Delusion and Denial

Delusion and Denial - PDF

The confrontation brewing in west Asia represents a struggle to reaffirm the broad cross-border solidarities that have long been undermined by US-Israeli stratagems and the collusion of the oil emirates.

(COMMENTARY)

Iraq's death toll is far worse than our leaders admit

Les Roberts
The writer is an Associate Professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

The US and Britain have triggered an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide

Published: 14 February 2007

On both sides of the Atlantic, a process of spinning science is preventing a serious discussion about the state of affairs in Iraq.

The government in Iraq claimed last month that since the 2003 invasion between 40,000 and 50,000 violent deaths have occurred. Few have pointed out the absurdity of this statement.

There are three ways we know it is a gross underestimate. First, if it were true, including suicides, South Africa, Colombia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia have experienced higher violent death rates than Iraq over the past four years. If true, many North and South American cities and Sub-Saharan Africa have had a similar murder rate to that claimed in Iraq. For those of us who have been in Iraq, the suggestion that New Orleans is more violent seems simply ridiculous.

Secondly, there have to be at least 120,000 and probably 140,000 deaths per year from natural causes in a country with the population of Iraq. The numerous stories we hear about overflowing morgues, the need for new cemeteries and new body collection brigades are not consistent with a 10 per cent rise in death rate above the baseline.

And finally, there was a study, peer-reviewed and published in The Lancet, Europe's most prestigious medical journal, which put the death toll at 650,000 as of last July. The study, which I co-authored, was done by the standard cluster approach used by the UN to estimate mortality in dozens of countries each year. While the findings are imprecise, the lower range of possibilities suggested that the Iraq government was at least downplaying the number of dead by a factor of 10.

There are several reasons why the governments involved in this conflict have been able to confuse the issue of Iraqi deaths. Our Lancet report involved sampling and statistical analysis, which is rather dry reading. Media reports always miss most deaths in times of war, so the estimate by the media-based monitoring system, Iraqbodycount.org (IBC) roughly corresponds with the Iraq government's figures. Repeated evaluations of deaths identified from sources independent of the press and the Ministry of Health show the IBC listing to be less than 10 per cent complete, but because it matches the reports of the governments involved, it is easily referenced.

Several other estimates have placed the death toll far higher than the Iraqi government estimates, but those have received less press attention. When in 2005, a UN survey reported that 90 per cent of violent attacks in Scotland were not recorded by the police, no one, not even the police, disputed this finding. Representative surveys are the next best thing to a census for counting deaths, and nowhere but Iraq have partial tallies from morgues and hospitals been given such credence when representative survey results are available.

The Pentagon will not release information about deaths induced or amounts of weaponry used in Iraq. On 9 January of this year, the embedded Fox News reporter Brit Hume went along for an air attack, and we learned that at least 25 targets were bombed that day with almost no reports of the damage appearing in the press.

Saddam Hussein's surveillance network, which only captured one third of all deaths before the invasion, has certainly deteriorated even further. During last July, there were numerous televised clashes in Anbar, yet the system recorded exactly zero violent deaths from the province. The last Minister of Health to honestly assess the surveillance network, Dr Ala'din Alwan, admitted that it was not reporting from most of the country by August 2004. He was sacked months later after, among other things, reports appeared based on the limited government data suggesting that most violent deaths were associated with coalition forces.

The consequences of downplaying the number of deaths in Iraq are profound for both the UK and the US. How can the Americans have a surge of troops to secure the population and promise success when the coalition cannot measure the level of security to within a factor of 10? How can the US and Britain pretend they understand the level of resentment in Iraq if they are not sure if, on average, one in 80 families have lost a household member, or one in seven, as our study suggests?

If these two countries have triggered an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide, and have actively worked to mask this fact, how will they credibly be able to criticise Sudan or Zimbabwe or the next government that kills thousands of its own people?

For longer than the US has been a nation, Britain has pushed us at our worst of moments to do the right thing. That time has come again with regard to Iraq. It is wrong to be the junior partner in an endeavour rigged to deny the next death induced, and to have spokespeople effectively respond to that death with disinterest and denial.

Our nations' leaders are collectively expressing belligerence at a time when the populace knows they should be expressing contrition. If that cannot be corrected, Britain should end its role in this deteriorating misadventure. It is unlikely that any historians will record the occupation of Iraq in a favourable light. Britain followed the Americans into this débâcle. Wouldn't it be better to let history record that Britain led them out?

Putin blasts U.S. for its use of force

By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 37 minutes ago

Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the United States Saturday for the "almost uncontained" use of force in the world, and for encouraging other countries to acquire nuclear weapons.

In what his spokesman acknowledged were his harshest attacks on the U.S. since taking office in 2000, Putin also criticized U.S. plans for missile defense systems and NATO's expansion.

Putin told a security forum attracting top officials that "we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations" and that "one state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.

"This is very dangerous, nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law," Putin told the gathering.

Putin did not elaborate on specifics and did not mention the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But he voiced concern about U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in eastern Europe — likely in Poland and the Czech Republic — and the expansion of NATO as possible challenges to Russia.

On the missile defense system, Putin said: "I don't want to accuse anyone of being aggressive" but suggested it would seriously change the balance of power and could provoke an unspecified response.

"That balance will be upset completely and one side will have a feeling of complete security and given a free hand in local, and probably in global, conflicts..." he said. "We need to respond to this."

