The idea of ISIS: The history and future of the Islamic State.

   The first thing we're going to have to realize in any discussion on ISIS is that, despite the media hysteria, they are not a cyborg army of super muslims spewing forth from Sodom about to gobble up the Middle East in their speedy Toyota trucks. Yes, these guys are well funded, well equipped and Internet savvy but the thing nobody seems to want to mention is that ISIS are in no way a formidable force. ISIS gains its power from its enemies lack of will to confront them because, let's face it, confrontation is pricey and nobody wants to pony up the blood and cash it would take to defeat them. [Update 10/3: The West has ponied up the cash and the air campaign is ongoing]

    ISIS, in the simplest terms, are a bunch of assholes on a roll in a consequence free environment.

 
    ISIS are also an 'idea' and in a social media world, ideas can be louder than bombs (more on that later). The main ISIS goal right now is cash and territory. Land for the caliphate. Later, they might get more ambitious and hit the soft underbelly of our infidel supply lines and detonate a dirty bomb someplace inconvenient but for the moment ISIS sights are firmly fixed on the easy pickings of post US Iraq and also on the real winners of the Iraq war, the Shia, who've grown fat and comfortable from fortified Baghdad all the way south to Basra. If we're going to talk about ISIS as a Sunni resistance movement, we're not going to be able to resist a little history here so let's go back to Jordan in 2003.

   Musab Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Jihadist is an Al-Qaeda commander and leader of a militant group called "JTJ", who is watching news footage of the first American 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' bombs landing in Baghdad. Iraqi triple A fire searches the night sky to no effect. Stealth bombers and JDAMS have Saddam clearly outmatched. We've all seen the footage. The US news anchor is orgasming on the fireworks but on the crappy satellite feed al-Zarqawi's 'tech guy' has managed to jack into via the dish on the roof, it's different. For a thug like al-Zarqawi, in a ramshackle apartment block on the edge of Damascus and schooled in the ways energy markets work, he comes to a very easy and fast realization. This is the war of his life. The methodology of his war and that of his followers will be via targeted atrocity against US forces and later, against Shia holy sites. Whatever it takes to make headlines. If the West thinks their high tech toys can take the Sunni homeland then he will show them warfare from another age (with the added bonus of advertising his prowess via the West's newfangled communication device, the Internet). He and his followers will show that fanatical muslims can learn HTML too. 

   Zarqawi quickly pencils down a wish list that will later become the ISIS manifesto.

   a) Kick the Americans out of Iraq.

   b) Establish a caliphate.

   c) Spread the conflict worldwide. 

   d) At some point in the future, nail the Israelis.

  Al-Zarqawi's ideas prove more durable then the man himself. He became too trigger happy with the LiveLeak vids and got 'freedomed' by the US via a 500 pounder from an F-16. He was holed up at what was, in hindsight, 'not a very safe house' in rural Iraq. Some stories state that a group of US soldiers stumbled upon the rubble, found him alive and finished him off via pistol. The fun part is, Al-Zarqawi's dead face was all over the Internet within hours and while the clueless Bush Administration were busy celebrating another 'mission accomplished' moment, Zarqawi's death mask went viral and recruited another few thousand disaffected Muslim youths from neighboring countries to the cause.

  And that right there is the problem when you're fighting ISIS. War mixed with some quasi religious message is always harder to win because when the fanatics lose they can handily resort to magical thinking and transmute a battlefield defeat into some kind of message from a god and weave that into a victory speech so long as there are fresh recruits around to buy into the bullshit.

   The pesky thing about the Middle East is that a manifesto written by a dead guy spawns a martyr and spreads like Ebola. Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) became the new nomenclature for the "JTJ" and other Sunni resistance groups because, let's face it, Al-Qaeda had by 2006 become a global 'terrorist' franchise with worldwide media recognition and everyone knows that these days, in our corporate consumertopia, if you're going to run a business it helps to have a recognizable brand splayed in bright lights over the drive thru window. Zarqawi's group got with the program and allowed themselves to be subsumed into the wider struggle. For the purposes of Sunni nationalism, the strategy from 2003-07 for a lot of militant groups operating in Iraq and later Syria was to sit back, bomb US patrols and Shia holy sites and allow the Al-Qaeda brand and western journalists to do their public relations and recruitment drives for them. In many ways, it was helter skelter and race war robbed from the sick dreams of Charlie Manson

   And it worked.

   One of the more interesting media tropes from the worldwide ISIS media hysteria (especially after the capture of Mosul in June) is the idea that ISIS were "kicked out of Al-Qaeda because they were too extreme". The fun part is, it's true. Zarqawi's policy of chaos in Iraq at all costs meant that attacking the Shia was profitable for two reasons,

  1) it destabilized the US sanctioned government in Baghdad (the idea of democracy being one of the touch stones of  US involvement and part of the cover story the elites fed to the plebs back home) and

  2) because, for Zarqawi, there was no such thing as bad publicity (except maybe the location of his safe house).


  This 'kill everything' policy might have worked until suddenly, Zarqawi's group got impatient at the pace of change, went 'all in' and detonated a massive car bomb at the al-Askari Mosque, and took out the famed 'Golden Dome', an artistic treasure and the holiest mosque for Shia Islam in Iraq. Unsatisfied with the destruction, the crazy bastard went and did it again a few months later and took down both minarets seriously pissing off not just the Shia, but everyone. The problem was, from Al-Qaeda's point of view, with a nominal interest in global jihad, was that bombing fellow Muslim sites, even the 'filthy Shia kind', was not a sound business strategy liable to impress Muslims worldwide. Al-Qaeda wanted 'the struggle' to focus on Western interests in Iraq,  fun stuff like IEDing Hum Vees and putting bullets in the heads of Iraqi civilians supporting the US occupation. This difference of opinion on targeting led to tension within the organization because invariably in jihad and war, once the blood starts to flow the message gets harder to control.

   Zarqawi had made himself a liability.

   Once he got taken out, his tenuous hybrid organization, still operating under the Al-Qaeda brand, went through a variety of leaders (most of whom got nailed by the US) and eventually found itself in schism. This schism was embodied by current ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi whose strategy of killing anyone anywhere so long as it advanced goals a) through d) of the above agenda meant that Al-Qaeda wanted to cut his group loose. ISIS, the newly rebranded wing formed by elements of Zarqawi's group and others battling Assad in Syria and already operating off reservation, were happy to go their own way.

   Let's talk Iraq 2007.

  The situation on the ground is a mess. With IEDs everywhere and even mainstream US news revealing how much American corporations had been charging US taxpayers every time a marine takes a dump in their branded porta-potty or electrocuted in their badly wired shower, the US public is realizing that corporate interests have played them for a mark like a Beijing businessman at a Vegas blackjack booth.

    The Administration decides upon a 'new' strategy called 'The Surge'.

   The American public, needy for a narrative involving victory but also retreat buys into the bullshit. The Surge involves a slight increase in US troops and patrols but mainly involves handing out millions of dollars in freshly printed cash to every Sunni Sheikh with a beef against the invasion willing to swap outrage for a new up armored Escalade. The Surge is war via pay off. And it works because money is honorable in the desert. The Sunni tribes banded together and formed 'The Sons of Iraq', amassed 30,000 fighters and ditched Al-Qaeda and it only cost the US half a billion dollars. That was chump change compared to what had been spent before. A 'Sunni Awakening' occurred where Sunni tribal elders were promised not only money but weapons to fight the extremists and most of all, Sunni representation in the government down south in Baghdad.

    In the meantime, the US needs someone it can dump the reigns of power on to. An exit strategy. Enter, not a powerbroker but a nobody, plucked from obscurity by the low tech genius of the Bush Administration. With every Sunni and Shia mover and shaker squabbling for a piece of the action, the Americans drop a harmless school teacher type named Nouriel Al-Maliki into the mix. Here's a guy with solid anti Saddam credentials and a humanities degree that should be easy to control. But there's a plot twist.

   Maliki turns out to be full on proof that the Milgram Experiment was not a fluke. 

   Handed power, Maliki goes from mild mannered asthete to Stalin in the space of a few months and engages in a brutal suppression of all things Sunni. He purges the army officer corps and local governments of Sunnis, removing anyone still left after Bremer's Baathist purge (the biggest mistake the US made in Iraq) and eliminates from the Iraqi Army any Sunni officer still left who might reasonably command a rifle squad. Some of the victims of this purge, though they did not know it yet, were to become the steel in the ISIS command structure when they swept south and nabbed Mosul. 

