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June 11, 2011

NATO´s Middle East Chess Game

Every good chess player knows that before striking the opponent you want to carefully position your pieces on the board and when ready then unleash hell.
NATO is playing the same game in North Africa and Middle East, toppling down every dictator and replacing it with a military junta as in Egypt with no clear leader and easy to be controlled and replaced if the case, they also get a democratic branding from the support of western countries together with a generous support package to keep things calm among the population.
The choice of countries is not casual, all of them have a strategic relevance either in oil production or logistics, as you can see below Egypt and Yemen are vital to oil supplies, Bahrain is vital to both oil production and logistics and Libya is a perfect replacement for oil from the Middle East should an Iranian blockade take place in Strait of Ormuz, the oil chockpoint where 50% of the world´s seaborne oil transits daily.



Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves -- 43.6 billion barrels -- outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects. Libya's oil is unusually "sweet" and "light," fundamentally is high-quality crude oil providing a better value than Saudi one should supplies from the Arabian region be disrupted at any stage. And furthermore Libya is close to Europe making easier to transit oil to the European and American markets while avoiding any possible disruption when the situation in the Middle East will escalate.
No doubt that once that Libyan oil fields will be under NATO control and production will be re-established  a new front of the New Resource War we entered into will be opened most probably directly on the Iranian borders.
Iran is well aware of this and since many years its government has been counteracting to the siege that is being undertaken on its borders. After all Iraq on the western border and Afghanistan on the eastern border are under US control, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States on his southern border are close US Allies and hosting major military bases. Pakistan on his south eastern border is without leadership and in lack of control while allowing the CIA to do whatever they want on its territory included staging a farsical attack to Osama Bin Laden on the outskirts of their capital. The Iranian northern borders are with Turkey a close US ally and not a good friend of Iran and the Caucasus republics of Russia which aside from Azerbaijan are normally hostile to Iran, the only friendly border at least for now is the one with Turkmenistan which is also vital for Iranian exports to China and Central Asia.
When the tension with Iran will mount and if a full scale war will explode the first victim will be the economy, The Strait of Ormuz will be shut down immediately and oil prices will explode to historical heights, a new great depression will start and as a consequence demand destruction will allow to make up for the shortfalls in production. If NATO plans will succeed Middle East will become a large battlefield for the core resources we covet and we cannot live without. Strange world where you have to wish that a dictator like Gaddafi will live another day.

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