Editorial Note: As events rapidly unfold in the Middle East, along with the fall of the Syrian Government, Professor Boyd-Barrett assesses emerging dynamics and their geopolitical implications.
Syria
The fall of Syria is a defeat for Russia. It may also be a partial liberation for Russia – liberation, that is, from its sunken investment in backing a government that has been so bitterly traumatized. Traumatized, first, by having to fight off an exceptionally bloody color revolution attempt 2011-2020 in the guise of a self-proclaimed pro-jihadi and pro-democracy hybrid, cynically organized and funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar on behalf, fundamentally, of US hegemony, and involving all the guile that the practised intelligence services of former Middle Eastern imperialists (Britain, France, and the Ottomans, primarily, with the help of other former European imperialists including Netherlands) could muster. Traumatized, secondly, with also having to suffer US larceny of its agricultural and oil resources and ruinous US economic (sanctions) warfare that simply made any kind of rebuilding and recovery impossible.
So, Assad’s Syria, Russia’s ally and, yes, Syria’s patron – along with Iran – has collapsed. The kindest future right now would be a partition of Syria. But the road to a viable partition is long and bloody.
Is this (Russian defeat) a good thing? Not if you imagine that a revived Ottoman empire is a good thing. Much of Syria was, after all, Ottoman. Erdogan has reportedly made comments suggesting that far from being content simply to pacify and acquire control over the main body of Syria through Turkiye’s s proxies – the terrorist HTS (largely a foreign force recruiting from far and wide, including China’s Uyghers, and with no genuine connection to Syria whatsoever, and the SNA (an arm of the Turkish military) – this territory will become part of Turkiye (now the official appelation chosen by the Erdogan government in preference to the West’s “Turkey”).
There is a certain merit to this given that direct Turkish control might conceivably be less horrific than the chaos of government-by-HTS or, rather, non-government-by-HTS. But the extension of Turkish control will be an increasing threat to Israel. Israel has advanced through the Golan Heights to within twenty or so miles from Damascus. It has advanced or is advancing further to Mount Hermon, which provides Israeli forces a broad overview of Lebanon’s Beqaa valley and seems to be drawing a buffer line from Daraa to Sweida. It may also be establishing even closer relations with Turkiye’s enemies, the Kurds, in northeast Syria (who are being attacked by HTS and the SNA), but who are supported by the US, even while reports surface of ISIS regrouping in the Raqaa area.
I have speculated that indications of an approaching deal between Russia and HTS (which should simply be regarded as a direct Turkish proxy) to allow Russia to retain control of its naval base in Tartus and its air force base in Khmeimem could be good not just as a corridor for Russian control of its interests in Africa, but as a source of stabilization in Syria between the fast growing tensions between Turkiye, the Kurds and Israel, and that would also, most important of all, help Russia be seen to be a force to be reckoned with in the event, highly probable, of a hot war instigated by Israel against Iran, with the US siding with Israel as soon as Israeli jet fighters are shot down over Iran.
Russian air defense assets in Syria could be helpful in this context. Alex Mercouris in a recent broadcast reports, however, that Russia is actually dismantling its S-400 air defenses at Khmeimem, and is discontinuing its humanitarian supplies of wheat to Syria, two things which he believes constitute strong evidence of a Russian decision to pull out of Syria altogether (and avoid the sensitivity of depending on Turkish goodwill to retain use of the Syrian bases).
The departure of Russia if, indeed, that does occur, I believe, will weaken Turkiye which is already in very grave danger of over-extending itself. The Russian bases are a local source of economic stability for Alawite-dominated Latakia and would lend some kind of legitimacy to Turkish control. There are reports of surviving elite Alawite forces operative in this area and they would be natural allies of Russia. There has been intensive bombing by Israel and Turkey of hundreds of the military assets of the former Syrian Army. These provide Israel with far easier aerial access to Iran. Only what remains, if anything, of Russian air defenses, are close enough to act as some kind of deterrent to an Israeli air war. Russia has plenty of other options so far as bases are concerned, although it is highly inconvenient for it to have to transition right now and in a period of emergency, and its deal with the Assad regime was probably better than most alternatives available. But for Turkiye to get stuck in an endless war against the US, the Kurds, the Israelis, not to mention a new generation of indigenous Syrian militia is hardly a healthy outcome for Turkiye’s very fragile economy.
Iran
We shall see. I am reminded of Paul Craig Robert’s criticism of both Russia and Iran, that they have been insufficiently aggressive. I am tempted to agree. The time for Iran to exert its strength against Israel was before the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah and before the collapse of Syria. That it didn’t, given the formal pact that now exists between Russia and Iran, is very likely the result of a judgment in Moscow that now was not the time for Russia to be deflected from its broader goal in Ukraine.
