by Pepe Escobar for the Asia Times
hina’s cardinal foreign policy imperative is to refrain from interfering abroad while advancing the proverbial good relations with key political actors – even when they may be at each other’s throats.
Still, it’s nothing but gut-wrenching for Beijing to watch the current, unpredictable, Saudi-Qatari standoff. There’s no endgame in sight, as plausible scenarios include even regime change and a seismic geopolitical shift in Southwest Asia – what a Western-centric view calls the Middle East.
And blood on the tracks in Southwest Asia cannot but translate into major trouble ahead for the New Silk Roads, now rebranded Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
When he said, on the record, “I decided … the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding [of terrorism]”, President Trump essentially took credit for the Saudi/UAE-orchestrated excommunication of Doha, the aftermath of his now notorious sword dance in Riyadh.
Trump’s senior staff though maintains that Qatar never came up in discussions with the Saudis. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former Exxon-Mobil CEO and a certified old Middle East hand, has done his best to defuse the drama – conscious there would be no reason for Qatar to continue hosting Al Udeid Air Base and Centcom to a hostile superpower.
Meanwhile, Russia – the Beltway’s favorite evil entity – is getting closer and closer to Qatar, ever since the game-changing acquisition in early December by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) of 19.5% of the crown energy giant Rosneft.
That translates into an economic/political alliance of the world’s top two gas exporters; and that explains why Doha – still holding a permanent office at NATO’s HQ – has abruptly thrown its “moderate rebels” in Syria under the (economic) bus.
Russia and China are bound by a complex, multi-vector strategic partnership. Beijing, privileging economic interests, takes a pragmatic view and is never inclined to play a political role. As the world’s biggest manufacturer and exporter, Beijing’s motto is crystal clear: Make Trade, Not War.
But what if Southwest Asia is mired in the foreseeable future in a permanent pre-war footing?
China and BRI’s best pal Iran
China is Qatar’s top trading partner. Beijing was actively negotiating a free trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) before the current standoff. Moving forward, a possible scenario is Qatar even pulling out of the GCC.
Qatar is also China’s second-largest source of liquefied natural gas (LNG), while Saudi Arabia is China’s third-largest source of oil. Since 2010 China is ahead of the US as the biggest exporter to Southwest Asia while solidifying its position as the top importer of Southwest Asia energy.
When King Salman recently visited Beijing, the House of Saud ecstatically spun a “Sino-Saudi strategic partnership” based on the signing of deals worth $65 billion. The partnership, in fact, hinges on a five-year Saudi Arabia-China security cooperation agreement that includes counter-terrorism and joint military drills. Much will have to do with keeping the profitable Red Sea-Gulf of Aden corridor free of political turmoil.
Of course, eyebrows may be raised over the fact that Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism is the ideological matrix of Salafi-jihadism threatening not only Southwest Asia and the West but also China itself.
The New Silk Roads/BRI imply a key role for the GCC – in a mutual investment, trademark Chinese “win-win” way. In an ideal world, the Saudi “Vision 2030” modernizing plan breathlessly being sold by Warrior Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) could, in theory, even reign in the appeal of Salafi-jihadism of the Daesh variety all across Southwest Asia.
What the Iranophobic MBS seems not to understand is that Beijing actually privileges its BRI-based economic relationship with Tehran.
Early last year, when President Xi Jinping visited Tehran, he and President Rouhani pledged to raise Chinese-Iranian bilateral trade to a whopping $600 billion in 10 years, most of it related to BRI expansion.
China and Iran have been doing serious business. For over a year now, direct China-Iran cargo trains have been crossing Central Asia in only 12 days. That’s just the appetizer for high-speed rail connectivity spanning the arc from China to Turkey via Iran in the early 2020s.
And in a (distant?) future, a pacified Syria will also be configured as a BRI node; before the war, Syrian merchants were a top fixture in the trading-in-small-goods Silk Road running from the Levant to Yiwu in eastern China.
