of essential commodities and an engineering, research and manufacturing base. Iran has substantial resources of natural gas (second only to the Russian Federation) and enough oil to enable it to be a leading exporter.”

“Unacceptable progress” indeed!

Clearly, the US has been rattled by Iran for some time. Contrary to Trump’s assertions, for example, the Iranian ‘nuclear deal’ was less a ‘gift’ to Iran than a changing of tack to a longer game allowing the West to cultivate a fifth column in the country in preparation for a future attack.

Yet, US belligerence has apparently been stepped up under Trump, with new sanctions, an enormous ramping up of hostile rhetoric and the dispatch of another warship to Iran’s borders in January following an entirely legal Iranian missile test.

But most worryingly, the US has been sending large numbers of US troops to Iran’s neighbors in recent weeks. The initial deployment of 500 US troops in Syria was followed on March 9 by a further 400, with the Washington Post announcing on March 15 that another 1,000 are on the way.

These are just part of a massive flotilla of almost 5,000 US soldiers currently en route to the region, with troops from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE also being considered. This was revealed just one day after Trump met Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House, following meetings earlier in the week between Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the foreign ministers of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These troops are ostensibly going to aid the fight to oust ISIS from their stronghold in Raqqa. The real reason is to cement US influence and confront the Iranians. This is the US ground invasion which the ‘Gulfis’ have been calling for for years. Its aim is to keep the civil war alive by keeping the Syrian Arab Army out of Raqqa.

In Iraq, Secretary of Defense James Mattis (an avowed anti-Iran hawk who has claimed the country is a bigger problem than ISIS) announced he plans to keep US troops in Mosul long after the city is recaptured from ISIS. Again, this is nothing to do with ‘stability’ but all about countering Iranian influence. Indeed, according to Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi, Trump promised that he would “double US support, not just continue it” following Mosul’s capture; support here meaning the deployment of occupation troops.

But deploying troops to Iraq and Syria to contain Iranian influence is just the start of it. Ultimately, Trump’s Cabinet of anti-Iran warmongers seek to destroy the Islamic Republic itself. Their difficulty is how to convince Russia to go along with this: Syria has taught them that without Russian acquiescence, regime change can be very difficult indeed.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article on Trump’s plans to “drive a wedge” between Iran and Russia, quoting a European official that there was “daylight” between the two countries. Indeed, differences do seem to have emerged over, for example, Assad’s future in Syria and, as political analyst Eric Draitser has pointed out, the two countries have a certain rivalry over supplying Europe’s energy markets.

Nevertheless, it would be utter suicide for Russia to go along with any US attempts to undermine its number one Middle Eastern ally.

As the deputy director of the Institute of the CIS, Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Yevseyev told Sputnik, “the logic of the White House is simple: any deterioration of relations, whether Russian-Iranian or Russian-Turkish is strengthening the US position in the region.” Neither side has an interest in that.

Indeed, Obama’s so-called ‘reset’ of US-Russian relations did not end well for Russia: then Prime Minister Medvedev supported tough UN sanctions on Iran and delayed the delivery of anti-missile batteries to Iran, not to mention acquiescing to NATO aggression against Libya, only to find the US going back on its commitments to roll back its missile defenses in Eastern Europe, organizing an anti-Russian coup in Ukraine, initiating a major sanctions regime, and sponsoring a proxy war against Russia’s ally Syria. So much for gratitude!

Thankfully, Iranian and Russian interests are deeply converged and a split highly unlikely. As the Institute for the Study of War has pointed out, the list of shared interests is long, ranging from support for the Syrian government, the desire to limit US influence in the Middle East and support for Armenia against Azerbaijan and Turkey, forming a relationship that “rests on a deep foundation of common strategic objectives and interests”. The key, however, is to approach matters with eyes wide open. Trump’s rushing of troops to Syria is nothing to do with any ‘common front’ against ISIS and everything to do with weakening Iran. And in the end, this means weakening Russia too.

This article originally appeared on RT.