Blue: Members of the European Union for the Mediterranean / Green: Other members / Striped green: Libya.The utterly Corrupt US Aipac/Congress has acquiesced to Caesarism. The American people have no more control over their government than do people in countries ruled by crude dictators.
Washington’s quest for world hegemony is driving the world toward World War III. China is no less proud than was Japan in the 1930s and is unlikely to submit to being bullied and governed by what China regards as the decadent West... Russia’s resentment to its military encirclement is rising... Washington’s hubris can lead to fatal miscalculations....
http://www.win.ru/en/school/6480.phtml
The Mediterranean Union was created in 2008.
http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=7636
It includes Israel, but not Libya.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24327
This Union will no doubt be a tool of the American Empire.
The HQ of the Mediterranean Union, in Barcelona.At http://www.voltairenet.org/en, Rick Rozoff has an article entitled:
Libyan War And Control Of The Mediterranean
From this we learn:
1. The Mediterranean Sea is the main battle front in the world....
2. The Mediterranean is to be part of the US empire....
Rather than go along with the West and back its duplicitous decision to ‘intervene' in Libya, India has decided to chart its own independent course in foreign affairs....
3. Almost all the Mediterranean nations are tied to NATO and the US military. The exceptions are Syria, Lebanon and Libya.
(Cyprus is not in NATO but has military bases of use to the US and its allies.)
4. Libya is also one of only five of Africa's countries that have not been integrated into the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).
The others are: Sudan, which is being balkanized....
The strategic significance of the region between Yemen and Somalia becomes the point of geopolitical interest. It is the site of Bab el-Mandab, one of what the US Government lists as seven strategic world oil shipping chokepoints. The US Government Energy Information Agency states that “closure of the Bab el-Mandab could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal/Sumed pipeline complex, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa. The Strait of Bab el-Mandab is a chokepoint between the horn of Africa and the Middle East, and a strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.” [9]
Bab el-Mandab, between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Oil and other exports from the Persian Gulf must pass through Bab el -Mandab before entering the Suez Canal. In 2006, the Energy Department in Washington reported that an estimated 3.3 million barrels a day of oil flowed through this narrow waterway to Europe, the United States, and Asia. Most oil, or some 2.1 million barrels a day, goes north through the Bab el-Mandab to the Suez/Sumed complex into the Mediterranean.
An excuse for a US or NATO militarization of the waters around Bab el-Mandab would give Washington another major link in its pursuit of control of the seven most critical oil chokepoints around the world, a major part of any future US strategy aimed at denying oil flows to China, the EU or any region or country that opposes US policy. Given that significant flows of Saudi oil pass through Bab el-Mandab, a US military control there would serve to deter the Saudi Kingdom from becoming serious about transacting future oil sales with China or others no longer in dollars....
It would also be in a position to threaten China’s oil transport from Port Sudan on the Red Sea just north of Bab el-Mandab, a major lifeline in China’s national energy needs.
In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world’s greatest untapped oil reserves. Yemen’s Masila Basin and Shabwa Basin are reported by international oil companies to contain “world class discoveries.” [10] France’s Total and several smaller international oil companies are engaged in developing Yemen’s oil production. Some fifteen years ago I was told in a private meeting with a well-informed Washington insider that Yemen contained “enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years.” Perhaps there is more to Washington’s recent Yemen concern than a rag-tag al Qaeda whose very existence as a global terror organization has been doubted by seasoned intelligence and Islamic experts.....
Ivory Coast, now under the threat of foreign military intervention, linked to AFRICOM.
Djibouti, where 5,000 U.S. and French troops are based.
Zimbabwe. ...
5. Lin Zhiyuan, deputy director of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences:
"By building a dozen forward bases or establishments in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and other African nations, the U.S. will gradually establish a network of military bases to cover the entire continent and make essential preparations for docking an aircraft carrier fleet in the region.
"The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with the U.S. at the head had [in 2006] carried out a large-scale military exercise in Cape Verde, a western African island nation, with the sole purpose of controlling the sea and air corridors of crude oil extracting zones and monitoring how the situation is with oil pipelines operating there.
