- Defining moments in US military logic: Kim
Phuc Phan Thi, centre, gave the Vietnam War a human face as she fled her
village after a napalm attack in 1972 (photo: Nick Ut, AP); the killing
of four Blackwater mercenaries in March 2004 prompted the US to destroy
Fallujah (photo: Karim Sahib, AFP)
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- The Pentagon has made remarkable strides in militarization
of space this year, but its techno-schemes are built on the same sandy
foundations as the rest of its defense policy, laments Eric Walberg
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- In April, Air Force Space Command activated a new unit
-- the 24th Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas -- to keep pace
with "the rapid changes in information technology and allow space
and cyberspace capabilities to be more accessible to military ground commanders",
according to the Space Command's top military officer General Robert Kehler.
Kehler called the activation "the beginning of what will be a deliberate
and focused effort to develop and evolve cyberspace forces and capabilities."
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- In August, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (MDA)
commenced its 12th annual Space and Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville,
Alabama, at the shiny new Von Braun Centre, named after the father of Nazi
Germany's missile project and one of the creators of the US ICBM programme,
who along with several German colleagues was sent to Huntsville in 1950
(Operation Paperclip) to work on the first live nuclear ballistic missile
tests conducted by the Pentagon.
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- Von Braun -- sorry, I mean Kehler -- told the Space and
Missile Defense Conference that global deterrence is necessary to encourage
restraint, deny benefits and impose costs to those nations and non-nation
states that threaten the Reich -- sorry, I mean the US and its allies.
The 2,000 participants heard lots more sabre-rattling from the likes of
the head of NASA, Charles Bolden, a retired Marine Corps general. Bloomberg
news agency predicted correctly in January that "President-elect Barack
Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between civilian and
military space programmes to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect
of a new space race with China."
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- There were no dissenting voices at the inauguration of
the 24th Air Force Cyberwar Unit in April or at the Star Wars conference
in August. It appears to be conventional wisdom that, as Army Lieutenant
General Kevin Campbell told the conference, space is "key terrain"
which the US can't afford to cede. More and more countries have the money
to use space, if not to fund their own launch and development programmes,
and "we should expect our adversaries to take advantage of that."
Lieutenant General Larry James, commander of the 14th Air Force space forces
in California (how many air forces does one country need?) said a major
problem commanders face is "space situational awareness" -- knowing
what's in orbit, whom it belongs to and what it's supposed to be doing.
Among the suggested solutions is greater use of commercial partners. How
clever, let's privatise space warfare while we're at it. Perhaps it will
be more "efficient".
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- The MDA told Von Braun's disciples that it is accelerating
the pace of full spectrum air, sea, land, cyber and space missile shield
developments in addition to laser weapons, having just completed a successful
sea-based missile interception from Hawaii. A disabled spy satellite was
shot down in February 2008 by the USS Lake Erie, an Aegis-class Guided
Missile Cruiser, which, as the Pentagon insisted at the time, had no military
implications whatsoever. In July, the Pentagon announced plans to integrate
its latest generation drone, the Reaper, into the global missile shield
system. At the same time, Israel tested its Arrow II interceptor missile,
jointly developed with the US, off the coast of California. The US and
Israeli Defense Forces will hold a joint missile defense exercise in October,
Juniper Cobra, testing the advanced X-Band radar, a farewell gift to the
land of Shalom from the Bush administration. The radar is capable of tracking
small targets thousands of kilometres away. Thousands of kilometres away
means surveillance of not only Syria and Iran but a large swathe of southern
Russia.
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- All this makes perfect, if horrible, sense. The US empire
is on the march and the Pentagon learned the perils of the draft from the
massive public protests it provoked during the Vietnam war. It already
operates on a global electronic battlefield where the fighting is increasingly
done by robot drones guided by surveillance systems, the idea being to
minimize US casualties. This was what Rumsfeld had in mind when he thought
he could conquer Iraq and Afghanistan with a handful of troops on the ground.
Even so, there is a lack of drafted cannon fodder, so in addition to robots,
foreign nationals are offered immediate US citizenship if they sign up,
and mercenaries (aka private contractors) -- US and foreign -- are employed
to help fight on the ground. Hence the impotence of the peace movement
in the face of US multiple wars, although the logic of the Rumsfeld doctrine
is already looking pretty threadbare.
