A SPECIAL FOCUS ON THE MIDDLE EAST
A Special Focus on the Middle East - Koenig's Eye View - www.watch.org
This week, I am beginning a two-part series on relations between Russia, China, Iran, Israel, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, the Palestinians and the U.S. The tension between these nations (although it should be noted that the Palestinians are not a nation) and the U.S. is becoming an extremely serious issue which could very likely to lead to the fulfillment of some key prophetic scriptures from Psalm 83, Isaiah 13, Isaiah 17-19, Ezekiel 38-39, the book of Obadiah and other relevant scriptures.
The U.S. and Israel are going to have to do something soon with Iran's nuclear weapons program. The U.S. and Britain have 135,000 troops at risk in Iraq. Israel has six million residents at risk. But Russia says any attack on Iran would have enormous implications.
China signed a $70 billion oil exploration deal with Iran in late 2004.
China's top defense minister has an ongoing relationship with Syria's top defense minister.
North Korean Scuds are deployed in Syria. Russia is erasing $12.5 billion dollars of Syrian debt.
Russia is in talks with Saudi Arabia and Egypt on providing them military equipment.
China is Aramco Oil's (Saudi Arabia's national oil company) largest customer. China is exploring for oil in Sudan.
Russia and China put pressure on Uzbekistan to evict the U.S. from a key air base in their country.
Putin has also offered military equipment to Syria and the Palestinians.
The Bush Administration is infuriating Putin with their effort to open relationships with former Soviet Union countries and their efforts with Iran.
China is not happy with President Bush's position in Southeast Asia — specifically, their interest in protecting Taiwan.
In Stratfor Intelligence's recent article, "Beyond the War on Terrorism," Peter Zeihan reports that the U.S. is going to deemphasize their involvement in the Middle East and focus more on democratizing former Soviet Union countries and a more strategic position in China.
The question is: Will the situation in the Middle East allow the U.S. to deemphasize their involvement or be added to their Russia and China plans? Zeihan wrote that before Sept. 11, Washington's China policy was designed to gradually confront and contain China until Beijing was forced to buckle under the pressure and sue for peace.
Three years later, now that the administration has some free bandwidth, that policy has been resurrected and the American ambassador to Beijing, Clark Randt (now serving his fourth year in that position), is actually beginning to do the work that he was originally hired to do. Though we maintain that China's recent decision to repeg the yuan was a purely cosmetic act, it was a cosmetic act that would have never occurred without a U.S. policy much more aggressive toward China than that immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Unfinished Business in Russia According to Peter Zeihan
It should come as no surprise that the most dynamic part of U.S. foreign policy relates to Russia. Condoleeza Rice, appointed as secretary of state at the beginning of the year, began her government work during the end of the Cold War, when she served as former President George H. W. Bush's Soviet expert at the National Security Council.
Now that she is in the big chair at Foggy Bottom, Rice has surrounded herself with members of the same team from her previous stint in government service. Of particular note are former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, former U.S. ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns, and Robert Joseph, former special assistant to the president and senior director for proliferation strategy, counterproliferation and homeland defense with the National Security Council (NSC) — a wordy way of saying that he was really important. The three now serve essentially as Rice's No. 2, 3 and 4 at State.
As we stated when Rice was appointed in January, the State Department is now "staffed by a team that helped knock the Soviet Union off its superpower perch. Russia can look forward to four years of a State Department with the resources and the will to ratchet back Moscow's influence throughout the Baltics, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia and even its western Slavic flank. The confrontation over Ukraine was just the beginning."
Personnel changes have not been limited to the top tier. William Burns as ambassador fits the mold set by Rice and her top team. He served at the U.S. embassy in Moscow as minister-counselor for political affairs during the 1980s, a position and time that would tend to shape one's political views. He is now coming back to Moscow after several years of knocking Israeli and Palestinian heads together. (Burns is also the man who blamed Christian fundamentalists for the reason there isn't a peace deal in Israel.)
In the case of Russia, however, the transformation is much deeper than just a fresh ambassador, secretary of state and top management team. The rank-and-file of the entire Russia desk at the State Department is being overhauled. Considering that most State Department personnel swap out positions every two to three years to avoid the dangers of going native, a certain amount of turnover is expected, but the top-to-bottom housecleaning in the case of the Russia team appears to be far more thorough than any scheduled rotation.
The big shift began, and the direction of U.S. policy was set, at the V-E Day celebrations in Moscow in May. During that trip, the Bush team bracketed a whirlwind tour past a parade stand in Moscow between deep, long and extremely friendly visits to Latvia and Georgia. The message was clear: The United States was now more concerned with the comings, goings and concerns of Vaira Vike-Freiberga and Mikhail Saakashvilli — the Latvian and Georgian presidents — than it was with the Russians, and this message was sent on the Russians' national day.
In the Russian mind, it is all snapping into place: color "revolutions" in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine; NATO and EU expansion right up to the Russian border; the commencement of pumping on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline; and now a thorough personnel shift in the State Department that is stocking the top ranks with people who were present at — and played a role in — the Soviet defeat. The Kremlin's belief is that the West, led by the United States, is committing to a full-court press into Russia's geopolitical space in an attempt to permanently remove Russia as a threat.
