The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians

by Francis A. Boyle

 

In direct reaction to Israel provoking the Al Aqsa Intifada, on October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people, some of whom are Christians, but most of whom are Muslims.[i]

 

This Special Session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted the Resolution set forth in U.N. Document E/CN.4/S-5/L.2/Rev. 1, “Condemning the provocative visit to Al-Haram Al-Shariff on 28 September 2000 by Ariel Sharon, the Likud party leader, which triggered the tragic events that followed in occupied East Jerusalem and the other occupied Palestinian territories, resulting in a high number of deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians.” The U.N. Human Rights Commission said it was “[g]ravely concerned” about several different types of atrocities inflicted by Israel upon the Palestinian people, which it denominated “war crimes, flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and crimes against humanity.”

 

In operative paragraph 1 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission then:

 

“Strongly condemns the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force in violation of international humanitarian law by the Israeli occupying Power against innocent and unarmed Palestinian civilians…including many children, in the occupied territories, which constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity;…”

And in paragraph 5 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission:

 

“Also affirms that the deliberate and systematic killing of civilians and children by the Israeli occupying authorities constitutes a flagrant and grave violation of the right to life and also constitutes a crime against humanity;…”

 Article 68 of the United Nations Charter had expressly required the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council to “set up” this U.N. Commission (now Council) “for the promotion of human rights.” This was its U.N.-Charter-mandated job.

 

The reader has a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, the world has seen those heinous war crimes inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian people living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and by Israel’s criminal paramilitary terrorist settlers. These Israeli “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for the perpetrators and their commanders, whether military or civilian, including and especially Israel’s political leaders.

 

Let us address for a moment Israel’s “crimes against humanity” against the Palestinian people—as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What are “crimes against humanity”? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals in Europe. In the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people:

 

Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

 The paradigmatic example of “crimes against humanity” is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is where the concept of “crimes against humanity” originally came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission (now Council) determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity.

 

Expressed in legal terms, this is just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. That is the significance of the formal determination by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that Israel has inflicted “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people. The Commission chose this well-known and long-standing legal term of art quite carefully and deliberately based upon the evidence it had compiled.

 

Furthermore, the Nuremberg “crimes against humanity” are the historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people was so horrific that it required a special international treaty that would codify and universalize the Nuremberg concept of “crimes against humanity.” And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.

 

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:

 

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

(a)   Killing members of the group;

(b)   Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)   Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even intensifying against the 1.6 million Palestinians living in Gaza as this book goes to press.

 

As Pappe’s analysis established, Zionism’s “final solution” to Israel’s much-touted and racist “demographic threat” allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide, whether slow-motion or in blood-thirsty spurts of violence. Indeed, the very essence of Zionism requires ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide against the Palestinians. In regard to the latest 2008-2009 Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza – so-called Operation Cast-lead — U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua during the Reagan administration’s contra-terror war of aggression against that country, condemned it as “genocide.”[ii]

 

Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have committed genocide against the Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Articles II(a), (b), and (c). For over the past six decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group constituting the Palestinian people.

 

This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.

 

Article I of the Genocide Convention requires all contracting parties such as the United States “to prevent and to punish” genocide. Yet to the contrary, historically the “Jewish” state’s criminal conduct against the Palestinians has been financed, armed, equipped, supplied and politically supported by the nominally “Christian” United States. Although the United States is a founding sponsor of, and a contracting party to, both the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide Convention, as well as the United Nations Charter, these legal facts have never made any difference to the United States when it comes to its blank-check support for Zionist Israel and their joint and severable criminal mistreatment of the Palestinians—truly the wretched of the earth!

 

The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by the United States and its N.A.T.O. allies in favor of R2P/humanitarian intervention against Zionist Israel in order to protect the Palestinian people, let alone a “responsibility to protect” the Palestinians from Zionist/Israeli genocide. The United States, its N.A.T.O. allies, and the Great Powers on the U.N. Security Council would not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter 6 monitoring force to help “protect” the Palestinians, let alone even contemplate any type of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement actions against Zionist Israel – which are actually two valid international legal options for R2P/humanitarian intervention! The doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” and its current “responsibility to protect” transmogrification so readily espoused elsewhere when U.S. foreign policy interests are allegedly at stake have been clearly proven to be a sick joke and a demented fraud when it comes to stopping the ongoing and accelerating Zionist/Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.

 

Rather than rein in the Zionist Israelis—which would be possible just by turning off the funding pipeline—the United States government, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. media, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the “Jewish” state to the tune of about 4 billion dollars per year, without whose munificence this instance of genocide – and indeed conceivably the State of Israel itself – would not be possible. Without the United States, Israel is nothing more than a typical “failed state.” In today’s world genocide is permissible so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure allies in N.A.T.O. or its de facto allies such as Israel.

