Chas Freeman: Turkey, Iran, Russia--And Zhou's Attempts To Sabotage Trump

Danny Davis and Chas Freeman had a great discussion today. Once again I’ve excerpted some highlights from a 45 minute video.

The NEW Middle East Begins, Now that Assad is Gone w/fmr Amb Chas Freeman

The Turkish objectives are several. First they have never really reconciled themselves to the 1923 treaty by which they ceded what is now Northern Syria to the new state of Syria, and they may well want to annex territory in Syria.

Like Alastair Crooke, Freeman believes the destruction of Syria provides a strong motive for Iran to go nuclear—our policies are forcing them to do so.

One of the major effects of this really seismic change in the region is that it leaves Iran naked in front of Israeli striking power. Iran has now lost its frontline deterrent capabilities that had been supplied by Hezbollah and Hamas, and it is now directly confronting Israel. We know that in the days prior to this stunning development more and more Iranians were openly advocating that Iran actually build the nuclear weapon that it has not tried to build. I suspect those pressures are now intense, because Iran needs a deterrent against Israel and the United States. I suspect we will see Iran take the path of North Korea and develop its own nuclear deterrent, and that deterrent will probably be capable of striking the United States as well as Israel. ... I don't know what other choices they have.

So I'm not sure that this is the joyous moment that so many people depicted. I find it really ironic that our outgoing president would celebrate the end of the secular regime in Syria without asking the question: What is going to follow it?

In the case of Syria we don't have any idea what is going to happen. I would add a final point and that is we're not even talking to the various parties that might know--Iran, Turkey--Turkey may be a member of NATO but we are deeply estranged. We don't talk to the Russians. Anthony Blinken in his four years in office has not once visited Moscow. Sergey Lavrov last came to Washington five years ago. There is no diplomacy. We exchange combative talking points with the Chinese--we don't listen to each other, we don't have a dialogue, we have a show. So the outgoing Biden Administration is bequeathing to its successor an incredible number of very fluid, potentially disastrous, situations--two of them already possible points of origin for a nuclear exchange: Ukraine, the Taiwan Strait. And Iran, I think, now much more likely to go nuclear than it ever was before.

This next paragraph followed a video clip of super hawk former general Jack Keane urging war on Iran if they don’t disarm—or something like that. He thinks that would be popular in the Middle East. Chas Freeman was a US ambassador to KSA, so has some knowledge of the region.

The assumption that Arab nations would be with us [against Iran] is extremely mistaken for precisely the reasons I mentioned earlier, namely: their distaste for the kind of Salafi Islam that has now taken hold in Syria and the threat that this ideology potentially poses to them. They are moving closer to Iran, not away from it. They now see Iran as an essential balancer of Israel, which has achieved a kind of supremacy in the event. Now nobody in the Gulf has any affection for Hezbollah or Hamas. They objected to Hamas because it was a democratic movement brought to power by elections--which they don't have in their countries and they object to that form of government. They were against Hezbollah because it was both Shia, not Sunni, and opposed to their influence in Lebanon. They disliked Syria, but let us note that after many efforts on their part to engineer regime change, overthrow the Assad government in Damascus, they had made their peace with Assad, reestablished diplomatic relations, were engaged in a dialogue with the Syrians.

The concluding two paragraphs come from the discussion Russia and Trump’s imperative to make peace. I think Freeman gets this right—Trump absolutely needs peace in order to address the mandate he received to fix what’s broken here at home. Given that Russia is going from strength to strength on the battlefield and our abilities to supply Ukraine have been badly attritted that leaves Trump with a weak hand to play.

I think Mr Trump was not elected to start a new war. He was elected in response to grave dissatisfaction by the American people with the existing situation in our country, and if he can't fix that he's not going to last very long as a legitimate leader of our nation.

Freeman gets this next bit partly right. He’s absolutely correct that Russia is not interested in a ceasefire—instead, they want a real peace settlement. What Freeman misses is what Putin has repeatedly made crystal clear: Peace for Russia means negotiating a new “security architecture” for Europe and, since the European countries are no more than vassals of the US, that means that there needs to be a treaty settlement between Russia and America—the true parties in interest.

Trump is continuing to pretend that an “immediate ceasefire” is possible, leading into negotiations. He won’t get that. I suppose it may be conceivable that the Russians would enter negotiations if Ukraine fulfills the Russian preconditions—which amount to effective surrender—but in that case Trump will have to watch while Russia dictates terms. He will be a bystander, a role he’s not used to.

Trump is also continuing to pretend that this is a war between Russia and Ukraine. That won’t work either—the Russians have strong reasons to reject that framework, because it’s untrue. Any number of Western officials have made it clear that they are at war with Russia, and Russia has stated that the war is a NATO - Russia war. One way or another, I believe Russia will demand a treaty settlement with America. If Trump tries to stonewall, I believe that Russia will keep pushing west, at ever greater speed. We shall see.

I don't think the Russians want a ceasefire--they're winning. I don't think they want a DMZ in Ukraine. They don't want an armistice--they want a peace. That means Ukraine and Russia are going to have to negotiate a border. That means Ukraine and Russia and other European countries and the Organization for Cooperation Security in Europe, the OCSE, are going to have to negotiate the status of oppressed minorities in Ukraine--Russian speakers. Hungarian speakers, Romanian speakers, others who have been deprived of their rights to use their own language. ... There needs to be some structure that can reestablish and sustain peace in Europe, and that can't begin with a DMZ dividing Europe. We saw what happened in Korea. ... We can't afford to have that in Europe. ... We have to rearrange all this and it's time to do it. The Biden administration is, however, piling everything it can into perpetuating the war in Ukraine so that Mr Trump will take the blame when it ends on terms that they can criticize.

My view is that Trump needs to do the courageous thing and come to a global settlement with Russia. I believe that if Trump can do that expeditiously, a global peace will be welcomed by Americans. The difficulty is that that will require an identity transplant for some Americans, from being the necessary nation to being one of several poles in a multipolar world. These won’t be easy times.