India steals a march on the high seas

India steals a march on the high seas
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - India's first indigenously designed and manufactured stealth frigate, commissioned late last month, sees the country join an elite of just eight nations that have built warships with naval stealth technology - it's also a likely boost for New Delhi's hopes to establish a warship-building industry.

The 6,200-tonne Indian Naval Ship (INS) Shivalik, commissioned into the navy by Defense Minister A K Antony in Mumbai on April 29, is the world's largest stealth ship. Despite its weight and size, Shivalik will be able to tiptoe through the high seas and approach enemies largely undetected thanks to its many stealth features.

Radar-absorbent paint and the ability of the ship's sides to be angled by 10% to bounce off radar waves reduce the chances of the hull being detected by up to 90%, and the ship's engines are placed on shock-proof mounts to reduce vibration. Highly effective insulators reduce the ship's thermal image, as does a special device which cools and diffuses smoke from its funnel.

Shivalik is the first of three "Project 17" multi-role stealth frigates being built at the government-owned Mazagon Docks Limited (MDL) in Mumbai. Another two, the Sahyadri and Satpura, are expected to be commissioned by end-2010 and mid-2011, respectively. These will be the navy's frontline frigates into the middle of the 21st century.

There are ships that are stealthier than Shivalik. Sweden's Visby class vessels and France's Lafayette class frigates are far more difficult to detect. But they are far smaller than Shivalik with displacements of 600 tonnes and 3,600 tonnes respectively.

Shivalik's teeth come from its mix of imported and indigenous weapon systems and sensors, which includes Barak surface-to-air missiles and a Shtil air defense system from Israel, Russian Klub anti-ship cruise missiles and basic anti-submarine warfare weapons.

It has sensors for air, surface and subsurface surveillance, electronic support and counter equipment and decoys for "soft kill measures", such as electronic jamming of incoming missiles. Shivalik is also equipped with defense systems against nuclear, biological and chemical attacks.

Opening up prospects for India's warship-building industry, the Shivalik is a "world-class frigate at Indian prices", according to defense analyst Ajai Shukla. The warship cost US$650 million to construct, a fraction of the price of a similar warship built elsewhere.

India's warship-building capability has been improving in recent years. In 2009 it launched its first indigenously built nuclear submarine for sea trials, becoming just the sixth country in the world to build such a vessel. (See India's 'enemy destroyer' sets sail, Jul 29, 2009)

Several of the warships India is building are high-tech and low-cost. For example, "Project 15-A" at MDL is building three Kolkata class destroyers, each of which will cost $950 million, a third of the price for comparative warships built abroad. Four anti-submarine warfare corvettes are also being built at the Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) in Kolkata at a cost of around $435 million. Under "Project 17A", MDL and GRSE will construct seven improved stealth frigates.

The cost of India's 44,000-tonne indigenous aircraft carrier, Vikrant, under construction at the Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) in southern India, is expected to be a third of the cost of the 65,000-tonne HMS Queen Elizabeth, while another planned IAC of 60,000-tonnage - likely to be named INS Vishaal - will cost less than half of its British equivalent.

Over the next five to seven years, India will be induct 37 major warships manufactured at home, saving the country an estimated $50 billion, writes Shukla. "India has everything it takes to be a warship-building superpower: the springboard of design expertise; cheap and skilled labor; and mounting experience in building successful warships," he said.

However, while India's warships may cost less, some projects have been beset with delays. The "P75 project", under which six Scorpene-class submarines were to be manufactured at MDL, is running late by several years. That project's successor, the "P75-I" - for six additional submarines - has not moved beyond the planning stage.

While delays in decision-making are partly the cause for the delays, observers say Indian shipyards are too slow in production and delivery - Shivalik's keel was first laid in 2001. This inability of local shipyards to meet the Indian navy's needs has raised doubts on how they would meet global demands.

A Parade of East-West Opportunities

Russia, Europe and the US should form a firm alliance against common threats, which, if not addressed together, will grow to pose grave challenges to their security,

By Simon Saradzhyan

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=116000

---

On 9 May, soldiers from the US, the UK, France, Poland and a number of former Soviet republics marched down the cobblestones of Moscow’s Red Square together with their counterparts from Russia to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the victory in World War II.

That soldiers from these NATO countries and Russia would parade in downtown Moscow is both unprecedented and illustrative of the potential for cooperation between Moscow and the West in the sphere of security and defense.

That potential is based on convergence of their vital interests in that:
• No nuclear weapons or nuclear devices are ever used
• No new nuclear powers emerge
• No sub-state actors acquire nuclear weapons and WMD terrorism is prevented while conventional terrorism is suppressed
• All weapons-usable nuclear material be accounted for and secured to highest standards
• There is no armed conflict or war in Europe/Eurasia
• No failed states emerge in Eurasia

Beyond the security domain, their vital interests will also converge in that:
• Transnational crime and trafficking in Europe/Eurasia is suppressed
• The viability and stability of major world markets, including that of fossil fuel, is ensured
• Integration of Russia into the club of economically developed free market democracies continues

This list, which I have complied, is not finite, and different vertices in the polygon, which Russia and NATO members form, have varying degrees of capabilities and motivation in advancing one or another of these interests.

Still, one cannot help wonder why, 20 years since the end of the ideological divide between West and East, the two have not only failed to form a strategic partnership, but also remain in a stand-off with thousands of nuclear warheads prepared for a quick launch.

In the meantime, new common challenges have emerged for the former Cold War foes, including the rise of non-state actors displaying sustained efforts to acquire WMDs and the possibility of failed states in Southern and Central Asia.

For the host of the 9 May parade, this list of challenges is also complimented by such resilient threats to Russia’s national security as the insurgency in the North Caucasus. Elsewhere, the growing disparity between its economically underdeveloped and under populated parts of Siberia and the Far East and China is becoming a cause for serious concern in Moscow.

Europe, Russia and the US would be much better prepared to preempt common threats to their security if they acted as members of one alliance or one collective security mechanism.

One way forward to start forging such an alliance is to reform the existing system of collective security in Europe to give Moscow a meaningful say. But the US government has already rejected Russia’s proposal for a new European collective security treaty.

Another way forward is accepting Russia into NATO, which would have to be preceded by building trust and resolving all major issues of discontent between the sides, including resolution of the conflicts in the former Soviet Union.

Joint missile defense could help to end the military stand-off between the alliance and Russia and to build trust, the lack of which is especially visible in relations between Russia and a number of former Warsaw Pact countries, albeit the recent rapprochement between Moscow and Warsaw shows that the existing animosities are not irreconcilable.

