Articles
Without question: US military expansion in the Asia-Pacific
The expansion of the US military into Asia-Pacific is not just about power, but also about profit.
Al Jazeera – By Jon Letman – April 25, 2012
As Noam Chomsky wrote in this two-part essay, America’s “pivot” toward the Asia-Pacific region is in response to what it calls “classic security dilemmas” posed by the rising influence of China and Russia. Reacting with military programmes and strategies it says are “defensive”, this US “pivot” is perceived as bullying, threats and intrusion – in other words more of the same – by those most impacted by America’s foreign military presence.
The “classic security dilemma makes sense”, Chomsky argues, if one operates under the assumption that the US has “the right to control most of the world, and that US security requires something approaching absolute global control”.
A major component of America’s “pivot” is its pursuit of “missile defence” which both President Obama and presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney argue are intended to counter threats from Iran and North Korea. Critics call it a ruse, but most of the American public calls it nothing at all – the issue is barely on the radar.
Even as the US clings to 20th century notions of being the world’s “sole Super Power”, attempting to expand its influence and control over the Asia-Pacific’s power centres, shipping lanes and resources, the American public remains under-informed, indifferent and flat-out unaware of its military impact abroad. …
Read on: www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/2012423142035880495.html
European Missile Defense Program Coming Under New Scrutiny
Huffington Post – By Desmond Butler – April 21, 2012
Major delays, cost overruns and critical technological problems are plaguing a missile defense system designed to protect the United States and Europe from an Iranian attack, Pentagon advisers and government investigators say about one of President Barack Obama’s top military programs.
The reports cast doubt on the shield, a politically sensitive issue at home and in relations with Russia. They say missile interceptors are running into production glitches, radars are underpowered and sensors cannot distinguish between warheads and other objects. …
Missile defense in Europe has been a nettlesome issue since the middle of last decade, when President George W. Bush announced plans to base long-range interceptors in central Europe as a defense against missiles from Iran. That infuriated Russia, which believed the program was intended to counter Moscow’s intercontinental ballistic missiles and undermine its nuclear deterrent. Some Democrats also objected, complaining the U.S. was gambling billions of dollars on questionable technology. …
The board’s report also said engineers have not been able to demonstrate that the system’s sensors can tell whether an interceptor has destroyed a warhead because the sensors cannot distinguish between a warhead and other objects, such as a piece of a destroyed rocket. …
“If you can’t tell the difference between a warhead and pieces of debris from an attempted intercept, how are you going to identify a decoy that’s designed to fool you?” …
A renowned physicist who has read the report, Richard Garwin, said the problems identified in the report appear too overwhelming to overcome. …
Read in full:
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/21/european-missile-defense-_n_1442536.html
“GLOBAL NATO” IS “AMERICA’S NATO”
Washington Outlines NATO’s 21st Century Mandate
Center for Research on Globalization – April 28, 2012
The State Department’s top Eurasia hand addressed the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’s Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia on April 26 to present Washington’s perspective on and expectations of next month’s summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
In a presentation titled “The Chicago Summit and U.S. Policy,” the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, Tina Kaidanow, laid out what the military alliance’s main powerhouse and financial backer demands of its 27 allies and in so doing indicated many of the top geopolitical objectives of her department and the U.S. government as a whole for the upcoming years.
Commenting on the fact that the May 20-21 gathering of over fifty heads of state from nations supplying troops for the longest war in her nation’s history, that in Afghanistan, will occur in Chicago, only the second NATO summit in the U.S. and “the first ever outside of Washington,” Kaidanow reiterated the main purpose of the world’s only military bloc:
“Our hosting of the Summit is a tangible symbol of the importance of NATO to the United States, as well as an opportunity to underscore to the American people the continued value of the Alliance to the security challenges we face today…NATO is vital to U.S. security. More than ever, the Alliance is the mechanism through which the U.S. confronts diverse and difficult threats to our security…Our experiences in the Cold War, in the Balkans, and now in Afghanistan prove that our core interests are better protected by working together than by seeking to respond to threats alone as individual nations.”
What the House members listening to her, if not the casual reader, would understand by the above comments is that NATO is the chief vehicle employed by the State Department, White House and Pentagon to advance American political, economic and military interests in Eurasia and increasingly the rest of the world. …
Read on: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30586
Chicago Summit: NATO To Announce Activation Of European Missile Shield
Stop NATO
By Rick Rozoff
May 3, 2012
On April 30 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen informed the Associated Press that the military bloc he leads will announce initial operational capability for the joint U.S.-NATO interceptor missile system in Europe at the NATO summit in Chicago on May 20-21.
Identifying the progression from European theater interceptor missile systems like NATO’s Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) and the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) and the U.S. Patriot Advanced Capability-3 battery deployed to Poland two years ago to current continent-wide territorial coverage with the integration of those systems with Washington’s European Phased Adaptive Approach, the alliance chief said, “As far as NATO is concerned, we have tested the systems and they work.”
