- This analysis below is followed by an incredibly important
article from the Asia Times entitled US: Remaking policy in Asia? which
confirms many SenderBerl interpretations regarding China. When you read
this important piece keep in mind that it is written with the slant that
the US agenda prevails, the only variable is what power group in the administration
obtains dominant control over the agenda. This portends US arrogance in
strategic planning which may soon come back to bite us.
-
- Those hardliners in the Bush administration are pushing
for military conflict at a point of history where such conflict has become
antiquated between major states. The Pentagon via Rumsfeld sees its mickey
mouse confrontations since Vietnam as somehow suggesting that the US because
of a set of new toys and gimmicks first utilized against an inept Saddam
Hussein in 1991 as suggesting that the US somehow can carry forth an efficient
incursion and victory (especially when aided by Israel's renown IDF). This
type of high school thinking, a mainstary in strategic planning at the
Pentagon, which last resulted in the Vietname fiasco, which taught the
US a lesson seemingly now forgotten in forging ahead not only against a
country, but a region, and thereafter the world. What in the world gives
these people the idea that they who have made every mistake known in the
book, can carry forth such an ambitious if not totally amoral agenda?
-
- SenderBerl: It is very apparent now that our interpretation
and worst fears are immediately ahead consistent furthermore with our prior
analysis seeing major war erupt in 2003. Bush and Sharon are both ready
to initiate a regional war where Bush [lans on taking control of Iraqi
and Saudi oil by installing provisional governments in both countries.
-
- When President Clinton sat with four aces up his sleeve
that his Middle East peace process would prevail and save his presidency
for historical purposes, he was floored when it did not unravel as he planned.
-
- Now, President Bush has military plans with Israel, seemingly
equally perfect, giving Bush and Sharon four aces that the regional war
will be quick and give them control over Middle East oil where they can
show how good and earnest they are by bending over backwards to bring democracy
and freedoms to those currently living under oppressive Middle Eastern
regimes -- while the historical truth is that they have diluted and undermined
those very same principles and freedoms for their own citizens.
-
- It is so attractive to capture all the Middle East treasure
but Bush and especially Sharon better think twice three times over who
gave the Middle East nations their treasure, and Who will not be standing
by letting those under an agenda removing G-d from the Middle East prevail.
Thus, when this reality which Bush and Sharon do not want to see takes
hold, they will do what others have historically done when things collapse:
point to each other, blame each other, as both slide into the sinkhole
which opens up when man thinks he can contest the biblical mandate. Under
this scenario, Israel's future is bleak and it may be by Bush's hand, to
salvage what he must if events unravel against his expectations.
-
- Those knowing that Clinton held four aces when Barak
was to meet with Arafat to reach a peace where Barak was to offer everything,
scoffed at us when we said that it would never take place (and we said
that if it did, it would signal Israel's demise). Clinton is still trying
to figure it out. However, the very fact, that Barak seriously undertook
the course, with Israel sitting there silent and passive, no doubt platformed
the further transgressions which have put Israel into the dire straits
it currently faces. Now, to extract itself, with the US, from the weak
position Israel was put into via Oslo, and the US was put into because
of Clinton, they compound egregious errors, rather than rethink and reconsider
what transpired to undertake the correct course.
-
- Joseph Ehrlich
- Sender, Berl & Sons Inc.
- November 25, 2002 7:00PM
-
- PS. Here is that remarkably important piece from the
Asia Times. It shows that China and Asia are next on Bush's agenda after
he wipes up in the Middle East. Do you really think that China is going
to sit there as a paper tiger? We know that Bush thinks so. So does Rumsfeld.
But what if they are wrong? Remember, there has been no serious US military
engagement since Vietnam and the US did not fare well in Vietnam. Because
of all the new toys at the Pentagon, does someone like Rumsfeld want to
roll the dice with the world at stake? It seems that way.
-
- From Asia Times:
-
-
- US - Remaking Policy In Asia?
