Did the world escape Armageddon during US –Russia Stand off on Syria!
Perhaps even closer than the 1962 Cuban Crisis because of Rogue Generals & perhaps an irresponsible Israel !
"When there is a general change of conditions, it is as if the entire creation had been changed and the whole world been altered." - Ibn Khaldun
"History is ruled by an inexorable determinism in which the free choice of major historical figures plays a minimal role", Leo Tolstoy
"History is but glorification of murderers, criminals and robbers." - Karl Popper
(Note; this is a very important in depth essay of recent scary developments written after search and long experience as a diplomat and analyst of international affairs.
http://tarafits.blogspot.in/2012/09/a-short-history-of-decline-of-american.html
http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/12/50-articles-on-us-led-illegal-war-on.html
Please spend some time perusing it .Very little in Indian media .Amb (Retd) K.Gajendra Singh, 30 October, 2013 http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/08/amb-rtd-k-gajendra-singh-cv-post.html )
The news trickling out from various sources in September and October about the standoff on Syria in Eastern Mediterranean appeared confused and sometimes even simplistic and looked like a table top nuclear war exercise with lurking Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) if it was played out.
But it marked and proclaimed a historic and epochal watershed between US led West and Russia-China led East and anti- Sunni Iran led allies against Saudi led Gulf Council members .The third dimension was for control over energy and its routes and strategic space .It was perhaps a touch and go moment which could have initiated Armageddon as is being revealed now in layers of information coming up from various sources.
The October 1962 Cuban Crisis between USSR and USA
In many ways September 2013 crisis resembled the 1962 Cuban crisis when US stopped USSR in its tracks to encroach into American strategic space by installing missiles in Cuba to counter US missiles against USSR in Turkey and Italy (this strategic conflict ie Washington installing missiles against Russia remains a major bone of contention even now).
We need not go into the details of the 13 day confrontation in October 1962 between the USSR and Cuba on one side and the United States on the other side. The crisis is generally regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to turning into a nuclear conflict and is also the first documented instance of mutual assured destruction (MAD) being discussed as a determining factor in a major international arms agreement.
The confrontation ended on October 28, 1962, when US president Kennedy and United Nations Secretary-General U Thant reached an agreement with Soviet leader Khrushchev. Publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement never to invade Cuba. Secretly, the US also agreed that it would dismantle all US-built Jupiter IRBMs, armed with nuclear warheads, which were deployed in Turkey and Italy against the Soviet Union. The tense negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union , which were carried out through intermediaries , pointed out the necessity of a quick, clear and direct communication between Washington and Moscow. As a result, a direct telephone link between the leaders of the two countries was established.
Who saved the world in 1962; Vasili Arkhipov !
Arguably the most dangerous moment in the crisis was only recognized during the Cuban Missile Crisis Havana conference in October 2002. Attended by many of the veterans of the crisis, they all learned that on October 27, 1962 the USS Beale had tracked and dropped signaling depth charges (the size of hand grenades) on the B-59, a Soviet Project 641 (NATO designation Foxtrot) submarine which, unknown to the US, was armed with a 15 kiloton nuclear torpedo. Running out of air, the Soviet submarine was surrounded by American warships and desperately needed to surface. An argument broke out among three officers on the B-59, including submarine captain Valentin Savitsky, political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and Deputy brigade commander Captain 2nd rank (US Navy Commander rank equivalent) Vasili Arkhipov. An exhausted Savitsky became furious and ordered that the nuclear torpedo on board be made combat ready. Accounts differ about whether Commander Arkhipov convinced Savitsky not to make the attack, or whether Savitsky himself finally concluded that the only reasonable choice left open to him was to come to the surface. During the conference Robert McNamara stated that nuclear war had come much closer than people had thought. Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, said, "A guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world."
This Soviet-American confrontation was synchronous with the 1962 China-India war with the USA's military blockade of Cuba. Historians speculate that the Chinese attack against India was meant to coincide with the Cuban missile crisis to draw attention away from the Himalayan War.
