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Sep-11-2008
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Views expressed here are author"s own and not of this website. Full disclaimer is
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(The author is a Professor in International Economics in Nagasaki University, Japan)
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A new cold-war has already emerged between USA and Russia, which may have significant implications for India in near future and can alter all strategic plans of India regarding its positions in the world and its economic policy. Russia, in response to Georgia"s attempt to invade South Ossetia, where the population of 70,000 have Russian citizenship, has declared both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both parts of Georgia, as independent nations and sends its army to protect them. Russia also controls the important port city of Shukumi in Georgia. In response USA has sent its battle ships to the Georgian coast. The Russian new President Dmitry Medvedev has declared that Russia is not worried about the new "cold war". Media in India has so far ignored the issue as usual because India always wakes up too late to understand he significance of changes in major international events.
Since the days of President Clinton USA is advancing steadily towards Russia to include both East European countries and former republics of the Soviet Unions within the Western military alliance of NATO. George Bush went further to include both Ukraine and Georgia within NATO but prevented by the wise advices from both France and Germany. In response, on 26 April, 2007 President Putin declared cancellation of the Soviet era treaty with NATO to limit conventional weapons in Europe. There are speculations that Russia may cancel also the "Strategic Arms Control Limitation" treaty signed in 1991 and 1993 to restrict the number of nuclear weapons and missiles by both NATO and Russia. In an assembly of world"s leaders on national security in Munich on 10 February 2007 former President Putin warned that "the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is very dangerous: Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law". Putin voiced concern about U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in eastern Europe, in Poland and the Czech Republic, and the expansion of NATO as possible challenges to Russia.
Immediately in response the U.S Secretary of Defense Roberts Gates said, "America needs a very strong army to be prepared for possible threats in the future. We do not know what changes can take place in such countries as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and others." It is the continuation of a long strategy of the U.S to project its dominance over the globe. On September 17, 2002 the Bush, administration published its "National Security Strategy of the United States of America". The document asserts as the guiding policy of the United States the right to use military force anywhere in the world, at any time it chooses, against any country it believes to be, or it believes may at some point become, a threat to American interests. President Bush asserted that "America"s values are right and true for every person, in every society."
USA has selected three areas to contain possible rivals: The Middle East, East Europe and East Asia. In the Middle East the rival is militant Islam. In East Europe the rival is resurgent Russia under Putin, who is still the Prime-Minister of Russia. In East Asia the possible rival is China. However, China is now the most important partner of the U.S corporations and as a result is not a rival as such on the political and military front. United States hope that by controlling the oil wealth of the Middle East it is possible to regulate militant Islam and to set it against resurgent Russia. President Clinton has tried that by supporting Bosnian Muslims against the orthodox Christians of Serbia. Benazir Bhutto, on the request of Clinton, has sent an army of 10000 Arab and Pakistani terrorists to Bosnia to kill the Christians and start the communal war. Then Cinton has bombed Serbia into submission to give up Kosovo. During his time Chechen Muslims revolting against Russia also got supports from USA, Britain and Western Europe. Through the occupation of Iraq USA will try in future to eliminate any possibility of Russian influence in the Middle East. Thus, still the real rival for the USA in the world scale is Russia as the Soviet Union was before 1991.
The programme to contain the Soviet Union in Central Asia had started by President Carter in 1978 after the revolution in Asfghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor of President Carter, wrote in his a book, "The Grand Chessboard", that "America"s capacity to exercise global primacy" depends on whether America can prevent "the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power". Brzezinski then concluded: "Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played." American support for the fundamentalist Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan via Pakistan since 1978 and the eventual destruction of Afghanistan is the direct result of that strategy. Weapon supply by President Reagan to the fundamentalist Iran was another strategy to support directly or indirectly the Islamic insurgency within the Soviet Union. The process continued against Russia even after the demise of the Soviet Union. The recent reversals of the results of the election in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kirghizistan, in which elected presidents are replaced by new pro-Western presidents in new rigged elections, as demanded by the mob, hired, fed, and employed by the Western organizations, are the direct result of that policy to contain and demoralize Russia.
