Articles (Oct – Dec 2010)
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Insecurity and Policy Choices
by Paul Rogers, Oxford Research Group, December 2010
The international security agenda in 2011 will continue to be dominated by four countries across the Middle East and South Asia – Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Iraq
Eight months after the March elections, a political stalemate remains, as persistent efforts to form a new government fail through internal dissension. …
The long-term problem in Iraq goes beyond the immediate confessional divisions and is rooted in the impact of a bitter seven-year war. That has cost the lives of at least 120,000 people, with hundreds of thousands more injured – many of them maimed for life. About four million people have been displaced, half internally and half to neighbouring countries. …
Under the Obama administration, the position of the US forces in Iraq has changed somewhat, but not as much as has been suggested, with the United States actually retaining considerable influence. The target of achieving a reduction in US forces from around 150,000 to 50,000 by late Summer was achieved, and troops are now meant to avoid combat roles and to be involved mainly in securing US interests and in training Iraqi security forces, offering them combat assistance only in rare circumstances. The stated longer-term aim is withdrawal of all forces by the end of 2011, but there are three elements that inject a degree of uncertainty.
One is the persistent reports that US Special Forces are regularly involved in security operations, but because they are not classed as regular combat troops, a fiction is maintained of minimal US involvement in combat. The second is a series of reports that Washington is anticipating an agreement with Iraqi politicians to keep around 15,000 troops in the country after the end of 2011. Finally, the sheer size of the US diplomatic presence, with a massive embassy complex in Baghdad and large missions in other cities, means that there will be a substantial US-controlled private security contingent in the country for years to come, in addition to troops that may remain.
The United States government regards Iraq as a country of great importance to its interests in the Gulf region, partly because of the oil and gas reserves of the entire region and partly because of Iraq’s own large oil reserves, but most importantly as a counter to the influence of Iran. Given that it is the Tehran administration that has gained most from the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime, and has worked hard to increase its influence in Iraq, a US government of any complexion is unlikely to let its security presence in Iraq diminish to the extent that is currently suggested. The United States will therefore be engaged substantially in Iraq for decades rather than years. …
Read the article in full at www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk
Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail
by Chris Hedges, Truthdig, December 20, 2010
One hundred thirty-one demonstrators, Chris Hedges among them, were arrested in front of the White House on Thursday.
The solemnity of that funerary march, the hush, was the hardest and most moving part of Thursday’s protest against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It unwound the bitter memories and images of war I keep wrapped in the thick cotton wool of forgetfulness. I was transported in that short walk to places I do not like to go. Strange and vivid flashes swept over me—the young soldier in El Salvador who had been shot through the back of the head and was, as I crouched next to him, slowly curling up in a fetal position to die; the mutilated corpses of Kosovar Albanians in the back of a flatbed truck; the screams of a woman, her entrails spilling out of her gaping wounds, on the cobblestones of a Sarajevo street. My experience was not unique. Veterans around me were back in the rice paddies and lush undergrowth of Vietnam, the dusty roads of southern Iraq or the mountain passes of Afghanistan. Their tears showed that. There was no need to talk. We spoke the same wordless language. The butchery of war defies, for those who know it, articulation.
What can I tell you about war?
War perverts and destroys you. It pushes you closer and closer to your own annihilation—spiritual, emotional and, finally, physical. It destroys the continuity of life, tearing apart all systems, economic, social, environmental and political, that sustain us as human beings. War is necrophilia. The essence of war is death. War is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. It is organized sadism. War fosters alienation and leads inevitably to nihilism. It is a turning away from the sanctity of life.
And yet the mythic narratives about war perpetuate the allure of power and violence. They perpetuate the seductiveness of the godlike force that comes with the license to kill with impunity. All images and narratives about war disseminated by the state, the press, religious institutions, schools and the entertainment industry are gross and distorted lies. The clash between the fabricated myth about war and the truth about war leaves those of us who return from war alienated, angry and often unable to communicate. We can’t find the words to describe war’s reality. It is as if the wider culture sucked the words out from us and left us to sputter incoherencies. How can you speak meaningfully about organized murder? Anything you say is gibberish. …
There’s more here:
www.truthdig.com/report/item/bitter_memories_of_war_on_the_way_to_jail_20101220
The mystery of missile defence
Aljazeera
By Chris Arsenault
December 17, 2010
After the latest failed missile defence tests, critics wonder why the US has spent $100bn on the system.
The cold war ended two decades ago, but dreams of an impenetrable missile shield from Ronald Reagan – who once called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” – are firmly back on the US national security agenda.
Late on Wednesday, the US tested its newest round of interceptors, spending $100m to blast a missile from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean towards California.
The anti-ballistic missile system failed, as the kill vehicle designed to blow the projectile out of the sky missed its target, adding to a long-list of unsuccessful tests for the expensive weaponisation scheme.
Since the end of the cold war the US has spent “approximately $100bn” on missile defence systems, Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defence Agency, told Al Jazeera.
Wednesday’s failed long-range test was important because it involved an attempt to intercept a dummy warhead, rather than the usual testing scheme of just maneuvering the missile to a particular point in space, said Ian Anthony, the research coordinator for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a think-tank in Sweden.
Big bucks
Despite constant technological problems with the system, the White House has requested $9.9bn for missile defence programmes for the next fiscal year (2011), Anthony told Al Jazeera.
Those vast sums of money concern Theodore Postol, a professor of science and international security at MIT and a former scientific adviser to the head of US naval operations. The weapons expert, hardly a liberal dove, just doesn’t believe missile defence can work technologically.
“If you look at it as an engineering and defence enterprise, it makes no sense,” Postol told Al Jazeera.
Technological failures and massive financial costs aside, if Barack Obama, the US president, is serious about reducing the possibility of nuclear war, then it seems developing new missile systems isn’t the best way to inspire international trust.
“The US will always say that missile defence is a defensive system,” said Tom Sauer, a professor of international relations at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. “The problem is that the Russians or Chinese may perceive it as threatening or offensive. When it comes to missile defence, perspective is everything.” …
Read on: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/12/20101217172028248218.html
A rage unquenched: AfPak, Iraq, and the west
OpenDemocracy
by Paul Rogers
December 16, 2010
A pattern of attacks in the United States and Europe by individual jihadists is deeply connected to both the effects and the perceptions of a decade’s war across the greater middle east.
The attempted attack on shoppers in central Stockholm on 11 December 2010 by the Iraq-born Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly has yet to be fully investigated, but it may have involved this individual undertaking an operation on his own initiative.
If this proves to be the case (evidence is still being examined), the Swedish incident may take its place among a recent pattern:
* the attempt of the young Nigerian, Omar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, to destroy an aircraft on an Amsterdam-Detroit flight on 25 December 2010
* the arrest on 12 October 2010 of a young construction worker and convert to Islam, Antonio Martinez, on a charge of planning to blow up a military-recruitment centre in Baltimore, Maryland
* the arrest on 26 November 2010 a Somali-born youth, Mohammed Osman Mohamud over a bomb-plot in Portland, Oregon.
