I never realized how true this was until I read the information below.
There are important facts and good suggestions.
Alan Maki has assembled a wealth of information in making his own point that the cost of imperialism being born by the American people is costing us dearly. Health care to be specific.
I hope everyone who reads this will pass this information along and hard copy it to give to friends.
Cassandra
-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Maki [mailto:amaki000@centurytel.net]
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:49 PM
To: 'info@wpc-in.org'; 'wpc@otenet.gr'
Subject: Re: NATO, the Malvinas Islands, and US 4th Fleet and U.S. military bases vs human needs
Socorro Gomes President of the World Peace Council;
I read your statement below. I think it is an excellent statement.
However, I think there is a major weakness… in relation to acknowledging the far-flung network of military bases and operations of the United States all over the world; you should have inserted a suggestion as to what could be accomplished for humanity if these bases were closed down and the military operations and maneuvers were to cease.
Presenting alternatives to this militarization are, in fact, one of the most powerful incentives for the American people to engage in struggle in unity with other progressive forces around the world against imperialism.
Below is a letter I sent to a member of the clergy here in the United States just yesterday. Like you, who has presented a very lucid description of imperialism, he presented a very lucid argument against the rise of the right-wing here in the United States. The right-wing is the base of the warmongers and the militarists here in the United States, like else where in the world.
In my opinion, to put forward such critiques could be vastly improved since our goal is to bring people into struggle against imperialism.
I have included an article from “Asia Time” regarding how the U.S. military responds when pressure mounts (as well as changing circumstances) to get U.S. military bases off of foreign soil--- such as Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines. If the World Peace Council does not always place in context militarism vs. human needs no one else is going to do this consistently.
When I mention "Cooperative Security Locations" (CSLs) most people have never heard of this. The American people are intentionally being kept very ignorant when it comes to the operations of U.S. imperialism making it all the more important that you place some emphasis in how this is all costing the American people and what they could have if not for imperialism.
I hope in the future you will make some mention what humanity could use resources for instead of this waste on militarism. Therefore, I am sending you the letter I sent to Reverend Harry Cook… the gist of my suggestion is this (the full letter follows:
The United States has 800 military bases on foreign soil...
What we need--- instead--- is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States where people can universally access, for free, all their health care needs from pre-natal care, to general health care to eye, dental and mental care right through to burial.
From: Alan Maki
To: Reverend Cook,
You quote a Richard Hoftsader, did you mean Richard Hofstadter?
I found your essay, Fear & Resentment, very interesting and a very lucid analysis of where we are at, and where we are headed.
I think Barack Obama has created the atmosphere for these “Tea Parties” to take place because he has refused to bring forward the kind of change people were anticipating when they voted for him.
The liberal, progressive, left community has refused to criticize Obama by insisting on real universal reforms aimed at solving very real problems:
- No moratoriums on home foreclosures and evictions.
- Wars in three countries rage on.
- No consideration of single-payer universal health care.
- The Democrats have backed away from the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Not a single mention of reforming the minimum wage to make it a real living wage has come from Barack Obama or the Democrats.
Without criticism and a proposed progressive agenda being pushed hard for real change, I think the right-wing is going to grow in strength way beyond what the religious right was able to accomplish.
Ironically, Obama has set-up liberals, progressives and the left for a smashing defeat; voters went to the polls expecting just the opposite from what they are getting from Barack Obama.
Where’s the change?
I think Barack Obama and the Democrats in betraying the American people--- first by acquiescing to Bush and the Republicans and now by derailing all real initiatives for real reforms that working people need and require to live and survive as capitalism collapses--- are doing more than their fair share to create “anger” in this country.
The anger is really growing out of mass confusion and disorientation surrounding who Barack Obama is and what he stands for.
The ideas expressed by Richard Hofstadter later in his life--- after 1939--- certainly aren’t going to do anything to allay fear or anger, let alone point people in the direction we need to go for real change.
Anyways, Barack Obama, in bringing forward the Wall Street agenda instead of what people expected from him has set the stage enabling an even more pernicious right-wing to make its way into power.
Like Richard Hofstadter would have done, you have critiqued the situation well; and, like him in his later years you don’t bring forward anything we can do to bring about real change… as a suggestion, you might want to check out Richard Hofstadter’s pre-World War II, depression era thinking; just a suggestion.
Something you might want to consider writing and speaking about:
The United States has over 800 military bases on foreign soil when what we need is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States (16 in each of our 50 states) providing everyone with free health care instead.
We really need to provide the American people with an anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist ideological out look framed in a way that convinces them that what they are getting now for their tax dollars are the wrong things; while encouraging them not to fear struggling for what is right and just.
