If you have been reading Raimondo's columns on Antiwar.com, he has been proposing that US interventions in the Middle East, specifically Libya and Syria, are to create an alliance between the US and Sunni Islamists in order to combat against Shia Iran. However, doesn't the Iraq War contradict this theory regarding American policy? Although the US did help the Sunni Islamists in the end to combat against al-Qaeda, the vast majority of Iraq was transferred from the control of a secular Sunni dictator to the rule of the Shia Islamists. Or are we to believe that U.S. policy shifted between 2003 and 2007 toward their goals in the Middle East?
My question is why did the U.S. perceive it in their best interests to support the Shias against Saddam Hussein if their true goal was to topple the Iranian government?
So because things went a certain way that means it was the plan of the United States for them to do so? Here is a thought, maybe Iraq ending up a good partner of Iran wasn't part of the plan? Maybe the very fact that Iraq and Iran are good buddies now is what gives the goal of combating Iran added urgency? Maybe each intervention leads to more interventions to repair the damage of the previous intervention?
So because things went a certain way that means it was the plan of the United States for them to do so?
Here is a thought, maybe Iraq ending up a good partner of Iran wasn't part of the plan?
The post wasn't adressed to you as can be clearly seen if you click on the 'replied on' link and from the fact your post continues to have 5 points only.
Okay I see the error in my reasoning, namely in assuming the foresight and competence of imperialists in their plans.
You're reading Raimondo so at least you're on the right path to learn.
http://news.yahoo.com/syria-says-chemical-weapons-attacked-103925213.html
Looks like Syria just did the retarded and shot itself in the foot.
I also wonder if Iran and Russia will have a revolt as well that will install pro West beauracrats. The US has gotten a lot smarter with intervention lately. Humanitarian war seems to be quite effective propaganda. The Democrats and Progressives can point to their successes in regime change as being infinitely superior to Republican tactics and when Libertarians argue otherwise they will point to the success of the Arab Spring like they point to Kosovo.
You have to understand the US, differently from Russia, lack any capability of long term strategic planning. Perwez Musharaf, the deposed Pakistani military strongman, used to show his guests a book he had been given by the then Soviet ambassador to Pakistan saying "This book details Russian geopolitcal strategy, whatever Russia is ruled by the Tzar, Lenin or Vladimir Putin. Their vision never changes. By contrast the US lack any capability for long term planning". Although a man of many faults, Musharaf is a well read and deeply intelligent person and his analysis was right on the money.
Leaving the pathetic "we are there to fight terrorism" excuse aside, let's take a look at Iraq. If the US were planning to secure a huge supply of oil, it made little sense to fight a war the other side of the globe. Annexing Canada by political means or deposing Hugo Chavez through a "piloted revolution" in Venezuela would have given the US ready access to enormous oil reserves at a fraction of the cost. Also it made little sense allowing Chinese and Russian oil companies to secure large and lucrative deals over US companies. If the aim was to depose Saddam Hussein because he was backing Islamists, it made even less sense. Osama bin Laden hated Hussein as much as he hated the corrupt House of Saud. Before the First Gulf War he made Hussein his favorite target, burying him under a stream of typically Arab bombastic rhetoric. In his famous 1996 fatwa, besides calling for the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of the US and the House of Saud from the Holy Sites, he also called for liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein's tyranny. Then there's the issue of the ever changing alliances the US made with various groups in Iraq. It betrayed the fact the US had invaded the country without any prior strategic planning. The huge military bases so readily abandoned? Yet another sign of the lack of forward planning.
Afghanistan is yet another proof of the lack of strategic vision and ever changing plans. Same thing about Libya: it went somewhat like "We got rid of Khadafi... now what?". The country is now descending into a civil war which will be funded by oil and natural gas. Sudan? China got the oil. Should I go on?
