The Third Iraq War: Syria, Turkey and the Kurdish Condundrum.

Britain's decision to join the US in bombing ISIS would appear belated and token. The US started bombing back in August 2014 yet ISIS is reported already to have come within a mile or so of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Whether for or against military intervention, experts consider air power alone as insufficient.

Britain's contribution of only six Tornado jets to attack ISIS positions is more about demonstrating that Britain remains at the forefront of combating terror in the Middle East and defending against the potential threat ISIS poses to the oil producing regions of Iraq from Kurdistan down towards Kuwait.

The aim of  'degrading and ultimately defeating' ISIS is about preventing the phantom caliphate from consolidating its position in Iraq and Syria through the exploitation and sale of the oil which it could use to fund its military operations and greater expansion in the region.

Having started with the mission to take on and destroy 'ISIL' in a long war or a 'generational struggle' against a 'global threat' that is mostly regional and confined to the Middle East, politicians such as Cameron seem intent in giving ISIS the sort of global power status the 'Islamic State' has sought out.

The dangers of 'mission creep' are inherent in the rhetoric about 'ISIL' since it is considered an organisation with which no accommodation can be made and so once the war has started, it follows that it would have to be finished or else the initial and costly bombing campaign would have been to no avail.

The main problem is not even the supposed 'allies' in the Greater Middle East are acting in concert because of shadowy geopolitical interests and the fact Qatar and Turkey are as concerned ( in fact pathologically obsessed ) with overthrowing President Assad in Syria as they are with defeating ISIS.

Qatari and Turkish intransigence on Assad's position in Syria remains one reason why there could not have been a negotiated political settlement between the Free Syria Army and Damascus and, as a consequence, why ISIS remains entrenched in its capital Raqqa as the most powerful 'third force' opposed to them both.

Without a truce between Syrian government forces and the FSA, ISIS, even if defeated in Iraq and rolled back from Sunni Arab regions through the action of Iranian backed Shi'ite militias and the Kurdish peshmerga, would always be able to to retreat and regroup in Syria before attacking once more.

While the US and Britain were prepared to engage diplomatically with Iran over the ISIS threat to Iraq, Qatar and Turkey would be hostile to any attempt to do a deal with an Iranian backed Assad which would affect their regional geopolitical interests. But without it, ISIS in Syria would be difficult to defeat.

Qatar and Turkey would remain reticent about any attempt to roll back ISIS in Syria that would entrench Assad and both Iranian and Russian influence. The Syrian National Council opposed Russian involvement in exploiting Syria's offshore gas in the Eastern Mediterranean and an Iran-Iraq-Syria 'Shi'ite' gas pipeline.

Turkey, a main backer on Sunni Muslim opposition to the Alawi administration of Assad, would like to become an east-west energy hub. A Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline would reposition it in a stronger position against Russia which would prefer to retain its predominance as Turkey's main source of gas.

Turkey has held back from joining in the military effort against ISIS because it President Erdogan wants to make that conditional upon the west renewing its pressure upon Assad to be replaced by a Sunni dominated government led by the Syrian National Council that would ensure Syria's territorial integrity.

Far from being the eastermost outpost of the west through NATO membership, a Cold War hangover, Turkey under Erdogan has reimagined its role as a 'neo-Ottoman' regional power and maintained an open border policy with Syria so as to facilitate the formation of Sunni militant forces.

Turkey was half-hearted about supporting the battle against ISIS at the Paris talks because it remains concerned arming the Kurds in Iraq could stimulate a wider Kurdish irredentist movement in Kurdish Syria and across the border where the PKK has had an uneasy peace with Ankara after a decades old conflict.

Erdogan has sought to draw Kurdish regions closer in the Turkish sphere of influence but not so far as to lead to calls for a separate state enjoining Kurds in southern Turkey, northern Syria and the already autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq, a valued special partner as it has the oil riches Turkey lacks.

Turkey has an oil pipeline stretching from Iraqi Kurdistan in Kirkuk to the port of Ceylan that it would like to make fully operational and has lucrative construction contracts with Erbil. Yet, at the same time, it opposes the wishes of those Kurdish groups in Syria and Turkey with far lessoil wanting to join it as part of one state.

On the contrary, there is reason to think Ankara would prefer these regions as a buffer between it and ISIS, one reason a motion in the Turkish parliament to create a 20km buffer zone in Syria between Turkey and Syria to secure passage for both foreign troops and for Turkish troops to secure Syrian-Kurdish enclaves.

While Turkey would be prepared to intervene militarily to secure its borders from ISIS, it would be more unwilling to contribute towards defeating ISIS without Assad being removed because that would free up the Kurdish fighters in Syria to demand an independent state that could stretch into southern Turkey.

