[Peace-discuss] The Long War (The Outrage Formerly Known as GWOT) gets longer
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Wed Jul 6 00:04:04 CDT 2011
*High stakes in Eurasia's 'New Great Game'*
China and Russia will benefit from US mistakes in Afghanistan, and the operation
in Libya, gaining influence and energy.
Pepe Escobar
Last Modified: 04 Jul 2011 14:39
Antonio Gramsci once mused that the old order has died but the new one has not
yet been born.
While Washington's geopolitical/energy focus was on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq
and Iran, and to a lesser extent on Central Asia, international politics was
already in transition from a unipolar world towards a new, polycentric system.
And then the 2011 Arab Revolt irrupted all across the MENA (Middle East-Northern
Africa) chessboard, turning all calculations upside down and reconfiguring the
relationship between the US, the main Eurasian nations, and Northern Africa.
Time to recall an ultimate Cold Warrior, Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 1997, in
the article "A Geostrategy for Eurasia", published by Foreign Affairs,
conceptualised that: "Eurasia is the world's axial supercontinent. A power that
dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world's
three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A
glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost
automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as
the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one
policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of
power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America's
global primacy and historical legacy."
*US power waning*
Fast forward to the first decade of the 2000s. The George W Bush administration
devised a strategy for a Great Central Asia according to which the US would roll
back Russia's traditional and China's growing influence.
Washington would have New Delhi as the partner of choice in Afghanistan and
Central Asia - laying the foundations of a new Silk Road.
And Washington would establish itself not far from Xinjiang, in Western China,
and close to Russia's underbelly. Essentially, that's how the US would win the
New Great Game in Eurasia.
This strategy was inbuilt in the Pentagon's Long War - codename for the Full
Spectrum Dominance doctrine - and its far more important, if half-hidden, twin:
the global energy war.
In my 2007 book Globalistan, I branded this process as Liquid War; here we would
find "liquidity" not only in terms of fast-flowing capital and information
shaping liquid modernity (a hat tip to Zygmunt Bauman), but also as in oil/gas
pipelines crisscrossing an enormous battlefield, what I have called Pipelineistan.
The problems with the Bush administration strategy may have already started way
back in 2003, when Turkey - the bridge par excellence between Central Asia and
the Mediterranean - decided not to support the war in Iraq.
Since then, Turkey has gotten closer to Russia and, following Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu's concept, in fact all its neighbors, especially Iran -
performing what could be called an "escape from the US" - and thus denting its
role as a NATO base for penetration into Eurasia.
It's in this context that an Ankara-Tehran-Damascus alliance was solidified
(and, incidentally, may now be unraveling). Meanwhile Eurasia as a whole changed
at breakneck speed.
Russia was "back" on a continental and also global scale; China and India
emerged geo-economically; the US got bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soon
the US was not the "indispensable nation" anymore.
*China and Russia*
Very few former Soviet states were annexed to the US sphere of influence - as it
was expected after 9/11. Moreover, Washington's dream of a line of control
stretching from the Mediterranean all the way towards Central Asia, aimed at
cutting in two the Eurasian landmass, did not happen.
China and Russia developed a joint Eurasia policy - organised, among other
channels, by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Eurasian Economic
Community and now increased military cooperation.
In Pipelineistan terms, China didn't have to send a single soldier (to Iraq) or
get bogged down in an infinite quagmire (in Afghanistan); instead it will get
plenty of oil from Iraq and much of the natural gas it needs from Turkmenistan.
China is massively investing in a land-based Central Asian energy strategy - a
pipeline-driven New Silk Road from the Caspian Sea to China's Far West in Xinjiang.
The US's geopolitical perspective is characteristic of a sea power - framing its
relationship with other nations from the position of an "island"; the
Mediterranean basin and Central Asia are viewed as placed in a so-called "arc of
instability", as defined by Dr Brzezinski.
Over these past few years, in a constantly evolving context, much more than
Great Central Asia, what became paramount for Washington was the geopolitical
concept of a Great Middle East - expanding on Brzezinski's "arc of instability"
and running from the Maghreb all the way to Central Asia.
So as much as Brzezinski conceptualised Central Asia as a volatile and
unpredictable "Eurasian Balkans", we had the Bush administration forcefully
dreaming of the "birth pangs" of the Great Middle East. The aim was
unmistakable; to cause a lot of trouble to the increasing geopolitical union
between China and Russia.
*Botched operations*
In these past few years, up to the - largely botched - Africom/NATO operation in
Libya, the US strategy has been aimed at the militarisation of the entire arc
between the Mediterranean and Central Asia.
Africom, the US Africa command implemented in 2008 with a headquarters in
Stuttgart, Germany, has now engaged in its first African war, in Libya. Africom
aims at rapid intervention all across Africa but also has its sights on the
"New" Middle East and Central Asia.
So now the US strategy can finally be examined in detail as a militarisation of
the Mediterranean-Central Asian arch.
That would assure the US a wedge between Southern Europe and Northern Africa;
assure military control over Northern Africa and Southwest Asia, with particular
emphasis on Turkey, Syria and Iran; and "cut" Eurasia in two. In sum: divide and
rule.
So this geopolitical road map was bound from the start to target Syria (already
happening); Iran (a perpetual neo-con dream); and even Erdogan's Turkey - all
useful for a US advance in Eurasia.
Meanwhile Eurasian powers Russia, China and India - all BRICS member countries -
not to mention Iran and Turkey themselves, are slowly calibrating their response.
In the midst of this ever-shifting accommodation of tectonic plates, Afghanistan
assumes an even more crucial role. It could - and should - recover its status of
crossroads/hub bringing Central Asia and South Asia together. Yet that may
ultimately happen not under American sponsorship - but under Chinese and Russian
partnership.
The Moscow/Beijing counterpunch is to organise the SCO as a rival to NATO in
terms of providing security for Central Asia - and for Afghanistan. Wily Hamid
Karzai has seen which way the wind is blowing - and he's all for it.
Moscow and Beijing have decided to enter into "tight cooperation" (their
terminology) not only in Central Asia but in the Middle East and North Africa as
well; Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao admitted as much in a recent op-ed piece for
the Financial Times newspaper.
The wake-up call was the Western intervention in Libya. The Chinese
economic/political/diplomatic push will be organised under the aegis of the
BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).
The complex hidden agendas at play in Syria; the unraveling of the
Ankara-Tehran-Damascus alliance; the West's double standards over Bahrain;
Washington's determination to overstay its military presence in Iraq -these
developments are all seen by Moscow and Beijing as part of a strategy to
perpetuate Western dominance in the Middle East.
So expect even more feverish moves by the angel of history. Eurasian actors
Turkey, Iran, Russia and China will be ever more active in the Mediterranean and
Central Asia - the key geostrategic battleground in a 21st century New Great
Game that might even be pitting Washington against Eurasia itself.
/
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for the Asia Times. His latest book is
*Obama Does Globalistan* (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at
pepeasia at yahoo.com
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/201173142127501343.html/
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