Geopolitics & Empire

Geopolitics & Empire · Bob Moriarty: American Empire, Military Overstretch, & Economic Collapse #107

Vietnam veteran, author, and investor Bob Moriarty joins us to discuss his thoughts on American Empire. He says military adventurism signals a clear decline. We also talk false flag operations and media propaganda. Finally, he discusses the inevitable debt bubble, civil unrest, precious metals, cryptocurrencies, and some investing basics.

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Websites

http://321gold.com

http://321energy.com

Publications

https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Moriarty/e/B01A9I4TJU?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1555083549&sr=8-1

About the Guest

Robert Moriarty was born in New York state in 1946. He began training as a military pilot in 1965 and became the youngest Naval Aviator during the Vietnam War in 1966. With two years in Vietnam and some 832 missions in combat, he left the Marine Corps in 1970. He worked in computers for a few years before beginning a 2nd career as a ferry pilot delivering small airplanes all over the world. He made over 240 ocean crossings mostly in single engine airplanes.

He and his wife of 25 years were computer consultants and began one of the earliest online computer retail outlets in 1995 before retiring in 2000. He began another career running a financial website in 2001 specializing in resource companies. He continues to travel the world looking for the next great mineral discovery and writes in his spare time.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Vietnam veteran, author, and investor Bob Moriarty joins us to discuss his thoughts on American Empire. He says military adventurism signals a clear decline. We also talk false flag operations and media propaganda. Finally, he discusses the inevitable debt bubble, civil unrest, precious metals, cryptocurrencies, and some investing basics.

*Support/Donate to Geopolitics & Empire:

Patreon https://www.patreon.com/empiregeopolitics

PayPal https://www.paypal.me/geopolitics

Bitcoin http://geopoliticsandempire.com/bitcoin-donate

Websites

http://321gold.com

http://321energy.com

Publications

https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Moriarty/e/B01A9I4TJU?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1555083549&sr=8-1

About the Guest

Robert Moriarty was born in New York state in 1946. He began training as a military pilot in 1965 and became the youngest Naval Aviator during the Vietnam War in 1966. With two years in Vietnam and some 832 missions in combat, he left the Marine Corps in 1970. He worked in computers for a few years before beginning a 2nd career as a ferry pilot delivering small airplanes all over the world. He made over 240 ocean crossings mostly in single engine airplanes.

He and his wife of 25 years were computer consultants and began one of the earliest online computer retail outlets in 1995 before retiring in 2000. He began another career running a financial website in 2001 specializing in resource companies. He continues to travel the world looking for the next great mineral discovery and writes in his spare time.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Geopolitics & Empire · Jim Rogers: The Coming Global Financial Crisis Will Be The Worst In Our Lifetime #106

Renown investor Jim Rogers joins Geopolitics & Empire to discuss the coming global financial crisis, what central banks will do to delay the inevitable, the dollar and de-dollarization, the Eurozone, gold, China and the Asian Century, President Trump and the political divisions in America, and what the American Empire's wars abroad mean for the world and the USA.

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Websites

http://jimrogers.com

Publications

https://www.amazon.com/Jim-Rogers/e/B000APBT14?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1554475087&sr=8-1

About the Guest

James Beeland “Jim” Rogers, Jr. is a Singapore based business magnate of American origin. Regarded by the business world as a brilliant investor, Rogers is also an author and financial commentator. He co-founded the global investment partnership, Quantum Fund, along with George Soros, another equally brilliant businessman. He also created the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI) and is the Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, Inc. The astute businessman displayed his business acumen from an early age. He was just five years old when he started his own “business” of selling peanuts! He studies economics, philosophy and politics at the Oxford University and joined the investment bank Arnhold and S. Bleichroder where he would meet his future business collaborator, George Soros. Even though he was very skilled at investing and managing money, he was not obsessed only with making money. There is a lot more to this interesting personality—he had a longstanding dream of motorcycling all over the world which he fulfilled during the period 1990-92. He is also a prolific writer and contributes frequently to ‘The Washington Post’, ‘The New York Times’, ‘Forbes’, ‘Fortune’ and ‘The Wall Street Journal’. One of his other interests is teaching and he has served as a professor of finance at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Renown investor Jim Rogers joins Geopolitics & Empire to discuss the coming global financial crisis, what central banks will do to delay the inevitable, the dollar and de-dollarization, the Eurozone, gold, China and the Asian Century, President Trump and the political divisions in America, and what the American Empire's wars abroad mean for the world and the USA.

