World Socialist Web Site – December 23, 2024
Syria’s new HTS government is a vehicle for imperialism’s struggle to control the Middle East
The US, European and regional powers have all welcomed the fall of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad at the hands of the al-Qaeda-linked group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant.
They all believe they can utilise HTS as their subcontractor to further their geostrategic interests in the war-ravaged country, despite the Islamist terrorist organization al-Qaeda supposedly being Washington’s number one enemy for decades.
In 2013, UN Resolution 2254 designated HTS’s precursor, the al-Nusra Front, a terrorist organization, as did the US, because of its affiliation with al-Qaeda. In 2018, Washington designated the HTS a Foreign Terrorist Organisation and placed a $10 million bounty on the head of its Syrian leader, Ahmed al-Shara’a, whose nom de guerre was Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.
Two weeks after fall of Assad, the US lifted the bounty on Jolani. The Biden administration has now said it will recognise and support a new government in Syria if it commits to renouncing terrorism and destroying any chemical weapons depots in the country. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the new Syrian government must “uphold clear commitments to fully respect the rights of minorities, facilitate the flow of humanitarian assistance to all in need” and “prevent Syria from being used as a base for terrorism or posing a threat to its neighbours.” In that case, he continued, “We in turn will look at various sanctions and other measures that we have taken.”
France, Germany and the United Kingdom have all met with HTS officials in Damascus. British diplomats held discussions with al-Shara’a and were photographed with him, even though HTS is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK and expressing support for the group is a criminal offence. London announced that it would send £50 million ($63 million) in humanitarian aid to Syria and Syrian refugees. Qatar has reestablished diplomatic relations with the country’s new leaders.
Turkey, which despite its close relations with HTS has long denied direct support, has reopened its embassy in Damascus. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan declared on Turkish television, “No one knows this group better than Turkey.” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged military and logistical support to HTS and is seeking to gain support from the Gulf nations, prompting al-Shara’a to announce that Syria would develop a strategic relationship with Ankara. He told Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak, “There will be strategic relations. Turkey has many priorities in the reconstruction of the new Syrian state.”
Thirteen years after at the start of the proxy war for regime change in Syria that was financed, orchestrated and supplied by the CIA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel to undermine and isolate Iran, the imperialist and Middle East powers are deepening their collaboration with their al-Qaeda-linked proxies to plunder Syria. It is part of their broader struggle to control the region’s oil and gas resources and roll back the influence of Russia, Iran and China in the Middle East.
Despite the rhetoric about a global war against Islamist terrorism, the US has long utilised reactionary Islamist groups to suppress left nationalist and socialist movements in the Middle East and Asia, including in the CIA/MI6’s overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953 and the CIA-backed military coup and mass killings in Indonesia in 1965.
Al-Qaeda, which is only one of the most well-known of these outfits, was created by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence, with aid and finance from the Saudi monarchy, under the leadership of Osama bin-Laden, the son of a Saudi construction magnate, during the US-instigated war against the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Islamist mujahideen fighters were funnelled across the Pakistani border into Afghanistan to serve as US proxies against the Soviet Union.
These Islamist groups were able to garner some measure of support among the most impoverished workers and rural toilers in the region by exploiting the social discontent of broad layers of the population in the Middle East, largely as a result of the failure of the secular nationalist regimes and parties—often allied with Moscow’s Stalinist regime—to improve the social and economic conditions or achieve any meaningful independence from imperialism.
The relationship between Washington and al-Qaeda and similar Sunni jihadi groups—characterised by their religious fanaticism, commitment to capitalism, virulent anti-communism and violent hostility to Shia Islam, Shia-majority Iran, and Alawites, the community to which Assad belongs—has repeatedly mutated from ally and proxy force to arch-enemy and back again, with all the accompanying lies and hypocrisy, as circumstances required.
Al-Jolani/al-Shara’a and the origins of HTS
Al-Jolani was born in 1982 to a middle-class Syrian family in Saudi Arabia and brought up in an affluent area of Damascus. His father’s cousin, Farouk al-Shara’a was a longtime foreign minister and then vice president of Syria until 2014.
After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, al-Jolani went to Iraq and joined the Sunni insurgency against the US occupation led by al-Qaeda. Captured by US forces in 2006, he spent the next five years in prisons in Iraq.
When the protests against Assad erupted in 2011, he moved back to Syria to set up the al-Nusra Front on behalf of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then leader of Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), an offshoot of al-Qaeda formed in 2004 that later incorporated a number of Sunni insurgent factions in Iraq. The aim of the al-Nusra Front was to unify the various Salafi jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda and ISI groups, overthrow the Syrian regime and create an Islamic state. The following year, the UN designated the al-Nusra Front a terrorist group.
There then followed more than a decade of mergers, splits and lethal conflicts with other jihadi groups—amid efforts to win broader support, particularly from the US and Turkey—by distancing itself from some of its former allies and more abhorrent practices.
