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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Nukes : Political-Economy : Regime |
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We're All Bunnies With These F-16s |
Current rating: 0 |
by Christopher Kremmer
(No verified email address) |
28 Mar 2005
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This gap between reality and self-serving, self-deluding rhetoric endangers the very freedoms it purports to defend. Unless, that is, you believe in the Easter Bunny. |
The Bush Administration's latest contribution to peace, prosperity and democracy - to sell 24 F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan - seems to have sailed under the radar. Perhaps that is why it was announced just before Easter. No swords into ploughshares this year.
A State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said the sale would "improve security and improve prosperity and improve development of the entire region". Oh yes, and the Easter Bunny is an arms dealer.
By "region", we can only assume he meant George Bush's home state of Texas, where the jobs of 5000 workers at Lockheed Martin Corporation's F-16 factory are on the line due to declining orders.
The decision undermines more than two decades of sanctions imposed because of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear program and 1999 military coup. The nuclear program is no longer clandestine and the military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, is an ally in the war against militant Islamists. He might even co-operate in a looming conflict with neighbouring Iran, so praise God and pass the ammunition.
Democracy and nuclear non-proliferation are important, but not as important as defending jobs in the US and catching Osama bin Laden.
Unfortunately, selling warplanes to Pakistan - as Australia discovered when it offloaded second-hand Mirages in the 1990s - antagonises India, which is not only a democracy but a rapidly emerging player in the world economy. In 1989, the German Federal Intelligence Service reported that Pakistan could adapt its existing F-16s to carry nuclear weapons. No prizes for guessing the likely target.
Solution? Sell even more warplanes to India. New Delhi is being encouraged to swallow the deal in return for closer diplomatic and military ties with the US and a place in the sun as a counterweight to China. Judging by India's restrained reaction to the announcement, this gambit may well succeed.
New Delhi's ageing Russian-built MiGs fall out of the sky with terrifying regularity. It needs an air force, not only to deter Pakistani adventures but to fend off China, which still has unresolved border issues.
If India buys the mooted 126 warplanes, the cost with spares will be about $US10 billion ($13 billion). That's a lot of schools, hospitals and basic infrastructure that the people of one of the world's poorest regions won't see. It's probably true that if the US doesn't sell them the planes, the Russians, Chinese and Europeans will, and that by permitting US firms to sell military hardware overseas, the US gains a degree of leverage over its customers.
However, the extent of that influence is limited. In the 1970s the US blocked arms supplies to Pakistan over concerns about its clandestine nuclear program, but when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, military aid and sales resumed. When that war ended with the Russian withdrawal and demise of the Soviet Union, the US again imposed nuclear-related sanctions on Islamabad. The attacks of September 11, 2001, put an end to that.
The danger of ad hoc policymaking is that the contradictions eventually blow up in your face. Relying on Islamists to defeat the Russians produced al-Qaeda and September 11. Relying on Pakistan as a frontline state meant turning a blind eye to its nuclear program.
When Pakistan went nuclear in 1998, Iran was encouraged to follow suit. The more Islamic bombs, the more likely one will end up being detonated in Sydney or Washington. The more we rely on Musharraf, the less chance there is of him holding genuinely free elections in 2007.
The White House has drawn different lessons. It believes sanctions imposed by its Democrat predecessors reduced US leverage. Having learnt to survive without American help, Pakistan began acting like a regional sheriff, patronising the Taliban.
Commentators who don't know any better are inclined to see decisions such as the F-16 sale in romantic terms, as part of a great struggle for freedom and democracy. In fact, such decisions are driven by competition for security and resources in a dangerous, fast-changing world.
Nowadays, they are also routinely accompanied by cynical deceit on the part of governments and the wishful thinking of uncritical analysts. This gap between reality and self-serving, self-deluding rhetoric endangers the very freedoms it purports to defend. Unless, that is, you believe in the Easter Bunny.
Christopher Kremmer is a Herald contributor and author of The Carpet Wars: A Journey Across the Islamic Heartlands
© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/ |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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A Con Job by Pakistan's Pal, George Bush |
by Robert Scheer
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
29 Mar 2005
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Trying to follow the U.S. policy on the proliferation of nuclear weapons is like watching a three-card monte game on a city street corner. Except the stakes are higher.
