"No lobby has managed to divert foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US and Israeli interests are essentially identical."

American supporters of Israel promoted the war against Iraq. The senior administration officials who spearheaded the [war] were also in the vanguard of the pro-Israel lobby, eg. Paul Wolfowitz; Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams; Vice President Richard Cheney; and Richard Perle.

A similar effort is now under way to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The website of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy states:

"Against the backdrop of an ever-bloodier conflict in Iraq, American foreign policy is moving in a dangerous direction toward empire. Worrisome imperial trends are apparent in the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy. That document pledges to maintain America’s military dominance in the world, and it does so in a way that encourages other nations to form countervailing coalitions and alliances. We can expect, and are seeing now, multiple balances of power forming against us. People resent and resist domination, no matter how benign."

Wave of Bush resignations underway

Richard Perle has been forced to take a low profile in Washington after initially heading Rumsfeld’s Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon. Feith was forced to leave the State Department for the private sector. That was more than a year ago.

Now White House Chief of Staff and a man who was a Bush family loyal retainer for 25 years, Andrew Card, has left, and in an announcement that apparently shocked the neo-conservative hawks Bush’s pro-neo-con CIA head, Porter Goss, abruptly announced his resignation in a one line statement.

Goss’ departure was preceded by the growing scandal involving Goss’ Number 3 man at CIA, Executive Director, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. Last December the CIA Inspector General opened an investigation into Foggo’s role in Pengaton-CIA contract fraud. Foggo is also being linked to an emerging White House-GOP [Republican] sex scandal which could pale the Monica Lewinsky affair.

The latest in the slow, systematic "let ‘em twist in the wind" process of downsizing the Bush regime, was an incident in Atlanta on May 4 before a supposedly friendly foreign policy audience where Rumsfeld spoke. During the question period, he was confronted by Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who once gave then-President George Bush Snr his morning intelligence briefings.

He asked why Rumsfeld had insisted before the Iraq invasion that there was "bulletproof evidence" linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda. "Was that a lie, Mr. Rumsfeld, or was that manufactured somewhere else? Because all of my CIA colleagues disputed that and so did the 9/11 commission", McGovern asked a startled Rumsfeld. "Why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary?"

The Los Angeles Times gave this account of the incident:

"At the start of the exchange, Rumsfeld remained his usual unflappable self, insisting, ‘I haven’t lied; I did not lie then’, before launching into a vigorous defense of the administration’s pre-war assertions on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

"But Rumsfeld became uncharacteristically tongue-tied when McGovern pressed him on claims that he knew where unconventional Iraqi weapons were located. ‘You said you knew where they were’, McGovern said.

"‘I did not. I said I knew where suspected sites were’, Rumsfeld retorted.

"McGovern then read from statements the Defense secretary had made that weapons were located near Tikrit and Baghdad…"

Rumsfeld was stone silent. The entire episode was filmed and shown on network television. Rumsfeld’s days are clearly numbered.

Another of the Bush team, Karl Rove is rumoured to be days away from being co-indicted with Cheney’s aide Lewis Libby for the Valerie Plame CIA leak affair.

All threads are being carefully woven, evidently by a re-emerging realist faction into a tapestry which will likely spell impeachment, perhaps also of the Vice President, the real power behind this Presidency.

A Foreign Policy disaster over China

In this context, the recent diplomatic insult by Bush to visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao is doubly disastrous for the US foreign position.

Bush acted on a script written by the anti-China neo-conservatives, to deliberately insult and humiliate Hu at the White House. First was the incident of allowing a Taiwanese "journalist" a Falun Gong member, into the carefully-screened White House press conference, to rant in a tirade against Chinese human rights for more than three minutes, with no attempt at removal. Then came the playing of the Chinese national anthem for Hu. The "Chinese" anthem, however, was the Taiwanese, not the People’s Republic of China anthem.

