Global Research

The Yemen war planned as a blitzkrieg by the Arab coalition has turned into a dragged-out war drawing resources from the coalition and directly Saudi Arabia. Mostly, the intervention has been induced by Saudi Arabias concerns over the strengthening of Iran in the region and will to control a major regional logistical point, the port of Aden.

The coalition Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan and Sudan has created 150,000-strong ground military grouping used for intervention in Yemen. The coalitions air grouping includes over 100 war planes and helicopters.

The interesting fact is Egypt has been actively participates in the Yemeni military campaign on the Saudi Arabias side. On the other hand, Egypt has a neutral position over the Syrian conflict. It clearly shows how tenuous and inconstant Middle East alliances.

The Saudi-led coalition uses modern military equipment and has an advantage in the man power. But the practice shows that it isnt enough. Numerous air raids which target civilians and socially significant facilities dont conduct a support of the Yemeni citizens. Arab media state over 25 000 people mostly civilians have been killed in this conflict.

So, the coalition is involving more and more resources in this intervention. On October 16, a battalion of Sudanese troops arrived in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden. Sudan forces are armed by Chinese armaments and equipment; small arms: rifles Type-51, Type-95, CQ, precision rifles M99, machine guns QJZ-89, automatic grenade launchers QLZ-87 and other military systems as antitank guided missiles Hongjian-8, battle tanks Type-96, MLRS WS-2. Also, Sudan military could use aviation Chengdu J-7, Nanchang Q-5 and Hongdu JL-8. According to reports, Sudan military could send one more battalion to Yemen in the nearest future.

Despite this, its hard to estimate the real military balance of pro-Houthi and anti-Houthi forces. There are lots of ground reports about the coalitions losses on the ground. The coalition forces dont have battle experience.

Houthi forces use skilfully the ground relief, local facilities and a concealment practice to inflict damage to ground and air forces of the Arab coalition. Experts believe that the coalition forces wont be able to act successfully in mountainous area and fight local guerilla. Furthermore, Saudi Arabias expectations that Iran wont support Houthis in Yemen have been a mistake.

At the moment, Saudi Arabia and its allies arent ready to participate in the negotiations aimed on a real way to solve the conflict. So, there are 2 main possibilities: First is ground and air forces of the Arab coalition will cut Houthis from the external support, gain enough battle experience and inflict defeat to the Houthi forces. But its unlikely. Its much more possible that the coalition forces wont be able to defeat decisively Hothis. It will conduct jitters among coalition members. Separately, almost all of them have own disagreed interests in Yemen.

Nonetheless, many major world powers are interested in a normal work of the Adens port because of its logistical importance and a stable situation on the main oil trade maritime routes. So, we could expect that the global players will be more and more involved in the conflict. The local conflicts in the Middle East has been turning to a big regional conflict.

“The Ivy League bourgeoisie who sit at the helm of the non-profit industrial complex will one day be known simply as charismatic architects of death. Funded by the ruling class oligarchy, the role they serve for their funders is not unlike that of corporate media. Yet, it appears that global society is paralyzed in a collective hypnosis – rejecting universal social interests, thus rejecting reason, to instead fall in line with the position of the powerful minority that has seized control, a minority that systematically favours corporate interests.” ~ Cory Morningstar

In his recent speech Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Nasrallah, alluded to a multi-phase “soft war” which relies upon the mass media complex to disseminate propaganda and bias, propelling the Middle East into, primarily, a sectarian crisis before descending even further into regionalism and finally a devastating individualism.

Cory Morningstar’s body of work does more than any other to expose the bare bones of the non-profit propaganda industry that governs both our reactions – and inactions, through a network of multi-layered and multi-faceted media manipulation campaigns, of which the end result is mass thought control. She explains:

“The 21^st century NGO is becoming, more and more, a key tool serving the imperialist quest of absolute global dominance and exploitation. Global society has been, and continues to be, manipulated to believe that NGOs are representative of “civil society” (a concept promoted by corporations in the first place). This misplaced trust has allowed the “humanitarian industrial complex” to ascend to the highest position: the missionaries of deity – the deity of the empire.”

In a paper entitled, Foreign Aid and Regime Change: A Role for Donor Intent, written just prior to NATO intervention in Libya, Prof. Sarah Blodgett Bormeo describes the “democratization” process for target nations. Unwittingly or wittingly, Bormeo perfectly outlines the role played by NGOs in this process. Bormeo even goes so far as to pinpoint the lack of impartiality rife among NGOs large and small, the majority of whom, receive their funding directly from western government and major corporation sources – all of whom have a vested interest in the outcome of their NGO’s activities and ‘intervention’ in a particular location. Bormeo emphasises the importance of “picking winners” in this scenario, as opposed to respecting and supporting the will of the people in any sovereign nation.

“Thus, it is possible that aid donors, in an effort to avoid further entrenching an “authoritarian” [my edit: this status is decided by donor] regime and perhaps increase the likelihood of democratization, channel funds through NGOs and civil society organizations in authoritarian states.”

In this short video below, we are introduced to the US military’s symbiotic relationship with NGOs in countries [in this instance, Iraq] where the policy is to Induce Pacification & Advance Western Ideologies. NGOs are cynically used to “soften” cultures and render entire communities dependent upon foreign aid in order to facilitate “Democratization”.

In this role, and dependent upon their donor support, NGOs cease to be the neutral, unbiased ‘humanitarian’ organisations they publically purport to be, and instead become actual covert tools for foreign intervention and regime change.  By default, they are assimilated into the Western modus vivendi of “waging war by way of deception” and their purpose is to alter public perception of a conflict via a multitude of media and “marketing” channels.

Following this formula, let’s examine, once more, the role of the Syria Civil Defence aka,’The White Helmets’ currently operating in Syria and take a closer look at their financial sources and mainstream media partners in order to better determine if they are indeed “neutral” as media moguls proclaim these “humanitarians” to be.

White Helmets: Follow the Money

The White Helmets were established in March 2013, in Istanbul, Turkey, and is headed by James Le Mesurier, a British “security” specialist and ‘ex’ British military intelligence officer with an impressive track record in some of the most dubious NATO intervention theatres including Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Le Mesurier is a product of Britain’s elite Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, and has also been placed in a series of high-profile pasts at the United Nations, European Union, and U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The origins of The White Helmet’s initial $300k seed funding is a little hazy, reports are contradictory but subsequent information leads us to conclude that the UK, US and the ‘Syrian Opposition’ [or Syrian National Council, parallel government backed an funded by the US, UK and allies] are connected. Logistical support has been provided and given by Turkish elite natural disaster response team, AKUT.

A further $13 million was poured into the White Helmet coffers during 2013 and this is where it gets interesting. Early reports suggest that these “donations” came from the US, UK and SNC with the previously explored connections to George Soros in the US.

However, subsequent investigations reveal that USAID has been a major shareholder in the White Helmet organisation.

The website for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) claims that “our work supports long-term and equitable economic growth and advances U.S. foreign policy objectives by supporting: economic growth, agriculture and trade; global health; and, democracy, conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance.”

In a USAID report update in July 2015 it is clearly stated that they have supplied over $ 16m in assistance to the White Helmets.

The USAID track record as a primary US Government/CIA regime change facilitator is extensively documented.  From South America to the Ukraine and in the Middle East, USAID serve a malevolent and ultimately destructive role in the dismantling of sovereign nations and their reduction to Western hegemony vassal states, as always, all in the name of freedom and democracy.

“The United States does not lack institutions that continue to conspire, and that’s why I am using this gathering to announce that we have decided to expel USAID from Bolivia”  ~ Bolivian President Evo Morales

“USAID and NED are in the business of “Democracy Promotion” which uses public money (from U.S. taxpayers) for secretive operations with the intention to support pro-U.S. governments with the help of political and social movements abroad. The goal is regime change.” ~ Timothy Alexander Guzman

With recent developments in Syria and as a consequence of  the Syrian Government requested Russian intervention, we have seen a scramble to justify the shambolic US foreign policy and its clandestine terror operations in Syria.  We have previously established the White Helmet connections to this US regime change operation and their undisputed exclusive integration into the Al Nusra and Free Syrian Army [Muslim Brotherhood] and even ISIS networks and strongholds.

After RT and Sott.net among others, exposed the gaping holes in White Helmet propaganda whereby the group recycled older photographs on Twitter in an effort to blame Russia for ‘civilian deaths’ – even before the alleged Russian bombing had occurred. Since then, the propaganda “war” has only ramped up.  The Russian involvement in Syria, did not only betray the US military deception, it also brought some heavyweight media giants of its own into the fray who set about de-constructing the Western media and NGO indoctrination that had, for so long, been largely unchallenged.

At this point the London Telegraph went into damage limitation mode.  It published an article expounding the White Helmet humanitarian role in Syria but with admissions of UK Government “majority” funding and that the White Helmets are embedded with ISIS (“in at least one ISIL held area”), claims previously vehemently denied but rendered indisputable after discovery of the photo showing an ISIS mercenary posing directly in front of a White Helmets depot located deep in ISIS held territory south of Yarmouk.

“The Foreign Office is currently the largest single source of funding. It is an irony that if Britain does effectively become an ally of Assad, and starts raids against Isil in Syria, it will be bombing from the air and paying for the bodies to be dug out on the ground. The White Helmets are also operating in at least one Isil-held area.”

Interestingly, the Telegraph stated clearly that the UK Foreign Office is the “largest single source of funding” for the White Helmets which may be perceived as an attempt to draw fire away from the USAID funding which still outstrips official figures released by the British Gov’t who “gifted” £ 3.5 million in equipment to “civil defence teams” in Syria [Report March 2015]. However, the British Government also committed to an additional £ 10m to “increase coordination between the Syrian Interim Government and civil defence teams” to be funded by: UK Government’s Conflict, Security and Stability Fund (CSSF).

If an organisation is funded by foreign governments who are directly involved in trying over-throw Syria’s government, how can they be rightly called an ‘independent relief organisation’?

It should be noted here also that although cries of ‘regime change!’ from both Washington and London have been muted since Russia entered the Syria conflict, both Washington and London have been supporting their own parallel, hand-picked ‘interim government’ for Syria since at least 2012.

So, with millions in hard cash and equipment being invested into the White Helmets by US & UK donors who have a very clear regime change objective in Syria, it becomes increasingly difficult to perceive their role as anything other than donor-biased propaganda merchants and a ‘humanitarian’ extension of a clandestine terror operation allied to the NATO proxy armies in the region.

White Helmet Leadership 

James Le Mesurier has been portrayed as a Humanitarian maverick hero, miraculously in the right place (Istanbul) at the right time, just as the need arose for the formation of a Syria Civil Defence team, perhaps coincidentally, only a few months prior to the now infamous and universally (except for a few diehard propagandists) discredited Ghouta ‘chemical weapon’ attack in August 2013, an event which has already been proven beyond a doubt to be a false flag attack, as well as subsequent accusations levied at the Syrian Government which narrowly failed to precipitate the NATO desired ‘No Fly Zone’.

However, when we delve deeper into the life and times of Le Mesurier we see that it was no happy accident that he was in Istanbul at this juncture.  As Sandhurst Military Academy’s top student and recipient of the Queen’s Medal, his chequered career took him from OHR [Office of High Representative] in Bosnia to intelligence co-ordinator in NATO’s newly won prize, Kosovo.

We’re told that Le Mesurier left the British Army in 2000 and joined the UN serving as deputy head of the Advisory Unit on ‘Security and Justice’, and Special Representative of the Secretary General’s security policy body within the UN mission in Kosovo. His career then took him to Jerusalem where he worked on implementing the Ramallah Agreement, then to Baghdad as a special advisor to Iraqi Minister of Interior, and to the UAE to train their gas field protection force, and later to Lebanon during the 2006 war. In 2005 he was made Vice President for Special Projects at private mercenary firm Olive Group, and in January 2008 he was appointed as Principal for Good Harbour International, both based in Dubai.

Le Mesurier is also the founder of Mayday Rescue, a “non profit” organisation providing SAR [search & rescue] training to civilians enduring conflict.  According to Mesurier’s own biography on the website, Mayday Rescue was founded in 2014, after he had established Syria Civil Defence/White Helmets.

Mosab Obeidat, previous Assistant Chief of Mission with the Qatar Red Crescent, one of whose officials, Khaled Diab was accused of supplying $ 2.2 m to secure arms for the terrorist groups in Syria. Details of this transaction and its exposure can be found in this Al Akhbar article from June 2013.  http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/16160

At least three other members of the team were a part of the Syrian “revolution” including Farouq al Habib, one of the 3 most prominent White Helmet leaders who was also a leader of the Homs uprising against the Syrian government and according to his testimony, was tortured by the Syrian “regime” security forces in 2012 for smuggling a journalist into Syria to “cover” the “peaceful protests”. Habib was a founder member of the “Homs Revolutionary Counci” (note that the CIA have been linked to nearly all ‘Revolutionary Councils’ in Syria) before fleeing to Turkey in 2013 (A more in-depth analysis of his anti-Syrian government testimony will be presented in Part II of this article).

Le Mesurier is heavily involved in several organisations not mentioned in this article, but for the purposes of demonstrating that the White Helmets should not be considered impartial or neutral as they claim, we will focus on those that best substantiate that argument.

Both Olive Group and Good Harbour International are experts in private “security”.  Taken from Sourcewatch on Olive Group:

“Olive Security was founded in 2001 by Harry Legge Burke.  Olive lends their quick success to strong relations in the government and military industry. Harry Legge-Burke is an ex-Welsh Guard, and a former aid to chief of defence staff Sir [Charles Guthrie]. He can claim Prince William as a skiing partner and his sister was a nanny to the royal children.

Iraq:  Olive were on the ground since the invasion began in 2003, and were able to deploy 38 former SAS employees within two days of the invasion’s completion in 2004

Jonathan Allum, Olive’s former director and co-owner, is also the son of Tony Allum, who is the chairman of the engineering company Halcrow and also the head of the UK government’s Iraq Industry Working Group. It was in the latter position that Tony Allum went to Washington to meet with Bechtel leaders, where he suggested, among other UK companies, Halcrow and Olive as companies worth considering for subcontracted work, all stemming from Bechtel’s $680 million contract with USAID. They were considered and contracts followed, though both Legge-Burke and Allum deny one had anything to do with the other.”

In May 2015, Olive Group merged with Constellis Holdings, in whose portfolio we can also find Academi, previously the notorious Blackwater Group (Nisour Square massacre, Iraq 2007).  Taken from The Atlantic July 2012:  Post 9/11, Bush enabled the CIA to subcontract assassinations allegedly targeting Al Qaeda operatives.  Blackwater was awarded this contract.

“Running operations through Blackwater gave the CIA the power to have people abducted, or killed, with no one in the government being exactly responsible.”

The CIA can no longer hide its Blackwater/Academi connections, especially after this week’s Wikileaks data dump of CIA director John Brennan’s emails, whose contact list included now spy chief Robert Richer at his Blackwater contact address.

The outsourcing of intelligence operations was in full-swing. What Bush initiated, Obama ran with, awarding Blackwater/Academi a $ 250m contract in 2010 to offer “unspecified” services to the CIA, thus maintaining the apparatus for “unaccountable” covert assassinations.

It is true that James Le Mesurier only joined Olive Group in 2005 and left them in 2008, but his involvement with them and their subsequent merger with Constellis and by default, Blackwater/Academi, gives a degree of valuable insight into the elite intelligence and Pentagon circles that Le Mesurier moved in prior to working for Good Harbour International and creating Syria Civil Defence (not forgetting the USAID funding & influence that underpins both Olive and SCD/White Helmets).

In 2008, Le Mesurier joined Good Harbour International, another private “security” expert organisation, whose CEO is none other than former terror advisor to the Bush administration, the Terror Czar himself, Richard A. Clarke.

The jury is still out on whether Clarke was indeed the “whistleblower” he fashioned himself as, post 9/11, or a merely a high-level gatekeeper who aided in preventing a full and detailed investigation into Bush and Rumsfeld’s roles in 9/11.

Patrick Henningsen, a political analyst and writer for 21^st Century Wire believes the latter is more likely:

“On first glance, one might buy into the mainstream media’s characterization of him, but it’s more likely that Richard Clarke is not a whistleblower at all. While appearing to oppose the Bush administration from a safe enough distance, I believe his role was inserted into the mix in the period of  2004-2005 in order to VALIDATE the bin Laden mythology and help to portray al Qaeda as an organic,  independently run terror organization.  He also claimed that Bush and Rumsfeld committed war crimes, but this means nothing because everyone knows that no US official will ever face ‘war crimes’ charges in any court of law anywhere on the planet. It’s effectively a straw man narrative that distracts from the real scandal in the US which is that the entire premise of the war on terror is completely contrived.  Clarke’s ‘whistleblower’ status gives him brilliant cover from too much public scrutiny. I remain skeptical of his whole public narrative. He was, is, and always will be an insider.”

What is perhaps even more telling, is Clarke’s reported close ties with Israeli-US operative Rita Katz of the SITE Intelligence Group, another supposedly independent, albeit ‘private’ intelligence firm located in Bethesda, Maryland, a stone’s throw away from CIA headquarters. SITE are said to be responsible for the media release of the harrowing ISIS execution videos, al Qaeda videos, and their credibility has been extensively questioned.

Katz’s long term working relationship with Clarke began before 9/11 when she and her research associate Steve Emerson were commissioned by Clarke to identify ‘Islamic radicals’ inside the Unites States. Over time, Katz’s relationship with Clarke blossomed into a much more extensive one that included regular briefings at both the Clinton and Bush White Houses.

“One of SITE’s founders, Rita Katz, is a government insider with close connections to former terrorism czar Richard Clarke and his staff in the White House, as well as investigators in the Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security, according to SourceWatch. Her father was executed in Iraq as an Israel spy, a fact that suggests a connection to Israeli intelligence.”
~ Mark Taliano

Wheels Within Wheels

This background on Le Mesurier should at least make us question the media portrayal of an affable, debonair and philanthropic leader of a civilian humanitarian mission.  His military & intelligence roots, the fact that despite working for OHR in Bosnia, no visible record of his employment can be found there, his private security-centric career path, his appearance in Istanbul at just the right moment to partner USAID, the UK government & Syrian opposition in creating just the sort of “democratization” enabling NGO as described in our introduction, MUST at least cause us to doubt the transparency and neutrality of the White Helmets in Syria.

In addition, the White Helmet leadership consisting of known Syrian opposition protagonists such as Raed Saleh and Farouq al Habib must make us more cynical about the claims of impartiality and lack of bias and for those who will defend the “peaceful” revolution narrative upheld by Habib and Saleh, please take the time to read Professor Tim Anderson’s in depth analysis of events in Syria pre NATO intervention.

“I have seen from the beginning armed protesters in those demonstrations … they were the first to fire on the police. Very often the violence of the security forces comes in response to the brutal violence of the armed insurgents” – Jesuit priest Father Frans Van der Lugt, January 2012, Homs Syria 

“The claim that armed opposition to the government has begun only recently is a complete lie. The killings of soldiers, police and civilians, often in the most brutal circumstances, have been going on virtually since the beginning.” – Professor Jeremy Salt, October 2011, Ankara Turkey

Our presentation of the White Helmets as regime change propagandists & terrorist allies in this article will be further explored and verified in Part II.

“Existing soft power initiatives and agencies, particularly those engaged in development and strategic communications, must be reinvigorated through increased funding, human resources and prioritization. Concurrently, the U.S. government must establish goals, objectives and metrics for soft power initiatives. Furthermore, the U.S. government can better maximize the effectiveness of soft power instruments and efforts through increased partnerships with NGOs. By providing humanitarian and development assistance in areas typically inaccessible to government agencies, NGOs are often able to access potential extremist areas before the government can establish or strengthen diplomatic, developmental or military presence, including intelligence.” — Joseph S. Nye, former US assistant secretary of defence, June 2004

Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.

“War Is Beautiful” is the ironic title of a beautiful new book of photographs.

The subtitle is “The New York TimesPictorial Guide to the Glamour of Armed Conflict.” There’s an asterisk after those words, and it leads to these: “(In which the author explains why he no longer reads The New York Times).” The author never explains why he read the New York Times to begin with.

The author of this remarkable book, David Shields, has selected color war photographs published on the front page of the New York Times over the last 14 years. He’s organized them by themes, included epigrams with each section, and added a short introduction, plus an afterword by Dave Hickey.

Some of us have long opposed subscribing to or advertising in the New York Times, as even peace groups do. We read occasional articles without paying for them or accepting their worldview. We know that the impact of theTimes lies primarily in how it influences television “news” reports.

But what about Times readers? The biggest impact that the paper has on them may not be in the words it chooses and omits, but rather in the images that the words frame. The photographs that Shields has selected and published in a large format, one on each page, are powerful and fantastic, straight out of a thrilling and mythical epic. One could no doubt insert them into the new Star Wars movie without too many people noticing.

The photos are also serene: a sunset on a beach lined with palm trees — actually the Euphrates river; a soldier’s face just visible amid a field of poppies.

We see soldiers policing a swimming pool — perhaps a sight that will someday arrive in the Homeland, as other sights first seen in images from foreign wars already have. We see collective military exercises and training, as at a desert summer camp, full of camaraderie in crises. There’s adventure, sports, and games. A soldier looks pleased by his trick as he holds a dummy head with a helmet on the end of a stick in front of a window to get it shot at.

War seems both a fun summer camp and a serious, solemn, and honorable tradition, as we see photos of elderly veterans, militaristic children, and U.S. flags back Home. Part of the seriousness is the caring and philanthropic work exhibited by photos of soldiers comforting the children they may have just orphaned. We see sacred U.S. troops protecting the people whose land they have been bombing and throwing into turmoil. We see our heroes’ love for their visiting Commander, George W. Bush.

Sometimes war can be awkward or difficult. There’s a bit of regrettable suffering. Occasionally it is tragically intense. But for the most part a rather boring and undignified death about which no one really cares comes to foreigners (outside the United States there are foreigners everywhere) who are left in the gutter as people walk away.

The war itself, centrally, is a technological wonder bravely brought out of the goodness of our superior hearts to a backward region in which the locals have allowed their very homes to turn to rubble. An empty settlement is illustrated by a photo of a chair in a street. There are water bottles upright on the ground. It looks as though a board meeting just ended.

Still, for all war’s drawbacks, people are mostly happy. They give birth and get married. Troops return home from camp after a good job done. Handsome Marines innocently mingle with civilians. Spouses embrace their camouflaged demigods returned from the struggle. A little American boy, held by his smiling mother, grins gleefully at the grave of his Daddy who died (happily, one must imagine) in Afghanistan.

At least in this selection of powerful images, we do not see people born with gruesome birth defects caused by the poisons of U.S. weapons. We do not see people married at weddings struck by U.S. missiles. We do not see U.S. corpses lying in the gutter. We do not see nonviolent protests of the U.S. occupations. We do not see the torture and death camps. We do not see the trauma of those who live under the bombs. We do not see the terror when the doors are kicked in, the way we would if soldiers — like police — were asked to wear body cameras. We do not see the “MADE IN THE USA” label on the weapons on both sides of a war. We do not see the opportunities for peace that have been studiously avoided. We do not see the U.S. troops participating in their number one cause of death: suicide.

A few of those things may show up now and then in the New York Times, more likely on a page other than the front one. Some of those things you may not want to see with your breakfast cereal. But there can be no question that Shields has captured a portrait of a day in the life of a war propagandist, and that the photographers, editors, and designers involved have done as much to cause the past 14 years of mass dying, suffering, and horror in the Middle East as has any single New York Times reporter or text editor.

Margaret Chan, general director of the World Health Organization (WHO), described Cuba’s public healthcare system as an example to be followed, emphasizing its sustainability and ability to respond to emergency situations, during an assembly meeting of the Interparliamentary Union, yesterday, October 20.

Chan highlighted Cuba’s spirit of solidarity, especially the country’s contribution to training healthcare professionals from Third World countries, and the important role played by Cuban professionals in combating Ebola in West Africa. 

Courtesy of Cuban medical brigade in Nepal

Leading the Cuban delegation to the event was National Assembly deputy Yolanda Ferrer, who commented that it was gratifying to hear the praise expressed by Chan, adding that Cuba’s health care system has been capable of offering its best to those in need around the world, while maintaining and consolidating the population’s health, despite the impact of the U.S. blockade.

The official Israeli story about Israa Abed – the Nazareth woman who was shot six times on Oct 9 by Israeli security forces as she stood motionless in a bus station – has changed so many times, it’s difficult to know what to believe any more. By a small miracle she survived the shooting.

I raised many questions about this incident, based on two videos taken by bystanders, in a post on the day she was shot. That post, including the videos, is available here.

Israa is one of Israel’s 1.6 million Palestinian citizens. She lives in Israel, not the occupied territories.

Let’s be clear: the main reason the police have repeatedly revised their account of the events of Oct 9 is because the visual evidence has conclusively refuted their claims. They have been forced to back-pedal.

Without the video, Israa would have been charged with, and probably convicted of, terrorism offences. In line with threats from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she would also have risked being stripped of her citizenship.

Originally the police said they “neutralised” Israa after she pulled out a knife and stabbed a security guard at the bus station in the city of Afula. When it was clear no one had been injured, the story changed: she had tried without success to stab the guard.

Then it was reported that the police had shot Israa not because of an attempted attack but because she behaved in a threatening manner towards other people at the bus station.

Now, in the latest version, the police say she did not intend to stab anyone. In the video footage, reports the Haaretz newspaper, she can be seen “standing next to a young ultra-Orthodox man without trying to hurt him”.

Instead, the police say she was depressed and / or mentally unstable and pulled out a knife because she wanted to “induce” the security forces to shoot her.

Pause for a second as you digest that argument. According to the police, Israa went to the bus station with the intention of pulling out a knife but not harming anyone, knowing that doing so would be enough to get her shot and maybe killed. And why would she think that? Because she looks Arab (she wears a headscarf), and, like most Palestinian citizens, understands that in any confrontation with the security services that is reason enough for the police to shoot without justifiable cause.

Even more disconcertingly, the Israeli police seem to agree that Israa’s assumptions were warranted.

Further, the claim that Israa wanted to be shot is pretty convenient for the four security staff who, even according to the official account, fired their weapons at a woman who posed absolutely no threat to anyone at the bus station.

Might they be disciplined, or, more properly, punished, for shooting a woman six times for no reason at all? Apparently not. They have been investigated and it has been decided that “there is no reason to take disciplinary measures against them, given the extenuating circumstances of the incident”. One might well ask: what were those “extenuating circumstances”?

Finally, the police are still claiming that Israa pulled out a knife. Given their series of bogus claims till now, there is no reason to assume even this part of their story to be true.

As I noted in my previous post, a video taken seconds after Israa was shot, when she is lying on the ground, appears to show a pair of sunglasses next to her. A man in jeans and T-shirt goes over to her, ignored by police, and kicks away the sunglasses. Who is that man and why is he interfering with evidence? No one seems to be asking these questions, so we are unlikely to get any answers.

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.682928

On October 27, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that the Pentagon is contemplating “direct action on the ground” in both Iraq and Syria, “in an effort to combat the self-proclaimed Islamic State terrorist group.” (Sputnik, October 27, 2015).

The not so hidden agenda, however,  is not “to combat” but rather “to protect and come to the rescue” of the Islamic State terrorist group. 

What’s new? Are we witnessing a process of military escalation?

The US and its allies already have boots on ground inside Syria. It’s not official, it’s a so-called “covert operation” which everybody knows about.

The Pentagon together with NATO, Turkey and Israel, et al, have routinely dispatched their military advisers, special forces and intelligence operatives to the Syrian war theater. These foreign forces have operated within rebel ranks from the outset of the war on Syria in March 2011.

While neither Washington nor the mainstream media have “officially” acknowledged their presence inside Syria, it should be understood that these Western special forces have performed routine command functions within the various terrorist groups in liaison with the US-NATO led coalition. In other words, they are largely responsible for coordinating countless ISIS and Al Nusrah terrorist operations against civilians inside Syria on behalf of the US led coalition. Needless to say, they are also supported by the US led air campaign, which theoretically is targeting (rather than “protecting”) the terrorists.

“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) The Terrorists

In response to Russia’s bombing raids against ISIS, Washington is now contemplating to announce “officially” (what they have been doing for the last four years) their resolve to have boots on the ground in an extended military operation. Needless to say, this operation, if it were to be carried out without the UN Security Council stamp of approval would constitute a violation of international law (Nuremberg).

The US administration is considering the possibility of deploying a small number of ground forces in Syria embedded among Kurdish troops or the “moderate” opposition, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing US officials.

The US military has also proposed sending a group of combat advisers to the front lines with the Iraqi army, and possibly also with Syrian rebels. This proposal is, nevertheless, qualified by the newspaper as a less likely scenario.

Moreover, the White House is to examine the option of deploying a small squadron of Apache attack helicopters to Iraq to step up the fight against the Islamic State, the newspaper said. The measure will entail deploying several hundred US servicemen to Iraq, according to the daily. Washington heads a coalition that has been conducting airstrikes on ISIL positions in Syria and Iraq since 2014.On Tuesday, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the Pentagon had not ruled out conducting attacks on the ground against ISIL terrorists. (Sputnik, October 28, 2015)

A No Fly Zone

Another important development pertains to the statement by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter that while “a no fly zone” is not contemplated in the immediate future by the Pentagon, it nonetheless remains an option: “President Barack Obama has not taken the option of a Syrian no-fly zone ‘off the table'”.

Meanwhile, Qatar has announced that it is contemplating sending ground troops to Syria. This statement announced by Doha was in all likelihood formulated  in Washington. According Qatar’s Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah, Qatar could intervene military in response to Russia’s intervention in support of the government of Bashar Al Assad. (CNN Arabic (October 21):

 “Anything that protects the Syrian people and Syria from partition, we will not spare any effort to carry it out with our Saudi and Turkish brothers, no matter what this is,”

From the outset, Qatar has acted as a US proxy. Together with Saudi Arabia it has contributed to the recruitment, training and financing of Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists inside Syria including ISIS and Al Nusrah.

We are at a dangerous crossroads

International diplomacy has collapsed. US foreign policy makers are ignorant and corrupt, unaware of the implications of their actions.

The US led air raids are being implemented simultaneously with those of Russia.

Stalemate at the UN. The UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon (appointed by Washington ) supports the US led war under a humanitarian banner.

These various actions and threats by the US led coalition –not to mention the chatter pertaining to a “World War III option” in the corridors of the US Congress– point to a scenario of military escalation, which could potentially lead to direct military confrontation between the US led coalition and the Russian Federation. 

As perspectivas econômicas do Japão põem em evidência que as políticas monetárias «não convencionais» implementadas por alguns bancos centrais dos países industrializados são um absoluto fracasso. A economia japonesa não só não registra crescimento econômico sustentado como voltou a registrar queda, segundo dados oficiais. O plano de recuperação lançado pelo primeiro-ministro Shinzo Abe está morto: tal como aconteceu em meados dos Anos 90, o Japão se afunda no estancamento econômico e na deflação, enquanto a dívida pública não para de crescer.

Os últimos três meses nos revelam que o panorama do sistema mundial é cada vez mais preocupante. Tanto pelas tensões geopolíticas na Síria, como pelas tendências econômicas à recessão. Pela quarta vez consecutiva neste ano, o Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI) diminuiu as previsões de crescimento: a economia global se expandirá 3,1% em 2015, a taxa mais baixa desde 2009.

O processo de recuperação econômica nos Estados Unidos é lento, e enquanto isso, a União Econômica e Monetária Europeia, junto com o Reino Unido, conservam o risco de consolidar a deflação (queda dos preços). Os países da América Latina e do continente asiático, por sua parte, tampouco estão a salvo da turbulência econômica mundial.

Depois da contração do crédito internacional, nos primeiros meses de 2009, a maior parte das economias emergentes evitaram se submergir numa crise profunda. Os países latino-americanos caíram em desaceleração, mas não em depressão.

O mesmo sucedeu com os países da região da Ásia-Pacífico. A China continuou comprando uma grande quantidade de matérias-primas (‘commodities’) – recursos com os quais os países primário-exportadores da periferia capitalista puderam resistir mais ao colapso. Agora, a situação é bem diferente, a recessão avança na América do Sul e a desaceleração ganha força no continente asiático.

O G-7 (integrado por Alemanha, Canadá, Estados Unidos, França, Itália, Japão e Reino Unido) se encontra preso numa crise estrutural. Os Estados Unidos, a Zona Euro, o Japão e o Reino Unido lançaram uma enorme quantidade de estímulos monetários e fiscais, para evitar o aprofundamento do caos. Porém, tais medidas, mais que dinamizar o grosso das atividades produtivas e promover a criação de emprego massivo, precipitaram a acumulação de dívida pública e o auge da especulação. A crise não foi resolvida, somente teve seus traços mais destrutivos contidos durante alguns meses.

No Japão, já se presenciam os primeiros sintomas do retorno da deflação (queda de preços). Quando o primeiro-ministro, Shinzo Abe, começou seu mandato, em dezembro de 2012, se comprometeu a tirar o país do atoleiro. Com graves penúrias desde 1980, devido a uma crise imobiliária, a economia japonesa se afundou no começo dos Anos 90, com um estancamento que sempre a manteve ameaçada pela queda dos preços.

O governo de Abe apostou todo o seu capital político num plano de recuperação chamado «Abenomics», sustentado pelas denominadas «três flechas»: as reformas estruturais, os estímulos fiscais (20,2 bilhões de ienes) e o programa de flexibilização quantitativa – um aumento da base monetária, num montante anual que equivale a 16% do produto interno bruto: 80 bilhões de ienes.

O objetivo consistia em incrementar a produtividade e a competitividade empresarial do país na economia global. Se liberalizou o mercado de trabalho, eliminando as barreiras da exploração capitalista. Para se juntar ao Tratado Transpacífico (TPP, por sua sigla em inglês), impulsionado pelos Estados Unidos, Abe pretende promover a abertura dos setores da agricultura e da saúde, entre outros, ainda que a resistência social interna seja forte nos dois casos.

Também diminuíram os impostos às corporações para promover o investimento produtivo, e se incrementou o imposto ao valor agregado, de 6 a 8%, para não gerar um rombo fiscal. Finalmente, foi lançado um programa de injeção de liquidez para favorecer a subida do nível dos preços. Entretanto, o plano «Abenomics» ainda não consegue fazer a economia decolar.

A economia japonesa caiu 1,2% entre abril e junho (em termos anuais). E há sinais que mostram que a recessão não cederá nos últimos dois trimestres do ano. Apesar da agressividade das políticas do Banco do Japão, a taxa interanual de inflação (excluindo alimentos e energia) continua sem crescer. Em agosto, diminuiu 0,1%. É a primeira vez que registra números negativos, desde abril de 2013.

A desvalorização do iene em mais de 30% com relação ao dólar ainda não mostra que o plano não foi capaz de dinamizar o comércio exterior o suficiente. A produção industrial (máquinas, automóveis e aparelhos eletrônicos) caiu e o nível de consumo das famílias não basta para elevar a demanda interna. A dívida pública já quase supera os 250% como proporção do produto interno bruto. A degradação da solvência é tanta que a agência Standard & Poors não teve alternativa e, em meados de setembro, diminuiu a qualificação da dívida soberana do país asiático de A para AA-.

O diretor do Banco do Japão, Haruhiko Kuroda, afirmou que a queda da atividade econômica se trata de uma situação que logo será superada, pois é transitória: tanto a queda dos preços do petróleo como a drástica desaceleração da China obstaculizam a capacidade do plano «Abenomics» de superar o estancamento e a deflação.

Sem dúvidas, entre os países do capitalismo industrializado, o Japão é um dos que vive um dos maiores dramas econômicos das últimas duas décadas. No começo de outubro, o banco central do país reiterou que não descarta a possibilidade de ampliar seu programa de estímulos monetários, no caso de que a situação se torne mais crítica. Contudo, é evidente que de nada servirá aumentar as doses um remédio que além de não curar, prolonga os males.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Fonte: Contralínea (México).

Tradução: Victor Farinelli (Carta Maior).

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez : Economista formado pela Universidade Nacional Autônoma do México.

Las perspectivas económicas de Japón ponen en evidencia que las políticas monetarias «no convencionales» implementadas por algunos bancos centrales de los países industrializados son un absoluto fracaso. La economía nipona no sólo no registra crecimiento económico sostenido, sino que regresó a la caída de precios según datos oficiales. El plan de recuperación lanzado por el primer ministro Shinzo Abe está muerto: tal como ocurrió desde mediados de la década de 1990, Japón se hunde en el estancamiento económico y la deflación, mientras que la deuda pública no para de crecer.

Los pasados 3 meses nos revelan que el panorama del sistema mundial es cada vez más preocupante. Tanto por las tensiones geopolíticas en Siria, como por las tendencias económicas que rozan la recesión. Por cuarta vez consecutiva en lo que va del año, el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) disminuyó sus estimaciones de crecimiento: la economía global se expandirá 3.1% en 2015, la tasa más baja desde 2009.

Es que el proceso de recuperación económica en Estados Unidos es muy débil, mientras que la Unión Económica y Monetaria Europea y el Reino Unido conservan el riesgo de consolidar la deflación (caída de los precios). Los países de América Latina y el Continente Asiático, por su parte, tampoco están a salvo de la turbulencia económica mundial.

Luego de la contracción del crédito (‘credit crunch’) internacional en los primeros meses de 2009, la mayor parte de las economías emergentes evitaron sumergirse en una crisis profunda. Los países latinoamericanos cayeron en desaceleración pero no en depresión.

Lo mismo sucedió con los países de la región de Asia-Pacífico: China continuó con la compra de una gran cantidad de materias primas (‘commodities’), con lo cual los países primario-exportadores de la periferia capitalista resistieron más ante el colapso si se los compara con las naciones industrializadas. Ahora la situación es muy distinta, la recesión avanza en América del Sur y la desaceleración cobra fuerza en el Continente Asiático.

El Grupo de los 7 (G-7, integrado por Alemania, Canadá, Estados Unidos, Francia, Italia, Japón y Reino Unido) se encuentra atrapado en una crisis estructural. Estados Unidos, la Zona Euro, Japón y el Reino Unido lanzaron una enorme cantidad de estímulos monetarios y fiscales para evitar la profundización de la debacle.

Sin embargo, esas políticas, más que dinamizar el grueso de la actividad productiva y promover la creación de empleo masivo, precipitaron la acumulación de deuda pública y el auge bursátil. La crisis no se resolvió, solamente se contuvieron sus rasgos más destructivos unos meses.

En Japón ya se presencian los primeros síntomas del regreso a la deflación (caída de precios). Cuando el primer ministro, Shinzo Abe, comenzó su mandato en diciembre de 2012, se comprometió a sacar a su país del atolladero. Con graves penurias desde 1980, por una crisis de los bienes raíces, la economía nipona se hundió a principios de la década de 1990 en el estancamiento, y siempre se mantuvo amenazada por la caída de precios.

El gobierno de Abe apostó todo su capital político en un plan de recuperación (conocido con el nombre de «Abenomics») sustentado en las denominadas «tres flechas»: las reformas estructurales, los estímulos fiscales (20.2 billones de yenes) y el programa de flexibilización cuantitativa (aumento de la base monetaria en un monto anual que equivale a 16% del producto interno bruto, 80 billones de yenes).

A grandes rasgos, el objetivo consistía en incrementar la productividad y la competitividad empresarial de Japón en la economía global. Se liberalizó el mercado laboral para eliminar las barreras de la explotación capitalista. Para sumarse en el Acuerdo de Asociación Transpacífico (TPP, por su sigla en inglés) que impulsa Estados Unidos, Abe pretende llevar adelante la apertura de los sectores de la agricultura y la salud, entre otros, aunque la resistencia interna no se lo permite todavía.

También se disminuyeron los impuestos a las corporaciones para promover la inversión productiva y se incrementó el impuesto al valor agregado de 6 a 8% para no generar un hoyo fiscal. Por último, se puso en marcha un programa de inyección de liquidez para favorecer la subida del nivel de precios. Sin embargo, el plan «Abenomics» aún no consigue el despegue de la economía.

La economía nipona cayó -1.2% entre abril y junio (en términos anuales). Y hay señales que apuntan a que la recesión no cederá en los últimos 2 trimestres del año. A pesar de la agresividad de las políticas del Banco de Japón, la tasa interanual de inflación (si se excluyen los alimentos y la energía) sigue sin crecer. En agosto disminuyó -0.1 por ciento. Es la primera vez que registra números negativos desde abril de 2013.

La depreciación del yen en más de 30% ante el dólar todavía no termina de dinamizar lo suficiente el comercio exterior. La producción industrial (maquinaria, automóviles y aparatos electrónicos) se desploma y el nivel de consumo de las familias no basta para elevar la demanda interna. La deuda pública ya casi supera 250% como proporción del producto interno bruto; la degradación de la solvencia es tal que la agencia Standard & Poors no tuvo alternativa y a mediados de septiembre disminuyó la calificación de la deuda soberana del país asiático de A+ a AA-.

El gobernador del Banco de Japón, Haruhiko Kuroda, sostuvo que la caída de la actividad económica se trata de una situación que muy pronto será superada, pues es transitoria: tanto el desplome de las cotizaciones del petróleo, como la drástica desaceleración de China obstaculizan que el plan «Abenomics» logre superar el estancamiento y la deflación.

Sin lugar a dudas, entre los países del capitalismo industrializado, Japón vive uno de los mayores dramas económicos desde hace más de 2 décadas. A principios de octubre, el banco central reiteró que no cancela la posibilidad de ampliar su programa de estímulos monetarios en caso de que la situación se vuelva más crítica. No obstante, es evidente que de nada servirá proveer dosis más altas de una medicina que en lugar de curar, prolonga los males.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

Fuente: Contralínea (México).

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez : Economista egresado de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

This article was first published by Who What Why

An extremely important story has come and gone in a flash, almost unnoticed, like so many important stories. It revealed that President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had agreed to invade Iraq long before the first bombs fell on the oil-rich Middle Eastern country.

The story is important because it adds to our understanding of the essentially criminal disinformation put out to convince Americans, Britons and the world that war was unavoidable.

We’d all been told that Bush and Blair only acted after exhaustive efforts to determine whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) — and that in any case their focus was on addressing that threat through all possible diplomatic options. In fact, as a leaked White House memo now shows, the UK was committed to backing the US-led invasion almost a year before the war started in March 2003.

The juiciest material in the memo was, of course, redacted, but even what remains is very telling: “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary. He is convinced on two points: the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success.”

 Protesters wearing George W. Bush and Tony Blair disguises. Photo credit:  Tintazul / Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)

What kind of “regional success” might these two Western leaders be after?

And what would determining that the threat Saddam posed was “real” have to do with “more regional success”?

Well, that success had nothing to do with eliminating WMDs (which turned out to be non-existent). It had everything to do with securing a wealth of natural resources.

As WhoWhatWhy previously reported, former NATO commander General Wesley Clark has revealed that the Pentagon had a plan dating back even before the attacks of September 11, 2001, to invade seven different countries in the region. According to Clark, it was “all about oil.” (Vice President Dick Cheney, chairing a secret energy task force, tried mightily to pin blame for 9/11 on Iraq — and though there was no truth to that claim, ended up persuading a fair chunk of the American public otherwise.)

THE SELF-DEALING THAT EXPLAINS IRAQ

Putting one and one together, now we know why Blair and Bush were so united in their desire to remove Saddam Hussein at any cost. The Iraq invasion was part of a larger scheme to re-draw the map of the Middle East and guarantee Western control of that region’s vast petroleum reserves for another generation and more. And little-known social and personal connections further bound the two men together — connections that ended up benefiting the business interests of a longtime mutual friend.

MAKE WAR, BECOME POPULAR

There were other benefits for the two men. As we reported earlier, Bush confided to a colleague in 1999 that if he became president, one of his main objectives would be to invade Iraq. He said a president needed a war in order to rally the American people, and get the high poll ratings necessary to drive a domestic agenda.

Tony Blair seems to have had the same idea. As former Tory Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said,

“Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a frontman for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet…. And in return for what? For George Bush pretending Blair was a player on the world stage to impress voters in the UK when the Americans didn’t even believe it themselves.”

This text was first published by Who What Why

For Part I, click here.

As you watch, perhaps with alarm, while thousands of refugees from Muslim countries make their way through Europe in a seemingly endless parade, you may be wondering if some of them will end up living near you, and how this might affect your life.

If you step back and look at the bigger picture, you will see the situation in reverse: how much the dominating presence of those from the western world has affected the daily lives of people living in Muslim countries.

What the colonial powers have done in Muslim countries is well known. Less well known are the machinations of Allen Dulles and the CIA in one of these colonial powers, France.

Without the knowledge or consent of President John F. Kennedy, Allen Dulles orchestrated the efforts of retired French generals, rightwing French, Nazi sympathizers, and at least one White Russian, to overthrow Charles de Gaulle, who wanted to give Algeria its independence. Dulles et al feared an independent Algeria would go Communist, giving the Soviets a base in Africa.

And there was another reason to hang onto Algeria: its natural resources. According to the US Energy Information Administration, it is “the leading natural gas producer in Africa, the second-largest natural gas supplier to Europe outside of the region, and is among the top three oil producers in Africa.”

We note with great interest that the plot to bring down Charles De Gaulle — the kind of people involved, the role of Allen Dulles, the motive behind it — all bear an eerie similarity to the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But that is another story.

As we have said earlier, Dulles’s job, simply put, was to hijack the US government to benefit the wealthy. And in this fascinating series of excerpts from David Talbot’s new biography on Dulles, we see how his reach extended deeply into the government of France.

WhoWhatWhy Introduction by Milicent Cranor

This is the second of a three-part series of excerpts from Chapter 15 (“Contempt”) ofThe Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of the American Secret Government. HarperCollins Publishers, 2015. Go here and here to see Parts 1 and 3. Previously, we presented excerpts from Chapter 20, and to see them, go here, here, andhere.

KENNEDY GETS A BAD SURPRISE

On January 26, Dulles sent a report to the new president on the French situation that seemed to be preparing Kennedy for de Gaulle’s imminent elimination, without giving any hint of the CIA’s own involvement in the plot. “A pre-revolutionary atmosphere reigns in France,” Dulles informed JFK.

“The Army and the Air Force are staunchly opposed to de Gaulle,” the spymaster continued, exaggerating the extent of the military opposition, as if to present the demise of the French president as a fait accompli. “At least 80 percent of the officers are violently against him. They haven’t forgotten that in 1958, he had given his word of honor that he would never abandon Algeria. He is now reneging on his promise, and they hate him for that. De Gaulle surely won’t last if he tries to let go of Algeria. Everything will probably be over for him by the end of the year — he will be either deposed or assassinated.”

Dulles clearly knew much more, but he wasn’t sharing it with Kennedy.

President De Gaulle stands between President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy
on the steps of the Élysée Palace in Paris, 1961.
Photo credit: U. S. Department of State image in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

When the coup against de Gaulle began three months later, Kennedy was still in the dark. It was a tumultuous time for the young administration. As he continued to wrestle with fallout from the Bay of Pigs crisis, JFK was suddenly besieged with howls of outrage from a major ally, accusing his own security services of seditious activity.

Kennedy then underlined how deeply estranged he was from his own security machinery by taking the extraordinary step of asking Alphand for the French government’s help to track down the US officials behind the coup, promising to fully punish them.

It was a stinging embarrassment for the new American president, who was scheduled to fly to Paris for a state visit the following month. To add to the insult, the coup had been triggered by de Gaulle’s efforts to bring French colonial rule in Algeria to an end — a goal that JFK himself had ardently championed.

The CIA’s support for the coup was one more defiant display of contempt — a back of the hand aimed not only at de Gaulle but at Kennedy.

JFK took pains to assure Paris that he strongly supported de Gaulle’s presidency, phoning Hervé Alphand, the French ambassador in Washington, to directly communicate these assurances. But, according to Alphand, Kennedy’s disavowal of official US involvement in the coup came with a disturbing addendum — the American president could not vouch for his own intelligence agency. Kennedy told Alphand that “the CIA is such a vast and poorly controlled machine that the most unlikely maneuvers might be true.”

JFK TO FRENCH: HELP FIND AMERICANS INVOLVED IN PLOT

This admission of presidential impotence, which Alphand reported to Paris, was a startling moment in US foreign relations, though it remains largely unknown today. Kennedy then underlined how deeply estranged he was from his own security machinery by taking the extraordinary step of asking Alphand for the French government’s help to track down the US officials behind the coup, promising to fully punish them.

“[Kennedy] would be quite ready to take all necessary measures in the interest of good Franco-American relations, whatever the rank or functions of [the] incriminated people,” Alphand cabled French foreign minister Maurice Couve de Murville.

In the wake of the crises in Cuba and France provoked by his own security officials, Kennedy began to display a new boldness. JFK’s assertiveness surprised CIA officials, who had apparently counted on Kennedy to be sidelined during the French coup.

To solidify his support for de Gaulle, Kennedy ordered US Ambassador James Gavin to offer the French leader “any help” he might need — clearly indicating that US troops would even fire on rebel forces from Algeria if they tried to land at American military bases in France. De Gaulle proudly declined the offer as “well-intentioned, but inappropriate” — perhaps horrified at the prospect of American GIs killing French soldiers on his nation’s soil. But Kennedy did arrange for US base commanders to take steps to camouflage landing sites, in case rebel planes attempted to use them.

In the wake of the crises in Cuba and France provoked by his own security officials, Kennedy began to display a new boldness. JFK’s assertiveness surprised CIA officials, who had apparently counted on Kennedy to be sidelined during the French coup.

Agency officials assured coup leaders that the president would be too “absorbed in the Cuban affair” to act decisively against the plot. But JFK did react quickly to the French crisis, putting on high alert Ambassador Gavin, a decorated paratrooper commander in World War II who could be counted on to keep NATO forces in line. The president also dispatched his French speaking press spokesman, Pierre Salinger, to Paris to communicate directly with Élysée Palace officials.

As Paris officials knew, the new American president already had something of a prickly relationship with de Gaulle, but he had strong feelings for France — and they made sure to absolve JFK of personal responsibility for the coup in their leaks to the press. French press accounts referred to the CIA as a “reactionary state within a state” that operated outside of Kennedy’s control.

After JFK’s death, Alphand spoke fondly of the bonds between Kennedy and France. “He thought that harmonious relations between the US and France were a fundamental element of world equilibrium. He knew France as a boy. He came to France for his holidays — the south of France — and he knew France also through his wife. Jacqueline made many, many trips to Paris. I know that Jacqueline helped him very much to understand France. She loves France — she has French blood — she speaks our language very well and she asked him to read the memoirs of General de Gaulle.”

Four rebellious French Generals who tried to overthrow President Charles de Gaulle in order to keep the French departments of Algeria as part of France. Picture was taken in 1961 in Algiers (French Algeria). From left to right French Generals André Zeller, Edmond Jouhaud, Raoul Salan and Maurice Challe. Photo credit: Wikimedia

Kennedy’s strong show of support for de Gaulle undoubtedly helped fortify French resolve against the rebellious generals. In the midst of the crisis, the American president issued a public message to de Gaulle, telling him, “In this grave hour for France, I want you to know of my continuing friendship and support as well as that of the American people.”

“FASCISM WILL NOT PASS!”

But it was de Gaulle himself, and the French people, who turned the tide against the coup. By Sunday, the second day of the coup, a dark foreboding had settled over Paris. “I am surprised that you are still alive,” the president of France’s National Assembly bluntly told de Gaulle that morning. “If I were Challe, I would have already swooped down on Paris; the army here will move out of the way rather than shoot…. If I were in the position Challe put himself in, as soon as I burst in, I would have you executed with a bullet in the back, here in the stairwell, and say you were trying to flee.” De Gaulle himself realized that if Challe did airlift his troops from Algiers to France, “there was not much to stop them.”

But at eight o’clock that evening, a defiant de Gaulle went on the air, as nearly all of France gathered around the TV, and rallied his nation with the most inspiring address of his long public career. He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes. But he had put on his soldier’s uniform for the occasion, and his voice was full of passion.

De Gaulle began by denouncing the rebellious generals. The nation had been betrayed “by men whose duty, honor and raison d’être it was to serve and to obey.” Now it was the duty of every French citizen to protect the nation from these military traitors. “In the name of France,” de Gaulle shouted, thumping the table in front of him, “I order that all means — I repeat all means — be employed to block the road everywhere to those men!”

De Gaulle’s final words were a battle cry. “Françaises, Français! Aidez moi!” And all over France, millions of people did rush to the aid of their nation. The following day, a general strike was organized to protest the putsch. Led primarily by the left, including labor unions and the Communist Party, the mass protest won broad political support.

Over ten million people joined the nationwide demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands marching in the streets of Paris, carrying banners proclaiming “Peace in Algeria” and shouting, “Fascism will not pass!” Even police officers associations expressed “complete solidarity” with the protests, as did the Roman Catholic Confederation, which denounced the “criminal acts” of the coup leaders, warning that they “threaten to plunge the country into civil war.”

Hundreds of people rushed to the nation’s airfields and prepared to block the runways with their vehicles if Challe’s planes tried to land. Others gathered outside government ministries in Paris to guard them against attack. André Malraux, the great novelist turned minister of culture, threaded his way through one such crowd, handing out helmets and uniforms. Meanwhile, at the huge Renault factory on the outskirts of Paris, workers took control of the sprawling complex and formed militias, demanding weapons from the government so that they could fend off rebel assaults.

“In many ways, France, and particularly Paris, relived its great revolutionary past Sunday night and Monday — the past of the revolutionary barricades, of vigilance committees and of workers’ councils,” reported The New York Times.

De Gaulle’s ringing address to the nation and the massive public response had a sobering effect on the French military. Challe’s support quickly began melting away, even — humiliatingly — within the ranks of his own military branch, the air force. Pilots flew their planes out of Algeria, and others feigned mechanical troubles, depriving Challe’s troops of the air transport they needed to descend on Paris.

Meanwhile, de Gaulle moved quickly to arrest military officers in France who were involved in the coup. Police swooped down on the Paris apartment of an army captain who was plotting pro-putsch street riots, and de Gaulle’s minister of the interior seized the general in charge of the rebel forces that were gathered in the forests outside Paris. Deprived of their leader, the insurrectionary units sheepishly began to disperse.

By Tuesday night, Challe knew that the coup had failed. The next day, he surrendered and was flown to Paris. Challe emerged from the plane “carrying his own suitcase, looking crumpled and insignificant in civilian clothes,” according to Time. “He stumbled at the foot of the landing steps, [falling] heavily on his hands and knees.” It was an ignominious homecoming for the man who had fully believed that, with US support, he was to replace the great de Gaulle.

Challe expected to face a firing squad, but de Gaulle’s military tribunal proved surprisingly merciful, sentencing the fifty-five-year-old general to fifteen years in prison.

Next: Part 3.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump recently reposted a tweet from a follower blaming his trailing numbers in a new Iowa poll on genetically modified corn that “creates issues in the brain.” The GMO issue looms large for the candidates currently in the running.

“@mygreenhippo #BenCarson is now leading in the #polls in #Iowa. Too much #Monsanto in the #corn creates issues in the brain? #Trump #GOP“

—  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2015

Trump made his thoughts on GM foods clear with this tweet, but what do the other candidates think? Hillary Clinton is in favor of genetically modified foods, though Hilary recently spoke out about the biotech industry causing inflated drug prices. Clinton has been called a ‘shill’ for biotech, even:

“How is Hillary personally involved in supporting big agriculture? The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), which gathers leaders to solve the world’s problems, promotes Monsanto, the maker of RoundUp® and RoundUp Ready® seeds. Hugh Grant, Monsanto’s Chairman and CEO spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative conference in September, 2014. Ms. Clinton’s top campaign advisor, Jerry Crawford, was a lobbyist for Monsanto for years and is now the political pro for her Super PAC, “Ready for Hillary.” Clinton spoke in favor of the government’s Feed the Future (FtF) program, a USAID funded, corporate-partnered program that brings RoundUp Ready® technology to the most vulnerable populations of the world. Monsanto and Dow Chemical support Hillary and Bill’s ‘Clinton Foundation’ with generous donations.”

Clinton has also been known to try to ‘pretty up’ public perception of GM foods, saying that the term ‘Frankenfood’ is a misnomer, and that they should be called drought-resistant crops, instead.

Furthermore, as Secretary of State Clinton, according to CNN, has supported the DARK Act or TPP 45 times, even though she has recently come out in opposition of it.

You can see the words come straight from Hillary’s mouth, here.

Then there’s Bernie Sanders who may be running against the grain on a lot of issues, including GMOs but there’s one issue on which Sanders sees eye-to-eye with Hillary Clinton, and Republican contenders: vaccinations. Erstwhile he comes down hard on the TPP, and says that Americans have a right to know what is in their food. Sanders has remarked:

“An overwhelming majority of Americans favor GMO labeling but virtually all of the major biotech and food corporations in the country oppose it . . .(Vermont’s labeling law is scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2016.) The people of Vermont and the people of America have a right to know what’s in the food that they eat.”

Conversely, Jeb Bush has made it clear that he’s a huge fan of GMO’s. At a recent conference, Bush said he supported country-of-origin labeling for produce like the avocados and cilantro that go into his homemade guacamole, but said he said that he did not support the right to know if our food is genetically modified.

“I think that’s a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist,” Bush said, while calling GMOs one of the “greatest high technology innovative sectors of our economy.”

“We should not be trying to make it harder for that kind of innovation to exist, we should celebrate it…” he continued.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee also seems to play it safe politically by saying that science is consistently showing that GMOs are safe. He thinks that a “Country of Origin” label makes more sense than a GMO label.

While these aren’t all the 2016 presidential candidates, the front runners have definitely weighed in on the issue. Who do you trust to govern food safety in 2016? After Obama’s empty promise to label GMO foods, maybe the answer is none of them.

A peer-reviewed study published last year in the British Journal of Nutrition, a leading international journal of nutritional science, showed that organic crops and crop-based foods are between 18 to 69 percent higher in a number of key antioxidants such as polyphenolics than conventionally-grown crops. Numerous studies have linked antioxidants to a reduced risk of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and certain cancers. The research team concluded that a switch to eating organic fruit, vegetable and cereals – and food made from them – would provide additional antioxidants equivalent to eating between one and two extra portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Moreover, significantly lower levels of a range of toxic heavy metals were found in organic crops. For instance, cadmium is one of only three metal contaminants, along with lead and mercury, for which the European Commission has set maximum permitted contamination levels in food. It was found to be almost 50 percent lower in organic crops. Nitrogen concentrations were also found to be significantly lower in organic crops. Concentrations of total nitrogen were 10 percent, nitrate 30 percent and nitrite 87 percent lower in organic compared to conventional crops. The study also found that pesticide residues were four times more likely to be found in conventional crops than organic ones.

The research was the biggest of its kind ever undertaken. The international team of experts led by Newcastle University in the UK analysed 343 studies into the compositional differences between organic and conventional crops.

The findings contradict those of a 2009 UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) commissioned study which found there were no substantial differences or significant nutritional benefits from organic food. The FSA commissioned study based its conclusions on only 46 publications covering crops, meat and dairy, while the Newcastle University-led meta-analysis is based on data from 343 peer-reviewed publications on composition difference between organic and conventional crops.

There has been for a long time serious concerns about the health impacts of eating food that has been contaminated with petro-chemical pesticides and fertilisers. Over the past 60 years, agriculture has changed more than it did during the previous 12,000. And much of that change has come about due to the so-called ‘green revolution’, which has entailed soaking crops with petrochemicals. Coinciding with these changes has been the onset and proliferation of numerous diseases and allergies.

The global agritech/agribusiness sector is in effect poisoning our food and the environment with its pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and various other chemical inputs. Journalist Arthur Nelson has written that as many as 31 pesticides could have been banned in the EU because of potential health risks, if a blocked EU paper on hormone-mimicking chemicals had been acted upon.

Christina Sarich recently reported that there are currently 34,000 pesticides registered for use in the US. She states that drinking water it is often contaminated by pesticides and more babies are being born with preventable birth defects due to pesticide exposure. Chemicals are so prevalently used that they show up in breast milk of mothers.

Illnesses are on the rise too, including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases and several types of cancer. Sarich says that their connection to pesticide exposure becomes more evident with every new study conducted.

Important pollinating insects have been decimated by chemical herbicides and pesticides, which are also stripping the soil of nutrients. As a result, for example, there has been a 41.1 to 100 percent decrease in vitamin A in 6 foods: apple, banana, broccoli, onion, potato and tomato. Both onion and potato saw a 100 percent loss of vitamin A between 1951 and 1999.

In Punjab, India, pesticides have turned the state into a ‘cancer epicentre‘, and Indian soils are being depleted as a result of the application of ‘green revolution’ ideology and chemical inputs. India is losing 5,334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion because of the indiscreet and excessive use of fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports that soil is become deficient in nutrients and fertility.

We can carry on down the route of chemical-intensive, poisonous agriculture, with our health and the environment continuing to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit. Or we can shift to organic farming and investment in and reaffirmation of indigenous models of agriculture as advocated by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology (IAASTD) report.

In this respect, botanist Stuart Newton’s states:

“The answers to Indian agricultural productivity is not that of embracing the international, monopolistic, corporate-conglomerate promotion of chemically-dependent GM crops… India has to restore and nurture her depleted, abused soils and not harm them any further, with dubious chemical overload, which are endangering human and animal health.” (p24).

Newton provides insight into the importance of soils and their mineral compositions and links their depletion to the ‘green revolution’. In turn, these depleted soils cannot help but lead to mass malnourishment. This is quite revealing given that proponents of the ‘green revolution’ claim it helped reduced malnutrition. Newton favours a system of agroecology, a sound understanding of soil and the eradication of poisonous chemical inputs.

Over the past few years, there have been numerous high level reports from the UN and development agencies putting forward similar arguments and proposals in favour of small farmers and agroecology, but this has not been translated into real action on the ground where peasant farmers increasingly face marginalisation and oppression.

According to Vandana Shiva, for instance, the plundering of Indian agriculture by foreign corporations is resulting in a forced removal of farmers from the land and the destruction of traditional communities on a scale of which has not been witnessed anywhere before throughout history. On a global level, not least because peasant/smallholder farming is more productive than industrial farming and because it feeds most of the world, this is undermining the world’s ability for feeding itself. It is also leaving to denutrification: not only in terms of specific items containing less nutrients than before, as described above, but because people are being forced to rely on a narrower range of foodstuffs and crops as monocropping replaces a biodiverse system of agriculture.

The increasingly globalised industrial food system is failing to feed the world but is also responsible for some of the planet’s most pressing political, social and environmental crises – not least hunger and poverty. This system – not forgetting the capitalism that underpins it – and the corporations and institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) that fuel it must be confronted, as must the wholly inappropriate and unsustainable urban-centric model of ‘development’ being forced through at the behest of these corporations in places like India.

Organic farmer and activist Bhaskar Save describes how this urban-centric model has served to uproot indigenous agriculture in India with devastating effect:

“The actual reason for pushing the ‘Green Revolution’ was the much narrower goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively less perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured by the government. The new, parasitical way of farming… benefited only the industrialists, traders and the powers-that-be. The farmers’ costs rose massively and margins dipped. Combined with the eroding natural fertility of their land, they were left with little in their hands, if not mounting debts and dead soils… Self-reliant farming – with minimal or zero external inputs – was the way we actually farmed, very successfully, in the past. Barring periods of war and excessive colonial oppression, our farmers were largely self-sufficient, and even produced surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items. These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets. And so the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs.”

Even if proponents of the ‘green revolution’ choose to live in a fool’s paradise by ignoring the ecologically and environmentally unsustainable nature of the system they promote and merely mouth platitudes about organic being less productive, they might like to look at the results Bhaskar Save achieved on his farm. They might also like to consider this analysis which questions the apparent successes claimed by advocates of the ‘green revolution’. And they should certainly consider this report based on a 30-year study which concluded that organic yields match conventional yields and outperform conventional in years of drought. That report also showed that organic agriculture builds rather than deplete soil organic matter, making it a more sustainable system.

But why let science get in the way of propaganda? These proponents have already paved the way for extending the the corporate control of agriculture and the ‘green revolution’ with their GMOs and further chemical inputs – all underpinned of course by endless deceptions and neoliberal ideology wrapped up as fake concern for the poor.

A peer-reviewed study published last year in the British Journal of Nutrition, a leading international journal of nutritional science, showed that organic crops and crop-based foods are between 18 to 69 percent higher in a number of key antioxidants such as polyphenolics than conventionally-grown crops. Numerous studies have linked antioxidants to a reduced risk of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and certain cancers. The research team concluded that a switch to eating organic fruit, vegetable and cereals – and food made from them – would provide additional antioxidants equivalent to eating between one and two extra portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Moreover, significantly lower levels of a range of toxic heavy metals were found in organic crops. For instance, cadmium is one of only three metal contaminants, along with lead and mercury, for which the European Commission has set maximum permitted contamination levels in food. It was found to be almost 50 percent lower in organic crops. Nitrogen concentrations were also found to be significantly lower in organic crops. Concentrations of total nitrogen were 10 percent, nitrate 30 percent and nitrite 87 percent lower in organic compared to conventional crops. The study also found that pesticide residues were four times more likely to be found in conventional crops than organic ones.

The research was the biggest of its kind ever undertaken. The international team of experts led by Newcastle University in the UK analysed 343 studies into the compositional differences between organic and conventional crops.

The findings contradict those of a 2009 UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) commissioned study which found there were no substantial differences or significant nutritional benefits from organic food. The FSA commissioned study based its conclusions on only 46 publications covering crops, meat and dairy, while the Newcastle University-led meta-analysis is based on data from 343 peer-reviewed publications on composition difference between organic and conventional crops.

There has been for a long time serious concerns about the health impacts of eating food that has been contaminated with petro-chemical pesticides and fertilisers. Over the past 60 years, agriculture has changed more than it did during the previous 12,000. And much of that change has come about due to the so-called ‘green revolution’, which has entailed soaking crops with petrochemicals. Coinciding with these changes has been the onset and proliferation of numerous diseases and allergies.

