US oil and gas industry demands increasing local production over easing sanctions on Iran and Venezuela

Many decades ago I had read that United States wishes to keep global sources of energy under its control, directly or indirectly. This became crystal clear after impositions of economic sanction on Iran and Venezuela and invasion on Iraq and Libya. The latest attempt is imposition of sanctions on global energy giant, Russia.

Till yesteryear global supply of energy was controlled by ‘Seven Sisters’. Since other players, particularly OPEC Plus still enjoy substantial leverage, the new name of the game is ‘Shale Oil’. To keep shale oil producers economically viable, oil price has to be kept around US$70/barrel in the global markets.

Under the strategy of cutting supplies from major producers, the first casualty was Iran, then came Iraq and Libya and now the target is Russia. To achieve the success, two pronged strategy is being followed, containing oil supply from OPEC Plus members and boosting indigenous production. To achieve the target the US administration is already in touch with exploration and production (E&P) companies which have already started soliciting ‘incentives’, the latest news is:

The oil and gas industry of United States is positioning domestic crude production as the lesser of environmental evils, as it attempts to dissuade the administration of US president Joe Biden from easing sanctions on Iran and Venezuela.

A US ban on Russian crude imports earlier this month reframed talks to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and rekindled diplomatic ties between Washington and Caracas, with market participants watching keenly for any developments that might offer incremental supply.

The US oil and gas stakeholders claim a move toward Iranian or Venezuelan barrels would signal a step back from the kind of environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards consumers, politicians and investors have called for in recent years.

"If you really care about ESG, compare the United States to other jurisdictions," Hunter Hunt, Chief Executive of Dallas-based oil and gas company Hunt Consolidated, told Argus earlier this month.

"We will have a higher commitment to the environment, a higher commitment to safety, and I think you will see a stronger understanding of all social concerns here in the US than you would see in Iran or Venezuela or other countries that potentially could fill the gap left by Russian oil."

Hunt's comments echo those heard elsewhere in the industry. AFPM President Chet Thompson on March 14, 2022 called against relying on countries with "less stringent environmental and safety standards" like Iran or Venezuela for energy.

ExxonMobil Chief Executive Darren Woods earlier this month said "production will shift to somebody else with potentially higher emissions" if climate hawks push US companies into decreasing production.

Seven Sisters

The Seven Sisters (oil companies) is a classification named by the Enrico Mattei who is an Italian politician for the seven giant oil companies that managed the oil industry worldwide until the 1970s. The company names of seven sisters are: Anglo-Persian Oil Company worked between 1908-1954 after that they became BP, Gulf Oil run within these years 1901-1985 after this year purchased by Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, Exxon later joined with Mobil, Texaco (1901-2000) acquired by Chevron in 2001.

The traditional period starts with the Seven Sisters giant oil firms as the authoritative strength in world petroleum businesses for the decades after World War II. Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, Gulf, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, and Chevron, the cartel operated authorizations to oil in sovereign nations with plentiful petroleum sources.

This adjustment proffered the Sister’s attribute powers over oil in Venezuela and newly named OPECs countries, and end of 1950, the Sister’s cartel maintained a 98.3% exchange portion of world petroleum production. BP, Chevron, Mobil, and Shell are remaining today, and we can say that they are the big four for the oil industry of today’s world. As for why this description is accepted.

After the 1940s, these seven big companies built a cartel that provided more than 83% of world oil production and became an oligopoly for the oil industry. They are in steadfast competition with each other, but when the rise of another company comes together, they blend and threaten that company. These companies could be termed a stop at least partially with the later OPEC countries.

According to the freshest statement of the Financial Times, cartels of this century; Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, as well as four major oil giants, as well as Total and ENI. However, especially in recent years, non-OECD countries have included China National Petroleum Co. (CNPC), Gazprom Russia, ConocoPhillips, Petrobras Brazil, Petronas Malaysia, and Saudi Aramco.

However, the share and support of the four major oil giants among these companies, which have achieved significant progress in recent years, is not known. Some energy experts claimed that new companies’ growth occurred with the help of seven sisters.