In the last two cases, the FBI had been tracking the suspects in ways that may amount to an effective entrapment at the supposed decisive moment. In any event, a notable aspect of these incidents in the United States and western Europe in 2009-10 is that individuals from various diasporas seem to be acting with little if any connection to the putative “al-Qaida central”.
In the sense that al-Qaida has never been a unified and narrowly hierarchical movement even at the height of its activities in the early-to-mid 2000s, this is nothing new. Many of its attacks in this period – in (among other places) Tunisia, Indonesia, Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Jordan, Britain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan – were only loosely linked to the al-Qaida leadership, or even more decentred and local. A feature most had in common, though, was coordination among a defined group. In this respect the trend towards self-motivated extreme behaviour is a departure. …
But actions by dislocated individuals (often of diasporic origins) do appear to be becoming more common. The roots of their radicalisation are complex and variable; the process may include a transformation of religious identity, a measure of indoctrination, a perception of marginalisation (or some mix of these). The clear context of this process, however, is often a bitter opposition to western policies and actions (especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan) as well as to America’s consistent support for Israel.
Read more:
www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/rage-unquenched-afpak-iraq-and-west
America: the panoptic shiver
OpenDemocracy
by Paul Rogers
December 10, 2010
The hacked United States diplomatic missives reveal both the vast ambition and the new vulnerabilites of the world’s superpower.
Among the most compelling nuggets of information contained in the batch of United States diplomatic documents released by WikiLeaks and published in leading international newspapers is the list of installations in more than fifty countries which the state department in Washington deems to be a US security concern.
Some of the locations seem obvious (major oil-and-gas processing-plants and pipeline terminuses, for example); but others are far harder to fit any evident national-security frame (such as an Australian pharmaceutical plant specialising in anti-snake-venom treatments, and cobalt-mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo).
But even the more unlikely sites are relevant to a country that sees itself as the world’s sole superpower with interests across the globe. The anti-snake-venom plant in Australia almost certainly has the expertise and equipment to make antidotes to other toxins, and this could be highly significant in the event of a biological-warfare threat.
The cobalt-mines around Kolwezi and Mutshatsha in the southern DRC extract the world’s most important deposits of cobalt ores, and ferro-alloys containing cobalt have the specific property of retaining their shape at very high temperatures. They are therefore much in demand for the guidance-vanes of missile-engines and other elements of modern weapons-systems.
The more surprising elements of the list as much as the expected ones thus illustrate the continued reach of the United States’s strategic and security ambitions. But they also reveal something more: its new vulnerabilities. …
http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/america-panoptic-shiver
I Believe: ‘For us to survive and thrive in a new century, we must peaceably dismantle the United States of Empire’
This article by Rob Williams is from Burlington Free Press
“I believe the United States is no longer a functioning republic, but a dysfunctional empire.”
Let me answer by starting with first principles: I believe the United States is no longer a functioning republic, but a dysfunctional empire.
An “empire,” you ask? What is this — “Star Wars?”
Indeed, the United States is an “empire” comprised of more than 700 military bases networked together in more than 130 countries around the world, an “empire” that spends more on annual “defense” — $1 trillion (not including special war-spending earmarks) — than the next dozen countries combined …
The “United States of Empire” makes possible an unsustainable and inequitable global paradigm: 8 percent of the global population — us, the people of the United States — are consuming 25 percent of the world’s resources.
And we, all of us on planet Earth, are living at a historical moment when the twin sisters of peak oil and climate change are ushering in a 21st century world of energy scarcity that will look quite different than the 20th century world of energy abundance.
I believe that for us to survive and thrive in a new century, we must peaceably dismantle the United States of Empire, and create a new political and economic paradigm.
The UNtied States …
Read this excellent article here: BurlingtonFreePresss.com
“No US or any other foreign cluster munition stockpiles in the UK”
Military Bases
Fabian Hamilton: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will urge the US Administration to remove stores of cluster bombs on US bases in the UK; and if he will make a statement. …
Nick Harvey: The US Administration has removed its stores of cluster munitions from its bases in the UK. There are no US or any other foreign cluster munition stockpiles in the UK.
House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for November 16, 2010
WikiLeaks cables: Secret deal let Americans sidestep cluster bomb ban
Officials concealed from parliament how US is allowed to bring weapons on to British soil in defiance of treaty
British and American officials colluded in a plan to hoodwink parliament over a proposed ban on cluster bombs …
According to leaked US embassy dispatches, David Miliband, who was Britain’s foreign secretary under Labour, approved the use of a loophole to manoeuvre around the ban and allow the US to keep the munitions on British territory.
Unlike Britain, the US had refused to sign up to an international convention that bans the weapons because of the widespread injury they cause to civilians.
The US military asserted that cluster bombs were “legitimate weapons that provide a vital military capability” and wanted to carry on using British bases regardless of the ban. …
Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables-cluster-bombs-britain
UK ‘Promised To Protect US In Iraq Inquiry’
New WikiLeaks cables claim the Government protected US interests in the Iraq war inquiry and also reveal fears over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
According to one document released by the whistleblowing website, British officials warned the [Iraq] inquiry would attract a “feeding frenzy” when it started.
Article and video analysis here:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/WikiLeaks…
The real question:
Who will trust Washington ever again?
The number of “Secret” and “Confidential” U.S. documents now made public has reached such a flood tide that it seems like the very edifice of the superpower is cracking before our eyes.
Just consider the stunning total of over 640,000 U.S. military and diplomatic communications that have been exposed this year.
That’s how many secrets and confidences the organization known as WikiLeaks has handed over to the world’s media in two separate “dumpings,” the first in February and then again this week, with more to come.
This amounts to a virtual shredding of the American reputation for security. …
Read more: www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/11/29/f-vp-stewart.html
US military changes mind over ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on homosexuality
OpenDemocracy
By Luke Heighton
December 1, 2010
Defence Secretary Robert Gates urges Congress to allow lesbians and gays to serve openly in US military; Anger and confusion in Ivory Coast, as results of first presidential election in a decade are torn up; British government considers selling its intelligence agencies’ services to private companies. All this and more in today’s security briefing.
