Saudi Arabia, Egypt prepare US-backed invasion of Yemen

Niles Williamson

Saudi Arabia and Egypt are preparing a US-backed military invasion of Yemen aimed at pushing back the Houthi militia that has taken over much of the country and reasserting the control of besieged President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Egyptian officials told the Associated Press that the three-pronged assault would come from Saudi Arabia in the north and from the Red Sea in the west and the Arabian Sea in the south. As many as five Egyptian troop ships have been stationed off the coast of Yemen. The officials said that the assault would begin after airstrikes had sufficiently weakened the Houthi rebels.

The developing assault on the Yemen, code named Operation Decisive Storm, is drawing on air support and ground troops from a coalition of majority Sunni Muslim countries in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia to suppress the Houthis, who belong to the Zaydi Shiite branch of Islam and have been backed by predominantly Shiite Iran.

The Saudi television channel Al Arabiya announced on Thursday that, in addition to at least 150,000 Saudi soldiers, military forces from Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and Sudan were preparing take part in the ground invasion. Saudi Arabia has already begun massing soldiers and heavy artillery on its southern border with Yemen.

The imminent intervention of ground forces drawn from countries throughout the region will transform the civil war into a region-wide openly sectarian war pitting forces aligned with the Saudi Sunni monarchy against forces associated with the Shiite-dominated government of Iran.

Sudan’s defense minister Abdel Raheem Mohammed Hussein reported Thursday that his country would contribute fighter jets in addition to ground troops which were already in route to the region. The Egyptian government has dispatched four warships to the Red Sea in order to patrol the Gulf of Aden and blockade Houthi supply lines.

Washington was quick to declare its support for the airstrikes and impending invasion. Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, released a statement Wednesday condemning the Houthis and making it clear that the Obama administration backed the Saudi-led assault. According to Meehan, the US was “establishing a joint planning cell with Saudi Arabia to coordinate US military and intelligence support,” to assist military operations in Yemen.

US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Thursday to the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Cooperation Council states and reiterated the Obama administration’s support for the assault on the Houthi rebels. A State Department official told Reuters that Kerry “commended the work of the coalition taking military action against the Houthis and noted the United States’ support for those coalition efforts--including intelligence sharing, targeting assistance, and advisory and logistical support for strikes against Houthi targets.”

Speaking at a US Senate hearing Thursday, Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, stated that the US military would ensure that the shipping lanes through the strategic straits of Mandeb and Hormuz remained open during the conflict. “It is one of our core interests to ensure that we have free flow of commerce through both straits,” he told the assembled Senators. TWO US warships, the USS Iwo Jima and USS Fort McHenry, have been positioned in the Red Sea just off Yemen’s coast.

US special operations troops were compelled to evacuate Yemen last week in the face of the Houthi offensive, reportedly leaving behind intelligence files that have fallen into the hands of the militia.

While the French and British governments have also provided support for the airstrikes, the European Union’s foreign minister, Federica Mogherini, released a statement yesterday cautioning against a military assault. “I’m convinced that military action is not a solution,” Mogherini stated. “At this critical juncture all regional actors should act responsibly and constructively, to create as a matter of urgency the conditions for a return to negotiations.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made a statement to reporters opposing the Saudi-led operation. “Military action from outside of Yemen against its territorial integrity and its people will have no other result than more bloodshed and more deaths.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham released a statement Thursday calling for an end to military operations. “Iran wants an immediate halt to all military aggressions and air strikes against Yemen and its people,” Afkham said. She warned that military operations in Yemen would “further complicate the situation” and “hinder efforts to resolve the crisis through peaceful ways.”

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Adel Al Jubeir, speaking from the country’s embassy in Washington, announced the opening of military operations late Wednesday night with jets from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain participating in airstrikes.

Bombs were dropped on locations throughout Yemen. According to local health officials more than 25 people were killed and another 40 injured in airstrikes on the capital of Sanaa. Reports indicated that many of the casualties were civilians.

Among the reported targets were the Houthis’ home territory in the northern province of Saada, the Al Dailami air base, the international airport in Sanaa and the Al Adnan airbase north of the southern port city of Aden, a former base for US and European special operations soldiers. Military forces loyal to former longtime dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, who have been fighting alongside the Houthis, have also been the targeted for air strikes.

Saleh, who resigned power in the face of mass protests in 2011 and 2012, has thrown his support and the military forces still loyal to him behind the Houthis in an attempt to oust Hadi and regain control over the country. Some factions of the Houthi rebels have called for the election of Saleh’s son, Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, as the NEXT president of Yemen.

Hadi was forced to announce his resignation and placed under house arrest in January by Shiite Houthi militia after a month’s long occupation of Sanaa. Hadi escaped captivity in February and fled to the southern port city Aden where he was working to marshal support for an assault on the Houthis. On Thursday officials in Saudi Arabia reported that Hadi had fled Yemen and was in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

US House passes sweeping new bipartisan assault on Medicare

Kate Randall

In a 392-37 vote, the US House on Thursday approved a bill that makes sweeping changes to the Medicare program that provides health insurance to more than 54 million seniors and the disabled. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act must be approved by the US Senate and signed into law by President Obama, who indicated his support for the measure earlier this week.

The bipartisan bill, drafted by Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, ties future payments to doctors for Medicare services to “quality of care,” shifting away from traditional fee-for-service payments. And for the first time, the universal Medicare program will institute means testing for higher-income seniors, requiring higher premiums for these individuals to access benefits.

The bill constitutes a historic attack on the Medicare program. Boehner called it the “first real entitlement reform in nearly two decades”—a reference to the assault on welfare launched under the Clinton administration in 1996. “Today is about a problem much bigger than any doc-fix or deadline. It’s about solving our spending problem,” he said.

Pelosi echoed Boehner’s comments, declaring that it had been a “privilege” to work with the House leader, and that she hoped the agreement “will be a model of things to come.”

The coming together of the Republican and Democratic Party leadership behind the overhaul exposes the unanimity within the ruling class on the need for sharp cuts in “entitlement” programs—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

It provides a permanent “fix” to a 1997 law that tied doctors’ Medicare fees to overall economic growth. As overall health care costs have risen sharply, that formula threatened deep reimbursement cuts to doctors, cuts that Congress has blocked with patchwork measures 17 times since 2002.

The House bill will do away with the scheduled payment cut, set to kick in April 1, and replace it with a 0.5 percent yearly raise in payments through 2019. After this, a new payment system based on “quality of care” will be implemented.

Such language has been adopted by Medicare in other frameworks, and is generally measured by readmission rates and similar statistics. In other words, doctors who see more of their patients readmitted will receive cuts in reimbursement. However, readmission is closely correlated with poverty and other social factors, thus cutting spending on health care in lower-income and working class areas.

