U.S. Strategy For The Near East: Keep Armies Weak And Nations Poor

The new would-be rulers of Syria, fully backed by Washington and its regional allies, regard these two gentlemen as modern day Muslim heroes, which points to the utter absurdity of U.S. policy in that part of the world. 

Just as Saddam and Bin Laden were once allies turned useful enemies, the same fate will befall the head chopping conquerors of the Syrian desert. 

But Washington couldn't care less what happens to Syria as long as Israel is happy with the final outcome. There isn't a grand U.S. strategy for these nations beyond keeping them poor and their armies weak so Israel remains the dominant state, able to kill whomever, whenever, and wherever. 

As a result of that policy, there are many weak states that are ripe for the picking. And when Washington does decide to attack and invade a sanctioned and impoverished country like Iraq and Afghanistan what follows isn't a Marshall plan, or any type of national reconstruction. There isn't any ambition or desire for that type of thing. 

The U.S. couldn't do it even if it wanted to because it is the junior partner in the Near East. Israel is the hegemon. It is the superpower. It is the brain. 

When President Truman threw his support behind the state of Israel, after an intense lobbying campaign by Zionists during the election, he couldn't have imagined the amount of influence that small state would come to have over U.S. decision-making in the Muslim world. And that disproportionate influence has been detrimental for all involved.  

Related: 

The Dust Never Settled.

Objectives, Means, And Ends.

"The real danger in the Korean situation," said Arnold Toynbee in the course of a recent lecture at Stanford University, "is not the apparent danger of a third World War. I feel that we shall be able to keep it within local limits and to do likewise with any other local affairs . . . elsewere. I am more afraid of the future relationship of the Western world with the Oriental and African peoples. They will have the last word in the issue between the West and Russia. We must win them to our way. . . " The Near East, which comprises an area extending from Turkey to the Indian Ocean and from the Caspian Sea to the African Sahara, forms, perhaps, the most important part of the area with which Professor Toynbee has shown grave concern. Greece and Turkey, owing partly to the Russian threat to which they are directly exposed, but mainly to effective American help, are definitely committed to the West, and there seems to be no serious Communist danger from within. The Arabian Peninsula, on the other hand, which is probably the most backward region in the Near East and whose governments are the most authoritarian, is relatively immune to Communist propaganda. The core of the Near Eastern area, which lies between Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula and extends from North Africa to the Caspian Sea, is the most dangerous sector, because of internal as well as external factors.

The first question which arises is that of discovering what is wrong with this area and why it has not yet been committed to the Western way of life. Have not Great Britain and France been active for a long time in this area and could they not exercise a great deal of influence on its people? Has not the United States enjoyed great prestige in that part of the world through its missionary and educational activities, which have been active in this region for over a century? Why has the Russian or Communist propaganda become such a threat in this area as to prevent its peoples from making up their minds to side with the West? The answer, we are told by foreign observers as well as Near Eastern leaders themselves, is to be found in the lack of material progress achieved and in the general weakness of the area. "The very weakness of the Near East," says Colonel Eddy, "the very lack of industrialization there, the very lack of any strong armed forces on which friends of the Near East might count: those are the conditions which have made it, and make it today, a vacuum---a vacuum which has terrific sucking power. And the wind is blowing from the North." - Majid Khadduri, "The United States and Political Stability in the Near East" World Affairs, 1951.

"Whether on the issue of immigration or on that of Jewish statehood, Truman was aware of considerable resistance to these initiatives in the State Department and the military. He spoke somewhat deprecatingly of the "striped pants boys" who, according to him, did not care enough about the fate of Jewish displaced persons and who were mainly concerned with Arab reactions to American proposals. Indeed, the State Department professionals, watching as they did over the entire range of U.S. interests in the Middle East, viewed the farreaching commitments to the Zionists with apprehension. The same was true of Acheson, a man supremely loyal and devoted to Truman, who held his own opinion on the matter: "I did not share the President's views on the Palestine solution to the pressing and desperate plight of great numbers of displaced Jews. . . . [T]o transform the country into a Jewish state capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East." Similarly, Acheson found Roosevelt's and Truman's assurances to consult the Arabs inconsistent with their sympathy toward Zionist aspirations.

