Scope for Peace

Over recent weeks there have been important conversations involving US President-elect Donald Trump, his choice as national security advisor Mike Waltz, Trump adviser (and slayer of public institutions) Elon Musk (whose wealth is now approaching half a trillion dollars), President Viktor Orban of Hungary (who is in his final days as chair of the European Council) and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Trump team’s analysis of the Ukrainian crisis sees it as one for which NATO is primarily responsible. In short, it seems to me, they in large measure buy into the Russian explanation for its SMO. Recent exploratory talks (and President Orban deserves special praise for standing against all the authoritarian liberal bullshit of Europe’s other leaders and finding a way to talk sensibly to actual Russians) are promising indications of some kind of positive outcome (for immediate peace) early on in the Trump presidency.

I have argued in a recent post the reasons why I am concerned that Russia, under multiple sources of threat, may settle for solutions that align with its narrow national interests at the possible expense of broader geopolitical goals for the end of US hegemony, the rise of a non-dollarized BRICS-led Global South, and the abandonment of the West’s arbitary “rules-based order” in favor of a return to a system of international law presided over by a reformed UN. These broader, some would say idealistic, goals are now threatened by Western efforts at push-back and tensions internal to the BRICS.

Paying for Ukraine

A Trump negotiating team would likely start from acknowledging the obvious reality that Putin doesn’t want all of Ukraine or Poland or anywhere else. Putin just wants to be sure that Ukraine is neutral and that it does not host to US hypersonic missiles (an objective that Biden appeared to concede to Putin towards the end of 2021 but then simply forgot about, thereby helping provoke the SMO).

There are other things that Putin will need to see, as well, including the departure of the illegal “President” Zelenskiy (who Ray McGovern predicts today will be gone two weeks into Trump’s presidency), and the denazification of Ukraine. In other words, we cannot expect to see Putin negotiate with any Banderite stand-in for Zelenskiy. Amid some signs that Trump will go a long way to secure a quick end to the conflict, Russia might try offering to formally abandon some of its objectives that have never been explicit stated but have certainly been on the table of possibilities that are open to Russia if the West cannot find a way of stalling its advances. One of these may be Kiev, another may be Kharkiv, and another, Odessa.

In the meantime, of course, the Biden administration, following its defeat at the polls - a defeat that it suffered in part because of Biden’s squandering of US national wealth on a silly, unnecessary and very bloody war in defense of Biden’s friends in Ukraine - is doing everything in its power to escalate the conflict. Not inconceivably, in a good-cop / bad-cop routine, Trump (even as he publicly chastises the Biden regime for its decision to greenlight US, UK, and French deployment of precision cruise missiles against Russian targets in Russia) may see this as working in his favor if the result is that Russia is therefore more likely to make concessions.

In addition to the greenlighting of cruise missiles, Biden, in his final days as President, is also rushing whatever arms and cash he can to Ukraine. Some of this is the $7 billion remnant of the $61 billion authorized by Congress back in March. It appears that a $20 billion “loan” has been transferred by the Treasury to Ukraine which is supposedly going to be paid back from the interest payable on seized Russian assets. Particularly given that most of these assets are actually held in Europe, it is far from clear that the interest will possibly be sufficient to pay for this loan.

Even though the US taxpayer will likely end up paying for the loan, this measure has not had the approval of Congress. Congressional reluctance to consider more money for Ukraine has been demonstrated by the refusal of House Speaker Mike Johnson to bring to the floor a White House request for the transfer of $24 billion to Ukraine.

Other sources of continuing aid to Ukraine include previously-agreed tranches of money going to Ukraine from the EU which is also progressing, through the G7, its own scheme for a loan of $30 billion which, like the US loan, is to be secured on seized Russian assets. This loan, if it happens, is also likely to end up being paid for by increasingly reluctant EU taxpayers.

“Extending” Russia on the Battlefield

In Siversk it seems likely that Russia did sustain unusually large losses in an offensive that it attempted over the weekend (but bear in mind that Ukraine has lost 25,000 soldiers in the past month), even as it probably succeeded in breaking through Ukrainian defenses. In Pokrovsk, Ukrainian forces successfully pushed back Russians at the western end of Shevchenko. A Ukrainian counter-offensive on Novotroitske, also close to Pokrovsk, failed. It has been reported, incidentally, that 1,000 Ukrainian troops defected from the French-trained 155th Brigade in this area.

