Dear wsn,
I hope you agree this is relevant to some of our threads here - it
certainly discusses world systems (recent, current, and future) of various
kinds. Comments invited.
-rkm
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Hi-Tech Warfare with China?
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7 April 1997
rkmoore@iol.ie
Rapid development underway of hi-tech US arsenal
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"The Future of Warfare" - The Economist, March 8 - delves into the subject
of hi-tech warfare, of which Desert Storm, we are told, was but a primitive
prototype. The most advanced elements are still only in the idea stage, but
others are well along in development, or already deployed, and the whole
program is on a fast-track priority for the US military. The impression is
given, and I believe rightly so, that the results will be formidably potent
- not at all like the dubious, premature, Star Wars project of the Reagan
era. Highlights:
The world is in the early stages of a new military revolution.
The technologies include digital communications, which allow data
to be compressed; a "global Positioning system" (GPS) of satellites,
which makes more exact guidance and navigation possible; radar-
evading "stealth"; and, of course, computer processing...
...over Bosnia the Americans have deployed JSTARS, a ground-
surveillance system in the sky: a single screen can display,
in any weather, the position and type of every vehicle within
an area 200 kilometres (125 miles) square...
A system of systems
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The revolution in military affairs revolves around three advances.
The first is in gathering intelligence. Sensors in satellites,
aircraft or unmanned aircraft can monitor virtually everything
going on in an area. The second is in processing intelligence.
Advanced command, control, communication and computing systems,
known as C4, make sense of the data gathered by the sensors and
display it on screen. They can then assign particular targets to
missiles, tanks or whatever. The third is in acting on all this
intelligence in particular, by using long-range precision
strikes to destroy targets. Cruise missiles, guided by satellite,
can hit an individual building many hundreds of miles away...
The Pentagon already has, or is developing, most of the technologies
required for space weapons. For instance it has just awarded a $l.l
billion contract for an airborne laser to hit ballistic missiles.
if that technology works, it could be adapted for a satellite...
Aircraft carriers, like other surface ships, risk being sunk by
cruise missiles. Some will be replaced by "arsenal ships", semi-
submersible, stealthy barges, carrying hundreds of missiles but
few sailors...
What's the point of this arsenal?
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There are many more details to the article, but what may be of broader
interest are the WHY questions ... What is all this for? ... Why the
urgency? The Economist's own answers to these questions are woefully
misinformed on almost every point:
This embryonic revolution, unlike the development of nuclear
weapons, has not emerged in response to any particular threat
to the United States or its allies. It has come about because
it is there, that is, because generals want to play with new
technologies in case a future threat emerges. In that it may
resemble Blitzkrieg, which was based on the technologies of the
1920's, when defence budgets were declining and there seemed
little prospect of another world war.
Nuclear weapons were developed (Manhattan Project) not - the record seems
clear - because of any particular "threat", but as a key part of the
American elite's intention to actively dominate the post-war world.
Intelligence sources knew the Nazis weren't getting anywhere with their own
nuclear research, and this fact was intentionally withheld from the
scientists at Los Alamos, who were manipulated into urgency "lest Hitler use
the bomb first".
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - both of which cities had
intentionally been spared conventional bombing, so that test results would
be accurate - accomplished live-target tests of the U235 and plutonium
device prototypes, as well as demonstrating to the world (especially the
Soviets) the will and ability to project power in such a way.
Similarly, Germany's blitzkrieg weapons were not idle technological
developments, carried out with little anticipation of use. Krupp's
engineers, with the connivance of several German governments, designed -
starting long before Hitler's rise - a suite of military hardware that was
aimed at achieving military superiority in a specific time-window (late
30's, early 40's), during which Germany was to regain its honor and further
its own elite's imperialist ambitions.
Similarly as well, permit me to suggest, America's current hi-tech-warfare
developments do not arise primarily from the play of generals nor even the
profit-seeking of arms developers. As with both the A-bomb and Nazi
blitzkrieg, what we are seeing with hi-tech warfare is the preparation of a
weapons suite crafted with particular - and not defensive - missions in
mind. But unlike the earlier precedents, as I'll seek to show, we are
seeing here something beyond merely elite nationalist ambitions at work.
