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Middle East Roundtable
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Edition 35 Volume 6 - September 04, 2008
Russia-Georgia: lessons for the Middle East
• Georgian defeat tarnishes Israel, spells trouble ahead - Ali Abunimah
If Georgia signals the beginning of the end of US "hyperpower", so too will Israel find itself increasingly challenged.
• Diplomacy by proxy - Zvi Bar'el
Can the Russian show of force in Georgia tilt the paralyzing status quo in the Middle East in a new direction?
• Russia could use Mideast ties in standoff with US - Konstantin von Eggert
The "Great Game" has just begun again.
• Telling every party what it wants to hear - Ekaterine Meiering-Mikadze
Ignoring the Kremlin's attempt to effect a Middle East comeback is dangerous.
• That tiny war: Iran, Russia and the Middle East - Jalil Roshandel
There is no reason to believe that Iran is neutral regarding the Russian-Georgian dispute.
Georgian defeat tarnishes Israel, spells trouble ahead
Ali Abunimah
In the wake of Russia's counterattack against the Georgian invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia last month, Turkish President Abdullah Gul observed that the era when the United States alone could set the world agenda had ended. "I don't think you can control all the world from one center," he said, "There are big nations. There are huge populations. There is unbelievable economic development in some parts of the world." Instead of "unilateral actions," Gul called for states to "act all together, make common decisions and have consultations with the world. A new world order . . . should emerge." Even if the US remains the world's most powerful country, it is a diminished force and time is not on its side.
These developments have major implications for Israelis, Palestinians and the broader region. For Israel, Georgia represents another in a series of setbacks and embarrassments. Israel attempted to downplay its involvement for fear that Russia would step up support to Israel's adversaries in retaliation. In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars of Israeli weapons and training had poured into Georgia--where the US has major energy and "strategic" interests--along with over two billion dollars of American military support. Israel played a similar role during the Cold War, arming at America's behest the apartheid regime in South Africa and the extreme right-wing US-backed regimes in Central America. In order to shore up its own American support, as well as for economic gain, Israel always does its part to help its patron.
But things did not go to plan. Israel's military reputation was already badly tarnished before the quick collapse of the Israeli-trained Georgian forces. This certainly did nothing to restore Israel's "deterrence" after a long series of setbacks: the collapse of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army in 2000, the Israeli failure to defeat Hizballah in July 2006, Hamas' rapid success in overcoming Israeli- and US-supported Palestinian Authority forces in Gaza in June 2007 and Hizballah's quick overrun of US-backed militias in Lebanon in May 2008. And, although the suffering was disproportionately on the Palestinian side, Israel was unable to defeat Hamas militarily and was forced to agree to a mutual ceasefire in order to stop resistance rocket fire at Israeli towns.
A clear danger to the region is that a new Israeli leadership will try to compensate by launching new military adventures to prove its toughness and reverse the trend. But Israel is much less likely to attack Iran, let alone without Washington's blessing and military support. Israel's dilemma, brought into stark relief by Georgia, is that it has no legitimate political solution within reach for its conflict with the Palestinians. At the same time, the military brute force that has sustained Israel has been losing the capacity to shape the region to its will. Israel relies on only one ally, the United States. If Georgia signals the beginning of the end of US "hyperpower", so too will Israel find itself increasingly challenged and its own needs increasingly at odds with those of its patron. Israel's neighbors will also have other choices than to fall into line behind America or stand alone as "rogue states".
Israel's loss does not necessarily mean the Palestinians' gain unless Palestinians are able to seize the initiative. One clear Palestinian loser is the US-backed Mahmoud Abbas/Mohammad Dahlan Authority in Ramallah which must now wonder if the US will be more loyal to it than it was to the Georgian leadership whose desperate calls for assistance went largely unanswered in Washington.
Yet if the US, bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, has trouble projecting power directly, and Russia gets more involved in the region, the US may rely more on the kinds of "dirty wars" that it has been stoking between Hamas and Fateh in Palestine and opposition and government in Lebanon. This will add to instability and human suffering and make it even harder for Palestinians to restore the kind of unity around a common agenda among all wings of the Palestinian nation (within Israel, in the 1967 occupied territories and the diaspora) needed to challenge Israeli apartheid and colonialism.- Published 4/9/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Ali Abunimah is cofounder of the online publication The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
Diplomacy by proxy
Zvi Bar'el
It sounded like the best news the Middle East had heard for the last decade: Russia is back. A Gulf News editor, Abdul-Hadi al-Timimi, wrote in an op-ed that Russia's willingness to use its military might to reassert its influence in the former Soviet space was "long overdue" and "most urgently needed at a time when the US and its allies are targeting two of the last few Russian allies in the Middle East: Iran and Syria."
It was not so much the show of force that Russia demonstrated toward Georgia that made the Middle East beam with joy, as it was the feeling that Russia is getting even with the United States. Russia used Georgia as a proxy for its new diplomacy. The one-polar world, anti-Arab and pro-Israeli, was shattered; America and Europe were "dragged naked" on the streets of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and the Middle East can breathe freely.
Can it really?
A very important common denominator between Israel and most Arab states has developed since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad came to power. It is not just the nuclear threat that Iran introduces, but rather the fact that its nuclear technology is not perceived anymore as Islamic power, let alone Arab power. It is the threat of a Persian or Shi'ite bomb that looms. Thus, no Islamic or Arabic counterbalance to the Israeli threat is achieved by an Iranian threat; rather, a more ominous power that is less controllable by Arab nations is in the making.
Political processes that have taken place in the Middle East in recent years--whether the crisis in Lebanon, establishing a more or less functioning government in Iraq, the power struggle between Fateh and Hamas or the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations--are void of any Arab influence. The last successful achievement was in 2002 at the Arab League summit in Beirut; since then, nothing new has emerged. A major attempt by leading Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia and by the Arab League to isolate Syria or to force Assad into consensual "behavior" regarding Lebanon, has failed. On the contrary, Syria is now the new "star" with a new opening to Europe, a dialogue with Israel, a renewed welcome in Russia and a fully obedient Lebanon under its wings.
These are just a few examples for the Middle East state of affairs, whereby the parties that are directly involved in conflicts are unable or unwilling to solve them. Now, as they search for a new genie--that is how one might read al-Timimi's call--can the Russian show of force in Georgia tilt the paralyzing status quo in the Middle East in a new direction?
We recall that Russia is a member of the infamous quartet that was formed in 2002 to "promote a just, comprehensive, and lasting settlement of the Middle East conflict". While the US and the European Union were involved heavily, albeit with little success, in this process, Russia was absent and its voice barely heard. Yet it is not US President George W. Bush who alienated Russia. Russia alienated itself.
So far, Russia has given the impression that it has no interest in "local conflicts" that carry no strategic importance for it. Of course, there is no need to expand on how, from a Russian point of view, the Kosovo or South Ossetia cases are not just "local conflicts". But now, with tension between Russia, the US and the EU high and a new "world crisis map" being drawn, Russia may want to play a higher-profile role, and not only in the Black Sea or the Caucasus, but also in areas that are considered "American" or "European" spheres of influence.
For example, Russia has not yet translated its alliance with Iran into political leverage over Iraq. But, with Syria as a newly-reborn ally and Iran as a partner, is it unimaginable to see Russia developing a pro-Russian "crescent"? Can one dismiss the possibility that states like Kuwait or Qatar will join in? After all, this is not the old cold war between two ideologies, nor is it the question about "who is with America and who is against it". Rather, commercial and strategic interests are involved.
In the context of its rivalry with the US and EU, Russia may want to flex its political muscle in the Arab-Israel arena. Why not call for a "Russian Annapolis" meeting? Why not invite Hamas and Fateh to Moscow? Can an Israeli or Palestinian prime minister decline a meeting with the Russian foreign minister? Further, if Russia decides that now it is its turn to impose a Russian peace initiative, can the parties reject it? Will such an initiative shake the US? Will Washington compete then with Moscow on promoting the peace process?
All this may sound like a hot summer illusion: a scenario of wishful thinking that refuses to accept the fact that the current status quo, the ongoing conflicts and the power struggle that ensues from them may just serve Russia as it had served the Soviet Union. Still, as we observe the latest Russian swing of the pendulum, assess Putin's ambitions and anticipate a new American president, how long will it take Russia to develop a new role in the Middle East?- Published 4/9/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Dr. Zvi Bar'el is the Middle East analyst of Haaretz daily.
Russia could use Mideast ties in standoff with US
Konstantin von Eggert
Although there is seemingly no direct link between the Russia-Georgia conflict and Russia's policy in the Middle East, the conflict could well lead to significant shifts in Moscow's posture in the region. If the current tendencies in the Kremlin's foreign policy prevail, the Middle East may return to a situation resembling that of the Cold War, with Moscow trying to make life difficult for Washington by supporting regimes the US considers hostile. It is the United States that Russia holds primarily responsible for what it terms the "aggressive policies" of Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, and it is America's support for Tbilisi--including promises to re-equip Georgia's armed forces--that rattle Moscow the most.
It is interesting that one of the first politicians to support Russia's actions was Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. There have been reports in the Russian press that Moscow may increase its naval presence in the Mediterranean through the use of Latakia and Tartus, Syria's two ports. New arms deliveries to Damascus could well be another response from Moscow to what it perceives as America's unfriendly policies in the Caucasus.
Another and potentially more serious step Russia could take is to adopt a more assertive stance over Iran's nuclear program and international sanctions against Tehran. It is interesting that in the wake of the crisis in Georgia, US military action against Iran, which some people claimed to be imminent before the end of the year, looks less likely as Washington has to tackle the Caucasus problem first. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad expressed some support for Russia's actions at the recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Dushanbe, though Tehran did not rush to recognize the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Indeed, Moscow got some moral support but nothing much in terms of real political solidarity from those it counted on, especially China and Iran. Yet these countries would appear to be among the few to which Russia will turn for support in case its standoff with the West over Georgia continues, as it might.
Overtures could also be made to Libya's maverick leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. A high-ranking Russian delegation paid Tripoli a visit to attend the thirty-ninth anniversary of the coup that brought Qaddafi to power. It was headed by Vladimir Yakunin, the boss of Russia's state railways and a man trusted by Vladimir Putin. Not much is known about the contents of the conversations in Tripoli, and it is doubtful that Qaddafi will take up a confrontational course with regard to US and Europe, as he cherishes his newly-found public acceptance by the West and even more so the economic benefits such acceptance could bring.
In the wider region, Russia is already taking steps to counter America's possible moves to secure a pipeline network in Caucasus and Central Asia. Prime Minister Putin has signed an agreement with Uzbek President Islam Karimov to build a new pipeline that will carry natural gas from Turkmenistan via Uzbekistan to Russia. Karimov, whose relations with America are tense over his harsh treatment of the opposition, was no doubt glad to get this shot in the arm from Moscow, which will be supplemented by massive Russian arms deliveries, if one believes what Putin said in Tashkent.
Another country that could get extra attention from Moscow is Azerbaijan, which has so far managed to maintain a precarious balance between Russia and the US. President Ilham Aliev had mostly let his officials support Georgia's territorial integrity (rather than condemn Russia's actions). However, a more pro-western tilt in Azeri policies is becoming visible, as Baku feels that events in Georgia could have a direct influence on its own frozen conflict with Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh. At the same time, there is a growing feeling in Washington that drawing Azerbaijan closer into the US orbit is in America's major interest. This will hardly be to Russia's liking. Iran, with its Azeri minority, also watches events in the neighboring country closely and will no doubt be unhappy if Baku strengthens its ties with the US.
It seems that a round of the twenty-first century version of the "Great Game" has just begun.- Published 4/9/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Konstantin von Eggert, MBE, is the Moscow Bureau Editor of the BBC Russian Service.
Telling every party what it wants to hear
Ekaterine Meiering-Mikadze
On May 15, 2008 the United Nations General Assembly recognized the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Georgians from Abkhazia in 1994. It seemed that the international community was finally paying attention to a conflict that, for reasons of political convenience, had been frozen for a decade and a half.
Tbilisi had been suggesting peace plans for Abkhazia as well as for South Ossetia for years, but no Georgian government could agree to settle the issue of separatism by accepting the outcome of referendums on independence in areas depopulated by force. In Abkhazia alone, militias enjoying Russian military support while using ethnicity as a cover expelled 80 percent of the population. The recognition of the 400,000 internally displaced persons' right of return a few months ago was an important diplomatic milestone toward solving a core issue of Georgia's two conflicts with separatists backed by Moscow.
In addition, Georgia had been focusing on developing the vicinity of the breakaway areas, creating incentives for people there to look toward Tbilisi rather than Moscow. Around Tskhinvali, the administrative capital of South Ossetia, the cleanup against smuggling started showing positive results, with young and old crossing checkpoints into Tbilisi-controlled areas to attend schools, see doctors, or simply work in a country that has been rated the top reformer by the World Bank.
Making Georgia attractive worked for the ordinary people who have always lived together in mixed situations. It did not work for the separatist elites who lived on smuggling and patronage rather than on economic development and political participation.
When Moscow's satraps in Tskhinvali realized they were losing influence among the population, they opted for escalation. The Kremlin's men on the spot had been violating everything from ceasefire agreements to Georgian airspace for many years. To prepare for supporting ground operations, Moscow arranged for maneuvers to be held in the North Caucasus. Separatist militias targeted Georgian police with roadside bombs. They increasingly terrorized the local population by shooting, looting and raiding, up to the point that farmers demanded stronger protection by the Georgian government. Moscow continued handing out Russian passports, dispossessing residents of their Georgian citizenship while creating a fictitious "Russian" entitled to the Kremlin's protection.
Despite the collusion between separatist militias and so-called Russian peacekeepers, Georgian State Minister Temuri Yakobashvili went to Tskhinvali early on August 7, 2008 to meet with separatist leaders; none of them showed up. Instead, the Russian commander of the peacekeeping forces, Murat Kulakhmetov, received him, stating that the Russian forces had lost control over the militias in South Ossetia. That was when the escalation began, with Russian material and personnel moving quickly through the Roki tunnel under the Caucasus chain into the area of Tskhinvali and from there onwards to Gori and the rest of Georgia.
This conflict was not really about South Ossetia or Abkhazia. Rather, it was about a country that over the last eight years has become increasingly intolerant internally and openly belligerent externally: Putin's Russia. While initially media and politicians worldwide took the conflict as a local incident, they quickly realized that the silent cold war going on since Putin's takeover in late 1999 had just entered its hot phase. The Russian invasion of Georgia aimed at reversing "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century", as Putin called the demise of the Soviet Union. In one word: little Georgia does matter, but it matters even more now that the bigger picture is becoming clearer around the world. Putin's "petro-state" is turning into a political project of national aggrandizement with global outreach.
Russia has not only been threatening, blackmailing and--now in the case of Georgia--occupying neighboring countries but has also been trying to reclaim its status as a great power beyond the borders of the infamous "near abroad". For three reasons, the area where Russian ambitions and local expectations appear most to coincide seems to be the Middle East.
First, Russia has been playing in the Middle East on old Cold War sympathies. It makes the Arab street and wide circles of uninformed but opinion-shaping actors believe that the past glory of the Soviet superpower is still alive. It actively plays on anti-Americanism, promoting the concept that the days of confrontation with the United States were in fact the good old days.
At the ideological level, Russia made its entry as a Muslim nation by becoming a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Supported by various Arab states, this has facilitated Russia's whitewashing of its negative record in the wider Middle East. Gone are the days when Arab mujahedin fought against Moscow's wars in Afghanistan or even more recently in Chechnya, where a quarter of the population was annihilated. Likewise, throughout the Levant in particular, the Kremlin supports the Russian-Orthodox Church, utilizing its clergy to counterbalance the largely Greek hierarchy.
At the secular end, Moscow cultivates friendship associations that regroup tens of thousands of graduates from former Soviet universities. Many among them are deeply convinced that Moscow's antagonism to Washington will benefit the Palestinian cause; Russia Today--by satellite television and online--carefully underlines this topic.
Second, as with its image strategy in Europe, the Kremlin presents itself as a reliable partner in business and politics: as modern and efficient as anybody else but not seeking to dominate the region. Russia consults with the oil countries of the Gulf, in particular Saudi Arabia, on production figures and target prices. In addition, the Kremlin is silently building up a gas cartel resembling OPEC, with emphasis on Qatar, Iran, Algeria and Egypt. Qatar ranks high on the Russian list of priorities, not only because there were complications resulting from the murder by Russian agents of Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbayev in Doha in 2004. More importantly, the tiny Gulf state has the potential to compete with Russia in the global gas market. While the Kremlin commands a pipeline network based on long-term contracts and pricing, Doha is investing in liquefied natural gas that can be delivered by ship to any place in the world with re-gasification installations.
Keeping energy prices high is a key concern for Russia: its upstream operations are more costly than in the Arab Gulf states, and it was income from extractive industries that allowed Moscow to flex its muscles in the first place. Maintaining a high price-level also serves the purpose of converting Arab petrodollars into Russian arms sales. With this, Moscow benefits twice from soaring energy prices.
Third, just as Russia has painstakingly tried not to appear as antagonizing the United States, so it has cultivated close ties with Israel. Moscow's role in the Quartet overseeing the Middle East peace process is not that important regarding a settlement of the Palestine issue. Rather, this is a vehicle to convey to Americans and Europeans that Russia does not in any way harm Israel's interests. At the same time, this multilateral instrument allows Moscow to conceal--at the Arab street level--that its direct relations with Tel Aviv are in fact more substantial than they appear to those who think of the Kremlin as defending the Palestinian cause. Meanwhile, Russia's coquetry with organizations such as Hamas and Hizballah allows it to score points in the Arab region. Another way of not arousing suspicion is Moscow's attempt to forge ever-closer ties with those Arab countries that have peace treaties with Israel, notably Egypt and Jordan. Here, too, cooperation in arms and energy diffuses the impression that Russian activities may ultimately turn into threats.
