Author: Salman Rafi Sheikh

 

Pakistani Province of Baluchistan at Cross-Roads of Geo-Political games

Ex: http://journal-neo.org

 

Baluchistan, the energy rich western province of Pakistan, has been experiencing violence and conflict in the form of insurgency for many decades. Although this insurgency has partly resulted from the socio-economic deprivation of the province, however, there is also another dimension of this conflict—the direct involvement of certain foreign powers both regional and international. They have they been exploiting this deprivation for igniting conflict but also providing both the material and non-material support to the insurgents by passing resolutions in favour of an ‘Independent Baluchistan’ and providing military equipement for sustaining skrimishes against the government and the army of Pakistan. This very foreign involvement which has turned this otherwise ‘socio-political struggle’ against deprivation into different sub-forms: ethno-nationalism, sectarianism, provincial chauvinism, terrorism and ‘Talibanism’. And, it is this very foreign involvement that has made the insurgency exclusively ‘Baluch insurgency’ instead of an insurgency of the people of Baluchistan which include Pashtun and other ethnic communities too. However, these forms of the on-going spate of large scale violence are not necessarily the result of that purely Baluch struggle against deprivation, nor are the people of Baluchistan, or more specifically people of typical Baluch ethnic origin, themselves directly involved in it. There is a definite global geo-political context which, when taken into account, does explain to a reasonable extent the spread of violence and instability.

This aspect is related to the geographical location of Baluchistan at the maritime interface of the Western, Southern and Eastern segments of Asia alongside the Indian Ocean that further enhances its importance in facilitating global trade and energy shipments. Baluchistan thus provides a number of shortest possible land and sea route to and from the East and the West. For this very reason Baluchistan has become a ‘geo-strategic’ fulcrum of this arena of extremely heightened geo-political competition. The US sponsored idea of “Greater Baluchistan” has done Baluchistan no good. On top of all Baluchistan’s territorial link with Afghanistan and use of its territory for the facilitation of NATO supplies has made it even more vulnerable to the geo-political maneuvering of the US and its allies in the region.

The idea of “greater Baluchistan” includes not merely territorial disintegration of Pakistan alone; it also includes that of both Iran and Afghanistan. In introducing a resolution on ‘independent Baluchistan’ in the US House of Representative in 2012, the US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said that the people of Baluchistan, “currently divided between Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, have the right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country,” adding that they should be afforded full opportunity to choose their own status among the community of nations. This ‘moral support’ is being followed by the supply of ample foreign fundings, arms deliveries and military training. In 2001, Jane’s information group, one of the leading sources on intelligence information, reported that the RAW and MOSSAD have created five new agencies to penetrate Pakistan to target important religious figures, civil and military personnel, journalists, judges etc, and the current situation and information provided by Pakistan’s various security agencies also verifies the fact of foreign involvement in Baluchistan. Even the government of Afghanistan has been abetting the disruptive forces in igniting conflict in the region by providing territorial sanctuaries to the so-called insurgents.

The continuing Baluch struggle against “deprivation”, properly supplied by the Western fighter for the greater good have successfully spread the conflict into many zones of Baluchistan, making them virtually independent. By repeatedly highlighting and emphasizing the state of deprivation of the Baluch people, the US and its allies have been exploiting the Baluch youth that is dying out with foreign arms in its hands in an attempt to attain the much yearned after ‘national’ independence from the ‘dictatorial’ domination of the Punjab. In this context, the US Congress bill on Baluch’s right to separation and self determination, tabled in 2012, is one of the manifest examples of the deliberately designed geo-political maneuvering. That bill was and is not only a violation of the internationally recognized principle of non-intervention, but also a sort of window dressing of the US’ and its Western allies’ global agendas. In essence, it was nothing else but an attempt to give a ‘legitimate’ cover to pursue, on part of the US, the twentieth century grand objectives which include domination of the region extending from Baluchistan to Central Asia and Eurasia and to Eastern Asia by way of segmenting the entire region, thereby controlling and dominating the flow of energy to and from the Eastern, Central and Western segments of Asia through the Indian Ocean.

It is for this reason that many US policy makers have, from time to time, been emphasizing the geo-strategic significance of Baluchistan in terms of serving the “grand objectives” of the US. For example a prominent US expert on South Asian affairs, Selig Harrison, urged the White House in 2011 to contain the fast spreading influence of China in the India Ocean, “by supporting the movement for an independent Baluchistan along the Arabian Sea and working with Baluch insurgents to oust the Chinese from their budding naval base at Gwadar.” Similarly, the evidence of such an interest in disintegrating Pakistan can also be found in an article, “Blood Borders” written by a military analyst of the US, Lt. Col. Ralph Peter, who presented the idea of revision of the boundaries of the entire Middle East as per the wished of the people of locale, and further suggested the placement of the US forces in the region to “continue to fight for security from terrorism, for the prospect of democracy and for access to oil supplies in a region that is destined to fight itself.”

The US has thus been using its presence in Afghanistan, which is by default linked to the attainment of the US’ grand objectives, to play dirty game in Baluchistan too. In 2012, during a briefing to the upper house of Pakistan’s parliament, the then interior minister of Pakistan, Mr. Rehman Malik, presented a number of letters written by the Afghan government to provide funds, visas, weapons and ammunition to Brahamdagh Bugti’s followers inside Baluchistan. Only in Kandhar there were reported 24 CIA sponsored training camps which train insurgents for carrying out their militant missions inside Baluchistan; and moreover, since 2002, the CIA has been running training camps inside Baluchistan for the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) and it has considerably assisted it in establishing a ‘state within a state.’

Needless to say, the CIA’s use of mercenaries to fight covert wars is an escapable feature of the US foreign policy. The arrest of such a mercenary, Raymond Davis, in Lahore blew the lid off the extensive role CIA covert operations are playing in creating the climate of violence and instability throughout Pakistan, and more specifically in Baluchistan. The underlying purpose of such covert operations is to manipulate in favour of supporting the Baluch peoples’ right to self-determination through secession.

That is how the neo-imperial forces of the West, led by the US, have been applying the policy of divide and rule—the classic political stratagem that has not escaped the interest of the neo-colonial states. While the truth is that the location of Baluchistan at the interface of three major segments of Asia, its maritime significance because of Gwadar port, its capacity to provide the shortest possible route to the landlocked states of Afghanistan and Central Asia, its capacity to serve as an international energy transit corridor, and its own untapped numerous reservoirs of energy sources add to its significance in the current era of extremely heightened competition in and around the Indian Ocean. As such, by disintegrating Pakistan, leading to an extended redrawing of regional boundaries, the US can significantly alter regional balance of power, and can place its own military in the region in the name of ‘maintaining peace and security.’

The US, in its quest for dominating the world is showing little to no respect for human rights Despite the fact that Pakistan is a non-NATO ally of the US,  is standing in the way of the U.S. and pays a handsome price for it.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs. Exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

L’Ukraine prise en tenailles entre l’Occident et la Russie

L’Ukraine prise en tenailles entre l’Occident et la Russie

par Thomas Ferrier

Ex: http://thomasferrier.hautetfort.com

La situation de l’Ukraine s’est profondément dégradée pendant le mois de janvier, alors que la résistance aux décrets liberticides votés par les parlementaires en catimini n’avait jamais été aussi forte. Des morts regrettables, des violences militantes autant que policières, ont entaché de sang un mouvement politique complexe, aux formes multiples, regroupant des libéraux occidentalistes aussi bien que des nationalistes radicaux.

La réaction du président Yanoukovitch est celle d’un pouvoir aux abois, sans la légitimité populaire d’un Poutine lui permettant de conserver son calme, et qui a été contraint de reculer. Il a contraint son premier ministre à démissionner, proposant l’ouverture à ses adversaires, à l’exception d’Oleh Tiahnybok, le dirigeant de Svoboda. Les députés ont aboli les lois qui restreignaient le droit de manifester. C’est un recul total ou presque, Yanoukovitch se refusant toutefois pour le moment à modifier le calendrier électoral et ainsi à prendre le risque d’être politiquement balayé, même s’il reste fort dans les zones russophones.

Yanoukovitch risque bien de subir le même désaveu que l’orangiste Sakashvili en Géorgie et pour les mêmes raisons, à savoir la volonté de mettre en place un régime restreignant les libertés. Or le souvenir de l’Union Soviétique n’est pas si loin. Poutine sait d’ailleurs ménager sa popularité en Russie en libérant ses adversaires, comme l’ex-milliardaire Khodorkovski ou les Pussy Riot, et en respectant en tout cas dans les formes les principes de la démocratie moderne. Mais il est vrai qu’il a le peuple derrière lui. Ce n’est pas le cas des tyranneaux des anciennes républiques soviétiques, qu’ils soient pro-USA ou pro-Russie.

L’Ukraine se trouve, on l’a dit, dans un positionnement géo-stratégique difficile, coupé en deux par un tropisme européen à l’ouest et par un tropisme russe à l’est, ravivant cette opposition, fondamentalement factice néanmoins, entre « occidentalistes » (zapadniki) et « slavophiles ». Entre volonté de rejoindre l’Union Européenne et crainte de perdre les avantages acquis de la relation ukraino-russe, le gouvernement en place n’a pas pu faire un choix clair entre deux options qui lui sont apparues comme incompatibles. La Russie a une part de responsabilité dans le sens où elle fait monter la pression vis-à-vis de l’Union Européenne, mais cette dernière a une responsabilité bien plus importante en se faisant le relai des intérêts américains dans la région. Poutine a très bien compris la politique de l’endiguement (« anaconda ») que les USA veulent mener contre la nouvelle Russie, comme ils l’ont fait dans le passé contre l’Union Soviétique.

Formé par le KGB, Vladimir Poutine sait très bien démasquer derrière des stratégies opaques les véritables chefs d’orchestre, ce qui ne veut pas dire qu’il faut tomber dans un autre piège qui est celui du « complotisme » et voir des plans ourdis par de mystérieux commanditaires derrière ce qui se passe aujourd’hui.

Tourner le dos à l’Union Européenne serait pour l’Ukraine une grosse erreur, mais cela en serait également de tourner le dos à la Russie. Ce serait comme tenter de s’unir en commençant par se couper en deux. Ces deux composantes, « europhiles » et « russophiles », ne devraient pas être opposées mais servir pour une synthèse originale, faisant alors de sa géographie une force et non plus une faiblesse.

Un gouvernement ukrainien digne de ce nom devrait se présenter comme un pont entre l’Union Européenne et la Russie, un espace intermédiaire d’échanges, un lieu où surtout Russes et (autres) Européens pourraient se parler et enfin s’entendre. Ceux qui sèment la division, là où les vrais européistes parlent d’unité, ce sont les USA et ceux qui leur servent de courroies de transmission. L’alliance Bruxelles/Moscou (ou Strasbourg/Moscou d’ailleurs) contre Washington, voilà qui aurait une autre « gueule », et dans un tel cadre, la situation de l’Ukraine serait nécessairement pacifiée et le pays en bien meilleure posture.

Yanoukovitch devrait s’en aller, comme Ioutchenko avant lui, et pour la même raison, qui est l’aliénation du pouvoir ukrainien à des intérêts étrangers, qui plus est des intérêts qui instrumentalisent le pays pour mener des manœuvres géopolitiques « conflictuelles ».

Car cette opposition que j’évoquais entre « occidentalistes » et « slavophiles » en Russie, comme en Ukraine, avec la mise en avant du courant « eurasien » qui relève de la seconde idéologie, est une idiotie conceptuelle totale. Les Slaves, et les Russes au premier plan, sont des Européens, tout comme les Français ou les Allemands. En affirmant leur slavité et leur orthodoxie, ils ne tournent pas le dos à l’Europe, mais ils s’y rattachent en vérité. Ivan Groznyi et Pierre le Grand ont toujours été du même camp, celui d’une Russie européenne dans une Europe européenne, une Russie qui certes s’étend à l’est de l’Oural mais toujours au nom d’une Europe expansive. Car si on gratte le russe, on trouve un varègue ou un bogatyr slave mais jamais un tatar.

L’Ukraine devra avoir l’audace de s’inventer un régime nouveau, avec une personnalité courageuse mais restant modeste, capable de maîtriser les dissensions et de susciter un « rêve ukrainien », celui d’une réconciliation entre l’ouest et l’est, mais aussi entre l’Union Européenne et la Russie. Cela implique de bien distinguer la volonté de rejoindre l’UE et tout lien avec l’OTAN. En clair, le gouvernement ukrainien devra veiller à rassurer le frère russe tout en orientant le frère européen (de l’ouest et du centre) dans le sens des intérêts strictement européens, qui sont ceux d’une grande alliance, en attendant une fusion, entre l’Union Européenne et la Russie. Et de la même façon, le tropisme atlantiste de Cameron, comme auparavant celui de Thatcher, de Majors, de Blair et de Brown, qui se cache derrière cette volonté de rupture avec l’UE, n’est pas au service du peuple britannique, ce dernier ayant vocation à restaurer son européanité au sein d’une Europe unie, en rompant avec le Commonwealth. C’est là où des mouvements comme UKiP servent manifestement la stratégie américaine en Europe, au nom d’une souveraineté britannique pervertie.

 

Thomas FERRIER (PSUNE/LBTF)

Aymeric Chauprade aux Ronchons

Jeudi 20 février :

Aymeric Chauprade

aux Ronchons

 

Un atlas géopolitique du monde actuel

Un atlas géopolitique du monde actuel

par Georges FELTIN-TRACOL

Il est toujours difficile de recenser un ouvrage qui l’a déjà été par nos soins. Aymeric Chauprade vient de publier la troisième édition, actualisée et augmentée, de sa Chronique du choc des civilisations. Intitulée « Civilisations en collisions » et mis en ligne sur le présent site le 9 octobre 2011, la précédente recension évoquait les qualités de cette deuxième édition qui valut l’éviction de son auteur de toutes les chaires universitaires à la suite d’une campagne de presse malveillante orchestrée par un de ces stipendiés par l’Oncle Sam.

 

 

Depuis 2011, l’ébranlement de la planète se poursuit avec de nouveaux conflits dont les fameuses révolutions arabes et le renversement de plusieurs régimes autoritaires laïques en Afrique du Nord, au Proche-Orient. Mais Aymeric Chauprade prend aussi en compte le déclin relatif des États-Unis d’Amérique, la montée en puissance de la Chine et la renaissance convalescente de la Russie. Il offre par conséquent au lecteur une vaste palette de textes et de cartes très éclairantes.

 

Le temps des civilisations

 

Favorable à une géopolitique culturelle (culturaliste ?), cet esprit aguerri aux sciences dures, les mathématiques en particulier, n’hésite pas à se référer à la longue durée chère à Fernand Braudel. Il replace dans un contexte politico-historique les heurts contemporains. Si l’ouvrage – le terme d’atlas serait plus approprié – s’ouvre sur un planisphère des civilisations, il ne faut pas se méprendre : Aymeric Chauprade n’est pas le disciple français de feu Samuel P. Huntington. Rappelons qu’en 1996, son premier essai portait sur L’Espace économique francophone. Pour une francophonie intégrale, vaine initiative de renouvellement des conceptions du gaulliste de la Francité, Philippe Rossillon. Il discerne ainsi quinze civilisations là où Huntington n’en distinguait que neuf !

 

« Le choc des civilisations, observe Aymeric Chauprade, traverse les siècles, et même, pour certaines civilisations, les millénaires; il s’apaise, qui reprend, et donne à l’histoire des chocs sourds et puissants, comme si des plaques tectoniques venaient à en découdre, causant d’immenses secousses dans l’humanité (p. 8). » Loin de se focaliser sur un seul antagonisme réducteur, il cherche plutôt à dresser un panorama précis de l’ensemble des territoires conflictuels tant aux confins qu’au cœur même des civilisations. Les dix chapitres géo-thématiques balaient dans le détail les cahots actuels.

 

Dégagé de tout subjectivisme, Aymeric Chauprade veut surtout montrer au lecteur la polymorphie des secousses civilisationnelles. Certes, il commence par évoquer l’affrontement islamo-occidental, mais il prend garde de ne pas sombrer dans un quelconque réductionnisme géopolitique ou de plaquer sur les événements ses propres représentations géopolitiques. Oui, l’islam concurrence le monde occidental. Mais, en dépit de l’exécution d’otages en Irak ou au Sahel, cette menace est maintenant moins terroriste – même si les risques persistent – que migratoire et démographique. La forte fécondité des immigrés d’Afrique subsaharienne prépare « une France dont la population serait majoritairement extra-européenne autour de 2040 (p. 58) ». Les bouleversements politiques sur les littoraux méridional et oriental de la Méditerranée font de cette aire géographique tricontinentale le point faible de l’Europe. Mais le péril mahométan se retrouve souvent instrumentaliser par les États-Unis d’Amérique notoirement anti-européens.

 

L’Europe doit lutter contre l’« Islamérique », cette alliance objective entre l’oligarchie étatsunienne, voire nord-américaine, et certaines tendances fanatiques de l’islam. Washington veut affaiblir l’Europe qui demeure la seule véritable rivale globale, d’où une longue et constante politique d’encerclement par des forces musulmanes hostiles soutenues en sous-main par l’hégémonie yankee. « Après l’Afghanistan (durant la guerre froide), puis les guerres de Bosnie, du Kosovo et d’Irak, après le soutien à l’A.K.P. en Turquie et aux Frères musulmans dans le monde arabe, l’Amérique offre en Libye un nouvel épisode de son alliance souterraine avec l’islam radical (p. 58). » Il s’agit par ailleurs d’entraver durablement la Russie qui retrouve son statut de grande puissance. Vladimir Poutine, l’homme le plus puissant du monde en 2013 selon le magazine Forbes, a compris que « l’énergie est le levier du redressement de la puissance russe (p. 101) ». Il faut par conséquent que Washington ou plus exactement l’« État profond » étatsunien – cette « structure de gouvernement à la fois invisible (par rapport à l’administration officielle) et continue (puisqu’elle survit aux changements de président), rassemblant des éléments et des moyens du Pentagone, de la C.I.A. et du F.B.I., des sociétés militaires privées et, plus globalement, du complexe militaro-financier (p. 13) » élimine dès le départ toute menace potentielle. La proximité et la connaissance, entre la haute-administration U.S. et les milieux financiers facilitent la privatisation de la guerre. Souvenons-nous que « la guerre d’Irak est directement à l’origine de l’exploitation capitalistique des S.M.P. Née d’un petit contrat de la C.I.A. de 5,4 millions de dollars en 2001, Blackwater (rebaptisée Xe en 2009) pèse, grâce à l’Afghanistan et l’Irak, 1,2 milliard de dollars. En 1995, Dyn-Corp ne pesait que 30 millions de dollars : c’est aujourd’hui la plus importante S.M.P. au monde, son chiffre d’affaires dépassant les 3 milliards de dollars (p. 25) ».

 

La pluralité de l’islam

 

Cependant, il ne faut pas considérer les islamistes comme de simples marionnettes aux mains des États-Unis. Les djihadistes savent nouer des alliances si l’exigent leurs intérêts. Et puis, l’islam est lui-même très varié, sinon l’Iran chiite, le Hezbollah libanais et leur allié baasiste syrien ne s’opposeraient pas avec un certain succès aux visées sunnites de l’Arabie Saoudite et du Qatar, appuyés par des puissances occidentales toujours aussi aveugles et bien corrompues par le pognon des hydrocarbures. Il traite aussi d’une donnée guère connue, à savoir « Les populations arabes de l’Amérique latine (p. 254) ». Issue de vagues d’immigration successives, cette population latino-américaine d’origine arabe « se situe dans la fourchette de 17 à 25 millions, ce qui représenterait 5 % de la population totale. […] Les Arabes d’Amérique, très majoritairement chrétiens, se sont fortement assimilés et ils se retrouvent même souvent dans les élites économiques, voire politiques, de leur accueil (p. 254) » comme le Mexicain Carlos Slim, le Chilien José Said ou l’Argentin Carlos Menem.

 

Si l’islam fait des convertis en Amérique latine, ce subcontinent, bastion du catholicisme romain, est surtout confronté « au défi des Églises pentecôtistes et évangéliques venues des États-Unis (p. 256) ». L’auteur mentionne les nombreuses méthodes de l’hégémonie yankee : l’action militaire, directe ou non, et/ou l’influence culturelle à travers les films, le non-art contemporain, les musiques dégénérées… Mais il attire aussi l’attention sur leur maîtrise élevée dans la dissimulation, la désinformation et l’intoxication. Tirant le bilan de l’invasion de l’Irak et l’avènement d’un gouvernement chiite proche de Téhéran, il prévient que « les Américains ont l’art de faire croire aux Européens qu’ils cumulent maladresses et erreurs (erreurs de la C.I.A., du Pentagone ou du département d’État), leur seul but étant en réalité de masquer ce que l’on appelle, dans le langage militaire français “ l’effet final recherché ” (p. 168) ».

 

Aymeric Chauprade examine avec soin tous les continents, hormis déplorons-le, l’Océanie dans laquelle est toujours présente au grand dam des Anglo-Saxons (Australie, Grande-Bretagne, États-Unis et Nouvelle-Zélande) la France, deuxième domaine océanique et maritime au monde et donc potentielle thalassocratie. À quand un Jeu de la France dans l’océan Pacifique, en partie traité par feu Hervé Coutau-Bégarie avec sa Géostratégie du Pacifique en 2001 ?

 

Vers l’ère des grands marchés intercontinentaux ?