One option for addressing these countries’ concerns over Russia’s entry into NATO could be to implement the idea of William Perry and George Shultz to move from consensus decisions to super-majority decisions in the alliance’s governing structure. Russia’s ascendancy to NATO will also end Russia’s own concerns over the membership of former Soviet republics in the alliance. It would also play a useful (but not decisive) role in forging closer economic cooperation with the West to secure its assistance in diversifying and modernizing the Russian economy in what will help to address the disparities with China in the east.

Neither the US nor Europe nor Russia can afford the status quo of the existing European collective security system, whose flaws have been exemplified by the wars in former Yugoslavia and Georgia, at a time when much more serious threats have emerged.

If not addressed together, some of these threats will expand in scale and scope in the next several decades to make the lingering suspicions and lack of institutionalized cooperation between Russia, Europe and the US look absurd and pernicious to future generations.

Washington’s World: the Pentagon dominates foreign policy

A major difficulty in writing a foreign policy commentary at the present time is that there is so little of it. This is not to say that there is no activity. There is indeed plenty of that: the UN nuclear non-proliferation review conference, renewed Middle East peace talks, high-level consultations with NATO and so on. The problem lies elsewhere. Our contacts at the State Department report that, while Secretary of State Clinton is an engaged and energetic participant in the Department’s business, she has no abiding interest in longer-range foreign policy strategy. As such, diplomatic initiatives unfold without any sense of overall purpose or longer-term attention. One official told us: “Our problem is that there is little prioritization. Everything is being driven by what comes up at the moment. Nothing gets thought through. For example, we are barely engaged in Iraqi politics right now, at a vital time for the future of that country.” Officials suspect that Clinton is looking for an alternative position, in this case as head of the International Monetary Fund. In part because of this restrained approach (which she shares with President Obama), policy toward Iran is experiencing an important change. As we have indicated before, Obama’s top advisory team includes those who concede that it is unlikely that the US will be able to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons technology and that the best response is to adopt a containment policy, modeled on the Cold War-era containment of the Soviet Union. This policy is now openly discussed at senior level in the State Department and NSC, especially as progress in obtaining Russian and Chinese support for effective sanctions has been painfully slow. It goes without say that this policy faces significant opposition, most directly from Israel’s many friends in the US foreign policy community....

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/2413.html?task=view

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/2178-brainwashing-the-hero-worshipping-society.html

NATO: Global Military Bloc Finalizes 21st Century Strategic Doctrine

http://australia.to/2010/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2733:nato-in-afghanistan-world-war-in-one-country&catid=52:world&Itemid=166

WRITTEN BY RICK ROZOFF

In Brussels in the first week of May NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen delivered his urbi et orbi (to the city and the world) monthly address, the bloc’s Military Committee assembled the defense chiefs of 49 nations supplying troops for the war in Afghanistan and U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden visited the Alliance’s headquarters.

As the world faces an almost two-year economic downturn epitomized by the national crisis in Greece and natural disasters like the devastating earthquake in Haiti and the fallout from volcanic eruptions in Iceland, the U.S.-led Western military bloc is preparing for interventions around the world.

For NATO, which however much it pretends to be something else or something more is a military bloc, all problems in the world require some variety of military action.

It exploited an ethnic conflict in Kosovo to launch its first war in Europe in 1999 and attacks on the American cities of New York and Washington two years later to begin its first war in Asia. Having fought a 78-day air war and now waging a nearly nine-year ground war, NATO is hardly a paper, and by no means a defensive, organization.

Its threat to intervene in as many as a score of different areas it has identified as part of its 21st century expeditionary mission is not to be taken lightly.

On May 5 its Secretary General Rasmussen delivered his monthly press briefing in Brussels and announced that he and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will hold a press conference on May 17 after NATO’s Group of Experts presents its report on the Alliance’s new Strategic Concept....

http://www.dodlive.mil/index.php/2010/05/missile-defense-agency-responds-to-%20new-york-times-article/

The new military doctrine will be the first in this century, the first since the completion of NATO’s precedent-setting large-scale air war in 1999 and its transition to fighting a ground war and counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan.

It will be the 61-year-old bloc’s first global warfighting doctrine based on the past eleven years’ military interventions in the Balkans, South Asia and the Horn of Africa, naval and airlift operations in the Mediterranean Sea and Africa, and a training mission in Iraq.

Despite Rasmussen’s assurance that all NATO member states “will examine the report carefully” as part of what has been portrayed as a collective, deliberative process, all the important elements of the Strategic Concept were decided upon years ago. In Washington, D.C.

They include a continuation and escalation of the war in South Asia, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan; placing all NATO member states under a joint U.S.-NATO interceptor missile shield; retaining American tactical nuclear weapons on air bases in European nations; expanding the bloc even further into the Balkans and nations of the former Soviet Union; extending ad infinitum naval surveillance and interdiction operations in the Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, encompassing many of the world’s most vital and strategic shipping lanes and naval choke points; penetrating deeper into the Middle East and Africa through military partnerships and training and other assistance programs.

Global NATO’s new strategy also emphasizes universally thematic as well as geographically specific pretexts for intervention around the world under its Article 5 collective military assistance and intervention clause.

In a conference on the new Strategic Concept in London last October 1 conducted jointly by NATO and Lloyd’s of London, Rasmussen identified what he referred to as third-millennium concerns that NATO is preparing to confront. [1]

They include but are not limited to (as the list has already expanded in the interim and will do so further) piracy, cyber security, climate change and global warming, storms and flooding, rising sea levels, water shortages and drought, cross-border migration, diminished food production, natural disasters, humanitarian crises, dependence on “foreign sources of fuel energy” and supplies emanating from nations NATO desires to drive out of regional and world markets, carbon dioxide emissions, “factories or energy stations or transmission lines or ports” that require protection, the melting of the Arctic ice cap and, as ever, international terrorism.

The above terms are the exact ones Rasmussen used last year.

And alleged weapons of mass destruction. And missile threats from “rogue states.” Nuclear proliferation real or potential or contrived. Territorial disputes, ethnic conflicts, “failed states,” endangered individuals or groups covered under the rubric of the “responsibility to protect,” competition over natural resources and an ever-evolving list of other justifications for intervention at any time at any spot on the earth for most any reason.

Ahead of this November’s NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal, the defense and foreign ministers of the bloc will meet in Brussels to put the finishing touches on the 21st century Strategic Concept.

In his May 5 press briefly, Rasmussen rattled off a barrage of rhetorical queries the answers to which were a foregone conclusion. “What new missions should NATO take on, to defend our populations against 21st century threats? What should our nuclear policy be? How far should our Partnerships reach?”