   Next up, the Obama Administration arrives in 2008.

   In many ways, the weakness of democracy, is that a new leader always comes along at regular intervals. That's if you believe the US Presidency actually runs shit and it's not all just theater designed to give the plebs something to argue about come voting time. Either way, with a mandate from a war weary public, democracy puts a neophyte in power, a community organizer so removed from conditions on the ground in a foreign desert and shoe horned by a campaign promise to drag US forces out of Iraq by an arbitrary date, that suddenly the Jihadis are partying like it's 1172. 

   To further complicate matters, the Arab Spring happens.

   Populations rise up some dictators get deposed peaceably but, noticeably, in countries that export even a smidgen of oil, shit gets complicated. Libya becomes a mess with Gaddafi putting up a decent fight until the French and British swoop in to take care of domestic business in the Mediterranean and take out his armor leaving him screwed and Gadaffi gets added to that list of dictators you might not like but, considering the alternatives, were the strongmen needed to hold desert together. Add to this the fact that the average Libyan is far worse off today then under Gadaffi, and it sure is a head scratcher trying to figure out who the winner is here. Here's a list of oil exporting Middle East countries that came out of the 'Arab Spring' better off then they were before.

    a) Libya… nope

    b) Syria… nope

    c) Egypt (no oil but canal owners)… all kinds of nope.

   The ultimate culmination of everything Arab Spring is Syria. The bloodbath of our times. 200,000 people dead, millions displaced and lets face it, a very complicated war fighting environment. In so many ways it was the adventure the Sunnis and ISIS were looking for. Assad, an Alawite and Russian ally, presiding over a country that was not a country outside of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and lines drawn on the desert according to 19th century logic, was fertile ground for newly born ISIS. The rich Sunnis in Riyadh and Qatar wanted Assad gone and so did the US and Euros. And so the money and weapons flowed into Sunni groups. But who's going to collect? Not the idiot on the corner with an AK calling himself a freedom fighter. Inexorably, the real fighters, trained veterans from Iraq, experts from abroad with explosive know-how, ex- officer corps from places like Fallujah, slowly the heavies began to seep into the fray and consolidate the disparate Sunni groups into something larger. The kids with AKs yielded to the serious guys in the know. Fighting Assad's forces to a stalemate was nice but Damascus could come later. Why fight a hard war when to the south and east lay the easy pickings of Iraq?

   ISIS moved the Syrian Civil War south and east and made conquest look natural.

   Worse, they made it look easy.

   Western media interpreted ISIS gains as battlefield invincibility but their advance would not have been possible if they were not already rolling into 'friendly' Sunni territory the Americans had abandoned. Power vacuums never last long in energy rich regions and the Sunni tribes that had once 'awakened' against al-Qaeda were no longer on the payroll and so enmity for AQI/ISIS wasn't generating gold and the Shia government in the south was turning increasingly hostile to Sunni interests. This made ISIS a functioning spearhead for a much larger Sunni nationalistic force. The opposing Iraqi Army, operating off 18 months of training and a meagre but steady paycheck stared down the full weight of ISIS and veteran Sunni tribal militias and that left the Iraqi Army with only one real course of action.

    Run like fuck.

    So fast forward to today and ISIS have their swathe of territory, they have Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, they're the richest militia in history, they're swimming in captured weapons and they're on Twitter. That's the fun thing about war in the 21st century. You can load up on tanks and fancy combat gear but if you're not savvy with social media then you're losing the fight. This is where you have to admire the assholes. The ISIS media wing is top notch and they make their vids in 1080p with surprisingly high production values. They've come a long way from the grainy 'generic terrorists training on the monkey bars' vids that were pumped out post 9/11 and have expanded their range to everything from your standard beheadings, pistol executions, mass execution of guys on their knees and on, mercilessly. to vids of ISIS fighters chasing down cars on the highway, riddling them with bullets while laughing and warbling the obligatory profusion of 'Allah Akbars' as they shock the shit out of you as you try to digest your pizza. Did I mention they also do kitten pics? Seems like they have achieved the ultimate level of Internet awareness...

   Master troll.

   The Syrian Civil War was the proving war where ISIS gained its traction. Well equipped, bolstered by expert fighters, hardened by scrapes with the Americans in towns like Fallujah, tempered, as it were, by fire, they could bring the fight to Assad and show the newbies how war is done without air power or tank support. Experts in avoidance, maneuver warfare and blending into civilian populations, ISIS under al-Baghdadi showed how, in the Internet age, you cannot be killed without consequence, without a way your death cannot be showcased via broadband and molded into some kind of martyrdom to fit the cause.

    Right now, ISIS have become experts in showing how serious they are, grabbing headlines every week with their beheading videos. ISIS, for all its love of the caliphate and worship of medieval theology, knows that though technology might be the unholy language of the infidels they are not so married to Sharia that they can't spot a winner. Putting themselves in your living room every night and making it hard to digest your dinner is a new kind of 21st century warfare aimed squarely at you via your monitor.

   So the question for ISIS is if this brand of crazy buys them any kind of longevity.

   Can shock therapy build an Islamic State?

   Surely the answer is no. They are the most hated people on Earth right now and rightly so. The problem is their gains are based on light infantry, maneuver warfare combined with a heavy dose of terror. Their gains are based on expanding into territory where they are seen, for now, as the lesser of many evils. Their enemies fear them much like Genghis Khan's cavalry. You cannot win but you can do business. ISIS exploits fear and punch above their weight but none of this is going to be enough to capture Baghdad. Baghdad is Shia country these days and Iran has been sending in troops and tanks to make sure it stays that way. If ISIS thinks their caliphate will ever boast Baghdad as their capital then we already know they're operating under a faulty strategy.

   The thing that's most interesting about ISIS is that they're smart but their goals are stupid.

    ISIS have already pissed off too many people to enjoy longevity.

   To the north, Turkey and the Kurd's want them gone. The Turks, interestingly, seem to be sitting this one out. Interestingly, ISIS have done a lot to make an independent Kurdistan a foregone conclusion and ended Turkish hostility to this idea. Kind of.  The Turks and Kurds have been fighting for so long that they've suddenly realized, via an external enemy, that they are in fact unlikely brothers with a mutually beneficial interest in seeing Kirkuk's vast oil reserves piped north into Turkey and exported from terminals on the Mediterranean in a game where every old Ottoman foe gets a fat chunk of the action. Sure the Turks are split on feeding support to the Kurds but Euros seem to like it. Maybe they'll even let the Turks join the club. Hence, the Euros have been flooding the Peschmerga with fancy new toys on the assurance that they only point them at the designated bad guys and not at the friendly and former genocidal Turks.

   Even the Saudis are running scared. ISIS are showing them what happens when you open Pandora's Box and hand out weapons with impunity. The Saudi Royals wanted Assad gone so bad it hurt so they dished out AT weaponry like the brown acid at Woodstock and soon everyone was swimming in blast technology. Trouble for the Saudis is, some of those weapons can get pointed back at you. The Saudis are good at buying off their population with oil revenue but they fear that even their own population are buying into the ISIS hype. ISIS are nothing if not an enigmatic idea, the kind of idea that young men are attracted too. There hasn't been something this attractive to disaffected Muslim youth across the world since '60s Pan Arabism.

   ISIS offers an insidious but beguiling idea to angry youth from Bradford to Marseilles....

   The idea that you could come home.

   They might hate you in the suburbs of Europe, but here in the desert, there's a chance for you to strike back. It's like the allure of '70s Punk Rock. Nobody likes you around here but if you're willing to make an idealogical journey there's a party in the desert and the possibility of making a new home so long as you're willing to do a little axe murdering on the side.

   Can ISIS survive?

   Not at the rate they've racked up enemies. Though they've amassed a healthy war chest and have de facto control of a large swathe of territory which they can milk for cash (they've been exporting oil for 25c on the dollar and running the usual extortion rackets in Mosul and other cities) it's just a matter of time before the hardcore Shia from the South, Peshmerga and Turkish forces from the north manage a concerted crush. Throw in some US airpower and ISIS will be forced to pretend they don't exist until the heat dies down.

   Interestingly, this is where things could get dangerous for the West.

