Syria trigger for WW3 unlikely, Saudi Foreign Minister

In a der Speigel interview, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir expresses his continued support for regime change in Syria and his desire for rebels to be supplied with anti-aircraft missiles that could shift the balance of power in the war. 

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al Jubeir ...... photo Armin Smailovic/ DER SPIEGEL

 

Adel al-Jubeir, 54, a slim, amiable man, wears a traditional robe and looks a bit fatigued. He and his counterparts spent the previous evening negotiating a cease-fire in Syria well into the night. And since early this morning, they have been busily discussing current global events. Al-Jubeir is the embodiment of a new breed of top Saudi Arabian leaders: He went to school in Germany and college in the United States and then served as the Saudi ambassador to Washington. In contrast to his longtime predecessor Prince Saud al-Faisal, who served as the country's top diplomat for decades stretching from the oil crisis in the 1970s until early 2015, al-Jubeir is not a member of the royal family.

At the time of his appointment as foreign minister last April, Saudi Arabia had just gone to war with neighboring Yemen and the situation in Syria was escalating. Al-Jubeir is now responsible for representing his country's controversial foreign policy.

According to him there are two ways to resolve Syria, and both will end up with the same result: a Syria without Bashar Assad. There is a political process which we are trying to achieve through what is called the Vienna Group. That involves the establishment of a governing council, which is to take power away from Bashar Assad, to write a constitution and to open the way for elections. It is important that Bashar leaves in the beginning, not at the end of the process. This will make the transition happen with less death and destruction.

The second option is that the war will continue and Bashar Assad will be defeated. If, as we decided in Munich, there will be a cessation of hostilities and humanitarian assistance can flow into Syria -- then this will open the door for the beginning of the political transition process. We are at a very delicate juncture, and it may not work, but we have to try it. Should the political process not work, there is always the other approach.

"The problem is that there is a faction in the West drooling at the prospect of engineering a nuclear war with Putin’s Russia and willing to manipulate Erdoğan, Saudi Prince Salman, and anyone and everyone they can deceive to reach that end. They tried and failed in Ukraine.”

“The conflict in Syria is essentially a conflict between two persons–Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, and his neighbor, Bashar Hafez al-Assad, President of Syria, commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces, General Secretary of the ruling Ba’ath Party and Regional Secretary of the party’s branch in Syria. This is NOT World War III, and I refuse to believe it will become World War III. It is a conflict between two people, Assad and Erdoğan.” F. William Engdahl, historian and geopolitical analyst.

With Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev speaking of the danger of "World War III" at the Munich Security Conference, Adel al Jubeir had this to say....


"I think this is an over-dramatization. Let's not forget: This all began when you had eight- and nine-year-old children writing graffiti on walls. Their parents were told: "You will never see them again. If you want to have children, go to your wife and make new ones." Assad's people rebelled. He crushed them brutally. But his military could not protect him. So he asked the Iranians to come in and help. Iran sent its Revolutionary Guards into Syria, they brought in Shia militias, Hezbollah from Lebanon, militias from Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, all Shia, and they couldn't help. Then he brought in Russia, and Russia will not save him. At the same time, we have a war against Daesh (the Islamic State, or IS) in Syria. A coalition that was led by the United States, with Saudi Arabia being one of the first members of that coalition".


Click here for the full interview and see the answers to some tough questions from der Speigel.

Putin vs. Erdogan — It's Personal

On Feb. 2, Turkish President Recep Erdogan urgently sought an audience with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. 

Putin and Erdogan

The Turkish ambassador in Moscow relayed the message, but has, it seems, yet to receive a response.
It was the second time Erdogan has been rebuffed by Putin following Turkey's downing of a Russian military jet in November. Instead of talking, Putin has accused Turkey of stabbing Russia in the back and supporting terrorists in Syria.

The underlying conflict is Putin's support for Syrian President Bashar Assad. When Russia intervened in Syria's civil war at the end of September, it saved an embattled regime that Erdogan had sought to overthrow.
The incompatibility of these strategic visions has been exacerbated by a developing personal rivalry between Putin and Erdogan.

The two leaders have much in common. Both have authoritarian styles, and both have made events in Syria a cornerstone of their popularity at home. Their instinct to escalate rather than back down has created an especially fraught situation in which they could conceivably come into conflict.

