=By= Nancy A. Youseff

Gen. George Casey, center, the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, hands the flag of Multi-National Corps-Iraq to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the U.S. Army’s III Corps, during a transfer of authority ceremony Thursday at Camp Victory in Baghdad. At right is Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the outgoing commander of MNC.
Matt Millham / S&S

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the U.S. military is notably short on soldiers, but apparently not on generals.

There are at least 12 U.S. generals in Iraq, a stunningly high number for a war that, if you believe the White House talking points, doesn’t involve American troops in combat. And that number is, if anything, a conservative estimate, not taking into account the flag officers running the U.S. air war, the admirals helping wage the war from the sea, or their superiors back at the Pentagon.

At U.S. headquarters inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, even majors and colonels frequently find themselves saluting superiors at a pace that outranks the Pentagon and certainly any normal military installation. With about 5,000 troops deployed to Iraq and Syria ISIS war, that means there’s a general for every 416 troops, give or take. To compare, there are some captains in the U.S. Army in charge of that many people.

Moreover, many of those generals come with staffs and bureaucracy that some argue slows decision-making against an agile terror group.

The Obama administration has frequently argued that the U.S. maintains a so-called light footprint in Iraq to reassure the American public that its military is not back in Iraq. Indeed, at times, the United States has not acknowledged where it has deployed troops until one of them died.

But if the U.S. footprint is so small, why does the war demand so many generals?

There is the three-star general in charge of the war, Army Gen. Sean MacFarland, and his two deputies, one of whom is in Iraq at any given time. There is the two-star Army general in charge of the ground war, Army Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, and his two deputies, who also travel between Iraq and Kuwait. There is the two-star general in charge of security cooperation—things like military sales—and his deputy.

Then there are the one-star generals in charge of intelligence, operations, future operations, targeting, and theater support.

There also are an untold number of Special Forces commanders in the battlefield whom the military does not speak publicly about; the dozen figure presumes at least one one-star Special Forces general.

And that is just the beginning of the top-heavy war fight. That figure doesn’t include the bevy of generals stationed in places like Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar to support the mission. Nor does it count the three-star Air Force general and his two-star deputy in charge of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, which is headquartered at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina. Then there is a three-star Marine in charge of Marine Corps Forces Central Command, based out of MacDill Air Force, Florida, and his deputy and their Navy counterparts. All three commands are responsible for the Middle East.

Finally, there are a number of generals from the other roughly 60 coalition countries. The Daily Beast knows of three who support the U.S. generals—from Australia and the United Kingdom.

Once all those additional generals are included, there are at least 21 flag officers in Iraq, a number even military officials concede is conservative, as there likely are other coalition generals and possibly other Special Forces commanders.

Officially, there are only 3,870 U.S. troops, or the equivalent of a heavy brigade, which is usually led by a colonel. One colonel.

As The Daily Beast first reported, however, there are actually more than 5,000 troops, still far short of a footprint that would usually demand a score of generals.

Defense officials defended the deployment of so many generals to The Daily Beast. In a war where there are so many different types of fighters, these officials said, you need generals to coordinate. Today’s warfighter is more lethal, thanks to improved technology, and therefore needs a commander with the appropriate authority to sign off authority on the use of that power. The intelligence reaching the front lines is so complex, it demands the talents of a one-star general, defense officials argued to The Daily Beast.

(Of course, it’s odd to brag about such lethality when the Defense Department has said repeatedly that American troops were “not in an active combat mission” in Iraq.)

These officials also say it is only fitting that Iraqi military leaders engage with a U.S. counterpart of the same rank.

“When you look at what they do and what they are in command of and how they provide support, I think it is justifiable,” one defense official explained to The Daily Beast.

Some defenders offer a more simplistic answer—the U.S. military has always used this structure to deploy generals to places like Iraq.

There are as a rule two types of generals in the U.S. military—those who command troops and those who support the fight. The military argues that in Iraq, the U.S. needs far more of the latter than the former. The Iraqi troops, led by Iraqi generals, should shape the front lines, they said.

But critics argue that such dependency on U.S. generals in areas outside the battlefield not only suggests a lack of Iraqi skills but also obfuscates the U.S. effort.

“Having this many generals and flag officers gives the appearance of commitment without the substance of commitment,” Christopher Harmer, a naval analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, explained to The Daily Beast.