However there's a country which is reaping huge rewards thanks to American recklessness and lack of vision: Israel. While I don't believe Israel "controls" the US, their lobbyists know how to play the American political and economical system like a fiddle. There are always bloodthirsty warmongers like Dick Cheney and Hilary Clinton who need but little convincing to start a war, any war, no matter how little strategic sense does it make (cough... Somalia... cough). There are huge "defense" industries always clamoring for wars: during wars helicopters get shot down and need replacing, trucks break down and need spares, equipment wears down and needs replacing. Differently from the US, Israel has a strategic vision: hegemony over the Middle East. It means no other country in the area can have access to nuclear weapons. It means as long as Shia and Sunni are busy butchering each other they will be too weak to fight Israel. It means as long Egypt is dependant on American largesse and spares to keep her ridiculously large and unwieldy army working she won't dare disturbing Israel. Right now Israel only has two serious rivals in the area: Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran is obviously next on list, though it may prove a tough nut to crack. However Israel leaders are patient. They can wait for sanctions to work for them and in the meantime squeeze more out of Uncle Sam by making threatening noises. By contrast the House of Saud is a much easier target. It depends on high oil prices to maintain both a large repressive apparat and to bribe large chunks of the population (including the Shia in the oil-rich east) into compliance. Should oil prices drop in the $50-60 region for a year they would be in for some serious troubles.
You have to understand the US, differently from Russia, lack any capability of long term strategic planning.
I'm going to take exception to this.
You really think there is no method to the madness of U.S. foreign policy? Or NATO for that matter.
Russia isn't written off saying "They have always had the same goal." That may be true, but it is only because they have lost every imperial struggle they find themselves in. By your logic, Britain, Portugal, France, and Germany should have simliar "long term strategies." They just aren't apparent because they won at least one before they lost. Russia has yet to test worlwide hegemony.
Leaving the pathetic "we are there to fight terrorism" excuse aside
Okay.
If the US were planning to secure a huge supply of oil, it made little sense to fight a war the other side of the globe. Annexing Canada by political means or deposing Hugo Chavez through a "piloted revolution" in Venezuela would have given the US ready access to enormous oil reserves at a fraction of the cost.
The U.S. already gets its imported oil from Mexico and Canada. We have use for middle east oil through the petrodollar system.
The U.S. lacks long term geopolitical planning my ass, kid. - The middle East is a plan to simultaneously satisfy every ethnic and religious group in the middle east, while securing governments that will be friendly to Western resource exploitation. Pakistan and Turkey both know that the U.S. thinks this, but still plays along as if we aren't working towards these goals. This is why I doubt Turkey is a reliable ally under pressure and why Pakistan will turn on us as soon as they get the right situation (China...). So, you can see in the map why we want Pakistan to no longer border China. Kurdistan is being built in Iraq and Turkey/Syria right now...
It is just a matter of finding the right opportunities. We have to find ways to help Jordan and Lebanon and Yemen stay alive while allowing the Saudis to topple and give up territory to the islamists. I think Israel is a lucky satellite at this point. The U.S will turn its back on them when there is too much baggage behind supporting them. They do heavily manipulate our media and politics, but the JCoS care little for religious squabbles.
Z. Brzezinski has said that our goal is to build the internal production and energy demand in China while depriving them of energy resources abroad with the intention of turning Russia and China against each other. China goes to Indonesia for oil. The U.S. says, "no" China goes to the Phillippines for oil. The U.S. says, "no" China goes to Central Asia, but have Iran, Russia, The U.S., Israel, and NATO to deal with. China goes to North Africa, but the warlords make foreign development expensive and time consuming and with little guarantee of success. China goes to Austrialia for oil. The U.S. says, "no."
I do think the planners in the U.S are getting impatient, but these are 50-75 year plans. They aren't mythical cultural dreams that have been smashed by virtually every other world power like the Russian dreams of a victorious Great Game.
By contrast the House of Saud is a much easier target. It depends on high oil prices to maintain both a large repressive apparat and to bribe large chunks of the population (including the Shia in the oil-rich east) into compliance. Should oil prices drop in the $50-60 region for a year they would be in for some serious troubles.
Yes, the petrodollar system is heaviest there. But, unfortunately, I don't think they are an easy target when things start to get hot over there.
While tptb in the anglosphere do have a long term plan for world domination, its the execution that is haphazard. In a sense, you are both right. But some of these military adventures are pathetic failures, you cannot tell me that they handled iraq the way that they intended to. Read Fiasco by thomas e ricks if you dont believe me.
I agree with you. I actually think the NeoCon line of, "They'll welcome us with open arms" was really what we were expecting. But, Iraq, just like Egypt, have not played ball recently. Egypt, Libya, and Pakistan all have not been playing ball. Iraq went off the petrodollar, Libya tried expanding the role of the AU without the approval of the Western Nation State-Unions.
The "Arab Spring" seems more like we just threw the dice for everyone. It's a sign of desperation.
