(Talk delivered at the United Service Institution, New Delhi on
October 13, 2004)
Churchill once said: “when nations have had the power they
have not always done right, and when they wished to do right they
no longer had the power”.
INTRODUCTORY
REMARKS
Although this presentation will
essentially dwell upon the current direction of US policy and
some likely outcomes, it needs to be
clarified at the very outset that putting the blame on the USA
for all the world’s ills is not likely to make many of the
seemingly intractable problems disappear. It has become facile
to attribute the advent of global terrorism to ill-conceived US
policies of earlier days. No doubt they contributed to the radicalization
of Pakistan and the networks spawned by the Pakistan military machine
- flush with Saudi funds, drug money and misappropriated US aid.
Nevertheless, equal blame needs to be apportioned on the Pakistan
and Saudi regimes for diverting hundreds of millions of dollars
to the spread of Sunni orthodoxy. It is still continuing. Had the
billions of dollars earned from the rise in oil revenues been expended
for uplifting the lot of the Muslim world rather than for spreading
anti-modern theology, the plight of the people of these countries
would not have been as abysmal as it is today. Similarly, had the
Pakistan-Taliban-al-Qaeda regime actually gotten down to improving
the lot of the people of Afghanistan once they had consolidated
their hold on the hapless country, instead of spreading terror
around the world, a model Afghan state would have been a beacon
for other Muslim countries.
However, the motivations of the prime movers were different. It
was they who were attempting to usher in an imperium of the orthodox
elements in the region, till they ran into the ambitions of the
other super-imperialist of the new century, USA. (These aspects
having been dealt with at length in the books, Dealing with
Global Terrorism: The Way Forward and Global Security
Paradoxes 2000-2020 will not be amplified further).
According to a former US Secretary
of State, demography too played a not inconsequential role in
adding to the decline in the Muslim
world on account of the fast multiplying populations. The submissive
role forced on women led to the population explosion. He went on
to say: “generations of young people have grown up in these
societies with a surplus of time on their hands and a deficit of
productive occupations”. (George P. Shultz at the Kissinger
Lecture delivered on February 11, 2004, at the Library of Congress).
The irony cannot be lost. It is well-known that Iraq’s secular
regime, in marked contrast to most of its neighbours, was laying
emphasis on shunning religious extremism while giving women equal
status and protecting the rights of its Christian and other minorities.
The caveats were essential to bring the discussion of US hegemony
onto an even keel, it not being the intention to look at the coming
US presidential election in a standalone manner, which, this time
around, will be greatly influenced by events outside USA - both
economic and geophysical - over which the superpower might be gradually
losing control. The presentation not being an exercise in prognostication
- of the outcome - will attempt to look at some of the fundamental
issues that could shape US policies, regardless of which presidential
contender sits in the White House in January 2005. The paper scans
a few basic issues under the following heads:
- Hidden Aspects Behind 9/11
- The Changing Nature of Conflicts
- US-Pak: The Strange Relationship
- USA: The Dangerous Drift
- The Unanswered Questions
- Concluding Remarks
HIDDEN
ASPECTS BEHIND 9/11
Around mid-July 2004, the Senate report on U.S. intelligence was
released. Toward the end of July, the 9/11 Commission report was
made public. Both focused on the same theme: the U.S. intelligence
community failed to function effectively before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Commenting on the shortcomings - wittingly or otherwise - they
avoid bringing to light what has long been suspected in many circles
in USA and the world.
The tantalizing question that
emerges is: “what went wrong
in the intelligence community”? The simplest explanation
would be that the US intelligence services were not as remiss in
their work as is made out to be. They were peripherally alive to
the fact that a plot to carry out attacks in the US was in the
offing. There were too many telltale signs strewn around. The Pakistan
ISI hierarchy that hatched the plot and the small group in Washington
in the know were aware of it. They felt that a “controlled” outrage
in stateside USA could be their excuse to put into effect the US
grand design for the Middle East.
The head of the Pakistan ISI,
General Mahmoud Ahmed, gave instructions for the wiring of US $
100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker.
General Ahmed, the paymaster was in Washington on 9/11 having a
series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon,
the national security council, with George Tenet, then head of
the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political
affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having
sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by
President Musharraf. The US has not demanded that he be questioned
and tried in court. Nor has the 9/11 commission made this recommendation
in its report.