The apparent prudence of the Pezeshkian faction in Iran appears to have been counter productive. It has bet recklessly on Trump’s goodwill to relieve the Iranian economy of some of the sanctions that Trump himself imposed on Iran in return to a promise by Iran to dismantle a nuclear capability that it does not even possess and even though Trump brutally destroyed the previous JCPOA.
But the result of Iran’s caution is the loss of Syria, and the loss of Syria is a threat to Iran and a major boost to Israeli Zionism generally and aggressive Zionist intent against Iran. In recent days we have had worrying public statements from both Tel Aviv and the Trump transition team that signal intent to go to war against Iran. US President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments (with even Tulsi Gabbard being pro-Israel) almost sign a warrant of war against Iran for Israel.
Trump will take the US out of the Armageddon trajectory of Ukraine-against-Russia only to throw it immediately back into the fire of the Armageddon trajectory of Israel-against-Iran and, through his publicly stated intention to impose heavy tariffs on imports from China, and other aggressions, the Armageddon trajectory of Taiwan-against-China.
Talk of Iran now being provoked into acquiring a nuclear weapon as deterrence seems fanciful at best. Since it will take a year, at least, for Iran to build such a weapon even after it purifies its uranium to the necessary 90% grade (something it can do within days). Israel and the US are even more highly motivated to strike Iran before it becomes a nuclear power. The Israeli Air Force is already reportedly preparing for just such an attack, beginning with Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Ukraine
Scott Ritter has written in a recent article that his sources tell him that President Biden’s decision, after losing the election, to greenlight the use of US precision missiles against targets in Russia was taken against the advice of the intelligence community and of the armed services. This tells us that the unelected cabal that is responsible for the actions of a senile, outgoing President is capable of bringing the world directly to the brink of nuclear war, that the cabal actually wants to so provoke Russia that Russia will take wildly excessive counter-reaction. And it wants to do this before January 20th.
Whose interests are served?
There is an apparent paradox between the outgoing Biden’s administration’s escalations against Russia and the US President-elect Donald Trump’s insistence that he wants a peace settlement. It could be of course that Trump is approving of the Biden escalations precisely because these might make Russia more pliable in negotiations. Other Biden escalations include his recent ATACMS attack on a weapons facility near Rostov, plans to impose yet more sanctions on the export of oil and gas by Russia’s “shadow fleet” (tankers that avoid insuring their ships in London), an escalation of the Syrian crisis as a step towards boosting Eastern Mediterranean sources of oil and gas to replace Russian. For the moment, Russia’s response, other than intensive missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities that have knocked power out from half the population or, at least, did so temporarily, is to wait for the inauguration of Trump. Ukraine’s assassination of Russian general Kirillov in Moscow is another attempt, quite likely with the foreknowledge of the USA, to provoke Russia to further escalation that the Kiev-NATO blok surely believe will make it impossible for Trump to talk peace. Ukrainian claims that Kirillov is responsible for chemical war atrocities strike me as highly unlikely since there have been few if any significant such claims in the war up until this point. I find somewhat credible counter claims that he was in charge of investigations of a network of US biological laboratories in Ukraine, whose existence appear to have been confirmed by none other than Victoria Nuland, among others.
Europe
Further disruptions in Europe and European Russia may work to Russia’s advantage since any disruption to the European elitist bingeing on war rhetoric is probably a good thing.
Macron has appointed a new prime minister, Michel Bayrou who, according to Bayrou himself, might hope for as long as a six month period in office without another vote of no confidence but who, just as likely, will bite the dust of parliamentary gridlock a good deal before then, and possibly in time before Le Pen is taken down by judicial moves against her and her party (National Rally) for the alleged misuse of public funds.
Closer to Russia is Georgia and, although its new prime minister recently declared that the ruling Georgian Dream party had seen off the latest Western-backed NGO color revolution, this narrative has actually still to peak. Mikheil Kavelashvili will be the new president of Georgia. He was the only candidate on the ballot of members of the electoral college, made up of members of Parliament, municipal councils and regional legislatures. He is closely identified with the governing Georgian Dream party that retained control (and the approval of numerous electoral observers) of Parliament in the recent election of October 26.
The current President, Salome Zourabichvili, fiercely pro-Western (a dual French Georgian citizen; possibly, some have speculated, an agent for France) has (not so democratically) vowed to remain in office and remain in the Presidential Palace, in a direct incitement to further violent opposition from the Maidan-type protestors on the streets.
In Romania, the country’s constitutional court, on the very dubious grounds of a Romanian intelligence report alleging Russian electoral interference through Tik-Tok in the first round of a Presidential election in which a critic of the war with Ukraine won top place (Călin Georgescu), has simply cancelled the first round and required a re-initiation of the entire process. Neocon “democracy” at work.
