The current situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan has shown the world the dangers of secret pacts and ancient grudges as a new “August 1914” moves toward reality.
As early as 2012, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and the Gulf States began arming al Qaeda and ISIS, deploying them against both Syria and Iraq.
Other nations aided as well, not just the US, France and Britain. There was also Georgia, Azerbaijan, Romania and, above all, Ukraine.
We will cover the backstory on this but what is clear is this, the Trump era replacement for NATO, where supposed enemies work in concert seamlessly, presents challenges to regional and world security that will require a very different working relationship between the US and Russia.
The current relationship is wrought with danger. Syria is only one issue but one that is telling as to intent.
After all, the US is not just occupying all of Syria’s natural resources, it is building a criminal empire inside Syria that has no overt military or policy aspect. America is simply “there,” stealing everything that is not nailed down and not even pretending to justify any of it.
We seem to have entered a new era where nation state players may finally take a back seat to other new power centers, maybe not “new” at all.
Background
Things have transpired recently that should seem impossible. How many remember, short months ago, Iran obliterating a large US base in Iraq and the United States doing nothing at all about it?
In 4 years, the world changed, became less predictable, much less so. With these increased risks, and we will outline only some of them, what would an abrupt change in US leadership bring about?
How likely is it that Biden will win the election?
We will address these and more. We begin.
We live in a broken world where nothing is what it seems. One day a good portion of Beirut simply disappears, supposedly due to abandoned fertilizer which simply cannot explode, the science is infantile.
President Trump announces it is a bomb, citing his military advisors at the Pentagon. Lebanon’s president says the same thing on CNN.
Within days, no one is asking anything. The answer? Simple, for it to have been a bomb, someone would have done it, someone capable of dropping a massive multi-kiloton weapon and “to hell with the consequences.”
You see, we live in a world where so many have so much to hide that misinforming the public is a standard practice.
Real History for a Change
Let me tell you a story about Azerbaijan and Nagarno Karakbakh.
Back in 2009, Israel took over 2 former Soviet fighter bases inside Azerbaijan. Simultaneously, Israel took on weapons sales to Azerbaijan, totaling close to $20 billion USD over a decade.
Azerbaijan was armed to refight its war with Armenia and Israel got air bases to attack Iran and to control the entire length of the Baku Ceyhan oil pipeline in the process.
Two other nations took part at this early stage, Georgia, home to a mysterious US weapons laboratory that collects bats in order to create, for reasons of research, new chimera viruses of the SARS/COV variety, those and other diseases as well, many many others.
Georgia also transits weapons from the Black Sea port of Poti to Israeli forces in Azerbaijan.
Turkey was the second, receiving a fleet of drones from Israel for secretly partnering with Turkey in Azerbaijan but against what enemy or enemies?
By 2011, Israel had dozens of planes in Azerbaijan and a drone operation at a commercial airport as well.
This capability covered not only Iran but Ukraine and areas into Russia as well, but for what reason?
Then, in October 2012, this report from Reuters, now listed as “top secret” though then published around the world:
Reuters – Yet despite official denials by Azerbaijan and Israel, two Azeri former military officers with links to serving personnel and two Russian intelligence sources all told Reuters that Azerbaijan and Israel have been looking at how Azeri bases and intelligence could serve in a possible strike on Iran.
“Where planes would fly from – from here, from there, to where? – that’s what’s being planned now,” a security consultant with contacts at Azeri defense headquarters in Baku said. “The Israelis … would like to gain access to bases in Azerbaijan.”
This was followed by a second report citing Israel’s desire to recruit Azerbaijan as an ally in a war on Iran:
BAKU (Reuters) – Israel’s “go-it-alone” option to attack Iran’s nuclear sites has set the Middle East on edge and unsettled its main ally at the height of a U.S. presidential election campaign.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exudes impatience, saying Tehran is barely a year from a “red line” for atomic capacity. Many fellow Israelis, however, fear a unilateral strike, lacking U.S. forces, would fail against such a large and distant enemy. But what if, even without Washington, Israel were not alone?
Azerbaijan, the oil-rich ex-Soviet republic on Iran’s far northern border, has, say local sources with knowledge of its military policy, explored with Israel how Azeri air bases and spy drones might help Israeli jets pull off a long-range attack.
We then ask why these stories, some over a decade old are now being played out and what does this tell us about how the world is going to work under new leadership. Then we look at this from VT:
“Azerbaijan is closely aligned with Turkey. However, they fought and lost a war in the early 1990’s against Armenia. Azerbaijan lost 16% of their territory at that time.
During that war, Azerbaijan turned to Al Qaeda and Chechen forces for support, an act that angered Russia. Azerbaijan is still a “safe haven” for terrorists and is commonly used to transit narcotics from Afghanistan and is a “way station” in human trafficking.
It is believed that an Israeli attack launched from Azerbaijan would unleash an immediate response from Armenia against Azerbaijan. The two nations have been at the verge of hostilities for nearly two decades.”
Okay, let us take this to today. It is stated that Turkey has deployed American built F 16 fighters to Azerbaijan and has used them to attack Armenia.