BRI does Turkey, Egypt and Israel
China’s Maritime Silk Road is not about a threatening “string of pearls” – but mostly about port infrastructure, built by Chinese companies, configuring key BRI stops from the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea and Suez all the way to Piraeus port in the Greek Mediterranean. Piraeus is owned and operated by China’s COSCO since August 2016; this upgraded, modern container hub for trade between East Asia and the West is already the fastest-growing port in Europe.
For his part, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already made it clear that Turkey’s national interests involve “the Suez Canal, the adjacent seas, and from there extending to the Indian Ocean.” As much as Ankara has set up a base in Qatar – with soldiers now flowing in – it has also established a Turkish-Saudi Strategic Cooperation Council.
Ankara may have been slowly and surely engaged in a strategic pivoting to Russia – as in the go-ahead for Turkish Stream. Yet that also qualifies as a pivot to China – expected to develop, bumps included, in all key areas, from membership of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Both Turkey and Iran – a possible full member of the SCO as early as next year – are actively supporting Qatar in the current standoff, including via regular food shipments. That shows once again how Beijing simply cannot allow itself to be dragged politically into what is essentially the vicious, intractable Iran-Saudi regional power war. Once again; BRI trumps everything.
Egypt poses an extra problem. It aligns with Riyadh in the current standoff; after all Field Marshall President Al-Sisi depends on the House of Saud “largesse”.
In Egypt, the new Singapore-sized capital east of Cairo is essentially being financed by Chinese investment; $35 billion by the end of last year, and counting. Extra bonuses include Beijing facilitating currency swap deals – providing a much-needed boost to the Egyptian economy. Ahmed Darwish, chairman of the Suez Canal Economic Zone, has nothing but praise to the top investor in the Suez Canal Corridor, which happens to be Beijing.
And then there’s the budding Israeli-Chinese connection. Israel backs the Saudi-UAE anti-Qatar blitzkrieg essentially as yet another proxy war front against Iran.
China is bidding to build the Red-Med high-speed rail connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. If the proverbial sea of containers can be accommodated near Eilat, the Chinese will be able to transship cargo via the Red-Med railway directly to Piraeus – an alternative route adding to the already Chinese-involved Suez Canal Corridor.
Connectivity is frantic on all fronts. Shanghai International Port Group is running Haifa port. China Harbor Engineering will build a new $876 million port in Ashdod. Israel is already China’s top supplier of advanced agricultural technology – as in water desalination, aquaculture and cattle farming, for instance. Beijing wants more biomedical, clean energy and telecom technology Israeli imports. And the clincher is Israel’s imminent membership of the AIIB.
It’s fair to argue that from now on everything that happens across Southwest Asia will be conditioned by, and interlocked with, BRI’s land-sea superhighway emporium from East Asia and Southeast Asia to southeastern Europe.
Focused on BRI’s comprehensive drive for multipolarization, “inclusive” globalization 2.0, and the rapid spread of information technology, the last thing Beijing needs is a throwback to the past; a foolish, manufactured standoff as the new front in an existential proxy war between the House of Saud and Iran, and with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Israel pitted against Qatar, Turkey, Iran – and Russia.
Talk about sleepless nights in the Zhongnanhai these days.
Pepe lays down a panoply of factoids demonstrating China’s stakes in the MENA.
The gamble they have taken for years has cost them these kinds of investments, many tens of billions, laid waste in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
One of the strategies the US Hegemon has used to contain China in MENA and Sub-Sahara Africa and the Horn is war and chaos disrupting development investments.
China’s refusal to put combat troops into any of the wars, even though its stakes are enormous, has resulted in this targeting by US warmongers. We see it in the Balkans and Ukraine and, now preemptively in the south Philippines. Moving ISIS into the Central Asia region is another blocking-containing-destabilizing move, focused against Pakistan and Xinjiang and worrying China’s OBOR master plan.
Not only does it destroy and diminish the development of these partner nations, it lays waste to the Chinese investment, uninsured, raw wealth put to the service of the underdeveloped peoples of the third world.
