Intelligence by Mel Goodman,
Culture by Noy Thrupkaew,
Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid,
Middle East by Stephen Zunes,
Africa by Martha Honey

excerpts from the book

Power Trip

U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11

edited by John Feffer

Seven Stories Press, 2003, paper

 

Intelligence
by Mel Goodman

p96
Less than two weeks after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed a high-level military and civilian commission to determine the causes of the intelligence failure. Following the September attacks, however, President Bush, CIA director George Tenet, and the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees were adamantly opposed to any investigation or postmortem.

 

Culture
by Noy Thrupkaew

p106
The defense budget for 2003 will be close to $400 billion, an increase of nearly 30 percent since 2000. The intelligence budget will increase by 20 percent in 2003, climbing to more than $35 billion.

p109
Colin Powell

"I wanted one of the world's greatest advertising experts, because what are we doing? We're selling. We're selling a product. That product we are selling is democracy. It's the free enterprise system, the American value system."

p111
CONTROLLING THE MESSAGE

According to New York's Sunday Tribune, "Most television networks have. . . taken their orders directly from the Pentagon" and enjoyed a good deal of access to military installations as a result. Journalists, on the other hand, have found themselves standing out in the cold. CBS anchor Dan Rather told the New York Times, "Somebody's got to question whether it's a good idea to limit independent reporting on the battlefield and access of journalists to U.S. military personnel and then conspire with Hollywood." The administration has maintained a tight hold on military information, surprising even seasoned spokespeople of other conflicts. Barry Zorthian, chief spokesman for the American campaign in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, told the New York Times that the flow of information in this conflict is "much tighter than Vietnam."

Commentators and editorial writers who disagreed with the administration came under fire. The Daily Courier in Oregon sacked a columnist who criticized Bush for his less than-rapid return to the capital following the attacks. The Texas City Sun issued an apology for a column written by a city editor entitled "Bush Failed to Lead the U.S." and fired the editor. Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory's column criticizing the president's action following the attacks drew more angry letters from readers than any other column in her forty-year career.

Perhaps the most public blowout took place after Bill Maher, host of the ABC-TV show Politically Incorrect, said, 'We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from two thousand miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, is not cowardly." Stations across the country dropped or suspended Maher's show, even as Maher scrambled to apologize for his remarks. At the White House, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer warned Americans that "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that. There never is." Although Politically Incorrect was canceled in May 2002, the network insisted that Maher's comments about September 11 had nothing to do with the decision. Maher had another take on the matter. "To them, Politically Incorrect was just, ooh, a cool title," he said of the network. "I don't think they really got it, that I really was politically incorrect."

Even more politically incorrect was the Pentagon's short-lived Office of Strategic Information. In February 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced the closing of the Pentagon's controversial office only seven days after allegations surfaced that the office's mandate may have included purposefully deceiving foreign media and running covert operations characterized by one Pentagon official as the "blackest of black programs." Rumsfeld vehemently denied that the office had ever been involved in spreading misinformation, or would have done so. "I guess notwithstanding the fact that much of the thrust of the criticism and the cartoons and the editorial has been off the mark," Rumsfeld said in a February 2002 news briefing, "the office has clearly been so damaged that...it's pretty clear to me that it could not function effectively."

Despite Rumsfeld's protestations to the contrary, shortly before the United States launched its bombing initiative in Afghanistan, an unidentified military officer told the Washington Post, "This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine.... We're going to lie about things." And when the New York Times inquired about closed-door meetings Charlotte Beers was holding for foreign journalists, the State Department's Deputy Director of Media Price Floyd explained, 'We can't give out our propaganda to our own people."

 

Central Asia
by Ahmed Rashid

p119
THE NEW "GREAT GAME"

The U.S. military presence in Central Asia will certainly prove to be a turning point in the history of the region. In the initial weeks after September 11, the United States and its European allies quickly signed treaties with Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan to lease military bases and use of their air space for the military campaign in Afghanistan This is the first time that the United States has placed its military forces in such close proximity to the borders of Russia and China, both of which consider Central Asia as part of their sphere of influence. So far Russia and China have gone along with Washington's aims, but as the war in Afghanistan winds down, nationalists and hard-liners in both countries are expressing their resentment toward and apprehension about a long-term U.S. presence in a region.

