The White House Murder INC, on the Khyber Pass express

http://defensetech.org/2010/07/26/pentagon-report-on-afghan-war-shows-huge-jump-in-ied-attacks/

This is our equivalent of the Pentagon Papers. In the case of the confirmation given in the leaked documents on Pentagon knowledge of Pakistani Army support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, what is not shown is probably much more important than this news. What will not be revealed is why the US military is not doing anything (other than talking tough for the media) to expose or end this state support for the Taliban--the bigger secret is that the United States supports its own Taliban, in many different countries. The biggest leak of all will be when someone dares to show the world the truth about full blown American Terrorism and our secret "Islamist" armies, some of which Pakistan commands on our behalf. It is doubtful that CIA/DIA/DODWikileaks will reveal that it is all a big show to fool gullible Americans. Everyone knows how much Americans love a good movie, especially one with a big twist at the end, and this one is a real doozy! I am going to spoil the plot for you, the good guys are really the baddest bad guys, and the ones that we thought were bad guys turn-out to be actors of Al-CIAda..., hired by USA's criminal deep state since the outset of the inside job of 9/11...

[Like a dam holding back a flood of putrid water, the deadly Pakistan/American secrets have allowed the stinking game to go on and on and on. The CIA/DOD Wikileaks revelations are making the secret players act, which explains the timing of this charade, coming after the leaks... Pakistan creates the Taliban to fight the Americans in the great psy-op, while the Americans create the anti-Taliban, the TTP, to fight the Pak Army, thus justifying the war of Pakistan on Pakistanis, and the American war upon everybody else from the Hindu Kush to Qana to Sudan in the Arc of Crisis of the Pentagon....

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/07/28/who-owns-general-petraeus/

The whole thing is a great "cluster fuck," as the American military loves such things.]

In case it hasn’t sunk in, one such example, the man was charged with espionage for revealing information to the American people that they should be entitled to have. This is what our dirty Deep State power behind the power in DC “republic” has come to....

Two “journalists” from Wired magazine (both convicted felons), using grossly unethical methods of selection and omission in writing their article, conspired with each other as well as the government to silence Manning and to smear him as a “traitor.” Not surprisingly, the substance of this Orwellian hit piece has been parroted unquestioningly by our sycophantic mainstream media. Readers desiring a balanced approach to the Manning story should read the excellent article by Glen Greenwald in Salon.com.

The actions of the utterly corrupt and beyond redemption US government in prosecuting Manning, instead of the "moral" assassins/cretins in the helicopter and their superiors, are those of a tyrannical state.... The actions of our media in their “reporting” of the story are like those of their counterparts in North Korea.

God help the US nation and its wonderful people in getting rid of this scourge...

The White House Murder INC, on the Khyber Pass express....

The 92,000 American classified military documents released by CIA-DOD-DIA-WikiLeaks add to the evidence that Pakistan's intelligence service backs the Taliban, to the point of helping the Taliban plan assassinations of American and Afghan officials.

This raises the question: Who covered up a scandalous arrangement known to everyone with a casual acquaintance of the situation? The answer is the same as in Agatha Christie's 1934 mystery about murder on the Orient Express, that is, everybody: former United States president George W Bush and vice president Dick Cheney, current US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, India, China and Iran. They are all terrified of facing a failed state with nuclear weapons, and prefer a functioning but treacherous one.

The released papers - described as one of the biggest leaks in US military history - detail military operations between 2004 and 2009. Some of the documents published on July 25 disclose how North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces have killed scores of civilians in unreported incidents in Afghanistan. The documents claim that 195 civilians have been improperly killed and 174 wounded. Many are motorcylists or drivers shot after being suspected of being suicide bombers.

The White House has condemned the publication, saying it threatened the safety of coalition forces, while Pakistan's ambassador to the United States said his country was committed to fighting insurgents. Husain Haqqani called the release "irresponsible", saying it consisted of "unprocessed" reports from the field.

The "everybody" involved in this case seems to exclude whomever actually leaked the documents, presumably some element of the US military, which has to absorb the effect of Pakistan's double game in the region in the form of body bags for enlisted men and shattered reputations for commanders. Like the Rolling Stone magazine interviews that led to the firing of General Stanley McChrystal, the America commander in Afghanistan, the WikiLeaks documents suggest a degree of disaffection of the American military with civilian leaders deeper than anything in living memory.

To exit the Afghan quagmire in a less than humiliating fashion, the United States requires Pakistani help to persuade the Taliban not to take immediate advantage of the American departure and evoke Vietnam-era scenes of helicopters on the American Embassy roof. The politicians in Washington know they have lost and have conceded to the Taliban a role in a post-American Afghanistan. They can only hope that once the country plunges into chaos, the public will have moved onto other themes, much as it did after the Bill Clinton administration put Kosovo into the hands of a gang of dubious Albanians in 1998.

India does not want America to call Pakistan to account. In the worst case, Pakistan might choose to support the Taliban and other terrorist organizations - including Kashmiri irredentists - openly rather than covertly. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, of whom the Economist on July 25 wrote "the strength of his coalition depends largely on how weak he is as Prime Minister", does not want to confront Pakistan. If Pakistan's support for anti-Indian terrorism became undeniable, India would have to act, and action is the last thing the Congress party-led coalition in New Delhi wants to consider.

China has no interest in destabilization in Pakistan; on the contrary, Beijing lives in fear that radical Islamists in Pakistan might infect its own restive Uyghurs. And Iran, which shares the fractious Balochis with Pakistan on their common border, lives in terror that a destabilized Pakistan would free the Balochis to make trouble.

Balochis comprise little over 2% of Iran's population, but they have demonstrated their talent at bomb-making on several recent occasions, including the bombing this month of a Shi'ite mosque in southeastern Iran in which 28 people were killed and hundreds wounded. Iran has accused Pakistan of sponsoring Balochi terror attacks, but intelligence community sources in Washington insist that the Pakistanis would never be so reckless as to put bombs into Balochi hands.

With 170 million people - more than Russia - and a nuclear arsenal, Pakistan is too big to fail, that is, too big to fail without traumatic consequences for its neighbors. Whether it can be kept from failure is questionable. Half its people live on less than a dollar day, and half are illiterate. It is riven by religious differences - a seventh of Pakistanis are Shi'ite - as well as ethnic ones.

The government's desultory campaign against pro-Taliban elements on the Afghan border comes down to Punjabis killing Pashtuns. To drive the Taliban in earnest out of the Pashto-speaking frontier in the Waziristan tribal areas would risk tearing the country apart. It is also the case that Pakistan wants the Taliban as a bulwark against India. But it is misleading to separate Islamabad's foreign policy objectives from the requirements of domestic cohesion, since irredentist agitation against India is part of the glue that holds together a fractious and fanatical collection of tribes.

Pakistan's claim on the support and forbearance of its neighbors, and its foreign sponsors, the United States and China, is its propensity to fail. American policy still wants to maintain a balance of power between India and Pakistan. That is an act of extreme folly. The longer the regional powers delay a reckoning with Pakistan, the more damaging the outcome. As I wrote in my year-end review last December 29:

There is one great parallel, but also one great difference, between the Balkans on the eve of World War I and the witch's cauldron comprising Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and contiguous territory. The failure of the region's most populous state - in that case the Ottoman Empire, in this case Pakistan - makes shambles out of the power balance, leaving the initiative in the hands of irredentist radicals who threaten to tug their sponsors among the great powers along behind them. But in 1914, both France and Germany thought it more advantageous to fight sooner rather than later. No matter how great the provocation, both India and China want to postpone any major conflict. The problem is that they may promote minor ones. [1]

Given the overwhelming evidence that Pakistan is taking American aid while helping the Taliban kill American soldiers, perhaps by providing its Afghani friends with shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missiles, the Obama administration has done the only thing it can: deny that the 92,000 documents contain any new information, while insisting that its November 2009 "review" of Afghan war strategy is an appropriate response to the problems detailed in the documents. The Obama administration has a story, and it is sticking to it. The White House stated after the documents were published on July 25:

Since 2009, the United States and Pakistan have deepened our important bilateral partnership. Counter-terrorism cooperation has led to significant blows against al-Qaeda's leadership. The Pakistani military has gone on the offensive in Swat and South Waziristan, at great cost to the Pakistani military and people. The United States and Pakistan have also commenced a Strategic Dialogue, which has expanded cooperation on issues ranging from security to economic development ... yet the Pakistani government - and Pakistan’s military and intelligence services - must continue their strategic shift against insurgent groups. The balance must shift decisively against al-Qaeda and its extremist allies. US support for Pakistan will continue to be focused on building Pakistani capacity to root out violent extremist groups, while supporting the aspirations of the Pakistani people.

That this is nonsense, Obama knows, along with the whole world. At some point the charade must come to an end, and it would be a novelty in world affairs if the reluctance of American commanders to feed the charade with American blood were the proximate cause of its termination. The United States would be better advised to stop the game now and seek an open alliance with India, the world's largest democracy and America's natural partner in Central Asia.

Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert :

http://cjoint.com/?hAjbqELaqC

Inside the Fog of War: Reports From the Ground in Afghanistan

http://cjoint.com/?hAjcErVvYJ

The Washington Post (US)
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Leaked CIA-DOD-DIA-WikiLeaks files lay bare war in Afghanistan

http://cjoint.com/?hAjepsyj3o

CIA-DOD-DIA-WikiLeaks takes new approach in latest release of documents

http://cjoint.com/?hAjfjzvOKX

Los Angeles Times (US)
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White House decries CIA-DOD-DIA-WikiLeaks release of Afghan war documents

http://cjoint.com/?hAjhKRF3Ux

Newsweek (US)
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The Pentagon Papers, Redux

http://cjoint.com/?hAjksz4xHC

Wired (US)
-----------------

CIA-DOD-DIA-WikiLeaks Drops 90,000 War Docs; Fingers Pakistan as Insurgent
Ally

http://cjoint.com/?hAjl4pleSM

The Times (UK)
-----------------------

Fury at leaking of Afghanistan war files (payant)

http://cjoint.com/?hAjnAptkyl

The Independent (UK)
-------------------------------

Whistleblower's CIA-DOD-DIA-WikiLeaks leaked US files reveal state of Afghan war

http://cjoint.com/?hAjq4uVghV

The Guardian (UK)
---------------------------

Afghanistan : the War Logs

http://cjoint.com/?hAjrT78hBJ

Turkey means business in Kurdistan

Turkey means business in Kurdistan By Justin Vela ISTANBUL - Take a drive through the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq and it's easily to pick out buildings and shops with Turkish names like Istikbal, Istanbul Bazaar, Dogan and the Ozboy furniture shop. On the main street, two new overpasses were built by Turkish companies, as were the city's international airport and also dormitories at the local university. This is but a glimpse of the more than 1,000 Turkish companies, including oils firms, that are forging a presence in Kurdish northern Iraq at a breakneck pace. Whatever the project, Turks are building an international reputation for being able to get the job done with their skilled knowledge base and ability to negotiate the often heavy red tape in the developing or autocratic world. "For oil exploration, Kurdistan is virtually unexplored," said Erdal Ahiska of Turkish energy company Petoil, which will invest approximately US$50 million in northern Iraq in 2010. "Before there was no big ability for oil business in the Kurdish region. Only two fields were used. Now it is interesting for oil companies to explore and invest in oil and natural gas." Since 2000, Turkish overseas projects climbed from $750 million to $23.6 billion in 2008. By 2015, the Turkish government hopes to increase international contracts to about $50 billion and Turkish businesses are currently active in more than 80 countries across the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. At first glance, their presence raises no questions. However, the business drive is part of Turkish foreign policy stepped up in recent years by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and is a clear signal that, though the country does not plan on negating its European Union ascension bid, it will not wait for permission to become a globally powerful trading body. According to Paul Barry of London-based Navigant Consulting, Turkish firms are becoming "very serious" rivals abroad "because they can relate to Muslim cultures and are very competitive". Yet given the Turkish government's 26-year war with Kurdish separatists in the country's southeast, which has left 40,000 people dead, the heavy presence of Turkish business in Kurdish northern Iraq has a special twist - a dual cause that goes beyond Turkey expanding its ever-growing markets. The Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) has long used northern Iraq's Qandil Mountains as a base to plan and carry out attacks inside Turkey. The Turkish military frequently bombs inside northern Iraq and carries out occasional cross-border raids in pursuit of the PKK, which often result in the deaths of Kurdish Iraqi civilians. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has also clashed with Turkey in the past. Turkey opposes the oil-rich areas around the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul being added to Iraqi Kurdistan and is concerned about the future of Turkmen as ethnic tensions in these cities continue to rise. "Turkey is not allowed to intervene in the Kirkuk issue and if it does, we will interfere in Diyarbakir's issues and other cities in Turkey," said Massoud Barzani, the president of the de facto Kurdish autonomous region in April 2007. Diyarbakir is the largest city in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast. Given the stakes involved, the AKP wants to turn the more than $7 billion in trade between Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey into political leverage to put pressure both on Baghdad and the KRG. Turkey also provides 80% of the food and clothes in northern Iraq. "Trade is the key of politics ... Improving business ties will eradicate the problems between us," said Zafer Caglayan, Turkey's state minister for foreign trade. The pressure is aimed both at limiting the power and independence of the KRG - which is viewed as the precursor to a future Kurdish state - and at the same time meant to elicit their help in Turkey's long-time fight against the PKK. In a rare interview in the Qandil Mountains, PKK top commander Murat Karayilan this month told this correspondent, "I cannot evaluate the KRG in the sense of good or bad. We know that the aim of the Turkish state is not only to weaken us, but also to weaken Kurds everywhere. It is a strategic approach. After us the KRG will weaken." Seemingly having embraced a close relationship with Turkey, the KRG's support for the PKK can be seen as suspect. Barzani even accepted an invitation to Ankara in June this year and met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul and other top officials to discuss ties. "The KRG government gives [Turkish business] a secure place," said one Kurdish Iraqi businessman in Sulaymaniyah. "We need them like they need us. They are near to us in culture. It is easy to cooperate. In politics there is a big problem, but in one way we want to explain by letting them come here that we are not enemies." There are more Turkish businesses in northern Iraq than from any other country, including neighboring Iran. Turks had been doing business in northern Iraq since before the 2003 US invasion and already had the contacts and presence to become the dominant investors in a region that desperately needs infrastructure. "They don't produce anything except oil and gas so we have to provide everything," said Galip Ensarioglu of Diyarbakir Trade and Industry Chamber (DTSO). "Water, marble ... everything we produce here we can sell to them." Ensarioglu claimed that 50,000 Turks had gone to northern Iraq to work. The relationship is based on a strong necessity. Not only is it in the best interests of the United States that Turkey and northern Iraq cooperate in order to ensure the smoothest possible exit of their forces from Iraq, there is also oil involved. The 960-kilometer Kirkuk-Ceyhane pipeline, also known as the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline (ITP), exports 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day, one-fourth of Iraq's total crude exports. The pipeline began functioning during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, allowing Iraq an export route without risking tankers in the Gulf being attacked. It was closed during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Gulf War I (1990-1991), reopening for use during the United Nations-sponsored Oil for Food Program. Today, the pipeline is used to export crude from oil fields north of Kirkuk, but needs frequent maintenance because of its age and frequent insurgent attacks. Most of the attacks are carried out inside Iraq. However on July 4, PKK insurgents bombed the pipeline near the town of Midyat in the southern Mardin province. The attack came after the ending of a year-long non-action period and could be interpreted as a signal to both Turkey and the KRG. The hope of AKP had been that by exerting economic influence over northern Iraq, they could convince the KRG to pressure the PKK to disarm, block supplies or otherwise uproot them from their Qandil Mountain stronghold. Even as Turkish business continues to flourish, this does not seem a likely scenario. Perhaps Turkey and the KRG are in fact engaged in a zero-sum game as Turkey wants to be a transit route for energy just as much as northern Iraq wants to export oil and its 6-8 trillion cubic meters in natural gas reserves. On July 11, the Turkish government sent a list of 248 PKK commanders to the KRG, demanding their immediate arrest and even mooting a joint military action inside Iraq. "The net is tightening," one official said. The KRG response was to claim, "These names are not those of people living officially in the [Kurdistan autonomous] region. They live in Turkey where they undertake their criminal activities." Having interviewed PKK top commander Murat Karayilan in the Qandil Mountains only the day before the list of names were issued, this reporter was witness to the double game being played by the KRG. Though he had come down for the interview from a position higher in the mountains and PKK members are not allowed to travel freely through the rest of Iraqi Kurdistan, Karayilan was relaxed meeting in a field off a paved road approximately 10 kilometers from a KRG checkpoint The PKK, also, maintain a checkpoint on the same road, operating as if Qandil was their legitimate territory. Neither the Turkish government or the PKK is in a position where they can agree on terms of peace. "It is not very clear, what will happen after this," said Karayilan. "Because AKP is pushing towards the hills. They don't want to stop the military campaign." Yet the KRG still does have the ability to act as a bridge between the two. The idea is perhaps more welcome than the actors in the conflict would like to see. Though they feel that the continued repression has brought the conflict to a new breaking point, Kurds are eager for peace. As on Kurdish man living in southeast Turkey said, "We can see the first Kurdistan flag in northern Iraq and we are very happy. But it is also important that they have dialogue all the time. I am pleased Barzani comes to Turkey." The KRG appears more than willing to both foster trade with Turkey and allow the PKK to operate from their territory. Doing so allows them the maximum power as their territory continues to be an investment hotspot. The PKK are only interested in attacking Turkey and investments inside of Iraqi Kurdistan are not threatened by them. By standing as that bridge, Barzani and the KRG are at the same time furthering the status of Iraqi Kurdistan as an investor hotspot and, also, the cause of Kurdish nationalism which has its uncertain path set in the future of a wealthy yet conflict-ridden Iraq.

