CANBERRA, Australia (AP): Army chiefs from 19 countries including the United States, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand met secretly in a Sydney hotel last week ahead of Asia-Pacific leaders forum, an official said Tuesday.
Australia's Chief of Army, Lt. Gen. Peter Leahy, said the meeting, which precedes the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation annual summit next month, was kept secret for security reasons.
"We were aware that there's a lot going on in Sydney and we didn't want to make a fuss," Leahy told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio, referring to added security measures being put in place in Australia's largest city for APEC.
Leahy's interview with the ABC is the first mention in the Australian media that the meeting had taken place. He did not say when last week the meeting was held.
Leahy said he and his international counterparts had discussed some of the challenges facing modern armies, such as how to prepare for disaster relief, peacekeeping and counterterrorism operations. (***)
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailgeneral.asp?fileid=20070814064734&irec=0
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AUSTRALIA: Kkkanberra urged to pressure Indonesia over Papua - 10/08/2007
Australia's Prime Minister John Howard is being asked to speak up for the human rights of Papua when he meets Indonesia's President in Sydney next month. The Chairman of the Papuan People's Assembly wants the issue raised when Australia hosts 20 national leaders during the APEC summit in September. Chairman Agus Alua claims Papua's special autonomy is being deliberately undermined by Indonesia's military.
Presenter - Karon Snowdon Speaker - Agus Alua. Chairman of the Papuan People's Assembly
listen windows media >
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/asiapac/programs/m1429728.asx
Showing posts with label militarisation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label militarisation. Show all posts
8/12/07
APEC: Sydney, you ain't seen nothin' yet...
7 August 2007 Lauren Parle writes:
We’re still a month away from the APEC summit, but disgruntled Sydney residents have so far tolerated the noise of Black Hawks passing over the city, had their Lord Mayor encourage everyone pack emergency 'go-bags' complete with radios and energy bars and had their hospital services cut back.
But it’s only just begun. Business owners have been the first to suffer. Cement barriers have been erected in the CBD, blocking access from the roads for many stores. And although Friday September 7 has been declared a public holiday, a number of cafes and restaurants will remain open over the long weekend.
It's not just businesses that have to remain tolerant. Sydney residents and tourists have been advised to take public transport and avoid driving as frequent delays between the airport and the city are to be expected. Under the APEC Meeting (Police Powers) Act, officers will have increased security powers for the period allowing them to search anyone passing through an APEC declared area.
Prime Minister John Howard has denied claims that the city will be “locked down” during the meeting but acknowledges that there will be a “heavy security presence”.
The early meetings are scheduled to begin on September 2 with the 21 member APEC leaders’ meeting beginning on September 8.
Security measures being taken for the APEC summit:
* Jets will patrol a restricted area within a 45-nautical-mile radius of Kingsford Smith Airport and all other flights set to travel through the area will be required to pre-register and obtain approval.
* People on elective surgery lists in hospitals including Prince of Wales and Royal Price Alfred have had their appointments postponed to free up resources.
* Concrete fences have been used to fence restricted areas of the Sydney Opera House, Exhibition and Convention Centre and the Government House.
* The Australian Defence Force announced that around 1500 personnel, Black Hawk helicopters, F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets, a special task group and Navy ships will be released for the event.
* A video featuring the Maritime Union of Australia protesting against Work Choices as part of a montage of ‘violent’ protesters has been shown as part of police training for the summit.
* Circular Quay, Museum and St James train stations will be closed for three days and moved to Elizabeth Street.
* For those planning to visit the city, delays and random police searches are said to be expected.
* NSW Premier Morris Iemma announced that temporary legislation would be put into force to increase police powers over the duration of the summit.
* Rumours of a 2.8m high concrete "ring of steel" to be built around the CBD have been circulating, alarming business owners.
* A $600 000 water cannon has been purchased by the police to be used against violent protesters.
* The NSW Police Minister has announced that taser guns, not capsicum spray, will be carried by riot police for crowd control.
Australia's police and military must not become the same thing
By Dr Jude McCulloch - posted Tuesday, 15 May 2001
ANZAC day provides the space to reflect on the role of the military in our society. The Australian military, unlike the military in countries such as Indonesia, has overwhelmingly been confined to dealing with external enemies during times of war and has not been used as a repressive force against its own citizens. The Australian Constitution contains provisions that imply a clear division between the military and the police. In addition, it is an important principle of Australian democracy that the military is under the direct control of the civil authority.
The establishment of paramilitary units in state police forces during the late 1970s has blurred the lines between the police and the military. These paramilitary units, like Victoria's Special Operations Group, train with the military, include former members of the military, use a wide range of military weapons and equipment, and train and use extremely high levels of force. In short, the units straddle the line between the two organisations. Groups like the SOG were originally set up as counter terrorist groups and it was on this basis that their special training and equipment were justified. Despite this the SOG, and its counterparts in other states, has been used in a wide and increasing range of traditional policing duties.
The blurring of the military and police functions is of great significance. Philosophically police are duty bound to protect life and to operate using only minimum force. The military, on the other hand, are trained to kill and may use maximum force to overcome an enemy. In addition, paramilitary police, unlike the military proper, are operationally independent from the government. Police command, rather than an elected government, decide where and when this 'military' force will be used.
The influence and impact of the paramilitary units moves beyond their direct sphere of operation. The paramilitary units are considered elite by other police and so provide role models for police, who are culturally predisposed to admire macho action-oriented methods of policing. In Victoria, the police hierarchy has greatly encouraged and facilitated the passing on of paramilitary tactics to other police by placing former SOG members in charge of firearms and public order training, and arranging regular secondments to other policing areas where further opportunities arise for paramilitary methods to be taught and operationalised. In addition, the SOG has been used as a testing ground for new weapons, which are subsequently absorbed into everyday policing. Many of the most controversial and problematic policing incidents in Victoria since the early 1980s - fatal shootings, forced entry raids, mass strip searches of nightclub patrons, pressure point neck holds and the batoning of peaceful protestors - are directly linked to the SOG or its influence over operational tactics.
The establishment of paramilitary police units within state police forces and the integration of their methods and tactics into everyday policing have taken place almost entirely in secret allowing little opportunity for public debate. The Victorian SOG, although not formally part of the military, is nevertheless a significant paramilitary force virtually indistinguishable in terms of the weapons and levels of force at its disposal from the military proper. The integration of SOG and SOG tactics into everyday policing has occurred without any appropriate recognition of the important constitutional and social traditions that have ensured that military force is not used against citizens except in the most extreme circumstances.
A close ideological and operational alliance between the police and the military is usually associated with repressive governments. Paramilitary police shift from the police mandate to use only minimum force and instead become adept at the soldier's craft of killing. In addition, paramilitary police are trained to approach demonstrators as terrorists to be punished as enemies of the state. The establishment of groups like the SOG has undermined the important principle that military forces are subordinate to and under the control of the elected government. The consequences of using military force to repress citizens and of having military forces, which are outside the direct and immediate control of the elected government, are tragically apparent in countries such as Indonesia. If Australia is to continue the long democratic traditions that have avoided the use of military force against its citizens, the position and role of the paramilitary police needs to be seriously examined and checked.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1266
8/11/07
Anti-ANZAC riots rock East Timor
All these anzac pigs can fuck off out of the Pacific......Haere Atu Poaka
Riots have broken out in East Timor's two largest cities, as opponents of new Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao confront Anzac police and soldiers. Gusmao's National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction party won only 22% of the vote in last month's parliamentary elections, trailing behind its rival Fretilin. Gusmao has been able to take power this week because of the intervention of his close ally, President Jose Ramos-Horta, who invoked a clause in East Timor's constitution that gave him the power to decree a government.
Fretilin activists have been outraged by Horta's act, insisting that their party has the right to form an administration because it won the largest share of the vote and the largest number of seats in parliament. Fretilin leader and former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri told the Sydney Morning Herald that 'People are really frustrated…they voted for Fretilin, expecting Fretilin to govern the country and suddenly with some kind of interpretation of the constitution, the second party was invited in'.
The riots began after protesters in the capital Dili and the eastern town of Bacau were confronted by Australian and New Zealand soldiers and police. Refusing orders to disperse, the protesters, who chanted 'Down with John Howard!' and held banners denouncing Horta as an Australian puppet, built barricades of burning tyres and threw rocks at police and soldiers. Australian troops opened fire after youths smashed the windows of their vehicle near the pro-Fretilin Comoro refugee camp on the outskirts of Dili. The camp has been a centre of anti-occupation protest since Australian troops shot and killed two of its residents on February the 22nd. The Australian embassy was targeted by rock throwers, and in Bacau a building associated with the UN was burnt down. Protesters attacked New Zealand army vehicles in both cities.
It is not surprising that protesters have chosen to express their anger at Gusmao's illegitimate government by attacking Anzac forces and property. For more than a year now, John Howard's administration has been flagrantly interfering in Timorese affairs on behalf of its close allies Gusmao and Horta. In the first half of 2006 Howard's government waged a campaign to destabilise the Fretilin-dominated government of Alkatiri by splitting the army and police forces, funding anti-secular demonstrations by the country's powerful Catholic church, and spreading anti-Muslim and anti-communist smears against Alkatiri. The result was a wave of violence which was used to pressure Fretilin into agreeing to the deployment of an Anzac 'peacekeeping force' of soldiers and police.
Howard used the occupying force to secure Alkatiri's resignation, and to make Horta temporary Prime Minister in his place. In response, Horta lavishly praised Australian and American foreign policy and took a much more conciliatory attitude to plans to expand Australian exploitation of oil fields in the Timor Gap. But political and social stability proved hard to restore, and last February and March riots shook Dili in response to the killings of Timorese civilians by Anzac troops who had been deployed against Horta's enemies. During this year's Presidential and parliamentary elections, Anzac troops were often used to bully Fretilin opponents of Horta and Gusmao. When John Howard visited Dili at the end of July to give his support to a Gusmao government he was met by protesters demanding an end to the Anzac presence in their country. The new uprising in Dili and Bacau only proves how widespread opposition to the occupation has become.
Anti-ANZAC riots rock East Timor
http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display/73474/index.php
Related
* http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com
East Timor: Refugees and street youth attack cops, foreign troops, aid orgs
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20070807110912481
East Timor: Australia's Shame
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20060525091427856
On the Eve of a Free Trade Area of the Pacific: Occupation, neo-colonialism and enclosure
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20070612183618607
7/27/07
Australia’s Expansive Asian Security Footprint
The 2007 Defence Update, the United States, and the abuses of realism
Richard Tanter
“How we defend our sovereignty, our citizens and our interests – and our success in doing so – shapes the future of our nation.”
The opening words of Brendan Nelson’s Preface to the 2007 Defence Update [1] are the most accurate of all those in this seriously flawed document – though quite likelynot as Nelson had in mind when he wrote them. The Defence Update 2007 comes after a decade of constant and still unfinished increases in defence spending, a tripling of domestic security spending, huge weapons systems orders, Australian defence Forces deployments from Lebanon to the Solomon Islands, three large and extremely demanding deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor, and world politics turning on the hinge of a massive strategic miscalculation by Australia’s closest ally. The Defence Update is a deeply flawed policy document, shaped by double standards and selective learning, shortsightedness and botched use of realism, the aggressive demands of alliance maintenance, and an almost complete failure to consider the real and salient threats to Australian security – both the state- and human- versions – of global problems such as climate change, health and poverty.
1. Product warning
Defence White Papers, and their little cousins, the Defence Updates, are curious documents. They should probably come with a product warning label which says something like:
“The Defence Update represents current Australian government defence policy and its strategic perceptions of the world. However, this document contains also words not meant to be taken at face value, except when they should be.”
Invisible product warnings aside, White Papers and Updates are meant to be taken seriously - as a basis for planning within government; as an explanation of the rationale for government policy to the citizenry, especially in the absence of parliamentary sovereignty; and as a signal of intent to other governments, both friendly and otherwise. The problem for the government lies in indicating to the separate stakeholder/readers just how the document is to be read: when it should be taken literally, when it should be ignored, and when it should be read through a set of codes which can be publicly understood – at least by those at whom they are aimed - but if necessary, publicly denied. Brendan Nelson’s visit to Beijing to explain to China how they should read beyond the words on the page faced exactly this problem. Whatever Mr Nelson said to the Chinese will also have to be squared with the much more important stakeholder: Washington.
