01-08-2016, 04:10 PM
Drew Phipps Wrote:I note that Mr. Peter's map and plan to redraw the Middle-east date back to 2006, the GW Bush years. I strongly suspect that there are earlier such plans, based on Gen. Wesley Clark's story of "7 countries in 5 years" planning documents in the 2001 Pentagon. I doubt that Erdogan was unaware of such stories until 2016.
As far as the fast-tracking of Gulenist army officers, that strikes me as more of a motive for Erdogan to fake a "coup attempt" and giving him cassis belli to arrest them, than an actual "coup" (at least at the current time). Maybe the US had plans eventually to replace Erdogan loyalists with Gulen loyalists. (Maybe they didn't, and it just so happens that the more well educated officers did better than the less well educated ones.) That still strikes me as grounds for Erdogan to move presumptively against them, rather than wait for whatever they may have planned to occur in the fullness of time.
It seems to be true that the US has always been willing to sacrifice the Kurdish desire for self determination (and there are likely other such examples) for its own economic interests. I doubt that will be different this time around.
Indeed, the map dates to 2006. The Wolfowitz Doctrine dates to 1992-6 and still is the governing strategy of the Neocons who control Washington and foreign policy decisions there. Years and decades flow by but big geopolitical strategy decisions last an awful long time. For example the British strategy that lasted well over 100 years to divide the main European powers by starting wars there to ensure no other nation could effectively compete or join together in an alliance to the detriment of Britain. The US have simply adapted that same strategy in Europe against Russia, particularly to ensure that Germany and Russia do not form an alliance as that would be the end of American influence on that continent - and would also impact heavily on their wider global ambitions too.
The problem with the US and the Kurds is that they have made an enemy of Erdogan in adopting their current strategy. Erdogan certainly cannot be trusted, but he clearly is breaking away from the US and pivoting to Russia.
I'm afraid I simply cannot see any common sense validity to your argument about a fake coup attempt (this remains for me nothing other than a flimsy and in-credible fig-leaf argument developed by Washington in event of failure of the coup), because it necessarily has to ignore all the recent build up events that led to the pivot to Russia.
It is far more sensible to look at those events from the prism of the impact they would have on the grand strategy of the US and a coup to ensure failure of the pivot to Russia - which was prefigured some time before the coup - is not only the obvious choice for Washington, but they have a very long history in such matters. The only thing I see that was in the offing was exactly what happened.
I consider the development of Gulenists in Turkey's military to be part of the US's usual divide and conquer policy and I believe it was put in place to keep Erdogan off balance. This is not strategy that is peculiar to Turkey but, I believe, SOP for all US allies. For example, I know that in the UK the CIA was (and probably still does) openly recruit members of the British army - and did so for decades.
From the viewpoint of the US this would be an obvious thing to do - friend and allies also need to know who the boss is and changes in long term strategic goals cannot be allowed to be threatened by up and coming politicians who may see things differently. Obviously, from the UK perspective this is not only disloyal but traitorous - but no government is going to do anything about it. The rational is a case of always being in a position to trigger a coup should it needed to keep all the shipping sailing in the same direction.
In 1970's Britain it is a matter of public record that a coup almost manifested against the duly elected prime minister, Harold Wilson. In the end he resigned and began almost immediately to investigate the circumstances of the CIA planned coup, by invoking the help of two investigative journalists.
The foregoing explains, I think, how deep politics really operates in its geopolitical manifestation and it also has the advantage of having a large number of past examples ready to hand to buttress it.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14