BREAKING NEWS: The Islamic State Threatens Vladimir Putin's Life, Russia; Has Lost Its Quest for a Global Caliphate
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| Obama golfs while the world burns; Putin swims with sharks |
Word up, people! The U.S. may be spared from the worst of the Islamic State's wrath after all! When a bully picks on a bigger piece of meat, the hamburger that is the bully will not fare well in a taste test against filet mignon. As you just read the heading, the Islamic State just issued a threat on Vladimir Putin's life and in the process, promises to topple Moscow and Russia. Now, this can mean two things. For one, while Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine and topples Kiev, he will send a smaller force of his world-class military to destroy the Islamic State within the corner of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Levant crossing onto the Sinai Peninsula. And as I had initially started this post shortly past the last, I received a notification from Facebook of a bomb threat called into the Moscow International Airport; the threat of the Islamic State is indeed very real to Muscovites and all of Russia.
Unlike President Obama, who to this day continues to finance the Islamic State's missions through a cloak-and-dagger method of espionage and subterfuge, or how he admitted to funding Hamas, has been reported by the Nigerian media just last year of supporting Boko Haram's diffusion of terror through the Maghreb region of northern and central Africa, is providing weaponry and funding in stealth to al Qaeda operatives in Libya, and now twice have our embassies been sacked and to our greatest concern to date aside from Islamic State entries into the U.S. through our southern border, 11 jetliners have been hijacked with no trace as of yet of their whereabouts, the future of American popular sovereignty under the democratic model of republican government is in doubt. To date, the Second Amendment has not been repealed and most attempts to undermine it have either been defeated or blocked by Congress or our federal courts, but as Obama frequently resorts to his pen and phone to issue executive orders so he does not engage in battles with the House GOP leadership, our Constitution has become as worthless of a piece of paper as a long piece of toilet paper following a person "dropping a deuce".
As the rule of law today is arbitrary to what race you are, the gender of which you were born, if you are a wealthy financier of the Democratic Party and our president or if you are in Silicon Valley or Hollywood and the music industry, or if you are either a Muslim or atheist, no conservative, Christian or Jew is safe; we know this through multiple government agencies targeting tax exempt organizations either in opposition or out of favor of Obama. As the IRS itself continues to obstruct Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) while he investigates the matter through hiding E-mails and Eric Holder unabashedly informing Gowdy he will not turn over those messages, the federal government is today not simply out of control, but now the American Politburo whose intelligentsia has doomed us all if our conservative officials fail to act in our best interests for safety, security and our right to free expression and privacy.
While Obama has no intention of slaying the monster our taxed wages created, Vladimir Putin will not stand by idly and be intimidated. The matter alone that he ordered over the years approximately one million executions of Islamic terrorists within Chechnya, Dagestan and South Ossetia's separatist rebel alliances or how his mandating the razing of all mosques inside Moscow is the proof inside the pudding. As I see it, Obama seded America's sovereignty when he sold us to Islamic terrorists or the state-sponsors who provide us with oil. Oil has for a generation and a half served as a rich dish often served cold in Middle East foreign policy; its has also played crucial roles in all major wars for the past century.
The Nature of the Islamic State's Threats to Putin and Russia
Genghis Khan is one of most notorious barbarians in world history, or at about whom the world knows well through reading their history texts. In fact, Genghis Khan created mankind's largest empire in history from Mongolia across the more than 4,000 miles of Siberian and Russian expanses; he nearly wiped out the entire global population of Islamic peoples for toppling territories he controlled as well as beheading his envoy of diplomats. Such a measure, not lost at all upon Genghis Khan, did not call for peace talks nor their bastard child of appeasement, but instead a show of such awesome force that his brand of barbarism far surpassed the Muslims of the day. Today, people consider Genghis Khan a savage, but celebrate Muhammad as noble prophet. Unfortunately, a man who owned some estimated at 40 slaves, who kept concubines as sex slaves, who married a six year old named Aisha and had sex with her when she reached nine years old, and who as a slaveholder of blacks who he called "raisin heads", and who beheaded between 500 and 800 Jews of Banu Qurayza does not by any Western standards for the measurement of morality constitute the characteristics of one proclaiming to be the founder of any religion of peace.