These seven sisters, who established the international oil industry for nearly a century, developed them through incorporations, takeovers, and incorporations and brought them to the present day, have a higher income than the gross national product of many other countries, and the tonnage of the tankers they possess is higher than the naval forces of many nations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tribute to Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright was the first woman to serve as US Secretary of State and a ‘Grande Dame’ of foreign policy for the Democratic Party. She wrote books, served on think tank boards and warned of the risk of fascism in the Donald Trump era. 

She died on March 23, 2022 at the age of 84; the cause of death was cancer.

Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, halfway through his two-term presidency, Albright became the highest-ranking woman in the US government at the time. As the top US diplomat, she called for the use of force as the conflict in Kosovo descended into ethnic cleansing. That was consistent with the hard line she had pressed during the Bosnian War, when she was Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations. She later described the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the failure to achieve a Mideast peace accord as among her biggest regrets.

“Madeleine’s courage and toughness helped bring peace to the Balkans and paved the way for progress in some of the most unstable corners of the world,” President Barack Obama said upon awarding Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2012.

Responding to news of her death, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters, “The impact that she has had on this building is felt every single day. She was a trailblazer as the first female Secretary of State and quite literally opened doors for a large element of our workforce.”

In a statement, Clinton called Albright “an extraordinary human being” and “a passionate force for freedom, democracy and human rights.”

Albright was famous for well-tailored suits adorned with pins or brooches, ranging from balloons to carnivorous animals and chosen to reflect a mood or an opinion. After learning that the Russians had bugged a conference room near her office at the State Department, for example, she wore a pin shaped like a huge bug.

Albright’s stature and style belied a commanding negotiating skill. When Yasser Arafat walked out of Paris talks in 2000, Albright told guards at the US ambassador’s residence to “Shut the gates!” As UN ambassador, she responded to Cuba’s 1996 downing of two unarmed Cessna aircraft: “This is cowardice.”

In an opinion column published February 23, 2022 in the New York Times, just before Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Albright took direct aim at Russian President Vladimir Putin. She disclosed that while flying back to Washington after her first meeting with Putin in 2000, she recorded her observations of him, “Putin is small and pale, so cold as to be almost reptilian.”

“Instead of paving Russia’s path to greatness,” she wrote in the column, “invading Ukraine would ensure Mr. Putin’s infamy by leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance.”

In an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “The Close,” Leon Panetta, a White House Chief of Staff under Clinton, recalled Albright as “a Cold War warrior” who had been “raised to understand what communism was about and what the threat from Russia was all about.”

Thomas Pickering, who served under Albright as Under Secretary for political affairs, said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio’s “Sound On”, “She had little love, I would say, for Russia, and that skepticism and indeed suspicion about Russia has proven to be more true than I think any of us had reason to believe when I worked for her.”

An emigrant who fled Czechoslovakia at the dawn of World War II only to discover her own Jewish heritage more than a half-century later, Albright witnessed firsthand the displacement of those deemed undesirable.

“In the end, no one who lived through the years of 1937 to 1948 was a stranger to profound sadness,” Albright wrote in “Prague Winter,” her personal account of the period. “Millions of innocents did not survive, and their deaths must never be forgotten.”

Albright was born Marie Jana Korbel on May 15, 1937, in Prague, one of three children of Josef Korbel, a diplomat, and the former Anna Spieglova. The family statement on her death gave her surname at birth as Korbelova. When the German army arrived in 1939, the family went into exile in London. 

At war’s end, they returned to Prague, relocating several months later to Belgrade where her father served as ambassador. At the age of 10, Albright was sent to boarding school in Switzerland.

When the Communist Party took control in Czechoslovakia in 1948, her father accepted a post on a UN commission on Kashmir. The Korbels stayed in New York. By then, Albright spoke four languages: Czech, Serbo-Croatian, English and French.

