“There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our life-time; there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe…violent conflicts will dominate the headlines …”Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle wrote in the preamble, a prelude to the draft of the ‘ Project for the New American Century,’ in 1992, during the heady days when the CIA’s subversion project of the Soviet Union had borne fruit.
| ‘Heat
not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself’ – William Shakespeare |
The establishment of the ‘New World Order’ demands coercion and force, preceded by the subversion of the targeted countries (with oil and mineral resources or large markets ) which in the scale of its operations is unprecedented in history, hence the precise formulation of ’multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe’, spelt out by Wolfowitz (now of the World Bank). The warning has been sounded in the public domain. Third world ruling elites shutting their eyes and ears to this warning is another matter, perhaps it is in deference to their own class interests.
The Defence Planning Guidance, 1992, goes on to state “The foreign policy of the US must be unapologetic, idealistic and well-funded. America must not only be the world’s policeman or its sheriff, it must be its beacon and guide ( sweeteners aplenty and democracy too, for civilizations five millenniums old! ) ….Our first objective must be to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavour to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power ( The New Energy Policy Document 2001 is an adjunct to the PNAC ). These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union and South West Asia ( China has since been categorized as a ‘strategic competitor)’…..
“There are three additional objectives to this objective : First the US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests, second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations, to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”
One would have anticipated that there would be a comprehensive top level review post the stalemate in Afghanistan and Iraq. Quite the contrary, if we are to go by the assertions of the National Security Strategy Document promulgated on 1st March, 2005 by the Pentagon. It boldly states “America is a Nation at war”. ‘New capabilities – based planning focuses more on how adversaries may challenge us than on whom those adversaries may be or where we might face them. We were in a time of unconventional challenges and strategic uncertainty…..The NSSD 2005 addresses the security of the American people, strengthening the comity of free nations. advancing democratic reforms and economic well-being around the world. The department of Defense is implementing the US president’s commitment to the forward defense of freedom. The strategy emphasizes the importance of influencing events before they become more dangerous and less manageable ( hence the doctrine of pre-emptive war).
Addressing the Association of the United States Army Sustaining Members in Washington DC in September 2005 US Vice President Cheney asserted that the ‘War (on terror ) could go on for several decades’ reflecting the Bush Administration’s commitment to global warfare. Cheney said, “Like the great duties of history, it will require decades of patient effort and it will be resisted by those whose only hope is through the spread of violence.” It requires, according to Cheney, the deployment of US forces worldwide in more than 100 countries rather than a select number of military bases ( watch the stationing of US forces in West Asia, creeping into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, under cover). Cheney continues prognosticating, ‘The US will be involved in military actions against “failed states” and “unstable states” a definition that will include not only the ‘oil & mineral’ states, but any and all member states of the UN! There is as Cheney says ‘terrorism to fight and protect the “civilized states”, promote democracy, spread ‘Free Market’ reforms world wide.’ However apart from the rhetoric that frequently adorns such doctrines and policy statements, the US military is focusing on operations by restructuring and redeploying its forces and intelligence assets for a long conflict in the Middle-East, Central Asia and Russia, where nearly 70% of the economically recoverable hydrocarbons lie. Hence the sustained complimentary campaign to bring ‘democracy’ and hasten ‘free-market economic reforms’.
