Who Profits From War

War is a big industry in the United States, but who profits from it? AJ+ breaks down how much money was contributed by defense contractors to members of Congress in 2014 and exactly who got the bulk of that money.

NATO Are The Terrorists

Danish soldier returning from Afghanistan says:

"We were told that we would travel down {there to Afghanistan} to fight terrorists. We were betrayed and the war is about profit. NATO are the terrorists, Sorry Afghanistan."

Monopolizing War

What America Knows How To Do Best

By Tom Engelhardt,
Courtesy Of  "Anti-War"

Two weeks ago, 200 U.S. Marines began armed operations in…?:

a) Afghanistan
b) Pakistan
c) Iran
d) Somalia
e) Yemen
f) Central Africa
g) Northern Mali
h) The Philippines
i) Guatemala

If you opted for any answer, “a” through “h,” you took a reasonable shot at it. After all, there’s an ongoing American war in Afghanistan and somewhere in the southern part of that country, 200 armed U.S. Marines could well have been involved in an operation. In Pakistan, an undeclared, CIA-run air war has long been underway, and in the past there have been armed border crossings by U.S. special operations forces as well as U.S. piloted cross-border airstrikes, but no Marines.

When it comes to Iran, Washington’s regional preparations for war are staggering. The continual buildup of U.S. naval power in the Persian Gulf, of land forces on basesaround that country, of air power (and anti-missile defenses) in the region should leave any observer breathless. There are U.S. special operations forces near the Iranian border and CIA drones regularly over that country. In conjunction with the Israelis, Washington has launched a cyberwar against Iran’s nuclear program and computer systems. It has also established fierce oil and banking sanctions, and there seem to have been at least some U.S. cross-border operations into Iran going back to at least 2007. In addition, a recent front-page New York Times story on Obama administration attempts to mollify Israel over its Iran policy included this ominous line: “The administration is also considering … covert activities that have been previously considered and rejected.” So 200 armed Marines in action in Iran — not yet, but don’t get down on yourself, it was a good guess.

In Somalia, according to Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, there have been far more U.S. drone flights and strikes against the Islamic extremist al-Shabab movement and al-Qaeda elements than anyone previously knew. In addition, the U.S. has at least partially funded, supported, equipped, advised, and promoted proxy wars there, involving Ethiopian troops back in 2007 and more recently Ugandan and Burundian troops (as well as an invading Kenyan army). In addition, CIA operatives and possibly other irregulars and hired guns are well established in Mogadishu, the capital.

In Yemen, as in Somalia, the combination has been proxy war and strikes by drones (as well as piloted planes), with some U.S. special forces advisers on the ground, andcivilian casualties (and anger at the U.S.) rising in the southern part of the country — but also, as in Somalia, no Marines. Central Africa? Now, there’s a thought. After all, at least 100 Green Berets were sent in there this year as part of a campaign against Joseph Kony’s Ugandan-based Lord’s Resistance Army. As for Northern Mali, taken over by Islamic extremists (including an al-Qaeda-affiliated group), it certainly presents a target for future U.S. intervention — and we still don’t know what thosethree U.S. Army commandos who skidded off a bridge to their deaths in their Toyota Land Rover with three “Moroccan prostitutes” were doing in a country with which the U.S. military had officially cut its ties after a democratically elected government was overthrown. But 200 Marines operating in war-torn areas of Africa? Not yet. When it comes to the Philippines, again no Marines, even though U.S. special forces anddrones have been aiding the government in a low-level conflict with Islamic militants in Mindanao.

As it happens, the correct, if surprising, answer is “i.” And if you chose it, congratulations!

On Aug. 29, the Associated Press reported that a “team of 200 U.S. Marines began patrolling Guatemala’s western coast this week in an unprecedented operation to beat drug traffickers in the Central America region, a U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday.” This could have been big news. It’s a sizable enough intervention: 200 Marines sent into action in a country where we last had a military presence in 1978. If this wasn’t the beginning of something bigger and wider, it would be surprising, given that commando-style operatives from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration have been firing weapons and killing locals in a similar effort in Honduras, and that, along with U.S. drones, the CIA is evidently moving ever deeper into the drug war in Mexico.

In addition, there’s a history here. After all, in the early part of the previous century,sending in the Marines — in Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere — was the way Washington demonstrated its power in its own “backyard.” And yet other than a few straightforward news reports on the Guatemalan intervention, there has been no significant media discussion, no storm of criticism or commentary, no mention at either political convention, and no debate or discussion about the wisdom of such a step in this country. Odds are that you didn’t even notice that it had happened.

Think of it another way: in the post-2001 era, along with two disastrous wars on the Eurasian mainland, we’ve been regularly sending in the Marines or special operations forces, as well as naval, air, and robotic power. Such acts are, by now, so ordinary that they are seldom considered worthy of much discussion here, even though no other country acts (or even has the capacity to act) this way. This is simply what Washington’s National Security Complex does for a living.

At the moment, it seems, a historical circle is being closed with the Marines once again heading back into Latin America as the “drug war” Washington proclaimed years ago becomes an actual drug war. It’s a demonstration that, these days, when Washington sees a problem anywhere on the planet, its version of a “foreign policy” is most likely to call on the U.S. military. Force is increasingly not our option of last resort, but our first choice.

Now, consider question two in our little snap quiz of recent war news:

In 2011, what percentage of the global arms market did the U.S. control?

(Keep in mind that, as everyone knows, the world is an arms bazaar filled with haggling merchants. Though the Cold War and the superpower arms rivalry is long over, there are obviously plenty of countries eager to peddle their weaponry, no matter what conflicts may be stoked as a result.)

a) 37% ($12.1 billion), followed closely by Russia ($10.7 billion), France, China, and the United Kingdom.
b) 52.7% ($21.3 billion), followed by Russia at 19.3% ($12.8 billion), France, Britain, China, Germany, and Italy.
c) 68% ($37.8 billion), followed by Italy at 9% ($3.7 billion) and Russia at 8% ($3.5 billion).
d) 78% ($66.3 billion), followed by Russia at 5.6% ($4.8 billion).