 

I anticipate no fundamental change in America’s support for the Zionist/Israeli ongoing campaign of genocide against the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama administration and its near-term successors, whether neoliberal Democrats or neoconservative Republicans. Tweedledum versus Tweedledee.

 

What the world witnesses here is (yet another) case of bipartisan “dishumanitarian intervention” or “humanitarian extermination” by the United States and Israel with the support of the N.A.T.O. states, against the Palestinians and Palestine. While at the exact same time these white racist cowards and hypocrites preach R2P/humanitarian intervention in order to subjugate Libya, now Syria, and perhaps someday soon Iran.

 

As Machiavelli so astutely advised The Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book:

“…one who deceives will always find one who will allow himself to be deceived.”[iii]

 On these dissentient points, this law professor rests his case against the doctrines of “humanitarian intervention” and its imperialist transformation into the demagogic “responsibility to protect.”

 
This article was first published on Global Research, January 26, 2013

Copyright © Francis A. Boyle, Global Research, 2013

Tokyo accuses Chinese navy of “locking onto” Japanese targets

by Peter Symonds

 

Chinese Su-27 fighter

Amid a tense on-going territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea, Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera on Tuesday accused the Chinese navy of locking radar guidance systems onto a Japanese warship last month. No weapons were fired. Branding the action as “extremely abnormal behaviour,” he said, “A small mistake could have led to a very dangerous situation.”

Yesterday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stepped up the pressure on China, accusing Beijing of deliberately inflaming tensions between the two countries. “It was a unilateral, provocative act and extremely regrettable,” he said. “I urge strong restraint by China so the situation will not unnecessarily escalate.”

The Chinese government has yet to respond to Japan’s claims. Onodera provided few details of the alleged incident on January 30, saying only that it involved Chinese frigates and a Japanese destroyer in the East China Sea. He also said that a Chinese ship had targeted a Japanese navy helicopter on January 19 in a similar manner.

The latest Japanese accusations follow months of escalating friction between the two countries, after the previous Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government “nationalised” the disputed islands in September. Beijing responded by dispatching maritime surveillance vessels, and more recently aircraft, to the area to challenge Japan’s administration of the islands and surrounding waters and airspace.

The result has been increasingly dangerous manoeuvring in the vicinity of the islands, as Japan has responded by sending coast guard vessels and scrambling F-15 fighters to challenge Chinese ships and aircraft. On January 10, China dispatched its own J-10 fighters to the area, bringing warplanes from the two countries into close quarters. Japan has hinted that it could authorise its fighters to fire warning shots against “intruders.” All of this increases the risk of a miscalculation or mistake, triggering a military clash that could rapidly escalate out of control.

The military standoff has been accompanied by the deliberate stirring up of nationalism and militarism by both governments, which have exploited the dispute to divert attention from mounting social tensions at home. The Chinese regime gave the green light in September for widespread anti-Japanese protests that involved attacks on Japanese businesses and citizens. The state-owned Chinese media has subsequently published a rash of articles and commentary on an impending war with Japan.

In comments last week, new Chinese leader Xi Jinping was uncompromising. As reported by the state-run Xinhua news agency, he warned: “No foreign country should ever nurse hopes that we will bargain over our core national interests, and nor should they nurse hopes that we will swallow the bitter fruit of harm to our country’s sovereignty, security and development interests.”

The Japanese elections in December brought Abe and the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) back to power, promising to bolster the military and take a tougher stance against China. The Abe government has increased the defence budget for the first time in a decade, made the first moves towards modifying the country’s so-called pacifist constitution, and called for a reconsideration of the previous limited apologies issued for Japanese war crimes in the 1930s and 1940s.

Abe visited the southern island of Okinawa, some 500 kilometres from the Senkaku/Diaoyu islets, on Sunday. Speaking at the Naha air force base, he promised “to strengthen the defence structure” for the southwest islands region, to deal with “continuous challenges to Japan’s sovereignty.” He added: “I will stand in the forefront and am determined to resolutely protect our territory, territorial waters and airspace.” Abe also visited the regional coast guard headquarters responsible for patrolling the disputed islands.

The Japanese coast guard, which is already well equipped, announced last week that it would form a special unit over the next three years dedicated to patrolling Japanese waters in the East China Sea. The unit will include 10 new and larger patrol boats, two sophisticated helicopter carriers and a specialised force of 600 additional troops.

The British-based Guardian reported in early January that both countries were stepping up their drone surveillance capacities. The Japanese military has plans to purchase US drones—long-range Global Hawks that can fly continuously for up to 30 hours at a height of up to 20,000 metres.

While the US has called for calm from both countries, the Obama administration is responsible for stoking tensions in the East China Sea, and for inciting territorial disputes between China and South East Asian countries in the South China Sea. As part of his aggressive “pivot to Asia”, Obama has encouraged Japan to end the constitutional limitations on its military and adopt a tougher stance towards China.