2. The jargon of national interests
The Defence Update 2007 follows its predecessors in 2003 and 2005, which in turn reflected changes in policy and strategic environment since the last Defence White Paper in 2000. The purpose of the Update and the rationale for its preparation are clearly explained:
“the Government has carefully assessed our national interests and how we might best use our armed forces in pursuit of those interests.
The core stated goal of defence policy is the pursuit of Australia’s “national interests”. Indeed in the brief space of 64 pages of generously spaced text and photographs (perhaps 15,000 words all told), the word “interests” appears 42 times. The interests concerned are Australia’s, as in “Australia national interests”, or very occasionally, those of Australia’s allies. No other conceptual term appears so often, or is used so freely, or with so little definition or conceptual traction.
The lack of clarity and traction in the use of interests in this document as a guide to policy comes from at least four immediately salient sources visible in the Update:
* double standards and selective learning,
* shortsightedness and botched use of realism, and
* the demands of alliance maintenance.
3. Double standards and selective learning
To speak of double standards in security affairs is to immediately invite suspicion that you are not serious about policy. The world of international politics, it is argued, is the realm of power, and policy formation for the national interest is a matter of seeking purchase in an anarchic world. In polite circles, we all understand that our friends and allies have failings best not mentioned. At worst, international politics is unfortunately the realm of “reasons of state” – as Bakunin rightly remarked and Chomsky reminds us, the most frightening term in our political lexicon.
The unwritten product warning that comes with White Papers and their like cues readers to accept such double standards, and to pass over them in sophisticated silence. Consistency is certainly an overrated political virtue, but there are some limits to the value of a blind eye in global politics. This is especially so when there are signs that those in power can no longer distinguish on the one hand between the little lies that make close company possible, and violent and genuinely threatening reality on the other.
Double standards on core issues abound. The primary worry about WMD technology today is “the proliferation of such weapons by countries like North Korea and Iran”. Nuclear proliferation in our region by India, Pakistan or, further afield, by Israel, is apparently not a concern. In East Asia, Australia supports “Japan’s more active security posture within the US alliance and multinational coalitions”. But Chinese military modernization “could create misunderstandings and instability in the region”. Just in case the Chinese failed to get the message, the China-based concern about possible “misunderstandings and instability”, is reinforced on the same page with a warning about the dangers of “strategic miscalculation” – echoing the same phrase apropos China barely a page earlier.
By contrast, the United States is several times depicted as “a stabilizing force”, despite its own rapid military transformation and increased military budget. The more salient and important example of “strategic miscalculation” is unmentioned and unmentionable: the American “miscalculation” in Iraq and Afghanistan – the hinge on which world politics are currently turning, catastrophically for the US and its close allies. The Defence Update’s authors know the reality, but in this context can say nothing of their fears.
US military bases in Australia
The Australian double standard on nuclear weapons in the Middle East is evident – and salient - to any informed Indonesian or Malaysian. Such readers might be surprised by the lofty heights of the Update’s statement of government intent on nuclear weapons proliferation:
“Australia has an over–riding interest to prevent the spread of WMD by backing arms control agreements and applying active counter–measures with our allies – such as the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) – where proliferation is discovered.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)’s rump disarmament section is the carrier of the institutional memory of the department’s activist non-proliferation period under Gareth Evans responding to large-scale mobilized peace movement pressure. But generally welcome though the concept of the PSI is, its execution and legal premises are flawed. Moreover, Australia in the last decade has a less than stellar record on nuclear proliferation and arms-control initiatives – witness the current convolutions on uranium exports to India, as Canberra waits for the US to resolve its position on NPT renegades.
Drawing lessons from recent events in world affairs is a useful rhetorical trope for the Update, but the lessons “learned” are somewhat selective. For example:
“The increased capability of terrorists and insurgents against a well–armed nation was illustrated during the Israel–Hezbollah conflict in 2006.”
There were any number of other lessons that could have been “learned” from that conflict, most of them highly relevant to current Australian policy. Most important among these was the extraordinary destructiveness of the practice of conventional warfare in urban environments by “a well–armed nation”, the now well-recognize limitations on the political effectiveness of using military force in such a manner, and the huge international cost in legitimacy to states seen using such disproportionate and indiscriminate force.
4. Botched realism and the calculation of national interests
At the heart of Australian policy, especially under Howard, are the claims of realism: this is the way the world is, and we can responsibly do no other. Leaving aside long-standing arguments about the constitutional failings of realism, what is most evident about the strategic picture portrayed in the latest Defence Update is that its realism is often wanting – often at the moments when it presents itself as most compelling.
This is most evident in the discussion of at least three of the four clear innovations in security policy under the Howard government: the attempt to overthrow the defence of Australia doctrine, the movement to military alliances with Japan, India and Indonesia in concert with the US against China, and the deployment of Middle East expeditionary forces. All three of these initiatives, coupled with the wider US-led Global war on Terror, are driven by the massive expansion of the military and intelligence budgets over the past decade.
Australian interests and the Middle East
In its piling up of Australian “interests”, one of the two places where the Update comes close to spelling out what those interests might be is the Middle East, though it does not actually do so. What the Update does is assert that given “the continuing importance of the region to our security and broader national interests”, that there are three reasons to “expect Australia’s strategic involvement in the Middle East to continue”:
* the US will continue to “remain heavily engaged” in the region, because to withdraw “would undermine its own security”;
* the strategic interests of China, India and our “trading partners” are increasingly linked to the Middle East; and
* “extremist terrorism continues to draw funding, support and people from the Middle East”.
Australia has approximately 1,500 troops in and around Iraq
In trying to convince a doubtful public that there is a reason for Australian troops to be involved in two Middle Eastern wars at one time, the Update authors were clearly labouring under several difficulties.
The first is the elephant in the room problem: the obvious and undoubted perceived interest – a perceived benefit to Australia from western access to oil – cannot be mentioned in polite company. When the Minister for Defence launched the Update with a general reference to the importance of energy security in the region, he was pilloried by the media and the political opposition, and then disowned by his leader and party. No, said the Treasurer, “Australian soldiers don't risk their lives for petrol prices." What the entire affair elided, and which is almost never discussed in parliament, the media, or by the commentariat, was the deep, unchanging and destructive character of the western concern to control Middle Eastern energy sources.
The second problem is that even when the dirty secret is admitted, even if only in only in conclaves of trusted experts, it is soon clear that it is not at all certain that the security of the Australian people can be shown to be affected by who owns the oil fields of Iraq. Even at the height of its revolutionary zeal, Iran, the regime most hostile to the US and its allies, did not interrupt the exchange of oil for dollars. Indeed the architect of the only serious assault on unfettered western access to cheap oil in the OPEC years was the closest US ally, Saudi Arabia.
Accordingly, the Update authors chose to speak of Australia’s interests by indirection, rationalising predicted behaviour rather than addressing national interests. But perhaps predictably, the three proffered bases for their expectation were limp and unconvincing, failing elementary tests of realism:
* even assuming, in the face of withdrawal from Iraq sooner rather than later, the US will continue to be “heavily engaged” in the Middle East, the question of why that means Australia will be militarily involved is left unsaid. This is probably as it has to be, since the only logical answers are either that it is assumed that American and Australian interests are identical, which is simply not true, or Australia follows US geo-political direction, which is close enough to the truth.
* the interests of our trading partners are indeed connected to the Middle East, but it is not at all automatic that fact then dictates an Australian military presence in the region. Certainly, not to China, our largest trading partner.
* “extremist terrorism” (sic) may indeed “draw funding, support and people from the Middle East”, but it is now catastrophically clear that the US-British-Australian coalition presence in Iraq is a much more important generator of “funding, support and people” for terrorism.
Realism in Northeast Asia
The Update’s remarks on China, reported above, have already had the predictable effects: Chinese protests about the gap between Australian claims of friendship and a desire for an even closer economic relationship above that of closest trading partner, as against the Update’s patronizing warnings of the dangers of “strategic miscalculation”:
“The pace and scope of China's military modernization, particularly the development of new and disruptive capabilities such as the anti-satellite missile, could create misunderstandings and instability in the region.”
There is of course a risk of strategic miscalculation in East Asia, certainly by dictatorships anxious to use nationalism as a domestic political crutch. But as the American example shows, China is not at risk alone. In the context of Australia’s deepening security relationship with Japan, calls for prudent realism need wider distribution amongst Australia’s allies and security partners as well as those nominated as potential antagonists by Australia’s major ally. [2]
5. The demanding ally and historical constants
The core of the China problem for Australia has been well canvassed for several years in the image of the Australian government’s nightmare of having to choose between its economic partner and its military ally. The trilateral security institutionalization now underway between the United States, Japan and Australia is certainly meant to exclude China. The Australian expression of concern about Chinese military development was itself an echo, just days apart, of Japan’s Defence Ministry statement:
“Tokyo's Defense Ministry said Beijing's military expansion plans include outer space, citing its successful missile test in January that destroyed a satellite. ‘It is highly possible that (China) is considering attacks against satellites as part of its military actions,’ the report went on, stressing that the rapid modernization of China's military forces ‘raises concerns’ and the effects on Japan ‘must be assessed carefully.’" [3]
The East Asian echo is a symptom of the deeper problem. Australia and Japan are effectively coordinating their statements on China, in the absence of any genuine security threat. The deepening of security relations between these two countries and India is not coincidental, and is well understood by China as such. Not surprisingly the Chinese have called Australia’s bluff on the matter, resulting in a humiliating backdown by the Australian Minister for Defence highly satisfactory to Middle Kingdom thinkers.
The tightening of security ties with Japan is being pursued enthusiastically without a realistic assessment of either the domestic problems that will inevitably arise from remilitarization in a country with deep and abiding democratic deficits, or the almost reckless embrace of “great power-like” security thinking and defence policies that are bringing Japan into unnecessary conflict with China, such as missile defence. [4]
But the key is the question of why the Australian government allowed itself to get into this predictable bind? It is not true that the Australian government simply does the bidding of Washington. Sometimes, as in the cases of both Afghanistan and Vietnam (and most likely Iraq) the problem is worse: Australia actively seeks participation in Washington’s wars before it is asked. [5] In the case of Japan, there is a combination of strong American pressure, Japanese nationalism (directed at its own constitution and “pacifist” public rather than outward), and Australian enthusiasm for a Northeast Asian technology-heavy partner.
In the case of China it is difficult to see anything other than either deep policy confusion or an inability to refuse the demands of our major ally, even in the face of a zero security threat and of entirely predictable negative consequences in relations with China.
The consequences of the demanding ally are even clearer and the consequences more dangerous in the case of Middle East policy. Australian policy towards the Middle East is almost purely derivative from US policy, and all its confusions and dangers. The exceptions to US derivation are two-fold, and both dangerous. The first, as already mentioned, is the repeated habit of Australian government’s anticipating the hegemon’s requirements, and volunteering for above-requirement coalition performance. Again the Update makes very clear the perceived need on the part of the Australian security establishment to actively maintain the alliance – to the point of identifying Australian security interests with those of the United States – as in the Middle East.
The second exception is a constant of Australian foreign policy which long predates the United States as preferred protector – the “common sense of a country feeling itself displaced from the centre into an alien geo-political and cultural environment. The Update rearticulates this distinctive “common sense”, this time apropos “terrorism”:
“For as long as that is true Australia and like–minded countries need to fight terrorism at its source rather than wait for it to come to our shores.
And again:
“In a globalised world, ignoring problems further afield only invites these threats to come closer to Australia.”
The current militarized response to what is presented as a generalized evil – “terrorism” (i.e. Iraq and Afghanistan) is a reprise of a much older Australian trait – evidenced by the rhetoric of “our shores”. In World War I the Australian government issued a propaganda poster that could well be recycled, showing bloodthirsty Huns in pointed helmets shooting an Australia farmer defending his family in front of a water tank. with the caption “Will you fight now, or wait for this?” [6] Historical constants continue to play their part in new contexts, and the destructiveness to real security needs of alliance anxiety is one such.
6. Globalisation and global problems as security threats
Globalisation is presented as one of two key factors structuring the changing strategic environment – the other being the “continued predominance of the United States, which acts as a stabilising force in the Asia-Pacific”.
Yet “globalisation” is understood at the most simplistic of levels: in fact, though presented as one of the two major drivers of world security, it receives barely a single paragraph of exposition.