Russia came to the rescue in Syria, which helps with Iraq and Iran. Russia is getting close with Egypt and may, with Egyptian military assist General Haftar to clean up Libya. So, China needs Russia’s military to safeguard the enormous investments it is making and has made in MENA.
The Hegemon has an easy time of it to frustrate the magnificent use of Chinese wealth. A few dozen terrorists and some explosive material and progress is stopped, the Chinese retreats their nationals on site, evacuating them from the country attacked, and the US dominates the scene.
Only in Iraq and South Sudan have the Chinese kept security forces to protect some of their interests. But both countries are far, far from stable for Chinese business to continue like before ISIS and chaos exploded Sino-investment.
On the Eurasian landmass we can expect, hope that the SCO can soon coordinate in some measurable security actions to protect the Chinese investments.
MENA and Africa, the NATOized Balkans and the Nazi wunderland of Ukraine are wholly different. There, in MENA, Russia with Iran and maybe Turkey, and Russia with Egypt may help China’s MENA. The rest are not so fortunate, and China is out of luck.
I have no idea how China will cope with the AFRICOM madness being brewed by Mattis and McMaster. But that catastrophe is coming from Gabon to Somalia and beyond. It’s long term continental partner, South Africa, is unraveling rapidly.
The Hegemon has intentions of denying development to the Dark Continent, that is clear. France, Belgium and UK will happily assist, no doubt. China has invested in Africa for 55 or more years, but the return is now merely friendship with the peoples of those sad countries. The Hegemon will not allow more.
Larchmonter
This is rather gloomy. Give the appraisal a lift by reading Pepe’s next article, dated today, at Sputnik: The West Can’t Smell What Eurasia is Cooking
If you’re correct in your appraisal – and I can’t argue against it – then we must be looking at two factors: (1) the time it will take China to change its culture and ramp up its soldiering in the world (perhaps 10 years?); and (2) the incompetence of the US nowadays, even in wreaking havoc, when faced down by real and sovereign soldiers.
Add to these two factors the SCO. China may not want to fight but she is not blind. Escobar outlines how Qatar sees the resistance axis in Syria changing the shape of the world, and now contemplates a new pipeline shared with Iran, Iraq and Syria as partners rather than vassals. In fact, Escobar sees the Russian involvement in Syria as a fledgling SCO action – this may be a little whimsical, but the future may come to see it as just so.
The entire energy/currency equation is slowly and quietly being changed.
SCO will intervene in Afghanistan to bring stability. Both Xi and Putin pushed in Astana for SCO to merge with the Eurasian Economic Union, not to mention the various development banks and other institutions. It’s very quietly getting very big, and powerful.
If Qatar and Iran sell gas to the EU and settle in Euros, and China imports from the Middle East and settles in Yuan – which are convertible to gold – the relative influence of the US dollar as one of the IMF basket of currencies must by comparison decline. Escobar points all this out, and also links to a gold article, also dated today, which hints at China’s gold mining expansion through the Silk Road countries.
I see little here that the US can defeat. But the weak ones, in Africa for example, may well suffer for a time until SCO can come to their aid. The US will ultimately drive all the world into alliance against it. And then it’ll stop.
I don’t think China is quite as far behind the curve as one might fear. And I don’t think the US is quite as capable of turning back the tide of history as one might, equally, fear. It’s not a hegemon anymore, except in its old patterns of obsolescent thinking.
Let me say this about the Chinese and military. They fought last in Vietnam, 1979. Took an ass-whipping from little, but very tough Vietnam. Two weeks, and out. Enormous casualties. Ever since, they have only one significant anti-terror operation in Xinjiang with about 120 elite operators against a gang of less than 12 or so Uyghurs. It was hunt and kill, tracking through mountains.
The last big war they fought in was Korea, 1950-53.
They train a lot with the Russians.
They are well-equipped.
They serve all over Africa as UN peacekeepers.
Their navy has seen some anti-pirate action in the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea zone protecting their container ships, tankers and freighters.
