Washington’s Machiavellian Game in Syria, by F. William Engdahl . . . uh-oh . . . some facts we need to know. ~J
One of my often-cited sayings is
around 2,500 years old. It’s from the respected Chinese philosopher Sun
Tzu in his small masterpiece, The Art of War. For centuries it’s been
one of the most influential strategy writings not only in Asia, but also
the Western world. It goes as follows:
“If you know the enemy and know
yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know
yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also
suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will
succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
In geopolitical analysis, when I examine a
major political or economic development, it’s very important that I
first look into myself, to feel if I’m blurring my analysis because of
deep-felt personal wishes for a peaceful, more harmonious world,
blurring the reality of a given nation or groups of nations. Similarly,
if I take those malevolent patriarchs who dominate American and NATO
policies today, I must be certain I know, not merely the surface of what
an American President or Secretary of State might say on a given day.
It can be a lie, a slick maneuver or it can be even honest. The work of
any serious analyst is to sort out which it is, to go deeper, to “mine”
the lode in order to see the real strategic implications.
Such is the case with finding out what is
the real Washington policy—the economic and foreign policy today. For
example, what is the real meaning and purpose behind the journey of the
92-year-old Henry Kissinger to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin and others
recently? What’s the real purpose of John Kerry when he appears to
follow a policy more friendly towards Russia than, say, his Assistant
Secretary Victoria Nuland or Secretary of Defense Ash Carter? Is it the
voice of a significant faction within the foreign policy establishment
that genuinely seeks a shift in Washington policy with Moscow from
confrontation and war towards detente, diplomacy and a policy of peace
and economic cooperation? What’s the real intent of the Roman Pope in
wanting to come together with the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow,
the first such meeting between those two churches–east and west–since
the Great Schism of 1054? Is that a positive step towards world peace or
is it something ominous?
Washington: confusion or deception?
It’s a widespread notion, fostered by US
and European mainstream and other media, even by media in Russia and
China that Washington is in confused disarray, a Superpower or hegemon
which has lost its bearings. Media analysts write of a policy clash or
internal factional battle that renders any US action in destroying DAESH
or ISIS in Syria and Iraq a ludicrous, bumbling joke.
From years of looking at US foreign
policy, I’ve learned to bring a certain respect in to my assessment. The
respect is not at all admiration but an appreciation that, after all,
the world’s most powerful Superpower did not come to that position of
power without extraordinary skills, cunning, a remarkable ability to lie
convincingly, to deceive, to very precisely manipulate the weaknesses
of their opponents.
That deception has been the hallmark of
American foreign policy for the entire post-1945 period, as towards the
Soviet Union of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989, when Gorbachev trusted his
American interlocutors who solemnly promised that the West would never
advance NATO to the East. The deception is the hallmark of US economic
policies since Bretton Woods in 1944 established the Dollar as supreme,
and which destroyed any potential challenge to the domination of the US
dollar as reserve currency—the most strategic of the American pillars of
power aside from that of the US military.
Some years ago I was told by a former
West Point officer that the cadets of West Point who go on to become
America’s future colonels, generals and military strategists, are
steeped in Sun Tzu as well as in Italian Renaissance diplomat Niccolò
Machiavelli’s The Prince, which teaches “the employment of cunning and
duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct.”
In international politics, it’s unwise to
believe your enemy is stupid. It can be fatal. Mistakes, of course,
they continuously make, only to re-program and correct or push on
another front in their obsession with world power and control.
More useful is to assume they have a
well-thought-through strategy behind a veil of Machiavellian lies and
deception, rather than to assume stupidity as our operating premise. So,
amid a most incredible array of contradictory indications out of
Washington, what’s going on between the actors in the war against Syria
and the entire Middle East today, in February 2016?
Using Russia in Syria
If we look at current US policies in the
Middle East, especially in Syria and in Iraq, and assume it is a very
well-thought-out strategy to reach a specific, well-defined goal, the
situation looks very different.
My current conclusion is that under a
smokescreen of apparent policy confusion and incompetence on the side of
Washington, of the Pentagon, of the State Department and their backers
on Wall Street, there is a carefully-planned strategy to ignite a war in
the oil-and-gas-rich Middle East that will dramatically alter the
political and geopolitical oil map of the world. Yes, another war about
oil like so many of the wars of the last century, a Century of War as
one of my books calls it.
The Washington-Wall Street think tanks
behind the coming change are orchestrating the actions of state actors
in the Middle East who, blinded by their own greed or desire for empire,
Ottoman or Saudi, see not that they are falling into a fatal trap.