The two issues capable of uniting the people of this country are the need to end war and militarism and the need for real health care reform. Bring both issues together in a way that makes sense to people and you create a powerful bulwark against this vicious right-wing thrust taking the form of hate-mongering “Tea Parties.”
I don’t think your lucid analysis lacking a suggested alternative is going to be enough to halt the drive to the extreme right now underway.
Perhaps you have written about solutions to problems; but, like others like myself reading your essay here for the first time… any mention of solutions is missing.
I hope you take my criticism in the friendly manner intended because I appreciate and share your analysis concerning the danger from the right.
Liberals, progressives and the left allowed Barack Obama to get away without defining what kind of “change” he was talking about. Now we have the task of either letting the extreme right fill this void that has been created; or liberals, progressives and the left can vigorously challenge Obama to bring about the “change” that everyone was expecting.
I guess Obama had one idea what change consisted of and most voters had quite a different idea… I don’t think, based upon Obama’s actions, that he can be trusted to bring about the “change” we need in this country… he has a different agenda that is neither liberal nor progressive; it certainly isn’t an agenda that pre-war World War II Depression era Richard Hofstadter would have appreciated.
Albert Einstein’s very lucid thinking provides us with a better understanding of problems and lays a foundation for change more so than Richard Hofstadter’s constant, never-ending search for alternatives to capitalism did. You might want to Google up Albert Einstein’s, “Why Socialism?”
I have enclosed below something I recently sent out for people to consider.
Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541
E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net
Check out my blog:
Thoughts From Podunk
http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/
The United States has 800 military bases on foreign soil...
What we need--- instead--- is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States where people can universally access, for free, all their health care needs from pre-natal care, to general health care to eye, dental and mental care right through to burial.
Instead of moving in this progressive direction, President Barack Obama and the United States Congress are moving in a most reactionary direction towards establishing military bases in outer space as they seek to insure the profits of both the merchants of death and destruction and the profit-driven health care industries... talk about skewed priorities and your wacky ideas devoid of common sense.
In addition to these 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil, Barack Obama and the United States Congress continue funding--- with our tax-dollars--- the Israeli killing machine to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
A network of 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States would create over four-million good-paying, decent jobs--- talk about your "economic stimulus" package!
We would be planting the seeds of socialism while helping to eradicate poverty as we keep people healthy and get them well when sick.
Think about this kind of solution in relation to what Barack Obama, the U.S. Congress and the Wall Street bankers and coupon clippers are offering the American people, and the peoples of the world... just what is the reason for bailing out the banks and AIG and maintaining more than 800 expensive U.S. military bases on foreign soil?
The Mt. Carmel Clinic in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada offers us a glimpse at what militarization and wars continue to rob us of.
The problems created by Wall Street will not be solved as long as the military-financial-industrial complex is allowed to squander human and natural resources on militarism and wars... we might just as well be dumping these resources out into the ocean... at least no one would die in wars.
These merchants of death and destruction must be stopped if humanity is to survive in a livable world.
The time has come to talk about the working class Marxist politics and economics of livelihood... capitalism has failed humanity miserably and left us a real mess.
Something for working people to think about and discuss around the dinner table... the capitalist sooth-Sayers certainly are not going to broach such solutions to the problems of working people as they hide behind the skirt of Rosy Scenario as this global capitalist economic depression intensifies.
Fear and Resentment
By Harry T. Cook
4/24/09
"To ignore reason and judgment and all the fine sentiments that move [people] to follow blind force ... in the hope that fear will ... make all people safe is bad practice." (Clarence Darrow, 1926)
"American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work ... who have now demonstrated ... how much political leverage can be got out of animosities and passions." (Richard Hoftsader, 1964)
There's nothing like crying "FIRE!" in a crowded circus tent to get people's attention. As events have amply shown, the likely result is a stampede, each person with his or her eye fixed on the nearest exit rather than on others who may be in the way. It is instinct at work rather than reason, with the end-product being gross disorder.
Likewise, there's nothing like the politics of resentment to excite what Hofstader called "animosities and passions." Making decisions on the basis of anger has never worked very well for the human race.
The administration of George W. Bush, now blessedly part of the past, carried this nation into a pre-emptive war against a sovereign nation not only on a partially manufactured flood-tide of post-9/11 fear but on what finally must be called bald-faced lies, viz., nonexistent WMDs and the shameful prediction of mushroom clouds.
The 2004 presidential election was prosecuted by Karl Rove & Co. using fear as an engine -- fear then not so much of WMDs as of what moral disaster would occur if gay and lesbian people were allowed to marry. The echoes of the fear campaign that drove a hapless Congress into acquiescence over Iraq joined the chorus of homophobia to put Bush back into the White House.