The al-Nusra Front won some early successes against Syrian regime forces, particularly in northwest Syria—in Aleppo, Hama, Lattakia, and Idlib—leading al-Baghdadi to call for the expansion of ISI into Syria under the broader mantle of Islamic State. But the factions soon clashed—killing thousands—as they competed for fighters in Syria. In April 2013, al-Jolani released a recorded message breaking with IS and stating, “The sons of al-Nusra Front pledge allegiance to Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri,” Osama bin Laden’s successor as leader of al- Qaeda—following the latter’s assassination in 2011—who provided fighters, arms and money.
The militias linked to al-Qaeda, which included Islamist fighters from Turkey, Iraq and Libya as well as from Chechnya and China’s Xinjiang region, dominated the anti-Assad forces. They became the biggest beneficiaries of the CIA’s near one-billion-dollar annual budget for the mission to topple the Assad regime, despite CIA claims that its arms and funds were going to “vetted” and “moderate” Syrian “rebels.”
When the dominance of the Islamic State (ISIS)—which the US and its allies had made the main force fighting for regime change in Syria—began to threaten US interests as it spread from Syria into northern Iraq in 2014, Washington switched horses and made the Syrian Democratic Forces, of which the US-backed Kurdish nationalist People’s Protection Units (YPG) are the backbone, its main proxy force.
When the US began its campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, al-Jolani described the US air strikes as an assault on Islam and said he would fight the “United States and its allies,” including taking the fight to Western countries, and urged his fighters not to accept help from the West in their battle against the Islamic State.
In 2015, he switched tack and denied that al-Nusra had any plans to attack Western countries, saying it was focused on fighting the Assad regime, its allies Hezbollah, and ISIS.
In 2016, the al-Nusra Front split with al-Qaeda, renaming itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS), although it suffered disaffections in doing so, before merging the following year with four other Salafi jihadist armed groups to form HTS. The US insisted it was still an al-Qaeda affiliate and characterized the HTS as an attempt to “hijack the Syrian revolution” not a move toward moderation, designating it a global terrorist organisation.
Its force, made up of about 10,000 fighters, went on to bring most of the other Islamist factions under its leadership. HTS gained control of about half of Idlib province and neighbouring areas and became the dominant force in the region via a mix of ruthless violence and political coercion. It received considerable support from Turkey, which has deployed troops in the province and used HTS and other Islamist militias against Kurdish forces that, with US backing, had set up an autonomous enclave in north-east Syria. Turkey aims to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state on its southern border and the growth of separatist sentiment among the large Kurdish population within Turkey itself.
Ankara, which controls several provinces in northwestern Syria, has intervened both by directly supporting the Syrian National Army (SNA), the successor to the former Free Syrian Army (FSA), and by backing HTS, despite recognising it as a terrorist organisation. Since 2016, Turkey has carried out several military interventions in Syria.
Following ceasefire agreements struck with Russia and the Assad regime in 2018, HTS forces and their allies, including 2 million displaced from other parts of Syria, were evacuated to Idlib. That province, now home to 4.5 million people, became the last redoubt of Washington’s al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militias that formed the spearhead of its war for regime change. Its rule became synonymous—as described by human rights organisations and the UN Human Rights Council—with torture, disappearances, public stonings, summary executions, imprisonment, and severe repression of any form of dissent in areas under the control of HTS gunmen.
Washington rehabilitates HTS
None of that stopped Washington from trying to rehabilitate HTS, signalling that once again al-Qaeda had its uses in Syria where the Assad regime, with support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, had maintained its grip on power. HTS offered its services to the US, clashing with ISIS cells in Saraqeb and Jisr al Shughur, both in Idlib province. When ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was killed by the US military in Idlib province in 2019, HTS welcomed his death.
In February 2021, Public Broadcasting Service’s (PBS) Frontline programme conducted an extraordinary interview with al-Jolani in Idlib province aimed at whitewashing HTS’s crimes in Syria. PBS gave him the opportunity to distance himself from his past affiliation with al-Qaeda. Al-Jolani stressed HTS’s role in fighting the Assad regime. Its mission, he said, was “defending the people, defending their safety, their religion, their honour, their property and standing against a criminal tyrant like Bashar al-Assad.”
He portrayed himself as Washington’s natural ally, pledging no support for any attacks against the US and denouncing the terrorist designation attached to himself and HTS as “unfair” and “political”. He declared, “Through our 10-year journey in this revolution, we haven’t posed any threat to Western or European society: no security threat, no economic threat, nothing.” Given the opportunity to deny the widespread charges of violent suppression of any form of dissent in Idlib, al-Jolani accused those who made such charges of being “Russian agents” or “regime agents.”
In the same programme, James Jeffrey, a former Middle East envoy in the Trump administration, confirmed that al-Jolani and the HTS were a US “asset” in Syria. “They are the least bad option of the various options on Idlib, and Idlib is one of the most important places in Syria, which is one of the most important places right now in the Middle East.”
The following year, when ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al- Qurashi was killed in a US military raid in Idlib, other Islamist groups accused HTS of collaborating with the US, although HTS formally condemned the US operation.
Since taking control of Damascus, HTS has continued to demonstrate its loyalty to its paymasters in Washington.
