Dictatorships that dangle on a Sino-Russian
thread-Beijing, Russia, Assad – Colombo

There has been news, mostly good but not yet conclusive, about two tottering dictatorships in the Middle East. First, Hillary Clinton threw America’s weight in support of democracy in Egypt and told the military to get back to the barracks. How sincere the Americans are depends on whether deeds follow declarations; so optimism should be tempered with caution. Since the Egyptian military leans on the US for hand-outs and because rapprochement between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Americans will be a global game-changer, there is hope.
Is it in the interests of imperialism, or what’s left of it in Washington, to reach deals with democratic alternatives to rotten old dictatorships? Is it in the interests of the global bourgeoisie to compromise with moderate Muslim political manifestations such as the Brotherhood? The answer is sometimes “Yes,” if the outcome benefits Washington (vide Burma, Libya, Egypt and in the future Syria and Lanka), and sometimes “No,” as in countless past examples. It varies case by case and fortunately, at this point in time, it is in the interests of the people of the countries of the Arab Spring, of Burma and of Lanka, and to the benefit of Washington (and London, Berlin, Canberra and Ottawa) to punish dictators and putative dictators, and to bolster bourgeois democratic alternatives. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt therefore is wise to promote an understanding with America, albeit an uneasy one, with Washington’s support for Egypt’s military dictatorship all these years notwithstanding helps to weaken the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (the core of the dictatorship).
I have been saying for over a year in this column that the Syrian monster Assad will be overthrown; sometimes, as now, the process seems to be accelerating; sometimes the road ahead seems hard and strewn with corpses of the Syrian people. Events in July have been encouraging; high-level rats are deserting the sinking ship, the fight has been taken right to the citadel of the Syrian defence establishment and the defence minister, and a top team blown to pieces during a high level meeting, and an uprising is in progress on the very streets of Damascus. The revolution is fighting to take control of several border crossing posts into neighbouring countries. The clandestine assistance that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Western countries are channelling to the freedom fighters is far from adequate but Syria is a peculiar case in which foreign assistance to freedom fighters must be injected with great care.
The problem is not Russia and China; they are but a diplomatic nuisance at the Security Council. Nor can Iran call the shots if a free flow of foreign support for the Syrian revolution is authorized. The grave danger is that the Arab people of the region must not feel that forces inimical to the liberation of the Palestinian people and supportive of the Israeli cancer are pulling the strings. But as the ‘noose’ tightens around Assad and the firebombing encircles his presidential palace there is reason to hope that the Syrian people can finish the job by themselves with a reduced level of foreign military and diplomatic assistance. The fall of the Assad military dictatorship is a certainty but the timing is another matter; I guess the same can be said of authoritarianism nearer home.
The strange case of
Russia and China Full Story>>>
thread-Beijing, Russia, Assad – Colombo



Is it in the interests of imperialism, or what’s left of it in Washington, to reach deals with democratic alternatives to rotten old dictatorships? Is it in the interests of the global bourgeoisie to compromise with moderate Muslim political manifestations such as the Brotherhood? The answer is sometimes “Yes,” if the outcome benefits Washington (vide Burma, Libya, Egypt and in the future Syria and Lanka), and sometimes “No,” as in countless past examples. It varies case by case and fortunately, at this point in time, it is in the interests of the people of the countries of the Arab Spring, of Burma and of Lanka, and to the benefit of Washington (and London, Berlin, Canberra and Ottawa) to punish dictators and putative dictators, and to bolster bourgeois democratic alternatives. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt therefore is wise to promote an understanding with America, albeit an uneasy one, with Washington’s support for Egypt’s military dictatorship all these years notwithstanding helps to weaken the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (the core of the dictatorship).
I have been saying for over a year in this column that the Syrian monster Assad will be overthrown; sometimes, as now, the process seems to be accelerating; sometimes the road ahead seems hard and strewn with corpses of the Syrian people. Events in July have been encouraging; high-level rats are deserting the sinking ship, the fight has been taken right to the citadel of the Syrian defence establishment and the defence minister, and a top team blown to pieces during a high level meeting, and an uprising is in progress on the very streets of Damascus. The revolution is fighting to take control of several border crossing posts into neighbouring countries. The clandestine assistance that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Western countries are channelling to the freedom fighters is far from adequate but Syria is a peculiar case in which foreign assistance to freedom fighters must be injected with great care.
The problem is not Russia and China; they are but a diplomatic nuisance at the Security Council. Nor can Iran call the shots if a free flow of foreign support for the Syrian revolution is authorized. The grave danger is that the Arab people of the region must not feel that forces inimical to the liberation of the Palestinian people and supportive of the Israeli cancer are pulling the strings. But as the ‘noose’ tightens around Assad and the firebombing encircles his presidential palace there is reason to hope that the Syrian people can finish the job by themselves with a reduced level of foreign military and diplomatic assistance. The fall of the Assad military dictatorship is a certainty but the timing is another matter; I guess the same can be said of authoritarianism nearer home.
The strange case of
Russia and China Full Story>>>