Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 13. Oktober 2005 / Time Line October 13, 2005
Version 3.512. Oktober 2005, 14. Oktober 2005
10/13/2005
WHITE HOUSE IGNORED CIA WARNINGS ON IRAQ
Postwar Projections "had little or no impact on policy
deliberations"
Declassified Kerr Report Available on National Security Archive
Website
National Security Archive Update, October 13, 2005
http://www.nsarchive.org
Washington D.C. October 13, 2005 - The White House disregarded
intelligence projections on post-Saddam Iraq according to a
newly-declassified CIA report, "Intelligence and Analysis on Iraq:
Issues for the Intelligence Community," posted today on the website
of the National Security Archive.
"In an ironic twist," the report finds, "the policy community was
receptive to technical intelligence (the weapons program), where
the analysis was wrong, but apparently paid little attention to
intelligence on cultural and political issues (post-Saddam Iraq),
where the analysis was right."
The report, from July 2004, is the third of three prepared by a
group of intelligence experts led by Richard J. Kerr, a former
deputy director of central intelligence, to examine the U.S.
Intelligence Community's assessments in the months before the U.S.
invasion. The first two reports remain classified despite the fact
that many of their key findings are summarized in the July report
and in unclassified reports produced by the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence and the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities
of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The Kerr report also identifies a number of weaknesses in the
Intelligence Community's analytical products, particularly the
October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraqi weapons
programs, which the report says was prepared "under an unusually
tight time constraint" and was "the product of three separate
drafters, drawing from a mixed bag of analytic product." The
October 2002 NIE was at the center of Bush administration claims
about Iraq's weapons programs in the prewar period.
The report also finds that intelligence analysts were under
constant pressure to find "links between Saddam and [al-Qa'ida]"
causing them to take a "purposely aggressive approach" to the
issue, "conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such
links." No such ties were ever found, however, and "the
Intelligence Community remained firm in its assessment that no
operational or collaborative relationship existed."
The Kerr report was first reported by USA Today on October 12 and
is featured in an article by Douglas Jehl in today's New York
Times. The text of the report was published this month with an
edited introduction in the CIA's Studies in Intelligence journal
(Vol. 49, No. 3). The complete, unedited version of the report was
declassified in response to a Freedom of Information Act request
and appeal by National Security Archive senior fellow Jeffrey
Richelson.
10/13/2005
The Swedish Academy, The Nobel Prize in Literature 2005
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2005 is awarded to the English
writer Harold Pinter
"who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and
forces entry into oppression's closed rooms".
Harold Pinter has been awarded the Wilfred Owen prize for poetry
opposing the Iraq Conflict.
http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/index.shtml
10/13/2005
We need to be told
When journalists report propaganda instead of the truth, the
consequences can be catastrophic - as one largely forgotten
instance demonstrates.
By John Pilger
10/13/05 "ICH" -- -- ''The propagandist's purpose," wrote Aldous
Huxley, "is to make one set of people forget that certain other
sets of people are human." The British, who invented modern war
propaganda and inspired Joseph Goebbels, were specialists in the
field. At the height of the slaughter known as the First World War,
the prime minister, David Lloyd George, confided to C P Scott,
editor of the Manchester Guardian: "If people really knew [the
truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't
know, and can't know."
What has changed?
"If we had all known then what we know now," said the New York
Times on 24 August, "the invasion [of Iraq] would have been stopped
by a popular outcry." The admission was saying, in effect, that
powerful newspapers, like powerful broadcasting organisations, had
betrayed their readers and viewers and listeners by not finding out
- by amplifying the lies of Bush and Blair instead of challenging
and exposing them. The direct consequences were a criminal invasion
called "Shock and Awe" and the dehumanising of a whole nation.
This remains largely an unspoken shame in Britain, especially at
the BBC, which continues to boast about its rigour and objectivity
while echoing a corrupt and lying government, as it did before the
invasion. For evidence of this, there are two academic studies
available - though the capitulation of broadcast journalism ought
to be obvious to any discerning viewer, night after night, as
"embedded" reporting justifies murderous attacks on Iraqi towns and
villages as "rooting out insurgents" and swallows British army
propaganda designed to distract from its disaster, while preparing
us for attacks on Iran and Syria. Like the New York Times and most
of the American media, had the BBC done its job, many thousands of
innocent people almost certainly would be alive today.