The global agritech/agribusiness sector is in effect poisoning our food and the environment with its pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and various other chemical inputs. Journalist Arthur Nelson has written that as many as 31 pesticides could have been banned in the EU because of potential health risks, if a blocked EU paper on hormone-mimicking chemicals had been acted upon.

Christina Sarich recently reported that there are currently 34,000 pesticides registered for use in the US. She states that drinking water it is often contaminated by pesticides and more babies are being born with preventable birth defects due to pesticide exposure. Chemicals are so prevalently used that they show up in breast milk of mothers.

Illnesses are on the rise too, including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases and several types of cancer. Sarich says that their connection to pesticide exposure becomes more evident with every new study conducted.

Important pollinating insects have been decimated by chemical herbicides and pesticides, which are also stripping the soil of nutrients. As a result, for example, there has been a 41.1 to 100 percent decrease in vitamin A in 6 foods: apple, banana, broccoli, onion, potato and tomato. Both onion and potato saw a 100 percent loss of vitamin A between 1951 and 1999.

In Punjab, India, pesticides have turned the state into a ‘cancer epicentre‘, and Indian soils are being depleted as a result of the application of ‘green revolution’ ideology and chemical inputs. India is losing 5,334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion because of the indiscreet and excessive use of fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports that soil is become deficient in nutrients and fertility.

We can carry on down the route of chemical-intensive, poisonous agriculture, with our health and the environment continuing to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit. Or we can shift to organic farming and investment in and reaffirmation of indigenous models of agriculture as advocated by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology (IAASTD) report.

In this respect, botanist Stuart Newton’s states:

“The answers to Indian agricultural productivity is not that of embracing the international, monopolistic, corporate-conglomerate promotion of chemically-dependent GM crops… India has to restore and nurture her depleted, abused soils and not harm them any further, with dubious chemical overload, which are endangering human and animal health.” (p24).

Newton provides insight into the importance of soils and their mineral compositions and links their depletion to the ‘green revolution’. In turn, these depleted soils cannot help but lead to mass malnourishment. This is quite revealing given that proponents of the ‘green revolution’ claim it helped reduced malnutrition. Newton favours a system of agroecology, a sound understanding of soil and the eradication of poisonous chemical inputs.

Over the past few years, there have been numerous high level reports from the UN and development agencies putting forward similar arguments and proposals in favour of small farmers and agroecology, but this has not been translated into real action on the ground where peasant farmers increasingly face marginalisation and oppression.

According to Vandana Shiva, for instance, the plundering of Indian agriculture by foreign corporations is resulting in a forced removal of farmers from the land and the destruction of traditional communities on a scale of which has not been witnessed anywhere before throughout history. On a global level, not least because peasant/smallholder farming is more productive than industrial farming and because it feeds most of the world, this is undermining the world’s ability for feeding itself. It is also leaving to denutrification: not only in terms of specific items containing less nutrients than before, as described above, but because people are being forced to rely on a narrower range of foodstuffs and crops as monocropping replaces a biodiverse system of agriculture.

The increasingly globalised industrial food system is failing to feed the world but is also responsible for some of the planet’s most pressing political, social and environmental crises – not least hunger and poverty. This system – not forgetting the capitalism that underpins it – and the corporations and institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) that fuel it must be confronted, as must the wholly inappropriate and unsustainable urban-centric model of ‘development’ being forced through at the behest of these corporations in places like India.

Organic farmer and activist Bhaskar Save describes how this urban-centric model has served to uproot indigenous agriculture in India with devastating effect:

“The actual reason for pushing the ‘Green Revolution’ was the much narrower goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively less perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured by the government. The new, parasitical way of farming… benefited only the industrialists, traders and the powers-that-be. The farmers’ costs rose massively and margins dipped. Combined with the eroding natural fertility of their land, they were left with little in their hands, if not mounting debts and dead soils… Self-reliant farming – with minimal or zero external inputs – was the way we actually farmed, very successfully, in the past. Barring periods of war and excessive colonial oppression, our farmers were largely self-sufficient, and even produced surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items. These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets. And so the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs.”

Even if proponents of the ‘green revolution’ choose to live in a fool’s paradise by ignoring the ecologically and environmentally unsustainable nature of the system they promote and merely mouth platitudes about organic being less productive, they might like to look at the results Bhaskar Save achieved on his farm. They might also like to consider this analysis which questions the apparent successes claimed by advocates of the ‘green revolution’. And they should certainly consider this report based on a 30-year study which concluded that organic yields match conventional yields and outperform conventional in years of drought. That report also showed that organic agriculture builds rather than deplete soil organic matter, making it a more sustainable system.

But why let science get in the way of propaganda? These proponents have already paved the way for extending the the corporate control of agriculture and the ‘green revolution’ with their GMOs and further chemical inputs – all underpinned of course by endless deceptions and neoliberal ideology wrapped up as fake concern for the poor.

It bears repeating and stressing what other articles explained. Washington uses ISIS and other takfiri terrorists as US foot soldiers in Syria, Iraq and wherever else they’re deployed.

In over a year of US bombing both countries, zero ISIS targets were struck – infrastructure and other government sites only. Claims otherwise are Big Lies about Obama’s wars in both countries.

Last year, he promised no “American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. We will not get dragged into another ground war” – another of his many Big Lies.

Last week, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said he has “no intention to authorize long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like our nation has conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Middle East analyst Phyllis Bennis told RT International: “I think the question of US boots on the ground has been true for over a year now. We’ve had at least 35,000 troops in Iraq that went back last year (2014).”

US “troops (are actively) engaged in combat…So, the notion that there are ‘no boots’ is simply not the case. We also know that besides 35,000 US troops on the ground in Iraq there are an unknown numbers of other Special Forces and CIA forces on the ground.”

“Maybe they wear sneakers rather than boots. But there is no question that US forces have been fighting directly in Iraq for more than a year now.”

Their involvement makes things worse on the ground, not better – why they’re deployed in the first place, to keep the regional pot boiling, assure endless war, instability and chaos, support, not combat ISIS, and now an attempt to counter Russia’s successful air campaign.

Make no mistake about what’s ongoing and intended. Washington supports its ISIS and other terrorist proxy foot soldiers, wanting them protected from Russia’s commitment to contain, neutralize and eliminate them.

Most important for Moscow is keeping them from spreading elsewhere, especially to Russia and Central Asia, what Washington very much intends.

An undeclared US/Russia war rages, each nation supporting opposite sides in Syria and Iraq – America backing pure evil to advance its imperium, Moscow the best hope to restore regional peace and stability.

On October 27, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told Senate Armed Forces Committee members Washington intends “direct (regional) action on the ground” – code language for escalating what’s been ongoing for over a year.

“We won’t hold back…whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground,” said Carter. “We expect to intensify our air campaign…with a higher and heavier rate of strikes…We’ve already begun to ramp up these deliberate strikes.”

What’s coming remains to be seen. Carter provided no details. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “(w)e need to figure out…what (he) meant.”

Sergey Lavrov said Washington has no “understanding (about) who poses a terrorist threat in Syria” and Iraq. “One cannot say that there are (so-called) ‘good’ terrorists which are not to be touched.”

Russia offers help to all Syrian opposition groups fighting terrorism. It’s hard “find(ing) representatives of such opposition groups,” Lavrov explained.

All elements fighting Assad are terrorists. No “good” ones exist. The only way to restore regional peace and stability is eliminating them – Russia’s commitment opposed by Washington.

Russian upper house Federation Council Committee on International Affairs chairman Konstantin Kosachev calls US operations in Syria (and by implication Iraq for doing the opposite of what’s claimed) illegal – in contrast to Russian forces operating “within the framework of international law.”

“We have no intention of joining any other coalition for the simple reason that they are outside the framework of the international law,” Kosachev stressed.

He blasted misinformation about Russian airstrikes targeting civilians – part of the ongoing information war, he explained. No evidence supports baseless accusations.

Russia’s Defense Ministry demanded NATO provide proof, supporting US and other member countries’ allegations. Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov summoned “military attaches of the United States, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, NATO bloc and requested them to provide a formal justification of the essence of these statements or make a rebuttal, especially concerning the outrageous accusations in a number of English-language media about alleged airstrikes on hospitals.”

Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov dismissed what he called baseless “stove-piping reports.”

“We have been closely monitoring and analyzing such hoaxes,” he explained. “Only when we are 100% sure of the target, (are) aircraft…sent to deliver strikes on IS infrastructure using the corresponding precision-guided munitions.”

No hospitals or other civilian targets are struck. Russia has photographic proof of all targets destroyed.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. 

In our previous media alert, ‘Sick Sophistry’, we examined media coverage of the deliberate US bombing of a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan on October 3. In particular, we exposed the BBC’s Pentagon-friendly reporting of the hospital as having been ‘mistakenly’ bombed.

On October 24, MSF announced that 30 people had now tragically died, up from the initial toll of 22. The humanitarian organisation, also known as Doctors Without Borders, continued to call for an independent international investigation into what it has called a ‘war crime’. Associated Press has just reported new evidence ‘that U.S. forces destroyed what they knew was a functioning hospital’.

The report comments:

‘The Army Green Berets who requested the Oct. 3 airstrike on the Doctors without Borders trauma center in Afghanistan were aware it was a functioning hospital but believed it was under Taliban control, The Associated Press has learned.’

Damningly, AP adds:

‘A day before an American AC-130 gunship attacked the hospital, a senior officer in the Green Beret unit wrote in a report that U.S. forces had discussed the hospital with the country director of the medical charity group, presumably in Kabul, according to two people who have seen the document.’

Meanwhile, there has still been no leading article in any UK newspaper backing MSF’s call for an independent inquiry.

In response to our alert, we were contacted by a former RAF pilot with twenty years’ military experience in several countries, including Afghanistan. He had discovered our alert by following a link in a comment posted underneath a recent Guardian piece mentioning the attack.

The former pilot gave us his name but, for obvious reasons, wishes to remain anonymous. He told us that he has experience of flying fast jets and multi-engine aircraft, and that he served operationally in the Balkans, Kosovo, Afghanistan and elsewhere. As far as we can tell, he appears to be genuine. He wrote to us in a series of emails (October 21-24):

‘First time I have ever come across your organisation and I am very impressed by your work.’

He then wrote:

‘It has been my firm opinion from the very beginning that Kunduz hospital was indeed deliberately targeted. I slightly digress from the Lindorff article in that the C-130 Gunship is a pinpoint platform with a choice of munitions. The fact that the hospital was targeted on five separate occasions with unerring accuracy simply underlines how deliberate this attack was. The Gunship itself is a revered weapon on the battlefield, manned by elite crews who are very highly trained. I was involved in the Afghan campaign almost from the beginning when things were pretty hairy. The aircraft of choice for UK Special Forces on the ground was the Gunship and they lobbied for a UK version. It is expensive and due to the side-mounted howitzer limited to one role and so their requests were denied. The Gunship gives unsurpassed support to troops on the ground because of its multi-hour endurance and loiter capability and the accuracy of its smaller calibre cannon and capability of its enormous 105mm howitzer.’

He continued:

‘I do not accept that the target could have been mistakenly targeted. The crew and command centre would have been fully aware they were attacking a hospital. I followed one of your links suggesting that the C130 crew challenged their orders to target the hospital. This is the very least that I’d have expected to happen. I have extensive operational experience flying in Afghanistan. I am struggling to comprehend in what circumstance I would blindly follow an order to attack a fully manned civilian hospital. If the description provided by MSF’s director-general is accurate I can say without hesitancy that I would have refused such an order for it is an obvious war crime. During the Kosovo war it was fairly routine for RAF Harrier pilots to return home with bombs still loaded because they had been unable to confirm visual acquisition of targets. RAF pilots are probably more inclined to think for themselves than American crews who are extremely tightly controlled. American military personnel give up many rights when they join up, but I am still disappointed that this crew did not appear to do more to challenge their orders. Back in the UK, we lost crown immunity many years ago and it is essential to challenge every questionable act carried out on the battlefield (our emphasis).

‘Given that we agree that the hospital was deliberately targeted it would be useful to try and understand why. It is my opinion that whilst possible, it is unlikely that this was a mistake, intentional or otherwise, by Afghan commanders on the ground. I saw an unconfirmed report stating that US Special Forces were on the ground in Kunduz so it is unlikely that Afghans alone would have called in the attack. So the alternative is that the crew were given their mission from US Central Command or it was called in on the ground by their own people. This is why I doubt we’ll see an independent inquiry. Very senior military officers would be on the hook for what happened in Kunduz because they would have authorised the sustained attack. It is still possible that the Kunduz hospital is seen as an operational “success”; the world of special operations is opaque. It is also a vague possibility that this was an act of gross incompetence, but that would still constitute a war crime. In any case, I simply do not believe it to be incompetence because of the sustained nature of the attack.’

He also commented on media coverage:

‘The response in the mainstream media mainly consisted of repeating what came off the wires. Unfortunately, the US military changed their version several times which weakened their case immediately. My own experience of BBC journalists is positive but when it comes to describing a major news event there is an immediate suspicion of editorial control from on high. I think it is extremely valuable that you target both individual journalists and the reporting of such events in general. I absolutely commend this approach, which is why I am happy to support you in your endeavours.’

You may be shocked that even the deliberate bombing of a hospital may be regarded as an operational ‘success’. There is no doubt that, were the full truth to emerge, the attack on the MSF hospital would be even more deeply embarrassing and damaging to Western interests than it already is. After all, ‘we’ do not commit war crimes; only ‘our’ enemies do that.

Long-time readers may recall that, in 2007, a serving British army officer in Iraq responded to an exchange we’d had with Mark Urban, the diplomatic editor of BBC Newsnight. The officer strongly rejected Urban’s contention that the central US aim was that of ‘forcing a democracy into the heart of the Middle East’ (Newsnight, BBC2, April 12, 2005), commenting:

‘There is a widespread, and well-sourced, belief based on both experience and evidence, in both the British military and academia, that the US is not “just in Iraq to keep the peace, regardless of what the troops on the ground believe. It is in Iraq to establish a client state amenable to the requirements of US realpolitik in a key, oil-rich region. To doubt this is to be ignorant of the motives that have guided US foreign policy in the post-war period and a mountain of evidence since 2003.” (quote from Media Lens).’

The officer gave rare voice to widespread scepticism within the military:

‘That the invasion was “illegal, immoral and unwinnable”, and the “greatest foreign policy blunder since Suez”… is the overwhelming feeling of many of my peers, and they speak of loathsome six-month tours, during which they led patrols with dread and fear, reluctantly providing target practice for insurgents, senselessly haemorrhaging casualties, and squandering soldiers’ lives, as part of Bush’s vain attempt to delay the inevitable Anglo-US rout until after the next US election.

‘Given a free choice most of us would never have invaded Iraq, and certainly would have withdrawn long ago.’

In response, Urban discussed the officer’s email on the BBC’s Newsnight programme; a rare concession to media activism.

Recall that the former RAF officer who emailed us after our Kunduz media alert made this particularly welcome point:

‘it is essential to challenge every questionable act carried out on the battlefield’.

It certainly is essential. And this is true, not just for military personnel with destructive high-tech weaponry at their fingertips; but also for journalists whose reporting has the power to facilitate or obstruct crimes against humanity.

Today Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to outline a new US military strategy for the Middle East. The Secretary admitted the failure of the US “train and equip” program for rebels in Syria, but instead of taking the appropriate lessons from that failure and get out of the “regime change” business, he announced the opposite. The US would not only escalate its “train and equip” program by removing the requirement that fighters be vetted for extremist ideology, but according to the Secretary the US military would for the first time become directly and overtly involved in combat in Syria and Iraq.

As Secretary Carter put it, the US would begin “supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL (ISIS), or conducting such missions directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground.”

“Direct action on the ground” means US boots on the ground, even though President Obama supposedly ruled out that possibility when he launched air strikes against Iraq and Syria last year. Did anyone think he would keep his word?

President Obama claims his current authority to conduct war in Iraq and Syria comes from the 2001 authorization for the use of force against those who attacked the US on 9/11, or from the 2002 authorization for the use of force against Saddam Hussein. Neither of these claims makes any sense. The 2002 authorization said nothing about ISIS because at the time there was no ISIS, and likewise the 2001 authorization pertained to an al-Qaeda that did not exist in Iraq or Syria at the time.

Additionally, the president’s year-long bombing campaign against Syrian territory is a violation of that country’s sovereignty and is illegal according to international law.

Congress is not even consulted these days when the president decides to start another war or to send US ground troops into an air war that is not going as planned. There might be notice given after the fact, as in Secretary Carter’s testimony today, but the president has (correctly) concluded that Congress has allowed itself to become completely irrelevant when it comes to such grave matters as war and peace.

I cannot condemn in strong enough terms this ill-advised US military escalation in the Middle East. Whoever concluded that it is a good idea to send US troops into an area already being bombed by Russian military forces should really be relieved of duty.

The fact is, the neocons who run US foreign policy are so determined to pull off their regime change in Syria that they will risk the lives of untold US soldiers and even risk a major war in the region — or even beyond – to escalate a failed policy. Russian strikes against ISIS and al-Qaeda must be resisted, they claim, because they are seen as helping the Assad government remain in power, and the US administration is determined that “Assad must go.”

This is not our war. US interventionism has already done enough damage in Iraq and Syria, not to mention Libya. It is time to come home. It is time for the American people to rise up and demand that the Obama Administration bring our military home from this increasingly dangerous no-win confrontation. We must speak out now, before it is too late!

Yesterday’s US deployment of the destroyer USS Lassen and surveillance aircraft into the 12-nautical mile zone surrounding the Chinese-controlled Subi and Mischief reefs in the South China Sea has qualitatively escalated tensions across Asia.

The aim of the US action is to humiliate the Chinese regime and present it with only two options: either make a forceful response or bow down to Washington’s flagrant trampling on its long-standing sovereignty claims. The pretext for the military provocation is the claim that the US is asserting its “right of freedom of navigation” in international, not Chinese, waters. This assertion has no more credibility than the claims that Iraq was attacked because of “weapons of mass destruction” or that the US waged war on Libya to defend “human rights.”

Beijing has responded diplomatically and militarily. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang told a press conference yesterday that the USS Lassen “illegally entered” Chinese waters. He stated: “The Chinese side will firmly respond to any deliberate provocation by any country… and take all necessary measures as needed.” Beijing, he declared, urged the US to “honour its commitment of not taking sides on disputes over territorial sovereignty so as to avoid any further damage to China-US relations and regional peace and stability.”

Last night, the US ambassador to China, Max Baucus, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to receive a formal expression of “strong discontent” from the Chinese government over Washington’s provocation.

The editorial of today’s Chinese state-controlled Global Times asserted:

“Beijing should deal with Washington tactfully and prepare for the worst. This can convince the White House that China, despite its unwillingness, is not frightened to fight a war with the US in the region, and is determined to safeguard its national interests and dignity.”

Beijing, the Global Times declared, should “track the US warships … launch electronic interventions, and even send out warships, lock them by fire-control radar and fly over the US vessels.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper, the People’s Daily, reported today that the Chinese military ordered two destroyers, the Lanzhou and Taizhou, “to warn the trespassing US warship.” A US official reported that the Chinese vessels “shadowed” the Lassen yesterday but kept a “safe distance.”

The reckless calculation in Washington is that such statements from the Chinese regime are nothing more than rhetoric to try to appease domestic nationalist outrage over the US actions.

The Obama administration and the Pentagon indicated that the Lassen’s deployment is only the start of repeated intrusions into Chinese-claimed areas, with the intention of compelling China to bow to US military dominance over the South China Sea. An unnamed Defense Department official told journalists: “I would expect that this becomes a regular operation.”

Retired Chinese Rear Admiral Yang Yi, a researcher at the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University, responded by telling the Washington Post that if incursions did become “a regular thing, military conflict in the region is inevitable and the US would be the one who started it.”

The Australian and Japanese navies, at Washington’s request, may participate in future and larger-scale intrusions. While only the Lassen was used in yesterday’s provocation, dozens of US and Japanese warships, including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, as well as two Australian frigates, are within striking range of the South China Sea.

The Australian government immediately declared its backing for the US action. Defence Minister Marise Payne stated that while Australia was not part of yesterday’s operation, it “strongly supports” the “rights” of freedom of navigation and overflight and “continues to cooperate with the United States and regional partners on maritime security.” Press reports indicated that Payne and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop were thoroughly briefed on the planned South China Sea provocation when they were in Washington for ministerial talks earlier this month.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that Japan was “exchanging information” with Washington and “closely monitoring the issue before we decide how to proceed.” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has stated previously that it is prepared to conduct “freedom of navigation” military operations, either alongside or independently of the US.

Kaoru Imori, from Japan’s Meiji Gakuin University, told the Chinese Xinhua news agency yesterday: “The advantage now for the US is that, in essence at least, it has a second de-facto military in the form of Japan—a country with a healthy military budget and cutting-edge means to both produce and export military hardware.”

Japan and Australia are the key partners of the US “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia. Both countries provide crucial bases for the American military and have integrated their armed forces into the US “AirSea Battle” plan. AirSea Battle is a detailed and now well-rehearsed outline of how the US and its allies will launch air and sea attacks on mainland Chinese military facilities in the event of war. The plan also involves imposing a naval blockade to prevent Chinese shipping passing between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, thus starving China of essential imports of energy and raw materials.

The timing of the US operations in the South China Sea underscores the fact that the “pivot” is motivated by the determination of American imperialism, backed at this point by its regional allies, to maintain its post-World War II dominance in Asia. The growth of China’s global economic and geopolitical influence over the past 15 years is viewed in US ruling circles as an unacceptable potential challenge. The ultimate objective of the US confrontation with Beijing is to return China to the status of a semi-colony, economically under the sway of American banks and corporations and politically subordinated to Washington’s dictates.

The deployment of the Lassen was ordered just days after Chinese President Xi Jingping’s tour of Britain and just days ahead of highly touted visits to China by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. Following the sweeping trade and investment agreements struck between Britain and China, the People’s Daily editorialised yesterday—before the US provocation—that the “major European countries are vying for its attention” and that closer economic and political relations with Europe could “offset the restraints imposed by the US-Japan alliance on China.”

Now Merkel, along with the head of Volkswagen and dozens of other German corporate executives, will arrive in Beijing today under conditions in which a military clash could take place between China and the US, Berlin’s ally in the NATO alliance. France’s Hollande is due to visit on November 2.

Over the next two weeks, US President Barack Obama will attend the Asia Pacific Economic Summit in the Philippines, the US-ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Summit and the East Asia Summit in Malaysia. US demands that Asian states fall in behind its actions in the South China Sea will figure prominently at these events, either officially or in backroom talks. Beijing will utilise the two regional summits it attends to apply counter-pressure.

China will expect to be supported by Russia, which has forged closer ties with Beijing as Moscow has come under its own threats and military provocations from the US and NATO in Eastern Europe. Andrei Klimov, a leading Russian parliamentarian close to President Vladimir Putin, told TASS news agency yesterday: “US sabre rattling near the borders of China—a permanent member of the UN Security Council—is likely to draw questions from another UN SC member, Russia. Nobody should feel free to make voyages there without an invitation.” The US, Klimov said, is “playing with fire.”

A fraught process of diplomatic and military brinksmanship is now in motion that could lead to an open clash between nuclear-armed powers and draw countries across the entire Asian region and internationally into a catastrophic war.

How can a people who have struggled long years under oppression throw off their oppressors and establish a free society? The problems are immense, but their solution lies in the education and enlightenment of the people and the emergence of a spirit that will serve as a foundation for independence and self-government. – Thomas Jefferson

After utilizing the geopolitics lens to dissect how globalists have been fulfilling their New World Order tyranny through a pervasive divide and conquer strategy applied globally, this second instalment examines how they’re regularly using that same proven formula domestically to divide Americans socio-culturally in any number of fragmented ways. Ample evidence shows how the elite has used its oligarch-controlled mainstream media to spread lies and propaganda in order to shape public opinion through nonstop false flag incidents and nonstop feed of false narrative disinformation. For a very long time this divide and conquer MO on the domestic front has been among the feds’ favorite tools of manipulation in their mighty arsenal to effectively polarize Americans into turning against themselves.

 The robber baron bankster himself J.P. Morgan commented after the Great Depression:

When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of [crony] capitalism to govern the world.  By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us.

Three quarters of a century later when the 2008 housing bubble crisis exploded 5 million homes were lost by hapless Americans fraudulently tricked by devious criminal banksters (that not more than one ever served any jail time over), the mega-rich crime boss’ prophetic words take on even greater significance.

 As a purposely orchestrated tag team, the US militarized police state and mainstream media take hoodwinking turns straight out of the Hegelian dialectic playbook when the DC crime cabal 1) creates a crisis, 2) imposes its “solution” that 3) then tightens its tyrannical noose. Among the most obvious examples of how the elite is attempting to divide America is harnessing both the power of police state brutality (trained in antiterrorism by Israeli apartheid oppressors) and power of its media to prey selectively upon Americans to shape public opinion and intentionally stir up racial tensions.

Mainstream media typically looks the other way not even covering black on white crime yet when it’s reversed, MSM invariably enflames the racial divide by endlessly exploiting a number of high profile murder cases when white males kill black males. Then when black protestors clash with largely white police forces, Obama regularly sends his favorite race card advisor Al Sharpton onto the scene to bombastically stir the melting pot to a turbulent boil.

After another innocent black life is lost, angry African Americans are more than justified taking to their city streets to exercise their First Amendment right to protest. But then as in Ferguson and Baltimore, enter globalist mercenary agitators shipped in to further stir up yet more civil unrest, deliberately delivering only more license to kill for the police terrorizing black communities across the nation. The media’s biased policy of sensationalizing white murder of blacks is designed to fan the flames of racial hatred of race-baited African Americans, eliciting their violent reaction.

 Meanwhile, the press regularly reinforces the notion of white guilt. Immediately following the Charleston shootings earlier this year, Salon was tweeting “White America must answer for the Charleston church massacre.” It’s reached absurd extremes – AmeriCorps volunteers are encouraged to wear white guilt bracelets to cope with their white privilege and colleges across the country are offering courses in White Guilt 101. Wikipedia defines white guilt as “individual or collective guilt felt by some white people for harm resulting from racist treatment of ethnic minorities by whites both historically and currently.” And for decades now mainstream media’s carried the white guilt torch.

 That said, racism still looms large in polarized America today. Blacks continue to be daily victims of racial profiling, suspected of committing a crime in stores or getting pulled over while simply driving down any street USA based solely on their skin color. Black church burnings have reached an epidemic level with a half dozen in the St. Louis area alone this month torched to the ground. And the gross inequality of the racist American judicial system that arrests, convicts, punishes with longer sentences and executes far more African Americans than any other ethnic group adds more concrete evidence that racism is still raging and dividing Americans.

With US citizens of color making up the majority of the US prison population despite comprising just 12% of the nation’s total population, 2.2 million Americans are currently incarcerated, accounting for over 25% of the world’s total prison population. As the world’s worst human rights violator for locking up its own citizens, the US dwarfs all other nations on earth including the most populous nation China despite representing only 5% of the world population. With one in three black men going to prison, African American males are six times more likely than whites and 2.5 times more likely than Hispanic males to end up behind bars. From these startling facts alone one might arguably conclude that the feds have launched an all-out war against darker-skinned Americans who happened to be poor.

Just coming to light this year are the hidden black hole prisons springing up around the land of the not so free where police in places like Chicago are suddenly picking up targeted citizens who then disappear without rights for an undefined length of time. Families and attorneys never even learn of their whereabouts. These selected detainees are treated much like Guantanamo prisoners interrogated and often tortured.

Journalist Will Potter recently disclosed another Pandora’s Box inside the US prison system writing about secret black holes existing within two federal prisons called Communications Management Units (CMU’s). He visited the one inside Marion Federal Prison in Illinois, the other is located in Terre Haute, Indiana. High profile political prisoners are being victimized under the worst kind of inhumane conditions. Most of these inmates are Muslims although the feds are also sending environmental activists convicted of terrorist crimes to them as well. Potter maintains that those incarcerated at CMU’s are transferred there because of their race, religion and political beliefs. This is totalitarian America’s gulag answer for political activists deemed enemies of the state.

In recent years America’s militarized police state appears to have declared open season on unarmed black Americans, cold-bloodedly gunning them down in alarming numbers, overtly sending the message that black lives don’t matter. Of course regardless of skin color, US cops suited and armed for combat are known to kill anybody who happens to wander into their combat zone at the wrong time. But an inordinate percentage of their K-I-A’s are African American. Law enforcement has conveniently not kept close track for obvious reasons. But by all accounts, trigger happy police are far more apt to pull the trigger on blacks than on either whites or Hispanics.

In response to this growing epidemic that some would say borders on inner city purging, the antiracist activist group Black Lives Matter sprang up across America in efforts to curb the spreading violence. When protests in Canada and America were joined in solidarity by demonstrations in the UK over increasing state sponsored police terrorism, the feds and media tag team immediately began attempting to criminalize Black Lives Matter, calling it a hate group responsible for the murder of white police officers and placing it under intensive surveillance by the US intelligence community.

In spite of another New York City police officer killed in the line of duty this week, records show that for every NYPD officer killed, New York’s “finest” are murdering four unarmed New Yorkers over a fifteen year stretch from 1999 to 2014 with 10 of those years not one officer being killed. Regardless of how media distorts and twists reality to turn Black Lives Matter into an easy scapegoat, the national average of unarmed American citizens being gunned down by militant police to police deaths far exceeds the NYC ratio of four to one.

 Acclaimed Canadian professor-author-philosopher John McMurtry stated in a recent interview:

I have travelled alone with only backpack possession through the world, and have found no state in which police forces are more habituated to violent bullying, more likely to draw a gun, more discriminatory against the dispossessed, and more arbitrarily vicious in normal behavior. The US now leads the globe in an underlying civil war of the rich against the poor.

  Of course America has a longstanding pattern of racial targeting. This latest oppression harkens back to J. Edgar’s FBI harassment, infiltration and murder of Black Panther Party members back in the sixties and early seventies. Both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were also placed under constant surveillance right up till their assassinations which have both been linked to federal law enforcement. In addition to targeting high profile African American activists, FBI’s COINTELPRO (1956-1971) singled out a number of other groups deemed potential enemies of the state as well. Members of the American Indian Movement and anti-Vietnam War protesters like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were both infiltrated and targeted for continual harassment as well.

 Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, FDR’s executive order rounded up 120,000 innocent US citizens who happened to be Japanese, shamefully placing them in prison camps for the remainder of the war. And before those atrocities came centuries of genocide against Native Americans and enslavement against Africans and their descendants.

 Thus, the US government has a long checkered past history of racism, persecution, torture, imprisonment and mass murder of US citizens perceived by the tyrannical state as either threats or expendables to be exploited and/or willfully destroyed. From the very start this divide and conquer and exterminate strategy by the ruling elite has been operationalized throughout American history.

 The Justice Department’s refusal to hold militant white police officers accountable for the murder of so many defenseless black Americans only demonstrates the criminally racist policies coming out of the first African American president’s administration. Sadly, when both white cops and legally protected “stand-your-ground” white civilians (as in the Trayvon Martin case) get away with murder, their lack of accountability has only increased the number of blacks being murdered. Right after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the Martin case, The Daily Mail’s headline reported “white people who kill black people in ‘Stand Your Ground’ states are 354% more likely to be cleared of murder.”

Since the embattled civil rights of the fifties and sixties were fought and attained by courageous African Americans (joined by a few white supporters), overall during the ensuing decades the people themselves in white and black America have come together making some significant strides toward overcoming the formidable racial barriers that historically divide this nation. In most places in the US today you commonly see white and black couples together, and in fact a thorough mixing of all the races is visible in the world’s biggest melting pot nation. Pew Research Center studying marriages that were formed in 2010 found that 15% were interracial, twice the rate in 1980. The most obvious indication of racial intermarriage is the tangible result produced – America’s younger population is clearly becoming tanner in complexion and it’s definitely neither from tanning salons nor sun worship.

 Yet if you listen to the media talking heads like predatory sharks feeding off the unrest in Ferguson and Baltimore by hyping up this violent cycle of oppression, often enough even defending police state aggression, you’d think that we’re on the verge of race wars in America. The authorities’ decision in both cases to unleash more oppressive police state retaliation against protestors clearly reflects a widespread, highly coordinated, top down federal policy confirming America’s growing tyranny specifically intended to escalate yet more civil and racial unrest, protest, rioting and violence. Between Washington and its MSM propaganda department, a divisive agenda to instigate race wars in America seems a fair and logical conclusion.

 Among the countless false flags in recent years, no more is one so obvious in revealing the feds’ sinister agenda to trigger race wars than the alleged Charleston South Carolina shooting at the AME Church in June. Obama’s $29 mil hush money payoff rushed through within a couple days after the incident to victims’ families and their flattened, unemotional, highly suspect responses during on camera interviews immediately after losing their loved ones; the Sunday sermon at the very crime scene where just a couple days earlier nine African Americans were allegedly shot dead; the tampered photo where a white supremacist patch worn by the suspect was photoshopped as a thinly disguised “badge of honor” afterthought; the unveiling that the suspect had lots of recent African American friends on Facebook and others from his past who unanimously corroborated he never showed signs of racism; Hillary’s Charleston visit just in time for the feds’ live action civil unrest training timed perfectly with the shooting followed by her and Barack’s “gun control” mantra played out like a B for badly scripted movie. This list of unbelievable anomalies points to another federalized false flag makeover calculated to foment racial divide in America.

 Of course the incident’s timing put into high gear the Confederacy rebel flag controversy feeding off raw emotions further designed to create black and white division. June’s dog wagging, in-our-face false flag was also timed perfectly on the very same day so as to take heat off US Congress being bribed with over a million globalist dollars to vote giving dictator Obama his TPP fast track. All too obvious was it an overt ploy to racially divide the nation while sneaking through one giant step closer towards the globalist agenda for one world government.

  An overtly oppressive pattern was also observed in 2011 during the feds’ nationalized police state offensive to use law enforcement to brutally extinguish the Occupy movement in the US. As is typical, the massively militant nationwide assault was preceded by mainstream media’s incessant attack portraying the protestors as criminal rapists, dirty, unkempt slackers, troublemaking anarchists, and ridiculed clueless lost souls dirtying up the public landscape and parks where they had no business occupying. MSM had a field day swaying and turning the American public against the movement prior to the Gestapos moving in to “clean up” the mess they left on municipal property. Once again, the one-two punch of media and police state acting in synchronized fascist tyranny.

 The bottom line reality that lay just beneath all that negatively spun, surface propaganda is that no fascist dictatorship will permit a growing population of dissidence directly confronting the oppressors and their one-sided, highly rigged, corrosively corrupt, grossly unjust and broken debtor slave system responsible for so much theft, death and destruction in the world. In actuality the Occupy movement was a grassroots uprising that was beginning to take hold and spread internationally aimed directly at the ruling elite and the globalists never felt so threatened. So they unleashed their MSM and fascist foot soldiers armed with internationally outlawed tear gas and bully clubs to violently quell the uprising before it gained any more global momentum. The oppression used in America was matched worldwide with the same iron fisted crackdown in Hong Kong and elsewhere around the world. The globalists won another battle in their war against humanity.

 By its very nature, no totalitarian police state tolerates either dissidence or truth and resorts to violent crackdown criminalizing those vowing to exercise free speech. The dangerous game in twenty-first century America under Obama’s Homeland Insecurity is to label any group or individual it chooses as terrorists and with blatant disregard of our constitutional liberties, locks us up and/or assassinates us. Thanks to such draconian unconstitutional laws as the Patriot Act and 2012’s NDAA, just like in prewar Nazi Germany, US citizens can be taken away in the middle of the night by US military raiding our homes without warrant, arrest us without charge, and detain us without trial, legal representation or due process for an indefinite period of time.

  The feds’ response in America repeatedly confirms that our government no longer complies with US rule of law explicitly guaranteed by our Constitution. The treasonous Obama regime has proven over and over again that it refuses to uphold our sacred First Amendment rights of free speech, peaceful assembly and protest. Subsequently since 9/11, domestic US human rights violations have soared dramatically in recent years, revealing a sinister federal agenda to intentionally induce rising levels of civil unrest, chaos, violence and widespread crises in order to then justify its thinly veiled excuse to ultimately declare martialized Obama law. And through our supreme dictator’s unprecedented number of notoriously unconstitutional executive orders, possibly the next false flag may be the one that fulfills his militarized tyrannical wet dream in the land of the enslaved. For decades the federal government has been methodically planning and willfully inciting increasing levels of civil unrest, chaos and citizen revolt amidst long planned false flag crises ultimately leading us to martial law and potentially to America’s second civil war.

 At the same time and certainly not by accident, the feds also made the calculated decision a couple decades ago to systematically militarize law enforcement with overkill weaponry and armed combat mechanization, reflecting an agenda to destroy the US by bringing their years of counterinsurgency wars from abroad home to the streets of America. And even if the massive unprecedented Jade Helm military exercise conducted in nine states for three months over the summer didn’t result in martial law as many in the alternative media feared, Jade Helm proved both a psyops and beta test for prolonged military occupation on US soil that does bring America one giant steppingstone closer to martial law. When every non-military, non-law enforcement federal agency – the National Weather Service, US Postal Service, Social Security Administration, Fish and Wildlife Department, USDA and the IRS – are all buying up billions of rounds of hollow point bullets, it can only mean one thing. It confirms Americans’ worst nightmare, that their own government has a demonic agenda to kill its fellow Americans, widening the deep chasm growing between the authoritarian security state and its fearing-for-their-lives citizens. And as time passes, the cold hard reality appears only to be mounting.

 Through this polarizing, extremely sobering process, a diabolical plan to willfully turn US citizens against each other has been co-designed to create a dangerously toxic culture of growing distrust, fear and paranoia while simultaneously increasing authoritarian tyranny and control. The feds’ wars of terror brought demonstrably home to roost has splintered Americans into two disparate, conflicting camps. As a result, a fear-driven, obedient, brainwashed, dumbed down and docile citizenry of sheeple that simply do what their told, following the governing authority’s methodical conditioning, brainwashing and programmed social engineering accompanied by pressured demands toward hyper-vigilance bordering on paranoia, believing that increasing numbers of their fellow Americans are subversively lurking nearby as their homegrown terrorist enemy. They listen to MSM marginalize and demonize the patriots as tin foil conspiracy nuts, entrenched in their denial that their own government could possibly be their own worst enemy. Of course this camp is held in line by the globalists’ army of henchmen, the government enforcers, be they politicians, military, law enforcement and the millions from the military industrial complex.

 As darkness descends on the end days of Amerika as a once great nation, scare tactics are being relentlessly propagated to purposely drive a wedge between the American people. A concerted federal effort’s been made to enlist US citizens to join Homeland Security and Obama’s so called civilian national security force of neo-Nazis (just like in prewar Germany) working hand-in-hand with law enforcement and dozens of DHS-funded state and municipal fusion centers acting as informants turning in their fellow neighbors for any suspected “unlawful” activities.

 Meanwhile, all military veterans (particularly those fresh off terror war battlefields) along with a growing camp of Americans justifiably concerned and upset over their oppressive, overreaching government invading their privacy and running roughshod over their cherished lost constitutional rights and civil liberties, all political activists and dissenters, all gun owners determined to exercise their Second Amendment rights, all fundamentalist Christians, all anti-abortion advocates, all Tea Party members, all tax activists, all home-schoolers, illegal aliens, or anyone else perceived to look or act different or strange like they don’t belong, all these groups are insidiously being lumped together as the emerging domestic terrorist enemy, designated as enemy belligerents, enemy sympathizers, and enemies of the state. Increasingly ominous is the fact that such a large segment of the American population’s every move is being electronically tracked and monitored on growing watch lists in the feds’ crosshairs as the next targeted enemy for harassment, persecution, impending imprisonment and potential elimination.

  Despite more Americans every day recognizing that their federal government is neither out to protect them nor represent their interests but only to subjugate, control, enslave, imprison and potentially murder them, the globalists/feds’ divide and conquer brainwashing agenda feebly counteracts by aggressively ramping up its greasily-oiled, ticking time-bomb fakery machine. This year more than ever the frequency of mass shootings in America is off the charts, seemingly taking place every other week, complete with some of the same crisis actors showing up in incident after incident with just too many enormous sized holes in the official narrative to avoid exposure as yet another flimsily disguised, staged false flag event.

 Following on the heels of the Charleston false flag, the shooting of US military personnel at the Chattanooga sites by another Islamic extremist adds more salt to the familiar wounds afflicting Moslems worldwide, not unlike January’s Hebdo false flag attack in Paris. The globalists’ and feds’ agenda is all too obvious, create racial and religious conflict and divide designed to lead to more hate crimes while with each passing incident increasing pressures are brought to bear calling louder and louder for tighter gun control. Meanwhile 23 are dead from another US bomb wiping out an Afghan hospital. The only gun control needed for humanity’s sake is Empire’s gun control.

  The media’s also busily hyping danger at every turn like there’s no tomorrow. Recently an FBI sting operation was reported by a number of mainstream media outlets purporting the FBI successfully uncovered an ISIS plot to purchase nukes. It turns out that it was just another fear mongering lie being hyped up by MSM. The elite knows that a population living in daily fear, confusion and ignorance is far more easily controlled than one that is educated and informed about the sinister plots and plans that their totalitarian police state government has in store for them.

  That’s another reason why if the Trans-Pacific Partnership is passed, internet censorship will threaten to cut off the flow of all accurate information and news to the public. This is exactly what the globalists want and intend, complete and absolute control so that only lies and disinformation are disseminated to the spoon-fed misinformed masses. Where all this tyranny and oppression is leading us is fairly obvious. Martial law will mean no more internet access to the truth, criminalization of gun ownership as Obama’s agenda to ratify the already passed UN treaty banning small arms, giving teeth behind the feds’ enforced gun confiscation. The screws are tightening with each passing week’s unfolding events.

The present migration crisis in Europe parallels the building crisis that’s been brewing here in the United States from an unprotected border with Mexico for nearly seven years under Obama’s watch. US Immigration has been a favorite globalist wedge issue dividing the nation racially and ethnically. Illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America have historically been used as scapegoats. Latin American migrant workers do the hard labor in the Agra-industry illegally exploiting them that few Americans would be willing to do themselves. But Obama’s amnesty policy has increased tensions amongst a fragmented American population. Again, be aware that it’s by globalist design that their puppet Obama has allowed an open border policy while bombing nations in the Middle East and North Africa that’s driven the mass migration to a head in the West. The globalists are behind the policies that intentionally create the crises specifically designed to divide and turn citizens in North America and Europe against illegal immigrants.

Ever since the Vietnam War and Nixon declaring his war on drugs, the US foreign policy towards Latin American nations as well as other nations at war like Afghanistan has actively engaged in covert criminal partnership with corrupt national governments and controlling powerful drug cartels. Starting with Reagan’s Iran Contra scandal, George Bush senior, both his sons, Bill Clinton and Obama have all played active roles employing CIA drug pushers in the ever-thriving multibillion dollar international drug smuggling industry whereby the federal government continues bilking enormous profits trafficking dangerous drugs into the US, literally destroying millions of American lives and further devastating US inner city populations that’s skyrocketed incarceration rates (over half a million) especially amongst African Americans. The war on drugs has given rise to the privatized prison industrial complex in America that’s mushroomed into an enormous slave labor industry reaping obscenely high $5 billion profits for corrupt human rights violators operating with little oversight all at taxpayer and inmate slave expense. The politics of America’s drug war in large part also created a welfare state that further divides Americans across both racial and class lines.

 America’s addiction to both legal drugs through Big Pharma and alcohol as well as illegal drugs have destroyed millions of American families as casualties of the globalist drug war and yet more victims of the divide and conquer. Meanwhile through the years, their criminal central banking cabal has busily laundered dirty money linked to funding CIA-Black Operations actively pursuing the Empire of Chaos’ global destabilization agenda.

  Another wedge vehicle being driven home to divide us are recent laws cropping up across the nation that appear to be anti-family. Apparently thought police at both the national and state levels of government are pushing a militant LGBT agenda to absurd, divisive heights, in effect driving a wedge between both gay and straight populations. The public education agenda is derisively teaching openly gay lifestyle choices in schools to children from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. There are laws in California that allow a student 12 or older to be taken off campus without parental permission to reeducation centers where they are “reeducated,” instilled with politically correct brainwashing of proper LGBT orientation and attitude.

  Sounds very much like Hillary’s “fun camps” to reeducate adults who aren’t quite lapping up her official politically correct adult programming agenda. It’s one thing to uphold antidiscrimination laws protecting Americans of all persuasions and lifestyles which are obviously important, but it’s another to aggressively indoctrinate and brainwash youth [or adults] about individual sexual preference and alternative lifestyle choices especially at such young impressionable ages. This appears to be yet another nationalized ploy to dictate another divisive wedge between people rather than inclusively bring them together. It also is a longtime subversively globalist agenda to weaken the family bond and family structure.

The traditional nuclear family unit containing a father, mother and child(ren), now a minority in America, has also come under national assault, forced to taking a disfavored backseat to the statist propaganda and oppressive policies. Parents’ rights to teach their children their own individual values, their sense of morality and spiritual/religious convictions have increasingly been undermined and usurped by rigid statist PC dogma. As a licensed therapist for many years in Los Angeles, I can personally attest to the notorious abuses of overzealous authoritarian child protection services overstepping its rightful bounds by destroying families, unjustifiably yanking kids out of their family homes, inflicting children in their care and custody with lifelong trauma and abuse, misplacing children in unsafe home environments (be they with biological family, foster care, group home or residential care). A thoroughly overburdened, broken system that’s been set up to protect children is too often only abusing and re-victimizing them as part of a national assault on the American family.

 The father of American education John Dewey was a New World Order advocate from way back. His pro-communist ideology promoting the idea of collectivism and “progressive” views on education that have permeated US public education over this past century have never been more fully embedded than they are today. In April 1972 Harvard med school professor Chester Pierce from the education and psychiatry faculty made the following statement strongly reflecting Dewey’s NWO bias in a keynote address at the Association for Childhood Education International:

Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being. It’s up to you, teachers, to make all of these sick children well by creating the international child of the future.

 Spoken like a truly indoctrinated internationalist, what Pierce had in mind for his global child of the future is a brainwashed youth devoid of any religion, any sense of national patriotism and loyalty toward his parents. Indeed all rank and file NWO ghouls have long viewed love of the Constitution and US national sovereignty, love of family and love of God as their three biggest barriers keeping them from their totalitarian panacea. Too many educational professionals maintain a negative, condescending attitude toward parents believing that their conditioning of their child is either unhealthy or grossly inadequate and it is the responsibility and indeed the right of the educational system to properly instill the correct values, moral code and appropriate beliefs so that the child optimizes his chance of becoming a healthy, productive, functioning adult, i.e., a good little statist citizen robot who does exactly what he or she is told, no questions asked.

Collectivism is inherently taught as the standard education model in today’s Common Core, the mandated national program in America’s public education system. It preaches the priority of group goals and group mind over the individual. One’s worth is measured more by what he or she brings into the group than any individual accomplishment. It’s another example of programmed dogma de-emphasizing the importance and value of both individuality as well as individual families. The current educational system stifles creativity but instead simply prepares young people to fit in as mere cogs in the larger wheel, conforming, compliant robots incapable of discriminative, critical thinking that questions or challenges the spoon-fed dogma of the day. No wonder American student test scores in a myriad of subjects are now falling near bottom of the international barrel compared to peers from other countries – all part of the dumbing down process that’s sadly become the American way of life.

The same mind control programming through mass media effects are perpetuated to confuse, conflict and pit women against men and men against women. In the media there’s a common depiction of the weak, emasculated white male who becomes the empowered woman’s idiot patsy. This negative stereotype of men being projected all over the airwaves is designed to blur and confuse boundaries and roles while increasing the battle of the sexes raging with rising rates of domestic violence and sexual assault in America, especially within military ranks and college campuses. Look at the violent, damaging messages over the last quarter century saturating popular modern music in the form of much of the hip hop and rap, often referring to women as “bitches” and “hoes,” mere sexual object-trophies to be used and abused. Conversely, healthy gender role models are relatively rare in both families as well as the mass media.

Then there’s the overplayed stereotype of the irascibly senile grandparent sending a reinforcing message that makes it easier in our youth-worshipping culture to discard aging grandpa or grandma into the trash bin of nursing homes to die rather than treat the elderly with respect, compassion and care within an extended family setting. Recently passed euthanasia laws in states across the country make it easier to pull the plug on life, especially when the aging are deemed burdensome, feeble, useless eaters already suffering frequently from chronic pain anyway. As the economy and family structure come under increasing levels of stress, elderly and fiduciary abuse has been on the rise. Current annual estimates are that 2.5 to 3 million elderly or up to 10% are being abused in the US. But these numbers fail to take into account the many cases that go unreported.

As globalists engage in social engineering programming of the masses through powerful nonstop 24/7 media effects, their diabolical design manifests through subtle and not so subtle messages geared to insidiously separate, divide, conflict, dumb down and otherwise cause lasting rifts, walls and wedges between a highly fractured America that out of ignorance allows globalists to further manipulate, divide and conquer us on the way to their NWO promise land.

Speaking of dumbed down, George W. Bush’s black and white thinking uttered in his simpleton mantra “you’re either with us or against us” has never been more evident. His vowed intolerance warning Americans against “wild conspiracy theories” that quickly morphed into the truth movement is yet another illustration of divide and conquer, dismissing any and all critics of gov.corps’ official false narrative as deranged, tin foiled hat wearing, paranoid fringe elements never to be taken seriously. The well-paid shills, the PR propagandists, think tank scientists and so called experts endlessly paraded before MSM cameras peddling their doublespeak talking point lies are more sleight of hand distraction to keep the public forever in the dark, cluelessly ignorant, dumbed down, confused, fearful and globally misinformed.

The ruling elite has consolidated its power into six-owned mega-media corporations controlling over 90% of all news and information outflow to the global masses. Likewise, the globalist-owned big three newspapers, the Washington Post, the New York Times and LA Times of course serve the same deceptive function. By engaging in mind control through vacuous forms of endless entertainment, preoccupying, addicting, programming, brainwashing, titillating, numbing, desensitizing, and distracting the masses with false lies, propaganda, superficial filler fluff, big sports and celebrity worship ad nauseam that purposely alter the hardwiring of the human brain, the truth of the elite’s sinister agenda largely remains hidden from public awareness and consciousness. This too is the modern techno-application of the divide and conquer recipe for gaining and maintaining absolute control since mass media effects carry an enormous sway and impact over huge segments of the captivated world population audience, effectively dividing and conquering them from ever generating a united, well organized, powerful grassroots movement to openly challenge and actively oppose the systematic unfoldment of NWO tyranny and authoritarian control. Ultimately this sleight of hand of the dumbing down, disempowering process keeps the sheeple from ever fully realizing the evil destruction being willfully perpetrated against them.

Another one of their divide and conquer ploys working against us for a very long time is America’s highly corrupt, two party political system. The illusion of Democrats being substantively different from Republicans is entrenched in US politics. Yet the uninterrupted evildoing from the Bush to the Obama regime was seamlessly carried out from one Republican administration to a Democratic one. That’s because they both represent the same puppet masters who own them. These days especially elected representatives from the two parties clearly do not operate in the interests of their voting constituents but instead succumb to the big money special interests of the globalists pouring billions into their bribed coffers to effectively own them too.

Politicians spew rhetoric on issues that elicit strong emotional reactions such as religion, gay marriage and abortion. Yet these hot button topics are at best secondary, diversionary sideshow sleights of hand, keeping us away from the real issues that hide the pervasive theft and unfairness of the status quo crony capitalism corruption or how our lives are so dominated by an elitist handful of psychopathic despots. Any thoughts or political debate that veer away from this elite corporatist ideology is taboo and subject to blackout censorship. As long as so many blind Americans continue blaming the opposing political party or those inflammatory secondary issues as the main cause of America’s problems, the globalists have the dumbed down idiots right where they want them, just as J.P. Morgan boasted so long ago. It’s the classic divide and conquering that’s allowed globalists to use distraction to conceal their willful destruction of the planet with complete impunity.

The same deceptive ploy is involved with labeling people based on the so called political left or political right, liberal-conservative, progressive-reactionary, hawk-dove, libertarian, anarchist, socialist, communist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, American, Russian, they’re all designed as well-worn tools for the elite to pigeonhole and marginalize us on the way to divide and conquer. The globalists possess a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and distraction at their disposal, all geared to erect dividing walls for the purpose of inciting conflict wedges so the globalist masters can consolidate stricter control over us. Their hidden agenda is powerfully pervasive and unless we can consciously step outside the conventional lens by which we so automatically filter, judge and separate ourselves into factionalized, warring camps, we are all doomed to be the perpetually weakened victims of their absolute criminal totalitarian control.

Throughout his lifetime Thomas Jefferson was suspicious of potential abuse and tyranny that could come from a federal government inadequately kept in check by the very checks and balances system he so meticulously crafted:

     Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental acts of the day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers [administrations]; too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Before they slip us all into their shackles, it’s time to come together as one formidable unified force to take action, arming ourselves with the truth and then spreading the power of that truth as far as it’ll take us. In the end evil will not defeat truth, honesty and justice.

Virtually everything globalists and their governing ponds do is focused on one aspect or another of the divide and conquer formula to their NWO endgame. The focus of this examination has been on their goal of dividing us into weaker parts fighting amongst ourselves lending itself heavily to their powerful advantage. However, lest we forget that the elite is armed with unlimited weapons in their mighty arsenal expressly used to conquer and destroy us. And they’ve a plethora of methods at their disposal making us sick and die through both their hard and soft kill means.

Toxic levels of industrial fluoride dumped into our water supply and laced in our toothpaste, mercury and other poisonous metals and impurities specially concocted for vaccine delivery, raining down of heavy metals with their daily dose of geo-engineered chemtrails, killer Fukushima radiation levels bombarding us by air and water contaminating our entire food chain… then all our lives we’ve been inhaling heavily polluted air and ingesting GMO/chemically processed/Monsanto soaked/nutrient starved dead food poisoning, living under chronic stress that’s killing us as we work longer hours on less wages making it near impossible to make ends meet with a 95% devalued dollar after a century of being robbed blind and preyed upon by the parasitic Federal Reserve globalists. If the elite’s slow death attack isn’t eugenically getting the job done for them, in an instant they can exercise their final solution option a mere nuke push button away. One way or the other, they’ve rigged the deck so not one of us gets out of here alive.

But until we don’t, prior to our being conked and conquered to death, along with the truth we still do have a few options of our own to fight back with. Truth and knowledge represent the very power that they’re most afraid of. When they are hit with the truth, they are knocked back, cowering the way a vampire reacts to daylight or worse, a stake being driven through its heart.

With the light of truth let us drive our power of truth straight through their heartless hearts. As an empowered, informed and courageously committed solidarity of world citizenry acting together as one, we can go a long ways toward liberating ourselves from their yoke of oppression. Right now we still outnumber them 7 billion to their ponerologically impaired handful. They are incapable of caring or loving others. We real humans do have a decided advantage in that department. So armed with the power of both truth and love guided from above that they can never take away from us, while we still have the numbers overwhelmingly in our favor, it’s time to fight back through civil disobedience accompanied by wise selection of where our hard-earned dollars go. Together undivided and unconquered, we still can prevail. After all, good in the end always conquers evil.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has been continuing to fight to lift the two year long siege imposed by ISIS militants at the Kuweires Military Airport. However, they have encountered several obstacles along the way that have made their march to the airbase very difficult. The superior air power and weapons aren’t enough to break the ISIS resistance inside the several villages surrounding the base.

The core of the clashes for the airport has moved to the town of Sheikh Ahmad as the SAA supported by the Russian Air Force pushed the terrorist group’s defenses at its southern district. ISIS had concentrated a major part of its forces there to safeguard the buffer-zone and help drive back the SAA servicemen that were attempting to bypass the ISIS defence line.

If the SAA captures Sheikh Ahmad, it will be less than 2km away from the Kuweires Military Airport’s frontlines located north of the Aleppo-Raqqa Highway.

Meanwhile, ISIS attempted to advance their positions inside the Hama Governorate after a successful series of attacks that put them in position to cut off the SAA’s main supply route to provincial capital of the Aleppo Governorate.

ISIS militants attacked several checkpoints belonging to the Syrian forces along the road to the town of Sheikh Hilal in an attempt to broaden their control over the Salamiyah-Raqqa road that runs through the town of Ithriyah. ISIS is aiming to block the supply road the SAA uses to reach the Khanasser-Aleppo highway. ISIS actively used suicide attacks using BMP armored vehicles in this advance. The SAA repealed the first wave of the terrorist attacks but the fighting has been continuing there.

According to reports, 1100 Iraqi paramilitary fighters have arrived to the Aleppo province under direct orders from Major General Qassem Suleimani – the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite “Quds Force”. These fighters are members of the Liwaa Abu Fadl Al-‘Abbas group. It’s the Iraqi paramilitary force which primarily operates in the southern Damascus. The reports argue that the Liwaa Abu Fadl Al-‘Abbas fighters arrived to the town of Khanasser, which is located near the highway recently attacked by ISIS.

Iraq’s army and al-Hashid al-Shaabi popular forces captured several strategic ISIS bases in the areas of East Haseebah, al-Sajariyyah, Theela and Al Sufiyyah, East of the city of Ramadi in the Anbar province on Monday. According to Iraqi reports, dozens ISIS militants were killed and scores of the armed vehicles were destroyed.

Earlier the same reports said al-Hashid al-Shaab, discovered US-made military hardware and ammunition, including missiles, in terrorists’ command center in Salahuddin province.

Iraq’s Kurdish fighters attacked a prison run by the ISIS militants in the northern province of Kirkuk, freeing as many as 70 prisoners. The facility is located about seven kilometers (four miles) north of the town of Hawija, which is to the west of the provincial capital, Kirkuk.

Separately, some 1,000 fighters from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) have arrived in the town, located in Nineveh Province. This comes as the Iraqi army and the country’s Kurdish Peshmerga forces are reportedly preparing to launch a massive attack on ISIS positions in Sinjar.

(Please read Part I prior to this article)

The first part of the series addressed the Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA) and the strategic geography resulting thereof, while this concluding section forecasts the three progressively intensifying post-election scenarios for where the polarized tension is headed. Because of its length, it’s divided into parts A and B, with the first one focusing on the post-election internal situation prior to the resumption of civil war, and the latter addressing what could foreseeably occur when hostilities break out once more.

Cold Peace Before A Hot War

Backdrop:

The elections have ended and Suu Kyi is content enough with its results that she doesn’t stir any anti-government destabilization. Intense polarization still remains over the NCA, and her camp (the National League for Democracy and affiliated pro-federalization rebel groups) is at loggerheads with the government, with the national reconciliation process largely coming to a standstill as both sides try to hedge against and outmaneuver the other via a complex series of political and ethnic alliances inside the newfound “democracy”. What’s really happening is that each bloc is consolidating its position in anticipation of what increasingly looks to be a renewed outbreak of civil war sometime in the future. As the country holds its breath, the India-Thailand Highway quickly fulfills its role in making Myanmar the integral connector country between India and ASEAN (and profits handsomely because of it), while China’s anticipated Indian Ocean corridor never sees the light of day and the security of its underperforming oil and gas pipelines de-facto becomes dependent on the (expensive) ‘goodwill’ of Suu Kyi and her friendly pro-federalization forces.

Suu Kyi/Rebels:

Beijing’s Buddy

Suu Kyi and her rebel friends dig in their positions both politically and physically, confident that the electoral results they just received give them a strong enough mandate to hold out against any forthcoming government pressure. They don’t anticipate the government going on any military offensives anytime soon, but they’re taking no chances and are arming themselves to the teeth just in case it gets any tempting ideas amidst the NCA and federalization deadlock. Always the skilled political opportunist, Suu Kyi does her utmost to position herself as Beijing’s most prized strategic asset in Myanmar. After all, she paid a landmark visit to the Chinese capital earlier in the year where she was wined and dined by the country’s top officials, including President Xi, in what was a telltale sign that Myanmar’s largest neighbor has given her its political blessing.

Corridor Blackmail

The reason behind China’s moves is simple to understand – Suu Kyi holds enough influence over the peripheral pro-federalization rebel groups in Shan State and the nationalist Buddhist monks in Rakhine State so as to literally be the deciding factor over whether China’s expensive oil and gas pipeline investments remain safeguarded or sabotaged. China may not like playing risky opposition politics with any of its ‘partners’, let alone one as strategically important and geographically close as Myanmar, but it almost has no pragmatic choice other than to engage with and de-facto ally itself with Suu Kyi. If China didn’t have influence over the border rebel groups before, then it surely does now, either directly in pursuit of a long-term effort to cut Suu Kyi out of the equation or indirectly through “The Lady” herself.

Playing With Fire

Also, it’s important to mention that the upping of China’s bilateral relations with Arakan National Party leader Aye Maung immediately before the election has ‘paid off’ in this scenario, since his hard-core anti-Muslim party cadres ‘keep the peace’ between the nationalist Buddhists and any potentially insurgent Rohingya’s, but they paradoxically increase the chances that a robust uprising will inevitably transpire the moment that the central government’s grip has loosened. The reason that China has taken the controversial path of supporting such a sub-state ethnic nationalist strongman such as Maung could be because it wants to diversify the ‘security dependence’ of its pipeline terminals away from Suu Kyi and her proxies, while still being fearful enough of anything labeled “Muslim” so as ‘justify’ its reliance on a crackdown-prone stand-in and thus ignore the potential destabilization blowback that’s obviously brewing.

“The China Whisperer”

Finally, because of the influence that she wields over Beijing’s pipelines, Suu Kyi could be said to have emerged as the “China Whisperer”, in that she has positioned herself as the main actor in Myanmar capable of talking to the Chinese and actually having them listen. This is actually quite dangerous, however, because she might leverage her influence in order to get China to back her federalist plans and support her allied ethnic proxies in Kachin and Shan States. In fact, if she plays her cards just right and is successful in becoming the ultimate wedge between Beijing and Naypyidaw, then she might even be able to convince China to arm her and her allies, especially if she tantalizingly frames the country’s polarized situation as a proxy competition between China (which supports Suu Kyi) and India (which supports the government).

Government:

Losing Ground With A Tough Sell

The government is expected to push forward with the NCA and firmly ensure that it is not amended in any way so as to support a federalized system. This is going to make it a very tough sell to many in the public who harbor pro-Suu Kyi, and thus, pro-federalization, sympathies. In fact, as Suu Kyi and her rebel ethnic allies use their government-provided parliamentary perches to proselytize their federalization ‘gospel’, more and more citizens will openly come to side with them and their federalized approach to solving the country’s civil war. This is expected to weaken the government’s support among the population, and can be said to represent a ‘pre-revolution’ of ‘ideological engineering’ prior to the coming hostilities. As the government loses ever more ground with the governed and becomes shockingly aware of this shift in support, it may predictably try to play up the economic benefit that its ‘pro-democratic opening-up’ has brought to the country, although as the population becomes accustomed to their rapidly increased standard of living, it’s expected that they’ll take such ruling party benefits for granted and not be persuaded to reconsider their political pivot.

From ASEAN Road To Indian Inroads

Partly as a natural consequence of increased trade relations with India, but also because of the need to counter-balance Suu Kyi and her ilk’s de-facto patronage from China, Naypyidaw will likely move closer to India, which for its part will be more than pleased to have ‘poached’ what used to be one of China’s closest allies just a few years ago. This new strategic partnership is expected to transform the Southeast Asian state by turning it into a bridgehead for Indian influence further into ASEAN, owing mostly of course to the India-Thailand Highway that will enhance New Delhi’s economic clout in the region. Myanmar will receive the given residual economic benefits for its transit state status, and could very well become a pivotal node between both points due to its concrete potential to cheaply and massively produce a variety of goods.

Depending upon the level of complex economic interdependency that results between the two (which in any case is expected to be quite large due to how advantageous the relationship will be for each), India might even feel compelled to deepen its political and military ties with Myanmar as well. If this happens, then it could see India, not China as had been the case for the past two decades, becoming the state’s greatest foreign patron, both on the international political arena and in terms of weapons shipments and technical cooperation. If developments move in this direction concurrently with China’s deepening partnership with Suu Kyi and her pro-federalization allies (more out of blackmailed pipeline necessity than any objective reason, as one should recall), then the two Asian giants could enter into a proxy collision course when the two internal sides finally resume the civil war.

Meltdown In Myanmar

Backdrop:

As was inevitably expected, the two blocs in Myanmar, the unionists and the federalists, the central government and Suu Kyi & allies, militarily clash, and the on-edge and ultra-tense country immediately descends back into all-out civil war. It doesn’t matter what the spark was or who’s responsible for having set off, as both sides had become distraught enough with the other’s recalcitrance in the NCA and federalization debate that they had reached the conclusion long ago that armed force would ultimately be the only way to resolve the impasse. While the central government, as explained in Part II, could technically prosper simply by holding onto its formal and allied rebel territories due to the India-Thailand Highway that runs across this corridor, it may have become ‘trigger happy’ and anxious if it felt it was losing the support of the majority Burmese population to Suu Kyi and her federalization platform and that another Color Revolution attempt was imminent.

Such a destabilizing asymmetrical reversal behind the government’s ‘own lines’, despite the misleading veneer of stability brought about by an Indian-assisted economic boom, could push it into making the riskiest calculation in its history, which would be to renew the civil war, but this time with the full intent of going as deep into the rebel’s territory as possible and cleaning them out once and for all. On the opposition’s side, they may have been fretting for a while that their covertly supplied Chinese arms might not be enough, nor of proper quality, to match or deter the Indian ones being delivered to Naypyidaw, thus leading them to commence a ‘first strike’ out of perceived tactical and military necessity. The problem becomes even more pronounced if either of the two external patrons (India for Naypyidaw, China for Suu Kyi and the rebels) ‘advises’ their respective side to preemptively engage in hostilities, or if they’re tricked by their proxy into supporting it in doing so in spite of not fully understanding the enormously complex and destabilizing situation that they’re getting themselves into.