It is striking that HTS leaders thanked Israel for its help by neutralising Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Al-Shara’a has issued no condemnation of Israel’s seizure of the demilitarised zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights—established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria—and the displacement of villagers in Quneitra province, in violation of international law. Neither has it said anything about the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes that have destroyed Syrian military bases, air defence systems, ammunition depots, surface-to-surface missile stockpiles and Syrian naval vessels, or the more than 75 US air strikes, breaching Syria’s sovereignty. Israel claims to have destroyed 80 percent of Syria’s military installations, as part of its efforts to strip the country of any defensive capability.
Instead, al-Shara’a said that having secured its interests through air strikes, Israel could now leave Syria in peace. He told Britain’s Times newspaper, “We do not want any conflict, whether with Israel or anyone else, and we will not let Syria be used as a launchpad for attacks [against Israel].” When the UK’s Channel 4 News tried to press an HTS spokesman about Israel’s attacks on Syria, his response was, “Our priority is to restore security and services, revive civilian life and institutions and care for newly liberated cities.”
HTS has vowed to keep Iran and Hezbollah—the Shiite “axis of resistance” against Israel—out of Syrian territory.
World Socialist Web Site – December 23, 2024
Trump threatens to seize Panama Canal
President-elect Donald Trump told a conference of fascist supporters in Arizona that the United States would demand the return of the Panama Canal to US control if the Panamanian government failed to follow his dictates about the fees imposed for transit and the stepped-up Chinese economic activity around the critical maritime facility.
Trump spoke to Turning Point USA “American Fest” after posting several messages on his Truth Social site denouncing Panama in the style of a loud-mouthed Yankee imperialist bully. He denounced the administration of President Jimmy Carter for signing the treaty in 1977 that ultimately returned the Canal Zone to Panamanian control in 1999.
“When President Jimmy Carter foolishly gave it away, for One Dollar, during his term in Office, it was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” Trump wrote. “It was likewise not given for Panama to charge the United States, its Navy, and corporations, doing business within our Country, exorbitant prices and rates of passage.”
Panama was abusing the “privilege” of charging tolls for passage through its own canal, he declared. “Our Navy and Commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama by the US. … This complete ‘rip-off’ of our Country will immediately stop.”
Tacitly admitting the weakened position of American imperialism even in its own hemisphere, Trump warned that the canal should not fall into the “wrong hands,” a clear reference to China. He called the canal a “vital national asset” that was “crucial” both for US trade and national security.
Returning to this theme in Arizona, he declared, “It was given to Panama and to the people of Panama, but it has provisions, you gotta treat us fairly and they haven’t treated us fairly.” While this appeared to be another complaint about the fees being charged, these are the same for American ships as for the vessels of any other country, based on tonnage and type of cargo, not what flag the ship flies.
He added, “If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly and without question.”
When one of his fascist listeners shouted, “Take it back,” Trump replied: “That’s a good idea.”
There is a second aspect to Trump’s sudden declaration of interest in Panama. Returning American military forces to the Panama could give them a significant role in the interdiction of the flow of migrant workers across the US-Mexico border.
Millions of these migrants come from South America through the “Darien gap,” the jungle region of Panama that borders on Colombia, and then up through Central America. US troops in the former Canal Zone would be in a position to block the migrants either at the canal itself or by pushing further south.
Trump’s references to American “generosity” to Panama can only generate disgust and anger in the people of that country and of Latin America more generally. The United States has invaded Panama twice, the first time to ensure the territory’s “independence” from Colombia and set it up as a US-controlled puppet state, clearing the way for construction of the 52-mile canal across the isthmus.
The US invasion came in 1989, when the first Bush administration sent thousands of US troops in to overthrow the regime of General Manuel Noriega, a longtime operative for US imperialism who had fallen out with Washington. Thousands of Panamanians were killed by American bombs, while Bush claimed that the invasion was necessary to preserve the “neutrality” of the Canal Zone. Noriega was brought back in chains to the United States to be tried for drug-trafficking, which he and his CIA controllers had long promoted. Noriega served long prison terms in the US and then France and was eventually repatriated to Panama to die of cancer.
The new crisis in US-Panama relations is being provoked by America’s economic decline and the growing influence of China, which now has more extensive trade relations with Latin America than the United States. But US ships still account for the lion’s share of the traffic through the Panama Canal, since it is the shortest sea route from the West Coast to the East Coast of the US.
China is the second-biggest user of the Panama Canal, and a Chinese company controls two of the five ports near the canal’s two ends, one on the Caribbean and the other on the Pacific.
China has been negotiating a possible new trans-isthmian canal through Nicaragua, which would take advantage of the largely flat terrain and sizable lakes. Last month Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega revoked an earlier agreement with a Hong Kong-based consortium and proposed a different route for the canal, this time to be funded on a multinational basis, with both US and Chinese involvement.
There has been growing commercial pressure either for widening the Panama Canal or building the Nicaraguan canal. There was a 29 percent drop in ship transits through the canal over the past fiscal year because of severe drought conditions. This has a global impact, since the canal accounts for fully 6 percent of all world trade traffic.
