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MOSCOW REACTS TO US BUILDUP IN AFGHANISTAN
By F. William Engdahl
Online Journal
Feb 6, 2009, 00:34
Moscow has correctly assessed that the announced Obama troop buildup
in Afghanistan has no relevance to the stated aim of combatting the
'Taliban,' but rather with a new attempt by the Pentagon strategists to
encircle both Russia and China in Eurasia in order to retain US global
military dominance. It is not waiting for a new policy from Washington.
Rather Russia is acting to secure its perimeter in Central Asia through
a series of calculated geopolitical moves reminiscent of the famous
Great Game of more than a Century ago. The stakes in this geopolitical
power game could not be higher -- the issue of world war or peace in
the coming decade.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Admiral Mike Mullen are asking Obama to double US troop presence
in Afghanistan.
Both Gates and Mullen said that while they're thinking about the war
in Afghanistan in terms of a three- to five-year time frame, their
immediate goals are 'unclear.' That's highly revealing. It is clear
from the deliberate pattern over months, despite vehement protest
from Pakistan's government, of US bombing attacks on villages inside
Pakistan, allegedly to hit Taliban targets, that the US intends to
widen the conflict to Pakistan as well. What could be the possible aim?
Militarily, adding 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan could never
secure peace in that war-torn tribal region. It has been documented
that many of the groups whom the US command labels 'Taliban' are in
fact armed bands controlled by local warlords, and not ideologically
close-knit Taliban cadre in any sense. By labelling them Taliban,
Washington hopes to convince its NATO allies such as Germany to send
their troops to fight in an unwinnable war. Afghanistan presently
has an estimated 40 percent unemployment and some five million living
below the poverty line. It has been ravaged by more than four decades
of continuous war.
Adding a mere 30,000 more for a total of 60,000 US troops in
Afghanistan where the current killing rate for US soldiers is running
15 times above that in Iraq, is ludicrous. According to the official
US Marine Corps counterinsurgency guidelines, to run a countrywide
counterinsurgency strategy with the absolute minimum force levels
required by US Army and Marine Corps doctrine, the US would need
almost 655,000 troops, or an escalation roughly 600,000 troops higher
than the force levels in the proposed Gates strategy. In fact the
US strategy as it now appears seems to be a replay of the gradual
escalation strategy the US pursued in Vietnam in the early 1960s.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose foreign policy guidance,
as that of her husband, is virtually20indistinguishable from the Bush
faction's, has just convened a dinner discussion of leading policy
experts on Afghanistan and South Asia. It included Defense Secretary
Gates, CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, and National Security
advisor Gen. James L. Jones. It follows the appointment of former
Ambassador, and hawk, Richard Holbrooke as the State Department's
Special South Asia Envoy.
In January 2008, more than a year ago, present National Security
adviser to Obama, General James Jones headed a private Afghan Study
Group which recommended drastic steps to 'revitalize' the war in
Afghanistan.
Revitalize a war whose goals have not even been clearly formulated? Not
surprisingly, Moscow suspects another agenda is at work when Washington
puts such heavy concentration strategically on the issue of the
forgotten "war on terror" in Afghanistan, a region with no discernable
direct national security implications for the United States or NATO
member countries. No conceivable combination in Afghanistan, a failed
state if there ever was one, could threaten a war of aggression
abroad. The tribal warlords around President Karzai seem to be
struggling just to maintain their heroin export flows at record levels.
Moscow's response
Not surpisingly, the Kremlin has reacted to the US plans for Central
Asia.
The president of Kyrgyzstan just flew to Moscow where he received
promises of debt relief and billions of dollars in aid. Kurmanbek
Bakiyev was told he would get a write off of Kyrgyzstan's $180
million debt to Russia, a $2 billion discounted loan and $150
million in financial aid from Russia. On the occasion, President
Bakiyev announced plans to close a US air base crucial to the war in
Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan has been home to the only remaining US base
in the strategically crucial region to Afghanistan's north.
