The Empire of Chaos is in a Jam
By Pepe Escobar
October 23, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Sputnik"
- The no-fly zone in Syria already exists. It is run by Russia and
Washington is unable to jam it.
NATO is desperate. The Pentagon is desperate.
Imagine waking up one day in Washington and Brussels just to realize
Russia has the ability to electronically jam — detect, trace,
disable, destroy — NATO electronics within a 600 km range
across Syria (and southern Turkey).
Imagine the nightmare of row after row of Russian
Richag-AV radar and sonar jamming systems mounted on helicopters and
ships jamming everything in sight and finding every available source
of electromagnetic radiation. Not only in Syria but also in Ukraine.
Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army units
in Europe, was even forced to qualify Russian electronic warfare
capabilities in Ukraine as "eye-watering."
For their part, caught in the crossfire as sitting
ducks or headless chickens, that mighty ideological aircraft carrier
known as the USS Think Tankland was left dabbling with the four
options left for Washington to "achieve its goals" in Syria.
The first option is containment — which is exactly
what the Obama administration has been doing. The recipe was
proposed in full by the
Brookings Institution; "containing their activities
within failed or near-failing states is the best option for the
foreseeable future."
But that, Think Tankland argues, would "crush the
popular opposition" in Syria. There is no "popular opposition"
in Syria; it's either the government in Damascus or a future
under the ISIS/ISIL/Daesh Salafi-jihadi goons.
The second option is the favorite among US neocons
and neoliberalcons; to weaponize the already weaponized opposition.
This opposition ranges from the YPG Kurds — who actually fight
on the ground against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh — to Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a.
al-Qaeda in Syria and its Salafi-jihadi cohorts. Al-Nusra of course
has been rebranded in the Beltway as "moderate rebels"; so this
option means in practice the House of Saud weaponizing al-Qaeda
while they fight under the cover of US air strikes.
Pure Ionesco-style theatre of the absurd.
Compounded by the fact those apocalyptic nut jobs who pass as
"clerics" in Saudi Arabia, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, have
duly
declared jihad against Russia.
The third option will go nowhere; Washington
allying with "Assad just go" and Iran — not to mention Russia — in a
real fight-to-the-finish against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. Obama boxed
himself in a long time ago with "Assad must go", so he remains
immobilized by a self-inflicted ippon.
The fourth option is the neocon wet dream; regime
change, achieved, in theory, by what I call the Coalition of the
Dodgy Opportunists (CDO), as in the NATO-GCC embrace, with a Turkish
starring role and attached US air strikes, plus all those thousands
of CIA-trained "moderate rebels" slouching all the way to Damascus.
As if the Russian campaign did not exist.
In fact, for US corporate
media, it's as if the overwhelming Russian massacre — and not
"containment" — of "Caliphate" assets these past three weeks is not
happening at all. Hubris has metamorphosed into huge embarrassment
and finally into total omission.
The Obama administration's "Assad must go" diktat
has also metamorphosed into a wacky version of a non-denial denial.
It's plain obvious now that the Russia air campaign, way
beyond ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, has destroyed the whole imperial game across
"Syraq"; that same old mix of regime change, Balkanization, creating
and keeping failed states, "isolating" Russia.
Moreover, and contrary to all the current rehash
of Afghan mythology — where, incidentally, the Taliban continue
to win in America's Longest War — Syria won't be a revisited USSR
quagmire. On the contrary; while in Afghanistan in the 1980s the
proverbial imperial game of using Salafi-jihadis against a secular
government worked, as it worked in NATO turning Libya into a failed
state, now Moscow reverse-engineered the process, smashing the
Salafi-jihadis on the ground in conjunction with secular
governments.
It's our (bombing) way or the highway
Which bring us to Iraq.
Next week, Iraq's parliament will vote on whether
to request Russian air strikes against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. Mowaffak
al-Rubaie, former national security adviser to former Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki, is convinced the vote will pass — even facing Sunni
and somewhat Kurdish opposition.
A measure of Washington's alarm is that the new
chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford
was forced to fly to Baghdad to make sure this won't happen. In his
own words, the Pentagon was consumed by "angst" when Iraqi Prime
Minister Haider al-Abadi evoked the vote.
"Angst" is bound to persist. This is all
about imperial spheres of influence. A "yes" vote, on the ground,
means the Russian Air Force working in tandem with ground intel
collected by Shi'ite militias such as the Badr Corps and Asa'ib Ahl
al-Haqq to smash all fake "Caliphate" positions. And geopolitically,
a "yes" vote signifies the ultimate humiliation — after all those
elaborate multi-trillion dollar plans for the "Greater Middle East"
which Shock and Awe in 2003 should have set in motion.
The USS Think Tankland's prescription for all the
trouble in Syria is to beef up NATO, as in "send aid of all kinds"
to "protect" poor Turkey.
Sultan Erdogan is possibly about to profit from a
Chancellor Merkel-engineered 3 billion euro plan to "encourage"
Ankara to keep on Turkish soil potential Syrian migrants bent on a
peaceful invasion of the European Union. Thus the Sultan will have
paved the way for being finally "accepted", in the long run, as a EU
member.
The problem is Sultan
Erdogan not only supports ISIS/ISIL/Daesh as a regime change tool,
but he also has renewed his war against PKK Kurds, which are allied
with YPG Kurds, which are objectively allied with Washington.
Even that configuration does not prevent the USS
Think Tankland from advising the creation of a NATO-enforced no-fly
zone along the Turkish-Syria border, supported by American, Turkish,
British and French troops.
Beltway, now we do have a problem. This
no-fly zone is already in effect. And it's run by Russia. And you
won't be able to jam it.
A quick final recap: the Empire of Chaos destroys
Iraq; creates the conditions for the emergence of a Salafi-jihadi
constellation, from al-Qaeda in Iraq to its Frankenstein, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh;
does not get the oil (remember Wolfowitz's "We're the new OPEC"?);
tries to destroy Syria for four years, unsuccessfully; and in the
end Russia reinstates its Middle East sphere of influence as the
real power fighting Salafi-jihadism across "Syraq".
If this is what passes for imperial planning, the
Empire of Chaos certainly does not need enemies.