Syria: Why Syria Concerns Britain

The Internet is full of voices that say 'Syria is none of our business'. If only that were true, Britain would not have been ramping up the aggressive rhetoric for the past two years about Assad 'going' nor trying to avoid engaging in diplomacy with Iran and even with Russia over Syria's future.

Syria does concern Britain as the Middle East has to because its central to the global economy upon which Britain depends for investment, especially from Saudi Arabia and Qatar which back 'the rebels'.There is no point in trying to pretend that these interests are not interconnected with our way of life here.

Syria will concern us even more when Britain gets dragged in to a potential new Afghanistan situation should military intervention cause the civil war to intensify or spread into Lebanon or drag Iran further in and be responded to by Saudi Arabia.

In the short term, the best thing to do is to stay out but in the longer term Britain needs to take energy self sufficiency as a matter of urgency and not be drawn in by gas rich states such as Qatar to take sides in potentially lethal sectarian conflicts.

The long term challenges are huge, the inertia and complacency vast and the short term prospects of being drawn in to an epoch of intractable resource wars a terrifying reality. What happens if the conflict spreads ? If Saudi Arabia is threatened with blowback ?

There is every reason to be filled with foreboding at the outcome of any military strike by the US and Britain. I have no confidence in the ability of Cameron or Hague to know what they are doing. Lots of military experts and diplomats are aghast at what is being proposed.

Syria: On the Brink of Regionwide War

'World leaders have issued a string of bellicose statements in the last 24 hours, with Iran and Russia standing alongside the Assad regime against an emerging western alliance led by the US, UK, France and Australia. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Abbas Araqchi, intimated that Tehran would respond, should the west strike.'

It's difficult to see how the aggression of the West can be held in check now. They have the Arab League onside now so the oil and gas interests are safe, at least at present.Now the US, France and UK are casting around for the correct legalistic formula to justify a military strike as opposed to pursuing diplomacy.

However, if the conflict spills over from Syria into Saudi Arabia or Iran steps up its support for Hizbollah and Shia militias to combat an emboldened Free Syria Army, the war on the ground could intensify to the point where Iran is then threatened by Saudi Arabia and then what will the West do ?

The aim of the Western powers is ultimately to get regime change in Iran. But Russia is hardly going to stand idly by. And China has started to get a great deal of oil from Saudi Arabia in the last decade. Yet it has large interests in Iran and oil assets in Iraq as well.

This military intervention could be catastrophic. It is hardly going to remove Assad's regime and that is not the aim. The purpose is to 'degrade' his regime, Western leaders claim, to prevent him using WMDs with 'impunity' through the West acting with unilaterally in tangent with the rich Gulf States.

The idea is Assad is to yield to the pressure of this 21st century version of 'gunboat diplomacy' by negotiating a way out that allows the West to coalition a new regime in Syria that is not pro-Iranian and also strong enough to resist Al Qaida.

It is hard to see how that could be acheived. The West would face a strong regional power such as Iran more directly should it act to shore up Assad and should the sectarian struggle on the ground in Syria become even more intense. Shia agitation in Bahrain against the Sunni monarchy could flare up.

Moreover, Hizbollah acts as a state within a state in Lebanon and if it ratchets up the struggle to defend Assad in concert with Iran then Israel could be dragged in to the region wide conflict. That is why Assad's advisers are already making noises about retaliation against Israel.

We are standing on the precipice of an extremely dangerous region wide conflict that could even create an oil price shock and destabilise the world economy. Saudi Arabia is not firmly secure from any 'blowback' from Syria if it falls into a situation similar to Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Supposed statesmen such as Hague exemplify the continuity between the neoconservative strands of geopoltical thinking dominant in 2003 and still influential a decade later in 2013. Hague has learnt nothing from the Iraq War whatsoever

Nor does Hague seem to have recognised the obvious fact that Iran has been able and willing to intervene in Syria a lot more because the upshot of the Iraq War to remove the secular tyrant Saddam Hussein was to create a Shia led government in a country where 70% are Shi'ites.

