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Twilight of the NPT?

tim — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:19:57 +0000

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty belongs to that venerable tradition in the Atlantic world of unequal agreements: those which—in their very texts, rather than just in their effects—give extraordinary benefits and liberties to one set of states while constraining the freedom of action and rights of others. Yet it has been remarkably successful since 1970 in attracting the adherence of the overwhelming majority of countries. Most surprisingly, the one that has benefited most from its terms—the United States—has been most vigorously attempting to undermine the npt regime over the last eight years, generating a major crisis in the efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons through international cooperation.

As Norman Dombey’s essay in this issue so vividly demonstrates, the NPT was constructed through US–Soviet negotiations in the 1960s to prevent non-weapon states from acquiring an arsenal, while leaving existing weapon states a free hand to develop and deploy—indeed, use—nuclear weapons as they saw fit. [1] Beyond a purely rhetorical commitment to negotiate disarmament, no restraints were put on them at all. By 1992, once the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—all nuclear powers—had joined, formidable instruments became available to enforce these unequal provisions. Any other country seeking to acquire nuclear weapons could now be referred for judgement before the UNSC, on the charge of posing a threat to peace under Chapter Seven of the Charter. This also allows the Permanent Five to legally bind all un member states to action—up to and including military attack—against the state in question. This threat would be particularly potent against states that had ratified the NPT, and thus submitted their nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. A weapons programme would be a direct violation of their obligations under the Treaty; thus referral to the UNSC would become a predictable institutional outcome of the NPT regime.

Policing the South

The Treaty was signed and ratified only after the Permanent Five had acquired their nuclear weapons—in the case of Britain and France, to preserve their great-power status; in the case of the Soviet Union and then China, to acquire a nuclear-deterrent capacity against the United States. The NPT was designed to lock the rest of the world into accepting the Permanent Five’s special rights. Why, in such circumstances, was the npt regime able to persist, enlarge its membership and fulfil so many of its inequitable goals, not only during the Cold War, but even after? One answer would be that most of the states who had the industrial and technological capacity to build both a nuclear bomb, and the vehicle to transmit it, were already offered protection from nuclear or conventional attack by one of the two superpowers during the Cold War.

States that persisted in their efforts to achieve nuclear-weapon status were those that faced security challenges but could not expect guaranteed protection from a superpower: Israel, in its struggle with the Arab states in the 1950s and 1960s, before the US decisively committed itself to Israeli military security; apartheid South Africa, repeatedly at war in Africa (and indeed, suffering defeats at the hands of Cuban forces in Angola in the 1970s); India, after its defeat by China in the border war of 1962; followed by Pakistan, in response to the threat from India. This explanation for the rarity of moves to circumvent or flout the NPT would also cover the cases of North Korea and Iraq. The former was neither a Russian nor a Chinese satellite, and could not rely on them for ultimate security even during the Cold War, when it faced aggression from both South Korea and the us. Iraq under the Ba’ath also faced grave military threats, not only from the Western powers but also from Israel and Iran, and could not count on superpower protection. But it had the financial resources for a nuclear-weapons programme. Conversely, the majority of states have not perceived themselves to be facing such dire military threats as to warrant the acquisition of nuclear arms. Even those with strong traditions of retaining complete autonomy over their security, such as Sweden or Brazil, have refrained from adopting such a course.

Yet absence of military threat may not fully explain the apparent achievements of the npt regime. Another element of the explanation may be that its success has been much more partial than it seems. The Treaty contains a grey zone between a state being an industrial nuclear power, in the civilian field, and being a nuclear-weapon state. It treats these two statuses as polar opposites: industrial proliferation is actually encouraged, while the cross-over to armaments is outlawed. In practice, no such gulf exists between the two: civilian nuclear power is the necessary threshold for acquiring nuclear-weapon capabilities. This has no doubt ensured that countries such as Germany and Japan—though deeply critical of aspects of the asymmetrical NPT regime—have been prepared to go along with it, for they cannot be described simply as non-weapon states. They would be better termed ‘threshold’ states, which remain within the terms of the Treaty but could, like a number of other formally non-weapon states, transform very swiftly indeed into full-fledged nuclear powers.

This grey zone is combined with the Treaty’s blinkered focus exclusively upon the industrial side of nuclear arms: it has nothing to say about delivery vehicles—that is, missile capabilities. Thus, threshold states can proceed under the terms of the Treaty to develop even intercontinental ballistic missiles without sanction. Nor does the so-called Missile Technology Control Regime serve to block them doing so. The MTCR is an informal club, established in 1987, to prevent diffusion of technology for missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads—specifically, those able to carry a payload of 500kg at least 300 kilometres. The club’s founders consisted precisely of those developed states which possessed such technologies, namely Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. The first four names are indicative: formally non-nuclear powers, but in reality threshold states with advanced missile technologies. The list of members has now grown to 34, of which 19 are in the European Union. Another 10 are US allies; Russia joined the club in 1995. Not a single country from the global South holds membership.

In short, beneath the headline picture of the npt anchoring the monopoly of nuclear-weapon states, we find a second layer of reality: a regime, including the MTCR, which has enabled a substantial number of rich countries, allied to the US, to become threshold states with advanced missile technologies. Alongside these there is a third reality: a sustained effort by the North, plus Russia, to block the possibility of states in the global South acquiring deterrence capability. This pattern is replicated by other organizations that form part of the overall counter-proliferation regime, such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group. This was created in 1975 on US initiative, in the face of India’s nuclear-weapons programme.

We are still left with two substantial puzzles: first, why have states in the global South that have bad relations with the United States still tended to adhere to the npt regime? Secondly, why has the us itself, in the post-Cold War period, shown such hostility to the rules of a regime that gives it such inordinate privileges? The most striking examples of states remaining in the npt, apparently against their own interests, are North Korea and Iran. American hostility towards them has been long-standing and deep: there is no doubt that the United States has been programmatically committed to overthrowing both regimes, even if its tactics towards each have varied across time. Yet both have continued to declare their respect for the npt and iaea. One reason lies in the enthusiasm for civilian nuclear power embedded in the foundations of the IAEA and the NPT. It is worth pointing out that when the iaea was created in the 1950s and the npt established at the end of the 1960s, few could envisage any state from the global South acquiring the indigenous know-how to construct their own civilian nuclear-power industry. North Korea and Iran have committed themselves to achieving just that and have been able to legitimate their efforts through the iaea–npt framework. Today many others have the technological and financial resources, if they wish, to follow suit. Far from precluding the emergence of threshold states in the South, the regime’s rules actually facilitate it.

Furthermore, the NPT does allow states to acquire a nuclear-deterrent capability: under Article X, if a state faces ‘extraordinary events’ that ‘have jeopardized’ its ‘supreme interests’, it may withdraw from the restraints of the Treaty with three months’ notice. This was exactly the course taken by North Korea in the face of blunt threats of pre-emptive attack—preventive war—made by the US. Pyongyang gave notice, withdrew and carried out a successful nuclear-weapon test. After the Bush Administration’s subsequent retreat, North Korea began to return to the npt regime.

Persian smokescreen

The confrontation between Iran and the US and EU over the former’s nuclear programme is paradigmatic of the current contradictions of the npt regime. Although there are some indications that Iran conducted research relevant to nuclear-weapon production between 1989 and 1993 (in a period when neighbouring Iraq did have a secret crash nuclear programme), there has been no significant evidence since then of clandestine weapon development. [2] Since the 1990s Iran has instead sought to establish civilian nuclear energy and substantial missile capacity. By pursuing both these paths, Iran could hope to become a threshold state in the same sense as Germany and Japan, and it could do so quite legally under the NPT, to which it has continued to adhere under the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, the US—supported by the EU—has been attempting to prevent Iran from exercising its legal rights to enrich uranium for civilian uses.

This campaign under Bush has been in many ways continuous with Clinton’s policy in the mid-1990s. His Administration had dubbed Iran—with which the US had no diplomatic relations—a rogue terrorist state secretly seeking ‘weapons of mass destruction’, and imposed sweeping sanctions centred on an embargo of Iranian oil. [3] Until 2002, Western Europe rejected both the embargo and Washington’s accusations against Tehran. Trade was growing between Iran and the eu, with Germany its main trading partner. By 2000 the EU was preparing the way for a trade agreement with Iran; European oil companies, including British ones, were discussing new investments. The Russian government was pursuing a similar course and had committed itself to a contract to build a nuclear-power station at Bushehr, on the Gulf coast. Iranian foreign policy was geared towards using these links as a vector to integrate the country into the international institutional and trading order.

