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Monday, June 13, 2005
The Short, Happy Life of the American Republic
The Scourge of Militarism: Rome and America
by Chalmers Johnson and Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch |
In September 2003, only four months after our president's "Mission Accomplished" moment on the USS Abraham Lincoln, it was already evident to some of us that neocon dreams of establishing a robust Pax Americana on the planet were likely to be doomed in the sands of Iraq – but that, in the process, the American constitutional system as we've known it might well be destroyed. The question of just what Rubicon we might have crossed when American troops first took a bridge over the Euphrates was on my mind – and Chalmers Johnson's as well. He sat down early that September, having just seen a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and wrote out his own version of the fall of the republic, which he entitled "The Scourge of Militarism," an essay as resonant today as it was then. It is the second offering in my Best of TomDispatch 2003 series.
Looking back almost two years later, Johnson writes,
"The American governmental system is no longer working the way it is supposed to. Many distinguished observers think it is badly damaged in terms of constitutional checks and balances and the structures put in place by the founders to prevent tyranny. General Tommy Franks, commander of the American assault on Baghdad, predicts that another terrorist attack on the United States would 'begin to unravel the fabric of our Constitution,' and he openly suggests that 'the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.'
"Another military writer, the historian Kevin Baker, fears that we are not far from the day when, like the Roman Senate in 27 B.C., our Congress will take its last meaningful vote and turn over power to a military dictator. 'In the end, we'll beg for the coup,' he writes. At the same time, the American public seems apathetic. Most Americans sense that the country is in great trouble, but evidently don't know how to think about the crisis we find ourselves in. Having been poorly schooled and without an elementary knowledge of earlier republics, the problems of standing armies in any form of democracy, and the threat of militarism (a fear that virtually all Americans shared during our first century as a republic), the American people today stare blankly at the mounting evidence that our military is totally out of control. Back in 2003, my 'Scourge of Militarism' essay tried to lay out some new ways to think about our current dilemmas based on what happened to an earlier republic faced with similar conditions. Unfortunately, given what's happened since, there is no reason to be optimistic about this fate of ours."
At the time, I introduced Johnson's essay this way – and I wouldn't change a word:
"We were to be the New Rome. As right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer (emphasis always on the 'hammer') wrote in Time magazine near the Ides of March, 2001 ('The Bush Doctrine, In American foreign policy, a new motto: Don't ask. Tell'), 'America is no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome. Accordingly, America is in a position to reshape norms, alter expectations, and create new realities. How? By unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will.'
"And that was before the terrorists of September 11th flew into the picture. In the wake of our president's declared 'war on terrorism' and an instant 'triumph' in Afghanistan, as the drums of war began to pound again, from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to those of the Washington Post, the New Rome analogy only grew and prospered. Empire, once a dirty word in the American lexicon, was suddenly a badge of pride, or at least a Kiplingesque 'burden' (as the New York Times Magazine had it in a cover story) to be hoisted on our capacious military shoulders. Our world, once we were done pounding it into shape with 'implacable demonstrations of will,' would put the Pax Romana and Pax Britannia combined into the shade. There would be nothing like it.
"Of course, along came history, which meant the unexpected, and blindsided our already dazzled neocon imperial dreamers. Now, Chalmers Johnson, who wrote a book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, which in the wake of September 11th came to seem all too prophetic, suggests that perhaps the imperial dreamers of this administration picked up the wrong end of the Roman analogy. What if the applicable part wasn't Pax Romana/Pax Americana, but the fall of the Roman republic under an onslaught of imperial militarism/the fall of the American empire under the same?
"Johnson's newest book, The Sorrows of Empire, takes up the thoroughly underreported, largely ignored issue of American militarism. Let him now plunge you into a short course in Roman history – and while you're reading, imagine that anyone in this country ever wanted us to be like the Roman empire in its heyday."
Little has changed since then, I'm afraid. Chalmers Johnson's books remain indispensable, and the militarism he addressed so starkly then is hardly less ignored in our country today (despite the publication of Andrew Bacevitch's remarkable book The New American Militarism); and, except at Web sites like Antiwar.com or LewRockwell.com, the fall of the republic isn't at the top of many American agendas. (Juan Cole at his Informed Comment Web site recently argued strikingly that our prison complex at Guantanamo should be closed exactly "because it was conceived as the beginning of the end of the American Republic.") One small change: Apologists for the Bush administration no longer speak or write proudly of our "Roman" legions marching forth to global battle, and yet the republic, already in shreds in 2003, remains desperately endangered. This essay was first posted on TomDispatch on Sept. 9, 2003. Tom
The Scourge of Militarism
Rome and America
by Chalmers Johnson
The collapse of the Roman republic in 27 B.C. has significance today for the United States, which took many of its key political principles from its ancient predecessor. Separation of powers, checks and balances, government in accordance with constitutional law, a toleration of slavery, fixed terms in office, all these ideas were influenced by Roman precedents. John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams often read the great Roman political philosopher Cicero and spoke of him as an inspiration to them. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, authors of the Federalist Papers, writing in favor of ratification of the Constitution signed their articles with the name Publius Valerius Publicola, the first consul of the Roman republic.
The Roman republic, however, failed to adjust to the unintended consequences of its imperialism, leading to a drastic alteration in its form of government. The militarism that inescapably accompanied Rome's imperial projects slowly undermined its constitution as well as the very considerable political and human rights its citizens enjoyed. The American republic, of course, has not yet collapsed; it is just under considerable strain as the imperial presidency – and its supporting military legions – undermine Congress and the courts. However, the Roman outcome – turning over power to an autocracy backed by military force and welcomed by ordinary citizens because it seemed to bring stability – suggests what might happen in the years after Bush and his neoconservatives are thrown out of office.
Obviously, there is nothing deterministic about this progression, and many prominent Romans, notably Brutus and Cicero, paid with their lives trying to head it off. But there is something utterly logical about it. Republican checks and balances are simply incompatible with the maintenance of a large empire and a huge standing army. Democratic nations sometimes acquire empires, which they are reluctant to give up because they are a source of wealth and national pride, but as a result their domestic liberties are thereby put at risk.
These not-particularly-original comparisons are inspired by the current situation of the United States, with its empire of well over 725 military bases located in other people's countries; its huge and expensive military establishment demanding ever more pay and ever larger appropriations from a supine and manipulated legislature; unsolved anthrax attacks on senators and newsmen (much like Rome's perennial assassinations); Congress' gutting of the Bill of Rights through the panicky passage of the PATRIOT Act – by votes of 76-1 in the Senate and 337 to 79 in the House; and numerous signs that the public is indifferent to what it is about to lose. Many current aspects of our American government suggest a Roman-like fatigue with republican proprieties. After Congress voted in October 2002 to give the president unrestricted power to use any means, including military force and nuclear weapons, in a preventive strike against Iraq whenever he – and he alone – deemed it "appropriate," it would be hard to argue that the Constitution of 1787 was still the supreme law of the land.
Checks and Balances
My thinking about the last days of republics was partly stimulated during the summer of 2003 by a new book and an old play. The book is Anthony Everitt's magnificent account of the man who had his head and both hands chopped off for opposing military dictatorship – Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician (Random House, 2001). The play was a modern-dress production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar seen at San Diego's Old Globe theater. The curtain opened on a huge backdrop of Julius Caesar looking remarkably like any seedy politician with the word "tyrant" scrawled graffiti-style beneath his face in red paint. At play's end, after Octavian's hypocritical comments on the death of Brutus, who was one of the republic's most stalwart supporters ("According to his virtue let us use him…"), the picture of Caesar dropped away, replaced by one of Octavian – soon to become the self-proclaimed god Augustus Caesar – in full military uniform and bearing a marked resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, Octavian's military rule did not actually follow at once after the suicides of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 B.C., and Shakespeare does not say it did. But that is what the play – and the history – are all about: killing Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 B.C., only prepared the ground for a more ruthless and determined successor.
The Roman republic is conventionally dated from 509 to 27 B.C. even though Romulus' founding of the city is traditionally said to have occurred in 753 B.C. All we know about its dim past, including the first two centuries of the republic, comes from the histories written by Livy and others and from the findings of modern archaeology. For the century preceding the republic, Rome had been ruled by Etruscan kings from their nearby state of Etruria (modern Tuscany), until in 510, according to legend, Sextus, the son of king Tarquinius Superbus ("King Tarquin"), raped Lucretia, the daughter of a leading Roman family. A group of aristocrats backed by the Roman citizenry revolted against this outrage and expelled the Etruscans from Rome. The rebels were determined that never again would any single man be allowed to obtain supreme power in Rome, and for four centuries the system they established more or less succeeded in preventing that from happening. "This was the main principle," writes Everitt, "that underpinned constitutional arrangements which, by Cicero's time [106 to 43 B.C.], were of a baffling complexity."
At the heart of the unwritten Roman constitution was the Senate, by the early years of the 1st century B.C. composed of about 300 members from whose ranks two chief executives, called consuls, were elected. The consuls took turns being in charge for a month each, and neither could hold office for more than a year. Over time, an amazing set of "checks and balances" evolved to ensure that the consuls and other executives whose offices conferred on them imperium – the right to command an army, to interpret and carry out the law, and to pass sentences of death – did not entertain visions of grandeur and overstay their time. At the heart of these restraints were the principles of collegiality and term limits. The first meant that for every office there were at least two incumbents, neither of whom had seniority or superiority over the other. Officeholders were normally limited to one-year terms and could be reelected to the same office only after waiting 10 years. Senators had to serve two to three years in lower offices – as quaestors, tribunes, aediles, or praetors – before they were eligible for election to a higher office, including the consulship. All officeholders could veto the acts of their equals, and higher officials could veto decisions of lower ones. The chief exception to these rules was the office of "dictator," appointed by the consuls in times of military emergency. There was always only one dictator, and his decisions were immune to veto; according to the constitution, he could hold office only for six months or the duration of a crisis.
Once an official had ended his term as consul or praetor, the next post below consul, he was posted in Italy or abroad as governor of a province or colony and given the title of proconsul. It is absurd for journalistic admirers of the U.S. military today to pretend that its regional commanders-in-chief for the Middle East (Centcom), Europe (Eucom), the Pacific (Pacom), Latin America (Southcom), and the United States itself (Northcom) are the equivalents of Roman proconsuls.(1) The Roman officials were seasoned members of the Senate who had held the highest executive post in the country, whereas American regional commanders are generals or admirals who have served their entire careers away from civilian concerns and risen to this post by managing to avoid making egregious mistakes.
After serving as consul in 63 B.C. (the year of Octavian's birth), for example, Cicero was sent to govern the colony of Cilicia in present-day southern Turkey, where his duties were both civilian and military. Over time, this complex system was made even more complex by the class struggle embedded in Roman society. During the first two centuries of the republic, what appeared to be a participatory democracy was in fact an oligarchy of aristocratic families that dominated the Senate. Not everyone was happy with this. After 287 B.C., when the constitution was more or less formalized, a new institution came into being to defend the rights of the plebs or populares, that is, the ordinary, non-aristocratic citizens of Rome. These were the tribunes of the people, charged with protection of the lives and property of plebeians. Tribunes could veto any election, law, or decree of the Senate, of which they were ex officio members, as well as the acts of all other officials (except a dictator). They could also veto each others' vetoes. "No doubt because their purpose in life was to annoy people," Everitt notes, "their persons were sacrosanct." Controlling appointments to the office of tribune later became very important to generals like Julius Caesar, who based their power on their armies plus the support of the populares against the aristocrats.
