A Tough Week for Foresight
Well, I’m sorry about that.
Ukraine
I did not predict Russia’s 2022 SMO. I should have done, but I had not been paying sufficient attention to the full pre-history of Western provocation of, and disrespect for Russia’s legitimate interests, to the full scale of threat that it faced from US nuclear installations in Poland and Romania, and NATO’s intent to follow these up with another in Ukraine. I was not fully attuned to the West’s dismissal - beneath their contempt - of Russian concerns about intermediate nuclear missile policy generally, nor to the implications for Russia of the steady build up of Ukrainian forces lined up against the Donbass republics, nor to the limitations of Russian tolerance for the egregious and hubristic NATO parading of its (ultimately not so very impressive) military prowess on Russian borders, nor to the general creepiness of Zelenskiy’s rapid abandonment of his election pledge to peace and his desperate appeal for NATO respectability, and so on, and so on.
I was aware of much of all of this but failed to make the logical leap to a realization that an independent and resourceful country cannot be pushed around to an infinite degree and that a system of international law that is constructed by white Anglo-Saxons for their benefit is not a sacred altar after all but just another flawed human construction, a conceit and a deception that is eminently challengable and fully deserving of being challenged.
Syria
I did not predict earlier this week that by the end of it Syria would be on the verge of collapse. The collapse has not at this moment of my writing in the morning of December 7th (California time) actually occurred.
But
when a President is reportedly evacuating his entire family out of the country;
when the Syrian Army no longer appears to have the will to defend its country; but this is not yet a given certainty’
when enemy forces have taken the country’s largest industrial city (Aleppo), and its third largest (Hama) and is advancing on Homs to the west, and on Deraa in the south, while Kurds move on Deir al-Zor, under conditions which suggest a major evaporation of Syrian Army forces as the result of bribery, corruption and lack of faith in their government;
when key allies such as Iran’s Quds force are retreating back to Iran or to Iraq or to Lebanon (their allied militia army, Hezbollah, weakend by Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon, still on-going amidst a misnamed ceasefire) - (NOTE: IRANIAN AUTHORITIES ARE TODAY DENYING THESE REPORTS OF WITHDRAWAL);
when Iraq militia are confining their forces to the border areas;
when Russia is advising Russian nationals to get out of Damascus and withdrawing some of its forces in a bid to focus all its energies on Ukraine (BUT WE NEED TO BE ALERT TO POSSIBLE WAR PROPAGANDA ON THIS POINT); the Russian airforce appears to be still active and there are still reports of the arrival of Wagnerian forces. The Russian Ministry of Defense silence, however, should be a warning that Russian support for Assad is on a knive’s edge;
when the treacherous Ergodan now publicly commends the further progress of the invasion of Syria by Salafist jihadi international terrorist forces that he has protected for over a decade;
when US-backed Kurdish forces move west to take over Deir al-Zor…..
Well, yes, given such developments, a collapse of some form is likely taking place. It remains to be seen whether a rump Syria can continue to survive in a line from Damascus up the Mediterreanean coast to Latakia, and whether Russia will decide to hold against the enemy to protect its naval base in Tartous.
A meeting of foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey and Russia will take place in Doha later today.
While I dont think the ancient Qatari pipeline proposal any longer has much to do with anything in Syria, I do wonder about the bitter contests for supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean over oil and gas deposits which pit against one another the interests of neighboring countries such as Turkey, Israel, Greece and Libya, the Palestinians having already been robbed, by Israeli genocide of Palestinians, of their rightful claims.
Erdogan’s recent arrests of Turkish protestors against Turkiye’s continuing supply of Azerbaijani oil and gas to Israel symbolically betrays his fundamental obeisance to the laws of energy politics, and to Turkiye’s sometimes obscure but apparently still solid obeisance to NATO and the West.
We might expect that Erdogan will continue to support the jihadists’ march on Damascus. If so, this is an even more considerable geopolitical revolution, one that presents a grave threat, along with that of Israel, to Iran.
Iran is greatly and rapidly increasing its rate of production of enriched uranium nearly suitable for the manufacture of nuclear fuel. The manufacture of a nuclear weapon, however, is said to require another year or eighteen months. This may suggest that Iran has no intention to defend itself against Israel (and now, possibly, a pro-Western regime in Damascus) and the increased rate of production of fuel is a theatrical gesture of preparation for negotiations with Trump, in the hope of some partial relief of sanctions, in which the reality is likely to constitute yet a further act of national humiliation.
South Korea
And I did not predict that the South Korean political class would today fail to impeach President Yoon’s extraordinary and illegal attempt to impose martial law earlier this week or that any such attempt was even imaginable at this time. Despite Yoon’s apology there can be no possible excuse, after such treasonous behavior, for a political leader to stay in office or be allowed to do so. The South Korean regime is no longer a safe regime, and it is certainly not a democratic one in these circumstances. Even if the country is now vulnerable to a second attempt by Yoon, mainly, I would guess, for the benefit of the US and the continuation of a US military presence on the immedite eastern flank of China, there is good reason to hope that the South Korean people will mightly resist any such usurpation of their rights.
Needless to say, with respect to all of these musings (above), events are developing very rapidly on the ground. I shall do my best to monitor these developments over the next few days although, for personal reasons, my postings may be briefer than they usually are.