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Volume 7, Number 1 Pages: 1 thru 27 |
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Volume 7, Number 1 Pages: 1 thru 27 |
by
Marc A. Sills
Copyright 2006
The Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) identifies its
enemy of record as “Islamic extremists,” and so it finds theaters presumably
wherever Islam confronts other religions and ideologies.
Islam confronts Western Christianity and Judaism in the West and Israel,
Orthodox Christianity in Russia and Serbia, Hinduism in India, Buddhism in
Thailand, Communism in China, etc. Pretty
simple. The cause of war is obviously within Islam itself, the result
of a dysfunctional religious paranoia that finds enemies everywhere it goes.
In response and legitimate self-defense, the crusader spirit lives on,
embodied by the leadership of the United States and its fearless,
will-not-be-intimidated President, protecting all that is good and right from
the hallucination of an evil caliphate empire which intends to “rule the
world.”
But
look. The darkest visions of
international Islamism notwithstanding,[i]
in fact, “the terrorists” have no state, no army, no navy, no air force, no
regular soldiers, no heavy weapons, no conventional military capabilities at all
to speak of, as well as no verified Weapons of Mass Destruction, no tested
delivery systems, no surveillance satellites, no space weapons, and above all
else, no particular identity. The
9/11/01 attack - that act of terrorism which ostensibly necessitated the GWOT -
was perpetrated by nineteen men of mixed nationalities who were armed with
nothing more than razor blades
It
is a challenge, then, to square these facts with the expenditure of some $440
billion (plus another $120 billion for current wars) in the 2007 US Defense
budget.[ii]
Surely, the GWOT justifies at least some of that investment in security.
But really, does all that money go to fighting an enemy who cannot be
conclusively identified, except as a network of violent, very low-tech, and yes,
very determined Muslim irregulars? Asymmetric
warfare, indeed.
While
the GWOT dominates collective consciousness, the Pentagon’s latest (2006)
Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) establishes Great Power conflict, most
particularly with China[iii]
(though Russia and India can also be considered potential rivals), as the main
focus of its preparation for future wars, and implicitly of its prosecution of
current wars. If money talks, the
QDR and the 2007 Defense budget together can be taken at face value, and then
the intent of the GWOT starts to resemble a prism, refracting the light on
conflict to make it appear coherent in the eyes of a presumed beholder, whose
emotions have been skillfully blackmailed through the icon of the 9/11 attack.
The intention is to mesmerize and delude, to contort any and all
conflicts within a central fear-mongered rubric that cannot be substantiated by
facts. Now, the GWOT appears to be
a cudgel and a cover story for persuading people to accept and support wars
around the world that have much less to do with Islamist terrorism than they do
with Great Power objectives.
How
many wars are there? What are they
about? If the GWOT charade is
followed, there are presumed to be some unknown number of wars grinding away,
mostly unreported, both within a central Middle East theater and off in the
far-flung periphery. Somehow, they
all conform to the conjurer’s spell and fall into place within a constellation
of events that have terrorism, not Great Power games, as their common
denominator. But the presumption is
questionable at best, and the true face of conflict is at odds with the
illusion. Of the current
identifiable shooting wars, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan, few if any
of them have terrorism at their root. Some
can be classified as “civil wars,” where popular insurgent elements are
attempting to seize state control. But
the majority of current violent conflicts around the world are wars of national
liberation, and their diverse protagonists can best be categorized as nations of
the Fourth World.
Fourth
World Wars
The Fourth World is the constellation of indigenous
peoples and nations in conflict with states.
It was first conceptualized during the 1970s[iv]
– at a time when the wars of First World decolonization were widely perceived
to be in their last chapters. The
Fourth World concept has its roots in a revolutionary tradition that dates back
at least to the 1770s, but its phase in the 1970s had begun in 1945 – at the
end of World War II and the subsequent independence of new states in Africa,
Asia, the Middle East, Oceana and the Caribbean, states which largely became
constituent members of the so-called Third World. Fourth Worldists of the 1970s argued that, while the phase of
decolonization might have been in transition, the momentum had by no means been
spent, and that there remained many chapters of liberation struggles yet to be
written.
Fourth World wars have often been hijacked and
cynically exploited as the fodder of Great Power conflict.
During the 1970s, for instance, the phase in which decolonization
occurred was framed by the Cold War context.
Within that context, many national liberation struggles were fostered and
manipulated, but they were almost always misperceived as simply proxy wars
between the capitalist First World and the socialist/communist Second World.
Declarations of independence from alien rule were always more important
than East-West rivalry. As a consequence of decolonization, from the end of
World War II in 1945, until the (presumed) end of the Cold War in 1991, scores
of new states achieved independence. The
membership of the United Nations (which was built by and for Great Powers) more
than tripled, climbing from 51 to 159, mostly as the result of liberation
movements that broke down European imperial states, notably Great Britain,
Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain.
Then, in the early 1990s, decolonization came to the
Second World, within a context then framed as George H.W. Bush’s “New World
Order” (also known as “the post-Cold War period” - when China largely
replaced the Soviet Union as the primary object of US military preparations).
Second World decolonization appeared as a net gain for the First World,
although the state system increased in complexity and decreased in coherence, to
the net detriment of all Great Powers. From
1990 to 2001 (the year marking initiation of the present context), the
population of states represented at the UN increased to 189, mostly as the
result of fragmentation of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and
Ethiopia. UN membership then grew
to 191, following the admissions of East Timor and Switzerland, in 2002.
In other words, coincident with Great Power
conflicts, the process of imperial disintegration and proliferation of new
states defines a major trend of world history for the past few centuries.
Empires have been falling apart for a long time.
No reason to think it’s over yet.
The advance of a nascent world empire, in the name of Globalization, has
not yet proven its capacity to overcome the systemic fragmentation that defines
the prevailing trend.
Since 2001, within the current context of the GWOT,
Fourth World independence movements have continued a phase marked by the
disintegration of multi-national post-colonial states, and conflicts are now
intensifying in significant locations - places of strategic importance for Great
Power relationships. And just as
previous contextual chapters (like the Cold War) have confused the understanding
of decolonization, so too the GWOT now overlaps with and obscures the
fundamental nature of indigenous liberation movements, while simultaneously
obscuring Great Power dynamics. Under
GWOT cover, the stage is set for Great Power conflict in many Fourth World
theaters, and also for a tsunami of independence movements.
The Joker
The GWOT context of current Fourth World wars cannot
be reduced to simple terms, because it is intentionally ambiguous, multilayered,
covert, and misleading, and it is being administered by people who apparently
believe their propaganda is credible. The pattern is revealed best when understood in terms of
Great Power conflicts, as opposed to terrorism.
Even then, it is a study of endless contradictions - the roots of which
lie at home, in American Indian policy.
Historically, American Indian nations have always
been the subjects of United States foreign policy, which was originally
administered by the War Department. Indian
nations have been parties to international treaties with the United States (and
other countries), and to this day are referred to as “sovereign” nations
that enjoy “self-determination” and have government-to-government relations
with the federal state. Many Indian
nations still are associated with traditional territories, in the form of
colonized reservations, and they have nominally autonomous administrative
institutions (“tribal governments”) that are unique, differentiating them
from all other ethnic groups and minorities in the United States.