China's pro-missile navy sinks carriers

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LG24Dg01.html

China's pro-missile navy sinks carriers
By Peter J Brown

The United States-South Korea response to the recent sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan - supposedly by North Korea - includes the arrival of US Navy (USN) aircraft carrier USS George Washington along with other US warships at the South Korean port of Busan, much to China's chagrin.

"Invincible Spirit", a joint US-South Korea exercise that is about to get underway, will be sending North Korea a strong message - "Don't try this again."

Beijing is very irritable and nervous as a result.

"The moment is truly delicate," said Zhu Feng, a professor of International Studies and deputy director of international strategy center at Peking University in Beijing. "Beijing is also worried about the possibility of the situation to spill into a military collision with North Korea. That's why there is opposition from China. The joint exercise is rocking the boat." [1]

When the USS George Washington last visited Busan in late 2008, there were few Chinese maritime surveillance assets in space. In contrast, due to the launch of new Chinese satellites, the George Washington was closely watched as it sailed from its home base in Yokosuka in early July until its arrival in Busan almost two weeks later.

Just prior to the start of "Invincible Spirit", US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made it clear in Seoul that regardless of any eyes in the sky, China would not influence decisions made about the exercises.

"These exercises are off the coast of Korea, not off the coast of China," Gates said. "These are exercises like we have conducted for decades. We have conducted them in both the West and East seas, so there's nothing provocative about them at all. There should be no doubt in anybody's mind that we intend to exercise in both seas." [2]

China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) will soon deploy its own carriers, but among other things, China must decide what kind of carriers to build, and, if the US model for naval warfare with its dependence on huge super-carriers and carrier battle groups (CBGs) is the right one for China.

If nothing else, having a US carrier so close at hand will focus China's attention on very important carrier-related matters.

More than a decade has passed since a US aircraft carrier sailed into the Yellow Sea. Things are vastly different now. For example, China has had an opportunity to study the US "AirSea Battle" (ASB) concept in 2010 which merges air and naval forces into a single, more effective fighting unit. ASB might be adapted by China which cannot divorce the current movements of the George Washington from the efforts of the US to refine and implement ASB. [3]

"The acquisition of an aircraft carrier and carrier aviation was something that was clearly an ambition and an objective of the PLAN," said Admiral Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, at a 2009 news conference in Beijing. "The advent of an aircraft carrier on the part of the PLAN really does not change the nature of our operations at all." [4]

James Bussert, co-author of "PLAN Combat Systems Technology 1949-2010", which will be published by the US Naval Institute Press next spring, is convinced that China does not want to duplicate the world policeman role that USN CBG's serve.

"China's goals do not require CBGs. They are achieving their goals via economic and political means in South America and Africa, and the power of the US Navy is not a factor," said Bussert.

While CBGs might give China certain advantages in Taiwan, in the South China Sea and along the routes used by ships transporting oil to China from the Middle East and Africa, the costs and the fact that CBGs are not required in order for China to achieve its national goals are distinct disadvantages.

"They do not have a superpower face-off agenda that the USSR had," said Bussert. "China believes the USN will retain its successful CBGs."

The first PLAN carrier is expected to have the keel laid by the end of 2010. A second hull should follow within a year. Both will rely on a ski-jump flight deck configuration, and not the steam catapult-based launch systems used on US carriers.

As for China's purchase in 1998 of the 67,000-ton Ukrainian-built Varyag, it is currently being fitted in the port of Dalian. It will likely serve as a carrier training platform for pilots flying J-15 aircraft until the indigenous PLAN carriers are commissioned around 2014.

As this work proceeds, retired Rear Admiral Eric McVadon, who serves as a senior advisor at the Virginia-based Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, also does not envision China acquiring enormous super-carriers.

"China is more likely to have smaller, less capable carriers suited to air support of surface action groups that are carrying out missions such as sea-lane security beyond the range of land-based air from Chinese bases," said McVadon. "The USN is not a model for the PLAN. Chinese leaders do not contemplate an ability to conduct massive air strikes against naval forces or targets ashore. Carrier aviation as done by the USN does not serve China's purposes. Having organic air available to PLAN units trying to deter attacks on tankers en route to China does make sense."

Because the PLA does not provide any official data on its future strategic naval modernization plans, US and Western experts must always rely on vast array of sources to determine what the PLAN has underway.

"A series of Hong Kong and Japanese newspaper articles from January 2009 citing Chinese shipbuilding and military sources indicated that the PLA was going to build two new Varyag style carriers, and then two larger nuclear-powered carriers," said Richard Fisher, senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based International Assessment and Strategy Center. "In the past, other PLA sources have indicated to US visitors their desire to build up to six carriers."

Over time, China will become more strategically savvy and will introduce conventional military power projection elements into arenas where it has long built significant elements of political and economic power.

"Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa are all areas where by the 2020s the PLA could be employing displays or usage of military power to sway political outcomes that benefit China's economic and political interests," said Fisher. "However, we should also expect that China will seek to make military deployments to South America a 'routine' element of its expanding political and economic power networks there."

This might explain what Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim had in mind when he issued a heads up in May 2009. Then, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva flew to Beijing to formalize plans for a joint Brazil-China pilot training program to be staged aboard Brazil's new carrier. The current status of this program is unclear. [5]

According to Toshi Yoshihara, associate professor in the Strategy and Policy Department at the US Naval War College in Rhode Island, China will make prudent investments in a wide of variety naval capabilities as part of a very deliberate process of fleet experimentation for their surface forces.

"They are acquiring small batches of the same class of ships to work out their preferences and needs. They are not going to bankrupt themselves by overspending on carriers," said Yoshihara. "They have learned from the Soviet experience and have pledged never to repeat the fatal mistake of engaging in unwinnable arms races."

China is still grappling with its approach to the constraints imposed by the so-called "first island chain" which extends south from the Japanese archipelago down to Indonesia.

"Many Chinese analysts conceive of the island chain as a physical barrier and, more importantly, they see most countries that occupy the island chain, particularly Japan, as either friendly to the US and/or hostile to China," said Yoshihara. "Their main concern is how to break through the island chain in times of crisis or war. Naval penetrations by the PLAN through the waterways along the Ryukyu Islands since 2004 should be understood as exercises in breaking out of the maritime straitjacket."

For this and other reasons, building carriers is deemed far less of a priority than the PLAN's current and ongoing submarine buildup.

"Many Chinese strategists clearly understand that a naval force structure centered on the carrier would play to US strengths," said Yoshihara.

Back in May 2007, therefore, Admiral Timothy Keating, former commander of the US Pacific Command, caught the Chinese off guard perhaps when he implied that the US might be willing to provide assistance to China if it proceeded with the construction of its carriers.

Keating made the offer after he tried to convey the complexity of the carrier universe to Vice Admiral Wu Shengli, who is commander of the PLAN.

Major General Yang Chunchang of China's Academy of Military Sciences, for example, told the China-run Hong Kong daily, Wen Wei Po, that he "was concerned about [the implications of] Keating's remarks." [6]

Some Chinese were concerned that the US might foil the Chinese carrier program, while others wondered why the US would make such an offer at a time when the US was so intent upon halting the sale of advanced weaponry to China by the European Union.

US offers aside, an established two-step plan which involves China's initial acquisition of medium-sized aircraft carriers, first, may now be in motion. This will enable the PLAN to gain significant operational experience, and thus set the stage for the acquisition of very large carriers later on. [7]

China's development of a new generation of land-based anti-ship missiles - many expected to see a test firing of China's new DF-21 medium-range, anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) during China's recent naval exercise in the East China Sea - suggests that while China slowly inches ahead with its carrier program, the PLAN is favoring a missile-centric strategy.

"Missiles will not replace warships. PLAN warships have relied on large, long-range cruise missiles ever since the early 1950's, continuing to today. The few air and submarine platforms can never provide the multi-purpose capabilities of surface warships," said Bussert.

Missile technologies may shift the offensive-defensive balance in favor of the defense, but this is not a new trend.

"From a historical perspective, changes in the offense-defense balance are cyclical," said Yoshihara. "World War II brought mobility back to sea power. Perhaps we are swinging back in the other direction."

Again, this bolsters the argument that many are making about the fact that undersea platforms will emerge as the most suitable alternatives for the future as a result.

"This brings up basic questions about sea control, a staple of US naval power. Would such a move require us to rethink or redefine what we mean by sea control?" asks Yoshihara.

The US which is already deploying its prototype "Prompt Global Strike" platform in space and placing lasers on its warships eventually will devise other means for countering advanced anti-ship missiles and even ASBMs, especially because this technology will soon be acquired by Iran and North Korea as well.