Gaining political asylum in 1949, they moved to Denver, where her father became a professor at the University of Denver. She met her future husband, Joseph Medill Patterson Albright, during a summer job at the Denver Post. They married in 1959, the same year she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. They had three daughters -- Anne, Alice and Katharine -- before the marriage ended in divorce

A Catholic who became an Episcopalian in marriage, Albright learned of her Jewish ancestry ‑ along with the death of more than a dozen relatives, including three grandparents in the Holocaust ‑ in 1997 at age 59.

In her 2003 autobiography, “Madam Secretary,” she said of her own parents, “My guess is that they associated our heritage with suffering and wanted to protect us. They had come to America to start a new life.”

Albright obtained a Ph.D. in public law and government from Columbia University where she studied under Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s future National Security Adviser. She also earned a certificate in Russian studies.

In 1976, Albright became the chief legislative aide to Democratic US Senator Ed Muskie of Maine. Two years later, Brzezinski recruited his former student as the National Security Council’s congressional liaison.

When Republicans came to power, she taught at Georgetown University and advised Democrats on foreign policy, including presidential candidates Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. In 1989, she became president of the public policy think tank Center for National Policy.

With Clinton’s victory in 1992, she became US Permanent Representative to the UN. In 1995, when as many as 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered in Srebrenica at the hands of Bosnian Serbs, Albright presented evidence of mass graves to the Security Council. 

With the lessons of Rwanda fresh in mind, she argued for the use of force. Following the shelling of a Sarajevo market in August, the largest North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission ever got under way, leading to the Dayton Accords that ended the war.

When Warren Christopher, Clinton’s first Secretary of State, announced his plan to return to the private sector, Albright was nominated as his successor. The US Senate unanimously confirmed her appointment.

Albright sought the use of force again in Kosovo, where in 1998 a civil war had ensued. Dubbed “Madeleine’s War,” NATO engaged in combat for the second time in its history, launching air strikes in March 1999 without the approval of the Security Council.

“Madeleine Albright is somebody who grew up learning the lessons of Munich, the danger of appeasing dictators, and she feels we need this more-assertive foreign policy not to back down in the face of people like Milosevic,” historian Walter Isaacson told CNN in a May 1999 interview. By June, Slobodan Milosevic’s troops began to withdraw from Kosovo.

Her efforts toward an Israel-Palestinian peace weren’t as successful. “People ask about my greatest disappointment as Secretary. This was it,” she said in her memoir.

Albright also supported the expansion of NATO and pressured Iraq to end its blockade of UN weapons inspectors. When Iraq didn’t comply, the US and Britain launched a series of air strikes known as Operation Desert Fox.

In October 2000, she became the highest-ranking US representative ever to make an official visit to North Korea, meeting with President Kim Jong Il. “I am sad to say that the Bush administration didn’t pick up the hand of cards that we left on the table there,” Albright said on MSNBC in 2013.

Following her government career, Albright returned to Georgetown as a professor. In 2005, she founded emerging markets investment adviser Albright Capital Management LLC within her Albright Group consultancy. She combined the firm with Stonebridge International in 2009 to form the Washington-based Albright Stonebridge Group, a global business strategy firm.

In addition to her autobiography and “Prague Winter,” Albright wrote best-selling books, including 2009’s “Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box.”

Even into her 80s, Albright’s defense of the ideals of democracy remained strong. The ascendency of authoritarian leaders was “a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II,” she wrote in a 2018 essay in the Times that coincided with the publication of her book “Fascism: A Warning.” She added, “The possibility that fascism will be accorded a fresh chance to strut around the world stage is enhanced by the volatile presidency of Donald Trump.”

She led the nongovernmental organization National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Pew Global Attitudes Project. She also served on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the boards of the Aspen Institute, Center for American Progress and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Albright never lost sight of the way her career broke through glass ceilings and made a point of promoting the careers of women throughout her professional life. In fact, she made famous a mantra: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

 

Key takeaways from Imran Khan’s Address to OIC Foreign Ministers

According to Reuters, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday suggested that close ally China and Islamic countries mediate in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and try to bring about a ceasefire.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is holding the 48th Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, which more than 600 delegates are attending, including Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as a special guest, in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

"May I suggest that OIC during its discussion with foreign ministers, we should think about how we can mediate, how we can bring about the ceasefire," Khan told the gathering.