By disconnecting reimbursements from services provided, doctors will also be incentivized to ration care and cut back on testing—the overarching aim of all the health care “reform” proposals backed by both Democrats and Republicans. The change will result in reduced services for Medicare patients overall and deep spending cuts by the government.

This shift has long been promoted in the private insurance sector. It is also a key goal of the Obama administration, which earlier this year set a goal to tie the vast majority of Medicare payments to programs promoting cost-cutting.

The second main feature of the bill would institute means testing for Medicare recipients, requiring higher-income seniors to pay more toward Medicare premiums for insurance and prescription drug coverage. Initial estimates are that this change would result in Medicare savings of around $30 billion over the next decade.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike are well aware that this fundamental change opens the floodgates for transforming a program that for the last half-century has provided health care insurance to those over the age of 65, regardless of income, into a poverty program available to only those poorest segments of society. This is seen as a first step in it being starved of funds and ultimately dismantled.

Boehner, salivating at these prospects, commented, “We know we’ve got more serious entitlement reform that’s needed. It shouldn’t take another two decades to do it.” He indicated that the Republicans would continue to push for funding cuts to other federal benefit programs.

Some Congressional Republicans balked at the overall cost of the measure, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates at $214 billion over the next decade. This would be paid for through $141 billion in new spending, with the balance divided between higher monthly premiums for higher-income Medicare recipients and payments by nursing homes and other health care providers.

Boehner and the Republicans see the implementation of means testing—and the subsequent savings for government—as a starting point for future overhauls to Medicare and other federal programs. This particularly applies to Social Security, the universal retirement program enacted in 1935 in the wake of the Great Depression.

Both Medicare and Social Security are not “gifts” by the government, but benefits based on the funds workers pay into these programs for their entire working lives through deductions from their paychecks.

As window dressing, the bill also provides two more years of funding to the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which serves 8 million low-income children, as well as to the nation’s 1,200 community health centers. While Pelosi and the White House had pushed for four-year extensions for both of these programs, the majority of Congressional Democrats willingly compromised on this issue in order to push through the changes to Medicare.

The bill also includes abortion funding restrictions at community health centers, incorporating components of the so-called Hyde Amendment, which forbids federal funding of abortion except in the cases of rape, incest, or the endangered life of the mother.

Leaders of the House “pro-choice” caucus assured skeptical Senate Democrats that the bill’s language provides no additional abortion restrictions beyond those that already apply. In fact, the Obama administration acceded to these reactionary and unconstitutional restrictions in language in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Speaking Wednesday on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of his signing into law of what is popularly known as Obamacare, the president indicated his support for the new bipartisan Medicare bill. “I’ve got my pen ready to sign a good bipartisan bill,” he said.

The coinciding of the ACA’s anniversary and the current bipartisan bill is noteworthy. From the start, Obama’s health care overhaul has been aimed at a fundamental restructuring of the health care system, aimed at lowering costs for the government and corporations while slashing health care services for the vast majority of Americans.

Taking its cue from Obamacare, the change in Medicare represented by Pelosi and Boehner’s bill will set an example that can rapidly be extended throughout the health care system. Despite many Congressional Republicans’ vocal opposition to the ACA and vows to see it repealed, they are in agreement with its aim of rationing care and funneling more money to the health care industry.

Although the bill faces some opposition in the Senate, it is expected to pass, either before Congress leaves for spring recess today or on its return in two weeks. If it does not pass before the recess, Congress will likely pass a temporary fix to the Medicare payments to doctors.

John Bolton’s call for war on Iran

Bill Van Auken

The New York Times Thursday published a prominent opinion piece entitled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”

The author was John R. Bolton, a former State Department official and, for a brief period, US ambassador to the United Nations, under the administration of George W. Bush. He became an influential figure in the administration after serving as a lawyer in the Bush campaign’s successful operation to steal the 2000 election by stopping the vote count in Florida.

Bolton, it must be said, has been calling for an immediate military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities—by either Israel or the US, or both—for at least the last seven years. On each occasion, he has warned darkly that unless his prescription for intensive bombing followed by “regime change” was adopted within days, the world would face the threat of an Iranian nuclear attack.

Thursday’s column was no different. “President Obama’s approach on Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe,” Bolton writes. He is referring to the attempt by Washington, together with the other member nations of the UN Security Council plus Germany, to negotiate restrictions on a nuclear program that Iran insists is strictly for civilian purposes in return for easing punishing economic sanctions.

“Even absent palpable proof, like a nuclear test, Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear weapons has long been evident,” according to Bolton. Despite the lack of “palpable proof,” Bolton insists that Iran’s unwillingness to “negotiate away its nuclear program” and the inability of sanctions to “block its building of a broad and deep weapons infrastructure” constitute an “inescapable conclusion.”

He continues: “The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.”

Bolton, who has made an entire career of suppressing “inconvenient truths,” allows that he would prefer an all-out US bombing campaign, but would accept a US-backed attack by Israel.

“The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary,” he writes. He adds that this military onslaught must be combined with US efforts “aimed at regime change in Tehran.”

What is involved here is an open appeal for the launching of a war of criminal aggression and incitement of mass murder. The unbridled militarism expressed in Bolton’s column would not be out of place in the writings of Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the first to hang at Nuremberg after his conviction on charges of crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in organizing the Nazi regime’s wars of aggression.

The question arises, why has he been given a forum in the editorial pages of the New York Times, the supposed newspaper of record and erstwhile voice of American liberalism?

The obvious answer is that any differences the Times editorial board—or for that matter the Obama administration—have with Bolton over Iran are of an entirely tactical character. All of them stand by the principle that US imperialism has the unique right to carry out unprovoked “preemptive” war anywhere on the planet where it perceives a potential challenge to its interests.

Not so long ago, Bolton, who personifies this arrogant and criminal policy, and the Times were on the same page politically and on essentially the very same lines he presents in his latest column on Iran.

In 2002, Bolton was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and a point man in the Bush administration’s campaign to prepare a war of aggression against Iraq based upon the lies that Saddam Hussein was developing “weapons of mass destruction” and preparing to hand them over to Al Qaeda.

Bolton, described by one of his former colleagues at the State Department as “the quintessential kiss up, kick down kind of guy,” had been an advocate of aggression against Iraq at least since 1998, when he joined other right-wingers in signing an “Open letter to the president” demanding such a war.

In the run-up to war, he played a central role in manufacturing phony evidence of the existence of Iraqi WMD. This included the promotion of the crude forgeries indicating that Iraq was seeking to procure yellowcake (concentrated uranium) from Niger.