"It is also necessary for the US to develop new multi-role medium range missiles that can provide missile defense and surface strike, even anti-ship capabilities. Such missiles should be sold to US allies, to facilitate a near-term maritime missile balance, so that any PLA use of ASBMs would guarantee the immediate loss of its surface fleet," said Fisher.

McVadon remains optimistic that everyone will focus on the bigger picture, and that the USN and PLAN will emerge as partners on the high seas.

"It is more likely that USN forces 10 years from now will be operating with a PLAN moderate-sized carrier chasing pirates or providing disaster relief somewhere west of Malacca than it is for USN forces attacking a PLAN carrier in a Taiwan conflict," said McVadon. If this peaceful partnership is not soon viewed by both countries as a more acceptable outcome, "then we need to devote enormous effort to change things."

Speaking to a few hundred US troops in South Korea prior to the beginning of "Invincible Spirit", Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joints Chiefs of Staff, said that he was downright concerned about what China is doing. Mullen highlighted China's "fairly significant investment" in high-end equipment including carriers, satellites, and anti-ship missiles. However, it was the absence of transparency, not the equipment itself that troubled Mullen most of all.

"It is difficult to figure out where they're headed," he said.

Chances are, they will soon be heading to sea aboard their new carrier.

Notes
1. China has different view on Cheonan, Korea Times, Jul 18, 2010. 2. Gates: Military exercise is no threat to China, Stars & Stripes, Jul 20, 2010. 3. Gates closed out of China, Asia Times Online, Jun 12, 2010. 4. US admiral: China naval strength no surprise, People's Daily, Apr 20, 2009. 5. Using BRIC to build at sea, IPRIS Viewpoints, Jan, 2010. 6. China's war chest, UPI, May 23, 2007. 7. China's Aircraft Carrier Ambitions: An Update, Naval War College Review, Winter 2010.

Peter J Brown is a freelance writer from Maine USA.

Ill-wind blows for a 'neutral' Afghanistan

Ill-wind blows for a 'neutral' Afghanistan
By M K Bhadrakumar

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG29Df01.html Plan B for Afghanistan...

Maybe there is an air about the brooding Hindu Kush mountains that lends inscrutability to politics and history. It touched Tuesday's Kabul international conference on Afghanistan, where the subtext was of far greater interest than the open agenda. In fact, when it comes to the Afghan problem, it is almost inevitably the case that the surreal takes precedence over the real.

Thus it was surreal that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is still not quite done, after failing to win in Afghanistan, with its first "real" war in its six decades of history as a military alliance, and it is certainly not contemplating a return to its natural habitat. NATO seems to have fallen for the adrenalin rush of the primeval tumult that people of the Hindu Kush live with and seems to loathe the dull prospect of returning to the predictability of a settled life in Europe.

NATO's longing for adventure seems to have been a key subtext of the Kabul gathering on Tuesday, which was attended by 60 countries. The big players at the conference danced around it, poking a finger or two at it to test how real it is or could be in the coming days and weeks in a setting like Afghanistan where nothing is quite certain until it physically arrives.

The statements made by the foreign ministers of the US, Russia and China at the Kabul conference assume significance in this regard.

Rasmussen's shot in the air
The stage for the shadow play was duly set by none other than the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. In an extraordinary "curtain-raiser" on the eve of the conference, exuding a high degree of optimism about the war, Rasmussen wrote that NATO was "finally taking the fight to the Taliban" aimed at the "marginalization of the Taliban as a political and military force ... [which] will encourage many who joined the Taliban to quit their ranks and engage in the reconciliation effort."

But tucked away more than halfway down in his highly-publicized article was a curious sub-text: BLOCKQUOTE> Starting the transition does not mean that the struggle for Afghanistan's future as a stable country in a volatile region will be over. Afghanistan will need the continued support of the international community, including NATO. The Afghan population needs to know that we will continue to stand by them as they chart their own course into the future. To underline this commitment, I believe that NATO should develop a long-term cooperation agreement with the Afghan government. Very little ingenuity is needed to estimate that Rasmussen would never venture into the public airing of such a profound thought regarding NATO's future in the post-Afghan war Central Asian region - the hidden agenda of this Clausewitzean war all along - without checking out in advance with Washington, nay, except at the bidding of the Barack Obama administration.

By a coincidence, Rasmussen's idea has appeared on the eve of the expected award of a contract by the US Defense Department to build a sprawling US Special Forces base in northern Afghanistan near Mazar-i-Sharif. The US is undertaking the project on a priority footing at a cost of as much as US$100 million. The base, in the Amu Darya region straddling Central Asia, will become operational by the end of 2011, or at the latest by early 2012.

According to available details, the 17-acre (6.8 hectare) site of the new American military base is hardly 35 kilometers from the border of Uzbekistan and it seems set to become the pendant of a "string of pearls" that the US is kneading through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan along the "soft underbelly" of Russia and China's Xinjiang.

How would the countries in the region size up the startling prospect that the US and NATO are possibly quitting the Afghan war by 2014 and yet preparing to settle down for a long stay in the Hindu Kush?

Moscow reacts
The only forthright reaction so far has come from Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointedly underlined in his statement at the Kabul conference the importance of recognizing Afghanistan's future "neutral status", which would preclude any sort of permanent foreign military presence. To quote Lavrov:

The restoration of the neutral status of Afghanistan is designed to become one of the key factors of creating an atmosphere of good-neighborly relations and cooperation in the region. We expect that this idea will be supported by the Afghan people. The presidents of Russia and the US have already come out in favor of it.

Indeed, what is surprising is that Obama not merely seemed to favor the idea of a "neutral" Afghanistan but explicitly referred to it as a "commitment" as recently as last month when he received Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Washington. The US-Russia Joint Statement of June 24 on Afghanistan, in fact, began with the following opening statement:

The United States of America and the Russian Federation confirm our commitment to Afghanistan becoming a peaceful, stable, democratic, neutral and economically self-sufficient state, free of terrorism and narcotics, recognizing that further significant international support will be needed to achieve this goal.

Has Obama backtracked? The point is, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton uttered not a word about a "neutral" Afghanistan in all of her intervention in the Kabul conference on Tuesday, whereas she seemed to deliberately circle around Rasmussen's thought process, preferring to dilate on issues such as the importance of upholding women's rights in a future Afghanistan.

Interestingly, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi chose to visit the idea of a "neutral" Afghanistan, but somewhat tangentially. He said on Tuesday:

The international community must give continued attention to Afghanistan and follow through on the commitments made in London [conference in January] and the previous international conferences on Afghanistan. We should respect Afghanistan's sovereignty and work together towards the early realization of 'Afghanistan run by the Afghans'. We want to see a peaceful, stable and independent Afghanistan ... [Emphasis added.]

US holding breath
At the end of the day what really matters is Clinton's silence. It needs to be carefully weighed.

It indicates the US seems to be wary of a rebuff from the region and is gingerly going about with the unveiling of the idea of setting up permanent US/NATO bases in Afghanistan? Of course, it has been fairly well known for quite a while among regional observers that the Pentagon has been feverishly beefing up the US military bases in Afghanistan, including construction of some new ones, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars and equipping them with facilities that enable the American troops to maintain a familiar lifestyle far away from home, which is of course conducive to the presence of long-staying GIs into a distant future among people famous for their hostility toward foreign occupation.

This was exactly what the US has done in Iraq, too, despite the end of the "combat mission" as such by September.

The US diplomats have been gently persuading capitals in the region in recent months that, contrary to what Afghan history might suggest, the idea of a "neutral" Afghanistan isn't all that good for regional security and stability in a milieu where violent Islamist radicals are at large. Washington hopes to capitalize on the visceral fears in those capitals of a radical Islamist avalanche once the Taliban is co-opted in the power structure in Kabul.

New Delhi, for instance, has explicitly used the term "neutral" Afghanistan in its past policy pronouncements, but the Indian minister S M Krishna used a noticeably milder variant in his statement on Tuesday - and that too, rather as a barb aimed at Pakistan than as a well-thought out stance regarding Afghanistan's neutral status - by merely observing that "India is committed to the unity, integrity and independence of Afghanistan underpinned by democracy and cohesive pluralism and free from external interference."

The idea of concluding a Status of Forces Agreement with President Hamid Karzai's government, which the US officials have been considering with the active encouragement from London, now seems doable. Compared with the past year or two, the Afghan leader nowadays gets on fairly well with his Western patrons. And he may even find physical advantages in having the US and NATO provide him with a security umbrella to safeguard against any nasty surprises that the Pakistani intelligence may spring on him in the downstream of the "reconciliation" with the Taliban.

The fact of the matter is that despite exuding confidence regarding a future beyond 2014, by when he wanted the foreign troops to end the combat mission and withdraw, in his heart of hearts Karzai cannot be having the sort of requisite faith in the performance of the Afghan Army - indeed, whether the army would even hold together as an entity in the foreseeable future - if there is a determined, well-crafted putsch by the Taliban with the able backing from its Pakistani mentors once Western forces withdraw from the battle field in 2014.

