Category: Government Documents

June 13, 2009

Cyberwar

Privacy May Be a Victim in Cyberdefense Plan

By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON – A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and diplomatic concerns, as the Obama administration moves ahead on efforts to protect the nation from cyberattack and to prepare for possible offensive operations against adversaries’ computer networks.

President Obama has said that the new cyberdefense strategy he unveiled last month will provide protections for personal privacy and civil liberties. But senior Pentagon and military officials say that Mr. Obama’s assurances may be challenging to guarantee in practice, particularly in trying to monitor the thousands of daily attacks on security systems in the United States that have set off a race to develop better cyberweapons.

Much of the new military command’s work is expected to be carried out by the National Security Agency, whose role in intercepting the domestic end of international calls and e-mail messages after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, under secret orders issued by the Bush administration, has already generated intense controversy.

There is simply no way, the officials say, to effectively conduct computer operations without entering networks inside the United States, where the military is prohibited from operating, or traveling electronic paths through countries that are not themselves American targets.

The cybersecurity effort, Mr. Obama said at the White House last month, “will not – I repeat, will not – include monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic.”

But foreign adversaries often mount their attacks through computer network hubs inside the United States, and military officials and outside experts say that threat confronts the Pentagon and the administration with difficult questions.

Military officials say there may be a need to intercept and examine some e-mail messages sent from other countries to guard against computer viruses or potential terrorist action. Advocates say the process could ultimately be accepted as the digital equivalent of customs inspections, in which passengers arriving from overseas consent to have their luggage opened for security, tax and health reasons.

“The government is in a quandary,” said Maren Leed, a defense expert at the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies who was a Pentagon special assistant on cyberoperations from 2005 to 2008.

Ms. Leed said a broad debate was needed “about what constitutes an intrusion that violates privacy and, at the other extreme, what is an intrusion that may be acceptable in the face of an act of war.”

In a recent speech, Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a chief architect of the new cyberstrategy, acknowledged that a major unresolved issue was how the military – which would include the National Security Agency, where much of the cyberwar expertise resides – could legally set up an early warning system.

Unlike a missile attack, which would show up on the Pentagon’s screens long before reaching American territory, a cyberattack may be visible only after it has been launched in the United States.

“How do you understand sovereignty in the cyberdomain?” General Cartwright asked. “It doesn’t tend to pay a lot of attention to geographic boundaries.”

For example, the daily attacks on the Pentagon’s own computer systems, or probes sent from Russia, China and Eastern Europe seeking chinks in the computer systems of corporations and financial institutions, are rarely seen before their effect is felt inside the United States.

Some administration officials have begun to discuss whether laws or regulations must be changed to allow law enforcement, the military or intelligence agencies greater access to networks or Internet providers when significant evidence of a national security threat was found.

Ms. Leed said that while the Defense Department and related intelligence agencies were the only organizations that had the ability to protect against such cyberattacks, “they are not the best suited, from a civil liberties perspective, to take on that responsibility.”

Under plans being completed at the Pentagon, the new cybercommand will be run by a four-star general, much the way Gen. David H. Petraeus runs the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from Central Command in Tampa, Fla. But the expectation is that whoever is in charge of the new command will also direct the National Security Agency, an effort to solve the turf war between the spy agency and the military over who is in charge of conducting offensive operations.

While the N.S.A.’s job is chiefly one of detection and monitoring, the agency also possesses what Michael D. McConnell, the former director of national intelligence, called “the critical skill set” to respond quickly to cyberattacks. Yet the Defense Department views cyberspace as its domain as well, a new battleground after land, sea, air and space.

The complications are not limited to privacy concerns. The Pentagon is increasingly worried about the diplomatic ramifications of being forced to use the computer networks of many other nations while carrying out digital missions – the computer equivalent of the Vietnam War’s spilling over the Cambodian border in the 1960s. To battle Russian hackers, for example, it might be necessary to act through the virtual cyberterritory of Britain or Germany or any country where the attack was routed.

General Cartwright said military planners were trying to write rules of engagement for scenarios in which a cyberattack was launched from a neutral country that might have no idea what was going on. But, with time of the essence, it may not be possible, the scenarios show, to ask other nations to act against an attack that is flowing through their computers in milliseconds.

“If I pass through your country, do I have to talk to the ambassador?” General Cartwright said. “It is very difficult. Those are the questions that are now really starting to emerge vis-à-vis cyber.”