Top Obama officials have repeatedly declared that Washington was “neutral” in the territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, warning at the same time that the US would side with Japan against China if a conflict broke out. Last month, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provoked an angry response from Beijing when she called for an end to “unilateral actions that would seek to undermine Japanese administration” of the islands—comments that tacitly acknowledged Japanese control.

In late January, Natsuo Yamaguchi, the leader of New Komeito, the junior partner party in the LDP-led ruling coalition, visited Beijing and delivered a letter from Abe to the new Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In the course of the meeting, Xi reportedly called for an improvement in bilateral relations. While tensions between the two countries appeared to ease for a few days, the situation has worsened since.

Last Saturday, the Japanese coast guard detained a Chinese fishing boat and its crew of 12, alleging that it had engaged in illegal coral fishing. The vessel was not in the disputed waters, but off Miyako Island, around 150 kilometres away from the Senkaku/Diaoyu group. Nevertheless in the heated atmosphere between the two countries, any incident, no matter how minor has the potential to trigger a conflict. The captain and crew were released on Sunday.

The allegations of Chinese warships locking onto Japanese targets followed a diplomatic dressing down of the Chinese ambassador to Tokyo on Monday. The foreign ministry summoned the ambassador to register another “strong protest” over the presence of Chinese ships in waters around the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. According to the Japanese coast guard, two Chinese maritime surveillance vessels spent around 14 hours in the area.

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 7 February 2013, and was republished with permission.

Hoe Obama lessen kan trekken uit de decennialange bemoeienis met Iran

        

Op 20 januari 2013 begon president Barack Obama aan zijn tweede termijn. De president is er zich terdege van bewust dat er van zijn ambitieuze agenda bij zijn aantreden in 2009 om de Amerikaanse invloed en het imago van de VS in de wereld te herstellen niets in huis is gekomen. Hij heeft dan wel de oorlog in Irak beëindigd, maar de “oorlog uit noodzaak” in Afghanistan niet gewonnen. En van nucleaire ontwapening is niet veel meer terechtgekomen dan de ratificatie van het nieuwe Start-verdrag met Rusland. Obama heeft de Amerikaans-Russische relaties laten verzuren, onder andere door de Amerikaanse plannen voor een raketschild in Europa, kijkt terug op een serie mislukte pogingen om de dialoog aan te gaan met tegenstanders van Amerika en kan evenmin een krachtig initiatief rond de klimaatproblematiek op zijn palmares schrijven.

De president heeft laten weten dat hij terug wil naar zijn oorspronkelijke agenda, maar geeft te verstaan dat hij wel subtieler te werk te wil gaan. Hij is een ervaring rijker door de mislukte diplomatieke initiatieven rond Noord-Korea en Iran, het gebrek aan invloed van Amerika in Egypte, Pakistan en Israel, en de onthutsende realiteit van het mensenlevens en geld verslindende avontuur in Afghanistan. Men moet van hem de komende jaren dus niet direct grote verdragen verwachten, grootschalig militair ingrijpen of omvangrijke steunmaatregelen. Maar of zo’n aanpak tot resultaat kan leiden blijft de vraag. De geheime acties en bliksemaanvallen zoals de snelle oorlog in Libië en de cyberoorlog tegen Iran hebben de tegenstanders dan schade berokkend, doorslaggevend zijn die acties toch niet geweest.

Vandaag kijkt de wereld met wantrouwen naar de beloftes van de Amerikaanse president om de zaken anders aan te pakken. Zo confronteerde een student in Cairo een Amerikaanse journalist met de vraag waarom Guantanamo Bay nog altijd open was, en op een diner in Washington vroeg een Europese minister van Buitenlandse Zaken of de Amerikaanse pivot naar Azië misschien een andere term is voor het negeren van de rest van de wereld. De Amerikaanse president, die in 2009 change zo'n prominente plaats gaf in zijn verkiezingscampagne, blijft geloven in sancties tegen landen die niet aan de leiband van de VS lopen. Recent verlengde hij resoluut het ruim 50 jaar oude handelsembargo tegen Cuba “in het nationaal belang van de Verenigde Staten”. Onder de Trading With the Enemy Act van 1917 is hij in oorlogstijd bevoegd om sancties op te leggen. Maar hij had die tegen Cuba ook kunnen intrekken of verzachten. De sancties missen niet alleen hun doel, maar schenden ook de mensenrechten van Cubanen en VS-burgers.