" Africa Command represents a vital, crucial link for the US adjustment of its global military deployment. At present, it is moving the gravity of its forces in Europe eastward and opening new bases in Eastern Europe.
"The present US global military redeployment centers mainly on an ‘arc of instability’ from the Caucasus, Central and Southern Asia down to the Korean Peninsula, and so the African continent is taken as a strong point to prop up the US global strategy.
"Therefore, AFRICOM facilitates the United States advancing on the African continent, taking control of the Eurasian continent and proceeding to take the helm of the entire globe."
....
The UN mandate was for 'humanitarian intervention' to protect civilians in Libya. The British are flying up and down the coast dropping bombs in order to assist one side in a civil war to capture land. Just how was this approved by the Security Council? You will see that there is nothing even remotely close to supporting what the British are doing, which makes such actions a clear breach of international law.
Scroll down for the Dennis Kucinich conspiracy theory, that the actions over Libya are part of a live war game, part of the brand new (November 2, 2010) mutual defense treaty between France and Great Britain which contemplated the current military action under the name "Southern Mistral" (the war game has been suspended due to the war reality)....
Controlled Opposition: USA/Zionism 101....
It was the mass murderer of tens of millions of Russian Christians, and leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin, who said “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” It should come as to no surprise to anyone that the Zionists who identify themselves as neo-conservative, all of whom are admitted ex-Leninists and ex-Trotskyists (30), are the leaders behind implanting “pro-democracy” groups throughout the MENA to control opposition to global Zionist hegemony. The board of directors at the National Endowment For Democracy (NED), the leader of the “pro-democracy” project in Libya (31), as well as the notorious globalist institution Freedom House (32), are comprised almost entirely of neo-cons.
The foundation of NED was built between 1982-1984 at the behest of a research study headed by staunch Zionist Allen Weinstein, who has headed a plethora of globalist projects masked by the pursuit of democracy. Weinstein has authored numerous books in defense of the Zionist entity’s genocidal operations throughout the Middle East, including one in particular that stressed the necessity of America’s commitment to the illegitimate Israeli state (33). Allen Weinstein publicly admitted in 1991, that the NED’s activities are modeled after the CIA’s operations, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” CIA monies are laundered through the NED (34), which serves as a perfect cover due to its perceived nature as a organization championing the cause of democracy.
The current head of NED is Carl Gershman, a ubiquitous globalist figure and zealous Zionist who has received awards for furthering the CIA’s agenda in Tibet and who has composed a study entitled “Israel, the Arabs and the Middle East” defending al-Nakba and all of Israel’s colonial endeavors (35). Gershman also worked for the most venomous of all Zionist Lobby organizations, the Israeli intelligence wing known as the ADL. Gershman is rabidly anti-Muslim and anti-Christian; he has stated that the Qur’an “vilifies Jews” and that the Christian World spread the “blood libel.” Additionally, he believes that Arabs and Arab culture suffer from a “moral sickness” and has gone on record to chastise any and all people who have associated Mossad with the 9/11 terror attacks as “anti-Semites (36).”
NED is already deeply embedded in the fabric of Egypt, and has reared its ugly head from the shadows upon the command of Gershman since the fall of Mubarak (37). With Qaddafi upsetting the Zionist dragon to the point of rage, Israel-Firster Gershman initiated the activation of the democratic army. Just three of the NED-funded groups taking part in the “pro-democracy” protests in Libya are the Akhbar Libya Cultural Limited (ALCF), Libya Human and Political Development Forum (LHPDF) and the Transparency Libya Limited (TL). These groups were funded in the hundreds of thousands by NED (38).
MEPI is an NED-backed group greatly involved in the deconstruction of Libya.
NED’s chief sister organization, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), headed by Zionist war criminal and butcher of Iraq’s children Madeline Albright (39), is also deeply involved in the Libyan uprising, as is a smaller NED-linked group, the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). Aswat, an Arabic propaganda hub in Libya, Libya’s General People’s Committee for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation, My Arabic Library (MAL) and Youth Of Today, Leaders Of Tomorrow are all funded by NDI and MEPI (40). So, an umbrella of organizations controlled by an anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, anti-Arab, pro-war, pro-Zionist war monger is looking out for the interest of the Libyan people? Right.
