In his 2016 book, The Lost Hegemon – Whom the Gods Would Destroy, F. William Engdahl argues that there is no better tool than weaponized religion to make massive geopolitical moves.
Engdahl’s main focus is the radicalization of Muslims by Britain, the United States, and their allies to wreak havoc in the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa, and Russia. Political Islam is dirty business used to destabilize entire nations and clear the way for profitable adventures and brazen political maneuvers.
This The Lost Hegemon review from Raymond C. Togtman sums it up:
“It would be impossible to summarize this important book in a few paragraphs. F William Engdahl has written an exhaustive history of the CIA’s recruitment of the Muslim Brotherhood, beginning in the 1950s, and its use of them to destabilize regimes and fight proxy wars for the USA from Tunisia to the Xinjiang province of China.
His story begins with the roots of Islamic rage and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood under Al-Banna in the aftermath of World War 1, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Britain’s perfidy in the Sykes-Picot agreement, and the Balfour Declaration. It continues with the Muslim Brothers’ participation in Hitler’s ‘Holy War’ against the Jews under the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
In 1979 President Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski recruited the Muslim Brotherhood to fight a proxy war against the USSR in Afghanistan, and since then the CIA has used them to fight proxy wars for the USA in the Balkans, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, China, and to establish a new Ottoman Caliphate in Eurasia through the work of Fetullah Gulen. Now the CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood are present in Syria and Iraq in the form of ISIS.
America is indeed the lost hegemon. Anyone who reads this book and also William Engdahl’s Full Spectrum Dominance will understand how and why America is now engaged in a new Cold War.”
What Togtman doesn’t mention is how useful the threat of Muslim terrorism can be. Run a few false flags, and citizens in “free” countries, give up their civil liberties without resistance. The enemy is amorphous, so the “powers that shouldn’t be” can drag the charade out as long as they need to. You can’t declare a victor in the war on terror.
There’s another invisible, manufactured enemy that’s even more powerful in its ability to generate pretext for lockdowns and life alteration in exchange for safety and security, but that’s another story.
Fascinating Stories
Fetullah Gulen
The story of CIA-asset Fetullah Gulen is remarkable. In the name of generating discord in the region over decades, the intelligence agencies cultivated a charismatic imam, Gulen, to build schools teaching Muslim youth the ways of radical Islam. They exported these teachings wherever they needed to sow discord, including Gulen’s home country, Turkey. He wanted a new Ottoman caliphate, and the controllers were more than happy to aid in that effort, all in the name of destabilization of the secularized country built up by former Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Gulen ended up in Pennsylvania despite the protestation of the U.S. State Department, which opposed granting him residency because he was an operative for the CIA (ha ha). Implausibly, there are over 160 Gulen charter schools in the United States. A useful profitable stream for his terror network.
Osama Bin Laden
Osama Bin Laden makes an appearance, because he was instrumental in developing the Mujahedeen holy warriors used in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and the Caucuses as proxy soldiers for US interests. Cozy relationship until it was time to cut ties and throw Bin Laden under the bus for masterminding the 9/11 attacks from a cave in Tora Bora.
Saudi Wahhabism Mixed With the Muslim Brotherhood
Back in the days of the President Dwight Eisenhower administration, Saudi Arabia was the “most conservative, strict Muslim country in the world.”
The controllers thought it would be a good idea to introduce the Saudis to a radical sect called the Muslim Brotherhood, which was banned from other Arab states because of their dangerous ideology.
“Allen Dulles’ CIA secretly persuaded the Saudi monarchy to help rebuild the banned Muslim Brotherhood, thereby creating a fusion with Saudi fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam and vast Saudi oil riches to wield a weapon across the entire Muslim world against feared Soviet incursions.”
Economic Hitmen
Long before John Perkins was doing his thing as an economic hitman, bankers put the Turkish Ottoman Empire into debt slavery to control them. The empire, in the midst of decay, was ripe for grift in 1881 with the resulting control of Turkish money and assets proving useful as the British sought to control the region.
WTF: Sykes-Picot and Balfour
I find it fascinating that the British and French took it upon themselves to draw up new borders for the Middle East in the Sykes-Picot agreement post WWI.
