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.

On North Korea.

Maybe in the light of North Korea being compared to the Nazi regime due to UN reports revealing the extent of its concentration camps and mass executions some in Britain might have cause for reflection that one prominent figures in the Stop the War Coalition actually look upon this totalitarian model state with sympathy.

The leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain called Andrew Murray, a sometime contributor to the Morning Star and Reader's Digest magazine, stressed this in 2003,

"Our Party has already made its basic position of solidarity with Peoples Korea clear".

He wrote this with reference to 'the Party' because the US under the Bush administration had referred to North Korea as part of an "Axis of Evil" and was preparing to invade Iraq in that year. Those journalists who supported that invasion have been rightly criticised.

Yet those such as Murray are still allowed to shield behind their ostensibly good work in the Stop the War Coalition as something that is less important than their pronouncements in sympathy with mass murdering totalitarian regimes such as North Korea.

It is about time those truly concerned with being against senseless wars and militarism also were consistent in holding such vile individuals to account and refusing to countenance their position as leading voices in protest against intervention in Syria.

It is impossible to have a sane opposition to the growing trend towards militarism if those allowed to be leading voices in the 'official anti-war' groups in Britain are those who sympathise with a North Korean regime that starves and murders so many of its people.

But, then again, North Korea is a Lodestar for all those obsessed with the idea that it is uniquely, always and everywhere the US Empire that is the 'root cause' of every global ill and who remainn indifferent to the reality on the ground in North Korea.

There is little chance of any form of intervention to try and remove the regime of Kim Jong-un because none of the regional and global powers has any real ability to put pressure on North Korea let alone the willpower to intervene. The comparison with Middle Eastern regimes is also not a good one.

Unlike Iraq and Syria, there have not even been any attempts at internal revolt or rebellion so deeply entrenched and powerful is the hold of the Juche totalitarian state. The DPRK, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, functions as though it took Orwell's 1984 as a model of good governance.

Even China has failed to restrain Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. The entire purpose of King Jong Il's nuclear programme and satellite missile launches was to impress upon the world not only that the leadership was erratic and dangerous but also the message to the people that nobody can liberate them.

The execution of Kim Jong-un's uncle in December 2013 was in continuity with the strategy of keeping those within and without North Korea in fear of the sheer unpredictability of the regime and not to be able to predict its next move and keep the world guessing.

The December purges meant that the opening up of free trade with China, a policy which Jang Song Taek was responsible for, would not lead to alien ideas that might disturb what the repellent British apologist for North Korea, George Galloway, called its 'coherent, pristine and innocent culture' .

The US and South Korea have no way of removing the North Korean dictatorship and both the latter and China and Russia fear the destabilising consequences of what would happen if the regime was to collapse or feel threatened enough with its nuclear weapons.

In addition, neither Russia not China has any geopolitical interest in a re-unified Korea that would be pro-US right on their eastern borders, so the DPRK acts as a sort of militarised buffer state in which no power has any real interest in destabilizing it.

China has its trade links and a policy across the globe of non interference with the internal policies of the dictatorships it deals with on a 'no strings attached' basis. Even increased trade has been incapable of any thawing of North Korea's stance towards the rest of the world.

Without any resources the world could be interested in, the North Korean regime seems set to last indefinitely .It is ethnically homogeneous. There are no sectarian divides. It uses its nuclear missiles and sabre rattling to intimidate the rest of the world into accepting it as a fact lest it do something crazy.

As Orwell put it in 1984-“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” 

A Note on Global Military Expenditure and the Quest for Natural Resources.

One of the peculiarities of radical 'anti-war' critics, who regard war as the inevitable outgrowth of 'capitalism' and 'imperialism', is how they seem more obsessed on using evidence of increased military expenditure and actual armed conflicts in the post Cold War world as proof of the validity that their ideological obessions are true.

Richard Seymour, a staunch critic of western military intervention in the previous decade and author of The Liberal Defence of Murder writes in The Guardian

'there is no inherent reason why geo-economic competition should lead to defence spending consuming trillions of dollars of value each year'.

Actually, there is. Modern geopolitical competition and the potential for conflict in the post Cold war world is mostly about rival power blocks competiting control over supplies of resources,such as oil and gas, that are diminishing relative to the huge demand for them caused by global industrialisation.
As Seymour is a militant progressive and a sort of ideological Marxist, with a nostalgia for some mythical idea of global communist revolution, he has to see increased militarism across the world as the function of the USA's military-industrial complex spurring on economic growth and 'state building strategies'.

Obviously, there is a military industrial complex. Yet , apart from that and the colossal profits it makes and the research and development it stimulates, the reason for increased global military spending lies in 'extractive states' using oil and gas revenue to build up their military capacity.

Hard facts rather than the sort of windy ideological platitudes on offer by Seymour confirm that. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s Year Book 2013 is packed with necessary facts and figures needed to comprehend global arms expenditure. It notes,

“rising military spending for the USA, as the only superpower, and for other major or intermediate powers, such as Brazil, China, Russia and India, ( that ) appears to represent a strategic choice in their long-term quest for global and regional influence; one that they may be loath to go without, even in hard economic times”,

Seymour ignores the evidence that connects increased global military expenditure on the quest for control over resources as he is confined to tired ideological contructs about 'western imperialism' that can be 'unmasked' and, therefore, state power on a global scale can be 'challenged'.

It is very comforting to believe that only the west is responsible for driving on military expenditure, with the US being focused on. If 'US Imperialism' and its 'hegemonic project' is defeated somehow ( by Islamist or Marxist revolutionaries for example ), the world will be necessarily transformed for better.

These preoccupations are largely parochial. Even if 40% of all global military expenditure still comes from the US, the startling increases are to be found elsewhere in states such as Russia, Brazil, China and India which have ambitions as regional superpowers. Seymour is not, however, much bothered by them

More intelligent critics of militarism who are prepared to do actual research offer a far more interesting perspective on the very real potential for conflicts and proxy wars over regions though integral to the continued security of energy supplies to developed and developing nations.

One such example in Michael T Klare whose chilling books on resource wars such as Blood and Oil, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet and The Race for What is Left detail what is really at stake in the post Cold War age. Anyone ignoring the race for resources is not worth taking seriously.