But their place in American society is highly compromised, especially in
their explicit treatment as “internal colonies”[v]
now administered by the Interior Department (while misrepresented by the State
Department),[vi] and in a very inconsistent
pattern that shares little among the experiences of other indigenous peoples of
the United States - particularly those in Hawaii and Alaska, who have neither
treaties nor reservations nor government-to-government relations.
And grossly outnumbered by about 99 to 1, within a generally oblivious
population that is ordered by an ethos of integration and individual equality in
a so-called democracy, American Indian nations are forever caught in a twilight
zone which can be characterized only in terms of ambiguity.
Now you see them; now you don’t.
The model of American Indian policy is manifest
outwardly in a foreign policy that is equally ambiguous in its recognition of
indigenous nations within other states. The
best analogy for this ambiguity is the Joker card, which has meaning and value
assigned by the one who holds and plays it. The policy is characterized by duplicity.
Sometimes indigenous nations in other countries are useful to US
interests, and sometimes not. Usually,
the United States stands by the principle of territorial integrity, which is a
universal right of all states, codified in international law.
The exceptions to the rule are therefore most interesting, but such
exceptions often are conducted in covert “special operations” of the CIA or
outsourced to unofficial foreign policy agents, greatly increasing the challenge
of perception from without. History
reveals the pattern.[vii]
In 1925, within a former context involving Great
Power conflict, the United States played the Joker, when it provided military
support for the Kuna Indians, in their rebellion against the government of
Panama.[viii]
In the 1980s, within the Cold War context, the United States recognized
Miskito Indians in their war of self-defense against the Nicaraguan government
(and enlisted them in the CIA’s illegal Contra War against the Sandinista
regime).[ix]
Meantime, it denied recognition to the East Timorese, in their war of
self-defense against the Indonesian government.
Then the Joker’s value was reversed, as policy moved to reintegrate the
Miskitos in Nicaragua (within a post-Sandinista regime), while it was forced to
accept the de-facto independent statehood of East Timor, in a United Nations
intervention. Within the New World
Order context (in the early 1990s), the policy recognized the indigenous
national identity of Eritrea, but only after having denied that identity for
decades, and then again, it was due to de-facto statehood achieved despite US
support for an Ethiopian empire. Meantime
(in 1992), the US Joker sold out Iraqi Kurds to Saddam Hussein’s brutal
regime, after having supported their rebellion in the Gulf War of 1991, and then
reversed again, to protect them from Saddam until 2003, in the now-forgotten
“Northern No-Fly Zone.”[x]
In today’s GWOT context, US policy is to support Kurdish autonomy in
Iraq (and perhaps Syria and Iran, as well), while denying it in Turkey.
In the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, today, the
US State Department stands full-square against recognizing the right of
secession as equivalent to the right of self-determination, but on the other
hand, secession can be accepted on a “case-by-case basis,” clearly depending
on its expedience in Great Power relations.[xi]
Certainly, other states (including Great Power
states) can also play the Joker card as a foreign policy instrument, when it
serves their interests. And they
can participate in the GWOT charade, as well.
But most states play the Joker very rarely and only close to home, and
mostly where useful indigenous nations are located directly across their own
borders in neighboring countries - as opposed to finding situations all around
the world and in many other countries, in a discernable pattern repeated through
different contexts. And for most
states, there is an understanding that playing the Joker is not always
effective. In the hands of
incompetents, it can backfire and provoke a mutual response which threatens
their own territorial integrity – the right to which all states claim equally.
Most states, but especially large multi-national states that are little
more than local empires, are vulnerable to the same weapon the Joker represents
– that is, territorial disintegration. Most
states also perceive that the system is presently becoming over-populated, to
the point of incoherence, which threatens them equally.
Most states view secessionism as an absolute anathema, and generally
refuse to sanction Fourth World liberation struggles.
On the other hand, there are several thousand
identifiable indigenous peoples and nations to account for, and it is
unrealistic to think that none of them will ever achieve independence, from this
point on. Their most common
experience is being colonized, and little has changed since the departure of
foreign imperialists from Europe or wherever.
Local imperialists are often more onerous than former overseas rulers
ever were. So, the original
revolutionary impulse - to be liberated from alien control - continues its
forward march. Meantime, most
Fourth World self-determination movements have historically sought external
recognition and validation, as well as financial and military support, from
whoever would provide it, whether that party was the United States, any other
state, or other revolutionary movements, including Islamic movements.
Categories for Investigation
[Emboldened
Italics indicate recent, unresolved, current, or predicted warfare
(within 2006). Enumeration
indicates war tabulation.]
Definition of War
The definition of “war” is somewhat open-ended
here, given that it must include presidential authorization of massive,
indiscriminate retaliation for singular terrorist attacks perpetrated by small
groups of individuals, as well as endless military occupations, diverse kinds of
covert action, low-intensity violence, severe repression, outsourcing to private
contractors, collateral killings of innocents, and search-and-destroy missions
against unidentifiable combatants, as well as 30-minute-long exchanges of
nuclear warheads. Here, data are
taken and interpreted from global surveys of “armed conflict” and
“self-determination movements” compiled in the Peace and Conflict 2005 publication produced by the Minorities at
Risk Project, and the Armed Conflict and Intervention Project[xii]
(both based at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management,
at the University of Maryland), and from the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples
Organization (UNPO),[xiii]
and also from other similar data sources on current violence, as noted.
Minorities and Ethnic Groups
It is necessary to clearly identify actors, in order
to reveal the convergence of the GWOT, Fourth World wars, and Great Power
objectives. Most everywhere,
indigenous peoples and nations are conflated with minorities, ethnic groups, and
terrorists. In the United States,
which is a 99-percent immigrant society, minorities and ethnic groups can best
be conceptualized as aggregates of
individuals who share certain attributes like race, culture, language,
religion, and national origin. Such
minorities and ethnic groups generally do not
share attributes that correspond to traditional territories and historical
self-governing institutions.
Sometimes, indigenous peoples behave and operate as
ethnic groups. Sometimes, ethnic
groups develop nationalist identities and ideologies, and metamorphose into
indigenous peoples and nations. Without denying that indigenous peoples might
indeed constitute numeric minorities, or that they might share common
experiences like discrimination (e.g. compare Native Americans and African
Americans), the focus must be on identifying situations in which
self-determination movements are understood to reflect a national experience of
colonized, oppressive conditions within defined territories.
Civil wars
Likewise, Fourth World wars are often misperceived
as “civil wars” (with which they sometimes do coincide), just as their
protagonists are frequently misunderstood as simple puppets of external elements
(although sometimes those elements are clearly at work).
Civil wars have been assigned many different definitions, by various
observers and theorists. Here, state control
is the objective of civil wars - which come in two types, sometimes coinciding
with each other and/or with Fourth World wars, and sometimes occurring as GWOT
and/or Great Power theaters.
Type I Civil Wars are
waged by and against insurgencies organized by ideology
(Islamist Taliban in Afghanistan
[1], Islamist Salafists in Algeria
[2], Marxists in Colombia [3], Maoist Naxalites in India [4], Maoist
anti-monarchists in Nepal [5], Communists in the Philippines [6], and
democrats in Myanmar [7]).