Until now, Moscow's ambitions have flourished by successfully telling separate audiences across the Atlantic, around the Mediterranean and in the Gulf what each wanted to hear. Until the Russian invasion of Georgia this may have appeared innocent; it is not anymore. As a lack of attention to Russia's policies has paved the way to disaster in Georgia, so too ignoring the Kremlin's attempt to effect a Middle East comeback is dangerous. In the new Cold War, support for Moscow in any matter whatsoever will be looked upon as a policy statement. Arab governments would be well advised to recall their experience of the old Cold War. Getting lost in contradictions does not pay in the long-term.- Published 4/9/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Ekaterine Meiering-Mikadze is ambassador of Georgia to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Republic of Iraq and the Lebanese Republic. This article is written in a private capacity and reflects her personal opinion alone.
That tiny war: Iran, Russia and the Middle East
Jalil Roshandel
Based on news reports, the war erupted on August 7 when Georgians launched a massive artillery barrage targeting the separatist province of South Ossetia that was supported by Russia. The latter claimed that 15 peacekeepers were killed and, in retaliation, Russian forces drove deep into Georgia, occupying crucial positions across the country. Testing Colin Powell's doctrine of overwhelming force, Russia dispatched more troops on August 8 to retake South Ossetia. Russia accused Georgia of killing 2,000 Ossetian civilians, while Georgia accused Russia of summarily executing ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia and detaining others in camps. Within a few days, a ceasefire prevailed and troops were withdrawn. At the end of a five-day war, Moscow recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a second separatist enclave of Georgia, ignoring the disapproval of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and strong criticism from the West.
Today the question is not who fired first or if Georgia was lured into firing first. In the words of the UN Security Council the two actors, Russia and Georgia, decided to resort to "open military aggression" to solve their political dispute. At this point the war is militarily over, but the political conflict will continue for some time. Its next phase will probably be the absorption of the newly "independent" territories by Russia. To many this might not appear important, but in fact this "small" incident is going to have much greater ramifications on a region that already has enough problems: the Middle East. Turkey, Iran, Syria, the Palestinian territories and Israel--in other words, the entire Middle East--will be affected.
Some states in the region now have an opportunity to realign or strengthen their ties with one of the parties by taking a stand for or against what has just happened. For instance, Syrian leader Bashar Assad was quick to take Russia's side in the war with Georgia. Assad also agreed to heighten Russia's naval presence at its Tartus port. Of course in return, he asked the Russians for advanced weapons systems. In international relations this might seem very normal, but in the context of fragile Middle East security this is interpreted as improving Syrian power versus Israel.
In terms of Middle East security, the Iranian position is of great importance. There is no reason to believe that Iran is neutral regarding the Russian-Georgian dispute. In fact, two policy options are available to Tehran, both of which, depending on long-term policy goals, could yield positive results. Thus Iran could, in theory, oppose Russia's action by arguing that Russian expansion southward is a clear threat to it and that instability in the Caucasus region would negatively affect its security. Or Iran could benefit from US-Russian tension over Georgia by taking calculated steps toward full support for Russia and maximizing its benefits in the nuclear sphere and elsewhere.
Iran appears to be tilting toward the second option. When you look at some of the less visible statements by Iranian authorities you find what the real, if not official, stance is. Thus the Iranian media described the fighting as a US-planned war to create a reason for intervention in the Caucasus. An anonymous Iranian military authority declared that the "US and its allies must accept the reality of Russia's victory in this war", meaning America's defeat, and warned Americans that everywhere they go they will face the same type of defeat.
Iran's Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Hassan Firouzabadi's comments are the most important. He referred to the Georgian president as "a product of an American velvet revolution" who started the war, thereby jeopardizing Russian national interests and security and causing Russia to react and attack Georgia. Firouzabadi argued that the war was initiated by American warmongers who seek to persuade the public to vote for their presidential candidate. One may argue that his remarks were geared toward domestic Iranian consumption, but are they not equally revealing of the Iranian government's stance toward the war?
Despite the fact that Levan Asatiani, the Georgian ambassador in Tehran, praised Iran's stance on the Caucasus conflict and claimed it had been supportive, Tehran officially did no more than mildly "[ask] the sides to declare a ceasefire and to start negotiations to resolve the problems". Perhaps Georgia's dependence on Iran justifies the ambassador's deference.
Historically, the Shahs of Persia and Iran feared Tsarist Russia and more recently the former Soviet Union, but this is no longer the case. Today, Russia and Iran have a strong relationship. Russia is building Iran's nuclear plant at Bushehr and is selling arms, missiles, aircraft and all sorts of technologies and military equipment to Iran. Iran is also seeking full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; this would enable it to sit at the same table with two veto holders on the UN Security Council, Russia and China, and would in fact place it in a defense pact with Russia.
As was evident in the case of Chechnya, Iran will not go beyond a mild reaction to the Georgia-Russia war and to recognition by Russia of the independence of the two Georgian enclaves. Recent remarks by President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad on the sidelines of the SCO meeting in Tajikistan that "there is evidence at hand that proves Zionists are behind the South Ossetia and Abkhazia events" and that "enemies do not wish to see Iran and Russia powerful" are very revealing.
For such a Russia-friendly position, Iran could as noted be rewarded with full membership in the SCO and more energetic support for its nuclear plans. Russia might strongly oppose additional international sanctions against Iran. Further, security, military and economic interactions between Iran and Russia could open the door for the Russians to step into the warm waters of the Persian Gulf, a traditional sphere of US interest and influence.
The picture is even gloomier when we look at all these probabilities together and link them to the future of security in the Middle East.- Published 4/9/2008 © bitterlemons-international.org
Dr. Jalil Roshandel is associate professor and director of the Security Studies Program at the Political Science Department of East Carolina University. He is currently working on a book project (with Dr. Alethia Cook): US-Iran Relations: Policy Challenges and Opportunities.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
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SCHAFFER: Kashmir's fuse alight
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The Washington Times
SCHAFFER: Kashmir's fuse alight
Howard Schaffer and Teresita Schaffer
COMMENTARY:
An estimated million Kashmiris marched through the streets of Srinagar, the disputed state's summer capital, on Friday, Aug. 22, many waving the green flag of Islam and demanding freedom - azadi - from Indian rule. A harsh crackdown followed.
The United States has not paid much attention to Kashmir for the past few years, confident that an active India-Pakistan peace process would prevent any crises on that front. It no longer enjoys that luxury. If the current unrest leads to another India-Pakistan confrontation, the whole area from Afghanistan through India will be affected, with critical U.S. interests in play.
Like the mass upheavals in 1963-64 and 1989-90, this Kashmir crisis was triggered by a specific event. This time it was the state administration's ill-conceived decision to make 100 acres of public land available to a Hindu religious organization to build facilities for pilgrims to a popular shrine in the state's Himalayan range. The land transfer provided ammunition to Kashmir's anti-Indian politicians, who made wild claims that it was part of a conspiracy to reduce the state's Muslim majority to minority status. Amid growing unrest, the government rescinded the transfer. Nationalist leaders in predominantly Hindu parts of the state started violent demonstrations against the revocation. Scores have since been killed in Hindu-Muslim clashes and firings by police and military units on civilian protesters.
The problem could not come at a worse time. India-Pakistan relations have been rocked by the apparent role of Pakistan's intelligence services, ISI, in last month's bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. The 4.5-year cease-fire along the Line of Control that divides Indian and Pakistani forces in the state has been broken by hours-long artillery clashes. There are reports that infiltration across the line into Indian-held territory is increasing. The Pakistan government, which in recent years had reduced its support for insurgents against Indian rule in Kashmir, has expressed sympathy for the Muslim demonstrators and reiterated its call for settlement of the 60-year old dispute. This is the least it could do. But as in the past, there are surely elements in ISI and elsewhere in Pakistan who want to fish in troubled waters. Even if they do not, many in India will accuse the Pakistanis of aggravating the crisis.
A peaceful future depends on both governments' success in cooling the situation. However, Pakistan is caught up in a deadly insurgency fueled by the Taliban's local affiliate. Suicide bombings reached new heights last week with an attack on an army ordnance factory near Islamabad. The weak and fractured post-Musharraf government faces a host of severe economic and political problems. It does not need trouble with India when its Afghan border area is inflamed.
In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government faces elections early next year. It has just survived a crisis over its nuclear agreement with the United States. Its political troubles, including soaring food and fuel costs, will make it even more reluctant to make any bold moves on Kashmir.
After many failed interventions, the United States has in recent years shied away from trying to broker a Kashmir settlement. It has confined itself to crisis management, most recently in 2002 when it helped defuse a confrontation that threatened to trigger another India-Pakistan war.
Washington's options and influence are limited. But the United States needs to convey to both Pakistan and India how much is riding on their ability to calm the crisis. The administration should make clear to the Pakistan government that meddling in Kashmir would be a dangerous course. Such an intervention would only heighten the country's problems and undercut its efforts to deal with insurgents near the Afghan border.
The message should be that exacerbating the trouble in Kashmir will only make things worse between us. At the same time, it should urge the Indians to show restraint. This includes reining in their natural tendency to pin the blame on Pakistan for their own mistakes in dealing with the Kashmiris.
The governments in both Islamabad and Delhi are ill-placed to make major policy changes, but they urgently need to maintain their promising back-channel contacts. This channel gives both a chance to refine and expand their ideas for an eventual Kashmir settlement, which they can share with their publics when the two governments are able to move forward. If the situation further deteriorates, Washington should send to the area a senior official to help defuse the crisis, as Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage did so effectively five years ago.
Such efforts will burden a lame-duck administration overloaded with critical foreign policy issues. But Kashmir is again becoming very dangerous. Stabilizing Afghanistan, avoiding a potential nuclear face-off between Pakistan and India, and steadying the fragile democratic government in Pakistan are critical U.S. interests today, far more than in previous decades. They are all at risk if Kashmir sparks a new India-Pakistan crisis. The United States can ignore Kashmir only at its own peril.
Howard Schaffer is deputy director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, and has just completed a book on the U.S. role in Kashmir. Teresita Schaffer is director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Both are retired U.S. ambassadors with long experience in South Asia.
The Washington Times
SCHAFFER: Kashmir's fuse alight
Howard Schaffer and Teresita Schaffer
COMMENTARY:
An estimated million Kashmiris marched through the streets of Srinagar, the disputed state's summer capital, on Friday, Aug. 22, many waving the green flag of Islam and demanding freedom - azadi - from Indian rule. A harsh crackdown followed.
The United States has not paid much attention to Kashmir for the past few years, confident that an active India-Pakistan peace process would prevent any crises on that front. It no longer enjoys that luxury. If the current unrest leads to another India-Pakistan confrontation, the whole area from Afghanistan through India will be affected, with critical U.S. interests in play.
Like the mass upheavals in 1963-64 and 1989-90, this Kashmir crisis was triggered by a specific event. This time it was the state administration's ill-conceived decision to make 100 acres of public land available to a Hindu religious organization to build facilities for pilgrims to a popular shrine in the state's Himalayan range. The land transfer provided ammunition to Kashmir's anti-Indian politicians, who made wild claims that it was part of a conspiracy to reduce the state's Muslim majority to minority status. Amid growing unrest, the government rescinded the transfer. Nationalist leaders in predominantly Hindu parts of the state started violent demonstrations against the revocation. Scores have since been killed in Hindu-Muslim clashes and firings by police and military units on civilian protesters.
The problem could not come at a worse time. India-Pakistan relations have been rocked by the apparent role of Pakistan's intelligence services, ISI, in last month's bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. The 4.5-year cease-fire along the Line of Control that divides Indian and Pakistani forces in the state has been broken by hours-long artillery clashes. There are reports that infiltration across the line into Indian-held territory is increasing. The Pakistan government, which in recent years had reduced its support for insurgents against Indian rule in Kashmir, has expressed sympathy for the Muslim demonstrators and reiterated its call for settlement of the 60-year old dispute. This is the least it could do. But as in the past, there are surely elements in ISI and elsewhere in Pakistan who want to fish in troubled waters. Even if they do not, many in India will accuse the Pakistanis of aggravating the crisis.
A peaceful future depends on both governments' success in cooling the situation. However, Pakistan is caught up in a deadly insurgency fueled by the Taliban's local affiliate. Suicide bombings reached new heights last week with an attack on an army ordnance factory near Islamabad. The weak and fractured post-Musharraf government faces a host of severe economic and political problems. It does not need trouble with India when its Afghan border area is inflamed.
In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government faces elections early next year. It has just survived a crisis over its nuclear agreement with the United States. Its political troubles, including soaring food and fuel costs, will make it even more reluctant to make any bold moves on Kashmir.
After many failed interventions, the United States has in recent years shied away from trying to broker a Kashmir settlement. It has confined itself to crisis management, most recently in 2002 when it helped defuse a confrontation that threatened to trigger another India-Pakistan war.
Washington's options and influence are limited. But the United States needs to convey to both Pakistan and India how much is riding on their ability to calm the crisis. The administration should make clear to the Pakistan government that meddling in Kashmir would be a dangerous course. Such an intervention would only heighten the country's problems and undercut its efforts to deal with insurgents near the Afghan border.
The message should be that exacerbating the trouble in Kashmir will only make things worse between us. At the same time, it should urge the Indians to show restraint. This includes reining in their natural tendency to pin the blame on Pakistan for their own mistakes in dealing with the Kashmiris.
The governments in both Islamabad and Delhi are ill-placed to make major policy changes, but they urgently need to maintain their promising back-channel contacts. This channel gives both a chance to refine and expand their ideas for an eventual Kashmir settlement, which they can share with their publics when the two governments are able to move forward. If the situation further deteriorates, Washington should send to the area a senior official to help defuse the crisis, as Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage did so effectively five years ago.
Such efforts will burden a lame-duck administration overloaded with critical foreign policy issues. But Kashmir is again becoming very dangerous. Stabilizing Afghanistan, avoiding a potential nuclear face-off between Pakistan and India, and steadying the fragile democratic government in Pakistan are critical U.S. interests today, far more than in previous decades. They are all at risk if Kashmir sparks a new India-Pakistan crisis. The United States can ignore Kashmir only at its own peril.
Howard Schaffer is deputy director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, and has just completed a book on the U.S. role in Kashmir. Teresita Schaffer is director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Both are retired U.S. ambassadors with long experience in South Asia.
NATO's Self-Destruction
NATO's Self-Destruction
William Pfaff
Paris, September 2, 2008 – When a tool is used for the wrong purpose, it may break. NATO has now been broken because it was used by the United States and the European NATO members as a tool for expanding western power into the Russian "near abroad," and after that, to make an inexplicably rash and dangerous effort to break into and split off portions of the Russian Empire as it existed in the 19th century -- long before the Soviet Union existed.
Russia had to be expected to react, and violently so, to an intrusion into the territorial integrity of the historical Russia. But with its assurance of eventual NATO membership, NATO had given implied guarantees to defend Ukraine and Georgia which it did not expect to honor, or could not honor other than at the risk of a war it had no intention of fighting. The Georgian fiasco affair was the result. NATO membership does not guarantee security.
NATO has been conducting this policy towards Russia on the assumption that Russia is too intimidated by western military power to resist. Now Russia has done so, in Georgia. The bluff has been called. The sham of the NATO guarantee has collapsed. Nobody in the West seems willing to admit this.
The Polish and Baltic state governments, the American neo-conservatives and acolytes of a "New American Century" of expanding global domination, the vice president, Dick Cheney, and his friends in the armaments, energy and government services industries, act as if they do not understand what has happened.
All of these people, and all those in Western Europe who are demanding immediate admission of Georgia and Ukraine into full NATO membership, are unwittingly doubling their stakes, enlarging their implied commitment to go to war if Mikheil Saakashvili should make another assault on South Ossetia or Abkhazia in order to re-annex them to Georgia, and if Russia again "overreacted."
Of course the western governments don't mean it, or even understand what they are doing. Or most of them don't; there possibly are some in Washington today who believe a short and sharp little preemptive nuclear attack to disarm Russia might be just the thing, before Russia becomes any stronger. I don't think there are many people in NATO Europe, nor in the United States, prepared to give a nuclear guarantee to Georgian irredentism, or to an attempt to split Ukraine, or intensify its internal divisions.
NATO was founded on Canadian initiative in 1949 as a security alliance of the North American nations with the European military union formed the year before by France, the U.K., and the Benelux countries, to defend against a "resurgent Germany."
The new NATO's purpose was to keep the Germans down but also to keep the Russians out. The cold war had broken out in earnest in 1948, with the communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia. Other European countries joined NATO, and in 1955 a rearmed and rehabilitated Germany became a member of the alliance, which needed its troops.
The organization ultimately saw the Berlin Wall come down, the Soviet Union fatally shaken, and Soviet agreement to the unification of Germany.
This was in 1999, during the administration of the first President George Bush, who convinced his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, that a free Eastern Europe and a united Germany would benefit the long-term interests of Russia.
Gorbachev accepted Germany's unification when he was assured that NATO would not be extended to the east. "Not one inch!" were the exact words of the reply made by Secretary of State James Baker.
That promise was then broken, first by the Clinton administration, and then by the son of the senior Bush, George W. Bush. Today, the American-led military alliance has been built up to the entire western frontier of Russia, from the Gulf of Finland in the north to the Black Sea.
