Third Russian-Chinese Veto Blocks the Road to World War III

By Carla Stea - Global Research, August 2, 2012

“They have shown only arrogance, not sincerity.”  Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong, July 19, 2012, United Nations Security Council Following the first Persian Gulf War, in 1990-1991, authorized by the United Nations Security Council with the adoption of Resolution 678, permitting “all necessary means” to be used against Iraq , the United Nations was often pejoratively referred to as “an annex of the United States Pentagon.”  Following the series of terrorist attacks against United Nations facilities in subsequent years, Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations Special Envoy and former Foreign Minister of Algeria explained this violent hostility against the United Nations in a press conference, stating that the United Nations was no longer regarded as impartial, but was now perceived, in many areas of global conflict, as a party to the conflict.   On July 19, 2012, for the first time in United Nations history, a third double veto was cast, by Russia and China, preventing the United Nations from becoming a party to the conflict in Syria, and restoring legitimacy to the United Nations as an independent and impartial international organization, no longer an instrument beholden to and dominated by one member state.  Even more significantly, the third Russian-Chinese veto deprived the US-NATO forces of the possibility of claiming that their actions were supported by the international community, and denied any moral authority to subsequent US-NATO military action in Syria, and beyond, unmasking such military action as naked aggression. On July 19, Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong stated, in explanation of vote “We have vigorously pushed for consensus among Security Council members through consultations.  However, draft resolution S/2012/538 submitted by the United  Kingdom , the United States and France completely contradicts such aims…First, the draft resolution is seriously flawed, and its unbalanced content seeks to put pressure on only one party.  Experience has shown that such a practise would not help resolve the Syrian issue, but would only derail the matter from the political track.  It would not only further aggravate the turmoil, but also cause it to spread to other countries of the region…During consultations on today’s draft resolution, the sponsoring countries failed to show any political will or cooperativeness, adopting a rigid and arrogant approach to the reasonable basic concerns of other concerned countries and refusing to make revisions….China has been committed to reaching a consensus, worked hard for a smooth extension of the mandate of UNSMIS and supported Mr. Annan’s mediation efforts.  In contrast, a few countries have been eager to interfere in the external affairs of other countries, to fuel the flames and sow discord in complete disregard of the possible consequences.  This time they have repeated their old trick of setting preconditions as obstacles to the extension of UNSMIS’s mandate and have accompanied that with an invocation of Chapter VII of the Charter and the threat of sanctions, in an attempt to change or even repudiate the hard-won consensus reached by the action group during the Geneva meeting.  They have shown only arrogance, not sincerity during the consultations.” Russian Ambassador Vitali Churkin stated  “The Western members of the Security Council refused to exclude military intervention.  Their calculations to use the Security Council of the United Nations to further their plans of imposing their own designs on sovereign states will not prevail.  They have been pushing their own geopolitical intentions, which have nothing in common with the legitimate interests of the Syrian people.  This has led to an escalation of the conflict, one that has reached tragic proportions….Their approach is especially ambiguous given what took place yesterday in Damascus .  I am referring to the grave terrorist attack.” On July 18, terrorists attempted a coup d’etat against the government of Syrian President Assad, massacring his Defense Minister, General Daoud Rajha, his Deputy and brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, and General Hassan Turkmani, former Defense Minister.  Several other senior government ministers were critically wounded as they attended a top-level meeting in Damascus.  Though a Syrian Islamist group, Liwa al-Islam claimed responsibility for the attack on the “crisis control room in the capital of Damascus ,” with President Assad’s bodyguard himself detonating the explosive, a researcher at Columbia University , Younes Abouyoub stated:  “This may be a larger intelligence operation involving foreign intelligence services.  First of all the timing of this work, the fact that it targeted three major figures within the Syrian government, this shows these are professionals, not amateurs…this is not the act of one person or two, this is a very carefully planned and well-organized and implemented operation.”  