Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 210
August 22, 2014
ISIL: America Reacts
A month or so ago, nobody had heard of the Islamic State. Now it is the dominant force of the middle east and all policy, military and political, across the region of Iraq and Syria is reactive to its advance. On the one hand this new grouping is a game changer, but on another it is damaging to over-estimate its power. The announcement by the Pentagon’s top general, backed by the US Secretary of Defense, that it will be necessary to attack its base in Syria to seriously damage it, is the first tangible sign of a foreign policy shift for long advocated by this blog. It also demonstrates that the Pentagon is ahead of the game over the State Department which is tied up in knots as it views the mounting chaos of its verities. Likewise the FCO in London.
The game changing nature of the Islamic State is that it is the embryonic beginning of what must become a new Sunni state occupying Sunni tribal areas of what was Syria and Iraq. The fact that within its ranks are bloodthirsty extremists of nihilist persuasion must not deter the West from seeing the long term opportunity for stability that the concept offers. We can look back on the wild and irrational confusion in Iran after the fall of the Shah and compare it with the functioning state of today, to observe the truth that the barbaric revolutionaries of today beget the moderates of tomorrow. The West must recognise that the Islamic State has succeeded because it is backed by much more moderate Sunnis in the territory it controls as well as the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. It is to all of those the West must now turn diplomatically in order to bring an end to unacceptable human suffering.
Militarily the position is rather different. The advance of IS must be checked to those areas where the majority Sunni populations support it. The vastly superior military capability of the US, France and Britain, allied to ground forces of the Kurds and Iraqi regular troops may already have achieved this in everywhere but Syria; and here the Pentagon has signalled it is willing to strike. When the President authorises this, his forces will be on the same side as Assad. Also lined up in diplomatic support with some covert military involvement will be Egypt, Iran, Russia, Turkey and Israel. Essentially this means that realistic diplomatic imperatives and pressing military options will finally have shredded the last sheet of the calamitous foreign policy which has been driven for the West by Washington and London since 9/11.
The Islamic State has ambitions far beyond those which it will be allowed to fulfil. When its leaders look back on the highwater mark of their enterprise they will see that it was immediately before the grizzly decapitation on video of an innocent, courageous and admired journalist. This cruel and sadistic act was designed to bring America to its knees and call off its air campaign. The effect was the opposite and in spades. The whole world rose in protest. The Security Council was united in condemnation, a rare event. Not only did this unnecessary death of an innocent demonstrate the cruel streak in the current leadership of IS. It demonstrated also a huge error of judgement which has cost it its goal.
Meanwhile in the United Kingdom a troubling revelation hangs. It was British hands that swung the sword which dealt the fatal blow.
August 21, 2014
Holiday Reading Page Turner
Ideal holiday reading, two light romantic thrillers in one volume of over four hundred pages will keep you guessing from start to finish. Written in different styles to suit the mood of each story, you will meet the shy and retiring female artist in A Gift of Treason and an extrovert private eye in Stanislaw’s Crossing. Available now in Paperback or Kindle from Amazon worldwide.
Buy now by clicking on the links.
GCSE Results : A Salute To All Students.
This is a day of joy and disappointment. It is a day of video clips and political comment. It is a day of statistics. Above all it is a day to remember; indeed no student will ever forget it. For teachers this is an annual event when they gather in the harvest of their dedication and skill, sometimes from fertile soil but often from stoney ground for which extra praise is due. But for students this day is a one off.
To all of them, whatever the outcome, this blog has a message. We are with you this day. Indeed every thinking person in our country is with you this day because you are our future as well as your own. If you have the grades you wanted, or better, well done. If it has not turned out as you hoped, know that you tried and we are with you too. Remember, if at first you don’t succeed………..! You can and will get there.
August 20, 2014
Two Books In One
Ideal holiday reading, two light romantic thrillers in one volume of over four hundred pages will keep you guessing from start to finish. Written in different styles to suit the mood of each story, you will meet the shy and retiring female artist in A Gift of Treason and an extrovert private eye in Stanislaw’s Crossing. Available now in Paperback or Kindle from Amazon worldwide.