How does this apply to Vladimir Putin? With all due respect, he stands to lose the most in terms of territory, and he is even greater danger of a massive onslaught of Islamic militancy not just the Islamic State, but too out of Chechnya, Dagestan, South Ossetia and even the Crimean Peninsula. The Crimean Peninsula, in fact, was won in one of the many wars between the Russian Empire and the last caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, and the results of the overwhelming Russian victories over time aided in the destruction of their Turkish foes, and by 1924, the abolition of the empire outright in favor of Mustafa Kermel Ataturk establishing the Republic of Turkey, even changing the name of Constantinople to "Istanbul".
Britannica can explain these wars in better detail and especially brevity than me. I know a few general facts about Russian history, but not to the degree as might a historian who specializes in it or the Slavic peoples:
The prospect of Putin conquering Ukraine quickly is better understood by one of the Russian Empire's victories over the Ottoman Turks. In 1783, the enlightened despot Catherine the Great annexed the Crimean Peninsula entirely, once a territory strategically under Ottoman control. For the Turks, it was a crushing blow; it had served as a launchpad to interior invasions of Russia. Once that the port of Sevastopol no longer was a source for any measure of a naval base, any amphibious invasions or occupations and blockades were dashed, and the matter of fighting Russia was to become the perilous plight of land wars. Russia, the world's third most populous nation, held a sizable advantage in continental pitched battles, and in this instance, the Ottomans were easily defeated. For Putin, his annexing of the Crimean Peninsula was not simply a matter of a slow buildup to an full-scale assault from its eastern border; it meant that once NATO decided to involve itself militarily, the port of Sevastopol would have to be invaded amphibiously. It also meant that as a part of NATO, Turkey, the closest nation to the Crimean Peninsula, would be the likely western ally to launch an assault, thus serving as a return to the old, or potentially a terrorist insurrection from both the interior and in the Middle East. This is why, despite agreeing to the contrary, Russia has a strategic partnership with Iran, whereby Moscow provides Tehran with technology to build nuclear reactors in exchange for having a role in Iran's nationalized oil corporation, which stretches past Afghanistan into Pakistan and India.
As news from The Times of Israel announced that the Obama administration has entered into an alliance with Iran in the war to destroy the Islamic State to secure Iraq and Syria, diplomatic relations stand to be complicated between Moscow and Tehran, as both continue to jockey to maintain the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who just two years ago the Obama Doctrine sought to topple through funding Islamic rebels, one of which was Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (or Syria or Sham), which today is known as the Islamic State. The price American foreign policy, longstanding for 35 years, will hinge upon the nuclear question for Tehran:
Britannica can explain these wars in better detail and especially brevity than me. I know a few general facts about Russian history, but not to the degree as might a historian who specializes in it or the Slavic peoples:
Russo-Turkish wars, series of wars between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in the 17th–19th century. The wars reflected the decline of the Ottoman Empire and resulted in the gradual southward extension of Russia’s frontier and influence into Ottoman territory. The wars took place in 1676–81, 1687, 1689, 1695–96, 1710–12 (part of the Great Northern War), 1735–39, 1768–74, 1787–91, 1806–12, 1828–29, 1853–56 (the Crimean War), and 1877–78. As a result of these wars, Russia was able to extend its European frontiers southward to the Black Sea, southwestward to the Prut River, and south of the Caucasus Mountains in Asia.
The early Russo-Turkish Wars were mostly sparked by Russia’s attempts to establish a warm-water port on the Black Sea, which lay in Turkish hands. The first war (1676–81) was fought without success in Ukraine west of the Dnieper River by Russia, which renewed the war with failed invasions of Crimea in 1687 and 1689. In the war of 1695–96, the Russian tsar Peter I the Great’s forces succeeded in capturing the fortress of Azov. In 1710 Turkey entered the Northern War against Russia, and after Peter the Great’s attempt to liberate the Balkans from Ottoman rule ended in defeat at the Prut River (1711), he was forced to return Azov to Turkey. War again broke out in 1735, with Russia and Austria in alliance against Turkey. The Russians successfully invaded Turkish-held Moldavia, but their Austrian allies were defeated in the field, and as a result the Russians obtained almost nothing in the Treaty of Belgrade (September 18, 1739).