What is deeply striking about the Defence Update, despite the unending and formless list of claims of “national interests” to be defended in this “globalizing world” is that genuinely global problems that are immediately and directly salient to the security of Australians are barely mentioned. The category of “non-traditional security issues” is noted, and then effectively dismissed. The dangers of “pandemics” are referred to twice, but on neither occasion for more than a phrase or two. Stunningly, especially given the electoral context in which the Update was prepared, the word “climate” does not appear once. Climate change, in the view of even the Pentagon, a matter of undoubted and immediate security relevance at both a global and national level in complex and mostly ill-understood ways, for all the pious talk of “non-traditional security threats” going back for a decade, is simply too big a problem to be seen. This is despite the fact that for our relations with Papua-New Guinea and the islands of the Southwest Pacific, to say nothing of Indonesia, and the economies of our trading partners, climate change and security – both the human and state varieties – are set to collide in ways we are barely beginning to understand.
Richard Tanter is Senior Research Associate at Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability and Director of the Nautilus Institute at RMIT and a Japan Focus associate. He has written widely on Japanese security policy, including 'With Eyes Wide Shut: Japan, Heisei Militarization and the Bush Doctrine' in Melvin Gurtov and Peter Van Ness (eds.), Confronting the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views from the Asia-Pacific, (New York: Routledge, 2005). His most recent book, co-edited with Gerry Van Klinken and Desmond Ball, is Masters of Terror: Indonesia's Military and Violence in East Timor in 1999 [second edition].
This is a slightly abbreviated version of an article that appeared at the Austral Policy Forum at Nautilus nautilus.rmit.edu.au/ on July 12, 2007. Published at Japan Focus on July 25, 2007.
See also Richard Tanter, The New American-led Security Architecture in the Asia Pacific: Binding Japan and Australia, containing China and US Expansion and Upgrading of Joint Australia-US Training Facilities. Nautilus reports on Australian forces in Afghanistan here.
Richard Tanter
“How we defend our sovereignty, our citizens and our interests – and our success in doing so – shapes the future of our nation.”
The opening words of Brendan Nelson’s Preface to the 2007 Defence Update [1] are the most accurate of all those in this seriously flawed document – though quite likelynot as Nelson had in mind when he wrote them. The Defence Update 2007 comes after a decade of constant and still unfinished increases in defence spending, a tripling of domestic security spending, huge weapons systems orders, Australian defence Forces deployments from Lebanon to the Solomon Islands, three large and extremely demanding deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor, and world politics turning on the hinge of a massive strategic miscalculation by Australia’s closest ally. The Defence Update is a deeply flawed policy document, shaped by double standards and selective learning, shortsightedness and botched use of realism, the aggressive demands of alliance maintenance, and an almost complete failure to consider the real and salient threats to Australian security – both the state- and human- versions – of global problems such as climate change, health and poverty.
1. Product warning
Defence White Papers, and their little cousins, the Defence Updates, are curious documents. They should probably come with a product warning label which says something like:
“The Defence Update represents current Australian government defence policy and its strategic perceptions of the world. However, this document contains also words not meant to be taken at face value, except when they should be.”
Invisible product warnings aside, White Papers and Updates are meant to be taken seriously - as a basis for planning within government; as an explanation of the rationale for government policy to the citizenry, especially in the absence of parliamentary sovereignty; and as a signal of intent to other governments, both friendly and otherwise. The problem for the government lies in indicating to the separate stakeholder/readers just how the document is to be read: when it should be taken literally, when it should be ignored, and when it should be read through a set of codes which can be publicly understood – at least by those at whom they are aimed - but if necessary, publicly denied. Brendan Nelson’s visit to Beijing to explain to China how they should read beyond the words on the page faced exactly this problem. Whatever Mr Nelson said to the Chinese will also have to be squared with the much more important stakeholder: Washington.
2. The jargon of national interests
The Defence Update 2007 follows its predecessors in 2003 and 2005, which in turn reflected changes in policy and strategic environment since the last Defence White Paper in 2000. The purpose of the Update and the rationale for its preparation are clearly explained:
“the Government has carefully assessed our national interests and how we might best use our armed forces in pursuit of those interests.
The core stated goal of defence policy is the pursuit of Australia’s “national interests”. Indeed in the brief space of 64 pages of generously spaced text and photographs (perhaps 15,000 words all told), the word “interests” appears 42 times. The interests concerned are Australia’s, as in “Australia national interests”, or very occasionally, those of Australia’s allies. No other conceptual term appears so often, or is used so freely, or with so little definition or conceptual traction.
The lack of clarity and traction in the use of interests in this document as a guide to policy comes from at least four immediately salient sources visible in the Update:
* double standards and selective learning,
* shortsightedness and botched use of realism, and
* the demands of alliance maintenance.
3. Double standards and selective learning
To speak of double standards in security affairs is to immediately invite suspicion that you are not serious about policy. The world of international politics, it is argued, is the realm of power, and policy formation for the national interest is a matter of seeking purchase in an anarchic world. In polite circles, we all understand that our friends and allies have failings best not mentioned. At worst, international politics is unfortunately the realm of “reasons of state” – as Bakunin rightly remarked and Chomsky reminds us, the most frightening term in our political lexicon.
The unwritten product warning that comes with White Papers and their like cues readers to accept such double standards, and to pass over them in sophisticated silence. Consistency is certainly an overrated political virtue, but there are some limits to the value of a blind eye in global politics. This is especially so when there are signs that those in power can no longer distinguish on the one hand between the little lies that make close company possible, and violent and genuinely threatening reality on the other.
Double standards on core issues abound. The primary worry about WMD technology today is “the proliferation of such weapons by countries like North Korea and Iran”. Nuclear proliferation in our region by India, Pakistan or, further afield, by Israel, is apparently not a concern. In East Asia, Australia supports “Japan’s more active security posture within the US alliance and multinational coalitions”. But Chinese military modernization “could create misunderstandings and instability in the region”. Just in case the Chinese failed to get the message, the China-based concern about possible “misunderstandings and instability”, is reinforced on the same page with a warning about the dangers of “strategic miscalculation” – echoing the same phrase apropos China barely a page earlier.
By contrast, the United States is several times depicted as “a stabilizing force”, despite its own rapid military transformation and increased military budget. The more salient and important example of “strategic miscalculation” is unmentioned and unmentionable: the American “miscalculation” in Iraq and Afghanistan – the hinge on which world politics are currently turning, catastrophically for the US and its close allies. The Defence Update’s authors know the reality, but in this context can say nothing of their fears.
US military bases in Australia
The Australian double standard on nuclear weapons in the Middle East is evident – and salient - to any informed Indonesian or Malaysian. Such readers might be surprised by the lofty heights of the Update’s statement of government intent on nuclear weapons proliferation:
“Australia has an over–riding interest to prevent the spread of WMD by backing arms control agreements and applying active counter–measures with our allies – such as the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) – where proliferation is discovered.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)’s rump disarmament section is the carrier of the institutional memory of the department’s activist non-proliferation period under Gareth Evans responding to large-scale mobilized peace movement pressure. But generally welcome though the concept of the PSI is, its execution and legal premises are flawed. Moreover, Australia in the last decade has a less than stellar record on nuclear proliferation and arms-control initiatives – witness the current convolutions on uranium exports to India, as Canberra waits for the US to resolve its position on NPT renegades.
Drawing lessons from recent events in world affairs is a useful rhetorical trope for the Update, but the lessons “learned” are somewhat selective. For example:
“The increased capability of terrorists and insurgents against a well–armed nation was illustrated during the Israel–Hezbollah conflict in 2006.”
There were any number of other lessons that could have been “learned” from that conflict, most of them highly relevant to current Australian policy. Most important among these was the extraordinary destructiveness of the practice of conventional warfare in urban environments by “a well–armed nation”, the now well-recognize limitations on the political effectiveness of using military force in such a manner, and the huge international cost in legitimacy to states seen using such disproportionate and indiscriminate force.
4. Botched realism and the calculation of national interests
At the heart of Australian policy, especially under Howard, are the claims of realism: this is the way the world is, and we can responsibly do no other. Leaving aside long-standing arguments about the constitutional failings of realism, what is most evident about the strategic picture portrayed in the latest Defence Update is that its realism is often wanting – often at the moments when it presents itself as most compelling.
This is most evident in the discussion of at least three of the four clear innovations in security policy under the Howard government: the attempt to overthrow the defence of Australia doctrine, the movement to military alliances with Japan, India and Indonesia in concert with the US against China, and the deployment of Middle East expeditionary forces. All three of these initiatives, coupled with the wider US-led Global war on Terror, are driven by the massive expansion of the military and intelligence budgets over the past decade.
Australian interests and the Middle East
In its piling up of Australian “interests”, one of the two places where the Update comes close to spelling out what those interests might be is the Middle East, though it does not actually do so. What the Update does is assert that given “the continuing importance of the region to our security and broader national interests”, that there are three reasons to “expect Australia’s strategic involvement in the Middle East to continue”:
* the US will continue to “remain heavily engaged” in the region, because to withdraw “would undermine its own security”;
* the strategic interests of China, India and our “trading partners” are increasingly linked to the Middle East; and
* “extremist terrorism continues to draw funding, support and people from the Middle East”.
Australia has approximately 1,500 troops in and around Iraq
In trying to convince a doubtful public that there is a reason for Australian troops to be involved in two Middle Eastern wars at one time, the Update authors were clearly labouring under several difficulties.
The first is the elephant in the room problem: the obvious and undoubted perceived interest – a perceived benefit to Australia from western access to oil – cannot be mentioned in polite company. When the Minister for Defence launched the Update with a general reference to the importance of energy security in the region, he was pilloried by the media and the political opposition, and then disowned by his leader and party. No, said the Treasurer, “Australian soldiers don't risk their lives for petrol prices." What the entire affair elided, and which is almost never discussed in parliament, the media, or by the commentariat, was the deep, unchanging and destructive character of the western concern to control Middle Eastern energy sources.
The second problem is that even when the dirty secret is admitted, even if only in only in conclaves of trusted experts, it is soon clear that it is not at all certain that the security of the Australian people can be shown to be affected by who owns the oil fields of Iraq. Even at the height of its revolutionary zeal, Iran, the regime most hostile to the US and its allies, did not interrupt the exchange of oil for dollars. Indeed the architect of the only serious assault on unfettered western access to cheap oil in the OPEC years was the closest US ally, Saudi Arabia.
Accordingly, the Update authors chose to speak of Australia’s interests by indirection, rationalising predicted behaviour rather than addressing national interests. But perhaps predictably, the three proffered bases for their expectation were limp and unconvincing, failing elementary tests of realism:
* even assuming, in the face of withdrawal from Iraq sooner rather than later, the US will continue to be “heavily engaged” in the Middle East, the question of why that means Australia will be militarily involved is left unsaid. This is probably as it has to be, since the only logical answers are either that it is assumed that American and Australian interests are identical, which is simply not true, or Australia follows US geo-political direction, which is close enough to the truth.
* the interests of our trading partners are indeed connected to the Middle East, but it is not at all automatic that fact then dictates an Australian military presence in the region. Certainly, not to China, our largest trading partner.
* “extremist terrorism” (sic) may indeed “draw funding, support and people from the Middle East”, but it is now catastrophically clear that the US-British-Australian coalition presence in Iraq is a much more important generator of “funding, support and people” for terrorism.
Realism in Northeast Asia
The Update’s remarks on China, reported above, have already had the predictable effects: Chinese protests about the gap between Australian claims of friendship and a desire for an even closer economic relationship above that of closest trading partner, as against the Update’s patronizing warnings of the dangers of “strategic miscalculation”:
“The pace and scope of China's military modernization, particularly the development of new and disruptive capabilities such as the anti-satellite missile, could create misunderstandings and instability in the region.”
There is of course a risk of strategic miscalculation in East Asia, certainly by dictatorships anxious to use nationalism as a domestic political crutch. But as the American example shows, China is not at risk alone. In the context of Australia’s deepening security relationship with Japan, calls for prudent realism need wider distribution amongst Australia’s allies and security partners as well as those nominated as potential antagonists by Australia’s major ally. [2]
5. The demanding ally and historical constants
The core of the China problem for Australia has been well canvassed for several years in the image of the Australian government’s nightmare of having to choose between its economic partner and its military ally. The trilateral security institutionalization now underway between the United States, Japan and Australia is certainly meant to exclude China. The Australian expression of concern about Chinese military development was itself an echo, just days apart, of Japan’s Defence Ministry statement:
“Tokyo's Defense Ministry said Beijing's military expansion plans include outer space, citing its successful missile test in January that destroyed a satellite. ‘It is highly possible that (China) is considering attacks against satellites as part of its military actions,’ the report went on, stressing that the rapid modernization of China's military forces ‘raises concerns’ and the effects on Japan ‘must be assessed carefully.’" [3]
The East Asian echo is a symptom of the deeper problem. Australia and Japan are effectively coordinating their statements on China, in the absence of any genuine security threat. The deepening of security relations between these two countries and India is not coincidental, and is well understood by China as such. Not surprisingly the Chinese have called Australia’s bluff on the matter, resulting in a humiliating backdown by the Australian Minister for Defence highly satisfactory to Middle Kingdom thinkers.