The arsenal includes more than technology
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Absent from the article, allow me to establish first, are other equally
significant threads of the ultra-modern-warfare story. Let me draw your
attention to some modern blitzkrieg conflicts: in Grenada, Panama, and Iraq.
Was anyone else struck by the similarities in this sequence of incidents?
These episodes had all the appearance, to me at least, of a sequence of
incrementally larger-scale field tests - the unfolding deployment of a suite
of techniques that included not only first-draft versions of the technology
mentioned in the Economist piece, but also striking innovations in
propaganda and international "law".
All three conflicts had highly dubious - in fact downright refutable -
justifications. American citizens in Grenada were not in danger, and the
touted Cuban "troops" were in fact civilian employees of a British firm
building a civilian (not military) air field. Noriega was in full
compliance with US drug-policy expectations, and the US put people back in
power who have continued to use Panama as a drug banking center. Saddam was
given a go signal, by the US Secretary of State, to invade Kuwait - just as
Turkey was later given a go signal to invade Kurdish areas of Iraq.
The publicly declared motivations for these US offensive operations were
clearly bogus. The operations can however be easily understood in terms of
traditional "strategic interests" imperialism: Grenada, being blatantly
socialist, was simply too much of an embarrassment, so close to American
borders - a backbreaking straw added to the mortifying weight of Cuba on the
backyard of Uncle Sam's self image. Noriega was threatening to get uppity
about the Panama Canal - as strategic an issue as you can imagine. Saddam
was succeeding in building a modern secular Muslim state in the Middle East
- a precedent that threatened to undermine the controlled instability that
the US has so carefully fostered in the region; the last thing the US
(acting, as is traditional, in tacit support of major oil-company interests)
wants are stable, prosperous, oil-owning states which are not beholden to
outside interests to stay in power.
But careful consideration of this sequence of military-media offensives, as
I hope to illustrate, reveals that these were multi-mission exercises: yes
they accomplished traditional "sphere of interest" objectives (as did, for
example, the overthrow of Allende), but they also accomplished other
objectives which deserve to be noted - objectives that foretell much about
what is likely to be the nature of international affairs in the age of
globalization.
Prior to each of the conflicts, the media erupted with
propaganda/demonization campaigns designed to prepare the way for the
adventurism. Then came tight management of all information during the
conflicts and hours of crafted infotainment (intelligence-provided diagrams,
interviews with generals, jazzy hardware in operation) in the place of news
coverage. The result was that these turned out to be, domestically anyway,
crowd-pleasing conflicts - no mean feat in a nation that was both morally
and practically shy of imperialism - a consensus sentiment that Reagan
dubbed "Vietnam syndrome".
In the cases of Grenada and Panama there was little attention given to
placating international opinion: the propaganda focus was on managing
domestic perceptions, and the censure by much of the rest of the world was
simply omitted, for the most part, from domestic news coverage. But with
Iraq, not only was there a much grander technological deployment, and
continued refinement of the propaganda machinery, but - and this is probably
the most important outcome of Desert Storm - the successful establishment of
a bold new precedent in de-facto international law.
There had been an expensive, all-stops-pulled propaganda/diplomacy/bribery
campaign in the global press, on the floor of the UN, and in who-knows-how-
many national capitals - a campaign designed to subvert all negotiation
efforts, achieve UN approval of unfettered US military intervention, and
patch together (through very costly bribery - in both money and future
commitments) the pretense of an "allied" military operation.
When the dust - more accurately the sand and organo-phosphates - had
settled, a de-facto new world order (as Bush accurately described it) had
been established as regards an internationally-sanctioned role for Uncle Sam
as the global policeman. Later in Somalia and Bosnia, due to this
precedent, the US had very little trouble in gaining rubber-stamp
international approval for whatever interventionist agenda it had in mind -
dictated in fact more by geopolitical considerations than any bona fide
sense of international peace and order.
