TFF Associates & Themes Blog

Archive for the ‘Security and defence’ Category

By Jonathan Power

Politicians have it in their DNA to hype our supposed present dangers. So do journalists. So does the military-industrial complex. So do certain think tanks and university professors who depend on sounding the alarm about this and that to gain grants from foundations.

When Leon Panetta was defence secretary under President Barack Obama he was not atypical when he said that any defence cuts would undermine the military’s “ability to protect the nation” and reductions would “invite aggression”.

Yet today’s wars tend to be low-intensity conflicts that on average kill 90% fewer people than the wars of the 1950s. The first decade of this century had fewer war deaths than any decade of the last century.

As for terrorism nothing is more over-hyped.

Of the 13,186 people killed in terrorist attacks in 2010 only 15 were American citizens. Unless you live in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia or Syria the chance of dying from a terrorist attack today has fallen to just above zero. Even the latest spate of bomb attacks in France and Belgium barely affect this world percentage.

The US is almost Islamic terrorist-free. What terrorism there is comes from right wing white men. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jonathan Power

June 28th 2016.

NATO has just announced a plan to send troops to the alliance’s eastern flank, close to the Russian border. NATO says it is attempting to deter potential Russian aggression.

The UK, the US, Canada and Germany will lead four battle groups to be based in Poland and the Baltic states. Diplomats say the troops will be a deterrent to Russian aggression by acting as a “tripwire” that would trigger a full response from the alliance if necessary

On Sunday the foreign minister of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, condemned Western “sabre-rattling and war cries”. He said, “Anyone who believes the symbolic tank parades on the Alliance’s eastern border will increase security is wrong”.

Apart from the appalling fact that the West is contemplating all out war against Russia there is the plain fact that it has expanded NATO in contravention of the solemn understandings given the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.

The deal was straightforward: The Soviet Union would agree to the reunification of East and West Germany and accept that East Germany would become part of NATO in return for a non-expansion promise.

It is the breaking of this promise that, more than any other one thing, has fuelled Read the rest of this entry »

By Jan Oberg

The third article in the TFF series on The New Cold War

We are witnessing a remarkable increase in tension between the US/NATO and Russia these years – and it can not only be explained by whatever we choose to think happened in Ukraine and Crimea. We find a totally new effort on both sides to use social and other media to tell how dangerous “they” are to “us”. There is a clear tendency to “fearology” – to instill fear in the citizens on both sides about the capabilities and intentions of the other side.

We find deeply concerned articles about the possibility of war between the two parties – a quarter of a century after the Berlin Wall tumbled.

Why is the new tension rising in Europe between US/NATO and Russia so manifestly dangerous and – with the exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis worse than during the First Cold War?

On a series of indicators, the political Western world – US/NATO/EU and Christian (Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic with sects) – is becoming weak relative to other players in the global society.

The West has engaged in a series of wars that turned into very costly fiascos – from what followed from Sykes-Picot which turned 100 in May 2016 over Vietnam to the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

The West is still the largest economic bloc and the 28 NATO members cover about 70% of the world’s mind-boggling US $ 1700 billion military expenditures. Africa as a continent, BRICS countries – China in particular – are making progress, also in fields where the West has failed; for instance, China has lifted 400 million Chinese out of poverty in a couple of decades. The wealthy West has done nothing of the sort over centuries but produced a grotesquely, perversely unequal income distribution.

Take a look at the graphs linked to this summary page from SIPRI. They will tell you how world military expenditures in constant prices have risen since 1996 even though the Warsaw Pact had been dissolved. In 2015, the US alone stands for 36% of the world’s military expenditures, China for 13% and Russia for4%.

President Obama stated recently that the US military is stronger than the next 8 – here is what he said in his State of the Union Address on January 12th, 2016:

“I told you earlier all the talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air. Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker,” Obama said in his last annual State of the Union address Jan. 12, 2016. “Let me tell you something: The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. Period. It’s not even close. It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined.”

In spite of these fact that prove the overwhelming and increasing superiority of today’s NATO, we see a constantly increasing propaganda coming out of NATO circles to the effect that NATO is getting weaker and that Russia a formidable, unreliable power just waiting for the next opportunity to invade some country in the West.

Let’s take a look back in time. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jan Oberg

The UK, Europe and the rest of the world will be affected. But there has been no planning for this anywhere. It’s now all up in the air what this Brexit vote will be the starting point of. All we can safely predict is that we are in for interesting times!

Why did it happen?

Arrogant corporate and other elites continuously enriching themselves against all common social sense and ignoring the legitimate needs and concerns of ordinary citizens, women in particular – so, class and gender.

So too that more highly educated people tended to vote for Remain and older people voting Leave – more interesting sociological analysis here.

Interestingly, the whole art world supported Remain – and now fear for the effects of Brexit on Britain’s cultural development.

An EU that has failed to create a new, better way of doing politics, merely growing its original democratic deficit – so, lack of real democracy.

An EU that has had a woefully inadequate, cynical response to a refugee crisis caused by leading EU member states’ warfare – so, (mis)management and lack of leadership.