The tightening of security ties with Japan is being pursued enthusiastically without a realistic assessment of either the domestic problems that will inevitably arise from remilitarization in a country with deep and abiding democratic deficits, or the almost reckless embrace of “great power-like” security thinking and defence policies that are bringing Japan into unnecessary conflict with China, such as missile defence. [4]
But the key is the question of why the Australian government allowed itself to get into this predictable bind? It is not true that the Australian government simply does the bidding of Washington. Sometimes, as in the cases of both Afghanistan and Vietnam (and most likely Iraq) the problem is worse: Australia actively seeks participation in Washington’s wars before it is asked. [5] In the case of Japan, there is a combination of strong American pressure, Japanese nationalism (directed at its own constitution and “pacifist” public rather than outward), and Australian enthusiasm for a Northeast Asian technology-heavy partner.
In the case of China it is difficult to see anything other than either deep policy confusion or an inability to refuse the demands of our major ally, even in the face of a zero security threat and of entirely predictable negative consequences in relations with China.
The consequences of the demanding ally are even clearer and the consequences more dangerous in the case of Middle East policy. Australian policy towards the Middle East is almost purely derivative from US policy, and all its confusions and dangers. The exceptions to US derivation are two-fold, and both dangerous. The first, as already mentioned, is the repeated habit of Australian government’s anticipating the hegemon’s requirements, and volunteering for above-requirement coalition performance. Again the Update makes very clear the perceived need on the part of the Australian security establishment to actively maintain the alliance – to the point of identifying Australian security interests with those of the United States – as in the Middle East.
The second exception is a constant of Australian foreign policy which long predates the United States as preferred protector – the “common sense of a country feeling itself displaced from the centre into an alien geo-political and cultural environment. The Update rearticulates this distinctive “common sense”, this time apropos “terrorism”:
“For as long as that is true Australia and like–minded countries need to fight terrorism at its source rather than wait for it to come to our shores.
And again:
“In a globalised world, ignoring problems further afield only invites these threats to come closer to Australia.”
The current militarized response to what is presented as a generalized evil – “terrorism” (i.e. Iraq and Afghanistan) is a reprise of a much older Australian trait – evidenced by the rhetoric of “our shores”. In World War I the Australian government issued a propaganda poster that could well be recycled, showing bloodthirsty Huns in pointed helmets shooting an Australia farmer defending his family in front of a water tank. with the caption “Will you fight now, or wait for this?” [6] Historical constants continue to play their part in new contexts, and the destructiveness to real security needs of alliance anxiety is one such.
6. Globalisation and global problems as security threats
Globalisation is presented as one of two key factors structuring the changing strategic environment – the other being the “continued predominance of the United States, which acts as a stabilising force in the Asia-Pacific”.
Yet “globalisation” is understood at the most simplistic of levels: in fact, though presented as one of the two major drivers of world security, it receives barely a single paragraph of exposition.
What is deeply striking about the Defence Update, despite the unending and formless list of claims of “national interests” to be defended in this “globalizing world” is that genuinely global problems that are immediately and directly salient to the security of Australians are barely mentioned. The category of “non-traditional security issues” is noted, and then effectively dismissed. The dangers of “pandemics” are referred to twice, but on neither occasion for more than a phrase or two. Stunningly, especially given the electoral context in which the Update was prepared, the word “climate” does not appear once. Climate change, in the view of even the Pentagon, a matter of undoubted and immediate security relevance at both a global and national level in complex and mostly ill-understood ways, for all the pious talk of “non-traditional security threats” going back for a decade, is simply too big a problem to be seen. This is despite the fact that for our relations with Papua-New Guinea and the islands of the Southwest Pacific, to say nothing of Indonesia, and the economies of our trading partners, climate change and security – both the human and state varieties – are set to collide in ways we are barely beginning to understand.
Richard Tanter is Senior Research Associate at Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability and Director of the Nautilus Institute at RMIT and a Japan Focus associate. He has written widely on Japanese security policy, including 'With Eyes Wide Shut: Japan, Heisei Militarization and the Bush Doctrine' in Melvin Gurtov and Peter Van Ness (eds.), Confronting the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views from the Asia-Pacific, (New York: Routledge, 2005). His most recent book, co-edited with Gerry Van Klinken and Desmond Ball, is Masters of Terror: Indonesia's Military and Violence in East Timor in 1999 [second edition].
This is a slightly abbreviated version of an article that appeared at the Austral Policy Forum at Nautilus nautilus.rmit.edu.au/ on July 12, 2007. Published at Japan Focus on July 25, 2007.
See also Richard Tanter, The New American-led Security Architecture in the Asia Pacific: Binding Japan and Australia, containing China and US Expansion and Upgrading of Joint Australia-US Training Facilities. Nautilus reports on Australian forces in Afghanistan here.
5/5/07
The Relationship Between Globalization and Militarism
by Steven Staples
Social Justice magazine, Vol. 27, No. 4 (2000)
Globalization and militarism should be seen as two sides of the same coin. On one side, globalization promotes the conditions that lead to unrest, inequality, conflict, and, ultimately, war. On the other side, globalization fuels the means to wage war by protecting and promoting the military industries needed to produce sophisticated weaponry. This weaponry, in turn, is used-or its use is threatened-to protect the investments of transnational corporations and their shareholders.
1. Globalization Promotes Inequality, Unrest, and Conflict
Economic inequality is growing; more conflict and civil wars are emerging. It is important to see a connection between these two situations.
Proponents of global economic integration argue that globalization promotes peace and economic development of the Third World. They assert that "all boats rise with the tide" when investors and corporations make higher profits. However, there is precious little evidence that this is true and substantial evidence of the opposite.
The United Nation's Human Development Report (U.N. Development Programme, 1999: 3) noted that globalization is creating new threats to human security. Economic inequality between Northern and Southern nations has worsened, not improved. There are more wars being fought today-mostly in the Third World-than there were during the Cold War. Most are not wars between countries, but are civil wars where the majority of deaths are civilians, not soldiers.
The mainstream media frequently oversimplify the causes of the wars, with claims they are rooted in religious or ethnic differences. A closer inspection reveals that the underlying source of such conflicts is economic in nature. Financial instability, economic inequality, competition for resources, and environmental degradation-all root causes of war-are exacerbated by globalization.
The Asian financial meltdown of 1997 to 1999 involved a terrible human cost. The economies of Thailand, South Korea, and Indonesia crumbled in the crisis. These countries, previously held up by neoliberal economists as the darlings of globalization, were reduced to riots and financial ruin. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) stepped in to rescue foreign investors and impose austerity programs that opened the way for an invasion by foreign corporations that bought up assets devalued by capital flight and threw millions of people out of work. Political upheaval and conflict ensued, costing thousands of lives.
Meanwhile, other countries watched as their neighbors suffered the consequences of greater global integration. In India, citizens faced corporate recolonization, which spawned a nationalistic political movement. Part of the political program was the development of nuclear weapons-seen by many as the internationally accepted currency of power. Nuclear tests have put an already conflict-ridden region on the brink of nuclear war.
2. Globalization Fuels the Means to Wage War
The world economic system promotes military economies over civilian economies, pushing national economic policies toward military spending. The World Trade Organization (WTO), one of the main instruments of globalization, is largely based on the premise that the only legitimate role for a government is to provide for a military to protect the interests of the country and a police force to ensure order within. The WTO attacks governments' social and environmental policies that reduce corporate profits, and it has succeeded in having national laws that protect the environment struck down. Yet the WTO gives exemplary protection to government actions that develop, arm, and deploy armed forces and supply a military establishment. Article X~ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) allows governments free reign for actions taken in the interest of national security.
***
The Military-Corporate Complex
Since the end of the Cold War, President Eisenhower's 196.0s-era military-industrial complex has been fundamentally challenged by globalization. Globalization has weakened the powers of the nation-state, while freeing corporations to move profits and operations across national boundaries. Defense/military contractors, once considered part of the national industrial base and regulated and nurtured as such, are becoming detached from the nation-state and are able to pursue their interests independently.
Globalization and the transnationalization of defense / military corporations have replaced the military-industrial complex of the Cold War economy with a military-corporate complex of the new global economy. This is based upon the dominance of corporate interests over those of the state. The weakened state is no longer able to reign in weapons corporations and is trapped increasingly by corporate interests: greater military spending, state subsidies, and a liberalization of the arms trade.
***
The Threat of Military Force Is Used to Protect Corporate Interests
According to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, "the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps" (Friedman, 1999).
Friedman illuminates the strategic relationship that exists between corporations and militaries. As globalization extends the reach of corporate interests around the world, a matching military capacity must be deployed to protect those interests. This is the underlying reason the U.S. military maintains the capacity wage two major wars in different regions of the world simultaneously.
***
Conclusion
Globalization is driving a global war economy and creating the conditions for tremendous loss of human life. Many writers and researchers have documented the decline in human rights, social justice, environmental standards, and democracy caused by globalization. The inevitable outcome of globalization will be more wars-especially in the Third World where globalization has its harshest effects. Meanwhile, the elites of the industrialized world are confident that the global economy will continue to provide them with wealth created from the resources and labor of the Third World. Their technologically advanced militaries will protect them and their investments, insulating them from the violent effects of globalization.
What is required is a complete reassessment of the current global economic system, with the goal of promoting genuine human security and development. Global financial institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, that do not promote these goals must be revised or scrapped completely and replaced with a system based upon principles of equity, peace, and democracy.
Steven Staples is the Chair of the International Network on Disarmament and Globalization (405 - 825 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z IK9 Canada; e-mail: sstaples@canadians.org), a network of activists and researchers in over 30 countries who are concerned about the new global economy and the need for peace, disarmament, and the funding of human needs.
For more information, visit the International Network on Disarmament and Globalization at www.indg.org, or e-mail info@indg.org.
Social Justice magazine, Vol. 27, No. 4 (2000)
Globalization and militarism should be seen as two sides of the same coin. On one side, globalization promotes the conditions that lead to unrest, inequality, conflict, and, ultimately, war. On the other side, globalization fuels the means to wage war by protecting and promoting the military industries needed to produce sophisticated weaponry. This weaponry, in turn, is used-or its use is threatened-to protect the investments of transnational corporations and their shareholders.
1. Globalization Promotes Inequality, Unrest, and Conflict
Economic inequality is growing; more conflict and civil wars are emerging. It is important to see a connection between these two situations.
Proponents of global economic integration argue that globalization promotes peace and economic development of the Third World. They assert that "all boats rise with the tide" when investors and corporations make higher profits. However, there is precious little evidence that this is true and substantial evidence of the opposite.
The United Nation's Human Development Report (U.N. Development Programme, 1999: 3) noted that globalization is creating new threats to human security. Economic inequality between Northern and Southern nations has worsened, not improved. There are more wars being fought today-mostly in the Third World-than there were during the Cold War. Most are not wars between countries, but are civil wars where the majority of deaths are civilians, not soldiers.
The mainstream media frequently oversimplify the causes of the wars, with claims they are rooted in religious or ethnic differences. A closer inspection reveals that the underlying source of such conflicts is economic in nature. Financial instability, economic inequality, competition for resources, and environmental degradation-all root causes of war-are exacerbated by globalization.
The Asian financial meltdown of 1997 to 1999 involved a terrible human cost. The economies of Thailand, South Korea, and Indonesia crumbled in the crisis. These countries, previously held up by neoliberal economists as the darlings of globalization, were reduced to riots and financial ruin. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) stepped in to rescue foreign investors and impose austerity programs that opened the way for an invasion by foreign corporations that bought up assets devalued by capital flight and threw millions of people out of work. Political upheaval and conflict ensued, costing thousands of lives.
Meanwhile, other countries watched as their neighbors suffered the consequences of greater global integration. In India, citizens faced corporate recolonization, which spawned a nationalistic political movement. Part of the political program was the development of nuclear weapons-seen by many as the internationally accepted currency of power. Nuclear tests have put an already conflict-ridden region on the brink of nuclear war.