They needed to dip into Syria. They would have every right to be there, invited by Assad, and they could have learned a lot. Right now, if things go hot in Pakistan and Xinjiang, they are ill-prepared for ISIS, Taliban or AQ intensity and IEDs.
SCO is a very slow-evolving organization. Is there any contact between SCO and terrorists? Will it ever?
Reminds me of BRICS. That’s a bank and not much more. It had huge potential but it’s really just the big economies that are still developing all facing the same problems with the Hegemon.
Remember that the Hegemon works with chaos, direct military, covert conflict, finance, investment, currency manipulation, commodity manipulation and sanctions. I see the Hegemon as reinvigorated, not weak. If you look at its failings, it tricks you into thinking the beast is dying. I see it more dangerous and reckless than ever. Trump uses the insanity of the warmongers to make deals.
Yes, gold, petrodollar fading, yuan rising, barter in bilateral trade and the news most recently that Russia is looking at blockchain currency and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan is also proposing a blockchain currency for international trade and settlements are signs that the Hegemon has some issues ahead.
So the US dollar has challengers. But the world is far from dumping it as a reserve currency.
One problem with working multi-polar solutions is if the Hegemon doesn’t want to negotiate new solutions, nothing will change for a long time. And Eurasia and the New Silk Road, OBOR, BRI, EAEU, et al are subject to all the troubles I laid out above in my initial comment. SCO is a beautiful thing compared to EU and NATO. But so what. SCO hasn’t done much but exist and add more Eurasian powers. Some day . . . Well, when?
Look at how the US is pouring on more sanctions, intending to disrupt the North Stream 2 to Germany, and crippling more Russian economic components. The entire post-Syria situation it is generally agreed will be intensive insurgency initiatives bankrolled by the US, Arabs and investors in gas and oil who want to cripple Russia and Iran and promote Israel’s production in the Leviathan field off-shore and the Golan.
It’s relatively easy to create chaos in Syria for quite some time. Meanwhile, it looks like the war in Ukraine will get a go. US trainers and experts are already seen all over the Ukie front adjusting the lines and setting tactical traps for when real fighting starts.
And the US in Afghan is going to add more fuel to that fire in order to interrupt the moves Russia is making to get Taliban negotiating, thereby fracturing their forces, and integrating some of them with the government so the combined strength will be able to battle ISIS and AQ. The US does not want that. It wants Russia out.
Everywhere China will push the OBOR in South Asia, the US has easy means of creating chaos.
The US military right now is unleashed from all restraints. The intention is to bring down the regime in Iran. The intention is to cripple Russia. They probably cannot accomplish either. But using all the Hegemon’s powers and tools, it will be simple enough to create chaos in the development paths of both. And doing so will hurt China and weaken SCO.
As for weakening China, the US will rattle the trade relationships, terrify the ASEAN nations nearby, flex the Japanese military muscles, and as long as Modi is in power, use India to create pressures on China.
So the constructs of these multipolar nations are wonderful if they had a linear progression, evolving ever bigger, doing what their mission statement indicate.
But China is playing a Wealth game and it needs to get into the Military action.
They do fine with diplomacy, but nothing great like Russia does. Russia’s diplomacy is 50% of Russia’s superpower. China needs the mixture of Wealth and Military (especially against ISIS). Missing the opportunity to show military ability signals to the Hegemon that China will not challenge anywhere. It will only defend its own borders.
A real superpower will have to bleed and kill. China is trying to spend and charm their way to the top. What is amazing is last year President Xi announced he wanted to cut the size of the PLA by 350,000 men. War would have accommodated that effort, maybe by only a few dozen or hundreds, but if he would send 25,000 or 50,000 men to Syria, the clean out of all terrorists would go smoother and much faster. And China would be recognized as more than rich guys.
They have some observers there embedded carefully, but they are not fighting. Even flying attack missions with the Russians would be meaningful and beneficial to PLA AF. Close support and strike sorties are crucial against ISIS and Taliban. They will need deep experience coming their way soon courtesy of the Hegemon.