The organizing of the “Feb17 Revolution” in Libya was led by a group known as the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO). The NCLO called for mass protests against the Qaddafi regime in a multi-level manner, inside Libya and abroad, all for the goal of bringing down the 42-year reign of the Libyan Colonel (41). The NCLO was formed on June 25, 2005 in London. The main goal of this organization was to foment the end of Colonel Qaddafi’s revolutionary, political, military and security powers and to trigger the formation of a transitional government run by “trustworthy” individuals (42). The NCLO is comprised of six umbrella groups, with the National Front Of The Salvation of Libya (NFSL) sitting at the head. A Libyan exile who resides in London named Ibrahim Sahad is NFSL’s leader (43).
At the onset of the Feb17 Revolution, Sahad and other NFSL and NCLO members began providing the Zionist media with “first-hand” information of massacres, human rights abuses, death tolls and other outlandish accusations that were never independently verified. Ominously, Sahad made it clear to state in an interview that “Qaddafi will not survive the protests (44).” The Zionist media has never given an audience to dissidents from occupied Palestine, occupied Iraq, occupied Kashmir, occupied Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan or the Resistance in Lebanon. So why Libyan dissidents? Simple. Because these particular Libyan dissidents belong to the NFSL, an organization funded for decades by the CIA and closet-Zionist regime of Saudi Arabia (45). In fact, whether it’s the American-Zionist puppet Qatar’s Al-Jazeera or typical Western media outlets like the Zionist-owned BBC and the New York Times, all reports leave a trail that leads back to the CIA’s NFSL (46).
The NFSL, Libya's premier "opposition" group, is fully backed by the CIA.
As aforementioned, one of the NFSL’s goals was to set up a transitional government to replace the regime of Qaddafi as momentum from the wave of protests was mounted. On February 27, 2011, 13 days after the fake Feb17 Revolution began, the National Transitional Council, also known as the Libyan National Council, was formed (47), in perfect accordance with the NFSL’s CIA-based agenda. One member of this transitional council is Mahmoud Jibril, who recently met privately with Zionist warmonger Hillary Clinton in Paris (48). Jibril also held a meeting with the Zionist President of France, Nicholas Sarkozy and spoke by phone with the warmongering British Foreign Secretary, William Hague (49).
Jibril, who heads the Foreign Affairs division of the Council, was educated in the United States,
Mahmoud Jibril, the Western dope groomed to replace Qaddafi in the new, Zionized Libya.
receiving a master’s degree and PHD at the University of Pittsburgh prior to teaching there for many years. Jibril also headed an organization called the National Economic Development Board (NEDB), Libya’s largest think tank, formed in 2009 (50). The NEDB was set up and advised by a group of international consulting firms from the US and UK and is in partnership with the London School of Economics (51), which receives its largest amount of funding from none other than George Soros (52). Once the “rebels” secure victory and Qaddafi is overthrown, Jibril is expected to maintain his position at the head of this institution of subservience to neoliberalism. With Jibril’s ties alone, it invalidates the Council’s claims to being the sole representative of the people of Libya. It is the sole representative of Zionism in Libya.
The Council almost immediately called for a no-fly zone over Libya (53). No self-respecting person of conscience, let alone the righteous Libyan people, the sons of the great Omar al-Mukhtar (rip) who led two decades of Resistance to Italy’s colonization of their nation, who are keenly aware of the aims of foreign occupiers and colonialists, would ever call for a no-fly zone over Libya. The same military operation that led to NATO bombing thousands of innocents to death in Kosovo with depleted uranium and cluster bombs and that led to the bombing of tens of thousands to death in Iraq prior to 2003′s invasion. However, stooges of Western interests most certainly would. Could anyone imagine Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (rip) or Hugo Chavez calling for a no-fly zone? Didn’t think so....