I want to underscore the importance of this new-world-order diplomatic
achievement. The US does not want to be an international pariah: it values
and exploits its close working relationships with the world's leading (read:
richest) nations. International approval, or at least acquiescence, has as
much strategic importance to the US as does the raw physical ability to
project its military power.
The missions of the arsenal: (1) globalist Imperial Legions?
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I claimed earlier that "particular missions" are the aim of the
techno/propagandist/diplomatic war chest we've been examining. Allow me to
say more about those missions. First comes the observation that America has
long outgrown its formerly narrow, purely nationalistic role, in the
geopolitical game. It still behaves imperialistically, as it has ever since
1812 - when it hoped to take over Canada - but no longer is parochial
national advantage the goal.
"Globalization" - with WTO, GATT, NAFTA, deregulation, privatization, and an
enlarged NATO - has replaced "national advantage" as the unstated national
purpose. The US government - which formerly acted as the tacit agent
primarily of American-based corporate power - is now acting as the agent of
the international corporate community generally. (Ironically, the world's
premier "democracy" has usually been far from acting on behalf of its
supposedly sovereign electorate.)
At the most fundamental level, it is not the US which is extending its power
over other nations via a police-force role, but rather the corporate elite
that is extending its power over additional nations via American globalist
policies and police-force power. US nationalism persists as a domestic
rhetorical fiction only so the citizens will continue to pay the bills, and
provide the infrastructure, for services that are actually being rendered to
others.
The propaganda phrase "American Interests", thus, will continue to be used,
and will continue to be backed by force, in the tradition of the Monroe
Doctrine. But other members of the NWO community (UK, Germany, et al)
understand that their own interests - more precisely the interests of their
corporate elites - are factored into the American equation. "American
Interests", just like "Chevrolet", continues to ring "Made in America" - but
both are increasingly assembled from foreign components.
This is what the New World Order (caps this time) is all about. Not simply
an internationally sanctioned military role for Uncle Sam, but a broader
agenda for Uncle Sam to pursue - the management of the globe on behalf elite
corporate interests generally, making all regions of the Earth stable and
profitable, from the perspective of capital investment.
The task of global management can be expected to involve conflicts of
various sizes, from anti-"terrorist" operations, to brushfire civil wars, to
"restructuring" of "renegade" regimes (as in Grenada and Panama) - all the
way up to full scale wars - and I don't count Desert Storm as full scale.
To handle flexibly this wide range of conflicts - and without sacrificing so
many of "our boys" that domestic acquiescence is threatened - one can
understand why the US needs its multi-faceted, hi-tech arsenal. But why
does it need to be upgraded with such urgency? Isn't it already far ahead
of all comers?
A trial balloon was sent up not that long ago whose goal was to add nuclear
capability to the internationally-approved war chest. I refer, of course,
to Libya and its (perhaps mythical) biological warfare plant (What ever
happened to that plant, by the way?). If that balloon had not met with
international focus-group derision, Libya might well have become the next in
the sequence of field-test blitzkrieg deployments - this time bringing nukes
(precise and clean? .. but of course) into the game.
The missions of the arsenal: (2) The China Question
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In considering why tactical nukes would be deemed necessary by US military
planners (not in Libya, but in the long run) - and in considering why the US
seeks to advance further its hi-tech capability when it is already so far
ahead of the pack - one is led inevitably to think about China.
China is the only remaining significant wild card in the New World Order
game. Cuba, and other similars, may be virulently anti-NWO (ie. - insisting
on their own sovereignty) - but they are small and highly vulnerable (and
Clinton promised Castro "Your day will come" in his recent State of the
Union message). Russia and the medium-sized "renegade" states (Iran, Libya
et al) may be somewhat unpredictable, and vexing to NWO planners due to
their size - but they don't (anymore at least) have great-power ambitions
and can be adequately contained and coerced (militarily and economically)
over time into acceptable roles - and convenient bad-guy is one of the most
useful roles.