Suu Kyi/Rebels:

In any forthcoming conflict, the federalization bloc’s most important strategic weapon is the potential to launch Color Revolution unrest in Yangon, Mandalay, and/or other large cities throughout the Burmese heartland. Succeeding in this manner would decimate the government’s backbone of support and greatly facilitate its collapse and subsequent replacement by Suu Kyi and the federative rebels. If that can’t be achieved quickly enough or happens to be quickly squashed by the military in its early stages, then they’ll likely resort to more conventional means to weaken the establishment, namely through formal armed struggle. It’s impossible for the rebels to ever capture Naypyidaw (which is more like the world’s largest military base as opposed to a ‘civilian-run’ capital), but if carried out properly, then a feigned ‘suicide attempt’ against it could create just enough of a diversion to deflect the military’s attention away from more tactically important targets for regime change such as Mandalay (located in the north and somewhat near the rebels’ existing area of activity), be it through their outright militant capture or Color Revolution seizure.

Complementary with the tactic of opening up other more ‘diversionary’ fronts, the rebels could leverage the support that Suu Kyi has among the country’s hyper-nationalist Buddhists such as the “Burmese Bin Laden” to provoke a massive anti-Muslim pogrom in Rakhine State that would surely tie up the military’s attention. It may not care so much about the Muslims themselves or even China’s pipelines, but what scares Naypyidaw the most is that the globally publicized killings of the vulnerable minority group that has garnered worldwide sympathy to could be used as an excuse for a multilateral international intervention into its affairs, and thus shift the balance decisively against it in this latest stage of civil warfare. Pertaining to this train of thought, the rebels might employ the last resort (or perhaps, their strategic first resort, depending on how it’s viewed at the time) of trans-border Naga terrorism against India in order to lure it into the mix. Although this might seem counterproductive considering that India is expected to side with the central government, it could achieve the major goal of prompting a sudden increase of Chinese technical support to their side, perhaps even culminating in a formal intervention to protect Beijing’s economic assets and act on the security dilemma that it believes it has with India in the country (especially if the Indians formally intervene there first, whether under an anti-terrorist justification or whatever other argument).

Government:

From a military standpoint, the government’s main objectives are to secure the cities from Color Revolution mayhem and rebel seizure (especially in the case of Mandalay), stabilize Rakhine State, and move ‘in for the kill’ against Kachin State. The first two imperatives are understandable when one considers the abovementioned rebel strategy, but thus far, the analysis hasn’t spoken too much about the Kachins and their leadership role in Myanmar’s civil war. For the most part, the country’s northernmost province operates as a pseudo-independent state despite the military’s scattered presence there since a 1994 offensive, and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and its militant Army wing are Myanmar’s second-largest rebel faction with an estimated 10,000 troops and another 10,000 reservists.

As written about in Part I, the KIO hosts the National Socialist Council of Nagaland – Khaplang (NSCN-K) and the Arakan Army, as well as a handful of Shan State rebel factions, so it’s essentially become the nucleus of the country’s rebel activity. If the KIO were to be crushed, then it would shatter the cohesiveness and support that all of the country’s other non-NCA rebel groups (save for theUnited Wa State Army, the country’s strongest rebel group, which firmly controls a small amount of critical territory along the Chinese border) receive from their training safe havens in the province. However, this is much easier said than done, as not only has the KIO proven itself to be a formidable fighting force, but the densely forested and hilly geography makes it exceptionally difficult for ‘outsiders’ to control. If it can succeed in going against the odds and wiping the rebels out of their primary nest inside the country, then the military can have a much higher chance at successfully wiping out the rebels once and for all, while still tolerating the powerful United Wa State Army’s existence in their secluded and very small corner of the country.

Finally, a few words must be said about forecasted fighting in Chin and Kayin States, the home of the Chin and Karen rebel organizations (all significant ones of which signed the NCA and are now aligned with the government). For the most part, none of the rebel groups signing on to the NCA are expected to actively engage in fighting on the government’s behalf and would likely remain neutral during any resumption of civil warfare, but the Chin and Karen groups are the only exceptions. Both would defend their territories against any outside rebels, and the latter could potentially even intervene in Mon State to the south (which hosts the anti-NCA New Mon State Party) if the federal rebels attempt any kind of destabilization there.

This isn’t because of any ‘loyalty’ they have to the government, but rather out of concrete economic self-interest, since both have a critical stake in keeping the Indian and Thai borders open and safe so as to reap the benefits from the India-Thailand Highway, and the Karen are also concerned about retaining benefits from the East-West portion of the Greater Mekong Subregion Economic Corridor that runs through its territory (and also, incidentally, through Mon State). If somehow the Chin and Karen rebels were to join the anti-government federalists in any forthcoming resumption of civil war, however, it could potentially represent one of the greatest strategic pivots of the entire conflict and quickly lead to the government’s collapse.

The Graveyard Of Great Powers

Backdrop:

The civil war is raging throughout every part of the country by this point, and India and China, mainland Asia’s two largest economies and the world’s most populous states, are becoming ever concerned about the security of their major strategic investments in Myanmar, the India-Thailand Highway and the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines, correspondingly. They’re also backing two opposing sides, with New Delhi throwing its lot behind Naypyidaw while Beijing sides with the rebels (whether openly or not) and Suu Kyi (if she’s even still alive by this point, that is). The peak danger is that either state wouldn’t’ even be planning for an intervention per say, but that they’d find themselves unwittingly drawn in by the magnetic pull of centripetal events and their own strategic insecurities stemming from their security dilemma with one another. The movement of one Asian Great Power into the battlefield (or even rumors thereof) is enough to prompt the other to go in as well, and with both indirectly, and possibly even directly, clashing in the pivotal Indian Ocean state, it could turn out that the mangled remnants of the then-former Union of Myanmar become the graveyard of their 21^st-century multipolar ambitions.

Rumors And Sabotage:

There is perhaps no easier way to formally draw India or China into the Myanmar internecine conflict than for either of them to believe (possibly false and manipulated) rumors about the other going in first. If India catches wind of reports stating that China has a certain amount of on-the-ground special forces operating in eastern Myanmar (Kachin and/or Shan States) and assisting the rebels with their anti-government offensive against Mandalay or the diversion (perhaps a genuine push if aided by Beijing) to take Naypyidaw, then they might quickly react by dispatching their own contingent to the country to help prop up the government. Likewise, the same goes for China, and if it believes some (potentially unsubstantiated) reports that India is operating inside the country’s northwestern regions against Naga terrorists, for example, it might feel compelled to intervene and prop up its own allied rebels nearby, especially if it has reason to fear that India could target them next or as part of its comprehensive anti-Naga offensive. Succinctly put, the fog of war, coupled with the gigantic security dilemma between India and China, could prove to be the deadly mix that draws them deeper into Myanmar at the point of the state’s self-destruction. Similarly, any planned sabotage by the rebels against India and/or China’s infrastructure projects would obviously be justifiable enough grounds for either of them to intervene in the conflict if they so choose, which, it needs to be said, might have been the rebels’ strategic goal all along for a multitude of reasons.

Cross-Border Incidents:

Aside from the above reasons for either Asian Great Power to directly get involved in Myanmar, a much more pressing one for each of them could be the incidence of cross-border raids against their territory. For example, recall the author’s suggestion in Part I to keep the NSCN-K in the back of one’s mind, as now is the precise moment when that factor of near-uncontrollable destabilization becomes most relevant. The resumption of all-out civil war in Myanmar could lead to an environment where the Naga terrorist group and its United Liberation Front of West South East Asia successionists-in-arms feel that it’s an opportune moment to once more strike against India, perhaps betting that New Delhi won’t risk the gamble of getting sucked into the Myanmar quagmire by responding. Quite possibly, however, they might miscalculate, especially given that India has genuine security interests that would be advanced by moving in to completely take out the terrorist group without any political considerations for Naypyidaw getting in the way this time. In the same spirit, if Kokang or other believed-to-be pro-Chinese rebels either went rogue in attacking China (unlikely) or in provoking the Myanmar military into accidental cross-border shelling like has happened before (much more likely), it could definitely preempt a forceful response by China, especially if Beijing is already contemplating a concentrated push to assist its proxies. Remember – any cross-border action by India or China, be it in response to a provocation or out of their own initiative, will result in an immediate and most likely symmetrical response from the other, and in such a tense international atmosphere between the two by this time, even simple rumors of such action could be enough to make one or the other ‘jump the gun’ and lunge into Myanmar.

The Rohingya Rescue (And Counter-Response):

The final external intervention scenario deals with the consequences of large-scale violence against the Rohingyas in Rakhine State. The Muslims are expected to be cautiously allied with the government because of its responsibility in keeping the opposition Buddhist national mobs at bay, but during a complete breakdown of law and order, the state obviously wouldn’t’ be able to keep its commitment to the globally recognized minority group. Therefore, the situation arises where India, which has more Muslims than Pakistan despite being a Hindu-majority state, might either feel obligated to stage a ‘humanitarian intervention’, or at least cloth its actions with such rhetoric, especially if the international (Western) community presses it to act on their behalf. Automatically, this would elicit an instantaneous response from China, which justifiably would be concerned that its Indian rival is trying to seize control of its strategic oil and gas terminals along the coast. At this point, it’s difficult to predict exactly how Beijing would react, but it could either intervene directly in the east and/or ‘play the Pakistan card’ to divert India’s strategic focus back to its traditional western direction. Nonetheless, the two sides are guaranteed to enter into a formal and very tense Cold War if the Indian military moves anywhere near China’s Indian Ocean resource terminals, no matter what (humanitarian) justifications it gives for doing so.

Concluding Thoughts

The Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA) that was just signed, precisely because of the fact that its signatories do not encompass the breadth of the country, provides the most clear-cut indication of the battle lines that would be drawn if civil war were to resume in the near future. Such a negative scenario could realistically occur amidst a post-electoral fallout between the government and Suu Kyi & her rebel allies, or some period afterward as the government and opposition become militantly frustrated with a NCA standstill and frozen federalization talks, respectively. The resultant outbreak of violence is expected to engulf the entire country, as both sides fight an existential struggle for their survival, which would see the government moving to squash the rebel once and for all, while the rebels try to finally overthrow the government that they’ve been fighting against for the past 70 years (both through militant and potential asymmetrical Color Revolution means).

In the heated fray that’s sure to follow, India and China seem primed to intervene, both out of their own economic self-interests in safeguarding their major strategic infrastructure projects through the country. It’s not that they’re eager to do so, but that they feel pressured to because of the extraordinarily intense security dilemma running between them. In the event that one of them takes the initiative in making a move in that direction (whether in response to a cross-border incident or infrastructure sabotage provocation), it’s a sure bet that the other will follow. Two rival Great Powers operating in the same battlespace wouldn’t be unprecedented, however, since it’s already happening with the US and Russia in Syria, but it if occurs between India and China, then this would shatter BRICS and the SCO and spell the beginning of an ultra-tense Cold War standoff between the world’s most populous states. This grand strategic result is the reason why it’s possible that an outside third-party such as the US might find a way to leverage the influence that it has with its on-the-ground proxies during the conflict in order to create the conditions necessary to bring this about, as an Indian-Chinese proxy war over Myanmar and the resultant Cold War that comes from it could be perhaps the greatest blow that multipolarity suffers this century.

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentaror currently working for the Sputnik agency, exclusively for ORIENTAL REVIEW.

(Please read Part I prior to this article)

The first part of the series addressed the Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA) and the strategic geography resulting thereof, while this concluding section forecasts the three progressively intensifying post-election scenarios for where the polarized tension is headed. Because of its length, it’s divided into parts A and B, with the first one focusing on the post-election internal situation prior to the resumption of civil war, and the latter addressing what could foreseeably occur when hostilities break out once more.

Cold Peace Before A Hot War

Backdrop:

The elections have ended and Suu Kyi is content enough with its results that she doesn’t stir any anti-government destabilization. Intense polarization still remains over the NCA, and her camp (the National League for Democracy and affiliated pro-federalization rebel groups) is at loggerheads with the government, with the national reconciliation process largely coming to a standstill as both sides try to hedge against and outmaneuver the other via a complex series of political and ethnic alliances inside the newfound “democracy”. What’s really happening is that each bloc is consolidating its position in anticipation of what increasingly looks to be a renewed outbreak of civil war sometime in the future. As the country holds its breath, the India-Thailand Highway quickly fulfills its role in making Myanmar the integral connector country between India and ASEAN (and profits handsomely because of it), while China’s anticipated Indian Ocean corridor never sees the light of day and the security of its underperforming oil and gas pipelines de-facto becomes dependent on the (expensive) ‘goodwill’ of Suu Kyi and her friendly pro-federalization forces.

Suu Kyi/Rebels:

Beijing’s Buddy

Suu Kyi and her rebel friends dig in their positions both politically and physically, confident that the electoral results they just received give them a strong enough mandate to hold out against any forthcoming government pressure. They don’t anticipate the government going on any military offensives anytime soon, but they’re taking no chances and are arming themselves to the teeth just in case it gets any tempting ideas amidst the NCA and federalization deadlock. Always the skilled political opportunist, Suu Kyi does her utmost to position herself as Beijing’s most prized strategic asset in Myanmar. After all, she paid a landmark visit to the Chinese capital earlier in the year where she was wined and dined by the country’s top officials, including President Xi, in what was a telltale sign that Myanmar’s largest neighbor has given her its political blessing.

Corridor Blackmail

The reason behind China’s moves is simple to understand – Suu Kyi holds enough influence over the peripheral pro-federalization rebel groups in Shan State and the nationalist Buddhist monks in Rakhine State so as to literally be the deciding factor over whether China’s expensive oil and gas pipeline investments remain safeguarded or sabotaged. China may not like playing risky opposition politics with any of its ‘partners’, let alone one as strategically important and geographically close as Myanmar, but it almost has no pragmatic choice other than to engage with and de-facto ally itself with Suu Kyi. If China didn’t have influence over the border rebel groups before, then it surely does now, either directly in pursuit of a long-term effort to cut Suu Kyi out of the equation or indirectly through “The Lady” herself.

Playing With Fire

Also, it’s important to mention that the upping of China’s bilateral relations with Arakan National Party leader Aye Maung immediately before the election has ‘paid off’ in this scenario, since his hard-core anti-Muslim party cadres ‘keep the peace’ between the nationalist Buddhists and any potentially insurgent Rohingya’s, but they paradoxically increase the chances that a robust uprising will inevitably transpire the moment that the central government’s grip has loosened. The reason that China has taken the controversial path of supporting such a sub-state ethnic nationalist strongman such as Maung could be because it wants to diversify the ‘security dependence’ of its pipeline terminals away from Suu Kyi and her proxies, while still being fearful enough of anything labeled “Muslim” so as ‘justify’ its reliance on a crackdown-prone stand-in and thus ignore the potential destabilization blowback that’s obviously brewing.

“The China Whisperer”

Finally, because of the influence that she wields over Beijing’s pipelines, Suu Kyi could be said to have emerged as the “China Whisperer”, in that she has positioned herself as the main actor in Myanmar capable of talking to the Chinese and actually having them listen. This is actually quite dangerous, however, because she might leverage her influence in order to get China to back her federalist plans and support her allied ethnic proxies in Kachin and Shan States. In fact, if she plays her cards just right and is successful in becoming the ultimate wedge between Beijing and Naypyidaw, then she might even be able to convince China to arm her and her allies, especially if she tantalizingly frames the country’s polarized situation as a proxy competition between China (which supports Suu Kyi) and India (which supports the government).

Government:

Losing Ground With A Tough Sell

The government is expected to push forward with the NCA and firmly ensure that it is not amended in any way so as to support a federalized system. This is going to make it a very tough sell to many in the public who harbor pro-Suu Kyi, and thus, pro-federalization, sympathies. In fact, as Suu Kyi and her rebel ethnic allies use their government-provided parliamentary perches to proselytize their federalization ‘gospel’, more and more citizens will openly come to side with them and their federalized approach to solving the country’s civil war. This is expected to weaken the government’s support among the population, and can be said to represent a ‘pre-revolution’ of ‘ideological engineering’ prior to the coming hostilities. As the government loses ever more ground with the governed and becomes shockingly aware of this shift in support, it may predictably try to play up the economic benefit that its ‘pro-democratic opening-up’ has brought to the country, although as the population becomes accustomed to their rapidly increased standard of living, it’s expected that they’ll take such ruling party benefits for granted and not be persuaded to reconsider their political pivot.

From ASEAN Road To Indian Inroads

Partly as a natural consequence of increased trade relations with India, but also because of the need to counter-balance Suu Kyi and her ilk’s de-facto patronage from China, Naypyidaw will likely move closer to India, which for its part will be more than pleased to have ‘poached’ what used to be one of China’s closest allies just a few years ago. This new strategic partnership is expected to transform the Southeast Asian state by turning it into a bridgehead for Indian influence further into ASEAN, owing mostly of course to the India-Thailand Highway that will enhance New Delhi’s economic clout in the region. Myanmar will receive the given residual economic benefits for its transit state status, and could very well become a pivotal node between both points due to its concrete potential to cheaply and massively produce a variety of goods.

Depending upon the level of complex economic interdependency that results between the two (which in any case is expected to be quite large due to how advantageous the relationship will be for each), India might even feel compelled to deepen its political and military ties with Myanmar as well. If this happens, then it could see India, not China as had been the case for the past two decades, becoming the state’s greatest foreign patron, both on the international political arena and in terms of weapons shipments and technical cooperation. If developments move in this direction concurrently with China’s deepening partnership with Suu Kyi and her pro-federalization allies (more out of blackmailed pipeline necessity than any objective reason, as one should recall), then the two Asian giants could enter into a proxy collision course when the two internal sides finally resume the civil war.

Meltdown In Myanmar

Backdrop:

As was inevitably expected, the two blocs in Myanmar, the unionists and the federalists, the central government and Suu Kyi & allies, militarily clash, and the on-edge and ultra-tense country immediately descends back into all-out civil war. It doesn’t matter what the spark was or who’s responsible for having set off, as both sides had become distraught enough with the other’s recalcitrance in the NCA and federalization debate that they had reached the conclusion long ago that armed force would ultimately be the only way to resolve the impasse. While the central government, as explained in Part II, could technically prosper simply by holding onto its formal and allied rebel territories due to the India-Thailand Highway that runs across this corridor, it may have become ‘trigger happy’ and anxious if it felt it was losing the support of the majority Burmese population to Suu Kyi and her federalization platform and that another Color Revolution attempt was imminent.

Such a destabilizing asymmetrical reversal behind the government’s ‘own lines’, despite the misleading veneer of stability brought about by an Indian-assisted economic boom, could push it into making the riskiest calculation in its history, which would be to renew the civil war, but this time with the full intent of going as deep into the rebel’s territory as possible and cleaning them out once and for all. On the opposition’s side, they may have been fretting for a while that their covertly supplied Chinese arms might not be enough, nor of proper quality, to match or deter the Indian ones being delivered to Naypyidaw, thus leading them to commence a ‘first strike’ out of perceived tactical and military necessity. The problem becomes even more pronounced if either of the two external patrons (India for Naypyidaw, China for Suu Kyi and the rebels) ‘advises’ their respective side to preemptively engage in hostilities, or if they’re tricked by their proxy into supporting it in doing so in spite of not fully understanding the enormously complex and destabilizing situation that they’re getting themselves into.

Suu Kyi/Rebels:

In any forthcoming conflict, the federalization bloc’s most important strategic weapon is the potential to launch Color Revolution unrest in Yangon, Mandalay, and/or other large cities throughout the Burmese heartland. Succeeding in this manner would decimate the government’s backbone of support and greatly facilitate its collapse and subsequent replacement by Suu Kyi and the federative rebels. If that can’t be achieved quickly enough or happens to be quickly squashed by the military in its early stages, then they’ll likely resort to more conventional means to weaken the establishment, namely through formal armed struggle. It’s impossible for the rebels to ever capture Naypyidaw (which is more like the world’s largest military base as opposed to a ‘civilian-run’ capital), but if carried out properly, then a feigned ‘suicide attempt’ against it could create just enough of a diversion to deflect the military’s attention away from more tactically important targets for regime change such as Mandalay (located in the north and somewhat near the rebels’ existing area of activity), be it through their outright militant capture or Color Revolution seizure.

Complementary with the tactic of opening up other more ‘diversionary’ fronts, the rebels could leverage the support that Suu Kyi has among the country’s hyper-nationalist Buddhists such as the “Burmese Bin Laden” to provoke a massive anti-Muslim pogrom in Rakhine State that would surely tie up the military’s attention. It may not care so much about the Muslims themselves or even China’s pipelines, but what scares Naypyidaw the most is that the globally publicized killings of the vulnerable minority group that has garnered worldwide sympathy to could be used as an excuse for a multilateral international intervention into its affairs, and thus shift the balance decisively against it in this latest stage of civil warfare. Pertaining to this train of thought, the rebels might employ the last resort (or perhaps, their strategic first resort, depending on how it’s viewed at the time) of trans-border Naga terrorism against India in order to lure it into the mix. Although this might seem counterproductive considering that India is expected to side with the central government, it could achieve the major goal of prompting a sudden increase of Chinese technical support to their side, perhaps even culminating in a formal intervention to protect Beijing’s economic assets and act on the security dilemma that it believes it has with India in the country (especially if the Indians formally intervene there first, whether under an anti-terrorist justification or whatever other argument).

Government:

From a military standpoint, the government’s main objectives are to secure the cities from Color Revolution mayhem and rebel seizure (especially in the case of Mandalay), stabilize Rakhine State, and move ‘in for the kill’ against Kachin State. The first two imperatives are understandable when one considers the abovementioned rebel strategy, but thus far, the analysis hasn’t spoken too much about the Kachins and their leadership role in Myanmar’s civil war. For the most part, the country’s northernmost province operates as a pseudo-independent state despite the military’s scattered presence there since a 1994 offensive, and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and its militant Army wing are Myanmar’s second-largest rebel faction with an estimated 10,000 troops and another 10,000 reservists.

As written about in Part I, the KIO hosts the National Socialist Council of Nagaland – Khaplang (NSCN-K) and the Arakan Army, as well as a handful of Shan State rebel factions, so it’s essentially become the nucleus of the country’s rebel activity. If the KIO were to be crushed, then it would shatter the cohesiveness and support that all of the country’s other non-NCA rebel groups (save for theUnited Wa State Army, the country’s strongest rebel group, which firmly controls a small amount of critical territory along the Chinese border) receive from their training safe havens in the province. However, this is much easier said than done, as not only has the KIO proven itself to be a formidable fighting force, but the densely forested and hilly geography makes it exceptionally difficult for ‘outsiders’ to control. If it can succeed in going against the odds and wiping the rebels out of their primary nest inside the country, then the military can have a much higher chance at successfully wiping out the rebels once and for all, while still tolerating the powerful United Wa State Army’s existence in their secluded and very small corner of the country.

Finally, a few words must be said about forecasted fighting in Chin and Kayin States, the home of the Chin and Karen rebel organizations (all significant ones of which signed the NCA and are now aligned with the government). For the most part, none of the rebel groups signing on to the NCA are expected to actively engage in fighting on the government’s behalf and would likely remain neutral during any resumption of civil warfare, but the Chin and Karen groups are the only exceptions. Both would defend their territories against any outside rebels, and the latter could potentially even intervene in Mon State to the south (which hosts the anti-NCA New Mon State Party) if the federal rebels attempt any kind of destabilization there.

This isn’t because of any ‘loyalty’ they have to the government, but rather out of concrete economic self-interest, since both have a critical stake in keeping the Indian and Thai borders open and safe so as to reap the benefits from the India-Thailand Highway, and the Karen are also concerned about retaining benefits from the East-West portion of the Greater Mekong Subregion Economic Corridor that runs through its territory (and also, incidentally, through Mon State). If somehow the Chin and Karen rebels were to join the anti-government federalists in any forthcoming resumption of civil war, however, it could potentially represent one of the greatest strategic pivots of the entire conflict and quickly lead to the government’s collapse.

The Graveyard Of Great Powers

Backdrop:

The civil war is raging throughout every part of the country by this point, and India and China, mainland Asia’s two largest economies and the world’s most populous states, are becoming ever concerned about the security of their major strategic investments in Myanmar, the India-Thailand Highway and the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines, correspondingly. They’re also backing two opposing sides, with New Delhi throwing its lot behind Naypyidaw while Beijing sides with the rebels (whether openly or not) and Suu Kyi (if she’s even still alive by this point, that is). The peak danger is that either state wouldn’t’ even be planning for an intervention per say, but that they’d find themselves unwittingly drawn in by the magnetic pull of centripetal events and their own strategic insecurities stemming from their security dilemma with one another. The movement of one Asian Great Power into the battlefield (or even rumors thereof) is enough to prompt the other to go in as well, and with both indirectly, and possibly even directly, clashing in the pivotal Indian Ocean state, it could turn out that the mangled remnants of the then-former Union of Myanmar become the graveyard of their 21^st-century multipolar ambitions.

Rumors And Sabotage:

There is perhaps no easier way to formally draw India or China into the Myanmar internecine conflict than for either of them to believe (possibly false and manipulated) rumors about the other going in first. If India catches wind of reports stating that China has a certain amount of on-the-ground special forces operating in eastern Myanmar (Kachin and/or Shan States) and assisting the rebels with their anti-government offensive against Mandalay or the diversion (perhaps a genuine push if aided by Beijing) to take Naypyidaw, then they might quickly react by dispatching their own contingent to the country to help prop up the government. Likewise, the same goes for China, and if it believes some (potentially unsubstantiated) reports that India is operating inside the country’s northwestern regions against Naga terrorists, for example, it might feel compelled to intervene and prop up its own allied rebels nearby, especially if it has reason to fear that India could target them next or as part of its comprehensive anti-Naga offensive. Succinctly put, the fog of war, coupled with the gigantic security dilemma between India and China, could prove to be the deadly mix that draws them deeper into Myanmar at the point of the state’s self-destruction. Similarly, any planned sabotage by the rebels against India and/or China’s infrastructure projects would obviously be justifiable enough grounds for either of them to intervene in the conflict if they so choose, which, it needs to be said, might have been the rebels’ strategic goal all along for a multitude of reasons.

Cross-Border Incidents:

Aside from the above reasons for either Asian Great Power to directly get involved in Myanmar, a much more pressing one for each of them could be the incidence of cross-border raids against their territory. For example, recall the author’s suggestion in Part I to keep the NSCN-K in the back of one’s mind, as now is the precise moment when that factor of near-uncontrollable destabilization becomes most relevant. The resumption of all-out civil war in Myanmar could lead to an environment where the Naga terrorist group and its United Liberation Front of West South East Asia successionists-in-arms feel that it’s an opportune moment to once more strike against India, perhaps betting that New Delhi won’t risk the gamble of getting sucked into the Myanmar quagmire by responding. Quite possibly, however, they might miscalculate, especially given that India has genuine security interests that would be advanced by moving in to completely take out the terrorist group without any political considerations for Naypyidaw getting in the way this time. In the same spirit, if Kokang or other believed-to-be pro-Chinese rebels either went rogue in attacking China (unlikely) or in provoking the Myanmar military into accidental cross-border shelling like has happened before (much more likely), it could definitely preempt a forceful response by China, especially if Beijing is already contemplating a concentrated push to assist its proxies. Remember – any cross-border action by India or China, be it in response to a provocation or out of their own initiative, will result in an immediate and most likely symmetrical response from the other, and in such a tense international atmosphere between the two by this time, even simple rumors of such action could be enough to make one or the other ‘jump the gun’ and lunge into Myanmar.

The Rohingya Rescue (And Counter-Response):

The final external intervention scenario deals with the consequences of large-scale violence against the Rohingyas in Rakhine State. The Muslims are expected to be cautiously allied with the government because of its responsibility in keeping the opposition Buddhist national mobs at bay, but during a complete breakdown of law and order, the state obviously wouldn’t’ be able to keep its commitment to the globally recognized minority group. Therefore, the situation arises where India, which has more Muslims than Pakistan despite being a Hindu-majority state, might either feel obligated to stage a ‘humanitarian intervention’, or at least cloth its actions with such rhetoric, especially if the international (Western) community presses it to act on their behalf. Automatically, this would elicit an instantaneous response from China, which justifiably would be concerned that its Indian rival is trying to seize control of its strategic oil and gas terminals along the coast. At this point, it’s difficult to predict exactly how Beijing would react, but it could either intervene directly in the east and/or ‘play the Pakistan card’ to divert India’s strategic focus back to its traditional western direction. Nonetheless, the two sides are guaranteed to enter into a formal and very tense Cold War if the Indian military moves anywhere near China’s Indian Ocean resource terminals, no matter what (humanitarian) justifications it gives for doing so.

Concluding Thoughts

The Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA) that was just signed, precisely because of the fact that its signatories do not encompass the breadth of the country, provides the most clear-cut indication of the battle lines that would be drawn if civil war were to resume in the near future. Such a negative scenario could realistically occur amidst a post-electoral fallout between the government and Suu Kyi & her rebel allies, or some period afterward as the government and opposition become militantly frustrated with a NCA standstill and frozen federalization talks, respectively. The resultant outbreak of violence is expected to engulf the entire country, as both sides fight an existential struggle for their survival, which would see the government moving to squash the rebel once and for all, while the rebels try to finally overthrow the government that they’ve been fighting against for the past 70 years (both through militant and potential asymmetrical Color Revolution means).

In the heated fray that’s sure to follow, India and China seem primed to intervene, both out of their own economic self-interests in safeguarding their major strategic infrastructure projects through the country. It’s not that they’re eager to do so, but that they feel pressured to because of the extraordinarily intense security dilemma running between them. In the event that one of them takes the initiative in making a move in that direction (whether in response to a cross-border incident or infrastructure sabotage provocation), it’s a sure bet that the other will follow. Two rival Great Powers operating in the same battlespace wouldn’t be unprecedented, however, since it’s already happening with the US and Russia in Syria, but it if occurs between India and China, then this would shatter BRICS and the SCO and spell the beginning of an ultra-tense Cold War standoff between the world’s most populous states. This grand strategic result is the reason why it’s possible that an outside third-party such as the US might find a way to leverage the influence that it has with its on-the-ground proxies during the conflict in order to create the conditions necessary to bring this about, as an Indian-Chinese proxy war over Myanmar and the resultant Cold War that comes from it could be perhaps the greatest blow that multipolarity suffers this century.

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentaror currently working for the Sputnik agency, exclusively for ORIENTAL REVIEW.

Universities remain closed as protests continue at University of Witwatersrand and other campuses

South African President Jacob Zuma announced a moratorium on tuition increases of six percent on Oct. 23. These fee hikes were scheduled to go into effect for 2016 as Africa’s most industrialized state faces a burgeoning economic crisis of sluggish growth and increasing uncertainty in the labor market.

The President’s proclamation came amid the closing of universities across the country after two weeks of protests on campuses in Pretoria, Fort Hare, Johannesburg, Cape Town and other cities and towns across the country. A twitter message #feesmustfall became a rallying cry for students throughout South Africa as they walked off campuses to demonstrate in the streets, at the parliament building in Cape Town, the Union Building in Pretoria and even outside the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party headquarters at Luthuli House.

At the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, one of premier higher educational institutions in South Africa, administrators shut down the campus after protests on October 14. These demonstrations rapidly spread to other campuses leading to the closure of many other universities and colleges during the week of October 19.

The Witwatersrand Acting Student Representative Council President, Shaeera Kalla, placed the unrest within a broader context saying, “There is a majority of black students every year who are academically excluded from this university, and financially excluded from this university. That, that is the reality and we are tired of that reality.”

Due to the demonstrations, government officials and vice chancellors, who had been meeting in Durban during the National Education Summit to discuss the state of higher education, were taken off guard by the protests. Witwatersrand University’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Adam Habib, was compelled to leave the conference and immediately return to Johannesburg and meet with disgruntled students.

At Witwatersrand which in the center of the nationwide dispute had proposed increases in registration, tuition and accommodation fees by an average of 10-percent for the following year.

Despite the announcement of a moratorium on fee increases, the student protests continued on October 26. At Witwatersrand, a university senate meeting designed to discuss the resumption of the academic program where lectures and examinations are pending, was disrupted by student activists demanding that the issue of free university education and other demands be addressed.

An article published by the South African Mail & Guardian said “Most university campuses around the country had decided to continue with protests, despite an announcement by President Jacob Zuma on Friday to put a moratorium on 2016 fee hikes. The students argued that only one of their several demands had been agreed to (fees not rising) following a march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Friday. They are demanding free education for all and that universities stop the outsourcing of staff and services.” (Oct. 26)

Education Reflects Broader Societal Challenges

The problems in higher education affordability is a manifestation of the increasing economic crisis in South Africa where the government, due to its adoption of neo-liberal policies, has been unable to implement free education, a mandate of the Freedom Charter from six decades ago.

Since the ANC took power in 1994 the amount of assistance to students pursuing post-secondary education has increased substantially. Nevertheless, these measures have not been adequate to meet the demands of the working class and poor communities.

In addition, the university system in South Africa allows individual schools to determine internal governance issues such as fee increases, student and labor affairs. Many aspects of the former apartheid system of institutional racism and class bias remain within the functional framework of education.

On October 21, when the Minister of Finance Nhlanhla Nene was delivering the midterm budget before parliament in Cape Town, thousands of students were demonstrating outside the building insisting that their concerns be addressed. Police used riot control techniques involving teargas to disperse the crowds where some had begun to storm the security fences and stone security personnel.

Nene’s report indicated that the national debt has grown from 26 percent to 47 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) since the 2008-9 global economic crises when South Africa instituted countercyclical measures to combat the downturn. The growth of debt-service is a major concern for bond ratings agencies which can determine the cost of borrowing and the interests of foreign capital in investing in the national economy.

These developments are aggravated by the decline in the value of the national currency (rand) which has slipped to the level of 13-1 against the United States dollar. Nene emphasized during his speech that “Our projection is that debt will rise by a further R600-billion (approximately $US50 billion) over the next three years, while stabilizing as a percentage of GDP.”

Increasing at an average annual rate of 10.9 percent, debt-service is the South African government’s fastest growing expense. Many of these difficulties stem directly from the declining prices for commodity exports and the ongoing capitalist relations of production where private business interests are seeking to cut labor costs amid the decline in the currency values.

Debate Intensifies Inside the Tripartite Alliance

The Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr. Blade Nzimande, who is also the Secretary General of the South African Communist Party (SACP), has been criticized for not taking decisive action in solving the problems of increasing fees. It was reported in the South African press that some of the youth leaders, including the newly-elected ANC Youth League President Collen Maine, has called for Nzimande’s resignation.

Others within the ANC-SACP and Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) alliance have rejected what they describe as the “scapegoating” of Nzimande, saying that the problems of higher education cannot be assessed independent of the overall crisis in the capitalist system. Nzimande in an interview said that even though the higher education sector is largely funded through state revenues, the private sector must increase support for universities.

“There is enough money in this country. The problem is that a lot of it is in the private sector,” Nzimande told the South African press agency eNCA. “Your richer universities had committed that they are going to dip into some of their reserves to support this. And then the rest were saying it will have to come from government, but we’ve got to look at all sources that are possible both inside and outside government, as well as your rich universities, because not all universities can afford to pay even a cent towards this.” (Oct. 26)

A wide ranging debate has been initiated on the character of the situation where the SACP, ANC, along with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the Democratic Alliance (DA) and other opposition parties have taken varying positions. Accusations from elements within the ANC and the SACP say that they support the demand for free education. However, there could very well be other political aspects to the unrest and views surrounding the demonstrations.

A polemic between the SACP and the ANC has come to the surface surrounding the National General Council of the ruling party held during October 8-11. The African Communist, one of the theoretical journals of the SACP, has openly criticized the program of the General Council in its third quarter issue saying that there needs to be a move away from neo-liberal economic policy through larger state spending geared toward re-correcting the legacy of apartheid and colonialism.

Imagine the following scenario. One or more Chinese warships sail provocatively into US Gulf of Mexico waters, or perhaps off its West Coast – after being warned by Pentagon and administration officials not to.

Washington would interdict the vessel, perhaps consider its intrusion a casus belli – with full US media support.

Here’s today’s reality. In mid-October, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said: “Make no mistake, the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as we do around the world, and the South China Sea is not and will not be an exception,” code language for laws are what Washington says they are, regardless of their precise meaning.

America considers all global waters its own, intending to sail provocatively through them whenever it wishes, even at the expense of world peace and stability. Hegemons operate this way, by its own rules alone.

China justifiably considers the Nansha (Spratly) Islands and waters surrounding them its sovereign territory. America respects only its own sovereignty, no one else’s.

Last May, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said America should avoid “risky and provocative approaches to maintain regional peace and stability.”

She stressed China will defend its territorial sovereignty. Unauthorized intrusions will be challenged. At the time, a state-run Global Times editorial bluntly warned:

If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea.

“China will have no choice but to” respond to US provocations. Its message says it won’t tolerate US intervention where it doesn’t belong.

China is concerned about America’s increasing Asia/Pacific presence, provocatively challenging its sovereignty and security.

On October 27, state-run Xinhua news said “(a) US warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of Chinese islands in South China Sea on Tuesday in a flagrant – and baseless – provocation against China’s legitimate rights in the body of water.”

The USS Lassen’s operation, carried out in the name of freedom of navigation, was nothing but a willful and harmful game of brinkmanship mounted to flex US muscles at China’s doormat and reassert Washington’s dominant presence in the region – at the cost of injecting more uncertainty into regional stability.

Xinhua blasted Washington’s deliberate provocation, calling it “the troublemaker of the West Pacific,” accusing it of “making trouble out of nothing.” Beijing authorities warned the US vessel after entering Chinese waters, saying it acted “illegally.”

A Foreign Ministry statement said: “China strongly urges the US side to conscientiously handle China’s serious representations, immediately correct its mistake and not take any dangerous or provocative acts that threaten China’s sovereignty and security interests.”

Foreign Minister Wang Yi added separately: “We advise the US to think again…before acting” provocatively. The incident was White House authorized – “despite repeated (Beijing) warnings” against violating its sovereign territory.

An unnamed Pentagon official said more US patrols in Chinese waters will follow. “This is something that will be a regular occurrence, not a one-off event.”

Reckless US policy risks direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine and Syria, as well as China for numerous provocations, entering its South China Sea waters illegally, the latest incident, more promised by its own admission.

Washington’s so-called “freedom of navigation” right is cover for willfully acting belligerently, confronting an Asian superpower recklessly in its own territory, a new millennium version of gunboat diplomacy, this one with weapons able to destroy life on earth.

China and Russia won’t let America run roughshod over their interests. United they’re a formidable anti-imperial force, one US policymakers should think twice about confronting.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at[email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

“Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.”  -José Maria Eça de Queiroz (translated from Portuguese.) [1]

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On October 19, 2015, Canadian citizens delivered their verdict on ten years of Harper governance.

With 73,451 of 73,568 polls reporting, Elections Canada, the body charged with overseeing Canada’s federal elections recorded a voter turnout of just under 68.5%, the highest turnout of electors in a federal election in over two decades! [2]

In some jurisdictions, such as the riding of Winnipeg Centre, voter turn-out exploded from 48.2 per cent in the 2011 election, to 61.4 per cent. [3]

There was clearly a desire to remove the established Conservative regime from power which may have overwhelmed any fraudulent activity that may have been taking place (listen to last week’s podcast.)

The opposition Liberal Party became the beneficiary of the “throw the bums out” sentiment that overtook the electorate.

So who is Liberal leader Justin Trudeau? Does the second youngest Prime Minister in Canadian history represent a fundamental departure from his predecessor? Or is he the Canadian equivalent of Barrack Obama, another neo-liberal political leader masquerading as a reformer on the environment, social policy and foreign policy?

This week’s Global Research News Hour attempts to examine exactly why Canadian voters cast their ballots the way they did, how the issues were explored during the campaign, and what to watch for as our new Prime Minister takes power. We speak with five political observers.

 Barrie Zwicker is a veteran journalist, commentator, and media critic, and a long-time champion of progressive political causes. He speaks to the fate of the NDP, and about how the mainstream media mostly ‘got it right’ in its campaign coverage, except when it came to so-called Deep Political events, such as 9/11 or the Ottawa Shootings of a year ago.

Mellissa Newitt is the National Coordinator and spokesperson for the Canadian Health Coalition, a public advocacy group raising concerns about threats to the integrity of Canada’s public health care system.

Yves Engler is a Montreal-based activist and writer and author of several books on Canada’s foreign policy including his most recent: Canada and Africa: 300 years of Aid and Exploitation.

Roger Annis is a socialist and retired aerospace worker, and a long-time champion for peace and social justice causes. He is one of the editors of Newcoldwar.org, and an outspoken critic of NATO’s involvement in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Michael Keefer is Emeritus Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Guelph, and author of an upcoming book on electoral interference in the 2011 election.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The  show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CFUV 101. 9 FM in Victoria. Airing Sundays from 7-8am PT.

CHLY 101.7 FM in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario – Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the  North Shore to the US Border. It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Notes:

1) http://www.quotery.com/quotes/politicians-and-diapers-have-one-thing-in-common-they-should/

2) http://enr.elections.ca/National.aspx

3) http://enr.elections.ca/ElectoralDistricts.aspx?lang=e

4) http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/indigenous-rock-the-vote-claims-victory-as-winnipeg-centre-turnout-soars-1.3280783

Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile  — Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, 1935

On November 3^rd, the US government will again run out of money due to a debt ceiling artificially imposed by Congress. This is the third time in four years that a radical faction has taken the country to the brink of default to extort concessions that are at best only marginally related to the budget.

The debt ceiling is an unconstitutional gimmick that violates the 14^th amendment, which says the validity of the government’s debt shall not be questioned. The debt was incurred by Congress when it passed the budget, and the money has been borrowed and spent. Congress cannot now refuse to pay.

One good gimmick deserves another. The debt ceiling could be eliminated for good, by restoring to the government its constitutional authority to create money. Article 1, Section 8, provides: “The Congress shall have the power to coin money [and] regulate the value thereof . . . .” The president could pay the government’s bills by issuing some large denomination coins by executive order.

When the Constitution was ratified, coins were the only officially recognized legal tender. By 1850, coins made up only about half the currency. Today, they make up less than one-half of one percent of the money supply – about 50 billion out of a $12 trillion circulating money supply (M2). These coins, along with about $25 billion in US Notes or Greenbacks originally issued during the Civil War, are all that is left of the Treasury’s money-creating power.

As the Bank of England recently acknowledged, the vast majority of the money supply is now created privately by banks as deposits when they make loans. The power to issue the national money supply needs to be returned to the people from whom it has been deceptively usurped. As Thomas Edison observed in the 1920s:

It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People.

In Lincoln’s Footsteps 

In the early days of his presidency, Barack Obama claimed Abraham Lincoln as his role model. One of Lincoln’s less well known achievements was to avoid a massive debt to private banks at usurious interest rates by restoring an earlier form of government-issued money, the paper scrip of the American colonists. In the 1860s, these US Notes or Greenbacks constituted 40% of the national currency. Today, 40% of the circulating money supply would be $5 trillion.

This massive money-printing during the Civil War did not lead to hyperinflation. US Notes suffered a drop in value as against gold, but according to Milton Friedman and Anna Schwarz in A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, this was not due to “just printing money” but was caused by trade imbalances with foreign trading partners on the gold standard.

The Greenbacks aided the Union not only in winning the war but in funding a period of unprecedented economic expansion. Lincoln’s government created the greatest industrial giant the world had yet seen. The steel industry was launched, a continental railroad system was created, a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools was promoted, free higher education was established, government support was provided to all branches of science, the Bureau of Mines was organized, and labor productivity was increased by 50 to 75 percent.

President Obama could follow the lead of his mentor and beat the debt ceiling by calling for a new issue of debt-free US Notes. The problem with that alternative is that it would require legislation, an impossibility before the looming November 3rd debt ceiling deadline.

Another way to solve the crisis with government-issued money was proposed by Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and endorsed by Democratic Representative Alan Grayson during the last debt ceiling crisis: the Federal Reserve could be ordered to transfer to the Treasury the federal securities it has purchased with accounting entries through “quantitative easing.” The Treasury could then just void out this part of the debt, which currently tallies in at $2.7 trillion. That alternative too would be legal, but it would require persuading the Federal Reserve to act.

A third alternative, which could be done very quickly by executive order, would be for the federal government to exercise its constitutional power to “coin money and regulate the value thereof” by minting one or more trillion dollar platinum coins.

A Treasury Issue of Special Coins 

The idea of minting large denomination coins to solve economic problems was first suggested in the early 1980s by a chairman of the Coinage Subcommittee of the House of Representatives. He observed that the Constitution gives Congress the power to coin money and regulate its value, and that no limit is put on the value of the coins it creates. He said the government could pay off its entire debt with some billion dollar coins. I wrote about this in Web of Debt in 2007 and said it would have to be a trillion dollar coin today.

In 1982, however, Congress chose to choke off this remaining vestige of its money-creating power by imposing limits on the amounts and denominations of most coins. The one exception was the platinum coin, which a special provision allows to be minted in any amount for commemorative purposes. (31 U.S. Code § 5112.)

In 2013, Carlos Mucha, an attorney blogging under the pseudonym Beowulf, proposed issuing a platinum coin to capitalize on this loophole. With the endless gridlock in Congress over the debt ceiling, the proposal got picked up by Paul Krugman and some other economists as a way to move forward.

Philip Diehl, former head of the US Mint and co-author of the platinum coin law, confirmed that the coin would be legal tender. He said:

In minting the $1 trillion platinum coin, the Treasury Secretary would be exercising authority which Congress has granted routinely for more than 220 years . . . under power expressly granted to Congress in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8).

Prof. Randall Wray explained that the coin would not circulate but would be deposited in the government’s account at the Fed, so it would not inflate the circulating money supply. The budget would still need Congressional approval. To keep a lid on spending, Congress would just need to abide by some basic rules of economics. It could spend on goods and services up to full employment without creating price inflation (since supply and demand would rise together). After that, it would need to tax — not to fund the budget, but to shrink the circulating money supply and avoid driving up prices with excess demand.

Why Not Pay Off the Whole Federal Debt? 

As the chairman of the Coinage Subcommittee observed in the 1980s, the entire federal debt could actually be paid in this way. The Federal Reserve has already established that it can issue $4.5 trillion in accounting-entry QE without triggering hyperinflation. In fact, it has not succeeded in triggering the modest inflation the exercise was designed for. As with QE, paying the federal debt in this way would just be an asset swap, replacing an interest-bearing obligation with a non-interest-bearing one. The market for goods and services would not be flooded with “new” money that would inflate the prices of consumer goods, because the bond holders would not consider themselves any richer than before. They presumably had their money in bonds in the first place because they wanted to save it rather than spend it. They would no doubt continue to save it, either as cash or by investing it in some other interest-generating securities.

The ease with which the government’s debt could be paid in this way was demonstrated in January 2004, when the US Treasury called a 30-year bond issue before its due date. The bonds were redeemed “at par” to avoid a 9-1/8% interest rate, which was then well above market rates. The Treasury’s January 15, 2004 announcement said that payment would be made “in book entry form,” meaning numbers were simply entered into the Treasury’s online money market fund (Treasury Direct). In effect, the money just moved from an online savings account to an online depository account, converting interest-bearing bonds into non-interest-bearing cash.

Where did the Treasury get the money to refinance this $3 billion bond issue at a lower interest rate? Whether it came from the private banking system or from the Federal Reserve, it was no doubt created out of thin air. As Federal Reserve Board Chairman Marriner Eccles  testified before the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1935:

When the banks buy a billion dollars of Government bonds as they are offered . . . they actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion dollars.

The US government can just as easily create this money by a bookkeeping entry itself. It can and it should, to avoid the interest charges that compound the national debt and make it unrepayable. Quoting Thomas Edison again:

If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. Listen to “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.FM.

It is unlikely that nuclear weapons, which the US created in the mid-twentieth century and used only once – to bomb Japanese cities – will ever be activated in a global conflict. We can assume that the leaders of the official Western nuclear powers (the UK, US, and France) as well as the other states that actually possess such weapons (India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan) will continue to base the conceptual foundation of their military strategy on this incontestable truism: “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” 

Russia’s current military and political leaders agree with this self-evident observation. In his Oct. 22 speech in Sochi before the Valdai Club, an international discussion group, President Vladimir Putin echoed these sentiments: “The development of nuclear weapons has made it clear that there can be no winners in a global conflict.”

Unlike nuclear weapons, which are “tools of extreme impact,” Long-Range Hypersonic High-Precision Weapons (or Advanced Hypersonic Weapons – AHW in US terminology) are ready for use in any scenario, including as part of counter-terror operations. AHW do not cause unnecessary civilian casualties and do not inflict significant material damage to civil transportation systems, power plants, or other infrastructure beyond the small affected area.

Russia has been developing its own promising prototypes of AHW in the numbers deemed necessary to bolster its own security, in response to both America’s functional rollout of Prompt Global Strike, an ambitious program to deploy a global, layered missile-defense system, as well as the Pentagon’s modernization of its strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.

There have already been calls for an international moratorium on R&D and testing of AHW. Despite the fact that this idea appears somewhat utopian, it is quite feasible that at some future date quantitative limits could be introduced on types of AHW and the regions where they could be positioned, but only if the following six key preconditions are met:

1) Any future AHW agreement must be grounded in the principle of equality and equivalent security for all signatory states and must ensure the creation of a system of multilateral, strategic-deterrence treaties.

2) Signatories to such an agreement must agree to respect the mutual commitment not to use AHW against each other under any circumstances.

3) Before such a treaty goes into effect, all nuclear powers must agree to respect the reciprocalobligation to either refrain from inflicting a nuclear first strike against each other or not to use such weapons at all, and also to renounce the use of weapons of any kind against manned or unmanned spacecraft, and these promises would be formalized through legally binding, international covenants.

4) All states possessing nuclear weapons, whether officially or factually, must commit themselves to move toward the use of defensive strategies and unconditional nuclear deterrence that threatens no one.

5) States deploying missile-defense systems and tactical nuclear weapons within the borders of other states, must dismantle the installations of this type currently being designed or constructed, before reaching an agreement on limiting AHW, and America must also pull all of its tactical nuclear weapons out of Europe and the Asia Pacific region, deploying them only within the borders of the continental US.

6) This agreement must be formalized through a legally binding international treaty that is both versatile and inclusive – in the sense that it includes provisions allowing any other state to join it – and its validity should be of indefinite duration.

Unfortunately, any type of Agreement on Quantitative and Territorial Constraints on the Deployment of AHW would hardly be reached shortly, given the context of America’s updated National Security Strategy (February 2015), which six times refers to Russia an “aggressor,” as well as the identification of Russia and China (here, here, and here) as her first and second, respectively, biggest potential adversaries in the American playbook for the use of strategic nuclear weapons. The Pentagon still adheres to a doctrine that calls for inflicting initial “preemptive and preventative” nuclear strikes against an enemy, and it keeps a longer list of potential targets for an initial nuclear strike than any other state. Another important point to consider is the multifold increase in NATO’s military activitynear Russia’s borders during last two years.

In other words, without a radical change by Washington and its NATO allies in their negative and even hostile stance toward Russia and China, the idea that any sort of mutually acceptable agreement could be reached to limit or control AHWs is simply unrealistic and should be put off until a “better time.”

Vladimir Kozin is Head of Advisers’ Group at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and Professor of the Academy of Military Sciences of the Russian Federation.

Introduction: a moment to take stock of the ongoing legal battle

This summer, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PAC) held the first oral hearings in the case brought by the Philippines against China concerning the South China Sea. Before considering any substantive issues, the PAC has to decide whether it has jurisdiction to issue a ruling.¹ Earlier, the closing weeks of 2014 had seen three significant developments, with Hanoi making a submission to the PAC, Beijing publishing a position paper (while not submitting it to the Court), and the United States issuing a position paper of its own. We can also mention the continued interest in the South China Sea by other countries, including India and Russia. Taken together, it means that the time may have arrived to take stock of the arbitration case, updating our previous summer of 2013 piece “Manila, Beijing, and UNCLOS: A Test Case?”.² At stake is not only this arbitration case, or even the entire South China Sea, but the role of international law in contributing to peaceful solutions to territorial conflicts, specifically whether it can help accommodate changes in relative power without recourse to military conflict.

Beyond the Philippines and China: Vietnam Makes a Move

After constant speculation on whether Vietnam would join forces with the Philippines and seek an international ruling on the South China Sea, Hanoi finally decided to make a submission³ to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PAC) without joining Manila as a co-plaintiff.⁴ In its submission, Vietnam asked the PAC to assert its jurisdiction, give “due regard” to the country’s rights and interests in the Spratlys and Paracels, as well as in her EEZ and continental shelf, and declare China’s nine-dash line “without legal basis”. Hanoi’s submission could be seen as a response to Beijing’s position paper⁵ of 7 December 2014, spelling out the Chinese position, but not submitting it to the PAC in the Hague concerning Manila’s request for arbitration under UNCLOS (the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea).⁶ At the time of writing, the court is still considering whether it has the authority to rule on the case. A third relevant development in the last days of 2014 was a study⁷ by the US State Department, released on 5 December. Once again, it is clear that the legal battle launched by Manila is being closely followed by all the capitals concerned. In October 2015 US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel said that should the PAC rule it had jurisdiction, both the Philippines and China should abide by its decision, adding that this was what the United States and the international community expected.⁸

Manila sent a top level delegation to the oral hearings on jurisdiction this summer, which included (clockwise from top left) Senate President Franklin Drilon, Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert Del Rosario, Justice Secretary Leila De Lima, and former AFP Chief of Staff Manny Bautista	View of the Philippines’ delegation at the Peace Palace, in The Hague (the Netherlands)

Once again, Viet Nam reiterates that Viet Nam has full historical evidence and legal foundation to reaffirm its sovereignty over the Hoang Sa [Paracel Islands] and Truong Sa [Spratly Islands] archipelagoes, as well as other legal rights and interests of Viet Nam in the East Sea [Biển Đông]. It is Vietnam’s consistent position to fully reject China’s claim over the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagoes and the adjacent waters, as well as China’s claiming of ‘historic rights’ to the waters, sea-bed and subsoil within the ‘dotted line’ unilaterally stated by China”. The spokesman also confirmed that Hanoi had “expressed its position to the Tribunal regarding this case, and requested the Tribunal to pay due attention to the legal rights and interests of Viet Nam.From day one, China has rejected the Philippines’ resort to international arbitration, arguing that the country had opted out of compulsory arbitration on sovereignty issues and that the suit violates bilateral agreements to solve disputes by negotiation. These were among the main arguments in Beijing’s statement laying down its position, a paper whose release some observers believe indicates that China cannot ignore international legal proceedings despite the fact that it has not been submitted to the PAC. The reaction to China’s paper was not limited to the Philippines; it also seems to have finally prompted Hanoi’s decision to join the battle on its own terms. On 11 December 2014, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Le Hai Binh made the following remarks⁹ in answer to questions from the press:

It should be noted that Hanoi did not join Manila as co-plaintiff in the case, choosing instead simply to lodge a statement with the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Some observers took this as indicative of a desire not to “alienate Beijing”,¹⁰ while at the same time defending the country’s position. Furthermore, an un-named “regional source” told the South China Morning Post¹¹ that Vietnam’s action “is as much to protect Vietnamese interests vis-à-vis the Philippines as it is directed against China”, with another adding that “There is reportedly no consensus in the Vietnamese Politburo on this subject. This is probably as far as the Politburo is prepared to go”. The same HK newspaper also quoted Rodman Bundy, a lawyer who believes that Hanoi’s statement “should be ignored by the tribunal given that Vietnam has no standing in the arbitration”, adding that the move was “a cat-and-mouse game going on outside the strict procedure of the arbitration”. Australian Professor Carlyle Thayer also spoke to theSouth China Morning Post, saying that Vietnam’s move was a way for the country to put forward her interests, adding that this amounted to “a cheap way of getting into the back door without joining the Philippines’ case”. Gregory Poling, South East Asia analyst at Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes that Vietnam’s statement had the same goal as “the Chinese position”, namely to “ensure that the justices hearing the case consider the arguments contained in the document, but do so in a way that is less provocative than Vietnam actually joining”.¹²

On 12 December 2014 Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hong Lei responded to a media question on Hanoi’s move. After repeating Beijing’s mantra about China’s “indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their adjacent waters” and the “indisputable fact that the Xisha Islands are an integral part of China’s territory”, he said that “China will by no means accept Vietnam’s illegal and invalid sovereignty claims over Nansha and Xisha Islands”. Hong called on Hanoi to “work with China to resolve relevant disputes over the Nansha Islands through consultation on the basis of respecting historical facts and international law so as to jointly safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea”, insisting that Beijing would not take part in the arbitration proceedings for reasons previously explained in detail in the 7 December position paper, and that “China’s position will not change”.¹³

Hanoi’s decision to address the PAC may have been a compromise outcome directed not just at Beijing but also at Manila. The decision took place in parallel with high-level meetings with China and others in the South China Sea. Perhaps a good starting point to look at these contacts would be the trip to Beijing in August last year by Le Hong Anh, a special envoy of the Secretary General of the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP). As Carl Thayer notes, this “marked an important inflection point in Sino-Vietnamese relations following the HD 981 oil rig crisis of the preceding three months”.¹⁴ Anh met Xi Jinping, Liu Yunshan (secretary of the CCP Central Committee and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee), and Wang Jiarui (vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference). These meetings led to more concrete agreements, and in particular in the words of Vietnam’s Foreign Affairs Ministry “three important points”, namely enhanced “bilateral ties between parties and states, boosting sound and stabilised relations between the two countries”, promoting bilateral visits, and working to “restore and enhance bilateral relations in all fields” and to “seriously implement the agreement on the basic principles guiding the settlement of sea related issues between Viet Nam and China; to effectively implement government-level negotiations on Viet Nam-China borders and territory; to seek basic and long-term solutions acceptable to both sides; to effectively control sea disputes and not act to complicate or expand disputes; to maintain peace and stability in the East Sea; and to maintain overall Viet Nam-China relations”.¹⁵ Furthermore, the meetings led to “the resumption of bilateral contacts, high-level visits and a meeting of government leaders”. In addition to the 16-18 October Vietnamese senior military delegation’s trip to China, discussed below, State Councilor Yang Jiechi traveled “to Hanoi to co-host the 7th Joint Steering Committee meeting on October 27” plus the 10 November meeting, “on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in Beijing”, between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Vietnamese counterpart.¹⁶

In December 2014, the first visit to Vietnam by a leading Chinese official that year took place. Yu Zhengsheng (chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) traveled to the country, invited by the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee and the Fatherland Front of Vietnam. According to Xinhua, the trip was designed to “to further mend bilateral ties after recent tensions” and the May 2014 anti-Chinese riots. The report stressed the “common border, similar culture and high economic complementarity” with China, “Vietnam’s largest trade partner for nine years in a row, while Vietnam has become China’s second largest trade partner in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations”. The text concluded saying that “there is reason to believe that if the two nations, especially Vietnam, cast their eyes on improvement and development of relations instead of aggravating differences, benefits will not only be brought about to themselves but also to the whole region”.¹⁷ This is in line with many Chinese injunctions to neighbors to work together to improve relations, while not offering any concrete solution to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Reporting on Yu’s meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in Hanoi on 26 December, Xinhua chose the headline “China, Vietnam agree to properly settle maritime disputes”.¹⁸ Here the word “properly” may perhaps be a thinly-disguised criticism of international arbitration and other dispute resolution mechanisms not to Beijing’s liking. Yu described the maritime issue as “highly complicated and sensitive, which requires negotiations to manage and control differences”, adding “Megaphone diplomacy can only trigger volatility of public opinion, which should be avoided by both sides”. ¹⁹

Commenting on the succession of high-level meetings, last year, and in particular the succession of two joint Steering Committee for Bilateral Relations meetings just a few months apart (in June and October), Thayer pointed out that this was “an indication that China’s top leaders are willing to engage with Vietnam to reset their bilateral relations, which were severely strained by the oil rig crisis”.²⁰ After some rumors,²¹ it was confirmed that Vietnamese Communist Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong would be visiting China in early April.²²

At a lower level, but providing opportunities for discussion, was the 65 anniversary of Sino-Vietnamese diplomatic relations in January,²³ where both countries’ friendship association heads stressed their wish for closer relations, chairman of the Viet Nam Union of Friendship Associations Vu Xuan Hong saying “it’s necessary to have more friendly exchanges between Vietnam and China to improve trust and narrow differences. Let’s work for more appropriate cooperative measures for mutual benefit and implement an action program for the Vietnam-China strategic partnership”.²⁴

In addition, Vietnam and China regularly hold bilateral cooperation meetings on a number of issues, including the fight against drug trafficking.²⁵²⁶.²⁷

In the military sphere, the last days of 2014 brought news that “the Chinese and Vietnamese navies will continue their joint patrol in the Beibu Gulf in 2015 to safeguard its security and stability”.²⁸ Earlier in October 2014, following an “unexpected three-day visit to Beijing by a 13-member high-level Vietnamese military delegation from October 16-18, led by Minister of National Defense General Phung Quang Thanh” the two Defense Ministries agreed to set up a direct hot line. According to Thayer, “This is an indication that both sides realized how quickly an incident could spiral out of control and lead to deadly force”. He also noted that “From Vietnam’s point of view, it was important to demonstrate domestic political unity by bringing such a large delegation to Beijing”, 2”.²⁹

In short, both China and Vietnam have engaged in major efforts to prevent tensions from getting out of hand. Yet no progress is apparent in the ultimate factor fanning the flames, that is the maritime territorial dispute between the two countries. Some observers have noted that Hanoi may be split on how to deal with China, and more generally the direction of the country’s foreign policy and military alliances. While this seems to be the case, we should be careful not to confuse disputes on how to manage a complex set of relations in search for balance and a maximization of national power, with disputes over ultimate goals. It is more likely that Vietnamese leaders are split on how to deal with China, and other countries such as Russia, the US, and India, rather than on the ultimate goal of embracing a wide range of alliances in order to prevent falling prey to a bigger neighbor. This is a traditional pillar of the country’s foreign policy, hence Vietnam seeks to develop bilateral relations with a wide range of actors, playing one off against the other when necessary, including China and India.³⁰ Stephen Blank notes that “Vietnam not only enjoys strong U.S., Russian, and Indian diplomatic and military support, it is buying weapons from Russia, Sweden, and Israel, among others”.³¹ To this we must add active participation in a large number of international organizations. At a conference in August, Prime Minister Dung described the country’s foreign policy as resting on “independence, self-reliance, multilateralism, diversification, and international integration”.³²

In addition to the already noted lack of substance in many Sino-Vietnamese statements, it is not clear to what extent either side has margin for compromise. Many voices in both China and Vietnam stand ready to criticize their respective governments for any perceived softening and betrayal of the national interest. For example, in August 2014, in the wake of the announcement of a trip to China by Politburo member Le Hong Anh, Nguyen Trong Vinh (former Vietnamese ambassador to China) said “China will never compromise. Their removal of the oil rig was only temporary. They will never abandon their wicked ambitions of taking a monopoly over the East Sea”, while Nguyen Quang A (an economist opposed to the government) “said he welcomed the talks but was concerned that Beijing might be trying to persuade Hanoi to drop its threat of taking international legal action against China’s territorial claims”.³³ Vietnamese dissenters often attack Hanoi for the alleged failure to stand up to Beijing, while not a few Chinese netizens voice strong criticisms on foreign policy. There seems to be a recognition in leadership circles on both sides that domestic public opinion, if unchecked, may prove destabilizing, restricting room for maneuver. As freelance journalist Roberto Tofani noted in 2013 “Beijing and Hanoi must now also face rising nationalism among their citizens, including periodic anti-China street protests in Vietnam and widespread anti-Vietnam rhetoric on Chinese citizens’ private blogs and Facebook pages related to the South China Sea disputes”.³⁴

In support of Vietnamese claims in the South China Sea, Hanoi has often employed French maps and French documentation to emphasize continuity of territorial boundaries from the colonial to the post-colonial era. Vietnamese observers have stressed the need to examine historical evidence, in a wide sense of the term, to counter similar efforts by Beijing, in a view also supported by some experts in other countries. For example, following Bill Hayton’s “The Paracels: Historical evidence must be examined” and subsequent response by Li Dexia and Tan Keng Tat (“South China Sea disputes: China has evidence of historical claims”)³⁵, Vietnam’s Nguyen Hong Thao wrote in support of Hayton, arguing that Chinese “evidences should not be accepted without debating and examining”, and defending the view that Song Dynasty maps “unanimously described Hainan island as the Southern terminus of China”.³⁶

Nguyen Hong Thao refers to the 13thcentury Song Dynasty Chinese book “Chu Fan Chi / Zhu Fan Zhi” (Notes for Foreigners or Records of Foreign Peoples) by Chao Ju-kuo (Zhao Ju Guo). He rejects Chinese claims that the book proves that the Paracels were part of China’s territory at the time, noting that “‘Chu Fan Chi’ was about ‘vassal kingdoms’ or ‘barbarous tribes’ … Consequently, it is obvious that the lands recorded in this book were not Chinese”. While the original text of the book has been lost, some commentators, writing in other contexts, such as China’s contacts with Africa, have noted that it addressed what were considered foreign lands.³⁷

Like their Chinese counterparts, Vietnamese authors use public displays of maps and documents as another weapon in this struggle. For example in September 2015 one such exhibition took place in Da Lat city, with the goal of proving Vietnamese sovereignty over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagos and featuring “UNESCO-recognized woodblocks from the Nguyen Dynasty, bibliographies and atlas collections published by many countries in different times, notably an atlas issued by China’s Qing dynasty in 1906 and subsequently used by the Republic of China”, as well as documents from different Vietnamese dynasties, the Republic of Vietnam, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and Western countries.³⁸

Vietnam relies on two kinds of Western sources. On the one hand, records of missionaries and traders, and, as noted, on official documents from the French colonial administration and other powers.