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/pdf/CTCForeignFighter.19.Dec07.pdf
Foreign intervention in Libya - "legitimized" by dodgy United Nations cover - is shaping up as a counter-revolutionary master coup to squash the momentum of the great 2011 Arab revolt, show who's boss, and present neo-colonialism with a facelift. And the new kingmaker presiding over Libya's balkanization is actually a queen: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
- Pepe Escobar (Mar 30, '11)
China on its toes
China will suffer if prolonged fighting in Libya and elsewhere pushes up global food and oil prices, whereas fast regime change would relieve the economic pain but increase pressure for political reform at home. While this is unlikely to cause major disturbances of the kind seen in Egypt, the myriad possible adjustments to changing factors will keep the government on its toes. - Francesco Sisci (Mar 30, '11)
An overbearing focus of China's latest five-year plan on social stability suggests a major conservative shift is underway, with "social-management" offices to feature on every major street amid mass recruitment of public vigilantes. With security forces' rapid-response capacity for "mass incidents" also to be honed and political reform frowned upon, the renewed drive to spurn Western norms will likely frustrate progressive intellectuals. - Willy Lam (Mar 30, '11)
It's easy to identify who profits from the war in Libya: The Pentagon, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the "rebels", the French and al-Qaeda. But that's only a short list of profiteers; control of an ocean of fresh water is crucial to the war mix, and nobody knows who'll end up getting the oil and the natural gas. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 29, '11)
The Westphalian principle that nation states could run their internal affairs as they pleased helped to reduce war for 300 years. That principle is now increasingly abandoned, not just in Libya but through the International Monetary Fund and other non-democratic international organizations. The consequences are hugely hazardous, while putting at risk the immense benefits the ancient treaty brought. - Martin Hutchinson (Mar 29, '11)
...
By Pepe Escobar
You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a "yes" vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya - the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.
The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, "This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner."
As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to "seduce" three other members to get the vote.
Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.
Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.
Profiteers rejoice
Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a "conspiracy", as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud - saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P - "responsibility to protect" does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new - oily - human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.
Whatever they say won't alter the facts on the ground - the graphic results of the US-Saudi dirty dancing. Asia Times Online has already reported on who profits from the foreign intervention in Libya (see There's no business like war business, March 30). Players include the Pentagon (via Africom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Arab League's Moussa, and Qatar. Add to the list the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, assorted weapons contractors, and the usual neo-liberal suspects eager to privatize everything in sight in the new Libya - even the water. And we're not even talking about the Western vultures hovering over the Libyan oil and gas industry.
Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that's just a "kinetic military action".
There's been wide speculation in both the US and across the Middle East that considering the military stalemate - and short of the "coalition of the willing" bombing the Gaddafi family to oblivion - Washington, London and Paris might settle for the control of eastern Libya; a northern African version of an oil-rich Gulf Emirate. Gaddafi would be left with a starving North Korea-style Tripolitania.
But considering the latest high-value defections from the regime, plus the desired endgame ("Gaddafi must go", in President Obama's own words), Washington, London, Paris and Riyadh won't settle for nothing but the whole kebab. Including a strategic base for both Africom and NATO.
Round up the unusual suspects
One of the side effects of the dirty US-Saudi deal is that the White House is doing all it can to make sure the Bahrain drama is buried by US media. BBC America news anchor Katty Kay at least had the decency to stress, "they would like that one [Bahrain] to go away because there's no real upside for them in supporting the rebellion by the Shi'ites."
For his part the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, showed up on al-Jazeera and said that action was needed because the Libyan people were attacked by Gaddafi. The otherwise excellent al-Jazeera journalists could have politely asked the emir whether he would send his Mirages to protect the people of Palestine from Israel, or his neighbors in Bahrain from Saudi Arabia.
The al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain is essentially a bunch of Sunni settlers who took over 230 years ago. For a great deal of the 20th century they were obliging slaves of the British empire. Modern Bahrain does not live under the specter of a push from Iran; that's an al-Khalifa (and House of Saud) myth.