That is the context and the framework that is before us when we embark on a review of the changing nature of warfare, to make sense of the bewildering array of contradictions that confront us. Do we have a clear picture of our national interests? Do we appreciate sufficiently that the livelihoods and well-being of our 1050 million people ( not just the creamy layer) is dependent on an independent, not dependent, balanced mix of political, economic, foreign/defense, S &T policies not just the neo-liberal mantra advocated by the Washington Consensus and the Wall Street? Military Commanders cannot lead their forces to victory if the nation has been economically hollowed out, as modern wars represent the will and resources of the nation in totality. In the United States itself the social and financial slide appears to be unstoppable. A fiscal deficit of $ 500 billion, a current account deficit of $700 billion, a nation in debts of trillions of dollars(7.7 trillions soaring by 2.3 billion $ daily with no savings, living on 80% of the world’s savings, borrowing $ 3 billion every day, having lost its once leading, manufacturing base, spends $500 billion on the Defense budget,( with unfunded military procurement liabilities of more than a trillion dollars), another $100 billion in Intelligence operations, maintains nearly 700 military bases globally, has its Army mired in Iraq and Afghanistan. ( In 2006, US defense spending will exceed the total spending on defense of the rest of the world put together). Yet its soldiers had to buy their own GPS position fixing gadgets and in some cases bullet proof vests too. When they return back home with injuries or DU afflictions they have to part pay for their treatment and meals at the hospitals ! The US’s NATO allies spend another $225 billion on the military. Compare this with the defense spending of the three target countries, Syria, Iran and North Korea, the ‘Axis of Evil’ who together spend $ 8.5 billion, less than 2% of the US defense budget ! This is a strange paradox. These predatory wars are being financed by China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and petro- dollars from West Asia. Dollar denominated oil trade upholds the dollar when the dollar is in reality of notional value and at risk. Yet it funds militarisation of space for first strikes with air burst electronics disabling big bombs and neutron bombs to incapicitate people, SDI, new micro- nuke programs, BCW weapons, war-breaker strategies and cyber warfare to paralyse an adversary’s central nervous systems like command & communications, power, telecom, water supply. Weaponisation of the sea bed, Depleted Uranium munitions, new attack systems to achieve information and full spectrum dominance, weather/ climate warfare which experts call the ‘ultimate WMD’ and which Zbigniew Brzezinski advocated long ago as National Security Adviser to be part of National Security Policy, on to Frequency Active Auroral Research program ( HAARP), gene warfare applications ( genetic bombs) to attack specific gene types( complete sequencing of the human gene sequence expressed as DNA/RNA), courtesy directions by Wolfowitz and Kristol. There are scientific papers galore that the AIDS virus was introduced in Africa, riding on the back of inoculations, as a part of the drive to reduce population, originating in the Army’s Bio- warfare laboratory in Detrick, Maryland. As for the extensive use of Depleted Uranium munitions in Gulf War 1991, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq the US Uranium Medical Research Center, Washington DC- Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have published extensive reports by field teams of UMRC in Afghanistan. The European Parliament Report, ECRR 2003, has extensively documented the contamination of water systems, ground and air environment, that causes cancer, gene mutation, heart disease, autism, Parkinson’s, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, slow destruction of the body’s immunity. Countries lying within a 1000 mile radius of Kabul and Baghdad are being affected by radiation poisoning. The media orchestration of a coming cancer epidemic in India to smoke-screen DU munitions effect is part of the cover up on DU. If we think cancer is a problem worse lies ahead when more DU is released in ‘wars against terror’ and for regime change based on ‘mistaken’ intelligence reports. India will not be able to cope with the health care demands of this cancer epidemic. ( Incidentally Pakistan has been supplied with DU munitions by the US in 2002).
The use of DU in the Gulf War/Kosovo and now in Afghanistan and Iraq has already back-fired on US soldiers, their families and deformed new- borns. Bio-warfare agents have demonstrated themselves to generate their own blowback. The officer son of General Westmoreland, the Commanding General of the US Army in Vietnam, was afflicted by cancer after the use of Agent Orange. The US President is now requesting some $ 4 billion to prepare for quarantine arrangements under the control of the US army ( until now prohibited for civilian deployment under the US Constitution ) in anticipation of the mutated gene Avian Bird Flu pandemic, which is being orchestrated as an internal threat which requires military enforced quarantine of regions and cities as per the statements emanating from White House, a most unusual strategy !!!