In Chasiv Yar, Ukrainians have reportedly taken back control over the industrial area. Further north, although Russia has scored a number of successes in securing a footprint on the west bank of the river Oskil, Ukraine claims to have pushed the Russians out of a forested area on the eastern bank. Newly arriving weapons may also provide the muscle for a further Ukrainian advance in the Cherniv and Sumy areas, west of Kursk, with a view to seizing an oil line between Bryansk and Momett that feeds oil to Belarus and then to Europe.

Europe, Savior of Europe

The French government is now so unstable, even under the newly appointed prime minister Bayrou, that it is unlikely to be able to carry forward any meaningful legislation that supports the neocon interests of President Macron or perhaps tries to do anything at all.

If this situation persists to a point of absolute crisis then we could see a collapse of the current politicsl status quo and a taking of power from Macron by Marine Le Pen’s party, National Rally, which is opposed to French participation in the war against Russia in Ukraine.

Germany, in the wake of a no-confidence vote today (December 16) in the ruling coalition, goes to the polls on February 23rd. Its likely new chancellor will be Friedrich Merz (CDU), although the (likely) outgoing chancellor, Scholz, is expected to be in post until a new coalition is formed in March or April. It is possible that the new coalition will have to include the AfD (which currently polls at around 18% of the electorate, ahead of the SDU which polls at 17%). So the pro-war policy of Merz (who wants to see Taurus missiles being fired on Russia from Ukraine) may yet be constrained by an anti-war AfD. The behavior of its leftist equivalent, SWA, in endorsing the austerity policy of its coalition partners in the two main states of the former East Germany, however, does not augur well for its ability to resist pro-war pressures.

Other pressures on Russia from the Biden administration, apart from reckless ATACMS attacks to provoke Russia into massive over-reaction, include (1) measures to impose further sanctions on those entities that cooperate with the distribution of Russian oil and gas (as in the case of the so-called Russian “shadow fleet,” that is, tankers who do not insure their ships in London’s insurance market); (2) pressure on HTS in Syria to push Russia from their bases in Latakia (although, for the moment, HTS is respecting Turkey’s reluctance to inflict further damage on Russian interests); (3)muse of the Syrian crisis - for which the US is mainly responsible - as a way of promoting the Eastern Mediterranean as a relatively new source of oil and gas that will damage Russia by liberating the West from dependence on Russian energy supplies; (4) incitement to civil war in both Georgia and Romania by attempts to undermine the electoral success of people that Washingto does not like; and (6) support for a proposed French-Polish and, possibly, German force on the ground in Ukraine.

This last might serve as (1) a doubtlessly ineffective and far too small a deterrence against further Russian advances, or (2) a NATO force to police a buffer zone between Russian forces and the rest of Ukraine, or even (3) a mopping-up device to help divide up a rump Ukraine among any European countries with some kind of historical claim on the territories of Ukraine, or perhaps with none at all.

Manpower Shortages and North Koreans

Russia too has its manpower problems. Its military needs compete with its needs for workers to power a growing industrial base. Western media are making a lot of this supposed Russian demograpic deficit, although it seems obvious that Russia would have no shortage of trained manpower from allies such as China, North Korea, Iran or even the Indian sub-continent. Nonetheless media exuberance about such a deficit links to the narrative about North Korean troops in Russia, not just training, as one might expect, but in combat.

Dima of the Military Summary Channel has been more convinced of this narrative than many comparable commentators and the other day even cited Russian sources in support. However I notice that today and yesterday he expressed an element of doubt, even as he relayed the story of a Russian-North Korean offensive in Kursk in which he reports that 24 soldiers, possibly North Koreans, were killed. The Independent, incidentally, carries a story today of a small group of North Koreans who were killed, supposedly, by friendly fire arising from language difficulties.