Now comes the aftermath of another election, and still the politics of fear are made to reverberate, this time over who will pay what taxes at what rate and for how long. The ultra-demagogic Tax Day protests -- ours in Michigan featured Joe the Plumber -- were a reminder of how inchoate fear can suddenly find focus in narrow resentment.
President Obama and congressional Democrats are on notice from the likes of Karl Rove and the editors of The Wall Street Journal that anything that resembles a hike in federal taxes for anyone for any reason (including saving the country from economic catastrophe) will be exploited in the 2010 election cycle and beyond.
The politics of resentment are what Adolf Hitler and his Nazi thugs played in Germany to great effect and success. The German people were, in fact, wronged by some of the draconian elements of the Versailles Treaty, and were ripe for a rabble rouser. Hitler showed up just in time to start a Holocaust.
The year 2009 is no time -- if ever there is a time -- for the politics of fear and resentment. Resentment is a stupid emotion.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was spot-on in that oft-quoted remark about fear in his inaugural address of March 1933 during the worst year of the Great Depression. FDR was right: Fear is to be afraid of.
Of fear a late First Century C.E. Christian philosopher wrote: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear." This "perfect love" is not some gooey thing of hugs and kisses and vapid smiles. It is an attitude of robust confidence which enables a person to step away from his or her own concerns to view them in a larger context beyond personal desire -- and to do so accepting the possibility of material diminishment of his estate.
Some significant number of people so enabled would cast out the kind of fear that poisons a nation's collective psyche, causing it to strike out blindly against perceived enemies and leaving chaos and old night in its wake.
© Copyright 2009, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
NATO, the Malvinas Islands, and US 4th Fleet
Written by Socorro Gomes President of the World Peace Council
Wednesday, 08 April 2009
For us with the World Peace Council – WPC, an organization that is near completing 60 years of existence with branches in 109 countries, it is a great joy to be in the homeland of San Martin, of Ernesto Che Guevara, fighters who, like us, defend peace, sovereignty and the integration of Latin America.
I would like to thank the organizations responsible for this conference, comrades of Mopassol, the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (PAHR) and Serpaj-Latin America.
This International Conference will address issues of great importance for the struggle for peace. We are sure that this initiative will contribute to update our analyses on the recent events in the international state of affairs and will also serve as the Latin American contribution to the international campaign against NATO throughout the world.
Complex and deep changes are taking place in the international scenery
Lately the world has been going through significant transformations that seem to signal a transition to another era. We have witnessed the policies of imperialism being questioned all over the world during the last years. There is a body of factors ranging from the emergence of new poles of economic and political power in the international scene, especially among countries of the so-called "developing south", to the increasing impasses in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Given those facts, the economic crisis of capitalism erupts and aggravates, having the USA as its epicenter. Those factors, among others, call into question the hegemony of US imperialism.
Comrades, there is no doubt that the current crisis will bring consequences to the struggle for peace, for it has an impact on the political outlook. As usually, the governments of imperialist countries try to place its effects on the shoulders of the workers from poor and dependent countries. The crisis will inevitably lead to the eruption of social struggles and political conflicts.
The international order found itself threatened by the grave crimes against humankind committed by Israel against the martyred Palestinian people. The events that took place in the beginning of the year were approved by the great powers, especially US imperialism, which sees Israel as its ally in its aim of reorganizing Middle East. We take advantage of this opportunity to affirm that Israel must be judged for the war crimes it has committed. Humankind longs for justice.
The new president of the United States has announced a withdrawal plan for the troops in Iraq, but also affirmed that the Arab country will remain occupied by 50 thousand soldiers and that its presence in Afghanistan will be intensified. Within a few days, when the Euro-Atlantic imperialist powers celebrate the sixtieth NATO anniversary, they will announce a new strategic concept that consists in widening that aggressive alliance, maintaining its expansion towards East and intensifying the cooperation among the military initiatives of the European Union and NATO as well.
Analysts of the US foreign policy are beginning to say that the new democrat administration will put in practice a Smart Power policy, a combination of the use of diplomacy with the use of force. That policy was previously called Soft Power.
Comrades, it is clear for us that the nature of imperialism will not be altered by a simple change in the presidential staff. The imperialist character of the United States' policy is still the same. Militarization and war will always be present. Peace is not a vocation of imperialism.
Generally speaking, the measures announced by the Obama administration so far placed the USA once again in the position of a hegemonic power. We must not fall for the idea that the US imperialism will give up being the center of the definitions regarding the international system. It is an outlook of great uncertainties.
According to sociologist Atílio Borón, the USA is an irreplaceable and undisputable actor within the international imperialist system. Its military power cannot be compared to that of any other country. Only US imperialism is present in 120 countries, having more than 700 missions and bases abroad. The military power is the final reserve of the system and war is an essential part of imperialism.
