Tag Archives: British Empire

Defence, historical, Russia and Russian relations, Uncategorized

The Imperial Vacuum in the Middle East and Near East, and Its Consequences

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Initial Thoughts

I have been reading about what appears to have been the appalling and unusually cruel murder of a dissident Saudi journalist, supposedly cut up while still alive by some kind of Saudi Arabian “security” team in the Consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul.

This news item made me once again muse on the unsatisfactory position in the “Levant”, the Middle East and also what was once called the Near East.

The region is not one that I know well personally. I have been to Qatar twice on short visits, once in 2001 (when Doha was a rather pleasant and rather sleepy place) and again in 2008 (by which time it had become a horrible, dystopian and skyscraping sprawl). I spent less than a week in the Luxor Hilton in 1994, and another three months in Egypt in 1998 (Aswan, the Red Sea, Alexandria and the oasis of Siwa). I have also spent about 4 months in Turkey and Turkish North Cyprus.

The Gulf

What many younger people fail to realize is just how recent (in present form) are the phenomena we know as Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Qatar etc. Take Abu Dhabi: when I was at school in England, aged 14, in 1970, there were a couple of rather unpleasant boys whose father was chief of police in Abu Dhabi, which was at the time a dusty desert enclave just beginning to profit from its huge hydrocarbon wealth. The British still supplied the senior military, police and other officials in Abu Dhabi at that time. Abu Dhabi, which had been known (right up to the Second World War) only for its pearls and for the slave trade, first struck oil in 1958 (or rather BP, as concession-holder, did). That first strike was followed by others, in 1959, 1962 and 1965.

The growth of Abu Dhabi in terms of population can be judged by the following progression: in 1960, the entire resident population of the city itself was 25,000. That grew to 50,000 by 1965 (though falling back to 46,400 by 1969). By 1995, the population was 398,695, and by 2014 was apparently 1,205,963, an increase of 31% even on the previous year! The latest estimate for the (entire) Abu Dhabi population (2018) is nearly 3 million! Abu Dhabi city (which contains about two-thirds of the entire population) was planned in 1967 for 40,000 inhabitants, which was changed in the 1970s (i.e. less than a decade later!) to a projection of 600,000. The present (2018) population of the city is said to number about 2 million. About 90% of the population of the emirate is foreign.

Qatar, likewise, is a very recent phenomenon in its recent form. Oil was discovered only in 1940, after which successive oil and gas finds in later decades transformed the small enclave once populated by a few thousand fishermen and pearl divers. The population of the entire sultanate in 1970 was 108,000, whereas in 2018 it is between 2.5 million and 3 million. As with Abu Dhabi and other Gulf Arab “states”, something like 90% of the population is foreign and that 90% does almost all of the work (from banking to street-sweeping), and has few rights.

I was once told, around 1977, by a construction person who spent his time in the Gulf, that he was engaged on constructing a new airport (I forget exactly where) there. He told me that the growth in the region (even then) had been phenomenal. I asked him where he thought that the Gulf Arabs would be by some date in the future (probably 2000, but I have in fact forgotten which year I specified) and he answered, cynically, “back riding their camels”! Well, he was wrong (if 2000 was the year), but I wonder whether he will be so wrong when looked back at from, say, 2050 or even 2030.

The Gulf “states” or statelets have no resilience: 90% of their population consists of expats, many of whom are from poor parts of Asia. The 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait showed that, for all their expensive Western military toys, the Gulf rulers and their forces are men of straw.

Some Gulf states are running out of hydrocarbons, others have understood that the demand for oil may have peaked with the development of other energy sources, and so have begun to diversify economically. However, in the end, the future for these socially-backward societies with their “ready-to-wear” (bought) Western toys and expertise may be not so good.

The Main Part of the Middle East

We have seen that, from the time of open proclamation of the New World Order [NWO] immediately after 1989, the NWO has destabilized the Middle East and North Africa. Israel is of course pivotal. The destabilization has, overall, helped Israel. Its major opponents militarily (Syria, Iraq) have been cast into chaos, Iran has been embroiled in conflict in Iraq, Yemen and Syria, Egypt has been further suborned and placed under NWO-controlled dictatorship, while even Libya (peripheral, but wealthy and always anti-Israel) has been broken up internally. There are now no regional armies able to pose an immediate threat to Israel, the “Zionist entity”.

Turkey

Turkey was, for much of the past century, a relatively static and relatively neutral player on the geopolitical stage. That was the genius of Ataturk, to make Turkey militarily-strong without (usually, much) using that power externally. Now, Turkey risks being drawn into the sphere of destabilization.

The Big Picture

The combined region of the Middle East and Near East has always been the stage for empires, among them the Alexandrine Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantine Romans, the Ottomans, the British; the French too (from Napoleon’s day until 1945). There were attempts by others to exercise imperial power: the Russians under both Tsarism and Sovietism; also, briefly, Iran under the Shah in the 1960s and 1970s. Now, beyond the strictly regional squabbling players, there are attempts at larger-scale control: Russia, the USA (i.e. the NWO), as well as, on a more limited level of power than the first two (and also than under the Shah), Iran again.

It is clear that the only solution to the problems of the regions, particularly of the core Middle East, likely to last long, will be the imposition of a supervening imperium which can subordinate all existing states to its control. That means that the Arab states and Israel would be ruled by this quasi-imperial power. It is equally clear that such an imperium does not exist. The Americans have huge destructive resources, but lack the imperial will and desire which would enable them to succeed the British, the Ottomans, Byzantium, Rome etc. That is also true of the Russians, who also can be described as largely “defensive” (wishing to defend their Southern flank as much as anything). The Iranians have not the power to make a substantial difference in this arena.