   So much rested on Obama's withdrawal of forces from Iraq that's it's hard to see US ground troops being reinserted into the fray. ISIS would love this because bleeding an empire is their speciality. Their command structure may be solid but their ability to resist US air power is negligible. They were beaten back from the Mosul dam because control of the Euphrates matters.

   The old logic of the 'cornered rat going for the throat' is interesting considering Europe's high population of disaffected Muslim youth. You never know what kind of dirty material (chemical, bio or nuke) you can buy in an Albanian/Georgian dive bar these days. Of course, I'm not talking the dreaded suitcase nuke, I'm talking a transit van, some Semtex and canisters full of gunk from some Soviet era reactor that, blown up at the right time in the right city could set the world on fire and spark all kinds of economic and over reaction scenarios that would certainly be popcorn time.

   ISIS presents that 'clear and present danger'.

   Let's state what we know.

   2014 has been a really shitty year if you're the type of person who believes 'world peace' could 'be a thing'. Libya is on fire, Syria is on fire, Ukraine is on fire and Iraq is on fire. Tensions are rising in the South China Sea. The world economic system depends on stability and with the number of flash points growing, it's getting increasingly hard to see a future without large forest fires.

   It's like trying to predict when, where and how the popcorn will pop.

Russia v NATO: Ukraine, Crimea and the new Cold War.

   Admit it, the second you saw that vid of Russian attack choppers pouring into Crimea, somewhere in the back of your brain you started thinking of nuclear winter, fallout, the best routes out of major population centers and how up-to-date the contents of your bug-out-bag are. Maybe you've got to be a '70s kid and have grown up under the threat of a Warsaw Pact air burst over your local mall to be really jarred by those images, but either way, I sure hit the popcorn pretty hard. Some deep repressed memories perked up when I saw those choppers. It's not often you get to see the Russian Army on the move and the resulting shit storm all over US and European media made for some pretty entertaining TV, especially if you enjoy your talking heads not connected to the reality of the situation in any meaningful way.

   Doesn't anyone on CNN read a history book? If there were truth in news reporting these days someone might admit that Russia pulled a 'smart' maneuver here just like the West did when they secured Iraqi oil, deposed Gaddafi or bombed the rebels in Mali. Russia just joined the club! With nukes in play nobody in the West is going to become embroiled in a Slavic civil war for Ukraine. Right? Let's face it, we just love our post modern self actualizing Twittery, i-Phoney, corporatocracy too damn much to risk our comfort for a bunch of cantankerous Steppe dwellers. 

   The Euros are locked into a co dependent, abusive relationship with Russian oil and gas and the US is way over extended for either to do anything significant about Crimea so Russia gets to keep its new real estate. When you look at it with the cold eyes of realpolitik, Putin pulled off a pretty shrewd maneuver here and the West, despite the outrage on your TV screen, is pissed not because they give a shit about democracy and territorial borders; but because they got outplayed here by Putin and their inability to apply pressure has begun to reveal some frays at the edges of 21st century Western hegemony.

   To see why Putin pulled this rather ballsy gambit into Crimea, all you have to do is consider Russia's strategic position. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian bear has watched NATO expand eastwards into its backyard bringing Poland, Latvia and Lithuania into the western fold. Worryingly for Moscow, Ukraine has seen its fair share of Western NGOs, (really just an acronym for foreign political action committees operating inside your border), and slowly pour $5 billion into the system with the aim of tilting the vast bread basket west. 

   You don't hear much about Russian motivation in Western media though.

   For instance, when Western media ran the Nuland leak tape they did so in a way so divorced from the reality on the tape that I had to check the mirror to make sure I was living in the same universe and it all wasn't an acid flashback to the '90s. Here we have two American diplomats, one of them the US ambassador in Kiev, the other the top US diplomat to the EU (and presumably voicing the strategy of Obama's tech nerds) basically plotting a coup d'état against the democratically elected leader of Ukraine. But all of this got ignored when the the story ran and somehow morphed instead into a titilating snippet about how an Obama official said 'fuck the EU'. Meanwhile, the 'news' stayed tightly focused on the armed "democratic protesters" chucking petrol bombs at the cops. Turns out a whole bunch of them are hardcore Nazis and they've already started bullying members of the Ukrainian parliament and people on the streets.

   But this is democracy, right?

   And let's face it, if Occupy Wall Street protesters started lobbing molotovs at the NYPD, they'd have been gunned down with M4s before their idealistic little fingers made it to their Zippo lighters while Fox News ran a donation drive to buy more ammo for the cops. Yet here we have a mass of armed protesters advancing on the Ukrainian equivalent of The White House and word out of Washington and Brussels was more cheering from the sidelines like they're witnessing freedom and democracy on the march. It reminded me of that time during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 when looters in Baghdad ran off with priceless Mesopotamian treasure from the national museum and Rumsfeld was pushed in front of the TV cameras to inform us that that's what 'free people do'.

   On both occasions, I nearly threw up in my beer.

   Am I saying Russia had justification for invading Crimea?

   Nope. I'm just saying it was a shrewd move. 

   When the West does it, it's sex, when Russia does it, it's rape. The Russians under Putin have been itching for a chance to rebuild some semblance of the Soviet Empire and bring as many energy rich states into a Eurasian Union to counterbalance the Euros. Seeing Ukraine join the EU and NATO would be far too risky for Putin. The Russians know from history that buffer states and winter are useful allies whenever foreign powers try diplomacy by other means and head for Moscow.

   That's why nabbing back Crimea was a natural play, correcting the 'mistake' Khruschev made in 1954 over vodka when he gave it to Ukraine. Of course, back then this was merely an administrative shuffle because in the heady days of Sputnik, no one ever thought the Soviet Union would collapse and Russia might find itself on the wrong end of the deal. When Russians think of Crimea today they think of cheap holidays in the sun and Sevastapol, home of the Black Sea Fleet. And that fleet is pretty critical to Russian geopolitical ambitions. The naval base there allows Moscow an ice free port to exert influence over the Eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans and the Middle East.

   Although full of aging vessels, the fleet has been earmarked for upgrades, including six new diesel Kilo class subs and some amphibious assault ships with which to press home diplomacy when a little hard pressure is required with uppity neighbors like Georgia. It's also only a few days sailing to Syria where NATO ambitions were stymied in 2013 not least because of Russian machinations.

   Putin grabbed it and let's face it, it's nothing the US wouldn't do. Watching Kerry remark on the Crimean situation last week was a further exercise in the absurd theater of reality. Who writes this shit?  The needle on the hypocrisy meter broke when it tried to push past max level.

   So what are the West going to do about all this?

   
   This is where it gets interesting. Realpolitik is back and the US is going to have to adjust. The instability in Ukraine exacerbated by a tanked economy allowed Putin to pull this deft move without firing a shot. A remarkable gain considering its two million population and powerful position in the Black Sea. The US initially responded with a call for across the board sanctions which Germany instantly rejected because their economy needs all that sweet Russian energy. The trouble is, unlike China, Russia exports raw materials and energy and advanced Eurozone economies mold that into machines. So for the EU at least, which does ten times more trade with Russia than the US, sanctions are a non starter.

   The new idea this week is 'travel bans' on Russian officials which is kind of funny. Looks like those guys will have to go holidaying to the beach resorts of Crimea this summer. Also, there's talk of asset freezes on all that sleazy Russian money holed up in Western banks. Of course, Russian dirty money in the 'City of London' is exempt from these asset freezes because of some bullshit reason David Cameron's bankers created out of thin air; but really because those in London's financial center need liquidity and cash is always king, dirty or clean.

   In geopolitics and war, you measure how much you care in blood and treasure.

   And by this metric, the West doesn't care that much. Ukraine is cheap and Crimea is part of the Russian Federation now and it will stay that way. The upcoming referendum is a foregone conclusion, I'm gonna guess a 75% vote for Russia. Of course it's all theater but the Russians have learned from the West how to make invasions look legit.

The older generation celebrates the good ole days after the Crimea vote

   The real question is what happens in Eastern Ukraine and this is what I'm saving the popcorn for. For one thing, Britain, the US and Russia signed the Budapest memorandum in 1994 which guaranteed Ukrainian borders in exchange for them giving up all the nukes left over from the Soviet Union. That sure looks like a shitty deal right now doesn't it? 