While Trump’s threat to Panama is no doubt connected in some fashion to these specific geostrategic concerns, there is a more general dimension to the foreign policy of the incoming administration, as Trump seeks to overcome the declining world position of American imperialism through a combination of bluster and bullying.
In recent weeks, he has several times gloated over the fading political fortunes of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, taunting Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau” and suggesting that Canada should become the 51st US state.
Last month he demanded that Mexico and Canada stop all illegal border crossings into the United States and warned that if they did not do so immediately, he would impose heavy tariffs on their imports to the US market.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long-simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!” he posted on Truth Social.
He continued this diatribe last week in another Truth Social declaration: “No one can answer why we subsidize Canada to the tune of over $100,000,000 a year? Makes no sense!” He continued: “Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State. They would save massively on taxes and military protection. I think it is a great idea. 51st State!!!”
Perhaps Trump was channeling fond memories from his childhood, when he would have been raised on tales of how grandfather Frederick Trump—an immigrant from Germany who fled to New York City to avoid military service—founded the family fortune by opening bars and brothels in Canada during the Yukon Gold Rush.
Whatever the exact triggers, Trump’s musings about bringing territories both tiny (Panama) and gigantic (Canada) under direct American control testify to the aggressive appetites of an imperialist ruling elite that sees military force as the only possible solution to its deepening economic, social and political crises.
Iran resolved to complete North-South Transport Corridor: President Pezeshkian
President Masoud Pezeshkian says Iran is determined to implement an agreement with Russia to complete the North-South Transport Corridor.
Pezeshkian made the remarks in a meeting with a Russian delegation, headed by Russian Deputy Prime Minister for Transport Vitaly Gennadyevich Savelyev, in Tehran on Monday.
He said the implementation of the Rasht-Astara railway section under the North-South international transport corridor project is among Iran’s priorities.
“Iran is committed to the provisions of this agreement and the Russian side can begin mapping the route and prepare the implementation of the project as soon as possible.”
He said the Iranian government puts emphasis on the implementation of the agreement and the country’s minister of roads and urban development is pursuing the issue.
The 162-kilometer Rasht-Astara railway is a strategic transport corridor that will connect the Iranian city of Rasht, near the Caspian Sea, to Astara on the border with Azerbaijan.
The project, which is aimed at integrating the transport and information routes of Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and India, is carried out within the framework of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC).
Savelyev, for his part, said Russia is resolute on implementing the Rasht-Astara railway and has granted the necessary credit line.
Russia is cooperating with Azerbaijan to complete the North-South Corridor and calls on Iran to implement it, he added.
He noted that Russia and Azerbaijan have agreed to modernize the part of this railway located on their territory and also ask Iran to help make the necessary arrangements to update and renovate the project inside the country.
The Russian official hailed his country’s growing cooperation with Iran in the transport section.
It is expected that the two countries would transfer 15 million tonnes of goods with the implementation of the Rasht-Astara railway, he noted.
Savelyev also invited the Iranian president to travel to Russia early in 2025 and said Russia is making the arrangements for the trip and the agreements that would be signed between the two sides.
Russia, Iran discussing timeframe for start of work on Rasht-Astara railway section: Savelyev
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Savelyev said the talks during the Russian delegation’s visit to Tehran are expected to enable each of the two sides to take the next step in mutual development.
"Iran is our strategic partner, above all else, and we undoubtedly have a lot of joint issues that we are going to discuss: in the sphere of sea transport, in the sphere of motor transport, railway transport, and air communication.”
He expressed hope that the two countries “can find solutions and will continue solving those issues that were signed in 2023 - an agreement, an intergovernmental agreement."
According to earlier reports, Russia will provide an interstate loan of 1.3 billion euros for the railway construction. The total value of the project was estimated at 1.6 billion euros at the moment the agreement was signed.
"The loan is ready, there are issues we need to discuss with the Iranian side. The financing has been opened de facto; everything has been agreed upon, the question is when we will begin. We will discuss this," Savelyev said.
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/12/23/739596/Iran-Russia-President-Masoud-Pezeshkian-Deputy-Prime-Minister-Transport-Vitaly-Gennadyevich-Savelyev-North-South-Transport-Corridor-Rasht-Astara-railway-
Transport & Logistic International - September 4, 2024
Inside Russia and Iran’s New Transport Corridor
In a strategic move poised to reshape global trade dynamics, Russia and Iran are collaborating on a new trade route that aims to establish a direct transportation link between the two nations. This ambitious infrastructure project, which forms a crucial part of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), is designed to enhance connectivity across Eurasia, reduce shipping times, and offer an alternative to traditional trade routes like the Suez Canal. As geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainties continue to influence international trade, this new corridor is set to play a pivotal role in creating new economic opportunities and shifting the balance of global logistics.
The project, which involves substantial investments in ports, railways, and other transport infrastructure, is expected to provide mutual benefits to both countries. For Russia, the route opens up access to new markets in the Middle East and South Asia, while Iran gains a stronger foothold in the Eurasian trade network.
