Now that the GOP is riding in to rescue Obama’s war plans, the stage is set for a week of video game coverage of the attacks on Syria. It’s always hard to know if this is just media blather or real preparations for an attack. What we see with Obama is the strange habit of confusing talk with actions. That’s why the managerial class hated Dick Cheney. He did not confuse talk with action. This is how we ended up in two pointless wars of choice in Afghanistan and Iraq, so there is something to say for talking rather than acting.

Anyway, lost in the run-up is the questionable relevancy of Russia’s opposition in world affairs. Putin keeps making noises one would expect from a tough guy with some punch, but he is slowly coming to the realization that words speak louder than actions. Syria’s main patron, the one moving ships into the area and providing arms to Assad is now on the fence. Rather, Russia appears to be on the fence. It’s hard to know as Putin is doing as much talking as Obama, who is probably bluffing about all this.

Regardless, the US, with or without support from Europe, can launch an attack on Syria knowing Russia will do nothing but complain. Obama could take out Assad if he chooses, knowing that Putin is not going to war over it. He can help facilitate waves of Muslim migrants flowing into Europe and he can choke off energy supplies, but he can’t stop the US from doing what it wants. He just has to hope Obama gets cold feet, so he has no choice but to talk out of both sides of his mouth to buy time and let Obama sweat.

There are two reasons why Russia is becoming a peripheral player in world affairs. The first is Russia simply lacks the military resources to do much outside her territory. One of the things we learned after the fall of the Soviet Union is that their technology was very crude compared to what the West was using. The years since the Cold War have given greater access to technology, but military tech is as much a part of culture and the Russian culture is still deeply warped from 70 years of communism.

In the case of Syria, the Israelis probably have terrific intelligence about Syria’s air defense systems, as well as her missile locations. The Israeli missile defense system is more than enough to ward out the ad hoc attacks that could come from a full-on attack on Syria by the US. Then there is the fact the US can own the airspace within hours of a conflict and deliver missile attacks anywhere it wants. We could take out the Russian naval assets deployed to the region. Putin certainly knows this.

The second reason is money. The wealth of nations is now controlled by central banks, specifically the Federal Reserve and the ECB. Those two banks control the world’s financial system. Putin and Gazprom may have hundred of billions in energy resources, but that’s not worth a whole lot when the Fed can destroy their currency. Russia, like China, needs to be connected to the grid and that means remaining on good terms with the United States, which is the world’s banker and money exchange.

That’s the big reason the Russians have to tread lightly. Of course, geography plays a big role here too. While vast distances have protected the Russians from invading armies from the West, it keeps her on the periphery of European life. As a result, these sorts of adventures are not really meant to confront the United States, but to keep western government from ignoring the Russian. If the Russians took on the attitude of the Swiss or the Swedes, there would never be a reason to think about them.

Shockingly, the American foreign policy establishment seems convinced the war in Syria is about freedom and democracy, despite the fact the rebels are probably worse than Assad. Those rebels would not exist without Saudi and GCC money and arms. On the other hand, Assad would be sleeping with Muhamar Qaddafi if not for Russian money and arms. There are reports that Iran has sent revolutionary Guard units to bolster Assad’s army. Out another way, there are no Jeffersonian democrats in the thing.

More important, the civil war in Syria is a proxy war. It is not about the specific events within Syria, but about the money men backing the actors. In this case, it is Iran and Saudi Arabia, Shia and Sunni, but also Russia, Europe and the United States.Like central Europe in the Thirty Years war, Syria is the chess board on which the game is played but the great power of this age. The fact that the most powerful player is the least realistic about what’s happening should be the great cause for concern.

This piece from the Financial Times goes into the other level of the game. The Euros, Russians and Chinese are not involved because they have an ideological interest. They are not there to promote freedom and democracy. The reason is for them to be involved is natural gas. The Russians, through Gazprom, control about a third of the natural gas supply to Europe. The Chinese have an insatiable appetite for natural resources, so they are involved. Europe, of course, is dependent on energy from the Middle East.

Iran shares an enormous natural gas field with the GCC countries. They would like to sell it to Europe. Building facilities to liquify it and ship it over sea to Europe is not practical for them. Instead, running a pipeline north through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea is a cheaper and faster option. Running through Iraq to Syrian ports on the Mediterranean would be even better. Russia would then have a customer for their arms, regain Iraq as a client and dominate the natural gas market into Europe.

Following the money makes it easy to see the Russian interests. On the other side, the Saudis have a similar set of interests. The Saudis understand better than anyone that oil is going to be replaced by gas as the primary energy source in the world. Within a decade refineries will be on-line that produce gasoline from natural gas at prices cheaper than crude. Therefore Saudi Arabia, along with the GCC countries, are looking to build their own natural gas pipeline to Europe.

Their pipeline could head in two different routes. One would lead from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to Turkey. The other would go through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey. I don’t think you have to be that clever to see why the Saudis and GCC are invested in Syria. If their ideological buddies win then it makes building their pipeline a better option than the Iranian pipeline. Inevitably, money and resources would swing in their favor. It also has the benefit of cutting the legs out from under Iran too.

The one player not in it for geopolitical reasons is the United States. That’s because the American foreign policy elite is neoconservative nuttery. There are people like John McCain, their heads are full of fantasies about spreading democracy, demanding we support the Islamist rebels. John McCain has been wrong about everything in the last three decades, but he just waves his POW-MIA flag and everyone runs for cover. He has the full backing of the Israeli lobby, who support American war on their enemies.