Before proceeding further , let me reiterate an observation , which needs verification ,that in US and even in Israel (specially in 2006 war with Hezbollah) some of the top military commanders come from the air force , who easily seduce political leaders and strategic experts with their computer generated power point presentations .How bombings and missiles would neutralize enemy defenses and forces and ground troops can then easily mop up the enemy remnants .During similar discussions at India's National Defence College in 1976 , after the air force , gunnery and tank brigadiers had their say , infantry officers would say ; ok, yes , but who and how would the ground troops fight , defeat and take over the ground and then defend it .
This point was clearly exposed in US led 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq and its brutal occupation , when expected fierce resistance for which the Iraqi leadership had drawn up plans made late decorated US Marine Col John Murtha bemoan that US military was broken in Iraq and a political solution must be explored .In the 2006 war in south Lebanon between the famed Israeli Commandos , highly motivated and trained Hezbollah cadres beat the hell out of Israelis and destroyed many of their so called invincible tanks .An investigation in Tel Aviv headed by a former Judge concluded that Israel , so called the best fighting force in the region did not win the war .
Crisis over Use of Chemical weapons in Syria and US threat to punish Damascus!
During the chemical weapons use crisis in Syria ,I was called quite a few times as an area expert by Indian Doordarshan and NDTV TV channels for panel discussions on the situation in Syria and its northern neighbor Turkey .I had reiterated that forgetting the advice of the creator , consolidator and modernizer of the secular republic of Turkey from the ashes of the decayed Ottoman empire , Kemal Ataturk , one of all time great strategic thinkers and implementers , who had after decades of war fare , had summed the liet motif of his policy ;"Peace at home and Peace abroad " , but the duo of Islamist prime minister Erdogan and his foreign minister Prof Davutoglu have got Turkey into a horrible mess because of the megalomaniac and retrograde Islamist thinking and policies of taking back Turkey to Ottoman era glory and influence over former Arab subjects in provinces of Syria, Egypt ,Libya etc . Fortunately President Abdullah Gul, a moderate and sober leader has tried to distance himself from such harmful policies.
As for the Syrian standoff, most other participants were confident that US will bomb Syria and get away (as elsewhere ) with Russia only making noises and protesting , while I was quite emphatic that I did not visualize US bombing Syria unlike Libya , in view of Russian, Iranian, Chinese interests and support and determination to oppose any such attempt with tacit support from other Brics members and non-aligned nation states. In Libya Moscow only lost investments but Syria is vital for MAD balance.
Let me also quote from my 24 September article;
America's place in the world shifted, few Americans noticed it- The Economist
http://tarafits.blogspot.in/2013/09/americas-place-in-world-shifted-few.html
" To a student of history , who has served in Cairo and Algiers ( 1960s ) ,in Paris (1970s) and Bucharest (1980s) , ten years in Turkey ( 1969-73 and 1992 to 1998 ) , with a ringside view in Amman ( 1989-92) of 1991 US led coalition war on Saddam Hussain over Kuwait and posts in Baku ( on the Caspian ) and lectures and travel in central and west Asia , the sudden end of the US- Russian standoff with naval armadas and other military hardware on alert and in attendance , the quickly choreographed solution with US Sec of State John Kerry's public offer of forgoing a US attack on Syria which itself was not clearly defined and, lo and behold an immediate positive response by Syrian foreign minister Muallam, who conveniently happened to be in Moscow besides Russian FM Lavrov , would remain a moment of historic turn around perhaps , perhaps like the turnaround of the Ottoman troops twice from the gates of Vienna in 16th century .
To a skeptic diplomat and political analyst , it appeared to be a done deal , when under pressure from US hawks and military-industry complex , Obama drew a red line last year of ban on use of Chemical weapons by Syria against anyone including rebels .The weapons are an insurance against at least a hundred Israeli nukes and other WMDs .Let us see what alternative Russia provides for Syrian security since keeping its military profile and presence in Syria , renewed in 2005 during Bashar Assad's visit to Moscow is matter of strategic life and death for Russia.