It is based on that complex international outlook that we must understand the role of those powerful war machines such as NATO and the Fourth Fleet and the meaning of the struggle for peace within that context.
Imperialism is not generous
The US establishment's ideas on Latin America are based on its interest in expanding its power over the region. Since when the United States became an imperialist power in the turn of the 19th to the 20th century and since when it became a hegemonic power, its foreign and military policy has always been focused on having this region under its direct influence. The agreements and treaties were always used to grant exclusively the interests of the USA. A classical example of that is the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance – ITRA, from 1947, part of the reorganization of the international system where the United States struggled in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. It is necessary to stress that during the whole of the 20th century the policy of force – the so-called Big Stick policy – prevailed.
Given the different proportions, ITRA can be considered the equivalent to NATO in the Southern Atlantic. Since it was the first collective security pact involving several countries, its grounds served two years later for the United States to constitute NATO. The United States' discourse in ITRA was aimed at maintaining the USA as the center of the inter-American system in order to, according to them, "ensure peace by all possible means," "promote reciprocal and effective aid" and "resist to all armed attacks" and any threats to the United Sates.
ITRA and OAS were the main tools to impose the hegemony of the United States in the region. Moreover, it was the main means in its campaign to isolate politically and economically the Cuban Revolution. But when ITRA was called to defend Argentina from the aggression committed by the English colonial forces in the Malvinas War, imperialism took the side of Britain. The USA not only denied the support that was "stated" in ITRA, but also offered logistic and intelligence support to the English. There should be no illusions regarding imperialism and its tools of domination – imperialism is not generous.
We take advantage of this opportunity to reaffirm our solidarity with the Argentinean people for recovering the Malvinas Islands, which are part of their territory. It is not possible to have territories occupied by colonialist forces in the 21st century.
Comrades, imperialism will not allow its influence in the region to be diluted without taking steps to avoid it. The reactivation of the Fourth Fleet is a clear demonstration of that.
The reactivation of the Fourth Fleet
Comrades and Argentinean friends, the US Navy Fourth Fleet is about to complete one year of operation, in July, in the waters of our continent. When we received that news, we were in Brazil with comrades Rina Bertacini, of Mopassol, and Ana Juanche, of Serpaj, participating in the Mercosur Social Forum, in the state of Paraná. Our analyses in the heat of the moment had much in common. It was the matter of another artifice of the United States with the objective of intimidating the political process of changes that was under development in the region, as well as taking a strategic position regarding our resources.
The importance given by the United States to its sea power, especially in the region, is nothing new. The first ideas according to which the United States needed a great sea power derived from the elaborations of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, who in the turn of the 19th to the 20th century influenced the American elite in their expansionist policy. According to Mahan, the United States had to maintain full control of the seas, oceans and commercial routes based on the formation of a broad set of naval fleets of the merchant and warfare navies, therefore guaranteeing its continental power. Such ideas influenced the action to annex Hawaii in 1897, the Spanish-American war, in 1898, the seizure of the Philippines in Asia, and also Cuba and a few other Caribbean islands.
Inheriting Mahan's formulations, the US Navy Fleets were created in the middle of World War II in the struggle of the allies against the axis. The Fourth Fleet was created in 1943 with the objective of protecting the region from possible attacks from Nazi-Fascist forces. After the end of the war, it was dismantled in 1950.
Today the "Fleets" are distributed in six regions of the world. The Second Fleet is in the North Atlantic, the Third sails in the Pacific Ocean, the Sixth operates in the Mediterranean, the Firth sails in the Persian Gulf region and Southeastern Asia and the Seventh is found in the Indian Ocean and Southern Asia. With them the USA maintain strategic areas all over the world under military control.
By divulging the news of its reestablishment in Latin American waters, one immediately asks the question – why now? With which arguments and justifications?
Among the little information made public since the announcement of the reactivation of such powerful weapon of war, the only justifications made known are but euphemisms pronounced by the USA.
According to James Stravidis, chief of the US Southern Command, a structure to which the Fourth Fleet is subordinated, his missions have a humanitarian character, supporting peace operations and assisting in disasters and anti-drug operations, as well as helping the USA to fight terrorism. However, James W. Stevenson, chief of the Naval Forces Southern Command, clearly states that the reactivation "sends a clear sign to some people who we know are not necessarily our supporters." It is a clear demonstration of intimidation to the countries that dare to defy openly the USA.
Moreover, the Rear Admiral affirms that the ships in the Fourth Fleet are prepared to sail "even the magnificent river systems existing in South America, sailing brown waters more than blue waters."
During one of the activities taking place in the World Social Forum we asked – what a nuclear-powered ship docked in the middle of the Amazonas River would represent? What "humanitarian" missions would be assigned to such war machine? It the objective was good, why the countries in the region were not consulted?