"I want to discuss how, maybe OIC along with China, we can all step in and try to stop this conflict which is going to have, if it keeps going the way it is, it would have great consequences for the rest of the world."

Khan's comments came hours after China and Pakistan echoed concerns about "spill-over effects of unilateral sanctions" on Russia, according to a statement by the Chinese foreign ministry.

Khan was in Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin the day Russian forces entered Ukraine. Pakistan has expressed concern about the repercussions of the invasion but also stopped short of condemning it.

Pakistan abstained from the UN General Assembly vote that condemned Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

According to Pakistan’s leading English Newspaper, Prime Minister Imran Khan delivered a keynote address at the inaugural session of the 48th Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at the Parliament House in Islamabad on Tuesday.

While talking about the OIC's role, he said, "We have failed both the Palestinians and the people of Kashmir. I am sad to say that we have been able to make no impact at all."

The premier said Western countries did "not take the OIC seriously" because "we are a divided house and those powers know it.

"We (Muslims) are 1.5 billion people and yet our voice to stop this blatant injustice is insignificant."

Khan said international law was on the side of the people of Palestine and Kashmir, adding that the United Nations Security Council's resolutions backed the right of the Kashmiris to self-determination through a plebiscite. However, the international community never ensured that right was given, he said.

Referring to India's stripping of occupied Kashmir's special status in August 2019, he said nothing happened because they (India) felt no pressure. "They feel we can just pass a resolution and then go back to our usual business."

He said India was changing the demography in occupied Kashmir by bringing in settlers from outside but "no one has pushed about it because they think we are ineffective."

Afghanistan and Ukraine

The premier also spoke about the global situation, expressing his apprehension that the world is "headed in the wrong way".

A new Cold War had almost started and the world could be divided into blocs, he said, stressing that unless 1.5 billion Muslims take a united stand, "we will be nowhere."

No other people had suffered as much as the people of Afghanistan, he said, adding that for the first time in 40 years, there was "no conflict" in the war-torn country. "The only danger now is through the sanctions [imposed on Afghanistan] and non-recognition", which could cause a humanitarian crisis, he cautioned.

Talking about the ongoing war in Ukraine, Khan suggested that the OIC foreign ministers should discuss how the body could "mediate; try to bring about a ceasefire and an end to the conflict".

If the war continued, it would have "great consequences for the world", he cautioned. "All countries that are non-partisan are in a special position to be able to influence this conflict."

He again repeated his suggestion that the foreign ministers discuss the issue, adding that he would also talk about it with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi about how the OIC, along with China, "can influence the events in Ukraine and stop this and have some ceasefire and resolve this conflict".

Meeting agenda

During the two-day conference, more than 100 resolutions will be overviewed. The agenda of the meeting covers a review of the developments affecting the Muslim world since the last CFM held in Niamey in 2020 and efforts undertaken by the secretariat for the implementation of resolutions adopted in previous sessions, especially on Palestine and Al Quds.

The participants would also deliberate on the situation in Afghanistan and India-held Jammu and Kashmir.

Issues pertaining to Africa and Muslims in Europe and developments in Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Syria, will also be taken up at the meeting.

The agenda, moreover, includes Islamophobia and issues related to international terrorism and cooperation in economic, cultural, social, humanitarian, and scientific domains.

On March 23, foreign ministers will visit the venue of the Pakistan Day parade. Later in the day, FM Qureshi along with OIC Secretary General Hissein Brahim Taha will hold a joint press stakeout following the conclusion of the session.

Heads begin to roll in Russia, claims western media

According to European media reports, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the house arrest of two senior Federal Security Service (FSB) officers. Colonel-General Sergei Beseda, Chief of the FSB’s “Fifth Service,” reportedly was detained along with his deputy, Anatoly Bolyuk, charged with providing flawed intelligence about Ukraine and their improper use of operational funds.