Carving Up Syria

Sunni Sectarianism

The Sunni majority is not homogenous, and the militia that have either emerged indigenously from that majority or, just as much, that have been exported into Syria (principally by Turkey) are often just as much at loggerheads with one another as they are with militia representing other groups in Syria. Many Kurds are Sunni. In Idlib, HTS struggled for supremacy over other Sunni extremists. Its Sunni identity does not confer automatic unity between HTS and other Sunni militia in Syria. Its radical Islamic beliefs do not make it the automatic enemy, either, of Israel, for whom HTS leader Julani even professes love. Recall that Israel gave practical medical and other support to Al-Nusra and even ISIS fighters from Isrseli-controlled Golan Heights during the 2011-2020 phase of the ongoing Western war for regime change in Damascus. Why did it do this? Because Israel has always preferred a divided Syria.

If HTS was truly a radical Sunni jihadi force (and not a Turkish proxy assembled from far and wide including Uyghurs from China), it would not simply be hostile to Israel, but it would be a friend of Palestine (mainly Sunni), and Palestine’s political arms Hamas (particularly) and Fatah. But HTS and Turkey are dismantling bases of the various Palestinian factions that took refuge in Syria following the Israeli Nakba massacre and expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948. They are certainly no friends of Palestine. It has been said that without Syria there is no Palestine, and HTS appears anxious to prove the point

HTS has said that Israel’s presence in Syria is no longer necessary because Syria no longer poses a threat to Israel. Of course, Israel will not listen, since the main “threat” that concerns Israel is Iran and Israel sees its invasion of Israel as a means of taking advantage with a view to an upcoming war with Iran.

Should HTS - a minor military force that no longer has access to the arms of the defeated Syrian army, since these have nearly all been bombed by Israel and Turkey - dare fight Israel, Israel will use this as a pretext for invading further into Syria. Israel’s occupation now extends well beyond the Golan Heights (where it may or may not be true that Israel has found a proxy in the Druze community) taking the settlements of Beit Jann, Daraaa, and many villages, on the way to Sweida.

As for Iran, Israel is now saying publicly that its destruction of Syrian air defenses makes it easier for Israel to wage more devastating attacks on Iran. And Trump comments suggest he is in fully sympathy.

Turkish forces or their proxies are aggressively pushing the Kurds further east and, in doing so, risk direct confrontation with the US and US proxies.

The Struggles for US Hegemony Against Russia

The fall of Syria is a defeat for Russia. It may also be a partial liberation for Russia from its sunken investment in backing a regime that has been so bitterly traumatized. Traumatized, first, by having to fight off an exceptionally bloody color revolution in the guise of a self proclaimed pro-jihadi and pro-democracy hybrid cynically organized and funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar on behalf, fundamentally, of US hegemony, and involving all the guile that the practised intelligence services of former Middle Eastern imperialists (Britain, France, and the Ottomans, primarily, with the help of other former European imperialists including Netherlands) could muster. Traumatized, secondly, with also having to suffer US larceny of its agricultural and oil resources and ruinous US economic (sanctions) warfare that simply made any kind of rebuilding and recovery impossible.

So Assad’s Syria, Russia’s ally has collapsed. The kindest future right now would be partition. But the road to partition is long and bloody.

Is this (Russian defeat) a good thing? Not if you imagine that a revived Ottoman empire is a good thing. Much of Syria was, after all, Ottoman. Erdogan has been making comments that suggest that far from being content simply to pacify and acquire control over the main body of Syria through its proxies - the terrorist HTS (largely a foreign force recruiting from far and wide with no genuine connection to Syria whatsoever), and the SNA (an arm of the Turkish military) this territory will become part of Turkiye.

There is a certain merit to this given that direct Turkish control might conceivably be less horrific than the chaos of government-by-HTS or, rather, non-government-by-HTS. But the extension of Turkish control will be an increasing threat to Israel (which has advanced throught the Golan Heights to within twenty or so miles from Damascus) which, in turn, is establishing even closer relations with Turkiye’s enemies, the Kurds, in northeast Syria (who are being attacked by HTS and the SNA), but who are supported by the US, while reports surface of ISIS regrouping.

