Yet the majority of the G20 member-nations, from spied-upon Brazil and Mexico to Indonesia and Argentina, not to mention China, find this whole business utterly disgusting. They are very much aware that according to the UN Charter, article 2(4) makes it ILLEGAL for any country to use force or threaten to use force against another country; and article 2(7) makes an intervention in an internal or domestic dispute in another country also ILLEGAL.
The G20 might at least be a platform to discuss secret, serious diplomacy involving the US, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia to organize a diplomatic way out, leading to free and fair elections in Syria in 2014. Wait; this process already exists. It's the Geneva II conference, which has been postponed month after month because the Syrian (armed) opposition refuses to discuss anything.
AFP Photo/Kirill Kudryavtsev
The Obama Doctrine has bombed not only the current G20 but in fact any possibility of a diplomatic solution for the Syrian tragedy. For starters, Obama obviously never read Sun Tzu. Naive is an understatement; he telegraphed his move to the "enemy," as in, "Hang in there; my bombs are coming, maybe now, maybe next week." He said the whole thing would be "limited," a "slap on the wrist."
But now the "slap" is morphing into an iron glove, hijacked by the war lobby in Capitol Hill via the Orwellian rhetoric of "change the momentum in the battlefield" -- code for what this has always been about from the beginning: regime change.
Bombing one of the oldest cities in the world during a perverse three-month window will do nothing but perpetuate the war (which is, essentially, the Obama administration agenda). The Pentagon never does "limited" or "tailored" stuff. This is going to be a much deadlier version of NATO in Kosovo deployed as the Air Force of the Albanian/Kosovars -- then promoted from "terrorists" to "freedom fighters" (just like foreign mercenaries in Syria); NATO wouldn't be foolish to have Western Europeans as "boots on the ground."
The spin in Brussels is that German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- who needs to face an election in two weeks -- supported by Camembert attack dog Hollande, has been posing as the middle-woman between Putin and Obama, trying to delay the Tomahawks. That's the rationale behind the latest BND -- German intelligence -- report, which contains "evidence" of a dodgy phone call involving a Hezbollah higher-up and the Iranian embassy (presumably in Beirut, though it's not specified). As if Hezbollah would discuss sensitive information on non-encrypted systems. Putin obviously won't be convinced by this new "evidence" to drop his support for Assad.
And even while this charade goes on, Moscow has been cleverly spreading its trade and commercial wings over an economically- and politically-ravaged Europe. Russia is no less than filling a US vacuum in Europe -- as much as China filled a US vacuum in Africa before the Pentagon counterpunched with AFRICOM.
US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo/Jewel Samad)
By now the different, sometimes converging, agendas of all those who want war on Syria are crystal clear. Essentially, it's "the road to Damascus ends up in Tehran."
The War Party in Washington, Israel and the House of Saud all know that new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's success depends on easing the sanctions and revitalizing the Iranian economy. Tomahawks falling over Syria will virtually obliterate his push for a civilized dialogue between Iran and the US; the ultra-conservatives in Tehran will inevitably regain the upper hand.
So the Obama doctrine, on purpose, is also about bombing any possibility of meaningful dialogue with Tehran. The proof is that Obama eagerly listens to rabid Israeli-firsters such as Dennis Ross, now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) think tank. Ross argues that bombing will reinforce the US's "credibility" -- as in threatening to go medieval further on down the road to prevent Iran from acquiring those evil, non-existent nuclear weapons.
And then, of course, there's Pipelineistan -- the elephant in the Syria frenzy room. There's a lot of natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean near the Syrian and Lebanese shorelines -- arguably 90 percent more than in Israel. So Syria is a great prize in itself -- on the road to become a natural gas competitor to Qatar.
Add to it the possibility of completion -- post-war -- of the $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline. Privileged customers: Western Europe. Soon Qatar was being blocked on two fronts; by the House of Saud (who vetoed a pipeline traversing Saudi Arabia) and by the pipeline traversing Syria.
Thus the alliance with the US (and a privileged partnership with Exxon-Mobil), dependent on destroying any moves towards an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, to the benefit of a Qatar-Syria-Turkey pipeline feeding European natural gas customers. For the US, there's the extra incentive that such a pipeline would dent Gazprom's hold over the European gas market.
None of that, of course, will be discussed at the G20; the Obama doctrine won't allow it. Quite predictable, when international relations are prey to a hubristic superpower that still answers geopolitical challenges with gunboat diplomacy.
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