  The hard lesson here is... never give up your nukes. 

   Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the interim Ukrainian prime minister, said "If you do not uphold these guarantees which you gave in the Budapest memorandum, then explain how you will convince Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear status." Note to Mr Yatsenyuk: North Korea has nukes, you don't, so tough shit on that analogy sir, you lost your nuke bargaining chip in the international casino 20 years ago. Also, Iran has the 4th largest oil deposits on the planet and gargantuan natural gas reserves where you have lots of empty fields for growing grass so I'm sorry to inform you sir, but nobody gives a shit. Wheat is cheap right now but oil is precious. Different rules apply.

   If Russia pulls a 'Sudetenland maneuver' and invades Eastern Ukraine to 'liberate' the Russian speakers from Ukrainian tyranny, it sure has the potential to enter the dreaded 'escalatory spiral' where we're talking  full on global confrontation. This is where I see nukes saving us. Like I've said before, nukes are the greatest peace keeping weapons ever invented because Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is the only logic us upright apes truly understand. In this case, the threat of confrontation will force leaders on all sides to the brokering table. That sure will be a complex deal.

    If Russia pours troops into Eastern Ukraine, it will force the West's hand. Proper economic sanctions, Poland will get their missile defense system and Russia will face growing isolation. If a shooting war starts on the ground (awesome multi spectrum air and land battles on mottled rolling green terrain) I sure would hit popcorn overdose. 

   Still, it's hard to see the Ukrainian Forces putting up a real fight. Sure, the figures above look decent on paper but war is never as simple as how many tanks you've got. The Ukrainian military is suffering very low morale due to the political situation, a low state of readiness and a military that is split between ethnic Ukrainians and Russian speakers. The Ukrainian military is unable to offer a credible deterrent right now.  It's also hard to see the forces on both sides engaging in a savage shooting war. After all, Slav historical ties run deep with Kiev itself being, in most Russians minds, a Russian city. That doesn't mean it can't happen but would Putin be prepared to fight for Ukraine killing fellow Slavs... like the Wehrmacht did?

   And yet still, 220,000 Russian troops, 1800 tanks and 400 attack choppers are engaged in "exercises" on the Ukrainian border. Meanwhile, Crimea just handed over it's navy to the Russian Federation while more troops and equipment arrive daily from the motherland. If the Russians invade they'll try not to fire a shot and annex Eastern Ukraine where the Russian speakers live, draw a line on a map and seek to de escalate. They'll have their buffer zone, the EU can have the bread basket, Poland gets a missile shield and the border becomes a Berlin Wall running along the new border with massive build ups of military forces on both sides.

   It's Cold War Part Deux.

   The beginning lines drawn in a multi polar 21st century.

   All those neoliberal economic ties and global interdependence is supposed to make the 21st century a century where war is impossible outside of the odd Third World resource grab or minor proxy war. Major wars are not supposed to happen say the architects of the new century because we will all buy tonnes of shit from each other and our need for more toys will mean our greed will save us from war.

   I must admit I'm pretty curious to see how that theory works out.

   Russia v Ukraine is surely its first major test.

The Syrian Regional War: NATO on deck!

   Looks like NATO and Obama's tech geeks are going ahead with a 'limited' attack on Syria.

  [UPDATE 9/26] Obama's nerds realized the bad idea was bad..

  The US has four destroyers in the Mediterranean right now each packing 90 Tomahawks apiece plus the British have a Trafalgar class submarine offshore and a Rapid Reaction force setting up shop at Akrotiri in Cyprus. It's hard to figure the real justification here (outside of the details I gave in my previous post) but the international media play here seems to be: "Assad unleashed his chemical weaponry and wasted civilians so now it's time for the West to bring some kinetic blast energy into the mix to punish Assad for killing people in an unapproved way." Yep, it seems the reasoning behind the attack is going to be that retarded. You kill your people via asphyxiation so we'll kill more of your people via high explosive and that'll teach you a lesson for your "moral obscenity".

   Such is the madness of war.

   Of course, this can't be the only reason for the attack and the above reason is just the bullshit they're going to print in the newspapers. A recent poll indicated 60% of the American public are against any intervention in Syria (because they're smart) but modern proxy resource war is never a game of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" so there is no 'ask the audience' option. The corporate oligarchy are just gonna go ahead and blow shit up and continue with the wider plan of gobbling up the entire energy riches of the Middle East.

   Syria will be first on the permanently destabilized list, followed later by Iran.

   This attack, for the moment, is being advertised as merely a 'one off strike' to punish Assad for using chemical weapons (if he used them, more on that later). It's the "poke the hornets nest with a stick and see what happens" theory of war. If Assad reacts and does something stupid like launching missiles at Israel (highly unlikely) then NATO will pounce and bring on the real war, armed with the excuse to retaliate they can feed to their surveillance state nominal 'democracies' back home. If Assad is smart and he sure seems to be, then the correct reaction to the NATO attack will be to do nothing and instead offer up the usual parade of dead babies to world TV cameras.

    And this is where the story gets real shady for me.

   Assad by all accounts is not a stupid man. He attended Western universities. He's a trained eye doctor. This at least must mean he's not a total idiot, right? Why then would he use nerve gas at a time when the rebel factions aligned against him are fracturing, fighting amongst themselves and losing control of towns? Assad's forces seem to have gained a slight initiative in this war and now suddenly, just as he begins winning, he breaks out chemical weapons and hands NATO the golden invitation to walk into his country?

   It just doesn't make sense on the very fundamental level known as common sense.

   The things is, who these days is gonna trust the US or UK when they say WMDs are a legit reason to enter a war? It is a fact that chemical weapons exist in Syria but the real issue here is, who used them? It may be hard to believe Assad is that stupid but of course, that does not mean he isn't that stupid. War is not a logical environment and the common sense I mentioned above may not be applicable at all. Maybe Assad felt that by using a terror weapon and getting away with it, that act alone would be a morale shatterer for the rebels and allow his forces to go on the full offensive; knowing that pesky entrenched rebel holdouts could be gassed out of their positions with ease. Maybe Assad was testing the waters to bring about an offensive chemical game changer to end the war decisively? We just can't know and no side in any of this as of this writing seems inclined to deliver definitive proof of who is responsible. Still, none of it passes the smell test does it?

   Do not watch the video below if you would prefer to avoid the horrors of nerve gas (NSFL).

 Assad's actions after the chemical story broke are telling too. He immediately offered to let UN inspectors in to examine the sites where the chemicals were allegedly used. Obviously, he's studied the West's WMD playbook in Iraq and learned from Saddam that stalling on this issue provides the West with justification for an invasion. Sure, that could be a bluff too, designed to play well with a foreign anti war public; the logic being that he at least tried to prove his innocence but the damn rebels prevented the UN convoy from getting through to the chemical sites. Maybe, he's like the shark in Jaws, either very dumb or very smart... he's gone under the media.

  Even the mainstream media are asking these questions now but it is testimony to our times that the precedent for wars without Congressional approval, without UN approval, wars that are illegal under international law; all can happen anyway because of the precedents set in Iraq 2003. Even the will of the majority of the public can be set aside by those in power. Hope and Change was all just a slick marketing campaign. Now we see why Obama didn't go after the Bush Administration and instead made them all immune from prosecution. Another precedent was set... that of total freedom from liability for those who would run the empire and its global proxy resource wars. A freedom from liability the Noble Peace Prize winner himself will avail of when he himself presses the red button on Syria later this week. If he does because deep down I still don't get where victory lies here. Obama's defenders will say that the White House did warn that chemical usage was a "redline" moment and the US will look weak if they do not strike punitively as a matter of proving the US point. One thing is for sure though and that's that any overt foreign involvement in Syria just leads to more clusterfuck. Unfortunately, this is the only truth you will find in the Syrian Regional War.

   Meanwhile, yesterday in Syria, shit got even more shady. Suddenly, on their way to the nerve gas attack sites, the investigating UN convoy took incoming fire and was forced to retreat before inspecting anything.  Let's look at the possibilities here in the absence of cold hard facts.

  A) The snipers were Assad's forces trying to stop the UN from discovering the truth behind the usage of nerve gas. Assad invited the UN team in as a ruse, just to seem like an honest broker and then had his snipers shoot up the convoy knowing they would flee. He then blamed the shooting on the rebels and appealed to world anti war sentiment under the idea that he did all he could to try to prove his forces innocent of chemical weapons usage.