War correspondent Eric Margolis added that:  “The operation was too well-prepared to be carried out by an amateur because such a gathering of high-profile officials would normally have the toughest security, making it impossible for a single suicide bomber to infiltrate…there may have been explosives hidden there before the meeting….the damage reported has far exceeded the damage that can be caused by one man carrying a suicide vest.”   Grossly irrational, and in violation of all logic, the United Kingdom, the United States and France claimed that the premeditated murders of Syrian President Assad’s top security ministers justified the adoption of resolution 2043, under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which would have imposed sanctions against the Assad government, and opened the way to external military action against the Syrian government.  The contortions required to arrive at this Orwellian distortion of reality also explain the Security Council’s shameful failure to issue any condemnation of these terrorist murders.  Although the Syrian opposition is undeniably pervaded by armed terrorists, identified by no less an authority than United States Intelligence Chief,  James Clapper, as Al-Qaeda operatives, this did not prevent the Western Powers, the UK, the US and France from embracing them, and opposing any Security Council statement condemning their terrorist activities.  Though Russia had earlier advanced the specious argument that their government was not “married” to the government of Assad, this had  no impact, since even had there been such a “marriage,” the option of divorce is available to those honourable and principled enough to terminate a shallow, rotting “marriage” which threatens to embroil others as “collateral damage.”  However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, on incontestable grounds denounced the Security Council’s refusal to condemn the July 18 terrorist attacks in Damascus, and the West’s failure to divorce its marriage to terrorism, (which began during the Carter administration with the arming and funding of Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan).  Lavrov stated:  “This is direct endorsement of terrorism.  This is a sinister position.  I cannot find words to express our attitude toward that.”   According to The New York Times, July 24, 2012,  “In February, the United States Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper told a Congressional hearing that there were “all the earmarks of an Al Qaeda-like attack” in a series of bombings against security and intelligence targets in Damascus .  He and other intelligence community witnesses attributed that to the spread into Syria of the Iraqi branch of Al-Qaeda….Daniel Byman, a counterterrorism expert who is a professor at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Brookings Institution said it is clear that Al Qaeda is trying to become more active in Syria .  As it has already done in Somalia and Mali , and before that in Chechnya and Yemen , the group is trying to turn a local conflict to its advantage.  ‘There’s no question Al Qaeda wants to do that, and they are actually pretty good at this sort of thing,’ he said. ‘They’ve done well at taking a local conflict and taking it global.’”   Despite James Clapper’s February warning that “the series of bombings against government security and intelligence targets in Damascus bore all the earmarks of an Al-Qaeda-like attack,”  on June 21, 2012, the front page of The New York Times stated, in an article bylined by Eric Schmitt:   “CIA said to aid in steering arms to Syrian rebels…A small number of CIA officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey , helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.  The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funnelled mostly across the Turkish border, by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria ’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey , Saudi Arabia and Qatar , the officials said.”   The German foreign intelligence service, the BND disclosed that “around 90 terror attacks that can be attributed to organizations that are close to Al-Qaeda or jihadist groups were carried out in Syria between the end of December and the beginning of July.”  “At least three major German newspapers – Die Welt, Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Bild have published reports attributing responsibility for the May 25 massacre in the Syrian town of Houla to anti-government rebel forces….writing in Bild, German war correspondent Jurgen Todenhofer accused the rebels of ‘deliberately killing civilians and then presenting them as victims of the government.’  He described this ‘massacre-marketing strategy’ as being among the most disgusting things that I have ever experienced in an armed conflict.’”   Following the Russian Veto on July 19, Russian Ambassador Vitali Churkin explicitly stated that one of the geopolitical goals of the relentless Western attempts to destroy the Syrian government of Assad is to weaken its ally, Iran .  