The first major Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) began after Turkey demanded that Russia’s ruler,Catherine II the Great, abstain from interfering in Poland’s internal affairs. The Russians went on to win impressive victories over the Turks. They captured Azov, Crimea, and Bessarabia, and under Field Marshal P.A. Rumyantsev they overran Moldavia and also defeated the Turks in Bulgaria. The Turks were compelled to seek peace, which was concluded in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (July 21, 1774). This treaty made the Crimean khanate independent of the Turkish sultan; advanced the Russian frontier southward to the Southern (Pivdennyy) Buh River; gave Russia the right to maintain a fleet on the Black Sea; and assigned Russia vague rights of protection over the Ottoman sultan’s Christian subjects throughout the Balkans.
Russia was now in a much stronger position to expand, and in 1783 Catherine annexed the Crimean Peninsula outright. War broke out in 1787, with Austria again on the side of Russia (until 1791). Under General A.V. Suvorov, the Russians won several victories that gave them control of the lower Dniester and Danube rivers, and further Russian successes compelled the Turks to sign the Treaty of Jassy (Iaşi) on January 9, 1792. By this treaty Turkey ceded the entire western Ukrainian Black Sea coast (from the Kerch Strait westward to the mouth of the Dniester) to Russia.
When Turkey deposed the Russophile governors of Moldavia and Walachia in 1806, war broke out again, though in a desultory fashion, since Russia was reluctant to concentrate large forces against Turkey while its relations with Napoleonic France were so uncertain. But in 1811, with the prospect of a Franco-Russian war in sight, Russia sought a quick decision on its southern frontier. The Russian field marshal M.I. Kutuzov’s victorious campaign of 1811–12 forced the Turks to cede Bessarabia to Russia by the Treaty of Bucharest (May 28, 1812).
Russia had by now secured the entire northern coast of the Black Sea. Its subsequent wars with Turkey were fought to gain influence in the Ottoman Balkans, win control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, and expand into the Caucasus. The Greeks’ struggle for independence sparked the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29, in which Russian forces advanced into Bulgaria, the Caucasus, and northeastern Anatolia itself before the Turks sued for peace. The resulting Treaty of Edirne (September 14, 1829) gave Russia most of the eastern shore of the Black Sea, and Turkey recognized Russian sovereignty over Georgia and parts of present-day Armenia.
The war of 1853–56, known as the Crimean War, began after the Russian emperor Nicholas I tried to obtain further concessions from Turkey. Great Britain and France entered the conflict on Turkey’s side in 1854, however, and the Treaty of Paris (March 30, 1856) that ended the war was a serious diplomatic setback for Russia, though involving few territorial concessions.
There too is the issue with World War I, where the Ottoman Turks joined the Central Powers alongside Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Among their foes within the Triple Entente was Russia, it too in its dying days as an empire under Romanov dynastic rule. History.com provides a brief synopsis for what and why the Ottomans enterred, its involvement with Russia and why Tsar Nicholas II was desperate for a victory over his age-old foe, and at what price the conflict would be paid by both parties:The last Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) was also the most important one. In 1877 Russia and its ally Serbia came to the aid of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria in their rebellions against Turkish rule. The Russians attacked through Bulgaria, and after successfully concluding the Siege of Pleven they advanced into Thrace, taking Adrianople (now Edirne, Tur.) in January 1878. In March of that year Russia concluded the Treaty of San Stefano with Turkey. This treaty freed Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro from Turkish rule, gave autonomy to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and created a huge autonomous Bulgaria under Russian protection. Britain and Austria-Hungary, alarmed by the Russian gains contained in the treaty, compelled Russia to accept the Treaty of Berlin (July 1878), whereby Russia’s military-political gains from the war were severely restricted.