After the Bush administration declared its "war on terror" and
announced plans to strike Afghanistan to root out the arch evil Osama
bin Laden from the caves of Tora Bora in 2001, Washington secured
air force basing rights in both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
At about that same time, it covertly began preparing to unleash a
series of US-financed 'regime change' Color Revolutions in Georgia (The
Rose Revolution, in November 2003) and Ukraine (Orange Revolution in
2004). It tried and failed in Belarus as well as Uzbekistan. A glance
at a map of Eurasia makes clear the pattern of those pro-NATO efforts
was to militarily encircle the territory of Russia, especially as at
the time Washington believed it had the government of Kazakhstan in
its pocket with military training agreements and Chevron's large oil
investment in Tenghiz.
Once Washington announced in January 2007 that it would station
strategic missiles and advanced radar systems in Poland and the
Czech Republi c to 'defend against rogue missile attack from Iran,'
as I detail in my soon-to-be-released book, Full Spectrum Dominance:
Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, then-President Putin
told the Munich Wehrkunde conference in February 2007 that the true
target of the US 'missile defense' strategy was not Iran but Russia.
Similarly, today the US insistence the Afghanistan military buildup is
about the Taliban, rings equally hollow. That's clearly why Moscow
is acting to secure its borders from a US militarization of the
entire Central Asian region. Oil and gas pipeline routes are a major
consideration, including US wishes to build a natural gas pipeline
from Turkmenistan to India that would deprive Russia's Gazprom of a
vital component of its current gas supply.
The prime objective of the Afghan escalation however, is to draw a new
'iron curtain,' this one between the two formidable Eurasian powers
with the only capacity to challenge future US global dominance: Russia
and China. Should the two former rivals firm up their cooperation
not only in raw materials and industrial economic trade, but as well
in the military cooperation sphere, as Obama campaign foreign policy
adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has stated, the combination would present
a devastating threat to America's global hegemony.
Now the decision, aided by the help of generous Russian financial
concessions, to abruptly cancel US Air Force landing rights at
Kyrgyzstan's Manas Air Base deals a devastating blow to US Great
Game's grand strategy to encircle the key powers of Eurasia -- China
and Russia.
When Washington tried to use its various NGOs to foment a Color
Revolution in Uzbekistan in 2005, the country's not-so-democratic
president, Islam Karimov, demanded the US evacuate its air bases,
repatriate US Peace Corps volunteers, and most NGOs were shut down and
foreign media banned. Karimov moved to firm his frayed ties with Moscow
at the time. Today Washington is reported to be feverishly trying
to reestablish itself in Uzbekistan, but the sudden cancellation of
base rights in Kyrgyzstan deals a new devastating blow to the entire
Eurasian encirclement Great Game strategy.
With the major NATO supply routes to Afghanistan going through Pakistan
from the Port of Karachi, and strikes on those supply lines increasing
by the day, the Pentagon is eagerly searching to find alternative
supply routes to the North. Militants just blew up a key bridge in
Pakistan's strategic Khyber Pass.
The securing of alternate Afghan supply routes is at least the official
explanation. Unofficially, it would also provide the pretext to beef
up US military presence in Central Asia. Now, with the loss of Manas
Air Base, a gaping hole in the Washington Great Game 'Mach IV' has
been left.
To further complicate20Washington's strategy, Moscow is moving to
firm up defense cooperation ties across former Communist states in
Central Asia.
A Central Asia answer to NATO?
The announcement by Kyrgzystan President Bakiyev that he was cancelling
US basing rights came during his visit to Moscow February 4 for a
summit meeting of the formerly moribund Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO), a security grouping comprising Armenia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. They
reportedly agreed to set up a collective rapid reaction force to
'counter military aggression, international terrorism, extremism,
crime, drug-trafficking and deal with emergency situations.' Clearly
the US plans for a major military build-up in Afghanistan were high
on the agenda as well.
