DECISION LOOMS: ESCALATE, OR RETREAT & RETRENCH?

War Times review of the many foreign policy reversals facing the U.S. government throughout the greater Middle East is important but also misleading. It is important because the next presidential administration will not only inherit this downward spiral, but a detailed blueprint on how to address it from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution. Their panels and researchers, described on their respective websites, are fully bipartisan and will reach a full Democratic-Republican consensus by January 2009.

But, this also indicates why the following article is misleading. It presents each of these U.S. foreign policy failures as strictly the undertakings of the Bush administration. This is simply not correct. Each of these policies was based on precedents from the Clinton and Carter administrations. For example, the Carter Doctrine declared that the oil of the Persian Gulf is a strategic US interest and stated the US would use military force to secure it. Since then all US policy in the Middle East has been bi-partisan, which is why Congressional Democrats continue to fully fund the Iraq and Afghan occupations, as well as support for the enormous network of US bases and fleets in and surrounding the Middle East. They are also on board for US arms shipments to the region: $20 billion for Saudi Arabia, $15 billion for other pro-US Sunni states, and $30 billion for Israel.

Washington's Wars and Occupations:
Month in Review #37

By Max Elbaum, War Times/Tiempo de Guerras, May 28, 2008

DECISION LOOMS: ESCALATE, OR RETREAT & RETRENCH?

Across the Middle East, the Bush-Neocon post-9/11 project faces failure.

In the last month alone, Washington has had to endure one humiliation after another:

*In Lebanon, the pro-U.S. government (prodded by Israel and/or Washington) announced a set of steps aimed at Hezbollah. Hezbollah and the broader Lebanese opposition movement - which together represent the majority of Lebanese - resisted. When the dust had settled the proposed steps were retracted and, as the New York Times headline put it, the agreement ending the fighting "Leaves Hezbollah Stronger."

*In Pakistan, the new government defied U.S. "advice" and signed a peace agreement May 21 with indigenous militant leaders in the so-called "tribal areas" bordering Afghanistan. Only the day before the Bush administration had declared that even negotiating with these militants would give "breathing space" to terrorists. Washington's anxiety here is directly connected to worries about growing Afghan opposition to the U.S. military presence there.

*Adding insult to injury, even a personal request from Bush himself couldn't get Washington's Saudi Arabian clients to agree to increase oil production.

All this underscores the fact that Bush's Iraq adventure, largely designed to show the world that the U.S. can do anything it pleases, instead ended up revealing - and exacerbating - U.S. weakness.

As a result, bitter divisions have opened up in the policy-making elite. The die-hards - now rallying around John "Stay-100-Years-in-Iraq" McCain - still think military force can win "victory." They continue to press for escalation, up to and including an attack on Iran. The "realists" - a broad layer that stretches from key advisers to Barack Obama to Republican Senators like Chuck Hagel - think some kind of retrenchment is imperative. They envision at least partial withdrawal from Iraq and diplomatic engagement with Iran in order to stave off even deeper undermining of U.S. power.

The scale of disasters confronting Washington (and the timing of U.S. electoral cycles and White House transition) means the decision-making window for this choice consists of the next ten months. We may see a new reckless act - such as an attack on Iran - that will make the invasion of Iraq seem like it was a "reality-based" decision. Or the world, the country, and the antiwar movement will be confronted with all the complexities of a wounded imperial power attempting to retrench but not yet ready (that's where mass pressure comes in!) to leave Iraq (much less the entire Middle East) to the people who live there.

"OVERPLAYED THEIR HAND"

At the beginning of this month, Washington and Tel Aviv clearly thought they were going to get somewhere in Lebanon. They launched an orchestrated campaign via the Lebanese government's announcement that it was going to (1) dismantle Hezbollah's telecommunications system, which had been a key factor in successful resistance to Israel's 2006 invasion; and (2) remove a figure sympathetic to the anti-Israel resistance from head of security at Beirut airport. As the government anticipated, Hezbollah resisted with blockades and protests. Then pro-government militias resorted to arms and a prepared-ahead-of-time propaganda campaign began accusing Hezbollah of provoking the conflict and armed battles.

Within days it was clear they had miscalculated. The pro-government militias (many of whom were little more than mercenaries) collapsed and often fled. Few outside the Western and Israeli media - and certainly not the Lebanese majority - bought the U.S./Israeli "blame Hezbollah" crusade. As the New York Times admitted May 22, the government and its backers "overplayed their hand."

The upshot was an agreement May 21 in which the government had to do even more than retract its original provocative decrees. In what the Times called "a significant shift of power in favor of Hezbollah and its allies" the opposition won the power to veto any cabinet decision and agreement on a new government. Within days General Michel Suleiman - long supported as a compromise candidate by Hezbollah against government resistance - was elected President.

PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN

Blatant defiance of Washington by Pakistani officials has become the norm since Bush's chosen dictator, Pervez Musharraf, suffered a huge electoral setback last February. The country's new parliamentary majority - which is laying the groundwork to completely oust its lame-duck President - has the heretical idea that it should make peace rather than war with its own citizens. Bush and the Neocons hate such "appeasement" policies (more on "appeasement" below). But they no longer can do much about them.

Washington's weakness in Pakistan is directly linked to the deterioration of the U.S. position in Afghanistan. It's right in the New York Times (May 22) for anyone who is willing to read a few paragraphs down from the misleading headlines:

"Increasingly, the question before the allies is how much longer it will take in crucial provinces to lock in tentative gains and bring real security and strong government. As important is whether that can be done before the war wears down relations within the American-led alliance, and between it and the Afghan people. Progress is so slow that Afghans often wonder aloud whether the U.S. actually wants the Taliban to win. 'No one claims this is going to be a year of full stabilization or even declining violence, let alone an end to the conflict,' said Christopher Alexander, deputy special representative for the U.N. in Afghanistan."

IRAQ FAILURE - IRAN IN THE GUNSIGHTS?

President Bush is still in a parallel universe about Iraq: "We are on our way to victory,'' he said in a May 22 speech that McCain immediately echoed. The reality lived by Iraqis is totally different.

Iraqis face an occupying power killing and demeaning them daily. A recent outrage even made the U.S. press: "U.S. Airstrike Kills 8 Civilians" read the
headlines in many U.S. newspapers May 23. The dead included two children and an elderly man; police officials said these unarmed civilians were killed while running away from a U.S. air attack. What seldom makes the press is the underlying trend: this spring has seen a dramatic increase in the use of helicopter-fired missiles and U.S. air power in general, including in densely populated urban areas. What is reported here as occasional "unfortunate accidents" or "collateral damage" is seen by millions of Iraqis as an integral feature of foreign occupation.

So are incidents like the admission that a U.S. sniper used a Koran as target practice near Baghdad. U.S. officials said the sniper was disciplined and removed from Iraq. But the Iraqi cabinet called for him to be prosecuted and anger surged among the population at large.
.
Against such a day-to-day backdrop, it's not surprising that reports began to surface May 23 that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani - the most respected and powerful religious/political leader in Iraq - has begun to issue private fatwas (religious edicts) affirming the legitimacy of armed attacks on occupying troops. Middle East expert Juan Cole, in a must-read discussion of Sistani's new stance May 23 - go to http://www.juancole.com/

Though it won't admit it, the administration is very worried. Following his usual response to trouble, Bush identifies a scapegoat/enemy and signals that military force is the way to "solve" the problem. Iran has been the enemy of choice for months now, and once again it is pump-up-the-volume time. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told reporters last week that the U.S. was entering a period of "increased pressure" on the Iranians. Israeli Army radio reported that a senior Bush staffer told Israeli officials that both Bush and Dick Cheney support military action against Iran. The White House denied the report. But at the same time it flaunted Bush's bellicose speech before the Israeli parliament in which he compared any willingness to negotiate with Iran to "appeasement" of the Nazis in the 1930s.

Bush's speech was clearly a threat directed against Iran. But it also was intended to impact U.S. domestic politics. Bush aides admitted it was a volley against Barack Obama's pro-negotiation position, and the President's theme was immediately picked up by McCain. "Appeasement-baiting" will be added to the general racist, anti-Muslim, fear-mongering arsenal that the "escalate-to-victory" crowd is resorting to in face of a U.S. public that has turned decisively against the Iraq war.

