I should like to offer a more detailed analysis of the recent Middle East crisis as it developed toward "the Battle of Iraq." Since late 1999 we find a pattern of moves aimed at damaging America's strategic position. These moves have not succeeded, but the game is far from over.
In late 1999 the Russian Federation announced a fleet deployment into the Mediterranean [1]. This announcement was not incidental. It anticipated future events. As oil prices spiked in early 2000, Russia began to show her hand in terms of moves intended to dramatically expand oil exports and production. It appeared on the surface that Russia might be preparing to exploit a general Middle East crisis involving a partial shutdown of some of the region's oil production. Also coincident with the last days of 1999, the head of the U.S. Congressional Task force on Terrorism and Unconventional warfare, Yossef Bodansky, publicly stated that Osama bin Laden had acquired Russian-built nuclear weapons through criminal intermediaries in the former Soviet Union.
The following questions must be asked: Was the Kremlin preparing to trigger, through its agents in the Islamic world, a damaging sequence of events that would boost its own oil revenues while damaging its oil-importing American nemesis? Was the Palestinian uprising of September 2000 the first eruption in a series of planned eruptions that would bring on an unprecedented energy crisis, a terror crisis and an economic crisis aimed at knocking America to her knees as it raised Russia from economic ruin?
In November 2000 the Israeli security services revealed that the al-Aqsa uprising was planned in late 1999, less than a month before the announced Russian fleet move to the Mediterranean (mentioned above). The timing of the Russian announcement suggests the possibility of coordination between Palestinian and Russian strategists. Furthermore, the instigation of a Middle East crisis could not have been more auspicious in terms of a damaging rise in oil prices vis-à-vis an already shaky U.S. economy. Signs of impending turmoil were apparent in key oil-producing states. Crises were brewing in Venezuela, Indonesia and Nigeria. The stage was set for an oil crunch, and Russia acted as though she was positioning herself to exploit a sudden doubling or tripling of prices. Arafat's sudden trip to Moscow at the peak of the Palestinian crisis in late November 2000, to consult Russian President Vladimir Putin, is suggestive of collusion.
Arafat had good cause to see his Russian patron. Over the weekend of November 24-26 the Israelis began to seriously mobilize. Israeli Prime Minister Barak accepted the advice of Chief of Staff Mofaz and ordered preparations for a regional Middle East conflict. By Dec. 1 the Knesset had approved emergency measures. The Israelis were going to beat down the Palestinian Authority and destroy Arafat's security infrastructure. The game of peace was over. But the Arab world was not rallying to Arafat's cause.
To bring this pot to a boil a further provocation was in the offing. On September 11, 2001, al Qaeda terrorists led by Mohammed Atta attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The destruction of the Twin Towers was a major blow aimed at the U.S. economy. Weeks before a Russian senior economist (from the Institute of Macroeconomic Research at the Russian Ministry of Economic Development and Trade) named Tatyana Koryagina had publicly predicted an attack on America by "shadow forces" that would collapse the U.S. economy. The dollar would soon be something to use for "wallpapering bathroom stalls," she said. In the wake of Koryagina's testimony before the Russian Duma, the country's lawmakers adopted gold coinage as legal tender. Russian citizens were encouraged to dump their dollars for gold. It is suspicious that a Russian, connected to a government ministry, should roughly guess the impending hit on America. What is most interesting, in light of this, is the background of the terrorists who organized the Sept. 11 attack. According to Czech sources, Mohammed Atta was trained as a terrorist in communist Czechoslovakia before the fall of the Soviet Union. Even more interesting, Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, spent several months in Russian secret police custody. (See my article, Ayman al-Zawahiri's Russian adventure.) This prince of the Egyptian terrorists, with his Egyptian accent, claimed that the Russians did not know who he was and let him go.
In terms of the push for Jihad against America, Zawahiri's voice was stronger even than bin Laden's at the outbreak of the September 2000 Palestinian uprising. During a September 21, 2000 al-Jazeera TV broadcast Zawahiri was heard to say: "Dear brothers, I am not trying to play on your emotions or ask you for your sympathy; rather, we are not talking business, we are talking Jihad." Referring specifically to the United States he said: "These heathens have spread their forces in Egypt, Yemen, and the Gulf, killing our children, persecuting our scholars, soiling our holy shrines, and stealing our wealth. Dear brothers, let us start working and stop playing."
