The sudden collapse of Syria, which had applied two months ago to join BRICS, raises questions of whether BRICS can be anything more than a better UN-type talking shop in the absence of having a meaningful military component. BRICS is above all an effort to check and roll back the power of historical colonial powers, whose citizens Putin has called the “golden billion”.
Yet the biggest winner of the successful regime-change operation against Assad is Israel, the modern colonizer of the Middle East. Israel has expanded its occupation of the Golan Heights. Yesterday morning, the IDF was 20km from Damascus and still advancing. Israel had bombed the main arteries from Lebanon to Syria at the announcement of the the Lebanon ceasefire and it is now systematically bombing Syria military installations, apparently so as to deprive the rebel forces of the ability to block current and future land grabs. Israel’s advance into Syria is effectively flanking Lebanon. Even though Iran may still be able to supply Hezbollah, it seems certain that will prove more difficult and hence reduce the level of assistance.
Turkiye’s Ergodan appears to have wanted to push Syrian refugees back into Syria. But since he could have done that regardless, his reasons for being a lead actor in this operation1 seem to be to disrupt the Kurdish enclave in the northeast.2 He has expanded the area under Turkiye’s control on the border. So even though he proved Turkiye’s military and perhaps also subornment chops, it’s not clear that he will achieve any strategic gains. A post by Conor Gallagher earlier today, Did Türkiye Win the Battle, But Lose the War? addresses this question in depth.
A question that will only be answered with time is what this stunning change of fortune means for BRICS. Turkiye asked to join BRICS in early September, raising eyebrows as to how that could be squared with Turkiye being a linchpin members of NATO, by virtue of geography and having the biggest NATO army in Europe. One has to wonder now, in light of the Supreme Leader of Iran”s warnings to Assad in June, and more urgently staring in September that the West was planning a new push to oust Assad. One has to wonder if the BRICS application was a deception, or alternatively, Erdogan keeping his options open as the plotting unfolded. Even now, Russia and Iran have been weirdly reluctant to finger Turkiye as a key player in this operation. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene has only now called out Turkiye and then in a coded manner, fingering the US and Israel as the masterminds.3
Without belaboring the point, Israel’s gain is a big blow for the Axis of Resistance project. Russia has also lost prestige, having invested successfully to fight off the US-backed effort to overthrow Assad during the civil war from 2011 to 2019, only to have it all come to naught. Although no decision seems to have yet been made, commentators such as John Helmer anticipate that Russia will pull out of its naval and air bases in Syria, ending its long-standing commitment to projecting power in the eastern Mediterranean.
Let us return to what this development means for BRICS. One might try to say “nothing.” But BRICS is in Schrodinger’s cat phase where there are many things BRICS could potentially be when it grows up, and those possibilities will over time coalesce into a mature form. As Frank Herbert observed in Dune, “Beginnings are such delicate times.”
So this shock does have the potential to influence BRICS’s direction, particularly when you read how cautious the Kazan Declaration was.
Now in fairness, many members of the Global Majority have worked up the nerve to defy the illegal5 US/EU/UK sanctions of Russia, even as the US in particular has been working hard at imposing secondary sanctions on those they claim have facilitated sanctions-busting. That stance has become more widely accepted after the initial condemnations of Russia after its invasion of Ukraine after the UK kicked over the preliminary peace deal in Istanbul and it then came out that Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande had intended from the outset to snooker Russia with the Minsk Accords by using them to buy more time to arm Ukraine.
More and more countries have also been frontally taking the position that they don’t accept the US/NATO premise that they are either with the Collective West or against it. China has told the US that its dealings with Russia are none of the US’ business. India’s foreign minister has repeatedly said he sees no reason to have to pick sides. The Malaysian Prime Minster recently gave a more pointed version of the same speech to Anthony Blinken.
Russia’s accelerating success in Ukraine, many informed analyses finding that a US military confrontation with China would come to a bad end for the US, Israel’s faltering operation in Lebanon and its economic woes, and the big turnout and mood of optimism at the October BRICS summit in Kazan all seemed to confirm that US domination was past its sell-by date.
But anti-globalists, in trying to tune out the bullhorn of Anglosphere messaging, are prey to knee-jerk skepticism that can desensitize them to issues on their side.5 Readers had a robust discussion on how seemingly expert observers, with considerable experience in the Middle East, such as Larry Wilkerson, Chas Freeman, and Scott Ritter (and Professor Mohammed Marandi, who is in Iran), were blindsided by the swift success of the Assad regime change operation. Even though the US and NATO are being found sorely wanting when they try to take on a peer power in Ukraine, Team Collective West has just demonstrated it can still throw small countries against the wall.
We have also seen near-universal condemnation of the genocide in Gaza, yet no grouping of countries has the will and the means to stop it.
Our reader GM early on took a very hard-line position, that a BRICS with no military alliance was doomed to not accomplish much. We had discounted that because GM is a bit too fond of aggressive action, and thinks Russia has made a big mistake by not striking on a military base or two in a NATO country in response to the NATO attack on Kursk. But he sadly might be proven correct on BRICS.
Right before the Assad regime fell, reader expat2uruguay wrote:
I don’t know, I don’t think that BRICS, and this includes Iran China Russia and even Turkey can afford to lose Syria to the West. They may not be able to stand up their resistance in the next year, but I think that the road to the Future multipolar includes Syria.
And afterward, Brian Berletic confirmed her instincts:
🇺🇸🇸🇾What is happening in Syria is a major loss for the Syrian people and their allies, including Russia and Iran and ultimately both China and the rest of the multipolar world.
It is a reminder that the US and its proxies remain the greatest threat to human peace and prosperity…
— Brian Berletic (@BrianJBerletic) December 8, 2024
Let us return to the genesis of the current push for multi-polarity: Putin’s speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. There, he took issue with the fact and desirability of the unipolar world, depicting the hegemon as eventually destroying itself from within as well as anti-democratic, by not respecting the rights of minorities, and contrary to the moral basis of modern civilization. And the reason for broaching the topic at the Munich Security Conference was that Putin called out the US push for absolute dominance as a threat to global security and called for a new global security architecture.
At the outset, Putin focuses on the paramount importance collective safety:
This universal, indivisible character of security is expressed as the basic principle that “security for one is security for all”. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out: “When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.”
And Putin later explained how colonialism was dangerous:
And there is still one more important theme that directly affects global security. Today many talk about the struggle against poverty. What is actually happening in this sphere? On the one hand, financial resources are allocated for programmes to help the world’s poorest countries – and at times substantial financial resources. But to be honest — and many here also know this – linked with the development of that same donor country’s companies. And on the other hand, developed countries simultaneously keep their agricultural subsidies and limit some countries’ access to high-tech products.
And let’s say things as they are – one hand distributes charitable help and the other hand not only preserves economic backwardness but also reaps the profits thereof. The increasing social tension in depressed regions inevitably results in the growth of radicalism, extremism, feeds terrorism and local conflicts. And if all this happens in, shall we say, a region such as the Middle East where there is increasingly the sense that the world at large is unfair, then there is the risk of global destabilisation.
So has the evolution of multipolarity wound up becoming Hamlet without the Prince?
For Putin’s effort at Munich, Russia was rewarded with further NATO expansion in 2008, despite initial opposition by France and Germany, via declaring Georgia and Ukraine would join. Georgia soon invaded South Ossetia, leading to a five-day war. Putin has insisted that the West quit threatening Russia’s security interests by installing a Nazi-friendly government in Kiev and persecuting ethnic Russians to the degree that it stoked the civil war in Donbass, leading to the current conflict.
Even though Russia had become something of an autarky by the time of the Special Military Operation, it was still unprepared for the shock and awe sanctions and needed the economic support of other countries via their willingness to ignore or help Russia evade them.
So the real call to action for BRICS-building has been trying to weaken the dollar hegemony, a topic completely absent from the Munich 2007 speech. But as we have repeatedly pointed out, there is still some to-ing and fro-ing as to how to go about it. Initially, many jumped on the idea of creating a new currency. We pointed out, as the Eurozone has shown, that that would entail surrendering a great deal of national sovereignity, particularly in having a central bank outside the control of any member state. We have said that the anti-dollar activists could go a long way in being able to evade sanctions by engaging in bi-lateral trade with settlement in the respective currencies. BRICS has committed to devising payments systems to smooth that process. But the trading-pair countries are exposed to the risk of one party accumulating a lot of the currency of the other, as in much more than it wants even if it invests in the trade deficit country. Keynes proposed the bancor as a remedy, but that too entails surrendering a good deal of national sovereignity (accepting sanctions for running sustained surpluses as well as deficits). So while these countries can get some relief, there aren’t any easy long-term solutions.
Moreover, despite the great sense of enthusiasm at the Kazan BRICS summit, the final statement went to some lengths in salute current US-EU dominated international institutions, calling for them to have a governance structures more representative of current economic and population weights, rather than envisioning BRICS institutions as eventually replacing them. The Kazan Declaration explicitly reaffirms support for the WTO, calls for a global financial safety net with “adequately resourced IMF at its center,” depicts the G20 as “he premier global forum…for dialogue of both developed and emerging economies” and so on.6 While there is no mention of the World Bank, the declaration does back the neoliberal/World Bank promoted idea the document calls “blended finance,” which in other parts of the world goes by “public-private partnership”.
As India and even China (despite aggressive US action) show, countries ex Russia, which close to self-sufficient, need and want to trade with the West as well as the Global South states.7
One factor that may not be sufficiently recognized is that even though sanctions don’t lead to popular revolts and regime change as some enthusiasts hope, the economic cost can blunt the willingness to risk war and suffer a decline in living standards from an already diminished base. That is arguably the case with Iran, where by all accounts it has suffered under sanctions. Some experts have argued that its caution in retaliating against Israel is not just strategic patience but represents serious reservations about kicking off a full-bore conflict. One has to wonder whether the Syria caper would have gone off as planned if Iran had delivered its overdue retaliation for the Israel missile strikes into Iran.
In keeping, a lesson Russia has drawn from the Western sanctions is less, not more, external dependence. From Sergey Lavrov in his interview with Tucker Carlson:
But the more we live under sanctions, the more we understand that it is better to rely on yourself, and to develop mechanisms, platforms for cooperation with ‘normal’ countries who are not unfriendly to you, and don’t mix economic interests and policies and especially politics. And we learned a lot after the sanctions started.
This is all well and good for a resource rich great power like Russia, but what does this portend for also-rans?
The spectacle of the US and NATO being humiliated in Ukraine, by not understanding Russia’s military and manufacturing capabilities, nor the colossal mistake of engaging in a fight on its doorstep (even Obama in the “Russia is a gas station with nukes” days recognized that Russia has escalation dominance in Ukraine) has led too many to discount the US’ other, still considerable, assets. As Rubiconned at Moon of Alabama is over-egging the pudding but there still some merit to this view:
Nuclear debate aside, I think we have definitively seen the overmatch the USA has on China and Russia play out in Syria, actually.
1- Financial power. Neither China or Russia have the US Dollar. Sanctions can hurt both buyer and seller, yes, but the effects of being sanctioned by far hurt more the country being sanctioned. Look at Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and of course, Syria, and how easily its own generals flipped on the promise of some cash. Either as carrot or stick, the US control of the financial levers of the world gives it unparalleled power.
2- Network of Allies. No Match. NATO, Aukus et alii. CSTO?? If the US is a paper tiger, then CSTO is a sad joke. Just ask Armenia. And now Syria. Global South was watching. Who is ever gonna stand up to the USA and think they can rely on BRICS to support them financially and militarily ever again?
3- Network of Proxies. No Match. No Mexicans or Canadians willing to die for China or Russia so far. Same in Europe, Japan, S. Korea, Australia and so on. China and Russia are surrounded by hostile states and non-state actors, in Iran’s case they operate within its borders and perhaps even Gov’t now.
3- Network of Bases. No Match. The US can conduct significant military operations and deployments across every continent it likes. Do you think if China or Russia could have sent troops to Syria they wouldn’t have before this sh1t show played out?
4- Network of Legacy and New Media. No Match. They are the best at propaganda and own all media and social media aside from Tik Tok, which will soon be banned in the West anyway precisely because they can’t control it as they like.
5- Unmatched Intelligence. Satellites and 5 Eyes. No Match. Look at the pager attack for how deep they can get at you at the Intel level. Nordstream blown up, Iran’s own PM was murdered, both covert ops, and no one can even dare admit it, such is the embarrassment and humiliation it would require. ‘And what are you gonna do about it’ is the clearly implied threat.
6- Color Revolutions and NGO networks. No Match. So what if for every 5 attempts 4 fail? Russia and China have proven incapable of exerting the same influence even in their own backyards compared to the USA. Syria’s fall will now embolden further efforts in Venezuela and Iran to revert past failures.
I wish it were not so, but, Paper Tiger my a$$.
That is not to say it will remain so forever, of course, but anyone who can’t see the obvious is just coping too hard and living in fairyland.
Reader vao summarized a cogent, if disheartening, forecast from a Twitter thread. Many are again perhaps too hopefully foreseeing quick karma, with Israel suffering overextension and both Turkiye and Israel, blowback. His scenario seems at least as likely:
Basically, together with the conditions imposed by the cease-fire (whereas ceasing fire apparently only applies to Lebanese forces), Hezbollah will soon be truly boxed-in, its entire territory under constant surveillance by Israel, incapable of operating without being detected. And a large part of Syria, including the capital, will end up likewise.
