Here are what I hope are a fairly complete laundry list of the issues:
NATO member Greece has collapsed, triggering regional banking meltdown concerns
Banks of Cyprus collapsed, Russian offshore banking haven taken out by Greek troubles
Russian ally Assad’s Syria is failing, loss of Tartus would exclude them from the Med
Assad regime is the only Iran friendly outpost in the area
Syrian revolt is funded in part by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, other Sunni majority regimes
KSA & Qatar funds come /w Salafist radicalization built into the deal
NATO members Greece & Turkey are at odds over Cyprus partition
Syrian instability is spilling into Iraq, fueling Sunni/Shia violence, some refugees
Syrian instability is spilling into U.S. ally Jordan, many refugees
Syrian instability is spilling into NATO member Turkey, many refugees
Israel is concerned over weapons transport to Hezbollah in Lebanon
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The Syrian civil war has been metastasizing into all of its immediate neighbors – Iraq, Turkey, and Lebanon have all seen violence precipitated by this festering conflict. Regional powers Iran and Russia have connections to the failing Assad regime and have taken indirect steps to protect the status quo. Regional Salafist funders Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funneling support and pushing ideology on Sunni Syrian rebels. I do not envy Israeli policy makers and the menu of unpleasant options that reality has provided them.
Russia has drawn a red line of their own – no NATO intervention in Syria. They’ve backed it up with a naval presence and the transfer of advance anti-aircraft systems to the Assad regime. The Syrian civil war is a multifaceted, multipolar regional issue and there are no soundbite sized prescriptions that will end it.
The real story here is not whether Obama will survive five Watergate-type scandals, but it is rather about his response to scandals in his administration will lead to WWIII. Here are key take-aways from this first article:
“In the last eight months, I have repeated the mantra that most of what drives this government today is the preservation of the Petrodollar on behalf of the Federal Reserve. I have also detailed how Iran is selling its oil to Russia, China and India for gold, thus threatening the preeminence of the Petrodollar in which the other countries of the world must first purchase dollars from the Federal Reserve for the “privilege” of purchasing oil. This process provides the only backing that our dollar possesses. Iran, China, Russia and India are destabilizing the dominance of our currency…”
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Syria is key to attacking Iran:
“On the surface, Syria seems so very insignificant on the global chessboard. However, the key to invading Iran and seizing their oil fields is to first control Syria because the occupation of Syria is an insurmountable checkmate against Russian ground troops intervention. If the US takes over the Syrian revolution that we started through our al-Qaeda proxy forces, the US will gain a huge tactical advantage in the Middle East. The installation of short and medium range missile batteries in Syria will serve as a deterrent and a blocking mechanism for Russian ground troops ability to intervene in Iran. If Russia allows the US to control Syria, Russia will lose any chance of preventing a US/NATO takeover of Iran. Russia and China have heavily vested themselves in gold. If Iran is stopped from selling its oil for gold, China, Russia and India will have wasted a enormous amount of the respective GNP’s in acquiring gold. And the acquisition of gold will be for naught if the US is above to re-establish the dominance of the Petrodollar as the world’s reserve currency through a successful invasion of Iran. For awhile, it appeared as if Russia did not have the stomach for WWIII and they were going to let us topple Assad with so much as a whimper. I have been shocked as I watched Russia apparently acquiesce to an impending takeover of Syria by US led forces. However, recent Russian events make it clear that WWIII is on the horizon.”
Intervening in Syria may result in some remarkable black swans if this author's contacts are correct:
“My military and intelligence sources were telling me last year that Alaska and Taiwan were at risk of a Russian invasion with regard to this conflict as is the North Pole if we intervened directly in either Syria or Iran. The North Pole? The North Pole’s melting glaciers has exposed the world’s greatest oil supply as well as untold amounts of gold and other precious metals. This is another story for another time except to illustrate that the Russians are talking world war if we topple Assad and invade Iran. This means WWIII is near and this reality is evidenced by the fact that the Russians are drawing a clear line in the sand and this is why Obama is not concerned about any thought of impeachment. The one thing that will distract the country from the five present “Watergates” will be the commencement of World War Three.”
Iraq: Bombs exploded in Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and in surrounding towns on Friday, killing at least 76 people.
Two staggered explosions were used in the deadliest attack which targeted Muslims as they were leaving the main Sunni mosque in Baqubah, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad. The second explosion targeted people who gathered to help the wounded, leaving 41 dead and 56 wounded, according to police and hospital officials.
A roadside bomb exploded later on Friday during a Sunni funeral procession in Madain, about 12 miles south of Baghdad, killing eight mourners and wounding 11, police said. .
Another blast struck a cafe in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding nine, according to police and hospital officials.