Against this background, and in the context of American preparations to attack Iraq, Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union address denounced the Islamic Republic as part of the ‘Axis of Evil’ and claimed the right to engage in a pre-emptive war to overthrow it. This did not initially alter the eu’s course: it proceeded to sign a new commercial agreement with Iran. Following discussions with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Ahani—less than a week after the Bush speech—Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Piqué, speaking for the presidency of the eu, told a news conference in Madrid that the 15-country bloc would seek ‘maximum cooperation’ with Iran on trade, the fight against terrorism and human rights. [4]US pressure, however, soon swung the West European states towards joining its campaign to deny Iran’s right to organize the full nuclear-fuel cycle, and support Washington’s demand that Iran stop enriching uranium on its own territory. The British and French sought to justify this by parroting the charges routinely made against Iran by the Clinton and Bush Administrations, which they had themselves previously ignored. The German government, more squeamish about Bush-style big-lie propaganda, said Tehran should give up its rights as a necessary step towards easing tensions between Iran and the US.

The problem facing the US–British–French approach was that the iaea inspectorate, under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, was not prepared to participate in spreading unsubstantiated allegations. In December 2002 the Bush Administration therefore tried to whip up a melodramatic media campaign in the hope of railroading the iaea Board into taking action against Iran. The trick was to present the news that Iran had been constructing nuclear facilities in Natanz and Arak as a shocking revelation of secret and presumably illegal activity. The us published satellite images of the two sites under construction as proof. This supposedly shocking revelation was nothing of the kind. The Natanz complex was for fuel fabrication; the Arak facility was a heavy-water reactor. NPT safeguards require Iran to inform the iaea of such facilities only six months before they go into operation. The pilot plant at Natanz was not operational until early 2006 while the one in Arak is not due to start until 2014. [5] The fact that Iran did not inform the Agency of their construction until February 2003 did not constitute any breach of the NPT, and thus the inspectorate refused to treat the us exposé as evidence of this. [6]

During 2003 and 2004 the Bush Administration worked to get rid of ElBaradei and gain control of the iaea inspectorate. They tapped all his phone calls and engaged in what the Washington Post later called an ‘orchestrated campaign’ to spread anonymous accusations that he was a secret supporter of Iran, had capitulated to pressure and was deliberately concealing damning details about Iran’s programme from the Board. ‘The plan is to keep the spotlight on ElBaradei and raise the heat’, a us official said. [7] These kinds of tactics had succeeded earlier in 2002 with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a UN body based in The Hague. Its head, José Bustani, had infuriated Washington by attempting to involve the OPCW in the search for suspected chemical weapons in Iraq; the White House successfully undermined and removed him. This had caused little stir internationally because of the OPCW’s fairly low profile, but also because its members wanted to avoid being drawn into the diplomatic row leading up to the Iraq war. The aim now was to unseat ElBaradei when he came up for re-election in December 2004. The US State Department sought alternative candidates such as Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Brazilian disarmament expert Sergio Duarte and two South Korean officials. [8] Downer was not prepared to stand against ElBaradei, while the latter three represented countries under iaea investigation for suspect nuclear work.

The drive to remove ElBaradei ultimately failed because a sufficient number of states on the iaea Board continued to back him. As a result, the us was left with only a few technicalities dating back to the 1990s on which to accuse Iran: it had twice neglected to report enrichment facilities, and there were six instances of ‘failure to provide design information or updated design information’ for certain installations. [9]iaea officials did not consider these omissions to be actual breaches of the NPT, and by autumn 2005 they had in any case been cleared up. ElBaradei certified that ‘all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for and, therefore, such material is not diverted to prohibited activities.’

To put these technical violations in perspective, between 2002 and 2005 the Agency found discrepancies in the utilization of nuclear material in as many as 15 countries including Taiwan, Egypt and South Korea. In 2002 and 2003, for example, the latter refused to let inspectors visit facilities connected to its laser-enrichment programme. Subsequently, Seoul confessed to having secretly enriched uranium to a 77 per cent concentration of U-235—sufficient for weapons-grade fissile material. Neither the US nor EU suggested referring the matter to the unsc. [10] In contrast, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran has produced weapons-grade uranium. Despite intrusive inspections, no facility or plan to do so has been discovered, nor have any weapon designs surfaced. ElBaradei’s September 2005 report concluded that Iranian concealment had been effectively rectified and was no longer a significant problem. [11] With the deepening crisis in Iraq, the Bush Administration eventually split over its own confrontation with Iran: its intelligence apparatus—backed by a powerful segment of the military—sabotaged the drive against Iran within the unsc and iaea by declaring that there did not, in fact, seem to be a secret nuclear-weapon programme. For face-saving reasons, the report suggested that Iran may have had one before 2003 but had abandoned it.

Primacy and proliferation

The fate of the NPT since the end of the Cold War has been linked to that of the American drive for global primacy in the military–political field. If that drive had been successful, the Treaty would have become irrelevant and the iaea inspectorate would have been reduced to a technical and political support system for Washington. The technological core of the US effort has focused on rendering obsolete other states’ attempts to furnish themselves with a nuclear deterrent against American attack. This could be achieved through the development of anti-missile systems within the Star Wars tradition: powerful radar and precision guidance systems could enable the US to destroy missiles on launch. At the same time, the US has been attempting to develop immensely powerful bunker-buster bombs capable of destroying underground nuclear and other military facilities. The political core, meanwhile, has been the doctrine of so-called pre-emptive war, entitling the us to attack regimes that it opposes, and to do so without the support of any multilateral institution such as the IAEA or the UN. A corollary of this is that the us is also free unilaterally to decide which states it allows to acquire nuclear weapons, without bothering with the rules of the NPT regime. This, indeed, has been the premise of the long-standing us policy towards Israel and its current approach to India.

Yet the us campaign seems doomed to failure. In the first place, the technological and military–political capacities it requires do not seem within reach. This is partly the result of drawbacks inherent in anti-missile defence systems: even if the technology works it could be overwhelmed, at least in the case of large countries such as Russia and China, by the opponent’s capacity to enlarge its stock of missiles and launch sites. More importantly, hostile states also frequently possess other, non-nuclear forms of deterrence which can lead to a loss of American nerve. This is the lesson of the confrontation with both North Korea and Iran. In each case, Washington blinked. The advanced capitalist world’s acceptance of American claims to primacy over it does not seem to extend to allowing the devastation of parts of that zone itself, such as South Korea; nor to tolerating a catastrophic interruption of its main oil supplies. Even where the us succeeds in confining destruction to an excluded state such as Iraq, it lacks the capacity to produce new regimes to its own liking.

For all of these reasons, the us campaign for global primacy and its doctrine of unilateral pre-emptive attack have not constituted a persuasive counter-proliferation regime. The other side of its strategy—promoting nuclear proliferation on the part of friendly states—has also thrown up problems, as in the Israeli, Indian and Pakistani cases. When India and Pakistan demonstrated in the 1990s that they had become nuclear-weapon states, the Clinton Administration imposed sanctions on both, at least formally respecting the spirit of the NPT. Bush, however, lifted those sanctions and then went on to negotiate and sign an agreement legitimating India’s nuclear-weapon status and inaugurating cooperation in the nuclear-energy sphere. [12] This policy not only undermines the cornerstone of the non-proliferation regime and contradicts the central purpose of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, it also demonstrates America’s political weakness: the accord will leave India largely independent in the nuclear field, unlike the British, for example, whose deterrent capacity remains deeply dependent on the us.

The Bush–Singh deal would allow India to import fissile material from the us for its civilian nuclear industry while, in return, voluntarily accepting the npt safeguards regime (including the Additional Protocol), but only for its civilian industry. India would have a free hand to develop and expand its military programme, just as the us has. Indeed the deal would free Indian resources from the civilian industry for military use. [13] India has, of course, promised within the terms of the proposed deal that it will subsequently negotiate a test ban, but this can scarcely be taken seriously since the us itself has not been prepared to ratify the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty. In these circumstances India will have gained a great prize—the Bush Administration’s endorsement of it as a legitimate nuclear-weapon state—while paying nothing in return, in this domain at least. It will have succeeded in damaging both of the main pillars of the NPT regime: to prevent proliferation and to preserve the five-state nuclear-weapons cartel, possessing the untrammelled right to maintain and enhance their arsenals.

Nuclear bonanza

The Bush Administration’s record on nuclear-weapons proliferation, then, is unremittingly negative from the standpoint of its own interests and those of its allies. The priority for rich capitalist non-weapon countries is to maintain their threshold status, while blocking states in the South from gaining it by tightening controls on their development of civilian nuclear industries and missile capabilities. The most obvious way to do this would be for Northern states to try to persuade those in the South to give up the NPT right to carry out their own uranium enrichment; but few would be ready to accept such a restriction on existing prerogatives, particularly when the five-state cartel has ignored all the phraseology in and around the Treaty on taking their own arms-control, test-ban and disarmament measures. On the contrary, the us over the last eight years has been brushing aside all restraints on its own massive rearmament in nuclear, missile and other strategic weapons.