Duy Chien, in a 2014 article draws on the writings of foreign missionaries and navigators.³⁹ For example, a French missionary traveling to China onboard the ship Amphitrite wrote in a 1701 diary: “Paracel is an archipelago belonging to the Kingdom of Annam. It’s a terrible submerged reef, stretching hundreds of miles.”⁴⁰More directly related to sovereignty, or at least to sovereignty claims, are “Notes on the geography of Southern Vietnam”, by Priest Jean-Louis Taberd (former apostolic vicar of Cochinchina from 1824 to his death in 1840⁴¹ and interpreter of King Gia Long). Published in 1837, the Notes describe the 1816 flag-raising ceremony on the Paracels by King Gia Long: “Paracel or Hoang Sa islands is an area crisscrossed by small islands, reefs and sand, seems to be extended to 110 North latitude and around 1070 longitude… Although this is an archipelago covered by nothing else but islands and reefs, and the depth of the sea promises [more] inconveniences than advantages, King Gia Long still thought that he had the right to expand his territory by that pathetic merger. In 1816, the King held a solemn flag hoisting ceremony and formally took possession of the reefs, with a certain belief that no one would struggle with him…” J.B. Chaigneau also mentions the 1816 ceremony.⁴²

The Nguyen Dynasty’s exercise of tax powers over foreign ships passing through the Hoang Sa (Paracels) area is perhaps among the strongest pieces of historical evidence that the Vietnamese advance, reinforced by the fact that it was recorded in non-Vietnamese sources. Thus Gutzlaff, a member of the Royal Geographic Society of London, in 1849 wrote in the Society’s Journal that “Katvang lies 15 – 20 nautical miles from Annam coast and spreads on 15 – 17 degrees north latitude, 111 – 113 longitude, then the King of Annam claims ownership of these islands, including rocks and reefs dangerous to marine navigation… Annam government benefits from setting up a patrol boat and a small garrison to collect taxes and protect fishermen operating in their water…”. This source is interesting because Gutzlaff acknowledges both a long-standing presence by Chinese fishermen in the area, as often insisted on by Beijing, and the exercise of state power by the Vietnamese in the region: “From time immemorial, junks coming largely from Hainan have annually visited all these shoals, and proceeded in their excursions as far as the coast of Borneo. ”.

The white paper published by the Republic of Vietnam in 1975 insisted on the actions described in French sources,⁴³and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has followed the same line. Furthermore, Hanoi has been keen to emphasize that French domination over Indochina not only did not interrupt the exercise of sovereign powers but actually reinforced it, since the new authorities kept exercising sovereign rights “After France and Vietnam had signed the Protectorate Treaties of March 15, 1874 and June 6, 1884”, including “building and operating lighthouses and meteorological stations, establishing administrative delegations responsible for the archipelago attached to Thua Thien Province (Annam), and granting birth certificates to Vietnamese citizens born in the archipelago”. France went as far as requesting that China solve the dispute by international arbitration (French Note Verbale dated February 18, 1937 addressed to China), but the proposal was refused. Paris also protested in 1947 after the Republic of China occupied the year before Phu Lam (Woody) Island, in the Paracels, and although a request for negotiations and third-party adjudication was refused, ROC forces later withdrew.⁴⁴”. Having said this, some Vietnamese accounts of the colonial years complain that French authorities were too passive in light of Chinese, and later Japanese, attempts to encroach on islands considered to be Vietnamese, and explain how it was only after such attitude was denounced in the press that they firmed it up. From 1931 to 1933 journalist Cucherousset published seven articles in L’Éveil Économique de L’Indochine (issues 685, 688, 743, 744, 746, 777 and 790) criticizing Governor Pasquier for his feeble defense of sovereignty over Hoang Sa. He wrote “Annam’s sovereignty over the Paracel Islands is undeniable”, while asking the governor “Which obstacles have prevented Annam from claiming sovereignty over the Paracel Islands, which they have owned for hundreds of years? Do we have to wait until the Japanese exploit the last tons of phosphate? Or is it true that the Japanese have paid a reasonable commission?”. Many other newspapers, both in metropolitan France and Indochina (the latter in both French and Vietnamese), regularly reported on the disputed islands, listing the grounds to oppose Chinese and Japanese designs.⁴⁵

Vietnam’s South China Sea narrative also relies on international treaties signed by Paris, such as the 1887 Conventionon the land border, signed by France and theQing dynasty, and according to which islands located east of a red line (described on a map attached to the treaty) belonged to China. Duy Chien argues that “This red line described on the map attached to the Convention was only 5 kilometers long, compatible with the width of the territorial waters of 3 nautical miles at that time, and functioned to demarcate the onshore islands within Tonkin Gulf. If following the [Chinese] authors’ interpretation, this line could be extended boundlessly, crossing the Tonkin Gulf, and not only Paracels and Spratlys but also Hue, Da Nang and even all the islands along the Central Coast of Vietnam or Con Dao island, also belonged to China consequently”. ⁴⁶

Concerning the 1943 Cairo Declaration, Vietnam’s position is that it did not imply any transfer of disputed islands or other features in the South China Sea to China, stressing that “no mention was made of Truong Sa (Spratly Islands) and Hoang Sa (Paracel Islands)” and that the Republic of China “a party to the Conference …did not have any reserve or any statement of its own on the restored territories”.⁴⁷

As is clear in a recent documentary by Ho Chi Minh City TV, Vietnam sees the East Sea, including the recovery of lost islands and features, as a matter of “vital space” (không gian sinh tồn) and “struggle for existence” (tranh đấu sinh tồn), expressions that appear often in the script. Commenting on the documentary, François Guillemot notes that “the documentary film prioritizes the history of the Paracels (Hoang Sa), the Vietnamese islets lost in 1974, while people are aware that China had effective control of that territory after that date”, concluding that “Vietnam has put its ‘struggle for existence’ in a long-term perspective, which, in the past, has shown a certain efficacy”.⁴⁸

The Malaysian angle: Manila tempts Kuala Lumpur with a downgrade of its Sabah claims

Another Filipino move connected to the international arbitration case is the offer to Malaysia, in a Note Verbale, to review its protest against the 6 May 2009 joint Vietnamese-Malaysian submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), containing a claim by Kuala Lumpur of an extended continental shelf (350 nautical miles from the baselines) projected from Sabah. In exchange for this, Manila is requesting two actions that it believes would reinforce her case against China: First, to “confirm” that the Malay claim of an extended continental shelf is “entirely from the mainland coast of Malaysia, and not from any of the maritime features in the Spratly islands”. Second, to confirm that Malaysia “does not claim entitlement to maritime areas beyond 12 nautical miles from any of the maritime features in the Spratly islands it claims”. According to former Philippine permanent representative to the United Nations Lauro Baja Jr., if Malaysia accepts the deal, the Philippines’ claim to Sabah will be “prejudiced”, adding “We are in effect withdrawing our objection to Malaysia’s claim of ownership to Sabah”.⁴⁹

Manila’s proposal is important for several reasons. First, because it illustrates how the Philippines is trying to involve as many countries as possible in its attempt to have the 9-dash line declared to be incompatible with international law. Second, because in so doing it is ready to compromise one of their own territorial claims, thus showing they are aware that they may have to sacrifice some of their long-standing policies in order to arrest what they consider to be the main threat to their territorial integrity. Third, given Malaysia’s reluctance to follow the road suggested by the Philippines, this confirms the fact that South China Sea coastal states remain reluctant to openly coordinate to oppose Chinese claims. Finally, by appearing ready to drop or at least downgrade claims to Sabah, Manila is showing that it is more confident in UNCLOS than in historical claims when it comes to defending its territorial claims over the Spratlys. The reason is that, while Manila’s claims are understood to be grounded in post-WWII developments, an alternative route for the Philippines would be to say that the features involved used to be part of the Sultanate of Sulu even before the Spanish conquest, a route which would demand that Manila not only retains but reinforces the claim to Sabah.

Rearmament and widening alliances: the background to Manila’s arbitration bid.

LNG flows, one of the many reasons why the South China Sea is widely considered to be strategic

Manila’s legal bid to cut short China’s maritime expansion is part of a wider strategy involving rearmament (among others, purchasing FA-50 light fighters from South Korea)⁵⁰ and closer defense links with the US and regional powers like Japan and Vietnam. In the case of relations with Washington, the impact of rising tensions in the South China Sea is twofold and seemingly to some extent contradictory. On the one hand, the Philippines and the United States have grown tighter, while on the other Manila has diversified and widened her alliances, no longer relying almost exclusively on Washington. Although this parallel reinforcement and diversification may not be without its contradictions in the future, for the time being it seems to be fitting reasonably well with the US dual Pacific policy of reengagement and increasing reliance on regional allies for military support. We could also note that the need to upgrade external defense and invest more in the air force and the navy may have provided Manila with an additional reason to be flexible in continuing the long and difficult path toward a peaceful settlement with Muslim rebels in the country’s south. While there are many other reasons to wish the peace process in Mindanao to conclude successfully, friction in the South China Sea is clearly one, and this has not been lost on regional allies like Japan, which retains a discrete but clear interest in developments in the island.

Similarly, Hanoi’s decision to join the international arbitration case should not be seen in isolation, but rather as part of a multi-faceted strategy which like Manila’s also involves rearming and developing closer ties to other countries, including Japan (which is providing patrol boats to her coastguard), India (a key partner in developing offshore oil and also a patrol boat supplier),⁵¹ Russia (essential weapons supplier and energy industry partner), and the United States (whose Pacific Fleet commander visited Vietnam in December 2014).⁵²

Concerning bilateral relations between Vietnam and the Philippines, their respective territorial claims are to some extent overlapping, hence the two countries are not completely at one. However, there is some evidence for tighter links, not least of which the port visit in November 2014 by two Russian-built Vietnamese frigates to Manila, the country’s first ever.⁵³ The 29-30 January 2015 trip to the Philippines by Viet Nam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh inaugurated “discussions towards the establishment of a Strategic Partnership and its elements with a view to elevating the level and intensity of bilateral exchanges between the two countries”. According to the Philippines’ Government, concerning the South China Sea, Minh and Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert F. del Rosario “agreed that concerned Parties should adhere to the ASEAN-China Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and soon conclude a Code of Conduct (COC)” and “reaffirmed their commitments to a peaceful resolution of disputes in the SCS in accordance with international law and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)”.⁵⁴ Commenting on this trip, Carl Thayer wrote that it was “likely that a formal strategic partnership agreement could be reached this year”, adding that negotiations constitute “a determined diplomatic effort to shore up Vietnam’s relations with fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)”, and underlining that “Growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea in recent years has led to a growing convergence of strategic interests between Manila and Hanoi”. Concerning the meaning of the term “strategic partnership agreement”, he cautions that “Both sides, however, want to broaden cooperation in order to avoid the appearance that the strategic partnership is a military pact by another name”, adding that existing trade and investment links are weak.⁵⁵ In more concrete terms, he mentions that “Vietnam could seek to leverage off the recently inaugurated U.S. Poseidon surveillance flights from the Philippines, for example”.⁵⁶ As noted by Del Rosario, this would be the third such agreement for Manila, following similar deals with Tokyo and Washington.

There are many obstacles to meaningful cooperation between the Philippines and Vietnam, going beyond generic statements of support for the rule of law at sea. They include poor interoperability and a weak record of past military cooperation. However, there is a growing realization in both Hanoi and Manila that closer links may allow them to reinforce the credibility of their defense posture, and more widely, their diplomatic stance concerning the South China Sea. ASEAN may seem the perfect forum for this closer cooperation to take place at the political level, while better interoperability would demand the regular holding of drills and exchanges, bilaterally or within a wider framework probably including the United States and Japan. This regional cooperation could perhaps take the place of joint air patrols.⁵⁷ In order to avoid being seen as squarely confronting China, such joint air patrols may focus on search and rescue, and environmental monitoring. The interoperability and joint operational experience gained, however, could then be applied to other scenarios.

Beijing puts forward its own views of the conflict

Post-Mao China has followed a somewhat contradictory approach to international law. To a large extent, this mirrors the country’s complex domestic relationship with the concept of the rule of law. On the one hand, China’s reopening of her law schools after the Cultural Revolution and huge expansion of the legal profession and the practical, day to day, presence of the law, has led to a similar move in the international arena. However, this greatly expanded role of the law both domestically and internationally has been accompanied, in the internal domain, by a persistent rejection of the concept of “rule of law”, authorities rather leaning towards “rule by law”. In Chinese foreign relations, international law has had to contend with two obstacles. First, there is a mistrust of international tribunals, and the fear that they may impinge on Chinese sovereignty. Moreover, the South China Sea has been defined as a “core national interest”⁵⁸, although the exact meaning of this term may not be completely clear .⁵⁹ Second, with the notion that public international law is a creature of the Western nations and thus inextricably linked to a historical period of foreign domination that only began to be reversed after the 1949 Communist victory.⁶⁰ This applies particularly to the law of the sea, seen as unfairly constraining the legitimate aspirations of a nation that has grown increasingly dependent on maritime trade and which feels surrounded by a chain of islands in hostile hands.

Throughout the international arbitration saga, China has repeatedly proclaimed that it would not accept the court’s jurisdiction. However, China has finally deemed it necessary to issue a formal document stating her posture. Some see this as a simple restatement of China’s position, confirming that it will not take part in the proceedings. Others see it as a small victory for the Philippines and international arbitration, since China has not been able to stay completely aloof from the case. Regardless, it is usefull to examine the document,⁶¹ dated 7 December 2014, some of whose main points are summarized here, noting in brackets the paragraph quoted or commented on. A more detailed analysis of Beijing’s response can be found in Appendix I to this paper.

The paper opens making it clear that issuing it is not equivalent to taking part in the arbitral proceedings, and then lists (Paragraph 3) its main purposes, each covered in one section, numbered from II to V.

These goals are first of all (Section II, Paragraphs 4-29) to stress that the case concerns “the territorial sovereignty over several maritime features in the South China Sea”, which, contrary to Filipino assertions, “is beyond the scope of the Convention and does not concern the interpretation or application of the Convention”. Next (Section III, Paragraphs 30-56), to explain that “China and the Philippines have agreed, through bilateral instruments and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, to settle their relevant disputes through negotiations” and the arbitration proceedings are thus a breach by Manila of “its obligation under international law”. Third (Section IV, Paragraphs 57-75), “assuming, arguendo, that the subject-matter of the arbitration” was interpreting or applying UNCLOS, the paper argues that it would still be “an integral part of maritime delimitation” thus falling squarely within China’s derogation from compulsory arbitration. Fourth (Section V, Paragraphs 76-85), the text underlines that, in Beijing’s view, “the Arbitral Tribunal manifestly has no jurisdiction over the present arbitration” and defends the view that China’s refusal to take part in the proceedings stands “on solid ground in international law”.

In Section II, the document (5) sums up the different Filipino constitutional and legal provisions defining her national territory, including references to “all the territory ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris concluded between the United States and Spain” in Article 1 of the 1935 Constitution. This is interesting because it implicitly contradicts Washington’s claim to take no sides in territorial disputes in the South China Sea, stressing only peaceful resolution in accordance with international law. The problem with this posture, in the case of the Philippines, is that, given that they were under American sovereignty, by saying it does not take any position on sovereignty the US is saying that it does not know the extent of its past territory. Therefore, we might ask what Beijing’s motivation in bringing up such treaties may be. At first glance it would seem better for China if the US sticks to this policy of not commenting on territorial claims themselves. On the other hand, however, Beijing may perhaps hope to prompt Washington to publicly comment on the matter in a way that may be detrimental to Manila, that is by stating that certain features claimed by the Philippines were not under US sovereignty in the past.

Taiwan and the “One-China Principle” are not absent from China’s document either, the text (22) accusing Manila of committing a “grave violation” of the principle for omitting Taiping Dao (Island) from the list of “maritime features” described as “occupied or controlled by China”. Instead, the text describes it as being “currently controlled by the Taiwan authorities of China”. A reminder that the conflict over the South China Sea is connected with that over Taiwan, in a number of ways. We may ask ourselves whether Manila was departing here from her “One-China Policy”. Was this a warning shot, or merely another example of how state practice concerning Taiwan is moving (sometimes inadvertently) away from Beijing’s strict position in many countries.⁶²

Section 28 stresses that “China always respects the freedom of navigation and overflight enjoyed by all States in the South China Sea in accordance with international law”. While this is in line with repeated assertions by Chinese authorities, it prompts further doubts on the exact nature of Beijing’s claims, for if all China was demanding was an EEZ then freedom of navigation and overflight would simply flow from international law, without the need for any concession by the coastal state. The issue is made more complex by the fact that in Beijing’s view the rights of coastal states are more extensive than in the eyes of countries such as the United States, going as far as including the right to authorize or deny military activities such as electronic intelligence gathering, which has been the source of a number of incidents, some of them fatal. Thus, if what China is claiming is an EEZ, is Beijing making a concession and accepting a lesser set of coastal state rights in the particular case of the South China Sea? Alternatively, should we read “freedom of navigation and overflight” as being restricted to civilian ships and planes, or at least not including any activities such as ELINT (electronic intelligence) gathering that might be prejudicial to the coastal state? Other questions may be prompted by China’s assertion. For example, does this also apply to territorial waters around Chinese islands in the South China Sea? A question made more complex by the fact that there is no agreement over which islands are legally recognized as islands given the extensive reclamation work taking place.

In Section III Beijing provides a long list of bilateral agreements and statements, and ASEAN documents, stipulating commitments to settle disputes by negotiation and agreement, in order to prove Manila is therefore “debarred from unilaterally initiating compulsory arbitration”. With regard to the absence of an explicit exclusion of third-party settlement, which as pointed out the text acknowledges, China cites the “Southern Bluefin Tuna Case”,⁶³ where the arbitration tribunal stated that “the absence of an express exclusion of any procedure … is not decisive”, that is the fact that a treaty commits parties to negotiate rather than resort to other, non-consensual, dispute settlement techniques prevents the latter from coming into play, without the need to specifically list all the possibilities. In that case, the applicable treaty required the parties to “consult among themselves with a view to having the dispute resolved by negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement or other peaceful means of their own choice”, and the ICJ determined that “That express obligation equally imports, in the Tribunal’s view, that the intent of Article 16 is to remove proceedings under that Article from the reach of the compulsory procedures of section 2 of Part XV of UNCLOS, that is, to exclude the application to a specific dispute of any procedure of dispute resolution that is not accepted by all parties to the dispute.” For China, bilateral agreements and statements with the Philippines and the DOC are not separate realities, but (39) “mutually” reinforce “and form an agreement between China and the Philippines”, giving rise to “a mutual obligation to settle their relevant disputes through negotiations”. Beijing is very keen to insist not only that it prefers bilateral (as opposed to multilateral, or arbitration) dealings, but that Manila has agreed to this.

We can thus see how the document, despite stressing that it is not a formal reply, systematically rejects all of Manila’s arguments, while summarizing China’s position. While China emphasizes the Philippines’ alleged commitment to deal with the issue bilaterally, the text refers to treaties between the country’s former colonial masters, and touches upon the sensitive issue of Taiwan. It is a reminder of how difficult it is to keep things bilateral in this corner of the world.

US Interpretations of China’s 9-Dash Line

Despite repeatedly stating that it will not take sides in territorial disputes in East Asia, Washington remains keenly interested in the ultimate fate of the South China Sea. In addition to perennial calls to settle disputes peacefully, regular reminders of the importance of freedom of navigation, military aid to regional actors like the Philippines, and support for a more active policy by non-littoral maritime democracies like India and Japan, the US Department of State took a further step late last year by issuing a document⁶⁴, part of its “Limits in the Seas” series. The text seeks to explain the different ways in which one may interpret Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea (“that the dashes are (1) lines within which China claims sovereignty over the islands, along with the maritime zones those islands would generate under the LOS Convention; (2) national boundary lines; or (3) the limits of so-called historic maritime claims of varying types”). It concludes that the “dashed-line claim does not accord with the international law of the sea” unless “China clarifies that” it “reflects only a claim to islands within that line and any maritime zones”. The text explains that it includes supporting Chinese official views, without attributing “to China the views of analysis of non-government sources, such as legal or other Chinese academics”.⁶⁵ Concerning this latter restriction, although it is of course official sources which may be considered to be most authoritative when it comes to interpreting a government’s position, we should not forget that administrations in different countries will often resort to “two-track diplomacy” or employ semi or non-official back channels to test the waters and lay the groundwork for future formal negotiations.

Nine-dash map attached to China’s two 2009 Notes Verbales

We should note that the American policy of not taking sides concerning the ultimate issue of sovereignty could be challenged given Washington’s past sovereignty over the Philippine Archipelago. While this has not been publicly stressed by Manila to date, it could enter the debate as a means of putting more pressure on Washington to adopt a more robust posture.

The 7 December 2014 paper by the Department of Statebegins by stressing that “China has not clarified through legislation, proclamation, or other official statements the legal basis or nature of its claim associated with the dashed-line map”, explains the “origins and evolution” of the dashed-line maps, provides a summary of the different maritime zones recognized and regulated by UNCLOS, and then proceeds to explain and discuss three possible interpretations of that claim “and the extent to which those interpretations are consistent with the international law of the sea”.⁶⁶ The document contains a number of maps, including (Map 1) that was referred to in China’s two May 2009 notes verbales to the UN Secretary General,⁶⁷ which stated that “China has indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters, and enjoys sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters as well as the seabed and subsoil thereof . The above position is consistently held by the Chinese government, and is widely known by the international community”.⁶⁸

The text first outlines the history of China’s maps of the South China Sea containing dashed lines, starting with a 1947 map published by the Nationalist government, noting that later PRC maps “appear to follow the old maps”⁶⁹with two significant changes: the removal of two dashes inside the Gulf of Tonkin (in an area partly delimited by Vietnam and the PRC in 2000) and the addition of a tenth dash to the East of Taiwan.⁷⁰ These two changes can be interpreted in different ways, to some degree contradictory. On the one hand, the partial delimitation agreement with Vietnam could be seen as evidence of Chinese pragmatism and flexibility, and proof that it is possible for countries in the region to at least partly settle their disputes by diplomacy. On the other, explicitly encompassing Taiwan with an extra dash may be seen as a reinforcement of Chinese claims on the island not necessarily based on the will of her population. Alternatively, it could simply be a way to more comprehensively encompass the waters and features that Beijing (either directly or via Taipei) wishes to master.

The paper then examines successive Chinese maps from a cartographic perspective, stressing that “China has not published geographic coordinates specifying the location of the dashes. Therefore, all calculations in this study relating to the dashed line are approximate”. This same criticism has been made of the San Francisco Treaty.⁷¹This section of the paper stresses that “Nothing in this study is intended to take a definitive position regarding which features in the South China Sea are ‘islands’ under Article 121 of the LOS Convention or whether any such islands are ‘rocks’ under Article 121(3)”. This is in line with Washington’s refusal to take sides concerning the ultimate sovereignty disputes in the region. The text notes that the “dashes are located in relatively close proximity to the mainland coasts and coastal islands of the littoral States surrounding the South China Sea”, and explains that, for example, Dash 4 is 24 nm from Borneo’s coast, part of Malaysia. Generally speaking, “the dashes are generally closer to the surrounding coasts of neighboring States than they are to the closest islands within the South China Sea”, and as explained later this is significant when it comes to interpreting the possible meaning of China’s dashed line, since one of the principles of the Law of the Sea is that land dominates the sea, and thus maritime boundaries tend as a general rule to be equidistant. That is, maritime boundaries tend to be roughly half way between two shores belonging to different states. To hammer home this point, the study includes a set of six maps (Map 4) illustrating this. The report criticizes the technical quality of the PRC maps, saying that they are inconsistent, thus making it “complicated” to describe the dashed line, whose dashes are depicted in different maps “in varying sizes and locations”. Again, this is important in light of possible interpretations of Chinese claims, since this lack of consistency and quality not only obfuscates Chinese claims, introducing an additional measure of ambiguity, but also makes it more difficult to ascertain whether historical claims are being made and whether they are acceptable in light of international law. .⁷²

11-dash map of the South China Sea issued by the KMT regime in 1947	South China Sea map first published in January 2013 by China’s state mapping authority Sinomap Press, featuring 10 dashes instead of the previous nine

Third, the page devoted to “’Historic’ Bays and Title”. The text stresses that “The burden of establishing the existence of a historic bay or historic title is on the claimant”, adding that the US position is that in order to do this the country in question must “demonstrate (1) open, notorious, and effective exercise of authority over the body of water in question; (2) continuous exercise of that authority; and (3) acquiescence by foreign States in the exercise of that authority”.⁷⁴ The text explains that this traditional American perspective is in line with the International Court of Justice⁷⁵ and “the 1962 study on the ‘Juridical Regime of Historic Waters, Including Historic Bays,’ commissioned by the Conference that adopted the 1958 Geneva Conventions on the law of the sea”.⁷⁶ It then turns its attention to the regulation of historic claims in Articles 10 and 15 of UNCLOS,⁷⁷ saying that they are “strictly limited geographically and substantively” and apply “only with respect to bays and similar near-shore coastal configurations, not in areas of EEZ, continental shelf, or high seas”.⁷⁸ Just like, when examining China’s posture we must take into account, as discussed later, the country’s history, and in particular the Opium Wars and their aftermath, American history has also shaped Washington’s perceptions and principles. The Barbary Wars⁷⁹ were widely seen as laying down fundamental principles of national policy such as rejection of blackmail, freedom of navigation, and the right and duty to intervene far from American shores whenever the country’s interests, principles, and prestige were at stake.⁸⁰

Thus, while China’s position concerning the South China Sea may end up resting at least in part, on the concept of historic waters, even if this is not the case history and perceptions of history will surely still play an important role in determining Beijing’s policy. This, however, is not something only taking place within China, since no regional or extra-regional actor is immune to the phenomenon, adding to the already tense situation in South East Asia. In particular, a couple of centuries later, both the Barbary Wars and the Opium Wars remain powerful factors projecting their shadow on American and Chinese foreign and defense policy.

The paper’s second section basically consists of a summary explanation of “Maritime Zones”, “Maritime Boundaries”, and “’Historic’ Bays and Title” according to UNCLOS. Three aspects are of particular significance. First of all, that the interpretation provided is not necessarily that considered correct by China. Although this is not always squarely addressed, when discussing whether Chinese claims in the South China Sea are or are not in accordance with international law we should first define international law, and there is the possibility that as China returns to a position of preeminence she may interpret some of its key provisions in a different way. Second, as the paper itself notes, while China ratified UNCLOS in 1996, the United States has not, although she “considers the substantive provisions of the LOS Convention cited in this study to reflect customary international law, as do international courts and tribunals”. Not all voices take such a straightforward view of Washington’s failure to ratify the convention while claiming that it is mostly a restatement of customary law and therefore applicable anyway.⁷³ Some critical observers see the United States as being, together with Japan, among the largest beneficiaries of UNCLOS, in addition to being the driving force behind it, even while refusing to ratify a convention from which China has gained almost nothing.

Let us move to the three interpretations put forward by the US Department of State.

1.- “Dashed Line as Claim to Islands”⁸¹

This would mean that all Beijing was claiming were the islands within the dashed lines, and that any resulting maritime spaces would be restricted to those recognized under UNCLOS and arising from Chinese sovereignty over these islands.

As possible evidence for this interpretation, the study cites some Chinese legislation, cartography, and statements. The former includes Article 2 of the 1992 territorial sea law, which claims a 12-nm territorial sea belt around the “Dongsha [Pratas] Islands, Xisha [Paracel] Islands, Nansha (Spratly) Islands and other islands that belong to the People’s Republic of China”.⁸² The Department of State also stresses that China’s 2011 Note Verbale states that “China’s Nansha Islands is fully entitled to Territorial Sea, Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and Continental Shelf”,⁸³ without laying down any other maritime claim. Concerning cartography, the study cites as an example the title of “the original 1930s dashed-line map, on which subsequent dashed-line maps were based”, which reads, “Map of the Chinese Islands in the South China Sea” (emphasis in the DOS study). With regard to Chinese statements, the study cites the country’s 1958 declaration on her territorial sea, which reads “and all other islands belonging to China which are separated from the mainland and its coastal islands by the high seas”⁸⁴ (emphasis in the DOS study).

The text argues that this reference to “high seas” means that China could not be claiming the entirety of the South China Sea, since should that have been the case there would have been no international waters between the Chinese mainland and her different islands in the region. This is a conclusion with which it is difficult to disagree, although we should not forget that it was 1958, with China having barely more than a coastal force rather than the present growing navy. Therefore, while the study’s conclusion seems correct, and precedent is indeed important in international law, it is also common to see countries change their stance as their relative power and capabilities evolve. Thus, if China had declared the whole of the South China Sea to be her national territory in 1958 this would have amounted to little more than wishful thinking, given among others the soon to be expanded US naval presence in the region and extensive basing arrangements. Now, 50 years later, with China developing a blue water navy, and the regional balance of power having evolved despite the US retaining a significant presence, Beijing can harbor greater ambitions.⁸⁵

2.- “Dashed Line as a National Boundary”⁸⁶

This would mean that Beijing’s intention with the dashed line was to “indicate a national boundary between China and neighboring States”. As supporting evidence for this interpretation, the DOS report explains that “modern Chinese maps and atlases use a boundary symbol to depict the dashed line in the South China Sea”, adding that “the symbology on Chinese maps for land boundaries is the same as the symbology used for the dashes”. Map legends translate boundary symbols as “either ‘national boundary’ or ‘international boundary’ (国界, romanized as guojie)”. Chinese maps also employ “another boundary symbol, which is translated as ‘undefined’ national or international boundary (未定国界, weiding guojie)” but this is never employed for the dashed line.

The report stresses that, under international law, maritime boundaries must be laid down “by agreement (or judicial decision) between neighboring States”, unilateral determination not being acceptable. The text also notes that the “dashes also lack other important hallmarks of a maritime boundary, such as a published list of geographic coordinates and a continuous, unbroken line that separates the maritime space of two countries”. The latter is indeed a noteworthy point, since border lines would indeed seem to need to be continuous by their very nature, rather than just be made up of a number of dashes. This is one of the aspects making it difficult to fit Beijing’s claims with existing categories in the law of the sea. Moving beyond the law, however, and this is something that the DOS report does not address, a certain degree of ambiguity may be seen as beneficial by a state seeking to gradually secure a given maritime territory. Some voices have noted this may have been the US calculus in the San Francisco Treaty. Thus, the technical faults, from an international legal perspective, in China’s dotted line are not necessarily an obstacle to Beijing’s claims, from a practical perspective.

3.- “Dashed Line as a Historic Claim”⁸⁷

The third way to see the dashed-line, according to the Limits in the Seas series paper, would be as a historic claim.

Concerning evidence for the possible interpretation of Beijing’s claims as historic, the report cites as “most notable” China’s “1998 EEZ and continental shelf law⁸⁸, which states without further elaboration that ‘[t]he provisions of this Act shall not affect the historical rights of the People’s Republic of China’” (emphasis added in the DOS report). China’s 2011 Note Verbale⁸⁹ says that Beijing’s claims are supported by “historical and legal evidence”, but while the DOS report adds emphasis to “historical”, one should be careful not to confuse a historical claim with a claim supported by history. A country may put forward historical evidence in both negotiations and arbitration or adjudication in areas where UNCLOS refers to “equitable” solutions. The text also notes how many “Chinese institutions and commentators have considered that the dashed-line maps depict China’s historic title or historic rights”.

The DOS reports explains that “some” Chinese Government actions and statements which are “inconsistent with” UNCLOS, while not amounting to “express assertions of a historic claim, they may indicate that China considers that it has an alternative basis – such as historic title or historic rights – for its maritime claims in the South China Sea”, and provides some examples, such as the assertion by a MFA spokesperson that the Second Thomas Shoal (Ren’ai Reef) is under Chinese “sovereignty”.⁹⁰ This mantra about sovereignty, together with repeated appeals to history, could indeed be considered as evidence that what Beijing has in mind is a historic claim. Furthermore, it may well be a claim going beyond the provisions for such term in UNCLOS.

Next the DOS report examines two issues: whether China has actually “Made a Historic Claim”, and whether it would “have Validity”. Concerning the former, the text states that “China has not actually made a cognizable claim to either ‘historic waters’ or ‘historic rights’”, the reasons being a lack of “international notoriety” and the statement in her 1958 Territorial Sea Declaration that “high seas” separate the Chinese mainland and coastal islands from “all other islands belonging to China”. The text admits that the expression “historic waters” appears in some Chinese legislation and statements, and actually cites some of them, but believes that this does not amount to “notoriety” to a degree sufficient to “at the very least” allow “other states” to “have the opportunity to deny any acquiescence with the claim by protest etc.”⁹¹ since “no Chinese law, declaration, proclamation, or other official statement” exists “describing and putting the international community on notice of a historic claim”.

Whereas the assertion that China has not actually made a claim may not be shared by everybody, in particular given the language flowing from Beijing which the DOS report itself cites, the reference to the “high seas” between mainland China and some islands seems stronger proof that Beijing was not making a historic claim. However, we must again stress that this would be the case if we followed the prevailing interpretation of the law of the sea, but there is no reason why China should adhere strictly to it, and even less that Beijing should not have changed her mind since 1958, when she had little more than a coastal navy and her economy was closed and in tatters. It may be true, as the report notes, that the 1958 Declaration only made a historic claim to the Bohai (Po-hai) gulf in northeastern China, but again this should perhaps be judged from a wider historical perspective. After 1949 the PRC took a much more uncompromising stance concerning its North-East than its South-East (and wider maritime) borders. With a pragmatic arrangement in place with the United Kingdom concerning Hong Kong, and a strong economic and political relation with the Soviet Union, it was at the other end of the country where, in 1950, Beijing (not without an intense internal debate given the state of the country), decided to resort to force to prevent the presence of hostile forces close to her border, intervening in the Korean War, pushing back the advancing Allied forces and reversing the impact of the Inchon landing, ultimately forcing a stalemate on the ground. In 1958, just five years after the Korean armistice, nearby waters may have thus been much more present in Chinese leaders’ minds. In addition, these were also the waters directly leading to Tianjin and Beijing, the venue for foreign interventions in both the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion. It would not be until the late 1970s that China’s South-Eastern flank would begin to receive more attention, in part thanks to the rapprochement with the United States and in particular once economic growth and the country’s move to become a net energy and commodity importer turned the waters of the South China Sea into a vital venue and potential choke point. It is true that in December 1941 the loss of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in the South China Sea had enabled the Japanese to land in Malaya and ultimately conquer Burma, closing the last land route to besieged Nationalist China, but this did not result in a comparable imprint on China’s historical consciousness, among other reasons because the episode did not involve Chinese naval forces and was subsumed into a much larger, dramatic, and quickly-developing picture.

Concerning whether, if China “Made a Historic Claim”, it would “have Validity”, the DOS paper insists that “such a claim would be contrary to international law.” The text does not stop at arguing that it is not open to a state to make historic claims based not on UNCLOS but on general international law, laying down a second line of defense. It explains that, “even assuming that a Chinese historic claim in the South China Sea were governed by ‘general international law’ rather than the Convention”, it would still be invalid since it would not meet the necessary requirements under general international law, namely “open, notorious, and effective exercise of authority over the South China Sea”, plus “continuous exercise of authority” in those waters and “acquiescence by foreign States” in such exercise of authority. Furthermore, it explains that the United States, which “is active in protesting historic claims around the world that it deems excessive”, has not protested “the dashed line on these grounds, because it does not believe that such a claim has been made by China”, with Washington choosing instead to request a clarification of the claim. Whether this view is also meant to avoid a frontal clash with Beijing, in line with the often state policy goal of “managing” rather than “containing” China’s rise, is something not discussed in the text.

The Spratly Islands, a bone of contention between China and the Philippines

Two Further Aspects to the US Position

The Department of State’s paper emphasizes that “The United States has repeatedly reaffirmed that it takes no position as to which country has sovereignty over the land features of the South China Sea”⁹²

The trouble with this view, apart from the possibility that a measure of ambiguity in the San Francisco Treaty may be in Washington’s interest, is that the United States is no mere external power in the South China Sea, given two essential historical facts that the Department of State’s paper never mentions. The first is the period of US sovereignty over the Philippines following the Spanish-American War of 1892, and the resulting Treaties of Paris⁹³and Washington,⁹⁴ which among others determined the territorial extent of the Archipelago. The second is the Second Indochina War, more often known as the Vietnam War, when American forces together with those from other Allied nations operated in the region in support of the Republic of Vietnam.

The Treaties of Paris and Washington are important because they amount to the United States being, at least until Filipino independence, a littoral state in the South China Sea. Furthermore, the territory of the Republic of the Philippines is inherited from the United States, precisely around the time when China, at that time the Republic of China, is beginning to publicly assert its claims in the South China Sea. While this paper will not examine this issue in depth, it seems clear that American authorities are in no position to simply claim that they have nothing to say on the ultimate issue of sovereignty, as if the Philippines had never been under US sovereignty and Washington had never signed any treaty dealing with the extent of its territory.

The Second Indochina War is not as significant, but it still means that for years US forces operated in some of the regions under dispute, following agreements with the Republic of Vietnam and other states in the region, including the Philippines. Although again not the purpose of this paper, any examination in depth of American policy concerning the territorial dispute over the South China Sea cannot ignore this episode. Instead, the diplomatic history of the period should be examined in the search for evidence of any event or document of legal significance.

Map showing the location, within the South China Sea, of the Paracels, the Spratlys, and Scarborough Shoal

Russia: Just a Silent Observer?

A look at Russian policy towards the South China Sea may begin with the observation that, while all other regional and extra-regional actors seem to have growing geopolitical tensions with China, Moscow appears to be strengthening ties with Beijing at a time of increasing isolation and economic trouble, as in areas including energy, the Ukraine, and the Arctic. However, it is necessary to examine Russian national interests and actual decisions on the ground, while being aware that Russian sources are most reluctant to deviate from the official narrative of friendship with China. This reluctance was clear in last year’s new military doctrine, which did not contemplate a possible conflict with Beijing⁹⁵ despite recognition of military imbalance in the Far East, one of the factors behind the Russian military reforms. Russian military doctrine may not refer to China, but “counter-terrorism” drills in the Far East usually feature the simulated employment of tactical nuclear weapons, hardly the first tool that comes to mind when confronting a terrorist attack. Although Chinese leaders avoid referring to it in public, a significant portion of Russia’s Far East remains an unfairly lost land in their eyes.⁹⁶

Even before the current spike in tensions in the Euro-Atlantic Region, Russia had determined to diversify energy exports, increasing the share of oil and natural gas exports going to the Asia-Pacific. While agreements with China have attracted the most media and scholarly attention, Moscow has been working on a wide range of projects, including a possible natural gas pipeline to South Korea through the DPRK⁹⁷ and civilian nuclear cooperation with Vietnam. Concerning Japan, Moscow was quick to offer support through increased LNG exports in the wake of Fukushima,⁹⁸ and while observers differ on the realistic prospects of a grand bargain, some cautioning that relations with Russia are the most difficult dossier on Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s table, a strong rationale remains for closer links between Russia and Japan.

This does not mean that this rationale will overcome bilateral obstacles such as the territorial conflict over the Northern Territories / Southern Kuriles and challenges associated with Japan’s difficulties in maneuvering away from American positions in the face of growing tensions with China, but it should at least caution against simplistic explanations. Furthermore, while Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s latest visit to the Kurile Islands / Northern Territories in August 2015⁹⁹ again prompted criticism in Japan, this has not prevented Medvedev himself from signing into Russian law the extension of the country’s continental shelf into the Okhotsk Sea, as agreed with Japan and in line with Moscow’s February 2013 application to the UN Commission on continental shelves.¹⁰⁰ Russia may have traditionally looked Westward, from Peter the Great¹⁰¹ to Lenin,¹⁰² but it is indeed a Pacific power, and its diplomacy features a wide range of relations with countries in the region. Faced with the need to develop her Far East, diversify away from Europe, avoid over reliance on China, and generally speaking maximize national power and influence and economic exchanges, we could perhaps talk about Russia’s own “Pivot” or “Rebalance” to the Pacific.¹⁰³ According to Stephen Blank (Senior Fellow for Russia at the American Foreign Policy Council), “Justified emphasis on the current Ukraine crisis should not lead us to make the mistake of overlooking Russia’s policies in East Asia”. This author points out how Russia is using energy and weapons sales in the region, in line with Moscow’s traditional diplomatic practice, adding that “like other powers, Russia is pursuing what may be called a hedging strategy against China in Asia. On the one hand it supports China against the US and on the other works to constrain Chinese power in Asia”. Blank concludes that “Sino-Russian amity, at least in regard to the Asian regional security agenda, is something of a facade”, meaning that “Russo-Chinese ties may not be as dangerous for the US as some have feared, although there is no reason for complacency since the two governments will clearly collude to block numerous American initiatives globally”.¹⁰⁴

Among other areas, Moscow may be seeking greater influence on the Korean Peninsula,¹⁰⁵ the participation of Asian powers other than China in the Russian Arctic,¹⁰⁶ greater cooperation with Indonesia, and, although regularly denied, the sale of Russian submarines (or transfer of technology) to Taiwan.¹⁰⁷ One of the most striking aspects of the Russian presence in the Pacific, and in particular the South China Sea, is Moscow’s continued support for Hanoi and sale of advanced weapons, chief among them Kilo-class submarines. Russia is not just an essential lynchpin in Vietnam’s asymmetrical warfare strategy, it has avoided publicly supporting China’s stance in the region.

This failure to speak out in favor of Beijing is not restricted to the South China Sea, as noted by Mu Chunshan “Even on the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute between China and Japan, Russia has kept an ambiguous position”. Mu lists four reasons for this. First, “China and Russia are not allies. There is no alliance treaty between them”, so Moscow is not bound to support Beijing politically or militarily, still less in “The South China Sea”, which “is not a place where Russia can expand its interests, nor is it necessary for Russia to interfere in this region absent a formal alliance with China”. Second, “Russia enjoys good relations with countries bordering the South China Sea and does not need to offend Southeast Asia for the sake of China”. This does not just apply to Vietnam, since for example “Russia also enjoys a good relationship with the Philippines”. Third, with Moscow focused on Europe and the Ukrainian crisis, “Russia has neither the desire nor the ability to confront the U.S. in the South China Sea”. Finally, “the development of China has actually caused some worries within Russia”, with concerns centered on possible encroachment in the Russian Far East. However, according to Mu Chunshan this does not mean that there is a split between Moscow and Beijing, since the two countries know each other well and Russia’s silence on the South China Sea, like China’s on the Crimea, does not mean they oppose each other. Beijing’s abstention at the UNSC on Crimea “doesn’t mean that China opposes Russia’s position. By the same logic, Russia’s neutral stance in the South China Sea disputes doesn’t mean that Russia doesn’t support China”. Generally speaking, “China and Russia leave each other ample room for ambiguous policies, which is actually proof of an increasingly deep partnership. This arrangement gives both China and Russia the maneuvering space they need to maximize their national interests”.¹⁰⁸

Vietnam has not only recently received her third enhanced Kilo-class submarine, HQ 194 Hai Phong,¹⁰⁹ but is building four Tarantul-class orMolniyacorvettes at Ba Son Shipyards, under license from Russia’s Almaz Central Design Bureau. Two corvettes were previously delivered in June 2014.¹¹⁰ Furthermore, Cam Ranh Bay remains of the utmost importance to the Russian Navy, and in November 2014 Hanoi and Moscow signed an agreement to facilitate the use of the base by Russian warships.¹¹¹ According to this agreement, in future Russian warships will only have to notify port authorities immediately prior to their arrival, the agreement privileging the Russian Navy and giving it special access, whereas other navies are restricted to one port visit per year.¹¹²

Russia is also a nuclear energy partner for Hanoi, and has ignored Chinese injunctions to abandon offshore oil cooperation with Vietnam in the South China Sea.¹¹³ Speaking to the Vietnamese media in advance of his official trip in April this year, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev confirmed plans for “a free trade area agreement. It will likely be the first such agreement to be signed between the Eurasian Economic Union and an individual country”, while identifying Vietnamese tourism in Russia and trade settlement in their respective national currencies as areas for further work.¹¹⁴ While defense links with Russia are a cornerstone of Vietnam’s multi-vector diplomacy, they go hand in hand with growing links with the United States. As often happens with countries engaging a wide range of powers which may otherwise be at odds, such a balancing act is not always easy and may result in pressure by one partner to restrict cooperation with the other. Recently, use of Cam Ranh Bay air facilities by Russian Il-78 Midas tanker planes refueling Tu-95 “Bear” strategic bombers, involved among others in sorties to Guam, prompted a request by Washington to Hanoi to terminate such access.¹¹⁵

We can conclude that Moscow is determined not to become too dependent on Beijing, and that despite many domestic and bilateral obstacles it wishes to become a major Pacific power. This may offer some opportunities to the United States in the event of a turn for the worse in Sino-American relations, but in addition to the many challenges it would pose, right now this appears an unlikely scenario given the deep mistrust of Russia in Western quarters in general and Washington in particular.¹¹⁶ Together with the absence of any mention of sanctions when discussing policy options in the South China Sea, and the apparent disconnect between the US “rebalance” and the country’s nuclear posture, this deep schism between Russia and the West constitutes a triad of factors objectively enhancing China’s position when dealing with her neighbors. Unlike Moscow, Beijing seems to be succeeding in preventing a regional territorial conflict from having a major impact on bilateral relations with Washington.

India: Looking East

As a quasi-island, vitally dependent on sea lanes of communication, India cannot afford to ignore developments in the South China Sea, a body of water connecting the country to, among others, Japan. In recent years New Delhi has supported Hanoi in two crucial ways, first by cooperating in offshore oil exploration and production, and second in helping build the country’s maritime security capabilities. This may be seen as part of New Delhi’s “Look East” policy,¹¹⁷ and also as partially motivated by a desire to make it more difficult for China to dominate the South China Sea and thus more easily access the Indian Ocean and increase pressure on India. However, while this may make sense, and fit with other Indian policies such as improving border infrastructures¹¹⁸ in the Himalayas and developing key weapons systems such as Brahmos,¹¹⁹ it does not mean that it is necessarily part of any “grand design” to encircle China. While true that India has gradually developed a wide range of relations with other countries in the region, including joint military drills, the often grand-sounding words employed to describe them rarely match their actual contents. For example, while relations with Japan are important and benefit from the personal warmth between the two prime ministers,¹²⁰ New Delhi and Tokyo are yet to conclude a civil nuclear agreement, which would certify the end to India’s “nuclear apartheid”. New Delhi remains cautious concerning China, and rather than engage in a multinational alliance against Beijing, Brahma Chellaney has more accurately described the country as having moved “from nonaligned to multialigned”¹²¹ under a prime minister whose foreign policy “hallmark” is “pragmatism”.¹²²

Furthermore, suspicions of the United States and more widely of foreign entanglements remain high among India’s national security community. Three recent tweets by Saurav Jha, a commentator on energy and geopolitics, are indicative in this regard. On 24 January 2015 he wrote “All the ‘pivot’ posturing has already served its purpose. All this Asian NATO talk is only for those who want to import expensive platforms” and “As usual Indian analysts missed the significance of the Obama-Jinping maryland retreat when they agreed on Yuan-dollar dynamics.”, adding “America has no desire to fight China and even overtly they keep saying that they do not seek to contain China or build alliances against it”.¹²³

While the January 2015 trip to India by US President Obama was widely considered to have been successful, with Dhruva Jaishankar (a fellow with the German Marshall Fund) concluding that “Anti-Americanism is dead”,¹²⁴ still more than a few Indian voices are reluctant to enter into any set of alliances that may led to entanglements or see the country used as a pawn against China. Thus, while Jaishankar explained that “Modi has been unabashed about deepening partnerships with countries in the Indo-Pacific region with which India shares both interests and values, particularly Japan and Australia”, seeking to “manage China’s rise by diversifying regional security partnerships” and establishing a “closer relationship with the US”,¹²⁵ Manimugdha Sharma, a journalist specializing in military history, tweeted “For decades, US propped up Pakistan to offset and upset its bigger neighbour. Let’s hope we don’t become Pak in US’ scheme against China”,¹²⁶adding that “India, so far, has very wisely stayed away from grand coalitions and alliances. Even in the aftermath of 9/11, when there was pressure on India to join the war against terror, we very wisely avoided sending troops. So logically speaking, India would avoid being used … we must set boundaries on this new friendship with the Americans”.¹²⁷

The “Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific & Indian Ocean Region” released on the occasion of Obama’s visit referred to the South China Sea. “Regional prosperity depends on security. We affirm the importance of safeguarding maritime security and ensuring freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea”. It called on “all parties to avoid the threat or use of force and pursue resolution of territorial and maritime disputes through all peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea”.¹²⁸

Furthermore, the trip was accompanied by renewed commentary about “quadrilateral” (Australia-India-Japan-US) maritime cooperation, following Modi’s words to that effect,¹²⁹ with commentators such as David Lang (analyst at ASPI and an editor of The Strategist) stressing that India’s Modi and Japan’s Abe are both “nationalistic, conservative leaders … elected with mandates to restart their economies and reclaim lost pride” and “playing for a greater role in underwriting peace and stability in the Asia–Pacific” and therefore seeking to “engage more with the US, regional partners and multilateral security architectures”.¹³⁰

However, as noted above, wariness of entanglements and loss of “strategic autonomy” still runs high in New Delhi and while democracies in the Pacific generally agree on the need to at least “manage” the rise of China and defend the rule of law at sea, this coexists side by side with a desire not to provoke China, and a degree of mistrust concerning the real degree of commitment by other parties to any collective endeavor to prevent Chinese territorial expansion. It is a dilemma well known by experts in game theory. Saurav Jha pulled no punches in this regard, tweeting “Does anybody seriously think that Indian participation in maritime coalition action against China will not lead to a Sino-Pak land attack?” and wondering “Will Japan open an Eastern front, during an Indian war with China. If not, what the hell is all this quadrilateral pappi-jhappi about?” This led him to express the view that “Unless India and Japan agree to a formal nuclear alliance, I really do not see the point of all this bakwaas quadrilateral pappi-jhappi”.¹³¹

Concerning India-Philippines relations, while Manila has pointed out that New Delhi welcomed her arbitration bid, India has done so cautiously,¹³² and bilateral exchanges remain relatively low key, while unimpeded by any significant dispute.¹³³

Therefore, while we can expect India to keep supporting Hanoi in the latter’s quest to develop offshore oil and build up her coastguard, it is likely that India will keep her options open and retain a prudent policy towards China, in a bid to prevent the latter’s expansion while avoiding provocations. While both sides see tighter India-Japan relations as necessary, when envisioning an open South China Sea, they recognize that overlapping values and interests are not enough to guarantee real progress, although the political will is clearly there and there is a widespread perception that India’s role in the region will grow.

Reclamation: Changing Facts on the Ground?

Another important development during the year 2014 has been reclamation work on different islands and reefs in the South China Sea, mostly although not solely by China, which some sources point out is also conducting similar activities in the Nanji Islands, located in the East China Sea, 300 km from the Senkaku/Diaoyu/Diaoyutai Islands.¹³⁴

The construction of artificial islands and the expansion, through reclamation, of existing natural features, is important on at least two counts. From a legal perspective, by supporting Chinese claims that certain features are indeed islands, benefits may include classification as an EEZ and not just a territorial sea and contiguous zone. While UNCLOS stipulates that in order for an island to result in an EEZ it must not constitute “rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own”, the distinction between islands giving rise to the different maritime zones regulated by UNCLOS and such “rocks” is, in the words of a leading law of the sea textbook, “poorly drafted” since, among others, “it does not define what a ‘rock’ is or suggest any dividing line between ‘rocks’ and islands. In addition, the question of whether any particular ‘rock’ can sustain ‘human habitation’ or ‘economic life’ is one that may admit of more than one answer because of the vagueness of the phrases used”.¹³⁵

To complicate the matter further, the issue of artificial islands is also ambiguous in UNCLOS. According to the same textbook, “The definition in the Conventions of an island as being ‘naturally-formed’ excludes artificial islands, although the distinction between a ‘naturally-formed’ and an ‘artificial’ island may not always be easy to make in practice: for example, if a State constructs some kind of barrier in the sea so that sand being moved by currents piles up against it, with the result that eventually an island is formed, is this a ‘naturally-formed’ or an artificial island?”¹³⁶ Thus, while UNCLOS states that artificial islands or installations on the high seas does not give rise to a maritime zone,¹³⁷ the ambiguity over what is natural and what is artificial provides a powerful incentive for claimants to consolidate and expand existing features, and even build new ones. The second reason why reclamation is important is that it may support a denser defensive network, facilitating the conversion of the South China Sea into what some Indian and Japanese voices call “Lake Beijing”.¹³⁸ According to Harry J. Kazianis, “China continues to change facts on the ground (‘in the water’ might be a better term), continuing work on several massive island reclamation projects that many analysts feel will create much larger islands housing airfields, ports, radar stations and maybe even anti-ship missile batteries”, adding that “New South China Bases + A2/AD = A Nightmare for America and Its Allies”. A2/AD stands for “Anti-Access/Area Denial”, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) defines “anti-access as enemy actions which inhibit military movement into a theater of operations, and area-denial operations as activities that seek to deny freedom of action within areas under the enemy’s control”.¹³⁹ Kazianis stresses that “Dubbed A2/AD by most Western military specialists, the PRC is slowly creating the conditions in which U.S., Japanese or other allied forces would suffer heavy losses if a conflict ever occurred in the [area] out to the first island chain, and in the future, all the way to the second island chain.”.¹⁴⁰

The Falklands were already a warning shot of what shore-launched anti-ship cruise missiles can accomplish, and whereas Argentina only managed to deploy an improvised Exocet unit employing missiles taken from a damaged warship, technological progress over the last three decades and lessons learned from that and other conflicts mean that such weapons have become a pillar of island warfare in the minds of defense planners in the Indian-Pacific Ocean Region, not least of which the Japanese. ¹⁴¹ This lesson from the South Atlantic may be one of the factors prompting reclamation work on the South China Sea.

During his 29-30 January 2015 trip to the Philippines, Viet Nam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh and Philippines’ Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert F. del Rosario “expressed their serious concern over the ongoing massive reclamation activities that pose threats to the peace and stability in the region as well as to the lives of many people across the various coastal states in the SCS”.¹⁴² Similar concerns have been expressed by others, while some observers have defended Chinese actions as compatible with international law.

For example in November last year National Taiwan University Law Professor Chiang Huang-chih (姜皇池), argued in an article in the Taipei-based United Daily News that “if you look at international norms, it is hard to find any legal grounds to demand that the PRC immediately stop its land reclamation activities”, stressing that “no specific stipulations in international law forcibly restrict claimants from engaging in construction projects on the reefs effectively under their control”. Chiang noted that countries involved in other disputed islands had undertaken development work, citing the cases of Dokdo/Takeshima where “South Korea sent people to build a lighthouse and reside on the islands” and “the northern four islands” where “Russians built facilities”.¹⁴³ s.

In his article, Chiang stresses the importance of “effective occupation” over disputed islands and the doctrine of “uti possidetis” (“先佔原則”in Chinese) in international law, including previous decisions by the ICJ. He explains that this means that “those who occupy ‘terra nullius’（無主地have the right to develop the land”, concluding that “The doctrine of ‘uti possidetis’ seems to be the prevalent idea in international community even in determining the sovereignty over unoccupied land, albeit it is controversial”.¹⁴⁴

It is clear that uti possidetis is a basic principle of international law, but it refers to the preservation of existing administrative borders in decolonization processes “thus theoretically excluding any gaps in sovereignty which might precipitate hostilities and encourage foreign intervention”. With origins in South America, it was later stressed by African states, and was followed when the Soviet Union disintegrated and Yugoslavia dissolved.¹⁴⁵ Uti possidetis remains the norm in other self-determination processes, but referring to it in the context of land reclamation may perhaps be a bit forced, or at least not directly relevant, except as illustration of a general concern for stability in international law. e Concerning the importance of “effective occupation”, Chiang is clearly right to point it out, since in practice any claimant having actual physical possession of disputed ground or waters will be in a much stronger position, both from a political and military perspective, and even from a purely legal one. Actual control allows a state, among others, to build a history of exercise of sovereign powers, pile up precedents of acquiescence by other countries, change the physical characteristics and supporting infrastructure of the contested feature, and better control the tempo and direction of diplomatic negotiations and other forms of dispute settlement. The saying “possession is nine tenths of the law” comes to mind. More generally, as stressed by Antony Allott in his work on “The Limits of Law”, “general or widespread resistance to or disregard of a law produces in practice the repeal of that law, de facto or de jure”.¹⁴⁶

It would of course be unfair and misleading to single out China alone when it comes to reclamation and infrastructure building, as mentioned, or to imply that it is only in the South China Sea where this is taking place. As a general rule, a country with a disputed maritime territory will seek to ensure that it accommodates as much economic, scientific, and administrative activity as possible. An example, not in the South China Sea is the Senkaku/Diaoyu/Diaoyutai Islands. For decades, Japan chose not to develop the islands, which remained in private hands, until in 2012 it moved to nationalize the islands, in a move aimed in part at preempting their purchase by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.¹⁴⁷

Beijing and many Chinese interpreted this as dangerously escalating the dispute over possession of the islands. While Tokyo has not deployed permanent ground troops in the Senkaku Islands,¹⁴⁸ there have been private proposals to build infrastructure, and even some unauthorized moves, such as the construction of a lighthouse by an activist organization in 1978,¹⁴⁹ and another in 1996. However, on the latter occasion, Tokyo tried to distance herself from the action, with Minister of Foreign Affairs Ikeda Yukihiko saying “The construction of a lighthouse in the Senkakus does not reflect the intention or views of the Government of Japan. The Government of Japan has decided to suspend decision on the permission of the lighthouse. The issue concerning the lighthouse does not affect Japan’s territorial rights. That is, the basis for Japan’s territorial rights to the Senkaku Islands is in no way strengthened or weakened by the issue concerning the lighthouse”.¹⁵⁰

Tokyo subsequently insisted that no private citizens or organizations could build lighthouses in the Senkakus.¹⁵¹ On the other hand, Japan has worked hard to alter a natural feature in Okinotori and Minamitori. Okinotori Island is a coral reef, located more than 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, whose value lies in giving Japan a huge EEZ around it. However, Beijing considers it to be a rock, thereby not giving rise to such an EEZ, according to UNCLOS, and hence Japan’s efforts to ensure that it does not sink. Since the 1980s, Japanese authorities have used concrete and sand to cover the area with a rust-proof titanium net. In addition, to stressing its island status, Japan has built a weather observation station on Okinotori, with a range of additional plans considered, including a prison and the breeding of micro-organisms. Minamitori is also a reef, and Japan’s easternmost island, with Tokyo similarly attempting to protect its shores.¹⁵²

Concerning Russia, like Japan a non-littoral state with interests in the South China Sea¹⁵³ and a nation which is involved in other maritime territorial disputes, Moscow has also been working to develop infrastructure in the Northern Territories / Southern Kurile Islands. Two differences are first, although not leading to an agreement to date, dialogue and some degree of cooperation with Tokyo have taken place, and second, that the islands themselves are more than big enough to sustain both economic activities and a military presence, they have long been inhabited, and Russia has not deemed it necessary to engage in reclamation. Limited cooperation includes an understanding on Russia’s continental shelf in the Sea of Okhotsk.¹⁵⁴ In recent years, Moscow has worked to develop, or at least announced plans to do so, roads, fishing farms, and spas.¹⁵⁵ In September 2014, an airport was inaugurated in Etorofu, one of the disputed islands.¹⁵⁶ Japan has protested against these moves, seeing them as increasing the effective degree of Russian control over the islands. In addition to their symbolic value (seen by many Russians as a just reward for the country’s huge sacrifice in the Second World War), which should not be lightly dismissed, and their role in making the Sea of Okhotsk a safe haven for strategic submarines¹⁵⁷ and facilitating easy access to the Pacific Ocean by the Navy, the islands are home to significant economic resources, with fisheries at the forefront,¹⁵⁸ but also including, among others, gold. In a recent assessment of the conflict, James D. J. Brown is not only pessimistic about an agreement, but concludes that “there are strong grounds to believe that Russia is now moving inexorably towards the point at which it will no longer even consider relinquishing the two smaller islands”.¹⁵⁹

While he does not mention Japan and Senkaku/Diaoyu/Diaoyutai, Chiang believes that “Censuring Mainland China for its land reclamation activities while turning a blind eye to the activities of other claimants would be a clear case of adopting double standards”.¹⁶⁰ Concerning land reclamation by other coastal states, in October 2014 the Philippines called on claimants to suspended construction work on disputed islands and said it would be doing so. However, no other regional states followed suit, and in March 2015 Manila announced that it would be resuming limited upkeep work. Foreign Minister Albert del Rosario said “We are taking the position that we can proceed with the repair and maintenance”, adding that this would “include making repairs to an airstrip, which would not jeopardize their claims to the area or disrupt regional stability”.¹⁶¹ This same Filipino report noted how, over the last few months, “China has forged an impressive undertaking of reclamation”, proceeding with “astounding speed” to secure a “newly constructed man-made island among the Spratly Islands”.¹⁶²

This was a reference to “an island at least 3,000 m long on Fiery Cross Reef that could be the site for its first airstrip in the Spratly Islands”, with “Satellite imagery of the island taken on 8 August and 14 November” 2014 showing that in three months “Chinese dredgers have created a land mass that is almost the entire length of the reef”. Located to the west of the main Spratly island archipelago, Fiery Cross Reef “was previously under water; the only habitable area was a concrete platform built and maintained by China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)”.¹⁶³ One of the lessons from the Falklands War is the need to be able to operate aircraft as close as possible to the disputed territory. In 1982 Argentina was unable to operate its Exocet-carrying Mirage from the Falklands themselves for lack of proper facilities, while British harriers were forced to launch from far away due to the overriding need to protect the Royal Navy’s only two light carriers. “Any power trying to operate air assets over disputed islands without having at its disposal air strips and other support facilities located on those same islands is likely to find itself facing these same constraints that both the British and the Argentines suffered from”.¹⁶⁴ Sam Tangredi, author of the book Anti-Access Warfare: Countering A2/AD Strategies, ¹⁶⁵ had noted before China undertook this reclamation work that, “An airbase on Fiery Cross Reef would give China de facto military control over the South China Sea airspace since it would allow shorter-range tactical aircraft with a heavier weapons load to operate in the airspace, an advantage over having to send tactical aircraft from the mainland in event of a potential conflict”.¹⁶⁶ According to publicly available satellite imagery, the new island “is more than 3,000 m long and between 200 and 300 m wide: large enough to construct a runway and apron. The dredgers are also creating a harbour to the east of the reef that would appear to be large enough to receive tankers and major surface combatants”. This reclamation work is “the fourth such project undertaken by China in the Spratly Islands in the last 12-18 months and by far the largest in scope”.

Beijing has also built smaller new islands at Johnson South Reef, Cuateron Reef, and Gaven Reefs, but in these cases the resulting area is not big enough to accommodate an airstrip. China formerly lacked an island with an airfield, as opposed to Taiwan (Itu Aba/Taiping), the Philippines (Pagasa), Malaysia (Swallow Reef, whose airstrip was also built on reclaimed land), and Vietnam (Southwest Cay), now Beijing has achieved “parity”, in a move which, according to Jane’s James Harding and Sean O’Connor, “appears purpose-built to coerce other claimants into relinquishing their claims and possessions, or at least provide China with a much stronger negotiating position if talks over the dispute were ever held”.¹⁶⁷ Greg Poling (analyst at Center for Strategic and International Studies) argues that “At this point, Beijing is building on almost every rock and low-tide elevation it occupies; to do any more would require pushing another claimant off a feature or occupying an unoccupied feature”, something that he does not believe Beijing is ready to do at this stage, while noting that there is not much Hanoi and Manila can do, the latter seeing her options even further restricted by the need to retain the “legal high ground as their arbitration case moves forward”.¹⁶⁸ Gavin Greenwood (analyst with Hong Kong-based regional security firm Allan & Associates) says that “From Beijing’s perspective once the cement on an airstrip or fortification set atop a reef has hardened China’s claim has become a reality and the new land is as sovereign as Tiananmen Square and just as non-negotiable”. Greenwood considers the US Navy response to be weak in the face of China’s deployment of advanced destroyers “that will serve as a credible deterrence”.¹⁶⁹

The potential impact of China’s reclamation activities has not gone unnoticed in Washington, with Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, warning that Beijing was building a “Great Wall of sand”. Speaking at a naval conference in Australia in March this year, Harris told his audience that China had created 1.5 square miles of artificial landmass over the last few months, adding that this was “unprecedented”.¹⁷⁰ His words came on the back of the earlier misgivings expressed by State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who said that Chinese reclamation work added to “concerns they may militarize outposts on disputed land features in the South China Sea”.¹⁷¹

The legislative branch has also expressed concerns, with a number of legislative initiatives designed to reinforce the “Pivot” and avoid strategic distraction prompted by other ongoing conflicts in different parts of the world.¹⁷² In addition, Republican Senators John McCain and Bob Corker and Democrats Jack Reed and Bob Menendez sent a letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter cautioning that unless a comprehensive strategy was put in place, “long-standing interests of the United States, as well as our allies and partners, stand at considerable risk”. The missive¹⁷³ explains that Gaven Reef had grown to about 28 acres (114,000-square-metres) over the past year, while formerly submerged Johnson Reef is now a 25-acre (100,000-square-metres) island and Fiery Cross reef has seen its size increase more than elevenfold since August 2014. This gives China the potential to expand the reach of its military, amounting to “a direct challenge, not only to the interests of the United States and the region, but to the entire international community”. These lawmakers demand that an American strategy contain “specific actions the United States can take to slow down or stop China’s reclamation activities”.¹⁷⁴

China of course takes a different view of reclamation and construction work in the areas under its control. At a news conference on 8 March 2015, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Beijing was just carrying out “necessary construction on its own islands and reefs”. While repeating the Chinese mantra on freedom of navigation and insisting on Beijing’s desire to solve disputes through “direct dialogue”, he warned that “We do not accept criticism from others when we are merely building facilities in our own yard. We have every right to do things that are lawful and justified”.¹⁷⁵ In less nuanced words, an opinion piece published by Xinhua accused Washington of displaying a “perverted sense of insecurity” and a “pirate-style mind-set” in criticizing Chinese reclamation work, demanding that she “honor its neutral commitment, abandon its warped mentality, retract its meddling hand”.¹⁷⁶

A number of observers have sought to connect ongoing reclamation work with the possibility that Beijing may declare an ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone) in the South China Sea, a scenario already widely discussed when China established one in the East China Sea.¹⁷⁷ The letter by four US senators to the secretaries of state and defense also refers to this.¹⁷⁸

Conclusions

To conclude, while the ultimate fate of the arbitration remains unknown, the court having to decide first of all whether it has jurisdiction, Manila has achieved two goals. First, it forced Beijing to publish a position paper. While not amounting to taking part in the proceedings, it means that China has concluded that it cannot simply ignore them. Second, it has prompted Vietnam to address the court, although again without taking part in the proceedings. A third success for the Philippines is the publication of the US Department of State’s paper. However relevant these legal developments may be, the situation on the ground has been moving in favor of China, first and foremost thanks to extensive reclamation work that may both bolster its legal claims and make possible construction of bases to provide enhanced air and naval power.