ISRAEL, SYRIA, AND THE NAKBA

Ironically, the first major player to defy Bush's anti-appeasement diatribe in practice was the Israeli government. Israel acknowledged that it was engaged in negotiations with "terrorist-supporting" Syria within days of Bush's remarks.

Tel Aviv's decision doesn't indicate that it has all of sudden realized that it is unjust to occupy other peoples' land. Israel's chokehold on the Palestinians remains and new settlement activity in the occupied West Bank continues. But there is calculation that talks in order to (as Israeli spokespeople put it) "wean Syria away from Iran and from its support for Hezbollah and Hamas" might work better than another war.

This too is a response to failure. Israel failed in its attempt to crush Hezbollah with its Lebanon invasion of 2006. Its latest provocation in Lebanon (see above) fell flat on its face. The effort to starve Gaza and to isolate Hamas (which holds power there) is in trouble, with more and more voices internationally (and within Israel itself) saying that sooner or later talking with Hamas will be necessary. Indirect negotiations mediated by Egypt are already happening.

Perhaps most dangerous for Tel Aviv was the climate surrounding what were supposed to be triumphal celebrations on the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding. In most of the world, this anniversary was marked by commemorations of the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 and harsh criticism of Israeli actions which drove tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Even in the U.S. (where, outside of Israel itself, Zionism holds its firmest grip) there was a noticeable uptick in mainstream articles (as well as protests by Palestine solidarity activists) that raise issues that apologists for Israeli occupation do not like to see mentioned. (See for instance: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/05/05/080505crbo_books_remnick?currentPage=5

When the term "Nakba" appears in both the New Yorker and Time there is change in the air.

It remains a hard road. The antiwar movement has to walk on many paths at the same time. We have a contribution to make to insuring that fear-mongering, racism and "appeasement-baiting" prove costly to their advocates and not to their targets. We have a fight to wage against the whole "us-them/enemy" discourse that justifies war, torture and occupation. We have a demand of "bring them all home now" that has to be projected into the heart of the nationwide conversation over Iraq until it is won. - writes that he has "all along believed that Sistani would ultimately issue a fatwa saying that it was illegitimate for there to continue to be foreign troops on Iraqi soil." Sistani's relative quiet so far has been a key factor preventing things in Iraq from being even worse for the U.S. than they already are. If he continues in the direction these latest reports indicate, even George Bush may finally recognize that a U.S. "victory" is not in the cards.

LA Mayor Villaraigosa leads delegation to Israel

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, accompanied by many LA City officials, are off to Israel in June to spend a week talking about anti-terrorism, security, the poor Jewish victims of Palestinian violence in Sderot, and green technology. According the following article, the tour guide is Rabbi Marvin Heir of the Museum of (In)Tolerance.

So much for the thesis that the main focus of Los Angeles elected officials, nearly all Democrats, is unrestricted real estate development and law and order in the form of police expansion. Looks like there is a third leg to their triangle, US foreign policy in the Middle East. Most likely their agenda is a preemptive push back against the next presidential administration, which will undoubtedly ramp up pressure on Israel and the Palestinian Authority for a quasi-two state solution.

This development should effect those who still claim that progressives should support the Democratic Party. Based on the party's performance in Los Angeles -- to promote regressive taxes, police expansion, layoffs and cutbacks, and this tour of Israel, with a focus on counter-terrorism -- the lesser-evil argument is getting harder to make. The real face of the Democratic Party, shown in full details, looks mighty grim.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mayor28-2008may28,0,5925745.story

From the Los Angeles Times

L.A. mayor to lead delegation to Israel

The third overseas trip by Antonio Villaraigosa since taking office is expected to focus on security and green technologies.

By Duke Helfand
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 28, 2008

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will travel to Israel next month for a weeklong mission devoted to security, counter-terrorism and green technologies, aides announced Tuesday.

Villaraigosa will lead a delegation of city officials and about a dozen religious and business leaders June 11-18, his third overseas trip since taking office nearly three years ago.

The mayor's office released the name of only one delegation member outside of City Hall: Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Spokesman Matt Szabo, who said the list is being finalized, described the mission as "a short targeted trip that will focus on security and green technology exchange."

But the trip also could help Villaraigosa buttress his relationship with Los Angeles' Jewish community, an always important political constituency in the city.

Villaraigosa's itinerary calls for him to sign an agreement to bring experts from Ben Gurion International Airport to review security at Los Angeles International Airport and other city-owned airports.

The mayor also is expected to sign an accord calling for Los Angeles to provide guidance about green measures taken at its port in exchange for expertise on how to better secure the mammoth facility in San Pedro, one of nation's busiest.

City officials said they also want to expand their relationship with the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, which would provide training for the Los Angeles Police Department and other local law enforcement agencies.

Villaraigosa will spend the bulk of his time in Jerusalem. He has meetings scheduled with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski, among others. He also is scheduled to meet Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai and visit a school in that city.

His schedule is expected to include a tour of Israel's seaport of Ashdod and a visit to Sderot, a desert town near the Gaza border that has faced repeated rocket attacks by Palestinians and has become a must-stop for American politicians. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, stopped by in March.

Villaraigosa also will meet with water experts to discuss conservation.

He will be joined by several top city leaders, including City Councilmen Jack Weiss and Dennis Zine. The list includes Department of Water and Power General Manager David Nahai and DWP board President Nick Patsaouras; port General Manager Geraldine Knatz and harbor Commissioner Doug Krause; Gina Marie Lindsey, general manager of the city's airport agency, and Airport Commission President Alan Rothenberg.

Szabo said the still-undetermined cost of the trip will be paid by the mayor's travel budget and by the semi-independent departments that oversee the DWP, airport and port.

Villaraigosa traveled to Asia two years ago for a 16-day trade mission. He went to El Salvador and Mexico last May for a mission that was cut short when police beat demonstrators and journalists during an immigrant-rights gathering in MacArthur Park.

duke.helfand@latimes.com

Foreign investment will be a curse for Palestine

Whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues in its current apartheid direction, or it can be deflected into the most likely two-state solution or even the utopian one-state solution, the issue of foreign investment will plague any solution. While some view the types of foreign investment described by the Financial Times as a blessing, it would in reality be a curse. It would totally undercut or even sink any imagined "liberation" offered by a one or two state solution.

This is because of foreign investment assures that the extraordinary inequality in wealth, income, and political power which now permeates both Israel and Palestine will continue. Foreign investment is not just a helping hand, but it exports and consolidates the class relationships of the donors in the Gulf, Europe, Israel, and the U.S. to Palestine. It also demands a profitable return on investment, a grim reality which will force any Palestinian or even Israel-Palestinian government to keep a tight lid on wages, benefits, public services, and independent union organizing. Furthermore, foreign investment provides a rationale and conduit for the continuation of the foreign intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, and NGO's which now keep a close rein on all political developments within the Palestinian Authority.


Investors eye Palestinians’ $2bn projects

By Tobias Buck in Bethlehem, Financial Times, May 22, 2008

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/65afd33a-2821-11dd-8f1e-000077b07658.html

Bethlehem appears an apt choice of location for the miracle the organisers of the first Palestine Investment Conference hope to pull off.

In a gleaming new convention centre just a short drive from where Jesus is said to have been born, they are trying to hammer home a seemingly impossible message: despite the Israeli occupation and fighting between rival Palestinian groups, despite the violence and poverty, “Palestine is open for business”.

The phrase is repeated over and over by the Palestinian officials and business leaders at the conference and there are signs the message is getting across. More than 1,000 investors, business people and officials – many from the Gulf and other Arab countries, but also from the US,Britain, France,Germany and Russia – have attended. Companies represented range from Coca-Cola and Intel to Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and McKinsey.

Palestinian businesses are presenting investment proj­ects worth almost $2bn (€1.3bn, £1bn) and several have attracted close interest from overseas investors. The organisers expect about 10 deals, including on housing and telecoms, to be signed before the three-day meeting closes on Friday, though most were pre-cooked and are not a direct result of the Bethlehem gathering.