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., said the charge that the U.S. "aspired to get unipolar power or acted unilaterally is just not borne out by the facts."

"Even our involvement in Iraq, certainly Afghanistan, is pursuant to United Nations resolutions," Lieberman said at the conference. "So that was provocative and wrong."

Asked if he had any reaction to Putin's charges, Defense Secretary Robert Gates just shook his head and said no.

Putin's spokesman Dimitry Peskov said the Russian leader did not intend to be confrontational, but acknowledged it was his harshest criticism of the United States since he was elected in March 2000.

Putin also criticized NATO expansion.

"The process of NATO expansion has nothing to do with modernization of the alliance or with ensuring security in Europe," Putin said. "On the contrary, it is a serious factor provoking reduction of mutual trust."

Putin's comments to a weekend forum attended by 250 officials, including Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, came after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the international community is determined to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Merkel said Tehran needed to accept demands made by the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"There is no way around this," Merkel said. "What we are talking about here is a very, very sensitive technology, and for that reason we need a high degree of transparency, which Iran has failed to provide, and if Iran does not do so then the alternative for Iran is to slip further into isolation."

Merkel, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency, emphasized the international community's support for Israel and said there was a unified resolve to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

"We are determined to prevent the threat posed by an Iranian military nuclear program," she said.

The annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, now in its 43rd year, is often used as an opportunity for officials to conduct diplomacy in an informal setting.

Some 3,500 police were on hand to provide tight security for the conference and kept the usual throng of demonstrators away. This year, several thousand protesters were expected, protest organizers said.

Heading in to the conference, Larijani, who is scheduled to speak on Sunday, said he planned to use the conference as an opportunity to talk about Iran's nuclear program. Those would be the first talks with Western officials since limited U.N. sanctions were imposed on the country in December, which fell short of harsher measures sought by the United States.

Larijani was expected to meet with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Javier Solana, the EU's chief foreign policy envoy.

At the opening dinner on Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni urged international solidarity in putting pressure on Iran to prevent it from producing a nuclear weapon.

"It is a regime that mocks the Holocaust while threatening the world with a new one, while trying to develop a weapon to do so," she said. "Iran is a threat not only to Israel ... but to the world. The international community cannot show any hesitation ... Any hesitation on our part is being perceived as weakness."

The conference this year focuses on "Global Crises — Global Responsibilities," looking at NATO's changing role, the Middle East peace process, the West's relations with Russia and the fight against terrorism.

Merkel opened the conference telling the delegates that one of the major threats facing the world today is global warming, urging a combined effort to combat it.

"Global warming is one of the major medium- to long-term threats that could have a dramatic effect," Merkel said.

Gates, who planned to talk Sunday on trans-Atlantic relations, was expected to press allies for more troops and aid for a spring offensive in Afghanistan.

He delivered the message Friday to a NATO defense minister's meeting in Seville, Spain, but got a lukewarm response.

France and Germany are questioning the wisdom of sending more soldiers, while Spain, Italy and Turkey have also been wary of providing more troops.

Demagoguery Posing as Scholarship

January 29, 2007

Dinesh D’Souza, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has raised a ruckus in his new book The Enemy at Home. In the book, he contends that the 9/11 attackers were motivated by neither U.S. foreign policy abroad nor by a hatred of U.S. freedom, as President Bush has repeatedly argued. Instead, D’Souza declares that Osama bin Laden hates the liberal U.S. culture that promotes contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. In a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post defending the book, D’Souza says that he doesn’t “hate America.” No, he just hates liberal America and is reprehensibly trying to use the horrible 9/11 attacks to score points against the Democrats of the left.

D’Souza is not the first person to try to turn the 9/11 attacks to his advantage. President Bush disingenuously tied them to Saddam Hussein and invaded Iraq. In fact, D’Souza is not even the first person on the right to try to pin the blame for 9/11 on the left. Jerry Falwell blamed gays, pagans, and the ACLU for the attacks. Although D’Souza seems horrified to have been compared with Falwell, they both end up at the same place. Falwell argued that God was punishing the United States for the activities of these liberal groups, and D’Souza argues that bin Laden has been enraged by American liberal groups’ overseas distribution of contraceptives and lobbying of non-Western countries to liberalize laws against homosexuality and abortion. Although Falwell’s explanation is religious and D’Souza’s is more secular, they both blame the left. Because D’Souza is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, however, he claims that he is not an “unqualified right-wing hack.”

But D’Souza’s qualifications for commenting on the causes of 9/11 are suspect. D’Souza’s biography on the Hoover Institution’s website indicates no scholarship expertise in fundamentalist Islam. In fact, D’Souza’s biography indicates no expertise on terrorism, foreign affairs, or national security policy. His Hoover Institution biography lists his expertise as follows: “Social and individual responsibility, civil rights and affirmative action, economics and society, higher education.” All previous books he has authored are on domestic subjects, and he was a senior domestic policy analyst at the White House during the Reagan administration. Academically, he earned a B.A. in English. After 9/11, everyone wants to be a foreign policy expert.