The Pentagon has today released the results of its survey into the attitudes of current service personnel towards the proposed repeal of the US military’s much-maligned ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy established in 1993. Currently the military is forbidden to inquire into a service member’s sexuality, but is still permitted to expel someone on the grounds of their sexual orientation. …
The 267-page report considered submissions by more than 115,000 service personnel and their spouses, 70% of whom felt that the presence of an openly gay or lesbian colleague in his or her unity would have “positive, mixed or non-existent” effects on the unit’s ability to perform its basic tasks. Almost the same proportion of respondents – 69% – said they believed they had already worked alongside a gay or lesbian service member. … Breaking the figures down according to voting tendencies, at least one survey has delivered similar results. According to the Washington Post-ABC News, 82% of Democrats, 77% of independents, and 64% of Republicans are in favour of allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly. …
Whether the existing law will be repealed any time soon, however, is a moot point. In clearly expressing the view that ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ should be removed from the statute book by the end of the year, Robert Gates was nevertheless extremely cautious when it came to the issue of practical reform, citing a lack of preparation. …
Read on: http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/security_briefings/011210
We are saddened
by the death of Chalmers Johnson
We are sad to report that Professor Chalmers Johnson, a great thinker, political scientist and historian, died on Saturday at the age of 79. He will be missed, but his writings and critical analysis of the US empire over many years will remain as a testimony to his brilliance and an inspiration to us all.
Below We’ve posted part of a tribute to Chalmers Johnson from the WashingtonNote.com
The Impact Today and Tomorrow of Chalmers Johnson
Next week, Foreign Policy magazine and its editor-in-chief Susan Glasser will be releasing its 2nd annual roster of the world’s greatest thinkers and doers in foreign policy. I have seen the list — and it’s impressively creative and eclectic.
There is one name that is not on the FP100 who should be — and that is Chalmers Johnson, who from my perspective rivals Henry Kissinger as the most significant intellectual force who has shaped and defined the fundamental boundaries and goal posts of US foreign policy in the modern era. …
However, this base of JPRI gave Chalmers Johnson the launch pad that led to the largest contribution of his career to America’s national discourse. From his granular understanding of political economy of competing nations, his understanding of the national security infrastructure of both sides of the Cold War, he saw better than most that the US had organized its global assets — particularly its vassals Japan and Germany — in a manner similar to the Soviet Union. Both sides looked like the other. Both were empires. The Soviets collapsed, Chalmers told me and wrote. The U.S. did not — yet. …
Johnson argued that there was no logic that existed any longer for the US to maintain a global network of bases and to continue the occupation of other countries like Japan. Johnson noted that there were over 39 US military installations on Okinawa alone. The military industrial complex that Eisenhower had warned against had become a fixed reality in Johnson’s mind and essays after the Cold War ended.
In four powerful books, all written not in the corridors of power in New York or Washington — but in his small home office at Cardiff-by-the-Sea in California, Johnson became one of the most successful chroniclers and critics of America’s foreign policy designs around the world. …
Read the full tribute here at www.thewashingtonnote.com
The road to endless war
By Paul Rogers, November 25, 2010
The politicians and diplomats lead the summits and rule the airwaves. But a close look at the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict reveals that the United States military take the decisions.
A clear narrative over Afghanistan emerged from the Nato summit held in Lisbon on 19-20 November 2010. At heart, the end is in sight for a difficult nine-year war: progress was being made on the ground, a timetable was in place for a gradual handover to the Afghan national army, and foreign-troop withdrawals would start in 2011 and be completed by 2015.
A senior Kabul-based Nato official, Mark Sedwill, even ventured the observation that children growing up in the city were likely to be safer there than their equivalents in London, Glasgow and New York; a view rebutted by the head of Save the Children, Justin Forsyth: “Afghanistan is the worst place on earth to be born a child – one in four children living there will die before they reach the age of 5”.
The official’s comparison, unwary as it may sound, is in the spirit of Nato’s larger public stance. This is that International Security Assistance Forces (Isaf) under Nato command, led overall by General David H Petraeus, are turning the tide against the Taliban – not least as the post-”surge” United States troop contingents engage the militants directly in the field.
A very different view is offered by a Pentagon report delivered to Congress on 23 November, which states that violence in Afghanistan has reached an all-time high. “(The) insurgency has proven resilient with sustained logistics capacity and command and control”, it says.
Both these messages cannot be right. But there is a way to reconcile them. US forces, especially the marine corps, are pursuing a notably more aggressive counterinsurgency stance – including in relation to Pakistan – and this is an important factor in increasing the overall rate of violence. At the same time, the senior US military commanders in charge of the war are explicitly intent on victory, or something that can resemble it. The same evidence is being read in very different ways. …
Read on… www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/road-to-endless-war
The Confrontation in the West Sea Area Begs Peaceful Settlement
Korea Report, November 24, 2010
Guns have flared again dangerously in Korea — in Yeonpyeong Island in the West Sea (Yellow Sea), within the disputed maritime border area between the two sides of Korea. Despite North Korea’s claim that its action was in retaliation to its vocally-protested South Korea’s naval exercises in the region, the North Korean military was wrong to fire its artillery directly at the island, hitting both military and civilian targets, resulting in military and civilian casualties and substantial damage to the island. This in turn prompted South Korea to return artillery fire to the North Korean shore.
This confrontation is one of many deadly clashes that has occurred in this area, due to the long-standing dispute arising from the unsettled vestige of the Korean War and the fragility of its armistice, which still stands to this day — 57 years after its signing. Unlike the land-based DMZ agreed upon by the Korean War armistice, the maritime border was not clearly delineated. The UN command then unilaterally created the Northern Limit Line (NLL), which encroaches dangerously close to North Korea’s shores in the area (just 7.5 miles from Yeonpyeong Island to North Korea) — and which expectedly North Korea does not acknowledge.
Read the rest of this article here:
http://koreareport2.blogspot.com/2010/11/confrontation-in-west-sea-begs-peaceful.html
Missile defence: the $270m ‘protective umbrella’ for 28 Nato allies
The Guardian
By Richard Norton-Taylor
November 19, 2010
What is the purpose of the proposed missile defence system?
To protect Nato allies and countries in the eastern Mediterranean from a perceived growing threat, notably long-range Shahab-3 and Qiam-1 weapons, which have a range of some 2,500 miles, being developed by Iran …
Why now?
The US has persuaded most of its Nato allies the time has come for a “protective umbrella”. …
Have all parties signed up to it?
Yes, in principle. Turkey’s objections have been allayed by lack of specific reference to its neighbour, Iran. Russia privately agrees … Israel, and the Gulf states, have their own anti-missile systems.
How will it work?
In stages. From next year US will deploy Aegis warships with interceptors in the eastern Med, supported by mobile radar units and run from a control centre in Ramstein, Germany. By 2015, there will be a land-based Aegis anti-missile system in Poland or Romania (or both). Third phase, due in 2018, would bring unmanned drones. By 2020, the idea is to have longer range missiles in place against a threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles which would be monitored by powerful large early radar warning systems, such as that in Fylingdales in North Yorkshire. The US satellite ground station at Menwith Hill, also in North Yorkshire, would also have a key role.
How much will it cost?
About $270m…
Read the full article here:
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/19/nato-missile-defence
JFK Speaks of Peace
Peace and Conflicy Monitor
by David Krieger
November 22, 2010
On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated. Nearly every American who is old enough can remember where he was when he heard the news of Kennedy’s death. In my case, I was on a train platform in Japan when I was told of the assassination. A Japanese man came up to me and said, “I’m very sorry to tell you, but your president has been shot and killed.” I remember being stunned by the news and by a sense of loss.
