Great article on BBC’s “Our Correspondent” website covering a recent US conference trying to see whether there was still anything in common with Europe. Apparently not:

“The West is an outdated concept,” declared one supremely self-confident senior American official at a lunch where he was the guest of honour. “And if there is still a West, then it includes Australia, Japan and South Korea. We have a global vision now” […] Seen through American eyes, it seemed the era of fixed alliances was over.

[…]

The name of the game would be selective and loose commitments: “Like an open marriage,” said one former US official […] “In my experience an open marriage tends to work only for one side,” [said] a British academic, “and I suspect it is the Americans who will benefit.”

When all’s said and done, there’s no real change in outlook. You’re still either with US, or against US.

Ever wonder how all the money pumped into fighting the War on Drugs is used? Well, here’s one indication from the Associated Press:

The U.N. found that Colombia’s army - the largest recipient of $700 million in annual anti-narcotics and counterinsurgency aid from the United States - had participated in killing civilians in 21 of Colombia’s 32 states.

The U.N. said the numbers of civilian killed in those areas showed an increase over 2005 but did not provide death toll figures.

In many cases, the victims were falsely presented as leftist rebels killed in combat, crime scene evidence was tampered with and the investigation was led by the military’s questioned criminal justice system.

The report said such killings with “characteristics of extrajudicial executions do not appear to be isolated incidents” and may have been prompted partly by the government’s use of combat deaths as a benchmark to measure success against leftist insurgents.

But there is some good news out of all this. The UK is probably making a decent amount of money selling arms to Columbia, after having identified it as one of a few “priority” markets for arms sales.

Ever wanted to fact check some obscure reference in a history book, or tried to research exactly what US government officials thought about, say, US attitudes towards oil in the Middle East, the Monroe Doctrine, or some other item of US foreign policy? Well, if, like me, you enjoy digging around for little nuggets of history and confirming what you read, you’ll enjoy the University of Wisconsin’s Digital Archives of the Foreign Relations of the United States.

For example, search for the Monroe Doctrine, and you can come across Robert Lansing (who became US President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State) describing his interpretation of it:

 �??In its advocacy of the Monroe Doctrine the United States considers its own interests. The integrity of other American nations is an incident, not an end. While this may seem based on selfishness alone, the author of the Doctrine had no higher or more generous motive in its declaration. To assert for it a nobler purpose is to proclaim a new doctrine.�?�

Regarding oil, you’ll find an often used quote by critics of US energy policy, which states, in 1945, that Saudi Arabia’s �??oil resources constitute a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history�?� (one of the principle reasons, in fact, that the United States wished to destroy colonial Britain’s dominance in the region). You can also have a look at the proposed Petroleum Policy of the United States (1944) and how they intended to keep any competition (namely the British) out.

This tool is a must for anyone who enjoys history.

There’s been a lot in the press recently regarding the upcoming China Africa forum to be held in Beijing this weekend. Officially, the purpose of the summit is clear: to promote political dialogue, and to boost trade ties between China and at least 48 Africa’s 53 states.

However, as the New York Times puts it, unofficially China is hoping to “redraw the world�??s strategic map by forming tighter political ties” with African states that have turned their back on Europe and the United States. No doubt this is both historical - African countries have never forgotten European colonial dominance, and US interference during the Cold War that led to such tyrrants as Mobutu - and it’s also pragmatic: China is the world’s fastest growing economy, has massive reserves of $US and, more importantly, they’re following a policy of don’t ask don’t tell:

“It is never our view that a country should interfere in another country’s internal affairs,” Deputy Foreign Minister Zhai Jun said last week. “We’ve never imposed on other countries our values … and we do not accept other countries imposing their values on us either.”

This has proven beneficial for such countries as the Sudan. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, visiting China for the summit, “rejected a 22,500-strong U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur”, while at the same time he “thanked China for its support in the face of western pressure over a humanitarian crisis”. Another beneficiary has been Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, who has been shunned by the West due to his human-rights abuses, and has found support from China in helping to continue to sustain his regime in the face of massive unemployment, food and energy shortages, and economic meltdown. A deal with China and Angola for a $2 billion loan that helped that country avoid issues with the IMF regarding corruption.

