The Monopolistic Agenda Behind Regime Change Chaos

Prior to 2011, Syria was a prosperous Middle Eastern country. The Baathist government had taken tremendous steps to improve the lives of Syria’s people. Between 1970 and 2009, the life expectancy for Syrians increased by 17 years, and the infant mortality rate was reduced exponentially. According to the US Library of Congress, in 1981 forty-two percent of the Syrian adult population was illiterate, but just ten years later, in 1991, illiteracy had been wiped out by a mass educational campaign.

Syria built the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates River with the assistance of 900 technicians and a loan of 100 million from the Soviet Union. In 2007, China had already begun investing “hundreds of millions of dollars” into Syria for the purpose of modernizing its “oil and gas infrastructure.”

But look at Syria today. Millions have fled as refugees. Over half a million have died. Terrorist groups control huge swaths of territory. Much of the overall infrastructure of the country, including water treatment facilities, power plants, and schools have been destroyed.

Can anyone rationally argue that attempts by western countries to remove the Baathist government led by Bashar Assad have benefitted the population?

Wrecking Countries in the Name of “Democracy”

Nicaragua is a similar story. The government of the Sandinistas, under the slogan of “Christianity, Socialism and Solidarity” has made tremendous efforts to improve the lives of the people. Between 2005-2014, poverty in Nicaragua was reduced by 30%. The GDP increased by 36% between 2007-2016. While its neighbors in Central America ,Guatemala and Honduras, are notorious wrecks of poverty, crime, and underdevelopment, Nicaragua has been a powerhouse of growth. The World Happiness Index even noted how optimism about life increased more among Nicaraguans than in any other country in 2016.

But, much like Syria, this has been swept away in an orgy of violence, cheered on by western media as “revolution.” The Economist writes “The economy had been one of the strongest in Central America with annual growth of 5%” but in the aftermath of the anti-government rioting “some $1bn in capital, the equivalent of 8% of GDP, has left the country, weakening the banks,” and tourism “has plummetted.”

In Venezuela, the Bolivarian government led by Hugo Chavez made tremendous gains for the population. Poverty was reduced. Illiteracy was wiped out. Healthcare was provided for the population. Even the Wall Street Journal admitted that: “In 2013, the party was still on. Oil was fetching $100 a barrel and Mr. Maduro’s populist government was showering petrodollars on everyone. The Caracas skyline was dotted with grandiose construction projects, steakhouses were buying vintage scotch by the container load and hotels had to be reserved weeks in advance.”

However, Venezuela now faces internal turmoil, with economic sabotage by food importers and most recently with an attempt on the life of President Maduro carried out via drones. Like in Syria and Nicaragua, the forces burning food warehouses and shooting police officers are cheered for by the western media, and in many cases, directly connected to the US State Department or US-based NGOs.

Trump Rubio Pence Venezuela opposition — Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Marco Rubio meet with Lillian Tintori, wife of US-backed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. Photo | White House

The same leaders that give speeches in the United Nations headquarters about the need for “sustainable development” and the eradication of poverty have at the same time been reducing nations to poverty, whether by direct military attack or by western supported “revolutions.”

No matter how brutal Saddam Hussein was, no one can argue that Iraq benefited from the 2003 invasion. Libya had the highest life expectancy on the African continent before 2011 war, in which NATO missiles backed up “rebels” armed by the west. Conditions in Libya have become so bad that people routinely flee the country on rafts. Afghanistan has been a nest of drug cartels, terrorists and overall instability since the 2002 invasion, with conditions far worse than prior to the overthrow of the Taliban.

The instability in the Middle East, the drug cartels and poverty in Latin America, have negative results that affect the entire world. Mass migration to the United States and Europe from those escaping this chaos is the source of great controversy and cultural division. Crime and terrorism have increased, not just in the developing world, but in the western countries.

The justification for these destructive “regime change” campaigns is “democracy” and “human rights.” However, it’s no secret that plenty of human rights violating, oppressive regimes are on very good terms with Wall Street and London. The most visible of them is Saudi Arabia, a country that beheads and tortures its own people while bombing its Yemen and killing civilians.

The Rise of Russia and China

Why are forces based in western countries so determined to foment unrest? What is the motivation? In order to understand this, it is necessary to review the history of the 20th Century.