*Support/Donate to Geopolitics & Empire:

Patreon https://www.patreon.com/empiregeopolitics

PayPal https://www.paypal.me/geopolitics

Bitcoin http://geopoliticsandempire.com/bitcoin-donate

Websites

http://jimrogers.com

Publications

https://www.amazon.com/Jim-Rogers/e/B000APBT14?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1554475087&sr=8-1

About the Guest

James Beeland “Jim” Rogers, Jr. is a Singapore based business magnate of American origin. Regarded by the business world as a brilliant investor, Rogers is also an author and financial commentator. He co-founded the global investment partnership, Quantum Fund, along with George Soros, another equally brilliant businessman. He also created the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI) and is the Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, Inc. The astute businessman displayed his business acumen from an early age. He was just five years old when he started his own “business” of selling peanuts! He studies economics, philosophy and politics at the Oxford University and joined the investment bank Arnhold and S. Bleichroder where he would meet his future business collaborator, George Soros. Even though he was very skilled at investing and managing money, he was not obsessed only with making money. There is a lot more to this interesting personality—he had a longstanding dream of motorcycling all over the world which he fulfilled during the period 1990-92. He is also a prolific writer and contributes frequently to ‘The Washington Post’, ‘The New York Times’, ‘Forbes’, ‘Fortune’ and ‘The Wall Street Journal’. One of his other interests is teaching and he has served as a professor of finance at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AdPZ8B-kXU

Jim Jatras discusses NATO's expansion into Latin America via Brazil and the big picture of what he sees happening in Venezuela, considering Russian and Chinese broader interests. We also examine NATO in light of its 70th anniversary and Foreign Minister Lavrov's comments on the "reluctance of the United States and its western allies to agree that the 500-year-long period of western domination in world affairs is coming to an end."

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Show Notes

Is NATO Going South? https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/23/is-nato-going-south.html

Trump eyes South American country as eligible for NATO privileges https://www.defensenews.com/global/the-americas/2019/03/19/trump-eyes-south-american-country-as-eligible-for-nato-privileges/

U.S. to upgrade military ties with Brazil https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-brazil-ally/us-to-upgrade-military-ties-with-brazil-during-visit-next-week-sources-idUSKCN1QV33K

Colombia’s demining centre joins NATO network https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_164677.htm

Brazil Isn’t Ready for Trump’s Invitation to NATO https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-23/brazil-isn-t-ready-for-trump-s-invitation-to-nato

Venezuela Agreed To Let Russia Set Up A Bomber Outpost On This Caribbean Island https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25570/venezuela-agreed-to-let-russia-set-up-a-bomber-outpost-on-this-carribean-island-reports

Russia tells Trump its troops will stay in Venezuela for 'as long as needed' https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/russia-trump-venezuela-us-military-troops-latest-a8844546.html

Lavrov warns that Moscow won't tolerate Western ultimatums http://tass.com/politics/994251

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Gets Russia-Venezuelan Threat Mitigation Act Through the House http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/debbie-wasserman-schultz-gets-russia-venezuelan-threat-mitigation-act-through-house

Website

https://twitter.com/JimJatras

http://www.jimjatras.info

About Jim Jatras

Jim Jatras is a Washington, DC-based attorney, political analyst, and media & government affairs specialist. He formerly served as a senior foreign policy adviser to the US Senate Republican leadership, and before that served as a diplomat in Mexico, the Office of Soviet Union affairs, and the Office of the Under Secretary for Political Affairs.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Jim Jatras discusses NATO's expansion into Latin America via Brazil and the big picture of what he sees happening in Venezuela, considering Russian and Chinese broader interests. We also examine NATO in light of its 70th anniversary and Foreign Minister Lavrov's comments on the "reluctance of the United States and its western allies to agree that the 500-year-long period of western domination in world affairs is coming to an end."

