Jack A. Smith : Climate Change Confab Brings Too Little Too Late

Climate change activists in Warsaw, Friday, November 22, 2013, portray, from right, French President Francois Hollande, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, President Obama, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Photo by Czarek Sokolowski, / AP.

Climate Change meeting in
Warsaw brings too little too late


Given the number of drastic reports about climate change... the accomplishments at COP19 are useful but hugely disproportionate to what is needed.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / December 23, 2013

The sharply increasing scientific indicators of impending disastrous global climate change have failed to motivate the principal developed countries, led by the U.S., to accelerate the lackluster pace of their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This was the principal conclusion of several key environmental groups attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) November 11-23 in Warsaw, Poland. The meeting lasted a day and a half longer than scheduled to resolve a dispute about new greenhouse emission targets. About 10,000 people attended the 19th annual meeting of the so-called Conference of Parties (COP19) that drew nearly all the UN’s 193 member states.

About 800 attendees associated with environmental groups walked out of the conference November 21, protesting the lack of progress. In a joint statement on the day of the walkout, the World Wildlife Federation, OxFam, Friends of the Earth, Action Aid, and the International Trade Union Federation declared:

Organizations and movements representing people from every corner of the Earth have decided that the best use of our time is to voluntarily withdraw from the Warsaw climate talks. The conference, which should have been an important step in the just transition to a sustainable future, is on track to deliver virtually nothing.

According to Professor Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics and a leading British expert on climate change: “The actions that have been agreed are simply inadequate when compared with the scale and urgency of the risks that the world faces from rising levels of greenhouse gases.”

There were also street protests and marches in Warsaw composed largely of younger conference attendees and local youth. One slogan, referring to climate disasters, was “The Philippines, Pakistan, New Orleans: Change the System, not the climate.”

On November 18, delegates from 133 developing countries -- under the umbrella of the G77 group plus China -- walked out temporarily “because we do not see a clear-cut commitment by developed countries to reach an agreement” to financially help poor countries suffering the effects of climate change for which they are not responsible. The U.S., for instance, was reluctant to help developing countries adapt to sea level rise, droughts, powerful storms and other adverse impacts, even though it is historically the greatest emitter of greenhouse gases.

By the end of the conference, perhaps encouraged by the walkout, the world body agreed to set up a “Loss and Damage” process for “the most vulnerable countries” experiencing losses from global warming. The details remain vague.

A distressing aspect of the conference came when four major developed countries took actions in contradiction to fighting global warming.

• Japan -- the fifth largest carbon polluter -- announced it was breaking its pledge to reduce greenhouse gases by 25% of 1990 levels by the year 2020, blaming the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.
• Canada and Australia recently declared they would not support the Green Climate Fund -- the UNCCC program to transfer money from the developed to the developing countries to assist them in dealing with climate change.
• Conference host Poland, a major coal producer, worked with the World Coal Association to simultaneously host the International Coal and Climate Summit in Warsaw. (Greenpeace and others protested outside the coal meeting.)

COP19 was permeated with corporate lobbyists from “fossil fuels, big business groups, carbon market and financial players, agribusiness and agrofuels, as well as some of the big polluting industries,” according to the oppositional “COP19 Guide to Corporate Lobbying.” Corporations appeared at previous COP meetings but, witnesses say, never in such large number.

Obviously, one of the most important issues confronting the world community is reducing greenhouse carbon emissions to impede global warming. This is a perennial UNCCC goal but hardly sufficient so far to prevent substantial increases in carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere, now exceeding 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in at least 3 million years since the Pliocene era.

Greenhouse reductions hark back to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which obligated developed countries to specific -- and in the main incongruously low -- emissions reduction targets while developing countries were encouraged to reduce emissions without a binding requirement.

Since 1997, despite Kyoto, emissions have increased substantially. According to a new report from research teams coordinated by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, “The gap between where emissions are and where emissions would need to be in order to keep climate targets within reach is getting bigger and bigger.”

Kyoto, which the U.S. refused to join because of its so-called “bias” toward developing countries, has in effect been extended from 2013 to 2020 when new emissions targets will go into effect. Unless these new targets are far greater than the old, CO2 ppm will jump much higher.

At issue during COP19 was a proposal by the EU, U.S., and a number of developed countries to eliminate Kyoto’s nonbinding reductions for developing countries. Under this plan, each and all countries would set specific targets over next year. These targets would then be inspected by the other countries to assure they are adequate for the mission at hand. The final targets would be published in early 2015 and presumably approved by that year’s COP, and implemented in five years.

An intense 36-hour struggle between a group of developing countries and most developed countries over this proposal went into an extra session lasting throughout Nov. 22 and into the early hours of the 23rd. Opposing removal of the distinction between developed and developing countries was a group called the “Like-Minded Developing Countries on Climate Change” (LMDC), including such countries as China, India, Venezuela, Bolivia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Thailand.

According to an account in the mass circulation Indian newspaper The Hindu:

India, China and other countries in the LMDC group take the position that the new climate agreement must not force developing countries to review their volunteered emission reduction targets. Setting themselves up in a direct confrontation with the developed countries, the LMDC opposes doing away with the current differentiation between developing and developed countries when it came to taking responsibility for climate action.

In other words, the developing countries will do what they can to reduce emissions, but the principal task by far belongs to the developed countries. They argue that developed industrial countries have been spewing fossil fuel-created greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for 100 to 200 years or more, and most of these pollutants have yet to dissipate. The carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere could warm the planet for hundreds of years.

The richer countries reject this argument, pointing to the increasing industrialization taking place in the developing world. Writing in the Guardian November 25, Graham Readfearn points out: “Rich countries are desperate to avoid taking the blame for the impacts of climate change.... The developed countries won't let any statements slip into any UN climate document that could be used against them in the future” in terms of financing mitigation, adaptation, and compensation costs.

Most developing countries are very poor and have contributed miniscule emissions, but a few of them -- China, India, and Brazil, among others -- have become major industrialized powers in relatively recent years. China, now the largest annual contributor to global warming, has been seriously industrialized for less than 30 years and also functions as a global factory for many nations, including the U.S.

These recently industrializing developing states, most of which are former exploited colonies of the rich countries, argue that the developed states became major powers based on burning fossil fuels and thus have the major responsibility to take the lead in reducing emissions.

China points out that while it has recently displaced the U.S. as leading producer of Greenhouse gas emissions, its population is three times greater. On a per capita basis, Beijing notes, the average American in 2011 produced 17.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide; the average Chinese, just 6.5 tons. (A metric ton is 205 pounds heavier than a 2,000 pound ton.) The U.S. rejects these arguments.

Climate activists in downtown Warsaw, Poland, Saturday, November 16, 2013. Photo from AP.

The developed-developing conflict over emissions was finally resolved when China and India withdrew demands for including Kyoto’s exception for developing countries, in return for which “commitments” to a specific target were changed to “contributions.” Clearly this is a vague stopgap measure that will eventually change. The important matter is the total of emissions reductions to be agreed upon in 2015.

The U.S., as the most influential developed country, has taken hardly any action at all to significantly reduce CO2 emissions when it was the number one emitter of carbon in the atmosphere or now when it is number two, tut-tutting about China’s smokestacks while President Obama boasts about expanding drilling for oil and fracking for gas.

Ironically, though China is a mass polluter today it is investing far more heavily than the U.S. in renewable resources such as solar and wind energy. This may eventually pay off, but not before an unacceptable level of CO2 continues.


Given the number of drastic reports about climate change from the scientific community in the last several months, the accomplishments at COP19 are useful but hugely disproportionate to what is needed. In addition to the agreement on contributions to lower greenhouse emissions this also happened: The countries agreed on a multi-billion dollar program to combat global deforestation. The Loss and Damage project was passed, and developed states were urged to increase levels of aid to poorer countries. A plan was hammered out to monitor emissions reductions.

A few of those recent drastic reports include these facts:

• Greenhouse gas emissions are set to be 8-12 billion tons higher in 2020 than the level needed to keep global warming below 3.6 Fahrenheit, the UN Environment Program said. (Above 3.6 F, the world’s people will begin to experience extreme effects)...
• According to the American Meteorological Society, there is a 90% probability that global temperatures will rise 6.3 to 13.3 degrees Fahrenheit in less than 100 years...
• According to the Associated Press, a leaked report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change means that “Many of the ills of the modern world -- starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease -- are likely to worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change”...
• The U.S. is likely to become the world’s top producer of crude oil and natural gas by the end of 2013 due to increased oil drilling and fracking for gas...
• The U.S. is pumping 50% more methane into the atmosphere than the government has estimated, reports Science News...
• In a new study, the team of researchers reports a global loss of 888,000 square miles of forest between 2000 and 2012 and a gain of only 309,000 square miles of new forest.

Summing up the Warsaw conference, an observer for Christian Aid, Mohamed Adow, declares:

In agreeing to establish a loss and damage mechanism, countries have accepted the reality that the world is already dealing with the extensive damage caused by climate impacts, and requires a formal process to assess and deal with it, but they seem unwilling to take concrete actions to reduce the severity of these impacts.

“We did not achieve a meaningful outcome,” said Naderev Sano, the head of the Philippines delegation who had been fasting throughout the meeting in solidarity with the victims of Typhoon Haiyan.

Samantha Smith, representing the World Wildlife Fund at COP19 declared:

Negotiators in Warsaw should have used this meeting to take a big and critical step towards global, just action on climate change. That didn't happen. This has placed the negotiations towards a global agreement [on emissions] at risk.