There was strong evidence of foreign
intelligence backing for the 9/11 hijackers. The US government
has been keen to cover it
up. Was it because it had been in the know ab initio? Senator Bob
Graham, chairman of the Senate select committee on intelligence,
has averred: "I think there is very compelling evidence that
at least some of the terrorists were assisted, not just in financing
... by a sovereign foreign government." In the same context,
Horst Ehmke, former coordinator of the West German secret services,
observed: "Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation
with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service."
It gives meaning to the reaction
on 9/11 of Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism
chief, when he saw the passenger
lists later on in the day: "I was stunned ... that there were
al-Qaeda operatives on board using names that the FBI knew were
al-Qaeda." It was just that, as Dale Watson, head of counter-terrorism
at the FBI told him, the "CIA forgot to tell us about them".
The CIA did not forget to tell
them. It was not an oversight. They had deduced that several
people in Washington and Islamabad
were in the know. General Ahmed was physically present, monitoring,
according to some sources, the attacks, in a manner of speaking,
in situ. Or so he thought. The scheme went awry. The complete collapse
of the twin towers was not scripted. The agents who carried out
the attack, not owing allegiance to the Pakistan ISI had their
own agenda, once the Pakistanis had paved the way for them. What
followed hardly requires elaboration. Another comment from USA
on the 9/11 commission’s report, tends to corroborate what
is being stated:
“ The 9/11 commission's report is insightful in tracing
the failures - intellectual, moral and technical - that made the
Sept. 11 attacks possible. What it does not explain - and what
remains inexplicable - is why the Bush administration would believe
that the attacks did not prove the need for an urgent overhaul
of U.S. intelligence, but that business as usual would suffice.
Whatever one thinks of Bush on other subjects, this decision remains
unexplained and undefended”.
The answer is again very simple. No major overhaul was carried
out because it was not an intelligence failure, as perceived by
the rest of the world. The attack itself was not a surprise to
the US establishment. It was a controlled exercise that got out
of hand unknown to the abettors in Islamabad. Many of the inexplicable
actions of the US establishment in the days that followed fall
into place when looked at through the prism of the explanation
just outlined. It focuses attention on the direct penetration of
the governance process and the media networks by the military-industrial
complex. At least thirty-two secretaries and other senior staffers
of the present US Administration are former board members, consultants
or shareholders of the largest armament industries and seventeen
of them are connected to the key suppliers of the missile defence
system. The oil lobby and the military contractors need no longer
put pressure on the administration since they are the Administration.
That is why, while three U.S. generals - Gen. Anthony Zinni, Gen.
Joseph Hoar, and Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack Jr - stated recently
that the U.S. occupation is failing in its objectives, President
Bush continues to assert that he expects Iraq to become a democracy
that will inspire other Middle Eastern countries to become democratic.
The difference between the ground
reality in Iraq and the statements coming out from Washington
is so marked that it is best explained
by the observation made by the noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith: “Corporate
power is the driving force behind US foreign policy – and
the slaughter in Iraq”.
THE
CHANGING NATURE OF CONFLICTS
The world is witnessing a new pattern of warring. Each side now
practices unprecedented savagery to the extent that the need for
physical annihilation of the opponent supersedes the geopolitical
imperatives of the two sides. The change did not come about suddenly.
High technology and the shadowy nature of the opponent have played
their part. Actually it is a continuum from the past of the genes
programmed into the imperialist powers. A few examples from Iraq
itself should suffice:
“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized
tribes. The moral effect should be good... and it would spread
a lively terror..." (Winston Churchill commenting on the British
use of poison gas against the Iraqis after the First World War).
From the statement just read out,
attention is invited to the words ‘the
moral effect should be good and it would spread a lively terror’.
The words, uttered in the halcyon days of the Empire, as the British
ventured into Mesopotamia after the defeat of Turkey in the First
World War, provide a glimpse into the mind of the great English
statesman, whose sentiment expressed over 80 years ago has apparently
lingered. As envisioned by Churchill, the use of deadly, inhuman
weapons – in the present case depleted uranium (DU) - did
spread lively terror in Iraq - even if the rest of the world failed
to see the ‘moral effect.’
Here’s another example of
the same mindset:
American pilots bombing and strafing, with depleted uranium weapons
helpless retreating Iraqi soldiers who had already surrendered,
exclaimed:
" We toasted him…. we hit the jackpot….a turkey
shoot….shooting fish in a barrel….basically just sitting
ducks… There’s just nothing like it. It’s the
biggest Fourth of July show you’ve ever seen, and to see
those tanks just ‘boom’, and more stuff just keeps
spewing out of them… they just become white hot. It’s
wonderful." - (L A Times and Washington Post, February 27,
1991).