  B) The snipers were in fact rebel factions trying to prevent the UN from discovering that the rebels themselves were responsible for the gas attack either using stolen chemical artillery shells looted from Assad's arsenals or, worse still, chemical weapons supplied from outside Syria by a foreign menagerie of sleazy enemies with an interest in watching Syria burn.

  C) The snipers were foreign CIA/Mossad/Turkish agents running a covert mission to interdict the UN convoy to stop the inspectors from discovering that the chemical weapons came from foreign sources, were not part of Assad's arsenal and that the rebels perpetrated the attack themselves; all this with the added bonus of confirming the fact that Assad is a callous killer who would fire on unarmed UN inspectors.

  D) The snipers are just random assholes. It's a war zone after all. Some dick shot at the convoy because he hates white SUVs, hates his job, hates the war and the guy banging his wife drives a white car so he fired shots and it's all just random mad shit.

   One of the above is the truth. But which one is it?

   They say truth is the first casualty in any war so here we go again...

Those blast points, too accurate for sand people?

   The impending NATO strike is being presented as a sort of 'slap on the wrist' attack in world media.

   To know if this is true, all we will have to do is wait to see what the primary targets for the initial Tomahawk cruise missile strikes will be. The targets designated here will be crucial in figuring out where NATO is planning on taking this war. If most of the targets are X band strikes against Syria's air defense radars than we can be pretty sure this is just the opening salvo and NATO intends to take air superiority over Syria and fill the skies later on with ground support aircraft for the rebels, a Libya part II if you like. However, if the strikes are primarily against Assad himself, his house, his swimming pool, his Bentley, government buildings and some military bases and command and control centers then, that might fit the advertising as a "punitive measure" type attack. Obviously, limited strikes against all of the above will keep NATO intentions muddled for now and will be the probable course of action. But we will still learn a lot from the extent of strikes against Assad's air defense systems. And we'd be foolish to think that the US doesn't have a whole bunch of follow up contingency options waiting in the wings.

   Next up, what are the wider geopolitics of this crazy war. 

   And, by wider geopolitics, I am of course talking Russia and Iran here. I talked a lot about this last time but it's worth repeating. Russia currently has an undisclosed number of assets inside Syria. They have that Mediterranean base at Tartus which they would dearly like to hold. Losing it would be a serious blow to Russian prestige but I'm sure NATO have offered assurances that they have no designs here. The Russians have some Soviet era warships off the coast, some Spetsnaz and paratroopers in country and also an unknown number of technicians helping with the air defense systems. Has the S-300 SAM system been deployed yet? This is a huge question and we don't yet know. Some batteries could be operational and will be operated by Russian technicians. Obviously, the S-300 getting its first combat test v NATO would be popcorn overdose time but most likely the initial strike will involve cruise missiles and maybe, if the US goes exotic, some B2 stealth bombers from mainland US bases.

   How will Russia react?

   There'll be complaints at the UN and fist waving along with the Chinese. But at this stage of the 21st century everyone knows the Western modus operandi and the juggernaut that is US military power. The corporate empire cannot be deterred by conventional forces and nukes remain off the table because it's just not worth bringing on Armageddon. Yet.

   The real question here is what the NATO plan for Syria is.

   Is it perpetual chaos in the heart of the Arab world? Because if the West were truly interested in stability in Syria than the dirty little secret of this war might be that Assad would be the best option for that. Let the Arab strongman continue his authoritarian dictatorship not because it's expedient or moral or even right, but because the alternatives are far worse. Just look at Egypt in the aftermath of Mubarak as an object lesson on how things can go wrong without a bad guy on the payroll. The Arabs just don't do democracy and voting booths. In the wake of Assad's demise, what would a post war Syria look like? It would look like another Civil War but this time on bath salts with multiple factions fighting each other, Druze, Alawites, Christians, FSA, Al-Nusra Islamic radicals, Kurds, Al-Qaeda franchise elements, Hezbollah, Iranian militias, Sunni factions, ex Assad Syrian Army hold-ons all clawing each other's faces off for power. The civilian slaughter and genocide could go off the charts.

   But here's the dark side for Western war planners. Once you ditch the morality of fomenting a failed state you also by default neuter it. Its teeth are gone. Its ability to project power evaporates from its neighbor's borders. All this chaos would mean the end of Syria as a contiguous state and would remove it as a threat to Israel, Turkey and Jordan and end its alliance with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran to the East. It would knock Russian influence out of the Middle East. Hezbollah would find itself with a far more difficult supply chain for rocketry to aim at Israel and Iran would find itself fully isolated and surely the next domino to fall.

   So now perhaps the benefits of attack emerge however tenuously. Total destabilization. Chaos. A very scary course of action surely with many unforeseeable outcomes but obviously viewed as containable from Western war planner's madcap Dr Strangelove rooms.

  In fact, examined on these terms, NATO's impending intervention in Syria starts to make some kind of strategic sense when you take in the big picture... total Western hegemony of the last easily extractable oil on the planet. Lessening reliance on tar sands and its low EROEI numbers and high costs-to-refine, nothing but sweet crude sitting just under desert sands in Iraq and Iran and the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. Syria barely has any oil but it is a linchpin state in the region. Damascus is the historic heart of Arabia. Maybe we've reached the stage where such chaos is desirable and that's a very scary place to be just 13 years into the new century. Hegemony via chaos is a risky game.

   This is a big war and it's happening live on your TV for reasons far removed from a whiff of nerve gas. If Assad takes his medicine and does not retaliate (his best move) we have the possibility of continued stalemate. The fire could all die down and be forgotten in a week or it could flare up and consume more forest. It's been a long hot summer. And the desert is dry and ripe for flames.

   If NATO are smart, they back down on this one. They already have all the chaos they need.

    Grab popcorn. And stay tuned.

    

Why Syria Matters: Sunni oil versus Shia oil and the battle for regional hegemony in the Middle East.

   The Syrian Regional War rages on and nobody knows how to put out the fire.

   Up to now, the Obama administration tech nerds have proved pretty savvy when it comes to dealing with foreign war-fighting policy. After all, they got Bin Laden. They buried Gaddafi via tech support so the French and British could get the job done. And every guy sporting an AK in a strategic desert these days knows he's just a drone strike away from oblivion. Even the plebs back home immersed in media driven bread and circuses know they're under 24 hour NSA surveillance every time they hit up Porn Hub. Few care. US defense policy these days is war via computer geek and it's working in this interim decade before the real resource wars get green lit.

   Meanwhile, we've got Syria like a festering splinter in the geopolitical game.

   Syria is proving to be a real head scratcher for Obama's nerds. On the one hand, you've got the "Free Syrian Army", the designated 'good guy freedom fighters', an idea the world media bandied about to describe the farmers in Dera'a that got the whole ball rolling in this 'civil war' when they tagged some graffiti on the wall of the wrong mud hut. Assad's heavy handed response meant Syria got lumped in to the whole Arab Spring narrative and there was all that talking head talk on US airwaves about democracy and freedom and ME dictators being assholes. But as with most stuff on US news networks, it's all a stinking pile of bullshit. All Arab countries are run by assholes because if they weren't they'd  be run my warring tribal militias and that's really bad for the oil business. The Arabs just don't do democracy. Voting booths are for pussies, infidels and ancient Greeks. Arabs respect strongmen going all the way back to Saladin. That's why the Syrian Civil War has got nothing to do with freedom fighting and democracy and everything to do with regional and global geopolitics at the heart of the desert energy chess game. Which is kind of funny when you consider Syria doesn't even have that much oil. But we're not talking geography here, we're talking regional hegemony and control of the human capital living inconveniently in the vicinity of major energy reserves.

   The Syrian Civil War is now a Middle Eastern regional proxy war.

  This war really has two aspects. First and foremost, it's a regional Middle East conflict between the Shia and Sunni. Yep, a good old religious war but religion really isn't a useful term here. Sure, they hate each other's guts but regional energy hegemony is the fuel that makes this war burn. On the one hand, you've got the Shia, that is, Iran, Hezbollah (firmly entrenched in next-door Lebanon) and the newly conquered Shia controlled region of southern Iraq (thanks Dick Cheney), aligned against Saudi Arabia, Qatar and everywhere else in the Middle East Saudi oil money stretches to Sunni client states.