The next major UNCCC conference, COP20, will take place in Lima, Peru, in December 2014. The extremely important 2015 meeting, when the countries will decide on new emissions targets, will be in Paris.

There is positive news as well as the negative.

• A majority of the American people now seek to limit global warming, according to a recent report from Grist Environmental News. Stanford University Professor Jon Krosnick led an analysis of more than a decade’s worth of poll results for 46 states. The results show that the majority of residents of all of those states, whether red or blue, are united in their worries about the climate. At least three-quarters of residents are aware that the climate is changing. Two-thirds want the government to limit greenhouse gas emissions from businesses. At least 62% want regulations that cut carbon pollution from power plants. At least half want the U.S. to take action to fight climate change, even if other countries do not.


• The walkout by environmental NGOs is highly significant. They are clearly “mad as hell” and presumably are “not going to take this anymore!" to evoke the famous line from the film Network. Their unprecedented action in Warsaw undoubtedly reflects the views of millions of people back in the United States who have been following the scientific reports and want Washington to finally take dramatic action.


• At issue is mobilizing these people to take action in concert with others to force the political system to put climate sanity and ecological sustainability on the immediate national agenda. Two things are required: 1. A mass education program is called for because the broader and deeper implications of reforms must be understood and acted upon. 2. Unity in action is necessary to bring together many constituencies to fight for climate sanity and justice with a view toward protecting future generations from the excesses of the industrial era.


• There are up to a score of major environmental organizations in the U.S. Some, like Greenpeace and 350.org are willing to offer civil disobedience; some are important education and pressure groups; and some -- far fewer -- are too cautious and compromising, such as those advocating for nuclear power or natural gas. There must be many hundreds and more small and medium size environmental groups throughout our country, with anywhere from five to 50 or even 100 local followers. And then there are the numerous progressive and left organizations that basically agree with the environmental cause. None have to give up their individual identities, but they can come together around specific global warming and ecological issues and fight the power of the 1% to 5% who essentially rule America.


• The actions of the developing societies at COP19 were important, too, particularly their brief walkout. The majority of these countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are not only vulnerable to the consequences of climate change but rarely possess the economic wherewithal to adequately survive. They will struggle for their demands in future global conferences.


• Despite the foot-dragging of many developed countries, all of them contain environmental and progressive/left organizations. They, too, are “mad as hell” and will grow stronger.


• Time may not be on sanity’s side, but as the CO2 ppm rises and the hopes for significant reductions in greenhouse gases fall in the next few years, conditions will be ripe for a global climate justice uprising.

At this point it seems that only a mass mobilization of the U.S. and world’s peoples will be able to provide the strength to stand up to the fossil fuel interests, the corporations, big business, banks, financiers, and the weak or corrupt politicians who impede the way to build an equal and ecologically sustainable society including rational conservation of resources and reduction of excess consumption.

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.]

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Jack A. Smith : What's Up With the Egyptian Coup?

A man in Tahrir Square with his face painted in Egyptian colors. Image from CNN.

Egypt's coup:
Progressive or regressive?

It is ironic that the military -- formerly loathed for upholding the dictatorship for decades, then further reviled during its controversial 17-month governance until Morsi took office -- is now supported by nearly the entire opposition.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / August 8, 2013

What is really happening in Egypt? Are the latest developments a progressive step forward or a regressive step backward for the millions of Egyptians seeking political change primarily through prolonged mass mobilizations in the streets?

It’s been over a month since a military coup d’état, with popular support, ousted the country’s first democratically elected government July 3 after only one year in office, following an earlier military coup with popular support that brought down dictator Hosni Mubarak.

There are diametrically opposed interpretations about what is taking place in Egypt. One fact remains certain, however. In 1952 during the overthrow of the monarchy, and in 2011 during the overthrow of the dictatorship, and in 2013 during the overthrow of the newly elected government, the military was the ultimate power. It has no intention to forego that power regardless of the outcome of the next election in 2014.

President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the candidate of the Freedom and Justice Party, remains in jail (or “incommunicado, as the media prefers), along with other imprisoned former government functionaries and MB followers. Most are awaiting trial on a variety of charges, as though it was the Brotherhood that launched the coup.

Some 250 people, almost all of them Morsi supporters, have been slain by military and security forces while demonstrating against the coup. The protests are continuing, and the military crackdown is becoming increasingly fierce.

The 450,000-strong armed forces, led by Gen. Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, dismissed the government just after popular anti-Morsi protests brought many millions of Egyptians into the streets June 30 to demand the president’s ouster. (In terms of the unusually huge crowds, this article just says “millions” because both sides tend to exaggerate their protest numbers.)

Sisi, who was named defense minister by Morsi, selected an interim government until new elections. Not one of the chosen 34 cabinet members belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, but 11 of them are veterans of the Mubarak regime. It seems doubtful that the MB and its political groups and associates that have produced majorities in five elections (presidential and parliamentary), will be allowed to contend for power.

The return of elements of the Mubarak regime is beginning to draw media attention. Writing in the Washington Post from Cairo July 19, Abigail Hauslohner stated: “Egypt’s new power dynamic following the coup is eerily familiar. Gone are the Islamist rulers from the Muslim Brotherhood. Back are the faces of the old guard, many closely linked to Mubarak’s reign or to the all-
powerful generals.”

Professor Joseph Massad, who teaches Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, was highly critical of the coup in a July 14 article in CounterPunch:

What is clear for now, with the massive increase of police and army repression with the participation of the public, is that what this coalition has done is strengthen the Mubarakists and the army and weakened calls for a future Egyptian democracy, real or just procedural. Egypt is now ruled by an army whose top leadership was appointed and served under Mubarak, and is presided over by a judge appointed by Mubarak (Interim President Adly Mansour) and is policed by the same police used by Mubarak. People are free to call it a coup or not, but what Egypt has now is Mubarakism without Mubarak.

There is no direct evidence that the U.S. was behind the coup. Of course Washington has long maintained intimate contact with the leaders of the armed forces and the Cairo government. It seems to have had as close a relationship with Morsi as it did with Mubarak and now with coup leader Gen. Sisi. There is an indirect connection, however, according to journalist Emad Mekay, writing in Al Jazeera, July 10:

A review of dozens of U.S. federal government documents shows Washington has quietly funded senior Egyptian opposition figures who called for toppling of the country's now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi. Documents obtained by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley show the U.S. channeled funding through a State Department program to promote democracy in the Middle East region. This program vigorously supported activists and politicians who have fomented unrest in Egypt, after autocratic president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising.

The State Department's program, dubbed by U.S. officials as a "democracy assistance" initiative, is part of a wider Obama administration effort to try to stop the retreat of pro-Washington secularists, and to win back influence in Arab Spring countries that saw the rise of Islamists, who largely oppose U.S. interests in the Middle East. Activists bankrolled by the program include an exiled Egyptian police officer who plotted the violent overthrow of the Morsi government, an anti-Islamist politician who advocated closing mosques and dragging preachers out by force, as well as a coterie of opposition politicians who pushed for the ouster of the country's first democratically elected leader, government documents show.

President Obama has proclaimed neutrality in this matter and seems to have positioned himself above the conflict, but Washington’s every practical deed has been supportive of the military and the military-dominated interim civilian leadership.

President Obama refused to characterize the overthrow as a coup, which of course it was, because to do so would legally terminate the annual bribe of $1.3 billion to the Egyptian armed forces -- a token of America’s gratitude for maintaining good relations with Israel. On July 31 U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that the Pentagon would participate in mid-September war games with the Egyptian army as its had done throughout the years of dictatorship.

The task of obliquely justifying the putsch fell to Secretary of State John Kerry. On July 17 he opined that before the coup there was “an extraordinary situation in Egypt of life and death, of the potential of civil war and enormous violence and you now have a constitutional process proceeding forward very rapidly. So we have to measure all of those facts against the law, and that's exactly what we will do."

On August 1, he went further, alleging that the Egyptian army was “restoring order.” The next day, Egypt Independent reported, that an MB spokesperson “called Kerry's comments ‘alarming,’ and accused the U.S. administration of being ‘complicit’ in the military coup."

The U.S. and several countries, mostly western, are leading a very public “reconciliation” campaign essentially aimed at convincing the leadership of the MB to capitulate, accept the overthrow, end the protests and “swallow the reality” of defeat. It is being portrayed as a peace effort, with no criticism directed toward the military that broke the law and evidently future jail terms for some MB leaders including Morsi who didn’t.

Clearly, it is just a matter of time -- an “I” to be dotted, a “T” to be crossed -- before Obama and Sisi will embrace in public.

A curious anti-Morsi coalition -- a seemingly unprincipled amalgam of left, center, and right, each with somewhat different agendas that they expect to advance by liquidating the Islamist government -- has galvanized behind the military junta and is following its “roadmap” to the next elections.

Included in the coup-supporting coalition are (1) a large portion of the youthful protestors who launched the January 2011 Tahrir Square freedom struggle against the single-party rule of Mubarak’s now disbanded National Democratic Party, including such organizations as the April 6 Youth Movement and Tamarod; (2) opposition liberal, left, and secularist groups who have combined in the National Salvation Front, plus worker groups who demonstrated in the name of their unions; and (3) the many supporters of the old Mubarak regime joyfully emerging from the shadows to support the military that in 2011 forced their leader’s resignation and imprisonment.

Communist groups, underground for decades, materialized during the 2011 uprising. They all supported the second uprising too, but are not playing a significant role. The Egyptian Communist Party heartily backed Morsi’s overthrow and strongly argued it was a popular revolt, not a military coup. Other Marxist groups, viewing the MB as a reactionary right-wing formation, similarly backed the anti-MB rebellion.