But the buzz is unmistakable as the small, tight-knit Palestinian business community uses its highest-profile platform in years to interact with investors from abroad.

“Look at the people who are right here,” says Mustafa Mohammed, chief executive of the Palestine Investment Fund, pointing to a group of Saudi construction executives. Together they will finance a sprawling $200m city north of the West Bank town of Ramallah. “This is a statement of their interest and of our potential.”

Mr Mohammed stresses the conference is less about doing deals and more about changing perceptions: “Having people here in the room talking about business is so much better than talking about violence and hatred. Hopefully we are showing here a different side.”

Across the room, Samir Hulileh is also feeling optimistic. The chief executive of Padico, the second-largest Palestinian company by value, taps his briefcase. Inside are details of several projects he spotted at the conference in which his group is keen to invest. “We have arranged for a lot of meetings after this conference,” he says.

Robert Kimmitt, deputy secretary of the US treasury, heads a US delegation of officials and businessmen. He notes “a significantly accelerating number of contacts from US business people asking about investment opportunities in the West Bank.

“What we have here is a very positive business climate. There are businesses here that are very successful and now there are hundreds of new business people at the conference, including smart financiers from the US who are sensing that something is happening here.”

Despite the determined show of optimism, it is hard to overlook the deep problems affecting the Palestinian economy. In the West Bank, an influx of foreign donor money and a new reform-minded government have allowed the economy to start growing again, albeit modestly. But Palestinians are still on average 40 per cent poorer today than nine years ago, according to World Bank figures. Heavy Israeli security restrictions make it hard for Palestinians in the West Bank to move themselves and their products between cities, putting a brake on business.

In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, home to 1.5m, the economy has collapsed due to an Israeli blockade started last year. Poverty has soared and even basic goods such as fuel are almost impossible to obtain.

One discussion session in Bethlehem dealt with reviving the Gaza economy. For the time being, however, the coastal strip will play no part in the international effort to kick-start a Palestinian economic miracle.

Israel as an Extension of U.S. Empire

Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Commitee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD), wrote an important article several years ago about Israel being an extension of U.S. empire, with a major focus on the neo-cons. Even though the neo-cons have since been discredited, it is time to revisit Halper's important essay for at least three reasons:

First, the next US presidential administration will be forced to deal with Israel/Palestinian issues for the broader reasons outlined by Walt and Mearsheimer in The Israel Lobby and Daniel Levy of J Street: Israel has outlived its usefulness to the US government's imperial interests in the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf. For details see Michael Klare's recent article in The Nation, posted elsewhere on Red Eye on the News, on the reprioritizing of US military policy for energy reserves and access routes. For the U.S. foreign policy realists these authors represent or describe, the path to Baghdad now lies through Jerusalem. It is the flip side of their neo-con's now laughable claim that the path to Jerusalem (i.e., US hegemony over the Middle East) was through Baghdad.

Second, this is the context of any one-state and two-state debate regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. This important debate usually takes place in a vacuum, and in this article Jeff has done some important work to offset this missing part of the discussion: Israel as an extension of U.S. empire, and therefore the two state solution as a way to resolve one of the major contradictions of the U.S. government in the Middle East: its pro-Likud policy conflicts with its desire to dominate the Persian Gulf.

Third, elsewhere Jeff and many others have also written on internal economic inequality in Israel and the occupied territories, the other context of the apartheid status quo, the two-state solution, and the one-state solution. If that inequality, kept in place by the enormous infusion of political and military power from the US to Israel, remains, then a two state or one state alternative to the occupation will not make an appreciable difference. Like South Africa, now in upheaval because of township poverty, the legal framework would change but leave the economic framework in place. Even the wish that this first stage of a one or two state solution would evolve to something much better would have dismal prospects.

Because much of Jeff's essay addresses the neo-cons, the portions of the essay which will be most relevant to the new administration re-assessing U.S. Middle East policy in early 2009 are highlighted in blue. The "realists" taking over in 2009, whether from an Obama or McCain administration, will carefully consider these aspects of the following essay:

"What are You Doing? What Have You Become?"
Israel as an Extension ofAmerican Empire

By JEFF HALPER, Counter Punch, November 2005

http://www.counterpunch.org/halper110720005.html

There are many tragic and self-destructive features of the Occupation for Israel itself. Although the country was founded on the "original sin" of exclusivity and the expulsion of the refugees, it nevertheless had (has?) the potential to develop into a normal, even progressive society. Many of the socialist principles that accompanied the Zionist program led in those directions. Israel always talked of democracy, even extending citizenship to its Arab population in 1948, even though the underlying concept of a "Jewish democracy," coupled with a deep-based fear of demographics only exacerbated by the Occupation, has emptied that of much of its content. It constituted itself as a welfare state, only to see that largely dismantled as the Israel-Palestine conflict gave dominance to the right whose agenda, together with expansion, was anti-socialist and pro-privatization. Israel became a member of the Socialist International and engaged in constructive development work in Africa, Asia and Latin America, but its need for military strength, coupled with a self-serving "alliance" with the US, has led to become a major arms dealer on a global scale, a subverter of progressive civil society elements throughout the developing world.

One of the tragic developments related to this rightward shift of Israeli politics and social policies -- even defining Israel's view of itself in the world -- is its emergence as a center for the global right-wing, a constellation of nefarious ideologies, groups and forces that seek nothing less than American-Christian hegemony over the entire world. In a unique and, again, tragic confluence of historical processes, the rise of an aggressive neo-con ideology and militaristic foreign policy, centered in the US but not limited to it, coincides with the emergence of the Israeli rights and an expansionist Israel. "Coincides" might understate the case: in fact, the rise of a religious right in the West owes much of its impetus to Zionism and Israel, while Israel is able to pursue its Occupation only because of its willingness to serve Western (mainly US) imperial interests including acting as a galvanizing center for global neo-con forces. What follows is a brief survey of those forces and their interplay with Israel.

Israel as a Center of Neo-Con Ideology and Mobilization.

Many of the founders of neo-conservatism in the 1970s and most of its prominent advocates today are Jewish. This is not an irrelevant fact, nor is it "anti-Semitic" to say so. Neo-conservatism emerged not of traditional anti-New Deal Republican conservatism, which was largely WASP and Middle Western in its roots, but out the Roosevelt's New Deal itself, which resonated with Eastern European Jewish immigrants, many of whom were working class and attracted to socialism and communism. From there they and their children gravitated to the New Left and then to liberalism (Irving Kristol has described a neo-con as "a liberal mugged by reality.") The Jewish magazine Commentary, a publication of Jewish liberals who were indeed mugged by the Sixties, became the fountain and mouthpiece of neo-conservatism as it emerged and entered into power politics during the Reagan Administration (when Jeane Kirkpatrick became the leading non-Jewish luminary).

Just a glance at some of the most prominent neo-cons:

Commentary founder and editor Norman Podhoretz;
Irving Kristol, former Commentary editor and founder of The Public Interest;
Elliot Abrams, head of the Middle East Desk of the National Security Council and Podhoretz's son-in-law;
Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense and one of the architects of the occupation of Iraq;
Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of Defense now heading the World Bank;
Richard Perle, former Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board;
William Kristol, son of Irving, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century;
Daniel Pipes, Middle East Studies professor and founder of the notorious CampusWatch;
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post columnist;
Dov Zakheim, former Comptroller of the Separtment of Defense;
David Wurmser, Cheney's chief Middle East advisor;
Kenneth Adelman, a hawkish arms control expert and senior Pentagon official.

Just to name a few points up a Jewish connection that is hard to understate.

Israel, of course, has long been of prime concern to these pillars of the American Jewish community, who now enjoy the political clout to integrate that issue seamlessly into the neo-con doctrine and thereby into the very fabric of American foreign policy and military strategy. It is a measure of how Jews have assimilated into American life, how they identity completely with the United States of which they see Israel as an extension, the "only democracy in the Middle East." In the "clash of civilizations" paradigm that defines the neo-con approach, the United States has embarked on a pre-emptive crusade to generate a "global democratic revolution" regime change to usher in governments more reflective of US values and thus more in tune with American interests all under American (corporate) tutelage. American Empire in a truly New American Century. Israel, then, fits neatly into the equation in three ways. First, it represents just that kind of American underling the US holds up as its model (and how Israel benefits from American largesse should help persuade other regimes); second, it possesses the military capacity and political readiness to further American interests; and third, it is located in the Middle East, the primary "theater" of the Crusade, where it is engaged with America's declared arch-enemy, "radical Islam." A strong Israel, then, represents a strong America.

