BRICS Mushiness Catapults the Threats (Update 1)
The number of trigger points for regional and global catastrophe multiplies by the week. What’s going on?
In brief summary:
(1) We have a distinctly unpromising situation with respect to the US/Israeli ceasefire proposal in Gaza that does not, in my view, provide any reassurance that this monstruous war crime is in secure sight of an end; we have indications that Hamas has accepted most of the content of the US/Israeli proposal, but wants some obvious and extremely important modifications that Israel has already said it cannot accept (though is willing to send a negotiating team to Doha to further explore).
These modifications include, I believe, and among other things: clarity with respect to the withdrawal of Israeli forces to their early March positions, US/Egyptian/Qatari guarantees that the ceasefire will be respected by Israel and that with continuing negotiations will be indefinitely extended, the immediate alleviation of the suffering and starvation of up to two million Palestinians; assurances on Israeli threats to annex the West Bank; dismantling of the starvation-manufacturing US-supported GHF that has murdered some 600-800 or so starving innocents in the past month alone, and its replacement by a UN and Palestinian Red Crescent machinery; and a reopening of the Rafah crossing (with withdrawl of Israeli troops from the Philadelphi corridor).
(2) While Russia holds firm to its resistance to the usual US/Ukraine garbage about ceasefires whose purpose is (for Europe, particularly a re-arming Germany!) to re-arm Ukraine, it has been slowing down in some parts of the battlefield even as its missile/drone attacks on Ukraine (as many as 500 Geran drones a day, plus Iskanders and Kinzhals) has escalated sharply. This is very unlikely to reflect weapons shortages, while the pause on the flow of US weapons to Ukraine has everything to do with diminishing US weapons stockpiles - amidst pleas from Germany’s Chancellor Merz to be allowed to buy Patriot interceptors from the US on behalf of Ukraine. Money in itself does not relieve shortages that are the product of a chronic lack of industrial capacity. It simply pushes up prices for diminished stock.
Putin has not elevated his terms for a settlement of the conflict in line with the growing advantages secured from what Russia has already achieved. Yet we have conceivably arrived at a point - under pressure from Washington at least, but not yet, so far, from Europe - where Zelenskiy is forced to capitulate or, at the very least, to turn away from a further declaration of martial law in favor of holding legitimate elections and thus to pave the way for a genuine peace negotiation (of which Zelenskiy will not be a part). Overly mindful, arguably, of US reaction and Russian and US interest in establishing a new framework of mutual agreement between them, Putin may be holding the lid on expanding the terms of settlement. This then, may seem to render pointless or wasteful the continuing advance of the Russian army towards the Dnieper if some of this territory at the end of the day has to be handed back.
This is dangerous territory. The Europeans are not turning down the rhetoric. The Coalition of the Brain Dead (of whom at least one, Starmer, is increasingly looking like a zombie, capable only of robotic commands for the transfer of more UK wealth to Ukraine as Britain’s economy slides into the Irish Sea), talks big, and, in doing so magnifies the non-existent threat to such a degree that for Europe it is absolutely real and Europe provokes Russia to occupy the role that Europe most dreads yet somehow seems to most want.
(3) In brief, if we ask why Russia is slowing down on the battlefield, then one answer invites us to consider whether Putin is simply too tied to a set of conditions which no longer matches the geopolitical reality, while another has to do with…
(4) The growing complexity of relations between US/Israel (these are a single entity) with Iran (first and foremost) - since we are talking about potential new fronts for Russia to defend - and then with …
(5) Syria (Jolani thugs, indigenous militia), Turkey and the Kurds. Former Al Qaeda/ISIS head-chopping illegal Syrian leader Jolani, gifted a lifting of Caesar Act sanctions by his new lover, US President Trump, while Israel establishes bases and stages raids on former Syrian Army positions close to Damascus, is reportedly seeking to “normalize” relations with Israel, while his extremist Sunni terrorist forces continue to massacre former regime loyalists, Christian and other minorities, and he alarms Turkey by allowing Kurds effective independence subject to the integration of the Kurdish army into Syrian.
(6) US and Israeli strangulation of Lebanon via pressure on its parliament, and of Hezbollah which both countries wish to disarm even as Israel continues to bomb and murder freely throughout the country.