Tot dusverre heeft de president de verwachtingen van de wereld niet kunnen inlossen. Een nieuwe koers in de relatie met tegenstanders als Cuba, Iran, Noord Korea, Myanmar en Venezuela lijkt enkel in Myanmar effect te sorteren. Het opbod tegen China blijft de grote uitdaging. In zijn tweede termijn hoopt de president de verstandhouding met deze grote rivaal te verbeteren. Maar China maakt zich steeds meer zorgen over de Amerikaanse pivot, temeer daar die gepaard gaat met een ongekend militair opbod in China’s achtertuin. De nieuwe Chinese leiders kunnen dat beleid alleen maar interpreteren als een poging het land in bedwang te houden. Dat hebben we al gezien in de vorm van verontrustende confrontaties in de regio, waarbij China in de Zuid-Chinese Zee werd opgezet tegen Vietnam en de Filippijnen, en tegen Japan in de Oost-Chinese Zee. Op korte termijn zal dit wel niet uitmonden in vijandigheden, maar de inzet van drones en cyberwapens blijft een reëel risico.

Men kan ernstige bedenkingen hebben bij de benoeming van bij John Kerry op Buitenlandse Zaken. Obama zet steevast mensen op dat soort posten die tot de Democratische rechtervleugel behoren en de Irak-oorlog steunden. Kerry is de afgelopen jaren sterk naar rechts opgeschoven. Hij verdedigde de Irak-oorlog zelfs nadat bleek dat er geen massavernietigingswapens waren. Voor hem hebben de VS het recht om zonder internationaal mandaat andere landen aan te vallen. Hij haalde scherp uit naar de VN secretaris-generaal en veegde de vloer aan met de Spaanse premier die vragen stelde bij het Amerikaanse unilateralisme. Kerry was ook niet akkoord met de uitspraak van het Internationaal Strafhof dat Israel met de bouw van de muur op Palestijns gebied de Vierde Conventie van Genève schendt. Voor Kerry was dat een anti-Israel motie. Kerry sluit zich op veel punten aan bij het gedachtegoed van de Republikeinse neoconservatieven. Naar buiten versterkt zo’n benoeming natuurlijk het beeld dat de VS boven de wet staan.

Hoewel de debatten in de Situation Room erop duiden dat de president zich bewust wordt van de beperktheid van de Amerikaanse invloed blijft neoconservatief Amerika geloven in machtsuitoefening met de harde hand. De manier waarop Amerika al tientallen jaren omgaat met Iran toont de fundamentele fouten in het denken van de politieke elite, en juist van deze geschiedenis zou de president moeten leren. Voor velen beginnen de betrekkingen tussen de VS en Iran met de gijzeling van de Amerikaanse ambassade in Teheran in 1979, waarna een groep irrationele moellahs aan de macht kwam met wie elk overleg bij voorbaat uitgesloten is. Monsters die enkel luisteren naar geweld. En die op het punt staan kernwapens te ontwikkelen en te gebruiken. Maar de werkelijkheid is dat de CIA vanuit dezelfde ambassade in 1953 de democratische regering-Mossadegh omverwierp omdat deze de Iraanse olierijkdom aan de Iraniërs wilde voorbehouden in plaats van aan buitenlandse ondernemingen.

De CIA installeerde de Sjah die de Amerikaanse wapenindustrie megawinsten bezorgde, terwijl zijn land een proeftuin werd voor geheime-dienst-technieken en mensenrechtenschendingen. Maar de Sjah verarmde en vervreemdde zijn bevolking. Een seculiere democratiegezinde revolutie bracht de Sjah in 1979 geweldloos ten val. Toen interne tegenstellingen niet snel leidden tot een nieuwe regering probeerde de CIA de Sjah aan de macht te houden, maar stuurde uiteindelijk aan op een gematigde theocratie. Nadat de Amerikaanse ambassade door een ongewapende menigte werd overgenomen sloten moellahs een deal met Amerikaanse Republikeinen om de gijzeling voort te zetten tot Carter de verkiezingen zou hebben verloren. De regering-Reagan hervatte de wapenverkopen aan Iran en maakte tegelijk wapendeals met Saddam Hussein die de oorlog tegen Iran twee termijnen Reagan kon volhouden dankzij Amerikaanse steun. En vandaag is Iran onder druk van het militair-industrieel complex doelwit van oorlogsdreiging, harde sancties en terrorisme.

De les die de Amerikaanse president uit de Iran-case moet trekken is dat het buitenland geen probleem heeft met de Westerse cultuur, maar met inmenging in hun bestuur, met het installeren van dictators die natuurlijke rijkdommen het land uitsluizen, elke vrijheid aan banden leggen en dissidenten opsluiten en martelen. Maar die les is aan de president verloren. Tijdens zijn inwijdingsspeech ter gelegenheid van zijn tweede ambtstermijn was het weer volop Amerikaans exceptionalisme:“Amerika blijft de spil van sterke allianties in alle uithoeken van de wereld. We zullen versterkt investeren in middelen die ons moeten toelaten buitenlandse crises het hoofd te bieden. Want niemand heeft meer belang bij vrede in de wereld dan de machtigste natie. We steunen democratie, van Azië tot Afrika, van Latijns-Amerika tot het Midden-Oosten. Onze belangen en ons geweten dwingen ons om op te treden in naam van hen die naar vrijheid verlangen”, zo klonk het.