The system worked well enough and afforded extraordinary freedoms to the citizens of Rome so long as all members of the Senate recognized that compromise and consensus were the only ways to get anything done. Everitt poses the issue in terms of the different perspectives of Caesar and Cicero; Caesar was Rome's, and perhaps history's, greatest general; whereas Cicero was the most intellectual defender of the Roman constitution. Both were former consuls: "Julius Caesar, with the pitiless insight of genius, understood that the constitution with its endless checks and balances prevented effective government, but like so many of his contemporaries Cicero regarded politics in personal rather than structural terms. For Caesar the solution lay in a completely new system of government; for Cicero it lay in finding better men to run the government – and better laws to keep them in order."
"Remember That You Are Human"
Imperialism provoked the crisis that destroyed the Roman republic. After slowly consolidating its power over all of Italy and conquering the Greek colonies on the island of Sicily, the republic extended its conquests to Greece itself, to Carthage in North Africa, and to what is today southern France, Spain, and Asia Minor. By the 1st century B.C., Rome dominated all of Gaul, most of Iberia, the coast of North Africa, Macedonia (including Greece), the Balkans, and large parts of modern Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. "The republic became enormously rich on the spoils of empire," Everitt writes, "so much so that from 167 B.C. Roman citizens in Italy no longer paid any personal taxes." The republic also became increasingly self-important and arrogant, believing that its task was to bring civilization to lesser peoples and naming the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum (our sea), somewhat the way some Americans came in the 20th century to refer to the Pacific Ocean as an "American lake."
The problem was that the Roman constitution made administration of so large and diverse an area increasingly difficult and subtly altered the norms and interests that underlay the need for compromise and consensus. There were several aspects to this crisis, but the most important was the transformation of the Roman army into a professional military force and the growth of militarism. During the early and middle years of the republic, the Roman legions were a true citizen army composed of small, conscripted landowners. Differing from the American republic, all citizens between the age of 17 and 46 were liable to be called for military service. One of the more admirable aspects of the Roman system was that only those citizens who possessed a specified amount of property (namely, a horse and some land) could serve, thereby making those who had profited most from the state also responsible for its defense. (By contrast, of the 535 members of Congress, only seven have children in the U.S.' all-volunteer armed forces.) The Roman plebs did their service as skirmishers with the army or in the navy, which had far less honor attached to it. At the beginning of each term, the consuls appointed tribunes to raise two legions from the census roll of all eligible citizens.
When a campaign was over, the troops were promptly sent back to their farms, sometimes richer and flushed with military glory. Occasionally, the returning farmers got to march behind their general in a "triumph," the most splendid ceremony in the Roman calendar, a victory procession allowed only to the greatest of conquerors. The general himself, who paid for this parade, rode in a chariot with his face covered in red lead to represent Jupiter, king of the gods. A boy slave stood behind him holding a laurel wreath above his head while whispering in his ear "Remember that you are human." In Pompey's great triumph of 61 B.C., he actually wore a cloak that had belonged to Alexander the Great. After the general came his prisoners in chains and finally the legionnaires, who by ancient tradition sang obscene songs satirizing their general.
By the end of the 2nd century B.C., in Everitt's words, "The responsibilities of empire meant that soldiers could no longer be demobilized at the end of each fighting season. Standing forces were required, with soldiers on long-term contracts." The great general Caius Marius undertook to reform the armed forces, replacing the old conscript armies with a professional body of long-service volunteers. When their contracts expired, they expected their commanders, to whom they were personally loyal, to grant them farms. Unfortunately, land in Italy was by then in short supply, much of it tied up in huge sheep and cattle ranches owned by rich, often aristocratic, families and run by slave labor. The landowners were the dominant conservative influence in the Senate, and they resisted all efforts at land reform. Members of the upper classes became wealthy as a result of Rome's wars of conquest and bought more land as the only safe investment, driving small holders off their property. In 133 B.C., the gentry arranged for the killing of the tribune Tiberius Gracchus (of plebian origin) for advocating a new land-use law. Rome's population continued to swell with landless veterans. "Where would the land be found," asks Everitt, "for the superannuated soldiers of Rome's next war?"
During the last century before its fall, the republic was assailed by many revolts of generals and their troops, leading to gross violations of the constitution and on several occasions to civil wars. These included the uprisings of Marius and Sulla and of the failed revolutionary Catilina. There was also the Spartacus slave rebellion of 73 B.C., put down by the immensely wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus, who in the process crucified some 6,000 survivors. Crassus was a member of the First Triumvirate, along with Pompey and Caesar, which attempted to bring the situation under control by direct cooperation among the generals. Everitt writes,
"During his childhood and youth Cicero had watched with horror as Rome set about dismantling itself. If he had a mission as an adult, it was to recall the republic to order. … [He] noticed that the uninhibited freedom of speech which marked political life in the republic was giving way to caution at social gatherings and across dinner tables. … The Senate had no answer to Rome's problems and indeed sought none. Its aim was simply to maintain the constitution and resist the continual attacks on its authority. … The populares had lost decisively with the defeat of Catilina, but the snake was only stunned. Caesar, who had been plotting against Senatorial interests behind the scenes, was rising up the political ladder and, barring accidents, would be consul in a few years' time."
Caesar became consul for the first time in 59 B.C., enjoying great popularity with the ordinary people. After his year in office, he was rewarded by being named governor of Gaul, a post he held between 58 and 49, during which he earned great military glory and became immensely wealthy. In 49, he famously allowed his armies to cross the Rubicon, a small river in northern Italy that served as a boundary against armies approaching the capital, and plunged the country into civil war, taking on his former ally and now rival, Pompey. He won, after which, as Everitt observes, "No one was left in the field for Caesar to fight. … His leading opponents were dead. The republic was dead too: he had become the state." Julius Caesar exercised dictatorship from 48 to 44 and a month before the Ides of March had arranged to have himself named "dictator for life." Instead, he was stabbed to death in the Senate by a conspiracy of eight members, led by Brutus and Cassius, both praetors, known to history as "principled tyrannicides."
Shakespeare's recreation of the scenes that followed, based upon Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, has become as immortal as the deed itself. In a speech to the plebeians in the Forum, Brutus defended his actions. "If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him I say that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: Not that I lov'd Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living, and all die slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all freemen?" However, Mark Antony, Caesar's chief lieutenant, speaking to the same audience, had the last word. He turned the populace against Brutus and Cassius, and as they raced forth to avenge Caesar's murder, said cynically, "Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war."
Who Will Watch the Watchers?
The Second Triumvirate, formed to avenge Caesar, ended like the first, with only one man standing, but that man, Caius Octavianus (Octavian), Caesar's 18-year-old grand nephew, would decisively change Roman government by replacing the republic with an imperial dictatorship. Everitt characterizes Octavian as "a freebooting young privateer," who on Aug. 19, 43 B.C., became the youngest consul in Rome's history and set out, in violation of the constitution, to raise his own private army. "The boy would be a focus for the simmering resentments among the Roman masses, the disbanded veterans, and the standing legions." Cicero, who had devoted his life to trying to curb the kind of power represented by Octavian, now gave up on the rule of law in favor of realpolitik. He recognized that "for all his struggles the constitution was dead and power lay in the hands of soldiers and their leaders." In Cicero's analysis, the only hope was to try to co-opt Octavian, leading him toward a more constitutional position, while doing everything not to "irritate rank-and-file opinion, which was fundamentally Caesarian." Cicero would pay with his life for this last, desperate gamble. Octavian, allied with Mark Antony, ordered at least 130 senators (perhaps as many as 300) executed and their property confiscated after charging them with supporting the conspiracy against Caesar. Mark Antony personally added Cicero's name to the list. When he met his death, the great scholar and orator had with him a copy of Euripides' Medea, which he had been reading. His head and both hands were displayed in the Forum.
A year after Cicero's death, following the battle of Philippi where Brutus and Cassius ended their lives, Octavian and Antony divided the known world between them. Octavian took the West and remained in Rome; Antony accepted the East and allied himself with Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt and Julius Caesar's former mistress. In 31 B.C., Octavian set out to end this unstable arrangement, and at the sea battle of Actium in the Gulf of Ambracia on the western coast of Greece, he defeated Antony's and Cleopatra's fleet. The following year in Alexandria, Mark Antony fell on his sword and Cleopatra took an asp to her breast. By then, both had been thoroughly discredited for claiming that Antony was a descendant of Caesar's and for seeking Roman citizenship rights for Cleopatra's children by Caesar. Octavian would rule the Roman world for the next 45 years, until his death in 14 AD.
On Jan. 13, 27 B.C., Octavian appeared in the Senate, which had legitimized its own demise by ceding most of its powers to him and which now bestowed on him the new title of Augustus, first Roman emperor. The majority of the Senators were his solid supporters, having been handpicked by him. In 23 B.C., Augustus was granted further authority by being designated a tribune for life, which gave him ultimate veto power over anything the Senate might do. His power rested ultimately on his total control of the armed forces.
Although his rise to power was always tainted by constitutional illegitimacy – not unlike that of our own Boy Emperor from Crawford, Texas – Augustus proceeded to emasculate the Roman system and its representative institutions. He never abolished the old republican offices but merely united them under one person – himself. Imperial appointment became a badge of prestige and social standing rather than of authority. The Senate was turned into a club of old aristocratic families, and its approval of the acts of the emperor was purely ceremonial. The Roman legions continued to march under the banner SPQR – senatus populus que Romanus, "the Senate and the Roman People" – but the authority of Augustus was absolute.
The most serious problem was that the army had grown too large and was close to unmanageable. It constituted a state within a state, not unlike the Pentagon in the United States today. Augustus reduced the army's size and provided generous cash payments to those soldiers who had served more than 12 years, making clear that this bounty came from him, not their military commanders. He also transferred all legions away from Rome to the remote provinces and borders of the Empire, to ensure their leaders were not tempted to meddle in political affairs. Equally astutely, he created the Praetorian Guard, an elite force of 9,000 men with the task of defending him personally, and stationed them in Rome. They were drawn only from Italy, not from distant provinces, and were paid more than soldiers in the regular legions. They began as Augustus' personal bodyguards, but in the decades after his death they became decisive players in the selection of new emperors. It was one of the first illustrations of an old problem of authoritarian politics: create one bureaucracy, the Praetorian Guard, to control another bureaucracy, the regular army, but before long the question will arise: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will watch the watchers?)