In the Balkans following the war on Serbia in 1999, the former Yugoslavia is firmly under Western control. In 2001, in the context of the Afghanistan invasion, the US established military bases for the first time in former Soviet republics and emerged as a presence in Central Asia. Since then, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzistan and Azerbaijan have allied themselves to the US. In 2003, a pro-Western regime came to power in Georgia, through the mob violence organized by Western intelligence services as witnessed in Ukraine as well in 2004. In Europe, most members of the former Warsaw Pact, including the former Baltic Soviet republics, have now joined NATO and the European Union. If Ukraine and Georgia would join N.A.T.O, Russia would be largely isolated.
Emerging Relationship between Ukraine and USA:
The US continued with its aggressive strategy and groomed the pro-Western president Yushchenko. Donations from institutes established by Soros have helped develop and finance the Ukrainian student movement "Pora" ("It is Time") along the lines of similar movements in Serbia and Georgia to remove pro-Russian politicians from power. Yushchenko"s way to power in 2004 was accompanied with a series of strange assassinations, the assassinations of Viktor Yushchenko"s first wife, and the former chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, Vadim Getman. Yushchenko fled Ukraine after being the finance minister, was arrested in the U.S for theft charges but came out from the US prison when his first wife was murdered and he married an official of President Bush in a hurry. He then came back to Ukraine as the champion of democracy for Ukraine. Ukraine is now about to join NATO.
With nearly 50 million inhabitants, Ukraine is, after Russia, by far the biggest of the successor states of the Soviet Union. Ukraine is connected to Russia by a common history and nationality, extending back to the Kiev-Rus, the birth of the Russian nationhood in the ninth Century. During the past 300 years, the largest part of today"s Ukraine was either Russian or Soviet national territory, or both. The heavy industry of the Eastern Ukraine, developed under the Soviet regime, is closely linked with its Russian counterpart. The dissolution of these links would have damaging consequences for both countries.
An additional factor is the strategic significance of Ukraine. Eighty percent of Russian gas and oil exports to Europe-its most important source of foreign exchange-flows through Ukrainian pipelines. The main base of the Russian Black Sea fleet, Sebastopol, is also situated on Ukrainian national territory. Russia is threatened with the loss of influence over one of the most important industrial regions of the former Soviet Union and the loss of control over the export routes of its most important raw materials, oil, and gas.
Georgia, a new US Ally:
During the Soviet Union era, most of the Soviet investment went into building up the backward, mostly Muslim nations and areas rather than Russia proper. The result is well-educated and well-organized republics such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, and Azerbaijan among others. These countries are sitting on top of or in close proximity to Caspian Basin oil.
After the overthrow of the Soviet Union, the United States moved to establish its strength in the Caspian area. They practically bought up Georgia, a key Caspian country. Both the former and the current head of the Georgian government, Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikhail Saakashvili, are bitterly anti-Russian and very pro-U.S., although a large number of Georgian fled to Russia since 1991 to avoid the chaos, lawlessness and poverty of the independent Georgia, which used to be the most prosperous republic of the old Soviet Union.
The most important factor in Georgia is that the country is now an essential link in the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, constructed by the Western oil companies, that carry oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey. Control over Caspian Sea oil is perceived by the Western powers, led by the United States, to be a vital strategic interest. Georgia"s strategic importance has resulted in an American military presence in the country to train its armed forces since 2003. Mikheil Saakashvili, who forced President Edward Shevardnadze to resign on 23 November 2003 after three weeks of demonstrations organized by Western intelligence services, has colossal support from George W. Bush himself. The result of his election was the withdrawal of Russian military bases from Georgia and their replacements by the U.S. army. Now Georgia wants to join NATO as well.
