Why the Caliphate could be Established in the Middle East.

'The declaration by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of this new entity, that he is the supreme authority of a new "caliphate" makes it easy to portray the Islamic State as a reactionary throwback. But this is an error. Baghdadi's vision is profoundly contemporary.

It is also a radical break with the strategic vision of previous militant leaders. Political Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood and their offshoots have long talked of appropriating institutions and power, by a variety of means ranging from peaceful social activism to a violent coup d'etat, but never about creating a new state.

What Baghdadi has done is fuse the political Islamists' aim of seizing state power with the neo-traditionalists' more global vision to create a recognisable if rough-edged state that is simultaneously supposed to be a launchpad for greater expansion. This unprecedented combination is a powerful one' The Isis leader's vision of the state is a profoundly contemporary one, Jason Burke, The Observer, August 24 2014.

Jason Burke is the most able of all those writing on Al Qaida and ISIS. The new Caliphate is dynamic and modern, a combination of Al Qaida's emphasis on the purifying potential of spectacular violence to remake and reimagine the world and the 'charitable' state functions of the Taliban of Afghanistan.

The difference between Afghanistan in the 1990s and the new Caliphate in northern Syria and Iraq is the way IS has captured major oil installations and selling oil to gain up to $1m a day in revenues. As such it can put the wealth towards benefitting alienated Sunni Arabs in both Syria and Iraq.

The other long term factor favouring an expansionist warlike Caliphate, apart from the supply of money from shadowy Gulf donors and men identifying with jihadism from around the globe, is climate change. Put bluntly and bleakly, the Fertile Crescent which long sustained life in the region is dying.

One reason for the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011 was a combination of higher food and fuel prices and several failed harvests which affected the Sunni Muslim communities the worst. With the collapse of state authority and the chaos created by war, the most ruthless jihadists of IS could flourish.

Assad tried to use control over water as a means to quell Sunni unrest. IS is copying that tactic in trying to control the Mosul Dam in Iraq. The 2003 invasion made an appalling system that was collapsing in Iraq even worse than it was and, combined with drought and crop failure, exacerbated Sunni militancy.

An article in Slate Magazine made plain the longer term factors destabilising both Syria and Iraq,

'The United Nations lists Iraq as “one of the Arab region’s most vulnerable countries to climate change.” In 2004, just after the American-led regime change, a Congressional Research Service report cited “rapid population growth coupled with limited arable land” and “a general stagnation of agricultural productivity” after decades of conflict and mismanagement during the final Saddam years as the main reasons Iraq grew more reliant on imports of food amid international sanctions and the oil-for-food program. A major drought from 1999-2001 also hampered the country’s ability to feed itself. Since then, conflict has raged and the climate has grown even more extreme, with alternating severe droughts and heavy rainstorms'.

The River Euphrates and the Tigris are drying up. Overpopulation relative to resources, and large numbers of unemployed young males, necessarily means the temptation towards violent jihad of IS as a means towards salvation and survival against the rival claims to diminishing water, land and, of course, oil.

IS is an expansionist Caliphate by nature or it is going to be nothing. With the shadowy proxy wars between the regional powers going on, IS could be useful to those wanting to check Iranian ambitions so long as it does not threaten to much to break out and menace Saudi Arabia.

With the Kurdish region, with its better organised government oil and water from the mountains headed towards independence, the battle for Baghdad would intensify and go on for coming decades ahead in a new epoch of semi-permanent chaos and technological barbarism.

Why China Could Stand to Gain from the Coup in Thiland.

The decision to put off any election in Thailand for a period of 15 months by General Prayuth Chan-ocha and to put into effect political 'reforms', that will put an end to the political turmoil that has been going on since 2011, is essentially an attempt to restore the predominant role of the 'monarchy-military nexus'.

The US and EU diplomats expressing 'concern' and demanding elections do so because since the new Pivot to Asia strategy that started in 2010, Washington has tended to back the Shinawatras because they do win elections and because they are allied to pro-US political forces across the border in Cambodia.

The Pivot to Asia is all about containing the military threat posed by China to Washington's regional partners and, in particular its claims to the territorial waters of the South China Sea where there are copious supplies of oil, and the Middle Kingdom's rivalry with the US for influence in South East Asia.

Given that the US and EU tacitly allowed the military in Egypt to launch a coup and gun down protesters in the street, while offering only tokenistic and mealy-mouthed condemnations, the Thai military have had no reason to believe that its coup would meet with effective western opposition.

One reason is that Thailand was a key part of Washington's strategy of containing communism during the Cold War and now of China as it overtakes the US in the wake of the financial crash of 2008 to become the world's largest economy with which Thailand has an increased amount of trade.

Should the US start to withdraw more of its military aid to Thailand, the monarchy-military nexus could always start to draw on Chinese military assistance and pull away from the joint naval cooperation essential to Washington's plan to control the oil tanker routes to China.

China has every interest in a military government in Thailand moving closer to Beijing in order to offset Washington's attempt to secure naval predominance in South East Asia and so be able to use the potential stopping of China's oil imports as a coercive tool of diplomacy.

Beijing has already watched as a traditional ally in Myanmar ( Burma ) has become closer to aligning with Washington, in response to nationalist discontent with Chinese dominance over its mining sector infrastructure projects, and has witnessed the establishment of military ties and prospectively lucrative arms deals.

If China is able to exploit the insecurity the monarchy-military nexus has at the threat of being pushed out of the privileged position they had under US auspices throughout the Cold War and until the first part of the twenty first century, it can thwart part of Washington's Pivot to Asia strategy.

When General Prayuth claims that 'Thais' like me, have probably not been happy for nine years' he is referring to the fact the 2006 coup did not, in the end, defeat the power of the Shinawatra dynasty and also, in effect, the fact that the US has moved closer to them after initially being wary of Thaksin's party.

What the monarchy military nexus want is an authoritarian government and the reduced threat of any attempt to erode their privileges through the Shinawatras mobilisation of the votes of the urban wage earners and rural classes who have seen higher food and energy prices due to dependence on imported oil.

With the impact of climate change causing floods and droughts that have caused havoc to Thai rice yields, both the Shinawatra party and their enemies have seen China as an alternative source of aid and assistance and, in the case of the generals, an example of a prosperous economy without the chaotic democracy.