At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Russia was an agrarian country with very little industry. Most of the population was illiterate, and very little of the country had access to running water or electricity. Following the revolution, there was a civil war in which millions died as the Bolsheviks fought for control of the country against foreign invaders and domestic opposition. At the same time, the Bolshevik government itself faced internal division and turmoil, with the Left Menshevik Party and the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party being outlawed, and a ban on factions within the party being instituted to ensure ideological unity.

In 1928, after the Bukharinist “right opposition” and the Trotskyist “left opposition” had been defeated, Stalin launched the program of building “Socialism in One Country.” He laid out a Five Year Plan to develop the economy of the Soviet Union. Illiteracy was wiped out. Electricity and running water was brought to the entire country. The Soviet Union began producing more steel than any other country in the world. The world’s largest hydro-electrical power plant, the Dneiper Dam, was constructed in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine.

Soviet 5 year plan — Translation | Oil Workers! More Oil for the Motherland! Let’s Fulfill the 5-Year Plan in 4 Years!

The vast construction projects shocked the world. The Five Year Plan had been laughed at, but once it was completed in four years, the world was blown away by the economic achievements. Maurice Dobb, an economics lecturer at the University of Cambridge described the specific details of Soviet economic achievements in his book “Soviet Economic Development Since 1917” published in 1948.

In 1938, the amount of electrical power in the Soviet Union was seven times what it had been just ten years prior. Coal production was 3.5 times larger than prior to the five-year plan. The number of hospital beds in rural areas was doubled. 20 new tramway systems and 80 new bus systems were built providing transportation access to those dwelling in Soviet cities. The world had never seen results of this kind. A deeply impoverished country became a world industrial superpower, at the same time the rest of the planet was having a great depression.The rise of China during the 20th Century had even more drastic and dramatic results. In 1949, China was far poorer than Russia had been in 1917. China was known as the “Sick Man of Asia” with very little industrial production with feudalist structures and primitive farming across the countryside.

The Chinese government received aid from the Soviet Union from 1949 to 1961. With Soviet assistance, the first steel mills and electrical power plants were constructed. After Soviet aid was withdrawn, China attempted to continue to develop without foreign aid, having a number of achievements amid some dramatic setbacks. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping launched the “Reform and Opening Up” and began constructing model cities and “Free Economic Zones.”

Today, China produces more than half of the steel in the world, in its massive, government-controlled steel industry. China also produces the majority of the world’s copper and aluminum. China also has the world’s largest telecommunication manufacturer, Huawei. 700 million people have been lifted out of poverty, with the goal of total eradication of poverty set to be reached in 2020.

The Monopolist World Strategy

Prior to the rise of Russia and China in the 20th Century, the western capitalist countries had a monopoly. Stopping the development of countries in the colonial world was a standard practice. The British empire famously burned the textile mills and looms of India, forcing the country to import cloth from England and Scotland.

The rise of Russia and China has introduced competition to the global market. Wall Street and London no longer have a monopoly. The British and American establishment is openly infuriated about the construction of the Nordstream 2 pipeline because it would prefer that countries in Europe purchase natural gas from US corporations, rather than from Russia’s state-controlled energy sector.

The United States and China are currently engaged in a trade war. Wall Street and London would prefer that the world buy its steel, computer chips, and other products from western corporations, rather than from the vibrant, growing state-controlled economy of China.

What Russia and China did themselves during the 20th century, they are now helping other countries to do around the world. The Belt and Road initiative led by China and the Eurasian Economic Union led by Russia are helping developing countries to build themselves up economically.

At the International Conference for the Development of Parliamentism, representatives of Guinea described how Russia’s state mining corporations have worked with this developing African country toward the goal of manufacturing its own aluminum. Russia is also working with Syria to develop its natural gas market. China’s Belt and Road program involves building railway systems in Central Asia, giving ocean access to remote regions, allowing production and export to begin.

China Africa Development — Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta 2nd left, and Chen Fenjian president of CCC shake hands next to a model of a locomotive in Mombasa, Kenya, May 30, 2017. The president opened the country’s largest infrastructure project since independence, a Chinese-backed railway costing nearly $3.3 billion that eventually will link a large part of East Africa to a major port on the Indian Ocean. Khalil Senosi | AP

Alse Toje of the Norwegian Nobel Institute has described the situation saying “especially on the Eurasian continent, this is a golden era, and in the Eurasian continent we’re seeing a lot of power accumulating, we’re seeing roads, cities, train networks snaking through the post-Soviet wilderness, and creating a fabulous amount of wealth and dynamism.”

