Middle east

[JamieThomas]

19 hours ago, PhilMaHole said:

I wonder what you'd do about it if you were POTUS? Or PM

I'd leave the silly c***s to it, and that goes for any other bams still leathering each other because they think it's still 1456.

I would however be satiating my despotic bloodlust by executing everyone to the right of Tony Benn, so there's that.

[Zetterlund]

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to suggest that if the CIA and MI6 etc stopped arming radical Islamist militias to use as proxies for their own strategic ambitions as they've been doing for the last 40 years, this wouldn't do the peace process any harm at all. Between this and not overthrowing any regional leaders who they don't agree with, things would probably start to look a bit rosier tbh.

The importance of oil security means this will never happen though. If western countries would rather nuke the Middle East oil fields than let them fall into the hands of the Soviets, as we considered in the 50s/60s, it's unlikely we're going to leave the Middle East alone any time soon.

[welshbairn]

6 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to suggest that if the Saudis and Iranians stopped arming radical Islamist militias to use as proxies for their own strategic ambitions as they've been doing for the last 40 years, this wouldn't do the peace process any harm at all. Between this and not overthrowing any regional leaders who they don't agree with, things would probably start to look a bit rosier tbh.

 

Apologies for the edit. I don't think oil is as big a factor as it used to be. Fracking in the US has sorted them out and Russia has loads of the stuff. The problem is that while oil still has value the region is a great market for weaponry, so long as the Shia-Sunni war can keep getting stoked up. Now that Russia has taken sides with Iran/Shia and the US has gone full board with the Saudis/Sunni it's in no power's interest to curtail the military industrial complexes rights to gain profit.

[Zetterlund]

7 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Apologies for the edit. I don't think oil is as big a factor as it used to be. Fracking in the US has sorted them out and Russia has loads of the stuff. The problem is that while oil still has value the region is a great market for weaponry, so long as the Shia-Sunni war can keep getting stoked up. Now that Russia has taken sides with Iran/Shia and the US has gone full board with the Saudis/Sunni it's in no power's interest to curtail the military industrial complexes rights to gain profit.

It's not just about producing oil for themselves though, it's keeping it out of the hands of potential enemies and allowing them to expand and set up a presence in new territory. Hence the plan to destroy oil fields if there was a chance of the Soviets moving into the Middle East. Hitler might have stuck around a bit longer too had his forces managed to get as far as Baku to keep his machine. turning

I'm not saying oil is everything and as you say the MIC is a huge factor too, along with the Israel lobby. But as much as some choose to ignore it, after every one of these messy conflicts from Iran 1953 to more recent adventures in Libya & Iraq, there's no end of proof, including official documents and admissions from people involved, that it was all about the oil. 

[Savage Henry]

On 2/12/2018 at 03:02, welshbairn said:

Apologies for the edit. I don't think oil is as big a factor as it used to be. Fracking in the US has sorted them out and Russia has loads of the stuff. The problem is that while oil still has value the region is a great market for weaponry, so long as the Shia-Sunni war can keep getting stoked up. Now that Russia has taken sides with Iran/Shia and the US has gone full board with the Saudis/Sunni it's in no power's interest to curtail the military industrial complexes rights to gain profit.

This.  The "it was all about oil" argument may have been true in a broad sense for the first part of the 20th century, but it's a far more complex issue nowadays.   If oil is an issue, it's more the case of free market enterprise than the oil itself.    The legacy of the gulf wars viz-a-vis oil was not the West shipping gallon after gallon out of the country, but the ability for huge international companies like Gulf Keystone (despite the name) and Crescent Petroleum to exist in Iraq.  The West did not simply stroll into Iraq and keep the oil in 2003, despite what Zero Hedge and Infowars would have you believe.  It did, however, monopolise the means of extracting that oil.  Post IS, almost all the Western oil companies have left or massively downgraded, but the distribution of that oil has remained fairly constant.  Fracking is a very western industry, and the ability to frack has really changed the oil dynamic.  The USA has access to more oil than it can deal with at this point.  

That said, up until 1990 pretty much all Western intervention in the West used trade as its primary motivation.  There's very little good to come out of Britain and France's exploits in Mesopotamia and North Africa, but plenty of folk made a healthy profit.   The problem comes when we attempt to explain state action by having only one motive (psychological egotism on a state level).  The Kurdish human shield era is one of the very few times that Western intervention can be seen as a purely ethical intervention, whereas even Sykes-Picot had at least a superficial nod to nationhood while being motivated, in large, by what Britain and France could get shipped down the Suez canal.