The announcement Friday that the United States is authorizing the sale to Pakistan of F-16 fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear warheads -- and thereby escalating the region's nuclear arms race -- is the latest example of how the most important issue on the planet is being bungled by the Bush administration.
Consider this dizzying series of Bush II-era actions:
We have thrown away thousands of Iraqi and American lives and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars after crying wolf on Iraq's long-defunct nuclear weapons program and now expect the world to believe similar scary stories about neighboring Iran.
We have cozied up to Pakistan for more than three years as it freely allowed the operation of the most extravagantly irresponsible nuclear arms bazaar the world has ever seen.
We sabotaged negotiations with North Korea by telling allies that Pyongyang had supplied nuclear material to Libya, even though the Bush administration knew that the country of origin of those shipments was our "ally," Pakistan.
Now, Lockheed Martin has been saved from closing its F-16 production line by the White House decision to lift the arms embargo on Pakistan and allow the sale. The decision, which ends a 1990 embargo put in place by the president's father in reprisal for Pakistan's development of a nuclear arsenal, is especially odd at a time when we are berating European nations for considering lifting their arms embargo on China.
The White House says the F-16s are a reward to Islamabad for its help in disrupting terrorism networks, despite a decade of Pakistan's strong support of Al Qaeda and the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
Yet Pakistan's ruling generals could be excused for believing that Washington is not seriously concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. How else to explain invading a country -- Iraq -- that didn't possess nukes, didn't sell nuclear technology to unstable nations and didn't maintain an unholy alliance with Al Qaeda -- and then turning around and giving the plum prizes of U.S. military ingenuity to the country that did?
Even as the Bush administration continues to confront Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, Islamabad has admitted that Pakistani nuclear weapons trafficker Abdul Qadeer Khan -- the father of his nation's nuclear bomb -- provided Iran with the centrifuges essential to such a program. Further, new evidence reveals that Khan marketed to Iran and Libya not only the materials needed for a nuclear bomb but the engineering competence to actually make one.
Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf insists Khan was running his nuclear smuggling operation under the radar of the military government that brought Musharraf to power. And although this is a highly implausible claim given the reach of the military's power and the scope of the operation, the White House has found it convenient to buy it hook, line and sinker -- all the better to remarket Pakistan to the American people as a war-on-terrorism ally.
While Pakistan was receiving such heaping helpings of benefit of the doubt, North Korea became the Bush administration's scapegoat for the rapid nuclear proliferation happening on its watch, according to the Washington Post. "In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya," wrote the Post. "But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction." Sources told the paper that "Pakistan's role as both the buyer and the seller [of uranium hexafluoride] was concealed to cover up the part played by Washington's partner."
One result of the United States shortsightedly pulling this fast one has been the collapse of multilateral nonproliferation talks with Pyongyang. Yet in the long term, the cost is much greater: a dramatic erosion of trust in U.S. statements on nuclear proliferation.
From Iraq to Iran, North Korea to Pakistan, the Bush administration has pulled so many con jobs that it is difficult for anybody to take it seriously. Unfortunately, though, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is as serious as it gets.
Robert Scheer, a journalist with more than 30 years' experience, has built his reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns appear in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines.
© 2005 LA Times
http://www.latimes.com |
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U.S. Arms Industry Fishing in Troubled South Asian Waters |
by Ranjit Devraj
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
29 Mar 2005
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NEW DELHI -- By offering nuclear-capable F-16 'Falcon' fighters to Pakistan and the even more advanced F-18 'Hornets' to India, Washington has shown a cynical readiness to profit from the long-standing rivalry between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors, say analysts.
''This is a bit like the Aesop's fable in which two cats fighting over a loaf take their dispute to a monkey for settlement,'' said P.R. Chari, research professor at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, a prestigious think tank devoted to security in South Asia.
In an interview with IPS, Chari said what was happening was all too obvious. ''The (North) Americans must be laughing all the way to the bank.''
Chari pointed to reports in the 'Washington Post' on Mar. 16 that said the sale of F-16s to Pakistan may have saved 5,000 jobs in U.S. President George W. Bush's home state of Texas where the plane's builder Lockheed Martin Corporation was located.