The CSTO was established in 1992 to serve as a basis for maintaining
some dialogue between Moscow and her former Soviet republics after
their declared independence, Russia's so-called 'near abroad.'
Today the level of talks is taking on a quite new seriousness as
US encirclement operations clearly are seen as a threat to all the
Central Asian republics. The CSTO lists its major security 'threats'
as Pakistan and Afghanistan. The decision to create a truly collective
force with a permanent location and a united command would propel
the alliance to a new level.
Russian President Medvedev announced the decision to20form the
collective regional CSTO Rapid Reaction Force: 'I would like
to emphasise the importance of this decision to establish rapid
reaction forces. It's aimed at strengthening the military capacity
of our organisation.' He claimed the new response units would 'not
be less powerful than those of NATO,' adding that 'the reason behind
the creation of the collective forces of operative functioning is a
considerable conflict potential which is accumulating in the CSTO
zone.' Translated from the Russian, that means the US strategic
build-up in and around Pakistan and Afghanistan.
At the same time as it hosted the CSTO summit, Russia hosted a
meeting of the so-called Eurasian Economic Community in Moscow,
EurAsEC. That group consists of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Russia and Tajikistan as full members. EurAsEC, established in 2000,
also involves Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine which hold observer status.
They discussed establishing a $10 billion joint assistance fund
to deal with the effects of the global economic crisis, as well as
establishing an international hi-tech technology exchange center and
implementing various innovative projects in member countries.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev captured the vulnerability of
Washington's exposed hypocrisy in Afghanistan when he told the press
after the Moscow summit, 'We are ready for full-fledged and equal
cooperation on security in Afghani stan, including with the United
States.' That of course is the last thing the Pentagon strategists
wish to hear.
F. William Engdahl is author of "A Century of War: Anglo-American
Oil Politics and the New World Order" (Pluto Press) and "Seeds
of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation"
(www.globalresearch.ca ). His new book, "Full Spectrum Dominance:
Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order" (Third Millennium
Press) is due for release in late Spring 2009. He may be reached via
his website: www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
By F. William Engdahl
Online Journal
Feb 6, 2009, 00:34
Moscow has correctly assessed that the announced Obama troop buildup
in Afghanistan has no relevance to the stated aim of combatting the
'Taliban,' but rather with a new attempt by the Pentagon strategists to
encircle both Russia and China in Eurasia in order to retain US global
military dominance. It is not waiting for a new policy from Washington.
Rather Russia is acting to secure its perimeter in Central Asia through
a series of calculated geopolitical moves reminiscent of the famous
Great Game of more than a Century ago. The stakes in this geopolitical
power game could not be higher -- the issue of world war or peace in
the coming decade.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Admiral Mike Mullen are asking Obama to double US troop presence
in Afghanistan.
Both Gates and Mullen said that while they're thinking about the war
in Afghanistan in terms of a three- to five-year time frame, their
immediate goals are 'unclear.' That's highly revealing. It is clear
from the deliberate pattern over months, despite vehement protest
from Pakistan's government, of US bombing attacks on villages inside
Pakistan, allegedly to hit Taliban targets, that the US intends to
widen the conflict to Pakistan as well. What could be the possible aim?
Militarily, adding 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan could never
secure peace in that war-torn tribal region. It has been documented
that many of the groups whom the US command labels 'Taliban' are in
fact armed bands controlled by local warlords, and not ideologically
close-knit Taliban cadre in any sense. By labelling them Taliban,
Washington hopes to convince its NATO allies such as Germany to send
their troops to fight in an unwinnable war. Afghanistan presently
has an estimated 40 percent unemployment and some five million living
below the poverty line. It has been ravaged by more than four decades
of continuous war.