Google "Raymond Davis"
Raymond Davis is the reason why we "found Osama in Pakistan" when we did. One of our deep cover CIA espionage operatives got caught by the Pakistanis taking pictures of Indian border installations with paperwork and cell phone records linking him to Al-Qaeda. The Pakistanis tried using him as leverage in a trade for one of the women who we kept in an Afghani secret prison for 6 years (in other words, high level of importance). The US didn't admit anything for two entire months and when it did the CIA said he was just a diplomat. But that didn't hold since Raymond Davis is an alias and having an alias is a disqualifeier for obtaining diplomatic passports.
The Russians expected war over this when it first happened. The Italian foreign ministry sent out statements warning their embassies of possible warfare.
The US media didn't report on this until the US admitted it had happened and even then they offered the story that he was 'defending himself from being mugged in Pakistan'...by the two dead guys who were actually ISI.
We are not an omnipotent force, but we are always on the offensive. The JCoS = no huddle.
The timeline of Obama having "actionable intelligence" concerning Osama's whereabouts in September of 2010, the Raymond Davis incident in January 2011, the U.S. admission of the incident in March of 2011, Obama testifying that he was doing his march madness brackets/plotting Osama's assassination simultaneously, then the May 1st, 2011 attack...speaks for itself. This incident was huge, but got no significant coverage due to its nature.
The purpose of assassinating Osama in Pakistan and then letting it hit the media like a movie trailer was to ensure that we had international leverage for our actions in Pakistan with Raymond Davis since we didn't have Pakistani support for his actions.
I think the first gulf war was mistake. US should have let Saddam have Kuwait. It would have kept the Sauds in check and not let them propagate wahhabism freely and secured ussome nice oil from Kuwait and Iraq. For all his mistakes Saddam actually treated the non muslims better than anyone else in that region.
Mr Brzezinski's ideas reminded me a lot of Karl Marx's: allow capitalism to destroy itself by "supercharging it" and pave the way fro the Proletarian Revolution. We know how well it turned out.
He may have had a point in thinking China has always lacked a geopolitical vision, being a very inwardly focused country, but Chinese leadership is learning fast. They will learn even faster once their housing bubble bursts (or if they somehow manage to deflate it slowly): the present turmoil in the Communist (?) Party is a sign the "growth at any cost" faction is losing ground to the "real politics" faction. How this faction will handle relationships with the US is still a mystery but I expect them to be more cautious and less accomodating than their predecessors.
Still I am not convinced of the existence of a long term US plan and probably will never be. You give good arguments but I still see the US as being in a post Cold War "grab what you can" phase which is proceeding with highs and lows, being mostly fueled by the lack of any serious opposition outside Russia's immediate sphere of influence (see the Russia-Georgia war and how the US-inspired revolution in Ukraine petered out).
PS: don't call "kid" somebody who was already around when Gerald Ford was president. You'd make him feel older than he already is.
Ok, how the hell do you honestly argue that the Arab Spring vindicates pro-war liberalism or interventionism?
It's appearing to prove the exact opposite ffs.
Was recently reading some interesting, closely related news.
As you well know the US Army maintains many warehouses full of military stockpiles around the world to hasten troops deployment. Due to the need of supplying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan most of these warehouses were emptied, hence the Pentagon is taking the occasion to "stock up" and reorganize.
As you may well imagine, the Gulf will take the lion's share, with thee big sites containing not only ammunitions, supplies, trucks etc but also heavy equipment, like tanks and infantry fighting vehicles (IFV). These sites will be fully restocked and enlarged to make room for a large number of MRAP's, the armored trucks so widely used in Afganistan. MRAP's are useless in a shooting war (being easily destroyed by even the old 100mm Soviet tank gun, not to mention more recent anti-tank weapons) but are very useful in "low intensity" conflicts, were the enemy is poorly equipped and has to rely on home-made explosives and ancient anti-tank weaponry.
The sites in Korea and Japan will also be restocked and enlarged but, significantly, instead of MRAP's will be stocked with "disaster relief" supplies. Whatever these are and how they will be employed, I leave that to your imagination.
Much, much more interesting is Europe's situation. The US Army will reduce its presence in Europe by withdrawing a big part of the armored troops stationed there and their equipment to the US. However the rapid deployment site in Italy won't be closed or reduced. Heavy equipment will be shipped back to the US but will be replaced with MARP's and other light equipment better suited to "bush wars". This signals two things: first, AFRICOM is becoming more and more important, second, the US will probably take over from France the role of "firefighter" in the African continent, probably given the European country's failure to develop a modern "rapid response force" and poor showing in Lybia. There's also to consider the fact US allies in Africa have been shown to be much less formidable than originally thought, with Somalia proving a tough nut to crack for Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. The US may be ready to do what France and Britain used to do in the XIX century, send in the "regulars" when the askaris had proven their limited value.