The driving force for China’s interest in Africa is obviously driven by the need for oil and raw materials, such as iron ore and copper, to sustain its economic growth. Trade in the first ten months of 2005 jumped by a massive 39% on the back of massive investment into oil - primarily in Angola and the Sudan (25% of its oil imports come from these two countries), but also Nigeria, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “China’s manufacturing sector has created enormous demand for aluminum, copper, nickel, iron ore, and oil” and, because of instability in the Middle East, they are focusing elsewhere for suppliers instead, such as South America and Africa. In addition to raw materials, China also “sees Africa as a growth market for its military hardware”, and also “textile manufacturers, for example, are reportedly investing in African factories”.

The increase in Chinese influence and arms sales has drawn criticism because of the don’t ask, don’t tell, see no evil approach China has taken. The U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission, for example, commented that “In Africa, as elsewhere in the world, the Chinese government has shown that it is eager to embrace dangerous and or unsavory regimes in order, among other goals, to secure access to oil.” Former US assistant secretary of state for Africa Walter Kansteiner adds: “Does it worry the U.S. government that China is aiding and abetting Robert Mugabe? Yeah, it does and it should. You know, he’s a bad guy, doing bad things to his people. And so, if Beijing is supporting and helping him, from a policy-maker’s point of view, that’s counter-productive.” World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz also recently criticised China because “Chinese lenders “do not respect” a set of internationally agreed principles to ensure that loans to African countries fund projects that meet high social and environmental standards”.

All this is, of course, highly hypocritcal in light of the fact that US arms sales and military aid to Africa continue to increase (the US accounts for roughly 40% of the world’s arms sales). Also, as David Kang, a visiting professor of East Asia Studies at Stanford University, notes: “The United States is highly selective about who we’re moral about. We support Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia�??huge human-rights violators�??because we have other strategic interests. China’s not unique in cutting deals with bad governments and providing them arms.” Lastly, if the World Bank wishes to talk of “high social and environmental standards”, one only has to look at the Chad debacle (see also here) to understand that the World Bank has no leg to stand on.

US businesses also deal with less than wholesome regimes, such as in Azerbaijan where western countries turned a blind eye to corrupt elections in 2005, as well as brutal crushing of dissidents because Azerbaijan was a strategic Western ally (contrasted with support for Georgia’s revolution primarily where the western world had less influence). Despite being one of the world’s most corrupt countries, BP happily pointed out that “The desire of the [Azerbaijan] government to make this work has been key to our decision to stay. Conditions are very favorable to foreign investors here.” Oil trumps human rights, since the new Baku-Ceyhan pipeline will soon be transporting around one million barrels of oil per day for Western markets.

The real reason for criticism of China’s actions is, of course, their growing influence in the Third World, specifically Africa, in a way that undermines US strategic goals. As the New York Times pointed out, China believes its African influence “will give their diplomats an advantage at the United Nations and other international organizations, where African countries can constitute a powerful voting bloc”. Couple that with their growing influence in the traditional sphere of South America, and its easy to understand US concerns, especially since they’re mired in an increasingly unstable Middle East.

The US’s goal in the Middle East has always been about securing oil and energy, not necessarily only for its own possible consumption needs, but to ensure control of “two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions” which “would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination” (Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard). As noted in the Monthly Review, since the National Security Strategy of the United States was announced in 2002, it has focused on increasing “its activities in West Africa, centering on those states with substantial oil production and/or reserves in or around the Gulf of Guinea”. They cite Richard Haas, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, as saying that “sub-Saharan Africa is likely to become as important as a source of U.S. energy imports as the Middle East”, and point out that the US has stationed bases throughout the region, primarily under the guise of the “war on terror”, but mainly because “the real issues are not the African states themselves and the welfare of their populations but oil and China�??s growing presence in Africa”:

For the Council on Foreign Relations, all of this adds up to nothing less than a threat to Western imperialist control of Africa. Given China�??s role, the council report says, �??the United States and Europe cannot consider Africa their chasse gardé [private hunting ground], as the French once saw francophone Africa. The rules are changing as China seeks not only to gain access to resources, but also to control resource production and distribution, perhaps positioning itself for priority access as these resources become scarcer.�?� The council report on Africa is so concerned with combating China through the expansion of U.S. military operations in the region, that none other than Chester Crocker, former assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Reagan administration, charges it with sounding �??wistfully nostalgic for an era when the United States or the West was the only major influence and could pursue its…objectives with a free hand.�?�

The unfortunate reality is that, if history is any judge, the scramble for Africa between China and the United States shall have the same effects on Africa that occured during the Cold War: regimes playing the fears of both interested parties off one another; dictators and tyrrants kept in power in order to further strategic aims; wars fought by proxies in the battle for mineral resources; and the continued suffering of local populations. Some do express hope that the Chinese “will be forced to take account” of issues such as corruption, as well as the concerns of the African people and not just their elites. But, as long as competition between China and America persists in Africa, such concerns may well not be in their self-interest.

Ha’aretz is reporting that flights used by the CIA to transport terrorist suspects stopped over in Tel Aviv. The “straw” company owning the plane, Prescott Support, is apparently a front for the CIA. The interesting thing, though, is that you can go here and have a look at photos of the plane in question. It seems to get around, with photos being taken as far back as 2001, in a variety of places including Malta, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Iceland, USA, Portugal, Malaysia and Singapore.

Some recovered history here, one of my favourite pieces: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It’s nothing “new” if you follow these things, but it’s worth writing down. Anyway, the “official” doctrine for many years had it that the USSR invaded long before the CIA began funding their opponents that later went on to become the Taliban. In fact, the CIA’s own website still refers to the invasion as being an “intelligence failure”: “Earlier intelligence reports on activities by the Soviet military units had not been accompanied by warnings that this activity might indicate Moscow’s intent to launch a major military intervention.” It goes on to say that:

“while the United States continued strict adherence to [US] President Carter’s injunction against direct US assistance and the use of US weapons to support the Afghan insurgency, the CIA did consult with the Pakistan Government on its support to the opposition forces”

The reality was very different, however. According to Eric Alterman, writing in The Nation, “former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates [revealed] in his 1996 memoir From the Shadows, the $500 million in nonlethal aid was designed to counter the billions the Soviets were pouring into the puppet regime they had installed in Kabul.”

According to Gates’s recounting, a key meeting took place on March 30, 1979. Under Secretary of Defense Walter Slocumbe wondered aloud whether “there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, ’sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire.’” Arnold Horelick, CIA Soviet expert, warned that this was just what we could expect.

National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski also revealed that, on the 3rd of July 1979, “President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul”, which in Brzezinski’s opinion would “induce a Soviet military intervention”.

We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

All of this is rather amusing when you then go and read The Scholarship Editions’ “Afghanistan” declaring that “Soviet officials had made extensive efforts to frighten [Aghanistan’s Prime Minister Amin and the Revolutionary Council] about an imaginary danger directed at Afghanistan.”

But the Soviet government as well as the Karmal regime have fabricated stories contrary to this conclusion. In December 1979 Soviet officials told Amin that the �??revolution�?� was in danger from the United States, which was about to launch a massive assault from the Persian Gulf. To meet the assault, Afghanistan should be prepared militarily.

That’s not to say that the US were about to launch an assault from the Gulf, but their fears were hardly “imaginary”. (Oh, and I couldn’t find any reference to Brzezinski’s admission, either). The irony, of course, is when Brzezinski was questioned as to whether or not he regretted laying the Afghanistan trap, he answered:

Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. … What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? … It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

Oops. Bet he forgot ever saying that. In fact, John Pilger reported that Brzezinski denied that this strategy was the beginning for al-Qaeda and terrorism; he said it was the Russian’s fault. Nevertheless, this was arguably the beginning of militarizing Islam to use as a US geo-political tool, something that continued long after the Soviets left Afghanistan.