Significantly, Lavrov appealed to the "Afghan people" - and not to Karzai's government, which hosted the Kabul conference - to voice the demand for the neutrality of their country and the rejection of long term foreign military presence.

For Obama and his CIA chums, it is "back to the future" in Latin America....

For Obama and his CIA chums, it is "back to the future" in Latin America....and elsewhere in the DOD Arc of crisis....

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/spyring.html

President Obama's Latin American policy resembles more Richard Nixon's Operation Condor and its assassinations and covert operations than President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress and its advancement of economic progress and democracy. Obama's reactionary Latin American policies appear to be aimed more at currying favor with south Florida's émigré right-wing exiles from Cuba, Venezuela, and Central America than in advancing democracy in the region.

Obama's recent decision to deploy thousands of Marines and dozens of Coast Guard vessels to Costa Rica, while opening up more military bases in Colombia and Honduras, where he authorized a coup against democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, is even more threatening to Latin America's progressive governments than the benign neglect bestowed by George W. Bush on the region after the failed 2002 coup attempt against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

In a throwback to the Nixon and Henry Kissinger era, there are increasing reports of political assassinations, as well as the illegal detention of opposition figures and journalists by U.S.-backed regimes in Colombia, Panama, and Honduras. Even more telling is the fact that Pinochet supporters who are members of the Chilean Senate recently were charged by Venezuela with gross interference in upcoming elections in Venezuela. Under President Sebastian Pinera, a Chilean billionaire who is obviously more to the liking of Obama than Latin America's populist leaders, Chile has become, along with Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica, a U.S. base to destabilize progressive-led governments in Latin America.

As far as Kissinger, America's oldest living war criminal, is concerned, he serves as Obama's "special envoy" to the Kremlin. Since Obama places so much stock in Kissinger's advice, it is important to take a look back on the CIA doctrine for destabilization of Latin America that was adopted for the 1954 overthrow of the Jacobo Arbenz government in Guatemala and used in successive U.S.-led coups in Latin America ever since. The doctrine was refined by the CIA and Pentagon during both the Nixon and Reagan administrations.

Much of the CIA's and Pentagon's current doctrine on Latin America destabilization is found in the declassified CIA manuals for "PBSuccess," the operation to overthrow Arbenz, who, himself died mysteriously in a bathtub in 1971, while in exile in Mexico City. Refined by the Nixon and Reagan administrations by both the CIA and Pentagon Special Operations forces, the manual for assassinations and destabilization includes the use of murder of individuals with blows to the head by blunt or sharp instruments; falls on to hard surfaces from buildings from at least 75 feet; falls from bridges on to hard surfaces but not water, elevator shafts, and stair wells; staged automobile accidents -- expanded after 1954 to include airplane crashes; poisoning to induce heart attacks and incurable diseases such as cancer; and, for false flag propaganda purposes, assassinations by rifles, machine guns, handguns, and explosions.

Brazil's leftist President Joao Goulart, overthrown by the Brazilian military in a 1964 coup, died from an alleged heart attack while living in exile in Argentina in 1976. Goulart's body was never autopsied and there is no official cause of his death documented. In 2000, the former governor of the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro, Leonel Brizola alleged that both Goulart and former Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek were both victims of Kissinger's Operation Condor. Kubitschek died in a suspicious car accident. Later, a member of Uruguay's intelligence service stated that Goulart was poisoned and Kubitschek killed in a staged car accident near Resende, Brazil on the orders of Brazilian dictator Ernesto Geisel, a close ally of Kissinger and Nixon. Kubitschek and Goulart were reportedly assassinated within five months of one another in 1976. Brazil's progressive president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's only progressive leader since Goulart, will see the end of his term on January 1, 2011. Given his popularity in Latin America and around the world, Lula may receive the same treatment as his predecessors given America's new aggressive covert activities in Latin America.

Chile's President before Allende, Eduardo Frei Montalva, an original supporter of Pinochet who later turned against him, is suspected of being poisoned to death by toxins in 1982. His son, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, narrowly lost last year's election to Pinochet loyalist Pinera. Medical experts, including those at the FBI, concluded that tissue samples from Frei Montalva's body contained deadly toxins. Frei Ruiz-Tagle also believes Chile's DINA intelligence service, which cooperated closely with the CIA in Operation Condor, was responsible for his father's assassination.

PBSuccess's "Study of Assassination" contains explanations of the pluses and minuses of several assassination plots, including the stabbing murder of French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub, as well as the gunning down of Abraham Lincoln, Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the ice axe assassination of Leon Trotsky, and the conference room explosion aimed at assassinating Adolf Hitler.

The CIA favored the machine gun method for killing the maximum number of people inside a room. It states: "The sub-machine gun is especially adapted to indoor work when more than one subject is to be assassinated. An effective technique has been devised for the use of a pair of sub-machine gunners, by which a room containing as many as a dozen subjects can be 'purified' in about twenty seconds with little or no risk to the gunners." The machine gun option appears to have been used to kill Chilean President Salvador Allende and his bodyguards in the CIA's 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power. Afterwards, Kissinger employed Operation Condor to use fascist governments in Latin America to track and hunt down and kill opponents of Allende and other left-wing activists. In Honduras, Panama, Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, a renewed low-key Operation Condor appears to have taken shape under Obama. The machine gun tactic also appears to have been employed by the CIA and India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in the regicide of Nepal's royal family on June 1, 2001.

The 470th Military Intelligence Brigade refined PBSuccess procedures in 1987 in a series of training manuals used at the School of the Americas in Georgia to train Latin American military operatives in destabilization tactics. Among the techniques recommended was the creation of blacklists of "enemy agents," "subversive persons," hostile political leaders, and known or suspected collaborators and sympathizers of enemies of the government. To give the CIA and Army "plausible deniability," covert destabilization operations are carried out by "associate" foreign services in order to minimize U.S. requirements for "committing communications to paper."

For Obama, whose Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was a top officer in the armed forces of General Suharto, who carried out the CIA's 1965-66 coup against President Sukarno and the Indonesian Communist Party, which saw almost one million accused Communists, as well as ethnic Chinese, systematically genocided, such re-imposition of covert activities in Latin America presents no moral dilemma to Obama, who first witnessed the CIA's repression as an impressionable young boy of 7- and 8- years old while living in Jakarta. Soetoro was still a senior officer in Suharto's army when Soetoro enrolled Barack Obama in 1967 as Barry Soetoro in Jakarta's Fransiskus Assisi Catholic school. In 1967, the Indonesian army and its CIA handlers were still mopping up Indonesia's left-wing opposition forces. Obama has studiously refrained from mentioning Indonesia's CIA coup and has twice canceled presidential visits to the country.

Given the similarities of the U.S.-led coups against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002, the coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, and the 2009 coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, the CIA and Pentagon appear to have added a less lethal practice to their bag of covert tricks -- kidnapping Latin American presidents at gun point and flying them to other nations against their will.

And Obama's decision not to rescind George W. Bush's re-establishment of the U.S. Navy's Fourth Fleet as part of the US Southern Command, means that the United States can always resort to its old "gunboat diplomacy" to enforce its military might and will in Latin America.

Arming the Arctic to control all the energy resources of the world

USMC Photo: U.S. Marines taking part in war games in Norway earlier this year.

The environmental changes occurring in the Arctic are as dramatic as they are significant for security cooperation and competition among Arctic nations. With the polar ice cap receding 25 percent since 1978, vast tracts of unexplored ocean rich with natural resources are opening up. In 2009, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the Arctic contains over 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and some 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids—of which the USGS estimates a whopping 84 percent may wait "offshore."

While there may not be a “great race” north just yet, there is enough movement — politically, militarily and commercially — to make things interesting. Last year, two German ice-strengthened merchant ships sailed from South Korea over the Eurasian coast to the Atlantic Ocean, and that same year, 13 ships traversed the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic, making 2009 a record-setting year for full transits in the austere region in a summer season. Of the 135 full Northwest Passage transits since 1903, almost half — 60 — have come since 2000.

Still, the waters of the Arctic won’t be clogged with shipping any time soon. At an event in Washington, D.C., in April to discuss the emerging strategic significance of the region, Stephen Carmel, senior vice president for maritime services of shipping giant Maersk Line, warned that navigation in the area is still extremely difficult. “Decent charts really don’t exist,” he said, “aids for navigation don’t exist, emergency response capability does not exist, so there’s things that need to be done before you can really support shipping up there.” In general, “there are a lot of things overall that are still far from certain in terms of the practicalities of working” in the Arctic, he concluded.

But where there are economic opportunities, military thinkers start to see potential hot spots. The U.S. has always retained the most robust military presence in the Arctic of all the Arctic Council members — including Canada, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland — and in January 2009 the George W. Bush administration released an Arctic Strategy paper that placed security as the U.S.'s primary concern in its Arctic territory (think Alaska). The U.S. Navy followed suit by issuing an Arctic Road Map that — thanks to Coast Guard help — laid out the direction that the lead naval service wants to pursue to meet the demands of U.S. maritime Arctic security.