Serious reservations about support for the Zionist program were also voiced by the military. In response to the president's request for an opinion, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended against any action that would cause disturbances in Palestine beyond Britain's military capability to control and definitely opposed the use of U.S. forces. Such a use of troops, they believed, would not only hurt British and American interests in the Middle East (including adverse effects on control of oil) but also pave the way for the Soviet Union "to replace the United States and Britain in influence and power in much of the Middle East."

Perhaps most vocal on this issue was the secretary of defense, James Forrestal. He spoke to the president repeatedly about the peril of arousing Arab hostility, which might result in denial of access to petroleum resources in their area, and about "the impact of this question on the security of the United States."

In spite of these critical voices within the administration, Truman gradually was won over to the idea that a Jewish state should be established. Thus when the UN Special Committee on Palestine recommended partition of the mandated territory into a Jewish and an Arab state, with Jerusalem as an international enclave, the president instructed the State Department to support the partition plan. Accordingly, the U.S. delegate in the un General Assembly voted for partition on November 29, 1947. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv, and the next step for the U.S. government was to decide the time and kind of recognition to be extended to it. The president did not hesitate: within eleven minutes of Israel's proclamation of statehood the president gave de facto recognition to the newly created Jewish state. It was followed by the de jure recognition on January 31, 1949.

In shaping his policy toward Palestine Truman experienced continuous pressures, especially from the Jewish community, virtually from the very moment he took office as president. These pressures were not limited to solicitation of his political and diplomatic support. "Top Jewish leaders in the United States were putting all sorts of pressure on me to commit American power and forces on behalf of the Jewish aspirations in Palestine."

. . .In shaping his policy toward Palestine Truman experienced continuous pressures, especially from the Jewish community, virtually from the very moment he took office as president. These pressures were not limited to solicitation of his political and diplomatic support. "Top Jewish leaders in the United States were putting all sorts of pressure on me to commit American power and forces on behalf of the Jewish aspirations in Palestine."

When the Palestine question reached the forum of the United Nations, Zionist efforts to ensure partition gained in intensity. They also bifurcated: some were directed toward securing a favorable vote of lesser Latin American countries and some were aiming straight at the U.S. president. According to Truman,

The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders — actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed me."

The president's daughter, Margaret, also testifies to the relentlessness and intensity of the Zionist campaign that "irritated" the president. Zionist leaders, she recalls, urged her father to "browbeat" South American and other countries into supporting partition. She acknowledges that "It was one of the worst messes of my father's career. ... To tell the truth about what had happened would have made him and the entire American government look ridiculous. Not even in his memoirs did he feel free to tell the whole story, although he hinted at it. Now I think it is time for it to be told." Thus she reveals that on August 23, 1947, some three months before the UN partition vote, the president expressed his disapproval of Zionist pressures in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt: "The action of some of our United States Zionists will prejudice everyone against what they are trying to get done. I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on the top, they are just as intolerant and as cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath. I regret this situation very much because my sympathy has always been on their side."

But the president's resentment at the pressures intensified when they were accompanied by threats. Margaret Truman recalls an episode when, in October 1948, a New York Democratic Party delegation called on her father to urge him to offer Israel de jure recognition, lift the arms embargo, and endorse the widest possible boundaries for the Jewish state. Failure to do this, they warned, would result in certain loss of New York State. On this occasion Truman did not conceal his irritation. "Dad looked them in the eye and said: 'You have come to me as a pressure group. If you believe for one second that I will bargain my convictions for the votes you imply would be mine, you are pathetically mistaken. Good morning.' " - "An excerpt from, "Ropes of Sand: America's Failure in the Middle East" By Wilbur Crane Eveland, 1980, Forbidden Bookshelf, 'Chapter Three - Thirty Years of Indifference'.

"At the same time, focusing on the current crisis has now led to consistent failures in the U.S. strategy when dealing with Iraq and the Middle East for the last two decades – and has already turned two apparent “victories” into real world defeats. From the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to the present, the United States has never had a workable grand strategy for Iraq or any consistent plans and actions that have gone beyond current events." - Anthony H. Cordesman, "America’s Failed Strategy in the Middle East: Losing Iraq and the Gulf" CSIS, January 2, 2020.

Normalizing Russia: The Empire Effect

 

"Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference" By Frederick Cooper and Jane Burbank (2010).