Most anti-Morsi organizations, including groups affiliated with the National Salvation Front, joined pro-military demonstrations July 26 called by Gen. Sisi himself to provide an additional popular mandate for increasing the suppression of “violence and terrorism,” primarily to crush continuing Brotherhood demonstrations.

The interim cabinet declared: “Based on the mandate given by the people to the state... the cabinet has delegated the interior ministry to proceed with all legal measures to confront acts of terrorism and road-blocking.” The MB has not perpetrated any acts of “terrorism,” so the reference must have been to the Salafi struggle for power in Sinai. Road-blocking refers to two large long-lasting sit-down protests in Cairo by anti-coup forces.

On July 27, police slaughtered 82 Morsi supporters to break up one protest. They used live ammunition and shot to kill nonviolent demonstrators. In response, the Obama Administration muttered a few words lacking any significance. Imagine the outcry from Washington and the mass media had the slaughter taken place in Beijing, Moscow, or Caracas.

The conservative Economist magazine noted August 3, “the new government is resurrecting the hated arms of Hosni Mubarak’s security state... The liberal Egyptians who teamed up with the army to oust Mr. Morsi will come to regret their enthusiasm.”

Among such liberals, reported Los Angeles Times correspondent Jeffrey Fleishman July 3, was

Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who once vilified army control, [but was] now asking the generals to reenter the scene in a moment of opportunity for both. "Every minute that passes without the armed forces intervention to perform its duties and protect the lives of Egyptians will waste more blood, especially since the person in the presidential position has lost his legitimacy and eligibility, and maybe even his mind," ElBaradei said.

For his selfless efforts ElBaradei has been promoted to be the junta’s “Vice President for Foreign Affairs,” and from this exalted position he is now a big voice in the “reconciliation” campaign. Once the MB and its many millions of supporters “understand that Morsi failed” -- that is, accept defeat -- "they should continue to be part of the political process” and participate in the nation’s political affairs.

Some opposition groups stayed away from Sisi’s provocative military rally, such as the April 6 youth group. The Revolutionary Socialists, a Trotskyist formation, backed the anti-Morsi coup but declared: “Giving the army a popular mandate to finish off the Muslim Brotherhood will inevitably lead to the consolidation of the regime which the revolution arose to overthrow. We must use the downfall of the Brotherhood to deepen the revolution, not to support the regime.”

The New York Times noted in an editorial July 31:

Whatever Egypt’s new military strongman...thought he was doing by summoning people to Tahrir Square [July 26] to demand a ‘mandate’ to fight terrorism, the result was to undermine Egypt’s prospects for stability even further. Whatever self-described pro-democracy groups thought they were doing by endorsing his call, the result was to strengthen the military and inflame raw divisions between civilian parties.

The pro-military Tamarod -- a youthful key group in building for the overthrow --  encouraged all the opposition to attend Sisi’s rally. Tamarod (the name translates into “mutiny” or “rebellion,” depending on usage) justly rose to fame after collecting multi-millions of signatures demanding the ouster of Morsi, then by calling for the huge June 30 rally that drew many millions across the country. This protest provided an immediate excuse for Sisi to publicly give Morsi 48 hours to meet opposition demands or be removed.

Writing in the July 22 New Yorker, author Peter Hessler suggested the Tamarod was convinced beforehand the armed forces would intervene after the protest. During interviews in the Tamarod office just before the coup, he asked how they knew this would happen, and was told: “We know our army.” One source of this knowledge, undoubtedly shared with a number of groups, were the hints of a takeover emanating from some army officers for a few months and days before the coup, including from Sisi.

Tamarod maintains it has no outside funding for the extensive petition campaign but a millionaire businessman subsequently took credit for the funding, saying the youthful organizers may not have known where it came from. The group says 22 million people signed petitions but there has not been an independent count.

It is ironic that the military -- formerly loathed for upholding the dictatorship for decades, then further reviled during its controversial 17-month governance until Morsi took office -- is now supported by nearly the entire opposition. The officer corps only changed sides in 2011 to preserve and increase its power and privileges, rising to the occasion again in 2013 to enhance its position.

General Sisi, who is described as a dedicated Islamist, is now adored by multitudes in the increasingly national chauvinist atmosphere engulfing the opposition, most members of which have averted their eyes to the murderous violence by military and police units against Morsi demonstrators. Rumors abound that Sisi himself is considering a run for president.

New York Times Cairo correspondent David Kirkpatrick reported July 16 that in

the square where liberals and Islamists once chanted together for democracy, demonstrators now carry posters hailing as a national hero the general who ousted the country’s first elected president... The voices on the left who might be expected to raise alarms about the military’s ouster of a freely elected government are instead reveling in what they see as the country’s escape from the threat that an Islamist majority would steadily push Egypt to the right.

Both those who applaud or resist the coup claim to support electoral democracy and the creation of a better society for Egypt’s 83 million people. From a left perspective, the various points of view about Morsi’s ejection revolve around one main question: Is a military-led coup against an elected government, backed by millions of demonstrators who prefer to elect another government (and could have done so in three years) -- a progressive or regressive change within the capitalist context? (The issue of anti-capitalism is not on the agenda so far.)

The opposition forces claim theirs is a progressive step forward, and that the military “joined with the masses” to oust a “failed” regime. The Muslim Brotherhood, by far the country’s largest political organization, maintains that a regressive military coup illegally destroyed a democratically elected government and jailed its leaders.

In order to provide context for determining whether this is a progressive or regressive coup, it is important to understand whether there have been changes in the “deep state” power relations since the days of the dictatorship in four key areas -- the military, the ruling class, the bureaucracy and the security forces. This will be followed by a discussion of the MB government’s year in office, the possible reasons for the coup, the politics and actions of the military and civil opposition, the needs of the Egyptian people, and the role of various countries in and around the Middle East.

1. The military has not changed. It has enjoyed near autonomy and virtual control of the government, openly or behind the scenes, for some 60 years, beginning as a left exponent of pan-Arab socialism and developing close relations with the Soviet Union. During the 1970s, President Anwar Sadat broke with Moscow in order to develop closer relations with the United States and capitalism. Since that time Cairo has become increasingly subject to American influence, receiving cash subsidies, training, equipment, international backing, and guidance from Washington.
   
   The armed forces were the power behind the dictatorial throne of President Mubarak, a former air force general, from 1981 to 2011 when he was ousted by the military in league with mass popular demonstrations seeking Western-type democratic elections. As soon as it was understood American interests would not be subverted, President Obama dropped Mubarak. The military continued as the ultimate power behind the democratic presidency of Morsi until he, too, was overthrown. The military always claims it does not want to be involved in the politics of running the country, but it has every intention of continuing its traditional role in the next government.
   
   Gen. Sisi, who has just named himself first deputy prime minister as well as retaining his position of defense minister and head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), received his master’s degree at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania in 2006. Last year the pro-opposition newspaper al-Tahrir reported that Sisi had "strong ties with U.S. officials on both diplomatic and military levels." Doubtless, both the Pentagon and SCAF communicate daily these days.


2. The ruling class has not changed. Perhaps a few Islamist millionaires who honestly supported the Morsi government will no longer be welcome, but the moneyed interests, the bankers, the big investors, the corporate heads, the owners of the mass media, the military leaders, and the security chiefs will remain in place. Virtually all supported Mubarak during his long years in power. They easily survived the transition to Morsi as they will the next regime, probably expanding their powers in the process.


3. The government bureaucracy has not changed. While heads of various government departments were mostly replaced when Morsi took power last year, and will be so again under the new regime, the basic organization and politics of the bureaucracy remains very similar to the Mubarak years. Morsi had to make do with a long-established officialdom that knew the ropes (as he didn’t), and which largely opposed him. The New York Times July 17 pointed out there is a “widespread perception that Egypt’s sprawling state bureaucracy had stopped cooperating with Mr. Morsi” before the latest coup.


4. The security forces have not changed. The national police and other security forces were only formally under Morsi government control. They remained largely the same repressive apparatus that Mubarak built to control the population. They fought actively during the first uprising in 2011 to oppose the demonstrations against dictatorial authority but often turned their backs when MB facilities were trashed by anti-Morsi protestors.
   
   Morsi’s interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim (a former general with close ties to the military), who did nothing to reform Mubarak’s brutal security and police apparatus, was reappointed to his position by the new government. In essence, according to The Economist July 6, “since the 2011 revolution, Egypt’s police force has abandoned many of its duties, helping generate a threefold surge in serious crime.” They appear to have returned with a vengeance.

So what has changed in Egypt since early 2011 when the Arab Spring began? Two main things.

1. The Egyptian masses in their many millions diverted the course of history when they bravely took to the streets to oust the dictatorship in quest of a form of democracy that would bring about improvements in the lives of the people. The causes were extremely high poverty (nearly 50%), devastating unemployment, weak and further reduced social services and subsidies due to the economic crisis, and the lack of political freedom.
   
   Young people inspired by the Tunisian revolution weeks earlier initiated the uprising, They called for a demonstration in Tahrir Square January 25, 2011. Unexpectedly, gigantic numbers of people joined the protest seeking a free and more open democratic society, jobs, and a much improved economy. Within weeks there were millions of protesters in Tahrir Square and throughout the country. The MB did not join the Tahrir uprising at first but eventually entered the struggle. They were very cautious, having recently emerged from decades of government repression.
   
