"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland,
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island,
Who rules the World-Island and the various Choke points commands the world"
"Force does not reveal to the victim the strength of his adversary,it invests the victims with patience"
Honesty, integrity, ethics, morality, Truth just might be a more effective path to real Justice.
USA is yet much too drunk of its own illusions to see the writings on the walls Worldwide.
This may seem bizarre, but it is strictly factual. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called the Pakistani opposition leader Nawaz Sharif to go over to Ankara to undergo coaching on how to acquire the political skills needed to establish civilian supremacy in Pakistan. And Sharif has actually reached Ankara.
Today’s Zaman, Turkey’s pro-government daily with Salafist leanings, featured a stunning report showing the picture of Turkish president Abdullah Gul (who belongs to Erdogan’s party, AKP) warmly receiving Sharif in his palace in Chankaya.
This is political theater of great rarity even by the Ottoman standards. But it is also serious stuff. Erdogan’s brand of political Islam is patronized by ‘green money’. Like Sharif, Gul also is close to the Saudi oligarchy (having worked in the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah for almost a decade). I see a Saudi hand in Sharif’s political pilgrimage to Ankara.
Riyadh would have got the Turkish leadership to give coaching to Sharif and groom him up at this historic juncture when the Shi’ite influence in Islamabad is on the rise. Erdogan and Gul can teach Sharif many things: how to mount a platform of political Islam in a country of observant Muslims; how to ride the popular wave of nationalism with an Islamic tinge; how to garner the groundswell of “anti-Americanism” (while secretly working for American geopolitics); and, ultimately, how to vanquish the secularist forces through salami tactic so that the ascendancy of Salafism gets established almost unnoticed.
Indeed, Sharif and Erdogan have some political traits in common. Both are grass root politicians; both have been persecuted under a political system based on the supremacy of the military establishment; both have a natural flair for populist politics and demagoguery; both are identified with Islamism; both enjoy reputation as ‘desi‘ leaders and nationalists.
But there are important differences, too. Erdogan has a working class background, whereas Sharif grew up in an affluent background. Erdogan has a strong anti-establishment streak, whereas Sharif was originally a progeny of the establishment (growing up literally as a playboy in the army barracks in Lahore) and even today, arguably, he belongs to it in terms of class interests.
Erdogan was a quintessential ‘outsider’, whereas Sharif merely happens to stand on the outside because he has not (yet) been invited in. Sharif’s is, therefore, the loneliness of the (temporary) exile rather than that fire in the belly that Erdogan carried for decades altogether. This is important because ultimately when you take on the ‘permanent establishment’ and the going gets tough, as is inevitable, there may be painful sacrifices to make. That is so everywhere - not only in Pakistan. Erdogan sat out obstinately in a prison cell without seeking a Saudi rescue package.
Besides, Erdogan is a genuine, unvarnished Islamist of a kind that Sharif just cannot be. Sharif’s dalliance with Islamic forces was a pragmatic move necessitated by the requirement to effectively build a coalition to meet the challenge from Benazir Bhutto in electoral politics. It was, ironically, a dalliance that was also the brainwave of the establishment (which also generously funded it). That is to say, it wasn’t at all an affinity that was felt in his blood, nor was it a matter of intellectual conviction. When you take on the permanent establishment and the ‘deep state’, there should be conviction bordering on fanatical faith in what one is doing. Which Erdogan had. And, Sharif may still be lacking it.
Again, Pakistan is not Turkey. The Pakistani people have a poor opinion of the political class, whereas Turkey has a vibrant and responsive political environment. Thus, Erdogan’s challenge to the military establishment had political legitimacy, whereas, Sharif’s attempt may look opportunistic. The point is, Sharif left behind a terrible legacy as an autocrat when he was prime minister and he may lack credibility when he tilts at the windmills of the military.
A big question remains. Is there an American hand in drawing up the tricky curriculum that the Turks will be following while tutoring Sharif? These are extraordinary times when Erdogan is acting strictly within the perimeters of the US-Saudi axis in regional politics. It is a tempting thought, but it cannot be excluded that the US could be preparing for a genuine ‘regime change’ in Pakistan. Is the Arab Spring about to sweep Pakistan?
The Americans would know by now that the Turkish ‘Islamists’ are much more useful as allies than the secularist Kemalists would have been. Put differently, Kemalists could never have performed the role for the US regional strategies with such natural ease the way Erdogan is doing while harnessing the Arab Spring. On a broader plane of geopolitics, too, Americans are ‘engaging’ political Islam in Egypt, Tunisia and even in Afghanistan. So, why not in Pakistan if an Erdogan were to appear there? The Zaman article is here.
Mongolian core to Russia's nuclear bid.... By Peter Lee
Over the last two decades, Russia has aggressively exploited and leveraged the nuclear legacy of the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union.
In places like Kazakhstan, Canada, Niger, Australia, the United States and Mongolia, Russia's (AtomRedMetZoloto) Uranium Holding Co or ARMZ is seeking to dominate worldwide uranium production.
The United States - which counts the Russian reset as one of the few unambiguous geopolitical wins - is apparently happy to turn a blind eye to Russia's uranium ambitions.
In the nuclear arms race with the United States, the USSR always went over quantity rather than quality. As the US poured research and development into smaller, more efficient warheads, the Soviets made sure they had a lot of bombs.
When the USSR collapsed, Russia inherited over a thousand tons of weapons-grade fissile material and a sizable nuclear refining and fabricating infrastructure. As Russia lurched through its post-Soviet adjustment, its control over most of the USSR's nuclear assets became one of the few effective bargaining chips in its dealings with the United States, and not only for negotiation of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
Russia's holdings of weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium (HEU) became a key currency in US-Russian diplomacy.
Under the "Megatons for Megawatts" program, it was agreed that 500 tons of Russian HEU would be downblended and shipped to the United States for use in commercial nuclear reactors. Today, approximately half of the fuel in US nuclear power plants comes from ex-Soviet warheads. [1]
Russia also uses its various uranium stockpiles to help meet its commercial export obligations - which reportedly exceed its domestic production capabilities by 6,000 tons per year.
Since the end of the Cold War, releases of material from Russian and US stocks have accounted for almost 60% of uranium demand, exerting significant downward pressure on uranium prices and mining activities.
Russia treats its nuclear industry as a national resource and it is aware that the uranium cupboard - at least as it pertains to HEU and other legacy stocks - will be bare in 10 to 15 years. As a matter of prudence, economics and national security, it is making plans for the future. [2]
The future includes an expected spike in uranium ore prices from US$55 to $70-$80 a pound as the price of commercially-mined ore is no longer depressed by a steady stream of government-owned HEU downblends into the marketplace.
It also includes a spike in demand, if South Korea, India and China assume that a multi-billion dollar nightmare like the Fukushima cleanup will never happen to them, and they continue with their program to build nuclear power plants.
If the nuclear power industry continues to grow as anticipated, there will be a shortfall of supply as existing uranium reserves worldwide experience accelerated depletion after the legacy feedstock kitty is gone. [3]
And the future will also probably see Russia and ARMZ at the heart of the global nuclear fuel industry.
Russia is exceptionally well-positioned to become the prime player in the 21st century commercial nuclear industry, in large part because of its dominant role in the business of refining uranium ore into usable fuel.
Russia has the world's largest uranium refining capacity, inherited from the USSR's oversized weapons program. It is estimated that Russia's refining capacity is four to five times that of the United States, and almost half of the world's total.
