PLANS FOR REDRAWING THE MIDDLE EAST: THE PROJECT FOR A "NEW MIDDLE EAST"
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Center for Research on Globalization, Canada
Nov 18 2006
Global Research, November 18, 2006
"Hegemony is as old as Mankind…" -Zbigniew Brzezinski, former
U.S. National Security Advisor
The term "New Middle East" was introduced to the world in June 2006
in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was
credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement
of the older and more imposing term, the "Greater Middle East."
This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the
inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the
Eastern Mediterranean. The term and conceptualization of the "New
Middle East," was subsequently heralded by the U.S. Secretary of State
and the Israeli Prime Minister at the height of the Anglo-American
sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon. Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary
Rice had informed the international media that a project for a "New
Middle East" was being launched from Lebanon.
This announcement was a confirmation of an Anglo-American-Israeli
"military roadmap" in the Middle East. This project, which has
been in the planning stages for several years, consists in creating
an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon,
Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders
of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.
The "New Middle East" project was introduced publicly by Washington
and Tel Aviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure
point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing
the forces of "constructive chaos." This "constructive chaos" –which
generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region–
would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel
could redraw the map of the Middle East in accordance with their
geo-strategic needs and objectives.
New Middle East Map
Secretary Condoleezza Rice stated during a press conference that
"[w]hat we’re seeing here [in regards to the destruction of Lebanon
and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon], in a sense, is the growing-the
‘birth pangs’-of a ‘New Middle East’ and whatever we do we [meaning
the United States] have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to
the New Middle East [and] not going back to the old one."1 Secretary
Rice was immediately criticized for her statements both within Lebanon
and internationally for expressing indifference to the suffering
of an entire nation, which was being bombed indiscriminately by the
Israeli Air Force.
The Anglo-American Military Roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speech on the "New Middle
East" had set the stage. The Israeli attacks on Lebanon –which
had been fully endorsed by Washington and London– have further
compromised and validated the existence of the geo-strategic objectives
of the United States, Britain, and Israel. According to Professor
Mark Levine the "neo-liberal globalizers and neo-conservatives,
and ultimately the Bush Administration, would latch on to creative
destruction as a way of describing the process by which they hoped to
create their new world orders," and that "creative destruction [in]
the United States was, in the words of neo-conservative philosopher
and Bush adviser Michael Ledeen, ‘an awesome revolutionary force’
for (…) creative destruction…"2
Anglo-American occupied Iraq, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan, seems
to be the preparatory ground for the balkanization (division)
and finlandization (pacification) of the Middle East. Already the
legislative framework, under the Iraqi Parliament and the name of
Iraqi federalization, for the partition of Iraq into three portions
is being drawn out. (See map below)
Moreover, the Anglo-American military roadmap appears to be vying
an entry into Central Asia via the Middle East. The Middle East,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan are stepping stones for extending U.S.
influence into the former Soviet Union and the ex-Soviet Republics
of Central Asia. The Middle East is to some extent the southern tier
of Central Asia. Central Asia in turn is also termed as "Russia’s
Southern Tier" or the Russian "Near Abroad."
Many Russian and Central Asian scholars, military planners,
strategists, security advisors, economists, and politicians consider
Central Asia ("Russia’s Southern Tier") to be the vulnerable and
"soft under-belly" of the Russian Federation.3
It should be noted that in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American
Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a
former U.S. National Security Advisor, alluded to the modern Middle
East as a control lever on an area he calls the Eurasian Balkans. The
Eurasian Balkans consists of the Caucasus (Georgia, the Republic of
Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan)
and to some extent both Iran and Turkey. Iran and Turkey both form
the northernmost tiers of the Middle East (excluding the Caucasus4)
that edge into Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The Map of the "New Middle East"
A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned
Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic,
governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It
has been causally allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt
to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for
possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This
is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the
"New Middle East."
This map of the "New Middle East" seems to be based on several other
maps, including older maps of potential boundaries in the Middle
East extending back to the era of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and
World War I. This map is showcased and presented as the brainchild
of retired Lieutenant-Colonel (U.S. Army) Ralph Peters, who believes
the redesigned borders contained in the map will fundamentally solve
the problems of the contemporary Middle East.