All this means that developing countries will not be dependent on the western capitalist world and its corporations. Countries are making their own products and seizing control of their own economies. State central planning is vital in making sure that western monopolies don’t wreck domestic enterprises.

Chaos and regime change is Wall Street’s hope for maintaining global monopoly. In order to keep themselves rich, they must try and keep the rest of the world poor.

However, Russia and China speak a different language, hailing a different ideology. In their economic policies and diplomatic language they speak of “win-win cooperation” and shared prosperity. They speak of a world connected by trade, where countries have a material interest, not in tearing each other down, but in seeing each other prosper.

Two different models of development are clashing on the global stage, one in which production is controlled by the state and rationally planned, and the other in which markets and profits are given “laissez faire” treatment, allowing an atmosphere of cutthroat competition aiming toward monopolistic hegemony.

This is the battle playing out on the global stage, as humanity looks on, nervously hoping peace can be maintained and international confrontations do not escalate.

Top Photo | In this Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004 file photo, a man is questioned in the living room of his home during a raid by the 82nd Airborne Division near Fallujah, Iraq. Photo | AP

Caleb Maupin is a widely acclaimed speaker, writer, journalist, and political analyst. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and in Latin America. He was involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement from its early planning stages and has been involved in many struggles for social justice. He is an outspoken advocate of international friendship and cooperation, as well as 21st Century Socialism. Maupin appears on a wide range of media, including CNN, RT, MintPress News, and New Eastern Outlook. You can read more of his work at his blog: https://calebmaupin.com.

Source | NEO

In the immediate wake of the Syrian government’s abrupt collapse, much remains uncertain about the country’s future – including whether it can survive as a unitary state or will splinter into smaller states as did Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, a move that ultimately led to a bloody NATO intervention. Moreover, who or what may take power in Damascus remains an open question. For the time being at least, members of ultra-extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appear highly likely to take key positions in whatever administrative structure sprouts from Bashar Assad’s ouster after a decade-and-a-half of grinding Western-sponsored regime change efforts.

As Reuters reported on December 12, HTS is already “stamping its authority on Syria’s state with the same lightning speed that it seized the country, deploying police, installing an interim government and meeting foreign envoys.” Meanwhile, its bureaucrats – “who until last week were running an Islamist administration in a remote corner of Syria’s northwest” – have moved en masse “into government headquarters in Damascus.” Mohammed Bashir, head of HTS’ “regional government” in extremist-occupied Idlib, has been appointed the country’s “caretaker prime minister.”

However, despite the chaos and precariousness of post-Assad Syria, one thing seems assured – the country will be broken open to Western economic exploitation, at long last.

Multiple reports show that HTS has informed local and international business leaders that when in office, it will “adopt a free-market model and integrate the country into the global economy, in a major shift from decades of corrupt state control.”

As Alexander McKay of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute tells MintPress News, state-controlled parts of Syria’s economy may have been under Assad, but corrupt it wasn’t. He believes a striking feature of the ongoing attacks on Syrian infrastructure from forces within and without the country is that economic and industrial sites are a recurrent target. Moreover, the would-be HTS-dominated government has done nothing to counter these broadsides when “securing key economic assets will be vital to societal reconstruction, and therefore a matter of priority”:

We can see clearly what kind of country these ‘moderate rebels’ plan to build. Forces like HTS are allied with U.S. imperialism, and their economic approach will reflect this. Prior to the proxy war, the government pursued an economic approach that mixed public ownership and market elements. State intervention enabled a degree of political independence [that] other nations in the region lack. Assad’s administration understood without an industrial base, being sovereign is impossible. The new ‘free market’ approach will see all of that utterly decimated.”

‘Reconstruction Project’

Syria’s economic independence and strength under Assad’s rule and the benefits reaped by average citizens, as a result, were never acknowledged in the mainstream before or during the decade-long proxy war. Yet, countless reports from major international institutions underline this reality – which has now been brutally vanquished, never to return. For example, an April 2015 World Health Organization document noted how Damascus “had one of the best-developed healthcare systems in the Arab world.”