It may be recalled that soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, under a naive Gorbachov and a drunk or drugged Yeltsin, U.S.-led West sent in a large number of so-called experts on capitalism, democracy and globalisation and transferred from half to one trillion dollars from the former Soviet Union territory to banks and other organisations in the West, in the process creating seven oligarchs in Russia out of which six were Jews. Some of them have left Russia and one who wanted to take over the country is in prison in Siberia.
Under the pretext of war against terror, following the September 11 attacks on the US symbols of power, Washington obtained rights to place its military aircraft and troops in Central Asian states like Uzbekistan, Kyrgizstan and Tajikistan in order to occupy strategic pods in the region to threaten the countries of the region including Russia and China.
Then it began the process of encroachment on the Russian near abroad by organising what I call US franchised Street revolutions for regime change to bring in pro- Washington rulers. It got rid of Milosevic in Serbia after having destroyed multiethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-religious Yugoslavia. Without proper medical aid Milosevic died as a result of a biased ICC ruling. US also succeeded in changing the Presidents in Georgia and also in Kyrgyzstan but it failed in Belarus .It also succeeded in Ukraine although the election remained contested.
When US tried a rebellion in Uzbekistan, its ruler Islam Karimov expelled US military aircrafts and troops from its base there. Since then the position of Georgia ruler has been weakened with a new parliament opposed to him. When Georgia encouraged by USA and Israel tried to snatch some disputed territory from Russia, it was punished very severely. Situation in Ukraine is still in flux although it's totally pro-US President was removed, because of enticement by the NATO and European Union. Ukraine is the home of the concept of Russian nationhood and eastern part is populated by Russian speaking Ukrainians, with Russia's Caspian and Mediterranean fleets anchored there.
I had written a number of articles on these franchised revolutions, which are given below;
Articles by Mr. K. Gajendra Singh from Security Research Review-(Volume 1(4) August 2005)
· After Non-Franchised Andean Uprising East Closes Ranks
· Baku-Cayman Pipeline: Another East-West Fault line
· Central Asian Backlash Against US Franchised Revolutions
· Contribution of Turkic Languages in the Evolution and Development of Hindustani Languages
· Georgia in Turmoil: A Gambit in the Eurasian Great Game
· Strategic Chess Moves across Eurasia
· Ukraine: Another Key Stage in East-West Strategic Battle
Western attempts to take over Central Asian states resulted in the strengthening of Songhai Corporation Organization (SCO), which warned NATO by organizing military drills and execises.
During the last few weeks I've been to various TV channels and have been pleasantly surprised that Doordarshan and Parliament channels are much more open and free from bias than India's so-called main corporate channels which are pro-American on foreign affairs. During one of the discussions, one participant claimed that if USA attacked Syria, Russia will make a lot of noise and do nothing. Another participant said that what Russia can do when its GDP is almost that of India's GDP. The differences in the nuclear and missile assets. It is because of such assets that US dare not attack North Korea."
Below are three interesting and important articles related to use of Sarin gas, which it appears now was clearly used by Al Qaeda related or other extremist groups and perhaps supplied by Saudi Arabia or brought over from Libya after the destruction of the state by USA ,Britain and France and Italy .Libya has been damaged almost completely. There's no rule of law. A year ago the American Amb Stevens and three of his aides were killed in Benghazi by terrorist groups .Libya's oil was the main attraction for the Western powers, its production has been reduced to one fifth. Before the bombing of Libya reportedly 5000 people had been killed but since then it is reported that almost 100,000 Libyans have died and there is complete chaos. Weapons supplied by West and paid for by the Gulf oil monarchies and stolen from Libya's military stores have brought about mayhem and chaos in neighboring countries like Mali, Algeria and an even beyond. Such is the result of humanitarian intervention which British, French and US leaders with support from Turkey, Jordan and GCC countries wanted to bring about in Syria.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36312.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/world/middleeast/seeking-credible-denial-on-poison-gas-russia-and-syria-turn-to-nun.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Let me quote from an article American Hegemony is Over by Israel Shamir (fully reproduced at the end) at the Rhodes Forum, on October 5, 2013. Shamir, a very well informed and independent analyst of international affairs is a very dear friend.