During this same period, the Times provided invaluable assistance to this propaganda campaign. Its senior correspondent Judith Miller was working in alliance with administration officials and right-wing think tanks to confirm and embellish upon the lies about WMD. Thomas Friedman, the paper’s chief foreign affairs columnist, was churning out column after column justifying what he readily acknowledged was a “war of choice” against Iraq, justifying it in the name of democracy, human rights and oil.

As the reputed newspaper “of record,” the Times set the tone for the rest of the corporate media, which together worked to overcome popular opposition to a war in the Middle East.

The results are well known. The war claimed the lives of over a million Iraqis, devastated an entire society and threw the whole region into chaos. In the process, some 4,500 US troops lost their lives, tens of thousands more were maimed and wounded and some $2 trillion was expended. A dozen years later, the Obama administration has launched a new war in Iraq, supposedly to halt the advance of ISIS, a force that it effectively backed in the war for regime change in Syria.

No one has ever been held accountable for these war crimes; not Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bolton and others who conspired to drag the American people into a war of aggression based upon lies. And not the editors of the Times who produced the propaganda that facilitated their conspiracy.

On the other hand, those who oppose war—from Private Chelsea Manning, who exposed war crimes in Iraq, to Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who was sickened by the atrocities carried out against the people of Afghanistan—are submitted to a media lynching and then given the full measure of “military justice.”

In publishing Bolton’s column, the Times is making sure that it burns no bridges to the most right-wing and sociopathic layers of the American ruling establishment. While it may differ with them now over an imminent bombing of Iran, future US wars—including against Russia or China, where the propaganda mills of the Times are grinding once again—will undoubtedly bring them back into sync.

The Fear Factor In Indian Republic

Parvez Alam

If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again. --- Malcolm X

I am tempted to write because I am feeling insecure. May be I shouldn't write because it becomes easy for them to identify me and kill me. They can kill me any time anywhere, in day light, at mid night, in Hashimpura or in Sopore or in Batla House. What is the purpose of these institutions, only killing and intimidating or something else? Why have we made our society in such a way that police and army symbolize only fear? Why we train security personnel in the fashion which create them spineless robots who just do not feel any acquiescence with thinking and judging? Why are we not agitating against the acts of violence, denial of justice, inhumanity and banality of evil? Why are we so silent when we are feeling so disturbed inside?

I don't know how to answer these questions. But still I want to write. I want to write because I feel intimidated and insecure more by the prevailing silence than by the bullets fired at me if I write. let there be hundreds and thousands to stand with the perpetrators of violence; let them take the other side; let their side be defined by their constructed identity. My heart thumbs up and I get goose bumps when I see my brethren in Manipur and Nagaland and Kashmir getting killed; and getting killed just because they want to stick to their jal, jungle and zameen. Don’t write me off; I am not an anti-national. Sometimes I do try to empathize with these police and army personnel and seek to reflect on their actions. Are these actions by army personnel or police officials voluntary or they are forced to do as they are asked to; I question.

Are there any police or army personnel who think differently other than killing and intimidating? My hunch is yes. There are hundreds and thousands of police officials, constables who act humanely. Why I am not saying think humanely is because of one reason and that is the thinking capability of those individuals gets blocked during the trainings and they too get ruled by the fears. I have seen on television and elsewhere the army personnel saving lives of stranded people during natural calamities. Then the question is that whether they save lives of civilians voluntary or even that is ordered. To my mind nothing is voluntary; one fear is dependent on another. Fear gets accumulated and takes the shape of giant Leviathan.

So why fear gets emboldened again and again, instead of getting removed from the society? We are somehow bounded by the fear of law, fear of police, fear of God so on and so forth. Somehow we are driven in everyday life by the act of fearing. Our social world considers this fearing normal and this becomes part or our everyday life. The vicious circle of fear is so entrenched and entangled that sometimes fear starts acting as authority. Hindus fear Muslims of returning to Mughal era, Muslims fear Hindus that they will be wiped out, students fear that they will fail in exams, wives fear that husbands will move to other women and vice versa, politicians fears elections, ideologies fears other ideologies so on and so forth. One fear wants to out smarts another, we call it competitions.

Again the banality of policing is in such a manner that it is obvious and normal. Fear is so much normalised in our society that without fear we cannot move a step ahead. Authorities are installed to be feared. Laws are to control our instinct to stop us from committing wrong because authorities decides what is wrong and right for us. Actions of an individual is so much controlled that we assume that we are moving freely but in reality we just imitate according to the legal norms we are told.

Fear is virtue in our society. If we are not fearing person people assume that we are not normal. Fear makes people normal. The self of an individual is defined by the amount of fear he/she carries. The dutiful and righteous are those who fear more of ‘God’s wrath’, out-casted by the society or fear of failure in their career. We often hear from people in suggestive mode that Allah se daro, Bhagwan se daro, Kanoon se daro etc.

Basically freedom and liberty are now failing concepts to define the individuals mode of expression and actions. Freedom of expression is the prerequisite to the enlightenment of an individual. If individual is not free to make an opinion or voice his thoughts and ideas, it is difficult to create a just society. The way we are becoming dependent on each other freedom is shrinking only replaced by fear. I may sound pessimistic though I am confident enough and optimistic about others disagreement with my opinions and thoughts. Love is replaced by fear but still we imitate and say we love. We love our nature and environment because we fear that global warming can cause havoc on our life. Love is mere the expression of fear in moderate manner.

Let me come straight to the point which I was raising initially. Police, army or authorities are just intensifying our already existing moral fear. The institutional fear lies in the coercive apparatuses of the state. If today we will not stand against the fear of any kind, our tomorrow will be full of fear. We need to understand the structure of the state and the mechanism we have evolved to make our life worse rather than well being. Now is the time to question the inability of our cognitive self which is chained with the fear. Now is the time to question our actions and deeds we act to appease our feared mind. Let's stand tall to say that our renaissance begins now, and the symbols of fear will be thrown in the ocean.

Authorities make laws and authorities strikethrough for different logics and reasons (Read Section 66A). They strikethrough laws not to restore freedom but to improvise for another harsh one and till that time we wait to label whatever comes as draconian rather working day and night to create sustainable society.

Pads Against Sexism Campaign – Some Issues

Parvin Sultana

Elone Kastratia STARTED a unique street art protest using Sanitary napkins with messages against sexual violence in her hometown Krlsruhe, Germany which went viral in social media. With rapidly spreading across to other countries, it was picked up by students of universities like Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University. They put up sanitary napkins in various spots in the universities. The idea behind using sanitary napkins to start such awareness campaign was to use blunt hard hitting methods in starting a dialogue around sexual harassment of women. The means used raised many eyebrows in a society where sexism continues to be rampant.