Part of US-British strategy to relieve the Kurds in north-west Iraq from the onslaught of ISIS ( Tornados are bombing ISIS positions to this end ) and arming the peshmerga has already led to demands for the same for those Kurds being cleared from northern Syria and military action to defend Kobani.

While Turkey is a staunch ally of Barzani's KNC in Iraq it is concerned about arms falling into the hands of the 'wrong' Kurdish rebels of the PKK which is a major fighting faction of the YPG. Ankara's attempts to block Kurdish refugees from entering and Kurdish fighters from entering Syria has caused riots

As Turkey has no real interest in assisting the fight against ISIS if it would mean a greater impetus towards Kurdish secession in Turkey itself there have been accusations that Ankara could be in league or plotting with ISIS in order to use it as a tool to keep the Kurds divided and ruled from elsewhere-including Iran.

That Iran backs Assad as a Shi'ite co-religionist and a client prepared to accede to grand designs for a gas pipeline through Iraq and Syria to be completed by 2016 is seen as a direct threat to the Qatar-Turkey scheme for a Sunni axis of influence and one reason why Assad was plotting with the Kurds of Syria.

None of the contending regional powers in Syria has any interest in any one of the contending forces with military power gaining the upper hand. As that by default allows the most brutal warring Sunni militant force to win out, the danger is that the failure to destroy ISIS could lead eventually to greater western intervention.

The western states could hardly intervene to assist the Kurds against ISIS in Syria where Turkey regards the the PKK, the largest and most militant faction in YPG struggling against ISIS, as a threat to its territorial integrity of Turkey and one that is growing angry at Ankara's attempt to stop Turkish Kurds fighting in Syria.

The double standard is resented by the Kurds because prior to April 2014, fighters going to assist the Free Syria Army, even the most militant Al Qaida affiliated groups such as Al Nusra, had been facilitated and tolerated throughout 2012 and 2013 before ISIS turned its guns against the Sunni states and the west.

The battle between ISIS and the YPG is critical because, despite Prime Minister Cameron's claim that ISIS makes money from sales of oil to Assad, most of the Islamic State's revenues come from illicit sales of oil across the long Turkish border, a strategic area through which foreign Sunni militants are recruited.

More than that, the borderlands with Turkey contain some of Syria's richest oil reserves such as the Rumeilan oil fields to the east of Serekaniye which are mostly in Kurdish hands: who control these resources also controls the illegal fuel trade which runs through pipelines built during the sanctions on Saddam in the 1990s.

From Ankara's perspective it benefits its security if neither the YPG nor ISIS could win definitive control over these oil resources with which to buy weapons because it regards both the YPG and ISIS as both dangerous terrorist threats and, if anything, the PKK as far more dangerous to it than ISIS.

Turkey's conflict with the PKK date back to 1984 and they were aligned with Assad's Syria: even in 22013 the Kurds of Syria were in league with Damascus because Assad wanted to divert the Free Syria Army northwards away from the capital and both they and the Kurds squabbled over the oil reserves.

The reticence of the Syrian Kurds to either want the restoration of rule from Damascus or to remain within a Sunni Arab dominated Syria being fought for by the Free Syria Army or, of course to an insane degree by ISIS and Al Nusra, means it is highly unlikely either Turkey or Qatar could get their way in Syria.

Yet it is precisely just such a foreign policy which is bound to provoke the Kurds in Syria into further resistance that makes a political settlement difficult to acheive : if the Kurds are thwarted in their quest for autonomy they would align even with Assad against Turkey meaning it would back Sunni militants against it.

Why Cameron is Prepared to Extend British Air Strikes into Syria.

“There is nothing token about this, quite the contrary. They need our help, not just with the Tornados flying daily from Cyprus, but also from the surveillance equipment overhead – to add to the operations of the Iraqi and Kurdish forces. We need to think about how we beat IS. IS is based in Syria and IS needs to be defeated in Syria as well as in Iraq.” -Defence Minister Michael Fallon

“If there was the need to take urgent action, for instance to prevent the massacre of a minority community or a Christian community, I would order that and come to the House to explain immediately afterwards.”

'I have said we support what the Americans and the five Arab nations have done in Syria. We have a Syria strategy which is to build up the Free Syrian Army [and] the Syrian National Coalition to achieve a political transition in Syria'-Prime Minister David Cameron

Cameron would prefer to extend British strikes into Syria to help overcome the humiliation of the summer of 2013 when Parliament rejected Cameron's desired war to take out Assad over the alleged chemical gas attack on Ghouta. The geopolitical strategy remained unchanged since then.