Empire building for Oil:
Now, as the United States occupies both Afghanistan and Iraq and deploys troops for the first time in the energy-rich regions of Central Asia and the Caucasus, the borders of a new American empire appear to be forming. The aim is to protect the growing economic interests of USA in Central Asia and the Caucasus, which are crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in December 2004 that Kazakhstan"s oil was becoming of "critical importance". Jane"s Foreign Report said recently that "Caspian reserves could be critical to future global energy supply," This is in line with the doctrine of "full-spectrum dominance" that now seems to govern American foreign policy and is manifesting itself in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
In his book The Grand Chessboard, Zbignew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Carter, urged that the U.S. take command of Central Asia and its "enormous concentration of oil and gas reserves" in order to command all of Eurasia. Brzezinski noted that "a truly massive and widely perceived external threat" would be needed to incline the U.S. public into a "supportive mood" for engagement in international war. He wrote that in 1997, four years before the 9/11 attacks on World Trade Center in New York. Brzezinski remembered, "the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor" as providing just such a threat or pretext.
In 2000 Vice President Dick Cheney, the then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former president of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz, and the then Defense Policy advisor Richard Perle were among authors of Project for the Next American Century (PNAC) papers, which repeated the goal of absolute U.S. supremacy. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all the other authors share ties to the oil-and-gas and/or pharmaceutical and/or weapons-of-mass-destruction industries. PNAC became the mantra of the US foreign policy since then.
PNAC wrote in September 2000 that the U.S. military should be transformed to a capability that let it "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars". PNAC 2000 estimated that such a "transformation" would require defense spending to have "a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually." PNAC 2000 added, one year before 9/11: "The process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor." Following the "new Pearl Harbor" of " "9/11" ", the defense budget of the U.S. rose to $345.7 billion in 2002 and to $365 billion in 2003, not counting costs of war against Iraq, which is about US$320 billion so far. However, resurgent Russia is now upsetting this U.S. plan for its global supremacy.
Russia, which was during the days of President Yeltsin impoverished and descending into social and political chaos, is now revived by Putin and by the enormous amount of wealth from exports of oil and gas. It is still armed with thousands of nuclear warheads, sprawling across Eurasia, encompassing or bordering on vast energy reserves in Eastern Siberia.
It is now clear was the actual reason for the highly costly and ineffective regime change in Iraq was not "Democracy" but control of oil and gas resources of the world. The quest for energy control has initiated the attempts for regime changes in Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgystan in recent years. It also can explain the USA"s hostility towards Lain America"s very popular democracies in Venezuela and Bolivia. The impending invasion on Iran is another attempt of the U.S to control Iran"s oil resources, where only the Western companies would be allowed to control all natural resources of the world eliminating all competitions from Russia or any other nations.
Implications for India:
In 1978 India had failed to understand the significance of the US design to provoke Pakistan to invade Afghanistan in the guise of tribal Muzzahideen. The objective of the US as admitted recently by Zbignew Brzezinski (in Le Nouvel Observateur of France, Jan 15-21, 1998) was to drag the Soviet Union into Afghanistan to defend the country against Pakistan. In July 3, 1979 President Carter signed the first directive for that secret aid and the Soviet Army came to Afghanistan in 24 December 1979 otherwise Pakistan would have occupied Afghanistan by then. Weapons for the Mujahideen were bought with U.S. and Saudi funds from China and Egypt. Reagan increased the budget by thousand folds.
As a result of these continuous military aid from the US, Pakistan became very powerful. Ayub Khan wrote in his recently published diary that in 1968 US was thinking of an independent Kashmir in collaboration with Pakistan. The war against the Soviet Army gave a boost to that effort. In 1987 the Soviet Union has decided to withdraw the Soviet Army from Afghanistan as the situation was then stabilized according to Gorbachev. Violent demonstrations in Kashmir for independence have started also in 1987. It began with anti-India tirade all over the valley and mushrooming of a number of underground militant organizations like J.K.L.F. and Hizb-i-Islami.