Simultaneously, the us’s efforts to turn itself into an aggressive alternative to any rule-based non-proliferation regime have proved woefully ineffective. Its bombastic rhetoric about unilateral preventive war was combined with a volte-face on North Korea and Iran. Meanwhile North Korea has been able to cross the civilian–military boundary and thereby gain the prospect of a better deal than it received from the Clinton Administration, without moving outside the international legal framework. Iran shows every sign of being able to acquire threshold status within NPT provisions. America’s readiness to trample upon the rules of the non-proliferation regime and the norms of the UN Charter resulted in a dramatic loss of diplomatic influence: Washington was not even able to unseat the Director General of the iaea and subordinate that apparatus to the us National Security Council. Its diplomacy towards India has been a spectacular example of wishful thinking and incompetence, producing a deal which does not even give Washington the kind of leverage it has over the British. In short the Bush legacy is one of lamentable failure.

The rational solution to the crisis of the non-proliferation regime would be for threshold states in the North, such as Germany and Japan, to link up with non-nuclear states in the South to demand that the weapon states adopt serious disarmament measures—above all the us but also Israel—as the basis for reviving the NPT in the post-Bush period. This, however, seems remote, not least because there is no sign of a will to submit to such pressure within the United States itself, and in such circumstances Washington’s allies tend to shut up. Moreover, the nuclear industries of the Atlantic world and, of course, Russia are looking forward to a bonanza of new business for nuclear-energy investment, especially in the South. In their competitive battles to gain contracts they are unlikely to impose new restrictions on uranium enrichment and reprocessing amongst their prospective customers. In the main zones where military–political incentives for weapons proliferation are greatest—the ‘Greater Middle East’ and East Asia—there are no indications that the United States is interested in replacing its confrontationist policies, of backing Israel in one theatre and containing China in the other, with a more cooperative approach to regional security. Thus, in this area as in so many others, the days when the United States and its Atlantic allies could credibly present themselves as a leading force on global issues seem to lie in the past.

Notes:

[1] Norman Dombey, ‘The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Aims, Limitations and Achievements’, nlr 52, July–August 2008.

[2] The Tehran Research Reactor (trr) had carried out experiments on bismuth irradiation to extract polonium, which, when combined with beryllium, may be used for nuclear-weapon construction. Iran was not, in fact, required to inform the iaea about such research. The iaea has declared there is no evidence that Iran ever imported beryllium. Experiment details were in the trr logbook, safeguarded by the iaea for 30 years.

[3] See, for example, ‘Findings’ in the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996.

[4] Suzanne Daley, ‘French Minister Calls us Policy “Simplistic”’, New York Times, 7 February 2002. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw publicly dismissed the Bush speech as designed for domestic consumption, saying it was ‘best understood by the fact that there are mid-term congressional elections in November.’ Of course, he quickly changed his tune.

[5] Siddharth Varadarajan, ‘The Persian Puzzle I: Iran and the invention of a nuclear crisis’, The Hindu, 21 September 2005.

[6] Under the IAEA’s ‘Additional Protocol’ drafted in the late 1990s, Iran would have had to inform it of plans six months before the start of construction (rather than before becoming operational). By 2002 Iran, like many others, had not yet ratified the Protocol.

[7] Varadarajan, ‘The Persian Puzzle II: What the IAEA really found in Iran’, The Hindu, 22 September 2005; Dafna Linzer, ‘iaea Leader’s Phone Tapped’, Washington Post, 12 December 2004.

[8] Linzer, ‘iaea Leader’s Phone Tapped’.

[9] Varadarajan, ‘Persian Puzzle II’. A further issue concerned import of uranium from China in 1991.

[10] Varadarajan, ‘Persian Puzzle I’.

[11] Varadarajan, ‘Persian Puzzle II’. Some of the centrifuges assembled in Natanz showed traces of enriched uranium, but inspectors concluded that these were of Pakistani origin.

[12] The Indo-us Civilian Nuclear Agreement was revealed on 18 July 2005 by Prime Minister Singh and President Bush as part of a ‘global partnership’ to promote ‘stability, democracy, prosperity and peace’.

[13] See Arms Control Association, ‘Experts Call on Congress to Take Harder Look at US–India Nuclear Deal’, 23 November 2005.

Waiting for the barbarians

tim — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:56:49 +0000

In his verse ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, Greek poet Constantine Cavafy describes a country where all public life focuses on its enemies. Citizens wait in the forum because ‘the barbarians are due’. The emperor and consuls are dressed in their finest garments to impress the barbarians when they arrive. Normal laws are suspended, and parliamentary debates cancelled during the present barbarian danger. Then the worst possible news reaches the city: ‘... the barbarians have not come. / And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer.’ The barbarians’ failure to materialise hurts more than their expected arrival – after all, ‘... what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution.’

A generation of Western politicians grew up during the Cold War, when the fear of the ‘barbarians’ of Russia and China was used as a key to international and domestic politics: all confrontations between the West and developing nations were recast as battles between freedom and communist tyranny. Anti-communism dominated home politics during the 1950s, and remained a significant force right up to the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Ideas to the left of the Democrats in US, or of social democracy in Europe, were often painted as illegitimate relations of the communist enemy. Some leading politicians seemed disorientated when the barbarians of the Soviet Union ceased to exist as a unified force. The Soviets had provided a ‘kind of solution’ to how to organise US and European government, and now they were gone.

Leaderships in the White House and Westminster have seized on the new terrorist threat as a new kind of useful barbarian, again shaping much of foreign and domestic policy into the frame provided by the ‘war on terror’. Relations with the developing world are determined according to who is on side in the battle against terrorism, and who harbours the diverse terrorist enemy. Authoritarian regimes like those of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia can be part of the coalition for freedom simply by declaring themselves against terrorism. Populations or nations that find themselves in conflict with the Western consensus – like many Iraqis, Palestinians and Iranians – are lumped together with Osama bin Laden’s small, violent network as part of the terrorist threat. Home politics are also bent towards an authoritarian, surveillance-happy ‘homeland security’, with the suspension of ordinary civil liberties and the enactment of emergency laws. The threat of the new barbarians provides a new and unhappy political ‘solution’. The theme of this book has been that, while legislators and officials are drawn to this political solution by themselves, they are also encouraged along this road by a substantial business lobby with a commercial interest in militaristic and authoritarian responses to the threat of terrorism.

The neoconservatives have a long history of building up the threat of the barbarians. In the 1970s George Bush Sr founded a group called ‘Team B’ to second-guess the CIA’s estimate of Russian weapons and intentions. This group, which included Paul Wolfowitz and other prominent neoconservatives, deliberately overestimated the scale of the Soviet military and the aggressive threat of the Russian leadership in an attempt to derail détente between East and West. From Team B developed the Committee on the Present Danger, a lobbying group which sought to keep up political pressure for a strong, interventionist US army. The Committee fought against anti-military feelings generated by the Vietnam failure, countering them by emphasising the Soviet threat. In effect the Committee on the Present Danger, led by neoconservative figures like Richard Perle, strained to keep the Cold War going. Unfortunately, these ideologues saw their present recede decisively into the past, when the Soviet bloc fell apart during the last decade of the twentieth century.

Unsurprisingly, given this past, neoconservatives like Cheney and Wolfowitz seized on the terrorist threat as a source of new barbarians. They set out an argument that would make the Islamist terrorists into an enemy around which all Western foreign policy – and a substantial amount of domestic policy – could turn. They enthusiastically embraced the idea that the terrorist menace could replace the red menace. A new ‘Committee on the Present Danger’ was formed by figures like James Woolsey to argue that the terrorist threat was not a ‘law enforcement issue’, but rather an ‘existential war’. The US leadership tried to frame all foreign policy questions in terms of the war on terror, in the same way that a previous generation of leaders had tried to squeeze all international conflicts into the frame of anti-communism.

During the Cold War, the US and British leaderships were willing to back any dictator, warlord or coup that was thought to provide protection against communism. For example, millions suffered and died while the West backed the South African regime and its vile proxies in Angola and Namibia, simply because they were seen as bulwarks against the red menace. In Southeast Asia, the Cold War was very hot, taking the form of the Vietnam War. In Central and South America it meant backing death squads against anyone – whether guerrilla or nun – who looked the least bit red. During the war on terror, all conflicts have been squeezed into the framework of the battle with Osama bin Laden – even when, as in the case of Iraq, such a connection had to be fabricated. As during the Cold War, reactionary, authoritarian and bloody regimes – Libya, Egypt, Uzbekistan – were welcomed aboard as long as they were ‘against terrorism’.