When will important journalists cease to be establishment managers
and analyse and confront the critical part they play in the
violence of rapacious governments? An anniversary provides an
opportunity. Forty years ago this month, Major General Suharto
began a seizure of power in Indonesia by unleashing a wave of
killings that the CIA described as "the worst mass murders of the
second half of the 20th century". Much of this episode was never
reported and remains secret. None of the reports of recent terror
attacks against tourists in Bali mentioned the fact that near the
major hotels were the mass graves of some of an estimated 80,000
people killed by mobs orchestrated by Suharto and backed by the
American and British governments.
Indeed, the collaboration of western governments, together with the
role of western business, laid the pattern for subsequent
Anglo-American violence across the world: such as Chile in 1973,
when Augusto Pinochet's bloody coup was backed in Washington and
London; the arming of the shah of Iran and the creation of his
secret police; and the lavish and meticulous backing of Saddam
Hussein in Iraq, including black propaganda by the Foreign Office
which sought to discredit press reports that he had used nerve gas
against the Kurdish village of Halabja.
In 1965, in Indonesia, the American embassy furnished General
Suharto with roughly 5,000 names. These were people for
assassination, and a senior American diplomat checked off the names
as they were killed or captured. Most were members of the PKI, the
Indonesian Communist Party. Having already armed and equipped
Suharto's army, Washington secretly flew in state-of-the-art
communication equipment whose high frequencies were known to the
CIA and the National Security Council advising the president,
Lyndon B Johnson. Not only did this allow Suharto's generals to
co-ordinate the massacres, it meant that the highest echelons of
the US administration were listening in.
The Americans worked closely with the British. The British
ambassador in Jakarta, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, cabled the Foreign
Office: "I have never concealed from you my belief that a little
shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to
effective change." The "little shooting" saw off between half a
million and a million people.
However, it was in the field of propaganda, of "managing" the media
and eradicating the victims from people's memory in the west, that
the British shone. British intelligence officers outlined how the
British press and the BBC could be manipulated. "Treatment will
need to be subtle," they wrote, "eg, a) all activities should be
strictly unattributable, b) British [government] participation or
co-operation should be carefully concealed." To achieve this, the
Foreign Office opened a branch of its Information Research
Department (IRD) in Singapore.
The IRD was a top-secret, cold war propaganda unit headed by Norman
Reddaway, one of Her Majesty's most experienced liars. Reddaway and
his colleagues manipulated the "embedded" press and the BBC so
expertly that he boasted to Gilchrist in a secret message that the
fake story he had promoted - that a communist takeover was imminent
in Indonesia - "went all over the world and back again". He
described how an experienced Sunday newspaper journalist agreed "to
give exactly your angle on events in his article . . . ie, that
this was a kid-glove coup without butchery".
These lies, bragged Reddaway, could be "put almost instantly back
to Indonesia via the BBC". Prevented from entering Indonesia,
Roland Challis, the BBC's south-east Asia corres-pondent, was
unaware of the slaughter. "My British sources purported not to know
what was going on," Challis told me, "but they knew what the
American plan was. There were bodies being washed up on the lawns
of the British consulate in Surabaya, and British warships escorted
a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so that
they could take part in this terrible holocaust. It was only later
that we learned that the American embassy was supplying names and
ticking them off as they were killed. There was a deal, you see. In
establishing the Suharto regime, the involvement of the IMF and the
World Bank was part of it . . . Suharto would bring them back. That
was the deal."
The bloodbath was ignored almost entirely by the BBC and the rest
of the western media. The headline news was that "communism" had
been overthrown in Indonesia, which, Time reported, "is the west's
best news in Asia". In November 1967, at a conference in Geneva
overseen by the billionaire banker David Rockefeller, the booty was
handed out. All the corporate giants were represented, from General
Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank and US Steel to ICI and British
American Tobacco. With Suharto's connivance, the natural riches of
his country were carved up.
Suharto's cut was considerable. When he was finally overthrown in
1998, it was estimated that he had up to $10bn in foreign banks, or
more than 10 per cent of Indonesia's foreign debt. When I was last
in Jakarta, I walked to the end of his leafy street and caught
sight of the mansion where the mass murderer now lives in luxury.