These campaigns mean a new type
of warfare that substitutes firepower for manpower, airpower
for infantry, and technology for reduced
physical presence on the battlefield. It is still evolving. Should
it succeed – in spite of the difficulties being faced by
US troops at present - it could become the model for NATO's future
strategy and lead to force restructuring in many countries. Going
by the current setbacks in Afghanistan, Iraq and even Waziristan
it would be an indication, however, that technological innovations
cannot entirely replace the human dimension of warfare. Most experts
are agreed that there is still the need for sufficient number of "boots
on the ground."
The war on terror is leading to market forces now dominating the
military scene, blurring the distinction between private and public
armies, even countries as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wherever there
is a shortfall in regular soldiers, private security agencies have
been filling the gap. Nevertheless, they may still fall short of
expectations when confronting stateless shadowy persons. Not being
able to pin down the enemy or seize the initiative from the adversary
results in more savage bombing and destruction of the infrastructure.
At the end of the day it required a non-military person to see
the fallacy of the proposition of mindless destruction with bigger
and bigger bombs:
“… one point (is) perfectly clear. We can bomb the
world to pieces, but we can’t bomb it into peace!” – Michael
Franti, Musician, Spearhead.
That being the case, peace in the neighbourhood is not likely
to come about unless the spending priorities are reversed. For
example, in Afghanistan, according to Christian Aid, the U.S. has
spent $40 billion on military operations, while the international
spending on aid is $4.5 billion. However, the NGO sector itself
has long outgrown its charitable beginnings and is now a global
player: recent estimates suggest that globally some 26,000 NGOs
employ 19 million people and dispose of around $1 trillion in finance,
much of it directly from governments.
USA-PAKISTAN
SPECIFIC
The title of the paper is ‘What the US Presidential Elections
do not Portend’. What they do portend, however, is a continued
involvement with Pakistan, or elements in Pakistan whose interests
have coincided with those of the Washington establishment for several
decades. The Pakistan Army will continue to be a surrogate for
US plans in the region for the foreseeable future, regardless of
al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and irrespective of Pakistan being the
fount and epicenter of radical Islamist terrorism, as also the
nerve centre of nuclear proliferation. None of these aspects alarm
Washington to the same extent as they do the rest of the world,
for the simple reason that several entities in Washington have
always been in the know of what was happening in Islamabad. They
have invariably manipulated the Pakistani military hierarchy for
their own ends. The reverse proposition is equally tenable. An
elaboration is required.
Within hours of General Musharraf’s announcement of AQ Khan’s
pardon, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage praised Musharraf
as “the right man at the right time”, adding that Pakistan
had been “very forthright in the last several years with
us about proliferation”! An official of the US State department
clarified that it was for Pakistan to decide how to deal with AQ
Khan. During his visit to Pakistan on 17 March 2004, Secretary
of State Colin Powell announced that the US government had decided
to designate Pakistan as a Major Non-NATO Ally. USA’s friends
in the Commonwealth did their bit by getting Pakistan’s suspension
from the Commonwealth (continued since Musharraf’s coup in
October 99) revoked. Pakistan was complimented for progress made
in restoring democracy and rebuilding democratic institutions!
Notwithstanding the above, Dr.
Ronald McCoy, President, International Physicians for the Prevention
of Nuclear War speaking at the NATO
Defence College Conference on ‘ Future Challenges for Non-Proliferation
Instruments at Rome: 16 - 17 March 2004 stated that:
“ The revelation of A Q Khan's black market in nuclear technology
is a wake-up call to the international community”.
Tick, Tick, Tick is the title of
an article appearing in the October 2004 issue of The Atlantic
Monthly. The article by Graham Allison
talks of Pakistan becoming a nuclear time bomb, perhaps the greatest
threat to American security today. The author does not talk of
a nuclear exchange with India, but of the direct and immediate
threat to US security from rogue elements within Pakistan, who
could be embedded sympathizers from within the military establishment
or of radical Islamist tanzeems in Pakistan that spawned the Taliban
and have close links to al-Qaeda. He elaborates that Pakistan's
nuclear complex poses two main threats: “the first, highlighted
by Khan's black-market network, is that nuclear weapons know-how
or materials will find their way into the hands of terrorists”.