After World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War, the U.S. military downsized its rank and file troops but did not shrink the size of its general and flag officer corps proportionally. The result is a long-standing criticism of a top-heavy military that some argue is costly and not as effective.

A May 2013 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, for example, concluded that “mission and headquarters support-costs at the combatant commands more than doubled from fiscal years 2007 through 2012, to about $1.1 billion.”

Several past defense secretaries have tried to cut the number of generals. Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel tried to reduce the number of general officers and civilians by 20 percent but wasn’t on the job long enough to make it happen. Robert Gates, the defense secretary during the peak of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, proposed eliminating 50 generals and admirals.

If Gates’s efforts succeeded, it is not obvious in today’s military. In addition to all those generals in the Middle East, there are dozens of others at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, which is in charge of the Middle East, and at the Pentagon who also support the U.S. effort in Iraq and Syria—so many that it is impossible to say just how many generals are part of the U.S. war effort.

On Wednesday, two of the leading four-star generals of the war stateside took new command positions. Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the outgoing special operations commander, became the new head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East. Army Gen. Raymond “Tony” Thomas is Votel’s special operations replacement.

Soon, they’ll be visiting the front lines in Iraq—and adding to the number of American generals on the ground in the ISIS war.

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WITNESSES TO HISTORY
CALEB MAUPIN

Brussels airport after terrorist attack.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s the reports from Brussels flow in, the voices on television are all saying the same things. We will have a call for tighter security. We will hear anti-immigrant bigotry and hate for the Islamic religion.

9/11, Charlie Hebdo, London, Madrid, Paris, and now Brussels: every time this happens, the response of the mainstream press and political establishment is the same. One of the classic definitions of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again, while expecting different results.

This time, why not acknowledge the reality of where ISIS came from, and why ISIS remains strong?

Where did ISIS Come From?

The leaders of the United States, NATO, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia remain committed to the violent overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic. The Syrian government, an independent, secular state — where Sunnis, Alawites, and Christians live together with equal rights under the leadership of the Baath Arab Socialist Party — is in the crosshairs of western leaders.

For the past five years, foreign fighters, money, and weapons have been flowing into Syria. While western media has propagated the illusion that the opposition “rebels” are “freedom fighters,” “revolutionaries,” and “human rights activists,” the reality is quite different. The opposition to the Syrian government is dominated by Sunni extremists who want to establish a caliphate, thereby ending the country’s religious freedom.

This is not a battle for “democracy,” but a battle to bring down an independent Arab nationalist state that has supported the Palestinian resistance and presides over a centrally planned economy. The major supporters of the anti-government forces in Syria are autocratic monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.

ISIS did not appear out of thin air. The reality is that ISIS originated as a faction among the anti-government fighters in Syria. ISIS, along with the Al-Nusra Front (previously called Al-Qaeda in Syria) and other religious fanatics, have been receiving military training at CIA camps in Jordan. According to CNN, at least a few ISIS fighters have actually received military training inside of the United States.

As the Syrian government, with Russian and Iranian support, is scoring real victories against ISIS on the battlefield, the Syrian-Turkish border remains open. Weapons and supplies continue to flow into ISIS hands from the NATO state of Turkey, which refuses to close its borders.

The world has seen the horrors of ISIS crimes in Syria, Paris, and now Brussels. Many people in western countries are very afraid that they or their loved ones could become the victims of ISIS’ next attack. John Kerry recently accused ISIS of genocide.

Trump Accurately Describes US Policy

The most honest voice, genuinely articulating the thinking behind US policy in Syria, has been Donald Trump. In a conversation with Scott Pelley of the US television program 60 Minutes, Trump said the US should allow ISIS to defeat the Syrian government.

“So, we lay off ISIS for now? Lay off in Syria, let them destroy Assad? And then we go in behind that?”

“Yes, that’s what I would say.” Trump replied.

This is exactly what US and NATO leaders have been doing. Instead of fighting ISIS, they have worked to weaken the Syrian government, along with its allies like Russia and Iran.  Western leaders continue to support Turkey and Jordan as those countries enable ISIS, allowing them to use their borders.

While people continue to die in terrorist attacks and ISIS remains a threat, figures like Trump, Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham-Clinton, and John Kerry are not concerned about keeping people safe. Rather they continue to chant “Assad Must Go” — the deranged foreign policy slogan on which ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the White House, and the Pentagon can all agree.