Playing with Fire: The Centrality of Israel to Christian Fundamentalists.

All this dovetails neatly with yet another powerful strand of right-wing ideology, that of Christian Zionism. According to Stephen Sizer, the author of Christian Zionism (2003), modern Christian fundamentalism is largely defined by a notion of dispensationalism, the idea that humanity will go through seven periods of Divine testing, culminating in Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. In this eschatology, the Jews and the modern state of Israel play such a key role that fundamentalism, dispensationalism and Christian Zionism are virtually interchangeable. As explained by Sizer, Christian Zionism claims not only that every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by everyone else, but that the Jews will lead the process since, in the fundamentalist view, this will lead to blessing for the entire world as nations recognise and respond to what God is seen to be doing in and through Israel.

Sizer defines Christian Zionism by seven tenets:

1. A literalist hermeneutic
2. The Jews remain God's chosen people
3. The Jews have a divine right to the land of the Middle East
4. Jerusalem is their exclusive capital
5. The Jewish temple must be rebuilt
6. The Arabs are the enemies of God's people
7. The world will end soon in the great battle of Armageddon but Christians who support Israel will escape.

This religious movement has its roots in the Protestant Reformation, where the Bible was taught within a contemporary historical context and given a plain literal sense. Puritan eschatology, which became dominant in European and American Protestantism as early as the late 17th century (think of Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mathers) took on a postmillennial character, teaching that the conversion of the Jews would lead to future blessing for the entire world.

In Britain, where dispensationalism matured, Christian Zionism spawned such influential figures as Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Arthur Balfour and Lloyd George (Queen Victoria herself took on the title: Protectress of the Jews). Balfour worked closely with Zionist leader Haim Weizmann (later the first President of Israel) to produce what came to be known as the Balfour Declaration. Considered the first major statement of support for Zionism by a world power, it states somewhat disingenuously that "His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of that object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done, which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish Communities in Palestine" Already at that early period the Christian Zionists privileged the rights of the Jews over those of the Palestinians indeed, were ignoring the rights of the "natives" altogether. In an extraordinarily candid letter written in 1919, Balfour articulated for the first time the deceitful nature of Western foreign policy towards the Palestinians that has characterized it for the past century:

"For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country," he wrote. [T]he Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires or prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land....[I]n short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate."

While Christian Zionism also has pockets of strength elsewhere -- in Holland and Scandinavia, for example, as well as among many fundamentalists in the developing world its center is certainly the United States, where it was brought from England in the middle 19th century by John Nelson Darby, whom Sizer describes as
"the father of Dispensationalism," for whom a revived Israel became a cornerstone of his apocalyptic theology. Darby, says Sizer, "has probably had a greater influence on end-time thinking than anyone else in the last two centuries [though rivalled by Hal Lindsey Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" series, influenced by him]. In the absence of a strong Jewish Zionist movement, American Christian Zionism arose from the confluence of these complex associations, evangelical, premillennial, dispensational, millenarian, and proto-fundamentalist.No longer were Christian Zionists expecting Jewish national repentance to precede restoration; it could wait until after Jesus returned during the millennium."

Darby preached that God has two distinct and separate peoples: the Church, his heavenly people, and the Jews, his earthly people.

While they function as one unit indeed, as mentioned, the Jews even take a leading role via Israel -- dispensationalists nevertheless see two very different "dispensations" at the End of Time. While Christians enjoy the Second Coming and the salvation of the Millennium, Jews, their supposed allies, suffer a much different fate: at Armageddon two-thirds of the Jews die and the final third convert to Christianity, a precondition of the Second Coming. Dispensalism is hardly a Jewish-friendly theology. The three major types of dispensationalism, however -- Apocalyptic (preoccupied with the End of Tome; Messianic (busy evangelising Jews for Jesus); and Political (using political means to defend and bless' Israel share the same basic tenets: a commitment to biblical literalism; a futurist eschatology; and the restoration of the Jews to Palestine.

Several Dispensationalists have played an elemental role in shaping modern Christian Zionism. William E. Blackstone, who preached that that the Jews had a biblical right to Palestine and would soon be restored there, supported Darby financially and worked very closely with Louis Brandeis, the Jewish member of the Supreme Court and early American Zionist leader who once proclaimed: "You [Blackstone] you are the Father of Zionism as your work antedates Herzl.' Cyrus Scofield, whose Scofield Reference Bible, published in 1918, has been described as "the Bible of American Fundamentalism," played a key role in founding the Dallas Theological Seminary, the main academic arm of dispensationalism (where Lindsay hails from). Israel's independence in 1948 and its stunning victory in the 1967 "Six Day War" foreshadowing Armageddon -- galvanized Christian Zionists, but was only with the election in 1976 of President Jimmy Carter, a "born again" Christian, which coincided with Menachem Begin's 1977 election as Prime Minister of Israel, did they truly began coalescing as an organized political force within American politics a trend consolidated by the subsequent election of Reagan and the emergence of Jerry Falwell's "Moral Majority." Not only did the Zionist Jewish lobby in the US have a champion in the White House, but Christian Zionists including Attorney General Ed Meese, Secretary of Defence Casper , Secretary of the Interior James Watt and, indeed, Reagan himself achieved political power for the first time. Lindsay, Pat Robertson and Falwell, who in 1982 was invited by Reagan to give a briefing to the National Security Council, gained formal access to American political leaders and policy-makers.

Today, Jerry Falwell, who calls America's "Bible Belt" Israel's "safety belt," estimates that there are 70 million Christian Zionists 80,000 fundamentalist pastors, their views disseminated by 1,000 Christian radio stations as well as 100 Christian TV stations. They are clearly a dominant part of the Republican Party, representing a quarter of Bush's voters.

Mobilizing the Global Extreme Right.

Just as it has benefited from the rise of the Right in the US and elsewhere in Europe, Israel under the Likud (though not exclusively under the Likud) has become a center for mobilizing right-wing ideological and political forces on a global scale. Most visible in this regard is the annual Jerusalem Summit (actually held in the Israeli city of Herzliya), where the neo-con tribe gathers and galvanizes its plans for world domination around their concern for Israel. We are not speaking of marginal "kooks," but of top right-wing political leaders from Israel, the US, Europe and other parts of the world, high military officers and leading academics. Its leading lights include: Baroness Caroline Cox, Deputy Speaker of the U.K. House of the Lords and the non-executive director of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation (I wonder what Sakharov, who spent his whole life upholding human rights, would think of that!); Sam Brownback, Republican U.S. Senator from Kansas; Prof. Moshe Kaveh, President of Bar-Ilan University; Prof. Daniel Pipes, Board Member, United States Institute of Peace; Director of the Middle East Forum; Initiator of CampusWatch; Dr. Yuri Shtern, Knesset Member, National Union; a leader of the Russian community and a member of the extreme right;

Their worldview and agenda is summed up in what is called the "Jerusalem Declaration." It covers a range of issues of concern to the global right: But it also brings Israel into the center of the global right-wing agenda, suffusing it with Israeli claims and terms. Thus, Israel and its exclusive "right" to the entire Land of Israel is inserted into the very center of the neo-con agenda. The Jerusalem Declaration asserts:

ISRAEL AS THE KEY TO THE HARMONY OF CIVILIZATIONS

Billions of people believe that Jerusalem's spiritual and historical importance endows it with a special authority to become a center of world's unity.

Israel's unique geographic and historic position at the crossroads of civilizations enables it to reconcile their conflicts. Israel's unique spiritual experience enables it to find a golden mean between the fault lines dividing civilizations: between tradition and modernity, religion and science, authority and democracy.