"The most dramatic event of September 2013 was the high-noon stand-off near the Levantine shore, with five US destroyers pointing their Tomahawks towards Damascus and facing them - the Russian flotilla of eleven ships led by the carrier-killer Missile Cruiser Moskva and supported by Chinese warships. Apparently, two missiles were launched towards the Syrian coast, and both failed to reach their destination.
It was claimed by a Lebanese newspaper quoting diplomatic sources that the missiles were launched from a NATO air base in Spain and they were shot down by the Russian ship-based sea-to-air defence system. Another explanation proposed by the Asia Times says the Russians employed their cheap and powerful GPS jammers to render the expensive Tomahawks helpless, by disorienting them and causing them to fail. Yet another version attributed the launch to the Israelis, whether they were trying to jump-start the shoot-out or just observed the clouds, as they claim
Whatever the reason, after this strange incident, the pending shoot-out did not commence, as President Obama stood down and holstered his guns. This was preceded by an unexpected vote in the British Parliament. This venerable body declined the honour of joining the attack proposed by the US. This was the first time in two hundred years that the British parliament voted down a sensible proposition to start a war; usually the Brits can't resist the temptation.
After that, President Obama decided to pass the hot potato to the Congress. He was unwilling to unleash Armageddon on his own. Thus the name of action was lost. Congress did not want to go to war with unpredictable consequences. Obama tried to browbeat Putin at the 20G meeting in St Petersburg, and failed. The Russian proposal to remove Syrian chemical weaponry allowed President Obama to save face. This misadventure put paid to American hegemony, supremacy and exceptionalism. Manifest Destiny was over. We all learned that from Hollywood flics: the hero never stands down; he draws and shoots! If he holsters his guns, he is not a hero: he's chickened out.
Afterwards, things began to unravel fast. The US President had a chat with the new president of Iran, to the chagrin of Tel Aviv. The Free Syrian Army rebels decided to talk to Assad after two years of fighting him, and their delegation arrived in Damascus, leaving the Islamic extremists high and dry. Their supporter Qatar is collapsing overextended. The shutdown of their government and possible debt default gave the Americans something real to worry about. With the end of US hegemony, the days of the dollar as the world reserve currency are numbered.
World War III almost occurred as the banksters wished it. They have too many debts, including the unsustainable foreign debt of the US. If those Tomahawks had flown, the banksters could have claimed Force Majeure and disavow the debt. Millions of people would die, but billions of dollars would be safe in the vaults of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. In September, the world crossed this bifurcation point safely, as President Obama refused to take the fall for the banksters. Perhaps he deserved his Nobel peace prize, after all."
Finally let me quote from
"Dismemberment of Command: America's Military Shakeup"
By Gordon Duff and New Eastern Outlook of 24 October, 2013.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/10/24/dismemberment-of-command-americas-military-shakeup/
"We all knew the military was being "cleaned up." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General "Marty" Dempsey, when he assumed America's top military command, filled a position that had been virtually vacant for over a decade.
That decade and more had been filled with failures of command, dozens of them, at the highest levels, numerous inexplicable and often senseless violations of good order and discipline. Moreover, many of those violations bordered on or exceeded the necessary prerequisites to qualify as war crimes or treason.
There had always been a "revolving door" in Washington, carefully groomed military careers could propel "armchair generals" to weighty positions with defense contractors, think tanks or mysteriously funded "chairs" at prestigious universities.
Thus when General Richard Myer *, a predecessor of Dempsey, while testifying before the 9/11 Commission, when unable to explain the many failures of command structures and defense protocols that allowed the attacks to proceed surprised none.
*A four star air force general
In fact, he had only assumed the chair of the Joint Chiefs a few days before 9/11. His tenure, until 2005, saw two illegal wars, a drug empire built in Afghanistan, trillions of dollars disappear in defense funding and the military itself purged of all commanders who failed to pass a political "purity test" established by Vice President Cheney.
Dempsey's role as "house cleaner" has reached into the pinnacle of America's nuclear command structure at a critical time, and not by coincidence.