De Amerikaanse sociologieprofessor Julian Go wijst er in zijn boek Patterns of Empire: the British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present op dat imperialistisch optreden een strategie is om werelddominantie te vrijwaren, een fenomeen dat gestalte krijgt in meer openlijk militair optreden in tijden van economische teruggang. Na tien jaar oorlog in Irak en Afghanistan zal Amerika zijn imperialisme wel enkele jaren op een laag pitje zetten, maar Amerikanen hebben een kort geheugen. Als de economie verder verslechtert ten voordele van de belangrijkste rivalen ziet men snel weer overal bedreigingen die bestreden moeten worden. Het beeld is beangstigend: het militair sterkste land ter wereld geraakt economisch meer en meer in verval. Amerikaanse agressie leidt onvermijdelijk tot een escalatie tussen de wereldmachten. En dat betekent wereldoorlog. De les van The Ugly American is nog even actueel als bij de verschijning van deze politieke roman in 1958.

Drone wars: the new blowback

by Paul Rogers

The United States and Israel see armed drones as a valuable tool of "remote control". But Iran, China and Russia - and non-state actors - are working to achieve their own capacity. The emerging era is one of drone proliferation.

Among the changes brought by Egypt's political transformation in 2011-12 has been that international journalists find it easier to enter Gaza. In turn this ensured much greater media reporting from within Gaza of Israel's assault in mid-November 2012 than had been the case over Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09. A largely unreported aspect of this situation was that many of these journalists had immediate experience of frequent and intense Israeli drone-flights over Gaza during the week-long conflict.

Suddenly, a large number of journalists was made aware - possibly for the first time - of the kind of situation villagers in northwest Pakistan had long been subject to: the sound of a drone in their vicinity, buzzing above their head, compounded by a fear that it is armed and could, at any moment, unleash a Hellfire missile at a nearby house or compound.

The use of drones in Pakistan and Gaza (over which Israel routinely deploys drones, even when there is no armed confrontation) is best seen as a signal of the emerging era of warfare by "remote control" (see "Remote control, a new way of war", 18 October 2012. It is too little realised, though, that many countries are already embracing drone technology; that it is becoming a substantial feature of the international arms trade; and that there is a particular trend towards armed drones (see "Suicide-bombs without the suicides: why drones are so cool", 13 September 2012).

A worldwide boom

In recent weeks, military journals have been full of reports of new "products" and deployments. Britain's first squadron of Reaper armed drones has been flown from bases in Afghanistan, under the control of an RAF team at Creech air-force base in Nevada; it will in due course be run from RAF Waddington, near Lincoln in eastern England (which already controls a second squadron of drones) (see Tim Ripley, "Reaper ops move to UK", Jane's Defence Weekly, 24 October 2012).

Japan, meanwhile, is purchasing Israeli drones and adapting them to fill a gap in its missile warning system (see James Hardy, "Japan plans IR-equipped UAV as part of BMD shield", Jane's Defence Weekly, 14 November 2012); and Russian state media report that Sukhoi - one of the major Russian aerospace companies - is responding to President Putin's call for Russia to catch up with the west by focusing on drones rather than manned combat-aircraft.

China now has two design bureaux working on drones similar to the United States's Reaper (see Wendell Minnick, "China's Unmanned Aircraft Evolve From Figment to Reality", Defense News, 26 November 2012. There are strong indications that it will prioritise exports (see Bradley Perrett, "Chinese Aerospace Plants See Profits in Civil Work", Aviation Week, 28 November 2012).

Iran's story

All these developments involve countries that have either been working on drones for many years or have large aerospace industries that can develop new products. What is perhaps more interesting, not least because of the regional implications, is that Israel is not the only country in the middle east that is heavily involved in drone development. Iran is in there too - in a programme that started thirty years ago and has continued throughout all the country's political changes.

By coincidence, in the very week of the intense Gaza war where Israel made concentrated use of drones, one of the first substantial unclassified reports on the Iranian programme was published (see Jeremy Binnie, "Rise of the Pahpad", Jane's Defence Weekly, 21 November 2012). The programme has its roots in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 whose greatly destructive battlefield stalemates resembled the western front's trench-warfare of 1914-18. In the effort to counter Iraqi capabilities, Iranian technicians developed crude drones that could undertake aerial photo-reconnaissance of Iraqi forces. The development of an indigenous drone industry had begun.

By the end of the 1990s, an arms exhibition in the United Arab Emirates included an Iranian exhibit of modest size, Ababil-2 (Swallow). The vehicle was around 2.7 metres in length with a 3.3-metre wingspan, had a top speed of around 280 kilometres per hour, and could reach a height of 3,300 metres. Iran then created the Mohajer (Emigrant) series with greater endurance. By early 2000, drones were being used to observe the anti-government Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MeK) rebels living in eastern Iraq and reportedly being supported by the Saddam Hussein regime.

