Syria: The Failure of the Geneva II Conference and Energy Power Politics.

The Geneva II talks between those representing both sides in the Syrian Civil War have  been suspended without any set date for their resumption. The appalling scale of the killing of civilians goes on without any prospect of resolution. At present the death toll is estimated at around 140,000 dead.

Jonathan Steele writes in the Observer,

'Rather than trying to score propaganda points or blame the other for Geneva's lack of progress, Washington and Moscow need to build on the common ground between them. Neither wants the total collapse of Syria's institutions or its secular multicultural tradition'.

Steele is right to emphasise the fact that neither global power has an interest in Syria's secular institutions being overthrown and the country becoming dominated by Islamist fanatics and a base for those affiliated to Al Qaida. The spectre haunting them is Syria becoming like Afghanistan in the 1990s.

The problem is that the West ( the USA, France and Britain ) are reluctant to put too much pressure on Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Saudi Arabia is intent on financially backing jihadists to overthrow Assad just as Qatar is giving aid and arms to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

True, Washington has been prepared to engage with Iran over its nuclear programme to the displeasure of Qatar. Getting Iran to work with other regional players such Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey is going to be difficult because of the lucrative energy interests at stake in this war.

Having been prevented in 2013 from launching missile strikes against Assad by Russia negotiating with the Syrian state to surrender its arsenal of chemical weapons, the US has sought to take a more diplomatic direction and exploit the new Iranian president's desire for sanctions on it to be removed.

Western policy, indeed, has been based on the fear of Iran shoring up Assad as a client and thus being able to realise its plan to export LNG from the South Pars gas field via pipeline by 2016. The pipeline would go through a Shia dominated Iraq via Syria onto the Eastern Mediterranean and hence EU markets.

France and Britain have been far more reluctant to do anything that would challenge Qatar over its backing for jihadists than the US. One reason is  the rival Qatari pipeline that would bring LNG to Europe direct instead of having to be loaded onto tankers rounding the Iranian controlled Straits of Hormuz.

Both France and Britain have become ever more dependent upon Qatari LNG. Consumer complaints about high gas prices in Britain mean the need to accept the emirates policy in Syria as it helps in enabling British corporations such as Centrica to strike deals over LNG rather than see it shipped elsewhere.

One additional reason for the stalemate at Geneva II and why France and Britain want Assad to go and a regime favourable to its energy interests to be installed is the that both depend on a colossal amount of investment from Qatar vital to boost their ailing economies.

As regards Britain, Milad Jokar points out,

'The Qatari investments are also important in Great Britain. With 20 percent of the shares of the London Stock Exchange, Qatar is the main shareholder of Barclays. The Emirate has also invested massively in the Olympic Games, it has financed 95 percent of the highest building in London (the Shard).'

The US, in its turn, has broad strategy of isolating Iran by thwarting its influence west through a pipeline via Syria and to the east through the planned pipeline to Pakistan. By retaining influence in Afghanistan, thus ensuring the war aim of construction of the TAPI pipeline, Iran's regional power against the USA's Gulf allies can be degraded.

These salient geopolitical factors are all part of the New Great Game for control over supplies of oil and gas that are being used up and diminishing across the globe with worldwide industrialisation. Those concerned with the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria need to be concerned with it and urgently..

Syria's Geopolitical Significance,

A very good summary of Syria's geopolitical significance was written by Michael T Klare for The Nation in September.

'Although Syria is not itself a significant oil producer, it lies adjacent to many of the major suppliers and has long served as a host for pipelines connecting the Gulf to the Mediterranean. More importantly, in recent years, is has assumed strategic importance as an ally of Iran and a conduit for Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon. “Syria has a geopolitical importance out of all proportion to its relatively small population, area, resource base, and economic wealth because of formidable military power…and its location at the heart of the Middle East,” Alasdair Drysdale of the Australian National University wrote in the Oxford Companion to World Politics. “As a result, it plays a central role in most of the Middle East’s key disputes.”

