The reasons why NATO’s official narrative about its war in Libya should not be accepted can be summed up in one word: WikiLeaks.
According to the propaganda from this US-led alliance, Libya was bombed to keep its civilians out of harm’s way. Anyone inclined to believe that blather is advised to read a February 2009 note sent to Hillary Clinton from Ronald Spogli, then about to leave his post as America’s ambassador in Rome.
Spogli’s cable – as made public by Julian Assange’s courageous combo – attaches much importance to the US Africa Command (Africom), which was established under George W Bush’s presidency in 2007. While Africom’s headquarters are in Stuttgart, two of its key offices are in Italy.
“Italy provides a unique geostrategic platform within Europe for US forces, allowing us to reach easily into troubled areas throughout the Middle East, Africa and Europe,” Spogli wrote. “And because of that advantage, Italy is home to the most comprehensive set of military capabilities - from the 173rd Airborne to cutting edge Global Hawks - that we have anywhere outside the United States.” Later on, he adds: “With the establishment of Africom, Italy has become an even more significant partner in our power projection calculations.”
True, Spogli expressed some reservations about Silvio Berlusconi, saying “he is not as attuned to our political rhythms as he is wont to believe”. Yet the ambassador was even more effusive in an earlier cable, dating from August 2008. “Italy remains our most important European ally for projecting military power into the Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa,” he told Dick Cheney, then America’s vice-president. “We have 14,000 US military and DOD [Department of Defence] civilian personnel and 16,000 of their family members on five Italian bases.”
Calling the shots
So that is what the war in Libya is really about: a projection of power. Even though France started the bombing in March, the US has emphasised that it calls the shots. Robert Gates, its defence secretary until recently, stated in June that the bombardment required the stationing of extra targeting specialists, primarily from the US, in NATO’s air operations centre in Italy. Europe is supposed to be grateful for this helping hand, Gates implied.
Ruffle through the WikiLeaks treasure trove a bit further and you’ll see that power is being projected in at least three directions: towards Tripoli, Beijing and Moscow.
Several cables can be found where America indicates its frustration with efforts by Muammar Gaddafi to let Libya get a bigger share of revenue from the exploitation of the country’s oil resources than Western multinationals were prepared to give it. A 2007 document says that the US should explain to Gaddafi that there are “downsides” to the renegotiation of contracts with energy giants. After such firms as ExxonMobil, Total (France), Eni (Italy) and Petro-Canada, had to cough up over $5 billion as a result of rejigged contracts, another cable warned in 2008 that Tripoli’s approach was establishing an international precedent. Using diplomatic language, this was described as a “new paradigm for Libya that is playing out worldwide in a growing number of oil producing countries.”
WikiLeaks has also shown that Gaddafi was wary of the $300 million-a-year Africom project. When he had a meeting with William “Kip” Ward, the general then in charge of Africom in 2009, Gaddafi reportedly predicted that China would “prevail in Africa” because it did not meddle in the internal affairs of African countries. Other cables hint at US unease with how Russia had secured energy and construction work in Libya. More generally, the aforementioned Spogli said: “We must recognize that Italy's buy-in will be crucial to any common US-EU energy security policy to counter [Vladimir] Putin's increasingly blatant and aggressive use of energy as a tool for increasing Russia's influence.”
Are we to deduce from his remarks that the US would never dream of using energy in that way? OK, that was a silly question.
Even though he was perturbed by the cordial ties between Berlusconi and Putin, Spogli appears to have been prescient. Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister (who Spogli rates highly), stated over the past few weeks that Eni will have a “number one role in the future” of Libya.
Keen to flex muscles
Africom will undoubtedly now be keen to flex its muscles in other parts of Africa. A November 2010 report by the Atlantic Council, a “think-tank” partly financed by the arms industry, observed that 14% of natural gas and 18% of oil imported by the US comes from West Africa, principally Nigeria. Forecasting that the figure for oil will rise to 25% by 2015, the paper argued that America’s economic strength relies on a ready supply of oil at a stable price.
At the moment, the US has just one military base on the African continent: in Djibouti. WikiLeaks has revealed plans for the American private security firm Blackwater (now Xe) to work from Djibouti and use “lethal force” against pirates operating off Somalia. The same Blackwater, as we know, did not flinch at using force in Iraq.
A 2009 cable, meanwhile, alerted Africom to how China had 10 times more diplomats in the Central African Republic than the US. China was “ramping up its military cooperation” with the CAR, “a country rich in untapped natural resources”, the cable added.