To no one’s surprise, he responded by saying “my aim is for the new Concept to be ambitious; not only to reflect what we are currently doing, but also to set out what we should be doing to keep the 900 million citizens in NATO countries safe from attack.” [2]

Attack from whom or what was not specified, as though the assertion that 28 NATO member states from Canada to Croatia, Iceland to Latvia and Norway to Portugal are and will always be under threat of immediate annihilation by stealthy, nefarious and unprecedentedly capable adversaries is self-evident and as such does not require substantiation. Perhaps he was alluding to Iran. Or Russia. Or non-state actors. Or to nobody at all.

His remedy for this historically unmatched threat – and though few in the world challenge such contentions they truly pass from the realm of political discourse into what is properly the province of psychiatry – is what the White House and the Pentagon intend it to be: Integrating most all of Europe into the U.S.’s global interceptor missile system, maintaining American nuclear weapons on the continent, fighting an expanding war in Asia 3,000 miles from NATO headquarters, recruiting the few European nations outside the Alliance into its fold, deepening the integration of nations of the former Soviet Union including those in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, and intensifying military partnerships with countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Oceania.

Regarding U.S. interceptor missile deployments – the list of NATO states where they are planned, all in Eastern Europe, now are reported to include Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania – Rasmussen said that “Because there is a growing threat…Europe needs to continue to contribute to its own defence.”

“NATO is already building a theatre missile defence system to protect our armed forces, when they go out on mission. The cost of expanding that system to cover not only our soldiers, but also our populations – normal citizens in our cities – is less than 200 million Euros.”

In debt-ridden and cash-strapped Europe, the secretary general felt that he only needed to discuss the cost-effectiveness of a program that could trigger a new missile race on the continent. Or far worse – a missile exchange, whether intended or inadvertent.

Rasmussen announced plans to visit Romania on the following two days, May 6 and 7, where, he added, “We will, of course, in our talks, cover the whole agenda, including missile defence. Not least because Romania attaches strong importance to what we consider the core function of NATO – territorial defence, collective defence, according to Article 5 in the NATO Treaty. And in my opinion an effective missile defence is a part of a credible territorial defence in the current security environment in the world. So obviously we will discuss also that issue.”

In February the Romanian government confirmed its commitment to host U.S. Standard Missile-3 anti-ballistic missile interceptors which, as seen above, Rasmussen construes as “territorial defence, collective defence, according to Article 5 in the NATO Treaty.”

In Romania he consulted with President Traian Basescu, Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi and other leading government officials and repeated, word-for-word, his comments at the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Estonia late last month that there were “more than 30 countries having or developing missile capabilities.” Again, no one asked him which thirty nations he was speaking about.

He also rehashed another refrain from the Estonia meeting in stating “In many cases, these missiles could eventually threaten our populations and territories. And several countries are seeking nuclear weapons….[W]e must take a fresh look at missile defence – not as a substitute for nuclear deterrence, but as a complement to it.” The last phrase was also borrowed from the NATO foreign ministers meeting In Tallinn. [3]

In a presentation at the University of Bucharest Rasmussen said that “Allies need to maintain an appropriate nuclear deterrent.”

More specifically, he said, “I hope that in Lisbon we will decide that missile defence is an Alliance’s mission, by combining the US and the NATO systems. That will provide an effective coverage to our populations.”

While in Bucharest, Rasmussen also reiterated the push to complete the total integration of the Balkans, reaffirming: “We share the view that the best recipe for lasting security and stability in the Balkans is integration of all countries of the region in the euroatlantic structures, into the EU and NATO.”

He praised Romania, which recently disclosed that it would increase its troop numbers in Afghanistan to 1,800, for its display of Alliance solidarity in the war zone, which is “substantial, without caveats.”

Other standard demands of the new Strategic Concept were also addressed, including so-called energy and cyber security, with Rasmussen connecting them to NATO’s Article 5 war clause and with missile shield deployments:

“NATO is a unique mechanism for collecting information from different sources – We have the means to protect critical energy infrastructure.”

“Nowhere is the need to act today rather than tomorrow more evident than in this area….[A] cyber attack can bring a country down without a single soldier having to cross its borders.”

“NATO’s core task was, continues to be and will remain territorial collective defence of our territories and populations.”

“I am not going to prejudge the new Strategic Concept. But I’ll make one point very clear: We cannot afford to put missile defence, energy security or cyber defence on the back burner. Because new challenges don’t wait until we feel ready to meet them.”

The claim that the populations of all 28 NATO nations, including those of North America, Iceland and Denmark’s Greenland, face an imminent threat from intercontinental ballistic missiles, ones moreover carrying nuclear warheads, ready to be launched by – to name the West’s standard suspects – Iran and Syria calls into question the credibility if not the sanity of the person who made it. On May 5 the NATO secretary general stated in this regard:

“We have…sufficient intelligence to know that we’re faced with a real threat, with Iranian aspirations as regards missile technology and nuclear programs,” adding that he was “confident” the NATO summit in November would agree to protect Washington, D.C., Ottawa and Reykjavik from phantom Iranian missiles.

References to cyber and energy security, though, are undisguised accusations against Russia, one of the world’s two main nuclear powers, and, coupled as they unvaryingly are with NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause, would alone warrant an immediate demand for the abolition of the military bloc whose strategic doctrine is based on that policy.

This week the Norwegian ambassador to former Soviet republic and current NATO partner Azerbaijan, bordering both Iran and Russia, said that the new Strategic Concept “will cover all member states, as well as NATO partner states.” [4]

There are over 40 NATO military partners included in the Partnership for Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Contact Countries and Trilateral Afghanistan-Pakistan-NATO Military Commission programs, so NATO reserves the right to intervene on behalf of some 70 nations, including partners like Israel, Georgia and South Korea. In fact NATO arrogates to itself and to its individual members and its partners the exclusive prerogative of using military force outside (and within) their borders.

Rasmussen’s visit to Romania is to be followed later this month by one to Bulgaria, “a state of strategic importance in view of future plans for the
deployment of an anti-missile shield.” [5]

In late April he visited the bloc’s two newest members, Albania and Croatia. After he met with Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha the latter announced “that Albania was prepared to fulfil all commitments that come from its NATO membership, including the positioning of anti-missile defence units on its territory.” [6]

Shortly afterward Chief of Staff of the Albanian Armed Forces General Maksim Malaj revealed that a team of NATO experts was headed to his country and that they “will make a thorough analysis of the geo-strategic factors in our country. If they decide to install elements of the anti-missile defence shield, we will give our permission.” [7]

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe Admiral James Stavridis visited Bulgaria on April 26 and 27 to meet with the country’s defense minister and military chief.