As Saddam Hussein heads for his own show trial on 19 October, he
must ask himself where he went wrong. Compared with Suharto's
crimes, Saddam's seem second-division.
With British-supplied Hawk jets and machine-guns, Suharto's army
went on to crush the life out of a quarter of the population of
East Timor: 200,000 people. Using the same Hawk jets and
machine-guns, the same genocidal army is now attempting to crush
the life out of the resistance movement in West Papua and protect
the Freeport company, which is mining a mountain of copper in the
province. (Henry Kissinger is "director emeritus".) Some 100,000
Papuans, 18 per cent of the population, have been killed; yet this
British-backed "project", as new Labour likes to say, is almost
never reported.
What happened in Indonesia, and continues to happen, is almost a
mirror image of the attack on Iraq. Both countries have riches
coveted by the west; both had dictators installed by the west to
facilitate the passage of their resources; and in both countries,
blood-drenched Anglo-American actions have been disguised by
propaganda willingly provided by journalists prepared to draw the
necessary distinctions between Saddam's regime ("monstrous") and
Suharto's ("moderate" and "stable").
Since the invasion of Iraq, I have spoken to a number of principled
journalists working in the pro-war media, including the BBC, who
say that they and many others "lie awake at night" and want to
speak out and resume being real journalists. I suggest now is the
time.
John Pilger's book Tell Me No Lies: investigative journalism and
its triumphs is published in paperback by Vintage.
10/13/2005
Revving Up the China Threat: new stage in US China
policy
By Michael T. Klare
Japan Focus on October 13, 2005.
Ever since taking office, the Bush Administration has struggled to
define its stance on the most critical long-term strategic issue
facing the United States: whether to view China as a future
military adversary, and plan accordingly, or to see it as a rival
player in the global capitalist system. Representatives of both
perspectives are nestled in top Administration circles, and there
have been periodic swings of the pendulum toward one side or the
other. But after a four-year period in which neither outlook
appeared dominant, the pendulum has now swung conspicuously toward
the anti-Chinese, prepare-for-war position. Three events signal
this altered stance.
The first, on February 19, was the adoption of an official
declaration calling for enhanced security ties between the United
States and Japan. Known officially as the "Joint Statement of the
U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee," the declaration was
announced at a meeting of top Japanese and US officials, including
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Rice. The very
fact that US and Japanese officials were discussing improved
security links was deeply troubling to the Chinese, given the
continued salience of Japanese World War II militarism in the
sixtieth anniversary year of Japan’s surrender, and their
ongoing anxiety about US plans to construct an anti-Chinese
alliance in Asia. But what most angered Beijing was the
declaration's call for linked US-Japanese efforts to "encourage the
peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Strait through
dialogue." While sounding relatively innocuous to American ears,
this announcement was viewed in Beijing as highly provocative, an
example of illicit interference by Washington and Tokyo in China's
internal affairs. The official New China News Agency described the
joint declaration as "unprecedented" and quoted a senior foreign
ministry official as saying that China "resolutely opposes the
United States and Japan in issuing any bilateral document
concerning China's Taiwan, which meddles in the internal affairs of
China and hurts China's sovereignty."
The second key event was a speech Rumsfeld gave June 4 at a
strategy conference in Singapore. After reviewing current security
issues in Asia, especially the threat posed by a nuclear North
Korea, Rumsfeld turned his attention to China. The Chinese can play
a constructive role in addressing these issues, he observed. "A
candid discussion of China...cannot neglect to mention areas of
concern to the region." In particular, China "appears to be
expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in
many areas of the world," and is otherwise "improving its ability
to project power" in the region. Then, with consummate
disingenuousness, he stated, "Since no nation threatens China, one
must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing
large and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust
deployments?"
To Beijing, these comments must have been astonishing. No one
threatens China? What about the US planes and warships that
constantly hover off the Chinese coast, and the nuclear-armed US
missiles aimed at China? What about the delivery over the past ten
years of ever more potent US weapons to Taiwan? What about the US
bases that encircle China on all sides? But disingenuousness aside,
Rumsfeld's comments exhibited a greater degree of belligerence
toward China than had been expressed in any official US statements
since 9/11, and were widely portrayed as such in the American and
Asian press.