But U.S. allies have also been busy. Norway has made massive investments in modernizing its Navy, including building five Aegis-capable frigates, and the country’s ground forces have started conducting the yearly Exercise Cold Response that involves more than 10,000 Norwegian and NATO troops, including U.S. Marines who practice cold-weather warfare.

Meanwhile, in the 2008 Canada First Defense Strategy and then again with its Northern Strategy in 2009, the Stephen Harper government has called for up to eight Arctic Offshore vessels, a $720 million icebreaker, a new satellite to map the region, a new deep-water resupply port, an army training base, and larger local militias in the region.

While the plans Ottawa have outlined look great on paper, Rob Huebert, a PhD Fellow at the Canadian Defense & Foreign Affairs Institute, says none of the programs have made much, if any, headway. “We’re still in project definition” he tells AVIATION WEEK's Defense Technology International. “The problem is we’re already seeing signs of the government trying to cut back on expenditures,” and some of the projects have been postponed. “Many people on the inside worry that [the Joint Support Ship] has been canceled,” and “we haven’t seen anything about the Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels…you get the sense that it hasn’t even moved up to the point where it is going to be put up for bidding and the icebreaker seems to be even further behind that.” The Russians, meanwhile, with their already large icebreaker fleet have announced plans for more nuclear-powered icebreakers, more ice-capable submarines, and as of 2008, had resumed surface naval patrols in Arctic waters. Moscow has also announced plans to land paratroopers on the North Pole some time this year.

While no one sees the outbreak of hostilities in the Arctic as a real possibility, and cooperation among the Arctic Council is becoming more and more common, the military buildup in the North is still something to watch.

The United States is using its military power, especially its navy, to control all the energy resources of the world that it can gain dominion over. It does no good to deny this, or to challenge the assertion, hiding your head in the sand to what is going on in the world will not change anything, except perhaps to make it easier for this to be accomplished. How can governments negotiate deals with a government that is working so hard to destroy them? The shared hypocrisy of all world leaders, in this respect, makes all governments complicit in America's crimes, wars and targeted assassinations of the infamous White House Murder INC,.... if all it takes to break the cycle and subvert the psyops is for one brave leader to take a stand and show the press whatever dirt he has access to. It also means that because no people can depend upon their leaders to break this cycle of slow enslavement it is the people's responsibility to change things.

Stumbling into a proxy war with Iran in Afghanistan

In the RFI/ here

http://tarpley.net/2010/07/22/obama-preparing-to-bomb-iran/

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki delivered a speech yesterday that underscores a risk we have been highlighting recently, namely, that the present direction of U.S. policy is raising the risks of renewed civil war in Afghanistan, which would simultaneously be a regional “proxy war” between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, on one side, and Iran, on the other.

Mottaki spoke in Kabul at the international conference on Afghanistan. Western media coverage of Mottaki’s address tended to be rather superficial, focusing on it being longer than other speeches at the conference. But Mottaki’s remarks were substantively important....

It is important to understand Mottaki’s speech from an Iranian perspective. The Foreign Minister’s address comes less than a week after a lethal suicide bomb attack at a Shi’a mosque in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan—an attack for which the Sunni extremist/Baluchi separatist group Jundallah claimed credit.

Iran has long charged that the United States supports Jundallah’s anti-Iranian terrorist activities. (Interestingly, the Obama Administration considered but then pointedly declined to designate Jundallah/CIA+MOSSAD+MI6 as a foreign terrorist organization in 2009.) Tehran has also suggested that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia—two of the Islamic Republic’s leading regional antagonists—support Jundallah.

With regard to the Zahedan attack, however, Iranian state media, see here, have reported that “the group is unlikely to have carried out the attack since it was effectively disbanded after [its leader, Abdolmalek] Rigi was executed in Iran last month.” Rather, Iranian media suggest that “extremist Wahhabis and Salafis trained by U.S. intelligence agents in Pakistan are believed to have carried out the bombings.”....

In this context, Mottaki’s remarks in Kabul take on a special—and ominous—significance.

–Past conversations with the Foreign Minister and more recent exchanges with senior Iranian diplomats indicate that, as a matter of policy, the Islamic Republic continues to oppose the Taliban’s participation in Afghanistan’s government. Mottaki’s observations in Kabul about observing the constitution signal that Tehran is opposed to modifying the constitution to facilitate the creation of power-sharing arrangements between the Karzai government and the Taliban. ..."

(Continue/ here)

The antagonistic US-China relationship becoming institutionalized

The antagonistic US-China relationship becoming institutionalized

The Barack Obama administration took office in 2009 determined to move beyond the unilateralism of the George W Bush years, and reassert America's global influence as the most principled and powerful guarantor of rule-based multilateralism.

With respect to China, this approach was presented as a doctrine of "strategic reassurance".

However, the policy has not yielded the systemic breakthroughs that the Obama administration hoped to achieve on climate change, non-proliferation, Middle East security, still less on US-China relations.

Instead, increasingly acrimonious exchanges between Beijing and Washington reveal the contradictions inherent in attempting to shoehorn an authoritarian, mercantilist and suspicious nation into a refurbished world system that ostensibly promotes democracy, open markets, multilateralism, while forcefully advancing American interests.

Now the Obama administration seems to have accepted a world of lowered expectations and strives for the more achievable goal of advancing US power at China's expense. Friction with China has emerged as a regular feature of US diplomacy - a means to score points in the game of international diplomacy at the expense of an unpopular, uncooperative, and, at least for the moment, diplomatically and militarily weaker regime.

Indeed, the US's China policy today looks a lot like good old-fashioned rollback, isolating China instead of incorporating it into a win-win multipolar system.

The Western press, distracted by individual issues such as Iran sanctions, Google and the sinking of a South Korean corvette, seems oblivious to the fact that the US-China relationship has lurched into zero-sum territory and relations are in deep freeze, largely as a result of the willingness of the Obama administration to confront China in pursuit of its agenda. The Chinese media, on the other hand, talk about nothing else.

Observers who believe that China will yield to US pressure as long as its access to world markets is assured are ignoring unmistakable signs that Beijing has decided that, while its economic interests are vital, it must be prepared to downplay short-term economic gain in order to ensure its geopolitical position and national future.

Even in its inception, US demands for "strategic reassurance" were inherently unequal, framed as something that China had to provide up front before the US would reciprocate. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg described the doctrine at a Center for a New American Security conference on China in September 2009. The onus for reassurance was put on China in a way that Beijing undoubtedly found grating.

Strategic reassurance rests on a core, if tacit, bargain. Just as we and our allies must make clear that we are prepared to welcome China's "arrival", as you all have so nicely put it, as a prosperous and successful power, China must reassure the rest of the world that its development and growing global role will not come at the expense of security and well-being of others. Bolstering that bargain must be a priority in the US-China relationship. And strategic reassurance must find ways to highlight and reinforce the areas of common interest, while addressing the sources of mistrust directly, whether they be political, military or economic.

Steinberg proceeded to list five areas of "impressive" cooperation: reviving the global economy, denuclearizing North Korea, dealing with Iran's nuclear program, mitigating climate change, and anti-terrorism and anti-piracy.

In retrospect, it is clear that in only two areas - the global economy and anti-terrorism/piracy - do the US and China share a genuine identity of interests, while with respect to North Korea, Iran and climate change, among other issues, US and Chinese positions remain fundamentally at odds. And in the key area of the global economy, agreement is by no means absolute.

While appreciating the massive Chinese domestic stimulus program (and the equally massive Chinese purchases of US sovereign debt), US plans for the new economic order clearly include a stronger Chinese currency - a situation that Steinberg alluded to when he described the three "continued areas of mistrust and disagreement": China's military expansion, global resource competition and the economic relationship.

Indeed, in mid-2010, a bleak but accurate gloss on "strategic reassurance" might be that the only area of genuine mutual reassurance concerns China's willingness to sail around the Horn of Africa in a cautious and responsible manner in search of pirates.

The aggravated US-China relationship is compounded by the Obama administration's difficulty in making compromises.

At first, the administration's initiatives looked promising. They made no easy accommodation to habitual US claims to national exceptionalism, and even had some international appeal.

Indeed, they were designed to repudiate the arrogant American me-firstism that had seen the US turn its back on the Kyoto climate treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court and the Law of the Sea Treaty. In short, rather than deploying the rhetoric of national interest, the Obama administration presented itself as a promoter of global norms - and sought to impose those norms on China.

Yet the full brunt of US intentions often only become clear in the foreign policy-making fine print, such as the somewhat obscure speeches of US deputy secretaries. As Steinberg put matters with respect to China:

Now, strategic reassurance does not only apply to the relationship between China and the United States. Our partners, particularly in Asia, must have the same certainty that China's expanding role will not come at the expense of their interests. And this not only requires that the United States bolster its own bilateral relationships, especially with key allies like Japan, South Korea and Australia, but also that we lead in updating and strengthening the regional and international institutions that shape the context in which China's development occurs, so that change is constructive rather than destabilizing.