Ambassador Churkin stopped short of implying that the integrity of Russia , itself, is a target of what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on March 12, at the Security Council, described as “geopolitical engineering.”  And this geopolitical engineering is already far advanced.  Including in Russia .   Although living standards of the Russian people improved substantially during Putin’s first terms as President, by the time of his re-election this year, an opposition led by Aleksei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov had formed, holding multiple demonstrations against both Putin’s party, United Russia, and against Putin, himself, as re-elected President, both before and after his election.  And, of course, the aborted plans to assassinate Putin himself, arranged by Ukranian operatives, rank high on the list of terrorist actions targeting Russia .   Early in 2011, Navalny had been invited to visit New York , and spoke at widely publicized events at the New York Public Library, and other publicly financed locations. Recent demonstrations in Moscow , led by Navalny and Nemtsov have the potential to destabilize Putin’s government.  When the new U.S. Ambassador McFaul arrived in Moscow , among his first activities were meetings with these leaders of the opposition in Russia .  As suspicions were aroused, Putin himself accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of being a force responsible for fomenting  civil unrest.  Numerous Russian intellectuals suspected United States agencies, such as the NED and others of instigating these disturbances which threatened civil turmoil, or worse within Russia itself.  In an attempt to expose and control foreign efforts to destabilize the Russian government, both chambers of the Russian Parliament, including the State Duma and the Federation Council,  approved a law, signed by President Putin, requiring externally funded NGO’s engaged in political activity in Russia to register as foreign agents.  This bill was inspired by, and modelled upon an almost identical law in the United States , requiring organizations operating in the United States but financed from abroad, to register as foreign agents of the country financing their activities.   Provocations of social and political turmoil within the Russian Federation have been exacerbated by the Kavkaz Center website, hosted and financed in Finland and Sweden, and instigated by Doku Umarov, listed as an international terrorist on the United Nations Security Council Al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee (pursuant to Resolution 1267) for organizing numerous terrorist activities, including the hostage taking and massacre of hundreds of school children in Beslan in September, 2003, and the suicide-bombing at Moscow’s Domodedevo Airport on January 2011, which killed 35 people. Umarov is also on the United Nations list of international terrorists for his connections to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Union, the Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, and other  terrorist organizations.  Umarov’s Kavkaz Center has been relentlessly instigating violent Islamic separatist movements within the large Moslem communities hitherto residing peacefully throughout the Russian Federation .   Is it a coincidence that on July 19, the historic day when the third double veto was cast by Russia and China at the United Nations Security Council, Andrew Roth reported in The New York Times:   “ Moscow – One senior Muslim official was killed and another was wounded in separate attacks on Thursday in the central Russian republic of Tatarstan , an unusual outbreak of violence in an area often held up as a model of harmonious interfaith relations.  The head of Islamic education for the region, Valiulla Yakupov was shot and killed outside his home on Thursday morning in Kazan .  Less than an hour later, Ildus Faizov, the chief Mufti for the Tatarstan region, was hospitalized after a bomb exploded in a car he was driving in Kazan, Russian investigators said.  Mr. Faizov, who was thrown clear of the automobile by the force of the explosion, suffered two broken legs.  Russia ’s Antiterrorism Committee said in a statement that several motives for the attack were being investigated, including recent statements against the growth of religious radicalism in the Republic by the organization Mr. Faizov runs, the Islamic Spiritual Council of Tatarstan.  Rustam Minnikhanov, the president of Tatarstan said in a statement that the attack was an ‘obvious challenge’ to the tranditional Islam supported by Mr. Faizov and the Islamic Spiritual Council.  Mr. Faizov, who was elected the region’s chief Mufti in 2011, has championed a fight against the growth of radicalism in the republic.  In April he said in a public statement that thousands of foreign missionaries had entered Tatarstan, and that ‘radical Muslim sects had emerged, which are ready even to kill the local population to further their goals.’  Mr. Yakupov was also an outspoken critic of radical Islam, and had called for a ban on Wahhabism in Russia .  