*Support/Donate to Geopolitics & Empire:

Patreon https://www.patreon.com/empiregeopolitics

PayPal https://www.paypal.me/geopolitics

Bitcoin http://geopoliticsandempire.com/bitcoin-donate

Show Notes

Is NATO Going South? https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/23/is-nato-going-south.html

Trump eyes South American country as eligible for NATO privileges https://www.defensenews.com/global/the-americas/2019/03/19/trump-eyes-south-american-country-as-eligible-for-nato-privileges/

U.S. to upgrade military ties with Brazil https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-brazil-ally/us-to-upgrade-military-ties-with-brazil-during-visit-next-week-sources-idUSKCN1QV33K

Colombia’s demining centre joins NATO network https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_164677.htm

Brazil Isn’t Ready for Trump’s Invitation to NATO https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-23/brazil-isn-t-ready-for-trump-s-invitation-to-nato

Venezuela Agreed To Let Russia Set Up A Bomber Outpost On This Caribbean Island https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25570/venezuela-agreed-to-let-russia-set-up-a-bomber-outpost-on-this-carribean-island-reports

Russia tells Trump its troops will stay in Venezuela for 'as long as needed' https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/russia-trump-venezuela-us-military-troops-latest-a8844546.html

Lavrov warns that Moscow won't tolerate Western ultimatums http://tass.com/politics/994251

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Gets Russia-Venezuelan Threat Mitigation Act Through the House http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/debbie-wasserman-schultz-gets-russia-venezuelan-threat-mitigation-act-through-house

Website

https://twitter.com/JimJatras

http://www.jimjatras.info

About Jim Jatras

Jim Jatras is a Washington, DC-based attorney, political analyst, and media & government affairs specialist. He formerly served as a senior foreign policy adviser to the US Senate Republican leadership, and before that served as a diplomat in Mexico, the Office of Soviet Union affairs, and the Office of the Under Secretary for Political Affairs.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Geopolitics & Empire · Ted Galen Carpenter: U.S. Support of Authoritarian Regimes, NATO, & North Korea #104

Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute joins us to discuss his research on U.S. foreign policy and support for authoritarian regimes and how these policies contrast starkly from American founding principles of non-intervention. We also discuss NATO expansion, the New Cold War, Russian maneuvering in Latin America and the renewed Monroe Doctrine, and North Korea.

*Support/Donate to Geopolitics & Empire:

Patreon https://www.patreon.com/empiregeopolitics

PayPal https://www.paypal.me/geopolitics

Bitcoin http://geopoliticsandempire.com/bitcoin-donate

Show Notes

Ted Galen Carpenter at National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/profile/ted-galen-carpenter

Ted Galen Carpenter at American Conservative https://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/ted-galen-carpenter

Websites & Books

Ted Galen Carpenter at Cato Institute https://www.cato.org/people/ted-galen-carpenter

https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=p_27%3ATed+Galen+Carpenter&s=relevancerank&text=Ted+Galen+Carpenter&ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1

About Ted Galen Carpenter

Ted Galen Carpenter is senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Carpenter served as Cato’s director of foreign policy studies from 1986 to 1995 and as vice president for defense and foreign policy studies from 1995 to 2011. He is the author of 12 books and the editor of 10 books on international affairs, including Perilous Partners: The Benefits and Pitfalls of America’s Alliances with Authoritarian Regimes, The Fire Next Door: Mexico’s Drug Violence and the Danger to America, Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America, America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan, The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea, Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington’s Futile War on Drugs in Latin America, The Captive Press: Foreign Policy Crises and the First Amendment, Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars, and A Search for Enemies: America’s Alliances after the Cold War.

Carpenter is contributing editor to both the National Interest and American Conservative, serves on the editorial boards of Mediterranean Quarterly and the Journal of Strategic Studies, and is the author of more than 800 articles and policy studies. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, World Policy Journal, and many other publications. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs in the United States, Latin America, Europe, East Asia, and other regions.

Carpenter received his Ph.D. in U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Texas.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute joins us to discuss his research on U.S. foreign policy and support for authoritarian regimes and how these policies contrast starkly from American founding principles of non-intervention. We also discuss NATO expansion, the New Cold War, Russian maneuvering in Latin America and the renewed Monroe Doctrine, and North Korea.

