Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
This is my third take on fixing Syria. The previous two are Fixing Syria — Take One (06 April 2017) and Fixing Syria — Take Two (22 October 2017).
This time I want to start with the question, Who is right and who is wrong? The question Who is good and who is bad? is meaningless because it is impossible to answer. Life is a mixture. But the first question is meaningful and answerable and in fact an answer to it is mandatory because it governs USA strategic thinking regarding Syria, the Levant and MENA generally.
In Syria today, the USA, Russia, Kurds and Israel are right and Famiglia Assad, Salafi/Shiite Jihadis and Erdogan are wrong.
Right is having legitimate authority to govern a nation or lesser jurisdiction and no ambition for aggression — for territory, money or women — on an other nation.
Wrong is having no legitimate authority to govern a nation or lesser jurisdiction or having ambition for aggression — for territory, money or women — on an other nation.
Legitimate authority to govern a nation or lesser jurisdiction is having approval from the larger part of the citizens of said nation or jurisdiction.
As I have said previously, in broad terms the big boys, who are accustomed to inter-nation power struggles and, with luck, maintain at least for themselves strategic situational awareness, should foregather to sort Syria out. That would be USA, Russia, Kurds, Israel, Jordan and Egypt. And perhaps Famiglia Saud. God will prosper their decisions because those nations in this context are right and the others named here as such are wrong.
USA has no grand national strategic interest in Syria and so has flexibility in arriving at a solution to the mess there. USA does have grand national strategic objective with respect to Syria, however, and that is to engineer a condition in which Syria is not a daily concern of USA statecraft. The closest USA comes to having a grand national strategic interest in Syria is this: she wants to prevent Salafi/Shiite Jihadis from sucking up oxygen there. USA has one direct enemy in MENA: Moslem Brotherhood and Iranian Mullahs, two white-washed tombs who operate une alliance de commodité.
Russia has grand national strategic interests in Syria. Russia wants Mediterranean (warm water) porting facilities for diplomatic, financial and military (i.e., grand strategic interest) reasons. This is not territorial aggression because Russia is not trying to occupy the porting. She came in to help Famiglia Assad against Jihadis because the Jihadis were winning and would have denied Russia porting in Syria. She has no inherent bond with Famiglia Assad, only with her access to those ports and quiet in Syria and MENA generally.
Kurds and Israel have approximately the same strategic interests in Syria: that affairs there not suck up their oxygen. It is unclear whether Kurds have diplomatic mindset sufficiently supple, subtle and imaginative to sit at table with the big boys. Operational, hard tactical mind-set they excel at.
Jordan and Egypt share, generally, the strategic interests of Kurds and Israel in re Syria. However, they, along with the freshening Famiglia Saud, have at least one essential knowledge to contribute to the conference: they have an idea of who could legitimately succeed Famiglia Assad from the point of view of Syrians, the big boys (USA and Russia, with India in the background) and also Arab governments generally.
Here are my ideas for successor to al-Assad:
1- An Arab of family known for Syrian patriotism, meaning, willing to take the job and not be required to turn Syria into a USA-style constitutional republic or European-style benevolent (so the titled heads boast) oligarchy.
2- An Army Officer, Field Grade or higher, Infantryman, not complicit in Famiglia Assad’s gassing and other genocides.
3- Friendly to the French and Russians and without animus towards Israel.
4- Not aligned with Moslem Brotherhood (Turkey) or Salafi/Shiite Jihadis.
5- Respected as a Soldier by Russian, Kurdish, Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian military high commands.
Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God
Update 1: None of my thinking on the matter has been done in a vacuum bereft of grounded sitreps.
Russia has no strategic interest in alliance with Iran or Famiglia Assad. Tactical interest, sure, but strategic interest, not. She does have strategic interest in Syria. She has said as much open source and indicated it diplomatically more than once and consistently, to include in deconfliction discussions in theatre. She has every interest in alliance, now, with USA and, more broadly, with India and USA. Willy-nilly, that is where we are heading.
Russia’s interest is border protection and blue water access. She has the world’s worst headache in that regard, which, as you know, is crucial for national sovereignty. Her concerns in re border protection can be assuaged and should be, to include accepting her necessity for porting in the Black and Mediterranean Seas.
Russia has a Turkey headache, as do we. Europe is now Eurabia, making NATO irrelevant, obsolete, a boast without a fist.
Germany cannot build a warship that floats upright and operates as advertised, cannot fly her few aircraft because her laws outlaw the proper fuel mixtures and cannot train her few ground combat troops because to do so puts them into overtime, which the government refuses to pay. And half her sub-surface fleet is operational. And she shuts down nuclear power generation with fanfare but quietly ramps up coal power generation buying US coal, while claiming moral superiority … and not being able to form a government.
Russia rightly works to prevent Germanic tribes, now augmented by and under control of Turkics and Salafist/Shiite Jihadis, marching east, as they have done before. Russia has never marched west except when Communist. She is not proposing to do so now. Putin is a patriot, not an imperialist. Crimea is a border-protection strategic move. That is why nobody outside Ukrainians opposed it, and nobody will. Geopolitics, pure and simple.
Geopolitics is about who is right and who is wrong. It is not about — and can never be about — who is good and who is bad.
And Russia never will be democratic. That’s not in her geography, her weather, her history or her cultural-religious DNA. Russians are not democrats. They are autocrats with a keen sense eternity and love of internal freedom, even chaos.
The challenge to USA leadership (and follower-ship) today is facing facts rather than assumptions, phenomena rather than narratives, in geo-politics. 1947 and 1991 we are not.
USA’s proximate enemy is the Moslem Brotherhood (Turkey) and Salafi/Shiite-Iran Jihad genehttps://theological-geography.net/?p=27675rally, and our ultimate enemy is China. Russia and India have the same proximate and ultimate enemies. That is why alliance of these three countries is necessary and inevitable.
I am willing to bet the farm on that. Actually, I have bet the farm on that!
Update 1: The Shock Of The Mundane: The Diffusion Of Basic Infantry Tactics
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
