toni solo, 6 de septiembre 2013

Apart from the US and France, nine other countries at the G-20 summit in St Petersburg, signed a declaration backing military action against the Syrian government. Britain,  Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Turkey all support the position of the US government. Much has been made of Prime Minister David Cameron's parliamentary defeat in a vote on military action against Syria. Likewise, the formal position of NATO and of the European Union ostensibly rejects military action against Syria.

But these contradictions on Syria are just one more expression of the deep divisions among the various interests making up the North American and Atlantic elites. They cannot agree how to manage their irreversible relative decline against the increasing economic power and political influence of determinedly independent powers like China and Russia, and less powerful but still formidable regional powers like Iran. Also relevant is the development of regional blocs like that of the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) or of UNASUR and CELAC in Latin America and the Caribbean, of the ASEAN countries in South East Asia and of nascent, similar blocs in Africa.

All these things indicate the relentless and perhaps accelerating development of a multipolar world, signalling the categorical end of North American and European global dominance. In such a context, the Western elites have two alternatives. They either accept they cannot change the global processes under way and adapt, or else they use their still remaining economic and military advantages to try and maintain their existing privileged control of global resources and geo-strategic areas.

Disagreement among the factions that make up the Western elites are blatantly obvious in reactions to events as diverse as the crisis in Syria and the Edward Snowden affair. That Western geopolitical strategic dilemma and the elite disagreements it provokes, form a looming backdrop to almost everything currently taking place in international affairs. No matter what the Western elites' overall policy response turns out to be, it will not have been worked out on the basis of anything resembling a well-informed, participatory democratic process.

Writers like Dan Glazebrook are absolutely right to insist on comparing the Syrian crisis with its Iraqi and Libyan precedents. In the former, the Western elites largely ignored the surprisingly undeceived majority opinion of their countries' populations. In the latter, the thoroughly mendacious corporate media propaganda campaign vitiated and neutered popular opinion which was already largely indifferent in comparison with the popular feeling aroused by the aggression against Iraq.

It is nonsensical to argue that the resistance to a US led war on Syria demonstrates the virtues of Western democracy. The massive transfer of wealth in favour of the Western corporate financial oligarchies begun in 2008  continues to this day. The Western elites imposed that unprecedented corrupt transfer of wealth regardless, insisting  on austerity for the majority, while readily funding bonuses for the financial elites along with their imperialist wars in Africa, Asia  and the Middle East.

Very clearly, the demented false beliefs touted by sales staff for mass murder like Barack Obama, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice or Samantha Power or their European counterparts do not stem from any democratic process. Nothing has changed since 2002 when the notorious memorandum by Britain's head of MI6 Richard Dearlove noted that on Iraq "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". The same is true now over Syria, where two years of Western supported terrorism have completely failed to displace the country's legitimate government.

The difference now is that important sectors of the North American and European elites recognize their best interests may not be served by a potentially devastating regional war. That is why David Cameron lost his parliamentary vote and why President Obama is stalling to gain time and Congressional approval for an attack on Syria. It is a war that certain US corporate energy and military-industrial interests and the Israeli and Saudi Arabian governments very clearly want. By comparison, the best interests of the peoples of North America and Europe, let alone those of Syria, Lebanon or Palestine, barely receive even the most cursory consideration.