Piece
of Cake: New Normal of Trump's Foreign Policy
By Pepe
Escobar
April
15/16, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Sputnik
"-
Here's the
Commander-in-chief of the Beautiful Piece of
Chocolate Cake School of Foreign Policy,
expanding on his next move regarding North
Korea.
"We
are sending an armada. Very powerful. We
have submarines. Very powerful. Far more
powerful than the aircraft carrier. That I
can tell you."
As
if bombing nuclear-armed North Korea would
be as much of a piece of cake as Tomahawking
a semi-deserted air base in Syria. But then,
that's the beauty of a box of chocolates
foreign policy; you never know what you're
gonna get.
NATO
was "obsolete." Then it was "no longer
obsolete." China was a currency manipulator.
Then it was no longer a currency manipulator.
There would be no more adventures in the Middle
East. Then it's back to pulling a Hillary and
bombing Syria. Russia was supposed to be a
partner – basically in oil and gas deals, while
a Kissingerian Divide and Rule remix would try
to unravel the Russia-China strategic
partnership. Then Russia is bad because
supporting "animal" (sic) Assad.
Some
(other) things never change. Iran will continue
to be demonized. The NATO-GCC combo will
continue to be bolstered. The House of Saud
terrorizing Yemen will continue to be a close
GWOT (Global War on Terror) ally.
It's
as if the whole dysfunctional Trump
administration machine has become a prisoner
of its non-stop duty to justify the
Tomahawks-with-chocolate Commander-in-Chief's
about turns and blatant lies, whereas its
previous strength derived from exposing the lies
and the hypocrisy inbuilt in the US
establishment/deep state nexus.
Xi is
on the phone
Russian
intelligence may have well inferred – correctly
– that the main goal of Secretary of State "T.
Rex" Tillerson's visit to Moscow was
to quiet down the high-stakes game as much
as possible as Trump moves to a face off with
Pyongyang. Washington simply cannot handle
multiple, simultaneous crises in Syria, Ukraine,
North Korea, the South China Sea, Afghanistan.
The possible deadline is May 9; the South Korean
presidential election that could stop any attack
by the US on North Korea in its tracks.
Japanese and South Korean media were
hysterically reporting on the deployment of as
many as 150,000 People's Liberation Army (PLA)
personnel, part of the PLA's 16th, 23rd, 39th
and 40th Group Armies, to the Chinese-North
Korean border. These forces are not aggressive;
they'd rather coordinate efforts to alleviate a
refugee crisis in the – appalling – event of a
Second Korea War breaking out.
The
Chinese Ministry of Defense issued a sort
of non-denial denial about the deployment. But
the crucial element was the subsequent Xi
Jinping call to Trump. Priority number one was
to dissipate the swelling US corporate media
narrative that Beijing would approve a US strike
against North Korea (on the contrary; Beijing
was seriously worried). Chinese media stressed
Xi emphasizing to a volatile Trump the only
possible way out is to work towards a peaceful
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Priority number two was to defuse the fake news
notion that Xi, facing his
Tomahawk-with-chocolate-cake desert at Mar-a-Lago,
had agreed to further US strikes in Syria. In
his phone call, Xi once again stressed the only
way out in Syria is a diplomatic solution.
With the
Beautiful Piece of Chocolate Cake School
of Foreign Policy as the new normal, now no one
has a clue what is Washington's policy on Syria,
and who's driving it (that was the key
information Foreign Minister Lavrov was trying
to extract from Tillerson).
The
previous policy was obvious; balkanization
light, with a Kurdish enclave in the eastern
desert, to be run by US proxies such as the
small PYD Syrian Kurdish population; Israel
absorbing yet another stretch of the Golan
Heights; a patch of the north for Turkey; and
enough real estate for Sunnis and assorted
jihadists.
Even before the Tomahawk show, US military
intelligence officials scattered around the
Middle East had serious doubts about what became
the
official White House narrative
on the chemical attack in Idlib. Former US intel
stalwarts, including Ray McGovern, Phil Giraldi
and Bill Binney, even
wrote a memo
to Trump calling for an honest, independent
investigation – as much as Lavrov would later
make it clear in his press conference with Tillerson.
The official narrative was also
debunked by an
MIT professor as "totally false."
Irrespective of whether Trump saw the light
via a White Helmets YouTube video or was
Tomahawked by the neocon/neoliberalcon axis, the
facts on the ground don't change.
Moscow
simply is not going to yield its sphere
of influence in Syria to Donald Trump or the
deep state. Russia has all but won the Syrian
War by preventing the formation of an Emirate
of Takfiristan, and defusing the possibility
of Russian/Chechen/Uzbek Salafi-jihadis
operating in alliance with Jabhat al-Nusra
and/or Daesh going back to wreak havoc in the
Caucasus. Not to mention that over 75%
of Syria's population is now living in the
functional parts of the country controlled
by Damascus.
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When
in doubt, sow chaos
The War Party/military-industrial-security-media
complex wants war, any war; it's good
for business, and ratings. The neocons want a
war to contain Iran. Professor Stephen Cohen is
realistically alarmed.
No one knows for sure whether Trump is now a
mere hostage of Mad Dog Mattis, HR McMaster and
co. who believes he's actually in charge, or
whether he perfected some sort of genius non-twitterable
geopolitical jiu-jitsu.
A
dissident US intel analyst based in the Middle
East paints a much gloomier picture: "The US
will not tolerate a Russia-China alliance
tilting the balance of power. North Korea and
Syria are merely pawns in this struggle that has
almost no meaning for themselves. The Russians
believe that the US is determined to go to war
against them, while they remain unsure about the
performance of their S-500 defensive missiles.
The Russians say more false flags are to come
in Syria, while the Chinese are also reviewing
any commitments of the US on the basis of what
they saw in Syria."
President
Putin has all but stated, on the record, that
Moscow cannot trust Washington. Russia has been
patiently building up its missile defense
capability – to the point that its air space
might as well turn out to be impenetrable
before the end of the decade.
Lavrov has
spoken many times in the past about "managed
chaos" – a "method of strengthening US
influence" exhibiting "projects" that "should be
launched away from the United States in regions
that are crucial for global economic and
financial development." The Beautiful Piece
of Chocolate Cake School of Foreign Policy may
have forced everyone to be lost in a masquerade.
But Moscow — and Beijing – do seem to see it
for what is; yet another facet of unmanageable
chaos.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
A
Government of
Morons
By Paul Craig
Roberts |
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Western
Civilization, if
civilization it
is, is the
greatest
committer of war
crimes in human
history. -
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