Separately, Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s National Security Council Chief, claimed that several Russian generals have been fired. The implications portend more suffering yet to come, but likewise opportunities to increase pressure on the Russian leader from within.

Perhaps emulating Joseph Stalin, this could be the onset of a purge and Putin’s desperate ploy to provide his domestic audience with a fall guy for self-inflicted wounds. His call to rid Russia of ‘scum and traitors’ as ‘a necessary self-purification of society’ might be Putin’s theatrical unveiling of not merely a further crackdown against the Russian people, but also his version of a ‘cultural revolution’ to bring further to heel those around him on whom he has counted to take and maintain power. If I were one of the oligarchs or siloviki, those from Russia’s intelligence services who profiteered on Putin’s kleptocracy, I’d be more than just a little worried.

Putin’s rhetoric is victimization, villains and heroes. He casts himself as the people’s champion. Putin chose the FSB, a machine organized and conditioned to execute his autocratic vision and tell him what he wants to hear — whether or not it conforms to reality.

Putin has relied on the FSB as his principal source of power and protection, not merely at home, but also across the former Soviet states over which he is determined to restore Russia’s dominion. His reorganization of the FSB from the KGB’s ashes should have told us precisely the direction he planned to take.

Putin’s outlook was made clear to me during my first meeting as the CIA’s chief of station in a former Soviet state with the local FSB chief, the “Rezident,” a general known for crushing the anti-Russian rebellion in Chechnya. He looked the part of a film noir Cold War villain, comically uncomfortable in the posh local restaurant. FSB protocol required that he bring another officer; Moscow prohibited its officers from meeting alone with the CIA.

Our contact was an education for me, a Russian-speaking CIA operations officer who had worked the target beyond Russia’s borders. The FSB chief wanted to let me know whose turf this was and how the game was played in his house. While we toasted collaboration to fight the evils of terrorism, he depicted the local officials as “members of his team” and the territory as an extension of “greater Russia.”

Although the CIA’s natural official counterpart is Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, it was the Kremlin’s internal security agency, the FSB that ran the show across the former Soviet states. Putin, while FSB director in the 1990s, structured it as such, providing what had been the KGB’s former counterintelligence directorate with a disproportionately larger share of its parent organization’s power and influence. The KGB’s Foreign Intelligence directorate would become the less muscular SVR.

The Fifth Service, or Operational Information Department, was established as a new FSB branch to collect intelligence on the former Soviet states and conduct “active measures” to assure they continued to gravitate around Moscow’s orbit. That meant everything from propping up pro-Kremlin regimes to neutralizing threats from those aiming to move their countries closer to the West.

From 1999 to 2009, the Fifth Service grew and took charge of Russia’s brutal war in Chechnya, where the FSB, not the army, called the shots. It was the Moscow apartment building bombings in September 1999, which killed 300 and wounded over 1,000 that then-Prime Minister Putin used to justify that war, claiming the attacks were undertaken by Chechen militants. The bombings, as it turned out, allegedly were the FSB’s handiwork under Putin’s direction.

Putin does not trust the army, a sentiment likely validated by its poor performance and his natural KGB-era disposition. The KGB spied on Russia’s armed forces, to purge them of reactionary elements, often the country’s best and most faithful officers. Putin’s FSB is modeled after Stalin’s chekists, the secret police, his most trusted means to reconstitute a Soviet-era structure that keeps the public’s civil liberties and those possessing any power within his tent well in check.

My FSB counterpart preached the need to target families who offered leverage against hooligans, as he referred to Russia’s enemies. Better to preempt them early, he said, ridiculing America’s surgical approach. He argued that such enemies were cockroaches whose nests had to be destroyed. The pests turned out to be his own people. The general was ethnically Chechen.

