Delusions of Grandeur



Since 2014 and the entry of Russia into the Syrian war, the Assad government has been able to find its footing and regain control over the largely urban areas it had lost beginning in 2011. With opposition groups and Islamic State either destroyed or marginalized, the sense is that the war is nearly over and that Assad is the victor.

Compared to the situation from even a year ago, what remains to be done seems simple: Assad and the Russians need to push rebels from their enclaves along the Turkish border then convince the Americans to leave. Afterward, the Syrian Kurds will join hands with Damascus because they have no other choice. Afterward comes the reconstruction and happily ever after, when the refugees in Europe, Turkey, Lebanon and elsewhere return home … when the Baath government and its cronies return to the business of looting the country and settling scores with anyone who ever disagreed with Assad about anything.

Europeans find this narrative agreeable because it doesn’t cost them anything and proposes the removal of annoying Syrian refugees; the sooner gone the better. Americans either agree or disagree with it, depending on days of the week. The Turks aren’t happy but nobody cares. The petroleum super states Iran and Saudi Arabia have divided interests; if the war ends or not, little will change for them; they both want empires but only those that can be had cheaply. Like Israel, Syria’s immediate neighbors would like to see the Baath regime disappear entirely but are grudgingly consigned to live with it if the alternative is fighting that spills over their borders. The Kurds look through the peep hole of history and see the outline of a Kurdish nation. For them the situation is similar to that of the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine in 1947: a few more battles to win, a bit more suffering to endure and the sketch takes on substance.

Outside of the human interest, the bloated casualty lists and the frenzy over European ‘migrants’, the Syria war is a sideshow. Triviality is one reason the fighting has gone on so long. Triviality leads to the absence of a serious investment, another reason why the war has lingered. Compared the trillions squandered by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, the West’s investment in Syria has been a rounding error. The war is bloodier than the Balkan conflict but less important strategically; a small, unimportant fracas in a small, unimportant country. Like Iraq, Syria is the creature of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, of First World War European powers divvying up the soon-to-be- extinct Ottoman Empire among themselves. Ataturk and the reemergence of Turkish power in Anatolia in 1923 put paid to those ambitions, only a few borders remain as reminders of colonial folly.

The diverse people of Syria live mostly in the western part of the country; much of the east except for the river valleys is dry and sparsely populated. Here, underground is the precious oil and gas the motorized West lusts after. These reserves are modest, a couple billion barrels already depleted; current flows are barely sufficient to provide for very limited local use, the country’s petroleum infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed by fighting and sabotage by Islamic State. Most of what remains intact is obsolete, engineers and field workers able to keep it functioning have been murdered or have fled the country. If the fighting were to stop tomorrow and unlimited funds made available, it would take a decade or more to bring Syria’s oil industry back into prewar rates of extraction. Yet the fighting is ongoing and funds are non-existent. If the intent of the powers has been to gain control over Syrian oil – they’ve all lost!

What gives Syria its outsized importance is the potential for a greater war between international powers. The conflict appears to be internal; a struggle between Assad and Syrians. Opportunists have jumped in seeking advantage, but none are quite powerful- or committed enough to remove the others. The war looks to creep back to the opportunists themselves: what happens in Syria is not confined there. the social and political fundamentals in Syria are no different from those elsewhere across the Middle East. Syria is an oil state; a petty one but an oil state nevertheless; the abominable government in Syria is mirrored by identically bad governments elsewhere, the same tinder for the same kinds of matches: (from Wikipedia):

 

Country Oil Production, Bbls/day Political System
World Production 80,622,000 Indicates OPEC membership
1 Russia 10,551,497 Single-party police state
2 Saudi Arabia 10,460,710 Monarchy/Single-party police state
3 United States 8,875,817 Corporate autocracy
4 Iraq 4,451,516 Iranian protectorate.
5 Iran 3,990,956 Single-party police state
6 China 3,980,650 Single-party police state
7 Canada 3,662,694 Multi-party republic
8 United Arab Emirates 3,106,077 Monarchy – effective single-party state
9 Kuwait 2,923,825 Monarchy – effective single-party state
10 Brazil 2,515,459 Transitional, to single-party status
11 Venezuela 2,276,967 (Failed) Single-party police state
12 Mexico 2,186,877 Transitional, undetermined
13 Nigeria 1,999,885 Multi-party republic
14 Angola 1,769,615 Effective single-party state
15 Norway 1,647,975 Multi-party republic

Carrying forward the US War on Terror in 2009, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama’s aim was to continue the neoliberal policy of configuring Middle East to suit US motorists and the auto industry, but at a lower cost.