Type II Civil Wars are
common in multi-national post-colonial states, especially in Africa, where all
the players may in fact be indigenous, but ideologies are somewhat irrelevant,
and the insurgents appear as “communal
contenders”[xiv] who attempt to seize
state control from another ethnically-defined nation (Sunni versus Shiite in Iraq [1], Hutu versus Tutsi in Burundi [2], non-Katangan
versus Katangan in the DRC
[3], northerner versus southerner, or Muslim versus Christian in Ivory
Coast [4] and Chad
[5], and clan versus clan in Somalia
[6] - apart from Somaliland, which is a Fourth World nation
Total
Civil Wars in 2006: 13
Irredentist Wars
Another category distinct from both civil and Fourth
World wars (though they may in fact coincide) is “irredentist” - where
international boundaries have divided ethnically-defined peoples or nations in
some irrational way. These wars may
result in reestablished boundaries, but they do not generally result in
fragmentation that liberates and adds another independent actor to the system.
Irredentist movements can be found today especially in the Former Soviet
Union (FSU), Africa, and eastern Europe, but presently, the most important
shooting war to report is in Kashmir
- which has significant convergence with the GWOT, Great Power
objectives, and Fourth World conflicts.
Fourth World Wars
The Fourth World wars of interest here are not
characterized by the social integration movements of discriminated minorities.
Neither are they characterized by attempts to seize state control through
civil insurgency, on basis of either ideology or ethnic identity.
Nor are they driven by irredentism, with a given people attempting to
leave one state and join another neighboring state. Rather, Fourth World wars
are about liberation and self-determination within historically defined
territories.[xv]
“Secession” is not always an accurate term of reference, since it
implies a history of union based on choice, rather than imperialist imposition.
And disintegration of an existing state and formation of a new one is not
always an essential requisite, since lesser forms of devolved “autonomy” are
often the objectives of Fourth World conflict.
Sometimes, these wars are very one-sided, as states attack indigenous
peoples who mobilize non-violent self-determination movements.
Sometimes, the wars become genocidal.
(Tabulation below.)
Other Categories
Another useful way to categorize cases would be to
identify existing multi-national states that are on the verge of “failure,”
given the (questionable) presumption that any disintegration of state control
reflects weakness and dysfunction, rather than wisdom and strength.
Still another category would be in prediction
of which Fourth World conflicts are likely to result in the formation
of new states, and which are likely to spiral downward in black holes of repression
and genocide. Yet another cut
would enumerate cases that are hot spots,
slow cookers, and time-bombs and also those cases like Eritrea and East Timor, which
have apparently been resolved (especially
through independence). All such
categories are useful, but the first organizing principle here will be location
– which, in Great Power conflict (as in real estate), is everything.
Great Power Objectives
Location must
be qualified in Great Power geopolitical games.
For the purposes at hand, qualifiers include: traditional power elements, military force configurations,
overland transit routes, strategic sea-lanes and chokepoints, strategic
resources (primarily, energy resources and critical metallic minerals),
compliant populations, and other force multipliers and dividers.
Connecting the Dots
Space limitation precludes depth analysis of cited
cases. Web-links are provided for
reference and further review. The
cases are not necessarily possible to validate irrefutably in terms of actual
GWOT analysis, since critical facts are likely classified, not to be released
for decades (if ever), and conclusions are left to be inferred, conforming to
the open-ended GWOT platform.[xvi]
The GWOT battle plan calls for non-specific,
pre-emptive, offensive attacks (“We are not going to play defense; we are
taking the war to the enemy, so we don’t have to fight at home…”) within
“The Long War” against non-specific “terrorists” in “many
countries,” which will unfold indefinitely into the future, perhaps for
generations. Other states,
including Great Powers, have their own versions of the GWOT, within one grand
charade. In fact, the charade has a
rather universal appeal to many states, which use it to brand all their internal
enemies as “terrorists” and thereby to justify violence and repression
against them, no matter what they might actually be fighting for. The purpose here is to identify the most significant GWOT
theaters as dots on the map, wherever they can be found, and then to identify
any underlayment of Fourth World wars, and finally to connect any pattern of
Great Power objectives perceivable in these places.
Identifying Great Power objectives is, like GWOT
analysis, largely inferential, because real information is so classified.[xvii]
The inference process starts with available guiding documents, like the
succession of QDRs and Defense budgets, which typically orient investigation
along 15-to-20 year planning horizons for “preparation to confront perceived
future threats.”
The net result of these preparations, since the days
of the Cold War, has proven to be a veritable weaponry juggernaut, with a life
of its own, which does not and is not likely to change dramatically, due to
sudden, isolated terrorist attacks out of the blue.
Aircraft carriers, submarines, missile defense systems, nuclear warheads
and space weapons are all intended for use against Great Power rivals, not
irregular insurgents armed with AK-47s, suicide vests, razor blades, and sticks
and stones – no matter how clever and vicious they may be.
Once an order for a given weapons system is placed, it will likely be
delivered. If the intended purpose
of that system becomes subject to review, due to changing conditions, then a new
justification for it might be necessary, and if such justification is not
already available, then it can be fabricated.
This has always been the nature of arms races, even
one-sided races against imagined future enemies. They do not stop, until they get to war.
They are runaway trains. The
juggernaut creates the very environment and conditions that the weaponry is
supposed to resolve. Here, we
follow guiding documents to theaters in which all that expensive hardware gets
deployed, in the process of taking, holding and controlling strategic space -
which extends to outer space.
The GWOT officially starts on 9/11/01, though it
could be argued that the war had been continuous since 1991,[xviii]
and that 9/11 simply marks a change in context. The enemy of the day before 9/11 was clearly China, and it
could be argued that China was still the enemy afterwards, which is why it
remains the focus of QDRs and military budgets today.[xix]
So 9/11 changed little in the background of events, while changing much
in the focus of foreground events.
Admittedly, the 9/11 attack has proven to be a
contextual turning point in Great Power relations. It provided a pretext for launching the GWOT (which was,
strangely enough, al-Qaeda’s clear objective, too), which meant unleashing a
long-planned US military intervention in the Middle East, Central Asia, and
elsewhere - filling a power vacuum that was left after Russia lost much of its
former influence, due to the Soviet collapse in the 1990s.
It was a “unipolar moment.”[xx]
More than simply a question of controlling the flow
of oil, the intervention made it possible to constrain the movement of any
potential regional or global rivals, namely Russia and China (and maybe India).
The GWOT has meant taking American military forces and bases right up to
the borders of all three states, something which was never possible during the
Cold War or even in the New World Order contexts, including the short-lived Gulf
War of 1991. Above all else, it has
prevented China from gaining access to the oil fields of Iraq,[xxi]
which was one thing that Saddam Hussein actually might have controlled - and was
not going to be permitted. Since
the GWOT began, China has had to go elsewhere for oil, and is doing so in Iran,
Sudan, and Nigeria (and elsewhere) - which all are GWOT and Fourth World war
theaters.[xxii]
Israel
The GWOT center of political gravity remains Israel,
as it must be, due to the central focus of Islamist consciousness.