Perhaps it is not so surprising that Bush and Cheney tried to update old red-baiting strategies for the age of terror, and to use the war on terror to police domestic opposition to their policies. But Cold War nostalgia was not limited to the US. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown explicitly argued that the Cold War model should be used in the new war on terror – for example, in an article for Rupert Murdoch’s daily Sun newspaper. Brown’s apprentice in his previous post as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ed Balls, made the same point in a radio interview. Brown wanted the Cold War analogy to sound reassuring after some of Prime Minister Blair’s bellicose stands, by emphasising the ‘cultural’ nature of the conflict with communism and the use of the ‘soft’ power of influence, as well as of the ‘hard’ power of war.

Brown said that the Western confrontation with the Soviets had been ‘a battle fought through books and ideas, even music and the arts’, and a ‘battle for hearts and minds’, as well as one of military power. The cultural war against communism included the covert funding of political organizations and magazines; the imposition of loyalty pledges; the removal of ‘unsound’ people from positions of influence, from Hollywood to local schools; the harassment of labour activists and campaigners – so Brown’s evocation of ‘soft power’ offered little comfort. It underlined the fact that Brown saw himself as continuing with the policy of making into a wide-ranging ‘war’ a conflict with the lethal but thankfully relatively small threat of domestic terrorism.

Brown’s comments about the Cold War were revealing in two ways. Firstly they showed that, though one of the main actors in the war on terror, Tony Blair, had walked off the stage, his understudy Gordon Brown intended to follow a similar script. Secondly, by invoking the Cold War Brown invited us to wonder whether the problems of the Cold War were going to be repeated in the war on terror. The theme of this book has been that President Eisenhower’s warnings about the ‘military–industrial complex’ can be restated for the war on terror: in short, there is a new ‘security–industrial complex’ made up of a circle of businessmen and politicians with a vested interest in responding to the terrorist threat with ever more aggressive, broad, expensive and counterproductive overreactions on the domestic and international fronts. Eisenhower’s warning came from the old Cold War years, but Brown’s attempted revival of one aspect of that conflict showed that the old warning could not, unfortunately, be treated as a mere historical curiosity.

One battle over Iraq, in 2007, affords a clear sense of how closely the British and US political leaderships were intertwined with business interests in the war on terror. The battle was not fought in the streets of Baghdad, but in the courts of Washington, D.C. Rival security companies launched legal actions and political lobbying campaigns to wrestle the most significant private military deal in the Iraq theatre – the ‘Reconstruction Support Services’ contract – out of the hands of Aegis, the British paramilitary company run by Tim Spicer.

This $280 million-a-year contract was at that point one of the most complete military privatisations ever. The deal put a private company in charge of mobile armed units, called Security Escort Teams, guarding the most important political figures. The contract also demanded that the company create and run ‘Reconstruction Operations Centres’ in Iraq, which would be in charge of all other private security companies in the country. These centres would manage military intelligence for the contractors, which they would also provide to the US army. Clauses in the contract said that the private company must have analysts with ‘NATO equivalent SECRET clearance’, who will conduct ‘analysis of foreign intelligence services, terrorist organizations, and their surrogates targeting Department of Defense personnel, resources and facilities’.

The contract places the contractor in charge of the most delicate military intelligence. After gathering this intelligence, the company is supposed to use its analysis both to assist the US army in its battle with the insurgency and to help direct the other security firms – keeping them out of harms way in the dangerous Iraqi ‘red zone’. Aegis itself codenamed this contract ‘Project Matrix’. The company told the Washington Post that its teams would go into Iraqi towns and cities and report back to the US – to ‘provide “ground truth” to the Army Corps’ – and help guide other contractors with ‘threat assessments for the people that travel the battlespace’.

Aegis worked hard to keep this lucrative contract. Spicer took great pains to build relations with the US state, hiring Kristi Clemens to run Aegis’s Washington office. Clemens had the right background to lobby for her new employer in the US. Clemens had previously been a spokesperson for Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq. She later became a Republican political appointee in the US Department of Homeland Security, but left that job after being accused of distorting public statements about terrorism to help get Bush re-elected.

Spicer also hired Robert MacFarlane as an Aegis director. MacFarlane had worked for Ronald Reagan, helping run the Iran–Contra operation. McFarlane was central the plot, which involved selling arms to Iran in return for hostage releases, while using the profits to pay for the ‘secret’ US backing of the Contras in their war against Nicaragua’s government. MacFarlane had been found guilty of misleading Congress in the affair, and had tried to kill himself with an overdose of Valium. He was later pardoned by President Bush Sr. A number of veterans of the Iran–Contra affair turned up in the administration of the younger President Bush, so MacFarlane was a useful contact. The advantage to Iraqis of these legal battles and struggles for influence is less obvious.

Spicer’s new links with the US security establishment did not guarantee that the company would be able to retain its grip on this slice of business. The contract was so central to the new military privatisation that other leading companies tried to take over, keen for their staff to be in charge of the ‘battlespace’ and the delivery of ‘ground truths’ in Iraq. When the contract came up for renewal in 2007, this jewel in the crown of military privatization attracted multiple bids. Two of the companies rejected from the bidding – the US firm Blackwater and the Anglo-South African Erinys – immediately launched court actions, demanding to be reconsidered. One of the consequences of privatisation was that the new wings of the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq now devoted valuable time and resources to fighting each other in court. Links with the political establishment – the British establishment as much as that of the American – were clearly prized by the security companies.

Two British firms were allowed to bid for this US security contract: Spicer’s Aegis and the Armor Group. Aegis had hired a prominent British politician – former Conservative defence minister (and grandson of Winston Churchill), Nicholas Soames. The Armor Group’s chairman was former Conservative defence secretary, Malcolm Rifkind. Rifkind had been Soames’s boss in the last Conservative administration, but now the two MPs were rivals in the battle for Iraqi security cash. The fact that the military companies were so keen to employ former ministers meant that any current or future politician knew that they could look forward to a lucrative career in the new security industry. The ‘revolving door’ between politicians and the security business provided the basis for the new security–industrial complex. It created a financial incentive for politicians to press forward with the subcontracting of state security services. In turn, the security industry had a vested interest in persuading politicians that new military interventions or extended police powers were feasible, and even positive ventures.

This game of musical chairs between positions of political influence and the boardrooms of the security industry is now well documented. Former Conservative leader Michael Howard sits alongside former CIA director William Webster on the advisory board of Diligence, a private intelligence company set up by former MI5 and CIA agents. The traffic of personnel between the new security industry and the leadership of Britain’s political parties affected both the Labour government and opposition. Prime Minister Gordon Brown made several ministerial appointments from outside his own party, announcing that he wanted a government ‘of all the talents’.

One such talent was the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West. While Sir Alan had never been talented enough actually to be elected, he did have his admirers. After resigning from the navy, Sir Alan had become a paid adviser to a company called QinetiQ, which had been formed out of Britain’s military laboratories, which had themselves been sold to US-led private investors. QinetiQ’s workshops once housed the historical counterparts of ‘Q’ – the gadget man who supplies James Bond with his spy kit. The newly commercialised boffins knew which way the market was moving, and the firm set up a ‘rapidly expanding security business’ to deal with ‘homeland security’ issues. The company sells surveillance systems, ‘data mining’ programmes to identify ‘dangerous passengers’, scanning machines designed to identify dangerous weapons, and other high-tech security products.

Shortly after Brown appointed the ex-QinetiQ man, the leader of the Conservative opposition, David Cameron, made Dame Pauline Neville-Jones his own senior security advisor. She had formerly been the head of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee, but in her retirement from public life had been chairwoman of QinetiQ for three years. So the security advisers to both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition had worked for the same security-focused company. The government could approach the terrorist threat politically or technically: it could aim to reduce the terrorist danger by trying to bring enough disaffected people into the political consensus, to isolate the hard core, violent minority; but it could also look to expensive computerized security systems as a way of trying to identify terrorist groups. The strong presence of security industry veterans in the political process makes the latter strategy more likely.

The nexus of links between the political class and the new security industry can both make company employees into ministers and ministers into company employees. Lord George Robertson – previously Labour defence secretary and then head of NATO – now works for Englefield Capital, a banking firm that owns GSL, which itself operates the private prisons, immigration detention centres and secure transport that form the backbone of the private security industry. The post-ministerial career of former home secretary, David Blunkett, includes a job advising Entrust, a Texas-based security firm bidding for work on Britain’s identity card. Former Labour cabinet minister Lord Barnett runs Atos Origin, a French-owned company also bidding for work on the identity card.