On November 14, 1914, in Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire, the religious leader Sheikh-ul-Islam declares an Islamic holy war on behalf of the Ottoman government, urging his Muslim followers to take up arms against Britain, France, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro in World War I.
By the time the Great War broke out in the summer of 1914, the Ottoman Empire was faltering, having lost much of its once considerable territory in Europe with its defeat in the First Balkan War two years earlier. Seeking to ally themselves with one of the great European powers to help safeguard them against future loss, the ambitious Ottoman leaders--members of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), known collectively as the Young Turks--responded favorably to overtures made by Germany in August 1914. Though Germany and Turkey secretly concluded a military alliance on August 2, the Turks did not officially take part in World War I until several months later. On October 29, the Ottoman navy--including two German ships, Goeben and Breslau, which famously eluded the British navy in the first week of the war to reach Constantinople--attacked Russian ports in the Black Sea, marking the beginning of Turkey's participation in the war.
The sheikh's declaration of a holy war, made two weeks later, urged Muslims all over the world--including in the Allied countries--to rise up and defend the Ottoman Empire, as a protector of Islam, against its enemies. "Of those who go to the Jihad for the sake of happiness and salvation of the believers in God's victory," the declaration read, "the lot of those who remain alive is felicity, while the rank of those who depart to the next world is martyrdom. In accordance with God's beautiful promise, those who sacrifice their lives to give life to the truth will have honor in this world, and their latter end is paradise."The origins of the war were steeped in nationalism, predicated upon ethnic and religious identity; it also was steeped in jingoism, or a nationalism based upon racial superiority. The best example to explain jingoism is to refer you to reading Sir Rudyard Kipling's The White Man's Burden. But as that is from a British perspective, Russia's interests lie primarily within the parameters of forming a Pan Slavic state, which among those would be Serbia, Montenegro and the Hungarian portion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The formation of alliances between historical adversaries Britain and France to oppose German expansion westward beyond the Rhineland was crucial in also including the Russians, who would serve as a backend deterrent to potential aggression from Berlin. In response, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen developed his now-famous plan to march west in sweeping away quick victories in Belgium and the Netherlands, into France, following by a reversal towards the east. The plan, very ambitious and extraordinarily aggressive, never materialized as a true success due to rate of advanced weaponry not equating with the 19th Century style of combat still employed. Germany did, however, defeat Russia by 1917, and served as a major catalyst for the Bolshevik Revolution after more than a decade of false starts and thwarted rallies by Tsar Nicholas II.
The prospect of Putin conquering Ukraine quickly is better understood by one of the Russian Empire's victories over the Ottoman Turks. In 1783, the enlightened despot Catherine the Great annexed the Crimean Peninsula entirely, once a territory strategically under Ottoman control. For the Turks, it was a crushing blow; it had served as a launchpad to interior invasions of Russia. Once that the port of Sevastopol no longer was a source for any measure of a naval base, any amphibious invasions or occupations and blockades were dashed, and the matter of fighting Russia was to become the perilous plight of land wars. Russia, the world's third most populous nation, held a sizable advantage in continental pitched battles, and in this instance, the Ottomans were easily defeated. For Putin, his annexing of the Crimean Peninsula was not simply a matter of a slow buildup to an full-scale assault from its eastern border; it meant that once NATO decided to involve itself militarily, the port of Sevastopol would have to be invaded amphibiously. It also meant that as a part of NATO, Turkey, the closest nation to the Crimean Peninsula, would be the likely western ally to launch an assault, thus serving as a return to the old, or potentially a terrorist insurrection from both the interior and in the Middle East. This is why, despite agreeing to the contrary, Russia has a strategic partnership with Iran, whereby Moscow provides Tehran with technology to build nuclear reactors in exchange for having a role in Iran's nationalized oil corporation, which stretches past Afghanistan into Pakistan and India.