There are a pair of articles in the March/April Foreign Affairs - a
propaganda journal for the globalist NWO agenda, with large type so aging
plutocrats can read it - called "The China Threat - A Debate". (By the way,
I commend Foreign Affairs in general to your attention. It is very
informative, between the lines, as regards NWO designs, and quite humorous,
in a dark sort of way, in the smooth-talking blatancy of its party-line
assumptions and rhetoric.) The "debate" (to return to our story) is an old-
boys affair - with much in the way of shared assumptions, and the
differences only in which tactics would best serve the shared goal of
subjugating China to the NWO agenda (or as they would say it: securing
reforms which bring China into the family of modern nations).
Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, in "The Coming Conflict with America",
present the case that armed conflict between the US and China may be
inevitable.
They tell us: "China's sheer size and inherent strength, its conception of
itself as a center of global civilization, and its eagerness to redeem
centuries of humiliating weakness are propelling it toward Asian hegemony."
And they pass on an ominous sentiment attributed to General Mi Zhenyu, vice-
commandant of the Academy of Military Sciences in Beijing: "For a relatively
long time it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of
vengeance. We must conceal our abilities and bide our time" - giving fair
warning to be wary of what may appear to be softening in future Chinese
behavior.
What makes these observations especially dire, from a global perspective, is
the article's seemingly authoritative description of Uncle Sam's attitude on
the matter - a description that might well be taken at face value:
China's goal of achieving paramount status in Asia
conflicts with an established American objective:
preventing any single country from gaining an
overwhelming power in Asia. The United States,
after all, has been in major wars in Asia three
times in the past half-century, always to prevent
a single power from gaining ascendency.
The implication is clear that the United States can be expected to act
decisively to alter what seems to be China's chosen path, even by warfare if
that becomes necessary. And if conditions have changed since the cited
three-war precedents, I'd say globalization mania only makes the thesis more
likely to hold.
We are told - with typical sleight-of-number - that China is spending
astronomical sums on military modernization - aimed at the ability to knock
out US Carrier Task Forces, as well as dominating Asia. We are told that
China's leaders "cannot be counted on to relinquish their monopolistic hold
on power" and that "The most likely form for China to assume is a kind of
corporatist, militarized, nationalist state, one with some similarity to the
fascist states of Mussolini or Francisco Franco."
We are shown a map with explosion! symbols next to seven "flash points".
Various plausible scenarios are explored, each of which could easily lead to
armed conflicts. It is explained that Japan must be our special partner in
counter-balancing Chinese hegemony.
Robert S. Ross, in "Beijing as a Conservative Power", takes up the debating
position that "engagement" is the proper approach to China - "Treat China as
an enemy and it will be one". Details are revealed regarding air and sea
power, showing that China cannot be any kind of real threat for a long time
to come. That provides time to build relationships and seek to integrate
China, adequately if not ideally, into an acceptable scheme of things.
Recent history is visited, and we learn that China has actually been acting
quite to US benefit in geopolitical terms. It balanced the Soviet Union; it
stabilized Southeast Asia when Uncle Sam was forced out of Vietnam. We are
urged to "invite China to participate in international rule-making", and to
"reinforce China's interest in regional stability and strengthen its
commitment to global stability. Engagement, not isolation, is the
appropriate policy".
Both articles take it as a given that the US has the "strategic interest" -
translation: the "right" - to insure that a "favorable" balance of power is
maintained in Asia: it is categorically unacceptable that China achieve
outright hegemony and freedom-of-action in Asia. The debate is about means,
not ends.
I must say that the first article is more convincing - the fundamental case
for eventual confrontation seems more solid than the likelihood of namby-
pamby coaxing bringing about a paradigm shift in China's thousands-year-old
sense of national greatness and sovereign pride.
Given the degree of societal dedication to be expected, and the prowess of
China's scientific and engineering communities, one might anticipate (in
this age where offense dominates defense) that China may be able to achieve
some technological leap-frog in the local military balance of power -
something as surprising as a Sputnik that neutralizes many of the American
advantages.