p123
For many Central Asian people the key question is not the issue of big power rivalry, but whether the United States will use its presence and newfound influence to urge the regimes to carry out desperately needed political and economic reforms or merely take advantage of their strategic assets. So far the signs are not hopeful. Building on the Clinton administration's Central Asian Border Security Initiative, which funneled millions of dollars to the five states for counterinsurgency, Washington has tripled military and economic aid to Uzbekistan ($50 million to $173 million) and substantially increased assistance to Tajikistan (to $125 million) for the year 2002. Instead of conditioning that aid on a timetable for economic and political reforms, the United States has publicly lectured the leaders about improving living conditions for their people and sought mere verbal assurance of reform from the regimes. With the encouragement of the United States, other major donors such as the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have jumped on the bandwagon, lending money with few stipulations.

 

Middle East
by Stephen Zunes

p128
DEMONIZING IRAN

Recent political trends in Iran-such as the 1997 election of the moderate Islamist Mohamed Khatami as president, sweeps by other moderates in parliamentary elections the following year, and Khatami's landslide reelection in 2001-should have pleased U.S. policy makers. Still the United States has refused to reestablish diplomatic relations severed since 1979 with this, the largest country in the Middle East. Despite the dramatic if uneven steps toward liberalization in Iran, various U.S. sanctions and other anti-Iranian measures were stricter at the end of Clinton's term than during the regime's most repressive and extremist period in the mid-1980s.

Nevertheless, after a toning down of anti-Iranian rhetoric in the waning months of the Clinton administration, there was some hope that the new Bush administration might be willing to pursue less hostile relations than its Democratic predecessor. However, in his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush linked the increasingly pluralistic Iran with the totalitarian regimes of Iraq and North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," a serious blow to Iranian moderates who had been fighting for greater political openness and better relations with the West. U.S. policy, in offending nationalist sentiments, has enhanced the credibility of the very hard-line elements Washington purports to fear. Liberal elements within Iran have rebuffed recent statements of support from the Bush administration, recognizing that such backing actually hurts their cause. In addition, despite the long-standing hostility of the Iranian regime to the Taliban and their decision to turn over al-Qaeda suspects to Saudi Arabia, the Bush administration has charged that Iran is harboring al-Qacda suspects, without, however, releasing any evidence to support this highly unlikely claim.

While elements of the Iranian intelligence community continue to support extremist groups outside the country, repression is ongoing within the country, and many Iranian democrats remain skeptical of the Islamist reformers in government, few Iranian pro-democracy activists find current U.S. policy helpful to their cause.

p132
PRESSURING PALESTINE

Ariel Sharon, the far-right-wing general implicated in a series of war crimes against Palestinian civilians, was elected prime minister just weeks after President Bush assumed office in 2001. Sharon played a key role in precipitating the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000 when, as talks between Israel and Palestine broke down at Camp David, he made a provocative trip to a religious site claimed by both Jews and Muslims in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. On taking office, Sharon refused to reenter peace negotiations with the Palestinians, and the repression in the occupied territories increased dramatically.

Despite State Department and CIA analyses criticizing Sharon's ongoing provocations and overreactions, Bush has focused almost exclusively on Palestinian terrorism as the cause of the crisis, using the same basic rhetoric as Sharon. Under Bush, Defense Department officials have unprecedented clout in the formulation of U.S. policy toward the conflict, which had previously been largely under the purview of the State Department. As a result, hard-line Pentagon officials who view the conflict strictly in security terms-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith-have marginalized the more pragmatic conservatives, such as Secretary of

State Colin Powell, who see the conflict more in political terms. Feith and Wolfowitz have long been on record opposing the peace process and have advocated continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These hawkish voices have been augmented significantly by a coalition of Democrats and right-wing Republicans in Congress who also support an expansionist Israel and oppose Israeli moderates calling for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands in exchange for security guarantees. The struggle in the occupied territories, in the eyes of the Bush administration and both parties in Congress, is not a matter of the military occupation of one country by another, but the suppression of terrorism. Without U.S. pressure, the Israelis have refused to lift their siege of Palestinian towns and cities or end the border closures. Not surprisingly, the violence has continued.