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- Iraq offers a heart-breaking example of a war in which
mercenaries so inflamed the locals they were sent to "liberate"
that, when given the chance in Fallujah, enraged mobs dragged the bodies
of four of them through the streets, burned and hung two of them from a
bridge. This scene was televised globally and prompted the US to make a
punishing, retaliatory assault on Fallujah, causing widespread death and
destruction, with no protest from Western governments. The new old logic
on the ground is: conquer hearts-and-minds by terrorizing and killing those
who resist, preferably with robots and mercenaries.
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- The logic in the heavens is merely an extension of this:
Star Wars is unashamedly a first strike global missile shield system. "The
Rise of US Nuclear Primacy" in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
Foreign Affairs (March 2006) states: "It will probably soon be possible
for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia
or China with a first strike. The US Air Force has enhanced the avionics
on its B-2 stealth bombers to permit them to fly at extremely low altitudes
in order to avoid even the most sophisticated radar." Deploying short-,
medium- and long-range interceptor missile batteries, mobile missile radar
stations, long-range super-stealth nuclear bombers, Aegis-class destroyers
equipped to sail the world's seas to hunt down conventional and nuclear
missiles, and surveillance satellites and weapons in space is not designed
to target non-existent intercontinental ballistic missile threats from
Iran or Syria, or even from North Korea, concludes analyst Rick Rozoff,
but to blackmail Russia and China and prepare the groundwork to "win"
in a first strike nuclear war.
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- On August 11, just a few days before the Von Baunites
gathered in Alabama, Russian Air Force commander Alexander Zelin warned,
"By 2030 foreign countries, particularly the US, will be able to deliver
coordinated high-precision strikes from air and space against any target
on the whole territory of Russia. That is why the main goal of the development
of the Russian Air Force until 2020 is to provide a reliable deterrent
during peacetime, and repel any military aggression with the use of conventional
and nuclear arsenals in a time of war." The following day Chinese
Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament
in Geneva, "Outer space is now facing the looming danger of weaponization.
Credible and effective multilateral measures must be taken to forestall
the weaponisation and arms race in outer space."
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- Make no mistake, the Pentagon is busy shooting for global
military supremacy. This year is crucial to get things right before the
expiration of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1) in December.
A joint understanding for a follow-on "agreement" to START-1
was signed by Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in July. The
US strategy appears to be to replace the treaty with a less formal agreement
that eliminates strict verification requirements and weapons limits. Former
US assistant secretary of state Paula DeSutter said in May 2007 that the
major provisions of the treaty "are no longer necessary. We don't
believe we're in a place where we need have to have the detailed lists
and verification measures."
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- More US "logic", this time dismissing the need
for much-hated treaties, which would have to be confirmed by the Senate
and, worse yet, adhered to, instead of informal "cooperation",
meaning arm-twisting or merely ignoring protests. The connection between
the lack of interest in a replacement for START-1 and Washington's missile
shield designs is not lost on the Russians. The CFR admits that US missile
plans in Europe are seen by the Russians "not so much as missile defense
as a deployment of first-strike capability." Zelin revealed that defense
upgrading would include developing "new missiles that will be capable
of defending against space-based systems."
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- Despite the fact that there is no popular will for militarizing
space, there is little standing in its way, with "defense" policy
now solidly bipartisan, and Euro-silence and even Euro-cheerleading. Only
"authoritarian" Russia and China call for a treaty against space
warfare. The US dismisses these calls as designed to block its plans for
the missile interceptor system. Well, yes, that is the point. "The
practice of seeking absolute strategic advantage should be abandoned. Countries
should neither develop missile defense systems that undermine global strategic
stability nor deploy weapons in outer space," Chinese Foreign Minister
Yang Jiechi told the peaceniks in Geneva, as the Von Braunites were promoting
peace US-style. He added that China welcomed moves to rid the world of
nuclear weapons, including China's. "The complete prohibition and
thorough destruction of nuclear weapons and a nuclear weapon-free world
have become widely embraced goals," Yang said, referring to Obama's
call in April for a "world without nuclear weapons". Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told them much the same. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton was conspicuous in Geneva by her absence.
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- Too bad no US generals or senior government officials
bothered to drop in on the Geneva conference, where the fallacy in their
"logic" could have been explained to them: a treaty signed by
the nations of the world, led by all the permanent members of the UN Security
Council, would prevent any "adversaries" from taking "advantage"
of using space for military purposes. The most touted blaggard, North Korea,
cannot even get its satellites into orbit, assuming they are of any military
significance. The rogue states that can and do (no names are necessary)
would be forced by a treaty to curb their appetites for cyber Armageddon,
allowing the world to breathe slightly more easily.
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- Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/
You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com
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