As a result of minimal credentials in the fields about which he is speaking, D’Souza, unsurprisingly, gets it wrong on the causes of 9/11. D’Souza writes in the Washington Post:

Contrary to the common liberal view, I don’t believe that the 9/11 attacks were payback for U.S. foreign policy. Bin Laden isn’t upset because there are U.S. troops in Mecca, as liberals are fond of saying. (There are no U.S. troops in Mecca.) He isn’t upset because Washington is allied with despotic regimes in the region. Israel aside, what other regimes are there in the Middle East? It isn’t all about Israel. (Why hasn’t al-Qaeda launched a single attack against Israel?) The thrust of the radical Muslim critique of America is that Islam is under attack from the global forces of atheism and immorality—and that the United States is leading that attack.

To evaluate D’Souza’s view, an examination is needed of bin Laden’s original motives for undertaking his war against the United States. Most terrorism experts—not just liberals—have concluded that bin Laden’s original motive for attacking the United States was seeing non-Muslim U.S. forces in the Islamic holy land of Saudi Arabia when he arrived back there after fighting the “infidel” Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan. In the Islamic world, it is the duty of every Muslim to do what he or she can to help evict non-Muslim occupiers from Muslim lands. This is what fuels Muslim resistance in Chechnya, Palestine, Afghanistan (both against Soviet and American occupiers), and Iraq. In fact, exhaustive empirical research on suicide terrorism by Robert Pape, a national security expert at the University of Chicago (hardly a bastion of liberalism), indicates that suicide terrorism has much less to do with religion than it does with the “nationalist” impulse to evict foreign occupiers from the homeland. Pape’s research shows that al Qaeda’s activities fall into this category because the group wants to evict the U.S. military presence from the Persian Gulf.

In addition, bin Laden’s other original motive for attacking the United States was its support for despotic, corrupt regimes in the Middle East. Just because there are many of them there doesn’t mean that this was not one of his prime motivators. His greatest hatred is for the autocratic government in his home country—Saudi Arabia. D’Souza, however, is right that bin Laden was not originally motivated to attack the United States because of its support for Israel. This justification was added later merely to gain more support for bin Laden’s cause in the Arab world.

In addition to most expert opinion, based on bin Laden’s original writings, and Pape’s empirical research, repeated public opinion polls in the Arab/Islamic world discredit D’Souza’s unsubstantiated musings. Those polls indicate that people in Islamic countries like U.S. technology, political and economic freedom, and even culture (which polls high even in Iran). The numbers start going south only when U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic world is mentioned. As D’Souza even admits, the opinions of the Islamic mainstream are important because it has been the traditional recruiting pool for Muslim extremists.

Since D’Souza has few qualifications in the field and has little empirical data or expert opinion on his side, one has to conclude that he is, in fact, a political hack in scholar’s clothing, who is exploiting 9/11 merely to pillory his political opponents. His demagogic bloviation, like that of Falwell and Bush, is dangerous because it obfuscates the demonstrated link between interventionist U.S. foreign policy and blowback terrorism and lets politicians and pundits avoid the most obvious solution: a more humble U.S. foreign policy.

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Ivan Eland
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Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
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Going for Broke

January 29, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative

Endorsing the Baker report would have meant denouncing his entire foreign policy, so Bush is betting everything on the neocons’ surge.

by Andrew J. Bacevich

Nothing so clearly reveals the impoverished state of American political discourse as the ongoing debate over finding “a way forward” in Iraq. Broadly speaking, that debate pits a resurgent foreign-policy establishment, led by James Baker, against embattled neoconservatives, with Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute their improbable champion. On the surface, Baker and Kagan represent irreconcilable views. Beneath the surface, they are engaged in a common enterprise: deflecting attention from the contradictions that beset U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Baker, the trusted Bush family factotum, resurfaced most recently as co-chair, along with former Congressman Lee Hamilton, of the Iraq Study Group. Almost without fail, media references to the Baker-Hamilton commission emphasize its bipartisan composition as if that alone were enough to win a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Yet to imagine that bipartisanship signifies wisdom or reflects a concern for the common good is to misunderstand the reality of present-day politics. The true purpose of bipartisanship is to protect the interests of the Washington Party, the conglomeration of politicians, hustlers, and bureaucrats who benefit from the concentration of wealth and power in the federal city. A “bipartisan” solution to any problem is one that produces marginal change while preserving or restoring the underlying status quo.

In this regard, the Baker-Hamilton report, issued as signs of impending failure in Iraq were becoming incontrovertible, was intended to do two things. Most obviously, it offered George W. Bush political cover to begin extricating the United States from Iraq. Yet that offer came at a price: by endorsing the ISG package of 79 recommendations—Baker pointedly warned against treating them as a “fruit salad”—the president would effectively repudiate his entire post-9/11 approach to foreign policy. To embrace the ISG’s findings meant renouncing unilateralism, engaging adversaries rather than castigating them as “evil,” and valuing stability over the promulgation of any Freedom Agenda. In effect, it meant steering the United States back toward the course that Secretary of State Baker had charted when working for Daddy Bush. After a lost weekend spent binging on the intoxicating liquor of Wilsonianism, the president would return to the path of sobriety.

Neoconservatives instantly grasped the nature of the threat: the issue at hand was not simply Iraq. Neocons have long loathed Baker as an unprincipled wheeler-dealer (and barely closeted anti-Semite). Now here was their nemesis leading the Old Guard in an assault on their most cherished convictions. If Bush took the bait—if he chose to cut his losses in Iraq—the effect would be to discredit their entire approach to foreign policy. Neoconservative hopes of “transforming” the Islamic world, banishing tyranny from the face of the earth, and securing permanent global dominion based on unquestioned military supremacy all would be dashed.