-
- By John Gershman
- (With permission from <http://www.fpif.org/>Foreign
Policy in Focus)
-
- Asia is arguably the region that has been most dramatically
affected by the shift in US policy since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
-
- US bases have cropped up in Central Asia for the first
time in history. Five Japanese vessels participated in the multinational
naval contingent that was part of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan,
marking the first wartime dispatch of naval vessels for operations abroad
since the end of World War II. (1) The administration of President George
W Bush has improved relations with both Pakistan and India at the same
time, a feat never accomplished during the Cold War. The administration
has expanded military cooperation with Taiwan that is unprecedented since
the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China. And
the United States has improved military relations with the Philippines
to the closest they've been since the end of the Cold War, and begun to
re-engage in a significant fashion with the Indonesian military for the
first time since ties were cut in 1999.
-
- The Bush administration came into office committed to
change US policy toward Asia. It aimed at reversing the Clinton-era policies
of engagement with North Korea and China, and strengthening military alliances
perceived as having been slighted under president Bill Clinton, particularly
with Japan, but also with Australia, South Korea, the Philippines, and
Thailand. Military and security issues were slated to displace economics
as the priority concerns of US policy toward the region.
-
- After the September 2001 attacks and the launch of the
Bush administration's "war on terrorism", Bush policy toward
the region followed three uneven phases. The first phase covered the period
following the attacks through the State of the Union address in January
2002, and largely involved assembling a coalition that would support (or
at least not oppose) the US-led war in Afghanistan. The second phase was
marked by two events: the identification of the "axis of evil"
in the State of the Union address and the launch of the so-called "second
front" in the war on terrorism in Southeast Asia more broadly. In
the third and current phase, signs of open dissent are appearing within
the administration and between the administration and its hardline supporters
concerning the administration's relationship with China. In addition, developments
in the region as a whole are complicating US efforts to implement its militarized
foreign policies and maintain supremacy in Asia.
-
- Military partnership with Japan
-
- Since the end of the Cold War, US-Japan relations as
a whole have been characterized by the absence of a strategic framework
- a gap that the Bush administration has begun to fill. In the first phase
of the "war on terrorism", the United States has put pressure
on Japan to change the way it thinks of war and peace.
-
- The closest thing to a blueprint for the Bush administration's
approach to Japan can be found in the so-called Armitage Report, the product
of a study group led by former Clinton administration official Joseph Nye
and current Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. (2)
-
- The report places security at the center of the US-Japan
relationship and conceives of the US-Japan security alliance as the primary
anchor for US force projection in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Despite
the 35,000 ground troops in South Korea, no naval forces are based there.
Japan hosts the only home port for a carrier battle group outside the United
States, a complete amphibious attack group, and a full marine expeditionary
force.
-
- The Bush administration wants a more substantial military
partnership that would begin to parallel relations with its European allies,
but there is no evidence that most Japanese want such a relationship. Japanese
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has called for the repeal, or at least
a reinterpretation, of Article 9 of Japan's constitution, which forbids
Japan to wage war. A reinterpretation would allow Japan to use military
force as part of "collective security" operations; that is, to
assist allied forces under attack outside of Japanese territory. In a stark
contrast to the Bush administration, Japan's foreign policy places a greater
emphasis on multilateralism. Japan has signed the land-mine treaty, the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and other multilateral arms control efforts
and remains upset by the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto protocol.
At a minimum, however, the administration will push Japan further toward
collective defense, steps foreshadowed in the late 1990s by Japan's approval
of the revised US-Japan security guidelines and its agreement to cooperate
in pursuing theater missile defense (TMD). Anything involving a more formal
military role for Japan in the region remains controversial both within
Japan and among many of its Asian neighbors, including those friendly to
Washington, such as South Korea. Most countries in the region see a more
militarily assertive Japan, given its past military adventures, as destabilizing
and a danger.
-
- The 'axis of evil' and beyond
-
- The second phase of the "war on terrorism"
in Asia has centered on confronting North Korea and expanding the conflict
to Southeast Asia. With North Korea, the Bush administration has most clearly
departed from the policies of its predecessor. One of the Clinton administration's
few unqualified foreign-policy successes was the negotiation of the Agreed
Framework in 1994, under which North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear
program in exchange for shipments of heavy fuel oil and the construction
of two nuclear reactors. When the US followed the lead of South Korean
President Kim Dae Jung's "Sunshine Policy" with the North, tensions
fell to their lowest levels since the end of the Korean War.