“With energy demand on the rise and sources of supply dwindling, we are, in fact, entering a new epoch — the Geo-Energy Era — in which disputes over vital resources will dominate world affairs. In 2012 and beyond, energy and conflict will be bound ever more tightly together, lending increasing importance to the key geographical flashpoints in our resource-constrained world.'

The odd thing about radical critics of capitalism is how their 'explanations' for the Iraq War only tend to mention US Imperial projects, 'hegemony', the need for profits and, in relation to that, the control of oil in order to benefit large energy corporations.

The truth is that the possibility of war and conflict has become greater in the 21st century because of a massive increase in global energy consumption and the fact that access to those resources from diverse regions, and in areas riven with sectarian and ethnic tensions, is regarded as part of national security.

Syria: The Failure of the Geneva II Conference and Energy Power Politics.

The Geneva II talks between those representing both sides in the Syrian Civil War have  been suspended without any set date for their resumption. The appalling scale of the killing of civilians goes on without any prospect of resolution. At present the death toll is estimated at around 140,000 dead.

Jonathan Steele writes in the Observer,

'Rather than trying to score propaganda points or blame the other for Geneva's lack of progress, Washington and Moscow need to build on the common ground between them. Neither wants the total collapse of Syria's institutions or its secular multicultural tradition'.

Steele is right to emphasise the fact that neither global power has an interest in Syria's secular institutions being overthrown and the country becoming dominated by Islamist fanatics and a base for those affiliated to Al Qaida. The spectre haunting them is Syria becoming like Afghanistan in the 1990s.

The problem is that the West ( the USA, France and Britain ) are reluctant to put too much pressure on Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Saudi Arabia is intent on financially backing jihadists to overthrow Assad just as Qatar is giving aid and arms to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

True, Washington has been prepared to engage with Iran over its nuclear programme to the displeasure of Qatar. Getting Iran to work with other regional players such Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey is going to be difficult because of the lucrative energy interests at stake in this war.

Having been prevented in 2013 from launching missile strikes against Assad by Russia negotiating with the Syrian state to surrender its arsenal of chemical weapons, the US has sought to take a more diplomatic direction and exploit the new Iranian president's desire for sanctions on it to be removed.

Western policy, indeed, has been based on the fear of Iran shoring up Assad as a client and thus being able to realise its plan to export LNG from the South Pars gas field via pipeline by 2016. The pipeline would go through a Shia dominated Iraq via Syria onto the Eastern Mediterranean and hence EU markets.

France and Britain have been far more reluctant to do anything that would challenge Qatar over its backing for jihadists than the US. One reason is  the rival Qatari pipeline that would bring LNG to Europe direct instead of having to be loaded onto tankers rounding the Iranian controlled Straits of Hormuz.

Both France and Britain have become ever more dependent upon Qatari LNG. Consumer complaints about high gas prices in Britain mean the need to accept the emirates policy in Syria as it helps in enabling British corporations such as Centrica to strike deals over LNG rather than see it shipped elsewhere.

One additional reason for the stalemate at Geneva II and why France and Britain want Assad to go and a regime favourable to its energy interests to be installed is the that both depend on a colossal amount of investment from Qatar vital to boost their ailing economies.

As regards Britain, Milad Jokar points out,

'The Qatari investments are also important in Great Britain. With 20 percent of the shares of the London Stock Exchange, Qatar is the main shareholder of Barclays. The Emirate has also invested massively in the Olympic Games, it has financed 95 percent of the highest building in London (the Shard).'

The US, in its turn, has broad strategy of isolating Iran by thwarting its influence west through a pipeline via Syria and to the east through the planned pipeline to Pakistan. By retaining influence in Afghanistan, thus ensuring the war aim of construction of the TAPI pipeline, Iran's regional power against the USA's Gulf allies can be degraded.

These salient geopolitical factors are all part of the New Great Game for control over supplies of oil and gas that are being used up and diminishing across the globe with worldwide industrialisation. Those concerned with the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria need to be concerned with it and urgently..

Drone Warfare and Resource Conflicts

News that Britain's RAF have fired missiles during the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan comes as no surprise as the UK is at the forefront with the US in applying this technology to the new challenge of 21st century warfare: containing and killing Islamist militants and securing access to resources.

The use of drones in covert operations in Afghanistan has been veiled in secrecy because they are a major military tool that is being tested out in preparation for a new epoch of resource wars. Afghanistan remains a theatre of operation for the British and US through military experts and private sector mercenaries.

The future of warfare is going to consist not, as in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014, of having combat troops on the ground and suffering casualties against those such as the Taliban in some struggle for 'nation building'. It will be to protect mineral resources, fortified compounds and pipeline routes.

The Afghanistan War has continued for thirteen years with relatively heavy British casualties. Apart from the fact these are British troops, the problem is in 'perception management' with regards convincing the public that wars fought for purposes that are difficult to mention means drones are convenient.

Wars for the minerals such as lithium in Afghanistan and the construction of the TAPI pipeline and other infrastructure projects vital for advancing Western geopolitical ambitions in Central Asia require drones to be used in order to fend off Taliban attacks on the New Silk Route project.

As the earlier nation building plans of the 2000s in both Iraq and Afghanistan are now considered to be too expensive after the 2008 economic crisis, requiring ground troops over a long term, a new shift has seen  focus on protecting strategic zones with drones and training regional militias in places such as Somalia too.

For the US, that means defending sea lanes and strategic areas such as Yemen which is strategically located between Saudi Arabia and Somalia and the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa where more than 3 billion barrels of oil a day pass the country's coast on their way west.

Drones are in use in Yemen and Somalia against Al Qaida affiliates such as Al Shabaab that are threatening to disrupt international commerce and the flow of vital hydrocarbons north towards the Suez Canal. As in Afghanistan, so too in Somalia  and Yemen is it the protection of resource interests ultimately at stake. 

It could be argued that drones are useful and good in rolling back terrorist attempts to attack the West's vital interests. But evidence shows in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan that drones sometimes kill civilians, thus recruiting new jihadists in these lands and even in the West due to recent patterns of migration.

Tony Blair on 'Religious Extremism'

'The fact is that, though of course there are individual grievances or reasons for the violence in each country, there is one thing self-evidently in common: the acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion. It is a perversion of faith-

'Tony Blair on 'religious extremism' as the force for global conflict in The Observer, January 27 2014)

'Well, I think if you have faith about these things, then you realise that judgment is made by other people...If you believe in God, [the judgment] is made by God as well.".