Whatever value Putin might believe exists in casting aside his most important supporters has no upside for him — but possibly does for us. Colonel-General Beseda, the reportedly detained Fifth Service chief, had been in his job for years and was the driver behind Putin’s strategy. He literally knows where the bodies are buried. That Beseda’s reporting and counsel likely was spun to align with Putin’s own warped view of the world and misguided expectations for the invasion of Ukraine is a product of the Russian leader’s own making. In such a system, who’s going to tell Putin anything different? But having done Putin’s dirty work and placated his demand for absolute obedience, only to be thrown to the wolves, Beseda’s removal will reverberate throughout the Kremlin, even if Putin leaves in place his FSB boss, Gen. Alexander Bortnikov.

Unlike Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and SVR Director Sergey Narayshkin, Bortnikov might enjoy greater protection as a career officer, rather than a professional politician. Bortnikov’s elimination could pose too great a risk, given his network and command over the safety net on whose survival Putin depends.

Putin’s desperation does not bode well for whatever guard rails we would hope to constrain him. A purge undermines Putin’s image of infallibility and strength and could precipitate threats from those who see his desperation as an exploitable vulnerability, or an incentive to act before they’re next. As he chances antagonizing the hammer and shield with which he maintains power — the FSB — and mistrusting the army’s ability to win his war abroad, the dynamic could draw him inward, forcing reconsideration of his Ukrainian campaign.

Facilitating this dynamic with continued external pressure, and perhaps internal meddling, is not without risk, but it may be the best means with which to force Putin to pay a dear price for his actions. A purge of scapegoats among those he has enriched, coming as Russia’s economy collapses, could boomerang and create a byzantine backdrop of palace-plotting that compels him to compromise or causes his fall. But insular and paranoid as Putin’s decisions seem to suggest he has become, a darker alternative is his choosing to go down with the ship — and possibly taking us with him.

 

Best Pastime of United States: Selling Arms to Saudi Arabia

Selling arms appears to be the sole motive of the United States. It creates a crisis, fans it and sells arms. The Saudi-Yemen conflict has been lingering on only because the US keeps on supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, rather than resolving the crisis. 

The Biden administration has transferred a significant number of Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia in the past several weeks after the country urgently requested a resupply, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

The transfers, which were not formally announced, are to make sure Saudi Arabia can defend itself against drone and missile attacks from the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, a senior US official said. 

While they would not specifically confirm a significant number of transfers, a State Department spokesman told The Hill that over the past several months the administration has been working with Saudi Arabia and its neighbors to help them strengthen their air defenses in response to a rising number of aerial attacks from Yemen. 

One official told the Journal the Patriot interceptors were moved from US stockpiles elsewhere in the Middle East. 

Washington’s relationship with Riyadh has been rocky for more than a year after President Biden took office, an issue that stems from the country’s human rights record and its involvement in Yemen’s civil war, which has dragged on since 2014 and killed thousands of civilians.  

Biden will not communicate directly with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and last year released an intelligence report implicating him in the murder of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. 

And the United States in September withdrew some of its own Patriot defense systems from Saudi Arabia amid ongoing Houthi attacks.

But Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s largest oil producers, is also a valuable strategic ally in the region, especially since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year. 

The US has supplied more than US$100 billion worth of weapons to the kingdom in the past decade and has used the country to keep a US force presence in the region amid ongoing tensions with Iran and counterterrorism missions against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.  

On Sunday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan condemned the Houthis for a series of major drone and missile strikes on water treatment facilities and Saudi-run Aramco oil infrastructure that started a fire at one site and temporarily reduced oil production at another. 

“We will continue to fully support our partners in the defense of their territory from Houthi attacks. We call on the international community to do the same,” Sullivan said in a statement. 

A person familiar with the transfers told The Hill that the recent movements of Patriots to the Saudis was not a new development and that the US has been working for months to bolster Saudi Arabia against cross-border attacks, which numbered at more than 400 last year, they said. 

Such attacks “affected Saudi infrastructure, schools, mosques, and workplaces, and endangered the civilian population, including 70,000 US citizens living in Saudi Arabia,” they said. 

“With US support, Saudi Arabia has been able to intercept 90 percent of the attacks, but we need to aim for 100 percent,” the person added.