The Russia-Iran Partnership in Context
Russia and Iran’s partnership in developing a new trade route is built upon a long-standing history of economic and geopolitical cooperation. Over the years, the two countries have forged a strategic alliance driven by mutual interests, particularly in circumventing Western sanctions and diversifying their economic ties. Russia and Iran share common goals, such as reducing dependence on Western markets and creating alternative trade pathways that bypass traditional routes dominated by Western-aligned countries.
Key to understanding this partnership is the broader context of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a multi-modal network designed to facilitate trade between Russia, Iran, India, and Europe. The INSTC, conceptualized in the early 2000s, has gained renewed relevance in recent years as geopolitical tensions have pushed countries to explore alternative trade routes. For both Russia and Iran, the corridor represents a strategic effort to boost bilateral trade while enhancing their influence over regional trade flows.
Recent agreements between Moscow and Tehran have laid the groundwork for this new trade route. In 2023, the two countries signed several memorandums of understanding to invest in rail and port infrastructure, with Russia committing to fund the construction of key sections of the Iranian railway network. These agreements reflect the growing alignment of their economic and political objectives, particularly in countering Western sanctions and fostering economic resilience.
Understanding the New Trade Route
The new Russia-Iran trade route is a critical segment of the broader INSTC, aimed at linking the Russian port of Astrakhan with the Iranian ports of Bandar Abbas and Chabahar. This multi-modal corridor combines rail, road, and sea transport to facilitate the seamless movement of goods between Russia, Iran, and beyond. The corridor is expected to reduce the transit time for goods traveling between Moscow and Mumbai by up to 40%, compared to the traditional Suez Canal route.
Key infrastructure investments underpinning the new trade route include the modernization of Iranian railways, expansion of the port facilities at Bandar Abbas and Chabahar, and the development of new logistics hubs along the route. Russia has committed to investing in these projects, viewing them as strategic assets that will enhance its access to Middle Eastern and South Asian markets. For Iran, the route offers a vital economic lifeline, boosting its trade connectivity with Eurasia and providing an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, which remains a vulnerable chokepoint.
The economic implications of this new trade route are significant. For both Russia and Iran, it presents an opportunity to increase trade volumes, diversify export markets, and reduce transportation costs. In addition, the route is expected to attract transit trade from other countries, including India, which has expressed interest in using the INSTC as an alternative route to access Russian and European markets. The route’s success, however, will depend on overcoming infrastructure bottlenecks, addressing security concerns, and ensuring political stability in the region.
Geopolitical Implications of the Route
The development of the Russia-Iran trade route has far-reaching geopolitical implications. By creating an alternative trade corridor that bypasses the Suez Canal, the route challenges existing trade routes and could potentially shift global trade patterns. For Russia and Iran, the new route serves as a strategic tool to counterbalance Western influence and reduce their dependence on traditional maritime routes controlled by Western-aligned countries.
The trade route is also likely to impact regional dynamics. It positions both Russia and Iran as key players in the Eurasian trade network, offering them greater leverage in negotiations with other regional powers such as China, India, and Turkey. The corridor could also serve as a platform for greater economic integration among Eurasian countries, potentially leading to the formation of new regional alliances and partnerships.
However, the project is not without its challenges. The route passes through regions that are politically unstable, and both Russia and Iran face considerable economic and logistical hurdles in developing the necessary infrastructure. Moreover, the new trade route could provoke responses from other global powers, particularly the United States and European Union, which may view the project as a threat to their strategic interests in the region.
Impact on Global Trade and Logistics
From a logistics perspective, the Russia-Iran trade route represents a significant development in the global supply chain landscape. By providing a faster and more cost-effective alternative to the Suez Canal, the route has the potential to reduce shipping times and costs for businesses engaged in Eurasian trade. This could be particularly advantageous for industries that rely on time-sensitive shipments, such as pharmaceuticals, electronics, and perishable goods.
The new route also offers a diversification strategy for global businesses looking to mitigate risks associated with geopolitical tensions, supply chain disruptions, and environmental concerns. For instance, the route’s integration into the INSTC could provide a more sustainable option for businesses seeking to reduce their carbon footprint by shortening the distance traveled by goods.
However, the route’s long-term viability will depend on overcoming several challenges, including infrastructure constraints, regulatory barriers, and political instability in the region. Furthermore, the success of the route will require significant investment in modernizing and maintaining transport infrastructure, ensuring security, and fostering greater regional cooperation.
Looking ahead, the Russia-Iran trade route has the potential to become a key artery in the global trade network. If successfully developed, it could serve as a catalyst for greater economic integration in Eurasia, offering new opportunities for trade, investment, and cooperation. The route could also provide a model for other countries seeking to diversify their trade networks and reduce dependence on traditional maritime routes.
However, the project faces numerous challenges, including geopolitical tensions, economic sanctions, and environmental concerns. For both Russia and Iran, the route’s success will depend on their ability to navigate these challenges and foster greater regional cooperation. As the global trade landscape continues to evolve, the Russia-Iran trade route represents a bold attempt to reshape the rules of the game and create new opportunities for economic growth and development.
