Adonis Diaries

What’s that Greater Middle East Strategy of the United States? (Dec. 29, 2005)

The success of the Khomeini revolution in Iran precipitated the direct military intervention of the USA in the Middle East. Since the end of WWII, the US enjoyed military supremacy in all the seas and oceans of the five Continents.  With the firm implantation of Israel, all that the US governments cared about the regimes in the Middle East was the maintenance of the flow of cheap oil to its market and securing open market for its exports. The US created and sustained the Iraqi-Iranian war until both parties were literally exhausted, heavily indebted, and completely depleted of any internal energy.  Then the US encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, intervened militarily, installed its military bases in the Arabian Gulf and mandated Syria in Lebanon to put an end to this virulent corner.

China was the catalyst for an even direct military hegemony of the US in the Middle East; the plans of the US in the Near East were already drawn for capturing Iraq, the biggest oil reserve in the world, and the attack on the Twin Towers in New York delayed that invasion in order to satisfy the internal prerequisites of dealing with the Qaeda in Afghanistan. The fall of Afghanistan forced the plan to be revisited and given a more accurate geopolitical name of the Greater Middle East. 

Before the first war on Iraq in 1991, China was already viewed as the next great threat to the US in Asia; China was growing economically at a pace never experienced in the modern world as the most populous nation; this rate of increase was bewildering in its steadiness and it proved to advance unabated since then.

The US realized that this game of trade embargo on Iraq with the gimmick of oil for food deal through the UN has done its job and reduced Iraq to a skeletal, economically and militarily, and that Iraq was ready to be easily invaded.   This invasion was intended to directly secure US strategic reserve in oil when the Twin Tower tragedy struck with different political consequences in the Moslem and Arabic World. 

China was now the fasted growing economy; its demands for oil and wheat were outpacing production and thus, raising oil prices to levels that the US feared for long time.  The quagmire of the US military intervention in Iraq has so far proven to be more expensive than simply paying the increase in oil prices in the world market as dictated by the free trade agreements; this situation is aggravated by the failure to increasing Iraq’s oil production and the emergence of nearby India as another oil and gas huge consumer. 

Economically, the invasion of Iraq is a total loss for the US and the alternative is to put the squeeze on China through holding up the Iraqi’s oil reserves as bargaining chips to keep the flow of China investment in the USA and buying its bonds for much needed liquidity.  Strategically, the US is in an even bigger trouble among the population in the Middle East who regard it as the Evil Empire and the source of all terrorist activities. Iran is stable and has increased its influence among the Moslem Shiaa in Iraq and Lebanon and the Al Qaeda of Sunny salafists is spreading and becoming more virulent thanks to the negative perception of the Islamists toward the USA.

The high odds of the failure of the US economic viability in Iraq and the follow up unavoidable failure to control the flow of oil to China have the direct consequences in setting the ground of the inevitability of another World War to be fought in the Middle East and the destruction of the hated Islamic populations by both protagonists.

After the fall of Iraq by the military coalition of the United States, without the official stamp of approval of the United Nations, there has been media coverage of an ambiguous Greater Middle East (GME) policy to restoring democracy in that large undefined region.  I have a feeling that after the September 11, 2000 blowing of the Twin World Trading Towers in New York the conservative government in the USA had envisioned a grand plan to isolate the Arabic and Persian’s influenced Moslem countries through an undeclared worldwide war of attrition. 

Both the labor British and the conservative Australian governments are the cornerstone to the success of this strategy; and initially it seems that France, Germany and Russia were not merely against the invasion of Iraq but of the GME war plan of the Anglo-Saxon coalition.  At this junction, World politics exhibit a rallying of France and Germany to that plan with the exception of Russia assuming that China is not going to take side right now until its economic and military dominion in the Far East is well established by capitalizing on all the advantages that a long and protracted negotiation with the USA might generate. 

Under the threatening banner of fighting terrorism in the GME region and installing democracy and freedom of speech instead of extremist Islamic salafist religious’ dogmas the USA and its allies are encouraging civil wars among the people and splintering the region into smaller and smaller self governing nations. Every civilian killing attempts every where in the World are labeled a terrorist act and the perpetrators heaped on the Al Qaeda group which was supposed to have been wiped out in Afghanistan or in most instances blamed on other Islamic extremist offshoots.