Tony Blair to Michael Parkinson in 2006 on the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Likewise, the decision to invade Iraq could be considered to be at least partly motivated by a perversion of faith, a belief that both all dictatorships and all terrorism were alike motivated by a seamless global geopolitical Evil that could be comprehensively defeated by the USA and Britain.

Of course, the invasion of Iraq was based on geopolitical calculations,namely the idea of controlling the second largest oil supplies on earth and spreading democratic revolution across the Middle East through a 'domino effect' that would be stages in rolling back Assad's Syria and the Ayatollah's Iran.

Blair's evangelical zeal was probably far more sincere than Bush's born again Christianity but in both cases the war was about calculated strategies leavened by a militant and missionary foreign policy that appealed to scores of atheists, most noticeably the Anglo-American writer Christopher Hitchens.

There were some prominent atheists who disagreed with the Iraq War and chose to do it on the basis alone that the US was dominated by Christian Fundamentalists, such as President GW Bush pretended to be, and the fact that Blair was prepared to invoke God and religion in his decision for war.

Dawkins, however, remains largely ignorant of global geopolitics and peddles the banal idea that wars are all 'the fault of religion' or that only societies in which religion is predominant could wars be aided and abetted enthusiastically, the parochial conceit of those reaching maturity in a more secular Britain in the 1960s and 70s.

Most of the violence perpetuated by terrorists globally is largely due to politics and politicised versions of religion-or 'political religions'- that gain ground in lands beset with conflicts over territory, scarce resources from oil to diamonds and even water, and great power conflicts. This is the case in the Middle East.

Syria's crisis is a consequence of global climate change, increased scarcity of cheap food, an incompetent dictatorship that represented certain minorities which could no longer ensure sufficient living standards for all and the geopolitical contest between regional and global powers over pipeline routes and access to oil and gas.

Syria's civil war is in reality a series of civil wars between minorities created by the fracturing of the artificial state into warring factions that want to break away ( such as the Kurds into a new oil rich state ) and the Sunni Muslims who have less of a stake in gaining from new gas pipeline projects from Shia Iran and Iraq.

The way Blair draws attention to the Syrian Crisis at present is always, however, with a view to portraying it as a consequence of sectarian divisions and 'perverted faith' that has ramped up casualties without US and British intervention to levels surpassing his mendaciously low figure of 100,000 deaths in the Iraq War.

'At present, our screens are dominated by the hideous slaughter in Syria. We have to hope that the peace negotiations succeed. But with more than 130,000 dead – and, on some accounts, the total is nearer 200,000 – millions displaced and the country in a state of disintegration...'

When Blair gives his opinion on any matter of global significance, it is invariably connected to his attempt to consolidate his image as a 'visionary' statesman and guarantee his 'legacy' in world politics. And that, in turn, means attempting to rationalise the catastrophic impact the invasion of Iraq in 2003 has had.

Contrary to the claims that Blair is a 'psychopath' and a mere 'warmonger', Blair does have a conscience which is why he seems to be obsessive in trying to prove that his decision to back the US invasion was justified in the light of some broader providential plan for the world.

By claiming contemporary terrorist atrocities are part of a 'clear common theme' and that other world leaders must 'start to produce a genuine global strategy to deal with it', Blair is trying to argue that the hitherto underestimated potency and power of religious based terrorism derailed his plans for Iraq.

The line Blair takes is that had it not been for 'the acts of terrorism...perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion', then democracy would have come to Iraq relatively quickly and it is they and not him who bears responsibility for the vast majority of the bloodshed.

'All over the region, and including in Iraq, where exactly the same sectarianism threatens the right of the people to a democratic future, such a campaign has to be actively waged. It is one reason why the Middle East matters so much and why any attempt to disengage is so wrong and short-sighted'.

Moreover, by maintaining that the sort of sectarian based religious violence is a 'growing' global threat, Blair can relativise the significance of the bloodshed in Iraq as one that is part of a wider trend that was just emerging at the time of his decision to invade Iraq to free it from a secular dictator.

The purpose of this propaganda is that Blair can absolve himself from the responsibility for the carnage in Iraq by trying to have it that this sort of sectarian violence was bound to break out anyway sooner or later. Just as governments have had to be 'engaged' over Syria, so too did he earlier with Iraq.

This way of 'framing' events in the Middle East over the past decade is meant to salvage Blair's reputation and it is motivated by vanity and egotism. All his efforts since being officially out of office are geared towards ensuring that he is retrospectively vindicated by History.

Even so, if that were the only aim Blair has, he could easily keep writing post ex facto justifications for the Iraq War and collecting vast amounts of money from his global lectures and speeches. But-and this is why Blair does have a conscience-he seems intent on promoting 'global harmony'.

Blair is obsessing with his 'place in history' because he does not want to be remembered only as the man whose decision brought widespread death and destruction to Iraq. So his 'TonyBlairFaithFoundation' is there 'to promote greater knowledge and understanding between people of different faiths'.

As a fairly recent convert to Catholicism, Blair can shift away from the Protestant idea of 'justification by faith alone' to one of atoning through a devotion to doing good work in the world by funding educational and exchange programmes and university courses to students across the world of faith.

Blair's message is that what happened in Iraq did not have to be that way. In fact, he was warned by numerous experts on the Middle East that an invasion to remove the secular dictator was going to lead to an outbreak of sectarian and ethnic tensions. Blair 'believed' it did would not happen that way.

So Blair is bound to blame violence on an 'abuse of faith' because his own decision to invade Iraq was based on a messianic faith based crusade to liberate the Middle East, one given impetus by the fact he had liberated the Muslim Kosovans in 1999 and the Afghans from the Taliban after 2001.

Blair is not going to cease trying to make up for-in his own way-the bad done in Iraq and that he blames on the evildoing of sectarian terrorists and not on himself because he believes he had the best of intentions. Blair knows all about faith based violence because his decision to go to war was based on it.

 

Woolwich Attack: Rationalising Terror and Propagating Ideology.

There is a difference between journalists attempting to explain why terrorists or assassins believe they are justified in carrying out attacks and using those justifications as a means to rationalise them as a mere reflex action to foreign policies that are said to be bound to cause a response.