The Alliance’s top military and civilian leaders visited the Southeastern European nations for discussions on the Strategic Concept. They also drummed up commitments for further deployments to Afghanistan and for the stationing of U.S. missile shield installations in the respective states.

The current NATO-integrated regimes on the Black Sea and in the Balkans are sufficiently compliant and obliging to allow the Pentagon anything it demands from them, whether missile interception sites or the transfer of nuclear warheads currently in Western Europe to locations closer to their prospective use to the east and south.

To insure that the message of Washington’s emissary and intermediary Rasmussen didn’t fail to get through, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, deputy commander-in-chief of “the world’s sole military superpower,” arrived in Brussels on May 6 to meet with Rasmussen and to address the European Parliament.

His comments while in the Belgian capital included:

“The United States and European Union have stood side-by-side to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons….In the face of the threat that Iran poses, we are committed to the security of our allies.”

He also said that “Washington remains determined to deploy its planned anti-missile system in Europe to counter the danger of Iran’s nuclear program and its long-range ballistic missiles.”

After Biden met with Rasmussen – the agenda was on “Afghanistan, missile defense, NATO’s Strategic Concept…Pakistan, Iran, counter-terrorism, climate change and energy security” [8] – NATO spokesman James Appathurai stated: “They both share the same view. They believe that NATO should take on territorial missile defense as a NATO mission at the next summit.” [9]

On the occasion of his European visit Biden released an article called “Advancing Europe’s Security” that was dutifully (one could say slavishly) published in the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times for readers on both side of the Atlantic.

The piece included these excerpts:

“The United States and Europe…have built the most successful alliance in history….NATO is revising its ‘strategic concept,’ which contains the guiding principles for NATO’s strategy to deal with security threats, to prepare the alliance for the challenges of the 21st century….[W]e have to devote more attention and resources to deterring and combating security threats to Europe that come from outside Europe.

“[T]oday the Continent faces new and pernicious threats: the spread of weapons of mass destruction to rogue regimes with access to ballistic missile technology, the ongoing threat of terrorist attack enabled by havens in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the prospect of cyber-attack by criminal networks and other actors, and significant energy security challenges….[We] need a more effective conflict-prevention, conflict-management, and crisis-resolution mechanism to defuse crises before they escalate. The Russia-Georgia crisis in August 2008 reminded all of us that we cannot take security in Europe for granted or become complacent.

“[W]e must affirm…the right of states to choose their own security alliances. The indivisibility of security…means that all European countries must abide by certain shared rules: above all, a commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states and the right of all countries to choose their own alliances freely. And most importantly, we cannot permit the re-establishment of spheres of influence in Europe.” [10]

The last allusion was of course to Russia. Washington will not permit it to have any influence in nations neighboring it, even those that had been part of Russia for centuries and which have large ethnic Russian populations.

There is only one sphere of influence in Europe from the North Sea to the Black Sea: That of the U.S. and NATO.

On the two days during which Rasmussen gave his monthly address and began his visit to Romania and Biden visited Brussels, May 5 and 6, the defense chiefs of 49 nations met at a gathering of NATO’s Military Committee in Brussels. The countries involved were NATO members states, partner states and other non-NATO nations contributing troops to the war in Afghanistan. (In addition to the 49 national contingents officially serving under NATO as troop contributors, Afghanistan and Pakistan work with NATO and nations like Bahrain, Colombia, Egypt and Jordan also have military personnel in the war theater or on their way there.)

The bloc’s two top military commander – U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and French General Stephane Abrial, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation – were in attendance, as was General Hakan Syren, Chairman of the EU Military Committee.

The defense ministers and NATO and EU military commanders discussed operations in three continents – Asia (Afghanistan), Europe (Kosovo) and Africa (Somalia) – as well as the NATO training mission in Iraq “in support of Iraq’s Security Forces” [11], the ongoing Operation Active Endeavor naval mission in the Mediterranean, Ukraine becoming the first former Soviet state to join the NATO Response Force, the new Annual National Programs for Ukraine and Georgia, transformation and modernization of the Georgian armed forces, and the integration of NATO and EU missions in Europe, Asia and Africa.

NATO’s 21st century military doctrine – expeditionary, global and aggressive – will leave few parts of the planet unaffected. The 900 million inhabitants of Alliance member states evoked by Secretary General Rasmussen are slightly over one-eighth of the human race, but the leaders of those nations gathered collectively in NATO presume to determine developments in dozens of spheres throughout the entire world. With only 13 percent of the world’s population but over 60 percent of its military spending.

1) Thousand Deadly Threats: Third Millennium NATO, Western Businesses Collude
On New Global Doctrine
Stop NATO, October 2, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/thousand-deadly-threats-third-millennium-nato-western-businesses-collude-on-new-global-doctrine
2) All quotes Rasmussen quotes from the NATO website:
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/index.htm
3) Nuclear Weapons And Interceptor Missiles: Twin Pillars Of U.S.-NATO
Military Strategy In Europe
Stop NATO, April 23, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/nuclear-weapons-and-interceptor-missiles-twin-pillars-of-u-s-nato-military-strategy-in-europe

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/05/chemical-concussions-and-secret-lsd-military-releases-cold-war-mind-control-report/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/index+%28Wired:+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

Keeping the profit in oil and persistent war

http://www.redress.cc/iraq/cking20100514

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/05/10/gordon-duff-rats-in-wolves-clothing/

Keeping the profit in oil and persistent war.... By Peter Chamberlin May 7, 2010,

The accelerating pace of events in south and central Asia suggest that we are nearing the end of the “nice guy” phase in the “terror war,” where the need to keep-up appearances is overridden by military considerations.

Until now, everything done by America or her allies has been marked by a need to maintain the appearance of “political correctness.” Nobody was allowed to reveal shocking information, or act in ways that revealed the Empire’s end game, which would require a big push, a major “surge.” It has always been the plan that when optimum conditions were achieved a major military push would be required to achieve the goals which were out of diplomacy’s reach. That deadly moment is upon us.

Everything that is planned for us relies on the principle of duality, two tracks are followed toward every important goal. The two tracks alternate between confrontation and cooperation with each other, sometimes they are allies, sometimes they are enemies. We see this most clearly in the multiple dramas that play out before us, disguised as the “war on terror.”

Our brilliant, conniving planners understand how to play both sides in every conflict. This fact explains why countries like Pakistan and India would cooperate in their own demise. (SEE: Committing Treason for a Piece of the Pie) This also explains the Russian cooperation with American plans in its former satellites, such as Kyrgyzstan, where American agents have just undone the first “Tulip revolution” with a second revolution, with Russia’s help. Together they have divided the Kyrgyz people and lit the fuse for more upheaval in neighboring countries. Putin sees it as a chess match with Obama and Brzezinski, risking everything for the sake of promised profits.