The new members joined NATO for the perfectly good reason that they were afraid of a "resurgent Russia." They believed that NATO would go to war to defend them, should Russia again become a threat to Europe. However they did not join in order to take part in an aggressive program to encircle and dismantle Russia. Yet that is what has happened, and Russia has called the bluff.
It is time for the European members of NATO to take a serious hand in this. The question must be asked and answered as to whether the NATO countries wish to continue to pursue an aggressively hostile policy towards Russia. If so, why? To what useful and attainable objective? What is to be gained by supporting Georgia's revanchist demands to control the Ossetian and Abkahazian enclaves, the majority of whose people do not wish to be ruled by Georgia?
What are NATO's intentions with respect to Ukraine? Does it intend to interfere in Ukrainian internal affairs, to promote the domination by those Ukrainians who are pro-western and Uniate (Roman) Catholic, over those others who are Russian-speaking and attached to Russia?
If so, to what purpose? To force a national split in Ukraine? Or incite civil struggle? What do the NATO governments expect to gain from this?
© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
This article comes from William PFAFF
http://www.williampfaff.com
The URL for this article is:
http://www.williampfaff.com/article.php?storyid=339
William Pfaff
Paris, September 2, 2008 – When a tool is used for the wrong purpose, it may break. NATO has now been broken because it was used by the United States and the European NATO members as a tool for expanding western power into the Russian "near abroad," and after that, to make an inexplicably rash and dangerous effort to break into and split off portions of the Russian Empire as it existed in the 19th century -- long before the Soviet Union existed.
Russia had to be expected to react, and violently so, to an intrusion into the territorial integrity of the historical Russia. But with its assurance of eventual NATO membership, NATO had given implied guarantees to defend Ukraine and Georgia which it did not expect to honor, or could not honor other than at the risk of a war it had no intention of fighting. The Georgian fiasco affair was the result. NATO membership does not guarantee security.
NATO has been conducting this policy towards Russia on the assumption that Russia is too intimidated by western military power to resist. Now Russia has done so, in Georgia. The bluff has been called. The sham of the NATO guarantee has collapsed. Nobody in the West seems willing to admit this.
The Polish and Baltic state governments, the American neo-conservatives and acolytes of a "New American Century" of expanding global domination, the vice president, Dick Cheney, and his friends in the armaments, energy and government services industries, act as if they do not understand what has happened.
All of these people, and all those in Western Europe who are demanding immediate admission of Georgia and Ukraine into full NATO membership, are unwittingly doubling their stakes, enlarging their implied commitment to go to war if Mikheil Saakashvili should make another assault on South Ossetia or Abkhazia in order to re-annex them to Georgia, and if Russia again "overreacted."
Of course the western governments don't mean it, or even understand what they are doing. Or most of them don't; there possibly are some in Washington today who believe a short and sharp little preemptive nuclear attack to disarm Russia might be just the thing, before Russia becomes any stronger. I don't think there are many people in NATO Europe, nor in the United States, prepared to give a nuclear guarantee to Georgian irredentism, or to an attempt to split Ukraine, or intensify its internal divisions.
NATO was founded on Canadian initiative in 1949 as a security alliance of the North American nations with the European military union formed the year before by France, the U.K., and the Benelux countries, to defend against a "resurgent Germany."
The new NATO's purpose was to keep the Germans down but also to keep the Russians out. The cold war had broken out in earnest in 1948, with the communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia. Other European countries joined NATO, and in 1955 a rearmed and rehabilitated Germany became a member of the alliance, which needed its troops.
The organization ultimately saw the Berlin Wall come down, the Soviet Union fatally shaken, and Soviet agreement to the unification of Germany.
This was in 1999, during the administration of the first President George Bush, who convinced his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, that a free Eastern Europe and a united Germany would benefit the long-term interests of Russia.
Gorbachev accepted Germany's unification when he was assured that NATO would not be extended to the east. "Not one inch!" were the exact words of the reply made by Secretary of State James Baker.
That promise was then broken, first by the Clinton administration, and then by the son of the senior Bush, George W. Bush. Today, the American-led military alliance has been built up to the entire western frontier of Russia, from the Gulf of Finland in the north to the Black Sea.
The new members joined NATO for the perfectly good reason that they were afraid of a "resurgent Russia." They believed that NATO would go to war to defend them, should Russia again become a threat to Europe. However they did not join in order to take part in an aggressive program to encircle and dismantle Russia. Yet that is what has happened, and Russia has called the bluff.
It is time for the European members of NATO to take a serious hand in this. The question must be asked and answered as to whether the NATO countries wish to continue to pursue an aggressively hostile policy towards Russia. If so, why? To what useful and attainable objective? What is to be gained by supporting Georgia's revanchist demands to control the Ossetian and Abkahazian enclaves, the majority of whose people do not wish to be ruled by Georgia?
What are NATO's intentions with respect to Ukraine? Does it intend to interfere in Ukrainian internal affairs, to promote the domination by those Ukrainians who are pro-western and Uniate (Roman) Catholic, over those others who are Russian-speaking and attached to Russia?
If so, to what purpose? To force a national split in Ukraine? Or incite civil struggle? What do the NATO governments expect to gain from this?
© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
This article comes from William PFAFF
http://www.williampfaff.com
The URL for this article is:
http://www.williampfaff.com/article.php?storyid=339
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
A PALESTINIAN VIEW Local priorities
Bitterlemons
01/09/08
A PALESTINIAN VIEW
Local priorities
by Daoud Kuttab
Whether those supporting the moderate leadership of Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas admit it or not, Hamas appears to
have won. Now, before Islamists around the world start celebrating,
it is important to note that the region, let alone the world, is far
from embracing hard-line fundamentalists. Hamas, for the record, has
made some important ideological and practical changes, the most
important of which was the "tahdiya" (ceasefire-like quiet).
The signs of Hamas' victory can be seen all over. From the success of
the siege-breaking peace boats to the partial opening of the Rafah
crossing with Egypt and the serious talks Hamas leaders are holding
with Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence chiefs.
Part of the reason for Hamas' success is the fact that the region and
the world have little choice but to accept the reality that emerged
in February 2006 and that Hamas in June 2007, with its takeover of
Gaza, served notice was not going away.
Another reason is global and regional changes. The Russian-Georgian
struggle exposed Washington's geopolitical weakness, a result of its
military overstretch in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also comes at a time
when George. W. Bush, a president with the lowest approval ratings in
decades, seems to have blinked. America is near agreement on a
timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq and Washington clearly lacks the
stomach for a confrontation with Tehran. The Iranians have called
Bush's bluff and seem to have succeeded.
Israel too has blinked. To its north, Israel has been incapable of
preventing Hizballah from re-arming, while Tel Aviv consented to a
prisoner swap not long ago that clearly favored the Shi'ite group.
The Lebanese national unity government, meanwhile, is yet another
sign that hard-line rejectionist regional and international positions
are not producing results.
Politically things are stalled. Israelis are now preoccupied with
elections for a new leader of Kadima and will soon enter what
promises to be a long-winded coalition-building process. The
Americans too are busy with their presidential elections, and
Palestinians are due to face presidential elections in January and
could well face parliamentary elections as well.
In this shifting strategic landscape, Jordan and Egypt--staunch US
allies that they are--have nevertheless shown enough independence to
begin to tango with the Palestinian Islamists. If Condoleezza Rice,
the US secretary of state, considers the Lebanese unity government (a
Hizballah victory) a good thing and if she backs the release of
Palestinian prisoners accused of killing Israelis, she certainly
can't stop Jordanian intelligence from reaching agreements on ground
rules with the Islamists.
Hamas has clearly made some important politically moderating
decisions and ideological and practical calls, yet the group is still
far from gaining legitimacy in the region. Such legitimacy will only
be delayed by actions such as the recent round up of Fateh leaders in
Gaza and the banning of Ramallah-based Palestinian publications.
But changes in the Middle East are palpable at different levels.
Regionally it seems clear that little major change is going to take
place. Perhaps Syria will move slightly to the pro-US camp but not by
much. Within each country, however, the region is still very
volatile. The information revolution coupled with the large
percentage of young people in the Arab world dictate to all leaders
the need for new and more inclusive strategies.
Such new strategies will require groups like Hamas to be much more
careful in their actions than in the past, and Hamas will pay close
attention to the example of Hizballah. There is currently a very
clear offer on the table by Arab countries vis-a-vis the Palestinian-
Israeli conflict. If Hamas moderates its views, its rhetoric and,
most importantly, its actions to accommodate said offer, the Islamist
group will find a much more welcoming Arab leadership than it might
have found in the past.
Leaders of Jordan and Egypt understand that they can't blindly follow
the policies of a discredited American government and a failed
Israeli leader to break the Islamists. They say all politics is local
in America. The local angle is also important here.
- Published 1/9/2008 © bitterlemons.org
Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian columnist, is the director general of
Community Media Network, a media NGO that is registered in Jordan and
Palestine.
01/09/08
A PALESTINIAN VIEW
Local priorities
by Daoud Kuttab
Whether those supporting the moderate leadership of Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas admit it or not, Hamas appears to
have won. Now, before Islamists around the world start celebrating,
it is important to note that the region, let alone the world, is far
from embracing hard-line fundamentalists. Hamas, for the record, has
made some important ideological and practical changes, the most
important of which was the "tahdiya" (ceasefire-like quiet).
The signs of Hamas' victory can be seen all over. From the success of
the siege-breaking peace boats to the partial opening of the Rafah
crossing with Egypt and the serious talks Hamas leaders are holding
with Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence chiefs.
Part of the reason for Hamas' success is the fact that the region and
the world have little choice but to accept the reality that emerged
in February 2006 and that Hamas in June 2007, with its takeover of
Gaza, served notice was not going away.
Another reason is global and regional changes. The Russian-Georgian
struggle exposed Washington's geopolitical weakness, a result of its
military overstretch in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also comes at a time
when George. W. Bush, a president with the lowest approval ratings in
decades, seems to have blinked. America is near agreement on a
timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq and Washington clearly lacks the
stomach for a confrontation with Tehran. The Iranians have called
Bush's bluff and seem to have succeeded.
Israel too has blinked. To its north, Israel has been incapable of
preventing Hizballah from re-arming, while Tel Aviv consented to a
prisoner swap not long ago that clearly favored the Shi'ite group.
The Lebanese national unity government, meanwhile, is yet another
sign that hard-line rejectionist regional and international positions
are not producing results.
Politically things are stalled. Israelis are now preoccupied with
elections for a new leader of Kadima and will soon enter what
promises to be a long-winded coalition-building process. The
Americans too are busy with their presidential elections, and
Palestinians are due to face presidential elections in January and
could well face parliamentary elections as well.
In this shifting strategic landscape, Jordan and Egypt--staunch US
allies that they are--have nevertheless shown enough independence to
begin to tango with the Palestinian Islamists. If Condoleezza Rice,
the US secretary of state, considers the Lebanese unity government (a
Hizballah victory) a good thing and if she backs the release of
Palestinian prisoners accused of killing Israelis, she certainly
can't stop Jordanian intelligence from reaching agreements on ground
rules with the Islamists.
Hamas has clearly made some important politically moderating
decisions and ideological and practical calls, yet the group is still
far from gaining legitimacy in the region. Such legitimacy will only
be delayed by actions such as the recent round up of Fateh leaders in
Gaza and the banning of Ramallah-based Palestinian publications.
But changes in the Middle East are palpable at different levels.
Regionally it seems clear that little major change is going to take
place. Perhaps Syria will move slightly to the pro-US camp but not by
much. Within each country, however, the region is still very
volatile. The information revolution coupled with the large
percentage of young people in the Arab world dictate to all leaders
the need for new and more inclusive strategies.
Such new strategies will require groups like Hamas to be much more
careful in their actions than in the past, and Hamas will pay close
attention to the example of Hizballah. There is currently a very
clear offer on the table by Arab countries vis-a-vis the Palestinian-
Israeli conflict. If Hamas moderates its views, its rhetoric and,
most importantly, its actions to accommodate said offer, the Islamist
group will find a much more welcoming Arab leadership than it might
have found in the past.
Leaders of Jordan and Egypt understand that they can't blindly follow
the policies of a discredited American government and a failed
Israeli leader to break the Islamists. They say all politics is local
in America. The local angle is also important here.
- Published 1/9/2008 © bitterlemons.org
Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian columnist, is the director general of
Community Media Network, a media NGO that is registered in Jordan and
Palestine.
Georgia and Kosovo: A Single Intertwined Crisis
From StratFor
Georgia and Kosovo: A Single Intertwined Crisis
August 25, 2008
By George Friedman
The Russo-Georgian war was rooted in broad geopolitical processes. In large part it was simply the result of the cyclical reassertion of Russian power. The Russian empire — czarist and Soviet — expanded to its borders in the 17th and 19th centuries. It collapsed in 1992. The Western powers wanted to make the disintegration permanent. It was inevitable that Russia would, in due course, want to reassert its claims. That it happened in Georgia was simply the result of circumstance.
There is, however, another context within which to view this, the context of Russian perceptions of U.S. and European intentions and of U.S. and European perceptions of Russian capabilities. This context shaped the policies that led to the Russo-Georgian war. And those attitudes can only be understood if we trace the question of Kosovo, because the Russo-Georgian war was forged over the last decade over the Kosovo question.
Yugoslavia broke up into its component republics in the early 1990s. The borders of the republics did not cohere to the distribution of nationalities. Many — Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and so on — found themselves citizens of republics where the majorities were not of their ethnicities and disliked the minorities intensely for historical reasons. Wars were fought between Croatia and Serbia (still calling itself Yugoslavia because Montenegro was part of it), Bosnia and Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia. Other countries in the region became involved as well.
One conflict became particularly brutal. Bosnia had a large area dominated by Serbs. This region wanted to secede from Bosnia and rejoin Serbia. The Bosnians objected and an internal war in Bosnia took place, with the Serbian government involved. This war involved the single greatest bloodletting of the bloody Balkan wars, the mass murder by Serbs of Bosnians.
Here we must pause and define some terms that are very casually thrown around. Genocide is the crime of trying to annihilate an entire people. War crimes are actions that violate the rules of war. If a soldier shoots a prisoner, he has committed a war crime. Then there is a class called "crimes against humanity." It is intended to denote those crimes that are too vast to be included in normal charges of murder or rape. They may not involve genocide, in that the annihilation of a race or nation is not at stake, but they may also go well beyond war crimes, which are much lesser offenses. The events in Bosnia were reasonably deemed crimes against humanity. They did not constitute genocide and they were more than war crimes.
At the time, the Americans and Europeans did nothing about these crimes, which became an internal political issue as the magnitude of the Serbian crimes became clear. In this context, the Clinton administration helped negotiate the Dayton Accords, which were intended to end the Balkan wars and indeed managed to go quite far in achieving this. The Dayton Accords were built around the principle that there could be no adjustment in the borders of the former Yugoslav republics. Ethnic Serbs would live under Bosnian rule. The principle that existing borders were sacrosanct was embedded in the Dayton Accords.
In the late 1990s, a crisis began to develop in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Over the years, Albanians had moved into the province in a broad migration. By 1997, the province was overwhelmingly Albanian, although it had not only been historically part of Serbia but also its historical foundation. Nevertheless, the Albanians showed significant intentions of moving toward either a separate state or unification with Albania. Serbia moved to resist this, increasing its military forces and indicating an intention to crush the Albanian resistance.
There were many claims that the Serbians were repeating the crimes against humanity that were committed in Bosnia. The Americans and Europeans, burned by Bosnia, were eager to demonstrate their will. Arguing that something between crimes against humanity and genocide was under way — and citing reports that between 10,000 and 100,000 Kosovo Albanians were missing or had been killed — NATO launched a campaign designed to stop the killings. In fact, while some killings had taken place, the claims by NATO of the number already killed were false. NATO might have prevented mass murder in Kosovo. That is not provable. They did not, however, find that mass murder on the order of the numbers claimed had taken place. The war could be defended as a preventive measure, but the atmosphere under which the war was carried out overstated what had happened.
The campaign was carried out without U.N. sanction because of Russian and Chinese opposition. The Russians were particularly opposed, arguing that major crimes were not being committed and that Serbia was an ally of Russia and that the air assault was not warranted by the evidence. The United States and other European powers disregarded the Russian position. Far more important, they established the precedent that U.N. sanction was not needed to launch a war (a precedent used by George W. Bush in Iraq). Rather — and this is the vital point — they argued that NATO support legitimized the war.
This transformed NATO from a military alliance into a quasi-United Nations. What happened in Kosovo was that NATO took on the role of peacemaker, empowered to determine if intervention was necessary, allowed to make the military intervention, and empowered to determine the outcome. Conceptually, NATO was transformed from a military force into a regional multinational grouping with responsibility for maintenance of regional order, even within the borders of states that are not members. If the United Nations wouldn't support the action, the NATO Council was sufficient.
Since Russia was not a member of NATO, and since Russia denied the urgency of war, and since Russia was overruled, the bombing campaign against Kosovo created a crisis in relations with Russia. The Russians saw the attack as a unilateral attack by an anti-Russian alliance on a Russian ally, without sound justification. Then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin was not prepared to make this into a major confrontation, nor was he in a position to. The Russians did not so much acquiesce as concede they had no options.
The war did not go as well as history records. The bombing campaign did not force capitulation and NATO was not prepared to invade Kosovo. The air campaign continued inconclusively as the West turned to the Russians to negotiate an end. The Russians sent an envoy who negotiated an agreement consisting of three parts. First, the West would halt the bombing campaign. Second, Serbian army forces would withdraw and be replaced by a multinational force including Russian troops. Third, implicit in the agreement, the Russian troops would be there to guarantee Serbian interests and sovereignty.