The abstract and coldly fanatical geopolitical fantasies about hastening a showdown with Iran through Syria and Iraq ( 'regime change' )  is firmly a component part of neoconservative ideology. Hague believes this is his 'world historical' moment. It might be in ways he hardly expects, assuming civilisation continues.

Syria : Spinning Towards War

As I predicted, the presumed chemical weapons attack on Ghouta east of Damascus is being spun into a diplomatic offensive to assert the will of the Western powers as the ones 'calling the shots' in global power politics. This seems more vital after Egypt ignored the West in using force to crush the Muslim Brotherhood.

The news headlines are full of Obama and Cameron's meeting to discuss what is to be done. The Guardian reported,

'The prime minister and US president said time was running out for Assad to allow UN weapons inspectors to the areas where the attack took place. Government sources said the two leaders agreed that all options should be kept open'.

It looks ominously as though the same drive towards threatening war has now been set in motion as it was in the months preceding Iraq. Though a full scale invasion is not going to happen, air strikes and aid to the FSA are most likely the 'options on the table'.

The assumption of Assad's responsibility and the problem that no conclusive proof will be found, with all the media tending to insist the responsibility primarily lies with Assad, is too good a propaganda opportunity to waste when it can be used to prove the 'credibility' of the West in dealing with the 'threat'.

The establishment of the exact facts is not considered so important. The aim is to put pressure on Russia, the better to get it to respond in such a way as to deny Assad's responsibility in the hope any evidence that subsequently comes out can be spun in favour of Hague's and Fabius's position earlier in the week.

The choreography was fairly predictable. The attempt to preempt any findings of the UN inspectors is the Iraq format. The way that Britain and France ramped up the rhetoric after the attack happened while Washington deliberated is in accordance with the format for intervention used in Libya.

Playing with Fire : The Syrian Crisis and " The Options on the Table"

The response to the Syrian Civil War in Washington and London seems to vacillate from the tough talk about 'all options being on the table' and claims that neither power will send arms to the Syrian opposition. Cameron indicated on the BBC that Britain would not now supply the "rebels" with weapons.

As with anything Cameron says, it is 'Public Diplomacy' ( i.e. propaganda ) designed to try to reassure the pubic that Britain is not doing anything as irresponsible as arming the 'wrong' elements in the Syrian opposition. Nor has Cameron actually denied that the opposition will, in fact, be armed.

What Cameron said was this,

“What we should be doing is working with international partners to help the millions of Syrians who want to have a free democratic Syria, who want to see that country have some chance of success.”

“We’re not intervening by supplying weapons, but I think we can with partners to strengthen those parts of the Syrian opposition that really do represent the Syrian people.”

The strategic partners that Britain has with regards Syria are Turkey and Qatar, which have been funding and aiding Syrian Muslim Brotherhood insurgents, and Saudi Arabia which has been backing Wahhabi jihadists as a proxy against Assad, the Lebanese Hizbollah and, by extension, its main Gulf rival in Iran.

Cameron only states that Britain is not supplying the opposition with weapons and not that it is not working with its strategic partners in the Middle East to funnel weapons into the favoured opposition militias. The claim of "stalemate" means essentially that there will be no diplomatic attempt to get a ceasefire.

This explains why in Washington military experts such as General Martin Dempsey are being called in to discuss the military options which involve continuing to work covertly with insurgent groups via the CIA or to establish no fly zones or, ominously, even to use kinetic strikes.

So despite all the reassurances that the US and UK will not supply weapons, the possibility of a disastrous attempt at intervening militarily is actually being pondered as under no circumstances would they allow Iran to win in Syria. This is why they are still worried about Assad becoming stronger.

Fears in the US about Iran's regional power have only grown with a Shia government under Maliki in Iraq allowing its airspace to be used by Iran to shuttle weapons to Damascus as well as the paramilitary Quds Force. Iraqi volunteers have also been joining Hizbollah to fight the Sunni militias.

So the potential for war exists no less than it did a moth ago when Hague got the EU to lift the embargo on supplying weapons to Syrian opposition groups that are still absurdly termed 'rebels' .The attempt to talk tough cannot alter the outcome of either the civil war on the ground nor persuade Russia to stop favouring Assad.