The third notable event was the release, in July, of the Pentagon's
report on Chinese combat capabilities, The Military Power of the
People's Republic of China. According to press reports, publication
of this unclassified document was delayed for several weeks in
order to remove or soften some of the more pointedly anti-Chinese
comments, to avoid further provoking China before George W. Bush's
November visit there. In many ways the published version is
judicious in tone, stressing the weaknesses as well as the
strengths of China's military establishment. Nevertheless, the main
thrust of the report is that China is expanding its capacity to
fight wars beyond its own territory and that this constitutes a
dangerous challenge to global order. "The pace and scope of China's
military build-up are, already, such as to put regional military
balances at risk," the report states. "Current trends in China's
military modernization could provide China with a force capable of
prosecuting a range of military operations in Asia--well beyond
Taiwan--potentially posing a credible threat to modern militaries
operating in the region."
This annual report, mandated by Congress in 2000, is intended as a
comprehensive analysis, not a policy document. However, the policy
implications of the 2005 report are self-evident: If China is
acquiring a greater capacity to threaten "modern militaries
operating in the region"--presumably including those of the United
States and Japan--then urgent action is needed to offset Chinese
military initiatives. For this very reason the document triggered a
firestorm of criticism in China. "This report ignores fact in order
to do everything it can to disseminate the 'China threat theory,'"
a senior foreign ministry official told the American ambassador at
a hastily arranged meeting. "It crudely interferes in China's
internal affairs and is a provocation against China's relations
with other countries."
While much of this was going on, the American public and mass media
were preoccupied with another source of tension between the United
States and China: the attempted purchase of the California-based
Unocal Corporation by the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation
(CNOOC). This attempt received far greater attention in the media
than did the events described above, yet it will have a far less
significant impact on US-Chinese relations than will the Pentagon's
shift to a more belligerent, anti-Chinese stance--one that greatly
increases the likelihood of a debilitating and dangerous military
competition between the United States and China.
What lies behind this momentous shift? At its root is the
continuing influence of conservative strategists who have long
championed a policy of permanent US military supremacy. This
outlook was first expressed in 1992 in the first Bush
administration’s Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) for fiscal
years 1994-99, a master blueprint for US dominance in the post-cold
war era. Prepared under the supervision of then Under Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz and leaked to the press in early 1992, the
DPG called for concerted efforts to prevent the rise of a future
military competitor. "Our first objective is to prevent the
re-emergence of a new rival...that poses a threat on the order of
that posed formerly by the Soviet Union," the document stated.
Accordingly, "we [must] endeavor to prevent any hostile power from
dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated
control, be sufficient to generate global power." This has remained
the guiding principle for US supremacists ever since.
In this new century the injunction to prevent the emergence of a
new rival "that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly
by the Soviet Union" can apply only to China, as no other potential
adversary possesses a credible capacity to "generate global power."
Hence the preservation of American supremacy into "the far realm of
the future," as then-Governor George W. Bush put it in a 1999
campaign speech, required the permanent containment of China--and
this is what Rice, Rumsfeld and their associates set out to do when
they assumed office in early 2001.
This project was well under way when the 9/11 attacks occurred.
Those events gave the neoconservatives a green light to implement
their ambitious plans to extend US power around the world. However,
the shift in emphasis from blocking future rivals to fighting
terrorism was troubling to many in the permanent-supremacy crowd
who felt that momentum was being lost in the grand campaign to
constrain China. Moreover, antiterrorism places a premium on
special forces and low-tech infantry, rather than on the costly
sophisticated fighters and warships needed for combat against a
major military power. For at least some US strategists, not to
mention giant military contractors, then, the "war on terror" was
seen as a distraction that had to be endured until the time was
ripe for a resumption of the anti-Chinese initiatives begun in
February 2001. That moment seems to have arrived.
Why now? Several factors explain the timing of this shift. The
first, no doubt, is public fatigue with the "war on terror" and a
growing sense among the military that the war in Iraq has ground to
a stalemate. So long as public attention is focused on the daily
setbacks and loss of life in Iraq--and, since late August, on the
devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina--support for the
President's military policies will decline. And this, it is feared,
could translate into an allergy to costly military operations
altogether, akin to the dreaded "Vietnam syndrome" of the 1970s and
'80s. It is hardly surprising, then, that senior US officers are
talking of plans to reduce US troop strength in Iraq over the
coming year even though President Bush has explicitly ruled out
such a reduction.
