… by Henry Kamens, … with New Eastern Outlook, Moscow
Georgians hope for the best, but it is not they who sell their country.
[ Editor’s note: Henry brings us another behind the curtain peek into the Byzantine geopolitics of NATO’s Turkey and the wannabe member, the Republic of Georgia that has sold itself for anything and everything, as bringing in loot from the outside is really the only game in town for self-enrichment there, and the US exploits that masterfully with all of its weapons of peace.
This is a region where diplomats are gangsters and military brass are diplomats, and ex-whatevers are for sale to the highest bidder like they always have been. Everybody uses everybody else to the best of their ability, and they sleep well at night knowing that the others are, too.
Of course this chicanery cannot be disclosed to the taxpayers, as they would be more than a little bit upset to learn the level of depravity that exists among many of those sworn to protect us. And by that I don’t mean all, but the bad guys have managed, with the long practice they have had, to know what the key spots are to control, so the others will be boxed in via a variety of tools that can be used inside and outside of government.
Bush and Cheney even created new civil service positions for “stay behind” operatives to remain inside the Obama government as not only their eyes and ears, but people who contribute to policy implementation. And that does not include the espionage side work they can do for their “other country”.
Turkey pulled a rabbit out of the hat by making Biden do a complete reversal on his Harvard talk where he blamed the ISIL mess all on the Gulf States and Turkey. I posed at the time that Turkey has more than a few tales it can tell, and I suspect that Erdogan threatened to visit a Turkish university and drop some bombs himself if he did not get an apology pronto from Biden.
Biden and Obama should have expected that and been ready, but it appears they did not. So American prestige has gone down another huge notch because Turkey’s involvement in supporting terrorism is as widely known as all the others, and yet Biden bent over. That is not the kind of leadership the public wants from senior statesmen. Being permanently over the rail for Israel is bad enough.
But in Biden’s case, he seems like he is along for the ride on every misadventure that comes along… and never learns from his mistakes. That is a fair example of one of the most dangerous political animals that walks the planet. Citizens beware… Jim W. Dean ]
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NATO exercises
– First published …September 30, 2014 –
Now that the NATO Wales Summit is history it is high time to consider what the real results of this meeting were. The devil is in the details, so to speak, “not-the-official-statements-but-what-was-talked-about-behind-closed-doors.”
What came as no surprise, considering what is happening with ISIS and Ukraine, is that US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel visited Georgia and Turkey straight after the recent summit. This was not out of friendship towards these countries.
Hagel was told in Cardiff exactly where things stand on the world stage, and came on this mission not to support Georgia and Turkey, but to save NATO itself.
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The Georgian equation
Hagel
This was Hagel’sfirst official visit to Georgia. He met government and military leaders and congratulated this longstanding U.S. military partner on its new status as an “enhanced NATO partner,” a new status which will put Georgia on the cutting edge of NATO policy, with new training and engagement commitments on both sides.
If Georgia is really so valuable a partner for NATO, one wonders why it is not actually offered NATO membership, which it has sought for years.
Hagel’s visit was designed to deflect these very questions, given that Georgia contributes more troops per capita to NATO operations than any other country, including the actual NATO members, but is still not considered worthy of membership.
The official line on the trip was expressed by Reuters News: “The trip has two aims: reassuring Tbilisi in face of tremendous upheaval in the region and sending a pointed message to Moscow.” It is difficult to see how it achieved either aim.
First, the upheaval in the surrounding regions — from Ukraine to Syria to Iraq — was introduced by the US through armed groups it trained and equipped, and is now fighting on the one hand but continuing to support on the other hand. If that is what Georgia’s great friend does in other countries it claims to be helping, who’s to say it won’t do the same in Georgia, or ask Georgia to support such activities elsewhere, regardless of the consequences?
Map of Turkey and Georgia region
Second, the US has supported Georgia for a generation, and did during the 2008 war with Russia in South Ossetia. This did not stop Russia doing what it wanted during that war.
If Georgia were a NATO member, other NATO states would be obliged to send troops to support Georgie if it were attacked. Yet, every Georgian attempt to join NATO has been met with encouraging words and no further action.
The US has pointedly done everything it can to avoid making a commitment to protect Georgia if it has to, and this latest stunt of “enhanced partnership status” is practically an open invitation to Moscow to walk in unhindered, though it is not currently threatening to do so.
But while we are supposed to be distracted by this message, Hagel acknowledged what this “enhanced status” really means. The US is going to build a training centre, which is allegedly there to support Georgia by providing additional equipment and technical assistance.
The US has been providing Georgia with this sort of support for twenty years, and already potential NATO bases in various regions have been identified and upgraded under the guise of civilian infrastructure projects, which civilians can’t go near or find out anything about.
Therefore this announcement implies that Georgians, who have been sent to die in NATO operations, are actually too incompetent to serve in NATO operations, unless there is another reason the US needs these bases without giving anything real in return. This brings us to Turkey.
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Turkey – The bumble bee of Europe
Richard Lugar Bio Lab, Georgia — Some biowarfare preparations exposed by journalist Jeffrey Silverman, VT, and Georgia news outlets
A few days afterHagel’s visit, President Obama outlined what he wants us to believe these bases are actually for. He stated that he was expanding his military campaign against terrorist organisations and would attack ISIS/ISIL fighters, Islamic State, “wherever they exist.”
“I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.”