The operation was designed in Pakistan with a code name Operation TOPAC. General Zia addressed a meeting of selected military commanders and top bosses of I.S.I. (Inter Services Intelligence) in April 1988 and said: " As you know, due to our preoccupation in Afghanistan, in the service of Islam, I have not been able to put these plans before you earlier. Let there be no mistake, however, that our aim remains quite clear and firm and that is the liberation of the Kashmir Valley - our Muslim Kashmiri brothers cannot be allowed to stay with India for any length of time, now. We whip up anti-Indian feelings amongst the students and peasants, preferably on some religious issues, so that we can enlist their active support for rioting and anti-government demonstrations. By the grace of God, we have managed to accumulate large stocks of modern arms and ammunition from US consignments intended for Afghan Mujahideen. This will help our Kashmiri brethren achieve their goals."
In 1989, the last soldier of the Soviet Union had left Afghanistan. A full-scale attack on the non-Muslims of Kashmir also had started in 1989. In 1992, Pakistan army in the guise of Muzahideens occupied Afghanistan and reduced the country to the Stone Age. In 1992 President Clinton"s special assistant to South Asia Robin Raffael had declared that USA does not recognize J&K as a part of India.
Even today India does not understand the design of the US in central Asia. United States constructed its most active regional terrorism partnerships with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, despite evidence that both governments had been penetrated by Al Qaeda. The geopolitical strategy of dominion in Central Asia, begun in 1978 with the "Afghan trap to ruin the Soviet Union" has emerged again to stop Russia to reemerge as a superpower challenging the supremacy of the US in Eurasia.
India with very limited natural resources like oil would be very badly affected if the U.S will have monopoly power on the oil resources. It can cut off all supplies to India, as it did in 1960 to demand arbitrary price and any other concessions from India. In 1960 India had two formidable friends, Iraq and the Soviet Union, to ignore the US pressure. However, today India because of its own lazy and contradictory foreign policy is practically without any real friend in the world.
Experience for the last sixty years should be enough lesson for India to understand that US is an unreliable friend, who has a very different plan for Eurasia, which does not accommodate India in the picture. Pakistan can still be useful for the US to control the region and that was the reason Pakistan is already chosen as the NATO ally of the US. China is a very important economic partner of the US. India thought for many years that the US would declare Pakistan as a terrorist state, but it did not. Now India is making the mistake to think that USA will consider India as the strategic partner against China. USA will not do that because China is the most important strategic commercial collaborator for USA today.
Thus, India by refusing to understand the full implication of this emerging cold war is making a serious mistake once again as it did before regarding Afghanistan, and Pakistan. India refused to help Afghanistan in 1989 when Dr. Najjibullah pleaded India again and again for help. As a result Pakistan had turned Afghanistan as one of its province from 1992 to 2001 and then sent terrorists to take away Kashmir from India in the same way. Indian policy makers today are making the same strategic mistake by not understanding the significance of this emerging cold war. During the last cold war the Soviet Union driven by its ideology stood by India, a non-aligned country. In the new cold war, Russia driven by its pure self-interest to stand up against its encirclement by the U.S. military might, will ignore India, and India will be marginalized in the world scene.
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References & Notes:
Abram N. Shulsky and Gary J. Schmitt, Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, Washington, DC: Brasseys Inc., 2002, p94.
Julie Kosterlitz, "Troops and Consequences: Americas track record in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan suggests that todays solutions can lead to tomorrows problems," National Journal, November 2001, 3420.
Kristen Lundberg, Politics of a Covert Action: The U.S., the Mujahideen, and the Stinger Missile, Boston, MA: The John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Mohammad Ayub Khan, Diaries of Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, 1966-1972, Oxford University Press, April 2007
Peter Bergen, Holy War Inc. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002, p71.
Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, p252.
William Blum, "Killing Hope," In Le Nouvel Observateu, 15-21 Jan 1998
Zbigniew Brzezinski (Interview) Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998 in http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html
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