Wikipedia:

Jane Richardson Burbank (born 11 June 1946 in Hartford, Connecticut, United States) is an American historian who is emeritus professor of history at New York University. She is known for her scholarship on Russia and its empire, as well as global history more broadly.

She was awarded the 2023 Toynbee Prize for her contributions to global history. Her 2010 book Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (co-authored with Frederick Cooper) won the 2011 World History Association Book Prize. The 2023 Toynbee Prize announcement described the book as "a landmark work of global history that combines extraordinary breadth with sophisticated analysis. They argue that for centuries empires, rather than nation-states, were the dominant political units in the global order."

In 1981, she received a PhD from Harvard University. She is former director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Michigan.

Video Title: Normalizing Russia: The Empire Effect. Source: umcrees. Date Published: January 18, 2012. 

The Anglo-American Legacy In The Middle East: From Aiding Pirates And Terrorists To Creating Famine And Enabling Genocide

Image: Rahmah ibn Jabir ibn Adhbi al-Jalhami, an Arab pirate who served the interests of the British Empire in the early 19th century.

For two centuries the British and Americans have caused mayhem in the Middle East and Central Asia with lies, war making, espionage, coups, terrorism, proxy warfare, geopolitical manipulation, political interference, social engineering. It's been a long marathon of deception and destruction. The British passed the baton to the U.S. after WWII. And they haven't stopped since. 80 years of bad policies.

They lost in Afghanistan multiple times, but not before destroying the country's social and political fabric. After the false flag 9/11 attacks,  when the illegitimate Taliban ran away to their sanctuaries in Pakistan, the Afghan people wanted a king to head the new government, but what they got instead was a corrupt drug runner for the CIA. The consequences for that fateful decision were predictable. 

When they finally left two decades into their criminal invasion they empowered the Taliban even more than before, handing them billions of dollars worth of military equipment. Lives and money wasted. They lost a war they shouldn't have started in the first place. Waging war on the Taliban without simultaneously declaring war on Pakistan was a dumb move. 

And they're guilty of many dumb moves. In Iraq they handed the country over to the cursed and craven Ayatollahs; in Syria they're in the process of handing it over to the dangerous and deranged Ottomans. Everywhere these motherfuckers turn they make a mess of it. 

Libya is just a sidebar in their long catalog of crimes. They ruined that country. In Armenia and Palestine they're on the side of genocide and ethnic cleansing. In Yemen they've tried everything to get their way, from creating famine conditions to sponsoring head chopping terrorists.

I don't think there will ever be peace in the Middle East until every British and American embassy is destroyed, in every country, in every capital. As long as they're allowed to operate in these countries there will be chaos, wars, famines, mass killings, assassinations, chemical warfare, terrorism, coups.

There will still be conflicts in their absence. The Middle East is plagued with racism, religious backwardness, corruption, tyranny, sectarianism, you name it, but like in Africa and other parts of Asia, until the Americans and British leave the scene, whether willingly or not, there will never be a chance for peace.

II.

Wikipedia:

Rahmah ibn Jabir ibn Adhbi al-Jalhami (1760–1826) was an Arab ruler in the Persian Gulf region and was described by his contemporary, the English traveler and author, James Silk Buckingham, as "the most successful and the most generally tolerated pirate, perhaps, that ever infested any sea."

As a pirate, he had a reputation for being ruthless and fearless. He wore an eyepatch after losing an eye in battle, which makes him the earliest documented pirate to have worn an eyepatch. He was described by the British statesman Charles Belgrave as "one of the most vivid characters the Persian Gulf has produced, a daring freebooter without fear or mercy" (ironically, his first name means "mercy" in Arabic).

He assisted the British forces in the Persian Gulf campaign of 1819 against the Al-Qasimi of Ras Al Khaimah.