Alternet has an interesting interview with historian Greg Grandin discussing his new book, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, and “how ‘militant anti-Communists’ in the Reagan administration developed the model for the Bush doctrine.” (There is an excerpt from the book also available here on Alternet). As he explains, the book tries to “look at how U.S. corporate elites — the Guggenheims, the Rockefellers and so forth — first established themselves in Latin America with their overseas subsidiaries and how U.S. political elites viewed the region as the first place to project American power.” Another great quote from the interview:

The war on terror or its component parts — gaining public acceptance of torture, for example, or rendition or the war in Iraq — is as much a domestic affair as it is a foreign one. If you read the writings of neocon intellectuals like Christopher Caldwell or William Kristol, it�??s all about steeling America�??s domestic culture and making the population more resistant to pain, both ours and the pain we inflict on others. And it seems that it�??s not just that they look at America�??s political culture and see dissent or anti-militarism, but they really see a culture of weakness, and they expected that the war on terror would bring about a restoration of American strength.

I’ve ear-marked this book myself for future reading as it looks pretty interesting. I first stumbled across Greg Grandin while searching around for information of American involvement in South America during the Cold War. He’d given an interview to the University of Chicago about another book he wrote entitled The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, which argued that “the spread of Latin America’s guerrilla movements was driven by the frustration of efforts to consolidate post-World War II social democracies.” In particular, he points out that “The overthrow of Arbenz” in Guatemala “was an important milestone” in the transformation of Latin America from having “a degree of political liberalization” to US-backed repression of “domestic dissent”, whereby “The already cramped space for political negotiation became even more restricted.”

The overthrow of Arbenz convinced many Latin American reformers, democrats, and nationalists that the United States was less a model to be emulated than a danger to be feared. Che Guevara, for example, was in Guatemala working as a doctor and witnessed firsthand the effects of US intervention. He fled to Mexico, where he would meet Fidel Castro and go on to lead the Cuban Revolution. He taunted the United States repeatedly in his speeches by saying that “Cuba will not be Guatemala.” For its part, the United States promised to turn Guatemala into a “showcase for democracy” but instead created a laboratory of repression. Practices institutionalized there�??such as death squad killings conducted by professionalized intelligence agencies�??spread throughout Latin America in the coming decades.

He’s a fairly regular writer at The Nation, is a teacher of Latin American history (New York University), and also helped contribute to the UN report on human-rights violations in Guatemala during their civil war. You can read his articles for the Nation here.

I’ve expanded a bit more on some of the themes I wrote about in my recent article, Israel’s Rational Prospect. You can read it here.

As Lebanon is bombed by Israel, I was shocked (but not surprised) to watch the BBC talk calmly on TV a few days ago - with computer generated graphics to demonstrate - how Israel was conducting war crimes (not said as such, obviously) by targetting Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, a mirror image of Hizbollah’s repeated war crimes against Israel in Haifa and elsewhere.

Israel have so far targetted: “highway bridges, residential buildings, and an electrical sub-station“; Beirut airport, “the fuel stores of the Jiyyeh power plant”; three factories producing household goods; “production facilities of at least five companies in key industrial sectors - including the country’s largest dairy farm, Liban Lait; a paper mill; a packaging firm and a pharmaceutical plant” that “will cripple the economy for decades to come”; churches; a hospital; apparent Hezbollah TV and radio stations; highways, and more. This mimics the usual Israeli strategy of collective punishment, as carried out in the recent Gaza attacks which “included the cutting off of water and power supplies, the destruction of bridges and damaged sanitation for local Palestinians.” As Amnesty International pointed out, “The wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure and property and the disproportionate restrictions imposed on civilians by Israeli forces amount to collective punishment on the entire population of the Gaza Strip, a violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits punishing protected persons for offences they have not committed.”
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On Sunday, three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay committed suicide by hanging themselves using make-shift nooses from clothing and bedsheets. What follows are a collection of quotes in response to the revelations.

“He also stressed that it was important to treat the bodies humanely and with cultural sensitivity.”
- White House Spokesman Tony Snow describing US President George Bush’s reaction

“He wants to make sure that this thing is done right from all points of view.”
White House Spokesman Tony Snow describing US President George Bush’s reaction

“It does sound like this is part of a strategy - in that they don’t value their own lives, and they certainly don’t value ours; and they use suicide bombings as a tactic. Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move.”
- Colleen Graffy, the deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy

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