For strategic military planners on both sides, one must assume that the race
has been joined. Can China achieve a window of opportunity - based on
focused achievement of military parity - during which it could establish a
firm hold on its own sphere of influence? Could it hold this parity long
enough for the new status quo to become accepted by the international
community, as has, it seems, the occupation of Tibet?
The pre-World-War-II parallel
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The scenario - I feel compelled to point out - is strikingly similar to the
pre-World-War-II scenario: with China in the role of Japan or Germany.
China has the same brand of soul-deep national ambition shared then by Japan
and Germany, and a similar potential to express it in action. Japan and
Germany could only be tamed (ie. adequate reforms imposed) - the historic
lesson seems to clearly say - by complete destruction followed by complete
rebuilding, under US tutelage. These are precedents that cannot be far from
the minds of our Foreign Policy authors, although their pens would be
unlikely to develop such comparisons until closer to the climax.
The parallels with the inter-war period are only accentuated by what we
learn in "China preys on American minds - The US this week", Guardian Weekly
(April 6).
Martin Walker describes the on-the-ground implementation of the engagement
agenda. We are told of the Beijing-based US business council, "a formidable
group of US executives whose corporate lobbies back in Washington have
worked hard to ensure that no US politician dare confront the engagement-
trade-investment model" (shades of Joe Kennedy et al). We are also reminded
of "fat Chinese consultancy fees earned by those former secretaries of
state, Dr. Henry Kissinger and General Alexander Haig". Clearly Foreign
Affairs (Robert Ross) was providing "philosophical background" for what
turns out to be an already operational corporatist agenda - an investment-
intensive agenda parallel to that of the inter-war years.
Interestingly, Mr. Walker casts moral derision on this money-grabbing
behavior: "There ought to be scandal in the way US corporations scurry to
serve Beijing's interests." He reports with explicit admiration some words
of Newt Gingrich, delivered recently at the Foreign Affairs College in
Beijing:
"Americans cannot remain silent about the basic lack of
freedom - speech, religion, assembly, the press - in China.
In the most basic sense, we are simply asking the Chinese
government to enforce its own constitution."
Perhaps one can presume Gingrich is replaying the crowd-pleasing Churchill
role: espouse the high moral ground, encourage a simmering pool of popular
suspicion toward the future enemy, and wait in the wings to form the nucleus
of a war government when the bugle finally sounds. Like Churchill, he would
be seen as morally untainted (as regards what in the end is known as
appeasement), although I imagine his constituency gets its share of Chinese
opportunities in the interim. The inter-war parallels are again
underscored.
We now come to an interesting clue as to how the increasingly
confrontational climate is to be spun in mass media doublespeak:
"The Clash of Civilisations, the book by Harvard professor
Sam Huntington, may not have hit the bestseller lists, but
its dire warning of a 21st century rivalry between the
liberal white folk and the Yellow Peril - sorry, the
Confucian cultures - is underpinning the formation of a
new political environment.
"To adapt one of Mao's subtler metaphors, Huntingdon's
Kultur-kampf is becoming, with stunning speed, the
conceptual sea in which Washington's policy-making fish now
swim."
Mr Walker lays out for us - and I'd be inclined take this for the time being
as the official mass-media party-line - the proposition that the only reason
for the US to be concerned about China is the question of human rights, and
that the only other reason conflict might develop is due to some mythical
notion of inevitable cultural warfare. Nowhere in this party-line is
mentioned the fact, so obvious to not-so-mass-media Foreign Affairs, that
American balance-of-power interests (not human rights, culture, or ideology)
will be the primary counter-consideration to investment opportunities, vis a
vis China policy.
Teddy Roosevelt said "Walk softly, and carry a big stick". The more
profitable version of this admonition, as carried out in the inter-war
years, in Iraq, and apparently again with China, is: "Profit through
engagement, then deliver a just-in-time death blow".
