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Syria – Back In The Arab Fold
Following Syria's military success against its enemies, Arab states which supported the war on Syria are again making nice with it. The United Arab Emirates will reopen its embassy in Damascus. Kuwait and Bahrain will follow. Today a delegation of parliamentarians from Jordan visited Damascus and met with President Assad.
The members of the delegation affirmed that the pulse of the Jordanian street has always been with the Syrian people in the face of the terrorist war against the, as Syria is the first line of defense for the entire Arab region and the victory in this war will be a victory for all the Arab countries in the face of Western projects aimed at destabilizing and fragmenting these countries in service of Israel’s security.
First signs that this was going to happen appeared a few month ago when a Kuwaiti TV personality spoke about the pleasure of visiting an again peaceful Damascus. In June the Foreign Affairs Minister of UAE called the expulsion of Syria from the Arab league a "mistake". In an interview with a Kuwaiti paper Assad said that he had reached "major understanding" with Arab states.
The Saudis though are not yet welcome back in Damascus. They were one of the largest financiers of the Jihadis and will have to pay an equally large price to come back into good standing. Negotiations are ongoing. A formal reentry of Syria into the Arab League can not be far away.
Behind this change is a fear of renewed Turkish ambitions. Not only Saudi Arabia but all the Arab states do not want Turkey to expand and become more powerful. They do not want to see Arab land in Syria under Turkish control. The sole exception so far is Qatar which is allied with Turkey and has Turkish troops on its land to protect it from Saudi imperialism.
The three blocks that form the larger Middle East, Turkey, Iran and the Arab states north of the Red Sea are roughly of the same population size. Each block also represents a religious-political stream with Turkey leading the political-Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, Iran the political-Shia and with the third block consisting of Sunni majority countries with more or less dictatorial rulers. The three blocks compete in their borderlands of Iraq and Syria. The Arabs finally noticed that their attempts to dispose the Syrian government led to gains for Iran and Turkey and put them on the losing site.
For Syria the new Arab position is a very welcome change. While it will certainly not end its alliance with Iran, it will welcome any help against the Turkish ambitions. It also needs investments to rebuild and the rich Gulf states will surely provide some. That will also sabotage U.S. and European plans to starve Syria of money unless it submits to their will.
A few somewhat random thoughts further to Syrian “military success”, considerable and very hard won, with much help from Russia, and help from Iran and Hezbollah: One might ask how likely is it that the US will eventually cooperate, and actually withdraw from occupying parts of the east of Syria? How long will they be there? Will they leave willingly, or by force? If willingly, by what alchemy of cleverness and good fortune can this be achieved? If by force, can they be removed without sparking a bigger war?
One of the ongoing scourges of Earth is this more and more dumbfounding American military empire project, which involves military bases in very many countries of the planet, and subversive activities in just about all, and has been enabled by American global media and financial system domination, and messianic enthusiasm at home. All of those – military dominance, media dominance, financial dominance, home brewed enthusiasm, are in decline.
Although the occupations of Germany, Japan and South Korea, as big examples, continue, those are seeming more and more contrived, bizarre, counterproductive. Russia as once again an essential propaganda system enemy, and China once again also taking on that role, don’t quite sustain the same gravitas and enthusiasm that the cold war and its crusade against communism had.
NATO has found a new life by becoming a American dominated aggressive military alliance, but that again requires a lot of effort at keeping a straight face while doing propaganda to justify. Britain has transitioned as Galloway has noted (paraphrased) – from Empire to Post Empire to pretensions of Empire, but has had to recently stay the course by furnishing much material for becoming a global laughing stock. ‘In any case, Russia did it!’
The extremely disproportionate influence of Jews over US foreign policy does not fully explain the American empire project, nor can this perpetually control it.
One explanation for the ongoing, generations long, American military empire is that the American military and its beneficiaries and supporting cast – The vast MIC and intelligence agencies and the many millions of people with financial dependency on that – have been determining much of the US national and foreign policy. But the US economy is now fragile, and tens of millions are either destitute or on the verge of such. Socially the Americans are an assortment of basket cases, living in a kind of nutty police state. Empire increasingly not working well at home.
And here I’m going to venture into again an endorsement not of Trump per se, but for one of the key ‘meanings’ of Trump: Trump’s arrival and behavior and many contradictory utterances have thrown many monkey wrenches into the previously relentless grinding on of the American Empire Project. Obama could make war and just about nobody noticed: The empire grinds on; Bush made war and lots cheered, and the Empire grinds on. With Trump’s coming , well, in regard to Syria and Germany and Korea and NATO and Turkey and Saudi Arabia and many other places, there are many signs that the Empire project is becoming much more – problematic, weaker, more hollow.
In the United States itself, the many millions of people who have concluded that the term ‘fake media’ is an accurate description of ABC, CNN, CBS, NY Times, etc., signifies that the ability of traditional mass electronic and print medias to completely ‘program’ US citizens beliefs and attitudes is in deep decline. The awareness of deeply corrupt and dysfunctional Washington is solidly embedded in much of America. So the support for Empire would seem to be weakened.
And nature itself may also reassert itself in a way to make the American military policy and criminality seem more obviously the wrong priority or insane: As one example, if the Grand Solar Minimum as predicted by Zharkova does its thing, staying warm and having food over the next decades will become far more of a national security concern than military bases in who knows where or another aircraft carrier etc.
Posted by: Robert Snefjella | Nov 20 2018 10:54 utc | 32
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