By Johan Galtung and - -
TOKYO, Apr 14 2008 (IPS)

Cold War II started when US President Clinton expanded NATO eastward, up to the border of the old Soviet Union and extended the US-Japan mutual security treaty westward to include Taiwan and South Korea, a clear breach of the Japanese constitution\’s ban on waging war, writes Johan Galtung, Professor of Peace Studies and founder of TRANSCEND, a global peace and development network. In this article, Galtung writes that the US has 700 bases in 130 countries. The result is the encirclement of the half of humanity, which in response organised the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which has six members (China, Russia, and four Central Asian Muslim republics) and three observers (India, Pakistan and Iran). It looks ominous and ominous it is. Enter a third force: Islam, which was also confronted by the US using 9/11 as rationale. There are no Muslim countries in NATO-AMPO but six in SCO, of which the USA has a problem with Iran. Why? The 1953 CIA-MI6 coup that ousted a legally-elected prime minister and ushered in 25 years of dictatorship. There is a simple way out: apologise for 1953. The cost: the admission that we – USA-UK – can make mistakes. The benefit: an end of Iran-USA problem. Instead, the US made NATO members accept a \”defence\” against \”only\” nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles, to be stationed in the Czech Republic and Poland. Wouldn\’t solving the conflict be better?

The US has 700 bases in 130 countries. The result is the encirclement of the half of humanity, which in response organised the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which has six members (China, Russia, and four Central Asian Muslim republics) and three observers (India, Pakistan and Iran). The Warsaw Pact was puny in comparison.

It looks ominous and ominous it is. Enter a third force: Islam, which was also confronted by the US using 9/11 as rationale. There are no Muslim countries in NATO-AMPO but six in SCO, of which the USA has a problem with Iran. Why? “Because they hate us,” is Washington’s explanation. Some Iranians do, most do not, but why? The answer is very simple: the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup that ousted a legally-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and ushered in 25 years of dictatorship.

There is a simple way out, and one that could have been taken long ago: apologise for 1953. The cost: the admission that we – USA-UK – can make mistakes. The benefit: an end of Iran-USA problem.

Instead, the US made NATO members accept a “defence” against “only” nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles (is there missile passport control?), to be stationed in the Czech Republic (radar) and Poland (missiles).

Given that there are many other routes for those missiles, the Russian proposal of stationing the defence in Azerbaijan makes more sense. But why would Iran choose to attack with missiles in the first place? Why not smuggle in materials and make bombs in the USA?

Wouldn’t solving the conflict be better?

I am reminded of an old Chinese story: during the Han dynasty, there was a dealer in weapons who sold both means of attack and means of defense, among them a halberd (a dagger axe) and a shield. Two prominent signs in his shop proclaimed their advantages:

This halberd is so sharp that it can pierce any shield!

This shield is so strong that no halberd can pierce it!

So it is with the modern arms race with its ballistic, anti- ballistic, anti-anti-ballistic missiles, and so on. Any child can see that the NATO shield is meant for Russia and presages an infinite regression of anti-anti, anti-anti-anti weapons, like decoys, or the new Russian random-trajectory missiles.

Why is the USA afraid of Russia?

“Because Russia is big, and so is China, and the biggest countries are our traditional enemies,” Washington would say.

Again, there are areas of disagreement and tension, and some obvious solutions, like stopping the encirclement, closing some bases (how would the USA react to efforts to enrol Cuba and Venezuela in the SCO?) and focusing on alternative energy and global warming and meeting the basic needs for all people.

But asymmetric vulnerability is part of the strategic equation, and states with the type of weapons that the USA-NATO-AMPO wields must be confronted. There seems to be a yearning for winnable wars, as opposed to confrontations with rag-tag resistance in Afghanistan or Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq.

Wouldn’t solving the conflict be better?

Imagine a little change in the geopolitical balance. Currently the US encircles SCO, expects a major war for world hegemony, and has a “war on terror” going on with Al Qaeda. As Russia, China, and India also have their problems with certain Muslim populations – Chechnya, Xinjiang, Kashmir- Washington manipulates this to win them over or neutralise them.

But here’s an alternative scenario: six out of nine SCO members/observers are Muslim. Imagine they persuaded the giants – Russia,China, and India- to soften their stance and give Chechnya, Xinjiang, and Kashmir much more autonomy, recognising that their struggles are similar to the struggles all three had against Western imperialism.

And, to continue that line of thought, imagine that some Chechens make peace with Moscow and open an anti-USA-NATO-AMPO front in the USA instead, joined by seasoned Kashmiri Muslims, and maybe some Uighurs. Not likely. There is too much racism and arrogance to overcome in the biggest countries in the world.

Wouldn’t solving the conflict be better?

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, that US tool and former South Korean foreign minister, was present at the NATO meeting. What a pity NATO did not have a Security Council with a public hearing with experts on either side that could tear the missile shield idea to pieces. NATO members have to be democracies; shouldn’t there then be transparency in the way it forges agreements?

NATO, history’s biggest alliance, with 26 members, fields 47,000 soldiers (the Soviets had many more) in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, hoping to train Afghan substitutes. (Look at Iraq for the rest of the story.) Afghanistan is a station on the Golgatha road of empires, as it was in the British invasions in 1838-1878 and the Soviet invasion in 1979. It may also be the end of NATO. No French take-over of the organisation can save it.

Wouldn’t solving the conflict be better? (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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