Description of the book, "The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf" By Muhammad Al-Qasimi, the Emir of the Emirate of Sharjah of the UAE: 

The British became the dominant power in the Arab Gulf in the late eighteenth century. The conventional view has justified British imperial expansion in the Gulf region because of the need to supress Arab piracy. This book, first published in 1988, challenges the myth of piracy and argues that its threat was created by the East India Company for commercial reasons. The Company was determined to increase its share of Gulf trade with India at the expense of the native Arab traders, especially the Qawasim of the lower Gulf. However, the Company did not possess the necessary warships and needed to persuade the British Government to commit the Royal Navy to achieve this dominance. Accordingly the East India Company orchestrated a campaign to misrepresent the Qawasim as pirates who threatened all maritime activity in the northern Indian Ocean and adjacent waters. Any misfortune that happened to any ship in the area was attributed to the ‘Joasmee pirates’. This campaign was to lead eventually to the storming of Ras al-Khaimah and the destruction of the Qawasim. Based on extensive use of the Bombay Archives, previously unused by researchers, this book provides a thorough reinterpretation of a vital period in Gulf history. It also illuminates the style and method of the East India Company at a critical period in the expansion of the British Empire.

An excerpt from, "Historical Perspectives on Piracy: The British Empire in the Persian Gulf" By Aniruddha Bose, Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations:

The second complicating factor is the curious part played by a pirate by the name of Rahmah bin Jabbar. Rahmah bin Jabbar was possibly the most successful and well known pirate operating in the Persian Gulf at the time. A member of the Jalama tribe, Rahmah bin Jabbar had been born into a humble family from Qurain (modern day Kuwait). Rahmah bin Jabbar began his career as a lowly horse dealer, before moving on to piracy. He started with one small vessel and ten companions with whom he began running a protection racket along the coast of the Arabian Gulf. At the height of his power Rahmah bin Jabbar commanded an entire fleet of pirate vessels, and the loyalty of an estimated 2,000 pirates. The largest of his vessels was a 300 ton ship manned by 350 men. Rahmah bin Jabbar protected his fleet by building alliances, including an alliance with the Al-Saud dynasty (the current ruling family of Saudi Arabia). He later shifted his loyalties towards the Al Bu Sa’id dynasty of Oman. Riding the coattails of the expanding Omani maritime Empire, Rahmah bin Jabbar built a flourishing business based on piracy. In the early 19th century, the pirates of the Qawasim tribal confederacy were his only serious rivals.

Rahmah bin Jabbar was in many ways the quintessential pirate. The British historian Charles Belgrave called him “one of the most vivid characters the Persian Gulf has produced, a daring freebooter without fear or mercy.” The contemporary English traveler and writer James Silk Buckingham described him as “the most successful…pirate, perhaps, that ever infested any sea.” He even wore an eye patch, having lost an eye in battle. Curiously, during the East India Company’s anti-piracy operations in the early nineteenth century, Rahmah bin Jabbar fought alongside the British. This was a truly remarkable state of affairs where a pirate fought alongside what was an avowedly anti-piracy mission. The key to the mystery lay in the fact that Rahmah bin Jabbar had identified the British as allies in his struggle against the Qawasim. Loch wrote in his diary, “He was as great a pirate as those of the [Qawasim] tribe with this exception:he protected British trade, and was at peace with [British allies] Basra and Bushire, but at war with every other part of the Gulf.” Rahmah bin Jabbar, possibly in honor of this alliance named his own flagship the Al-Manowar (after the English ‘Man o’ War’).

. . .The records suggest two significant conclusions. First, the anti-piracy operations took very long to succeed, and were very expensive. The operations began in the 1800s and continued well into the second half of the nineteenth century. The operations involved warships as well as ground forces. The costs were substantial. Second, the curious case of the pirate Rahmah bin Jabbar throws into question the dividing lines between pirates and the British Empire. The alliance that brought Rahmah bin Jabbar and the British suggest that the East India Company was less interested in suppressing piracy in the Indian Ocean region than it was in protecting its own ships. The Company and perhaps the British in general were perfectly happy supporting piracy, as long as it did not affect British commercial interests. The evidence suggests that the evils of piracy, at least in this period, were very much in the eyes of the beholder.

The Ottomans Never Left

 

An excerpt from, "The Ottomans are back - what does that mean for Israel?" By Seth J Frantzman, The Jerusalem Post, January 1, 2020:

The Past 10 years have witnessed an extraordinary reversal, as most of the Arab countries have been torn apart from within. Where monarchies or Arab nationalism failed, a rising religious extremism preyed on weak states. But even this Islamist terrorist rise did not supplant the new states.

ISIS came and went. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, briefly rising in Gaza and even in Tripoli or other areas, and seeking election in Tunisia, Jordan and other places, has not been the success that some thought. Political Islam is not winning.