The policy for targeting of micro-nukes was jointly decided by corporate heads and senior military general officers at Offut Airforce Base, Nebraska, in August 2002, US Airforce Strategic Command Headquarters. The CIA’s covert operations responsibilities have been transferred to the Pentagon.The CIA was assessed to be too timid in the ‘War on Terror’ regime! This signals a dramatic shift in the character of the US military, the consequences of which will become apparent to developing country elites in the immediate future. Robotised warfare is said to be necessary because it is designated as an “Unbeatable Robotic Army” with the title ‘Future Combat System.’ Says General Gordon Johnson of the US Joint Force Command, of the robots born of nano-technology, “These robots do not get hungry. They are not afraid, they do not forget their orders. They don’t care if the guy next to them has just been shot. They are far cheaper and yes they do a better job than human soldiers “--- a stinging indictment of the US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan !Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), increasingly getting more versatile, also fall in the category of ‘robots’ in the air.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA) has programs and contracts running in hundreds of Universities, Research labs, private military companies (PMCs), think tanks and third countries. DARPA synergises the combined R&D budgets of the civil and military sectors as civil –military integration is facilitated by micro-electronics, MEMS and nano technologies, all of which have military applications in software and hardware. Laser weapons, charged particle beam or directed electro-magnetic weapons (E Bombs ), ‘Black out bombs’, to incapacitating agents, mind-control, psycho- pharmacology agents, acoustic weapons, optical/visual weapons are some of the more active projects at various stages of being operationalised.
When serving Indian military commanders speak, after they take over as chiefs, of ‘net-work centric warfare’ (ncw) one only hopes they are not merely echoing their counterparts in the West out of context. Just to take this as an example, ‘ncw’ has its pitfalls like overload, slow response to military operations other than war. NCW favours the mean and cheap force structure, shoot first ask questions later, resurrects old myths like ‘strategic bombing’. What did 2nd generation warfare achieve in Korea or Vietnam, what will fourth generation warfare achieve in Iraq?
Yet in the face of these esoteric weapon systems, the fact is that nations and peoples which refuse to accept defeat cannot be vanquished. In this context it is relevant quoting the Iraqi Resistance. It may be recalled that Iraq was supplied with weapons by the West for the duration of its war with Iran, which weakened both nations, thereafter it faced the Gulf War 1991, 12 years of crippling sanctions, no fly zones in its own air-space, half a million children died, its water supply was denied simple bacteria killing medicines, machinery spare parts were prohibited for import, its oil revenues curtailed and oil infrastructure adversely affected. The invasion and the occupation’s devastating damage to basic civic services, its long suffering people notwithstanding, the spirit of the Iraqi people as one united people lives and has driven a super power’s army in to a quagmire. The Iraqi Resistance has taken on this hi-tech Coalition armed force, nevertheless, and its statement reads “Over two million innocents died waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel. It is our duty as well as our right, to beat back the occupation, whose nations will be held morally accountable. We did not cross the oceans to occupy Britain and the United States. And we are not responsible for 9/11. These are only a few of the horrid lies that these criminals brandish to cover their true plans for the pillage of our country’s energy resources. We thank all those, including those in Britain, the USA and elsewhere who took to the streets to protest against the war. We do not require arms or fighters. We have plenty. We are asking you to form a worldwide front against the war, occupation, and sanctions. The enemy is on the run. They have no place to hide. Like rats they are being driven into the corner. They are in fear of the Resistance fighters every moment of their lives. They can neither see nor predict. We can now choose when, where and how to strike; in much the same way as our ancestors harnessed the first sparks of civilization. We shall now proceed to define the word ‘conquest’. At present we are writing a new chapter in the arts of urban and rural resistance warfare.”
There are some overarching features that have to be kept in mind in assessing the situation :
…… “Just over two centuries ago a contingent of 800 irregular soldiers faced an army of nearly 80,000 troops from the Nawab of Bengal’s standing forces. Not only was there numerical superiority on the Bengal side, but in this instance artillery and technical supremacy were also against the European force. Nevertheless in the most miserable skirmish ever to be called a decisive battle the Europeans walked off with a victory which would change world history. That was the Battle of Plassey. The date was 23 June 1857.
All sorts of racial, national and historical myths developed out of this event, but the story of the conquest of Bengal was no mystery. In the modern parlance of Western Intelligence community, what happened was a classic ‘covert’ operation carried through with great clandestine success. There never was a military defeat of the Nawab of Bengal’s army. The method of victory was much more simple: the Commander of the Nawab’s armed forces had secretly been bought off by the British before either side had reached the mango groves around Plassey.