 

La partie septentrionale de l’océan Pacifique aux portes de l’Extrême-Orient connaît un regain de tensions entre la Chine et le Japon. Y a-t-il un risque de guerre ouverte entre Pékin et Tokyo ? Sans répondre à cette difficile question qui nécessite des facultés de médium, Aymeric Chauprade relève que « les deux pays n’ont jamais été aussi interdépendants économiquement. La Chine est le premier partenaire commercial du Japon (elle représente plus de 20 % de son commerce) et le Japon est le premier fournisseur de la Chine (15 % des importations). Le Japon délocalise en Chine et, déjà, plus de 9 millions de Chinois travaillent pour le capital japonais. Cette intégration économique du Japon et de la Chine se fait de manière plus large dans le cadre du plus grand marché économique en formation dans le monde, le marché dit de l’A.S.E.A.N. + 3 (Chine, Japon, Inde), qui est devenu une réalité le 1er janvier 2010. Plus les années vont passer, plus la réalité économique du Japon va diverger de celle des États-Unis au profit de cette sphère de coprospérité asiatique (pp. 215 – 216) ». L’accélération des négociations entre Bruxelles et Washington pour constituer au plus tôt une grande zone de libre-échange transatlantique se comprend mieux quand on sait l’existence de ce  marché asiatique très étendu.

 

Cet atlas géopolitique est remarquable. Aymeric Chauprade met en perspective les problématiques géostratégiques avec leurs soubassements plus occultes. Pour preuve, depuis 2009, on a trouvé en Méditerranée orientale d’importantes bassins d’hydrocarbures dont la délimitation des zones d’exploitation en haute mer avive les querelles frontalières. La volonté des Occidentaux de contrôler ces ressources à peine découvertes explique leur ingérence en Syrie. Pis, l’atlas rapporte « en Grèce en 2012 et à Chypre en 2013 […] une tentative des milieux de la finance anglo-américaine (qui dominent le F.M.I. et l’Union européenne) de forcer les Grecs surendettés (pourtant assis sur des richesses considérables en hydrocarbures et en or) à céder les actifs qu’ils possèdent dans le secteur énergétique et les ports stratégiques (p. 107) ».

 

Avec un rare talent, Aymeric Chauprade ausculte les continents, explique les enjeux et identifie les manœuvres en coulisse, là où se joue vraiment à chaque instant le sort du monde.

 

Georges Feltin-Tracol

 

• Aymeric Chauprade, Chronique du choc des civilisations. Du 11 septembre 2001 à la guerre de Syrie, actualité, analyses géopolitiques et cartes pour comprendre le monde d’aujourd’hui, Chronique Éditions, (15 – 27, rue Moussorgski 75018 Paris), 2013, 272 p., 31 €.

 

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Article printed from Europe Maxima: http://www.europemaxima.com

 

URL to article: http://www.europemaxima.com/?p=3577

The Americanization of the World

 

The Americanization of the World

By Bionic Mosquito

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

The Americanization of the World, by William Thomas Stead.

With this post, I will begin a review of the above titled book, written in 1902.  In order to provide context as to my purpose for and approach in this review, I will begin by re-introducing and expanding upon my working hypothesis under which I have been considering various events over the last century and more.

1) There is a group of elite that operate above politicians and national governments, working through think-tanks and other global foundations and institutions.

2) The elite are not all of one mind, although in many ways their interests are aligned and the tools through which they leverage control are equally beneficial to all.

3) Until the turn of the 20^th century, much of this control was exercised through the British government and other British-based institutions.

4) Beginning as early as the late 19^th century (and perhaps the mid-nineteenth century), two things were becoming clear to this group:

a.The ability of Great Britain to be an effective tool for global reach would soon reach its limits.

b.The potential reach through the United States was untapped and, relatively speaking, unlimited.

5) The commonality in philosophical heritage and language of the people in Great Britain and the United States made the US population susceptible to similar tools of control – tools already established and proven effective.

6) Actions were taken beginning in the late 19^th century to effect the transition of this tool for global control from Great Britain to the United States.

7) These actions, through two World Wars, culminated in the United States moving to the position as the primary tool for control by the elite.

8) Winston Churchill – worshiped despite being the leading political figure during the entire span of the demise of the British Empire – played the key role in supporting this transition: both the decline of Great Britain and the ascendency of the United States as leader of this broader, English-speaking, elite controlled empire.

9) As opposed to looking elsewhere for world government, the United States has been the tool to implement world government – taking a leadership position in establishing the UN, IMF, World Bank, NATO, etc.

10) The good news?  Decentralization will win out: witness the break-up of the artificial conglomerations of the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.  Witness similar events unfolding in Iraq, the inability to consolidate in Afghanistan.  Witness tiny Belgium, divided in two – yet somehow the entirety of Europe is going to meld into one?  Much more capable thinkers than I am write of the coming of the end of the nation-state (see especially the sections on Barzun and van Creveld).

Some of the visible actions taken to move the US into this leadership position include:

1) The creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913

2) The engagement of the US into the Great War, despite overwhelming public opinion against getting involved in this European conflict

3) The engagement of the US into the Second World War, again despite overwhelming public opinion against getting involved in this conflict.

4) Various purposeful actions taken by the British government to a) overcome the historical animosities between the two countries, and b) move the US toward the position of global primacy.

If you find this too tin-foil-hat for you, there is little reason to continue reading this post (if you haven’t stopped already).

While reading 1939 – The War That Had Many Fathers, I came across another event that seems to have helped move the US into a position to take the hand-off from Great Britain: the assassination of President McKinley in 1901.  As I explain here, this event helped to move the US from a negative or neutral posture toward Great Britain (and even somewhat favorable to Germany) toward a much more positive relationship with Great Britain through the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.

This transition was but one step in what is known as the Great Rapprochement, the turning of US policy toward Great Britain in the period 1895 – 1915.

Also while reading the above-mentioned book I came across the name William Thomas Stead, and his book “The Americanization of the World.”  Given the title and description of the book, and that this book was initially published in 1902 (precisely at the beginning of this changing relationship), it seemed to me a worthwhile read given the hypothesis I identify above.

With that lengthy preamble out of the way, I offer an even lengthier introduction of Mr. Stead….

Who was Stead?  “William Thomas Stead (5 July 1849 – 15 April 1912) was an English newspaper editor….”

If his date of death seems familiar, it is because Stead died aboard the Titanic. Before this, he was a tremendously influential newspaper editor and author:

In 1880, Stead went to London to be assistant editor of the Liberal Pall Mall Gazette (a forerunner of the London Evening Standard), where he set about revolutionizing a traditionally conservative newspaper “written by gentlemen for gentlemen”.

Stead early on learned the power that the press could project over government action:

Stead’s first sensational campaign was based on a Nonconformist pamphlet, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London. His lurid stories of squalid life in the slums had a wholly beneficial effect on the capital. A Royal Commission recommended that the government should clear the slums and encourage low-cost housing in their place. It was Stead’s first success.

Despite being able to successfully move government to action, not every endeavor ended well; still, his reach and magnitude knew few limits:

In 1884, Stead pressured the government to send his friend General Gordon into Sudan to protect British interests in Khartoum. The eccentric Gordon disobeyed orders, and the siege of Khartoum, Gordon’s death, and the failure of the hugely expensive Gordon Relief Expedition was one of the great imperial disasters of the period.

 

Gordon was sent to evacuate British citizens from a troubled region and to otherwise abandon Sudan.  Once Gordon arrived, he apparently pursued a different course: he decided it was best to crush the Muslim uprising for fear that it would eventually spread to Egypt as well.  Gordon, with 6,000 men, began a defense of Khartoum.

On March 18, 1884, the Mahdist army laid siege to the city. The rebels stopped river traffic and cut the telegraph line to Cairo. Khartoum was cut off from resupply, which led to food shortages, but could still communicate with the outside world by using messengers. Under pressure from the public, in August 1884, the British government decided to reverse its policy and send a relief force to Khartoum.

“Under pressure from the public” a relief expedition force was sent, but failed to arrive in time to save Gordon and his men:

On January 26, 1885, Khartoum fell to the Mahdist army of 50,000 men. At that time of year the Nile was shallow enough to cross by wading and the Mahdists were able to breach the city’s defenses by attacking the poorly-defended approaches from the river. The entire garrison was slaughtered, including General Gordon. His head was cut off and delivered to the Mahdi. Two days later the relief expedition entered the city to find that they were too late.

Lord Kitchener later reconquered Sudan.

Forgive my diversion into this tale of late nineteenth century British imperialism; however it serves to demonstrate the power and influence that Stead possessed.  As cited above, “In 1884, Stead pressured the government to send his friend General Gordon into Sudan….”  It seems reasonable that he also was the one to apply pressure to send aid to “his friend” Gordon.

More on Stead and his influence:

1885 saw him force the British government to supply an additional £5.5million to bolster weakening naval defenses, after which he published a series of articles.  Stead was no hawk however; instead he believed Britain’s strong navy was necessary to maintain world peace.

Stead saw peace through war.  He saw the British Navy as a global force for good.  Consider how the tools used by the elite have not had to change a bit over the 125 years since Stead’s time, as the same tools used by Stead to help usurp wealth from the British middle class remain completely effective in the propaganda campaigns designed to usurp wealth from the middle class of the US today.

…he is also credited as originating the modern journalistic technique of creating a news event rather than just reporting it, as his most famous “investigation”, the Eliza Armstrong case, was to demonstrate.

Stead had other passions, showing an ability to understand future global consolidation well before any generally visible steps:

Stead was a pacifist and a campaigner for peace, who favored a “United States of Europe” and a “High Court of Justice among the nations”….

Stead held court in high places:

[Stead] was an early imperialist dreamer, whose influence on Cecil Rhodes in South Africa remained of primary importance; and many politicians and statesmen, who on most subjects were completely at variance with his ideas, nevertheless owed something to them. Rhodes made him his confidant….

Rhodes, of course, cornered the South African diamond market with the help of rather influential friends – call them the elite of the elite.  Rhodes was also quite influential regarding British Imperial policy:

Historian Richard A. McFarlane has called Rhodes “as integral a participant in southern African and British imperial history as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln are in their respective eras in United States history…

And Rhodes was influenced by Stead.

Stead found his influence ever-growing:

The number of his publications gradually became very large, as he wrote with facility and sensational fervor on all sorts of subjects, from The Truth about Russia (1888) to If Christ Came to Chicago! (Laird & Lee, 1894), and from Mrs Booth (1900) to The Americanisation of the World (1902).

And finally, to show the well-rounded character of the man:

Stead claimed to be in receipt of messages from the spirit world, and, in 1892, to be able to produce automatic writing.  His spirit contact was alleged to be the departed Julia Ames, an American temperance reformer and journalist whom he met in 1890 shortly before her death.  In 1909 he established Julia’s Bureau where inquirers could obtain information about the spirit world from a group of resident mediums.

As mentioned, Stead died on the Titanic.  His reputation survived:

Following his death, Stead was widely hailed as the greatest newspaperman of his age…. Like many journalists, he was a curious mixture of conviction, opportunism and sheer humbug. According to his biographer W. Sydney Robinson, “He twisted facts, invented stories, lied, betrayed confidences, but always with a genuine desire to reform the world – and himself.”

Why all of this background on Stead?  Well, it seems he was a rather influential fellow within the British elite at precisely the time when the United States began its turn toward Great Britain: an empire which (to say nothing of the spat in 1776) less than a century before burned the White House and much of the capitol, and only a few decades before, while officially neutral, aided the South in their war for independence – guilty enough to ultimately pay restitution of $15.5 million for building war ships for the Confederacy.

Great Britain was officially neutral throughout the American Civil War, 1861–65. Elite opinion tended to favor the Confederacy, while public opinion tended to favor the United States.

I will suggest it is elite opinion that counts when it comes to matters of politics, for example:

Diplomatic observers were suspicious of British motives. The Russian Minister in Washington Eduard de Stoeckl noted, “The Cabinet of London is watching attentively the internal dissensions of the Union and awaits the result with an impatience which it has difficulty in disguising.” De Stoeckl advised his government that Britain would recognize the Confederate States at its earliest opportunity. Cassius Clay, the United States Minister in Russia, stated, “I saw at a glance where the feeling of England was. They hoped for our ruin! They are jealous of our power. They care neither for the South nor the North. They hate both.”

Yet as early as 1895 – only 30 years after the end of the war – the US and Britain began their courtship.  And in the background was William Thomas Stead.

Finally, on to his book and the first chapter:

As it was through the Christian Church that the monotheism of the Jew conquered the world, so it may be through the Americans that the English ideals expressed in the English language may make a tour of the planet. (Page 3)

Setting aside the exaggeration of the claim, given the religion of statolatry (to borrow a phrase from Charles Burris), the comparison seems quite appropriate.

Stead saw the inevitability of the United States taking the preeminent position among the English-speaking nations.  He looked at population growth over the preceding 100 years (including empire), but also at differentiating the white population from the non-white (a recurring theme in his writing); he felt strongly that it was the white population that was of importance.

We are comparing the English-speaking communities.  The right of leadership does not depend upon how many millions, more or less, of colored people we have compelled to pay us taxes. (Page 5)

Stead, not shy, makes plain one purpose of colonizing people of color – compelling tax payments.  Stead also discounts the millions of British subjects in, for example, India, Africa, and the West Indies when it comes to considering the trends of population and future supremacy.

Population should be weighed as well as counted.  In a census return a Hottentot counts for as much as a Cecil Rhodes; a mean white on a southern swamp is the census equivalent for a Mr. J.P. Morgan or Mr. Edison.

A nation which has no illiterates can hardly be counted off against the Russians, only three per cent of whom can read or write. (Page 9)

He also sees no hope for reversal of this trend in favor of the US and to the detriment of Great Britain – not only in population but also industrial production and therefore capability of global reach.

Having presented this case, he suggests Britain embraces this inevitable change, restoring old bonds:

The philosophy of common sense teaches us that, seeing we can never again be the first, standing alone, we should lose no time in uniting our fortunes with those who have passed us in the race. Has the time not come when we should make a resolute effort to realize the unity of the English-speaking race?  …while if we remain outside, nursing our Imperial insularity on monarchical lines, we are doomed to play second fiddle for the rest of our existence.  Why not finally recognize the truth and act upon it?  What sacrifices are there which can be regarded as too great to achieve the realization of the ideal of the unity of the English-speaking race? (Page 6)

Stead sees continuous contention between the United States and Great Britain for control of global trade, with Britain eventually and ultimately the loser.  Stead is writing during the very early phases of the Great Rapprochement.  As regarding great sacrifices, considering the tremendous work done by Great Britain behind the scenes to create the propaganda in the US necessary to drag the American people into two world wars (as I view these wars as key to formalizing the transition of power), it seems reasonable to conclude that Stead’s suggestion that no sacrifices should be considered too great was taken quite seriously.

Stead goes on to outline the power and control available through a united US and British front: population, land mass, control of the seas and most navigable rivers.  And gold: “With the exception of Siberia they have seized all the best goldmines of the world.” (Page 7) Not a barbarous relic, apparently.

Between the two, they have seized the dominions of Spain, despoiled the Portuguese, the French and the Dutch, and left nothing but scraps to Italy and the Germans. (Page 7)  The only statistic in which these non-English-speaking nations hold the lead is in the amount of national debt! (Page 11)

Stead is looking for a savior, someone to lead in bringing these two – the US and Britain – into one, with the US taking the leading position:

The question arises whether this gigantic aggregate can be pooled.  We live in the day of combinations.  Is there no Morgan who will undertake to bring about the greatest combination of all – a combination of the whole English Speaking race?

The same motive which has led to the building up of the Trust in the industrial world may bring about this great combination in the world of politics.  (Page 12)

Presumably he is writing here of the work done by Morgan in consolidating the US steel industry.  Of course, Morgan also had connections with the same elite family that assisted Rhodes with diamonds in South Africa:

In 1895, at the depths of the Panic of 1893, the Federal Treasury was nearly out of gold.  President Grover Cleveland accepted Morgan’s offer to join with the Rothschilds and supply the U.S. Treasury with 3.5 million ounces of gold to restore the treasury surplus in exchange for a 30-year bond issue.

It should also be kept in mind: McKinley was a Rockefeller man; Rockefeller had ties to Germany.  Teddy Roosevelt, beneficiary of McKinley’s assassination, was a Morgan man; Morgan was a strong friend of Britain.  It seems the “Morgan” that Stead was looking for in the political combination was the same “Morgan” that he was referring to in the industrial combination.

Stead sees the impossibility of the American people accepting a combination where those in America would accept being subservient again to the crown:

It is, of course, manifestly impossible, even if it were desirable, for the Americans to come back within the pale of the British Empire. (Page 15)

Instead, he suggests Britain should accept reunion “on whatever terms may be arrived at.” (Page 15)

While not an overt political reunion, it certainly seems that a reunion was accepted by the British – and ultimately the U.S.  If one visible actor can be placed at the center of this “success,” I will suggest it is Winston Churchill.  For much of the first half of the 20^th century, Churchill played a leading role in British politics; even when not in an official position, he was communicating directly with Roosevelt behind the scenes in order to facilitate America’s entry into the Second World War – the final event in ensuring the transition.

During this time, Britain (or more precisely, the British population) certainly paid the price of reunion – “whatever terms necessary,” as Stead suggested in 1902: the terms for the British population can be seen in the blood of two world wars, inflation, a depression, a loss of manufacture and industry.  This price was paid over the next 50 years.  In the end, the United States clearly stood on top of the English-speaking world.

One politician, more than any other, stood in a position of leadership and influence while Britain was economically and physically bled: Winston Churchill.  Presiding (in various roles) over such a massive loss of Empire would normally result in the derision of the leader.  Yet Churchill is exalted.  Perhaps it has little to do with his role in the death of the British Empire, but because of his role in the birth of the larger, Anglo Empire.  For this reason, the gatekeepers of mainstream history frame Churchill in a praiseworthy manner.

And one writer, a man who traveled within and influenced the highest circles of the elite, wrote the book before the events even occurred: William Thomas Stead.

I will continue with further posts regarding this book as I find comments of import.  In the meantime, the examination of this one life and this first chapter has provided insights supportive of my working hypothesis regarding the transition of elite power and control from Great Britain to the United States.

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The Ukrainian Dystopia

The Ukrainian Dystopia – Domestic and Foreign Factors

by Leonid Savin

Ex: http://www.geopolitica.ru

 

First of all, the situation in Ukraine is not as simple as it is being described by the Western media and Brussels/Washington politicians. The protest was started just before the Vilnius summit of the Eastern Partnership at the end of November 2013. Actually, most of protesters didn’t read the proposed agreement about the association with the EU, but were galvanized by leaders of the oppositional parties (Svoboda, Udar, Batkivschina). The slogan was that Ukraine is part of Europe (yes, of course, there was no doubt about this), but only a few interested individuals knew that such an agreement of association had previously been signed with… Jordan, Morocco, and some other countries.

 

This document was developed as tool of the EU’s soft power for engagement of the African and Eastern European markets. When President Yanukovich did not sign this agreement, the West initiated a colossal campaign against him: from political and diplomatic pressure to direct support of the Ukrainian opposition. We must take into account that the opposition, both nationalistic and liberal, was supported by the EU and USA years before through grant program.

 

Klichko’s Udar party was especially supported by Germany (he is also a resident of Germany). Russia has supported the decision of the Ukrainian president and provided a large discount for gas supplies and a loan of $15 billion. This gesture of good will was interpreted by the opposition and Ukrainian right-wing nationalists as the imperial ambitions of Moscow. From this point of view, Yanukovich is a puppet of Russia.

 

Some Ukrainian oligarchs also started to actually support the opposition because they are not pleased with Yanukovich and have their own funds abroad. Of course, there were long consultations between these oligarchs and Western politicians for how to better increase the pressure against the president, and the protests were intensified. We see that the general frontline of the protests was captured by ultra-radical groups similar to the Black Bloc of the antiglobalist movement a few years ago, but with a different political orientation.

 

These right-wing groups committed most of the violence during the protests (the destruction of Lenin’s memorial, attacks on police with Molotov cocktails, the ‘occupying’ of governmental building), and the political opposition was an umbrella that brought together these radicals. In reality, neo-Nazi radicals are strongly against the EU and European values and have no any road map for the future of Ukraine. They are funded by an umbrella of opposition groups (300 UAH for a day’s stay on Maidan and 2000 UAH for those who attacked police with Molotov cocktails. 1 $ US = 8 UAH) and both structures (the political opposition and neo-Nazi urban insurgents) choose the victims – it is the president, the Party of Regions, and the police.

 

After violent attacks near the ministers’ offices, parliament issued new laws pertaining towards addressing responsibility for such acts of protests and violence. But even these measures did not provide a cure for the crisis. On 25 December, three policemen were captured by extremists (one was wounded by a knife) and illegally held in one of the captured buildings in Kiev. The same day, Yanukovich proposed giving the post of prime minister to the leader of the Batkivshina party (Yatsenyuk) and the post of vice-prime-minister to Klischko (they refused).

 

Despite Western allegations otherwise, there really wasn’t much police violence, and the government does have the legal right to use such power if need be. In two words, we have a conflict between the established legal structures (president, parliament, other governmental structures) and those with self-proclaimed legitimacy (the opposition with mass support), as described by Carl Schmitt. The problem is that the opposition is very active, but the followers of the president, government, and order are passive. When the “Euromaidan” civil activists in Kiev and other regions began their street blockades and use of violence, the majority of Ukrainians did nothing and hoped that the police and the security service would intervene. But a paralyzed police force cannot perform their own standard functions because the opposition describes such measures as “violence against the people”.

