The G20 summit in St. Petersburg was supposed to be a serious discussion about the extreme turmoil affecting the global economy -- especially in the West. Instead, the only growth and job creation in sight will be for the US military- industrial complex.
Another beneficiary will be assorted mercenaries plying their trade in the Levant.
The original Russian agenda is a road map towards stimulating "economic growth and job creation."
Confronted with a horrendous economic scenario -- with 90 percent of new jobs in the US qualifying as temporary, low wage and with no benefits -- the "wag the dog" response of the Obama administration is to start a new war in Syria to the benefit of, who else, Israel and the House of Saud (who will be picking up the tab).
Talk about the Obama Doctrine reaching new heights.
For a while, the world was fooled by the notion that the Obama doctrine -- extricating the US from George "Dubya" Bush's disastrous wars -- would direct the superpower towards a modus vivendi with a multipolar world. That was a myth.
Add to it another myth; the "pivoting to Asia" -- significantly announced by Obama at the Pentagon -- selling the notion that from now on Washington would focus on containing its rival for real, Beijing.
Yet most of the "pivoting" so far has been pure hype -- as Beijing quickly noticed. And the Middle East never left the equation -- as the Obama administration kept performing cataclysmic geopolitical somersaults to finesse its "doctrine."
And what a mess of a doctrine this is. Obama has given his blessing to every momentary "winner" in Egypt -- from the sinister SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and the Sisi military dictatorship.
G8 leaders (L-R) Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, US President Barack Obama, France's President Francois Hollande, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Italy's Prime Minister Enrico Letta stand on the podium for the family photograph on the second day of the G8 summit at the Lough Erne resort near Enniskillen in Northern Ireland on June 18, 2013. (AFP Photo/Ben Stansall)
It has "led from behind" in Libya, when in fact the bombing of Libya was initiated by AFRICOM and then transferred to NATO (that is, the African and European arms of the Pentagon).
It reconfigured the Global War on Terror (GWOT) into a newspeak-laden "Overseas Contingency Operations' (OCO), in fact a "kinetic" shadow war crammed with drones and death squads.
It weaponized hardcore Islamists and even Al-Qaeda offshoots in one country while supporting military goons in another; it solemnly brushed aside real pro-democracy protests (as in Bahrain); and in Syria, after being defied for over two-and-a-half years on the "Assad must go" red line, it's about to resort to default mode; good ol' democracy bombed from above.
I have qualified this mess as the indispensable (bombing) nation syndrome -- the benign hymn of the last resort that every "idealistic" US President is required, sooner or later, to sing.
In Obama's case, the hymn comes with the requisite Gotterdammerung overtones. We're talking about the fragile ego of a pampered teenager blown to smithereens because, recklessly, he drew a "red line" without thinking about the serious consequences; and now, afflicted by hubris and terrified of losing face, he's on a path to deliver some heavy metal.
The narrative is not exactly uplifting; our tormented "hero," weasel-style, is trying to extricate himself from the responsibility, stating that "US credibility" is on the line, and not his own. He seems not to have noticed that US "credibility" -- not to mention US Tomahawk diplomacy -- is already shattered all across the developing world (European poodles, though, bravely resist).
Before the "red line" fiasco, our Wagnerian lost soul would have profited from the G20 to once more lobby President Putin to extradite a real hero, Edward Snowden. Now he will be lobbying for his puny Tomahawk diplomacy. French President Francois Hollande, self-styled new American attack poodle, is already yapping. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may join him. Forget about discussing that pesky global economy.
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