These systems were far less sophisticated than those being developed by the United States and Israel. In any case, to "fly" drones over any distance requires real-time direct-communications links via satellites. Iran doesn't have such systems, and to maintain links would either need forward-operating units or have to "buy" time on commercial communications satellites.

A new phase

Yet the Iranian drone programme has a twofold significance. First, it is a mature programme developed over some thirty years - perhaps often rather crude, but showing a commitment and ability that may well be shared with others. Jeremy Binnie, for example, reports that the Sudanese government has used Iranian drones, and that Venezuela has received Iran's assistance in developing its own drones (see "An asymmetrical drone war", 19 August 2010) .

Second, a revealing Israeli experience occurred on 6 October 2012. It seems, as far as the details can be pieced together, that a drone was assembled in southern Lebanon from components supplied by Iran; launched by Hizbollah, possibly aided by Iranian personnel; then "piloted" to fly offshore down the Mediterranean coast of Israel before turning east over land towards the northern part of the Negev desert. An Israeli Defence Forces statement says that the drone was spotted off the coast of Gaza, implying that it had initially evaded Israeli coastal-surveillance systems, and was eventually shot down in the Yatir forest area near the West Bank.

Israeli sources say the drone was observed for some time before being shot down when it was approaching sensitive areas. This seems implausible, since it could have been armed and could have diverted very quickly towards a town or village at any stage.

What is more interesting is that since the drone flew a substantial distance there must have been some way in which it could be kept in communication with its operating base in southern Lebanon. This suggests that Iran had either found a way of using commercial satellite links or else had personnel established in Gaza that could maintain communications, coordinating their activities with those in that Lebanese base.

None of this is particularly threatening to a state as powerful as Israel.Yet it adds a symbolic dimension - a worrying sense of impotence - that follows the impact of the rockets fired from Gaza to the very end of the conflict.

Furthermore, it is one part of a longer-term process that is more advanced than many people think (see "Hizbollah's warning flight", 5 May 2005). Such is the nature of drone technology that states with intermediate technical capabilities are likely to become serious forces in the drone-orientated world soon to emerge. If the United States can persist with targeted assassinations in northwest Pakistan, acting with seeming impunity as it rewrites the laws of war, and if Israel can do the same in Gaza - why should other countries not follow suit?

The use of armed drones by the Americans, Israelis, British and others may seem hugely attractive in the short term. But it sets a precedent that may be followed much sooner than might be expected. If that proves the case, then Iran's thirty-year drone programme may have done much to bring it about.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international-security editor, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century(Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers

This article first appeared on openDemocracy November 29, 2012

Tensions at ASEAN summit over South China Sea

By Peter Symonds

Sailors and civil service mariners lower a Tomahawk cruise missile onto the Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Oklahoma City (SSN 723) at Polaris Point, Guam, Nov. 16, 2012.

(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jason C. Swink/Released)

South China Sea territorial disputes between China and its South East Asian neighbours have been centre stage at summit meetings organised by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Cambodia this week.

Tensions flared after Philippine President Benigno Aquino disputed a statement by Cambodia, the summit host, on Sunday that ASEAN countries had reached a consensus “not to internationalise the South China Sea from now on.” The statement was in line with China’s insistence that the maritime disputes be resolved bilaterally. Cambodia is closely aligned with Beijing.

During a meeting of ASEAN leaders with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Monday, Aquino objected to the statement that a consensus had been reached, declaring: “For the record, this was not our understanding. The ASEAN route is not the only route for us. As a sovereign state, it is our right to defend our national interests.”

With the support of the Obama administration, the Philippine government has taken a more strident stance over its territorial claims in what it now calls the West Philippine Sea, resulting in a dangerous standoff this year with China over the disputed Scarborough Shoal.

Noda also intervened to challenge efforts by Cambodia to limit the discussion. A Japanese statement reported: “Prime Minister Noda raised the issue of the South China Sea, noting this is of common concern for the international community, which would have direct impact on peace and stability of the Asia Pacific.”

Japan’s involvement in the dispute, for the first time, further cuts across China’s efforts to strictly limit the issue to South East Asian countries. Noda’s intervention was also aimed at a domestic audience. With an election due next month, all the parties, including Noda’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan, are stirring up nationalist sentiment, focussing on Japan’s own dispute with China over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands in the East China Sea.

Philippine President Aquino subsequently offered to host a meeting of the four countries involved in territorial disputes with China—Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines. “Our position has always been that a multilateral problem does not lend itself to a solution on a bilateral basis,” he declared.

In July, sharp disagreements between Cambodia and the Philippines over the South China Sea at an ASEAN meeting of foreign ministers resulted, for the first time, in the organisation being unable to issue a final communiqué.

President Barack Obama yesterday attended the East Asian Summit organised by ASEAN as part of his three-nation trip to Thailand, Burma and Cambodia. According to US deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, Obama’s message was that “there needs to be a reduction of the tensions… There is no reason to risk any potential escalation, particularly when you have two of the world’s largest economies—China and Japan—associated with some of those disputes.”