   By mid-February Mubarak and vice president Omar Suleiman handed power to the armed forces, which facilitated their departures and ruled for the next year and a half. The U.S. effortlessly transferred its 30-year support for the old dictator to Gen. Sisi and the SCAF -- an institution with which Washington had long enjoyed deep and fruitful ties. Mubarak was tried and sentenced to life in prison for allowing the army to kill peaceful protestors. The military disbanded parliament, ended “emergency laws,” suspended the constitution, and appointed an interim leadership pending elections. Sharp protests continued from time to time because the ruling SCAF was both distrusted and not moving fast enough to bring about a democratic structure.


2. The political system was transformed from a capitalist dictatorship to a capitalist electoral democracy -- a step forward that allowed the Egyptian people to elect their leadership for the first time in thousands of years. One year later, of course, a second military coup removed the elected government, backed by the same popular forces that fought to establish elections.

Morsi won the June 2012 election honestly with 51.73% of the vote but there are reasons to believe that a proportion of his majority backed him grudgingly. Four candidates ran in phase one of the balloting. Morsi won with 24.78% of the vote, which mainly came from the MB and other Islamic parties. Second was Ahmed Shafiq with 23.66% of the vote -- presumably from supporters of the old regime, considering that he was a former air force commander who served a decade in Mubarak’s cabinet and was the dictator’s last prime minister, serving five weeks until early March 2011.

Political cartoon by Dave Grunlund / The Cagle Post.

In the runoff election -- given the choice of a candidate who had been a Mubarak man or one from a powerful religious organization that was harassed by the old regime, a majority voted for Morsi. Shafiq, however, won a startling 47.27% of the vote.

Virtually as soon as he became Egypt’s first democratically elected president Morsi was confronted by fairly strong opposition waiting for him to fail. The honeymoon period lasted less than two months before there were protests seeking to remove him from office. Much of the mass media, mostly owned by Mubarak supporters, began criticizing him almost immediately, some viciously.

The New York Times reported, only a few months after he took office, that “Morsi’s advisers and Brotherhood leaders acknowledged that outside his core base of Islamist supporters he feels increasingly isolated in the political arena and even within his own government.”

One of the more interesting facts about the removal of the Islamist president is that the popularity of the MB, the Freedom and Justice Party (the vehicle for Morsi’s election victory), and to an extent Morsi himself is not terribly low -- at least about three months before the coup. Here are the basic results from a public opinion poll conducted March 3-23, 2013, by the respected Pew Global Attitudes Project:

Only 30% of Egyptians think the country is headed in the right direction, down from 53% last year and 65% in 2011, in the days after the revolution... Despite the negative views about the country’s direction, most Egyptians still have a positive view of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that has been the dominant political force in post-Mubarak Egypt.

Still, the group’s ratings have declined somewhat over the past two years -- 63% give it a positive rating today, compared with 75% in 2011. About half (52%) express a favorable opinion of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party... The National Salvation Front (NSF), a relatively secular coalition of opposition forces, receives more negative reviews than the MB an NSF. In time this seeming contradiction may be clarified.

Clearly there were strong doubts about Morsi and the MB, not only from those who backed Shafiq but from many who supported the MB candidate to keep the former regime out of power. This was hardly an auspicious beginning for Morsi.

Another factor was distrust of a religious regime. Islam has been Egypt’s state religion for many years. But ever since the leftist Free Officers Movement led by Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in 1952 Egypt has kept religious parties off the ballot. Morsi was not only the first elected president, and the first non-military president, he was also the first Islamist president.

In seeking office the MB conveyed the impression it did not seek to impose an extreme Islamist government upon the country. Of the three main organized currents in Sunni Islam -- the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wahhabi movement (and associated Salafism), and al-Qaeda (plus allied jihadist groupings) -- the MB is the mildest and most open to modern governing structures. However, it is considered hyper-conservative on cultural issues, such as the rights of women, and it wasn’t trusted by large numbers of Egyptians.

The Morsi government committed a number of political miscalculations and blunders. Chief among them was its refusal in office to take meaningful steps to convince dubious constituencies that compose the opposition that he wanted to govern collegially by giving their concerns serious consideration. The MB and Morsi had no experience in governing or sophistication in relating to liberal and progressive Muslims and non-Muslims.

Morsi governed as a majoritarian -- a politician who thinks an electoral majority entitles a regime to do as it pleases without regard for the views of the opposition. A mature democracy may be able to survive this but it is unwise in a society’s first elected government when the opposition entertains deep worries.

During the campaign the MB, according to The Economist,

refrained from pushing an overtly Islamic agenda, for instance banning alcohol or enforcing corporal punishment, with the zeal which might have been feared. But in power the Brotherhood began to abandon its previous caution regarding its foes. Morsi appeared to dismiss secular opponents and minorities [Coptic Christians or Shia Muslims] as politically negligible. Instead of enacting the deeper reforms that had been a focus of popular revolutionary demands, such as choosing provincial governors by election rather than presidential appointment, or punishing corrupt Mubarak-era officials, the Brothers simply inserted themselves in key positions.

"The Brotherhood's single most divisive act,” writes socialist journalist Mazda Majidi of the Party for Socialism and Liberation,

was passing a constitution that was strongly opposed by all secular forces. The constitution trampled the rights of women and laid the basis for the oppression of religious minorities. Far from creating a consensus of the wide array of forces that overthrew the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship, the Brotherhood codified its own reactionary social policies into the constitution.

Morsi offered some concessions to quell the constitutional uproar, “but opposition leaders turned a deaf ear, reiterating their demands to begin an overhaul of the Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly itself,” reported The New York Times December 7. The assembly passed the constitution in a very low turnout election.

The MB made a big error in developing the constitution by seeking to please the ultra-conservative Islamist Salafi to strengthen Egypt’s Islamic bloc. In return the Salafi al-Nour Party eventually broke with the Brotherhood and joined the opposition when it saw a coup was on the agenda. The anti-Morsi side welcomed this important new addition. (The Salafi party withdrew from the opposition camp to save its reputation after the junta’s police massacred unarmed Islamist MB supporters.)

In its brief one year in office the Morsi government was never able to control the military or police so it ended up catering to these powerful institutions lest they make more trouble. Writing in CounterPunch July 7, Franklin Lamb explained:

Some Congressional analysts believe that one of Morsi's biggest mistakes 
resulted from a deliberate policy of accommodation and not, as is commonly believed, confrontation. He allowed the military to retain its corporate autonomy [it controls businesses] and remain beyond civilian control.

Furthermore, he included in 
his cabinet a large number of non-Muslim Brotherhood figures who 
abandoned him within months when the going got tough, thus presenting to the public an image that the government was on the verge of collapse. 

Some have suggested that Morsi should have brought the military to heel 
soon after he assumed power and was at the height of his popularity, just as the military was at its lowest point in public perception.

Morsi faced a plethora of serious problems from day one. The worst was the dilapidated condition of the free-falling economy, the root cause of Egypt’s most pressing problems. The culprit was grave economic mismanagement during the Mubarak years drastically compounded by the worldwide capitalist recession, its lingering effects and the last two years of political disruption.

The MB’s struggling government was helped by gifts of billions of dollars, mostly from oil-rich Qatar ($7 billion) and lesser amounts from friendly Turkey and some other sources. This helped, but not enough. The new military-guided regime was immediately gifted with $12 billion from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

The Cairo government is dependent on tourism, which brought in 17% of the country’s GNP until it vanished abruptly with the first mass demonstrations in early 2011. Investment dropped for the same reason. The price of food imports, largely wheat, increased after Morsi won the election.

In January 2011, when the first uprising began, unemployment was 8.9%. When Morsi took office it in July 2012 it was 12.6%, and today it is 13.2%. About 80% of the jobless are workers under 30 years old. In urban areas, more than 50% of young men are unemployed -- a politically volatile statistic. This situation was worsened in recent months when public anger boiled over due to fuel and electricity shortages. (The shortages ended virtually the day after Morsi was ousted, a coincidence that led critics to suspect that anti-MB sabotage intentionally caused the problem as an incentive for the uprising.)

The Brotherhood’s rise to power exposed a sharp dispute between the key Sunni factions in the region -- the MB on one side and the more extreme Wahhabi, Salafi, and al-Qaeda orientations on the other.

Indian news analyst M. K. Bhadrakumar commented in Asia Times July 9:

The autocratic Persian Gulf oligarchies rushed to celebrate the overthrow of the elected government under Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian military. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah dispatched his congratulatory cable to Cairo within hours of the announcement of Morsi's ouster. The sense of jubilation is palpable that the Muslim Brotherhood, which spearheads popular stirrings against the Persian Gulf regimes, has lost power in Egypt.

(Saudi Arabia helps finance the Egyptian Salafi and cheered when the al-Nour Party joined the opposition.)

“In that respect,” William McCants wrote in Foreign Affairs July 7:

No Salafi is likely more pleased with the turn of events in Egypt than Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda. For decades, Zawahiri has argued that the Muslim Brotherhood's engagement in party politics does nothing more than strengthen the hands of its adversaries and ratify an un-Islamic system of rule. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, he has continued to make his argument that the West and its local proxies will never allow an Islamist government to actually rule. He doubtless views the coup as a final vindication of his argument.

Syria was also elated by Egypt’s coup since Morsi called for the overthrow of the Assad government and even suggested that Egyptian Islamists consider joining the fight. However, Syria’s main ally, Iran, condemned the coup. Oil rich Qatar (which also opposes Assad in Syria) is the odd monarchy out among the Gulf states, having provided generous funding to Morsi’s government and deploring the coup.