The US and British states have taken on new powers to fight the war on terror, and then promptly delegated these powers to a new and growing corporate sector. discontent over individual parts of the war on terror has not yet been enough to substantially shift British or US policy. One of the many reasons that the transatlantic leadership continues to reach for militaristic and authoritarian solutions to current crises is that there is now a substantial commercial lobby beckoning them in this direction. The first step towards unravelling the influence of the security–industrial complex is the recognition that it exists. I hope this book goes a little way towards making that possible.
Footnote

War on Terror, Inc: Corporate Profiteering from the Politics of Fear, by Solomon Hughes, is published by Verso, price £16.99

War in the Caucasus and The Battle for Oil

tim — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:41:25 +0000

Part 1, August 2008

War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation?

During the night of August 7, coinciding with the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Georgia’s president Saakashvili ordered an all-out military attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia.

The aerial bombardments and ground attacks were largely directed against civilian targets including residential areas, hospitals and the university. The provincial capital Tskhinvali was destroyed. The attacks resulted in some 1500 civilian deaths, according to both Russian and Western sources. “The air and artillery bombardment left the provincial capital without water, food, electricity and gas. Horrified civilians crawled out of the basements into the streets as fighting eased, looking for supplies.” (AP, August 9, 2008). According to reports, some 34,000 people from South Ossetia have fled to Russia. (Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, August 10, 2008)

The importance and timing of this military operation must be carefully analyzed. It has far-reaching implications.

Georgia is an outpost of US and NATO forces, on the immediate border of the Russian Federation and within proximity of the Middle East Central Asian war theater. South Ossetia is also at the crossroads of strategic oil and gas pipeline routes.

Georgia does not act militarily without the assent of Washington. The Georgian head of State is a US proxy and Georgia is a de facto US protectorate.

Who is behind this military agenda? What interests are being served? What is the purpose of the military operation.

There is evidence that the attacks were carefully coordinated by the US military and NATO.

Moscow has accused NATO of “encouraging Georgia”. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov underscored the destabilizing impacts of “foreign” military aid to Georgia: .

“It all confirms our numerous warnings addressed to the international community that it is necessary to pay attention to massive arms purchasing by Georgia during several years. Now we see how these arms and Georgian special troops who had been trained by foreign specialists are used,” he said.(Moscow accuses NATO of having “encouraged Georgia” to attack South Ossetia, Russia Today, August 9, 2008)

Moscow’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, sent an official note to the representatives of all NATO member countries:

“Russia has already begun consultations with the ambassadors of the NATO countries and consultations with NATO military representatives will be held tomorrow,” Rogozin said. “We will caution them against continuing to further support of Saakashvili.”

“It is an undisguised aggression accompanied by a mass propaganda war,” he said.

(See Moscow accuses NATO of having “encouraged Georgia” to attack South Ossetia, Russia Today, August 9, 2008)

According to Rogozin, Georgia had initially planned to:

“start military action against Abkhazia, however, ‘the Abkhaz fortified region turned out to be unassailable for Georgian armed formations, therefore a different tactic was chosen aimed against South Ossetia’, which is more accessible territorially. The envoy has no doubts that Mikheil Saakashvili had agreed his actions with “sponsors”, “those with whom he is negotiating Georgia’s accession to NATO “. (RIA Novosti, August 8, 2008)

Contrary to what was conveyed by Western media reports, the attacks were anticipated by Moscow. The attacks were timed to coincide with the opening of the Olympics, largely with a view to avoiding frontpage media coverage of the Georgian military operation.

On August 7, Russian forces were in an advanced state readiness. The counterattack was swiftly carried out.

Russian paratroopers were sent in from Russia’s Ivanovo, Moscow and Pskov airborne divisions. Tanks, armored vehicles and several thousand ground troops have been deployed. Russian air strikes have largely targeted military facilities inside Georgia including the Gori military base.

The Georgian military attack was repelled with a massive show of strength on the part of the Russian military.

Act of Provocation?

US-NATO military and intelligence planners invariably examine various “scenarios” of a proposed military operation— i.e. in this case, a limited Georgian attack largely directed against civilian targets, with a view to inflicting civilian casualties.

The examination of scenarios is a routine practice. With limited military capabilities, a Georgian victory and occupation of Tskhinvali, was an impossibility from the outset. And this was known and understood to US-NATO military planners.

A humanitarian disaster rather than a military victory was an integral part of the scenario. The objective was to destroy the provincial capital, while also inflicting a significant loss of human life.

If the objective were to restore Georgian political control over the provincial government, the operation would have been undertaken in a very different fashion, with Special Forces occupying key public buildings, communications networks and provincial institutions, rather than waging an all out bombing raid on residential areas, hospitals, not to mention Tskhinvali’s University.

The Russian response was entirely predictable.

Georgia was “encouraged” by NATO and the US. Both Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels were acutely aware of what would happen in the case of a Russian counterattack.

The question is: was this a deliberate provocation intended to trigger a Russian military response and suck the Russians into a broader military confrontation with Georgia (and allied forces) which could potentially escalate into an all out war?

Georgia has the third largest contingent of coalition forces in Iraq after the US and the UK, with some 2000 troops. According to reports, Georgian troops in Iraq are now being repatriated in US military planes, to fight Russian forces. (See Debka.com, August 10, 2008)

This US decision to repatriate Georgian servicemen suggests that Washington is intent upon an escalation of the conflict, where Georgian troops are to be used as cannon fodder against a massive deployment of Russian forces.

US-NATO and Israel Involved in the Planning of the Attacks

In mid-July, Georgian and U.S. troops held a joint military exercise entitled “Immediate Response” involving respectively 1,200 US and 800 Georgian troops.

The announcement by the Georgian Ministry of Defense on July 12 stated that they US and Georgian troops were to “train for three weeks at the Vaziani military base” near the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. (AP, July 15, 2008). These exercises, which were completed barely a week before the August 7 attacks, were an obvious dress rehearsal of a military operation, which, in all likelihood, had been planned in close cooperation with the Pentagon.

The war on Southern Ossetia was not meant to be won, leading to the restoration of Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia. It was intended to destabilize the region while also triggering a US-NATO confrontation with Russia.

On July 12, coinciding with the outset of the Georgia-US war games, the Russian Defense Ministry started its own military maneuvers in the North Caucasus region. The usual disclaimer by both Tblisi and Moscow: the military exercises have “nothing to do” with the situation in South Ossetia. (Ibid)

Let us be under no illusions. This is not a civil war. The attacks are an integral part of the broader Middle East Central Asian war, including US-NATO-Israeli war preparations in relation to Iran.

The Role of Israeli Military Advisers

While NATO and US military advisers did not partake in the military operation per se, they were actively involved in the planning and logistics of the attacks. According to Israeli sources (Debka.com, August 8, 2008), the ground assault on August 7-8, using tanks and artillery was “aided by Israeli military advisers”. Israel also supplied Georgia with Hermes-450 and Skylark unmanned aerial vehicles, which were used in the weeks leading up to the August 7 attacks.

Georgia has also acquired, according to a report in Rezonansi (August 6, in Georgian, BBC translation) “some powerful weapons through the upgrade of Su-25 planes and artillery systems in Israel”. According to Haaretz (August 10, 2008), Israelis are active in military manufacturing and security consulting in Georgia.

Russian forces are now directly fighting a NATO-US trained Georgian army integrated by US and Israeli advisers. And Russian warplanes have attacked the military jet factory on the outskirts of Tbilisi, which produces the upgraded Su-25 fighter jet, with technical support from Israel. (CTV.ca, August 10, 2008)

When viewed in the broader context of the Middle East war, the crisis in Southern Ossetia could lead to escalation, including a direct confrontation between Russian and NATO forces. If this were to occur, we would be facing the most serious crisis in US-Russian relations since the Cuban Missile crisis in October 1962.

Georgia: NATO-US Outpost

Georgia is part of a NATO military alliance (GUAM) signed in April 1999 at the very outset of the war on Yugoslavia. It also has a bilateral military cooperation agreement with the US. These underlying military agreements have served to protect Anglo-American oil interests in the Caspian sea basin as well as pipeline routes.

Both the US and NATO have a military presence in Georgia and are working closely with the Georgian Armed Forces. Since the signing of the 1999 GUAM agreement, Georgia has been the recipient of extensive US military aid.