    Basically, we're talking Saudi Arabia's oil versus Iran's oil.

   The Saudis took it really personally when Hezbollah retook the Syrian town of Qusair in pretty impressive fashion last week, fighting that ugly street by street Stalingrad type warfare Hezbollah have been proving adept at lately. This has kicked the Saudi royals back in Riyadh into raging camel mode. Although a long time coming, the Shia v Sunni grand regional war is beginning to take shape. The grand alignment of Riyadh and Cairo (who broke diplomatic relations with Damascus last week and called for a no fly zone over Syria) is kickstarting. Next up to the party, King Abdullah of Jordan (fearful of conflict creep and more refugee spillage across his border), mentioned recently at a cadet graduation ceremony  "Hezbollah must leave Syria... there is no place for Hezbollah in Syria". These are fighting words especially for the Jordanians who've kept their head down during this whole Arab Spring so as to maintain their benevolent dictatorship in the desert.

   What's all this saber rattling about?

   Basically, the Sunni oil Sheikhs fear the Iranian Oil Ministry will dust off the old maps from Ottoman times and build an oil pipeline from Abadan across Shia controlled Southern Iraq to Tartus in Syria and begin making billions exporting oil to Europe via the Mediterranean. Next up, why not build a nice railway line from Tehran to Damascus and on maybe to Beirut. That right there would be the type of Shia strategic encircling axis that makes every oil rich prince in Saudi Arabia want to rage drive his Ferrari Enzo off a cliff with his whole family in the passenger seat.

   Even more so, let's talk methane. The above mentioned pipeline could theoretically supply the Euros with natural gas, the "cleaner" energy the planet loving Euros crave. With the EU mandated carbon reductions set to go into effect by 2020 and Germany axing its nuke plants, suddenly, Shia Iran's South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf becomes a goldmine beyond the dreams of Xerxes. Guess who lays claim to the northern part of that gas field? Sunni Qatar. Yes my friends, dig deep enough into any war and you can ditch religion and always find money and taking other people's shit as primary motivations for any shooting war.

   All this makes Syria ground zero for proxy war central.

   Right now the Saudis have been pumping some serious weaponry into the FSA. MANPADS (quite apart from being the worst acronym for a weapons system ever) are shoulder mounted AA useful for taking down choppers and low flying jets and also supplied, somewhat ironically, are at least 50 Russian made 9M113 "konkors"; wire guided anti tank missiles that can waste Syrian T-72s. The CIA have been supplying weaponry too but through the usual plethora of back channels; shady deals via Euro allies via dodgy corporate warehouses that make the stuff impossible to trace and every government ends up with plausible deniability while the Syrian rebel at the end of the supply chain literally jizzes his pants while unboxing his new laser guided death ray; and then begins crying as he can't read the instruction booklet because it's printed in a language.

The 9M113 Konkurs AT missile. FSA instruction booklet included?

     This war is so interesting it has me glued to Live Leak and I'm getting fat on popcorn.

   One thing that makes me splurge is the second aspect of the Syrian war, namely the geopolitical aspect, and how that's leading to all kinds of complications that drag in Russia, China, the US and Japan, and surely has the policy nerds at the Pentagon tearing their hair out wondering what the best play is in this increasingly complex and risky game.

   If the US goal is to prevent the FSA from losing this war then that's going to require more than covert arms sales via shady transactions through the usual back channels. Let's face it, it's going to require a Gaddafi style no fly zone. As of this writing, Assad's forces are attempting to retake Aleppo, the home of the Sunni business elites, largely abandoned by them now as the squatting, multi denominational FSA fighters holed up there have helped, along with Syrian Army artillery and airstrikes, to turn that once thriving city into Beirut circa 1978. If Syrian forces manage to retake it, like they did Qusair a few weeks back, it'll be a major coup and decision time for NATO and the Sunni alliance of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and even Turkey to make a move. If Aleppo falls to Assad's forces and the Iranian sponsored militias then the FSA initiative will have been lost. And as any general knows, losing the initiative means everything in war.

   That's when it will be decision time for the major powers.

   If NATO decide on a no fly zone, the first thing they are going to have to contend with is Russia's newly delivered S-300 SAM system (if deliveries have been timely and made as Putin promised). These will have to be manned by Russian personnel because of the steep learning curve on operating this complex anti aircraft system. Assad's troops just won't be up to speed if NATO decides on a Gaddafi maneuver. The S-300 is potent but as yet untested in combat but there's no doubt it's a serious contender and at least equal to anything NATO has counter measure wise. The Russians claim it is even effective against stealth aircraft but they would say that wouldn't they? Maybe time will tell. The best bet for any initial strike will be X band radar cruise missile attacks on the launchers and radar installations all of which will be manned, at least for now, by Russian technicians. That will mean the US will have to go all in and I don't think the Obama tech geeks have the stomach for it. If they do, does that mean we get to sit back and jump straight to a fun game of global thermonuclear war when Putin's personnel get vaporized? Nah. Just another shit storm at the UN and more head scratching at the Pentagon.

   From a purely realpolitik view, if the US does nothing, and Assad wins, that's a tremendous victory for Iran and Russia. On the other hand, if the US tackles this via half measures, floods the FSA with the latest shoulder mounted anti air and anti tank weaponry, you might hand the FSA a victory that will leave them hating the US anyway (even if they provide them with all those new fancy toys). The FSA itself is so fractious and made up of so many conflicting groups of martyr worshipping 72 virgin afterlife fucking crazies, including radical Al-Qaeda franchise elements, Sharia law nuts and radicals that, even an FSA win will mean the US will have basically armed another extremist state in the Middle East and created a hotbed for anti Western terrorist training camps that'll make the Taliban goat herders in Afghanistan about as threatening to world peace as Mahatma Gandhi on Xanax.

   Obviously, Obama's computer geeks are stumped.

   Another fun thing about this whole Middle East energy chess game is the stake Russia has in all this. If Assad manages to hold on, then Assad owes Putin big time. Russia loves that warm water but somewhat obsolete Mediterranean military base at Tartus on the Syrian coast. Arms sales to Assad have been booming and the whole Arab Spring thing has left Russia with a serious lack of allies and weapon clients in the Middle East. After the US appropriated Iraq's oil reserves and has that symbiotic relationship with Saudi Arabia's crazy Wahhabi sheiks who exchange petrodollar monopoly funny money for F-16s and Floridian beachfront property, the Russians are loathe to lose that last foothold in the Middle East that still buys their Migs and heavy weaponry. Also, the Russians would like to hold on to the regional influence Damascus provides as the historical and metaphorical heart of the Arab world. Holding on to Syria against NATO encroachment would be a major victory for the Russians who are feeling decidedly small since the heady days of the Soviet Union.

   Also, for the Iranians, Syria is the main supply route for weaponry to Hezbollah, their proxy army on Israel's northern border. Hezbollah proved themselves a serious contender for world's best irregular army when they bloodied the IDF's nose back in 2006 when the Israeli's tried an incursion into Southern Lebanon. For Iran, holding Syria will achieve multiple aims; piss off the Saudis, assert Shia aspirations for hegemony in the region and remind Israel that they've got some allies on speed dial if Netanyahu goes ahead with his dream strike on the Natanz centrifuge facility. A possible pipeline to Europe for oil and gas across friendly territory would be icing on the global energy cake. Hezbollah also proved themselves useful allies for Assad when they went into Qusair and kicked ass and showed the FSA what real idealogical fighters can do when you threaten to fuck with their shit. This furthers my pet theory that heavy infantry armed with state of the art shoulder mounted AA and AT weaponry is the most significant development in warfare since Guderian's tanks and Stukas Blitzkrieged around the Maginot Line.

    That's why the Pentagon are shitting themselves with the trillions they just blew on the F-22 Raptor... it's a pricey ~$140 million per plane option when your enemy fights from second hand Toyota Hilux trucks that cost about as much as a beer and pizza at Yankee Stadium. We're decades away from major power v major power conflict and this makes 5th generation fighter aircraft so 20th century. The future of warfare for the foreseeable future is in the hands of the tech nerds, total information monitoring, computer espionage and satellite controlled drones versus desert guys in sandals with AKs and used Toyota trucks.

   One final fun aspect of the Syrian War is the whole chemical weapons debate.

