Hegemony Is A Two-Edged Sword

Turkey was responsible for the sarin gas attack in Syria last year. It was planned as a Turkish false flag operation that crossed Obama’s foolish red line. Turkey has designs on Syria, but the rebels, aided by Turkey, were losing. This is why it conceived a false flag gas attack so as to bring the U.S. into the war. It almost succeeded in bringing Obama into the war with a massive and unjustifiable aggression. It failed when the sarin gas was found not to be of the kind in the hands of the Syrian government.

The U.S. government was almost played by Turkey, just as it has been played by Israel and many other so-called allies at various times and places. Hegemony or possessing a sphere of influence is a two-edged sword.

The U.S. cannot make public its errors, which run the gamut, without at times embarrassing its “allies”, which then loses them as allies in some of the other games the U.S. government is playing. Hersh had one main source for his story, a former intelligence official. The last paragraph is instructive:

“Barring a major change in policy by Obama, Turkey’s meddling in the Syrian civil war is likely to go on. ‘I asked my colleagues if there was any way to stop Erdoğan’s continued support for the rebels, especially now that it’s going so wrong,’ the former intelligence official told me [Hersh]. ‘The answer was: “We’re screwed.” We could go public if it was somebody other than Erdoğan, but Turkey is a special case. They’re a Nato ally. The Turks don’t trust the West. They can’t live with us if we take any active role against Turkish interests. If we went public with what we know about Erdoğan’s role with the gas, it’d be disastrous. The Turks would say: “We hate you for telling us what we can and can’t do.”‘”

So, in order to maintain influence and dominance, if possible, and in order to maintain the cooperation on other matters, in this case NATO and military pressure against Syria, the U.S. government tolerates all sorts of hanky-panky, all sorts of corruption, all sorts of oppressive governments, and uses them to do its dirty work. That dirty work often backfires.

The U.S. government seeks the broadest possible sphere of influence of its empire on every continent. It creates so-called “interests”, “threats”, and “enemies” out of thin air. Its actions include both hostile threats, rewards and cooperative enticements, that is, whatever it takes to gain the hegemonic objective. It can be friendly toward China one day and hostile the next. It can cooperate with Russia on one item and threaten it on another.

At the same time, hegemony cuts both ways. The involvements are invariably prone to misjudgments, errors, and blunders. Decisions arise based on uncertain information and personal factors. Dynamic factors intervene. Consequences are frequently highly uncertain. Events spin out of control. Expectations are not realized.

The basic question is buried under these games of U.S. power and control: What good does any of this do for Americans trying to pursue their own lives and happiness? It’s relatively easy to see the bad that it’s doing and the bad to which it is leading, but where is the good?

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