Russia’s High-Stakes Game in Iraq: Expanding Their Role in the Middle East

Second Line of Defense ^ | January 19, 2014 | By Stephen Blank

[Brad from Tennessee]

Ten years after the American invasion Iraq is in danger of disintegration. Its stability cannot be taken for granted or even assumed.

Evidently Iraq is not far from being a failed state and Syria is already deep in the throes of protracted civil war.

Both states may be racked for years by internal conflict, violence, instability, and the “mushrooming” of terrorist groups, given the anarchy prevailing there.[i]

At the end of 2013 the U.S. had to rush sizable amounts of weapons to Iraq to stave off a major Sunni offensive in the form of Iraqi Al-Qaeda attacks, an insurgency that threatens to destabilize Iraq.[ii]

Meanwhile the Iraqi Kurdish authorities (Kurdistan Regional Government-KRG) are moving openly and steadily towards independence, mainly connected with exporting energy located in Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey and, though less well known, Russia.[iii] This situation exposes both Iraq’s fragility and the overall collapse of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

According to the National Counterterrorism Center, there are more terrorists today in Iraq than at the height of 2006, the previous peak.[iv] Surveying this chaos, David Rothkopf writes that, not only are terrorist groups multiplying in Iraq, Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia, (one might ad the North Caucasus too) taken together their number adds up to more self-proclaimed Islamic radical groups than ever before in world history.[v]

Furthermore the inconstancy, vacillation, tone deafness, and weakness of American policy throughout the Middle East, has engendered a situation where America’s three wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and more generally against Islamic terrorism are likely to be seen by regional powers to have ended in defeat.[vi]

This Middle Eastern situation opens up possibilities for opportunistic anti-American powers like Russia to make gains, and the Iraqi case conforms to that general pattern. . .

[Sacajaweau]

Expanding?? Russia had huge contracts with Iraq prior to us hitting it. Russia lost all those dollars...I forgot the number but it was monstrous.

Russia insists on growing after the failure of their 5 year plans and relative isolation policy. And who should they deal with?? Hell, we deal with all those same countries. I have sheets from Pakistan. Long johns from Egypt. Etc etc...

[Sacajaweau]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-09/russia-gets-4-2-billion-arms-deals-with-iraq-rivals-u-s-1-.html

[SunkenCiv]

Monstrous atheist corporate state dealing arms including advanced fighters to every two-bit dictatorship on Earth — that’s the buried lead. Media Shills / Spin Doctors ping. Thanks Brad from Tennessee.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Monstrous atheist corporate state dealing arms including advanced fighters to every two-bit dictatorship on Earth

I'm not sure you are talking about Russia or America.

[Brad from Tennessee]

Thanks.

[Brad from Tennessee]

[Monstrous atheist corporate state]

Russian organized crime has become the state.

[ETL]

Colonel Kangaroo is another of those Putin butt kissers a handful of us take the time to set straight.