Obama’s posturing as a voice of moderation is completely hypocritical. The Obama administration is directly responsible for inflaming all the territorial disputes involving China by indicating support for its allies—Japan and the Philippines—in taking a tougher stance. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provocatively declared at an ASEAN summit in 2010 that the US had “a national interest” in securing “freedom of navigation” through the South China Sea and offered to mediate negotiations over the issue.

Subsequently, while declaring the US neutral on the territorial issues, American officials have publicly stated that Washington would support Japan in any conflict with China over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands, and hinted it would do the same in relation to the Philippines. The Obama administration has exploited the maritime disputes as a convenient device to drive a wedge between China and its neighbours, put pressure on Beijing and justify a US military build-up in the region.

Control over the shipping lanes through South East Asia is a key component of the Obama administration’s broader “pivot to Asia”—a diplomatic and strategic offensive aimed at containing China by strengthening US alliances and military ties across Asia.

Obama held his own separate meeting with ASEAN leaders, again calling for an “early conclusion” to establishing a regional code of conduct in the South China Sea. Beijing, however, is still pushing for bilateral arrangements. While Chinese and ASEAN leaders agreed on Sunday to further negotiations on a code, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson declared that the process would “take some time.”

These territorial disputes are not the only issue being exploited by Washington to undermine China’s influence in South East Asia. Obama took time out at the summit for a photo opportunity with the leaders of countries involved in the Lower Mekong Initiative—Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. Launched in 2010, the Lower Mekong Initiative is a mechanism for exploiting differences between this grouping and China over water use and dam building in the upper Mekong river.

US-China rivalry also spilled over into trade and economic issues.

Obama used the summit to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a regional trade grouping being pushed by Washington, strongly biased toward US corporations and financial institutions. The TPP foreshadows an across-the-board reduction of tariffs and other forms of protectionism, and is aimed in particular against state-owned enterprises. While the TPP does not include most Asian economies, the US is pressing key allies such as Japan and South Korea to join up. Washington’s aim is either to exclude China, or force it to open up new areas of its economy to US investors.

The TPP currently only includes four ASEAN countries—Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam. Obama outlined a new initiative, known as the US-ASEAN Expanded Economic Engagement, to expand trade and investment ties with all 10 ASEAN countries and encourage them to join the TPP.

The US proposal was one of several competing trade plans under discussion on the summit’s sidelines. These included a proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) between ASEAN countries and its current Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners—Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. Notably, the US would be excluded.

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 21 November 2012, and was republished with permission.

Chances for Peace, the second decade

by Paul Rogers

Egypt: Coral Reef in the Southern Red Sea area (author: Mahmood Habeeb; source: USAID – Wikimedia Commons)

The world faces immense and unavoidable security, climate and economic tests. In the effort to meet them, the second decade of the 21st century is crucial.

The next thirty years, until the mid-2040s, will be hugely challenging in the effort to establish worldwide peace and security. A combination of deepening socio-economic divisions and accelerating environmental limits, especially the impact of climate change, represents an unavoidable test. What are the underlying reasons for the predicament and what needs to be done? Will it be possible to move to a more equitable, emancipated and low-carbon world, and if so, how? A new report from the Oxford Research Group seeks to answer these questions, and argues that the second decade of the 21st century is the vital period for effecting change.

The report, entitled Chances for Peace in the Second Decade: What Is Going Wrong and What We Must Do - is rooted in a historical perspective. During the superpower "cold war" from 1945-90 there were many "proxy wars" waged in the global south that killed more than 10 million people. At the same time, the nuclear arms-race peaked at over 60,000 nuclear warheads, with many nuclear accidents and dangerous crises along the way; it was more by luck than wisdom that the world survived without armed nuclear catastrophe. The cold-war era also saw massive expenditure on the military, diverting resources and attention from much more important human needs. Even now, there is great peril in nuclear proliferation, even if it is less that of tipping over a precipice into all-out disaster and more of a slippage towards “small nuclear wars in far-off places”.

The cold war ended in the late 1980s. The west's security attitudes in the 1990s were captured in the incoming CIA chief R James Woolsey's comment that the United States had slayed the Soviet dragon but now inhabited a jungle full of poisonous snakes. When that “jungle” bit back (including with the 9/11 atrocities), the only response to be considered was to crush that part of it in an all-out “war on terror”.

The result in the 2000s was the appalling loss of life in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even as the al-Qaida idea retained its potency, not least in south Asia, northern Africa and the middle east. In the process, the west lost the will to put tens of thousands of "boots on the ground"; instead, it is now moving into an era of “remote control” in which armed drones, special forces, private military companies, intense expeditionary warfare and rendition all play a part in keeping the lid on threats to security.