It is an advantage that Russia is likely to keep, thanks in part to American anxieties over proliferation and its policy of discouraging any new entrant - not just Iran - from developing refining capability.
One of the more utopian schemes to reassure nervous operators of nuclear power plants that they can have continued access to nuclear fuel even if they can't refine it in-country is the proposed "Nuclear Fuel Bank". It is not surprising that Russia promptly agreed to host the fuel bank because, in the words of the International Atomic energy Agency (IAEA), "Russia has already produced the low-enriched uranium" needed to stock it. [4]
One thing Russia doesn't have is lots of domestic uranium ore. Access to imported low-cost uranium ore is key to keeping the Russian refineries humming - and profitable.
Therefore, ARMZ - which accounted for only 7% of the world's uranium production when its sourcing was limited to Russia - has gone abroad to tie up sources of supply in the grand tradition of transnational energy companies.
Journalist and Kazakhstan hand Hal Foster described ARMZ's strategy and ambition in a 2010 piece:
[AMRZ hopes to] produce between 25 and 30 percent of the world's supply [of uranium ore] by 2030.
ARMZ is already in the process of becoming a powerhouse, accounting for 40 percent of the world's enriched uranium.
Chief Executive Sergei Kiriyenko has made no secret of ARMZ's desire to become one of the driving forces on the international uranium market ...
That's because it gives ARMZ a much larger share of world reserves at a time when the price of uranium is expected to soar due to the increasing demand for reactors. "We're looking at a shortage-driven market, with an inflexible supply," Kiriyenko said. [5]
Depending on how one keeps score, ARMZ is already perhaps the third or fourth largest producer of uranium, thanks to a recent overseas acquisition binge. But that doesn't take into account ARMZ's aggressive efforts to lock up supply from outside sources and the extra clout the Russian government brings to the table on its behalf.
ARMZ's business approach can be seen in its most important move, into the near-beyond of Kazakhstan, which has quickly become the world's leading supplier of uranium ore, with one-third of the global market.
Although Kazakhstan controls only an estimated 12% of world reserves, it is most aggressive in exploiting them. In 2009, it increased output by 69% over the previous year, and has promised to double production by 2015.
The primary production technique involves drenching the underground ore body with sulfuric acid to leach out the uranium. Squeamish environmentalists may not be reassured by Kazatomprom's declaration that "the natural hydrochemical environment of uranium deposits of South Kazakhstan has a unique capability for self-restoration". [6]
Russia has displayed an integrated commercial and governmental strategy toward Kazakhstan and its uranium industry.
On the commercial side, beyond its direct investments in Kazakhstan, ARMZ purchased controlling interest in Canada's Uranium One, thereby gaining control of the company's sizable interests inside Kazakhstan. Almost as an afterthought, ARMZ thereby became the owner of almost half of America's uranium output (US capacity constitutes an inconsiderable 3% of global output). [7]
On the governmental side, the two nations have signed agreements for construction of nuclear reactors and uranium refining capacity.
And there is this, as reported by Martin Sieff:
Russia's Rosatom nuclear agency and Kazatomprom, the national nuclear development corporation of Kazakhstan have reached agreement about setting up a joint venture to market uranium around the world, Kazakhstan has ... joined Russia in a new customs union that became operative on July 1. Coordinating uranium exports and uranium production policy is the first concrete achievement of cooperation between the two nations under the CU umbrella. [8]
The government-to-government angle may have also involved some combination of traditional Soviet heavy-handedness and new-style nomenklatura skullduggery against Mukhtar Dzakishev, the young technocrat credited with leading Kazatomprom's charge to the top of the uranium league table.
In March 2010, Dzakishev was sentenced to 14 years for various crimes, including alleged collusion with a self-exiled opponent of Kazakhstan's president to illegally and profitably alienate uranium reserves or production rights to overseas companies.
There are widespread allegations that Dzakishev's conviction is a political hatchet job - or an effort to remove a potential stumbling-block from Russia's uranium cooperation with Kazakhstan, as Joanne Lillis reported at Eurasianet:
... suspicions have been aired that Dzhakishev's case was linked to a redistribution of lucrative uranium assets. Misgivings were compounded after interrogations of Dzhakishev, in which he suggested that Russian nuclear interests had benefited from his arrest, were leaked in a video that was posted on the YouTube video sharing site. [9]
The road to Mongolia With this background, we can turn to the Russian campaign in Mongolia, another sector of Russia's near-beyond with significant uranium reserves.
Thanks to the travails of a small Canadian company, Khan Resources - and its court filings - we have a privileged view of how Russian nuclear sausage is made.
Mongolia has a major uranium play at Dornod, a reserve discovered during the socialist era and exploited for a time by the USSR. It has reserves of at least 25,000 tons, and can support an extraction rate of 2,000 tons per year - an estimated cash flow of $300 million per year, much of it probably profit.
After the communist regime was replaced by a multi-party democracy in 1989, the Dornod deposit was opened up to investment by Western commercial mining interests.
Through a series of transactions, by 2009 the rights to exploit the deposit were held by Khan Resources of Canada (58%), a Russian company (21%), and the Mongolian government (21%).
According to court documents, Khan claimed that it had spent $20 million on surveys and construction at the mine site by this time.
However, in 2009 the Russian government and ARMZ turned their interest toward Mongolian uranium and proceeded government/business tag team fashion similar to what they had employed in Kazakhstan.
Russia feels a strong sense of entitlement over Dornod. A 2010 Pravda news report on Dornod was titled "Russia to retrieve control over uranium".
The Soviets and Russians operated the mine from 1988 to 1995, had 10,000 Russian workers on site, and claims to have invested $600 million overall on Mongolian uranium exploration and development.
Material from Dornod was railed 400 kilometers to ARMZ's Priargunsky operation in the Trans-Baikal region of Russia, which still mines domestic uranium and processes it into yellowcake.
Russia's nuclear establishment covets Dornod as a component of a "single infrastructure" of uranium extraction and refining that signals Priargunsky's return to economies of scale (Dornod material would double the current output of the Priargunsky refinery). [10]
On the government-to-government level, in January 2009, Russia and Mongolia announced a uranium extraction joint venture.
According to Khan Resources' court filings, this signaled the beginning of a campaign to squeeze it out of the Dornod project. Toward the end of the year, ARMZ made a hostile takeover bid against Khan in Canada; the Khan board rejected it.
Then, in January 2010, the Mongolian parliament or Great Khural passed a law giving the Mongolian government an uncompensated 51% share in any project - like Dornod - in which it had previously invested money.
Khan acquiesced, presumably not happily (Asia Times Online's attempt to contact Khan's management was unsuccessful), but its efforts to determine its new diminished share in the project were frustrated by a boycott of proceedings by its Russian partner.
The situation was further complicated when Khan entered into ultimately fruitless negotiations to be acquired by a Chinese company, Overseas Uranium Corporation of the China National Nuclear Corp.
According to Pravda, bringing the Chinese into the picture did not endear Khan Resources to Sinophobic Mongolians.
Yet, Ulan Bator with whom the Canadians have not coordinated their actions did not want the Chinese. On these grounds, TSAUK [the acronym of Khan's operating combine in Mongolia] had its license revoked, and the Mongols will be developing the uranium deposit with Russian companies. [11]
ARMZ then injected itself into the issue, publicly announcing that Khan's mining licenses for Dornod had been invalidated. Khan protested that its licenses were still valid and it had received no adverse notification from the Mongolian government.