For instance, in August of 2001,
even as the final planning for 9/11 was under way, Osama bin
Laden received two former officials
of Pakistan's atomic-energy program - Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood
and Abdul Majid - at a secret compound near Kabul. Over the course
of three days of intense conversation bin Laden and his second-in-command,
Ayman al-Zawahiri, grilled Mahmood and Majid about how to make
weapons of mass destruction. After Mahmood and Majid were arrested,
on October 23, 2001, Mahmood told Pakistani interrogation teams,
working in concert with the CIA, that Osama bin Laden had expressed
a keen interest in nuclear weapons and had sought the scientists'
help in recruiting other Pakistani nuclear experts who could provide
expertise in the mechanics of bomb-making. CIA Director George
Tenet found the report of Mahmood and Majid's meeting with bin
Laden so disturbing that he flew directly to Islamabad to confront
President Musharraf. This was not the first time that Pakistani
agents had rendered nuclear assistance to dangerous actors. Pakistan's
nuclear program has long been a leaky vessel; the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace has deemed the country "the world's
No. 1 nuclear proliferator."
Two theories are being currently
presented by USA’s investigative
reporters in explanation of the amazingly favourable treatment
of Pakistan’s crimes of nuclear proliferation by USA. According
to Seymour Hersh (“The Deal” in The New Yorker 8 March
2004), USA has agreed to accept Musharraf’s action in consideration
for Musharraf allowing US troops to hunt for Osama bin Laden in
the frontier areas of Pakistan where OBL is believed to be hiding.
Musharraf is further stated to have offered to provide human intelligence
for tracking down OBL.
According to the second theory
presented by Jason Leopold (writing in South Asia Tribune) USA’s acceptance of Musharraf’s
action was actually meant to shield Dick Cheney who had known of
Pakistan’s proliferation activities for more than a decade
and took no corrective action. According to Leopold, in 1989, Richard
Barlow, a young Pentagon analyst had prepared a report for Cheney
who was then working as the US Secretary of Defence in the Bush
(Senior) administration. The report said that Pakistan had built
the bomb and was selling nuclear technology and equipment to countries,
which the US said were sponsoring terrorism.
Barlow’s report was politically inconvenient because its
acceptance would have resulted in the cut-off of US aid to Pakistan
and would have killed the $1.4 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets
to Pakistan. Desperately wanting to sell the F-16s to Pakistan,
Cheney dismissed Barlow’s report. Some months later a Pentagon
official was told by Cheney to downplay Pakistan’s nuclear
capabilities when he testified before the Congress. Barlow complained
to his bosses at the Pentagon and ended up being fired.
Although USA and many other countries that are putting pressure
on Iran have put the lid on the revelation late last year that
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program,
had been selling nuclear technology and services on the black market,
the enormity of the exercise has shaken the establishments of these
countries to the core. As is nearly always the case the hidden
part of this iceberg conceals much more. In spite of the need to
keep supporting General Musharraf, it has become the number one
agenda for disarmament lobbies worldwide. The head of the International
Atomic Energy.
Agency has called it a "Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation" -
a decades-old illicit market in nuclear materials, designs, technologies,
and consulting services, all run out of Pakistan. The Pakistani
government's response to the scandal was hardly reassuring. Pakistan's
official position remains that no member of Musharraf's government
had any concrete knowledge of the illicit transfer - an assertion
that U.S. intelligence officials in Pakistan and elsewhere have
dismissed as absurd.
The scale of the proliferation
activities – both the time
scale and the mind-boggling extent - give an indication that in
addition to the involvement of the military hierarchy of Pakistan,
several Western intelligence agencies were in the know, if not
at the highest levels, certainly at the operating level. The connections
formed in the earlier periods of cooperation in Afghanistan in
the 1980s ensured that knowledge. Following from it, an obvious
conclusion is that the enormous sums that were paid did not go
into the Pakistan treasury. These sums would be likely to have
been shared by the top military brass of Pakistan, key intermediaries,
and the clandestine agencies – hence the reluctance to allow
anyone else to interrogate AQ Khan. The intelligence agencies were
already using narcotics-related funds for activities that would
not have received official funding from their respective governments.
Cases have been coming to light regularly of the military-industrial
complexes’ subcontracting the dirty work to mercenary-type
agencies.
