The Munich Security Conference 2015: War And Peace On The African Periphery

The first Munich Security Conference was held in 1963. This year’s summit, the 51’st in the series, held from Feb 6 to Feb 8, highlighted the theme, The Collapsing International Order. It marked a heightened tension between two world heavy weights over the current Ukraine crisis.

We’ve now reached an inflection point which will determine the trajectory of the current struggle between Russia-China and the US-EU to remake the global international order. It is clear that the unipolar world order characterized by US hegemony following the end of the cold war is fast coming to an end. The gloves are now off. The Neocon and Neoliberal Mullahs in Washington DC are in full hysterical imperial overdrive. They are ready for the “Democracy” Jihad.

Last week eight Neocon, or should I call them Neoliberal Mullahs, issued a report signaling the desire of the US government to begin to supply arms to the Ukraine. The western backed Ukrainian nationalist government in Kiev which is indiscriminately shelling civilians in the rebellious east of the country has suffered a catastrophic defeat near Debaltsevo in the east of the Ukraine where more than 8 thousand Ukrainian troops are believed to be trapped by separatist forces in a military cauldron.

The Mullahs in DC and their baby mullahs in the EU have so far refused to accept the most logical outcome for the Ukraine, that is, a federation which guarantees equal rights to the Russian speaking East and the Ukrainian speaking West of the country. If tiny countries like Belgium and Switzerland can be federations. Why not the Ukraine which has more bitter language and cultural divisions now exacerbated by a civil war?

For the first time since 1939, there is a very real risk of a hot war between Russia and the West over the future of the Ukraine. This prompted Francois Hollande of France and Angela Merkel of Germany to go to Moscow on February 6 to discuss the Ukraine crisis. They first stopped in Kiev to talk with President Poroshenko of the rump Ukraine before heading to Moscow.

Reports indicated that it was a last ditch attempt by Merkel and Hollande to achieve an acceptable outcome in the Ukraine before the hothead Freedom Mullahs in DC try to send weapons to their client government in Kiev.

The Russians have warned that their response will be harsh. Kiev is just 300 miles from Moscow. Reports indicate that if the US embarks on such a step, the Russians have contingency plans to destroy the Ukrainian army and take Kiev in 72 hours. What would the US do in such a scenario? The credibility of the US and the West will be on the line. Will they risk a hot war with Russia over Ukraine a nation deeply divided between the Russian speaking east and the Ukrainian speaking west that historically dislike each other?

We are told that Merkel and Hollande held a 5 hour meeting with Putin in the Kremlin. The meeting was held behind closed doors. No aides or officials were allowed. It was strictly Putin, Merkel and Hollande all speaking in German. None of the leaders came out to talk to the press. Putin’s press secretary Dimitri Peskov just said that the discussions were substantial and that a follow up via phone conversation would happen on Sunday February 8 between Putin, Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko.

On February 7 at the Munich Security Conference, French president Hollande addressing the gathering said we are now faced with the prospect of a very hot war in Europe. The American Neocon Senator Mullah Lindsay Graham at the Munich conference said and we quote:

I don’t know how this will end if you give the Ukraine defensive capability. But I know this: I will feel better because when my nation was needed to stand up to the garbage and to stand by freedom I stood by freedom. They may die, they may lose…

So Neocon Mullah Graham knows the fanatic Ukrainian nationalists will lose, they may die but he will certainly feel better. That is certainly a most Orwellian statement. The self-chosen, self-exceptional Freedom and Democracy Mullahs in DC seem to have an eerie similarity to Theocratic Islamic Mullahs in parts of the Islamic world. We will now focus our analysis on Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergei Lavrov’s and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s speeches at the Munich Security Conference.

We will start with an analysis of Kofi Annan’s speech who gave opening remarks on February 6 at the conference. His speech was titled, ‘The end of the Middle East as we know it’.

He starts by talking about the crisis engulfing the world now, which is The Collapsing World Order by focusing on the Middle East as a prime example of the effects of such a change.

He says:

I would like to briefly examine the factors – international, regional and local – that led to the current situation…

As we all know, the Middle East has been shaped as much by outside forces as internal dynamics, and I would like to briefly mention three that are often considered of primordial importance.

Yes the Middle East has been shaped by these external forces just as much as Africa. But he chooses to focus on the Middle East probably because of the effects of the Arab spring and the strategic importance of Middle Eastern oil to the western economies. He makes an interesting point that although the carving up of the Middle East after World War 1 by Britain and France following the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman empire has contributed to the current unraveling of the Middle East, the primary factor which is driving this process was the US invasion of 2003 which we chose to call the Democracy Jihad. He says and we quote:

The second and much more proximate cause of the instability we are witnessing today was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I spoke against it at the time, and I am afraid my concerns have proved well-founded. 

The folly of that fateful decision was compounded by post-invasion decisions. The wholesale disbandment of the security forces, among other measures poured hundreds of thousands of trained and disgruntled soldiers and policemen onto the streets.

Subsequently, the rush to create an instant democracy, as if elections sufficed in the absence of democratic tradition or sound institutions, ushered in corrupt, repressive and sectarian governance. 

The country has been in the throes of insurgency ever since and the ensuing chaos has proved an ideal breeding ground for the Sunni radical groups that have now coalesced around the Islamic State label. 