Asia
President Yoon of South Korea has been successfully impeached as of today. His duties will be shouldered by others. The vote to impeach has to be approved by the country’s constitutional court and it is widely hoped that the court will move promptly to endorse. The real motives for Yoon’s attempt to impose martial law are unclear but the fact that his minister of defense has resigned and another official tried to commit suicide may suggest that Yoon was being manipulated through a senior military faction on behalf of the US whose own interest may have been to by-pass an unwilling South Korean citizenry into forcing the export of weapons from South Korea to Ukraine.
Multipolarity
Recent events are not auguring well for the cause of multipolarity any time soon.
The challenges to Russia are arguably so numerous and so intense that they may well have the consequence of constraining Russia into traditional foreign policies of national interest that are less informed by grandiose ambitions for a new and more just global order.
For the time being, and possibly for the longer term, Russia can look with some security to its alliances with China, in particular, and Iran and North Korea and some others. But the BRICS seems an ever more fragile location for the pursuit of transformative change towards a new global order. The US under Trump will be highly motivated to try to prise China away from Russia, although its capacity to do this is far more limited than Trump policy makers yet understand.
There are obviously many uncertainties concerning Iran and North Korea. Meanwhile, within the BRICS the solidity of Brazilian support seems uncertain given (1) Brazil’s membership of Mercosur tying it indirectly to the interests of the EU with which Mercosur now has a trading partnership; (2) Lulu’s chairing of the BRICS next year amid the distraction of Brazil’s hosting of COP30 climate talks, and (3) given Lulu’s distancing of Brazil from Venezuela (soon to be a hot spot, once more, in the evolution of the Global South). South Africa can surprise, as it did in it bringing the case against Israel for its genocide of Palestinians to the International Court of Justice.
Although only an affiliate member, Turkiye’s recent behavior in Syria may make it impossible for BRICS partners to agree to promoting it to full membership and may also suggest that Turkiye, when push comes to shove, will align with Washington and NATO interests first before those of the Global South.
Like Turkiye, Indian interests are finely balanced between orientation to Washington and its co-leadership with China of the Global South. It appears amenable to resolution of border issues with China, but it also neighbors a Washington puppet government in Pakistan and, possibly, a Washington-prone government in Bangladesh.
Weaponizing Human Rights Discourse for Regime Change
Western mainstream media coverage of Syria dwell on stories of prisoners emerging from Syrian prisons into the sunlight. Too often of course, we are presented with material reflective of the conditions of those with whom western media want us to empathise: anti-Assad, of course; connected to “pro-democracy” or, simply, “oppositional voices,” of whom many will have been pro-jihadi and pro-ISIS, benefitting from pay and patronage from the West (indirectly) and from Saudi Arabia and Qatar (directly) and subject to terrible treatment over inordinate periods of time. We hear much less, as one might expect, of people who were in prison because they committed crimes, or were out-and-out Muslim Brotherhood or ISIS fanatics, yet those too have been released.
My book Conflict Propaganda in Syria (Routledge 2022) addresses this among many other claims and counterclaims concerning the alleged cruelties of the Assad regime. I do not discount the possibility or even the probability of abuses, but I also describe some of the ways in which Syria was a laboratory for a Western-backed industry for the weaponization of claims of “human rights abuses” for the purposes of regime change. These played out most notoriously – and to the discredit of the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – in relation to many false claims of Assad responsibility for chemical weapons attacks that were actually the work of the jihadi opposition or that did not occur at all or that were staged by jihadi movements, including by the White Helmets.
I also point out that the abuses that are commonly the subject of Western complaint and moral indignation are routine for Western-supported regimes throughout the Arab world, including Egypt whose treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood on behalf of the West as well as of Egyptian elites themselves is every bit as bad and probably a lot worse.
I also point out that the the Baath party regimes of Syria (driven by principles of Arab secularism, nationalism and socialism – red flags, of course, to a Washington foreign policy agenda of American Exceptionalism, American hegemony, an American-dominated “globalist” order and extreme capitalism) were themselves the target of hideous sectarian attacks by the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist Sunni movements at the service of Western interests that weaponize for their own purposes Wahhabi Islam’s commitment to the Caliphate and disrespect and even hate for nationalist loyalties. Baathist reactions to jihadi violence have typically been presented in Western media (somewhat ludicrously, given their theocratic character) as repressive over-reactions to “democratic” movements.
And I would go so far as to suggest that the Western neocon cabal that passes silently over Israel’s long-standing Zionist genocide of the Palestinians and now through its assertion of a “Greater Israel” in southern Lebanon and southern Syria – as though this was nothing – certainly has no claim to moral superiority over the Arab world.
I have also had recent occasion to return to my argument that the “sectarianism” so often laid at the door of the regimes of Hasef and Bashar Assad, has not been the sectarianism of what is constitutionally a secular regime but has always been the sectarianism of a Syrian minority of extremist Islam, funded and instigated by the Muslim Brotherhood and often in collaboration with Washington.