Meanwhile, the Western Nations are enacting laws restricting freedom of speech in Media and publications, extracting war executive orders to detaining of suspects without due legal recourse, spying on their own citizens and listening on communication calls against the rules of law in the name of fighting terrorists’ plans and their organizational and financial resources and capabilities.  The political atmosphere in the USA and many European countries is heading toward applying Martial Laws and these restrictive and restraining climates against Liberty and Freedom could be viewed as training sessions for the coming open war.

What is this GME policy?  The USA was feeling comfortable after the Second World War as to its global strategic military superiority and its naval and land military bases throughout the five oceans.  The oligarchic and dictatorial regimes in the Arab World were facilitating the USA policy of dominion and Israel was its local heavy stick whenever any regime ventured to resist it by simply recovering lands captured by Israel or to exhibit independent tendencies with the support of the Soviet Union. The advent of Worldwide organized “terrorist attacks” and the inability to contain that movement with classical military interventions, mainly after the failure of the USA to maintain peace and stability in Iraq, led to a smoke screen change in the tactical approach for preserving hegemony in the Arabic Islamic World.

The code name is to divert the attention of the Islamic masses by offering minimal political representations within the oligarchic regimes which might satisfy the disposition of the people to a first step democratic level of governance and more leeway for freedom of speech and publication. It is interesting to study the small changes that the USA means to bring to the region through the electoral systems in Egypt and Saudi Arabia; at this pace these two countries might require a century before any meaningful democracy is established, for starter the female gender has still to be permitted to drive officially in Saudi Arabia.  It is also interesting to hear the howl of despair coming from the US administration every time the extremist Moslem political organizations are about to win any election; for example, Hamas in Palestine is to be forbidden to participate in the Parliamentary election if any election is to take place and the Moslem Brotherhoods in Egypt are detained and fraudulent election admitted as legitimate; the election results in Iraq need more than 3 weeks to be officially declared while the wide sweeping victory of the Islamists in Algeria was militarily canceled and savagely contained a decade ago.

Not that the people in this region care to have Islamic salafist doctrinal political systems installed, but a reaction to the complete failure of the US to regard us but merely modern slaves in an area flush in oil.  For more than 80 years, the people in every Arabic country have been trying to experiment with democratic systems and these attempts have been aborted by the tacit support of the US to monarchic, oligarchic and one party regime.  

The war strategy is not concerned with the governments, already subjugated and controlled for decades, but targeting the Moslem people in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain and the Arab Emirates.  The Moslem countries not socially or culturally closely related to Arabic or Persian influence or having large Moslem minorities will be drastically contained through strict financial and economic constraints such as Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Malaysia in Asia and Nigeria and the Northern non Arabic African people in Chad, Niger, Mali, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Guinea.  

What is being offered is basically a psychological “feeling good” attitude toward the prospect of fair representation without any substantial variations in the system of governance that suit grandly the interests of the USA imperialists. The policy of the GME striving for mega Media propaganda of “feeling good” attitude of forthwith democratic change is a sick chimerical gamble hoping that the average masses will be tamed into moderation or the regimes would have an opportunity to win a majority that would permit them to repress the extremist elements.

The Arabic people and Moslems in general have digested the smoke screen tactics of the US and Western World and their god fatherly dialogues that make their blood curl and they cannot be fooled for long; in the mean while precious time is burned away mindlessly with no serious alternatives to genuine solutions.

So far, Iran has grasped the extent of that visible danger and has been feverishly acquiring military deterrence power, economic self sufficiency and utilizing the mass Medias to enlightening the Moslem World to the coming calamities.  The Iranian regime is diffusing the message of unity and integrity among the Moslem masses and projecting the image of confident defiance: it is steadfast on its Uranium enrichment program on its proper soil for nuclear deterrence, saving its oil production, negotiating with Russia, China and India for economic cooperation and openly casting Israel as a spearhead colony of the US in the region.  Iran is not about to relinquish its influence in Iraq or in Lebanon through the powerful political party of Hezbollah or in Western Afghanistan where its Foreign minister is currently spending a few days there to keep strong links with its citizens.  Iran is heading to become the catalyst of the next calamity with the tacit economic and military support of China and Russia.