Menstruation continues to be a hushed up women’s issue. Not to talk about the menstruation taboos with a long list of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ that women across the nation continue to face, such a campaign was bound to (and meant to) provoke. Students wrote messages against rape culture, gender violence, menstruation taboos on sanitary napkins and put them in various places around the campus and some other places. While the administration in Jamia was quick to remove the pads, it did GET many people talking.

The campaign tried to rope in a number of issues ranging from the attitudinal problem with regard to rape, the stigma attached to menstruating women being impure, the superstitions that put in place absurd practices of segregation during menstruation. The aim of using sanitary napkins for this purpose was to add shock value and shake the society from its drunken stupor of being complacent when it came to issue of sexual harassment of women. It’s the very discomfort and disgust with menstrual blood which renders it with subversive capacity. Many of us had heard about republican women held in Armagh Women’s Prison used menstrual blood as a means of resistance in their political struggle against the state.

What enrages many activists is that society seems to be more disgusted with menstruation than with gendered violence. The disgust around this natural body function is extremely strong. Menstruation is dirty. A menstruating girl is a polluting thing—a thing to be feared and shunned. Restrictions on food habits, mobility etc which defy all kind of logic is applied. The discomfort and pain which a woman goes through is however not even acknowledged. Cramps are to be borne without complaint. It was to address this varied issues that the campaign was initiated.

It met with mixed response. And the social media was awash with various views on the same. While the university of Jamia did not take too kindly to the campaign, it is the response of the larger student community which is interesting. The university issued a show cause notice to the campaigners. The administration very candidly puts that they are not opposed to the message being spread against sexual harassment but the means used. This ironically re-entrenches the disgust that people feel with menstruation. In this campaign the means used was as important as the message. Jamia being a minority institution saw some heated response from students of the minority community as well.

Leaving aside questions of theological nature, of what religions had to say about the purity/impurity status of a menstruating woman, many had other problems with the campaign. Many liberal men who claimed to be all for gender equality felt that the movement did not address issues of rape which is a bigger problem than the stigma attached to menstruation. The violence and trauma that rape victims and survivors go through is not addressed in this campaign because it focuses more on menstruation. This became the basis of dismissal for many. Campaigners however pointed out that the campaign also encompassed issues of rape and gender violence. Moreover menstruation taboos which dehumanizes women on a regular day to day basis, treats women as an untouchable is also an issue that needs to be talked of. The shame attached to a natural biological phenomenon is absurd. Women have been frisked, forced to GET down of buses because they are menstruating. So the stigma needs to be countered.

For many others the campaign is silly and not about feminism. Why something a woman goes through every month could be dismissed so casually by people claiming to be feminists and sympathizers, one needs to wonder. Still some others felt that it leaves out a large number of rural women who are not sanitary napkin users. There is a tendency to overlook the fact that the inaccessibility of rural women to sanitary napkins could also be highlighted through such a campaign. They are often the worst victims of menstruation taboos. The entire idea was to START a dialogue about this issue, get people talking about the multiple facets of menstruation and accept it as a normal biological process.

Many were left uncomfortable for university campuses being used for such a campaign. But where else if not in universities? Should not university campuses give students the space to express their views, to take a stand in issues of socio-political importance? Universities must prepare students to intervene in society armed with progressive ideas. This campaign have set the ball rolling. Irrespective of their stand, it got people talking about menstruation publicly.

The nation is not unfamiliar to unique movements and campaigns. Be it the naked protest of women in Manipur against the rape of Thangjam Manorama, the decade long hunger strike of Irom Sharmila or this campaign of writing on sanitary napkins – such movements despite limitations and shortcomings will continue to set the discourse for issues which are left out in the mainstream or challenge set norms.

Premises On The Question Of Political Crisis In Bangladesh

Farooque Chowdhury

Today’s Bangladesh faces political crisis as scores of news-reports and views claim [an end-note to this article cites headings/excerpts of a few of those], and today’s Bangladesh doesn’t face political crisis as one can claim periods of turmoil are not crisis, can cite a few data from economy, and can also refer to a lull within a long period of crisis. Both the statements, one can claim, are correct in relative terms. On the other hand, any of the two cancels the other. Only a scientific approach to the question – crisis – can provide a reliable answer. The approach should look into all related aspects instead of making sweeping remarks based on superficial observations and shallow search that ignores basic elements of crisis.

Political activity, agitation, movement, violent or forceful acts, etc. are considered crisis by a part of analysts as many political acts are considered agitation, which actually are not. Similarly, a part of analysts interpret failure to reach an agreement and manifestation of bargaining between factions of dominating interests as crisis. At the same time, most of the analyses concentrate on dispute/debate between or opposite positions of two major political parties as crisis while a number of the analyses find source of the crisis in concerned individuals/leaders as if the concerned individuals/leaders are irresponsible or vindictive or stubborn. A careful reading will find a part of those analyses is part of lobby-activity/deceitful public relation job to manipulate target-group with threat-/scare-mongering and/or slanted/distorted information. The approach, amazingly, misses causes of crisis in real terms while gets engaged with incidents appearing crisis.

The first premise

It’s difficult in Bangladesh to find out a single period of time without squabbling, contradictory contentions, dispute and serious disagreement between factions of dominating interests. It’s not unusual in emerging political systems. At least a number of analysts from the core of the world system like to forget that matured political systems went through bloodier episodes on their way to maturity; and a number of matured political systems faced situations like shut down of government for days, a state without government for months, replacement of elected government by unelected government, a state on the verge of bankruptcy, and a near-collapse of financial system. Bangladesh is not beyond the global system. Rather, the period Bangladesh faces is full with increased competition for market, investment opportunity, cheaper labor and geostrategic position, which lead to interference/intervention, subversion, provocation.

Factional fights within the dominating interests are not uncommon in the Bangladesh mainstream politics as in other countries with capitalist system. Tools, processes and institutions for domination have always been questioned by none, but by factions within the dominating interests in Bangladesh. Matured political systems don’t face the reality. The processes, institutions, etc. are/were ridiculed, challenged, defied and defiled by one or other faction of the dominating interests. Sometimes the institutions, processes, etc. were challenged, hit, ridiculed and hurt in a way that even politics appearing and/or claiming radical seemed follower of ahimsa, non-violence. A data set will show the number of state machines or its parts hit/hurt/harmed by the politics of existing production relation is higher than the number hit/hurt/harmed by politics for radical change. There were periods in Bangladesh politics that witnessed parts of the dominant politics standing for existing property relations were nullifying institutions essential for safeguarding the relations. Periods were there those institutions and processes were virtually made non-existent by the interests that require those to safeguard, solidify and consolidate the interests in Bangladesh.