As news from The Times of Israel announced that the Obama administration has entered into an alliance with Iran in the war to destroy the Islamic State to secure Iraq and Syria, diplomatic relations stand to be complicated between Moscow and Tehran, as both continue to jockey to maintain the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who just two years ago the Obama Doctrine sought to topple through funding Islamic rebels, one of which was Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (or Syria or Sham), which today is known as the Islamic State. The price American foreign policy, longstanding for 35 years, will hinge upon the nuclear question for Tehran:
Khamenei approves cooperation with US forces battling IS
Iran’s leader gives authorization to Qods Force commander as Washington, Tehran hold nuclear talks in Geneva
BY LAZAR BERMAN AND AFP September 5, 2014, 3:15 pm
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| Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivering a speech on the 25th anniversary of the death of the late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, at his mausoleum in a suburb of Tehran on June 4, 2014. (photo credit: AFP/ HO /Iranian Supreme Leader's Website) |
Iran’s supreme leader authorized cooperation with the United States to combat the Islamic State in Iraq
According to the BBC, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave his approval for Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards Qods Force to work with the US and other countries battling IS.
Meanwhile,US and Iranian officials met for a second day of negotiations in Switzerland Friday as they work towards hammering out a full nuclear deal ahead of a November deadline.
The US team led by Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and Under Secretary Wendy Sherman began meeting Thursday with an Iranian delegation led by Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in a luxury Geneva hotel.
No information filtered out from the first day of closed-door talks, and it remained unclear whether they would wrap up Friday or continue into Saturday.
EU and US officials did announce Thursday that broader talks would be held on September 18 in New York between Iran and the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, and would be led by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
That will mark the first meeting of the so-called P5+1 and Iran since they failed to meet a July 20 deadline for implementing a comprehensive and complex deal on curbing Tehran’s enrichment capabilities and number of centrifuges.
The deadline has been pushed forward to November 24.
The West suspects Iran wants to acquire nuclear weapons, but Tehran insists the program is purely for peaceful purposes.
In exchange for accepting curbs on its nuclear activities, Iran wants a slew of crippling US, EU and UN sanctions to be lifted.
But any deal will have to be approved by the Islamic leadership in Tehran as well as by the US Congress, where many lawmakers are seeking to impose even tougher sanctions on Iran.
The Geneva talks come after Washington last weekend unleashed a new round of sanctions against Tehran.
State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf meanwhile called Thursday on Iran to “fully and without delay” cooperate with UN watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), after its inspectors were refused access to a military base outside Tehran that they have been trying to visit since 2005.
Over the past year, Tehran and Washington have pursued exhaustive talks on the nuclear deal, marking a dramatic turnaround in relations for two countries that had virtually no official communication since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution, which toppled the Western-oriented shah.
Switzerland, which represents US interests in Tehran and has hosted many of the nuclear talks, only applies “targeted” economic sanctions on Iran that do not include oil.
The Swiss city of Lausanne has since 2003 hosted Iranian Oil Company subsidiary the Naftiran Intertrade Company Sarl (NICO), which for the past two years has been the target of EU sanctions.
Former NICO chief Seyfollah Jashnsaz in early July hailed “Switzerland’s fairer approach to Iran”, pointing out that the subsidiary had ensured $100 billion worth in Iranian oil sales between 2010 and 2014.
“We apply targeted sanctions. We do not want the sanctions to hurt everyone, especially in the civil society,” Swiss Economic Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Livia Leu told public broadcaster RTS.
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And there you go with the political intrigue. I cannot yet refer to this as appeasement with Iran; to this point, it reeks of the alliance the U.S. and Britain had with the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, which simply implied "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". And while the Soviet Union was a key ally in taking down Hitler from the East, it led subsequently to 26 years of cold war where tensions over global nuclear destruction and the race for global influence between capitalism and communism drove the foreign policies of both sides as well as Western Europe. It also led to the creation of NATO to defend the Western allies from an attack from the Eastern Bloc states. Syria will remain under heavy Iranian influence as a Shi'ite Islamic state, but where the future conflict may life with Tehran will be over U.S. or Iranian control and influence of Iraq. This will rehash the old wounds from the Iran-Iraq War between 1980 and 1988 where nearly a million died fighting a battle of attrition which settled nothing.