The base indicated is, quite curiously, one of the bases the defecting Azeri officers reported as being under Israeli command. We assert it still is.
This means that Turkey’s “secret” deployment in Azerbaijan is done a partnership with Israel. It is unimaginable that Turkey, fully involved in the conflict, having deployed thousands of Syrian terrorists against Armenia, could do so without coordinating with Israel, Azerbaijan’s primary defense partner.
We will also remind, that back in 2009 when Israel began deploying air assets in Azerbaijan, Turkey, in exchange for Israeli drone technology, aided Israel in every way.
At that time, Israeli and Turkish pilots were training together.
We might also note that these Israeli drones were deployed against the Syrian Arab Army in Idlib by Turkey with devastating effect, just as we note their similar capability against the Armenian military as well.
We must also remember than Turkey murdered nearly 2 million Armenians between 1914 and 1923.
We must also note again that Turkey’s overt war on the Kurds suddenly came to an abrupt halt, almost as though it were totally fake all along, as Turkey has now entered the war on Armenia.
Turkey even seems to be supporting the creation of a Kurdish state running from the Mediterranean to the Iran border, something one would think Erdogan would be strongly opposed to with one possible exception, the Kurds are to be puppets of a secret coalition Erdogan is part of.
That coalition is active in Syria, it is active in Libya, it is even working to take over of all places, Cameroon and how many other nations?
Even Ghana is now targeted.
It is being called a new “Ottoman Empire” but what is reflected is a secret cabal that includes Turkey but also includes, certainly Israel, certainly Saudi Arabia but how many others, Azerbaijan we know now but Ukraine as well? Others?
What is proven, sadly, is that the world order that a strong American Secretary of State, working with Lavrov in Russia and others, may have put together does not exist.
Where the US once drove policy, even wrongheaded policy, the rudderless ship of abandoned US allies is seeking other outlets, dangerous ones.
Trump’s Crashing Chances
American electoral polls claim it is impossible for Trump to retain the presidency. Wall Street is now fully behind Biden after 4 years of mayhem and instability. Trump has become a threat to markets.
If things proceed without an October Surprise, such as a false flag nuclear attack on a US city, Trump is gone.
This leaves Biden and Putin to pick up the pieces, a world in economic shambles from COVID but a world also suffering from several inexplicable and contradictory “trends.”
Russians, who quite frankly do not understand Americans at all, seem to love Trump. Yet Trump has Russia and many prominent Russians under sanction, cutting off Russia from economic moves needed to support a balanced economy.
Thus, the leader that is loved is also the leader that has orchestrated an economic war and, more seriously, a strategic arms race.
Russia may well like that as well as Russia’s relatively tiny military industrial complex has efficiencies the massive American version does not. Russia can quickly develop advanced weapons and moves “hard science” to battlefield much better than the US can.
This would mean that pushing Russia into a strategic arms race is an American policy to secure dominance, one America would appear to be losing, where America should have known it would lose from day one.
Is there something else?
There can be little doubt that Trump had walked away from NATO. Whether this is out of abject ignorance as his former top officials, one after one, has stated, or some “long game” plot is not clear.
The “New NATO” is in the Middle East
Obama and Biden had, working with Russia and NATO, come to a durable nuclear agreement with Iran in 2015. This had calmed the Persian Gulf region and largely eliminated any potential threat to Israel.
Still, however, Netanyahu kept presenting fake intelligence of Iranian nuclear weapons programs, evidence laughed at by the IAEA, CIA and America’s allies as well.
Everyone knew it was fake, Netanyahu is a pathological liar like Trump. From the 2011 G 20, according to Reuters:
“’I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,’ Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen in to a simultaneous translation.
‘You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you,’ Obama replied, according to the French interpreter.”
America’s Election Farces
No one need say it, predicting an American election based on polls is dangerous. There are reasons for this as it is generally accepted that American elections are rigged during count.
In the Wisconsin recount of the 2016 election, it was found that some precincts voted at up to 116% of registered voters with 100% “Trump” ballots.
As precinct after precinct showed massive tampering, reporting mysteriously ended. Similar issue plagued the 2000 election where exit polls, normally highly accurate, were 10% off from “recorded count” where accuracy has been better than 2%, often much better.
That said, the polls released on October 6, 2020 give Biden 16% and large leads in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Pennsylvania. With only a very short time to the election, nothing other than another massive vote hack could save Trump, even though he has announced he will release an untested COVID vaccine within hours of the election.
Conclusion
Let us say the US returns to the JCPOA. Let us say the US returns to Open Skies treaty and the various weapons agreements it has abandoned. With so many new weapons deployed and others whose capabilities are unfathomable, the idea of security through weapons restrictions and treaties may well be a waste of time.
The next issue is a new economy for the world, perhaps taking advantage of the “bull in a china shop” mess Trump crated to erase it all and start over again.
Except, there is a problem. With the COVID pandemic, the world economy is no longer in focus. In America, millions of jobs are more than lost, the industries themselves have contracted or disappeared.
No one knows what the world economy will be, what will survive and what nations may well crumble economically as well.
Then there is that other question, the simple one. Can there be a return to civility and compassion?
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”