On June 10, 1963, just six months before his life was cut short, Kennedy gave the Commencement Address at American University. His topic was peace. He called it “the most important topic on earth.” As a decorated officer who served in combat during World War II, he knew about war.
Kennedy spoke of a generous and broad peace: “What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek?” he asked. “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons or war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”
He recognized that nuclear weapons had created “a new face of war.” He argued, “Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”
Just eight months before giving this speech, Kennedy had been face to face with the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He knew that it was possible for powerful, nuclear-armed nations to come to the brink of nuclear war, and he knew what nuclear war would mean for the future of humanity. “I speak of peace,” he said, “as the necessary rational end of rational men.”
Kennedy asked us to examine our attitudes toward peace. “Too many of us think it is impossible,” he said. “Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable – that mankind is doomed – that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.” …
Read on: www.monitor.upeace.org/innerpg.cfm?id_article=756
Encircling Russia, Targeting China, NATO’S True Role in US Grand Strategy
GlobalResearch.ca
by Diana Johnstone
November 18, 2010
On November 19 and 20, NATO leaders meet in Lisbon for what is billed as a summit on “NATO’s Strategic Concept”. Among topics of discussion will be an array of scary “threats”, from cyberwar to climate change, as well as nice protective things like nuclear weapons and a high tech Maginot Line boondoggle supposed to stop enemy missiles in mid-air. The NATO leaders will be unable to avoid talking about the war in Afghanistan, that endless crusade that unites the civilized world against the elusive Old Man of the Mountain, Hassan i Sabah, eleventh century chief of the Assassins in his latest reincarnation as Osama bin Laden. There will no doubt be much talk of “our shared values”.
Most of what they will discuss is fiction with a price tag.
The one thing missing from the Strategic Concept summit agenda is a serious discussion of strategy.
This is partly because NATO as such has no strategy, and cannot have its own strategy. NATO is in reality an instrument of United States strategy. Its only operative Strategic Concept is the one put into practice by the United States. But even that is an elusive phantom. American leaders seem to prefer striking postures, “showing resolve”, to defining strategies.
One who does presume to define strategy is Zbigniew Brzezinski, godfather of the Afghan Mujahidin back when they could be used to destroy the Soviet Union. Brzezinski was not shy about bluntly stating the strategic objective of U.S. policy in his 1993 book The Grand Chessboard: “American primacy”. As for NATO, he described it as one of the institutions serving to perpetuate American hegemony, “making the United States a key participant even in intra-European affairs.” In its “global web of specialized institutions”, which of course includes NATO, the United States exercises power through “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus, even though that power originates ultimately from a single source, namely, Washington, D.C.”
The description perfectly fits the Lisbon “Strategic Concept” conference. Last week, NATO’s Danish secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced that “we are pretty close to a consensus”. And this consensus, according to the New York Times, “will probably follow President Barack Obama’s own formulation: to work toward a non-nuclear world while maintaining a nuclear deterrent”.
Wait a minute, does that make sense? No, but it is the stuff of NATO consensus. Peace through war, nuclear disarmament through nuclear armament, and above all, defense of member states by sending expeditionary forces to infuriate the natives of distant lands.
A strategy is not a consensus written by committees. …
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21999
Britain’s Defense Cuts: Grim Portent for U.S. Military?
By Tony Karon
Time.com
October 21, 2010
… The defense spending cuts announced this week as part of the British government’s massive deficit-cutting austerity program mean that the next time America goes to war in some distant land, it is unlikely to be joined by significant numbers of British squaddies. Besides scrapping (for at least a decade) its naval capacity to send air power overseas, the U.K. will cut its defense budget by 8%, losing 17,000 personnel and cutting back its armory of tanks and artillery.
Americans may not consider the U.S. an empire, but there’s no question that its military is equipped and deployed on an imperial scale. … The Pentagon maintains more than 800 bases beyond the 50 states, and stations close to 300,000 troops abroad. The 2009 U.S. defense budget of $660 billion was more than the combined defense expenditures of the next 17 countries on the spending table. And that budget continues to rise steadily, growing at 4.8% for 2010, a year in which the U.S. economy’s GDP growth is likely to be less than 2%.
Militarily, the U.S. is the British Empire of the 21st century — and then some. But it is policing the world on the back of a colossal $1.5 trillion budget deficit and a staggering $13.5 trillion national debt. Its economy is in the grip of a deep, and possibly long-term, crisis that shows little sign of reducing an unemployment rate close to 10%, let alone being in a position to make the desperately needed investments in everything from education to infrastructure necessary to restore long-term competitiveness. …
Read the full article here:
www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2026961,00.html?xid=rss-top-aol
| Wikileaks revelations: relentless drumbeat of civilian deaths |
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Following the publication by Wikileaks of 400,000 pages confirming what the anti-war movement has always said about the barbarism that would ensue from this unjustified and illegal attack, an observer editorial, seven years too late, now says the war was “was not just a strategic failure, it was, for the occupying powers, a moral catastrophe.” See the editorial, together with comments from Observer readers: See also: We don’t do body counts, said Donald Rumsfeld. Oh yes you do: The Guardian’s Wikileaks coverage STOP PRESS Tony Blair has been recalled to give further evidence to the Chilcot Enquiry which has been gathering evidence concerning the illegal war against Iraq. He is appearing again to account for the ‘conflicting evidence’ he gave. With thanks to Stop The War Coalition: http://stopwar.org.uk/
Dispatches: Iraq’s Secret War Files: This programme (watch here), shown on Channel 4 (UK television), exposes the full and unreported horror of the Iraqi conflict and its aftermath.
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US Election 2010: Obama lost the terms of debate and a large segment of white women
Open Democracy
by Ruth Rosen
November 4, 2010
The modern women’s movement changed the terms of debate and eventually the national conversation. During this electoral cycle, Obama, Democrats and progressives alike have failed to define and then proudly grab the terms of debate.
In the wake of the election, progressive movements and their members are debating what went wrong. Some say the media amplified the bizarre statements of the Tea Party. Still others argue that Obama didn’t offer sufficient leadership or remind us what he had actually achieved during his first 18 months in office. Many blame no one, knowing that midterm elections bring a backlash, regardless of who is power.
All of these are basically true. But something gets lost in this wringing of hands or resigned acceptance of inevitable defeat. Barack Obama ignited a hope for change and then squandered the opportunity— right in the middle of high unemployment, terrible economic anxiety, and widespread fear of a declining America— to hold tightly to the terms of debate that vaulted him to power and might have resulted in many fewer Democratic losses. …
History reminds us that any social movement that changes the terms of debate will eventually change the national conversation.
