Things have not been going quite so well of late for the Power Elite who plot, scheme, and plan behind the scenes like the Grinch, while the rest of us try to get on with our lives.
The highly respected General Wesley Clark, former supreme allied commander of Nato, had spilled their beans when he informed the world that the US government through the Pentagon planned not only to invade Iraq, but to “take out seven countries in five years”.
It showed how imperialism and conquest never died, but flows healthily along undercurrents beneath the surface under another name. The other six were Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.
Investigators tell us to follow the money. More particularly in geopolitics we should follow the black gold, oil, the super currency that is pegged to it, the petrodollar, and its conveyor, the all important pipelines.
Well, what do you know? While Syria, Libya, Iraq and Iran have long been known to be oil rich, a 1991 World Bank/UNDP study found that Somalia had the best future hydrocarbon prospects in the entire region, second only to... wait for it, Sudan.
My word, what a coincidence!
Somalia’s oil rich basins are connected geologically across the Gulf of Aden to those of Yemen, which have nine billion barrels of proven oil reserves. Yemen of course has been the victim of an atrocious war with Saudi Arabia, known for its extreme wahhabism, dictatorial regime run by an insanely wealthy family dynasty, and regular mass beheadings in public squares.
But all this does not disqualify Saudi Arabia from remaining chummy chummy with the US and UK power houses that supply it extensively with weapons.
While some have been whinging over alleged foreign interference by internet bots in election campaigns, Syria has had to deal with massive interference through foreign mercenaries and now even a US military presence on its soil and in its airspace, in blatant breach of international law.
Sudan for its part was partitioned in 2011, with 75 per cent of its oil fields going to the new South Sudan. On January 3, 2014, the New York Times reported that “South Sudan is in many ways an American creation, carved out of war-torn Sudan in a referendum largely orchestrated by the United States, its fragile institutions nurtured with billions of dollars in American aid”.
Many are under the illusion that there is nothing illegitimate about economic sanctions that seem to be handed out by some countries like cheesecakes, as if such decisions were at the mere discretion of a foreign government as part of its policies. They are wrong. If not sanctioned by the UN, they are against international law.
The US has slapped economic sanctions on Syria, Iran and Sudan.
But hey, whoever remembers international law, right? It is not only a dead letter, especially when it comes to economic sanctions, but one that has been buried a long time ago, and is fading fast from public memory, in the same way any moral codes had become ancient history mixed with laughable legend and hearsay in the heyday of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Middle East chess game got held up in Syria when the constant flow of 30 kilometre convoys of oil-filled trucks commandeered by Isis finally started to get blown up. When the Isis gravy train ground to a halt, its finances and ability to wage war slowly but surely started to dry up.
But meddling in Syria and the Middle East is nothing new.
The global conflict today, and make no mistake about it, it is not just a regional one, is once again about cornering and controlling global resources
In Robert Kennedy junior’s excellent article in Politico entitled ‘Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria’, he reminds us of the Bruce-Lovett report, to which his grandfather Joe Kennedy was a signatory, that had exposed “CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people”.
He tells us furthermore that: “In July 1957, following a failed coup in Syria by the CIA, my uncle, Sen. John F. Kennedy, infuriated the Eisenhower White House, the leaders of both political parties and our European allies with a milestone speech endorsing the right of self-governance in the Arab world and an end to America’s imperialist meddling in Arab countries.”
Today pipeline wars are still being fought all across the Middle East.
Then along comes Turkey, where its leader has moved up a notch from authoritarian to downright obnoxious. But Turkey just so happens to be one of the most important members of Nato. So the powers that be have to tread ever so gingerly so as not to upset the highly volatile character who has yet to learn the word ‘diplomacy’, and who suddenly happens to hold so many trump cards in his hand. No pun intended there.
After some media mouthpieces have turned completely hoarse croaking out fake news about fake enemies to prepare the unwitting western public for some horrific showdown that would serve to try and divert all lucrative oil pipelines to lead to the Lion and the Eagle, Turkey suddenly goes rogue, starts to misbehave, sings out of tune from the given hymn sheet and, horror of horrors, starts talking to the Bear and the Persian Lion.
What a nightmare for such dedicated strategists. Ever had that feeling of glee disappear and that smug sneer wiped off your face just after you have eaten up a couple of pieces on the droughts board, when your opponent suddenly starts dancing around the board with his fingers, gobbling up so many of your own pieces, while trying hard not to gloat?
You get the point.
The global conflict today, and make no mistake about it, it is not just a regional one, is once again about cornering and controlling global resources, while people are led astray into believing otherwise.
One of the reasons the Soviet economy had collapsed was its unaffordable military budget. The US military budget today is the largest in world history, dwarfing everyone else’s, and costs the US, including many hidden costs, around one trillion dollars per year. This is roughly equivalent to its annual deficit, which is also the largest in world history.
But the US buys time and credit, and keeps its creditors at bay as it pegs oil and international trade to its currency which comes off the printing press like hot cross buns. It does this by freeriding on the back of a post-WWII treaty at Bretton Woods, making the dollar the world reserve currency to be used for international trade. This ceased to make any sense the moment President Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard.
No right-thinking nation would want to remain tied at the hip to the sinking dollar, or forced to sell its oil and other precious resources in a currency that serves to empower another nation and its military. Many that tried to break free failed through invasions, staged coups, colour coded, foreign aided revolutions and springs.
Taking out smaller pieces on a chessboard is one thing, but trying to push around Dragons and Bears, and middle weights on the board, is another matter altogether. Turkey is a pretty beefed-up middleweight, and despite the most unsavoury nature of the character who calls the shots there, the man has read the oil game, and read it well.
Turkey is a regional heavyweight in both Nato and the Middle East. It is an elephant, one might say, that has stalled the crusade for pipelines, oil and propping up the petrodollar.
But like any other elephant in the proverbial room, the powers that be cannot really talk about it openly, or risk upsetting it, in fear that it may clumsily step back and put its huge foot right down onto all of NATOIL’s insidious plans.
Now wouldn’t that be a shame?
Rodolfo Ragonesi is a lawyer and researcher in international affairs.