RE: The Syrian War is All About Natural Gas
Great reminder of what many of the underlying motivations are for this conflict. But, gas and oil isn't the guiding issue anymore. The Qataris are beaten on that pipeline and have cut deals with Iran to develop the North Pars gas field which they share and to build an alternate pipeline with Iran to serve Europe.
This is why Saudi Arabia went ballistic last year on Qatar, after Qatar bought a stake in Rosneft to ensure it's survival when it became clear to them that Trump would no longer suppor their support of Al-Qaeda in Syria and Assad was likely to stay in power.
What's left of the original plan for Syria is some desperate thrashing around by the Neocons in the U.S. and the their ideological brethren in Israel/SA to limit Iran, humiliate Russia and break up the alliance with China and complicate OBOR.
Thank you for your contribution and for resteeming! It does seem that the US is losing Qatar to Russia. Apparently Russia is currently selling weapons both to Qatar, who now feels threatened by Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia! Russia is also taking advantage of the situation to negotiate sales of their own natural gas to Saudi Arabia, while Qatar is now working on deals to collaborate with Gazprom. I wonder how the US will tackle this.
You see, it's still about fossil fuels. Because fossil fuels define markets, markets define the economy, and the economy defines power. For example, what would be the impact of a Russian-Chinese collaboration on oil and natural gas on the petrodollar and the US dollar as a no. 1 currency? What makes things really complicated (actually much more complicated than I tried to portrait for simplicity) is that geopolitics are not defined solely by countries (or state companies) but by private or semi-private companies as well. A semi-private company might be trying to keep its own state and a private investor from a rival state, both happy and serve interests of both to keep a balance. This is how things get out of hand when trying to find out exactly who's interests a particular action serves, because global economy is a jungle and alliances shift as fast as options do.