Barely a few months ago, in early May, the Russian Ministry of Defense accused Washington, “claiming that [US as well as NATO and Israeli] military assistance to Georgia is destabilizing the region.” (Russia Claims Georgia in Arms Buildup, Wired News, May 19, 2008). According to the Russian Defense Ministry

“Georgia has received 206 tanks, of which 175 units were supplied by NATO states, 186 armored vehicles (126 – from NATO) , 79 guns (67 – from NATO) , 25 helicopters (12 – from NATO) , 70 mortars, ten surface-to-air missile systems, eight Israeli-made unmanned aircraft, and other weapons. In addition, NATO countries have supplied four combat aircraft to Georgia. The Russian Defense Ministry said there were plans to deliver to Georgia 145 armored vehicles, 262 guns and mortars, 14 combat aircraft including four Mirazh-2000 destroyers, 25 combat helicopters, 15 American Black Hawk aircraft, six surface-to-air missile systems and other arms.” (Interfax News Agency, Moscow, in Russian, Aug 7, 2008)

NATO-US-Israeli assistance under formal military cooperation agreements involves a steady flow of advanced military equipment as well as training and consulting services.

According to US military sources (spokesman for US European Command), the US has more than 100 “military trainers” in Georgia. A Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman “said there were no plans to redeploy the estimated 130 US troops and civilian contractors, who he said were stationed in the area around Tblisi” (AFP, 9 August 2008). In fact, US-NATO military presence in Georgia is on a larger scale to that acknowledged in official statements. The number of NATO personnel in Georgia acting as trainers and military advisers has not been confirmed.

Although not officially a member of NATO, Georgia’s military is full integrated into NATO procedures. In 2005, Georgian president proudly announced the inauguration of the first military base, which “fully meets NATO standards”. Immediately following the inauguration of the Senakskaya base in west Georgia, Tblisi announced the opening of a second military base at Gori which would also “comply with NATO regulations in terms of military requirements as well as social conditions.” (Ria Novosti, 26 May 2006).

The Gori base has been used to train Georgian troops dispatched to fight under US command in the Iraq war theater.

It is worth noting that under a March 31, 2006, agreement between Tblisi and Moscow, Russia’s two Soviet-era military bases in Georgia – Akhalkalaki and Batumi have been closed down. (Ibid) The pullout at Batumi commenced in May of last year, 2007. The last remaining Russian troops left the Batumi military facility in early July 2008, barely a week before the commencement of the US-Georgia war games and barely a month prior to the attacks on South Ossetia.

The Israel Connection

Israel is now part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Israel is a partner in the Baku-Tblisi- Ceyhan pipeline which brings oil and gas to the Eastern Mediterranean. More than 20 percent of Israeli oil is imported from Azerbaijan, of which a large share transits through the BTC pipeline. Controlled by British Petroleum, the BTC pipeline has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Caucusus:

“[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region’s countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel, “ (Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006)

While the official reports state that the BTC pipeline will “channel oil to Western markets”, what is rarely acknowledged is that part of the oil from the Caspian sea would be directly channeled towards Israel, via Georgia. In this regard, a Israeli-Turkish pipeline project has also been envisaged which would link Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon and from there through Israel’s main pipeline system, to the Red Sea.

The objective of Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for its own consumption needs but also to play a key role in re-exporting Caspian sea oil back to the Asian markets through the Red Sea port of Eilat. The strategic implications of this re-routing of Caspian sea oil are far-reaching. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, July 2006)

What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel’s Tipline, from Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon.

“Turkey and Israel are negotiating the construction of a multi-million-dollar energy and water project that will transport water, electricity, natural gas and oil by pipelines to Israel, with the oil to be sent onward from Israel to the Far East,

The new Turkish-Israeli proposal under discussion would see the transfer of water, electricity, natural gas and oil to Israel via four underwater pipelines.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961328841&pagename=JPost%...

“Baku oil can be transported to Ashkelon via this new pipeline and to India and the Far East.[via the Red sea]”

“Ceyhan and the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon are situated only 400 km apart. Oil can be transported to the city in tankers or via specially constructed under-water pipeline. From Ashkelon the oil can be pumped through already existing pipeline to the port of Eilat at the Red Sea; and from there it can be transported to India and other Asian countries in tankers. (REGNUM)

In this regard, Israel is slated to play a major strategic role in “protecting” the Eastern Mediterranean transport and pipeline corridors out of Ceyhan. Concurrently, it also involved in channeling military aid and training to both Georgia and Azerbaijan.

A far-reaching 1999 bilateral military cooperation agreement between Tblisi and Tel Aviv was reached barely a month before the NATO sponsored GUUAM agreement. It was signed in Tbilisi by President Shevardnadze and Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyu. These various military cooperation arrangements are ultimately intended to undermine Russia’s presence and influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

In a pro forma declaration, Tel Aviv committed itself, following bilateral discussions with Moscow, on August 5, 2008, to cut back military assistance to Georgia.

Russia’s Response

In response to the attacks, Russian forces intervened with conventional ground troops. Tanks and armored vehicles were sent in. The Russian air force was also involved in aerial counter-attacks on Georgian military positions including the military base of Gori.

The Western media has portrayed the Russian as solely responsible for the deaths of civilians, yet at the same time the Western media has acknowledged (confirmed by the BBC) that most of the civilian casualties at the outset were the result of the Georgian ground and air attacks.

Based on Russian and Western sources, the initial death toll in South Ossetia was at least 1,400 (BBC) mostly civilians. “Georgian casualty figures ranged from 82 dead, including 37 civilians, to a figure of around 130 dead…. A Russian air strike on Gori, a Georgian town near South Ossetia, left 60 people dead, many of them civilians, Georgia says.” (BBC, August 9, 2008). Russian sources place the number of civilian deaths on South Ossetia at 2000.

A process of escalation and confrontation between Russia and America is unfolding, reminiscent of the Cold War era.

Are we dealing with an act of provocation, with a view to triggering a broader conflict? Supported by media propaganda, the Western military alliance is intent on using this incident to confront Russia, as evidenced by recent NATO statements.

Part 2, July 2006

The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil

Is there a relationship between the bombing of Lebanon and the inauguration of the World’s largest strategic pipeline, which will channel more than a million barrels of oil a day to Western markets?

Virtually unnoticed, the inauguration of the Ceyhan-Tblisi-Baku (BTC) oil pipeline, which links the Caspian sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, took place on the 13th of July, at the very outset of the Israeli sponsored bombings of Lebanon.

One day before the Israeli air strikes, the main partners and shareholders of the BTC pipeline project, including several heads of State and oil company executives were in attendance at the port of Ceyhan. They were then rushed off for an inauguration reception in Istanbul, hosted by Turkey’s President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in the plush surroundings of the Çýraðan Palace.

Also in attendance was British Petroleum’s (BP) CEO, Lord Browne together with senior government officials from Britain, the US and Israel. BP leads the BTC pipeline consortium. Other major Western shareholders include Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, France’s Total and Italy’s ENI. (see Annex)

Israel’s Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was present at the venue together with a delegation of top Israeli oil officials.

The BTC pipeline totally bypasses the territory of the Russian Federation. It transits through the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia, both of which have become US “protectorates”, firmly integrated into a military alliance with the US and NATO. Moreover, both Azerbaijan and Georgia have longstanding military cooperation agreements with Israel.

srael has a stake in the Azeri oil fields, from which it imports some twenty percent of its oil. The opening of the pipeline will substantially enhance Israeli oil imports from the Caspian sea basin.

But there is another dimension which directly relates to the war on Lebanon. Whereas Russia has been weakened, Israel is slated to play a major strategic role in “protecting” the Eastern Mediterranean transport and pipeline corridors out of Ceyhan.

Militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean

The bombing of Lebanon is part of a carefully planned and coordinated military road map. The extension of the war into Syria and Iran has already been contemplated by US and Israeli military planners. This broader military agenda is intimately related to strategic oil and oil pipelines. It is supported by the Western oil giants which control the pipeline corridors. In the context of the war on Lebanon, it seeks Israeli territorial control over the East Mediterranean coastline.

In this context, the BTC pipeline dominated by British Petroleum, has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean, which is now linked, through an energy corridor, to the Caspian sea basin:

Israel is now part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and Central Asia.

While the official reports state that the BTC pipeline will “channel oil to Western markets”, what is rarely acknowledged is that part of the oil from the Caspian sea would be directly channeled towards Israel. In this regard, an underwater Israeli-Turkish pipeline project has been envisaged which would link Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon and from there through Israel’s main pipeline system, to the Red Sea.

What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel’s Tipline, from Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon. In April 2006, Israel and Turkey announced plans for four underwater pipelines, which would bypass Syrian and Lebanese territory.

The new Turkish-Israeli proposal under discussion would see the transfer of water, electricity, natural gas and oil to Israel via four underwater pipelines.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1145961328841&pagename=JPost%...