   Obama called their use a 'redline' moment for US involvement. Trouble is, the FSA are using them too. Also, if you're a fan of YouTube or Live Leak (and who isn't these days),  then you can go ahead and watch an FSA guy eat a Syrian Army soldier's raw heart. That right there is Liberia level warfare and makes death by Sarin gas about as troublesome as a skiing holiday in the Netherlands. Still, for some reason, the general population abhors death by chemical. Sure it's ugly, sometimes prolonged, but death in war is never pretty is it? The average web surfer sipping lattes in Starbucks hates death by gas but somehow maiming and vaporizing via kinetic blast energy is seen as fair game. Chemical weapons are the least of the problems the Syrian War presents except of course if some dissident FSA or angry Syrian Army dissident manages to export some Sarin gas to Times Square. And that's not even a crazy idea anymore.

   The Syrian Regional War can have many outcomes. None of them predictable.

   Only one thing is for sure for whoever "wins" this thing, and I can't resist a little history here courtesy of my old friend Tacitus, the Roman historian who quoted the Scottish chieftain Calgacus after his loss  in 83AD at the Battle of Mons Graupius and said of the Roman legions who defeated him...

   "They created a desert and called it victory".

North Korea v The World

   The real question Western war planners have been asking since the Korean Armistice in 1953 and especially in the years since the demise of the Cold War and rise of China has been:

   How much incoming artillery can Seoul take?

   Because that's the cost of any war on the Korean Peninsula today.

   For all of the North's bluster the real calculation comes down to a very simple equation. At what point in the cost benefit analysis does the price of appeasement (food, fuel, tech and free HBO for Kim Jong Un) become more expensive than patching up Seoul after a NK artillery and rocket bombardment? To use a crude metaphor, war on the Korean peninsula is a lot like you stepping in dog shit on your way to a party. You've got two choices, wipe it off in public or let everyone deal with the smell. The question here, and bear with me here for a sec, is, who wins this clash of opposing realities; the dog shit or your shoe?

   In many ways, the answer is no one.

   For war planners right now, North Korea is the dog shit. It's just far easier and cheaper to avoid war on the Korean peninsula than win. At least, that's the conventional paradigm that held true during Kim Jong Il's 17 year reign. Western media portrayed Kim Jong Il as a crazy, lonely leader with a penchant for Hennessey, Bogart movies and nukes but omitted the fact that being crazy was the only card he had to play; dealt to him in a pretty shitty poker hand after the Cold War ended and NK lost the Soviet Union as a benefactor. Bluffing his way through the game on two pair got him oil and grain and street cred and there was always the chance he'd go full retard anyway and do something really crazy and launch something significant. Sure, that'd mean his regime's instant demise but the idea behind cultivated crazy is that you just might do it... because you're crazy.

   Crazy buys you leeway and means you don't have to operate under normal "rules".

   His son is trying to play the same hand but doesn't seem to understand that the house rules have changed. For one thing, China is sick of North Korea's shit. They just want to keep exporting Wal Mart inventory and soaking up bank and any war on the Korean peninsula will dent cash flow. Also, it'll mean an influx of destabilizing starving NK peasants flooding across the Yalu river into Dan dong which will be very bad for business.

   China no longer knows how to deal with this war.

   So, like everything war wise at the moment, it's left up to the Americans to figure it out.

  Meanwhile, the South Koreans have done their own cost benefit analysis and are approaching a tipping point. The tipping point where putting up with North Korea's bullshit might not be worth it anymore. With a functional nuke in the mix, it's only a matter of time before real and permanent damage could be done to Seoul and the South Koreans are beginning to total up the possible losses today versus say, three years from now, and suddenly they're realizing that it might be cheaper to take the horrible tasting medicine today and let the air strikes begin. The alternative is North Korean nuke hegemony not only in the Pacific Theatre but 40 miles north of their fabulous and gleaming gangnam capital. That's so destabilizing it makes international capitalism shit a gold brick. Of course, the theory that South Korea can retalitate to provocation only works if the Chinese and US are onboard and we're probably not at that point. Yet. But one thing is for sure and that's that the South will not sit idly by if the DPRK bombards an island or torpedoes a corvette like the shit they pulled on the Cheonan in 2010.

The North Korean's Pentium II based missile tech. Google blocks them from downloading more RAM.

   The US, for their part, would like this to go away. One thing you've got to say for the Obama administration is that they play a smart game when it comes to conflict. Unlike Bush. They are a bunch of smart nerds who play a mean game of Civ II and they'd like a pragmatic result which would be cheap, non messy and non confrontational. This, ideally, would take the form of North Korea collapsing all by itself (something which can happen but will take time) and is itself a risky gambit because it seems all of this North Korean belligerence is driven by internal pressure among the country's elites sensing the end of the gravy train. The problem with further appeasement and stand off soft pressure is that it is likely to lead to a shooting war anyway.

   This war is starting to enter the realm of possibility and it may be time to grab the popcorn folks.

   Just don't microwave it yet. I'm still not feeling this war. The North Koreans do self preservation pretty well and if the shooting starts it will only be because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation on their part. The failure of their society and the internal pressure release valving among their elites is pushing Kim Jong Un, the young neophyte, into crazy territory and that's the kind of mistake failed states make. The bubble you're in distorts the image of the outside reality to the point where pulling a trigger becomes a viable release. If they fire a missile at the wrong place it'll be up there with Gallipoli or, more pertinently, Mac Arthur's failure to properly assess the DPRK's intentions when they invaded the South in 1950 and the Chinese human wave follow up across the Yalu River that hammered the US 8th Army that November.

   Of course, if the trigger gets pulled, this war will be over very quickly. Nothing I've said before about this war changes. The DPRK, despite the media reports on active troop numbers will crumble faster than Saddam's forces in Gulf War I. All that crappy Warsaw Pact era equipment will evaporate to precision weaponry in days and counter battery fire from the South will pin point and neutralize NK artillery north of Seoul pretty damn fast. The only costly part would be having to occupy and take Pyongyang because who wants it?

   Again, it's all a matter of just how much damage Seoul is willing to take in the initial bombardment.

   The real question I heard somebody raise a while back is the moral issue that North Korea presents.

  Remember that argument, often made, that if the Allies really knew (which they did) about the Nazi concentration camps, why didn't they try to do something about it? There are plenty of examples of prison break missions in WWII, like say Operation Jericho, and the question often gets asked as to why the Allies didn't try something similar when it came to the death camps. Sure, there are truckloads of reasons why that wouldn't have been a sound military operation but military history is a fickle beast prone to hindsight.

   And yet in North Korea right now you have all the conditions present for pre emptive war that were not present when the US air dropped a few trillion into Iraq. If Western democracy and specifically the US and UK want to hold true to the 21st century  "bring democracy to the oppressed peoples" narrative they themselves established, then the fair question is, "where will you find a better candidate?" Of course, being realistic, that just means that TV talk and total media saturation is just high penetration bullshit. We already know why not. Still, if the world had principles (if it ever had), 'pre emptive war' would make sense outside of Middle East deserts.

   1) Remove an aggressive, unstable, proven nuclear armed state from a strategic region.

    North Korea sure checks the box on this. Right now, Iran is being sanctioned to hell by everybody and they don't even have a capable warhead. Meanwhile in North Korea everyone is handling those assholes with kid gloves. Sure, China needs to give the go ahead but they weren't too excited about Iraq either. The reason this is not happening is because they've got nothing anybody wants and the cold hard facts of conflict are that nobody goes to war for free; they go to war for resources.

   2) Get rid of an evil regime and bring "democracy" to the oppressed people. (The moral imperative).

    North Korea has death camps. North Korea has slave labor. North Korea is like Saddam Hussein's Iraq on bath salts. And yet nobody gives a shit all of a sudden. Why? Probably it's down to strategic resources, China's proximity and Pacific Theater strategic concerns but let's face, when you cut through the bullshit of war and war's alarms, intervention on the Korean peninsula still fails the cost benefit analysis.

  3) The aftermath of North Korea's 'liberation' would not be pretty. Especially if delivered via foreign weaponry. That's 25 million people switching hard and fast to the 21st century. It'd be on par with teleporting a bunch of  Mayflower Pilgrims to Times Square in 2013. It's going to look like hell multiplied by Jesus divided by where the fuck am I?

   It's not gangnam style.

   It's chaos.