Naturally, you naturally eliminated “d” first. Who wouldn’t? After all, cornering close to 80% of the arms market would mean that the global weapons bazaar had essentially been converted into a monopoly operation. Of course, it’s common knowledge that the U.S. arms giants, given a massive helping hand in their marketing by the Pentagon, remain the collective 800-pound gorilla in any room. But 37% of that market is nothing to sniff at. (At least, it wasn’t in 1990, the final days of the Cold War when the Russians were still a major competitor worldwide.) As for 52.7%, what national industry wouldn’t bask in the glory of such a figure — a majority share of arms sold worldwide? (And, in fact, that was an impressive percentage back in the dismal sales year of 2010, when arms budgets worldwide were still feeling the pain of the lingering global economic recession.) Okay, so what about that hefty 68%? It couldn’t have been a more striking achievement for U.S. arms makers back in 2008 in what was otherwise distinctly a lagging market.

The correct answer for 2011, however, is the singularly unbelievable one: the U.S. actually tripled its arms sales last year, hitting a record high, and cornering almost 78% of the global arms trade. This was reported in late August but, like those 200 Marines in Guatemala, never made onto front pages or into the top TV news stories. And yet, if arms were drugs (and it’s possible that, in some sense, they are, and that we humans can indeed get addicted to them), then the U.S. has become something close enough to the world’s sole dealer. That should be front-page news, shouldn’t it?

Okay, so here’s the third question in today’s quiz:

From a local base in which country did U.S. Global Hawk drones fly long-range surveillance missions between late 2001 and at least 2006?

a) The Seychelles Islands
b) Ethiopia
c) An unnamed Middle Eastern country
d) Australia

Actually, the drone base the U.S. has indeed operated in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean was first used only in 2009 and the drone base Washington has developed in Ethiopia by upgrading a civilian airport only became operational in 2011. As for that “unnamed Middle Eastern country,” perhaps Saudi Arabia, the new airstrip being built there, presumably for the CIA’s drones, may now be operational. Once again, the right answer turns out to be the unlikely one. Recently, the Australian media reported that the U.S. had flown early, secretive Global Hawk missions out of a Royal Australian Base at Edinburgh. These were detected by a “group of Adelaide aviation historians.” The Global Hawk, an enormous drone, can stay in the air a long time. What those flights were surveilling back then is unknown, though North Korea might be one guess. Whether they continued beyond 2006 is also unknown.

Unlike the previous two stories, this one never made it into the U.S. media and if it had, would have gone unnoticed anyway. After all, who in Washington or among U.S. reporters and pundits would have found it odd that, long before its recent, much-ballyhooed “pivot” to Asia, the U.S. was flying some of its earliest drone missions over vast areas of the Pacific? Who even finds it strange that, in the years since 2001, the U.S. has been putting together an ever more elaborate network of its own drone baseson foreign soil, or that the U.S. has an estimated 1,000-1,200 military bases scattered across the planet, some the size of small American towns (not to speak of scads of bases in the United States)?

Like those Marines in Guatemala, like the near-monopoly on the arms trade, this sort of thing is hardly considered significant news in the U.S., though in its size and scope it is surely historically unprecedented. Nor does it seem strange to us that no other country on the planet has more than a tiny number of bases outside its own territory: the Russians have a scattered few in the former SSRs of the Soviet Union and a single old naval base in Syria that has been in the news of late; the French still have some inFrancophone Africa; the British have a few leftovers from their own imperial era, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has essentially been transformed into an American base; and the Chinese may be in the process of setting up a couple of modest bases as well. Add up every non-American base on foreign soil, however, and the total is probably less than 2% of the American empire of bases.

Investing in War

It would, by the way, be a snap to construct a little quiz like this every couple of weeks from U.S. military news that’s reported but not attended to here, and each quiz would make the same essential point: from Washington’s perspective, the world is primarily a landscape for arming for, garrisoning for, training for, planning for, and making war. War is what we invest our time, energy, and treasure in on a scale that is, in its own way, remarkable, even if it seldom registers in this country.

In a sense (leaving aside the obvious inability of the U.S. military to actually win wars), it may, at this point, be what we do best. After all, whatever the results, it’s an accomplishment to send 200 Marines to Guatemala for a month of drug interdiction work, to get those Global Hawks secretly to Australia to monitor the Pacific, and to corner the market on things that go boom in the night.

Think of it this way: the United States is alone on the planet, not just in its ability, but in its willingness to use military force in drug wars, religious wars, political wars, conflicts of almost any sort, constantly and on a global scale. No other group of powers collectively even comes close. It also stands alone as a purveyor of major weapons systems and so as a generator of war. It is, in a sense, a massive machine for the promotion of war on a global scale.

We have, in other words, what increasingly looks like a monopoly on war. There have, of course, been warrior societies in the past that committed themselves to a mobilized life of war-making above all else. What’s unique about the United States is that it isn’t a warrior society. Quite the opposite.

Washington may be mobilized for permanent war. Special operations forces may be operating in up to 120 countries. Drone bases may be proliferating across the planet. We may be building up forces in the Persian Gulf and “pivoting” to Asia. Warrior corporations and rent-a-gun mercenary outfits have mobilized on the country’s disparate battlefronts to profit from the increasingly privatized 21st-century American version of war. The American people, however, are demobilized and detached from the wars, interventions, operations, and other military activities done in their name. As a result, 200 Marines in Guatemala, almost 78% of global weapons sales, drones flying surveillance from Australia — no one here notices; no one here cares.