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality”; US ambassador to Turkey at the time James Jeffrey, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Turkish boss Tecep Erdogan exchanging pleasantries in June, 2009. The fact of this meeting by itself is suggestive: Clinton was in the process of crafting a more subtle yet aggressive foreign policy that relied less on the American soldiers and more on specialists, contractors and overseas proxies. Certainly Turkey, with its large military and its claim to lead the Muslim world could carry a larger burden.

Turkey’s gigantic invisible problem: invisible because nobody will talk about it. Turkey imports almost a million barrels of crude oil every single day paid for with euros and dollars borrowed from Wall Street and Frankfurt. This fuel is then wasted by Turkey’s massive fleet of non-remunerative automobiles. Because driving cars cannot pay for anything, Turkey is unable to earn its repayments organically; nor can it meet obligations with its own currency There are few choices and all of them are bad: it can continue borrowing; roll over its debts and hope for a miracle. It could starve its own economy in an effort to repay, or the government could simply default and (hopefully) restructure. Turkey would ultimately confront debt service costs it cannot meet. It’s not too big to fail. It would end up a humble servant to its bankers like Greece or be excluded from credit markets and broken like Venezuela. The endgame either way is the same: Turks would have to dramatically reduce driving to minimize fuel imports and staunch the overseas drain of hard currency, they would not be ‘modern’ any more.

Enter A Great Leader With a (Desperate) Vision

Maybe the gambit was Erdogan’s or it simply evolved out of itself, it was diabolically and blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention. If successful it would to turn a wicked economic pumpkin into a winning geopolitical lottery ticket. Turkey would ramp up its militancy in the region, but not so much as to scare the horses. It would muscle in on its neighbors and demand concessions from blackmailed governments. Turkey would act in the background, without the public blessing of the US and Nato but carefully, behind a facade of finely crafted, wise-sounding official hypocrisy and outright falsehoods. If necessary, opportunities would be ‘self-created’. The overall approach would follow the tried-and-true colonial method: destabilize the selected victims, boot the governments and install compliant or distracted replacements.

Stealing oil would solve Ankara’s problems. Instead of being an embarrassing international deadbeat, the takeover of even part of Iraq’s oil capacity would transform the New Ottoman Empire into a major exporter. It could keep what it needed for itself then sell the remainder for hard currency. It would liberate the country from its bankers. Erdogan would become a heroic figure to rival Ataturk or even Suleiman the Magnificent. All of this would be dolled up as the price for defeating terrorism. For America and Israel the plan offered the chance to blunt Iran’s reach, and do so cheaply, even if it did not succeed 100%. It would marginalize the pro-Tehran governments in Damascus and Baghdad and cut the supply lines of its proxy Hezbollah. A Turkish supply guarantee to the EU would help its petition for EU membership. Turkey would also sell oil to Israel which would satisfy American hard-liners. Because Turkey is a Nato member and a ‘force for good’, it would dodge the moral- and legal opprobrium that is fixed on military aggressors. Likely complaints would come from governments freighted with the quaint baggage of decency and restraint; oil would buy these governments off. Just like Turkey, every developed country has millions of cars and millions more drivers. Faced with any difficulty in obtaining fuel, decency and restraint fly out the window. Without fuel, there are strikes and mutinies and the collapse of growth; governments are overthrown or voted out of office.

The Arab Spring unrest in Syria in 2011 offered the opportunity. In collaboration with the Clinton State Department and CIA, Turkey gathered together a multi-national mob of jihadi villains and let them loose to effect regime change. When it became clear by the middle of 2013 Assad was not going to fold despite his enormous losses, the plan was ‘adjusted’. From its muster of terroristic bandits, Turkish intelligence cobbled together the most capable into a sort of jihadi Super Group, providing them with weapons, leadership and intelligence. ISIS was a stalking horse meant to smash the by-now severely weakened Syrian army and overrun the disordered Iraqis. Under the new scheme, regime change was unimportant, what mattered was physical control over the oil reservoirs. Once these were taken — after a ‘decent interval’ of rape and massacre — Turkish troops with Nato imprimatur would pour into Syria and Iraq to ‘rescue’ the victims of its own proxy.

While the rewards seemed enormous, the risks were equally so and Turkey bore most of them. The chance of victory in any war is elusive, exhausting stalemate is the default outcome. Turkey’s endeavor had too many moving parts, its instruments were murderous criminals leavened with a few ex-Saddam military officers with good survival instincts. Any number of things could go wrong — and did; Turkey might not get any oil for all its efforts. Failure, and the US and Nato would deny any involvement or responsibility, Turkey would get all the blame; it would be the bag-holder. Erdogan would be seen as a loser. This would jeopardize any EU membership and might cost Erdogan his job. The counter-argument was even if the project blew up entirely, Turkey could not be any worse of than if it did nothing. Plus, Ankara could lie/deny just as well as Americans.