Then, in April, Khan's licenses were, in fact, invalidated, albeit on grounds that Khan declared were specious. Indeed, when Khan took the case to court in Mongolia, the Mongolian court ruled in its favor.
To date, Khan is involved in three legal proceedings over the Dornod project. The Mongolian case is winding its way through the appeals process.
Khan has also served the Mongolian government with a demand to take the matter to arbitration, which Khan claims is mandated by Mongolian resource laws, to settle a claim for $200 million in compensation.
Finally, Khan is suing its ARMZ and Priargunsky, its erstwhile partner, in a Canadian court for $200 million in damages. The Russian Ministry of Justice has refused service on the grounds of "security or sovereignty". [12]
Khan's antagonists could be in a position to stonewall the various proceedings until Khan has burned through enough of its modest nest egg to lose hope and accept a settlement well below the US$200 million it is asking for ... and, perhaps, less than what it was previously offered.
According to a report on Voice of America, the hostile Russian bid valued Khan at C$0.65 per share (for a total valuation of approximately C$35 million) and the Chinese bid at C$0.96/share (C$53 million). [13]
It is not a good sign for Khan that the market which has pounded Khan's stock from a high of $5.64 a share in 2007 down to 24 cents, a market capitalization roughly equivalent to the $20 million Khan said it actually disbursed on the project before it shut down, and less than the Chinese and even the Russian offers.
The attitude of the Mongolian government - and its enthusiasm for tarnishing its image as an investment destination with its manhandling of Khan Resources - is unclear.
The World Nuclear Association's profile of the Mongolian nuclear industry stated that "[t]he Mongolian prime minister said that the government decision on this project had been vexed, which relates to Rosatom's impatience with the delay in finalizing it." [14]
There is no question, on the other hand, that the driving force for restructuring the Dornod project to exclude Khan comes from the Russian side. The focus of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's July 2009 visit to Mongolia was reportedly Mongolian uranium.
President Dmitry Medvedev came to Ulan Bator a month later, with ARMZ's president in tow, also to discuss uranium. To sweeten the deal, Russia wrote off over 98% of Mongolia's debt and promised to "give Mongolia 375 million roubles for the vaccination of livestock to increase the import of meat and milk to the Russian market". [15]
It is also rumored that Russia's precondition for participating in the Tavan Tolgoi coal mining project (and building an expensive and economically suspect railroad line from the mine to Russia) is a cooperative Mongolian attitude on Dornod.
President Tsakhia Elbegdorj's relations with the Russian leadership are rumored to be icy, and it was further rumored that the mysterious summer 2011 interruption of Russian diesel fuel deliveries that threatened Mongolia's harvest (and its full enjoyment of the Nadam Festival) was a message to Elbegdorj that he should toe the line on the uranium issue that preoccupies Russia.
While Mongolia deepened its uranium ties with Russia, Mongolia's nuclear negotiations with the United States came undone.
In September 2011, Elbegdorj pulled the plug on secret negotiations with the United States and Japan to establish Mongolia as a nuclear waste storage facility, and fired the negotiating team - including the ambassador-at-large, A Undraa, who had gone to the US earlier in the year to discuss the US proposal - after a bizarre cavalcade of denials and misinformation. [16]
In May 2011, the Mongolian Embassy in Vienna had posted a vociferous denial of the rumor, which read in part:
Mongolia's mass media clarified the issue with relevant officials in accordance with information distributed by the world's bigger news agencies such as Reuters, CNN and Japan's Mainichi newspaper and distributed the position of Mongolia's officials. Authorities of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and Mon-Atom state-run company all denied this information and affirmed that Mongolia's government has not held any talks on burying nuclear spent fuel with any one nor is there legal basis for any such activity. [17]
The US government, despite the fact that it had originally floated the proposal, obligingly papered over the situation with a supporting statement that Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control Wonk characterized regretfully in May 2011 as "a lie":
I really hate to use the word "lie" to describe the DOE statement. However, Dick Stratford [director of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Safety and Security in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation at the US Department of State] confirmed at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference that US and Mongolian officials had held "discussions about whether or not Mongolia would harbor - or take a spent-fuel storage depot for third-country fuel". Conveniently, I asked Stratford directly and on-the-record about US-origin spent nuclear fuel. He said "Yes, I would support allowing [South Korea and Taiwan] to transfer US-obligated spent fuel." [18]
There is understandable resistance within Mongolia to using its pristine steppes and/or deserts as a dump for nuclear waste.
But the Mongolian denial also included this interesting passage:
Mongolians are not stupid to store other countries nuclear waste if they do not buy nuclear fuel from Mongolia. [Emphasis added]
In reporting the collapse of the deal, Mainichi reported:
The Mongolian government was considering processing uranium into nuclear fuel and exporting it in an attempt to make good use of the uranium resources. For this purpose, Mongolia was exploring the idea of introducing "nuclear fuel lease contracts" in which Mongolia would receive spent nuclear fuel from countries that buy uranium nuclear fuel from Mongolia.
If Mongolia - with US support - was able to establish itself as an accredited nuclear waste depository, and leverage that capability to become a preferred supplier of nuclear fuel for users with spent fuel disposal problems, Mongolia would have become an important - and independent - player in the uranium fuel business.
If this was actually the plan, Elbegdorj backpedaled with breathtaking speed. In a September 15, 2011 interview, he stated:
[T]he nuclear waste of other countries is a 'snake grown up in another body', he said. "Receiving back the nuclear waste after exploiting and exporting uranium must not be, as I think, this is a pressure from foreign superpowers, and we must throw out this delusion." [19]
Now, for whatever reason - and thanks to a law banning the importation, transit, and storage of nuclear waste - Mongolia is now down to one partner for its uranium program: Russia and one apparent role: provider of feedstock to ARMZ's Priargunsky plant inside Russia.
In any case, one can expect that after the smoke clears Russia will be firmly entrenched at Dornod.
The US government's lack of interest in the Russian push to dominate the uranium trade is curious, especially when contrasted with the Chinese rare earths furor that consumed the West's diplomats and press corps in 2010.
There are plenty of rare earths reserves around the world, including the United States, reserves that the Chinese government fully expected would enter into production as China rationalizes its own industry and cuts down on exports.
In an interesting side note to last year's national security hysteria, the world's largest rare earth mine, at Mountain Pass, California, in the United States resumed mining on October 24, 2011; its operators, Molycorp, expect to be in production for another 30 years. [20]
On the other hand, there is not that much uranium in the world beyond the reach of Russia when its extensive interests in mining, its purchasing agreements, and its dominant position in refining are taken into account.
Perhaps the US military establishment has no worries about weapons-grade uranium, since it can reprocess and repurpose its current inventory to make ever smaller and more efficient nukes.
But the supply of world uranium supplies for commercial purposes will be largely in the hands of Russia's opaque autocracy and its cowed foreign clients.
That doesn't seem to concern the United States or its national security advisers and critics overmuch. Why not?
In discussing Russia's move into Kazakhstan, Martin Sieff pointed out the Great Game element, at least as it pertains to China:
The new agreement with Russia means that Kazakhstan will cooperate with Russia rather than having Rosatom as a formidable rival in its efforts to increase its uranium exports. Together, the two nations will be in a position to dominate the global uranium market.
The move is of great strategic importance since China has already expressed a strong interest in purchasing vastly increased quantities of Kazakhstan's uranium ore for the 500 next-generation civilian nuclear reactors that Beijing is planning to build over the next 30 years.