Further aggravating the reality, there were periods when one institution for domination was questioning/challenging other, getting engaged with turf-war, one trying to nullify other, one suspending other, one cutting down other’s credibility, even one was degrading self-credibility and self-esteem. The acts of nullifying, etc. sometimes reach to a level that sounds “radical”!

The factions cut down credibility while try to build up credibility. These put at stake their entire interest while get engaged into competition with each other. Its economic parts question its political reflection while part of its political manifestation hurts its economic interests. All the factions take stand for democracy in an abstract sense while subvert its democracy. Scholars in its service announce their allegiance to people’s rule while anchor solutions on individuals’ standing and advice from external masters as if democracy depends on a small group of individuals and external masters. They fail to identify self-class interests!

There are instances in steps by the dominating interests as a whole or by its factions that try to secure its democracy by depending on a few individuals’ good wishes on a fine morning, relying on individuals appearing apolitical instead of depending on political institutions and/or mechanism for securing its democracy, and thus undercutting its institutions.

Observations by a major party to the system at least snap the reality. On political context, IMF said in December 2013: “Political tensions and associated nationwide strikes (hartals) have intensified since February 2013 in the lead up to national elections, which are due by January 2014. Protests were further spurred by war crimes verdicts against leaders of two main opposition parties and by political gridlock over establishing a transitional government to oversee the election period.” (IMF Country Report No 13/357) On challenges ahead, IMF mentioned: “Most immediately there are the disruptions and uncertainty associated with the forthcoming elections.” (ibid.) On risks, IMF said: “The principal near-term risk is an intensification of election-related uncertainty, economic disruptions and violence, which would affect investment and growth, directly and through confidence effects.” (ibid.) The report’s risk assessment matrix mentioned “Intensification of politically motivated uncertainty and tensions” as one of the shocks. The report identified vulnerability: “Escalating violence and uncertainty would affect investment and growth”. As potential impact it mentioned: “High: Growth prospects could be further dampened by a loss of confidence and a slump in investment and consumption. Balance of payments (BOP) pressures could emerge from lost export production.” Similar observations/assessments/analyses are many that the dominating interests can’t ignore. All these explicitly mention “politics”, and this politics is the politics of the dominating interests.

It’s an almost difficult “story”, and the “story” is frustratingly long, and sometimes sounds repetitive. The situation that emerges may appear static at first view. A randomly chosen few months’/years’ press reports on economy, society, politics and institutions for domination are enough to exhibit the show the factions always conduct.

Reasons, causes, sources of these acts and deals are obviously areas for inquiry. Whether these were necessary and whether these were mature and effective acts are essential questions that also need inquiry as answers to these questions help asses condition of the dominating system and the interests. There is liberty also to ignore these questions. Irrespective of position regarding inquiry or non-inquiry the undeniable fact is Bangladesh went through these acts, political tact, maneuver, etc. that provide a deep look into the condition of politics, statecraft, capacity of the dominating interests, and its institutions, etc.

Another premise

Construction of another premise is possible, which may appear is in opposition to the first premise.

Parts of machines, mechanism, processes required for domination are being modified, updated, strengthened. It’s a requirement for persisting with domination. Contending factions of the dominating interests also reach into compromises as there are common interests of the factions. The factions engaged into competition go back to position that fundamentally don’t cross “red line” – the limit crossing of which endangers fundamental interests.

Faction(s) of the dominating interests, at times, resort to extra-constitutional steps for resolution of constitutional issues, and, at times, extra-constitutional steps are accommodated through constitutional measure and process. Extra-legal measure(s) by the interests are legitimized by legal measures, and legal and constitutional measures with far-reaching implications are taken to discourage extra-legal/-constitutional measures. Amazingly, political analysts serving the dominating interests ignore those legal/constitutional measures.

In the area economy, the reality is different from a part in the area of the dominating politics, the part in constant factional fight. On fundamental issues related to economy, there’s unanimity among the fighting factions of the dominating interests. But, there’s difference on the question of creating breathing space and shock absorber to dominated interests, which is a show of im/maturity. Similarly, on the vital question of bulldozing with neoliberalism, there is difference between the factions: one bulldozes while the other occasionally puts brakes in certain areas. These have implications on public life, and on people’s democratic struggle.

The already cited IMF report said after referring to relevant data: “Export performance is holding up reasonably well compared to other parts in the region” (Figure 2. Bangladesh: Exports and Remittances, p. 37), and “manufacturing, including the flagship garment industry has remained resilient” (Figure 3. Bangladesh: Real and External Sector Developments, p. 38). It also said: “Administrative improvements drove up tax revenues between 2009 and 2011” (Figure 4. Bangladesh: Fiscal Developments, p. 39).

On Bangladesh's investment climate, there’s another observation: “Bangladesh offers some of the world’s most competitive fiscal and non-fiscal investment incentives. Bangladesh offers the most liberal FDI regime in South Asia, allowing 100% foreign equity with unrestricted exit policy, easy remittance of royalty and repatriation of profits and incomes.” (Royal Danish Embassy, DANIDA Business Partnerships, Bangladesh – Business Development Profile, February 2013)

Who can forget profit Bangladesh banks made while their elder brothers in the metropolis were facing collapse? Who can forget the microcredit debtors’ “praiseworthy” repayment rate? And, who can forget labor’s unorganized struggles, which were mostly non-political?

These indicate gains by related capitals, and its position and power. And, these indicate profit. And, these indicate appropriation of surplus value in a “happy and congenial” atmosphere, which is uninterrupted and easy exploitation of labor by capital. Interruption in circuit of capital, in spheres of circulation and production would not have kept manufacturing resilient. Easy repatriation of profits, etc. is not easy in a hostile and uncertain situation.

At times, the economic elites act in a mature way than its representatives in the area of politics, and at times the same elites sound fascist as it demands/suggests curtailing of rights, political/democratic/labor, although the suggestion/demand are non-functional. At times, the economic elites mobilize labor while part of its political representative fails in the mobilization. Capital’s fascist-like aspiration and demand – curtail democratic rights: ban strike – shows its powerful position, its uninterrupted power in the areas of economy and politics.

Crisis

The question of crisis in capitalism should be understood in terms of antagonistic classes and the struggle that the classes carry on. The question of political crisis is related to the question of class struggle, and to its intensification and/or to intensifying it.
Crisis is inherent in a system that stands on antagonistic class division. But crisis doesn’t surface as visible fault lines/breaches all the time, and doesn’t burst out all the time. At the same time, crisis in economy or in part(s) of it isn’t instantly visible in the area of politics. There’s uneven, irregular and asymmetric development of crisis.