It was no "slip-up" by the professional White House protocol people. It was a deliberate effort to humiliate the Chinese leader. The problem is that the US economy has become dependent on Chinese trade imports and on Chinese holdings of US Treasury securities. China today is the largest holder of dollar reserves in the form of US Treasury paper with an estimated $825 billion. Were Beijing to decide to exit the US bond market, even in part, it would cause a dollar free-fall and collapse of the $7 trillion US real estate market, a wave of US bank failures and huge unemployment. It’s a real option even if unlikely at the moment.

China’s Hu didn’t waste time or tears over the Bush affront. He immediately went on to Saudi Arabia for a three-day state visit where both signed trade, defence and security agreements. Needless to say, this is no small slap in the fact to Washington by the traditionally "loyal" Saudi Royal House. Hu signed a deal for SABIC of Saudi Arabia to build a $5.2 billion oil refinery and petrochemical project in northeast China. At the beginning of this year, King Abdullah was in Beijing for a full state visit.

The SCO and Iran events

The latest developments around the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and Iran further underscores the dramatic change in the geopolitical position of the United States.

The SCO was created in Shanghai in 2001 by Russia and China along with four former USSR Central Asian republics — Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Prior to the US declaration by Bush of an Axis of Evil in January 2002, the SCO was merely background geopolitical chatter as far as Washington was concerned.

Today the SCO, which has to date been blacked out almost entirely in US mainstream media, is defining a new political counterweight to US hegemony and its "one-polar" world. At the next meeting of the SCO on June 15, 2006, Iran has been invited to become a full SCO member.

Last month in Tehran, the Chinese Ambassador announced that a pending oil and gas deal between China and Iran is ready to be signed. The deal is said to be worth at least $100 billion, and includes development of the huge Yadavaran onshore oil field. China’s Sinopec would agree to buy 250 million tons of LNG over 25 years.

No wonder China is not jumping to back Washington against Iran in the UN Security Council. The US had been trying to put massive pressure on Beijing to halt the deal, for obvious geopolitical reasons, to no avail. Another major defeat for Washington.

Iran is also moving on plans to deliver natural gas via a pipeline to Pakistan and India. Energy ministers from the three countries met in Doha recently and plan to meet again this month in Pakistan.

The pipeline progress is a direct rebuff to Washington’s efforts to steer investors clear of Iran. Ironically, US opposition is driving these countries into each others’ arms, Washington’s "geopolitical nightmare". At the same June 15 SCO meeting, India, which Bush is personally attempting to woo as a geopolitical Asian "counterweight" to China, will also be invited to join SCO.

SCO is gaining in geopolitical throw-weight quite substantially. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi told ITAR-Tass in Moscow in April that Iranian membership in SCO could "make the world more fair". He also spoke of building an Iran-Russia "gas-and-oil arc" in which the two giant energy producers would coordinate activities.

US out in cold in Central Asia

The admission of Iran into SCO opens many new options for Iran and the region. By virtue of SCO membership, Iran can now take part in SCO projects, which in turn means access to badly-needed technology, investment, trade and infrastructure development. It will have major implications for global energy security. The SCO has reportedly set up a working group of experts ahead of the June summit to develop a common SCO Asian energy strategy, and discuss joint pipeline projects, oil exploration and related activities.

Iran sits on the world’s second largest natural gas reserves and Russia has the largest. Russia is the world’s second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia. These are no small moves.

India is desperate to come to terms with Iran for energy but is being pressured by Washington not to.

Gennady Yefstafiyev, a former General in Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, says, "The long term US goals in Iran are obvious: to engineer the downfall of the current regime; to establish control over Iran’s oil and gas; and to use its territory as the shortest route for the transportation of hydrocarbons under US control from the regions of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea bypassing Russia and China. This is not to mention Iran’s intrinsic military and strategic significance."

In the space of 12 months Russia and China have managed to move the pieces on the geopolitical "chess board" of Eurasia away from what had been an overwhelming US strategic advantage, to the opposite, where the US is increasingly isolated.

It’s potentially the greatest strategic defeat for the US power projection of the post World War 2 period. This is also the strategic background to the re-emergence of the so-called realist faction in US policy.

Abridged

First published in Geopolitics-Geoeconomics, May 7, 2006

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