It appears that China, if it makes the strategic shift from fossil fuel to nuclear power, can anticipate replacing the geopolitical risks of getting oil out of the Middle East with the complications of dealing with a uranium cartel along the lines of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries based on Kazakhstan and Mongolian reserves and headed by Russia.
US sows discord in South Asia, hence the US's "divide-and-rule" strategy.....
By M K Bhadrakumar
Two templates in regional politics are seriously debilitating the United States's campaign to bring Pakistan down on its knees in the Afghan endgame. One is that Delhi has distanced itself from the US campaign and pursues an independent policy toward Islamabad.
The second factor frustrating US policies to isolate Pakistan is the South Asian nation's bonhomie with Iran. Pakistan would have been pretty much isolated had there been an acute rivalry with
Iran over the Afghan endgame. The current level of cordiality in the relationship enables Islamabad to focus on the rift with the US and even draw encouragement from Tehran.
It's baloney A recent statement by the Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna on the US-Pakistan rift underscored that India doesn't see eye-to-eye with the US approach. (See US puts the squeeze on Pakistan, Asia Times, October 22). It was carefully timed to signal to Washington (and Islamabad) that Delhi strongly disfavored any form of US military action against Pakistan.
There is a string of evidence to suggest that the Pakistani leadership appreciates the Indian stance. The general headquarters in Rawalpindi acted swiftly on Sunday to return to India within hours a helicopter with three senior military officers on board which strayed into Pakistani territory in bad weather in the highly sensitive Siachen sector. The official spokesman in Delhi went on record to convey India's appreciation of the Pakistani gesture. Such conciliatory gestures are rare (for both sides) in the chronicle of Pakistan-India relationship.
Again, last week, India voted for Pakistan's candidacy for the Asia-Pacific slot among the non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council and the Pakistani ambassador promptly responded that he would work with his Indian counterpart in New York. Ironically, the UN has been a theater for India and Pakistan's frequent clashes over the Kashmir problem.
Looking ahead, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan are likely to meet on the sidelines of the South Asian Association For Regional Cooperation summit in Male on November 10-11. Washington would have been quick to insist that it acted as "facilitator" in fostering the improving climate in India-Pakistan relations. But the US is instead watching with a degree of discomfort that its complicated South Asian symphony is throwing up jarring notes. Calibrating India-Pakistan tensions traditionally constituted a key element of the US's regional diplomacy.
Washington has "retaliated" to Krishna's statement by issuing a travel advisory cautioning American nationals from visiting India because of heightened terrorist threats. Delhi, in turn, ticked off Washington saying it considered the US move "disproportionate" - a cute way of saying that the advisory is a load of baloney.
Jundallah in retreat ...
What is happening in Pakistan-Iran relations is even more galling for the US. There has been a spate of high-level visits between Islamabad and Tehran and the two capitals have reached mutual understandings on a range of security interests. Last week, Tehran acknowledged that there had not been a single attack by the terrorist group Jundallah from the Pakistani side of the border in the Balochistan region during the past 10 months.
Tehran has accused the US of masterminding the Jundallah terrorists to stage covert operations to destabilize Iran. However, since the detention of Central Intelligence Agency operative Raymond Davis in Lahore in January, Islamabad has clamped down on hundreds of US intelligence operatives functioning on Pakistani soil, seriously cramping the US's capacity to dispatch Jundallah terrorists into Iran.
Tehran is satisfied that the Pakistani security establishment is finally acting purposively to smash the US-backed Jundallah network. It reciprocates Pakistan's goodwill by trying to harmonize its Afghan policy and scrupulously avoided pointing fingers at Pakistan for the assassination of Afghan Peace Council head Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was closely allied with Tehran.
Essentially, Iran appreciates that Pakistan's "strategic defiance" of the US will be in the interest of regional stability, the bottom line being that Tehran is keen to force the American troops to leave the region.
Tehran succeeded in the pursuit of a similar objective in Iraq by prevailing on Shi'ite political elites in Baghdad not to accede to the desperate pleas by the US to allow US troops to continue even after the stipulated deadline of withdrawal in December 2011 under the Status of Forces agreement. But Afghanistan is a different kettle of fish and a common strategy with Pakistan will help.
Pakistan keeps an ambivalent stance on the issue of a long-term US military presence in Afghanistan, but it can count on the Taliban to robustly oppose the US plans apropos military bases. Unsurprisingly, Tehran purses a multi-pronged approach toward the Taliban.
Concerted effort ... In sum, the overall regional scenario is becoming rather unfavorable to the US. The easing of tensions in Pakistan's relations with India and Iran undermine US strategy to get embedded in the region.
The US's travel advisory was intended to raise hackles in India about the imminent possibility of Pakistan-supported terrorist activities. Again, US-sponsored disinformation is reappearing with claims that China and Pakistan are conspiring against India by setting Chinese military bases in the northern areas of Pakistan, which form part of Kashmir.
This is coinciding with a distinct improvement in the security situation in the Kashmir Valley, to the point that chief minister Omar Abdullah openly advocated last week in Srinagar that decades-old emergency regulations should be progressively withdrawn and that Delhi should initiate a serious engagement of Pakistan to settle the Kashmir problem.
United States-backed propaganda about the prospect of Chinese military bases in the Pakistani part of Kashmir is intended to serve a dual purpose: namely, creating discord between Pakistan and India and in Sino-Indian relations, too.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a significant statement last week that he was "convinced" that the Chinese leadership wanted a peaceful resolution of all problems between India and China, including the long-running border dispute. Significantly, he expressed his "sincere hope [that] it is possible for us to find ways and means by which the two neighbors can live in peace and amity despite the persistence of the border problem".
Manmohan's remarks assumed significance since the two countries are to shortly hold the 15th round of talks on the border issue in New Delhi. In a meaningful move, the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to Manmohan's political overture. Beijing said China was "ready to work with India to enhance the China-India strategic partnership". The statement said:
As important neighbors to each other, China and India have maintained sound momentum in the bilateral relationship. As for the border issue left over from history, the two sides have been seeking a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution through friendly consultations. Pending a final solution, the two sides are committed to maintaining peace and tranquility in border areas.
A season for propaganda The speculative, unattributed - and unverifiable - reports regarding Chinese intentions to establish military bases in the upper reaches of the Kashmir region under Pakistani control are surging again at a formative point in regional security. Their labored thesis is that Delhi should be extremely wary about the "devious" intentions of China and Pakistan and should go slow on the normalization of relations with these "treacherous" neighbors.
Curiously, Delhi is also being bombarded at the same time with US propaganda that Washington is striking a "grand bargain" with Pakistan over the Afghan problem whereby there will be a mutual accommodation of each other's concerns, which may include US intervention to mediate the Kashmir problem and US pressure on Delhi to roll back its presence in Afghanistan.
In a motivated commentary in Foreign Policy magazine last week on the eve of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Islamabad, two prominent US think-tankers wired to the Washington establishment actually tried to alternatively bait Islamabad and frighten Delhi by putting on the table the ingredients of the "grand bargain". Truly, this is all turning out to be a season for propaganda.
The heart of the matter is that the US is desperate to clinch a strategic agreement with the government of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul that would allow the establishment of a long-term American military presence in Afghanistan.