Bourgeois politics is not always self-regulating as its economy has the same limitation. Intra- and inter-class conflicts and conflicting interests push it to the level of crisis that takes the political system to the brink of break down, and in circumstances, it breaks down. Other than intra- and inter-class conflicts there are external shocks and disturbances, which also “contribute” to crisis or near-crisis. The political system tends to move towards equilibrium, and in circumstances, depending on position and power of class forces, equilibrium is achieved, even it is temporary.

Capital-labor contradiction, contending economic interests, and mechanism’s failure to balance those interests are at the root of political crisis. Political crisis is preceded by crisis in economy as it can’t escape contradiction between capital and labor. On case of crisis, areas of investment, rate of interest, rate of profit, outflow of capital, outflow of gold, currency reserve, monetary policy, etc. show signs. Machines for domination face stalemate, and breakdown, which are shows of political crisis. The machines lose credibility. At the same time, dominated social strata losses trust on machines for domination.

Even, political crisis can be followed by periods of lull that may appear as stability. It may appear cyclical. Competing factions within dominating interests don’t go to the point of breakdown if the factions are not stupid – unaware of self-interests. Anarchy prevails during a period of political crisis. The anarchy begins from economy and dominates politics. Society and culture is shaken. The crisis situation thus creates conditions for emergence of a new context in the areas of society and culture.

There is a role of classes, dominating and dominated, during period of political crisis. Even, parts/factions of the classes may/can play distinctive and, at times, decisive role. Ideological and political questions emerge sharply during period of crisis. The questions take a long time to get charged, take a concrete shape from a seemingly abstract form.

There is every possibility for intensification of class struggle during period of political crisis. The possibility of intensification of class struggle during period of crisis depends on ideological, political and organizational preparedness. A stupid, sterile, subservient leadership in the camp of the people can’t take the lead required during the period. It behaves like a lackey or a donkey only to be denounced as betrayer to the people’s cause and as agent of dominating classes, and only to be dumped in dead pages of history.

Period of political crisis finds either mobilization or demobilization of classes, which depends on the role of classes, its leadership, class alignment, and ideological, political and organizational preparedness.

Political crisis in the metropolitan areas of the global capitalist system takes a different appearance from the appearance of political crisis in the peripheries, which are not only dominated by the center of the system, but also are directly, with intelligence and military power, with trade and “aid” power, and/or with subversive acts, and are interfered regularly and intensively. Information media is used to supplement the interference. It’s the old imperialist practice. It’s bloody. It’s violent. It takes human toll. It exposes imperialism in its crude and cruel appearance. Thus imperialism acts as a “teacher” to a distant periphery, which was completely unaware of imperialist intrigues hatched in the metropolitan center of the world system.

It may appear strange, but imperialist project of interference often finds no other option but to create conditions that break down status quo in countries although the status quo serves imperialist interests, stands as a castle to safeguard the interests. It’s done as part of, in short, imperialist venture. But this creates crisis in the realms of economy and politics.

In period of crisis, foundation of status quo gets jolted, and prelude to radical change gets prepared. Class forces challenging status quo may/may not reinvigorate, and effectively/not effectively challenge status quo. It depends upon other factors including capital’s capacity to transfer the burden of crisis, adjust to cropped up situation, establish control over adverse forces/factors, regain lost space/power, subdue opposing class force. Alternative to crisis that arises are change in status quo, the old order, and changes in class alignment, class equation and class dominance in the system.

Crisis may spread to an entire system, or to a part or parts of a system. Crisis may not get all demolishing power in all phases of it. Crisis in a part or in an entire system may not bring down the system instantly.

Intervention

Intervention, subversion, aggression, war, patronization of armed groups by imperialism can create political crisis in countries. Proxy war with its different levels is now well-known. The crisis can overwhelm and devastate entire society, can create havoc in the life of people in respective society. Imperialism uses its definitions, standards and values, which are destructive, show of double-standard, fraudulent.

These imperialist activities are as old as imperialism, and countries/societies still stand as example to this. In today’s world, the activities have been intensified and sharpened in terms of both strategy and tactics.

Political stalemate, deadlock, are created by imperialism as part of the “game”. However, fundamental relation in the area of production is not jolted by imperial campaign as the shepherds of the globe are cautious enough. At the same time, measures are taken so that people remain politically demobilized and deactivated.

Part of the premises

In the circuit of capital, in the spheres of circulation and production, in the reproduction process, no interruption or breakdown is visible yet in Bangladesh. A few sporadic or organized strikes and disruptions in production in a few factories/manufacturing units don’t disrupt the circuit or the spheres of production, etc.

There, yet, is no failure at different moments of reproduction process in Bangladesh. Capitals yet have not faced interruptions in appropriating surplus value in the country. The accumulation process, rather, moves unhindered. Dominating capital’s control over the working class and over the entire society, and profits that have been and are being made are a clear show of uninterrupted condition. Investment, industrial, trade and service units, profit, credit, etc. show the same uninterrupted trend with variations.

Factions of dominating interests are engaged in a fight or in a series of fights. But, dominated interests have not been challenged systematically and politically by its opposing class forces. This challenge is absent not only in the area of politics, but also in the areas of ideology, culture, organization, and even in the area of publicity and information. Yet, struggle for political power by the class forces opposing the dominating interests is not visible. Ideological questions are not spelled out among the people.

On the contrary, political leadership of the dominating interests successfully keeps its hold on the masses of people. It can even mobilize and demobilize masses whenever it feels necessary. It fixes the agenda of the struggles and organizations of the camp that claims pro-people or pro-labor or pro-working people. The camp or factions within the camp virtually follow factions of the dominating interests.

One can temporarily forget, for the sake of a fallacious argument, labor’s and people’s fundamental rights. Requirements for labor’s survival, essential for capital’s reproduction, can also be forgotten in the same style. Labor’s safe movement and labor’s safety are required for reproduction of capital. It’s also essential for capital. It can be easily understood where the crisis is when the politics that claims to be upholding labor’s interest fails to raise slogan and mobilize labor for labor’s safe movement, for labor’s safety. On the contrary, capital mobilizes labor with the demand. It shows, partly, both the relative condition and power of labor and capital, which helps understand the question of crisis.

A New Economy Will Help Save Rivers And Fisheries

Brent Blackwelder

Globalization and cheater economics have been destroying the world’s great rivers and their fisheries. Most people know about the devastation of rivers from water pollution, but not as many are aware of the significant impacts of big dams, river engineering, and real estate development in and on top of rivers. These activities can seriously damage fisheries and impair the natural functions of riverine ecosystems. A true-cost, steady state economy would, for the most part, avoid the continuing tragic dismantlement of rivers and fisheries.

The following three activities are causing major harm to rivers and fisheries, but would not occur in a true-cost, steady state economy.

