Syria: Enter the Arab League.

'the Arab League threw its weight behind the allies' judgement that the Assad regime was responsible for the chemical attack, the US and Britain paved the way for intervention, saying it would be a response to a violation of international law and not aimed at regime change.'

The final part of the plan to attack Syria is to get the Arab League to back it. The goal is regime change in that missile strikes are designed to get the Assad to negotiate his departure on the West's terms. But this is still a dangerous calculation in the New Great Game to control oil and gas.

The real stakes in the Syrian conflict are energy resources and global power politics. Qatar has funded the Muslim Brotherhood, as has Turkey, because Iran is a major geopolitical rival that is also vying with it to pump gas from the South Pars field it shares with its tiny neighbour, a leading state in the Arab League.

Qatar is a major supplier of liquefied natural gas ( LNG ) to the West where numerous states want energy diversification and not to be too dependent upon Russia. The depletion of North Sea Gas has also made Britain anxious to please Qatar and benefit from the colossal amounts of money it invests in London.

The facts are instructive as to where Britain's future strategic interests lie even though the vast majority of gas still comes from the North Sea and Norway. The UK economy has become increasingly a rentier one since the 1980s and dependent upon oil money and its export of weapons to oil rich Arabic states.

'Qatar investments in the UK have reached QR125bn ($34bn), including stakes in grocery chain Sainsbury’s, BAA (British Airports Authority), London Stock Exchange, Barclays, the US Embassy building in Grosvenor Square and the Shard of Glass development, which is Europe’s tallest building'

Qatar is a regional gas rich superpower upon which the EU states especially depend upon and hence why Britain and France were pushing Washington to intervene militarily. But the US has vital interests there too as it has become a major player in the global LNG market after its 'shale revolution'.

The Gulf states became increasingly hostile to Assad as Iran stepped up its supply of arms via Iraq and to its Lebanese proxy Hizbollah. Saudi Arabia also fears its non-Arab and Shia rival across the Persian Gulf. The oil rich kingdom fears an axis of influence between Iran, Iraq and Syria to the north and a planned pipeline.

Saudi Arabia even offered Russia a deal on control of the oil market if it gave up its support for Assad. But Russia fears that Western missile strikes could embolden Al Qaida affiliated groups within Syria, some of whom come from Chechnya and are allegedly funded by the West's strategic partner.

If Russia drops its support for Assad, then Saudi Arabia's Head of Intelligence Prince Bandar has offered an alliance between the OPEC cartel and Russia and to safeguard its gas interests in the Eastern Mediterranean such as those discovered near Tartus on the border with Lebanon where Russia has a naval base.

The lack of compliance would result in Saudi Arabia not being able to guarantee the security of the Sochi Winter Games as the West proceeds with removing Assad Bandar claimed of the jihadists “We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role in Syria’s political future.”

The imminent US and British attacks on Syria have not much to do with humanitarian outrage at chemical weapons use as these are largely a pretext for an intervention they wanted. The aim is continuity with that of getting regime change while not leading to a collapse of Syria into a failed state.

That's the reality. European states and their economies are basically too overdependent upon gas for energy from states such as Qatar and do not wish to be dependent on states such as Russia which are global geopolitical rivals with huge resources of oil and gas that it doesn't have enough of any more.

Instead of wasting time denouncing 'hypocrisy', 'warmongering' and so on ( as if this were some surprise ) it is better to concentrate on the underlying reasons why the double standards in the West's foreign policies have become increasingly obvious since the end of the Cold War.

Syria: The New Great Game for Gas.

'US defense secretary Chuck Hagel says US forces are now ready to act on any order by President Barack Obama to strike Syria. The US navy has four destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean sea within range of targets inside Syria. The US also has warplanes in the region'.