The U.S.-controlled military organization recently announced that simulated tests on April 4-5 established the integrated system’s viability and prepared the groundwork for successive, qualitatively more advanced, stages of development and deployment.
On the day Rasmussen addressed the issue, the Obama administration’s National Security Council senior director for European affairs, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, gave a presentation titled “Revitalizing NATO: From Lisbon to Chicago” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. in which she confirmed the NATO chief’s assertion by stating, “At Chicago, it is our intent to declare an interim capability for NATO missile defense based on the ability to employ U.S. assets under NATO command…” …
POLICE STATE: “Robots R’US”: Military-style Drones on 63 Military Bases In The USA
From Worldwide Hippies
By Danny Schechter (globalresearch)
April 28, 2012
It’s easy to understand why Presidents, politicians and the military love robots. They don’t talk back. They follow orders. You press a button and they do what they are told. They are considered so efficient, and so lethal.
These modern killing machines represent science fiction reborn as science ‘faction.’
Robots and drones don’t burn Korans or pose with the heads of their captives on the battlefield. (Robots also don’t protest wars.) Lose the human factor and you get silent but deadly total destruction.
And that’s why drone warfare has become such a weapon of choice. You have video game jockeys sitting on their asses in front of consoles of digital displays at an Air Force base outside Las Vegas, targeting suspected terrorists in Afghanistan. After a couple of quick kills, they take the rest of the day off.
It’s only later, that we get the reports of civilians decimated as collateral damage.
Oops!
These new lethal toys are used both for surveillance and targeted assassinations. …
Rethinking U.S. Military Presence in Asia and the Pacific
Center for Strategic and International Studies – By Michael J. Green – April 16, 2012
For the past six decades the U.S. military has enjoyed preeminence in the Western Pacific, but there are increasing questions about whether this advantageous position is sustainable given a combination of budget cuts, asymmetrical military threats, and local opposition to bases. The bottom line is that the United States can and must retain a robust military presence in the region, taking advantage of new partnerships, technologies, and operational concepts—while recognizing that many of the challenges we face are not entirely new. Inertia and incrementalism will not work, however. The United States will need to develop a holistic strategy that builds on all the instruments of national power as we rebalance toward Asia.
U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) faces a fundamental budget challenge: even with an administration pledge to hold U.S. capabilities steady in Asia while cutting force structure elsewhere, $487 billion in planned cuts means hollowing out other commands’ assets in ways that will ultimately force cannibalizing of PACOM assets when crises hit the Middle East or elsewhere. Moreover, upgrading, consolidating, and dispersing U.S. bases and facilities in the PACOM area of responsibility will cost money–even if the result is a smaller footprint. Any serious strategy for sustaining a presence will have to take this into consideration.
The military challenges to U.S. forward presence are also growing. China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities are increasing the risk to U.S. assets located within the so-called Second Island Chain (south from Japan through Guam). The quantity, range, and lethality of Chinese and even North Korean ballistic missiles have grown several-fold in the past decade. This threat has prompted some experts to propose pulling critical U.S. assets out of missile range so there will be a conventional retaliatory capability in the region. This proposal is both ahistorical and counterproductive, however. …
Read on: http://csis.org/files/publication/120413_gf_green.pdf
U.S. plans for larger presence in Pacific
Army Times
By Gidget Fuentes
April 21, 2012
The failed mid-April launch of a long-range North Korean rocket, billed as a satellite launch but widely seen as the test of a ballistic missile, was the latest reminder of how the Pacific region remains one of the world’s most volatile.
It’s also a key focus of the Obama administration’s new national defense strategy.
The military’s top officer in the Pacific, Adm. Samuel Locklear, describes the new focus as “back to the Pacific,” alluding to long-standing U.S. military presence and partnerships with Pacific Rim nations dating back before World War II.
In practice, it means more Navy ships in the region, along with more Marines and soldiers, Locklear told an audience of service members April 12 at Yokota Air Base, Japan. “What you should expect from the future is an enduring presence in this part of the world that is properly shaped for the coming century,” said Locklear, a former Pacific Fleet commander who in March took the helm of Hawaii-based U.S. Pacific Command.
Among his top missions is “making this theater a priority for the long run,” he said. “We have a joint force that, for the Pacific, has been misshapen. So we have to reshape it for the contingencies that we have here.”
That won’t mean new U.S. bases in the region, but rather bilateral agreements for joint access or shared use, Locklear said. “We’ve got to be optimally deployed in places where we can get to … We just can’t be in one place to do what we’ve got to do.” …
Read on: www.armytimes.com/news/2012/04/navy-larger-pacific-presence-china-samuel-locklear-042112w/
Iran: who is threatening whom?