We call upon all nations to choose Jerusalem, the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel, as a center for this evolving new unity. We believe that one of the objectives of Israel's divinely-inspired rebirth is to make it the center of the new unity of the nations, which will lead to an era of peace and prosperity, foretold by the Prophets.

Most Islamic countries, regrettably, have sworn to destroy Israel. We call on the countries of the Free World to realize the following: if the people of Israel can live in peace in their Promised Land, peace will have a chance to reign in the whole world. If radical Islam succeeds in destroying Israel, there will never be peace, and Western civilization will fall to Jihad as well.

For the sake of the entire world and therein, the land of Israel must belong to the people of Israel.

The front line in the war we are fighting rests in the birthplace of Judeo-Christian civilization. The stakes are high: if Israel and Jerusalem are fortified, they will become the center where mankind will gather to usher in an era of peace and prosperity. But the West's failure to save them may well spell doom for civilization itself.

Just as in the past the Free World stood together against Fascism and Communism, so it today must do to combat the third challenge: radical Islam. We prevailed then, and we shall prevail now. United around Jerusalem and armed with our eternal values, we cannot fail.

And what of the Palestinians? They are disposed of neatly, almost mater-of-factly, in the Jerusalem Declaration:

PLO STATE AS A THREAT TO PEACE

Supporting the creation of a PLO state in Judea and Samaria is a historical injustice of colossal proportion.

A tiny democracy is urged to concede the only thing it lacks - territory - to totalitarian regimes in exchange for the promises of the only thing they cannot provide - peace.

In pressuring to attain this suicidal arrangement, the "free world" betrays the very principles on which it is based. Anti-Israel and anti-Zionist attitudes, which disguise primordial anti-Semitism, constitute one area where hypocrisy in international politics is most visible.

The genesis of a totalitarian PLO state would represent an act of surrender to radical Islam's false rhetoric and a capitulation to terror.

The totalitarian PLO state would become a safe haven for international terrorism, a new Taliban-esque refuge, replete with plots to destroy both Israel and the West. Thus the future generations of the Free World will pay in blood for their fathers' moral blindness.

We call on the government of Israel to provide moral leadership to the world in the struggle against terror:

Cease negotiating with terrorists and proffering mass releases of captured murderers.

Eliminate the terror-sponsoring capabilities of the Palestinian Authority.

Liberate Arabs residing in Judea, Samaria and Gaza from the Jihad propaganda machine, which has turned them into a morally depraved people who worship murder and terror.

Promote a viable humanistic alternative for just and secure peace instead of creating a terrorist PLO state.

We call on all free nations to:

Unite in order to remove from power despotic Islamic regimes and re-educate an entire generation of Muslim children to embrace the democratic traditions of normative Islam.

Recognize the PLO/ PA as the terrorist organization which it is.

Cease forcing Israel to negotiate with terrorists.

Encourage Israel to establish full sovereignty throughout the land of Israel.

We must reject moral relativism and confront creeping "anti-Zionism" on Western campuses.

A favorite target of global neo-cons, Christian fundamentalists and the Israeli right is "radical Islam" -- convenient for Israel if it can succeed in depicting the Palestinians at part of that nefarious but mystified conspiracy/population. Says a statement issued by the Jerusalem Summit:

The front line in the war we are fighting rests in the birthplace of Judeo-Christian civilization. The stakes are high: if Israel and Jerusalem are fortified, they will become the center where mankind will gather to usher in an era of peace and prosperity. But the West's failure to save them may well spell doom for civilization itself.

Just as in the past the Free World stood together against Fascism and Communism, so it today must do to combat the third challenge: radical Islam. We prevailed then, and we shall prevail now. United around Jerusalem and armed with our eternal values, we cannot fail.

But a second target a favorite with the neo-cons of the Bush Administration as well are NGOs, the very body and soul of civil society. Well, that's not exactly true. After all, some of the favored neo-con organizations fundamentalist churches, right-wing think tanks, The Project for a New American Century, the Zionist Organization of America and others are also of civil society. Let's rephrase: a favorite target of neo-cons are progressive NGOs. These are blamed for being undemocratic (!) organizations whose main raison d'etre is to constrain American power. "The work of the state," writes the prominent Australian neo-con Gary Johns in his well-known article "The NGO Challenge: Whose Democracy is it Anyway?" "is as much to counter the tyranny of the minorities, including individuals, as well as to [sic] counter the tyranny of the majority. The task is to limit the claims on the commons, to depoliticize much of life, to make it less amenable to public dispute.In the most egalitarian and peaceful of nations, there is the invention of a permanent litany of human rights abuses."

None other than the venerable American Enterprise Institute, (NGO) home to some of the major neo-cons, runs a website called "NGO Watch," which keeps an eye on other "undemocratic" NGOs. Since NGOs constitute a serious threat to American Empire by exposing its workings, countering its dis-information and mobilizing civil society opposition (European NGOs are particularly suspect), it is not surprising that Israel, too, has its own anti-NGO website, "NGO Monitor," an off-shoot of the NGO Watch whose declared objective is "to end the practice used by certain self-declared humanitarian NGOs' of exploiting the label universal human rights' to promote politically and ideologically motivated anti-Israel agendas." Operated by an "approved" NGO headed by Dore Gold, Netanyahu's Ambassador to the UN, NGO Monitor targets such organizations as the Ford Foundation (who, according to the Monitor, "provided funding to a number of human-rights based NGOs that engaged in demonization and anti-Israel activities"), Christian Aid, ICAHD, B'tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, together with all Israeli NGOs favoring "peace" (including the mild New Israeli Fund) and, virtually by definition, all Palestinian NGOs. By intimidating funders of NGOs whose views are unacceptable to them, the "monitors," the neo-cons and their Israeli clones hope to limit the effectiveness of progressive civil society groups, thus strengthening the hand of governments in which such "democratic" elements as themselves, religious fundamentalists, corporations and the military have the upper hand.

Bringing the Israeli Right into the Global Neo-Con Alliance.

Although hardly a fan of Christians, Menachem Begin and his Likud colleagues appreciated their ideological similarities and the dovetailing of their political worldviews, especially since a militarily strong Israel able to use its Occupation for expansion was at the common center of their concerns. In order not only to strengthen the right-wing position at home but to influence policy towards Israel deriving from the US-led international community, Israel's right wing has worked diligently to insert itself into the global right alliance.

The Likud has long courted the Christian Right. In 1980, Falwell became the first non-Jew to be awarded the Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky medal for Zionist excellence by Begin. It was well known that Benjamin Netanyahu, when visiting Washington as Prime Minister, used to first meet with Falwell, and The National Unity Coalition for Israel, a gathering of more than 500 fundamentalist Christian leaders, then with the President and Congressional leaders. That continues: Pat Robertson received Israel's Freedom Award in 2004, and both Netanyahu and Benny Alon, the leader of the extreme right National Union Party, conduct extensive and ongoing contacts with them. It is a case of strange bed-fellows of great use to each other: Alon and other xenophobic orthodox rabbis who hold Christianity in contempt embracing dispensationalists who look forward to the End of Days and the end of the Jews. Yet each has its own interest in using Israel as a vehicle for its political program and of course the Jewish neo-cons lend a legitimacy to the relationship. All use the other.

Another interesting wrinkle is provided by another xenophobic and in principle anti-Christian community in Israel, the leaders of the Russian immigrants in Israel, such as Nathan Sharansky and Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu's former office chief. United by their fierce anti-communism and similar neo-con views of the world (Sharansky, who has been called "Bush's guru," was instrumental in getting the US to isolate Arafat), the Russian immigrant leaders carry on an intimate relationship with Washington through both the neo-cons and the Christian Right, while ensuring through their mobilization of the one million-strong Russian community in Israel the continued rule of the Likud (even though they actually stand to the right of it).

Through their control of the organized Jewish community in the US and elsewhere, demonstrated most openly in the work of the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), the Likud and Russian elements in Israel have even succeeded in turning what was historically a liberal Jewish Establishment into another uncritical arm of Israeli policy, and thus of the extreme right.