Libya,on the other hand,  had substantively little to do with oil, as, like much of the Arab Spring, it was an internal revolution that the Western powers took weaselly symbolic action on, as events spiraled out of their control.  Libyan oil trade was and remains nominal, and the Libyan uprising had almost no impact on world oil trade.   Libya has never been about the free market, in the way that Iraq was.  What has Libya ever provided the West, to be cynical about things?  Olives, oranges and attractive hotel property.   The affects there have been felt on a humanitarian level, on a supposed anti-terrorism level, and on a movement of peoples level.   

There's a masochistic element to much revisionist (and contemporaneous) analysis of Middle Eastern politics.  The argument which goes that the collapse of Iraq's infrastructure was the deliberate result of a greed for oil allows many in the West to feel good while criticising the admittedly venal figures who have lead UK and US and French politics for the best part of half a century.   It also views history as a Western imposition.  While that, in many cases in the Middle East, has been true, the current situations have far more to do with local issues (religious, sectarian and identity) than trade and commerce (or war and imperialism).

[NotThePars]

I agree with most of what you say SH the only things I would add is that the US coalition in Iraq purposely destabilised Iraq between the Gulf Wars via a sanctions regime that seemed more about needlessly punishing Iraqi’s than anything else and the local sectarian tensions were deliberately amplified by the post-2003 occupation forces before it came to bite them on the arse when IS sprung up to general Sunni acquiescence.

The oil part is worth remembering especially in the context of Mohammed bin Salman’s attempts to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil revenues.

[Savage Henry]

1 hour ago, NotThePars said:

I agree with most of what you say SH the only things I would add is that the US coalition in Iraq purposely destabilised Iraq between the Gulf Wars via a sanctions regime that seemed more about needlessly punishing Iraqi’s than anything else and the local sectarian tensions were deliberately amplified by the post-2003 occupation forces before it came to bite them on the arse when IS sprung up to general Sunni acquiescence.

The oil part is worth remembering especially in the context of Mohammed bin Salman’s attempts to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil revenues.

A very fair comment.  Sanctions did nothing but reduce the average life expectancy in Iraq.  In retrospect, it was up there in the most catastrophic of US foreign policy failures.

[madwullie]

Love this forum sometimes 

[John Lambies Doos]

Even France opposed the Iraq War and were allied with the Russians in opposing the worst excesses of the US and British led sanctions regime.

Ban on French Fries followed

[bob the tank]

36 minutes ago, John Lambies Doos said:

On ‎11‎/‎02‎/‎2018 at 15:39, NotThePars said:

Even France opposed the Iraq War and were allied with the Russians in opposing the worst excesses of the US and British led sanctions regime.

Ban on French Fries followed

Is that chips?

[John Lambies Doos]

Is that chips?

Aye but the fat c***s still bought loads of them

[welshbairn]

1 minute ago, bob the tank said:

Is that chips?

Freedom fries if you please.

[Jacksgranda]

On ‎15‎/‎02‎/‎2018 at 20:59, John Lambies Doos said:

On ‎11‎/‎02‎/‎2018 at 15:39, NotThePars said:

Even France opposed the Iraq War and were allied with the Russians in opposing the worst excesses of the US and British led sanctions regime.

Ban on French  Cheese eating surrender monkeys Fries followed

 

[Forest of Dean]

...

[welshbairn]

On 09/03/2018 at 00:08, Forest of Dean said:

You should look at what Ray McGovern has always described the motivations as: 

OIL
Oil, Israel and Logistics

The Americans were going to call the Iraq War Operation Iraqi Liberty until someone pointed out the acronym. Meanwhile, could Syria be getting their excuses in early before launching a chemical attack on Eastern Damascus tomorrow?

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201803101062395304-eastern-ghouta-chemical-attack/

[Peppino Impastato]

1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

The Americans were going to call the Iraq War Operation Iraqi Liberty until someone pointed out the acronym. Meanwhile, could Syria be getting their excuses in early before launching a chemical attack on Eastern Damascus tomorrow?

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201803101062395304-eastern-ghouta-chemical-attack/

Why do you automatically assume they're lying?  You're a strange case man

[welshbairn]

3 minutes ago, Peppino Impastato said:

Why do you automatically assume they're lying?  You're a strange case man

I'm asking the question. You should try it sometimes instead of jumping to unfounded conclusions to fit your world view.

[Peppino Impastato]

1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

I'm asking the question. You should try it sometimes instead of jumping to unfounded conclusions to fit your world view.

Strange question to ask.  And pot calling kettle black.  Do you think your own government ever lie?

[welshbairn]

1 minute ago, Peppino Impastato said:

Strange question to ask.  And pot calling kettle black.  Do you think your own government ever lie?

Of course.

[Peppino Impastato]

1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

Of course.

Such as?  Do you think the British government genuinely believed Iraq had wmd?