Look back at the successes of the modern women’s movement. They didn’t win all their battles, but they forced the nation to debate why men rape 92 year-old women or 3 three year- old girls and gradually people began to recognize that rape is not about sexual lust. They also forced the nation to consider what constitutes sexual harassment at work—for which there existed no language before the movement—and over time, the public began to understand why sexual blackmail undermined a woman’s civil rights and her right to earn a living. By openly discussing “date rape” and “marital rape,” activists launched a heated debate over what is acceptable and what is not. In the end, many laws, policies and social customs changed dramatically.
But it didn’t stop there. Violence against women and incest against girls had been painful individual secrets. By openly discussing them, women even convinced the UN’s General Assembly in 1993 to vote for a convention that described such violence as a violation of their human rights. A decade later, rape as a tool of war also became a violation of women’s human rights, replacing their traditional role as part of the spoils of war. …
The women’s movement didn’t win all its battles. But it did change the terms of debate, redefining traditional customs as crimes. That was its great accomplishment and that is why the nation is still debating much of its movement’s agenda from the late 1960s and 1970s. …
What Obama, Democrats and progressives failed to do during this electoral cycle was to define and then proudly grab the terms of debate. If you look back at all successful social movements, all their great accomplishments, some of which changed law, were to change the terms of debate. The Civil Rights movement forced Americans to question the truthfulness of racial supremacy and the fairness of racial inequality. The environmental movement asked whether we could protect the planet’s health and sustainability if we raped all of it resources. And the gay and lesbian movements, by encouraging people to leave their closets, forced Americans to recognize the ordinary humanity of their gay friends, neighbors, and relatives. Just recently, a new movement launched by young undocumented college-aged immigrants, is encouraging students to come out of the shadows and, following the successes of gays and lesbians, proudly say “I’m undocumented and unafraid.”
These are the social movements that change the conversation. Instead, Obama, Democrats and progressives allowed the well organized, oil-funded Tea Party and its media echo chamber to turn the mantra of “no taxes , no government, no deficit” into the terms of debate. No wonder they have so many victories to celebrate after the election.
Would South Korea fall down into a ‘swamp of MD’?
Peace Network
By Cheong Wooksik
October 25, 2010
South Korea (ROK) is in fact, being incorporated into the Missile Defense (MD) system initiated by the United States. Following the large deployment of US MD system such as the most advanced Patriot (PAC-3) and radar in South Korea during the Roh Moo Hyun- Bush period, the speed of her enrollment [into the US MD system] is being rapidly accelerated under the Lee Myung Bak administration.
Kim Tae-Young, Minister of National Defense, caused the recent controversy. During a National Assembly’s government affairs audit on the Ministry of National Defense on Oct. 22, upon the question by Shin Hak-Yong, National Assembly member, Democratic Party, which was whether it had been the condition for the ROK to join the US-demanding MD when the ROK and US had agreed upon the installation of the ‘Extended Deterrence Policy Committee’ at the time of the Security Consultative meeting (SCM), [the Minister replied] on his question that “We are examining the MD issue together, too.”
Following it, Minister Kim said, “The thing to be a little considered is why our people have denying response on the MD. It is because the United States created the MD to protect the United States’ homeland. Now it is changed and [the need of MD] is regionally considered. So it became a little different from the past and [we] are prudently considering it. [His] remark was sufficient for the people to have the suspicion that the Lee Myung-Bak government is stepping on the process of joining the MD.
As the controversy became bigger, the Ministry of National Defense began to explain it in a separate material on [Oct.] 23. It stated that, “The both authorities of the ROK and US would discuss on the sharing information and operating measures to protect the Korean peninsula from the North Korean threat of the Weapons of Mass Destruction within the ‘Extended Deterrence Policy Committee’ in the future.” Despite that, he claimed that, “ It does not mean that we join the regional MD of the United States, but that, while we establish the Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD), primarily for the subsystem defense, we will also strengthen the cooperation in sharing information and operating usable assets to effectively respond to the North Korean ballistic missile threat, with the United States Forces of Korea (USFK).” In a word, what it means is while it strengthens the MD cooperation with the United States, it is not the participation in the MD initiated by the United States.
United States says, “South Korea is an important partner.”
However, such explanation by Lee Myung-Bak government can be said, in a word, like ‘covering the sky with the palm of hand.’ Even though he is nominally denying the joining the [US] MD, the symptoms of [South Korea] being virtually and more deeply incorporated into the MD can be grasped here and there. …
http://peacekorea.org/zbxe/50051#0
The Online Threat
The New Yorker
by Seymour M. Hersh
November 1, 2010
Should we be worried about a cyber war?
On April 1, 2001, an American EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance plane on an eavesdropping mission collided with a Chinese interceptor jet over the South China Sea, triggering the first international crisis of George W. Bush’s Administration. The Chinese jet crashed, and its pilot was killed, but the pilot of the American aircraft, Navy Lieutenant Shane Osborn, managed to make an emergency landing at a Chinese F-8 fighter base …
The plane carried twenty-four officers and enlisted men and women attached to the Naval Security Group Command, a field component of the National Security Agency. They were repatriated after eleven days; the plane stayed behind. The Pentagon told the press that the crew had followed its protocol, which called for the use of a fire axe, and even hot coffee, to disable the plane’s equipment and software. These included an operating system created and controlled by the N.S.A., and the drivers needed to monitor encrypted Chinese radar, voice, and electronic communications. It was more than two years before the Navy acknowledged that things had not gone so well. “Compromise by the People’s Republic of China of undestroyed classified material . . . is highly probable and cannot be ruled out,” a Navy report issued in September, 2003, said. …
The U.S. realized the extent of its exposure only in late 2008. A few weeks after Barack Obama’s election, the Chinese began flooding a group of communications links known to be monitored by the N.S.A. with a barrage of intercepts …
Read the full story here: www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/01/101101fa_fact_hersh
The Strategic Defence and Security Review
The Government published its Strategic Defence and Security Review on Tuesday 19 October.
The SDSR is available here (PDF document):
Strategic Defence and Security Review – Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty
See Chapter 3 – “The Deterrent”, for full details of the Trident programme.
Al-Qaida: condition and prospect
From Open Democracy, written By Paul Rogers
October 14, 2010
A series of developments across greater west Asia offers evidence of al-Qaida’s dispersed reality, continued energy and potential vulnerability.
In the tenth year of the “war of terror”, and almost fifteen years after a deadly bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in June 1996 announced the arrival of a new Islamist armed nucleus in the middle east, what are the condition and prospects of the al-Qaida movement? Three developments in different parts of “greater west Asia” and beyond offer valuable evidence on which to make an assessment.