___________________________________________________________________
This week, I am beginning a two-part series on relations between Russia, China, Iran, Israel, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, the Palestinians and the U.S. The tension between these nations (although it should be noted that the Palestinians are not a nation) and the U.S. is becoming an extremely serious issue which could very likely to lead to the fulfillment of some key prophetic scriptures from Psalm 83, Isaiah 13, Isaiah 17-19, Ezekiel 38-39, the book of Obadiah and other relevant scriptures.
The U.S. and Israel are going to have to do something soon with Iran's nuclear weapons program. The U.S. and Britain have 135,000 troops at risk in Iraq. Israel has six million residents at risk. But Russia says any attack on Iran would have enormous implications.
China signed a $70 billion oil exploration deal with Iran in late 2004.
China's top defense minister has an ongoing relationship with Syria's top defense minister.
North Korean Scuds are deployed in Syria. Russia is erasing $12.5 billion dollars of Syrian debt.
Russia is in talks with Saudi Arabia and Egypt on providing them military equipment.
China is Aramco Oil's (Saudi Arabia's national oil company) largest customer. China is exploring for oil in Sudan.
Russia and China put pressure on Uzbekistan to evict the U.S. from a key air base in their country.
Putin has also offered military equipment to Syria and the Palestinians.
The Bush Administration is infuriating Putin with their effort to open relationships with former Soviet Union countries and their efforts with Iran.
China is not happy with President Bush's position in Southeast Asia — specifically, their interest in protecting Taiwan.
In Stratfor Intelligence's recent article, "Beyond the War on Terrorism," Peter Zeihan reports that the U.S. is going to deemphasize their involvement in the Middle East and focus more on democratizing former Soviet Union countries and a more strategic position in China.
The question is: Will the situation in the Middle East allow the U.S. to deemphasize their involvement or be added to their Russia and China plans? Zeihan wrote that before Sept. 11, Washington's China policy was designed to gradually confront and contain China until Beijing was forced to buckle under the pressure and sue for peace.
Three years later, now that the administration has some free bandwidth, that policy has been resurrected and the American ambassador to Beijing, Clark Randt (now serving his fourth year in that position), is actually beginning to do the work that he was originally hired to do. Though we maintain that China's recent decision to repeg the yuan was a purely cosmetic act, it was a cosmetic act that would have never occurred without a U.S. policy much more aggressive toward China than that immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Unfinished Business in Russia According to Peter Zeihan
It should come as no surprise that the most dynamic part of U.S. foreign policy relates to Russia. Condoleeza Rice, appointed as secretary of state at the beginning of the year, began her government work during the end of the Cold War, when she served as former President George H. W. Bush's Soviet expert at the National Security Council.
Now that she is in the big chair at Foggy Bottom, Rice has surrounded herself with members of the same team from her previous stint in government service. Of particular note are former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, former U.S. ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns, and Robert Joseph, former special assistant to the president and senior director for proliferation strategy, counterproliferation and homeland defense with the National Security Council (NSC) — a wordy way of saying that he was really important. The three now serve essentially as Rice's No. 2, 3 and 4 at State.
As we stated when Rice was appointed in January, the State Department is now "staffed by a team that helped knock the Soviet Union off its superpower perch. Russia can look forward to four years of a State Department with the resources and the will to ratchet back Moscow's influence throughout the Baltics, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia and even its western Slavic flank. The confrontation over Ukraine was just the beginning."
Personnel changes have not been limited to the top tier. William Burns as ambassador fits the mold set by Rice and her top team. He served at the U.S. embassy in Moscow as minister-counselor for political affairs during the 1980s, a position and time that would tend to shape one's political views. He is now coming back to Moscow after several years of knocking Israeli and Palestinian heads together. (Burns is also the man who blamed Christian fundamentalists for the reason there isn't a peace deal in Israel.)
In the case of Russia, however, the transformation is much deeper than just a fresh ambassador, secretary of state and top management team. The rank-and-file of the entire Russia desk at the State Department is being overhauled. Considering that most State Department personnel swap out positions every two to three years to avoid the dangers of going native, a certain amount of turnover is expected, but the top-to-bottom housecleaning in the case of the Russia team appears to be far more thorough than any scheduled rotation.
The big shift began, and the direction of U.S. policy was set, at the V-E Day celebrations in Moscow in May. During that trip, the Bush team bracketed a whirlwind tour past a parade stand in Moscow between deep, long and extremely friendly visits to Latvia and Georgia. The message was clear: The United States was now more concerned with the comings, goings and concerns of Vaira Vike-Freiberga and Mikhail Saakashvilli — the Latvian and Georgian presidents — than it was with the Russians, and this message was sent on the Russians' national day.
In the Russian mind, it is all snapping into place: color "revolutions" in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine; NATO and EU expansion right up to the Russian border; the commencement of pumping on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline; and now a thorough personnel shift in the State Department that is stocking the top ranks with people who were present at — and played a role in — the Soviet defeat. The Kremlin's belief is that the West, led by the United States, is committing to a full-court press into Russia's geopolitical space in an attempt to permanently remove Russia as a threat.
___________________________________________________________________
Comments