A word to the wise is enough. Affirming that the Fourth Fleet is a signal to some governments with which Washington is not sympathetic is an open provocation to the political process in the region.
Since its reactivation the Fourth Fleet is subordinated to the US Southern Command, having the naval base of Mayport in North Florida as the port for its powerful ships. It has not an assigned fleet, but was made available an arsenal of war, including nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Among those we list the following:
• 1 Nimitz (nuclear) aircraft carrier able to transport up to 85 F-18 aircrafts • USS Boxer and USS Kearsage assault ships: each one carry up to 45,500 tons and is able to transport up to 1,800 men • Sea Knight helicopters (42 units) • AV-8 Harrier II fighter jets • LCAC landing crafts
It is clear that a force with such power of destruction is not merely bound to offer solidarity and support to the countries in the region. The Fourth Fleet is imperialism's reaction to the political changes taking place in Latin America. The Fourth Fleet is not a defensive force. It is an offensive and intimidating force.
The Fourth Fleet and the dispute for controlling the maritime routes and energy sources
There is no doubt that the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet involves imperialism's intention to deploy potent weapons and advanced structures that would allow, if necessary, its use for controlling routes and sources of energy.
In the USA National Defense Strategy the "Right to Oil" is preceded only by the defense of territorial integrity and the political independence of the USA. "Right to Oil" means, in other words, that the United States' imperialism, eager to guarantee its predatory consumption, can resort to force in order to ensure access to energy sources, wherever they are.
Another factor that we must be aware of is that the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet coincides with the recent discoveries of oil in waters of the Brazilian continental platform. The so-called pre-salt would place Brazil in the fourth or third position in the list of the world's greatest oil producers.
It is very likely that the Fourth Fleet will not be object to the news in the next months or even years. Its initial objective is not to call attention, but to pass some strategic messages of positioning and power, as well as to provide the monitoring of the region and terrorize the governments of Latin America that search for independence from United States' imperialism.
The Fourth Fleet Admiral's skills illustrate quite well that his priority mission will not involve humanitarian actions. Rear Admiral Joseph D. Kerman is a veteran military with the Naval Special Warfare Development Group in charge of intelligence missions and counter-terrorism. Joseph Kerman was for many years an instructor for the SEAL (Sea, Air, Land). He is part of the USA war elite. The SEAL offered "valuable services" in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars with their divers and also in other missions mostly covered by the CIA.
The peoples of the world cannot stand still before such grave events. The Fourth Fleet is not only against Brazil or the countries in the region – it is connected to a strategy of international character.
One question remains unanswered. Is it possible that organizations such as the Fourth Fleet contribute to missions of alliances such as NATO? The US Naval Warfare fleets are spread all over the world in strategic points to control the flow of commercial routes and energy sources. The Naval Fleets participate in many war campaigns developed by imperialism and support military alliances of which the USA is part, such as NATO.
NATO – imperialism's mechanism against the peoples of the world
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO is a military organization that has been at the service of United States' imperialism since its onset. It played an important role in the Cold War and later had an important function as a military force in the reorganization of the political blueprint of a unipolar world. In the year of the 60th anniversary of that war machine the world is going through significant transformations and NATO is increasingly fit to support the intentions of great powers with the use of force.
Appearing in the heat of the Cold War, NATO was imperialism's tool to threaten and, if necessary, attack socialist countries. In the 1990s, when the so-called "socialist threat" disappeared, NATO's new role is materialized with a new strategic concept.
Since the end of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the heralds of imperialism even affirmed that we would live a period of eternal peace – the end of history. Those affirmations were proved wrong shortly after, for, as we have said, war is an essential part of socialism.
The great powers, headed by United States' imperialism, soon tried to open routes to the East taking advantage of the political void left by the dismemberment of the Soviet Union with a view to control immense sources of energy – gas and oil – along with flow routes existing in the Balkans and Central Asia.
In that period NATO organized its conferences in London (1990) and Rome (1991), when it tried to seal its reconfiguration by assuming openly an offensive character in order to play the role of a strategic force with operational capacity and pro-active action outside the territorial area of its country members, acting as a war machine at the service of great imperialist powers, especially American imperialism.
That period is characterized by NATO's widening, involving some countries that were once part of the Warsaw Pact, making alliances with countries outside the geographical sphere of the alliance, such as in the case of the "Gulf Cooperation Council" and the "Mediterranean Dialogue." The first experience of that transformation had the Balkans as its backdrop. Especially after the bombings and invasion of Yugoslavia, NATO begins to widen militarily its area of influence, reaching the borders of Russia.