I read recently that Russia had 100,000 "techincal assistants" in Syria.
Given Syria’s possession of an enormous arsenal of chemical weapons
This must be why. If Assad falls to a factional power that wars with itself (as in Libya) those chemical weapons will get everywhere. The U.S. might be indifferent to their 'accidental' use in eastern europe and the middle east... I think Russia will care more (EU might too). I also think one of the reasons the U.S. wants Assad overthrown so much is because Russia has so many assets with his regime.
http://www.infowars.com/putins-geopolitical-chess-game-with-washington-in-syria-and-eurasia/
http://non-intervention.com/1055/galloping-toward-the-abyss-the-price-of-u-s-interventionism-in-syria-and-israel/
The US has gotten a lot smarter with intervention lately. Humanitarian war seems to be quite effective propaganda.
"Humanitarian Aid" has been an excuse since Laos.
The difference in foreign policy in this country, as I have seen it (in academic terms) is as follows:
Realists: Eisenhouer, Reagan, Carter, & Obama
These people use paramilitary intelligence operations and will arm and fund rebels. They will bomb countries and not admit to it. They will use "coercive diplomacy" which is basically the wikileaks operation; get gossip and dirt on diplomats and leaders that we don't like or need then release it to the media and the populations of the countries get rid of them. Iran/Contra is a basic example of "realism."
Old School Realists: Nixon, Bush Sr.
These are realists that have committed to the full use of force which is the only thing that really differentiates them. Bush and Nixon (!!) were willing fund and arm militant groups that massacred people. I can't prove it, yet, but I think Bush Sr. waged, basically, a PR campaign aimed at convincing people that we went to war with Iraq (Bush practically gave Iraq the nod to attack Kuwait after we manipulated them into war with Iran) and won it within "thirty minutes" or whatever.
NeoCons: Clinton (was instrumental to the preface of their policy & let them dominate the State and Defense Depts.), Bush Jr.
The Mujaheddin came from Carter. Reagan used it effectively in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Obama is simply aiding the pawns in whatever arena we need them in. I would also argue that Guantanamo is not just a prison, it is a training camp. We have sent many "prisoners" from Guantanamo to Libya, Yemen, & Pakistan. We pick them up, we break them down, we get them fit, we send them back with money, guns, and diplomatic support.
Syria says will use chemical weapons if attacked
This is the same thing that India and Israel say about the WMD's. The whole strategic purpose of the WMD is to say that conventional warfare is moot. "We will nuke your infantry..." It necessarily elevates conflict from "WMD vs. convention" to "WMD vs. WMD." The latter is why we don't invade Pakistan and North Korea, but will invade countries that don't have them, like Iraq. This is the prime reason that Iran is scrammbling to acquire them (they are developming them, they would be dumb not to). Quite the conundrum game theory simulation.
Israel has said it fears that chaos following Assad's fall could allow the Jewish state's enemies to access Syria's chemical weapons, and has not ruled out military intervention to prevent this from happening.
Russia will be too. Noone in the world wants Israel to secure those weapons.
Naval chief confirms talks with Cuba, Vietnam and the Seychelles about setting up overseas facilities for Russian ships Russia's only existing naval base outside the former Soviet Union is located in the Syrian port of Tartus. A squadron of Russian navy ships, including several assault ships carrying marines, is heading to Tartus in a show of support for a longtime ally that Moscow has protected from international sanctions and continues to supply with weapons.
Russia's only existing naval base outside the former Soviet Union is located in the Syrian port of Tartus. A squadron of Russian navy ships, including several assault ships carrying marines, is heading to Tartus in a show of support for a longtime ally that Moscow has protected from international sanctions and continues to supply with weapons.
But does realism necessarily preclude non-interventionism? Would you consider Ron Paul a realist?
Realism
Neoconservatism
Isolationism
Those are the three academic classes of US foreign policy. Ron Paul is, obviously, considered an isolationist. I don't disagree with the terminology although I know many take offense to it and wish to consider it "non-intervention." I split Realism up into two camps because "realists" don't use the full military force, but Nixon and Bush Sr. were straddling the line and neither can be considered NeoCons.