Parliament to vote for war against Eurasia

It does not seem very popular today to be against the UK getting involved in Iraq and Syria, but then again, MP's and the media like to have short memories.

There is no strategy whatsoever for the intervention. The RAF are going to bomb a few trucks and kill some terrorists. That is the good bit, the more of them that are dead the better given their unhinged barbarity they wish to inflict on everyone else in the world.

But with no troops on the ground, no rapprochement with Assad, no chance of Kurdish or Iraqi forces really being capable of offensive duties, what will this achieve? I have not even mentioned the Free Syrian Army, for good reason too, it is worthless and struggles to hold any territory inside of Syria.

Plus we have Libya - this sad country does not make the news now, the world having moved on. But Libya has not moved on, it has moved backwards, by about 100 years. Split by rival militias with either General warlords or lunatic religious terrorists. Libya was once a prosperous country, a small population and plentiful resources of oil and gas. A nice Mediterranean climate to boot.

What did Western intervention achieve in Libya in the long-term. Gaddafi is gone and replaced by a worse situation, much like Iraq. Extremism has a new fertile territory.

There was no plan in Libya and there is no plan for Syria. Iraq perhaps could be returned to its whole but this is unlikely as the schism in the Muslim world between Shia and Sunni is akin the the reformation in Europe. This will not be settled over a few years but many decades.

When the UK voted to not go into Syria last year, people now say this made it worse and allowed IS to flourish. This is a simplistic approach to what happened. IS grew from funding from Qatar and Saudi Arabia who now at last seem to be realising the need to kill the monster they have created. IS grew because Shia Iraqi government lost support in Northern Iraq. The governance of Iraq needs attention, which it is now getting.

The problem of IS is not a creature of the West. The crazy terrorists use Western hostages and threaten the West for purposes of extortion and to gain more enlistees. We would do better to ignore them and encourage the regional powers to annihilate them. Bombing randomly from afar will do little or nothing to improve the situation and only goes to further enhance copycat terrorism around the world in the Phillipines etc.

Instead a vote is for a permanent war against radical Middle East factions, one that is stateless and probably impossible to win through military means. We have tried for nearly 20 years and still the war goes on. It is hauntingly similar to Orwell's Eurasia war of 1984.

The coursing damage of oil money

Norway, the only Country in the world ever not to have totally squandered its oil wealth. Virtually every other country has become exceedingly corrupt on the back of oil wealth, although how much of a contribution it makes to the overall economy has a great bearing too.

I note the US has bouts of being unduly affected by major oil and gas effects, from way back in time with Standard Oil, to the Halliburton of today. But oil is not the sole contributor to the US economy, so although effective in pushing foreign policy agendas and such like, it is rarely totally dominant.

Other countries fair less well, the states of Africa become kleptocracies for decades and only finally now are making some progress, having learned the hard way from Chinese intervention and constant civil war. But the greatest oil state in Africa, Nigeria, is still very corrupt and hosts Boko Haram - the south of the Country, Imo, is poisoned beyond recognition and resembles parts of China more than Africa's beauty.

The main threats, rapidly growing, in the world today focus around the Sunni sponsored growth of Whabbist Islam, Shia countering sponsored by Iran and Russian attempts to re-create Greater Russia.

All of these are funded, not so much directly but States (Iran being the exception), but by wealthy oligarchs. Naive Qatari and Saudi shaikhs channelled the money to build Al-Nusra in Syria which in turn spawned IS. They still do, the army of IS being paid for by these funds in the main and the mercenaries fighting for them (its never all about religion is it, remember the crusades) being paid up to $10,000 a month to fight. No wonder IS managed to amalgamate all the disparate Syrian and Iraqi forces - the side with the richest battalions wins.

Outside of the Syria-Iraq disaster, but sadly forgotten on the sidelines, is the sad case of Libya, with warlords fighting over key resources and the key oil terminal at Ras Lanuf for funding. Libya has entered firmly into failed state category. the only saving grace for the world is that the Libyan population is small - half the size of London and similar to Scotland, so the effect of a rapidly growing diaspora will be minor.

In Ukraine, Oligarchs were first responsible for raping the country, then fighting to get their placemen elected and thence now to defending or attacking Eastern Ukraine. Some of the oligarchs are Russian and some are Ukrainian. Their money and power,  mainly taken from either oil or coal mining, allows them more power than State actors. Putin himself plays the role of the Oligarch personified as a State actor, having subsumed the nascent democracy of Russia.

So much of the difficulty of ending the conflicts at the moment is to do with the funding and support for them. Much as Israel/Palestine has always had backers on both sides, wars that continue this way mean money for the those involved. They are harder to end than more conventional state wars because the financial conduits are hard to close.

Moreover, the rich men who support the wars have little stake in the post-war settlement. They care nothing of the country or people whom they fund to fight (like Gaza these past sad years). being removed, personally they are at no risk.

All of these men became able to influence through the immense power of controlling oil resources. I am no leftie nor greenie, but the world is a harder, sadder place for this and with resources running out over time the fighting over them and with their riches will surely only become tougher.

The world was a better place when they wasted their money on wine, yachts and women.