As soon as the agreement was signed, the Russians rushed troops to the Pristina airport to take up their duties in the multinational force — as they had in the Bosnian peacekeeping force. In part because of deliberate maneuvers and in part because no one took the Russians seriously, the Russians never played the role they believed had been negotiated. They were never seen as part of the peacekeeping operation or as part of the decision-making system over Kosovo. The Russians felt doubly betrayed, first by the war itself, then by the peace arrangements.
The Kosovo war directly effected the fall of Yeltsin and the rise of Vladimir Putin. The faction around Putin saw Yeltsin as an incompetent bungler who allowed Russia to be doubly betrayed. The Russian perception of the war directly led to the massive reversal in Russian policy we see today. The installation of Putin and Russian nationalists from the former KGB had a number of roots. But fundamentally it was rooted in the events in Kosovo. Most of all it was driven by the perception that NATO had now shifted from being a military alliance to seeing itself as a substitute for the United Nations, arbitrating regional politics. Russia had no vote or say in NATO decisions, so NATO's new role was seen as a direct challenge to Russian interests.
Thus, the ongoing expansion of NATO into the former Soviet Union and the promise to include Ukraine and Georgia into NATO were seen in terms of the Kosovo war. From the Russian point of view, NATO expansion meant a further exclusion of Russia from decision-making, and implied that NATO reserved the right to repeat Kosovo if it felt that human rights or political issues required it. The United Nations was no longer the prime multinational peacekeeping entity. NATO assumed that role in the region and now it was going to expand all around Russia.
Then came Kosovo's independence. Yugoslavia broke apart into its constituent entities, but the borders of its nations didn't change. Then, for the first time since World War II, the decision was made to change Serbia's borders, in opposition to Serbian and Russian wishes, with the authorizing body, in effect, being NATO. It was a decision avidly supported by the Americans.
The initial attempt to resolve Kosovo's status was the round of negotiations led by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari that officially began in February 2006 but had been in the works since 2005. This round of negotiations was actually started under U.S. urging and closely supervised from Washington. In charge of keeping Ahtisaari's negotiations running smoothly was Frank G. Wisner, a diplomat during the Clinton administration. Also very important to the U.S. effort was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried, another leftover from the Clinton administration and a specialist in Soviet and Polish affairs.
In the summer of 2007, when it was obvious that the negotiations were going nowhere, the Bush administration decided the talks were over and that it was time for independence. On June 10, 2007, Bush said that the end result of negotiations must be "certain independence." In July 2007, Daniel Fried said that independence was "inevitable" even if the talks failed. Finally, in September 2007, Condoleezza Rice put it succinctly: "There's going to be an independent Kosovo. We're dedicated to that." Europeans took cues from this line.
How and when independence was brought about was really a European problem. The Americans set the debate and the Europeans implemented it. Among Europeans, the most enthusiastic about Kosovo independence were the British and the French. The British followed the American line while the French were led by their foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who had also served as the U.N. Kosovo administrator. The Germans were more cautiously supportive.
On Feb. 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence and was recognized rapidly by a small number of European states and countries allied with the United States. Even before the declaration, the Europeans had created an administrative body to administer Kosovo. The Europeans, through the European Union, micromanaged the date of the declaration.
On May 15, during a conference in Ekaterinburg, the foreign ministers of India, Russia and China made a joint statement regarding Kosovo. It was read by the Russian host minister, Sergei Lavrov, and it said: "In our statement, we recorded our fundamental position that the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo contradicts Resolution 1244. Russia, India and China encourage Belgrade and Pristina to resume talks within the framework of international law and hope they reach an agreement on all problems of that Serbian territory."
The Europeans and Americans rejected this request as they had rejected all Russian arguments on Kosovo. The argument here was that the Kosovo situation was one of a kind because of atrocities that had been committed. The Russians argued that the level of atrocity was unclear and that, in any case, the government that committed them was long gone from Belgrade. More to the point, the Russians let it be clearly known that they would not accept the idea that Kosovo independence was a one-of-a-kind situation and that they would regard it, instead, as a new precedent for all to follow.
The problem was not that the Europeans and the Americans didn't hear the Russians. The problem was that they simply didn't believe them — they didn't take the Russians seriously. They had heard the Russians say things for many years. They did not understand three things. First, that the Russians had reached the end of their rope. Second, that Russian military capability was not what it had been in 1999. Third, and most important, NATO, the Americans and the Europeans did not recognize that they were making political decisions that they could not support militarily.
For the Russians, the transformation of NATO from a military alliance into a regional United Nations was the problem. The West argued that NATO was no longer just a military alliance but a political arbitrator for the region. If NATO does not like Serbian policies in Kosovo, it can — at its option and in opposition to U.N. rulings — intervene. It could intervene in Serbia and it intended to expand deep into the former Soviet Union. NATO thought that because it was now a political arbiter encouraging regimes to reform and not just a war-fighting system, Russian fears would actually be assuaged. To the contrary, it was Russia's worst nightmare. Compensating for all this was the fact that NATO had neglected its own military power. Now, Russia could do something about it.
At the beginning of this discourse, we explained that the underlying issues behind the Russo-Georgian war went deep into geopolitics and that it could not be understood without understanding Kosovo. It wasn't everything, but it was the single most significant event behind all of this. The war of 1999 was the framework that created the war of 2008.
The problem for NATO was that it was expanding its political reach and claims while contracting its military muscle. The Russians were expanding their military capability (after 1999 they had no place to go but up) and the West didn't notice. In 1999, the Americans and Europeans made political decisions backed by military force. In 2008, in Kosovo, they made political decisions without sufficient military force to stop a Russian response. Either they underestimated their adversary or — even more amazingly — they did not see the Russians as adversaries despite absolutely clear statements the Russians had made. No matter what warning the Russians gave, or what the history of the situation was, the West couldn't take the Russians seriously.
It began in 1999 with war in Kosovo and it ended in 2008 with the independence of Kosovo. When we study the history of the coming period, the war in Kosovo will stand out as a turning point. Whatever the humanitarian justification and the apparent ease of victory, it set the stage for the rise of Putin and the current and future crises.
Georgia and Kosovo: A Single Intertwined Crisis
August 25, 2008
By George Friedman
The Russo-Georgian war was rooted in broad geopolitical processes. In large part it was simply the result of the cyclical reassertion of Russian power. The Russian empire — czarist and Soviet — expanded to its borders in the 17th and 19th centuries. It collapsed in 1992. The Western powers wanted to make the disintegration permanent. It was inevitable that Russia would, in due course, want to reassert its claims. That it happened in Georgia was simply the result of circumstance.
There is, however, another context within which to view this, the context of Russian perceptions of U.S. and European intentions and of U.S. and European perceptions of Russian capabilities. This context shaped the policies that led to the Russo-Georgian war. And those attitudes can only be understood if we trace the question of Kosovo, because the Russo-Georgian war was forged over the last decade over the Kosovo question.
Yugoslavia broke up into its component republics in the early 1990s. The borders of the republics did not cohere to the distribution of nationalities. Many — Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and so on — found themselves citizens of republics where the majorities were not of their ethnicities and disliked the minorities intensely for historical reasons. Wars were fought between Croatia and Serbia (still calling itself Yugoslavia because Montenegro was part of it), Bosnia and Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia. Other countries in the region became involved as well.
One conflict became particularly brutal. Bosnia had a large area dominated by Serbs. This region wanted to secede from Bosnia and rejoin Serbia. The Bosnians objected and an internal war in Bosnia took place, with the Serbian government involved. This war involved the single greatest bloodletting of the bloody Balkan wars, the mass murder by Serbs of Bosnians.
Here we must pause and define some terms that are very casually thrown around. Genocide is the crime of trying to annihilate an entire people. War crimes are actions that violate the rules of war. If a soldier shoots a prisoner, he has committed a war crime. Then there is a class called "crimes against humanity." It is intended to denote those crimes that are too vast to be included in normal charges of murder or rape. They may not involve genocide, in that the annihilation of a race or nation is not at stake, but they may also go well beyond war crimes, which are much lesser offenses. The events in Bosnia were reasonably deemed crimes against humanity. They did not constitute genocide and they were more than war crimes.
At the time, the Americans and Europeans did nothing about these crimes, which became an internal political issue as the magnitude of the Serbian crimes became clear. In this context, the Clinton administration helped negotiate the Dayton Accords, which were intended to end the Balkan wars and indeed managed to go quite far in achieving this. The Dayton Accords were built around the principle that there could be no adjustment in the borders of the former Yugoslav republics. Ethnic Serbs would live under Bosnian rule. The principle that existing borders were sacrosanct was embedded in the Dayton Accords.
In the late 1990s, a crisis began to develop in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Over the years, Albanians had moved into the province in a broad migration. By 1997, the province was overwhelmingly Albanian, although it had not only been historically part of Serbia but also its historical foundation. Nevertheless, the Albanians showed significant intentions of moving toward either a separate state or unification with Albania. Serbia moved to resist this, increasing its military forces and indicating an intention to crush the Albanian resistance.
There were many claims that the Serbians were repeating the crimes against humanity that were committed in Bosnia. The Americans and Europeans, burned by Bosnia, were eager to demonstrate their will. Arguing that something between crimes against humanity and genocide was under way — and citing reports that between 10,000 and 100,000 Kosovo Albanians were missing or had been killed — NATO launched a campaign designed to stop the killings. In fact, while some killings had taken place, the claims by NATO of the number already killed were false. NATO might have prevented mass murder in Kosovo. That is not provable. They did not, however, find that mass murder on the order of the numbers claimed had taken place. The war could be defended as a preventive measure, but the atmosphere under which the war was carried out overstated what had happened.
The campaign was carried out without U.N. sanction because of Russian and Chinese opposition. The Russians were particularly opposed, arguing that major crimes were not being committed and that Serbia was an ally of Russia and that the air assault was not warranted by the evidence. The United States and other European powers disregarded the Russian position. Far more important, they established the precedent that U.N. sanction was not needed to launch a war (a precedent used by George W. Bush in Iraq). Rather — and this is the vital point — they argued that NATO support legitimized the war.
This transformed NATO from a military alliance into a quasi-United Nations. What happened in Kosovo was that NATO took on the role of peacemaker, empowered to determine if intervention was necessary, allowed to make the military intervention, and empowered to determine the outcome. Conceptually, NATO was transformed from a military force into a regional multinational grouping with responsibility for maintenance of regional order, even within the borders of states that are not members. If the United Nations wouldn't support the action, the NATO Council was sufficient.
Since Russia was not a member of NATO, and since Russia denied the urgency of war, and since Russia was overruled, the bombing campaign against Kosovo created a crisis in relations with Russia. The Russians saw the attack as a unilateral attack by an anti-Russian alliance on a Russian ally, without sound justification. Then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin was not prepared to make this into a major confrontation, nor was he in a position to. The Russians did not so much acquiesce as concede they had no options.
The war did not go as well as history records. The bombing campaign did not force capitulation and NATO was not prepared to invade Kosovo. The air campaign continued inconclusively as the West turned to the Russians to negotiate an end. The Russians sent an envoy who negotiated an agreement consisting of three parts. First, the West would halt the bombing campaign. Second, Serbian army forces would withdraw and be replaced by a multinational force including Russian troops. Third, implicit in the agreement, the Russian troops would be there to guarantee Serbian interests and sovereignty.
As soon as the agreement was signed, the Russians rushed troops to the Pristina airport to take up their duties in the multinational force — as they had in the Bosnian peacekeeping force. In part because of deliberate maneuvers and in part because no one took the Russians seriously, the Russians never played the role they believed had been negotiated. They were never seen as part of the peacekeeping operation or as part of the decision-making system over Kosovo. The Russians felt doubly betrayed, first by the war itself, then by the peace arrangements.
The Kosovo war directly effected the fall of Yeltsin and the rise of Vladimir Putin. The faction around Putin saw Yeltsin as an incompetent bungler who allowed Russia to be doubly betrayed. The Russian perception of the war directly led to the massive reversal in Russian policy we see today. The installation of Putin and Russian nationalists from the former KGB had a number of roots. But fundamentally it was rooted in the events in Kosovo. Most of all it was driven by the perception that NATO had now shifted from being a military alliance to seeing itself as a substitute for the United Nations, arbitrating regional politics. Russia had no vote or say in NATO decisions, so NATO's new role was seen as a direct challenge to Russian interests.
Thus, the ongoing expansion of NATO into the former Soviet Union and the promise to include Ukraine and Georgia into NATO were seen in terms of the Kosovo war. From the Russian point of view, NATO expansion meant a further exclusion of Russia from decision-making, and implied that NATO reserved the right to repeat Kosovo if it felt that human rights or political issues required it. The United Nations was no longer the prime multinational peacekeeping entity. NATO assumed that role in the region and now it was going to expand all around Russia.
Then came Kosovo's independence. Yugoslavia broke apart into its constituent entities, but the borders of its nations didn't change. Then, for the first time since World War II, the decision was made to change Serbia's borders, in opposition to Serbian and Russian wishes, with the authorizing body, in effect, being NATO. It was a decision avidly supported by the Americans.
The initial attempt to resolve Kosovo's status was the round of negotiations led by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari that officially began in February 2006 but had been in the works since 2005. This round of negotiations was actually started under U.S. urging and closely supervised from Washington. In charge of keeping Ahtisaari's negotiations running smoothly was Frank G. Wisner, a diplomat during the Clinton administration. Also very important to the U.S. effort was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried, another leftover from the Clinton administration and a specialist in Soviet and Polish affairs.
In the summer of 2007, when it was obvious that the negotiations were going nowhere, the Bush administration decided the talks were over and that it was time for independence. On June 10, 2007, Bush said that the end result of negotiations must be "certain independence." In July 2007, Daniel Fried said that independence was "inevitable" even if the talks failed. Finally, in September 2007, Condoleezza Rice put it succinctly: "There's going to be an independent Kosovo. We're dedicated to that." Europeans took cues from this line.
How and when independence was brought about was really a European problem. The Americans set the debate and the Europeans implemented it. Among Europeans, the most enthusiastic about Kosovo independence were the British and the French. The British followed the American line while the French were led by their foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who had also served as the U.N. Kosovo administrator. The Germans were more cautiously supportive.
On Feb. 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence and was recognized rapidly by a small number of European states and countries allied with the United States. Even before the declaration, the Europeans had created an administrative body to administer Kosovo. The Europeans, through the European Union, micromanaged the date of the declaration.
On May 15, during a conference in Ekaterinburg, the foreign ministers of India, Russia and China made a joint statement regarding Kosovo. It was read by the Russian host minister, Sergei Lavrov, and it said: "In our statement, we recorded our fundamental position that the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo contradicts Resolution 1244. Russia, India and China encourage Belgrade and Pristina to resume talks within the framework of international law and hope they reach an agreement on all problems of that Serbian territory."
The Europeans and Americans rejected this request as they had rejected all Russian arguments on Kosovo. The argument here was that the Kosovo situation was one of a kind because of atrocities that had been committed. The Russians argued that the level of atrocity was unclear and that, in any case, the government that committed them was long gone from Belgrade. More to the point, the Russians let it be clearly known that they would not accept the idea that Kosovo independence was a one-of-a-kind situation and that they would regard it, instead, as a new precedent for all to follow.
The problem was not that the Europeans and the Americans didn't hear the Russians. The problem was that they simply didn't believe them — they didn't take the Russians seriously. They had heard the Russians say things for many years. They did not understand three things. First, that the Russians had reached the end of their rope. Second, that Russian military capability was not what it had been in 1999. Third, and most important, NATO, the Americans and the Europeans did not recognize that they were making political decisions that they could not support militarily.
For the Russians, the transformation of NATO from a military alliance into a regional United Nations was the problem. The West argued that NATO was no longer just a military alliance but a political arbitrator for the region. If NATO does not like Serbian policies in Kosovo, it can — at its option and in opposition to U.N. rulings — intervene. It could intervene in Serbia and it intended to expand deep into the former Soviet Union. NATO thought that because it was now a political arbiter encouraging regimes to reform and not just a war-fighting system, Russian fears would actually be assuaged. To the contrary, it was Russia's worst nightmare. Compensating for all this was the fact that NATO had neglected its own military power. Now, Russia could do something about it.
At the beginning of this discourse, we explained that the underlying issues behind the Russo-Georgian war went deep into geopolitics and that it could not be understood without understanding Kosovo. It wasn't everything, but it was the single most significant event behind all of this. The war of 1999 was the framework that created the war of 2008.
The problem for NATO was that it was expanding its political reach and claims while contracting its military muscle. The Russians were expanding their military capability (after 1999 they had no place to go but up) and the West didn't notice. In 1999, the Americans and Europeans made political decisions backed by military force. In 2008, in Kosovo, they made political decisions without sufficient military force to stop a Russian response. Either they underestimated their adversary or — even more amazingly — they did not see the Russians as adversaries despite absolutely clear statements the Russians had made. No matter what warning the Russians gave, or what the history of the situation was, the West couldn't take the Russians seriously.
It began in 1999 with war in Kosovo and it ended in 2008 with the independence of Kosovo. When we study the history of the coming period, the war in Kosovo will stand out as a turning point. Whatever the humanitarian justification and the apparent ease of victory, it set the stage for the rise of Putin and the current and future crises.
Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S.
The New York Times
August 30, 2008
Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S.
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO — The era of the American Internet is ending.
Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network's first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States.
Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control.
And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly flowing around the United States, which may have intelligence — and conceivably military — consequences.
American intelligence officials have warned about this shift. "Because of the nature of global telecommunications, we are playing with a tremendous home-field advantage, and we need to exploit that edge," Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006. "We also need to protect that edge, and we need to protect those who provide it to us."
