Britain's Foreign Policy on IS: Building Towards Military Intervention.

'As Washington seeks to build a multi-national coalition to support an expansion of air strikes against the jihadists....the prime minister returned to work in Downing Street to intensify plans for an emergency action plan to be agreed at the Nato summit'. The Guardian

'We have been putting in humanitarian aid. I can confirm that last night I authorised two Hercules to participate in the big aid drop on Amerli, a town that has been under siege for nearly two months. The RAF dropped 14 tonnes of food and water there for a population that has been completely besieged'-Michael Fallon, British Defence Minister.

Since the US bombing of IS positions commenced a couple of weeks ago, there has been a growing feeling that Britain too could be dragged back into involvement in Iraq at a level beyond RAF Hercules aircraft dropping food supplies to Iraqis in need and surrounded by IS foot soldiers.

The emphasis has been, therefore, upon humanitarian intervention once more, something invariably leading to the suspicion of yet another 'western war' being planned or else that IS is a creation of the CIA acting in tangent with Israel and with the Caliph himself a Mossad plant.

Certainly, there is not much evidence of public support for any military intervention. Had there been, it is far more likely Cameron could have taken a Blair-style 'shoulder to shoulder' stance. If anything, Cameron was playing for time throughout August 2014, not wanting to be seen as rushing into another conflict.

Cameron claimed Britain's 'military prowess' and 'assets' would be deployed, that 'boots on the ground' were not an 'option on the table' nor air strikes-unless requested. The language of Cameron and his ministers is standard fare and so yawn inducingly banal that many people would feel like switching off the TV.

It looks likely that the British government does not know what could be done or else, far more likely,  it does but is putting out constant spin and managing the media to try and play down the imminent threat of military intervention until some sort of trump card, yet to be played, could be produced.

The task of Britain's politicians seems to consist in trying to anticipate what Washington is going to require its 'first ally' to do the better to position themselves and Britain's 'military assets' at the service of the US should they be requested and so pose as independent 'global players'.

The attempt by the government to ramp up the rhetoric about IS is about softening up public opinion ready for military intervention. Bombing IS positions is not going to defeat it, however, and there is not much sign of any shift away from the failed foreign policy towards Syria. So a 'generational struggle' is on.

This is known as 'public diplomacy'. The basic fact is that the military intervention in northern Iraq is primarily about protecting the Kurdistan region and the oil producing regions from IS and to prevent the Iraqi state collapsing. This would trigger off a potential surge in global oil prices. 

The international development minister Alan Duncan "This is such a complicated conflict that any response needs to be a well co-ordinated international effort." John Kerry went on in a speech later to claim there was a need for a 'world coalition' to defeat a 'genocidal ISIS'.

By 'international', that means 'the west' taking action to ensure energy security as some 20% of Iraqi oil is exported to Europe. But more oil goes to East Asia which is heavily dependent upon imported oil. Higher oil prices would mean higher production costs in China and the cost passed on to Western consumers.

It is partly because the US and Britain back in 2003 caused the havoc in Iraq, still unfolding to such an extreme degree in 2014, that military intervention of some sort of a continued basis appears inevitable. But it also underlines the way the global economies have become dangerously overdependent upon oil.

This is a fact many in the West refuse to confront. It is one thing blaming the politicians as bungling and pursuing a contradictory strategy in Syria and Iraq. But, at a deeper level, the hyper-consumerism that those citizens enjoy requires that this sort of military intervention becomes more frequent.

So, in this sense, political double standards are necessary whereby the most obvious facts about British foreign policy, such as the energy interests ( i.e oil and gas ) are seldom talked about sensibly and reduced to cynical sneers by 'anti-war' activists about military intervention being 'all about the oil'.

This, in turn, means that the very serious problem of the most advanced global economies being fragile and dependent upon oil prices, and the continued access to easily available supples, is impossible to discuss without the accusation of peddling conspiracy theories being made by the defenders of the foreign policy.

ISIS and an 'Extreme Islamist Regime'

'I'd disagree with those people who think this is nothing to do with us and if they want to have some sort of extreme Islamist regime in the middle of Iraq that won't affect us – it will"

ISIS is very much 'to do' with Britain and the US having backed its Gulf allies and their foreign policy. The bulk of past funding for ISIS came from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar both when ISIS was a force fighting the Shi'ite militias in Iraq but also when it was aligned with the Free Syria Army.

As recently as 2013 ISIS was fighting with ISIS against the Kurdish militias. Al Qaida broke with ISIS because its interests were better served by remaining with affiliated groups that both Britain and the US have assisted in their struggle against Assad by backing Saudi and Qatari policy.

Cameron's use of the word 'extreme Islamist' is a slight improvement on Tony Blair's use of the soundbite 'jihadi extremist' which implies there may well be 'jihadi moderates'. If 'extremist' is taken to mean ISIS, then Al Qaida affilated groups such as Al Nusra brigades could be correspondingly 'moderate'.

"The people in that regime, as well as trying to take territory, are also planning to attack us here at home in the United Kingdom. So the right answer is to be long term, hard-headed, patient and intelligent with the interventions that we make'

When Cameron uses the words 'that regime' it could be taken to imply that there could be a military intervention not only against ISIS but also against Assad of the sort he was itching for in the summer of 2013. ISIS is a jihadi group but it is not a government nor a 'regime' in any conventional sense

'..the most important intervention of all is to make sure that these governments are fully representative of the people who live in their countries, that they close down the ungoverned space, and they remove the support for the extremists.

If that were British foreign policy, then the emphasis would have to be upon being more forceful with Qatar and Saudi Arabia which have been at the forefront of backing militant Sunni jihadists in Syria. But , on the whole, both Britain and the US have tended to turn a blind eye to this.