At the same time, China's vast economic expansion has finally begun
to translate into improvements in its net military capacity.
Although most Chinese weapons are hopelessly obsolete--derived, in
many cases, from Soviet models of the 1950s and '60s--Beijing has
used some of its newfound wealth to purchase relatively modern arms
from Russia, including fighter planes, diesel-electric submarines
and destroyers. China has also been expanding its arsenal of
short-range ballistic missiles, many capable of striking Taiwan and
Japan. None of these systems compare to the most advanced ones in
the American arsenal, but their much-publicized acquisition has
provided fresh ammunition to those in Washington who advocate
stepped-up efforts to neutralize Chinese military capabilities.
Under these circumstances, the possibility of a revved-up military
competition with China looks unusually promising to some in the
military establishment. No American lives are at risk in such a
drive. Any bloodletting, should it occur, lies safely in the
future. These moves are supported by a recent surge in anti-Chinese
popular sentiment, brought about in part by high gasoline prices
(which many blame on China’s oil thirst), the steady loss of
American jobs to low-wage Chinese industry, and the (seemingly)
brazen effort by China’s leading oil company to acquire
Unocal. This appears, then, to be an opportune moment for renewing
the drive to constrain China. But the brouhaha over Unocal,
together with other Chinese attempts to secure oil and natural gas,
also reveals something deeper at work: a growing recognition that
the United States and China are now engaged in a high-stakes
competition to gain control of the rest of the world's oil
supplies.
Just a decade ago, in 1994, China accounted for less than 5 percent
of the world's net petroleum consumption and produced virtually all
of the oil it burned. True, China was already number four among the
world's top oil consumers, after the United States, Japan and
Russia, but its daily usage of 3 million barrels represented less
than one-fifth of what the United States consumed on an average
day. Since then, however, China has jumped to the number-two
position (supplanting Japan in 2003), and its current consumption
of about 6 million barrels per day is approximately one-third of
America's usage. However, domestic oil output in China has remained
relatively flat over this period, so it must now import half of its
total supply. And with China's economy roaring ahead, its need for
imported petroleum is expected to climb much higher in the years to
come: According to the Department of Energy (DOE), Chinese oil
consumption is projected to reach 12 million barrels per day in
2020, of which 9 million barrels will have to be obtained abroad.
With the United States also needing more imports--as much as 16
million barrels per day in 2020—and with no credible research
on alternative energy sources approaching conclusion, the stage is
being set for an intense struggle over access to the world's
petroleum supplies.
This would not be such a worrisome prospect if global petroleum
output could expand sufficiently between now and 2020 to satisfy
increased demand from both China and the United States--and in
fact, the DOE predicts that sufficient oil will be available at
that time. But many energy experts believe world oil output, now
hovering at about 84 million barrels per day, is nearing its
maximum or "peak" sustainable level, and that there is no way that
the world will ever reach the 111 million barrels projected by the
DOE for 2020. If this proves to be the case, or even if output
continues to rise but still falls significantly short of the DOE
projection, the competition between the United States and China for
whatever oil remains in ever diminishing foreign reservoirs will
become even more fierce and contentious.
The intensifying US-Chinese struggle for oil is seen, for instance,
in China's aggressive pursuit of supplies in such countries as
Angola, Canada, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia,
Sudan and Venezuela. Until recently China derived very little of
its petroleum from these countries; now it has deals with all of
them to secure new supplies. That China is competing so vigorously
with the United States for access to foreign oil is worrisome
enough to American business leaders and government officials, given
the likelihood that this will result in higher energy costs leading
to a slowing economy; the fact that it is seeking to siphon off oil
from places like Canada, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela--which
have long sent a large share of their supplies to America--is the
source of even greater concern, holding as it does the potential to
result in a permanent shift in the global flow of oil. From a
strategic perspective, moreover, US officials worry that China's
efforts to acquire more oil from Iran and Sudan have been
accompanied by deliveries of arms and military aid, thus altering
the balance of power in areas considered vital to Washington's
security interests. China, whose reach not long ago seemed to be
limited to regions on its immediate borders, has emerged as a
significant global player in the energy sweepstakes and beyond.