Cameron backed Qatar and Turkey's plan to train and back Sunni jihadists to overthrow Assad just as he had led with Hollande in pushing for the NATO intervention to back the insurgents in Libya and get rid of Gaddafi. The ambition was a democratic Libya amenable to French and British energy interests.

Syria after 2011 was no different with France and Britain supporting Qatari policy in backing the SNC and so turning a blind eye to Doha's support for Sunni jihadists as a means justifying the end of removing the 'brutal dictator' and thus securing western influence in the Levant.

Energy interests and the special relationship with Qatar were paramount no matter how risky the strategy was. In common with Turkey, both Britain and France want Assad to go so that the offshore gas reserves would not be conceded to Russia as they subsequently were in December 2013.

Russia upped the stakes after it concluded a 25 year deal with Assad to develop Syria's gas. These lie in an offshore field 850 square miles of Syria's Exclusive Economic Zone in an area called Block 2 which is positioned the coastal cities of Banias and Tartous where Russia has a naval base.

These reserves of the Levant were discovered in 2010. Turkey subsequently backed the opposition to Assad as part of its neo-Ottoman strategy as a means to increase its influence in Syria and benefit from the fossil fuel reserves it lacks in partnership with gas rich Qatar by backing Sunni militant forces.

With Putin copying Turkish tactics in backing insurgents across its borders in Ukraine to advance geopolitical ambitions in the Black Sea region and successfully gain control over energy transit routes, the need to knock out ISIS and then Assad to check Russian influence in the Eastern Mediterranean has intensified.

Cameron made plain that he support the Gulf states interests, no matter their support for terrorism, by accusing Iran and Assad of doing the same. Indeed, Cameron recycled SNC and Qatari propaganda in Parliament on Friday 26th about Assad being the main sponsor of ISIS through buying its oil.

In fact, the oil revenues accrued by ISIS are mostly from sales of oil via Turkey, Britain's stalwart NATO ally through channels and illegal pipelines set up for the export of black market oil dating back to the 1990s when Saddam was firmly in charge in Baghdad. Officials in Turkey's deep state are said to be profiting.

ISIS funds mostly come from Turkey and not from Damascus which has no interest in funding an organisation based in Syria in a nation where 60% of the population is Sunni, if not Sunni Arab, and his own government is dominated by Alawis and supported by minorities wanting protection from Sunni militants.

Cameron's insistence on supporting the SNC and FSA as an alternative to Assad and ISIS simply is not credible. Nor is it meant as anything other than a determination to continue with the foreign policy of backing Qatar and its strategies no matter the risks because the stakes are access to oil and gas.

Cameron's ambition is to see ISIS destroyed and to then use the renewed pretext for intervention in Syria to erase the humiliation of his thwarted quest to remove Assad in 2013. This is far more a vital interest for Britain ( and France ) than it is for the US for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Qatar and Turkey sought the removal of Assad to get a Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline from the south Pars gas field through to the Mediterranean where it would then by exported through to EU markets. Even before the Ukraine conflict, energy diversification away from Russia was a geopolitical goal.

Secondly, Qatar is set to become a major exporter of LNG to Britain as North Sea gas declines. This was made plain by energy minister Michael Fallon in 2013 when he lauded both that an the 10 billion pounds investment Qatar was due to make in upgrading the UK's infrastructure.

Cameron was prepared to engage diplomatically with Iran's Rouhahi over Iraq but he demonstrated repellent hypocrisy in emphasising Iran's support for terrorism as one reason it unlike Qatar which backs Sunni jihadists across the region ( including the Taliban ) could be no an ally. Assad is regarded as a pariah.

The reason has all to do with fawning on Qatar so as to strike up a special relationship whereby Britain assists in asserting its regional interests militarily and in being pledged to defend its interests so as to get LNG and lucative arms deals. Hammond has even talked up the possibility of a military base in Qatar.

With Libya having fallen into chaos and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine going on, the Eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf are regions where Britain and France could source extra supplies of energy. The spread and surge of ISIS and the need to fight them as a 'global threat' are a consequence of energy geopolitics.

The so called 'moderate rebels' are miniscule and the FSA in September 2014 is, as Patrick Cockburn points out, little more than a CIA led outfit awaiting funds and new recruits to make it some third force between Assad and ISIS ( which is absurdly unrealistic and futile ).

Cameron seems intent on persisting with this mythical moderate Sunni force because of energy interests. It's both ruthless and inept as a foreign policy strategy but, then again, those two adjectives define Cameron and his neoconservative government.