So neoconservatives launched a fierce—at times hysterical—counterattack. Among their several complaints, one in particular stood out: Baker and Hamilton based their conclusions on the assumption that victory in Iraq lay beyond reach. Neocon critics portrayed this as the ultimate heresy. Any admission of failure in Iraq was premature, they insisted. The war there had to be won, and it could be won.

Enter Frederick Kagan. A lesser light in the neoconservative constellation, Kagan had for months been flogging his own scheme for turning the tide in Iraq. From his perch at 17th and M Street, it all appeared quite simple: rather than looking for ways to turn the war over to the Iraqis, it was time for American commanders to get serious about winning. They needed to quash the insurgency and secure the population, thereby creating conditions for economic reconstruction and political “reconciliation.” Above all, winning meant sending more G.I.’s to Iraq and especially into Baghdad, which Kagan identified as the decisive battlefield.

Here was the neoconservative response to James Baker: the imperative of the moment was not to withdraw but to surge.

In a series of articles, op-eds, and interviews, Kagan argued his case with remarkable sangfroid. Writing in The Weekly Standard, he insisted that enlarging the U.S. troop commitment was “the only option likely to bring peace to Iraq.” It made no sense to consider any of the proposed alternatives: “All will fail.” Dismissing concerns of senior military officers that American forces were about tapped out, Kagan did his own arithmetic and found it “obvious that there are many more troops to send.” Kagan had equally little patience for complaints that units recently returned from the war zone needed time to refit before another tour. If it proved necessary to “send forces that are not as well trained as one would like,” then so be it, he wrote. Although the army chief of staff had recently gone on record worrying that his service might crack under the stress of repeated deployments, Kagan was having none of it: “The Army will not break with this proposal.” And if the Pentagon needed additional forces to sustain the surge, Kagan had a ready solution. In his AEI report “Choosing Victory,” he counseled President Bush to “issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this age.”

Only when it came to the dimensions of the surge did Kagan’s assurance slip. In early December 2006, he was insisting that 80,000 reinforcements were needed. As he refined his plan, that number shrunk. By year’s end he concluded that a mere 30,000 additional troops would suffice. Did this adjustment reflect Kagan’s perception that the task was becoming easier? Were conditions in Iraq somehow improving? Or was Kagan tacitly acknowledging that the Pentagon did not after all have “many more troops to send”? He offered no explanation.

What can we say of this proposal? Simply this: to imagine that 170,000 troops will accomplish what 140,000 troops failed to do in nearly four years or that marching a handful of additional combat brigades into the maw of Baghdad will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat qualifies as pure fantasy. Kagan’s “surge” is the first cousin to Kenneth Adelman’s more famous “cakewalk.” It is ideology dressed up as strategy. Marketed as the product of careful analysis, the surge should be seen for what it is: a naked gamble. Tacitly acknowledging the point, some proponents even refer to it as the “double down” option.

That in places like AEI and the editorial offices of The Weekly Standard Kagan himself has emerged as the man of the hour testifies to the depth of neoconservative desperation. Kagan’s insistence that his surge will do the trick postpones the neoconservative day of reckoning. Believe Kagan and you can avoid for at least a bit longer having to confront Iraq’s incontrovertible lessons: that preventive war doesn’t work, that American power has limits, that the world is not infinitely malleable, and that grasping for “benign global hegemony” is a self-defeating proposition.

Indeed, the very niggardliness of Kagan’s plan testifies to the core problem to which neoconservatives refuse to own up. Between their professed aspirations and the means at hand to pursue those aspirations there yawns a massive gap.

Consider this: at the equivalent moment in the Vietnam War—immediately following the 1968 Tet Offensive—those most obstinately in denial about the reality of that war concocted their own version of a surge strategy. At the urging of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Earle Wheeler, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the senior U.S. field commander, floated a request to deploy an additional 206,000 G.I.’s to South Vietnam. Whatever else might be said of Westmoreland’s proposal (which President Lyndon Johnson immediately rejected), it possessed a certain demented grandeur. Even with over a half-million U.S. troops already in Vietnam, throwing in a couple hundred thousand more qualified as a surge in just about anyone’s book. By comparison, Kagan’s proposal looks positively puny. It looks puny because it is.

“The United States faces a dire situation in Iraq,” Kagan loftily explained in a recent Washington Post op-ed, “because of a history of half-measures.” Now, he would have us believe, is the time to pull out all the stops. But Kagan’s so-called surge really amounts to yet another half-measure. Other than forfeiting the lives of more American soldiers and adding to the billions already wasted in Iraq, it will accomplish little. As for Kagan’s expectation that a presidential summons to the colors will produce a stampede of fresh recruits, anyone who buys that will also believe in the tooth fairy.

So if Kagan got it wrong, does it follow that Baker got it right? The short answer is no, except perhaps in a tactical sense.