"our engagement with the Saudi Arabians, with Qataris, with Emiratis and others is all on the basis that none of us should be supporting those violent terrorists or extremists'

This means that London and Washington have tried to dissuade Qatar and Saudi Arabia from backing Sunni jihadists through fear of 'blowback'. But Qatar has actually made it plain it does not care. The Qatari foreign minister stated in March 2014 ;"The independence of Qatar's foreign policy is simply non-negotiable".

The reason Britain's 'engagement' with Qatar has not meant preventing them from supporting Al Qaida affiliated groups is that Cameron's government has been forthright in courting Qatar as a major source of investment in Britain, important to prop up its ailing rentier economy, and of gas.

With instability in Ukraine and the need to diversify sources of gas away from dependence upon Russia, notable both Cameron and Johnson have been banging the drum for increased bilateral ties with Qatar, a power lauded by Johnson as a "dynamic friend'.

Britain has grovelled before Qatar because its domestic supplies of North Sea gas have been depleting in recent years. An essential reason for Britain supporting Qatar's policy of backing jihadists in Syria is to get rid of Assad and secure the contruction of the Qatar-Tukey gas pipeline.

Britain has been prepared to align with Qatar in such as way as to provide the space within which groups such as ISIS can flourish because it wanted to remove Assad and prevent a 'Shi'ite gas pipeline' running from Iran's part of the South pars gasfield through Iraq and Syria to the Easterm Mediterranean.

Being Hard on Britain's "Soft Power".

Here we go again. More on how Britain must advance its 'soft power' role. Indra Adnan writes this in the Guardian today( Soft power: Britain is losing its grip on this key asset ? )

Britain is weakening rather than bolstering its soft power institutions. Twenty-five countries have launched English-speaking world-affairs news outlets: we have cut funding to the BBC World Service, closing 22 bureaus (including the Ukraine) since 2011.Instead of harnessing institutions such as these, which reliably attract goodwill and trust, David Cameron has placed a commerce-oriented advertising campaign proclaiming "Britain is great" at the heart of its operations at No 10

Perhaps, it might be better to get a grasp on reality and realise that Britain isn't actually at all that great. It is valued by immigrants only as a fast track cash machine as opposed to some wonderful land of opportunity as it was re-presented under the Blair regime with "Cool Britannia" and all that mind numbing upbeat boosterism.

Reality is more important than mere image and enough people know enough now to know Britain is actually increasingly a worse place to live in relative to other nations than at any time in modern history. Outside London's globalised super economy there is nothing much to impress any more.

Town centres are either full of tawdry clone stores of half the shops boarded up.There is no sense of living in a community and hence the repeated incantation of the word "community" as a buzzword and copious drivel about a 'society fundamentally at ease with itself'.

London itself is only a city that attracts either the super rich, oil sheihks and kleptocrats or else the huddled masses from poorer nations to work in its low wage service sector jobs. The reality is one of cut throat competition and fear between groups of immigrants who economically undercut one another.

The reality is is a fragmented United Kingdom on the cusp of disintegration. Britain's foreign policy is a disgrace, an entirely self serving one of grovelling to states such as Qatar so that we can get its gas and its petrodollars can be invested in British made military hardware and London's property market.

The property market alone seems to drive the economy .Belief and trust in decayed institutions has waned and dwindled as the sovereign consumer works harder and harder to merit the right to own a banal legostyle brick box and spend on goods that help stave off despair and loneliness.

People living in Britain are increasingly miserable, liable to divorce, binge drinking and drug taking because they have no other form of overcoming their atomised status. This is known by those in Britain and those who come to witness the place from outside and are shocked to see whole swathes of British cities where few even speak English

It is just as well money is not being spent on 'soft power' because it is the hard realities that are those that now have meaning within and beyond Britain's shores. As it has become a global entrepot, it has also become a centre for global terror plots and plans so that foreign and domestic policies merge.

The consequence is an increasingly authoritarian security state monitoring its citizens because of the brutal power games the British government is playing in regions where there is oil and gas at stake. Naturally, these realities are seldom explicitly mentioned but outsiders realise Britain's essentially cynical global role.

No amount of investment in spin and soft corporate propaganda is going to be able to acheive anything other than create a hallucinatory view of Britain as an kleptocrat investor's paradise of prestige property and sports amenities, one that's a vision of a future dystopian hell for those who view and see the reality from below.

Afghanistan: Mission Not Quite Accomplished

"You have to remember that Afghanistan is an extremely poor country with a very, very troubled history but I think the purpose of our mission was always to build an Afghanistan and Afghan security forces that were capable of maintaining a basic level of security so this country never again became a haven for terrorist training camps. That has been the most important part of the mission …That is the mission, that was the mission and I think we will have accomplished that mission and so our troops can be very proud of what they have done."

Cameron might well have declared that the mission has been accomplished. The fact it is it has not because the main strategic objective of the West in Afghanistan-securing the construction of the TAPI pipeline-has not been achieved. That is why British troops are being 'drawdown' and not withdrawn.

"Afghanistanisation" is a longer term project that underlies the geopolitical strategy of ensuring that Iran is excluded from being able to export its gas eastwards through Pakistan into India, one of the world's largest markets. Thousands of Western troops and private contractors will remain after 2014.

Despite the recent thaw in relations between Washington and Tehran over Iran's nuclear programme, the US was resolute in November 2013 in refusing to exempt the IPI pipeline from sanctions and instead pushing Pakistan towards accepting the future Trans-Afghan alternative.

With British troops being withdrawn from 'combat roles'. the military and private contractors are set to stay there in order to keep the Taliban in check from attacking the TAPI pipeline's construction because this has remained the paramount interest as the idea of 'nation building' was shelved.

The process of 'drawdown' of British troops has been paralleled by the US. Replaced by private contractors and with the conflict spilling over to the south in Pakistan with drone warfare, the strategy is to keep on with 'infrastructure projects' and the pipeline that is in the West's vital interest to protect.