"Both Russia and Turkey are confronting each other's pride," says Dr. Theodore Karasik, a senior advisor at the UAE-based Gulf State Analytics. "The likelihood of an escalation is high. It's a nightmare scenario that may come true."

Russian planes began flying combat missions to support Assad's beleaguered ground forces on Sept. 30. In mid-October, the Syrian military launched an assault on the northwestern region of Aleppo, a swath of territory nestled against the Turkish border and populated by Turkmen rebels supported by Erdogan.

The assault was slow to gain momentum, but Russian air support eventually gave Syrian government forces a decisive edge. Ankara was not pleased, and claimed the Russian aircraft had been repeatedly violating Turkish airspace during operations. Then, on Nov. 24, the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian Su-24 fighter-bomber.
The diplomatic fallout from the shoot-down was swift and heated, but it remained confined to rhetoric and economic retaliation by Russia. Since the incident, trade relations with Turkey have all but broken down, and Ankara is now painted in Moscow as a supporter of terrorism.

Tensions between Russia and Turkey subsided through December and January — the ongoing battle for Aleppo has yet to sway in either side's favor. But relations once again took a turn for the worse on Jan. 30, when Ankara accused another Russian aircraft of violating its airspace.

True to form, Erdogan lashed out. "If Russia continues the violations of Turkish sovereign rights, it will be forced to endure the consequences," he said.

The U.S. military backed Turkey's version of events and called on both sides to show restraint.
The calls were largely unheeded. On Feb. 1, the Russian Defense Ministry denounced the allegations as "naked propaganda," and accused Turkish forces of providing artillery cover to Turkmen rebel forces under assault from government troops in Aleppo.

Also on Monday, the Kommersant newspaper reported that a Turkish nationalist group the Grey Wolves may have been responsible for the downing of a Russian civilian airliner over Egypt in October.
Turkey has been antagonizing Russia in its own way. On Jan. 31, Russia's Association of International Truck Drivers revealed Turkish licenses for their truckers had not been renewed — another jab in an ever-intensifying trade war.

"With Turkmen flowing into Turkey, Erdogan is now trying to play tough … but Russia is certainly not going to change its behavior," said Dr. Theodore Karasik, a senior advisor at Gulf State Analytics.
But Erdogan's game of playing it tough brings serious risks, and the reasons for this are than Turkey's options are becoming increasingly limited.

Turkey is essentially losing its struggle against Russia in Syria. In the second half of January, the number of Russian air strikes on the Turkish border increased significantly. "After several strategically important victories in the area, Russia and the Syrian government finally feel they are close to gaining more ground in Aleppo and in Latakia," said Barmin.

These gains may be solidified in the coming days. On Jan. 3, the RIA Novosti news agency reported that Assad's forces successfully encircled the rebels in Aleppo, cutting off their supply lines to the Turkish border.
Though Assad and his Russian allies have yet to win the war, Russia has established a de facto no fly zone in northern Syria, and Turkey's ability to supply the rebels may be in jeopardy.

"Russia vs. Turkey is now a permanent fixture on the geopolitical map," said Karasik. "And the key reason is that Ankara is simply not getting its way." 


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Is Hilary Clinton a pathalogical liar?

More and more the subterfuge behind Hilary Clinton is coming into the light. But will it make a difference to those who support her? And is the US ready to elect, to the highest office in the land, someone with more than just a shaky background.

A scowling Hilary Clinton

Hilary Clinton has been much more than a bit player in the Syrian crisis. Her diplomat Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was killed as he was running a CIA operation to ship Libyan heavy weapons to Syria. Clinton herself took the lead role in organizing the so-called “Friends of Syria” to back the CIA-led insurgency.

The U.S. policy was a massive, horrific failure. Assad did not go, and was not defeated. Russia came to his support. Iran came to his support. The mercenaries sent in to overthrow him were themselves radical jihadists with their own agendas. The chaos opened the way for the Islamic State, building on disaffected Iraqi Army leaders (deposed by the US in 2003), on captured U.S. weaponry, and on the considerable backing by Saudi funds. If the truth were fully known, the multiple scandals involved would surely rival Watergate in shaking the foundations of the US establishment.

