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Friday, November 29

You can't go wrong in paying attention to what Alistair Crooke has to say

I can't vouch for Alaistair Crooke's individual sources although I know he is very well connected in the 'spook 'community. But I pay attention when he speaks his mind, and I give thought to his opinions, whether I agree or not with all or part. Here, a few of his posts this year at Strategic Culture. Just the headline and lede are instructive.  


November 25, 2019
Is Trump a ‘Covert Ally’ to the Multipolar Order?
Is Trump’s effort at outreach to Russia connected to his vision of how the US might transition to something smaller, within a multi-polar framework?

November 18, 2019
Is the Middle East Beginning a Self-Correction?
What is driving the sudden focus on ‘the flawed system’ in Lebanon is simply hard reality, Alastair Crooke writes.

November 11, 2019
Cornering and Strangulating Iran Has Backfired on Israel
What if maximum pressure fails either to implode the Iranian state politically, nor brings Iran to its knees, begging for a new nuclear deal?

November 4, 2019
The ‘War’ for the Future of Middle East
The MidEast may pass through its crises but be aware that the 'there is no alternative' meme is becoming a reason for protestors ‘to burn the system down.’

November 1, 2019
The Lebanese ‘Canary in the Mine’ Is Signalling Mid-East Trouble Ahead
Lebanon is ‘special’ in its own distinct way – but yes, it precisely is giving warning of a turbulence quietly incubating across the Middle East.

October 21, 2019
A Panicked Israel Is a Dangerous Israel
It is not just that Israel’s influence in Congress puts him in a risky political corner. But a bigger danger is that Israel cannot change course.

October 7, 2019
Can Trump’s ‘Middle Lane Nationalism’ Hold the Line Against System-Network Attack Strategy?
The question is: can Trump’s instinctive, creative ambiguity hold the line of US credibility (which exists more in the eye of the domestic beholder?)

September 30, 2019
Culture Wars, Foreign Policy Wars – When They Meet, They Clash
What has the ‘international style of architecture’ – now going out of fashion – got to do with today’s geopolitics?

September 23, 2019
A Precision Strike on US Credibility – Shattering a US Paradigm
The US is ‘blowing smoke’ about launch sites mainly to divert from the very obvious (but embarrassing) fact that the raining down of missiles on Abqaiq, primordially owes to the Saudi war on Yemen (supported unreservedly by Trump).

September 16, 2019
The New Heresy That Threatens the Entire European Continent
In all the hullabaloo of Brexit and its associated parliamentary infighting, little-noticed has been how Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson are attempting to change the very nature of the UK political landscape.

September 9, 2019
‘The New Normal’: Trump’s ‘China Bind’ Can Be Iran’s Opportunity
There is consensus amongst the Washington foreign policy élite that all factions in Iran understand that – ultimately – a deal with Washington on the nuclear issue must ensue. It somehow is inevitable.

August 26, 2019
The Great Switch: The Geopolitics of Looming Recession
Is the prospect of looming global recession merely an economic matter or is there a wider pattern of geopolitical markers that may be deduced ahead of its arrival?

August 19, 2019
The Deeper Meaning in a Lost War
It is now no longer conceivable that MbS can deliver what Trump and Netanyahu desired. Does this then mean that the US confrontation with Iran, and Jared Kushner’s Deal of the Century, are over? No.

August 14, 2019
The Great Switch: Old Ways Fade and are Irrecoverable
Conflict is popping up everywhere in the world nowadays and all of them have their separate background contexts. But why so many at the same time? Well, it’s all about change – about the recognition that we are at the cusp of major changes. The world is beginning to pre-position.

August 11, 2019
Germany Stalls and Europe Craters
The treaties are untouchable, precisely because Germany believes that to loosen its hold over the monetary system will be to open Pandora’s Box to the ghosts of inflation and social instability rising, to haunt us anew, Alastair Crooke writes.

August 3, 2019
The Citadels of America’s Elites: Fractured and At Odds with Each Other
The more the rival US élite factions cloister themselves in their enclaves, certain in their separate views about how America can retain its global supremacy, the less likely it is that they will understand the very real impact of their collective belligerence on the outside world.

July 15, 2019
‘Hawk Policy’ in Financialised Garb
The ‘max pressure’, Make America Great Again formula is not going to work, for the simple reason that it is consuming America’s ‘capital stock’ at a torrential rate. It will neither restore America’s manufacturing base, nor will it recover to America it’s political hegemony.

July 8, 2019
To Think Outside the Box, It Helps First to Understand What’s IN the Box
The crisis between Iran and Washington is only nominally about nuclear issues. It is rather, a political crisis between Iran and America, which reaches back to the humiliation of US President Carter in the context of the US embassy siege in Tehran.

July 1, 2019
Trump’s Iran Policy: Dangerously Flawed Assumptions, With No Plan ‘B’
Ultimately, Trump will find himself in a corner in which he never wished to find himself: It may already be too late. He is there.

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