WHOSE SECOND COLD WAR?: (Thank you Russia) By Ghassan Kadi 25 April 2015

WHOSE SECOND COLD WAR?: (Thank you Russia)

By Ghassan Kadi
25 April 2015

The world does not need a new cold war, or does it?
The Cold War started before the hot war was over. It was put on track when America dropped the “bomb” and Stalin declared that the USSR should have the same technology.

The blame here is not on Stalin. If the Americans had any wisdom to learn from history, they should have known that even before the Assyrians introduced iron swords and spears against blades made of bronze, any new super weapon creates an arms race. In retrospect therefore, the “Manhattan Project” was the real underlying trigger point for initiating the Cold War.

With both the US and the USSR, and later on Britain and France and other nations becoming nuclear powers, the deterring effect of a major direct confrontation between superpowers became obvious, though not strong enough to prevent major local conventional proxy wars.

Nations of the Middle East together with Korea and Vietnam cannot claim any benefit from the Cold War, but perhaps most of the rest of the world, especially Cuba, can.

America did not win the Cold War any more than the USSR lost it. In reality, ending it was a negotiated agreement that happened prior to the breakup of the USSR; not afterwards as falsely perpetrated by US officials and Western media.

With all the fear, tension, waste and plundering of resources that the Cold War generated, the world by-and-large has won it with flying colours. After all, it did stop WWIII and definitely did not allow for more A-Bombs to be dropped on more cities after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The so-called American self-announced New-World Order that rendered the USA the sole superpower would have worked well had America used its fortune-given role for the betterment of humanity. But the USA chose to do the contrary. Instead of choosing to be a custodian, America chose to be a bully.

Only three years into its New-World Order era, America -unopposed- led a coalition against Iraq, and a few years later and on false claims invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq again and through its proxies, Libya.

Finally, in September 2013, Russia drew a redline on Syria, and for the first time after two and a half decades of impunity and global hegemony, the United States realized that its golden age of piracy has come to an end.

But this is not all.

During the days of the Vietnam War, the American economy was at its zeal. America was driven by greed, but given its current economic woes, the driving force has changed from greed to need, and this is where the danger is.

When fighting for survival, one puts much more effort, and this includes bullies. And when it comes to super bullies, if pushed and cornered, they may resort to all means possible to guarantee survival.
The American economy is in tatters.

The world’s first economy stature of the US is in question, not only on “Purchasing Power Parity” (PPP) basis, but there are also recent suspicions that the declared American GDP figure is deliberately inflated to $17 Tn when the real figure is only in the vicinity of $5 Tn. Some reports even argue that the debt figure has been tampered with to look much lower than what it is and that the actual figure is in excess of $80 Tn.

The US Dollar is strong now, but only artificially. As the global war against it, spearheaded by China, is already underway and it won’t take long before the Green Back loses its stature as “the” global currency. Furthermore, the natural resources of America have virtually all but dried up. Oil fracking will not offer the panacea needed, and even ground water resources are drying up.

America has lost most of industrial base and corporate greed initially moved its factories and know-how to China, not only creating massive domestic unemployment, but also teaching the Chinese technology they badly needed and were eager to learn. Now, The United States is highly dependent on Chinese imports all the way from highly sophisticated electronics to T-shirts.

On the human resource level, the number of American youth graduating with degrees in science and engineering are a fraction of what the BRICS countries are producing, and even less than what China and India are producing individually.

To add insult to injury, America’s infrastructure of roads, bridges, river levees, dams etc are crumbling and need trillions to be fixed; money that the treasury does not have and possibly cannot even borrow.

The only attribute that can keep America in the superpower basket is its military might, and a desperate America may just use more of it in more overt and bullish manners to rejuvenate its economic prowess and continue to reign supreme, and it did, for two and a half decades, until Russia drew a redline on Syria.

It is as if there is an undeclared accord between China and Russia that China would tackle the US dollar and Russia its military dominance, and this does not mean that either of them is powerless in the partner’s arena. United strategically and geopolitically with India as partners in BRICS, India is poised to play a significant role in reshaping the world of the future.
Here comes Cold War II ?? Perhaps it has already started.