Bahrainis, historically, have always rejected being part of a sort of Shi'ite nation led by Iran. The protests come a long way, and are part of a true national movement - way beyond sectarianism. No wonder the slogan in the iconic Pearl roundabout - smashed by the fearful al-Khalifa police state - was "neither Sunni nor Shi'ite; Bahraini".
What the protesters wanted was essentially a constitutional monarchy; a legitimate parliament; free and fair elections; and no more corruption. What they got instead was "bullet-friendly Bahrain" replacing "business-friendly Bahrain", and an invasion sponsored by the House of Saud.
And the repression goes on - invisible to US corporate media. Tweeters scream that everybody and his neighbor are being arrested. According to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, over 400 people are either missing or in custody, some of them "arrested at checkpoints controlled by thugs brought in from other Arab and Asian countries - they wear black masks in the streets." Even blogger Mahmood Al Yousif was arrested at 3 am, leading to fears that the same will happen to any Bahraini who has blogged, tweeted, or posted Facebook messages in favor of reform.
Globocop is on a roll
Odyssey Dawn is now over. Enter Unified Protector - led by Canadian Charles Bouchard. Translation: the Pentagon (as in Africom) transfers the "kinetic military action " to itself (as in NATO, which is nothing but the Pentagon ruling over Europe). Africom and NATO are now one.
The NATO show will include air and cruise missile strikes; a naval blockade of Libyia; and shady, unspecified ground operations to help the "rebels". Hardcore helicopter gunship raids a la AfPak - with attached "collateral damage" - should be expected.
A curious development is already visible. NATO is deliberately allowing Gaddafi forces to advance along the Mediterranean coast and repel the "rebels". There have been no surgical air strikes for quite a while.
The objective is possibly to extract political and economic concessions from the defector and Libyan exile-infested Interim National Council (INC) - a dodgy cast of characters including former Justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, US-educated former secretary of planning Mahmoud Jibril, and former Virginia resident, new "military commander" and CIA asset Khalifa Hifter. The laudable, indigenous February 17 Youth movement - which was in the forefront of the Benghazi uprising - has been completely sidelined.
This is NATO's first African war, as Afghanistan is NATO's first Central/South Asian war. Now firmly configured as the UN's weaponized arm, Globocop NATO is on a roll implementing its "strategic concept" approved at the Lisbon summit last November (see Welcome to NATOstan, Asia Times Online, November 20, 2010).
Gaddafi's Libya must be taken out so the Mediterranean - the mare nostrum of ancient Rome - becomes a NATO lake. Libya is the only nation in northern Africa not subordinated to Africom or Centcom or any one of the myriad NATO "partnerships". The other non-NATO-related African nations are Eritrea, Sawahiri Arab Democratic Republic, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
Moreover, two members of NATO's "Istanbul Cooperation Initiative" - Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - are now fighting alongside Africom/NATO for the fist time. Translation: NATO and Persian Gulf partners are fighting a war in Africa. Europe? That's too provincial. Globocop is the way to go.
According to the Obama administration's own official doublespeak, dictators who are eligible for "US outreach" - such as in Bahrain and Yemen - may relax, and get away with virtually anything. As for those eligible for "regime alteration", from Africa to the Middle East and Asia, watch out. Globocop NATO is coming to get you. With or without dirty deals....
Obama is now asking Congress for a waiver on Uzbekistan's human rights record – arguably the worst in the world – in order to restart military supplies to President Karimov of Uzbekistan. Even Bush stopped these, after the 2005 Andijan massacre of at least 800 civilian demonstrators.
This blog has repeatedly pointed to the ever-increasing role of the “Northern Distribution Network” for getting supplies to the NATO troops in Afghanistan, with Uzbekistan as the point of entry. The Wikileaks cables from Tashkent outline a consistent US policy of sacrificing the human rights of Uzbeks in order to promote this military agenda.
Unfortunately, by promoting evil dictatorship in Central Asia, the United States and NATO are not advancing their own long term interests. Like Mubarak, Karimov is passing his sell-by date. But all rational thinking is thrown out of the window as NATO concentrates on the war it is losing in Afghanistan.