The first is in Yemen, where a group that has long claimed association with al-Qaida – the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army (AAIA) – now declares its intent to establish a substantial militia that aims to overthrow the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh… . There may be an element of hubris in the assertion, but Yemen’s fraught circumstances – much of the country is effectively out of the control of the central government, and there is deep poverty and insecurity – make it at least worthy of being noted (see Fred Halliday, “Yemen: travails of unity“, 3 July 2009). …
The second development is the warning issued by the United States on 4 October 2010 about the possibility of commando-attacks in western Europe (with France, Germany and Britain regarded as possible targets) which might follow the pattern of the Mumbai operation in November 2008 (see Saskia Sassen, “Cities and new wars: after Mumbai“, 29 November 2009). The suggestion from Washington is that the originating source of this danger is western Pakistan, but for the security forces in France at least the current concerns are more focused on north Africa, and especially Algeria (see Matthew Saltmarsh, “France Faces Terror Threats At Home And Abroad”, New York Times, 11 October 2010). This follows the kidnapping of seven workers, including five French expatriates, at uranium-mines in northern Niger; in turn this is part of a pattern of spreading militancy across parts of the Sahel (see Stephen Ellis, “The Sahara’s new cargo: drugs and radicalism“, 14 April 2010).
The third development is a drone-strike in the North Waziristan region of north-west Pakistan that, according to a usually reliable source, had targeted other people but in the event killed Mohammad Usman, one of al-Qaida’s most significant (if little-known) leaders (see Syed Saleem Shazad, “Al-Qaeda takes a big hit“, Asia Times, 9 October 2010). Most of the senior figures in al-Qaida have until recently come from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria and other points west, reflecting the ideological and military currents that gave birth to the movement. Usman, by contrast, belonged to a new and young generation of non-Arab al-Qaida leaders born in Pakistan which is attempting to forge links with radicalised Pakistanis.
The cost of success
Together, these three developments illustrate the diversification of the notably loose entity referred to as “al-Qaida”. What it has been plausible to describe as the group’s heartland of western Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan has since 2008 been under even more intense pressure from multiple raids by pilotless US drones operated largely by the CIA.
The fact that these missions have regularly hit civilians as well as their militant targets has helped to make them very unpopular in Pakistan as well as provoking further resistance, as the closure of Nato-Isaf’s tanker supply-routes and the fire-bombing of convoys in early October 2010 indicate …
Read the full article on www.opendemocracy.net
See also “The AfPak endgame” also by Paul Rogers
Professor Boyle: US Threats to Nuke Iran Termed Illegal
MWC News
October 10, 2010
By Sherwood Ross
The U.S. today is threatening to attack Iran “under the completely bogus pretext” that it might have a nuclear weapon, a distinguished American international legal authority says.
When Obama administration officials, like those of the Bush regime before it, say “all options are on the table,” they are threatening nuclear war and that is prohibited by international law, says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois at Champaign.
Not only has the International Atomic Energy Commission said this charge against Iran “is simply not true,” Boyle pointed out, but threatening Iran with nuclear war in itself constitutes an international crime.
“If we don’t act now, Obama and his people could very well set off a Third World War over Iran that has already been threatened publicly by (President George W.) Bush Jr.,” he asserted.
In a speech on nuclear deterrence to the 18th conference on “Direct Democracy” in Feldkirch, Austria, Boyle said it has been estimated an attack on Iran with tactical nuclear weapons by the U.S. and Israel could kill nearly 3-million people.
(Boyle charges the U.S. has already committed “acts of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and has authorized, armed, equipped, and supplied Israel to commit…outright genocide against Lebanon and Palestine.”) …
Read on: http://mwcnews.org/focus/analysis/5791-us-threats-to-nuke-iran.html
“Reset” in US Russian Relations and “Missile Defence”
Global Research
by Valentin Zorin
October 13, 2010
There was cause for much optimism when President Obama made the first steps towards a ‘reset’ in US-Russian relations by renouncing plans by his predecessor, George Bush, to deploy American missiles in close proximity to the Russian borders on the territory of Poland and the Czech Republic.
And it cleared the way for settling other important problems in bilateral relations. Preparations for signing a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty got off the ground at last, and the no-easy talks on the treaty eventually resulted in an agreement which was signed by Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama in Prague in May this year.
But as it became clear shortly afterward, the issue is far from simple. At the end of September Bucharest said it was getting ready to sign an agreement on the deployment of an American military base on the territory of Rumania. A similar base was to be deployed on the territory of Bulgaria. As it happens, Rumania will have the bases instead of Poland, and Bulgaria instead of the Czech Republic. But a change of location makes no difference as far as the end result is concerned. Given the situation, the American moves cause as much concern as before.
As he commented on them, Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said: “Russia and the US have discussed the issue of missile defense at length and agreed that there would be no anti-missiles in Poland or the Czech Republic. And all of a sudden, we learn that the missiles are being moved to other European countries. So where is the ‘reset’?”
Among other questions which are brought up in connection with the missile defense program is how long the United States is going to drag its feet over ratifying the new START Treaty. Signed in May, the treaty was supposed to be ratified by the Senate by the middle of September. Now, as the first ten days of October are coming to a close, the opponents to the treaty are preventing the ratification from going ahead by linking it to missile defense. Senator Richard Lugar said a few days ago that the treaty should be supplemented with a special resolution stating that it imposes no restrictions on American plans to develop a missile defense system.
Mighty circles in the US have been doggedly pursuing a missile defense program ever since it was launched by President Ronald Reagan 25 years ago. …
Read in: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21372
U.S. Missile Defense Outline
The Gouverneur Times
Written by Karen Parrish
October 15, 2010
“To have effective missile defense, you need more than one layer,” the director of the Defense Missile Agency said this week.
During the Atlantic Council missile defense conference here Oct. 12, Army Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly described the “phased, adaptive approach” policy for missile defense in Europe that President Barack Obama approved in 2009.
O’Reilly said the three layers of the approach will counter short-range, medium- and intermediate-range, and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
O’Reilly then outlined the four phases of the U.S. missile defense policy for Europe.
Phase one, to be implemented between now through 2012, he said, calls for current, proven missile systems and sensors to be deployed at sea to protect Europe and deployed U.S. servicemembers and their families.
During phase two, extending from 2012 through 2015, improved sea- and land-based systems now in development and testing will increase protection from short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, O’Reilly said.
Phase three, running from 2015 through 2018, will establish protection at sea and ashore from intermediate-range missiles, he said.
Phase four, extending from 2018 through 2020, will provide early-interception capability against medium- and intermediate-range missiles, he said, with a secondary capability to protect against intercontinental ballistic missiles. …
Read on: www.gouverneurtimes.com/gt-world-national-article/19837-us-missile-defense-outline
The AfPak endgame
From Open Democracy, written By Paul Rogers
October 7, 2010
Behind the escalation of United States cross-border raids into Pakistan and of Taliban attacks on coalition tanker-convoys lie the cold political reality of an unwinnable war.
The problems for the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, both military and political, continue to mount. The expansion of military operations into Pakistan is also having a blowback effect which, proclaimed tactical successes notwithstanding, presents increasing perils to the coalition.
