At the time of the Iraq War in 2003, there appeared a project called the “Greater Middle East”. It was a plan of redrawing of the Old World regime’s map. This redrawing of the map of the Middle East is part of a strategy to put US military boots on the ground in control of all the major oil and now the natural gas of the Middle East. The purpose was to control the economies of China and the European Union and to directly be able to blackmail those countries. As Henry Kissinger said back in the 1970s, “If you control the oil, you control entire nations or groups of nations.”

Dick Cheney, before he was a Vice President, in 1999 gave a very interesting speech to the institute of Petroleum in London. He outlined the perspective for the next twenty years of how much oil the world will need, how much decline there will be from old oil fields and how many new ones will have to be discovered. And there he said: “One place in the world with the largest reserves of oil is under control of the Middle East nations – Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. The problem is that those oil reserves are controlled by the governments”. In other words, he said that we, the United States, have to take away the control over that oil from the governments and put it into private companies’ hands like BP, Shell and others.

When Cheney became Vice President under George W. Bush, the first thing he was put in charge of was the Energy Task Force. Under his control, the task force began looking at oil maps of the Middle East in great detail before the Iraq invasion.

So the idea is to control that oil and, because of the growing importance of natural gas for the EU, to control the gas.

Therefore, this is what the Greater Middle East project is all about. It is a plan for redrawing the map, creating a unified Kurdistan as a geopolitical pivot that will allow Washington to control all the surrounding countries and destabilize Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, which play a very crucial role in the whole project. 

 The Project for a “New Middle East”

“Hegemony is as old as Mankind…” -Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor

The term “New Middle East” was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East.”

This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean. The term and conceptualization of the “New Middle East,” was subsequently heralded by the U.S. Secretary of State and the Israeli Prime Minister at the height of the Anglo-American sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon. Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary Rice had informed the international media that a project for a “New Middle East” was being launched from Lebanon.

This announcement was a confirmation of an Anglo-American-Israeli “military road map” in the Middle East. This project, which has been in the planning stages for several years, consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

Secretary Condoleezza Rice stated during a press conference that “[w]hat we’re seeing here [in regards to the destruction of Lebanon and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon], in a sense, is the growing—the ‘birth pangs’—of a ‘New Middle East’ and whatever we do we [meaning the United States] have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the New Middle East [and] not going back to the old one.” 

The Anglo-American Military Roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia 

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speech on the “New Middle East” had set the stage. The Israeli attacks on Lebanon –which had been fully endorsed by Washington and London– have further compromised and validated the existence of the geo-strategic objectives of the United States, Britain, and Israel.

Anglo-American occupied Iraq, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan, seems to be the preparatory ground for the balkanization (division) and finlandization (pacification) of the Middle East. Already the legislative framework, under the Iraqi Parliament and the name of Iraqi federalization, for the partition of Iraq into three portions is being drawn out. (See map below)

Moreover, the Anglo-American military road map appears to be vying an entry into Central Asia via the Middle East. The Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are stepping stones for extending U.S. influence into the former Soviet Union and the ex-Soviet Republics of Central Asia. The Middle East is to some extent the southern tier of Central Asia. Central Asia in turn is also termed as “Russia’s Southern Tier” or the Russian “Near Abroad.”

Many Russian and Central Asian scholars, military planners, strategists, security advisers, economists, and politicians consider Central Asia (“Russia’s Southern Tier”) to be the vulnerable and “soft under-belly” of the Russian Federation.

It should be noted that in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. National Security Adviser, alluded to the modern Middle East as a control lever of an area he, Brzezinski, calls the Eurasian Balkans. The Eurasian Balkans consists of the Caucasus (Georgia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan) and to some extent both Iran and Turkey. Iran and Turkey both form the northernmost tiers of the Middle East (excluding the Caucasus) that edge into Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The Map of the “New Middle East”

A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic, governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It has been causally allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the “New Middle East.”

Note: The above map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).

The map of the “New Middle East” was a key element in the retired Lieutenant-Colonel’s book, Never Quit the Fight, which was released to the public on July 10, 2006. This map of a redrawn Middle East was also published, under the title of Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look, in the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal with commentary from Ralph Peters. Could it be Lieutenant-Colonel Peters is revealing and putting forward what Washington D.C. and its strategic planners have anticipated for the Middle East?

The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.

Of course, no adjustment of borders could make every minority in the Middle East happy. Yet, for all the injustices, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.

The map would make sweeping changes throughout the region such as:

Israel: has an opportunity to expand its borders, once the region is broken up .

Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq All lose territory to create a Free Kurdistan.

Free Kurdistan: New state created for the Kurds.

Greater Lebanon: a reborn Phoenecia that also gains territory at the expense of Syria.

Greater Jordan: Would become Greater Jordan, which would comprise the parts of Palestinian land and portions of northern Saudi Arabia, which would once and for all become a homeland for Palestinians, for those both in the Diaspora and under occupation.