Indeed, Internet industry executives and government officials have acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States has proved a distinct advantage for American intelligence agencies. In December 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency had established a program with the cooperation of American telecommunications firms that included the interception of foreign Internet communications.
Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States.
"Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches."
But economics also plays a role. Almost all nations see data networks as essential to economic development. "It's no different than any other infrastructure that a country needs," said K C Claffy, a research scientist at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis in San Diego. "You wouldn't want someone owning your roads either."
Indeed, more countries are becoming aware of how their dependence on other countries for their Internet traffic makes them vulnerable. Because of tariffs, pricing anomalies and even corporate cultures, Internet providers will often not exchange data with their local competitors. They prefer instead to send and receive traffic with larger international Internet service providers.
This leads to odd routing arrangements, referred to as tromboning, in which traffic between two cites in one country will flow through other nations. In January, when a cable was cut in the Mediterranean, Egyptian Internet traffic was nearly paralyzed because it was not being shared by local I.S.P.'s but instead was routed through European operators.
The issue was driven home this month when hackers attacked and immobilized several Georgian government Web sites during the country's fighting with Russia. Most of Georgia's access to the global network flowed through Russia and Turkey. A third route through an undersea cable linking Georgia to Bulgaria is scheduled for completion in September.
Ms. Claffy said that the shift away from the United States was not limited to developing countries. The Japanese "are on a rampage to build out across India and China so they have alternative routes and so they don't have to route through the U.S."
Andrew M. Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota who tracks the growth of the global Internet, added, "We discovered the Internet, but we couldn't keep it a secret." While the United States carried 70 percent of the world's Internet traffic a decade ago, he estimates that portion has fallen to about 25 percent.
Internet technologists say that the global data network that was once a competitive advantage for the United States is now increasingly outside the control of American companies. They decided not to invest in lower-cost optical fiber lines, which have rapidly become a commodity business.
That lack of investment mirrors a pattern that has taken place elsewhere in the high-technology industry, from semiconductors to personal computers.
The risk, Internet technologists say, is that upstarts like China and India are making larger investments in next-generation Internet technology that is likely to be crucial in determining the future of the network, with investment, innovation and profits going first to overseas companies.
"Whether it's a good or a bad thing depends on where you stand," said Vint Cerf, a computer scientist who is Google's Internet evangelist and who, with Robert Kahn, devised the original Internet routing protocols in the early 1970s. "Suppose the Internet was entirely confined to the U.S., which it once was? That wasn't helpful."
International networks that carry data into and out of the United States are still being expanded at a sharp rate, but the Internet infrastructure in many other regions of the world is growing even more quickly.
While there has been some concern over a looming Internet traffic jam because of the rise in Internet use worldwide, the congestion is generally not on the Internet's main trunk lines, but on neighborhood switches, routers and the wires into a house.
As Internet traffic moves offshore, it may complicate the task of American intelligence gathering agencies, but would not make Internet surveillance impossible.
"We're probably in one of those situations where things get a little bit harder," said John Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., who said the United States had invested far too little in collecting intelligence via the Internet. "We've given terrorists a free ride in cyberspace," he said.
Others say the eclipse of the United States as the central point in cyberspace is one of many indicators that the world is becoming a more level playing field both economically and politically.
"This is one of many dimensions on which we'll have to adjust to a reduction in American ability to dictate terms of core interests of ours," said Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. "We are, by comparison, militarily weaker, economically poorer and technologically less unique than we were then. We are still a very big player, but not in control."
China, for instance, surpassed the United States in the number of Internet users in June. Over all, Asia now has 578.5 million, or 39.5 percent, of the world's Internet users, although only 15.3 percent of the Asian population is connected to the Internet, according to Internet World Stats, a market research organization.
By contrast, there were about 237 million Internet users in North America and the growth has nearly peaked; penetration of the Internet in the region has reached about 71 percent.
The increasing role of new competitors has shown up in data collected annually by Renesys, a firm in Manchester, N.H., that monitors the connections between Internet providers. The Renesys rankings of Internet connections, an indirect measure of growth, show that the big winners in the last three years have been the Italian Internet provider Tiscali, China Telecom and the Japanese telecommunications operator KDDI.
Firms that have slipped in the rankings have all been American: Verizon, Savvis, AT&T, Qwest, Cogent and AboveNet.
"The U.S. telecommunications firms haven't invested," said Earl Zmijewski, vice president and general manager for Internet data services at Renesys. "The rest of the world has caught up. I don't see the AT&T's and Sprints making the investments because they see Internet service as a commodity."
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
August 30, 2008
Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S.
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO — The era of the American Internet is ending.
Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network's first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States.
Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control.
And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly flowing around the United States, which may have intelligence — and conceivably military — consequences.
American intelligence officials have warned about this shift. "Because of the nature of global telecommunications, we are playing with a tremendous home-field advantage, and we need to exploit that edge," Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006. "We also need to protect that edge, and we need to protect those who provide it to us."
Indeed, Internet industry executives and government officials have acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States has proved a distinct advantage for American intelligence agencies. In December 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency had established a program with the cooperation of American telecommunications firms that included the interception of foreign Internet communications.
Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States.
"Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches."
But economics also plays a role. Almost all nations see data networks as essential to economic development. "It's no different than any other infrastructure that a country needs," said K C Claffy, a research scientist at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis in San Diego. "You wouldn't want someone owning your roads either."
Indeed, more countries are becoming aware of how their dependence on other countries for their Internet traffic makes them vulnerable. Because of tariffs, pricing anomalies and even corporate cultures, Internet providers will often not exchange data with their local competitors. They prefer instead to send and receive traffic with larger international Internet service providers.
This leads to odd routing arrangements, referred to as tromboning, in which traffic between two cites in one country will flow through other nations. In January, when a cable was cut in the Mediterranean, Egyptian Internet traffic was nearly paralyzed because it was not being shared by local I.S.P.'s but instead was routed through European operators.
The issue was driven home this month when hackers attacked and immobilized several Georgian government Web sites during the country's fighting with Russia. Most of Georgia's access to the global network flowed through Russia and Turkey. A third route through an undersea cable linking Georgia to Bulgaria is scheduled for completion in September.
Ms. Claffy said that the shift away from the United States was not limited to developing countries. The Japanese "are on a rampage to build out across India and China so they have alternative routes and so they don't have to route through the U.S."
Andrew M. Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota who tracks the growth of the global Internet, added, "We discovered the Internet, but we couldn't keep it a secret." While the United States carried 70 percent of the world's Internet traffic a decade ago, he estimates that portion has fallen to about 25 percent.
Internet technologists say that the global data network that was once a competitive advantage for the United States is now increasingly outside the control of American companies. They decided not to invest in lower-cost optical fiber lines, which have rapidly become a commodity business.
That lack of investment mirrors a pattern that has taken place elsewhere in the high-technology industry, from semiconductors to personal computers.
The risk, Internet technologists say, is that upstarts like China and India are making larger investments in next-generation Internet technology that is likely to be crucial in determining the future of the network, with investment, innovation and profits going first to overseas companies.
"Whether it's a good or a bad thing depends on where you stand," said Vint Cerf, a computer scientist who is Google's Internet evangelist and who, with Robert Kahn, devised the original Internet routing protocols in the early 1970s. "Suppose the Internet was entirely confined to the U.S., which it once was? That wasn't helpful."
International networks that carry data into and out of the United States are still being expanded at a sharp rate, but the Internet infrastructure in many other regions of the world is growing even more quickly.
While there has been some concern over a looming Internet traffic jam because of the rise in Internet use worldwide, the congestion is generally not on the Internet's main trunk lines, but on neighborhood switches, routers and the wires into a house.
As Internet traffic moves offshore, it may complicate the task of American intelligence gathering agencies, but would not make Internet surveillance impossible.
"We're probably in one of those situations where things get a little bit harder," said John Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., who said the United States had invested far too little in collecting intelligence via the Internet. "We've given terrorists a free ride in cyberspace," he said.
Others say the eclipse of the United States as the central point in cyberspace is one of many indicators that the world is becoming a more level playing field both economically and politically.
"This is one of many dimensions on which we'll have to adjust to a reduction in American ability to dictate terms of core interests of ours," said Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. "We are, by comparison, militarily weaker, economically poorer and technologically less unique than we were then. We are still a very big player, but not in control."
China, for instance, surpassed the United States in the number of Internet users in June. Over all, Asia now has 578.5 million, or 39.5 percent, of the world's Internet users, although only 15.3 percent of the Asian population is connected to the Internet, according to Internet World Stats, a market research organization.
By contrast, there were about 237 million Internet users in North America and the growth has nearly peaked; penetration of the Internet in the region has reached about 71 percent.
The increasing role of new competitors has shown up in data collected annually by Renesys, a firm in Manchester, N.H., that monitors the connections between Internet providers. The Renesys rankings of Internet connections, an indirect measure of growth, show that the big winners in the last three years have been the Italian Internet provider Tiscali, China Telecom and the Japanese telecommunications operator KDDI.
Firms that have slipped in the rankings have all been American: Verizon, Savvis, AT&T, Qwest, Cogent and AboveNet.
"The U.S. telecommunications firms haven't invested," said Earl Zmijewski, vice president and general manager for Internet data services at Renesys. "The rest of the world has caught up. I don't see the AT&T's and Sprints making the investments because they see Internet service as a commodity."
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
What's Past is Prologue The War Will Go On By C. G. ESTABROOK
What's Past is Prologue
The War Will Go On
By C. G. ESTABROOK
In the late summer of 2008, as the American political parties convene to produce a new president, it seems clear that Americans will continue to kill and die -- and suffer and inflict terrible injuries -- in the U.S. war in the Middle East, regardless of who is elected president, well into the next administration and beyond.
The war is not limited to Iraq. The Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, in March of 2003, was preceded by their invasion of Afghanistan, in October of 2001. In the spring and summer of 2008, more Americans have been killed each month in Afghanistan than in the on-going war in Iraq.
Furthermore, there are undoubtedly members of the current administration -- centered in the office of the vice president -- who wish to attack Iran, and the military and the CIA are already conducting "special operations" there. But the foreign policy establishment in Washington -- which cuts across party lines -- believes, in the words of Democratic party deep thinker Richard Holbrooke, that "AfPak" [Afghanistan and Pakistan] is "even more important to our national security than Iraq."
What he means is that that is where the most serious resistance to the U.S. attempt to dominate the region militarily is coming from. And therefore the Pentagon will send 12,000 to 15,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, as soon as the end of this year, with planning underway for a further force buildup in 2009.
Democracy Now! reported this week that "senior Pentagon officials are debating whether the US military should expand the Afghan war by carrying out military attacks against Islamic militants operating in Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas. The move would be in defiance of Pakistan's civilian government, which recently refused to accept a U.S. military training mission for the Pakistani army ... The prominent military analyst Anthony Cordesman said the US should treat Pakistani territory as a combat zone if Pakistan does not act. Cordesman's comment came in a new report in which he declared the US is now losing the war against the Taliban. Cordesman writes, "Pakistan may officially be an ally, but much of its conduct has effectively made it a major threat to U.S. strategic interests.'"
Both potential presidents approve. McCain and Obama try to outdo one another on how war-like they will be in AfPak: after Obama said he would send two more brigades to Afghanistan, McCain said he would send three; in his major speech in Berlin, Obama's only specific exhortation to the Germans was, "The Afghan people need our troops and your troops ... We have too much at stake to turn back now."
What in fact do we have at stake? Recently an Afghan government newspaper loosed the proverbial cat when it asserted that the U.S. wants to keep Afghanistan unstable in order to justify the presence of the American military, given Afghanistan's geographical location bordering Iran and central Asia's rich oil- and gas-producing nations.
That's not far wrong. It has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy since the Second World War that the U.S. must control the energy resources of the Middle East. Not because we need them here at home -- the U.S. obtains the bulk of the oil used domestically from the Western hemisphere -- but because control of energy gives the U.S. a strangle-hold on our corporations' major economic competitors, the European Union and northeast Asia (Japan, China and South Korea).
Whether we call them al-Qaida, Taliban, insurgents, terrorists or militants, the people whom we're trying to kill in the Middle East are those who want us out of their countries and off of their resources. In order to convince Americans to kill and die and suffer in this cause, the Bush administration has vastly misrepresented the situation, from trumpeting the non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" to, apparently, forging incriminating letters.
But even though a majority of Americans are now against the war in Iraq, many still think that the Bush administration was justified in invading Afghanistan, because it "harbored" Osama bin Laden. They forget that the government of Afghanistan tried to discuss the surrender of Osama bin Laden for trial, but the U.S. government refused to negotiate. It preferred a war that supported general U.S. policy in the region.
On the basis of the principles on which the U.S. and its allied governments hanged German leaders after the Second World War, the Bush administration has committed what the Nuremberg Tribunal called "the supreme international crime [i.e., worse than terrorism] differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" -- and they've done it twice, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
More than a generation ago, the U.S. war against South Vietnam came to an end -- after horrible suffering and millions dead -- because of the conjunction of three factors: (1) the resistance of the Vietnamese people against foreign occupation; (2) the effective revolt of the American military in Vietnam, largely a conscript army; and (3) the opposition of the American people, seventy per cent of whom came to believe by the late 1960s that the U.S. war was "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not a mistake.
As a character in Shakespeare's Tempest says, "...what's past is prologue, what to come / In yours and my discharge."
C. G. Estabrook is a retired visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the host of "News from Neptune, the TV Edition," on Urbana Public Television and on the website newsfromneptune.com; he can be contacted at carl@newsfromneptune.com
The War Will Go On
By C. G. ESTABROOK
In the late summer of 2008, as the American political parties convene to produce a new president, it seems clear that Americans will continue to kill and die -- and suffer and inflict terrible injuries -- in the U.S. war in the Middle East, regardless of who is elected president, well into the next administration and beyond.
The war is not limited to Iraq. The Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, in March of 2003, was preceded by their invasion of Afghanistan, in October of 2001. In the spring and summer of 2008, more Americans have been killed each month in Afghanistan than in the on-going war in Iraq.
Furthermore, there are undoubtedly members of the current administration -- centered in the office of the vice president -- who wish to attack Iran, and the military and the CIA are already conducting "special operations" there. But the foreign policy establishment in Washington -- which cuts across party lines -- believes, in the words of Democratic party deep thinker Richard Holbrooke, that "AfPak" [Afghanistan and Pakistan] is "even more important to our national security than Iraq."
What he means is that that is where the most serious resistance to the U.S. attempt to dominate the region militarily is coming from. And therefore the Pentagon will send 12,000 to 15,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, as soon as the end of this year, with planning underway for a further force buildup in 2009.
Democracy Now! reported this week that "senior Pentagon officials are debating whether the US military should expand the Afghan war by carrying out military attacks against Islamic militants operating in Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas. The move would be in defiance of Pakistan's civilian government, which recently refused to accept a U.S. military training mission for the Pakistani army ... The prominent military analyst Anthony Cordesman said the US should treat Pakistani territory as a combat zone if Pakistan does not act. Cordesman's comment came in a new report in which he declared the US is now losing the war against the Taliban. Cordesman writes, "Pakistan may officially be an ally, but much of its conduct has effectively made it a major threat to U.S. strategic interests.'"
Both potential presidents approve. McCain and Obama try to outdo one another on how war-like they will be in AfPak: after Obama said he would send two more brigades to Afghanistan, McCain said he would send three; in his major speech in Berlin, Obama's only specific exhortation to the Germans was, "The Afghan people need our troops and your troops ... We have too much at stake to turn back now."
What in fact do we have at stake? Recently an Afghan government newspaper loosed the proverbial cat when it asserted that the U.S. wants to keep Afghanistan unstable in order to justify the presence of the American military, given Afghanistan's geographical location bordering Iran and central Asia's rich oil- and gas-producing nations.
That's not far wrong. It has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy since the Second World War that the U.S. must control the energy resources of the Middle East. Not because we need them here at home -- the U.S. obtains the bulk of the oil used domestically from the Western hemisphere -- but because control of energy gives the U.S. a strangle-hold on our corporations' major economic competitors, the European Union and northeast Asia (Japan, China and South Korea).
Whether we call them al-Qaida, Taliban, insurgents, terrorists or militants, the people whom we're trying to kill in the Middle East are those who want us out of their countries and off of their resources. In order to convince Americans to kill and die and suffer in this cause, the Bush administration has vastly misrepresented the situation, from trumpeting the non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" to, apparently, forging incriminating letters.
But even though a majority of Americans are now against the war in Iraq, many still think that the Bush administration was justified in invading Afghanistan, because it "harbored" Osama bin Laden. They forget that the government of Afghanistan tried to discuss the surrender of Osama bin Laden for trial, but the U.S. government refused to negotiate. It preferred a war that supported general U.S. policy in the region.
On the basis of the principles on which the U.S. and its allied governments hanged German leaders after the Second World War, the Bush administration has committed what the Nuremberg Tribunal called "the supreme international crime [i.e., worse than terrorism] differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" -- and they've done it twice, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
More than a generation ago, the U.S. war against South Vietnam came to an end -- after horrible suffering and millions dead -- because of the conjunction of three factors: (1) the resistance of the Vietnamese people against foreign occupation; (2) the effective revolt of the American military in Vietnam, largely a conscript army; and (3) the opposition of the American people, seventy per cent of whom came to believe by the late 1960s that the U.S. war was "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not a mistake.
As a character in Shakespeare's Tempest says, "...what's past is prologue, what to come / In yours and my discharge."
C. G. Estabrook is a retired visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the host of "News from Neptune, the TV Edition," on Urbana Public Television and on the website newsfromneptune.com; he can be contacted at carl@newsfromneptune.com
Dancing With Chaos Will a Russo-American Nuclear War Happen (Soon)? By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.