I imagine a conference room with British, French, and Arab representatives sitting around a table. A British General draws a rough draft of the new borders on a flip chart. The Arab folks look at each other, then at the General, and ask … “Wait, who are you, and why are you creating new borders for our countries?”
The Brit dude, looking incredulous, says, “well, because of the mass carnage of WWI. We need to switch things up … obviously.”
Oh.
Then, there’s the Balfour declaration. “Look, we’re going to need your land for a new Jewish state. Things were pretty bad in Eastern Europe for the Jews, so you’ll agree that each of your countries should contribute a smidge of your land to give these poor folks a place of refuge.”
“One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third. More than that, the country was still part of the Empire of a fourth, namely Turkey.” -Arthur Koestler, Jewish author, on the Balfour Declaration between England and Lord Rothschild for a Palestinian Jewish homeland.
Engdahl draws a bright line between these ludicrous “agreements” and Islamic rage.
Yugoslavia Destruction
During the Cold War, the United States plotted to destabilize socialist and communist countries. Their favorite tool was “quiet revolutions” to overthrow the ruling parties.
Yugoslavia was on the list Eastern Bloc European nations. In 1988, the US-run NGO called the National Endowment for Democracy started stirring up opposition groups to Slobodan Milosevic’s socialist government.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The US knew the big, bad Soviet Union was no longer an excuse for keeping NATO and a military presence in Europe. So, the dialectical narrative had to shift to the European propensity for wars.
Yugoslavia was a perfect target. They had $21 billion in debt from oil imports in the 70s-80s during the oil crises. And an ethnic-religious mix ripe for aggravation. Slovenia and Croatia were primarily Roman Catholic, Serbia was Orthodox Christian, and Bosnia-Herzegovina was an even mix of Catholic, Orthodox Christian, and Muslim.
And, they were in the heart of Europe, which was a perfect place to manufacture a nasty war as pretext for keeping NATO operational, and building bases throughout the continent.
In 1989, President George H.W. Bush used the debt hammer and the IMF to impose brutal economic sanctions. Classic economic hit man stuff.
The sanctions and political stirring sparked in the prior year created the perfect atmosphere for the break up of a country. The IMF began making ludicrous economic demands that decimated the country, and Bush threatened to pull financial support from Republics that didn’t declare independence from Yugoslavia.
The government was in chaos. More money and propaganda flowed in from NGO’s and foundations (like the Soros Foundation) to prop up a growing political dissent. This morphed into an actual attack on a Yugoslav military base in May 1991, and the civil war was on.
Then, Bush and friends brought in the battle hardened Mujaheddin to ramp up the violence and atrocities and help destroy the country, particularly Serbia which had the largest population, and opposed the Balkanization.
Long story short 200,000+ people died in ethnic wars that lasted a decade. A fun little geopolitical manipulation. By subterfuge and propaganda, the world opinion makers branded the Serbians as the new Nazis in case they ever wanted to oppose the wishes of the NWO in the future.
“The war in Bosnia was America’s war in every sense of the word. The United States administration helped start it, kept it going, and prevented its early end.” – Sir Alfred Sherman, Balkan expert and advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
The campaign to destroy Yugoslavia went off without a hitch even as the seat of the United States President changed three times from Reagan to Bush to Clinton. So, nice when opposing political parties can come together for a common cause.
Under Clinton, NATO installed a permanent 80,000 troop occupation force in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And, the US grabbed a stronghold perfect to launch Jihadists into Soviet Central Asia, including Chechnya and Uzbekistan.
Arab Spring
They renamed The Greater Middle East Project as Arab Spring. Good branding move. Easier to position it as an organic movement of oppressed people fighting for rights and freedom.
Not the case. It was manufactured, and resulted in the typical carnage. Western puppets placed in positions of power and resources looted. In fact, Libya, after losing Muammar al-Gaddafi, became a failed state of warring factions. Today, it has open-air slave trade markets. Gimme some of that DEMOCRACY!
Conclusion
Engdahl is a top-notch researcher. He is able to synthesize a mass of information and turn it into a coherent and readable narrative, chock full of citations. The Lost Hegemon paints a disturbing picture of geopolitical manipulation, and the dangerous flailings of a hegemonic power in decline.
Read it!
Check out more books by F. William Engdahl.