Each of the 45 stars is a US Military Base!
Image source: www.bluerepublican.org/2011/12/whos-threatening-whom/
Iran has been surrounded by US bases.
The total number of Basis are 45 but the names and information is hidden from public eye.
For a list of the bases surrounding Iran:
www.worldrealnews.com/2012/03/03/list-of-us-basis-surrounding-iran/
Global military spending flattens as U.S. cuts back, Russia adds
Los Angeles Times
April 16, 2012
The United States and much of Western Europe trimmed their military spending because of budget constraints, according to new data from by a Stockholm-based think tank.
The slight drop in the United States, the biggest military spender worldwide, helped break a 13-year trend of surging spending on armies around the world, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a new report. Global military spending was basically flat in 2011, growing only 0.3%.
“It seems likely that the rapid increases of the last decade are over for now,” the think tank wrote. It estimated that countries around the world spent $1.738 trillion on their militaries last year.
The drop in American military spending — the first since 1998 — was partly because of the long delays in crafting a budget as the Obama administration and Republican lawmakers clashed over cuts, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a report this week.
European countries tightening their belts in the name of austerity have also spent less on their militaries, with Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland paring back over the last three years, it said.
Yet more is being spent on the military elsewhere. Russia increased its spending by 9.3%, putting it third in the world behind the U.S. and China. …
U.S. intelligence gains in Iran seen as boost to confidence
Washington Post; By Joby Warrick and Greg Miller; April 8, 2012
More than three years ago, the CIA dispatched a stealth surveillance drone into the skies over Iran.
The bat-winged aircraft penetrated more than 600 miles inside the country, captured images of Iran’s secret nuclear facility at Qom and then flew home. All the while, analysts at the CIA and other agencies watched carefully for any sign that the craft, dubbed the RQ-170 Sentinel, had been detected by Tehran’s air defenses on its maiden voyage.
“There was never even a ripple,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official involved in the previously undisclosed mission.
CIA stealth drones scoured dozens of sites throughout Iran, making hundreds of passes over suspicious facilities, before a version of the RQ-170 crashed inside Iran’s borders in December. The surveillance has been part of what current and former U.S. officials describe as an intelligence surge that is aimed at Iran’s nuclear program and that has been gaining momentum since the final years of George W. Bush’s administration.
The effort has included ramped-up eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, formation of an Iran task force among satellite-imagery analysts and an expanded network of spies, current and former U.S. officials said. …
So you want to be a drone pilot on the front line of war
Stop the War Coalition; April 7, 2012
So you want to be a drone pilot? Have a seat in the operator’s control station that guides the remotely piloted aircraft.
You could be sitting in a trailer on Creech Air Force Base in Nevada or doing your duty at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. From this perch, you can see a battle space on the other side of the world. You are virtually on the front lines of war.
One of the screens in front of you has a live full-motion video feed from the aircraft (perhaps showing the home of an anti-American sheik and his family in Pakistan or Afghanistan). A second screen has mission data like the altitude of the drone and its fuel level. A third screen displays multilayered menus of more data.
You can steer the drone with the joystick in your right hand; the pedals beneath your feet control its rudder. …
“Now you sit in a trailer, for most missions nothing happens,” says Cummings, a former pilot. “Your plane orbits in the sky, you watch and you wait. For the everyday mission, it’s very boring. I’d much rather be flying an F-16.”
And then boredom is punctuated by terror — and deadly mistakes. The exact death toll is much disputed. The New Jersey-based Long War Journal says 138 civilians have been killed in drone strikes in the last eight years. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism counters that the strikes have killed anywhere from 479 to 811 noncombatants in that period, including 174 children. …
By another metric, the New American Foundation estimates, based on news reports, that 17 percent of the Pakistanis killed in U.S. drone strikes between 2004 and 2011 were civilians; in 2011 the figure was 11 percent. The Air Force does not release statistics on the subject but the science board’s report cited an internal estimate that suggested U.S. drone strikes accounted for 8 percent of all civilian casualties in the Afghan theater (compared to 66 percent caused by the Taliban). …
The second common cause of civilian deaths, the “lack of tactical patience,” is not a problem that can be solved technologically. That is a matter of training American soldiers to live in a surreal moral universe.
“You shoot a missile, you kill a handful of people,” says Cummings, a former pilot, “and then, this is what is strange, you go home. Your shift is over. You get in your car and drive 30 minutes to the northern suburbs of Las Vegas and you mow the lawn, talk to your kids, you go to church.” …
Read in full: stopwar.org.uk/index.php/usa-war-on-terror/1323-so-you-want-to-be-a-drone-pilot-on-the-front-line-of-war
Nuclear Power for the Skies Spells Peril for Those Below
Common Dreams
by Karl Grossman
April 11, 2012
The crash last week of a US drone on the Seychelles Islands, the second such crash in four months, underlines the deadly folly of a plan of US national laboratory scientists and the Northrop Grumman Corp. for nuclear-powered drones.