“Baku oil can be transported to Ashkelon via this new pipeline and to India and the Far East.[via the Red sea]”

Water for Israel

Also involved in this project is a pipeline to bring water to Israel, pumping water from upstream resources of the Tigris and Euphrates river system in Anatolia. This has been a long-run strategic objective of Israel to the detriment of Syria and Iraq. Israel’s agenda with regard to water is supported by the military cooperation agreement between Tel Aviv and Ankara.

The Strategic Re-routing of Central Asian Oil

Diverting Central Asian oil and gas to the Eastern Mediterranean (under Israeli military protection), for re-export back to Asia, serves to undermine the inter-Asian energy market, which is based on the development of direct pipeline corridors linking Central Asia and Russia to South Asia, China and the Far East.

Ultimately, this design is intended to weaken Russia’s role in Central Asia and cut off China from Central Asian oil resources. It is also intended to isolate Iran.

Meanwhile, Israel has emerged as a new powerful player in the global energy market.

Russia’s Military Presence in the Middle East

Meanwhile, Moscow has responded to the US-Israeli-Turkish design to militarize the East Mediterranean coastline with plans to establish a Russian naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus:

“Defense Ministry sources point out that a naval base in Tartus will enable Russia to solidify its positions in the Middle East and ensure security of Syria. Moscow intends to deploy an air defense system around the base – to provide air cover for the base itself and a substantial part of Syrian territory. (S-300PMU-2 Favorit systems will not be turned over to the Syrians. They will be manned and serviced by Russian personnel.)

(Kommerzant, 2 June 2006, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=IVA20060…

Tartus is strategically located within 30 km. of the Lebanese border.

Moreover, Moscow and Damascus have reached an agreement on the modernization of Syria’s air defenses as well as a program in support to its ground forces, the modernization of its MIG-29 fighters as well as its submarines. (Kommerzant, 2 June 2006). In the context of an escalating conflict, these developments have farreaching implications.

War and Oil Pipelines

Prior to the bombing of Lebanon, Israel and Turkey had announced the underwater pipeline routes, which bypassed Syria and Lebanon. These underwater pipeline routes do not overtly encroach on the territorial sovereignty of Lebanon and Syria.

On the other hand, the development of alternative land based corridors (for oil and water) through Lebanon and Syria would require Israeli-Turkish territorial control over the Eastern Mediterranean coastline through Lebanon and Syria.

The implementation of a land-based corridor, as opposed to the underwater pipeline project, would require the militarisation of the East Mediterranean coastline, extending from the port of Ceyhan across Syria and Lebanon to the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Is this not one of the hidden objectives of the war on Lebanon? Open up a space which enables Israel to control a vast territory extending from the Lebanese border through Syria to Turkey.

It is worth noting that the US War Academy had already contemplated the formation of a “Greater Lebanon” which would extend along the coastline from Israel to Turkey. In this scenario, the entire Syrian coastline would be annexed to an Anglo-American Israeli protectorate.(See Map of The New Middle East below).

Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert has stated that the Israeli offensive against Lebanon would “last a very long time”. Meanwhile, the US has speeded up weapons shipments to Israel.

There are strategic objectives underlying the “Long War” which are tied to oil and oil pipelines.

The air campaign against Lebanon is inextricably related to US-Israeli strategic objectives in the broader Middle East including Syria and Iran. In recent developments, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice stated that the main purpose of her mission to the Middle East was not to push for a ceasefire in Lebanon, but rather to isolate Syria and Iran. (Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2006)

At this particular juncture, the replenishing of Israeli stockpiles of US produced WMDs points to an escalation of the war both within and beyond the borders of Lebanon.

Homeland Insecurity

tim — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:33:51 +0000

In another bizarre twist to Washington’s often illegal, irrational ‘war on terror,’ peaceful, lawful human rights campaigners are now apparently being refused entry to the US — without any right of appeal.

Noordin Mengal, a British citizen and Baluch human rights defender, was detained and deported by US immigration when he arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport from Dubai last week.

Mengal is the grandson of the veteran Baluch national leaders Sardar Attaullah Mengal and Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri. He is a representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council on behalf of Interfaith International and is a member of the lawful, non-violent Baluchistan National Party (BNP).

Baluchistan was invaded and annexed by Pakistan in 1948. It has been under military occupation ever since.

Washington’s ally in the so-called war on terror, the Pakistani President and long-time dictator Pervez Musharraf, has been waging a savage war against the people of Baluchistan,

This has included indiscriminately bombing civilian areas using US-supplied fighter aircraft and attack helicopters.

Unlike Musharraf, some of whose army and intelligence services are protecting the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, the BNP is peaceful, democratic and secular. Its members ought to be supported, not harassed, by the US.

But the ignorant, simple-minded Bush regime doesn’t like human rights defenders who challenge its foreign allies and stooges. In particular, it is fearful of campaigners who expose US complicity with dictators and with the perpetration of crimes against humanity. Presumably, this is why Mengal was stopped and sent back? There is no other explanation, since all his papers were in order and all his humanitarian campaigning is non-violent and constitutional.

Mengal has never been arrested in the past and has never been convicted or charged by any government. He has never been accused of any offence and has no charges pending against him. Does the US government care? Apparently not. It seems to ignore the US constitution when it suits it to do so.

After being held in custody in appalling conditions for over 26 hours by the Department of Homeland Security, Mengal was refused entry to the US and deported. No reasons given. No right of appeal. This is Bush-style democracy (sic) in action.

Apart from humiliating and inconveniencing Mengal, does this matter to the rest of us? Yes. It is further evidence of the corrosion of the rule of law and human rights by a US administration that is making major blunders in its bid to protect the country from terrorist attack.

Mengal’s mistreatment by the US authorities is worth telling in some detail because it highlights the lawless abuses and shamelful ignorance that often characterises President Bush’s foreign and domestic policies.

On his arrival at Newark at 6.30pm on 23 June, Mengal was detained and interrogated by officers of the Customs and Border Protection Enforcement section of the Department of Homeland Security. Mengal was questioned about the situation in Baluchistan and his human rights activities. Although he cooperated fully and gave a truthful account, he was subsequently told that he would not be granted entry to the United States and was, in effect, deported.

Under the US visa waiver programme, however, law-abiding British nationals are exempted from formal visa procedures and can freely visit the US for a maximum stay of up to three months on each entry.

Mengal asked an officer if he could call an official at the British embassy. The official confirmed his right to do so, but told him it would only be possible just prior to his departure. In the end, this assurance was voided. Moreover, Mengal was denied access to a telephone to contact his family and no one from the US government informed Mengal’s family of what was happening to him.

According to Mengal, at the wholly unreasonable hour of 2am the next morning he was re-interrogated. At one point he was asked if he would like to phone someone within the US, as he was not allowed to call internationally. But then he was told it was too late in the night and he would have to wait until later in the morning. But this offer to later phone a US contact never materialised.

A transcript of his interrogation was supposed to be given to him but wasn’t. It was eventually sent to him after he left the US, but it was doctored to falsely allege that he had declined offers to contact a lawyer and the British embassy.

A little later Mengal was informed that he would be given a place to rest, but was made to sit on a chair for nearly 10 hours, during which time he was repeatedly told that he would soon be taken to another facility.

At approximately 6am on 24 June he was belatedly given a thermoplastic blanket (disposable emergency sheet made of yellow polythene with a cellulose matting insulation) to keep warm.

At around 11 am, officers moved Mengal to another facility. The authorities shackled him like a common criminal, locking his handcuffs to a heavy chain looped around his waist, and led him through the airport lounge to an armoured detention vehicle.

Mengal was driven to the Elizabeth detention facility in New Jersey, where he was placed in a cell with a solid steel door. He estimates he was there for over five hours.

On questioning the detention officer regarding his status, Mengal was told that he was not a criminal, nor an offender. Mengal asked the officer if a British citizen had ever been detained at this facility. The officer replied: “Never.”

In the evening of 24 June, Mengal was once again restrained with fetters and manacles and transported back to the airport. He asked officers of the Department of the Homeland Security if he had the right to call a lawyer. He was told he was not now entitled to one and could only have done so on the day of his arrival. On the day of his arrival, however, he was not informed of any of his rights, nor was he allowed to contact anyone.

At 8pm, Mengal was interrogated again by officials from US Immigration and Customs enforcement. They disparaged and dismissed his human rights work. He was made to feel like an enemy of the US.

Shortly before he was put on a Qatar Airways flight at about 9pm, Mengal was told he was being sent back to Dubai and that if he returned to the US, even having attained a visa, there was still a possibility he would be denied entry.