A recently leaked e-mail from Hillary Clinton goes as far to predict an all-out Sunni-Shia war throughout the region in the aftermath of a Syrian government overthrow. Hillary Clinton says that “in the view of the Israeli commanders this would not be a bad thing for Israel and its western allies” because it may lead to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

No Real “War on Terror”

ISIS continues to be a threat and kill innocent people because in reality, western leaders are not fighting a war against terrorism. They are fighting a war against economically independent and nationalist regimes around the world. Since 9/11 they have toppled the secular government of Iraq; the Islamic socialist government of Libya; and the Taliban in Afghanistan. In each of these countries, which were somewhat stable prior to the attack, Al-Qaeda and ISIS have become stronger.

As Iranian revolutionary guards fight ISIS every day, the US continues to demonize Iran for testing ballistic missiles. As Russia aids the Syrian government and scores real defeats to ISIS, the leaders of the United States accuse Putin of being “aggressive” and put sanctions on the country.

The origins of the Sunni Takfiri current that spawned ISIS go back to the 1980s. Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda emerged as US allies in an all-out fight to destroy the secular People’s Democratic Party that took power in 1978.

Support for these fanatical extremists remains very strong within the US-aligned Saudi Kingdom. Zacharius Mossawi, a convicted 9-11 hijacker, has confessed under oath that the Saudi regime was involved in the planning of the 9/11 attacks.

However, western leaders remain very friendly with the oppressive Saudi regime that works closely with major US oil corporations.

The people who have taken responsibility for the horrendous Brussels attack are the direct beneficiaries of US foreign policy. By opposing independent-minded countries — like the Syrian Arab Republic, Russia, Iran, and China — US foreign policy is strengthening ISIS. By attacking the enemies of ISIS and similar forces — and in some cases, directly arming and training them — Western leaders have created instability and strengthened ISIS.

While the individuals directly responsible for the Brussels attack most certainly need to be held accountable, why not hold accountable the leaders of the western countries who work each day to enable them?

The Syrian government has never attacked or killed innocent civilians in the United States or Europe. Neither have the leaders of Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, or China. If the terrorism of ISIS is to be defeated, this all-out drive to topple independent-minded governments around the world must be abandoned.

Cross-posted with New Eastern Outlook

 Caleb Maupin is an American journalist and political analyst. Tasnim News Agency described him as “a native of Ohio who has campaigned against war and the U.S. financial system.” His political activism began while attending Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio. In 2010, he video recorded a confrontation between Collinwood High School students who walked out to protest teacher layoffs and the police. His video footage resulted in one of the students being acquitted in juvenile court. He was a figure within the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City. Maupin writes on American foreign policy and other social issues. Maupin is featured as a Distinguished Collaborator with The Greanville Post.

READ MORE ABOUT CALEB MAUPIN HERE.

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[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s Stephen Lendman reported recently on these pages, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister and a unique political figure of today’s world, wrote in a March 3 essay in Global Affairs magazine that his country stands “at the crossroads of key trends” in the field of international relations and underlined that Russia, has “a special role in European and global history.”

Unfortunately, average citizens of the West, especially of the USA, know little and understand less of Russia’s history. To the great majority of Westerners, Russia is a mysterious and forbidding land somewhere in the East which poses a threat to the world which it aims at dominating. Therefore, I have summarized here some aspects of that long history in order to amplify and elucidate Russia’s possible role in the “difficult period of international relations”, of which Lavrov speaks so clearly and rationally.

The history of Russia has been marked, on the one hand, by constantly recurring patterns of fascination for and attraction to the West, and on the other hand abhorrence of and isolation from the same West to which Russia throughout its long history has often wanted to belong. To a certain degree Russia is different. Most Russians themselves are convinced of certain “particular Russian qualities” differentiating them from Western man—qualities not understood, and on the contrary, oftentimes misunderstood by the West. These characteristics can be described as components of a great messianic spirit: the Russian people have often believed themselves destined to be the salvation of the world.

While the few periods of wide contacts with the West have renewed the country, given it new vigor and skills and broken a chain of reaction tyranny, those purely Russian characteristics—tenacity, endurance, spiritualism, ethnic unity, love for mankind and popular traditions have given the country superhuman strength in periods of crisis. Russians never give up. Resistance is in the national DNA. Russians consider themselves invincible as a nation of which there are many examples: the battles of Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad.