(7) Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia involving a potential Azeri bid under Aliev to conquer the remainder of Armenia - having previously taken most of Nagorno-Karabakh; penetration and takeover of Armenia - under the cloak of legitimacy offered by President Pashinyan - by Western intelligence or other influences (including the customary few thousand NGOs so central to Western color revolution strategies) to facilitate the development of expansionist (and Western proxy) Azerbaijan with a (Western) objective of destroying the previous alliance between Russia and Armenia, and creating a new front for Russia on its Azeri borders to distract it from Ukraine. This also converts Azerbaijan (with whome Putin, possibly entering a trap, had recently improved relations) into an Israeli air-base so as to apply pressure on both the Caucasus and on Iran … exacerbating regional instability that might, as a side benefit, create new possibilities for Western meddling in Georgia that might pull it further away from Moscow.
(8) All this is tied in with the neo-Ottoman aspirations of Slippery Erd as he continues to balance his continuing membership of NATO with his partnership status in the BRICS, with his pro-Turkmen alliance with Azerbaijan, his covert alliance with Israel and with his culturally expansive aspirations across the Turkmen world to the Uighers in China. And as I said in a previous post, we should factor in the importance of Iran as a crucial throughway in the development of a north-south trading corridor under BRICS control from the Indian ocean to the Arctic, and the potential for disruption of such a corridor by a US-Turkish controlled east-west corridor.
(9) All of this highlights the singularity of Russian caution on Israel, on account of the 1,300,000 Israeli citizens who migrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union (few of whom are likely to be dual passport holders), and how this constrains whatever degree of hope we can invest in Russia to extend meaningful support to Iran and meaningful support to Palestine and how Russian diffidence acts as a further damper, should a damper even be needed, on China’s capacity for boldness. Why should Putin care so much for Russian-speaking Israelis who, to escape anti-semitism that they experienced in the Soviet Union fled, to Israel thirty-odd years ago, and many of whom, it must be said, are likely to be active supports of Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, and of Israeli expansions in Lebanon and Syria?
(10) Nor should we overlook the pro-Israeli sympathies of the Azeri leadership (an authoritarian regime that lords it over a largley pro-Iranian population) and the pro-Ukrainian orientation of both Israel and Azeri leadership.
(11) And thus we arrive at one of the most critical questions of all, namely: when Iran most needs to follow-through on its success in retaliation for Israel’s unprovoked attack, and to show resolve, why does it risk demonstrations of weakness and is it only Iran that takes the consequences of this? Within days of Iranian leadership correctly determining that negotiations with the US and the Israel are simply and objectively impossible becuase these interlocutors have shown themselves capable only of deception, bad faith and incompetence, there are reports (not necessarily accurate, mind) of Iranian willingness to restart negotiations with Witkoff et al, provided that the US can give “guarantees” that neither the US nor Israel will attack Iran while negotiations are still in progress.
On the face of it, this sounds like an invitation to Iran’s enemies to conclude that Iran is irrevocably weak and to contemplate how they might further attempt to pull the country apart. In the same breath, Iran, by continuing to give assurances that it will continue to respect the term of the non-proliferation treaty, seems to be holding back on going “rogue” on the IAEA - as it must do, given the way in which IAEA created a false pretext for Israel’s unprovoked attack and possibly gave Israel the names and addresses of Iranian nuclear scientists.
Does Iran lack weapons? No. Does it lack the means of going nuclear? No. Does it lack sources of new weaponry? No. Does it lack strong allies, No. Does it lack people? No. Does it lack a creditable army and air force? No. We of course must weigh the influence of religious beliefs and precepts: is martydom of a nation acceptable to the devout? Well, perhaps it is, and perhaps a martyred nation is still a nation and still a threat. A safer, route, surely, even if it means that Iran must kow-tow to the unfair and unjust imperialism of the nuclear hierarchy, is to secure the umbrella protection of Russia and China - assuming, and it is only an assumption, that this really exists and is not going to be deflected by scruples concerning Russian-speaking Israelis or other special Russian national interests we may not know about.
(12) Last but hardly a final question: what is the added value of BRICS to Russian and Chinese resolve (or lack of it) on US/Israeli global aggressions, when the Westphile wobbliness of so many BRICS members exposes the alliance as toothless and divided? But thanks, anyway, to Wang Yi for telling Europe that China wont allow Russia to lose in Ukraine.