2. Globalization Fuels the Means to Wage War
The world economic system promotes military economies over civilian economies, pushing national economic policies toward military spending. The World Trade Organization (WTO), one of the main instruments of globalization, is largely based on the premise that the only legitimate role for a government is to provide for a military to protect the interests of the country and a police force to ensure order within. The WTO attacks governments' social and environmental policies that reduce corporate profits, and it has succeeded in having national laws that protect the environment struck down. Yet the WTO gives exemplary protection to government actions that develop, arm, and deploy armed forces and supply a military establishment. Article X~ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) allows governments free reign for actions taken in the interest of national security.
***
The Military-Corporate Complex
Since the end of the Cold War, President Eisenhower's 196.0s-era military-industrial complex has been fundamentally challenged by globalization. Globalization has weakened the powers of the nation-state, while freeing corporations to move profits and operations across national boundaries. Defense/military contractors, once considered part of the national industrial base and regulated and nurtured as such, are becoming detached from the nation-state and are able to pursue their interests independently.
Globalization and the transnationalization of defense / military corporations have replaced the military-industrial complex of the Cold War economy with a military-corporate complex of the new global economy. This is based upon the dominance of corporate interests over those of the state. The weakened state is no longer able to reign in weapons corporations and is trapped increasingly by corporate interests: greater military spending, state subsidies, and a liberalization of the arms trade.
***
The Threat of Military Force Is Used to Protect Corporate Interests
According to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, "the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps" (Friedman, 1999).
Friedman illuminates the strategic relationship that exists between corporations and militaries. As globalization extends the reach of corporate interests around the world, a matching military capacity must be deployed to protect those interests. This is the underlying reason the U.S. military maintains the capacity wage two major wars in different regions of the world simultaneously.
***
Conclusion
Globalization is driving a global war economy and creating the conditions for tremendous loss of human life. Many writers and researchers have documented the decline in human rights, social justice, environmental standards, and democracy caused by globalization. The inevitable outcome of globalization will be more wars-especially in the Third World where globalization has its harshest effects. Meanwhile, the elites of the industrialized world are confident that the global economy will continue to provide them with wealth created from the resources and labor of the Third World. Their technologically advanced militaries will protect them and their investments, insulating them from the violent effects of globalization.
What is required is a complete reassessment of the current global economic system, with the goal of promoting genuine human security and development. Global financial institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, that do not promote these goals must be revised or scrapped completely and replaced with a system based upon principles of equity, peace, and democracy.
Steven Staples is the Chair of the International Network on Disarmament and Globalization (405 - 825 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z IK9 Canada; e-mail: sstaples@canadians.org), a network of activists and researchers in over 30 countries who are concerned about the new global economy and the need for peace, disarmament, and the funding of human needs.
For more information, visit the International Network on Disarmament and Globalization at www.indg.org, or e-mail info@indg.org.
4/2/07
US Militarism and "War on Terror" in the Asia-Pacific Region
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples' Struggle
Cebu City, December 9-10, 2006
Let me congratulate all the cooperating organizations for successfully organizing this conference. I am deeply pleased that the International League of Peoples' Struggle is part of the joint initiative, with the Asia-Pacific Research Network, Asia-Pacific Mission for Migrants, Asian Students Association, ARENA-New Zealand, Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) and the Peace for Life Network.
Thank you for inviting me to be the keynote speaker. I feel privileged and highly honored to express my views to all of you who are present as representatives of people's organizations, grassroots movements, the academe and other institutions and who seek to confront and tackle the problem of US militarism and the so-called war on terror, which is actually the US war of terror.
The conference must strive to achieve its three objectives:
1. to raise the level of awareness and understanding of the current US war of terror in the context of long-running US imperialism and militarism and how this war is being used to aggrandize US economic and political interests in the region;
2. to address specific urgent issues relating to the US military bases, militarism and human rights in order to be well grounded in responding to the needs and demands of the people; and
3. to develop a platform for cooperation and sustained networking for carrying out an Asian regional campaign against the US war of terror and escalating militarism and work for the realization of the full range of human rights.
I. US War of Terror, Militarism, Economic and Political Interests
Militarism and expansionism characterized the US as a global imperialist power at the turn of the 20th century. The US reached across the Pacific and turned the Philippines into its colony and military outpost in Asia. It emerged from the Second World War the strongest and most prosperous industrial capitalist country, while the economies of its European allies as well as their former adversaries Germany, Italy and Japan (the Axis powers) were devastated. It headed the alliance of imperialist powers in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and East European countries, China, North Korea, Mongolia the Indochinese countries (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) and Cuba.
The restoration of capitalism through modern revisionism in the Soviet Union and East European countries from 1956 onwards and the anti-Left coup in China in 1976 led to the expansion of the world capitalist market into the erstwhile socialist economies. But this has contributed to, rather than prevented, the aggravation of the chronic crisis of overproduction that continues to afflict the entire world capitalist system since the 1970s. US president Reagan and and UK prime minister Thatcher led the US and Britain, and subsequently the global economy, from Keynesianism to the neoliberal policies of deregulation, liberalization, privatization and de-nationalization to further exploit the weaker economies and squeeze the toiling peoples dry in order to aggrandize the monopoly bourgeoisie and accelerate the concentration and centralization of capital in its hands.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and East European regimes in 1989-91 led to the undisguised restoration of capitalism and the rapid integration of the erstwhile Comecon countries into the world capitalist system under the banner of "neoliberal globalization". China also stepped up capitalist restoration. The promise of progress, prosperity and peace flowing into the so-called newly-emergent markets and developing countries as a result of "globalization" were proven false. Russia and the East European countries underwent further economic and social degradation. East Asia succumbed to a financial and economic crisis in 1997. Japan and Europe fell into recession in succession, followed by the US in 2000.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc left the US as the sole and unchallenged imperialist superpower. Gone was the spectre of "communism" and "totalitarianism" which the US had invoked to justify massive military spending, costly military research and production, the permanent deployment of US military forces all over the world, military intervention and wars of aggression. The neoconservatives in the US, representing the interests of big business, especially the military industrial complex and the oil giants, drew up a blueprint to expand and consolidate US global hegemony, to combat and defeat "rogue states" and prevent at all cost the rise of any rival in the world or in any global region in order to ensure US global supremacy for the entire 21st century.
Historically, the US has used war as means to counter economic slowdown and stagnation, reviving the sluggish economy even if only temporarily by spurring military production and drawing immense profits for the military contractors. The neoconservatives offered the blueprint "Project New American Century (PNAC)" as the solution in the short, medium and long term. But the PNAC was regarded by most US policy-makers as too arrogantly presumptive, reckless and expensive for the American public and Congress and thus remained on ice until Bush came to power and 9/11 occurred. Previously, not even the successful Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and military intervention in the Balkans in most of the 1990s could whet the neoconservatives' appetite for large-scale and prolonged military actions (using the full spectrum of US power, chiefly its high-tech weapons) to seize and control strategic territory and resources.
The 9/11 bombings instantly reversed the disposition of the US, particularly the temper of bipartisan consensus, as the Bush regime conjured and hyped the "global terrorist" menace and persuaded the American public. The US Congress was swayed to support a worldwide, borderless, permanent and preemptive "war against terrorism". The initial targets of invasion and occupation would provide the US with access to and control of strategic resources, vital supply lines and strategic forward positions for military aggression. The US has long coveted Afghanistan for access to and control of the rich sources of oil and natural gas reserves in the Caspian region and Central Asia and for securing a foothold on the western flank of China. It has even more coveted Iraq for its huge oil reserves next only to Saudi Arabia, which has the largest but of a quality inferior to Iraqi oil. Iraq has the added advantage of being centrally located, suitable for building US military bases and controlling the sources of oil in the Middle East.
Soon after launching its war of aggression against Afghanistan in October 2001, the US in January 2002 declared Southeast Asia as the "second front in the war against terrorism" and drastically increased its forward presence in the Philippines under the guise of "joint military training exercises" purportedly to enhance cooperation and interoperability in operations against the small bandit group Abu Sayyaf. But the US is really interested in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia, because of the region's rich oil, natural gas and other mineral resources, strategic basing locations, and sealanes through which half of US and non-US world merchandise trade pass.
The US military budget has shot up from a steady USD 350 billion in the years before 9/11 to nearly USD 500 billion in 2006, or nearly half of the entire US annual budget. Actual military expenditures are even more, exceeding 50% of the total budget, since many items are hidden under apparently non-military items. The budget outlays for the Department of Defense (DOD), for example, do not include the expenses for prosecuting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, part of which is listed as "supplemental expenses" and run up to more than USD 100 billion.
A large part of the additional expenses for FY 2006 and 2007 will go to expanding the US Special Forces by 15% or 66,000 troops, upgrading the weaponry of the Army, and developing new fighter jets, battleships, the star wars anti-missile defense system and other weapons systems. The Special Forces are the designated principal and core combat force for the overseas "war on terror", for training foreign forces, and carrying out covert intelligence and non-conventional operations, including abductions and assassinations. The types of weaponry and armaments being developed are reportedly directed mainly at a possible conflict with China. In the meantime, the development of such weaponry and armaments is calculated to pressure China and induce it to fall in line with the US.
Some observers note that some military expenditures, including the development of new weapons systems, have little to do with the "war on terror" and are obviously intended to boost the military industrial complex, which appears to have won out in the tug-of-war for funding against some Pentagon officials who favor an increase in army troops to remedy the overstretching of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The combination of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld has gone for putting more money into military production, acquisition of equipment and even privatization of functions in the military.
The US considers Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand as its closest and most reliable allies in the region. Australia hosts a US satellite spy base and provides military training for other US allies in the area. The US is setting up land and ship-based "Star Wars" missile defense systems in Australia with the cooperation of the Australian government. The Philippine and Singapore governments have military agreements with the US and have been willing and eager accomplices in the "war on terror".
The military agreements and arrangements between the US and the Philippines include the Military Assistance Agreement, the Mutual Defense Agreement, the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement. The Philippine reactionary government immediately declared full support for the US "war on terror" shortly after 9/11, offering Philippine troops, medical personnel, contract workers, and opening its airspace and the use of Philippine territory and facilities as refuelling stations, storage, prepositioning and staging areas for US troops. Singapore also has an access and servicing agreement with the US for use of its seaports.
US troops conduct joint military training exercises, "counter-narcotics", "counter-terrorist" as well as "humanitarian" operations (civic-military, disaster, anti-epidemic, de-mining and rescue operations) as a pretext for forward-deployment and pre-stationing of its troops in critical and strategic areas all over the world. In East Asia and Oceania, US Special Forces, mostly based in Japan and Korea, regularly conduct these operations on a year-round basis in the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The US also conducts joint naval exercises with Australia for enhancing cooperation and interoperability.
US military presence in the Asia-Pacific serves as a coercive and intimidating sword hanging over the governments and peoples of the region, allowing US and other foreign multinationals to dictate policies and exploit and plunder the region's natural and human resources. Military and economic grants and loans are depicted by puppet regimes like that of Arroyo as sweet aid but in fact are used to poison and subvert the political and economic sovereignty of the people and impose anti-national and anti-democratic policies on the reactionary governments.
II. Urgent Issues Relating to US Military Bases, Militarism and Human Rights
US military bases serve to protect and promote the ultra-national economic, political and other interests of US imperialism and are strategically directed against the political and economic sovereignty of countries in the region. It is through military force that the US has been able to serve and expand the interests of US monopoly capitalism in the recurrent struggles for a redivision of the world among the imperialist powers. US imperialism is inherently aggressive and its aggressiveness serves the purpose of expanding economic territory and political hegemony and prevailing in the competition with other imperialist powers.
US imperialism uses all kinds of justifications and subterfuges in order to build its military might and deploy its military forces abroad. Its loudest justification for many decades since the end of World War II was anti-communism and such related euphemisms as defense of freedom, democracy, peace and security. Now, the latest big justification is anti-terrorism. The imperialists and their puppets are in fact the biggest real terrorists who use state power to kill the people in large numbers. But they magnify al Qaeda and other fringe groups beyond their criminal character, capabilities and proportions to justify the worst forms of terrorism, which are wars of aggression and state repression. There are still other justifications but these are consistently related to maintaining and promoting the interests of monopoly capitalism.
The US Pacific Command (USPACOM) is the largest geographical unified command in the US armed forces, stretching from the west coast of the Americas all the way across the Pacific to the East Asia littoral to the Indian Ocean and the east coast of Africa, from the Arctic to Australia and New Zealand to Antarctica. USPACOM maintains 100,000 troops in the Asia-Pacific. Around 37,000 are based in South Korea while 43,000 are based in Japan. These forces are depicted by the US as serving to protect Taiwan and South Korea from the threat of invasion and takeover by China and the DPRK, respectively.