Britain and the Third Iraq War: Strategy and Geopolitical Ambitions and Interests.

Richard Williams, a former commanding officer of the SAS who served in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote in the Independent on Sunday the deployment of RAF bombers was a “military sugar rush” that “risks looking fearful and half-cocked”.The Observer, Sunday 28 2014

Cameron's decision to deploy air strikes against ISIS is largely a political decision to make the Prime Minister look 'tough on terror'. ISIS realises that Cameron is a media obsessed politicians intent on grabbing the right headlines as opposed to the wily and shrewd diplomat that could defeat them.

The use of six Tornados and Britain's 'military prowess' is designed to send the message that Britain values the US led war against ISIS and wants to retain 'credibility' as a 'global player' leading at the forefront of a war on terror. All that despite the fact Britain did nothing while the Scottish referendum was going on.

Cameron prioritised domestic politics instead of the war against ISIS because it was more important for his government and as the US was leading the war anyhow. These air strikes would not make any difference apart from exploiting the fears of an ignorant populace about ISIS posing a direct threat to them.

ISIS is predominantly a regional threat and global in the sense it could use its power base in Syria to surge through Iraq and menace the present and future security of oil supplies of the Kurdistan and southern Iraq. These supplies are vital to ensure stable or falling oil prices and global economic recovery after the 2008 crash.

Britain has an interest in protecting both regions in Iraq because of the oil exploration and the interests BP have there. Qatar is a major Gulf ally partner which has been brought back into aligning with Saudi Arabia under western leadership in fighting ISIS whereas before there had been enmity between them.

Britain's role in bombing ISIS is firmly concerned with protecting resources far more than it is about protecting Britons from terrorist attacks at home. Had that been the main concern, Britain would not have been prepared to turn a blind eye towards Saudi Arabia and Qatar backing Sunni jihadists in Syria

ISIS would pose a threat to Qatar should it entrench itself in Iraq and launch attacks on the rest of Iraq and the Gulf States. In July 2014, ISIS made plain its intention of bombing the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the power which bore responsibility for creating the ISIS threat in its proxy war against Iran.

Britain is bound to regard any threat to Qatar as a threat to its interests. Qatar is a major supplier of liquefied natural gas to the domestic gas market. Michael Fallon, who last week predicted a 'new Battle of Britain' against ISIS, was energy minister before being shifted into the MoD.

Fallon made plain the increased dependency on Qatari gas was going to be part of a mutually beneficial partnership. Qatar would step up its LNG exports to Britain as imports increased. In return, Qatar would invest 10bn pounds in Britain's infrastructure as well as London's real estate and other projects.

The need to protect Qatar and energy supplies as North Sea gas depletes rapidly is one interests as is being bound to support geopolitical strategies that would check Iranian influence in the region such as holding out for the eventual removal of Assad once ISIS is 'degraded and destroyed'.

This is one reason Philip Hammond made clear Britain wanted to establish a permanent military base in one of the Gulf states, either Bahrain or most likely Qatar because ' we have to think through how we will train our forces in desert warfare, in hot-conditions’ combat in the future'.

While Cameron has sought to engage Iran in diplomacy to maintain a stable Iraq, he has made it clear that there is going to be no change in the failed and risky strategy that created ISIS in the first place. Assad is not to be drawn into a peace process in Syria because the aim is still to overthrow him.

Cameron claimed that ISIS' made profit from oil sold to Assad, so yoking together the threat of terror with the secular dictator. In fact, the evidence shows the oil from ISIS is coming via Turkey and was supported until ISIS turned its guns against Turkey.  Cameron repeated Gulf state propaganda.

So, apart from being dishonest about where ISIS had been selling its oil, Cameron is insistent upon continuing the strategy of backing the foreign policy of Qatar which played a major role in causing the chaos that allowed ISIS to gain ground in Syria and become the 'global' threat they would become.

ISIS poses a threat but the current determination of Britain to participate in air strikes is primarily about a policy determined by the geopolitics of energy. The attempt to insinuate Assad in in league with ISIS by buying their oil suggests he could never be negotiated with because he is effectively backing terrorists.

Yet it would only be through a ceasefire between Damascus and the Free Syria army and SNC that ISIS could be decisively defeated and a political solution to ISIS found in Syria other than continued war and the possibility and risks of external military intervention over the longer term.

The reason for Cameron's intransigence is partly ideological. Neoconservative ideology holds that dictatorship and terrorism are two peas from the same pod: remove the dictator and democracy and freedom and the rule of law shall flourish and terrorism would be curtailed and defeated.

