Britain's Blair Demands
a Thirty Years War
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Feb. 3—Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave an interview to BBC today, in which he called for a "generation of war" against al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups all over the globe. Blair compared the global war on terrorism to the 45-year Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union, and heaped praise on French President François Hollande for deploying French troops to Mali to beat back a jihadist insurgency that was purportedly threatening to take over the country's capital Bamaka. His statement directly reflected the British Empire's policy of "permanent war"—which, under current circumstances, is leading to thermonuclear confrontation with Russia and China, in an attempt to crush their sovereign independence.
Blair neglected to mention that both Britain and the United States have been fueling this permanent war, by allying with al-Qaeda and other Anglo/Saudi-backed jihadists in the overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya and in the ongoing effort to overthrow the Assad government in Syria. The former prime minister is the author of the doctrine of the "post-Westphalian" permanent global war doctrine, and has been a key controller of President Obama on behalf of the British Crown.
It is no coincidence that the escalation towards general war comes at a moment when the trans-Atlantic financial system is reaching a hyperinflationary breaking point. A decrepit financial empire is seeking to hold on to power, by spreading chaos and war among its potential challengers. (See Economics for our coverage of the exposure of massive derivatives losses at Italy's Monte dei Paschi of Siena bank and the German Deutsche Bank.)
Blair's psychotic rantings resonated at the annual Munich Security Conference (Feb. 1-3). NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen delivered a Blair-esque speech in which he declared that NATO would deploy wherever Alliance interests were threatened. He declared that he looked around the globe and saw an "arc of crises stretching from the Sahel to Central Asia," and vowed that NATO's future mission, following the withdrawal from Afghanistan, would be global in scope, would deploy special operations forces, rapid reaction forces, and missile defense capabilities to secure NATO dominance.
In fact, as our story in this section on Australia and the "Asia pivot" documents, the NATO threat to crush national sovereignty and enforce a global financial dictatorship, extends to the Pacific Basin as well.
All told, the Munich Conference involved a gang-up against Russia and China, highlighted by a late night panel on Feb. 1 (see below), where an asset of multibillionaire British agent George Soros, Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, held the Russian government accountable for the 60,000 deaths in Syria's civil war based on Moscow's support for the Assad government. The next morning, in a panel on the European security environment, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov skewered the permanent war gang by asserting that the only legitimate military actions were those approved by the UN Security Council, and that the West was supporting terrorist networks in Libya and Syria, the very forces that have been carrying out a terror war against the West and other regions (see below).
The conflict was out in the open, and the danger of rapid escalation is imminent.
Israel's Attack on Syria
As the Munich Conference was about to take place, Israel was engaging in an illegal military action inside Syrian territory, an action that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak endorsed. On Jan. 29, Israeli fighter jets invaded Syrian air space to bomb at least two targets—a military research facility outside Damascus and a truck caravan that Israel claimed was carrying advanced Scud missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
No evidence has been presented to verify the Israeli claim of Hezbollah rocket smuggling. Under any circumstances, the Israeli action was a flagrant violation of international law, aimed at escalating the two-year destabilization of Syria by NATO, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. What is far worse, the Israeli bombings were the first direct military actions by an outside power against Syria since the start of the destabilization. Israel has threatened to carry out further attacks.
It has been confirmed that there are Russian advisors at Syria's advanced air defense sites, and if Syria attempts to shoot down incoming Israeli fighter planes the next time they attack, the situation could quickly escalate. NATO has already deployed Patriot missile batteries along the southern Turkish border with Syria.
Clearly, the Israeli attack means that the situation in Syria indeed a hair trigger for general war, potentiallly drawing in NATO, Russia and even China. The immediacy of the threat of general war may have prompted the designated leader of the Syrian opposition, Sheikh Moaz al-Khatib, to offer for the first time to directly negotiate with the Assad government. At Munich, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi met with al-Khatib (see below).
But U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and UN Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi insisted that the precondition for any arrangement to end the fighting in Syria, was that President Bashar al-Assad step down. This is not going to happen.
And Now Iran, Africa ... ?
As the conference was winding down, Iran and the UN Permanent 5 countries plus Germany announced that there would be a meeting to discuss Iran's nuclear program in Kazakstan on Feb. 25. Outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also told NBC-TV that Iran has still not made a decision to build a nuclear bomb, echoing Vice President Biden's remarks in Munich that there is still "time and space" to negotiate a deal with Iran to avert military confrontation.
However, Israel's Barak shocked the Munich audience with a rant against Iran, in which he essentially declared that the time for talks has run out, that war is on, and no further attention would be paid to any critics.
The African continent is simultaneously set to explode. The French military intervention into Mali, fully backed by the Cameron government in Britain, is no quick in-and-out operation. Full-blown destabilization is spreading from Libya to Mali and throughout North Africa. Algeria, one of the few Maghreb countries to explicitly oppose the London-Paris-Washington overthrow of Qaddafi, is a prime target for Western-backed regime change, according to senior African diplomats. It is here in North Africa that Tony Blair's generational war is already underway.