At the multilateral level, the United States has blocked the UN from authorizing a multinational peacekeeping force, human rights monitors, or even an inspection team to investigate an alleged massacre by Israeli occupation forces at a Palestinian refugee camp. The United States scuttled a series of proposed UN resolutions by European nations by threatening to veto anything that used the term "siege" to refer to Israeli occupation forces surrounding and shelling Palestinian towns, or that mentioned Israel's illegal settlements, the Geneva Conventions, international law, or the principle of land-for-peace. In December 2001, the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution strongly condemning Palestinian terrorism because it also criticized Israeli policies of assassinating Palestinian dissidents and imposing collective punishment on civilian populations. In December 2002, the United States vetoed a measure criticizing Israel's slaying of UN humanitarian workers and the destruction of a food warehouse belonging to a UN development agency. In each of these cases, the United States was the only dissenter within the fifteen-member world body.

p134
BUILDING REAL SECURITY

... there is increasing evidence that some leading segments of Saudi society, including members of the Saudi royal family, support terrorism. Much of the financing for al-Qaeda comes from this U.S. ally, and fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi citizens. Instead of targeting Saudi Arabia, however, the war on terrorism has included countries with no apparent links to al-Qaeda, such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine. Similarly, the Bush administration ) continues to support a fundamentalist and authoritarian; regime in Saudi Arabia while refusing to support the Palestinians' right to statehood until they create a democratic political system based upon "tolerance and liberty". The Saudi regime's close ties to American oil interests ;have made it difficult for successive administrations to challenge the country's repressive theocratic rule and ties to Islamic extremists.

p136

 Top Arms Recipients in the Middle East: 1998-2001

 Country  US Deliveries (billions)  Total Receipts (billions)

 Saudi Arabia  $12.8  $29.3
 Israel  $3.8  $4.8
 Egypt  $3.1  $3.5
 Kuwait  $1.5  $2.4

p137
The United States became the target of terrorists not because of the country's freedom and democracy, as President Bush claims, but because U.S. Middle East policy has had nothing to do with freedom and democracy. A policy based more on support for democracy, international law, arms control, and sustainable development will make American interests far safer than the current policy based on punitive sanctions, invasion, arms exports, and support for repression and economic policies that primarily benefit wealthy elites. The shift to the right in U.S. Middle East policy actually began when the Clinton administration came to office. However, the events of September 11, 2001, made it politically possible for the United States to move in an even more extreme direction. Most prominent Democrats in Congress, including traditional skeptics of U.S. foreign policy, were supportive of this rightward drift during the Clinton administration out of party loyalty and have remained largely supportive of Bush's Middle East policy as well out of fear of being labeled "soft on terrorism." It is very unlikely, then, that there will be a shift in U.S. Middle East policy unless a popular movement develops within the United States to force such a change.

 

Africa
by Martha Honey

p144
OIL AND SECURITY

One year after the September 11 attacks, the lead story in the New York Times proclaimed that "Africa, the neglected stepchild of American diplomacy, is rising in strategic importance to Washington policy makers, and one word sums up the reason: oil." In early 2002, the newly created African Oil Policy Initiative Group (AOPIG), composed of congressional members, administration officials, industry executives, consultants, and investors, drew up a blueprint for U.S. energy and mineral resource interests in Africa. As House Subcommittee on Africa chair Ed Royce (R-CA) explained, "African oil should be treated as a priority for U.S. national security post 9-11, and I think that post 9-11 it's occurred to all of us that our traditional sources of oil are not as secure as we once thought they were."

U.S. imports of crude oil from West Africa-Nigeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon-equal 15 percent of total imports and are set to rise to 25 percent by 2015, according to the National Intelligence Council. In his 2001 National Energy Policy Report, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney projected that the area would be "one of the fastest-growing sources of oil and gas for the American market." Expansion plans include reopening the U.S. consulate in Equatorial Guinea, where off-shore reserves have been recently discovered, a new embassy in oil-rich Angola, construction of a pipeline linking southern Chad to Atlantic ports, increased military exchanges with West African countries, and a possible new U.S. naval base on Sao Tome and Principe, a tiny, two-island nation strategically located in the Atlantic oil-bearing basin of the Gulf of Guinea.