When it comes to the international system, we must ensure that new powers like China - and there are others as well, of course - can take their rightful place at the table without generating fear or mistrust ... As we pursue these policies, we will be open to China's growing role, but we will also be looking for signs and signals of reassurance from China. If China is going to take its rightful place, it must make those signals clear.

So, when US initiatives collided with Chinese interests, there was no graceful way to negotiate between Obama universalism and Chinese particularism or, as it is usually framed in the Western press, US principle vs Chinese selfishness. The situation has not been helped by the fact that many of the Obama administration's grand strategic initiatives have fizzled in practice (or in the case of something like economically crippling Iran through sanctions, the outcome may be years in the future).

Complex Rubik's cube diplomacy involving interlocking initiatives and delicate sequencing on much tougher Iran sanctions, climate change and nuclear non-proliferation have yielded few breakthroughs. The reasons are numerous, but in each case, China is part of the story. China has challenged the US on a number of these issues. For example, Beijing earned the Obama administration's ire for its high-profile role in opposing US initiatives in the Copenhagen climate debacle and as a result of its hard bargaining on United Nations sanctions against Iran.

Partly as a result of Chinese resistance, the climate and nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) treaties and Iran sanctions have, after immense expenditures of prestige and energy by the United States, degenerated into little more than unproductive can-kicking down the road of futile multilateral initiatives. In short, strategic reassurance is not forthcoming in areas of potential cooperation, a situation that the Obama administration blames on China, and not on any shortcomings of its own policies.

Frictions, on the other hand, are persistent and apparently structural. It appears that, in response, the Obama administration has chosen to interpret "strategic reassurance" as the simple and emotionally satisfying strategy of rollback - attacking Chinese interests instead of trying to accommodate them.

From the Chinese perspective, the Obama administration's China policy increasingly looks, walks and quacks like containment. Apparently, the United States prefers a different term: "pre-empting China's monopoly status".

On his blog Washington Note, foreign policy insider Steve Clemons reported on a conversation he had in early June with senior administration officials involved in the international realm.

One of the most interesting comments made to a question I posed probing the administration's strategy in Asia, was "Steve, don't watch the hand!"
What this person was saying was "don't get lost in everything going on at the surface" in US-China relations or US-Japan relations, but rather look at the other many bits and pieces of America's engagement in the Asia-Pacific that are enhancing US leverage and generating a greater sense among Pacific Rim countries that America is there, engaged, and pre-empting China from enjoying monopoly status.

Either by accident or design, US public diplomacy campaigns involving climate change, nuclear proliferation, Internet freedom, Iran and the South Korean boat being sunk, while yielding few concrete gains, have succeeded in one key respect. They have placed China at a geopolitical disadvantage, forcing it to line up with pariahs or near pariahs like Iran, Myanmar and North Korea in opposition to the Western democracies, Japan and South Korea.

The antagonistic US-China relationship shows signs of becoming institutionalized, especially with the Obama administration's efforts to establish a solid strategic, legal and diplomatic foundation for sustained and successful third-country sanctions on the issue of Iran, with the European Union and Japan ready as always to lend a hand. The administration's overwhelming desire to isolate Iran virtually assures a confrontational posture against China.

Even as the UN resolution on the fourth round of Iran sanctions wound its way uncertainly through the Security Council, it was an open secret that China would water it down. The US-proposed solution was follow-on national sanctions that, if not "crippling" as desired by Israel, would hit Iran where it hurt - in the energy sector. The perceived flaw to that solution would be that China would honor the UN resolution, impose no follow-on national sanctions, and scoop up Iran contracts while the US and Europe stood on the sidelines.

United States national and EU sanctions are useless if all they do is drive Iran - and its energy investments, petroleum products and import/export and financial dealings- further into China's arms, as Glenn Kessler reported for the Washington Post:

US and European officials acknowledge that the administration's gambit faces uncertainties.

China, for instance, could swoop into Iran to replace Western investors. "China is the elephant in the room," one diplomat said, but the hope is that China will face political pressure not to appear to profit from an international pullout. Officials also say China cannot replicate some of the technologies and products produced in Europe.

Both Russia and China have insisted that, in return for their support of the UN resolution, they received assurances that follow-on national sanctions by the US and Europe would not damage their energy and economic interests.

However, the obsessively forward-thinking Obama administration would certainly have a plan for addressing the underlying weakness of a massive geostrategic effort that has consumed the energies of the US administration for the past six months.

Perhaps the Obama administration gave Russia and China the desired assurances with the caveat (perhaps implied or unspoken) that, if Iran's behavior didn't change, then promises to lay off Russian and Chinese interests would have to be honored, as they say, "in the breach".

The enabling US legislation on Iran sanctions - HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 - was signed by Obama in early July and provides ample justification for imposing third country sanctions, whether in sorrow or in anger:

The proposed bill, announced in a joint statement by Representative Howard Berman (D-Calif) and Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn), would bar non-US financial institutions dealing with Iran's [Islamic] Revolutionary Guards [Corps] or targeted Iranian banks from also doing business with the US banking sector. The bill would also penalize firms selling gasoline to Iran through restrictions on their US bank transactions, property transfers and foreign exchange in the United States.

As one analyst observed, "The act presents foreign banks doing business with blacklisted Iranian entities a stark choice - cease your activities or be denied critical access to America's financial system," an outline of the bill states, adding that it would address problematic moves taken by international branches of US financial institutions.

Obama made a show of asking for explicit waivers for "cooperating countries", understood to be Russia and China, in return for their support on the UN resolution, as a demonstration of good faith. He didn't get the blanket waivers, but he is perhaps not unhappy that he didn't. He will be able to grant one-year exemptions for individual corporations, albeit with a "name and shame" requirement to put the recipients on the public record.

Therefore, if China exploits Western and Japanese sanctions to entrench itself in Iran's energy sector or is excessively dilatory in supporting the initiatives of the Obama administration, financial sanctions can be deployed against its banks, as they were earlier with respect to North Korea in the famous case of the 2005 sanction of Banco Delta Asia, a small bank in the Chinese territory of Macau.

The Obama administration's carefully-constructed legal and diplomatic edifice of third-country sanctions gives the United States a weapon that it can wield against China, not only on Iran, but also to advance US interests in the myriad other areas of friction that bedevil the relationship. The other key area of friction between the United States and China today is the Korean Peninsula.

In a development that China affects to find increasingly suspicious, US exchanges with China in Asia have grown progressively more confrontational, thereby playing to America's primary strength - its overwhelming military superiority while highlighting a key Chinese vulnerability - regional fears (albeit voiced mostly by Japan and more recently South Korea) concerning the geopolitical ambitions of its burgeoning military.

In particular, it appears that the temptation to exploit China's geopolitical vulnerabilities - and take advantage of South Korea President Lee Myung-bak's enthusiasm for using US support to challenge Chinese hegemony in Northeast Asia - were irresistible to the Obama administration.

The result is a destabilization of the Korean Peninsula that has, by US design, achieved the exact opposite of reassurance.

Things started to come to a nasty head over the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan near North Korean waters on March 26. The way South Korea and the United States have allowed the issue to play out seemed designed to put China in an ugly light.

South Korea turned to the United States and its allies - and passed over China and Russia - to conduct the investigation into the sinking. Then the United States took center stage to endorse the findings, and South Korea's call for UN action, unequivocally. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited China to encourage it to support the South Korean/US position. To date, China has declined.

The United States and South Korea profess to believe that China prefers to protect its feckless and dangerous ally, North Korea, instead of standing with justice, security, the international community and its key economic partner, South Korea. China's statements in favor of peace on the peninsula and greater diplomatic efforts by the North and South to settle their differences get no respect.

Senator James Webb, the Democratic Party's most influential spokesman on Asia in the US Congress, put it this way in a Korea Times news article posted on his official website:

Webb said China's position on the Cheonan incident when it reaches the UNSC will be a barometer of its willingness to cooperate with the international community.

"It is a good opportunity for the rest of the world to observe and comment on whether China is proceeding in a mature fashion as a member of the international community," he said. "It's a test of whether it can participate among the leadership of the world community."

The Chinese government may feel that the South Korean/international investigation contains enough evidentiary and procedural shortcomings that it can be safely disregarded. A recent report by the South Korean Board of Audit and Investigation, while calling for the removal of 25 South Korean military officers for their failings in responding to the disaster, also highlighted at least two instances of falsification of official records of the incident.

The South Korean military was further embarrassed by the revelation that it had displayed the schematic of the wrong North Korean torpedo when it rolled out its case on May 20.

However, China's ambivalence on the issue of the Cheonan probably has more to do with the growing suspicion that the US definition of "strategic reassurance" now involves, above all, not just the maintenance but the attempted enhancement of US strategic advantage in China's backyard.

