The unipolar moment is no more and Western powers now rely on certified terrorists to help them achieve short-term Pyrrhic victories. Even as the loud cheers still echo, there’s no reason to believe the misadventure in Syria will be worth celebrating any more than Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Ukraine are. Sadly, rivers of blood will be spilled, all for opposite outcomes and unintended consequences. Alex Krainer, below.
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“Once bitten, twice shy”, they say. Having allowed wishful thinking to cloud my judgment – see previous post – on the ability of Russia, Iran and China to save the Damascus government from the fate of those in Tripoli and Baghdad, I’m wary of describing the Empire of Chaos & Evil’s win – on the face of it stunning – as Pyrrhic. As I put it in a below the line exchange with one who, in cheerful disregard for the fate of Iraq and Libya, sees in the ousting of ‘Evil Assad’ cause only for dancing in the street: 1
Doesn’t matter what I think of Bashar al-Assad. Doesn’t matter what you think. He’s gone, Israel wins, US wins, Turkey wins. For now at least.
I don’t say Alex Krainer is wrong on the Pyrrhic thing. But there’s cause for concluding that the ‘rivers of blood’ he speaks of are neither ‘opposite outcomes’ nor ‘unintended consequences’. Rather, they are the calling cards of a dying empire whose response to the attempt, exemplified by Belt & Road, of the lead BRICS nations to build a better world – most obviously for a global south blood-soaked and looted, but ultimately for humanity at large – is to scorch the earth.
I view the failed states left in the wake of the “war on terror” not as unfortunate by-products – eggs cracked to make the proverbial omelette – but design features. Not so much “its ours or we wreck it” as “we wreck it to make it ours”.
All the same, as I put it in another and more cordial exchange below the same post, “AK’s an interesting dude”. There’s far more to agree with than not in an essay (with audio alternative) comprehensive in its historic and geopolitical scope.*
Syria: will it prove to be the empire’s final quagmire?
The West’s long descent from the 1993 Wolfowitz Doctrine, one Pyrrhic victory after another.
Alex Krainer, December 14, 2024
On Sunday morning we woke up to the most surreal news: the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is no more. From the day the new-and-improved Jabhat al-Nusra, now renamed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), launched their attack on Syria (Wednesday, 27 November at 7:50 AM) to Sunday, 8 December 2024, only 11 days’ time. In those 11 days, Damascus fell and president Assad fled to Russia. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) offered next to no resistance and HTS drove straight through Syria almost unopposed.
All of a sudden and seemingly out of nowhere, the already strategically defeated Western empire suddenly scored a brilliant victory and everything changed. The media and social networks are chock-full of stories about how this happened and explanations of why it happened this way. Supposedly Syria was too week, its troops too poorly paid, its leadership too corrupt to withstand the onslaught from Idlib.
The same Syria and its army under the same Bashar Al-Assad fought a concerted attack by Al Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra, Khorasan and other moderate head choppers supported by Turkey, US, UK and the whole Arab league. They resisted for four long years, from 2011 until 2015, when Russia finally came to their rescue. The same Bashar al-Assad refused to flee Damascus back then. Since 2016, Syria had 8 full years to regroup, rearm and reinforce their defenses against the incursion which was fully expected.
Syria folded with a stronger hand
Not only that, in those past 8 years the circumstances changed quite substantially: until last Sunday, Syria was facing a much weaker West, a fractured Arab street (the Arab League, with the exception of Qatar was at least overtly supportive of the Assad regime). In 2011, Russia and Iran had a cold-to-hostile relationship but today they are in a close alliance and both were fully supportive of Syria. Furthermore, Iran and Saudi Arabia are no longer enemies and Iran has largely consolidated its dominance in the region.
The insurgency brewing under Turkish protection in Idlib wasn’t a secret either. Iranian intelligence warned Assad and Syrian leadership months in advance that an attack was being prepared. HTS’s leader Mohammad al-Golani made no secret that HTS’s objective was not only Aleppo but Damascus itself. According to US reports, HTS & friends have been attacking Syrian positions almost constantly since 2022 and SAA had heavily fortified positions capable of containing attacks from Idlib towards Aleppo. But when the attack came, they offered almost no resistance.
Keep in mind, the jihadi forces from Idlib counted between 20,000 and 30,000 troops. Syrian army counted nearly 270,000 troops. An invading force would have to outnumber the defending forces by a factor of 3:1 to overcome their resistance. As it was, the defenders outnumbered the attackers almost 10:1, were well equipped and well armed in fortified positions. This is the reason why the Israeli intelligence thought that Idlib incursion was a suicide mission. SAA’s best forces were concentrated in Hama, but when HTS attacked, Hama fell without a fight.
Why did Syria fall without a fight …?