War: it’s what we do the most and attend to the least. It’s a nasty combination.

Copyright 2012 Tom Engelhardt

The Wars Of Corporate America

By Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

Myth: The US was forced to declare war on Japan after a totally unexpected Japanese attack on the American naval base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. On account of Japan’s alliance with Nazi Germany, this aggression automatically brought the US into the war against Germany.

Reality: The Roosevelt administration had been eager for some time to wage war against Japan and sought to unleash such a war by means of the institution of an oil embargo and other provocations. Having deciphered Japanese codes, Washington knew a Japanese fleet was on its way to Pearl Harbor, but welcomed the attack since a Japanese aggression would make it possible to “sell” the war to the overwhelmingly anti-war American public.

An attack by Japan, as opposed to an American attack on Japan, was also supposed to avoid a declaration of war by Japan’s ally, Germany, which was treaty-bound to help only if Japan was attacked. However, for reasons which have nothing to do with Japan or the US but everything with the failure of Germany’s “lightning war” against the Soviet Union, Hitler himself declared war on the US a few days after Pearl Harbor, on December 11, 1941.

Fall 1941. The US, then as now, was ruled by a “Power Elite” of industrialists, owners and managers of the country’s leading corporations and banks, constituting only a tiny fraction of its population. Then as now, these industrialists and financiers – “Corporate America” – had close connections with the highest ranks of the army, “the warlords,” as Columbia University sociologist C. Wright Mills, who coined the term “power elite,”[1] has called them, and for whom a few years later a big HQ, known as the Pentagon, would be erected on the banks of the Potomac River.

Indeed, the “military-industrial complex” had already existed for many decades when, at the end of his career as President, and having served it most assiduously, Eisenhower gave it that name. Talking about presidents: in the 1930s and 1940s, again then as now, the Power Elite kindly allowed the American people every four years to choose between two of the elite’s own members – one labelled “Republican,” the other “Democrat,” but few people know the difference – to reside in the White House in order to formulate and administer national and international policies. These policies invariably served – and still serve – the Power Elite’s interests, in other words, they consistently aimed to promote “business” – a code word for the maximization of profits by the big corporations and banks that are members of the Power Elite.

As President Calvin Coolidge candidly put it on one occasion during the 1920s, “the business of America [meaning of the American government] is business.” In 1941, then, the tenant of the White House was a bona fide member of the Power Elite, a scion of a rich, privileged, and powerful family: Franklin D. Roosevelt, often referred to as “FDR”. (Incidentally, the Roosevelt family’s wealth had been built at least partly in the opium trade with China; as Balzac once wrote, “behind every great fortune there lurks a crime.”)

Roosevelt appears to have served the Power Elite rather well, for he already managed to be nominated (difficult!) and elected (relatively easy!) in 1932, 1936, and again in 1940. That was a remarkable achievement, since the “dirty thirties” were hard times, marked by the “Great Depression” as well as great international tensions, leading to the eruption of war in Europe in 1939. Roosevelt’s job – serving the interests of the Power Elite – was far from easy, because within the ranks of that elite opinions differed about how corporate interests could best be served by the President. With respect to the economic crisis, some industrialists and bankers were pretty happy with the President’s Keynesian approach, known as the “New Deal” and involving much state intervention in the economy, while others were vehemently opposed to it and loudly demanded a return to laissez-faire orthodoxy. The Power Elite was also divided with respect to the handling of foreign affairs.

The owners and top managers of many American corporations – including Ford, General Motors, IBM, ITT, and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New Jersey, now known as Exxon – liked Hitler a lot; one of them – William Knudsen of General Motors – even glorified the German Führer as “the miracle of the 20th century.”[2] The reason: in preparation for war, the Führer had been arming Germany to the teeth, and the numerous German branch plants of US corporations had profited handsomely from that country’s “armament boom” by producing trucks, tanks and planes in sites such as GM’s Opel factory in Rüsselsheim and Ford’s big plant in Cologne, the Ford-Werke; and the likes of Exxon and Texaco had been making plenty of money by supplying the fuel Hitler’s panzers would need to roll all the way to Warsaw in 1939, to Paris in 1940, and (almost) to Moscow in 1941. No wonder the managers and owners of these corporations helped to celebrate Germany’s victories against Poland and France at a big party in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on June 26, 1940!

American “captains of industry” like Henry Ford also liked the way Hitler had shut down the German unions, outlawed all labour parties, and thrown the communists and many socialists into concentration camps; they wished Roosevelt would mete out the same kind of treatment to America’s own pesky union leaders and “reds,” the latter still numerous in the 1930s and early 1940s. The last thing those men wanted, was for Roosevelt to involve the US in the war on the side of Germany’s enemies, they were “isolationists” (or “non-interventionists”) and so, in the summer of 1940, was the majority of the American public: a Gallup Poll, taken in September 1940, showed that 88 percent of Americans wanted to stay out of the war that was raging in Europe.[3] Not surprisingly, then, there was no sign whatsoever that Roosevelt might want to restrict trade with Germany, let alone embark on an anti-Hitler crusade. In fact, during the presidential election campaign in the fall 1940, he solemnly promised that “[our] boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”[4]

That Hitler has crushed France and other democratic countries, was of no concern to the US corporate types who did business with Hitler, in fact, they felt that Europe’s future belonged to fascism, especially Germany’s variety of fascism, Nazism, rather than to democracy. (Typically, the chairman of General Motors, Alfred P. Sloan, declared at that time that it was a good thing that in Europe the democracies were giving way “to an alternative [i.e. fascist] system with strong, intelligent, and aggressive leaders who made the people work longer and harder and who had the instinct of gangsters – all of them good qualities”!)[5] And, since they certainly did not want Europe’s future to belong to socialism in its evolutionary, let alone revolutionary (i.e. communist) variety, the US industrialists would be particularly happy when, about one year later, Hitler would finally do what they have long hoped he would do, namely, to attack the Soviet Union in order to destroy the homeland of communism and source of inspiration and support of “reds” all over the world, also in the US.