The importance of the TAPI pipeline lies in the strategy of energy diversification. It means Turkmen gas could be exported south beyond Russian control, preventing China exerting too much leverage ( a pipeline now goes between Turkmenistan and China ) and hemming in Iranian influence.

Opponents of the war can scoff at Cameron's claim of 'mission accomplished' because they are in the dark as to what the true objectives were. Even if the war initially really did have women's liberation, the establishment of liberal democracy and the 'war on drugs' as aims, these are now less prominent.

The reality is that Afghanistan has always been an important part of a geopolitical jigsaw and valued as a potential prize for its copious resources, expecially of lithium ( used to make batteries for everything from the mobile phones to iPads that consumers demand ).

Afghanistan is a conflict zone and a cockpit in the New Great Game for control of energy flows and the minerals needed for high tech products being played out between the West, China and Russia. The facts are established on this. US State Department officials routinely mention 'the New Silk Road'.

If we are going to talk about whether it 'was worth it', it's first necessary to understand why Afghanistan was fought for so long. It's infantile to berate 'idiot politicians' because the politicians know they could never admit the real geopolitical reasons for the war that are too complex for the children to grasp.

Syria: Same Issue, Different Question.

"I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would go back to parliament again on the same question and the same issue," he said. "We can't go back asking the same question over and over. So no, I can't foresee such circumstances."

So opines Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister. Now he is blaming the 'cynical' and 'point scoring' Ed Miliband for having Labour vote against the government on the motion to involve Britain militarily in a US led missile strike against the Syrian regime.

I predicted yesterday that there would be a clamour for a second vote and that the new tack in 'public diplomacy' on Syria would take the form of the government blaming Miliband for diminishing Britain's global standing the better to box him into a position of having to support a new vote on a different question.

It doesn't seem as though that could include only chemical weapons. The question is what other pretexts could be cooked up to justify a military intervention that is wanted for geopolitical advantages and to advance strategic interests irrespective of whether Assad has chemical weapons or has actually used them,

For that is what Hague and Clegg are insinuating about another vote. Already Shadow Defence minister Jim Murphy and Ben Bradshaw are said to be voices in favour of a second vote according to the Daily Telegraph. They are positioning themselves for that should  more 'compelling evidence' come from Washington.

The 'public diplomacy' offensive now is to portray Miliband for having prevented the chance for Britain to have supported military intervention under any changed circumstances so that, if and when circumstances change, they can try to pressurise Miliband to get the party to vote for it the second time around.

It is both predictable and pathetic.

Syrian Crisis: The "Right" to Launch Missile Strikes.

'The Obama administration indicated on Sunday that it would launch military strikes against Syria even if it failed to get the backing of the US Congress, claiming evidence that sarin gas had been used in chemical attacks outside Damascus last month.

Less than a day the president vowed to put an attack to a congressional vote, secretary of state John Kerry said the administration was determined to act against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and did not need the backing of Congress to do so.

President Obama "has the right to do this no matter what Congress does", said secretary of state John Kerry, one of the leading advocates of a military assault on dictator Bashar al-Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons on 12 neighborhoods outside Damascus on 21 August.

Giving the vote to Congress was a mere formality. The next eight days will see a 'public diplomacy' offensive by Washington on a vast scale to marshal the US and other willing participants towards military intervention. The impression has to be of an irresistable momentum. As Kerry put it,

 "We have a coalition of more than a few but this is a situation that's going to grow as the evidence comes out."

The decision to put the matter to Congress was merely a ploy to buy more time. There is no absolute guararantee that with 'new evidence' and Washington pressurising it allies for a for or against us position that the British government and opposition might not strike up a new found unity of purpose.

It it looks unlikely given the political situation in Britain but the reality is that both the government and opposition are trying to use Britain's non- involvement in any future military intervention as the fault of each other, the better to present themselves as the best guardians of Britain's role as a 'global player'.

If Washington starts finding new and more reliable allies, a new vote might be put to Parliament to get it to vote the right way with the connivance of both political parties. Clearly, Kerry's message is that, unlike Britain, the US is not hamstrung by indecisive partisan politicians, a message that may be heeded....

Syrian Crisis : Politicking and Positioning Over Britain's Role in Syria.

Get ready for a week of intense 'public diplomacy' from Washington as it steps up a gear with the accusations of Assad's use of chemical weapons, now said to have contained sarin gas, and siren voices in Britain clamouring for the case for military intervention to be framed in a new light by the government.

In Britain, William Hague said: "We were saying in our parliament that there would be a second vote at a later stage if we wanted to go ahead with military action. So that, of course, would have been rather similar to President Obama setting out this timetable in Congress now"

The hawks are already regathering for a second swooping attempt to drag Britain towards military intervention in Syria. Osborne is clearly trying to blame Labour for humiliating not only the government but also Britain because its diminished role as a 'global player'.

The 'public diplomacy' being put forth by Hague is that if Congress votes for military action they would be able to portray the Labour opposition in a bad light if Washington spins out a new line on Syria other than the specific one on chemical weapons which was defeated in the Parliamentary vote.

If Washington cobbled together some sort of pretext for intervention based on 'humanitarian intervention' , or if other evidence of atrocities committed by the 'Assad regime' could be exploited to press the case in a 'new light', there could be noises about second vote, something Miliband has not ruled out.

The politicking going on in Britain now reflects both sides attempt to prove themselves better to lead Britain's role as a 'global player' and accusing each other of the failure to maintain its 'credibility' on the world stage. Hague knows Labour were not against military intervention in principle.

Hague is now insinuating that Miliband and Labour have played partisan politics and would destroy Britain's position if further evidence is found "Parliament has spoken. I don't think it is realistic to think that we can go back to parliament every week with the same question having received no for an answer'.

Of course, the government could go back to Parliament wit a differently worded question on the same issue should they be able to portray Labour as cynical should a blitz of propaganda come forth on Syria and the UN inspectors find 'something' that could be spun as part of a 'new' decisive case for military intervention.