The hubris of the United States in this approach seems to know no bounds. The tactic of CIA-led regime change is so deeply enmeshed as a “normal” instrument of U.S. foreign policy that it is hardly noticed by the U.S. public or media. Overthrowing another government is against the U.N. charter and international law. But what are such niceties among friends?

This instrument of U.S. foreign policy has not only been in stark violation of international law but has also been a massive and repeated failure. Rather than a single, quick, and decisive coup d’état resolving a US foreign policy problem, each CIA-led regime change has been, almost inevitably, a prelude to a bloodbath. How could it be otherwise? Other societies don’t like their countries to be manipulated by U.S. covert operations.

Removing a leader, even if done “successfully,” doesn’t solve any underlying geopolitical problems, much less ecological, social, or economic ones. A coup d’etat invites a civil war, the kind that now wracks Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. It invites a hostile international response, such as Russia’s backing of its Syrian ally in the face of the CIA-led operations. The record of misery caused by covert CIA operations literally fills volumes at this point. What surprise, then, the Clinton acknowledges Henry Kissinger as a mentor and guide?

And where is the establishment media in this debacle? The New York Times finally covered a bit of this story last month in describing the CIA-Saudi connection, in which Saudi funds are used to pay for CIA operations in order to make an end-run around Congress and the American people. The story ran once and was dropped. Yet the Saudi funding of CIA operations is the same basic tactic used by Ronald Reagan and Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s (with Iranian arms sales used to fund CIA-led covert operations in Central America without consent or oversight by the American people).

Clinton herself has never shown the least reservation or scruples in deploying this instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Her record of avid support for US-led regime change includes (but is not limited to) the US bombing of Belgrade in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Iraq War in 2003, the Honduran coup in 2009, the killing of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and the CIA-coordinated insurrection against Assad from 2011 until today.



source Jeffrey Sachs writes in The Huffington Post...

Russia’s triumph in Aleppo

A last ditch effort to stop a Russian-led military offensive in northern Syria ended in failure on Wednesday when the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) backed by the National Defense Forces (NDF) and heavy Russian air cover broke a 40-month siege on the villages of Nubl and al-Zahra in northwestern Aleppo province. 

Syrian Army in Aleppo

The Obama administration had hoped that it could forestall the onslaught by cobbling together an eleventh-hour ceasefire agreement at the Geneva peace talks. But when the news that Syrian armored units had crashed through al Nusra’s defenses and forced the jihadists to retreat, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura suspended the negotiations tacitly acknowledging that the mission had failed.


“I have indicated from the first day that I won’t talk for the sake of talking,” the envoy told reporters, saying he needed immediate help from international backers led by the United States and Russia, which are supporting opposite sides of a war that has also drawn in regional powers.” (Reuters) De Mistura then announced a “temporary pause” in the stillborn negotiations which had only formally begun just hours earlier. Developments on the battlefield had convinced the Italian-Swedish diplomat that it was pointless to continue while government forces were effecting a solution through military means.

After months of grinding away at enemy positions across the country,  the Russian strategy has begun to bear fruit. Loyalist ground forces have made great strides on the battlefield rolling back the war-weary insurgents on virtually all fronts. A broad swathe of the Turkish border is now under SAA control while the ubiquitous Russian bombers continue to inflict heavy losses on demoralized anti-regime militants. Wednesday’s lightening attack on the strategic towns of  Nubl and Zahraa was just the icing on the cake.  The bold maneuver severed critical supply-lines to Turkey while  tightening the military noose around the country’s largest city leaving hundreds of terrorists stranded in a battered cauldron with no way out.

For the last two weeks, the Obama team has been following developments on the ground with growing concern. This is why Secretary of State John Kerry hurriedly assembled a diplomatic mission to convene emergency peace talks in Geneva despite the fact that the various participants had not even agreed to attend. A sense of urgency bordering on panic was palpable from the onset. The goal was never to achieve a negotiated settlement or an honorable peace, but (as Foreign Policy magazine noted) to implement “a broad ‘freeze’ over the whole province of Aleppo, which would then be replicated in other regions later.” This was the real objective, to stop the bleeding any way possible and prevent the inevitable encirclement of Aleppo.