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- While clueless Westerners, addicted to simplistic but empire-serving tales of Good Guys versus Bad, may be taken in by Al Qaeda cut-out Jabhat Al Nusra’s image makeover as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham; your friendly neighbourhood socially inclusive
head choppersmoderate Islamists …
… for Syria’s Christians, Jews, Druze, Alawites, Shia and most Sunnis the future is bleak. A people of whom 90% live in poverty thanks to years of sanction, oil theft, wheat theft and crippled industry – while captagon, fentanyl and crystal meth output made their country a narco-state – now face a nightmare beyond any wrought by Ba’athist rule even at its most brutal under Hafez al-Assad, far less the reluctant son seeking to liberalise a state beset by Islamist proxies of a West bent on regime change for reasons other than those advertised.
“Not so much “either it’s ours or we wreck it” as “we wreck it to make it ours”.”
It could be both, depending on how the term “ours” is defined?
Certainly, in what used to be Syria and the surrounding area, the resources are “ours” – at least for a tiny minority of sociopaths. Not so much the country, the people and the wrecked remains of an atomised society now torn with Western elite planned and induced sectarianism.
Unless I’ve missed something in terms of what matters for those whom “ours”equates to everything in terms of resources, the same cannot be said for Afghanistan.
Libya, Somalia and least one part of what was Sudan I’m not too sure about in regard to the resources being “ours”.
Either way, even if the resources are not “ours” in those places, at least they are no one else’s and the “price was worth paying” – but only for those doing the counting. Those not doing the counting don’t count. Mainly because they no longer exist – either as extant human entities or a functional society capable of sustaining itself and thriving, having been sanctioned and bombed back to the Stone-age by their self-proclaimed superior beings from the “Garden”.
A process and it’s driving attitude succinctly described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby:
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that held them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”
The rest of the “Jungle” are at least beginning to understand the nature of the beast that will most certainly devour them if they let it. Hence, the pushback from the majority in Mackinder’s Heartland and the Global South in examples from Ukraine and Taiwan through to the BRICS.
Not so much, if at all, from within the Empire of Kaos. Where the majority seem to be blissfully unaware of, or deliberately ignoring, the elephant in the room that they don’t count either in this equation and sooner or later Western populations themselves will become “the price worth paying”.
There would appear to exist no normal, rational, legal or non-violent means to prevent these psychopaths continuing to slaughter civilians en-masse and destroy whole countries with impunity in the pursuit of the aim articulated out loud by one of their number here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8ZmkIhs8r0&ab_channel=GeopoliticalEconomyReport
This entire class of people – regardless of what nominal grouping of the single transferable uni-party they gather under – are beyond reasoned and rational discussion. They have no empathy for anyone – neither their own populations, which they, along with their media scribes, treat like sheep with their bullshit propaganda narratives and who they will not hesitate to discard in the same manner should they decide it is in their interests; nor any other population on the planet. Both of whom they clearly regard as their inferiors.
Logic dictates that such wanton slaughter – whether in Palestine, Syria, Libya, and anywhere else which gets in the way of their insatiable appetites – will continue indefinitely whilst ever these people remain extant until either a greater outside force steps in to bring some civilised order to this imperialist induced chaos in the Near East and wider world by restoring civilised values and behaviour on an out of control Western elite or the wider Western populations take some responsibility by getting their own house in order and clearing up and permanently removing our own parasitic detritus class from existence.
Once again, Alistair Crooke, writing at the Strategic Culture Foundation, hits the bull with a single dart:
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/12/16/new-geo-political-map-unfolding-the-end-syria-and-palestine-for-now/
“Finally, western interests have been fighting over Middle Eastern resources for centuries – and ultimately that is what lies behind the war today.
Is he, or isn’t he, pro-war, people ask about Trump, since he has already signalled that energy dominance will be a key strategy for his Administration.
Well, western countries are deep in debt; their fiscal room for manoeuvre is shrinking fast, and bond-holders are beginning to mutiny. There is a race to find a new collateral for fiat currencies. It used to be gold; since the 1970s it was oil, but the petrodollar has faltered. The Anglo-Americans would love to have Iran’s oil again – as they did until the 1970s – to collateralise and build a new money system tied to the real value inherent in commodities.”
Though, the question remains hanging in the air as to whether even Iranian oil and resources will be sufficient to kick that debt crisis can down the road?
The suspicion is that it will not be. Hudson’s analysis suggests that seizure of the entire heartland and the remaining resources of every part of the planet is existential for the creditor oligarchy’s system to even have the legs to limp a little further down the road before it collapses like its predecessor Roman creditor oligarchy.
Which makes it imperative that whatever opposing forces exist prevail in terms of containing that inevitable collapse to the minority of the world that is the Collective West rather than risking a global civilisational collapse.