Dancing With Chaos
Will a Russo-American Nuclear War Happen (Soon)?
By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.
The first, and also previous, nuclear war consisted of two atomic bomb attacks that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, on August 6 and August 9 of 1945. These attacks by the United States of America against an utterly defeated and prostrate Japan occurred in the last month of the Pacific War (which occurred between December 7, 1941 to August 15, 1945 for the USA) and were demonstrations of remorseless American power intended to deflate the triumphant spirit of a Soviet Union victorious against Nazi Germany (May 8, 1945), and to check the Soviet leadership from advancing its forces into Japan (despite being implored to do so by the Allies at the Yalta Conference six months earlier).
Tsarist Russia had lost its 1904-1905 war with Imperial Japan for control of Manchuria (northern China) and Korea, both of which Japan occupied until 1945. During World War 1 (1914-1918) and the Russian Civil War (1917-1923), a dozen nations invaded Russia, occupying many regions and fielding troops that supported the pro-tsarist, anti-Bolshevik White forces between 1918 and 1920. Japan supplied 37 percent of the troops in this Allied Intervention, 70,000 of the 188,000 total and by far the single largest contingent; they were all deployed in the Vladivostok (northwestern Pacific) region and were the last to leave, in 1922. A series of Soviet-Japanese border wars occurred between 1938-1945, primarily a 1938 war along the Siberian-Manchurian border (western-eastern) just northeast of Korea, a 1939 war along the Mongolian-Manchurian border (eastern-western), northwest of Korea, and the Russian invasion of Manchuria on August 8, 1945.
With the demise of the Japanese Empire, the Russians and Chinese consolidated their adjoining domains of control spanning the Eurasian landmass east of the Baltic and north of the Black Sea, Caucasus and Himalayas, for over four decades until the breakup of the Soviet Union. Over the last twenty years, the United States has actively sought to encircle Russia with military forces implanted in client states that are former Soviet Republics or Eastern European Socialist Republics, now independent, whose compliance has been bought. A similar policy applies to China and its surrounding south and central Asian states. This US policy is often personified by Zbigniew Brzezinski (the Carter Administration National Security Advisor credited with funding the advanced militarization of the Afghani mujahideen that included Osama Bin Laden), who characterizes it as geostrategic dominance radiating from the control of Caucasus and Central Asian republics, several rich in oil.
In recent weeks, US commentators (e.g., P. C. Roberts and W. S. Lind) on Russia's intervention into the Republic of Georgia (a US client state in the South Caucasus Mountains) to reverse the Georgian invasion of breakaway region South Ossetia, believe the blundering belligerence of US policy toward Russia could escalate to the point of armed confrontation, and this would erupt into a nuclear war.
The logic assumed is that the US would have to rely on missile-borne tactical nuclear warheads launched by air and naval forces to counter Russian troops and armor in the Caucasus, since the US is too distant to transport its troops quickly, and many of them are bogged down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and who knows, maybe also Iran by that time. The Russians could be assumed to use their tactical nuclear weapons to compensate for their possible disadvantage of having less technically sophisticated weapons systems relative to the "smart bomb" precision-guided munitions and "stealth" delivery vehicles of the US military. Once a shooting war starts, the natural tendency is to reach for your biggest guns and fire away before the other guy can clear his holster.
So, is a new nuclear war possible? Let's muse on this. After all, the time necessary for rationality to work its good is only available before the shoot-out, or after the killing is done and the survivors are ready to move on to the burials.
The purpose of war is to increase your degree of control OVER OTHERS. This is usually equated to having acquired greater political and military power. This is true even if the the war is conducted as nothing beyond brigandage and piracy: plunder, profit and wealth are seen as increasing your power to control events. Using this metric, it is easy to judge if you have won or lost a war.
We proceed by inquiring about the psychological and technical enabling factors, and the political and diplomatic restraining factors for the outbreak of a nuclear war:
1, psychology: are the prospective belligerents easily inclined to war?
2, technology: are their military establishments ready for nuclear combat?
3, politics: can the ruling class be assured of maintaining control of its own population?, could there be a revolution if the war fares badly?
4, diplomacy: is the potential estrangement of and isolation from European states, and other allies, a significant restraint?; is it possible that in a mid-war or post-war weakened condition your state becomes unable to control new rebellions by imperial subject states, or to stop encroachments into your domain of influence by imperial rivals?
We can contract the previous four major questions in these two: have we identified all possible contingencies and devised alternative plans for each?, does the cost-benefit ratio for the war outweigh that of diplomatic alternatives, and after what period of time? We consider the four factors in turn.
Psychology: Remembering World War Two
It is important to know that the overwhelming fraction of the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany was provided by the Soviet Union (Russia and its union of socialist republics), and they suffered the greatest losses as a result. Consider the following numbers. The combined 1939 population of the fifty-five countries involved in World War Two (WW2) was 1.962 billion; the total number of war dead was 72.8 million, which was 3.7 percent of the 1939 population of participants. Of course, many of these countries bore only a slight to moderate burden in carrying on the war, while a small number provided the greatest efforts and made the greatest sacrifices (see "World War II casualties" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties).
The combined human losses of the Soviet Union, China, Germany and Japan were just under 73 percent of the total deaths for WW2. The Asian theater of WW2 was essentially the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, while the European theater of WW2 was essentially the Russo-German War of 1941-1945.
Let us look at the impact of WW2 on five selected countries, by using three ratios for each country, where these ratios are defined as follows.
Country:
the percentage of its 1939 population killed in WW2;
the ratio of its 1939 population to the 1.962 billion WW2 participants;
the ratio of its WW2 dead to the total WW2 dead;
(all ratios below are expressed as percents).
Soviet Union: 13.7; 8.6; 31.7.
China: 3.9; 26.4; 27.5.
Germany: 10.5; 3.6; 10.
Japan: 3.8; 3.6; 3.7.
USA: 0.3; 6.7; 0.6.
The Soviet Union lost nearly 14 percent of its population (every 7th person) in the war, and this mortality amounted to almost one third of the entire WW2 dead. China was three times as populous as the Soviet Union, so its loss of nearly 4 percent of its people (every 26th person) amounted to over one quarter of the entire WW2 dead. Germany lost over a tenth of its population (every 10th person), which amounted to 10 percent of the WW2 dead; and Japan's loss of just under 4 percent of its people (every 26th person) amounted to nearly 4 percent of the WW2 dead.
Notice that the United States' WW2 dead amounts to a fifty-fifth (1/55) of the Soviet total, and the 1939 national populations were comparable, the Soviet population being 29 percent higher. It would be very beneficial to the world if Americans, commemorating their Memorial and Veterans' Days, would try imagining their feelings if they had suffered war as deeply as the Soviet people (every 7th person instead of every 172nd person lost). Now, we never trivialize the real pain of war veterans, their relatives and and friends, however small a portion of a nation's population they may happen to be. But, clearly, the impact of a WW2 experience like that of the Soviets will imprint a dread of war far more deeply into the national consciousness than a WW2 experience like that of the United States.
Another interesting numerical result is that the combined losses of Germany and Japan amount to only 13.7 percent of the WW2 dead, and the combined population of these two Axis powers amounted to only 7.2 percent of the WW2 participating population. Advanced industrialized nations hell-bent on war can drag in a multitude of victims vastly more numerous than themselves. A reasonable assumption for today is that the state planners and popular historical memories in both Russia and China viscerally appreciate the importance of this point, but that it may be dimly perceived in US popular imagination, and even dismissed by US policy-makers. This is probably the type of caution introduced by European allies when the US engages them in multilateral diplomacy and planning, and which is so annoying to US unilateralists.
So, the US may have a more casual attitude about bellicose posturing and nuclear war threatening bravado, while the Russians and Chinese are likely to be very circumspect and deliberate about threatening nuclear war; if they do, pay attention!
Technology: The Military Is A Hungry Robot
The US military is a brainless stomach that always wishes to be fed, it is the very definition of fiscal cancer. It has no other goal beyond immediate ingestion of capital drained from the US treasury, so all its pronouncements, papers, studies, proposals and testimony are devoid of meaning beyond their role as advertisements aimed at the audience of policy-makers heading the capitalist, government and propaganda ministries of the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC). The purpose of these advertisements is to induce as many of these directorate-class individuals as possible to put their influence behind the many schemes for larding the military. So, we can expect any part of the military that sees initiating a nuclear war as an instant benefit to itself by calling its services into action, to lobby for it. A brainless stomach has no concept of consequences, or of others. "More" fills the conceptual space, and all the frenzied, convoluted babble is a drone of incantations intended to materialize that "more."
While the hardware for nuclear war is complex, both the US and Russian military establishments have decades of experience with it, and they have maintained their training. These military forces could use their nuclear weapons as ordered without a significant number of technical or personnel failures. Some of the warheads launched might be duds, in that their detonation would be flawed and their full explosive yield would be unrealized; and some of the personnel might crack under the pressure of actual combat -- either as a blind panic or an intentional rebellion -- and fail at their posts. However, we can expect a low incidence of such failure in either the US or Russian forces.
This is unfortunate from the point of view of preventing nuclear war. We now know that "a guy named Arkhipov saved the world" during the Cuban Missile Crisis. "During a naval skirmish between an American destroyer and a Soviet B-59 submarine off Cuba on Oct 27, 1962," where "the destroyer dropped depth charges near the submarine to try to force it to surface, not knowing it had a nuclear-tipped torpedo...that the submarine was authorised to fire it if three officers agreed. The officers began a fierce, shouting debate over whether to sink the ship. Two of them said yes and the other said no."
This was no failure of Russian military training (which like that in the arts and sciences is of unparalleled rigor), but instead the operation of vivid historical consciousness. I fear that the culture of the United States is so shallow and immature that thorough military training can transform any callow youth into a robot soldier attuned to his or her assigned functions, and unlikely to have the psychological depth and historical consciousness to question orders and training under conditions of extreme danger, urgency and confusion, or to recognize moments of pivotal importance.
Military establishments are intended to be robotic performers, reliable agents implementing commands abstracted and codified from the political directives of the national leadership. So, we should assume that by far the best way to prevent the military from proceeding with a nuclear war is by influencing the policy that it operates under, so that it is one of restraint.
Still, let me make a direct plea to any US soldier or sailor who finds themselves charged with launching a nuclear weapon: don't do it, mutiny, revolt. Think, the more and sooner the better. Be Arkhipov. I think the Russians will be more restrained than the Americans about first use, but will have zero hesitation about second use.
Politics: Popular Loyalty Or Popular Revolt?
Because Russia is a lesser power than the United States, and because of the many and obvious provocations made by the US against Russia as part of its encirclement strategy, as well as the shameless advantage US capitalism took of Russia during the immediate post-soviet period of political fragmentation and economic reorganization, the Russian people will have no trouble supporting their government regardless of how any potential war with the US transpires; they will always see themselves as the defenders, not the aggressors. This will be especially true if the US fires first, which it delights in boasting it feels free to do; and we can be sure that if Russia does fire the first nuclear shot, it will be an evidently defensive preemptive strike. The expectation of popular loyalty, won by the robust revival of the Russian economy under Vladimir Putin's administration, as well as a reaction to US belligerence, frees the Russian leadership of any fear about revolution erupting in reaction to possible reverses in a potential Russo-US war, even a nuclear one. Russia is united.
The US public is unprepared for the sacrifices attendant to a nuclear war, no matter how "tactical" and "limited." Every nuclear munition carries the destructive power of many conventional bombs or cannons, and shot for shot every fall of a nuclear munition will produce proportionately many more casualties. US soldiers and sailors will fill coffins or dematerialize at rates not experienced since the Civil War. The American public has been protected, shielded and distracted from the impact of war, especially since the Vietnam War, but the number of casualties to be expected from even a limited tactical nuclear war would be impossible to hide (as the casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are hidden today), and the mollycoddled American viewing public would be traumatized on apprehending the magnitude and pace of the carnage.
The reactions to this fright would be varied, but in all cases they would contribute to the agitation of the public, a loss of placidity and thus an increased difficulty of social control. This triggers the primary anxiety of the ruling class. It is nearly inconceivable that US public agitation over the number of military casualties from a foreign nuclear war would rise to the same intensity as the Parisian public's agitation about starvation in 1789, but the great fear of the US ruling class would be that it had become of the same type. Today's paycheck-dependent US Americans are disunited by their fearful prejudices and diminishing expectations in an eroding economy, while the Russian people are experiencing historically significant economic growth and political stability. At what point of disaffection would the US public unite into storming its own Bastilles, at what level of unsatisfied wants -- in a population indoctrinated to be self-governed by wants -- would the US public acquire the motivational rage of a Cindy Sheehan and become the 21st century san-culotte whose pikes were now the subject of the 2nd amendment?
We should not let such florid rhetoric carry us on flights of fancy of Phil Gramm ('let them whine for cake') types arriving at their Sidney Carton moment, but neither should we underestimate the potential for outbreaks of real social unrest in the US as a consequence of losing people to a nuclear war of imperialistic hubris.
Diplomacy: Consolidating Conquest, Or Chaotic Collapse?
The imperialist imagination sees conquest as the method of consolidating power. The emperor projects a conception of order onto the world, and then seeks to subject each actual state and population into fulfilling an assigned role. Every country is a tile that fits into the grand mosaic of the imagined empire, adding its unique hue to the overall image and easing the interconnectedness of all others into a consolidated structure. Conquest is accomplished by force, bribery or inequitable alliance.
However, every tile of the world mosaic has its own conception of itself and its role in the world, so there is always opposition to empire. Most people call this freedom.
Imperialistic thinking assumes that power, the ability of superior force to hold sway, is the only dimension along which international relations operate. It ignores chaos, the ability of nature and reality to erupt with surprises, and entropy, the tendency of all structure to dissipate, as other dimensions of international relations. It is impossible to predict all possible outcomes of present situations, so it is impossible to devise perfect systems of control. While we are always free to take action, we can never be certain of all its possible consequences. Aside from our common-sense plans for managing the practicalities of our lives, the overall contingency plan that comes closest to perfection is to "go with the flow." This is zen. The only thing we can ever really control is our own behavior. Because all known previous empires have collapsed, chaos and entropy being prominent in their demise, we can anticipate a similar fate for the American empire.
The Russian economy is booming in part because Russia is a major supplier of oil and gas to Europe. Russia is also a leading supplier of military and nuclear power technology. Many people easily ascribe the various conflicts occurring in Eurasia to rivalries over the control of oil and gas fields and the routing of pipelines. China's exploding economy would love to plunge its straw -- direct trans-border pipelines -- into Iran's oil pools and drain them without interference; Iran would love China to monetize its oil bonanza, so it wants to power itself with nuclear energy to maximize its oil profits. Russia is eager to supply Iran the nuclear power technology it wants, because it is a profitable business venture, and because they want the security of controlling the fuel cycle of a close neighbor, for the purpose of nonproliferation (of nuclear weapons).
However, these logical commercial synergies fail the most important acceptance criterion of US capitalism, "what's in it for me?" The US would prefer a compliant Iran drained to its benefit, such as in the days of the Shah, it would prefer Central Asian oil to flow south through Afghanistan and east through the Caucasus, Black Sea and Turkey, and it would prefer Europe to limit its energy dependency on Russia. It is not just a matter of increasing the oil supplied to the US, it is about throttling the sources of Russia's and China's growing economic power; it is about control.
We can expect the Europeans to try soothing the neo-con fevered Bush Administration, quietly behind closed embassy doors, from working itself into a rabid lather for nuclear war with Russia, initially in the Caucasus. This will have some influence, because the failure of Europe to join in a diplomatic demonization campaign against Russia, like the earlier campaigns against Iraq, would make it more difficult for the US to proceed to war. Also, the US is mindful that were it to be seriously weakened by a unilateral nuclear war with Russia, an unscathed Europe would easily step into control of its empire. After all, this is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman did to Winston Churchill's British empire.
Also, Europe would worry that a nuclear war in the Caucasus might spread, war usually does when one side becomes desperate. If Russia were being "bombed back to the stone age" it would most certainly bomb the US bases in the Central Asian republics along its southern border. These would be legitimate military targets, and would no doubt be actively involved in the US war against Russia (why else are they there?). This would draw the Central Asian republics into the war and probably topple their ruling classes, which Russia would see as their just deserts. A similar catastrophe might happen to Poland and other Eastern European states hosting US missile systems. For Europe, the thought of the disruption of their oil supplies from Russia and Central Asia, along with the possibility of sustaining casualties from nuclear bombardment, should be enough to propel them into vigorous and sustained diplomatic action to restrain US belligerency. They will probably say all manner of nasty things about Russia, to mollify their infantile US emperor, and do as little as possible to disrupt their existing commercial arrangements with Russia.
Analogous to the situation of the US public, if Europe and American "allies" were to suffer directly and severely from the war, they might unite in revolt and then use their military forces against the US, or Russia, or both as they guessed would offer the best relief. What is that level of "direct and severe suffering" that would trigger a European military response? Good question.
There are many other possibilities for mischief once the US is embroiled in a nuclear war and inattentive to its empire. Other nations could decide it was an opportune time to settle their own scores with each other, independent of the US-Russia war. China and India fought a border war in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is believed to have erupted because the US was completely preoccupied elsewhere. One can imagine Israel finding it opportune to accelerate its liquidation of the Palestinians, expand into Lebanon, attack Iran or a variety of its neighbors, or all of these, while the US was absorbed in a nuclear war radiating from the Caucasus.