Hague is already shifting tack to that position,

 "Parliament has spoken. I don't think it is realistic to think that we can go back to parliament every week with the same question having received no for an answer.

"Anybody looking objectively at this would see that, in order for parliament in any circumstances to come to a different conclusion, people would have to be more persuaded by the evidence. There is a great deal of evidence there but I'm not sure that the extra evidence that the United States presented would have made a difference to those doubting the evidence in the House of Commons.

"The Labour leadership would have to play a less partisan and less opportunistic role and be prepared to take yes for an answer in terms of the motions that we present to the House of Commons. We had taken on board all the points that they had made before the debate on Thursday. All those things would have to happen to get a different result in the House of Commons and I can't see any immediate possibility of that."

Moreover, Labour's position is not against Washington's on intervention. They were not against military intervention per se but against the case being made by Cameron for it. That is why Jim Fitzpatrick resigned from the shadow front bench because he was against intervention 'full stop'.

Labour have only learnt that there is a need for the case to be seen to be better and for the mistakes that it made in Iraq not to be repeated. But though Cameron used Iraq style techniques to spin Britain into intervention, Syria is not, in fact, the same as Iraq as military invasion was never on the cards.

Miliband is clever enough to know that and has tried to use the Syria Crisis to exorcise the spectre of Blair and pose as 'responsible'. Yet neither Miliband nor Alexander are against military intervention at some stage should the conditions they laid down on Thursday be subsequently met. Alexander stated today,

" The conditions we set down on Thursday apply on Sunday morning. But since then, of course, the prime minister has given his word to the British people that the UK will not participate in military action in Syria."

The implication is that the conditions for military intervention still apply but for the position of Cameron. It is a political manoeuvre to make his leadership look as though it could damage Britain's standing as a global player, the very basis for Osborne's attack on Labour.

Alexander is not stating that military intervention was conclusively ruled out. He is stating that the conditions for participation were not met and still have not by Sunday morning. This leaves the question open while boxing Cameron into a corner for having botched the case on Thursday.

Labour can now have both ways. If new 'compelling evidence' is provided ( as their condition two requested) and if the UN finds some evidence of chemical weapons use, then Miliband and Alexander could spin about and support military intervention with Washington later while criticising government incompetence.

This does not mean that Britain will definitely join the US in any operation against Assad's regime without another vote. But it means that if Washington and 'the international community' demands Assad be held to account for war crimes, Labour could vote for it if another vote were held.

Labour could then have it both ways, that it was Miliband who showed leadership and the best way to preserve the 'special relationship' while Cameron's irresponsible recklessness damaged Britain's credibility as a 'global player'. Alexander himself is a staunch and unquestioning Atlanticist.

Is nobody listening carefully to what these politicians are actually saying ?

Syria: What Could Happen if the Conflict Intensfies.

The Syrian Crisis deepens day by day. David Cameron is a vain, incompetent and blustering figure, the leader of a nation with too much of a global role, none of the responsibilities that come with being one of the five permanent security council members and no independent foreign policy.

Cameron states his predictable backing for the US and is trying to act the statesman by pretending the US now can see the wisdom of the lead Britain and France took in bringing to light claims about President Assad's  use of chemical weapons ( sarin nerve gas ),

"I welcome this candid assessment by the Americans. I think it, rightly, puts back centre stage the question, the very difficult question to answer but nonetheless one we have got to address: what are we going to do about the fact that in our world today there is a dictatorial and brutal leader who is using chemical weapons under our noses against his own people."

War clouds are darkening and amassing steadily on the horizon. The Syrian Crisis has potential consequences far more lethal than the invasion of Iraq, though that invasion is a major cause of the current crisis in having led, over the last decade, to Shia government favourable to Tehran.

The US has expressed considerable concern over growing Iranian influence. So the US and UK are highly likely to back the Sunni militias with weapons. Encircling and controlling Iranian ambitions is a basic tenet of US foreign policy. Iran will step up its supply of weapons, cautiously backed by Russia.

Faced with this Cameron and Hague are out of their depth, mediocrities trying to cope with the immense complexities that they do not fully grasp. They live in a detached world of abstract theoretical geopolitcs in which 'existential enemies' can be combatted only through sabre ratting and 'resolve'.

Cameron emits same rhetoric as Blair with Iraq, the same shrill oversimplifications and messianic overtones. There will be no point of return from this one if the conflict escalates further across the Middle East. Too much is at stake.

The Western economies depend far too much upon oil and gas to let Iran have dominance over Syria. Iran occupies what Zbigniew Brzezinski called one of the most important 'geopolitical pivots' in the world, an area between the Middle East and Central Asia where most of the globe's oil and gas is.

Iran is facing economic crisis as US sanctions create inflation and falling living standards. Hemmed in from the east by US presence in Afghanistan, blocking the IP pipeline in favour of the TAPI pipeline is an extension of the sanctions policy and it is leading to Iranian resentment of the West.

The temptation for Tehran to step up the conflict in Syria as an escape westwards and to retain it's influence is considered a direct threat to the US's ability to control the balance of power over the Gulf. Bahrain faced Shia protests against the minority Sunni regime in 2012.

The prospect of Shia dominance in Syria and the defeat of Sunni fundamentalist 'rebels' ( i.e. insurgents ) is anathema to the US and UK so there is no prospect for peace nor the diplomatic resolution of the crisis and they no more want to negotiate with Assad than with Iran.

There are no signs the Sunni insurgents will not continue to suffer set backs and military defeats with Hezbollah now supporting Assad from Lebanon. So it is very probable the US and UK and France will supply arms so as to counter Iran and it will respond by doing the same.

The escalation of a lethal proxy war and more weapons entering Syria can only create create a total bloodbath to happen on a scale that could not only exceed Iraq but which could polarise the regional and global powers and ramp up the conflicts over oil and gas supply routes to a new level.