On Monday, hundreds of Afghans demonstrated in Kabul against US bases. The same day, the lower house of the Afghan parliament rejected terms guiding the operations of the Afghan government's existing agreement with the International Security Assistance Force as violating the country's sovereignty. The mood in the Afghan parliament seems hostile.
Karzai is convening a loya jirga (grand council) to seek endorsement for the US-Afghan pact. Matters will come to a head when it meets on November 16. Karzai promises that the US-Afghan pact will be sent to parliament for approval after being discussed in the jirga. Washington insists that the jirga approves the draft pact before the Bonn II conference convenes in December. Karzai's political future depends on whether he can deliver on the pact.
All sitting parliamentarians, some former members, one-third of the provincial council members, representatives of civil society and distinguished people, religious scholars and influential tribal leaders have been invited to the jirga. Two hundred and thirty representatives of Afghan refugee communities in Pakistan, Iran and Western countries will also be in attendance in the 2,030-strong jirga.
On September 13, Afghan National Security Advisor Dadfar Spanta told Afghan parliamentarians that the US might set up military bases in Afghanistan after the signing of the pact, but that the pact wouldn't be inked unless approved by parliament. Spanta added, "Concerns of our neighbors [over the US-Afghan pact] are genuine, but we will not allow our soil to be used against them."
The Afghan parliament fears, however, that Karzai might choose to bypass it after extracting endorsement from a pliant jirga and interpreting that as the collective opinion of the Afghan nation. Parliament directed the speaker on Monday to address an official communication to Karzai highlighting its constitutional prerogative to approve foreign policy issues.
The Afghan endgame is moving into a crucial phase; much will depend on regional politics. The worst-case scenario for the US is that subsuming the contradictions in the intra-regional relationships between and among Pakistan, Iran, India and China, these countries might have a convergent opinion on the issue of American military bases.
An accentuation of these contradictions, therefore, would serve the US's geopolitical interests at the present juncture, hence the US's "divide-and-rule" strategy.....
. German armed forces to close dozens of military bases...
The German Defense Ministry has presented its long-awaited plan to reorganize its military bases, as it prepares to significantly shrink the size of the military. Thirty-one bases are soon to be closed....55000 positions have already been eliminated and more to come.
Wednesday was a dark day for many German cities and municipalities. They fought to convince the German military, the Bundeswehr, to stay with them, but to no avail. The bad news came from the Defense Ministry in the early hours: 31 military bases will be completely shut down.
Among them some heavyweights: the renowned air force officers' school in the Bavarian town of Fürstenfeldbruck and the fleet command of the navy in Glücksburg. Both bases are to have their functions transferred to other places.
Early Wednesday, the 1,800 soldiers in the southwestern town of Sigmaringen also found out that they'll soon have to move - the base there, rich in tradition, will be closed. And businesses in the Danube city of about 16,000 are now fearing economic losses.
"Every closure and every reduction is painful," said Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere. He said there were deeply-rooted traditions in the military, but that the reforms were unavoidable. "The Bundeswehr is not there for the base's sake. It's there to fulfill its mission efficiently and well."
Smaller army, fewer bases
The Defense Ministry's plan for its military bases follows an earlier decision to reduce personnel in the Bundeswehr, which is set to shrink to about 185,000.
The bases were built for many more soldiers, and the ministry says maintaining them would be too expensive. Since the end of compulsory military service in March, 55,000 posts have been axed, and 30,000 are soon to follow.
The Bundeswehr bases are spread out across the country so that the military is "present in the region," as the military says. This will reportedly not change, as a concentration of the military in a few larger bases was never considered.
Rather, de Maiziere proceeded with the motto "reduction comes before closing." Many bases will be shrunk but not closed. At 31, the number of closures indeed seems moderate. According to the minister's calculations, the smallest bases not included, 264 will remain in operation.
New policy rolls out through 2017
Hardest hit by the closures is Schleswig-Holstein in the north, the state with the highest military concentration. Eight bases there are to be closed, and 10,000 service positions cut. Still, State Premier Peter Harry Carstensen said he doesn't feel betrayed by the closures, since important military installations will remain in the state.
The leadership of the navy, army and air force is also to be consolidatedThe western state of Saarland and Bavaria in the south will also feel the cuts, while posts in the former East Germany will remain relatively unaffected.
The Defense Ministry has said it will not yet allocate money made from any civilian use of the closed military bases, but it has stressed that it wants to help the affected soldiers and civilian contractors.
"The uncertainty has come to an end," said the German Armed Forces Association, a soldiers' interest group. It praised the publication of the new base plan, for which soldiers had long been waiting. But its chairman, Colonel Ulrich Kirsch, warned the government not to let the affected soldiers down.
"All hardships have to be mitigated as best possible," he said.
Reforms reach the top
Also to be reworked is the Bundeswehr's leadership structure. First and foremost, the headquarters of the Defense Ministry will remain in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. Current capital Berlin will continue to play second fiddle. All together, Bonn and Berlin are to have no more than 2,000 employees, a good 1,000 fewer than now.
The command of the various military branches will be relocated and merged with the responsible administrative bodies. The navy will soon be led from Rostock on the northeastern coast, the air force from Berlin and the army from Strausberg, in the eastern state of Brandenburg.
Slashing the US defence budget could undermine stability in Asia and US interests there, says J. Randy Forbes. And it could get worse this autumn....
Just as the history of the world was written in Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of the 21st century will surely be written in the Asia-Pacific. Four decades of almost uninterrupted economic growth and the expansion of democratic governance has created a region of peace, prosperity, and integration that rivals almost any in history. The United States has been one of the greatest benefactors of Asia's success – we have gained access to new markets, formed deeper alliances to ensure stability, and seen the winds of democratic change sweep away ruthless autocrats.
But unnoticed by many is the fact that US military power and its alliances have underwritten the region's security for the last seven decades, creating a stable environment that continues to enable success. However, after passage of a budget act that slashed defence – and with more potentially on the way at the hands of the Congressionally-mandated Supercommittee – all this could change. Worse yet, just as the United States is choosing to dismantle its military, the People's Republic of China is continuing to modernize its military at a rapid pace. The result is an impending shift in the regional balance of power that is raising alarm amongst China’s neighbours and has called into question the United States’ long-term security commitments. In short, further defence cuts will imperil the future prosperity and stability of the Asia-Pacific.
Going forward, the United States will have two paramount interests in this region. First, it must preserve the free flow of trade. The region’s economic rise has made countries such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China, and Singapore into major trading partners for the United States and the rest of the world. But just as goods in the United States are shipped from Pennsylvania to Virginia by truck, the geography of the Asia-Pacific means that even intra-regional trade must transit the maritime ‘highways’ that intersect the region’s seas and pass through important choke-points. Forty percent of world trade passes through the Strait of Malacca, for instance. Maintaining the ability to secure those shipping lanes and preserve freedom of navigation will remain critical for commercial and military vessels.
Second, stability in the region will continue to be a top priority for US statesman. A conflict in the Taiwan Strait or on the Korean Peninsula wouldn’t only put US military service members in harm’s way, but it would also cause major diplomatic and economic disruption in the region, possibly paralyzing global markets. Further, if states like South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, or Japan perceive the US is backing away from its security commitments, they may invest in nuclear weapons as a relatively cheap means of deterrence, setting off a round of nuclear proliferation that would leave the region and the international community in a far more dangerous position.
For its part, China insists it will pursue a course of ‘peaceful development’ that doesn’t seek to dominate its neighbours. While many hope China’s claims are true, the only verifiable metric we have to understand what the future might look like is the China’s growing military capabilities. Unfortunately, they don't paint a picture of benign intentions.