What Zawahiri meant is quite clear. At the outset of the Palestinian uprising he was calling for a holy war against the United States. A connection between the September 2000 Intifadah and the September 2001 attack on America is here indicated. Add to this the connection alleged between bin Laden's nuclear arsenal and Russian agents in Chechnya. [See my article, The Chechen War and bin Laden's Nukes.] For those who did not follow the Chechen intrigue closely, it was an odd affair, not at all straightforward. Recent reports indicate, in addition, that Moscow's theater hostage crisis, in which key Chechen terrorists were eliminated, was a secret police provocation organized to cover the Kremlin's tracks. Chechen terrorists under Kremlin control had served their purpose and were now inconvenient witnesses to a double game. All of this leads back to the suspicious apartment bombings - blamed on Chechen terrorists - that triggered the Second Chechen War and gave color to the story of Chechen terrorists passing nuclear weapons to bin Laden. It also should be mentioned that President George W. Bush has stated his belief that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. It is therefore significant that documents captured in Baghdad show extensive Russian support for Saddam Hussein's secret operations, including Kremlin offers of support for assassinations against targets in the West.
The picture here is not altogether clear. But we should not ignore the curious connectedness of Russia to Iraq, Russia to Zawahiri, Russian nukes to bin laden and Russia's Czech satellite to Atta. The Kremlin's past support for terrorism is famous. It is not something that can be credibly disputed. And so we must ask ourselves: Did the combination that began with the September 2000 Palestinian uprising set the stage for the economically devastating destruction of the Twin Towers, a Middle East war, an oil crisis and an economic crisis meant to cripple the United States? Was that the plan? And was this plan thwarted by America's incredible resiliency and strength?
KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, writing in March 1992, explained Russia's strategy in the Middle East as follows: "A primary objective of the strategy here is to achieve a partnership with the fundamentalists in Iran and Algeria and to replace the present American-oriented rulers of Saudi Arabia with fundamentalists."
Was bin Laden a part of this strategy?
Whatever the answer, the failure of bin Laden to ignite a revolution in Saudi Arabia is a critical failure indeed. The collapse of Saddam Hussein is a further blow to those who would make trouble for America in the Middle East. We cannot be sure exactly how the Russians hoped to exploit the emerging crisis of 2000-2001. But this much is certain: America's position has been strengthened, if only for the moment. Totalitarian regimes across the planet are alarmed. Of course, this situation is only temporary. We find elucidation on this point from the late Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, who once lectured a colleague on the weaknesses of America. "They don't comprehend our final goals," he explained. "And they mistake tactics for strategy. Besides, they have too many doctrines and concepts proclaimed at different times, but the absence of a solid, coherent, and consistent policy is their big flaw."
The strategists who want to knock America from its dominant global position are men who think in terms of decades. They do not jump from expedient to expedient. They prepare the ground long ahead of time. As KGB defector Golitsyn explained in his postscript on Russia's long-range strategy in his book, The Perestroika Deception: "[T]he Soviet long-range strategists have a coherent framework within which to pursue their objectives. And they are taking precautions to ensure that the crisis of confusion among conservative forces will not be temporary. On the contrary, practical measures are in hand to prevent any recovery of perspective, which would lead to the true purposes of [Russian] 'restructuring' being understood in time."
The Bush administration remains naïve and deluded about Russia's goals. President Bush continues to follow the false path of arms control and disarmament. The modernization of U.S. forces yet entails further reductions in the number of American tanks, planes and ships. Meanwhile, the Chinese and Russian armed forces continue to grow.
I should like to end with a quote from Andrei Navrozov, who anticipated the present situation more than a decade ago when he wrote what the Kremlin strategists were then thinking: "Democracies have never understood that we have a strategy. They never had one, and when somebody does not know how to play chess and just 'shuffles his galoshes' as we say, he always assumes his opponent is doing the same. They think Iosif Vissarionovich [Stalin] was a fool, Hitler a madman. Even if they could read what I am thinking now ... they would never believe their eyes. They cannot comprehend that in war as in chess, the stronger your position the more productive the combinations you set up, until there is simply no room for failure left and your opponent surrenders."
Notes:
[1] The Russian fleet deployment was later canceled after the Arab states failed to mobilize for war against Israel after the start of the Intifadah al-Aqsa in September 2000.