Let us be clear: there is a new race to colonise Africa. America and its European cronies are determined to win it.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 5 September 2011.
Showing posts with label WikiLeaks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WikiLeaks. Show all posts
Monday, September 5, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Fake feminism NATO-style
Back in 2002, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy brilliantly satirised the official excuses for the invasion of Afghanistan . “It’s being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas,” she said. “We are being asked to believe that the US marines are actually on a feminist mission.”
The effort to rebrand militarism as compassionate and motherly continues today in NATO’s Brussels headquarters. Stefanie Babst, a senior official in the alliance working on “public diplomacy” (a synonym for propaganda), keeps busy trying to raise the profile of a decade-old United Nations Security Council Resolution on gender, peace and security. It is “extremely encouraging” that NATO is committed to this resolution – number 1325 in case you were wondering – and its call that women and children be shielded from violence during armed conflicts, Babst has declared.
Can it really be the case that NATO is sparing women from the horrors of the war it is waging in Afghanistan? Of course, it can’t.
UN data published in December stated that 742 civilians were killed or wounded by NATO or by Afghan forces loyal to Hamid Karzai’s government in the first ten months of last year. Most of these casualties – including 162 deaths – were attributed to air strikes, a NATO speciality.
Documents made public through the heroic work of WikiLeaks have helped give us a glimpse of what Afghans have to endure. On 16 August 2007 Polish troops mortared a wedding party in a village called Nangar Khel. Four women and one man were killed. A pregnant woman in attendance was among those wounded by shrapnel. Though an emergency caesarean was performed, her baby died.
NATO’s attempts to master the dark arts of spin cannot be allowed to conceal the brazen opportunism of the alliance. When the Soviet Union started to collapse, there was much nervousness among NATO staff that their beloved institution would go out of business. After a lengthy period of scrambling around for reasons why the alliance was still relevant now that the Cold War was supposed to be over, it was given a new lease of life with the implosion of Yugoslavia. In 1999, NATO celebrated its fiftieth anniversary by raining down cluster bombs – weapons so dangerous that over 100 governments have subsequently agreed to ban them – on Serbia. No soldier, general or political leader serving the alliance has ever been held to account for that monstrous war crime.
Afghanistan has helped ensure that NATO will remain alive and kicking for the foreseeable future. In August 2003, NATO took charge of the US-led “stabilisation force” occupying Afghanistan. Karl Eikenberry, now US ambassador to Afghanistan and a former deputy commander of NATO’s 28-nation military committee, stated in 2007 that “the policy of turning Afghanistan over to NATO was really about the future of NATO rather than about Afghanistan, one that could ‘make’ the alliance. The long view of the Afghanistan campaign is that it is a means to continue the transformation of the alliance.”
Transforming NATO “means in the first place expanding it into a global military force, one able to wage wars like that in Afghanistan and others modeled after it,” Rick Rozoff has observed on his excellent “Stop NATO” blog.
In his New Year’s message, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the alliance’s secretary general, rejoiced in how there are now nearly 140,000 NATO soldiers deployed around the world: in the Balkans, Iraq, the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean (off the Horn of Africa), as well as in Afghanistan. Rasmussen would like us to think that all these men and women are working tirelessly to bring peace and stability to trouble spots. But closer inspection of NATO’s track record shows that their primary purpose is to ensure that the US and Europe will have access to energy supplies and other resources that our myopic governments regard as essential for our economies.
NATO’s activities in Africa, for example, have received only a fraction of the media coverage given to Iraq or Afghanistan. But the bit of information that we have available to us is illuminating. James Jones, who stepped down in October as the US national security adviser, paid a considerable amount of attention to Africa when he was a high-level NATO commander a few years previously. In 2006, Jones signalled that NATO was thinking about using the fight against piracy as a pretext to launch a mission off the Horn of Africa and in the Gulf of Guinea. The aim of this mission would be to avert any perceived threats to the energy supply routes for Western nations, he said.
It is about time that journalists grew more sceptical than we have been towards the whole industry of think tanks and self-appointed experts in Brussels and Washington who praise NATO at every available opportunity. For many years, I was naive enough to believe that an influential outfit called the International Crisis Group (ICG) was a credible source of information and ideas on conflict resolution. My illusions have been shattered by an article from its president Louise Arbour last month, in which she argued that greater resources should be allocated to NATO’s war efforts in Afghanistan. Arbour used to be the UN’s high commissioner for human rights but did not direct one word against how NATO’s bombs routinely rob Afghans of that most basic of rights: the right to life. Shame on her.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 16-22 January 2011.