Since early Muscovy, even after Ivan the Great in the 15th century who had defeated the Mongol occupiers of Russia, tripled Russia’s territory and making it a major European nation, and exchanged ambassadors and traders with the outside world, contact between Russians and foreigners was discouraged if not forbidden because they were considered contaminating even for the Tsar himself. And consequently secluded in special residential areas of Moscow.

While this great nation was being born, persecuted Europeans, adventurers and criminals were making their way to today’s USA, where they built log cabins and began the exterminations of the native peoples they encountered.

In comparison, sixteenth century Russia under Tsar Ivan the Terrible had become a formidable European power. It expanded its borders to the South but was defeated in its effort to conquer the Baltic States to the West. Those defeats in the West served to emphasize the necessity to modernize the Russian state. Ivan’s severe reforms and the methods employed to achieve them divided the country and sent many Russians in flight to the borderlands and beyond, joining the free-living Cossacks in the steppes.

Keep in mind that centuries were passing. And Russia was advancing, having liberated itself from the yoke of Tartar occupiers. Europeans and more and more Russians themselves understood that they were a great power to be reckoned with. The expanses, the realization of the great wealth their lands contain, the nation’s potential power, and importantly a unifying worldview (mirovozreniye) began welding the Russians together as a nation state.

It fell to Peter the Great (17th and early 18th centuries) to effect a “window on Europe”. Numerous Russians of all classes were sent abroad to learn necessary skills for Russia’s affirmation as a modern European nation, permitting Peter to build his new capital of Saint Petersburg on the Baltic Sea facing the West. Russians became cognizant of a new way of life and perceived new approaches to social living, shaking Russia out of its self-imposed isolation while the huge country also shook off any remaining inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West. By the end of Peter’s reign in 1725, the upper classes had indeed moved toward Europe, adopting European manners and dress and snobbishly preferring to speak French in the salons and the Court. The masses, the Russian people, a spiritual people, however, remained fixed and committed to old Russian traditions and the Orthodox religion.

As the 18th century progressed and while what became the USA was still a British colony, Catherine the Great imported ideas of French enlightenment—ideas however not yet compatible with traditional Russian views. She came to realize that the thinking of Voltaire and Rousseau were dangerous, a danger to herself … and a threat to Tsardom as well. This was long the great historical dilemma for the rulers of Russia: the nation’s need of Western knowhow in order to maintain its position as a world power and the concomitant threats these new influences posed to the system. In any case, by the end of the century the upper classes had learned a new way of life while they also came to recognize their own backwardness.

But the masses continued to toil and repeat generation after generation the old way of life. Such was the setting for the blossoming of Russian intellectual and social thought in the 19th century.

The French invasion of 1812 and Russia’s subsequent victory over Napoleon’s armies and the occupation of Paris changed Russian life.

For the first time in its history great numbers of ordinary Russians—as opposed to the privileged classes of the previous century—had close contact with one of the major centers of Western civilization. Young, educated military officers brought back from France new customs; but more important were the new ideas which fascinated and enraptured Russian intellectuals. In the face of the veritable explosion of these Western ideas, Alexander I was forced to renege on the promises of the liberalism of his youth. A new period of repression began. Nevertheless, the mild movement for a Constitution by some of the guards officers, the so-called, “Decembrists” of 1825, were crushed by the Tsar. Yet it was too late. Things had changed in Russia. The gentry and other educated classes were infected and began to resist the closed society.

The clash between autocracy in need of modernization but aware that those same ideas endangered its existence and the more enlightened educated classes no longer capable of living in darkness gave birth to the first Russian political emigration: intellectuals who left their homeland to fight for their ideals. The conservatives at home, horrified at how far they had moved away from old Russian traditions by becoming nearly Europeans began resisting European influences, thus articulating a struggle between themselves—the so-called Slavophiles—and the Westernizers. All the while the masses were silent.

In the 1830s and 40s, many liberal-minded men in Russia, suffocated by oppression because of their new ideas, by censorship and political backwardness, emigrated to Europe to study and struggle for fundamental freedoms for their people. The earliest émigrés went to France, England and Switzerland where they supported a program for a Constitution and reforms.