This could be a reason why, while pushing for international arbitration, Manila has also been rearming, deepening its Alliance with the United States and expanding a widening range of defense relations with other coastal and non-coastal actors. Concerning the latter, India and Japan are vitally dependent on these waters and seem determined to play a growing regional role, while Russia continues to supporting Vietnam and quietly balance against a rising China that, official protestations to the contrary, may cast a shadow over its national security and geopolitical position. For the time being, while the Permanent Court of Arbitration continues deliberation on the admissibility of Manila’s arbitration bid, there will likely be continued incidents, clashing narratives, further reclamation work, rearmament, and a complex and kaleidoscopic set of quasi-alliances and extensive and often conflicting interests. An additional development could be, according to some observers, a Chinese ADIZ. US Naval War College Professor James Kraska believes that “#ADIZ will come; just a matter of time”.¹⁷⁹ Whatever the ultimate fate of the South China Sea, its impact will reach far from its shores, both in terms of the international law of the sea, and the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific and beyond.

Appendix I: China’s position paper

After an introduction, making it clear that issuing the paper does not amount to taking part in the arbitral proceedings, the text lists in Paragraph 3 the main purposes of the paper, each such purpose covered in sections II to V. These goals are first of all (Section II, Paragraphs 4-29) to stress that the case concerns “the territorial sovereignty over several maritime features in the South China Sea”, which, contrary to Filipino assertions, “is beyond the scope of the Convention and does not concern the interpretation or application of the Convention”. Section III, Paragraphs 30-56 explains that “China and the Philippines have agreed, through bilateral instruments and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, to settle their relevant disputes through negotiations” and that the arbitration proceedings are thus a breach by Manila of “its obligation under international law”. Section IV, Paragraphs 57-75 explains Beijing’s position that, “assuming, arguendo, that the subject-matter of the arbitration” was interpreting or applying UNCLOS, arguing that it would still be “an integral part of maritime delimitation” thus falling squarely within China’s derogation from compulsory arbitration. Section V, Paragraphs 76-85 underlines that “the Arbitral Tribunal manifestly has no jurisdiction over the present arbitration” and defends the view that China’s refusal to take part in the proceedings stands “on solid ground in international law”. These sections are followed by a set of Conclusions (Section VI, Paragraphs 86-93).

In Section II, the document (5) explains that “Prior to the 1970s, Philippine law had set clear limits for the territory of the Philippines, which did not involve any of China’s maritime features in the South China Sea”, citing Article 1 of the 1935 Constitution, which reads “The Philippines comprises all the territory ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris concluded between the United States and Spain on the tenth day of December, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, whose limits are set forth in Article III of said treaty, together with all the islands embraced in the treaty concluded at Washington between the United States and Spain on the seventh day of November, nineteen hundred, and the treaty concluded between the United States and Great Britain on the second day of January, nineteen hundred and thirty, and all territory over which the present Government of the Philippine Islands exercises jurisdiction”.¹⁸⁰ It added that the 1961 Philippine Republic Act No. 3046, titled “An Act to Define the Baselines of the Territorial Sea of the Philippines”,¹⁸¹ confirmed such territorial limits. Setting aside for a moment whether Manila has indeed redefined the limits to her national territory, this is potentially very significant because as reiterated in the US Department of State paper analyzed below, Washington has persistently stressed that it was taking no sides concerning the ultimate issue of sovereignty. Yet, while this may be sustainable in the case of other territorial disputes in the region, the case of the Philippines is rather different, given that the country was under US sovereignty for more than half a century. Thus, whatever one makes of Beijing’s case, it is difficult not to agree that past treaties signed by the United States may be relevant to the issue at hand.

A question may be what, if any, may be Beijing’s motivation in bringing up such treaties, in addition to providing arguments in favor of its posture concerning the extent of Filipino territorial claims. Is Beijing perhaps hoping to prompt Washington to publicly comment on the matter in a way that may be detrimental to Manila? Or to quietly lean on the Philippines not to go too far? These may be speculative questions, yet ones difficult to avoid given the complex nature of the South China Sea dispute, with not only different immediate players, that is the coastal states, but plenty of other interested contenders, including the United States, Japan, India, and Russia. China’s document also refers to a UK-US Treaty, and while London has traditionally chosen a low profile posture in the region, it has recently been upgrading defense cooperation with Japan. Going back to Washington, the possible impact of past treaties and other diplomatic practice has already been considered important by observers in the case of Taiwan and the Senkaku/Diaoyu/Diaoyutai Islands, given Formosa’s change of status following the end of the Second World War and the American occupation of the Ryukyu Archipelago for three decades after its conclusion. However, the connection with the United States is much closer in the case of the Philippines, and Washington’s non-committal posture on sovereignty may come under increased pressure, although as mentioned this could result from different, even opposed motivations.

The text affirms (6) that “Since the 1970s, the Philippines has illegally occupied a number of maritime features of China’s Nansha Islands, including Mahuan Dao, Feixin Dao, Zhongye Dao, Nanyao Dao, Beizi Dao, Xiyue Dao, Shuanghuang Shazhou and Siling Jiao. Furthermore, it unlawfully designated a so-called ‘Kalayaan Island Group’ to encompass some of the maritime features of China’s Nansha Islands and claimed sovereignty over them, together with adjacent but vast maritime areas”, claiming sovereignty “over Huangyan Dao of China’s Zhongsha Islands and illegally explored and exploited the resources on those maritime features and in the adjacent maritime areas”, and (10) argues that in any case it is not possible to rule “on whether China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea have exceeded the extent allowed under the Convention” until “the extent of China’s territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea” has been determined.

This argument is central to China’s case, being the opposite of one of the pillars of Manila’s arbitration bid, namely that it only concerns the extent and manner that rights are exercised, rather than territorial delimitation, which is out of bounds to the court due to Beijing’s derogation (that is, opt out from that aspect of the convention, meaning that compulsory arbitration does not extend to territorial delimination in the case of China), which Manila acknowledges. To press further, Beijing, citing the ICJ, (11) points out that “the land dominates the sea”. That is, it argues that one cannot discuss whether the sea is being used in accordance with UNCLOS before a full determination of a country’s land territory has been made, a determination not open to the Permanent Court of Arbitration without Beijing’s consent.

The text calls (14) Manila’s attempt to examine the former “contrived packaging” which “fails to conceal the very essence of the subject-matter of the arbitration, namely, the territorial sovereignty over certain maritime features in the South China Sea”. Another, less aggressive, term employed by the text (18) to press home the same point is “putting the cart before the horse”. To support this view, the document argues (18) that there is no precedent “in relevant cases” of any “international judicial or arbitral body” having “ever applied the Convention to determine the maritime rights derived from a maritime feature before sovereignty over that feature is decided”. While international tribunals like the PAC are not, formally speaking, formally bound to the doctrine of precedent (stare decisis), they do tend to follow previous rulings. However, there have not been a large number of cases, much less a coherent set of rulings, on this issue. Therefore, we may say that there is simply no consistent body of case law on whether it is possible to examine compliance with UNCLOS of a country’s practice in advance of territorial determination.

Concerning the “low-tide elevations” that Manila claims to be such and has included in its arbitration bid, saying that they cannot be appropriated, China’s document (23 and 24) argues that “whether or not” they “can be appropriated is plainly a question of territorial sovereignty”. Formerly often referred to as “drying rocks” or “banks”, UNCLOS defines “low-tide elevations” as “a naturally formed area of land which is surrounded by and above water at low tide but submerged at high tide”.¹⁸² The Chinese paper states that it “will not comment” on whether they are “indeed low-tide elevations”, while pointing out that “whatever nature those features possess, the Philippines itself has persisted in claiming sovereignty over them since the 1970s”, citing “Presidential Decree No. 1596, promulgated on 11 June 1978” whereby Manila “made known its unlawful claim to sovereignty over some maritime features in the Nansha Islands including the aforementioned features, together with the adjacent but vast areas of waters, sea-bed, subsoil, continental margin and superjacent airspace, and constituted the vast area as a new municipality of the province of Palawan, entitled ‘Kalayaan’”.

China’s position paper cites later Filipino legislation, arguing that while pretending to adjust claims to UNCLOS it does “not vary the territorial claim of the Philippines to the relevant maritime features, including those it alleged in this arbitration as low-tide elevations”. The text accuses Manila of contradicting herself by first asserting in “Note Verbale No. 000228, addressed to Secretary-General of the United Nations on 5 April 2011” that “the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) constitutes an integral part of the Philippines”, the KIG including among others “the very features it now labels as low-tide elevations”, with the “only motive” being to deny them to China and “place them under Philippine sovereignty”. Furthermore, the position paper argues (25) that UNCLOS “is silent on this issue of appropriation” of low-tide features, citing the ICJ in the 2001 Qatar v. Bahrain ruling,¹⁸³ where it stated that “International treaty law is silent on the question whether low-tide elevations can be considered to be ‘territory’. Nor is the Court aware of a uniform and widespread State practice which might have given rise to a customary rule which unequivocally permits or excludes appropriation of low-tide elevations”. The text also cites a later 2012 ICJ case between Nicaragua and Colombia,¹⁸⁴ where it stated that “low-tide elevations cannot be appropriated”, but argues that the Court “did not point to any legal basis for this conclusory statement [statement of conclusions]. Nor did it touch upon the legal status of low-tide elevations as components of an archipelago, or sovereignty or claims of sovereignty that may have long existed over such features in a particular maritime area”, adding that “the ICJ did not apply the Convention in that case”. Therefore, China’s position paper argues, “Whether or not low-tide elevations can be appropriated is not a question concerning the interpretation or application of the Convention”.

This section also (28) stresses that “China always respects the freedom of navigation and overflight enjoyed by all States in the South China Sea in accordance with international law”. While this is in line with repeated assertions by Chinese authorities, it prompts further doubts on the exact nature of Beijing’s claims, in the sense that if all it was demanding was an EEZ then freedom of navigation and overflight would simply flow from international law, without the need for any concession by the coastal state. The issue is made more complex by the fact that in Beijing’s view the rights of coastal states are more extensive than in the eyes of countries such as the United States, going as far as including the right to authorize or deny military activities such as electronic intelligence gathering, which has been the source of a number of incidents, some of them fatal. Thus, if what China is claiming is an EEZ, is Beijing making a concession and accepting a lesser set of coastal state rights in the particular case of the South China Sea? Alternatively, should we read “freedom of navigation and overflight” as being restricted to civilian ships and planes, or at least not including any activities such as ELINT (electronic intelligence) gathering, prejudicial to the coastal state? Other questions may be prompted by China’s assertion. For example, does this also apply to territorial waters around Chinese islands in the South China Sea? A question made more complex by the fact that there is no agreement over which islands are islands there, particularly given the extensive reclamation work taking place.

Section III largely consists of a long list of bilateral agreements and statements, and ASEAN documents, laying down commitments to settle disputes by negotiation and agreement, whose purpose is to prove Manila is therefore “debarred from unilaterally initiating compulsory arbitration”. In the former category, the text cites among others (31) the “Joint Statement between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of the Philippines concerning Consultations on the South China Sea and on Other Areas of Cooperation, issued on 10 August 1995” which contains “the principles that ‘[d]isputes shall be settled in a peaceful and friendly manner through consultations on the basis of equality and mutual respect’ (Point 1); that ‘a gradual and progressive process of cooperation shall be adopted with a view to eventually negotiating a settlement of the bilateral disputes’ (Point 3); and that ‘[d]isputes shall be settled by the countries directly concerned without prejudice to the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea’ (Point 8)” and (33) the “The Joint Statement” of 16 May 2000 whose Point 9 states that the two countries “agree to promote a peaceful settlement of disputes through bilateral friendly consultations and negotiations”. Concerning China-ASEAN documents, the text stresses (35) the 2002 “Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (‘DOC’)”, whose Paragraph 4 reads “The Parties concerned undertake to resolve their territorial and jurisdictional disputes by peaceful means … through friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea”. The DOC is of particular interest, not only because it has also been signed by most coastal states in the South China Sea (although not by Taiwan), but because it has often been touted by observers and governments as proof that it was indeed possible to settle the status of the sea without resorting to war. Does this agreement close the doors to compulsory arbitration under UNCLOS? As often in the law, at least two different interpretations are possible.

On the one hand, a literal reading of the quoted paragraph seems to restrict the avenues opened to coastal states, although the term “only” or words to that effect do not appear in that section (as China’s position paper openly acknowledges in its Section 40). On the other it could be argued that the reference to UNCLOS is in itself a door open to arbitration, since that treaty provides under certain conditions and limitations for this form of dispute settlement. An intermediate view could be that the DOS forces signatories to first resort to direct consultations and negotiations, with arbitration under UNCLOS as a last resort. Concerning this view, Manila argues that China has no intention to engage in meaningful negotiations, whereas Beijing says (45) that “the truth is that the two countries have never engaged in negotiations with regard to the subject-matter of the arbitration”.

This is, at least to some degree, surprising, given the emphasis in the text on China’s commitment to negotiations. Given Beijing’s emphasis on bilateral negotiations, why have these have not even started with the Philippines? Not that they have not concluded, or progressed, but not even begun. Perhaps with such a question in mind, the position paper provides (47) some possible reasons, such as the fact that “the South China Sea issue involves a number of countries”. This is of course true, but by pointing it out as a reason not to have even begun negotiating with the Philippines, China is contradicting another pillar of its posture in the South China Sea: its insistence on bilateral, as opposed to multilateral, negotiations. One could thus argue that China cannot have its cake and eat it too.

If the issue is complex because of the large number of actors involved, would a multilateral forum not be more appropriate? If so, why does Beijing insist on bilateral negotiations? And when someone like Manila argues these are leading nowhere, then the reply is that they have not even started because, among other reasons, of the large number of countries involved. There are of course powerful reasons why China may prefer a bilateral approach, but this illustrates how easy it is to fall into contradictions in the international arena, not something that affects just China of course.

Beijing’s insistence on excluding non-littoral estates from the dispute furthermore clashes with Chinese policy in the Arctic, where the country seeks a voice, arguing that despite just being a (self-labeled) “quasi-Arctic state” it has a right to at the very least make its voice heard given that the region has an impact on its interests. Countries like India, Japan, and the United States, may well put forward similar views concerning the South China Sea, considering themselves to be “quasi-littoral” states given among others their dependence on Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs) going through it. A number of contradictory arguments may be put forward.

Those wishing to blame China may accuse Beijing of seeking to change facts on the ground first (by, for example, occupation of some features and the artificial expansion of others), before engaging in meaningful negotiations. They may also argue Beijing is waiting for the balance of naval power in the region to shift further in her favor, or for developments elsewhere in the world to weaken the resolve of non-regional actors to intervene. On the other hand, those seeking to blame the Philippines may put forward similar accusations, arguing that Manila wishes to rearm first before engaging in serious negotiations with China. These voices may also put forward the view that Manila first wishes to take the moral high ground (among other means by the international arbitration bid), secure stronger support by the United States, or draw in other interested parties like Japan. We can thus see how both sides have potential reasons not to seek a speedy start of bilateral negotiations.

With regard to the absence of an explicit exclusion of third-party settlement, which as pointed out the text acknowledges, China cites the “Southern Bluefin Tuna Case”,¹⁸⁵ where the arbitration tribunal stated that “the absence of an express exclusion of any procedure … is not decisive”. Two key words for China are to “agree”, which the text (38) explains often appears in bilateral communiques, and “to undertake”, which features (38) in Paragraph 4 of the DOC. China’s position paper stresses, citing ICJ in Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro, where the Court ruled that “[t]he ordinary meaning of the word ‘undertake’ is to give a formal promise, to bind or engage oneself, to give a pledge or promise, to agree, to accept an obligation. It is a word regularly used in treaties setting out the obligations of the Contracting Parties …. It is not merely hortatory or purposive”.¹⁸⁶ For China, bilateral agreements and statements with the Philippines and the DOC are not separate realities, but (39) “mutually” reinforce “and form an agreement between China and the Philippines”, giving rise to “a mutual obligation to settle their relevant disputes through negotiations”.

The position paper argues (50), as a further argument to prove that exchanges of views with the Philippines did not start in 1995, that it was not until 2009 that Manila abandoned claims in excess of UNCLOS. Concerning the doctrine of Estoppel, that is the ban on acting against one’s own acts, the paper rejects (51) Manila’s assertion that Beijing has incurred a “grave breach of the terms of the DOC”, preventing it from invoking Paragraph 4 “to exclude the jurisdiction of the Arbitral Tribunal”, dismissing it as “groundless”. The text considers this to be a “selective” resort to the DOC and a “self-contradictory tactic” amounting to a violation of “good faith”. It is true that a general principle of the law, also of international law, is that one cannot refer in isolation to a given excerpt from a rule or document.

The problem is perhaps that the position paper overdoes this by next (55) referring to an alleged “current relationship of cooperation between China and the ASEAN member States in the South China Sea”, to which countries like Vietnam might not fully subscribe. The text (56) also argues that Manila’s resort to arbitration amounts to “running counter to the common wish and joint efforts of China and the ASEAN member States”, and here this is not something that can be so easily dismissed, since the Philippines has indeed been the only littoral state to try to resort to arbitration, although Vietnam and some other states, including non-littoral ones, seem to be at least providing a measure of support to Manila, although framed in terms designed not to overtly provoke China.

Section IV is perhaps not so original, basically reiterating arguments already expounded in Section III. It still contains some paragraphs worthy of comment, though. In Paragraph 61 the text refers to the “Agreement for Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking in Certain Areas in the South China Sea” between China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Philippine National Oil Company, expanded in 2005 to “a tripartite agreement, with the participation of Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation”.

The text praises it as “a good example of the constructive efforts made by the States concerned to enhance cooperation and create conditions for a negotiated settlement of the disputes in the South China Sea”, stressing that the “maritime area covered by that agreement is within that covered in the present arbitration initiated by the Philippines”. Few would disagree that agreements like this do indeed offer an interesting path, allowing states party to a dispute to build trust while concentrating on the joint development and management of natural resources, leaving for later tricky questions of sovereignty. When we move from the realm of theory to that of practice, however, we find that such efforts involving China have not been successful. In the South China Sea, possible cooperation seems to have given way to violent competition, with oil rigs becoming “weapons”¹⁸⁷ rather than symbols of cooperation. In the East China Sea, where a similar agreement was concluded with Japan, it later unraveled and has not been implemented. It is Taiwan, not China, that has actively pushed for joint management that could proceed while leaving sovereignty for later. This has resulted not only in President Ma’s East China Sea Peace Initiative,¹⁸⁸ but in a fisheries agreement with Japan along these lines.¹⁸⁹ Whatever the reasons, no similar agreement has been concluded and effectively implemented by the PRC.

It is interesting to note the position paper’s critique of Manila’s arbitration bid in Paragraph 68, which argues that “The issues presented by the Philippines for arbitration constitute an integral part of maritime delimitation between China and the Philippines” and that “The Philippines’ approach of splitting its maritime delimitation dispute with China and selecting some of the issues for arbitration, if permitted, will inevitably destroy the integrity and indivisibility of maritime delimitation and contravene the principle that maritime delimitation must be based on international law as referred to in Article 38 of the ICJ Statute and that ‘all relevant factors must be taken into account’.

This will adversely affect the future equitable solution of the dispute of maritime delimitation between China and the Philippines”. While the first sentence is just a reiteration, the second one touches upon a legitimate concern, given that any partial ruling runs the risk not only of being difficult to implement due to its non-comprehensive nature, but also of not being equitable for lack of consideration of certain factors concerning areas or aspects not included in the arbitration proceedings. This could be a reason to reject this approach. On the other hand, it could be said that history shows how countries often reach limited agreements, either because they are unable to successfully reach a comprehensive settlement, or because they prefer to start dealing with those issues where they either expect it to be easier to reach an understanding or which are more pressing. China is no stranger to this posture. The reference to equity though is important since an equitable settlement is often one involving tradeoffs, and such tradeoffs will often only be acceptable when covering a case’s full spectrum of issues.

Lastly, the position paper argues (73) that when one state has issued a declaration in accordance with Article 298 of UNCLOS, excluding itself from compulsory arbitration in certain areas, another state cannot initiate proceedings arguing that they do not fall within the exemption, before first engaging in negotiations with the defendant state. The text says that otherwise Article 298 would be rendered “meaningless”.

To reinforce this, the text adds (74) that this is the first such case, and that “Should the above approach be deemed acceptable, the question would then arise as to whether the provisions of Article 298 could still retain any value”, placing a question mark on “the declarations so far filed by 35 States Parties under Article 298”. Here we should distinguish the core of the matter from the procedural issues at stake. Even if it were to agree with Beijing on this point, the fact that the arbitration court will have to rule on the admissibility of the case and its own powers could be seen as a barrier to any attempt to institute compulsory arbitration in areas covered by an Article 298 exemption. Of course, the problem for the state sued is that in order to argue before the court that the latter should dismiss the case it would be necessary to appear before it, which is precisely what Beijing is bent on avoiding. Issuing this position paper is a way to make its views known, while avoiding this trap. As mentioned earlier, this can be interpreted in many ways. From the point of view of the rule of law and the progress of international law and tribunals, this can cut both ways. On the one hand, we could say that China’s (and Vietnam’s) decision to address the PAC, despite not joining the proceedings, shows that these, and more generally international arbitration, cannot simply be ignored, whatever the protestations to the contrary. On the other hand, such moves may be seen as bypassing formal proceedings, and showing how imperfect the actual powers of international tribunals remain.

In Section V the text demands full respect for China’s “right to freely choose the means of dispute settlement”, while defending the position that the “rejection of and non-participation in the present arbitration is solidly grounded in international law”. The stress on “consent” (76), while not amounting to any Chinese singularity, may also reflect the country’s experience with the so-called “unequal treaties”.

Also important is the reference (76) to the “package deal” nature of UNCLOS, which is indeed the case, and as the text notes involved “extended and arduous negotiations” with regard to Part XV dealing with dispute settlement. The position paper insists (78) that the resulting “balance” in that Part was “a critical factor” prompting many countries to sign the convention, and again cites the Southern Bluefin Tuna Case, this time to reinforce the notion that compulsory arbitration should be restricted to cases where all parties agreed to it. The problem with this is that if all parties agree to arbitration, then there is no need for the procedure to be compulsory, and if compulsory proceedings are provided for, it is with a view to at least some cases where one or more countries may indeed oppose them. If “compulsory” arbitration could only move forward with the post-ratification consent of all parties involved, one could argue that there would be no need for UNCLOS to lay down areas where arbitration could be mandatory.

Another legal principle that the text delves into (84) is that of “abuse of right”, in tandem with the above-mentioned “good faith”. These are general principles of law found, in some form or another, in most legal systems. The text cites Article 300 of UNCLOS, which lays down that “States Parties shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed under this Convention and shall exercise the rights, jurisdiction and freedoms recognized in this Convention in a manner which would not constitute an abuse of right”, adding that

Manila has not done so by seeking to bypass Beijing’s refusal to engage in arbitration and existing agreements to settle the dispute by negotiations.

Alex Calvo is a guest professor at Nagoya University (Japan) focusing on security and defence policy, international law, and military history in the Indian-Pacific Ocean. Region. A member of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) and Taiwan’s South China Sea Think-Tank, he is currently writing a book about Asia’s role and contribution to the Allied victory in the Great War. He tweets @Alex__Calvo and his work can be found here.

Notes

¹ Shannon Tiezi, “In the Philippines’ South China Sea Case, Is International Law on Trial?”, The Diplomat, 14 July 2015, available here.

² A. Calvo, “Manila, Beijing, and UNCLOS: A Test Case?”, The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 11, Issue 34, No. 11, 26 August 2013, availablehere. Also published by The Asia Times, 3 September 2013.

³ Zuraidah Ibrahim and Kristine Kwok “Beijing rejects Hanoi’s legal challenge on Spratly, Paracel islands disputes”, The South China Morning Post, 13 December 2015, available here.  http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1661364/china-rejects-vietnam-claims-arbitration-submission-over-south-china-sea

⁴ This section of the paper is an updated version of A. Calvo, “South China Sea Arbitration: Vietnam Makes Submission to Court” China Policy Institute Blog,University of Nottingham, 29 December 2014, available at http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2014/12/29/south-china-sea-arbitration-vietnam-makes-submission-to-court/

⁵ “China’s position paper on South China Sea”, China Daily, 7 December 2014, available at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-12/07/content_19037946.htm

⁶ A. Calvo, “Manila, Beijing, and UNCLOS: A Test Case?”, The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 11, Issue 34, No. 11, 26 August 2013, available athttp://japanfocus.org/-Alex-Calvo/3988#

⁷ “CHINA: MARITIME CLAIMS IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, U.S. Department of State, 5 December 2014, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁸ Jose Katigbak, “US expects China, Philippines to abide by UN ruling”, The Philippine Star, 4 October 2015, available at http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2015/10/04/1506894/us-expects-china-philippines-abide-un-ruling

⁹ “Remarks by MOFA Spokesperson Le Hai Binh on the South China Sea Arbitration case”, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Viet Nam, 11 December 2014, available at http://www.mofa.gov.vn/en/tt_baochi/pbnfn/ns141212143709

¹⁰ Prashanth Parameswaran “Vietnam Launches Legal Challenge Against China’s South China Sea Claims”, The Diplomat, 12 December 2014, available at http://thediplomat.com/2014/12/vietnam-launches-legal-challenge-against-chinas-south-china-sea-claims/

¹¹ “Australian Professor Carlyle Thayer also spoke to theSouth China Morning Post, saying that Vietnam’s move was a way for the country to put forward her interests, adding that this amounted to ‘a cheap way of getting into the back door without joining the Philippines’ case’” Zuraidah Ibrahim and Kristine Kwok “Beijing rejects Hanoi’s legal challenge on Spratly, Paracel islands disputes”, The South China Morning Post, 13 December 2015, available at http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1661364/china-rejects-vietnam-claims-arbitration-submission-over-south-china-sea

¹² “Gregory Poling, South East Asia analyst at Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes that Vietnam’s statement had the same goal as “the Chinese position”, namely to “ensure that the justices hearing the case consider the arguments contained in the document, but do so in a way that is less provocative than Vietnam actually joining”” An Dien, “Vietnam dismisses China’s position paper on East Sea claims”, Thanh Nien News, 12 December 2014, available at http://www.thanhniennews.com/politics/vietnam-dismisses-chinas-position-paper-on-east-sea-claims-35200.html

¹³ “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hong Lei’s Remarks on Vietnam’s Statement on the Chinese Government’s Position Paper on Rejecting the Jurisdiction of the Arbitral Tribunal Established at the Request of the Philippines for the South China Sea Arbitration”, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 12 December 2014, available at http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1218756.shtml

¹⁴ Carl Thayer, “China and Vietnam Eschew Megaphone Diplomacy”, The Diplomat, 2 January 2015, available at http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/china-and-vietnam-eschew-megaphone-diplomacy/

¹⁵ “Viet Nam, China agree to restore, develop ties” , website of Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 August 2014, available at http://www.mofa.gov.vn/en/nr040807104143/nr040807105001/ns140828134145

¹⁶ Carl Thayer, “China and Vietnam Eschew Megaphone Diplomacy”, The Diplomat, 2 January 2015, available at http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/china-and-vietnam-eschew-megaphone-diplomacy/

¹⁷ “Commentary: China, Vietnam capable of managing differences”, Xinhua, 26 December 2014, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-12/26/c_133879569.htm

¹⁸ “China, Vietnam agree to properly settle maritime disputes”, Xinhua, 27 December 2014, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-12/27/c_133881526.htm

¹⁹ “China, Vietnam agree to properly settle maritime disputes”, Xinhua, 27 December 2014, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-12/27/c_133881526.htm

²⁰ Carl Thayer, “How Vietnam Woos China and India Simultaneously”, The Diplomat, 28 October 2014, available at http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/how-vietnam-woos-china-and-india-simultaneously/

²¹ Carlyle A. Thayer, “Background Briefing: Vietnam: Party Secretary General to Visit China”, Thayer Consultancy, 12 March 2015, available at http://es.scribd.com/doc/258870451/Carl-Thayer-Vietnam-s-Party-Secretary-General-to-Visit-China

²² “Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong to visit China”, Voice of Vietnam, 2 April 2015, available at http://vovworld.vn/en-US/News/Party-leader-Nguyen-Phu-Trong-to-visit-China/323614.vov

²³ “Vietnam celebrates 65th anniversary of Vietnam-China ties”, China Daily, 17 January 2015, available at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2015-01/17/content_19341112.htm

²⁴ “Meeting marks 65th anniversary of Vietnam-China diplomatic ties”, Voice of Vietnam, 16 January 2015, available at http://www.talkvietnam.com/2015/01/meeting-marks-65th-anniversary-of-vietnam-china-diplomatic-ties/http://www.talkvietnam.com/2015/01/meeting-marks-65th-anniversary-of-vietnam-china-diplomatic-ties/

²⁵ “Vietnam, China holds meeting on cooperation in drug prevention”, China Daily, 15 October 2014, available at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2014-10/15/content_18740895.htm

²⁶ This issue, although not directly connected to the South China Sea, is particularly relevant because it is security related and shows that while tensions remain, the border between the two countries is not experiencing the sort of clashes experienced at sea. Also connected to security, the “fourth round of negotiations on an agreement on free navigation at the mouth of the Bac Luan River between Vietnam and China” took place in January 2015, “China, Vietnam talk free navigation”, Voice of Vietnam, 29 January 2015, available at http://english.vov.vn/Politics/China-Vietnam-talk-free-navigation/287442.vov

²⁷ Military exchanges also continued in recent months, with for example Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan (Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army) welcoming a delegation from the “Peacekeeping Office of the Ministry of National Defence of China, led by its Chairman Major-General Li Tian Tian” on 30 December 2014 “Vietnam, China promote cooperation on peacekeeping”, People’s Army Newspaper, 31 December 2014, available at http://en.qdnd.vn/defence-cooperation/vietnam-china-promote-cooperation-on-peacekeeping/339319.html

²⁸ “China, Vietnam navies to continue joint patrol in 2015”, China Military Online, 31 December 2014, available at http://english.chinamil.com.cn/news-channels/china-military-news/2014-12/31/content_6291463.htm

²⁹ Carl Thayer, “China-Vietnam Establish Defense Hot Line – What’s Next?”, cogitASIA, Center for Strategic & International Studies, 23 October 2014, available at http://cogitasia.com/china-vietnam-establish-defense-hot-line-whats-next/

³⁰ Carl Thayer, “How Vietnam Woos China and India Simultaneously”, The Diplomat, 28 October 2014, available at http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/how-vietnam-woos-china-and-india-simultaneously/

³¹ Stephen Blank, “Russia and Vietnam Team Up to Balance China”, The National Interest, 7 April 2014, available at http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/russia-vietnam-team-balance-china-10195

³² “Multilateral diplomacy helps Vietnam protect sovereignty: PM”, Tuoi Tre News, 13 August 2015, available at http://tuoitrenews.vn/politics/21629/multilateral-diplomacy-helps-protect-vietnams-national-sovereignty-premier-dung

³³ “Vietnam sends envoy to China to smooth tensions”, AP, 25 August 2014, available at http://bigstory.ap.org/article/vietnam-sends-envoy-china-smooth-tensions

³⁴ Roberto Tofani, “Psychological warfare in the South China Sea”, Asia Times, 10 April 2013, available at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/SEA-01-100413.html

³⁵ Li Dexia and Tan Keng Tat, “South China Sea disputes: China has evidence of historical claims”, Vietnam Law Magazine, 15 August 2014, available at http://vietnamlawmagazine.vn/east-sea-why-not-examine-the-historical-evidences-3673.html#_ftn2

³⁶ Nguyen Hong Thao, “East Sea: Why not examine the historical evidences?”, Vietnam Law Magazine, 22 October 2014, available at http://vietnamlawmagazine.vn/east-sea-why-not-examine-the-historical-evidences-4901.html

³⁷ For example Anshan Li, in A History of Overseas Chinese in Africa to 1911, writes that “He had the opportunity to come into contact with merchants from various countries. While inquiring about customs of various countries, he also reviewed and compared various types of maps and books” and cites Zhao Juguo’s autobiography, where he stated “Assigned to this post here recently, I spend all day reading various foreign maps … I listed names of these countries and their customs” Anshan Li, A History of Overseas Chinese in Africa to 1911, (New York: Diasporic Africa Press, 2012), p. 30

³⁸ “Lam Dong hosts an exhibition of Vietnam’s sovereignty over Truong Sa and Hoang Sa archipelagos”, Voice of Vietnam, 9 September 2015, available at http://www.vietmaz.com/2015/09/lam-dong-hosts-an-exhibition-of-vietnams-sovereignty-over-truong-sa-and-hoang-sa-archipelagos/

³⁹ Duy Chien, “Western witnesses of Vietnam’s sovereignty over Hoang Sa”, VietNamNet Bridge, 26 June 2014, available at http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/special-reports/105809/western-witnesses-of-vietnam-s-sovereignty-over-hoang-sa.html

⁴⁰ Another French source is a 1701 letter by Priest Tartre to Higher Father, which is included in the book “Collection of the amusing letters about Asia, Africa and America” (Episode III, republished in 1843). Concerning Hoang Sa (Paracel) it reads: “The ship weighed anchor and with tail – wind reached the Paracel Shoal shortly. Paracel was an archipelago of the An Nam Kingdom. It was an awful submerged shoal ranging across hundreds of miles and witnessing several shipwrecks – It runs parallel to the coastline of Cochinchina (Dang Trong) …”.

⁴¹ Jacob Ramsay, Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early Nineteenth Century Vietnam , (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), p. 28

⁴² A. Salles ed., “Le Mémoire sur la Cochinchine de Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau”, Bulletin des Amis du Vieux Hué, No. 2, 1923, p. 257

⁴³ hite Paper on the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) Islands, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Vietnam, 1975, available at http://nghiencuubiendong.vn/download/doc_download/132-white-paper-on-the-hoang-sa-paracel-and-truong-sa-spratly-islands-part-1

⁴⁴ “Vietnam Official Stance on Vietnam Sovereignty over Hoang Sa Archipelago”, Vietnam Pictorial, 9 July 2014, available at http://vietnam.vnanet.vn/english/vietnam-official-stance-on-vietnam-sovereignty-over-hoang-sa-archipelago/59061.html

⁴⁵ “Vietnam’s sovereignty over Hoang Sa, as reported in early 20th century newspapers”, The Vietnam Times, 21 July 2014, available at http://vietnamtimes.com.vn/vietnams-sovereignty-over-hoang-sa-as-reported-in-early-20th-century-newspapers/

⁴⁶ Hong Thao Nguyen, “Vietnam’s Position on the Sovereignty over the Paracels & the Spratlys: Its Maritime Claims”, Journal of East Asia & International Law 1 (2012), available at https://southeastasiansea.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/vietnams-position-on-the-sovereignty-over-the-paracels-the-spratlys-its-maritime-claim.pdf, p. 187-188

⁴⁷ “The Cairo Declaration (1943) and Vietnam’s sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel Archipelagos”, National Defence Journal, 27 March 2015, available at http://tapchiqptd.vn/en/research-and-discussion/the-cairo-declaration-1943-and-vietnams-sovereignty-over-the-spratly-and-paracel-archipelagos/7190.html

⁴⁸ François Guillemot, “Mer et îles du Viêt-Nam : une vision “dai vietnamienne” de l’histoire”, Mémoires d’Indochine, 10 July 2015, available athttp://indomemoires.hypotheses.org/19248 The blog entry contains links to the full documentary on Youtube.

⁴⁹ Tessa Jamandre, “Philippines offers Sabah to win Malaysia’s support for UN case vs China”, The Philippine Star, 30 March 2015, available at http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2015/03/30/1439007/philippines-offers-sabah-win-malaysias-support-un-case-vs-china

⁵⁰ “Pnoy inspects FA-50 to be delivered next year”, Tankler, 14 December 2014, available at http://tankler.com/news/2014/12/14/1673-pnoy-inspects-fa-50-to-be-delivered-next-year

⁵¹ Sudhi Ranjan Sen, “India to Sell Warships to Vietnam, Increase Footprints in South China Sea”, NDTV, 19 December 2014, available at http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/india-to-sell-warships-to-vietnam-increase-footprints-in-south-china-sea-636681

⁵² “U.S. Pacific Fleet leader visits Vietnam to boost ties”, TuoitreNews, 17 December 204, available at http://tuoitrenews.vn/politics/24749/us-pacific-fleet-leader-visits-vietnam-to-boost-ties

⁵³ Elena L. Aben, “Vietnam warships visit Manila”, Manila Bulletin, 25 November, available at http://www.mb.com.ph/vietnam-warships-visit-manila/

⁵⁴ “1st meeting of Philippines-Viet Nam Joint Commission on concluding a Strategic Partnership held in Manila”, website of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines, 30 January 2015, available at http://www.gov.ph/2015/01/30/1st-meeting-of-philippines-viet-nam-joint-commission-on-concluding-a-strategic-partnership-held-in-manila/ For a summary of existing defense cooperation agreements between Vietnam and the Philippines, and more details about the November 2014 port visit, see Carl Thayer, “Vietnam’s Navy Crosses the Line”, The Diplomat, 2 December 2014, available at http://thediplomat.com/2014/12/vietnams-navy-crosses-the-line/

⁵⁵ Carl Thayer, “The Philippines and Vietnam Forge a Strategic Partnership”, The Diplomat, 10 March 2015, available at http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/the-philippines-and-vietnam-forge-a-strategic-partnership/

⁵⁶ Carl Thayer, “The Philippines and Vietnam Forge a Strategic Partnership”, The Diplomat, 10 March 2015, available at http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/the-philippines-and-vietnam-forge-a-strategic-partnership/

⁵⁷ Scott Cheney-Peters, “Patrolling International Skies: Understanding Joint Air Patrols”, AMTI Brief, Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative, 29 July 2015, available at http://amti.csis.org/patrolling-international-skies-understanding-joint-air-patrols/

⁵⁸ Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, “Can China Defend a ‘Core Interest’ in the South China Sea?”, The Washington Quarterly, Volume 32 Issue 2, Spring 2011, pp. 45-59, available at http://csis.org/files/publication/twq11springyoshiharaholmes.pdf

⁵⁹ See in this regard “China’s declaration of key interests misinterpreted”, Beijing Review, 26 August 2013, available at http://www.china.org.cn/world/2013-08/26/content_29824049.htm and “Beijing’s reluctance to classify publically the South China Sea as an outright core interest should not be interpreted as it backing down from the dispute as a whole” Paul B. Stares, “Is the South China Sea, like Taiwan, a core national interest now for China?”, Ask CFR Experts, Council on Foreign Relations, 29 July 2013, available at http://www.cfr.org/china/south-china-sea-like-taiwan-core-national-interest-now-china/p31159

⁶⁰ Or now that Chiang Kai-shek seems to be enjoying some sort of rehabilitation in China, the 1943 Cairo conference. Jeremy Taylor “Xikou, Zhejiang and Chiang Kai-shek”, Nottingham University Chinese Policy Blog, 24 September 2012, available at http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2012/09/24/xikou-zhejiang-and-chiang-kai-shek/

⁶¹ “Position Paper of the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the Matter of Jurisdiction in the South China Sea Arbitration Initiated by the Republic of the Philippines”, website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 7 December 2014, available at http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1217147.shtml

⁶² A. Calvo, “Japan Quietly Leads on Increased Recognition of Taiwan”, Shingetsu News Agency News, 26 July 2012, Shingetsu News Agency, available at http://www.shingetsunewsagency.com/SNA/SNA_News/Entries/2012/7/26_Japan_Steps_toward_Recognition_of_Taiwan.html

⁶³ “Southern Bluefïn Tuna Case between Australia and Japan and between New Zealand and Japan, Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility. Decision of 4 August 2000”, 4 August 2000, p.43, para. 57, website of the United Nations, available at http://legal.un.org/riaa/cases/vol_XXIII/1-57.pdf

⁶⁴ “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁶⁵ “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, pp. 11 and 23-24, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁶⁶ “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, p. 1, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁶⁷ Note Verbale CML/17/2009, Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China before the UN, website of the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea (DOALOS), 7 May 2009, available at http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/mysvnm33_09/chn_2009re_mys_vnm_e.pdf and Note Verbale CML/18/2009, Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China before the UN, website of the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea (DOALOS), 7 May 2009, available at http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/vnm37_09/chn_2009re_vnm.pdf

⁶⁸ “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, p. 1, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁶⁹ L. Jinming and L. Dexia, “The Dotted Line on the Chinese Map of the South China Sea: A Note”, Ocean Dev’t & Int’l L., Volume 34, 2003, pp. 287-95, p. 289-290.

⁷⁰ “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, p. 3, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁷¹ “However, as with so many other contested islands of the postwar era, the treaty specified neither precise limits nor the final designation of the disposed territories” Kimie Hara, “Okinawa, Taiwan, and the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in United States–Japan–China Relations”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 28, No. 2, July 13, 2015, available at http://japanfocus.org/-Kimie-Hara/4341/article.html

⁷² “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, pp. 4-7, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁷³ “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, pp. 8-10, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁷⁴ This passage reflects the US traditional position “In December 1986, the u.s. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, published “Navigation Rights and the Gulf of Sidra,” in GIST, a reference aid on u.s. foreign relations. The study discussed the history of u.s. responses, dating to the 18th century, to attempts by North African States to restrict navigation in these waters. The GIST stated, in part, that: Current law and customs: By custom, nations may lay historic claim to those bays and gulfs over which they have exhibited such a degree of open, notorious, continuous, and unchallenged control for an extended period of time as to preclude traditional high seas freedoms within such waters. Those waters (closed off by straight baselines) are treated as if they were part of the nation’s land mass, and the navigation of foreign vessels is generally subject to complete control by the nation”, J. Ashley Roach and Robert W. Smith (Editors), “Excessive Maritime Claims”, International Law Studies, Volume 66, p. 30, available at https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/cd1fb225-30b4-4cfe-b0e3-a5311c2ac8e5/Historic-Waters.aspx

⁷⁵ The text cites a number of cases, among them “Fisheries Case (U.K. v. Norway), 1951 I.C.J. 116 (Dec. 18), p. 130, 133, 138, 142”, which is available at http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/5/1809.pdf

⁷⁶ Available, together with related documents at http://legal.un.org/ilc/guide/8_4.htm

⁷⁷ Text of these and other articles of UNCLOS available at http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf

⁷⁸ “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, p. 10, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁷⁹ A short naval and diplomatic summary can be found in “Barbary Wars, 1801–1805 and 1815–1816”, website of the Office of the Historian, US Department of State, available at https://history.state.gov/milestones/1801-1829/barbary-wars

⁸⁰ “The United States’s conflicts with the Barbary States (Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli, and Tunis) from 1784-1815 gripped the young nation, featured bold attempts by American policymakers to defend U.S. trade in the Mediterranean region and assert leadership in international affairs, set important precedents in American foreign relations (including the first U.S.-supported coup attempt that generated the line “to the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Corps Hymn), provided vital naval training for the War of 1812, and helped create an early sense of American exceptionalism”. Jason Zeledon, “Home”, Barbary Warfare. All about America’s wars with the Barbary Pirates, available at http://www.barbarywarfare.com/home

⁸¹ “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, pp. 11-14, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁸² “The PRC’s territorial sea refers to the waters adjacent to its territorial land. The PRC’s territorial land includes the mainland and its offshore islands, Taiwan and the various affiliated islands including Diaoyu Island, Penghu Islands, Dongsha Islands, Xisha Islands, Nansha (Spratly) Islands and other islands that belong to the People’s Republic of China. The PRC’s internal waters refer to the waters along the baseline of the territorial sea facing the land”, Article 2, Law on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, 25 February 1992, available at: http://www.un.org/depts/los/LEGISLATIONANDTREATIES/PDFFILES/CHN_1992_Law.pdf

⁸³ Note Verbale CML/8/2011, Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China before the UN, website of the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea (DOALOS), 14 April 2011, available at http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/mysvnm33_09/chn_2011_re_phl_e.pdf

⁸⁴ Declaration on China’s Territorial Sea, reproduced in “Straight Baselines: People’s Republic of China”, Limits in the Seas, No 43, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 1 July 1972, pp. 2-3, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/58832.pdf

⁸⁵ For a discussion of China’s naval ambitions and capabilities, and possible directions, see Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Main Mission: South China Sea, Not Syria”, The National Interest, 5 October 2015, available at http://nationalinterest.org/feature/chinas-main-mission-south-china-sea-not-syria-14012

⁸⁶ “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, pp. 14-15, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁸⁷ “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, pp. 15-22, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁸⁸ Article 14, Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Act, 26 June 1998, website of the United Nations, available at http://www.un.org/Depts/los/LEGISLATIONANDTREATIES/PDFFILES/chn_1998_eez_act.pdf

⁸⁹ Note Verbale CML/8/2011, Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China before the UN, website of the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea (DOALOS), 14 April 2011, available at http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/mysvnm33_09/chn_2011_re_phl_e.pdf

⁹⁰ “It is known to all that China has sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their surrounding waters, including the Ren’ai Reef”, “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang’s Regular Press Conference on March 10, 2014”, website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 10 March 2014, available at http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/2511_665403/t1136288.shtml

⁹¹ Taken from C.R. Symmons, Historic Waters in the Law of the Sea: A Modern Re-Appraisal, (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2008), p. 145.

⁹² “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea”, Limits in the Seas, No 143, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs – Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, US Department of State, 5 December 2014, p. 11, available at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf

⁹³ “Treaty of Peace Between the United States and Spain; December 10, 1898”, website of The Avalon Project, Yale University, available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/sp1898.asp

⁹⁴ “Treaty between the Kingdom Spain and the United States of America for cession of outlying islands of the Philippines [1900]”, website of the Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, available at http://www.gov.ph/1900/11/07/the-philippine-claim-to-a-portion-of-north-borneo-treaty-between-the-kingdom-spain-and-the-united-states-of-america-for-cession-of-outlying-islands-of-the-philippines-1900/

⁹⁵ A. Calvo, “No Place for China in Russia’s New Military Doctrine?”, China Policy Institute Blog, University of Nottingham, 30 December 2014, available at http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2014/12/30/no-place-for-china-in-russias-new-military-doctrine/

⁹⁶ “Having decided to make a maximum effort against the Tatars, Sophia and Golitsyn suspended all other Russian territorial ambitions. The momentum of the advance to the Pacific was abruptly halted. By the mid-seventeenth century, Russian soldiers, traders, hunters and pioneers had reached and conquered the basin of the Amur River, which makes a vast looping circle around the territory now known as Manchuria. For years, under increasing Chinese pressure, frontier soldiers had been sending desperate appeals to Moscow for reinforcements. But Sophia, reducing her commitments, sent not reinforcements, but a diplomatic mission headed by Fedor. Golovin to work out a peace with the Manchu Dinasty. The negotiations took place in the Russian frontier post of Nerchinsk on the upper Amur River. Golovin was at a disadvantage; not only had Sophia ordered him to make peace, but the Chinese brought up a large fleet of of heavily armed junks and surrounded the fort with 17,000 soldiers. In the end, Golovin signed a paper which gave the whole of the Amur basin to China. Subsequently, the Russians claimed that the treaty had been based not on justice, but on the presence of so much menacing Chinese military force. In 1858 and 1860, the tables were turned, and Russia took back 380,000 square miles of territory from an impotent China. Not all Russians approved this claim. After all, the Treaty of Nerchinsk had been honored for 180 years; all this time, the territory had been Chinese. But Tsar Nicholas I approved, proclaiming, ‘Where the Russian flag has once been hoisted, it must never be lowered.’”, Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986), pp. 87-88

⁹⁷ A. Calvo, “Russia and South Korea: the economic and geopolitical rationale for a natural gas pipeline”, China Policy Institute Blog, University of Nottingham, 4 November 2014, available at http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2014/11/04/russia-and-south-korea-the-economic-and-geopolitical-rationale-for-a-natural-gas-pipeline/

⁹⁸ A. Calvo, “Can Russia Assist Japan in Fueling Its Energy Future? “, Journal of Energy Security, July 2012 Issue, 23 July 2012, available athttp://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=376:can-russia-assist-japan-in-fueling-its-energy-future&catid=128:issue-content&Itemid=402

⁹⁹ “ロシア首相：北方領土の軍備強化 択捉島で表明”, Mainichi Shinbun, 22 August 2015, available athttp://mainichi.jp/select/news/20150823k0000m030048000c.html?inb=tw again no characters visible.

¹⁰⁰ “The More the Merrier: Russia Expands its Territory Further Into Okhotsk Sea”, Sputnik News, 22 August 2015, available at http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150822/1026071741/russia-okhotsk-sea-medvedev-continental-shelf.html

¹⁰¹ Although we have to bear in mind that while looking toward the West in seeking inspiration to reform Russia, Peter the Great devoted great efforts, once peace with his Western foes had been achieved, towards the East and the South. Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986), pp. 840-850

¹⁰² “He adhered to an ethnic hierarchy in his revolutionary politics. For him, Germans were culturally superior to Britons and French, who in turn were superior to Finns; and, of course, Finns had a distinct edge over the Russians”, Robert Service, Lenin: a Biography, (London: Pan Books, 2010), p.389

¹⁰³ A. Calvo, “The other ‘pivot’: Is Russia also rebalancing towards the Pacific?”, China Policy Institute Blog, University of Nottingham, 28 January 2015, available at http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2015/01/28/the-other-pivot-is-russia-also-rebalancing-towards-the-pacific/

¹⁰⁴ Stephen Blank, “Russia and Vietnam Team Up to Balance China”, The National Interest, 7 April 2014, available at http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/russia-vietnam-team-balance-china-10195

¹⁰⁵ A. Calvo, “The Kremlin seeks a greater role on Korean Peninsula”, China Policy Institute Blog, University of Nottingham, 18 February 2015, available at http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2015/02/18/the-kremlin-seeks-a-greater-role-on-korean-peninsula/

¹⁰⁶ Alex Calvo, “Russian perceptions of China in the Arctic”, Nottingham University Chinese Politics Blog, 23 March 2015, available at https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2015/03/23/russian-perceptions-of-china-in-the-arctic-mistrust-feeds-persistent-wish-for-diversification/

¹⁰⁷ “Defense Ministry rejects proposal to buy submarines from Russia”, Focus Taiwan, 18 March 2015, available at http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201503180026.aspx

¹⁰⁸ Mu Chunshan,“Why Doesn’t Russia Support China in the South China Sea?”, The Diplomat, 21 June 2014, available at http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/why-doesnt-russia-support-china-in-the-south-china-sea/

¹⁰⁹ “Vietnam’s third Russian sub to arrive next month”, Thanh Nien News, 20 November 2014, available at http://www.thanhniennews.com/politics/vietnams-third-russian-sub-to-arrive-next-month-34230.html

¹¹⁰ Duy Khanh, “Vietnam to build more Russian missile boats”, Thanh Nien News, 19 November 2014, available at http://www.thanhniennews.com/politics/vietnam-to-build-more-russian-missile-boats-34169.html

¹¹¹ “Russia, Vietnam agree on simplified Cam Ranh port entry for Russian warships”, TASS, 27 November 2014, available at http://en.itar-tass.com/world/763988

¹¹² Rakesh Krishnan Simha, “Why the Bear is back in Vietnam”, Foreign Policy News, 12 June 2015, available at http://foreignpolicynews.org/2015/06/12/why-the-bear-is-back-in-vietnam/

¹¹³ “Beijing has repeatedly demanded that Moscow terminate energy explorations in the South China Sea, clearly responding to Russia’s visibly enhanced interests in Southeast Asia. In 2012 Russia announced its interest in regaining a naval base at Cam Ranh Bay, a step probably connected to joint Russo-Vietnamese energy projects off Vietnam’s coast, and a means of checking China in the South China Sea. Gazprom also signed a deal to explore two licensed blocks in Vietnam’s continental shelf in the South China Sea, taking a 49 percent stake in the offshore blocks, which hold an estimated 1.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and more than twenty-five million tons of gas condensate. Those actions precipitated Beijing’s demand that Moscow leave the area. However, despite its silence, presumably to avoid antagonizing China, Moscow stayed put. Russia has subsequently increased support for Vietnam regarding energy exploration in the South China Sea and, perhaps more ominously from China’s standpoint, in arms sales and defense cooperation”. Stephen Blank, “Russia and Vietnam Team Up to Balance China”, The National Interest, 7 April 2014, available at http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/russia-vietnam-team-balance-china-10195

¹¹⁴ “Dmitry Medvedev’s interview with Vietnamese media”, website of the Russian Government, 5 April 2015, available at http://government.ru/en/news/17527/

¹¹⁵ Nhina Le and Koh Swee Lean Collin, “Vietnam and Great Power Rivalries”, The Diplomat, 31 March 2015, available at http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/vietnam-and-great-power-rivalries/

¹¹⁶ For a warning on the dangers of pushing Russia to cooperate with China in the South China Sea, see Harry J. Kazianis, “Russia Could Make South China Sea a Chinese Lake”, The National Interest, 26 February 2015, available at http://russia-insider.com/en/china_politics_business_opinion/2015/02/25/3872

¹¹⁷ Which should not be taken literally as implying that India is not looking carefully in other directions. “India is surrounded by security concerns all around” Sonia Roy, “Indian Foreign Policy and Terrorism (Post 9/11)”, blog of Sonia Roy, 11 January 2010, available at http://soniaroy.blogspot.com/2010/01/indian-foreign-policy-and-terrorism.html While some explanations of the policy are overtly, and to a large extent understandably, enthusiastic, see for example the following quote from Professor Brahma Chellaney “For India, the Look East policy is a strategic imperative, India has to look East, because looking West India sees only trouble – Pakistan, Afghanistan, all the way up to Iraq and Jordan. So looking West is not useful. Looking East is better, because looking East means you engage with the more dynamic economies and with democracies like Indonesia, Japan, Korea, these are important countries for India now”, Uwe Hoering, Interview with Brahma Chellaney, website of Stiftung Asienhaus, 3 July 2014, available at http://www.asienhaus.de/uploads/tx_news/asienhaus-hintergrundinformation7-2014.pdf , India has never stopped paying attention to countries such as Iraq. Sonia Roy “Iraq”, in P.R. Kumaraswam (editor), Persian Gulf 2013: India’s Relations With the Region, (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2014), pp. 107-126. See also A.N. Ram (ed.), Two Decades of India’s Look East Policy: Partnership for Peace, Progress and Prosperity, (New Delhi: Indian Council of World Affairs, 2012), available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09700161.2013.802527

¹¹⁸ “’What India is belatedly seeking to do is to improve its defenses by upgrading its logistics,’” said Brahma Chellaney, an analyst who tracks the India-China relationship at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, in an e-mail. ‘By building new railroads, airports and highways in Tibet, China is now in a position to rapidly move additional forces to the border to potentially strike at India at a time of its choosing.’” “India Digs Under Top of the World to Match Rival”, Lydia Polgreen, New York Times, 31 July 2010, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/world/asia/01pass.html?pagewanted=all

¹¹⁹ Radhakrishna Rao, “A Boost to BrahMos”, website of CLAWS (Centre for Land Warfare Studies), 15 December 2014, available at http://www.claws.in/1304/a-boost-to-brahmos-radhakrishna-rao.html

¹²⁰ Alex Calvo, “Abe’s Election Good News for Japan-India Ties”, Shingetsu News Agency News, 21 December 2012, Shingetsu News Agency, available at http://www.shingetsunewsagency.com/SNA/SNA_News/Entries/2012/12/21_Abes_Election_Good_News_for_Japan-India_Ties.html

¹²¹ Brahma Chellaney, “From a nonaligned to multialigned India?”, Nikkei Asian Review, 15 December 2014, available at http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Geopolitico/From-a-nonaligned-to-multialigned-India

¹²² Brahma Chellaney, “Reshaping India’s diplomacy”, The Japan Times, 18 January 2015, available at http://chellaney.net/2015/01/18/reshaping-indias-diplomacy/

¹²³ Tweets by Saurav Jha, @SJha1618, 24 January 2015.

¹²⁴ Dhruva Jaishankar “Anti-Americanism is dead”, Indian Express, 27 January 2015, available at http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/anti-americanism-is-dead/99/

¹²⁵ Dhruva Jaishankar “Anti-Americanism is dead”, Indian Express, 27 January 2015, available at http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/anti-americanism-is-dead/99/

¹²⁶ Tweet by Manimugdha Sharma, @quizzicalguy, 26 January 2015.

¹²⁷ Direct communication to the author by Manimugdha Sharma, 26 January 2015.

¹²⁸ “U.S.-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region”, website of The White House, 25 January 2015, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/25/us-india-joint-strategic-vision-asia-pacific-and-indian-ocean-region

¹²⁹ “Mr. Modi’s suggestion of fresh security cooperation linking the two with Japan and Australia would bring back a short-lived effort involving the four democracies that began in 2007. Known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, it drew protests from China and was abandoned a year later with a change of government in Australia” Peter Baker and Gardiner Harris, “U.S. and India Share Sense of Unease Over China”, The New York Times, 27 January 2007, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/world/us-and-india-share-sense-of-unease-over-china.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

¹³⁰ David Lang “Symbolism and strategy on 26 January”, The Strategist, 23 January 2015, available at http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/symbolism-and-strategy-on-26-january/

¹³¹ Tweets by Saurav Jha, @SJha1618, 27 January 2015.