It increasingly looks as if the current events will lead to an Israeli victory as complete as the 1967 war, and with consequences as momentous:
1) Arab armies wrecked or neutralized — then Egypt, Syria, Jordan; now Syria, Lebanon.
2) Arab territories conquered by Israel — then Sinai, Gaza, West Bank, Jerusalem, Golan; now Gaza, a part of Syria including the whole of Golan, arguably a tiny sliver of Lebanon.
3) Ethnic cleansing enabling Israel to vacate land for settlers — then Palestinians fleeing the West Bank to Jordan, inhabitants of the Golan fleeing to Syria; now Palestinians in Gaza being exterminated.
There are differences though:
4) The 6-days war was a short, sharp conflict; the current one is a long-grind where attrition plays the major role.
5) In 1967 the Israelis achieved victory by daring tactical operations against the armed forces of their enemies; in the current one, by focusing on the slaughter of civilians, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and outright genocide.
6) In 1967, Israel fought alone. In the current conflict, its armouries are being constantly replenished by the USA, Germany, and the UK; the Israeli airforce uses British bases in Cyprus as a backup; NATO spy airplanes have been loitering on the Gaza, Lebanese, and Syrian coasts providing intelligence to Israel; special forces from the USA have been operating in Gaza; and the warplanes of the USA, UK, France, Jordan, and Egypt helped Israel attempt to fend off the missile waves lobbed at it from Iran.
I am sure that, when everything is over, the current conflict will be touted in Israel as yet another example (after 1948, 1967, 1973) of the Jewish State, outnumbered and assaulted by a coalition of blood-thirsty enemies, heroically fighting its way to a costly, exhausting, but nevertheless crushing victory. I suspect that, just like in 1967, we will also see the emergence of Palestinian worldwide terrorism as the sole remaining outlet to fight Israel.
This will also mark the point at which war will be primarily be conducted to destroy not the enemy forces, but the enemy as a whole. Machine-gunning ambulances, bombing hospitals, blowing up protected cultural artifacts, sniping children, killing women and old people, shooting at refugee camps, levelling cities, arasing fields and orchards, sending prisoners to concentration camps to be tortured and assassinated — anything goes. Forget about the Geneva conventions, the Hague conventions, the customary rules of war. No need to dissemble, no need to conceal war crimes, crimes against mankind, crimes of genocide: they can be perpetrated openly — nobody will do or say a damn about it. That kind of approach initiated by the USA in Serbia, pursued in Iraq, taken up by France and the UK in Libya, the Saudis in Yemen, and the Ukrainians in Lugansk and Donetsk, has been now perfected by the Israelis in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.
When karma strikes back and the “civilized” nations are subject to the same treatment, of course they will screech like pigs led to the slaughter, but it will be too late. Just look at Ukrainians howling when Russia blasts their energy infrastructure.
So as the Israelis say, “Love your enemy, for you will become him.” Putin’s original vision of multipolarity to create a more just, equitable world put a new global security order, as in understandings about the use of armed force, at its center. Without that, it is an exercise in idealism, too fragile to stand up to the current level of conflict, which seems destined only to become worse as climate change produces more agricultural shortfalls and struggles to secure scarce resources intensify. As I too often say, I hope I am wrong.
______
1 Alexander Mercouris reported on Tuesday that the core cadre of 5,000 came from Turkiye and 1.500 were trained to special forces levels.
2 I trust savvier military minds can explain how that would work, since the Kurds and American are allied in stealing Syrian oil and among other things, supplying it to Israel. Lindsay Graham has already threatened Turkiye with sanctions if it dares more into the northeast.
3 This implies Turkiye was merely the muscle.
4 Only sanctions approved by the UN are legal under international law.
5 Yours truly is a BRICS/anti-colonial sympathizer. However, I have also been on the receiving end of a lot of wrath in making early, accurate, and unpopular calls. In the 2015 Greece bailout negotiations, I concluded Greece would have to bow to the demands of the Troika….because, among other reasons, it already had in agreeing to a mini-bailout in 2015, which committed Greece to accepting an IMF hairshirt program. Greece’s valiant struggles in the end only tightened its noose by managing the difficult task of uniting the entire EU against them. The final terms agreed in July were worse than those on offer in February. Diagnosing a patient as having a Stage 4 cancer does not mean you are rooting for the cancer.
6 Note paragraph 34:
We stress that Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be strictly observed. We condemn illegal foreign military presence that lead to increasing risks of a large-scale conflict in the region. We emphasize that illegal unilateral sanctions seriously exacerbate the suffering of the Syrian people.
How many divisions does the Pope have?
7Do not chide me for using “Global South.” The motto of the BRICS Summit was: “BRICS and Global South: Building a Better World Together”
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I don’t understand the draw of the “multipolar world” as an ideal.
We’ve had multipolar worlds in the past. With the logic of capitalist growth, it leads to competing empires and therefore eventual world war.
For Russia–China too, I suppose–the multipolar world is a necessity, and it means a new empire. The ideal stuff about sovereignty reminds me of the all the happy, egalitarian words the Athenians spouted at the beginning of their empire, the brutal reality of which history’s unfolding revealed.
Russia, a capitalist country, will be most successful where it can create imperial clients and zones of economic exploitation. We know, for instance, that the Russian economy is very hungry for cheap labor. Russia’s appetite in part explains the breakthrough in North Korea. The DPRK was forced by its international isolation into the emerging Russian imperial sphere to survive, and in return for security guarantees by the imperial patron, offered up its economic potential.
If you consider the ideal of multipolarism in this way, as the developing eurasian empire’s propaganda, then perhaps the loss of Syria is not so bad. It further isolates Iran, creating a situation where that ancient nation might have to surrender more of its sovereignty than it wishes to Russian imperialism.
The anticipated defense agreement between Russia and Iran has not yet been signed, causing some raised eyebrows. Most opinion has located the reluctance with Russia, but perhaps it’s Iran that’s balking at the price. Now I suspect that Iran will give to the Russians whatever they ask, moving that great nation, second greatest in the middle east by population, firmly into the eurasian imperialist camp.
Or it’ll be torn to shreds by the competing imperialist bloc. It could be the Russians who decide it’s not worth the expenditure to save the Islamic Republic and who by inaction invite its competitors to further extend themselves in their efforts to destroy Iran while Russia completes the conquest of Ukraine.
In my opinion, Russia desires the markets, resources, and cheap skilled labor that Iran represents. So it will probably move to secure them.
“For Russia–China too, I suppose…”
Yes, China desires cheap labor as well.
I’ve said for the longest it could all turn out to be multipolar neoliberalism. Time will tell.
China desires and perhaps even requires the oil that’s produced in Iran. So Russia may not be that interested in iran, but China certainly is. China has to get its oil from somewhere and it can’t get it from sources that are already committed to the West. It also needs to get its oil from somewhere that has a secure path of travel from the source to China. And I don’t think that means by sea either. This is why I think Iran will be supported and protected by some BRICS members, because China needs the energy resources from there.
There is no way in hell that the west can defeat Iran militarily (they can cause problems, and Iran would like to reduce those, but it’s not existential). Syria is a foreign policy problem for them – it has no impact on their defensive interests. Iranian domestic problems are largely economic and political. Syria and Iran were not, western propaganda to the contrary, particularly close. They were allies of convenience.
Russia and China have many economic and geostrategic interests in common, as both are focused on developing Central Asia. They’ve collaborated (along with China) on building roads and trainlines, and developing mining resources in the region. They’re not close, but they have many interests in common.
Russia is involved in North Korea because it has stopped trying to placate the west. North Korea is on their border, has a port that can be very useful to them and it’s an easy way to piss off the west. Russia isn’t much of an industrial power, and I don’t see much evidence that they see N. Korea as a useful labour source (China might).
“There is no way in hell that the west can defeat Iran militarily…”
Then Iran should stop tying one hand behind their backs, jumping in the ring, and saying they are going the distance.
If they can defeat Israel militarily, they should have done it yesterday.
You’re making a leap from Cian’s assertion that Iran cannot be invaded and conquered to the idea that Iran can or should invade or attack Israel. Many, many reasons not to do that.
There’s also no way that Iran can defeat Israel.. It goes both ways.
“There’s no way that the west can defeat Iran militarily.”
Of course that doesn’t mean that they can’t turn Iran into a destabilized, impoverished, third world sh*t hole, for decades, like they have done to so many other countries who refused to be their lackeys. Cuba is the poster child for that approach, over 60 years of ever escalating misery under the boot of U.S. repression, just so we can point to them as a shining example of how ‘communism always fails.’
So, it’s all Russian’s fault, as usual.
As an antidote to anyone thinking that the sort of atrocities rumored to have gone on in Syria in the Sednya prison are limited to foreign lands, here is a good resource I found on the Iqbal v. Ashcroft case where a Pakistani national was tortured at the ADMAX SHU facility in NYC.
https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/sinnar-lost-story-of-iqbal.pdf
Excerpt:
Just keep this in mind the next time some sanctimonious neo-con gives you a sermon about how the Assad regime was any different than the rules-based order.
The Assad regime was put in place with US support. His father later turned on the US (after the US betrayed him), hence the enmity.
I find the triumphalism of the US and Israel kind of funny – given that historically ever one of their ‘victories’ has backfired on them. This may be the exception, but it certainly looks like the textbook definition of Pyrrhic victory.
Do please enlighten me with factual references supporting your view that Hafez Assad staged a coup supported by USA.
At what point did CIA and MI6 drop their plotting against Syria after 1957 ?
How did DGSE in Paris react ?
Your tone is utterly out of line, particularly since you regularly Make Shit Up and never provide links. You are one of the last people who has any business getting nasty over catching a reader in error. You need to shape up if you want to continue commenting. You are already in moderation for earlier offenses.
The strategic mistake Syrians, Russians and Iranians made was to not try absolutely everything to kick out the US troops from Syria and then have some deal with the Kurds.
The half assed Wagner attempt was not even half assed, no air cover/air defense nothing.
Why was strategic? Because this is were the food and the oil was, and with those assets, the sanctions wouldn’t have bitten that badly and the army and the population would have stayed in better shape.
However, the might of the US is relative. How many volunteers will US Army get if they start another war oversees? Will Americans volunteer to defend Taiwan or Ukraine or go against Iran? I don’t think so. That is not the case for these other countries.
As for Moon of Alabama’s points:
1- Financial power. Yes, and it works on small, quasy isolated countries with few borders.
2- Network of Allies. Bollocks. Australia is coming around and going to scrap the nuclear subs deal. They might send a batalion to defend Taiwan, maybe… And many Germans really feel they were attacked by the US with the NordStream. AfD is groing in strength.
3- Network of Proxies. None of the countries listed are really ready to die for the US. The latest kerfuffle in S Korea indicates that…
3- Network of Bases. Bullshit. “across every continent” I really would like to see US going across Asia, let’s say, to reach Mongolia….
4- Network of Legacy and New Media. Legacy media is not trusted, see the polls. And the new media is all over the place. See Romania’s case…
5- Unmatched Intelligence. Satellites and 5 Eyes. Yeah, and if you can see but not touch, or what you see is not really what it is…
6- Color Revolutions and NGO networks. It seems the Georgia Maidan is fizzling.
Just saying
I think this fundamentally misunderstands Russian thinking.
If this was the US, then this analysis might make sense, but ultimately they were never willing to fight on behalf of Syria – only to buy Assad enough time to strengthen his army so he could prevail on his own. When Assad demonstrated his reluctance/inability to do this they gradually reduced their support.
I don’t know that Syria was ever that important to Russia, and it complicated a difficult (but necessary) relationship with Turkey/Israel (because Azerbaijan is on the route of a crucial trainline that Putin has spent 20 years building to Pakistan). They may well hold onto their air and naval bases, but even if they don’t I’m not sure how much that really matters to them. Russia is not a naval power, and their naval interests are mostly focused on the arctic.
It was more important to Iran, though even there it’s easy to overestimate its importance (good luck shutting down ME smuggling routes. Afghani heroin won’t make it’s own way to Europe – deals will still be done). However Hezbollah weapons got to Lebanon – it was pretty covert already (as Israel, and the US, bombed anything they thought were shipments). Civil wars usually make it easy to smuggle stuff, rather than harder.
Assad was a weak man, and a mediocre politician. His people wouldn’t ultimately fight for him. Iranian and Russian support had limits, and they sensibly cut their support when Assad failed to meet his part of the bargain. If they play their cards right, and they’re both good at this kind of stuff, they may well end up in a similar position, only with the military commitments.
“only to buy Assad enough time to strengthen his army so he could prevail on his own”. Napoleon said that to reach to the heart of soldiers you have to go through their stomach. The eastern regions with weath and oil would have been the most essential thing to strengthen Syrian Army.
Or if Assad were Julius Casear or Saladin. But such people don’t come around often.
Assad didn’t even do the bare minimum. He didn’t train his soldiers, he didn’t try and regain popular legitimacy. He had options, and Russia was willing to assist. But he refused because he thought if he waited long enough he’d somehow regain western legitimacy and everything would be fine.