Even before the redline-on-Syria event of September 2013, Russia has been put under the direct threat of NATO missiles in neighbouring ex-Warsaw Pact partners. Realistically, what was Russia supposed to do?

Moreover, even during the Yeltsin era when Russia did not pose any direct or indirect threat to America, American defence strategists continued to develop more sophisticated weapons as if the Cold War did not come to an end!!

The world certainly does not need a new cold war, or does it? Sadly, the USA is not seem to be giving the world any other option. America has already started Cold War II as soon as Cold war I was over. To this effect, the world should be thankful that once again Russia is prepared to do the deterrence.

"SLOGANS VS MESSAGES:MIDDLE EAST STYLE" By Ghassan Kadi. Oriental Review 15 April 2015

An important but brief piece about knowing when a message is a message!

http://orientalreview.org/2015/04/15/slogans-vs-messages-middle-east-style/

Written by ORIENTAL REVIEW on 15/04/2015

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On the 4th of April 2015, and in the wake of the Saudi-led coalition attack on Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah gave an unprecedented speech in which he openly and overtly attacked Saudi Arabia and predicting its defeat in Yemen.

In his previous public presentations, Nasrallah strongly criticised his local and regional opponents, but remained adamant to stick to “self-distancing”, and turned his strategy into a slogan, reiterating that his prime and only objective was the “resistance” and protecting the resistance (against Israel).

Nasrallah has always mirrored the voices and strategies of the Supreme Leader of Iran, and in this context, Iran had been openly critical of the policies of its Saudi neighbour, but with a diplomatic reconciliatory tone. It was not till nearly a week after Nasrallah’s latest speech that Iran’s Supreme Leader announced that the “Saudi noses will be rubbed in the dirt”.

Khamenei’s predecessor Khomenei was quick to create anti-American slogans such as “Death to America” and described the US as big Satan. But those terms were meant to be for consumption. It seems that Western media and observers do not discern the subtle difference between such slogans and real messages.

A look to the east of Iran clearly reveals the difference. Pakistani leadership proclaims that it will always protect Saudi Arabia and the Muslim holy land. This is slogan talk. But when the talk was pushed to walk, to the horror and dismay of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the Pakistani parliament voted against intervention in Yemen.

Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) in Tehran on April 7, 2015

Erdogan, the other mighty Sunni leader that the Saudis were hoping to rally up, even went a step further and visited Iran in the height of the Iranian-Saudi tension, snubbing the Saudis in the worst manner and at the worst time.

Only Sisi responded to the Sunni call of duty, for a handful of dollars. Now that no one else put the hand up, he can go for a few dollars more, standing out as the ugly with Erdogan being the bad and Pakistan the good.

One positive outcome of the recent developments is that thus far the Saudis have failed to rally up a pan Sunni army to fight the Shiite “infidels”. The Pakistanis and Turks understand well what would the consequences of such an alliance, and they are not fools like the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia now stands alone and poised to face a quandary. The aerial strikes are not achieving their objective, and even if they did, it is only the boots on the ground that rule. The Saudi army has two options; to retreat or to start a land invasion.

If they retreat, the Saudis will face grave consequences. They have stirred the hornet’s nest and retaliations will follow on the ground within Saudi Arabia as well as its borders.

If they launch a land assault, only the half-hearted Egypt will support them. But the big question is this, why does an army with a budget that surpasses Russia’s defence budget be scrambling for allies and begging for help? The simple answer to this is that the Saudi army is a toothless tiger of Bedouins and mercenaries.

The bigger question is this. With its overt criticism and threat to the Saudi royals, to what extent will the Iranian leadership support the Houthis in Yemen?

Ghassan Kadi is the Lebanese political commentator and blogger. He is currently doing his PhD in sociology of the Middle East based on local knowledge and understanding of the Levantine culture, mind-set and politics.