What has happened is that the historically powerful periphery states, Turkey and Iran, have risen to grab influence throughout the Middle East. These states, as the Ottoman Empire and Persian Empire, were weakened in 1920 and European powers supplanted their historic role. But now, with Europe looking more insular, these countries are rising again.

Turkey’s expedition to Libya is just one symbol of that new world order in the Middle East.

"War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,

The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade" - Shelley.

 

The fast changing events in Syria in the last couple of days has left people guessing about what's coming next. 

Will Assad be assassinated, as President Trump proposed to his generals back in 2020, or overthrown after a NATO sponsored onslaught on Damascus? 

I think since Turkey seems to be the lead actor in this unfolding drama Assad's life is not threatened in the near term. Turkey is satisfied with taking a few cities at a time. Erdogan wants Assad to stay, and Syria to remain weak.

Turkey's immediate priorities, and its long-standing military and political objectives, are reclaiming the cities it lost a century ago and removing from the map the Kurds who until recently had no tangible presence on its border with Syria. 

During the end of Trump’s first term Erdogan had received the approval from Washington to invade Afrin, as well as other Kurdish towns in north Syria, and ethnically cleanse the Kurds living there. 

But giving him that little real estate obviously wasn't enough. You give the Devil an inch he will take a mile. Erdogan and his neo-Ottoman clique always had their eyes on bigger prizes: Mosul, Aleppo, Kirkuk, Damascus, possibly even Beirut and further down. 

When the invading terrorists took Aleppo this week they unfurled the Turkish flag over one of its historic citadels. This was Turkey letting the world know this is a conquest, not a liberation.

Syria's future won't be stable, peaceful or prosperous. Everyone but the Turks has a painful historical memory of the Ottoman Empire. Even the Salafist and Wahhabi Arabs, the crazy guys who ate their enemies' organs on the battlefield, know how bad they were for the entire region. 

Six centuries of brutality, slavery and oppression. And when it finally died it left behind nothing, not a grand monument, a beautiful mosque, a glorious church, just a pile of dust. They built nothing. They pillaged and destroyed.

And history seems to be repeating itself. The Turkish-backed terrorists have looted everything they can get their hands on in Syria. Thieves don't know how to rebuild or create.

The only way Turkey can hold onto Aleppo and other newly acquired cities in its ill-gotten possession is through military force. And, as we've seen in Gaza in the last year, that is not sustainable. 

Bringing The Ukrainian Tragicomedy To An End

Related: 

Ukraine And The Self-Destruction of The West.

The Dark Legacy of Ukrainian Nationalism And The Long Shadow of WWII.

The NATO-Assisted Suicide of Ukraine.

Dr. Vladimir Brovkin Interview On Western Relations With Russia Post-1991.

The Geostrategic Value of Ukraine.

Why NATO-Trained Armies Lose Wars And Why Ukraine's Criminal Leaders Should Beg For Mercy.

The West Stays Behind The Trenches While Spurring On Ukraine's Death March.

Geopolitical Bloodletting: NATO's Cynicism In Ukraine.

Alliances Matter.

The Role of the Ukraine in Modern History By Ivan L. Rudnytsky.

Mark von Hagen - Does Ukraine Have a History?

Putin's Strategic Patience Has Run Its Course.

Ukraine, Eurasia, And The War For The Future of Europe.

The End of Ukraine.

Russia has waged a very cynical military campaign in Ukraine. Instead of invading Kiev with its massive military and removing its illegal leadership, headed by that cokehead comedian, Putin has instead decided to take the python approach and slowly eat his prey. 

Russia has taken Ukraine piece by piece when the humanitarian approach, though more costly for Russia, would have been to move more swiftly. 

Putin's strategy to bleed out the Ukrainians and making sure Ukraine is unable to field a large army in the future is unfair and unjust to Ukraine's population, which has been illegally captured at the point of a gun. 

Ukraine's brave men have been sacrificed by both the West and Russia in a war that it would never have waged had it been under a sovereign ruler for the last decade.

And the longer the needless war in Ukraine goes on the greater its tentacles will reach into other conflicts across the world. Weapons destined for Ukraine have already ended up in other hotspots. Healing this wound is a matter of international security, not just of Ukraine's and Russia’s.