The minority Alawite community is an offshoot of Shia Islam that acquired disproportionate influence and power, including in the military, political and commercial realms, precisely because it was recognized by most thinking, non-extremist Syrians to be a source of protection of all Syrian minorities against potential abuses of power by the majority Sunni population and, in particular, its extremist Muslim Brotherhood jihadi minority.
I have referred just now to a Western-funded industry for the weaponization of human rights advocacy for the purposes of regime change. This is the subject of a recent article by Kit Klarenberg with particular reference to an agency that I also discuss in my book namely, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), founded in May 2011 (even before the outbreak of the so-called “civil war” or attempted color revolution) by NATO state contractors, ARK and Tsamota and, whose first act was:
[t]o train handpicked Syrian “investigators, lawyers, and activists in basic international criminal and humanitarian law…enabling [them] to link state and non-state actors to underlying criminal acts.” Dedicated “teams of investigators according to their regions” – including Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Idlib – were created, “and equipped with field investigative kits.”
Klarenberg goes on to describe in detail these activities:
Their objective was to gather evidence of war crimes committed by Syrian government forces, in support of a “domestic justice process in a future transitional Syria.
Given the affiliations of ARK and Tsamota, the pair were well-placed to know in advance of plans by Western governments to topple the Assad government via brute force. Now that has come to pass, it may be time for their long-standing plan to at last be put into action.
Founded by MI6 journeyman Alistair Harris, ARK was one of a constellation of contractors, staffed by military and intelligence veterans, employed by British intelligence at a cost of many millions to conduct covert psychological warfare campaigns in Syria, from the initial days of the crisis. The aim was to destabilise Assad’s government, convince the domestic population, international bodies and Western citizens that genocidal CIA and MI6-backed militant groups pillaging the country were a “moderate” alternative, and deluge media the world over with pro-opposition propaganda.
Under this operation’s auspices, ARK founded and ran numerous ostensibly independent opposition media outlets targeting Syrians of all ages, while tutoring and equipping countless local “citizen journalists”, teaching them “camera handling, lighting, sound, interviewing, filming a story…video and sound editing…voice-over, scriptwriting,” and “graphics and 2D and 3D animation design.” The firm’s students were also instructed in practical propaganda theory, such as “target audience identification, media narrative analysis and monitoring, behavioral identification/understanding, campaign planning, behavioral change, and how communications can influence it.”
… throughout the Syrian dirty war, the CIJA enjoyed glowing profiles in Western media, while providing journalists and rights groups with multiple scoops supposedly exposing Syrian government atrocities. At no point did any mainstream reporter or NGO question, let alone raise concerns about, the manner in which the Commission garnered the material upon which its cases against government officials in Damascus was “hand carried” out of the country.
CIJA chief Wiley acknowledged in 2014 that his organisation smuggled evidence from Syria by working with every opposition group “up to but excluding Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.” However, a 2019 investigation by The Grayzone amply indicates that CIJA was frequently in extremely close quarters with both groups. Moreover, they were paid handsomely for their assistance in securing documentation. This included material seized in Raqqa after its January 2014 capture by ISIS, right when the ultra-extremist group was massacring Alawites and Christians.
Accordingly, CIJA received tens of millions of dollars for its efforts from a variety of Western governments, including those at the forefront of the Syrian dirty war. Despite the vast windfall, the Commission’s work produced zero prosecutions for many years. This changed in late 2019, when Anwar Raslan and Eyad Gharib, two former members of Damascus’ General Intelligence Directorate, were indicted in Germany for crimes against humanity.
As Klarenberg goes on to explain, these indictments turned out to be very controversial.
Conclusion
I conclude from this review of recent developments that the world as a whole remains in very grave danger – worse than at any previous point in human history – of nuclear annihilation. While I do see some hope that Russia’s victories in its proxy war with NATO over Ukraine, a war initiated by NATO, will force meaningful peace negotiations. These may be long and arduous, not least because I can see little reason why Russia would trust anything that Western leaders have to say, given their long record of deliberate deception and their publicly stated aspiration to see a break-up of the Russian Federation and an opening up of Russian material wealth to Western corporations.
But even if such negotiations were to occur and prove fruitful, there are even greater threats to the world arising from the determination of the collective West to bolster a faltering Washington hegemony in the two other major fronts of this conflict between the collective West and the Global Majority namely, in the Middle East (i.e. the potential for hot war between Israel/US and Iran), and in East Asia (i.e. the potential for hot war between China and the West over the pretext that Taiwan, or elements within Taiwan, want full independence from China).
(Featured Image: “File:Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad (2017-11-21) 04.jpg” by Пресс-служба Президента России is licensed under CC BY 4.0.)