¹³² Tarra Quismundo, “India backs PH arbitration bid to solve sea dispute”, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 24 October 2013, available at http://globalnation.inquirer.net/88541/india-backs-ph-arbitration-bid-to-solve-sea-dispute/

¹³³ “Bilateral relations have remained conspicuously devoid of both any major issue of discord or of any significant scale of engagement during the last six decades or so” Vibhanshu Shekhar, India-Philippines Relations: An Overview, (New Delhi: Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, 2007), available atfile:///C:/ALEX/STRATEGIC%20STUDIES%20ARTICLES/South-East%20Asia/Philippines/Relations%20with%20India/IPCS-Special-Report-43.pdf and “The relations between the two countries have been cordial, though the full potential is yet to be realized”, “India-Philippines Relations”, website of the Ministry of External Affairs , December 2013, available at http://www.mea.gov.in/Portal/ForeignRelation/Philippines__December_2013_.pdf

¹³⁴ “Confirmed: China Is Building a Military Base Near Japan”, The National Interest, 26 January 2015, available at http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/confirmed-china-building-military-base-near-japan-12120

¹³⁵ R. R. Churchill and A. V. Lowe, The law of the sea, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), Third Edition, pp. 49-50

¹³⁶ R. R. Churchill and A. V. Lowe, The law of the sea, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), Third Edition, pp. 50-51

¹³⁷ R. R. Churchill and A. V. Lowe, The law of the sea, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), Third Edition, p. 51

¹³⁸ James R. Holmes, “The South China Sea: “Lake Beijing””, The Diplomat, 7 January 2013, available at http://thediplomat.com/2013/01/the-south-china-sea-lake-beijing/

¹³⁹ Christopher J. McCarthy, Anti-Access/Area Denial: The Evolution of Modern Warfare, (Newport: US Naval War College, 2010), p. 2, available at https://www.usnwc.edu/Lucent/OpenPdf.aspx?id=95

¹⁴⁰ Harry J. Kazianis, “Russia Could Make South China Sea a Chinese Lake”, The National Interest, 26 February 2015, available at http://russia-insider.com/en/china_politics_business_opinion/2015/02/25/3872

¹⁴¹ A. Calvo, “Shored-based anti-ship missiles: when the land commands the sea”, The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), 13 January 2015, available at http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/shored-based-anti-ship-missiles-when-the-land-commands-the-sea/ For the case of Japan, see A. Calvo, “Marines, Missiles, and the Iron Lady: The Military Leg in Japan’s Ocean Strategy”, The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 11, Issue 49, No. 1, 9 December 2013, available at http://www.japanfocus.org/-Alex-Calvo/4045# Concerning their potential use in the defense of Taiwan, see A. Calvo, “Anti-ship missiles in the defence of Taiwan: Limited war or people’s war?”, China Policy Institute Blog, University of Nottingham, 19 August 2014, available at http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2014/08/19/anti-ship-missiles-in-the-defence-of-taiwan-limited-war-or-peoples-war/

¹⁴² “1st meeting of Philippines-Viet Nam Joint Commission on concluding a Strategic Partnership held in Manila”, website of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines, 30 January 2015, available at http://www.gov.ph/2015/01/30/1st-meeting-of-philippines-viet-nam-joint-commission-on-concluding-a-strategic-partnership-held-in-manila/

¹⁴³ “Mainland China’s Land Reclamation in South China Sea Not Violation of Int’l Law (A Commentary)”, Kuomintang Official Website, 5 December 2014, available at http://www.kmt.org.tw/english/page.aspx?type=article&mnum=112&anum=15498

¹⁴⁴ “Mainland China’s Land Reclamation in South China Sea Not Violation of Int’l Law (A Commentary)”, Kuomintang Official Website, 5 December 2014, available at http://www.kmt.org.tw/english/page.aspx?type=article&mnum=112&anum=15498

¹⁴⁵ Malcolm N. Shaw, International Law, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), Sixth Edition, pp. 525-528

¹⁴⁶ Antony Allot, The Limits of Law, (London: Butterworths, 1980), p. 88

¹⁴⁷ “Genba defends ‘pragmatic’ purchase of the Senkakus”, The Japan Times, 20 October 2012, available at http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20121020a5.html

¹⁴⁸ A. Calvo, “Why Japan should put boots on the ground on the Senkaku Islands”, Strife Blog, 25 May 2015, available at http://strifeblog.org/2015/05/25/why-japan-should-put-boots-on-the-ground-on-the-senkaku-islands/ Also published by ISN on 3 June 2015, available at http://isnblog.ethz.ch/international-relations/why-japan-should-put-boots-on-the-ground-on-the-senkaku-islands

¹⁴⁹ Wani Yukio, “Barren Senkaku Nationalism and China-Japan Conflict”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 28, No. 4, July 9, 2012, available at http://www.japanfocus.org/-Wani-Yukio/3792/article.html

¹⁵⁰ “Press Conference by the Press Secretary 4 October 1996”, website of Japan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, 4 October 1996, available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/press/1996/10/1004.html#1-a

¹⁵¹ “尖閣諸島の灯台”, in “副大臣会見記録（平成17年2月”, website of Japan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, February 2005, available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/kaiken/fuku/f_0502.html

¹⁵² Yuka Hayashi, “Japan’s Attempts at Artificial Island Building”, Wall Street Journal, 14 May 2015, available at http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/05/14/japans-attempts-at-artificial-island-building/

¹⁵³ A. Calvo, “Russia’s South China Sea Approach and Search for Strategic Autonomy”, Issue Briefings 10/2015, South China Sea Think Tank, 4 September 2015, available at http://scstt.org/issue-briefings/russias-south-china-sea-approach-and-search-for-strategic-autonomy/

¹⁵⁴ “The More the Merrier: Russia Expands its Territory Further Into Okhotsk Sea”, Sputnik International, 22 August 2015, available at http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150822/1026071741/russiaokhotskseamedvedevcontinentalshelf.

html

¹⁵⁵ “Russia plans spas on disputed isles”, Japan Times, 13 July 2012, available at http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120713b3.html#.UAKzClLtvsY

¹⁵⁶ “Russia opens new airport on Japan-claimed Etorofu Island off Hokkaido”, Japan Times, 18 September 2014, available at http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/09/18/national/russia-opens-new-airport-japan-claimed-etorofu-island-hokkaido/#.VEDkE_l_s8s

¹⁵⁷ “The Russian navy does not have sufficient numbers of nuclear attack submarines and surface ships to defend the deployment of the newest Borey submarines in the open Pacific. The only safe option seems the semi-closed Sea of Okhotsk, guarded by the Kurile Island chain”, Pavel Felgenhauer, “The Kurile Islands: a Key to Russia’s Maritime Nuclear Strategy”, Eurasia Daily Monitor, Jamestown Foundation, 4 November 2010, available at http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=37127&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=484&no_cache=1#.VfGHMNLtmko

¹⁵⁸ For a summary of the issues at stake, and Russian views on the dispute, see Yulia Kiseleva,“Four small islands – big fuss”, available at http://www.academia.edu/1651160/Four_small_islands_big_fuss

¹⁵⁹ James D.J. Brown, “Not Even Two? New developments in the territorial dispute between Russia and Japan”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 38, No. 3, September 21, 2015, available at http://japanfocus.org/-James-Brown/4378/article.html

¹⁶⁰ “Mainland China’s Land Reclamation in South China Sea Not Violation of Int’l Law (A Commentary)”, Kuomintang Official Website, 5 December 2014, available at http://www.kmt.org.tw/english/page.aspx?type=article&mnum=112&anum=15498

¹⁶¹ Michelle FlorCruz, “Philippines Resumes South China Sea Construction As China Continues Reclamation”, IB Times, 26 March 2015, available at http://www.ibtimes.com/philippines-resumes-south-china-sea-construction-china-continues-reclamation-1861266

¹⁶² Michelle FlorCruz, “Philippines Resumes South China Sea Construction As China Continues Reclamation”, IB Times, 26 March 2015, available at http://www.ibtimes.com/philippines-resumes-south-china-sea-construction-china-continues-reclamation-1861266

¹⁶³ James Harding and Sean O’Connor, “China building airstrip-capable island on Fiery Cross Reef”, IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, 20 November 2014, available at http://www.janes.com/article/46083/china-building-airstrip-capable-island-on-fiery-cross-reef

¹⁶⁴ A. Calvo, “1982 Falklands War: Seven Lessons for Japan”, Shingetsu News Agency, 28 June 2014, available at http://shingetsunewsagency.com/tokyo/?p=730

¹⁶⁵ Sam Tangredi, Anti-Access Warfare: Countering A2/AD Strategies, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2013)

¹⁶⁶ Wendell Minnick, “Beijing Continues S. China Sea Expansion”, Defense News, 14 June 2014, available at http://mobile.defensenews.com/article/306140014

¹⁶⁷ James Harding and Sean O’Connor, “China building airstrip-capable island on Fiery Cross Reef”, IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, 20 November 2014, available at http://www.janes.com/article/46083/china-building-airstrip-capable-island-on-fiery-cross-reef. For a selection of satellite pictures showing Chinese construction and reclamation work, and some of the ships involved, see Matikas Santos, “In photos: China’s construction of military bases in Spratlys”, The Inquirer, 17 March 2015, available at http://globalnation.inquirer.net/119660/in-photos-chinas-construction-of-military-bases-in-south-china-sea/

¹⁶⁸ Luke Hunt, “China Challenges ASEAN with Land Fills in South China Sea”, The Diplomat, 10 March 2015, available at http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/china-challenges-asean-with-land-fills-in-south-china-sea/

¹⁶⁹ Luke Hunt, “China Challenges ASEAN with Land Fills in South China Sea”, The Diplomat, 10 March 2015, available at http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/china-challenges-asean-with-land-fills-in-south-china-sea/

¹⁷⁰ Simon Denyer, “U.S. Navy alarmed at Beijing’s ‘Great Wall of sand’ in South China Sea”, The Washington Post, 1 April 2015, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-navy-alarmed-at-beijings-great-wall-of-sand-in-south-china-sea/2015/04/01/dda11d76-70d7-4b69-bd87-292bd18f5918_story.html

¹⁷¹ “Jen Psaki Spokesperson Daily Press Briefing”, website of the U.S. Department of State, 9 March 2015, available at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2015/03/238679.htm#CHINA

¹⁷² Josh Rogin “U.S. Misses Real Threat of China’s Fake Islands”, Bloomberg News, 2 April 2015, available at http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-02/u-s-misses-real-threat-of-china-s-fake-islands

¹⁷³ Full text can be found at “Letter to Secretary Carter and Secretary Kerry on Chinese Maritime Strategy”, website of the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services, 19 March 2015, available at http://www.armed-services.senate.gov/letter-to-secretary-carter-and-secretary-kerry-on-chinese-maritime-strategy

¹⁷⁴ David Brunnstrom, “US senators seek strategy to stop Beijing’s South China Sea reclamation”, The Sidney Morning Herald, 20 March 2015, available athttp://www.smh.com.au/world/us-senators-seek-strategy-to-stop-beijings-south-china-sea-reclamation-20150320-1m3lq3.html

¹⁷⁵ “Foreign Minister Wang Yi Meets the Press”, website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 8 March 2015, available athttp://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1243662.shtml

¹⁷⁶ Zhang Ning, “Commentary: U.S. meddling on South China Sea betrays pirate-style sense of insecurity”, Xinhua, 14 March 2015, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-03/14/c_134066199.htm

¹⁷⁷ For a comprehensive look at Beijing’s ADIZ in the East China Sea see A. Calvo, “China’s Air Defense Identification Zone: Concept, Issues at Stake and Regional Impact”, Naval War College Press Working Papers, No 1, US Naval War College, 23 December 2013, available at http://www.usnwc.edu/Publications/Working-Papers/Documents/WP1-Calvo.aspx

¹⁷⁸ David Brunnstrom, “US senators seek strategy to stop Beijing’s South China Sea reclamation”, The Sidney Morning Herald, 20 March 2015, available athttp://www.smh.com.au/world/us-senators-seek-strategy-to-stop-beijings-south-china-sea-reclamation-20150320-1m3lq3.html

¹⁷⁹ Tweet by ‏@JamesKraska, dated 14 October 2015

¹⁸⁰ “The 1935 Constitution”, website of the Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Available at http://www.gov.ph/constitutions/the-1935-constitution/

¹⁸¹ “Republic Act No. 3046 of 17 June 1961. An Act to Define the Baselines of the Territorial Sea of the Philippines”, website of the United Nations, available at http://www.un.org/depts/los/LEGISLATIONANDTREATIES/PDFFILES/PHL_1961_Act.pdf

¹⁸² R. R. Churchill and A. V. Lowe, The law of the sea, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), Third Edition, p. 48

¹⁸³ Qatar v. Bahrain, I.C.J. Reports 2001, pp. 101-102, para. 205. Full text of the ruling available at “Maritime Delimitation and Territorial Questions between Qatar and Bahrain (Qatar v. Bahrain)”, website of the International Court of Justice, available at http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?sum=443&p1=3&p2=3&case=87&p3=5

¹⁸⁴ Nicaragua v. Colombia, I.C.J. Reports 2012, p. 641, para. 26. Full text of the ruling available at “Territorial and Maritime Dispute (Nicaragua v. Colombia)”, website of the International Court of Justice, available at http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=3&case=124&code=nicol&p3=5

¹⁸⁵ “Southern Bluefïn Tuna Case between Australia and Japan and between New Zealand and Japan, Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility. Decision of 4 August 2000”, 4 August 2000, p.43, para. 57, website of the United Nations, available at http://legal.un.org/riaa/cases/vol_XXIII/1-57.pdf

¹⁸⁶ Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro, Judgment of 26 February 2007, I.C.J. Reports 2007, p. 111, para. 162), website of the International Court of Justice, available at http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=3&case=91&p3=4

¹⁸⁷ Martin Murphy “Deepwater Oil Rigs as Strategic Weapons”, Naval War College Review, Spring 2013, Vol. 66, No. 2, available at https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/3453d037-02ec-48e6-a6b3-d710e21c2e89/Deepwater-Oil-Rigs-as-Strategic-Weapons.aspx

¹⁸⁸ A. Calvo, “President Ma’s Peace Initiative and the Strategic Triangle Beijing-Taipei-Tokyo”, TESS Working Papers, 31 August 2012, The Eurasia Studies Society (TESS), available at eurasiasociety.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/mas-peace-initiative-and-the-strategic-triangle-calvo.doc

¹⁸⁹ A. Calvo, “Adult Wisdom: The Japan-Taiwan Fisheries Deal”, The Tokyo Diplomat, 19 April 2013, Shingetsu News Agency, available at http://www.shingetsunewsagency.com/SNA/News/Entries/2013/4/19_Adult_Wisdom__The_Japan-Taiwan_Fisheries_Deal.html

October 28^th, 2015 marks 56^th anniversary of the death of Camilo Cienfuegos (1932-1959), one of the five heroes of the Cuban Revolution (1953–1959) along with Fidel and Raúl Castro, Ché Guevara, and Juan Almeida Bosque (1927-2009).  

Cienfuegos played a major role in overthrowing the corrupt and dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973), which oppressed the Cuban people and committed countless crimes. During Batista’s rule, American companies were essentially permitted to control the Cuban economy and run it according to their own interests, while the U.S. Mafia and businessmen participated in organized crime. This situation came to an end with the victory of the Cuban revolution, when Cienfuegos and the four other heroes sought to establish an independent Cuba that prioritized the interests of its own citizens.

Cienfuegos obtained a very prominent position in the revolutionary movement almost immediately after his first meeting with Fidel Castro in 1955. That meeting transpired in Mexico, where 82 revolutionaries that were exiled from Cuba organized the movement to overthrow Batista’s oppressive regime. In November 1956, all 82 of these revolutionaries embarked on a 10-day journey to return from Mexico to Cuba on the now-famous yacht called Granma, which actually had the capacity to transport only 12 people. Once in Cuba, the revolutionaries decided to advance to the Sierra Maestra mountain range in order to meet up with other supporters of the revolutionary movement against Batista’s dictatorship. However, only 12 of them managed to survive the journey and reach Sierra Maestra, as they came under multiple attacks by the Cuban Army. 

Shortly thereafter, in 1957, Cienfuegos was appointed to the highest rank of Commanding Officer and chief of the army, which exceeded the ranks of both Raúl Castro (Commander of the Rebellious Army in Oriente) and Ché Guevara (Commander of the Rebellious Army in Cabaña). Then, on December 31, 1958, Cienfuegos played a key role in the victory in the Battle of Santa Clara, as he and Guevara led the two columns that captured the city. This essentially marked the victory of the revolutionary movement as, just one day later on January 1, 1959, Batista fled the island and his corrupt and oppressive U.S.-backed government was replaced with a revolutionary socialist state.

In addition to marking the end of American imperialism in Cuba, the victory on January 1, 1959 also concluded 467 years of serfdom and exploitation by a foreign power. Spain dominated and exploited Cuban labour and resources from 1510 until its defeat in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Unfortunately, the victory over Spain did not bring Cubans the liberation and independence that they had hoped for.  Instead, one oppressor was merely substituted for another.

After its victory in the Spanish-American War, the U.S. transformed Cuba into a neo-colony. Subsequently, in the years following 1898, the U.S intervened militarily and exercised imperial power over Cuba, exploiting its natural and human resources, and dictating Cuba’s domestic and foreign policies. During that period, the Cuban economy became highly dependent on the U.S., as “74% of Cuba’s exports were destined for the US, while 73% of its imports came from the US…the all-important Cuban US sugar export market and price were controlled in Washington” (Ritter, 2010, p. 3). In fact, “[b]y the 1950s, the U.S. controlled 80 percent of Cuban utilities, 90 percent of Cuban mines, close to 100 percent of the country’s oil refineries, 90 percent of its cattle ranches, and 40 percent of the sugar industry”[1].

In addition to exploiting Cuba’s natural resources and labour, U.S. dominance also led to the vulnerability of women on the island being taken advantage of as, prior to the revolution, many girls in the urban areas served as prostitutes for American tourists and businessmen. Shortly after the revolution, the Cuban regime shut down all casinos and brothels, marginalized the mafia, and curtailed international tourism to the island. Furthermore, the Cuban government also nationalized foreign enterprises and utilities, and instituted a number of land and agrarian reforms. The U.S. retaliated by imposing a commercial, economic and financial embargo in 1962, which blocked almost all trade between the two countries and banned U.S. citizens from travelling to Cuba.

The anniversary of the death of Camilo Cienfuegos is commemorated every year on October 28^th in Cuba. In 2009, on the 50^th anniversary of his death, Camilo’s face was added to the Plaza de la Revolución, beside that of Ché Guevara, along with his  famous quote: “Vas bien, Fidel ” (You’re doing fine, Fidel). Camilo is also featured on Cuban currency, as he is depicted on the convertible and non-convertible 20 peso bills.

The name of Cienfuegos is always remembered along with those of Antonio Maceo Grajales (1845-1896) and José Julián Martí Pérez (1853-1895), two well-known Cuban independence heroes, as well as Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro, Ché Guevara, and Juan Almeida Bosque, the leaders of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. The names of all of these independence heroes are synonymous with movements against neo-colonial or imperialist domination, economic colonization, exploitation and humiliation. They have served as inspirations for similar movements since the victory of the Cuban Revolution and will continue to do so well into the future. As Fidel Castro stated in his speech to announce the death of Camilo Cienfuegos to the Cuban people on November 1, 1959:  “There are many Camilos among our people!”

Notes

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in coordination with the National Defense Forces (NDF) and the Palestinian militia “Liwaa Al-Quds” smashed the ISIS militants at the western outskirts of Ithriyah. This provides a ground to reopen the road between Ithriyah and Salamiyah inside the Hama province.

Nonetheless this success looks badly amid the ISIS counter actions in another sector. Militants cut off route along the Aleppo-Khanasser highway that leads to the Aleppo province. As long as ISIS has control of the road, the Syiran government’s supplies aren’t possible through it.

Since Saturday morning, the SAA and its allies have continued their operations in Jabal Al-Akrad, targeting Al-Nusra’s defensive positions at the northern axis of Kataf Al-Ghaddar. In addition to the capture of Kataf Al-Ghaddar, the Syrian Arab Army’s Special Forces have advanced inside the strategic city of Salma, capturing several building blocks and hilltops from the terrorists.

The area around Salma has become on the Russian Air Force’s primary targets due to its proximity to the terrorist stronghold of Jisr Al-Shughour. Separately, the Russian Air Force has continued to bomb ISIS targets in the Al-Raqqa province.

Another top commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), Brigadier General Reza Khavari, was killed in clashes in the Northern parts of the province of Hama on October 22. SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence remembers 7 other IRGC members, mostly from Ansar Corps, have been martyred in Syria in the last days according to the confirmed reports.

Russia has been continuing diplomatic efforts to set a wide coalition aimed to conduct anti-terror operations in Syria and Iraq instead of trying to overthrow Assad by supporting militant powers in the region. On October 23, Russia and Jordan made an agreement to set a coordination center in Amman. The center will be used to share information on the counter-terrorism operations. Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria already have a Baghdad-based center used for the same goal.

This activity is hardly facing a joint counter-strategy from the US-led powers and regional elites. On the one hand, Western media, think tanks and experts argue that Russia doesn’t fight ISIS. On the other hand, same think tanks and experts believe that without the direct Russian military involvement, the Islamic State had all chances to break the back of the Syrian forces by the end of 2015.

In this case, ISIS had to launch attacks west of Palmyra against the T4 Airbase, Homs city and Qusayr while Al Nusra and other so-called “moderate rebels” were advancing in northern Latakia, Aleppo city, and northern Damascus. Then ISIS had to exercise a death blow to the dispersed government forces by attacking south of Homs.

Thus, the establishment of a Russian airbase in Latakia in September 2015 smashed these plans by preventing both “moderate terrorists” and ISIS from advancing along Syria’s central corridor. Nonetheless, it seems that a part of Western elites aren’t happy by this result. They prefer to see Syria divided among ISIS militants, Al Nusra and other terrorist groups.

Nonetheless, the Pentagon has offered a new strategy to regain the initiative in the Middle East. As SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence forecasted, the strategy will include coordinated offensives involving Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish forces, the Iraqi army and Iranian-backed Shia militias supported by the US Air Force. Ash Carter, the US defense secretary, and senior officials are expected to outline the strategy to Congress next week.

We remember, Iraqi forces retook the town of Baiji in the Salaheddin province on Tuesday. Baiji is located about 180 kilometers south of the major city of Mosul, which fell to the ISIS militants in June 2014. The town, which is home to Iraq’s largest oil refinery, has been the scene of fierce clashes between terrorists and pro-government forces over the past weeks. Upcoming US-led military efforts will be likely focused there.

“The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.”  (J.Edgar Hoover, 1895-1972.)

Did the Government believe the claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or was the aim regime change, which has no basis whatsoever in international law? Was this the real motivation? Secondly, when was the decision taken to go to war? Was it at Crawford or Camp David, in April 2002, (Lord Morris of Aberavon, House of Lords, October 22, 2015

*      *      *

“Sir Cover Up” 

Just five days after it was revealed (1) that former British Prime Minster Tony Blair and then President George W. Bush had made a pact to attack Iraq and overthrow the country’s sovereign government a full year before the invasion took place – as Blair continued to mislead government and populace stating that diplomacy was being pursued and no decisions made – another snake has slithered from under the hay (as the Arab saying goes) in the form of Sir Jeremy Heywood.

Sir Jeremy who has been unkindly dubbed “Sir Cover Up” by sections of the media is Prime Minister David Cameron’s Cabinet Secretary, thus the UK’s top Civil Servant.

According to the Daily Mail, Sir Jeremy has: “insisted he did not deserve his reputation as the secretive and manipulative power behind the throne” and was “frustrated” at his public portrayal.

However:

“Sources close to the Iraq Inquiry claim it was held up for months while chairman Sir John Chilcot argued with Sir Jeremy about which documents could be put in the public domain.

“In the end, Sir Jeremy insisted that 150 messages between Tony Blair and George Bush in the run-up to the 2003 war must be censored. Only the ‘gists’ of the messages and selected quotes will be released. (Emphasis mine.)

“Former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said it was ‘wholly inappropriate’ that Sir Jeremy had been involved in decisions on the Iraq Inquiry, given his role as Mr. Blair’s Private Secretary at the time of the war.” (2)

Sir Jeremy was Principal Private Secretary to Tony Blair from June 1999 to July 2003 and would thus have been party to every step of the scheming and untruths about the invasion and surely the plotting between Bush and Blair to attack, during their April 2002, three day meeting at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. (See 1.)

Subsequently Heywood stepped in to the same position when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister after Blair’s resignation, a post he held between January 2008 and May 2010, so would also have been party to the plans for and structure of the Chilcot Inquiry in to the war, which was set up by Brown. Thus those involved in the bloodbath and invasion, convened the Inquiry in to the illegality.

Gordon Brown as Blair’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote the cheques for the years of illegal UK bombings of Iraq and for the UK’s participation in “Operation Iraqi Liberation” (OIL.) He also wrote the cheques for Britain’s part in the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan.

According to Ministry of Defence figures, the total cost of UK military operation in Iraq, 2003-2009, was £8.4 Billion – ongoing since they are back bombing, with Special Forces in Northern Iraq – and it would be unsurprising if also elsewhere in the country, given Britain’s duplicitous track record. To 2013 the cost of UK operations in Afghanistan reached £37 Billion, also ongoing.

David Cameron who voted to attack Iraq told a news programme at the time: “You’ve got to do what you think right, even if it’s unpopular …”, near mirroring Blair’s “I know I’m right” of the same time. Cameron admires Blair, regarding him as a “mentor.” At every level of government past and present, there are vested interests in the truth on Iraq never coming out.

Cameron’s words on his election as Prime Minister come to mind again: “We’re all in it together.”

Of Sir Jeremy, political commentator Peter Oborne has written: “Heywood is a perfect manifestation of everything that has gone so very wrong with the British civil service over the past 15 years.” (3)

House of Lords Debate:  Prelude to a Criminal Indictment of Tony Blair? 

On Thursday, 22^nd October, in a debate in the House of Lords, Tony Blair’s former Attorney General (May 1997-July 1999) Lord Morris of Aberavon cited the “scandalous delay” in producing the Chilcot Report.

Sir John Chilcot’s Inquiry took evidence between November 2009 and 2^nd February 2011. Costing £10 million (and rising) the final Report is now not expected until summer 2016 and maybe even sometime in 2017.

The families and friends of the 179 British service people who died had been “badly let down” by the delays, stated his Lordship. Indeed, but, tragic as the whole Iraq horror is for the UK’s bereaved, their sons, daughters, relatives, signed up to join the armed forces, trained extensively in killing other human beings and had the lawful right, if in conscience they believed it wrong, illegal, to refuse to serve.

In their debate (4) their Lordships devoted no time to the grief of the relatives of the over one million Iraqi dead, the 800,000 Iraqi children who have lost one or both parents, the million widows, the maimed, the limbless, those who lost their minds, homes, all, in the horror, who also are “badly let down”, their need for answers paramount. Only Lord Dykes in just two lines referred to: “ … the fate of Iraqi civilians. That should be a substantial part of this report.”

Lord Dykes also encapsulated the hitherto unspoken questions:

*“Why was it so important for them to turn on Saddam Hussein if regime change was not the main driver?

*”Why did Tony Blair have those embarrassing exchanges in 2002 when there was no question of there being any declaration of war?

*“Why did the then Government ignore the instinct and feelings of 1.5 million people marching down Piccadilly to protest about what was still an illegal war?

*”Why did the Americans and the British ignore the wise advice of the French Government under President Chirac and Foreign Secretary Dominique de Villepin about the mistake of going to war on that occasion?”

In a surely clear reference to Sir Jeremy Heywood, Lord Morris said that: “ …  the saddest feature of the inquiry process was the ‘strenuous effort’ of the Cabinet Office to block the committee from having access to ‘swathes of vital documentation,’ including notes from Blair to Bush” adding: “ Respect for good governance is undermined if Reports don’t see the light of day before issues become dimmed in public memory.”

Lord Parekh also referred to the “delay” caused by: “the dispute over access to various documents”, Sir Jeremy’s spectre stalked the Chamber:

“For example, it took nearly a year to obtain the Blair-Bush correspondence and the notes Mr Blair is supposed to have left with Mr Bush, to read them and to decide whether to include them in the report.”

Baroness Falkner was surely also referring to Blair and Cameron’s ally, “Sir Cover Up” when she said:

“Looking at the sequencing of events, it is clear that there was some kind of stand-off between the Cabinet Secretary and the Inquiry team, which lasted for a while … it took from July 2012 to January 2015 to reach an agreement on publishing the Blair-Bush correspondence.”

And does that refer to the “censored” version?

Lady Falkner made a vital point regarding David Cameron’s desire to emulate Blair in visiting a full scale “Shock and Awe” on another devastated country which poses Britain no threat and which would be as unlawful as Iraq:

“I want to pick up the issue of our continuing intervention in the Middle East. Let us go back to the August 2013 vote on not intervening in Syria. We as a country cannot, and should not, make a decision on that until we know of our hand in setting that region ablaze in the first instance. That is the least we owe the country.”

Earl Attlee had hands on experience having served as a Territorial Army Officer in Iraq during the Invasion had clearly had enough of prevarications:

“I do not believe that democratic leaders can lead a country to war without being held to account for the decisions that they made on our behalf. I could see the ‘dodgy dossier’ for what it was … “

Baroness Williams was equally scathing, demanding: “ … the truest possible account of this, which I think is the second-gravest mistake ever made in the history of the United Kingdom’s foreign policy after the end of the Second World War.”

Comparing the Iraq disaster to the 1956 Suez crisis in “scale” and “effect”, she stated:

“Today, when we look at what has been tragically not only an attempt to try to invade Iraq but, perhaps more crucially, an attempt to see the Middle East fade away into a situation where there is almost no legally available support, let us not forget that an invasion based on the argument that you need regime change has no place in international law and no place in the United Nations.” (Emphasis mine.)

In context, Suez has been described (5) as: “ … one of the most important and controversial events in British history since the Second World War. Not only did Suez result in deep political and public division in Britain, it also caused international uproar.”

“It has come to be regarded as the end of Britain’s role as one of the world powers and as the beginning of the end for the British Empire.”

Suez led to the downfall of Prime Minister Anthony Eden whom, it was widely believed, had mislead Parliament over the degree of collusion between Britain and Israel.

Tony Blair also mislead Parliament, including over the extent of his collusion with George W. Bush. Ironically he has also been described as: “having an unremitting record of bias toward Israel.” (Electronic Intifada, 29^th June 2007.) When he was – Orewellianly – appointed “Middle East Peace Envoy”, he was described as: “A true friend of the State of Israel” by then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and: “a very well appreciated figure in Israel” by then Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Eden and Blair may have more in common regarding their actions in the Middle East than meet the eye. Eden however simply sunk into obscurity whereas the clamour for Blair to account for his actions grow ever louder. The petition to Parliament for his arrest for war crimes and misleading the nation has nearly reached the required 10,000 when it is mandatory for the Prime Minister to respond. At 100,000 a Parliamentary debate can be called.

“Dead-End Road” towards a War Crimes Trial?

The Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn told BBC Newsnight that Blair could see a war crimes trial over the: “illegal Iraq invasion.”

www.arrestblair.org established by journalist George Monbiot: “offers a reward to people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, for crimes against the peace.” So far five credible attempts have been made and around £13,000 paid out.

As events are unfolding there may soon be no more wriggle room for all those involved in the lies and cover ups. Their Nuremberg may yet await. It is owed to those who lost their lives for a pack of lies. For the people of Iraq it is a sacred accounting, a debt of ultimate honour and a woefully inadequate apology which might at least demand reparations..

Notes:

1.     http://www.globalresearch.ca/tony-blairs-deal-in-blood-with-george-w-bush-to-attack-iraq-one-year-before-the-march-2003-invasion/5483029

2.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3279702/Don-t-call-Sir-Cover-Britain-s-civil-servant-Jeremy-Heywood-rejects-claims-muzzling-ministers-Heathrow.html

3.     http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sir-jeremy-heywood-the-most-powerful-751584

4.     http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201516/ldhansrd/text/151022-0002.htm#15102244000633

5.     http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/projects/suez/suez.html

6.     https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/108495

What is “Benghazi,” Washington’s long-running kabuki circus, really about?

Is it about dead diplomats and CIA mercenaries? Foreign service security? Terrorist attacks and Islamaphobic movies? Emails and Sidney Blumenthal? Whether Hillary Clinton cares, or whether she spends the night alone? Does the Benghazi committee, or anyone else, really know what “Benghazi” is about?

On September 11, 2012, as Libya fell deeper into chaos, one of the organized and well-armed jihadi groups used outrage at an Islamaphobic movie as a cover for attacking the “special mission compound” (not the embassy in Tripoli, not a consulate) that served as a cover for the nearby CIA mission station. The jihadis in that attack killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and his information officer Sean Smith. One of the missions Stevens was working on was retrieving weapons in Libya before they fell into the hands of jihadi groups like the one that killed him. So far, for three years, no one has seemed to wonder whether the jihadis were aware of Stevens’ mission and his presence in Benghazi that night.

What gave “Benghazi” legs from the start was not any curiosity about why things happened as they did, but why the Obama administration started obfuscating immediately. One obvious reason was the 2012 presidential campaign, which might be hurt by admitting a “terrorist” attack. Republicans and mainstream media greeted the event with accusations and blame for the president. So the administration bobbed and weaved and sent UN ambassador Susan Rice out to TV land, where she told a long line of talking heads an unforthcoming and variable story that was essentially inaccurate. Rice’s talking points were vetted by the CIA, which had things to keep hidden. At the Benghazi hearing Republican congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio cited evidence that Clinton had spread the same false story while knowing it was false:

“You can’t be square with the American people. You tell your family it’s a terrorist attack but not the American people. You tell the Libyan president it’s a terrorist attack but not the American people. You tell the Egyptian prime minister it’s a terrorist attack but not the American people.”

Clinton denied Jordan’s interpretation of the evidence, but offered no alternative. No one mentioned the CIA. When the committee chair invited Clinton to respond at greater length, she ducked and plugged her book instead: “I wrote a whole chapter about this in my book, Hard Choices. I’d be glad to send it to you, congressman.”

Hillary Clinton’s performance was well prepared and impressive

From her opening statement on, Clinton made it clear what her talking points were and she maintained them with remarkable composure and occasional good nature. She began slickly, acknowledging the “terrorist attacks” and then taking the high ground of honoring the fallen:

“The terrorist attacks at our diplomatic compound and later, at the CIA post in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, took the lives of four brave Americans…. I’m here to honor the service of those four men. The courage of the Diplomatic Security Agency and the CIA officers who risked their lives that night. And the work their colleagues do every single day all over the world.”

Then she spent some time on Chris Stevens, whom she knew and admired as “one of our nation’s most accomplished diplomats.” In 2012, Stevens had been in the Foreign Service 21 years and was named to his first ambassadorship that May. By then he was well known for his sometimes unorthodox ingenuity and effectiveness, as Clinton said:

“When the revolution broke out in Libya, we named Chris as our envoy to the opposition. There was no easy way to get him into Benghazi to begin gathering information and meeting those Libyans who were rising up against the murderous dictator Gadhafi. But he found a way to get himself there on a Greek cargo ship, just like a 19th-century American envoy. But his work was very much 21st-century, hard-nosed diplomacy….

“I was the one who asked Chris to go to Libya as our envoy. I was the one who recommended him to be our ambassador to the president….

“Chris Stevens understood that diplomats must operate in many places where our soldiers do not, where there are no other boots on the ground and safety is far from guaranteed. In fact, he volunteered for just those assignments.”

A lawyer who never practiced law, Stevens had a resume that included stints as an embassy political officer in Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, and Riyadh. He had served with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and with Senator Richard Lugar. At the State Department, he was special assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs and was in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs as the Iran desk officer. And he had worked in Libya twice before, in 2007-2009 and in 2011, as envoy to the opposition during the Libyan revolution.

One of Stevens’ jobs in Libya was running guns to Syrian rebels

Since Chris Stevens was a smart, savvy, alert operative who was surely aware of the significance of the 9/11 date, the obvious question is: why did he decide to be in Benghazi, with limited security, on that date? What seemed important enough to him to take such an obvious risk? Hillary Clinton answered the question this way:

“Nobody knew the dangers of Libya better. A weak government, extremist groups, rampant instability. But Chris chose to go to Benghazi because he understood America had to be represented there at that pivotal time. He knew that eastern Libya was where the revolution had begun and that unrest there could derail the country’s fragile transition to democracy. And if extremists gained a foothold, they would have the chance to destabilize the entire region, including Egypt and Tunisia. He also knew how urgent it was to ensure that the weapons Gadhafi had left strewn across the country, including shoulder-fired missiles that could knock an airplane out of the sky, did not fall into the wrong hands. The nearest Israeli airport is just a day’s drive from the Libyan border.”

That’s a nice bit of hide-in-plain sight deflection. Stevens was in Benghazi for two days. He wasn’t “representing” America there, his post was Tripoli. But it sounds good to have him in Benghazi to protect Egypt and Tunisia (even though Tunisia was blessed to avoid American “help” and is perhaps the most stable country in the region now). Clinton even throws in Israel to further blur her listeners’ minds with an imaginary and rather dangerous “day’s drive from the Libyan border.” That’s chutzpah! And well done, with a straight face.

The nugget of reality embedded in largely fatuous rhetoric is the urgency to secure “the weapons Gadhafi had left strewn across the country, including shoulder-fired missiles….” That seems one of the most likely reasons Stevens was in Benghazi, to secure those weapons somehow. Storing them at the special mission compound was not a good option, and even the CIA annex was only temporarily safe. These weapons had to go somewhere safe, or useful, and there was an operational stream already in place, from Benghazi through Turkey, to some of the Syrian rebels the US thought might be worth supporting there. Syrian rebels, with no air force of their own, were at the mercy of the government air force, and surface-to-air missiles would be helpful (we knew the technique worked, having supplied surface-to-air missiles to the mujahedeen to shoot down Russian aircraft in Afghanistan some 35 years ago).

In his last official action on September 11, 2012, Chris Stevens met with a Turkish diplomat thought to be involved with shipping Libyan weapons through Turkey to Syrian rebels.

Weapons flowed along a CIA rat line established in early 2012

Officially denied, but credibly reported by Seymour Hersh and others, the idea of US shipping arms to Syrian rebels without Congressional authorization is hardly radical or shocking. It’s a condition best assumed to be true, since means, motive, and opportunity are all aligned. In the London Review of Books of April 17, Hersh wrote:

“The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida.”

In early 2012 President Obama signed a secret order authorizing support for Syrian rebels. In early 2011, President Obama had signed a secret order authorizing support for Libyan rebels. Some of the subsequent covert action was known as Operation Zero Footprint. It was widely known within the intelligence community, the administration (including Clinton), and Congress. There’s no credible explanation of where the Libyan weapons went, and almost no one asks. When Republican congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas brought these covert operations up at the Benghazi hearing, his three questions to Clinton were all framed as “awareness” questions. His second question was about weapons to Syria (the other two were about weapons to Libyan rebels):

“Were you aware or are you aware of any U.S. efforts by the U.S. government in Libya to provide any weapons, directly or indirectly, or through a cutout, to any Syrian rebels or militias or opposition to Syrian forces?”

That’s a softball question with so many moving parts (and bad grammar) that any decent lawyer would have no trouble evading. The repetition in “U.S. efforts by the U.S. government” is a huge loophole, since the Libyan operation was run by NATO. Clinton answered the Syrian question and the other two with a single word: “No.” There were no follow-up questions. Clinton no doubt has credible deniability on Stevens’ involvements in gun-running, but that doesn’t explain why a Kansas Republican went out of his was to ask her cover-your-butt questions.

Living in denial means not having to explain what’s real

The official story, the consensus narrative for most of Washington and the mainstream media, is that gun-running out of Benghazi is “bogus” or a “fantasy” or a “myth.” Using all these words in Newsweek on October 21, Kurt Eichenwald goes on at some length to defend the official story. Late in his piece he gets to the gun-running and explains it away with a counter-myth of his own:

“No one advancing this fantasy ever explains how a secretary of state could be directing an intelligence operation that would be handled by the CIA.”

As if Clinton and almost anyone else in a position of intelligence authority in any administration wouldn’t know better than to make secret operations obscure. This is a classic strawman argument with Clinton as the strawman. The Newsweek story also cites a Republican report from the House Permanent Select Committee that said in part:

“All CIA activities in Benghazi were legal and authorized. On-the-record testimony establishes that CIA was not sending weapons (including MANPADS) from Libya to Syria, or facilitating other organizations or states that were transferring weapons from Libya to Syria.”

Yes, perhaps all CIA activities were legal and authorized by secret presidential findings. That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. “On-the-record testimony” is pretty weak evidence for anything in the intelligence world. And even if the testimony is technically accurate, it’s hardly relevant to an operation run by NATO. The best evidence that we’re being lied to is the amazing amount of smoke and mirrors deployed to assure us we’re being told the truth. And that smoke and mirrors includes the Benghazi committee’s reluctance (as well as previous investigations’ failure) to look at the core issues with integrity – which is understandable, since that might well lead to a constitutional crisis. But while failure of integrity is quieter and calmer than confrontation, that failure is itself a constitutional crisis that we have lived with for decades now.

The Newsweek story castigates Republicans for refusing to “accept facts over fantasies,” which is fair enough as far as it goes. But when the alternative is a set of facts equally fantastical, that’s really no help. But Eichenwald piles on, virtually accusing Republicans of being terrorists:

“No doubt, the terrorists set on attacking America are cheering them on. Nothing could delight some terrorist sitting in a Syrian or Libyan or Iraqi hovel while hearing a top Republican congressman brag on television that a relatively small attack on a U.S. compound continues to threaten to transform a presidential election in the most powerful country in the world.”

That is shameless fearmongering. That is an intimidation tactic designed to enforce silence and reinforce denial. He could call for honest questions designed to get honest answers. That would be new. But the official answers have already been decreed, so everyone just needs to move on. And to add shamelessness to shamelessness, Eichenwald’s final, irrelevant, blatantly manipulative emotional appeal is to “allow the dead to finally rest in peace.” That offends the living and the dead.

Does anyone really want a serious exploration of the deeper issues?

Democrats on the Benghazi committee have outlined the omissions in the investigation (such as key witnesses from the defense and intelligence hierarchies) that demonstrate its lack of seriousness to date. It’s not that the Democrats were unduly concerned about the lack of a serious investigation, it took them months even to mention it, and their letter of July 15, 2015, was far from a call for integrity of process. What motivated the Democrats, understandably, was the appearance that the Republican majority had shifted its focus to make Hillary Clinton the primary target of the Benghazi committee.

The received wisdom on Benghazi is that, as The New Yorker dutifully put it: “There have now been seven full investigations of the circumstances surrounding the Benghazi attack, five in the House and two in the Senate.” This formulation omits other investigations by the State Dept.’s Accountability Review Board and news media, etc. Each previous investigation seems to have reached a conclusion that the events in Benghazi were somewhere between “untidy” and “a mess,” but none recommended any indictments. However the assumption that any investigation has been “full” is a false assumption. None of them have yet explored the shared assumptions that made Benghazi possible, if not inevitable.

In her opening statement, Hillary Clinton referred to the current shared assumptions that shape American behavior in the world. No one on the committee contradicted her.

“America must lead in a dangerous world….

“We have learned the hard way when America is absent, especially from unstable places, there are consequences. Extremism take root, aggressors seek to fill the vacuum and security everywhere is threatened, including here at home. That’s why Chris [Stevens] was in Benghazi. It’s why he had served previously in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem during the second intifada….

“Retreat from the world is not an option. America cannot shrink from our responsibility to lead…. ”

This mantra is a variation on the creed of American exceptionalism, but it is only a belief system. This is not an analytical assessment of anything. “America must lead” is not a clearly self-evident proposition, it is only an article of faith. Others believe otherwise. Some surely believe the world would be a less dangerous place without American leadership, certainly without the kind of leadership America has provided for the past 35 years.

Clinton herself points to the contradiction inherent in her doctrine of American goodness. To defend her belief, she resorts to fearmongering. She is objectively wrong to assert, as a universal truth, that “when America is absent,” bad things happen. Tunisia is only the most obvious example of places where America’s absence is a blessing. Her list of places where Chris Stevens served is a list of horrors and failures – Syria is a failed state, Jerusalem continues to suffer, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are brutal dictatorships that we have helped sustain for decades.

“Retreat from the world” is, in fact, an option. But it is an option with a range of meanings from reduced engagement to isolationism. What we’ve been doing for decades has not helped make the world a better place. Our most engaged interventions have made the world a much worse place, especially in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. When Hillary Clinton claims, as she did, that “America is the greatest force for peace and progress the world has ever known,” she must known that’s not true. And she must also know it’s especially not true for Libya, where she was the prime architect for the “peace and progress” that has produced yet another failed state.

Opposition to rampant American militarism is rare, but not unknown. At a hearing little more than a month after the Benghazi attacks, at an October 16, 2012, hearing, Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio spoke eloquently to the wider context in which Chris Stevens died, in an intervention taken without constitutional authority:

“We bombed Libya. We destroyed their army. We obliterated their police stations. Lacking any civil authority, armed brigades control security. Al-Qaeda expanded its presence. Weapons are everywhere. Thousands of shoulder-to-air missiles are on the loose. Our military intervention led to greater instability in Libya….

“We want to stop the attacks on our embassies? Let’s stop trying to overthrow governments. This should not be a partisan issue. Let’s avoid the hype. Let’s look at the real situation here. Interventions do not make us safer. They do not protect our nation. They are themselves a threat to America.

Pity the poor Republicans. They want to pillory Hillary Clinton without denigrating her rash rush to war in Libya. They want to blame Democrats for casualties without abandoning their policies designed to shed more blood. That’s a tricky tightrope, and it’s entertaining, at first, to watch them cling to it. The fun stops when you realize what the real stakes are for our nation, that USA that everyone at the hearing purports to love, even as they do it varying forms of grievous harm. Honest answers about “Benghazi” won’t be had until someone asks honest questions.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, October 27, 2015

Washington is thinking about creating a no-fly zone in Syria again. According to a new plan, it will be located at the border between Jordan and Syria. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a main lobbyist of the creation of buffer zones.

Despite the fact that Obama’s administration has turned back to considering this plan, it will be hardly put into practice.

The US security chiefs understand clearly that this plan needs strengthening of the US air and ground forces in Syria, major logistical and technical efforts.

Video

scroll down for (approximate transcript)

Transcript

The Russian military presence in the region makes this even harder than earlier. Any kind of a no-fly zone in Syria will fuel additional tensions between the two world powers. Another point is that without the US ground contingent, this zone will be controlled by the US local allies whose elites at least partly support terrorists in Syria. Despite the US pivot of Turkey noticed by SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence in the recent videos, the situation remains complicated. At least, Turkey elites arent the only power which can support terrorists in Syria.

On account of the recent developments, the US has three main approaches in Syria:

First is to continue diplomatic efforts to counter Russian activity and recapture initiative in the region. Indeed, it means to allow a free hand to Russia to fight terrorism and support Assad. This kind of a defensive strategy isnt fully acceptable for the White House because of political and PR expenses.

Second is for opposition groups with mainly Kurds to be formed to build a pro-US force acceptable to a public opinion in the Syrian battlefield. The problem is that powers in Saudi Arabia will continue to supply arms and equipment to Al Nusra. It leads to strengthening of pro-Saudi militant groups and Al Qaedas entrenching in Syria. If Assad is overthrown or just go as result of a political solution, Al Qaeda will become a main Syrian power. SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence hardly believe that Saudi elites will miss the chance to use this power in their own interests

Third is to establish a no-fly or a buffer zone aligning itself with a side of the conflict definitely. This will lead to the problems showcased by us in the videos beginning. We are sure that Pentagon and CIA understand this threat.

Thus, the US will continue to conduct a joint strategy grounded on these approaches. It will include the most favourable ways to hold the US interests in Syria. A No-fly zone and buffer-zone projects will be hardly supported by the US on the official level. Nonetheless, Saudi Arabias activity aimed to supply terrorists with arms and equipment wont be prevented in the nearest future, especially in Idlib. Its aimed to show that the Syrian offensive supported by the Russian Air Force doesnt work.

Indeed, this approach has a big strategic problem. In case of the US-led ground offensive, Syrian Kurds will probably expand their actions in regions without Kurdish population. After the storm of Raqqa, they wont become a major power in the most part of the Syrian territory. So, in the mid-term perspective, the US will need to improve its efforts in Syria by new approaches and ideas. One of them could be to continue the local efforts to counter ISIS presence de-facto assisting Russia in the region. On October 10, Russia and the USA signed an agreement regulating the operations of their air forces in Syria. This is a fact confirming the possibility. Nonetheless, if the US considers to counter Russian presence by a hard means, it could turn to the idea of supporting pro-Saudi terrorist groups as al Nusra.

As he prepares to launch a new, pan-European movement for change, Yanis Varoufakis sits down with Can Europe make it? to discuss democracy in Europe, Brexit, and the other part of Plan X.

Alex Sakalis: I’m very interested in this transnational, pan-European movement you are preparing to launch, the details of which you’ve been teasing us with…

Yanis Varoufakis: I’m not teasing you. It’s just that it takes time to establish.

AS: What forces are you hoping to bring together with this pan-European movement?

YV: It began as an idea after the crushing of what I call the Athens spring, which happened in the summer. It became abundantly clear that at the level of the nation-state you can’t even table proposals regarding your own country, let alone proposals for the eurozone as a whole. I experienced the Eurogroup at very close quarters and it was obvious that it was not a forum in which to discuss how to stabilise the European social economy, or how to democratise it. That is just impossible – it can’t be done.

So you know when our government effectively overthrew itself – for this is what we did – we overthrew ourselves, our programme…

AS: A self-coup?

YV: Yes, but that of course was precisely the intention of the troika. That is what they really enjoy doing. Making us not only renege on everything we said, but also forcing us to be the ones who must implement the very programme we loathed and which we were elected to challenge.

So once this happened, the only question was: was it worth starting something afresh in Greece? To have another go? Another bite of the cherry? And my conclusion was that the answer to that is no. What would be the point of starting another campaign for two years – that is how long it would take – just to return to where we were, where I was, one up against eighteen?

If my diagnosis is correct, what is going on in Greece is simply a reflection – an echo – of a far deeper crisis throughout the eurozone, which cannot be solved at any national or member-state level. The obvious conclusion one must draw from this is that either you argue for a dissolution of the monetary union, and then you can talk about national politics again quite sensibly. Or you should be talking about a pan-European movement for change throughout the eurozone. It is one or the other.

Now the former appeals to many. And this is a debate which is happening in Britain as well, outside the monetary union but within the European Union. It doesn’t appeal to me. Not because I have any illusions about Brussels, Frankfurt and the European Union. I have written extensively and spoken out extensively against the very DNA of the European Union. However it is one thing to criticise a set of institutions like the European Union, criticise the way it was put together and the way it functions. It is quite another thing to argue that it should be dismantled. This is what we call in mathematics, hysteresis. The path that you take to somewhere, once you get to that somewhere, doesn’t exist any more. We can’t just turn around upon the original path and find ourselves outside where we used to be. So we have walked this path towards a particular union, however toxic it might be, and if we try to step back from it, we are going to fall off a cliff.

That is my view. It is exactly what happened in the 1920s. There was a union at that time. It wasn’t formalised but it was very strong. It was the gold standard. Its fragmentation brought about apocalyptic human losses and I very much fear that we would have the same thing now.

Therefore, I followed my own thinking through to the extent that I can, logically, and reached the conclusion that a pan-European movement is the only solution. It sounds utopian, but this idea cemented in my mind in August when I started travelling across Europe, and realised that there was a great deal of hunger and thirst everywhere I went for such an idea.

People would come to listen to me in their thousands, not because they so much wanted to lend solidarity to Greece, or to me, but just because the experience of this negotiation between Greece and the troika hit a nerve everywhere. And the people who come to listen and to discuss with me and my colleagues are worried about themselves, their own countries, Europe. So I put two and two together and end up with the conclusion, at least for me personally, that the only thing that is worth fighting for is this coalescence at the European level with one very simple, but radical, idea: to democratise Europe.

People might say, “pah, Europe is democratic.” No it is not. Not democratic at all. So to democratise it is actually a very radical idea that goes against every fibre in the body and soul of those people in Brussels.

AS: Tell us more about who you have been speaking to so far in your travels who you hope to bring onto this pan-European platform?

YV: This is one reason, in my view, why this should be a movement, and not a party and not an elite. This is not about giving you a list, a roll call of significant politicians. If it’s a movement it has to be a grassroots movement. So I have just come back from Coimbra in Portugal. Before that I was in Barcelona with the magnificent new mayor, Ada Colau, who is working together with me on this. In France there are lots of people, a very wide range of people who are interested: academics, activists, unionists, politicians. Arnaud Montebourg is one person who is definitely on board. We have people from Die Linke, from the Social Democratic Party in Germany, and very good, genuinely good people from the Kreisky Forum in Austria. So as I said before, I’m not teasing: it takes some time before we can launch this.

AS: Would any of these people be in favour of leaving the EU? Would you include people who have arrived at that different judgment in your movement?

YV: Well, I don’t believe in a Leninist kind of party where you create the parameters in advance and then people are allowed in in order to serve them. I don’t think that people who want to leave the EU would be drawn to this, because this would be a movement about democratising Europe. There may be, and there will be a lot of discussion about currency, about what happens when we have a repetition of the experience that I had, being told that either you accept the established order of things or it’s the highway for you. So there will be no preset position on currencies except that there will be no preset position either in favour of getting out of the eurozone.

My view personally, and I keep repeating this, is that it is politically a mistake and financially an error to start planning for the dissolution of the eurozone as something which you want to achieve. We shouldn’t be scared of threats that we will be thrown out of the eurozone. But that’s a different story.

AS: So would Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party be welcome to join your movement?

YV: Absolutely. But you see it is important to make this point. This is not going to be a coalition of parties. It should be a coalition of citizens. They can belong to any party they want. This will not admit parties into it. It is not a party and it is not an alliance of parties. The idea is to create a grassroots movement across Europe of European citizens interested in democratising Europe. They can belong to any party. Of course they will be involved in other campaigns in their local communities, in their member states, in their nations. Maybe you will have people from different parties from the same country. I can easily imagine that, and actually I would like that. Because if the idea is not to replicate national politics, why can’t you have that? But personally, I count a lot on the Corbynites.

AS: Are you drawing up a manifesto?

YV: Yes. This is what we’re working on.

AS: Who’s writing it?

YV: I’m not going to give you names, and we will not sign it when we launch it. It will be a free floating text.

AS: Can you give us an estimated release date?

YV: It will be before Christmas.

AS: In the UK we are facing this referendum on whether we should leave or whether we should stay. openDemocracy has been discussing how this will be framed in the media and we think it may come down to something like this: “do we love business more than we hate immigrants, or do we hate immigrants more than we love business?”

YV: That’s an interesting way of putting it.

AS: But this is not the debate we should be having about Europe. This is quite an incredible, epochal choice the UK is faced with. How would you like to see the debate framed regarding our relationship with Europe and what we should demand of Europe?

YV: “Do we want a democratic Europe or not?” This is going back to what I was saying before. Europe and the European Union are not the same thing. The problem with the EU is that it has all the regalia of a supranational state, without being one. It is not only that it is not formally a state. Its DNA, its history, the way in which it has been put together is completely different from the way a state emerges. A state emerges as a result of the political need for a mechanism, a collective action mechanism, that ameliorates class conflict and group conflict.

So take the US or the UK. The English state began with the need to find some kind of balance between different lords and barons. The Magna Carta was a clash between the king’s central authority and the barons, and later on you had the clash between the landed gentry on one hand and the merchants. The industrialists come in and the working class comes in. Different groups clashing mercilessly for control. And the state emerges through this clash of these tectonic plates smashing one another and the state becomes the set of institutions that have legitimacy or try to base their legitimacy on a mandate from the population as a whole, in order to create some kind of balance of power – to equilibrate these conflicts, to stabilise them.

So this is how a state forms. By definition, the state, even if it is not democratic, as in China for instance, nevertheless is a purely political process for the purpose of stabilising social conflicts. Now Europe, Brussels, did not emerge like that. Europe emerged as a cartel of heavy industry. It began with steel and coal, and then they co-opted the farmers, then they co-opted the bankers, and then the car industry and then eventually the service industries, and so on and so forth. It was an attempt to create stable prices, to limit competition, the opposite of the raison d’etre of the British state and of course the American state. So the idea was to stabilise prices and to stop the clash between German industry, French industry, northern Italian industry, Dutch industry – that kind of thing.

There is a huge difference between a state that emerges as a political means for stabilising class conflict and the administrative personnel of a cartel. British industry was never part of that cartel and that is why Britain came so late to the European Common Market. Britain came in effectively to replace a lost empire by having access to these markets. But the markets were already cornered by the central European cartel. So the reason why the British establishment has never been enamoured of the European Union is because it never was part of the cartelising process which gave rise to Brussels. That is not a bad thing. But I’m trying to explain why in Germany, Holland, Belgium, the establishment, the elites, do not ever question the European Union, whereas in Britain it is questioned.

So here in the UK you end up with a situation where nobody likes it. The working class doesn’t like it, because the EU doesn’t have the interests of the working class of Britain in mind. But at the same time British industry does not have the same stake in it. The City has a stake in it, and some businesses, some small pockets of businesses also do have. Everything follows from this. The European Union had to develop a common currency because if you are going to build a cartel you need to have stable prices. For the first twenty years the stability of prices was guaranteed by Bretton Woods. After 1971, Europe tries to create its own gold standard Bretton Woods system, which then became the euro. So Britain is in a precarious situation vis a vis the EU. Britain keeps saying to the world that they want the single market but they don’t want Brussels. But they can’t have that.

AS: Well, they usually use the example of Norway or Switzerland.

YV: Well Norway and Switzerland have effectively deferred to Brussels. So do you want that?

AS: The debate doesn’t usually get that far…

YV: Yes, well that’s where it should go. So the question is, even if you get out of the Union, the labour standards, the environmental standards will in the end be dictated at the level of Europe.

AS: Because our economies are just too globalised and too interconnected?

YV: Look at TPP, TTIP and all that. This is not about tariffs and quotas any more, it is about standards. It is about industrial standards, environmental standards, labour standards and about patents. So who writes these rules? It won’t be a negotiation between Britain and the EU that writes those rules. It will be in Brussels that these rules will be written. And Britain will have a choice of take it or leave, outside the EU.

So my view is that the problems with the EU have to do with the way in which it was constructed in the first place as a democracy-free-zone. It is completely democracy-free by design. Britain is not – due to the difference between Brussels as opposed to London in terms of DNA. From my perspective, progressive Brits have no alternative other than to stay in the EU and join us in trying to democratise it. If we fail to democratise the EU, it really doesn’t make much of a difference whether we’re in or out. Unless of course Britain finds a way of replacing the 60% of its trade with the EU, with someone else. This it won’t be able to do.

AS: Owen Jones is calling for what he calls Lexit – a left-wing exit from the EU. What would you say to someone like him who would support everything you say about Europe and democracy, but still wants to leave the EU?

YV: Well, I’m facing this kind of argument in my country with former comrades of mine in the government who left and formed the Popular Unity Party, who are saying exactly the same thing. We can’t have a genuine conversation with the Eurogroup, so exit is the only solution.

My argument is that there are no easy solutions. I wish that we could create an alternative universe in which it would be possible to have a degree of autonomy, autarky, that allows you to clean out the Augean stables. You can’t. The idea that we will go back to an agricultural pastoral life is absurd. Today, even combine harvesters are governed by electronics that our countries do not necessarily produce.

You cannot step back from the globalised market and especially from the Europeanised market. So if you exit without having any capacity to participate in the democratisation of that market, then you will always be subject to a market that is run by technocrats and you will have even less degrees of freedom than you have now.

I think it’s very important not to fall into the nationalist trap of thinking that you can recoil back into the nation-state cocoon. That doesn’t mean that we should go along with Brussels. I’m not in favour of staying within the EU and playing ball. I think I have proven this beyond any reasonable doubt. I believe in staying in to subvert the rules. Even to go into a campaign of civil disobedience within. That for me is the left wing strategy. Not “Lexit”.

AS: How much power do national governments have over economic policy? When you were finance minister did you really feel in charge of your country’s destiny?

YV: No. Well it depends. Britain is very different from Greece. Not only because it is a more sizeable and significant economy, but also because it is not in the eurozone. If you are not in the eurozone you have a degree more freedom, there is no doubt about that. And I wish we had never entered the eurozone, which is not the same thing as my saying I think we should get out. Big difference.

So when you are inside the eurozone, your degree of freedom is minimal, if not zero. The only thing we could do was to renegotiate the whole package, to give us a degree of freedom. So one of the things this movement is going to be proposing is ways in which we can combine greater Europeanisation of particular realms like debt management, like the banking sector, aggregated investment, fighting poverty – to find European solutions for these in order to create more decentralisation, to give more degrees of freedom for social and economic policies at the level of the regions, the cities and of course, the nation. I believe that this is possible. It sounds like a contradiction, but I believe it is possible to gain these degrees of freedom if we Europeanise certain big problems.

AS: This leftwing economic opposition to ordoliberalism would have to go beyond Keynes then…?

YV: Textbook Keynes to be sure. But this would be a new variety of Keynes which is adapted to the circumstances of Europe. For years now with my friends James Galbraith and Stuart Holland, former Labour MP for Vauxhall, we have been putting together what we call ‘a modest proposal’, nicking the title from Jonathan Swift, which is a Keynesian idea of what to do with the eurozone that applies at the level of the eurozone and not at the level of nation-states.

So in it we explain how the existing institutions – the central bank, the European stability mechanism, the European investment bank – can be utilised in order to create a European new deal. An investment-led green new deal for Europe, with the investment bank playing the role that under the New Deal of Roosevelt, the federal treasury played by issuing treasury bills for the purposes of mopping up excess savings in order to channel it towards investment. I think we can do this with the European investment bank, being supported by the European central bank – instead of through quantitative easing purchasing government debt. It could purchase bonds from the investment bank, therefore ensuring that whatever new quantitative easing occurs is directed straight into investments, especially in green technologies. There are ways you can imagine intervening immediately in the European crisis today to stabilise European capitalism in order to be able to begin discussing political projects for democratising it. It is either that or barbarism.

AS: Or the status quo?

YV: The status quo is no longer an option, because it is fragmenting. I don’t believe that the status quo is sustainable, and I think everybody knows this. Take Italy. Italy is a country that has a current account surplus. It owes most of its public debt to itself, which is good. But it is unsustainable. They had a primary surplus of between 2 and 2.3% over the last few years and yet their debt to GDP ratio is growing precipitously. Now that tells you that something is profoundly wrong, when you have a country like Italy, sophisticated, that produces everything from Armani to Ferrari to Fiats, and they have a current account surplus. They have two surpluses – a trade surplus and a service surplus and then they have a surplus in the primary accounts of the Government. And yet they’re sinking into debt. This tells you something.

Renzi the other day came out and said something quite remarkable. He said that if Brussels rejects his budget, he is going to submit the same one to them. That is open defiance of the European Union fiscal pact. Why is he doing it? Is he a revolutionary? No. Because he knows that if he behaves according to the rules, his country is going to fall into a black hole or reject him. We find the same in France, Spain which is being heralded as a great success story of austerity as we speak – these are unsustainable. And Schauble too knows this. He knows that the eurozone is not capable of taking and absorbing another shockwave in the international economy – the kind of shockwave which is shaping up now. So I don’t think that the status quo is an option.

AS: Can you explain in laymans’ terms what your Plan B entailed?

YV: Actually I called it Plan X – just to be accurate – and there were two parts to it. There were actually two separate plans. One concerned how to deal with the situation if we are forced out of the euro. Because there were these threats and even though I believed them to be not credible and that they would never do it, even if they wanted to, and I believed it to be illegal for them to do it and that they would have serious problems if they did. Nevertheless, as the minister of finance, I had an obligation to draw up contingency plans in case they managed to get us out.

And so this mainly, was Plan X. When you started trying to wrap your mind around how this redenomination of everything in a different currency could occur, the more you thought about it the more complicated it seemed to be. Every time you thought you had solved a problem, you created another ten. So the team that I had working on this was working night and day trying to imagine all the scenarios. And of course the difficulty with that was that it had to be a small team, otherwise it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So that was Plan X.

But then there was another, not a contingency plan, but a set of responses that I had been preparing for a while, for at least a year, for staying in the euro after they shut down the banks. I knew they would threaten us with the banks and I knew that a long time before we were elected. And the three steps that I recommended as retaliation were, firstly, to announce the creation of a parallel payment system, a euro-denominated electronic system; secondly a haircut or postpone by 30 years the repayment of the Greek Government bonds owned by the ECB, to the tune of 27 billion. That would be a major weapon to use, because the ECB’s whole QE program would have serious legal difficulties if we did that. And thirdly, changing the law governing the functioning of the central bank of Greece. So that was in order to stay in the euro with closed banks, after an aggressive move by the ECB.

That was the plan that I thought was crucial, not Plan X. Plan X was there in case we were pushed out of the euro. I didn’t believe it was credible, but I had to have it, just like the Minister of Defence has to have the contingency plans in case Turkey invades, even if he doesn’t believe Turkey will invade.

But those three policies with which to respond to the closure of the banks, that was the real game for me. It was a plan for staying in the euro and managing to survive within it, with banks closed, while the negotiations yielded the proper outcome. I always knew that until and unless we demonstrated capacity not to surrender after the banks had been closed for a week or two, we would be taken to the cleaners.

AS: And you think a small, bankrupt country with no allies in the eurozone could have done that?

YV: Yes absolutely. Look at Mario Draghi just keeping the euro together. Without QE there would be no euro. QE is very precariously balanced legally because Draghi faces major challenges from the Bundesbank, and the main challenge is that he is purchasing assets that may be subject to a haircut, and the usual response by the Central Bank is that they will not tolerate a haircut. But the bank already owned 27 billion of Greek legacy debt from 2010 which it had purchased. If I announce a haircut in response to the very aggressive move of shutting down our banks, then suddenly the whole quantitative easing (QE) programme would be jeopardised. Weidmann and the Bundesbank would say, “see, you are purchasing assets that now are being subjected to a haircut.” So we had a weapon, but I was prevented from using it.

AS: At openDemocracy we’re obsessed with TTIP. A Syriza minister I spoke to recently said that it was his belief that a Syriza Government would never pass TTIP. Were there ever any discussions about TTIP while you were in the government?

YV: No, never. I’m sure that this is a genuine sentiment. But then again let me remind you Alex that we kept saying for years and during the months of the negotiation, every day, that we would not sign a third memorandum.

AS: So…you think the pressure would be too strong if it got to that point?

YV: I’ve already answered you.

AS: My last question is about the media, and how they are going to react. How will you deal with the media in relation to your new movement? It may not be pretty…

YV: Oh don’t worry I‘ve had plenty of training.

AS: So you’ve learned lessons…

YV: The single most important lesson that I have learned is that it doesn’t matter. Because if the message is strong, given the need for a movement that expresses this craving for a modicum of democratic control over the sources of power in Europe, I think the groundswell of people will, as it did in Greece, carry us through. We won 61.3% of the vote in the referendum against every single television, radio station and every newspaper. They were all campaigning for the yes. We could do it in Greece, we could do it in Europe.

And in the final analysis, it is as Homer has taught us. It is not so much the journey that matters as the destination. It is a good fight and we have to fight it.

Times reporting shifts from the absurd to the contemptible.

According to The Times, Russian airstrikes caused “surg(ing) civilian flight.” It lied, claiming its “warplanes attacked the village of Ter Ma’aleh, killing at least a dozen people and sending most of the residents into hurried exile.”

“The assault on the village was part of a wider escalation of violence across the country that has displaced tens of thousands of people in just weeks and led relief workers to warn that Syria is facing one of its most serious humanitarian crises of the civil war.”

“The intensity of the fighting, they say (who is ‘they?’), is fueling increased desperation as a growing number of Syrians are fleeing to neighboring countries and, especially, to Europe.”

Russian airstrikes “l(ed) to the latest wave of displacement. (M)unitions (used) added to the sense of fear.” Russia “target(ed) hospitals and other medical facilities.” The Times cited a willfully misleading Human Rights Watch report accusing Russia of killing civilians, despite no corroborating evidence.

Fact: The Times article is a complete fabrication.

Fact: Washington bears full responsibility for Syria’s refugee crisis. Britain, France, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other rogue partners share blame.

Fact: Russian intervention is a liberating, not displacing force. More on this below.

Fact: Long before Russian airstrikes began on September 30 (less than a month ago), half of Syria’s 23 million people were internally or externally displaced.

Fact: Many headed for Europe years ago, numbers increasing dramatically in the past year or so.

Fact: Most Syrian refugees are in bordering countries Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq, as well as smaller numbers in Egypt.

The web site SyrianRefugees.eu said

“under 150,000 Syrians have declared asylum in the European Union, while member states have pledged to resettle a further 33,000 Syrians. The vast majority of these resettlement spots (85%) are pledged by Germany.”

Fact: Refugees arriving daily in Europe come from various countries, most either Pentagon war theaters or nations affected by US-inflicted instability, violence and chaos – including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Eritrea, Mali, Syria and others.

Fact: Syria is Obama’s war, planned years before he took office, part of longstanding US strategy to replace all sovereign independent governments with US-controlled illegitimate puppet regimes.

Fact: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria are four of history’s great crimes, America bearing full responsibility, millions of lost lives and unspeakable human suffering considered a small price to pay – the appalling dark side of US imperial viciousness.

On October 24, the reliable Sputnik News service headlined “Syria Refugees Praise Russian Airstrikes, Consider Returning,” saying:

“Syria’s Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun previously said that over 800,000 refugees have returned since Russian airstrikes against terrorist targets in Syria began on September 30th.”

“The operation has also given refugees from the conflict hope that peace would return, according to interviews AP conducted around the Aleppo province, a hub for refugees leaving Syria.”

“ ‘I hope that with Russian pilots’ help, our military will advance and defeat terrorists so that we could return to our homes,’ one refugee told AP.”

This view is widely held and growing, opposite of deplorable Times propaganda, a Lying Machine for wealth, power and privilege, supporting all US wars of aggression, past and current.

In a few short weeks, Russia’s intervention dramatically changed the Syrian and regional landscape.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

An “MSF facility in Saada, Yemen was hit by several airstrikes last night with patients and staff inside the facility,” the group tweeted.

Sadaa is the largest city in Sadaa province, northwestern Yemen.

.@MSF facility in #Saada #Yemen was hit by several airstrikes last night with patients & staff inside the facility. pic.twitter.com/MicfUT571V

— أطباء بلا حدود-اليمن (@msf_yemen) October 27, 2015

According to Yemeni Saba news, the target was Heedan hospital. Several people were injured in the airstrikes. “The air raids resulted in the destruction of the entire hospital with all that was inside – devices and medical supplies – and the moderate wounding of several people,” Heedan hospital director Doctor Ali Mughli said. The Saudi-led coalition launched its anti-Houthi campaign in March 2015 in response to the “Ansar Allah” Houthi movement capturing large territories of Yemen, including Sanaa, the capital and the country’s second largest city, Aden.

.@MSF health center in Haydan #Saada #Yemen was hit by 5 airstrikes yesterday at 11:30 PM. No casualties

— Stefano Zannini (@StefZannini) October 27, 2015

The Saudi-led campaign has been receiving much criticism over civilian deaths of late. Over 2,300 civilians have been killed in the campaign in the last six months, according to the UN.

One of the deadliest attacks took place in al-Wahijah village in Taiz province, when at least 135 people, mostly women and children, were killed in an airstrike on a wedding party.

According to the UN children’s agency UNICEF, the operation has caused the deaths of 505 children.

In any war, collateral damage is inevitable. And no matter how careful Russia attempts to be, one cannot avoid eventually killing innocent civilians. That is why it is so important to make sure any war fought is justified to begin with – so that when a tragic mistake is made it is not compounded by the fact that the war within which it took place shouldn’t have been fought in the first place.

Russia’s intervention in Syria, however, is justified. The sovereign nation of Syria is openly being dismembered by foreign states, led by the US, joined by Syria’s neighbors, Turkey, Israel, and Jordan, as well as regional state-sponsors of terrorism including the despotic regimes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

The potential loss of human life in confronting the proxy army of terrorists this coalition of multinational military aggression has arrayed against Syria pales in comparison to the outcome should Syria fall entirely to these forces. The perpetual chaos that has unfolded after America’s successful dismemberment of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are but warnings of the fate that could befall Syria should order not be restored, and Syria’s sovereignty not protected. What’s more is that for each and every nation the US destroys, the terrorist organizations and all accompanying infrastructure that fill the void left behind by toppled governments has an accumulative effect. The strength of this threat and its ability to project violence further increases exponentially.

In that light, Russia’s alleged bombing of a “field hospital” in terrorist-held territory in Syria would be a tragic mistake at best… if such an allegation had credible evidence underpinning it. However, it does not.