US officials told the Journal that the decision to send the interceptors had taken so long because other US allies also have a high demand for the weapons and the need to go through the typical government vetting process, not due to a delay from the White House.  

The decision to green-light the arms transfer is also part of an administration effort to mend its relationship with Saudi Arabia and convince the kingdom to pump more oil to offset quickly rising crude oil prices, according to the officials.

Asked later on Monday about the Patriot deployments, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby would not confirm the transfers but said the US military is committed to helping Saudi Arabia defend itself against threats to its territory from Yemen.

"We're in constant discussions with the Saudis about this, about this threat environment, and always looking for ways to continue to help them defend themselves, but I've got nothing to say with respect to that press report," Kirby said.

 

 

 

Afghanistan to be next proxy war ground

The invasion of Ukraine has essentially consolidated US-Russia antagonism, while upending the post-Cold-War security order in Europe. It has also initiated the militaristic rationale of the Cold War without providing the two ideological alternatives of organizing politics, economies and societies that characterized that period.

It is critical to recognize that the Cold War’s proxy wars, or hot wars, will play out mercilessly and more viciously in conflict-prone regions of the Global South, while the North will use all means to extinguish these wars from its soil or try to turn them into frozen conflicts or prolonged asymmetric insurgencies.

In Asia, it is important that nations such as India, China, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and even Israel retain their balancing act and non-alignment posture and do not succumb to pressure from the West or Russia to choose sides.

The recent rapprochement of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan towards Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin while avoiding US President Joe Biden; and Israel’s efforts to reach out to all sides, including Moscow, Berlin and Washington, all indicate diplomatic efforts to find a solution to this conflict but, more importantly, to avoid being sucked into a war that is being imposed on them.

This cooperation and diplomatic effort demonstrated by West Asian nations is also desperately needed between Beijing, New Delhi, Tehran and Islamabad.

Analysts have already pointed to the US-Russia rivalry in the Middle East as Russia’s military-to-military links with authoritarian regimes of the region – including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, Iran, and even Israel – have provided Moscow with legitimate leverage to threaten US security interests and project power into southern Europe.

While the invasion of Ukraine strengthened the Western alliance militarily and economically, prompted German rearmament and pushed neutral European states to consider joining NATO, it is critical that Asian powers take steps to prevent both Russian and Western incursions into their weaker and conflict-prone neighborhoods, for themselves and their neighbours.

While most media outlets and analysts remain focused on places with traditional military presence and face-offs, US-Russian and even US-Chinese proxy wars will resume in another critical geostrategic region i.e. Central Asia.

Afghanistan’s geostrategic importance and conflict-prone environment will once again serve as the starting point for a superpower proxy war, allowing the US to open new fronts against its arch rivals Russia and China.

A member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies stands among the food rations to be distributed to drought-hit farmers, in Sang-e-Atash, Afghanistan, on December 13, 2021. Severe drought has worsened the already desperate situation in the country, forcing thousands to flee their homes and live in extreme poverty.

The number and nature of opportunistic Islamist terrorist organizations and spoiler groups in and around Afghanistan provide an ideal breeding ground for further destabilization of the entire region, including Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan.

This time, the West will aim to expand the threat of Islamic terrorism emanating from Afghanistan, actually destabilizing Russia’s underbelly, stretching its forces and resources while Moscow grapples with harsh sanctions.

At the same time, the threat emerging from Afghanistan and the mountainous regions of Central Asia will destabilize China’s restive Western border, adding to Beijing’s already-heightened domestic security concerns. Washington will literally hit two or more birds with one stone at the very low cost of financing and arming Islamist groups.

This is not to say that Washington had this intention all along. Under the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations, Washington has made it clear that Islamic terrorism was no longer the perceived threat to US national security it had once been, and this was replaced by Russia, but more importantly, China.

The US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan should also be viewed in the light of Washington’s shifting strategic priorities. The war in Ukraine changed all that.