Viewed as an immediate response to a crisis fast slipping out of control, the various prescriptions offered by the Iraq Study Group do possess considerable merit. Although the damage done to American interests by this misguided war cannot be undone, there exists an urgent need to contain that damage, to stanch our losses, and to prevent the entire Persian Gulf from plunging into chaos. Considered in this context, Baker’s call for a phased withdrawal of combat troops, his insistence on establishing milestones to spur improvements in the Iraqi government’s performance, and his proposed diplomatic initiative aimed at fostering regional support for stabilizing Iraq all make sense. Reinvigorating the so-called peace process, another Baker recommendation, also deserves consideration, not in the vain hope of producing peace, but to counter the (largely accurate) perception that the U.S. government has never really cared about the plight of the Palestinian people.

As a prescription for strategy, however, the Baker-Hamilton report flunks for the most fundamental of reasons: it neglects the little matter of how the United States got into this fix in the first place. As they went about their work, the one subject that members of the Iraq Study Group stubbornly avoided was the past.

This convenient amnesia allowed the ISG to overlook a record of bipartisan bungling and shortsightedness extending over a period of decades. Franklin D. Roosevelt got the ball rolling in 1945, promising protection to the House of Saud in exchange for preferred access to Saudi oil. Dwight D. Eisenhower made his own distinctive contribution, engineering a coup in Tehran and forging a fateful partnership with the Shah. John F. Kennedy chipped in with another CIA-assisted coup, this one bringing the Ba’ath Party to power in Baghdad. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon affirmed the Iranian connection and added another, establishing a costly “special relationship” with Israel. When revolutionaries tossed the Shah out on his ear, Jimmy Carter upped the ante: under the terms of the Carter Doctrine, the United States vowed henceforth to use any means necessary to secure its interests in the Gulf.

From this point, the pace of events quickened. U.S. commitments multiplied. Costs skyrocketed. American leverage waned. That U.S. policy yielded benefits for Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, and large multinational oil companies seemed clear enough. That it was serving the long-term interests of the American people was becoming far less clear.

Celebrated by neoconservatives as a man of vision and principle, Ronald Reagan manifested neither of these qualities when it came to the Middle East. In Lebanon, he flung away the lives of 241 U.S. troops to no purpose except perhaps to raise questions about American will. After establishing a tacit anti-Iranian alliance with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Reagan okayed a hare-brained scheme to funnel U.S. weapons to Tehran. Iran-Contra became Reagan’s trifecta: a policy that was simultaneously stupid, illegal, and an embarrassing failure. Meanwhile, just off-stage in the Petri dish of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, Reagan’s policies inadvertently served to cultivate the bacillus of Islamic radicalism.

Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, assisted by then Secretary of State James Baker, took the final plunge. With his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Saddam Hussein outlived his usefulness to the United States. Operation Desert Storm, Bush’s attempt to remove the Iraqi dictator from the scene, came up short. Not for the last time an ostensibly historic victory over Iraq left in its wake a problematic legacy. Policing the Gulf now became a full-time job. To keep Saddam in his box and the mullahs at bay, Bush scattered a network of quasi-permanent military garrisons across the region. Bill Clinton inherited this mare’s nest and then proceeded to fritter away eight years bombing Iraq to little effect and absorbing terrorist attacks on American forces and installations.

This dispiriting narrative—from FDR’s encounter with Ibn Saud on the Great Bitter Lake to the near-sinking of the USS Cole at Aden 55 years later—left a peculiar imprint on members of the Washington Party. The blowback from ill-advised policies served to whet their appetite for more of the same.

By the time George W. Bush became president, Republicans and Democrats alike subscribed to a common set of dubious assumptions: that the Persian Gulf represents a vital strategic interest, permanent and inescapable; that Gulf nations are incapable of managing their own affairs; that the United States, therefore, has no alternative but to determine the fate of this region; that American power and prestige, guided by distinguished statesmen in the mold of James Baker and Lee Hamilton, will suffice to do just that; that peace and prosperity for all lie just around the corner, if only Americans will persist a bit longer.

Here lies the ultimate purpose of the Iraq Study Group: to shield these assumptions from critical scrutiny. Perpetuating the Great Game of the modern Middle East ensures that the flow of oil, arms, and contracts continues without interruption. As long as the Game goes on, it provides a rationale for the endless comings-and-goings of important personages engaged in “the search for peace.” Think tanks churn out policy papers by the score. Lobbying firms prosper. Guests on Sunday morning talk shows prattle on about the latest crisis. Recruited to serve on blue-ribbon commissions, high governmental officials from yesteryear relive their glory days. The Game is its own reward. For members of the Washington Party, its preservation qualifies as a categorical imperative.

When it comes to U.S. policy in the Middle East, neither the cavalier urgings of Frederick Kagan nor the confident reassurances of James Baker will provide the basis for defining a “way forward.” Despite superficial differences, their prescriptions point in the same direction: they will simply exacerbate our predicament. Further militarizing U.S. policy, always the first choice of neoconservatives, will only compound our dilemma; yet so too will deference to self-appointed Wise Men, who created that dilemma in the first place.

Neoconservatives like Kagan believe that the United States is called upon to remake the Middle East, bringing the light of freedom to a dark quarter of the world. Pseudo-realists like Baker believe that the United States can manipulate events in the Middle East, persuading others to do our bidding. Both views, rooted in the conviction that Providence has endowed America with a unique capacity to manage history, are pernicious.

The way forward requires abandoning that conviction in favor of a fundamentally different course. A sound Middle East strategy will restore American freedom of action by ending our dependence on Persian Gulf oil. It will husband our power by using American soldiers to defend America rather than searching abroad for dragons to destroy. A sound strategy will tend first to the cultivation of our own garden.