Senior Guardian journalist Seumas Milne is an example of the latter as clear from the headline accompanying his reactionto the verdict in sentencing soldier Lee Rigby's killer Michael Adebolajo-Woolwich attack: If the whole world's a battlefield, that holds in Woolwich as well as Waziristan.

Essentially, Milne's attitude towards to Adebolajo's assassination is to use it to hammer home hard propaganda points by quoting the words of terrorists and assassins as if their justifications were self evident and not to be 'condoned' because 'counter-productive'.

This Leninist approach to terrorism regards such violence as Adebolajo's as bad because bad for 'the cause', an 'infantile disorder' to use Lenin's words when criticising 'pointless' anarchist violence in Russia before the Revolution of 1917 that fails to yield results.

Milne opines,

'Quite apart from morality, the impact was violently counter-productive for the Muslims that Rigby's killers claimed to be defending, as Islamophobic attacks spiked across Britain.'

That is why Milne loftily writes off morality as something 'quite apart' from the 'counter-productive' nature of the attack. That, in any case, matters less because a soldier who had served in Afghanistan was hacked to death in the streets of London but because it led to a backlash against 'our side'.

The use of language to hint and insinuate that message is clear to anybody who knows anything about how propaganda works. Milne is claiming that what assassins such as Adebolajo must be taken at face value and not to even bother looking in detail at what he actually said.

"We swear by the Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. The only reason we have killed this man this is because Muslims are dying daily. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth ... We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth...I apologise that women had to see this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your governments. They don't care about you. Do you think David Cameron is gonna get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? Do you think the politicians are gonna die? No, it's gonna be the average guy – like you, and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so you can all live in peace. Leave our lands and you will live in peace. That’s all I have to say. Allah’s peace and blessings be upon you. Salaam alaikum".

Milne completely discounts the nature of the threat was aimed at the British public, that if 'You people' failed to stop the war then 'You' would become next. The fact it was a soldier who was targeted was intended to give Adebolajo a sort of equivalent status as a foot soldier in a war.

'Rigby was a British soldier who had taken part in multiple combat operations in Afghanistan. So the attack wasn't terrorism in the normal sense of an indiscriminate attack on civilians'.

It was a discriminate attack on a soldier that was meant to get the public to think that they would be next because they have not prevented a war in Afghanistan being fought. Adebolajo was not even a born Muslim nor from Muslim lands ;attacked' but someone who converted in order to have a creed to fight for.

In that sense, Adebolajo's actions are quite in line with a tradition of political terrorism and assassination that has a pedigree going back to the Russian tradition that culminated in Lenin's bloodthirsty use of mass terror during the construction of the Soviet Union.

The idea that there are no innocent people in this world once the scale of the oppression is so clear means that either people are either for the right cause or against it. By failing to 'do' anything to change governments that carry out oppression in their name they are objectively supporting it and targets.

To mechanically write off all consideration of the psychopathology behind acts of terror and assassinations and killings for political and religions reasons is the gambit of those who have no problem with the idea of murdering their opponents so long as it gets the result they want.

If that means using outrages and atrocities for bolstering one's own propaganda, while affecting a distaste for that killing as 'counter productive', then that's simply the way it has to be in order to wake people up to the killing done in 'our name'. Sp Milne, as a prominent figure in the Stop the War Coalition claims,

'Only the wilfully blind or ignorant can be shocked when there is blowback from that onslaught at home. The surprise should be that there haven't been more such atrocities.'

'You People' had it coming in other words. The position is Stop the War or else expect more bloodshed. This is far from being a pacifist position. But then again, one problem with the 'anti-war' groups in Britain is that they are not led by well meaning people but, alas, cold blooded totalitarian ideologues.

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: The Potential for Terrorist Blowback"

Historian Mark Almond on how and why European Muslims are going to Syria to become battle hardened jihadists and on how certain groups funded by European governments have themselves forwarded Islamists 'along a pipeline' to Syria to fight against Assad. 

There is an element of collusion between the government in Britain and jihadists dating back to the 1980s in Afghanistan designed to further geopolitical and oil and gas interests, one that has and can and will lead to violent 'blowback' in the form of domestic terror attacks.

Syria's Geopolitical Significance,

A very good summary of Syria's geopolitical significance was written by Michael T Klare for The Nation in September.

'Although Syria is not itself a significant oil producer, it lies adjacent to many of the major suppliers and has long served as a host for pipelines connecting the Gulf to the Mediterranean. More importantly, in recent years, is has assumed strategic importance as an ally of Iran and a conduit for Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon. “Syria has a geopolitical importance out of all proportion to its relatively small population, area, resource base, and economic wealth because of formidable military power…and its location at the heart of the Middle East,” Alasdair Drysdale of the Australian National University wrote in the Oxford Companion to World Politics. “As a result, it plays a central role in most of the Middle East’s key disputes.”

This is the dilemma facing Obama today. If the United States cannot extricate himself from the geopolitical imperatives posed by Iran’s continuing threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the safety of Persian Gulf oil supplies, it cannot extricate itself from the turmoil in Syria. Because a failure to confront Assad’s excesses could be viewed as giving Iran and other outside powers a green light to meddle in the Syrian conflict, and could be seen by the Iranians as an indication that they can continue to stockpile enriched uranium with impunity, US leaders see no choice but to become involved in Syria.

Russian involvement in the Syrian imbroglio adds another dimension to America’s dilemma. Russia has long-established ties with the Syrian leadership, beginning with Assad’s predecessor, his father Hafiz, and retains a vital naval base at Tartous, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. More important than these strategic interests, however, is Moscow’s desire to curb America’s global activism. From Russia’s perspective, then, Syria is less important as a strategic asset in itself than as an arena in which to gain geopolitical advantage over the West. By the same token, a failure to contest Russia’s spoiler in Syria role could be interpreted as an invitation for Moscow to undertake other obstructionist endeavors'.

Read the rest here.

Syria : The Danger of Energy Geopolitics.

Back in September military action by the US and France over the alleged chemical weapons attack by Assad's forces on a suburb of Damascus seemed inevitable. Dossiers were being produced and ministers were waxing indignant about the need to 'punish' Assad.