While many big corporations were engaged in profitable business with Nazi Germany, others now happened to be making plenty of money by doing business with Great Britain. That country – in addition to Canada and other member countries of the British Empire, of course – was Germany’s only remaining enemy from the fall of 1940 until June 1941, when Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union caused Britain and the Soviet Union to become allies. Britain was desperately in need of all sorts of equipment to continue its struggle against Nazi Germany, wanted to purchase much of it in the US, but was unable to make the cash payments required by America’s existing “Cash-and-Carry” legislation. However, Roosevelt made it possible for US corporations to take advantage of this enormous “window of opportunity” when, on March 11, 1941, he introduced his famous Lend-Lease program, providing Britain with virtually unlimited credit to purchase trucks, planes, and other martial hardware in the US. The Lend-Lease exports to Britain were to generate windfall profits, not only on account of the huge volume of business involved but also because these exports featured inflated prices and fraudulent practices such as double billing.

A segment of Corporate America thus began to sympathize with Great Britain, a less “natural” phenomenon than we would now tend to believe. (Indeed, after American independence the ex-motherland had long remained Uncle Sam’s archenemy; and as late the 1930s, the US military still had plans for war against Britain and an invasion of the Canadian Dominion, the latter including plans for the bombing of cities and the use of poison gas.)[6] Some mouthpieces of this corporate constituency, though not very many, even started to favour a US entry into the war on the side of the British; they became known as the “interventionists.” Of course, many if not most big American corporations made money through business with both Nazi Germany and Britain and, as the Roosevelt administration itself was henceforth preparing for possible war, multiplying military expenditures and ordering all sorts of equipment, they also started to make more and more money by supplying America’s own armed forces with all sorts of martial material.[7]

If there was one thing that all the leaders of Corporate America could agree on, regardless of their individual sympathies towards either Hitler or Churchill, it was this: the war in Europe in 1939 was good, even wonderful, for business. They also agreed that the longer this war lasted, the better it would be for all of them. With the exception of the most fervent pro-British interventionists, they further agreed that there was no pressing need for the US to become actively involved in this war, and certainly not to go to war against Germany. Most advantageous to Corporate America was a scenario whereby the war in Europe dragged on as long as possible, so that the big corporations could continue to profit from supplying equipment to the Germans, the British, to their respective allies, and to America herself. Henry Ford thus “expressed the hope that neither the Allies nor the Axis would win [the war],” and suggested that the United States should supply both sides with “the tools to keep on fighting until they both collapse.” Ford practised what he preached, and arranged for his factories in the US, in Britain, in Germany, and in occupied France to crank out equipment for all belligerents.[8] The war may have been hell for most people, but for American “captains of industry” such as Ford it was heaven.

Roosevelt himself is generally believed to have been an interventionist, but in Congress the isolationists certainly prevailed, and it did not look as if the US would soon, if ever, enter the war. However, on account of Lend-Lease exports to Britain, relations between Washington and Berlin were definitely deteriorating, and in the fall of 1941 a series of incidents between German submarines and US Navy destroyers escorting freighters bound for Britain lead to a crisis that has become known as the “undeclared naval war.” But even that episode did not lead to active American involvement in the war in Europe. Corporate America was profiting handsomely from the status quo, and was simply not interested in a crusade against Nazi Germany. Conversely, Nazi Germany was deeply involved in the great project of Hitler’s life, his mission to destroy the Soviet Union. In this war, things had not been going according to plan. The Blitzkrieg in the East, launched on June 1941, was supposed to have “crushed the Soviet Union like an egg” within 4 to 6 weeks, or so it was believed by the military experts not only in Berlin but also in Washington. However, in early December Hitler was still waiting for the Soviets to wave the white flag. To the contrary, on December 5, the Red Army suddenly launched a counter-offensive in front of Moscow, and suddenly the Germans found themselves deeply in trouble. The last thing Hitler needed at this point was a war against the US.[9]

In the 1930s, the US military had no plans, and did not prepare plans, to fight a war against Nazi Germany. On the other hand, they did have plans war against Great Britain, Canada, Mexico – and Japan.[10] Why against Japan? In the 1930s, the US was one of the world’s leading industrial powers and, like all industrial powers, was constantly looking out for sources of inexpensive raw materials such as rubber and oil, as well as for markets for its finished products. Already at the end of the nineteenth century, America had consistently pursued its interests in this respect by extending its economic and sometimes even direct political influence across oceans and continents. This aggressive, “imperialist” policy – pursued ruthlessly by presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt, a cousin of FDR – had led to American control over former Spanish colonies such as Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, and also over the hitherto independent island nation of Hawaii. America had thus also developed into a major power in the Pacific Ocean and even in the Far East.[11]

The lands on the far shores of the Pacific Ocean played an increasingly important role as markets for American export products and as sources of cheap raw materials. But in the Depression-ridden 1930s, when the competition for markets and resources was heating up, the US faced the competition there of an aggressive rival industrial power, one that was even more needy for oil and similar raw materials, and also for markets for its finished products. That competitor was Japan, the land of the rising sun. Japan sought to realize its own imperialist ambitions in China and in resource-rich Southeast Asia and, like the US, did not hesitate to use violence in the process, for example waging ruthless war on China and carving a client state out of the northern part of that great but weak country. What bothered the United States was not that the Japanese treated their Chinese and Korean neighbours as Untermenschen, but that they turned that part of the world into what they called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, i.e., an economic bailiwick of their very own, a “closed economy” in with there was no room for the American competition. In doing so, the Japanese actually followed the example of the US, which had earlier transformed Latin America and much of the Caribbean into Uncle Sam’s exclusive economic playground.[12]