Without Islamism, there is no GWOT, and without the GWOT, there are only
bare-boned Great Power interests. Israel
is a critical actor in Great Power dynamics, serving as a regional forward base
and auxiliary force for the United States in the eastern Mediterranean, able to
help control passage to and from the Suez Canal and Red Sea, which is of special
importance for Russia, whose Black Sea Fleet could be bottled up in a time of
crisis.
Israel’s security is determined in great part by
the conditions it imposes on Palestinians
[1], who have fought for liberation (in a Fourth World war) since 1948. After having denied Palestine’s independence for all this
time, the United States and Israel have now finally arrived at the understanding
that a “two-state solution” is the only way forward. Thus, the US has been forced by circumstance to play the
Joker, with the implicit decision to allow another seat in the United Nations
(whose membership will grow to 192). But
the liberation process (which cannot be called secession) will likely remain
violent, due to multiple fundamental contradictions,[xxiii]
and war may continue indefinitely, even after Palestinian statehood is achieved.
Afghanistan and Central Asia
In the first official GWOT operation, in 2001, the
United States and its allies overthrew the Islamist Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Taliban project was and remains dominated by ethnic
Pashtuns (Pathans). In the GWOT
effort, indigenous Tajiks and Uzbeks in the north (the Northern Alliance), and
Hazaras in the center of the country were mobilized, intensifying pre-existing
Type II Civil War and Fourth World wars which dated from the early 1990s, after
Soviet occupation forces were withdrawn. In
constructing the new Karzai regime as a showcase exercise in “popular
democracy,” the United States has actually reestablished Pashtun domination,
which implies the reversal and withdrawal of prior US support for Fourth World
organizations.
As Taliban insurgents emerge anew from their
redoubts and engage in Type I Civil War, new violence and political repression
can be anticipated in areas populated by Tajiks,
Uzbeks, and Hazaras.
But war is reported currently in southern regions inhabited by indigenous
Baluchis
[2].[xxiv]
The violence largely occurs in the cross-fire of Pashtun forces representing
opposing ideologies (Taliban versus Karzai), as Baluchis either take sides in
the GWOT or return to a liberation struggle that has been active since the
British departed, in 1947.
Although the GWOT agenda of retribution for the 9/11
attack seems obvious, the Afghanistan operation has been perhaps primarily a
Great Power struggle - over the land-locked energy resources of Central Asia,
and the US determination, in 2001, that they should not be controlled by
neighboring China and/or Russia.[xxv]
It is common knowledge that huge oil and gas deposits are located in
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and the big problem is transit to
global markets. At the time of
occupation, the United States favored land routes that required building
pipelines through western Afghanistan, south through Pakistan (that is, through
indigenous Baluchistan) to the Indian Ocean.
All other routes would have gone through Iran, Russia or China, unless
they were to cross the Caspian Sea.[xxvi]
Plans have changed, since then.[xxvii]
These pipelines were not feasible without
substantial control of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and also the countries to the
north, especially Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, where the US has built major
military bases since 2001. Both
China and Russia understand these bases not for their ostensible purpose (GWOT
operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere in Central Asia), but rather for their
Great Power implications.[xxviii]
The bases would never have been built without mutual cooperation in the
GWOT charade, but four years later, the point has been lost.
Now, the United States is being evicted from Uzbekistan and having its
rent increased in Kyrgyzstan, creating a new vacuum waiting to be filled.[xxix]
The long American thrust into Central Asia has not gone according to
expectations, but a foot-hold still exists in Afghanistan, and it can probably
be maintained, at least as long as the GWOT is credible.
That credibility is fading fast.
Iraq and Turkey
As of this writing, Iraq appears to have descended into a general Type II Civil War,[xxx]
with Sunni and Shiite elements struggling to control the state, despite (or as
consequence of) the US occupation. Kurdish
Peshmerga fighters have figured
prominently in this war, mostly in operations against Sunni insurgents,
Baathists and suspected jihadis. Meanwhile,
Kurds living in northern Iraq have enjoyed relative peace and tranquility, since
the US occupation began in 2003, though in fact since the “Northern No-Fly
Zone” was established in the mid 1990s. These
days of peace are likely numbered, and renewed warfare can be anticipated, not
only in Iraqi Kurdistan, but also Turkish Kurdistan, and perhaps Iranian and
Syrian Kurdistan, as well.[xxxi]
The problem with indigenous Kurdish autonomy or independence in Iraq is
that it sets an example for other Kurds; and the problem with the United States
playing the Joker, in recognizing and defending Iraqi Kurds, is in the duplicity
and reversal of its meaning outside Iraq’s boundaries.
Turkey has a long
history of brutal, if not genocidal, repression of Kurds[xxxii]
(commonly called “terrorists”), who comprise about a fifth of the total
population, concentrated in the southeast.
Turkey also has a serious Islamist movement to contend with (making it a
GWOT theater), and meantime, it is a major Great Power ally, due to its
shorelines on both the Mediterranean and Black seas, its control of the Bosporus
and Dardanelles chokepoints (that is, controlling Russia’s only year-round
access to open ocean), its military cooperation with Israel, its transit route
for oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea, and the US military bases which
it allows in its territory.
During the New World Order context, when the United
States was protecting Iraqi Kurds from Saddam’s forces, in the Northern No-Fly
Zone, Turkey was permitted to make repeated military incursions into Iraq,
attacking Turkish Kurds who took refuge there, as well as Iraqi Kurds who
sheltered them. No reason to think
that the United States will restrain Turkey from mounting a major offensive into
Iraq, when (not if) “autonomy fever” spreads again across the border.[xxxiii]
As for its commitment to the Kurds, the US track record speaks for
itself. The Kurds
[3] have been betrayed and sold out on three major occasions in the past (1923,
1975 and 1992), after getting US aid and assistance in their quest for
independence. No reason to think it
won’t happen again.
The Balkans
It could be argued that the Balkan Wars of the 1990s
were prelude to the GWOT, or that they occurred as an extension of a GWOT that
actually began with the Gulf War of 1991, which may in fact have begun with the
Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, which began with the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and
so on.[xxxiv]
After all, the whole premise of the GWOT alludes to a “Long War.”
It could also be argued that the Balkan Wars of the 1990s were never
totally resolved by the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and that the same general
set of actors remains in place for another showdown.
Despite the wave of state fragmentation and formation of the 1990s,
another round of Fourth World wars is looming and will likely be played out in
the near future.
At present, mineral-rich Kosovo [4][xxxv]
is a Fourth World time-bomb, and Serbia-Montenegro
is about to disintegrate violently, within 2006. Just as in the last round, Russia may stand with its Orthodox
Slavic kinfolk who control Serbia, and if the United States does not support
Kosovo, then Iran will likely exercise Islamist influence again among its Muslim
ethnic-Albanian Kosovar allies, and if Iran doesn’t, then al-Qaeda will.
The conflict will go misunderstood as a GWOT theater, when in fact, its
roots are to be found in wars fought centuries ago.
During the 1990s, the United States was slow to get
on the right side of history, attempting to obstruct or prevent the
fragmentation of Yugoslavia, to the net effect of actually exacerbating
destruction that might have been avoided. This
time around, Kosovo wants its status resolved by the end of 2006, and its
independence is already a fact (bringing United Nations membership up to 193).