Buy now by clicking on the links.
A Gift of Treason
The narrow, ordered life of a gentle but almost reclusive artist, Jane Block, is disturbed when a bequest, intended for her dead mother, passes to her. Mystery surrounds the nature of the inheritance and Jane is led on a sinister trail to secrets of the past, forcing her to confront her own fears and inhibitions. She finds herself caught in a frightening quest to unravel a shocking story of treachery in World War Two, and in so doing finds intrigue, love and betrayal.
Stanislaw’s Crossing
St.John Whilloe is the black sheep member of a wealthy legal family, whose firm of solicitors looks after the affairs of many of the top families in the country. He is consulted by a young woman who claims to be frightened by her husband. Things are not as they seem and St.John finds himself drawn into a complex web of intrigue and murder. He is soon in a race against time to solve a mystery with roots in a tortured family history, with sinister paranormal undertones.
August 19, 2014
Islamic State: It Will Not Go Away.
There is no doubt that religious wars, or wars between factions of one religion, generate a sickening level of atrocities and genocide. Christianity is not immune from these horrors as history sadly records. There is no doubt either that many Islamic State fighters have indulged in horrific brutalities, graphically described by those fortunate enough to make an escape. This does not, however, mean that the Islamic State is a gang of marauding bandits or unruly mobs of driven young men seeking martyrdom and a fast track to heaven.
This is a highly organised, well disciplined political/military force founded on a religious conviction and a political ambition, well funded by friends and an oil producer in its own right from captured oil fields. Its army is properly organised and commanded, with access to heavy weapons and much captured materiel of war. This is why it has advanced so quickly and why it now controls a large section of both Syria and Iraq.
It also has a good deal of support among Gulf states allied to the West and, even more important, strong support from the Sunni populations in the areas which have now fallen under its control. It is not a here today and gone tomorrow aberration; tomorrow it will still be there. Almost everybody concerned with stability and peace in the Middle East sees the Islamic State as the number one problem. In order to solve that problem, and the human displacements and suffering underscore the need for this, the Islamic State must be seen as part of the solution.
It may be possible to contain its advance and it will be necessary to recover and secure certain strategic installations, but it will not be possible to inflict a military defeat upon it on such a scale as to make it disappear. Neither Syria nor Iraq has the capacity to do this and neither is any longer an intact and functioning country. Iraq does not even have an effective government; just a hope it may get one.
The moment has now come to wind up the ill starred Sykes Picot map of divided colonial spoils and redraw boundaries which recognise reality and tribal history. There will have to be one country for a Shia majority, one for Sunni and recognition of the Kurdish region as a state. The Sunni element will straddle parts of the current Iraq and Syria. The Alawites will end up controlling a good deal less of Syria than they are used to, but with everyone else, must come away, from any agreement which can last, with a future worth working for which is peaceful. There is no point in subjugating anyone in such a settlement, because triumphalism will only beget insurgency. And there has been enough of that.
Two Spooky Mysteries!
Ideal holiday reading, two light romantic thrillers in one volume of over four hundred pages will keep you guessing from start to finish. Written in different styles to suit the mood of each story, you will meet the shy and retiring female artist in A Gift of Treason and an extrovert private eye in Stanislaw’s Crossing. Available now in Paperback or Kindle from Amazon worldwide.
Buy now by clicking on the links.
A Gift of Treason
The narrow, ordered life of a gentle but almost reclusive artist, Jane Block, is disturbed when a bequest, intended for her dead mother, passes to her. Mystery surrounds the nature of the inheritance and Jane is led on a sinister trail to secrets of the past, forcing her to confront her own fears and inhibitions. She finds herself caught in a frightening quest to unravel a shocking story of treachery in World War Two, and in so doing finds intrigue, love and betrayal.