Indian leaders and government officials
are invariably surprised by the soft treatment meted out to Pakistan
by US officials. They
do not realize that in many respects Washington and Islamabad were,
and still remain, hand in glove. Richard Armitage and Gen. Colin
Powell have both been recipients of awards from the Pakistan government – a
fact seldom mentioned these days.
USA: THE DANGEROUS DRIFT
The Economic Perspective
“
The main problem with fiscal policy is that politicians can easily
make themselves temporarily popular by cutting taxes and increasing
public spending while running up massive public debts, leaving
repayment to the future. This trick can last a few years, but sooner
rather than later budget deficits and growing public debt force
a painful policy reversal. Yet a cynical politician can buy himself
re-election and perhaps be in retirement when the crisis arrives”.
(The Economic Times, 14 January 2004, Lessons from US fiscal profligacy
by Jeffrey D Sachs). He goes on to say: “There are two vital
lessons for other countries. The first is that the looming US budget
deficits will sooner or later limit America’s international
power. Americans supported the Iraq war only because they didn’t
have to pay for it with increased taxes. When Americans are forced
to choose between foreign adventures and higher taxes, they will
be much less likely to support expensive military operations abroad.
Indeed, the US will be deeply divided internally as the public
grapples with the fiscal mess left by Bush”. In a similar
vein historian Niall Ferguson had remarked that American military
might cannot translate into imperialism, as historically defined,
because no successful imperial power has ever been so pitifully
dependent on foreign money. It may not be known that total US defence
spending dwarfs the official defense budget.
The $401.3 billion defense budget
for 2004, signed by President Bush in November 2003 is huge indeed,
as many commentators have
noted. The "official" sum, however, greatly underestimates
total U.S. defense spending. Add together all defense-related spending
by federal agencies and the tab amounts to about $754 billion – a
good 88 percent more than $401.3 billion - according to Robert
Higgs, senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute
and editor of The Independent Review.
" Lodged elsewhere in the budget, other lines identify funding
that serves defense purposes as surely as - sometimes even more
surely than - the money allocated to the Department of Defense," writes
Higgs in an op-ed published in the San Francisco Chronicle. "On
occasion, commentators take note of some of these additional defense-related
budget items, such as the nuclear-weapons activities of the Department
of Energy, but many such items, including some extremely large
ones, remain generally
unrecognized."
In arriving at his $754 billion calculation for total defense
spending for 2004, Higgs added to the $401.3 the amount of spending
on homeland defense by agencies other than the Department of Homeland
Defense, estimates of foreign military financing (including development
funds that free up the defense budgets of recipient countries),
spending by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the interest
costs of past years' defense spending, as well as the supplemental
spending bills to fund the occupation and reconstruction of Afghanistan
and Iraq.
" Although I have arrived at my conclusions honestly and
carefully," Higgs writes, "I may have left out items
that should have been included - the federal budget is a gargantuan,
complex, and confusing document. If I have done so, however, the
left-out items are not likely to be relatively large ones. Therefore,
I propose that in considering future defense budgetary costs, a
well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon's (always well
publicized) basic budget total and double it. You may overstate
the truth, but if so, you'll not do so by much."
THE
DANGEROUS DRIFT
In December 2001, George W. Bush abrogated the ABM Treaty. By
New Year's Day 2005, half-dozen interceptors could come up in Alaska
and four more in California. In 2005 ten more will be added in
Alaska, ten will be added at a third site not yet determined, and
ten will be placed at sea, the beginning of a ship-based mobile
defense. And this is just the beginning.
It is axiomatic that excessive
military spending on the part of the remaining superpower will
propel the world to newer heights
of militarism, bringing in its wake greater destruction. Here’s
what a celebrated American economist, well known in this part of
the world, thinks about it: “Civilised life, as it is called,
is a great white tower celebrating human achievements, but at the
top there is permanently a large black cloud. Human progress dominated
by unimaginable cruelty and death. ……Mass slaughter
has become the ultimate civilised achievement”. (Extract
from The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth for Our
Time, by JK
Galbraith).
Not many people seem to be listening,
certainly not the people who matter in the USA. In 1997, Zbigniew
Brzezinski wrote that “retaining
planetary superpower status by the USA can be summed up by three
great geostrategic imperatives: 1) avoiding collusion between vassals
and keeping them in the dependency justified by their need for
security, 2) fostering the obedience of the protected, 3) preventing
the ‘barbarians’ from forging aggressive alliances.