Unless Iranian influence is actually desired in the picture, it would be
relatively easy to just move ahead, having conceded the point.
However, given this scenario, after Kosovo’s
statehood it can be predicted that Montenegro
will split with Serbia, bringing UN
membership to 194. Orthodox Montenegro will then be faced with a Fourth World independence
movement in its Muslim Sanjak[xxxvi]
province. Meanwhile, Orthodox Macedonia
will be faced with a Muslim
Albanian[xxxvii] irredentist movement.
Orthodox Serbs
in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia are
likely to be drawn into action.[xxxviii]
Serbia is likely to react
violently to all of these developments. This
will likely have the result of drawing Russia’s hand.[xxxix]
And this time, Russia is not in a moment of weakness comparable to the
last round.
The Caucasus
Russia’s overall
strategic position has been in decline since the late 1980s. Presently, there are new deployments of US forces and bases
in Romania and Bulgaria - placing new constraints on Russia’s freedom of
movement through the warm-water Black Sea and then the Turkish Straits (which is
of special importance for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, based in Ukraine).
Russia faces further US deployments in Central Asia and Georgia, and
increasing American influence in oil-rich Azerbaijan, which is now the source of
a new largely-British (BP) pipeline that flows away from Russian control,
through Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean.[xl]
Then, there is an increasingly assertive America-friendly Ukraine,
separating Russia from irredentist allies in Moldova.
And Ukraine is threatening to disrupt the flow of oil, gas, and critical
minerals like titanium, and to limit Russia’s Black Sea access to a very short
coastline, between Ukraine and Abkhazia. Apart
from that coastline, the Black Sea shores are occupied by hostile neighbors.
Abkhazia[xli] is a Fourth World nation which has been asserting
its independence from Georgia (not
Russia), since the Soviet fragmentation of 1991. Away from the Black Sea coast, Abkhazia’s northern boundary
cuts through the Caucasus mountain range, which is the home of many other Fourth
World nations, which are Muslim and have been so for centuries, long before al-Qaeda
existed. One such nation is South
Ossetia, which is, like Abkhazia, also asserting independence from
Georgia, and playing host to Russian troops stationed there to defend it from
Georgia – whose external support now comes primarily from the United States.
South Ossetia is home to some notorious Islamist elements, whose refuge
is the infamous Pankisi Gorge.
Meantime, on the north side of the Caucasus, the
Fourth World nation of Chechnya
[5][xlii]
has been locked in a blood-soaked struggle for independence from Russia, since
the Soviet fragmentation of 1991. Chechnya’s
war has long been associated with the GWOT, especially in Russian claims of al-Qaeda’s
involvement. But the United States
is curiously ambiguous about Chechnya, which indicates its Joker potential. On
the one hand, Chechnya provides evidence for the main cover story - that the
GWOT is a common struggle uniting Russia with the United States and other
states. On the other hand, oil-rich
Chechnya serves the interests of those who were never satisfied with the
disintegration of the Soviet Union and are still holding out for further
weakening Russia, even if that implies Machiavellian cooperation with
international Islamic terrorists. It
is useful to vilify Russia for its pattern of human rights abuses in Chechnya,
realizing that destabilizing its energy colony is a means toward a greater end.
For those who would play the Joker as covert or
overt American policy, Chechnya also has the potential to inspire similar
self-determination movements, especially among other Muslim nations controlled
by Russia in the Caucasus. These
movements threaten Russia’s oil and gas pipelines which run west along the
northern Caucasus plain towards Ukraine, from where they run across most of
Europe - making Russia the preeminent source of European energy and the
world’s second most important energy exporter, after Saudi Arabia.
Since 1991, the Chechen conflict has had serious and
violent repercussions in Ingushetia,
North Ossetia, Dagestan,
Circassia,, and Kabardino-Balkaria
(the multiple fronts are tabulated here as one continuous theater [6]).[xliii]
Kabardino-Balkaria is of extra importance for Russia, due to its deposits
of some one-half of the world’s reserves of tungsten and molybdenum[xliv]
- which are strategic metals with important military applications.
Meantime, other Muslim nations within Russia but away from the Caucasus -
including Tatarstan,
Bashkortostan, Udmurtia,
Chuvashia,
and Mari
El [xlv]– have all openly
opposed Russia’s policy in Chechnya and are themselves likely to push for
self-determination, if the Chechen war is not resolved soon and in a process not
based on military force and repression.
Russia’s problems with Fourth World nations are
largely of its own making, rather than the result of “terrorist”
infiltration or American subversion. In
fact, Russia plays the same game of ambiguity towards indigenous nations as does
the United States in its Indian policy. In
every one of its constitutions since 1921, Russia (and formerly, the Soviet
Union) has guaranteed to the indigenous peoples enclosed within that they are
understood as nations, whose participation in the Russian Federation reflects a
union of choice, rather than imperial domination. Every one of those constitutions contains explicit language
about “autonomy” and “self-determination,” up to and including the
“right to secession.”[xlvi]
But Russia has rarely proven true to its constitutions, and so has had to
deal with the consequences of its duplicity - like the fragmentation of the
Soviet Union and the decolonizing process that continues at present, especially
in Chechnya.
Russia might use nuclear weapons before it lets go
of Chechnya, and meantime, it is not about to leave Abkhazia and South Ossetia
under Georgia’s control. Perhaps
Russia will accept the independence of Kosovo, in exchange for the independence
(and possible absorption) of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.[xlvii]
And the United States is unlikely to go to war over Georgia’s
dismemberment, though the public betrayal will be an embarrassment.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia probably will become integrated in the Russian
Federation, and the wars in Chechnya and North Caucasus will continue
indefinitely at low intensity. And as a net result, Russia will increase its
relative Great Power strength, having played its own Joker in Georgia.
Southwest Asia: Iran and Pakistan
Iran and Pakistan
co-exist as neighbors, simultaneously united and divided by multiple factors.
They occupy different sides of the GWOT – Iran branded as one of the
two remaining points of the formerly triangular “axis of evil” (now that
Iraq has been occupied), and Pakistan identified as an official GWOT ally of the
United States. They both are Muslim
societies, governed by repressive dictatorships masquerading as democracies:
Iran is run by Shiite Islamists, and Pakistan by secular Sunni military
autocrats. Iran is dominated by
Persians, Pakistan by Punjabis. Pakistan
is India’s nuclear-armed enemy; Iran is India’s technological and energy
partner and a nuclear-weapons aspirant. Pakistan
is the recipient and purveyor of Chinese nuclear technology; Iran is the
recipient of Russian and Chinese
nuclear technology, as well as their political support in confronting the West,
and now is a major source of China’s oil imports.
And both states have serious problems with Fourth World nations,
especially with Baluchis (a.k.a. Baloch, Balochis), who straddle their common
border and occupy extensive territory on both sides.
As an officially designated “state sponsor of
international terrorism,” Iran can
expect to see the Joker played against it.
But does the GWOT explain the Joker?