The recapturing of Nubl and Zahraa leaves the jihadists with just one route for transporting weapons, food and fuel to their urban stronghold. When loyalist forces break the blockade at Bab al Hawa to the northeast, the loop will be closed, the perimeter will tighten, the cauldron will be split into smaller enclaves within the city, and the terrorists will either surrender or face certain annihilation. Wednesday’s triumph by the Russian-led coalition is a sign that that day may be approaching sooner than anyone had anticipated.

source: Off Guardian

Is the prospect of nuclear war now more likely

A fight now underway over newly-designed U.S. nuclear weapons highlights how far the Obama administration has strayed from its commitment to build a nuclear-free world.

The fight, as a recent New York Times indicates, concerns a variety of nuclear weapons that the U.S. military is currently in the process of developing or, as the administration likes to say, “modernizing.” Last year, the Pentagon flight-tested a mock version of the most advanced among them, the B61 Model 12. This redesigned nuclear weapon is the country’s first precision-guided atomic bomb, with a computer brain and maneuverable fins that enable it to more accurately target sites for destruction. It also has a “dial-a-yield” feature that allows its handlers to adjust the level of its explosive power.

Supporters of this revamped weapon of mass destruction argue that, by ensuring greater precision in bombing “enemy” targets, reducing the yield of a nuclear blast, and making a nuclear attack more “thinkable,” the B61 Model 12 is actually a more humanitarian and credible weapon than older, bigger versions. Arguing that this device would reduce risks for civilians near foreign military targets, 

James Miller, who developed the nuclear weapons modernization plan while undersecretary of defense, stated in a recent interview that “minimizing civilian casualties if deterrence fails is both a more credible and a more ethical approach.”

Other specialists were far more critical. The Federation of Atomic Scientists pointed out that the high accuracy of the weapon and its lower settings for destructiveness might tempt military commanders to call for its use in a future conflict.

General James E. Cartright, a former head of the U.S. Strategic Command and a retired vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that possessing a smaller nuclear device did make its employment “more thinkable.” But he supported developing the weapon because of its presumed ability to enhance nuclear deterrence. Using a gun as a metaphor, he stated: “It makes the trigger easier to pull but makes the need to pull the trigger less likely.”

Two formidable obstacles derailed the administration’s nuclear disarmament policy. At home, powerful forces moved decisively to perpetuate the U.S. nuclear weapons program: military contractors, the weapons labs, top military officers, and, especially, the Republican Party. Republican support for disarmament treaties was crucial, for a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate was required to ratify them. Thus, when the Republicans abandoned the nuclear arms control and disarmament approach of past GOP presidents and ferociously attacked the Obama administration for “weakness” or worse, the administration beat an ignominious retreat. To attract the backing of Republicans for the New START Treaty, it promised an upgraded U.S. nuclear weapons program.

Russia’s lack of interest in further nuclear disarmament agreements with the United States provided another key obstacle. With 93 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons in the arsenals of these two nations, a significant reduction in nuclear weapons hinged on Russia’s support for it. But, angered by the sharp decline of its power in world affairs, including NATO’s advance to its borders, the Russian government engaged in its own nuclear buildup and spurned U.S. disarmament proposals.

Germany's far right gaining traction

Frauke Petry has called for police to be allowed to shoot at migrants. While her demand was widely condemned, Tony Paterson reports from Berlin that the right-wing, xenophobic party she leads is attracting unprecedented support.

Frauke Petry courtesy Getty Images

The leader of Germany’s main right-wing anti-migrant party has caused political uproar by insisting that the country’s border police should be authorised to shoot at refugees trying to enter the country illegally.

Frauke Petry, the 40-year-old leader of Germany’s once merely Eurosceptic but now increasingly xenophobic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, made her controversial demands after addressing a political meeting in Hanover at the weekend.

“Police must stop migrants crossing illegally from Austria,” Ms Petry told the Mannheimer Morgen newspaper. “And, if necessary, use firearms. That is what the law says.” She added: “I don’t want this either, but the use of armed force is there as a last resort.”

More than 1.1 million migrants entered Germany in 2015 – the majority arriving since September. A poll issued last week showed that 40 per cent of Germans now wanted Ms Merkel to resign.Her remarks were the most extreme political response so far by a substantial political figure to mounting public dissatisfaction with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “open door” refugee policy and growing anxiety at the unprecedented influx of refugees and other migrants.

source ~ The Independent