I’ve been reading that several years ago the Russians offered to upgrade the Syrian army into a more capable force but Assad refused. He also got rid of many of his fighting generals for loyalists instead who it turned out had links with Gulf state nations and so could be turned. He wouldn’t come to a deal with Erdogan and did not turn up to the last BRICS meeting where he could have made a lot more friends as he did not want to see Erdogan. I’m afraid that because of the stress of all those years of fighting, the guy had checked out a long time ago.
Do you talk to many Americans or Brits? If you did, you would know that a large majority believes that Ukraine can still win because Russia has lost a million men and really is about to run out of ammo, and Hamas burned babies in ovens and Trump is going to bully Iran into submission because Iran is scared of the US. I have heard tripe like this and worse. You seriously underestimate US propaganda. And even if US regime change operations don’t work as often as they used to, they can still destabilize the targets. so they impose costs.
As for lackey states being willing to die for the US, they are at least as willing as we are. There have been regular reports of Russia taking out sheep dipped soldiers from NATO states, most often special forces types or operators of fancy military gear.
I will observe that the Venn diagram of people who think Ukraine can win the Russo-Ukrainian War without drastically more aid than they have been receiving these past few years, and of people who think Trump is about to bully Iran into submission because Iran is scared of his toughness, may be two barely-overlapping circles.
The right-wing branch of the propaganda engine has very intensely publicized the idea that Trump is “tough” and that the reason Iran makes trouble is that America is not “tough” enough. “Tough” is some kind of weird vague macho construct that has very little to do with actual policy, qualifications, or personal history, of course.
But the right-wing branch of the propaganda engine has not been so kind to Ukraine.
Unless they’ve started publicizing, without my noticing, the belief that the Ukrainians are ten feet tall and bulletproof and that that that is why they supposedly don’t need help. I suppose I can’t rule out the possibility that this has happened.
Sorry, you need to get out more. I just met two in an argument here in Southeast Asia with two expats who held PRECISELY this constellation of beliefs. It fits into “the US/Anglosphere can alway win abroad if they put enough muscle behind it” world view.
Just been unfriended on fb by an old friend after gently pointing out that his options on Ukraine aren’t exactly realty adjacent. Apparently Putin is deeply unpopular, and, after quoting the data from Statista which seemed to show otherwise, it turns out that Statista is just a data scraping company and anyway, everyone is too scared to talk there. Russia having trouble recruiting because of their losses – which are much higher than Ukraines, running out of kit, friendless in the world, losing in Georgia, the usual guff. He claimed that Jake Broe is a reliable, even-handed source, not a name I’d ever heard mentioned, here or elsewhere.
The almost invisible vein of western exceptionalism runs deep.
Stumbling into the podcast of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation forum in London was an eye opener. Moderated by Gillian Tett whose command of high level BS is very intimidating stopped me in my tracks. I thought, are you guys actually serious? There sat Boris Johnson chatting with a quiet little “Mike” next to him , Mike Pompeo in fact. And they were all having a big cluster agreement on how “Ukraine Can Win” if we just stand with them, etc. And General Petraeus who acted like he was on Prozac, sort of mouthing intellectual cliches which were utterly boring and pointless and everyone in the audience looking overfed, too comfy and close to brain dead. And etc.
I remember when Gillian Tett was a terrific reporter. Now she’s been promoted to her level of incompetence, by being required to hang with functionally stoopid people rotting her brain. .
aye. while my need for cope,lol, is fully functional..i remember post 911 america.
all it will take is a lihop or mihop false flag of sufficient size and sound and fury, and away we go.
and, too, at least from my perch out here in backwater texas…americans are not exactly well informed about the world, or even recent history…nor even about their own country. Myopia and short term sorta memory rule
hell, most people i know insist that people like biden and hillary are communists.
and that all this woke nonsense is the essence of marxism.
so yeah…given the right trigger, even a draft might be sold effectively.
i expect it to be a presumably softer target, like venezuela…or even mexico.
the former has all that sour, heavy crude, after all.
and i suppose mexico could be dreamed into being a great big guam, where labor and environmental laws dont count, and they can slap a made in usa sticker on it.
of course, i doubt the usa is up to even those adventures, these days…no matter how many americans they can rile up into fighting. propaganda doesnt manufacture shells, etc.
and to be clear…i really, really want the usaempire to fall apart…it makes me ill to be a part of it.
be cool to get the resultant burning times behind us, as well…and hopefully settle into some post imperial stasis of universal subsistence….like Trantor in the second foundation.
The Mexican adventure would have been better suited for 1836.
I don’t underestimate ability of US to spew propaganda. But I don’t think this propaganda is believed any longer (see the polls) and we see that legislation is put in place to actually jail and fine people that espose certein opinions – When they have to use coercion like this, I don’t know…. UK is the canary in the Anglosphere… And the propaganda is loosing its message with the increase in the economic troubles of the population. This is a general fact – see Syria, and Romania, with Ceausescu and now is something that I am very familiar.
“As for lackey states being willing to die for the US, they are at least as willing as we are.” Which is not that much, given the failure in recruitment as prima facie evidence. As for single males joining the fray, they are really not that many but yes, “adventurers” will always be available – see the Greater Male Variability Theory. The clips coming from the frontline are totally denuded of glamor. It is mud and death from shells, 3000 kg bombs, and missiles and drones. Navy SEALS and British SAR training will not help aginst such.
There are no institutions that are going hold the purveyors of propaganda accountable to the point that they personally feel the consequences.
Thus, until that happens, they will continue to spew it. As for people not believing the propaganda, they merrily continue and simply dare people to keep up with it.
And with that said, I go back to this line in the article:
“Moreover, despite the great sense of enthusiasm at the Kazan BRICS summit, the final statement went to some lengths in salute current US-EU dominated international institutions, calling for them to have a governance structures more representative of current economic and population weights, rather than envisioning BRICS institutions as eventually replacing them.”
The normative things uttered by US/EU and their institutions look great on paper. The complain of Russia and China et all is about West’s hypocrisy and blatantly not respecting i.e. UN Charter. The “rules based order”. I haven’t heard BRICS to salute the US imposed “rules based order”…
UN Charter…speaking of looking great on paper.
I asked two young French guys who were doing some work on my street if they’d be willing to fight in Ukraine. One said of course he would, it’s to defend France from Russia. The other was slightly more circumspect but said he would go if conscription came back. The anti Russian propaganda here is a drumbeat every. single. day. on radio, and TV. Yesterday I heard the report that Zelensky said that 43,000 Uke troops have been killed so far being reported as if it were simply fact.
And the BBC and NPR are even worse. The West has been thoroughly and shamelessly propagandized and it sadly mostly works. Heck, read the comments on articles in the NYT or FT. It’s disheartening.
to your point, i was recently shocked by my kidbrother intoning “we must stop putin.” depressing to see an otherwise intelligent person outsource his thinking to new york times propaganda.
G’day Bloodnok, I have an associate with a Phd who similarly believes and he volunteered for Vietnam in the day and is very well informed on most things except present geopolitics, he is a practising Christian. I mentioned not to cast dispersions.
Yes you could reading from a Times of London or Guardian ‘leading comment’.
And the reader’s comments ( even accepting some of them are not exactly ordinary citizens) are even more extreme.
Its not surprising given all they hear and read is Russophobic nonsense.
You are missing that Assad repeatedly rejected Russia and China overtures to invest in Syria as well as rebuffing more military assistance. Assad had agency and did not want to become a Russian vassal or even be too beholden to Russia. That was a bad calculus but you can’t blame Assad’s actions on Russia.
There are stories in the Russian media how Russian businessmen tried to do business in Syria, but too often goods got stolen/confiscated already in the harbor or an already established site of business needed some new, expensive permission all of a sudden, so they quite soon gave up.
Syria was under unbearable stress. It had a population of only about nine million after the departure of millions of refugees. It suffered under murderous sanctions. A third of the country, including the area containing its most productive resources, was controlled by insurgents and hostile powers. It’s surprising that it lasted as long as it did.
This year I’ve read stories that it’s economy was now based on the manufacture and sale of narcotics to neighboring states. That’s end of the line behavior.
So yes, the rot set in. That said, I will miss some aspects of the Assad government. In particular it’s unwavering support of Palestine, which made it a target and heavily contributed it it’s demise.
1- Financial power. Neither China or Russia have the US Dollar.
RF and China do not have the green paper bill, but combined together they have all the grain and commodities they need, along with the industrial base. Last attempt to produce MacBooks in US failed because Apple could not find a reliable manufacturer of…screws for the MacBook chassis in US soil….
Sanctions cannot touch a country like RF with its own energy and agriculture and emerging industry. “With a little help from my friends” , the RF is winning the… super market war!
2- Network of Allies. No Match. NATO, Aukus et alii. CSTO?? If the US is a paper tiger, then CSTO is a sad joke. Just ask Armenia. And now Syria. Global South was watching. Who is ever gonna stand up to the USA and think they can rely on BRICS to support them financially and militarily ever again?
Networks of allies are not so important for the nuclear superpower of the world. RF has enough nukes and modern missiles to wipe the West off the face of the Earth if pushed in the corner. Unlike the psychopathic western elites, the Russians and the Chinese do want to see the current form of life continuing on the planet and are happy to coexist in a multipolar world.
Networks of allies usually serve the role to legitimize the dirty US wars abroad. RF does not need these types of networks. Armenia and Syria in reality performed the perfect…seppuku, lured by the cunning West – the Armenian west-leaning elites believed they would be granted entry to EU if they gave Nagorno Karabach to the Azeries, and back stabbed RF. Assad and his generals on the other hand believed they would be given money and prosperity and admitted back to the Arab world of US …puppets, if they ousted Iran and tolerated the … democratic opposition to the north and east…
3- Network of Proxies. No Match. No Mexicans or Canadians willing to die for China or Russia so far. Same in Europe, Japan, S. Korea, Australia and so on. China and Russia are surrounded by hostile states and non-state actors, in Iran’s case they operate within its borders and perhaps even Gov’t now.
RF and China are surrounded by countries where by US design in most of them, the ruling elites are keen to destroy their homelands to please the US masters, in exchange of some villa in Florida… However, when the situation escalates further you see how South Koreans for example are willing to respond to their despots.
3- Network of Bases. No Match. The US can conduct significant military operations and deployments across every continent it likes. Do you think if China or Russia could have sent troops to Syria they wouldn’t have before this sh1t show played out?
Networks of bases are fine to organize and train insurgency or suppress democracy and the interests of the hosting country (Germany – Nord Stream, Japan – Okinawa etc), but strategically mean nothing to the RF Orechnik. Similarly, US cannot support logistically Taiwan in a war scenario because the Chinese supersonic missiles will sink whatever US flot dares to approach. See how nicely the Ansarrulah are dealing with the Western navies in the Red Sea.
4- Network of Legacy and New Media. No Match. They are the best at propaganda and own all media and social media aside from Tik Tok, which will soon be banned in the West anyway precisely because they can’t control it as they like.
That’s a good one – the elites base their rule on the effective control of information flow towards their people and the West shines in it!
5- Unmatched Intelligence. Satellites and 5 Eyes. No Match. Look at the pager attack for how deep they can get at you at the Intel level. Nordstream blown up, Iran’s own PM was murdered, both covert ops, and no one can even dare admit it, such is the embarrassment and humiliation it would require. ‘And what are you gonna do about it’ is the clearly implied threat.
The … unmatched intelligence of the West has led the US from one blunder to the next in every war after WWII. The ongoing wars behind the scenes will never be admitted to the public for obvious reasons. But the third world has caught up with the west and ousting the previous masters from Africa – to begin with.
6- Color Revolutions and NGO networks. No Match. So what if for every 5 attempts 4 fail? Russia and China have proven incapable of exerting the same influence even in their own backyards compared to the USA. Syria’s fall will now embolden further efforts in Venezuela and Iran to revert past failures.
Color revolutions and NGOs have an …expire date like every other political or military innovation. Sooner or later people learn to stop the NGOs (Georgia) or die in millions on the battle fields of Irak, Lybia, Ukraine etc
G’day Kouros, I see your comment re scrap the nuclear sub deal and feel joy though see no translation to happenstance with either the ALP or Coalition governments but yes there surely is strong resistance from the ALP old guard and non reactionary analysts. Do you have some inside knowledge you could share please?
The thing I find most odd about all this is the fact that Syria lost without putting up a fight but yet the Russian bases are still there. When I first heard the news, I assumed the bases had been overrun, but apparently that isn’t the case. The Russians may pull out, as Helmer and others speculate, but presumably that would mean they take their stuff with them, not leaving it behind to be looted like the US did in Afghanistan.
So perhaps the gloating from Western sources about the “loss” here for Russia and Iran is premature. I’m also seeing lots of videos/articles praising Russia and Iran for not taking the bait in Syria and sending in fighters. But maybe that’s all cope? All I know is that after reading many articles written by people with way more experience and connections than me, nobody seems to know what’s going on, or they aren’t admitting it if they do. Even GenocideJoe was warning that the “rebels” who took over are maybe not to be trusted and vigilance is required from the US. I was a little surprised he wasn’t taking credit for these brave freedom fighters, or some such nonsense, but breaking countries and not having any plan in the aftermath is par for the course for these neocons.