What this sabre ratting in Washington can do is to ramp up the pressure to act in order to defend the US and UK's global 'credibility'' .Clinton and Hague's bad diplomacy prepared the way in insisting 'Assad Must Go' from the outset. Hague remains determined to remove Assad as his prestige depends on it.

For the fear of not 'losing face' in the Middle East and thus emboldening Iran is bound to become a recurring one. John McCain obviously wants to portray Obama as weak and dithering. Hague is itching to exploit his supposed diplomatic victory with the EU over the embargo to prove himself 'right'.

The geopolitical situation is too volatile for this sort of posturing. With Israel having been claimed to used Turkish airbases for a strike to knock out Syrian anti-ship cruise missiles, on July 5, the danger is that Iran will see Turkey as a greater threat to its security.

As historian Mark Almond put it,

“It [Turkey] could be a conduit for a potential air strike into Iran through its own aspects. It would be much more difficult for the Iranians to detect something coming from Israel..Even if the Israelis have plans to strike at Iran from a completely different direction the risk is that the Turks will be held responsible and Turkey could be drawn into a conflict.”

The terrifying part of any potential conflict between Turkey and Iran is that Turkey is a NATO member and Article 5 is clear that any attack on a member state is construed as an attack on all. The failure of the US and UK to try to involve Iran in diplomacy over Syria could mean the potential collision of these powers over it is growing.

The Geopolitical Factors Behind the Syrian Crisis.

It's now official. The US has announced, in response to what it regards as confirmation that the Assad regime is using chemical weapons, that it will now arm the 'rebels' in Syria. This morning the Guardian newspaper headline reported 'US says it will arm Syrian rebels following chemical weapons test'.

The US was positively itching to arm 'the rebels' for some time. The chemical weapons pretext was one needed to convince them that could conceal a cynical strategy that had already covertly been promoting via the CIA in arming jihadists just as they did in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

The secular Syrian democrats who initiated protests against President Assad are no longer influential and the 'rebels' are better now term insurgents as they were in Iraq when Sunni militias with similar ideologies fought against the US and then the Shia guerillas that were allowed by the US to defeat them.

The willingness of the US, UK and France to back Sunni militias in Syria is a consequence of the fact that it backed majority Shia dominance in Iraq, and turned a blind eye to sectarian and ethnic cleansing after 2006, as the price of getting a stable government in Baghdad and being eventually able to withdraw troops.

Having supported a Shia government in Iraq, the US and UK now find themselves fearing Shia dominance promoted by Iran spreading in to Syria in a way that would upset the balance of power in the Middle East. Added to that, if Assad wins, Syria, Iraq and Iran would potentially move closer.

This poses a threat to Western geopolitical strategies for containing Iran which, in effect, means imposing punitive sanctions to destabilise the government, politicising the IAEA to find Iran guilty of trying to create a nuclear bomb and continuing the war in Afghanistan to hem it in from the east.

Control over pipeline supply routes are part of this lethal New Great Game, one becoming more dangerous with the growth of the Indian and Chinese super economies and the Western attempt to compete in Central Asia and the Middle East for access to fossil fuel resources.

The Afghanistan War, set to continue by covert means and by supporting US contractors after troop 'drawdown' ( i.e. not withdrawal ) by 2014, is crucially concerned with blocking off Iranian gas exports east through the partially completed IP pipeline to Pakistan. The US favours the TAPI pipeline.

The proposals for a Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline from Iran's South Pars gas field which is shares with rival Qatar, who is backing Sunni Muslim Brotherhood Islamist militias in Syria, has created consternation in Saudi Arabia and, of course, in Turkey, the main 'East-West pipeline transit country after Russia.

Destroying Iranian power is the key to hegemony over both the Middle East and Central Asia which is why the US and UK have repeatedly made Iran the most demonised nation in the region, even if it's government commits far fewer human rights abuses than Saudi Arabia, an outright despotism.

The fact is that the three permanent security council members that 'represent' the West are not prepared to see the insurgents lose , as they have been after the defeat in Qusair because the ultimate game plan is to curtail and roll back Iranian influence in Syria.