This is the same President Obama who objects to the Russian military doctrine, which states that Russia will defend its own citizens wherever they may be, whatever country it has to enter to do so. Once again, the US is incapable of understanding that “democracy” and “hypocrisy” are supposed to be two different things.
Or does Obama actually know that, but want to keep up the pretence because he will be retired by the time the US has to do what he has committed it to?
More relevant to the situation is the statement made some years ago by retired Four Star General Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander during the Kosovo War. Commenting on defence planning, he said: “We’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
by General Wesley Clark — CFR’s designated spiller of the beans, so CFR can do whatever it wants because it has announced it?
Iraq hasn’t gone – but now ISIS is there, trained and equipped by the US — and staffed by Georgians, amongst others — for this purpose. Syria is being destroyed by forces the US backed and inserted in exactly the same way. Libya has seen a revolution and a transfer of power to the local branch of al-Qaeda.
Somalia is in the process of being divided into two separate states with US assistance, Sudan already has been. Only Iran is left, but not for much longer if the Greater Kurdistan plan ISIS is pursuing, just as the US has long done, comes to fruition.
General Clark did not include Turkey in his list of countries to be “knocked off”. But this is because he did not have to. The US had no need to say that it was “going to” knock off Turkey, because it has been trying to since long before Clark made his statement.
There are close links between the US material support for PKK fighters in Turkey and the material support now being given to the Kurds in Northern Iraq, which existed years before ISIS appeared. The same methods, and the same supply routes, have been used for many years to undermine one Turkish government after another, whether they be right, left, democratic, military or pseudo-theocratic in nature.
Turkey’s Erdoğan
Turkey’s crime isthat it doesn’t fit in. The US is just as interested in its ongoing cultural war as it is in the bombs and bullets. The US will never trust Turkey because it is both Moslem and secularist.
The “Islamic World” which Obama talks about engaging with consists of autocracies, fanatics, intolerance and anti-Western values, in US eyes. Turkey is rather more in the other direction, but does not abandon or denounce the faith which is alleged to create these things.
Bumble bees can’t fly, because the laws of aerodynamics say they can’t, but they do. Science won’t change the laws, it would rather destroy the anomaly. Turkey is the same as the bumble bee, as far as the US is concerned. Such a country can’t exist or prosper, but it is playing an increasingly important role in regional affairs. By doing so it presents a cultural and political model which provides a real alternative to US ones.
The US can’t cope with that, as we have seen in many countries, including Georgia, where democracy hasn’t produced the results Uncle Sam wants.
The US can’t actually destroy Turkey because the only alternative would be the sort of Islamic state the US most fears. But it can, and will, do everything in its power to undermine this ally of mutual convenience, and Georgia is the obvious place to do it from, as a look at the map and the statements of both Clark and Obama indicate.
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Destination Turkey
Armed forces in Turkey are no slouches
Where did Hagel goafter his “reassuring” visit to Georgia? Turkey. Of course he did. Turkey may be secular, but doesn’t like attacking fellow Moslems. A cowed and ineffectual Turkey, the sort of state the Ottoman Empire ended up as, would not be a problem.
An influential and prosperous Turkey which does things its own way is a bigger threat to America than any faraway terrorist group, strategic alliances notwithstanding. This is what lies behind the apparent tribute Hagel paid to Turkey when he was there.
“When we look around the world … Turkey, I think in many ways, can be seen as a model for engaging and practicing a vibrant democracy,” he said, adding “Turkey will be involved in all efforts, as President Barack Obama articulated on the last day of the NATO Summit, to build a broad international coalition to combat the threat posed by the Islamic State…. ISIS is a threat, as President Obama and other leaders have said, to its own region of the world first. It’s a threat to every country, it’s a threat to every society, and Turkey lives right here.”
Therefore, as long as terrorist groups the US invented are roaming around, the US will expect Turkey to do whatever the US wants to destroy them. What that is has been indicated by other statements the US has made.
US Senator John McCain, amongst others, has recently complained that Turkey is becoming increasingly authoritarian and restricting basic freedoms. So some change of government will be expected, and ultimately a change in national orientation. You can do anything in the name of combating the other side, just ask the people of Haiti under Papa Doc.
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Conclusion
“Now remember, … things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up, then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.” — The Outlaw Josey Wales, a 1976 Eastwood movie.
NATO would like a reason for increased funding for more enhanced surveillance and war toys
NATO has tofulfill some mission in a post-Cold War world. It is pursuing a two-pronged strategy to try and find one. One prong is to try and start another Cold War by declaring everything Unamerican to be wrong and hostile. The other is to insert terrorist groups into various countries to give the “international democratic order” something to fight against.
There is no reason a defensive alliance should have a cultural dimension. Very different political models can co-exist, side-by-side, and even within the same country, as the differences between local councils in pluralistic countries often demonstrate.
But NATO insists on its partners having a culture the US likes and trusts, which is always something close to what the US itself has. You can’t talk to Communists or Moslems or Russians, and if you do you will pay the price, as Ukraine is discovering the hard way now.
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NATO is awareof this weakness, but has no real intention of addressing it. This leaves it only one way out – coming out of the stockade with all guns blazing, like Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Turkey has to change and Georgia has to make it change, or both will be devastated as any other too-independent states have been: ally or not.
So which state is next on the list of countries to be knocked off? Could it be that Obama realizes the US is putting itself further up that list by the day?
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Henry Kamens, columnist, expert on Central Asia and Caucasus, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
Jim W. Dean was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022. He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.
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