Talk politics.

This vid tells the story of Zbigniew Brzezinski's involvement in perfecting the doctrine of combating nationalism with religious fanaticism. It was none other but Brzezinski himself (along with Carter), one of Obama's mentors on foreign policy since day one, who initiated the strategy of importing Islamic fundamentalists from all around the world into Pakistan, arming them and training them, and then sending them over the Afghanistan border to fight the Soviets.

On a side note, indeed it's now known that Brzezinski and Carter had funded the Mujahideen half a year before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan (the first directive for granting secret aid to them was signed on July 3, 1979). The idea was to use the right-wing religious extremists against the leftist pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, which largely contributed to the Soviets taking the decision to intervene (December 24 the same year). Says Brzezinski himself,

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahideen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.


After the Soviets failed miserably in Afghanistan and were forced to flee with their tail under their legs, the Mujahideen did not enjoy their triumph for too long, because their alliance soon split into various factions. This fragmentation resulted in the spreading of various versions of Islamist fundamentalism, a large number of fugitives and exiles from other parts of South Asia and the Middle East contributing to that additionally. These soon began sharing that space with drug cartels, poppy producers and arms- and human-trafficking networks spanning almost all continents and being centered in the Middle East.

However, after years of neglect (or as some might argue, downright hostility) from the West, the coordination of these groups passed to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have financed various Wahhabi groups through their proxies ever since, using "private" charities, or even minor proxy states like Qatar. Although these groups have largely diverged into many directions and have covered a myriad of causes over the years, they still keep being assisted and supported by the Saudis. This process extends into the Maghreb as well: as soon as it became clear that Libya was up for grabs, these forces suddenly swelled there. The US and NATO saw a nice opportunity in this to use these groups as a proxy against Gaddafi. Moreover, their leaders were already very familiar to the Western intelligence, they had tabs being kept on them, etc, so they could be used with relative ease.

There sure were a handful of governments in the Middle East that needed toppling, governments that opposed the Saudi and US interests in the region, and which were furthermore perceived as a threat to Israel. Gaddafi's downfall, coupled with the West's policy of no boots on the ground resulted in huge arms stockpiles remaining up for grabs there, and thousands of poor political prisoners who needed a purpose in their miserable life. A resource that the US couldn't afford to just scratch off the book, if they could be used as a tool to do the dirty job for them.

As for the guns, from a US standpoint it'd be useful to know how many of those are there, who has them and what they're being used for. But in order to avoid getting their hands dirty, the US had to appoint a middleman in any possible arms transfer from one point of conflict to the next. And they sure got such middlemen, who provided a reliable connection with the groups that needed the guns. The function of these liaisons was to determine which group was a legitimate ally and which wasn't, to vet their leaders and decide whom the US could trust with doing the job, and which groups and leaders would be competent enough to utilize the tactical, financial and military support that the US would provide. So, as the bombs kept falling from the sky over Libya, US-supported thugs rode in gun-packed pickup trucks across the country, pushing Gaddafi closer and closer to his ultimate hole, from where there was no escape.


The problem is, the US has been finding time and time again that none of these proxies are trustworthy in the long run, ever since 9-11. Once they've served their purpose and done their job in a particular conflict, they soon tend to degenerate and become a thorn in the ass rather than an asset - and unfortunately, there's no way to just order them to disarm and dismantle voluntarily. That's a classic example of good intentions leading to bad results, thanks to short-sightedness in the strategy-making process. The US either consistently fails to notice the pattern, or its leaders just don't care about the outcome that much.

Another example is Syria. Obama was very vocal in announcing his "red line" about the purported use of WMDs by Assad. But he soon had to silently take that threat back or just tone it down, when it started to become clear that either Assad had actually not used chemical weapons, or that the question as to which side had actually used them was controversial at best. In fact, hints began to arrive that the Turkish and Saudi intelligence had provided part of those chemical weapons to groups like the Al-Nusra Front (a branch of Al Qaeda) in a blatant attempt at manipulation. A move which has remained without consequences thus far. Whether failed or not, this manoeuvre did manage to transfer a certain amount of arms from Libya to Syria, a task which was accomplished through organizing the Libyan rebels with the aid of Qatar, to move the arms via Turkey into Syria by both air and ship transport.

Then in April this year, the omnipresent Sen. John McCain, this paragon of cunning strategical thought, made an open appearance with the leaders of the so called Free Syria Army, using the opportunity to pledge America's support for their cause. The goal of toppling Assad at any cost justified the means, namely recruiting various Islamist extremists to do the job. Little did he know that some of the people he was posing for the cams with, were responsible for breaking up a number of prisons in the Middle East. Gaddafi and Assad had sure been repressive dictators, but meanwhile they had remained useful US assistants in keeping the threat of fundamentalist terrorism in check. In fact, both Libya and Syria had hosted a number of rendition prisons that the CIA would occasionally make use of (not to mention that they would frequently deliver Libyan rebels to Gaddafi to torture - but that was before he suddenly stopped being the West's buddy). These black sites were full of suspected and/or proven terrorists - one of them was present at the FSA / McCain meeting, and at the time he had already founded ISIS, and was working with the Al-Nusra Front to break into prisons and free dangerous extremists. That man stood in the back, smiling through the whole meeting with McCain, probably enjoying the thought that he was now receiving America's official diplomatic, and possibly military and financial support.


I don't know how you'd interpret that chain of events: was the US repeatedly played in Libya and then Syria, or was all that a well-planned strategy? I leave that conclusion to you, but in either case, the outcome obviously wasn't what we may've expected. One thing is for sure though: the US, through its high-ranking official representative, was again actively involved in nation-building in the most volatile region of the world, working to create conditions for pushing their short-term interests forward, while being either completely ignorant or more likely careless about the longer-term consequences for the whole region, and for the US itself in the long run.

Again, I leave it up to you to judge for yourselves what the true success of this sort of strategy of using proxies and manipulating minor regimes for your goals is. The way I see it, there are roughly two possible explanations for the repetitive try-and-fail dance that we've been watching for decades. Either the eager Western nation-builders only care about their short- to mid-term interests and are mostly ignorant of the peculiarities of the region they're presuming to meddle into, or they simply do not care about the consequences of their actions, because it's all happening thousands of miles away from the safety of home anyway, and because peace has never been profitable, therefore is much less desirable than perpetual war.