But the large US military presence in East Asia and the Pacific and the "war on terror" are directed at intimidating China and the DPRK as well as discouraging nations and peoples from asserting national independence and sovereignty. The DPRK has long been demonized as part of the "axis of evil", blockaded, and threatened with further sanctions and even with outright aggression if it continues to defy US warnings and develop its own nuclear weapons. But the DPRK has tested its nuclear capability despite US warnings and asserted its right to defend itself from superpower aggression. China has been named by the US as the world power most capable of challenging US hegemony and supremacy within 20 years, a possibility that the US has declared it will never allow.
In the Philippines and some other countries in the region, the US controls and influences the local military forces through indoctrination and training, military supplies, intelligence exchange and war exercises. It uses the local military forces as a surrogate armed force not only to fight the revolutionary forces but also to ensure that the local government toes the US line and protects US interests in the country. We have seen puppet regimes, like those of Marcos and Suharto, propped up by the US with economic and military support and then later dropped through maneuvers in collaboration with US-trained military officers.
To protect the interests of the US, British and Dutch oil companies, the US used military and economic aid to support and embolden Suharto and his clique of generals to act against Sukarno and massacre 1.5 million people in the name of anti-communism. But at a much later time, the US would use US-trained Indonesian Special Forces to depose Suharto, after having become a liability to imperialist interests. Like all the rest of so-called US allies, Japan is an object of US dual policy. The US depicts its military bases and forces in Japan as protective of Japan and extracts an annual USD 6 billion payment from Japan. At the same time, the US claims that the same US military bases and forces are there to protect other countries, particularly those in the Asia Pacific region, from the danger of resurgent nationalism and militarism in Japan.
US policy on military or security matters are implemented in collaboration with puppet and partner governments in various regions and has resulted in horrible consequences to the people. The "war on terror" has spurred a rise in human rights violations by US troops and by local state security forces as governments intensify and escalate military and police operations against revolutionary and opposition forces, including those engaged in open and legal democratic struggle. Human rights violations, including murder and rape, continue to be perpetrated by US troops with impunity in East Asian countries where they are based or deployed.
The "war on terror" has given the Arroyo regime an excuse for escalating repressive measures in order to suppress the widespread clamor and actions of the people for its ouster on the grounds of puppetry, corruption, electoral fraud, and culpability for gross violations of human rights. The Bush and Arroyo governments have been pushing Congress to pass anti-terrorist legislation to proscribe patriotic and progressive organizations and leaders, to allow warrantless arrests, detention and seizure of properties, to suppress the freedom of speech and assembly and to allow rampant surveillance, harassment and intimidation. But even without such legislation, the military and police have gone on a rampage of killing, abducting, torturing, massacring innocent people, forcing people to evacuate and committing other atrocities with impunity.
In such notorious places like Fort Bragg and the School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), the US has systematically trained military officers of puppet governments in the doctrine of low intensify conflict and in dirty tricks, including psychological warfare and methods of abduction, assassination and torture. Indonesian, Philippine and Thai security (military and police) forces have also been trained by US Special Forces, Drugs Enforcement Administration and FBI agents to violate human rights and fundamental freedoms in the name of anti-terrorism and other pretexts.
Under the direction and influence of the US Military Commissions Act of 2006, the US and its puppets are bound to violate civil and political rights with impunity on a wider scale than before on the road of state terrorism and fascism. The law negates the right to habeas corpus, prevents prompt access to the civil courts, lawyers of choice and evidence, attacks the confidentiality of lawyer-client relations and allows unlimited surveillance, warrantless arrests, arbitrary seizures of property, indefinite detention and the use of torture. Starting with the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, the US has pushed its allied as well as puppet governments to adopt so-called anti-terrorism laws. These have established the global legal infrastrucrture for naked state terrorism and fascism.
The US thinly disguises its real intent in the "war on terror", which is to go after and suppress national liberation movements, anti-imperialist forces and leaders and governments assertive of national independence. Before conducting "joint military training exercises" in the Philippines in 2002, US and Philippine officials boasted that after the Abu Sayyaf, they would go after the New People's Army (NPA) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). They have persistently attempted to link the Abu Sayyaf and MILF, as well as the MILF with the NPA in order to conjure the illusion of a chain of "terrorist" cooperation among them.
The US has designated the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), NPA and the NDFP Chief Political consultant as "terrorists", and has pressured other governments to do likewise since 2002. The Arroyo government has subsequently suspended formal talks with the NDFP and used the "terrorist" tag and the threat of intensifying US-backed military offensives in order to coerce the NDFP to capitulate through a one-sided "formal peace accord" (a document of surrender) written by the Arroyo government.
Since the first post-9/11 "joint military exercise", the Arroyo government has declared "all out war" against the CPP-NPA-NDFP and has deployed the Philippine Army light infantry companies trained by the US Special Forces in Basilan and elsewhere to the NPA-controlled areas. Half of the USD 55 million aid for counterterrorism was allotted to offensive operations against the NPA. Joint US-RP military exercises were subsequently held in and around NPA-controlled areas in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
The US war of terror and the subservience of the Arroyo regime have sabotaged the peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and have escalated the armed counterrevolution against the Filipino people. In directing the Arroyo regime to carry out an all-out war policy, the US aims to increase its military intervention in the Philippines, deploy US troops, build military facilities and pave the way for the return of US military bases.
III. Cooperation and Networking for Campaigns
There is a need for us to wage a region-wide campaign for the abrogation of military and security agreements and arrangements with the US, and for the dismantling of US military bases in the region. We must encourage the people to struggle against US militarism and terrorism, especially in countries where US military power is deeply entrenched. In this way the nations and peoples of East Asia and Oceania attain genuine independence, uphold their national and economic sovereignty, and build a truly free, democratic, prosperous and peaceful region.
The decision to launch a regional campaign to dismantle the US bases in the East Asia and Oceania region is quite timely and deserves our unanimous agreement and concerted efforts. There are robust and vibrant anti-bases formations and movements in countries where there are US bases, stations, facilities, advisors and trainors and other forms of military presence, especially in Japan and South Korea, Australia, Philippines and Indonesia. There is the Asia-Wide Campaign against US bases. We should strive to cooperate and coordinate with these formations and movements and help to expand, strengthen and further activate them. We can also establish new formations and movements where possible and necessary.
The US and other imperialist powers, the militarists and the local fascist reactionaries are the real terrorists, by the correct definition of terrorism as organized violence solely or mainly against the people or civilian population. We must launch a campaign to expose and oppose their use of superior military and economic power to coerce the nations and peoples of East Asia and Oceania into following the US imperialist and terrorist agenda, disguised as a "war on terror" for maintaining regional stability and security.
We should wage regional mass campaigns or other forms of coordinated efforts for defending civil and political rights, as well as economic, social and cultural rights. The defense of civil and political rights is closely linked with the campaign to expose and oppose US militarism and the "war on terror", which have become the main prod to the attacks on civil and political rights. This involves exposing and opposing the repressive measures masquerading as "anti-terrorism" and "counterterrorism".
We must strengthen our resolve and strive to reverse and eradicate the evil consequences of the US war of terror in the form of bilateral and multilateral agreements to allow unbridled US aggression and other extraterritorial acts, the policy of state terrorism, fascist legislation and actual bloody campaigns to violate human rights like Oplan Bantay Laya. Otherwise US militarism and terrorism in collaboration with the local regimes and ultra-reactionaries in the region will continue to violate human rights in a comprehensive way and inflict terrible suffering on the people.
The campaign to defend the people's social, economic and cultural rights requires exposing US militarism and the "war on terror" as means for imposing US hegemony over the region, controlling and using strategic resources for its own interest and to the detriment of the peoples of the region. Superior US military power is being employed to promote and facilitate "neoliberal globalization" in the region, so that US monopoly capital can more freely enter the local economies and intensify the exploitation and oppression of the region's peoples.
In all of these campaigns, we need to broaden our knowledge and deepen our understanding of the operations and dynamics of US militarism and "war on terror" in particular countries and in the entire region. We must pay close attention to the impact of US militarism and terrorism on the civil, political, social, economic and cultural lives of the peoples. The various study commissions of the ILPS can contribute significantly to these studies, as the member organizations serve to arouse and mobilize the broad masses of people against US militarism and the "war on terror".
The networks of ILPS, APRN, Peace for Life, APMM, ARENA-New Zealand, APWLD and ASA are sufficiently broad to be able to undertake these campaigns. Good coordination and cooperation will certainly enhance the capabilities of each network as well as the whole. The campaigns can also serve to expand and strengthen each network as it arouses, organizes and mobilizes the people against US militarism and the "war on terror" and along the specific issues to which these are linked.
Internationally, the situation is excellent for launching and carrying out these campaigns. The Bush government faces continuing isolation daily as its global "war on terror", especially the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, are exposed as naked acts of imperialist aggression, and as the valiant resistance of the Afghan and Iraqi people frustrate and defeat the lone superpower's arrogance, rapacity and brutality.
The American people have expressed their unequivocal disapproval of the war in the Middle East and Central Asia, handing over both houses of Congress to the opposition Democrats. The neo-conservatives are in decline and disarray in US policy-making bodies on foreign policy and security. The US government is faced with a sluggish economy and with the threat of another round of recession in the coming year. US imperialism has no solution to its economic and political crisis, and no plan for extracting itself from the Iraqi and Afghan quagmires. The longer it stays in these quagmires the bigger losses it incurs. The so-called realists among US policy-makers are finding grave difficulties seeking a way out of Iraq and upholding US imperialist interests..
The peoples of East Asia and Oceania will certainly join and support the campaigns against US militarism and its war of terror as these will complement and enhance their own struggles for national liberation and social emancipation. The anti-imperialist and democratic movement of the peoples is gaining ground and intensity. The peoples' struggles worldwide will steadily and surely advance to isolate, weaken and eventually defeat US imperialism and other imperialists the world over. ###
http://www.josemariasison.org/inps/USterASPACconfkeynote.htm
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples' Struggle
Cebu City, December 9-10, 2006
Let me congratulate all the cooperating organizations for successfully organizing this conference. I am deeply pleased that the International League of Peoples' Struggle is part of the joint initiative, with the Asia-Pacific Research Network, Asia-Pacific Mission for Migrants, Asian Students Association, ARENA-New Zealand, Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) and the Peace for Life Network.
Thank you for inviting me to be the keynote speaker. I feel privileged and highly honored to express my views to all of you who are present as representatives of people's organizations, grassroots movements, the academe and other institutions and who seek to confront and tackle the problem of US militarism and the so-called war on terror, which is actually the US war of terror.
The conference must strive to achieve its three objectives:
1. to raise the level of awareness and understanding of the current US war of terror in the context of long-running US imperialism and militarism and how this war is being used to aggrandize US economic and political interests in the region;
2. to address specific urgent issues relating to the US military bases, militarism and human rights in order to be well grounded in responding to the needs and demands of the people; and
3. to develop a platform for cooperation and sustained networking for carrying out an Asian regional campaign against the US war of terror and escalating militarism and work for the realization of the full range of human rights.
I. US War of Terror, Militarism, Economic and Political Interests
Militarism and expansionism characterized the US as a global imperialist power at the turn of the 20th century. The US reached across the Pacific and turned the Philippines into its colony and military outpost in Asia. It emerged from the Second World War the strongest and most prosperous industrial capitalist country, while the economies of its European allies as well as their former adversaries Germany, Italy and Japan (the Axis powers) were devastated. It headed the alliance of imperialist powers in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and East European countries, China, North Korea, Mongolia the Indochinese countries (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) and Cuba.
The restoration of capitalism through modern revisionism in the Soviet Union and East European countries from 1956 onwards and the anti-Left coup in China in 1976 led to the expansion of the world capitalist market into the erstwhile socialist economies. But this has contributed to, rather than prevented, the aggravation of the chronic crisis of overproduction that continues to afflict the entire world capitalist system since the 1970s. US president Reagan and and UK prime minister Thatcher led the US and Britain, and subsequently the global economy, from Keynesianism to the neoliberal policies of deregulation, liberalization, privatization and de-nationalization to further exploit the weaker economies and squeeze the toiling peoples dry in order to aggrandize the monopoly bourgeoisie and accelerate the concentration and centralization of capital in its hands.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and East European regimes in 1989-91 led to the undisguised restoration of capitalism and the rapid integration of the erstwhile Comecon countries into the world capitalist system under the banner of "neoliberal globalization". China also stepped up capitalist restoration. The promise of progress, prosperity and peace flowing into the so-called newly-emergent markets and developing countries as a result of "globalization" were proven false. Russia and the East European countries underwent further economic and social degradation. East Asia succumbed to a financial and economic crisis in 1997. Japan and Europe fell into recession in succession, followed by the US in 2000.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc left the US as the sole and unchallenged imperialist superpower. Gone was the spectre of "communism" and "totalitarianism" which the US had invoked to justify massive military spending, costly military research and production, the permanent deployment of US military forces all over the world, military intervention and wars of aggression. The neoconservatives in the US, representing the interests of big business, especially the military industrial complex and the oil giants, drew up a blueprint to expand and consolidate US global hegemony, to combat and defeat "rogue states" and prevent at all cost the rise of any rival in the world or in any global region in order to ensure US global supremacy for the entire 21st century.