They apparently haven’t studied Sun Tzu,
much less, even a thought of such deep themes as knowing themselves and
knowing their enemy. They are mostly driven by burning hate, as with
Erdogan and his Turkey today–hate for the Syrians, for the Kurds, for
the Europeans, even for the Saudis with whom Erdogan claims to be
allied. In Erdogan’s Kasbah, everyone has their daggers ready behind
their backs.
Washington sets the trap
What can be the true strategy of
Washington and their patrons in Wall Street in the present Middle East
chaos called the “war to defeat DAESH” or IS?
It’s useful to go back to the end of
September, 2015 when Russia surprised not only Washington, but the
entire world, with the swiftness and effectiveness of its requested
military intervention against DAESH and other terror groups destroying
Syria.
It’s clear from the lack of an effective
Washington response, and from subsequent Washington actions, that their
policy strategists took time to recalculate their original regime change
strategy for Syria. What emerges is the clear evidence that they
decided to actually use that Russian military intervention to advance
their original strategic plan for the region, much like classical
martial arts teaches–use your opponent’s force against them. It smacks
of Churchill’s strategy of luring Hitler into a Polish invasion in 1939
so Britain could declare war on Germany, but waiting until Germany
invaded the Soviet Union before seriously acting, the period of
so-called Phony War.
Washington has orchestrated events,
including the apparent US-Russian accord around the UN Security Council
Resolution 2254 of December 18, 2015 that led to Geneva III “peace”
talks. The Geneva III talks were sabotaged from the outset by
Washington’s control of the UN “peace” mediators, including US diplomat,
now UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Jeffery D.
Feltman, and his subordinate, Staffan de Mistura, the Machiavellian
United Nations Envoy to Syria and the Arab League. Washington acceded to
Saudi demands that the large Syrian Kurdish minority, who are in the
firing lines of DAESH in Syria, be excluded, and that Syrian
“opposition” be determined by the oil-hungry Saudis.
Now, following the Munich talks of the
International Syria Support Group (ISSG) on February 12, co-chaired by
Kerry and Lavrov, Russia and the USA have on paper agreed that,
“cessation of hostilities will commence in one week, after confirmation
by the Syrian government and opposition, following appropriate
consultations in Syria.” Further, “The members of the ISSG reaffirmed
that it is for the Syrian people to decide the future of Syria.”
Now there are two points that I find
flashing red. The “cessation of hostilities” means that Russian
highly-effective air support to the Syrian National Army and Hezbollah
and other pro-Assad forces will stop or be significantly reduced at a
critical point. Russian parliamentarians claim cessation will not apply
to the areas around Aleppo controlled by DAESH or Al-Nusra Front, but
that remains to be seen. In either case it is a trap.
That ceasefire will happen just as Syrian
forces, backed by Russia are on the brink of a major victory in Aleppo,
breaking the DAESH supply lines to Erdogan’s Turkey, the oatron of
DAESH along with the Saudi monarchy. Second, there is no demand that
DAESH or Al-Nusra cease “hostilities.” That means Russia has agreed to
stop support of Assad but DAESH is no party to the deal, leaving it free
to rearm with Turkish and Saudi support. Now the plot thickens and gets
very dangerous.
Janus-faced Washington
Washington policy–the policy of the USA
military-industrial complex and their Wall Street bankers– has in no way
changed. That’s clear. I find no convincing evidence to the contrary.
They plan to destroy Syria as a functioning nation, to finish the
destruction of Iraq begun in 1991, and to spread that destruction now to
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to Turkey, and across the entire oil and
gas-rich Middle East. They are simply using other means to that end
given the “game-changing” presence of Russia since September 30.
While State Secretary John Kerry was
working the “soft cop” routine with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov in the run-up to the February 12 Munich talks, on February 10 a
Pentagon spokesman falsely accused the Russian military of hitting two
hospitals in Aleppo, even though, by prior agreement, it was US aircraft
that operated over the city on that day. The US Pentagon spokesman,
Colonel Steve Warren, charged that Russian aircraft in Syria were using
“dumb” bombs, “indiscriminately scattering those bombs across populated
areas regardless of whether those populated areas have women and
children, civilians or hospitals,” charges denied by Moscow.
Two days later in Munich, Lavrov, on
behalf of Moscow, apparently compromised on its offer to impose a
ceasefire in three weeks and instead accepted one week, a potentially
devastating setback for the near-victory of the Syrian National Army
forces to retake Aleppo and seal the Turkey DAESH supply route. It’s
interesting that that decision came only nine days after Henry Kissinger
met with Putin in Moscow. We may never know if there was a connection.