While the PLA is far from achieving parity with the United States, it is rapidly and consistently developing asymmetric capabilities – missiles, submarines, anti-satellite and cyber warfare capabilities – to counter the United States’ more sophisticated air and naval forces. Taking a page from their own philosopher of war Sun Tzu, Chinese strategists aim to achieve their objectives while avoiding conflict. Thus, China aims to acquire conventional capabilities sufficient to deter the United States from entering a conflict in the western Pacific Ocean, or, should one occur, to deny access to US forces operating from bases in Japan, South Korea, and Guam.
If the United States doesn’t counter these capabilities, the credibility of its security commitments will erode. Australia, Japan and Singapore have already begun to question the staying power of the United States in the region and their concerns about the rise of China.
Despite unprecedented evidence that Beijing’s efforts are maturing, the US Congress voted to cut another $465 billion from the defence budget over the coming decade. These cuts will force our military services to make considerable reductions in its procurement of new weapons systems necessary for maintaining a balance of military power with China, while reducing the resources necessary to maintain the readiness of aging platforms.
An even greater blow to our nation's defences could come this autumn: if Congress fails to agree to the Supercommittee’s recommendations, the automatic defence reductions required by the Budget Control Act’s ‘sequestration’ process would cut another $550 billion in national security. When asked if a reduction of this magnitude would be the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the foot, Secretary of Defence Panetta replied without hesitation ‘No, we'd shooting ourselves in the head.’
The Asia-Pacific is a theatre in which air and naval forces are vital. Yet the House Armed Services Committee has estimated that sequestration could lead to cuts that would reduce the Navy from 285 ships (already the smallest fleet in almost 100 years) to a paltry 238, far less than the Chinese Navy. The HASC study also found that the Air Force, which is deployed across the region as a means to deter aggression and project lethal power in the event of a crisis, would have to shed hundreds of fighters. Critical programmes like the next-generation bomber would likely also be cut. The Marine Corps, a force that can operate across a versatile set of missions at its forward-deployed location in Japan, would also face sizable reductions that could hollow the service.
In the decades ahead, there is perhaps no region more important to US interests than the Asia-Pacific. Yet at a time when we need even more attack submarines, destroyers, and modern fighters and bombers to keep pace with China's advances, our military leaders and allies are left to wonder if the US will choose to continue its leadership role in the region.
As Washington considers even more defence cuts, we cannot forget the long-term strategic challenges we face. Failure to properly resource our Asia-Pacific forces will weaken deterrence and make conflict more likely—conflict that can’t help but involve the United States given its critical interests in the region. By cutting defence now, we will incur unacceptably high costs in the future. Our military and our nation simply cannot afford it....
Real wimps go to Tehran via Baghdad.... By Pepe Escobar
The new Holy Trinity mythology peddled by Washington to an unsuspecting world is that the Libya war is over, the Iraq war will be over by New Year's Eve, and the Afghan war will be over by 2014.
Oh yes; and Lindsay Lohan is a reincarnation of the Virgin Mary....
Let's focus on Iraq. There is one real reason for the United States troop withdrawal in December; the Nuri al-Maliki government in Baghdad bluntly denied blanket immunity from prosecution of war crimes to US soldiers. This implies, crucially, the Maliki
government evicting the Pentagon from very convenient military bases in Iraq out of which a strike on Iran could be conducted.
It's essential to remember that this Shi'ite-majority Iraqi government - which inherited a totally devastated country - was arrived at via US-approved democratic elections. Now that entails two poetic justice developments; a democratic Iraq getting closer to the Islamic Republic of Iran; and democracy expelling the militarized face of empire.
No wonder Washington is dazed and confused. Naturally the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the State Department and/or all of the above are already working around the clock to come up with any number of mischief scenarios.
Expect reams of think-tank Middle East "experts" suggesting a US withdrawal as a diversionist tactic; the creation of a false flag/black ops gambit, such as the suicide bombing of a Saudi ambassador (oops, already tried this one); blaming the "terror" on Tehran; and then reshipping thousands of troops back to keep Iraq "safe from terror".
Washington currently has fewer than 40,000 US troops in Iraq, down from an all-time high of 170,000 in late 2007. For the moment, some 16,000 Americans (the size of an army division), split between US diplomats and "civilian contractors", aka weaponized mercenaries (8,000 of them, plus 4,500 "general life support", aka the help) are supposed to be staying on in Iraq.
This mix of bureaucrats, CIA spooks, special forces and barely disguised slaves will be the de facto US Secretary of State Hillary "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton's private army.
Iraqi nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr has other ideas; he has already announced that "they are all occupiers and resisting them after the end of the agreement is an obligation". It's easy to do the math and infer the consequences.
And they even stole our oil If one pays attention to the Office of the Inspector General report number ISP-I-09-30A, even this 16,000 army division figure is bogus. The report, written in 2009, calls for a "significant rightsizing" (gotta love the terminology) of the larger-than-the-Vatican US Embassy in Baghdad, aka Clinton's palace; and stressed, "the rightsizing process has to begin immediately."
Yet no matter how many "rightsized" US boots remain on Iraqi ground, still the "how to nail Iran" gambit looms large. The key feature of the recent Justice Department/Federal Bureau of Investigation/Drug Enforcement Agency "Fast and Furious" plot (see The Occupy Iran Fast and Furious plot (extended) Asia Times Online, October 14) was not its implausibility; it was to hammer home that the Iranians are evil entities who dare to disrespect the US by concocting all manner of Hollywood suspension of disbelief schemes to spread "terror".
Then there's the alleged veneer of respectability added to the sub-standard Hollywood shtick. Take a look at this Brookings Institution report, titled "Which Path to Persia?" [1] and written by a bunch of usual suspects such as Kenneth Pollack, Bruce Riedel, Michael O'Hanlon and Martin Indyk.
The record shows that Washington in fact has thrown almost everything in this book at Iran. The only "strategy" missing is a unilateral Israeli strike (the neo-conservatives are dying for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go for it) which would be met by an Iranian retaliation, thus dragging in the US and opening up the possibility for a ground invasion (doomed from the start, but why should these authors care?)
Predictably, the ideal scenario for these and other Beltway armchair warmongers is for Tel Aviv to launch a sneak attack, with "retreating" US troops in Iraq offered as bait/sacrificial victims for a vicious Iranian retaliation. There couldn't be a more ideal pretext for dragging Washington into an uwinnable war - all over again.
Yet the bottom line, which Washington neo-conservatives will never process, is that the US lost the Iraq war, period.
There were no Saddam Hussein weapons of mass destruction, never. There was no Saddam-al-Qaeda connection. There was no bombing the Middle East into democracy because this was fabricated after the Shock and Awe fact; and although former US vice president Dick Cheney had elevated Iraq's oil fields to the status of a US national security priority in the early months of 2001, even before 9/11, the US didn't get the oil; the best contracts went to the Russians and the Chinese (see Iraq's oil auction hits the jackpot Asia Times Online, December 16, 2009).
As for how Washington "reconstructed" the country it devastated, suffice to read the painfully tragicomic account by former State Department insider Peter van Buren. [2]
This all feels like the Frank Zappa hit The Torture Never Stops. After the spectacular success of the cowardly North Atlantic Treaty Organization operation in Libya, those same nullities who in 2002, in the run-up to the attack on Iraq, were bragging that "real men go to Tehran", now want to use Americans as bait for an Israeli attack - and this while US sanctions on Iran are about to become a de facto blockade, which international law still deems as an act of war.