Stanislaw’s Crossing
St.John Whilloe is the black sheep member of a wealthy legal family, whose firm of solicitors looks after the affairs of many of the top families in the country. He is consulted by a young woman who claims to be frightened by her husband. Things are not as they seem and St.John finds himself drawn into a complex web of intrigue and murder. He is soon in a race against time to solve a mystery with roots in a tortured family history, with sinister paranormal undertones.
August 18, 2014
Ferguson: American Trauma
Americans must ask themselves three questions.
Why was it necessary to shoot an unarmed man in the course of apprehending him for a minor robbery?
Why was it necessary to shoot him six times?
And what would they be saying if all this was happening, not in their own country, but Putin’s Russia?
In the rest of the world where conflict is everywhere causing human misery, many must envy America at peace. The sad thing is that it is not, and maybe never has been, at peace with itself. Perhaps a moment of reflection among Americans of good intention, which is almost all of them, will suggest the time has come to pay less attention to what everybody else is doing and more to finally healing the wounds within its own society which have festered for far to long. It is a delicate and challenging project from which it is easy to recoil. But it must be done. Moreover it will be done. Anything in the end can be done because you are America. Can do is what you are.
Free Kindle Download Today
For just one day a free copy of the original Kindle of this explosive Nazi era novel of drama and treachery, with clickable chapters and page numbers in a conventional book format for easy navigation. Click on the image to download free.
Sporting Golds
After one or two nervous moments, not to mention the debacle by the overpaid and spoiled footballers whose humiliating performance in Brazil shocked the country, England sport has had a golden summer. Top of the medals table at the Commonwealth Games, Winners of the Ladies Rugby World Cup, triumphant over India in the cricket Test series and part of the Team GB which has come top of the European Athletics Championships. Good for England and good for Britain; which includes Northern Ireland and Rory McIlroy who is winning everything.
August 17, 2014
U.K. Foreign Policy: What Is It?
There are two kinds of foreign policy, proactive and reactive. Proactive is when a country controls its own policy; reactive is when it is tossed about by events. This blog does not need to specify the mess in which the UK now finds itself. There is also within the proactive option the strategic view and the tactical action. For many years UK and Western foreign policy has been flawed in these two elements, leading to the greatest string of military and diplomatic failures since World War I. Armed interventions in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan have led to eventual collapse and fragmentation of the states involved; that in Afghanistan will begin to gather pace when NATO quits. Backing disparate and disunited rebel groups in Syria has not only failed to topple Assad, but it has led to the rise of IS.
The Islamic State is now top of the in-tray of every Western leader and Arab ruler; also it causes anxiety in Tehran, Ankara and Moscow. The problem becomes compounded by the fact that Arab states allied to the West are the ones funding IS and in order to check the never ending advance of this new phenomenon on the map, the West and the Arab rulers ( including those who fund it and are now frightened by their creation) will need to walk in step with both Tehran and Moscow. Meanwhile Egypt is allied with Israel in its confrontation with Hamas, which though Sunni, is supported by Iran.
The geopolitics of the Middle East, expected to develop into a happy bunch of pluralist democracies following the Arab Spring, has done nothing of the kind. Indeed it now resembles a house ransacked by burglars; chaos everywhere. To get back to some form of normality can now be the only strategic objective of policy and nothing less will end the appalling suffering and atrocities now engulfing civilian populations in all sectors. First it is necessary to make a list of all the states which remain intact and under coherent government. They are Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey and yes, Israel. All are meddlars of one sort and another and all have played a part in creating the pickle now threatening everyone. To control this debacle all become de-facto allies of each other and all are then allies of the West. A more realistic look at state borders will be essential to sort everything out.
And the West has to recognise that it needs its old ally from Napoleonic times, WWI and WWII; Russia. A positive sign is the meeting between the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France to try and find a way forward in eastern Ukraine. Some progress is reported. It is also interesting to note who was not there. The lights of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office need to burn 24/7. Never before has it been so wrong. About everything.