-
- Secretary of State Colin Powell advocated continuing
the Clinton-era policies of engagement, but he was overruled by hardliners
soon after Bush entered office and a review of policy toward North Korea
was launched. Bush embarrassed President Kim by criticizing his Sunshine
Policy when he visited Washington in March 2001. The events of September
11 might have sparked a US-North Korean rapprochement. After condemning
the attacks, North Korea promptly announced that it would sign the remaining
international anti-terrorism conventions that it hadn't already ratified.
But the United States kept North Korea on its terrorism list and maintained
the accompanying economic sanctions. This more confrontational stance culminated
with North Korea's inclusion in the axis of evil in the 2002 State of the
Union address, even though the US State Department claims North Korea hasn't
engaged in terrorism since the 1980s.
-
- In late August, the two Koreas reached an agreement on
three major joint economic projects, including reconnecting severed cross-border
railways, constructing an industrial complex, and instituting anti-flood
measures. After Koizumi's historic trip in mid-September, Japan and North
Korea began negotiations over normalizing relations. US assistant secretary
of state for East Asia James Kelly traveled to North Korea in early October
and at that meeting confronted North Korean officials with evidence that
it has engaged in a secret nuclear weapons program since 1997 in violation
of the Agreed Framework, a charge that North Korean officials acknowledged
to be true.
-
- North Korea's acknowledgement of the weapons program,
like its acknowledgement that it had abducted Japanese citizens in the
1970s and 1980s, seems aimed at a broader dialogue with the Bush administration.
The Bush administration stance continues to be divided as to how to respond
to the recent developments. (The State Department itself is divided, as
Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton
continues to wave the flag of the "axis of evil" in contrast
to the more positive views articulated by Armitage and Kelly.) Although
the future of the Agreed Framework may be in doubt, the engagement approach
remains favored by the key countries in the region. Emerging at the same
time that the administration is gearing up support to invade Iraq, the
intra-administration debate over how to respond to the North Korean situation
may have broader effects on US policy toward weapons of mass destruction.
-
- In Southeast Asia, meanwhile, the US has focused its
war on terrorism in the Philippines and Indonesia. In Indonesia, military
cooperation is back on the table despite congressional opposition on the
grounds of Indonesian military complicity in massive human rights abuses.
Increased military aid to Indonesia is typically justified on the basis
that it will promote democracy, but the International Crisis Group (among
many others) has argued that bilateral military ties have not succeeded
in "producing an Indonesian military that meets the standards of a
modern, professional force under civilian control".
-
- In the Philippines, the US deployed more than 1,000 troops
in a partially successful hostage rescue cum counter-terrorist operation
in the south of the country. Against the backdrop of these counter-terrorism
operations, the US has been transforming the Philippines into a staging
area for power projection in the region (primarily against China/Taiwan)
but also to boost projection into Central Asia and the Middle East. In
August the Bush administration added the Communist Party of the Philippines
and its armed wing, the New People's Army, to the State Department's list
of foreign terrorist organizations. The most immediate effect was to get
the Dutch government to freeze the assets of the party leadership, which
remains there in self-imposed exile. The longer-term agenda is likely to
include an expansion of training and exercises to be directed at countering
the nearly 35-year-old insurgency.
-
- The Bush administration foray into Southeast Asia has
been troubling for several reasons. First, the terrorist threat was never
as large as the rhetoric suggested. While there is a small network of individuals
and organizations involved in terrorist activities, they have no mass following.
They represent a law-enforcement, not a military, challenge. Second, US
military aid is strengthening unaccountable and repressive militaries.
It also risks undermining fragile democratic institutions and legitimizing
broader crackdowns on political dissent by regional leaders.
-
- Confronting China
-
- In the first draft of the 1992 Defense Policy Guidance
drafted by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, it was unclear where the new
rival to US supremacy would most likely emerge. Europe and Japan as well
as China were among the candidates. By the time the Bush administration
came into office, however, the proponents of this doctrine of supremacy
saw only one possible peer competitor emerging in the foreseeable future:
China.