Significantly, the leading Muslim Association of Britain, MAB, supported Remain with the argument that ”Exit from the EU runs the risk of perpetuating rifts in British society, which would increase levels of hate crimes against British Muslims.” So, Islamophobia.

A general sense (but sometimes denial) of insecurity about the future all over the Western world, Read the rest of this entry »

By Farhang Jahanpour

Today (16 June 2016), Jo Cox, the 41-year old Labor MP, was killed after she was shot and stabbed in her constituency in Yorkshire. A 52-year old man was arrested in the area. The suspect was named locally as Tommy Mair.

There is as yet very little concrete information about him or his motives, and it is too early to jump to a conclusion and link his dastardly act with the referendum, but some eyewitnesses have said that before shooting Jo Cox twice, Mair shouted “Britain first”. Clearly, he is a deranged individual, but if he uttered those words, it is possible to conclude that the assault was connected with the referendum.

The fact remains that the assassination of such a strongly pro-EU MP is a big shock, a major loss and of course the source of great grief for her husband and her two small children. Before being elected as an MP in the last general election, Jo Cox had been a charity worker and a human rights campaigner all her life. Her husband, Brendan, used to work for Save the Children. They and their two little children lived a quiet and unassuming life in a barge on the Thames near the Houses of Parliament.

Her husband released the following touching statement after her death:

“Today is the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. More difficult, more painful, less joyful, less full of love. I and Jo’s friends and family are going to work every moment of our lives to love and nurture our kids and to fight against the hate that killed Jo.
Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it everyday of her life with an energy and a zest for life that would exhaust most people. She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now, one that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn’t have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous.
Jo would have no regrets about her life, she lived every day of it to the full.”

In any case, this ugly deed provides an extreme example of the acrimonious debates that are held over the referendum. All campaigning has been suspended as a sign of respect for the death of the MP.

On June 23, the British people take part in a rare referendum Read the rest of this entry »

On June 15, 2016 – Jan Oberg participated in a discussion on CCTV America – the global Chinese channel in the US with up to 75 million viewers – with Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, a discussion lead by Anand Naidoo. See it here.

By Jonathan Power

June 7th. 2016.

The second article in the TFF Series on The New Cold War

George Orwell, the author of “Animal Farm” and “1984”, was the first person to use the phrase “Cold War” in a 1945 newspaper article, written just after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He argued that “the surface of the earth is being parceled off into three great empires, each self-contained and cut off from contact with the outer world, and each ruled, under one disguise or another, by a self-elected oligarchy. He counted the US and Western Europe as one, the Soviet Union as the second and China as the third. He concluded that, “the atomic bomb is likeliest to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a peace that is no peace”.

I think he got it nearly right – or so it seems as a new Cold War erupts between the West and Russia and China spars with the US over the South China Sea and its islands.

Of course it’s more complicated than that. China and Russia have a fair relationship. China and the US are perhaps doing nothing much more than annoying each other and the bonds of commerce and student exchanges bind both the elites and the populaces close together.

To me a new Cold War is nonsense on stilts. Even more than the original one.

George Kennan, the US former ambassador to Moscow and the author of how to contain the Soviet Union, always insisted that Stalin had no intention of rolling his tanks into Western Europe. As Robert Legvold summarizes Kennan’s views in his interesting new book, “Cold War”, “The threat the Soviet Union posed was political, a threat accentuated by these countries’ vulnerability to Soviet subversion because of their economic frailty and political instability – a threat requiring a political and economic response, not a military one”.

In 1948 Kennan wrote, as he observed the creation of Nato, “Why did they [Western leaders] wish to divert attention from a thoroughly justified and promising program of economic recovery by emphasizing a danger which did not actually exist but which might be brought into existence by too much discussion of the military balance and by the ostentatious stimulation of military rivalry?” Read the rest of this entry »

Av Erni & Ola Friholt

Margot Wallström har utropat en feministisk utrikespolitik för Sverige. Inom den tecknades nyss ett värdlandsavtal med Nato, världens utan jämförelse starkaste militärallians. Avtalet permanentar flera gånger årligen återkommande militärmanövrer i stora delar av vårt lands luftrum, på landytan och i territorialvattnen. Sverige bekostar nödvändiga infrastrukturan-läggningar.

Militärmanövrerna samtrimmar svensk militär med Nato. Den underförstådda motståndaren är Ryssland, ständigt utpekat som aggressivt och hotfullt. Med den förklaringen flyttar Nato ständigt fram sina positioner mot Rysslands gränser. Eftersom Ryssland känner sig hotat utvecklas ett spel som leder till ökad spänning och krigsrisk, vilket i sin tur ger anledning att upprusta båda sidor.

Kapprustningen tar resurser från det civila samhället och skapar oro även där. Närmast ska det torkdrabbade Gotland utrustas med nya anläggningar, vapen och manskap. Kapprustning med ständigt nya vapen har bara ett slut: fattigdom och krig.