The map of the "New Middle East" was a key element in the retired
Lieutenant-Colonel’s book, Never Quit the Fight, which was released
to the public on July 10, 2006. This map of a redrawn Middle East
was also published, under the title of Blood Borders: How a better
Middle East would look, in the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal
with commentary from Ralph Peters.5
It should be noted that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted to
the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the
U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost
authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and
U.S. foreign policy.
It has been written that Ralph Peters’ "four previous books on strategy
have been highly influential in government and military circles," but
one can be pardoned for asking if in fact quite the opposite could
be taking place. Could it be Lieutenant-Colonel Peters is revealing
and putting forward what Washington D.C. and its strategic planners
have anticipated for the Middle East?
The concept of a redrawn Middle East has been presented as a
"humanitarian" and "righteous" arrangement that would benefit the
people(s) of the Middle East and its peripheral regions. According
to Ralph Peter’s:
"International borders are never completely just. But the degree of
injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or
separate makes an enormous difference – often the difference between
freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and
terrorism, or even peace and war.
The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa
and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had
sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders
continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But
the unjust borders in the Middle East – to borrow from Churchill –
generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.
While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders
alone – from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality
to deadly religious extremism – the greatest taboo in striving to
understand the region’s comprehensive failure isn’t Islam, but the
awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our
own diplomats.
Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make
every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic
and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried.
Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as
joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected
in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by
the most significant "cheated" population groups, such as the Kurds,
Baluch and Arab Shia [Muslims], but still fail to account adequately
for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and
many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong
can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide
perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.
Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave
unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never
see a more peaceful Middle East.
Even those who abhor the topic of altering borders would be well-served
to engage in an exercise that attempts to conceive a fairer, if still
imperfect, amendment of national boundaries between the Bosphorus
and the Indus. Accepting that international statecraft has never
developed effective tools – short of war – for readjusting faulty
borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s "organic" frontiers
nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face
and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made
deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until
they are corrected."6
(emphasis added)
"Necessary Pain"
Besides believing that there is "cultural stagnation" in the Middle
East, it must be noted that Ralph Peters admits that his propositions
are "draconian" in nature, but he insists that they are necessary
pains for the people of the Middle East. This view of necessary
pain and suffering is in startling parallel to U.S. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice’s belief that the devastation of Lebanon by
the Israeli military was a necessary pain or "birth pang" in order
to create the "New Middle East" that Washington, London, and Tel
Aviv envision.
Moreover, it is worth noting that the subject of the Armenian Genocide
is being politicized and stimulated in Europe to offend Turkey.7
The overhaul, dismantlement, and reassembly of the nation-states of
the Middle East have been packaged as a solution to the hostilities
in the Middle East, but this is categorically misleading, false,
and fictitious. The advocates of a "New Middle East" and redrawn
boundaries in the region avoid and fail to candidly depict the roots
of the problems and conflicts in the contemporary Middle East. What
the media does not acknowledge is the fact that almost all major
conflicts afflicting the Middle East are the consequence of overlapping
Anglo-American-Israeli agendas.
Many of the problems affecting the contemporary Middle East are
the result of the deliberate aggravation of pre-existing regional
tensions. Sectarian division, ethnic tension and internal violence
have been traditionally exploited by the United States and Britain
in various parts of the globe including Africa, Latin America, the
Balkans, and the Middle East. Iraq is just one of many examples of
the Anglo-American strategy of "divide and conquer." Other examples
are Rwanda, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan.
Amongst the problems in the contemporary Middle East is the lack of
genuine democracy which U.S. and British foreign policy has actually
been deliberately obstructing. Western-style "Democracy" has been a
requirement only for those Middle Eastern states which do not conform
to Washington’s political demands. Invariably, it constitutes a pretext
for confrontation. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are examples
of undemocratic states that the United States has no problems with
because are firmly alligned within the Anglo-American orbit or sphere.
Additionally, the United States has deliberately blocked or displaced
genuine democratic movements in the Middle East from Iran in 1953
(where a U.S./U.K. sponsored coup was staged against the democratic
government of Prime Minister Mossadegh) to Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Turkey, the Arab Sheikdoms, and Jordan where the Anglo-American
alliance supports military control, absolutists, and dictators in
one form or another. The latest example of this is Palestine.