Concerning the issue of the pipeline wars, every nation that is involved in any way is destined for a great disappointment if American plans for them bear fruit. Who knows, tomorrow they might actually get the pleasure of seeing American oil companies drowning in oil and gas profits in a devastated world where the majority of people worry more about food than fuel. In exchange for enduring World War III, very few nations will profit. With or without Unocal’s new pipelines, there will be gas at the pumps, priced as high as the market will bear.

The US military has invested heavily in creating a panic atmosphere, concerning the so-called “peak oil” issue. Because the American military seems to be worried about tomorrow’s fuel, “peak oil” concerns are given legitimacy and a personal sense of urgency that would not otherwise be possible. Military leaders seem more concerned with ensuring that war remains profitable than in filling an actual need. When the time for the big military push comes, many people will accept it as a necessary evil, even though common sense would otherwise tell them to resist war aggression.

The planned pipelines from Georgia to Turkey and from Turkmenistan to Pakistan rely on achieving a balance between bribery and intimidation, to maintain an image of American benevolence, in order to gain the permission of every potential pipeline country government just long enough to build the energy conduit and establish security. After that, resistance will be impossible. This plan cannot succeed by diplomacy alone, because of the natural divisions of tribes, nationalities and religion. For this reason, the military must have its big push, its “surge,” to grab the great prize.

So you have the two tracks of military force and diplomacy coercing and cajoling the targeted nations into compliance with our plans. The message that is communicated between them is: “Deal with us, or be broken.” It is that simple, yet it is so complex. Pakistan, more than any other nation, understands the two faces of America. American aid comes with the understanding that the Pakistani Army would wage war upon its own people. In order to gain access to American aid, Pakistan supports a “war on terror” that intends to divide and occupy large sections of the country along the transit route.

The illusion that American forces will withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq next year brings political support to Obama and the Democrats, who are portrayed as weak by his right-wing critics. Obama needs a strong military victory before this November’s congressional elections -- the only question is where he will choose to make his stand with America’s worn-out military forces. Without gaining undeniable access to either Pakistan or Iran, no pipeline plans can go forward.

In ‘Final Solution’ Frenzy – Part Four: Final Solution for Pakistan, the Central Asian reporters point to a confluence of strategic factors which may indicate new drastic military action taking place after July. Considering the quality of their past research, their warnings should be taken seriously. Their research has given teeth to accusations of CIA involvement in the Mumbai attacks and foreign destabilization of Balochistan; especially significant are their reports of a Russian/US/Indian alliance against Pakistan.

Much has been written about the US/Indian efforts to destabilize Pakistan, especially via Afghan rebuilding projects, but practically nothing has been written about the Russian/American partnership to destroy the nation we know as Pakistan. If all goes according to plan, Russia will have her revenge for the jihadi humiliation and American oil companies will have another slice of the pie.

Thanks to the American-Russian-Indian troika, the drug-running Northern Alliance has been revived and given control over Afghanistan’s government, its army and national police force, in order to wage war against Afghanistan’s Pashtun population. In the American vision, all Pashtun are all considered to be “Taliban.” When the monstrous tubular monuments to American materialism are finally constructed on Pashtun land, Unocal and their oily friends will have the last laugh on the Taliban.

The saddest part about this entire sick, opportunistic scenario is that, if all goes according to plan, the majority of the earth’s people will feel gratitude towards America and everybody involved, even though they gained nothing for the struggle and the suffering that they would not have already had, regardless of whether the pipelines were built now or 20 years from now. All that luscious smelly gas would have continued to flow from those gas pumps, no matter what.

This whole swindle, war and all, was never really necessary; the only positive outcome will be the increased profits for a few hundred trillionaires. We, who survive the game, will gain nothing more than our wisdom for lessons learned, but what good does this knowledge do any of us now?

How does foresight, or deeper insight, help us today, as we stand on the threshold of a major war escalation? If knowledge is the greatest form of resistance, then how can we translate knowledge of American intentions into effective forms of resistance? What actions could be taken to oppose plans for Asian conquest?

Any effective action would consist of defusing trigger points, which are integral parts of the surge plan. A trigger point is any situation that can be inflamed through social agitation. Cases in point would be the Kyrgyz revolution, or the Moscow bombings, which could have easily caused a miscalculation by government or local leaders that caused violence to spiral out of control. Any sane or moral individual would recognize the inherent danger in such a situation and would naturally move to help calm tensions. The problem in this scenario is the provocateur. There will be plenty of agitators on hand to thwart anybody seeking to keep heads cool.

We all have moral choices to make, as we see the impending escalation of this unnecessary criminal war. When our moment of testing comes, will we give our consent to this ongoing atrocity, or will we find ways to resist? I am sick with the certainty that this moment of testing is much closer than most of us dare to think.

Russia and US march in post-Soviet step

Russia and US march in post-Soviet step
By M K Bhadrakumar

An unprecedented military parade in Red Square in Moscow on Sunday, when servicemen from the major North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries will march alongside Russian soldiers, will be a commemorative event marking the 65th anniversary of Victory Day in World War II. Arguably, it is not a parade of NATO troops but rather of Russia's erstwhile allies in the coalition against Adolf Hitler.

Nor are parades necessarily the stuff of real politics or the harbingers of military alliances. Yet, the political symbolism cannot entirely be lost when the Kremlin ramparts resonate with the march of American troops and Vladimir Lenin's mausoleum bears mute witness. The point is that while the 50th and 60th Victor Day anniversaries occurred in the post-Cold War era, they saw no such "allied" parades. In fact, the United States almost acted as a "spoiler" by raking up controversies of Soviet history when the Kremlin marked the day with great pomp and circumstance five years ago.

Indeed, the parade on Sunday cannot be seen without reference to the ''convergence trend'' that has appeared in the Euro-Atlantic region - to cite Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. He elaborated:

This trend is manifested with the improved atmosphere of Russia-US relations, including the elaboration of the new treaty replacing the START I [ Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty], further formation of the strategic partnership with the European Union and ongoing normalization at the Russia-NATO Council. Conditions are forming to overcome the Cold War bloc mentality in the European architecture and the consequential fears regarding spheres of influence.

Things seem to be falling into place. Washington didn't say "Aha!" when it became clear that Viktor Yanukovich, president of Ukraine, had begun to waffle with the Kremlin leadership and Cold Warriors voiced criticism that the Barack Obama administration was abandoning influence and power in the post-Soviet space.