 

The current problem is that the opposition umbrella does not have control over the violent neo-Nazi groups in Kiev and other regions, and some opposition leaders are nervous about their own place in any future political system in Ukraine. Another problem is that the “Euromaidan” activists have raised support from abroad (including from the Ukrainian diaspora) under the idea of “the people fighting against an authoritarian regime”. The masses do not usually understand the complexity behind such situations, and thus, they are profitably manipulated by those who are directing the destabilization.

 

The Strategic Landscape

 

The general context of these (and previous) protests may be found in the political system of Ukraine – it is liberal capitalism. For the last ten years, the social sector was destroyed, and Ukraine experienced a rapid rise in unemployment. Many citizens therefore needed to go abroad for work (Russia, Poland, and the European countries) or immigrate. When the “Orange Revolution” started in 2004, there was lots of optimism. The majority believed in changing the status quo and there were many calls of “Yes, we can!”. But this process of reorganization was twisted and stagnant.

 

The leaders were politically impotent, and corruption increased by leaps and bounds. The governmental system became more rotten than it had ever been before, and this process continued to accelerate. When Yanukovich returned to the presidency, he did not do enough to pursue radical changes to this trend. He cares more about his own “clan”, and this began the conflict between the oligarchs.

 

As I wrote above, some of them began to support the opposition (whereas they had supported Yanukovich in the past). The feeling of “yes, indeed” penetrated the minds of some oligarchs and they began to play their own game. Yet, they did not understand that another game was already in effect and that they were simply pawns within it!

 

Yanukovich understood that associating with the EU would be the last major political decision he would make. After the agreement, he would have to release Yulia Timosehnko (the former prime minister) from jail, and there is even a chance that he himself would then be sent to jail! Secondly, EU association would mean the implementation of protective tariffs from Russia. Russian gas would then be sold to Ukraine for the same price as it is to the EU. For example, in 2014 it would be about $370-380 per 1000 cubic meters, but Belarus would only be paying $175!!!

 

 

The difference can most certainly be felt, especially when one thinks about the economy’s industrial complex. In the process of building the Customs Union and the Eurasian Union, Russia will be very sensitive about any economic vectors near and around its own space. Ukraine would lose access to the huge Russian (but also Belarusian and Kazakh) market for its own goods, as well as the cheap goods coming out of the Customs Union. But the protesters do not think in geopolitical norms. They only rely on emotions…

 

European Involvement

 

European leaders are really confused. The European and US politicians need to stop and think before they continue to act, as they do not fully understand what it is they are doing. In the EU, we see much more police violence during protests than is the norm. When information about right-wing neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine entered into the Western media, there was cognitive dissonance. When Ukrainian Jews were attacked by the same protesters standing in Maidan, there was a strong reaction from the international Jewish community, but the European establishment once more expressed cognitive dissonance.

 

They wanted a planned and manipulated reality, but real life is different than their constructed images of it. They even wanted to present different images and pictures of what is happening. After two people were killed, new questions emerged: what is happening inside the opposition’s camp, and why can’t the opposition leaders control the radical groups under their own umbrella? I think that the European security services have knowledge and experience in dealing with leaderless resistance movements and insurgent anarchism, but the recognition of this occurring in Ukraine would also lead to the recognition that the Ukrainian government must use force to combat this extremist (even with European assistance)! In actuality, the EU does not have special think tanks or well-educated analysts that focus on Ukraine. Therefore, the European community does not have enough information about what is happening there, what its roots are, and what the possible tree of scenarios could be.

 

The Goals of the Ukrainian Opposition

 

The opposition wants to organize new presidential and parliamentary elections because that is the only legal way to change the power system. Because new presidential elections are scheduled for March 2015, this crisis is a serious test for Yanukovich. For the opposition, it is chance to get more publicity, because until now, they were supported only by some regions. And with the promotional aid of the EU and US, such a goal will be easier. On the other hand, they do not have a single leader to rally behind, so we could see an internal battle be waged inside the opposition’s camp in the future.

 

Ukraine actually has a very clear electoral map where one can see which region votes for the Party of Regions and which support the nationalists’ parties. If confidence in Yanukovich decreases, then he will lose support from the East and South of Ukraine (his classic base of electoral support). Nonetheless, Yanukovich is a legal president and he will not leave office before his term is over – this is certain. His post is guaranteed by the Constitution, and he has already proposed a plan for ending the crisis. The opposition does not have any such constructive ideas, and they speak with the language of ultimatums. This attitude is impossible to use in any normal negotiations, and the EU understands this very well. Therefore, they (the outsiders) cannot propose anything and just have to wait to see what happens.

 

The Role of the Media 

 

Most of the Ukrainian and European media take an incendiary position. There has been a lot of misinformation spread about the events in Kiev. Some US media outlets have used strategic rhetoric, for example, the Foreign Affairs magazine issued by the Council on Foreign Relations used the word “ceasefire” in an article about the process of ongoing negotiations between the authorities and the opposition.

 

Such a discourse is symbolic of a war of conscience against the state of Ukraine. Blogs and social networks are also effective in advancing this campaign. If one looks at a map of the “Euromaidan” hashtag, most activity will be seen as coming from three locations – Kiev, Washington, and London! Alternative media can also be of use in finding out more information about various figures of the opposition, for example, Oleg Tyagnibok of the Svoboda Party (formerly the Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine), statements from his hate speeches (mostly against Jews, Russians, Poles, and communists), his background, and where he gets his money from to fund his current activities.

 

External Actors 

 

Ukrainian MPs, the prime minister, and even oppositional leaders (Klichko) already recognized that there have been manipulations and interference from abroad. This means that external influence has already happened. If regime change occurs, this will not mean anything good for Ukrainians. Radicals are radicals under any regime. They will use Molotov cocktails again, but this time, the target of their attacks will be the EU’s occupational regime, the degraded culture of the West, banks, and corporations (under the auspices of honor and Ukrainian independence, of course). This type of bourgeois right-wing nationalist that we currently see on Maidan will be emancipated in the near future.

 

Some oppositional leaders will get preferential treatment from the West, while a select few will be used as technical actors during the consequent engagement of Ukraine with the West. European institutionalism is a good tool for gradual reforms, but with the rise of Euroscepticism, especially in the neighboring countries of Hungary and Slovakia, this will no longer be as easy as before. The “Palestine-ization” of Ukraine could worryingly occur. There is a serious present crisis affecting the state system, political processes, national identity, geopolitical thinking, and sovereignty. I think that the key decisions that we see in the upcoming days will address each of these topics. Then we will see a test that can gauge the actual sovereignty of Ukraine.

 

The Geopolitical Scale 

 

In this crisis, the main geopolitical actors are trying to get new experience in order to use it for their own benefits. Russia is following a clumsy strategy of engagement and acts more reactively than proactively. The EU seems to be a timid actor, as the Ukrainian vector had been a fault line in the European strategy for many years. Because of the economic crisis and problems with its own identity within the EU, Ukraine is perceived as a difficult partner.

 

The homogenization of the Ukrainian space would not go as easily as previously planned, and Ukrainian society is divided in their vision of the future. The US continues to battle against Russia and the Eurasian Union. For this reason, Ukraine is a good place to wage such a campaign. The timing is on the side of the US, because the Olympic Games in Sochi may distract the global public (in a similar fashion as the 2008 Olympic Games in China provided a cover for Saakashvili’s regime to begin military aggression against South Ossetia). In this situation, Ukraine loses its geopolitical maneuverability very quickly. The moderate balance that served as a useful political tool for Ukraine’s external activities during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma no longer works. This is because in a geopolitical sense, Ukraine does not understand the necessity of a strong alliance with Russia and the Eurasian bloc, as without it, the country will be slowly devoured by the EU and manipulated by the US. Separatism could also possibly occur in Ukraine.

 

The first mirage of this processes emerged in 2004, but now the situation is more complex and there will be more than two separate pieces if this scenario becomes reality. The Zakarpatie region (bordering Hungary and Slovakia) does not want to be in an independent Western Ukraine. The Crimea has some Tatars who generally supported the “Euromaidan” events, so a conflict in the Crimea Autonomous Republic is also possible there, especially when we take into account that many Tatars have already been waging jihad in Syria and now have experience in military insurgency.

 

Conclusion 

 

Any results of “Euromaidan” will be negative both for the Ukrainian people and regional geopolitics. The society inside of the country is divided, and part of it thinks in the framework of revenge and resentment (both sides of the current conflict). The process of reconciliation will not be fast and easy. The only possible way for a positive political development would be innovation, but the Ukrainian political elites are lazy and do not have enough intellectual skills and experience to devise such innovations, as neither do the opposition. European and US advisors will not bring winning ideas to the Ukrainian opposition. The radical nationalistic sector thinks only about the realization of their own ideas which are similar to xenophobia and Nazism. Because of the activity of these aforementioned elements, there is no possibility to marginalize and “freeze” them.

 

The oligarchs will also try to use radicals as a frontline to further their own profit. It is very strange that the nationalists cooperate so closely with the cosmopolitan oligarchs and the neoliberals in Ukraine, because the doctrine of Ukrainian nationalism is against oligarchy and globalization. This alliance thus symbolizes nothing besides the hypocrisy that is standard for business interests involved in politics. Therefore, the new state of a hypocritical Ukraine is the most plausible scenario that we will have in the future.

Réflexions sur le péril démographique musulman russe

Alexandre Latsa:

Réflexions sur le péril démographique musulman russe

Ex: http://french.ruvr.ru

Nombre de commentateurs souvent proche de certains milieux d’extrême droite européens ou néoconservateurs américains mettent en avant comme faiblesse fatale pour la Russie le fait que le pays devrait rapidement devenir un Etat majoritairement musulman. Sa population comprendrait déjà de 13 % à 15 % de musulmans (soit 19 à 22 millions de personnes) et ce nombre devrait rapidement grossir puisque, toujours selon ces experts américains principalement, les femmes du Caucase musulman auraient 10 enfants !

Pour d’autres analystes journalistiques, la Russie comprendrait 30 à 40 millions de musulmans, soit jusqu’à 25 % de la population de Russie, condamnant de façon irréversible le pays à devenir un califat. Pour eux à l’horizon 2050 la Russie devrait se transformer en une sorte de Russabia, pendant russe de l’Eurabia de l’Ouest du continent.

Ces théories se sont brusquement développées lorsque durant les 2 ou3 dernières années sont apparues des vidéos sur les prières de rue de la communauté musulmane à Moscou qui selon certains sites laïcistes « submergeraient Moscou » comme Paris ou d’autres villes d’Europe.

En réalité il n’en est rien.

Ces prières ont lieu une fois par an dans la capitale de Russie et contrairement à la situation dans d’autres pays européens, elles sont organisées volontairement « par » les autorités municipales russes « pour » les croyants musulmans. La capitale de Russie comprend en effet quatre mosquées pour les quelques deux millions de musulmans que la ville connaît et dont la grande majorité sont issus d’Asie centrale mais travaillent dans la capitale. Il faut noter que les musulmans ne sont pas les seuls à être « mal logés » puisque selon Alexandre Boroda de la fédération des juifs de Russie, 500.000 juifs vivraient à Moscou alors que la ville ne comprendrait actuellement que quatre synagogues.

D’un point de vue des évolutions démographiques internes à la fédération de Russie, force est de constater que les chiffres et les faits vont aussi pour l’instant à l’encontre de ces prévisions catastrophistes.

Le recensement de 2002 annonçait le chiffre de 14,64 millions de musulmans en Russie soit un peu moins de 10 % de la population du pays à cette époque. Selon une analyse du Pew Research Center, un think-tank américain spécialisé sur les questions démographiques et sociales, on serait arrivé à 16,4 millions en 2010. Toujours selon ce think-tank, en 2030 on devrait arriver à 18,6 millions de musulmans en Russie (sur une population de plausiblement 150 millions soit 12 % de la population totale du pays) mais cela seulement si leur progression se maintient à 0,6 % / an selon Didier Chaudet. La population musulmane passerait donc de 9% de la totalité de la population du pays en 2002 à autour de 12 % en 2030.

Qu’en est-il des chiffres dont on dispose ?

Le district du Caucase du Nord qui représente 6,7 % de la population de Russie n’a « produit » (en 2013) « que » 8,7 % des naissances du pays, incluant les minorités russes présentes dans cette région. Les trois républiques les « moins russes» du grand Caucase Nord que sont la Tchétchénie, le Daghestan et l’Ingouchie (qui comprennent à elle trois moins de 3 % de Russes ethniques) ont connu à elle trois 98.801 naissances en 2013 (contre 99.909 en 2012 soit une baisse de 1,7 %) c’est à dire 5,5 % des naissances de toute la fédération de Russie, un taux presque identique à celui de 2006 comme on peut le constater ici.

L’ensemble de toutes les républiques musulmanes de Russie, du Caucase (Tchétchénie, Daguestan, Ingouchie, Adygué, Kabardino-Balkarie et Karatchaïévo-Tcherkessie) ainsi que de la Volga (Tatarstan et Bachokorstan) ont connu cette année 286.402 naissances pour 14.443.611 millions d’habitants, soit un total de 15 % du total des naissances du pays pour 13,2 % de la population de la fédération de Russie.

Il ne faut pas cependant pas oublier que nombre de ces républiques « musulmanes » ont en outre de fortes minorités russes (36 % au Bachokorstan, 33 % en Karatchaïévo-Tcherkessie, 30 % au Tatarstan, 25 % en Kabardino-Balkarie) voir une majorité russe comme c’est le cas en Adygué avec 63 % de russes.

Bien sûr, nombre de citoyens de ces républiques sont à Moscou et aussi de façon moindre à Saint-Pétersbourg, ce qui contrebalance un peu la tendance. Mais en même temps ce ne sont pas les minorités tatares ou caucasiennes moscovites (russifiées et urbanisées) qui ont dans leur intérêt de bâtir un nouveau califat ou de faire sécession bien au contraire.

En effet selon une étude de Gallup de 2007 49 % des Russes musulmans ne priaient jamais (66 % pour les jeunes générations), 46 % ne sauraient pas prononcer la profession de foi musulmane, 50 % boiraient de l'alcool et 27 % mangeraient du porc. Nulle surprise dés lors que selon les derniers sondages de 2013 « seulement » 7 % de la population se déclare musulmane (contre 4 % en 2002 et 6 % en 2007) pendant que 68% des sondés se déclarent eux orthodoxes contre 50 % en 2002.

Ce retour en religion des Russiens et des habitants de la Russie est sans doute l’une des principales raisons du renouveau démographique russe et de la hausse du nombre de naissances ces dernières années, avec la forte propagande d’Etat entamée en 2005 et évidemment la hausse continue de l’amélioration des conditions de vie, qui incluent l’obtention des primes à la naissance.

Par conséquent et à ce jour, une Russabia ne se profile vraisemblablement pas d’un point de vue démographique interne et sans une potentielle immigration extra-russienne soutenue comme cela pourrait cependant être le cas en provenance d’Asie centrale, comme abordé ici et là. N

Les opinions exprimées dans ce contenu n'engagent que la responsabilité de l'auteur

L’Allemagne, la Russie et la crise ukrainienne

L’Allemagne, la Russie et la crise ukrainienne

Ex: http://www.dedefensa.org

La nouvelle équipe mise en place au ministère des affaires étrangères allemand présente une perspective très intéressante, essentiellement au moment où la crise ukrainienne prend des dimensions internationales importantes. En effet, c’est tout aussi essentiellement du point de vue des relations avec la Russie, et cela dans le cadre de la tension ukrainienne, qu’il faut considérer cette nouvelle équipe.

Nous parlons d’une “nouvelle équipe”, dans le contexte que nous proposons, parce qu’il faut parler, à côté du ministre Frank-Walter Steinmeier qui a été nommé en décembre 2013, de Gernot Erler, nouveau chef des relations avec la Russie et les pays de l’ex-URSS dans ce ministère (titre de sa fonction : “Coordinateur responsable de la Russie, de l’Asie centrale et des pays de l’Eastern Partnership”). Erler est entré en fonction jeudi dernier et a aussitôt exposé aux journalistes ses conceptions (voir EUObserver, le 31 janvier 2014)

• Les deux hommes sont des SPD, ce parti ayant réclamé pour lui ce grand ministère des affaires étrangères comme une des conditions de sa participation à la coalition avec Merkel. La politique russe de Frank-Walter Steinmeier est très spécifique, comme il l’a montré dans les quatre années (2005-2009) qu’il a passées à ce poste, dans la premier gouvernement Merkel, également de coalition. On peut dire qu’il s’agissait, pour l’essentiel, d’une poursuite discrète de la politique Schröder (toujours pour les relations avec la Russie), en même temps que l’affirmation de Steinmeier de son peu de goût pour les pratiques-Système du politically correct. Cet extrait de l’article de Wikipédia qui lui est consacré est significatif, y compris avec citation de la réaction d’un extraordinaire cynisme inconscient du New York Times accusant, en parfait mode inverti, Steinmeier d’un “extraordinaire cynisme” parce que ce ministre-là avait observé (en 2008) qu’il fallait, comme lui-même l’avait fait, “beaucoup de courage par les temps qui courent pour ne pas rencontrer le Dalaï-Lama” quand il passait à portée de rencontre... (Donc, selon notre interprétation, il n’y a rien pour ce cas qui soit nécessairement contre le Dalaï-Lama, – autre débat, – mais beaucoup, sinon tout, contre l’obligation-Système très active en 2008-2009, – JO de Pékin et la suite, – d’aller faire ses dévotions aux Dalaï-Lama. L’extraordinaire “cynisme inconscient du New York Times” est bien de faire la bête à cet égard, et de négliger l’évidence qui aurait du l’éclairer et qui l’a plutôt aveuglé. L’aveuglement est donc avéré et le cynisme trouillard et inconscient du NYT est bien là ; mais quoi, rien de nouveau à cet égard depuis que règne le Système.)

«Russian opposition activists celebrated when Steinmeier lost elections in 2009, signaling their discontent with Steinmeier. Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial human rights group, said that Steinmeier had prolonged Schröder's policies on Russia and that Germany's policies were “extremely bad for civil society, democracy and the country as a whole”.

»In 2008, Steinmeier refused to meet Dalai Lama. Instead, Steinmeier issued the statement “it takes a lot of courage not to meet with the Dalai Lama these days”, which the New York Times described as “extraordinarily cynical” and accused of Steinmeier of prioritizing money over human rights.»

• Merkel accepta la nomination de Erler au côté de Steinmeier le 9 janvier. On notait alors qu’il s’agissait de la reconstitution de l’équipe Schröder pour l’établissement de relations privilégiées avec la Russie  : «Erler coordinated German-Russian relations in the foreign ministry at the time when Steinmeier was chief of staff to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Together they secured the construction of a direct gas pipeline from Russia to Germany (Nord Stream) which bypassed Poland and the Baltic states, increasing their vulnerability to Moscow gas politicking.» (EUObserver, le 10 janvier 2014.)

• Dans le texte déjà référencé (EUObserver, le 31 janvier 2014), on a donc une excellente présentation des idées et des conceptions qui vont présider à la nouvelle équipe du ministère des affaires étrangères allemand vis-à-vis de la Russie et au moment où la crise ukrainienne place les relations avec la Russie au premier plan. Les déclarations de Erler sont d’autant plus significatives que son poste a pris l’ampleur qu’on a vue, alors qu’il était auparavant réservé aux seules relations de l’Allemagne avec la Russie. (Cela servit à son prédécesseur, Andreas Schockenhoff, pour en faire une tribune d’accusation constante de la situation des droits de l’homme et de la démocratie en Russie, sorte de base d’“agression douce” contre la Russie caractérisant alors pour une bonne part la temporairement “nouvelle” politique russe de l’Allemagne [voir le 8 avril 2013]. On mesure d’autant mieux le changement qu’apporte l’équipe Steinmeier-Erler.)

«The EU was wrong not to have analysed possible conflicts with Russia before offering the so-called Eastern Partnership to countries like Ukraine, Gernot Erler, Germany's new chief of relations with Russia and the eastern neighbourhood told journalists in Berlin on Thursday (30 January). [...]

»[Erler] said his name was floated to act as a mediator in Ukraine, where pro-EU protests in Kiev recently turned violent. But in the meantime, EU neighbourhood commissioner Stefan Fuele and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton have taken on the task. “It is best for Germany not to seek a special role in Ukraine but rather to stick to the common European position and support the EU mediation efforts,” Erler said. [...]

»...Erler said the number one priority is to stop the violence. He said the second priority is to quickly create a functional government because “Ukraine is on the brink of bankruptcy, which would have immense consequences also for Europe.” But, looking further down the line, he said the EU must reconsider its Eastern Partnership and why the Ukraine fiasco arose. [...]

»“I am surprised that experts have been called to look into it only now – if there is a conflict between a Russian Customs Union and the Eastern Partneship. We need a solution as quickly as possible, because this is not only about Ukraine. Moldova and Georgia have finished the negotiations and want to sign the agreement this summer. How will Russia act if that happens?” Erler asked. “We have to ensure there is no tension between the Eastern Partnership and the Russian Customs Union,” he noted.

»He added that trade is just one element of concern from the Russian side, but did not elaborate on the point. But he said that if countries like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova enter a “deep free trade agreement” with the EU, as currently envisaged by the Eastern Partnership, Moscow fears that these markets will be flooded with cheap Western products, which would undermine Russian exports. “I can understand this concern. I don't know what the solution will look like, but it seems possible and this is currently being assessed by experts,” he noted.»