*Support/Donate to Geopolitics & Empire:

Patreon https://www.patreon.com/empiregeopolitics

PayPal https://www.paypal.me/geopolitics

Bitcoin http://geopoliticsandempire.com/bitcoin-donate

Show Notes

Ted Galen Carpenter at National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/profile/ted-galen-carpenter

Ted Galen Carpenter at American Conservative https://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/ted-galen-carpenter

Websites & Books

Ted Galen Carpenter at Cato Institute https://www.cato.org/people/ted-galen-carpenter

https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=p_27%3ATed+Galen+Carpenter&s=relevancerank&text=Ted+Galen+Carpenter&ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1

About Ted Galen Carpenter

Ted Galen Carpenter is senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Carpenter served as Cato’s director of foreign policy studies from 1986 to 1995 and as vice president for defense and foreign policy studies from 1995 to 2011. He is the author of 12 books and the editor of 10 books on international affairs, including Perilous Partners: The Benefits and Pitfalls of America’s Alliances with Authoritarian Regimes, The Fire Next Door: Mexico’s Drug Violence and the Danger to America, Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America, America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan, The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea, Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington’s Futile War on Drugs in Latin America, The Captive Press: Foreign Policy Crises and the First Amendment, Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars, and A Search for Enemies: America’s Alliances after the Cold War.

Carpenter is contributing editor to both the National Interest and American Conservative, serves on the editorial boards of Mediterranean Quarterly and the Journal of Strategic Studies, and is the author of more than 800 articles and policy studies. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, World Policy Journal, and many other publications. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs in the United States, Latin America, Europe, East Asia, and other regions.

Carpenter received his Ph.D. in U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Texas.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph44p4SMWBQ

Retired British Ambassador to Bahrain and Syria Peter Ford discusses the Syrian War and its latest developments, including attempts to try Bashar al-Assad at the ICC. He describes the "permanent government" of the U.S. which is a key driver of the war, as well as America's European counterparts such as France and Britain, who still cling to the coattails of their imperial past glory. Ambassador Ford believes Gulf unity is shattered and that Syria will remain weak, but will slowly rebuild in the coming years.

*Support/Donate to Geopolitics & Empire:

Patreon https://www.patreon.com/empiregeopolitics

PayPal https://www.paypal.me/geopolitics

Bitcoin http://geopoliticsandempire.com/bitcoin-donate

Transcript

Podcast: This is the Geopolitics and Empire podcast, and we're talking to retired British diplomat and ambassador to Bahrain and Syria, Peter Ford. He is also the Director of the British Syrian Society. We will be discussing the war in Syria, the US and European foreign policy of regime change, the media propaganda that enables it, and what we can expect to see in the future.

Podcast: It's great to have you on, Ambassador Ford.

Peter Ford: Thank you for having me, I look forward to our dialogue. [spoiler]

Podcast: Yes. And let's get started with the different narratives that exist of the Syrian War. Because the prominent narrative is that it's a civil war, but you recently gave a speech in the House of Lords, which you sent me a copy, and you explained that in effect, the war is part of a multi-decade long war on Syria by the West. We know we have declassified files that go back to 1957, I believe, where the CIA had the plan to overthrow Syria. I believe in 1983, in the 80s there were other documents, and Wikileaks in the 2000s as well released such documents.

Podcast: So can you give us a frank explanation of what really the Syrian War was, or is, all about?

Peter Ford: Well, you'll recall in 2011, when everything kicked off in Syria, there had been a genuine popular uprising in some other Arab countries, beginning with Tunisia, and across North Africa, spreading through Libya and Egypt. And to a large extent, I believe those were genuine domestic uprisings. The case of Syria was always going to be different. While those countries in North Africa, the sectarian issue hardly applied, because the people were almost all Sunni Muslim. Syria is a social and religious mosaic. It was always likely that in the event of any uprising with religious factors, social factors would come into play.

Peter Ford: So Syria was always destined to be different. It was also destined to be different because the West, particularly the United States, has had this anti-Syrian agenda going back several decades, and has been constantly looking for opportunities to destabilize Syria and remove the Damascus regime, as they would call it. And such an opportunity arose in 2011, and the Western powers lost no time in piling in on the back of some limited local demonstrations, particularly in southern Syria, in Daraa, and in no time, for example, the US Ambassador was marching up with his French colleague to Hama to participate themselves in demonstrations there.