The alternative to prevent this dangerous trend and revert to a rational and peaceful coexistence is a secular, democratic and national Arabic force to take control of its destiny. Unfortunately, what is required is inexistent, not even in its embryo, because of the perennial foolish US policy in this region of squashing the spirit of secular and democratic nationalism for short term benefits. The US cannot win the looming war in the long term in the Greater Middle East, unless the purpose is indeed to set this region ablaze and its populations impotent for centuries to come, because the masses consider the US policies as the master evil in the world in planning and execution.

The reaction of the Moslems, in face of the sustained heavy handed and total disrespect of the US policies to support our claims for human rights and fair representations and abusing the United Nations to squeeze our survival capabilities through economic and financial embargoes, is toward fundamentalism and is typified by the successes of Hamas in Palestine and the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt in the Parliamentary and municipality elections and the strong inroads of the Islamic Jihad political parties in Algeria, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Sudan in the societies’ fabrics. It seems that the Moslems are reverting to staunch dogmatic principles reminiscent of a coming war with the “infidel Crusaders” and with valid rhetorical and logical reasoning.

There are a few baffling signs that this GME policy might not survive or a more viable alternative supercede the current policy of alienating the Arabs and Moslems; for example the pressures on the Bush administration to rescind the restraining laws on private freedom and telephone and internet communication and acknowledging the flimsy basis for conquering Iraq and a popular waves of demonstrations against the all encompassing powers that the administration has snatched from Congress and concentrated in the executive branch under the prerogatives of war on terrorism.  

I am leaning toward the option that by coining the term “terrorists” to connote Islamists and acknowledging that terrorism is stronger and far reaching than contemplated that the momentum for carrying the GME policy is becoming a bipartisan policy throughout the USA and the Western World. The quagmires that the international forces are experiencing in Iraq are driving them out; though it appears a tactical maneuver to regroup and figure out a strategy to crank the vise on the GME people and let them succumb under a wretched life of lack of freedom, democracy and poor economic and social development.  The European Union is about to give up on the application of human rights in the GME and is ready to adopt shortcuts to our difficulties and may temporary let us die slowly and vanish in the night.

Let us not fool ourselves; every time discrimination on the basis of religion or color or gender or nationality or custom is condoned inside or outside the boundaries of a nation, whenever human rights are baffled, people detained on flimsy charges and without due normal legal recourse, prisoners tortured to extract confessions and killed in their detention centers then the spirit of extremism has indeed taken roots and the dictatorship system is deeply entrenched regardless of how developed a nation is or how loud they claim to have democracy and the rule of law and order among its citizens.

If we had to rely solely on the United Nations to temper the drive of the most powerful Nations, nations that have the tendency of bypassing genuine diplomatic procedures into direct military interventions toward the weaker nations, then we should be pessimistic about the coming war.  There are a few realities that might prevent outright declaration of war by the Western World to the Islamic Arabic and Persian World; first, the European Union is a complex assembly of Nations that could not be easily ruled solely by France, Germany and Britain in matters of participating in wars with multiple interactions with other bordering Nations; second, the Latin American countries are leaning toward socialism and are verbally antagonistic to USA imperialism; thirdly, the Far East with a heavy concentration of Moslems is not about to endanger its economic cooperation by internal political struggles that do not enhance their survival as a viable economic and financial block; and fourthly, Russia is too aware of the importance of the stability of its former Islamic Nations bordering Iran, Turkey and Pakistan to gamble on a fruitless policy of discrimination against the Moslem people.

However, if war is declared and any powerful nation sides with the Islamic masses and support it militarily then we might witness the prophetic vision of George Orwell for future social and political organizations based on Communist blueprints as he described in his book entitled “1984”; an era of constant low level wars among three super blocks of nations. One other thing, if another world war is declared against the Moslems our puppet regimes would collapse and, win or lose, Israel will cease to exist before an armistice is reached.

If the attack on the Twin Towers occurred during the invasion of Iraq then the US would have declared war plainly and simply and the Moslem and Arabic people would have not vacillated for so long and remained manipulated, extorted and abused by the reactionary Arabic regimes holding on for dear life.