Apart from the gross oversimplification of the complex realities of the Middle East that Cameron, following Blair, seems to understand little, this worldview comes in handy when demanding dictators from Saddam to Gaddafi and Assad are removed who are not favourable to Britain and its Gulf allies interests.

Despite the benefits of a negotiated truce between Assad and the FSA, Cameron is intent upon fawning upon Qatar because of the business interests and to the detriment of Britain's security and any real chance of peace in Syria. Qatar wants Assad gone and a Sunni government amenable to its designs.

Both Qatar and Turkey want a Qatar-Turkey pipeline which would avoid Qatari LNG having to be exported through the Persian Gulf and the strategic and Iranian held chokepoint of the Straits of Hormuz. It would also contain and offset rival plans for an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline to the Eastern Mediterranean.

When Cameron uses luring language to depict a 'terrorist caliphate' on the Mediterranean built by ISIL, he is not just conjuring up an image of 'terrorist' with a sea coast popularly associated in the British mind with continental beach holidays in places from Spain to Cyprus and Turkey.

On the contrary, the very use of the acronym 'ISIL' reflects the fact Cameron regards Islamic State as a threat to geostrategic interests in the Eastern Mediterranean, not least the prospect of the gas in the Levant being taken out of Assad and Russia's clutches and put back into the hands of the SNC and 'the rebels'.

Far from being a mere global terror threat, the spectre of "ISIL' provides the opportunity not just to bolster the security of the oil supplies from Kurdistan and Shi'ite regions but also to establish the precedent to bomb Syria, knock out ISIL and then move on to those considered to be backing it.

Given that Cameron is portraying the Assad regime as being in league with ISIS ( one of the most preposterous propaganda claims given that Assad is one its main enemies and targets in the region ), it would appear he has learnt nothing from recent failed 'humanitarian interventions' elsewhere after 2003.

British and French leaders are not that stupid that they would fulfil the definition of insanity in trying to repeat the same policies again and againwhile expecting a different result to the chaos that has been the consequence of the overthrow of Saddam and then Gaddafi after the NATO backed war of 2011.

On the contrary, it is far more disturbing because it is a sign of the strategic deperation over the security of future supplies of oil and gas in regions lying those regions affected by the crumbling of states through sectarian and ethnic enmities heightened and sharpened by political anarchy and resource struggles

In preparing for the 'long war' or 'generational struggle', Cameron means not only the fact ISIS would take a long time to defeat. It is also part of a campaign of 'public diplomacy' softening up British opinion for a continued war over energy transit routes lying within regions where there are ample oil and gas reserves.

It's about time people woke up to this and fast.

The Third Iraq War: Enter Britain

Nothing was more predictable than Cameron waiting until after the Scottish referendum to try to reunite Britain behind him and pose as a 'global player' once more by joining in with air strikes again 'ISIL'. There is now even messianic rhetoric about a 'new battle of Britain' from Defence Minister Michael Fallon.

However, given that the US has been targeting ISIS for a month from the air, it is hard to see what real difference Britain would bring apart from the usual need to 'stand shoulder to shoulder' with the US. Instead of rushing into military action, Britain should try to retain an independent position.

For a start it is hardly wise to be straying into Syrian air space to attack ISIS without any attempt to engage Assad's government because the reality is that the Free Syria Army is merely a front for a CIA assembled coalition of Sunni forces without any real power on the ground.

ISIS is primarily a regional threat first and foremost to Iraq and then to those Gulf states which had been prepared to allow funding and arms to go to Sunni militant groups such as the Al Nusra Brigades. Qatar and Saudi Arabia were largely responsible for this because they wanted to overthrow Assad.

The fact Saudi Arabia and Qatar are now part of the coalition against ISIS is farcical given the fact both powers ratcheted up the conflict in Syria by backing their own favoured Sunni jihadists the better to get their sway in Damascus in any post-Assad future.

Both Gulf powers created the conditions in Syria for the more brutal jihadists to flourish and gain ground. So Hugh Robertson turns truth on its head when he states “The fact is, our failure to take action promptly and effectively then did create in part the conditions that have led to the crisis we face today'

“There is no doubt that many of our allies across the Gulf saw that as a sign of weakness. Now, I’m absolutely delighted that the Labour party has woken up to what I believe needs to be done and I accept that they and many others had doubts about what was happening a year ago.

This is dangerous nonsense and if Robertson is typical of Britain's military high command there is reason to be concerned. Had the US and Britain gone into Syria to help remove Assad in 2013, the situation would have replicated what happened in Libya after the failed military adventure of 2011.