Operational Conclusion: Israel Against Progressive Civil Society

The operational upshot of all this is not merely a well-organized, well-financed and well-articulated global cabal of neo-cons, religious fundamentalists, academics who will legitimize their positions and political leaders, but the integration of Israel into a global military system again, led by the US but involving the elites of almost every country, including Arab and Muslim ones whose purpose is to subvert progressive civil society elements and create an "environment" conducive to American Empire and the well-being of those compliant international elites. Israel's leading position in this military alliance, then, has global implications, but it also serves to give Israel the military strength and political umbrella needed to transform its Occupation into annexation while advancing a Pax Americana over the Middle East.

Israel's military influence as a point-country for American Empire stems from four main sources:

(1) Israel has inserted itself into the center of the US military industry. This, at least, is how AIPAC is able to sell Israel to members of Congress. According to its website in 2001 (www.aipac.org):

The United States and Israel have formed a unique strategic partnership [a formal "strategic alliance" was signed in 1985].Perhaps more than any two countries, the US and Israel share vital intelligence on terrorism, weapons proliferation and other threats. With US help, Israel is able to maintain its qualitative military edge for deterring aggression by its potential enemies. By collaborating with Israel, the US has a reliable, democratic and technologically-advanced partner in securing American strategic interests. This partnership includes: bilateral strategic agreements on military planning, ballistic missile defense and counter-terrorism; joint development of weapons and technologies; intelligence sharing; and combined military exercises.By working closely with the Israeli Defense Forces, and by pre-positioning equipment in Israel, the United States military enhances the readiness of its own forces responding to future crises in the Middle East.

The US pre-positions hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military equipment, including spare parts, trucks, ammunition and armor in Israel. This equipment can be used by Israel as emergency supplies in times of crisis and is available to US forces for military contingencies in the region.Israeli defense companies have become a significant provider of military equipment to the US Armed Forces. Israel represents one of the top five suppliers of high-tech military hardware to the United States, and is first on a per capita basis. An average of 300 US Department of Defense and military personnel travel to Israel every month, more per capita than any other US ally.

Needless to say, Israel provided key support for the US in Iraq, including the construction of mock Iraqi neighborhoods and villages in the Negev where American troops could train. The American military government in Iraq, the "Civil Administration," was patterned after the Israeli Civil Administration that rules the Occupied Territories. Israeli involvement in the defense-related economies in the districts of most members of Congress explains to a great degree why Israel enjoys the uncritical support it does. The Israeli astronaut who died in the Challenger accident testifies to the intimate involvement of Israel in the most guarded parts of the American military, where even European countries are excluded. In fact, Israel has just taken delivery of advanced F-16s and helicopter gunships that have been denied Europe.

(2) Israel also serves as the major arms subcontractor for American arms. It recently signed two agreements, worth $1.5 billion each, to train and equip both the Chinese and Indian armies with Israeli-tinkered US weaponry. The US uses Israel as a conduit when it wishes to avoid Congressional bans, embodied in the Arms Export Control Act, on selling arms to countries with serious human rights violations or, as in the case of India and Pakistan, when it wishes to avoid taking sides.

(3) Because of access to American technology and financial support, Israel has become the third largest arms producer in the world, making more weapons than China, Britain or France. In fact, Israel produces 12% of the world's arms. And it sells to countries few other want to associate with: Apartheid-era South Africa (where it trained the notorious security forces and helped develop the regime's nuclear program), Mobutu's Zaire, Liberia under Charles Taylor, the Burmese generals, Agentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras and Guatemala under their military dictatorships, the corrupt and brutal regimes of Central Asia and Rwanda, where it sold small arms to the Hutu before and during the genocide, then, without interruption, to the Tutsis immediately afterwards.

(4) Israel has become a military superpower in its own right. Its army and air force rival those of the major European countries, and it has become the world's fourth largest nuclear power, despite never signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It works closely with the US military. For example, Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker (January 24-31, 2005) that "The next strategic target [is] Iran.The [Bush] Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer.Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran." And it pursues an aggressive military policy of its own, although with tacit or explicit American "permission." Israel has become a leading subverter of human rights and progressive change throughout the world. It has military advisors and mercenaries in Columbia (both on the side of the government and of the drug cartels). Its mercenaries (all of whom operate under the supervision of the Ministry of Defense) are active in West Africa, where they broke the UN's boycott on "blood diamonds," as in many other conflictual locales. Israeli advisors completely built Singapore's army, today the strongest in Southeast Asia. Israel also has major weapons development programs with every country in the European Union.

As an Israeli (and an immigrant to the country to boot), I write all this with sadness and concern. For all the violence and injustice that accompanied its birth, this was not the country it was intended to be. The slogan of the Israeli peace movement, "occupation corrupts," has proven to be true with a vengeance. Israel has become a Sparta, an aggressive country with no moral brakes that endangers its neighbors, peoples of far-away land and, in the end, its own population. The fact that Israel has become a handmaiden (to choose a nice word) to American Empire, that it has compounded the sins of occupation by joining forces with chauvinistic neo-cons, corporations pursuing war profits, anti-Semitic fundamentalists and other dubious forces subverting progressive civil society elements around the world. This is the greatest betrayal, not only of what Israel might have been had it sought accommodation and peace with the Palestinians and its other neighbors but of the Jewish people as a whole, who have been disproportionately represented among the progressive forces seeking to spread universal human and civil rights, and who themselves have a fundamental stake in such principles prevailing. The purpose of this paper is not to "knock" Israel, but to shake it, to yell at its leaders and citizens: "What are you doing? What have you become? Save yourselves!" If not that, then at least to constrain it, as we must constrain American Empire, for the sake of us all.

Jeff Halper is an anthropologist and the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
He can be reached at icahd@zahav.net.il.)

Bibliography

Prior, Michael 1999, Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry. London: Routledge.

Sizer, Stephen 2003, Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon.

http://www.jinsa.org/home/home.html (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs)

http://www.rense.com/general18/JINSA.htm

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/jinsa.phphttp://www-hjs.pet.cam.ac.uk/patrons_html (Henry Jackson Society

The New Geopolitics of Energy

By Michael T. Klare, The Nation, May 1, 2008

This article appeared in the May 19, 2008 edition of The Nation.

While the day-to-day focus of US military planning remains Iraq and Afghanistan, American strategists are increasingly looking beyond these two conflicts to envision the global combat environment of the emerging period--and the world they see is one where the struggle over vital resources, rather than ideology or balance-of-power politics, dominates the martial landscape. Believing that the United States must reconfigure its doctrines and forces in order to prevail in such an environment, senior officials have taken steps to enhance strategic planning and combat capabilities. Although little of this has reached the public domain, there have been a number of key indicators.

Since 2006 the Defense Department, in its annual report Military Power of the People's Republic of China, has equated competition over resources with conflict over Taiwan as a potential spark for a US war with China. Preparation for a clash over Taiwan remains "an important driver" of China's military modernization, the 2008 edition noted, but "analysis of China's military acquisitions and strategic thinking suggests Beijing is also developing capabilities for use in other contingencies, such as conflict over resources." The report went on to suggest that the Chinese are planning to enhance their capacity for "power projection" in areas that provide them with critical raw materials, especially fossil fuels, and that such efforts would pose a significant threat to America's security interests.

The Pentagon is also requesting funds this year for the establishment of the Africa Command (Africom), the first overseas joint command to be formed since 1983, when President Reagan created the Central Command (Centcom) to guard Persian Gulf oil. Supposedly, the new organization will focus its efforts on humanitarian aid and the "war on terror." But in a presentation delivered at the National Defense University in February, Africom's deputy commander, Vice Adm. Robert Moeller, said, "Africa holds growing geostrategic importance" to the United States--with oil a key factor in this equation--and that among the key challenges to US strategic interests in the region is China's "Growing Influence in Africa."

Russia, too, is being viewed through the lens of global resource competition. Although Russia, unlike the United States and China, does not need to import oil and natural gas to satisfy its domestic requirements, it seeks to dominate the transportation of energy, especially to Europe. This has alarmed senior White House officials, who resent restoration of Russia's great-power status and fear that its growing control over the distribution of oil and gas in Eurasia will undercut America's influence in the region. In response to the Russian energy drive, the Bush Administration is undertaking countermoves. "I do intend to appoint...a special energy coordinator who could especially spend time on the Central Asian and Caspian region," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February. "It is a really important part of diplomacy." A key job of the coordinator, she suggested, would be to encourage the establishment of oil and gas pipelines that bypass Russia, thereby diminishing its control over the regional flow of energy.