In Baghdad, a bomb exploded near a shopping center during the evening rush hour in the mainly Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah, killing 21 people and wounding 32. That was followed by another bomb in a commercial district in Dora, another Sunni neighborhood, which killed four people and wounded 22, according to officials.
Comment: The series of bombings against Sunni targets on Friday apparently were in retaliation for two days of bombings earlier in the week against Shiite targets. Authorities reported 130 people died in attacks since Wednesday.
The momentum towards sectarian war in Iraq might have been stopped by political reforms that provided for more equitable power sharing with the Sunni political parties. The al Maliki government, instead, treated Sunni political protestors as terrorists and Baathists.
Now the time for compromise appears to have passed. One ripple effect of the fighting in Syria is that Sunni groups in Iraq have become emboldened to fight the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.
Former prime minister Allawi warned this week that the bombings will continue until al Maliki resigns and new elections are held. But neither is likely.
Earlier we reported that the US has now officially landed a Marine force in Israel as well as an assault ship, in a visit that the US Navy promptly assured “is not associated with, nor a reaction to, any world events.” It seems we were not the only ones who read this justification somewhat skeptically: so did Russia.
And in a historic event, the Russian Pacific fleet, for the first time in decades, crossed the Suez Canal and entered the Mediterranean, direction Cyprus' port of Limasol (hi Cyprus – Russia will be arriving shortly) in what is now the loudest implied warning to the US and Israel amassing military units across Syria's border that Russia will not stand idly by as Syria is used by the Israeli “Defense” Forces for target practice.
Russian Amphibious Ship Admiral Nevelskoi – Click on Image to Enlarge
“The task force has successfully passed through the Suez Channel and entered the Mediterranean. It is the first time in decades that Pacific Fleet warships enter this region,” Capt. First Rank Roman Martov said. This is what is also known as dropping hints, loud and clear.
Admiral Panteleyev destroyer – Click on Image to Enlarge
The group, including the destroyer Admiral Panteleyev, the amphibious warfare ships Peresvet and Admiral Nevelskoi, the tanker Pechenga and the salvage/rescue tug Fotiy Krylov left the port of Vladivostok on March 19 to join Russia’s Mediterranean task force.
The task force currently includes the large anti-submarine ship Severomorsk, the frigate Yaroslav Mudry, the salvage/rescue tugs Altai and SB-921 and the tanker Lena from the Northern and Baltic Fleets, as well as the Ropucha-II Class landing ship Azov from the Black Sea Fleet. The task force may be enlarged to include nuclear submarines, Navy Commander Admiral Viktor Chirkov said last Sunday.
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Shore leave for a whole lot of submarines just a few hundred kilometers from Syria? Surely. From Rian.
The Defense Ministry said in April Russia has begun setting up a naval task force in the Mediterranean, sending several warships from the Pacific Fleet to the region. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in March a permanent naval task force in the Mediterranean was needed to defend Russia’s interests in the region.
A senior Defense Ministry official said the Mediterranean task force's command and control agencies will be based either in Novorossiysk, Russia, or in Sevastopol, Ukraine.
Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, head of the parliamentary defense committee, previously told RIA Novosti that the Mediterranean task force should be comprised of 10 warships and support vessels as part of several tactical groups tasked with attack, antisubmarine warfare and minesweeping.
The Soviet Union maintained its 5th Mediterranean Squadron from 1967 until 1992. It was formed to counter the US Navy's 6th Fleet during the Cold War, and consisted of 30-50 warships and auxiliary vessels
It appears that the squadron is being reincarnated and quite rapidly at that.
It also appears that the two key naval forces in the Mediterranean are finally starting to position themselves for what may soon be a face off.
Hopefully Europe's “anti-manipulation” task force can spook enough majors to push the price of Brent much lower before the moment such an escalation becomes reality.
I didn’t plan on spending six years covering the war in Afghanistan. I went there in 2007 to make a film about the vicious fighting between undermanned, underequipped British forces and the Taliban in Helmand, Afghanistan’s most violent province. But I became obsessed with what I witnessed there—how different it was from the conflict’s portrayal in the media and in official government statements.
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In February 2013, on his last day at the helm of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John R. Allen described what he thought the war’s legacy will be: ‘‘Afghan forces defending Afghan people and enabling the government of this country to serve its citizens. This is victory, this is what winning looks like, and we should not shrink from using these words.’’
The US and British forces are preparing to leave Afghanistan for good (officially, by the end of 2014), and my time in the country over the last six years has convinced me that our legacy will be the exact opposite of what Allen posits—not a stable Afghanistan, but one at war with itself yet again. Here are a few encapsulated snapshots of what I’ve seen and what we’re leaving behind.