Augustus is credited with forging the Roman Peace (Pax Romana), which historians like to say lasted more than 200 years. It was, however, a military dictatorship and depended entirely on the incumbent emperor. And therein lay the problem. Tiberius, who reigned from 14-37 AD, retired to Capri with a covey of young boys who catered to his sexual tastes. His successor, Caligula, who held office from 37-41, was the darling of the army, but on Jan. 24, 41 AD, the Praetorian Guard assassinated him and proceeded to loot the imperial palace. Modern archaeological evidence strongly suggests that Caligula was an eccentric maniac, just as history has always portrayed him.(2)
The fourth Roman emperor, Claudius, who reigned from 41 to 54, was selected and put into power by the Praetorian Guard in a de facto military coup. Despite the basically favorable portrayal of him by Robert Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) and years later on TV by Derek Jacobi, Claudius, who was Caligula's uncle, was addicted to gladiatorial games and fond of watching his defeated opponents being put to death. As a child, Claudius limped, drooled, stuttered, and was constantly ill. He had his first wife killed and married Agrippina, daughter of the sister of Caligula, after having the law changed to allow uncles to marry their nieces. On Oct. 13, 54 AD, Claudius was killed with a poisoned mushroom, probably fed to him by his wife, and at noon that same day, the 16-year-old Nero, Agrippina's son by a former husband, was acclaimed emperor in a carefully orchestrated piece of political theater. Nero, who reigned from 54 to 68, was a probably insane tyrant who has been credited with setting fire to Rome in 64 and persecuting some famous early Christians (Paul and Peter), although his reputation has been somewhat rehabilitated in recent years as a patron of the arts.
The Short, Happy Life of the American Republic
After Augustus, not much recommends the Roman Empire as an example of enlightened government despite the enthusiasm for it of such neoconservative promoters of the George W. Bush administration as the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer, the Los Angeles Times' Max Boot, and the Weekly Standard's William Kristol. My reasons for going over this ancient history are not to suggest that our own Boy Emperor is a second Octavian but rather what might happen after he is gone. The history of the Roman republic from the time of Julius Caesar on suggests that it was imperialism and militarism – poorly understood by all conservative political leaders at the time – that brought it down. Militarism and the professionalization of a large standing army create invincible new sources of power within a polity. The government must mobilize the masses in order to exploit them as cannon fodder, and this leads to the rise of populist generals who understand the grievances of their troops and veterans.
Service in the armed forces of the United States has not been a universal male obligation of citizenship since 1973. Our military today is a professional corps of men and women who join up for their own reasons, commonly to advance themselves in the face of one or another cul de sac of American society. They normally do not expect to be shot at, but they do expect all the benefits of state employment – steady pay, good housing, free medical benefits, relief from racial discrimination, world travel, and gratitude from the rest of society for their military "service." They are well aware that the alternatives civilian life in America offers today include difficult job searches, no job security, regular pilfering of retirement funds by company executives and their accountants, "privatized" medical care, bad public elementary education systems, and insanely expensive higher education. They are ripe, it seems to me, not for the political rhetoric of patrician politicians who have followed the Andover, Yale, Harvard Business School route to riches and power but for a Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Juan Perón – a revolutionary, military populist with no interest in republican niceties so long as he is made emperor.
Regardless of the outcome of the next presidential election, the incumbent will have to deal with the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, our empire of bases, and a 50-year-old tradition of not telling the public what our military establishment costs and the devastation it can inflict. History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless. Roman history suggests that the short, happy life of the American republic is in serious trouble – and that conversion to a military empire is, to say the least, not the best answer.
The first two books in Chalmers Johnson's Blowback Trilogy – Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic – are now available in paperback. The third volume is being written.
NOTES
1. See, for example, Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military (New York: Norton, 2003).
2. Shasta Darlington, "New Dig Says Caligula Was Indeed a Maniac," Reuters, August 16, 2003.
Copyright 2003 Chalmers Johnson
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Posted at 06:13 am by R7fel
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Saturday, June 11, 2005
Ten Deadly Enemies of Humanity in America
By Dr. Charles Mercieca
06/09/05 "ICH" - - Every dictionary describes enemy as “one hostile to another; one who hates another; a foe; an adversary; an antagonist; a hostile force, army, fleet, or the like.” The enemy’s goal is to destroy anything that comes in the enemy’s way that would prevent such an enemy from the achievement of set goals and purposes. Hence, any person or group that performs actions that are detrimental to our environment, to our very own life may be viewed as our deadly enemy.
Destructive Intent of American Corporations
Regardless as to whether or not Americans as a whole perceive it, we may single out the ten deadly enemies of the American people and of all people of all nations as a matter of fact. These are ten American largest corporations whose product is virtually lethal. They put in danger not only the people who work for such industries but also those who are directly or indirectly affected by their deadly products. They are all linked to wars and they all view peace as their outright enemy since peace would eventually render their product obsolete.
This means, they would not cease embracing their Satanic God, known as the never-ending-accumulation of wealth and money. These top deadly enemies make billions of dollars annually on the premise that the end justifies the means. To this end, they employ psychologists to study the mood of the people and to come with advertisement proposals so as to present their product deceitfully to the people. They want the American people either to accept it by all means or, at least, to remain indifferent about it. There is only one thing they do not want absolutely, namely, to see people openly critical against their deadly product.
In this presentation, we are not going into details on the nature of the deadly product of such ten big corporations. We are simply going to pinpoint them and bring them into the open for everyone to see and comprehend. We hope that those who are interested in the preservation of our environment and life would investigate on their own the extent of irreversible damage these monsters of our earthly society are procuring.
We are going to enlist them briefly and to explain what they do with a brief comment on how their product leads to the destruction of our environment and of our life. Needless to say, the fact that they may produce good product should not be a justification of their continued existence the way they are.
1. Lockheed Martin Corporation, better known by many as Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, is located in Forth Worth, Texas. This company chose to specialize in the manufacture of military aircrafts whose job is to devastate entire nations mercilessly in the name of national security, peace and world stability! It produces F-16 Fighting Falcon, the versatile air-lifter C-130J Super Hercules, the stealth fighter F-117 Nighthawk, and the next generation fighter F/A 22 Raptor. All these are meant to be used not by civilians for positive and constructive purposes, but by the military for negative and destructive activities.
This lethal company has been awarded contracts to build the multi-service and multi-mission F-35 Joint Strike Fighter! Lockheed Martin sells its products to any nation that gives the right price under the pretext that such nations have a right for self-defense! Like Retired US Admiral Gene La Rocque remarked in his videotapes: “Military product is manufactured primarily not for the defense of the USA or of any other country but merely for profit.”
2. Boeing Company is viewed as the largest aerospace company in the world. It is commissioned to make commercial jets that it sells to any nation that wishes to purchase such a product. Although Boeing tries to stress the word “commercial” in its advertisements, it is also in the business of making military aircraft and missile in addition to phantom works. It tries to justify its product as an effective means for the United States to defend itself against the enemy. Here we need to ask: Who is the enemy? At one time the answer was: The Soviet Union. However, after the Soviet collapse they came out with another enemy known as the rogue states, which consist of a group of some five to six banana republics where people are starving and are having surmountable problems.
Like every other big industry, Boeing is primarily concerned with profit. To this end, it would not object to provide every single nation on earth with its product as long as involved nations would pay the right price. Confronted with such a reality, the concept of nationalism and patriotism for Americans becomes literally meaningless. And to distract the American people from the industry’s malicious intent, the stress on the concept of patriotism emerged to be popular. This explains why nowadays you see some of the top executives in these deadly corporations, along with top US government officials, wearing an American flag pin on their chest.
3. Northrop Grumman Corporation works under the guise of national security, civil and industrial needs by providing advanced information technology systems whose ultimate goal is to make American wars more devastating as to kill the maximum amount of people possible with the least effort. Among other devices, it has developed Kinetic Energy Interceptors Missile Defense Battle Management Capabilities. This company has made the waging of wars as its source of income. Behind the scenes it makes sure that wars are constantly taking place, even if it had to provide weaponry systems to potential enemies and then instigate them to use them via third parties. This would be needed to give them the excuse to start a devastating war where everyone, including Americans, would be a loser and no one a winner.
We need to keep in mind that in the United States both individuals and corporations have the freedom to make money the way they want. This policy has enabled the manufacturers of all kinds of weapons to develop into lucrative businesses no matter how much their product would prove to be detrimental to innocent people. After all, as we learned from the Iraqi war, the massacre of innocent Iraqis in tens of thousands has been referred by American politicians who support fully the weapons industry not as victims but merely as collateral damage, like people were a piece of discarded furniture.
4. General Dynamics Corporation is one of the major military contractors. Recently it was awarded $900 million contract for the production of 2.75 inch rockets from the US Army Aviation and Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. This corporation, like other similar ones, is in the business of air and water pollution and of hastening the road to Armageddon. Under the guise of peace, General Dynamics continues to fleece the US government of tens of millions of dollars, money that would have been used constructively to provide homes for the homeless, give our children adequate health care and education, and enable researchers to find remedies to such deadly maladies as cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy, among others.
General dynamics is headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia and it employs over 70,000 people worldwide. In 2004 it had revenue of over $19 billion dollars. Its lethal product is used for expeditionary combat systems, armaments and munitions as well as shipbuilding and marine systems among. This corporation is responsible for rockets that can be fired from a variety of rotary and fixed platforms that include, among others, US Army apache and US Marine Corps Cobra attack helicopters. One of the best sources to see what this corporation, along with other deadly ones mentioned in this presentation, is doing would be the internet.
5. Raytheon Company specializes in high technology with operations in commercial and defense electronics, engineering, construction, aviation, and major appliances. This company has embarked on advertisements that show the company’s concern for the “needs of the people” starting with giving assistance to families of US military men in Iraq. At the same time, this company supports the Ballistic Missile Defense System. Most of its war products are in testing today. In spite of its effort to establish a good image as being humanitarian and peaceful, Raytheon does nothing positive and constructive for peace in the sense that it works for the prevention of war rather than for the waging of war.
The idea that these deadly enemies in America of our earthly community would work for a genuine peace through the development of a program of international disarmament and arms control not only it does not exist in their agenda, but the very thought of it may be easily dismissed as craziness! This company, like the others enlisted in this presentation, has people trained in talking with top government officials by presenting them with videotapes showing how the development of more sophisticating and devastating weapons would enhance the national security of the United States. Unfortunately, most of the US government officials, mostly Republicans, fall easily into trap and concede to allot more and more money for more and more weapons and wars.
6. United Technologies Corporation claims to be a $37 billion company whose products include heating and cooling fire and security systems along with Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines, Sikorsky helicopters and UTC Power fuel cells, among others. As stated earlier, these deadly corporations are in the business of making money through the production mostly of devastating lethal products. Recently, Sikorsky S-92 helicopter won Korean Presidential competition. This type of helicopter is now sold to South Korea. United Technologies Corporation states that what it manufactures is merely for national defense and security of the United States and of all the other countries that purchase such products.
There is no war machinery whatsoever that is said to be manufactured for purpose of the destruction of the infrastructure of nations and the massacre of numerous innocent people. When this happens we already know what they would say relative to the horrendous crimes that are committed against innocent people in every way. It’s merely collateral damage! The best contribution that this company could do is to get out of the war business, the sooner the better. We need to develop an international program of disarmament and arms control. At the same time, we need to leave the job of international relations and peace in the hands for world-wide humanitarian organizations and out of the hands of the government’s officials.