Should the conflict lead to the destabilisation of Lebanon and Jordan, as well as turning Syria into a version of Afghanistan, that could have severe consequences for the 'blowback' from Sunni militias and Al Qaida reaping havoc across the border into Saudi Arabia.

The US and Britain will do everything to shore up Saudi Arabia from collapse but the knock on effects upon oil production would seriously destabilise global oil supplies and prices. The slump in the West would be intensified and the blowback from Al Qaida terrorists cause mayhem.

A Note on the UAE

Guardian journalist Irvine writes,

The UAE is recognised as a valued investor in the UK, with Boris Johnson recently referring to himself as the "mayor of the eighth emirate". After all, Dubai has invested in a £1.5bn new deepwater port at London Gateway, while up the river, the £36m Emirates Airline cable car carries Londoners across the Thames.

There is no more degrading spectacle than Britain prostrating itself before these corrupt rentier oil rich regimes in order to male London the capital of "capital capital". By the standards of other neighbouring regimes, the UAE is relatively liberal but Cameron's feeble mention of human rights is eyewash.

David Cameron led a delegation to the UAE to, among other things, persuade the Emiratis to purchase 60 British Typhoon aircraft. Human rights were to be discussed, the prime minister said. "On human rights, there are no no-go areas in this relationship."

As a PR guru, the idea of selling billions of pounds worth of military hardware to the UAE- while pretending that this comes under the condition of respecting human rights is as bogus-is exactly the sort of slippery jibberish to be expected from David Cameron.

Clearly there are "no no-go areas" as Cameron, more of crude businessman than a statesman or diplomatic is highly unlikelt to make conditions upon the UAE government over arbitrary detainment or torture when the arms deals are already signed and sealed and London is cravenly dependent upon capital.

Great Britain was one a net exporter of capital that actually did have benefits to both the recipient countries and the City of London. That was founded in tangent with Britain's manufacturing power and export markets. The sight of Britain crawling before such regimes is both demeaning and humiliating.

Those who warble on about what happens in Saudi Arabia or UAE or Qatar is "not our business" ignore the obvious fact it is "our business" because of the reciprocal business relationships that have developed since the 1980s: the British trade in arms and its geopolitical support in return for oil and investments.

Establishment orthodoxy on the Trident Nuclear System.

There's some good research from Norton Taylor on the failure to offer opposition to the renewal of Trident,

Disclosures in hitherto secret papers released at the National Archives under the 30-year rule are extraordinarily pertinent now. Despite Nott's claim about the prevailing view in Thatcher's government 30 years ago, the government built a four-boat Trident submarine fleet, designed and assembled new warheads, and leased the missiles from the US.

Today, we do not know how many ministers are questioning the plan to replace the existing Trident system. We may have to wait for 30 more years to find out. It is known that senior members of the armed forces have serious doubts about the wisdom of investing tens of billions in a new nuclear weapons system that is widely regarded as irrelevant to the immediate interests and pressing needs of Britain's armed forces.

Even Tony Blair, in his autobiography, A Journey, described Trident's purpose as "non-existent in terms of military use", remarking: "Its expense is huge."

Earlier this year, the MoD quietly acknowledged that the cost of a new fleet of Trident nuclear missile submarines – excluding the the missiles and warheads that would go on them – would amount to £25bn by the time they were built.

Britain, meanwhile, is also collaborating with the US on plans to replace nuclear warhead components....

Insanity. Britain seeks to replace Trident still even though it is about defence from a threat that has not existed for two decades-the Soviet Union-and is simply about maintaining "credibility" as a member of the nuclear club at a huge expense at a time of recession and cuts to public services.

And this is the government lecturing Iran about its nuclear programme.

The reasons Trident is being renewed are to maintain Britain as a "Global Player", to remain attached to the USA , military-industrial interests, the decline of Parliament and of independent politicians to challenge these interests. The absence of dissent is one of the more sinister features of public life.

Even CND is now led by Kate Hudson, a former member of the Communist party of Great Britain and supporter of the Soviet Union, who exists as a spokesman for trite anti-American propaganda as opposed to the principled opposition once offered by Bertrand Russell, Michael Foot and AJP Taylor.

The Coalition is not Greatly Different to New Labour.

Polly Toynbee claims that the Tories are destroying New Labour's achievements with regards the youth of Britain. With the claim in the Guardian,

Economically we face a neoliberal experiment threatening an era of low growth, no lessons learned from the 30s.

The only question is whether voters believe David Cameron's new year's message: "We're tackling the deficit because we have to – not out of some ideological zeal. This is a government led by people with a practical desire to sort out this country's problems, not by ideology. When we talk of building a bigger, stronger society, we mean it." Or will they believe Ed Miliband's view that the "irresponsible pace and scale" of the cuts is a "political choice by those in power, not necessity"?

Actually, we have faced the neoliberal experiment at an accelerated pace since 1997 when New Labour came to power and based "growth" on unsustainable debt fuelled consumerism. The coalition is using the highly predictable crash of 2008 to impose a yet more extreme doctrinaire version of the same dogmas.

New Labour and those such as Toynbee are simply reacting to a government whose fanaticism follows on from New Labour but having inherited a mess. Instead of reining in the banking system and making reforms of that and profligate borrowing, the idea is to return to the 1990s through shock therapy.

Nothing has been done to remedy the underlying weakness of Britain: the decimation of the industrial manufacturing base, the guff about a "Creative Economy", the over reliance on services and being a pure consumer economy that does nothing particularly useful other than service global economic activity.

There are whole swathes of Britain where no new job creation is going to be forthcoming. Toynbee, at least, did criticise the colossal speed and scale of immigration encouraged and permitted by New Labour. But she did not see it as an inherent part of the short termist nature of that regime.

Inflating and bigging up consumerism through cheap money provided from China whilst bigging up migration to keep labour costs low in those jobs servicing the British consumer economy from within was what "New " Labour stood for. This was the meaning of a "global economy" in Britain.

