[S]ome might not want this sort of freedom which reeks of oil and is splattered with blood.” – Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko, a Soviet-style dictator
Condi, who has scorned Belarus as “the last true dictatorship in Europe,” met with opposition groups from Belarus during a NATO summit in neighboring Lithuania.
In what the press is speculating “could be the beginning stages of a future US-backed attempt at regime change” Rice told the dissidents there will be “a road to democracy in Belarus.” A Belarus deputy minister condemned the meeting as a “return to the times of the Cold War”.
Today, reports the BBC, “presidents of Russia and Belarus are meeting in Moscow a day after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for political change in Minsk.”
Belarus and Russia have accused Rice of interfering in the country’s internal affairs. Belarus is an “important defense partner to Russia and a vital part of its gas export pipeline network.”
Why? F. William Engdahl of Asia Times — in “The oil factor in Bush’s ‘war on tyranny'” — says, “A new ‘war on tyranny’ is being groomed to replace the outmoded ‘war on terror’.” More below:
In his January 20 inaugural speech, Engdahl writes, Bush declared that “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”
About Belarus specifically, Engdahl writes:
Belarus is also no champion of human rights [PHOTO from BBC: “Prominent political rivals of Mr Lukashenko have disappeared”], but from Washington’s standpoint, the fact that its government is tightly bound to Moscow makes it the obvious candidate for a Ukraine-style “Orange Revolution” regime-change effort. That would complete the US encirclement of Russia on the west and of Russia’s export pipelines to Europe, were it to succeed. Some 81% of all Russian oil exports today go to Western European markets. Such a Belarus regime change now would limit the potential for a nuclear-armed Russia to form a bond with France, Germany and the EU as potential counterweight against the power of the United States sole superpower, a highest priority for Washington Eurasia geopolitics.
Engdahl lays out the global “tyranny” strategy:
[……]
Rice [PHOTO: Speaking at NATO summit on April 21] dropped a hint in her Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony two days prior to the Bush inauguration. The White House, of course, cleared her speech first.
Target some tyrannies, nurture others
Rice hinted at Washington’s target list of tyrants amid an otherwise bland statement in her Senate testimony. She declared, “in our world there remain outposts of tyranny … in Cuba, and Burma and North Korea, and Iran and Belarus, and Zimbabwe”. Aside from the fact that the designated secretary of state did not bother to refer to “Burma” under its present name, Myanmar, the list is an indication of the next phase in Washington’s strategy of preemptive wars for its global domination strategy.
As reckless as this seems given the Iraq quagmire, the fact that little open debate on such a broadened war has yet taken place indicates how extensive the consensus is within the Washington establishment for the war policy. According to the January 24 New Yorker report from Seymour Hersh, Washington already approved a war plan for the coming four years of Bush II, which targets 10 countries from the Middle East to East Asia. The Rice statement gives a clue to six of the 10. She also suggested Venezuela is high on the non-public target list.
[……]
According also to former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official Vince Cannistraro, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s new war agenda includes a list of 10 priority countries. In addition to Iran, it includes Syria, Sudan, Algeria, Yemen and Malaysia. According to a report in the January 23 Washington Post, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), also has a list of what the Pentagon calls “emerging targets” for preemptive war, which includes Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, the Philippines and Georgia, a list he has sent to Rumsfeld.
While Georgia may now be considered under de facto North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or US control since the election of President Mikheil Saakashvili, the other states are highly suggestive of the overall US agenda for the new “war on tyranny”. If we add Syria, Sudan, Algeria and Malaysia, as well as Rice’s list of Cuba, Belarus, Myanmar and Zimbabwe, to the JCS list of Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia and the Philippines, we have some 12 potential targets for either Pentagon covert destabilization or direct military intervention, surgical or broader. And, of course, North Korea, which seems to serve as a useful permanent friction point to justify US military presence in the strategic region between China and Japan. Whether it is 10 or 12 targets, the direction is clear.
Engdahl concludes:
About the Conoco connection, briefly:
On January 21, 2005, a BBC analyst wrote:
By Leonid Ragozin, BBCRussian.com
President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus has long been a target of US criticism – and the Bush administration clearly has it on its radar.
The new US “outposts of tyranny” list presented by the incoming US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, mentions just one European country – Belarus.
President Lukashenko, who maintains an iron Soviet-style grip on Belarus, hit back on Friday, saying “some might not want this sort of freedom which reeks of oil and is splattered with blood“.
And what is it that you and I — world-weary and highly wary veterans of the Bush administration — could tell President Lukashenko about his defiance?
Can you imagine the damage that could be done by the team of Rice/Bolton? Neocons and their ideology are a creeping cancer on the globe. How long before our ‘friends’ decide to come together and go for a little political chemo-therapy?
Yes. That Asia Times piece is a riveting, terrifying read (if you can, click on the link and read it all) … and to see it echoed by the BBC’s and other analysts … and of course our own Sy Hersh.
I shot down another Engdahl article in this diary a few weeks back:
Russia, Ukraine, oil, US diplomacy – all in one!. He sees strange conspiracies where there are none and says silly things.
There actual business reasons for actions of oil companies, not just evil geostrategic plans!
As I said to you at Kos: he’s just one source for concern about Bush’s war on tyranny Shoot him down, but you tell me why the world press is focused on Rice’s meeting with DISSIDENTS at a NATO summit, and why a BBC analyst says essentially the same thing. I realize I’m stepping a bit on your turf, but, aside from this or that journalist’s theories, you have to look at the facts.
of the Soviet Union, the United States has been involved in the Caususes, in a very quiet way, in a mini-Cold War with Russia. And yes, oil supply routes are the major motivation.