Frida Berrigan, a longtime peace activist who is a senior program associate at the New America Foundation’s arms and security initiative, expressed concerns about whether the Obama administration would be able to balance its promise to respect privacy in cyberspace even as it appeared to be militarizing cybersecurity.

“Obama was very deliberate in saying that the U.S. military and the U.S. government would not be looking at our e-mail and not tracking what we do online,” Ms. Berrigan said. “This is not to say there is not a cyberthreat out there or that cyberterrorism is not a significant concern. We should be vigilant and creative. But once again we see the Pentagon being put at the heart of it and at front lines of offering a solution.”

Ms. Berrigan said that just as the counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had proved that “there is no front line anymore, and no demilitarized zone anymore, then if the Pentagon and the military services see cyberspace as a battlefield domain, then the lines protecting privacy and our civil liberties get blurred very, very quickly.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/us/politics/13cyber.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

An Open Letter to the Lahui May 23rd, 2009

Letter to the Lāhui:

Early this week I was a part of a panel “Hoʻopunipuni: The Myth of Statehood” organized by Arnie Saiki, in Los Angeles. Julian Aguon, Kekuni Blaisdell, Kuhio Vogeler and I all spoke about the many different and connected deceptions that have maintained the fiction that Hawaiʻi belongs to the United States.

We discovered that the audience, largely consisting of Hawaiians living in Southern California, was desperate to understand the nature and direction of the sovereignty movement in Hawaiʻi. They wanted to be connected to and contributors to the movement but did not understand why there was fighting between Kanaka Maoli in Hawaiʻi, why there was such opposition to Kau Inoa and the Akaka Bill, what the US Supreme Court decision on the Ceded Lands implied, and mostly when we in Hawaiʻi would finally give them a unified and clear path to follow.

I told the audience that we fight among ourselves in part because of the pernicious and ingrained deceptions that America has provided that have succeeded not only in disguising its imperial nature in the world but also convincing Kanaka Maoli that the US has some legitimacy in its claims to our land and our loyalty. To their complaints that we seemed to be fighting among ourselves, I replied that we have not just one American lie to contend with, but one lie after another, collectively confusing issues and making it difficult to achieve consensus, much less unanimity, yet we grapple with this constantly, striving to base our movement on fact and truth and some sense of honor.

I do believe that we will continue to disagree over many things, but I see no reason why we should not eventually get to the point where we can at least agree on how we see the US/Hawaiʻi relationship and understand the factual history of that relationship. Before we assume that some Hawaiian people will always be Americans by choice, let us at least be sure that they know the history that even America concedes.

Simply: The US assisted and participated in a conspiracy that helped fewer than a hundred armed malcontents take control of a nation that ruled over more than 38,000 subjects ardently loyal to the Queen. The US violated its own constitution in accepting the cession of the regime it sponsored and impounded nearly 2 million acres of kingdom property pretending that it was a legal annexation. The US imposed a colonial government on an independent nation state and allowed the colonial administration to lease and sell the very best lands of the Kingdom to a small number of already wealthy plantation owners during the first half of the twentieth century. In 1921 the US passed a homestead act in Congress setting aside slightly more than 1/10th of the land it took to benefit the poor and struggling Hawaiians, after first defining who would qualify according to a random assignment of blood quantum, and allowing the same territorial government to fund and parcel the lands as they saw fit.

By 1941, Hawaiʻi was considered an American colony by the international community which seemed to forget that the Kingdom had been a recognized, independent nation state until the United States formed the territorial government, and was placed on the list of “Non self-governing territories” by the newly formed United Nations in 1947.

In 1959, the US declared Hawaiʻi the 50th state after removing Hawaii’s name from the roster of Non self-governing territories and reporting to the UN that Hawaiʻi had been incorporated into the American union by a plebiscite in which more than 90 percent of the vote had chosen statehood. In truth less than thirty percent of Hawai`iʻs residents had actually voted and the only choices voters were given were statehood or continued status as an American territory. At this point, if there were Hawaiians left who remembered that we had been an independent country, they were not talking. Under UN auspices, greater scrutiny should have been applied to the process by which America claimed statehood for Hawaiʻi. Without international voices and with few published objections to our incorporation the US proceeded to transfer control of nearly one and a half million acres of Kingdom lands and Liliuʻs crown lands to the state government requiring only that the new state government assume the trust responsibility once borne by the US government for the native people.