Sources:
Express.co.uk ﾖ Russia-Iran Trade Route Infrastructure Project
Al Jazeera ﾖ Russia-Iran Relations
World Bank ﾖ International North-South Transport Corridor
Reuters ﾖ Global Trade and Logistics
Chatham House ﾖ Geopolitical Trade Strategies
https://tlimagazine.com/news/inside-russia-and-irans-new-transport-corridor/
Tom Dispatch – December 22, 2024
Climate Change Taking the World’s Four Legacy Empires Down
Alfred W. McCoy
(ﾠTomdispatch.comﾠ) – Some 2,000 years ago, an itinerant preacher, Saul of Tarsus, was writing to a wayward congregation in Corinth, Greece. Curiously enough, his words still capture the epochal change that may await us just over history’s horizon. “For now we see in a glass, darkly,” he wrote. “Now I know in part, but then shall I know fully.”
Indeed, mesmerized by a present filled with spellbinding events ranging from elections to wars, we, too, gaze into a darkened glass unable to see how the future might soon unfold before our eyes — a future full of signs that the four empires that have long dominated our world are all crumbling.
Since the Cold War ended in 1990, four legacy empires — those of China, France, Russia, and the United States — have exercised an undue influence over almost every aspect of international affairs. From the soft power of fashion, food, and sports to the hard power of arms, trade, and technology, those four powers have, each in its own way, helped to set the global agenda for the past 35 years. By dominating vast foreign territories, both militarily and economically, they have also enjoyed extraordinary wealth and a standard of living that’s been the envy of the rest of the world. If they now give way in a collective version of collapse, instead of one succeeding another, we may come to know a new world order whose shape is as yet unimaginable.
An Empire Once Called Françafrique
Let’s start with the French neocolonial imperium in northern Africa, which can teach us much about the way our world order works and why it’s fading so fast. As a comparatively small state essentially devoid of natural resources, France won its global power through the sort of sheer ruthlessness — cutthroat covert operations, gritty military interventions, and cunning financial manipulations — that the three larger empires are better able to mask with the aura of their awesome power.
For 60 years after its formal decolonization of northern Africa in 1960, France used every possible diplomatic device, overt and covert, fair and foul, to incorporate 14 African nations into a neo-colonial imperium covering a quarter of Africa that critics called Françafrique. The architect of that post-colonial confection was Jacques Foccart, a Parisian “man of the shadows.” From 1960 to 1997, using 150 agents in the Africa section of the state’s secret service, he managed that neocolonial enterprise as France’s “presidential adviser for Africa,” while cultivating a web of personal connections to presidential palaces across the northern part of that continent.
As part of that postcolonial empire, French paratroopers (among the world’s toughest special forces) shuttled in and out of northern Africa, conducting more than 40 interventions from 1960 to 2002. Meanwhile, more than a dozen client states there shared autocratic leaders shrouded in vivid personality cults, systemic corruption, and state terror. In that way, Paris ensured the tenure of compliant dictators like Omar Bongo, president of the oil-rich country of Gabon from 1967 to 2009. Apart from exporting their raw materials almost exclusively to France, the firm economic foundation for Françafrique lay in a common currency, the CFA franc, which gave the French treasury almost complete fiscal control over its former colonies.
From Paris’s perspective, the aim of the game was the procurement of cut-rate commodities — minerals, oil, and uranium — critical for its industrial economy. To that end, Foccart proved a master of the dark arts, dispatching mercenaries and assassins in covert operations meant to eternally maximize French influence.
The exemplary state in Françafrique was undoubtedly Gabon, then a poor country of just a half-million people rich in forestry concessions, uranium mines, and oil fields. When the country’s first president was being treated for fatal cancer in a Paris hospital in 1967, Foccart manipulated its elections to install Omar Bongo, a French intelligence veteran, who was then only 31.
As political opposition to his corrupt rule intensified in 1971, Foccart’s office dispatched notorious assassin and mercenary Bob Denard. When a key opposition leader arrived home from the movies one night, “Mr. Bob” stepped from the shadows and gunned the man down in front of his wife and child. The Foccart network also secured Bongoﾒs rule by training the presidential guard and forming a security force to protect French oil facilities there.
Through rigged elections in 1993, 1998, and 2005, Bongo clung to power while French officials enabled his graft, facilitating more than $100 million yearly in illicit payments from France’s leading oil company. When he finally died in 2009, his son Ali-Ben Bongo succeeded him, inheriting 33 luxury properties in France worth $190 million and a country a third of whose population lived in misery on the equivalent of two dollars a day. But in August 2023, after one too many rigged elections, Ali Bongo was finally toppled by a military coup, ending a dynasty that had lasted nearly six decades.
As it turned out, his downfall would be a harbinger for the fate of Françafrique. During the preceding decade, France had deployed some 5,000 elite troops to fight Islamic terrorists in six nations in Africa’s Sahel region, an arid strip of territory extending across the continent just south of the Sahara Desert.