Corporate America was extremely frustrated at being squeezed out of the lucrative Far Eastern market by the “Japs,” a “yellow race” Americans in general had already started to despise during the 19th century.[13] Japan was viewed as an arrogant but essentially weak upstart country, that mighty America could easily “wipe off the map in three months,” as Navy Secretary Frank Knox put it on one occasion.[14] And so it happened that, during the 1930s and early 1940s, the US Power Elite, while mostly opposed to war against Germany, was virtually unanimously in favour of a war against Japan – unless, of course, Japan was prepared to make major concessions, such as “sharing” China with the US. President Roosevelt – like Woodrow Wilson not at all the pacifist he has been made out to be by all too many historians – was keen to provide such a “splendid little war.” (This expression had been coined by US Secretary of State John Hay in reference to the Spanish-American War of 1898; it was “splendid” in that it allowed the US to pocket the Philippines, Puerto Rico, etc.) By the summer of 1941, after Tokyo had further increased its zone of influence in the Far East, e.g. by occupying the rubber-rich French colony of Indochina and, desperate above all for oil, had obviously started to lust after the oil-rich Dutch colony of Indonesia, FDR appears to have decided that the time was ripe for war against Japan, but he faced two problems. First, public opinion was strongly against American involvement in any foreign war. Second, the isolationist majority in Congress might not consent to such a war, fearing that it would automatically bring the US into war against Germany.

Roosevelt’s solution to this twin problem, according to the author of a detailed and extremely well documented recent study, Robert B. Stinnett, was to “provoke Japan into an overt act of war against the United States.”[15] Indeed, in case of a Japanese attack the American public would have no choice but to rally behind the flag. (The public had similarly been made to rally behind the Stars and Stripes before, namely at the start of the Spanish-American War, when the visiting US battleship Maine had mysteriously sunk in Havana harbour, an act that was immediately blamed on the Spanish; after World War II, Americans would again be conditioned to approve of wars, wanted and planned by their government, by means of contrived provocations such as the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident.) Furthermore, under the terms of the Tripartite Treaty concluded by Japan, Germany, and Italy in Berlin on September 27, 1940, the three countries undertook to assist each other when one of the three contracting powers was attacked by another country, but not when one of them attacked another country. Consequently, in case of a Japanese attack on the US, the isolationists, who were non-interventionists with respect to Germany but not with respect to Japan, did not have to fear that a conflict with Japan would also mean war against Germany.

And so, President Roosevelt, having decided that “Japan must be seen to make the first overt move,” made “provoking Japan into an overt act of war the principal policy that guided [his] actions toward Japan throughout 1941,” as Stinnett has written. The stratagems used included the deployment of warships close to, and even into, Japanese territorial waters, apparently in the hope of sparking a Gulf of Tonkin-style incident that could be construed to be a casus belli.  More effective, however, was the relentless economic pressure that was brought to bear on Japan, a country desperately in need of raw materials such as oil and rubber and therefore likely to consider such methods to be singularly provocative. In the summer of 1941, the Roosevelt administration froze all Japanese assets in the United States and embarked on a “strategy for frustrating Japanese acquisition of petroleum products.” In collaboration with the British and the Dutch, anti-Japanese for reasons of their own, the US imposed severe economic sanctions on Japan, including an embargo on vital oil products. The situation deteriorated further in the fall of 1941. On November 7, Tokyo, hoping to avoid war with the mighty US, offered to apply in China the principle of non-discriminatory trade relations on the condition that the Americans did the same in their own sphere of influence in Latin America. However, Washington wanted reciprocity only in the sphere of influence of other imperialist powers, and not in its own backyard; the Japanese offer was rejected.

The continuing US provocations of Japan were intended to cause Japan to go to war, and were indeed increasingly likely to do so. “This continuing putting pins in rattlesnakes,” FDR was to confide to friends later, “finally got this country bit.” On November 26, when Washington a demanded Japan’s withdrawal from China, the “rattlesnakes” in Tokyo decided they had enough and prepared to “bite.” A Japanese fleet was ordered to set sail for Hawaii in order to attack the US warships that FDR had decided to station there, rather provocatively as well as invitingly as far as the Japanese were concerned, in 1940. Having deciphered the Japanese codes, the American government and top army brass knew exactly what the Japanese armada was up to, but did not warn the commanders in Hawaii, thus allowing the “surprise attack” on Pearl Harbor to happen on Sunday, December 7, 1941.[16]

The following day FDR found it easy to convince Congress to declare war on Japan, and the American people, shocked by a seemingly cowardly attack that they could not know to have been provoked, and expected, by their own government, predictably rallied behind the flag. The US was ready to wage war against Japan, and the prospects for a relatively easy victory were hardly diminished by the losses suffered at Pearl Harbour which, while ostensibly grievous, were far from catastrophic. The ships that had been sunk were older, “mostly 27-year old relics of World War I,” and far from indispensible for warfare against Japan. The modern warships, on the other hand, including the aircraft carriers, whose role in the war would turn out to be crucial, were unscathed, as per chance (?) they had been sent elsewhere by orders from Washington and were safely out at sea during the attack.[17] However, things did not quite work out as expected, because a few days later, on December 11, Nazi Germany unexpectedly declared war, thus forcing the US to confront two enemies and to fight a much bigger war than expected, a war on two fronts, a world war.