A real course change will require a different compass, different navigational charts, and perhaps above all different helmsmen, admitting into the debate those who earn their livelihoods far from the imperial city on the Potomac. A foreign policy worthy of the name will reflect the concerns and aspirations of ordinary Americans. It’s that last prospect that Frederick Kagan and James Baker most fear.
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Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, is a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.

Carter expected firestorm over book, ex-aide says

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/19/07

Athens — Former White House press secretary Jody Powell said Friday President Carter anticipated the firestorm of controversy that would erupt around his recent book, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid."

"I talked with him last fall and he was prepared for what was going to happen on this thing," Powell said of the book, which has been widely criticized as too harsh toward Israel.

Powell and former CIA director Stansfield Turner appeared on a panel about foreign affairs at a University of Georgia conference on the Carter presidency that continues through Sunday.

"You see this on a lot of issues but this one in particular, that for some folks, balance is not acceptable. It's got to be all one way or another, and if you disagree with that, you're going to catch hell," Powell said.

David Houghton, a British professor of political science at the University of Central Florida, said he was amazed at the disparaging tone of a New York Times review of book, which he said no credible European newspaper would use in describing a former national leader.

Because of the strong bias toward Israel in the United States, "I doubt seriously whether the U.S. can be an honest broker in the region," Houghton said.

Powell said Carter's defeat in his 1980 reelection campaign sent an unfortunate message to later presidents regarding Middle East policy.

"One of the lessons learned for later administrations was that making peace in the Middle East was a political loser," Powell said.

By TOM BAXTER

Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East”

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

November 18, 2006

Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East”

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya



“Hegemony is as old as Mankind…” -Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor


The term “New Middle East” was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East.”

This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean. The term and conceptualization of the “New Middle East,” was subsequently heralded by the U.S. Secretary of State and the Israeli Prime Minister at the height of the Anglo-American sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon. Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary Rice had informed the international media that a project for a “New Middle East” was being launched from Lebanon.

This announcement was a confirmation of an Anglo-American-Israeli “military roadmap” in the Middle East. This project, which has been in the planning stages for several years, consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

The “New Middle East” project was introduced publicly by Washington and Tel Aviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of “constructive chaos.” This “constructive chaos” --which generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region-- would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel could redraw the map of the Middle East in accordance with their geo-strategic needs and objectives.

New Middle East Map

Secretary Condoleezza Rice stated during a press conference that “[w]hat we’re seeing here [in regards to the destruction of Lebanon and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon], in a sense, is the growing—the ‘birth pangs’—of a ‘New Middle East’ and whatever we do we [meaning the United States] have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the New Middle East [and] not going back to the old one.”1 Secretary Rice was immediately criticized for her statements both within Lebanon and internationally for expressing indifference to the suffering of an entire nation, which was being bombed indiscriminately by the Israeli Air Force.

The Anglo-American Military Roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speech on the "New Middle East" had set the stage. The Israeli attacks on Lebanon --which had been fully endorsed by Washington and London-- have further compromised and validated the existence of the geo-strategic objectives of the United States, Britain, and Israel. According to Professor Mark Levine the “neo-liberal globalizers and neo-conservatives, and ultimately the Bush Administration, would latch on to creative destruction as a way of describing the process by which they hoped to create their new world orders,” and that “creative destruction [in] the United States was, in the words of neo-conservative philosopher and Bush adviser Michael Ledeen, ‘an awesome revolutionary force’ for (…) creative destruction…”2

Anglo-American occupied Iraq, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan, seems to be the preparatory ground for the balkanization (division) and finlandization (pacification) of the Middle East. Already the legislative framework, under the Iraqi Parliament and the name of Iraqi federalization, for the partition of Iraq into three portions is being drawn out. (See map below)

Moreover, the Anglo-American military roadmap appears to be vying an entry into Central Asia via the Middle East. The Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are stepping stones for extending U.S. influence into the former Soviet Union and the ex-Soviet Republics of Central Asia. The Middle East is to some extent the southern tier of Central Asia. Central Asia in turn is also termed as “Russia’s Southern Tier” or the Russian “Near Abroad.”

Many Russian and Central Asian scholars, military planners, strategists, security advisors, economists, and politicians consider Central Asia (“Russia’s Southern Tier”) to be the vulnerable and “soft under-belly” of the Russian Federation.3

It should be noted that in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. National Security Advisor, alluded to the modern Middle East as a control lever on an area he calls the Eurasian Balkans. The Eurasian Balkans consists of the Caucasus (Georgia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan) and to some extent both Iran and Turkey. Iran and Turkey both form the northernmost tiers of the Middle East (excluding the Caucasus4) that edge into Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The Map of the “New Middle East”

A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic, governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It has been causally allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the “New Middle East.”

MAP OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST AS SEEN ABOVE


Note: The map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO's Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles.


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This map of the “New Middle East” seems to be based on several other maps, including older maps of potential boundaries in the Middle East extending back to the era of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and World War I. This map is showcased and presented as the brainchild of retired Lieutenant-Colonel (U.S. Army) Ralph Peters, who believes the redesigned borders contained in the map will fundamentally solve the problems of the contemporary Middle East.