By 2020, however, nationalist consciousness against repeated transgressions of their sovereignty was rising in many of those relatively new countries, putting pressure on French forces to withdraw. As its troops were expelled from Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, Russia’s secretive Wagner Group of mercenaries moved in and, by 2023, had become increasingly active there. Just last month, the foreign minister of Chad announced that it was time for his country “to assert its sovereignty” by expelling French forces from their last foothold in the Sahel, effectively ending Françafrique after 60 years of neocolonial dominion.
In those same months, Chad also expelled a U.S. Special Forces training unit, while nearby Niger cancelled U.S. Air Force access to Air Base 201 (which it had built at a cost of $110 million), leaving Russia the sole foreign power active in the region.
Russia’s Fragile Empire
While France’s African imperium was driven by economic imperatives, the revival of Russia’s empire, starting early in this century, has been all about geopolitics. During the last years of the Cold War, from 1989 to 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, with Moscow losing an empire of seven Eastern European satellite states and 15 “republics” that would become 22 free-market democratic nations.
In 2005, calling the collapse of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Russian President Vladimir Putin set about reclaiming parts of the old Soviet sphere — invading Georgia in 2008, when it began flirting with NATO membership; deploying troops in 2020-2021 to resolve a conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan; and dispatching thousands of Russian special forces to Kazakhstan in central Asia in 2022 to gun down pro-democracy protesters challenging a loyal Russian ally.
Moscow’s main push, however, was into the old Soviet sphere of Eastern Europe, where, after a rigged election in 2020, Putin backed Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko in crushing the democratic opposition, making Minsk a virtual client state. Meanwhile, he pressed relentlessly against Ukraine after the ouster of his loyal surrogate there in the 2014 Maidan “color revolution” — first seizing Crimea, then arming separatist rebels in the eastern Donbas region adjacent to Russia, and finally invading the country with nearly 200,000 troops in 2022.
But perhaps Putin’s boldest move was a little-understood geopolitical flanking maneuver against NATO, played out across two continents. Starting in 2015, Moscow hopped over the NATO barrier of Turkey by setting up a naval base and an airfield in northern Syria and began a bombing campaign that would soon reduce cities like Aleppo to rubble to keep its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, in power in Damascus. In 2021, Moscow skipped over another U.S. ally, Israel, and began supplying Egypt with two dozen of its advanced Sukhoi-35 jet fighters so its airmen could compete with Israelis flying American F-35s. Completing Russia’s push into the region, Putin built upon shared interests as oil exporters to befriend Saudi Arabia’s uncrowned leader, Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Using his Syrian bases as a springboard, his final geopolitical gambit was a pivot across North Africa from Sudan to Mali conducted covertly by a notorious crew of Russian mercenaries called the Wagner Group.
In recent weeks, however, Putin’s geopolitical construct suffered a serious blow when rebels suddenly swept into Damascus, sending Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad fleeing to Moscow and ending his family’s more than 50 years in power. After suffering a stunning 700,000 casualties and the loss of 5,000 armored vehicles in three years of constant warfare in Ukraine, Russia had simply stretched its geopolitical reach too far and no longer had sufficient aircraft to defend Assad. In fact, there are signs that Russia is pulling out of its Syrian bases and so losing a key pivot for power projection in the Mediterranean and northern Africa.
Meanwhile, as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte condemned the “escalating campaign of Russia’s hostile actions” and its attempt to “crush our freedom and way of life,” Western Europe began ramping up its defense industries and cutting its economic ties to Russia. If Senator John McCain was right when, in 2014, he called Russia “a gas station masquerading as a country,” then the rapid switch to alternative energy across Eurasia could, within a decade, rob Moscow of the finances for further adventures, reducing Russia, now also harried by economic sanctions, to a distinctly secondary regional power.
The Limits of China’s Power
For the past 30 years, China’s transformation from a poor peasant society into an urban industrial powerhouse has been the single most dramatic development in modern history. Indeed, its relentless rise as the planet’s top industrial power has given it both international economic influence and formidable military power, exemplified by a trillion-dollar global development program and the world’s largest navy. Unlike the other empires of our era that have expanded via overseas bases and military intervention, China has only acted militarily on contiguous territory — invading Tibet in the 1950s, claiming the South China Sea during the past decade, and endlessly maneuvering (ever more militarily) to subdue Taiwan. Had China’s unprecedented annual growth rate continued for another five years, Beijing might well have attained the means to become the globe’s preeminent power.
But there are ample signs that its economic juggernaut may have reached its limits under a Communist command-economy. Indeed, it now appears that, in clamping an ever-tighter grip on Chinese society by pervasive surveillance, the Communist Party may be crippling the creativity of its talented citizenry.
After a rapid 10-fold expansion in university education that produced 11 million graduates by 2022, China’s youth unemployment suddenly doubled to 20% and continued climbing to 21.3% a year later. In a panic, Beijing manipulated its statistical methods to produce a lower figure and began fabricating numbers to conceal a youth unemployment rate that may already have reached 30% or even 40%. The potential power of youth to break the hold of the communist state was evident in November 2022, when protests against zero-Covid lockdowns erupted in at least 17 cities across China, with countless thousands of youths chanting, “Need human rights, need freedom,” and calling for President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to “step down.”