By stating that she will henceforth act “before the threat
becomes manifest”, is to say that before the reality of the
threat may be demonstrated, America expects others to accept her
word as law. The doctrine of ‘dissuasion’ or containment
is hence forsaken. (World Affairs, Vol 7, NO 4, October-December
2003. United States and Europe by Alain De Benoist).
In an interview to the BBC in London in September 2003 this writer
had spoken about the psychological disorientation taking place
among the US troops deployed in Iraq, a good six months or more
before the Abu Ghraib incidents came to light. The psychological
stress engendered in tens of thousands of young soldiers could
be far more damaging in the long run than the physical casualties
being suffered in Iraq. What is more, when they return their discontent
will diffuse through the bloodstream of American civil society
generating secondary stresses not anticipated at this juncture,
perhaps deliberately so. No longer will returning soldiers be welcomed
as heroes in joyful parades in small towns scattered across America.
There will be no ‘yellow ribbons’ on
the trees leading into town. In all probability the soldiers
would prefer to slink
back into anonymity. Fearing this discontent could be a major calculus
in the decision of the US administration to postpone large-scale
troop rotation from Iraq till after the US presidential election.
President Bush told reporters at a press conference several months
ago that U.S. troops would remain in Iraq indefinitely.
Neither of the leading presidential candidates has clearly articulated
a plan to bring home U.S. troops. People in USA and outside would
want to know whether they would be merely exchanging a Republican
version of the war in Iraq for a Democratic one should George W.
Bush not win a second term. Meanwhile, more than 4,000 scientists
- including 48 Nobel Prize winners - have accused the Bush administration
of distorting and suppressing science to suit its political goals. “The
administration has undermined the quality and independence of the
scientific advisory system and the morale of the government’s
outstanding scientific personnel,” they said in a letter.
It would be pertinent to recall that Richard Nixon was re-elected
at the height of the resistance to the Vietnam War. George McGovern,
the antiwar candidate was defeated in a landslide.
Nixon was elected on the basis
of his appeal to white supremacy, which still remains strong
among the majority of whites in the
US. The Republicans have been exploiting that sentiment successfully
ever since. Elections didn't stop the Vietnam War. It was the anti-Vietnam
War movement that stopped the war in spite of the electoral results.
Should something similar happen now in the US and UK, the world
and the US would be better served. Besides the US military stuck
in Iraq, as the institution of the military seems to be rotting
internally, there are two players who will most probably determine
the outcomes in Iraq: the international anti-war movement and the
Iraqi resistance. The latter has the dominant role because they
now have the battlefield initiative and staying power. The central
paradox for the Bush administration, as one writer put it is: “They
are now in a situation where it is ‘politically impossible’ to
leave, but it is militarily impossible to win”.
In the aftershock of 9/11, the
U.S government has entered a new arms race, redirecting up to
$10 billion toward biodefense research.
Officials have justified this biodefense push as a necessary evil
in the shadow of what a CIA report has called the "darker
bioweapons future." It is a "modern-day Manhattan project" whose
ramifications are being overlooked by an uninformed public. By
frantically pursuing research that could potentially change the
face of biological science as is currently known another Pandora’s
box is being opened. A growing number of microbiologists, with
relatively poor oversight, could actually be paving the way for
the next generation of killer germs.
In October 2003, the National
Academy of Sciences released a little-noticed report warning
that "the government has no
mechanism to prevent 'the misuse of tools, technology, or knowledge
base of this research enterprise for offensive military or terrorist
purposes.'" In 2003, close to half the total US government
discretionary expenditure was used for military purposes. A large
part was for weapons procurement or development. Nuclear-powered
submarines run to billions of dollars, individual planes to tens
of millions each. Such expenditure is not the result of detached
analysis. From the relevant industrial firms come proposed designs
for new weapons and to them are awarded production and profit.
In an impressive flow of influence and command, the weapons industry
accords valued employment, management, pay and profits in its political
constituency, and indirectly it is a treasured source of political
funds.
The
gratitude and the promise of political help go to Washington
and to the defence budget; and to foreign policy or, as in Vietnam
and Iraq, to war. That the private sector moves to a dominant public
sector role is apparent. Given its authority in the modern corporation
it was natural that management would extend its role to politics
and to government. Once there was the public reach of capitalism;
now it is that of corporate
management. In the US, corporate managers are in close alliance
with the president, the vice-president and the secretary of defence.