What I do know is the US is acting like a stereotypical bully, constantly poking and punching and gloating about it if they aren’t taken to task. I agreed with Russia’s attritional approach early on, but that was before the Gaza genocide started. As others have pointed out, this is all one war. Now it’s high time someone stepped up and punched the bully square in the jaw. If they don’t do it soon, there won’t be much left to defend except rubble.
“As others have pointed out, this is all one war.”
I’m not sure the Russian government sees it that way. Losing Syria is certainly a blow, but not to anything essential (except maybe for some longshot ambitions). I see no sign that our government regards Palestine as anything other than a stick to beat the “Collective West” with verbally (and perhaps a political nuisance due to pro-Israeli sympathies among the Russian upper strata conflicting with the government’s desire to court anti-Israeli opinion worldwide). The biggest problem with Israel winning its current round of conflicts from a Russian national interest perspective is that it would eventually free up more equipment for Ukraine. But I’m not sure Ukraine getting more equipment would change much by this point. Ukraine’s biggest problem is the slow and steady deterioration of its manpower, and this won’t help it. With that in mind, is it really all one war? Maybe it is, depending on what the Americans are really up to globally and how much they can actually do outside of their sphere of influence, but if the Russian government doesn’t see it that way, it won’t act accordingly.
If the Syrian civil war gets worse, which it probably will, then Russia well benefit. This could end up causing problems, and distractions, for both the US and Israel for years.
And the tensions it will create between the US and Turkey can only really benefit Russia. If anything this removes one of the main existing sources of tension, and may make it easier for them to protect their interests in Azerbaijan (the train line from St. Petersburg to Pakistan being infinitely more important to Russia than Syria).
Did they lose it just now though? We keep hearing that is was a loss for Russia/Iran, but the Syrian economic engine was illegally occupied by the US and its headchopper allies for many years previously. So Russia wasn’t exactly winning before, if you define winning as not having your ally occupied by the enemy that is stealing the ally’s wealth, which seems like a reasonable definition. I do think Russia was surprised by how quickly Syria fell – Lavrov was definitely not his usual cool self when discussing it – but they may have been looking for a better ally than the reluctant opthamologist to begin with.
Assad definitely lost here. But there has been a lot of discussion about both Iran and Russia having grow weary of Assad. There has also been talk from Russia about being in contact with those who just overran Syria, and the bases are currently still there and not occupied by enemy forces from what I understand. And another take I saw recently was that Iran needed Syria in the past as a base to launch attacks from, but that was no longer a necessity due to improved missile tech.
Also, I may be mistaken but I’d thought that pre-genocide at least, Russia was largely an ally of Israel. I’m not sure what the situation might be now. I guess what I’m getting at in a roundabout and garbled way here is that it might be possible that Russia will have some say in how Syria is reconstituted in the short to medium term. And it’s Israel with a bunch of headchoppers on its border for the time being at least, not Russia.
Whatever might be going on, these are certainly interesting times.
Israel and Turkey are both allies of Azerbaijan. And Russia is far more concerned about maintaining friendly relations with Azerbaijan than it is with ANYTHING happening in the ME.
Syria was a complication they didn’t really need, but they were committed to for other reasons.
I wouldn’t say ally (against who?), but there were some friendly ties, though increasingly strained due to Israel being allied with the US and Russia increasingly going up against the US. There were and are trade ties. I think what matters a lot more, though, is the large number of informal personal connections. A lot of Israelis are immigrants from Russia or descendants of immigrants. Many have family ties in Russia and/or dual citizenship with Russia (including myself, though I haven’t been in Israel for a long while and hope not to return). Some Israeli-connected Russians and dual citizens (not including myself) are rich and influential. I do think that this is a non-negligible consideration for Putin, if only because some of those people are his friends and/or domestic political allies (or friends of other allies). Ultimately, the Middle East is far away; Russian Jews are right here at home. Though no doubt their influence does not remotely compare to that of the Zionist lobby in America.
As for losing Syria, well, it’s certainly wobbly now at least. I think it, or parts of it, might be reclaimed depending on how events pan out there. But currently our position there has been substantially weakened and made precarious. Regardless, though, it has limited bearing on Ukraine.
Yes, Putin’s has seemed at least sympathetic to israel, whether that’s on his own account or his Allie’s. I’ve thought if he was serious re Syria he wouldn’t have allowed israel to bomb them but would have provided adequate AA defense as he seems to have done for Iran.
So it seems Iran is far more important to him than Russia.
Russia and Iran both seem to have set limits on how much support they were willing to give Syria, and had notably cooled on the relationship after Assad rejected their advice, and instead embraced the west/gulf states.
They seem to have looked at the situation and drawn the conclusion that Assad was a weak man, hopelessly out of his depth and he couldn’t be saved. Faced with the choice of creating their own puppet, or taking a loss, they sensibly chose the latter.
Iran’s support of Hezbollah may be more difficult (though I’m skeptical given how endemic smuggling is), but Russia has proven itself pretty flexible in the past, is good at cutting deals and has a lot to offer. And given Israel destroyed all the Syrian state weaponry – their hand is strengthened.
And of course we don’t know how important those bases were – a lot of their support seemed to have been purely about supporting a long term ally, and dealing with Islamic fundamentalism (which they take more seriously than the US).
The reporting from the usual dialogue works interviewees claims that a big part of the reason for the fall of Syria was due to lack of money to pay the troops. And this was due to the US sanctions.
Another reason that Assad just gave up on it is apparently his wife is very ill and probably doesn’t have a long time to live. I imagine that he decided he would rather care for his wife in her final days. Sorry I can’t remember the source for this information, but I think it was Gilbert Doctorow.
Finally, in the early reporting I remember that COVID-19 was mentioned, in that it was very bad in Syria and left the people feeling no confidence in their government. I’ve been trying to follow up on this, because I find the idea very interesting that whole nations can suddenly fail because of how bad covid was for/on their populations. As I find out more I’ll comment on this again, especially in water cooler, where other people might have ideas on how to learn more about how seriously Syria was impacted by COVID-19.
A final thought, I find it remarkable that our naked capitalism commentariat apparently doesn’t have anybody who lives in Syria. And all of the analysts that many of us follow here also don’t seem to have relationships with people living in Syria. Surely the citizens of Syria were aware of the fact that the army was not being paid or supplied with food, uniforms, and weapons, and therefore were unable to defend against an invasion. All anybody had to do was to ask the locals it appears.
Kevork Almassian is from Syria, and I remember him talking about economical struggles when he was a guest somewhere (can’t remember exactly where and when). Brian Berletic also talked about it, and even showed a video of some US official saying the quiet part loud (about destroying Syria economically, which is exactly what happened).
P.S. I remember Asma having breast cancer treatment years ago. Now I see that she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia this year.
Yesterday I saw a video of a militant sitting outside Assad’s palace in a car and he had been in and found and grabbed Assad’s photo album. As he flicked through them you could see that they were all of his children as babies, he and his wife – all the photos that you would see from a devoted family man. I don’t think that that Jihadist expected that.
I don’t think that “democracy loving westerners” expected that either.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/12/links-12-10-2024.html#comment-4144695
Russians/Soviets were invited to Syria in 1957, soon after the Suez crisis. Assad’s dad was still an ambitious squadron leader in Syrian air force and Syrai was sort of a democracy.
Since then they have helped when asked, but otherwise they have not much cared who has run the country or how – none of their business, really. They are there to care of Soviet/Russian business and provide some internal stability and external counter-balance when needed.
Since 2015 intervention in the civil war, Russian have had contacts with most of the warring groups. They negotiated the jihadist withdrawals (remember those columns of busses from Aleppo?), they took care of reconciliation of the surrendered jihadists back to Syrian society, they were usually the first to provide food and medicine to the “liberated” areas. They arranged the cease-fire between SNA and Kurds, and patrolled the cease-fire line (remember all those videos of US and Russian troops meeting).
And ironically, in the end it was the Russians who physically removed Assad from the throne.
Green busses that took them all to Idlib, to fester. Even then it did not look like it would end well.
The Russians are already saying that there will be no green busses for the Ukrainian Nazis and that there will be no Ukrainian Idlib allowed to fester. That is the big lesson from Syria. You leave a frozen conflict and the west will just come right back at you when they have gathered the men and the materials.
Assad/Baathist Syria was greatly harmed by fading of the Al Nusra/ISIS invasions and not finishing off Idlib. (I do not call it civil war outside the greater Sunni v secular context). Rumor has it that U.S. and vassals threatened entering the battle. Indeed as Israel and U.S. has done the past days.
Russia and Assad stopped and gave US 5 years to bleed Syria and import, train and equip jihadis to Idlib.
2019 could have been better fought by Assad.
This set of event does not sell a cease fire in Dneiper.
RF must finish off Kiev.
Quid pro quo would be monitor departure of all equipment given Kiev since 2012.
But U.S. DoD records cannot be audited….
Nobody knows yet what’s going to happen. The new leader is making moderate noises and trying to sound non-threatening, but so did the Taliban at first. Joe needs to cover his ass in case they start up again with the head-chopping and child bride slave markets.
There are videos showing those Jihadists “cleansing” villages of Allawites and killing former Syrian soldiers.
Everybody knows what’s going to happen. Libya redux, as was the plan. You can even see all the moderate action on the Internerts, if you have the stomach for it. The only unexpected thing is prevalence of shooting, and lack of beheading. Maybe that’s what makes them moderate.
As much as it may hurt, it had to be said.
If we are unhappy that NATO is spending our tax dollars to prop up the corrupt Zelensky regime, we should appreciate that BRICS has not done the same to save the corrupt Assad regime. If BRICS were an organization that demanded that South Africa provide tanks to protect Russia’s interests in the Middle East, the Global South would never want to join.
Posted this on Conor’s piece on Türkiye earlier today, but relevant to this discussion. Not in agreement with Helmer’s views.
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/
Doctorow has not evidenced that he has any insider contacts. Helmer has extensive contacts in the General Staff. He’s reported extensively on the electricity war. Doctorow has regularly Made Shit Up to the degree that some of his statements on Judge Napolitano have been forcefully debunked by all of the other regulars asked to opine.
Now Helmer may get spun from time to time but he does have MANY source with specific knowledge.
Doctorow does not understand the limits of his knowledge. I’ve stopped listening to him or even reading him except when he writes up the discussions on Russian political shows. Perhaps the post you linked to is one of those, if so, apologies for being a bit sharp/.
@yves I also value Gilbert Doctorow’s reporting on Russian news shows. Thank you for clarifying that he often makes shit up, because I wasn’t aware of this. I have noticed that he has been spending a lot of time the last few weeks defending himself from criticism, though I wasn’t aware of the actual criticism.
The point is, is capitalism dying (I am, it has ceased to work in some places and structures) or there is still a margin of decades? The normal thing under the system is that the nucleus (central) power be replaced for the new one, becoming its junior partner, as it historically happened always, first from Netherlands to UK, then from UK to US. So, it would be China the next power and the US its junior partner, becoming a second-tier power. It is not happening and it’s hard to see how it could happen since the US is destroying itself, what has not happened in the past to the substituted powers, not to say there is nowhere in the US any group who could manage such transition, I mean, they don’t exist. If the system would work properly, this would be the result (the US being the minor partner of China), no matter what the US do, did or would do. I think clearly this is not going to happen.
If capitalism is going to finish abruptly, not necessarily in its whole dominion (the whole planet), but in certain parts of it, it will be substituted by different economic systems to be created, not necessarily one but many (like in other historical transitions), from which it’s supposed one of them eventually will impose (as capitalism did in 15-16th centuries). If this is the stage, then an extra prudency is needed since any prediction will be impossible, nor there cannot be any security in the permanence of this or that.
Historical events happens without prior advice, in despite of many clues in advance. No one expected the American Revolutionary War -literally, even less that Bourbonic dominions shot at their feet helping the revolutionaries, no one expected French Revolution, nor Napoleon, and things could have been quite different with minor changes. So, maybe simply China and Russia are bracing for the impact, as in Syria, it is not possible to save who doesn’t want to be saved. They have enough task to save themselves for a future absolutely impredictable.
No one in BRICS has said they are against capitalism or seeking to replace it. Putin has made a big point of letting countries do as they see fit. So I don’t understand your comment as having anything to do with BRICS.
What kind of capitalism are they for though? Where the private interests rule and buy politicians or one that the state and the political class has a bigger role and can steer things toward more acceptable outcomes for the population at large?
But someone absolutely did predict Napoleon, and characteristically, it was Diderot, in 1774, over a decade before the start of the French Revolution.
Here is an elided version of a very long passage from Diderot cited by Reinhart Koselleck in his essays “Futures Past”:
On the crisis to come: “Under despotism the people, embittered by their lengthy sorrows, will miss no opportunity to reappropriate their rights. But since there is neither goal nor plan, slavery relapses in an instant into anarchy. Within the heart of this general tumult there can be heard but one cry ‘Freedom!’ But how can this valuable thing be secured? Nobody knows.”
The many factions fighting over this will collapse into two, Royalists and Antiroyalists: “This is the moment of violent commotion. The moment of of plotting and conspiracy…. In this royalism serves as a subterfuge as much as antiroyalism. Both are masks for ambition and covetousness. The nation now is merely an entity dependent upon a collection of criminals and corrupt persons. In this situation only one man and a suitable moment are needed for an unentirely unexpected result to emerge.”