Historically, the US has used war as means to counter economic slowdown and stagnation, reviving the sluggish economy even if only temporarily by spurring military production and drawing immense profits for the military contractors. The neoconservatives offered the blueprint "Project New American Century (PNAC)" as the solution in the short, medium and long term. But the PNAC was regarded by most US policy-makers as too arrogantly presumptive, reckless and expensive for the American public and Congress and thus remained on ice until Bush came to power and 9/11 occurred. Previously, not even the successful Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and military intervention in the Balkans in most of the 1990s could whet the neoconservatives' appetite for large-scale and prolonged military actions (using the full spectrum of US power, chiefly its high-tech weapons) to seize and control strategic territory and resources.
The 9/11 bombings instantly reversed the disposition of the US, particularly the temper of bipartisan consensus, as the Bush regime conjured and hyped the "global terrorist" menace and persuaded the American public. The US Congress was swayed to support a worldwide, borderless, permanent and preemptive "war against terrorism". The initial targets of invasion and occupation would provide the US with access to and control of strategic resources, vital supply lines and strategic forward positions for military aggression. The US has long coveted Afghanistan for access to and control of the rich sources of oil and natural gas reserves in the Caspian region and Central Asia and for securing a foothold on the western flank of China. It has even more coveted Iraq for its huge oil reserves next only to Saudi Arabia, which has the largest but of a quality inferior to Iraqi oil. Iraq has the added advantage of being centrally located, suitable for building US military bases and controlling the sources of oil in the Middle East.
Soon after launching its war of aggression against Afghanistan in October 2001, the US in January 2002 declared Southeast Asia as the "second front in the war against terrorism" and drastically increased its forward presence in the Philippines under the guise of "joint military training exercises" purportedly to enhance cooperation and interoperability in operations against the small bandit group Abu Sayyaf. But the US is really interested in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia, because of the region's rich oil, natural gas and other mineral resources, strategic basing locations, and sealanes through which half of US and non-US world merchandise trade pass.
The US military budget has shot up from a steady USD 350 billion in the years before 9/11 to nearly USD 500 billion in 2006, or nearly half of the entire US annual budget. Actual military expenditures are even more, exceeding 50% of the total budget, since many items are hidden under apparently non-military items. The budget outlays for the Department of Defense (DOD), for example, do not include the expenses for prosecuting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, part of which is listed as "supplemental expenses" and run up to more than USD 100 billion.
A large part of the additional expenses for FY 2006 and 2007 will go to expanding the US Special Forces by 15% or 66,000 troops, upgrading the weaponry of the Army, and developing new fighter jets, battleships, the star wars anti-missile defense system and other weapons systems. The Special Forces are the designated principal and core combat force for the overseas "war on terror", for training foreign forces, and carrying out covert intelligence and non-conventional operations, including abductions and assassinations. The types of weaponry and armaments being developed are reportedly directed mainly at a possible conflict with China. In the meantime, the development of such weaponry and armaments is calculated to pressure China and induce it to fall in line with the US.
Some observers note that some military expenditures, including the development of new weapons systems, have little to do with the "war on terror" and are obviously intended to boost the military industrial complex, which appears to have won out in the tug-of-war for funding against some Pentagon officials who favor an increase in army troops to remedy the overstretching of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The combination of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld has gone for putting more money into military production, acquisition of equipment and even privatization of functions in the military.
The US considers Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand as its closest and most reliable allies in the region. Australia hosts a US satellite spy base and provides military training for other US allies in the area. The US is setting up land and ship-based "Star Wars" missile defense systems in Australia with the cooperation of the Australian government. The Philippine and Singapore governments have military agreements with the US and have been willing and eager accomplices in the "war on terror".
The military agreements and arrangements between the US and the Philippines include the Military Assistance Agreement, the Mutual Defense Agreement, the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement. The Philippine reactionary government immediately declared full support for the US "war on terror" shortly after 9/11, offering Philippine troops, medical personnel, contract workers, and opening its airspace and the use of Philippine territory and facilities as refuelling stations, storage, prepositioning and staging areas for US troops. Singapore also has an access and servicing agreement with the US for use of its seaports.
US troops conduct joint military training exercises, "counter-narcotics", "counter-terrorist" as well as "humanitarian" operations (civic-military, disaster, anti-epidemic, de-mining and rescue operations) as a pretext for forward-deployment and pre-stationing of its troops in critical and strategic areas all over the world. In East Asia and Oceania, US Special Forces, mostly based in Japan and Korea, regularly conduct these operations on a year-round basis in the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The US also conducts joint naval exercises with Australia for enhancing cooperation and interoperability.
US military presence in the Asia-Pacific serves as a coercive and intimidating sword hanging over the governments and peoples of the region, allowing US and other foreign multinationals to dictate policies and exploit and plunder the region's natural and human resources. Military and economic grants and loans are depicted by puppet regimes like that of Arroyo as sweet aid but in fact are used to poison and subvert the political and economic sovereignty of the people and impose anti-national and anti-democratic policies on the reactionary governments.
II. Urgent Issues Relating to US Military Bases, Militarism and Human Rights
US military bases serve to protect and promote the ultra-national economic, political and other interests of US imperialism and are strategically directed against the political and economic sovereignty of countries in the region. It is through military force that the US has been able to serve and expand the interests of US monopoly capitalism in the recurrent struggles for a redivision of the world among the imperialist powers. US imperialism is inherently aggressive and its aggressiveness serves the purpose of expanding economic territory and political hegemony and prevailing in the competition with other imperialist powers.
US imperialism uses all kinds of justifications and subterfuges in order to build its military might and deploy its military forces abroad. Its loudest justification for many decades since the end of World War II was anti-communism and such related euphemisms as defense of freedom, democracy, peace and security. Now, the latest big justification is anti-terrorism. The imperialists and their puppets are in fact the biggest real terrorists who use state power to kill the people in large numbers. But they magnify al Qaeda and other fringe groups beyond their criminal character, capabilities and proportions to justify the worst forms of terrorism, which are wars of aggression and state repression. There are still other justifications but these are consistently related to maintaining and promoting the interests of monopoly capitalism.
The US Pacific Command (USPACOM) is the largest geographical unified command in the US armed forces, stretching from the west coast of the Americas all the way across the Pacific to the East Asia littoral to the Indian Ocean and the east coast of Africa, from the Arctic to Australia and New Zealand to Antarctica. USPACOM maintains 100,000 troops in the Asia-Pacific. Around 37,000 are based in South Korea while 43,000 are based in Japan. These forces are depicted by the US as serving to protect Taiwan and South Korea from the threat of invasion and takeover by China and the DPRK, respectively.
But the large US military presence in East Asia and the Pacific and the "war on terror" are directed at intimidating China and the DPRK as well as discouraging nations and peoples from asserting national independence and sovereignty. The DPRK has long been demonized as part of the "axis of evil", blockaded, and threatened with further sanctions and even with outright aggression if it continues to defy US warnings and develop its own nuclear weapons. But the DPRK has tested its nuclear capability despite US warnings and asserted its right to defend itself from superpower aggression. China has been named by the US as the world power most capable of challenging US hegemony and supremacy within 20 years, a possibility that the US has declared it will never allow.
In the Philippines and some other countries in the region, the US controls and influences the local military forces through indoctrination and training, military supplies, intelligence exchange and war exercises. It uses the local military forces as a surrogate armed force not only to fight the revolutionary forces but also to ensure that the local government toes the US line and protects US interests in the country. We have seen puppet regimes, like those of Marcos and Suharto, propped up by the US with economic and military support and then later dropped through maneuvers in collaboration with US-trained military officers.
To protect the interests of the US, British and Dutch oil companies, the US used military and economic aid to support and embolden Suharto and his clique of generals to act against Sukarno and massacre 1.5 million people in the name of anti-communism. But at a much later time, the US would use US-trained Indonesian Special Forces to depose Suharto, after having become a liability to imperialist interests. Like all the rest of so-called US allies, Japan is an object of US dual policy. The US depicts its military bases and forces in Japan as protective of Japan and extracts an annual USD 6 billion payment from Japan. At the same time, the US claims that the same US military bases and forces are there to protect other countries, particularly those in the Asia Pacific region, from the danger of resurgent nationalism and militarism in Japan.
US policy on military or security matters are implemented in collaboration with puppet and partner governments in various regions and has resulted in horrible consequences to the people. The "war on terror" has spurred a rise in human rights violations by US troops and by local state security forces as governments intensify and escalate military and police operations against revolutionary and opposition forces, including those engaged in open and legal democratic struggle. Human rights violations, including murder and rape, continue to be perpetrated by US troops with impunity in East Asian countries where they are based or deployed.
The "war on terror" has given the Arroyo regime an excuse for escalating repressive measures in order to suppress the widespread clamor and actions of the people for its ouster on the grounds of puppetry, corruption, electoral fraud, and culpability for gross violations of human rights. The Bush and Arroyo governments have been pushing Congress to pass anti-terrorist legislation to proscribe patriotic and progressive organizations and leaders, to allow warrantless arrests, detention and seizure of properties, to suppress the freedom of speech and assembly and to allow rampant surveillance, harassment and intimidation. But even without such legislation, the military and police have gone on a rampage of killing, abducting, torturing, massacring innocent people, forcing people to evacuate and committing other atrocities with impunity.
In such notorious places like Fort Bragg and the School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), the US has systematically trained military officers of puppet governments in the doctrine of low intensify conflict and in dirty tricks, including psychological warfare and methods of abduction, assassination and torture. Indonesian, Philippine and Thai security (military and police) forces have also been trained by US Special Forces, Drugs Enforcement Administration and FBI agents to violate human rights and fundamental freedoms in the name of anti-terrorism and other pretexts.
Under the direction and influence of the US Military Commissions Act of 2006, the US and its puppets are bound to violate civil and political rights with impunity on a wider scale than before on the road of state terrorism and fascism. The law negates the right to habeas corpus, prevents prompt access to the civil courts, lawyers of choice and evidence, attacks the confidentiality of lawyer-client relations and allows unlimited surveillance, warrantless arrests, arbitrary seizures of property, indefinite detention and the use of torture. Starting with the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, the US has pushed its allied as well as puppet governments to adopt so-called anti-terrorism laws. These have established the global legal infrastrucrture for naked state terrorism and fascism.
The US thinly disguises its real intent in the "war on terror", which is to go after and suppress national liberation movements, anti-imperialist forces and leaders and governments assertive of national independence. Before conducting "joint military training exercises" in the Philippines in 2002, US and Philippine officials boasted that after the Abu Sayyaf, they would go after the New People's Army (NPA) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). They have persistently attempted to link the Abu Sayyaf and MILF, as well as the MILF with the NPA in order to conjure the illusion of a chain of "terrorist" cooperation among them.
The US has designated the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), NPA and the NDFP Chief Political consultant as "terrorists", and has pressured other governments to do likewise since 2002. The Arroyo government has subsequently suspended formal talks with the NDFP and used the "terrorist" tag and the threat of intensifying US-backed military offensives in order to coerce the NDFP to capitulate through a one-sided "formal peace accord" (a document of surrender) written by the Arroyo government.
Since the first post-9/11 "joint military exercise", the Arroyo government has declared "all out war" against the CPP-NPA-NDFP and has deployed the Philippine Army light infantry companies trained by the US Special Forces in Basilan and elsewhere to the NPA-controlled areas. Half of the USD 55 million aid for counterterrorism was allotted to offensive operations against the NPA. Joint US-RP military exercises were subsequently held in and around NPA-controlled areas in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
The US war of terror and the subservience of the Arroyo regime have sabotaged the peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and have escalated the armed counterrevolution against the Filipino people. In directing the Arroyo regime to carry out an all-out war policy, the US aims to increase its military intervention in the Philippines, deploy US troops, build military facilities and pave the way for the return of US military bases.