I am somewhat pessimistic, but not thoroughly so.
I think Putin can handle the Hegemon if Iran listens to him, if Turkey is not couped and if Erdogan really joins with Russia and Iran. I also think President Xi will do what Putin indicates as they face the return of the Hegemon as a war machine in their path to Eurasian integration.
Putin has seven more years to break the hegemony, to cripple NATO, to carve EU some holes.
I am very optimistic he can handle everything.
The US has no surprises in its toolbag. And their intent is very clear. Hegemony!
They want the gas business via LNG and must destroy Russia’s into Europe.
They want to contain and destroy Russia’s economy.
They want to contain China’s trading power, make them waste their Trillions on deadend projects, drain off investment capital, and trap them inside the inner island lines by force of US Naval power, with Japanese and Australian and Indian navies.
None of that is going to change. Putin, judo master, is waiting to throw them.
“Putin, judo master, is waiting to throw them.” may be true (I think it is), however some might say that’s incomplete.
What does Judo Master do after he and his opponent(s) agree about who has been defeated? – this is to ask precisely this: what follows defeat? What follows victory? There are two answers…
If Victory attends defeat – as often happens one party defeats the other and declares “victory”. This is 2 actions, not one. It is not necessary, nor is it good, to declare “victory”, as Victory, being Bad, insinuates into the victor several hubristic poisons. Generally the eminent among these is Betrayal… This also inoculates the defeated with certain ambitions that also lead to Evil, and more fighting, and more defeats…or victories – but anyway endless lessons…ugly ones.
Obviously the Master avoids silly mistakes like victory – he’s a master, not an amateur fraud. Think of the alternatives between Truman and FDR… (the latter’s deal with Stalin all voided by the former – who bathed in Victory after the damned gadgets fried the Japanese in a brutal opening of a “cold” war
The defeated partner declares defeat…and the parties agree to study together – at a minimum they agree to study Judo together.
That’s what the Master does after his opponent declares defeat, he teaches, or offers to… Not all “students” are willing, not just at first. But they all return…
@Larchmonter445. I can only say that if you look at the world from such a straight forward way, you are going to miss a lot. The Chinese play Go and follow Sun Tzu.
Go is a long game, but can be fast. But in the end, the victor and vanquished may not be obvious without close examination of the Go board. Also the vanquished may not realise that he is vanquished.
The strategy in Go and Sun Tzu is the accumulation of advantages in position and resources. For example, the latest breakthrough in Chinese military technology in ultra quiet submarine engines, quantum radar and hypersonic air-to-air missiles have made respectively, the US Navy, stealth planes and US Airforce overall obsolete. But the Americans have still not realise this due to their hubris.
The Chinese economy is due to be double the size of the US economy in output terms in another 5-7 years time. It is already 15-20% larger now. The US economy is a bubble, propped up by an overvalued dollar which itself is a bubble. Only the Chinese can rescue the US economy now. But the Americans in their hubris failed to realise this.
Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago that the most excellent way to win a war is to win without fighting or to fight as little as possible. Thus you can see that China seldom go to war. The wars in Korea and Vietnam were forced on the Chinese by external aggression at a time when China was militarily weak. But Sun Tzu’s dictum still stands.
The US is very unlikely to try to force a war with China in the East and South China Seas and in the Indian Ocean when OBOR/BRI. The US economy reminds me of the USSR’s economy in the nineteen-eighties last century. It is facing increasingly insurmountable troubles. Its citizens are opting out of the work-force.
Its military-industrial-complex is an economic parasite and its USD600B per year military is unaffordable. Also like the old USSR prior to its collapse, the US is fomenting trouble all over the world to sustain its declining influence. That’s why Trump wants the EU countries to spend more on defence so he can shift the defence burden onto the EU.
The economic collapse of the US will likely see it descending into civil strife if not civil war.
Understood about GO, a symbolic item I refer to many times in comments here and elsewhere.
However, I stand by my very small insight that the Chinese are ill-equipped to fight a terror war that will come.