“If the moment comes, the man emerges…. He speaks to the people, who until this moment believed themselves all: You are nothing. And they say: We are nothing. And he speaks to them: I am the Lord. And they speak as out of one mouth. You are the Lord. And he says to them: Here are the conditions according to which I am prepared to subject [rule] you. And they say: We accept them….”
“What will succeed this revolution? No one knows”
Well, so much for Diderot. Koselleck notes this as a “long term prognosis” that derives its unexpected result from Diderot’s attention to “the dialectic of liberty,” liberty’s need to find specific historical forms.
Perhaps the path ahead is confused and unclear. But in searching for it, it would be a good idea to pay a lot of attention to two terms that I seem to have noticed only in the past month or so. The first is “depluralization” which I believe is Alastair Crooke’s term for one of the ways the forever wars are reshaping the Middle East and separating different religious groups. The other is Steve Turley’s “renationalization,” a term he applies to the United States and the West (Mercouris and Diesen recently interviewed Turley).
If you follow the logic of Crooke’s and Turley’s arguments, neo-liberal wars and globalism are driving a re-scaling of loyalties and conceptions of virtue that undermines neo-liberal hegemony. When the empire of lies collapses and the environmental crisis really begins to bite, human beings are going to have to live much more modest, disciplined, more locally focused and communal lives. People are going to need to feel that the virtues and determination need for those lives come from within. They will still need to experience liberty, but that experience will come from having differently informed hearts. Crooke and Turley are pointing to a remaking of aspirations and a reassertion of experienced truths that may support this.
But having said that one optimistic thing, I still expect that this “thing” that is coming toward us, out of neo-liberalism and its wars, and the environmental crisis of capitalism, will exceed the scale and the many horrors of the French Revolution.
Re: Diderot, that sounds more like Mussolini than Napoleon… Also, the image of “the people” speaking in one voice to accept “the man” seems like it has more to do with Rousseau’s General Will than with actual social processes. It’s an interesting quote nonetheless, thank you. It seems that Diderot did correctly anticipate that the outcome of a revolution would be “the man”, though perhaps he had some help from knowledge of the English experience and that of many Italian city-states.
I fear that the troubles on the way are bound to exceed all known historical events, at least in scale, which makes precise analogies difficult. That is not so difficult to anticipate either, even if most of the details are.
Just a wee note: much as I would like to take credit for that comment it wasn’t me, although it was in response to a comment of mine. It was by Rubiconned.
Incidentally he missed my point. I was not in any shape or form saying that the US is a paper tiger as such, simply that IMHO the Americans will never, ever use nukes in any context* against another nuclear power and therefore to that extent China and Russia could be (safely) pushing back against the Americans more than they currently are. So the US is a paper tiger insofar as the US might implicitly threaten all out nuclear war (which is a bluff). But it still has many other ‘tricks up its sleeve’ as we have just seen.
Obviously the American Empire still has huge amounts of soft power and financial power though.
FWIW in any case, I absolutely do think that the US is in long term imperial decline but the key word here is the word ‘long’. Please remember that the extremely long decline of the Roman Empire took place over centuries rather than decades, and it wasn’t a steady decline either: the Empire reconstituted itself in the 7th and 8th century (the so-called Byzantine Empire even retook Rome for a few decades, which everyone forgets about) although the general ‘tendency’ was always obvious.
Likewise, the US Empire is obviously in long term imperial decline but it could take decades or even centuries for it to finally collapse. At the moment, in any case, it still has unparalleled abilities for ‘force projection’ even though it’s not what it was even a few decades ago.
*except I suppose by accident
I will correct! Thanks also for weighing in.
No way US imperial decline takes centuries. With the current political, social/cultural, and climate degradations in play I’d be amazed if it makes it 50 more years.
The only reason I think the US may not face a fast collapse like we have seen in other places is due to geography. And Canada and Mexico are in no shape do to anything if the US is hollowed out…
Agreed, but imperial force projection will cease much sooner than a domestic collapse. The way that the West is currently using up weapons, and I’m not sure where they might be making more of them (certainly not Ukraine) I think imperial decline is on a fast track. In fact it feels to me like the Biden administration is throwing everything it can everywhere in that “quarterly time horizon” that is so popular in these times.
Also, the Biden administration has been throwing so much money at Ukraine, and of course both countries are fabulously corrupt, so I think that’s where all those fancy weapons came from for the moderate rebels to use against Syria
I agree. Neolib short termism is crushing every aspect of economic activity. So much wealth flows to the top, heartily supported by both parties, that already the bottom 2/3 are squeezed out of a place to live. Healthcare, housing, even food is unaffordable. Climate change will ravage much of the us even without sea level rise. We can’t replace the tunnels/bridges built in the early 1900’s.
I’m part of it, but the avg us citizen is grossly overweight. Mfg was shipped to Asia, it’s not coming back.
When you add the ‘X’ factor of geography you are actually adding a very great deal. The US is in an essentially unparalleled position of safety in terms of its geographical position, as well as its access to natural resources (especially of course, oil). Britain, even when it ran the world, was a relatively exposed small island off the Eurasian landmass, and Rome was a city!
OTOH one state of the US (Alaska) is the size of the entirety of Western Europe.
True, and I think Russia and China are about as safe now for the same reasons. Granted they don’t have America’s oceans, but there is also no one who is likely to launch an existentially threatening land invasion of either country. To me that suggests a long stand-off until someone, or everyone involved, suffers an internal collapse for largely unrelated reasons. I think it will take decades rather than centuries, though, if only due to the rate of environmental degradation with the displacements that causes. (But also the pace of social change is generally quicker than in Roman times, due largely to modern infrastructure I think.)
I don’t think the US/Empire will take decades to collapse.
The decline from 2008 (or any other date) has been extreme.
The obvious corruption, obvious genocide, always declining living standards of the bottom 90%, homelessness, sky rocketing debt with nothing to show for it, climate change, further deindustrialization, continuing inflation, and always increasing inequality …..ect …ect
The ruling elites are continuously doubling down on every bad policy of the last fifty years.
You can only steal so much from a society before it collapses….
Things that can’t last don’t…..I didn’t think i would live long enough to see the inevitable collapse, but
it’s coming like a freight train…
The golden goose has been killed….
Hidari: At the moment, in any case, it (the US) still has unparalleled abilities for ‘force projection’
No, it doesn’t. In 2024, we’re into the Norma Desmond era of US force projection, with the US hollowed-out across a number of industrial and technological verticals.
Real world evidence: –
*The US inability to develop and field hypersonics when even India can;
*Lockheed Martin running out of space to store F-35s rejected by the Pentagon, while less than 50 percent – and probably substantially less – of F-35s delivered are flight-capable at any time;
*The last two tests of the Trident II D5 SLBMs that Lockheed Martin sold the UK for its nuclear deterrent failing to launch;
*Boeing producing planes that either fall out of the sky or have parts that fall off them;
*Two NASA astronauts stuck up at the ISS for the last six months-plus because the Boeing re-entry vehicle simply doesn’t work;
*Chip-maker Intel approaching TBTF status, because ARM – a pure chip design play – is taking most of its business in company with Asian fabs;
*Abrams tanks being unfit for actual battlefield use, as in Ukraine, where the US has admitted as much and is withdrawing them.
This list could go on and on.
All this, too, is besides the US commitment to the wrong weapons systems – outdated 20th century big platform systems or systems for which impossibly unrealistic assumptions were made (e.g. the US putting all its eggs in the basket of the F-35 as the one 5th-gen air fighter that’d fit all its needs, whereas the Russians have six different fighters.)
At this late date, reshoring industry under the incoming Trump administration, and perhaps a Vance administration following it, is extremely unlikely to fix all this, because there’s also a competency crisis. There simply aren’t enough experienced American engineers, and indeed literate people, especially in the face of realities like China’s population pool being fifteen times larger to begin with.
Abrams was withdrawn in order to get upgrades in a form of reactive armor bricks (Sovietization), and a grill on top (Russification). Didn’t help much, especially against low-flying fiber-optic-controlled drones that can hit it right in it’s fat rear lower end.
Thanks for the amplification on the Abrams.
For the vulnerabilities you cite, the Abrams is a very good example of what I mean by ‘the US commitment to the wrong weapons systems – outdated 20th century big platform systems.’
Much as the US would like to take credit for this, I don’t see that they had a whole lot to do with it. This was an operation by Turkey that was successful because Syria was completely hollowed out (as much by Baathist greed/incompetence as anything else). And it remains to be seen whether this will be successful. So far it looks like Syria will probably collapse into even worse civil war, which would probably hurt US interests more than Russian/Iranian.
The US could hang on for a long time, if it acknowledged how much weaker it is now. But the more it pretends it’s still the hyperpower of the 80s/90s, the faster decline will occur. It’s navy is (literally) falling apart, it’s airforce relies upon overpriced garbage, it can’t recruit troops for the army and it’s equipment is mostly a legacy of the coldwar. It’s meddling in Ukraine has permanently weakened it’s European allies, it’s meddling may well lose it S. Korea (the US is deeply unpopular in S. Korea, where it’s rightly seen as an occupying power). It’s attempt to bully other countries in Asia to gang up on China is backfiring, and may result in the opposite. It has no idea how to do democracy, it cannot make the things it relies upon and it’s scientific expertise relies heavily upon the Chinese immigrants it’s trying to drive back to China out of xenophobia.
China is very powerful
Agreed, well said
Syria was completely hollowed out by USA/Israel, over the years. I’d say they deserve all the credit. Turkey just took a sucker punch at someone about to collapse anyway.
The report about Assad turning down Russian financed army restructuring is an oddly familiar one. Assad or his inner circle probably saw the largest threat was a colonel with foreign contacts and a disciplined force, not the US or Israel.
The South Korean status quo is a mirror of sorts. People showed up, ending the dictatorship of 2024 and supporting the parliament. Assad (his dependents who run things) probably realized they couldn’t risk a fighting general being given mobile power because people won’t show up for him.
Saddaam Hussein did questionable things in the Persian Gulf War for similar reasons. He didn’t trust Shiites, so he was more so focused on protecting Baghdad from the Shiite dominated forces than prepping defenses.
Then the reports on the tax burden are bizarre. My guess is the elites of Syria were looting all along whether due to fear of a veteran uprising or falling out of favor.
Of course not, quite on the contrary, they want to keep capitalism going on. But if capitalism finishes to work, I don’t think that event has anything to do with human will, it will simply happen as any other historical process and the only thing that can be done is to be as prepared as possible to confront the storm. If possible, such a thing
What I try to say is that they simply consider that such a thing can happen, that it is a real possibilty, totally unwanted like an earthquake or a tsunami, I mean, completely out of control, so they are behaving extra prudential. To be more precise, I think many among them think the US is accelerating the end of cspitalism, giving it a speed faster than with “normal circumstances”, and they are trying to prevent such additional harm. All of this make them extremely risk averse, since any bad step, as little as it could be, could mean a catastrophical position.
I am afraid the reply is out of place. I am sorry, I was trying to explain better what I said up there.
“I really would like to see US going across Asia, let’s say, to reach Mongolia….”
Strangest wish ever. Sort of retracing the Japanese invasion through Manchuria of September 1931. That invasion began the last World War. Wait a little though, for the Chinese to finish the rail line through otherwise landlocked Mongolia. This however is not 1931.
That was in jest, and expressed as an evident contradiction to the fact that the US has no such capabilities.
US has no such capabilities, but wouldn’t mind sending the Japs to have another go, now as a proxy. Maybe some Kuril Liberation Army, for starters.
“unmatched intelligence” ? The recently exposed (and not widely reported) Salt Typhoon backdoor hack by the Chinese was in place since 2021.
https://theconversation.com/what-is-salt-typhoon-a-security-expert-explains-the-chinese-hackers-and-their-attack-on-us-telecommunications-networks-244473
Larry Johnson discusses it here:
https://sonar21.com/chinese-hack-means-beijing-reading-and-hearing-all-us-military-and-intelligence-classified-phone-communications/
If this is the case, then the Chinese have been listening to classified communications since 2021. So they knew about the planning of this event in Syria. Did they tell the Russians? Did they tell the Iranians? Did they keep this info to themselves?
Yves said: “One has to wonder now, in light of the Supreme Leader of Iran”s warnings to Assad in June, and more urgently staring in September that the West was planning a new push to oust Assad. One has to wonder if the BRICS application was a deception, or alternatively, Erdogan keeping his options open as the plotting unfolded. Even now, Russia and Iran have been weirdly reluctant to finger Turkiye as a key player in this operation. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene has only now called out Turkiye and then in a coded manner, fingering the US and Israel as the masterminds.”
Alex Krainer says the events in Syria are a trap for the U.S. and Israel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVMfckVQ7Hg
If the Chinese knew, and the Russians knew, and the Iranians knew, then it might be a trap. Did Erdogan know, too? The Saudis want more Sunni forces to surround Iran, and al-Qaeda and HTS are both Sunni, of the Salafist type.
Krainer says this trap is similar to the trap the U.S. set for Russia in Afganistan. Possible?