With civil war and unrest in Colombia and Venezuela, upheavals in the Middle East and war looming with Iraq, Africa was playing "an increasingly important role in our energy security," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told the House International Relations Committee in June 2002. Shortly afterward, Secretary of State Powell was dispatched to visit Gabon, Sao Tome, and Angola, oil-rich countries that rarely, if ever, have been visited by a high-level U.S. official. Powell avoided Nigeria, the most important African oil supplier to the United States, where popular resistance continues to grow against oil companies in the Niger Delta region. Quietly, however, the Bush administration has increased its military ties to Nigeria, while pressuring it to pull out of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the quota and price-setting cartel. As one oil industry official explained, "There is a long-term strategy from the U.S. government to weaken OPEC's hold on the market and one way to do that is to peel off certain countries." By summer 2002, Bush's Africa policy was characterized as "build the military and extract the oil."

While most current military training programs predate September 11, the United States has sought to strengthen relations with African police, military, and security forces in a bid to identify Islamic radicals and secure access to oil resources. At present, nearly every sub-Saharan country receives International Military Education and Training (IMET) funding. U.S. Special Forces, through the African Crisis Response Initiative started in 1997, have trained eight thousand troops from Senegal, Ghana, Mali, and other countries.

p148
DIFFERING U.S. AND AFRICAN AGENDAS

A growing discomfort with U.S. unilateralism has increased anti-American sentiment across the continent and prompted calls for UN rather than U.S. leadership in the war on terrorism. Within just two weeks of the September 2001 attacks, Egyptian President Mubarak warned that Washington's "cure should not be more bitter than the illness." Terrorism is far from the most critical problem confronting the continent. Poverty, AIDS, protracted violent conflicts between countries, debt burdens, and the breakdown of states have all ranked higher on the agendas of African leaders and regional organizations. As Salih Booker, director of the U.S.-based policy organization Africa Action, wrote, "Whether measured by numbers killed or nations wounded, by economies upended or families crushed, the AIDS pandemic is a deadlier global threat than that posed by terrorist groups.... The war on AIDS is more important than the war on terrorism." Yet, after September 11, the J U.S. government began to look at Africa almost exclusively through the lenses of terrorism and oil.

When the Bush administration took office, it signaled that Africa would remain a low priority, economically and strategically. During the Cold War, the U.S. foreign aid and alliances in Africa were largely aimed at checking Soviet and Chinese influence. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration proclaimed that free market prescriptions-trade, not aid; export-led growth; and structural adjustment policies- would define its relations with Africa. But less U.S. foreign direct investment goes to Africa than any other world region-less than one percent of the total in 2001 - and over half of that goes to the oil industry. And Clinton's much-touted trade access bill, the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), helped increase African exports (mainly textiles) to the United States for a handful of countries, including Mauritius, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Kenya.

The Bush administration continues to press African economies to privatize, open up to foreign capital, develop "good governance" practices, and uphold agreements to end conflicts in the Congo and elsewhere. At the same time, the administration has modestly increased development assistance, while favoring neoliberal proteges such as Mozambique, South Africa, and Nigeria. U.S. contributions still lag far behind Europe, and by mid-2002, the $700 million that the United States had committed for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative had yet to be disbursed. Most of the Bush administration's $2.2 billion in total aid to Africa for 2003 was not appropriated by Congress.

Meanwhile, the United States provided only a modest contribution of $200 million to the UN Global AIDS Fund, which estimates its needs at $7 to $10 billion.

By the time Americans commemorated the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks, African support and goodwill, as symbolized in the gift of cattle, had largely vanished. The Bush administration's unilateralist policies combined with its aggressive and narrow obsession with security and oil in Africa have increasingly alienated many Africans. In September 2002, Africa's most respected statesman, Nelson Mandela, charged in uncharacteristically bitter language that "the attitude of the United States is a threat to world peace." Mandela, who had supported the U.S. war in Afghanistan, lashed out at Bush officials for pursuing war in Iraq. He went a step further, charging that in the eyes of many, U.S. actions-from not paying compensation to Africans killed or injured in the two embassy bombings, to snubbing the world summits on racism and sustainable development (both held in South Africa), to showing contempt for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan-contain "that element": racism. This racism, which also underlies U.S. designs on African oil, the prioritizing of counterterrorism over tackling poverty and AIDS, and the militarizing of the continent, has distorted Washington's perception of what truly matters to Africa and Africans.


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