Venezuela through Russian and Chinese eyes

In the previous post I suggested: 

... the Venezuela adventure is ... forcing Putin to eat more shit as he is lamely reduced to asking that his tanker crew will be nicely looked after.  Yep, lots of random shit happens on Planet Trump ... both Russia and Xi are utterly dismayed, as ever, by the casual ease with which perfidious western nations sweep away years and even decades of patient strategic effort: this time Venezuela, the latest in a long series  

- that series including Libya, Syria and Iran-as-Middle-East-counterweight (and supplier of arms to Russia).

Taking Russia first: Putin really had set a lot of strategic store by Venezuela - proportionately, a lot more than Xi, for whom these things are merely road-bumps, however annoying and tactically unpredictable.  Ditto Syria, ditto Iran.  Putin is beholden to N.Korea, FFS, at the same time as trying to project a superpower profile, so these setbacks are pretty hard to swallow.  The Bear with the sore head is unlikely to cut anyone any favours on its western borders, witness the performative missile strike on Lviv; but he'll be watching Iran with an awful sense of déjà-vue doom.  Where to parade his plonker now, except in the Donbas?

China looks very different.  Xi pretty much believes in regional hegemony!  So Venezuela may be a bit of a setback to a maturing long-term plan, and oil is oil; but hey, Taiwan is the only thing he really cares about, period.  

Also, he's looking forward to wiping the floor with Trump - again - this year.  He played Trump brutally last year.  You say 'tariffs', Mr Trump?  Nope, and we raise you rare earth metals.  Now, hand over your very best chips, lots of them, before we reduce your remaining industries to rust and dust ... That's the way, Donald, there's a good boy.  Now run along.

And 2026 is the mid-terms ...  Venezuela, pffft.  Trump and Xi are scheduled for a couple of summits this year, and the Chinese will be expecting to ream him again.  What else of gigantic strategic value will Trump give away this time?  The dawning of the Chinese era stands to be accelerated materially in just a few months. Scary stuff. 

ND

UPDATE:  see thread below - this is getting complicated !  

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/17/china-blocks-nvidia-h200-ai-chips-that-us-government-cleared-for-export-report

Russians laughing at the West - and rightly so

.@BorisJohnson tries to pass G7,EU/NATO &regional allies for intern. com/ty.That collective opinion beats individual one is pure bolshevism pic.twitter.com/MBnP5YN263

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) April 11, 2017

President Putin met with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, who has come to Russia on an official visit.https://t.co/yasNjjSrFl pic.twitter.com/Qvf2TGLSVD

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) April 11, 2017

Two dilettanti botched it even before coming under Russian diplomacy`s
broadside. Who failed whom? pic.twitter.com/Equ1G4HumM

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) April 11, 2017

Really, how stupid does the West' diplomacy look. I can't remember a time when collectively the Western powers looked so inept. As we know, we are incapable of even securing the borders and oceans around Europe, let alone dealing with a manipulative and highly intelligent power such as Russia.


The Chinese, risk averse in international relations, must be aghast at the collapse of both Western Unity and the total lack of strategic nous on display by both US and Europe.


Surely, in a Reagan/Thatcher world the answers are simple:


1) Agree to let Assad survive on a promise of the destruction of ISIS and end to use of chemical weapons. Agreement with Turkey to continue the block on passage of migrants from Syria and Iraq.


2) Agree to lift sanctions on Russia re Crimea in return for a settling of the border disputes in Ukraine and agreement from both sides to position Ukraine as a neutral power not to be invited into EU/NATO.


3) UN Resolutions to take UN mandate to 'support' Libya, allowing the crushing of ISIS there and an end to the criminal migrant gangs, plus potentially more stability for the Government going forward.


4) (As is happening) A China/US agreement on North Korea to try to stop the mad boy-king enacting his weird fantasies.


5) Global resolutions from the UN against Al-Qaeda and ISIS (and the Uighurs etc to get China on board) to allow for more rapid intervention as ISIS vacates the Middle East for North Africa and the Sahel.


Instead, we are basically doing the opposite of the above, side-lining Russia who are prepared to do the dirty work for us. Doing nothing really with China and ignoring the ISIS issue in Libya, Iraq and Syria.

Take Gaddafi's Compound !

Before I took Gaddafi's Compound, I was constantly on the run! (Mahomet al-Rebel, Tripoli)

Taking Gaddafi's Compound made me feel much better - I was beginning to think we'd backed the wrong side! (W.Hague, London SW1)

I got better as soon as I found Gaddafi's Compound: it's a miracle cure! (Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, address unknown)

We'll be trying Gaddafis as soon as we get our hands on some! (International prosecutor, The Hague)

I've had a dose of this medicine, and look what it did for me! (Hosni M, The Old Bazaar, in Cairo)

Goes down easier than my Compound ! (Sheikh Well, Bahrain)

I used to prefer Gaddafi's Purge (Saif G, Su'un-in-the-Choki)

Libya: The Great Game, Part 94

There has been occasion hereabouts to make reference to conspiracy theories quite recently, (I shall return to the silver markets another time).