The Incredible Expanding Atrocity 

When reports of Russian military aviation striking what AFP called a “field hospital” came to light, they were met by immediate skepticism, even by critics of Russia. AFP’s article, “13 dead as Russia strike hits Syria field hospital: monitor,” reported that:

At least 13 people including medical staff were killed when Russian warplanes struck a field hospital in northwestern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday.

Of course the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is actually a single individual named Rami Abdel Rahman, who is admittedly sympathetic to those seeking the division and destruction of Syria. Rami Abdel Rahman is also based in the UK, so is not actually “observing” anything in Syria. He himself has been observed coordinating his activities with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.

The “clinic” in question was allegedly run by the Syrian-American Medical Society (SAMS), which according to their website is a multi-million dollar US-based NGO, provided with full support by the US State Department. Upon SAMS’ website is even a video by US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Powers, hailing SAMS as one of her “personal heroes.”

SAMS has played an instrumental role in using its alleged medical work to support terrorist organizations seeking to divide and destroy Syria and help disseminate propaganda peddled by the US State Department itself in attacking and undermining the credibility of the Syrian government in Damascus. This includes repeating the State Department’s unfounded narratives regarding “barrel bombs” and the use of “chlorine gas” by the Syrian government.

Telling however, is even those from this organization apparently drawn upon by the Western media have not mentioned Russia as perpetrating the bombing. AFP’s article would cite a SAMS staff member stating:

“Our initial reports from the ground show that we have lost two hospital staff, a physiotherapist and a nurse,” the staffer said in an emailed statement. 

Speaking on condition of anonymity, she did not specify whether the strikes were conducted by Russian warplanes.

This unconvincing narrative was quickly augmented by the Western media with other “strikes.” The number quickly went from 1 to 3, then 4, and then up to 7 – 7 hospitals allegedly struck by Russian warplanes, all according to the same handful of Western-backed fronts, echoed by an increasingly discredited Western media.

Just Warming Up – Russia “Strikes” 3 Hospitals 

The International Business Times in their article, “Russian air strikes hit hospitals in Syria claims NGO,” would report:

A US-based NGO has claimed the ongoing air strikes in Syria carried out by Russian forces have hit at least three medical facilities. The bombings took place in different locations – Idlib, Hama and Latakia provinces.

The NGO cited is the US-based “Physicians for Human Rights” (PHR), who in their latest annual report (PDF) reveals that it is in fact directly funded by multiple departments and agencies within the US government including the US State Department itself.  It too is a clearinghouse for a multitude of discredited propaganda campaigns aimed at Syria’s government, in support of an opposition now clearly revealed as foreign-sponsored terrorists.

The London Guardian would report in its article, “Four Syrian hospitals bombed since Russian airstrikes began, doctors say,” that:

At least four hospitals have been bombed by fighter jets in north-western Syria since Russia’s intervention in the war began in late September, doctors and international observers claim.

It also cites SAMS, Physicians for Human Rights, as well as the opaque Medical Relief for Syria, which operates independently of internationally recognized relief agencies, and appears to be involved in cross-border logistical support for terrorist-held territory in Syria.

Lie Big or Go Home – Russia “Strikes” 7 Hospitals  

The New York Times places the capstone upon this growing propaganda campaign with its article, “Group Cites 7 Attacks on Hospitals Across Syria.” The article states:

At least seven hospitals or medical facilities in Syria have been hit by airstrikes since Russia entered the civil war there, killing at least four people, according to an international human rights group and Syrian relief workers.

Notable, however, is that amid this growing lie, the New York Times adds a cautionary disclaimer further down in its propaganda piece which states:

It was impossible to independently confirm who had carried out that attack and earlier attacks on medical facilities in Hama, Latakia and Aleppo Provinces. 

The New York Times is also citing the US State Department-funded Physicians for Human Rights. Repetitive lies emanating from such an organization should be no surprise. Not only does their funding and activities betray whatever supposed humanitarian work they claim to be engaged in, in name alone they make a mockery out of the oath and duty of actual physicians.

And while such organizations eagerly create or repeat unverified narratives regarding Russian warplanes intentionally strafing medical facilities when Russia and the Syrian Arab Army are admittedly engaged in a nationwide war against a demonstrably vicious enemy – all in an attempt to portray Russia and Syria as threats to humanitarian aid efforts and medical relief, it should be noted that those who dishonestly pose as humanitarian aid personnel or peddle a political agenda under the guise of providing medical relief, in fact do more to endanger both than any warplane ever could.

On Sunday October 25th, CNN headlined “Tony Blair says he’s sorry for Iraq War ‘mistakes,’ but not for ousting Saddam” and reported:

“I can say that I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong because, even though he had used chemical weapons extensively against his own people, against others, the program in the form that we thought it was did not exist in the way that we thought,” Blair said in an exclusive interview on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS that airs Sunday.

Blair was referring to the claim that Saddam’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, which was used by the U.S. and British governments to justify launching the invasion. But the intelligence reports the claim was based on turned out to be false.

Here is the Downing Street Memo on that matter (dated 23 July 2002):

“C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

That was written by Matthew Rycroft, to David Manning, John Scarlett, Alastair Campbell, and others. It summarized “PRIME MINISTER’S MEETING, 23 JULY.” Blair was the Prime Minister. The memo then goes on to say:

“The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. [NOTE: He did let them in; they were making progress and were pleading to continue their work when Bush/Blair ordered them out so we could invade.] Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD.” So: Blair at that time considered to be beyond question that Saddam was trying to reconstitute, and was reconstituting, his prior WMD operation.

The memo continues:

“There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change.” So: Blair likewise wanted to overthrow the leaders of Libya and of Iran.

So: Blair took some serious questions as being instead simply unquestionable, true beyond doubt. This fits in with his devout religious commitment. He respects faith: that consists only of unproven beliefs, and of the conviction that these beliefs should remain as beliefs no matter how weak the actual evidence for them is.

For a person of faith, the less reason there is to believe an allegedly authoritative statement, the stronger his belief in it is. In short: Blair is stupid. But he’s authentically following the Bible there, and he’s committed to it. For example, the Gospel of John opens:

“Before the world was created, the Word already existed; he was with God, and was the same as God.”

Then (8:31-32):

“Jesus said to the faithful, ‘If you obey my teachings, you are authentically my followers; you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” Blair is free: he is committed to The Word — not to reality. He’s free from reality, which can be figured out only by lots of careful work, which we call by the name of “science.” It’s a methodology above methodologies; and it demands lack of faith in anything, because it’s the exact opposite of faith, which is the opposite meta-methodology from science. He is the ultimate conformist. And he has become enormously successful as a result.

Therefore: he really is sincere that the problem was “that the intelligence we received was wrong.” He didn’t lie when he spouted what Bush told him; he really was that stupid. His faith was real, though what he believed was false.

He believed this even though he already knew that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” He knew, on 23 July 2002, that the “policy” (invading Iraq) was the goal, and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around” it. In other words: he didn’t even care whether Saddam really  was a threat — Blair simply had faith in Bush, and was willing to send British soldiers to kill, and be killed, for that faith.

——

Back to the CNN piece:

On the video, starting at 1:25, Blair says:

“It’s important also to realize that … ISIS actually came to prominence from a base in Syria and not in Iraq.”

If that belief by him is true, then one might reasonably wonder why the wikipedia article on ISIS doesn’t even mention “Syria” until it reaches: “Syrian Civil War: In March 2011, protests began in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. In the following months, violence between demonstrators and security forces led to a gradual militarisation of the conflict.[107] In August, al-Baghdadi began sending Iraqi members experienced in guerilla warfare across the border into Syria to establish an organization there. Led by a Syrian known as Abu Muhammad al-Julani, this group began to recruit fighters and establish cells throughout the country.[108][109]” And this statement hardly supports the likelihood that ISIS started in Syria instead of in Iraq. In fact: It denies that, where it asserts:

“In August [of 2011], al-Baghdadi began sending Iraqi members experienced in guerilla warfare across the border into Syria to establish an organization there. Led by a Syrian known as Abu Muhammad al-Julani, this group began to recruit fighters and establish cells throughout the country.”

ISIS in Syria resulted from the spread of ISIS in Iraq, which had begun in 2006. ISIS spread five years later into Syria. And ISIS in Iraq had begun in 2006, three years after we invaded. Here is how the Politico article that wikipedia used there as its source describes the situation: “He called himself Abu Mohammad al-Golani, and the young fighter, about whom little is known for sure except that he is a veteran of that war against the Americans in Iraq, had been authorized by his boss, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and al Qaeda’s central command to set up a Syrian offshoot of the notorious group.”

In any case, Blair is either stupid, or else lying, because what he’s saying makes no sense, other than as self-‘justifications,’ for whom and what he is — which is either stupid or lying.

On this basis, Blair says in that CNN interview (0:47-):

“But I find it hard to apologize for removing Saddam. I think even from today in 2015 it is better that he is not there than that he is there.”

Really? The wikipedia article “Casualties of the Iraq War” cites estimates ranging from 174,000 Iraqis killed, to over a million. The most scientific counts (and each of the studies is linked to there), the Lancet study and the PLOS survey, are both in the 500,000-600,000 range. Yet, Blair still says, “I find it hard to apologize” for having done that.

However, the situation is actually even worse than that. On 29 September 2015, I headlined, “GALLUP: ‘Iraqis Are the Saddest & One of the Angriest Populations in the World’,” and reported that, “This Gallup survey covered 1,000 adults in each of 148 countries during 2014.” On page 8 of Gallup’s report is the headline, “Iraqis Are the Saddest & One of the Angriest Populations in the World.”

The current residents of Iraq, as surveyed by Gallup, are the saddest people on Earth, or at least in all of the 148 nations they surveyed. And they’re also shown on page 7 to have the world’s “Highest Negative Experience Scores.” That’s an overall score on how frequently the residents experience pain, sadness, stress, and anger. Iraq is number one. In other words, they’re experiencing what’s probably the most miserable lives of any nation on this planet.

We don’t know whether Blair is a liar or only stupid; but, we do know that he’s so callous, that he must qualify as being a psychopath. Can it be that he’s too stupid to recognize this clearly established fact? Somebody should tell him: “Maybe you don’t know it, but knowledgeable people do.”

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

The economic perspectives that Japan brings in evidence that the «non-conventional» monetary policies implemented by some central banks of industrialized are an absolute failure. The Japanese economy not only fails to register sustained economic growth but has regressed to the fall of prices according to official data. The recovery plan of Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is dead: as already happened from the middle of the decade of 1990, Japan is sinking into economic stagnation and deflation, even as the public debt continues to grow.

The past three months tell us that the panorama of the world system is daily more preoccupying. Both for the geopolitical tensions in Syria, as well as the economic tendencies that touch the recession. For the fourth time this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reduced their estimates of growth: the global economy will expand 3.1% in 2015, the lowest rate since 2009.

The process of recovery of the United States is very weak, while the European Economic and Monetary Union and the United Kingdom continue to undergo the risk of deflation (the fall of prices). The countries of Latin America and the Asian Continent, for their part, are themselves not exempt from the economic world turbulence. After the international credit crunch in the first months of 2009, the greater part of emerging economies avoided falling into a deep crisis. The Latin American countries slowed down but did not fall into depression.

The same thing happened with the countries of the Asian-Pacific region: China continued with the purchase of a great quantity of commodities, with which the primary exporters of the capitalist periphery resisted more in the face of the collapse when compared with the industrialized nations. Now the situation is very different, the recession advances in South America and the slowdown gathers strength in the Asian Continent.

The Group of 7 (G-7, made up of Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom) are trapped in a structural crisis. The United States, the Euro Zone and the United Kingdom launched an enormous quantity of monetary and fiscal stimuli to avoid the deepening of the debacle.

Nevertheless these policies, rather than dynamizing production and promoting the creation of massive employment, precipitated the accumulation of public debt and stock market growth. The crisis was not resolved, although its more destructive aspects were contained for a few months.

In Japan the first symptoms of a return to deflation –the fall of prices – were already present. When the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, began his mandate in December of 2012, promised to bring the country out of this situation. With serious shortages since 1980, and a crisis of basic goods, the Japanese economy sank into stagnation in the early 1990s, and was threatened with a fall of prices.

The government of Abe gambled its political capital on a recovery plan (known as «Abenomics») supported with the so-called «three arrows»: structural reforms, fiscal stimuli (20.2 trillion yen) and the programme of quantitative flexibility (an increase of the monetary base with an annual amount equivalent to 16% of the GDP, 80 trillion yen).

In large terms, the objective is to increase business productivity and competition of Japan in the global economy. The labour market was liberalized to eliminate barriers to capitalist exploitation. In order to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), pushed by the United States, Abe proposes to open sectors of agriculture and health care, among others, although internal resistance still doesn’t allow this.

He has also lowered the taxes on corporations in order to promote productive investment, and he has increased the Value Added Tax from 6 to 8% in order to avoid a fiscal aperture. Finally, a programme of injection of liquidity was established in order to encourage the take off of the economy.

The Japanese economy fell to -1.2% between April and June (in annual terms). And there are signs that the recession will not cease in the final 2 trimesters of the year. In spite of the aggressiveness of the Bank of Japan’s policy, the inter-annual rate of inflation (if one excludes food and energy) continues without growth. In August it fell to -0.1%. This is the first time that it registered negative rates since April of 2013.

The depreciation of the Yen of over 30% to the dollar has still not dynamized foreign trade   sufficiently. Industrial production (machinery, automobiles, electronic appliances, etc.) has fallen and the level of consumption of families is not enough to raise internal demand. The public debt has almost reached 250% of the GDP; the degradation of solvency is such that the Standard & Poors agency had no alternative and in mid September reduced the qualification of the sovereign debt of the Asian country from A+ to AA-.

The Governor of the Bank of Japan, Haruhiko Kuroda, maintains that the fall in economic activity involves a situation that will soon be overcome, since it is transitional: both the fall in the price of oil, along with the drastic deceleration of China are obstacles that prevent the plan of «Abenomics» from overcoming stagnation and deflation.

Without doubt, among the countries of industrial capitalism, Japan is in one of the major economic dramas for over two decades. At the beginnings of October, the Central Bank repeated that it would not cancel the possibility of expanding its programme of monetary stimuli if the situation became more critical. Nevertheless, it is obvious that it does not serve to administer higher doses of a medicine that in place of curing simply prolongs the disaster.

Translation: Jordan Bishop.

Ariel Noyola Rodriguez is an Economist who graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico

The economic perspectives that Japan brings in evidence that the «non-conventional» monetary policies implemented by some central banks of industrialized are an absolute failure. The Japanese economy not only fails to register sustained economic growth but has regressed to the fall of prices according to official data. The recovery plan of Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is dead: as already happened from the middle of the decade of 1990, Japan is sinking into economic stagnation and deflation, even as the public debt continues to grow.

The past three months tell us that the panorama of the world system is daily more preoccupying. Both for the geopolitical tensions in Syria, as well as the economic tendencies that touch the recession. For the fourth time this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reduced their estimates of growth: the global economy will expand 3.1% in 2015, the lowest rate since 2009.

The process of recovery of the United States is very weak, while the European Economic and Monetary Union and the United Kingdom continue to undergo the risk of deflation (the fall of prices). The countries of Latin America and the Asian Continent, for their part, are themselves not exempt from the economic world turbulence. After the international credit crunch in the first months of 2009, the greater part of emerging economies avoided falling into a deep crisis. The Latin American countries slowed down but did not fall into depression.

The same thing happened with the countries of the Asian-Pacific region: China continued with the purchase of a great quantity of commodities, with which the primary exporters of the capitalist periphery resisted more in the face of the collapse when compared with the industrialized nations. Now the situation is very different, the recession advances in South America and the slowdown gathers strength in the Asian Continent.

The Group of 7 (G-7, made up of Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom) are trapped in a structural crisis. The United States, the Euro Zone and the United Kingdom launched an enormous quantity of monetary and fiscal stimuli to avoid the deepening of the debacle.

Nevertheless these policies, rather than dynamizing production and promoting the creation of massive employment, precipitated the accumulation of public debt and stock market growth. The crisis was not resolved, although its more destructive aspects were contained for a few months.

In Japan the first symptoms of a return to deflation –the fall of prices – were already present. When the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, began his mandate in December of 2012, promised to bring the country out of this situation. With serious shortages since 1980, and a crisis of basic goods, the Japanese economy sank into stagnation in the early 1990s, and was threatened with a fall of prices.

The government of Abe gambled its political capital on a recovery plan (known as «Abenomics») supported with the so-called «three arrows»: structural reforms, fiscal stimuli (20.2 trillion yen) and the programme of quantitative flexibility (an increase of the monetary base with an annual amount equivalent to 16% of the GDP, 80 trillion yen).

In large terms, the objective is to increase business productivity and competition of Japan in the global economy. The labour market was liberalized to eliminate barriers to capitalist exploitation. In order to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), pushed by the United States, Abe proposes to open sectors of agriculture and health care, among others, although internal resistance still doesn’t allow this.

He has also lowered the taxes on corporations in order to promote productive investment, and he has increased the Value Added Tax from 6 to 8% in order to avoid a fiscal aperture. Finally, a programme of injection of liquidity was established in order to encourage the take off of the economy.

The Japanese economy fell to -1.2% between April and June (in annual terms). And there are signs that the recession will not cease in the final 2 trimesters of the year. In spite of the aggressiveness of the Bank of Japan’s policy, the inter-annual rate of inflation (if one excludes food and energy) continues without growth. In August it fell to -0.1%. This is the first time that it registered negative rates since April of 2013.

The depreciation of the Yen of over 30% to the dollar has still not dynamized foreign trade   sufficiently. Industrial production (machinery, automobiles, electronic appliances, etc.) has fallen and the level of consumption of families is not enough to raise internal demand. The public debt has almost reached 250% of the GDP; the degradation of solvency is such that the Standard & Poors agency had no alternative and in mid September reduced the qualification of the sovereign debt of the Asian country from A+ to AA-.

The Governor of the Bank of Japan, Haruhiko Kuroda, maintains that the fall in economic activity involves a situation that will soon be overcome, since it is transitional: both the fall in the price of oil, along with the drastic deceleration of China are obstacles that prevent the plan of «Abenomics» from overcoming stagnation and deflation.

Without doubt, among the countries of industrial capitalism, Japan is in one of the major economic dramas for over two decades. At the beginnings of October, the Central Bank repeated that it would not cancel the possibility of expanding its programme of monetary stimuli if the situation became more critical. Nevertheless, it is obvious that it does not serve to administer higher doses of a medicine that in place of curing simply prolongs the disaster.

Translation: Jordan Bishop.

Ariel Noyola Rodriguez is an Economist who graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico

Como es sabido, un Estado soberano se muestra particularmente sensible a todo lo que sobrevuela su territorio: el Convenio de Aviación Civil Internacional, suscrito en Chicago en 1944, consagra jurídicamente en su primer artículo el reconocimiento de la soberanía del Estado sobre su espacio aéreo, al estipular que: “Los Estados contratantes reconocen que todo Estado tiene soberanía plena y exclusiva en el espacio aéreo situado sobre su territorio”. La definición de la noción de “espacio aéreo” reviste una importancia fundamental para el derecho internacional público, el derecho constitucional, así como para otras ramas del derecho relacionadas al desarrollo de la actividad aeronáutica de carácter comercial. El derecho internacional público distingue el espacio aéreo del espacio ultraterrestre (también denominado “extra-atmosférico”) sin que a la fecha exista un claro consenso internacional sobre el límite entre ambos (Nota 1). Un artículo publicado en 1996 en Canadá explica que: “Étant donné que de nombreux États, notamment les États Unis et les pays occidentaux, ont estimé qu’il était inutile au bout de 30 années d’exercice des activités spatiales, de chercher à résoudre un tel problème, il n’y a jamais eu de délimitation claire et universellement acceptée » (p. 14). Se sabe dónde inicia el espacio aéreo, pero la altura a partir de la cual deja de serlo para transformarse en espacio ultraterrestre depende de las regulaciones de cada Estado.

Al ser el espacio aéreo parte íntegra del territorio de un Estado, el sobrevuelo y/o el aterrizaje de aeronaves extranjeras es prohibido, a menos que el Estado haya suscrito un convenio internacional o haya dado su consentimiento previo, mediante una autorización o permiso especial.

Cuando se trata de aeronaves militares, la sensibilidad es aún mucho mayor: recientemente Turquía reaccionó con vehemencia ante la detección de aviones militares rusos no autorizados en su espacio aéreo cercano a la frontera con Siria (ver breve  nota  sobre este reciente episodio). En muchos Estados, la responsabilidad de otorgar autorizaciones para sobrevuelo o aterrizaje de aeronaves militares recae en el Poder Ejecutivo (como por ejemplo en el caso de Uruguay: ver procedimiento previsto con fecha del 2003 en el que las solicitudes deben dirigirse al Estado Mayor General de la Fuerza Aérea). En otros Estados, esta atribución es competencia del Poder Legislativo: es el caso, por ejemplo, de República Checa, cuyo Parlamento procedió a autorizar el sobrevuelo de aviones militares norteamericanos durante una cumbre de la OTAN celebrada en  Praga en el 2002 (ver  nota  de prensa); o de Nicaragua, cuya Asamblea Nacional aprobó recientemente el ingreso simultáneo de naves y aeronaves de diez Estados, incluyendo las de Cuba, Estados Unidos, Japón y Rusia (ver nota en el sitio de su Asamblea). Es también el caso de Costa Rica: el texto constitucional así lo dispone, y una circular de la Dirección General de Aviación Civil (DGAC) del 2005  precisa de igual forma que: “6.3 Permiso de sobrevuelo y aterrizaje de aeronaves militares. Para la emisión de un permiso de sobrevuelo y aterrizaje de aeronaves militares sobre el territorio nacional, deben ser autorizadas por la Asamblea Legislativa de conformidad con AIC-A15/03 del 31 de julio del 2003” (ver  documento ).

Mapa de rutas utilizadas por el nacotráfico en las zonas marítimas de Estados de Centroamérica, extraído de artículo de prensa (Aldia, Costa Rica) del año 2012

El reciente debate en Costa Rica

El pasado fin de semana, el Presidente del Poder Legislativo de Costa Rica publicó un  artículo de opinión  con relación a una propuesta tendiente a agilizar los trámites de aprobación de sobrevuelo de aeronaves militares extranjeras, debido a que, según se lee, “el año pasado Aviación Civil recibió más de 700 solicitudes de ese tipo”.  Su propuesta pretende que el Congreso sea únicamente solicitado cuando estas aeronaves sean artilladas. En el caso de naves militares no artilladas, el permiso sería otorgado directamente por la DGAC: la misma propuesta fue dada a conocer en el plenario del Congreso unos días antes, el 15 de octubre del 2015 por parte del mismo Presidente del Congreso (ver pp. 23-26 del  Acta  del 15/10/2015). Al revisar con detalle su iniciativa, además de la diferencia de régimen entre naves artilladas y no artilladas, se incluye una característica que, según el Presidente del Congreso, deben de tener los dispositivos militares de las primeras: “Tratándose de aeronaves militares, la Asamblea Legislativa sólo dará trámite a los permisos de permanencia solicitados para estas categorías de medios de transporte que se encuentren artillados o porten dispositivos militares ofensivos” (p. 26).

Al no haber sido mayormente discutida y consultada de previo a su presentación, esta iniciativa provocó el malestar de varios diputados, recriminando, entre otros, a su Presidente el atribuirse competencias que pertenecen al Poder Legislativo (y no a su Presidente): ello se desprende de la lectura de las posiciones registradas inmediatamente después de presentada la propuesta, y disponibles en el acta precitada.

Aprobaciones de sobrevuelo recientes cuestionadas

En el mes de septiembre del 2015, el aterrizaje en Costa Rica de cuatro helicópteros del Ejército de Estados Unidos sin previa aprobación legislativa causó un malestar muy similar en distintos sectores de Costa Rica (ver  nota  de La Nación así como la de  Informa-tico en la que se exigen sanciones, del 22/09/2015). En esta  nota  de prensa de La Nación se lee que para el jefe de la diplomacia de Costa Rica, “No sé por qué llama tanto la atención. Estados Unidos lo comunica a la Cancillería y la Cancillería a Aviación Civil, pero pueden ser esos helicópteros de Estados Unidos o el avión privado de un jefe de Estado. No son helicópteros artillados de guerra ni tienen morteros ni cosas parecidas. Es algo normal, sobre lo que están queriendo hacer un poco de bulla”.

En el año 2013, con ocasión de la visita del Presidente de Estados Unidos a Costa Rica (2 y 3 de mayo del 2013), el sobrevuelo de helicópteros de Estados Unidos cuyos permisos no fueron solicitados fue objeto de una fuerte recriminación por parte de la Sala Constitucional de Costa Rica (ver  nota  de La Nación del 6/07/2013). En su decisión Res. 01922-2013 del 5 de julio del 2013, el juez constitucional indicó, entre otros, que: “/…/ la Dirección General de Aviación Civil, se arrogó una competencia exclusiva de la Asamblea Legislativa, al autorizar el ingreso y permanencia en aeropuertos de aeronaves, cuya calificación, si son militares o de guerra, si estaban o no artilladas o por los fines con que ingresaron y permanecieron en el territorio nacional, le corresponde, exclusivamente, a ese órgano constitucional. Consecuentemente, la Dirección General de Aviación Civil infringió el derecho fundamental a la paz” (Nota 2).  Se trata de una faceta más del denominado “derecho a la paz” como un derecho humano, desarrollado por el juez constitucional de Costa Rica en los últimos años, y que tuvimos la oportunidad de analizar brevemente (Nota 3).

Una discusión de cierta data

En su artículo de opinión, el Presidente del Poder Legislativo costarricense precisa que Costa Rica recibió más de 700 solicitudes el año pasado  para ingresar a su espacio aéreo con aeronaves militares. Salvo error de nuestra parte, no se ha dado a conocer el detalle de esta lista de 700 solicitudes de sobrevuelo, lo cual no permite valorar cuáles Estados están requiriendo un uso tan frecuente del espacio aéreo costarricense con aviones militares. A este respecto sería interesante, además de conocer el detalle de esta lista, poder compararla con el número (y el detalle) de solicitudes recibidas en años anteriores, de manera a tener un panorama más completo, y conocer cuáles permisos son aprobados y cuáles son denegados. Con relación a la cifra de 700 solicitudes, se lee por ejemplo en una memoria del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del año 2011 que para el período comprendido entre el 30 de abril del 2010 y el 1ero de mayo del 2011, “se diligenciaron 82 sobrevuelos y aterrizajes sobre territorio nacional” (p. 201). En una respuesta a una solicitud de aclaración al Ministro de Seguridad con fecha de agosto del 2003 se indicaba por parte del Procurador para Asuntos Internacionales que: “No es usual que los aviones de guerra modernos, más sofisticados y poderosos, tengan necesariamente que sobrevolar el espacio aéreo nacional “para su tránsito entre dos o más Estados diferentes a Costa Rica”, tal como expresa el consultante; pues generalmente dichas travesías se hacen sobre la alta mar o el espacio aéreo internacional, incluso fuera del alcance de los aparatos de radar normales” (ver texto del documento).

En su artículo de opinión, el Presidente del Congreso refiere también a una gran variedad de Estados y de situaciones: “Solo entre el 1° de julio y el 15 de setiembre de este año, hubo 70 peticiones, correspondientes a aeronaves de Bolivia (con el vicepresidente a bordo), México, Venezuela, Estados Unidos, Rusia, Chile (en el que viajaba la presidenta), Marruecos (visita de turismo de la familia real) y Colombia, entre muchos otros países” precisa el legislador. Nuevamente aquí, el dato aportado reviste especial interés, y un observador podría preguntarse cómo es que se distribuyen estas 70 solicitudes en tan solo 2 meses y medio a Estados que requieren pasar por el espacio aéreo de Costa Rica con aeronaves militares.

La prensa de Costa Rica informó el pasado 17 de octubre (ver  nota  de Diario La Extra) que dos aviones del servicio de guardacostas de Estados Unidos que apoyan a Costa Rica en la lucha contra el narcotráfico debieron abandonar el territorio de Costa Rica debido a la falta de permisos por parte del Poder Legislativo. Como bien se sabe, Costa Rica y Estados Unidos acordaron un acuerdo de patrullaje conjunto el 1ero de diciembre de 1998 en ambos océanos (ver  texto  de aprobación del acuerdo en la ley 7929 de 1999). Lo que no verificó parte de la prensa, es que ambas aeronaves norteamericanas nunca fueron objeto de alguna solicitud de permiso dirigida a la Asamblea Legislativa, razón por la cual debieron abandonar el territorio nacional.

Con relación al Océano Atlántico, un convenio regional asociando a Estados Unidos, a Francia, a Países Bajos y a Estados del litoral Caribe, incluyendo a Haití, fue suscrito en el 2003 y aprobado por Costa Rica en el 2010 (ver texto de ley de aprobación).

La noción de “aeronaves de guerra”

Con respecto al acuerdo con Estados Unidos de 1998, surgió, unos años después de su aprobación, la duda de saber si las naves y aeronaves norteamericanas debían solicitar un permiso (o no) por parte del Congreso. En el dictamen 209/2003 del 7 de julio del 2003 (ver  texto completo ),  la Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) respondió a una solicitud de aclaración por parte de las autoridades a cargo de la lucha contra el narcotráfico, con relación a “la eventual exigencia de permiso legislativo para el aterrizaje en nuestros aeropuertos nacionales, de aeronaves no artilladas del Gobierno de los Estados Unidos de América“. En su respuesta, la PGR indicó al Ministro de Seguridad que: “3.- Para los efectos del inciso 5° del Artículo 121, de la Constitución Política, son aeronaves de guerra aquellas que pertenezcan a las Fuerzas Armadas de un Estado, que lleven los signos exteriores distintivos de las aeronaves de guerra de su nacionalidad, que se encuentre al mando de un oficial designado por el gobierno de ese Estado y cuya dotación se encuentre sometida a las reglas de las fuerzas armadas regulares de su país; independientemente de que sean o no artilladas y de la misión o propósito del vuelo. 4.- La autorización para el sobrevuelo y aterrizaje en los aeropuertos nacionales, de aeronaves de guerra extranjeras, constituye un acto de soberanía propio de las atribuciones exclusivas de la Asamblea Legislativa por el inciso 5° del artículo 121 de la Constitución Política, y por tal razón es una potestad indeclinable e intransferible, pues constituye el ejercicio puro y clásico de la soberanía; del poder soberano depositado por el pueblo en sus representantes, reunidos en el órgano legislativo. El criterio presente dictamen es que si una aeronave extranjera – cualquiera que fuese su nacionalidad- reúne las características apuntadas en el párrafo anterior, debe ser considerada una nave de guerra, y por ello debe obtener la autorización de la Asamblea Legislativa para sobrevuelo y aterrizaje en nuestro país; independientemente de si está o no artillada y de la misión o finalidad del vuelo“.

Este mismo criterio fue el que se estableció en una circular de la Dirección General de Aviación Civil con fecha del 31/07/2003 (ver texto), siempre disponible en el sitio oficial de esta entidad al momento de redactar estas líneas, la cual precisa de la misma manera que: “son aeronaves de guerra aquellas que pertenezcan a las Fuerzas Armadas de un Estado, que lleven los signos exteriores distintivos de las aeronaves de guerra de su nacionalidad, que se encuentre al mando de un oficial designado por el gobierno de ese Estado y cuya dotación se encuentre sometida a las reglas de las fuerzas armadas regulares de su país; independientemente de que sean o no artilladas y de la misión o propósito del vuelo”.  Ante una solicitud de aclaración, el Procurador para Asuntos Internacionales mantuvo el criterio anteriormente avanzado en el mes de agosto del 2003 (ver texto de su nota con fecha del 5 de agosto del 2003).  Ante una nueva solicitud para una nueva aclaración, en marzo del 2006, dos Procuradoras respondieron al Ministro de Seguridad sin modificar el criterio expuesto en el 2003 (ver texto del resumen del dictamen).

Resulta oportuno señalar que a mediados del 2004, se leyó que las autoridades consideraban excesiva la interpretación hecha por la PGR (ver nota de La Nación del 26/07/2004), indicando que se habían presentado “situaciones difíciles a gobiernos amigos, cuando aeronaves de guerra extranjeras que trasladan mandatarios o funcionarios de alto nivel deben sobrevolar nuestro territorio en tránsito a terceros países”.  No obstante, la Gaceta Oficial del mes de septiembre del 2004 (ver  texto  de Gaceta Oficial del 29/09/2004, página 1) refiere por ejemplo que la Asamblea Legislativa “aprobó conceder permiso de sobrevuelo para dos aeronaves de la Fuerza Aérea de Autodefensa de Japón, las cuales pretenden atravesar el espacio aéreo nacional los días 14 y 17 de setiembre del año 2004, con el propósito de trasladar al Primer Ministro del Japón, señor Junichiro Koizumi y su delegación, en un viaje a los Estados Unidos de América, México y Brasil”. Una Gaceta Oficial de mediados del año 2005 (ver texto) reporta que la misma Asamblea decidió el 3 de agosto del 2005 “Conceder permiso de sobrevuelo y aterrizaje a una aeronave de la Fuerza Aérea del Reino de España, la cual trasladará a la Vicepresidenta Primera del Gobierno de España, Excelentísima Señora María Teresa Fernández de la Vega Sanz, quien visitará Costa Rica durante el período comprendido entre el 1º y el 2 de agosto del 2005”.

Unos días después de ese mismo mes de agosto del 2005, se decidió por parte de los diputados eximir de permisos por parte de la Asamblea Legislativa a naves militares no artilladas (ver nota de La Nación): en esta última, se indica que esta decisión se anunció mediante comunicado de prensa y que se tomó a raíz de “una petición del Ministerio de Seguridad para que se dieran los permisos respectivos a los aviones que trasladarán a Costa Rica al presidente de Corea del Sur y a varios mandatarios de Centroamérica”.

Las más de 700 solicitudes recibidas el año pasado mencionadas por el Presidente del Congreso en su reciente artículo parecieran no haber pasado por la Asamblea Legislativa: ello indicaría que la interpretación de la PGR del 2003 ya no prevalece y que la decisión de los diputados de agosto del 2005 se mantiene siempre vigente. No obstante, una reciente solicitud de autorización al Poder Legislativo para el sobrevuelo de una aeronave boliviana pareciera indicar que el criterio es variable: al revisar el acta parlamentaria, se puede apreciar que la solicitud enviada a la cancillería de Costa Rica precisaba que se trataba de una aeronave militar no artillada de Bolivia en la que viajaba su Vice Presidente (ver p. 30 del Acta del 8 de octubre del 2015).

Recurrentes aprobaciones masivas y el juez constitucional

El antes mencionado acuerdo de patrullaje conjunto con Estados Unidos suscrito en 1998 y aprobado en 1999 merece mención aparte, en la medida en que se intentó subsanar un roce constitucional detectado por la Sala Constitucional mediante un protocolo que no se publicó sino 10 años después de suscribirse. En efecto, en  junio de 1999 el juez constitucional declaró en su Resolución 4156 -99 ( ver texto ) que “Todo lo anteriormente expresado nos conduce a dos conclusiones: primera, que es inconstitucional el numeral VIII.2 del tratado, por violación del inciso 5) del artículo 121 de la Constitución Política; segunda, que el tratado, tal y como se formula, lleva implícita la interdicción, de manera absoluta, de todo lo concerniente a la materia militar, pero en el estricto sentido de lo castrense, esto es, que se trate de tropas americanas y naves de guerra del ejército de los Estados Unidos de América”.  Con el fin de subsanar el texto, se negoció entre Costa Rica y Estados Unidos un Protocolo al Tratado de 1998, en el mes de julio de 1999.  Ante una consulta por parte de un diputado en el año 2010 sobre el contenido exacto del tratado,  una Procuradora concluyó su análisis (ver texto de la Opinión OJ-031-2010) manifestando que: “2. En ese sentido, la voluntad real expresada por los señores Diputados fue modificar el Acuerdo por medio de su Protocolo, el cual fue debidamente aprobado por la Asamblea Legislativa. 3. Por razones que no se determinan, el Decreto Legislativo 7929, texto impreso de la Ley aprobada por la Asamblea Legislativa, no se corresponde con la voluntad real del Legislativo”. En la sección “Fe de erratas” apareció finalmente publicado el Protocolo al convenio bilateral en la Gaceta Oficial Número 176 del 9/09/2010  (ver texto, en la última sección Fe de Erratas), cuyos dos únicos artículos nos permitimos reproducir: “Artículo I. El párrafo 2 de la Sección VIII del Acuerdo será modificado para leerse en su totalidad de la siguiente manera: “En toda ocasión que lo requiera el artículo 121, inciso 5, de la Constitución Política de Costa Rica, el Gobierno de Costa Rica deberá requerir y obtener de la Asamblea Legislativa el permiso correspondiente para las actividades contempladas en los incisos 8 y 10.b de la Sección IV del presente Acuerdo.” Artículo II. Este Protocolo deberá entrar en vigencia al mismo tiempo y en la misma forma que el Acuerdo”.

Paralelamente a estas inusuales informalidades para un instrumento jurídico internacional, este tratado bilateral dio lugar a intentos de ampliar el alcance de algunas de sus disposiciones, llevados a conocimiento del juez constitucional, y que se reseñarán muy brevemente en las líneas que siguen.

Para el período que va del 1ero de julio al 31 de diciembre del 2015, el Congreso de Costa Rica aprobó en junio del 2015 el atraque de 83 naves de Estados Unidos en tareas de apoyo a la lucha contra el narcotráfico en ambos mares (ver p. 2 de  Gaceta Oficial  del 9/01(2015). El texto del permiso otorgado en junio del 2015 precisa que se trata de “permiso de atraque, permanencia en puerto y desembarque de las tripulaciones de las embarcaciones del Guardacostas de los Estados Unidos de América, que estarán desarrollando operaciones antinarcóticos en el apoyo al Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas y demás autoridades del país“.  Notemos que en junio del 2014, se otorgó un permiso similar para un número mucho menor de 44 embarcaciones (ver texto del permiso) desde el 1ero de julio hasta el 31 de diciembre del 2014. No se cuenta con información sobre la razón de ser de esta diferencia de un año a otro. Sobre este punto, vale la pena recordar que la solicitud norteamericana hecha en noviembre del 2013 para el período anterior (1ero de enero – 30 de junio del 2014) también solicitaba la autorización para 43 embarcaciones (ver texto de la solicitud).

En julio del 2010, una solicitud de la Embajada de los Estados Unidos (que fue aprobada por la Asamblea Legislativa) para apoyar con flota militar fuertemente artillada (incluyendo portaaviones de su marina, la cual lleva las siglas de USS) a las naves de su servicio de Guardacostas  (siglas USCGC) en los mares de Costa Rica provocó ya no un malestar, sino una profunda indignación de varios sectores en Costa Rica (ver  nota  de Semanario Universidad). Al revisar las actas del Parlamento de finales de junio del 2010, se evidencia la gran reticencia del Presidente del Congreso para leer en su totalidad la nota diplomática enviada por la Embajada de Estados Unidos (ver  acta  del 30/06/2010, pp. 19-24). A la nota inicial (reproducida en las pp. 6-9) solicitando permiso para 53 embarcaciones con la siglas USCGC, se añade un documento más (pp.14-18) que solicita el permiso para 46 embarcaciones militares (USS): su lectura anet el plenario se debió a la insistencia de un diputado para que sea leída. Finalmente, la insistencia del mismo diputado es la que obligó a la lectura de la traducción no oficial de la nota 062 que se reproduce en la página 24 y que establece que: “El Gobierno de Costa Rica y el Gobierno de los Estados Unidos no formularán reclamos con excepción de aquellos contractuales en contra del otro por daño pérdida o destrucción de la propiedad del otro, lesiones o muerte del personal de ambos que surgieran de las actividades a las cuales se les aplica este acuerdo. Los reclamos de terceros que surjan de las actividades de la operación deberán ser referidos al supuesto gobierno responsable para que estos sean resueltos según las leyes de dicho gobierno, se entiende; sin embargo, de conformidad con la Ley número 7929 del 6 de octubre de 1999, publicada en La Gaceta número 209 del 28 de octubre de 1999, que el Gobierno de Costa Rica no renuncia a su jurisdicción penal, aun en casos relacionados con compensación ordinariamente resueltos por el derecho privado o administrativo. La Embajada agradece la cooperación que el Gobierno de Costa Rica brinde para cumplir con estos requisitos y solicita al Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores remitirlos a las autoridades correspondientes con el propósito de coordinar estas visitas a puerto y las subsiguientes operaciones”.

Leídos (a duras penas) los tres documentos, finalmente el Presidente del Congreso se sintió obligado a precisar (pp.24-25) que: “Diputado, únicamente para hacer la aclaración. Si bien es cierto son tres notas, son dos permisos; uno es del permiso que se está discutiendo, que es el primero de Guardacostas; el otro es de la Armada Marina, o sea, que son dos actos distintos; y el otro es un anexo a los dos permisos, pero es un anexo como para información, digamos que nosotros lo tramitamos en un solo expediente. Vamos, para evitar dudas, a hacer dos votaciones para que quede cada una de las solicitudes debidamente votadas”.

Ante un manejo tan improvisado, y una reticencia tan evidente, varios diputados y ciudadanos presentaron un recurso ante la Sala Constitucional de Costa Rica contra la aprobación realizada por los parlamentarios de esta solicitud. En su sentencia  Res. 2010-021680  (ver texto integral), con fecha del 24 de diciembre del 2010, la Sala Constitucional rechazó los recursos y precisó que consideraba que la “práctica ulterior” de las partes al convenio consistiendo en incorporar barcos militares era de recibo. Lo hizo de la siguiente forma: “… en nuestra opinión el inciso 5) del artículo 121 constitucional no admitiría una interpretación restrictiva, porque es irrenunciable e implicaría una negación a la autoridad normativa expresa otorgada por la Constitución Política, al cuerpo deliberativo y representativo de la soberanía popular, por lo que de ninguna manera sería admisible que sirviera un Tratado Internacional para minar tal atribución que le es inherente al Parlamento. Más aun, se afectarían los principios constitucionales de supremacía constitucional y de su rigidez, de eficacia directa e inmediata aplicación de la Carta Magna, sin que ni siquiera se hubiesen observado los procedimientos constitucionales que pudieran afectar aquella jerarquía y rigidez, con lo cual se vacía de contenido una importante parte orgánica de la Constitución, su supremacía, así como su regularidad jurídica. Por último, las partes han interpretado el Acuerdo y su Nota Diplomática en el sentido de que para su ejecución es válido el autorizar el ingresos de naves militares para fines pacíficos, civiles, de policía, lo que constituye un elemento esencial en su interpretación a tenor de lo dispuesto en el numeral 31.3, inciso b) de  la Convención de Viena sobre el Derecho de los Tratados –práctica ulterior seguida en la aplicación del tratado-, y avalada por esta Sala Constitucional”. Es de notar que esta decisión se tomó por un estrecho margen, ya que de siete magistrados,  tres se separaron del voto de mayoría: con relación a la última parte de la nota diplomática que debió ser leída por el Presidente del Congreso por insistencia de un diputado, los tres magistrados indicaron que: “Ciertamente consideramos que el acuerdo impugnado viola el derecho que le asiste a toda persona costarricense a obtener justicia y pronta reparación por cualquier daño sufrido en el territorio nacional, acudiendo a los Tribunales de Justicia de Costa Rica y “ocurriendo” a las leyes costarricenses (artículos 41 y 153 de la norma fundamental). Además,  implica una clara denegación de justicia, pues una gran mayoría de los habitantes de la República no cuentan con medios económicos, materiales sociales y culturales para trasladarse a Estados Unidos de América a exigir el reclamo de sus derechos en casos de haber sufrido daños en su persona, propiedad o intereses morales. Así entonces, quienes suscribimos el voto particular consideramos que, también en cuanto a este aspecto, el acuerdo deviene en inconstitucional”.

Resulta oportuno señalar que este recurso interpuesto en julio el 2010 contó con la firma de varios diputados: uno de ellos fue Ministro de Seguridad en la administración 1998-2002, y conoce con mayor detalle el alcance exacto de los términos acordados en el tratado de patrullaje conjunto suscrito a finales de 1998.

En una resolución anterior de la misma Sala Constitucional (ver  texto  integral de la Res. 2009-005426) del 31 de marzo del 2009, se lee que también en el 2007 se procedió a este tipo de solicitud “ampliada” por parte de la Embajada de Estados Unidos, consistiendo en completar una primera lista de barcos con las siglas USCGC con naves fuertemente artilladas de su marina (con las siglas USS): “Se solicita el permiso para diecisiete embarcaciones con el acrónimo USCGC (servicio de guardacostas del país indicado). También se tramitó la nota diplomática #004 del 3 de enero de 2007 requiriendo el ingreso de cinco barcos con el acrónimo USS (marina de guerra de los Estados Unidos). Pudo comprobar que las embarcaciones que corresponden a la segunda nota son de la marina, debidamente artilladas, con lanzadores de misiles y diseñadas para misiones de corto alcance. No pertenecen al servicio de guardacostas y tienen el doble de longitud de las naves de ese servicio, con lo que son inútiles para persecuciones de lanchas rápidas en el mar“. En aquella ocasión, el juez constitucional rechazó el recurso interpuesto e indicó que: “Es precisamente en la sede Parlamentaria donde debe discutirse la conveniencia o no de ese ingreso, como en efecto ocurrió. No hay elementos de juicio suficientes en este caso que permitan concluir que los motivos del ingreso sean distintos de los que expresó el entonces Ministro de Seguridad en la nota dirigida a la Asamblea y que permita de alguna forma concluir que en el ejercicio de la competencia constitucional en cuestión la Asamblea Legislativa se hubiera apartado del valor constitucional de la paz, cuyo contenido ha fijado la propia Sala en los términos que ya se transcribieron“.  Cabe señalar que esta aprobación en mayo del 2007 por parte de la Asamblea Legislativa se debió también, según la misma Embajada de Estados Unidos en Costa Rica, a su propia labor de cabildeo. Se lee en este cable diplomático del 27/05/2007 publicado por la organización Wikileaks, que “4. This vote caps our behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign over the past six months, which was highlighted by Berrocal and the Ambassador hosting key legislators (and  media) aboard the USCGC Rush in Golfito in January”. En el mismo cable también se señala que un pequeño detalle pasó desapercibido para muchos en Costa Rica: “6. COMMENT: These votes clear the way for ship visits until after the CAFTA referendum, which is good news by itself; if the new visit window leads to even less stringent visit approval requirements in the future, even better. (No one seems to have noticed that the period approved — May 1-November 30, 2007 — is actually seven months.)”. En otro cable diplomático hecho público por Wikileaks del mes de diciembre del 2008 (ver cable) se detalla lo provechoso que resultó para la imagen de Estados Unidos la estadía de la embarcación militar USS Underwood en Golfito durante el mes de noviembre del 2008 para convencer a diputados  costarricenses, entre otros, de la necesidad de asociar naves militares a operaciones de patrullaje conjunto: “Costa Rica’s hyper-legalistic political system and the anti-military, pro-disarmament views of the government and society often made it very difficult to provide military assistance here in the past.  As Reftels illustrate, challenges remain, even when providing humanitarian assistance, and we should proceed carefully, but  the Underwood’s visit illustrates how far we have come. The willing participation of skeptical, often-critical legislators from the main opposition party (the PAC) was critical to provide them a clear understanding of the USN’s “role” in law enforcement.  We believe they now grasp the nuance that whether from a USCG cutter or a USN warship, it is always a law enforcement team that conducts boardings and the actual hands on searches, seizures and arrests under the bilateral maritime agreement with Costa Rica”.

Encontramos también una resolución del año 2006 de la Sala Constitucional que merece mención, en la medida en que señalaba en aquel momento el carácter estrictamente policial de las operaciones realizadas en materia de patrullaje conjunto, en términos que hoy parecen haberse desvanecido: “Al respecto, debe tenerse presente la naturaleza de cuerpo policial, y no militar, del Servicio de Guardacostas de los Estados Unidos de América. Asimismo, en la jurisprudencia parcialmente transcrita, ya la Sala señaló que el Acuerdo de referencia establece un sistema de vigilancia policial conjunta, a través de lo que convencionalmente se denominan fuerzas de orden público, utilizando naves que no son de guerra en estricto sentido, ni tampoco tropas, ni militares, del Ejército de los Estados Unidos de América, sino mediante la conformación de fuerzas y equipos policiales, como parte de la ejecución de los compromisos asumidos por ambos países en la lucha contra el narcotráfico. Adicionalmente, la Sala dijo que la naturaleza de la operación conjunta del patrullaje como medio para combatir el tráfico ilícito de estupefacientes lo distingue de las operaciones militares, por cuanto los fines que persigue no son militares, ni se fundamentan en actuaciones bélicas, sin que el tratado autorice la permanencia de fuerzas militares en territorio nacional” (ver texto de la Resolución 2006-017744 del 11 de diciembre del 2006). La última frase evidencia el cambio de posición del juez constitucional, si la comparamos con el “regalo” navideño del 24 de diciembre del 2010 antes mencionado.

Algunas valoraciones

Más allá de los diversos intentos a lo largo de los años para ampliar progresivamente el alcance de lo establecido en 1999 por parte de Costa Rica y de Estados Unidos, de la tendencia a militarizar la lucha contra el narcotráfico (que se promueve en otras latitudes con resultados cuestionables en cuanto a su eficacia), y  de los diversos ejercicios realizados ante la justicia constitucional costarricense, al momento de redactar estas líneas, se cuenta con pocos elementos para saber exactamente qué tipo de aeronaves militares sobrevuelan con tanta regularidad el espacio aéreo de Costa Rica. La cifra de más de 700 solicitudes recibidas en un solo año merecería mayores detalles por parte de las autoridades a cargo de la aviación civil en Costa Rica.  Adicionalmente, se cuenta con pocos datos sobre los logros, los aciertos (y los desaciertos) del convenio de patrullaje con Estados Unidos, el cual adolece de una evaluación integral, pese a haber cumplido 15 primaveras en el 2014.

En una carta de entendimiento suscrita entre Costa Rica y Estados Unidos en junio del 2009 con relación a la Iniciativa de Mérida (ver  documento, Programa Interdicción marítima y terrestre regional) se indicaba brevemente que: “En reconocimiento a los efectos nocivos que ha tenido el incremento del tráfico ilícito en las aguas costeras y dentro del territorio costarricense en la seguridad interna de Costa Rica, este proyecto buscará dar apoyo a los esfuerzos del Gobierno de Costa Rica (GOCR) para combatir el tráfico por tierra y en sus aguas costeras”.

En nuestra modesta opinión, se trata de un primer (y como puede suceder con un primerizo,  tímido) “reconocimiento”, según el término usado, de los efectos no contemplados del patrullaje conjunto que debería merecer mayor atención por parte de las autoridades nacionales: en efecto, es muy probable que la presión ejercida en alta mar (debido a  la capacidad de vigilancia desarrollada desde 1999) haya sustancialmente modificado las rutas del narcotráfico entre Colombia y México  acercándolas cada vez más a las costas de Costa Rica. A inicios de los años 2000, las rutas marítimas de trasiego se ubicaban a más de 130 millas náuticas: ver por ejemplo la ubicación del decomiso realizado en noviembre del 2002 al que refiere esta nota de prensa. A este respecto, el mapa de esta otra nota de Aldia editada 10 años después (2012) es sumamente ilustrativo: recientes decomisos en el 2015 refieren a distancias menores a las 10 millas (ver nota del Diario La Extra de marzo del 2015).

Otro efecto, poco estudiado, que merecería igual – o hasta mayor –  atención es el siguiente: en los últimos años, son muchas las familias de pescadores costarricenses las que han visto a sus integrantes involucrarse en tareas  de apoyo a los narcotraficantes. Muchos pescadores jefes de hogar han sido sancionados como tal y se encuentran cumpliendo una pena en un centro penal: en varios casos, por encontrarse en el mar con sus embarcaciones artesanales con una inusual cantidad de gasolina, en labores de abastecimiento a las lanchas rápidas usadas por el narcotráfico. El Plan Nacional sobre Drogas 2013-2017 (ver  documento ) precisa que: “Los barcos pesqueros artesanales de bandera nacional, han sido intensivamente utilizados para el trasiego de drogas, bajo la lógica de su capacidad de confundirse con el resto de buques costarricenses que se dedican a la pesca a pequeña escala” (p. 17). El Plan Nacional no contempla mayores iniciativas para remediar a esta delicada situación en las costas de Costa Rica, que se puede ver como una consecuencia previsible del acuerdo de patrullaje conjunto de 1999.

Es también muy probable que buena parte de la droga que navegaba en alta mar entre Colombia y México destinada al mercado norteamericano en los años noventa sea ahora trasegada por bandas organizadas en el mismo territorio de Costa Rica: a este respecto, merece mención la referencia que hace el Instituto Costarricense sobre Droga (ICD) en su informe (ver texto) al indicar que: “Es muy evidente que el patrullaje en conjunto con el gobierno de los Estados Unidos da frutos que impiden que esta droga llegue a ser consumida en las calles de la potencia del norte y las nuestras ya que la mecánica actual de pago de los cárteles a los costarricense por los servicios que estos brindan incluye el pago con drogas, misma que luego se procura vender en territorio costarricense” (p. 28).  Lamentablemente el ICD no precisa la proporción existente entre la droga incautada destinada a Estados Unidos y la  destinada a Costa Rica, que permitiría valorar mejor las ventajas y desventajas de estos operativos conjuntos desplegados en el mar para Costa Rica. Tampoco propone iniciativa alguna para resguardar y proteger a sus comunidades costeras. Más generalmente, el ICD se muestra un tanto discreto sobre el patrullaje conjunto, con un único y modesto gráfico para el período 2008-2013 en su informe anual (pág. 30 del informa antes mencionado). Lo cierto es que las retribuciones por este trasiego otrora realizado en el mar ya no se realizan en dinero en efectivo, sino que se pagan con porciones del mismo producto trasegado,  destinado ahora a suplir la creciente demanda del mercado nacional.

Encontramos en otro informe anual para el año 2013 del Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) (ver  documento ) una interesante aseveración: “El éxito de las labores de patrullaje conjunto entre Costa Rica y los EE.UU – particularmente entre 2007 y 2008- obligó a los traficantes a modificar su trayecto. En primer lugar, acercándose más a la costa con la intención de pasar inadvertidos para los sistemas de detección; y utilizando embarcaciones pequeñas, comúnmente de 2 motores, que pueden cargar entre 400/900 kg” (p. 35).  Este mismo informe (que tampoco procede a algún análisis más profundo sobre los efectos del patrullaje conjunto) reconoce además que “La mayor parte de la cocaína que llega hasta Costa Rica lo hace por vía marítima. De la droga que llega hasta suelo costarricense, solo una pequeña cantidad permanece para abastecer el mercado local mientras que la mayor parte continua en dirección al mercado del norte mediante diferentes combinaciones en rutas aéreas marítimas o terrestres” (pp. 14-15). El mismo informe oficial de la OIJ precisa además que  “Las incautaciones de cocaína más cuantiosas son aquellas realizadas en intervenciones marítimas o en provincias costeras” (p. 74).

En definitiva se puede avanzar, con base en esta breve información recopilada – que no pretende ser exhaustiva – producida por las mismas dependencias del aparato estatal costarricense, que:

–      el desplazamiento inicial de las rutas de cargamentos de droga destinadas a abastecer la demanda del mercado norteamericano hacia las costas de Costa Rica;

–      el grado de vulnerabilidad de algunas comunidades costeras ante la presión ejercida por los narcotraficantes;

–      el desplazamiento ya no solamente a las costas, sino al mismo territorio costarricense de las rutas otrora marítimas;

–      el hecho que el narcotráfico haya ideado desde el territorio costarricense nuevos circuitos de distribución hacia los mercados situados al Norte de Centroamérica que antes se realizaban en alta mar;

son, entre muchos otros, complejos temas que tienen todos y cada uno implicaciones muy serias para las autoridades policiales y el Estado costarricense, para las comunidades costeras y para la sociedad costarricense como un todo.  Ante esta previsible situación, se hubiese esperado del Estado costarricense y de su aliado norteamericano algún tipo de estrategia para desarticular y contener la presión sobre las comunidades costeras que implicaría el patrullaje conjunto acordado en 1998: en una comparecencia ante la Comisión de Seguridad y Narcotráfico realizada en septiembre del 2010, el Comisionado Antidrogas fue enfático con relación a la poca preparación de Costa Rica para resguardar lo que ocurre en sus costas y en las primeras 20 millas de mar adyacente (Nota 4).

Conclusión:

Independientemente de aspectos meramente represivos en los que insisten muy a menudo los cuerpos policiales y de seguridad en sus informes anuales, con claras tendencias a militarizar la lucha contra el narcotráfico en algunos casos, y a considerar “exitoso” cualquier aumento en las cantidades de decomiso de droga, es posible que la actual discusión planteada en Costa Rica sobre permisos a aeronaves vuelva a dar lugar a discusiones en el seno del Parlamento y, eventualmente, a un nuevo ejercicio ante el juez constitucional. Un momento oportuno para incluir, en algún momento de la discusión, las consecuencias (al parecer no previstas) del acuerdo de patrullaje conjunto suscrito en 1999 con Estados Unidos.

Nicolás Boeglin 

Notas

Nota 1: Se lee en este artículo que: “En cuanto al límite exterior del espacio aéreo, su debate continúa, como indicamos, en la citada comisión de la ONU. Son numerosas y diversas las teorías que se han expuesto sobre este particular, por lo cual se las ha reunido en dos grandes grupos, a saber: las teorías espaciales, fundamentadas en consideraciones técnicas o físicas, y las teorías funcionales, que se basan en el concepto de la actividad espacial”. Véase  MOYANO BONILLA C., “El Protocolo de Montreal de 1984 y la violación del espacio aéreo por aeronaves civiles”, Boletín Mexicano de Derecho Comparado, Disponible aquí.

Nota 2: La Sala Constitucional indica además con especial acento que: “Le corresponde al órgano legislativo, como representante y encarnación del pueblo costarricense, de sus valores, principios, tradiciones y derechos colectivos de los que es titular, discutir y discernir si se trata de “tropas extranjeras” o no, si estamos o no ante “naves de guerra” y, en definitiva, autorizar su ingreso o no al territorio nacional, según los fines que tengan propuestos esas tropas extranjeras o naves de guerra /…/. Bajo esa inteligencia, ningún otro órgano o entidad pública puede autorizar el ingreso de tropas extranjeras o de naves de guerra o discutir, si se trata de unos u otros, tales extremos le están reservados, exclusivamente, a la Asamblea Legislativa en procura de actuar el valor constitucional y el derecho fundamental a la paz, consustanciales a la sociedad costarricense. El órgano o la entidad que se arrogue esa atribución o competencia exclusiva y pretenda efectuar distinciones que son competencia del órgano legislativo, será, por consiguiente, manifiesta y absolutamente incompetente y cualquier acto que dicte será sustancialmente disconforme con el parámetro de constitucionalidad“.

Nota 3: Véase BOEGLIN N., “Hacia la consolidación del derecho humano a la paz”,  publicado en el sitio Tribuglobal, edición del 4/02/2014, disponible aquí.

Nota 4: Leemos en esta  acta  de la Comisión de Seguridad y Narcotráfico del Congreso de Costa Rica del 21/09/2010, que para el Comisionado Antidrogas de Costa Rica y Vice Ministro, “El patrullaje conjunto marítimo también establece la posibilidad del patrullaje aéreo y la interdicción aérea sigue siendo uno de los recursos más efectivos. Y aquí también nosotros dentro del replanteamiento de la estrategia del patrullaje hemos optado por utilizar el recurso aéreo también. Me refiero a tecnología, me refiero a radares, a capacidad de detección para poder nosotros intervenir cuando esas embarcaciones se van acercando a la costa. Pero en este momento con los recursos que tiene el país se hace prácticamente, como lo dice nuestro pueblo, burro amarrado contra tigre suelto en la lucha. Nosotros no tenemos en este momento esa capacidad de interdicción marítima, y estamos focalizando la acción en hacer puntos de contención específicos y poder tener mayor apoyo en la detección. Porque Costa Rica tampoco cuenta con los recursos tecnológicos de radar, para poder estar estableciendo y aunque los tuviéramos no tenemos la capacidad para dar una cobertura adecuada al abordamiento, al acercamiento de esas lanchas a esas lanchas a nuestras costas, que es lo que tanto golpea” (p. 29). En la página 21 de esta misma acta se transcribe lo oído por un diputado en la cadena norteamericana de CNN por parte de la Presidenta de Costa Rica con relación al patrullaje conjunto, y que, según este mismo diputado, fue luego “borrado del mapa“.

This article was first published by Who What Why

Congressional Republicans were desperate to score political points in the Benghazi saga. So desperate that they finally decided to masquerade as … peaceniks.

During the recent grilling of Hillary Clinton, the Republicans — who have rarely seen a war they didn’t like — actually criticized the former Secretary of State for ignoring the difficulty of successful regime change. (No mention was made of how well George W. Bush’s regime change has gone in Iraq.)

Further, they claimed that she had run roughshod over her own experts, who warned that US involvement in a 2011 air campaign in support of rebels would lead, at best, to new problems, and that they (the Republicans) had anticipated the chaos that marks Libya today.

“You initiated a policy to put the United States into Libya…. You were the prime mover…. You were concerned about image, you were concerned about credit,” Rep. Peter J. Roskam ­(R-Ill.) told her. “If Libya unraveled, you had a lot to lose.”

This new line of attack was simply the latest in a series of attempts to damage her over Benghazi, none of which seem to have eroded confidence among those inclined to give her their vote, or even among those on the fence. It was essentially a hail mary pass, and we will see if the public blames her for the morass that is Libya today — a country where chaos and extremism now reign.

Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from: EIA.GOV / Wikipedia, HOUSE.GOV, Eric Kounce TexasRaiser / Wikimedia, Global Research.

What the GOP Dares Not Ask

But, quick: What was Libya really about? If you don’t know, then you’re no different from most people, including most members of Congress — as evidenced by the debate in 2011, and by the discourse since. Seemingly missed by all: getting rid of Muammar Qaddafi was never really about protecting the lives of Libyans.

No, it was, like everything else in geopolitics — about money. Or, more precisely, the invaluable resources to be had, and about a national leader who would not play ball with those who wanted those resources. Of course, the establishment was not about to level with us, so it lied.

WhoWhatWhy was on the case from the beginning in Libya, pointing out the deceptive propaganda campaign that was unleashed to guarantee that war was inevitable.

The real questions Hillary Clinton ought to be asked — but which the Republicans cannot ask because they are as complicit as anyone — is why she pushed for Qaddafi’s ouster. And why she was apparently so comfortable with misleading the American people about the actions taken in their name.

As the US enters the thick of yet another presidential election, we urge everyone to consider just why it is that the inevitable nominees from both parties can be expected to perpetuate the same historical myths. And why whoever is elected can be counted on to commit troops, dollars and lives to still more such military adventures. Or misadventures.

What Historical Myths? Keep Reading

To learn more, we invite you to read our original reports published when it was all unfolding.They chronicle how US officials disseminated (with media complicity) an unending stream of brazen lies designed to advance a hidden, predetermined agenda.

Here are links to a couple of those past stories (summaries edited for space):

The Libya Secret: How the West Cooked Up “People’s Uprising”

The public was told that the sole purpose of what was to be very limited bombing was to protect rebelling Libyan civilians from massive retaliation by Qaddafi. However, protecting civilians apparently didn’t generate sufficient US public support for intervention, so we started to hear about other purported justifications for going in: Qaddafi was so odious he was encouraging his soldiers to … commit mass rape! And if that wasn’t enough, he was giving them Viagra! Oh, and condoms!

You can’t make this sort of thing up. And yet that’s just what the NATO crew did — made it up.

Libya: Connect the Dots – You Get a Giant Dollar Sign

“Why Libya?” Why were the United States and its allies suddenly so worried about the rights of Libyans under the long-ruling Qaddafi? And why did the West initiate a no-fly zone, commence massive bombing runs, and virtually create, train, supply and fund a rebel army?

For an answer, we need only look to the “usual suspects” — oil companies, financial houses such as Goldman Sachs — all engaged in quintessential corporate intrigue. Just the sort that never seems to come out in … the corporate media.

And here are a few more Libya-related stories from the You-Can’t-Make-This-Up Department:

Burying the Lockerbie Bomber and the Truth

The CIA’s Man in Libya

Kerry, McCain Behind Mysteriously Urgent Libya Mission

LIbya Update Featuring Media and Congress as Daffy Duck

Al-Jazeera’s Failures on Libya and What They Tell Us About the Network

They’re some of the best soldiers in the world: highly trained, well equipped, and experts in weapons, intelligence gathering, and battlefield medicine.  They study foreign cultures and learn local languages.  They’re smart, skillful, wear some very iconic headgear, and their 12-member teams are “capable of conducting the full spectrum of special operations, from building indigenous security forces to identifying and targeting threats to U.S. national interests.”

They’re also quite successful.  At least they think so.

“In the last decade, Green Berets have deployed into 135 of the 195 recognized countries in the world. Successes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Trans-Sahel Africa, the Philippines, the Andean Ridge, the Caribbean, and Central America have resulted in an increasing demand for [Special Forces] around the globe,” reads a statement on the website of U.S. Army Special Forces Command.

The Army’s Green Berets are among the best known of America’s elite forces, but they’re hardly alone.  Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, Army Rangers, Marine Corps Raiders, as well as civil affairs personnel, logisticians, administrators, analysts, and planners, among others, make up U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF).  They are the men and women who carry out America’s most difficult and secret military missions.  Since 9/11, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has grown in every conceivable way from funding and personnel to global reach and deployments.  In 2015, according to Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw, U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to a record-shattering 147 countries — 75% of the nations on the planet, which represents a jump of 145% since the waning days of the Bush administration. On any day of the year, in fact, America’s most elite troops can be found in 70 to 90 nations.

There is, of course, a certain logic to imagining that the increasing global sweep of these deployments is a sign of success.  After all, why would you expand your operations into ever-more nations if they weren’t successful?  So I decided to pursue that record of “success” with a few experts on the subject.