NATO in Latin America
It was under that context of new alliances and widening that the government of former Argentinean president Carlos Menem developed a strategy to approach the military alliance. According to that conception, Argentina would only reach a greater importance in the international scene if it maintained a policy of automatic alignment with the United States or, as said in the occasion, if it maintained a "carnal relation" with the super power either in the economic field or in its foreign policy and military cooperation.
Seminars and important conferences were held in the country to address the relation with NATO and several Argentinean authorities participated in NATO's deliberative instances with the objective of demonstrating commitment with the organization.
It was under those circumstances that Argentina became the only Latin American country to send troops to the first Gulf War in 1991. Later it sent troops to the so-called Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFOR), which was NATO's occupation force in the Balkans during the conflict in 1996. It was also in that occasion that former USA president Clinton proclaimed Argentina as a "non-NATO ally."
What is the meaning of being a non-NATO ally?
The title "non-NATO ally", coined in 1989, is a designation made by the Congress of the USA to a group of countries that obtain advantages in the acquisition of weapons that would be sold only to NATO countries. The first countries to receive that title were Australia, Egypt, Israel Japan and South Korea. In the Bush administration, that token was granted to his allies in the "war against terror" – New Zealand, Jordan, Bahrain, Philippines, Thailand, Kuwait Morocco and Pakistan.
Latin America is a strategic area to NATO
In the last years NATO has made efforts to approach the region once more. After being reconfigured as a military alliance with global challenges, some sort of world's sheriff, it considered to be important to maintain its presence in our area.
In 2008, as the campaign against Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC-EP) peaked, Colombian Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos declared to newspapers that his country intended to send troops to Afghanistan and start collaborating with NATO. In the weeks preceding our conference, it became public that Colombia will send 150 soldiers as a first step in cooperating with the occupation in Afghanistan.
It could mean that Colombia will establish a new kind of cooperation with NATO in the medium term.
Another route being explored with less success is the attempt at involving the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), based in Portugal, in NATO exercises. That, according to the Alliance's command, would project its actions to both margins of the Atlantic Ocean.
Widening the awareness of the anti-imperialist struggle and the defense of peace
Today, under international circumstances of uncertainties and deep contradictions, the peoples of the world must try to strengthen their anti-imperialist awareness, showing that the use of war to impose its plans and maintain its centrality in the international system is the very nature of imperialism.
NATO is completing 60 years of existence. We must take into account that the transformations taking place at the heart of that military alliance aim at strengthening its role as a privileged tool in incursions that imperialism carries out against the peoples of the world.
Military structures at the service of the empire complement each other in the logic of controlling the main routes of commercial flow and plundering energy sources. The Naval Warfare Fourth Fleet may be put at the service of NATO if necessary with the lame excuse that some country in the region may be "violating human rights" or "sheltering terrorists", among other fallacies that could be devised.
Our region is historically characterized by the efforts in defense of peace, what makes it a "Peace Zone." The general feeling of the peoples living in our region is one of sympathy for peace, of solidarity with struggling peoples. Comrades and friends, imperialism is going through a severe crisis, the hegemony of the United States is threatened. We are sure that, with the union of democratic, progressist and anti-imperialist forces, we may create a broad international front against imperialism and its war machines and a broad mobilization of the peoples to defeat imperialism. We are sure that it is not invincible and it will be defeated!
--
Socorro Gomes President of the World Peace Council–CMP and Cebrapaz-Brazilian Center for Solidarity to Peoples and Struggle for Peace
http://www.wpc-in.org/
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JB28Ae01.html
IN THE DRAGON'S LAIR
US prowls for China in the Philippines
By Herbert Docena
Since the closure of its military bases in the country in 1991, the United States has incrementally regained, transformed and deepened its military presence and intervention in the Philippines. The manner in which the US has attempted to re-establish basing in the Philippines illustrates its attempts to radically overhaul its global offensive capabilities to become more agile and efficient while overcoming mounting domestic opposition to its presence around the world.
The objectives with which the United States has sought to achieve this in the Philippines - a country that is firmly within what US analysts and strategists call "the dragon's lair" - point to the emerging US strategy toward what it has officially identified as the one country with "the greatest potential to compete with the United States" - China. In this strategy, the Philippines, by virtue both of its location as well as its political disposition towards the US relative to its neighbors, plays a crucial role.
Basing without bases
After George W Bush came to power, the US began to attempt in earnest to implement what its proponents bill as the most comprehensive reconfiguration of its global military presence since World War II. The underlying rationale is clear: the positioning and forms of US military bases of the past - built as they were for the Cold War - no longer suffice for the present. The US overseas basing must therefore be transformed so as to enable the US military to become leaner and meaner, quicker and more agile.
In the Philippines, as in a growing number of places around the world, the one persistent constraint for both the US and Philippine governments, however, has been the long-standing domestic sensitivity to US bases in the country. This opposition was actually an important - if not the decisive - factor in the decision to close the bases in 1991 and in the adoption in the post-Ferdinand Marcos 1987 constitution of provisions banning foreign military bases in the country.