Or is the Joker better explained by Iran’s current attempt to acquire
nuclear technology? What other
factors might be in the mix? In
early 2006, Iran and China announced an oil development deal worth $100 billion,[xlviii]
and it was reported on the same day that the US State Department sought special
funding to support Iranian “opposition groups.”[xlix]
This non-specific appellation is probably adequate to explain some of the
recent violence along Iran’s southwestern border with Iraq, in the oil-rich
Khuzestan Province, which is occupied by the indigenous Ahwaz [7],[l]
who are ethnic Arabs. It might also
explain increased repression of Kurds
[8],[li]
along the northwestern border with Iraq and Turkey, and of the Baluchis
[9],[lii]
who occupy the southeastern border region adjacent to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Sistan-Baluchestan province includes the strategic coastline along
the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman, near the Strait of Hormuz – where there is
constant and congested traffic of oil tankers, freighters, and warships
(especially American warships based at Diego Garcia and Dubai).
It should be evident that any attempt to weaken the Iranian state through
territorial disintegration also attempts to weaken Iran’s allies, namely
China, Russia and India.
Fourth World nations in Pakistan appear to be mirror images of those in Iran. Instead of being designated as “victims” by the United States, as they are in Iran, the Baluchis [10] are under attack in Pakistan (and by US-led forces in southern Afghanistan), suspected of harboring or supporting al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists.[liii] [N.B. Baluchi conflict is enumerated for a third time here, accounting for three separate theaters.] Baluchistan is Pakistan’s energy (gas and oil) colony, its nuclear weapons testing ground, and its territory along the strategic coast of the Arabian Sea, which includes the port city of Gwadar, where there is a major naval base. Pakistan and China together are about to build a land bridge from Gwadar to China, circumventing the problems attached to ocean shipping.[liv] Obviously, Pakistan has some conflicting allegiances.
But as an official GWOT ally, Pakistan enjoys
American military and political support, as it also attacks numerous tribes of
indigenous Pashtuns [11], who inhabit the mountainous North West Frontier
Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA - which includes North
and South Waziristan), along the border of Afghanistan, in a continuing mission
to search out and destroy Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents.[lv]
Pashtuns have never accepted Punjabi domination in the Pakistani
experiment, ever since independence from India in 1947, and for them, the
Taliban are considered ideological authorities.
They want to live under tribal and Shari’a law and order, not Punjabi
military dictatorship. They do not want to rule the world.
Fourth World struggles also continue in the regions
Pakistan calls the Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir. The violence coincides with the irredentist war of Muslim
Kashmiris who want liberation from Hindu India and unification with Muslim
Pakistan, and it involves Muslim and Pakistani military repression of indigenous
Buddhist Ladhakis [12][lvi]
and Hindu Pandits [13].[lvii]
And in addition, Pakistan is increasingly violent in its treatment of
indigenous Hindu Sindhis [14],[lviii]
near the southeast border with India. There
are no clear American Jokers in Pakistan, at least this year.
But there just might be a few Indian Jokers.
South Asia
India’s
position in Great Power relations has shifted since the days of the Cold War,
when it alternated between roles as a major Soviet ally and as leader of the
Third World “Non-Aligned Movement.” India
is presently the object of a triangular courtship – being offered competing
favors (especially in the form of nuclear and military hardware and outsourced
high-tech jobs) by Russia and the United States, while warily attempting to
contain, without being contained by China, with whom its uncertain border
remains unstable. India’s
geography makes it the key-stone of a power arc stretching across southern Asia,
and gives it the potential for exercising some control of Indian Ocean sea-lanes
– through which Chinese (and Japanese and Korean) energy supplies must pass.
Whoever wins the Indian courtship gains an advantage, therefore, in
relation to China.[lix]
If India has a Great Power rival, it is China,[lx]
and that rivalry is then translated to the more momentous nuclear standoff with
Pakistan (China’s ally).
Although it possesses a large military force with
advanced weaponry (including nuclear missiles), the Indian state has never yet
been strong enough to build its way out of endemic poverty, nor to stamp out the
incessant Type I Civil War of Maoist Naxalites,[lxi]
nor the various rebellions of indigenous
Adivasis [15][lxii]
(“Scheduled Tribes”) throughout the country (especially in zones slated for
hydroelectric, mining, and large-scale development projects), nor the Fourth
World wars that have been active hot spots since independence from Great
Britain, in 1947.
Clearly, the most important of India’s internal
conflicts is in Kashmir, enumerated above as an irredentist war, which coincides
with Fourth World (Ladakhi
and Pandit) struggles.
Kashmir validates India’s place in the GWOT, given that indigenous
Muslim Kashmiri liberation fighters are allegedly supported by both al-Qaeda and
the Pakistani government. Kashmir
is widely understood as a flash-point with Pakistan, given its repeated history
as a battlefield and its ongoing potential to ignite a nuclear exchange that
would have global repercussions. Meantime,
Islamist militants and terrorists are certainly active within India’s huge
Muslim population, but as elsewhere, they have no military capabilities to speak
of, and compared to Pakistan and China, they explain very little about India’s
military and nuclear arms race.
Equally destructive as Kashmir have been the wars of
northeast India, which are all Fourth World self-determination struggles that
may appear conjoined but in fact are a spectrum of distinct peoples and
battlefronts. The Naga [16][lxiii]
war is in ceasefire mode, at this time of writing, but it is a time-bomb that
can be predicted to explode again at any moment, and will likely do so within
the year. On the other hand,
warfare is current in Tripura [17],[lxiv]
Mizoram
[18],[lxv] Manipur
[19],[lxvi]
and Assam
[20][lxvii]
(which has a second distinct struggle in its Bodoland [21] district).[lxviii]
If there are Jokers played in these wars, it is
possible they come in the form of Christian missionaries, especially Baptists,[lxix]
who have no particular love for the imperial Hindu state and its repression of
their indigenous proselytes. Also,
chances are good the Joker involves Chinese state influence - which is related
to Pakistan, through which China would like to build that land bridge to bypass
the problems associated with ocean transit.
Also, China might be interested in a tit-for-tat exchange, due to
India’s long-term asylum provided to the Dalai Lama, and therefore its
implicit involvement in Tibet.
Locked in Hindu India’s armpit, Muslim Bangladesh
presents another theater for both GWOT and Great Power conflicts.
There is an active Islamist movement in the country, and it occasionally
attacks the Muslim government, as well as various other points of social
tension. But more important is the
tension with India over expansion of the Muslim Bengali population beyond the
country’s borders into India’s state of Assam, where they have been involved
as antagonists in the ongoing war of liberation (cited above).
India is building a border wall and fence to keep Bengalis out.
China is giving Bangladesh military assistance and other aid.[lxx]
Bengali population encroachment is also the central
issue in the ongoing Buddhist Jumma
/ Chakhma [22] liberation struggle, which has been active in the
Chittagong Hills Tracts (CHT), since Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan,
in 1971.[lxxi]
Military occupation of the region continues today, eight years since a
peace agreement was supposed to have put an end to open warfare.
Military occupation qualifies as war for the United States, in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The Chittagong
conflict is presently contained by military occupation and severe repression -
and so, it qualifies as a one-sided war of the state against indigenous nations.[lxxii]
Off the coast of India’s southern cone, Sri
Lanka continues as the battlefield of one of the longest running and
bloodiest of all current Fourth World wars.