Coal Ash Cesspools

The mining and burning of coal have come under enormous scrutiny because of the air pollution, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions they cause. There is another major but relatively unknown water pollution threat from coal burning, in addition to the smoke plume at the power plant–coal fly ash pits. After coal is burned at a power plant to generate electricity, the ash residue (which can contain serious toxins such as mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, etc.) is dumped into unlined ponds or pits near the power plant. These toxic cesspools, as they should be called, cause contamination of surface water, well water, and adjacent lands.

In February of 2014, one of Duke Energy’s dozens of coal ash cesspools malfunctioned, sending toxic sludge 70 miles down the Dan River in North Carolina and into Virginia. Six years earlier (December, 2008) a coal ash cesspool operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority broke, sending even greater quantities of toxic water and sludge into a tributary of the Tennessee River.

Independent testing of coal ash cesspools reveals a Pandora’s Box of toxins, findings that generally contradict assertions by utilities that things are okay. This growing issue amounts to a deadly in-your-face utility circus, flouting the law and flaunting the political power of utilities over state legislatures.

Utilities are doing what would never be allowed in a true-cost economy: they are externalizing the costs of dealing with fly ash from burning coal. Were they to include the health and pollution damages, the costs of coal would skyrocket and its use would be rapidly phased out.

Giant Dams

The economic evidence over the last 70 years against large dams has been assembled by economists at Oxford University(UK). They found, on average, large dam projects in developing countries exceed their construction cost budget by 90%, and often take over 10 years to complete.

In addition, most mega-hydrodams omit genuine cost-accounting for their sometimes enormous adverse environmental and social impacts. For example, the public tends to think of hydroelectric power as a clean source of energy, not realizing that dams may be responsible for over 20% of the human-caused methane emissions. (Methane is a 20-30 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.) In Asia, the Mekong River contains the world’s largest inland fishery and provides livelihood for an estimated 60 million people. Large dams are planned across the mainstem of the river that would destroy the fish migrations of more than 200 species. One proponent of these dams said, “don’t worry, the people can just buy their fish from a fish farm once the river fish disappear.”

Again, a true-cost economy does not condone the blatant failure to include all the costs. See my February 2015 blog “Crossroads on Global Infrastructure” for more details on large infrastructure projects.

River Engineering and Response to Weather Disasters

In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, New York and New Jersey received about $60 billion in relief and assistance. Instead of avoiding more development in top hazard zones, a burst of building permit applications has been made for more activities in and on top of the Hudson River, all in a number one hazard zone. A lot of this real estate development on piers would harm crucial habitat for over 100 fish, plant, and animal species. The proposals include such reckless propositions as an amphitheater and trees on an artificial “island” in the river. This is not free-enterprise development, but subsidized activity that eventually will necessitate a taxpayer “emergency relief bill” following the next hurricane or superstorm. We will never reach a sustainable economy if we have to keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars globally, bailing out new real estate development where it never should have been.

Real estate developments in and on top of rivers, armor-plating shorelines to enable more construction right on the coast, proliferating coal ash cesspools, and building mega-dams all have something in common. They can damage fishery habitats, disrupt fish migrations, and impair the healthy functioning of rivers in the US and worldwide. A true-cost economy recognizes that healthy rivers and flourishing fisheries are vital economic assets for cities and towns, and has principles that prevent their evisceration. The current globalized economy does not.

The Madness Of Funding The Pentagon To “Cover The Globe”

William D. Hartung

President Obama and Senator John McCain, who have clashed on almost every conceivable issue, do agree on one thing: the Pentagon NEEDS MORE MONEY. Obama wants to raise the Pentagon's budget for fiscal year 2016 by $35 billion more than the caps that exist under current law allow.  McCain wants to see Obama his $35 billion and raise him $17 billion more. Last week, the House and Senate Budget Committees attempted to meet Obama's demands by pressing to pour tens of billions of additional DOLLARS into the uncapped supplemental war budget.

What will this new avalanche of cash be used for? A major ground war in Iraq? Bombing the Assad regime in Syria? A permanent troop presence in Afghanistan?  More likely, the bulk of the funds will be wielded simply to take pressure off the Pentagon's base budget so it can continue to pay for staggeringly expensive projects like the F-35 combat aircraft and a new generation of ballistic missile submarines.  Whether the enthusiastic budgeteers in the end succeed in this particular maneuver to create a massive Pentagon slush fund, the effort represents a troubling development for anyone who thinks that Pentagon spending is already out of hand.

Mind you, such funds would be added not just to a Pentagon budget already running at half-a-trillion DOLLARS annually, but to the actual national security budget, which is undoubtedly close to twice that.  It includes items like work on nuclear weapons tucked away at the Department of Energy, that Pentagon supplementary war budget, the black budget of the Intelligence Community, and war-related expenditures in the budgets of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security.

Despite the jaw-dropping resources available to the national security state, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Martin Dempsey recently claimed that, without significant additional infusions of cash, the U.S. military won't be able to “execute the strategy” with which it has been tasked. As it happens, Dempsey's remark unintentionally points the way to a dramatically different approach to what's still called “defense spending.”  Instead of seeking yet more of it, perhaps it's time for the Pentagon to abandon its COSTLY and counterproductive military strategy of “covering the globe.”

A Cold War Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

Even to begin discussing this subject means asking the obvious question: Does the U.S. military have a strategy worthy of the name?  As President Dwight D. Eisenhower put it in his farewell address in 1961, defense requires a “balance between cost and hoped for advantage” and “between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable.”  Eisenhower conveniently omitted a third category: things that shouldn't have been done in the first place -- on his watch, for instance, the CIA's coups in Iran and Guatemala that overthrew democratic governments or, in our century, the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq.  But Eisenhower's underlying point holds. Strategy involves making choices.  Bottom line: current U.S. strategy fails this TEST abysmally.

Despite the obvious changes that have occurred globally since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military is still expected to be ready to go anywhere on Earth and fight any battle.  The authors of the Pentagon's key 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), for instance, claimed that its supposedly “updated strategy” was focused on “twenty-first-century defense priorities.” Self-congratulatory rhetoric aside, however, the document outlined an all-encompassing global military blueprint whose goals would have been familiar to any Cold War strategist of the latter half of the previous century. With an utter inability to focus, the QDR claimed that the U.S. military needed to be prepared to act in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, the Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. In addition, plans are now well underway to beef up the Pentagon's ability to project power into the melting Arctic as part of a global race for resources brewing there.