There has been no reporting in the mainstream media regarding the 180-degree turnabout in American policy over both Syria and Iran in the past few weeks. In fact, those policies changed overnight.
The reason was never given and, even more curiously, never questioned. One day, the US was ready to rain missiles onto Syria. Anything Russia said, no matter how much supporting documentation was offered, was discarded. America had returned to the unilateralism of the Bush presidency.
Secretary of State Kerry announced to the world that the Assad government in Syria was responsible for large-scale chemical warfare in the environs of Syria's own capitol city. Kerry had exact numbers of casualties, details on radio intercepts and full satellite data on the attacks themselves.
Then he didn't
It was found that the radio intercepts came from "Group 8200," identified by Colonel James Hanke, former Defense Attaché to Israel as a Mossad psychological operations unit. The "intercepts" were invented.
What follows is worse; if the intercepts were invented and the intercepts established whose forces were in control of the areas the chemical weapons were launched from, then data on the launchings was not just erroneous but totally wrong.
This began in investigation. There were also HUMINT (HUman INTelligence) sources that filled in Kerry's "intelligence mosaic." When a process was initiated to verify those sources, they simply disappeared "in a puff of smoke."
The result of this investigation, one that will never be made public, is that, within both the Pentagon and White House, individuals responsible for collating and reporting intelligence to cabinet members, members of congress and even the president were, in actuality, espionage agents.
They were and are "moles." Washington is reliving the fictional reality of a John Le Carre novel.
Further examinations of policy documents submitted covered intelligence on Iran. National Intelligence Estimates and reports from the IAEA had found that Iran had accounted for all nuclear material. Claims that Iran had diverted material for "high level enrichment" were, in fact, not just insubstantial but purposefully so.
In fact, the pattern is slowly tracing back to 9/11 and before, including any and all intelligence that led to the attacks on both Iraq and Afghanistan but much more.
As an aside, we take a second to look at Afghanistan. The former First Secretary of the Soviet and Russian embassies in Kabul was Colonel Eugene Khrushchev, a longtime friend. Gene, an expert on the region and co-editor at Veterans Today, is deeply suspicious of US involvement in the sudden and inexplicable growth in narcotics production in Afghanistan.
"Gene" as I call him, cited pronouncements by former US Envoy, Richard Holbrooke that demonstrated somewhat more than "passive support" for what had been a very small opium production issue and what had now become a massive heroin production and distribution industry.
None of this would have been possible, not under America's military occupation of Afghanistan, without full complicity of American commanders.
Similarly, in Iraq, hundreds of billions of dollars of dollars, aid funding, military supplies, weapons, disappeared, all under close military scrutiny.
Prior to that, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had unearthed over two trillion dollars in defense accounting "errors."
Our question is a simple one; what happens when we take a military command authority whose normal good order and discipline is impacted by political extremism and an "unreliable" electoral process to which you throw billions of dollars of potential bribes and payoffs into the mix?
Then take this military command, now little more than a "street gang," and arm it to the teeth, stoke it up on race hatred and religious bigotry, tell it that it is above any rule of law and loose it on half the planet.
How then does the context change, when top nuclear officers are removed, commanders of the most devastating weapons arsenals imagined?
One more thing to add into the mix, missing nuclear weapons. When Fox News today reported the firing of General Michael Carey, they were careful to cite that his removal was not over missing nuclear weapons.
One might ask; when is a denial an accusation?
Over the past six years, there have been two major command shakeups with American strategic nuclear forces. In 2007, Minot Air Force Base, a leading American nuclear defense facility accidentally misplaced an unknown number of thermonuclear warheads, ostensibly "mistakenly" shipping them to another base without authority or necessary record keeping.
Six weapons were listed as recovered. The launch/storage device used was designed to hold nine.
The American form of government was intended to not only separate "church and state" but put the military under civilian control. What does one do when those lines are blurred?
How does one restore accountability?
Moreover, based on recent events, there is an undeniable pattern that something out of the world of fiction, perhaps "Dr. Strangelove" or "Seven Days in May" has or nearly may have transpired.