Since the devastation of much of their territory by the tsunami of
December 2004, indigenous Hindu Tamils
[23] have apparently paused in their war of liberation from Buddhist
Sinhalese rule. But none of the
pre-tsunami contradictions have been resolved, and warfare is likely to resume
in the near future. Deposits of
titanium ores along the northeast coast serve to guarantee at least one focus of
conflict.
Stability in Sri Lanka is of common concern among
Great Powers, due to its location along major sea-lanes.
But it is ironic that Great Powers rarely associate Sri Lanka with the
GWOT (despite the Sinhalese government’s insistence), since the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were among the earliest of all insurgent
organizations to perfect the use of suicide bombers.
While the Sri Lankan government blames India for its problem with Tamils,
China gives Sri Lanka military and economic assistance.[lxxiii]
Myanmar (Burma) also
continues as the location of intractable Fourth World wars, and it may have the
highest concentration of such conflicts anywhere on the planet.
Apart from its Type I Civil War against and repression of the popular
democracy movement, the military regime is
waging war against indigenous Chin
[24], Kachin [25], Karen
[26], Karenni [27], Mon
[28], Shan [29] and Wa
[30] peoples,[lxxiv]
in their respective territories, and also against Naga [31] refugees from
India.[lxxv]
If these peoples qualify as “terrorists,” it is only in defamations
by the government, as they are not mentioned otherwise in the GWOT.
On the other hand, they are clearly the fodder of Great Power struggle,
given that China is the main patron of Myanmar’s government.
The patronage is related to increasing Chinese (and Western) oil, gas,
mining, and timber interests in the country.
The US can be expected now to press for “regime change” in Myanmar,
after having ignored the situation there for decades.
It would not be surprising to find the Joker played in behalf of any or
all of the indigenous nations, in this context.
Southeast Asia
Until the tsunami of December 2004, the conflict in Aceh,[lxxvi]
at the north end of Sumatra, was one of the bloodiest Fourth World wars commonly
misunderstood as a GWOT theater. The
indigenous Acehnese had been fighting for independence from Indonesia,
since its liberation from the Dutch empire in 1950, and they were aiming to
follow East Timor’s successful (though terribly violent) path to
statehood, which was finalized through United Nations membership in 2002.
The tsunami put an apparent end to the fighting, by bringing in a huge
international relief effort, an autonomy agreement with the government, and
disarmament of Aceh’s main insurgent organization.
The war had been associated with the GWOT, inasmuch as the Acehnese
rejected the secularist agenda of the Indonesian experiment and demanded Islamic
social order under Shari’a Law. But
the cause of war was Indonesian empire, not al-Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiya.
Too soon to know whether the Aceh war is really
over, it is worth noting that it was always a Great Power theater.
Partly, this was due to the wealth of Sumatra’s oil and gas resources,
a mainstay of Indonesia’s export economy.
But more important is Sumatra’s location as the western shore of the
Strait of Malacca, through which some 50 percent of world shipping must pass,
including most of the oil from the Arabian Gulf imported by China, Japan, South
Korea and the Philippines. For Great Powers, the Strait of Malacca is considered one of
the world’s most important strategic chokepoints, where an enemy’s supply
lines might most easily be throttled. It
is therefore little wonder that the United States permitted Indonesia’s
military to attack the Aceh liberation movement for so long (in the name of the
GWOT, since 2001), until the tsunami.
At the other (eastern) extreme of the vast
Indonesian empire, in the Irian Jaya province on the western half of New Guinea,
the indigenous Melanesian peoples of West Papua [32][lxxvii]
continue their own war for independence. Having
neither direct GWOT nor Great Power involvement, the insurgents are seriously
outgunned and underpowered against the Indonesian armed forces.
Conditions are best characterized in terms of military occupation and
severe repression.[lxxviii]
Across the Strait of Malacca from Sumatra, on the
neck of the Malay Peninsula, Thailand
is at war with Muslim Malays [33] who inhabit the southernmost provinces of
Yala, Pattani, Songkhla, and Narathiwat, and seek independence from Buddhist
Thai control.[lxxix]
The Muslim insurgency has been associated with the GWOT and al-Qaeda
affiliates, such as Jemaah Islamiya, but it is clearly a Fourth World war that
has roots in the aftermath of European decolonization of Malaysia, Indonesia,
and Burma, and the irrational demarcation of Thailand’s southern borders to
include Muslims who might have been more peacefully ruled by Malaysia.
Regardless of its GWOT associations, the conflict is a Great Power
theater, for the same reason that Aceh is – that is, being located on opposite
sides of the strategic Strait of Malacca. In
addition, there are important tin and tungsten resources within the indigenous
territories, and these contribute to explaining the US support given to the Thai
government.
Vietnam also
occupies a strategic position - on the western shores of the South China Sea,
with major shipping lanes to and from China and other East Asian states off its
coast. There have been improvements
in relations between Vietnam and the United States, since the days of the
“American War,” over three decades ago, but the government is still ruled by
communists, and that is the most important of several major impasses in the
relationship. The Cold War may
still be alive, but there are no serious allegations that Vietnam is a GWOT
theater. However, it clearly
remains a place of interest for Great Powers, due to its strategic location, and
the particular location of the naval base at Cam Ranh Bay – which the United
States would like to control again.[lxxx]
Similarly, proximity to the Spratly and Paracel Islands (which are
claimed by seven countries, including China, and are reportedly rich in oil)
magnifies the importance of its location. And
this in turn magnifies the importance of its Fourth World conflicts.
Since the closing days of violence with the United States, and then
Cambodia, and then China, Vietnam has been at war with indigenous
largely-Christian Montagnards
[34][lxxxi]
who have occupied the highlands for millennia and are now being squeezed out by
the ever-encroaching ethnic Vietnamese population. Similarly, ethnic Cambodian Khmer
Krom [35][lxxxii]
are enduring warlike repression in the south of Vietnam.
And the same conditions must be noted for the Hmong
[36],[lxxxiii]
in conflict with the communist government of neighboring Laos.
On the other (eastern) side of the South China Sea,
the Philippines continues to be the
location of another Fourth World war that has its roots in ages past, most
especially since independence from the United States (and Japan) at the end of
World War II. The state has always
been a largely Christian project, and its control of largely-Muslim Mindanao and
other southern islands has been the source of conflict since long before al-Qaeda’s
existence. Today, there is a
ceasefire with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in Mindanao, but war
continues with small splinter organizations of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF),
including Abu Sayyaf, on both Mindanao and certain minor islands of the Sulu
Archipelago (especially Basilan and tiny Jolo), and across strategic waterways
to the nearby Muslim Malaysian province of Sabah, on the island of Borneo.
The Moro
[37] liberation struggle is commonly associated with al-Qaeda and the GWOT, but
it must be understood broadly as a Great Power theater focused on shipping lanes
through and near the South China Sea. In
this case, the local theater of the Sulu Archipelago involves movement through
the Tapaan Passage, between the Sulu and Celebes seas. The United States was
evicted from former bases in the Philippines (Clark Air Force Base, and the
Subic Bay Naval Base), but now has returned to a highly strategic position that
constrains Chinese movement in the region.[lxxxiv]
Also of note in the Philippines is the continuous repression of indigenous Igorot peoples on the north island of Luzon.[lxxxv] The Igorots are not associated with the GWOT or Great Power relations, but their struggles do reflect the relative strength and weakness of the state - which is also beset with an intractable low-intensity Type I Civil War waged by the New People’s Army.[lxxxvi]
China
China may or may
not intend, today, to become a Great Power rival of the United States, tomorrow.