In the White House, the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had not arrived as a surprise, but the German declaration of war exploded there as a bombshell. Germany had nothing to do with the attack in Hawaii and had not even been aware of the Japanese plans, so FDR did not consider asking Congress to declare war on Nazi Germany at the same time as Japan. Admittedly, US relations with Germany had been deteriorating for some time because of America’s active support for Great Britain, escalating to the undeclared naval war of the fall of 1941. However, as we have already seen, the US Power Elite did not feel the need to intervene in the war in Europe. It was Hitler himself who declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, much to the surprise of Roosevelt. Why? Only a few days earlier, on December 5, 1941, the Red Army had launched a counteroffensive in front of Moscow, and this entailed the failure of the Blitzkrieg in the Soviet Union. On that same day, Hitler and his generals realized that they could no longer win the war. But when, only a few days later, the German dictator learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he appears to have speculated that a German declaration of war on the American enemy of his Japanese friends, though not required under the terms of the Tripartite Treaty, would induce Tokyo to reciprocate with a declaration of war on the Soviet enemy of Germany.

With the bulk of the Japanese army stationed in northern China and therefore able to immediately attack the Soviet Union in the Vladivostok area, a conflict with Japan would have forced the Soviets into the extremely perilous predicament of a two-front war, opening up the possibility that Germany might yet win its anti-Soviet “crusade.” Hitler, then, believed that he could exorcize the spectre of defeat by summoning a sort of Japanese deus ex machina to the Soviet Union’s vulnerable Siberian frontier. But Japan did not take Hitler’s bait. Tokyo, too, despised the Soviet state but, already at war against the US, could not afford the luxury of a two-front war and preferred to put all of its money on a “southern” strategy, hoping to win the big prize of resource-rich Southeast Asia, rather than embark on a venture in the inhospitable reaches of Siberia. Only at the very end of the war, after the surrender of Nazi Germany, would it come to hostilities between the Soviet Union and Japan. In any event, because of Hitler’s needless declaration of war, the United States was henceforth also an active participant in the war in Europe, with Great Britain and the Soviet Union as allies.[18]

In recent years, Uncle Sam has been going to war rather frequently, but we are invariably asked to believe that this is done for purely humanitarian reasons, i.e. to prevent holocausts, to stop terrorists from committing all sorts of evil, to get rid of nasty dictators, to promote democracy, etc.[19]

Never, it seems, are economic interests of the US or, more accurately, of America’s big corporations, involved. Quite often, these wars are compared to America’s archetypal “good war,” World War II, in which Uncle Sam supposedly went to war for no other reason than to defend freedom and democracy and to fight dictatorship and injustice. (In an attempt to justify his “war against terrorism,” for example, and “sell” it to the American public, George W. Bush was quick to compare the 9/11 attacks to Pearl Harbor.) This short examination of the circumstances of the US entry into the war in December 1941, however, reveals a very different picture. The American Power Elite wanted war against Japan, plans for such a war had been ready for some time, and in 1941 Roosevelt obligingly arranged for such a war, not because of Tokyo’s unprovoked aggression and horrible war crimes in China, but because American corporations wanted a share of the luscious big “pie” of Far Eastern resources and markets. On the other hand, because the major US corporations were doing wonderful business in and with Nazi Germany, profiting handsomely from the war Hitler had unleashed and, incidentally, providing him with the equipment and fuel required for his Blitzkrieg, war against Nazi Germany was definitely not wanted by the US Power Elite, even though there were plenty of compelling humanitarian reasons for crusading against the truly evil “Third Reich.” Prior to 1941, no plans for a war against Germany had been developed, and in December 1941 the US did not voluntarily go to war against Germany, but “backed into” that war because of Hitler’s own fault.

Humanitarian considerations played no role whatsoever in the calculus that led to America’s participation in World War II, the country’s original “good war.” And there is no reason to believe that they did so in the calculus that, more recently, led to America’s marching off to fight allegedly “good wars” in unhappy lands such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya – or will do so in the looming war against Iran.

A war against Iran is very much wanted by Corporate America, since it holds the promise of a large market and of plentiful raw materials, especially oil. As in the case of the war against Japan, plans for such a war are ready, and the present tenant in the White House seems just as eager as FDR was to make it happen. Furthermore, again as in the case of the war against Japan, provocations are being orchestrated, this time in the form of sabotage and intrusions by drones, as well as by the old-fashioned deployment of warships just outside Iranian territorial waters. Washington is again “putting pins in rattlesnakes,” apparently hoping that the Iranian “rattlesnake” will bite back, thus justifying a “splendid little war.” However, as in the case of Pearl Harbor, the resulting war may well again turn out to be much bigger, longer, and nastier than expected.

Jacques R. Pauwels is the author of The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, James Lorimer, Toronto, 2002

 Notes

[1] C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, New York, 1956.
[2] Cited in Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: An Exposé of The Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949, New York, 1983, p. 163.
[3] Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, New York, 2001, p. 17.
[4] Cited in Sean Dennis Cashman, America, Roosevelt, and World War II, New York and London, 1989, p. 56; .
[5] Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust, Washington/DC, 2009, p. 115.
[6] Floyd Rudmin, “Secret War Plans and the Malady of American Militarism,” Counterpunch, 13:1, February 17-19, 2006. pp. 4-6, http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/02/17/secret-war-plans-and-the-malady-of-american-militarism
[7] Jacques R. Pauwels, The Myth of the Good War : America in the Second World War, Toronto, 2002, pp. 50-56. The fraudulent practices of Lend-Lease are described in Kim Gold, “The mother of all frauds: How the United States swindled Britain as it faced Nazi Invasion,” Morning Star, April 10, 2003.
[8] Cited in David Lanier Lewis, The public image of Henry Ford: an American folk hero and his company, Detroit, 1976, pp. 222, 270.
[9] Jacques R. Pauwels, “70 Years Ago, December 1941: Turning Point of World War II,” Global Research, December 6, 2011, http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28059.
[10] Rudmin, op. cit.
[11] See e.g. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, s.l., 1980, p. 305 ff.
[12] Patrick J. Hearden, Roosevelt confronts Hitler: America’s Entry into World War II, Dekalb/IL, 1987, p. 105.
[13] “Anti-Japanese sentiment,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment
[14] Patrick J. Buchanan, “Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?,” Global Research, December 7, 2011,http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28088 . Buchanan refers to a new book by George H. Nash, Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and its Aftermath, Stanford/CA, 2011.
[15] Stinnett, op. cit., p. 6.
[16] Stinnett, op. cit., pp. 5, 9-10, 17-19, 39-43; Buchanan, op. cit.; Pauwels, The Myth…, pp. 67-68. On American intercepts of coded Japanese messages, see Stinnett, op. cit., pp. 60-82. “Rattlesnakes”-quotation from Buchanan, op. cit.
[17] Stinnett, op. cit., pp. 152-154.
[18] Pauwels, “70 Years Ago…”
[19] See Jean Bricmont, Humanitarian imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War, New York, 2006.