Peter Ford: So the die was cast from a very early stage, and what may have begun as local demonstrations quickly escalated. Islamist fighters began to appear. Very quickly they were armed by the United States, and other powers, particularly Gulf powers acting in cooperation with America. And in a very short time indeed, the conflict had become essentially another episode in the West's war against Syria.

Podcast: Since you brought up some of these fighters, these proxy fighters, I'm gonna jump ahead to one of my questions. Tell us a little bit of how this war was fought, so, you know, some people say they're proxy fighters, mercenaries, these moderate rebels, jihadists. We have declassified documents that say the US knew what it was doing. Judicial Watch declassified the DIA documents, we had Michael Flynn, the head of the DIA revealed this, Hamid Karzai, the former Afghan leader. And many other people say that the United States directly arms, funds, trains, transports ISIS, Daesh, for use.

Podcast: Is this too simplistic a way of describing the proxy force? Or how does this mechanic work?

Peter Ford: The United States didn't look carefully at the credentials of the Islamic fighters that they were training. I don't think they wanted to know which groups the fighters actually belonged to. I don't say that the United States deliberately trained ISIS, or Al Qaeda, or Mossad fighters, but this was the overall effect of giving training and weapons more or less indiscriminately to anybody who would take them.

Peter Ford: Many of these radical fighters were masquerading under the brand of the Free Syrian Army, which originally began with some defecting elements of the Syrian army. But very quickly, it was overrun by radical Islamists, and became the Free Syrian Army indistinguishable, virtually, from Al-Nusra, with which it was very often collaborating on the battle front. And these other groups like Ahrar al-Sham, and so many others that they're not ... there were literally hundreds of these Islamo-fascist groups, and the United States, and Britain, and France, were up to the eyeballs in supporting them with training, and weapons, and direction on the field of battle. There were military control rooms coordinating the jihadis in northern Jordan, and in southern Turkey.

Podcast: And you mentioned previously, in 2011 a bit of unrest that started in Syria, and we're bombarded by a lot of propaganda. We heard all these things about Saddam Hussein, yeah, you know, Saddam Hussein wasn't a nice guy, I knew people from Iraq a long time ago, and they did whatever they could to get out of Iraq, and they didn't want to go back. But for the allegations that were launched against Saddam ... for example, weapons of mass destruction, that he worked with Al-Qaeda, that he was involved in 9/11 ... none of that was true. So, you know, I'm skeptical, often, about these narratives that are replayed in the media.

Podcast: So we're told that Assad gassed his own people and things like this, but apart from ... Maybe you can tell me, tell us, apart from this repetition in the Western media that he gassed his own people, has there been any evidence of such a thing?

Peter Ford: Look, no government ... no government in the Middle East has been a paragon of virtue. In varying degrees they have all been authoritarian governments. And maybe there were good reasons for this, maybe Western [inaudible 00:08:01] like democracy doesn't fit, for whatever historical, social reason. But the fact is that Assad was no worse than, for example, the King of Jordan, who the West supports to the hilt, in terms of repressing domestic political activity. Certainly better than Egyptian, successive Egyptian presidents in terms of repression, and much better than the Gulf leaders in terms of encouraging pluralism and some degree of parliamentary control. And relative free speech, so it's all relative. Assad is no angel, his secret police did indeed carry out some excesses, but so did everybody else's secret police in the Middle East.

Podcast: Some say the war is over, but you say the war goes on by other means. Has President Assad won?

Peter Ford: It's too early to say he has won. He controls over 70% of the territory of Syria now, but important parts of the country are still beyond his control. And the war goes on by other means, particularly economic means. Also, I don't think that Western powers have conceded victory to Assad. Whatever they say sometimes, out of one corner of their mouth, they say, "Yeah, Assad has won, we have to move on to the next phase," but out of the other side of their mouth, they say, "Ah, we insist on a transition." This is the euphemism prepared for regime change.

Peter Ford: The phrase regime change has become a dirty word after Iraq, and after Libya. So they can't call it regime change, they call it, therefore, transition, and they say, "Well, we insist that there must be a transition away from Assad's rule. There must be UN supervised, democratic elections." But they never tell us who, which paragon of virtue is going to take over, going to win in an election over Assad, or why they believe that Assad would not win. Most people who actually know anything about Syria would say that he would get more than 40%, which is more than Trump, or May, or Macron, or Merkel. And yet we've set the bar so high, that we demand that he do better than all these Western democratic leaders who enjoy the right to continue to govern his country.