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Putin and Russia versus the Islamic State, and the First Die is Now Cast
The situation with Russia again is most interesting both in Moscow's diplomatic snafu with the West over Ukraine and now in Putin's obligation to defend his nation against the very real threat of an Islamic uprising. The latter may conflict with Putin's decision to conquer Kiev, or at least in how he chooses to do so. To date, he has only funneled rubles into rebel forces hands as well as providing weaponry and munitions. With the threat from the Islamic State, however, he must consider his enemies within the separatist regions of Chechnya, Dagestan (where the Tsarnaevs are from) as well as South Ossetia. Islamic terrorism engages primarily in guerilla warfare, in exploding vehicles outside of major building of strategic importance, and by using the media to document mass executions and media journalists' beheadings to intimidate their infidel foes. To Putin's credit, he indeed has executed approximately 1,000,000 Muslims found guilty of terrorist activities and for treason; he also has razed to the ground all mosques in Moscow. Russia indeed has the port of Sevastopol under naval control along, of course, with the entire Crimean Peninsula, and that strategically is crucial for Putin. However, Moscow is sandwiched to the east by Islamists and soon, the Islamic State, and from the west by NATO. The existential crises faced by America and Western Europe has finally reached the doorsteps of the Kremlin.
The Daily Mail provided the initial report on the threat. My initial reaction was to laugh almost uncontrollably; my thought was that the Islamic State had just signed its own death warrant and the end of its dream for a global caliphate:
'This message is addressed to you, oh Putin': ISIS now threatens Russia over its ties to Syria's Assad and promises to 'liberate Chechnya and all the Caucasus'Vladimir Putin was threatened because of close ties to Bashar al-AssadIn video, ISIS rebel sits in cockpit of captured Russian-made fighter jetSecond fighter warns Putin that his 'throne is in danger and will collapse'Added: 'With permission of Allah we will liberate Chechnya and Caucasus'It puts Putin on same side as the West in holding back Muslim extremismAt same time, Krelim leader remains at loggerheads with U.S. and EuropeBy WILL STEWART FOR MAILONLINEPUBLISHED: 07:49 EST, 3 September 2014 | UPDATED: 09:06 EST, 4 September 2014
Vladimir Putin was today directly and personally threatened by the Islamic State because of his close ties to Syrian leader Bashar Hafez al-Assad.
The chilling warning, delivered by a member of the terror group, puts the Kremlim leader on the same side as the West in holding back Muslim extremism.
But at the same time, he remains at loggerheads with the U.S. and Europe in the worst crisis since the Cold War.
In a video on Al-Arabiya TV channel, an ISIS rebel sits in the cockpit of a captured Russian-made fighter aircraft in the Tabak area of the Syrian province of Rakka.
A second fighter warns: 'This message is addressed to you, oh Vladimir Putin. These are your aircraft which you sent to Bashar, and with the help of Allah we will send them back to you.
'Remember this. And with the permission of Allah we will liberate Chechnya and all the Caucasus.
"The Islamic State exists and it will exist and it will expand with the help of Allah. Your throne is already shaking. It is in danger and it will collapse when we get to you. We are on the way with Allah's permission.'
The threatening footage comes with Russian subtitles, but the voice of a Russian speaker can be heard too.
In the sequence, in which the Islamic warriors clamber over the Sukhoi fighter, they also threaten the Syrian dictator, branding him a 'pig' and vowing to 'use these aircraft to get to you'.
The message of hate to Putin follows his strong support for Assad, without which he is likely to have been toppled.
Putin is also loathed by Islamic extremists and terror groups for crushing attempts to set up an Islamic state in Chechnya, and in other mainly Muslim regions of southern Russia such as Dagestan.
The Russian leader has long argued that the West has missed the danger of such extremist groups while criticising him for human rights abuses in his clampdown.
The video was released amid a warning to Putin that far from NATO being his biggest threat - as Russian propaganda is daily arguing - the real danger to him is from Muslim extremism on his southern flank.