The challenge

Yet it is now clear that the challenges facing humankind stem from much more substantial drivers of change: the inability of the global economic system to deliver socio-economic justice, and the failure of both political and economic systems to respond to environmental limits, especially the potentially disastrous consequences of climate disruption.

The financial crisis of 2008 made only a marginal dent in conventional economic wisdom. The orthodoxy is still that the west may have a few years of austerity, with a little bit more financial regulation to patch up the system, before a vigorous return to the old ways in which upcoming countries play a leading role. It sounds plausible, but leaves out the basic inability of the system to deliver fairness. Free-market capitalism is rooted in difference, and always produces plenty of losers. But the disadvantaged on the margins, who are in the majority in so many countries, are also today much better educated, have greater access to communications than ever before, and are far more likely to resent their exclusion and react against it.

In practice, this might be expressed in the Naxal rebellion in India, social unrest in China, protest from the much better educated and knowledgable youthful Arab generations, or even recourse to radical and sometimes brutal faith-based movements. The response from the powerful might be to seek to maintain control, whether within or between states; but this is guaranteed to produce yet more resentment and anger. Meanwhile, environmental limits encroach remorselessly; and, in the case of climate disruption, accelerate steadily.

The end result, at least on present trends, recalls Edwin Brookes's dystopic future expressed in the 1970s: of “a crowded, glowering planet of massive inequalities of wealth, buttressed by stark force yet endlessly threatened by desperate people in the global ghettoes…”.

That is the negative scenario. The Oxford Research Group report tries, in a very tentative way, to suggest some positive outcomes. In the simplest of terms, the way ahead is straightforward - though translating the obvious into the actual is far from easy. Severe climate change has to be prevented by a rapid transition to low-carbon economies, with the main carbon-emitters of the global north having to decrease carbon outputs by 80% in less than two decades. The lesser emitters must be enabled to develop along economic paths that are truly sustainable, aided substantially by the northern states that have been responsible so far for the great majority of emissions.

Such an environmental transition has to be paralleled directly by an economic transformation to a far more equitable and emancipated system, both transnationally and within states. For the global south, this involves much greater debt-relief and the linking of trade with development in a manner similar to that advocated by UNCTAD in the 1960s but never implemented - a genuine "new international economic order". Technological innovations may well help, not least in adapting to the level of climate change that is already inevitable; and a rapid transition to versatile renewable-energy sources, often seriously localised, can enhance economic autonomy.

The transition

The sheer size of the task is enough to induce a feeling of profound powerlessness, but this needs to be met head-on with a sense born of combined hope and history.

Thirty years ago, in the early 1980s, there was a palpable fear of nuclear annihilation and doubts whether the world would make it to 1990 - yet we did. Thirty years before that, some far-sighted politicians sought European economic cooperation as a means of preventing a third European civil war. The European Union has many problems, but a Franco-German conflict is now almost inconceivable.

There are numerous recent examples where warning-signs have been heeded and steps rapidly taken. The shock of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, for example, helped stimulate a raft of arms-control treaties later in that decade; and the discovery of the Antarctic “ozone hole” in 1983 led to the Montreal convention to control the pollutant causes of ozone-depletion.

The equivalent for climate change - the "canary in the coal-mine” - might well turn out to be the increasing incidence of severe weather events. But dynamic responses to environmental limits and the socio-economic divide will come fast enough only if these are underpinned by enough new thinking. If prophecy is “suggesting the possible”, then bring on the prophets and their movements!

There are, fortunately, quite a few of these around already. Britain alone has many pioneers, among them the New Economics Foundation's "great transition" project, the "transition towns" movement, or even the delightfully named "incredible edible Todmorden" (based in an innovative west Yorkshire town) and its many offshoots. The work of the Centre for Alternative Technology is as imaginative as ever, and Oxford Research Group's work on "sustainable security" does its best with modest resources to take on conventional security thinking.

On a worldwide level, many economic alternatives already exist - from the small and startlingly different (such as self-managing communes or industrial zones) to vast associations such as the cooperative movement with around 950 million members. The former have many opportunities to grow, while the latter are fully embedded in many societies yet still full of potential.

The future

An earlier column in this series proposed that the hundred-year period between the mid-20th and mid-21st centuries is proving crucial to humanity's future, by testing our ability to contain and avert two risks of self-destruction: the production and use of weapons of gargantuan destructive power, and the wreckage of the global environment and distinct societies within it (see "A century on the edge", 29 December 2007).

On the eve of 2013, more than two-thirds of the way through this pivotal century, the picture is mixed. Those terrible weapons were unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the very start of the period, but so far there has (again, by luck more than wisdom) been no repetition. The risk remains, however - alongside that of environmental destruction and of deep economic divisions.

In addressing these dangers, the early decades of this century are key. The chances are with us, and much of the knowledge is there too. But we are nearly into the third year of the second decade and time is getting short.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international-security editor, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century(Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers

This article first appeared on openDemocracy 20 December 2012