The thing is, the rest of the world figures they can wait out the Americans, who will get tired of spending blood and treasure on pointless wars. Obama’s election was, in part, a reaction to the disasters of the Bush years. Americans figured out they were conned into pointless wars on behalf of Israel. They don’t think of it exactly that way, but that is the reality of it. At some level, white people have figured out that the neoconservatives don’t seem to have our interests in the front of their mind. It’s heresy, so it goes unsaid.

That means the rest of the world can safely ignore the US, while they sort the mess out themselves. This is not a terrible outcome. Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires and we have been mired there for a dozen years. The Levant was nothing but trouble for the Romans and the British. The lesson of history is to stay out of these tribal lands and do what is required to keep them in their own lands. If the great game in Syria restores the old order of aggressive containment, that would be a pretty good result.

Looks like Obama will launch an attack on Syria soon.  I would assume this has been in the works for at least a year, but the chemical attack is being used as a justification or maybe the chemical attack is fake. One of the things that is hard for people to come to grips with is that most news is fake. It’s a combination of propaganda, bias and incompetence. If Obama wants a war, the media will provide the news stories to justify the war, even if they have to make them. That’s just life in a no trust society.

Either way, the US military does not move that quickly. The planning and execution structure is heavily bureaucratic and sclerotic. They need four or five planning sessions to build a latrine. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just how big armies of a global empire have to function. The minute civil war broke out in Syria, the military began preparing options for their civilian bosses. This from Wikileaks suggests western special ops have been working in Syria for a couple of years, probably since Bush invaded Iraq.

Of course, they have probably been working with Israeli intelligence and maybe even Saudi and Qatari forces. Then there is the fact that lots of money can be made from war, especially in a land full of oil and gas. Mesopotamia has become something of a giant version of Casablanca during World War II. Everyone and anyone that can make a buck from oil or war is int he region. War is inevitable, as long as there is money to be made from war. That means all the great powers are invested in the region.

American foreign policy has been a mess since the end of the Cold War, which was a useful restraint on the naive and delusional in the ruling elite.The threat of nuclear annihilation forced the sober minded to keep a firm hand on the tiller. That was a long time ago and now feckless ninnies like those in the Obama administration are in charge. No one notices just how jumbled and incompetent foreign policy has been under Obama, mostly because the media ignores it, for fear people will notice the wrong things.

Syria is a perfect example of the thumbless handling of foreign policy. Russia has a long history in Syria and they have strong ties with the Iranians. That means the neocons think America should side with the Islamist rebels trying to depose Assad. This ignores the fact that Russia is there fore purely economic reasons. The Russians are not motivated by ideology. It’s pure geopolitical politics. They seek to control the flow of energy into Europe, as that gives them money, but also keeps them in Europe, which is vital to their psyche.

The alleged gas attack is a great opportunity to strike a deal with the Russians that would put some limits on Iran’s ability to cause trouble and remove support for the Jihadists, but this administration has bungled it. The only hope may be the French. They are making noises about using the recent gas attack as an excuse to intervene. That’s ironic for many reasons, but it is what it is. The opportunity was there to shame the Russians into considering some sort of brokered settlement. Instead, the US is now backing Islamists.

In a perfect world, the US is out of the region entirely and it is left to the Europeans figure out how to get oil and gas out the place. That’s not in the cards, so the next best thing is a deal where the oil and gas in the region is controlled by parties willing to keep the peace locally and do business with the West. No one really cares about the religious inclinations of the locals, just as long as it does not spill outside the region or endanger the supply of natural resources. Otherwise, the locals can live as they please.

The worst result is having a Russian puppet in charge with a massive gas pipeline from Iran into Europe. That gives the Iranians the cash to pay for Russian arms, finance lunatics and become the dominant power in the Gulf. It also would give Russia the whip hand over Europe, as they would control their energy supplies. There’s lots of room to screw it up, but it gives the wrong parties greater access to power. The French seem to get this and want to prevent it, even if it means squaring off with the Russians.

The problem, of course, is that American foreign policy is controlled by a combination of naive and possibly deranged Progressives and neoconservatives, who have a messianic vision of the future, built around Israel. The result is American foreign policy is torn between support for Muslim radicalism on anti-Western grounds and opposition to radical Islam in support of Israel. Eight years of the latter is now been followed by four years of the former. The result has been a collapse in credibility.

As Spengler put it, “As long as the United States declares its support for the humbug of Muslim democracy in Egypt and Syria, the rest of the world will treat us as hapless lunatics and go about the business of securing their own interests without us.” That may be the least worst option, as America recovers from almost two decades of incompetent managerialism. If the rest of the world figures out they are better off without out us, maybe the next President will be happy to let the rest of the world sort their own troubles.

Steve Sailer has a post up on this piece in the NYTimes about Syria. The Kurds are looking like the one population group in the Arab world with a chance to escape the entropy of Islam. In Iraq, Saddam tried to exterminate them, but they hung on. Today, the Kurdish areas of Iraq are the only civilized portion of the country. Business is booming, they have a reasonably sane government and they have avoided the sectarian terrorism that still plagues the rest of the country. This with no help from the Americans.

Now we see they are quietly taking control of their areas in Syria. The Turks are naturally nervous about this, but there’s not much they can do about it. For the Turks, all of the options in Syria are bad options. Their bigger concern is the fact the Kurds will outnumber the Turks in twenty years. The future belongs to those who show up and in Turkey, the Kurds will showing up in big numbers. They have a TFR three times that of the Turrks.

Between the three countries, the Kurds number 30 million. They sit on loads of oil and gas and they practice a mild form of Islam. This allows them to be favorably disposed to western capitalism, without swallowing the degenerate Western culture. That sounds like the makings of a pretty good country, at leats by the standards of the region. Maybe the West should start looking at the Kurds as potential partners instead of the crazy Arabs.