The rapid climbdown by the US was forced upon it by  Russia's brilliantly timed diplomatic intervention when they struck a deal in which Assad would allow both  Russia and the US to oversee the destruction of the chemical weapons arsenal. The US was thereby allowed  to save face and claim its coercive diplomacy had worked.

War was averted. Yet the issue, of course, was never completely about chemical weapons, though the hardline on 'weapons of mass destruction' was also designed to send out a message to Iran that their alleged programme to build a nuclear bomb was of a piece with the dangerous rogue state of Syria which is its stalwart ally.

The reason why the US and France were drawn to the brink of intervening with missile strikes and aircraft carriers had been sent to the Eastern Mediterranean was the dangerous New Great Game over gas resources and pipeline routes, one that explains Western double standards over Syria and Egypt.

After the Egyptian army had mown down protesters and their barricades with bullets and bulldozers  in the streets of Cairo who were against the military coup, Western diplomats made weasel comments about the need for dialogue. When Assad was alleged to have used poison gas in Syria, the call was to remove him.

From the US perspective, there was far less to gain in intervening to try and put pressure on Assad than certain EU powers such as Britain and France. The US felt it needed to act because it was tied to the rhetoric about Assad's use of chemical weapons being a 'red line' that once, when crossed, necessitated action.

True, the US still has energy interests in the Middle East better served by shoring up the regional powers that are backing the Sunni insurgents seeking to overthrow Assad's Shia regime, most obviously Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But the shale gas 'revolution' in the US reduced dependence upon the other enemy of Assad-Qatar.

All three external powers backing and funding the insurgents against Assad decided to do so in order to get a new regime that would not oppose their energy interests, in particular the plan to build more gas pipelines to EU states, to export Qatari liquefied natural gas ( LNG ) and reduce dependence on Iran and Russia.

Energy geopolitics is a prime determiner of  the relations between states in the early twenty first century as the race is on to control supplies that are not keeping pace with the burgeoning demand. States haunted by the prospect of their decline such as Britain and France have been the most aggressive in struggling to retain influence.

Part of this is post-imperial hubris but that ties together with both these states role as large arms providers to Middle Eastern states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The BG group has major interests in exploiting Egyptian gas reserves ( hence the mealy mouthed denunciations of SCAF for their bloody coup d' etat ).

The problem with Syria, from France and Britain's perspective, is that he occupies a piece of strategic land through which Iran wants to extend its energy interests no less than Russia which has leased a naval port in Tarsous through which it can protect its energy interests in the Levant with new discoveries of undersea gas.

But Russia also seeks to guarantee the potential "Islamic pipeline' that would, in any post-civil war Syria, be built from the South Pars gas field that Iran shares with Qatar through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean. That would cut the power of Qatar and Turkey as energy providers to the EU.

Despite the immediate crisis having diminished since September 2013, the longer term potential for intractable conflict remains. More than that, there is evidence that radicalised Muslims are going to and fro from Western nations to Syria to become hardened jihadists and who might carry out attacks there.

There is evidence that the secret services have been prepared to use these jihadists as 'assets' in the past from Afghanistan, to Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Kosovo in order to further energy interests. The prospect of 'blowback' being visited upon Britain and France is a lethal consequence of this New Great Game.

Blair on Syria: Another Attempt to Secure His "Legacy"

Originally written in September 2013.

The repellent Blair has tried to appropriate the crisis, and the politicians reaction to it in the West, the better to bolster his own 'Legacy' in arguing for the tough need to follow up words with action. As usual, he's just trying to place himself ultimately on 'the right side of History' after the catastrophe of the Iraq invasion.

"After the long and painful campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, I understand every impulse to stay clear of the turmoil, to watch but not to intervene, to ratchet up language but not to engage in the hard, even harsh business of changing reality on the ground"

Almost every single statement Blair has made on 'events' in the Middle East is 'public diplomacy' designed to retrospectively justify Iraq by placing it within the context of the 'long war' that he, at least, had the courage to confront. It dovetails with his posture as set out in his autobiography ' Tony Blair A Journey'.

It's surprising that few commentators deal with the issue of whether Blair has a bad conscience or not ( as opposed to seeing him as a bare faced liar ). His attitude to the bloodshed unleashed by the Iraq invasion is to argue for the lowest estimate of deaths-around 100,000-and to try and persuade readers of A Journey how he agonised over the decision.

Yet politicians such as Blair no longer have careers. They have journeys in which they encourage the true believers to follow them through adversity and towards the ultimate triumph of what is just and right, with casualties on the way alas. Despite affecting to be a Christian, this attitude has more in common with twentieth century Utopian communists.

It's all retrospective pleading. At the time in 2003, Blair was supremely confident. He has rationalised the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq by spinning it that the sort of interventions about to be undertaken against the 'Assad regime' in Syria show the need to stand tough against evil dictators.

One of the propaganda mechanisms inherent in the attempt to create an acceptable 'public doctrine' is to create fake binary choices, a simplistic framing device of the 'either-or' pose. All possible objections are reduced to an absurd muddleheaded reaction whereas his own 'resolve' rings clear, bright and true by comparison.

"in any event, why take sides since they're all as bad as each other? It is time we took a side: the side of the people who want what we want; who see our societies for all their faults as something to admire; who know that they should not be faced with a choice between tyranny and theocracy".

The fact that this 'analysis' bears no resemblance to the actual nature of the choices facing Syria is irrelevant. Blair is striding out to do what his job always was; to try to convince himself the better to convince the public that the 'choice' is as he only sees it ( even if you may politely  'disagree' with him ).

And this is what a Peace Envoy in the Middle East is there to do. The only peace Blair understands is pacifying the conscience before contemplating the large scale military actions he knows will create more deaths in the short term because they will die in order that future generations will live and learn to live better.

And so 'History' will absolve him or, at least he hopes, his actions in Iraq will be understood and 'contextualised'. Though the 'something must be done' pose from Blair is all to do with this, his professions about the path to peace, through just wars, are the effusions of the worst sort of sinister Creeping Jesus politician.

It seems incredible that so many were taken in by this fraud during his time in office and still seem to regard his "analysis" of the Middle East as providing "insight". It does but not in the way his craven and fawning admirers suppose. 