Presently, all looks calm and very clever. They have hired Eric Prince to handle security in Africa and in Yunnan and Xinjiang, supposedly to protect executives and installations. But it is a PMC in the making with Chinese characteristics. His rollodex reportedly has 2.5 million names of contractors who have battle experience.
This is a good idea on the surface. But it gains no PLA experience.
Russia is a learning machine in Syria. They tested over 150 military weapons and munitions. They have rotated thousands of troops and matured their leadership’s judgments. All the while, China gets a bit chunkier at the waist, and falls behind in the latest techniques of both adversaries who mean to kill them (ISIS and AQ) and rivals who mean to contain them (US and Japan and India).
All that China is doing is huddling with Russian military to “learn”. I don’t think you can ‘transfer’ the experience of war like you can the mechanisms of electrical actuators or lines of elegant software code. China will waste its technological advantages in weapons if its military is not battle-tested. ISIS and AQ are very good as fighting forces. They are adding their own Air Force via bomb-dropping drones. That could eventually make them quite formidable in battles within urban landscapes. Mosul and Raqqa a year from now would have been impenetrable if ISIS had drones ready as they are showing now in sparse use.
As for the US economy or bubble bursting, and only the US being effected, I think not. The bubble theory of collapse cannot say only the US will be crippled.
Chinese investment in the US and UK is enormous. And they will make more investments with Trump. That’s his game, his demand, his deals.
We haven’t even seen poor Venezuela or rancid Ukraine collapse, nor South Africa and corrupt Brazil and Argentina wobble much. The US foundations may be cracked, but Wall Street has all sorts of Quikcrete to patch the fissures.
The fact is Trump is collecting booty from everyone. And the balance sheet is now not only a matter for taxpayers who absorb the deficits, but for stakeholders in the hegemonic world order. They are paying up for the protection racket the Pentagon has established. And the MIC is flush with orders from all the vassals. Let the Good Times Roll. America is coming back! MAGA means mega bucks and revenues is all that matters. Profits is for Small businesses, not transnationals. Revenues drives stock prices, and market value drives bonuses; and the Lords of War and Power are going into high gear even with Trump’s hands tied on Russia, Ukraine and Syria.
Everyone is All In. The notion that this will explode is wishful.
Long game? President Xi is over in five more years. Putin is over in seven.
Then what? Then who? These two have a lot to accomplish if the multi-polar world gets a chance at life.
The Beast right now looks like it has every chance to outlive these two great minds.
What we can hope for is more stupid strategic moves like upping the ante in Afghanistan. This also is the plan for AFRICOM, more war. That’s good for our side. It will be disastrous. If the Beast makes tactical moves that keep coming up a cropper, the weariness will force changes. US military is almost exhausted. The effectiveness of their use is virtually nulled by reality. Where is it they can fight and win? jAnd Trump has laid down that marker—they must win.
So, if China would present a massive presence in Syria, that would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It would be a brilliant move for multi-polar end to the Hegemon’s proxy in MENA. Totally, a stroke that would be inexplicable for the US.
Equivalent to the first use of Kalibrs from the Caspian Sea. Psychologically, the turning of the war—the war against the Hegemon. Then you can say collapse may happen.
@Larchmonter445. Eric prince is only one layer for Obor security. He helps in intelligence and analysis and his mercenaries are for dealing with semi or non-state terrorists. His guns can be hired by both Obor governments and the private sector. The hard backup is China’s new 100,000 man marine force to be stationed along Obor marine routes. China is substituting quantity with quality military manpower.
China’s 4,000km range anti-ship ballistic missiles will provide a protective shield against state pirates in the East and South China seas and the Indian Ocean. Her submarines, missile ships and soon aircraft carriers will further secure the maritime routes.
As for IS, they will soon be history, drones and all. And any who enters China via Xingjiang, will also rapidly becomes history. China is in the process of deradicalising her Uighers and transform them into useful normal citizens. China is already fighting a war on terror, guerilla style. Your description of a crack force hunting down the terrorists is likely correct. They know the terrain better than the Uighers themselves.
