STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Pax Westphalia Dies, Middle East Writhes
By Staff News & Analysis - March 29, 2011

Progress in Libya Fight … Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. won't enter into the internal conflict in Syria the way it has in Libya, where the international effort to protect civilians from Muammar Qaddafi is progressing. "No," Clinton said when asked on the CBS program "Face the Nation" if the U.S. would intervene in Syria's unrest. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's security forces clashed with protesters in several cities over the weekend after his promises of freedoms and pay increases failed to prevent dissent from spreading across the country. – Bloomberg

Dominant Social Theme: he 400-year-old Peace of Westphalia goes glimmering into the night; but relax, the United Nations has found something to put in its place.

Free-Market Analysis: When the Anglo-American elites do something big (like destabilizing the entire Middle East with CIA-supported "youth movements") it is often necessary to follow along for a while to figure out what's really going on. Eventually the elites themselves may clue you in because they will inevitably begin to justify whatever chaos they are embarked upon (human nature) in an attempt to justify it. There are lots of clues in the Bloomberg article excerpted above. In this analysis, we'll take a look at some of them.

Thanks to the Bloomberg article and others like it (and the alternative ‘Net press as well), we believe we may have discerned the bottom-line reason for what's going on. As we reported yesterday, six years ago, the UN seems basically overturned the Peace of Westphalia established in Europe in 1648. The Peace of Westphalia established the sovereignty of nation-states and apparently made official the principal that an attack on such a state constituted a formal act of war. The new UN principle passed by both the Security Council and the General Assembly in 2005 has turned the sovereignty principal on its head via something called Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

This principle explains that the primary purpose of a nation-state's government is not to rule but to protect civilians. Thus if the UN as a whole determines that a given nation state is promoting genocide rather than peace, then that nation state can be attacked by the massed forces of the entire UN. Pax Westphalia is no more. Just yesterday in "War Thy Name is David Cameron" we wrote:

THIS is the REAL reason that Britain (et al.) has gone to war. It is not so redemptive after all. It has to do with rewriting the principle of national territorial sovereignty as codified by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Did you know, dear reader, that the Libyan war was a repudiation of this ancient treaty? "R2P is being given a trial run in Libya, and the results of the experiment will have momentous consequences in the decades ahead," the article informs us.

Now everything is much clearer. The new R2P is mostly an enforcement mechanism for the Anglo-American power elite that runs the UN and therefore is basically in charge of its recommendations. There are other reasons of course that may have to do with oil and the dollar reserve currency's oil link, and which we've written about previously. (See Mid-East Conflict Not Exactly About Oil.) Here's some more from Bloomberg:

Clinton said the elements that led to intervention in Libya – international condemnation, an Arab League call for action, a United Nations Security Council resolution – are "not going to happen" with Syria, in part because members of the U.S. Congress from both parties say they believe Assad is "a reformer." "What's been happening there the last few weeks is deeply concerning, but there's a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities," Clinton said, referring to Qaddafi's attacks on the Libyan people, "than police actions which, frankly, have exceeded the use of force that any of us would want to see."

Clinton could not be any clearer. For some reason Assad is seen (currently anyway) as a good guy while Qaddafi is not. Therefore he will not be bombed and chased out of office while Qaddafi will be. What is the dividing line? Not the UN but the US Congress, which sees Assad as a "reformer." It seems obvious that Ms. Clinton "misspoke" when she made this point; in other comments she has been careful to explain that the US has gone to war under the umbrella of the UN.

Of course, this has its own unique set of problems as US leaders are not supposed to send men into battle without Congressional authorization. What is interesting is that despite the incredible sensitivity and high profile of these issues (thanks in large part to the Internet) Clinton does not hesitate to declare that America is now going to war based on UN authorization. Not only that, but she refuses to rule out FURTHER actions. The Bloomberg article quotes her as saying, "Each of these situations is unique," in reference to such countries as Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Syria and Bahrain.

Bloomberg also reported that Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (who can be counted on to support almost any US military action) told CNN's "State of the Union" that the intervention helped the U.S. "There's a democracy movement, and we should be on the side of that movement," Levin said. Of course this begs the question: Will the US wish to intervene in every overseas Democracy movement or just some? And who will make that determination, and why?

As the Libyan action unfolds, Clinton has been more and more forthcoming. "I've never seen anything like it, where the world spoke so unequivocally," she reportedly said. In a conversation with NBC, Clinton was even more blatant. A United Nations envoy will soon inform Qaddafi loyalists of two significant questions, she explained. The first was, "Do you really want to be a pariah?" and the second, "Do you really want to end up in the international court?" By this she meant the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

So now it comes together. The UN has established a new precedent and Middle Eastern turmoil – to a large degree engendered by Anglo-American mischief – has provided a proving ground. The US, according to Clinton (and Congress in particular) is picking and choosing what wars it wants the UN to fight based on whether the individual governments are "reformers" or "tyrants." Finally, those who are selected as tyrants are to be informed that if they resist the UN's demands to leave office, they will doubtless be charged with "war crimes."

We still believe in the points we have made previously regarding these youth revolutions – that they may end up in Islamic governments that will allow the US in particular and the West in general to continue to promote the phony "war on terror." Such Islamic governments would look militaristic on the outside but behind the scenes they will actually be manipulated by Western intel and military power.

But what is emerging now is far deeper and frankly quite startling. The Anglo-American power elite has overthrown a lynchpin of international diplomacy for 400 years and substituted in its place a UN resolution that is evidently and obviously answerable to the West and to the US (and the Anglosphere) in particular.

After Thoughts

This sends a direct and threatening message to the leaders of other nation states throughout the world. It is a new era, perhaps. If these leaders, no matter how thuggish or freedom minded, are not inclined to agree with Western power elites on any one of a number of issues they too could find themselves first destabilized, then attacked and finally brought in manacles to the Hague. The New World Order proceeds?

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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