Major corporate figures are also in senior positions elsewhere
in the federal government; one came from the bankrupt and thieving
Enron to preside over the army.
THE
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
There are many questions that remain
unanswered. The ones uppermost in people’s minds could
include the following:
- The Outcome of the US Presidential Election
WHAT
HAPPENS NEXT IN IRAQ?
Taking up the first question the
realization dawns that the absence of ethics and morality in
governance is also being globalised at
an accelerated pace. It is radically re-shaping the attitude of
governments to the people who elected them. It is the major outlays
that decide – for individuals, societies and nations – the
pattern of returns, confirming the wisdom of the old adage, ‘as
you sow, so you reap’. Hence, if the leading nation of the
world is spending over half a trillion dollars on its military
systems, when it is the strongest nation in the world, the resultant
cannot but be heightened militarism.
The pattern is no longer restricted to the military-industrial
complex. Till a few years ago an enlightened leadership in the
United States could have given the lead for reversing nuclear proliferation.
Being the lone superpower it should still, on the face of it, be
in a position to take the lead. What is the ground reality, however?
An enlightened leader with the attributes required to reverse the
dangerous decline might not find it possible today to come to the
fore and win election to the office of the President of the United
States. The interests that have taken an iron grip over the Washington
establishment, the media and wealth formation will simply not allow
such a species to co-exist. A few hard facts should suffice to
confirm the observation:
The two principal contenders
for the White House in the coming elections were both agreed
- and still agree - on the need
for the Iraq invasion in spite of the 9/11 Commission report and
exposures of deliberate falsifications that took place at the highest
levels of governance.
Extrapolating from these
positions in the run up to the US presidential election it can
be stated that a significant percentage
of Americans still support the decision to invade Iraq, again,
in spite of the wide dissemination of the 9/11 Commission report,
the rise in US casualties and the near-universal condemnation of
the US policies in Iraq.
A look at the board members
of media companies is revealing. In America a large number of
the directors of NBC, CBS and ABC
all have common involvement with Rothschild/Rockefeller/Morgan
companies, as well as being members of the Council on Foreign Relations
and Trilateral Commission. In Britain, the Daily Telegraph is owned
by the Hollinger group, whose advisors and directors include Henry
Kissinger, Lord Carrington, Brzezinski and Lord Rothschild. The
current chairman of N.M. Rothschild, Evelyn de Rothschild, is on
the board of the Daily Telegraph. A former board member, Andrew
Knight, is now executive chairman of the 'rival' News International,
which runs The Times and the Sun, and which is funded by the Oppenheimers
and the Rothschilds. Regulatory bodies such as the Press Complaints
Commission also have links with the same people e.g. the chairman
Lord Wakeham who is a director of N.M. Rothschild. (The Media by
Ivan Fraser and Mark Beeston).
A
handful of media barons have a stranglehold on the global media.
The extent of the media
holdings of Rupert Murdoch
and the influence that a single individual wields in shaping the
global discourse and, what is more important, the public position
on that discourse hardly needs elaboration.
Private military companies (PMC) - mercenaries in plainer
language – manning the occupation administration’s
front lines are now the third-largest contributor to the war effort
after the United States and Britain. They will be even less amenable
to civilized restraints in the countries where they are deployed.
Star Wars is no longer
a futuristic theory. Sometime this summer, the US will station
10 missile interceptors in Alaska
and California, with more to follow soon. The Pentagon has spent
$16 billion on the project, with major funding increases on the
way.
The statement made a short while
ago by the Democratic contender should set at rest any doubts
as to the future of US policies: “I
will never give any nation or international institution a veto
over our national security. And I will build a stronger American
military”. - John Kerry.
Coming to the question
of Iraq it would be pointless reiterating that the USA has made
a mess of it and is deeply mired
without an exit strategy. Britain played an equally perfidious
role in goading the US administration into the Iraq folly. In the
process it ended up by accelerating the schisms in the Atlantic
Alliance. Whether Tony Blair wins the next elections or is defeated
at the polls is not the issue, as is being made out to be. There
are deeper underlying issues that now confront the world when planet-destroying
technologies are proliferating. Can the defeat of the incumbents
in the USA and UK be sufficient recompense for unimaginable chaos
and suffering brought on by the whims and fancies of just two individuals
in temporary control of the levers of power. Would the world be
able to sustain follies of this nature in future? Therefore, the
questions before the world.
