Posted by andreas from p3EE3C325.dip.t-dialin.net (62.227.195.37) on Thursday, September 26, 2002 at 9:17AM :
In Reply to: Private Lesson for for E.Kamber posted by andreas from p3EE3C46E.dip.t-dialin.net (62.227.196.110) on Thursday, September 26, 2002 at 6:24AM :
Will he u'stand what relevance for Assyrians?
:
: Business Times - 25 Sep 2002
:
: More to Iraq war than just Saddam?
: US has wider strategic aims, says an international conference
: By
: Anthony Rowley
: In Tokyo
: THERE is no way that the US will not go to war with Iraq - with or without
: an enabling resolution from the UN - and the motives behind the coming
: attack go far beyond simply toppling President Saddam Hussein or stripping
: Iraq of any weapons of mass destruction that it may possess.
: The impending war has much wider strategic aims such as the cementing of US
: global supremacy by removing any future threat to America's oil supplies,
: encircling China, and installing US-friendly 'democratic' regimes across the
: Middle East.
: This is no scenario posited by the over-active imagination of anti-American
: lobbies, but rather the sober consensus arrived at by eminent academics,
: historians, economists, global strategists and other experts during an
: international conference at Oxford University last week.
: The meeting came just one year after a similar conference - held in the
: immediate aftermath of the Sept 11 incidents - accurately predicted the
: wider consequences of that disaster. As if to validate the apocalyptic
: vision sketched out during the Oxford conference, the Bush administration in
: Washington unveiled last Friday its rationale for shifting US military
: strategy towards pre-emptive action against hostile states and terrorist
: groups. The message in the National Security Strategy was that the US will
: in future use pre-emptive military action whenever and wherever it perceives
: a threat - actual or potential - to its national security.
: The inevitable and imminent attack on Iraq, coming close on the heels of the
: assault on Afghanistan, will mark a spectacular opening to this new chapter
: in American imperial history. How it will close is beyond the ability of
: even experts to predict with any certainty. But the outcome is likely to be
: far more complex than a repeat of the strike on Afghanistan, followed by the
: installation of an internationally supported and friendly new regime in
: Baghdad.
: That the US assault upon Iraq will come sooner rather than later (at the
: latest next January, and possibly as early as next month) was taken for
: granted by experts at the Oxford Analytica annual conference. The lack of a
: build-up of US ground forces in the Middle East so far on anything
: approaching the scale of the Gulf War does not mean that war is not
: imminent, since the attack is likely to use overwhelming air power and
: selective use of special forces on the ground.
: The Oxford consensus rejected any comfortable view that war might even yet
: be averted by Saddam Hussein's decision to re-admit UN arms inspectors (on
: certain conditions) and it also avoided taking consolation in any thought
: that the impact might be short-lived and limited only to Iraq. At the very
: least, violent, anti-American street demonstrations in Cairo, Alexandria and
: other Egyptian cities could be expected - perhaps erupting also in Saudi
: Arabia and maybe Jordan.
: These would be forcibly suppressed, but if they should threaten a number of
: Middle East regimes, this might not necessarily be outside of the US game
: plan, some experts suggested. Such regimes are regarded as potentially
: unstable in the long run because they are not based upon democratic
: principles. They are also founded upon what are often regarded as the
: benighted precepts of Islam. To use the wording of the new National Security
: Strategy, they contain people who 'hate the United States and everything for
: which it stands'.
: To clean out such regimes and install others that are not just friendly to
: the US in foreign policy terms but which also subscribe to American mores
: would further the cause of the Bush administration's neo-imperialism and
: also secure the future integrity of energy supplies for the US. Such aims
: might be achieved as part of the greater Iraq campaign - protracted and
: expensive though this might prove to be - or by using Iraq as a jumping off
: point for future regime-destabilising actions once Saddam Hussein has been
: subdued.
: Some at the Oxford conference noted with incredulity the fact that the new
: National Security Strategy also envisages the use of the IMF and the World
: Bank as instruments of this policy. Nothing, it seems, is now excluded in
: the campaign of the Bush administration to wage war by one means or another
: on 'un-American' activities or beliefs.
: Against this breathtakingly broad canvas, the fact that collateral damage
: might be done to oil installations in the Iraq campaign - sending oil prices
: to US$40 or even US$100 a barrel - is a cost that Washington may be prepared
: to tolerate.
: What of the wider strategic objectives of the war? The US, according to one
: strategy expert, is 'getting into central Asia (via Afghanistan) in order to
: surround China' - and it remains to be seen just how far it will penetrate
: there and in the Caucasus.
: Russian President Vladimir Putin, it was noted, is powerless to stop this
: and, being pragmatic, he sees no point in engaging in 'futile opposition.'
: He will simply bide his time - on the assurance that he will be re-elected
: in 2004 for a further four-year term - until he can turn the situation to
: his own advantage.
: If neither force nor persuasion can deter the Bush administration from its
: course of asserting global supremacy in the most explicit possible way, what
: could derail the strategy? Economic experts in Oxford suggested that it
: might all come down eventually to economics.
: The US current account deficit - now running at around US$450 billion a year
: or 4 per cent of GDP - is expected to widen further, while the government
: budget has swung massively from surplus to a deficit which is expected to
: exceed US$200 billion this year even without the cost of the Iraq war (for
: which an extra US$100 billion at the very least, should be factored in).
: For a nation so hugely dependent upon external financing to cover its
: deficits, this will be problematical to say the least should the new
: imperial strategy erode international confidence in the US dollar. Therein
: lies the Achilles heel even if the Armageddon scenario plays out in other
: ways.
-- andreas
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