Per a 2018 U.N. investigation, “universal, free healthcare” was extended to all Syrian citizens, who “enjoyed some of the highest levels of care in the region.” Education was likewise free, and before the conflict, “an estimated 97% of primary school-aged Syrian children were attending class, and Syria’s literacy rates were thought to be at over 90% for both men and women [emphasis added].” By 2016, millions were out of school.

A U.N. Human Rights Council report two years later noted pre-war Syria “was the only country in the Middle East region to be self-sufficient in food production,” its “thriving agricultural sector” contributing “about 21%” to GDP 2006 – 2011. Civilians’ daily caloric intake “was on par with many Western countries,” with prices kept affordable via state subsidy. Meanwhile, the country’s economy was “one of the best performing in the region, with a growth rate averaging 4.6%” annually.

At the time that report was written, Damascus had been reduced to heavy reliance on imports by Western sanctions in many sectors and, even then, was barely able to buy or sell much in the way of anything, as the measures amounted to an effective embargo. Simultaneously, the U.S. military occupation of a resource-rich third of Syria cut off the government’s access to its own oil reserves and wheat. The situation would only worsen with the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act’s passing in June 2020.

Under its auspices, a vast volume of goods and services in every conceivable field were and today remain banned from being sold to or traded with any Syrian citizen or entity. The legislation’s terms explicitly state preventing attempts to rebuild Syria was its chief objective. One passage openly outlines “a strategy to deter foreign persons from entering into contracts related to reconstruction.”

Immediately after coming into effect, the Syrian pound’s value collapsed further, sending living costs skyrocketing. In a blink, almost the entire country’s population was left barely able to afford even the bare essentials. Even mainstream sources typically approving of belligerence towards Damascus cautioned of an inevitably impending humanitarian crisis. However, Washington was neither concerned nor deterred by such warnings. James Jeffrey, State Department chief of Syria policy, actively cheered these developments.

Simultaneously, as Jeffrey subsequently admitted to PBS, the U.S. was engaged in frequent, secret communication with HTS and actively assisting the group – albeit “indirectly” due to the faction’s designation as a terrorist entity by the State Department. This followed direct approaches to Washington by its leaders, including Abu Mohammed Jolani, former leader of Al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra. “We want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad,” HTS reportedly said.

Given this contact, it may be no coincidence that in July 2022, Jolani issued a series of communications about HTS’ plans for future Syria, containing multiple passages in which finance and industry loomed large. Directly foreshadowing the group’s recent pledge to “adopt a free-market model,” the extremist mass murderer discussed his desire to “open up local markets to the global economy.” Many passages read as if they were authored by representatives of the International Monetary Fund.

Coincidentally, Syria, since 1984, has refused IMF loans, a key tool by which the U.S. Empire maintains the global capitalist system and dominates the Global South, ensuring ‘poor’ countries remain under its heel. The World Trade Organization, of which Damascus isn’t a member either, plays a similar role. Accession to both would go some way to cementing the “free-market model” advocated by HTS. After over a decade of deliberate, systematic economic ruin, geopolitical risk analyst Firas Modad tells MintPress News:

They have no choice. They need Turkish and Qatari backing, so [they] will need to liberalize. They have no capital whatsoever. The country is in ruins and they desperately need investment. Plus, they hope liberalizing may attract some Saudi, Emirati or Egyptian interest. It’s impossible for Syria to rebuild using its own resources. The civil war might resume. They are acting out of necessity.”

‘Shock Therapy’

In Syria’s protracted political and economic dismantling, there are eerie echoes of the U.S. Empire’s destruction of Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s. During that decade, the multiethnic socialist federation’s breakup produced bitter wars of independence in Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia – encouraged, financed, armed, and prolonged every step by Western powers. Belgrade’s perceived centrality to these brutal conflicts and purported complicity in and sponsorship of horrendous war crimes led the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions against what remained of the country in May 1992.