In 2010, three Islamists were killed in a gun battle with the police in the Nurlatsky region of Tatarstan, raising fears of an armed insurgency similar to the one in Russia ’s North Caucasus .’”   NewsLanc.com stated:  “The attack took place in the capital of the most prominent, prosperous and influential Muslim republic of the Russian Federation …What happened was in fact an assassination of the official leaders of moderate Islam in Russia – the country with the biggest Muslim population in Europe .” The enormous significance of this terrorist attack against moderate Muslim leaders in Tatarstan is its location on the Volga .  Russia is currently embroiled with terrorist Islamic separatist insurgencies in the South of Russia, the North Caucasus .  If terrorist insurgencies comparable to those in Chechnya and elsewhere in Russia ’s North Caucasus erupt on the Volga, Russia ’s East, and the gateway to the colossal oil and gas and other mineral riches in Siberia , Russia could be trapped into wars on two fronts, in both the southern and the eastern part of Russia .  Bashkurtistan, another Muslim republic on the Volga , could also become infected with terrorist Islamic separatist movements.  If Islamic republics on the Volga succeed in breaking away from the Russian Federation, Russia, the largest country on earth, could be reduced to the size of France, from Ukraine to the Volga, losing control of the huge oil and gas reserves east of the Volga, that currently sustain much of the Russian economy, and provide much of Europe with its oil and gas.   Although Russia is existentially threatened by NATO bases surrounding its territory, and the threat to its nuclear deterrent posed by missile defense, it is possible that these external threats are less deadly than the possible dismemberment of the Russian Federation threatened by the spread of terrorist Islamic separatist movements.  It is also an interesting coincidence that the terrorist assassination of the official leaders of moderate Islam in Russia have occurred so soon after the establishment of the NATO transit hub on the Volga, in Ulyanovsk, close neighbour to Tatarstan.   China, also in the crosshairs of this Islamic terrorist insurgency, so convenient to the Western agenda of weakening, and possibly paralyzing the competitive power of these two global giants, Russia and China , is threatened by the violent insurgency of its Muslim Uighur population in Western China .   The US-NATO countries are mired in economic crisis, which is likely to worsen, and large-scale warfare may be perceived as a way to boost their respective economies.  It is possible that the huge risks of such warfare may deter the wiser policy makers, in which case, the use of “Islam as sword,” perfected by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who designed the Carter administration policy of training, funding and arming Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan to provoke the Soviet Union to invade, at huge cost to its social and economic integrity, may be the weapon of choice to erode the strength of Russia and China.  Russia ’s Ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin stated, last December, that NATO’s interference in the so-called “Arab Spring” resulted in “Sharia law coming to previously relatively secular states.”  He asked “to what extent NATO is aware of the fact that the coming of radical Islam to all the regions where it projected its force is a result of its actions.”   The “Arab Spring” has brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in every country where it occurred.  Indeed, in Egypt , Hillary Clinton was pelted with tomatoes, and the United States blamed for bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power.  Sharia law is the most brutal form of capitalist domination, keeping populations terrorized and submissive wherever it is inflicted.    There is currently talk of dismemberment and  partition of Syria, similar to the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, and plans for the dismemberment of Russia and China may be on the drawing board of US-NATO powers.  The Russian-Chinese veto of July 19 may have disrupted these plans, and destroyed any moral force the US-NATO powers might have claimed for their more overt Napoleonic militaristic adventures.  Lacking moral coherence, and the legitimacy which a supportive UN Security Council resolution might have conferred, to buttress public relations sales of aggression to a gullible public – a public which would ultimately pay the cost of imperialistic wars, US-NATO itself may eventually erode from within, as did the Napoleonic forces stopped dead in their tracks at Borodino, in Russia in 1812.  Following that decisive battle at Borodino, the huge, but demoralized Napoleonic army soon disintegrated, and ultimately the Napoleonic empire, itself collapsed.  Despite the most intense pressure to capitulate, throughout the Syria crisis, the triple double-veto by Russia and China at the UN Security Council bears comparison with Tolstoy’s analysis of the psychological component of historic events, a component he considered ultimately decisive. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=32165