The United States military commander in Afghanistan, General David H Petraeus, and his political masters in the Barack Obama administration have effectively centred their strategy on accepting that the war is unwinnable in the conventional sense; and that the best that can be achieved is a negotiated withdrawal. The main component of their approach is the military surge, whose purpose is to establish a position of strength that can be the foundation of the best deal possible (including with the Taliban, or elements thereof) to cover a withdrawal (see “Afghanistan: wind of change“, 9 September 2010).
Therein lies the problem: both because any such advantage on the ground is proving impossibly elusive, and because none of the coalition’s local partners can be relied on to cooperate in political terms. The latter point is highlighted by reports of negotiations between senior officials of the Hamid Karzai government and the Taliban over ending the war (see Karen De Young et al., “Taliban, Afghan Leaders in Talks, Sources Say”, Washington Post, 6 October 2010).
The spreading war
The war is not going well. The escalation of operations around Kandahar increases the salience of cross-border support for the Taliban. This does much to explain the considerable surge in armed-drone attacks – with twenty-three in the last month alone – as well as in cross-border helicopter-raids, one of which killed two Pakistani border-guards and obliged the US to issue unprecedented statements of regret (see Jane Perlez & Waqar Gillani, “U.S. Apologizes as Attacks in Pakistan Continue“, New York Times, 6 October 2010).
An important aspect of the raids is the killing of German and British citizens – people who have been targeted as suspected paramilitaries. In effect, Nato is eliminating its own citizens in the absence of any legal process whatsoever. …
Obama Going to India in November
to Sell Weapons
India, US to ink huge military deal
Source: Global Times
US President Barack Obama’s visit to New Delhi in November may secure $5 billion worth of arms sales to India Russia’s Vzglyad newspaper reported Monday.
The deal, if signed during Obama’s visit, would make the US replace Russia as India’s biggest arms supplier, the paper said, adding that the deal would also help India curb China’s rise.
India’s shortlist includes Patriot defense systems, Boeing mid-air
refueling tankers and certain types of howitzers, and the total cost of the deal may exceed $10 billion …
Read on: http://world.globaltimes.cn/asia-pacific/2010-07/550830.html
How arms deals are shaping the Mideast
Christian Science Monitor
By Kristen Chick
October 6, 2010
A record U.S. arms deal with Saudi Arabia is part of an effort to put pressure on Iran, partly by strengthening alliances with oil-rich neighbors also concerned by Iran’s rise.
Gulf states are stepping up weapons purchases from the United States in the face of an emerging Iran and other regional threats. The deals highlight the extent to which Washington now considers Gulf allies as key to containing Iran. …
From 2005 to 2009, the US sold up to $37 billion in arms to Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait, according to the US Government Accountability Office.
The recent US-Saudi deal, which is expected to be submitted to Congress for approval soon, could be worth as much as $60 billion.
It would include 84 new Boeing F-15 fighter jets and upgrades to another 70 of them, as well as three types of helicopters: 72 Black Hawks, 70 Apaches, and 36 Little Birds.
In addition, US officials are discussing a $30 billion package to upgrade Saudi Arabia’s naval forces.
The US is also expected to agree next year to sell the Theater High Altitude Area Defense missile defense system to the UAE for about $7 billion. …
Read on:
www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/1006/How-arms-deals-are-shaping-the-Mideast
Laser Weapons Move Forward, Slowly
AOL News
By Sharon Weinberger
October 6, 2010
As the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency prepares for another test of the Airborne Laser, a chemical laser housed on a Boeing jumbo jet, the question still looms: When will any laser weapon be ready for the battlefield?
With billions of dollars and decades of work invested in such weapons, the short answer is: Probably not anytime soon, but some lasers are further along than others. …
[This arcticle then looks at the “top three military laser weapons”]
1) Airborne Laser: The next test of the Pentagon’s flying megawatt-class laser, known as the Airborne Laser Testbed, is likely to take place next week … originally supposed to be part of a missile defense system that would shoot down ballistic missiles in their initial phase of flight. …
2) Solid-State Laser: The Pentagon is also funding solid-state lasers, which although not nearly as powerful as chemical lasers, are more compact and are slowly reaching high power levels. …
3) Free Electron Laser: Boeing last month received a contract to complete the design of the Navy’s Free Electron Laser, a tunable beam of energy that can be used on board ships to destroy possible threats. …
Read the full article here:
www.aolnews.com/nation/article/laser-weapons-move-forward-slowly/19663509
Cost of an Empire: Five expensive, controversial U.S. military bases (not in Iraq or Afghanistan)
The Hawaii Independent
By Patrick Winn
October 4, 2010
BANGKOK, Thailand—If you spin a globe and randomly point to a country, there’s a one-in-five chance the U.S. military runs a piece of the nation underneath your finger.
The U.S. Defense Department has real estate in 46 countries and American territories, adding up to a whopping 837 overseas locations. It manages roughly 1,300 square miles, a combined area considerably larger than Rhode Island. Throw in bases within the territories and 50 states and you’ve got Ohio.
Beyond massive complexes in Germany, Japan, and South Korea, there are little-known holdings scattered around the planet: an old Dutch mine, a communications tower on Australia’s west coast, and an army sniper range in Djibouti.
How much does overseeing this sprawling foreign footprint really cost? The exact cost of managing troops, bases, fleets, and materiel overseas is difficult to determine. The think tank Foreign Policy in Focus estimates at least $250 billion. …
The article then takes a look at five U.S. military bases that have proven costly and controversial:
Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia
Location: Extremely remote island in the Indian Ocean
Real Estate: 595 buildings on 7,000 acres.
Value: $2.6 billion
Incirlik Air Base
Location: Southern Turkey
Real Estate: 675 buildings on 3,300 acres
Value: $1.7 billion
Naval Station Guantanamo Bay
Location: Cuba
Real Estate: 1,400 buildings on 28,800 acres
Value: $2.6 billion
Transit Center at Manas
Location: Near Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek
Real Estate: An estimated 37 acres of land and 200-plus facilities, all leased
Value: $63 million annual rent
Kadena Air Base
Location: Okinawa, a southern Japanese island
Real Estate: 1,850 buildings on nearly 11,000 acres
Value: $6.4 billion
Read this interesting and informative article here: www.thehawaiiindependent.com/story/cost-of-an-empire-five-expensive-controversial-u.s.-military-bases-not-in-i/
Finally the 1946 UKUSA Agreement is public.
It created a world-wide network of listening posts run by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which endures today.
In 1948 Canada joined and in 1956 Australia and New Zealand too – though they have always been junior partners. The latter, being Commonwealth countries, provide an important geographical spread as does GCHQ in Cyprus (which monitors the Middle East).
Read more here: www.archive.themhac.uk/the-american-bases/statewatch-org
Indian Government says NO to Global Network’s Planned International Conference
October 9-12th 2010
This conference that was to be held in Nagpur, India will not happen. For some strange undemocratic reason, our Indian hosts had to have the permission of their government in order to hold such an international peace confab.