In a less than ideal world, a rogue MQ-9 Reaper would put these armchair warmongers out of their misery.
[We have been playing footsie with dictators and tyrants since the days of Jimmie Carter, or even before. The arrangements made by us then, with the world's most abusive dictators, have created the intolerable living conditions that have mobilized the masses in revolution (SEE: “Dictatorships and Double Standards”–the Terror War Begins....)--all according to the great plan. Planned chaos precedes the new order of things. The United States is able to work its evil way in the world because it dares to lie BIG. The official government/corporate media version of events is ALWAYS a lie. Look behind these lies and you will see the careful stage management of events, intended to achieve a desired outcome. We set-up dictators and terrorists, in order to knock-down later, because it is too unbelievable and irrational to be grasped by the conventional thinking huddled masses. We are doing our best to further that cockeyed policy today in places like Uzbekistan, where we are once again strengthening the evil dictators who will create tomorrow's problems, just as the mad scientists at CIA and the Pentagon have ordered.] When war against tyrants makes you cozy up to tyrants....that's the Ziocon's policies at work....
No, no, no, writes Leslie H. Gelb, to the neoconservatives once again rising from the undead to lead America to another war, bigger Pentagon budgets, and a bizarre blame game over Iraq.
They’re back! The neoconservatives who gave America clueless, unpaid-for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a near doubling of military expenditures, during the Bush years have risen from their political graves. Someone, maybe a media tiring of President Obama’s interminable plight, pulled the stake from their heart. Now they’ve returned to the op-ed pages, the talk shows, the think-tank discussions, and the advisory ranks of Republican presidential candidates.
Once again, the neoconservatives mount their steeds. They hint that we need another war or at least a little military strike, this time against Iran. They’re pushing to increase military spending; the China threat, you know. They’re also trying to further weaken Obama by charging that he’s losing Iraq to Iran by not keeping U.S. forces there (without mentioning, of course, that Iraq is throwing them out).
I find it hard to believe that any of these new tricks will work, but I have come never to underestimate the neoconservatives, that formidable group mostly of Republicans who sprang from the loins of the great Democratic senator from Washington, Henry “Scoop” Jackson. They are very smart and far tougher than their liberal and moderate opponents. They write and speak with far greater simplicity and force. (Democrats just must make 17 complicated points about everything.) They are always relentless and on the attack. The only ones to stand up to them effectively have been other Republicans, specifically the best of the foreign-policy realists such as George Shultz, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, and George H.W. Bush.
Bill Kristol.
Here’s a standard technique for the neoconservatives: One of America’s many nasty enemies does something provocative, as they inevitably do. The neocons say the president has to get tougher. Then the enemy does another nasty thing, and the neocons say the president wasn’t tough enough. And so on until they’re off to the races and suggesting that the only effective means to stop the devils is a bombing attack, or a hundred thousand troops, in and out quickly, of course. If some poor Democratic president doesn’t follow their advice, he’s labeled a wimp who is endangering U.S. security. If the wimp starts a war, the game continues with charges that the president isn’t really trying to “win” the war and should be adding more troops. We’ve heard this routine so many times, you’d think that the wimpy Democrats would have built up some immunity, and that the media would stop providing the bullhorns. Alas, it goes on and on.
Iran sits atop the neocons’ list of priorities. Beyond argument, its leaders are dangerous. They are probably trying to construct nuclear weapons. On top of this, we seemingly have some Quds Force general buying a hit on the Saudi ambassador in a D.C. restaurant. Bill Kristol is leading the charge, calling the recent alleged Iranian assassination plot “an engraved invitation” to use force. He continued: “We can strike at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and weaken them. And we can hit the regime’s nuclear weapons program, and set it back.” Were these mere musings? No! He goes on to say that if the White House doesn’t use force, Congress should authorize force against a variety of Iranian targets, and against its “nuclear weapons program.”
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is equally direct. He approves the administration’s current efforts to tighten and target. “But they will not scare it,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “The White House needs to respond militarily to this outrage. If we don't, we are asking for it.” And what of the likely wave of terrorist attacks that will follow worldwide from such attacks? The Iranians are not going to just cower in the corner because we talk and act tough. Alas, that just doesn’t happen. They escalate, too.
And in case you believed that Republicans, faced with America’s economic calamity and indebtedness, won’t press for higher military spending, take another look. Mitt Romney, the moderate establishment candidate, wants to put a 4 percent floor on the baseline defense budget. According to The Wall Street Journal, that would amount to about a $30 billion increase over the current base. In his recent foreign-policy speech and white paper, Romney proposed increasing Navy ship production: “I will reverse the hollowing of our Navy and announce an initiative to increase the shipbuilding rate from 9 per year to 15. I will begin reversing Obama-era cuts to national missile defense and prioritize the full deployment of a multilayered national ballistic missile defense system.” Those bills would be incalculably high.
The neocons’ Iraq caper irritates me particularly because of its blatant hypocrisy. Their line is that Obama will “lose” Iraq to Iran because of the decision he made to take out all U.S. forces from that country. The formidable John Bolton puts it this way in The Daily Beast: “The consequence of an Obama policy that continues the withdrawal of American forces down to zero in Iraq would unquestionably strengthen Iran.” Well, Obama didn’t invent that policy—George W. Bush did. He was the one who approved the agreement with Iraq to completely withdraw all U.S. forces by the end of 2012. Bush had little choice because the Iraqi government would accept no less. Obama also has little choice because Iraq won’t give American soldiers immunity from prosecution. Frankly, if anyone lost Iraq to Iran, it was the neocons. It was they who pressed to crush Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and when they did, they destroyed the only regional counterweight to Iran. Take a bow, neocons....
A few years ago, I was in Dubrovnic, Croatia. There were Croatian police officers lined up--every hundred yards or so--between the airport and Dick Cheney's conference hotel (a business conference). Much of the city was specified as a no-parking zone that day--quite an inconvenience for the local tourist trade. I stopped to talk to one of the officers; his name was Dario. He told me that he just completed a seven hour bus ride in order to stand at this spot, while Mr. Cheney's Black Stretch Limo Motorcade drove by. After standing there for two hours, he would get back on the bus and head home. Dario was afraid of me. ("I'm just doing what they tell me to do.") I could tell that he thought I might be a CIA agent, checking out the security within the police force. (I had suggested to him that many Americans considered Cheney a "malicious, perhaps even evil, self-interested man.")
The whole Cheney vist was ugly. All the locals were afraid to speak, to complain about the parking, to say anything whatever about the USA, about Americans in general. The entire town just froze up. I will never forget it.
This is the sort of power that the Neocons wish to project in the world. Jackboot power.....
I suspect that most of our "powers who be" are so self-absorbed, and obsessed with the next move that art has little if any meaning for them. A common feature of our last Presidents - Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama - is that not one of them (or their wives) has exhibited the slightest interest in the arts. I'm not sure what the practical implications are, but the trait is very much part of the narcissist personality syndrome. By the way, I've studied Sarkozy, Cameron and Blair as well and it is exactly true of them as well.
Leslie Gelb hit it on the head. I have an uneasy feeling that we already reached the status of "rogue nation" under the younger Bush. Little thought went into our responses to the infamous and Barbaric inside Job of 9/11(Afghanistan COIN approach) mixed with misguided Israel associated (Iraq) actions - massively wasteful flailing about which has taken us to disaster's doorstep. I have seriously been questioning the value of my vote for anyone but, as a minimum I cannot see voting for anyone in the NEOCON camp.....
