Putin antes up
Vladimir Putin's adoption of the Bush doctrine in the wake of the Beslan school calamity - that is, Russia is preparing to make pre-emptive strikes on "terrorist bases" anywhere in the world - may seem to overplay the Chechnya card. But then again, it appears the Chechens didn't do it. Though sole living detainee Nur-Pashi Kulayev would seem to be Chechen, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov not one of his countrymen has yet been identified among the dead hostage takers, and Kulayev has said that the goal of the attack was "to unleash a war on the whole of the Caucasus."
If not Chechens, then who, and for what cause? And why has the White House rather perversely called upon Russia to solve its terrorism problem through diplomacy, though the Bush policy is to "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them"?
Beslan needs the big picture, and the big picture is the Great Game.
Like a neverending Monopoly tournament, imperial rivals have been playing the Great Game for centuries. But then, no one said domination of the Eurasian landmass would be easy. The pot, however, is about as big as it comes. "Who controls Eurasia controls the world," wrote former National Security Advisor (and current advisor to the "US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce") Zbigniew Brzezinski in The Grand Chessboard. The "War on Terror" is the latest - and so some players hope, last - round. In May 2001, Dick Cheney's National Energy Policy singled out the Caspian Basin as a "rapidly growing new area of supply," and called for "energy security...to be a priority of our trade and foreign policy." Now, thanks to 9/11, American troops are stationed for the first time on the former territory of the Soviet Union, in the Caspian region, and they "will pull out only when all al-Qaeda cells have been eradicated." In other words, never.
If Putin indeed targets "terrorist bases anywhere in the world," then by all rights America's Middle Asian proxy of Pakistan deserves be in Russian crosshairs. Pakistan has been playing a dangerous and duplicitous game since at least the late-70s, when its intelligence service began inciting Muslim extremists to serve as the patsies of US geopolitics. Brzezinski admitted in 1998 that he and CIA director William Casey had intentionally provoked the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - which they anticipated would be an empire-ending quagmire - by providing covert aid to the Afghan mujahideen via Pakistan's ISI. "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
The CIA-ISI-al Qaeda triangle is a decades' old tool of American statecraft, and on 9/11 it dramatically raised the stakes of the Great Game. It now appears Russia's not yet ready to fold.
Read Lutz Kleveman in The Guardian last October for more on how the Great Game contextualizes the "War on Terror," and follow Asia Times for superlative coverage of the players moves. (See, for example, Pepe Escobar's study of the 9/11 smoking gun of Pakistani Lietenant-General Mahmoud Ahmad.) For deeper analysis of Beslan's geopolitical implications, I commend xymphora's posts of yesterday and today.
If not Chechens, then who, and for what cause? And why has the White House rather perversely called upon Russia to solve its terrorism problem through diplomacy, though the Bush policy is to "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them"?
Beslan needs the big picture, and the big picture is the Great Game.
Like a neverending Monopoly tournament, imperial rivals have been playing the Great Game for centuries. But then, no one said domination of the Eurasian landmass would be easy. The pot, however, is about as big as it comes. "Who controls Eurasia controls the world," wrote former National Security Advisor (and current advisor to the "US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce") Zbigniew Brzezinski in The Grand Chessboard. The "War on Terror" is the latest - and so some players hope, last - round. In May 2001, Dick Cheney's National Energy Policy singled out the Caspian Basin as a "rapidly growing new area of supply," and called for "energy security...to be a priority of our trade and foreign policy." Now, thanks to 9/11, American troops are stationed for the first time on the former territory of the Soviet Union, in the Caspian region, and they "will pull out only when all al-Qaeda cells have been eradicated." In other words, never.
If Putin indeed targets "terrorist bases anywhere in the world," then by all rights America's Middle Asian proxy of Pakistan deserves be in Russian crosshairs. Pakistan has been playing a dangerous and duplicitous game since at least the late-70s, when its intelligence service began inciting Muslim extremists to serve as the patsies of US geopolitics. Brzezinski admitted in 1998 that he and CIA director William Casey had intentionally provoked the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - which they anticipated would be an empire-ending quagmire - by providing covert aid to the Afghan mujahideen via Pakistan's ISI. "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
The CIA-ISI-al Qaeda triangle is a decades' old tool of American statecraft, and on 9/11 it dramatically raised the stakes of the Great Game. It now appears Russia's not yet ready to fold.
Read Lutz Kleveman in The Guardian last October for more on how the Great Game contextualizes the "War on Terror," and follow Asia Times for superlative coverage of the players moves. (See, for example, Pepe Escobar's study of the 9/11 smoking gun of Pakistani Lietenant-General Mahmoud Ahmad.) For deeper analysis of Beslan's geopolitical implications, I commend xymphora's posts of yesterday and today.
posted by Jeff Wells at 9:12 a.m.
11 Comments:
Just so you know, it's Pepe Escobar, not Pablo.
-Sunnie
ouch. Pepe, of course. I'll edit.
and oh yeah - thanks!
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