Many feel an inexplicable relief that we have all come very close to a great catastrophe and are now pulling back. Those who express such inexplicable beliefs may well is justified."
The Cape of Good Hope -
American Hegemony is Over
By Israel Shamir
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36668.htm
October 27, 2013 "Information Clearing House - First, the good news. American hegemony is over. The bully has been subdued. We cleared the Cape of Good Hope, symbolically speaking, in September 2013. With the Syrian crisis, the world has passed a key forking of modern history. It was touch and go, just as risky as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The chances for total war were high, as the steely wills of America and Eurasia had crossed in the Eastern Mediterranean. It will take some time until the realisation of what we've gone through seeps in: it is normal for events of such magnitude. The turmoil in the US, from the mad car chase in the DC to the shutdown of federal government and possible debt default, are the direct consequences of this event.
Remember the Berlin Wall? When it went down, I was in Moscow, writing for Haaretz. I went to a press-conference with Politburo members in the President Hotel, and asked them whether they concurred that the end of the USSR and world socialist system was nigh. I was laughed at; it was an embarrassing occasion. Oh no, they said. Socialism will blossom, as the result of the Wall's fall. The USSR went down two years later. Now our memory has compacted those years into a brief sequence, but in reality, it took some time.
The most dramatic event of September 2013 was the high-noon stand-off near the Levantine shore, with five US destroyers pointing their Tomahawks towards Damascus and facing them - the Russian flotilla of eleven ships led by the carrier-killer Missile Cruiser Moskva and supported by Chinese warships. Apparently, two missiles were launched towards the Syrian coast, and both failed to reach their destination.
It was claimed by a Lebanese newspaper quoting diplomatic sources that the missiles were launched from a NATO air base in Spain and they were shot down by the Russian ship-based sea-to-air defence system. Another explanation proposed by the Asia Times says the Russians employed their cheap and powerful GPS jammers to render the expensive Tomahawks helpless, by disorienting them and causing them to fail. Yet another version attributed the launch to the Israelis, whether they were trying to jump-start the shoot-out or just observed the clouds, as they claim.
Whatever the reason, after this strange incident, the pending shoot-out did not commence, as President Obama stood down and holstered his guns. This was preceded by an unexpected vote in the British Parliament. This venerable body declined the honour of joining the attack proposed by the US. This was the first time in two hundred years that the British parliament voted down a sensible proposition to start a war; usually the Brits can't resist the temptation.
After that, President Obama decided to pass the hot potato to the Congress. He was unwilling to unleash Armageddon on his own. Thus the name of action was lost. Congress did not want to go to war with unpredictable consequences. Obama tried to browbeat Putin at the 20G meeting in St Petersburg, and failed. The Russian proposal to remove Syrian chemical weaponry allowed President Obama to save face. This misadventure put paid to American hegemony , supremacy and exceptionalism. Manifest Destiny was over. We all learned that from Hollywood flics: the hero never stands down; he draws and shoots! If he holsters his guns, he is not a hero: he's chickened out.
Afterwards, things began to unravel fast. The US President had a chat with the new president of Iran, to the chagrin of Tel Aviv. The Free Syrian Army rebels decided to talk to Assad after two years of fighting him, and their delegation arrived in Damascus, leaving the Islamic extremists high and dry. Their supporter Qatar is collapsing overextended. The shutdown of their government and possible debt default gave the Americans something real to worry about. With the end of US hegemony, the days of the dollar as the world reserve currency are numbered.
World War III almost occurred as the banksters wished it. They have too many debts, including the unsustainable foreign debt of the US. If those Tomahawks had flown, the banksters could have claimed Force Majeure and disavow the debt. Millions of people would die, but billions of dollars would be safe in the vaults of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. In September, the world crossed this bifurcation point safely, as President Obama refused to take the fall for the banksters. Perhaps he deserved his Nobel peace prize, after all.