I am advised by the British Embassy that to visit the scenes of the November 1841 uprising in central Kabul as research for my book on Burnes is too dangerous. After ten full years of occupation, with 180,000 troops and billions of dollars in military hardware, they do not even control a few square miles in the center of the capital, let alone the country. The recent attacks on the US Embassy and British Council have proved that. This war is lost.
America’s increasing fawning to Karimov is yet more evidence of that. The reason America is now so desperate for his favor is that, as they leave defeated, taking Karzai with them, they have to get out millions of tonnes of vehicles and military equipment, which has to pass overland. They have lost this war so absolutely that they no longer have possession of the ground they started with. They cannot get out the way they went in, through Pakistan, as they would be attacked in the Bolan and Khyber passes, and along the entire route. So they have to leave through Uzbekistan. The Americans will do anything for Karimov, just as long as they get permission to slink out through his country. I hope as they go they look into the faces of the people whose continued enslavement buys their permission....
What if… Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya, are more than mere blunders, mistakes, the result of incompetence?
What if the strategy is perfectly sensible and rational, but so outrageous and cynical that one cannot state it publicly, and the leadership of the United States would prefer to be called idiots rather than criminals?
I don’t believe the US will ever retreat from Iraq or Afghanistan. Look at the new US embassy in Baghdad. It’s absolutely enormous, close to the size of 100 football fields. It’s effectively a city within a city. A militarized castle dominating Baghdad with a garrison numbering thousands and a total population exceeding 15,000. One could compare it in significance to a power statement like the Tower of London.
Iraq is awash with both oil and gas, and a recent UN report boldly states that Iraq has the potential to develop into a gigantic source of oil comparable to Saudi Arabia. The idea that the US will simply walk away from such a prize is… fanciful.
Afghanistan is a strategic bridgehead in Asia. It is of vital importance if one is going to invade the Asian heartland and the area around the Caspian Sea, more oil and gas. It’s also an outpost which can be used to cut off China’s oil and gas supplies from the Caspian Basin and throttle any attempt to re-establish the Silk Road and pushing it even further into Africa and its resources, thereby undermining China’s attempts to establish an alternative route for its imports and exports that avoids a potential American naval blockade of the China Sea at some future point.
Finally, one can also see the NATO attack on Libya and the attempt to put a pro-western regime in power, as a brilliant strategic thrust. Almost at a stroke one has control over African’s largest reserves of oil and gas, a land route into the heart of the Sahara Desert, and perhaps most importantly, China has been strategically defeated. Over 36,000 Chinese workers and technicians have left Libya, China is down 3 billion dollars and is unlikely to participate in the carving up of Libya’s energy resources. NATO seems to be sending a message to China… we’re back and Africa is ours....
Schmoozing up to Karimov has more to do with an organized retreat than with strategic planning.
Should the US attack Iran before they’re due to leave, than their presence in western Afghanistan will be more crucial to them than Helmand or Kabul, so I expect some switching of priorities, very soon., another reason why they need the K2 bridgehead in Uzbekistan....
I think that US are not going to leave Afghanistan in any near future.... Their mission there was not to bring peace and development to a long time victims of the great powers proxy war strategy but to occupy Afghanistan in order to project power in a very geo-strategically important region. It was clear that Russia as long as it has any influence over former colonies will not permit US to settle in Central Asia safely and in this circumstances Afghanistan seems to be an ideal ground for the US to have vast region under potential supervision. With China growing, having strong US military presence just outside of Chinese borders is very important for Pentagon strategists. Unfortunately once again Afghanis are falling victims of their land’s geographical position which is considered to be more important for great powers than the prospects of long term stability and development....
It is eerily reminiscent of the mess the UK got itself into at Port Said in late ’56. In which case, the humiliation heaped upon the US could even trump that of Saigon in April ’75....
It's a big doc, but one thinks the most pertinent phrase is "The EC strategy has one overarching objective: to consolidate Libya’s integration in the rules based international political and economic system"
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