Taken together, these and like moves suggest that a momentous shift has occurred. At a time when world supplies of oil, natural gas, uranium and key industrial minerals like copper and cobalt are beginning to shrink and the demand for them is exploding, the major industrial powers are becoming more desperate in their drive to gain control over what remains of the planet's untapped reserves [for more evidence of major shortages in fossil fuels, see Klare, "Beyond the Age of Petroleum," November 12, 2007, and Mark Hertsgaard, "Running on Empty," May 12]. These efforts typically entail intense bidding wars for supplies on international markets--hence the record high prices for all these commodities. But they also take military form, as arms transfers and the deployment of overseas missions and bases. It is to bolster America's advantage--and to counter similar moves by China and other resource competitors--that the Pentagon has placed resource competition at the center of its strategic planning.

Alfred Thayer Mahan Revisited

This is not the first time that American strategists have placed a high priority on the global struggle over vital resources. At the end of the nineteenth century a bold and outspoken group of military thinkers, led by naval historian and Naval War College president Alfred Thayer Mahan and his protégé, then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, campaigned for a strong American Navy and the acquisition of colonies to ensure access to overseas markets and raw materials. Eventually, their views helped generate public support for the Spanish-American War and, upon its conclusion, the establishment of a Caribbean and Pacific empire by the United States.

During the cold war, ideology reigned supreme as containment of the USSR and the defeat of Communism were the overriding objectives of American strategy. But even then, resource considerations were not entirely neglected. The Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957 and the Carter Doctrine of 1980, though couched in the standard anti-Soviet rhetoric of the day, were principally intended to ensure continued US access to the Persian Gulf's prolific oil reserves. And when President Carter established the nucleus of Centcom in 1980, its primary responsibility was protection of the Persian Gulf oil flow--not containment of the Soviet Union.

After the cold war, the first President Bush tried, and failed, to establish a global coalition of like-minded states--a "new world order"--that would maintain global stability and allow Western corporate interests (American firms foremost among them) to extend their reach across the planet. This approach, in watered-down form, was subsequently embraced by President Clinton. But 9/11 and the current Administration's relentless campaign against "rogue states," notably Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Iran, has reinjected an ideological element into US strategic planning. As George W. Bush tells it, the "war on terror" and rogue states are the contemporary equivalents of earlier ideological struggles against Fascism and Communism. Examine the issues closely, however, and it is impossible to disentangle the problem of Middle Eastern terrorism or the challenge posed by Iraq and Iran from the history of Western oil extraction in those regions.

Islamic extremism of the sort propagated by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda has many roots, but one of its major claims is that the Western assault on and occupation of Islamic lands--and the resulting defilement of Muslim peoples and cultures--has been driven by the West's craving for Middle Eastern oil. "Remember too that the biggest reason for our enemies' control over our lands is to steal our oil," bin Laden told his sympathizers in a December 2004 audiotaped address. "So give everything you can to stop the greatest theft of oil in history."

Likewise, the US conflict with Iraq and Iran has largely been shaped by the fundamental tenet of the Carter Doctrine: that the United States will not permit the emergence of a hostile power that might gain control over the flow of Persian Gulf oil and thus--in Vice President Cheney's words--"be able to dictate the future of worldwide energy policy." The fact that these countries might be seeking weapons of mass destruction only complicates the task of neutralizing the threat they pose, but it does not alter the underlying strategic logic.

Concern over the safety of vital resource supplies has, therefore, been a central feature of strategic planning for a long time. But the attention now devoted to this issue represents a qualitative shift in US thinking, matched only by the imperial impulses that led to the Spanish-American War a century ago. This time, however, the shift is driven not by an optimistic faith in America's capacity to dominate the world economy but by a largely pessimistic outlook regarding the future availability of vital resources and the intense competition over them waged by China and other rising economic dynamos. Faced with these dual challenges, Pentagon strategists believe that ensuring US primacy in the global resource struggle must be the top priority of American military policy.

Back to the Future

In line with this new outlook, fresh emphasis is being placed on the global role of the Navy. Using language that would sound surprisingly familiar to Alfred Mahan and the first President Roosevelt, the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard unveiled A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower in October; it emphasizes America's need to dominate the oceans and guard the vital sea lanes that connect this country to its overseas markets and resource supplies:

Over the past four decades, total sea borne trade has more than quadrupled: 90% of world trade and two-thirds of its petroleum are transported by sea. The sea-lanes and supporting shore infrastructure are the lifelines of the modern global economy.... Heightened popular expectations and increased competition for resources, coupled with scarcity, may encourage nations to exert wider claims of sovereignty over greater expanses of ocean, waterways, and natural resources--potentially resulting in conflict.

To address this danger, the Defense Department has undertaken a massive modernization of the combat fleet, entailing the design and procurement of new aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers, submarines and a new type of "littoral combat" (coastal warfare) ship--an endeavor that could take decades to complete and consume hundreds of billions of dollars. Elements of this plan were unveiled by President Bush and Defense Secretary Gates in the budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2009, submitted in February. Among the big-ticket items highlighted in the shipbuilding budget are:

§ $4.2 billion for the lead ship of a new generation of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers;

§ $3.2 billion for a third Zumwalt class missile destroyer; these warships with advanced stealth capabilities will also serve as a "testbed" for a new class of missile cruisers, the CG(X);

§ $1.3 billion for the first two littoral combat ships;

§ $3.6 billion for another Virginia class submarine, the world's most advanced undersea combat vessel in production.

Proposed shipbuilding programs will cost $16.9 billion in FY 2009, on top of $24.6 billion voted in FY 2007 and FY 2008.

The Navy's new strategic outlook is reflected not only in the procurement of new vessels but also in the disposition of existing ones. Until recently most naval assets were concentrated in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Northwest Pacific in support of American forces assigned to NATO and the defense pacts with South Korea and Japan. These ties still figure prominently in strategic calculations, but ever-increasing weight is placed on the protection of vital trade links in the Persian Gulf, the Southwest Pacific and the Gulf of Guinea (close to Africa's major oil producers). In 2003, for example, the head of the US European Command declared that the aircraft carrier battle groups under his command would be spending fewer months in the Mediterranean and "half their time going down the west coast of Africa."

A similar outlook is guiding the realignment of overseas bases, which has been under way for the past several years. When the Bush Administration came into office, most major bases were in Western Europe, Japan or South Korea. Under the prodding of then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, however, the Pentagon began to relocate forces from the outer fringes of Eurasia to its central and southern regions--especially East-Central Europe, Central Asia and Southwest Asia--as well as to North and Central Africa. True, these areas are home to Al Qaeda and the Middle Eastern "rogue states"--but they also contain 80 percent or more of the world's oil and natural gas, as well as reserves of uranium, copper, cobalt and other critical industrial materials. And, as noted, it is impossible to separate the one from the other in US strategic calculations.

A case in point is the US plan to maintain a basing infrastructure to support combat operations in the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia. American ties with states in this area were established several years before 9/11, to protect the flow of Caspian Sea oil to the West. Believing that the Caspian basin could prove a valuable new source of oil and natural gas, President Clinton worked assiduously to open the doors to US involvement in the area's energy production; aware also of the endemic ethnic antagonisms in the region, he sought to bolster the military capabilities of friendly local powers and to prepare for possible intervention by American forces. President Bush later built on these efforts, increasing the flow of US military aid and establishing bases in the Central Asian republics.

A corresponding mix of priorities governs the Pentagon's plans to retain a constellation of "enduring" bases in Iraq. Many of these installations will no doubt be used to support continuing operations against insurgent forces, for intelligence activities or for the training of Iraqi army and police units. Even if all US combat troops are withdrawn in accordance with plans announced by senators Clinton and Obama, some of these bases will probably be retained for the training activities they say will continue. At least some bases, moreover, are specifically earmarked for the protection of Iraqi oil exports. In 2007, for example, the Navy revealed that it had established a command-and-control facility atop an offshore Iraqi oil terminal in the Persian Gulf to oversee the protection of vital terminals.