It was easier to import labour from other countries and maintain some welfare for those in the UK who did not want to take the jobs that no Briton supposedly wanted to do at that price than reform the education system. To create one where vocational subjects and training predominated.

Instead, New Labour was intent on simply getting more students to "university" in third rate ex-polytechnics than training people to do valuable things such as plumbing and all those jobs now done by Polish migrants because of the delusion that doing media studies or other mickey mouse degrees was better.

The bubblegum economy has gone snap in Britain harder than elsewhere because of the structural weaknesses and deficiencies of Britain's economy as well as the absurdly huge expenditure on the armed forces and trident. All that panders to the notion of Britain spreading its values across the globe whilst it cannot even remedy its own deficiencies within.

The Unspecial Relationship.

In the wake of the defence cuts and the reduction of British forces to a military auxiliary in the USA's grand strategy, it seems that a necessary revision of the cliches about the "special relationship" need to be revised is is long overdue. Dr Mark Almond in July 2010 wrote an interesting column in the Daily Mail ( It's Time to Hit America's Reset Button )

Pressing the 'reset button' has been President Barack Obama's favourite term for trying to restore relations with Russia since they got frosty again, Cold War-style, in the past few years. But Britain and the United States ought to be thinking about that reset button, too.

Since the Second World War, Britain's leaders have liked to think they enjoyed what Winston Churchill called a 'special relationship' with Washington. Even as Britain's status as global Number One disappeared, our leaders believed this country could 'punch above its weight' because American presidents would listen to Whitehall's wisdom.

But like all US presidents, Obama strokes the egos of foreign leaders by emphasising Washington's 'special friendship' for their country. Only the British think they are unique.

In fact, the relationship between Britain and America has often been astonishingly one-sided, as demonstrated after BP's huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many in Britain were amazed by the ferocity of Obama's response and the xenophobic emphasis on the Britishness of BP, ignoring the fact that lax US environmental regulation and the American obsession with a right to cheap oil for their gas-guzzlers contributed to the disaster.

Although the consequences of BP's mess are bad for the United States, they are far worse for us. In many ways it is the British public, not BP, which is paying for the Gulf cleanup through tax write-offs and the collapse in its value to pension funds here. Now, having driven its share price to record lows, the US oil company Exxon Mobil has been given tacit approval by the Obama administration to make a bid for BP.

Coming at the same time as the rising casualty toll in Afghanistan, the combination of economic woe and military misadventure should make Whitehall rethink long decades of blindly standing by Washington.

In truth, this is not the first time America has sought to undermine Britain. Even before the Second World War had seemed to tie Britain and America together, Whitehall had responded to growing US power by pursuing a policy of appeasement, Britain's diplomats deciding America's ever greater global influence should be accommodated, even at the cost of our own interests.

At the end of the First World War, Washington made it plain that it did not like Britain's alliance with Japan. The Japanese had got uppity by demanding Americans publicly accept racial equality. At America's insistence, Britain snubbed Japan.

The Washington Naval Conference in 1921 is often heralded as a model of disarmament talks, but in reality it paved the way for the Second World War. Britain conceded naval equality to the United States, but since America did not act as an ally, the limits on the Royal Navy made it weaker as Japan, Italy and Germany rose as rivals. America was further away from these threats and left Britain to face them alone.

In the Twenties, American central bankers plotted to detach Commonwealth countries such as South Africa from the sterling area in a bid to weaken the pound and allow the dollar to become the dominant international currency. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1925, Churchill put Britain back on the gold standard to head off this threat, even though it plunged our export industries into depression and helped provoke the 1926 General Strike.

Britain was alone against Nazi Germany in 1940. It is true President Franklin Roosevelt arranged for military aid to be sent from America under the Lend-Lease agreement, but it came at a heavy price. In return for Britain handing over billions of dollars' worth of economic assets in the Americas, the United States sent military equipment and other supplies. It saved Britain's bacon, but when it was cut off the moment the war ended in 1945 it left this country without its traditional markets in the Western hemisphere. US companies now dominated what had once been the basis of Britain's balance of trade surplus.

America did not join the war until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour and Hitler declared war on the United States. But Roosevelt made it clear America was not fighting to restore the British Empire. Behind Churchill's back Roosevelt used to joke to Stalin about him being an old imperialist. Until well into 1944, more British forces than Americans were fighting the Nazis.

The Second World War did produce a uniquely close relationship. Even today the British armed forces and intelligence services are embedded with their US partners. But the balance of power in the alliance has shifted decisively. From Britain's sacrifice of its nuclear know-how to help produce an American-owned atomic bomb in 1945 to the subordination of our unique code-breaking skills to the US National Security Agency, this country gave as much to make America a superpower as it got back from the alliance.

When British interests clashed with US ones, Washington had no problem in torpedoing them. In 1956, President Eisenhower was right about Suez but the price of failure was paid by Britain. Fifty years later, Tony Blair and the whole Establishment failed us and ordinary Americans by backing George Bush even though MI6 had sources inside Iraq saying Saddam had no WMDs.

Getting realistic about this country's relationship with Washington does not mean swinging wildly to Cubanstyle anti-Yankee hostility, but unless Britain's leaders pay more than lip service to Britain's national interests, a combination of economic hits and costly wars originating on the other side of the Atlantic could poison the alliance.

Dropping the phrase 'special relationship' is not enough. It would be healthier on both sides of the Atlantic to recognise those things we really do have in common. Honest disagreement among friends is a better basis for stability. A partnership of unequals cannot be securely based on illusions, however comforting.

"Dread juggernaut of conflict with Iran is drawing closer"

Simon Tisdall, one of the Guardian's foreign affairs columnists, writes,

The US is quietly ratcheting up economic and financial pressure on Iran amid signs that talks about Tehran's suspect nuclear programme could resume next month. These two developments may be connected. But neither sanctions nor diplomacy can wholly obviate the dread possibility of military confrontation unless something fundamental changes soon at the heart of Iran's fundamentalist regime.