Turkey, which had very close relations with the MB regime in Egypt, strongly opposed the coup. Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu said:

A leader who came [to power] with the support of the people can only be removed through elections. It is unacceptable for democratically elected leaders, for whatever reason, to be toppled through illegal means, even a coup... Turkey will take sides with the Egyptian people.

Interestingly, although they are on opposite sides of the volatile Syrian civil war, Turkey and Iran are strongly united against the coup, despite Tehran’s silent reservations about Morsi’s recent anti-Shi’a comments and his backing for rebel forces in Syria. The interim regime in Cairo has already made friendly overtures to Damascus.

Remarking on the unusual Ankara-Tehran coupling, Bhadrakumar wrote: “The two key regional powers in the Middle East have now openly challenged the military junta in Egypt. It will have a profound impact on the so-called Arab Street. A Turkish-Iranian platform will be hard to resist, in geopolitical terms, for the coup's Arab enthusiasts — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,"

Stratfor, the private geopolitical intelligence company, argues that the

coup does not bode well for international efforts to bring radical Islamists into the mainstream. However, it does serve the interests of Arab monarchies, particularly those of the energy-rich Gulf Cooperation Council states (and especially Saudi Arabia), most of which see the Brotherhood-style Islamist forces as a challenge to their legitimacy. The fall of the Morsi government has given them cause to celebrate because the Brotherhood’s political ideals run counter to their political interests.

The Egypt-centered Brotherhood has branches in Syria, Jordan, Gaza (Hamas), Tunisia, and Morocco. It governs in the latter two countries. “Each group will be affected according to its particular geopolitical circumstances,” says Stratfor.

What lessons are to be deduced from the extraordinary mass demonstrations of the Egyptian people from 2011 to 2013. There are two important lessons, among others.

First, what occurred was an incredible display of the political power that can be generated when unprecedented numbers of people respond to mass popular dissatisfaction -- in this case mammoth economic, political and social problems -- uniting in prolonged militant actions in the streets, where everyone can see them and hear them. They booted out a dictator and elected a president.

Such actions do not often achieve a change of government, of course. But they certainly are -- or should be -- an inspiration for those who wish to change especially onerous or harmful government policies, if not government itself.

Second, while the people in the streets of Egypt were inspiring and they certainly changed history, the absence of a strong political organization with clear detailed goals and respected leadership, greatly weakened their accomplishment.

The army, which served a dictatorship for 59 of its 61 years, still rules, stronger than ever, having made the transition from a decrepit, failed Mubarak regime to a weak and pliable democracy. A difficult but worthwhile first experiment in electoral democracy was crushed by the military acting in the name of the mass opposition.

Now, key figures from the old dictatorship have reappeared. There is no chance the next government will be politically left enough to resolve the grave problems plaguing the Egyptian people. The Muslim Brotherhood is about to be repressed again, and there is no telling how it will respond.

A number of the people who took an important part in the mass demonstrations seemed to believe that organization, goals, and leadership could be replaced by individual or small group initiatives, enthusiasm, and spontaneity. These qualities can go so far, but no further.

For the Egyptian people to build a viable capitalist electoral democracy with a program that puts the needs of the working masses first, they require an organization, leadership, allies, finances, strategy, and tactics sufficient to attain that goal. The same methods exist for building socialism, which will be considerably more difficult to attain but offers far more benefits for the working class, middle class, and the poor.

A number of left commentators have questioned the preference of some groups involved in the mass actions, such as Tamarod, a key player, to minimize the need for organization and leadership. In this regard here is a quote from an article in the July 7 CounterPunch titled, “The End of the ‘Leaderless’ Revolution,” by Cihan Tugal, who teaches Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley:

Multiple anti-representation theses from rival ideological corners (anarchist, liberal, autonomist, postmodernist, etc.) all boil down to the following assumption: when there is no meta-discourse and no leadership, plurality will win. This might be true in the short-run. Indeed, in the case of Egypt, the anonymity of Tamarod’s spokespersons initially helped: the spokespersons (who are not leaders, it is held) could not be demonized as partisan populists. Moreover, thanks to uniting people only through their negative identity (being anti-Brotherhood), as well as to its innovative tactics, Tamarod mobilized people of all kinds. Still, the mobilized people fell prey to the only existing option: the old regime!

When the revolutionaries do not produce ideology, demands and leaders, this does not mean that the revolt will have no ideology, demands and leaders. In fact, Tamarod’s spontaneous ideology turned out to be militarist nationalism, its demand a postmodern coup, its leader the feloul (remnants of the old regime). This is the danger that awaits any allegedly leaderless revolt: Appropriation by the main institutional alternatives of the institutions they are fighting against.

It is time to globalize the lessons from the [actions of] 2011-2013. Let’s start with the U.S. and Egypt. What we learn from this case is that when movements don’t have (or claim not to have) ideologies, agendas, demands and leaders, they can go in two directions: they can dissipate (as did Occupy), or serve the agendas of others... The end of the leaderless revolution does not mean the end of the Egyptian revolutionary process. But it spells the end of the fallacy that the people can take power without an agenda, an alternative platform, an ideology, and leaders.

The accomplishment of the Egyptian masses in ridding themselves of a dictatorship is immense. The move toward bourgeois democracy is progressive within the confines of capitalism. But a variety of factors noted above have stalled this hopefully continuing progress, not least because of the absence of a unifying political organization with a point of view based upon the needs of the working people and a course of action leading to victory.

The MB won the election because it was an experienced large organization, toughened by government repression, that knew what it wanted. Had there been a similar secular organization with an enlightened progressive program representing the interests of the people, the MB may have lost. In general it seems the people prefer a secular progressive government that will do everything possible to serve their needs and interests.

Instead of building such an organization out of the willing masses that spontaneously answered the call for action against the dictatorship -- and organization that could enter the next election -- the army destroyed the first government and is guiding the masses toward a new conservative regime. The increasingly glorified and powerful military is not only welcoming back the reactionary Mubarakists, but is making certain that the honored members of the deep state will be happy in their new accommodations.

Morsi made many mistakes, but he was not a repressive force, and the mistakes could have been rectified through the democratic process without a military coup and the violence now directed at protesting supporters of the illegally deposed president.

There is still time to pursue the progressive course of revolution that began in January of 2011. The millions who took to the streets for democracy are still waiting for the political mechanism that will propel them to attaining their goals. As long as the masses remain active and prepared to take to the streets, and as long as there are forces that recognize the necessity for building an organization to take power, the revolution continues.

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.]

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Jack A. Smith : Obama, China, and the Middle East

Samantha Powers, Susan Rice ("two cats among pigeons"), and President Obama. Photo by Charles Dharapak / AP.

Foreign policy pivot?
Obama, China, and the Middle East

Obama has transferred the brunt of U.S. foreign/military policy away from the Middle East and the war on terrorism and toward Asia to better manipulate the conditions of China’s inevitable return to big power status.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / June 20, 2013

There is an obvious connection between the first summit conference attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barrack Obama in California June 7-8 and Obama’s major speech two weeks earlier redefining the future of America’s 12-year military role in the Middle East.

In effect, Obama has transferred the brunt of U.S. foreign/military policy away from the Middle East and the war on terrorism and toward Asia to better manipulate the conditions of China’s inevitable return to big power status. The process Washington began two years ago to contain China’s influence -- the “pivot” to Asia, now termed the “Asia Pacific rebalancing strategy” -- can now be accelerated.

I have located no mention of this connection in the Chinese press, but it undoubtedly added to President Xi’s concern about the “rebalancing” just before his talks with Obama. The only mention in the U.S. mass media I know of was a single paragraph in a March 25 New York Times article about Obama’s comments:

Left unsaid in Mr. Obama’s speech was one of the biggest motivations for his new focus: a desire to extricate the United States from the Middle East so that it can focus on the faster-growing region of Asia.

The switch makes practical sense. It has evidently occurred to the Oval Office that a monomaniacal obsession with a small, scattered enemy possessing primitive weapons undermines America’s imperial interests. The main geopolitical prize for the U.S. government obviously is in East and South Asia, not the Middle East, which has transfixed Washington’s attention since September 11, 2001, at a huge cost in prestige and treasure -- probably $5 trillion or more when it’s finally paid off in several decades.

Clarifying this new foreign/military policy thrust is the main reason President Obama delivered his important speech May 23 redefining America’s wars, drones, and Guantanamo. His main message was that “we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”

“Rebalancing” to Asia does not signify the Obama Administration has the slightest intention to ignore the Middle East. It means these small so-called terror wars are no longer Washington’s first international priority. The U.S. will continue the fighting, but with much smaller numbers of special forces, drones and other cheaper means of domination, not with large armies of occupation and trillions in treasure.

The Afghan, Iraq, and “terror” wars combined with a conservative political atmosphere, regressive economic and political trends, and the impotence of the two-party system in these first years of the 21st century have made a mockery of American democracy: Massive government erosion of civil liberties and the right to privacy; an election system based on corporate money, not the voters; and a ruling elite indifferent to burgeoning inequality and the plight of the poor and destitute.

Osama bin-Laden, the symbol of the terror wars is dead (USA!, USA!,USA!), but not before he tricked the world’s most powerful country into launching two unnecessary and embarrassingly stalemated wars against much weaker foes, creating havoc in those two countries and criticism of American aggression throughout much of the region. Credit card war spending created a mile-high domestic deficit that Congress is using as a hatchet to cut social programs and substantially weaken civil liberties and privacy rights.