As it has embarked on the project of transforming its global presence, the US has also sought to adapt to and undermine domestic opposition to its bases. In this, the US military's reconceptualization of its global military presence - no longer as merely a collection of physical structures but as a global "posture" - is illuminating. By posture, explained US Under Secretary of Defense Douglas J Feith, "We are not talking only about basing, we're talking about the ability of our forces to operate when and where they are needed."
Thus, recognizing that the local political situation is not yet ripe for the re-establishment of the kind of large military bases it once had in the Philippines, the United States has instead moved to achieve this ability in various other ways.
Recurring deployments
The United States has been deploying a growing number of its troops, ships and equipment all over the Philippines ostensibly for training exercises, humanitarian and engineering projects, and other missions. In 2006 alone, up to 37 military exercises were scheduled - up from around 24 in the preceding years. As many as 6,000 US troops are involved, depending on the exercise.
Although packaged as on-and-off temporary programs to train US and Filipino troops, such exercises are seen as an alternative way for the US military to secure access to the Philippines. "The habitual relationships built through exercises and training," former US Pacific Command head Admiral Thomas Fargo noted in March 2003, "is our biggest guarantor of access in time of need." He continued: "Access over time can develop into habitual use of certain facilities by deployed US forces with the eventual goal of being guaranteed use in a crisis, or permission to preposition logistics stocks and other critical material in strategic forward locations."
As US troops come and go in rotation for frequent and regular exercises, their presence - when taken together - makes up a formidable forward presence that brings them closer to areas of possible action without need for huge infrastructure to support them and without inciting a lot of public attention and opposition. As the US National Defense Strategy states, "Our posture also includes the many military activities in which we engage around the world. This means not only our physical presence in key regions, but also our training, exercises, and operations."
Along with troops, an increasing number of ships have also been entering the country's territorial waters and docking at various ports with growing frequency. Such ship visits are also seen as ways to establish presence. As the US Congressional Budget Office has pointed out, "[T]he Navy counts those ships as providing overseas presence full time, even when they are training or simply tied up at the pier."
Dual-use infrastructure
Apart from the troop deployments and ship visits, the US has also been constructing an increasing number of structures and facilities that could be useful for the US military when the contingency arises - while at the same time allowing it to buy political support from the national and local governments. In various parts of the country, especially in the southern regions of Mindanao, the US has been engaged in a flurry of construction activities, building or renovating airports, piers, wharves, roads and other infrastructure.
In General Santos City, for example, the US constructed a deep-water port and one of the most modern airports in the country, connected to each other by one of the country's best roads. Why the United States was so intent on financing and building this modern airport in a small city where relatively few passenger or cargo planes land could not be explained if not for its potential military use. In Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, where US troops routinely go for exercises, the airport has been renovated and its runway strengthened to carry the weight of C-130 planes. In Sulu, the US is renovating the airport, upgrading roads, and building ports that can berth huge ships.
All this is consistent with a US Air Force (USAF)-funded study which recommended having more deployments to have more infrastructure. By increasing deployments, notes the study, the United States can get into arrangements that "include measures to tailor local infrastructure to USAF operations by extending runways, improving air traffic control facilities, repairing parking aprons and the like".
Cooperative security locations
The US is also establishing in the Philippines a new category of military installations it calls "Cooperative Security Locations" (CSLs).
As part of the innovations introduced in the ongoing revamping of the global US network of bases, CSLs refer to facilities owned either by host-governments or even by private companies that are to be made available for use by the US military as needed. According to the Pentagon, these CSLs are to be run and maintained by either host governments or private contractors and are as useful for prepositioning logistics support or as venues for joint operations with host militaries. While intended to be small so as not to attract attention, they could be expanded to become larger bases when necessary.
In August 2005, the US Overseas Basing Commission, the official commission tasked to review US basing, categorically identified the Philippines as one of the countries where such CSLs are being developed by the US in the region. The Philippine government, however, has refused to disclose the locations and other details about these CSLs.
Base services without basing
The US has obliged the Philippines to provide it with a broad range of locally provided services that would enable it to launch and sustain operations from the Philippines when necessary.
In November 2002, the US and Philippine governments signed the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA), which researchers with the US Congressional Research Service describe as "allowing the United States to use the Philippines as a supply base for military operations throughout the region".
The MLSA obliges the Philippine government to provide the US with logistical supplies, support and services during exercises, training, operations, and other US military deployments. These supplies include food, water, petroleum, oils, clothing, ammunition, spare parts and components, billeting, transportation, communication, medical services, operation support, training services, repair and maintenance, storage
services, and port services. "Construction and use of temporary structures" is also covered.