With typical US government double-speak, Mengal was informed that he was not being deported, but rather was regarded as “inadmissible.” At no point was he ever told why he was refused admission to the US. Even now, he doesn’t know why.

Throughout his detention, Mengal was denied the right to contact an official from the British embassy. Isn’t this a violation of the Vienna Convention? Are not detained foreign nationals supposed to have the right to contact their diplomatic representatives?

It seems like the Department of Homeland Security can’t tell the difference between a terrorist and an anti-terrorist, democratic, secular, peaceful Baluch human rights defender. In which case, the war on terror is bound to fail. The US government’s clumsy, ignorant victimisation of another innocent person — Mengal isn’t the first and he won’t be the last — helps explain why so many people hate America. This is a nation that professes a love of liberty yet often acts like a tin-pot tyranny.

Iraq task, Iran risk

tim — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:27:43 +0000

The architects of the “war on terror” in the George W Bush administration will soon be leaving office. But the four months until the United States presidential election on 4 November 2008 could be momentous. In Iraq and Iran, what happens in the next four months – or does not happen – will shape events in the next four years and even beyond (see “Washington’s choice: subdue Iran, secure Iraq”, 12 June 2008).

The current level of conflict in Iraq is lower than for most of the period since the start of the war in March-April 2003, but it continues at a substantial level. The United States military’s losses have also been on a declining trend [1], but it still lost twenty-nine people in June 2008, an increase from nineteen in May. But this is far from the only index [2] of the fragility of the current security environment, as two recent incidents and one longer-term factor show.

The first incident is a US military raid on 27 June 2008 on the town of Janaja in southern Iraq that killed a civilian reported to be a relative of Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. The operation involved sixty US soldiers as well as Apache helicopter-gunships; did not include Iraqi units; and was apparently conducted without the knowledge of the provincial authorities, even though Karbala province was supposed to have been under Iraqi control. The response [3] of the Iraqis was, not surprisingly, sharp (see Hannah Allam & Sahar Issa, “U.S. Raid Angers Iraq [4]”, Miami Herald, 28 June 2008).

The second is a suicide-bombing attack in Anbar province on 28 June that killed twenty-three people including three US marines, which an al-Qaida insurgent group said that it had perpetrated (see Alissa J Rubin, “Group Claims Responsibility for Iraq Attack [5]”, New York Times, 29 June 2008). The attack was targeted [6] against local Sunni leaders who were supporters of the anti-al-Qaida “awakening movement”, and the militant responsible had been a member of the movement. It was, in short, an “inside job”.

The trend is the construction right across Baghdad of a network of walls designed to separate armed factions and communities. These have contributed to the decrease in violence, but have also produced a prison-like environment that is resented by many citizens (see Hamza Hendawi, “Iraqis Say Walls Protect But Feel Like Prison [7]”, Associated Press, 28 June 2008).

The Iraq outlook

Beyond the immediate security environment, two large developments are a signal of Washington’s current strategic thinking in relation to Iraq. The first is the opening up of Iraqi oil reserves to thirty-five companies in a bidding competition to increase oil production. At the outset the process involves six oilfields, though five short-term contracts are also being offered to American and European companies (see Sudarsan Raghavan & Steven Mufson, “Iraq Opens Oil Fields to Global Bidding [8]”, Washington Post, 1 July 2008).

The opening of the Iraqi oil industry to private companies represents a major departure from the nationalised industry of the Saddam Hussein era. Such a process was an early aim of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA [9]) established in the wake of the US invasion as the key instrument of US political control in the post-Saddam flux. Many believed and more hoped that a partially functioning Iraqi government has been able to take an independent line on this issue, though it now appears that the process of privatisation has been closely overseen by a group of American advisers. This group itself, moreover, was led by a team from the US state department, thus giving the George W Bush administration a direct role in the process (see Andrew E Kramer, “U.S. helped Iraqis on oil contracts [10]”, International Herald Tribune, 1 July 2008).

This series of columns has consistently argued that the primary purpose of the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime was less to gain control of Iraq’s oil reserves, even if they were around four times the size of US domestic reserves; rather, it was the location of Iraq in a region containing nearly two-thirds of all of the world’s oil that was more significant (see, for example, “Iraq’s danger signals [10]”, 13 December 2007). Nonetheless, the manner in which Iraq’s oil is coming under external control does begin to give some credence to those who claim a more direct connection between Iraq’s oil and the decision to go to war.

The plan to expand Iraqi oil production carries a real concern for its designers: that the pipelines and processing plants will be vulnerable to the kind of insurgent activity that inflicted such enormous economic damage in 2004-05. This fear may be connected with the second large development – the plan to maintain US military forces at current levels for at least until mid-2009. The last of the five additional combat-brigades that formed the year-long US “surge” is now departing the country, but plans are already underway to bring 30,000 fresh troops into the country early in 2009 (see Lolita C Baldor, “U.S. To Send 30,000 Troops To Iraq [11]”, Associated Press, 28 June 2008). These will replace existing contingents in a routine fashion, but what is less remarked is their effect on overall US deployment; namely, that that 142,000 troops will remain in Iraq, a number actually 7,000 more than were present before the surge began in February 2007.

It is always possible that violence will decrease to the extent that further withdrawals can take place, but the Pentagon is not currently planning for this. Its calculation is most likely based on a real fear that many of the insurgents are lying low and will return to the conflict in the coming months. If this proves correct, then a likely target will be Iraq’s oil installations just as foreign companies are moving in. This too will become clear by November 2008.

The Iran prospect

The Pentagon’s current preparation for a major long-term military presence in Iraq is accompanied by a sharpening of rhetoric over the putative threat posed by Iran’s nuclear plans. Most of this is at present emanating from some Israeli commentators and some of the Washington-based think-tanks and policy groups that identify themselves with what they imagine Israel’s national interest to be.

Most analysts are aware of the capacity of the Iranians to respond to any military attack by the United States or Israel in numerous ways, by (for example) escalating tension in Iraq or engineering a massive spike in crude oil prices. This often leads them as a result to discount the risk of an attack on Iran. Against this, some circles in Washington argue that Iran’s capacity to react has been much overplayed; in this view, Iran is actually far weaker than is commonly appreciated (see Seymour M Hersh, “Preparing the Battlefield [12]”, New Yorker, 7 July 2008). The conclusion is that now may be a good time to demonstrate resolve by targeting Tehran’s nuclear facilities, however limited they might currently be (see Gareth Porter, “‘Weak’ Iran ripe to be attacked [13]”, Asia Times, 1 July 2008).

What has always to be remembered in weighing the effect of these nuances is that there is a bottom-line for Israel: namely, there must never be another country in the region that has nuclear weapons – deterrence must work only one way if Israel is to be secure. In addition, a strong thread within hardline Israeli political thinking in the present political conjuncture (though opinion on the matter is not uniform) is that a Barack Obama presidency would be bad news. He may have sounded hardline over Iran in his speech [14] to Aipac on 4 June 2008, but Obama is seen as a highly intelligent politician with a worrying streak of independence in him (see “Iran and the American election [14]”, 5 June 2008).

It is troubling, then – a matter of concern to those in Israel and Washington who seek to resolve the Iran issue by force – that Obama is ahead of John McCain in the opinion polls. Perhaps, in such uncertain and unpredictable circumstances, now is the time to pre-empt Iranian nuclear developments – whatever the costs – rather than wait for an Obama victory and the nightmare prospect of talking to the enemy?

These, then, are the four months that will determine the future of the region and much of the world – not least the long-term security of the state of Israel – for years ahead. Iran and Iraq at the heart of present concern, though the security deterioration in other areas deserves to be noted: Afghanistan and Pakistan (see Julian E Barnes & Peter Spiegel, “Afghanistan Attacks Rise, U.S. Says [15]”, Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2008), and parts of north Africa (see Michael Moss, “Algerian militants win new lease on life as Al Qaeda affiliate [16]”, International Herald Tribune, 1 July 2008). Whether the incoming White House tenant faces the ashes of a new landscape of war or merely the fallout of the old one, the world is in for a long and bumpy ride.

Links:

[1] http://icasualties.org/oif/
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/01/AR200807…
[3] http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080629/ts_nm/iraq_raid_dc_1
[4] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/story/586350.html
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html?ref=middl…
[6] http://www.metimes.com/Politics/2008/06/28/qaeda_claims_iraq_suicide_bom…
[7] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080627/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_inside_the_walls…
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/01/ST20080701…
[9] http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/cpa/
[10] http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/30/business/contracts.php
[11] http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=116&sid=1430221
[12] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh/?yrail
[13] http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JG02Ak04.html
[14] http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/HQblog/gG5CKp
[15] http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/25/world/fg-usafghan25
[16] http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/01/africa/01algeria.php