I started by asking Sean Naylor, a man who knows America’s most elite troops as few do and the author of Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command, about the claims made by Army Special Forces Command.  He responded with a hearty laugh.  “I’m going to give whoever wrote that the benefit of the doubt that they were referring to successes that Army Special Forces were at least perceived to have achieved in those countries rather than the overall U.S. military effort,” he says.  As he points out, the first post-9/11 months may represent the zenith of success for those troops.  The initial operations in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 — carried out largely by U.S. Special Forces, the CIA, and the Afghan Northern Alliance, backed by U.S. airpower — were “probably the high point” in the history of unconventional warfare by Green Berets, according to Naylor.  As for the years that followed?  “There were all sorts of mistakes, one could argue, that were made after that.” He is, however, quick to point out that “the vast majority of the decisions [about operations and the war, in general] were not being made by Army Special Forces soldiers.”

For Linda Robinson, author of One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare, the high number of deployments is likely a mistake in itself.  “Being in 70 countries… may not be the best use of SOF,” she told me.  Robinson, a senior international policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, advocates for a “more thoughtful and focused approach to the employment of SOF,” citing enduring missions in Colombia and the Philippines as the most successful special ops training efforts in recent years.  “It might be better to say ‘Let’s not sprinkle around the SOF guys like fairy dust.’  Let’s instead focus on where we think we can have a success… If you want more successes, maybe you need to start reining in how many places you’re trying to cover.”

Most of the special ops deployments in those 147 countries are the type Robinson expresses skepticism about — short-term training missions by “white” operators like Green Berets (as opposed to the “black ops” man-hunting missions by the elite of the elite that captivate Hollywood and video gamers).  Between 2012 and 2014, for example, Special Operations forces carried out 500 Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) missions in as many as 67 countries, practicing everything from combat casualty care and marksmanship to small unit tactics and desert warfare alongside local forces.  And JCETs only scratch the surface when it comes to special ops missions to train proxies and allies.  Special Operations forces, in fact, conduct a variety of training efforts globally.

A recent $500 million program, run by Green Berets, to train a Syrian force of more than 15,000 over several years, for instance, crashed and burned in a very public way, yielding just four or five fighters in the field before being abandoned.  This particular failure followed much larger, far more expensive attempts to train the Afghan and Iraqi security forces in which Special Operations troops played a smaller yet still critical role. The results of these efforts recently prompted TomDispatch regular and retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich to write that Washington should now assume “when it comes to organizing, training, equipping, and motivating foreign armies, that the United States is essentially clueless.”

The Elite Warriors of the Warrior Elite

In addition to training, another core role of Special Operations forces is direct action — counterterror missions like low-profile drone assassinations and kill/capture raids by muscled-up, high-octane operators.  The exploits of the men — and they are mostly men (and mostly Caucasian ones at that) — behind these operations are chronicled in Naylor’s epic history of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the secret counterterrorism organization that includes the military’s most elite and shadowy units like the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 and the Army’s Delta Force.  A compendium of more than a decade of derring-do from Afghanistan to Iraq, Somalia to Syria, Relentless Strike paints a portrait of a highly-trained, well-funded, hard-charging counterterror force with global reach.  Naylor calls it the “perfect hammer,” but notes the obvious risk that “successive administrations would continue to view too many national security problems as nails.”

When I ask Naylor about what JSOC has ultimately achieved for the country in the Obama years, I get the impression that he doesn’t find my question particularly easy to answer.  He points to hostage rescues, like the high profile effort to save “Captain Phillips” of the Maersk Alabama after the cargo ship was hijacked by Somali pirates, and asserts that such missions might “inhibit others from seizing Americans.”  One wonders, of course, if similar high-profile failed missions since then, including the SEAL raid that ended in the deaths of hostages Luke Somers, an American photojournalist, and Pierre Korkie, a South African teacher, as well as the unsuccessful attempt to rescue the late aid worker Kayla Mueller, might then have just the opposite effect.

“Afghanistan, you’ve got another fairly devilish strategic problem there,” Naylor says and offers up a question of his own: “You have to ask what would have happened if al-Qaeda in Iraq had not been knocked back on its heels by Joint Special Operations Command between 2005 and 2010?”  Naylor calls attention to JSOC’s special abilities to menace terror groups, keeping them unsteady through relentless intelligence gathering, raiding, and man-hunting. “It leaves them less time to take the offensive, to plan missions, and to plot operations against the United States and its allies,” he explains.  “Now that doesn’t mean that the use of JSOC is a substitute for a strategy… It’s a tool in a policymaker’s toolkit.”

Indeed.  If what JSOC can do is bump off and capture individuals and pressure such groups but not decisively roll up militant networks, despite years of anti-terror whack-a-mole efforts, it sounds like a recipe for spending endless lives and endless funds on endless war.  “It’s not my place as a reporter to opine as to whether the present situations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen were ‘worth’ the cost in blood and treasure borne by U.S. Special Operations forces,” Naylor tells me in a follow-up email.  “Given the effects that JSOC achieved in Iraq (Uday and Qusay Hussein killed, Saddam Hussein captured, [al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab] Zarqawi killed, al-Qaeda in Iraq eviscerated), it’s hard to say that JSOC did not have an impact on that nation’s recent history.”

Impacts, of course, are one thing, successes another.  Special Operations Command, in fact, hedges its bets by claiming that it can only be as successful as the global commands under which its troops operate in each area of the world, including European Command, Pacific Command, Africa Command, Southern Command, Northern Command, and Central Command or CENTCOM, the geographic combatant command that oversees operations in the Greater Middle East.  “We support the Geographic Combatant Commanders (GCCs) — if they are successful, we are successful; if they fail, we fail,” says SOCOM’s website.

With this in mind, it’s helpful to return to Naylor’s question: What if al-Qaeda in Iraq, which flowered in the years after the U.S. invasion, had never been targeted by JSOC as part of a man-hunting operation going after its foreign fighters, financiers, and military leaders?  Given that the even more brutal Islamic State (IS) grew out of that targeted terror group, that IS was fueled in many ways, say experts, both by U.S. actions and inaction, that its leader’s rise was bolstered by U.S. operations, that “U.S. training helped mold” another of its chiefs, and that a U.S. prison served as its “boot camp,” and given that the Islamic State now holds a significant swath of Iraq, was JSOC’s campaign against its predecessor a net positive or a negative?  Were special ops efforts in Iraq (and therefore in CENTCOM’s area of operations) — JSOC’s post-9/11 showcase counterterror campaign — a success or a failure?

Naylor notes that JSOC’s failure to completely destroy al-Qaeda in Iraq allowed IS to grow and eventually sweep “across northern Iraq in 2014, seizing town after town from which JSOC and other U.S. forces had evicted al-Qaeda in Iraq at great cost several years earlier.”  This, in turn, led to the rushing of special ops advisers back into the country to aid the fight against the Islamic State, as well as to that program to train anti-Islamic State Syrian fighters that foundered and then imploded.  By this spring, JSOC operators were not only back in Iraq and also on the ground in Syria, but they were soon conducting drone campaigns in both of those tottering nations.

This special ops merry-go-round in Iraq is just the latest in a long series of fiascos, large and small, to bedevil America’s elite troops.  Over the years, in that country, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, special operators have regularly been involved in all manner of mishaps, embroiled in various scandals, and implicated in numerous atrocities. Recently, for instance, members of the Special Operations forces have come under scrutiny for an air strike on a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Afghanistan that killed at least 22 patients and staff, for an alliance with “unsavory partners” in the Central African Republic, for the ineffective and abusive Afghan police they trained and supervised, and for a shady deal to provide SEALs with untraceable silencers that turned out to be junk, according to prosecutors.

Winners and Losers

JSOC was born of failure, a phoenix rising from the ashes of Operation Eagle Claw, the humiliating attempt to rescue 53 American hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1980 that ended, instead, in the deaths of eight U.S. personnel. Today, the elite force trades on an aura of success in the shadows. Its missions are the stuff of modern myths.

In his advance praise for Naylor’s book, one cable news analyst called JSOC’s operators “the finest warriors who ever went into combat.”  Even accepting this — with apologies to the Mongols, the Varangian Guard, Persia’s Immortals, and the Ten Thousand of Xenophon’s Anabasis — questions remain: Have these “warriors” actually been successful beyond budget battles and the box office? Is exceptional tactical prowess enough?  Are battlefield triumphs and the ability to batter terror networks through relentless raiding the same as victory? Such questions bring to mind an exchange that Army colonel Harry Summers, who served in Vietnam, had with a North Vietnamese counterpart in 1975.  “You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield,” Summers told him.  After pausing to ponder the comment, Colonel Tu replied, “That may be so. But it is also irrelevant.”

So what of those Green Berets who deployed to 135 countries in the last decade? And what of the Special Operations forces sent to 147 countries in 2015? And what about those Geographic Combatant Commanders across the globe who have hosted all those special operators?

I put it to Vietnam veteran Andrew Bacevich, author of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country. “As far back as Vietnam,” he tells me, “the United States military has tended to confuse inputs with outcomes. Effort, as measured by operations conducted, bomb tonnage dropped, or bodies counted, is taken as evidence of progress made. Today, tallying up the number of countries in which Special Operations forces are present repeats this error. There is no doubt that U.S. Special Operations forces are hard at it in lots of different places. It does not follow that they are thereby actually accomplishing anything meaningful.”

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Nation Institute. A 2014 Izzy Award and American Book Award winner for his book Kill Anything That Moves, his pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Intercept, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. His latest book is Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa.

Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz aired his views in the Telegraph newspaper in the wake of a row over UK contracts.

He warned that there had been “an alarming change in the way Saudi Arabia is discussed in Britain” and that the country’s role as the center of Islam and as a key security partner were of “little concern to those who have fomented this change.”

Abdulaziz said the new trend could have “potentially serious repercussions that could damage the mutually beneficial strategic partnership that our countries have so long enjoyed.”

The ambassador singled out Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for his efforts to halt a contract to provide prison services to Saudi Arabia’s notorious jails.

“One recent example of this mutual respect being breached was when Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Opposition, claimed that he had convinced Prime Minister David Cameron to cancel a prison consultancy contract with Saudi Arabia worth £5.9 million [US$9 million],” Abdulaziz argued.

He also said that Saudi Arabia often had to deal with a “lack of understanding and misconceptions” about the Gulf regime’s traditions, laws and customs.

Saudi Arabian laws allow stoning, decapitation and crucifixion and these take place regularly.

Corbyn’s intervention over the prison services contract centered on the case of Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimra, who was arrested at the age of 17 for resisting the regime and is due to be beheaded and then crucified.

“If the extensive trade links between the two countries are going to be subordinate to certain political ideologies, then this vital commercial exchange is going to be at risk,” Abdulaziz said, adding that Saudis “will not be lectured to by anyone.”

“Hasty decisions prompted by short-term gains often do more harm than good in the longer term,” he said.

The Russian military operation in Syria has divided the Arab world. One side is made up of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan, which view Russia’s actions with optimism. Their attitude was voiced by Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri, who recently said his nation believes «that the Russian operation will impact the fight against terrorism in Syria and help eliminate it». «Russia is concerned by the resistance to terrorism and the purpose of its intervention is a fatal blow to terrorism in Syria, and its strikes are in line with those of the anti-Daesh coalition in Syria and Iraq», he stated.

The UAE, Jordan and Egypt view the groups being hit by Russian airstrikes as extremists. King Abdullah of Jordan, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed of the UAE and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt all met with Vladimir Putin at the MAKS air show in July and likely exchanged the views on the situation in the region to align their positions.

The other side is made up of Saudi, Qatari and the Turkish governments, which are adamantly opposed to Russian intervention in the Middle East. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir described the Russian military moves as an «escalation» at a recent meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

According to Reuters report, Qatar, a member of GCC, is a major supporter of rebels in Syria’s civil war, suggested it could intervene militarily following Russia’s intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

The comments made by Qatar’s Foreign Minister in a CNN Arabic interview on October 21, hit the newsstands to shock the world.

Asked if Qatar supported the Saudi position that does not rule out a military option in Syria as a result of Russia’s intervention, Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah said, «Anything that protects the Syrian people and Syria from partition, we will not spare any effort to carry it out with our Saudi and Turkish brothers, no matter what this is». «If a military intervention will protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the regime, we will do it», he added.

Attiyah also said Qatar preferred to solve regional crises through direct political dialogue. «We do not fear any confrontation, and thus we will call for dialogue from a position of strength because we believe in peace and the shortest path to peace is through direct dialogue».

Reuters also reports that Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was quoted by Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen television as saying: «If Qatar carries out its threat to militarily intervene in Syria, then we will consider this a direct aggression… Our response will be very harsh».

Al-Attiyah defended the Ahrar Al-Sham Islamist militant group which Qatar and its allies have been supporting, saying: «They are not allies of Al-Qaeda. They are a Syrian group fighting to liberate their country. We do not consider them extremists and terrorists. They are part of the moderate opposition».

Qatar has been a leading supporter of anti-Assad rebel groups, providing arms and financial and political backing.

Ever since its outbreak in 2010, the Arab Spring has brought about misery and violence to the Middle East. The hopes were dashed as vicious circles of unfulfilled revolutions, ethnic wars and societal polarization hit the region.

As a typical small-state, Qatar benefited from stability in its region prior to the Arab Spring.  When the tumultuous events came, the Qatar’s policy shifted to fostering change. The swift rise of Islamic groups in the region gave rise to expectations that they would come to power. Qatar took advantage of its close contacts with such groups. The country allegedly hosts prominent members of the Taliban, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood as well as rebels form Syria and Libya.

A dialogue between the US and Iran   agitated Saudi Arabia. It enabled Qatar to move more freely in the region and fill in the vacuum created by decreased Saudi influence. The sudden changes in the region resulting from the Arab Spring   have revealed its ambitions and allowed it to shape regional politics according to its interests.

For instance, when the turmoil hit Yemen in 2011, Qatar sided with the opposition, and publicly called on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down. In Libya Qatar was quick to side with the opposition and provided it with financial and military support.

Decreased US interest in the region creates an opportunity for regional actors such as Qatar to take on greater role in the resolution of conflicts in the region. Dr. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen of London School of Economics and Political Science, believes that «The country took advantage of the unique niche which it had spent years crafting in order to play an astoundingly high-profile and increasingly controversial role in the uprisings. Initially, it displayed unprecedented regional leadership bordering on outright activism in responding to crises across the Arab world».

There are also economic reasons that drive its policy.

In 2012 Felix Imonti, an analyst cited by Ansa Mediterranean, posed the article entitled Qatar: Rich and Dangerous published by specialized website “Oilprice.com”. There he provided the clue to real motives behind the Qatar’s Middle East policy.

The author suggested that Qatar’s involvement in the Syria civil war was based in part on its desire to build a pipeline to Turkey through Syria. According to him, «The discovery in 2009 of a new gas field near Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria opened new possibilities to bypass the Saudi Barrier and to secure a new source of income. Pipelines are in place already in Turkey to receive the gas. Only Al-Assad is in the way. Qatar along with the Turks would like to remove Al-Assad and install the Syrian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the best organized political movement in the chaotic society and can block Saudi Arabia’s efforts to install a more fanatical Wahhabi based regime. Once the Brotherhood is in power, the Emir’s broad connections with Brotherhood groups throughout the region should make it easy for him to find a friendly ear and an open hand in Damascus».

That’s the gist of it. First and foremost it is a matter of finances. Transporting gas by pipeline is quicker and far more economic than cooling is down to liquid form to be shipped in specialized tankers. And although Saudi Arabia and Qatar may be working hand in hand to remove Bashar Assad from power, this is where their cooperation stops. Both the Saudis and the Qataris want to control the outcome of the Syrian conflict.

As oil-price.net reported back in 2012,  Qatar needed to get its Qatar-Turkey pipeline through Syria. Europe wants the project to come through to diversify its energy supplies and make gas cheaper.  A middle-eastern pipeline going through Syria is a very attractive option. If Syria has a Sunni government, the Middle East energy rich Arab states will have a Sunni corridor stretching from the Persian Gulf to the European Union. The government of Bashar Assad preferred a pipeline going through Iran.

Soon civil unrest hit his country. The migrant crisis currently faced by Europe is an unintended consequence of the plans to build a Qatar-Syria gas pipeline and undermine the position of Russia on the European energy market. That’s what Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah has in mind when he so eloquently expresses his concern over the fate of Syrian people.

* * *

At the Valdai discussion forum on October 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin said some countries are playing a double game, adding that while they fight against terrorism they also «place figures on the board» in their own interests. “Success in fighting terrorists cannot be reached if using some of them as a battering ram to overthrow disliked regimes,» Putin told the forum, saying that this way the terrorists would not go anywhere. «It’s just an illusion that they can be dealt with [later], removed from power and somehow negotiated with,» he added.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already embroiled in an expensive and bloody war in Yemen that may limit both their military and financial resources. An intervention in Syria would be a gross violation of international law if it is not sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council or conducted upon an invitation of Syria’s government.

There is a consequence to be taken into account before Qatar implements the plans announced by its Foreign Minister. The Qatar’s military may clash with the armed forces of Russia, Syria, Iran and the formations of Hezbollah.  This danger is evident. It gives ground to conclude that the official statement made by Qatar’s Foreign Chief in nothing else but a good example of reckless policy fraught with dire implications.

There are few more intrinsically brutal facts than slavery’s role in the building of European, and then subsequently, its various settler empires.  As a system, it became the peculiar institution, as it was euphemistically termed, in the American south. It signified a demographic theft that the African continent has struggled to overcome, a shock of exponential proportion.

Slavery was always lucrative, not merely because it filled the pockets of owners and investors, but because it was literally a state-building enterprise.  The development of the southern US states, be it in terms of infrastructure, would have been inconceivable without slave labour.   In 1776, it was estimated that 40 members of the British parliament were deriving earnings from enslaved entities of the Caribbean.

This historical burden has been handled in an assortment of ways. Caribbean voices were particularly angered at the end of September when Prime Minister David Cameron ducked and weaved around the issue about how to deal with slavery’s legacy. He was not coming empty-handed – but an apology for Britain’s slaver past was not on the cards.

A certain hierarchy of interest was noted by the former Jamaican Prime Minister, P J Patterson, who suggested that it was time to acknowledge “the black experience” in addition to such commemorations offered for past injustices against the Jewish people.[1]

“The refusal to apologise is a refusal to take responsibility for the crime.  In a law-abiding world, this is not acceptable.”  Patterson also had a side swipe at Cameron, noting that the overall “package he offered had discretely omitted any mention of a £25-million contribution to the building of a prison.”

Cameron’s DNA was doing much of the talking on that score.  In 1833, when the Abolition Act was passed, mechanisms of compensation were instituted – for former slave owners.  The shock to the economy with this sudden disruption saw claims made by individuals such as Cameron’s own ancestors, including a certain Gen. Sir James Duff, MP for Banffshire in Scotland.[2]  Chattels had suddenly become human subjects. It was a hard economic reality to swallow.

Cameron’s entire trip to Jamaica was beset by a self-imposed historical vacuum. Coming out with a direct apology was never going to figure, despite the 15 member states of Caricom (Caribbean Community Secretariat) having agreed to establish working committees investigating the prospects of reparations by European powers for genocide, trafficking and chattel enslavement based on racial principles.[3]

The reparations argument goes back a good way, with compensation taking such forms as “40 acres and a mule”.[4]  In 1964, Trinidad’s representative on a UN committee on colonialism, Sir Ellis Clarke, argued that reparations should be made to former colonies as an inseparable part of gaining independence.  “An administering power is not entitled to extract for centuries all that can be got out of a colony and, when that has been done, to relieve of its obligations by the conferment of a formal but meaningless – meaningless because it cannot possibly be supported – political independence.”

For Clarke, the reparations issue was inextricably linked to that of viable political independence.  The former imperial power had to do its bit in forking out some form of compensation, an acknowledgment both financial and psychic, for the newly released colony to thrive.

“Justice requires that reparation be made to the country that has suffered the ravages of colonialism before that country is expected to face up to the problem and difficulties that will inevitably beset it upon independence.”

A distinction should be drawn from the principle of reparation itself, an economically and legally sound argument, to the form such modern reparation might take. The handing over of raw cash in contrition has already been pooh-poohed in various circles.  Glenn C. Loury, writing in 2000, felt it a mistake to take the route of pure monetary compensation, claiming that it would let conservatives off the hook.[5]

Such packages become unduly reductionist, placing no onus on the former colonial power to truly atone.  One falls into the old trap of assuming that money solves all.  Loury, writing specifically about African-American efforts to seek reparations, suggested the need for lingering reminders.

“The heirs to this atrocity – long established Americans and newly naturalized citizens alike – should be confronted continually with the horrors of what their country wrought.”

This is not to say that various theatrical precedents have not taken place, though they suggest that compensation is all too easily politicised.  Those two thespians of international politics, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Muammar el-Qaddafi, certainly gave the historical precedent a go.  In that case, Italy’s colonial spectre became a matter of a $5 billion compensation package, comprising construction projects, student grants and pensions for Libyan soldiers who served with Italy during the Second World War.[6]

The process, rather, should be a systematic network of alleviating fair trade – a point made by that long time student of brutality in Africa, Adam Hochschild.  While various countries find themselves marching to the wrenching tune of free trade and undemocratic finance, a restructured system of fair trade can act as a form of tangible, and constructive contrition.  Caricom’s 10 point plan, created last March, points to a variant of this, focusing on technology transfer and debt cancellation in addition to the sought after apology.

For all that, the human tendency to resort to forms of enslavement, and the monetising of human beings for profit, remain.  The echoes of slavery find shape in debt bondage, indentured labour, and the modern phenomenon of disposable labour.  Life may well be cheap, but human labour remains highly, and irresistibly valuable.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

Notes:

The World Health Organization said today that eating even unprocessed red meat “probably” causes cancer.

But as we reported in 2012, it may not be red meat – but FAKE meat – that’s killing us.

Specifically, the modern factory farm creates meat that is much higher in saturated fats – and much lower in healthy omega 3s – than traditional grass-fed cows.

Feedlot cows are also dosed with large quantities of antibiotics and estrogen.

Worse, the FDA allows a drug banned in 160 nations and responsible for hyperactivity, muscle breakdown and 10 percent mortality in pigs to be added to animal feed shortly before slaughter.

While the practice of feeding cow parts to other cows – one of the main causes of mad cow disease – has been banned on paper, cow blood “products”, feather meal, pig and fish protein, and chicken manure are all still fed to cows.   Remember – unlike bacteria or viruses – heat does NOT kill the deadly prions which cause mad cow disease. (And cows are fed to  chickens, pigs and fish – which are then fed back to the cows – so cows may end up eating the prions from other cows anyway.)

And yet the government is so protective of the current model of industrial farming that private citizens such as ranchers and meat packers are prohibited from testing for mad cow disease.

And genetically-engineered meat isn’t even tested for human safety. (Read this if you think there is a scientific consensus that gm foods are safe.)

On top of that, there are a slew of meat additives added after butchering.

So yes … factory-farmed, mass-produced red meat may be bad for us.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean that organic, grass-fed meat is …

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s interview by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria was a pre-emptive move in response to the UK government’s inquiry, led by Sir John Chilcot, into the 2003 Iraq war.

Blair is an unindicted war criminal. He spoke to Zakaria, a personal friend, only in order to issue a partial apology for specific aspects of his role in the Iraq conflict. This was designed to divert from the central issue of his joining with President George W. Bush in launching an illegal war of aggression to bring about regime change.

Asked whether the decision to go to war had been a mistake, Blair replied,

“I can say that I apologise for the fact that the intelligence I received was wrong. Because even though he [Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein] had used chemical weapons extensively against his own people against others, the programme in the form we thought it was did not exist in the way that we thought. So I can apologise for that.

“I can also apologise, by the way, for some of the mistakes in planning and certainly our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you had removed the regime. But I find it hard to apologise for removing Saddam. I think even from today 2015 it’s better that he is not there than he is there.”

Pressed on whether the war was the “principal cause” of the rise of Islamic State (ISIS), he replied,

“I think there are elements of truth in that… Of course you can’t say that those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015. But it’s important also to realise—one, that the Arab Spring which began in 2011 would also have had its impact on Iraq today. And two—ISIS actually came to prominence from a base in Syria and not in Iraq.”

Blair only replied in an ostensibly self-critical fashion to the run-up to the war and its aftermath, while continuing to defend an intervention that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, destroyed Iraq, created untold human suffering and destabilised the entire Middle East to this day.

The specificity of his replies is made necessary by the need to justify his actions, and made possible by the fact that Blair, and all those who face possible criticism in Lord Chilcot’s inquiry into the Iraq War, has been given full access to its findings and the right to respond prior to publication.

The inquiry was set up in 2009 and the release of its findings has been repeatedly delayed for several years now as a result of this provision. When it is finally published, possibly next year or in 2017, there is no direct possibility of prosecutions flowing from it. However, the evidence it will uncover still poses a threat to Blair. Hence his slippery formulations on CNN.

Blair admits only supposed errors of judgement on his own part, but these are all lies. Blair did not support war because of faulty intelligence. The intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6 gathered in the Joint Intelligence Committee, with the support of the CIA, assembled evidence they knew to be false in order to further war aims already decided upon in consultation with Washington.

“Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government”, published in September 2002, supposedly contained proof that Iraq possessed chemical and biological WMD and had reconstituted its nuclear weapons programme. Blair famously claimed in the foreword that Saddam’s “military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.”

Major General Michael Laurie, who was involved in producing the dossier, told Chilcot in 2011,

“[T]he purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care.”

“Iraq—Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation”, the “Dodgy Dossier”, was published in February 2003 as a briefing paper to justify war. Much of it was plagiarised from a thesis by graduate student Ibrahim al-Marashi but it was praised by Blair and US Secretary of State Colin Powell as high quality intelligence proving the threat posed by Iraq.

This month, the Mail on Sunday discovered an email from Powell among declassified US State Department documents while they were searching through a cache of Hillary Clinton’s recently released emails. Written in March 2002, the report to Bush makes clear that Blair had agreed to assume the role as propagandist for war in Iraq while posing as a voice of caution.

One week prior to a planned meeting at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, Powell states that Blair,

“will present to you the strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause… [A redacted passage follows] On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary. He is convinced on two points: the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success.”

Noting that “Blair’s Cabinet shows signs of division” and that “the Labour Party and the British public are unconvinced that military action is warranted now,” Powell continues,

“Blair may suggest ideas on how to (1) make a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace; (2) keep Iraq’s neighbors on our side; (3) handle calls for a [United Nations Security Council] blessing that can increase support for us in the region and with UK and European audiences; and (4) demonstrate that we have thought through ‘the day after.’”

Powell concludes, “Blair knows he may have to pay a political price for supporting us on Iraq, and wants to minimize it. Nonetheless, he will stick with us on the big issues.”

Prior to the publication of this presidential briefing document, the former UK ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer, had only told Chilcot that at Crawford he felt Blair’s views on regime change had “tightened”, while Blair’s ex-adviser Sir David Manning said he had signalled that he would be willing to back regime change, but only if the issue was first put to the United Nations.

Already by June, the UK defence secretary’s office had drawn up three possible scenarios for UK participation in a war for regime change, including “the discreet UK package” that would have offered the US 20,000 British troops.

Blair’s situation is made worse by the efforts of his former cabinet colleagues to distance themselves from the Iraq War. Former Home Secretary David Blunkett told the Mail on Sunday that he challenged Blair during cabinet meetings prior to the war about the level of post-conflict planning for Iraq, but Blair instead placed his faith in US Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Turning to Chilcot, Blunkett added,

“I would have thought that over the six years since the £10 million inquiry was established, Sir John would have found the time to ask the then-Home Secretary what he knew… Given that it looks as if we will have to wait until at least 2017 for his report, I think it would be useful if Sir John could set out now the basic parameters of what he has established—or risk his entire exercise being totally discredited.”

It is now more than three weeks since the October 3 massacre by US military forces of medical personnel and patients at the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical center in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Aided by the media, the US military and the Obama administration are continuing their efforts to cover up and whitewash a war crime.

On Monday, the Associated Press published a report providing further confirmation that the facility was targeted and bombed by US military personnel with full knowledge that it was a functioning hospital. The attack lasted for an hour, destroying the building and killing 30 people, including at least 13 MSF staff members and 10 patients.

According to the AP,

“A day before an American AC-130 gunship attacked the hospital, a senior officer in the Green Beret [Army] unit wrote in a report that US forces had discussed the hospital with the country director of the medical charity group, presumably in Kabul, according to two people who have seen the document.”

A report from “a senior Green Beret officer from 3rd Special Forces Group” on October 2 stated, “MSF report that they have personnel in the trauma center,” according to the AP, citing two sources who have seen the report.

The AP states that it was the Green Berets, the Special Forces division of the US Army, that called in the attack.

According to the AP, the Army believed that the hospital was being used by the Taliban, which had recently taken control of the city. This has been repeatedly denied by MSF, both before and after the attack.

The report also cites MSF spokesman Tim Shenk, who notes that in the days before the attack, “an official in Washington” asked the group “whether our hospital had a large group of Taliban fighters in it.” Shenk continues: “We replied that this was not the case. We also stated that we were very clear with both sides to the conflict about the need to respect medical centers.”

The involvement of “an official in Washington” raises questions as to whether personnel in the Obama administration played a direct role in selecting and targeting the hospital.

The report follows a previous article citing a former intelligence official who said special operations analysts had mapped the entire area and drawn a circle around the hospital.

The new report adds to the growing body of evidence demonstrating that US forces knowingly and deliberately destroyed a hospital that was performing civilian functions, a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions and a violation of the US War Crimes Act. According to the latter, those found guilty of committing such a crime can be subject to life imprisonment or death.

Among the possible motivations for the attack is the fact that the hospital was the only major medical center in northeastern Afghanistan, and it provided aid to all those injured in the escalating conflict between US forces and the Taliban-led insurgency. Beyond those immediately killed, hundreds or even thousands will die as a result of their loss of access to medical care.

In a statement released on October 23, which reported an increase in the death toll from 22 to 30, MSF noted that the destruction of the hospital

“will have a huge impact on access to surgical care for hundreds of thousands of people in the region… Last year, more than 22,000 patients received care at the hospital and more than 5,900 surgeries were performed.”

It added,

“All that now remains of the three operating theaters, the ER and outpatient departments, and the intensive care unit are collapsed roofs, blackened walls, floors thick with dust, and twisted pieces of metal that were once beds and trolleys.”

The attack may also have been intended to send a message to Pakistan. According to the earlier AP report, the US Army forces suspected that the hospital was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity. MSF, however, has stated that it had no Pakistanis on its staff and that none of those killed who have been identified were Pakistani.

In either case, the US military was making clear that it was prepared to take any action and commit any crime to maintain its position in Afghanistan. Only days after the attack, the Obama administration announced that it would maintain up to 10,000 troops in the country at least through the end of 2016.

The White House and the military continue their efforts to whitewash the war crime. Since the massacre, military officials have issued a series of self-contradictory statements about what happened, including claims that the attack was a “mistake.”

On October 15, a US military patrol entered the bombed out hospital facility without informing MSF, a violation of previous agreements. An MSF official said that the entry “damaged property” and “destroyed potential evidence.”

Over the weekend, the military announced that General John F. Campbell, the overall commander of operations in Afghanistan, has appointed Major General William B. Hickman to lead a supposedly “independent” investigation into the incident. The character of this investigation was indicated by Campbell, who said in a statement, “We will be forthright and transparent and we will hold ourselves accountable for any mistakes made.”

The attack on MSF was not a “mistake.” It was a crime. The purpose of Hickman’s inquiry will be to cover up for those responsible.

Will Portugal finally see the end of austerity as administered for four years by the right-wing coalition (known as Portugal Ahead) composed of the Social-Democratic Party (PSD) and Democratic and Social Centre-People’s Party (CDS-PP)?

In the country’s legislative October 4 elections this governing alliance, running for the first time as a single ticket called Portugal Ahead (except on the Azores), won the elections, but with only 38.4 per cent of the vote (down from 50.4 per cent at the 2011 national election). Of the 5.4 million Portuguese who voted, 739,000 turned their back on the outgoing government, leaving it with only 107 seats in the 230-seat parliament (down 25). As a result, the PSD-CSD alliance, which boasted during the election campaign of being the most reliable tool of the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund), could even lose government.

Some of the votes lost to the right would have joined the ranks of the 4.27 million abstaining (an increase of 238,000 in a country of 9.68 million voters): this 44.1 per cent abstention rate was the highest since the 1974 Carnation Revolution overthrew the dictatorship of António Salazar and his successor Marcelo Caetano.

A lot would have gone to the Socialist Party (PS), which governed the country from 2005 until 2011. However, the total PS vote increased by only 4.3 per cent, from 28 per cent to 32.3 per cent (180,000 votes extra), giving it 86 seats (12 more). The PS even failed to beat Portugal Ahead in Lisbon, where PS leader António Costa was mayor before becoming PS leader earlier this year.

The Two Major Parties

This result showed that, despite Costa’s woolly anti-austerity rhetoric, the party is still distrusted among many voters for bringing the austerity of the Troika into Portugal in 2011.

The PS also failed to shake off its image as the party of the political caste, an image reinforced by the arrest of José Sócrates, the former prime minister, on corruption charges at the end of last year. As a result, while the PS won many votes from Portugal Ahead, it also lost many to abstention and to its left.

Due to Portugal Ahead’s losses and the PS’s very partial recovery, Portugal’s “parties of government” achieved their worst joint result since 1985 (70.7 per cent). At the same time, the parties to their left – principally the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Left Bloc (BE) – won their highest ever score (18.4 per cent). Overall, the broadly defined parties of the left, including the PS and smaller forces that failed to win seats, won over 55 per cent of the vote.

Within the left, very few of the lost PS vote went to United Democratic Coalition (CDU), the coalition of the PCP and the Green Ecological Party (PEV). It scored only 4000 more votes than in 2011, going from 7.9% to 8.3% (16 to 17 seats) because of the fall in participation.

Some disillusioned PS voters would also have supported People Animals Nature (PAN), which entered the parliament for the first time with 1.4 per cent and one seat.

Left Bloc: The Vote

The big winner from popular disgust with Portugal Ahead and distrust of the PS was the Left Bloc, the radical coalition which began life in 1999 as an electoral alliance of three parties coming from Trotskyist, Maoist and dissident PCP backgrounds. The Left Bloc vote nearly doubled, from 5.2% to 10.2% (289,000 voters to 551,000), giving it 19 seats (11 more), its best ever result. The Bloc is now the third force in the Portuguese parliament.

The radical party-movement boosted its representation in the main urban areas and regions alike, including for the first time on the tax-haven island of Madeira. It now has MPs from ten of Portugal’s 20 electoral districts, doubling its result in 2011 and surpassing its previous best result (2009) by three seats.

In terms of seats, the Bloc’s biggest gains were in the northern coastal city of Oporto (from 2 to 5) and the capital Lisbon (from 3 to 5). It doubled its representation in Setubal (from 1 to 2) and recovered all other seats it had lost in the 2011 election.

The two high-water marks of the Bloc’s advance were Oporto and Madeira, where it built on its gains in winning two seats in the March election to the regional parliament. It was from these two regions that the Bloc’s three extra seats compared to its 2009 result came.

This Left Bloc’s surge came as a shock because in polls during the year it averaged only 4.2 per cent. Even during the two weeks of the formal election campaign its poll rating averaged only 6.8 per cent, with higher scores only coming in the final week of campaigning. The Left Bloc was alone of the four major tickets in scoring higher than poll predictions. The result may well have surprised Bloc members themselves. In a July 30 interview with the French left weekly Regards, long-standing leader Fernando Rosas said “we hope to get 5 per cent of the vote.”

The result is even more surprising given the crisis at the Left Bloc’s Ninth National Convention in November last year: this saw the radical party-movement split in half over leadership and tactics toward the PS. To have hauled itself out of that crisis and poll ratings as low as 3.5 per cent to a score of over 10 per cent less than a year later is a remarkable achievement.

At the same time, none of various splits that the Left Bloc has suffered over the past five years, most importantly Livre, which advocated unconditional participation by the left in a PS government, had any success at this election.

Another failure was the Movement for the Earth, which could only manage 0.4% after scoring 7.1% in the May 2014 European elections.

Left Bloc: The Campaign

To achieve its gains the Left Bloc ran an aggressive campaign against the conservative government (“a government more German than the German government itself”) and featuring an appeal against resignation and a call for people to “make a difference!” (the campaign slogan).

In an October 5 article on the Spanish web site Publico Bloc MP Jorge Costa and leader Adriano Campos explained the reasons for the radical force’s success,

“The Left Bloc’s result reveals the strengthening of an anti-austerity camp that has been able to to absorb the greater part of the votes lost by the right, as well as mobilising the support of many people unhappy with the PS. The firmness of of our proposal to reverse the cuts imposed by the pro-Troika parties allowed the Left Bloc to strengthen its position and advance among the the class that lives from work: we can see this clearly in the vote achieved on the outskirts of Lisbon (11%), Oporto (13%) and Setubal (13%).

“The confrontation pushed by Left Bloc spokesperson Catarina Martins exposed the PS’s freezing of pensions and earned the support of a part of the pensioners and of people who depend on social security payments to avoid falling into extreme poverty.

“By confronting head-on the consequences of a clash with a European Union dominated by Merkel and thus opening a serious and coherent discussion on the question of the euro, the Left Bloc re-won popular confidence in a socialist alternative that breaks with the powers-that-be.”

The argument against the Bloc by the outgoing prime minister and Portugal Ahead leader Pedro Passos Coelho – that the acceptance of the third memorandum conditions imposed on the Greek SYRIZA government by the Troika proved that “there is no alternative” to austerity – fell flat in the face of the Left Bloc’s position on the issue. Fernando Rosas explained it in his Regards interview:

“We have publicly drawn our conclusions from this episode [of Greece’s acceptance of the memorandum]: firstly, that it is impossible to carry out an anti-austerity policy in the framework of the euro. Secondly, the Eurozone is a sort of dictatorship that prevents European countries from making democratic choices. We want to renegotiate the debt and, if necessary, we would be prepared to exit the euro.

“We will not make Tsipras’s mistake of getting into negotiations without a Plan B. But we don’t want to publicly criticise SYRIZA. Our official position is that we must be ready to leave the euro if negotiations over the debt come to nothing. Our position has to be presented in a very pedagogical fashion because the Portuguese are very attached to Europe and the euro.

“Thus, we don’t say: ‘Our program is to leave the euro.’ Rather we say: ‘Our program is to renegotiate the debt’. If that doesn’t work, we have to be prepared to leave the euro.”

Rosas further explained:

“[The dictatorship of] Salazarism meant misery and oppression for the Portuguese people. Here Europe is very much associated with democracy. This association between Europe and democracy means we have to be very prudent.

“[Former Bloc spokesperson] Francisco Louçâ, who is an economist, is working on this scenario: we are in the process of developing studies on the issue.”

The Bloc also stood out for the leadership of women in its campaign. Besides Martens, the only woman leader of Portugal’s major parties, the Left Bloc’s message was forcefully carried by economist and MP Mariana Mortágua, well-known in Portugal for relentless questioning of Banco do Spirito Santo executives over the collapse of the bank and for exposing an attempt of the conservative government to restore life-time pensions for MPs via the small print of the national budget.

What Government?

Portugal is now in the midst of a complex game of negotiations over which party or parties will form government. No early solution is likely in which the PS is racked with differences over what it really wants and all parties are manoeuvring to make their rivals pay the highest political price for failure.

For the PDS-CDS, failure would be the formation of a left coalition government or a PS minority government supported from outside by the PCP and/or the Left Bloc. For the right of the PS, failure would be a left PS minority government too vulnerable to support from its left.

The possible scenarios are:

• A repeat of the PDS-CDS alliance as minority government. This would require the PS to at least abstain on a motion of opposition from the Left Bloc and/or PCP-PEV.
• A German-style “grand coalition” between the PDS-CDS and PS. This would require a comprehensive written program for government between the partners.
• A minority PS government. This would require a minimum agreement with the Left Bloc and PCP-PEV, with at least one supporting it and the other abstaining against the opposition of the PDS-CDS.
• Some sort of left government, including the PS and one or both of the Left Bloc and PCP-PEV. If only a two-party agreement, the party not participating would have to agree to at least abstain on its formation.

A major variable in the game is the attitude of the conservative Portuguese president Cavaco Silva, who can be expected to put maximum pressure on the PS to come to terms with the PDS-CDS.

In their Público interview Costa and Campos described the prospect:

“Everything indicates that the President of the Republic will allow the formation of a minority government of the right, which will need the abstention of the PS to approve its basic axes (government program, budgets). This scenario will produce a deep crisis in the PS, which is wedded to the pro-austerity policies of the European socialists and with António Costa announcing the calling of a special congress [in March 2016, after the presidential elections].”

Costa is partially hostage to his demand in the final stages of the election campaign for the Left Bloc and PCP to join the SP in a broad anti-Portugal Ahead alliance. What would be the basic points of agreement for such an coalition?

For the Left Bloc the bottom line for any agreement with the PS is action on jobs, wages and pensions, including cuts to an income tax surcharge. After discussions with the PS on October 11 Catarina Martins said that agreement was possible, an assessment shared by Costa himself, who said that “the conditions exist that would allow this agreement to take place.”

At the same time, however, the PS leader made clear that the PS would abstain on the formation of a PDS-CDS minority government if it had no governmental alternative to offer. In this way he is pressuring the Left Bloc and PCP to demand as little as possible if they want to see a PS or left-coalition government.

Both the Left Bloc and PCP are intent on getting rid of the right-wing government, with the PCP prepared to vote for a PS government even without any agreement on a joint program with the PCP itself. The negotiating position of the Left Bloc does not require the PS to make any commitment to pursue debt restructuring – its position is for a European conference on the debt.

PCP secretary Jerónimo de Sousa told an October 17 mass meeting in Lisbon that “one thing is certain: nothing is stopping the PS from forming government and starting work…Even in a scenario where the PS insists on its own program and it would not be possible to find a convergence on a government program – which in fact would not be easy – not even then can it be concluded that the solution is a PSD-CDS government.

“The problem is in knowing whether the PS will choose between giving backing and support to the formation of a PSD-CDS government or whether it will take the initiative to form a government which has the conditions for its inauguration and operation guaranteed.

“What really counts and determines the solution of the problem of forming governments are the majorities that form in the Assembly of the Republic and give support to a government, not the party that has the most votes.”

As for the PSD-CDS, it has indicated that it prepared to accept a number of the points in the PS election program in exchange for PS support. The PS counterattack was to demand more information on the state of government finances, provoking in turn an attack from the PDS-CDS to the effect that Costa was “generating alarm over the present situation and future prospects of the country.”

Alarm Bells Among the Elites

Costa’s comments after meeting with the Left Bloc and PCP have set off alarm bells within the Portuguese and European establishment and within the PS right wing itself. Former prime minister and European Commission president José Manuel Durao Barroso said: “I know one thing. Socialist voters didn’t vote PS so that it would form a government with the PCP and the Left Bloc.”

José Luís Carneiro, PS Oporto federation president, said: “The proposals in the PS’s electoral program that a majority of the PSD-CDS is prepared to accept…show that it is possible to guarantee the international commitments of the Portuguese state and marry intelligent and sustained competitiveness with social justice.”

On October 14, Francisco Assis, a PS MP in the European Parliament opted for a minority government of the right as the way out of the PS’s conundrum: “The best solution for the PS and the country is that it takes on the leadership of the opposition in the national assembly.”

By contrast, former presidential candidate Manuel Alegre said: “At this moment a government of the PS, PCP and Left Bloc is what guarantees stability and is the alternative that has a parliamentary majority,” adding that a left government “is a democratic solution.”

As this article is being finished, the debate over who should form government in Portugal has broken out at European levels, with Joseph Daul, the president of the European People’s Party (representing most mainstream conservative forces in the European Parliament) saying that “the sacrifices of the Portuguese people cannot be put at risk by a government composed of parties with anti-European Union and anti-NATO positions.”

The thought of ‘losing Portugal’, even to a moderate left coalition that questions austerity and puts the question of debt negotiation on the table, has “Brussels” worried. It had appeared, with the humiliation and taming of the SYRIZA government, that things were going reasonably well for the European establishment – even though its confronts a very testing challenge in Catalonia and with the Spanish December 20 elections.

The possible destruction of its very reliable pillar of support in Portugal is an outcome it could really do without – especially as it would lift morale across the left in the Spanish state and strengthen the feeling that the days of the most right-wing enforcers of austerity are numbered. •

Dick Nichols is Green Left Weekly‘s European correspondent, based in Barcelona. This article first appeared on Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal website.

Appendix: Excerpt from post-election speech by Catarina Martins (October 4)

“(…) The Left Bloc had today its best result ever. We had more votes, more mandates, more strength than ever.

We understand the people’s vote and we take on board the responsibility that was given to us.

We were the vote of trust for workers, young and retired people. I thank that trust of more than half a million voters and I tell you all: the Bloc will keep and honour its word.

That’s why I am here to talk to you about the future.

The right-wing coalition is certainly the most voted candidacy, but they shouldn’t celebrate when they have lost 30 MPs and more than half a million of votes. Together, PSD and CDS don’t have enough votes to privatize social security or to cut pensions. A new majority Passos Coelho and [CDS leader] Paulo Portas government was rejected by democracy and nothing of what they will say will cover up the defeat.

If the President, either because of party affiliation [PSD] or lack of attention to the vote, invites that government, you all should know that the Left Bloc will honour its words and – this is our mandate – reject in parliament the governmental program which means making Portugal poorer.

The voters didn’t choose austerity and sacrifice; the voters said that austerity and sacrifice were already enough. The majority wanted a change and they have a right to that change.

We will now wait for the answer of the other left-wing parties because our responsibility is huge…

Portugal needs an emergency plan that brings resources together. It needs to heal the wounds of poverty, it needs investment, it needs to increase the minimum wage, it needs to end the threat of pension cuts.

Portugal needs the peace and the certainty that we are doing our best against financial blackmail, because our debt needs to be restructured in order to have public health, education and stability for the pensioners.

We will have hard days and years. A lot will be said about political crisis, power games and tricks. But the Left Bloc never forgets what’s truly essential: the social crisis, people’s lives and difficulties, one child out of three living in poverty, one million unemployed, and more than one million pensioners who live on less than ten euros a day to pay the rent, food and taking care of themselves. These are the problems that concern our country. I want to give you my solemn guarantee: the Bloc will not give up on Portugal, will not give up on those who work here or have worked here before. We need to be firm, have a clear head and pay all attention to the essential thing: and the essential thing is employment.

Portugal will lose if our economy is not fixed in order to create jobs.

Portugal will win if it embraces democracy and reaffirms responsibility.” •

Caught with its pants down in Syria, the US government is making a fool of itself.  By attempting to mischaracterize Russia’s actions against ISIS in Syria, Washington has admitted that the terrorists from outside Syria, who are attempting to overthrow the elected government of Syria, are “our guys.”  

In an interview with Fox “News,” a senior US government official said:  “Putin is deliberately targeting our forces. Our guys are fighting for their lives.”

Professor Michel Chossudovsky reports that “our guys” includes Western military advisers, intelligence agents and mercenaries recruited from private security companies.

 The defense official told Fox “News” that the Russians are “completely disingenuous about their desire to fight ISIS.”  According to the Obama regime, all of the hundreds of Russian air and missile attacks against ISIS are directed at US trained terrorists — all five of them — and their hundreds of Western advisors.

Evidently, the senior defense official forgot that General Lloyd Austin, who heads US Central Command, recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee that only 4 or 5 of the US-trained “moderate terrorists” remain on the battle field.  Obama has cancelled the failed $500 million waste of US taxpayers money to train “moderate terrorists” to overthrow the Syrian government. The trainees took the money and ran.

It is difficult to believe that even the incompetents who work for Fox “News” could really think that the Russians made hundreds of air strikes, supplemented with cruise missile strikes, against 4 or 5 moderate terrorists.  But the stupidity and ignorance of Fox “News” knows no limits.  (The most discouraging aspect of my existance is the knowledge that millions of dumbshit Americans sit before Fox “News” for their daily brainwashing.)

But that is the story that senior US government officials are leaking to a gullible, or paid for, Fox “News.”

The truth of the matter—which will never emerge from Fox “News”— is that Washington is using ISIS in an illegal attempt to overthrow an elected government that will not submit to being a Washington puppet.

In clear words, Washington in total violation of law is behaving as a war criminal and is attempting to overthrow an elected government in order to replace it with a vassal answering to Washington.

President Putin has said that Russia will not stand for any more war crimes from Washington in areas of the world that affect Russian national interests.  Russia has been asked for assistance by the legitimate government of Syria against ISIS, and the Russian air strikes are exterminating ISIS.  This has the Washington war criminals upset.  The senior US defense official told Fox “News” that the only role for Russia in Syria is to assist the US in overthrowing Assad.  I guess the dumbshit Washington official didn’t hear what Putin had to say.

The question that desperately needs to be asked will never be asked by the US print and TV media or by NPR.  That question is: What is the point of the incessant US government lies about Russia, its actions, and its intentions?  Are the warmongers in Washington trying to start World War Three?

Obviously the presidential candidates—both Hillary and all of the Republican dimwits—are determined to start World War Three.  Watch the Americans vote for World War Three in the next election.

The United States government no longer has any credibility outside its borders and very little within, as evidenced by recent polls that show that 62 percent of American voters are wishing for a third party in the hopes that it might represent the people instead of a half dozen vested interests that, thanks to the Republican Supreme Court, have purchased the US government, lock, stock and barrel.

The reason so many voters admire Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, even though both have no idea what really needs to be done, is that these two are the only candidates who are raising a fuss about a politial system that serves only a few.  Talk about dictators and disenfranchisement, the American voters are the most disenfranchised in human history.  Allegedly the US is a democracy, but there is no sign of democracy in the behavior of the government. Sound and careful studies show that the US voter has no input whatsoever into the behavior and decisions of the US government.  The US government is as far removed from the people, if not more so, than any dictatorship.  We desperately need to be liberated outselves!

As former President Jimmy Carter recently said, America is no longer a democracy.  America is an oligarchy.

Like so many things Carter was right about, but never given credit for by the corrupt American Establishment, Carter is again correct.

I say bring back Jimmy Carter.  The man is moral and intelligent.  He is a million times better than any presidential candidate in the running. At 90 years of age in a losing war with cancer, Jimmy Carter is our best bet.

Notes:  

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/14/official-russia-deliberately-targeting-us-backed-forces-in-syria/  

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-program-isis-fighters-syria-general-lloyd-austin-congress/  

http://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-accuses-putin-of-targeting-our-guys-including-cia-operatives-and-western-military-advisers-inside-syria-instead-of-isis-terrorists/5482475 

The Benghazi Hearing on the role of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prior to and during the assault on the U.S. Embassy / CIA compound in Libya reflects partisan pre-election posturing.

The hearing also reflected a bipartisan agreement with regard to omitting the U.S.’s role in State sponsorship of terrorism, the overstepping of the provisions of UNSC Resolution 1973 (2011), and the strategy to use a destabilized Libya as springboard for the war on Syria, Iraq, Mali, and the destabilization of Egypt after the ouster of Mohamed Morsi. 

Clinton and Jibril in Tripoli after the murder of Muammar Qaddafi.

Omitting foreknowledge about Al-Qaeda linked terrorists in eastern Libya. Not at any point during the hearing of the Select Committee on Benghazi was it mentioned that the U.S. military command was well aware of the fact that Libya was the second-largest contributor of foreign Al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq during the US occupation and that most of the Libyan Al-Qaeda fighters came from the eastern Libyan cities of Benghazi (Bengazi) and Derna.

The data had been published in a West Point counter-terrorism report entitled Al-Qa’eda’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq.

The study puts into perspective the words of the murdered, former Libyan head of State Muammar Qaddafi in a BBC interview where he stressed that the armed insurgency in eastern Libya was run by Al-Qaeda fighters.

That is, Al-Qaeda-linked brigades like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) distributed weapons (and drugs) to protesting youth who in part had legitimate grievances.

U.S. Embassy in Benghazi a hub for liaison with multiple terrorist brigades.  It is also noteworthy that the CIA (under the auspices of the State Department) deployed agents as liaison to eastern Libya in early 2011.

The hearing would, however, disclose that both the State Department and the CIA had contacts to various radical Islamist organizations.

It is not surprising either, that Hillary Clinton’s statements during the Benghazi (Bengazi) Hearing suggested that the primary U.S. presence during the attack in Benghazi a year ago was a CIA presence. The CIA and JSOC had been present even before the eruption of the first violent protests.

The hearing would disclose that U.S. Ambassador J Christopher Stevens was liaison to several of the insurgencies. Many of these, like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, were led by former Guantanamo inmates and in part by known CIA/MI6 agents such as Abdelhakim Belhadj who after the ouster of Muammar Qaddafi would become the head of the western-backed Tripoli Military Counsel.

Belhadj would also be honored by no other than the Chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Committee, Republican Senator John McCain. In April 2013 Senator McCain illegally crossed the Turkish – Syrian border to hold a meeting with “the Syrian opposition” in a safe house in Idlib.

Present at the covert meeting were the chief of the so-called Free Syrian Army Salam Idriss, as well as Abu Bakhr al-Baghdadi, a.k.a. Al-Badri or Caliph Ibrahim; the leader of Daesh, a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL or Islamic State.

McCain would claim that he was not aware that al-Baghdadi was present. A statement that contradicts even the most basic security procedures for U.S. Senators and diplomats who are holding meetings abroad.

U.S. Senator John McCain meeting illegally in a rebel safe house with the heads of the “Free Syrian Army” in Idlib, Syria in April, 2013. In the left foreground, top al Qaeda terrorist leader Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Al-Baghdadi of ISIS, aka Caliph Ibrahim of the recently founded Islamic Empire) with whom the Senator is talking. Behind Badri is visible Brigadier General Salim Idris (with glasses), the former military chief of the FSA, who has since fled to the Gulf states after the collapse of any semblance of the FSA. (Courtesy VoltaireNet.org)

The attack on the U.S. Embassy and the CIA compound in Benghazi was led by former Guantanamo inmate Sufiyan Qumu who like Belhadj was released from Guantanamo in time to participate in the overthrow of the Libyan government.

It remains unclear whether the February 17 Martyrs Brigade that was ordered to stand down, or if so by whom. It is certain, however, that the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, in 2011, assassinated General Younes, thus helping long-term CIA asset General Khalifa Hifter (a.k.a. Hefter) to assume power.

Certain is also that the attack on the U.S. compound was not the product of a spontaneous demonstration but a well-planned and conducted military operation.

Overstepping the provisions of UNSC Resolution 1973 (2011). One important point that was omitted from the hearing was the U.S. and its NATO and Gulf Arab allies overstepped the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 (2011).

The resolution called for the enforcement of a no fly zone that should prohibit the Libyan government from using the Libyan air force against the insurgents.

Instead, the resolution was used by NATO and NATO-allied Gulf Arab States to target Libyan ground forces, the Libyan government, vital infrastructure, and to provide air cover for the foreign-sponsored insurgencies.

Instead, members from both the Democrats and the Conservatives maintained the narrative that the U.S. freed the Libyan people from a dictator and the claim that the following chaos was an unplanned or unwanted side-effect. Before returning to these side-effects, however, it is timely to focus on the role of the UN Security Council.

To be adopted, a UNSC Resolution requires the concurrent vote of all of the Council’s permanent member States. The Russian abstention should, in theory, and legally speaking, have prevented the implementation of UNSC Resolution 1973 (2011). The Libyan case has once again highlighted the failures of the Security Council.

A “gentleman’s agreement” between the permanent members from 1948 introduced the tradition that a resolution that had not been vetoed could be implemented by those that were sponsoring and supporting it, provided that the provisions of the resolution were not overstepped. Part of the blame for the developments in Libya must, in all fairness, be attributed to Russia and China as well. It is noteworthy that the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, August 2014, criticized the UN for failing to protect small, sovereign nations from the consequences of the conflicts of the great powers as the League of Nations has failed them.

Chaos in Libya unintended? A 2010 U.S. Special Forces Training Circular, TC 18-01 clearly states that the United States, for the foreseeable future, would primarily be involved in irregular warfare. The TC 18-01 was to be released to “foreign students and contractors” on a case by case basis only. The document also contains a “destruction Notice” to prevent any unauthorized dissemination. nsnbc international has published the TC 18-01 HERE.

The term “irregular” must be understood as a euphemism for “illegal”; That is in violation of international and humanitarian law.  A study of the TC 18-01 enabled nsnbc to a) understand the strategy used in Libya, in Syria, in Egypt subsequent to the ouster of Mohamed Morsi b) as well as to forecast the developments in Ukraine, It is noteworthy that Egypt’s President, Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi stated that the U.S. has stabbed Egypt in the back with Morsi and that the Egyptian government and the people of Egypt would not easily forget of forgive this fact that.

Al-Mafraq – recruitment and staging area in Jordan.

The chaos that ensued in Libya established the springboard for the destabilization of Mali. The destabilization of Libya also created the springboard for the recruitment, training and deployment of insurgents to the Syrian theater of war.

In June and July 2012 some 20,000 fighters under the command of LIFG second in command, MahdiAl-Harati, launched two major assaults on Syria via the Jordanian border town of Al-Mafraq, near theRamtha airbase where the United States has stationed air forces, special forces, DIA and CIA operatives as well as a number of organizations like USAID.

Moreover, in April 2013 the UN would note that Libya has developed into a major hub for the shipment of weapons to Syria via Turkey and other neighbors to Syria. In September 2013 Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdul-Aziz stated that a lot of Libyans are fighting within the ranks of the armed terrorist groups in Syria and that Libya remains a hub for weapons shipments to the insurgents. The post-coup Libyan Foreign Minister stressed that “helping our brothers in Syria is a source of pride”. 

The statement by Mohamed Abdul-Aziz came after an article in the British newspaper The Times, written by journalist Sheera Frenkel, revealed the discovery of the largest arms shipment from Libya to Syria via Turkey. These weapons were shipped via Turkey with full knowledge of the Turkish authorities and distributed to fighters of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA)and other insurgencies by Turkish (read NATO) officers. The shipment included, among other, shoulder-launched SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles.

Ambassador Christopher Stevens had previously served as Ambassador to Syria. Stevens was one of the most skilled U.S. diplomats when it came to subversion management. No unspoken bipartisan agreement to omit these and many other facts about Libya can change these and many other facts that prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Hillary Rodham Clinton, among many others, would be a prime candidate for a war crimes tribunal rather than for a pre-election positioning game at the U.S. Senate.

It is also noteworthy that the strategy that is outlined in the Training Circular TC 18-01 is consistent with NATO strategy. NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Admiral James G. Stavridis and Ivo H. Daalder wrote an article in the March/April 2012 edition of Foreign Affairs (pp. 2 – 7 ). Their article is entitled “NATO’s Victory in Libya. The Right Way to Run an Intervention”,

Daalder and Stavridis described the NATO-led campaign against Libya with the words ” a teachable moment and model for future interventions”. The author has attempted to reach out to the now retired Admiral Stavridis to ask whether or not he still maintains that position. No answer was forthcoming.

It is noteworthy that Stavridis, during a 2012 Forestall Lecture noted that he was a newly selected one-star accounting officer at the Pentagon and that he was “lucky to have survived the September 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon”. There are several questions which we would like to ask Admiral (ret) Stavridis.

Where, exactly, was his office and what files was he working on in the days up to 9/11? How did a newly selected one-star accounting officer achieve to be promoted to the rank of full Admiral and NATO SACEUR by 2008? More questions have been asked in the article entitled “Rumsfeldt’s Missing Trillions, Stavridis and Unconventional War“.

Considering that there, arguably, is a need for a full investigation and a war crimes tribunal rather than a pre-election Senate Hearing it must be noticed that the UNSC is the plaything of the permanent Security Council members. Neither the USA, Russia or China have made their citizens subject to the Rome Statutes and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Being charged there is the privilege of politicians from e.g. Libya, Yugoslavia, Ivory Coast, and other nations who are subject to superpower rivalries.

Destabilizing and destroying Libya, Africa, the Middle East and the world not discussed

A Congressional hearing on the attacks against the United States compounds in Benghazi, Libya, the birthplace of the counter-revolution, focused on whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now a presidential candidate, was negligent in her duties leading to the death of an ambassador and several Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) personnel.

These much-publicized hearings were portrayed by the corporate media and the Democratic Party as a politicized public relations exercise to damage the candidacy for the nomination of Clinton. United States Congressman Elijah Cummings, a Democratic from Maryland, repeatedly came to the defense of Clinton despite questions that were raised surrounding issues that would fall under the purview of the former State Department head and principal envoy during the first administration of President Barack Obama.

Clinton represented the public face of the CIA-Pentagon-NATO campaign of destabilization, bombing and seizure of Libya. After the Libyan government under the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi began a military response to the obvious imperialist-backed war of regime-change, the Clinton state department engineered the passage of two United Nations Security Council resolutions which provided a rationale for the imposition of an arms embargo and so-called “no fly zone” over Libyan territory and waterways.

These resolutions opened up a pseudo-legal justification for the massive bombing of the country during March 19 to October 31, 2011. Reports suggests that anywhere from 50,000-100,000 people were killed in the aerial bombardment leaving the infrastructure of the state destroyed, displacing two million people and prompting the precipitous rise in instability throughout the regions of North and West Africa, extending throughout the Middle East and Southern Europe.

Libya under Gaddafi was designated as the most prosperous state on the continent which owed no money to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, utilizing its two million barrels of oil production per day to fund monumental projects which built schools, hospitals, power systems, homes and the maintenance of free education and healthcare. Today Libya has been reduced to one of the major sources of human trafficking and terrorism serving as a conduit for hundreds of thousands seeking to flee to Europe amid the ongoing imperialist war policy and worsening world capitalist crisis.

The UN envoy to Libya has attempted repeatedly to bring together the two main identifiable regimes based in Tripoli and Tobruk. Both of these groups claim to be the legitimate representatives of the embattled state.

Nonetheless, those who were leading figures under the Jamahiriya system of the Gaddafi-era have been assassinated, imprisoned or driven into exile. Members of the Gaddafi family and other officials are still being held in prisons where no credible judicial structures are in place to guarantee any semblance of due process.

Communities which defended Libya against the western-backed rebels have been dislocated, many of whom are of indigenous African origin. Other groups such as the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda are openly operating inside the country, defying even the public rhetoric of the Obama administration which claims as a cornerstone of its foreign policy being the “war on extremism.”

Both Capitalist Parties Support Imperialism

Nonetheless, during the Clinton hearings the total destruction of Libya, the destabilization of North Africa and the Middle East were never addressed. Whether the war of regime-change against Libya and other interventions such as the 2003-2011 invasion and occupation of Iraq were based upon false premises and misguided assessments, never came into the range of examination.

Although the previous administration of President George W. Bush framed the invasion of Iraq as a humanitarian war, the actual social conditions of the people inside the country has rendered them to extreme poverty and deprivation. Millions of Iraqis have been both internally and internationally displaced.

The Pentagon is still bombing Iraq under the guise of destroying the bases of the IS yet the invasion and occupation created the conditions for such groups to exist and flourish. During late October, a U.S. soldier was killed in what was described as an elaborate plan to weaken the IS. However, there is no end in sight under the existing administration of Obama or the one that will replace it in 2016 to Washington’s intervention in Iraq.

In Syria, with the Russian-led aerial campaign against the armed opposition groups supported by the U.S., it has further exposed the failure of Washington’s policies in the Middle East. Four million Syrians have been driven out of their homes as a direct result of the Obama administration’s funding of extremist organizations which have killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The Democratic and Republican parties in the U.S. advocate imperialist policies for Africa, the Middle East and throughout the world. Consequently since 1975, untold millions have lost their lives in Southern Africa, Afghanistan and South Asia, Colombia and throughout Latin America, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific.

Domestic Impact of Imperialist War

These policies have resulted in not only the deaths and displacement of millions but also the driving down of living standards and greater insecurity and instability throughout large sections of the world. This global crisis encompasses the western industrialized states including the U.S.

Such policies of war and economic exploitation cost the working people of the western countries trillions in wages and tax revenues. The continuing pursuit of aggressive militarism has diverted tremendous resources which could have been utilized in the elimination of unemployment, poverty, hunger, homelessness, state repression and environmental degradation so prevalent in the U.S.

While the banks drove millions from their homes in major cities, suburbs, rural areas and small towns in the U.S., facilitating the closing of schools, the slashing of education and social services expenditures, under successive Democratic and Republican administrations, the state continues to propose and approve over $1 trillion annually for defense and homeland security. The state has attempted to explain these policies as a defensive measure against “terrorism.” Yet the terror of homelessness, job losses and police brutality is not even seriously discussed in the Congress or the Senate.

Who will come to the defense of the nationally oppressed, workers and the poor among the members of the legislative, judicial and executive structures of the U.S.? This is more than a rhetorical question but one whose answer will determine the course of the struggle between late 2015 and the national elections in 2016.

The working people and nationally oppressed cannot rely on the Democratic or the Republican parties to represent their interests within the capitalist-imperialist state. The masses need their own political party that can develop a program to end wars of regime-change and dominance and to ensure full-employment, quality education, universal healthcare, the protection of the environment, the total liberation of women and all oppressed groups and nations.

Voting for either of the capitalist parties in the U.S. will only result in the same policies for the majority. During the course of the campaign for president no candidate for the nomination of either party is advocating the abolition of private property, national oppression and economic exploitation and adoption of an internationalist foreign policy that would recognize the right of oppressed nations to self-determination.

These are the central issues that will determine the future of the imperialist states and indeed the entire globe. A discussion involving these aims and objectives must come to fore in the U.S. in order that actual conditions for the people improve and stabilize.

Documentario: The Revolution Business

(La dichiarazione di Srdja Popovic è a 4:20)

Discorso del presidente G.W.Bush (Czernin Palace, Praga, 5 giugno 2007)

Liban 2005-2015 : d’une « révolution » colorée à l’autre