This is the dilemma facing Obama today. If the United States cannot extricate himself from the geopolitical imperatives posed by Iran’s continuing threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the safety of Persian Gulf oil supplies, it cannot extricate itself from the turmoil in Syria. Because a failure to confront Assad’s excesses could be viewed as giving Iran and other outside powers a green light to meddle in the Syrian conflict, and could be seen by the Iranians as an indication that they can continue to stockpile enriched uranium with impunity, US leaders see no choice but to become involved in Syria.

Russian involvement in the Syrian imbroglio adds another dimension to America’s dilemma. Russia has long-established ties with the Syrian leadership, beginning with Assad’s predecessor, his father Hafiz, and retains a vital naval base at Tartous, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. More important than these strategic interests, however, is Moscow’s desire to curb America’s global activism. From Russia’s perspective, then, Syria is less important as a strategic asset in itself than as an arena in which to gain geopolitical advantage over the West. By the same token, a failure to contest Russia’s spoiler in Syria role could be interpreted as an invitation for Moscow to undertake other obstructionist endeavors'.

Read the rest here.

The Egyptian Crisis: Why Obama Will Not Cut Aid to Egypt.

'Instead of addressing the issue of the coup and its implications for US aid to Egypt, he announced that the US would not hold joint military exercises with the Egyptians, which was just about the smallest punishment that he could have chosen, short of doing nothing'.

Daniel Larison: Unless Obama cuts aid to Egypt, he'll be seen as endorsing coup and crackdown .The Guardian Thursday 15 August 2013.

President Obama is going to continue doing nothing because the retaining the support of the Egyptian generals ( SCAF ) is believed crucial to maintaining American foreign policy goals and geopolitical objectives such as the continued supply of relatively cheap oil and gas from the Middle East.

The only reason John McCain is now posturing and calling for an end to the military aid is for the domestic political aim of making Obama seem indecisive and weak. It is merely a way for him to present himself as not Obama at a time when he is facing the consequent fallout of a policy the dates back to 1979.

The Egyptian army is funded by the US to preserve the security of the Sinai Peninsula that borders Israel and is close to Saudi Arabia with which the US also has a strategic military partnership based on oil and arms deals. The Sumed pipeline pumps oil west from the Gulf and needs protection.

Even if the US cancelled military aid, it would acheive little that Saudi Arabia could not do by stepping in to provide more than the $10 billion it has already given the regime for removing and eliminating the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement seen as a potential threat to the oil rich kingdom.

Given that the Obama administration has also seen setbacks in Syria, with the Sunni insurgents being rolled back and defeated by President Assad with help from Hezbollah and Iran, US primacy in the Middle East is seen as threatened which is why McCain is getting increasingly critical.

Yet the security of the Suez Canal is vital to uphold US interests in the Persian Gulf against the nation McCain has ranted against more than any other- Iran. It was Iran's breaking free from US control over its oil in 1979 along with the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan that created the current balance of power.

With Iran being seen as a potential menace to US oil interests in the Persian Gulf, the Suez Canal was all the more vital as a rapid sea route for US Fifth Fleet to have a shortcut to the region. The treaty with Egypt of 1979 gives the US exclusive quick passage whereas other powers must wait weeks.

The naval carriers are also vital to the war effort in Afghanistan. One central war aim seldom mentioned is to secure the construction of the TAPI pipeline as an alternative to Iran's rival IP pipeline through to Pakistan. The transport of Liquified Natural Gas via the Suez Canal is a strategic 'energy security' concern.

With an energy hungry and assertive China also courting influence in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, US dependence upon 12 % of its oil from Saudi Arabia ensures that Washington is going to continue to back the Egyptian army because to do otherwise would severely threaten the basis of  its foreign policy in the Middle East.

For some years now the US has been wary on increased Chinese influence in the oil rich kingdom and Russia's tendency to cooperate with Iran and Syria. One reason for the Iraq War in 2003 was to control the globe's second largest oil reserves in order to diversify oil supply.