7. Halliburton Company claims to be one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the oil and gas industries. No wonder it moved so quickly to take hold of the oil in Iraq shortly after the American invasion and occupation. This company employs 100,000 people in over 120 countries. These people are primarily trained in drilling and formation evaluation, fluid systems, production optimization as well as digital and consulting solutions. Over the past several years, this company made it clear that it wants to be second to none in technological leadership, operational excellence as well as innovative business relationships, and dynamic workforce.
Three of the most dangerous and abusive companies in the USA are the trio corporations consisting of the weapons, oil and construction companies. They seem to work hand in hand. The weapons industry destroys the infrastructure of a nation such as it has been in Iraq, then the oil industry steps in to take charge of the existent oil of such nation and other rich natural resources when available, while the construction company steps in to rebuild what the weapons industry destroyed successfully. Needless to say, these three big corporations seem to work hand in hand like they were a mafia type of organization.
8. General Electric Company seems to be one of the most astute companies in the world when it comes to the advertisement of its product. It focuses on products that are mostly used by the general public, like bulbs and refrigerators. When it comes to the products that are harmful to people, it tends to play it cool and hardly makes any public advertisements. This company has some $500 billion dollars in assets and has business in 47 nations around the world. It has been heavily involved in nuclear weapons emitting toxic wastes that made countless thousands of people have numerous health problems many of whom died prematurely. A videotape report was made to illustrate this reality entitled: Deadly Deception.
This videotape report was produced by a concerned private humanitarian organization known as Corporate Accountability International, and could be contacted at 46 Plympton Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02118. This organization has been very active in protecting the life of ordinary citizens whose air has been dangerously polluted by big corporations that included lately the giant oil corporations of Exxon/Mobil, and Chevron/Texaco. It also got after other big corporations like Coca-Cola, which has been draining all of the pure water they can get hold on, and tobacco giants like Phillip Morris whose structured deceitful advertisements about their lethal product has hooked millions on nicotine most of whom were sent to their grave already. General Electric Company remains a very dangerous company because of its involvement in nuclear weapons.
9. Science Applications International Corporation is the largest employee-owned research and engineering company in the United States. Like the other mentioned big corporations, this corporation is also involved in military ventures. Just recently it signed a contract with the US Air Force to provide system engineering and integration support for the Joint Mission Planning system (JMPS) for a period of 12 years. The contract exceeds $200 million dollars. The ultimate purpose would be to make US military missions, as they are called, more effective. In plain words, the objective would be for the US Air Force to become more devastating in future wars on any regional or global scale.
Some of the work that is performed deals with health care, energy and telecommunication. Needless to say, each of these deadly companies do provide services that could be termed to be positive and beneficial but such services do not seem to be the focus of the company as a whole. Besides, this giant corporation is trying to work hand in had with military vehicles, homeland security as well as anything that goes under the titled of national security, whatever that may mean since such a phrase has been so much misused and abused in the past. Some of its major clients may be enlisted as criminal justice, space ventures, which may include control of weapons in space, and effective transportation in addition to others.
10. Computer Sciences Corporation provides mostly consulting, systems integration and design, and software for industries and for governmental requirements. Although this corporation is also involved with health services, its focus seems to be on aerospace and defense dealing with weapons and military equipment for purpose of waging of endless wars. The US government spent billions of dollars on this industry at the expense of the American people’s health care and education. Such money could have been used to improve Americans’ quality life through the elimination of hunger, the provision of homes for the homeless, and the cure of diseases that are killing Americans unnecessarily.
According to the United Nations report on the children’s state of health in every country, one out of five children in the USA suffers from malnutrition and hunger. As stated by retired top military commanders of the US Center for Defense Information in Washington, DC, these big military corporations are not primarily concerned with the defense of the American nation, nor of any other nation as a matter of fact. Their primary and only concern is profit as stated eaerlier. When the Soviet Union collapsed the United States was given the opportunity to bring about a permanent world peace through the development of an international program of disarmament and arms control. After all, this has been a major goal of the United Nations since its establishment in 1945.
We are submitting a list of names and addresses of main offices of these top ten deadly enemies of humanity in America in the order of billions of dollars that were made out of the manufacture and sales of military ammunitions and weapons of mass destruction during the year 2004.
1. Lockheed Martin Corporation, 6901 Rockledge Drive, Bethesda, Maryland 20917, USA, Phone: 301-897-6000, Fax: 301-897-6704
2. Boeing Company, 100 North Riversides, Chicago, Illinois 60606, USA, Phone: 312-544-2000,
3. Northrop Grumman Corporation, 1840 Century Part East, Los Angeles, California 90067, USA, Phone: 310-553-6262, Fax: 310-553-2076
4. General Dynamics Corporation, 13880 Del Sur Street, San Fernando, California 91340, USA, Phone: 818-897-111, Fax: 818-899-4045
5. Raytheon Company, 870 Winter Street, Waltham, Massachusetts 02451, USA, Phone: 781-522-3000, Fax: 781-522-3001
6. United Technologies Corporation, 275 Westminster Street, Suite 400, Providence, Rhode Island 02903, USA, Phone: 401-521-5700, Fax: 401-521-3332, Fax: 401-521-3332
7. Halliburton Company, 5 Houston Center, 1401 McKinney, Suite 240 C, Houston, Texas 77020, USA, Phone: 710-759-2600, Fax: 710-759-2605
8. General Electric Company, 1717 East Interstate Avenue, Bismarck, North Dakota 58503, USA, Phone: 701-223-0441, Fax: 701-224-5336
9. Science Applications International Corporation, 10260 Campus Point Drive, San Diego, California 92121, USA, Phone: 858-826-6000, Fax: 858-826-6800
10. Computer Sciences Corporation, 2100 East Grand Avenue, El Segundo, California 90245, USA, Phone: 310-615-0011, Fax: 310-322-9769
In conclusion, the American people have the sacrosanct duty to bring these ten deadly enemies of humanity in America under control by refusing to manufacture weapons and deadly military equipment and to insist with such corporations to replace without delay their lethal products with constructive items that would be beneficial to all people without exception.
Dr. Charles Mercieca. President of International Association of Educators for World Peace NGO, United Nations (ECOSOC), UNDPI, UNICEF, UNCED & UNESCO Professor Emeritus of Alabama A&M University
Copyright: Dr. Charles Mercieca.
Posted at 08:32 am by R7fel
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Thursday, June 09, 2005
| Nuclear Time Capsule |
| By Jane Vaynman |
|
The Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, "Sixty Years Later," will be held on November 7- 8, 2005. Below is the first in a series of analyses on proliferation milestones.
In June of 1945, the Franck Report was ignored, the moral concerns of its scientific authors over the use of nuclear weapons dismissed. Sixty years later, the report seems a prescient warning of proliferation dangers. Still largely overlooked today, it typically shows up as a few paragraphs amidst the hundreds of pages written about the Manhattan Project. Yet interestingly, the report’s warnings of a nuclear arms race and recommendations for the international control of nuclear energy resonate with contemporary concerns. The proliferation challenges of today were clearly foreseen by some of the bomb’s creators.
A small group of scientists at the Metallurgical Lab in Chicago were, in the spring of 1945, increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled spread of atomic energy and the moral implications of using the atomic bomb. While A-bomb research was conducted primarily in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Chicago lab focused on the production of fissile materials that would form the core of the explosive device. In December of 1942, the first test nuclear reactor went critical in the squash courts under the stadium at the University of Chicago. In June of 1945, while the Los Alamos raced to finish the bomb, work at Chicago had slowed and scientists were drawn to thoughts of the future. Nobel laureate James Franck formed a committee to consider the implications of the bomb, including Eugene Rabinowitch, the ultimate drafter of the report, and Leo Szilard, one of the first scientists to advocate the development of an atomic bomb but who had become concerned about its use on Japan after Nazi Germany’s defeat.
The final report warned of a dangerous nuclear future. First, the United States could not rely on its current advantage. Nuclear research would not be an American monopoly for long, and secrecy would not be protection. Staying ahead in production was also a false security, as a "quantitative advantage in reserves of bottled destructive power will not make us safe from sudden attack." If no international agreement were developed after the first detonation of the bomb, then there would be a "flying start of an unlimited armaments race."
The report argued that the manner in which nuclear weapons were revealed to the world would be critical to the future trust and desire for agreement that would develop between both allies and adversaries. The use of the bomb on Japan without warning would have both moral and political repercussions:
It will be very difficult to persuade the world that a nation which was capable of secretly preparing and suddenly releasing a weapon, as indiscriminate as the rocket bomb and a thousand times more destructive, is to be trusted in its proclaimed desire of having such weapons abolished by international agreement.
Instead, the scientists recommended a demonstration of the bomb before representatives of the United Nations.
Sixty years ago, the Franck Report clearly identified nuclear materials as the critical choke point for the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The scientists explained that the rationing of uranium ores may be the simplest way to control nuclear technology. Under an international agreement, uranium would be accounted for, and there would be a check on the conversion of natural uranium into fissile material. The scientists argued that an international agreement must be backed by controls: "No paper agreement can be sufficient since neither this or any other nation can stake its whole existence on trust in other nations' signatures."
The extent to which the Truman administration discussed the Franck Report is unclear. The eight-member Interim Committee - chaired by Secretary of War Henry Stimson and composed of top government officials- handled atomic bomb policy. At its June 21, 1945 meeting, the committee concluded the bomb should be used on Japan without warning. This determination echoed recommendations of the Scientific Advisory Panel to the Interim Committee –Manhattan Project physicists Enrico Fermi, E.O. Lawrence, Arthur Compton, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. After a discussion of the Frank Report in mid-June, the Scientific Panel expressed their view that "no technical demonstration [was] likely to bring an end to the war." Neither group seriously considered the report’s recommendations on international control of atomic energy.
But the Chicago scientists had hit upon a core truth: preventing proliferation had to be a political solution; the science of nuclear technology could not be otherwise contained. In its closing paragraphs, the Frank Report was explicitly forward thinking:
We urge that the use of nuclear bombs in this war be considered as a problem of long-range national policy rather than military expediency, and that this policy be directed primarily to the achievement of an agreement permitting an effective international control of the means of nuclear warfare.
The problems of controlling fissile materials and restraining a nuclear arms race were questions before mushroom clouds ever rose over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today, the same questions linger unresolved. We should not have to wait another sixty years before the scientists’ plea for a "long-range national policy" is answered.
Jane Vaynman is the Project Assistant for Non-Proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment. She is a graduate of Stanford University. |
Posted at 08:31 am by R7fel
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The Ties That Bind China, Russia and Iran
By Jephraim P Gundzik
The military implementation of the George W Bush administration's unilateralist foreign policy is creating monumental changes in the world's geostrategic alliances. The most significant of these changes is the formation of a new triangle comprised of China, Iran and Russia.
Growing ties between Moscow and Beijing in the past 18 months is an important geopolitical event that has gone practically unnoticed. China's premier, Wen Jiabao, visited Russia in September 2004. In October 2004, President Vladimir Putin visited China. During the October meeting, both China and Russia declared that Sino-Russian relations had reached "unparalleled heights". In addition to settling long-standing border issues, Moscow and Beijing agreed to hold joint military exercises in 2005. This marks the first large-scale military exercises between Russia and China since 1958.