III. Cooperation and Networking for Campaigns
There is a need for us to wage a region-wide campaign for the abrogation of military and security agreements and arrangements with the US, and for the dismantling of US military bases in the region. We must encourage the people to struggle against US militarism and terrorism, especially in countries where US military power is deeply entrenched. In this way the nations and peoples of East Asia and Oceania attain genuine independence, uphold their national and economic sovereignty, and build a truly free, democratic, prosperous and peaceful region.
The decision to launch a regional campaign to dismantle the US bases in the East Asia and Oceania region is quite timely and deserves our unanimous agreement and concerted efforts. There are robust and vibrant anti-bases formations and movements in countries where there are US bases, stations, facilities, advisors and trainors and other forms of military presence, especially in Japan and South Korea, Australia, Philippines and Indonesia. There is the Asia-Wide Campaign against US bases. We should strive to cooperate and coordinate with these formations and movements and help to expand, strengthen and further activate them. We can also establish new formations and movements where possible and necessary.
The US and other imperialist powers, the militarists and the local fascist reactionaries are the real terrorists, by the correct definition of terrorism as organized violence solely or mainly against the people or civilian population. We must launch a campaign to expose and oppose their use of superior military and economic power to coerce the nations and peoples of East Asia and Oceania into following the US imperialist and terrorist agenda, disguised as a "war on terror" for maintaining regional stability and security.
We should wage regional mass campaigns or other forms of coordinated efforts for defending civil and political rights, as well as economic, social and cultural rights. The defense of civil and political rights is closely linked with the campaign to expose and oppose US militarism and the "war on terror", which have become the main prod to the attacks on civil and political rights. This involves exposing and opposing the repressive measures masquerading as "anti-terrorism" and "counterterrorism".
We must strengthen our resolve and strive to reverse and eradicate the evil consequences of the US war of terror in the form of bilateral and multilateral agreements to allow unbridled US aggression and other extraterritorial acts, the policy of state terrorism, fascist legislation and actual bloody campaigns to violate human rights like Oplan Bantay Laya. Otherwise US militarism and terrorism in collaboration with the local regimes and ultra-reactionaries in the region will continue to violate human rights in a comprehensive way and inflict terrible suffering on the people.
The campaign to defend the people's social, economic and cultural rights requires exposing US militarism and the "war on terror" as means for imposing US hegemony over the region, controlling and using strategic resources for its own interest and to the detriment of the peoples of the region. Superior US military power is being employed to promote and facilitate "neoliberal globalization" in the region, so that US monopoly capital can more freely enter the local economies and intensify the exploitation and oppression of the region's peoples.
In all of these campaigns, we need to broaden our knowledge and deepen our understanding of the operations and dynamics of US militarism and "war on terror" in particular countries and in the entire region. We must pay close attention to the impact of US militarism and terrorism on the civil, political, social, economic and cultural lives of the peoples. The various study commissions of the ILPS can contribute significantly to these studies, as the member organizations serve to arouse and mobilize the broad masses of people against US militarism and the "war on terror".
The networks of ILPS, APRN, Peace for Life, APMM, ARENA-New Zealand, APWLD and ASA are sufficiently broad to be able to undertake these campaigns. Good coordination and cooperation will certainly enhance the capabilities of each network as well as the whole. The campaigns can also serve to expand and strengthen each network as it arouses, organizes and mobilizes the people against US militarism and the "war on terror" and along the specific issues to which these are linked.
Internationally, the situation is excellent for launching and carrying out these campaigns. The Bush government faces continuing isolation daily as its global "war on terror", especially the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, are exposed as naked acts of imperialist aggression, and as the valiant resistance of the Afghan and Iraqi people frustrate and defeat the lone superpower's arrogance, rapacity and brutality.
The American people have expressed their unequivocal disapproval of the war in the Middle East and Central Asia, handing over both houses of Congress to the opposition Democrats. The neo-conservatives are in decline and disarray in US policy-making bodies on foreign policy and security. The US government is faced with a sluggish economy and with the threat of another round of recession in the coming year. US imperialism has no solution to its economic and political crisis, and no plan for extracting itself from the Iraqi and Afghan quagmires. The longer it stays in these quagmires the bigger losses it incurs. The so-called realists among US policy-makers are finding grave difficulties seeking a way out of Iraq and upholding US imperialist interests..
The peoples of East Asia and Oceania will certainly join and support the campaigns against US militarism and its war of terror as these will complement and enhance their own struggles for national liberation and social emancipation. The anti-imperialist and democratic movement of the peoples is gaining ground and intensity. The peoples' struggles worldwide will steadily and surely advance to isolate, weaken and eventually defeat US imperialism and other imperialists the world over. ###
http://www.josemariasison.org/inps/USterASPACconfkeynote.htm
3/29/07
Our parlous region
Australia's policy in the South Pacific is obsessed with security concerns and market-driven solutions to the problems of poorer nations, write Shahar Hameiri and Toby Carroll.
THE recent release of a commissioned progress report into the largest Australian-led state building program in recent history demonstrates the need for a qualitatively new approach to assisting the Pacific. After three years of extensive involvement through the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, the report paints a disturbing picture.
Although the security situation has thankfully improved under RAMSI, the same cannot be said for the economy, with Solomon Islanders suffering prohibitive prices for basic goods and low employment prospects.
Unfortunately, the Australian Government's approach to the Pacific region is constrained by a lack of imagination that does little to improve the development prospects of our neighbours or advance Australia's long-term security interests.
Indeed, not a day has gone by in the past year without news of political and social unrest in the Pacific. In some circles, the island states to Australia's north and east have acquired the dubious moniker of the "Arc of Instability".
Important questions relating to the nature of this instability, as well as to Australia's approach to ameliorating it, need to be raised. This is because the fundamental reading in Australia of the Pacific quagmire is biased in favour of promoting stopgap measures that are difficult to implement and, when implemented, can amplify the root causes of the problem.
Crucially, the Australian Government's short-term interests are with curbing immediate regional security threats in the form of migrant outflows, international crime and breeding grounds for terrorists.
In the long-term, the Government's plan is to stabilise the region and implement so-called "good governance" programs, which are seen as the bedrock of market-led development. Market-led development, in turn, is seen as generating stable societies, thereby guaranteeing Australia's security.
The short-term concern for stability goes some way towards explaining the Howard Government's recent decision not to intervene in Fiji after the military coup — preferring the use of diplomatic sanctions and other softer measures. In sum, the existence of a capable Fijian military, while detrimental to democracy, is congenial to Australia's immediate security interests, as perceived by the Australian Government.
In the Solomon Islands, the situation has been very different. In the Solomons, before the Australia-led intervention, no such circuit-breaker existed to control unlawful elements. This meant that the Australian Government had a more elemental interest in stabilising the security situation as a precursor to governance and economic reforms.
The problem with the Government's approach in the Pacific is that it almost never works. Even in the Solomon Islands, where the intervention was initially lauded as a great success, devastating riots and increasing tensions reversed this appraisal drastically, as the report suggests. In Fiji, where Australia is a leading donor, we also see the limits of "good governance" programs.
A report such as the RAMSI one can lead to knee-jerk reactions from those who are already sceptical of the utility of Australian aid. We should be clear that we do not advocate reducing or eliminating Australia's efforts in the Pacific. We do, however, argue for a qualitatively different framework.
Pacific states are geographically small and widespread, have limited natural resources and face significant environmental challenges — especially those associated with climate change.
The problems of the Pacific cannot be solved with the logic of comparative advantage, so critical to market-led development approaches. For example, in the Solomon Islands, deforestation has created massive social and environmental problems, making the industry unsustainable and divisive.
There are many possible policy alternatives to those being promoted by Australia and other major donors.
First, there should be a stronger shift away from "boomerang aid" that often ends up in the pockets of Western companies and consultants. Rather than playing a Keynesian-style role in developing local economies, this form of aid has very little impact on kick-starting domestic markets.
While critics might be concerned about corruption in the process of financial distribution, this should not preclude considering such policies in tandem with suitable checks and balances.
This is because corruption has both played a part in the development of Western economies and actually continues to play a role in promoting Western economic interests in developing countries. To focus on corruption as the primary cause for development failure is to miss the bigger picture.
A second measure has been endorsed by the Labor Party's foreign affairs spokesman, Robert McClelland, and the World Bank. This involves opening up Australia's labour market to temporary workers from the Pacific. At present, Australian employers in seasonal industries, such as agriculture and hospitality, cannot meet staffing demands. In the Pacific, on the other hand, we see a "youth bulge" and massive unemployment. In the Solomon Islands, for example, the median age is just under 19, whereas in Australia it is about 37.
The final policy option relates to a combination of tax concessions to promote Australian foreign direct investment in the Pacific, controlled transfer of technology associated with productive output, and preferential trading arrangements for Pacific states.
But preferential trading should not take the form of free trade agreements, which invariably give preference to the most powerful party.
New trading regimes should nurture budding industries and protect them from competition, where appropriate, within a regional framework.
The World Trade Organisation is a potential barrier here, but the present international trade regime is part of the problem that needs to be tackled.
Far from radical, some of the policies were flagged in 2003 by a report of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. But the report's recommendations have found little expression within Australian Government policy.
The present approach of the Australian Government is not only tight-fisted, it is inefficient in generating outcomes congenial to regional stability.
The debate on regional engagement needs to be expanded beyond its ideologically and politically constrained boundaries.
Shahar Hameiri and Toby Carroll research regional economic development and security issues at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University.
3/23/07
Internal and Foreign Military Forces
There are currently 3 Pacific island countries with standing armies: Tonga, Fiji
and Papua New Guinea. Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands have elite para-military
units which are part of the Police force. A worrying feature in the region is
the increased militarisation of the armed and police forces, in response to
perceived threats following the events of September 11 and the consequent War on
Terror.
In a new world disorder dictated to by US foreign policy, PCRC continues to
campaign for the close down of all military bases and military operations in the
Pacific, reduced army and cut in military budget. Current threats include the US
military build-up on Guam as a result of the winding down of the US military
operations in Okinawa, Japan and joint military exercises conducted by foreign
powers in the Pacific.
PCRC is also concerned with the emerging trends from the joint military
exercises in the Pacific which include:
* An increased military presence of foreign powers in the Pacific, but with
involvement of the Pacific islands themselves.
* An extension of the involvement of the military into areas that were
traditionally under the responsibility of the police and the arming of police in
some Pacific countries such as Fiji.
* Under the pretext of protecting vulnerable Pacific island countries from
natural disasters and criminal activities, a whole military/ police network is
being set up by foreign powers across the Pacific. Should a crisis arise, this
network could very easily be competely controlled by those foreign powers.
Furthermore, the response of Pacific Island Forum members to armed threats in
the region such as through the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon
Islands (RAMSI), could see the beginning of a permanent regional armed force,
something that PCRC will continue to oppose as a direct threat to the
preservation of peace in the Pacific.
For more information on our demilitarisation campaigns contact
http://tinyurl.com/2b3kum
---------------------------
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10429488&ref=emailfr\
iend
and Papua New Guinea. Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands have elite para-military
units which are part of the Police force. A worrying feature in the region is
the increased militarisation of the armed and police forces, in response to
perceived threats following the events of September 11 and the consequent War on
Terror.
In a new world disorder dictated to by US foreign policy, PCRC continues to
campaign for the close down of all military bases and military operations in the
Pacific, reduced army and cut in military budget. Current threats include the US
military build-up on Guam as a result of the winding down of the US military
operations in Okinawa, Japan and joint military exercises conducted by foreign
powers in the Pacific.
PCRC is also concerned with the emerging trends from the joint military
exercises in the Pacific which include:
* An increased military presence of foreign powers in the Pacific, but with
involvement of the Pacific islands themselves.
* An extension of the involvement of the military into areas that were
traditionally under the responsibility of the police and the arming of police in
some Pacific countries such as Fiji.
* Under the pretext of protecting vulnerable Pacific island countries from
natural disasters and criminal activities, a whole military/ police network is
being set up by foreign powers across the Pacific. Should a crisis arise, this
network could very easily be competely controlled by those foreign powers.
Furthermore, the response of Pacific Island Forum members to armed threats in
the region such as through the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon
Islands (RAMSI), could see the beginning of a permanent regional armed force,
something that PCRC will continue to oppose as a direct threat to the
preservation of peace in the Pacific.
For more information on our demilitarisation campaigns contact
http://tinyurl.com/2b3kum
---------------------------
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10429488&ref=emailfr\
iend
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