“If this is the case, then the Chinese have been listening to classified communications since 2021. So they knew about the planning of this event in Syria. Did they tell the Russians? Did they tell the Iranians? Did they keep this info to themselves?”
Maybe China is crossing their fingers, wishing on a star, and playing for the part of “last man standing” after other countries tear each other down?
Just a few passing points:
The idea that Brics is anything but an talk shop and an occasional dumping ground for some easy to agree programs is, and always has been, a complete fantasy. All international bodies of this type involve a voluntary surrender of sovereignty – few of the countries involved have any interest in doing this, especially with ‘partner’ countries with which they are often already in serious dispute for one reason or another. Most of the Brics countries run export surpluses with the US and as such cannot afford to go into direct conflict. Smaller countries join this sort of organisation to see what they can get out of it, and if it can be used as leverage in other negotiations.
As for Syria – as usual there is far too much attention paid to the big non-Middle Eastern players in this, when the real roots of what happened is much closer to Syria – in particular the UAE, Kuwait and KSA, all of which have devoted billions (and mountains of weapons) to the conflict to their various allies, and who have far deeper and better intelligence insights than anyone else. The Turks have very strong influence in the area via their traditional allies and the Muslim Brotherhood, and they’ll be using these to exert further influence, but it will only be in private agreements with Qatar, KSA, etc. They will work out something between them. If they don’t there will be chaos. Neither the US, Russia, China, Iran or anyone else will be anything but observers.
I don’t buy that Turkey was taken by surprise by the complete collapse. We may never know the full story, but its very clear that senior allies of Assad had done deals (or at least, taken huge bribes) not to fight. The collapse of Damascus was far too fast to have been an accidental byproduct – most of Damascus was loyal to Assad. Only a desertion of the leadership could have led to a mass downing of weaponry at this scale.
Erdogan has been quite open about his desire for an Ottoman revival. Turkish nationalists see the Levant as part of their traditional lands. Do not underestimate their ambitions there – they extend way beyond just getting rid of refugees and dealing with the Kurds. Whether they will bite off more than they can chew is anyone’s guess, but Erdogan has a history of over reaching (although in this case, its worked out spectacularly well for him).
Turkey, btw, did not, as some claim, betray or lie to Russia and China (not that China has a particularly big role). They see themselves as the key regional power there, everyone else as annoying outsiders who they occasionally have to mollify. Its highly unlikely the Russians took anything they said at face value (not least because the Russians scrupulously held Assad back from striking at direct Turkish interests. Turkey had always made it clear – to the extent of shooting down at least one Russian fighter – that it saw itself as the big beast in that area and would not have made any promises to what it sees as intruders to their zone of interest.
The value of Syria to Russia was far more than just its port and airfields and position on the Mediterranean. It was its leverage point with the Gulf region as a whole and it allowed Russia a say in what is still the worlds center for oil and gas. Its now lost any influence in the region, including to a significant degree with Iran – both countries, while working well together in some respects, also have fundamentally differing strategic needs in the Caspian region. This would well worsen relations between them, especially if Russia continues to favour Azerbaijan. While the area is not a core strategic interest of Russia, it is still an area they can’t afford not to be involved in, and the absence of their presence, which has always acted to some degree as a break on the US (and others) having everything their way, could well have many unexpected second and third order effects on the regional balance there. One thing to look out for is Chechnya – there are rumours of Chechens with Russian military training fighting with the Syrian rebels – any sign of a weakening by any power in the region could well cause some unexpected revolts in any number of regions from the Black Sea to the Caspian and across to the former Soviet Republics and Pakistan.
There will be renewed talk about pipelines via Syria to the Mediterranean, but these may create unlikely allies (and enemies). Qatar wants to dominate via a land link through KSA, but their main gas reserves are essentially shared with Iran, so any agreement will involve quiet discussions with Tehran. Qatar has to thread carefully due to its ‘issues’ with KSA and the other Gulf States, but with so much money involved, expect some possibly unexpected realignments. Iran, which is also desperate to find new gas markets, may renew their focus on Armenia and Georgia.
On the issue of sanctions – only Russia is really immune to these. The US still has many ways to hurt anyone who doesn’t fall in line, and that includes China, which badly needs the US to maintain its role as the buyer of last resort, because there is nobody else to buy up their giant surplus. The most vulnerable is Iran, which apart from losing out in Syria, has enormous internal problems, with a very rickety infrastructure and poor economy. It needs enormous investment just to stop its energy infrastructure collapsing (they will be looking at what is happening right now in Cuba, and worrying). They will be doing some deep thinking over the next few months on how to address these problems (Syria and Israel is just one problem on their plate, they have many others). Many regular Iranians will be wondering why they’ve spent so much on whizz bang rocketry to support Hizbollah while their electrical and water systems slowly decay. They may well reconsider their strategic approach, even though their actual options are very narrow.
“The US still has many ways to hurt anyone who doesn’t fall in line, and that includes China, which badly needs the US to maintain its role as the buyer of last resort, because there is nobody else to buy up their giant surplus.”
I am waiting for CA to burry us with stats showing that this is really not quite the case any longer…
I think exports to the United States account for about 3% of Chinese GDP. And given the rapid negative effects that would be felt in the United States if these imports suddenly ceased, I suspect this would create even more of a problem for the US.
20 years ago, matters might have been otherwise, but in the current reality this is not a dog you can kick without losing half your leg as a result.
Agree totally that people probably shouldn’t expect BRICS to be much more than a G20 alternative (but edgier!) Also that people are underestimating how much local dynamics are at play, even if Turkey is the closest thing for a coordinator for now.
I tend to look into a lot of things from the Iranian perspective though, and I think people are jumping way too quick to conclusions on how much this damages them or Hezbollah. Or conversely, how much the US and Israel are in control of this (think hard about what Khamenei is really doing when he publicly says so). I mean, when we step back and look at it from the purely ideological level, the West, Israel, and Turkey just “hurt” Iran, a revolutionary, Islamic republic… by turning Syria into an attemptive, revolutionary, Islamic republic. We’ll see how this plays out, but as long as the rebels don’t restart any ethnic cleansing or team up 100% with Israel, this could wind up a long-term win for them at a short-term tactical cost.
Aside from that though, and Iran does have a lot of internal problems, I think people ignore its internal politics and how firmly the Islamic system is in place now. Honestly, at this point, if they had to choose, I think the Iranian people would go full juche (despite the economic costs) rather than question their strategic alignment. Even as recently as 2020, I had conversations with people that would naively ask, “If you don’t agree with the sanctions, why don’t you as an American vote out Trump and make peace with us?” After 4 years of Joe Biden and team, followed by Trump Redux, I’m pretty sure the few Iranians still talking like that are seen as so hopelessly naive by everyone else as to be politically meaningless.
The really funny thing is all the foreigners who criticize Pezeshkian for being weak or naive, when they don’t realize that’s exactly the part he’s picked to play. I think he is a sincere candidate and has authority on most matters. On military affairs and the Resistance Axis though, he’s essentially Khamenei’s pied-piper for stringing along the few remaining Iranian liberals, then making them look stupider and stupider in ever tighter news cycles.
The US is also very vulnerable to sanctions from China, and to a lesser degree Russia (as Europe discovered). China doesn’t want a confrontation with the US, and so has been holding back. China has a lot more tools to use against the US, while global trade now revolves around China rather than the US.
The US is not used to getting hurt, is terrible at diplomacy and is indifferent to how other cultures see the world. I think that’s going to get them in a lot of trouble in the next decade.
Notice how Putin always refers to the political overlords of the collective west as “our colleagues and partners” and in return him and Xi get called “thugs and dictators” (and much worse things). One hopes the fall of Syria liberates the leaders of BRICS from the collective delusion that they’ll ever be treated as equals and peers by the psychopaths running the west. You can’t be engaged in a generational mission to usher in multipolarity while caring about public opinion or the nature of press coverage in your adversary’s territory. All bets are off now and this congenial posture should be jettisoned once and for all and replaced with a markedly confrontational one that includes regular military power projection. At this stage of the game, the only people whose opinion should matter are in the Global South as much of the public in the west has been brainwashed beyond any reasonable prospect of redemption.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/opinion/david-brooks-snap-out-of-it.html
September 22, 2014
Snap Out of It
By David Brooks
President Vladimir Putin of Russia, a lone thug sitting atop a failing regime….
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/opinion/thomas-friedman-putin-and-the-pope.html
October 21, 2014
Putin and the Pope
By Thomas L. Friedman
One keeps surprising us with his capacity for empathy, the other by how much he has become a first-class jerk and thug….
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/thomas-l-friedman-whos-playing-marbles-now.html
December 20, 2014
Who’s Playing Marbles Now?
By Thomas L. Friedman
Let us not mince words: Vladimir Putin is a delusional thug….
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/paul-krugman-putin-neocons-and-the-great-illusion.html
December 21, 2014
Conquest Is for Losers: Putin, Neocons and the Great Illusion
By Paul Krugman
Remember, he’s an ex-K.G.B. man — which is to say, he spent his formative years as a professional thug….
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/thomas-friedman-czar-putins-next-moves.html
January 27, 2015
Czar Putin’s Next Moves
By Thomas L. Friedman
ZURICH — If Putin the Thug gets away with crushing Ukraine’s new democratic experiment and unilaterally redrawing the borders of Europe, every pro-Western country around Russia will be in danger….
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/world/middleeast/white-house-split-on-opening-talks-with-putin.html
September 15, 2015
Obama Weighing Talks With Putin on Syrian Crisis
By PETER BAKER and ANDREW E. KRAMER
WASHINGTON — Mr. Obama views Mr. Putin as a thug, according to advisers and analysts….
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/opinion/mr-putins-mixed-messages-on-syria.html
September 20, 2015
Mr. Putin’s Mixed Messages on Syria
Mr. Obama considers Mr. Putin a thug, his advisers say….
Putin stopped referring to Western leaders as friends and “partners” some time in 2022, either right after Boris Johnson broke up the Ukraine peace negotiations or if not then, when Poroshenko, and then Hollande and Merkel, gloated over how they’d deceived him with the Minsk Accords. He is now openly bitter about having trusted them.
Yep. There was a notable tone change.
Blinken has been touting the imminence of a “normalized” Saudi-Israel deal for a year now, which has yet to be realized and which the Saudis have been saying depends on an independent Palestinian state. Israel not only rejects such an entity, but appears close to expanding its borders with Lebanese and Syrian territory. Regional powers such as Saudi Arabia face moving forward on the basis of agreements with a Greater Israel newly secure in the status of regional hegemony, backed by US and Europe – a position attained through the relentless application of violence directed at largely civilian targets. Tough choice. The new Trump administration will not arrive in power with a calm and stable Mid-East, or even one with a crisis contained to the occupied territories. Israel is extended and surely believes the US will pay all the bills
Israeli hard-liners are not only demanding that Saudi Arabia go into a pact with them, they are also demanding that Saudi Arabia drop any suggestion of a two state solution as a prerequisite. That should work.
Just a detail, but there is nothing illegal about sanctions not approved by the UNSC, although there is a persistent myth to that effect. International law recognises that countries cannot be forced to trade with each other, and the countries have a sovereign right to restrict their commerce with others, as many states did with South Africa in the 1980s. Some IL theorists have argued that sanctions could be illegal under domestic law if they contravene other international engagements or customary international law, but that’s a matter for conferences of specialists. Military sanctions, on the other hand are reserved to the UNSC because of the provisions of the Charter.
They are very much in conflict with World Trade Organization obligations if between members. Which, I think, falls under “illegal” when talking about “International Law”. There is no such law, per se, just a lot of agreements on how states should behave in international relations.
The WTO is somewhat ambiguous on sanctions (they seem to sidestep any attempt at legal challenges), but WTO rules incorporated GATT (Article XXI) which explicitly allowed for ill defined ‘security’ exemptions which seem to have been used as a general catch-all when convenient.
I assume the legal ambiguity around this is entirely deliberate, as most countries at some time or another puts restrictions on trade for real or spurious security reasons, even within the EU.
Yes, there’s ill defined “national security”, but even then the sanctions are subject to more intensive review by WTO dispute settlement panels and the Appellate Body.
That’s not ambiguous at all, me thinks. The idea is to have no artificial or unilateral barriers for trade, which sanctions very much are. And secondary sanctions even more so.
You guys can keep defending sanctions as much as you want, but in the pretend international system of agreements and organizations we have, as vague as it is, they are deemed both immoral and illegal.
Well, you could tell that to the African Union, which has a special sanctions regime to punish coups and unconstitutional changes of government, or for that matter the Australians who have introduced a whole series of national sanctions against the junta in Myanmar, including financial sanctions and travel bans. Bear in mind that “sanctions” has a very wide meaning, that goes far beyond trade in goods.
“Just a detail, but there is nothing illegal about sanctions…”
China has introduced motions in the United Nations to affirm a right to development of each nation. The United States has dismissed the motions.
What about sanctions on third countries, that trade with the “targeted” country?
What about sanctions on third countries, that trade with the “targeted” country
China has been clear that, there will be trade with any accepting country China chooses to trade with. When German Foreign Minister Annaleena Baerbock insisted otherwise, the Chinese simply turned away. Remember that the United States and selected Western allies have been applying nominal sanctions against China for years. China simply overcomes them and markets will be lost beyond recovery.