The joint military exercises complement a rapidly growing arms trade between Moscow and Beijing. China is Russia's largest buyer of military equipment. In 2004, China was reported to have signed deals worth more than $2 billion for Russian arms. These included naval ships and submarines, missile systems and aircraft. According to the head of Russia's armed forces, Anatoliy Kvashnin, "our defense industrial complex is working for this country [China], supplying the latest models of arms and military equipment, which the Russian army does not have". Russia's relations with China are not limited to military trade. In the past five years, non-military trade between Russia and China has increased at an average annual rate of nearly 20%. Moscow and Beijing have targeted non-military trade to reach $60 billion by 2010, from $20 billion in 2004. One of the key components of commercial trade is Russian energy exports to China.
In early 2005, Moscow agreed to more than double electricity exports to China, to 800 million kilowatt hours (kWh), by 2006. Officials at Russia's electricity monopoly, Unified Energy Systems, are also courting Chinese investment in the development and renovation of Russia's electricity system. In October 2004, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and Russia's Gazprom signed a series of agreements intended to study how Russia can best supply natural gas to China. At the same time, Russia signed specific agreements with China on oil exports.
Russia's oil shipments to China are slated to reach 10 million tons in 2005, increasing to 15 million tons in 2006. All of these shipments will be made by rail. However, this agreement was overshadowed by talks concerning the construction of an oil pipeline from Siberia to northern China. Russia has been pondering an oil pipeline to China for nearly 10 years. In 2002, plans for this pipeline received a boost when Moscow pledged to invest $2 billion in an oil pipeline running from the Siberian city of Angarsk to Daqing in northeastern China.
At the end of 2004, Russian officials announced that rather than running into China, the new mega pipeline would terminate in Russia's Pacific port of Nakhodka. Japan lobbied Moscow hard for this configuration, offering to finance the entire construction project, the cost of which is estimated to exceed $10 billion. In addition to a readily available financing source, the Nakhodka pipeline will remain entirely in Russian territory, allowing Moscow complete control over the oil flow.
Many analysts viewed Moscow's decision as a blow to relations with China. Though the pipeline does not terminate in China, it does pass within 40 miles of Russia's border with China. A spur from this pipeline to China would be inexpensive, while further diversifying the market for annual oil flows expected to reach 80 million tons. In other words, why should either Moscow or Beijing finance an eastern oil pipeline when Tokyo is bending over backwards to provide such financing?
More indicative of Russia's deepening energy relations with China are the circumstances surrounding the renationalization of Russian oil major Yukos. Yukos was the only Russian company exporting oil to China. Russia's government effectively renationalized Yukos in late 2004 when it seized the company's primary production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, and auctioned it off to the highest bidder. Yuganskneftegaz, located in Siberia, is Russia's second-largest oil producer.
Through somewhat twisted means, Russia's state-owned oil company, Rosneft, acquired Yuganskneftegaz for $9.3 billion. In December 2004, Russia's Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko offered the CNPC a 20% stake in Yuganskneftegaz. In February 2005, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin revealed that Chinese banks provided $6 billion in financing for Rosneft's acquisition of Yuganskneftegaz. This financing was secured by long-term oil delivery contracts between Rosneft and the CNPC.
It is unclear whether the CNPC owns a portion of Yuganskneftegaz. However, in March, Russian authorities approved a merger between state-owned gas company Gazprom and Rosneft. This merger excludes Yuganskneftegaz, which will remain a separate state-owned company. It is possible that Yuganskneftegaz was left a stand-alone unit to facilitate China's investment in the company.
China's involvement in the renationalization of Yukos represents the most significant foreign participation in Russia's highly guarded oil sector. The CNPC is also involved in several joint ventures with Russia's state-owned gas company, Gazprom. These include ventures to develop energy reserves in Iran, the home of China's largest energy-related investments.
Beijing and Moscow warm to Tehran.
In March 2004, China's state-owned oil trading company, Zhuhai Zhenrong Corporation, signed a 25-year deal to import 110 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Iran. This was followed by a much larger deal between another of China's state-owned oil companies, Sinopec, and Iran, signed in October 2004. This deal, worth about $100 billion, allows China to import a further 250 million tons of LNG from Iran's Yadavaran oilfield over a 25-year period. In addition to LNG, the Yadavaran deal provides China with 150,000 barrels per day of crude oil over the same period.
This huge deal also enlists substantial Chinese investment in Iranian energy exploration, drilling and production as well as in petrochemical and natural gas infrastructure. Total Chinese investment targeted toward Iran's energy sector could exceed a further $100 billion over 25 years. At the end of 2004, China became Iran's top oil export market. Apart from the oil and natural gas delivery contracts, the massive investment being undertaken by China's state-owned oil companies in Iran's energy sector contravenes the US Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. This law penalizes foreign companies for investing more than $20 million in either Libya or Iran.
Side-stepping US laws is nothing new for China. Beijing, as well as Moscow, has supplied Tehran with advanced missiles and missile technology since the mid-1980s. In addition to anti-ship missiles like the Silkworm, China has sold Iran surface-to-surface cruise missiles and, along with Russia, assisted in the development of Iran's long-range ballistic missiles. This assistance included the development of Iran's Shihab-3 and Shihab-4 missiles, with a range of about 2,000 kilometers. Iran is also reportedly developing missiles with ranges approaching 3,000 kilometers.
In late 2004, former secretary of state Colin Powell asserted that Iran was working to adapt its long-range ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads. China was also believed to be producing several new types of guided anti-ship missiles for Iran in 2004. China's and Russia's sales of missiles and missile technology as well as missile development assistance contravenes the US-Irannon-proliferation act of 2000. This act specifically states that sanctions will be "imposed on countries whose companies provide assistance to Iran in its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and missile delivery systems".
In the past several years a number of Chinese and Russian companies have faced US sanctions for selling missiles and missile technology to Iran. Rather than slowing or stopping such sales, the pace of missile acquisition and development in Iran has accelerated. Like relations between China and Russia and China and Iran, Russia's relations with Iran have also advanced considerably in the past 18 months. In addition to increased investment in Iran by Russia and burgeoning arms trade between the two countries, Russia has been heavily involved in Iran's nascent nuclear energy industry.
After much wrangling and repeated US intervention, Russia and Iran finally signed, in February, a deal clearing the way for the shipment of Russian nuclear fuel to Iran's nuclear power plant at Bushehr. Washington's primary concern about Bushehr is the intended use of the plant's spent nuclear fuel. This fuel can be discarded, reprocessed, or used in the manufacture of weapons-grade plutonium. In an effort to assure Washington that the last of these three possibilities will not come to pass, Moscow has promised that all the spent fuel from Bushehr will be returned to Russia.
Nonetheless, Washington continues to believe that Bushehr's start-up will advance Tehran's supposed nuclear weapons program. Though evidence of an Iranian weapons program is sparse, the US remains convinced that Iran is working to develop nuclear weapons with Russian assistance.
The new geostrategic alliance
Along with energy trade, investment and economic development, the China-Iran-Russia alliance has cultivated compatible foreign policies. China, Iran and Russia have identical foreign policy positions regarding Taiwan and Chechnya. China and Iran fully support the Putin government's war against the Chechen separatists (Iran's self-described status as an "Islamic republic" notwithstanding). Russia and Iran support Beijing's one-China policy. The recent promulgation of China's anti-secession law, aimed at making Beijing's intolerance of Taiwanese independence explicit, was heartily commended in both Moscow and Tehran.
The most compelling aspect of this alliance is revealed in China's and Russia's support for Iran's much-maligned nuclear energy program. The Putin government has consistently maintained that Russia would not support UN Security Council resolutions that condemn Iran's nuclear energy program or apply economic sanctions against Iran. In February, Putin said he was convinced Iran was not seeking to develop nuclear weapons and announced plans to visit the country, in support of Tehran, just prior to his summit with President Bush.
Beijing has echoed Moscow's opposition to UN action against Iran. After concluding the historic gas and oil deal between China and Iran in October 2004, China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing announced that China would not support UN Security Council action against Iran's nuclear energy program. Opposition in Moscow and Beijing to UN action against Iran is significant because both countries hold UN Security Council veto power.
The endorsement of Tehran's nuclear energy program by Moscow and Beijing reveals the primary impetus behind the China-Iran-Russia axis - to counter US unilateralism and global hegemonic intentions. For Beijing and Moscow, this means minimizing US influence in Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. For the regime in Tehran, keeping the US at bay is a matter of survival.
The joint statement issued at the conclusion of Putin's state visit to China in October 2004 was a clear indication of Beijing's and Moscow's abhorrence of the Bush administration's unilateral foreign policy. The statement noted that China and Russia "hold that it is urgently needed to [resolve] international disputes under the chairing of the UN and resolve crisis [sic] on the basis of universally recognized principles of international law. Any coercive action should only be taken with the approval of the UN Security Council and enforced under its supervision..."
Two weeks after this statement was released, and just prior to the US presidential election, Beijing's position against US unilateralism was again made explicit by China's former foreign minister Qian Qichen - arguably China's most distinguished diplomat.
In an opinion piece published in the state-controlled China Daily, Qian ripped Washington's unilateralism: "The United States has tightened its control of the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia." He noted that this control "testifies that Washington's anti-terror campaign has already gone beyond the scope of self defense". Qian went further, stating that: "The US case in Iraq has caused the Muslim world and Arab countries to believe that the superpower already regards them as targets [for] its ambitious democratic reform program."
To China and Russia, Washington's "democratic reform program" is a thinly disguised method for the US to militarily dispose of unfriendly regimes in order to ensure the country's primacy as the world's sole superpower. The China-Iran-Russia alliance can be considered as Beijing's and Moscow's counterpunch to Washington's global ambitions. From this perspective, Iran is integral to thwarting the Bush administration's foreign policy goals. This is precisely why Beijing and Moscow have strengthened their economic and diplomatic ties with Tehran. It is also why Beijing and Moscow are providing Tehran with increasingly sophisticated weapons.
Jephraim P Gundzik is president of Condor Advisers, Inc. Condor Advisers provides emerging markets investment risk analysis to individuals and institutions globally. Please visit us for further information.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
Posted at 07:47 am by R7fel
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Monday, May 30, 2005
Why do they hate us?
Why do they hate use so? That question was asked by many Americans after 11 September 2001. The query is based entirely on ignorance, which, by itself, is a result of a chronic American fault - a near total apathy towards history.
By Sandy Shanks
05/30/05 "Aljazeera" - - The vast majority of Americans are clueless regarding the past of faraway lands as well as their own. That is highly dangerous in so much as we share this planet with other ethnicities, and historical illiteracy breeds misunderstanding.
George Santayana wrote: "Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it," or words to that effect, and many believe him, allowing the caveat that the principle also applies to those who never learned history in the first place.
Subsequently, during the agony known as the Iraq war, it becomes easy to be fixed totally on the present - the present being defined as that era beginning 19 March 2003, to now - and that is folly.
Noting that awareness of the past is a two-edged sword, meaning it is incumbent upon Arabs to learn as much as they can about the West, the fact remains that since the fall of the Arab empire in the 11th century, Arabs have not been in control of their own destiny, and, to a large extent, that condition exists today, Bush's attack on Iraq being a case in point.