Initially, discussion of China's intensifying quest for foreign oil
was largely confined to the business press. But now, for the first
time, it is being viewed as a national security matter--that is, as
a key factor in shaping US military policy. This outlook was first
given official expression in the 2005 edition of the Pentagon's
report on Chinese military power. "China became the second largest
consumer and third largest importer of oil in 2003," the report
notes. "As China's energy and resource needs grow, Beijing has
concluded that access to these resources requires special economic
or foreign policy relationships in the Middle East, Africa, and
Latin America, bringing China closer to problem countries such as
Iran, Sudan, and Venezuela." Again, the implications of this are
obvious: China's growing ties to "problem states" constitute a
threat to strategic initiatives in volatile areas of particular
interest to US policymakers and so must be met with countermoves of
one sort or another.
Two trends have thus joined to propel this new swing of the
pendulum: a drive to refocus attention on the long-term challenge
posed by China and fresh concern over China's pursuit of oil
supplies in strategic areas of the globe. So long as these two
conditions prevail--and there is no repeat of 9/11--the calls for
increased US military preparation for an eventual war with China
will grow stronger. The fact that Bush has seen his job-approval
rating plummet in the wake of Hurricane Katrina might also tempt
the Administration to play up the China threat. While none of this
is likely to produce an immediate rupture in US-Chinese
relations--the forces favoring economic cooperation are too strong
to allow that--we can expect vigorous calls for an ambitious US
campaign to neutralize China's recent military initiatives.
This campaign will take two forms: first, a drive to offset any
future gains in Chinese military strength through permanent US
military-technological superiority; and second, what can only be
described as the encirclement of China through the further
acquisition of military bases and the establishment of
American-led, anti-Chinese alliances will continue. None of these
efforts are being described as part of an explicit, coherent
strategy of containment, but there is no doubt from the testimony
of US officials that such a strategy is being implemented.
Elements of this strategy can be detected, for example, in the
March 8 testimony of Adm. William Fallon, Commander of the US
Pacific Command (PACOM), before the Senate Armed Services
Committee. "It's certainly cause for concern to see this continuing
buildup [by China]," he noted. "It seems to be more than might be
required for their defense. We're certainly watching it very
closely, [and] we're looking at how we match up against these
capabilities."
To counter China's latest initiatives, Fallon called for
improvements in US antimissile and antisubmarine warfare (ASW)
capabilities, along with a deepening of military ties with
America's old and new allies in the region. With respect to missile
defense, for example, he stated that "an effective, integrated and
tiered system against ballistic missiles" should be "a top priority
for development." Such a system, in all likelihood, would be aimed
at China's short-range missiles. He also called for establishment
of a "robust and integrated ASW architecture" to "counter the
proliferation of submarines in the Pacific."
Note that Fallon is not talking about a conflict that might occur
in the central or eastern Pacific, within reach of America's
shores; rather, he is talking about defeating Chinese forces in
their home waters, on the western rim of the Pacific. That US
strategy is aimed at containing China to its home territory is
further evident from the plans he described for enhanced military
cooperation with US allies in the region. These plans, encapsulated
in the Theater Security Cooperation Plan (TSCP), were described by
Fallon as "one of the primary means through which we extend US
influence, develop access and promote competence among potential
coalition partners."
Typically, the cooperation will include the delivery of arms and
military assistance, joint military maneuvers, regular consultation
among senior military officials and, in some cases, expansion (or
establishment) of US military bases. In Japan, for example, PACOM
is cooperating in the joint development of a regional ballistic
missile defense system; in the Philippines it is assisting in the
reorganization and modernization of national forces; in
Singapore--which already plays host to visiting US aircraft
carriers--"we are exploring opportunities for expanded access to
Singaporean facilities." And this is not the full extent of US
efforts to establish an anti-Chinese coalition in the region. In
his March testimony Fallon also described efforts to woo India into
the American orbit. "Our relationship with the Indian Integrated
Defense Staff and the Indian Armed Services continues to grow," he
noted. "US and Indian security interests continue to converge as
our military cooperation leads to a stronger strategic
partnership." Central Asia. All this and much more is described as
an essentially defensive reaction to China's pursuit of forces
considered in excess of its legitimate self-defense
requirements--"outsized," as Secretary Rice described the Chinese
military in a recent interview. One can argue, of course, about
what constitutes an appropriate defense capacity for the world's
most populous nation, but that's not the point--what matters is
that any rational observer in Beijing can interpret Fallon's
testimony (and the other developments described above) as part of a
concerted US campaign to contain China and neutralize its military
capabilities.
