U.S. political objectives in the Middle East will Fail--Is Iran the Target?

U.S. political objectives in the Middle East will Fail--
Creating a New Cold War with Europe, China and Russia; Target is Iran not Iraq.
Guest: Mr. Craig B Hulet: International Relations, Terrorism & Military Affairs Expert
(Author: The Hydra of Carnage: An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire)

"In every age...the ultimate sources of war are the beliefs of those in power:
their idea about what is of most fundamental importance
and may therefore ultimately be worth a war."
-- Evan Luard, International War

This may answer two questions: The first, what are Bush’s political objectives? It is not so much Iraq’s WMD as we were led to believe; it is more about Iran.

Bush will try to outflank Iran and not allow oil and gas pipelines to run through Iran from the Northern Caspian region, Russia, Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, South to the Persian Gulf and into Pakistan. Bush, inextricably tied to western oil interests, wants to run their pipelines through Afghanistan into Pakistan as the counter weight on the eastern front. Then pipelines through Iraq, an Iraq controlled by the U.S., is the counterweight on the western front. Control Baghdad, you control the Euphrates and Tigris river’s trade waterways. But Russia will try to dominate in the North, with pipelines running North and Northwest into Russia and across to the Black Sea according to several articles in Pravda. China will try to dominate the east with pipelines running east and southeast into China, "The Silk Road" route. Put succinctly: Russia wants the Black Sea routes, China the Silk Road routes, Bush wants everything to flow south from the entire region into his deep pockets via the Persian Gulf routes. Geography rules even if borders no longer matter. Also, reported (Jan.14, 2003 NYT), Russia is negotiating massive pipeline routes from its Siberian oil fields: one from Angarsk into the northern industrial region of China and a separate one which would bypass China. Negotiating with the Japanese for a pipeline which would run from Lake Baikal to the port of Nakhodka, near Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. Oil is the Great Game and everyone is in on it. Russia and China have already opened dialogue on security issues with India, and Japan will not remain in economic doldrums forever.

The second is control of the future; the encirclement of Iran, isolating its oil and gas production, is again, but one of many goals. Control of these routes is primary to western interest’s control of the future. Thus, it is argued, while Russia and China seem "out of it" today, they along with India have been holding trilateral security meetings regularly since Bush removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan (although reports recently see their potential return and the Asian Times reports Usamah bin Laden is now back in eastern Afghanistan). They see the chessboard. Bush may be pressing the United States into a highly lucrative new Cold War with this trilateral formation; Iran will not sit idle while this takes place. Iran is more the target than Iraq. To control, or dominate Iran, Mr. Bush has to encircle it, which requires the recently reported permanent military presence in the region. Afghanistan to the East, Turkey and Azerbaijan to the North, Iraq to the West, the South are already U.S. stooges. Pipelines, in effect, will become the new Berlin Wall.

The Caspian News Agency reported recently: 16:12 16.01.2003, Iran and Azerbaijan are nearing agreement on the Caspian Sea: Baku, January 16, 2002. (CNA). The Iranian Deputy Foreign minister Mekhti Safari arrived on January 15 at Baku to hold talks with the Azeri officials on the Caspian sea. Azerbaijani and Iranian officials have considered dividing the Caspian Sea, which is believed to contain large oil and gas reserves, into five equal parts. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the sea's status was regulated by treaties between the Soviet Union and Iran. Azerbaijan says it is nearing an agreement with Iran on the legal status of the Caspian Sea...(end). Russia and China today may not fend off the American imperium, even "seemingly" going along with what Mr. Bush sees as necessity in the Middle East, but things change. In the words of one of America’s finest scholars on the subject at hand in a recent article in Foreign Affairs journal: “Why has the unprecedented concentration of American power today not triggered balancing responses from other major states? One answer is to be patient: the slow distancing of allies and other states from the American imperium is only a matter of time.” -- G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Service School, Georgetown University

Azerbaijan is the Key to Understanding the Region

Azerbaijan is key to understanding the region and the power. During the past decade the only western source of power and force projection into the region was with the USACC. The United States Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. It was this body that has, and remains, the source of negotiations, planning and structure in the region. Prior to many of its board members entering the present White House along with Mr. Bush, they were the force behind the U.S. Congressional effort called the Silk Road Strategy of 1996-1998; the Caspian initiative; Black Sea pipeline routes and the division of the Caspian Sea, etc.