Adding a mere 30,000 more for a total of 60,000 US troops in
Afghanistan where the current killing rate for US soldiers is running
15 times above that in Iraq, is ludicrous. According to the official
US Marine Corps counterinsurgency guidelines, to run a countrywide
counterinsurgency strategy with the absolute minimum force levels
required by US Army and Marine Corps doctrine, the US would need
almost 655,000 troops, or an escalation roughly 600,000 troops higher
than the force levels in the proposed Gates strategy. In fact the
US strategy as it now appears seems to be a replay of the gradual
escalation strategy the US pursued in Vietnam in the early 1960s.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose foreign policy guidance,
as that of her husband, is virtually20indistinguishable from the Bush
faction's, has just convened a dinner discussion of leading policy
experts on Afghanistan and South Asia. It included Defense Secretary
Gates, CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, and National Security
advisor Gen. James L. Jones. It follows the appointment of former
Ambassador, and hawk, Richard Holbrooke as the State Department's
Special South Asia Envoy.
In January 2008, more than a year ago, present National Security
adviser to Obama, General James Jones headed a private Afghan Study
Group which recommended drastic steps to 'revitalize' the war in
Afghanistan.
Revitalize a war whose goals have not even been clearly formulated? Not
surprisingly, Moscow suspects another agenda is at work when Washington
puts such heavy concentration strategically on the issue of the
forgotten "war on terror" in Afghanistan, a region with no discernable
direct national security implications for the United States or NATO
member countries. No conceivable combination in Afghanistan, a failed
state if there ever was one, could threaten a war of aggression
abroad. The tribal warlords around President Karzai seem to be
struggling just to maintain their heroin export flows at record levels.
Moscow's response
Not surpisingly, the Kremlin has reacted to the US plans for Central
Asia.
The president of Kyrgyzstan just flew to Moscow where he received
promises of debt relief and billions of dollars in aid. Kurmanbek
Bakiyev was told he would get a write off of Kyrgyzstan's $180
million debt to Russia, a $2 billion discounted loan and $150
million in financial aid from Russia. On the occasion, President
Bakiyev announced plans to close a US air base crucial to the war in
Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan has been home to the only remaining US base
in the strategically crucial region to Afghanistan's north.
After the Bush administration declared its "war on terror" and
announced plans to strike Afghanistan to root out the arch evil Osama
bin Laden from the caves of Tora Bora in 2001, Washington secured
air force basing rights in both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
At about that same time, it covertly began preparing to unleash a
series of US-financed 'regime change' Color Revolutions in Georgia (The
Rose Revolution, in November 2003) and Ukraine (Orange Revolution in
2004). It tried and failed in Belarus as well as Uzbekistan. A glance
at a map of Eurasia makes clear the pattern of those pro-NATO efforts
was to militarily encircle the territory of Russia, especially as at
the time Washington believed it had the government of Kazakhstan in
its pocket with military training agreements and Chevron's large oil
investment in Tenghiz.
Once Washington announced in January 2007 that it would station
strategic missiles and advanced radar systems in Poland and the
Czech Republi c to 'defend against rogue missile attack from Iran,'
as I detail in my soon-to-be-released book, Full Spectrum Dominance:
Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, then-President Putin
told the Munich Wehrkunde conference in February 2007 that the true
target of the US 'missile defense' strategy was not Iran but Russia.
Similarly, today the US insistence the Afghanistan military buildup is
about the Taliban, rings equally hollow. That's clearly why Moscow
is acting to secure its borders from a US militarization of the
entire Central Asian region. Oil and gas pipeline routes are a major
consideration, including US wishes to build a natural gas pipeline
from Turkmenistan to India that would deprive Russia's Gazprom of a
vital component of its current gas supply.
The prime objective of the Afghan escalation however, is to draw a new
'iron curtain,' this one between the two formidable Eurasian powers
with the only capacity to challenge future US global dominance: Russia
and China. Should the two former rivals firm up their cooperation
not only in raw materials and industrial economic trade, but as well
in the military cooperation sphere, as Obama campaign foreign policy
adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has stated, the combination would present
a devastating threat to America's global hegemony.
