by Jeffrey and Michele Steinberg

Feb. 7—If there were any doubt that the real targets of the Syria regime-change campaign being waged from London and Washington are Russia and China, last week's confrontation at the United Nations Security Council should have erased any last confusion.

On Feb. 4, Russia and China cast their second vetoes of a Security Council resolution demanding the removal of President Bashar al-Assad from power. While the final wording of the resolution did not include a call for foreign military intervention, as was the earlier case with Libya, the essence of the draft, nominally introduced by Morocco, but actually drafted in London, Paris, and Washington, was that Assad had to go.

Prior to the vote, Russia had introduced its own resolution, proposing mediation between the Assad government and the opposition, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had informed the other Security Council members that he would be leading a Russian delegation to Damascus on Feb. 8, in an effort to open direct talks between the Assad government and leading oppositionists. Rather than wait for the Russian diplomatic mission, Britain, France, and the United States forced the Feb. 4 vote—and the fully anticipated Russian and Chinese vetoes.

Within moments of the Russian and Chinese votes, a vicious barrage of attacks were launched against the two permanent Security Council member-states. The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, joined with her British and French counterparts in delivering blood-curdling attacks on Russia and China, accusing them of defending a brutal dictator, and charging that any future bloodshed in Syria would be on their hands.

Throughout the debate, the only person to make mention of the Arab League monitors' report on their month-long visit to Syria, was Syrian Ambassador Dr. Bashar Ja'afari. That report (see accompanying article) made clear that a significant portion of the violence, attributed by the Western media to Assad, has been carried out by armed rebels. Among the actions by the foreign-funded and armed opposition, and documented in the report, were the bombing of power grids, gas pipelines, government buildings, public transportation, and foreign journalists.

Hours after the Security Council debate and vote, the Russian and Chinese embassies in Tripoli, Libya were attacked by Syrian and Libyan hooligans. Dozens of Syrian embassies around the world were also targeted for violent protests. In Sydney, Australia, a pro-Assad activist was shot as he left his home.

World War III

There is much more at stake in the events described above. As published recently in the Russian-language edition of China's People Daily, Russia and China have been drawn together in an alliance for survival, against the increasing provocations from London, and from the British puppet in the White House, President Barack Obama.

According to a senior U.S. intelligence source, both Russia and China have concluded that the Anglo-Americans and their French allies are seeking to establish absolute control over the strategic oil supplies in the Persian Gulf—and that means that both Russia and China must be kept out. For China, in particular, this is an existential issue, given China's growing reliance on energy supplies from the Persian Gulf. At the present time, China is the number one importer of Iranian oil, and China's largest source of oil is Saudi Arabia.

The identical assessment was presented in great detail in the Russian edition of People's Daily of Jan. 31 by Dai Xu, a senior colonel in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and a prolific commentator on the events of the day.

Dai described the present strategic situation in terms of the new U.S. policy directed against China, where the announcement of the policy—the military pivot to Asia[1]—was soon followed by "provocative moves with its ally, the Philippines." At the same time, the U.S deployed three carriers to the Persian Gulf, and the EU imposed new sanctions on Iran, attempting to constrain that country militarily, politically, economically and diplomatically. The policy, Dai continued, is also aimed at Russia, with the U.S. preparing itself for a "Russian Winter," and making its "preferences known with regard to the expected presidential campaign of Vladimir Putin."

In the face of the U.S. policy, Russia, somewhat unexpectedly, sold anti-aircraft missiles to Iran and fighters to Syria. "In the American strategy, the conquest of the Eurasian land mass is the fundamental field of activity," Dai wrote.

Presently, the ongoing policy of isolating and surrounding Russia and China is the final strategic target, he said. Therefore, there is a need for Russia and China to work together to restrain the actions of the U.S. in pressuring weaker countries to follow their lead. "One might say that the convergence of China and Russia is the inevitable result of the strategic pressure from the U.S., as well as the choices the two sides make in the interest of their own survival. Only together do they possess the strength to withstand the U.S. moves."

Russia and China both possess nuclear weapons, making it more difficult for the U.S., even at the head of NATO, to move against them militarily. Dai noted that this may well lead to a new Cold War.

The PLA assessment was taken one step further in a Feb. 6 interview by the Russian daily Kommersant with Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov. Antonov announced a planned expansion of Russia's nuclear weapons arsenal, in response to emerging threats from the Obama Administration and allies.

"New challenges emerge, including missile and nuclear proliferation," he began. "Look at how unstable the situation in the Middle East is. That's why Russia's military doctrine envisages the use of nuclear weapons in specific cases. I do not rule out that under certain circumstances we will have to boost, not cut, our nuclear arsenal."

Antonov cited the Obama Administration's refusal to negotiate with Moscow over the deployment of a U.S. missile defense shield over Europe.

"The situation is dismal in this area. The U.S. continues to boost its missile defense potential in Europe and other regions. The European segment of the U.S. missile defense demonstrates aspirations to shift the strategic balance of forces in Europe. After the Cold War, U.S. strategic weapons—and missile defense is a strategic weapon—are getting closer to Russia's borders."

Both the United States and Russia have many nuclear attack submarines, equipped with vast arsenals of nuclear weapons. Over half of the entire U.S. nuclear missile force—over 2,000 warheads—are submarine-based. Russia's submarine force has almost 600 nuclear warheads. Either country has the nuclear firepower to wipe out mankind several times over.

This is the real dimension of the so-called Iran and Syrian crises. London is hell-bent on provoking a thermonuclear war, aimed at wiping out both the Asia-Pacific region and the United States as the priority targets.

There is no other way to interpret the events of last weekend at the United Nations in New York. There is no legitimate reason for the level of provocations being targeted against Moscow and Beijing by London, Washington, and Paris—except that they are out to provoke an all-out strategic confrontation, using Syria and Iran as pretexts.

For London, the motive behind such a berserker drive for thermonuclear World War III could not be more obvious. The entire trans-Atlantic financial and monetary system is hopelessly bankrupt, and time is running out on any efforts to postpone the day of reckoning. According to a senior U.S. intelligence official who stays on top of the European financial crisis, the Inter-Alpha Group-led European private banks will need at least EU5 trillion in zero-interest bailout loans before the end of the year in order to avoid meltdown. This means that the combined U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank will be carrying out a monetary hyperinflation beyond Weimar Germany's Autumn 1923 blowout.

For London, the prospect of a trans-Atlantic hyperinflationary explosion, while the Asia-Pacific region continues to enjoy relative prosperity, is unacceptable. The Queen believes that genocidal war is preferable to the loss of City of London power.

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by Jeffrey and Michele Steinberg [1] See William Jones, "Obama's Asia Deployments: 'World War III Could Start from Here,"