In other words, through the MLSA, the US has secured for itself the services that it would normally provide itself inside a large permanent base but without constructing and retaining large permanent bases - and without incurring the costs and the political problems that such bases pose.
Forward operating base
Finally, the United States has succeeded in indefinitely stationing a US military unit in the country. Since 2002, a unit now called
the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTFP) has been deployed to the southern Philippines. Contrary to the US and Philippine governments efforts to present the troops belonging to the unit as part of temporary training exercises, this unit has maintained its presence in the country continuously for the last six years. With the Philippine government not setting an exit date, it will continue to be based in the Philippines for the long haul.
The unit, which is composed of about 100-500 mostly Special Forces troops, is headquartered inside a Philippine military camp in Zamboanga City, but its "area of operations", according to a US military publication, spans 8,000 square miles, covering the entire island of Mindanao and its surrounding islands and seas. With various military facilities now being constructed for their use, members of the unit refer to their bases in Mindanao as "forward operating base-11" and "advanced operating base-921".
Though US and Philippine government officials have consistently claimed that the unit is not involved in actual combat, US troops themselves describe their mission as "unconventional warfare" and "counter-insurgency" operations in the country. They have confirmed that they join Filipino troops on patrol, provide them with intelligence, and assist in various aspects of their operation. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen them in the vicinity of operations. Most recently, US troops have been accused of joining Filipino soldiers when they perpetrated what was described as a massacre of innocent civilians in Sulu.
In terms of profile and mission, the JSOTF-P is similar to the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-Horn of Africa) - which was established in Djibouti in eastern Africa in 2003, also composed mostly of Special Forces, and which has been described as the "model for future US military operations".
Greatest potential competitor
Taken together - the increasing troop deployments, the construction of more and more infrastructure to guarantee US military mobility, the designation of facilities as "cooperative security locations" to be used by the US military when needed, the assurance of support services in case of operations, and the indefinite stationing of US troops in the country - have significantly improved the US ability to operate in and from the Philippines, thereby locking the country firmly within the US global posture.
The determination to ensure and strengthen this ability cannot be adequately explained by the supposed threat posed by local or regional "terrorist" groups in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia. As brutal or as violent as the deeply splintered Abu Sayyaf Group has been in its operations, for example, the threat that its remaining 300 or so members pose to the US is quite low and cannot explain the magnitude, the form, and locations of US presence in the country. Not only doesn't the Abu Sayyaf pose an existential threat to the US, neither does it affect US strategic interests or limit its freedom of action in country or beyond. Nuisance does not a national security threat make.
Rather, the US military presence in the Philippines appears to be part of the US drive toward global military dominance in general, and, in particular, of the emerging US strategy towards China - the one power that has now been officially identified by the US as posing the greatest challenge to its global supremacy. As indicated by the series of provocative pronouncements by US officials against China in the past years, the actual US moves to encircle it with military bases and other forms of military presence, and its ongoing efforts to enlist various countries on its side and assemble a de facto anti-China coalition in Asia, US military basing in the Philippines appears to be part of what its advocates have proposed as a strategy for preserving US lone-superpower status by preventing the rise of potential rivals.
Location, location, location
If such a strategy is indeed being put into action, the Philippines appears to be of crucial strategic importance. Since the late 1990s, a growing chorus of US military strategists and foreign policy thinkers concerned with China's rise have warned about the deficiencies in the US military presence in Asia, particularly in Southeast Asia. In their recommendations for addressing this, the Philippines has since been repeatedly explicitly singled out as among the countries in which the US must move decisively to regain its presence. As various studies have concluded, in any possible face-off with China - whether in a long-drawn out competition or in an outright confrontation - the Philippines, by virtue of its location, can be pivotal.
At the same time, the US does not have many other choices. Other countries in the vicinity of China are either geographically less than ideal, or else, have proven to be unwilling to consent to US requests for basing or access. While Singapore, for example, has proven more accommodating to the US than others, its small size is seen as limiting US options. Indonesia and Malaysia, on the other hand, have not only openly castigated US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have also rejected US demands to station in and operate from their countries. Even Thailand, which is a close US ally, has actually rejected US overtures to be allowed to station ships in or to deploy troops to its territory. Regardless of their attitudes toward the United States, most countries in the region simply do not see China as a threat and have therefore refused to go along any strategy that could antagonize it.
Hence, the United States finds that it needs the Philippines more than ever. Not only is it ideally located geographically, its government has so far stood out among its neighbors for being far more willing to align itself with US demands. But with China also aggressively courting Filipino leaders, this too could change. As the ensuing geopolitical competition heats up, the Philippines could tip the balance one way or the other.
Herbert Docena is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) and a research associate at the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South.
(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
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