Chinese leaders are fully aware of their glaring military
inferiority vis-à-vis the United States, and so can be
expected to avoid a risky confrontation with Washington. But any
nation, when confronted with a major military buildup by a
potential adversary off its shores, is bound to feel threatened and
will respond accordingly. For China, which has been repeatedly
invaded and occupied by foreign powers over the past few centuries,
and which clashed with US forces in Korea and Vietnam, the US
buildup on its doorstep must appear especially threatening. It is
hardly surprising, then, that Beijing has sought modern weapons and
capabilities to offset America's growing advantage. Nor is it
surprising that China has sought to buttress its military ties with
Russia--the two countries held joint military exercises in August,
the first significant demonstration of military cooperation since
the Korean War--and to discourage neighboring countries from
harboring American bases. (Uzbekistan asked the United States to
shut down its base at Karshi-Khanabad after a meeting of the
Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization in July.) But even if
defensive in nature, these moves will provide additional ammunition
for those in Washington who see a Chinese drive for regional
hegemony and so seek an even greater US capacity to overpower
Chinese forces.
This is all bound to add momentum to the pendulum's swing toward a
more hostile US stance on China. But that outcome is not
foreordained: Future economic conditions--a sharp rise in US
interest rates, for example--could strengthen the hand of those in
Washington who seek to prevent a breach in US-Chinese relations.
These figures argue, for example, that Beijing helps keep US
interest rates low by using part of its enormous trade surplus to
buy large quantities of US Treasury bonds and that China represents
an expanding market for US cars, aircraft and other manufactured
goods. But the pursuit of ever more potent weapons on each side
could prove to be a self-sustaining phenomenon, undermining efforts
to improve relations.
The debate over China's military power and the purported need for a
major US buildup to counter China's recent arms acquisitions will
become increasingly heated in the months and years to come. As
always, it will be fueled by claims of this or that Chinese
military advance, often employing pseudo-technical language
intended to exaggerate Chinese capabilities and discourage close
scrutiny by ordinary citizens. If this trend persists, we will
become locked into an ever expanding arms race that can only have
harmful consequences for both countries--even if it doesn't lead to
war. Questioning inflated Pentagon claims of Chinese strength and
resisting the trend toward a harsher anti-Chinese military stance
are essential, therefore, if we are to avert a costly and dangerous
course.
Michael T. Klare is the defense correspondent of The Nation and a
professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College.
His latest book is Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of
America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum. This is a
slightly revised version of an article appeared in The Nation on
October 24, 2005.
10/13/2005
SPACE PRESERVATION TREATY
The current U.S. Administration plans to deploy space-based
weapons. One main purpose is to dominate and control space, as the
actor who dominates and controls space, dominates and control all
on earth. Space-based weapons are dangerous, destabilizing, too
costly, and unnecessary, as they would not protect anyone or
anything…and there is a better choice. Fortunately, a U.N.
Space Preservation Treaty is ready to be signed into law. This is
the one moment in time when space-based weapons can be
banned…before deployment under the guise of
“research” or “tests” of missile defense,
and/or before the accelerated momentum of funding, vested interests
and technology gets put into place that would make this impossible
to stop. Plans are in motion to convene a U.N. Space Preservation
Treaty Conference.
CONTINUE:
http://peaceinspace.blogs.com/space_preservation_treaty/
10/13/2005
U.S. cash, demands of war fuel human trade
BY CAM SIMPSON AND AAMER MADHANI
Chicago Tribune
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/world/12891064.htm
(KRT) - American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S.
military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor,
mainly impoverished Asians who often are deceived, exploited and
put in harm's way in Iraq with little protection.
The United States has long condemned the practices that
characterize this human trade as it operates elsewhere in the
Middle East. Yet this very system is now part of the privatization
of the American war effort and is central to the operations of
Halliburton subsidiary KBR, the U.S. military's biggest private
contractor in Iraq...
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