The effort to rebrand militarism as compassionate and motherly continues today in NATO’s Brussels headquarters. Stefanie Babst, a senior official in the alliance working on “public diplomacy” (a synonym for propaganda), keeps busy trying to raise the profile of a decade-old United Nations Security Council Resolution on gender, peace and security. It is “extremely encouraging” that NATO is committed to this resolution – number 1325 in case you were wondering – and its call that women and children be shielded from violence during armed conflicts, Babst has declared.
Can it really be the case that NATO is sparing women from the horrors of the war it is waging in Afghanistan? Of course, it can’t.
UN data published in December stated that 742 civilians were killed or wounded by NATO or by Afghan forces loyal to Hamid Karzai’s government in the first ten months of last year. Most of these casualties – including 162 deaths – were attributed to air strikes, a NATO speciality.
Documents made public through the heroic work of WikiLeaks have helped give us a glimpse of what Afghans have to endure. On 16 August 2007 Polish troops mortared a wedding party in a village called Nangar Khel. Four women and one man were killed. A pregnant woman in attendance was among those wounded by shrapnel. Though an emergency caesarean was performed, her baby died.
NATO’s attempts to master the dark arts of spin cannot be allowed to conceal the brazen opportunism of the alliance. When the Soviet Union started to collapse, there was much nervousness among NATO staff that their beloved institution would go out of business. After a lengthy period of scrambling around for reasons why the alliance was still relevant now that the Cold War was supposed to be over, it was given a new lease of life with the implosion of Yugoslavia. In 1999, NATO celebrated its fiftieth anniversary by raining down cluster bombs – weapons so dangerous that over 100 governments have subsequently agreed to ban them – on Serbia. No soldier, general or political leader serving the alliance has ever been held to account for that monstrous war crime.
Afghanistan has helped ensure that NATO will remain alive and kicking for the foreseeable future. In August 2003, NATO took charge of the US-led “stabilisation force” occupying Afghanistan. Karl Eikenberry, now US ambassador to Afghanistan and a former deputy commander of NATO’s 28-nation military committee, stated in 2007 that “the policy of turning Afghanistan over to NATO was really about the future of NATO rather than about Afghanistan, one that could ‘make’ the alliance. The long view of the Afghanistan campaign is that it is a means to continue the transformation of the alliance.”
Transforming NATO “means in the first place expanding it into a global military force, one able to wage wars like that in Afghanistan and others modeled after it,” Rick Rozoff has observed on his excellent “Stop NATO” blog.
In his New Year’s message, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the alliance’s secretary general, rejoiced in how there are now nearly 140,000 NATO soldiers deployed around the world: in the Balkans, Iraq, the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean (off the Horn of Africa), as well as in Afghanistan. Rasmussen would like us to think that all these men and women are working tirelessly to bring peace and stability to trouble spots. But closer inspection of NATO’s track record shows that their primary purpose is to ensure that the US and Europe will have access to energy supplies and other resources that our myopic governments regard as essential for our economies.
NATO’s activities in Africa, for example, have received only a fraction of the media coverage given to Iraq or Afghanistan. But the bit of information that we have available to us is illuminating. James Jones, who stepped down in October as the US national security adviser, paid a considerable amount of attention to Africa when he was a high-level NATO commander a few years previously. In 2006, Jones signalled that NATO was thinking about using the fight against piracy as a pretext to launch a mission off the Horn of Africa and in the Gulf of Guinea. The aim of this mission would be to avert any perceived threats to the energy supply routes for Western nations, he said.
It is about time that journalists grew more sceptical than we have been towards the whole industry of think tanks and self-appointed experts in Brussels and Washington who praise NATO at every available opportunity. For many years, I was naive enough to believe that an influential outfit called the International Crisis Group (ICG) was a credible source of information and ideas on conflict resolution. My illusions have been shattered by an article from its president Louise Arbour last month, in which she argued that greater resources should be allocated to NATO’s war efforts in Afghanistan. Arbour used to be the UN’s high commissioner for human rights but did not direct one word against how NATO’s bombs routinely rob Afghans of that most basic of rights: the right to life. Shame on her.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 16-22 January 2011.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
America pulls Europe's strings
Commenting on the state of trans-Atlantic relations in 2008, former American president Jimmy Carter argued that European Union governments are “not our vassals” but “occupy an equal position with the U.S.”. Documents released over the past month appear to offer a different view.