 Syria: Would lose a portion of its northern territory to set up a Kurdish state, and parts of Iraqi lands would be added to that.

 Iraq: To be divided into three states (Shi’ite, Sunni, and Kurd).

The Kurdish State: Includes Iraqi Kurdistan, which comprises Kirkuk and part of Mosul, as well as parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

The Shi’ite Arab state: Made up of southern Iraq and the eastern portion of Saudi Arabia, as well as southwestern parts of Iran (Ahvaz Province), meaning that it comprises nearly a complete semi-circle around the east and west Persian Gulf.

Sunni Iraq: One of three successor states to Iraq, this one would obviously be primarily Sunni, comprising Al Anbar province

Saudi Arabia: Loses territory to Jordan, Arab Shia State, Yemen and the Islamic Sacred State. A new state that would act as an Islamic Vatican carved from Saudi Arabia. Would be divided into three countries, one of them a religious state (or, as the article calls it “an Islamic Sacred State”), which will include the Holy places of Mecca and Medina.

Yemen: Would include parts of southern Saudi Arabia

UAE: Loses territory to Arab Shia State, although Dubai likely to remain an independent playground for the rich.

Kuwait and Oman would retain their current borders.

Azerbaijan: Gains territory from Iran.

Iran: Loses land to Kurdistan, Arab Shia State, Azerbaijan and Free Baluchistan but gains territory from Afghanistan. The goal is to make Iran even more Persian.

Afghanistan: Loses land to Iran in the west but gains land from Pakistan in the east.  Afghanistan will lose portions of its southwest to the new Baluch state.

Pakistan: Loses territory to both Free Baluchistan and Afghanistan. It now lies almost entirely east of the Indus.

The new Baluch state, or “Free Baluchistan:” Will be founded on part of south-eastern Iran and part of southwestern Afghanistan in the area called Baluchistan, which is inhabited by Baluchs, most of whom are Sunni Muslims.

The borders of the rest of Arab Asia would be left unchanged. As for the Arab countries of North Africa, they were not addressed in the article, and perhaps that is because they were considered outside the geographic bounds of the New Middle East.

The borders of the current Middle East cause much of the ethnic and sectarian strife within or between states, and that this has resulted in the taking of unconscionable measures against ethnic and religious minorities, and instability across the entire region.

Therefore, it is suggested that the various sects and ethnicities that find themselves unable to coexist have separate states established for them (for example, one for the Shi’a in Iraq and another for the Kurds). But in view of the fact that adjusting borders usually requires the agreement of the affected peoples, this may now be impossible. Therefore, such a border correction may have to be carried out by other means, even if that requires the shedding of blood to realize the purpose, meaning that the article brings the good news that the borders of the New Middle East are to be drawn with the blood of its people (meaning our blood). This compelled the author to choose the strange title of Blood Borders for his article.

Under the plan for remapping the borders of the Middle East, some countries will lose land and others will expand by annexing lands at the expense of those which are to shrink, with a scenario that appears something like the following:

After examining the available maps and the public statements of American officials, a number of objectives can be discerned, the most prominent of which are:

The fragmentation and weakening of the Arab region, making it easier for the United States of America to dominate its markets and its petroleum, (70% of world’s proven oil reserves and 45% of its natural gas); and it would consolidate Israeli hegemony over its small and weak neighbors, which would force some of them to appeal to the Hebrew state for protection.

The draining away of strength from political Islam – or as its supporters would call it, Islamic awakening. In this way, sectarian conflicts would remain between countries in the region, rather than being directed at or fought against the United States on its own land, or against American interest in other countries.

At first glance, the project described above appears as if it were taken from one of the legends of the east or lifted from the tales of A Thousand and One Nights. But since the folly and adventurism of this American administration are fully recognized; and given what we know about the fundamentalist neoconservatives in the White House, who are infamous for their fanaticism and radicalism, we have little choice but to examine this plan and pay very serious attention.

If the American administration reformulates the frontiers of the Middle East in accordance with this or some similar project, we must expect that the region will be plunged into bloody and violent conflict, the opening scene of which is the Israeli aggression against Lebanon. The following scenes will witness a weakening of resistance forces in the region including in the forces of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine, and the strength of [Washington’s] regional opponents, primarily Iran.

So that the core question that remains is this: who will write the final scene in the struggle that lies before us?

Without a doubt, the victors will write it, and the victors will be determined by which people are in possession of the skills and experience to undergo trials and suffering. They who experience the greatest testing will be capable of paying the price for victory, satisfied with the costs and the burdens.

Keep in mind this map is nearly 11 years old and does not reflect recent developments such as the Arab spring, the Syria war, the Yemen civil war or rise of Islamic State.

Many of the problems affecting the contemporary Middle East are the result of the deliberate aggravation of pre-existing regional tensions. Sectarian division, ethnic tension and internal violence have been traditionally exploited by the United States and Britain in various parts of the globe including Africa, Latin America, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria is just one of many examples of the Anglo-American strategy of “divide and conquer.” Other examples are Rwanda, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan.