With a Shia dominated government favourable in Iraq, the balance of power has tilted towards Iran. That threatens the interests of Saudi Arabia and the stability of certain other minority Sunni regimes such as Bahrain that faced uprisings in the wake of the Arab Spring by Shia Muslims this time.

It will be interesting to see how Iran and Russia will react to the US decision. to arm the 'rebels' The only certainty is an intensification of the war, regional instability and a potentially very dangerous clash of interests together with an arms race by outside powers to back 'their side'.

This is a very, very dangerous situation. It has all the elements in place for a potential escalation into an all out regional war and major diplomatic crisis with global ramifications. For those in Britain interested in averting catastrophe, energy security needs to be looked as a matter of emergency.

Syria: The Appalling Prospect of Widening Conflict.

Syria could quite potentially be one of the most dangerous flash points in global history. It occupies an important location in the Middle East and is the site now, as the conflict has developed into a bloody civil war along sectarian lines,for global power politics over the ultimate control of oil and gas to be played out.

The escalation of the violence and threats of greater violence have increased in recent weeks with Hizbollah entering decisively to attack Sunni insurgent strongholds and repel their militias. Hizbollah success in this, and growing Iranian influence, would decisively destroy the West's dominant role in the Middle East.

Indeed, it is a symbolic that even a small Gulf state such as Qatar has a hold on Britain and it has an impact on British foreign policy. It is important in the way it is acting as regards Syria that it is backed without question by the UK. Given that Qatar is active is already funnelling arms to the Sunni jihadists in Syria.
.
Neither the USA nor Britain will stand up to Saudi Arabia is about oil supplies. Britain also has highly lucrative British Aerospace contracts and armsdeals with Saudi Arabia to shore up the lynchpin of British and US interests in the Middle East and one as responsible as any for spreading and promoting terrorism.

Unfortunately, this foreign policy is not only about the enrichment of the elites or oil companies. It connects with the very facts of everyday existence in in the UK today. The 'right' to relatively cheap oil and a high octane lifestyle is not for negotiation in either the US or the UK.

Hence the absurd legacy of the Iraq War launched by the US and UK in 2003, a war to control its oil was that in imposing a democracy they eventually got a Shia dominated government under Maliki that looks favourably on Tehran. Three months ago Iraq agreed to the construction of an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline.

This Iranian 'Islamic' pipeline project can only have ramped up the pressure for the West to retain the freedom to actively intervene by backing the Sunni insurgents as and when the US, UK and France decides it has less to lose than by doing so in order to prevent Shia dominance.

The conflict in Syria is now squarely between two oil and gas rich states, that is, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Due to the counter productive impact of sanctions on Iran, it is now all the more interested in checking Sunni insurgents and will be seen as a measure of vital measure of defence.

But the fact is that the West has no alternative supply of oil and gas that would allow it flexibility not to get dragged into this regional proxy war. Iran is a regional power that has the basis of a democracy already. Yet it has been encircled by the West through military force being used in Iraq and Afganistan.

Without any attempt at negotiation via diplomacy, Iran responded by supplying arms to Hizbollah. It was always going to be the way Iran would respond as the IAEA has been politicised by the USA to advance the idea it has the capacity to build nuclear weapons and justify any measures against itas it sees necessary.

This is what is so dangerous about the situation. Iran is a bulwark against Western hegemony in Central Asia as much as the Middle East. The war in Afghanistan cannot end in 2014  because the infrastructural projects in Afghanistan are not complete. Politicians only speak now of 'draw-down' not withdrawal.

The largest so-called 'infrastructural' project is the TAPI pipeline in Afghanistan, the reason ( yet seldom mentioned ) that the US and NATO forces are 'staying the course'. The calculation is not just to supply south east Asia with gas but to block off the rival IP pipeline and so entrench sanctions against Iran.

That's why Syria is important. Not only is it a proxy struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as a sectarian conflict that will potentially spread across the the Middle East. It is part of a wider geopolitical struggle for the control over resources in Central Asia and hegemony in world politics.

As I sit here in the year just preceding the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War the date '1914' is hanging heavy with those who can see parallels in how the Great Powers got dragged into a catastrophe. The stakes could not be higher this time: all developed and developing powers need oil as their lifeblood.