In a report finalised earlier in December, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton signalled that the EU’s main purpose internationally is to “help” Washington “achieve its global objectives”. By coincidence, a series of secret cables from U.S. embassies around the world – made public by the website WikiLeaks - indicates that America expects Europe to constantly act as its subordinate.
A memo approved by William Leach, then U.S. ambassador to Paris, in 2005 deals with French opposition to the war declared against Iraq two years previously. Leach takes comfort in learning that the anti-war stance of President Jacques Chirac was not supported by some prominent members of Chirac’s own party, the Union for a Popular Majority (known by its French acronym UMP).
The memo summarises a visit which Leach received from Hervé de Charette, a former foreign minister and then head of international relations for the UMP. De Charette, according to the memo, called Chirac’s position on the war “embarrassing”. Giving the impression that he was speaking on behalf of Nicolas Sarkozy, now France’s president and the UMP leader at the time, de Charette identified a sturdy relationship with the U.S. as “the basis for French foreign relations”. De Charette also described the Israel-Palestine conflict as “the key issue” for both the EU and U.S. and suggested that he wished to counter the perception that France was more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to Israel.
Another cable from 2005 pinpoints Britain and the Netherlands as America’s most trusted allies in western Europe. Drafted by Clifford Sobel, who was about to step down as the U.S. envoy to The Hague, it labels the Dutch as “go-to guys” when disagreements arise between the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Sobel says that the Dutch helped “push back” plans by France and Germany to develop a European military capability that could act independently of NATO, a US-dominated alliance. He applauds the Dutch, too, for providing “early logistic support” for the war in Iraq by allowing the U.S. military pass through Rotterdam, when it was unable to use other European ports for that purpose.
Furthermore, the cable celebrates the willingness of Dutch diplomats to act as “eyes and ears” for America. It recommends that – because the Netherlands has a history as a coloniser in the Caribbean- the Dutch should be given a role in countering the rise of left-wing politicians in Latin America. According to Sobel, the Dutch are “deeply concerned” about “meddling” by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez in the Caribbean. “As a Caribbean power, the Dutch have good reasons to lead an effort to balance traditional Spanish dominance on Latin American issues in the EU, but the U.S. and others will need to push them to take this role,” the cable adds.
Eva Golinger, a New York lawyer who has written several books on Chavez, said that the cables published by WikiLeaks underscore Washington’s “obsession” with relations between Cuba and Venezuela. Claims that Cubans have penetrated every aspect of Venezuelan government and economy are redolent of Cold War warnings about “communist expansion” in the Southern hemisphere, Golinger wrote on her internet publication Postcards from the Revolution. She also accused US diplomats of painting a false picture of Venezuela. Whereas one cable alleges that the quality of hospitals has declined under Chavez, his administration has pumped billions into a public healthcare system which guarantees free treatment to all citizens.
Two decades after the Cold War was widely assumed to have ended, the cables show that at least 200 American nuclear weapons remain on European soil. Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey are named as some of the countries hosting these weapons.
In addition, the cables appear to offer proof that NATO is planning for a confrontation with Russia. A document from January 2010 shows that the alliance approved a plan during that month to expand an operation known as Eagle Guardian, under which preparations would be made for fighting with Russia in Poland and the three Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia).
The decision follows NATO’s encroachment into countries surrounding Russia over the past decade. This enlargement occurred despite promises made to Moscow by James Baker, the U.S. secretary of state from 1989 to 1992, that NATO would not expand eastwards. As members of NATO since 2004, the Baltic states have accommodated both military bases for the U.S. and operations training soldiers preparing attacks on Afghanistan.
Writing in September, Rick Rozoff, a blogger with the campaigning website Stop NATO, noted that the warplanes from a variety of NATO members fly “round-the-clock” over the three Baltic countries, all of which adjoin Russia. Rozoff intimated that these operations are bound to increase friction between Russia and the alliance.
“NATO’s new members on the Baltic Sea are delivering on the demands imposed upon them by accession to the alliance,” he added. “They host NATO – particularly U.S. – troops, bases, warplanes, warships and missiles. They provide troops for wars far abroad. They supply training opportunities on the ground and in the air for the war in Afghanistan and for future conflicts with none of the restrictions that exist in North America and Western Europe. And they render those multiple services near Russia’s western border.”