Then on February 12, Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy chairman of the
committee for international affairs at the Federation Council, told TASS
that the areas still occupied by terrorists such as DAESH and Al-Nusra
were not covered by the Munich ceasefire.
The Pentagon is also quietly putting
“boots on the ground” in Iraq. War jargon in Washington has become so
dehumanized in the era of drone warfare that we no longer speak of the
soldiers, merely their “boots.” They are preparing a major military move
in Syria whether through Turkish and Saudi proxies or direct, or both,
despite the nice sounding words about humanitarian aid and UN supervised
Syrian elections in 18 months. At the same time, US military veterans
are preparing the propaganda in the US for a ten-year siege before the
US could drive the last DAESH terrorist out of the oil-rich Mosul, the
heart of north Iraqi oil production.
On January 22 in an interview with CNBC
Defense Secretary Ash Carter stated that the US intends to defeat
Islamic State’s greatest strongholds: the northern Iraqi city of Mosul
and the IS “capital” Raqqa, in Syria.
“We’re looking for opportunities to do
more and there will be boots on the ground, and I want to be clear about
that. But it’s a strategic question whether you are enabling local
forces to take and hold rather than trying to substitute for them,”
Carter said. “We’re prepared to do a great deal because we have the
finest fighting force the world has ever seen. We can do a lot
ourselves,” Carter said.
The US says it has already sent 50
special operations forces to northern Syria to gather intelligence and
maintain contacts with local forces. “It is a keyhole through which one
gets a lot of insight, and thereby allows us more effectively to bring
the huge weight of coalition military power to bear on the battlefield
in an effective way,” he stated. A leading Russian Duma parliamentarian,
Vladimir Soloyvov, head of the Russian parliament’s Foreign Relations
Committee, dismisses Carter’s statements as a Washington publicity move
to “steal thunder in fighting terrorism in the Middle East,” a sign that
some at least in the Russian policy establishment do not really know
their enemy.
A spreading world war
I’m going to make a prediction which you
can verify as accurate or, hopefully, not. In about two months I
estimate, around late March or April it will be clear. The US
Machiavellians have lured not only Turkey’s Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s
Prince Salman, but now Moscow into their trap in the Middle East. The
initial losers in this unfolding deadly game will be Saudi, Turkey,
Syria, Iraq and likely Russia. The ultimate losers, eventually, will
also be the American Patriarchs or oligarchs behind these incessant wars
of destruction, but not immediately, short of a miracle.
Look carefully at the little-reported
statements in recent days of two key Washington war actors–Joe Biden and
John Kerry. On January 24, Vice President Joe Biden, the one who
orchestrated the US coup d’ etat in Kiev in February 2014, met with
Turkish President and would-be Sultan of a neo-Ottoman imperium, Recep
Erdogan. Biden told Erdogan and Prime Minister Davotoglu that Washington
wanted Turkey and Iraq to “coordinate” on an emerging US military plan
to take back the Iraqi city of Mosul from DAESH or the so-called Islamic
State. An Obama Administration official described the Mosul attack as
in “hard-core planning” stages, though not imminent.
The unnamed US “senior” official, most
likely Biden, stated that the US is also selecting several hundred Sunni
Arabs in Syria, as well as some Turks, who Turkey says its government
has identified as “potential fighters,” to help the US close the roughly
60 miles of border with Syria that remains under Islamic State control.
The source added that Washington is hoping to finalize a package in
coming weeks of new technological assistance for Turkey to aid in
securing that stretch of border.
Biden also strongly backed Turkey’s fight
against the Turkish Kurdish PKK and said that the US would strengthen
its military campaign against ISIS if there is no agreement on a
political solution in Syria. Joe Biden well knows that Erdogan and
Turkish MIT intelligence head, Hakan Fidan fully back DAESH and fully
are out to create ethnic cleansing against the Kurds in Turkey, and in
Syria. He knows because the CIA worked with Fidan, a US educated Turkish
military veteran, at secret Turkish bases over the past two years to
train DAESH terrorists in the Washington war against Assad.
If you are beginning to smell a big skunk here, you have a healthy sense of smell.
So now we have Washington and Erdogan
bringing undesired US and Turkish troops into Iraq’s Mosul region to
prepare a major military operation, with or without the agreement of
Iraq’s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has repeatedly and
impotently demanded the Turkish army leave Mosul.
Why Mosul?
