Obama relaunches the «global war on terrorism» at the UN

First published September 23, 2014

At the 69th session of the UN General Assembly, that opens today at New York under his presidency, tomorrow, US President Obama «will call the world to unite against the threat of Isis». Immediately afterwards, this same Obama will chair a special meeting of the Security Council which should approve a resolution presented by the United States.

As to what one reads in the draft, that was circulated some days ago by the Reuters Press Agency, the resolution focuses on a specific aspect of the campaign against «the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria»: the requirement for all countries to «prevent and suppress the recruitment, the organization, transport and the fitting out of individuals that go to other states into order to plan, prepare and carry out terrorist activities, or to provide or receive terrorist training or financing for such activities». Under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, the Security Council would have the authority to adopt measures to force states to comply with the wording of the resolution.

The resolution would be sharable, were it not to constitute a skeleton key with which the United States seeks to obtain UN rubber stamping of their strategic planning, formally focussed on the struggle against «the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria». If the resolution were actually to be applied, the first persons against which the Security Council should adopt sanctions and other measures would be the United States itself.

As has been widely documented, it is the United States and the majority of its Nato allies, who have financed, armed and trained Islamic groups in Libya in 2011, groups that until a short time before were defined as terrorists. These include the first nuclei of the future ISIS; They provided them with weapons through a network organized by the CIA (documented by a New York Times inquiry [1]) when, after having contributed to destroying Gaddafi, they went to Syria to destroy Assad; it was again the United States and NATO to facilitate the offensive of Isis in Iraq (at the time when the al-Maliki government distanced itself from Washington, and moved closer to Peking and Moscow), providing them, on the basis of a plan that must have been coordinated by the CIA, financing, arms and transit routes among Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan. According to intelligence officials interviewed by the New York Times, there are in Syria and Iraq around 15 000 foreign combattants coming from 80 countries. These include more than 2 000 from the US and Europe.

If the resolution were actually applied, the first politician against which the Security Council should take the measures would be the US Senator John McCain who, in May 2013, under the instruction of the Obama administration, met in Syria the head of ISIS, Ibrahim al-Badri, today known by his battle name Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi [2].

Since the resolution leaves each State free to establish which are the terrorist groups to fight, it is virtually assumed that it will be unanimously approved – even by Russia and China. But in this way, the United States would have in fact a free hand in launching a «global war against terrorism version 2.0» that, while facially focussed on ISIS; would however really be aimed at the complete demolition of Syria, which till now had been prevented by the Russian mediation in exchange for chemical disarmament of Damascus and the reoccupation of Iraq. For example, by invoking the UN Security Council Resolution, the US could bomb a government base in Syria, asserting to have evidence that it is a centre for terrorist training.

All this forms part of the strategy of the «American empire of the West» that is losing ground in the economic and political sphere to China and other emerging or re-emerging powers – notably Russia. It was against Russia that the United States and NATO launched a new cold war in Europe – throws on the scale the spade of their military superiority. Look at others: at Irna and in the Asia/Pacific region, at the China itself. Useful source of profits for US and European multinationals, but at the same time feared because, by reaching an agreement with Russia, it may create a Euroasian power capable of presenting a countervailing force to the US Superpower and in general, to the West’s dominant role.