The Obama-Xi talks

More details about the speech follow but I’ll focus now on President Xi’s visit first. It is too early to fully assess the June 7-8 meetings during which the two heads of state spent eight hours together in discussions with hardly any of the usual formalities. There were two main issues, from Washington’s point of view, cyber theft and North Korea, plus several other discussions and agreements.

Cyber theft: Obama informed Xi of his extreme displeasure over China’s alleged massive “cyber-enabled economic theft of intellectual property and other kinds of property in the public and private realm in the United States by entities based in China.” Last March, National Intelligence Director James Clapper testified that cyber threats appear to have largely replaced terrorism as posing the greatest risks to U.S. national security.

Obama directed considerable pressure upon his Chinese guest, but did not obtain much satisfaction. At the end of the cyber meetings, Tom Donilon, Obama’s national security advisor (soon to be replaced by UN Delegate Susan Rice), could only report: “It's quite obvious now that the Chinese senior leadership understand clearly the importance of this issue to the United States.”

The American leader’s cyber presentation was somewhat upstaged the same day when the Guardian (UK) reported, “Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for U.S. cyber-attacks.” This top-secret 18-page presidential directive was provided to columnist Glen Greenwald by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Obviously, the U.S. engages in cyber crime as do most major countries. It even launched the first cyber “war” by corrupting Iran’s computer network.

Xi criticized the U.S. media for ignoring cyber attacks against China. He also commented, “by conducting good-faith cooperation we can remove misgivings and make information security and cyber security a positive area of cooperation between China and the U.S. Because China and the United States both have a need and both share a concern, and China is a victim of cyber attacks and we hope that earnest measures can be taken to resolve this matter.”

Soon after the summit, according to Associated Press, “China's Internet security chief told state media that Beijing has amassed huge amounts of data on U.S.-based hacking. The official held off blaming the U.S. government, saying it would be irresponsible and that the better approach is to cooperate in the fight against cyberattacks.”

On June 13, whistleblower Snowden, in Hong Kong, revealed to the South China Morning Post that the National Security Agency was spying on China and Hong Kong. The same day, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chungying said China is a "major victim" of cyber attacks but did not lay blame.

North Korea: Both sides discussed relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). At the end of the meetings, Donilon announced what the White House perceives as a victory:

With respect to North Korea, I think the important point here is full agreement on the goals -- that is denuclearization; full agreement that in fact the Security Council resolutions which put pressure on North Korea need to be enforced, and full agreement that we will work together to look at steps that need to be taken in order to achieve the goal.

Rumors were circulating before the meetings that this might be China’s new position toward its old ally, but in summing up the talks on Korea a leading member of the Chinese delegation only said that Xi and Obama "talked about co-operation and did not shy away from differences."

New relationship: The Beijing government stresses that China seeks a "a harmonious, peaceful rise to power and on becoming a responsible stakeholder in the international system.” During the meetings President Xi said he favored a “new type of great power relationship” based on mutual trust, respect, cooperation on important issues, and better ways to resolve differences.

Xinhua news agency reported:

According to Yang Jiechi, Xi's senior foreign policy adviser, Obama responded actively to the proposal, saying that the U.S. side placed high importance on its relations with China and is willing to construct a new state-to-state cooperation modal with China based on mutual benefit and mutual respect, so as to jointly meet various global challenges.

Climate change: The U.S. is history’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but relative newcomer China is biggest in recent individual years. At the summit, both agreed to reduce hydrofluorocarbon emissions, one of the most potent of the greenhouse gases. This is not a major step but a beginning. China on its own made an important announcement last month, vowing to put a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2016. This is considered a major breakthrough that will influence other nations, possibly even the U.S.

Omitted from the meeting was Washington’s customary complaint that China manipulated its currency to America’s disadvantage. For the last several years Beijing has been cautiously but systematically appreciating the value of its currency until it now approximates natural value.

The summit was productive in its way, but that does not change either Washington’s geopolitical objectives or the threats implicit in its “rebalancing” to Asia.

Beijing is exceptionally anxious to keep the peace with Washington. It is a developing country with many crucial tasks ahead for decades to consolidate the economic and social conditions of a country which must feed, house, educate, and gainfully employ 1.3 billion people in a land area somewhat smaller than the U.S. with 314 million people.

China is also decades behind the U.S. in military terms, a gap that will continue indefinitely because the Pentagon constantly spends fortunes to maintain its weapons and logistic superiority. A war would wipe out the incredible advances China has made since the success of the communist revolution 64 years ago, which includes bringing about 700 million people out of poverty, creating a substantial middle class, and becoming the center of world production.

Washington wants friendly relations with the Beijing government, as it does with all countries. However, it imposes strict conditions for such relations. This is based on the fact that the U.S. has been one of two sharply contending, dominant global powers from the end of World War II in 1945 to1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved, and the single dominant world power -- indeed, the mightiest hegemonic state in history -- ever since.

Those who rule the U.S. believe that it is the “indispensible nation,” ordained to lead, even as its economy suffers stagnation and Washington appears to have a penchant for “leading” the world from one war to another.

The great majority of countries enjoy friendly relations with Washington because they are willing to recognize the U.S. as world leader with special privileges and dispensations up to, and often including, getting away with the murder attendant to its illegal wars. Only a handful of countries do not accept U.S. hegemony -- Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran among them -- and Uncle Sam extracts a hefty price for such insolence.

Beijing seeks friendly relations with Washington for obvious reasons. Successive Chinese leaders have assured the U.S. government that China does not seek world leadership.

China does not challenge American dominion, at least openly, but it is extremely independent. Its tilt toward Iran and Syria, which frustrates the White House, are examples, as is its protection of what it believes are China’s economic, political, and territorial prerogatives regardless of intense U.S. criticism in certain areas. In theory, China opposes unipolar (one country) world leadership, preferring a multipolar system, as do a number of developed and developing countries, but no nation will push the issue for the foreseeable future.

America’s leaders are apprehensive that if China largely continues for the next 10 or 20 years the unprecedented development of the last 20 years its mere success in relation to what could be America’s slow decline will result in Washington’s displacement.

That seems to be where the “Asia Pacific rebalancing strategy” comes into play. It has several purposes but two stand out. The main purpose is not to prevent China’s rise or economic success but to confine it in terms of global power, not that Beijing has evidenced a desire to wield such authority. The other purpose is to further integrate the U.S. into the region’s dynamic economic climate.

The U.S. is bringing three of its strengths into the endeavor -- alliances, money/trade, and military power.

1. Alliances: Washington is organizing the many Asia/Pacific countries historically within its superpower orbit to join a united crusade to keep China from exercising leadership even within its own geographical sphere of interest.
   
   Such clients include Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam (lately), Australia, and quite possibly those on the periphery -- India, perhaps Myanmar and Cambodia. Indonesia and Taiwan may not want to get involved. Since Obama first announced his focus on Asia two years ago, the U.S. has been inserting itself into regional squabbles, particularly the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, always on the side of Beijing’s opponents to make them more grateful to their protector.
   
   Most of these countries are rising economically or are already established, and they are beginning to develop close economic, political and military ties with each other, but it is unlikely they could form a possible bloc that would some day “balance” China without the U.S.


2. Money and trade: The U.S. is in the process of forming a free trade association of nations in the Asia/Pacific region, including countries in the Americas bordering the Pacific. It’s called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. China supports the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), but is “considering" membership in the TPP as well.
   
   The U.S.-dominated TPP will bring some economic benefits to all its members, but the main objective is to provide the United States with an important vehicle to become a major player in the region, political as well as economic, and thus a rival to China in East Asia.
   
   There are various complications and intrigues involved with the TTP that I won’t go into, except for one progressive critique from the Council of Canadians:

   The TPP is globally controversial because of how it will entrench a myopic vision of market-based globalization that is the main cause of runaway climate change and which has done little to create good, sustainable jobs or reduce poverty worldwide. The TPP also enhances corporate rights to sue governments when public policies interfere with how, when and where they make profits.

3. Military power: The unparalleled supremacy of the U.S. military/national security/surveillance apparatus -- inefficient against guerrilla war (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) but capable of becoming an unparalleled death machine if deployed against China -- is not only coming to the Asia/Pacific region but it’s mostly there already, in certain places going back to World War II.
   
   The U.S. pivoted to Asia 70 years ago and never left. China has been virtually surrounded for years with U.S. naval, air, and troop bases through the region from small islands dotting the western Pacific to Japan and South Korea in the northeast to the Philippines in the southeast, to Afghanistan in the west. This does not include air power, long-range missiles, surveillance satellites, and nuclear weapons at the ready.
   
   More recently Obama opened a new Marine base in western Australia and ordered the majority of the U.S. fleet, from aircraft carriers to nuclear submarines, to move from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Why does the Obama Administration feel the need to show the flag and its martial trappings, up close, intentionally too close for Beijing’s comfort? To show who’s boss. If Beijing ever dared provoke Washington in such manner, the U.S. would prepare for war.

An article titled “The Problem With The Pivot” appeared in the December 2012 Foreign Affairs, declaring: “Obama’s new Asia policy is unnecessary and counterproductive.” Written by Robert S. Ross of Boston College and Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the essay stated:

[T]he Obama Administration’s pivot has not contributed to stability in Asia. Quite the opposite: it has made the region more tense and conflict-prone. Military aircraft and naval ships now crowd the region’s skies and waters. And the United States risks getting involved in hostilities over strategically irrelevant and economically marginal island [in the South China Sea]....