I speculated yesterday that indications of an approaching deal between Russia and HTS (which should simply be regarded as a direct Turkish proxy) to allow Russia to retain control of its naval base in Tartous and its air force base in Khmeimem could be good not just as a corridor for Russian control of its interests in Africa, but as a source of stabilization in Syria between the fast growing tensions between Turkiye, the Kurds and Israel, and that would also, most important of all, help Russia be seen to be a force to be reckoned with in the event, highly probable, of a hot war instigated by Israel against Iran, with the US siding with Israel as soon as Israeli jet fighters are shot down over Iran.

Russian air defense assets in Syria could be helpful in this context. Yet, Alex Mercouris in his broadcast earlier today cites reports that Russia is actually dismantling its S-400 air defenses at Khmeimem, and is disconinuing its humanitarian supplies of wheat to Syria, two things which he believes constitute strong evidence of a Russian decision to pull out of Syria altogether (and avoid the sensitivity of depending on Turkish goodwill to retain use of the Syrian bases).

The departure of Russia if, indeed, that does occur, I believe, will further weaken Turkiye which is already in very grave danger of over-extending itself. The Russian bases are a local source of economic stabilility for Alawite-dominated Latakia and would lend some kind of legitimacy to Turkish control. Russia has plenty of other options so far as bases are concerned, although it is highly inconvenient for it to have to transition right now and in a period of emergency, and its deal with the Assad regime was probably better than most available. But for Turkiye to get stuck in an endless war against the US, the Kurds, the Israelis, and a new generation of indigenous Syrian militia is not a healthy outcome for a very fragile economy.

Iran

We shall see. I am reminded again of Paul Craig Robert’s criticism of both Russia and Iran, that they have been insufficiently aggressive. I am tempted to agree. The time for Iran to exert its strength against Israel was before the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah and before the collapse of Syria. That it didn't, given the formal pact that now exists between Russia and Iran, is very likely the result of a judgment in Moscow that now was not the time for Russia to be deflected from its broader goal in Ukraine.

But the result of that caution is the loss of Syria, and the loss of Syria is a threat to Iran and a major boost to Israeli Zionism and aggressive Zionist intent against Iran. In the last two days we have had worrying statements from both Tel Aviv and Washington of intent to go to war against Iran. US President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments (with even Tulsi Gabbard being pro-Israel) almost sign a warrant of war against Iran for Israel.

Trump will take the US out of the Armageddon trajectory of Ukraine against Russia only to throw it immediately back into the fire of the Armageddon trajectory of Israel against Iran and, through his 60% tariff scheme, the Armageddon trajectory of Taiwan against China.

Talk of Iran now being provoked into acquiring a nuclear weapon as deterrence seems fanciful at best. Since it will take a year at least for Iran to build such a weapon, Israel and the US are even more highly motivated to strike Iran before it becomes a nuclear power. The Israeli Air Force is already reportedly preparing for just such an attack, beginning with Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Ukraine

Scott Ritter has written in a recent article that his sources tell him that President Biden’s decision, after losing the election, to greenlight the use of US precision missiles against targets in Russia was taken against the advice of the intelligence community and of the armed services. This tells us that the unelected cabal that is responsible for the actions of a senile, outgoing President is capable of bringing the world directly to the brink of nuclear war, that the cabal actually wants to so provoke Russia that Russia will take wildly excessive counter-reaction. And it wants to do this before January 20th.

Whose interests are served?

Europe

Further disruptions in Europe and European Russia that may work to Russia’s advantage since any disruption to the European elitist binging on war rhetoric is probably a good thing.

Macron has appointed a new prime minister, Michael Barnier, who, according to Barnier himself, might hope for as much as a six month period in office without another vote of no confidence but who, just as likely, will bite the dust of parliamentary gridlock a good deal before then and possibly in time before Marine Le Pen is taken down by judicial moves against her and her party for the alleged misuse of public funds.

Closer to Russia, is Georgia and, although its new prime minister recently declared that the ruling Georgian Dream party had seen off the latest Western-backed NGO color revolution, this narrative has actually still to peak. AP reported earlier today that Mikheil Kavelashvili became president of Georgia. He was the only candidate on the ballot of members of the electoral college, made up of members of Parliament, municipal councils and regional legislatures. He is closely identified with the governing Georgian Dream party that retained control (and the approval of numerous electoral observers) of Parliament in the recent election of October 26.