Crusades
After the Seljuk Turks took control of the eastern Mediterranean lands (now known as Palestine) and Mesopotamia (Iraq), Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade to gain control of the Holy Land in 1096.
The Western army created four colonies, including one in Jerusalem. Using the euphemism, crusaders, European armies continued their pious invasions of the Middle East (applying the modern term), the last major incursion, the Fourth Crusade, taking place in 1204, at which time the "crusaders" plundered Constantinople (Istanbul).
The Seljuk Turks were followed by the Mongol empire (1219 to 1500), and the Mongols were replaced by the Ottoman Turks during the 1500s.
At the height of the Ottoman empire, 1566, their control over Arab lands stretched from Mesopotamia through the Holy Land into North Africa from Egypt to Tunisia.
The Ottoman empire maintained its grip on modern-day Iraq and Palestine until the end of the first world war, at which time those lands fell under British rule. Iraq achieved its "independence" in 1932.
Egypt and Suez
Meanwhile, the largest Arab nation in the world, Egypt, did not fare much better. As stated, she was conquered by the Turks as well. In 1798, Napoleonic France gained control of it, and the emperor's troops were tossed out by British and Turkish forces in 1801.
This was followed by a brief period of autonomy under Muhamad Ali, an Albanian. However, the fate of Egypt was sealed in 1869.
Built by the French, the Suez Canal was opened. In 1875, Great Britain took control of the canal, and, in a manner of speaking, control of that vital waterway remains in the hands of the West to this day.
In 1882, Britain occupied Egypt. Gamal Abd al-Nassir nationalised the canal in 1956, but a war that year involving France and Britain clearly illustrated that Egypt really does not control the Suez.
Today, for example, the canal and access to the Red Sea and Arabian Sea is largely in the hands of the American Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Fleets, as is the Persian Gulf. There could well be some Arab resentment about that.
Arabs living in Arabia, changed to Saudi Arabia in 1932 in honour of the ruling family in the kingdom, have been largely independent, using the generic meaning of the term, since the days of the Muslim empire.
Now that last statement assumes that Arabs in the kingdom (Saudi Arabia) can experience independence while the United States has bases in Dhahran, Jedda, Riyadh and four other locations, with still other locations that are "classified". There could well be some Arab resentment about that.
Recalling that Egypt's fate was sealed in 1869, the fate of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other Middle Eastern nations was sealed in the 1930s. Oil was discovered.
The Middle East possesses the world's largest easily accessible reserves of black gold, Saudi Arabia ranking first, Iraq second. Western oil companies moved in.
Arab lands were now doomed to dominance by the industrial West, which needed that oil for its cars, planes, ships, and factories. There could well be some Arab resentment about that.
Mother of all insults
The greatest ignominy, by far, perpetrated by the West upon the Arab people is the formation of the state of Israel.
Indeed, the creation of the Jewish state fomented Islamic "terrorism", as we know it today. Arab nationalists, frustrated by defeat in wars against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, turned to "terrorism" and every target in the West was open game, Munich Olympics in 1972, Achille Lauro in 1985, World Trade Centre in 1993 and, of course, 2001.
Actually, over the years, the target list has become a very long one. Many in the West respect the state of Israel, but that is not the point.
For Americans to fully appreciate the scope of this mother of all insults, please allow a ridiculous scenario.
Let us assume that the Arab League had the power to carve a nation out of the United States, say in Montana, meaning no disrespect to the inhabitants of that great state, and populate it with our deadliest enemy - members of al-Qaida. Would that not create a bit of a stir on the part of Americans? There could well be some American resentment about that.
How did this happen? That story is equally sordid. In 1917, the British treasury was depleted by the war, and Britain was facing defeat.
Balfour Declaration
Chaim Weizmann, an activist within the World Zionist Organisation and the first Israeli president, offered both financial hope and improved weaponry to Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour.
The result is the infamous Balfour Declaration that stated equivocally that His Majesty's government favoured, "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of that object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done, which may prejudice the religious and civil rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".
Balfour was equivocal, because he later added in a private memorandum in 1919: "For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.
"The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs, who now inhabit that ancient land."
Birth of Israel
This uniquely bad form by Britain was followed by the UN adoption of the Balfour Declaration after the second world war.
On 14 May 1948, Israel came into existence under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion. There could well be some Arab resentment about that. After the second world war, the British and French empires collapsed.
The vacuum was filled by the United States. Currently, American CBG's (Carrier Battle Groups) roam the high seas, totally dominant and unrivalled.
That made the US a target. Knowing this and aware that vibrant Arab nationalism has been around for more than 200 years, I nearly cried when Bush invaded Iraq.
That made our young, our future, enmeshed in a fiery cauldron so far from home and targets for Arab revenge. There are some who feel that the US goal in Iraq is the creation of a democracy.
Bush's goals or justification for war has changed over the years, and this new one was adopted after his February 2005 State of the Union address.
Role of religion
Once again, history becomes a casualty. Never in the history of mankind has democracy flourished at the point of a gun. Also, an absolute requirement for a democracy is education, a secular education, not a Bible-waving, Quran-waving education. Education slanted by religion breeds prejudice.
Religion belongs in the home, church or mosque, and the innermost thoughts of the individual.
Let's just say that both Christianity and Islam are two of the great religions of the world and get on with it - meaning governance.
Does more than 900 years of foreign domination, the lion's share of it by Western powers, justify atrocities? Emphatically no. There is no purpose served by killing 25 people and wounding 50 others at a funeral.
However, the Iraqi resistance fighter is a soldier, and soldiers are strong adherents to reality. One reality is that continued attacks on Iraqi policemen and national guard units only prolong the stay of the American occupation forces.
At some point, the soldier will come to the bargaining table, and I am clueless at to what will happen there.
However, centuries of Western domination are kind of hard to forget and that will remove any holier-than-thou attitude American negotiators may have.
Once a man's grievance is recognised, that can go a long way towards understanding.
Sandy Shanks is an author and columnist. He lives in Southern California.
Posted at 05:24 pm by R7fel
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Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Interpol Says World Should Prepare for Bioterrorism
Wed May 25, 2005 09:32 AM ET
By Michele Kambas
NICOSIA (Reuters) - Bioterrorism is a credible threat which authorities worldwide have underestimated, the world's top law enforcement agency warned on Wednesday.
Interpol says the world is largely unprepared for the possibility of attacks with crude biological agents -- some of which can be developed in a kitchen -- that militant groups have developed a heightened interest in.
"We, as police, cannot afford to be unprepared for the eventual use of biological agents by terrorist groups," Interpol president Jackie Selebi told a regional conference in Cyprus.
The world intelligence community has long warned that the militant group al Qaeda could try to use biological weapons such as anthrax, ricin, smallpox, plague or Ebola.
Al Qaeda manuals on preparation of biological agents were discovered at the group's training camps in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in 2001.
"I do not want to scare everybody to say there is going to be a bio-terrorist attack. I am simply saying that, dealing with the issue of terrorism, you must deal with the issue of terrorism in its totality, including the possible use of biological agents," Selebi told journalists.
HIDDEN KILLERS
Biological agents are easy to make, carry and conceal but do not, at the moment at least, have the capacity to claim large numbers of casualties at once.
Interpol has a dedicated unit working on raising awareness of the threat, developing training programs and encouraging new legislation in jurisdictions where a prosecution for using bio-agents is possible only once the agent is actually deployed and therefore far too late.
"Failing in this area is not an option. The consequences of such failure are far to dire to contemplate," he said.
Asked if Interpol members were now prepared to counter the threat, Selebi replied: "They are being prepared."
The devastating effects of deliberate use of biological agents to inflict harm manifested itself with the anthrax scare of 2001, in which five people died in the United States after exposure to barely-visible flecks of the bacteria.
Last month, a British court jailed a man with suspected links to al Qaeda on charges of plotting bomb or poison attacks in London. Police believed the poison that would have been deployed was ricin, extracted from castor beans and fatal even in doses of less than a milligram.
In March, a U.S. presidential commission suggested al Qaeda had made advances in developing a virulent biological warfare agent they called Agent X.
The commission also said U.S. intelligence had long believed that al Qaeda had trained its members in producing toxins obtained from venomous animals and botulinum, a toxin more commonly known for its association with improperly canned food.
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Posted at 10:42 pm by R7fel
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A Revolution in American Nuclear Policy
Tomgram: Jonathan Schell on Crossing Nuclear Thresholds
Call it Star Wars, parts VII-XXII; but last week, just as Revenge of the Sith was opening galaxy-wide -- multiplexes on Tatooine alone were expected to pull in billions -- reporter Tim Weiner revealed on the front page of the New York Times that a new presidential directive will soon essentially green-light the future U.S. militarization of space. (When, in December 2001, the administration withdrew from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which forbade the weaponization of space, it opened the way for exactly the kind of Pentagon R&D that now threatens to come to mutant fruition in the heavens.) Just three days before Weiner's piece appeared, military analyst William Arkin reported in the Washington Post that "[e]arly last summer, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved a top secret 'Interim Global Strike Alert Order,'" preparing the way for devastating attacks against hostile powers developing weapons of mass destruction, air strikes that could be carried out more or less on demand anywhere on the planet and, if so desired, included a "nuclear option."
These two actions don't represent separate worlds of planning. One of the imagined future weapons for Rumsfeld's "global strike" force, for instance, turns out to be a CAV (Common Aero Vehicle) which, from space, could theoretically hit any target on Earth with a massive dose of conventional munitions on half an hour's notice. Of this weapon, the Washington Post's Walter Pincus wrote, "The first-generation CAV, expected to be ready by 2010, will have ‘an incredible capability to provide the warfighter with a global reach capability against high payoff targets,' Gen. Lance W. Lord, commander of Air Force Space Command, told the House Armed Services Committee… The system could, Lord said, ‘deliver a conventional payload precisely on target within minutes of a valid command and control release order.'"
Such "global strike" space weaponry, while not (yet) nuclearized, would not be far off in impact. For instance, according to Weiner, one such weapon, Hypervelocity Rod Bundles (nicknamed "Rods from God"), aims "to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking at speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour with the force of a small nuclear weapon." In this way, the boundaries between the previously almost unusable nuclear option and more conventional war-fighting options are slowly -- and quite consciously -- being blurred by the Bush administration.
Let's put a label on these developments: Proliferation. In space as on Earth, the Bush strategists have an almost primal urge to cross strategic and weapons barriers and thresholds of all sorts, and head into uncharted territory; or, as an old TV space opera used to put it, "boldly to go where no man has gone before." (On Star Trek, though, the voyages of the USS Enterprise were, at least theoretically, peaceful in nature, and the announcement of the next destination didn't automatically end with an explosion.)
Perhaps there's another label that might capture even better the administration's primal global urge -- in this case, a label much beloved by the Air Force Space Command, those "Guardians of the High Frontier" (as they so flatteringly like to call themselves): "dominance" or "space superiority." ("Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny," [Space Command's General Lord] told an Air Force conference in September. "Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future.") In the old Army Air Corps anthem, airmen sang of taking off "into the wild blue yonder, climbing high into the sun"; now I suppose it should be "the wild, black yonder."