Without doubt, the agreement between Moscow and Kiev on extending the deadline for the Black Sea Fleet in the Crimea goes beyond the framework of Russian-Ukrainian relations. The kaleidoscope has moved and the situation is shifting simultaneously in several areas - Eurasia, East Europe's security and the Black Sea basin. That Ukraine delisted from setting bear-traps itself becomes a geopolitical shift of consequence and Russian security is unavoidably a pan-European issue - even a global one.

Yet the Obama administration behaved as if Yanukovich did the most natural thing. True, as Nicolai Petro, pointperson on Russia in the George H W Bush administration in the early years of the post-Soviet era, wrote recently:

It was always wishful thinking to believe that Ukraine where almost any poll taken in the past decade shows a 90 percent favorable view of Russians, and nearly one in five still holds out hope of the two countries becoming one state would be so easily torn away from Russia. If anything, [former president Viktor] Yushchenko's efforts to equate 'pro-Western' with 'anti-Russian' probably did more to undermine the popularity of the Orange Revolution than any other factor.''

'No' to 'sphere of influence' ...
What Petro wrote is equally applicable with regard to the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan. However, the US has taken a stance in Bishkek. The senior director for Russian and Central Asian affairs at the US National Security Council, Michael McFaul, underscored in Bishkek, the Kyrgyzstan capital, this week that the Obama administration had an entirely novel take on Central Asia.

McFaul insisted that through the power of Kyrgyzstan's example, ''it could also be a model for other countries about how to establish democratic institutions'.' He said openly:

We [the Obama administration] have strategic priority to support the development of democratic institutions and we have a variety of programs, we have a variety of American organizations that work in Kyrgyzstan to do that. They are supported by the American taxpayers ... their sources of funding are supported by the American government ... with this philosophy of dual-track engagement, we will continue to work with the government ... but in parallel we're also going to engage directly with the civil society, with independent media, with legal organizations, to also help to advance the democratic process here in Kyrgyzstan. It has to be both tracks; it cannot be one or the other.

Is the future of the US military base in Manas under Russian threat as a consequence? No, McFaul doesn't think so since the US and Russia have a "common interest" in fighting the extremists in Afghanistan and in any case, "President Obama has been very clear, he categorically rejects the notions of 'spheres of influence', the 'Great Game'."

McFaul's repudiation of Moscow's contention that it has "special interests" in the post-Soviet space, but his acknowledgement that it can have "common interests" with Washington casts the US stance on Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in an altogether different perspective.

Conceivably, the US hasn't really conceded Ukraine as a Russian "sphere of influence" but recognizes that Washington and Moscow have a "shared interest" in that country's stability. The hard reality is that the Ukrainian economy is perilously close to a risk of default and the country is situated close to the heart of Europe and it is bigger than Greece but not a member of the European Union.

Europe (or the US) is not in a position to salvage the Ukrainian economy through massive aid. And if Moscow shows the political will (and has enough financial surplus) to help brotherly Ukraine to the tune of US$4 billion per year - as payment for retaining the Sevastopol naval base for Russia's Black Sea Fleet - American interests are not damaged.

As prominent Russian politician Boris Nemtsov pointed out, "No one in the world is paying that kind of money for naval bases." The US, in comparison, pays a paltry $800 million a year to rent its huge naval base in Okinawa, Japan. The Black Sea Fleet comprises ships built 30 to 40 years ago and is incapable of threatening the US. The flagship of the fleet, the missile carrier Moskva, was commissioned in 1980. The fleet is in poor shape for combat activities with NATO. Besides, according to Nemtsov, "only an incurable optimist" would insist that Sevastopol is for Russia's keep for the next quarter century. Given the fluidity in Ukrainian politics, Yanukovich could always get replaced and the new leader may quote chapter and verse from a national constitution that forbids foreign military bases.

... but 'Yes' to common interests
All-in-all, the Obama administration is making a tantalizing proposition to Moscow: the post-Soviet republics can have "'you" as well as "us". If Moscow's strategic tie-up with Ukraine helps toward forging peace up to the Urals and thereby create conditions for Russia to focus on its modernization, the Obama administration is prepared to regard it as of "common interest". Similarly, the US's military base in Manas poses no threat to Russia's vital interests while it creates conditions for regional stability, which are of "common interest" to both Russia and the US.

Even the advent of democracy in Central Asia does not undercut Russian interests. The authoritarian regimes in the region are increasingly adept at playing off Moscow against Washington. Besides, the US is willing to concede, as McFaul phrased it with tremendous clarity during his Bishkek visit on Tuesday, "We [US] don't support one individual or one political view and we most certainly don't support an American-style democracy. That's not our policy at all. There are lots of varieties of democracy around the world. There is no one truth, there is no one way to build democracy."

In essence, McFaul virtually echoes the Kremlin's thought process and hopes to convince Russia that it may have a "common interest" in the democratization of the post-Soviet space. As Ukraine's example shows, color revolutions need not invariably result in anti-Russia regimes. Then, there are other signals.

The Obama administration has studiously distanced itself from Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili. The US ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, indicated that the US was willing to take in its stride the proposed sale of four French Mistral warships to Russia. He told Moskovsky Komsomolets, the Moscow daily newspaper, "The only question [about the Mistral sale] is the overall stability in the region. And I believe that it will not be infringed as a result of this agreement. [Moreover] we understand that this is an agreement between two sovereign countries."

The Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty is back on the negotiating agenda with Russia and NATO has offered it could work with Russia on a missile shield. The US's energy czar, Richard Morningstar, has quietened, while Moscow dramatically advances the prospects of the South Stream gas pipeline that helps fasten a southern European/Balkan gas grid to Russian energy sources. It almost seems the purge of Russian influence from the Balkans was an error.

A US-Russia strategic understanding over the post-Soviet space is still some time away. It will take time to build mutual confidence that it would be a fool's errand for Washington to try to set the former Soviet republics against Russia, while equally, Moscow need not insist that the ''stans'' should route their dealings with the US via the Russian capital. The broader issue is whether the new START treaty heralded a new US-Russia relationship that, in turn, made the Russian-Ukrainian breakthrough possible.

Yanukovich indeed deferred to the Obama administration by surrendering Ukraine's weapons-grade plutonium - and that suggests some degree of coordinated US and Russian policies toward Ukraine.