The current President, Salome Zourabichvili, fiercely pro-Western (a dual French Georgian citizen; possibly, some have speculated, an agent for France) has (not so democratically) vowed to remain in office and remain in the Presidential Palace, in a direct incitement to further violent opposition from the Maidan-type protestors on the streets.

Asia

President Yoon of South Korea has been successfully impeached as of today. His duties will be shouldered by others. The vote to impeach has to be approved by the country’s constitutional court and it is widely hoped that the court will move promptly to endorse. The real motives for Yoon’s attempt to impose martial law are unclear but the fact that his minister of defense has resigned and another official tried to commit suicide may suggest that Yoon was being manipulated through a senior military faction on behalf of the US whose own interest may have been to by-pass an unwilling South Korean citizenry into forcing the export of weapons from South Korea to Ukraine.

Multipolarity

Recent events are not auguring well for the cause of mutlipolarity any time soon.

The challenges to Russia are arguably so numerous and so intense that they may well have the consequence of constraining Russia into traditional foreign policies of national interest less informed by grandiose ambitions for a new and more just global order.

For the time being and possibly for the longer term Russia can look with some security to its alliances with China, in particular, and Iran and North Korea and some others. But the BRICS seems an ever more fragile location for the pursuit of transformative change towards a new global order. The US under Trump will be highly motivated to try to prise China away from Russia, although its capacity to do this is far more limited than Trump policy makers yet understand.

There are obviously many uncertainties concerning Iran and North Korea. Meanwhile, within in the BRICS the solidity of Brazilian support seems uncertain given (1) Brazil’s membership of Mercosur tying it indirectly to the interests of the EU; (2) Lulu’s chairing of the BRICS next year amid the distraction of Brazil’s hosting of major climate talks, and (3) given Lulu’s distancing of Brazil from Venezuela (soon to be a hot spot, once more, in the evolution of the Global South). I have never had much confidence in South Africa in this context.

Although only an affiliate member, Turkiye’s recent behavior in Syria may make it impossible for BRICS partners to agree to promoting it to full membership and may also suggest that Turkiye, when push comes to shove, will align with Washington and NATO interests first before those of the Global South.

Like Turkey, Indian interests are finely balanced between orientation to Washington and its co-lesdershiop with China of the Global South. It neighbors a Washington puppet government in Pakaistan and, possibly a Washington-prone government in Bangladesh.

Weaponizing Human Rights Discourse for Regime Change

My book Conflict Propaganda in Syria (Routledge 2022) addresses this among many other claims and counterclaims concerning the cruelties of the Assad regime. I do not discount the possibility or even the probability of gross abuses but I also describe some of the ways in which Syria was a laboratory for a Western-backed industry for the weaponization of claims of “human rights abuses” for the purposes of regime change. These played out most notoriously - and to the discredit of the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons - in relation to false claims of Assad responsibility for chemical weapons attacks that were actually the work of the jihadi opposition or that did not occur at all or that were staged by jihadi movements, including by the White Helmets.

I also point out that the abuses that are commonly the subject of Western complaint and moral indignation are routine for Western-supported regimes throughout the Arab world, including Egypt whose treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood on behalf of the West as well as of Egyptian elites themselves is every bit as bad and probably a lot worse.

I also point out that the the Baath party regimes of Syria (driven by principles of Arab secularism, nationalism and socialism - red flags, of course, to a Washington foreign policy agenda of American Exceptionalism, American hegemony, an American-dominated “globalist” order and extreme capitalism) were themselves the target of hideous sectarian attacks by the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist Sunni movements at the service of Western interests that weaponize for their own purposes Wahhadi Islam’s commitment to the Caliphate and disrespect and even hate for nationalist loyalties. Baathist reactions to jihadi violence has typically been presented in Western media (somewhat ludicrously, given their theorcratic character) as repressive over-reactions to “democratic” movements.

