The West "Doubles Down": British Foreign Secretary Praises the Downing of Russian Charter Jet

We are in the "double down" phase in Syria as far as the Great Powers are concerned. "Double down," a gambling reference which means to double one's bet and hence one's risk, seems to be the quote du jour for the last few days. First, today, in an interesting story by David Sanger and Helene Cooper, "Obama Turns to Diplomacy and Military in Syria, and Is Met With Doubts":

At White House meetings, administration officials say, Mr. Kerry has argued that without applying both military and diplomatic pressure, the Russian intervention that began in late September would shore up Mr. Assad “and actually wind up destroying Syria.” [Rich, isn't it?]

But the question is whether the military element of the strategy — which reversed Mr. Obama’s previous determination to keep American combat troops out of the country — will be enough to make a difference.

“What he is doing will not work,” Fareed Zakaria, a journalist whom Mr. Obama frequently speaks with, wrote in a column in The Washington Post last week. “In a few months,” he predicted, the United States “will face the challenge again — back down or double down. So far, President Obama has responded each time with increased intervention.” 

Reflecting a willingness to do more, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Sunday that additional troops could be sent to Syria if the United States could find more local forces to work with.

The White House is hoping that the Syrian, Arab and Kurdish coalition, aided by American pilots and special operators on the ground, can seize and hold territory. The United States also plans to step up airstrikes. Mr. Obama deployed 12 A-10 warplanes and is sending additional F-15 fighter jets to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

The theory is that over time the combination will increase the pressure on Mr. Assad to step down. The immediate focus is not on Mr. Assad’s strongholds, though; it is on territory seized by the Islamic State, including its capital, Raqqa.

But there is a far more immediate problem: identifying friends and enemies on the ground in Syria. Several rebel groups aided by the United States have been bombed by the Russians in recent weeks. American officials say they believe that Russia is trying to wipe out Mr. Assad’s opponents while claiming that it is going after the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Eventually, American and Russian officials will have to share lists about the groups that they support and that could be credible interlocutors for a cease-fire and political solution. But the United States has declined to do so, for fear that the Russians or Mr. Assad would immediately target the groups for attacks.

Then would come the practical problem of engineering a cease-fire and a referendum to replace Mr. Assad.

It is this supplying of a list of "credible interlocutors" that is going to be a huge problem for the Obama administration; it was the subject of yesterday's report by Somini Sengupta, "Invitation List Looms as Test for Syria Talks." It is in Sengupta's story that we encounter the use of "double down" again, this time from the lips of British foreign secretary Philip Hammond. Hammond amazingly lays claim to Islamic State Sinai Province's destruction of the Russian charter jet as an effective tactic to bring Russia closer to the West's negotiating position:

The diplomatic standoff over who is a terrorist and who counts as a legitimate opposition group comes on top of the significant differences that remain on the future of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Russia and Iran want to leave open the possibility that Mr. Assad can stand for election once more. The United States, Britain and their Persian Gulf allies resolutely oppose that idea. 

The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, during a visit to Armenia on Monday, said that the talks should concern themselves with who should represent the Syrian opposition and who should be considered extremists, instead of whether to replace Mr. Assad, The Associated Press reported. As for which opposition group is legitimate, Mr. Assad has dismissed all his armed rivals as terrorists, and Russia, his most powerful backer, has largely supported his assertion. Indeed, over the last five weeks, Russian airstrikes have repeatedly attacked positions of several Western-backed groups. 

Mr. Hammond also said that his government suspected that the Islamic State or operatives “inspired” by the organization were behind the destruction of a Russian airliner in Egypt on Oct. 31. He added that he hoped that would persuade President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to take a more flexible posture in the Syria talks.

“We’ll see whether the Russians now double down or whether they decide that they never wanted to be too deeply engaged anyway in Syria and that this is a warning shot to them and we’ll sense a greater willingness to engage in the talks in Vienna this coming Saturday,” he said. [!]

While Mr. Hammond declined to offer any details on which groups could eventually take part in political negotiations, his comments suggested that the West might be prepared to back Sunni Islamist groups with close ties to allies, including Saudi Arabia. “What we mean by a secular constitution, and what people in the Muslim world will understand by secular will be two different things,” Mr. Hammond said.

Sort of takes one's breath away, doesn't it? Here you have the West basically coming right out and acknowledging an overlap -- if not explicit collaboration -- between it and the terrorist jihadists it is purportedly locked in a death match with.

Another mainstream illumination of this manifest interlocking between the West -- in this instance, NATO-member Turkey -- and Islamic State is Roger Cohen's "Turkey’s Troubling ISIS Game," which appeared in the Sunday NYT. Read it and you come away with an understanding how Islamic State is used to further objectives of the Turkish government. The advantage to the United States, Turkey, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), UK, et al., is that Islamic State can be disavowed. Better yet, the exact opposite can be claimed, that U.S., KSA, Turkey, UK are "at war" with ISIS.