There can be no doubt that the Indian government feared angering the U.S. by allowing such a conference to happen just before Obama’s trip. It is no secret that the U.S. has for several years been pushing India to develop a Space Command and to become a junior partner in the Pentagon’s growing Star Wars program.
See http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2010/08/indian-government-says-no-to-global.html
‘No seminar on nuclear disarmament’
from the Times of India:
“NAGPUR: In an apparent move to curb an ‘unwanted’ congregation, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) has struck down the application by a city-based activist known for his left leaning to hold a global seminar on nuclear disarmament in city.”
Lindis Percy and Laila Packer (Coordinators CAAB) were to have gone to this conference.
Report on the Nagpur Conference
A BRIEF REPORT ON THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE TO ACHIEVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND MISSILE DEFENCE FREE ASIA
Having been denied permission to organize an International conference on Achieving a Nuclear and Missile Defence Free Asia on 9-10,October 2010 at Nagpur, India, by the Govt of India a National Conference on the same theme was held at the same venue and dates.Vice Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, former Naval chief of India and Bruce Gagnon, Co-ordinator Global Network attended. More than 225 delegates from the States of Andhrapradesh, Madhypradesh, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, Orissa, New Delhi have participated nincludent more than students.
On 9th October the inaugural session was held and Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat made the inaugural address and Bruce Gagnon greeted the Conference. On 10th the discussions on Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, prevention of An Arms Race in the Outer Space, the concept of Asian Union and other issues were discussed. At the beginning of the discussion a Question and Answer session for 30 mts was held with Mr.J ayantha Dhanapala, former UN Under Secretary General from Sri lanka was held through Skype. Admiramal Bhagwat and Bruce hae extensivel highlighted the danger of Weaponistion of space.
A note worth feature was that many girl students and women intellectuals played a great role in the discussions and some of the peace activists from other states who attended the Conference were surprised at the dynamism with which the youth strongly articulated their views. This was noticed by Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat and Bruce Gagnon.
At the end a Nagpur Declaration was adopted.
On 11th night myself and Bruce left to Bhopal, Agra, Jammu and Srinagar
for a lecture tour.
On the 12th Bruce addressed a large gathering of Acdemicians and students at Bhopal in the Bhansal College of Technology and National Institute of Technology. At each of the meetings more than 200 staff and students were present. A retired Colonel Mr.N.P Dixit has taken the responisibility for organising the meetings assisted by Mr.Vivek Dhawan, CEO of Smrit Netcome Private Limited. In the evening Hindustan Times a daily news paper had an exclusive interview with Bruce.
On 13-14 October we were at Agra the place of Taj mahal. After seeing the beauty and grandeur of Taj mahal we met a group of Doctors of Indian Doctors for Peace & Development affiliated IPPNW and discussed various issues. After Bruce spoke about the danger of weaponistion of space, they have expressed that for the first time they are hearing about the danger from Space and they will be cooperating with the G.N in future. We left for Jammu on the evening of 14th.
On 15 Oct under the banner of Global Network a well attended public meeting was held at Jammu in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. This was a unique meeting attended by high intellectuals including scientists, retired and serving Govt Officilas, academicians, retired Military Officers, Trade Union leaders and others. It was addressed by Bruce, myself and Senior Advocate M.A. Goni former Advocate General of Jammu and Kashmir State.
On 16th we visited the house of Adv. Goni and discussed with him for a couple of hours on several international issues and the situation in J&K. We left to Srinagar on 17th and during our stay there till 19th we couldnt address any meetings because of the disturbances there and students are unable to attend the Colleges. However we held a brief of disucussion with the Principal of Government Womens College, Srinagar and got an assurance that she will assist us in spreading our movement amongst the students.This college has got more than 7,000 girl students.We visited the Office of the Rising Kashmir a daily English newspaper and discussed with the senior journalists on various issues. At Jammu Mr. Ashwani Pradhan, General Secretary of All India Peace & Solidarity Organisation of J&K State, leader of the Bank Employees and a member of the Global Network did a splendid job in organizing the meeting and also for our stay. At Srinagar we have been taken care by Mr. Abdul Ghani Hafiz and Mr.Abdul Rehamn Tukroo (An Ex. Member of the Legislative Council of J&K.) Both are very progressive individuals.
The experience of Bruce has already been put in his Blog .. Some Imortant Developments. Seeing the enthusiasm of the Youth at Nagpur in the conference, I am feeling to organize a National Conference of Youth at Nagpur in October 2011 on Nuclear Issues, PAROS and Global Warming to consolidate.
Colonel Dixit at Bhopal wants to host the G.N Annual Conference in 2012 at Bhopal. Bhopal is the Capital City of Madhyapradesh State and connected with AIR and Train services. If the G.N Board approves Mr. Dixit can be given the necessary directions.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ACHIEVING NULCEAR WEAPONS AND MISSILEDEFENCE FREE ASIA,9-10,OCTOBER 2010,NAGPUR
NAGPUR DECLARATION
The National Conference held at Nagpur on 9-10,October 2010 on Achieving Nuclear Weapons and Missile Defence Free Asia welcomes the statement of External Affairs Minister of India supporting Nuclear Disarmament in the UN Conference on Disarmament held on 24th Sept 2010. This conference suggests that the Nuclear Nations of Asia,like China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel jointly work for a Nuclear Free Asia and the World. To begin with they should hold a Conference shortly to deliberate on this important issue.
Many Asian Countries like China,India,South Korea,Japan and Israel are making rapid strides in the Space technology.This Conference alerts that the these countries should not drift away from the policy of Space for
Peace only and not to promote and participate in any Militarisation and weaponisation of Space.In addition they should collaborate with the efforts of Russia, China and Canada in the United Nations to Prevent an Arms Race in the outer Space.
This Conference alerts Asian countries not to fall a prey to the US & NATO manipulations to encircle Russia and China with Missile Defence deployment which is meant for first strike attacks. The Missile Defence system of US are infact Missile Offiensive programmes. Asian Countries should not allow any deployment of US Missile Defence systems any where in Asian Countries.
This Conference demands the dismantling of all Foreign Military Bases of US in Japan,South Korea, Diego Garcia, Phillippines, Thailand, Gaum and other Asian Countries.US is trying to expand NATO into Asia which is very dangerous and provocative and this Conference opposes this move and appeales to the people of Asia to oppose these US moves.
The imperialist forces engineered many conflicts in Asia. Inspiteof these conflicts, Asia is now rising. The economic growth of India,China and Vietnam etc. is note worthy. If Asian Countries are not involved in Nuclear and Space Arms races and reduce their military budgets, it will help to develop the human development of the people to a very extent. To address various political, security and economic issues, Asian countries should explore the possibility of establishing Asian Union on the lines of the European Union..
J.NARAYANA RAO
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