It is a brutal fact that no country benefited more from war during in the 2oth Century than the United States. World War I enriched and invigorated the US economy, and the self destruction of the 19th Century European state system left the US as the world's mightiest industrial power. World War II ended the Great Depression, put the US on a pathway to unparalleled world military power, and set the stage a long economic boom that created a rich middle class that, not withstanding its recent hardening of the arteries, remains unprecedented in world history. Pearl Harbour excepted, neither war visited any significant destruction on the American homeland.
While we think of war in terms of our sacrifices, it may surprise readers to learn that the United States suffered fewer military deaths in WWII than Yugoslavia, an allied country not usually thought of in the NASCAR mentality of the United States as being a major player that war. In fact, hundreds of millions of people — mostly civilians — died in the wars (and their aftermath) of the 20th Century, while the United States in comparison paid a relatively minor price in lives lost and a vanishingly small price in terms of material destruction wrought at home.
Indeed the most traumatic material destruction and highest number of civilian deaths suffered on the US mainland since the dawn of the unprecedented state violence of the 20th Century were caused by the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September of 2001 (the nearby NYSE was closed for only a week and the Pentagon never shut down). While horrific and psychologically devastating in themselves, these attacks were a horrendous crime, not an act of war.
Moreover, when viewed in the grand sweep of the preceding 100 years, the material and human destruction of 9-11 was pinprick compared to that visited on the trenches in Flanders, the Somme, and Verdun, the cities of Nanking and Warsaw, London and Coventry, Hamburg and Berlin and Dresden, Leningrad and Stalingrad and Minsk, or in the fire bombing raids on Tokyo, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the now forgotten destruction of every city in North Korea, of millions of civilians killed by bombing (and sanctions) in North Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Even casual readers of history know this summary just scratches the surface of carnage wrought by 20 Century warfare — carnage which, by the grace of good fortune, pretty much bypassed the people and land of the United States. Perhaps some American even think this good fortune is a kind of entitlement. Is it not surprising that President Bush's call on the American people to keep consuming and living the good life when he asked Congress to authorize a global war of terror in our national response to the crime of 9-11 was so well received?
None of these facts denigrates the bravery and sacrifice of the American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who fought and died in the wars of the last 100 years, but they are facts nevertheless, and they provide a backdrop against which the strength our national character is measured by others.
Nor should we be surprised, given this history of good fortune, that many leaders and opinion makers in America, especially strategic wannabees like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina or the armchair strategists in the Heritage Foundation (which receives a lot of grant money from arms merchants who benefit from war), treat war as a cavalier endeavor. Nothing typifies this cavalier attitude so much today as the loose talk about bombing Iran's nuclear reactors (unless it be an intervention in Syria). The attached essay puts this kind of warmongering talk into a perspective appropriate to those who, unlike most Americans during the 20th Century, would be on the receiving end of such an attack.
Nigeria: President Goodluck Jonathan announced a “state of emergency” in three northeastern states in an attempt to curb the increasingly violent attacks by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram. (Note: Boko Haram is Hausa for “Western education is sinful.”)
In a televised address Jonathan said, “We are facing a rebellion and insurgency by terrorist groups which pose a very serious threat to our national unity….They have attacked government buildings and facilities. They have murdered innocent citizens and state officials. They have set houses ablaze, and taken women and children as hostages. These actions amount to a declaration of war…. I hereby declare a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.”
Comment: The three states lie in the far northeast, bordering Niger, Chad and Cameroon. The catalyst for the declaration was a coordinated attack last week in the town of Bama in Borno state. Some 200 Boko Haram fighters in buses and machine gun-mounted trucks attacked an army barracks, the policy station and the prison. They freed more than 100 prison inmates and killed 55 people, mostly police and other security forces.
Boko Haram is a fundamentalist Islamist fighting group that is dedicated to creating an Islamic state based on Sharia in northern Nigeria, which is predominantly Islamic. Its rebellion since 2009 has resulted in about 3,600 people killed, including security forces. One Nigerian analyst reported it has several hundred armed fighters, but it has significant local sympathy.
Security officials state Bokop Haram controls at least 10 of 27 local government areas in Borno state, which is the center of the insurgency. One official says the real figure could be closer to 20 of 27 because local councilors fearing assassination have fled, leaving a power vacuum filled by bearded radicals with automatic rifles.
The government judged that a suppression campaign between December 2011 and July 2012, which included a limited imposition of martial law, had nearly eliminated the threat. The latest reports indicate the movement has recovered.
Recent activity suggests Boko Haram intends to set up an Islamist administration in the territory it now controls, as well as fight government security forces. This is the pattern followed by al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in northern Mali. Boko Haram has contacts with AQIM and the style of the Bama attack plus the weapons used – machined guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers – suggest new training, new financing, more weapons and more cohesive operations characteristic of AQIM.
Recovering lost districts will be difficult for the Nigerian Army. Its past campaigns were so brutal that they alienated the local villagers and ensured tolerance if not support for Boko Haram.