Moscow remains calm about Manas and is unflustered by the ratcheting up of US influence in Bishkek. Can things move in the direction of a completely different nature of US-Russia equations in the post-Soviet space? Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan seem early signposts.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Western Pacific, Indian Ocean Now Strategic Center of the World

http://in.rbth.ru/articles/2010/05/04/rebuilding_the_world_order.html

So says Robert Kaplan, influential (particularly inside the Pentagon) author and semi-resident at various Washington DC think tanks. We highlighted some comments from Kaplan the other day at a conference on security and climate change. On a conference call with reporters Friday discussing his new Foreign Affairs piece, “The Geography of Chinese Power,” Kaplan argued for shifting our strategic focus from the Middle East to WESTPAC. The key area to watch closely is the South China Sea, as important in the 21st century as the Gulf was in in the 20th.

Recently, I wrote up a paper from the Center for Naval Analyses, “The Navy at a Tipping Point: Maritime Dominance at Stake?”, (.pdf) that said the U.S. Navy is on a downward glide path from today’s 286 ships to around 240 ships out around 2025. Planners face hard choices as to where and what to prioritize, it said. Given a shrinking fleet, one of the options the paper considers to maintain maritime dominance would require stacking carrier strike groups and supporting high end ships in WESTPAC, while the fleet base at Norfolk would become home for low end ships (LCS, JHSV, amphibs) and engagement, counter-narcotics/counter-piracy missions.

On Iran, the U.S. is painting itself into a political and moral corner

On Iran, the U.S. is painting itself into a political and moral corner By Rodrigue Tremblay May 5, 2010,

“This confrontation [between the forces of the Apocalypse and Israel] is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.” --U.S. President George W. Bush (in a 2003 conversation with French President Jacques Chirac)

“Preventive war was an invention of [Adolf] Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.” --Dwight D. Eisenhower

“We don’t desire any nuclear proliferation in our region, and our policy is well known regardless of which country has such programs. For us it doesn’t matter whether it is Israel or Iran. I will call on the international community, which is so sensitive toward Iran, to pay attention to Israel, too.” --Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Prime Minister

“Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.” --The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

By now, most everybody knows that the (2003-) Bush-Cheney Iraq War was based on fiction and on deception. There was no such thing as “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, the rationale for an illegal attack against that country. And Bush II and his accomplices knew that.

But incredibly, just as the Bush-Cheney administration did in launching a war against Iraq in 2003 by (falsely) alleging that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the Obama-Biden administration, in 2010, is arguing for unilateral sanctions against Iran and even beating the drums of war against Iran, alleging that its program to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants is posing an existential threat to Israel, to Europe and to the United States.

Besides being a blatant exaggeration, this is nevertheless most dangerous. Indeed, such an eventual military attack -- which, by the way, would be illegal under international law -- would also have dire economic consequences, because it would almost certainly result in the closing of the narrow Strait of Hormuz. Should we be reminded that it is through this strait that roughly 40 percent of all world traded oil transits out of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. Its closing would push the international oil price to unheard of levels.

Therefore, if the pro-Israel lobby and the pro-war neocon press were to succeed in 2010-11 in triggering a hot war against Iran, as they did in 2002-03 against Iraq, this could easily turn the current festering financial crisis into a full-fledged worldwide economic depression. Believe me, the last thing the world economy needs now is an oil-shock that would derail the present feeble economic recovery.

But the most disconcerting of all is no doubt the implicit threat recently made by President Barack Obama, on Tuesday, April 6, to launch a nuclear attack against Iran and North Korea if these countries refuse to toe Washington’s line. That sort of loose language is most dangerous because it may serve to trivialize the military use of nuclear weapons, a disaster that the world must avoid. The round of pronouncements demonizing Iran and the incessant calls for sanctions against a sovereign country by other U.S. politicians is also most unproductive, even though that may make for good domestic politics.

This is. of course, in addition to the use of unmanned drones to drop bombs on civilians in Pakistan and other American death squad activities in Afghanistan that the Obama administration has intensified since gaining power. There seems to be a pattern here: No law or moral decency seem to be taken into consideration when such decisions, most likely illegal, are taken, no matter who is in power in Washington, D.C.

It is true that Iran’s domestic politics is not without reproach. This is a country that is run by a mixture of democratic and theocratic rules. However, compared to fundamentalist Islamic Saudi Arabia, Iran is somewhat more democratic and less oppressive of women, even though it does not satisfy all the Western criteria to be a true democratic state. But we don’t declare war on a country because we don’t like its domestic politics. That’s not what the U.N. Charter or the Nuremberg Charter, says.

Logic would have it that all the nuclear countries in that part of the world (Israel, Pakistan, India,) sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), just as Iran has done, because an accidental, or worse, an intentional or provoked, use of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat to the region and to the world. In the long run, however, the world needs a new and expanded nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) to prevent nuclear war but, at the same time, to make sure that no country is denied access to nuclear energy that can enhance its economic development. Every country in the world has a right to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants.

Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal . He is the author of the book "The Code for Global Ethic.s."

Time for a nuclear samba

Time for a nuclear samba
By Pepe Escobar

It does not necessarily take two to samba - but if you samba as a group the result is much more infectious. Brazil has advanced a proposal to unblock the Iranian nuclear dossier that is in fact the common view among the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China), the emerging geopolitical counter-power to United States hegemony.

Iran has all but agreed that Brazil should be the mediator between Tehran and the United Nations - rather than the axis of the US, Britain and France inside the UN Security Council, plus Germany - to finally settle the Iranian nuclear dossier. According to the Fars news agency, after his visit early this week to New York, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, in a phone call with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, told him that Iran had agreed with the Brazilian proposal for a nuclear fuel swap deal for the Tehran research reactor, which produces medical isotopes for cancer treatment. The proposal will be discussed in detail when Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visits Tehran by the end of next week.

The Brazilian government - on a "soft" collision course with the Barack Obama administration - has been positioning itself as a mediator for some time. The nuclear swap was first proposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) late last year in Vienna. The idea was for Iran to transfer the bulk of its low enriched uranium abroad and have access to nuclear fuel rods supplied by France.

The negotiation stalled after Tehran proposed that the swap might take place in Japan, Brazil or Turkey. Brazil's Lula, by the end of April, suggested the better idea was for the swap to take place in a country neighboring Iran. Then Tehran settled on its own island of Kish. The swap inside its own borders was considered by Iran as a question of national sovereignty. The US and the Europeans rejected it.

Ahmadinejad's position on the swap - which is the position of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps - developed just as the Iranian president, in New York

, publicly refused the US/European Union tactic of always bundling together nuclear weapons and use of nuclear energy in the same discussion. In a call that rang across the developing world, Ahmadinejad pulled no punches. He denounced the Security Council and the IAEA as being manipulated against non-nuclear states and expressly demanded the world to cease development of nuclear weapons and to ban production, storage, proliferation, maintenance and use of nuclear weapons.