The near future is full of troubles but none are fatal. The US will lose its emission rights as a source of income. The US dollar will cease to serve as the world reserve currency though it will remain the North American currency. Other parts of the world will resort to their euro, yuan, rouble, bolivar, or dinar. The US military expenditure will have to be slashed to normal, and this elimination of overseas bases and weaponry will allow the US population to make the transition rather painlessly. Nobody wants to go after America; the world just got tired of them riding shotgun all over the place. The US will have to find new employment for so many bankers, jailers, soldiers, even politicians.
As I stayed in Moscow during the crisis, I observed these developments as they were seen by Russians. Putin and Russia have been relentlessly hard-pressed for quite a while.
* The US supported and subsidised Russia's liberal and nationalist opposition; the national elections in Russia were presented as one big fraud. The Russian government was delegitimised to some extent.
* The Magnitsky Act of the US Congress authorised the US authorities to arrest and seize the assets of any Russian they deem is up to no good, without recourse to a court.
* Some Russian state assets were seized in Cyprus where the banks were in trouble.
* The US encouraged Pussy Riot, gay parades etc. in Moscow, in order to promote an image of Putin the dictator, enemy of freedom and gay-hater in the Western and Russian oligarch-owned media.
* Russian support for Syria was criticised, ridiculed and presented as a brutal act devoid of humanity. At the same time, Western media pundits expressed certainty that Russia would give up on Syria.
As I wrote previously, Russia had no intention to surrender Syria, for a number of good reasons: it was an ally; the Syrian Orthodox Christians trusted Russia; geopolitically the war was getting too close to Russian borders. But the main reason was Russia's annoyance with American high-handedness. The Russians felt that such important decisions should be taken by the international community, meaning the UN Security Council. They did not appreciate the US assuming the role of world arbiter.
In the 1990s, Russia was very weak, and could not effectively object, but they felt bitter when Yugoslavia was bombed and NATO troops moved eastwards breaking the US promise to Gorbachev. The Libyan tragedy was another crucial point. That unhappy country was bombed by NATO, and eventually disintegrated. From the most prosperous African state it was converted into most miserable. Russian presence in Libya was rather limited, but still, Russia lost some investment there. Russia abstained in the vote on Libya as this was the position of the then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev who believed in playing ball with the West. In no way was Putin ready to abandon Syria to the same fate.
The Russian rebellion against the US hegemony began in June, when the Aeroflot flight from Beijing carrying Ed Snowden landed in Moscow. Americans pushed every button they could think of to get him back. They activated the full spectre of their agents in Russia. Only a few voices, including that of your truly, called on Russia to provide Snowden with safe refuge, but our voices prevailed. Despite the US pressure, Snowden was granted asylum.
The next step was the Syrian escalation. I do not want to go into the details of the alleged chemical attack. In the Russian view, there was not and could not be any reason for the US to act unilaterally in Syria or anywhere else. In a way, the Russians have restored the Law of Nations to its old revered place. The world has become a better and safer place.
None of this could've been achieved without the support of China. The Asian giant considers Russia its "elder sister" and relies upon her ability to deal with the round-eyes. The Chinese, in their quiet and unassuming way, played along with Putin. They passed Snowden to Moscow. They vetoed anti-Syrian drafts in the UNSC, and sent their warships to the Med. That is why Putin stood the ground not only for Russia, but for the whole mass of Eurasia.
The Church was supportive of Putin's efforts; not only the Russian Church, but both Catholics and Orthodox were united in their opposition to the pending US campaign for the US-supported rebels massacred Christians. The Pope appealed to Putin as to defender of the Church; so did the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. The Pope almost threatened to excommunicate Hollande, and the veiled threat impressed the French president. So Putin enjoyed support and blessing of the Orthodox Patriarchs and of the Pope: such double blessing is an extremely rare occasion.
There were many exciting and thrilling moments in the Syrian saga, enough to fill volumes. An early attempt to subdue Putin at G8 meeting in Ireland was one of them. Putin was about to meet with the united front of the West, but he managed to turn some of them to his side, and he sowed the seeds of doubt in others' hearts by reminding them of the Syrian rebel man flesh-eating chieftains.