The problem for the U.S. is that while it "doubles down" its "double game" is increasingly exposed and ultimately untenable as a strategy. If the U.S. provides a list of "credible interlocutors," that list will either include the groups of Jaish al-Fateh ("Army of Conquest"), members of which are Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra as well as Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, or fictitious, U.S.-created ghost armies. There are also indications that the Army of Conquest is beginning to fray.

So the U.S. is in a pickle. If it wants to double its bet yet again by placing more troops in northern Syria, eventually Congress will demand to vote on authorizing the move, a vote I don't think the administration can win.

The Metrojet Airbus and the New Cold War

What we get when we read the news is not what is really going on. We get a general picture, almost like clip art, and then a large, elaborate, well-constructed frame to adorn the picture and shape how we perceive it.

If you read the news every day, attempt to follow the presentation of the clip art, you develop a kind of sixth sense when something is awry. And something is definitely awry when it comes to the story of the Russian charter jet that blew apart the weekend before last over the Sinai, killing all 224 on board.

At first, all officials -- from Russia, Egypt, the United States, Britain -- denied that the Airbus A321-200 could have been downed by a terrorist attack. Why? Because Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, Islamic State's affiliate in the Sinai, allegedly doesn't possess surface-to air missiles capable of reaching the altitude of an Airbus jetliner.

But the weakness of that argument is the assumption that the only way a terrorist can strike is with a missile.

Then there were several-days worth of stories chock full of MacGuffins about the structural integrity of the Metrojet Airbus, its previously repaired tail section, the shoddy nature of Russian commercial aviation, etc.

During this time you had the Pentagon interjecting anonymously -- why? -- that it had satellite imagery showing a flash emanating from the plane which pointed to an explosion; meanwhile Russian and Egyptian officials maintained their ludicrous denials of foul play.

Finally the dam broke when the U.K. suspended flights to the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after concluding a bomb blew apart the Russian charter jet. The Brits started shuttling their nationals out of the Sinai peninsula with the plane cargo holds empty. What does that tell you?

Obama performed an about-face and said terrorism could very well have brought down the Metrojet. Over the weekend the storyline shifted to a "those wacky Egyptians and their lax security" theme. Now it is broadly acknowledged that a bomb smuggled aboard the Airbus, as Michael Schmidt reports in "Consensus Grows for Bomb as Cause of Russian Jet Crash, Officials Say," was the cause of the crash.

Where most regular news consumers immediately assumed foul play, the mainstream media at the behest of their official minders in government took their readers, listeners and viewers on a week-long wild goose chase. Why?

Because something is happening here. Tectonic plates are shifting and realigning. I am of the opinion that Western-style democracy in the industrial core is getting harder for the power brokers to manage (look at the U.S. presidential campaign). Watching the NFL games yesterday, I have never seen such a mixing of the military with popular sports. Coaches and players wore camouflage gear on the sidelines. It is an homage to Veterans Day, but it runs far deeper than that, as the report, "Tackling Paid Patriotism," of Arizona senators John McCain and Jeff Flake makes clear. The Pentagon pays millions to have sports teams honor the military. This is fascism of course.

But the Pentagon needs to spend that money in order to maintain support for all its foreign interventions, such as bolstering its troop presence in Europe.

Russia is making its own play, and not just with its forceful intervention in Syria. Pepe Escobar makes the case in "What’s the Big Deal Between Russia and the Saudis?" that Russia is negotiating with its enemies al-Saud and Turkey on oil and pipelines. While Mike Whitney argues in "Turkey Goes to War" that a post-landslide-election Erdogan is still aiming to establish a buffer zone in northern Syria with Turkish troops.

When everything appears to be in flux -- the G20 meeting in Turkey this weekend should be interesting -- stick with the obvious. The Russian charter jet was obviously brought down by a terrorist attack. The jihadis have not been successful  in bringing down commercial jets with on-board bombs, as Michael Schmidt points out:

If the Islamic State was behind the crash, it was able to mount the kind of attack that Al Qaeda has found difficult to carry out in recent years. At least three times since 2009, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen has come close but failed to bring down an airliner using bombs that were designed to be undetectable. 

Western intelligence officials have feared that the Islamic State has larger ambitions for attacks outside Syria and Iraq — where it seized large stretches of land in 2014 — especially after the United States and Russia began separate military operations against the group.

Why now? And why didn't the jihadis go after the United States? The U.S. has purportedly been bombing ISIS longer than Russia.