The map of the “New Middle East” was a key element in the retired Lieutenant-Colonel’s book, Never Quit the Fight, which was released to the public on July 10, 2006. This map of a redrawn Middle East was also published, under the title of Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look, in the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal with commentary from Ralph Peters.5

It should be noted that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.

It has been written that Ralph Peters’ “four previous books on strategy have been highly influential in government and military circles,” but one can be pardoned for asking if in fact quite the opposite could be taking place. Could it be Lieutenant-Colonel Peters is revealing and putting forward what Washington D.C. and its strategic planners have anticipated for the Middle East?

The concept of a redrawn Middle East has been presented as a “humanitarian” and “righteous” arrangement that would benefit the people(s) of the Middle East and its peripheral regions. According to Ralph Peter’s:

"International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.

The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.

While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region’s comprehensive failure isn’t Islam, but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.

Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried. Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant "cheated" population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia [Muslims], but still fail to account adequately for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.

Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.

Even those who abhor the topic of altering borders would be well-served to engage in an exercise that attempts to conceive a fairer, if still imperfect, amendment of national boundaries between the Bosphorus and the Indus. Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s “organic” frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected."6


"Necessary Pain"

Besides believing that there is “cultural stagnation” in the Middle East, it must be noted that Ralph Peters admits that his propositions are “draconian” in nature, but he insists that they are necessary pains for the people of the Middle East. This view of necessary pain and suffering is in startling parallel to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s belief that the devastation of Lebanon by the Israeli military was a necessary pain or “birth pang” in order to create the “New Middle East” that Washington, London, and Tel Aviv envision.

Moreover, it is worth noting that the subject of the Armenian Genocide is being politicized and stimulated in Europe to offend Turkey.7

The overhaul, dismantlement, and reassembly of the nation-states of the Middle East have been packaged as a solution to the hostilities in the Middle East, but this is categorically misleading, false, and fictitious. The advocates of a “New Middle East” and redrawn boundaries in the region avoid and fail to candidly depict the roots of the problems and conflicts in the contemporary Middle East. What the media does not acknowledge is the fact that almost all major conflicts afflicting the Middle East are the consequence of overlapping Anglo-American-Israeli agendas.

Many of the problems affecting the contemporary Middle East are the result of the deliberate aggravation of pre-existing regional tensions. Sectarian division, ethnic tension and internal violence have been traditionally exploited by the United States and Britain in various parts of the globe including Africa, Latin America, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Iraq is just one of many examples of the Anglo-American strategy of “divide and conquer.” Other examples are Rwanda, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan.

Amongst the problems in the contemporary Middle East is the lack of genuine democracy which U.S. and British foreign policy has actually been deliberately obstructing. Western-style "Democracy" has been a requirement only for those Middle Eastern states which do not conform to Washington's political demands. Invariably, it constitutes a pretext for confrontation. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are examples of undemocratic states that the United States has no problems with because are firmly alligned within the Anglo-American orbit or sphere.

Additionally, the United States has deliberately blocked or displaced genuine democratic movements in the Middle East from Iran in 1953 (where a U.S./U.K. sponsored coup was staged against the democratic government of Prime Minister Mossadegh) to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, the Arab Sheikdoms, and Jordan where the Anglo-American alliance supports military control, absolutists, and dictators in one form or another. The latest example of this is Palestine.

The Turkish Protest at NATO’s Military College in Rome

Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters’ map of the “New Middle East” has sparked angry reactions in Turkey. According to Turkish press releases on September 15, 2006 the map of the “New Middle East” was displayed in NATO’s Military College in Rome, Italy. It was additionally reported that Turkish officers were immediately outraged by the presentation of a portioned and segmented Turkey.8 The map received some form of approval from the U.S. National War Academy before it was unveiled in front of NATO officers in Rome.

The Turkish Chief of Staff, General Buyukanit, contacted the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, and protested the event and the exhibition of the redrawn map of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.9 Furthermore the Pentagon has gone out of its way to assure Turkey that the map does not reflect official U.S. policy and objectives in the region, but this seems to be conflicting with Anglo-American actions in the Middle East and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

Is there a Connection between Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Eurasian Balkans” and the “New Middle East” Project?

The following are important excerpts and passages from former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives. Brzezinski also states that both Turkey and Iran, the two most powerful states of the “Eurasian Balkans,” located on its southern tier, are “potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts [balkanization],” and that, “If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable.”10

It seems that a divided and balkanized Iraq would be the best means of accomplishing this. Taking what we know from the White House's own admissions; there is a belief that “creative destruction and chaos” in the Middle East are beneficial assets to reshaping the Middle East, creating the “New Middle East,” and furthering the Anglo-American roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia:

"In Europe, the Word “Balkans” conjures up images of ethnic conflicts and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its “Balkans,” but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more religiously and ethnically heterogeneous. They are located within that large geographic oblong that demarcates the central zone of global instability (…) that embraces portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia [Pakistan, Kashmir, Western India], the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.

The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong (…) they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way: they are a power vacuum. Although most of the states located in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East are also unstable, American power is that region’s [meaning the Middle East’s] ultimate arbiter. The unstable region in the outer zone is thus an area of single power hegemony and is tempered by that hegemony. In contrast, the Eurasian Balkans are truly reminiscent of the older, more familiar Balkans of southeastern Europe: not only are its political entities unstable but they tempt and invite the intrusion of more powerful neighbors, each of whom is determined to oppose the region’s domination by another. It is this familiar combination of a power vacuum and power suction that justifies the appellation “Eurasian Balkans.”