Back-up ugly Empire....Simple advice beyond the reach of modern day planners and politicos
Bill Bonner What's Bill doing in Cyprus...?
We'll get to that. First, what happened in the markets? On Friday, the Dow rose 267 points. Gold went up too -- $23.
A big move to the upside. And why? No apparent reason. Gaddafi bit the dust, almost literally. And the Europeans seemed to be stumbling to yet another solution...in which they borrow more money to help fund the troubles created by borrowing money in the past.
Nothing new, in other words...
Your editor brought his wife here to Cyprus on a weekend get-a-way. Besides, he wanted to see where Solon died. Whether or not Solon, the great Greek lawgiver, died in Cyprus or not is a matter of some dispute. And what he was doing here is unknown. But Herodotus says his body was ‘consumed in Cyprian fire.' So this is the place he must have gone back to ash.
Solon was in charge of Athens in the second part of the 7th century BC. Then, as now, the people had gotten themselves into a jamb. They owed too much money. The burden of debt was so great that the economy was apparently being crushed by it.
But Solon was no dope.
"The Athenians were in the habit of disguising the unpleasant aspects of things, giving them endearing and charitable names," wrote Plutarch. "They refer to whores as mistresses, taxes as contributions, garrison cities as guards and the common jail as a residence."
So, according to Aristotle, Solon figured the thing to do was to organize a "shaking off of burdens." Solon "made a cancelation of debts, both private and public...they shook off the weight lying on them."
The problem with today's solons is that they do not shake off the weight lying on the public. They add to it. The problem in Europe is government debt. But every government in the EU continues to go further and further into debt.
And next week – on Halloween – the US is supposed to pass the point where it has national debt greater than 100% of its GDP. And at the present pace, each year's deficit adds about another $1.5 trillion.
If we are really following in the footsteps of Japan – as we think we are – we'll see the feds double their debt over the next 7-10 years.
But wait. Japan has an advantage. It has no military expenses of any consequence. The US has them up the kazoo. The cost of its wars and foreign meddling is more than $1 trillion a year. It cost a million a year just to maintain one soldier in Afghanistan. These expenses could be cut without much pain or suffering in the US itself.
But empires don't back up. Certainly, the Greek empire didn't. After Solon sorted out their debt problems, they were soon back in the empire business and back in debt. That's why much of the history of Cyprus is the story of one Greek misadventure after another. Sometimes the Athenians were fighting the Persians and the Phoenicians. Sometimes they were fighting other Greeks. Sometimes they were fighting the Cyprians. Sometimes they were fighting alongside the Cyprians. Like the Americans, they had troops all over the place...making enemies wherever they went.
A stele was discovered that recorded the names of the Athenians of the Erechtheid tribe who fell in the years 459-458 BC.
"Of the Erechtheid tribe, these are they who died in war, in Cyprus, in Egypt, in Halieis, in Aegina, at Megara..." Inscribed are the names of 177 soldiers.
Athens didn't back up. It kept going until it had gone too far. In 431 BC Pericles gave the kind of speech that Mitt Romney just gave at the Citadel. (No presidential candidate can talk openly about managing the process of decline....that would be political suicide.)
Pericles praised his forefathers for their efforts:
"They dwelt in the country without break in the succession from generation to generation, and handed it down free to the present time... And if our remote ancestors deserve praise, much more do our own fathers, who added to their inheritance the empire which we now possess, and spared no pains to be able to leave their acquisitions to the present generation.... You may reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty and a keen feeling of honor in action that men were enabled to win all this..." .
Then, he vowed to stay the course:
"You cannot decline the burdens of empire and still expect to share its honors."
He should have backed up. Under his guidance, Athens continued to make war on just about everyone...until the Spartans invaded it, laid wasted to the city and enslaved its people. Pericles died of plague.
Don't expect the US to back up either.
Threatened with budget cuts, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta reacted not with thoughtful reflection, but with Greek-like lunacy. As to the budget cuts, he called them a "doomsday mechanism." They would be ‘catastrophic.' We would be "shooting ourselves in the head," he went on.
These would be the effects, said he, of spending only as much as the whole rest of the world put together.
Of the people who propose to put on the brakes, they are like the Nazis at Bastogne, asking Patton to surrender. "Nuts," says he replied.
Spending cuts are intolerable...so is any talk of "decline" or backing up. The armed zombies who run the defense industry won't permit it.
But imperial decline doesn't have to be such a bad thing. Gideon Rachman, in the Financial Times, explains:
What the UK discovered after 1945 is that a decline in national power is perfectly compatible with an improvement in living standards for ordinary people, and with the maintenance of national security. Decline need not mean the end of peace and prosperity. But it does mean making choices and forging alliances. In an era of massive budget deficits, and rising Chinese power, the US will have to think harder about its priorities. Last week, Hillary Clinton insisted that America will remain a major power in Asia – with all the military expenditure that this implies. Very well. But what does that mean for spending at home? Few politicians are prepared to have that discussion. Instead, particularly among Republicans, they fall back on feel-good slogans about American "greatness".
Those who refuse to entertain any discussion of decline actually risk accelerating the process. A realistic acknowledgement that America's position in the world is under threat should be a spur to determined action on everything from educational reform to the budget deficit. The endless politicking in Washington reflects a certain complacency – a belief that America's position as number one is so impregnable that it can afford self-indulgent episodes such as the summer's near-debt default.
The failure to have a proper discussion of relative decline also risks leaving American public opinion unprepared for a new era. As a result, the public reaction to setbacks at home and abroad is less likely to be calm and determined and more likely to be angry and irrational – feeding what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called "the paranoid style in American politics".
These days the British have learnt almost to revel in failure. They buy volumes with titles like the "Book of Heroic Failures" in large numbers. It is quite common for the supporters of a losing English soccer team to chant, "We're shit and we know we are." This is not a habit I can see catching on in the US. When it comes to managing decline, self-abasement is optional.
And here's another piece from the Financial Times, describing America's "Eclipse" :
...In this challenging new study, Arvind Subramaniam of the Peterson Institute for International Economics writes of the next transfer, that from the US to China. This one is surely closer. While Americans were prating of the "unipolar moment", its economic foundations were crumbling away. Properly measured, he argues, China is already its economic equal. Very soon it will be far more powerful, economically, and ultimately, also militarily.
The book's most striking prediction is that the renminbi will match, or replace, the dollar as a reserve currency by the early 2020s, far sooner than most now suppose. This is largely because China will emerge as far and away the world's largest trading power: currency follows trade....
Elie, HK RIP we will for ever love you so very much
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds..." - Samuel Adams
HK For EVER
RIP For Ever a HERO
Elie , RIP !
With tears in their eyes and flowers in their hands people paid tribute to their national hero. Sad at the loss, which can not be compensated yet pride was all over their faces,sacrificed their son of the soil. His was a death for a noble cause of dying for one's own country. Such men are not born everyday, they belong to the rare class of humanity, who are an example in themselves, and they are the ones who set precedents. Mr. Elie HOBEIKA, HK,is an unprecedented Leader, a Hero, and a Legend for ever.
I favor liberty, voluntary trade and private property, oppose all aggression, and loathe the modern criminal omnipotent state of extra-judicial assassins for hire....
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