The chaos that the administration in Washington is working hard to cultivate around the world is no simple task. Some of it can be understood in the context of vendettas coupled with national interests, but much of it is incomprehensible by any logic.
Decades could elapse before the relevant intelligence documents in Langley or elsewhere will be declassified. Or we might have to wait for another Wikileaks or Edward Snowden to discover the unknowns about the disguised coups that have been taking place for a while in more than one place around the world, and which U.S. policy seems to be interested in, if not supportive of.
In Venezuela, for example, it is as if a contemporary retribution against Chavez’s days is being implemented against his successor, in a way that is reminiscent of the coup carried out against Salvador Allende in Santiago. That coup happened to take place on September 11, as well. Noam Chomsky even called it the “first 9/11,” 28 years before the 9/11 of 2001.
In Tripoli, Libya, coups take place almost on a daily basis. These also seem like they are meant to take revenge against the Gaddafi era, as though his horrific death was not enough to serve as an example for those who dare stand up to the “New Rome.”
There even was a third 9/11 in Libya, the killing of the U.S. ambassador. He was an innocent victim of the hatred of the gunmen who killed him, but also the victim of his own administration’s policies. Meanwhile, Libya is fighting a terminal illness, before its artificial and forced unity crumbles, and is struggling to resist the Western push towards its partitioning.
Egypt, Libya’s neighbor to the east, is living one day at a time, between a revolution that did not survive, and another that has yet to come. Between geographic and demographic anxieties, Egypt has now become two Egypts, not one.
In Qatar, the coup was bloodless. A U.S. officer came, delivered the orders, and left. An emir and a sheikh – the former Qatari ruler and his foreign minister – set the date for their departure immediately.
Only a few weeks earlier, they thought that they were the rulers of a great regional empire, and the exclusive representatives of Caesar, from the Gulf to the Mediterranean. One member of the duo – thanks to the irony or curse of fate – had been telling Gaddafi himself a few weeks before the war on Libya, that Washington had asked him to prepare the necessary studies to partition Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia itself, which was established with the first oil well in 1932, survived for eighty years – the same average age of its rulers – in the American bosom, ever since Roosevelt came to Riyadh straight from the Yalta meeting. Today, the American media is already publishing maps detailing how Saudi could be partitioned, just as Washington is preoccupied with plans for a second Yalta.
The same brand of chaos was carried by the Americans and all Western powers all the way to Russia’s borders. Exactly one month ago, the president of Ukraine had consulted with Moscow and agreed to a deal. On February 21, he signed a document for an internal settlement.
However, the calculations of external powers did not agree with de-escalation in Kiev. The riots continued, and suddenly turned violent. There were deaths, the fuel of color-coded revolutions and chameleonic policies. The events of 2004 were repeated.
Is it possible that Washington had not anticipated Moscow’s reaction? Is it logical that the Americans did not realize that the heir of Peter the Great would not leave the land of Prince Vladimir an easy prey for the “decaying and decadent” West, according to the Kremlin’s old-new propaganda? Did they not know that he would not remain silent or retreat, and that he would be ready to mobilize his army, his white horse, and his judo garb to defend the tsarist legacy and Russia’s interests and future?
Many hypotheses may arise in this context. For instance, Washington may not be concerned by Moscow’s response and related calculations. Indeed, Washington stands to gain in all cases. It is enough for America to poke the Russian bear dreaming of restoring a bipolar world, even if with a neo-Nazi fork, without any cost – be it in blood or in treasure.
Whether it ends up hurting Russia or hurting Europe, the U.S. benefits. To be sure, Washington’s goal is not to bring Ukraine into Catherine Ashton’s Union, but to wrap NATO around Comrade Putin’s neck. This is where the second hypothesis of the American adventure – or gamble – comes into play.
What if the wager or the goal was exactly what is coming out of the Crimea now? What if the covert American plan is to push someone to begin redrawing the borders in the Old World, to expose the map of the Old Continent, its brittleness, and its explosive artificiality?
Going forward, and no matter what solution is found for Ukraine, it is certain that the Crimea will remain Russian. The step could become the first move in a domino effect, in a game similar to the one Washington played twice before, over the span of a quarter of a century: The first was when the Soviet Union collapsed through the implosion of former Yugoslavia. The second was when Washington itself brokered the secession of Kosovo, in violation of the international law and legitimacy that it is invoking today.
Is the plan then that the Crimea would be the third and fixed domino in the game fantasized by the Americans, like they fantasize about a game of “Smack Down” in Wrestling, a stampede involving two teams in American football, or a hockey brawl behind transparent glass that lets them see all the excitement from a distance?
Do American decision-makers spend their time these days in front of their overt and covert screens, next to a pack of beers and popcorn bags as they watch what happens in the Crimea and beyond? To be sure, all of the national borders in Eurasia and Europe are like those of the Crimea, from Poland to France, and from the Basque to Scotland.
More importantly, do they want the same kind of chaos before that or after, for our region, where history books still mention that Wilson, Obama’s predecessor, was opposed to Sykes-Picot? Between the “American Dream” turned nightmare outside the Land of the Free, and “creative chaos”, everything is possible in the calculations of Uncle Sam.
Follow Jean Aziz on Twitter | @JeanAziz1
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.