But what if the US, Hitler-like, forced a nuclear war on China? Xi was reported to have told Obama that plus or minus 10%, there will always be a lot of Chinese. There are many ways to interpret this.
My interpretation is that in a thermonuclear war, China will lose at a maximum 10% of her population or 140 million people, before China’s counter will stop such a war. So there is no way that the US will win even a thermonuclear war.
And in the aftermaths, we can place our bets on which country will recover faster and stronger.
So the type of war China had and is preparing for is far different than you think.
And after a war like in Syria, the peace must be won. China is in a position as a member of the SCO to contribute decisively to winning the peace with her massive economic resources channeled via Obor.
Instead of spending billions on assets and infrastructures they can’t protect the chines should spend on creating anti hegemony political parties & politicians in europe & usa help them come to power, & thus get rid of the current warmongering regimes…
One cannot win much being anti-[whatsoever].
The positive, constructive, creative visions change the world.
Qatar is yet another front in the American Empire of Chaos’ war on the world:
“Experts all across the world are trying to figure out what’s really fueling the Qatari-Saudi Cold War, but the answer is simple – the US. As it’s always prone to do, Washington is masterfully playing a game of divide and conquer in the Mideast, doing the same thing to its Gulf allies as it did to its North African ones during the theater-wide “Arab Spring” Color Revolutions, except this time pitting them against one another on a state-to-state level as opposed to an intra-state one between the government and some of its citizenry.
The long-term purpose behind all of this is to usher in Ralph Peters’ 2006 “Blood Borders” blueprint for the “New Middle East”, wherein the Gulf eventually undergoes a geopolitical reengineering just like “Syraq”, Turkey, and the Balkans are slated to do as well. All in all, the fracturing of the region into a myriad of internationally recognized and de-facto statelets is expected to facilitate the prolongation of American hegemony in the broad interconnected space that the late Brzezinski described as the “Eurasian Balkans,” while simultaneously creating major complications for its Russian and especially Chinese rivals’ access to this geostrategic pivot space at the heart of Afro-Eurasia.”
The Machiavellian Plot to Provoke Saudi Arabia and Qatar into a “Blood Border” War
http://abundanthope.net/pages/Political_Information_43/The-Machiavellian-Plot-to-Provoke-Saudi-Arabia-and-Qatar-into-a-Blood-Border-War_printer.shtml
Agree, the divide and conquer strategy behind is easy to figure out.
But what is not easy to understand is why the victims are not simply carrying out a strategy that scares the US nutheads away from making trojan horses of extremism in every countries.
The governments in said countries maybe bribed but must know it. The trail of drugs and weapons and radicalism are easy to track. The US business is as vulnerable as everybodys.
The worst thing bullies and criminals knows is when their own weapons are turned against them.
Bloody noses to US business and affairs would be enough to scare them and make them more hungry for friendly business than the military violence and destruction they are up to at the moment.
Interesting link. What I consider interesting is why the Saudis (royals) do not seem to figure out that they will be the next target in a not so distant future, kind of what happened to Erdogan. Are they that stupid or simply have no choice than to play the game of their US/Israeli masters?
The ruling elite of KSA is an Israel poxy proxy. Israel controls KSA. Once the oil runs out…… KSA is reverts to a sand wasteland.
Russia, Iran, and China, need to create an alternative Twitter, just as they need an alternative SWIFT system.
Al Jazeera’s Arabic Twitter account suspended
“The Arab-language Twitter account of Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera, @ajarabic, has been suspended as the result of what the broadcaster called an organized campaign. The pan-Arab channel says it is taking action to get the service back online. The suspension comes amid a continuing confrontation between Qatar and other Gulf Nations. Al Jazeera’s coverage of events in the Arab world is one of the points of contention.”
Trump tried to do business with Qatar as a private businessman years ago, and was rejected.
Could this aggression from Saudi Arabia be Donald’s revenge now that he is president?