·First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 22 December 2010
In a report finalised earlier in December, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton signalled that the EU’s main purpose internationally is to “help” Washington “achieve its global objectives”. By coincidence, a series of secret cables from U.S. embassies around the world – made public by the website WikiLeaks - indicates that America expects Europe to constantly act as its subordinate.
A memo approved by William Leach, then U.S. ambassador to Paris, in 2005 deals with French opposition to the war declared against Iraq two years previously. Leach takes comfort in learning that the anti-war stance of President Jacques Chirac was not supported by some prominent members of Chirac’s own party, the Union for a Popular Majority (known by its French acronym UMP).
The memo summarises a visit which Leach received from Hervé de Charette, a former foreign minister and then head of international relations for the UMP. De Charette, according to the memo, called Chirac’s position on the war “embarrassing”. Giving the impression that he was speaking on behalf of Nicolas Sarkozy, now France’s president and the UMP leader at the time, de Charette identified a sturdy relationship with the U.S. as “the basis for French foreign relations”. De Charette also described the Israel-Palestine conflict as “the key issue” for both the EU and U.S. and suggested that he wished to counter the perception that France was more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to Israel.
Another cable from 2005 pinpoints Britain and the Netherlands as America’s most trusted allies in western Europe. Drafted by Clifford Sobel, who was about to step down as the U.S. envoy to The Hague, it labels the Dutch as “go-to guys” when disagreements arise between the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Sobel says that the Dutch helped “push back” plans by France and Germany to develop a European military capability that could act independently of NATO, a US-dominated alliance. He applauds the Dutch, too, for providing “early logistic support” for the war in Iraq by allowing the U.S. military pass through Rotterdam, when it was unable to use other European ports for that purpose.
Furthermore, the cable celebrates the willingness of Dutch diplomats to act as “eyes and ears” for America. It recommends that – because the Netherlands has a history as a coloniser in the Caribbean- the Dutch should be given a role in countering the rise of left-wing politicians in Latin America. According to Sobel, the Dutch are “deeply concerned” about “meddling” by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez in the Caribbean. “As a Caribbean power, the Dutch have good reasons to lead an effort to balance traditional Spanish dominance on Latin American issues in the EU, but the U.S. and others will need to push them to take this role,” the cable adds.
Eva Golinger, a New York lawyer who has written several books on Chavez, said that the cables published by WikiLeaks underscore Washington’s “obsession” with relations between Cuba and Venezuela. Claims that Cubans have penetrated every aspect of Venezuelan government and economy are redolent of Cold War warnings about “communist expansion” in the Southern hemisphere, Golinger wrote on her internet publication Postcards from the Revolution. She also accused US diplomats of painting a false picture of Venezuela. Whereas one cable alleges that the quality of hospitals has declined under Chavez, his administration has pumped billions into a public healthcare system which guarantees free treatment to all citizens.
Two decades after the Cold War was widely assumed to have ended, the cables show that at least 200 American nuclear weapons remain on European soil. Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey are named as some of the countries hosting these weapons.
In addition, the cables appear to offer proof that NATO is planning for a confrontation with Russia. A document from January 2010 shows that the alliance approved a plan during that month to expand an operation known as Eagle Guardian, under which preparations would be made for fighting with Russia in Poland and the three Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia).
The decision follows NATO’s encroachment into countries surrounding Russia over the past decade. This enlargement occurred despite promises made to Moscow by James Baker, the U.S. secretary of state from 1989 to 1992, that NATO would not expand eastwards. As members of NATO since 2004, the Baltic states have accommodated both military bases for the U.S. and operations training soldiers preparing attacks on Afghanistan.
Writing in September, Rick Rozoff, a blogger with the campaigning website Stop NATO, noted that the warplanes from a variety of NATO members fly “round-the-clock” over the three Baltic countries, all of which adjoin Russia. Rozoff intimated that these operations are bound to increase friction between Russia and the alliance.
“NATO’s new members on the Baltic Sea are delivering on the demands imposed upon them by accession to the alliance,” he added. “They host NATO – particularly U.S. – troops, bases, warplanes, warships and missiles. They provide troops for wars far abroad. They supply training opportunities on the ground and in the air for the war in Afghanistan and for future conflicts with none of the restrictions that exist in North America and Western Europe. And they render those multiple services near Russia’s western border.”
·First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 22 December 2010
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