And when we see deployment against Libya of armed forces from not only Italy, France and the USA Med Fleet - all fairly proximate - but the UK, Spain, Canada, and Denmark*, within hours of a widely unexpected and essentially unheralded UN vote ... you may be sure the plans were in hand for quite a while before that.

I have commented elsewhere that NATO is in fact quite good at this planning & deployment stuff, particularly of air forces; and France never left the command structure even when she absented herself from actual NATO formations for many years. But even so. What's going on ?

It isn't difficult to 'follow the money', and notice the sheer quantities of oil & gas involved. France has always conducted itself vis-à-vis Algeria so that national champion Total has been able to conduct uninterrupted operations in that country before, during and after the 1960's war. Likewise, it is a pressing feature of Spanish, French and Italian policy to exert as much control as they can to stem the tide of African immigration. Neither of these factors is new, so evidence of pre-planning is not to be marveled at.

But even so. We read a lot about how aggressive China is in its quest for control over raw materials; and how Russia has been gradually reasserting hegemony over the natural resources of the FSU. But these could be painted as rank amateurs when it comes to the decisive colonial instinct: China can barely restrain North Korea, and Russia's 2008 adventure in Georgia amounted to a demonstration of its ineffectiveness.

On the subject of Russia, early reports indicated that they had "stepped up gas supplies to Italy to 2.5 times normal levels after Italy's supplies from Libya were cut off". This may be genuine assistance to the Italian cause, but it may be no more than the Italians nominating winter-maximum supply levels during relatively mild weather, which (in March) they are contractually entitled to do at their own discretion. Nonetheless, if Moscow had given the nod for curtailment, Gazprom would have complied. It is thinking like that which leaves Germany on the sidelines: they pride themselves on being very strategic in their energy policy, but it all boils down to a lame single strand: grovel to Russia and, errr, grovel to Russia. (Oh, and keep those lignite mines open, just in case.)

So - it's not difficult to paint this operation as part of a considered plan, at very least to defend certain lines-in-the-sand as regards stability of access to oil & gas, plus damping-down of reasons for refugees to hit the boats. When push comes to shove, somehow wind-farms don't quite cut the mustard as the future of European energy supply. Actions (or non-actions) in Egypt, Bahrain etc can be seen in the same light: ditto the fact that Qatar - small in numbers, huge in gas supplies - is onside. Oh, and did we mention that little Qatar is perilously positioned as regards Iran ...

To conclude: we can follow this camel-train of thought all the way to the most lurid conspiracy-theories: see this, this & this. But at an absolute minimum we are seeing a measure of self-interested post-colonial steel that many assumed the Old Continent had completely lost. The traditional Capitalism-at-Work-by-other-means, if you like. Russia and China mere bystanders - for the time being, at least.

So: watch Turkey, watch Iran, watch gas prices. This could be a very serious indicator of the shape of politics to come.

ND


*PS - Denmark is interesting. They were deeply worried by German reunification, and vowed to demonstrate that their soldiers no longer wore hair-nets, so to speak - e.g. deploying tanks (which actually opened fire) to Yugoslavia to make the point. I'd guess today's air deployment is more of the same.

Libya .. not much time left.

Libyan rebels in Ras Lanuf. I emailed a USA friend earlier about the rebels preparations.

The question I asked was based on some BBC reports from Ras Lanuf. Those AA guns there were moved close together and were then surrounded by 4x4s parked all around them. I asked thea retired US Army general if the deployment of those guns was as bad as it looked to me. Parked close together, surrounded by hundreds of boxes of ammo, with civilians milling about, firing the odd burst into the sky for morale. I could see no proper defences at all.

"Defense of AA guns is not so much a "surround by infantry and let them do their job" so much as they are support weapons for the front line troops protecting the airspace dimension. AA guns should be integrated and provide supporting fire for each other with overlapping arcs of fire to maximize potential against aircraft.

The guns are too close and could probably be taken out with one strike. Normally you would want a couple hundred meters separating them to limit damage from artillery fire or one strike taking them out. Normally you would have a chest high sand berm in a u-shape with the open end to the rear to protect from shrapnel and small arms.

As for deployment, what purpose are the guns serving in this location? Is it a strategic crossroads or a likely air avenue of approach? If so placing them for best fire position is paramount. Based upon what I have seen on the news, most weapons have been placed haphazardly and if the Libyan forces were competent the rebels could be easily overrun by a coordinated combined arms assault.

In the hours that I was waiting for this reply the news of the rebels being defeated and falling back from concentrated Gaddafi regime attacks came in. The rebels just aren't trained. They have no air power. They don't appear to have much artillery. And despite everyone in Libya undergoing conscription, they don't seem to have much experience.

I expect that those SAS troops were secretly supposed to be military 'advisers.' If the rebels don't get help very soon, I'm sure they will lose. Ras Lanuf is 2/3 of the way from Tripoli to Benghazi.