This was highlighted today in The Moscow Times newspaper by Judy Dempsey, senior associate and editor-in-chief of Strategic Europe at Carnegie Europe.
'Outgoing NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has repeatedly spoken about an "arc of instability" around Europe,' she wrote.
'He has repeatedly warned Russia that it would suffer the consequences after Putin's decision in March to invade and then annex Crimea, Russian involvement in eastern Ukraine and Putin's call for immediate talks on "statehood" of southern and eastern Ukraine, or Novorossiya.
'But it is clear that so far Western sanctions and NATO's threats and rhetoric are no deterrence when it comes to thwarting Putin's ambitions.
'What could deter him is his own combustible southern flank and Islamic State, which Russia would be very unwise to ignore.
'It is these threats that are far, far more dangerous to Russia than NATO's limited intentions in Poland and the Baltic states.
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| Ties: The Russian leader was targeted by the rebels because of his ties to Bashar Hafez al-Assad (pictured) |
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Conclusion: What Does This Mean for the U.S. and NATO? A Mixed Bag of Tricks
So, what does this mean for the U.S. approach to attacking the Islamic State as well as our involvement with NATO over Russia and the Islamic State? It appears very unclear, but then everything about the president seems to look as if the foundation of the house will be divided every time as if it were based upon Jenga blocks or quicksand. However, in a very odd way, the Islamic State and Russia might serve the West a major purpose in NATO deterring Moscow's eventual launch of a full-scale invasion into the heart of Ukraine until it takes Kiev. It requires a mixed bag of tricks and playing one side against the other. Deceit, therefore, must be employed to stifle both foes and to potentially kill two birds with one stone. Regardless of how this ends, it will be global conflict, and Israel, China, Japan, Pakistan, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and the area few have any inkling on, the Golden Triangle, will be involved. The main objective is to prevent Russian and Chinese expansion into the Western Hemisphere in both nation's shift militarily and in engaging in economic protectionist cartels.
As Israel will no doubt defend their sovereignty as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is militarizing that area to defend against the Islamic State, Al-Nusra, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, Russia has a very strong advantage militarily. The lone concern for Putin is not his military superiority and his alliance with the Assad regime, but whether his military fighting has evolved beyond the Soviet failures at guerilla warfare during the Afghanistan campaign which aided President Reagan's toppling of communism during the 1980s. In a bizarre scenario, Israel may align with Russia both out of necessity as well as to spite the Obama administration, and at that, the inevitable formation of the terrorist quartet coalition will lose by way of fighting to the last man. If Egypt sides with Russia and Israel as might Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the plight to prevent global war may be averted, no thanks to President Obama at least in the Middle East. For the U.S., the task then becomes easy in principle, yet impossible in its implementation and potentially catastrophic for the American people since Obama appears to still be siding with the Islamic State following providing key figures in authority with intelligence to conduct their illicit operations in genocide. As the Islamic State is now in the U.S., this scenario becomes all the more crucial in the act of diversionary tactics in the game of military chess play.
Russia will have no choice but to cross over into the Arabian peninsula north of the Sinai Peninsula connection of Levant that is directly north of Israel. To do this, it will have to enter through Turkey, which is a NATO ally of the U.S. and Britain. Depending upon Washington and London's objections or lack thereof, that may lead to NATO declaring war on Putin, which then complicates matters far more. NATO will attack with the U.S.'s supply of superior weaponry and munitions and the entire coalition of manpower (including our own contribution of troops represented within the alliance) into the heart of Ukraine while Turkey's full military force, itself considerable as it is ranked globally in the top 10, will attack Russian forces from the south. The objective will then shift to encircling Russian forces much like Marshal Georgy Zhukov did to the German army at Stalingrad in February 1943. The cost in terms of military casualties as well as collateral civilian lives will be enormous, but no warfare has been waged successfully since before the Crimean War during the mid-1850s that did not include a total warfare package. The issue with the Crimean Peninsula, which is of great concern to Russia since it has always coveted it dating to the reign of Catherine the Great's expansion during her launching of campaigns against the Ottoman Turks, will require the U.S. Navy and British Royal Navy to bombard the coastline from the Black Sea and then impose a blockade to prevent any further incursions from Russian vessels later deployed or potential amphibious invasions by the Islamic State and its terrorist ring of allies with access to a very rudimentary contingent of vessels akin to modern frigates. The tandem of U.S. and British naval fleets are exponentially superior, and will be too overwhelming as an awesome force just with our presence for Russia to counter. To prevent possible Chinese People's Liberation Army advances through Central Asia's former Soviet republics Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, sending NATO forces through Georgia, Belarus and Lithuania will be crucial, but also to cut off Islamic terrorist cells in the separatist settlements of Chechnya, Dagestan and South Ossetia before any measurable Islamic State coalition can reach those territories to serve as bases for operations. Enough ground forces from NATO combined with U.S. Air Force superiority and others among our allies willing to contribute to our airpower should serve as a deterrent for serious attempts by Chinese forces too overstretched in supply lines to risk wasting precious resources simply to construct its own series of military bases.