With the birth of Socialism in Europe, Russian socialists were soon born among these intellectuals. The departure of Alexander Herzen from Moscow to Europe in 1847 marked the beginning of a new era of Russian social-political thought which was to result in the overthrow of Tsardom and the Bolshevik victory over its more moderate opponents contesting for power in Russia.

The crushing of the Decembrists of 1825, the execution and exile of their leaders, and simultaneously the new ideas advanced by young liberals had made a great impression on Herzen who dedicated his life work to the cause of Russia democracy. Herzen symbolized the move of Russian émigrés from thought to action. Herzen and friends and later the anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, initiated a movement centered around their political journal, The Bell, a movement democratic in nature, promoting a union between the governed and the governing in Russia and encouraging Russians in the homeland to overthrow autocracy. The Bell, published in London, circulated among intellectuals in the homeland, and allegedly read by the Tsar himself, was born on the wave of revolution raging across Europe and survived to introduce the revolutionary current of Lenin, Russian socialists and the later Bolsheviks.

During this period occurred the Mexican-American War (1846-47), in which Mexico lost half of its national territory to the Yankees, a war which became the model of American imperialistic wars, ultimately becoming world-wide, in Latin American, Asia, Europe and Africa. The war against Mexico was soon followed by the American Civil War, 1861-65, at the price of 600,000 dead in the name of US capitalism. Two new world powers, Russia in the East and the Unites States in the West were emerging, powers which that within a century would submerge the old European nation states.

Herzen, however, did not have the stuff that revolutionaries are made of. He had attacked Tsardom with the written word while in that period of crisis only extremes counted. Thus, Herzen inevitably fell from favor among younger, revolutionary émigrés. The struggles between the right and the left among Russian intellectuals left Herzen behind as an anachronism. Intellectuals meanwhile split over the concept of revolution—the moderates for whom some form of constitutional democracy was the goal moved toward the conservatives while the more liberal passed to the side of the revolutionaries. The next wave of Russian émigrés was to be dominated by the revolutionaries headed by Lenin.

Russia’s revolutionaries were a fiery bunch, as divided and factious as the Western left today. Russian revolutionaries disagreed, fought and split, and regrouped. But the movement was carried implacably forward by the organized hard core of the movement led by Vladimir Lenin. In essence, the various currents among Russian revolutionaries continued to reflect the old dispute between Westernizers and more traditional Slavophiles, a modern Western socio-political philosophy or the old Russian traditions, which are still the two deep souls of Russia. In this case, Russian Marxists, European in outlook, looked toward the new proletariat as their base. The Socialist Revolutionary wing counted instead on the peasants and, in a broad sense, the Russian people. The necessary support of both these currents was harnessed by Lenin and his successors after they won the revolution and the Civil War.

The Russian Civil War which erupted after the Bolsheviks took power in 1917 was marked by Western intervention (British, American, French and Japanese) on the side of the anti-revolutionary “Whites”. Since then Russian-American relations, despite alliances during European wars and various commercial agreements, have been based on American Capitalism’s unrelenting opposition to Socialism/Communism. Moreover, I believe there is also an underlying anti-Russian spirit present, perhaps because of American jealousy of Russia’s expanses and wealth, or ,even something more spiritual. The Cold War is most exemplary of America’s fundamental attitude, not only toward Russian Communism but also toward Russia itself.
It is paradoxical that the eyes of the two new nations among world powers, Russia and the USA, still antagonistic toward each other after a century of seeing each other’s reflection in Europe, today are both looking eastwards. Despite the US encirclement of Russia and its goal of regime change and dismemberment of its old enemy, despite the proxy wars in Syria, despite America’s return to Latin America and the expansion of its presence in Africa, nothing can be more threatening to the USA than the terrifying image of the Russian-Chinese alliance. Lavrov’s words of Russia and a crossroads should scare the Jesus out of Washington.

Senior Editor Gaither Stewart, based in Rome, serves—inter alia—as our European correspondent. A veteran journalist and essayist on a broad palette of topics from culture to history and politics, he is also the author of the Europe Trilogy, celebrated spy thrillers whose latest volume, Time of Exile, was recently published by Punto Press.

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 by Andrew Korybko

Topic: Russian Jets Withdraw From Syria

The Western and Mideast mainstream media are frenziedly spinning Russia’s planned drawdown from Syria as a military defeat and a betrayal of its key ally, but just exactly who is betraying whom?