On comprend évidemment l’intérêt que nous portons à cette nouvelle équipe de politique étrangère de l’Allemagne. Le terme “équipe” lui-même, au lieu de désigner le seul nouveau ministre, suffit à définir la cause de notre intérêt, puisqu’à côté du ministre l’importance de son coordinateur pour les relations avec la Russie et son “extérieur proche” est évidente et significative. Les relations de l’Allemagne avec la Russie et avec l’Ukraine, et justement les deux relations suivies et coordonnées par un seul homme, ont aujourd’hui une importance absolument considérable alors que nous sommes au cœur de la crise ukrainienne. Avec l’équipe Steinmeier-Erler, l’Allemagne sera poussée à déployer une tendance politique qui ira contre toutes les tendances activistes du bloc BAO, que ce soit celle de l’UE et de ses principaux membres (sauf l’Allemagne dans ce cas, bien entendu), que ce soit celle des USA, que ce soit celle des divers centres d’agitation et de subversion qui nous sont bien connus depuis les “révolutions de couleur”.

Nous n’entendons certainement pas porter ici un jugement de type géopolitique, puisque, nous le répétons une fois de plus pour tenter d'en instruire ceux qui nous lisent qu’il s’agit bien de notre ligne de pensée invariable, notre jugement rejette absolument cette référence dans une époque qui est installée décisivement et irréversiblement dans l’ère psychopolitique. C’est dire que nous n’apprécions nullement la nouvelle équipe Steinmeier-Erler du ministère des affaires étrangères comme un outil offensif de type géopolitique, par exemple pour établir des relations de puissance avec la Russie, ou pour toute autre entreprise du même genre. Pour nous, l’Allemagne reste un pays privé d’une véritable politique étrangère, sans la dimension de sécurité souveraine qui fait une telle politique ; par conséquent, l’Allemagne n’est pas dans une voie géopolitique d’affirmation, dans quelque orientation qu’on la considère.

Mais ce qui semblait une immense faiblesse de l’Allemagne dans l’ère précédente est devenu d’une piètre importance aujourd’hui. Si l’Allemagne ne s’est pas haussée au niveau d’un grand acteur souverain, comme le craignent les géopoliticiens qui voient constamment ces derniers temps une résurgence de la puissance allemande, les autres (USA et France en premier) se sont tous abaissés à son niveau en dissolvant leurs principes d’action dans la course effrénée pour rencontrer les consignes-Système, et opérationnaliser ce que nous nommons la politique-Système, avec l'importance primordiale accordée à la communication au détriment complet de l'action. Dans ces conditions qui sont celles d’un abaissement général qui ne saurait surprendre dans le contexte général, d’une absence totale d’action politique structurante, d’une paralysie conceptuelle à cause des pressions du système de la communication, il se trouve que l’Allemagne telle qu’elle se découvre avec l’équipe Steinmeier-Erler est parfaitement placée ; elle se retrouve à l’aise dans le jeu ordonné par l’ère psychopolitique, où les événements hors du contrôle humain ont pris le pas sur les desseins géopolitiques et les politiques qui vont avec, au profit (?) d’un immense désordre lorsqu’il s’agit de cette même appréciation géopolitique faite du point de vue des acteurs humains ignorant que l’enjeu central est désormais autour du Système et de l’affrontement Système versus antiSystème. Dans le cas qui nous occupe, l’équipe Steinmeier-Erler ressuscite indirectement, par le biais des obligations de l'ère psychopolitique, la politique Schröder des années 2001-2005, qu’on a faussement qualifiée d’antiaméricaniste à cause de l’affaire irakienne, qui fut essentiellement déployée selon une volonté de stabilité, en Europe d’abord avec les bonnes relations avec la Russie, d’une façon plus générale dans le reste du monde avec le refus de Schröder d’appuyer l’invasion de l’Irak (plutôt qu’une opposition directe). Ce sont les centres divers de pensée paranoïaque de Washington et des milieux atlantistes (think tanks et NGO diverses, des neocons à Soros) qui firent de cette politique Schröder une affirmation antiaméricaniste.

(De ce point de vue, la politique Schröder épousait parfaitement la politique française de 2002-2003, lorsque l’équipe Chirac-de Villepin retrouva les principes gaulliens de partage par universalité du principe de souveraineté nationale, au nom duquel la France s’opposa à l’expédition irakienne des USA, – et, là aussi, nullement par antiaméricanisme d'humeur ou de circonstance. (L'antiaméricanisme est là, simplement parce que les USA sont un centre-Système complètement anti-principie.) Ainsi faut-il également séparer, du côté allemand, les perspectives ouvertes par l’équipe Steinmeier-Erler de la brouille actuelle Allemagne-USA dans la crise Snowden/NSA. Le deuxième cas concerne, du côté allemand, la souveraineté intérieure allemande qui n’a rien à voir avec une politique extérieure, souveraine ou pas. La crise Snowden/NSA ne dépend certainement pas, dans sa composante allemande, des affaires étrangères mais de l’ensemble de sécurité intérieure, – ministère de l’intérieur, services de sécurité allemands, etc., – et, bien entendu, de Merkel elle-même.)

Dans les circonstances présentes, avec le bouillonnement ukrainien, avec cette nouvelle équipe Steinmeier-Erler et l’éventuelle politique qu’elle sera conduite à proposer, – Merkel ayant sont mot à dire, naturellement, – l’aspect non-géopolitique de l’activité allemande s’insère parfaitement dans le contexte général pour agir comme une pression antiSystème brutale et inattendue au milieu de l’élan général antirusse (et pro-opposition en Ukraine) du bloc BAO. (Nous irions même jusqu’à avancer que la seule présence de l’équipe Steinmeier-Erler constitue en soi une telle affirmation de communication que, même sans la nécessité d’actes politiques affirmés et sensationnels, elle imposera sa marque dans les événements en cours, notamment la crise ukrainienne.)

Nous apprécions donc l’importance fondamentale de cette nouvelle structure de la politique étrangère allemande, surtout avec le rôle élargie donné à Erler par rapport à son prédécesseur, qui lui permet de traiter directement de l’affaire ukrainienne par rapport aux liens de l’Allemagne, et de l’UE, avec la Russie, comme un élément de trouble et de contradiction plus que comme un élément constructif. Ce trouble et cette contradiction sont introduits au cœur de la politique-Système qui ne peut être qu’antirusse, et pour les circonstances plus opérationnelles, comme un élément de trouble et de contradiction au cœur de l’action de l’UE et dans les relations intra-bloc BAO, entre l’UE et les USA. Cela ne se comptabilise nullement en termes de “victoire” ou de “défaite”, encore moins en termes de stabilisation, mais en termes d’accentuation de la lutte antiSystème contre un Système en mode de surpuissance, et par conséquent en termes d’accentuation de la dynamique-Système définie par l’équation surpuissance-autodestruction, avec l’accentuation de la dynamique de surpuissance alimentant sa propre transmutation en autodestruction.

What Links the Threat of a U.S. Default with the Destabilization of Ukraine?

Nikolai MALISHEVSKI

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

At the Munich Security Conference the Ukrainian opposition and the U.S. essentially agreed on a plan to force Viktor Yanukovich to capitulate. Arseniy Yatsenyuk told of this plan of action, which was worked out with the direct participation of Western representatives, after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and EU officials. While the «Euromaidan» is shoring up its tents, showing that it is there for the long haul, the State Department has appointed a time by which the regime change operation in Ukraine is to be finished: March 24. That is how the message which appeared on the official site of the U.S. State Department on January 24 could be interpreted:

«Ukraine Travel Alert. The U.S. Department of State alerts U.S. citizens of the potential risks of travel to Ukraine due to the ongoing political unrest and violent clashes between police and protesters. Protest-related violence, particularly in Kyiv, has escalated sharply since January 19, resulting in several deaths and hundreds of injuries.  Protesters have occupied Kyiv’s Independence Square and several government buildings in Kyiv and other cities throughout Ukraine.  Groups of young men, popularly called “titushky,” have attacked journalists and protesters and committed other random acts of violence in Kyiv and other cities.  U.S. citizens are advised to avoid all protests, demonstrations, and large gatherings.  U.S. citizens whose residences or hotels are located in the vicinity of the protests are cautioned to leave those areas or prepare to remain indoors, possibly for several days, should clashes occur.  This travel alert expires on March 24, 2014».

The start of implementation of the regime change plan most likely will coincide with February 7. Two significant events are to occur on this date: the start of the Olympic Games in Sochi and the deadline on suspension of the cap on the U.S. state debt agreed upon by the President and the Congress.

Today, as six months ago, when the situation in Syria abruptly deteriorated and everyone was expecting the beginning of a military campaign against that country, the masters of the dollar from the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government once again face the same self-destructive dilemma: to default and declare America bankrupt or to raise the debt ceiling once again and further toughen austerity measures. On the international arena this dilemma is directly linked with the need to reevaluate the status and role of American currency. 

The masters of the dollar are unable to resolve the problem which is making America's life difficult. In recent years they have merely been postponing a solution, making do with initiating cataclysms to distract attention from the dramatic situation with America's currency. Now a new flare-up in the problem has been postponed until February after something similar occurred last autumn amid the dramatic happenings which fastened the entire world's attention to Syria (the drama was instigated by America's allies among the Islamist terrorists who falsified a «chemical attack» in August 2013). A similar refocusing of the world media's attention is occurring today, but this time the role of the main «distraction» is being played by the disturbances and pogroms on the streets of Kiev and other Ukrainian cities.

Compare these two illustrations; they are identical. In the illustration framed in red are instructions in Arabic developed by American specialists during the first stage of the «popular protest» in Syria (2011). Framed in yellow are instructions in Ukrainian for Kiev's Maidan activists. 

The problem of a U.S. default first became a major issue in 2008, soon after Moscow's statement that Russia is setting a course toward economic integration of Eurasian countries. Then the Americans were able to distract the world's attention by shifting it to the slaughter in South Ossetia started by their Georgian puppets on the day of the opening of the Olympics in Beijing and to what the world media called «the beginning of the global economic crisis».

The default of the «global superpower» and the collapse of the currency system and the dollar will most likely not take place immediately after February 7 either, despite the most acute financial and economic crisis since the time of the Great Depression and the astronomical proportions of the aggregate debt of the United States. The masters of the American currency have initiated a whole series of crises which could give the dollar its next reprieve. 

The most «promising» crisis has been created around Ukraine, to whose shores the U.S. is already prepared to send its warships under the pretext of the Sochi Olympics. Thanks to the sensation surrounding the disturbances in Ukraine, key facts which testify to the acuteness of the problems facing Americans remain practically unnoticed in the world media. Such as information about the size of the drop in the real disposable income (RDI) of Americans since 1974 (the change is reflected in the following graph):

These events affect Europe as well. Even pro-American Polish politicians, such as former president of Poland A. Kwasniewski, who represents the European Parliament in Ukraine with regard to the Tymoshenko case, speak of this with alarm. «The situation in Ukraine,» says Kwasniewski, «could get completely out of the control of the authorities and the opposition and have extremely tragic consequences not only for Ukrainians, but for the European Union as well... The fact that innocent people are being killed in Ukraine could cause a wave of migration and economic problems... We truly are in danger of a great tragedy. I think that European diplomats, diplomats from neighboring countries and Poland should be very sensitive to these matters. We could end up in a spiral of events which we will no longer be able to stop..». 

Besides the crisis in Ukraine, which is distracting the international public from the upcoming battle for the future of the dollar on Capitol Hill, another three «backup» crises are being prepared in Thailand, Egypt and Syria. On the eve of the Olympics, Damascus is supposed to report on the liquidation of its chemical weapons. The plan adopted in November provides for the weapons to be completely removed from the country by February 5. However, Syria is clearly lagging behind schedule. But both Damascus's fulfillment (disarming before a potential aggressor) and non-fulfillment of its obligations with regard to chemical weapons give Washington a pretext to step up actions against Syria, Russia's last Middle Eastern frontier. It's not for nothing that at the Munich Security Conference the U.S. attempted once again to talk with Syria in the language of ultimatums, and the radical Islamists from the Caucasus Emirate, who are fighting on the side of the Syrian rebels, are already prepared to act in Ukraine after the recent call for their confederates to «go on jihad» both in Syria and in the Northern Caucasus.

Tags: European Union Federal Reserve Ukraine US

Rangoon Realpolitik: Russia, India courting Myanmar

Rangoon Realpolitik: Russia, India courting Myanmar

by Rakesh Krishnan Simha

Ex: http://indrus.in

 

 

A strategic axis that was threatening to develop between Myanmar, China and Pakistan has been nixed by the Southeast Asian country’s growing ties with Russia and India.

 

Myanmar Army Commander Gen Min Aung Hlaing on a visit to Delhi in 2012. Source: AP

A mini version of the Great Game is being played out in Asia – and the prize is Myanmar, strategically overlooking the main shipping channel that connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Long boycotted and forgotten by much of the world, the Buddhist country’s military junta – perhaps unwillingly – had developed strong military and commercial ties with China and Pakistan.

Part of the blame for Myanmar tilting towards China and Pakistan goes to next-door neighbour India. Showing a complete lack of realpolitik, New Delhi had shunned the Myanmarese military rulers while openly supporting the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The friendless junta opted for 'friends' who were available. At one time, Myanmar used to refer to China as “paukphaw” – the Myanmarese word for sibling. The strategic and military relationship between the two resulted in Chinese fighter jets, tanks and missiles pouring into Myanmar. Military advisors soon followed and soon the army, air force and navy were being trained by Chinese officers.

India's huge stakes in Myanmar

In return China got access to Myanmar ports, offering Beijing with strategic influence in the Bay of Bengal, in the Indian Ocean region and Southeast Asia. Worryingly for India, China built a massive intelligence gathering network on Great Coco Island. Located just 18 km from India’s Andaman & Nicobar Islands, it allows China to monitor India's military activities, including missile tests, in the area.

Pakistan followed in China’s wake. In 2001, three Pakistan Navy vessels - a submarine, tanker and destroyer - visited Yangon Port. This was an unprecedented development because until then Myanmar had maintained it would not permit foreign navies to visit the country.

Enter Moscow

Despite deep defence ties the Myanmarese were loath to buy their insurance policy from just two countries – especially when one of them was a known international outcaste. Myanmar had never quite forgotten that in 1963 Moscow had provided the newly installed military government with three helicopters. Russia, having lost ground in its former strongholds such as Iraq, Libya and Syria, also saw an opening into a growing market.

In 2009 Moscow cracked that market, selling the Myanmar Air Force 20 MiG-29s in a $570 million deal, edging out the Chinese who had offered their knockoff fighters. Russia’s MiG Corp also pitched in, helping upgrade Myanmar's main military airstrip.

‘India needs Myanmar, and Myanmar also needs India’

Russia also sold Myanmar Mi-35 attack helicopters, aircraft trainers, artillery guns, air defense systems, tanks, radars and communication equipment.

According to Wikileaks, Russian diplomats were able to connect with the secretive Myanmarese generals. “Russia has exceptional access in Naypyidaw (the capital), including to top military leaders; and [the Russian ambassador] has been the most outspoken defender of the regime’s policies, including its human rights record during sessions with visiting UN officials,” reads the leaked cable.

The Myanmarese generals were glad they had made the right buys. The cable shows Russian helicopter gunships were successfully deployed against Kachin rebels.

India’s reset

Alarmed by the Chinese military and intelligence gathering bases in Myanmar, India has taken a long-overdue policy u-turn. Indian military supplies are now trickling into the country. These include maritime patrol aircraft, naval gunboats, 105 mm light artillery guns, mortars, grenade-launchers and rifles.

India has reported agreed to Myanmar’s request for assistance in building offshore patrol vehicles (OPVs). More importantly, it has green lighted a request to double the number of vacancies for training Myanmarese Navy officers and sailors from the current quota of 50. India will also train Myanmarese pilots to fly Russian-built Mi-35 helicopters.

Ethnic violence in Myanmar

According to The Diplomat, Myanmar is currently engaged in a competitive naval buildup with Bangladesh, particularly since the maritime standoff between their navies in 2008, which did not portray Myanmarese naval capabilities in a particularly good light. It is in this backdrop that Myanmar has asked for more from India – new radars, sensors and sonars for its naval frigates and corvettes.

In a sign that India is shedding its Gandhian reticence towards military exports, the Defence Research & Development Organisation’s hull-mounted sonar (HUMSA) – which is designed for small frigates, corvettes and OPVs – is being exported to the Myanmar Navy.

The sonars are also part of a larger pipeline of naval sensors being supplied to Myanmar, which has in the past included BEL-built RAWL-02 Mk III L-band 2D search radars and commercial grade navigation radars that are being sported by Myanmar Navy ships, reports The Diplomat. The primary offensive weapon of these ships is the Russian built Kh-35 Uran anti-ship missile.

While India would like to play a larger role in Myanmar, especially its democratisation process, the junta is in no hurry to travel that path. Instead they find the Vladimir Putin school of democracy more suited to the needs of a developing country that is reeling under separatist movements.

A Mandela moment in Myanmar

According to Asia Times, Myanmar appears to be looking elsewhere for inspiration and ideas. In July this year, a parliamentary delegation from Myanmar led by speaker Shwe Mann visited Russia as part of a "fact finding mission" on Russia's democracy model.

“Given their wariness of democracy in the first place and particularly one that is argumentative and noisy like that in neighboring India, Myanmar's rulers, who have often spoken in favor of a ‘disciplined democracy’ are looking to Russia for ideas….,” says the report.

Considering the state of democracy in India, you couldn’t fault the Myanmarese for looking elsewhere. As long as Myanmar is being weaned off both Beijing and Islamabad, New Delhi should count its blessings.

Related

• India, Russia and Abe’s posturing
• Moving beyond ‘conflict of civilizations’ to multi-polar equilibrium
• Russia praises results of African Union Summit

Will Mobocracy Triumph in Ukraine?

Will Mobocracy Triumph in Ukraine?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

Despite our endless blather about democracy, we Americans seem to be able to put our devotion to democratic principles on the shelf, when they get in the way of our New World Order.

In 2012, in the presidential election in Egypt, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won in a landslide. President Obama hailed the outcome.

One year later, the Egyptian army ousted and arrested Morsi and gunned down a thousand members of his brotherhood. The coup was countenanced by John Kerry who explained that the Egyptian army was “restoring democracy.”

Comes now the turn of Ukraine.

In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych, in what neutral observers called a free and fair election, was chosen president. His term ends in 2015.

Yet since November, protesters have occupied Maidan Square in Kiev, battling police, and howling for Yanukovych’s resignation. The United States appears now to be collaborating with Europe in bringing about the neutering or overthrow of that democratically elected government.

Military coups, a la Cairo, and mob uprisings, at la Kiev — are these now legitimate weapons in the arsenal of democracy.

What did Yanukovych do to deserve ouster by the street? He chose Russia over Europe.

In the competition between Vladimir Putin and the European Union over whose economic association to join, Yanukovych was betrothed to the EU. But after an offer of $15 billion from Putin, and a cut in fuel prices to his country, Yanukovych jilted the EU and ran off with Russia.

Yanukovych felt he could not turn down Putin’s offer.

Western Ukraine, which favors the EU, was enraged. So out came the protesters to bring down the president. And into Kiev flew John McCain to declare our solidarity with the demonstrators.

Kerry has now joined McCain in meddling in this matter that is none of America’s business, declaring in Munich that, “Nowhere is the fight for a democratic European future more important than today in Ukraine.”

We “stand with the people of Ukraine,” said Kerry.

But which people? The Ukrainians who elected Yanukovych and still support him or the crowds in Maidan Square that want him out and will not vacate their fortified encampments until he goes?

Kerry is putting us on the side of mobs that want to bring down the president, force elections, and take power. Yet, Americans would never sit still should similar elements, with similar objectives, occupy our capital.

Reportedly, we are now colluding with the Europeans to cobble together an aid package, should Yanukovych surrender, cut the knot with Russia, and sign on with the EU.

But if Putin’s offer of $15 billion was a bribe, what else is this?

While he rules a divided nation, Yanukovych has hardly been a tyrant. As the crowds grew violent, he dismissed his government, offered the prime ministry to a leader of the opposition, repealed the laws lately passed to crack down on demonstrations, and took sick for four days.

But the street crowds, sensing he is breaking and smelling victory, are pressing ahead. There have now been several deaths among the protesters and police.

Putin is incensed, but inhibited by the need to keep a friendly face for the Sochi Olympics. Yet he makes a valid point.

How would Europeans have reacted if, in the bailout crisis, he, Putin, had flown to Athens and goaded rioters demanding that Greece default and pull out of the eurozone?

How would the EU react if Putin were to hail the United Kingdom Independence Party, which wants out of the EU, or the Scottish National Party, which wants to secede from Great Britain?

Ukraine was briefly independent at the end of World War I, and has been again since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Still the religious, ethnic, cultural and historic ties between Russia and Ukraine are centuries deep.

Eight million Ukrainians are ethnic Russians. In east Ukraine and the Crimea, the majority speak Russian and cherish these ties. Western Ukraine looks to Europe. Indeed, parts belonged to the Habsburg Empire.

Pushed too far and pressed too hard, Ukraine could disintegrate.

Security police who have questioned jailed rioters seem to believe we Americans are behind what is going on. And given the National Endowment for Democracy’s clandestine role in the color-coded revolutions of a decade ago in Central and Eastern Europe, that suspicion is not unwarranted.