Of course, a restraining consideration here is that the US might not be capable or willing to assist and even fund Israel during the course of its own major war with Russia, unless Israel were a full-fledged partner in that war. If Israel were so blinded by its own ambition that it did join the war against Russia, then Russian arms would quickly and forcefully be turned against it, and this would almost certainly be joined by military actions from many states in the Middle East. The intelligent course for Israel would be to stay out of a US war against Russia (which will really look dirty to the US public as they see their own forces being nuked), but even then it might have to accept a diminished level of support from its great protector, and consequently a more successful opposition from its many subjects and neighbors.
Conclusion
Once the chaotic dimension of reality is realized, it becomes easy to envision any number of disastrous developments for each of the initial combatants, and even the initial bystanders. From any perspective, it is easier to imagine a negative cost-benefit ratio to this war than a positive outcome. For this reason, I think it less likely to occur. However, one must not underestimate the stupidity of imperialists, if war does break out then I think the Russians will have a clearer view of how to proceed, and this will mean painful losses for the US, its allies and enablers.
The great fallacy of the imperialistic mind is that the threat of destruction is equated with the power to control. Control is an illusion, chaos is the reality. A successful warrior dances with chaos, and success means simply that one is still alive.
Manuel Garcia, Jr. is a retired physicist who spent 15 years working on US underground nuclear tests. Time and effort have gone into understanding why nuclear weapons still exist. E-mail = mango@idiom.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/garcia09012008.html
Will a Russo-American Nuclear War Happen (Soon)?
By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.
The first, and also previous, nuclear war consisted of two atomic bomb attacks that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, on August 6 and August 9 of 1945. These attacks by the United States of America against an utterly defeated and prostrate Japan occurred in the last month of the Pacific War (which occurred between December 7, 1941 to August 15, 1945 for the USA) and were demonstrations of remorseless American power intended to deflate the triumphant spirit of a Soviet Union victorious against Nazi Germany (May 8, 1945), and to check the Soviet leadership from advancing its forces into Japan (despite being implored to do so by the Allies at the Yalta Conference six months earlier).
Tsarist Russia had lost its 1904-1905 war with Imperial Japan for control of Manchuria (northern China) and Korea, both of which Japan occupied until 1945. During World War 1 (1914-1918) and the Russian Civil War (1917-1923), a dozen nations invaded Russia, occupying many regions and fielding troops that supported the pro-tsarist, anti-Bolshevik White forces between 1918 and 1920. Japan supplied 37 percent of the troops in this Allied Intervention, 70,000 of the 188,000 total and by far the single largest contingent; they were all deployed in the Vladivostok (northwestern Pacific) region and were the last to leave, in 1922. A series of Soviet-Japanese border wars occurred between 1938-1945, primarily a 1938 war along the Siberian-Manchurian border (western-eastern) just northeast of Korea, a 1939 war along the Mongolian-Manchurian border (eastern-western), northwest of Korea, and the Russian invasion of Manchuria on August 8, 1945.
With the demise of the Japanese Empire, the Russians and Chinese consolidated their adjoining domains of control spanning the Eurasian landmass east of the Baltic and north of the Black Sea, Caucasus and Himalayas, for over four decades until the breakup of the Soviet Union. Over the last twenty years, the United States has actively sought to encircle Russia with military forces implanted in client states that are former Soviet Republics or Eastern European Socialist Republics, now independent, whose compliance has been bought. A similar policy applies to China and its surrounding south and central Asian states. This US policy is often personified by Zbigniew Brzezinski (the Carter Administration National Security Advisor credited with funding the advanced militarization of the Afghani mujahideen that included Osama Bin Laden), who characterizes it as geostrategic dominance radiating from the control of Caucasus and Central Asian republics, several rich in oil.
In recent weeks, US commentators (e.g., P. C. Roberts and W. S. Lind) on Russia's intervention into the Republic of Georgia (a US client state in the South Caucasus Mountains) to reverse the Georgian invasion of breakaway region South Ossetia, believe the blundering belligerence of US policy toward Russia could escalate to the point of armed confrontation, and this would erupt into a nuclear war.
The logic assumed is that the US would have to rely on missile-borne tactical nuclear warheads launched by air and naval forces to counter Russian troops and armor in the Caucasus, since the US is too distant to transport its troops quickly, and many of them are bogged down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and who knows, maybe also Iran by that time. The Russians could be assumed to use their tactical nuclear weapons to compensate for their possible disadvantage of having less technically sophisticated weapons systems relative to the "smart bomb" precision-guided munitions and "stealth" delivery vehicles of the US military. Once a shooting war starts, the natural tendency is to reach for your biggest guns and fire away before the other guy can clear his holster.
So, is a new nuclear war possible? Let's muse on this. After all, the time necessary for rationality to work its good is only available before the shoot-out, or after the killing is done and the survivors are ready to move on to the burials.
The purpose of war is to increase your degree of control OVER OTHERS. This is usually equated to having acquired greater political and military power. This is true even if the the war is conducted as nothing beyond brigandage and piracy: plunder, profit and wealth are seen as increasing your power to control events. Using this metric, it is easy to judge if you have won or lost a war.
We proceed by inquiring about the psychological and technical enabling factors, and the political and diplomatic restraining factors for the outbreak of a nuclear war:
1, psychology: are the prospective belligerents easily inclined to war?
2, technology: are their military establishments ready for nuclear combat?
3, politics: can the ruling class be assured of maintaining control of its own population?, could there be a revolution if the war fares badly?
4, diplomacy: is the potential estrangement of and isolation from European states, and other allies, a significant restraint?; is it possible that in a mid-war or post-war weakened condition your state becomes unable to control new rebellions by imperial subject states, or to stop encroachments into your domain of influence by imperial rivals?
We can contract the previous four major questions in these two: have we identified all possible contingencies and devised alternative plans for each?, does the cost-benefit ratio for the war outweigh that of diplomatic alternatives, and after what period of time? We consider the four factors in turn.
Psychology: Remembering World War Two
It is important to know that the overwhelming fraction of the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany was provided by the Soviet Union (Russia and its union of socialist republics), and they suffered the greatest losses as a result. Consider the following numbers. The combined 1939 population of the fifty-five countries involved in World War Two (WW2) was 1.962 billion; the total number of war dead was 72.8 million, which was 3.7 percent of the 1939 population of participants. Of course, many of these countries bore only a slight to moderate burden in carrying on the war, while a small number provided the greatest efforts and made the greatest sacrifices (see "World War II casualties" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties).
The combined human losses of the Soviet Union, China, Germany and Japan were just under 73 percent of the total deaths for WW2. The Asian theater of WW2 was essentially the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, while the European theater of WW2 was essentially the Russo-German War of 1941-1945.
Let us look at the impact of WW2 on five selected countries, by using three ratios for each country, where these ratios are defined as follows.
Country:
the percentage of its 1939 population killed in WW2;
the ratio of its 1939 population to the 1.962 billion WW2 participants;
the ratio of its WW2 dead to the total WW2 dead;
(all ratios below are expressed as percents).
Soviet Union: 13.7; 8.6; 31.7.
China: 3.9; 26.4; 27.5.
Germany: 10.5; 3.6; 10.
Japan: 3.8; 3.6; 3.7.
USA: 0.3; 6.7; 0.6.
The Soviet Union lost nearly 14 percent of its population (every 7th person) in the war, and this mortality amounted to almost one third of the entire WW2 dead. China was three times as populous as the Soviet Union, so its loss of nearly 4 percent of its people (every 26th person) amounted to over one quarter of the entire WW2 dead. Germany lost over a tenth of its population (every 10th person), which amounted to 10 percent of the WW2 dead; and Japan's loss of just under 4 percent of its people (every 26th person) amounted to nearly 4 percent of the WW2 dead.
Notice that the United States' WW2 dead amounts to a fifty-fifth (1/55) of the Soviet total, and the 1939 national populations were comparable, the Soviet population being 29 percent higher. It would be very beneficial to the world if Americans, commemorating their Memorial and Veterans' Days, would try imagining their feelings if they had suffered war as deeply as the Soviet people (every 7th person instead of every 172nd person lost). Now, we never trivialize the real pain of war veterans, their relatives and and friends, however small a portion of a nation's population they may happen to be. But, clearly, the impact of a WW2 experience like that of the Soviets will imprint a dread of war far more deeply into the national consciousness than a WW2 experience like that of the United States.
Another interesting numerical result is that the combined losses of Germany and Japan amount to only 13.7 percent of the WW2 dead, and the combined population of these two Axis powers amounted to only 7.2 percent of the WW2 participating population. Advanced industrialized nations hell-bent on war can drag in a multitude of victims vastly more numerous than themselves. A reasonable assumption for today is that the state planners and popular historical memories in both Russia and China viscerally appreciate the importance of this point, but that it may be dimly perceived in US popular imagination, and even dismissed by US policy-makers. This is probably the type of caution introduced by European allies when the US engages them in multilateral diplomacy and planning, and which is so annoying to US unilateralists.
So, the US may have a more casual attitude about bellicose posturing and nuclear war threatening bravado, while the Russians and Chinese are likely to be very circumspect and deliberate about threatening nuclear war; if they do, pay attention!
Technology: The Military Is A Hungry Robot
The US military is a brainless stomach that always wishes to be fed, it is the very definition of fiscal cancer. It has no other goal beyond immediate ingestion of capital drained from the US treasury, so all its pronouncements, papers, studies, proposals and testimony are devoid of meaning beyond their role as advertisements aimed at the audience of policy-makers heading the capitalist, government and propaganda ministries of the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC). The purpose of these advertisements is to induce as many of these directorate-class individuals as possible to put their influence behind the many schemes for larding the military. So, we can expect any part of the military that sees initiating a nuclear war as an instant benefit to itself by calling its services into action, to lobby for it. A brainless stomach has no concept of consequences, or of others. "More" fills the conceptual space, and all the frenzied, convoluted babble is a drone of incantations intended to materialize that "more."
While the hardware for nuclear war is complex, both the US and Russian military establishments have decades of experience with it, and they have maintained their training. These military forces could use their nuclear weapons as ordered without a significant number of technical or personnel failures. Some of the warheads launched might be duds, in that their detonation would be flawed and their full explosive yield would be unrealized; and some of the personnel might crack under the pressure of actual combat -- either as a blind panic or an intentional rebellion -- and fail at their posts. However, we can expect a low incidence of such failure in either the US or Russian forces.
This is unfortunate from the point of view of preventing nuclear war. We now know that "a guy named Arkhipov saved the world" during the Cuban Missile Crisis. "During a naval skirmish between an American destroyer and a Soviet B-59 submarine off Cuba on Oct 27, 1962," where "the destroyer dropped depth charges near the submarine to try to force it to surface, not knowing it had a nuclear-tipped torpedo...that the submarine was authorised to fire it if three officers agreed. The officers began a fierce, shouting debate over whether to sink the ship. Two of them said yes and the other said no."
This was no failure of Russian military training (which like that in the arts and sciences is of unparalleled rigor), but instead the operation of vivid historical consciousness. I fear that the culture of the United States is so shallow and immature that thorough military training can transform any callow youth into a robot soldier attuned to his or her assigned functions, and unlikely to have the psychological depth and historical consciousness to question orders and training under conditions of extreme danger, urgency and confusion, or to recognize moments of pivotal importance.
Military establishments are intended to be robotic performers, reliable agents implementing commands abstracted and codified from the political directives of the national leadership. So, we should assume that by far the best way to prevent the military from proceeding with a nuclear war is by influencing the policy that it operates under, so that it is one of restraint.
Still, let me make a direct plea to any US soldier or sailor who finds themselves charged with launching a nuclear weapon: don't do it, mutiny, revolt. Think, the more and sooner the better. Be Arkhipov. I think the Russians will be more restrained than the Americans about first use, but will have zero hesitation about second use.
Politics: Popular Loyalty Or Popular Revolt?
Because Russia is a lesser power than the United States, and because of the many and obvious provocations made by the US against Russia as part of its encirclement strategy, as well as the shameless advantage US capitalism took of Russia during the immediate post-soviet period of political fragmentation and economic reorganization, the Russian people will have no trouble supporting their government regardless of how any potential war with the US transpires; they will always see themselves as the defenders, not the aggressors. This will be especially true if the US fires first, which it delights in boasting it feels free to do; and we can be sure that if Russia does fire the first nuclear shot, it will be an evidently defensive preemptive strike. The expectation of popular loyalty, won by the robust revival of the Russian economy under Vladimir Putin's administration, as well as a reaction to US belligerence, frees the Russian leadership of any fear about revolution erupting in reaction to possible reverses in a potential Russo-US war, even a nuclear one. Russia is united.
The US public is unprepared for the sacrifices attendant to a nuclear war, no matter how "tactical" and "limited." Every nuclear munition carries the destructive power of many conventional bombs or cannons, and shot for shot every fall of a nuclear munition will produce proportionately many more casualties. US soldiers and sailors will fill coffins or dematerialize at rates not experienced since the Civil War. The American public has been protected, shielded and distracted from the impact of war, especially since the Vietnam War, but the number of casualties to be expected from even a limited tactical nuclear war would be impossible to hide (as the casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are hidden today), and the mollycoddled American viewing public would be traumatized on apprehending the magnitude and pace of the carnage.
The reactions to this fright would be varied, but in all cases they would contribute to the agitation of the public, a loss of placidity and thus an increased difficulty of social control. This triggers the primary anxiety of the ruling class. It is nearly inconceivable that US public agitation over the number of military casualties from a foreign nuclear war would rise to the same intensity as the Parisian public's agitation about starvation in 1789, but the great fear of the US ruling class would be that it had become of the same type. Today's paycheck-dependent US Americans are disunited by their fearful prejudices and diminishing expectations in an eroding economy, while the Russian people are experiencing historically significant economic growth and political stability. At what point of disaffection would the US public unite into storming its own Bastilles, at what level of unsatisfied wants -- in a population indoctrinated to be self-governed by wants -- would the US public acquire the motivational rage of a Cindy Sheehan and become the 21st century san-culotte whose pikes were now the subject of the 2nd amendment?
We should not let such florid rhetoric carry us on flights of fancy of Phil Gramm ('let them whine for cake') types arriving at their Sidney Carton moment, but neither should we underestimate the potential for outbreaks of real social unrest in the US as a consequence of losing people to a nuclear war of imperialistic hubris.
Diplomacy: Consolidating Conquest, Or Chaotic Collapse?
The imperialist imagination sees conquest as the method of consolidating power. The emperor projects a conception of order onto the world, and then seeks to subject each actual state and population into fulfilling an assigned role. Every country is a tile that fits into the grand mosaic of the imagined empire, adding its unique hue to the overall image and easing the interconnectedness of all others into a consolidated structure. Conquest is accomplished by force, bribery or inequitable alliance.
However, every tile of the world mosaic has its own conception of itself and its role in the world, so there is always opposition to empire. Most people call this freedom.
Imperialistic thinking assumes that power, the ability of superior force to hold sway, is the only dimension along which international relations operate. It ignores chaos, the ability of nature and reality to erupt with surprises, and entropy, the tendency of all structure to dissipate, as other dimensions of international relations. It is impossible to predict all possible outcomes of present situations, so it is impossible to devise perfect systems of control. While we are always free to take action, we can never be certain of all its possible consequences. Aside from our common-sense plans for managing the practicalities of our lives, the overall contingency plan that comes closest to perfection is to "go with the flow." This is zen. The only thing we can ever really control is our own behavior. Because all known previous empires have collapsed, chaos and entropy being prominent in their demise, we can anticipate a similar fate for the American empire.
The Russian economy is booming in part because Russia is a major supplier of oil and gas to Europe. Russia is also a leading supplier of military and nuclear power technology. Many people easily ascribe the various conflicts occurring in Eurasia to rivalries over the control of oil and gas fields and the routing of pipelines. China's exploding economy would love to plunge its straw -- direct trans-border pipelines -- into Iran's oil pools and drain them without interference; Iran would love China to monetize its oil bonanza, so it wants to power itself with nuclear energy to maximize its oil profits. Russia is eager to supply Iran the nuclear power technology it wants, because it is a profitable business venture, and because they want the security of controlling the fuel cycle of a close neighbor, for the purpose of nonproliferation (of nuclear weapons).
However, these logical commercial synergies fail the most important acceptance criterion of US capitalism, "what's in it for me?" The US would prefer a compliant Iran drained to its benefit, such as in the days of the Shah, it would prefer Central Asian oil to flow south through Afghanistan and east through the Caucasus, Black Sea and Turkey, and it would prefer Europe to limit its energy dependency on Russia. It is not just a matter of increasing the oil supplied to the US, it is about throttling the sources of Russia's and China's growing economic power; it is about control.
We can expect the Europeans to try soothing the neo-con fevered Bush Administration, quietly behind closed embassy doors, from working itself into a rabid lather for nuclear war with Russia, initially in the Caucasus. This will have some influence, because the failure of Europe to join in a diplomatic demonization campaign against Russia, like the earlier campaigns against Iraq, would make it more difficult for the US to proceed to war. Also, the US is mindful that were it to be seriously weakened by a unilateral nuclear war with Russia, an unscathed Europe would easily step into control of its empire. After all, this is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman did to Winston Churchill's British empire.
Also, Europe would worry that a nuclear war in the Caucasus might spread, war usually does when one side becomes desperate. If Russia were being "bombed back to the stone age" it would most certainly bomb the US bases in the Central Asian republics along its southern border. These would be legitimate military targets, and would no doubt be actively involved in the US war against Russia (why else are they there?). This would draw the Central Asian republics into the war and probably topple their ruling classes, which Russia would see as their just deserts. A similar catastrophe might happen to Poland and other Eastern European states hosting US missile systems. For Europe, the thought of the disruption of their oil supplies from Russia and Central Asia, along with the possibility of sustaining casualties from nuclear bombardment, should be enough to propel them into vigorous and sustained diplomatic action to restrain US belligerency. They will probably say all manner of nasty things about Russia, to mollify their infantile US emperor, and do as little as possible to disrupt their existing commercial arrangements with Russia.