President Putin announced that Russia will begin drawing down its military forces in Syria on 15 March, popularly known as the Ides of March and infamous for being the day that Emperor Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by his own allies.

© Photo: Russian Defence Ministry

While it may have been chosen innocently enough, the date is rich with symbolism and is quite fitting in describing the changing dynamics that are presently at play in the Mideast.On this peculiar day of the year when things are typically not as they may initially seem to be, what’s being popularly portrayed as a “defeat” and “betrayal” is anything but, while the ones doing the premature celebrating are ironically the very same forces that should be concerned the most.

Nearly two millennia after the Ides of March were fatefully enshrined in history, it’s no longer the Roman Emperor that’s being betrayed by his allies, but the Turkish and Saudi ones that are being backstabbed by the US.

The Drawdown

Presidents Putin and Assad coordinated the decision to decrease the Russian troop presence in Syria, agreeing that the anti-terrorist operation had completed its stated aims of “combating terrorism and the restoration of security and stability to many regions in Syria”.

© Sputnik/ Ramil Sitdikov

What’s Behind the Move? Most Discussed Ways to View President Putin’s ‘Syrian Surprise’

In particular, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu proclaimed that his country “carried out more than 9,000 flights” which contributed to “the Syrian troops liberating 400 towns and over 10,000 square kilometres of territory.”

 

The reader is encouraged to consult The Saker’s latest article if they’re interested in a detailed analysis of everything that Russia has accomplished thus far, but the present piece will now move on to describing the intent behind the drawdown and the contingency measures that are in place for defending Syria from any large-scale aggression against it.

From the Battlefield to the Boardroom:

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]ussia’s announcement was timed to coincide with the resumption of the Geneva III talks and clearly carries with it the symbolic message that Moscow is doubling down on its diplomatic commitment in resolving the War on Syria.

The country’s leadership has reminded the world time and again that the only solution to the long-running war is a diplomatic one, with only the Syrians themselves having the right to decide how this will unfold.

A de-jure partition is absolutely off the table and prohibited by UNSC Res. 2254, but there’s a creeping fear among many that a de-facto one could occur if federalization is ever implemented.

It’s perhaps for this reason why the Syrian government and its people are currently not in favor of this approach, and for curious readers who are wondering exactly what could be so bad about federalization, the author welcomes them to read his earlier published research on the topic that’s available at Russia’s National Institute for Research of Global Security.

Russian Defense Ministry

Russia’s ‘Largely Achieved’ Syrian Objectives in Facts and Figures

After five and a half months of operation, Russia’s anti-terrorist air operation has succeeded in the herculean task of bringing the War on Syria to its final logical phase, which is the protracted negotiation process that has just recommenced.The conflict has thus shifted from the battlefield to the boardroom, but in the lamentable event that foreign actors influence their political surrogates to sabotage the ongoing talks and reinitiate large-scale hostilities, Russia has a few back-up measures up its sleeve to make sure that Syria isn’t left unsecured.

Hedging Its Bets:

As optimistic as the Russian leadership is that the resumed negotiations will pave the way to an eventual settlement in the War on Syria, it’s not wishfully naïve either. Here’s how Russia’s hedging its bets just in case the talks are unexpectedly spoiled and Syria plunges back into all-out warfare:

* Bases

Moscow will retain the Hmeymim air base in Latakia and the Tartus naval base in its namesake governorate, the former of which will be used to monitor compliance with Syria’s cessation of hostilities agreement.

* Assets

While most air assets are leaving the battlespace, there’s nothing preventing their return if deteriorating conditions demand it, and Russia’s Caspian Flotilla is more than capable of using its Kalibr cruise missiles to assert out-of-theater force projection without ever having to leave the country’s territory.

* Strategy

In the unlikely but disastrous event that Turkey and Saudi Arabia conventionally invade Syria, Russia has the cruise and strategic missile capabilities to instantly respond to their aggression while considering a more robust follow-up course of action.

Striking a Deal

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t’s unrealistic that Russia would not have conferred with its Iranian and Hezbollah allies prior to its coordinated drawdown decision with Syria, just as it’s equally unrealistic that its strategists wouldn’t have considered how this would affect the current balance of forces in the region.

There’s no way that Russia would unilaterally make the military moves that it did without some corresponding quid pro quo having taken place on the side of the US and its allies, no matter how invisible it may appear to the untrained eye.