Podcast: You gave an interview last year that I listened to, and you mentioned something that I never thought of, and you know, regarding going forward, the Syrian economy ... how another weapon of war is demographics, and the depopulation being used as a weapon. How this exodus of Syrians will have an impact on the economy, and the future of Syria, and will weaken the state. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Peter Ford: Yeah, absolutely. The Western powers, by their action in fueling the conflict, pumping weapons and money, and effectively running jihadi armies who have ethnically cleansed huge areas, are provoking an exodus of population in the first place. Secondly, in sustaining the existence and encouraging the culture of refugees by giving billions to keep them in place. In places like Jordan, and Turkey, and Lebanon, effectively the Western powers have been paying people to leave Syria and accept charity in camps in these countries.

Peter Ford: And now, there is a deliberate, calculated policy, to discourage these people from going back. They continue to be offered amounts of money to remain, and they are given advice not to return unless they are absolutely certain that their young men, for example,...

Retired British Ambassador to Bahrain and Syria Peter Ford discusses the Syrian War and its latest developments, including attempts to try Bashar al-Assad at the ICC. He describes the "permanent government" of the U.S. which is a key driver of the war, as well as America's European counterparts such as France and Britain, who still cling to the coattails of their imperial past glory. Ambassador Ford believes Gulf unity is shattered and that Syria will remain weak, but will slowly rebuild in the coming years.

*Support/Donate to Geopolitics & Empire:

Patreon https://www.patreon.com/empiregeopolitics

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Show Notes

Peter Ford Speech, Panel Discussion, House of Lords, March 2019 https://guadalajarageopolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/EuroSCE-Panel-Discussion-March-2013-2.docx

About Peter Ford

Peter William Ford (born 27 June 1947) is a retired British diplomat who was ambassador to Bahrain from 1999–2003 and to Syria from 2003–2006.

Ford was educated at Weston Point Community Primary School, Helsby Grammar School and The Queen's College, Oxford. Having finished his Arabic studies he worked in Beirut, Riyadh, Paris and Cairo before being appointed British ambassador to Bahrain as well as Syria from 2003-06. Retiring from the Diplomatic Service in 2006, he became Representative of the Commissioner-General of UNRWA in the Arab world. In February 2017, Ford became a Director of the British Syrian Society, alongside President Assad's father-in-law Dr Fawaz Akhras.

In 2003, as ambassador to Bahrain, Ford says he sent critical memoranda to London before the Iraq War. Later, he regretted not having been more outspoken. In his time in Damascus (2003-2006), he says he distanced himself more and more from the official policies. Since 2006, he has been criticised as a defender of the Syrian government in Syria. In 2016, he suggested opposition forces were responsible for an attack on a UN humanitarian convoy in September 2016 which led to the deaths of 10 humanitarians. A UN panel of inquiry said the attack was conducted from the air, and only Syrian and Russian air forces were operating in the area. The UN panel stated "that it did not have evidence to conclude that the incident was a deliberate attack on a humanitarian target".

He accused the British government of lies and political mistakes in Syria from the onstart of the uprising, thus aggravating the situation. He argued that Prime Minister David Cameron should have either committed British forces or refrained from encouraging opposition forces from mounting a campaign against the Syrian government. Ford believes that the British leaders expected an early end of the Syrian government and overestimated the strength of the moderate opposition, whom they did not provide with sufficient help.

Ford argued that the fall of Assad would open a "Pandora's box", repeating the mistakes of Libya and Iraq. In his opinion, the fall of the Syrian government would lead to the massacres of Christians, Shias, Alawites, Druze and other minorities. On the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, he commented to the BBC that "there [had] been no investigation.. not a dodgy dossier - we've not seen any dossier whatever this time". Ford argued there was no proof of the Syrian government's involvement in the attack.

Ford participated in the EuroCE conference on the future of Syria from 5 to 6 April 2017 which was criticised by dissidents as pro-Assad, because among the speakers there were Syrian politicians and supporters of the Assad government. At the conference Ford described the British policy as "incoherent and grotesque", and accused the British government of being among those in the front rank of destroying Syria. He added that following the Iraq War he had been...