However, as the Iraq war backfired and led in time to China gaining more oil concessions, the US has seen its global reach shrink and it is not going to want to lose Egypt to rival powers vying for influence in Iraq and Syria-especially Iran along with Russia and China.

With lucrative arms deals with Egypt at stake and increased rivalry with China and Russia in the New Great Game that has arisen in the wake of the end of the Cold War, Washington is not going to halt the flow of military aid nor, more ominously, is it going to watch should Egypt slide into chaos.

Egypt: The New Great Game and Global Arms Race

'The EU's top diplomat...Lady Ashton ( a Labour Peer ) is in Cairo to try to negotiate an unlikely settlement between Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and the army, but demands and recent behaviour from both sides mean reconciliation is far from likely.'

So reports the Guardian's Patrick Kingsley. Lady Ashton has reported from an undisclosed location after having been escorted there by the Egyptian army that ex-president Morsi is doing 'well', knows what is going on in the world and that she would not comment on her visit as "I was not going to represent his views".

It is hard to see what bargaining power Ashton actually has and whether this is mere 'public diplomacy' to make it appear as though the EU is in the business of 'democracy promotion' as opposed to promoting its business interests over democracy in the name of 'stability'.

The two, business interests and democracy, are not necessarily incompatible. Yet the military takeover is not very likely to promote democracy as the old Mubarak era elites in the 'deep state' are only prepared to tolerate a measure of it provided they can stave off any threats to their hegemony in Egypt.

The only thing Ashton seems to have offered is vacuous platitudes about the need for a "fully inclusive transition process, taking in all political groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood". That will impress neither the Muslim Brotherhood not the Egyptian army which is backed directly by Washington.

The reason the US will not remove its $1.3bn funding is that an authoritarian regime is favoured by strategic partners and major suppliers of oil to the US such as Saudi Arabia. The kingdom fears the spread of Muslim Brotherhood ideas in the region and a weak regime in which terrorists can thrive.

Indeed, after Mubarak fell in 2011 and the US switched to supporting a democratic transition in Egypt, Saudi Arabia indicated that it could draw closer to new emerging energy hungry industrial powers such as India and China. This is poses a threat to US hegemony over the Gulf region.

Moreover, Egyptian generals have long indicated that the $1.3 billion US military aid, which has not changed since 1978, is not substantial enough. There has been resistance to the army downscaling its military capacity to act only as a rapid deployment force to defend Western oil interest in the Gulf.

Given Egypt's global geostrategic significance occupying the land bridge between North Africa and the Middle East, and with the Suez Canal and the SUMED pipeline, the Egyptian military and the 'deep state' have every interest in playing off rival suitors vying for influence in the region.

Ultimately, Washington will not want to sacrifice influence both in Egypt and Saudi Arabia against China's and Russia's attempt to make strategical inroads into the Middle East. There is an arms race now on with both Great Powers which are eager to gain a foothold and diplomatic leverage.

A Congressional Service Report in late 2011 revealed that Egypt purchased $800 million in Chinese weapons since 2003 and $600 million from Russia. That led to the US increasing its sales of weapons to Egypt from $4.5 billion between 2003 and 2007 to $7.8 billion from 2007 to 2011.

Compared to these broader trends and the feared decline of the US as a world empire, the delay in delivering four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt is a mere diplomatic token gesture no less than Lady Ashton's show of concern about the democratic transition being placed back on track through being 'inclusive'.

Egypt is the site of a brutal power struggle in which the army can ramp up the the stakes by executing a military coup in the name of preserving 'stability' . Then, as General Sisi has indicated, the consequent rise of terrorist threats as all the more reason why those interested in regional stability should support it.

These are the realities of the West being far too dependent upon oil and gas to fuel their high octane economies. The EU state's representatives will warble on about human rights and democracy but are always prepared to do that while leaving the real business of energy geopolitics to the US and NATO.

Both in the Middle East and in Central Asia a New Great Game is on between the major powers for control over oil supplies and the pipeline routes that ensure hegemony. Egypt is squarely in the middle of that global contest as is Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, the latter being another pipeline transit state.