Xi Jinping has made clear to the heads of International Financial Organizations, that China will meet its development goals this year and in 2025. Evidently the Financial Organizations heads agree. There is no arrogance about the assurances of Xi, just an understanding what China is capable of developmentally.
Is interdicting the trade of third parties on the open seas claiming global jurisdiction of one’s internal rulings illegal?
Embargoes are legal under international law, but blockades – preventing third parties from trading with the enemy – are an act of war and therefore illegal. Many sanction regimes have extraterritorial effects that make them more skin to blockades than to embargoes.
There is nothing illegal if you can’t be arrested.
Many could be argued to constitute collective punishment.
The whole world is watching as the U.S., led by Netanyahu, spreads chaos in the Mideast. This may intimidate some people, but it can’t be viewed as constructive behavior. Meanwhile, China is building roads, rail lines, seaports, and airports in the developing world. The dollar is still riding high, but it is riding into the sunset. A nation governed by squabbling billionaires, bellicose ideologues, and myopic lobbyists cannot pursue sound policies, so our imperial decline will continue.
“Meanwhile, China is building roads, rail lines, seaports, and airports in the developing world.”
All ways to expediate getting resources out of countries. Doesn’t necessarily translate to other ways that a country would need to “develop”.
The proceeds, if the price is fair, can be used for more education, additional investments, more savyness, and overall development. Nothing wrong with such a picture.
Also, a fair amount of those resources would need to stay in those countries for such development and investments.
Time will tell.
Yea. They should take a page from US book, and just bomb them for their own good.
Imo China never said they built such infrastructure for charity. The recipient either accepts it as useful development in their self interest or, say, turn to the generous imf/worl bank instead, I assume coaxed in the latter direction with bribes.
Look at the Yom Kippur war 1973.
US/Nixon sent to Israel war stocks flush from the stopping of the bleeding in Vietnam and also the Cold War stocks. US airlifted newest smart weapons just off test in Vietnam. I was in position to see a lot of this.
US logistics is now a greater factor in keeping IDF firing. With gifting Kiev this may be unwise for US. Especially buying/replacing land war stocks when the U.S. Navy is not up to par west of the dateline!
I am thinking US is investing in MacKinder war into the Eurasian land mass, when being a two ocean empire US should be into Alfred Thayer Mahan.
Putin is in the middle of the land mass.
“Putin is in the middle of the land mass.”
The Germans were never much for map reading; after all they followed Napoleon in 1812. Tolstoy made the absurdity clear, and portrayed General Kutuzov admiringly in accordance. Putin knows Tolstoy.
Great update. I think Brics will be fine in the long run. The real truth is the west is willing now and for that matter has always been willing treat others with brutality to get what they want but that comes at a price. The Brics countries just need to stay on course and develop together and show respect for each other. Turkeye made a massive mistake and was used by the US and now will pay the price for making a deal with the devil. The Middle East will likely become even more unstable and in the end this will end poorly for the west. If you look back at history these seismic shifts take time to develop. I still believe the west will continue its decline just not fall as hard as some predicted or as soon as many predicted.
Yes, a wake up call not to rely on wishful thinking and a huge strategic defeat for Iran especially. We should soon get a real indication if it has made anyone change their thinking. The Bric’s as a group can’t survive without Russian military might, the same as the West can’t survive as a group without the US military machine.
The Russians are enveloping Pokrovsk right now and before Mr Trump gets sworn in they should be in a position to cross the border of the Dnepropetrovsk Oblast. If they dally in the neighbourhood of Pokrovsk for no real reason it will be a tangible sign of Russian intentions at least in the short term. Do they seek a pause that refreshes while Mr Trump gets in the saddle or push on ? Maybe turn to Zaporizhzhia ?
This doesn’t mean that the US’s malign long term intentions to Russia will change but Russia must need a break at least for while, Russian troops may be getting well rotated but there is no doubt they are not getting the leave they are entitled to in their contracts.
Also look behind Turkey, Greece and Cyprus will be getting nervous at Turkish successes and the Caucasus is not looking good either with its underbelly into Eurasia. Maybe time to be shoring up your weak links instead of taking on more responsibilities.
One thing I think BRICS could do to offer concrete benefits to their members is to bring back the concept of reciprocity.
This concept was a long-standing pillar of diplomacy, until the neocons and their mavericks came up with “We make our own reality” and other nonsense.
Here is how that might work:
1. US State Dept sanctions individuals in country X, a BRICS member, let’s just say the CEO of Huawei in China. Sanctions include financial penalties, and a ban on travel to the US.
2. BRICS says, OK, that’s fine, you have the power to do that. But we’re now sanctioning the equivalent CEO in the US – the chairman of Cisco. He’s now banned not just from travel to China, but ANY BRICS COUNTRY. (Cancel that trip to Rio, Chuck Robbins.)
Oh, and you owe us the same amount of money that you put on the Huawei CEO as a penalty.
3. US State dept. has a fit. But they’re stuck. It’s an individual and they can’t really do much but sulk and whine.
The key is sticking together. And the big powers (China, Russia) making sure to take care of the smaller ones. Because while China and Russia can usually find workarounds to sanctions, a country like Syria can’t.
I suppose the problem is that the West, fwiw, is committed to a proactive program of doing certain things, while the BRICS and its hopefuls are not. The former have an agenda–we may think they are illegal and/or immoral, wasteful, and all that, but they do want to take things, control things, and so forth, and they are directing their energy and their resources at achieving these goals. In pursuit of these goals, they are organized hierarchically–the clique in Washington (whoever they are exactly) formulates the goals, use their control over institutions to direct the resources, plan out what they are going to be doing, and issue the orders to their underlings who carry them out more or less faithfully (or get replaced for daring to stop them.) The analogue is unfortunate, but one thing that has been consistently pointed out as to why Germany and its coalition, despite the lack of resources, was able to punch above their collective weight was that they were goals driven in their purpose and were highly hierarchical in their organization: everything was directed from Berlin and there was little that Budapest, Sofia, or even Vienna (WW1) or Rome (WW2) could do about them, other than obeying. Even near the end of its power, those who dared to defy them too close to German power suffered consequences (the ouster of Horthy, the crushing of the Slovak uprising, and the assiassination of US-appointed mayor of Aachen, etc).
BRICS is neither a “goal-driven” nor a hierarchical organization. In fact, it was created in opposition to them. They do not want want to be subordinated to someone’s design but they are not really agreed on what they want to do about it–other than they do not want to be subordinated. While this can and does potentially make it more attractive, it still means that it cannot easily function without exceptional diplomacy at its core: it has to formulate some set of goals/aims/guidelines (which, by necessity, will need to be loose and milquetoast, at least in their formulation) that all or most members can buy into and herd the members along into doing what they can and would to achieve them, knowing that they will all cheat and try to take advantage of others and, by the nature of the enterprise, you can’t punish them. This is a bit analogous to the politics of Allied powers during WW2 (and also WW1). We also know that both kinda failed (although the victories cloud how badly they failed.) Britain and France were very bad at cooperation during WW1. There was no cooperation worth speaking of between USSR and the Western powers during WW2 and the Western powers were able to get along because everyone depended on USA for, well, everything and the team of FDR, Marshall, and Eisenhower were very good at diplomacy. Maybe Putin, Lavrov, Wang Yi, etc are modern day incarnations of FDR, Marshal, and Eisenhower, but with a major problem: neither Russia nor China is quite the analogue of USA. China comes close, but not quite. I’d suggest that they are more like France and UK during WW1–friendly at “personal” level (like King Edward VII loved everything about France), aware that their medium to long term prosperity and, to a degree, even survival are tied to each other, but also regarding each other with justified suspicion (anyone who says otherwise is delusional.) even while cooperating closely.
What do all these say about prospects of BRICS? Not a whole lot, I guess, other than it could go anywhere, but any sort of success will require both keeping the goals modest and widely acceptable and exceptionally delicate diplomacy to keep everyone more or less happy, chiefly by not being asked to do too much. It’s not a “revolutionary” movement, but a coalition of “not doing.”
To carry the analogy further, what was the situation that faced UK and France in Fall, 1939? I suppose the Germany-equivalent of today didn’t exactly conquer “Poland”: Syria (the Poland equivalent) has been gobbled up by Turkey (playing the role of USSR, I guess?) and Israel (kinda like Germany, I suppose–I wanted to be silly and call it Slovakia, and Netanyahu does sort of look like Josef Tiso if you squint a bit). The best that France and UK could do was to engage in what people called the “Phoney War” and ridiculous and magical schemes in which they could somehow beat Germany (and USSR, too) on the cheap, precisely becaue they couldn’t think of a way to beat Germany directly and they suspected that the other would abandon them to bear disproportionate cost (they weren’t too wrong about that–especially the French). One should hope that Putin and Xi are better than Chamberlain and Daladier, but I also tend to think the latter two got bad rap from the people who eagerly look to history to draw wrong lessons for today.
For context about the speed and unforeseen collapse of Syria.
I didn’t read anyone expecting Afghanistan to collapse in days after the withdrawal of a tiny leftover US forces.
Years later I read that once Trump agreed to a withdrawal and then Biden formalized a date, at that point all the money going to the Afghanistan which trickled down to the police force stopped. It was taken by the top people because they knew the money was ending. Which ment the troops were not going to fight the Taliban.
I suspect that something similar was occurring in Syria as their army was quite large, well equipped and trained.
So something else happened that could explain the rapid collapse, IE the troops not getting paid?
A bunch of commenters brought this up: I’ve heard versions of this from Marandi, Crooke, a d Mercouris. What made me wonder, though, was just who was paying them and how when they were fighting and how did the money stop? For Afghanistan, US was paying the money and the end of that money flow spelled when the soldiers should quit. But who and what was propping up Syria until recently and why did it stop?
Syria had a budget of around $4-5 billion, of which third to half went to armed forces. It is a country with some 20 million citizens and 22% income tax.
My understanding is that the top level of the army was about as corrupt as is possible in a semi-functional country, and the officers and soldiers who during the civil was learned how to fight jihadists effectively were quickly disposed of when the situation calmed. Efficient and professional soldiers can easily rock the boat of decent grift.
There are rumors that units of SAA special forces have made their way to Lebanon and are swearing to keep fighting the opposition.
If so, it’s pretty staggering how quickly corruption overran the country, since it clearly wasn’t quite that bad as late as 2019!
Thanks everyone.
I expect we will find out a lot more accurate details over the next weeks/months.
Eventually humanity is going to have to step back and figure out the flaws in the paradigm.
Time, God, money;
As mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our sense of time is the present going past to future, but the fact is that activity and change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Energy is conserved because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color and sound, as frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.
While this might seem tangential to the politics, given we insist on applying that temporal flow to a thermodynamic reality, there are no circuit breakers on the feedback loops. Such as wealth and power leveraging more wealth and power, until it all collapses. Down the various rabbit holes, echo chambers, vortices.
God; Ideals are not absolutes. Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The core codes, creeds, heroes, narratives at the center of every culture are ideals.
The universal, on the other hand, is the elemental, so a spiritual absolute would be the essence from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The light shining through the film than the stories playing out on it.
Remember, democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. Ancient Israel was a monarchy. The Big Guy Rules. Like the religion.
Constantine adopted Christianity for the monotheism as he was bringing the sides of the Empire together. The Catholic Church was the eschatological basis for European monarchy. Divine right of kings, as opposed to consent of the governed.
When the West went back to popular forms of government it required separation of church and state, culture and civics, morality and law.
When one assumes one’s ideals are absolute, there can be no negotiation.
Money; As these linear, goal seeking organisms in this cyclical circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality, people see money as signal to save and store, while markets need it to circulate. Consequently Econ 101 refers to it as both medium of exchange and store of value.
These might be related, but are not synonymous. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. If we treated roads like we treat money, everything would be paved over and we would be fighting over our lots. The hallway is a medium, the hall closet is a store. The average five year old understands the difference, but our entire economic model doesn’t get it. The medium has become the message.
I could go on, but most people don’t want to think outside the box until it is broken.
The mother of all reality checks is in the mail.
“The medium has become the message.” A perpetual spring or a well is also a message. And a store in progress. When it comes to an ecosystem the medium and the store are intrinsic to each other. They are yet to be extracted, financialized; turned into undefined tokens. If money were an asset, a tangible natural asset, a store of value, it would have to pass the perpetuity test – it would need to regenerate. But the profits of capitalism are a mirage, they are fleeting. Fiat money can be laundered into true assets but it can never be exchanged for true assets. Because money is just a counterfeit asset. The only way money can regenerate is by human fiat. But the catch is that the only way an exchange with human fiat can achieve regeneration is completely dependent on a perpetual store of abundance in nature, which must be cultivated. So this is the hard argument for a new kind of money or capital. Regenerative capital, the cultivation of essential value.
a superlative essay, Yves. I have come to appreciate your cautionary approach to BRICS, having formerly been among the “too hopefully foreseeing quick karma” crowd. many thanks for this and for the website.
Agreed, it was very good. And sobering!
Personally, I don’t think we’re heading toward a multi-polar world. I don’t see more than two poles emerging that are strong enough to exist as a cohesive alliance.