The drone that “bounced a few times on the runway” at Seychelles International Airport on April 4 “before ending” up in the sea, according to a statement from the Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority, was conventionally powered. So was the drone which had a similar accident on Seychelles in December. From the Indian Ocean island nation the US flies drones over Somalia and over waters off East Africa looking for pirates.
But the use of nuclear power on US drones was “favorably assessed by scientists at Sandia National Laboratories and the Northrop Grumman Corp.” …
Just consider if the two drones which crashed on the Seychelles used nuclear power and the impacts if the radioactive fuel they contained was released. Or consider if the drones had crashed elsewhere, in Somalia, for instance, providing nuclear material to those who might want to make a “dirty bomb.” Drones, it should be noted, have a record of frequently crashing. …
Read in full: www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/11-5
Obama Administration Silencing Pakistani Drone-Strike Lawyer
Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin
April 9, 2012
When is the last time you heard from a civilian victim of the CIA’s secret drone strikes? Sure, most of them can’t speak because they’re deceased. But many leave behind bereaved and angry family members ready to proclaim their innocence and denounce the absence of due process, the lack of accountability, the utter impunity with which the U.S. government decides who will live and die.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government has increasingly deployed unmanned drones in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. While drones were initially used for surveillance, these remotely controlled aerial vehicles are now routinely used to launch missiles against human targets in countries where the United States is not at war, including Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. As many as 3,000 people, including hundreds of civilians and even American citizens, have been killed in such covert missions.
The U.S. government will not even acknowledge the existence of the covert drone program, much less account for those who are killed and maimed. …
But in Pakistan, where most strikes have occurred, the victims do have someone speaking out on their behalf. Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who co-founded the human rights organization Foundation for Fundamental Right, filed the first case in Pakistan on behalf of family members of civilian victims and has become a critical force in litigating and advocating for drone victims. …
Now that Akbar has become the voice of drone victims, it appears that the Obama administration is trying to silence him.
He was invited to speak at a human rights symposium at Columbia University’s law school in May 2011, but he never received a visa. Despite repeated enquiries, he was merely told there was “a problem” with his application. Now he has been invited to speak at the first ever Drone Summit on April 28-29 in Washington DC, organized by the peace group CODEPINK and the legal advocacy organizations Reprieve and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Once again, his visa remains stuck in the never-never land of “administrative review.” …
Read in full: www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/09-6
B-52 bomber marks major milestones in 2012
Shreveport Times
by John Andrew Prime
April 9, 2012
… It was 60 years ago Sunday that the prototype YB-52 first took to the air, thrilling employees of the Air Force and Boeing and civilians in Seattle, who witnessed the event.
It was 50 years ago this summer and fall that the last of the 744 B-52s built, an H-model that is still flying out of Minot Air Force Base, N.D., rolled off the assembly line and was accepted into the fleet.
October also marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when all of the old Strategic Air Command’s bombers, including Barksdale’s B-52s, were put on 100 percent alert status for a full month.
And it was 40 years ago this December that the airplanes faced and met their greatest challenge ever, in the epic Linebacker II bombing campaign over the skies of Hanoi, then the most heavily defended airspace in the world. …
Read on: www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20120409/NEWS01/204090328/B-52-bomber-marks-major-milestones-2012
In this article no mention of the terrible results of the actions of these pilots who bombed and bombed from a great height – how scarry the thinking is…..
Bill Moyers | The Real Costs of War
Truthout; By Bill Moyers; April 1, 2012
- The Dead
- 6051 U.S. service members
- 2,300 U.S. contractors
- 9,922 Iraqi security forces
- 8,756 Afghan security forces
- 3,520 Pakistani security forces
- 1,192 Other allied troops
- 11,700 Afghan civilians
- 125,000 Iraqi civilians
- 35,600 Pakistanis (civilians and insurgents)
- 10,000 Afghan insurgents
- 10,000 Members of Saddam Hussein’s army
- 168 Journalists
- 266 Humanitarian workers
- Total: 224,475 lives lost
- The Wounded
- 99,065 U.S. soldiers
- 51,031 U.S. contractors
- 29,766 Iraq security forces
- 26,268 Afghan security forces
- 12,332 Other allied troops
- 17,544 Afghan civilians
- 109,558 Iraqi civilians
- 19,819 Pakistani civilians
- Total: 365,383 wounded
- The Displaced
- 3,315,000 Afghan civilians
- 3,500,000 Iraqi civilians
- 1,000,000 Pakistani civilians
- Total: 7,815,000 refugees and internally displaced people
Read in full: http://truth-out.org/news/item/8238-the-real-costs-of-war
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