It seems that the point of no return has been reached with the prospect of cruise missile strikes against the Syrian government being launched. The propaganda machine is in full spin, the media is focusing on the 'implementation' of a military attack that has been

This is despite the work of the UN inspectors in trying to find solid evidence chemical weapon use and this concern has been eclipsed. The YouTube clips and instantaneous images from social media sites of dying children believed to be casualties of a 'heinous' attack by 'the 'Assad regime' are a propaganda coup.

There are token nods towards the UN inspectors finding the facts first but the momentum towards military action is in full swing in order to maintain Western 'credibility', the same position held by Madelaine Albright with regards the 78 day bombardment of Serbia during the Kosovo Conflict in 1999.

But Syria is not Kosovo and the potential for the conflict to spin out of control as the result of military action far greater. The aim of the West has been 'regime change' from the outset of the civil war. Iran was not engaged with diplomatically and Assad's removal the precondition for negotiations.

Regime change is about the geopolitics and the control of energy supplies. Qatar supported the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia other Wahhabi Islamist militias to remove Assad because he signed a deal to construct a rival gas pipeline from Iranian sector of the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf.

The New Great Game for gas is a vital interest for the West which has become increasingly dependent upon LNG from Egypt and Qatar in the last decade, not least Britain whose North Sea gas reserves have depleted at an alarming rate since 1999. The EU consumes 25% of the world's gas. It produces 2%.

Iran is warning the West about its attack on the Syrian state because this geopolitical gas export route through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean is another way to assert its standing as a global player with whom the West would need to negotiate rather than threaten with violence.

With gas export routes to the east through the Iran-Pakistan pipeline blocked off by Western manoeuvres to keep Pakistan onside ready for the construction of the Trans-Afghan pipeline-the central war aim in Afghanistan-Iran will be bound to try and back Hizbollah in Syria all the more as it becomes encircled.

If US missile strikes from its warships in the Mediterranean cause damage to Assad's regime without defeating it it can only put the backers of Syria's proxy armies further at odds in a way that could create the potential for all out regional conflict with lethal global ramifications.

For Russia has vital interests in backing Assad because a huge new gas field was discovered in April 2011 by the Syrians near the border with Lebanon and Tartus-the home of the Russian Mediterranean naval base and a potential export base of gas to the EU. Russia's Gazprom is also interested in gas deposits off Cyprus.

Unilateral US missile attacks, aided by willing European states increasingly desperate to be independent of Russian gas, is bound to be responded to by Russia should it lead to the real prospect of the Assad government collapsing because it could destabilise Chechnya. 

The decision to threaten missile strikes as a substitute for diplomacy or as an attempt to force the Assad government to step down could literally backfire if it fails to achieve that ( which is likely ) but only steps up the regional instability that could create an even worse situation to deal with in future.

Egypt: On Calling the Coup that Wasn't a Coup a Coup

No longer is there any serious dissent about British foreign policy objectives in Parliament. Britain has no real independent foreign policy any more. It is a small medium rank power which has a permanent seat on the UN security Council only as a legacy of the Second World War and its status then as an imperial power.

Effectively, Britain follows or anticipates the foreign policies of Washington whose approval is needed and wanted. So the focus of opposition parties has shifted more to criticising the way the policy is presented and delivered as opposed to having any dissent as to the objectives nor wisdom of the foreign policy

So the shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander's line on the Egyptian coup that cannot be called a coup by Washington lest it is obliged to suspend the $1.3 billion subsidy it provides to the generals to buy US military hardware is to tell Britain he thinks it really is a coup.

Initially, there was a dispute about acknowledging whether a coup had taken place. I understand the caution in western capitals in the days that followed Morsi's exit: careful language was chosen to try to secure crucial influence with Egypt's new rulers.

How many Western diplomats with positions of power and influence have called it a coup ? The EU's Lady Ashton has not. The only reason Alexander calls it a coup now is because he wants to differentiate himself from those who are not calling it a coup because the US cannot call it a coup.

Many people across the world know it's a coup, some why Obama and Hague won't call it a coup and most don't care that Douglas Alexander is now calling it a coup because Hague cannot. The rest of Alexander's article is a mere string of banal and robotic 'public diplomacy' platitudes

The foreign policy of arming the Egyptian generals remains an unquestionable foreign policy.

