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http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/print/Putin Chess.pdf
Putin’s Geopolitical Chess Game with Washington
in Syria and Eurasia
By F. William Engdahl, author of Myths, Lies and Oil Wars21 July 2012
Since reassuming his post as Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin has lost no minute in addressing the
most urgent geopolitical threats to Russia internationally. Not surprisingly, at the center of his agenda
is the explosive situation in the Middle East, above all Syria. Here Putin is engaging every imaginable
means of preventing a further deterioration of the situation into what easily could become another
“world war by miscalculation.” His activities in recent weeks involve active personal diplomacy with
Syria’s government as well as the so-called opposition “Syrian National Council.” It involves intense
diplomacy with Erdogan’s Turkey regime. It involves closed door diplomacy with Obama. It involves
direct diplomacy with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
Syria itself, contrary to what most western media portray, is a long-standing multi-ethnic and
religiously tolerant secular state with an Alawite Muslim President Bashar Al-Assad, married to a Sunni
wife. The Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam which doesn’t force their women to wear head
scarves and are liberal by Sunni standards, especially in the fundamentalist places like Saudi Arabia
where women are forbidden to even hold a driver’s license. The overall Syrian population is a diverse
mix of Alawites, Druze and Kurds, Sunnis, and Armenian Orthodox Christians. Were the minority
regime of Al-Assad to fall, experts estimate that, like in Egypt, the murky Sunni (as in Saudi Arabia)
Muslim Brotherhood organization would emerge as the dominant organized political force, something
certainly not welcome in Tel Aviv and certainly not in either Russia or China.
1
According to an informed assessment by Gajendra Singh, retired Indian diplomat with decades of
service in the Middle East and a deep familiarity with the ethnic mix inside Syria, were the minority
Alawite regime of Al-Assad to fall, the country would rapidly descend into a bloodbath that would make
estimates of 17,000 killed to date a mere prelude. Singh estimates, “A defeat of Assad led regime will
lead to slaughter of Alawites, Shias, Christians, even Kurds and Druzes. In all, 20 % of a population of
20 Million.”
2
That would be some 4 million Syrians. That ought to be food for thought for those in the West cheering
on a murky dubious opposition “Syrian National Council” that is dominated by the ominous Muslim
Brotherhood, and an armed opposition “Free Syrian Army” that has been reported even by the New
York Timesas rife with factional armed splits. Moreover the conflict were it to descend into a Libya-like
internal bloodbath, would spill over across the Syrian border into Turkey. Syrian coastal area has a
significant Alawite population and a large number of Alawites live in the adjoining Turkish provinces of
Hatay and Antakya.
To sort out fact from fiction inside Syria is daunting as media are limited and opposition spokesmen
have been repeatedly caught lying about events. In one recent instance, a UK journalist claimed he
was deliberately led into a potential death trap by rebel opposition forces to score propaganda against
the Damascus regime. The UK Channel 4 News's chief correspondent, Alex Thomson, told AP that
Syrian rebels set him up to die in no man's land near the Lebanese border, saying they wanted to use
his death at the hands of government forces to score propaganda points.
3
And in one brazen example
of political manipulation, BBC was recently caught publishing a photograph it claimed was of a
massacre at Al-Houla on 25 May 2012, in which 108 persons are known to have died including 49
children. It turned out the picture had been taken by Italian photo journalist, Marco Di Lauro in Iraq in
2003.
4
The stakes in this geopolitical chess game are nothing less than survival first of Syria as a sovereign
nation, whatever its flaws and defects. More, it ultimately involves the survival of Iran, Russia and
China as sovereign nations together with the other BRIC states Brazil, India and South Africa. Longer
term, it involves the matter of survival of civilization as we know it and avoidance of a world war that
would decimate the world population not by tens of millions as seventy years ago but likely this time
by billions.
Putin’s Geopolitical Chess Game with Washington
in Syria and Eurasia
By F. William Engdahl, author of Myths, Lies and Oil Wars21 July 2012
Since reassuming his post as Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin has lost no minute in addressing the
most urgent geopolitical threats to Russia internationally. Not surprisingly, at the center of his agenda
is the explosive situation in the Middle East, above all Syria. Here Putin is engaging every imaginable
means of preventing a further deterioration of the situation into what easily could become another
“world war by miscalculation.” His activities in recent weeks involve active personal diplomacy with
Syria’s government as well as the so-called opposition “Syrian National Council.” It involves intense
diplomacy with Erdogan’s Turkey regime. It involves closed door diplomacy with Obama. It involves
direct diplomacy with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
Syria itself, contrary to what most western media portray, is a long-standing multi-ethnic and
religiously tolerant secular state with an Alawite Muslim President Bashar Al-Assad, married to a Sunni
wife. The Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam which doesn’t force their women to wear head
scarves and are liberal by Sunni standards, especially in the fundamentalist places like Saudi Arabia
where women are forbidden to even hold a driver’s license. The overall Syrian population is a diverse
mix of Alawites, Druze and Kurds, Sunnis, and Armenian Orthodox Christians. Were the minority
regime of Al-Assad to fall, experts estimate that, like in Egypt, the murky Sunni (as in Saudi Arabia)
Muslim Brotherhood organization would emerge as the dominant organized political force, something
certainly not welcome in Tel Aviv and certainly not in either Russia or China.
1
According to an informed assessment by Gajendra Singh, retired Indian diplomat with decades of
service in the Middle East and a deep familiarity with the ethnic mix inside Syria, were the minority
Alawite regime of Al-Assad to fall, the country would rapidly descend into a bloodbath that would make
estimates of 17,000 killed to date a mere prelude. Singh estimates, “A defeat of Assad led regime will
lead to slaughter of Alawites, Shias, Christians, even Kurds and Druzes. In all, 20 % of a population of
20 Million.”
2
That would be some 4 million Syrians. That ought to be food for thought for those in the West cheering
on a murky dubious opposition “Syrian National Council” that is dominated by the ominous Muslim
Brotherhood, and an armed opposition “Free Syrian Army” that has been reported even by the New
York Timesas rife with factional armed splits. Moreover the conflict were it to descend into a Libya-like
internal bloodbath, would spill over across the Syrian border into Turkey. Syrian coastal area has a
significant Alawite population and a large number of Alawites live in the adjoining Turkish provinces of
Hatay and Antakya.
To sort out fact from fiction inside Syria is daunting as media are limited and opposition spokesmen
have been repeatedly caught lying about events. In one recent instance, a UK journalist claimed he
was deliberately led into a potential death trap by rebel opposition forces to score propaganda against
the Damascus regime. The UK Channel 4 News's chief correspondent, Alex Thomson, told AP that
Syrian rebels set him up to die in no man's land near the Lebanese border, saying they wanted to use
his death at the hands of government forces to score propaganda points.
3
And in one brazen example
of political manipulation, BBC was recently caught publishing a photograph it claimed was of a
massacre at Al-Houla on 25 May 2012, in which 108 persons are known to have died including 49
children. It turned out the picture had been taken by Italian photo journalist, Marco Di Lauro in Iraq in
2003.
4
The stakes in this geopolitical chess game are nothing less than survival first of Syria as a sovereign
nation, whatever its flaws and defects. More, it ultimately involves the survival of Iran, Russia and
China as sovereign nations together with the other BRIC states Brazil, India and South Africa. Longer
term, it involves the matter of survival of civilization as we know it and avoidance of a world war that
would decimate the world population not by tens of millions as seventy years ago but likely this time
by billions.