The conclusion is, to me, obvious: the future of the region is not another imperial or quasi-imperial chapter, but large-scale destruction only.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Dhabi

http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/abu-dhabi-population/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Qatar

 

Defence, historical, Reminiscences and Musings, Russia and Russian relations, Uncategorized

There Should Have Been An Honourable Peace in 1939 or 1940

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The Background

September the 9th, 2018. 79 years and 8 days since the famous German attack on the Polish radio station at then Gleiwitz; 79 years and 6 days since Britain (and so the entire British Empire) and France declared war on Germany; about 78 and a bit years since the German defeat of France, since the British retreat from Dunkirk; 78 years since the air Battle of Britain.

What weakens the usual System-history narrative about the history of those times is the a priori assumption or, if you like, a Grundnorm [basic underlying concept or belief, often unquestioned or deliberately made impossible to question], that the declaration of war by Britain and France was unquestionably both “the right thing to do” and unavoidable.

The typical, conventional System view, as displayed above, is of course grounded on an even deeper-held belief or Grundnorm, that is that the German government of Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP was so evil that it had to be destroyed. That view (at the time and really until the 1970s at least –talking about British attitudes–) was based on the opinion that Germany was again trying, for the second or third time in memory, and as a continental power, to take over mainland Europe. More recently, the more Jewish-influenced attitude has held sway, because of the Jewish control or veto over the worlds of publishing, academia, politics, msm etc in the West: that Germany had to be confronted and defeated because of its policy re. Jews.

The whole “Germany had to be defeated because of the ‘holocaust'” nonsense is of quite recent date. Not often (i.e. never) mentioned to the brainwashed masses or to their equally brainwashed offspring in British schools, is the fact that not one of the world leaders or the most important military leaders (e.g. Churchill) made any mention of “extermination programmes” or “gas chambers” in their spoken remarks or post-war written memoirs. The Jewish-Zionist element has taken control of the historical narrative and completely twisted it. That is why “they” hate any historical revisionism. They present a weight of mutually-quoting fakery as if it were a weight of evidence. In any case, even the Zionist propagandists do not claim any German “extermination plan” or programme for the Jews  until 1941.

Returning to war and peace in 1939-40, we see that the big picture shows a world far more than today split between European empires. The British Empire ruled between a quarter and a third of the world. Most of the rest (leaving aside the Soviet Union, the USA and China) was ruled by other Europeans: empires of the French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Belgians. The depredations of the early imperial days had begun to give way to the idea of stewardship. The native peoples were beginning to be looked after, the wildlife the same. All that (which became so positive in the 1950s) was ruined by the Second World War and its aftermath. Decolonization, globalist finance-capitalism etc have been disastrous for the peoples and environment of Africa, South America, Asia.

In Europe too, we see how disastrous was the decision to go to war in 1939. Immense destruction, huge loss of life (some estimates say 80 million), cruelties, hardship etc. Also massive economic dislocation.

We often hear half-baked nonsense about how “the war” stimulated inventions and technological progress. Most of this is either not true or is at best half-true. In both Europe and USA, huge strides were being made in the 1930s. What the war did was to change priorities: planes built for speed rather than comfort, housing built on a utilitarian rather than an aesthetic basis etc.

In the UK, much nonsense is talked about the Welfare State in this regard. In fact, social housing (which had existed in limited forms for centuries) was being created on quite a large scale in the UK of the 1930s, particularly in and around London. As for the NHS etc, that was already being prepared in studies etc, though the war may have concentrated minds and so on.

The Phoney War

The Phoney War, also called the Bore War and (in Germany) Sitzkrieg, lasted from September 1939 to April 1940. At that point, few people, even in the armed services of either side (meaning UK/Germany) had been killed. Any bitterness or venom (mainly on the British side and stirred up by relentless propaganda) was small compared to what existed later. There could, after Dunkirk, have been an honourable peace, an armistice. Germany could then have turned its full attention to destroying Stalin’s regime the following year. The Russian people would eventually have come to a concordat with the German Reich. Only the Jewish commissars etc would ultimately have lost out.

Conclusion

Britain lost out hugely by going along with Churchill’s ridiculous adventurism. Terrible loss and turmoil during the years of war, 10 years of “austerity” after the war ended. The perceived “need” (in fact a conspiracy) to import blacks and browns in the 1950s and thereafter in order to make up for those killed and injured in that wholly unnecessary war. Slow poisoning of the folk.

Britain and France declared war on Germany, ostensibly, to protect the independence of Poland. It never happened. Poland was split between the German Reich and the Soviet Union at first, later taken entirely by the Reich, then later still taken entirely by the Soviet Union. Instead of one or two weeks of war, Poland was strafed by 6 years of it. Only since 1989 has Poland regained anything like full political sovereignty. When I myself visited Poland on several occasions in the late 1980s, one still met older Poles who might mention those worthless guarantees of 1939.

Had an honourable peace been found in 1939 or 1940, the British Empire would have wound down more gradually, as would the other European empires. There would not have been so much war and misery across the world, the American cultural death-impulse would not have been so powerful and destructive; also, the environment would not have suffered anything like as badly. Above all, Europe would be fully European and have a fully-European future.