You may fairly ask, why Mosul? To
paraphrase Bill Clinton in his 1992 famous retort to George H.W. Bush,
“It’s the oil, stupid.” The US failed operation dubbed Arab Spring, the
failed CIA and Obama Administration backing of the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt and across Middle East oil states, and now their operations with
Turkey in Mosul and Syria are all about the oil.
This time, however it isn’t about taking
over the rich oilfields of Iraq and Syria. It’s about destroying them.
The US-engineered, French-executed destruction of Qaddafi’s Libya is the
model. Iraq, as Dick Cheney’s 2001 Energy Policy Task Force discovered,
holds the world’s third largest proven conventional oil reserves, on a
par with Iran, with Saudi reserves the largest. The area around Mosul
and the Kurd-controlled Kirkuk fields nearby are the current focus of
the US military strategy. In Syria, DAESH terrorists control most all
Syrian oilfields, where they illegally export with aid of Erdogan’s
family to world markets to finance their terror campaign against Assad’s
regime.
An ominous wire report sent a shiver down
my spine when I read it. On January 28, US Army Lieutenant General Sean
MacFarland, head of the US-led coalition against Daesh (ISIL) in Iraq
and Syria, said that the US military was on site at the Mosul Dam to
assess “the potential” for the collapse. Were it to be blown up, it
would send a flood of water down the heavily populated Tigris river
valley. “The likelihood of the dam collapsing is something we are trying
to determine right now… all we know is when it goes, it’s going to go
fast and that’s bad,” MacFarland told reporters in Baghdad. The US State
Department estimates up to 500,000 people could be killed and over one
million rendered homeless should Iraq’s biggest dam collapse.
It would likely flood the large oilfields
of Kirkuk on its path, rendering them inoperable. Whoever controls the
Mosul Dam, the largest in Iraq, controls most of the country’s water and
power resource. The dam holds back over 12 billion cubic meters of
water that is crucial for irrigation in the farming areas of Iraq’s
western Nineveh province. In a 2007 letter, US General David Petraeus, a
key figure in the destruction of Iraq and in the creation of what
became DAESH, warned Iraq’s government that “A catastrophic failure of
Mosul Dam would result in flooding along the Tigris River all the way to
Baghdad.”
Washington Proxy War Builds
Combine this statement by General
MacFarland, head of the US-led coalition against Daesh (ISIL) in Iraq
and Syria on that Mosul Dam, the Biden talks to get Turkey’s military
invasion accepted by Iraq “in the war against DAESH” and the
encouragement by State Secretary John Kerry of Prince Salman’s Saudi war
against Yemen, as
well as the recent Davos statements by Ash Carter. Add to that the fact
that the Saudi and Turkish militaries just announced plans undertake
joint military actions to “cooperate against common threats.”
On February 13, Turkish Foreign Minister
Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed a joint Turkish-Saudi joint attack plan for
invading Syria, telling press, “If we have such a strategy, then Turkey
and Saudi Arabia may launch a ground operation.” xvi
Now add to that the fact that Turkish
military began shelling a Syrian airbase and village recently retaken by
Syrian Kurds, with the argument that the Kurds of Syria were
“terrorists” like the Turkish PKK Kurds. Turkish Prime Minister
Davutoglu confirmed the cross-border mortar shelling into Syria
territory on February 13: “We will retaliate against every step (by the
YPG),” he told state broadcaster TRT Haber. “The YPG will immediately
withdraw from Azaz and the surrounding area and will not go close to it again.”
Now add the fact that this week
Washington repeated that it does not regard the Syrian Kurds as
terrorists and that the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) have
just opened its first foreign representative office in Moscow and we
begin to see the outlines of Washington’s strategy of steering heated-up
and hated-up Turkey and Saudi Arabia to trigger Washington’s surrogate
war, a war where Turkey, a NATO member, Saudi and the Gulf Arab oil
states, find themselves in a direct military confrontation with Russia
in Aleppo province of Syria. The Turkish shelling at present is clearly a
testing of the waters of a war with Russia to see how, in the wake of
their ceasefire agreement, they will react. Will Russia retaliate by
hitting Turkish military targets, in a NATO country?
Combine all that with the quiet but
strategic Pentagon deployments inside Syria and Iraq with “boots on the
ground,” and we have the combination for an explosion across the
oilfields of the entire Middle East that would rock the world. Truly, as
the old Greek saying goes, whom the gods would destroy, they first make
mad.
I can imagine a disgusted world turning
on those American Patriarchs and their proxy partners in war, telling
them, to use the words of the great Freddy Mercury song, the one about
rocking certain people.
F. William Engdahl is strategic
risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from
Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and
geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.