The greatest challenge for the U.S. will lie in the Asia-Pacific theater depending upon how well our Navy and Air Force presence intimidates our Chinese opponents. You recall how I told you I authored in February a very extensive blog article which was never published discussing the very disturbing chain of events destabilizing the peace geopolitically both in foreign policy and diplomacy as well as international trade that will be affected. As China and Russia are very closely aligned in every imaginable way, the important idea is in the case of war with Beijing to somehow stall Russia from aiding the Chinese air force and elite naval fleet. As Beijing just launched its very first aircraft carrier within the past two years and their destroyers are rapidly acquiring new and improved additions, Russia already has two aircraft carriers and itself, a formidable but aging navy. The difference therein lies in their air forces, whereas Russia still uses excellent MiG fighter jets from the end of the Soviet-era, while China still buys to this day Russian manufactured armaments, artillery, munitions and tanks; Beijing's air force, however, is also expanding from Chinese industrial might and capacity. But as they do this, China also is expanding its forces through its mighty industrial capacity which today is far superior than our own since what once was a large manufacturing sector here was long ago outsourced to China due to our labor unions destroying cost effectiveness. And since Beijing continues to do this while still holding a nearly $2 trillion trade debt over the U.S.'s heads, any terms for a harsh arbitration of peace by our diplomats must include China forgiving all our outstanding trade debts under threat of total annihilation as well as the dissolution of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in favor of representative democracy with free speech and creative expression. With Russia, the U.S. has superiority in numbers if there should be a land war in Ukraine or along the Siberian border with Chinese Sinkiang. If our land forces attack China on the mainland, a blitzkrieg strategy is crucial to its success. Our air power superiority over China will neutralize our deficiency in numbers; if we do not utilize this method, all hope for a win on the ground is lost before any potential conflict is waged. The potential of countering a battery coalition of Sino-Russo naval and air force conflicts will come from Japan's fleet as it counters China's alongside our own global reach in the region, the East and South China Seas should be secured, mainland China blockaded and the ability to engage in multiple amphibious landing inevitable and unstoppable with the appropriate strategy to not force a confrontation in numbers with the People's Liberation Army. Inciting military and economic cooperation from the Philippines, long an American ally as a former colonial holding and now a strategic trading partner in the Indian Ocean, as well as Vietnam as it faces a potential Chinese invasion in its dispute over oil and natural gas maritime claims, will be crucial as the Vietnamese must be aided in its ability to militarize its border with China while Manila will mobilize its armed forces along its archipelago to provide defense against a sea invasion by Chinese naval deployments. Taiwan will be the key in the South China Sea for the U.S. and Japan to serve as our coalition's base for launching airstrikes in southern China and to possibly blockade Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor between Kowloon and the actual island of Hong Kong. To this point, British foreign relations with China are deteriorating over Beijing's attempt to sabotage free suffrage in Hong Kong, which was transferred to Chinese rule in 1997. It is important to continue supporting our special allies in London diplomatically in both NATO, our mutual counterterrorism agenda and with respect to the Asia-Pacific Rim's rising tensions.