I denna situation önskar Sveriges regering förhandla fram ett förbud mot kärnvapen, det vapen som kärnvapenmakternas säkerhetstänkande ytterst vilar på och är det sista de skulle avstå från. Detta erinrar om myten om Sisyfos, mannen som dömts att baxa ett stenblock uppför en sluttning och som varje gång han nått toppen får se blocket rulla ner igen till utgångspunkten.

Den svenska regeringens feministiska Sisyfosarbete bortser ihärdigt ifrån att det är alla de andra vapnen som startar utarmande kapprustning och krigshot. De så kallade konventionella vapnen skördar dagligen och stundligen dödsoffer och skadade. Hur befängt det än kan låta, måste väl illusionen om säkerhet och fred genom de andra vapnen ha lockat till värdlandsavtalet med Nato?

Regeringen väljer att betala och samarbeta med ”de stora grabbarna”, de som i Serbien, Afghanistan, Irak, Libyen, Syrien, Jemen och Somalia med militära konventionella ”insatser” dödat över två miljoner människor på femton år och skadat ännu fler.

Deras svar på konflikter är endast ett: bombningar till underkastelse.

Därför får vi som svar ett evigt s k terrorhot.

Om den feministiska utrikespolitiken vore allvarligt menad, vore den givna politiken nedrustning, samtal och utbyte med den utpekade fienden, allt för avspänning i enlighet med Palmes kommission om gemensam säkerhet, alltså även motsidans säkerhet, och en verklig alliansfrihet.

Nu går färden åt motsatt håll, med kontraproduktiv handelsbojkott och anslutning till Natos våldsdoktrin.

Du lever farligt, Margot!

ERNI & OLA FRIHOLT

By Gunnar Westberg

Very pleasant meeting. We all agreed on everything. We follow you, Big Brother, in all your ventures, we are so happy you like us.

Reports and family pictures have appeared in media from a dinner with 350 guests. Nice laudatory speeches, not a disturbing critical word.

There is a final document on everything that was agreed, already beforehand.

I recommend no one to read the paper, you can’t, it is such a soporific (= tending to induce drowsiness or sleep).

No journalist has so far given an overview, they fell asleep too, I guess. The section on Environment and on Energy seems good, but nothing new. The failure of the USA in energy conservation is not allowed to disturb in this Feel good report.

The section on Defence and Security is, however, very depressing. Read the rest of this entry »

By Gunnar Westberg

The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility”.

Other serious close calls

In November 1979, a recorded scenario describing a Russian nuclear attack had been entered into the US warning system NORAD. The scenario was perceived as a real full-scale Soviet attack. Nuclear missiles and bombers were readied. After six minutes the mistake became obvious. After this incident new security routines were introduced.

Despite these changed routines, less that one year later the mistake was repeated – this time more persistent and dangerous. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US national security adviser, was called at three o’clock in the morning by a general on duty. He was informed that 220 Soviet missiles were on their way towards the USA. A moment later a new call came, saying that 2,200 missiles had been launched.

Brzezinski was about to call President Jimmy Carter when the general called for a third time reporting that the alarm had been cancelled.

The mistake was caused by a malfunctioning computer chip. Several similar false alarms have been reported, although they did not reach the national command.

We have no reports from the Soviet Union similar to these computer malfunctions. Maybe the Russians have less trust in their computers, just as Colonel Petrov showed? However, there are many reports on serious accidents in the manufacture and handling of nuclear weapons.

I have received reliable information from senior military officers in the Soviet Union regarding heavy use of alcohol and drugs among the personnel that monitor the warning and control systems, just as in the USA.

The story of the “Norwegian weather rocket” in 1995 is often presented as a particularly dangerous incident. Russians satellites warned of a missile on its way from Norway towards Russia. President Yeltsin was called in the middle of the night; the “nuclear war laptop” was opened; and the president discussed the situation with his staff. The “missile” turned out not to be directed towards Russia.

I see this incident as an indication that when the relations between the nuclear powers are good, then the risk of a misunderstanding is very small. The Russians were not likely to expect an attack at that time.

Indian soldiers fire artillery in northernmost part of Kargil region

Close calls have occurred not only between the two superpowers. India and Pakistan are in a chronic but active conflict regarding Kashmir. At least twice this engagement has threatened to expand into a nuclear war, namely at the Kargil conflict in 1999 and after an attack on the Indian Parliament by Pakistani terrorists in 2001.

Both times, Pakistan readied nuclear weapons for delivery. Pakistan has a doctrine of first use: If Indian military forces transgress over the border to Pakistan, that country intends to use nuclear weapons.

Pakistan does not have a system with a “permissive link”, where a code must be transmitted from the highest authority in order to make a launch of nuclear weapons possible. Military commanders in Pakistan have the technical ability to use nuclear weapons without the approval of the political leaders in the country. India, with much stronger conventional forces, uses the permissive link and has declared a “no first use” principle.

The available extensive reports from both these incidents show that the communication between the political and the military leaders was highly inadequate. Misunderstandings on very important matters occurred to an alarming degree. During both conflicts between India and Pakistan, intervention by US leaders was important in preventing escalation and a nuclear war. Read the rest of this entry »