The Treasures Of War

Frank Insight Into The Priorities Behind The British Occupation Of Iraq, and The Inherent Entanglement Between The Military Effort and 'British Business'

John Humphrys discussed the closure of the British consulate in Basra with financier Andrew Alderson and executive chairman of the Iraq Britain Business Council, Baroness Nicholson, and addressed the potential effects for British business investments in the region. The discussion highlights the resultant profitability of the UK's involvement in the war on Iraq, in particular the six-year occupation of Basra (which, as Nicholson described, 'is going to be one of the most significant oil hubs of the globe'), and the sustained efforts to secure the region for the benefit of British corporations.

Concern was raised by all participants for the potential ill effects of the closure on British investments in Basra, echoing the ‘furious reaction from business leaders’ (as The Telegraph put it) following the announcement. In somewhat nostalgic tones, Humphrys quotes the British Consul general Nigel Haywood, who, following the invasion, was ‘so optimistic about Britain’s commercial hopes for Basra, with its vast oil resources’.

Baroness Nicholson describes the benefits currently reaped by business: ‘… we have a bunch of companies there … who are doing wonderfully well. If you just look at the Shell flared gas, for example; that’s an 18 billion dollar contract. If you just look at BP pumping out a million barrels of oil a day...’

The concern is that the closure of the consulate will leave current investments without government support and will ‘send the wrong message’ to business. Andrew Alderson, who had in 2003 been given ‘authority for over one fifth of Iraq's finances’ emphasised how after ‘we put our people and we make this investment in people and time and motion, and then lives’, ‘we’ve got to see it through to the finish … I think at the moment there’s a danger that we are signalling a withdrawal and we are not seeing it through to a logical finish’.

In his opening comments Humphrys hypothesised that ‘future historians […] might well point at Basra as a tragic example of shattered hopes, of British lives and treasures squandered perhaps’.

The ‘squandering’ of ‘lives and treasures’ only stands, it seems, if British business is unable to continue to extract the region’s wealth. The underlying premise for all involved is that the 179 British lives lost (the effects of the occupation on the people of the region don’t register as a concern, despite the emergence of reports that same week of birth defects in Basra ‘after British troops invaded’ are in vain only if profits cannot be made for British business.

Perhaps remembering the listening public, following 10 minutes of discussion, Baroness Nicholson reminds the others ‘that the loss of British lives was not designed to make commercial contracts [Humphrys quickly agrees] … it was to make freedom for the Basra people.’ (Humphrys: ‘of course’.)

Nicholson goes on to make several disingenuous statements, summarising why the Iraqis are ‘grateful that we [the British army] were there’: ‘They’ve got a semblance of democracy, they’ve got freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom to work, they’ve got education coming back, they’ve got a much better situation than before… they’re so grateful that we were there’ (listen below).

On the matter of freedom of speech, it is worth noting what Iraqi activist Yanar Mohammed told the Democracy Now! news programme in December 2011, discussing the Arab Spring uprising in Baghdad:

We demonstrated. The Arab Spring was there very strong but got oppressed in ways that were new to Iraqi people. Anti-riot police of the American style was something that we witnessed there. The big vehicles that sprayed us with the hot water, polluted water, pushed us out of these squares. And sound bombs were thrown at us, live ammunition; the full works. This is not a democratic country.

A BBC report in November 2011 also made note of the violent clampdown by security forces at the start of the Arab Spring in the country that Nicholson claims has freedom of speech.

On the comment that ‘they’ve got education coming back’, Nicholson’s somewhat sugar-coated colonial perspective lacks historical context, failing to note that it was the UN sanctions, backed by the UK that were responsible for the destruction of the education system in Iraq throughout the 1990s. Murtaza Hussain recently wrote for Al Jazeera about the sanctions on Iran (now) and Iraq (in the ’90s). On Iraqi education, he wrote that

The rapidly deteriorating economic environment due to sanctions had the necessary side-effect of severely undermining the Iraqi education system, which had been funded through oil revenues and had heretofore succeeded in producing historically high literacy rates among both the male and female populations.

As much as Nicholson is upset at the closure of the consulate, she has some sense of relief knowing that ‘the British government has at last recognised the high value to British Industry of Iraq’. The disingenuous implication that the British government has not until now realised the ‘massive opportunities to profit’ (Humphrys words) spoken of by British business ‘in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war’, like Nicholson’s earlier claims, goes unchallenged by the Today show host. This despite evidence to the contrary. For example, the release of minutes from a Foreign Office meeting with BP in November 2002, five months before the invasion, noted that ‘Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity’.