The country’s macroeconomic statistics are growing ever grimmer as well. After decades of rip-roaring growth, its gross domestic product, which peaked at 13%, has recently slumped to 4.6%. Adding to its invisible economic crisis, by 2022 the country’s 31 provinces had shouldered crippling public debts that, the New York Times reported, reached an extraordinary “$9.5 trillion, equivalent to half the country’s economy,” and some 20 major cities have since leaped into the abyss by spending wildly to give the economy a pulse. Seeking markets beyond its flagging domestic economy, China, which already accounted for 60% of global electric vehicle purchases, is launching a massive export drive for its cut-rate electric cars which is about to crash headlong into rising tariff walls globally.
Even China’s daunting military may be a bit of a paper tiger. After years of cloning foreign weapons, Beijing’s arms exports have reportedly dropped in recent years after buyers found them technologically inferior and unreliable on the battlefield. And keep in mind that, even as its military technology has continued to advance, China hasnﾒt fought a war in nearly 50 years.
Nonetheless, President Xi keeps promising the Chinese people that Taiwan’s reunification with “the motherland is a historical inevitability.” However, should Beijing launch a war on Taiwan, whether to fulfill its promise or distract its people from growing economic problems, the result could prove catastrophic. Its inexperience with combined arms — the complex coordination of air, sea, and land forces — could lead to disastrous losses during any attempted amphibious invasion, and even a victory could do profound damage to its export economy.
The End of the American Century
When it comes to that other great imperial force on Planet Earth, let’s face it, Donald Trump’s second term is likely to mark the end of America’s near-century as the world’s preeminent superpower. After 80 years of near-global hegemony, there are arguably five crucial elements necessary for the preservation of U.S. world leadership: robust military alliances in Asia and Europe, healthy capital markets, the dollar’s role as the globe’s reserve currency, a competitive energy infrastructure, and an agile national security apparatus.
However, surrounded by sycophants and suffering the cognitive decline that accompanies aging, Trump seems determined to exercise his untrammeled will above all else. That, in turn, essentially guarantees the infliction of damage in each of those areas, even if in different ways and to varying degrees.
America’s unipolar power at the end of the Cold War era has, of course, already given way to a multipolar world. Previous administrations carefully tended the NATO alliance in Europe, as well as six overlapping bilateral and multilateral defense pacts in the sprawling Indo-Pacific region. With his vocal hostility toward NATO, particularly its crucial mutual-defense clause, Trump is likely to leave that alliance significantly damaged, if not eviscerated. In Asia, he prefers to cozy up to autocrats like China’s Xi or North Korea’s Kim Jong-un instead of cultivating democratic allies like Australia or South Korea. Add to that his conviction that such allies are freeloaders who need to pay up and America’s crucial Indo-Pacific alliances are unlikely to prosper, possibly prompting South Korea and Japan to leave the U.S. nuclear umbrella and become thoroughly independent powers.
Convinced above all else of his own “genius,” Trump seems destined to damage the key economic components of U.S. global power. With his inclination to play favorites with tariff exemptions and corporate regulation, his second term could give the term “crony capitalism” new meaning, while degrading capital markets. His planned tax cuts will add significantly to the federal deficit and national debt, while degrading the dollarﾒs global clout, which has already dropped significantly in the past four years.
In defiance of reality, he remains wedded to those legacy energy sources, coal, oil, and natural gas. In recent years, however, the cost of electricity from solar and wind power has dropped to half that of fossil fuels and is still falling. For the past 500 years, global power has been synonymous with energy efficiency. As Trump tries to stall America’s transition to green energy, he’ll cripple the country’s competitiveness in countless ways, while doing ever more damage to the planet.
Nor do his choices for key national security posts bode well for U.S. global power. If confirmed as defense secretary, Peter Hegseth, a Fox News commentator with a track record of maladministration, lacks the experience to begin to manage the massive Pentagon budget. Similarly, Trump’s choice for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has no experience in that highly technical field and seems prone to the sort of conspiracy theories that will cloud her judgment when it comes to accurate intelligence assessments. Finally, the nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, is already promising to punish the president’s domestic critics rather than pursue foreign agents through counterintelligence, the bureau’s critical responsibility.
By the time Trump retires (undoubtedly to accolades from his devoted followers), he will have compressed two decades of slow imperial decline into a single presidential term, effectively ending Washington’s world leadership significantly before its time.
A New World Order?
So, you might ask, if those four empires do crumble or even collapse, what comes next? The forces of change are so complex that I doubt anyone can offer a realistic vision of the sort of world order (or disorder) that might emerge. But it does seem as if we are indeed approaching a historical watershed akin to the end of World War II or the close of the Cold War, when an old order fails with utter finality and a new order, whether redolent with promise or laden with menace, seems inevitable.
https://www.juancole.com/2024/12/climate-change-empires.html