'There has been speculation that Egypt would react to the suspension of EU or US support by ditching its peace treaty with Israel or abandoning its fight against the Islamist terrorist threat in the Sinai peninsula. But those policies are clearly in the country's interests, and the generals will not abandon them'

Nor is the US or Britain 'abandoning' the generals. The policies are also in the interests of the USA which is why it funds the generals and why they think they can act as a law unto themselves by attempting to eliminate Muslim Brotherhood protesters and liquidate it as a terrorist organisation.

'the scale of the violence now being witnessed confirms that the army is not the solution to Egypt's continuing crisis'.

What scale of violence would Alexander have considered necessary to provide a 'solution" ? A lower scale ? Only 200 or so ? The hapless New Labour appointee Cathy Ashton talks almost comically of "confidence building measures" between the 'interim government' and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Baroness Ashton, ex-CND administrator and national treasurer, met representatives of other EU states with a $400 million arms trade with Egypt and have decided belatedly to 'suspend' export licenses for the tear gas and rubber bullets that the Egyptian security forces are using 'disproportionately' at present.

The EU High Commissioner has declared that “Member states also agreed to suspend export licences to Egypt for any equipment which might be used for internal repression and . . . review their security assistance with Egypt” This does not mean, however, that all military hardware is being cancelled.

Alexander follows the routine line about the aid not being stopped for 'humanitarian reasons, the usual rationalistation offered by greedy overdeveloped states feeling guilty at their role in trying to control the energy resources of other lands by putting something back into their economies.

'Through its aid, Europe has a responsibility to advance our commitment to democracy and human rights. And European co-operation with Egypt could not continue as normal when civilians are being killed and basic rights are undermined'.

But only some arms deals used for 'internal repression' are being cancelled as there is no full arms embargo being proposed as there was on Syria as civil war broke out there. The reason is that security in Egypt is important because many EU states have failed to take 'energy security' and self sufficiency seriously enough in the past.

A great deal of Liquified Natural Gas ( LNG ) comes from Egypt and via it from the Gulf states such as Qatar. States such as Spain and Italy are especially dependent upon gas from North Africa. Britain has energy interests as well. One third of all gas in Egypt is controlled by the British BG Group.

As this EU report makes clear from 2009,

'The EU is particularly vulnerable to such events and trends, as it holds less than 2% of world gas reserves even though gas accounts for about one quarter of its gross domestic energy consumption.To make matters worse, indigenous production is stagnating and set to decline, while consumption is on the rise and will keep growing, driven primarily by the electricity generation sector and households'.

The quest for diversified supplies of gas ( the sort of diversity liberal elites do not like to mention in regards to the transcendent communitarian values of the EU ) means that Egypt is crucial to advance this strategy. Much of the LNG has to go through the Suez Canal and Gulf of Aden.

The security of the sea passage from the Mediterranean down through the Red Sea is, therefore, a vital interest. Without the Egyptian army there can be no prospect of 'stability' and the fear is that terrorists could menace oil and gas pipelines to EU states as well as its trading partner Israel.

The EU report states it baldly 'Most new discoveries of economically exploitable gas over the past two decades have been in the Middle East'. Moreover, if LNG is not to go through Russia, which uses gas as a diplomatic lever, new sources need to be tapped and shipped via Egypt.

This is the reality that people in the West do not want to hear. They are uncomfortable truths. Many liberal left progressive elites probably try to convince themselves that they can magically  combine 'democracy promotion' with the support for undemocratic governments in the region such as Saudi Arabia.

Hence the vacuous 'public diplomacy' line,

'The decisions and declarations made at this sensitive time matter to the credibility with which the west's voice is heard not just in Egypt but across the Middle East. It is vital that people believe the west's commitment to democracy is real'.

In Britain and across Europe an urgent, serious and mature discussion about this as a matter of emergency needs to be conducted.