Through an astute and subtle understanding of the political factions within the Bengali leadership and ruling class; by carefully distinguishing the patriotic from the corrupt; and through an unabashed capacity to buy and sell comprador loyalty from those who deal in their ambitions of power, the small British expeditionary force under Robert Clive secured its military triumph by a neat gamble on prior political arrangement. From the incident at Plassey onwards, the British waged more or less continuous war against the Indian people ‘consolidating their power’ in India and the conquest of other regions, breaking up the old systems of self-sufficient and self perpetuating villages, and supporting an elite whose self-interest would harmonize with British rule.
Over the next century an entire world was remade and reshaped under the global expansion of the British empire. In Bengal a pre-capitalist mode of production was totally transformed. Indigo, jute, tea, opium, private property in land, Zamindari landlordism, land tax, and the right to buy and sell a peasant’s property, to extract debt from him were all introduced. From its staging post in South Asia, the new European based epoch of commerce and modern industry broke open markets throughout Asia with the rumble of war and the ‘right’ to an open door (Lifshultz in the Unfinished War in Bangladesh).
After Vietnam, the prevailing environment is once again beset with unforeseen problems as the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq is stalemated; the military-technological prowess is impressive-- ‘State to State’ contests having been won so easily, but the people and their quaint nationalism stands unvanquished. The phoenix of the ‘end of history’ has risen from the ashes, to haunt the victors. Leaving little place space for a honorable retreat, without irreparable loss of prestige which may foreclose other such adventures for unilateral, pre-emptive invasions, predicated on military predominance alone. Some blame is sought to be placed on insufficient priority given to ‘Stability and Support Operations (SASO) and the civil-military mix of the SASO. Such superficial understanding betrays a total disregard for Afghan and Iraqi nationalism. Surprises happen. In this case the ‘surprise’ is the people. Regime changes with imposed NRAs or NRIs who have lived and worked for Western establishments are usually not bought by the people ! A mix of ‘throw away’ soldiers, mercenaries supplied by private military companies, special forces working incognito behind the scenes and instant local armies hastily assembled can hardly face ‘assymetric warfare’ by people’s militias with the will to do or die.
The expanding role of NATO eastwards to Central Asia, Afghanistan, Africa and possibly West Asia cannot be a cause of comfort to anyone who has studied their thinking and planning processes. A repeat of the Iraq process to capture some of the largest energy resources outside the control of the US, concerns all who have an interest in accessing on strictly commercial terms Iran’s surplus for export energy resources. Iran is our neighbor and in the eventuality of its invasion, occupation and loot of its resources under the pretext of WMDs, the entire West Asian region and, the Indian sub-continent is likely to become a cauldron that will boil over with unpredictable consequences and which the US and its allies can hardly stabilize except to cause unimaginable suffering through slow but long acting agents like Depleted Uranium, active weapons like Bunker busters, cluster bombs, micro nukes and CBW agents, more then we have seen in Vietnam and Iraq combined. The people of the United States themselves are realizing the diabolical game of ‘war on terror’ at home and abroad, a war of profits for the Corporates and criminal neglect of the majority of the unemployed and low wage work force at home without heath care, medicare, decent housing, education. They have begun to see through such hollow initiatives as the ‘Africa opportunity and growth act’, another name for neo-colonial capture of resources and markets.
Presidents of the US in the past sounded alarm bells about increasing Corporate and Big Business influence and attempts at creeping control of the US military. General Dwight Eisenhower’s famous warning, near the time of handing over the President’s office on the ‘military-industrial complex’ is well known. Since then Corporations in the advanced capitalist nations have not only their men installed in leading positions of the state’s apparatus, they have also taken an increasing share of the orders for new military acquisitions, logistics contracts, R&D budgets. The ‘revolving door’ policy for civilian and military personnel in the Pentagon, defense projects etc enables the Generals and Admirals to secure a lucrative second career in the Corporate sector and the think tanks funded by it. Is it any surprise, therefore, that the essential ethos and character of the military leadership has changed much beyond ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ to private gain, specially in the years approaching retirement. The corporate quest for oil, minerals and markets has never before so openly determined the agenda, and the time table for invasions, regime changes, occupation and plunder. Short of it, where coercion, inducement, regime change and presence missions will accomplish corporate objectives, so much the better. Instruments and tools to implement covert operations and subterranean warfare require an all pervasive global deployment. It may well be that besides the public façade of the Pentagon and Whitehall, the direction for this century’s military emanates, without any fuss, from the Corporate Board Rooms.