The proposal to eliminate Syrian chemical weapons was deftly introduced; the UNSC resolution blocked the possibility of attacking Syria under cover of Chapter Seven. Miraculously, the Russians won in this mighty tug-of-war. The alternative was dire: Syria would be destroyed as Libya was; a subsequent Israeli-American attack on Iran was unavoidable; Oriental Christianity would lose its cradle; Europe would be flooded by millions of refugees; Russia would be proven irrelevant, all talk and no action, as important as Bolivia, whose President's plane can be grounded and searched at will. Unable to defend its allies, unable to stand its ground, Russia would've been left with a 'moral victory', a euphemism for defeat. Everything Putin has worked for in 13 years at the helm would've been lost; Russia would be back to where it was in 1999, when Clinton bombed Belgrade.
The acme of this confrontation was reached in the Obama-Putin exchange on exceptionalism. The two men were not buddies to start with. Putin was annoyed by what he perceived as Obama's insincerity and hypocrisy. A man who climbed from the gutter to the very top, Putin cherishes his ability to talk frankly with people of all walks of life. His frank talk can be shockingly brutal. When he was heckled by a French journalist regarding treatment of Chechen separatists, he replied:
"The Muslim extremists (takfiris) are enemies of Christians, of atheists, and even of Muslims because they believe that traditional Islam is hostile to the goals that they set themselves. And if you want to become an Islamic radical and are ready to be circumcised, I invite you to Moscow. We are a multi-faith country and we have experts who can do it. And I would advise them to carry out that operation in such a way that nothing would grow in that place again".
Another example of his shockingly candid talk was given at Valdai as he replied to BBC's Bridget Kendall. She asked: did the threat of US military strikes actually play a rather useful role in Syria's agreeing to have its weapons placed under control?
Putin replied: Syria got itself chemical weapons as an alternative to Israel's nuclear arsenal. He called for the disarmament of Israel and invoked the name of Mordecai Vanunu as an example of an Israeli scientist who opposes nuclear weapons. (My interview with Vanunu had been recently published in the largest Russian daily paper, and it gained some notice).
Putin tried to talk frankly to Obama. We know of their exchange from a leaked record of the Putin-Netanyahu confidential conversation. Putin called the American and asked him: what's your point in Syria? Obama replied: I am worried that Assad's regime does not observe human rights. Putin almost puked from the sheer hypocrisy of this answer. He understood it as Obama's refusal to talk with him "on eye level".
In the aftermath of the Syrian stand-off, Obama appealed to the people of the world in the name of American exceptionalism. The United States' policy is "what makes America different. It's what makes us exceptional", he said. Putin responded: "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal." This was not only an ideological, but theological contradistinction.
As I expounded at length elsewhere, the US is built on the Judaic theology of exceptionalism, of being Chosen. It is the country of Old Testament. This is the deeper reason for the US and Israel's special relationship. Europe is going through a stage of apostasy and rejection of Christ, while Russia remains deeply Christian. Its churches are full; they bless one other with Christmas and Easter blessings, instead of neutral "seasons". Russia is a New Testament country. And rejection of exceptionalism, of closeness is the underlying tenet of Christianity.
For this reason, while organised US Jewry supported the war, condemned Assad and called for US intervention, the Jewish community of Russia, quite numerous, wealthy and influential one, did not support the Syrian rebels but rather stood by Putin's effort to preserve peace in Syria. Ditto Iran, where the wealthy Jewish community supported the legitimate government in Syria. It appears that countries guided by a strong established church are immune from disruptive influence of lobbies; while countries without such a church – the US and/or France – give in to such influences and adopt illegal interventionism as a norm.
As US hegemony declines, we look to an uncertain future. The behemoth might of the US military be able to still wreck havoc; a wounded beast is the most dangerous one. Americans may listen to Senator Ron Paul who called to give up overseas bases and cut military expenditure. Norms of international law and sovereignty of all states should be observed. People of the world will like America again when it will cease snooping and bullying. It isn't easy, but we've already negotiated the Cape and gained Good Hope.
Presentation at the Rhodes Forum, October 5, 2013 - http://new.livestream.com/World-Public-Forum/Rhodes-Forum/archives (Language edited by Ken Freeland) - Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net