The traditional Balkans represented a potential geopolitical prize in the struggle for European supremacy. The Eurasian Balkans, astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly Eurasia’s richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities, are also geopolitically significant. Moreover, they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.

The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.

Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel international rivalries. The situation is made all the more volatile by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also internally unstable.

(…)

The Eurasian Balkans include nine countries that one way or another fit the foregoing description, with two others as potential candidates. The nine are Kazakstan [alternative and official spelling of Kazakhstan] , Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia—all of them formerly part of the defunct Soviet Union—as well as Afghanistan.

The potential additions to the list are Turkey and Iran, both of them much more politically and economically viable, both active contestants for regional influence within the Eurasian Balkans, and thus both significant geo-strategic players in the region. At the same time, both are potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts. If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable, while efforts to restrain regional domination by Russia could even become futile."11


Redrawing the Middle East

The Middle East, in some regards, is a striking parallel to the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe during the years leading up the First World War. In the wake of the the First World War the borders of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe were redrawn. This region experienced a period of upheaval, violence and conflict, before and after World War I, which was the direct result of foreign economic interests and interference.



The reasons behind the First World War are more sinister than the standard school-book explanation, the assassination of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. Economic factors were the real motivation for the large-scale war in 1914.


Norman Dodd, a former Wall Street banker and investigator for the U.S. Congress, who examined U.S. tax-exempt foundations, confirmed in a 1982 interview that those powerful individuals who from behind the scenes controlled the finances, policies, and government of the United States had in fact also planned US involvement in a war, which would contribute to entrenching their grip on power.

The following testimonial is from the transcript of Norman Dodd's interview with G. Edward Griffin;



We are now at the year 1908, which was the year that the Carnegie Foundation began operations. And, in that year, the trustees meeting, for the first time, raised a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year, in a very learned fashion. And the question is this: Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people? And they conclude that, no more effective means to that end is known to humanity, than war. So then, in 1909, they raise the second question, and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war?

Well, I doubt, at that time, if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country [the United States], than its involvement in a war. There were intermittent shows [wars] in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans were. And finally, they answer that question as follows: we must control the State Department.

And then, that very naturally raises the question of how do we do that? They answer it by saying, we must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country and, finally, they resolve to aim at that as an objective. Then, time passes, and we are eventually in a war, which would be World War I. At that time, they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly. And finally, of course, the war is over.

At that time, their interest shifts over to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914, when World War I broke out.


The redrawing and partition of the Middle East from the Eastern Mediterranean shores of Lebanon and Syria to Anatolia (Asia Minor), Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and the Iranian Plateau responds to broad economic, strategic and military objectives, which are part of a longstanding Anglo-American and Israeli agenda in the region.

The Middle East has been conditioned by outside forces into a powder keg that is ready to explode with the right trigger, possibly the launching of Anglo-American and/or Israeli air raids against Iran and Syria. A wider war in the Middle East could result in redrawn borders that are strategically advantageous to Anglo-American interests and Israel.

NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan has been successfully divided, all but in name. Animosity has been inseminated in the Levant, where a Palestinian civil war is being nurtured and divisions in Lebanon agitated. The Eastern Mediterranean has been successfully militarized by NATO. Syria and Iran continue to be demonized by the Western media, with a view to justifying a military agenda. In turn, the Western media has fed, on a daily basis, incorrect and biased notions that the populations of Iraq cannot co-exist and that the conflict is not a war of occupation but a "civil war" characterised by domestic strife between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Attempts at intentionally creating animosity between the different ethno-cultural and religious groups of the Middle East have been systematic. In fact, they are part of carefully designed covert intelligence agenda.

Even more ominous, many Middle Eastern governments, such as that of Saudi Arabia, are assisting Washington in fomenting divisions between Middle Eastern populations. The ultimate objective is to weaken the resistance movement against foreign occupation through a "divide and conquer strategy" which serves Anglo-American and Israeli interests in the broader region.

Notes

1 U.S. State Department; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, What the Secretary Has Been Saying; Special Briefing on the Travel to the Middle East and Europe of Secretary Condoleezza Rice, Washington, DC. July 21, 2006.

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/69331.htm

2 Professor Mark LeVine, The New Creative Destruction, Asia Times, August 22, 2006.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH22Ak01.html

3 Professor Andrej Kreutz; The Geopolitics of post-Soviet Russia and the Middle East, Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Washington D.C., January 2002.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_1_24/ai_93458168/pg_1

4 The Caucasus or Caucasia can be considered as part of the Middle East or as a separate region

5 Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Ralph Peters; Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look, Armed Forces Journal (AFJ), June 2006

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899

6 Ibid

7 Crispian Balmer; French MPs back Armenia genocide bill, Turkey angry, Reuters, October 12, 2006.

James McConalogue; French against Turks: Talking about Armenian Genocide, The Brussels Journal, October 10, 2006.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1585

8 Suleyman Kurt; Carved-up Map of Turkey at NATO Prompts U.S. Apology, Zaman (Turkey), September 29, 2006.

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&hn=36919

9 Ibid

10 Zbigniew Brzezinski; The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Basic Books, New York, 1998

http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/basic/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465027261

11 Ibid