-
- But the Bush administration was divided on its approach
to China from the moment it took office. Hardline neo-conservatives such
as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and
Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim represented a fairly unified Pentagon
with John Bolton as a key outpost in the State Department. They have been
backed by an even more rabid informal network of China-bashers known as
the "Blue Team" who are based in congressional staff, right-wing
think-tanks, and media outlets. In the more moderate realpolitik camp have
been Powell, the director of the State Department's policy planning staff,
Richard Haass, Armitage, and Kelly. National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice, while largely siding with the hawks, has played a balancing role
on policy toward China.
-
- Early in the administration, the hawks appeared ascendant,
their rhetoric considerably sharper than that of the Clinton administration.
Bush denounced Clinton's efforts to forge a "strategic partnership"
with China, referring instead to China as a "strategic competitor".
The Clintonesque pattern of engagement did prevail at key points, however,
such as the resolution of the April 2001 imbroglio involving the PC-3 spy-plane
collision. And through September 11, 2001, that approach appears to have
been maintained. Most notably, Bush met with Chinese President Jiang Zemin
twice in four months (October 2001 and February 2002) and again last month.
The number and frequency of these meetings is unprecedented in US-China
relations.
-
- The hawks have not given up. Rumsfeld remains the only
major cabinet member not to have met with his Chinese counterpart. Having
apparently lost the intra-administration battle over how to conduct direct
relations with China, the Pentagon has focused on upgrading relations with
Taiwan and other allies in the region. (While it contains proponents of
Taiwan independence, the Bush administration does not formally advocate
this position.) In the midst of the spy-plane negotiations in April 2001,
the Bush administration approved the most generous arms package for Taiwan
in a decade, including destroyers, anti-submarine planes, and diesel submarines.
While Bush administration rhetoric with respect to Taiwan became less strident
after the September 11 attacks, the Pentagon quietly continued to forge
closer links between the US and Taiwanese military establishments, culminating
in a meeting between Wolfowitz and Taiwan's minister of defense.
-
- The Blue Team, relatively quiet since September 11 last
year, renewed their salvos in mid-2002. These China-bashers see an opportunity
in the distractions of the Chinese leadership's succession process to strengthen
US-Taiwan ties and heighten the anti-China tone of the renewed military
ties in the region. They want a more explicit return to the framework of
China as a strategic competitor, a view expressed in the first report of
the US-China Security Review Commission, which was staffed by a number
of Blue Team members. The Blue Team supports pending congressional legislation
that demands greater planning and operational integration of the US and
Taiwanese militaries that would, if passed, contravene nearly 25 years
of US policy toward China and ignite a major crisis in US-China relations.
-
- Challenges from the region
-
- The aftermath of September 11, 2001, enabled the US to
expand its military presence throughout the Asia-Pacific region through
military operations, exercises, aid, and training programs that have consolidated
the US hegemonic military presence and deepened military cooperation in
the region. The net effect of these expanded ties has been to expand the
capacity for US force projection and has undermined democracy by strengthening
unaccountable and repressive militaries in countries such as Indonesia
and the Philippines. These developments were not "caused" by
September 11 - ie, these were not new policy initiatives - but the way
the Bush administration responded to September 11 created a window of opportunity
for already existing proposals to succeed.
-
- If the events of September 11 had not happened, it is
by no means clear that political support would have existed for expanded
ties with the authoritarian regime in Pakistan or the chronically repressive
militaries in the Philippines and Indonesia, either in the United States
or in those countries. Nor would economic resources - military and foreign
aid for the Philippines and Indonesia as well as debt relief for Pakistan
- have been as forthcoming. These new relationships are driven by the Pentagon.
The State Department remains a junior partner and has no significant resources
to offer for fighting poverty or strengthening civilian democratic institutions.
At the same time, key policies toward Asia have continued regardless of
September 11. The September 11 attacks did nothing to weaken the Bush administration's
support for national and theater missile defense systems, or its willingness
to sell arms to and develop closer military ties with Taiwan.
-
- In this third phase of the "war on terrorism",
the internal conflict between the hardliners and the advocates of engagement,
unsustainable in the long term, will continue until one side or the other
is defeated (with most of the betting on Powell to resign first). The Pentagon
has the edge, since the recent boost in military spending gives it resources
that other agencies lack. The most likely pressure for change in the foreseeable
future will come not from within the Bush administration but from the region.