Afghans protest Biden’s order to reallocate unfrozen Afghan funds

It is noteworthy that the Taliban, unlike its pro-Western predecessor, now prioritizes China and Russia.

It has disarmed and weakened, for the time being, the Uygur-linked East Turkestan Islamic Movement terrorist organization based in Afghanistan. It is pursuing the Afghan chapter of Islamic State, Islamic State of Khorasan Province, to reassure Russia and the Central Asian Republics that it poses no threat to them, among other reasons. It is using water politics to persuade Iran to recognize it.

Despite all these efforts, Taliban are still waiting for some tangible support from these countries to help it consolidate its position in Afghanistan.

It would not be surprising if the Taliban turned against these countries or simply turned a blind eye, allowing terrorist groups to use Afghan soil as a launch pad for activities against Russia or China and beyond in exchange for desperately needed US financial backing.

Though the emergence of organized armed resistance against the Taliban have already started in small pockets across Afghanistan – and are often legitimate uprisings against an oppressive regime – unfortunately and realistically, whatever emerges from the region now will have to serve the proxy interests of the US and Russia before serving Afghan nationalist or resistance aspirations.

The Afghan people, like Ukrainians, now have to choose between bad and worse. By going their own way and taking care of their weak neighbours, Asian powers of the Global South can help prevent the worse option and the spread of yet another hot Cold War in Asia.

 

Britain fails in securing addition oil from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson held talks about energy security with the de facto leaders of Gulf oil exporters Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but failed in securing additional crude oil.

Johnson's trip to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh was aimed at securing oil supplies and raising pressure on President Vladimir Putin over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which led to sweeping Western sanctions on Moscow and soaring world energy prices.

Johnson's office said that in his meeting with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, he stressed the need to work together to stabilize global energy markets.

After his talks in Riyadh with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Johnson was asked whether the kingdom would increase oil production.

"I think you'd need to talk to the Saudis about that. But I think there was an understanding of the need to ensure stability in global oil markets and gas markets," he said.

So far Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose close ties with Washington are under strain, have snubbed US pleas to ramp up oil production to tame the rise in crude prices that threatens global recession after the Russian offensive in Ukraine.

"The world must wean itself off Russian hydrocarbons and starve Putin's addiction to oil and gas," Johnson said before his meetings. "Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are key international partners in that effort."

The two Gulf states are among the few OPEC oil exporters with spare oil capacity to raise output and potentially offset supply losses from Russia. But they have tried to steer a neutral stance between Western allies and Moscow, their partner in an oil producers' grouping known as OPEC+.

The group has been raising output gradually each month by 400,000 barrels a day, resisting pressure to act more quickly.

The UAE remains committed to the OPEC+ deal, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters before the meeting.

It has deepened ties with Moscow and Beijing in the last few years and abstained last month in a US-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution to condemn the invasion of Ukraine, which Russia has described as a "special military operation".

Johnson "set out his deep concerns about the chaos unleashed by Russia’s unprovoked invasion, and stressed the importance of working together to improve stability in the global energy market", his office said after his talks in Abu Dhabi.

Johnson and the crown prince also agreed on the need to bolster security, defence and intelligence cooperation to counter threats including from Houthi forces that have fought a lengthy conflict in Yemen against Saudi and UAE forces.

Johnson is only the second major Western leader to visit Saudi Arabia since journalist Jamal Khashoggi's 2018 killing by Saudi government agents in Istanbul.

The CIA concluded that the prince approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi. He has denied any involvement in the killing.

The Prime Minister's trip also came just four days after Saudi Arabia executed 81 men, the largest number in a single day for decades, for offences ranging from joining militant groups to holding deviant beliefs.

Asked about criticism of Saudi Arabia's human rights record, Johnson said: "I've raised all those issues many, many times over the past ... and I'll raise them all again.

"But we have long, long standing relationships with this part of the world and we need to recognize the very important relationship that we have ... and not just in hydrocarbons."

Saudi press agency SPA said Johnson and Prince Mohammed discussed the conflict in Ukraine and international issues, adding that Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a strategic partnership.