The USA would be crazy to think of launching a military attack on Iran. Even if Iran were to get a nuclear missile, the driving force of the US foreign policy of isolating and encircling Iran for geopolitical hegemony and energy security, exists independently of Tehran actually having nuclear weapons.

But the need for change lies not merely in Iran.

There needs to be a fundamental change in the West's over dependence upon oil and gas. To merely shift the responsibility for the aggression on to Iran only and to totally screen out what the USA wants in ramping up tensions with Tehran.

Indeed the USA and Britain's is fighting in Afghanistan is to get a rival TAPI pipeline to the Iranian IPI scheme. The US is not keen on Iran having any nuclear capacity for civilian use either, as that would mean the greater use of gas and oil as levers over neighbouring states like Turkey.

Moreover, US bases under the auspices of Centcom ( Central Command ) set up under Reagan do encircle Iran from all sides. The reason is to enforce The Carter Doctrine of 1980-that any threat to supplies of oil and gas would be considered a threat to national security and the USA's vital interests.

Ultimately, with Iraq having been invaded on the pretext of having non-existent Weapons of Mass destruction there would seem to be some logic in Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb given the threat the USA is seen to pose. The squeeze on Iran would exist independent of the particular government it has, crudely depicted as a some totalitarian theocracy.

Indeed in 1952 the decision of the Mossadeq government to nationalise Iran's oil led to the USA blackballing Iran so that no oil could flow out and subsequently in 1953 the CIA orchestrated a coup that brought to power the Shah and his repressive police state. Which in turn then eventually led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

This current global situation with the dangerous colliding and clashing of strategic interests is increasingly similar to that which existed in the immediate run up to The First World War. There are numerous hotspots where ethnic and religious separatism interacts with a New Great Game for oil and gas that could trigger off global conflicts.

This is desperately worrying. Corelli Barnett summarised this in 2007 ( A War Too Far ),

To achieve its targets, the Pentagon would have to unleash waves of attacks by more than 100 aircraft on the 20 widely dispersed plants of the Iranian nuclear industry. Prolonged bombing of military bases, barracks and air-defence systems, many of them in or near great cities, would be needed. We saw it all before, in much smaller and less populated Iraq.

The loss of life among civilians would far exceed the 7000 slaughtered during the "shock and awe" blitz on Baghdad that heralded the invasion of Iraq. If the bombers struck an already "live" nuclear plant, the result would be another Chernobyl. In addition, such an onslaught would inevitably mean war.

And it would mean war with a nation of 70 million people -- 65 per cent of whom are under the age of 25 -- at a time when the combined might of American, British and other international armed forces have been unable to subdue a country with a population of no more than 27 million.

Iran is a mountainous country much bigger than Iraq or Afghanistan and extending from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, from Turkey to Afghanistan.

While the Iranian armed forces (including the 120,000 men of the Revolutionary Guards and the 200,000 in the Basij militia, all Islamic zealots) may be far inferior to the American forces in training and hi-tech weaponry, they fought a bloody war with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army for six years -- proving that they are well able to take appalling attrition without buckling.

For them, every body bag contained a glorious martyr. No one should therefore underestimate Iran's capacity for prolonged resistance. War with Iran would be like Iraq plus Afghanistan multiplied by 10.

In a fresh demonstration of "asymmetrical warfare" (where the two sides are mismatched in their military capabilities), America's colossal firepower would be countered by guerilla ambush and terrorist bombings anywhere in the world where infuriated Muslims could inflict damage on the West.

Because of the connection between the Shias of Iran -- who make up 90 per cent of the population -- those of southern Iraq, and of Hezbollah in the Lebanon, the conflict would engulf the entire Middle East, from the Mediterranean coast to the borders of Pakistan and very probably sucking in the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia as well in reaction.

What's more, such a conflict would inflict terrible damage on the global economy because of its impact on oil supplies from the Persian Gulf.

It would be all too easy for Iranian suicide speedboats to make the narrow Straits of Hormuz too hazardous for the passage of the giant tankers on which the industrialised "First World" (now including China) depends. It would be all too tempting for the US Navy to try to clear that passage by force.

In short, an attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III.

The chilling reality is that such wars seem increasingly likely due to the lethal reliance of diminishing fossil fuels in dangerous far off lands, the contradiction between the West's need for stable or falling oil prices and the need in Iran and other Islamic nations for rising prices to stave off discontent.

On British General Strategy and Defence Cuts.

On the defence cuts outlined in the past two days, Richard Norton Taylor writes in the Guardian ( Defence Cuts Don't Go Deep Enough ),

The navy gets two large aircraft carriers – the biggest ships it has ever had – at a cost of more than £5bn. The first one, the Queen Elizabeth, is due to enter service in 2016 yet, because Britain's Harrier fleet is being scrapped and the expensive US Joint Strike Fighters (JSFs) due to replace them won't be ready in time, by 2020 the ship will be mothballed – or sold – without ever having planes flying off her.

By 2020, the second carrier, the Prince of Wales, should be ready but adapted to take cheaper, catapult-launched JSFs, or French Rafale planes. So, for the next 10 years, Britain will have no carrier-based strike force. The obvious question, which has not been satisfactorily answered by the government, is why such a threat needing such a force will suddenly face the UK in 10 years' time.

The reason is that US foreign policy is British foreign policy and Britain a key bridge between the USA and Europe. Hence the continued overexpenditure has little to do with threats but in maintaining credibility as an auxiliary force "doing its bit" for the Atlanticist block.

The political elites in Britain are members of the same think tanks as fellow US Atlanticists and Britain's role is to divide Europe from forming any counterweight to NATO independent of the USA. Trident is part of the USA's global geopolitical strategy and the so-called missile shield.