Nor is Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov entirely wrong when he says, “a choice is being imposed” on Ukraine, and European politicians are fomenting protests and riots “by people who seize and hold government buildings, attack the police and use racist and anti-Semitic and Nazi slogans.”

If, as a result of street mobs paralyzing a capital, a democratically elected Ukrainian government falls, we could not only have an enraged and revanchist Russia on our hands, but a second Cold War.

And we will have set a precedent that could come to haunt Europe, as the rising and proliferating parties of the populist right, that wish to bring down the European Union, learn by our example.

The Best of Patrick J. Buchanan

Patrick J. Buchanan [send him mail] is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? See his website.

Copyright © 2014 Creators.com

Previous article by Patrick J. Buchanan: Why the GOP Is Rotten

Syrie: guerre par procuration vers la paix ou bien vers le chaos

par Eberhard Hamer, Mittelstandsinstitut Niedersachsen e.V.

Ex: http://www.horizons-et-debats.ch

Tous les grands médias au monde se sont réjouis des insurrections en Afrique du Nord, en Syrie et en Ukraine présentés comme des mouvements de libération. Cependant, il s’est avéré, entre temps que ces soulèvements ne provenaient pas de l’intérieur de ces pays mais qu’ils étaient fomentés, dirigés et financés de l’extérieur et qu’il s’agissait d’intérêts économiques ou financiers étrangers ou – à l’instar de la Syrie ou de l’Ukraine – de politique de puissance géostratégique.

Quels sont les intérêts qui ont provoqué la tragédie syrienne?
–    Sans la déstabilisation de la Syrie, Israël et les Anglo-Saxons n’auraient pas osé s’attaquer à l’Iran, ou n’auraient pas pu atteindre en toute sécurité ce pays avec leurs missiles et leurs avions – bien qu’il semble que pour le moment le gouvernement américain ait abandonné ce plan. Cette période d’avant-guerre était nécessaire pour la lutte des Américains et les dictatures sunnites (Arabie saoudite et Qatar) contre la Syrie chiite et son allié de Téhéran. Cette Syrie relie l’Iran chiite avec d’autres groupes chiites du monde arabe. Sans cet intermédiaire, l’influence de l’Iran dans le monde arabe serait affaiblie.
–    C’est aussi une question liée aux ressources de gaz. Jusqu’à présent, un oléoduc venant de l’Iran traversait la Syrie. Entretemps on a trouvé des gisements de gaz naturel dans le sud de l’espace méditerranéen – non seulement en zone maritime mais également sous le territoire syrien (Kara). Jusqu’à présent, le Qatar exportait du pétrole liquéfié au moyen d’une flotte de pétroliers. Si le gouvernement Assad disparaissait, le Qatar aurait la possibilité de transporter le «combustible bleu» directement par le territoire syrien vers la côte de la Méditerranée et pourrait ainsi doubler son volume d’exportation et en même temps empêcher l’exportation de l’Iran. C’est la raison pour laquelle le Qatar finance l’insurrection en Syrie.
–    Le contrôle des livraisons du pétrole et du gaz en provenance du Proche-Orient signifie pour les Etats-Unis en même temps le contrôle de l’Europe occidentale et l’affaiblissement de la Russie. Outre les raisons géostratégiques, ce sont donc des raisons économiques qui sont décisives pour les «corrections par des soulèvements» en Libye, Tunisie, Egypte et Syrie. Il s’agit du monopole (et des prix de monopole) pour le pétrole et le gaz.
–    La participation d’Israël en Syrie correspond également au principe du gouvernement Netanyahu, et de tous les anciens gouvernements, de déstabiliser tous les pays voisins afin de sécuriser Israël.
–    Le principal financier de l’insurrection populaire présumée en Syrie sont les Etats-Unis et les dirigeants en sont la CIA qui veille à ce que la propagande de masse dans le monde soit en faveur des «rebelles syriens», en leur fournissant des armes de précision, des missiles antichars, des lunettes de vision thermique, des fusils de précision et dirige, avec l’aide de la marine américaine, la gestion logistique de l’insurrection depuis la mer. Par leur engagement en Syrie, les Etats-Unis et leur industrie tente de lutter contre l’influence de la Russie (politique de l’encerclement) et de la Chine alliée de l’Iran.
–    La Russie possède une base marine et militaire sur la côte méditerranéenne de la Syrie. Après avoir été évincés de la Libye, les Russes ne veulent pas se faire chassés, également, de la Syrie.
–    Parallèlement, la croisade occidentale en Syrie a atteint la Grande Muraille chinoise. La Chine s’intéresse aussi vivement aux ressources du Moyen-Orient. Le Pakistan est déjà sous son influence. Les Chinois entretiennent des relations de longue date avec les talibans afghans. L’Iran est aussi leur allié. Le sud de l’Irak est de facto contrôlé par les alliés chiites de l’Iran. A l’aide de la Syrie, la Chine cherche également à obtenir de l’influence sur la côte méditerranéenne.
–    De même que le but des Etats Unis est d’encercler la Russie et la Chine afin de les repousser à l’intérieur de leurs frontières (par exemple à l’aide de l’insurrection fomentée par les Etats-Unis en Ukraine et la nouvelle offensive dans le Pacifique), ces deux pays veulent, dans le cas de la Syrie, stopper la politique d’encerclement américaine pour des raisons économiques, militaires et géopolitiques.

Lors de la conférence sur la Syrie, les Syriens eux-mêmes n’ont été que des participants passifs. Les commanditaires de la guerre syrienne doivent se mettre d’accord. Mais ils sont confrontés à des obstacles insurmontables:
1.    Les troupes ayant été infiltrées en Syrie par les Etats-Unis (CIA), à savoir les talibans, les combattants de la révolution et les fanatiques islamiques, auparavant engagés dans les pays d’Afrique du Nord ainsi que les troupes de mercenaires (tel Black­water etc.), ne peuvent pratiquement pas être éloignés sans faire de ravages ailleurs. Plus personne ne les veut. On doit donc les laisser s’entretuer et détruire la Syrie. Cela plaide en faveur de la continuation de la guerre.
2.    Les dictatures pétrolières sunnites (Qatar, Arabie saoudite) n’ont pas uniquement leurs propres intérêts à promouvoir concernant le pétrole et le gaz en Syrie, mais également des intérêts de suprématie idéologique islamique qu’ils ne vont guère abandonner.
3.    Israël ne veut pas la paix avant d’avoir atteint la déstabilisation totale de la Syrie afin d’avoir la voie libre en direction de l’Iran.
4.    La Russie se bat pour son influence en Syrie et soutient donc le président Assad (langage occidental: «le régime Assad») en tant qu’allié garantissant ses intérêts.
5.    La Chine est intéressée à la paix en Syrie à condition que son influence soit assurée ou élargie par Assad.

La paix, est-elle possible dans ces conditions?
Quelques objectifs de guerre initiaux des intervenants étrangers se sont entre temps réalisés ou ont changés:
–    Israël ayant atteint son but de déstabiliser la Syrie et le Liban à long terme n’est donc plus partenaire de la conférence de paix.
–    Les Etats-Unis s’épouvantent désormais face à leurs propres mercenaires. Ils craignent, qu’en cas de victoire, un nouveau système islamique, encore plus dangereux que le précédant, puisse se développer en Syrie. Ils cherchent donc une voie de sortie sans trop perdre la face.
–    Jusqu’à présent, la Turquie s’est tenue un peu à l’écart, mais elle a aidé les insurgés de manière subversive au moyen d’armes et d’aide militaire et logistique. Elle veut certes augmenter sa sphère d’influence en Syrie, mais n’est nullement intéressée à avoir un Etat islamique radical comme voisin.
Sont en faveur d’une solution pacifique, avec le maintien du gouvernement Assad:
–    la Russie, car elle garderait ainsi sa base navale et ses alliés en Syrie,
–    l’Iran, car l’axe chiite serait ainsi maintenu et Assad resterait le rempart contre les attaques provenant d’Israël,
–    la Chine, car elle aurait, par l’intermédiaire de l’Iran et de l’axe chiite, plus d’influence sur Assad que sur des terroristes islamistes.

Les terroristes islamistes sont contre une solution pacifique. Les autres buts qu’ils poursuivent – à l’exception de la conquête du pouvoir sunnite en combattant les chiites – sont, selon les groupements très divers, sans doute pas toujours facile à définir et dépendent en partie également de leurs bailleurs de fonds et de leurs dirigeants (Mossad, CIA, Qatar, Arabie saoudite).

Une armistice suffirait déjà à neutraliser les combattants infiltrés. Cela ne peut donc pas être dans leur intérêt, d’autant plus que la résistance de la population dans les territoires qu’ils occupent se renforcerait. S’ils n’étaient plus payés par les Etats-Unis et les monarchies sunnites, ils ne pourraient plus faire face à la pression de l’armée syrienne. Ils devraient donc quitter le pays et semer la pagaille autre part.

Le président Assad et l’armée syrienne pourraient également ne pas encore être intéressés à un cessez-le-feu, car ils sont en train de gagner et de libérer de plus en plus le pays des terroristes. D’autre part, des négociations de paix avec un groupe de citoyens syriens présenterait l’avantage que les 30 000 soldats mercenaires étrangers seraient ainsi isolés, de sorte qu’Assad pourrait risquer de négocier la paix avec une représentation de groupes syriens.

Il faut s’attendre à ce que la tactique utilisée à Genève soit la suivante: des négociations de paix, oui, mais pas encore de cessez-le-feu – et plus tard: la paix, oui, mais uniquement entre Syriens et sans les terroristes étrangers.

Si l’on se demande, si la fomentation de cette guerre par les puissances étrangères, a valu la peine pour eux, il ne reste en réalité que l’avantage israélien (déstabilisation). Les Américains, la CIA, le Qatar et l’Arabie saoudite vont probablement perdre. Pour eux, cette guerre n’a certainement pas amené les résultats escomptés.

Après que les Américains ont, avec l’aide des Russes, empêché l’attaque israélienne contre l’Iran et terminé avec succès les négociations nucléaires avec ce pays, une reprise pacifique pourrait se produire dans cette région, si l’on parvient à éliminer les combattants étrangers de la Syrie et réinstaurer la paix entre les Syriens.    

(Traduction Horizons et débats)

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Quel est le rôle de l’Allemagne en Ukraine?

par Karl Müller

Ex: http://www.horizons-et-debats.ch

Les mass media allemands mènent actuellement une campagne ouverte contre le gouvernement ukrainien et à l’aide de celle-ci également une contre le gouvernement russe. Toute personne qui n’a que les informations des mass media à disposition et qui doit donc se former une opinion en se fondant sur celles-ci, ne sait pas ce qui se passe réellement en Ukraine.
Néanmoins, même sur la base des informations publiées, il est possible de poser quelques questions et d’exiger des réponses:

1. Les mass media allemands, ainsi que le gouvernement, exigent vivement de l’Ukraine qu’elle respecte le droit de protestation pacifique. Faut-il en déduire que le gouvernement allemand considère que les occupations de maisons, les blocus, l’édification de barricades, les détériorations et les actes de violence massive sont des «protestations pacifiques»? Pourquoi ne condamne-t-on pas ces violations évidentes du droit, poursuivies en Allemagne comme violations de domicile et de l’ordre public, quand il s’agit de l’Ukraine?
2. Les «protestations» dans la capitale de l’Ukraine ressemblent beaucoup à d’autres manifestations menées de l’extérieur pour imposer des changements de régime, le tout non pas sur la base de règles institutionnelles, mais à l’aide de la pression de la rue, méthode s’étant substituée aux putschs militaires qui ne sont plus très à la mode.¹ Vitali Klitschko est un produit allemand, mis en place par la Fondation Konrad-Adenauer de la CDU.² Quelles sont les justifications du gouvernement allemand concernant la violation massive de la Charte de l’ONU interdisant strictement toute ingérence dans les affaires intérieures d’un autre Etat souverain?
3. Certains commentaires rappellent, même si leur objectif n’est pas le même, qu’on peut de l’extérieur manœuvrer un pays dans une situation de pré-guerre civile. Ainsi, on a pu lire dans la «Süddeutsche Zeitung» du 23 janvier: «Il est vrai qu’il n’y a pas encore de guerre civile en Ukraine. Mais il est aussi vrai que toute guerre civile commence ainsi ou dans des circonstances semblables. En Syrie, la diplomatie occidentale a dû se soumettre dans la douleur à une certaine retenue. Cela ne doit pas se passer en Ukraine.» En ce qui concerne la Syrie, on sait à quel point l’Occident, y compris l’Allemagne, a attisé le feu. Le gouvernement allemand peut-il garantir qu’il n’en sera pas de même pour l’Ukraine?
4. Sur la base des analyses géopolitiques et stratégiques actuellement connues concernant le rôle de l’Ukraine dans la politique mondiale, on peut estimer qu’il y a suffisamment d’indices légitimant l’idée qu’en réalité le gouvernement allemand ne s’intéresse en Ukraine ni aux droits humains, ni à la démocratie, ni au bien-être de la population. On sait depuis le milieu des années 1990 que l’Ukraine doit être le fer de lance occidental des Etats-Unis et de leurs alliés dans leur lutte contre la Russie (Brzezinski: «Le grand échiquier – L’Amérique et le reste du monde»). C’est dans ce but que vont les tentatives d’«intégrer» l’Ukraine dans l’UE et l’OTAN. Le gouvernement allemand peut-il de façon crédible faire croire que ces analyses sont sans intérêt et que la politique du gouvernement allemand envers l’Ukraine et la Russie est menée en toute honnêteté, dans le sens d’une coopération pacifique et en toute égalité, comme il se doit entre pays se trouvant sur un pied d’égalité?

Les peuples d’Ukraine, d’Allemagne et de Russie ne veulent pas se voir entraînés dans des conflits sanglants. Ils vivent sur le même continent où chaque pays dépend de l’autre. Ils savent quels sont les dangers de se laisser entraîner dans des conflits suscités par des campagnes mensongères à l’intérieur ou entre leurs pays. Ils se souviennent des innombrables victimes causées par la surenchère de violence. Cette année, on commémore pour la centième fois le début de la Grande guerre. Cela ne reste-t-il pas un avertissement pour tous les peuples européens?

C’est à juste titre qu’on s’interroge sur les raisons des campagnes médiatiques se suivant à un rythme accéléré. Pourquoi veut-on nous distraire des véritables questions urgentes qui touchent nos pays et l’Europe toute entière? La classe politique allemande et «occidentale» croit-elle réellement pouvoir détourner l’attention de ses propres échecs en menant une campagne médiatique bruyante? N’est-il pas temps de réfléchir? Pourquoi ne voit-on pas apparaître une politique honnête, fondée sur les valeurs fondamentales?³   

 •

1    cf. Wayne Madson: NATO’s Eastern Prize,
www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/12/16/ukraine-nato-eastern-prize.html du 16/12/13. Version allemande: Die Ukraine: Ein Staat im Osten, den die NATO gern vereinnahmen möchte, www.luftpost-kl.de/luftpost-archiv/LP_13/LP20113_221213.pdf du 22/12/13
2    cf. Horizons et débats no 39 du 23/12/13, p. 6–7
3    cf. «Etat des lieux en début d’année», in: Horizons et débats, no 1 du 20/1/14, p. 1

Vladimir Odintsov

Saudi Arabia buys the West

Ex: http://journal-neo.org

The relationship between Saudi Arabia and the west, primarily the United States, has always been a critical component of the Saudi political policy. However, the recent changes to the strategy undertaken by Washington and its various European allies to resolve both the Syrian crisis and the Iranian nuclear program have forced Riyadh to amend its foreign policy priorities and to alter any further co-operation with the western countries.

These policy changes that Washington and its main ally, London, have undertaken in the Middle East are being called no less than a “betrayal and a deceitful attitude towards Riyadh” by representatives of the Saudi Arabian royal family. Such claims were particularly applied toThe Telegraph newspaper by the Saudi ambassador in London, prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin AbdulAziz Al Saud and it has been stated that from now on, Riyadh “will not be idly standing by”. His advisor Nawaf Obaid has, meanwhile, accused America and the west of “being dishonest with Saudi Arabia” and announced that the Saudis will be adopting a new “defence doctrine” to accomplish their foreign policy goals and that “our strategic posture is moving from reactive to proactive”, that is, they will be taking an active position in terms of their foreign policy.

Saudi Arabia’s refusal to strategically partner with the United States was also voiced to a host of foreign media at the end of 2013 by the head of the Saudi Intelligence Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who claimed that a “decisive shift” was occurring in Saudi Arabian foreign policy. He has stated that the Saudi monarchy will now cease to focus on Washington, who has been “ignoring Riyadh interests”.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy has certainly never been public. This is primarily because the leaders of this kingdom have never had to be accountable before their own people with regards to their plans and policies. This is why Riyadh’s plans on the foreign arena were always hidden behind a veil of secrecy and only in certain circumstances did well-known foreign players become privy to this knowledge through “confidential talks” with Saudi diplomats. Even then, this information was less of a “revelation” and was instead clearly well-placed information that was disseminated in a skilled manner through the “confidential talks” to reinforce certain Saudi manoeuvres or to implement certain secret monarchy plans. This is why the information pertaining to Riyadh’s shifting political focus that “accidentally” ended up in the hands of a host of western news agencies, primarily The Wall Street Journal,The Telegraph, Reuters, The New York Times and others at the end of last year was really an expertly-executed informational campaign aimed at warning Washington and London that they their risk losing their main ally in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia. It’s not hard to guess that Prince Bandar bin Sultan could have been the one behind this campaign, as he is in charge of not only the national intelligence but virtually all of the kingdom’s foreign policy.

This “informational leak” was quickly followed by Riyadh’s “demonstration of strength” in the form of financial flirting with various Arab countries as well as those in the Middle Eastern region (in particular Lebanon, Egypt and others) and their readiness to fully replace the United States as a source of funding for their military and technical modernization programs as well as a source of foreign weapons, a task that would instead be relegated to a “trusted Saudi Arabian ally”. This political game undertaken by Riyadh began to actively attract leaders of other nations, those who also felt “offended by Washington”. Or, simply put, those who, like Saudi Arabia, have become outcasts within the new American policies. In this environment, the Saudi’s first choice fell to the French president François Hollande, who was eager to play along to the Riyadh tune during a time when his ratings were falling catastrophically low among the French population.

This led to François Hollande visiting Riyadh at the end of 2013 where the Saudi Arabian king allocated a $3 billion grant to fund the Lebanese Army on the condition that weapons will be purchased in France. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia also stated that it is ready to spend over $50 billion on the further foreign policy rapprochement with France, which is based on their common views with respect to the situation in Syria and Iran.

This led to a severely negative reaction in the United States, where this grant approval was seen as a public insult of the American position on Iran and Syria, a position that is contrary to the Saudi policies surrounding these countries. The United States believes that Riyadh intends to create a new axis with Paris after having met the rather soft, from the Saudi point of view, platform undertaken by Washington with respect to their Middle Eastern policies. The foundation of this new axis will be involving Paris in billion dollar operations relating to the regions’ weapons and military equipment, something France cannot refuse. At the forefront of the French-Saudi political alliance is the Saudi oil money which has caught the interest of the deeply troubled French economy. The French have already signed a $1.5 billion contract agreeing to modernize the Saudi navy, which has led François Hollande to undertake three additional visits to Saudi Arabia.

Although the French and Saudi Arabian foreign policy is fairly close on issues surrounding Syria, Lebanon and Iran, there are serious disagreements regarding Egypt with respect to the role that the Muslim Brotherhood should have in the country and in the region as a whole. These disagreements could undermine the burgeoning “axis of good” in the future, however, Riyadh can presently count on their “valuable ally, uncompromising with respect to Assad” on Syrian issues.

Washington is not only worried about losing Saudi Arabia as the sole client for American weapons, but is also concerned about the hit to the United States’ reputation as the provider of aid to Lebanon to help strengthen their military power. After all, the financial support being provided to Lebanon seems to be a lot more generous from Saudi Arabia than it is from the U.S.

The United States’ foreign policy image with respect to Syria is also suffering due to France’s growing activity in establishing contacts with the Syrian opposition with the aid of the Saudis. While François Hollande was having talks with Riyadh’s protégé and head of the national coalition for Syrian opposition Ahmad Dzharba, Washington’s highest politicians did not once attempt to make these types of contact themselves.

France’s growing efforts to anchor in the Persian Gulf and the Saudi attempts to define partners who would help resolve pressing regional issues (Syria, Iran and others) without involving the United States has led to serious concerns in Washington. The American plan to control the process of transforming the gulf monarchies (Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf) into an economic, military and political bloc are now under serious threat. This could also mean that various U.S. projects would grind to a halt, such as the creation of the unified integrated ABM system in the Persian Gulf, the launching of the new co-ordination mechanism – a Council of the Defence Ministers of the U.S. and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, and even the creation of a unified military and political bloc of the gulf monarchies.

This has forced the hand of U.S. State Secretary John Kerry, who travelled to Saudi Arabia with a short visit at the beginning of January of this year. Although the main topic of conversation was the issue of reconciling the Middle East, behind closed doors there were also talks of other issues that have cast a shadow over Saudi-American relations (military-technical co-operation and their disagreements on Iranian and Syrian policies). The Saudis once again linked resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with how the situation will be developing with regards to the regional problems that are central to Saudi interests.

Within these circumstances, the United States’ position on these issues will be a defining characteristic that will determine the further particulars of the Saudi co-operation with the Americans. Experts also note that Saudi Arabia will not be able to agree that the Arab countries should recognize the Jewish character of the Israeli state, a point which is being advanced by the Americans and John Kerry himself.