Humphrys comments towards the end of the interview (made with a tone of seeming incredulity) point to the underlying rationale for the discussion (listen below):

It’s not a straight quid pro quo, of course, but nonetheless, surely, if a country has sent its young men to another country to die, to restore, to create democracy¹ in that country you’d expect a bit of gratitude, wouldn’t you? (Emphasis added.)

Only after such distortion as took place in this discussion – reiterating the discredited justifications for the invasion of Iraq, omitting the human rights abuses committed during the British occupation, and touting the ‘semblance of democracy’ granted to the people of Iraq – could one reach such a conclusion.

Via: "News UnSpun"

Mapping Drone Proliferation

Big Business vs. The MTCR

A new US Congress report on the proliferation of drones has confirmed a huge rise in the number of countries that now have military unmanned aerial systems.  The USGovernment Accountability Office (GAO) has published an unclassified version of its February 2012 report on the proliferation of UAVs.  The report examines both the proliferation of UAVs, commonly known as drones, and examines US and multilateral controls on the export of drone technology.  

The report states that between 2005  and December 2011, the number of countries that posses drones rose from 41 to 76 (see here for full list).

Countries that have drones according to GAO report

According to the report: 

“The majority of foreign UAVs that countries have acquired fall within the tactical category. Tactical UAVs primarily conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions and typically have a limited operational range of at most 300 kilometres. However, some more advanced varieties are capable of performing intelligence collection, targeting, or attack missions. Mini UAVs were also frequently acquired across the globe during this period.” 

It should be noted that currently only the US, UK and Israel are known to have used armed UAVs.

The report goes on: “Currently, there are over 50 countries developing more than 900 different UAV systems. This growth is attributed to countries seeing the success of the United States with UAVs in Iraq and Afghanistan and deciding to invest resources into UAV development to compete economically and militarily in this emerging area.”

While the report fails to highlight the danger of growing drone proliferation to global peace and security it does emphasize the danger of drone proliferation to “US interests”.  The report states that “the use of UAVs by foreign parties to gather information on U.S. military activities has already taken place” and “the significant growth in the number of countries that have acquired UAVs, including key countries of concern, has increased the threat to the United States.”  

Despite this, the report states “the U.S. government has determined that selected transfers of UAV technology support its national security interests”, thus highlighting the contradiction at the heart of current arms control measures.  ‘Private sector representatives’  told the reports authors that “UAVs are one of the most important growth sectors in the defense industry and provide significant opportunities for economic benefits if U.S. companies can remain competitive in the global UAV market.”

Table 1: US drone sales Fiscal Year 2005-2010

The report reveals that between 2005 – 2010, the US approved over $380m of drone exports (Table 1).  In total, the U.S. government approved transfers of complete UAV systems in 15 cases over the period.  Eight of the 15 countries were names in the report:  Denmark, Italy, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Australia, Colombia, Israel, and Singapore. Additionally, 1,278 UAV-related licenses  were identified over the period.

The US and The MTCR

The main international agreement that controls the transfer of drones is the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).  Although not primarily focused on drones, the MTCR controls UAVs by dividing them into two categories. Category One systems are capable of delivering a 500 kilogram warhead further than 300 kilometres, while Category II covers systems that carry a lighter warhead or have a range of less than 300km. Although all decisions are taken on a national basis (and there is no sanction by other countries if the MTCR is broken) there is a “strong presumption of denial” underpinning Category One – that is, an assumption that MTCR signatory states will not export such systems. Countries have greater discretion about exporting Category Two systems.

Drone Wars UK has previously highlighted efforts by US corporation to “relax” controls on the export of drones.  However the GAO report details for the first time “six US-sponsored UAV-related proposals” to amend the MTCR over the 2005-2011 period, five of which “would have resulted in moving some UAVs currently categorized under MTCR Category I to Category II” and thus making them more easier to export.  The five proposals were rejected by other members of the MTCR.

While the GAO report goes on to detail the need to improve internal US controls on the export of drones and related technology (recommending improving information databases and communication between licensing departments and intelligence agencies), it shies away from advocating the need to improve international controls. 

Two weeks ago it was reported that the Pentagon has identified 66 countries that would be eligible to buy US drones under new guidelines yet to be approved by Congress.  Meanwhile, Germany wants to buy armed drones; while neighbouringPoland plans to scrap its manned fighters for armed drones, just as Canada wants to spend $1 billion on armed drones and Australia too plans to spend $3 billion on drones.

The time for global controls to stop the spread of drones has never been more urgent or important.  Next month the 26th annual plenary meeting of the MTCR takes place in Berlin behind closed doors.  No public agenda or details of the meeting are available.  We urge all those involved to see the growing dangers of drone proliferation and to resist the siren calls by those with vested interests to relax the controls that currently exist.

Table 2: List Of Countries Reported By US GAO To Posses Drones.

Algeria	Egypt	Lebanon	Singapore
Angola	Estonia	Libya	Slovakia
Argentina	Ethiopia	Lithuania	Slovenia
Australia	Finland	Malaysia	South Africa
Austria	France	Mexico	Spain
Azerbaijan	Georgia	Morocco	Sri Lanaka
Belarus	Germany	Netherlands	Sweden
Belgium	Greece	New Zealand	Switzerland
Botswana	Hungary	Nigeria	Syria
Brazil	India	Norway	Taiwan
Bulgaria	Indonesia	Pakistan	Thailand
Burundi	Iran	Panama	Trinidad & Tobago
Canada	Israel	Peru	Tunisia
Chile	Italy	Philippines	Turkey
China	Ivory Coast	Poland	Uganda
Colombia	Japan	Republic of Korea	Ukraine
Croatia	Jordan	Romania	UAE
Czech Republic	Kazakhstan	Russia	United Kingdom
Denmark	Latvia	Serbia	United States

Via: "Drone Wars UK"