Syria: The US, Kurdish Designs, Turkey, Iraq and Iran

No matter how President Obama and his team try to spin it a military intervention and 'upgrading' assistance to the insurgents against Assad backed by Qatar and Turkey would be tantamount to directly taking sides in the Syrian conflict. Up until now, Washington has only given CIA help to the Sunni dominated Free Syria Army;

Washington's foreign policy has consistently called for Assad to go. In refusing to engage with Iran diplomatically has made a slide into involvement in the civil war inevitable. There can be no political settlement if Washington demands that the precondition for peace is for Assad's Shia government to surrender.

The Alawites fear retribution from Sunni jihadists who have fought with the FSA including elements affiliated with Al Qaida such as the al Nusra Front who are fighting against Assad. They are not controlled by 'official' Sunni insurgents and the Syrian National Coalition and want to ethnically cleanse Alawi villages.

Turkey, moreover, is a NATO member threatened with the conflict between the Kurds and the radical Sunni jihadists of al Nusra. spilling over the border. Backing the FSA in Syria, Washington would face the prospect of Iran intervening more to back militant Kurdish separatists.
 
The danger of Kurdish separatist struggles with Sunni jihadists in northern Syria on the border with both Turkey and Iraq is that it threatens to destabilise border districts and towns in a way that could yet draw in other Western powers should it escalate. 

The Syrian government no longer has much control over the north east of the country and is content to see the al Nusra Front pinned down by Kurdish militias. Iran also gave support for those seeking Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq in order to increase its regional influence.

The reason for move towards separatism that the West opposes, in order to show solidarity with Turkey as a NATO member, is opposition to a potential future for an oil and gas rich Kurdistan with its own ideas about its role in the world that elude the control of regional and global powers.

As part of a fractured Iraq, the relative autonomy of Kirkuk from the Shia dominated government in Baghdad has yielded benefits for Western oil concerns who are willing to invest. But the West does not want to drive Baghdad towards Iran by pushing for Kurdish autonomy too much.

Nor does Iran want to back Kurdish independence more than is needed in order to only cause problems for Turkey alone because it is backing the Muslim Brotherhood against Iran's Shia client Assad. Iran has its own large Kurdish minority.

When Obama states that Syria is not Iraq and not Afghanistan, because of the history the US had in its invasions of both countries, he only wishes to emphasise the distinction between limited military intervention and war.

Unfortunately, Syria is very much a similar case to its Iraq neighbour in being a country more opened up to the competing energy interests of global powers since the US invasion of 2003. Syria is also similar to Afghanistan in being a geopolitically vital pipeline transit zone.

The 21st century is set to be an epoch of intense and bloody struggles and conflicts over resources. Western nations are necessarily going to be involved in them due their overdependence upon oil and gas in those volatile lands where they lie. 

Libya: The Failure of the Last Western Military Intervention.

As President Obama attempts to work with Congress to get a unity of purpose behind military intervention in Syria with only France being a willing ally so far, the last military intervention back in 2011 has proved to be a complete failure and offers a lesson.

Patrick Cockburn's brilliant special report in The Independent shows Libya has moved towards becoming a failed state.

'As world attention focused on the coup in Egypt and the poison gas attack in Syria over the past two months, Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians that Nato’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example of a successful foreign military intervention which should be repeated in Syria.

In an escalating crisis little regarded hitherto outside the oil markets, output of Libya’s prized high-quality crude oil has plunged from 1.4 million barrels a day earlier this year to just 160,000 barrels a day now. Despite threats to use military force to retake the oil ports, the government in Tripoli has been unable to move effectively against striking guards and mutinous military units that are linked to secessionist forces in the east of the country.

Libyans are increasingly at the mercy of militias which act outside the law. Popular protests against militiamen have been met with gunfire; 31 demonstrators were shot dead and many others wounded as they protested outside the barracks of “the Libyan Shield Brigade” in the eastern capital Benghazi in June.

Though the Nato intervention against Gaddafi was justified as a humanitarian response to the threat that Gaddafi’s tanks would slaughter dissidents in Benghazi, the international community has ignored the escalating violence. The foreign media, which once filled the hotels of Benghazi and Tripoli, have likewise paid little attention to the near collapse of the central government.

The strikers in the eastern region Cyrenaica, which contains most of Libya’s oil, are part of a broader movement seeking more autonomy and blaming the government for spending oil revenues in the west of the country.

For the rest read it here.

Syria: The Geopolitical Constellation and the Move Towards Military Involvement in the Syrian civil War.

'While stressing that Washington's primary goal remained "limited and proportional" attacks, to degrade Syria's chemical weapons capabilities and deter their future use, the president hinted at a broader long-term mission that may ultimately bring about a change of regime.

"It also fits into a broader strategy that can bring about over time the kind of strengthening of the opposition and the diplomatic, economic and political pressure required – so that ultimately we have a transition that can bring peace and stability, not only to Syria but to the region"' 

President Barack Obama, Tuesday Sepember 3 2013 ( The Guardian, Obama hints at larger strategy to topple Assad in effort to win over Republicans )

Washington has always wanted regime change from the outset of the Syrian Civil War in April 2011. That Obama is now indicating that a policy of siding with the Syrian 'rebels'  is back 'on the table' in addition to missile strikes. one advocated staunchly by the neoconservative John McCain, reflects a continuity in policy.

The rationale is clear: the US, France and UK will not tolerate any extension of Iranian influence in Syria through Assad and Hizbollah while they are tacitly backing the attempt by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to extend their influence by backing the armed Sunni Islamist opponents of the government.

The bottom line is that Qatar is an ally with a strategic partnership with Britain in a variety of military and economic bilateral ties which is completely opposed to Iran's rival geopolitical designs for Syria in the future-if it has one-including proposed pipelines to pump gas west towards Europe.

Turkey is already has sections of gas pipeline to hook up to Qatar and that requires the potential Shi'ite axis of influence from Iran to the Eastern Mediterranean be broken and Assad removed in Syria. That requires the playing the role of a revived Ottoman Empire and extending greater friendship ties to other Arab states.

Turkey wants to stand with Qatar not only due to the desire to increase its prominence as an energy hub between Europe and Asia. Gas rich Qatar now provides most of Turkey's tourist revenue. As Professor Norman Stone emphasised, after the protests in Turkey back in June 2013,

'Arab money is behind the shopping malls and is underpinning the Turkish current-account deficit. The Saudis and Qatar seem to be mainly involved, and now they buy up land in Yalova, over the water from Istanbul, as well. This has delighted the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu'.