© Sputnik/ Mikhail Klimentyev

This is Why Putin is the Most Unpredictable Politician in the World

For instance, the threat of a Saudi invasion of Syria has dramatically eased after the provocative “Northern Thunder” military exercise ended last week, during which time Riyadh had harnessed 20 countries, 350,000 troops, 2,500 warplanes, 20,000 tanks, and 450 helicopters along its northern border over a tense 18-day period. After the Saudis caught cold feet midway through the drills, Turkey also backed down from its plans as well, despite the Russian Ministry of Defense warning in early February that there was an imminent danger that it could invade Syria around that time.

Russian jets take off, going home.

Nevertheless, it shouldn’t be too surprising that this happened considering that Lavrov confidently predicted that the US and its coalition partners would succeed in restraining Turkey. He was obviously privy to the type of high-level and clandestine diplomatic talk that rarely ever filters down to the masses in detail, as is typically the case whenever any Great Power properly engages in diplomacy. There are concrete reasons to believe that Russia and the US may have reached some sort of gentlemen’s agreement behind closed doors, with the clearest indication of this being Lavrov’s major announcement on Monday afternoon that Russia is ready to coordinate its actions with the US in liberating Raqqa, which importantly was made just hours before Putin declared the headline-grabbing military drawdown.

Beware the Ides of March

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]aving proven the existence of secret Russian-US diplomacy over Syria (as evidenced by Lavrov’s aforementioned surprise announcement), the recent unparalleled bout of American behavior towards Turkey and Saudi Arabia can now be seen in an entirely new light and be analyzed to further extrapolate what any prospective deal between Moscow and Washington may have entailed.

 

The US’ reluctant and arm’s-length support to Erdogan after he shot down the Russian anti-terrorist plane over Syria late last year sparked questions about why the US would hang Turkey out to dry, but after realizing that it largely comes down to the Kurds, it’s fair to say that the US has turned on the Turkish strongman.

The US’ refusal to give Turkey the green light to invade Syria, just as Lavrov predicted, was the undeniable proof that Moscow needed in order to know that Washington was sincere in selling out Ankara’s interests for its own grand geopolitical benefit.

As for Saudi Arabia, Obama’s exhaustive interview with The Atlantic magazine, published on March 10, carried some unprecedentedly sharp criticism of the Kingdom. The American President implied that the Saudis were “free riders” who “need to ‘share’ the Middle East with their Iranian foes”, effectively walking back Washington’s hitherto unquestionable commitment to blindly supporting the royals no matter what.

Even more shockingly, Obama wouldn’t even deign to call the Saudis his “friends”, preferring instead to remark that their relationship is “complicated” and consequently administering a previously unthought-of public insult against the entire monarchic family.

At this point, there’s no use denying the indisputable evidence that the US is visibly recalibrating its relations with Turkey and Saudi Arabia to the maximum discomfort of both of these country’s leaderships, and it’s much more constructive to analyze how all of this happened in hindsight and identify the role that Russian diplomacy may have played in influencing this revolutionary tilt over the past year.

The Turks and Saudis have laughed too soon if they really think that Russia has “betrayed” Syria simply because it lessened its military presence in the country, because this Ides of March, there’s much more proof that it’s the US that backstabbed both of them and that Obama did so in the self-interested pursuit of crafting a “peace in Syria” narrative to ultimately top off his ‘legacy’.

About the Author

Andrew Korybko is a political analyst, journalist and a regular contributor to several online journals, as well as a member of the expert council for the Institute of Strategic Studies and Predictions at the People’s Friendship University of Russia. He specializes in Russian affairs and geopolitics, specifically the US strategy in Eurasia. His other areas of focus include tactics of regime change, color revolutions and unconventional warfare used across the world. His book, “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change”, extensively analyzes the situations in Syria and Ukraine and claims to prove that they represent a new model of strategic warfare being waged by the US.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik or The Greanville Post. 

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Of course, Clinton was just conducting US foreign policy as usual, which for all intents and purposes makes her an active participant in a cynical criminal enterprise. 

As a rule we do not post Democracy Now! shows due to the proclivity of this program to feature frequent “left imperialists” —voices on the so-called left that in practice serve as apologists for the imperialist system. This specific program is however an exception, and the crime reported so heinous as to obligate the widest diffusion. 