There has been much on-line controversy lately about whether the new Star Wars movie is an attack on the Bush administration. One thing can certainly be said: Where Star Wars went long ago, Bush administration fantasies are now heading. After all, what is a CAV, but a little "Death Star," that terrible, planet-destroying instrument of the on-screen Evil Empire. As Theresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information pointed out in a recent article, "[O]rbiting 'death stars' to attack ground targets are being considered. Pete Teets, the former acting secretary of the U.S. Air Force has said: 'We haven't reached the point of strafing and bombing from space - nonetheless, we are thinking about those possibilities.'"
In fact, "thinking" turns out to be something of a euphemism, given that the first tests of parts of the CAV program are to be carried out later this year. Of course, the Bush high-frontiersmen and the high-frontiersmen of the military-industrial complex (into which so many space-based tax dollars are already flowing) are just dying to test new generations of threshold-busting weapons (can't wait!). And yet, most of these bizarre weapons are technologically daunting and deficit-bustingly expensive. As Weiner points out: "Richard Garwin, widely regarded as a dean of American weapons science, and three colleagues wrote in the March issue of IEEE Spectrum, the professional journal of electric engineering, that 'a space-based laser would cost $100 million per target, compared with $600,000 for a Tomahawk missile.'"
In addition, based on past history, such futuristic dream-weaponry is likely to be about as successful as our $100 billion (so far) Star Wars anti-missile system which has proved incapable of intercepting anything smaller than the Queen Mary or faster than a tractor; and -- irony of ironies -- the decision to test, and then try to deploy, such systems is likely not only to start a space arms race, but to make us all (and the satellites we now depend on for so much) far more vulnerable than at present. According to Demetri Sevastopulo of the British Financial Times, the Russian answer to the news in the New York Times piece was instantaneous and grim: "Russia would consider using force if necessary to respond if the US put a combat weapon into space, according to a senior Russian official."
Space domination -- meaning war-fighting in space -- is a form of Earthly madness. But the path of proliferation, once started down has its own mad logic. Bush's top officials have been stuck on global dominance since they took power. Dominance has just turned out to be a little harder to come by on Earth than advertised… but, ah, space… All those boys who grew up on sci-fi movies and moon shots, now have their moment. And a boy can always dream, can't he?
The only problem is that Bush's dreamers, having swallowed their inside-the-beltway global-power fantasies whole, turn out to play the dominance game like the global klutzes they are. Admittedly, they've been in their Darth Vader outfits breathing hard for quite a while -- every day another threat (and if John Bolton makes it to the UN, change that to a threat a second) -- but they seem to lack the power effectively to demand a pizza delivery for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
None of this makes what they're doing any less dangerous. As Jonathan Schell points out below (in his latest "Letter from Ground Zero" in the new issue of the Nation magazine), the new "global strike" plans revealed by Arkin represent part of a revolution in what passes for nuclear policy-making in this country.
So, proliferation planet? Sure, that's on the way. Now, though, we're intent on proliferating in the heavens as on Earth. Think of it as a package deal. Tom
A Revolution in American
Nuclear PolicyBy Jonathan Schell
A metaphorical "nuclear option" -- the cutoff of debate in the Senate on judicial nominees -- has just been defused, but a literal nuclear option, called "global strike," has been created in its place. In a shocking innovation in American nuclear policy, recently disclosed in the Washington Post by military analyst William Arkin, the administration has created and placed on continuous high alert a force whereby the President can launch a pinpoint strike, including a nuclear strike, anywhere on earth with a few hours' notice. The senatorial "nuclear option" was covered extensively, but somehow this actual nuclear option -- a "full-spectrum" capability (in the words of the presidential order) with "precision kinetic (nuclear and conventional) and non-kinetic (elements of space and information operations)" -- was almost entirely ignored.
The order to enable the force, Arkin writes, was given by George W. Bush in January 2003. In July 2004, Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated to Adm. James Ellis Jr., then-commander of Stratcom, "the President charged you to ‘be ready to strike at any moment's notice in any dark corner of the world' [and] that's exactly what you've done." And last fall, Lieut. Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force, stated, "We have the capacity to plan and execute global strikes."
These actions make operational a revolution in US nuclear policy. It was foreshadowed by the Nuclear Posture Review Report of 2002, also widely ignored, which announced nuclear targeting of, among others, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya. The review also recommended new facilities for the manufacture of nuclear bombs and the study of an array of new delivery vehicles, including a new ICBM in 2020, a new submarine-launched ballistic missile in 2029, and a new heavy bomber in 2040. The review, in turn, grew out of Bush's broader new military strategy of pre-emptive war, articulated in the 2002 White House document, the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, which states, "We cannot let our enemies strike first." The extraordinary ambition of the Bush policy is suggested by a comment made in a Senate hearing in April by Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, who explained that the Defense Secretary wanted "bunker buster" nuclear bombs because "it is unwise for there to be anything that's beyond the reach of US power."
The incorporation of nuclear weapons into the global strike option, casting a new shadow of nuclear danger over the entire planet, raises fundamental questions. Perhaps the most important is why the United States, which now possesses the strongest conventional military forces in the world, feels the need to add to them a new global nuclear threat. The mystery deepens when you reflect that nothing could be more calculated to goad other nations into nuclear proliferation. Could it be that the United States, now routinely called the greatest empire since Rome, simply feels the need to assert its dominance in the nuclear sphere?
History suggests a different explanation. In the past, reliance on nuclear arms has in fact varied inversely with reliance on conventional arms. In the very first weeks of the nuclear age, when the American public was demanding demobilization of US forces in Europe after World War II, the U.S. monopoly on the bomb gave it the confidence to adopt a bold stance in postwar negotiations with the Soviet Union over Europe. The practice of offsetting conventional weakness with nuclear strength was soon embodied in the policy of "first use" of nuclear weapons, which has remained in effect to this day. The threat of first use under the auspices of the global strike option is indeed the latest incarnation of a policy born at that time.
This compensatory role for nuclear weapons emerged in a new context when, after the protracted, unpopular conventional war in Korea, President Eisenhower adopted the doctrine of nuclear "massive retaliation," intended to prevent limited Communist challenges from ever arising. And it was in reaction to the imbalance between local "peripheral" threats and the world-menacing "massive" nuclear threats designed to contain them that, in the Kennedy years, the pendulum swung back in the direction of conventional arms and a theory of "limited war" to go with them. Meanwhile, nuclear arms were officially assigned the more restricted role of deterring attacks by other nuclear weapons -- the posture of "mutual assured destruction."
Today, though the Cold War is over, the riddle of the relationship between nuclear and conventional force still vexes official minds. Once again, the United States has assigned itself global ambitions. (Then it was containing Communism, now it is stopping "terrorism" and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.) Once again, the United States is fighting a limited war -- the war in Iraq -- and other limited wars are under discussion (against Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc.). And once again, nuclear arms appear to offer an all too tempting alternative. Arkin comments that a prime virtue of the global strike option in the eyes of the Pentagon is that it requires no "boots on the ground." And Everett Dolman, a professor at the Air Force School at Maxwell Air Force Base, recently commented to the San Francisco Chronicle that without space weaponry, "we'd face a Vietnam-style buildup if we wanted to remain a force in the world."
For just as in the 1950s, the boots on the ground are running low. The global New Rome turns out to have exhausted its conventional power holding down just one country, Iraq. But the 2000s are not the 1950s. Eisenhower's overall goal was mainly defensive. He wanted no war, nuclear or conventional, and never came close to ordering a nuclear strike. By contrast, Bush's policy of preventive war is inherently activist and aggressive: The global strike option is not only for deterrence; it is for use.
A clash between the triumphal rhetoric of global domination and the sordid reality of failure in practice lies ahead. The Senate, on the brink of its metaphorical Armageddon, backed down. Would the President, facing defeat of his policies somewhere in the world, do likewise? Or might he actually reach for his nuclear option?
Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World, is the Nation Institute's Harold Willens Peace Fellow. The Jonathan Schell Reader was recently published by Nation Books.
Copyright 2005 Jonathan Schell
Posted at 09:46 pm by R7fel
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40 Countries With Nuclear Capabilities
US, NATO Nuclear Policies 'Immoral' - McNamara
By Louis Charbonneau
Reuters
Tuesday 24 May 2005
United Nations - U.S. and NATO nuclear policies are immoral, dangerous and destructive for the global nuclear non-proliferation regime, a former Defense Secretary from the Vietnam War era, Robert McNamara, said on Tuesday.
McNamara, who spoke at a conference taking stock of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, was defense secretary in the 1960s under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He was the architect of early U.S. policy in the Vietnam War.
"If I were to characterize U.S. and NATO nuclear policies in one sentence, I would say they are immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, very, very dangerous in terms of the risk of inadvertent or accidental launch and destructive of the non-proliferation regime that has served us so well," he said.
McNamara said the monthlong conference should strengthen the treaty and "ensure that North Korea and Iran do not become nuclear powers."
But he added, "I believe there is a high probability that the conference will fail to achieve those objectives."
He said it was dangerous to believe that countries without the bomb and which face serious security risks would ignore the nuclear option while Washington continues to regard a large atomic arsenal as vital to its own defense.
The conference, which ends Friday, bogged down in wrangling over the agenda and then the allocation of work among committees. While the disputes played out behind the scenes, nuclear activists and diplomats blamed the delays squarely on Iran and the United States.
The United States spent the first two weeks of the conference quietly seeking to block discussions of nuclear disarmament-related commitments and decisions reached at 1995 and 2000 NPT review conferences.
Iran sought to block discussion of its nuclear enrichment program, which it insists is intended to produce fuel for nuclear power plants while the United States, Britain, France and Germany fear it may be intended for bombs.
U.S. arms expert and former senior diplomat Thomas Graham, who helped negotiate every major arms control agreement during the last 30 years, said that with more than 40 countries capable of making atom bombs, it was vital to revive the NPT.
"In a world with nuclear weapons so widespread, every conflict would run the risk of going nuclear and it would be impossible to keep nuclear arms out of the hands of terrorist organizations," Graham said.
North Korea says it has the bomb. If Iran joins Pyongyang, others may follow, McNamara said.
"In Asia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are likely to follow suit. And in the Middle East, Egypt, Saudia Arabia and Syria may well follow," he said.
This, experts say, would wreck the NPT.
By signing the 1970 NPT, the United States and the four other nuclear weapons states -- the Soviet Union, China, France and Britain -- agreed to work on disarming.
The other 183 signatories pledged not to seek nuclear weapons or help other states acquire them.
Posted at 09:42 pm by R7fel
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Greens Embracing Nuclear Power
New Environmentalism, Or Backdoor to Nuclear Power?
Bill Berkowitz
OAKLAND, USA, May 24 (IPS) - Mainstream U.S. environmental groups, injured by political defeats, public indifference and budget cuts, are weighing alliances with neo-conservatives -- improbable rightwing bedfellows in the struggle to rein in global warming who want to reduce U.S. dependence on Middle East oil. In the process, some greens are reconsidering their longstanding opposition to nuclear power.
This realignment comes at a time when environmental-friendly initiatives of the administration of former U.S. President Bill Clinton have been reversed, enforcement of environmental regulations has been stymied, and privatisation of U.S. public lands is proceeding apace.