The danger is that in pushing for the support for the Sunni insurgents aligned to the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran would step up its support for Kurdish militias who want autonomy in Syria and Turkey leading to the conflict spilling over into a NATO member. The al Nusra Front is already in conflict with the Kurds.

So Syria is the proxy war ground not only for external powers but also for ethnic and sectarian enmities that straddle borders and have created fault lines across the Middle East. It is a lethal theatre in the New Great Game being played by the world's largest powers for control over energy flows across the region and beyond.

The ultimate target is Iran. Hemmed in to the east by a government installed by the West through the Afghanistan war and occupation, Iran is also having its gas export routes west thwarted by the US and other allies who have opposed Iran as an independent geopolitical player since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

If the US embarks on military intervention through missile strikes, Assad could react in a dangerous way and Iran is not going to be prepared to see him removed or overthrown by pro-Washington opponents. Hizbollah will step up operations and Iraq under a Shia president leans towards Tehran as well.

That is why measures towards what  David Cameron  called the need to 'tilt the balance', in the rebel's favour is now back' on the table' in Washington. No doubt Britain will be a willing partner in funnelling aid to the Sunni militias in order to put Assad in the position of negotiating his exit at a second Geneva Conference.

Washington's foreign policy and the insistence that 'Assad must go' exacerbated the problems in Syria to the point where any political settlement looks unlikely and yet where military intervention could intensify the level of killing and instability as well as committing the West to the Sunni side in a complex conflict.

Syria: Patrick Cockburn on the Impact of Air Strikes

Patrick Cockburn of The Independent is no doubt the best journalist writing on the Syrian Crisis at present. His analysis here is well worth the read. How Syria action risks unsettling fragile Middle East balance of power Wednesday 28 August 2013

'Will air strikes help spread the Syrian conflict to other countries in the region? The important point here is to take on board how far it has already spread and the degree to which it already destabilising Syria’s neighbours. The al-Qa’ida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, which fights in both Iraq and Syria, has already become stronger thanks to Syria, and is responsible for bombings in Iraq more intense than anything seen since 2008. The same organisation is responsible for ethnically cleansing Syrian Kurds in north-east Syria, 40,000 of whom have already fled to the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq. If the Assad government becomes weaker then the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and other jihadists, the most effective rebel fighting forces, will be strengthened.

Turkey is likely to support US actions, its importance depending on whether or not the US air base at Incirlik in south-east Turkey is used. Turkey has a 560-mile long frontier with Syria but it is vulnerable to Syria and Iran acting through Turkey’s Kurdish minority. Turkish government support for the rebels in Syria is also strongly opposed by the Turkish opposition who have been reinvigorated by mass street protests this summer.

Syrian Crisis: France's Stance and Its Strategic Partnerships.

“I am struck by how eager Great Britain and France appear to be in favour of military action. And I am also mindful of the fact that both of these two powers are former imperialist, colonialist powers in the region.” -former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski

France has been more hawkish over Syria throughout the conflict there than either Britain or even the US. When news of the alleged chemical weapons strike on East Ghouta broke on 21 August, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, was first out calling for a 'reaction with force'.

A continuous stream of the most belligerent rhetoric has emanated from Paris since then, with calls from President Hollande that France was 'ready to punish' Assad to Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault claiming the attack involved a "massive use of chemical agents".

France's knowledge about Syria's chemical weapons stock may come from the fact that in the 1980s it was French pharmaceuticals that were imported for 'dual use purposes'. The French dossier is technically specific about Syrian CW capabilities but adds nothing towards exact responsibility for the attacks.

The 'public diplomacy' behind the dossier is to back up Washington's version on Saturday and John Kerry's rhetoric about 'we know' everything and 'we have assessed'. Indeed France has been more persistent in backing the Syrian opposition than the US as it was responsible for setting up 'Friends of Syria'.

The 'Friends of Syria Group' or 'Friends of the Syrian People Group' was set up in June 2012 by Sarkozy to bolster support for the Syrian National Council and to prepare for a post-Assad government. The aim is 'revolution' but the reality from the French perspective is its national interests.

France is a staunch ally and strategic partner of Saudi Arabia and Qatar both in the Friends of Syria Group and which support militias with arms and money against Assad. French military ties with the oil rich kingdom have put it at the forefront of the push to directly provide weapons to the Syria rebels.

The FT reported on June 21 2013 an analyst close to ruling circles, Jamal Khashoggi, revealing that Saudi Arabia would never let its Persian Gulf rival Iran 'win a victory in Syria' because Assad had had the upper hand until the alleged chemical weapons attack by his regime occurred.

'”Saudi Arabia has to do something now, even if it will do it alone. The goal now must be toppling Bashar, even if the US is not involved. If Saudi Arabia leads the way, Sunni tribes and o ther countries, including France, will eventually join.”

France, concerned that Syrian opposition forces are losing ground, has suggested it is ready to push ahead with increasing the scale of equipment it supplies to the rebels, but it remains coy on what weapons it may be prepared to include.

Officials said this week that Paris had already “ticked the boxes” of materiel it was willing to deliver on a list presented to the Friends of Syria members by the Free Syrian Army. But they declined to say what these included.'

France's defence of Saudi Arabia's policy in Syria so as to check Iran, its main regional geopolitical rival and Shia enemy, is a lucrative and mutually beneficial partnership. On the August 30 news broke of 'a billion euro defence contract with Saudi Arabia to overhaul four frigates and two refuelling ships'.

France's bilateral ties with Qatar, the other main funder of the Islamist militias, brings numerous benefits from Total's stake in the liquefied natural gas ( LNG ) market and the supply of it as an increasing part of the gas energy portfolio for north west Europe via France's EDF group.

France's energy policy is interconnected to geopolitical strategy and competition with Russia and Gazprom for control over the global market for LNG. The volume of Qatari LNG threatens to displace the importance of Russian gas. The proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline would rival Russian imports and so it backs Assad.

France's interest in energy diversification coincides with many EU states. However, only France ( apart from Britain ) is a military power that can assert those energy security interests in the Middle East. More than that, Qatar invests billions of petrodollars in French real estate and grand projets.