Washington’s increased activity on China’s periphery has led Beijing to conclude that the United States has abandoned "strategic engagement," the cornerstone of U.S. policy toward China since the end of the Cold War. In contrast to previous administrations, the Obama Administration has dismissed China’s legitimate security interests in its border regions, including even those that are not vital to U.S. security.

Obama and the Middle East

Now I’ll return to Obama’s May 23 speech “ending: the war on terrorism,” and the “new” U.S. policy in the Middle East. Aside from clearing the way for deeper involvement in Asia, what are we to make of this manipulative and defensive 7,000-word lecture?

Obama sought to convey the impression -- in the words of a New York Times article the next day --

that it was time to narrow the scope of the grinding battle against terrorists and begin the transition to a day when the country will no longer be on a war footing.... As part of a realignment of counterterrorism policy, he said he would curtail the use of drones, recommit to closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and seek new limits on his own war power.

Progressive and left commentators excoriated the speech with a “there he goes again” approach to what they viewed as a deceptive, self-justifying attempt to deflect criticism of his war policies.

President Obama’s pledge to take steps toward removing the U.S. from its “perpetual war footing” was widely questioned. A May 25 front page article in The New York Times noted:

Nor can Mr. Obama escape his own role in putting the United States on a war footing. He came into office pledging to wind down America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but within a year had ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and oversaw a significant expansion of the Bush administration’s use of clandestine drone strikes.

Anthony Romero, ACLU executive director, commented:

President Obama is right to say that we cannot be on a war footing forever -- but the time to take our country off the global warpath and fully restore the rule of law is now, not at some indeterminate future point.

The antiwar Answer Coalition summed up the speech in these words:

While there is much to dissect in his speech, the bottom line is that President Obama is attempting to respond to criticism of his war on terror policies while creating a new framework to institutionalize many of these same policies.

Answer was convinced that the

speech must be seen as a direct response to the individuals and organizations who have consistently been challenging the actions of the administration on these issues. It is unavoidably clear that the firestorm of criticism around drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay Prison, and the extent of domestic surveillance created a climate in which Obama was forced to defend his policies.

Other commentators tore apart Obama’s efforts to rationalize his killer drone policy when he declared: “Beyond the Afghan theater, we only target al-Qaeda and its associated forces. And even then, the use of drones is heavily constrained.” (The Afghan theater includes western Pakistan.) Critics also panned the few superficial reforms he promised to introduce into the program.

Progressives refused to accept his justification for not closing Guantanamo concentration camp as he promised five years ago. Some articles pointed out that despite a recalcitrant Congress, Obama could have used the vast authority of the presidency to actually close the prison and release its hapless inmates. When Obama boasted that he “ended torture” it was pointed out that the forced-feeding of hunger striking Guantanamo prisoners was torture according to the American Medical Association.


Unfinished business: Iran and Syria

The Obama Administration still has much unfinished business in the Middle East that guarantees it will remain indefinitely -- though not in “global war on terrorism” rampages as in Iraq. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be stationed in or close to the region, on land and at sea. Special forces troops and drones will continue to kill suspected terrorists in the Middle East and now deeper into Africa. In addition, Obama seeks to keep 10,000 U.S. troops and nine bases in Afghanistan to 2024, 10 years after “combat forces” withdraw at the end of 2014.

The White House has many other plans for the Middle East and North Africa. The first task is to insure that Israel, America’s main dependency and factotum in the region, remains the Pentagon’s virtual forward base in the Arab world. America’s second task, at which it has been laboring for many years, is regime change in Iran and Syria -- the only two countries in the entire region not within Washington’s hegemonic orbit. Iraq and Libya used to make it four countries, until Bush (2003), then Obama (2012), reduced the number.

Iran, now an Islamic Republic that adheres to the Shia branch of Islam, is the main target because it is a powerful, oil-rich state that will not bend the knee to Washington. The Iranian people have not been forgiven for the last 34 years for the intolerable affront of kicking out the vicious dictatorial monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, installed on the Peacock Throne by American-British imperialism a quarter-century earlier. Were Iran willing to kowtow to the U.S. today, it wouldn’t be suffering extreme sanctions and the constant threat of U.S.-Israeli war.

Iran was greatly strengthened when the U.S. invaded its main enemy, Iraq, bringing down the minority Sunni government in Baghdad led by secularist Saddam Hussein. The majority Shia Iraqi population then elected a government of their own. Now there are Shia regimes in Tehran, Baghdad, and Damascus (secular President Bashar Assad and government leaders are Alawites, a branch of Shia Islam), forming a contiguous Shia region 1,500 miles wide, bordered by Turkey on the west and Afghanistan to the east.

The Sunnis are the great majority in the Middle East and throughout Islam. Certain Sunni Arab countries -- such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf dictatorships, among others -- seek to reduce Shia power by supporting the overthrow of the minority Alawite government led by President Assad, weakening Iran with the loss of its main Arab supporter. The moderate Islamist government of NATO member Turkey is a big supporter of the rebels, partly to gain influence in the Sunni Arab world, partly to impress the U.S.


Escalation in Syria?

The beginning of the popular struggle for democracy in Syria two years ago consisted largely of nonviolent protests that were met with government repression. We will never know if certain government concessions to the original peaceful protests would have led to reform instead of mayhem. The conflict, however, very soon transformed beyond calls for a broader democracy into a deadly civil war led by Sunni rebels, including jihadist elements, seeking to eliminate the secular regime and take power.

This war, in its second year, has become exceptionally vicious, destructive of people and infrastructure. The UN says at minimum 93,000 Syrians have been killed. A large number of the dead have been soldiers on both sides.

The U.S. and its closest NATO allies have supported regime change from the beginning, but only if it is possible to place a government submissive to Washington’s dictates in Damascus. That proviso is important.

It is incorrect to assume Obama is disinterested in overthrowing the Assad regime simply because he refused to commit to an American air and ground war to support of the anti-government forces. Obama’s problem is that the insurgents are thoroughly disunited despite receiving arms and money from Sunni countries and “non-lethal” aid from the U.S. and others for well over a year.

White House efforts to form a reliable, united pro-U.S. rebel front have failed repeatedly. At the same time, Islamic jihadist fighting elements are stronger than the other warring groups in the Free Syrian Army. This suits the wealthy Saudi Arabian dictatorship, the major sponsor of the war, but is anathema to Washington for obvious reasons.

As we write, the Obama Administration has just announced, “following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.” Up to 150 people are alleged to have died from the gas.

Nerve gas may have been used but I remain dubious that the Syrian government ordered its use. Assad fully understood that if even a small amount of gas was deployed it would cross Obama’s “red line,” leading anywhere from a marked increase in U.S. support for the rebels to massive retaliation.

Assad clings tenaciously to his life, his office, and his constituency. Why would he, in effect, toss it all away by approving the use of a small amount of sarin knowing it could trigger his doom? War hawks in Washington -- liberal and conservative, as well as within the State Department -- are demanding a drastic response from the White House, from arming the rebels with sophisticated weapons to establishing a no-fly zone to putting “boots on the ground.”

Obama is hesitant. According to The New York Times he has “decided to begin supplying the rebels for the first time with small arms and ammunition.” I suspect he will insist that the shipments must not end up with jihadist rebels. He can be expected to resist pressure to establish a no-fly zone in Syria backed with U.S. jets, as he did in Libya. Syria has sophisticated air defenses as opposed to nearly defenseless Libya.

Another factor causing hesitation is that despite a year of press and U.S. government exaggerations that Assad is on the precipice of defeat, the Alawite government controls most of the territory and nearly all the large cities. Recent battlefield support from Lebanon’s Shia self-defense organization Hezbollah has been an important asset for the government and has contributed to rebel setbacks and loss of territory in recent months.

The sarin announcement, and the subsequent American decision to openly send arms, benefits the insurgents at a time when they need a morale boost and an infusion of weapons with which to mount counterattacks. Obama will do what he can to keep the rebels in the field and bring about regime change. But he knows history will be unforgiving if he aligns with known terrorists, and justly suspects that the American people will oppose another U.S. ground war in the Middle East.

There is one important unknown factor: the influence on Obama from newly named security adviser Susan Rice, the former UN Delegate, and her replacement, Obama adviser Samantha Powers. Both are liberal war hawks and staunch advocates of so-called “humanitarian intervention.” They may push for a tougher line on Syria and elsewhere.

At the UN Rice has been publicly rude to chief delegates from both China and Russia. Powers is said to have been a major influence on Obama’s decision to attack Libya. Veteran analyst M.K. Bhadrakumar, writing June 8 in India Punchline, commented that by advancing both advisers Obama “is letting loose two cats among pigeons, a reference to State and Defense Secretaries Kerry and Hagel.”

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.]

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Jack A. Smith : Afghanistan's Karzai Lets Cat Out of the Bag

Afghan president Hamid Karzai. Photo by Massoud Hossaini / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images.

But then, again...
Afghan War may end by 2024

Washington evidently was taken aback by Karzai’s unexpected public revelations that made it clear President Obama is anxious, not hesitant, to keep American troops in Afghanistan.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / May 23, 2013

Hamid Karzai has let the Pentagon’s cat out of the bag -- to the displeasure of the Obama Administration. The Afghan president revealed inside information about President Obama’s war plans after all U.S. “combat troops” completely withdraw in 17 months at the end of 2014.

As was known in recent years, the Obama Administration actually plans to keep troops in Afghanistan after the “withdrawal,” at least to 2024. They won’t be “combat troops,” so Obama didn’t actually mislead the American people. Instead they are to be Special Forces troops, who certainly engage in combat but are identified by a different military designation, as well as U.S. Army trainers for the Afghan military, CIA contingents, drone operators, and various other personnel.