Analogous to the situation of the US public, if Europe and American "allies" were to suffer directly and severely from the war, they might unite in revolt and then use their military forces against the US, or Russia, or both as they guessed would offer the best relief. What is that level of "direct and severe suffering" that would trigger a European military response? Good question.
There are many other possibilities for mischief once the US is embroiled in a nuclear war and inattentive to its empire. Other nations could decide it was an opportune time to settle their own scores with each other, independent of the US-Russia war. China and India fought a border war in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is believed to have erupted because the US was completely preoccupied elsewhere. One can imagine Israel finding it opportune to accelerate its liquidation of the Palestinians, expand into Lebanon, attack Iran or a variety of its neighbors, or all of these, while the US was absorbed in a nuclear war radiating from the Caucasus.
Of course, a restraining consideration here is that the US might not be capable or willing to assist and even fund Israel during the course of its own major war with Russia, unless Israel were a full-fledged partner in that war. If Israel were so blinded by its own ambition that it did join the war against Russia, then Russian arms would quickly and forcefully be turned against it, and this would almost certainly be joined by military actions from many states in the Middle East. The intelligent course for Israel would be to stay out of a US war against Russia (which will really look dirty to the US public as they see their own forces being nuked), but even then it might have to accept a diminished level of support from its great protector, and consequently a more successful opposition from its many subjects and neighbors.
Conclusion
Once the chaotic dimension of reality is realized, it becomes easy to envision any number of disastrous developments for each of the initial combatants, and even the initial bystanders. From any perspective, it is easier to imagine a negative cost-benefit ratio to this war than a positive outcome. For this reason, I think it less likely to occur. However, one must not underestimate the stupidity of imperialists, if war does break out then I think the Russians will have a clearer view of how to proceed, and this will mean painful losses for the US, its allies and enablers.
The great fallacy of the imperialistic mind is that the threat of destruction is equated with the power to control. Control is an illusion, chaos is the reality. A successful warrior dances with chaos, and success means simply that one is still alive.
Manuel Garcia, Jr. is a retired physicist who spent 15 years working on US underground nuclear tests. Time and effort have gone into understanding why nuclear weapons still exist. E-mail = mango@idiom.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/garcia09012008.html
Goose Bumps and Hula Hoops for Barack by Mona Eltahawy
Goose Bumps and Hula Hoops for Barack by Mona Eltahawy
As disreputable opponents try to ‘smear’ Barack Obama by calling him a Muslim, Muslim Americans rally to his campaign. In such a difficult time for Muslims, they think he’ll do the right thing.
more...http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1705
As disreputable opponents try to ‘smear’ Barack Obama by calling him a Muslim, Muslim Americans rally to his campaign. In such a difficult time for Muslims, they think he’ll do the right thing.
more...http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1705
Bush's Policies Must End by Patrick Seale
Bush's Policies Must End by Patrick Seale
The disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, the crises with Iran and Pakistan, and the criminal neglect of Israeli-Arab issues are the legacy of George W. Bush -- all of which must be resolved.
more...http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1702
The disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, the crises with Iran and Pakistan, and the criminal neglect of Israeli-Arab issues are the legacy of George W. Bush -- all of which must be resolved.
more...http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1702
Adding Hunger to the Middle East Crises by Rami G. Khouri
Adding Hunger to the Middle East Crises by Rami G. Khouri
The coming food crisis could exacerbate the fragmentation of Arab states and societies, unless leaders step up. Governments that abdicate responsibility for feeding their hungry could collapse and intensify Middle East problems for the region and the world.
more...http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1707
The coming food crisis could exacerbate the fragmentation of Arab states and societies, unless leaders step up. Governments that abdicate responsibility for feeding their hungry could collapse and intensify Middle East problems for the region and the world.
more...http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1707
A Provisional Iraq War Balance Sheet by Patrick Seale
It may not be too early to draw up a provisional balance sheet of the Iraq war, especially since Iraq is still likely to be at or close to the top of the next U.S. President’s headaches.
more...http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1706
more...http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1706
Can NATO Survive Georgia? by Immanuel Wallerstein
Can NATO Survive Georgia? by Immanuel Wallerstein
From its creation, NATO was a strategic U.S. tool, providing a European alliance against the USSR/Russia. Now, through U.S. “flawed thinking,” NATO is in danger of collapsing.
more...http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1708
From its creation, NATO was a strategic U.S. tool, providing a European alliance against the USSR/Russia. Now, through U.S. “flawed thinking,” NATO is in danger of collapsing.
more...http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1708
Why Iraqi 'Client' Blocked US Long-Term Presence
September 2, 2008
Why Iraqi 'Client' Blocked US Long-Term Presence
by Gareth Porter
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signaled last week that all U.S. troops – including those with non-combat functions – must be out of the country by the end of 2011 under the agreement he is negotiating with the George W. Bush administration.
That pronouncement, along with other moves indicating that the Iraqi position was hardening rather than preparing for a compromise, appeared to doom the Bush administration's plan to leave tens of thousands of military support personnel in Iraq indefinitely. The new Iraqi moves raise the obvious question of how a leader who was considered a safe U.S. client could have defied his patron on such a central U.S. strategic interest.
Maliki declared Aug. 25 that the U.S. had agreed that "no foreign soldiers will be in Iraq after 2011." A Shi'ite legislator and Maliki ally, Ali al-Adeeb, told the Washington Post that only the Iraqi government had the authority under the agreement to decide whether conditions were conducive to a complete withdrawal. He added that the Iraqi government "could ask the Americans to withdraw before 2011 if we wish."
It was also reported that Maliki has replaced his negotiating team with three of his closest advisers.
These moves blindsided the Bush administration, which had been telling reporters that a favorable agreement was close. The Washington Post reported Aug. 22 and again Aug. 26 that the agreement on withdrawal would be "conditions-based" and would allow the United States to keep tens of thousands of non-combat troops in the country after 2011.
The administration had assumed going into the negotiations that Maliki would remain a U.S. client for a few years because of the Iraqi government's dependence on the U.S. military to build a largely Shi'ite Iraqi army and police force and defeat the main insurgent threats to his regime.
But that dependence has diminished dramatically over the past two years as Iraqi security forces continued to grow, the Sunni insurgents found refuge under U.S. auspices, and the Shi'ites succeeded in largely eliminating Sunni political-military power from the Baghdad area. As a result, the inherent conflicts between U.S. interests and those of the Shi'ite regime have been become more evident.
Contrary to the administration's claims that it was helping the regime remain independent of Iran, Maliki was far closer to Tehran than to Washington from the beginning. As a team of McClatchy newspaper reporters revealed last April, the choice of Maliki as prime minister was the direct result of the mediation by Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, in the negotiations within the coalition that had won the December 2005 parliamentary election.
Washington didn't learn that Suleimani had slipped into the green zone until later, according to the McClatchy report.
Maliki has hardly hidden his opposition to U.S. ambitions to maintain a major long-term role in Iraq. One of his first moves was to propose negotiating a timetable for complete U.S. withdrawal with the Sunni insurgents. He soon clashed with U.S. officials over their determination to launch a campaign against Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Sadr had been a key political ally of Maliki, and the Mahdi Army was an important asset in a broader Shi'ite campaign to eliminate Sunni political-military power in Baghdad.
The Iraqi leader angered U.S. officials in late October 2006 by intervening to call off a U.S.-Iraqi cordon and search operation against the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. When Bush met with Maliki in Amman, Jordan on Nov. 30, 2006, to discuss a possible U.S. troop increase, he had hoped to get approval for U.S. troops to occupy Sadr City. As Michael Gordon revealed in his Aug. 31 account of Bush policymaking on the surge, however, Maliki told Bush he wanted U.S. troops to stay out of the center of the capital.
In the end, Maliki and the U.S. command reached a compromise on a carefully conditioned U.S. occupation of Sadr City. But Maliki continued to maintain ties with the Sadrists.
In 2007, Gen. David Petraeus' project to form Sunni militias, mostly from former armed resistance veterans, became a new source of tension between the Bush administration and Maliki. An associate of Maliki told Associated Press in July 2007 that he once threatened in a discussion with President Bush to counter the arming of Sunnis by arming Shi'ite militias. The Iraqi leader halted progress on political concessions to the Sunni community.
As the U.S. command turned its attention increasingly to attacking the Mahdi Army, the Bush administration began talking in June 2007 about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq, based on the "Korean model." Maliki's responded by declaring that U.S. troops should leave and turn over security to Iraqi forces.
In August, Bush publicly distanced himself from Maliki, apparently hoping he would be replaced by a more cooperative figure.
In late August, the Sadrists were fighting against both U.S. troops in Baghdad and security forces loyal to the pro-Iranian Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council in the south. With Maliki's obvious encouragement, Iran intervened to arrange the first of a series of accommodations between its Iraqi clients and Sadr. On Aug. 26, 2007 the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, asked why nothing had been done to arrange "reconciliation" between the two Iraqi groups, said Iran "always used its influence to create unity between the different groups in Iraq."
Three days later, Sadr announced a unilateral cease-fire. The main beneficiary of the cease-fire, which ended attacks on the green zone and intra-Shi'ite fighting, was the Maliki regime, and Iraqi officials credited Iranian policy for having made it happen.
The March 7 U.S. draft of the status of forces agreement (SOFA) and the U.S. military drive in Shi'ite territory brought the conflict of interests between the Maliki regime and the Bush administration to a head in 2008. In mid-March, Maliki rejected a Petraeus plan for a massive joint operation against the Sadrists in Basra, which would have increased Iraqi dependence on U.S. troops.
Instead, Maliki launched his own operation in Basra that was planned to last only a few days. Then, in a move that appears to have been prearranged with Suleimani, Iraqi officials were dispatched to Iran to get Suleimani's help in mediating a peace agreement with Sadr.
The result was a Sadrist retreat from Basra, even though Iraqi security forces had not been able to cope with the Mahdi Army resistance. That headed off a major U.S. troop presence in the Shi'ite south and strengthened Maliki's position in negotiations with Washington.
The Basra agreement set the stage for the subsequent accord between Maliki and Sadr, again reached with Iranian mediation, for a cease-fire in Sadr City on May 12. The agreement prevented the U.S. command from getting the large-scale U.S. campaign in Sadr City for which it had been pushing for more than a year.
The carefully calculating Sadr had been convinced to trade short-term military success for the prospect of a U.S. military retreat.
Maliki began pushing for "significant changes" in the SOFA only after the May agreement, but he was only returning to the position he had embraced two years earlier.
This Maliki record of opposition to U.S. political-military interests apparently failed to shake the Bush administration's belief that he would yield to U.S. demands in the end. That faith appears to reflect the official military triumphalism associated with Gen. David Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy – a residual faith in the power of the U.S. military's presence in Iraq to sweep away all local obstacles to U.S. victory.
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=13396
Why Iraqi 'Client' Blocked US Long-Term Presence
by Gareth Porter
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signaled last week that all U.S. troops – including those with non-combat functions – must be out of the country by the end of 2011 under the agreement he is negotiating with the George W. Bush administration.
That pronouncement, along with other moves indicating that the Iraqi position was hardening rather than preparing for a compromise, appeared to doom the Bush administration's plan to leave tens of thousands of military support personnel in Iraq indefinitely. The new Iraqi moves raise the obvious question of how a leader who was considered a safe U.S. client could have defied his patron on such a central U.S. strategic interest.
Maliki declared Aug. 25 that the U.S. had agreed that "no foreign soldiers will be in Iraq after 2011." A Shi'ite legislator and Maliki ally, Ali al-Adeeb, told the Washington Post that only the Iraqi government had the authority under the agreement to decide whether conditions were conducive to a complete withdrawal. He added that the Iraqi government "could ask the Americans to withdraw before 2011 if we wish."
It was also reported that Maliki has replaced his negotiating team with three of his closest advisers.
These moves blindsided the Bush administration, which had been telling reporters that a favorable agreement was close. The Washington Post reported Aug. 22 and again Aug. 26 that the agreement on withdrawal would be "conditions-based" and would allow the United States to keep tens of thousands of non-combat troops in the country after 2011.
The administration had assumed going into the negotiations that Maliki would remain a U.S. client for a few years because of the Iraqi government's dependence on the U.S. military to build a largely Shi'ite Iraqi army and police force and defeat the main insurgent threats to his regime.
But that dependence has diminished dramatically over the past two years as Iraqi security forces continued to grow, the Sunni insurgents found refuge under U.S. auspices, and the Shi'ites succeeded in largely eliminating Sunni political-military power from the Baghdad area. As a result, the inherent conflicts between U.S. interests and those of the Shi'ite regime have been become more evident.
Contrary to the administration's claims that it was helping the regime remain independent of Iran, Maliki was far closer to Tehran than to Washington from the beginning. As a team of McClatchy newspaper reporters revealed last April, the choice of Maliki as prime minister was the direct result of the mediation by Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, in the negotiations within the coalition that had won the December 2005 parliamentary election.
Washington didn't learn that Suleimani had slipped into the green zone until later, according to the McClatchy report.
Maliki has hardly hidden his opposition to U.S. ambitions to maintain a major long-term role in Iraq. One of his first moves was to propose negotiating a timetable for complete U.S. withdrawal with the Sunni insurgents. He soon clashed with U.S. officials over their determination to launch a campaign against Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Sadr had been a key political ally of Maliki, and the Mahdi Army was an important asset in a broader Shi'ite campaign to eliminate Sunni political-military power in Baghdad.
The Iraqi leader angered U.S. officials in late October 2006 by intervening to call off a U.S.-Iraqi cordon and search operation against the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. When Bush met with Maliki in Amman, Jordan on Nov. 30, 2006, to discuss a possible U.S. troop increase, he had hoped to get approval for U.S. troops to occupy Sadr City. As Michael Gordon revealed in his Aug. 31 account of Bush policymaking on the surge, however, Maliki told Bush he wanted U.S. troops to stay out of the center of the capital.
In the end, Maliki and the U.S. command reached a compromise on a carefully conditioned U.S. occupation of Sadr City. But Maliki continued to maintain ties with the Sadrists.
In 2007, Gen. David Petraeus' project to form Sunni militias, mostly from former armed resistance veterans, became a new source of tension between the Bush administration and Maliki. An associate of Maliki told Associated Press in July 2007 that he once threatened in a discussion with President Bush to counter the arming of Sunnis by arming Shi'ite militias. The Iraqi leader halted progress on political concessions to the Sunni community.
As the U.S. command turned its attention increasingly to attacking the Mahdi Army, the Bush administration began talking in June 2007 about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq, based on the "Korean model." Maliki's responded by declaring that U.S. troops should leave and turn over security to Iraqi forces.
In August, Bush publicly distanced himself from Maliki, apparently hoping he would be replaced by a more cooperative figure.
In late August, the Sadrists were fighting against both U.S. troops in Baghdad and security forces loyal to the pro-Iranian Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council in the south. With Maliki's obvious encouragement, Iran intervened to arrange the first of a series of accommodations between its Iraqi clients and Sadr. On Aug. 26, 2007 the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, asked why nothing had been done to arrange "reconciliation" between the two Iraqi groups, said Iran "always used its influence to create unity between the different groups in Iraq."
Three days later, Sadr announced a unilateral cease-fire. The main beneficiary of the cease-fire, which ended attacks on the green zone and intra-Shi'ite fighting, was the Maliki regime, and Iraqi officials credited Iranian policy for having made it happen.
The March 7 U.S. draft of the status of forces agreement (SOFA) and the U.S. military drive in Shi'ite territory brought the conflict of interests between the Maliki regime and the Bush administration to a head in 2008. In mid-March, Maliki rejected a Petraeus plan for a massive joint operation against the Sadrists in Basra, which would have increased Iraqi dependence on U.S. troops.
Instead, Maliki launched his own operation in Basra that was planned to last only a few days. Then, in a move that appears to have been prearranged with Suleimani, Iraqi officials were dispatched to Iran to get Suleimani's help in mediating a peace agreement with Sadr.
The result was a Sadrist retreat from Basra, even though Iraqi security forces had not been able to cope with the Mahdi Army resistance. That headed off a major U.S. troop presence in the Shi'ite south and strengthened Maliki's position in negotiations with Washington.
The Basra agreement set the stage for the subsequent accord between Maliki and Sadr, again reached with Iranian mediation, for a cease-fire in Sadr City on May 12. The agreement prevented the U.S. command from getting the large-scale U.S. campaign in Sadr City for which it had been pushing for more than a year.
The carefully calculating Sadr had been convinced to trade short-term military success for the prospect of a U.S. military retreat.
Maliki began pushing for "significant changes" in the SOFA only after the May agreement, but he was only returning to the position he had embraced two years earlier.
This Maliki record of opposition to U.S. political-military interests apparently failed to shake the Bush administration's belief that he would yield to U.S. demands in the end. That faith appears to reflect the official military triumphalism associated with Gen. David Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy – a residual faith in the power of the U.S. military's presence in Iraq to sweep away all local obstacles to U.S. victory.
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=13396
Sunday, August 31, 2008
OSC: Russia- Iran Alliance?
OSC: Russia- Iran Alliance?
Article from the Russian press proposing a strategic alliance between Russia and Iran.
By Juan Cole
Pundit on Possible Russia-Iran Alliance To Counter 'Unfriendly' US Moves. Continue http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20657.htm
Article from the Russian press proposing a strategic alliance between Russia and Iran.
By Juan Cole
Pundit on Possible Russia-Iran Alliance To Counter 'Unfriendly' US Moves. Continue http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20657.htm
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