Syria : Why Britain's Political Elites Want Military Intervention

There is much delusion in Britain over the reprieve from military intervention. The proposed missile strikes are a bad idea. However, that does not mean that they are merely 'stupid' or 'senseless'. Evidently, they are designed as part of a policy of showing Assad that he can never win in the civil war.

The aim of a missile strike is in continuity with the policy Washington and London have had since 2011 that 'Assad must go'. By a demonstration of strength, the US wants to make it plain that Assad will negotiate his exit at the postponed Geneva Conference and make way for the opposition.

The Syrian National Council is backed by the Friends of Syria group which meets in Doha and Istanbul and regularly receives Western diplomats. Turkey and Qatar are backing the opposition and want Assad to go with the support of the West due to its strategic partnerships with them and energy interests.

Britain's position is not merely about neoimperial hubris, 'saving Syria', the vanity of politicians wanting to strut on the world state though these are important. It is due to the fact that the enemies of Assad, especially Qatar, are vital partners in shoring up the continued prosperity of the Britain's rentier economy.

With the decline of North Sea Oil, Qatar has made up an increasing proportion of Britain's supply of LNG. Britain and France want 'energy diversification' and to depend less upon Russian gas for geopolitical reasons that are evident enough over Syria and also in wars such as Afghanistan.

Qatar proposed a gas pipeline to Turkey in 2009. Assad stands in the way of such a project as does Iran, the Gulf rival of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which wants to export gas to the Eastern Mediterranean via Iraq and Syria. This would be a major setback after Britain went to war to control Iraq's oil and gas.

Just as there was a complete cross political party consensus on the value of the Afghanistan War, so too is there on Syria. The Labour amendment to the defeated government motion, also rejected, was only about caution over rushing in to intervention when the case had not yet been clearly formulated.

The reason the British government's attempt to join the US in a missile strike on Syria was defeated in Parliament was not so much about public opinion. Nor did Cameron take the vote to Parliament because he was genuflecting to public opinion. He did it because he believed it would vote for him.

True, Miliband wanted to exploit the anti-interventionist mood after his 'lack of leadership' had been subject to criticism over the summer. Yet Labour was for military intervention and just not the way that Cameron had proceeded which seemed similar to Blair's demand to trust his 'call of judgement' on Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons

Already, there are strong voices calling for a second vote on military intervention on Syria now that Obama has played for time and delayed military action until Congress reconvenes .Members of the government are blaming Miliband for making military action no longer an option in case new 'compelling evidence' turns up.

The reasoning is that if Washington gets more regional support, as it already has with the Arab League now demanding action *and a legal pretext could be used for missile strikes, then the British government would be able to put another vote before Parliament in light of changed circumstances.

Boris Johnson in particular has been putting pressure on Cameron to do so. In the Daily Telegraph Johnson claimed  "If there is new and better evidence that inculpates Assad, I see no reason why the government should not lay a new motion before parliament, inviting British participation".

The Mayor of London has every reason to be forthright as he is close to the rich elites in Qatar and has been relentlessly banging the drum for it as a major investor in London. In fact, Britain has strong developed strong bilateral trade ties with Qatar in energy,education and 'culture'.

Unfortunately, Britain's dysfunctional rentier economy has become increasingly interconnected with Qatar's in the wake of the 2008 crash and the need for Qatari petrodollars to boost investment in British real estate (especially in London ) and lure shoppers to spend more.

Whether the British public likes it or not, Syria and its geopolitical position is very much about Britain's business, keeping gas bills down and giving shots of investment to prop up an ailing and failing neoliberal economy too overdependent upon oil and gas from unstable regions.


* Correction- The Arab League Secretary General has decided the UN route must be pursued and "military action is out of the question". Saudi Arabia wanted US military action.

'Saudi Arabia and the Syrian opposition pleaded with League members to back a US military strike on the regime.

 Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told the meeting that "opposition to international action only encourages the regime to pursue its crimes".

"It is time to ask the international community to assume its responsibilities and to take deterrent measures" against the Syrian regime," al-Faisal said.'

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.

Syria : The USA's Coercive Diplomacy on Syria.

'Obama's draft resolution has a short paragraph on the need for a political settlement in Syria and even calls on the Geneva talks process to be resumed urgently. Is it cynical or just naive? Syrian rebels' intransigence and their unwillingness to attend without preconditions are the main reason for the failure of Geneva so far.' ( Jonathan Steele, Syria: the US public faces a grim reality TV choice  Guardian September 1 2013 )

Washington never wanted a political settlement on any other terms other than that of the US and the Syrian opposition it supported along with the Friends of Syria group. It continually made Assad's removal or agreement to 'go' the precondition of any negotiations. The foreign policy was and remains 'Assad must go'

That has been the aim of of US and its strategic partners in the Middle east such as Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The US and Britain does not want any Iranian influence in Syria because there are fears it was using that to plan a pipeline to the Eastern Mediterranean in rivalry to Qatar's proposed one to Turkey.

Syria is geopolitically the cockpit for rival energy interests. The US, France and UK support Saudi Arabia and Qatar because they rely on these countries for oil or gas. France has become increasingly reliant on Qatar for LNG and Total has a stake in it. Britain likewise in order to diversify supplies away from Russia.

Iran is seen as a threat because it is a rival to both these countries and feared as a source of sponsorship for disgruntled Shia populations in Saudi Arabia who live near the main oil producing zones of Saudi Arabia not to mention backing Assad's Alawite regime in Syria.

Engaging with Iran is the most sensible diplomatic option to bring about a political settlement but the US and Britain have continually rejected that because of the energy interests at stake and because Qatar and Saudi Arabia are going to pursue their interests no matter what the Wests wants.

The problem comes down to the fact that though US foreign policy on Syria is one of choice it is also dictated by the necessity of it depending on Saudi Arabia for 12% of its oil still and the more general overarching strategy of containing Iran and getting 'regime change' there.

Obama started talking more straightforwardly of 'national security interests' after the British Parliament decided the UK would not take military action alongside the US. These interests are crucially interconnected with energy interests and energy security no less than they were with Britain and more so France.

Evidently, Obama is attempting to drum up wider support for a missile strike against Syria designed to add greater pressure along with Kerry's statement that there would be assistance to 'the rebels'. The UN security council is dismissed as 'completely paralysed'. In reality, the US is asserting coercive diplomacy.

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 ?