   And nobody wants to pay that price.

   Yet.

    

Mali: The French go to the desert.

   It's always time to break out the popcorn when the French go to war.

  The French intervention in Mali, Operation Serval, isn't exactly a shocker since the French can be pretty touchy when it comes to what goes down in their former colonies. True, the French can be pretty touchy about just about everything but foreign deserts they used to own get them extra twitchy. Especially since their former Saharan colony in Mali is engaged in one of those shitty Islamic civil wars where the bad guys are threatening the official French friendly government. It's one of those typical post colonial African wars we've been seeing a lot of lately. As usual, the bad guys want to turn the country into some shitty Sharia theocracy  and re enact that monkey bar training video Western media roll out every time they want to remind you how easily you could die on the bus to work if the designated scary people get their hands on some ungoverned desert real estate.

   The new French President, Francois Hollande, decided to intervene militarily which is seen as a ballsy move for a liberal and buys him street cred with a French population feeling decidedly small on a world that has become decidedly large since the heady days of Napoleon's 'whiff of grapeshot'. Sure, the French bombed Gadaffi with British and American help but Mali is their baby and a war they can  win all by themselves. Yes, Obama will probably throw some drones into the mix to help things along but the French winning a war will be a self esteem boost and help with the new American strategy of letting their allies clean up their own messes for a change.

   In truth, Afghanistan has taught the US the lessons of imperial over reach and how protracted campaigns, even against goat herders, have a tendency to bankrupt your treasury. So it's time to put on the training wheels and see if the French can deal with the crazies in the desert all by themselves. There are good reasons the French are touchy about Mali. The one thing about civil wars in Africa is that they have this nasty habit of spreading into neighboring countries due to the arbitrary lines the Euros drew on Africa when they were chopping it up for fun and profit. One neighboring country is Niger, and that's currently number one on the French list of favorite former colonies.

    Why?

  Because Niger is France's main supplier of uranium, that pesky yellow cake the Bush Administration lied about when they needed access to Iraq's oilfields. Uranium is basically what keeps the lights on in France and nuke reactors provide 75% of Gallic electricity generation; electricity they also export to neighboring countries for serious bank. Any disruption in supply and the French get further exposed to the big fear of every developed economy in the 21st Century; buying energy on world markets that are sure to get increasingly pricey as we strip mine the planet frantically in search of more juice.

   Right now, the French have retaken all the key objectives in northern Mali but that's the easy part. Warfare these days is boring as hell because the results are so predictable. How can a bunch of guys in pick up trucks with AKs possibly go up against Mirage jets, attack choppers and trained troops? They'll just run away even if it means postponing the rendezvous with the 72 virgins in the after life. The ability of these people to hold ground is non existent and with all that empty space out there, it's just as easy to run away for a while and see how much money the "invaders" want to burn holding on to their newly acquired desert. The current plan includes a UN and African force (ECOWAS) coming in after the French scatter the bad guys so everyone can share the price tag.

   One of the main rebel groupings fall under the banner of the Ansar Dine. They're just another bunch of wannabe al-Qaeda's who drive around in Toyota pick up trucks sporting slightly rusty Warsaw Pact surplus small arms (RPGs, DShK 12.7mm and the usual plethora of AK variants) and want to impose strict Sharia law on every poor fuck with a camel. This means chopping off kids hands for stealing an apple, stoning women who flash their ankle and getting rich off unsecured mineral wealth if given a chance. If you're a poor guy in Africa who can handle himself in a scrap it's not a bad career choice considering the alternatives are tending goats, tending camels or hitting up Bono for a handout.

   By far my favorite outfit in the Mali desert are the Tuareg warriors.

    They are pretty badass fighters. They're one of those old nomadic Saharan tribes who never had much use for civilization and preferred wandering the desert and discovering cool new interesting stuff like water. Then, when African nations gained independence from the colonials in the 1960s, the Tuareg found their open ranges suddenly chopped up into nation states; nation states that didn't fancy free peoples wandering across their bit of desert. The Tuareg are indigenous to Mali, Niger, bits of Algeria, Burkina Faso and even African behemoth Nigeria. They fought the French with swords v machine guns in the early 1900s and that didn't work out well so the Tuaregs were forced into treaties that chopped up their roaming grounds. Most recently, Gaddafi hired them as mercenaries (or private contractors if you prefer contemporary nomenclature) for $1000 per day which approaches Blackwater or Halliburton payscales. One side effect of their involvement in Libya was that they got to loot Gaddafi's armories when the smoke cleared and sailed through Niger and Algeria's porous borders to Northern Mali in 4x4s flush with some nice Warsaw Pact weaponry. They've been selling this to the Islamic sky god believers and making some nice bank on the spoils of Gaddafi's defeat.

   All this desert warfare got me thinking of the state of the planet in the 21st Century. It's falling rapidly into three distinct camps. 

1. The technologically advanced but mature economies of the West lumbered with debt.
2. The rapidly developing Asian economies armed with cheap labor craving a bigger piece of the pie.
3. The backward theocracies in the Middle East and Africa who just happen to be sitting on the energy reserves the other two need.    

  Number one is the old school West; modern, advanced tech nations that have grown fat since the industrial revolution delivered the wonders of the light bulb, the flushing toilet and the laptop. They conquered everywhere and have been sitting pretty since the 19th century. True, they raped the earth to do this but there are side benefits like free education, pensions and welfare states. Trouble is, all this stuff costs money and that's getting increasingly hard to generate on a planet getting smaller by the second. There just isn't much real estate left to exploit to fund the relatively easy lives of the population back home.

  The Asian economies, on the other hand, are working with hive like determination to get back into the game. With huge populations that'll work for cheap, the West thought it'd be a good idea to outsource manufacturing so everyone could have a cheap car and a flat screen. It was basically a way of lowering prices for stressed consumers in the West, a sort of cultural welfare program that worked out well in the 1990s and 2000s but now, the beanstalk has grown huge into a proverbial behemoth and China may become the dominant power on the planet by 2030. 

   The third grouping is all that mineral and energy wealth of the Middle East and Africa. The problem is that people happen to live on top of it. Angry people. One of the side benefits of dirt cheap manufacturing is that technology has become so cheap, even poor people can afford it. That means every mud hut in North Africa and the Middle East has a satellite dish where they get to see the fruits of the modern consumer dystopia beamed into their living space. It's a bit of a culture shock for feudal medieval desert dwellers with strict laws on what you can eat and fuck. They get to see what their lands have been raped for and what they're missing out on. This causes some kind of critical self examination where they get to see the emptiness of living under Imams where they have to obey laws written by some Dark Age goat herder who said women have to dress in black tents, nobody can have sex just for the fun of it and you're not allowed to drink either, even if to wash the pain.

   How do you wash away the pain of hundreds of years of oppression and strict theocracy?

   Blow shit up.

   Blowing up the rich assholes in the West with all their fancy tech goods is a fallback remedy when your god says you can't get some love from the woman dressed in a tent living in a tent in the village down the way. The Amenas gas complex hostage crisis in Algeria is just the latest example of this. The 'Islamic extremists' in the desert are liable to strike easy but strategic energy hubs because these are the things the rich fucks in the West need from their desert; things they don't really need since they're never gonna see the profits anyway. Those profits go to the local strongman who rules the country with an iron fist and Western weaponry. Oil and gas fund those Western lifestyles they see on TV, selling stupid shit desert dwellers never even knew they wanted. The answer is Jihad. Jihad in the name of an exploited history. Jihad because my god is better than your god. Jihad because I'm stuck in a desert fapping to reruns of Baywatch on my cheap Chinese made TV.

   You know what the worst thing about these three distinct global camps is?

   None of them are the "good guys".

   That's the thing about the 21st Century.

  Everybody gets to be an asshole.

  It's not like the previous century when the fascist bad guys were so obviously bad and easy to define. These days war is entertainment. The major powers get to fight in foreign places far from their doorsteps and we watch because the explosions make for good TV. But what happens when the desert dust ups draw a major clash and switch from proxy warfare to direct conflict between major powers?  Right now the world is a Real Time Strategy game with three distinct races. The tech advanced West with expensive units but soft populations, the economic East with millions of infantry and hard, hive mind populations and then the fanatical "terrorists" in the desert with asymmetric tactics and vast energy reserves.

   I'd play that RTS game.

   If it were a game.