Now the decision, aided by the help of generous Russian financial
concessions, to abruptly cancel US Air Force landing rights at
Kyrgyzstan's Manas Air Base deals a devastating blow to US Great
Game's grand strategy to encircle the key powers of Eurasia -- China
and Russia.
When Washington tried to use its various NGOs to foment a Color
Revolution in Uzbekistan in 2005, the country's not-so-democratic
president, Islam Karimov, demanded the US evacuate its air bases,
repatriate US Peace Corps volunteers, and most NGOs were shut down and
foreign media banned. Karimov moved to firm his frayed ties with Moscow
at the time. Today Washington is reported to be feverishly trying
to reestablish itself in Uzbekistan, but the sudden cancellation of
base rights in Kyrgyzstan deals a new devastating blow to the entire
Eurasian encirclement Great Game strategy.
With the major NATO supply routes to Afghanistan going through Pakistan
from the Port of Karachi, and strikes on those supply lines increasing
by the day, the Pentagon is eagerly searching to find alternative
supply routes to the North. Militants just blew up a key bridge in
Pakistan's strategic Khyber Pass.
The securing of alternate Afghan supply routes is at least the official
explanation. Unofficially, it would also provide the pretext to beef
up US military presence in Central Asia. Now, with the loss of Manas
Air Base, a gaping hole in the Washington Great Game 'Mach IV' has
been left.
To further complicate20Washington's strategy, Moscow is moving to
firm up defense cooperation ties across former Communist states in
Central Asia.
A Central Asia answer to NATO?
The announcement by Kyrgzystan President Bakiyev that he was cancelling
US basing rights came during his visit to Moscow February 4 for a
summit meeting of the formerly moribund Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO), a security grouping comprising Armenia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. They
reportedly agreed to set up a collective rapid reaction force to
'counter military aggression, international terrorism, extremism,
crime, drug-trafficking and deal with emergency situations.' Clearly
the US plans for a major military build-up in Afghanistan were high
on the agenda as well.
The CSTO was established in 1992 to serve as a basis for maintaining
some dialogue between Moscow and her former Soviet republics after
their declared independence, Russia's so-called 'near abroad.'
Today the level of talks is taking on a quite new seriousness as
US encirclement operations clearly are seen as a threat to all the
Central Asian republics. The CSTO lists its major security 'threats'
as Pakistan and Afghanistan. The decision to create a truly collective
force with a permanent location and a united command would propel
the alliance to a new level.
Russian President Medvedev announced the decision to20form the
collective regional CSTO Rapid Reaction Force: 'I would like
to emphasise the importance of this decision to establish rapid
reaction forces. It's aimed at strengthening the military capacity
of our organisation.' He claimed the new response units would 'not
be less powerful than those of NATO,' adding that 'the reason behind
the creation of the collective forces of operative functioning is a
considerable conflict potential which is accumulating in the CSTO
zone.' Translated from the Russian, that means the US strategic
build-up in and around Pakistan and Afghanistan.
At the same time as it hosted the CSTO summit, Russia hosted a
meeting of the so-called Eurasian Economic Community in Moscow,
EurAsEC. That group consists of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Russia and Tajikistan as full members. EurAsEC, established in 2000,
also involves Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine which hold observer status.
They discussed establishing a $10 billion joint assistance fund
to deal with the effects of the global economic crisis, as well as
establishing an international hi-tech technology exchange center and
implementing various innovative projects in member countries.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev captured the vulnerability of
Washington's exposed hypocrisy in Afghanistan when he told the press
after the Moscow summit, 'We are ready for full-fledged and equal
cooperation on security in Afghani stan, including with the United
States.' That of course is the last thing the Pentagon strategists
wish to hear.
F. William Engdahl is author of "A Century of War: Anglo-American
Oil Politics and the New World Order" (Pluto Press) and "Seeds
of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation"
(www.globalresearch.ca ). His new book, "Full Spectrum Dominance:
Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order" (Third Millennium
Press) is due for release in late Spring 2009. He may be reached via
his website: www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.