The USACC Advisory Board consisted of “only” these seven men: Dr. Henry Kissinger, James A Baker III, Lloyd Bentsen, Zibigniew Brzezinski, Dick Cheney, Brent Scowcroft, John Sununu. It is noted here that the current Vice President’s daughter, Elizabeth Cheney-Perry, has been named Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs for regional economic issues; she left Armitage Associates for the job. The USACC Vice-Chairman of the Board is James A Baker IV (Baker Botts, L.L.P.); Chairman Emeritus is T. Don Stacy (VP, Amoco); with Richard Armitage as Board President, until he resigned to become Colin Powell’s Deputy, which rounds out the US elite running the USACC. The remaining Board of Directors are a who’s who of the oil and gas multinational corporate interests of the west and specifically the United States. On the Board of Trustees or USACC the latter interests hold sway again with three primary exceptions: Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Joseph R. Pitts (R-PA) (whose efforts formed the 1996 legislative backbone of the Joint House/Senate Silk Road Strategy for Afghanistan, [Unocal, Texaco] et al) and Richard Perle (until his recent resignation, US Defense Policy Board). The Legal Counsel for USACC is Ted Jones of the Texas Law firm Baker Botts L.L.P. (James A Baker III & IV’s law firm.); Treasurer is Karl Mattison (VP, Riggs Bank, NA). It was the James A. Baker III Institute of Rice University which outlined the Cheney Strategic Energy Initiative which later became the Administration’s Strategic Energy National Security Policy. (Clearly Dick Cheney wouldn’t be interested in giving Congress the names of who he consulted on the Energy Initiative as they would amount to the remainder of the Board of Directors and Board of Trustees of USACC.) * see below.

The argument made here remains theoretical and analytical. If anyone can outline a better explanation as to what Bush’s interests, not necessarily the American citizens, are in the region, this analyst would bend in humble humility before it. Facts are facts regardless of how they may be interpreted. There is no denying the Bush Administration and the above named beneficiaries are out to achieve political objectives the American people, indeed the world’s people, are unaware of. Then “in whose interests” does Bush work? It is this analyst’s theory that Mr. Bush will attempt to achieve the objectives of a unique kind of American-led corporate empire: HHMMS is what it has been called, the Hollywood Harvard McDonalds Microsoft Syndrome.
This Lucrative New Cold War?

The regional map was possibly eliminated (otherwise see above) for this article and e-mails: (see The Hydra’s back cover) provided with the Silk Road legislation offered by the joint US House/Senate hearing on the Silk Road Strategy, 1996. The encirclement and isolation of Iran has been a national security objective for over a decade. The arrests of hundreds of Iranians in the slick INS sting operation the month of January 2003 in California may not have been as coincidental as we think. It was primarily Iranians arrested. Mr. Bush will achieve this objective at the cost of likely creating a new Cold War with pipelines as the New Berlin Wall. One can see how Europe, Russia, China, India and North Korea (maybe all of South and East Asia including Japan) could easily find themselves in a balancing alliance against the one great hegemon, what Europe is calling the Hyperpower, the American-led Empire. Europe is making precisely these noises today arguing for a full EU military capability. Make no mistake about this theory, the idea encompasses what Mr. Bush might perceive as a positive: A new Cold War. The old Cold War was quite lucrative for specific collections of corporations and individuals. It could be just one of many political objectives the layman might construe as dangerous and with negative side effects.
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* Remaining USACC Board of Directorsand Trustees: Farhad Azima (CEO Aviation Leasing), Howard Chase (Dir. International Affairs, BP), Don Condon (Pres,, CONOCO), Stanley Escudero (Moncrief Oil Int.), Nader Fahm (Pres. Alfacom), Andrew Fawthrop (VP, Unocal), Mike Kostiw (Gen. Manager, Chevron Texaco), David Sambrooks (VP, Devon Energy), Gregory K. Williams (Strategic Security Manager, Coca Cola) -- Trustees: Abdullah Akyuz (Pres. TUSIAD-US Inc.), Iiham Aliyev (VP, SOCAR), Graham Allison (Former Ass. Secretary of Defense; Dir. Belfer Center for Science and Int. Affairs, Kennedy School, Harvard), Frank Henke (Chair, American Bank and Trust), Hafiz Pashayev (Ambassador of Azerbaijan in the US), John Robert (Senior Advisor, American Int. Group), Stephen Robertson ( Pres. Bertling Logistics), Nancy Tuomey (VP, First Union bank), Frank Verrastro (Senior Policy Advisor, Vinson & Elkins).

Craig B Hulet? was Special Assistant to Congressman Jack Metcalf (ret.) and consultant to US Justice Dept.'s ATF&E.