Bombs in cargo holds reek of spy craft, double agents and intelligence agencies. If the British were able to make a determination of terrorism because they intercepted chatter about the Metrojet explosion, they either knew that it was going to happen or knew that an ally agency was running the operation. This was definitely a tit-for-tat attack in the New Cold War.

Authoritarianism in Turkey and the United States + Islamic State Responds to Russia

Turkish president Recep Erdoğan's strategy of tension appears to have paid off. His Justice and Development Party (AKP), confounding pollsters who predicted another dead-heat election, has won a majority in parliament. It took the shredding of a ceasefire with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and sowing divisions in Turkish society that will not be bridged anytime soon, but it guarantees that Erdoğan will remain in power for the foreseeable future and that he will take a crack at revision of the constitution to formalize an executive presidency. Right now the presidency is mostly a ceremonial post, which necessitates that Erdoğan rule through cut-outs like prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsu report in "Erdogan’s Party in Turkey Regains Parliamentary Majority":

With 99 percent of the votes counted, according to the state broadcaster TRT, the Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., captured 49.3 percent of the popular vote, giving it a solid majority of 316 seats in Parliament.

The victory for the A.K.P. came at great cost to the cohesion of Turkish society. Critics say Mr. Erdogan’s divisive rhetoric, by denigrating opponents as terrorists or traitors, helped polarize the country. And a government crackdown on dissent in the lead-up to the vote, with mobs attacking newspaper offices and a recent raid on a media conglomerate opposed to the government, raised concerns abroad about Turkey’s commitment to democracy.

Erdoğan's raids on and closure of opposition media has an approximate parallel in the United States. The Republican National Committee (RNC), following the CNBC-hosted GOP debate last Wednesday, pulled a debate scheduled for February that was to be televised by NBC News and Telemundo. The feeling among the Republican presidential candidates, as well as the RNC, is that questions from the moderators have been hostile. The candidates are seeking to have more control over the process. To that end, they convened in Alexandria, VA in an attempt to articulate a negotiating position towards the networks.

As Ashley Parker notes in "Republican Campaigns Meet in an Effort to Alter Debates":

They emerged with a modest list of demands, including opening and closing statements of at least 30 seconds; “parity and integrity” on questions, meaning that all candidates would receive similarly substantive questions; no so-called lightning rounds; and approval of any graphics that are aired during the debate.

The campaign representatives also moved to take the Republican National Committee out of the debate negotiating process, calling for the campaigns to negotiate directly with the TV networks over format, and to receive information about the rules and criteria at least 30 days before each debate.

Ben Ginsberg, a top Republican lawyer and debate negotiator who was invited to serve as a facilitator at the meeting, is drafting a letter — without the R.N.C.’s input — that the campaigns plan to send to the networks within 48 hours. Mr. Ginsberg called the committee immediately after the meeting to convey the group’s next steps.

It is hard to generate any sense of outrage on behalf of the corporate networks or the sidelined RNC. The media monopoly and the national duopoly central committees are working hard to make sure that the candidates who have raised the most corporate cheddar are waved through to the general election. This means Hillary, and now, with the approval of billionaire investor Paul Singer, Marco Rubio.

Nonetheless, the orchestrated Republican attacks on the liberal bias of the corporate mainstream media reek of authoritarianism.

Sadly, as Erdoğan proved again yesterday, authoritarianism works. It is just in the case of the CNBC debate brouhaha authoritarianism is being used against the font of authority, the mainstream corporate media. So who knows how this is all going to play out in the GOP primary.

I think it is pretty safe to say that the corporate mainstream has successfully circled the wagons around Hillary. With the phony challenge of a Biden bid successfully surmounted, her first debate performance hailed as a commanding victory and the Benghazi committee hearing rapidly receding in her rear-view mirror, Hillary is all set to roll up Sanders come Super Tuesday.

A triumphant Erdoğan means that Europe will come a-calling again in search of a solution to the refugee crisis, a crisis which promises to grow more acute. Turkey's election in June, the one that failed to deliver Erdoğan his majority, was purported to be a referendum of Turkish disapproval of the war in Syria. Now that Erdoğan is in possession of his majority I would imagine that Turkish support for jihadist networks in Syria and attacks on Kurds will be amplified.

The downing of a Russian charter jet in Egypt is clearly the work of jihadists. Islamic State in the Sinai is claiming responsibility. Yet the West is putting up a smokescreen, saying that it couldn't be a jihadist group because such groups don't possess surface-to-air missiles. Poppycock. No such hedging was indulged when it came to blaming Novorossiyan forces for the downing of MH17. What we have here is a reprisal for Russia's forceful entry into the war in Syria.

Russia's reply should be interesting. For what it is worth, if I were a ruling member of the House of Saud, I would be nervous.