November 29, 2007 -- A future Hillary Clinton administration threatens to immerse the United States in even further wars. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Senator Clinton's two top foreign policy advisers -- who could both end up in her administration in senior foreign policy positions -- are known to have hard line positions on two "K countries" -- Kosovo and Kurdistan. And their reasons have very little to do with helping Kosovars or Kurds -- Albright and Holbrooke are known to be extreme Russophobes who would like nothing more than confront the Russians over Kosovo and Iraqi Kurdistan.
It should be recalled that the Albright-Holbrooke team plunged the United States into the Balkans war, culminating in the first aerial bombing of a European city, Belgrade, since Adolf Hitler's time. Now Holbrooke is calling for U.S. military intervention once again in Kosovo to bolster Kosovo against Russian and Serb opposition to Kosovo's planned independence. He is also accusing Putin of plying Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik with petrodollars to wean him away from the West and toward a declaration of independence of Bosnia. Holbrooke also obviously sees NATO force being used to put down any Serbian secession from Bosnia.
Writing for MaximsNewsNetwork, Holbrooke sounded the call to arms against Russia. Holbrooke charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin was using his petro-dollars to intimidate regional countries against supporting Kosovo independence. Moreover, Holbrooke called for pressure against Russia's threat to have the Serb section of Bosnia, as well as Georgian secessionist regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia, declare independence if Kosovo declares independence.
Holbrooke says that two Bush administration representatives, Undersecretary of State for European Affairs Nicholas Burns and Special Envoy Frank Wisner, have sought and received assurance from America's NATO partners that they will recognize Kosovo's independence. NATO's deputy representative in Bosnia, Raffi Gregorian, an American, and US ambassador in Sarajevo, Charles English, have been lobbying for NATO to send more troops to Kosovo to protect its expected unilateral declaration of independence from Serb or Russian counteractions. This will set the stage for another neocon "wet dream," a NATO military confrontation with Russia that has already been stage-set by plans to locate missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic.
It should be recalled that the Dayton Peace talks, which resulted in the agreement that established peace in Bosnia, involved two leading Bush administration neocons: Richard Perle and arch-Zionist Douglas Feith. Both served as advisers to the Bosnian Muslim delegation in Dayton at a time when U.S. arms and money, courtesy of Perle's and Feith's Bosnia Defense Fund, were pouring into the country, with some bleeding over into the hands of "Al Qaeda" and Iranian Revolutionary Guard units. Osama Bin Laden, himself, was reported to be traveling around the world on at least Bosnian passport, issued by the Bosnian embassy in Vienna.
It is one big happy family with the Democratic and Republican interventionist crowd, both the neocon and "neocon-lite" variety: Albright, Holbrooke, Perle, and Feith. Add to that Senator Clinton's military adviser, retired General Wesley Clark, who publicly praised Perle's and Feith's involvement in Dayton on behalf of the Bosnians. Even as then-Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell knew of administration plans to invade and occupy Iraq, he insisted on maintaining U.S. troop levels in Kosovo. Not surprisingly, Senator Clinton recently held out the possibility that Powell could find a job in her administration.
The other "K country" where the neocons are hankering for a showdown with Russia is Kurdistan in Iraq. Russia has just opened a consulate in the Iraqi Kurdistan capital of Erbil. Direct flights between Erbil and Moscow are planned. In addition, a subsidiary of Russia's Alfa Group plans to explore for oil in Kurdistan next year. The consulate deal was celebrated in a ceremony by Russian ambassador to Iraq Vladimir Chanov and Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani.
It is noteworthy that Barzani is the grandson of the late longtime Kurdish leader Gen. Mulla Mustafa Barzani and the nephew of current Kurdish Regional Government president Massoud Barzani. The Barzani clan have traditional links with Russia and the Soviet Union. In 1945, the Republic of Mahabad was declared in the Soviet-occupied area of Iran as a Kurdish independent republic. Barzani was named the republic's Defense Minister and Army Commander. Pursuant to the Yalta Agreement, Soviet forces were required to withdraw from Iran. Many of Barzani's Pesh Merga forces were hanged by Iranian troops and Barzani fled to Baku, Soviet Azerbaijan and then on to Moscow, where he enjoyed the patronage of Joseph Stalin's government.
Mustafa Barzani received funds from the Nixon administration and Henry Kissinger but was double-crossed after Kissinger helped worked out a deal between Barzani's benefactor, the Shah of Iran, and Saddam Hussein, whom Barzani's forces were fighting. After the typical neocon deal, Barzani was forced to flee to exile in America, where he died in 1979.
Now that US and Israeli military, intelligence, and financial interests are deeply embedded in Iraqi Kurdistan, Russia's move into the area is creating new tensions.
With the Barzani Kurdistan Democratic Party now renewing its old links with its erstwhile Russian allies and the United States planning a long military stay in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, the neocons have another Russian-American fault line to exploit in their efforts to push American global domination. And it does not matter if Hillary Clinton or any of the Republicans, with the exception of Ron Paul, occupy the White House in January 2009.