Russia was unaware: it probably didn’t think of- or understand developments or their potential in advance. Success would be costly to Moscow, its Iranian client would be isolated and its European oil and gas business reduced. This would cut into kick-backs and payoffs to Russian bosses. That Moscow were not consulted is obvious: best to present the world with a fait accompli in Syria rather than risk leaks and the inevitable ‘media discussion’ that would accompany diplomatic- or strategy exchanges. Had the Russians suspected the designs on Syria or Iran, they certainly would have objected and the project watered down, delayed or called off. This might have saved the hapless victims their lives and fortunes. As it was, Russia’s Syria adventure served to prolong the war rather than shorten it. This was not really a fault: events outran Moscow. By the end of 2013, Assad had already ceded the eastern half of the country and much of the south to rebels. Iraq was never on Moscow’s radar; neglect, corruption and the pro-Iranian bias of the Baghdad government had rendered large areas in the north and west of Iraq ungovernable. Russia could not lose what it never possessed in the first place.

As it was, the jihadi offensives were shockingly effective. By the end of 2013, CIA-supplied ‘moderate’ al-Qaeda militants were inflicting heavy losses on the Syrian military. In the summer of 2014, ISIS emerged, overrunning most of central and eastern Syria and northwest Iraq. The group soon began shipping hundred of thousands of barrels of oil from commandeered Syrian and Iraqi oil fields, some by truck over the Turkish-Syrian border and the rest commingled with Iraqi Kurdish oil and shipped through the KRG pipeline into Turkey. Some of this found its way to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, from there to Israel, some was transferred under ‘gentleman’s agreement’ across the lines to Assad. At that point, everything fell apart. The ISIS puppet began pulling its own strings. Rather than following up its stunning Mosul victory by pursuing Iraqi forces to Baghdad and beyond, the group’s leadership diverted its energies toward creating a bureaucracy, complete with central bank and gold coins.

ISIS also made serious tactical errors, burning itself up in sieges and attacking the strategically irrelevant Yezidis in Sinjar. ISIS became obsessed with the capture of Baiji, an ugly, dusty refinery town midway between Mosul and Baghdad. A small number of determined defenders held out for months, giving Iraqi forces time to regroup in front of Baghdad. Its chances frittered away, ISIS would never threaten the Iraqi south and its billions of barrels oil reserves. In Sinjar, ISIS caught Kurdish Peshmerga defenders and Yezidi civilians by surprise. After the Peshmerga ran away, ISIS massacred defenseless Yezidis, kidnapping thousands of girls and women. Kurdish YPG/YPJ guerillas crossed into Iraq from Syria and opened a corridor, putting up resistance and allowing Yezidi civilians to escape. The ISIS offensive in this region of Iraq crippled before it could develop, Kirkuk and its oil fields were quietly taken under Kurdish control. Under the lash of increasing US air strikes, ISIS’ moment faded, they surrendered the initiative and never regained it. The flower of ISIS’ army, its most experienced and disgusting fighters were thrown into the furnace of Kobani and destroyed, others fell into the long and ultimately fruitless siege of Syrian government forces at the city of Deir Ezzor. The defeat at Kobani in 2015 was decisive, it was the beginning of the group’s end.

The defeat of ISIS and increasingly effective Russian air support gave Assad the space to regroup and take the initiative against the less capable non-ISIS militants who also had to make do with diminished Turkish support. The result was the pushing back of militants out of Syrian cities and other strategic places. This is where Syria is today: Syria’s Kurds with their American allies have control over the north of the country east of the Euphrates. Jihadis are largely confined to enclaves along the Turkish border west of the river. ISIS holds a few, shrinking pockets; there is an American enclave in the middle of nowhere along the Iraqi-Jordanian border at al-Tanf. Damascus has control to some degree or other over the rest.

Current Syria (Syria Live Map)

Unaffordable Victory

Modern industrial militaries and political systems have become much more adept at fighting wars rather than winning them. Conflicts last for decades even when one side or other possess material and technical advantages. Witness the 40 year struggle between Ankara and independence-minded Kurds; 71 years of on-and-off fighting between Pakistan and India over control of Kashmir, 54 years between the Colombian government and various militants; 40 years between Afghan factions versus the West and between the various factions themselves. Israel has been at war vs. most of its neighbors since the founding of the country in 1948. The Syria war has its roots in the militant uprising against the Hafez al-Assad government in 1982. The Baathist army destroyed much of the city of Hama in a destructive siege that foreshadowed events 30 years later. Modern victory has become expensive, as much or more than defeat. Money- and resource costs put it out of reach leaving combatants to inhabit a shadowy middle ground, war as perverse kind of entertainment.