Is there a Connection between Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Eurasian Balkans” and the “New Middle East” Project?

The following are important excerpts and passages from former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives. Brzezinski also states that both Turkey and Iran, the two most powerful states of the “Eurasian Balkans,” located on its southern tier, are “potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts [balkanization],” and that, “If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable.”

It seems that a divided and balkanized Iraq would be the best means of accomplishing this. Taking what we know from the White House’s own admissions; there is a belief that “creative destruction and chaos” in the Middle East are beneficial assets to reshaping the Middle East, creating the “New Middle East,” and furthering the Anglo-American road map in the Middle East and Central Asia:

In Europe, the Word “Balkans” conjures up images of ethnic conflicts and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its “Balkans,” but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more religiously and ethnically heterogeneous. They are located within that large geographic oblong that demarcates the central zone of global instability (…) that embraces portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia [Pakistan, Kashmir, Western India], the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.

The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong (…) they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way: they are a power vacuum. Although most of the states located in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East are also unstable, American power is that region’s [meaning the Middle East’s] ultimate arbiter. The unstable region in the outer zone is thus an area of single power hegemony and is tempered by that hegemony. In contrast, the Eurasian Balkans are truly reminiscent of the older, more familiar Balkans of southeastern Europe: not only are its political entities unstable but they tempt and invite the intrusion of more powerful neighbors, each of whom is determined to oppose the region’s domination by another. It is this familiar combination of a power vacuum and power suction that justifies the appellation “Eurasian Balkans.”

The traditional Balkans represented a potential geopolitical prize in the struggle for European supremacy. The Eurasian Balkans, astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly Eurasia’s richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities are also geopolitically significant. Moreover, they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans is infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.

 The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.

Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel international rivalries. The situation is made all the more volatile by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also internally unstable.

The Eurasian Balkans include nine countries that one way or another fit the foregoing description, with two others as potential candidates. The nine are Kazakhstan [alternative and official spelling of Kazakhstan] , Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia—all of them formerly part of the defunct Soviet Union—as well as Afghanistan.

The potential additions to the list are Turkey and Iran, both of them much more politically and economically viable, both active contestants for regional influence within the Eurasian Balkans, and thus both significant geo-strategic players in the region. At the same time, both are potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts. If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable, while efforts to restrain regional domination by Russia could even become futile.

The Middle East, in some regards, is a striking parallel to the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe during the years leading up the First World War. In the wake of the First World War the borders of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe were redrawn. This region experienced a period of upheaval, violence and conflict, before and after World War I, which was the direct result of foreign economic interests and interference.

The reasons behind the First World War are more sinister than the standard school-book explanation, the assassination of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. Economic factors were the real motivation for the large-scale war in 1914.

The redrawing and partition of the Middle East from the Eastern Mediterranean shores of Lebanon and Syria to Anatolia (Asia Minor), Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and the Iranian Plateau responds to broad economic, strategic and military objectives, which are part of a longstanding Anglo-American and Israeli agenda in the region.

The Middle East has been conditioned by outside forces into a powder keg that is ready to explode with the right trigger, possibly the launching of Anglo-American and/or Israeli air raids against Iran and Syria is under occupation by foreign forces, and it is on the verge of being partitioned.  A wider war in the Middle East could result in redrawn borders that are strategically advantageous to Anglo-American interests and Israel.

NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan has been successfully divided, all but in name. Animosity has been inseminated in the Levant, where a Palestinian civil war is being nurtured and divisions in Lebanon agitated. The Eastern Mediterranean has been successfully militarized by NATO.  Iran continues to be demonized by the Western media, with a view to justifying a military agenda. In turn, the Western media has fed, on a daily basis, incorrect and biased notions that the populations of Iraq cannot co-exist and that the conflict is not a war of occupation but a “civil war” characterized by domestic strife between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Attempts at intentionally creating animosity between the different ethno-cultural and religious groups of the Middle East have been systematic. In fact, they are part of a carefully designed covert intelligence agenda.

Even more ominous, many Middle Eastern governments, such as that of Saudi Arabia, are assisting Washington in fomenting divisions between Middle Eastern populations. The ultimate objective is to weaken the resistance movement against foreign occupation through a “divide and conquer strategy” which serves Anglo-American and Israeli interests in the broader region.

Dear reader. Now you have an idea of the game-plan of the 2 families to break up the Middle East, and take control of the region’s oil and gas. Now America does not need this oil and gas. Rather, the plan is to take control of these oil and gas fields, and then deny them to its economic rivals. The terms and conditions that New York will demand of Europe and Asia will be such, that to give in, means surrendering their economic, political, and financial independence. These countries realize that, thus, one will see an increasing involvement by the military forces of the countries that would most likely be negatively impacted by America’s grip over their energy sources.

In the next article, we will see how Trump is accelerating this process.