Jerome understands the legitimate exploratory and supply business angle of this.
And yet, there is also this battle for political influence going on as well. I think that battle sometimes trumps business considerations.
And now this Causus battle has splilled north into Ukraine and Belarus.
I think Soj is also a great person for information on Moldovia, Georgia, and the whole region.
It has become, IMO, a new mini Cold War.
As you know, I am not defending Bush and his ilk, just saying that not everything in the oil business can be linked to grand conspiracies.
Engdahl is making tendencious use of the facts. For instance:
That would complete the US encirclement of Russia on the west and of Russia’s export pipelines to Europe, were it to succeed. Some 81% of all Russian oil exports today go to Western European markets.
Only 10-15% of Russian oil exports go through Belarus, which is not what he implies, is it? The rest go through the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, which are internal European Seas and are controlled by the US so long as they are allies with Europe. In the case of conflict with Europe, the US would have absolutely NO control over these exports.
A world oil price of US$150 a barrel or more in the next few years would be joined by chokepoint control of the supply by one power if Washington has its way.
What control of supply? As the largest importer, with little spare capacity worldwide, pretty much every significant oil producer has leverage over the USa today, via its ability to cut off production and created a supply shock on the oil markets. The US ca ndeny oil to China, and that’s about it.
Lukoil, the second largest private oil company in the world
I thought Big Oil was all controlled by the Americans? It’s pretty misleading to call them like this, and technically untrue on any metric except highly artificial ones (for Lukoil, they have the second largest oil (as opposed to oil&gas) reserves, but they lag behind many other companies on all other metrics (overall reserves, production, market value, turnover, etc…)
“Washington”, of course, today is shorthand for the policy domination by a private group of military and energy conglomerates, from Halliburton to McDonnell Douglas, from Bechtel to ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco
McDonnell Douglas does not even exist as an independent company any more. Facts, facts, facts.
I could go on, but you get the point. It’s sloppy and dishojnest, even if it has the right target, and it thus discredits the message of aggression and recklessness of the Bush admin.
Oh, and Belarus IS a nasty dictatorship.
Jerome, your comments are very interesting in terms of fast-checking by the source, Asia Times. Is Asia Times inattentive in its fact-checking?
Your comments make so much sense from a business standpoint. I just fear that Bush et al. aren’t very business-like — i.e., they’re so consumed by their ideology that they’re rather lax, in these international adventures, in conducting prudent “due diligence.” As we’ve seen painfully in Iraq.
Honestly, I don’t think Lukashenko really has too much to be worried about in terms of direct U.S. interference. My feeling is that we’re basically just doing a lot of saber-rattling.
While I don’t necessarily think that the Bush Admin’s policies in this regard are deliberately racist, the inclusion of Belarus on our lists of “tyrannies” means that the Admin doesn’t need to take heat for only targeting non-white countries. But much like another nation on the list, Burma/Myanmar, it’s almost certainly just for show. So long as Lukashenko doesn’t attempt to initiate strife with the U.S., his close ties to Russia — and the fear by the latter of encirclement — probably guarantee his safety; a move against him would not viewed favorably by Russia. Belarus poses no conceivable threat to the U.S. (having shipped all its nuclear warheads back to Russia almost ten years ago), and does not possess all that much material wealth.
Also — and this is just a hunch — I suspect that any unilateral attempt by Bush/Rice to effect regime change in Belarus would not be looked upon kindly by the EU, since they (somewhat rightly) view Belarus as within their sphere of interest. This overview by the EU appears to support that general concept, especially with regard to the European Neighborhood Policy of 2003. While relations between the EU and Belarus are currently chilly, I don’t know whether Bush and Rice want to risk alienating the states of “New Europe” the way we did with “Old Europe” in the run-up to the Iraq War.
Then again, with this group of clowns running things in Washington, anything is possible.
A few thoughts occur to me.
I never thought that Osama bin Laden and his friends were a major threat to the United States. They can kill people from time to time but they have nowhere near enougth power to seriously threaten a country of 300 million people, let alone the whole of Western civilization.
If President Bush wishes to create alliances of enemies powerful enougth to really threaten America, then a global war on tyranny (carefully distinguishing between such monsters as the democratically elected President Chavez of Venezuela and such crusaders for American liberty as President Karimov of Uzbekistan)would probably achieve his aim.
The Belarus President is undoutedly a tyrant. However would it be a sane policy for the United States to bring about a pro-American regime change. The Russians are probably already concerned about being encircled by American allies. Belarus might be the last straw. Has Secretary Rice, a Russian specialist, realised how Moscow would react? Does the Administration seriously think it does not matter if it recreates the Cold War, especially as the Russians (and the Chinese) are no longer handicapping themselves with Communist ideology.
If the United States administration seriously wants to seek global hegemony by military force they would need to totally reorganise American society. It would need a militarised society, like 19th century Prussia. A draft would be essential and not one which rich and well connected people would be able to avoid.
Are the American people willing to expend the blood and treasure which would be necessary? I seriously doubt it.
In any event I fail to see how a society facing economic ruin in the fairly near future, as the United States seems to be, could finance a global struggle.
The more grandiose the neocons dreams may be the more certain would be disaster.