There are two books that can explain, with realism and (rare thing) with no desire to bring the reader on anyone's side, what we see happening in the area of the world from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea.
Their author was an agent of the American intelligence services, operating in India, Lebanon, Iraq, Tajikistan and who knows where else between 1980 and 2000. He describes facts and events, in which he participated directly, which today determine our uncertain and, at times, violent reality.
These facts, although they seem distant in time and place, are between us every moment of our lives: when we get petrol, pay a bill or a bill, go shopping, travel by plane, buy a mobile phone or a PC... Even when we do our tax return.
The shadow of those years is projected on us, here and now, and will do so for a long time to come. Maybe forever.
“I joined the agency imagining that I could serve my country loyally. These twenty years have convinced me of the opposite. I thought I was fighting evil, I realized too late that I was asked to ignore it".
What did the writer see and experience to formulate what is essentially an indictment (he speaks of a substantial "surrender") towards his homeland and against one of its most important and powerful structures, the CIA? Perhaps the same thing that the general saw. Donovan, his creator, who wanted her to be America's eyes and ears abroad, but who perhaps never wanted her to become his heart and soul. Donovan knew that if this had been achieved, the United States would have become nothing more than a financial corporation, certainly very armed, certainly the most powerful in the world, but that the CIA would ultimately have become just an anonymous consultancy firm that studies strategies commercial and marketing for its customers. Which, depending on what the auditors calculate (they and their partners and their suppliers of raw materials) will order "cuts and reductions", "incorporations and mergers", "disposals and disposals", whose research and development will not seek, first of all, technical and scientific progress, the human and environmental well-being of all, "democratically", but only what the "board of directors", "the shareholders' meeting", deems appropriate, in order to manage your profits, margins and budgeted interests.
The Defeat of the CIA (2003) and Sleeping with the Devil (2004) by Robert Baer, say why Iran is today, now, the hegemonic political power between the Indus River and the Mediterranean Sea. Because Saudi Arabia is no longer the largest, free, US military base in the world, but has in fact become the largest construction company on the planet, with commercial representatives ensconced in every Western parliament.
It tells us why Europe could not, cannot and will not be anything other than a paying spectator of the "show" that is about to begin.
Because India will be the human lung (and perhaps cannon fodder) of the West, and happy to be so.
Because Turkey today, for what it was yesterday, is the "betting company" best managed and used by anyone starting from the Persian Gulf states, and several African and Central Asian states.
Because the former Soviet Asian republics, which together with Israel and Egypt will become (and already are) the main suppliers of gas and hydrocarbons to Western Europe, will be exposed to the wrath of those who no longer want to be their own executioners, to be the one who provides the enemy with the same rope with which he has always kept him on a leash, pulling and letting go depending on the context and the recurring economic crises that affect the West. And above all of because America, according to operative Robert Baer, has failed.
If you reduce politics to business, if you put money in the place of God thinking that they can buy everything and everything, sooner or later you will find someone who has enough to live on but is willing to exchange their life for an ideal, a belief, or even just a hypothetical better future for one's children will pose the challenge a plan that is unsustainable for us "merchants"..
There will come those who, at the head only of themselves or of an oligarchy, will offer better conditions than a corporation of shareholders, bankers, oilmen, placing the negotiation at the level of personal friendship, of respect, and not at that of blackmail, or fear. Whether this is true or not doesn't matter.
Iran, Russia, China, are oligarchies and dictatorships, certainly, which by their nature are and will always be more maneuverable. flexible, agile of our democracies (true or presumed to be).
Baer tried to warn his bosses at the CIA, probably knowing (at some point certainly) that they were only "consultants", but believing them to be (at least marginally) motivated to also serve the interests of the American people. He realized too late that he was instead talking to other members of a board of directors, and often without real voting rights.
The arrogance of the bankers, the greed of the oilmen, the sloth of the politicians, the subservience of the high-level officers of the armed forces, the hypocrisy of the presumed intellectuals, the substantial indolence of all the Western people, will have for the writer only two possible practical results: retreat or war.
This was the future according to Robert Baer, twenty years ago. Today is our present!
Enjoy the reading!
Andrea Sapori
