PeakOil is You
THE F.William Engdahl Thread (merged)
Re: A high-risk game of nuclear chicken - F. William Engdahl
by Kickinthegob » Sun 05 Mar 2006, 06:50:34
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')ran like India and Pakistan, is permitted to develop a small arsenal of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to the growing military threat in its area posed by the United States from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Emirates, as well as by Israel’s nuclear force - Engdahl
This appears to be the only sane solution. It's not like they are going to be making nukes tomorrow like the neocons in the US and Israel would like everybody to believe.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ere the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld axis to risk launching a nuclear strike on Iran, given the geopolitical context, it would mark a point of no return in international relations. Even with sagging popularity, the White House knows this. The danger of the initial strategy of pre-emptive wars is that, as now, when someone like Iran calls the US bluff with a formidable response potential, the US is left with little option but to launch the unthinkable-nuclear strike.
A US pre-emptive nuclear strike to defend Israel would raise the issue of what the military agreements between Tel Aviv and Washington actually encompass, a subject which neither the Bush Administration nor its predecessors have seen fit to inform the American public about. - Engdahl
The unthinkable. Or for that matter Israel deciding to start WW3 unilaterally. Kind of a sick and twisted arrangement when you consider a handful of lunatics could scorch the earth and even worse when they openly make the threat. Apparently France now has a preemptive nuclear strike plan too! In all the excitement makes you forget that this is all about the war on terror.
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Calculating the Risk of War in Iran - F. William Engdahl
by Carlhole » Sun 05 Mar 2006, 10:43:06
Calculating the Risk of War in Iran
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Current Concerns', 'I')n the past weeks media reports have speculated that Washington is “thinking the unthinkable,” namely, an aggressive, pre-emptive nuclear bombardment of Iran, by either the United States or Israel, to destroy or render useless the deep underground Iranian nuclear facilities.
The possibility of war against Iran presents a geo-strategic and geopolitical problem of far more complexity than the bombing and occupation of Iraq. And Iraq has proven complicated enough for the United States. Below we try to identify some of the main motives of the main actors in the new drama and the outlook for possible war.
The dramatis personae include the Bush Administration, most especially the Cheney-led neo-conservative hawks in control now of not only the Pentagon, but also the CIA, the UN Ambassadorship and a growing part of the State Department planning bureaucracy under Condi Rice. It includes Iran, under the new and outspoken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It includes Putin’s Russia, a nuclear-armed veto member of the UN Security Council. It includes a nuclear-armed Israel, whose acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, recently declared that Israel could “under no circumstances” allow Iranian development of nuclear weapons “that can threaten our existence.” It includes the EU, especially Security Council Permanent Member, France and the weakening President Chirac. It includes China, whose dependence on Iranian oil and potentially natural gas is large.
Each of these actors has differing agendas and different goals, making the issue of Iran one of the most complex in recent international politics. What’s going on here? Is a nuclear war, with all that implies for the global financial and political stability, imminent? What are the possible and even probable outcomes?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Current Concerns', 'I')n the past weeks media reports have speculated that Washington is “thinking the unthinkable,” namely, an aggressive, pre-emptive nuclear bombardment of Iran, by either the United States or Israel, to destroy or render useless the deep underground Iranian nuclear facilities.
The possibility of war against Iran presents a geo-strategic and geopolitical problem of far more complexity than the bombing and occupation of Iraq. And Iraq has proven complicated enough for the United States. Below we try to identify some of the main motives of the main actors in the new drama and the outlook for possible war.
The dramatis personae include the Bush Administration, most especially the Cheney-led neo-conservative hawks in control now of not only the Pentagon, but also the CIA, the UN Ambassadorship and a growing part of the State Department planning bureaucracy under Condi Rice. It includes Iran, under the new and outspoken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It includes Putin’s Russia, a nuclear-armed veto member of the UN Security Council. It includes a nuclear-armed Israel, whose acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, recently declared that Israel could “under no circumstances” allow Iranian development of nuclear weapons “that can threaten our existence.” It includes the EU, especially Security Council Permanent Member, France and the weakening President Chirac. It includes China, whose dependence on Iranian oil and potentially natural gas is large.
Each of these actors has differing agendas and different goals, making the issue of Iran one of the most complex in recent international politics. What’s going on here? Is a nuclear war, with all that implies for the global financial and political stability, imminent? What are the possible and even probable outcomes?
Iran’s Oil Bourse a Casus Belli?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Current Concerns', 'T')here has been considerable discussion especially in internet reports of late that the soon-to-open Teheran Oil Trading Bourse, due to open sometime this March, is perhaps the real reason Washington is preparing to launch military action against Iran. The argument is that by offering oil buyers a chance to trade oil in currencies other than dollars, the US dollar, the financial pillar of the American empire, would crumble and, with it, American global hegemony. This argument, as compelling as it might seem, is fundamentally flawed. The only currency potentially able to challenge the dollar as the preferred currency of world trade in oil is of course the Euro.
Assuming, for sake of argument, that suddenly, China, Japan, India, East Asia and the countries of the EU were to trade oil for euros, just as Saddam Hussein did after November 2000 with Iraqi oil-for-food, the trade would quickly hit a wall in the form of a limited supply of Euros on international currency markets. The limit here is the European Central Bank and its Maastricht Treaty. Under Maastricht, the ECB is mandated to keep a strict monetary limit on euros in circulation and to help enforce national debt discipline to limit government debt. So long as this state of affairs remains within the ECB, one very friendly to banks holding euro-denominated debt securities, there will be no successful challenge to the role of the dollar. But it is even more complex. The role of the dollar as reserve currency for world trade and central banks is fundamentally a political one. It is a political decision by the Japanese to support the US dollar partly in return for the US nuclear umbrella defense. The same for Saudi Arabia. The governments and business leaders of the European Union are so intimately tied into a network of dependency on the dollar world that there is cold fear to do anything to offend Washington or the dollar.
Last edited by Ferretlover on Thu 19 Feb 2009, 11:11:32, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Merged with THE F. William Engdahl Thread.
Reason: Merged with THE F. William Engdahl Thread.
- Carlhole