I won't offer an opinion as to what the US "should" do re/China, any more
than I would be able to say what it should have done pre-WW-II. In both
cases, one would need to imagine a transformed protagonist before one could
imagine a different outcome. The question of reforming US policy (according
to whatever criteria) boils down to the question of changing who runs
America - and that would stray us from our subject (solution in hand, but
too long for margin).
What, in fact, America seems to be doing is to consciously replay the inter-
war scenario: profit maximally from trade and investments in China,
encourage US public opinion to maintain a simmering hostility toward what
may become a future enemy, tacitly facilitate China's military development,
closely monitor developments - and most important - be sure that the US,
together with its projected allies, maintains strategic dominance
militarily. In this last regard, the US may have skirted danger in WW II
more closely than it will have to this time around.
This time around the US is on a continual wartime footing, with fleets
sufficient for some specified number of simultaneous conflicts - not to
mention nuclear submarines, satellite superiority, strategic missiles, and
the new gadgets the Economist tells us about. This is a far cry from the
comparative state of US preparedness in the inter-war years. And - due to
the Grenada-Panama-Iraq shenanigans mentioned above - the US has field-
tested formulas for arranging hostilities with favorable publicity at any
time of its own choosing.
The war itself - considerations; Hi-tech arsenal considered mandatory
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The first step in preparation for actual military engagement with China
would be a demonization campaign, and it would need to be a globally
effective campaign, not just for US consumption. Need I point out how
incredibly easy that campaign would be? Slave labor camps, all but outright
genocide against minorities such as the Tibetans, killing off infant
females, religious suppression, massacre of peaceful demonstrators, legions
of political prisoners, no semblance of human rights or free press by
Western standards, possibly heartbreaking behavior toward Hong Kong, a
dictatorial regime - the mix may change over time, but China will for quite
a while be a very easy target for American style demonization campaigns.
While Saddam and Khadafi have been successfully portrayed as inhuman devils
- with far fewer actual sins than China's for the media to exploit - one may
need to look more to Nazi Germany for a comparable precedent of a regime
which was first cheerfully engaged and then thoroughly and officially
despised - and all too easy a reversal one might note.
The immediate war-initiation scenario might not be much different from that
employed in WW II. Sinking a carrier task force would have the same
emotional impact on the US public as did the attack on Pearl Harbor, and no
holds would then be barred the US military by domestic opinion. We saw how
China's recent belligerency toward Taiwan (one of Bernstein and Munro's
seven flash points) resulted in the dispatch of American fleets which then
flouted their electronic superiority to the chagrin of the Chinese navy and
the embarrassment and frustrated anger of Chinese leaders.
A more assertive China with a more formidable military capability - and this
is where we're most likely heading - would make similar confrontations both
more likely and more dangerous. And for the US to back down from what it
perceived as strategic challenges would be to yield to that very Chinese
hegemony which Foreign Policy informs us is categorically unacceptable to
"American Interests".
Let us consider the parameters of the hypothetically resulting war. The US
strategy would have certain fundamental objectives, which I surmise, based
on common sense and precedents, would include:
(1) very few, if any, nuclear strikes tolerated on US soil
(2) nuclear annihilation of China not an option
(3) tactical nukes in China OK
(4) land war in China not an option
(5) unconditional Chinese surrender a must
These kinds of strategic criteria lead one naturally to the kind of arsenal
described in the Economist article - augmented by nuclear-armed cruise
missiles. And only a likely showdown with China could so urgently compel a
seemingly unassailed Uncle Sam to rapidly upgrade what looks otherwise like
an already sufficient war chest. America must, given its self-appointed
global role, be capable of assuring delivery on all five of the above
objectives before the time-window of the anticipated conflict comes around -
otherwise only distinctly disadvantageous scenarios (from an NWO globalist
perspective) are obtainable.
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BTW> If you read this far, you might want also to look at "America_&_NWO" in
cyberlib/articles-by-rkm, see sig below.
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Posted by Richard K. Moore - rkmoore@iol.ie - PO Box 26 Wexford, Ireland
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