Obama's continued zeal for the missile shield in order to deal with"the Iranian threat" is actually part of the same strategy that explains why the Afghanistan War is being fought for at least the next 4-5 years. To isolate and contain Iran from extending its has pipelines to the east.

This is why Britain has spent £12bn already and is willing to spend another 15bn in the next four years to ensure the completion of the TAPI pipeline and the diversification of Turkmenistan's gas supply away from Russian and Chinese control.

Getting Russia back onside was one reason for Obama dropping the missile shield in Central Europe. Ultimately, the New Great Game for global hegemony through controlling the Eurasian Heartland is to be stepped up in other ways. Collusion between Russia and Iran and China is the spectre feared.

This is the stark reality behind why Britain is footing the bill for "Defence". The fact that even excluding Trident the projects and operations will cost more than £26bn is a price considered worth paying to maintain vital interests in controlling diminishing supplies of oil and gas

The question is one of strategic overstretch because of strategic desperation: the cuts to the Defence budget necessary to a second rate economy such as Britain's cannot be taken due to the need to control oil and gas, a major driving force behind the costly invasions of Iraq and important with Afghanistan too.

The idea that Britain has ramped up expenditure on Defence merely due to pork barrel politics ( though important with the aircraft carriers ) is absurd. Reality has hit Britain hard but the strategic review has in mind that Britain can and must act more effectively as an auxiliary force with the USA.

The most flattering illusion is less that of those spouting guff about "projecting power" or punching above our weight". This is routine political cliche. The worst one is that the over spending on defence is merely due to incompetence, imperial delusion and vainglory.

It is not. It is due to a precision calculated geostrategy that has as its design the maintenance of the Great Car Economy and energy intensive lifestyles that all British consumers demand, need and that would be politically hazardous for politicians to admit must change in order to avoid being dragged into conflicts.

After all when politicians put up the price of petrol, the whinging from British consumers about it and the lack of investment in public transport by Britain still struggling to finish Crossrail indicate the utter ineptitude of a political and economic system based on emulating the USA.

Yet the lure of bountiful petroleum that can be controlled as a means of preserving Western US global hegemony and hence preserving the USA's status as the world's leading petrocurrency has been seriously undercut by the Iraq gamble and the 2008 crash.

Though defence cuts reflect a strategic overstretch and diminished world standing, the temptation will be to deploy forces in areas vital to maintain oil and gas supplies with ever greater desperation in a way that could precipitate an epoch of devastating resource wars.

The Categorisation of Threats to Britain: Public Diplomacy.

The government white paper on national strategy should not be taken at face value but as public diplomacy. The tiers of threats it lists down in descending order do not stack up with the maintenance of what is still a huge defense budget proportional to Britain's second rank economy.

In The Guardian, Sir Simon Jenkins clarified the white paper thus,

The first so-called tier one threat is "attacks on cyberspace and cybercrime". The second is "international terrorism". The third is a foreign crisis "drawing in Britain", and the fourth is a natural hazard – "such as severe coastal flooding or an influenza pandemic". None of these constitute a military threat to the security of the realm.

Lesser threats are listed, including attacks from chemical, biological or radiological weapons, "organised crime" and "severe disruption to information … collected by satellites". Only in the lowest risk category, at number nine, do we encounter a "large-scale conventional military attack on Britain". This improbable event is put on a par with yet more terrorism, illegal immigration, and "disruption to fuel supplies or price instability", whatever the last may mean.

To none of the top threats is an army, navy or air force a sensible response. Almost all Britain's defence spending goes on threat number nine, a concerted attack on British soil, yet this is so unlikely these days, or in the foreseeable future, that it must merit some detailed assessment of balancing of risk against cost. It gets none.

None of the threats are mutually exclusive. International Terrorism provides the rationale for being in Afghanistan, though attacks can be planned in Britain and much of Al Qaida is in Pakistan. But ,of course, purported theats can be mere pretexts to carry out foreign policies.

For, the third threat , a foreign crisis "drawing in Britain", could be classified as a threat if it involved a threat to energy security as defined as a potential threat to the USA's and UK's control over diminishing resources, the main driving force behind the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

That's why the scale of conventional military forces are being maintained on the whole. Britain committed 40,000 troops to Iraq. Yet Germany and France did not. The reason was to preserve the "special relationship" and an anxiety over continuing supplies of oil ( mendaciously listed as a lower threat ).

Iraq was a resource war. It was not solely do to, as Jenkins maintains, with Blair's quest for glory. Blair had expressed concern about fuel supplies after Noth Sea Oil peaked in 1999 and in the wake of the fuel protests of 2000. Two of Blair's closest policy advisors David King and David Manning warned of Peak Oil.

As David Strahan, author of the Last Oil Shock wrote in 2007,

Britain and America’s shared energy fears were secretly formalised during the planning for Iraq. It is widely accepted that Blair’s commitment to support the attack dates back to his summit with Bush at Crawford in April 2002. The Times headline was typical that weekend: Iraq Action Is Delayed But ‘Certain’.

What is less well known is that at the same summit Blair proposed and Bush agreed to set up the US-UK Energy Dialogue, a permanent diplomatic liason dedicated to “energy security and diversity”. No announcement was made, and the Dialogue’s existence was only later exposed through a US Freedom of Information enquiry.

The continuation of the war in Afghanistan is crucially concerned for a successful outcome to getting the TAPI pipeline constructed in order to block off the threat of a rival IPI pipeline from Iran and to diversify supplies away from Russia and maintain a presence in Central Asia.

British foreign policy is essentially US foreign policy and that means the quest for energy security and geopolitical struggles. Many of the main threats outlined by the white paper are anticipated consequences of business as usual: of vying for control over strategically vital regions where pipelines will run.

The scaling down of Britain's defence budget is to make it tie in with the USA's foreign policy: serving that agenda is Britain's national strategy. Dr Liam Fox is a messianic neoconservative and admirer of Bush II. Britain follows the USA for ideological reasons and shares its geopolitical fears over resources.