Posted by Tony from ? (167.88.192.30) on Thursday, September 26, 2002 at 9:55AM :
In Reply to: Will he u'stand what relevance for Assyrians? posted by andreas from p3EE3C325.dip.t-dialin.net (62.227.195.37) on Thursday, September 26, 2002 at 9:17AM :
Who knows what he and his leaders think of all these? And we wont know unless He breaks his silence.
: 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.
-- Tony
-- signature .