Stalemate going forward is the likely outcome in Syria, but that does not mean there are no losers. The people of Syria have lost, some of them have lost everything. The jihad or Wahhabi ideology that has given the West such a fright has proven by use to be nihilistic and counterproductive. Syria has lost resources, those who depend upon them are out of luck. Ankara lost its gamble and may wind up losing everything. Its great petroleum problem is no nearer solution than it was in 2011. Lies and the West’s hypocrisy prop the government, thin gruel for those with delusions of grandeur.

11 thoughts on “Delusions of Grandeur

  1. Ken Barrows

    We could support independence for the Kurds and ignore Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey if we just implement more “market stimulating” policies:

    https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/20/18104206/solar-panels-cost-cheap-mit-clean-energy-policy

    The article leaves some questions unanswered for me, though. If the cost has come down 99% over four decades (R&D/economies of scale, etc), what has been the improvement in EROEI? If market stimulating policy means subsidy, what happens to the cost if it goes away? What if government just applied an energy tax to all forms of energy extraction?

  2. Oilcrashing

    Hello Steve and fellow undertowers, I would like to ask a couple of questions-

    1) Do you think the FED is acting correctly – or that it has any other alternative than hiking rates?
    2) Do you think the FED is shielding the US from a recession and pushing the problems to the rest of the world – in my opinion, Europe, Japan, China and EM are experiencing a more intense slowdown than US, which seems to be in a good shape right now though new data is pointing to a US-slowdown as well?

    That’s all, I wish all of you a good new year 2019 despite the mounting problems that are appearing now.

  3. Creedon

    The central bank system only works through the expansion of the money supply. Contracting the money supply doesn’t work. They aren’t really very smart. It is becoming obvious and the world is now lost. We are rapidly getting to the point where the central banks will have to reverse course and print tons of money; of course it’s all collaterally restrained, ha, ha and then we can continue to make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer. The next step may be some sort of universally, guaranteed wage for everyone.

    1. Eeyores enigma

      “The next step may be some sort of universally, guaranteed wage for everyone.”

      More like universally, guaranteed inflated bills paid to the rentier class for everyone. The Gov steps in and makes sure that the bills get paid no matter what. Cost of living can keep going up and up. No ones lives get any better but the oligarchs will keep getting paid. Then that cash flow becomes collateral for them to borrow even more money to expand on their holdings.

  4. Creedon

    Steve, I appreciate your take on the Syrian situation. Your position though that getting rid of cars is the answer to the world’s problems; I find problematic. I agree with you in theory, but the world has no working model of a modern civilization operated without fossil fuels. The working model of a world without cars is Venezuela or the Amish. That’s a hard sell in today’s world. Can we build a modern civilization on bicycles and hi speed trains. China had some sort of industrial system with the bicycle as the main transportation vehicle in the 60s. Europe is doing more with bicycles and trains then we are. Cities in the U.S. have put in bicycle paths that very few use. The world needs a plan.

    1. steve from virginia Post author

      Models for the world going forward include Syria, Venezuela, Haiti and North Korea.

      Best case scenario is a few places are enclaves while the rest is reduced to barbarism. Worst case scenario is everything reduces to barbarism.

      Oh, and the cars are going regardless of what anyone wants. They go by way of voluntary choice or ‘the other way’.

      The upshot of the Syria war (which is why I pay attention to it) is that an enlargement of this war beyond a certain, indeterminable point will result in a crisis that would put the entire world on a stringent- and likely permanent energy diet.

  5. Reverse Engineer

    🍾 2019 Collapse Political and Attitude Survey (Merry Collapse Christmas & Doomy New Year to all Kollapsniks! 🎅 This survey is quite detailed and covers many of the topics discussed here on Economic Undertow among the Collapse Aware. Fill out sitting by an open fire drinking a glass of Eggnog.)

  6. Bachs_bitch

    @Steve, I was wondering what Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan actually means in the real world? I mean it’s clearly meant to reinvigorate his base (delivering on promises) but what do you think will actually happen? I’m guessing some of the troops get to come home for Christmas and everyone forgets about the whole thing until the next conflagration.

    On that note, happy Christmas & New Year to all my fellow collapsologists!

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