The measures were the harshest ever levied in U.N. history. At one point, producing inflation of 5.578 quintillion percent, drug abuse, alcoholism, preventable deaths and suicides skyrocketed, while shortages of goods – including water – were perpetual. Yugoslavia’s once thriving independent industry was crippled, its ability to manufacture even everyday medicines virtually non-existent. By February 1993, the CIA assessed that the average citizen had “become accustomed to periodical shortages, long lines in stores, cold homes in the winter and restrictions on electricity.”

Surveying the wreckage years later, Foreign Affairs noted that sanctions against Yugoslavia demonstrated how “in a matter of months or years whole economies can be devastated,” and such measures can serve as uniquely lethal “weapons of mass destruction” against civilian populations of target countries. Yet, despite such desolation and misery, throughout this period, Belgrade remained resistant to privatization and foreign ownership of its industry or to the pillaging of its vast resources. The overwhelming majority of Yugoslavia’s economy was state- or worker-owned.

Yugoslavia was not a member of the IMF, World Bank, or WTO, which went some way to insulate the country from economic predation. In 1998, though, authorities began waging a heavy-handed counterinsurgency against the Kosovo Liberation Army, a CIA and MI6-funded and armed al-Qaeda-linked extremist militia. This provided the U.S. Empire with a pretext to, at last, finish the job of neutralizing what remained of the country’s socialist system. As a Clinton administration official later admitted:

It was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform [in Eastern Europe] – not the plight of Kosovar Albanians – that best explains NATO’s war.”

From March – June 1999, the military alliance bombed Yugoslavia for 78 straight days. Yet, Belgrade’s army was barely in the firing line at any stage. In all, officially, just 14 Yugoslav tanks were destroyed by NATO, but 372 separate industrial facilities got smashed to smithereens, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Markedly, the alliance took guidance from U.S. corporations on which sites to target, and not a single foreign- or privately-owned factory was hit.

NATO’s bombing laid the foundations for Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s removal via a C.I.A.- and National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored color revolution in October of the following year. In his place, a doggedly pro-Western government advised by a collective of U.S.-sponsored economists took power. Their explicit mission was to “make an economic environment favorable for private and other investments” in Belgrade. Ravaging “shock therapy” measures were deployed the moment they assumed office, to the further detriment of an already immiserated and impoverished population.

In the decades since successive Western-backed governments across the former Yugoslavia have enforced an endless array of neoliberal “reforms” to ensure an “investor-friendly” environment locally for wealthy Western oligarchs and corporations. In lockstep, low wages and a lack of employment opportunities stubbornly endure or worsen while living costs rise, producing mass depopulation, among other destructive effects. All along, U.S. officials intimately implicated in the country’s breakup have brazenly sought to enrich themselves from the privatization of former state industries.

‘Internal Repression’

Does such a fate await Damascus? For Pawel Wargan, Political Coordinator at the Progressive International, the answer is a resounding “yes.” He believes the country’s story is familiar “to those who study the mechanisms of imperialist expansion.” Once its defenses are fully neutralized, he foresees the country’s industries being “bought-up at bargain sale prices as part of market ‘reforms,’ which transfer yet another chunk of humanity’s wealth to Western corporations”:

We’ve witnessed the well-rehearsed choreography of imperialist regime change: a ‘tyrant’ is overthrown; backers of national sovereignty are systematically and viciously repressed; with tremendous, but hidden, violence, the country’s assets are chopped and diced and sold to the lowest bidder; labor protections are discarded; human lives are cut short. The most predatory forms of capitalism take root in every crevice and pore that emerges in the collapse of the state. This is the agenda of structural adjustment policies enforced by the World Bank and IMF.”

Alexander McKay echoes Wargan’s analysis. Now “free,” Syria will be forcedly made “dependent upon imports from the West” evermore. This not only fattens the Empire’s bottom line but “also severely restricts the freedom of any Syrian government to act with any degree of independence.” He notes similar efforts have been undertaken throughout the post-1989 era of U.S. unipolarity. It was well underway in Russia during the 1990s “until the slow turn around in policy started in the early 2000s under Putin”:

The aim is to reduce Syria to the same status as Lebanon, with an economy controlled by imperial forces, an army used primarily for internal repression, and an economy no longer able to produce anything but merely serve as a market for commodities produced elsewhere, and site of resource extraction. The U.S. and its allies do not want independent development of any nation’s economy. We must hope the Syrian people can resist this latest act of neo-colonialism.”

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.