But current US development of weapons with which to fight China,
tomorrow, according to the 15-20 year planning horizons identified in today’s
QDRs and Defense budgets, will likely generate that rivalry and impel it towards
crisis, all intentions notwithstanding. China
is, of course, developing its own weapons, but the expenditures amount to only
about one-thirteenth of the American project,[lxxxvii]
and capabilities today are relatively minimal, and they are not likely to change
dramatically in relative proportion, tomorrow. In a fight, China would probably not be able to defend its
vital shipping lanes through the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, and would be
easily defeated at chokepoints in the Strait of Malacca and Strait of Hormuz,
not to mention lesser points like the Tapaan Passage (cited above).[lxxxviii]
And there is no real chance that China will ever be able to mount an
offensive in the Western Hemisphere. Chinese
global hegemony, like an Islamic caliphate, is only a hallucination – albeit a
useful one.
Today’s greatest point of tension is, no doubt, Taiwan
– which is not an indigenous Fourth World nation,[lxxxix]
but rather a breakaway island province ruled by adversaries of the mainland
Communist regime. [Editor’s
Note:There are nine Fourth World nations that are the original occupants of the
island. They are the Ami
(131,845 pop.), Atayal
(81,800 pop.) Bunun
(37,922 pop.), Paiwan
(62,110 pop), Puyuma
(8,792 pop.), Rukai
(8,670 pop.), Saisiyat
(3,939 pop.), Tsou
(6,192 pop.) and Yami
(4,044 pop.). Since 1945 Han Chinese have occupied the Island of Taiwan
virtually eliminating the original nations’ visibility in the world. Since the
1990s the Kuomintang (KMT) government has instituted constitutional changes
recognizing these nine nations as the original peoples of Taiwan. Despite this
legal change, confrontations between the Han government and the Taiwanese
nations continue.] Taiwan’s
potential for total independence and statehood is measured in the balance
between China’s clear intention to prevent fragmentation by military force,
and the ambiguity of the United States – which may or may not want to play the
Joker, depending on expedience. There
have been strong voices in the United States that have advocated Taiwan’s
independence, since 1949. Taiwan’s
own impetuousness may force the United States to play its hand prematurely, and
a major international crisis would ensue immediately, not in 20 years.
There are several other places where the Joker might
be played, most notably in Tibet,
Inner Mongolia, and the Uyghur
Autonomous Region [38] (Xinjiang Province) - which is today the locus of
China’s most important Fourth World war and is associated in the GWOT.[xc]
Indigenous Muslim Uyghurs, in rebellion against Chinese colonialism, are
living mostly in conditions of military occupation and severe repression.[xci]
However, Uyghur combatants were training at al-Qaeda camps in
Afghanistan, at the time of the US occupation in 2001, and some were captured
and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay by American forces, who had no idea what kind
of struggle the Uyghurs represented. The
combatants have served to provide the United States and China an apparent common
enemy in the GWOT, since both countries are targets for Islamist jihad.
But American interest in Uyghur liberation is
comparable to interest in the Chechen war with Russia: the policy is ambiguous.
On the one hand, the United States maintains a “One China” policy,
and it officially opposes liberation movements of Taiwan, Tibetans, Uyghurs,
Mongolians, and other Fourth World nations.
On the other hand, it is useful to have a weapon with which to accuse
China of human rights abuses, and to point out that Uyghur political leaders
today are likely to be imprisoned and executed for “splittism,” especially
since China enacted an Anti-Secession Law, in 2005. The ambiguity reflects
understanding that Uyghur territory is of vital importance for China as an
energy and minerals colony, a nuclear weapons testing area, and as the route of
major oil pipelines from neighboring Kazakhstan.
As it is with Muslim Uyghurs, so it is with Buddhist
Tibetans,[xcii]
who are not associated with the GWOT. During
the 1950s and beyond, the CIA sponsored and supported a Tibetan war for
independence from China. Then, in
the 1970s, the United States sold the Tibetans out, due to Cold War developments
of Sino-Soviet rivalry and Richard Nixon’s “opening” of normal relations
with the Communist government.[xciii]
Tibet, however, remains a potentially useful pawn for the United States,
which is why the Dalai Lama is occasionally entertained at the White House –
to demonstrate the inherent ambiguity of the official “One China” policy.[xciv]
China, like Russia and the United States, is largely
responsible for its own problems with Fourth World peoples.
As with Russia and the United States, the Chinese state and constitution
are constructed around explicit language about “autonomy” and
“self-determination” of indigenous nations.[xcv]
As with Russia and the United States, the contradictions between ideology
and practice have been instrumental in generating the liberation movements of
Fourth World peoples whose experience is to be colonized.
It may be convenient to blame external actors for playing Jokers, but
duplicity serves to create its own reward, in the form of rebellion.
At the least, therefore, it is clear that China’s claim to a place in
the GWOT is tenuous, self-serving, and refutable.
Horn of Africa
In 2002, the United States quietly opened a major
theater of GWOT operations, establishing the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of
Africa (CJTF-HOA),[xcvi]
with its base in Djibouti – a
former French colony located at the southern end of the Red Sea.
This location is also identifiable as the Bab el-Mandeb Strait - another
of the world’s most important strategic chokepoints, from where it is possible
to control shipping between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.
The chokepoint has major implications:
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, for example, would have a fourth major
obstacle (besides the Bosporus, Dardanelles, and Suez) between the Indian Ocean
(and by extension, the Arabian Gulf) and its base in Ukraine.
Oil tankers loading at Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, would have another
obstacle (besides the Malacca Strait) on their way to China.
The CJTF-HOA mission is ostensibly to fight
terrorism in nine countries: Djibouti,
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
Some of these countries have indeed been highlighted by singular
terrorist strikes, perpetrated by individuals, including the 1998 embassy
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the attack of 2000 on the USS Cole, in
Yemen, and chaos has been continuous in Somalia since 1991.
Most all of the regional violence, however, can be best understood in
terms of Fourth World conflict, rather than Islamist jihad.
And in these terms, the purpose of the Task Force is reduced to implicit
Great Power objectives.
In Somalia,
the southern part of the country is beset with Type II Civil War, which pits
various clans (some of them Islamist) against one another, attempting to control
the state from the capital city of Mogadishu. The northwestern part of the country is a different story.
Somaliland
(the former British colony) broke free from the south, in 1991, and after
passage through several violent episodes, has existed in relative peace and
tranquility since then. Somaliland
can be understood today as a Fourth World nation, dominated by Muslim Somali
Isaaqs, who are not Islamist. The
nation has achieved de-facto independence from the south - comparable to the
situation of Kosovo in relation to Serbia-Montenegro (cited above).[xcvii]
Liberation is not a foregone conclusion, however, because whichever party wins control of the south will undoubtedly attempt to control the north, and if that happens, war is very predictable. The biggest present obstacle to statehood (which would