The Turkish Protest at NATO’s Military College in Rome
Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters’ map of the "New Middle East" has
sparked angry reactions in Turkey. According to Turkish press releases
on September 15, 2006 the map of the "New Middle East" was displayed in
NATO’s Military College in Rome, Italy. It was additionally reported
that Turkish officers were immediately outraged by the presentation
of a portioned and segmented Turkey.8 The map received some form of
approval from the U.S. National War Academy before it was unveiled
in front of NATO officers in Rome.
The Turkish Chief of Staff, General Buyukanit, contacted the U.S.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, and
protested the event and the exhibition of the redrawn map of the
Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.9 Furthermore the Pentagon has
gone out of its way to assure Turkey that the map does not reflect
official U.S. policy and objectives in the region, but this seems
to be conflicting with Anglo-American actions in the Middle East and
NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.
Is there a Connection between Zbigniew Brzezinski’s "Eurasian Balkans"
and the "New Middle East" Project?
The following are important excerpts and passages from former U.S.
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book, The Grand
Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives.
Brzezinski also states that both Turkey and Iran, the two most powerful
states of the "Eurasian Balkans," located on its southern tier, are
"potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts [balkanization],"
and that, "If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the
internal problems of the region would become unmanageable."10
It seems that a divided and balkanized Iraq would be the best means
of accomplishing this. Taking what we know from the White House’s own
admissions there is a belief that "creative destruction and chaos" in
the Middle East are beneficial assets to reshaping the Middle East,
creating the "New Middle East," and furthering the Anglo-American
roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia:
"In Europe, the Word "Balkans" conjures up images of ethnic conflicts
and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its "Balkans,"
but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more
religiously and ethnically heterogeneous. They are located within that
large geographic oblong that demarcates the central zone of global
instability (…) that embraces portions of southeastern Europe,
Central Asia and parts of South Asia [Pakistan, Kashmir, Western
India], the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.
The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong (…)
they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way:
they are a power vacuum. Although most of the states located in the
Persian Gulf and the Middle East are also unstable, American power
is that region’s [meaning the Middle East’s] ultimate arbiter. The
unstable region in the outer zone is thus an area of single power
hegemony and is tempered by that hegemony. In contrast, the Eurasian
Balkans are truly reminiscent of the older, more familiar Balkans of
southeastern Europe: not only are its political entities unstable but
they tempt and invite the intrusion of more powerful neighbors, each
of whom is determined to oppose the region’s domination by another.
It is this familiar combination of a power vacuum and power suction
that justifies the appellation "Eurasian Balkans."
The traditional Balkans represented a potential geopolitical prize in
the struggle for European supremacy. The Eurasian Balkans, astride the
inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly
Eurasia’s richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities,
are also geopolitically significant. Moreover, they are of importance
from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least
three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely,
Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing
political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are
infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous
concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region,
in addition to important minerals, including gold.
The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over
the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department
of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50
percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase
in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s
economic development is already generating massive pressures for the
exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central
Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves
of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico,
or the North Sea.
Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent
objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests,
rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel
international rivalries. The situation is made all the more volatile
by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also
internally unstable.
(…)
The Eurasian Balkans include nine countries that one way or another fit
the foregoing description, with two others as potential candidates. The
nine are Kazakstan [alternative and official spelling of Kazakhstan] ,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia,
and Georgia-all of them formerly part of the defunct Soviet Union-as
well as Afghanistan.
The potential additions to the list are Turkey and Iran, both of them
much more politically and economically viable, both active contestants
for regional influence within the Eurasian Balkans, and thus both
significant geo-strategic players in the region. At the same time,
both are potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts. If either
or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the
region would become unmanageable, while efforts to restrain regional
domination by Russia could even become futile."11
(emphasis added)
Redrawing the Middle East
The Middle East, in some regards, is a striking parallel to the
Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe during the years leading up the
First World War. In the wake of the the First World War the borders
of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe were redrawn. This region
experienced a period of upheaval, violence and conflict, before and
after World War I, which was the direct result of foreign economic
interests and interference.
The reasons behind the First World War are more sinister than the
standard school-book explanation, the assassination of the heir to
the throne of the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. Economic factors were the real motivation
for the large-scale war in 1914.
Norman Dodd, a former Wall Street banker and investigator for the
U.S. Congress, who examined U.S. tax-exempt foundations, confirmed
in a 1982 interview that those powerful individuals who from behind
the scenes controlled the finances, policies, and government of
the United States had in fact also planned US involvement in a war,
which would contribute to entrenching their grip on power.
The following testimonial is from the transcript of Norman Dodd’s
interview with G. Edward Griffin;
We are now at the year 1908, which was the year that the Carnegie
Foundation began operations. And, in that year, the trustees meeting,
for the first time, raised a specific question, which they discussed
throughout the balance of the year, in a very learned fashion. And
the question is this: Is there any means known more effective than
war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people? And
they conclude that, no more effective means to that end is known to
humanity, than war. So then, in 1909, they raise the second question,
and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war?
Well, I doubt, at that time, if there was any subject more removed from
the thinking of most of the people of this country [the United States],
than its involvement in a war. There were intermittent shows [wars]
in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where
the Balkans were. And finally, they answer that question as follows:
we must control the State Department.
And then, that very naturally raises the question of how do we do
that? They answer it by saying, we must take over and control the
diplomatic machinery of this country and, finally, they resolve to
aim at that as an objective. Then, time passes, and we are eventually
in a war, which would be World War I. At that time, they record on
their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President
Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war does not end
too quickly. And finally, of course, the war is over.
At that time, their interest shifts over to preventing what they call
a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914,
when World War I broke out.
(emphasis added)
The redrawing and partition of the Middle East from the Eastern
Mediterranean shores of Lebanon and Syria to Anatolia (Asia Minor),
Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and the Iranian Plateau responds to broad
economic, strategic and military objectives, which are part of a
longstanding Anglo-American and Israeli agenda in the region.
The Middle East has been conditioned by outside forces into a powder
keg that is ready to explode with the right trigger, possibly the
launching of Anglo-American and/or Israeli air raids against Iran
and Syria. A wider war in the Middle East could result in redrawn
borders that are strategically advantageous to Anglo-American interests
and Israel.
NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan has been successfully divided, all but in
name. Animosity has been inseminated in the Levant, where a Palestinian
civil war is being nurtured and divisions in Lebanon agitated. The
Eastern Mediterranean has been successfully militarized by NATO. Syria
and Iran continue to be demonized by the Western media, with a view
to justifying a military agenda. In turn, the Western media has fed,
on a daily basis, incorrect and biased notions that the populations of
Iraq cannot co-exist and that the conflict is not a war of occupation
but a "civil war" characterised by domestic strife between Shiites,
Sunnis and Kurds.
Attempts at intentionally creating animosity between the different
ethno-cultural and religious groups of the Middle East have been
systematic. In fact, they are part of carefully designed covert
intelligence agenda.
Even more ominous, many Middle Eastern governments, such as that of
Saudi Arabia, are assisting Washington in fomenting divisions between
Middle Eastern populations. The ultimate objective is to weaken the
resistance movement against foreign occupation through a "divide and
conquer strategy" which serves Anglo-American and Israeli interests
in the broader region.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is in an independent writer based in Ottawa
specializing in Middle Eastern and Central Asian affairs. He is a
Research Associate of the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG).
—————————————— ————————————–
Notes
1 U.S. State Department; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, What
the Secretary Has Been Saying; Special Briefing on the Travel to the
Middle East and Europe of Secretary Condoleezza Rice, Washington, DC.
July 21, 2006.
1.htm
2 Professor Mark LeVine, The New Creative Destruction, Asia Times,
August 22, 2006.
22Ak01.html
3 Professor Andrej Kreutz; The Geopolitics of post-Soviet Russia
and the Middle East, Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Association of
Arab-American University Graduates, Washington D.C., January 2002.
/is_1_24/ai_93458168/pg_1
4 The Caucasus or Caucasia can be considered as part of the Middle
East or as a separate region
5 Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Ralph Peters; Blood borders: How a
better Middle East would look, Armed Forces Journal (AFJ), June 2006
33899
6 Ibid
7 Crispian Balmer; French MPs back Armenia genocide bill, Turkey angry,
Reuters, October 12, 2006.
James McConalogue; French against Turks: Talking about Armenian
Genocide, The Brussels Journal, October 10, 2006.
8 Suleyman Kurt; Carved-up Map of Turkey at NATO Prompts U.S.
Apology, Zaman (Turkey), September 29, 2006.
; alt=&hn=36919
9 Ibid
10 Zbigniew Brzezinski; The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Basic Books, New York, 1998
detail.jsp?isbn=0465027261
11 Ibid
——————————————– ————————————
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For map,
xt=viewArticle&code=NAZ20061116&articleId= 3882