Further, the administration of President George W. Bush appears to have seized the initiative in the environmental debate with such slogans as ''common sense environmentalism'', ''Healthy Forests'', and ''Clear Skies'' to describe its key positions and programmes.
''The Death of Environmentalism,'' written by political pollster Ted Nordhaus and public relations consultant Michael Shellenberger and originally released at an October 2004 meeting of the Environmental Grantmakers Association of U.S. philanthropies that support green causes, credited the movement with a number of successes. These included enactment of the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air and Clean Waters Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.
But the assessment said there was ''strikingly little to show'' for the ''hundreds of millions of dollars poured into combating global warming,'' charged the movement with being out of touch with the public, and challenged it to ''rethink everything'' -- alliances, strategies, positions, messages -- and come up with new, imaginative and public-friendly ways to solve the global warming crisis.
And for all their earlier successes, recent times have brought budget cuts, public indifference, and a string of political defeats. These include legislation opening up parts of the Alaska wilderness to oil exploration and rollbacks on environmental regulations.
All of which has caused consternation.
Several leading environmentalists, including Fred Krupp, executive director of Environmental Defence, Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, and James Gustave Speth, dean of Yale University's school of forestry and environmental studies, are encouraging research into the economic, safety and security, waste storage, and proliferation issues surrounding nuclear power.
In a piece published this month's issue of the journal Technology Review, entitled ''Environmental Heresies,'' Stewart Brand, the longtime environmentalist who founded the ''Whole Earth Catalogue -- a telephone directory-type consumer guide to the goods and services needed to forge an alternative lifestyle -- argued that perhaps the only solution to global warming, a reality the Bush administration has not openly embraced, is nuclear power.
Earlier in the year, Robert Bryce, the author of ''Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate'', reported in the online publication Slate on a developing alliance between greens and neo-conservatives. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney, president of the ultra-right Centre for Security Policy, two big-time advocates for President Bush's war with Iraq, enthusiastically advocate fuel-efficient vehicles as a way of reducing dependence on Middle East oil.
The coupling of such top ''neo-cons'' -- the architects of the Iraq war -- with environmentalists -- many of whom have voiced concern about the devastating effects the war has had on the Iraqi environment -- materialised sometime late last year when they backed a proposal from the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington-based think tank tracking energy and security issues. The neo-cons are ''going green for geopolitical reasons, not environmental ones,'' Bryce concluded.
A bill that would give ''significant financial incentives for the development of three new nuclear technologies,'' sponsored by Arizona Republican Senator John McCain and Connecticut Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman is being circulated in draft form.
''As the world approaches peak oil and a future of rapidly escalating energy costs, increasing support for nuclear power amongst some environmentalists was predictable,'' Scott Silver, executive director of the Oregon-based grassroots environmental group Wild Wilderness, said in an interview.
''The unwritten mission of many organisations is 'sustainable growth' which translates into supporting economic growth while minimising associated ecological damage,'' Silver told IPS. ''In keeping with this mission, the fight against global warming will not be waged by attempting to decrease the ecological footprint of man or by reducing the demands we put upon this planet, but by growth.
''By tightly framing the issue in terms of 'too much carbon dioxide', nuclear power becomes an obvious solution,'' Silver added. ''For industry and the neo-cons, the problem has nothing to do with climate. For the neo-cons, the problem is one of sustaining economic growth during a period of energy scarcity.''
In a May 16 Pacific News Service commentary entitled ''Why I Am Not an Environmentalist,'' Orson Aguilar brought the contentious issue of ''economic development'' to the table.
Aguilar, associate executive director of The Greenlining Institute, which works to persuade banks and other financial institutions to invest in low-income and minority communities, especially in inner cities, said that for far too long, top-tier environmental groups neglected urban concerns.
Aguilar, who grew up in East Los Angeles, said that his community worried more about ''the lack of good housing and jobs, scraping together money for groceries, failing schools and all-too-common police brutality,'' than about ''air pollution'' or ''the smells coming from the incinerator directly south of our housing complex.''
Environmentalists, Aguilar charged, were preoccupied with ''preserving places most of us will never see.'' When the movement finally became conscious of the toxic nightmare plaguing the inner cities in America, he added, it ''avoided addressing my community's desperate need for economic development.''
In the late 1990s, Aguilar's organisation was deeply involved in trying secure legislation aimed at making it easier to revitalise inner city ''brownfields,'' or polluted plots of land. They met opposition from major environmental groups including the Sierra Club, he recalled.
By contrast, the idea of making it easier to revitalise brownfields had been kicking around at right-wing think tanks for several years, and it became a central theme of Bush's environmental agenda --albeit primarily because it meant enabling corporations to sidestep environmental regulations.
So, Aguilar said, he is not dismayed by the ''death of environmentalism''; he sees it as an opportunity: ''While there are many who feel sadness and anger that environmentalism is dead, I am optimistic that in dying, environmentalism might give birth to a new politics that offers a better future to both my community and the planet. Those environmentalists who are ready to evolve will find many new allies like me ready to join them in building a new and more expansive movement on the other side.''
Silver was not so quick to rhapsodise. This campaign ''appears to have been invented for the purpose of killing off traditional, naturally-evolved, grassroots-based environmentalism and replacing it with a synthetic, pro-development, focus-group tested collaborative partnership between 'new environmentalists,' industry, and those who hope to collect crumbs thrown off from unfettered growth,'' he said.
Posted at 06:58 am by R7fel
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Israeli Arsenal Vexes Nuclear Negotiators
Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS, May 20 (IPS) - The U.S. administration has sought to keep a tight focus on the suspected nuclear activities of Iran and North Korea at month-long talks here on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But other countries also have highlighted the impact of Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal on efforts to establish a Middle East nuclear-free zone.
To be sure, diplomats from Arab and developing countries said they share some of U.S. President George W. Bush's concerns about Iran's and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
During open debate that has lasted for the past two weeks, however, speaker after speaker also has urged the international community to help set up a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East by urging Israel to give up its nuclear weapons programme.
''The presence of nuclear arms is an impediment to peace not only in the region, but in the world,'' Qatari diplomat Nasr Al Ali told delegates at the talks, held every five years.
''These weapons are a major obstacle to peace and security in the region,'' Saudi representative Naif Bin Bandar Al-Sudairy said in a statement.
Demands to establish a zone free of nuclear weapons in the Middle East stem from a number of U.N. General Assembly resolutions and recommendations made by consensus at past NPT review conferences.
Armed with an estimated 200-300 nuclear bombs, Israel has said that it is willing to join the treaty but only after a comprehensive peace agreement has been reached with its Arab neighbours, many of whom it has described as ''hostile'' nations.
''A Middle East nuclear weapons free zone will be viewed very favourably by Israel once we have a comprehensive peace in the area,'' said Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon recently, ''and there are no dangers of attacks or delegitimisation by any other country.''
Israeli officials said their nuclear arms do not pose a threat to other countries and that they serve as a deterrent against invasion by larger neighbours.
''The real risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East emanates from countries that, despite being parties to the international treaties, do not comply with their relevant international obligations,'' said Alan Bar, director of the Israeli foreign ministry's arms control department.
''These countries,'' Bar added, ''are engaged in ongoing efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile efforts that have a destabilising effect on not only in the region, but on a global scale as well.''
Bar said Israel has ''never threatened its neighbours nor abrogated its obligations under any disarmament treaty.''
Arab diplomats rejected those assertions.
''Peace is not based on possession of weapons of mass destruction,'' said Sudairy. ''Real peace must be founded on confidence, trust, and good intentions. It is based on freeing the region from injustice, occupation, and aggression.''
Pro-Israel policy advocates specialising in nuclear issues, however, said Iran stood out as the greatest potential source of nuclear destabilisation in the Middle East.
''The question now is whether the whole NPT regime is threatened by Iran and not whether a nuclear free zone is immediately feasible,'' said Ariel Cohen, a senior analyst at the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation.
''It may be feasible at some point, but right now you see a threat to the NPT regime coming in the aftermath of both India and Pakistan and North Korea delivering blows to non-proliferation,'' Cohen told IPS.
Both India and Pakistan, which tested nuclear weapons in 1998, have refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty. North Korea, defying U.S. pressure to abandon its nuclear programme, opted out of the treaty about two years ago.
''If Iran violates NPT,'' said Cohen, ''there will be a domino effect that may involve Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, at which point Israel may go hot. Meaning Israel may not just hide behind creative ambiguity as it did so far, but will put its nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, and that will be Iran's contribution to a more unstable Middle East.''
Cohen's fear about nuclear instability in the Middle East is something that many US-based independent-minded researchers and analyst also share -- but from a radically different perspective.
''The world does well to remember that most Middle East weapons programmes began as a response to Israel's nuclear weapons,'' said Joseph Cirincione, director for non-proliferation at the liberal think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-author of its recent study, ''Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security.''
''Everyone already knows about Israel's bombs in the closet,'' he said. ''Bringing them out into the open and putting them on the table as part of a regional deal may be the only way to prevent others from building their own bombs in their basements.''
Cirincione said it would not be easy to create such an agreement but nevertheless insisted there is no time to lose.
Seeing current diplomatic trends in the Middle East as being favourable to the Bush administration, Cirincione said ''this is precisely the time'' to intensify efforts to rid the Middle East of nuclear weapons.
''It should be obvious that Israelis are better off in a region where no one has nuclear weapons than in one where many nations have them,'' he said. Interviews with the U.S. diplomatic sources did not indicate significant movement in such a direction.
''Our position has been the same,'' an official from the U.S. permanent mission to the United Nations said. ''We have urged Israel to join the treaty. We have a long-standing concern over its safeguard facilities.''
The official's response suggested that while Washington recognises the need for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, it has no public intention as yet of convincing Israel to sign the NPT.
In the 1990s, the United States, Israel, and Arab nations all had supported the goal of non-proliferation but they failed to make any progress toward it after the Palestinian-Israeli peace process collapsed.
Numerous delegates, citing what they described as U.S. attempts to make Iran the focus of international debates on proliferation while turning a blind eye to Israel's illegal possession of nuclear weapons, said they were compelled to dub the U.S. nuclear policy as based on double standards and hypocrisy.
''Some states which are waging war against nuclear weapons are defending Israel and thwarting initiatives to establish a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East,'' said Syrian Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad, in an obvious reference to the United States, which has accused Syria of supporting terrorist groups.
Even so, while voicing disappointment with the U.S. role, Arab diplomats are actively participating in the review conference negotiations. Egypt has emerged in a leadership role. Representing the Non-Aligned Movement of 115 developing countries, the Egyptian delegation is urging the conference to set up a subsidiary body to implement its past resolutions on nuclear weapons free zones.
''This conference should establish a practical roadmap that guarantees the establishment of nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East,'' Egyptian envoy Ahmed Fathallah told delegates.
This month's talks are scheduled to wind down on May 27. Few if any diplomats said they expect significant progress on the Middle East or any other major items on their agenda. But that will not stop them from pressing the case.
''Israel has to be brought in,'' Mekdad said. ''We are not going to give up. We'll be there talking about it.''
Posted at 06:46 am by R7fel
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