The White House has kept other details secret, such as troop numbers and basing arrangements, until it is certain a final Strategic Partnership Declaration is worked out with the Kabul government. When that occurs, the White House expects to make the announcement itself at a time of its choosing, sculpting the information to convey the impression that another 10 years of fighting is not actually war but an act of compassion for a besieged ally who begs for help.

On May 9, however, during a speech at Kabul University, President Karzai decided to update the world on the progress he was making in his secret talks with the U.S., evidently without Washington’s knowledge.

“We are in very serious and delicate negotiations with America," Karzai said. "America has got its demands, Afghanistan too has its own demands, and its own interests... They want nine bases across Afghanistan. We agree to give them the bases.

"Our conditions are that the U.S. intensify efforts in the peace process [i.e., talks with the Taliban], strengthen Afghanistan's security forces, provide concrete support to the economy -- power, roads and dams -- and provide assistance in governance. If these are met, we are ready to sign the security pact."

Washington evidently was taken aback by Karzai’s unexpected public revelations that made it clear President Obama is anxious, not hesitant, to keep American troops in Afghanistan. Few analysts thought there would be as many as nine bases. Neither the White House nor State Department confirmed requesting them but both emphasized that any bases in question were not intended to be permanent, as though that’s the principal factor.

If American engagement lasts until 2024 it will mean the U.S. has been involved in Afghan wars for most of the previous 46 years. It began in 1978 when Washington (and Saudi Arabia) started to finance the right wing Islamist mujahedeen uprising against a left wing pro-Soviet government in Kabul. The left regime was finally defeated in 1992 and the Taliban emerged as the dominant force among several other fighting groups in the mid-90s.

The CIA remained active in Afghanistan and was joined by the rest of the U.S. war machine weeks after the September 11, 2000, terror attacks in Washington and New York. The objective was to overthrow the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda, which also emerged from the Washington-financed wars. The U.S. swiftly took control of Kabul and al-Qaeda fled to Pakistan. Since then, the American foreign legion has been fought to a stalemate by a much smaller poorly equipped guerrilla force, which is where the situation remains today.


Negotiations with the Taliban

The U.S. has engaged in secret talks with the Taliban off and on for a couple of years. The hope is that the Taliban will agree to stop fighting and subordinate itself to the Kabul government in return for money, and a certain amount of administrative and political power within the national and certain provincial governments.

The Taliban will agree to nothing at this stage but an immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces and the closure of bases. The White House evidently thinks that a combination of U.S.-trained Afghan forces plus the remaining Americans might bring their opponents to the bargaining table. The nine bases also provide the U.S. with a strong bargaining chip to relinquish at the right time.

Washington has additional reasons for remaining in Afghanistan, as we wrote in the May 31, 2011, issue of the Activist Newsletter -- and little has changed:

The U.S. has no desire to completely withdraw from its only foothold in Central Asia, militarily positioned close to what are perceived to be its two main enemies with nuclear weapons (China, Russia), and two volatile nuclear powers backed by the U.S. but not completely under its control by any means (Pakistan, India). Also, this fortuitous geography is flanking the extraordinary oil and natural gas wealth of the Caspian Basin and energy-endowed former Soviet Muslim republics such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Lastly, Iran -- a possible future imperial prize -- is situated directly across Afghanistan’s western border.

The U.S. wants to keep troops nearby for any contingency. Washington’s foothold in Central Asia is a potential geopolitical treasure, particularly as Obama, like Bush before him, seeks to prevent Beijing and Moscow from extending their influence in what is actually their own back yard, not America’s.

Soon after this was written the Obama Administration revealed its “pivot” to Asia. Remaining in Central Asia is now part of what we have called America’s “ring of fire” around China, singeing North Korea as well.

Karzai occasionally makes strong public statements that criticize the U.S. They seem mainly intended to bolster his position by showing the Afghan people he is not Uncle Sam’s total puppet, but he’s to be praised for these statements.

For example, he often complains openly when the U.S. commits war crimes in his country, which have been numerous. He has demanded the U.S. discontinue night raids on homes. In late February, according to the Guardian, he ordered “U.S. Special Forces to leave one of Afghanistan’s most restive provinces, Maidan Wardak, after receiving reports from local officials claiming that the elite units had been involved in the torture and disappearance of Afghan civilians.”

He recently charged that Washington was allowing the Taliban to increase its violence to make it necessary for him to approve the U.S. demand to remain until 2024.


The issue of Karzai

The issue of Karzai.

Washington named Karzai acting president soon after the Bush Administration’s aggressive invasion 12 years ago. His job was to serve the interests of the United States while governing Afghanistan.

Karzai was elected president with decisive U.S. backing two years later. The Obama Administration maneuvered to oust him in the 2009 election, charging him with gross corruption, but its candidate withdrew just before the voting. Karzai legally cannot run for another term, but intends to continue playing a powerful role if he can pull it off.

Karzai is shrewd and realizes America’s intentions are far more corrupt than his own because he only wants money, power, and a somewhat better deal for Afghanistan, while the hypocritical U.S. wants everything there is to grab for its own geopolitical interests.

He has long been on the CIA’s generous payroll and also distributes payoffs to various warlords, some of whom are closer to the CIA than to the government. A week before the 2001 invasion the CIA was inside the country smuggling money to the warlords to join the impending war on the Taliban.

The White House dislikes the Afghan leader but he’s all they have at the moment. They desperately need him now, particularly until signing a final agreement on having U.S. troops remain until 2024. President Obama well remembers his humiliation when Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rejected demands to keep troops in Iraq after the “withdrawal” date, December 30, 2011.

Obama pressured Maliki for years to permit up to 30,000 U.S. troops in Iraq after the “combat troops” pulled out. In mid-October 2011 the Iraqi leader finally accepted 3,000 to 5,000 troops in a training-only capacity. The Iraqis then insisted that they remain largely confined to their bases, and refused Washington’s demand to grant legal immunity to the soldiers when they entered the larger society.

That was the deal-breaker. Washington routinely demands legal exemption for its foreign legions as a matter of imperial hubris, and would not compromise. The day after the deal collapsed, Obama issued a public statement intended to completely conceal his failure. "Today,” he said, “I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year."


The deal with Kabul

Several important issues in the Washington-Kabul post-2014 negotiations seem to have been decided, including a U.S. payment of at least $10 billion a year to train and pay for some 400,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers. Among the remaining issues are two of considerable importance -- troop strength and legal immunity for American personal (both for soldiers and tens of thousands of U.S. “contractors” who will remain in the country).

Reports circulated in the last few months that between 3,000 and 20,000 U.S. troops, mainly Special Forces, CIA contingents, drone operators and contractors of various kinds, will remain after 2014. The main air cover is expected to come from Navy aircraft carriers probably stationed in the Arabian Sea or Indian Ocean. Drones are expected to play a major role in battle as well as surveillance. Last year there were some 400 drone attacks in Afghanistan and that number is expected to continue increasing.

The New York Times reported January 3 that

Gen. John R. Allen, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, has submitted military options to the Pentagon that would keep 6,000 to 20,000 American troops in Afghanistan after 2014... With 6,000 troops, defense officials said, the American mission would largely be a counterterrorism fight of Special Operations commandos who would hunt down insurgents. There would be limited logistical support and training for Afghan security forces. With 10,000 troops, the United States would expand training of Afghan security forces. With 20,000 troops, the Obama administration would add some conventional Army forces to patrol in limited areas.

The May 11 New York Times reported that

The Obama administration has yet to decide how large a force it would like to keep in Afghanistan, but administration officials have signaled that it is unlikely to total more than 10,000 service members. They said it was more important now to hash out a range of issues, like whether American troops would continue to have legal immunity in Afghanistan after next year, than to talk about the specifics of where troops would be based.

The big remaining issue is immunity for U.S. personnel. Our guess is that, unlike in Iraq -- where conditions are far different -- Washington will find a way around the issue. It is difficult to see how the Kabul government of Karzai or his successor in next year’s elections can survive for long without substantial American financial support for a prolonged period.


The world as battleground

American forces are engaged in Obama’s drone wars in western Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and soon Africa. Regime change in Libya would not have occurred had the Obama Administration refused to participate. President Obama has been fanning the flames of regime change in Syria for nearly two years, and now he’s about to up the ante.

He’s strangling Iran with unjust sanctions and keeps warning that war is possible. He calls Hezbollah, the Shia self-defense organization in Lebanon, a terrorist organization, as he does Hamas in Gaza, the victim of overwhelming Israeli hatred and violence. And now Obama in moving more military power to East Asia to confront China.

If George W. Bush was in the White House today, a huge American peace movement would be out on the streets demanding an end to America’s endless immoral wars. But now a Democrat officiates in the Oval Office, his Nobel Peace Prize wisely hidden in a dark closet lest his militarist propensities provoke an unseemly contrast.

Obama’s many wars are but extensions of Bush’s wars plus killer drones, but the great majority of Americans either seem to have forgotten or simply don’t care about the wars, even though their tax money will amount to $80 billion for Afghanistan in fiscal 2014. Meanwhile, Pentagon generals anticipate various new wars of one kind or another well into the future. The battle against al-Qaeda is expected to last 20 more years. The world has become America’s battlefield.

Afghanistan? Didn’t we have a war there once? Oh, that’s right, it ended when we got rid of Bush, didn’t it?

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.]

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