Brave Berta Cáceres: Her hard-won fame could not protect her against an ambush by the plutocrats’ jackals.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is facing a new round of questions about her handling of the 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Since the coup, Honduras has become one of the most violent places in the world. Last week, indigenous environmental activist Berta Cáceres was assassinated in her home. In an interview two years ago, Cáceres singled out Clinton for her role supporting the coup. “We’re coming out of a coup that we can’t put behind us. We can’t reverse it,” Cáceres said. “It just kept going. And after, there was the issue of the elections. The same Hillary Clinton, in her book, ‘Hard Choices,’ practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the meddling of North Americans in our country. The return of the president, Mel Zelaya, became a secondary issue. There were going to be elections in Honduras. And here she [Clinton] recognized that they didn’t permit Mel Zelaya’s return to the presidency.” We play this rarely seen clip of Cáceres and speak to historian Greg Grandin.

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Since the coup, Honduras has become one of the most dangerous places in the world. In 2014, the Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres spoke about Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2009 coup. This is the woman who was assassinated last week in La Esperanza, Honduras. But she spoke about Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2009 coup with the Argentine TV program Resumen Latinoamericano.

BERTA CÁCERES: [translated] We’re coming out of a coup that we can’t put behind us. We can’t reverse it. It just kept going. And after, there was the issue of the elections. The same Hillary Clinton, in her book, Hard Choices, practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the meddling of North Americans in our country. The return of the president, Mel Zelaya, became a secondary issue. There were going to be elections in Honduras. And here, she, Clinton, recognized that they didn’t permit Mel Zelaya’s return to the presidency. There were going to be elections. And the international community—officials, the government, the grand majority—accepted this, even though we warned this was going to be very dangerous and that it would permit a barbarity, not only in Honduras but in the rest of the continent. And we’ve been witnesses to this.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres speaking in 2014. She was murdered last week in her home in La Esperanza in Honduras. Last year, she won the Goldman Environmental Prize. She’s a leading environmentalist in the world. Professor Grandin?

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, and she criticizes Hillary Clinton’s book, Hard Choices, where Clinton was holding up her actions in Honduras as an example of a clear-eyed pragmatism. I mean, that book is effectively a confession. Every other country in the world or in Latin America was demanding the restitution of democracy and the return of Manuel Zelaya. It was Clinton who basically relegated that to a secondary concern and insisted on elections, which had the effect of legitimizing and routinizing the coup regime and creating the nightmare scenario that exists today.

I mean—and it’s also in her emails. The real scandal about the emails isn’t the question about process—you know, she wanted to create an off-the-books communication thing that couldn’t be FOIAed. The real scandal about those emails are the content of the emails. She talks—the process by which she works to delegitimate Zelaya and legitimate the elections, which Cáceres, in that interview, talks about were taking place under extreme militarized conditions, fraudulent, a fig leaf of democracy, are all in the emails.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And particularly what does she say in them?

GREG GRANDIN: Well, she talks about trying to work towards a movement towards legitimating—getting other countries, pressuring other countries to accept the results of the election and give up the demand that Zelaya be returned and basically stop calling it a coup.

AMY GOODMAN: SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: We think that Honduras has taken important and necessary steps that deserve the recognition and the normalization of relations. I have just sent a letter to the Congress of the United States notifying them that we will be restoring aid to Honduras. Other countries in the region say that, you know, they want to wait a while. I don’t know what they’re waiting for, but that’s their right, to wait.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorsing the coup. What is the trajectory of what happened then to the horror of this past week, the assassination of Berta Cáceres?

GREG GRANDIN: Well, that’s just one horror. I mean, hundreds of peasant activists and indigenous activists have been killed. Scores of gay rights activists have been killed. I mean, it’s just—it’s just a nightmare in Honduras. I mean, there’s ways in which the coup regime basically threw up Honduras to transnational pillage. And Berta Cáceres, in that interview, says what was installed after the coup was something like a permanent counterinsurgency on behalf of transnational capital. And that was—that wouldn’t have been possible if it were not for Hillary Clinton’s normalization of that election, or legitimacy.

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Grandin, we’re going to have to leave it there. Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at New York University, his most recent book titled Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to look at Argentina and what is a billionaire Republican donor, hedge fund financier, to do with Argentina. Stay with us.

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