In a word, the “boiling Middle East” is a fitting name for the region as the intrigues here seem to be perpetually growing. They are followed by new informational provocation, which in turn prepares a foothold for the possible upcoming deterioration of the military-political situation in the region. One example of this is the new recent claim by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper regarding the possibility that Syria has the manufacturing capabilities to produce not just chemical, but biological weapons which will, once again, give the U.S. a reason to send a military operation to Damascus, something of particular interest to Riyadh who is ready to pay any amount of their oil money to achieve their goals.

However, let’s not forget that the times are changing and the world is changing with them. New calls for military action, even those that are financed well and generously funded by the Wahhabi monarchy, will not only fail to generate an income for the puppeteers in Washington and Riyadh, but will instead hasten their political downfall. 

Vladimir Odintsov is a political commentator exclusively for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook.

Is Israel Getting Ready to Rethink its Strategy in Syria?

Dmitry MININ

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

On 24 January, a senior officer in the Israeli military intelligence held a special briefing, at which it was reported that there is «the possibility» of Israel rethinking its strategy in the Syrian conflict. The reason? The sharp rise in the number of militants in Syria linked to al-Qaeda who are uncompromising when it comes to Israel. Just two years ago they numbered 2,000, but today this number has increased to 30,000. They have travelled to Syria from countries in the Middle East, Europe, America... Israel is starting to come to the conclusion that if Bashar Assad is overthrown and the militants’ immediate goal realised – the creation of a large Islamic state from Syria and parts of Iraq – then these forces are going to come down on them hard. Hence the need for Israel to look at the possibility of carrying out its own large-scale operations in Syria, apparently.

According to the Israelis, the Islamist groups in Syria that pose a threat to their country include:

1. Jabhat al-Nusra. On 22 January, the Israeli security agency Shin Bet reported that it had foiled three planned terrorist attacks by this organisation, including blowing up the US Embassy in Tel-Aviv and the Convention Centre in Jerusalem. The alleged perpetrators included immigrants from Turkey and the North Caucasus republics. 

2. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

3. Ahrar ash-Sham. This group serves as the basis for the recently established Islamic Front (IF), which America has declared to be a «moderate» group. Israeli intelligence sources are disputing this assessment, pointing out that Ahrar ash-Sham’s leader, Abu Khalid al-Suri (real name Mohamed Bahaiah), admitted that he is a member of al-Qaeda. Experts in France are also in agreement with this, observing that Muhamed Bahaiah acts as al-Qaeda’s chief coordinator in Syria, used to have links with Bin Laden and remains a close acquaintance of al-Zawahiri.

4. Jaysh al-Islam. This organisation dominates the Damascus region and is known to have close ties with Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agencies.

The Israeli army (the IDF) is considering several options for how it could tackle these groups:

a) creating buffer zones on the Syrian side of the border;

b) air and ground strikes against jihadist border concentrations;

c) deep thrusts into Syria and Iraq to block the advance of al-Qaeda forces into Jordan;

d) the targeted assassinations of top al-Qaeda commanders; and

e) preventing jihadist forces from seizing areas in Syria that could subsequently be used as springboards from which to advance into Israel.

At the same time, however, Israeli strategists are stipulating the need for all the «pros and cons» of fighting al-Qaeda in Syria to be considered carefully, bearing in mind that such a military campaign would ease the pressure on Assad’s regime and his allies, Iran and Hezbollah, which Israel, of course, does not really want to do. But at some point, they are going to have to choose which is more important – real security or the myths of their own propaganda.

Speaking at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies, «Security Challenges of the 21st Century», Israel’s Defence Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, stated that the US has encountered many challenges in the region and is trying to reduce its presence and intervention. At the same time, he believes that Syria’s partition into several parts is a looming reality, which means that Israel needs to be prepared for the situation when its «red lines» are crossed. This would be «an attack on Israel or the transfer/use of chemical weapons» which, according to Ya’alon, could alter Israel’s position regarding its «non-intervention» in what is currently happening in Syria.

Israel’s significant military build-up on its border with Syria has already been declared. The IDF’s press office announced the official commissioning of a new territorial division known as the Bashan Division after the ancient name of the Golan Heights region, in which the division will be stationed. The division will be led by Brigadier General Ofek Buchris, a former commander of the Golani Brigade and then commander of the 366th Reserve Division, known as the «Netiv Ha-Esh» Division.

The IDF’s 36th «Ga’ash» Armor Division, which as well as carrying out combat missions served as the territorial division in the Golan Heights region, will remain in the same place, but will move into the reserves of the General Staff. This division includes the «Golani» Infantry Brigade, the «Saar me-Golan» and «Barak» Armor Brigades, and the «Golan» Artillery Regiment.

On 28 January, commenting on a report about the renewal of US arms supplies to Syrian rebels, the Israeli military intelligence website DEBKAfile reported that, this time around, they are going to carry out the plan agreed with Tel-Aviv for the creation of two buffer zones on the border between Israel and Jordan. The US is also supposedly convinced of the futility of trying to alter the balance of forces in the Syrian conflict in its favour, and is ready to restrict itself to protecting its last reliable allies in the region. The plan is for both zones to be created in Syria, sufficiently close to Damascus.

According to reports by Reuters, high-ranking officials in American and European intelligence agencies have confirmed that a plan approved by the US Congress for the financing of arms supplies to rebel groups in Syria contains secret articles that not all members of Congress are aware of.

Weapons and ammunition, including anti-tank missiles and grenades, will be delivered to Syria through Jordan. In addition, the US is also intending to provide the so-called moderate opposition with a variety of equipment, including modern communication equipment and night vision equipment.

Even on the face of it, however, there are serious doubts about the potential of America and Israel’s «new strategy». To begin with, it is mistaken in the false hope that there are forces loyal to the West that can be placed along the border between Israel and Jordan, similar to the Maronite Army of South Lebanon that existed in the 20th century. Finding «border guards» like that in Syria is extremely difficult. The entire region of the Golan Heights on the Syrian side is dominated by anti-Israeli minded jihadists from Jabhat al-Nusra. In many respects, these were nurtured by Israel itself, which was once obsessed with the idea of overthrowing Bashar Assad no matter what. It should be noted that since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, more than 800 militants, including 28 leaders, have received medical help in Israeli hospitals, including the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, where top-level officials are treated. How exactly «democrats» are to emerge in place of these al-Qaeda-ists, however, is unclear. 

The picture is more varied in the sector adjacent to Jordan, but it is also unlikely that local rebels want to turn into eternal «military settlers». Everyone remembers the fate of the puppet South Lebanese Army, whose soldiers were eventually forced to abandon their homeland with their families and sit and vegetate in Israel, deprived of all rights. In fact, if the Islamists conquer the rest of Syria, pockets like these will be crushed in a matter of hours.

 It is about time people understood that none of the various strategic equations in Syria can be solved without the involvement of Bashar Assad as both the most important figure in Damasus and the country’s president. The Syrian government does not need any kind of external intrusion against its enemies, enemies that were nurtured by the «suddenly enlightened» Western and Israeli strategists themselves. Something different is required, namely that the US and its allies stop all inference in Syria’s affairs. Damascus will deal with the rebellion itself single-handed. That way it will be cheaper, and result in fewer victims.

EGYPTE : QUAND LA DICTATURE N'EST PAS LA DICTATURE

L'Occident perd son argumentaire

Michel Lhomme
Ex: http://metamag.fr

 

Le commandement de l'armée égyptienne a donné lundi 27 janvier mandat à son chef, le maréchal Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, pour se présenter à l'élection présidentielle en Egypte. Le vice-premier ministre, homme fort du pays depuis qu'il a destitué en juillet, par la force, le président islamiste Mohamed Morsi, avait peu auparavant été élevé au rang de maréchal, le plus haut grade de l'armée égyptienne, par le président Adly Mansour.

 

Ce dernier a confirmé que le scrutin présidentiel serait organisé avant les législatives. Pour tous les observateurs, cette inversion judicieuse du calendrier électoral devrait servir les intérêts du maréchal Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi qui sera donc probablement élu. 

Mohamed Morsi, déposé le 3 juillet 2013, était le seul président élu démocratiquement en Egypte, et le premier non issu des rangs de l'armée, à diriger le plus peuplé des pays arabes. Tout le week-end, des manifestations et des heurts ont agité le Caire laissant à l'anniversaire des trois ans de la révolution un goût plutôt amer. Le général Mohamed Saïd, chef du bureau technique du ministère de l'intérieur égyptien, a été tué mardi 28 janvier dans la capitale égyptienne par des inconnus qui ont ouvert le feu sur lui, selon les services de sécurité du pays. Cet assassinat survient en pleine vague de répression sanglante de toute manifestation des partisans des frères musulmans et de toute une série d'attentats djihadistes visant les forces de l'ordre.

Un pays gênant pour les Occidentaux

Pourtant, dans les médias, l'Egypte est oublié. On tait, on camoufle l'Egypte. En somme, nous avons eu début juillet un coup de force, un coup d'état militaire en bonne et due forme mais pour les Occidentaux, ce n'était pas un coup d'Etat ! C'est ainsi que depuis quelques mois, on sent dans les relations internationales une sorte de distanciation polie sur tout ce qui se passe que ce soit à Gaza, au Liban, en Syrie ou en Afrique noire. On ne croit plus en rien et surtout plus au modèle démocratique et aux bons sentiments humanitaires tant vantés dans les années 90.

 

L'incapacité d'Obama à utiliser en juillet 2013 le terme de ''coup d'Etat'' pour désigner la situation égyptienne fut rédhibitoire et augure d'une certaine incapacité de l'Amérique à se repositionner idéologiquement, à posséder et maîtriser un argumentaire crédible. Barak Obama ne pouvait en effet utiliser officiellement le terme de ''coup d'état militaire'' car il aurait alors été mis dans l'obligation légale de couper l'aide financière si vitale à l’Egypte. Les Etats-Unis étaient ainsi la victime collatérale de leurs propres textes. Mais si un coup d'Etat n'est plus un coup d'état, qu'est-ce alors que la démocratie et qu'est-ce qui justifiera demain l'interventionnisme américain ?

Avec la destitution violente de Morsi, l'Occident est entré dans une nouvelle confusion politique car les Occidentaux aiment les concepts clivants, aiment négocier à l'intérieur de paramètres clairs et surtout veulent en permanence moraliser le politique pour ne pas culpabiliser leurs turpitudes. 

C'était donc des insurgés contre des dictateurs, des fanatiques contre des démocrates, des bons contre des méchants, des laïcs contre des religieux. C'est pour eux une manière de mieux comprendre et d'appréhender la politique extérieure et de l'expliquer à leurs électeurs. On s'était habitué, avant l'Egypte, qu'un coup d'état militaire était nécessairement ''mauvais'' et qu'un président élu serait forcément le ''bon'', le seul légitime. Mais il y eut Morsi après, mais qui s'en souvient, l'Algérie des années 91-92. Et si l'éviction de Morsi justifiait demain, même dans un pays comme la France, le refus de certains résultats électoraux. Quel que soit ce que l'on pense des Frères Musulmans, ce sont eux qui remportèrent les élections présidentielles. Leur formation était alors le parti le plus important du Parlement égyptien et le second parti de ce Parlement n'était pas celui des libéraux mais celui des salafistes, encore plus fondamentalistes et radicaux que les Frères Musulmans.

Une démocratie à géométrie variable

Cette confusion de l'attitude occidentale à l'égard des élections égyptiennes s'est multipliée dans tout le Proche-Orient et en particulier en Syrie où la France comme les Etats-Unis ont soutenu les rebelles les plus fanatiques au nom de la ''démocratie''. S’agissant de l'Egypte, certains commentateurs ont prétendu que l'Egypte, après tout, n'était pas mûre pour la démocratie ou pire que finalement, la démocratie n'était pas une bonne solution pour l'Egypte, qu'elle n'y était pas préparée ! Mais quel pays est-il donc prêt pour la démocratie ? En somme, le discours de la paix démocratique, le discours de l'idéologue Christopher Layne n'était que du vent. Pourtant tout le conflit afghan fut justifié par le discours démocratique. Toutes les interventions africaines ont été, jusqu'à aujourd'hui, des interventions pro-démocratiques. C'est donc le coup d'état militaire de Sissi qui a stoppé ce grand élan de générosité démocratique car pour une fois, un coup d'état n'était pas un coup d'état mais une affaire démocratique!

L'écho des évènements égyptiens qui nous parvient est comme brouillé par la sensation incommode d'une belle duperie. Avec l'Egypte, avec la Syrie, avec les pressions sur Gaza, l'Occident se dirige petit à petit vers le chaos moral de l'intervention sans une once de justification. On se retrouve exactement comme au temps de la Guerre froide lorsque les Etats-Unis et ses alliés justifiaient les coups de force d'Asie ou les dictatures d'Amérique latine, les préférant à toute autre alternative sociale sauf qu'à cette époque, les progressistes chantaient la révolution sur des vers de Neruda et dénonçaient les dictateurs et les tyrans dans les films de Godard ? Or qui, aujourd'hui, lève le petit doigt contre Sissi, le dictateur-maréchal égyptien ? En tout cas, les événements égyptiens nous enseignent ce sur quoi nous insistons toujours ici : on ne peut en politique internationale éviter la complexité, le confus et les compromissions de toutes sortes. La politique internationale n'est pas morale et ne le sera jamais.

Is Japan Losing its Independence?

Record Trade Deficit in Japan and Nuclear Reality: Is Japan Losing its Independence?

Noriko Watanabe and Walter Sebastian

Ex: http://moderntokyotimes.com

The anti-nuclear lobby in Japan and the mass media in this nation on a whole continue to focus on the negative side of nuclear power stations. Not surprisingly, the government of Japan is dithering about this issue just like other important areas – for example the declining birth rate. However, Japan can’t afford to maintain its current energy policy because it is hindering the economy too much. Either Japan must re-focus on nuclear energy which helped in the modernization of this nation in the post-war period – or, Japan must bite the bullet and formulate an alternative energy policy and quickly.

The Ministry of Finance announced earlier this week that the trade deficit in 2013 reached a record figure. This should set off alarm bells in the corridors of power because the $112 billion dollar trade deficit will put enormous strains on the economy. After all, with no real energy policy existing currently in Japan, then it seem more than feasible that the next few years will follow the same pattern.

Issues related to the nuclear crisis in Japan appear to have been blown up out of all proportion. After all, the huge loss of life occurred because of the brutal tsunami that followed the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11 in 2011. This isn’t meant to belittle the trauma caused to the local area in Fukushima because within a certain zone it is clear that problems continue to exist. However, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear crisis is more based on bad management, the age of the plant, deficiencies within the planning mechanisms of this nuclear plant, lack of accountability, limited safety mechanisms – and other areas of importance. Of course, the earthquake triggered the tsunami but the nuclear crisis that erupted was based on human failure when faced with the brutal reality of nature.

Vojin Joksimovich, nuclear specialist and writer at Modern Tokyo Times, stated last year: “Japan has few natural resources and imports about 84% of its energy requirements. Nuclear power has been a national strategic priority since 1973. The country’s 54 nuclear plants have provided some 30% of the nation’s electricity. This was expected to increase to 40% by 2017 and to 50% by 2030. Japan has a fuel cycle capability including enrichment and reprocessing of used fuel for recycle and waste minimization. Shutdowns of 48 units capable of generating electricity have resulted in soaring fossil fuel, mostly LNG imports. Five nuclear utilities have been compelled to raise electricity rates: household rates 8.5-11.9%; commercial rates 14.2-19.2%.” 

“According to the NASA climate change study, summarized in the May 2013 issue of the Nuclear News, using nuclear power to generate electricity instead of burning fossil fuels prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution deaths and 64 billion metric tons of CO2- equivalent greenhouse gas emissions between 1971 and 2009. In the time frame 2000-2009 the nuclear plants prevented on average 76,000 deaths/year. It appears that the NRA has ignored these types of considerations, while pursuing the absolute safety quest for the nuclear plants.” 

In the same article Vojin Joksimovich says: “There is now abundance of evidence showing that the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power has not harmed the Japanese public. The University of Oxford physics professor Wade Allison, author of the remarkable book Radiation and Reason: The Impact of Science on a Culture of Fear, testifying in the British House of Commons in December of 2011, was the first one to tell the world that the accident has not harmed the Japanese public: “No acute fatalities, no acute injuries, no extended hospitalizations due to radiation, unlikely cancer fatalities in 50 years.”

“World Health Organization (WHO) report followed: “Low risk to population, no observable health effects.”United Nations Scientific Committee on Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) report, with contributions from 80 international experts, says: “No immediate health effects, unlikely health effects in future among general public and vast majority of workers.” Most Japanese were exposed to additional radiation less than natural background level of 2.1mSv/yr. The report concludes that observable effects are attributable to stresses of evacuation and unwarranted fear of radiation. This means that the most serious health effects were not caused by radiation but by fear of it by the Japanese authorities. Lastly the Fukushima Medical University (FMU) is conducting a health management survey of all 2 million Fukushima Prefecture residents. Thus far the maximum dose received was only 19mSv. This writer, while in a local hospital, has received doses of 30-40mSv from CT scans. It means that he has received higher dose than ~99% of the Japanese population from the Daiichi accident.”

Now Japan is stuck by either adopting a pragmatic nuclear policy based on modernizing the entire system and implementing tougher standards – or to continue with importing dirty energy at a negative cost in terms of health related issues and hindering the economy. Of course, Japan could try to radically alter its energy policy by implementing a policy that boosts alternative energy – the effects and costs remain debatable. However, the current status quo of relying on expensive imported fossil fuels to bridge the non-existent energy policy isn’t viable.

The huge deficit is based on increasing imports that followed in the wake of the March 11 9.0-magnitude earthquake that triggered the tsunami and nuclear crisis in Fukushima. Since this period, imports continue to rise in relation to the demand of fossil fuels. Therefore, despite exports rising in Japan to nearly 10% in 2013, it is clear that the import imbalance, weak yen and the reliance on fossil fuels are all hitting the economy hard.

Forbes says: “A surge in Japanese fossil fuel demand following the Fukushima nuclear crisisin 2011 pushed imports to their highest-ever level of 81.26 trillion yen.”

“In other words, steep post-Fukushima energy bills are taking a toll on Japan’s economy.”

“Prior to the Fukushima fiasco, nuclear reactors supplied a third of Japan’s electric demand.”

Lee Jay Walker at Modern Tokyo Times says: “The yen will continue to feel the effects of the current account deficit and if this isn’t addressed then traders may well sell off more yen. This in turn will have an adverse effect on import costs thereby creating a downward economic spiral. Therefore, given the reality that exports reached a near 10% increase last year, it is clear that Japan needs to address its energy policy along with other essential areas related to the economy.”

Akira Amari, Fiscal and Economic Policy Minister, is extremely anxious about the deficit. He warns that unless this issue is addressed then Japan “may become like the United States in depending on other countries for its financial funds.”

If the above scenario happens then Japan will further lose its independence and this also applies to the nuclear angle. After all, the development of the nuclear sector was an area of self-reliance given the overall weakness of Japan in relation to natural energy resources. Now, however, Japan is beholden to more imported fossil fuels; the nation relies on America for protecting the nation state in relation to the armed forces of this nation being stationed in Japan; while imported foodstuffs are a natural fact of life; and if the trade deficit continues then soon Japan may rely on foreign nations for funds. Therefore, the current leader of Japan needs to focus on a proper energy policy because the current status quo is undermining the economy along with other negative ills.

Lee Jay Walker gave guidance to both main writers

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2014/01/27/the-cost-of-misguided-energy-policies-japans-record-trade-deficit/

http://www.moderntokyotimes.com/2013/07/16/restart-of-japanese-nuclear-plants-politically-correct-radiophobia-harms-the-general-public/

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http://moderntokyotimes.com

A. Chauprade: sur l'Ukraine

Ayméric Chauprade:

L'Ukraine, nouvelle étape dans la stratégie de domination américaine

par realpolitiktv

 

¿Por qué se opone Washington al acuerdo petrolífero ruso-iraní?

Ex: http://www.elespiadigital.com

 

El acuerdo reciente “Petróleo contra Mercancías” que negocian en este momento iraníes y rusos ha provocado la ira de Washington.

Según este acuerdo, Irán intercambiará medio millón de barriles de petróleo por equipos y productos rusos de muy diversa índole de los que tiene necesidad.

El periódico libanés As Safir ha analizado esta “cólera estadounidense” y busca desvelar las razones de la misma.

Paralelamente a la visita del ministro iraní de Exteriores a Rusia, EEUU intentar ejercer presiones sobre Moscú para que cambie de opinión y dé marcha atrás en su decisión de suscribir este acuerdo.

Los 500.000 barriles de petróleo poseen un valor de 1.500 millones de dólares que servirán a Irán para adquirir equipos y productos rusos.

Este dinero también servirá para crear fábricas y empresas rusas en Irán.

Para justificar su oposición, EEUU se remite al compromiso nuclear interino firmado por el Grupo 5+1 con Irán, que el acuerdo petrolero ruso-iraní supuestamente violaría.

Sin embargo, la preocupación de Washington tiene otras causas.

Una primera razón sería el margen de maniobra que este acuerdo concede a Irán en las negociaciones nucleares para un arreglo definitivo de la cuestión nuclear iraní.

Además este acuerdo energético, si es concluido, llevaría  a que el régimen de sanciones contra Irán se debilite más rápidamente de lo previsto.

