The third more

Saddam's regime in 1995 had already begun to show a state of turmoil, and after years of war and suppression by coalition forces, as well as political and military sanctions imposed by the United States and NATO, Saddam's accumulated wealth has been squandered. The further squeeze of the Soviet Union's arms sales to Iraq between 1992 and 1993, and Yanayev's insistence on installing an advisory group in Iraq at the last minute, can at least show one thing: the United States and the Soviet Union regarded Saddam as an outcast.

It is not that there are no people in Moscow who want to continue to increase their support for Saddam, but they are again blocked by Yanayev. As far as the Soviet Union is concerned, supporting Saddam Hussein now is tantamount to supporting Syngman Rhee before the Korean War, and using foreign exchange for a regime that is doomed to lose, rather than thinking about how to disrupt the US strategic plan in the Middle East. Now it is very worrying and terrible, because Yanayev does not know what kind of method the United States is going to use to break through the chaos in the Middle East.

"The question is whether the Americans will take it upon themselves and launch a battle similar to the Gulf War, or use proxies to subvert the regimes of various countries in the Middle East." Yanayev rubbed his sleepy eyes, the KGB's intelligence bureau has not stopped collecting intelligence in the past few days, all important information has been presented to Yanayev's desk, and every time he finishes processing a batch of documents, he begins to analyze the movements of the Americans in the Middle East.

"The U.S. has recently stepped up military exercises with Saudi Arabia, with a much larger lineup than ever before, and it looks like it's preparing for war with Saddam Hussein or flexing its muscles in the Middle East. At the same time, riots are beginning to occur more frequently in Kurdish areas, and this group of ethnic elements trying to establish a Kurdish state seems to have recently made a dirty deal with the United States. The KGB Foreign Intelligence Service is trying to pull some favorable intelligence out of the mouth of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. In this way, we can also prepare mentally for the turmoil that may ensue. ”

The more Yanayev analyzed, the more frightened Yazov became, and he stood up and walked to the map. Circle a few regions with a pen, "We can see that the countries where the turmoil is taking place are almost all regimes with which the Soviet Union has close diplomatic relations. Is the strategic deployment of the Americans in the Middle East aimed at us? ”

"Against the USSR? It's too much to look up to. Yanayev sneered, "He just wants the Soviet Union to trick us by the way when the international political disadvantage is at a disadvantage, will they stop the action because we voted against it?" No, the United States will definitely not do this, if the USSR and China join forces against the NATO bloc, there is still a chance. It's just a pity that our southern neighbor is not very interested in the problems of the Middle East, but this is not to blame, after all, the scope of interests has not been expanded to such a point. ”

"So the Middle East issue is a silent contest between us and the United States. Twenty years ago, we dared to send troops directly to Iraq to engage with the US coalition forces, and now we have not even solved our own problems. Thinking of this, Yanayev shook his head with a wry smile. He dropped the pen on the table. Slowly, I think about the future of the Middle East.

It seems that the Arab Spring is already on the bright side, and this is not a strategic mistake of the Soviet Union, but the fact that decades of repressive policies and oligarchy rule in the Middle East have made the socio-national-contradictory problems that have accumulated under prosperity vaguely explode, and the United States is only providing a match for the lead of this giant powder keg.

"General Secretary Yanayev, then who are other conspiracies of the United States aimed at?" Yazov did not understand the meaning of Yanayev's words.

"Excuse me, who is the only one who can make money in the war? It is the US multinational arms corporation, whose weak economy has long been waiting for such a lucrative order. So who was the first to make money after the war? Comrade Yazov is an oil interest group in the United States. As soon as the countries of the Middle East became pawns for their manipulation, then this was a nightmare for oil and gas extraction for the USSR. ”

Think about increasing oil production at a time when the Soviet economy was in trouble. If the price is forced to death, no one will be able to stop it at that time. So the USSR intervened or not, and the outcome was the same.

"What if we also sell weapons to anti-American and pro-Soviet regimes?" Yazov suddenly said, "In that case, we can also sell weapons to the Middle East." If the Americans had intervened in the war themselves, they would have been retaliated by the guerrillas, and if it had been through proxy warfare, the Soviet Union would have been able to get a huge war military order, wouldn't it? ”

"So Comrade Yazov, do you think that after the United States becomes strong, he will get along with the Soviet Union? Let's not forget that the current performance of the United States is based on the deterioration of the American economy after the Gulf War. Once he became a de facto real economy, the economic and political repression of the Soviet Union would be even greater. ”

"Now do you know why I'm strengthening international economic and political exchanges with Asia, especially with China? It is to cope with the re-formation of the climate of the United States and to cope with the strategic encirclement and attack on us. ”

"The key is to do everything possible to make the United States suffer a big loss in the inevitable chaos in the Middle East, we have been calculating that the other side may personally do it in Iraq, but Mario is not stupid enough to do that, after excluding another Gulf War, the most likely is a proxy war."

This is the conclusion that Yanayev has come to through a lot of intelligence analysis, if it is a proxy war, it will not be the model of providing arms to the guerrillas to trap their teammates in Afghanistan, but returning to the stage of two countries hiding behind the sandbox, and maybe it will end up being a Pyrrhus-style victory. It is not clear whether the United States will withdraw from the Middle East politics at a terrible price or the Soviet Union will win at a terrible price.

The atmosphere of the conversation reached an impasse, and Yanayev and Yazov did not know how to continue the topic for a while, and just as the two fell silent, the door of Yanayev's office suddenly rang. Before he could finish asking in, the anxious Kryuchkov came in with the latest information.

"Large-scale riots broke out in northern Iraqi cities, with local rebel forces engaging in heavy firefights with Saddam's forces in the streets. Opposition forces now have almost captured the rioted city, and they have CIA-backed heavy weapons in their hands. ”

Yanayev took a deep breath, it was better to come back than to come.

Yazov asked Kryuchkov rhetorically, "You mean that there is a large-scale military riot in Iraq?" Is this information accurate? ”

"Of course it's accurate, and in a few hours the news will be on Al Jazeera." Kryuchkov said anxiously, placing a pile of unsorted information on Yanayev's desk.

"The riots came from Kurdish cities in the north, as well as from small towns in the south, and the most strange thing was that the army arrived only slowly after the entire city had been captured. It appears to have been waged with the deliberate connivance of some government officials. ”

Yanayev's face was a little pale, this information almost overturned some of the conclusions he had reached before, Yanayev bit his lip, looked at the scrap of paper cut out on the table, and suddenly said, "It turns out that this is the case, Mario's pattern is not only to start a proxy war, but also to intervene in NATO's joint forces." From the double suppression of the civil opposition forces and the US military, Saddam Hussein faced a pattern of internal and external troubles. It is not certain that there are still big fish hidden in the army that have not surfaced, and it is not necessary to launch a coup d'état while Saddam's regime is unstable. ”

"This hand is really clever, I think in a few hours, the US-led NATO bloc should have a vote in the UN Security Council." (To be continued.) )