Had Assad been removed ( and probably murdered in a similar gory way to Gaddafi's brutal lynching, torture and butchery ), a war between the Sunni factions would have no doubt resulted in ISIS holding Damascus and causing ethnic cleansing and sectarian murder on a far vaster scale.

Joining in the air strikes just to flaunt 'military powess' is largely futile unless there is a longer term plan to draw in Assad and Iran into a regional political initiative. If there is not and ISIS is rolled back, it still could regroup because the conflict in Syria would be continued by other Sunni militants.

The Free Syria Army and 'moderate rebels' are largely non-existent as a real military force and would not be able to beat both ISIS and Assad. The idea that they ought to is pure wish thinking that accords with the sort of absurd and unrealistic strategy pursued between 2011 to 2013.

To defeat ISIS, there has to be a diplomatic initiative for a ceasefire between the Free Syria Army and Assad's forces. Saudi Arabia and Qatar would have to be pressured further into desisting from any policy allowing funds to go to Sunni militants. Turkey would be made to clamp down on illegal oil sales.

The foreign policies of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were as dangerous, in fact far more so, than the much maligned Iran, their Gulf rival which is hypocritically accused of sponsoring terrorism abroad when, by any definition, that is precisely what Britain's Gulf allies have been doing on a far more dangerous basis.

The reason why Britain turned a blind eye to this was it hoped the strategy would remove Assad and check the possibility of an Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian gas pipeline towards the Eastern Mediterranean in favour of an alternative Qatar-Turkey pipeline. Assad's departure would lessen Russian influence too.

The entire role of energy security in this shabby and sinister debacle needs far more attention than it usually gets. ISIS is the consequence of a shoddy strategy to assert the hegemony of the Gulf states over its energy export rival in Iran and against Russian influence over the offshore gas reserves of the Levant.

In Iraq, its expansion from a threat in Syria to a 'global threat' is largely due the threat it poses to present and future oil production in Kurdistan and the Shi'ite south. This supply is needed to keep oil prices stable and so keep a global economy of cheap Chinese manufactures and hence profligate western consumerism afloat.

Britain's role is not just about backing the US and Gulf allies. It is about buying influence, protecting both its economic interests in the region and asserting control over the global oil supplies that is needed to retain western military and political hegemony against that of other global powers

Both Syria and Iraq, as lands separating the Eastern Mediterranean from the Persian Gulf, are the site for a regional proxy war between contending powers vying for control over resources and energy transit routes between the Middle East and the West against rival schemes backed by Iran, Russia and China.

In the longer term, there need to be significant geopolitical and economic shifts in the West away from over dependence upon imported oil and gas to drive the economy. Globalisation has made the world economy ever more reliant on a constant or falling oil supply but it is going to come from lands riven with conflicts.

The Third Iraq War 2014: A Brief Consideration of the Strategy and the Stakes

'The current wave of bombing in Syria appears to be a response, as is often the case with air wars, to US domestic politics. It is to show Barack Obama is “not a wimp” and is “taking the fight to the enemy”. Even so he has been forced to justify it on the grounds that Isis is a “threat to American security”, a ludicrous claim.'-US air strikes against Isis will only escalate violence, Simon Jenkins, Guardian Sepember 23 2014

Debates about the strategy to deal with ISIS continue. The reason why the US is leading a coalition of states to destroy ISIS, already joined by France, is concerned mostly with a regional threat to global energy security and it seems Jenkins does not grasp how global power politics in 2014 actually works.

It is obvious that the the claim ISIS is a threat to the US or Britain is 'ludicrous'. With the Scottish referendum won, Cameron is now set to try to overcome the humiliation of Parliament's rejection of his war against Assad in 2013 now a clearly defined global evil has been identified in the form of ISIS.

The fact that had Assad's regime been destroyed the threat of ISIS, which wants Assad to be destroyed as much as the Western leaders did, would have been worse is now a fact to be forgotten. But the entire reversal of strategy within a year hardly induces much confidence in them.

The truth is we are not going to know what the military strategy is because we are obvioisly not going to be told. The endgame is still defeat ISIS and then build up the so-called 'moderate' sunni 'rebels' to overthrow Assad and win a geopolitical contest over Iran and secure the influence of the Gulf states and Turkey.

Part of this is concerned with energy security. A Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline and pro-western Sunni government would check Russian control over the offshore gas reserves of the Levant basin and hence Putin's influence in the energy rich Eastern Mediterranean region.

Evidently, ISIS is a threat to the present and future planned expansion of the oil production in the Kurdistan region east of Kirkuk and down in the Shi'ite regions of the south. These reserves are needed to keep the oil price stable and so power the global economies of the West and East Asia.