Existe otra tercera razón por la que Washington se opone a este acuerdo. Los norteamericanos creen que, con él, Rusia se posiciona con ventaja en el mercado iraní de cara al futuro levantamiento de las sanciones antiiraníes.

Dicho acuerdo serviría para impulsar el crecimiento económico de Rusia y permitiría a este país incrementar sus exportaciones petrolíferas y revertir la tendencia, que quedó reflejada en 2013, a la bajada de las mismas.

En cuarto lugar, el acuerdo entre Rusia e Irán tendrá también un importante efecto en la cooperación militar ruso-iraní.

El periódico As Safir señala que “a pesar de la cólera de la Casa Blanca, el Kremlin no va a renunciar a este acuerdo con Irán”.

Moscú ha hecho saber, de esta forma, a su rival estadounidense que no concede ninguna importancia a las sanciones unilaterales aprobadas por EEUU o sus aliados europeos, y que lo único que importa son las sanciones votadas por la ONU.

Este acuerdo y otros aspectos de la cooperación ruso-iraní serán abordados durante la próxima visita del presidente ruso, Vladimir Putin, a Teherán, que tendrá lugar dentro de unas semanas.

Polish involvement in Ukraine’s coup and settlement

Polish involvement in Ukraine’s coup and settlement

By Andrew KORYBKO (USA)

Ex: http://orientalreview.org

Poland has been exploiting the destabilization of Ukraine in order to expand its influence further East at Russia’s expense. Together with Sweden, Poland launched the EU’s Eastern Partnership initiative in 2009. This was commenced specifically with the purpose of spreading Brussels’ (and Warsaw’s) sway over the non-member states on the Union’s periphery. It is also a Trojan Horse for future NATO expansion. Poland has in the past decade been jockeying for a leadership role in the EU, and the Eastern Partnership provided amble opportunity for the country to prove its importance to its NATO and EU patrons. Focusing specifically on Ukraine, Poland has unique cultural, political, linguistic, and historical ties there, especially in the areas of Western Ukraine that used to briefly be part of the Second Polish Republic. Warsaw’s political establishment has exploited these ties not only to encourage internal disruption in Ukraine (at the expense of Russia having a stable economic partner), but also to institutionalize Poland’s role as the sub-regional hegemon over the western portion.

Opposition outreach

The Polish government has issued very strong statements in support of the ‘protesters’, even going as far as to declare “full solidarity” with them, thereby nullifying any claim to impartiality that they may have previously aspired to have. Now, Poland’s Prime Minister has directly interfered in the domestic turmoil.

As the rioting in Ukraine continues to spread westward, Prime Minister Tusk spoke by telephone with opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk last Sunday, stating afterwards that “We support Ukrainian democrats in their efforts to achieve a fair and wise agreement”. Poland has thus passed the threshold from official statements to actions, as the Polish government wants the world to know that it has dialogue channels open with the ‘opposition’, and this infers a level of influence over its leaders and official government support of their actions. Interestingly enough, this public revelation of contact with Yatsenyuk and support of his “Ukrainian democrats” makes Poland complicit in the coup that Ukrainian Prime Minister Azarov (who has resigned today – OR) alleges is in full motion within his country. Azarov goes on to state that “It’s a real coup attempt, and everyone who backs this coup should clearly say ‘Yes, we support the overthrowing of the lawful administration in Ukraine,’ instead of hiding behind peaceful protesters.”After officially associating with Yatsenyuk, one of the prime coordinators of the unrest, and endorsing his “Ukrainian democrats”, Poland has irrevocably proven itself to be in support of regime change.

Poland’s previous political provocations (to say nothing of the contact with Yatsenyuk) were not lost on the citizens of Kharkov, who on 23 January protested at the Polish consulate there, “demanded the closure of all Polish diplomatic missions in Ukraine, [and claimed] their staff were representing an enemy nation”. Quite clearly, the Polish diplomatic missions in Ukraine have now taken on the de-facto role of coup-supporting institutions, thereby making them actual enemies of the Ukrainian government. The same goes for Germany, which has a special relationship with permanent resident and UDAR provocateur Klitschko, who is for Germany what Yatsenyuk is for Poland – a proxy fighter in a larger geopolitical struggle against Moscow. The most honest thing that Warsaw and Berlin could do now is follow Azarov’s advice and proclaim “Yes, we support the overthrowing of the lawful administration in Ukraine”, as their actions demonstrate nothing less.

Looking for Galicja

Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria Map, 1897

Poland’s foreign policy towards Ukraine has been very assertive. Besides jointly taking the helm of the Eastern Partnership, strongly voicing support for the Ukrainian destabilizers, and publicly parading its connection to Yatsenyuk, it is now among the league of countries threatening sanctions against Ukraine. Poland’s foreign policy offensive against the Ukrainian government is designed to place it into the best position to enter into possible post-conflict multilateral negotiations, a proposal now being floated around by the influential Carnegie Endowment think tank. In defending their proposal, the authors assert, “Don’t underestimate how hard Poland has worked to revamp the EU’s Eastern Partnership initiative. Sikorski and his experts know the region extremely well, having spent the past several years working with the leaders and civil-society movements in Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.” Sikorski and the Polish government’s involvement with the aforementioned “civil-society movement” leaders is an indication of intimate association with Ukraine’s coup organizers, and of course, it should not be underestimated.

Poland would like nothing more than to legitimately institutionalize its influence over Ukraine (especially the formerly Polish western half) by being internationally recognized as taking part in any multilateral negotiations to end the Ukrainian crisis. This would be an implicit admission of Poland’s new sub-regional hegemony in Eastern Europe, and it would contribute to the regional fragmentation of the country. The areas under Poland’s sphere of influence would more radically gravitate west, thereby cementing the dual East-West nature of the current Ukrainian identity. Instead of resolving regional differences, it would only exacerbate them, as Poland would encourage Western Ukrainian ‘separateness’ in the political, linguistic, and cultural domains. It is also probable that the protesters’ western nest (Lviv and the surrounding environs) may seek to declare autonomy on par with the Crimea, with Poland, Germany, and the entire EU (read: NATO) as future guarantors of its legal status.

Including Poland (or any Western [NATO] state) into any post-conflict negotiated settlement would be akin to letting a fox into the henhouse, as it would legitimize the previous violations of Ukrainian sovereignty by the West, entrench Western Ukraine’s regional oppositional identity to the rest of the state, and possibly allow NATO a foothold in carving up Ukraine at a more politically convenient time in the future.

Andrew Korybko is the Master’s Degree student at the Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO).

Turkey and Iran: The Ties That Bind

Turkey and Iran: The Ties That Bind

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

 

Ex: http://www.globalresearch.ca

As Turkey works for harmonization with Iran and Russia, an internal struggle has developed between the PM and the Gulenists that may threaten the process. If the leadership of the AKP is to be believed, it’s part of a foreign conspiracy to remove them.

Regarding the conflict in Syria, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) government in Ankara might be on the opposite side of the fence from both Tehran and Moscow, but the depth of Turkish ties with Iran and Russia go beyond this.

Turkey is not only tied to both Iran and Russia through geography and centuries of common history, it also shares the bonds of mutual trade, culture, linguistics, and ethnic composition. Although Turkish policies and political relations with Iran and Russia are subject to fluctuation, the many links tying Turkish society to both cannot be undone, including the economic reality of their ties.

Tehran and Moscow are two of Turkey’s most important trading partners and sources of energy. Aside from Germany, in terms of Turkish exports and imports, the combined volume of Turkish trade with both Iran and Russia outflanks, by way of comparison, any bilateral trade relations Ankara has with other countries.

Realizing the importance of Turkish economic ties to Iran, it is important to note that the unilateral US and European Union sanctions set up against Iran have hurt the Turkish economy. The Turks need Iranian energy in the form of natural gas and oil. When the US government asked Ankara to cut back on Iranian energy imports, it basically expected the Turkish government to knowingly handicap the Turkish economy in order to serve Washington’s agenda.

Even under the US-led sanctions regime directed against Iran as a form of economic manipulation and warfare, Turkish businesses and the AKP government have tried their best to maintain their economic and energy ties with Iran. This has been done both openly and covertly. Turkey has even acted as a covert channel for Iran to evade the US and EU sanctions.

Among other things, the corruption scandal involving the head of the state-owned Halk Bankasi (People’s Bank), or Halkbank for short, that emerged on December 17, 2013, is a reflection of the continuation of business and trade between Turkey and Iran. Sales from Iran were silently facilitated by the Turkish bank through the purchasing of gold that was given to Tehran as payment, instead of a currency, after Tehran was blocked from using the SWIFT international money-transfer system in March 2012. Halkbank maintains that the transactions were legal and that no rules prevented trading precious metals with Iran until July 2013 and that it ceased doing so on June 10, 2013.

An internal power struggle has emerged in Turkey. The Halkbank scandal is really a sub-plot and symptom of this. Not only do the recent graft probes reflect widespread government corruption in Turkey, but it puts the spotlight on an inner tussle within the AKP and, more broadly, within the Turkish elite managing the affairs of the Republic of Turkey.

Neo-Ottomanism: Winter in Turkish foreign politics

Since 2011, the economic damage on Turkey caused by the sanctions regime against Iran has been aggravated through an aggregate of Turkish miscalculations and domestic incidents. In large part, these miscalculations are the result of the metamorphosis of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s business-friendly ‘zero problems’ foreign policy into the much more aggressive ‘neo-Ottoman’ foreign policy.

Senior Turkish politicians believed that the so-called Arab Spring would elevate Ankara as an indisputable regional powerhouse from the borders of Morocco to Iraq. These Turkish views were also encouraged by the US and from inside the EU, with the promotion of the so-called ‘Turkish model’ for the Arabs, which buoyed the AKP government to diverge from its ‘zero problems’ policy in pursuit of neo-Ottoman dreams of unchallenged Turkish economic and political supremacy in the Arab World.

Through its neo-Ottoman enterprise, Ankara walked away from the Ankara-Damascus-Tehran axis that appeared to be forming and all the advances it had made with Libya, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. A winter of sorts had arrived for Ankara in the field of foreign affairs. Turkish relations eventually soured, with almost all the countries on its borders and a chilling of relations began to emerge with Tehran and the Kremlin.

Neo-Ottoman foreign policy was initiated through the Turkish government’s support for the NATO war and regime change operations in Tripoli that ultimately disrupted Turkish trade with the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Although the Turkish government pretended it was against the war, Ankara did not veto any of NATO’s war plans at the North Atlantic Council in Brussels. Instead Turkey supported the NATO-imposed no-fly zone, actively took part in the naval embargo around the Libyan coast, manned the airport in Benghazi as the NATO provisional authority there, and facilitated the Libyan anti-government forces in multiple ways.

As a result of the Turkish government’s own actions, the intensity of Turkish business ties and trade with Libya has not recovered since the NATO war in 2011 due to the damage and instability inflected on the Libyan economy.

 

Gulf of Izmir, formerly known as the Gulf of Smyrna, on the Aegean Sea in the Turkish city of Izmir (AFP Photo)

The events in Libya were followed by the eventual suspension of Turkish trade with Syria, another important Turkish trading partner. The discontinuation of legal trade with Syria resulted as a consequence of Erdogan’s reckless support for regime change in Damascus.

All the while, Turkey’s relations with Iraq, another major Turkish trading partner, were degenerating due to the arrogance and hubris of Erdogan and the AKP. Ankara believed that Iranian influence in the Levant and Mesopotamia would be replaced with Turkish influence and kept pushing for its affiliates to supplant the governments in Damascus and Baghdad.

Even when the AKP government saw that a formidable Eurasian alliance formed by Russia, Iran and China would not let Damascus collapse to the anti-government insurgency supported by Turkey and its NATO and GCC allies, Erdogan opted to stay the course against Damascus instead of trying to reverse Ankara’s disastrous Syria policy.

Aside from the economic damage the AKP was inflicting on Turkey, the instability that Ankara was helping support in Syria through the training, arming, and financing of insurgents in Syria began to have political and security consequences on Turkish soil too.

As the Turkish economy began to hurt, domestic political tensions began to build, the disparity caused by the AKP’s neoliberal economic policies began to hurt more, and the AKP began to act more authoritarian so as to protect its authority.

To an extent, the Gezi Park protests that spread from Istanbul across Turkey in 2013 are a reflection of the ignition of these domestic tensions.

This article was originally published by Russia Today on January 20, 2014.

A worker walks past the pumping station on the border between Iran and Turkey (Reuters)

 

 

Articles by: Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

About the author:

An award-winning author and geopolitical analyst, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is the author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press) and a forthcoming book The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa. He has also contributed to several other books ranging from cultural critique to international relations. He is a Sociologist and Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), a contributor at the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF), Moscow, and a member of the Scientific Committee of Geopolitica, Italy.

 

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"United by Hatred"

"United by Hatred"

Interview with Alexander Dugin

by Manuel Ochsenreiter

Ex: http://manuelochsenreiter.com

Prof. Dugin, the Western mainstream media and established politicians describe the recent situation in Ukraine as a conflict between pro-European, democratic and liberal oppositional alliance on the one side and an authoritarian regime with a dictator as president on the other side. Do you agree?

Dugin: I know those stories and I consider this type of analysis totally wrong. We cannot divide the world today in the Cold War style. There is no “democratic world” which stands against an “antidemocratic world”, as many Western media report.

Your country, Russia, is one of the cores of this so called “antidemocratic world” when we believe our mainstream media. And Russia with president Vladimir Putin tries to intervene in Ukrainian domestic politics, we read...

Dugin: That´s completely wrong. Russia is a liberal democracy. Take a look at the Russian constitution: We have a democratic electoral system, a functioning parliament, a free market system. The constitution is based on Western pattern. Our president Vladimir Putin rules the country in a democratic way. We are a not a monarchy, we are not a dictatorship, we are not a soviet communist regime.

Our politicians in Germany call Putin a “dictator”!

Dugin: (laughs) On what basis?

Because of his LGBT-laws, his support for Syria, the law suits against Michail Chodorchowski and “Pussy Riot”...

Dugin: So they call him “dictator” because they don´t like the Russian mentality. Every point you mentioned is completely democratically legitimate. There is not just one single “authoritarian” element. So we shouldn´t mix that: Even if you don´t like Russia´s politics you can´t deny that Russia is a liberal democracy. President Vladimir Putin accepts the democratic rules of our system and respects them. He never violated one single law. So Russia is part of the liberal democratic camp and the Cold War pattern doesn´t work to explain the Ukrainian crisis.

Violent protesters in Kiev

So how can we describe this violent and bloody conflict?

Dugin: We need a very clear geopolitical and civilizational analysis. And we have to accept historical facts, even if they are in these days not en vogue!

What do you mean?

Dugin: Todays Ukraine is a state which never existed in history. It is a newly created entity. This entity has at least two completely different parts. These two parts have a different identity and culture. There is Western Ukraine which is united in its Eastern European identity. The vast majority of the people living in Western Ukraine consider themselves as Eastern Europeans. And this identity is based on the complete rejection of any pan-Slavic idea together with Russia. Russians are regarded as existential enemies. We can say it like that: They hate Russians, Russian culture and of course Russian politics. This makes an important part of their identity.

You are not upset about this as a Russian?

Dugin: (laughs) Not at all! It is a part of identity. It doesn´t necessarily mean they want to go on war against us, but they don´t like us. We should respect this. Look, the Americans are hated by much more people and they accept it also. So when the Western Ukrainians hate us, it is neither bad nor good – it is a fact. Let´s simply accept this. Not everybody has to love us!

But the Eastern Ukrainians like you Russians more!

Dugin: Not so fast! The majority of people living in the Eastern part of Ukraine share a common identity with Russian people – historical, civilizational, and geopolitical. Eastern Ukraine is an absolute Russian and Eurasian country. So there are two Ukraines. We see this very clear at the elections. The population is split in any important political question. And especially when it comes to the relations with Russia, we witness how dramatic this problem becomes: One part is absolute anti-Russian, the other Part absolute pro-Russian. Two different societies, two different countries and two different national, historical identities live in one entity.

So the question is which society dominates the other?

Dugin: That´s an important part of Ukrainian politics. We have the two parts and we have the capital Kiev. But in Kiev we have both identities. It is neither the capital of Western Ukraine nor Eastern Ukraine. The capital of the Western part is Lviv, the capital of the Eastern part is Kharkiv. Kiev is the capital of an artificial entity. These are all important facts to understand this conflict.

Western Media as well as Ukrainian “nationalists” would strongly disagree with the term “artificial” for the Ukrainian state.

Dugin: The facts are clear. The creation of the state of Ukraine within the borders of today wasn´t the result of a historical development. It was a bureaucratic and administrative decision by the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was one of the 15 constituent republics of the Soviet Union from its inception in 1922 to its end in 1991. Throughout this 72-year history, the republic's borders changed many times, with a significant part of what is now Western Ukraine being annexed by the Red Army in 1939 and the addition of formerly Russian Crimea in 1954.

Some politicians and analysts say that the easiest solution would be the partition of Ukraine to an Eastern and a Western state.

Dugin: It is not as easy as it might sound because we would get problems with national minorities. In the Western part of Ukraine many people who consider themselves as Russians live today. In the Eastern part lives a part of the population that considers itself as Western Ukrainian. You see: A simple partition of the state wouldn´t really solve the problem but even create a new one. We can imagine the Crimean separation, because that part of Ukraine is purely Russian populated territory.

Why does it seem that the European Union is so much interested in “importing” all those problems to its sphere?

Dugin: It is not in the interest of any European alliance, it is in the interest of USA. It is a political campaign which is led against Russia. The invitation of Brussels to Ukraine to join the West brought immediately the conflict with Moscow and the inner conflict of Ukraine. This is not surprising at all of anybody who knows about the Ukrainian society and history.

Some German politicians said that they were surprised by the civil war scenes in Kiev...

Dugin: This says more about the standards of political and historical education of your politicians than about the crisis in Ukraine...

But the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych refused the invitation of the West.

Dugin: Of course he did. He was elected by the pro-Russian East and not by the West. Yanukovych can´t act against the interest and the will of his personal electoral base. If he would accept the Western-EU-invitation he would be immediately a traitor in the eyes of his voters. Yanukovych´s supporters want integration with Russia. To say it clearly: Yanukovych simply did what was very logical for him to do. No surprise, no miracle. Simply logical politics.

 

 

There is now a very pluralistic and political colorful oppositional alliance against Yanukovych: This alliance includes typical liberals, anarchists, communists, gay right groups and also nationalist and even neo-Nazi groups and hooligans. What keeps these different groups and ideologies together?

Dugin: They are united by their pure hatred against Russia. Yanukovych is in their eyes the proxy of Russia, the friend of Putin, the man of the East. They hate everything what has to do with Russia. This hate keeps them together; this is a block of hatred. To say it clearly: Hate is their political ideology. They don´t love the EU or Brussels.

What are the main groups? Who is dominating the oppositional actions?

Dugin: These are clearly the most violent neo-Nazi groups on the so called Euro-Maidan. They push for violence and provoke a civil war situation in Kiev.

Western Mainstream media claims that the role of those extremist groups is dramatized by the pro-Russian media to defame the whole oppositional alliance.

Dugin: Of course they do. How do they want to justify that the EU and the European governments support extremist, racist, neo-Nazis outside the EU-borders while they do inside the EU melodramatic and expensive actions even against the most moderate right wing groups?

But how can for example the gay right groups and the left wing liberal groups fight alongside the neo-Nazis who are well known to be not really very gay friendly?

Dugin: First of all, all these groups hate Russia and the Russian president. This hate makes them comrades. And the left wing liberal groups are not less extremist than the neo-Nazi groups. We tend to think that they are liberal, but this is horribly wrong. We find especially in Eastern Europe and Russia very often that the Homosexual-Lobby and the ultranationalist and neo-Nazi groups are allies. Also the Homosexual lobby has very extremist ideas about how to deform, re-educate and influence the society. We shouldn´t forget this. The gay and lesbian lobby is not less dangerous for any society than neo-Nazis.

We know such an alliance also from Moscow. The liberal blogger and candidate for the mayoral position in Moscow Alexej Nawalny was supported by such an alliance of gay rights organizations and neo-Nazi groups.

Dugin: Exactly. And this Nawalny-coalition was also supported by the West. The point is, it is not at all about the ideological content of those groups. This is not interesting for the West.

What do you mean?

Dugin: What would happen if a neo-Nazi organization supported Putin in Russia or Yanukovych in Ukraine?

The EU would start a political campaign; all huge western mainstream media would cover this and scandalize that.

Dugin: Exactly that´s the case. So it is only about on which side such a group stands. If the group is against Putin, against Yanukovych, against Russia, the ideology of that group is not a problem. If that group supports Putin, Russia or Yanukovych, the ideology immediately becomes a huge problem. It is all about the geopolitical side the group takes. It is nothing but geopolitics. It is a very good lesson what is going on in Ukraine. The lesson tells us: Geopolitics is dominating those conflicts and nothing else. We witness this also with other conflicts for example in Syria, Libya, Egypt, in Caucasian region, Iraq, Iran...

Any group taking side in favor of the West is a “good” group with no respect if it is extremist?

Dugin: Yes and any group taking side against the West – even if this group is secular and moderate – will be called “extremist” by the Western propaganda. This approach exactly dominates the geopolitical battlefields today. You can be the most radical and brutal Salafi fighter, you can hate Jews and eat human organs in front of a camera, as long as you fight for the Western interest against the Syrian government you are a respected and supported ally of the West. When you defend a multi-religious, secular and moderate society, all ideals of the West by the way, but you take position against the Western interest like the Syrian government, you are the enemy. Nobody is interested in what you believe in, it is only about the geopolitical side you chose if you are right or wrong in the eyes of the Western hegemon.