However,
the USA must be obliged to conform to global norms of conduct
as enshrined
in the UN Charter, in letter and
spirit. It must adhere to the BTWC and ratify the Kyoto Protocol
as well as the ICC convention. It must put a stop to the militarisation
of space.
Failing
which, all countries, allies and non-allies must cut off bilateral
dialogues and abrogate,
in a phased manner, their
special relationships with the superpower. There is no other way
to restore sanity to a world hurtling toward self-destruction.
The
limits of ‘superpowerhood’ stand
exposed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The same is applicable in the
economic
sphere. Without support from NATO, the UNSC and its G8 allies America
simply cannot go it alone. It is these others who underpin US power,
led lemming-like on account of the deferential attitudes fostered
during the long years of the Cold War. The moment they decide to
remove their shackles, without necessarily upsetting the applecart,
the US will be more amenable to a reasoned dialogue.
The
situation in Iraq has provided the world an opportunity to restore
the primacy
of the UN. It can also become an enabling
environment for overdue UN reform, provided individual nations
stop making private deals with the US.
The
ruling elite in India, Japan, Germany and Brazil must not hanker
after a permanent UN
Security Council seat. At
this critical juncture they must come together to force general
reform of the UN. Together they represent a formidable force in
the world forum that cannot be ignored for long.
CONCLUDING
REMARKS
The director of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El-Baradei, has opined that, “Unless we are moving steadily
toward nuclear disarmament, I’m afraid that the alternative
is that we’ll have scores of countries with nuclear weapons
and that’s an absolute recipe for self destruction.” Given
current US policy for maintaining a nuclear arsenal for the indefinite
future, threatening non-nuclear countries, and doing research into
new types of usable nuclear weapons, nuclear disarmament appears
to be a distant dream, thus making proliferation a more likely
nightmare. (Democratizing Money: An Outline for Staving off
a Monetary Train Wreck by Arjun Makhijani. Science for
Democratic Action,
Volume 12, Number 1, December 2003).
More than a decade after the USSR,
Russia is drifting into a new arms race with the US. It’s
incredible that America spends more on nuclear weapons than when
the Cold War peaked. Sadly, Moscow
is responding by diverting scarce resources to modernize its nuclear
forces. Under President George W Bush, the US has aggressively
started asserting its narrowly defined interests, not heeding world
opinion or traditional American foreign policy priorities.
Today only two entities threaten each other and the world with
the threat of weapons of mass destruction, these being the superpower
USA and its principal adversary the shadowy radical elements out
to hit USA wherever they can. At least for the next ten to fifteen
years the nuclear exchange at the lowest kiloton yields is more
likely between these two adversaries. This period becomes the window
of opportunity to effectively roll back the nuclear peril. The
cataclysmic holocaust that could have resulted from an exchange
between the two superpowers during the Cold War decades when the
doomsday clock in New York came close to one minute to midnight
can be practically ruled out for at least the next decade or two.
However, as far as the planet is concerned, the bigger danger
to planetary decline stems from massive deforestation, species
extinction, breakdown of the inter-species genetic barriers, global
warming and, most importantly, the likelihood of the pursuance
of the capitalist consumption patterns by the developing world,
being propelled by the forces of globalization into this mould
at a self-energizing pace. If the remaining virgin forest tracts
disappear and the capitalist consumption patterns become the norm
for the bulk of the human race the damage to the Earth would be
far more than a suitcase bomb or a few low yield nuclear bombs
going off.
It is above all the U.S. public
that must appreciate that at the end of the day the course that
America takes in the coming years
will depend largely on how the USA deploys its wealth. For example,
should it persist with the planet-destroying star wars programme,
with outlays of tens of billions of dollars, leading up to possibly
half a trillion dollars or more over the life of the programme,
then America will surely get firmly sucked into the negative spiral
of decline and decay. The rest of the world would be dragged down
as well. Today unbridled capitalism, which has become the handmaiden
of environmental degradation, nuclear proliferation and the militarisation
of space, has turned into a ‘rogue’ process. In other
words, it is a runaway process that might no longer be amenable
to control.
The global community must now push
the US towards ratifying most of the global protocols that the
US has walked out of, or opposed
against the wishes of the vast majority of the world’s nations.
If anything, it should have been the frontrunner for adhering to
the Kyoto protocol and the commitment given by the P-5 for collectively
moving towards universal nuclear disarmament.
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