Trump, Erdogan, Netanyahu and the risks of war in Syria (and Eastern Mediterranean)

By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

Since 2016, people in the US and all over the world  have been debating whether or not Trump is a Russian agent! Of course, a mere journalist like me cannot know whether this is true or not. Even the intelligence services seem to be confused on this issue!

In addition to being a journalist, I studied Physics and my father happened to also be  a physicist. When I was a child, he tought me that, when examining a problem, I have to begin not by taking my own views, fears, hopes or aspirations for granted. I should rather begin by the observed reality itself and then develop theories which explain it, not the other way round. This is why it seems to me better to begin by examining what Μr. Trump is doing to understand what he is.   

What Mr. Trump has done is extremely hostile to the Russian interests. He  has continued and accelerated the arms race, abolished the INF treaty, bombed Syria twice, in spite of the presence there of Russian troops, made direct threats to use nuclear weapons (against North Korea and Iran), abolished all kind of rules in international relations, ordered the assassination of Gen. Soleimani, rumoured to be a man having greatly contributed to the rapprochement between Tehran and Moscow, imposed new sanctions on Russia and supported the Ukraine with more weapons. He is doing everything he can to destroy the German-Russian plans for energy co-operation (Nord Stream II), he has overthrown pro-Russian Morales in Bolivia and tried the same with Maduro. In the light of such policies, it is a little bit difficult to call such a politician a friend of Russia, much more a Russian agent! If Russia has friends and even agents like Mr. Trump, then it does not need enemies.

Many people in the US and in the world misunderstood Mr. Trump  in the beginning. They wanted to fight against US imperialism and neoliberal totalitarianism, but did not understand (or did not want to understand) Imperialism as an organic product of Capitalism (which they like, but not  its results) and they hoped Trump could become their man. They thought Trump was a kind of fighter against the establishment, an isolationist, an opponent of wars. (They have thus fallen into a trap analogous to the one German voters fell into, when they supported Hitler, thinking he was a kind of anti-establishment socialist!). Errors, even serious ones,  are not only human, but can also be the greatest teacher of humans, on condition they are not too grave and that people have the courage to acknowledge, correct and learn from them  as soon as possible.

Two months after Soleimani’s assassination, Trump’s game came to a new climax with his “absolute support” for Erdogan against Syria and Russia.  But there is even more. The State Department special representative to Turkey has asked the Pentagon to supply Patriot missiles to Ankara. The State Department is run by Pompeo, who seems to be the leading figure among the neocon friends of the President, an absolutely central person in the effort to realise the big wars in the Middle East that the Neocons  want to provoke and, also, a “theoretician” of the new, fully totalitarian version of Imperialism (read his recent speech in Stanford University). The US Military have denied providing Patriot missiles to Ankara, out of fear of being involved in a conflict with Russia. It is worth pointing out here that the US Department of Defense (the US deep state by definition), has constantly opposed the ideas of Mr. Trump’s neoconservative friends during the last three years, contributing to avoiding disasters in Korea, Syria and Iran.

A conflict between Russia, Syria and Turkey would represent a colossal victory for the neo-totalitarian forces seeking a war against Iran and a widespread conflict in the Middle East, the chaos and the “war of civilizations” throughout the region and beyond, in both the eastern Mediterranean and in the Indian subcontinent. 

Trump, Netanyahu and the Neocons

We have tried to answer the “Russiagate” question by examining Trump’s policy. If we use the same method, we will also conclude that if there is a country which has most profited from Mr. Trump’s policies it is none other than Netanyahu’s Israel. In reality the Trump political enterprise was not but a way to put the dissatisfaction created by the Neocon wars to the service of repeating them. Elected upon a promise to stop them, Mr. Trump did everything possible to provoke a new conflict with Iran, much more serious than any of the wars we have seen up to now.

Donald Trump has done everything possible to satisfy Israel (Jerusalem, Settlements, Golan etc.), more than all other US Presidents together. At the same time he overturned US official policy on the central question of Iran in order to satisfy the plans of the Israeli Prime Minister and the Neocon Party of War. Netanyahu was informed beforehand of the decision to kill Soleimani, a decision kept secret from the leadership of the US Congress!

One could reasonably ask at this point whether America is the superpower or whether Israel has taken its place, and how that has happened, but these are rather unorthodox questions. Israel is so powerful that it has virtually forbidden any discussion of its influence. It is the only country in the world that has done so. You can criticise Americans, Russians, Germans, Chinese and anyone else, but not Israel. If you do it you are immediately classified as anti-Semitic (or masochistic, if you are Jewish yourself!).

Mr Trump even appointed the most extremist Neo-conservatives, such as Pompeo and Bolton, to the most critical posts of his administration. Neo-conservatives are the architects of the wars in the Middle East, and Netanyahu is one of their inspirers, creators and leaders.

We will not conclude from all of this that Mr. Trump is an agent of Netanyahu and the Neo-Conservatives, because we dislike this kind of reasoning. We are however afraid that, without doing much research, we have already provided the reader with more and more convincing evidence of the Trump-Netanyahu and Trump-Neocons relationship, more convincing, if juxtaposed with what the FBI found after searching  the US President’s relations with Russia for three years.

But we should admit that President Trump has an astonishing capacity to make other people believe he is their friend. It seems one of them is Tayip Erdogan.

Read more at http://www.defenddemocracy.press/trump-erdogan-netanyahu-and-the-risks-of-war-in-syria-and-eastern-mediterranean/