Being prepared to go to war on every continent but Antarctica means that significant reductions in the historically unprecedented, globe-spanning network of military bases Washington set up in the Cold War and after will be limited at best. Where changes happen, they will predictably be confined largely to smaller facilities rather than large operating bases.  A planned pullout from THREE bases in the United Kingdom, for instance, will only mean sending most of the American personnel stationed on them to other British facilities.  As the Associated Press noted recently, the Pentagon's base closures in Europe involve mostly “smaller bases that were remnants of the Cold War.” While the U.S. lost almost all its bases in Iraq and has dismantled many of its bases in Afghanistan, the Pentagon's base structure in the Greater Middle East is still remarkably strong and its ability to maintain or expand the U.S. troop presence in both Iraq and Afghanistan shouldn't be underestimated. 

In addition to maintaining its huge network of formal bases, the Pentagon is also planning to increase what it calls its “rotational” presence: training missions, port visits, and military exercises.  In these areas, if anything, its profile is expanding, not shrinking.  U.S. Special Forces operatives were, for instance, deployed to 134 nations, or almost 70% of the countries in the world, in fiscal year 2014. So even as the size and shape of the American military footprint undergoes some alteration, the Pentagon's goal of global reach, of being at least theoretically more or less everywhere at once, is being maintained.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has stepped up its use of drones, Special Forces, and “train and equip” programs that create proxy armies to enforce Washington's wishes. In this way, it hopes to produce a new way of war designed to reduce the Pentagon's reliance on large boots-on-the-ground operations, without affecting its strategic stretch.

This approach is, however, looking increasingly dubious. Barely a decade into its drone wars, for example, it's already clear that a drone-heavy approach simply doesn't work as planned.  As Andrew Cockburn notes in his invaluable new book, Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins, a study based on the U.S. military's own internal data found that targeted assassinations carried out by drones resulted in an increase in attacks on U.S. forces.  As for the broader political backlash generated by such strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, it's clear enough by now that they act as effective recruitment tools for terror organizations among a fearful and traumatized population living under their constant presence.

At a theoretical level, the drone may seem the perfect weapon for a country committed to “covering the globe” and quite literally waging war anywhere on the planet at any time.  In reality, it seems to have the effect of spreading chaos and conflict, not snuffing it out. In addition, drones are only effective in places where neither air defenses nor air forces are available; that is, the backlands of the planet.  Otherwise, as weapons, they are sitting ducks.

A Pentagon for All Seasons

Washington's strategy documents are filled with references to non-military approaches to security, but such polite rhetoric is belied in the real world by a striking over-investment in military capabilities at the expense of civilian institutions. The Pentagon budget is 12 times larger than the budgets for the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined.  As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has noted, it takes roughly the same number of personnel to operate just ONE of the Navy's 11 aircraft carrier task forces as there are trained diplomats in the State Department.  Not surprisingly, such an imbalance only increases the likelihood that, in the face of any crisis anywhere, diplomatic alternatives will take a back seat, while a military response will be the option of choice, in fact, the only serious option considered.

In the twenty-first century, with its core budget still at historically high levels, the Pentagon has also been expanding into areas like “security assistance” -- the arming, training, and equipping of foreign military and police forces.  In the post-9/11 years, for instance, the Pentagon has developed a striking range of military and police aid programs of the kind that have traditionally been funded and overseen by the State Department. According to data provided by the Security Assistance Monitor, a project designed to systematically track U.S. military and police aid, the Pentagon now delivers arms and training through 18 separate programs that provide assistance to the vast majority of the world's armed forces.

Having so many ways to deliver aid is handy for the Pentagon, but a nightmare for MEMBERS of Congress or the public trying to keep track of them all.  Seven of the programs are new initiatives authorized last year alone. More than 160 nations, or 82% of all countries, now receive some form of arms and training from the United States.

In a similar fashion, in these years the Pentagon has moved with increasing aggressiveness into the field of humanitarian aid.  In their new book Mission Creep, Gordon Adams and Shoon Murray describe the range of non-military activities it now routinely carries out. These include “drilling wells, building roads, constructing schools and clinics, advising national and local governments, and supplying mobile services of optometrists, dentists, doctors, and veterinarians overseas.”  The specific examples they cite underscore the point: “Army National Guardsmen drilling wells in Djibouti; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers building school houses in Azerbaijan; and U.S. Navy Seabees building a post-natal care facility in Cambodia.”

If one were to CHOOSE a single phrase to explain why General Dempsey thinks the Pentagon is starved for funds, it would be “too many missions.”  No amount of funding could effectively deal with the almost endless shopping list of global challenges the U.S. military has mandated itself to address, most of which do not have military solutions in any case.

The answer is not more money (though that may not stop Congress and the president from dumping billions more into the Pentagon's slush fund).  It's a far more realistic strategy -- or put another way, maybe it's a strategy of any sort in which the only operative word is not “more.”

The Pentagon's promotion of an open-ended strategy isn't just a paper tiger of a problem.  It has life-and-death consequences and monetary ones, too.  When President Obama's critics urge him to bomb Syria, or put more ground troops in Iraq, or arm and train the security forces in Ukraine, they are fully in line with the Pentagon's expansive view of the military's role in the world, a role that would involve taxpayer DOLLARS in even more staggering quantities.

Attempting to maintain a genuine global reach will, in the end, prove far more expensive than the wars the United States is currently fighting.  This year's administration request for Iraq War 3.0 and Syria War 1.0, both against the Islamic State (IS), was a relatively modest $5.8 billion, or roughly 1% of the resources currently available to the Department of Defense.  As yet not even John McCain is suggesting anything on the scale of the Bush administration's intervention in Iraq, which peaked at over 160,000 troops and cost significantly more than a trillion DOLLARS.  By comparison, the Obama administration's bombing campaign against IS, supplemented by the dispatch of roughly 3,000 troops, remains, as American operations of the twenty-first century go, a relatively modest undertaking -- at least by Pentagon standards.  There are reasons to oppose U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Syria based on the likely outcomes, but so far intervention in those nations has not strained the Pentagon's massive budget.

As for Ukraine, even if the administration were to change course and decide to provide weapons to the government there, it would still not make a dent in its proposed $50 billion war budget, much less in the Pentagon's proposed $534 billion base budget.

Using the crises in Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria as arguments for pumping up Pentagon spending is a political tactic of the moment, not a strategic necessity.  The only real reason to bust the PRESENT already expansive budget caps -- besides pleasing the arms industry and its allies in Congress -- is to attempt to entrench the sort of ad hoc military-first global policy being promoted as the American way for decades to come.  Every crisis, every development not pleasing to Washington anywhere on Earth is, according to this school of thought, what the Pentagon must be “capable” of dealing with. What's needed, but completely dismissed in Washington, is of course a radical rethinking of American priorities. 

General Dempsey and his colleagues may be right.  Current levels of Pentagon spending may not be able to support current defense strategy.  The answer to this problem is right before our eyes: cut the money and change the strategy.  That would be acting in the name of a conception of national security that was truly strategic.