Right now, we’ve got the West vs. the Eurasia block, with lots of other countries being contested territory and mostly trying to preserve some autonomy. Those countries aren’t forming a pole, they’re just trying to avoid having to pick a side.
I’ve been reading for at least the past six months on anti-Empire sites that Ukraine “is crumbling” or “about to collapse” or “running out of soldiers”, and yet stories this week say Ukrainian military have been operating drones in support of HTS in Syria. How can they spare personnel to assist Turkey and Israel in Syria if they’re running out of soldiers on the front lines in their own war zone? There’s no doubt that Russia is still advancing in Ukraine, but the daily war reports still show fierce battles being waged between the opposing armies. All I can assume is that the anti-Empire waystations on the intertubes inflate their narratives with a little too much hopium-nitrous gas when coming up with their analyses. Too much of it bleeds into cheerleading, apparently.
The recent coverage of Iran’s True Promise 1 & 2 strikes (total triumph for Iran!) and Israel’s retaliation (completely ineffective!) is another subject that I think has been interpreted in a way that may significantly misrepresent what really happened. It sure looks like, ever since Raisi was killed, that Iran has been pushed back into a defensive crouch and is far from ready or able to meaningfully assist the “Axis of Resistance” any further. But if subsequent developments make me have to eat my words, I will be not at all unhappy.
The West’s pushing hard for an extremely reluctant Ukraine to eat its seed corn by drafting 18 year olds. I think we can take that as a clear sign there’s a cannon-fodder shortage.
It’s not like it takes an army to train people how to use FPV drones–we’re probably talking maybe 100 instructors, not all of which need be Ukrainian. Not a big investment by any stretch, considering also that an attack on Syria is sort of an attack on Russia.
Well, remember that the SAA looked pretty in control as late as the time we were all eating turkey in the US, not talking about Turkish HTS marching merrily down the M5 highway on the road to Damascus.
It all came apart very quickly. Speaking of turkey, did you read any of Taleb’s work? The “Turkey Problem” as he calls it, is linear thinking that just because yesterday was OK, today will be fine. Works great all year for the turkey, until right around the 3rd week of November …
While I agree with the thrust of your comment, one reason for the Ukrainian military (and, I think, mercenaries/paramilitaries?) to be active in all kinds of places away from the frontline in Ukraine itself (Kursk, Africa, Syria) is that the war in Ukraine looks to be a slow, grinding loss. They can’t hope to make much of a difference by being there, so it makes sense to go elsewhere, whether for revenge or out of some strategic calculation or from personal profit motives. Better to live, win and build connections in Syria than to die pointlessly in the Donbass, for some at least.
About a Syrian budget. Neera Tanden, who became a top Biden adviser, recommended during the Obama years, that when the US put troops in Syria the oil and wheat producing regions be occupied and resources siphoned off as wished. Tulsi Gabbard complained about such a siphoning plan, and remains unforgiven for having made the complaint.
Look. Tthe solution to US global demolition is its’ citizens. The worldwide death and destruction is ours to stop!
Not Russia. Not China. Not the Global South.
While we enjoy the fruits of this destruction, our children will not.
100%. I join you in helpless rage and melancholy. only a small minority feel this way tho. taking to the streets does nothing but possibly allow us to tell our children and their children and show the Ancestors watching that we did something. all we can do is bear witness.
What if all this is just a discussion of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? The World itself may be the major player in coming years, as global warming does more and more damage in many ways. Few things pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than military activity. Crops may fail, naval bases may sink beneath the sea. The Council on Foreign Relations recently struggled with the question “Was COP29 in Azerbaijan a Failure?”
A good and thoughtful essay but I am scratching my head at some of the comments, including the MoA ones. Isn’t the answer that the fall of Syria doesn’t mean much for the BRICS unless one was deluded about BRICS?
BRICS seems to have a pretty limited remit so far: help non-Western countries do business (trade) beyond the weaponized confines of the Western system.
So BRICS didn’t stop a rotten fruit like Syria from falling. Was it supposed to? The multipolar initiative is not yet ready to knock down the entire Western military-economic system of coercion. Were we expecting it to? Already?
I’m as critical of pusillanimous Putin and chicken**** China as the next guy, but perhaps some patience is called for.
BRICS is just one piece of the multipolar puzzle and there are going to be bigger bumps than Syria along the way.
If BRICS gets a decent payments system platform up and running that countries can use besides SWIFT, that’s a pretty big deal. It’s not the revolution in world affairs that people are hoping for, but it’s still a big event.
Had a brainwave: Is it possible/likely that the US will demand (of course, secretly), that the new government in Syria recognizes Israel’s ownership of Golan Heights (including current occupation) in exchange for giving access to the east part of Syria (without US troops leaving) and lifting of some sanctions?
A guy named (as nom de guerre no less) Golani gives up the Golan. That’s precisely why I think a clash is inevitable and soon.
I also don’t think the “Rise of BRICS heralding the imminent arrival of the multipolar world” is the only over-hyped and over-predicted karma.
There’s quite a few lefty journos/analysts that are way over-exaggerating the idea that “Israel is undergoing a social collapse and will cease to exist in 10-20 years”. I think Shir Hever was the originator of this idea and it has taken root on the left.
I think Israel is damaged, but far from destroyed. I don’t think the destiny is locked in, either. I’m open to the possibility that it may yet destroy itself. The world would be better off if it would hurry along.
i think the us’s biggest weakness is its reliance on china and overall lack of industrial capacity. yes, it has all these strengths, but if china decided to get real serious, it could really damage the us. if the us was put in a great power war, it would need to find a way to pull its act together, or lose the war of attrition.
i feel like i can’t make any judgements until i read a little more about history and the way these things generally go. have ingested a lot of hopium and copium over the past year as i try to inform myself on the state of the world.
I don’t see the fall of Syria as a warning to row but a special case. Ignoring the naval base, Syria was surrounded by adversaries or, at best, a neutral (Iraq.) plus it either didn’t have modern AA or it wasn’t allowed to use it. Pretty tough to be bombed without limit even if the military isn’t corrupt.’
Venezuela, say, might fall but it’s not surrounded. If a country has decent AA plus missiles it’s probably ok. Russia shows an expensive Air Force isn’t critical.
I am an European and this sentence made me laugh
What do you think European Union is? A tax and trade union without meaningful military component.
the point with Syria was that Russia opted, once again, for diplomatic options. I guess now they are done with it.
Russia, as well as China, have meaningful military arguments.
Russia should have destroyed all American presence in Syria.
Russia could exterminate Israel and be done with American proxy in the region.
They have the meaningful military component.
what many cultures don’t have is the total lack of humanistic mindset specific to Americans.
Oh, come on. Are you serious?
All EU members save pissants like Luxembourg and Malta are members of NATO. They all make contributions to NATO.
The only exception is small and geographically advantaged Ireland which takes its neutrality seriously. The EU is now talking of making EU and NATO links more formal.
The US got EU members to strip their own weapons cupboards bare for Ukraine. The US maintains substantial bases in NATO. US funding of NATO and its military support of NATO is a big component of EU prosperity, as in they have not borne the full costs of their defense. One can go on….
Legally, EU members have compromised their national autonomy further by being subject to EU law, with the ECJ as the ultimate arbiter. Eurozone member, and the biggest EU economies are part of the Eurozone, have agreed to substantial constraints on national spending, do not control their currencies, and rely on the munificence of the ECB to support their banks in crises. We wrote long form about how the ECB cut its support for Greek banks in 2015, forcing the country into a financial and economic crisis, and forcing the Syria government in July to accept worse bailout terms in July than had been on offer in February.
Also Austria isn’t in NATO. (They were liberated/occupied by Soviets in WW2 and promised to be neutral as condition for Red Army to go home.)
Thank you for the fine point. However, this does not change the fact that the EU has a substantial military component via NATO. Austria is arguably a free rider. Again, it is more than a “talking shop”. How could there be a famed democratic deficit in Europe if the EU was not a significant power center? The EU sees fit to ride herd on state judiciaries, see Poland. It has enough in the way of budget that it distributes to member states that it can use withholding them as a punishment, witness Hungary.
It was the same deal offered to Germany in Stalin Notes 1952 but rejected by Adenauer and US. Adenauer did not want the Protestant East to undermine his Catholic Rhineland Republic so a United Neutral German State was rejected.
It made Berlin Regime of Ulbricht paranoid and pushed Adenauer to drive West Germany deeper into Paris orbit and Western institutions
Austria is nicely depicted by Harry Lime in the Third Man of that era – after 1955 it changed.
There are however only 4 serious NATO powers if you look at real spending and armaments – the rest including Spain are free-riders especially Baltics snd Belgium and Even U.K. has a bigger army than Germany which includes civilian staff in its military establishment. There are very few German combat forces – most are bureaucrats.
Marat notes US has one bureaucrat for every member of military with Veterans Admin and hospitals having huge personnel and gargantuan when added to DoD non-combat staffing
Taking a step back from Western Weltanschauung where every retreat is a defeat, I reflect on the unknowns that are skipped over so readily by puppetmasters wanting their marionettes to dance – or simply their team to scorecard winning goal.
Jolani – a name derived from a patrilineal connection to the Golan Heights has already engaged in talks with Putin. Now more than ever Erdogan needs Russia‘s support in that he has antagonised Iran.
There are more cards on the table than Assad as the Joker – he was never the Ace. He wants to retire to opthamology – he was never the dictator orbiter thug like Mahir, his younger brother.
Now Israel has destroyed Syrian arms it has guaranteed an outside protector will emerge – if not Turkey then a new entity supported by Iraq and Iran and Russia and probably Pakistan. I do not see anything other than a catastrophic miscalculation
US will soon see Ukraine fall – how Western Europe will absorb millions of Ukrainians plus Palestinians plus Syrians I do not know. I do know it is terrifying people as unemployment mounts – Bosch to fire 10,000 and Daimler 20,000 and those are the announced rather than planned cuts. For every one of those jobs 10 others live off their needs
Syria was long gone. No electricity no food no jobs heavy taxes. US destroyed it. US only invaded Iraq because UN Sanctions had expired and Russia snd France were vetoing renewal
US is stuck in the region with hatred from every quarter – it is the facilitator of Baby Murder in Gaza snd Lebsnon and Death of Christianity in birthplace as Christian churches are destroyed. It has hollowed out the West.
Russia and China snd Iran can watch US bleed out. Forever Wars never end and empires need blood sacrifice from the legions
This is a helpful corrective to perhaps too much enthusiasm for the imminent emergence of full-blown multipolarity. It seems safest to conclude for the time being that BRICS is an imperfect step in that direction, its primary purpose being to make available possible partners and mechanisms for trade to countries which would otherwise have to face US led sanctions entirely on their own.
As for Syria, does its fate provide motivation for Iran to accelerate its nuclear program?
To your closing question, yes, particularly if the incoming Trump administration refuses to negotiate re sanctions relief.
One thing that is completely absent from this discussion is a look at how previous Empires fell. With the exception of the Soviet Union (which was only, so to speak, ‘metaphorically’ an Empire, and was, at least economically, an ‘anti-Empire’) I can’t think of a single Empire that fell purely and solely for internal reasons. People might look at the British Empire but actually that Empire received two major body blows first: one from the Kaiser, and the second from the Axis powers and then, the final body blow, it faced huge external pressure from the United States, which wished to push the Brits out of (e.g.) Asia so that the US could step in and install a looser system of neocolonialism that benefited the US instead.
Generally speaking, Empires fall because they are pushed.
In this context, the fact that the US is, to all intents and purposes, uninvadable, is important. (OTOH so is the existence of ICBMS and other similar systems which can be launched from thousands of miles away and can still ‘hit’ the US ‘mainland’.) But even taking that into account, people should not infer that just because the US is flailing and failing that means that its ultimate demise is going to happen anytime soon. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empires were by the late 19th century, total jokes, and everyone expected them to collapse any minute. But they didn’t. It took WW1 to finish them off, and neither of them fell immediately (i.e. when during the first few years of the war) either.
I can easily see the US Empire staggering on for a few more decades or even longer, and that, of course, means that Israel will survive as well, no matter how improbable both those scenarios currently seem.
Empires fall because they rot from the inside, up to the point they are easy to push.
Alexander Mercouris has read Yves post, this article and comments. His response is in his 12-12-2024 podcast; the last 10 minutes, or so.
Alexander Mercouris’s commentary on Yves’s article on Syria and BRICS here:
https://youtu.be/VyYD3_CVnXA
at 100:12:16
Collapse?
“Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
Looks like foreign policy that requires goons with guns to drive it.
The same goons that according to the US fiat media flew planes into the financial centre and capital city of the USA
– Who did 9/11? “Al Qaeda”
– Who’s ‘running’ Syria? “Al Qaeda”
All of this coupled to a debt driven derivative dystopian financial system that requires people to believe that failed banks are successful businesses
Levin Repeatedly References “Sh**ty Deal” at Goldman Hearing
A financial scam health sector
US healthcare – As a share of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.3 percent
China’s life expectancy is now higher than that of the US
Phony Tony Blinken and Jake the Fake Sullivan together with their corporate controllers are driving the country into the ground with a chaotic rudderless foreign policy that requires the support of (goons with guns | the Langley boys).