China's leadership succession has just been finalized, and a number of
other key events will take place soon - including presidential elections
in South Korea, and the decision to continue or abrogate the Agreed Framework.
If Japan and South Korea respond positively to the new North Korean initiatives,
and continuing economic crisis makes a major expansion of Japan's military
role more difficult, US hardliners will find it more difficult to promote
confrontation with North Korea.
-
- The missing element is popular mobilization at home to
seize the opportunity presented by the divide within the administration.
Popular mobilization forced Congress to cut ties with the Indonesian military
in 1999, and popular mobilization can challenge, transform, or at the very
least mitigate the worst elements of Bush administration policy in the
region.
-
- Notes
- 1. During the Gulf War Japan contributed about US$10.8
billion out of the estimated $60 billion it cost to fight the war and minesweepers,
but those only after the hostilities had ended. See Yukio Okamoto, "Japan
and the United States: The Essential Alliance", Washington Quarterly
25(20) (Spring 2002), pp 59-72.
-
- 2. The report was published in late 2000 by the Institute
for National Strategic Studies under the title "The United States
and Japan: Advancing Toward a Mature Partnership", and is available
online at http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/sr_japan.html. In addition to Armitage,
key Bush administration officials who participated in drafting the report
include: Paul Wolfowitz (deputy undersecretary of defense), James Kelly
(assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific), and Torkel
Patterson (former senior director for Asian Affairs, National Security
Council).
-
- John Gershman (john@irc-online.org) is a senior analyst
at the <http://www.irc-online.org/>Interhemispheric Resource Center
(IRC). A version of this essay will appear in Global Power Trip edited
by John Feffer and published by Seven Stories Press (forthcoming spring
2003).
- =======
-
- Addendum to our E-mail of August 12, 2002:
-
- Beyond Baghdad: Expanding Target List
-
- Washington looks at overhauling the Islamic and
Arab world
-
- By Roy Gutman and John Barry
- NEWSWEEK
-
- Aug. 19 issue - While still wrangling over how to overthrow
Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration is already looking for other
targets. President Bush has called for the ouster of Palestinian leader
Yasir Arafat. Now some in the administration-and allies at D.C. think tanks-are
eyeing Iran and even Saudi Arabia. As one senior British official put it:
"Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."
-
- IN A STATEMENT BROADCAST into Iran in mid-July, Bush
promised unspecified U.S. "support" to "Iran's people"
as they "move toward a future defined by greater freedom." And
early this month, a top Bush aide said the current regime-both the elected
government of reformist Mohammed Khatami and the unelected mullahs who
dominate public life-was ineffectual. Speaking to an audience at the Washington
Institute for Near East Affairs, National Security Council aide Zalmay
Khalilzad did not call outright for a regime change in Iran, but didn't
argue when a questioner asserted that this was the policy's aim. Khalilzad
did not indicate any plan to use force, but promised to "reach out"
to the Iranian people and find "ways and means" of helping them.
-
- Richard Perle, chairman of Bush's Defense Policy Board,
recently invited a controversial French scholar to brief the outside advisers
on "taking the Saudi out of Arabia." When word leaked to the
press, the Bush administration strongly denied it wanted to oust the Saudi
royal regime. Still, some insiders continue to whisper about the possibility.
Syria and even Egypt are now under discussion in neoconservative circles,
along with North Korea and Burma.
-
- "The thinking in the administration is really evolving
toward the idea of promoting democracy and regime change-an overhaul of
the Arab and Islamic world, rather than dealing with it as it is,"
says Kenneth Katzman, a leading expert on Iran who works with the Congressional
Research Service. Some military strategists worry that the talk of overthrowing
other nations could jeopardize any invasion of Iraq. Tony Blair, the only
foreign leader who might join in a U.S.-led intervention in Iraq, is asking
tough questions. "He wants to know a lot more about what the administration's
real agenda is," says a top Blair aide. Some Iraq-invasion scenarios
under review have U.S. carriers steaming into the narrow Persian Gulf-a
place where they'd be vulnerable to missile strikes from Iranian shore
batteries. Richard Murphy, a former top State Department official dealing
with the Mideast, warns the United States could lose Iran as a needed ally.
"They will be pretty cautious about putting their hands firmly in
ours, knowing we have a knife headed for their back
|