Prof. Dugin, especially Ukrainian opposition groups calling themselves “nationalists” would strongly disagree with you. They claim: “We are against Russia and against the EU, we take a third position!” The same thing ironically also the salafi fighter in Syria would say: “We hate Americans as much as the Syrian government!” Is there something like a possible third position in this geopolitical war of today?

Dugin: The idea to take a third and independent position between the two dominating blocks is very common. I had some interesting interviews and talks with a leading figure of the Chechen separatist guerilla. He confessed to me that he really believed in the possibility of an independent and free Islamic Chechnya. But later he understood that there is no “third position”, no possibility of that. He understood that he fights against Russia on the side of the West. He was a geopolitical instrument of the West, a NATO proxy on the Caucasian battlefield. The same ugly truth hits the Ukrainian “nationalist” and the Arab salafi fighter: They are Western proxies. It is hard to accept for them because nobody likes the idea to be the useful idiot of Washington.

To say it clearly: The “third position” is absolutely impossible?

Dugin: No way for that today. There is land power and sea power in geopolitics. Land power is represented today by Russia, sea power by Washington. During World War II Germany tried to impose a third position. This attempt was based precisely on those political errors we talk about right now. Germany went on war against the sea power represented by the British Empire, and against the land power represented by Russia. Berlin fought against the main global forces and lost that war. The end was the complete destruction of Germany. So when even the strong and powerful Germany of that time wasn´t strong enough to impose the third position how the much smaller and weaker groups want to do this today? It is impossible, it is a ridiculous illusion.

Anybody who claims today to fight for an independent “third position” is in reality a proxy of the West?

Dugin: In most of the cases, yes.

Former German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle shows solidarity with the "Euro-Maidan"

Moscow seems to be very passive. Russia doesn´t support any proxies for example in the EU countries. Why?

Dugin: Russia doesn´t have an imperialist agenda. Moscow respects sovereignty and wouldn´t interfere in the domestic politics of any other country. And it is an honest and good politics. We witness this even in Ukraine. We see much more EU-politicians and even US-politicians and diplomats travelling to Kiev to support the opposition than we see Russian politicians supporting Yanukovych in Ukraine. We shouldn´t forget that Russia doesn´t have any hegemonial interests in Europe, but the Americans have. Frankly speaking, the European Union is not a genuine European entity – it is an imperialist transatlantic project. It doesn´t serve the interests of the Europeans but the interests of the Washington administration. The “European Union” is in reality anti-European. And the “Euro-Maidan” is in reality “anti-Euro-Maidan”. The violent neo-Nazis in Ukraine are neither “nationalist” nor “patriotic” nor “European” - they are purely American proxies. The same for the homosexual rights groups and organizations like FEMEN or left wing liberal protest groups.

Vladimir Platov

Do “Colour Revolutions” Happen Spontaneously?

 

Ex: http://journal-neo.org

 

For over 3 years countries of the Arab world have lived under the influence of “revolutions” which have shaken the political foundations of a number of states in the region, bringing about a change in the ruling elite and the emergence of new political parties and movements. Among local – and external – media outlets there is tireless discussion of the fundamental question: to whom did these “revolutions” prove profitable and who was their real instigator?

These questions are posed by columnists following the emergence and development of “colour revolutions” in other world regions, particularly the events in Ukraine, which have seen a resurgence in recent times. Experts are especially perplexed by the actions of EU and U.S. politicians, calling the Ukrainian opposition to greater action against the country’s legally elected government – with whom, incidentally, the EU and the U.S. foster diplomatic relations, as officially attested to by those currently in power in Kiev. The matter is not only limited to calls by U.S. Senator John McCain & Company to change out the current Ukrainian regime, however; it extends also to organized financial support of individual opposition “leaders”, to whom residency is undoubtedly offered in the U.S. or countries of the EU “for revolutionary services”. A prime example of this is the Ukrainian opposition “leader” Klitschko, who has received residency in the U.S. and Germany.

Within this context, conclusions drawn by experts of the highly respected French Centre for Research on Intelligence (CF2R) may prove especially interesting: conclusions on whether “colour revolutions” are spontaneous or could be the result of coordinated operations.

The French experts believe that revolutionary reform activists in countries of Eastern Europe as well as the Arab world – in particular the April 6th Youth Movement which ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak – and even South America were educated through seminars on “nonviolent revolution” strategy, held in Serbia by the famous organization, CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies), which was born in 2001 of the Serbian political entity Otpor!, becoming a training centre for “nonviolent action” after the felling of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime.

CF2R experts tracked the activities of CANVAS “advisors” preparing for Georgia’s Rose Revolution and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, as well as their close ties with the Belorussian organization Zubr (“Bison”), founded in 2001 with the goal of toppling the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. They also discovered CANVAS ties with the Venezuelan opposition.

During the winter of 2011 flags with CANVAS emblems, inherited from Otpor!, were waved by Egyptian students of the April 6th Youth Movement, playing an active role in the demonstrations on the streets of Cairo.

CF2R paid particular attention to CANVAS’s claimed funding sources, as activities of this structure require substantial financial support. In the words of CANVAS director Srda Popovic, the organization operates “exclusively on private donations”. Authors of the study, however, paint quite a different picture. According to informed French sources two American organizations actively finance CANVAS – the International Republican Institute (IRI) and Freedom House.

The International Republican Institute is a political organization associated with the U.S. Republican Party, founded in 1983 following American President Ronald Reagan’s speech before the British Parliament in Westminster, where he offered political parties and organizations abroad aid in creating “infrastructures for democracy”. It is well known that the IRI is financed by the U.S. government (in particular, through the State Department, the Agency for International Development – USAID – and the National Endowment for Democracy). Its activities include “providing broad assistance to political parties and training their activists”.

The French experts, however, clearly indicate that the International Republican Institute is, in fact, nothing more than a screen for the CIA. Under these circumstances it is worth noting that the famous activist of the Euro Maidan in Kiev, U.S. Senator John McCain, is not only a representative of the U.S. Republican Party, but also a champion of the IRI. On the basis of this information questions as to who may be guiding his actions are answered in and of themselves.

As far as Freedom House, its main activity is the “export of American values”. This Non-Government Organization was founded in 1941 and conducts research on the status of political and civil liberties in various countries. Between 60 and 80 percent of its budget is made up of grants from the U.S. government (mainly the State Department and USAID). Until 2005 its director was former CIA head James Woolsey, which, according to the opinion of CF2R experts, clearly indicates U.S. intelligence involvement with Freedom House activities. A highly remarkable fact, established by the French, is Freedom House’s invitation to famous Egyptian blogger Israa Abdel Fattah, co-founder of the April 6th Youth Movement, to attend an event held by the organization. There, she underwent training in a program for “political and social reformers”. All activities were funded by USAID.

The financial participation of the IRI and Freedom House, as well as that of the U.S. Special Forces hidden behind them, can be traced in “revolutionary activities” not only in Egypt, but also in Tunisia, Libya, Syria and other States in the Middle East region.

As noted by the French, it is extremely difficult under these conditions not to notice the U.S. role and American manipulation of events in the Middle East in recent years, even with the lack of direct references to such activities on the part of the Obama administration. Even more surprising is the fact that the Western press has been and continues to be highly discreet on this issue (with rare exceptions) and is silent about the relationship between current events in the Arab world and US “advisors”. “Even individuals who are usually forthcoming with ‘conspiracy theories’ are strangely silent”, remark the French experts.

Given that the activities of the IRI, Freedom House, USAID and other organizations heavily used by Washington in “political reforms” continue to be carried out (and not only in the Middle East), we can hardly expect a quick decline of “revolutionary” movements in the world, including those in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere.

Vladimir Platov, Middle East expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Thaïlande: une révolte contre l’emprise américaine

Bernhard TOMASCHITZ:

Thaïlande: une révolte contre l’emprise américaine

Les désordres qui secouent la Thaïlande sont une révolte contre un gouvernement inféodé aux Etats-Unis qui galvaude le patrimoine national en privatisant les ressources

La capitale thaïlandaise, Bangkok, n’est plus le lieu idyllique que s’imaginent les vacanciers occidentaux. Les batailles de rue se succèdent entre les partisans du gouvernement de la ministre-présidente Yingluck Shinawatra, reconnaissables à leurs chemises rouges, et les opposants à ce gouvernement, généralement vêtus de chemises jaunes. Cinq personnes ont trouvé la mort jusqu’ici. La situation n’est pas prête à se calmer: le chef de l’opposition, Suthep Thaugsuban est fermement décidé à renverser Yingluck Shinawatra, qu’il considère comme une marionette de son frère Thaksin Shinawatra.

Le déclencheur de cette vague de protestations a été une loi d’amnistie fabriquée pour absoudre Thaksin Shinawatra, l’ancien premier ministre thaïlandais, qui vit en exil depuis qu’il a été renversé par les militaires en septembre 2006; en 2008, il a été condamné à la prison pour corruption. L’opposition revendique également de renationaliser le consortium thaïlandais du pétrole PTT. Ce consortium avait été privatisé peu après l’accession au pouvoir de Thaksin Shinawatra en février 2001. Le “Wall Street Journal” écrivait à l’époque: “Le premier ministre thaïlandais Thaksin Shinawatra a fait du processus de privatisation, longtemps bloqué, l’un de ses premiers objectifs économiques. Au cours des trois prochaines années, le gouvernement vendra les actions de 16 entreprises et agences nationales”.

Avant d’entamer sa carrière politique, Shinawatra avait été conseiller du Groupe Carlyle, une des plus grosses entreprises américaines de participation. Il a mis à profit ses expériences professionnelles quand il a commencé sa carrière politique, comme l’écrivait le journaliste Thanong Khantong en 2001 dans le journal thaïlandais en langue anglaise “Nation”: “En avril 1998, lorsque la Thaïlande se trouvait encore dans le marasme économique le plus profond, Thaksin Shinawatra a essayé d’utilser ses liens avec l’Amérique pour peaufiner son image politique, au moment où il fondait son parti le Thai Rak Thai”. Il a notamment invité l’ancien président américain George H. W. Bush et son ministre des affaires étrangères James Baker.

Les Américains ont rapidement reconnu l’importance que pouvait revêtir Shinawatra qui, pour sa part, a su se montrer reconnaissant. En 2003, la Thaïlande a envoyé un contingent de soldats pour perpétrer l’attaque contre l’Irak, contraire au droit des gens. Il a également entamé des pourparlers pour forger un accord de libre-échange entre les Etats-Unis et la Thaïlande. Shinawatra a ensuite tenté d’imposer les conditions de cet accord au pays, en contournant le parlement. Le coup des militaires a empêché la traduction dans la réalité de cet accord.

Celui-ci aurait d’abord profité aux Etats-Unis. Dans un rapport de la Maison Blanche, on peut lire que l’accord de libre-échange “aurait essentiellement profité aux fermiers américains, confrontés aux droits de douane thaïlandais qui, en moyenne, sont de 35% plus élevés que les restrictions extra-tarifaires”. Robert Zoellick, un faucon de l’écurie des néo-conservateurs, qui, à l’époque était le principal des négociateurs américains et est devenu ultérieurement président de la Banque Mondiale, fut l’homme qui força Bangkok à éliminer dans le domaine agricole, “les limitations injustifiables à l’endroit des nouvelles technologies américaines”. Cette formule désigne surtout les organismes génétiquement modifiés. D’après Ernest Bower, le président du “US-ASEAN Business Council”, le traité entre Washington et Bangkok devait constituer “un précédent et un préliminaire” à tous les accords de libre-échange à négocier entre les Etats-Unis et les pays d’Asie du Sud-Est disposant d’un fort secteur agricole. L’“US-ASEAN Business Council” est un lobby qui veut amplifier les relations économiques entre les Etats-Unis et l’association des pays du Sud-Est asiatique. Parmi les 500 entreprises américaines qui sont parties prenantes dans ces négociations, on compte Coca-Cola et Google mais aussi des industries de l’armement comme Lockheed Martin et Northrop Grumman.

L’“US-ASEAN Business Council” est demeuré actif en Thaïlande après la chute de Shinawatra. De concert avec d’autres fondations américaines influentes, comme Freedom House, le Council a soutenu des “mouvements démocratiques” thaïlandais comme l’UDD (“United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship”). Une “Union for Thai Democracy” remercie le Council pour l’avoir soutenu dans une lettre du 26 avril 2011: “Nous avons eu l’occasion de rencontrer ‘Human Rights Watch’, le ‘National Democratic Institute’ [une officine dépendant des Démocrates américains] et l’‘US-ASEAN Business Council’. Nous avons discuté de nombreuses questions (...). Le monde sait désormais, à l’heure de la globalisation, que seule une véritable démocratie peut garantir la stabilité”.

L’intérêt des Américains était que le statu quo demeurât tel quel en Thaïlande. La re-nationalisation du géant pétrolier PTT, que réclame l’opposition actuelle, bouleverserait la situation économique: en effet, le consortium énergétique américain Chevron est l’actionnaire principal de PTT depuis la privatisation de cette entreprise du Sud-Est asiatique. Il faut aussi se rappeler que PTT dispose d’un bon réseau d’oléoducs et de gazoducs. Vu les réserves énergétiques thaïlandaises, ce réseau revêt une importance stratégique considérable. Selon un dossier établi par la CIA, la Thaïlande disposerait de réserves sûres de pétrole estimées à 442 millions de barils et des réserves de gaz équivalant à 8,8 milliards de m3”.

A tout cela s’ajoute la position géostratégique de la Thaïlande et surtout de la presqu’île de Kra, dont la largeur est d’à peine 44 km. Elle sépare l’Océan Indien du Golfe du Siam. La Chine, depuis longtemps, veut creuser un canal au beau milieu de cette presqu’île pour mettre un terme au fameux “dilemme de Malakka”: le détroit de Malakka, contrôlé par des puissances tierces, limite considérablement la marge de manoeuvre des Chinois dans cette zone maritime cruciale. Zhou Fangye, de l’Académie chinoise des sciences sociales, écrivait, fin novembre 2013, dans un journal appartenant à l’Etat chinois, “Global Times”, que le creusement d’un canal “résoudrait automatiquement le ‘dilemme de Malakka’ et permettrait d’éviter le goulot d’étranglement stratégique qui limite l’accès à l’Océan Indien de la puissance maritime chinoise”. A l’inverse, le politologue néo-conservateur américain Robert Kaplan considère que le projet d’un Canal de Kra, vu son importance géostratégique, est comparable au projet du Canal de Panama et “changerait l’équilibre en Asie au profit de la Chine”.

Bernhard TOMASCHITZ.

(article paru dans “zur Zeit”, Vienne, n°50/2013, http://www.zurzeit.at ).

Visita próxima de Putin a Irán causa insomnio a EEUU

Ex: http://www.elespiadigital.com

Al parecer, Moscú está a punto de terminar los preparativos para la visita del presidente ruso Vladímir Putin a Irán. En cualquier caso, según fuentes bien informadas rusas e iraníes, el viaje se realizará próximamente. Lo más probable es que tenga lugar una vez terminados los JJOO de invierno en Sochi, que se disputarán del 7 al 23 de febrero.

El “vector iraní” de la política rusa inquieta cada vez más a EEUU. Es evidente que Washington no desea que Rusia restablezca plenamente las relaciones económicas con Teherán y entre en competencia con las compañías norteamericanas. Irán comenzó, a partir del 20 de enero, a cumplir los acuerdos sobre la restricción de su programa nuclear. Y la Unión Europea y EEUU atenuaron, parcialmente, el régimen de sanciones contra Teherán.

En la víspera del comienzo de la Conferencia de Ginebra sobre Siria llegó a Moscú el titular de Exteriores de Irán, Javad Zarif, quien se reunió con su colega ruso Serguéi Lavrov y luego con el presidente Vladímir Putin.

Entonces debatieron no solo la solución siria, sino también los preparativos de la visita del dirigente ruso a Teherán. “Confiamos en verlo a Usted próximamente en Irán, expresó Zarif a Putin. En diciembre de 2013, en Teherán estuvo de visita el canciller Serguéi Lavrov.

Ya en el pasado, Rusia se “chamuscó” con las artimañas de Occidente que lo convenció a que apoyara las sanciones, ventajosas para la UE y EEUU, contra algunos países de la región. Así fue, por ejemplo, con Libia. Ahora, a todas luces, Moscú se propone actuar de forma preventiva, e intensificar el comercio con Irán mucho antes de que sean levantadas las sanciones occidentales.

En enero trascendió que Rusia está dispuesta a comenzar a comprar a Irán hasta quinientos mil barriles de petróleo al día. Es muy probable que se planee la firma de tal acuerdo durante la próxima visita. Los diplomáticos rusos, en respuesta a los reproches de parte de EEUU han señalado ya más de una vez que Moscú solo reconoce las sanciones del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU contra Irán. Mientras que las sanciones unilaterales de EEUU por las compras de petróleo y las transacciones financieras con Irán no las considera vinculantes jurídicamente. Hace cerca de treinta y cuatro años que EEUU no tiene relaciones con Irán, desde el tiempo que fue ocupada su embajada en Teherán, en noviembre de 1979.

Moscú, como vecino y por el aporte hecho en la solución del “problema nuclear iraní”, tiene todas las razones para actuar con respecto a Irán sin fijarse en quien sea y de conformidad plena con sus intereses nacionales, señala Vladímir Nóvikov, analista del Instituto ruso de investigaciones estratégicas:

—En primer lugar, la mayor parte deltrabajo pesado del expediente nuclear iraní lo hizo Rusia. Además, en toda la última década de búsqueda de una solución, Rusia ha desempeñado el papel de mediador y “tranquilizador” principal para una y otra parte, léase Occidente e Irán. Porque nosotros no estamos interesados en el agravamiento de la situación junto a nuestras fronteras meridionales, no lejos del Cáucaso. Entendemos el papel de Irán en la región del Cáucaso y en Asia Central, en la región del Oriente Próximo. Las relaciones de buena vecindad con Irán son para nosotros de suma importancia.

La transacción petrolera prevista entre Moscú y Teherán ha originado una reacción no del todo adecuada de EEUU. El secretario del Tesoro, Jack Lew, sin nombrar a Moscú amenazó con medidas punitivas de su país contra toda compañía que intente obviar el embargo norteamericano contra Irán:

—Para las compañías líderes del mundo sería un error garrafal sobrevalorar el grado de apertura de Irán para los negocios. El plan unificado de medidas (del Sexteto de mediadores e Irán) prevé la atenuación de sanciones bien determinadas y limitadas. Toda la arquitectura de las sanciones petroleras y financieras se mantiene invariable. Toda compañía que sobrepase la raya y emprenda acciones que violen esas sanciones puede ser víctima de medidas punitivas y nosotros nos proponemos velar atentamente por el cumplimiento del régimen de las sanciones.

Pero, en Moscú están seguros de que si Rusia va a esperar, mientras EEUU y la UE levantan las sanciones iraníes, los socios occidentales alcanzarán a repartirse el mercado iraní. Teherán necesita finanzas, bienes y tecnologías. Y Moscú tiene justamente el dinero y las posibilidades de saciar el hambre tecnológica y de bienes de su vecino.

Toda la marcha de la Cumbre Económica de Davos revela que los cálculos de Rusia fueron acertados. Pues en la cita de Davos, que continúa ahora en Suiza, la exposición del presidente iraní Hasán Rouhaní fue seguida en una sala colmada de delegados de los grandes negocios de Europa y de EEUU. El mandatario iraní señaló que, con la atenuación de las sanciones, Teherán estaba dispuesto a entablar relaciones de cooperación con países occidentales. La agencia alemana DPA expresó que los empresarios europeos “habían empezado ya a sobarse las manos”, ilusionados con la apertura del mercado iraní.

Rouhaní se reunió incluso en Suiza no con políticos sino con jefes de corporaciones mundiales líderes del sector energético. Y los invitó a regresar a Irán e invertir capitales en su país. Poco menos que hicieron fila los titulares de la ENI, de Italia, de TOTAL, de Francia, y de la BP y Shell de Gran Bretaña.

El componente económico del levantamiento de las sanciones no es menos importante para Europa que para Irán. Según los cálculos más modestos de la cartera de Hacienda de EEUU, la “reapertura” de Irán abre un mercado para bienes y servicios, como mínimo, de sesenta a setenta mil millones de dólares, lo que significa a su vez decenas de miles de nuevas vacantes.

Alemania solamente, el socio comercial principal de Irán antes de las sanciones, confía en lograr en dos años, con su atenuación, elevar las exportaciones a Irán a los diez mil millones de euros, como el volumen de antes de las sanciones. Alemania exporta ya ahora a Irán mercancías no prohibidas por las sanciones. Pero, debido a que los bancos europeos no realizan operaciones con Teherán, por culpa de las sanciones, todo el comercio se lleva a cabo en dinero contante y sonante. Y con tales cuentas, los volúmenes del comercio no pueden superar un nivel determinado.

Incluso compañías estadounidenses, antes de los acuerdos de Ginebra, habían comenzado ya a enviar emisarios a Irán para sondear dónde era posible desplazar a los competidores europeos. Las compañías de EEUU se aprestan a exportar a Irán automóviles, equipos para la industria extractora de gas y petróleo, maquinarias, equipos para la construcción, artículos químicos y otros.