According to the 'Post', Lockheed and other global defense manufacturers depend on sales of sophisticated military hardware to boost their profits.
The F-16 deal was ''likely to be as warmly greeted in Fort Worth as it is in Karachi,'' the paper said.
According to Chari there was little doubt that U.S. arms contractors were now eyeing India's much larger market that has been closed to them since 1974 when India first exploded a nuclear device. Washington at the time reacted by imposing an arms and dual-use technology embargo on this country.
India, which signed a military pact with the former Soviet Union in 1971, has traditionally sourced its defense needs from Moscow although it also maintains squadrons of French Mirage fighters as well as British Jaguars.
But rapidly expanding ties in recent years between India and the U.S., the world's two largest democracies have seen a progressive lifting of sanctions and moves towards defense cooperation.
A visit to New Delhi on Mar 15-16 by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice produced a welter of new concessions covering not only the sale of F-16 and F-18 combat aircraft but also possibilities for co-production.
Lockheed has so far sold F-16s, currently costing 25 million U.S. dollars a piece to 24 countries and the aviation giant also makes the deadly fighters in Europe, South Korea and Turkey.
As far as Pakistan is concerned Washington would actually be resuming deliveries of F-16s halted in 1990 after a U.S. law barred military exports to Islamabad on suspicions that it was clandestinely developing nuclear weapons.
For India the real icing on the cake was an offer by Rice of cooperation in India's civilian nuclear energy program, which has since 1974 cut its own path with support from Russia and France as result of U.S.-led embargos.
As for the fighter deal, analysts like Chari saw little use for either India or Pakistan to be buying expensive nuclear-capable aircraft when they were not likely to be put to actual use.
Chari said neither country needed aircraft to deliver nuclear bombs against each other since both possessed missiles with more than adequate range.
''After 1994 when both countries declared themselves as nuclear powers they came close to an all-out war twice - during the 1999 Kargil war and the 2002 border standoff - but on both occasions they desisted from resorting to the nuclear option,'' he said.
India and Pakistan have been at pains to improve relations, soured by a long-standing dispute over the territory of Kashmir, and are currently engaged in 'cricket diplomacy' with a Pakistani team currently touring India as part of a series of confidence building measures.
Rice had words of praise for this peace initiative, but ironically her actions were matched with the U.S. decision to sell neighbors with a history of more than half-a-century of hostilities sophisticated military hardware.
''The logic of escalating military preparations contrasts with the logic of dialogue and reconciliation,'' said Prof. Achin Vanaik, a well-known anti-nuclear activist who teaches in Delhi University.
What was interesting to note, Chari said, was that from a position of imposing sanctions against both India and Pakistan for carrying out the 1998 tests, Washington has come round to supplying both countries with platforms capable of delivering nuclear bombs.
''It just shows that Washington has a flexible enough foreign policy to accommodate what it judges to be in its own best interest and this includes such issues as nuclear proliferation,'' Chari said.
That 'claws in claws out' approach has seen Washington first offering F-16s to Pakistan during the war to rid Afghanistan of its Soviet occupiers in the 1980s and then reneging on it on the grounds that Islamabad was pursuing a clandestine nuclear program
Towards the end of the Clinton administration, Washington tilted heavily towards India attracted by its large, rapidly opening market and Pakistan hovered on the brink of being declared a failed state.
Post 9/11, the boot was again on the other foot and Pakistan found itself designated a major non-NATO ally for its role in Washington's 'war against terror' in Afghanistan and deemed fit once again to receive F-16 fighters.
Indeed, said Chari, many of the so-called concessions made towards South Asia by Rice were best seen in the context of the upcoming review of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and Washington's eagerness to deflect criticism from its own failings in South Asia.
Indian analysts have been critical of Washington's failure to prevent the alleged supply of nuclear weapons know-how and parts from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the 'father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
On Monday India's External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh said it was time that the world took a close hard look at clandestine proliferation.
He declared that for its own part, India was ready to sign a global treaty on no-first-use of nuclear weapons.
Singh said as things stood, the security environment in South Asia was seriously undermined by nuclear weapons technology and parts flowing into and out of the neighborhood.
Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service
http://www.ips.org |
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