Resource wars and the recurrent threat of the dispossessed in lands ravaged by war, chaos and the impact of global heating, as is clear in the Sunni Arab regions of Syria where the Fertile Crescent that sustained life for millennia is dying, are set to dominate the 21st century.

ISIS's spread and surge into Iraq represents an outgrowth of these resource struggles in Syria and Iraq. Jenkins seems to be under the impression these wars are all about wars of choice launched by strutting and posturing democratic politicians wanting to win votes and to be 'tough on terror'.

To an extent, that is clearly a pressure. The 'public diplomacy' offensive designed to big up the ISIS threat and soften up public opinion to the idea of a long war or 'generational struggle' reflects the foreknowledge that the west would need to intervene wherever militant groups threaten resource interests.

It's odd than Jenkins cites the First Gulf War of 1990 as a better example of a war waged with 'total commitment' rather than one that starts with bombing and advances into a larger war by stealth and because of 'mission creep'. After all, that war, as with the Third Gulf War, was concerned with energy security too.

The Causes of Third Iraq War and the Global Struggle Against IS

War against ISIS is becoming more imminent eaders and diplomats from more than 30 countries pledged to use "whatever means necessary" to defeat the 'global threat' of Islamic State ( ISIS ) with France set to join Americal air strikes and Britain, no doubt, waiting til after the Scottish referendum on September 18.

The Paris talks are mostly concerned about containing ISIS and protecting the oil producing zones of Kurdistan and those towards the south of Iraq around Basra and near the borders of Kuwait and towards Saudi Arabia. The terror threat to the West is useful mostly as 'public diplomacy' in democracies.

ISIS does pose a potential threat to the region and across its so-called caliphate because most of the lands it stakes a claim to are in regions with copious supplies of rare earth and minerals as well as oil that the world economy requires. So in that real sense it is a 'global threat'.

Public diplomacy requires that the population is given an simplistic narrative in which there are evil terrorist ready to attack Britain or France because a war to secure resources is seen as lacking the necessary heroic uplift that a cosmic battle between good and evil has.

In the US, statesmen and advocates of geopolitical strategies are usually more refreshingly more candid about the importance of strategic control over resources than in Britain where politicians think it's rather bad form to mention the grubby reality of oil needs in front on the electorate, that is, the children.

A surge in oil prices could damage the economies of the west such Britain's with its fragile and ailing rentier economy easily affected by the higher cost of oil, not least as it is dependent upon East Asian manufactured goods being produced cheaply to keep up consumer led recovery through shopping.

The threat to Qatar in particular is a threat to Britain's supply of liquified natural gas upon which it depends for 12-15% of its gas imports with the decline of North Sea gas reserves. Qatar is a vital market for French and British weapons system and billions of dollars of investment to prop up their ailing rentier economies.

Britain is one of many global powers with a developed economy that has an interest in that along with OPEC nations and East Asian countries such as Japan and China, even though the 'international core coalition' to defeat ISIS is primarily a US western led alliance.

Maintaining western influence by making its military capacity useful to Saudi Arabia and the GCC states is considered vital to fend off the prospect of China making inroads and muscling in to the lucrative arms market dominated by US, French and British companies.

The other aim is to try to bring together the Gulf states again over differences as regards Libya where Qatar is backing militant Islamists and the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt which are backing ex-Gaddafi militias. The need to freeze Iran out of diplomacy is also thought necessary.

One reason is because the 'Friends of Syria' Group ( i.e the west and its allies ) want unity between Qatar and Saudi Arabia so as to be able to overthrow Assad and secure the Turkey-Qatar pipeline. That would thwart Iran's alternative plan for a Shi'ite pipeline through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean.

Resource wars and struggles for access to far flung supplies of oil and gas are set to be a recurrent feature of the 21st century. Jihadists, as in Syria, were used as part of a risky strategy to try to get rid of Assad just as they were in Libya, the better to try to gain control over oil.

The consequence was blowback. Wherever the US, France and Britain have considered military intervention the stakes have been fighting a 'global terror threat' which is portrayed as such because there is a need to justify intervening to secure oil supplies whether Boko Haram in Nigeria or jihadists in Yemen or Egypt.

ISIS has a base in Syria and Iraq but it is, like Al Qaida, becoming a franchise operation that is set to spread across the lands claimed as part of the caliphate because in such regions jihadi-Islamists are leading the disenfranchised poor in a war to seize oil or menace oil transit zones or vital pipeline routes.

Throughout all these lands climate change, drought, crop failure , overpopulation, the strain on water supplies and resource struggles are combining now in a lethal brew to spawn pyschopathological jihadi-movements that have nothing to lose in trying to deal crippling blows to the world economy.