It is interesting he uses the word instant democracy here. The West likes instant coffee, quick fixes, so it is not surprising that they would want to impose instant democracy for others to drink. That is the logic of democratic Jihad. Islamic Jihad seeks to achieve instant Islamic dominance. Democratic Jihad organized by the West seeks to achieve instant democratic dominance. The two jihads are but two branches of the same structural roots of a messianic ideology of Islamic dominance or democratic dominance. In that aspect, the West and the Islamists are meta-Siamese twins.

He goes on to talk about the great history and civilization of the Middle East and the attempts by the Islamic radicals to restore that through their violence and radicalism. He says:

Yet the Islamic world’s golden age, under the Abbasid Caliphate, was characterized by openness to new ideas, scientific inquiry and debate.

That caliphate was a far cry from the sectarian, obscurantist and violent entity that calls itself the caliphate today. 

The radicals are leading the Middle East astray if they think that their ideology will restore the Muslim world’s erstwhile greatness.

His observation that an attempt to restore greatness through terror will not lead to a positive resolution is certainly right. But the use of terror by the radicals as a geopolitical tool to further their aims was a tool that they learnt from the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The terror conceptual apparatus they borrowed from the West was adapted and wedded to the Islamic concept of Jihad.

But to Kofi Annan’s credit, he mentions the meddling by the US which he does not mention by name but is implied as we can see from his statement below:

Rather than tackling these problems, states in the region have for decades cracked down on their critics with the connivance of external powers anxious to preserve secure oil supplies and sell weapons. But we should not confuse repression with stability.

On the whole, we can say that Kofi Annan of course as a product of the western power system was very soft on criticism of the west and as is his trademark was calling for a comprehensive international dialog to save the region from further chaos. But will the empire of Chaos favor such a dialog?

I highly doubt so.

We now analyze Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergei Lavrov’s speech. He comes bluntly putting the blame on the US and the West for the collapsing international order. He starts by saying:

On the contrary, the events of the past year have confirmed the validity of our warnings regarding deep, systemic problems in the organization of European security and international relations in general. I would like to remind about the speech by President Putin spoken here eight years ago.

The design of stability, based on the UN Charter and the Helsinki principles was long ago undermined by the actions of the US and its allies in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, by NATO expansion to the East, the creation of new lines of separation. The project of building a “common European home” failed because our partners in the West were guided not by the interests of building an open architecture of security with mutual respect for interests, but illusions and beliefs of the winners in the “cold war”.

We can only so much agree with his take on the unilateral actions of the US in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. In all these cases, the US twisted the norms of the UN and undermined the system of checks and balances of the international security architecture to unravel these countries. This as Kofi Annan put it, resulted in the rise of non-state actors like ISIS which now control territory larger than countries.

In Africa, we have seen what Libya has become and its shockwave effects in Mali and the Boko Haram phenomenon in Nigeria. But the democracy Mullahs in DC are still dreaming new democracy jihads to bring instant democracy to people who have not asked them for the western version of democracy.

He goes on to say:

We don’t even understand, what could be the reason for the American obsession of creating a global missile defense system? The desire for unquestionable military superiority? The faith in the possibility to technologically solve the problems that are essentially political? Anyway, the missile threats have not decreased, but in the Euro-Atlantic area emerged a strong irritant, which will take a long time to get rid of. But we are ready for it. Another destabilizing factor was the refusal of the United States and other NATO members to ratify the Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), which buried this agreement.

His right assertions cannot be challenged with any kind of rigorous logic. The actions of the west in this obsession with military superiority can only be explained in the context of the Democracy jihad. The Islamic Jihad hopes to achieve the dominance of the Muslim Islamic Ummah over the rest of the world.

The Democracy Jihad of the west seeks to achieve the dominance of the Western Democratic Ummah over the rest of the world. This is the reason why the Democratic Mullahs in Washington and their baby Mullahs in other western capitals continue to promote a Democracy Jihad to impose their version of democracy.

He gives a sober warning which is so actual today. He says:

It is important that everyone realizes the real extent of risks. It’s time to get rid of the habit to consider each issue separately, not seeing “the forest behind the trees”. It is time to assess the situation comprehensively. The world today is on a steep fault associated with changing of historical periods. “Birth pains” of the new world order are manifested through the increase of conflicts in international relations. If instead of strategic global vision, prevail the tactical decisions made by politicians with an eye on the coming elections at home, there is a danger of a loss of control over the levers of global governance.

The world is indeed changing, we can clearly see the signs of the decline of western power as other centers of power in Asia and Africa begin to rise, or are on a path of great power resurgence like in the case of Russia. This can lead to a total loss of control over the levers of global governance. We can see in the case of the long decline of the Islamic world, the use of Islamic Jihad by the fundamentalists in the Islamic world to claw back lost influence in the world.

We have noted the eerie parallelism in the geopsychology of Islamic Jihad and Western Democratic Jihad. Therefore in the case of the declining west, we will see more attempts by the democracy fundamentalists who now wield the levers of power in the West to embark on more Democracy Jihads to claw back their diminishing power.

This will mean dangerous times for Africa as she can surely expect to be a target of such Democracy Jihads by the Democratic Mullahs in the West. We are surely forewarned.