And I would go so far as to suggest that the Western neocon cabal that passes silently over Israel’s long-standing Zionist genocide of the Palestinins and now through its assertion of a “Greater Israel” in southern Lebanon and southern Syria - as though this was nothing - certainly has no claim to moral superiority over the Arab world.

I have also had occasion in a recent post to return to my argument that the “sectarianism” so often laid at the door of the regimes of Hasef and Bashar Assad, has not been the sectarianism of a secular regime but has always been the sectarianism of a Syrian minority of extremist Islam, funded and instigated by the Muslim Brotherhood and often in collaboration with Washington.

The minority Alawite community is an offshoot of Shia Islam that acquired disproportionate influence and power, including in the military, political and commercial realms, precisely because it was recognized by most thinking, non-extremist Syrians to be a source of protection of all Syrian minorities against potential abuses of power by the majority Sunni population and, in particular, its extremist Muslim Brotherhood jihadi minority.

I have referred just now to a Western-funded industry for the weaponization of human rights advocacy for the purposes of regime change. This is the subject of a recent article by Kit Klarenberg (Klarenberg) with particular reference to an agency that I also discuss in my book namely, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), founded in May 2011 (even before the outbreak of the so-called “civil war” or attempted color revolution) by NATO state contractors, ARK and Tsamota and whose first act was

“To train handpicked Syrian “investigators, lawyers, and activists in basic international criminal and humanitarian law…enabling [them] to link state and non-state actors to underlying criminal acts.” Dedicated “teams of investigators according to their regions” - including Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Idlib - were created, “and equipped with field investigative kits.

“Their objective was to gather evidence of war crimes committed by Syrian government forces, in support of a “domestic justice process in a future transitional Syria..

“Given the affiliations of ARK and Tsamota, the pair were well-placed to know in advance of plans by Western governments to topple the Assad government via brute force. Now that has come to pass, it may be time for their long-standing plan to at last be put into action/”

“Founded by MI6 journeyman Alistair Harris, ARK was one of a constellation of contractors, staffed by military and intelligence veterans, employed by British intelligence at a cost of many millions to conduct covert psychological warfarecampaigns in Syria, from the initial days of the crisis. The aim was to destabilise Assad’s government, convince the domestic population, international bodies and Western citizens that genocidal CIA and MI6-backed militant groups pillaging the country were a “moderate” alternative, and deluge media the world over with pro-opposition propaganda”.

“Under this operation’s auspices, ARK founded and ran numerous ostensibly independent opposition media outlets targeting Syrians of all ages, while tutoring and equipping countless local “citizen journalists”, teaching them “camera handling, lighting, sound, interviewing, filming a story…video and sound editing…voice-over, scriptwriting,” and “graphics and 2D and 3D animation design.” The firm’s students were also instructed in practical propaganda theory, such as “target audience identification, media narrative analysis and monitoring, behavioral identification/understanding, campaign planning, behavioral change, and how communications can influence it…”

Throughout the Syrian dirty war, the CIJA enjoyed glowing profiles in Western media, while providing journalists and rights groups with multiple scoops supposedly exposingSyrian government atrocities. At no point did any mainstream reporter or NGO question, let alone raise concerns about, the manner in which the Commission garnered the material upon which its cases against government officials in Damascus was “hand carried” out of the country.

“CIJA chief Wiley acknowledged in 2014 that his organisation smuggled evidence from Syria by working with every opposition group “up to but excluding Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.” However, a 2019 investigation by The Grayzone amply indicates that CIJA was frequently in extremely close quarters with both groups. Moreover, they were paid handsomely for their assistance in securing documentation. This included material seized in Raqqa after its January 2014 capture by ISIS, right when the ultra-extremist group was massacring Alawites and Christians…

“Accordingly, CIJA received tens of millions of dollars for its efforts from a variety of Western governments, including those at the forefront of the Syrian dirty war. Despite the vast windfall, the Commission’s work produced zero prosecutions for many years. This changed in late 2019, when Anwar Raslan and Eyad Gharib, two former members of Damascus’ General Intelligence Directorate, were indicted in Germany for crimes against humanity.”

As Klarenberg goes on to explain, these indictments turned out to be very controversial.