The Third Iraq War: Continuity and Change between 2004-2014

“This is a galvanizing moment for NATO and our partners”-US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel

President Obama is finalising plan to 'degrade and destroy' the Islamic State which he and other leaders refer to as ISIL in Iraq. However, there are hawkish voices demanding that air strikes should be broadened out into Syria and that would not mean involving Assad's permission though he is still officially head of state.

The call to go in and bomb IS in Syria where it has its base in and around Raqqa reflects the fact that despite the emergence of IS out of the Sunni militant groups, which were being backed until late 2013, the aim of US strategy in the longer term is to remove Assad in continuity with the demand made by early 2012.

The goals of the Second Iraq War in 2003, launched by the Bush administration, were energy security and to create a domino effect of democratisation across the region from Iraq into Syria so as to reduce US dependence upon Saudi Arabian oil in the period before the shale oil revolution in North America. 

Needless to say, the democratisation of Iraq by 2005 had got under way but in the context of a collapsed state. Sectarian and ethnic tensions shattered Iraq and the created chaos and conflicts that have gone on ever since: IS in Iraq could only gain ground in 2014 as Sunni Arabs were prepared to align with it.

Sunni Arabs were marginalised by the dominance of the Iraqi Shi'ites in Baghdad, who lean towards Iran, and the development of an ever more autonomous Kurdish region prepared to sell oil and strike oil contract deals with global energy giants ( such as ExxonMobil ) without the permission of the central government.

Yet the energy security issue remained unsolved because IS has gained what Obama euphemistically termed 'resources'. That means, of course, oil. From oil revenues IS could sustain attacks on the Kurdish oil rich region or even to surge south towards Baghdad or around it down further.

Such a disruption to the oil supply would create a severe increase in global oil prices at a time when the US and especially other NATO nations are experiencing very slow economic growth or have had stagnating economies in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

One reason the US is going in with air strikes, and is due to step them up with NATO nations playing a possible auxiliary role, is to give NATO nations a new sense of mission against a threat to the southern border and to gear it towards the main challenge of the 21st century: resource wars.

Such air strikes would be partly about showing NATO 'credibility' on the borders of southern Turkey and starting to recreate NATO definitively into an organisation that could use military power to defend energy interests and uphold its alliances in the Middle East by protecting Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Even though both these energy rich Gulf states could defend themselves with the state-of-the-art military equipment sold to them by the US, Britain and France, these powers are reluctant to be seen attacking other Sunni Muslims in lands not so far away lest it cause resentment among the people. 

Islamic State is a primarily a regional threat. Though the gory spectacles, mass killings of minorities and ambition to expand the Caliphate is real, the US and other western powers only started to act when it was clear IS posed a threat to the oil producing regions of Kurdistan, hitherto thought of as relatively secure.

That strategy against Islamic State mean rolling back IS in Iraq and broadening strikes into Syria too if necessary because the 'game plan' as regards it is still as it was before to impose a 'moderate' Muslim Brotherhood government on Damascus, overthrow Assad and check Iranian and Russian influence.

The last thing the US, Britain and France would want is to destroy IS only to empower and embolden Assad and Iran so they could realise the plan to build the 'Shi'ite Islamic' gas pipeline from the South Pars gas field to the Eastern Mediterranean.

Already Russia has a naval presence at the Syrian port of Tarsaus and permission to drill and exploit the gas reserves in the Syrian part of the Levant Basin. A gas pipeline linking Iranian gas through Syria as an alternative to the Qatari -Turkish one to the EU is this to be blocked off and thwarted at all costs.

In this sense there is a certain connection between the conflict in Ukraine and in Syria. If the US or NATO were to bomb positions in Syria, even if held by IS, this would be a violation of sovereignty by NATO far more than Russia's incursions into Eastern Ukraine and the backing given to "pro-Russia rebels".

Yet Syria's territorial sovereignty was effectively violated when Turkey started arming and training Sunni jihadists to go across the border to overthrow Assad and there is evidence Turkish forces in March 2014 had planned military incursions into northern Syria to protect the tomb of Shah Suleiman.

The protection of the site where the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire was under threat by ISIS was important to Erdogan who has pursued a neo-Ottoman strategy towards both Syria and Kurdistan, both former provinces before World War One and valuable for recreating Turkey as an east-west energy hub.

It is is clear, therefore, that energy security and control over oil and gas transit routes are the predominant factor in  contemporary geopolitical struggles in the Greater Middle East and the quest for both regional and global hegemony. Any account which omits mention of these factors ignores reality.