The Cheonan incident and the US response did not occur in a vacuum. They took place at a time of considerable uncertainty concerning the US forward position in the Pacific. In late 2009/early 2010 the Obama administration was busy ostracizing the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government in Japan, which was attempting to establish a more equal and independent role for Japan within the US-Japan-China triangle.

The DPJ government's unwillingness to accept the US position on a key issue was its campaign promise (recently abandoned) to renegotiate the deal made by the outgoing Liberal Democratic Party to build a new US Marine Corps air station at Oura Bay on Okinawa.

At the same time, Lee's conservative government in South Korea was determinedly burnishing its pro-American credentials by backing away from the independent security policy and "Sunshine" engagement of North Korea favored by its two predecessor governments.

The United States decided to reward Lee - and South Korea's ambitions as a regional power and security partner, placing it virtually on a par with Japan - by endorsing several moves designed to enhance the nation's stature. These included supporting South Korea as the host for two prestigious summits: the Group of 20 confab in November 2010, and the next Nuclear Security Summit - Obama's keystone diplomatic initiative - in 2012. Part of the deal apparently included a coordinated response on the Cheonan sinking, extending beyond participation in the investigation and support of its findings to agreement to support a call for UN Security Council action.

The cost of this deepening of the South Korea-US security relationship was China's feeling that the two countries were ganging up on China on matters Northeast Asian. To Beijing, the US clearly showed the cloven hoof by endorsing the UN Security Council as an appropriate venue for the Cheonan sinking. This implied that the US's idea of "strategic reassurance" involves good relations only if China repudiates its North Korean ally and acquiesces to sidelining the six-party talks - a diplomatic initiative that granted China a central role in regional and global affairs.

It also indicated that the US was promoting a new, destabilizing security paradigm in North Asia - promoting an enhanced role for South Korea while pushing the future of North Korea into the US-friendly UN Security Council at the expense of the six-party talks. As the North Korean regime approaches a leadership transition that might plunge it into chaos, Beijing is surely sensitive to the fact that America seems to be sidelining China from the consultations that may decide the future of the Korean Peninsula.
These issues received an airing at the Shangri-La dialogue, a think-tank sponsored confab of defense ministers held annually in Singapore. At the 2010 iteration, held from June 4-6, the South Korean president carried his campaign to exploit the geopolitical implications of the sinking of the Cheonan to a major Asian forum. His call for a united anti-North Korea front by the civilized world was overshadowed by a conspicuous spat between US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and China's delegation to the conference led by General Ma Xiaotian.

Gates dismissed China's Taiwan arms sales-related anxieties with a condescension that China's official opinion found infuriating, especially when contrasted with a high-profile tripartite meeting between Gates, Lee and Japan's defense minister that pledged to "deter further provocation" in the region.

During the conference, it transpired that Gates was not welcome to visit Beijing. This was construed, perhaps inaccurately, as a further, high-profile expression of Chinese displeasure at Taiwan arms sales. The Taiwan arms sale matter had been thoroughly hashed out earlier in January and had already triggered the tit-for-tat Chinese response: cancellation of scheduled military exchanges and some US-China diplomatic exchanges at the vice foreign minister level.

It is more likely that by June Beijing was sending a message concerning the overall health of the military and political relationship with the US - a message that Gates was perhaps not ready to share with the Western journalists covering the conference.

In the question and answer session subsequent to Gates' speech, Chinese Major General Zhu Chenghu took the US to task for working with Israel to slow-walk the investigation on the assault on the Free Gaza aid flotilla, while demanding full speed ahead on censure of North Korea. Zhu concluded with a remarkably straightforward statement of dissatisfaction: "The Chinese are taking the Americans as a partner, as friends, and Americans take the Chinese as enemies."

In his official remarks to the forum, General Ma criticized the traditional military mindset of relying on zero-sum alliances that weaken an adversary. He also made the pointed remark, "We should not treat only the symptoms but not the causes, still less try to put out a fire with a hammer."

This can be construed as a reference to America's preference for casting all regional problems within a security template simply because military might is America's last remaining trump card in Asia. Matters have not improved since Singapore.

Previously, mindful of the objections of the Democratic Party's union base, Obama had resisted pushing congress to ratify the South Korea-US free-trade agreement.

However, the US yielded to South Korean strategic blandishments - Lee had openly stated that he wanted to stall the agreement until after the agreement with the US went into effect, so the US could gain the greatest benefits - and Obama confirmed the pro-South Korean/anti-China tilt of his administration by coming out in support of ratification of the South Korea-US free-trade agreement. Obama then used the public forum of the G-20 summit in Toronto to pointedly insult President Hu Jintao by accusing China of "willful blindness" in refusing to publicly endorse the results of the investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan.

Chinese perceptions of US hypocrisy and hostility were undoubtedly reinforced by the observations that a) no public insults were directed at Russia which has also declined to endorse the Cheonan findings as yet; and b) the US stepped forward to reject a North Korean call for a joint investigation of the Cheonan sinking under the auspices of the UN - an investigation that might reveal additional embarrassing holes in the "compelling" case that the US claimed China was exercising "willful blindness" in disregarding.

Criticisms of the US's China policy in the Chinese media have become less oblique and markedly more strident. Chinese media characterized Obama's "willful blindness" rebuke as "irresponsible and flippant".

The next, inevitable area of friction concerns joint US-South Korea naval exercises scheduled for the end of July in the Yellow Sea between the Korean Peninsula and China, which may or may not feature an appearance by the US aircraft carrier George Washington. With good reason, China has chosen to interpret these exercises as a deliberate provocation, whose purpose is not to overawe North Korea; it is to humiliate Beijing by demonstrating that the US fleet can sail the oceans of East Asia in disregard of China's sensibilities and openly expressed objections.

A June 12 People Daily Online editorial entitled, "US Must Restrain Provocative Military Actions" predictably adopted the framing favorable to China, calling for "peace" instead of "provocation" and made it clear that it expects that it is China and not the United States that should be "reassured":

The United States may believe that since it conducted military drills in the Yellow Sea in the past, it can do that now and in the future. But the United States should understand, with China's increasing national strength, Chinese nationals will get more sensitive to the provocative actions the US navy takes in a place so close to their home.

No one would allow its competitor with guns in hand to wander in front of their home or keep a close watch staring through their windows, and the Americans would not too.

China does not object to the US navy's presence in the western Pacific and even shows understanding that some countries in this region still need the US military to provide a sense of security. And no country has the capability to replace the United States in this capacity. But, this does not mean the United States can ignore China's self-esteem and drive their aircraft carrier straight to the front of China's doorstep to flex their muscles.

Only when the United States learns to respect the western Pacific countries and adapt to the changes of their politics, economies and, in particular, public opinion, can its authority in this region be recognized. The United States should make people feel that the US military presence in this region is peaceful and necessary, not vice versa.

Furthermore, the United States needs to take into account these countries' moods if it wants to become a peacemaker, not a troublemaker. Otherwise, the United States will have difficulties in staying in the region for a long time and its interests here will be difficult to effectively protect.

The People's Daily's international affairs mouthpiece, Global Times, ran an editorial with a similar theme - and wording - under the title "Yellow Sea No Place for US Carrier":

Many Chinese are tired of the abrupt changes in US posture. The US just stressed the importance of partnership between the two countries at the second Strategic and Economic Dialogue at the end of last month. Now, it looks as if the US could try to incite China with military aggression.

China's expression of displeasure moved from words to munitions, as China announced its navy would conduct live fire drills in the East China Sea for the duration of the US-South Korea maneuvers.

On July 6, Global Times ran a blunt editorial titled, US has to pay for provocation.

The US provocation on the western Pacific is a typical act born out of the Cold War mentality.

This will only further isolate the US in these parts, as no East Asian country would like an outsider to mess up the region, and its neighborhood.

Developments in East Asia over the past 10 years contributed significantly to the economic boom of the United States in the decade before it suffered a setback from its own financial trouble.

As commander in chief, Barack Obama needs to rethink his role in East Asia, as to whether he is squandering the invaluable political heritage left behind by George W Bush. It will be a tragedy if the US upsets the prevalent situation and turns the clock back on East Asian relations by decades.

Considering the growing economic, diplomatic, political and cultural ties the US has with China, the price the US has to pay for its irresponsible decision will be higher than it can envision now. If the US does not pay for this "adventure" now, it will pay in the future.

These are not the opinions of a strategically reassured - or reassuring - China. These are the words of a threatened regional power that regards US hostility as dangerous and growing.

Scheduling the George Washington to avoid the Yellow Sea is not going to allay Chinese concerns about America's hostile intentions. By now, suspicion has probably hardened into certainty.

It's a worrisome reflection on the Obama administration's China policy that US interactions with Beijing are now apparently driven by frustration, rancor, inertia and opportunism - and the acrid residue of new American ambitions for regional leadership that China is determined to contest.