Looks like the UN apparently was paying attention. Apparently. On Wednesday, the five permanent Security Council members, in a joint statement, supported the idea of making the Middle East a nuclear-weapons-free zone. That would let the (nuclear) cat out of the bag - forcing Israel to declare itself a nuclear power and join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The chances of this happening under a Benjamin Netanyahu government are slim.

In fact, Washington paid only lip service to this nuclear-free wishful thinking because it is avidly courting the Arab vote to back up a Security Council fourth round of sanctions against Iran. It remains to be seen whether Arab states, mostly US clients, will be duped by this. They do want a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East for real, Israel included.

Egypt - which chairs the powerful 118-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) - has circulated a proposal to the 189 signatories of the NPT calling for a conference by 2011 on turning the Middle East into a nuclear-weapons-free zone. Inevitably, the US is now trying to persuade Egypt to "soften" its tone and basically wait and see.

The non-aligned countries in the developing world, as well as the BRICs, may have understood the "real" danger behind the (non-existent) Iranian bomb: it is Israel's behavior for decades that has carried the threat of a nuclear war in the Middle East, not a non-existent Iranian "bomb".

And then there's the ever-shifting sanctions front. What is now clear is what was already clear last month: no new sanctions before July, if at all. Both Russia and China are turning the US-drafted sanctions package into sand. BRIC member Brazil, alongside Turkey, the current non-veto power Security Council members, also don't want sanctions.

All eyes now focus on the Brazil-Iran meeting late next week. If there's a global politician that can breach the enormous divide between US/European aggressiveness and the military democracy of the mullahatariat, it is Lula. He's from the West, he's from the global south and he's a hell of a charming negotiator. The time has come for a real nuclear samba.

Turkey and Russia assemble an ‘axis of outsiders’

Adrian Pabst

It was one of the most memorable parliamentary brawls of recent times. Members of Ukraine’s Supreme Council threw punches, eggs and smoke bombs, while the speaker was shielded with an umbrella.

Last week’s turmoil erupted when lawmakers were considering whether to endorse an agreement that would, over the next 10 years, decrease the price that Ukraine pays for Russian gas in exchange for a 25-year extension of Moscow’s lease on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

On one level, these tensions are just the latest episode in a century-long struggle between Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east and south on the one hand, and the country’s centre and west on the other. The former looks to Moscow; the latter considers itself part of the West. Coming less than three months after a divisive presidential election narrowly won by the pro-Russian candidate Victor Yanukovych, the deal marks the end of Ukraine’s flirtation with Nato and seals its return into Russia’s orbit.

More importantly, it signals a wider realignment in the Middle East and Central Eurasia that heralds the return of former outsiders like Russia, Ukraine and Turkey to the forefront. Disillusioned with the EU’s bureaucratic diktat and fed up with what they view as arbitrary US interference in their Central Asian and Kurdish backyard, leaders such as the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan are forging close ties. Traditional rivals are becoming partners.

With the EU conspicuous by its absence and the US struggling to make progress in Afghanistan or on Israel-Palestine, Russo-Turkish co-operation is filling a growing void in the Caucasus and in the strategic corridor that links the Gulf to Afghanistan and Central Asia. In the process, Moscow and Ankara are reshaping the geopolitics of the Middle East and Eurasia.

Many in the US and the EU will dismiss this rapprochement as little more than a desperate move by two deeply disgruntled, post-imperial powers in search of a role in a changing world. But there can be little doubt that Russia and Turkey are building an ‘’axis of outsiders’’ that is challenging US hegemony and the EU’s complacent indifference regarding its own periphery.

Mutual geopolitical and economic interests are at the heart of this new axis. Geopolitically, Moscow and Ankara have a stake in stabilising the wider Caucasus and other parts of their shared neighbourhood. That’s why both have mediated in the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Moreover, Turkey – a long-standing member of Nato – created the Caucasus Security and Stability Platform after the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia. Aimed at all countries in the region (including Armenia and Iran) and granting Russia special status, this platform was initiated independently from Turkey’s traditional western allies. Crucially, it marks a neo-Ottoman concern for the wider Caucasus and underscores an imperial recognition that great power conflicts threaten the collective security of entire regions.

This recognition also applies to the wider Middle East, where Ankara and Moscow show their deep mistrust in Israel by maintaining links to Hamas and other Palestinian groups. Even though any peace deal depends on US brokerage, enhanced involvement from Turkey and Russia can help prepare the ground for new negotiations.

Turkey and Russia have identified shared interests that go beyond tourism and trade in cheap consumer goods. Both are engaged in the geopolitics of energy security.

In the past, they seemed to be on opposing sides. Turkey was part of the Nabucco pipeline project, delivering gas from Turkmenistan via the Caspian Sea to Europe, thus bypassing Russia. Meanwhile, the Kremlin championed the South Stream project, with a pipeline running under the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria, thus bypassing Turkey.

Despite long-standing pricing and volume disputes, both have been profoundly frustrated by a lack of investment and political support from the EU and the US. In response, Moscow and Ankara are now envisaging a second Blue Stream gas pipeline. The first such pipeline was inaugurated in 2003 and currently transports 10 billion cubic metres of gas yearly. Alternatively, Ankara could take up Moscow’s offer to join the South Stream project, using Turkey’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea. Either way, this would transform the Turkish Republic into Europe’s real energy hub, with possible gas deliveries to Israel and links to Iran’s vast energy reserves.

Moreover, Russia and Turkey have shared interests in Iran and Afghanistan. As the tensions over Iran’s nuclear ambitions escalate and the Afghan security situation deteriorates, expect more joint initiatives from the ‘’axis of outsiders”.

Despite the ‘’Obama effect’’, the US and Nato remain deeply discredited in the Middle East and Afghanistan, which opens the way for other actors. The EU suffers from both integration and enlargement fatigue and it lacks a substantive vision for relations with its neighbours, thereby exacerbating the frustration and disillusionment of countries on Europe’s periphery.

Instead of simply opposing US domination or looking to the EU for meaningless ‘’strategic partnerships’’, Russia and regional powers such as Turkey and Ukraine are forging close ties with each other and intervening in their shared spheres of influence. Issues such as future US troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan or a new wave of sanctions on Iran won’t be solved without their involvement or support.

In the wake of the global economic crisis, the centre of geopolitical and geoeconomic power is shifting from the developed countries of the West to the emerging markets in the Gulf region, eastern Asia and the southern hemisphere. As part of this shift, there are a number of realignments in the wider Middle East and Central Eurasia that presage the return of former outsiders to the centre of global affairs.

Adrian Pabst is lecturer in politics at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK