AP Delivers a F*ck You to Mo Yan and the PRC…at a Price

[Update: It is possible that AP’s visit to Liu Xia was facilitated by the regime.  For a possible precedent see Blind guy evades 100 captors and gets to Beijing just in time to give Hillary Clinton a headache.  However, the timing doesn’t seem right to me, as the reportage on Liu Xia detracted from the hoopla surrounding Mo Yan.  If this were a CCP strategem, I would think the more effective strategy would have been for Mo Yan and the PRC to claim their moment in the Nobel sun, then a few days later allow the focus to shift to Liu Xiaobo’s incarceration and what the new, ostensibly more hip and liberal regime of Xi Jinping might do about it.  Instead we get the framing of “posturing of pro-regime hack undercut by image of Nobely/nobly suffering spouse”.  If you want to tie yourself into conspiratorial knots, you could speculate that hardliners secretly orchestrated the visit to embarrass and anger the new leadership, thereby creating conditions for Liu’s continued detention.]

Judging by tweets and retweets, Mo Yan is in the bad books of Western journalists for failing to recognize that with the great privilege of the Nobel Prize comes great responsibility, at least the responsibility to demonstrate fealty to Western attitudes concerning intellectual freedom and to demonstrate solidarity with other winners who are not in a position to enjoy their prizes to the fullest…like Liu Xiaobo.

Mo’s statements supporting certain types of censorship as an order-maintaining public good were unfavorably bookended with reports of a journalistic coup: AP reporters somehow obtained access to Liu Xiaobo’s wife,  Liu Xia, who is held incommunicado in Beijing.

Human Rights Watch's Phelim Kine tweeted: Mo Yan's defense of #China #censorship appalling on same day of images of a traumatized, unlawfully imprisoned Liu Xia http://yhoo.it/11LTePa) 

But read the AP piece and see if you can spot the possible flaw in this bold effort in compare and contrast:

Stunned that reporters were able to visit her, Liu Xia trembled uncontrollably and cried as she described how absurd and emotionally draining her confinement under house arrest has been in the two years since her jailed activist husband, Liu Xiaobo, was named a Nobel Peace laureate.
In her first interview in 26 months, Liu Xia spoke briefly with journalists from The Associated Press who managed to visit her apartment Thursday while the guards who watch it apparently stepped away for lunch. Her voice shook and she was breathless from disbelief at receiving unexpected visitors.

…

Liu, dressed in a track suit and slippers, was shaken to find several AP journalists at her door. Her first reaction was to put her hands to her head and ask several times, "How did you manage to come up? How did you manage?"

Around midday, the guards who keep a 24-hour watch on the main entrance of Liu's building had left their station — a cot with blankets where they sit and sleep.

It is unlikely that the PRC regime decided to allow covert access to Mdme. Liu at this particular instance, thereby letting the international media rain on the parade of its preferred Nobelist, Mo Yan.  The AP's journalistic derring-do is unlikely to please Mdme. Liu’s jailers.

If the reporting concerning Mdme. Liu’s shock and surprise is accurate, she is very likely terrified that the AP reporters’ visit will lead to some retaliation against her: curtailment of the monthly visits to her husband, or possible removal to even less endurable detention outside Beijing.

Maybe Mo Yan is not the only one who is learning that a Nobel Prize brings with it unexpected and possibly unwanted responsibilities.

Maybe we’ll find out what kind of retaliation Liu Xia suffers…the next time there’s another Chinese Nobel Prize…whenever that happens.

Photo by AP's Ng Han Guan

“I Don’t Know Whether to Kiss You…or Waterboard You…”

A line that coulda shoulda been in Skyfall but wasn’t.

Skyfall was enjoyable, in a grim sort of way.  I certainly regretted the shortage of many of the signature Bond tropes—babes, booze, quips, and gadgets-- that  enlivened the earlier films, especially in the self-mocking days of Sean Connery and Roger Moore, and made the gaping plot holes more endurable.

The wheels come off Skyfall in the final act, where Bond returns to his ancestral home in Scotland with his bosslady, M, to lure the archvillain, Silva into a trap.

For some reason, although MI6 is aware of this ruse, Bond receives no official backup and has to fight off a helicopterload of henchman relying only on his wits, courage, Dame Judy Dench, and the decrepit but murderous old family retainer and caretaker, Kincade, played by Albert Finney.

In the good/bad old days, Roger Moore would have marched into the old homestead calling peremptorily for Kincade! only to be pleasantly nonplussed  by the appearance of the current officeholder, Kincade’s gorgeous granddaughter, wearing nothing but a bikini under an ankle-length fur coat and wielding a shotgun.   Then, after some improbable but amusing mayhem, the villain would be subjugated,  Felix Leiter would appear to mop up the underlings, and M would be on the helicopter back to London harrumphing, “Where’s Bond?”  Cut to Moore luxuriating with the lovely Ms. Kincade in a profusion of mink before a roaring fire, purring, “I’ve always wanted to explore the hills and valleys of my native Scotland…”

Roll credits.

In Skyfall, by contrast,  much unconvincing elder-abuse derring-do ensues, culminating in a showdown in the wee kirk in the heather that holds the bones of Bond’s sainted parents.  With Bond temporarily detained below the ice of the local tarn, Silva takes by surprise Dench—and Finney, who appears to have chosen this dangerous moment to take a crap in the church outhouse, only to return through a side door adjusting his suspenders just in time to stand there like a gormless idiot while Silva pulls the awkward stunt of putting his own gun to his own head, lining up Dench’s head next to his, and imploring Dench to pull the trigger, end it for them both, and take care of his mommy issues.

This would have been the perfect opportunity for M—already mortally wounded but fortuitously not exhibiting the shock, disorientation, trembling, stammering, and meaningless gibbering usually associated with severe blood loss—either to toss off a devastating quip—“No, after you, I insist!”—while twisting herself out of the way and pulling the trigger, or do the stiff upper lip thing, snuffing Silva at the cost of the remaining four minutes of her life and sacrificing her not-a-damp-eye-in-the-house death scene with JB.

Spoiler alert: Neither of these two things happens.

The key dilemma for any Bond movie is finding a plausible, crowd-pleasing mission for a heartless government assassin that doesn’t make him look like a thug or recreational terrorist or scab taking work away from the CIA and Mossad.

If you read the relentless fluffing in the Guardian (and paid attention to the whole “Queen parachutes into London Olympics with Daniel Craig” deal) you will realize that Skyfall hangs its hat on English patriotism.  Early in the movie, in a psychological evaluation, Bond responds to the word “country” in a free association test with a steely “England” (instead of “club” or “Marie Osmond”, or, for that matter, “Scotland” no doubt pissing off the independence enthusiasts that hoped he might have gone all Braveheart).  There is also some Churchill and British bulldog-related flagwaving intended to evoke thin red line/all for England emotions.  

Mission accomplished; Skyfall, has surpassed Avatar as England’s biggest national grosser.  The unintended amusement emerges when we learn exactly what Bond is protecting England from.

The set piece for this conundrum occurs during the superb second act attack on London, in the parliamentary inquiry scene where some officious young MP gets in M’s face and tells her to discontinue MI6’s black ops activities in favor of the modern point and click intel gathering that is all the rage these days.

In her reply, Dame Judy Dench deploys high dudgeon in the service of low seriousness, talking about the big, bad, dangerous world and justifying the 00s with the rhetorical question “How safe do you feel?”  Fortuitously, at this moment, Silva bursts into the hearing room on his mission of mayhem, proving that spry if wrinkly velociraptors like James Bond and even lumbering brontosaurs like M have their uses.

At least, that’s what director Sam Mendes thinks.

The catch, of course, is that Silva is an ex-MI6 agent whom M abandoned to the tender mercies of Chinese intelligence and who subsequently turned rogue.

I would have found it preferable and infinitely more entertaining if Dench had used the occasion of Silva’s irruption to acidly berate the franticly scurrying MPs, “This is exactly what I’m talking about!  If we stop employing overtrained psychopaths, who is going to deal with the overtrained psychopaths who leave our employ?”

Which brings me in a roundabout way to Syria, where the anti-Assad powers (including Great Britain, of course, but also including a) the US, Turkey, and the rest of NATO and b) the GCC)  will soon have the pleasure of scraping up the mess created by their material and diplomatic support of the insurrectionists.

Undoubtedly one of the options on the table is to send in some kind of armed force, not to deal with Assad (who is now having the sort of difficulties in his capital—high level defections, serial car bombs, loss of control of the airport, etc.—usually associated with regime collapse), but to restore order and support pro-Western opposition forces after Assad falls.

The general disinterest in this development astounds me.

Consider the matter of the NATO plan to position Patriot batteries in Turkey.

Is Assad going to compound his current woes by attacking Turkey?  Is there any conceivable explanation for the NATO move other than to reduce the danger of Syrian regime retaliation if Turkey sends in troops?

Consider the matter of the US and UN warnings about chemical weapons.  Assad has announced that the regime will not use them against domestic enemies; in any event, given the close quarters mayhem going on in Syrian cities (and the presence of civilian human shields by accident or design), it doesn’t seem a workable option.  The most likely use, if any, of chemical weapons, would be against a foreign army.

Consider the matter of the hurried reorganization of SNCORF—an exercise in regime change that replaced  the corrupt and conspiratorial Muslim Brotherhood-dominated SNC with a new group of stooges, equally ineffectual and isolated from the domestic opposition, but who presumably will be more responsive to foreign demands once it comes time to erect a useful pro-Western intervention-friendly proxy on the rubble of Assad’s regime and the bodies of the bloody-minded Islamist insurrectionists.

But the whole Day After contingency planning angle—including the explosive possibility that Turkish troops will be marching into an Arab country, thereby reigniting not-so-fond memories of the Ottoman Empire—gets almost no attention in the Western press.  

Of course, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire—and the fragmentation of the Arab Middle East into arbitrary, unstable, and largely unrulable fiefdoms—was very much the work of the British Empire during and after World War I.

In large part, the last fifty years of US foreign policy in the Middle East has been dealing with the consequences of Britain’s inability to hold on to its empire from Suez to Tehran or even manage its dissolution.

Maybe there’s a movie out there about England stepping up and shouldering the grim obligation of cleaning up the abortion the Empire midwived in the Middle East.

It certainly isn’t Skyfall.

P.S. Want the Skyfall china bulldog?  It's sold out.  But Royal Doulton has promised to grunt out another litter by March 2013.

Is China trying to implode Japan's economy?

[This article originally appeared at Asia Times Online on December 1, 2012.  It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.]
 
Is the People's Republic of China (PRC) trying to implode the Japanese economy? It is starting to look that way. The PRC has counterprogramed the US pivot to Asia - and US advantages in military and softpower - by leveraging its economic strengths.

When Japan kicked off this year's edition of the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Follies with the national purchase of the uninhabited rocks, the PRC leadership responded by giving free rein to nationalist Nipponphobic demonstrations, boycotts, and occasional anti-Japanese thuggery - and then refused to allow relations to renormalize.

The PRC frequently reiterates a hardline position during the press conferences of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For instance, on November 19:

Q: Is there arrangement of meeting between the Chinese and Japanese leaders during the East Asian Leaders' meetings? What is your comment on the prospect of Sino-Japanese relations?

A: As far as I know, there is no arrangement of Sino-Japanese bilateral meeting during the East Asian Leaders' meetings.

On your second question, as is known to all, Japan's illegal "purchase" of the Diaoyu Islands has led Sino-Japanese relations to the current difficult situation. Japan should bear full responsibility. China hopes the Japanese side will seriously reflect on and correct its mistakes, show sincerity and make concrete efforts to properly settle the current problems and push bilateral relations back to the normal track of development.

By this framing, "pushing bilateral relations back to the normal track of development" would involve the Japanese government publicly repudiating the island purchase.

That simply isn't going to happen.

Japanese public opinion is rock-solid behind Japan's claims to the Senkakus, a situation that has more to do with fear and mistrust of Rising China in the Land of the Rising Sun than it has to do with the validity and value of Japan's claims to a cluster of uninhabited Taiwanese islands.

As the Japanese parliamentary elections - announced for December 16 - approach, the PRC is doing nothing to reduce the political profile of the issue, or its unpopularity in Japan. Chinese coast guard vessels have continually patrolled the waters near the Senkakus, allowing the Japanese media to report this affront in a style reminiscent of America's humiliation during the Iran hostage crisis:

Chinese vessels sail near Senkakus for 20th day [1]
Chinese vessels near Senkakus 30 days in a row [2]

And so on.

The widely accepted explanation for the PRC willfully pitching Sino-Japanese relations into the deep freeze is knee-jerk Chinese nationalism, with the emphasis on "jerk". A variation on this explanation is "weak and divided Chinese government is trying to look strong for internal political reasons", an explanation that has been trotted out for decades by every government that found its tit caught in a Chinese wringer, here floated by the current Noda government to explain the current crisis and obligingly circulated by the Asahi Shimbun:

In September, the Noda administration officially decided to put three of the Senkaku Islands under state ownership, before China's Communist Party Congress was held.

"If we purchased [the Senkaku Islands] immediately after the new leadership was established, it would bring shame to China," a source close to Noda said. "We will be able to improve our relationship with the new leadership if we finish putting [the Senkakus] under state ownership during Hu Jintao's era."

However, the friction between Japan and China has only worsened. The Noda administration has further strengthened the belief that the new leadership in Beijing is unstable, and Xi has no choice but to take a hard-line stance against Japan, according to an official at the prime minister's office. [3]

Unfortunately for Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, a nice Reuters backgrounder on the Senkaku purchase reveals that the central government could have delayed the sale of the islands to the city of Tokyo for an indeterminate period of time, thereby sparing the tender feelings of the new Chinese leadership, by insisting on parliamentary review, surveys and other bureaucratic hoo-hah; indeed, a key reason why the right-wing owner abandoned his ideological soul mate, Shintaro Ishihara, to sell to the central government was because he needed to see the money pronto in order to pay down a mountain of debts.

If Noda wants to see what hardline posturing driven by leadership instability looks like, he can take a peek in the mirror. [4]

The PRC's high-profile, unyielding position on the Senkakus seems to reflect something other than reflexive nationalism, political weakness, or the blunderings of a disoriented and incapable elite. It appears that the Beijing leadership may have decided to edge beyond using the Senkaku dispute as a mere demonstration of its economic countermeasures to the US pivot into Asia, to thinking seriously about actually trying to kick a key prop out from under the US initiative - a vital, but weakened and vulnerable ally: Japan.

The Day After: The Second Battle for Syria is About to Begin

I wrote the piece reproduced below exactly one year ago.  It concludes:

The Syrian revolutionaries were too weak to get the nation they wanted.

They’ll have to make do with whatever state that Turkey, the Gulf powers, and the western democracies decide to give them.

Now, at the end of 2012, perhaps the fundamental dynamic of the current jockeying over recognition, arms, and aid to the reconstituted overseas Syrian opposition has been misunderstood.

It isn’t a question of how to help the rebels.

The Syrian Army appears increasingly unable to hold its ground and Syria seems to be headed for a total collapse of national authority—at the hands of largely Islamist insurrectionists.

The Western powers aren’t concerned with how many more days, weeks, or months Assad is able to maintain a territorial base in Syria centered on Damascus.  And they don’t see very concerned with unleashing a flood of arms to hasten the regime’s demise and deliver the Syrian people from their current misery.

What matters is the day after, when Syria is fragmented among the victorious fighters, many with an Islamist agenda.

Somebody’s going to have to go in with an army to clean up the mess, co-opt, demobilize, or kill the insurrectionists, and restore some semblance of order and security.  The Syrian Army probably isn’t going to be up to the job.

That’s what I believe the true significance of the hurried establishment of SNCORF (Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces) is all about.

It represents the creation of a compliant (and not Muslim Brotherhood-dominated) authority that can call for assistance a.k.a. intervention by NATO and Turkey and the GCC, perhaps as soon as the SNCORF establishes a halfway plausible presence in post-Assad Idlib, Tarsus, or Aleppo, somewhere where foreign aid and, if needed, forces can be funneled into Syria efficiently.

It looks like the second battle for Syria is about to begin.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

 

The Syrian Revolution Hijacked

The Syrian revolution—a broad-based, non-sectarian, democratic anti-despot national movement—has failed.

Mass demonstrations never materialized in Damascus and Aleppo.  The military and security forces didn’t crack.  The Alawite on Sunni crackdown (Alawites form the backbone of the army/security forces/irregular goon squads) fomented sectarian divisions, with most non-Sunnis minorities cleaving desperately to the Assad regime.  Prosperous Sunnis have presumably been hedging their bets by donating to the anti-government cause in recent days but have not explicitly abandoned the regime.

The Gulf powers and the West would have welcomed a Ba’athist regime collapse at the hand of domestic anti-government demonstrations.

That didn’t happen.

As the peaceful democratic movement has faltered, there has been no move from the Western/Gulf powers to encourage reconciliation and reforms.

Quite the contrary, in fact.

Whenever Assad makes an offer of reform, the Western powers dismiss it as too late and/or insincere.

Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokesperson, counseled Syrian dissidents to defy the Assad regime’s offer of an amnesty in return for handing in illegal weapons, as the LA Times reported:

Syria accused Washington of "inciting sedition, supporting the acts of killing and terrorism," the official Syrian news agency said, quoting an official source at the Foreign Ministry.

…
The comments came a day after State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland declared that she would counsel Syrians to reject the amnesty, in which those the government terms arms violators were asked to turn themselves in with their weapons "to the nearest police station" during a one-week period that began Saturday. Those who surrender and have not killed anyone "will be released soon," the Interior Ministry vowed.

"I wouldn't advise anybody to turn themselves in to regime authorities at the moment," Nuland told reporters in Washington.

Nuland, by the way, is married to PNACer and neocon pundit Robert Kagan.  Recalling Dick Cheney's enthusiasm for driving to Damascus post-Iraqi Freedom, maybe we should call the Syria enterprise Clean Break II: The Do-Over.

Anyway, democracy didn't work.  Time for Plan B.

The foreign powers interested in Assad’s fall—and stripping Iran of a regional ally--have made the decision to piggyback a foreign-supported, foreign-funded insurrection on the faltering anti-government movement.  

More accurately, the democratic revolution is now an uncertain and unwilling passenger on the Gulf-funded military machine rumbling toward Damascus.

Havens for anti-Assad fighters have materialized in Turkey, and arms and money are flooding in from all over the place.

Weapons and money for anti-Assad insurrectionists has been trickling in for months, to the blissful disregard of western news outlets fixated on the images of democracy demonstrators struggling against oppression.

Now that the political option is sliding off the table and it is clear a foreign-funded insurrection is needed to remove the Assad regime, the gusher of arms and cash has become too big to ignore.

But the story doesn’t require old-fashioned reporting anymore.

Just go down to a Turkish foreign ministry presser for tea, cookies, and a targeted backgrounder.

Turkey has positioned itself as the indispensable Western/Gulf proxy on Syria’s northern border.

Iran’s IRNA news agency passed on a report in Turkey’s Millyet tabloid a major Turkish news outlet.  IRNA is sometimes selective and/or inaccurate in its presentation of international news, so I’m passing it on with a caveat, but the report as presented passes the smell test for me:

According to Milliyet, as cited by IRNA, France has sent its military training forces to Turkey and Lebanon to coach the so-called Free Syrian Army -- a group of defectors operating out of Turkey and Lebanon -- in an effort to wage war against Syria's military.

The report added that the French, British, and Turkish authorities “have reached an agreement to send arms into Syria.”

The Turkish daily said that the three have informed the US about training and arming the Syrian opposition.

According to Milliyet, a group of armed rebels are currently stationed in Turkey's Hatay Province near the border with Syria.

The report comes as an earlier report had revealed that the British and French intelligence agencies have reportedly tasked their agents with contacting Syrian dissidents based in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli in order to help fuel unrest in Syria.

Reports also said that French intelligence agents have been sent to northern Lebanon and Turkey to build the first contingents of the Free Syrian Army out of the deserters who have fled Syria.

For those of you who prefer to get your Turkey/Syria news from a reliable Crusader source, here’s an eyebrow-raising item from the Daily Telegraph, albeit via Hurryet on November 27:

Syrian dissidents held secret talks Nov. 25 with Libya’s new authorities and Turkish authorities in Istanbul with the aim of securing weapons and money for their insurgency against Damascus, the Daily Telegraph has reported.

Syrian opposition group requested “assistance” from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers, during the meeting, the daily reported Nov. 25.

“There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” a Libyan source said on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”

Preliminary discussions about arms supplies took place when members of the Syrian National Council (SNC) – the country’s main opposition movement – visited Libya earlier this month, said the daily.

“The Libyans are offering money, training and weapons to the Syrian National Council,” said Wisam Taris, a human rights campaigner with links to the SNC. Last month, Libya’s interim government became the first in the world to recognize Syria’s opposition movement as the country’s “legitimate authority.”

Large shipments of weapons have not yet been sent, said activists, mainly because of logistical difficulties.

But proposals for a “buffer zone” inside Syria, monitored by the Arab League, or the likely emergence of an area inside the country controlled entirely by rebels, could solve this problem. “The [Libyan] council’s offer is serious,” said Taris.

Sources in the Libyan town of Misrata suggested that some weapons may already have been sent. Some smugglers were caught selling small arms to Syrian buyers in Misrata, said a man who trafficked guns to Libya’s rebels during the country’s civil war.

Libyans feel closely aligned to the Syrian cause, said Hameda al-Mageri, from the Tripoli Military Council.


The Tripoli Military Council is the creature of Islamist strongman Abdelhakim Belhadj.

Belhadj is the preferred in-Libya muscle of the Gulf States—“proxy” is perhaps not too strong a term.  He recently found it expedient to issue a non-denial denial that Qatar had dispatched nine planeloads of arms to Tripoli for the exclusive use of his forces.

Belhadj was denied a seat in the new Libyan cabinet thanks to Western anxiety over any overtly Islamist tinge to the proceedings. In an inspiring demonstration of the give-and-take of new Libyan democracy, a representative from Zintan was able to leverage his town’s continued and suspiciously prolonged local custody of Saif Qaddafi into a winning bid for the defense slot.

Instead, Belhadj now has the opportunity to pursue profitable mischief in Syria on behalf of the Gulf states and their anti Sh’ia/anti-Iranian counter revolution (and perhaps dissipating the intimidating shadow of Belhadj and a number of his well-trained and hardened fighters from the streets of Tripoli).

In an amusing sideline, Belhadj--presumably on his way to the Istanbul meeting--got a friendly hazing at the airport from his Zintan buddies.  The brief detention was noted by the local Libyan press; the thing about the money was apparently glossed by a pro-Gaddafi website (they still exist!):

The battalion of Zintan men has arrested him after the discovery that the passport is registered with the competent authorities and carrying fake name. 

After the arrest the rebels received a call from the President of the Council Mustafa Abdul Jalil asking the Alzentan and officials at the airport in Tripoli to allow Hakim Belhaj to leave the country, this has been found on the large sum of money inside the bag Khuwaildi Belhadj.

The democratic revolution ship has sailed.  What’s going on today is a foreign-supported insurrection.

The Chinese and the Russians have a clear-eyed understanding of what’s going on.

The PRC is loath to get on the wrong side of Saudi Arabia, its largest energy supplier, by going too far to defend Syria.

Moscow, which has a real stake in its Iran alliance and cares about the fate of Assad’s regime, has shown no such qualms.

A selection of headlines from RIA Novosti gives an idea of what a responsible multi-lateral response on Syria—as opposed to a hurried military ass-kicking enabled by global anti-Iranian forces meant to obscure the failure of a peaceful "color revolution"—would have looked like:

Syria welcomes Russia as intermediary in reconciliation talks 

Syrian opposition should not boycott reforms—Russian FM 

Moscow calls on Arab League to work for peace in Syria


None of this is happening, of course.

As to where this all ends up, I will outsource the increasingly plausible endgame--Turkey is ready to invade Syria--to the estimable M. Badhrakumar of Asia Times (and his personal blog, Indian Punchline):


Turkey and its western allies are transferring the Libyan fighters whom they trained and armed to depose Muammar Gaddafi to Syria. Around 600 Libyan ‘volunteers’ have entered Syria. Daily Telegraph reported that secret meetings were held on Friday in Istanbul between the Turkish officials and the Syrian opposition representatives and the Libyan fighters. Large-scale infiltration of weapons from Turkey and Jordan have been going on for months to create civil-war conditions in Syria, but this is the first move to introduce ‘volunteers’.  

The move is necessitated by the failure to induce defections form the Syrian armed forces, except a mere handful. Turkey and the western powers are desperate to create the myth of a ‘Syrian resistance’ force without which their blatant aggression will be in full display. 

…

Things seem to be heading for a flash point, indeed. The sure sign is that US V-P Joseph Biden is heading for Ankara in the weekend. It is a major signal of the US giving the go-ahead to Turkey to act on Syria without fear. Again, Jordanian King, Abdullah, travelled to israel. He is Saudi Arabia’s ‘back channel’ to Israel and a key regional ally for the western intelligence. 

Turkey is indeed shedding its fear of the unknown and is coming out into the open on the Syrian situation. Turkish FM Ahmet Davitoglu indicated today for the first time that Turkey is all set for invasion of Syria once it gets the green signal from its western allies. He said this before heading for the combined meeting of EU foreign ministers and Arab League representatives (read Saudi Arabia and Qatar).  

The day Davutoglu spoke, November 29, will stand out as a notable date in the chronicle of the Turkish Republic that Kemal Ataturk founded. Ataturk’s ‘red line’ used to be that Turkey should never get entangled in the affairs of the Muslim Middle East but should instead concentrate on its own ‘modernization’. Evidently, the Islamist government in power today thinks Turkey is today ‘modern’ enough already and can now go back and reclaim its Ottoman legacy. 

A Turkish army moving into an Arab country - it is a historic point. It is a century after the Turks were driven out by the ‘Arab revolt’. The matrix is dripping with irony. The Arab revolt against the Turks was instigated by Great Britain. And Britain, although a far weaker power today, is still playing a seminal role - except, it is encouraging the Turks to return to the Arab world. One hundred years ago, Britain successfully pitted the Arabs against the Turks. Today, Turks join hands with some Arabs who have a grouse against some other Arabs.  

The Syrian revolutionaries were too weak to get the nation they wanted.

They’ll have to make do with whatever state that Turkey, the Gulf powers, and the western democracies decide to give them.

[Endnote: On December 1, 2012, Hurriyet foreign news editor Emre Kizilkaya wrote this on his blog, The Istanbulian:

Erdogan showed us his right hand [a distracting tirade about a Turkish  TV show which Erdogan condemned for insufficient emphasis on the martial majesty of his personal avatar, Suleiman the Magnificent] and it instantly caught our attention for a week.

Meanwhile, his left hand was cloaking a NATO delegation which visited Turkey for a recon mission before setting up a Patriot missile defence system against Syria:

A critical decision which some see as a prelude to an all-out war...]