Intrigues and Leaks

These last few weeks appear to indicate that Cold War 2.0 is beginning to escalate further. A little less than two weeks ago there was an attempted coup d'etat in Turkey that was effectively stillborn. At the time I had suspected that it was staged by Turkish strongman Tayyip Erdogan, as the Turkish military has ample experience in coups and close ties to the US intelligence community. Thus, any coup would have surely had the backing of the CIA and that would put the Turkish military on good footing. As noted at the time, there were rumblings that the CIA was in fact behind the coup via their proxy, Fethullah Gulen (the Turkish cleric also has ties to the Clintons, which may be very significant, as we shall see).

While an Erdogan-staged coup still remains a possibility, recent information sheds new light of the recent events in Turkey that has caused me to rethink that accessment. Increasingly, there are indications that the Russian in fact warned Erdogan of the coup:

"Several Arab media outlets, including Rai Alyoum, quoted diplomatic sources in Ankara as saying that Turkey's National Intelligence Organization, known locally as the MIT, received intel from its Russian counterpart that warned of an impending coup in the Muslim state.

"The unnamed diplomats said the Russian army in the region had intercepted highly sensitive army exchanges and encoded radio messages showing that the Turkish army was readying to stage a coup against the administration in Ankara.

"The exchanges included dispatch of several army choppers to President Erdogan's resort hotel to arrest or kill the president.

"The diplomats were not sure of the Russian station that had intercepted the exchanges, but said the Russian army intelligence unit deployed in Khmeimim (also called Hmeimim) in Syria's Northern province of Lattakia is reportedly equipped with state-of-the-art electronic and eavesdropping systems to gather highly sensitive information for the Russian squadrons that are on an anti-terrorism mission in Syria."

Putin and Erdogan

If so, it was a brilliant move on Putin's part. After the tensions between Turkey and Russia last year over Turkey shooting down a Russian military plane, the possibility of a war could not be dismissed. But now with the failed coup, Turkey and Russia seem poised for a closer relationship, potentially depriving NATO of one of its most crucial allies if Turkey's continued insistence on US culpability for the coup are any indications. This would be yet another major success for Putin in the Islamic world after successful Russian efforts to keep Assad in power in Syria.

With recent events this past weekend, there are indications that Putin may have scored another major success, only this time in the United States itself. As I'm sure many of you are aware, there are incessant rumblings that Russia is behind the DNC hack that threw the Democratic National Convention into disarray earlier in the week. While is tempting to dismiss these allegations out of hand, there are some compelling indications that a Russian hand may in fact have been behind the hack.

If so, there are two compelling motives for this intervention in the US political madhouse:

1. Revenge for the Panama Papers. There have been ample allegations that this was a CIA plot targeted at Russia and other alleged enemies of the United States Putin himself condemned the leaks as a plot to destabilize Russia.
2. to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming the next president of the United States

The second motive is not entirely unreasonable Hillary's antagonism towards Russia and the neocon warmongers flocking to her campaign in droves. Indeed, the neocons appear to have bold plans for Hillary's presidency:

"The way they described Clinton’s foreign policy vision suggested that if elected president in November, she will escalate tensions with Russia, double down on military belligerence in the Middle East, and generally ignore the American public’s growing hostility to intervention...

"Smith told the audience that unlike Trump, Clinton “understands the importance of deterring Russian aggression,” which is why “I’ll sleep better with her in the chair.” She is a former deputy national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden...

" 'I know Hillary cares more about Ukraine than the current president does,' Kagan replied. '[Obama] said to me [that he wouldn’t arm Ukraine because] he doesn’t want a nuclear war with Russia,' he added, rolling his eyes dismissively. 'I don’t think Obama cares about Putin anymore at all. I think he’s hopeless.'

"Kagan is married to Victoria Nuland, the Obama administration’s hardline assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs. Nuland, who would likely serve in a senior position in a Clinton administration, supports shipping weapons to Ukraine despite major opposition from European countries and concerns about the neo-Nazi elements those weapons would empower.

"Another thing neoconservatives and liberal hawks have in common is confidence that the foreign policy establishment is right, and the growing populist hostility to military intervention is naïve and uninformed."

arch neocon and Hillary backer Robert Kagan

Ah yes, that silly Obama and his fears about a nuclear war with Russia. The nerve!

Perhaps I'm over reacting. After all, the likely alternative is almost as appealing and may well have close ties to Russia (an certainly has a Knight of Malta and Blackwater veteran as his top foreign policy adviser, potentially indicating a tie to the fascist Le Cercle network). On the other hand, the push to force women to register for the draft in the United States and the ban on transgender people serving in the military recently being lifted may indicate that some people feel the US military will soon need all the warm bodies they can get their grubby hands on. With the political climate today and the growing chaos both abroad and domestically, this is likely not a good portend.