A Global Struggle

No other major power is capable of matching the United States when it comes to the global deployment of military power in the pursuit or protection of vital raw materials. Nevertheless, other powers are beginning to challenge this country in various ways. In particular, China and Russia are providing arms to oil and gas producers in the developing world and beginning to enhance their military capacity in key energy-producing areas.

China's drive to gain access to foreign supplies is most evident in Africa, where Beijing has established ties with the oil-producing governments of Algeria, Angola, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and Sudan. China has also sought access to Africa's abundant mineral supplies, pursuing copper in Zambia and Congo, chromium in Zimbabwe and a range of minerals in South Africa. In each case the Chinese have wooed suppliers through vigorous diplomacy, offers of development assistance and low-interest loans, high-visibility cultural projects--and, in many cases, arms. China is now a major supplier of basic combat gear to many of these countries and is especially known for its weapons sales to Sudan--arms that reportedly have been used by government forces in attacks on civilian communities in Darfur. Moreover, like the United States, China has supplemented its arms transfers with military-support agreements, leading to a steady buildup of Chinese instructors, advisers and technicians, who now compete with their US counterparts for the loyalty of African military officers.

Much the same process is under way in Central Asia, where China and Russia cooperate under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to provide arms and technical assistance to the military forces of the Central Asian "stans"--again competing with the United States to win the loyalty of local military elites. In the 1990s Russia was too preoccupied with Chechnya to pay much attention to this area, and China was likewise consumed with other priorities, so Washington enjoyed a temporary advantage; in the past five years, however, Moscow and Beijing have made concerted efforts to gain influence in the region. The result has been a far more competitive geopolitical environment, with Russia and China, linked through the SCO, gaining ground in their drive to diminish US influence.

A clear expression of this drive was the military exercise the SCO conducted last summer, the first of its kind to feature participation by all member states. The maneuvers involved some 6,500 personnel from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and took place in Russia and China. Aside from its symbolic significance, the exercise was indicative of China's and Russia's efforts to enhance their capabilities, placing a heavy emphasis on long-range assault forces. For the first time, a contingent of Chinese airborne troops were deployed outside Chinese territory, a clear sign of Beijing's growing assertiveness.

To ensure that the intended message of these exercises did not go unnoticed, the presidents of China and Russia used the occasion of an accompanying SCO summit in Kyrgyzstan to warn the United States (though not by name) against meddling in Central Asian affairs. In calling for a "multipolar" world, for example, Vladimir Putin declared that "any attempts to solve global and regional problems unilaterally are hopeless." For his part, Hu Jintao noted, "The SCO nations have a clear understanding of the threats faced by the region and thus must ensure their security themselves."

These and other efforts by Russia and China, combined with stepped-up US military aid to states in the region, are part of a larger, though often hidden, struggle to control the flow of oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea basin to markets in Europe and Asia. And this struggle, in turn, is but part of a global struggle over energy.

The great risk is that this struggle will someday breach the boundaries of economic and diplomatic competition and enter the military realm. This will not be because any of the states involved make a deliberate decision to provoke a conflict with a competitor--the leaders of all these countries know that the price of violence is far too high to pay for any conceivable return. The problem, instead, is that all are engaging in behaviors that make the outbreak of inadvertent escalation ever more likely. These include, for example, the deployment of growing numbers of American, Russian and Chinese military instructors and advisers in areas of instability where there is every risk that these outsiders will someday be caught up in local conflicts on opposite sides.

This risk is made all the greater because intensified production of oil, natural gas, uranium and minerals is itself a source of instability, acting as a magnet for arms deliveries and outside intervention. The nations involved are largely poor, so whoever controls the resources controls the one sure source of abundant wealth. This is an invitation for the monopolization of power by greedy elites who use control over military and police to suppress rivals. The result, more often than not, is a wealthy strata of crony capitalists kept in power by brutal security forces and surrounded by disaffected and impoverished masses, often belonging to a different ethnic group--a recipe for unrest and insurgency. This is the situation today in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, in Darfur and southern Sudan, in the uranium-producing areas of Niger, in Zimbabwe, in the Cabinda province of Angola (where most of that country's oil lies) and in numerous other areas suffering from what's been called the "resource curse."

The danger, of course, is that the great powers will be sucked into these internal conflicts. This is not a far-fetched scenario; the United States, Russia and China are already providing arms and military-support services to factions in many of these disputes. The United States is arming government forces in Nigeria and Angola, China is aiding government forces in Sudan and Zimbabwe, and so on. An even more dangerous situation prevails in Georgia, where the United States is backing the pro-Western government of President Mikhail Saakashvili with arms and military support while Russia is backing the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia plays an important strategic role for both countries because it harbors the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, a US-backed conduit carrying Caspian Sea oil to markets in the West. There are US and Russian military advisers/instructors in both areas, in some cases within visual range of each other. It is not difficult, therefore, to conjure up scenarios in which a future blow-up between Georgian and separatist forces could lead, willy-nilly, to a clash between American and Russian soldiers, sparking a much greater crisis.

It is essential that America reverse the militarization of its dependence on imported energy and ease geopolitical competition with China and Russia over control of foreign resources. Because this would require greater investment in energy alternatives, it would also lead to an improved energy economy at home (with lower prices in the long run) and a better chance at overcoming global warming.

Any strategy aimed at reducing reliance on imported energy, especially oil, must include a huge increase in spending on alternative fuels, especially renewable sources of energy (solar and wind), second-generation biofuels (those made from nonedible plant matter), coal gasification with carbon capture and burial (so that no carbon dioxide escapes into the atmosphere to heat the planet) and hydrogen fuel cells, along with high-speed rail, public transit and other advanced transportation systems. The science and technology for these advances is already largely in place, but the funding to move them from the lab or pilot-project stage to full-scale development is not. The challenge, then, is to assemble the many billions--even trillions--of dollars that will be needed.

The principal obstacle to this herculean task is the very reason for its necessity in the first place: massive spending on the military dimensions of overseas resource competition. I estimate that it costs approximately $100 billion to $150 billion per year to enforce the Carter Doctrine, not including the war in Iraq. Extending that doctrine to the Caspian Sea basin and Africa will add billions. A new cold war with China, with an accompanying naval arms race, will require trillions in additional military expenditures over the next few decades. This is sheer lunacy: it will not guarantee access to more sources of energy, lower the cost of gasoline at home or discourage China from seeking new energy resources. What it will do is sop up all the money we need to develop alternative energy sources and avert the worst effects of global climate change.

And this leads to a final recommendation: rather than engage in militarized competition with China, we should cooperate with Beijing in developing alternative energy sources and more efficient transportation systems. The arguments in favor of collaboration are overwhelming: together, we are projected to consume 35 percent of the world's oil supply by 2025, most of which will have to be imported from dysfunctional states. If, as is widely predicted, global oil reserves have begun to shrink by then, both of our countries could be locked in a dangerous struggle for dwindling supplies in chronically unstable areas of the world. The costs, in terms of rising military outlays and the inability to invest in more worthwhile social, economic and environmental endeavors, would be staggering. Far better to forswear this sort of competition and work together on the development of advanced petroleum alternatives, super-fuel-efficient vehicles and other energy innovations. Many American and Chinese universities and corporations have already initiated joint ventures of this sort, so it is not hard to envision a much grander regime of cooperation.

As we approach the 2008 elections, two paths lie before us. One leads to greater reliance on imported fuels, increased militarization of our foreign fuel dependency and prolonged struggle with other powers for control over the world's remaining supplies of fossil fuels. The other leads toward diminished reliance on petroleum as a main source of our fuel, the rapid development of energy alternatives, a reduced US military profile abroad and cooperation with China in the development of innovative energy options. Rarely has a policy choice been as stark or as momentous for the future of our country.

About Michael T. Klare

Michael T. Klare, defense correspondent of The Nation, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College. His newest book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, will be published by Metropolitan Books in April.