It may just be appropriate to quote the eminent historian Michael Howard, since most men in power are forgetful of history…He writes “Let me repeat the analogy about the drunk who lost his watch in a dark alley, but was found looking for it under a lamp-post because there was more light there. The light provided by our knowledge of technological capabilities and our capacity for strategic analysis is so dazzling as to be almost hypnotic; but it is in those shadowy regions of human understanding based on our knowledge ( and understanding ) of social development, cultural diversity and patterns of human behavior that we have to look for the answers.” If one may say ‘men and women willing to sacrifice all for a cause’!
To conclude with an observation attributed to a school teacher turned the greatest General of the last century, Vo Nguyen Giap, whom I had the honour of meeting, one to one, in 1990, in Mumbai,
“McNamara and his advisers have raised the numbers of invaders to around half a million. What are the consequences? They have vastly deployed chemical defoliants ( Agent Orange et al ) and other terrible engines of mass destruction. Certainly these will vastly increase the number of deaths and impose additional, appalling sufferings on our people. It will not however loosen the grip of our fight for freedom. It will enhance it. In the end our resistance fighters will triumph.”
Essentially as Pinter, the Nobel Prize winner said in his speech in the House of Commons, UK — it is the US ( and its allies ) versus the rest of the world.
Media reports quote Dr Manmohan Singh as saying recently that “it was necessary to arrive at the truth from the facts”, an unexceptionable principle. The question is which facts and which reality one is looking at –the picture of truth and reality that the leaders of the US, UK and their corporate media paint or the reality of millions of women and children trampled upon, mutilated, mass murdered, tortured and the deformed babies born, in the cradle of the world’s civilization; people pillaged, looted, victims of unprecedented brutality, the consequences of pre-emptive, unilateral war, integral to the PNAC, outside the UN system, cannot be passed over as ‘a mistake’. More such ‘mistakes ‘ are on the anvil as India has signed up for joint operations, logistics and material support with such a ‘super-power’; a power in precipitous economic and social decline. The June Indo-US Defense pact/agreement and the August 2005 Indo-US ‘strategic’ pact appear at first to rely on tenuous logic and ‘thin’ facts. However they are a natural, pre-meditated consequence of the privatization/ de-nationalisation of key public enterprises, at first to be taken over by ‘Indian ‘companies with loans from public sector banks and then by foreign financial interests via the ‘acquisitions and mergers’ process enabled by FDI. Foreign military intervention to ‘save’ these now foreign owned assets from the people who first created them with their savings is not uncommon. There is still time to ensure the security of the overwhelming majority of the Indian people from this disastrous course but this would require a different focus and orientation.
The strategic direction in which US militarisation is heading is unmistakenly a cul-de-sac. However, given the frenetic and unlimited funding of new and deadlier weapon systems( specially bio and gene warfare) which will kill people or even depopulate in millions or billions; these are issues that cannot be ignored. The deep underlay of weapons development is political and military, hence even more focus is required when, concerns nearer home are reflected in the speech of the US Ambassador to NATO at Brussels on September 22, “…Afghanistan would remain NATO’s most important mission”…...for the foreseeable future. Add to this the designation of Pakistan as ‘the Most Important Non-NATO Ally” and ‘ India chosen as the US supported, budding Big Power of the Region’ post the Bush-Manmohan Singh Strategic alliance of August 2005.
Notwithstanding the above, the strategic demands of the 21st century lie exactly in the opposite pole.
Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat,
Former Chief of the Naval Staff
17 October, 2005
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