In 1977 a federal-state task force investigating the Hawaiian Homes Act discovered that only a small fraction of qualifying Hawaiians had received homestead lands while a majority of the lands were leased out to non-qualified residents in order to raise funds to administer the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. Moreover, other ceded lands had been leased or sold without any benefit allocated to Native Hawaiians, an apparent violation of the requirement stipulated in the transfer of those lands to the state government in 1959. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs was created in 1978 in order to create an agency that could receive state monies and act on behalf of Native beneficiaries. In 1978 the Hawaii Supreme Court and the Legislature both confirmed that Hawaiians were entitled to a 20 percent pro rate share of ceded land revenues because of the terms of the Statehood Act.

In 1989 a story in the Wall Street Journal detailing the continued failure of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands had the Hawaiʻi State governments and the US government pointing the finger of blame at each other, although the Task Force in 1977 had already proposed a remedy: spend a billion dollars, half immediately and half over ten years and build the infrastructure necessary to put qualifying Hawaiians on the land. Neither would and both accused the other of bearing the responsibility. In 1998, the governor of Hawaiʻi acknowledged that a 20 percent share of ceded lands revenues to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs would amount to ten million dollars. He offered five million as the maximum that the revenue strapped government could afford and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs accepted.

Partly in response to a mounting frustration with the failure of the US to live up to its commitments, and partly in recognition of the dire poverty in which many Hawaiians found themselves, thousands of Hawaiians began to explore sovereignty as an alternative to continued poverty and marginalization. But a growing number of political and community activists and scholars began to analyze the nature of Americaʻs possession of Hawaiʻi and has since identified several different avenues of liberation.

One political avenue is to emphasize the Kanaka Maoli’s status as an indigenous people, which places us under the protection of the UN’s Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; A second acknowledges Hawaiʻi as an American colony, not lawfully decolonized, under the UN’s Article 73. A third focuses on the national status of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its rights under international laws to re-secure its independent status and the end of American military occupation.

Perhaps in response to these national and indigenous affirmations, US Senator Daniel Akaka proposed an alternative in 1994 that would recognize Hawaiian natives as a native people under the jurisdiction of the Congress and is finally poised to pass this legislation known as the Akaka Bill this year. The protections and assurances of this bill became more and more detrimental to Native Hawaiians over the past fifteen years in order to placate a hostile congress and administration. The shape taken by federal recognition has occurred with almost no consultation with Hawaiian organizations.

Regardless of the provisions of the Akaka Bill, federal recognition is merely the latest deception of the US government that it has some legitimate claim to Hawaii’s sovereignty and its lands. The naked truth is that our ancestors created a national government in the 1840s, structured by democratic laws and principles; created property similarly structured by modern laws and principles; secured treaties of recognition, cooperation and friendship; never raised a hostile hand against the United States or any of its citizens; honored the principles of international laws and covenants and strongly and uniformly opposed the takeover by the US in 1897.

Hawaiians today may claim that they have been Americanized, but not without fully understanding how this has come about, not through one deception only, but through a series of deceptions that continue to this day. In my opinion, it is possible that Hawaiians could choose continued incorporation with America or a federally recognized status as preferred political futures. But it would be a betrayal of our ancestors to base that choice on lies. It is also quite clear that we are legally entitled to that choice. Perhaps when all Hawaiians can agree on the history of how we have been claimed by America, we will have fewer fights over who we are and how we should proceed.

It is important that Hawaiian organizations and agencies like the Office of Hawaiian Affairs do not perpetuate deceptions by pressing for quick and immediate solutions to difficult political issues. As an agency whose mission is to seek the betterment of the Native people, the Kanaka Maoli, it should be leading the attempt to research, uncover, chronicle and discuss the history of our relationship with the United States. It should not be hurrying a process that Hawaiian people have not fully discussed. Unfortunately, its official position with regard to federal recognition is that time will only erode the political, economic and social conditions of Native Hawaiians in Hawaiʻi and that the Akaka Bill, regardless of its provisions, offers the only foreseeable relief.

Hawaiian sovereignty activists see the restoration of a Hawaiian nation as a long-term process of education, advocacy and requiring a commitment on the part of Hawaii’s people, not just Natives, to a just resolution of the American fraud. It is not likely that OHA can exert much leadership in this kind of dynamic, and it appears that its strategy, more and more, is simply to try and isolate the sovereignty movement as either hopeless or irrelevant. The extent to which this strategy wastes the talents and energies of a growing number of Kanaka Maoli is the true measure of its failure of leadership.

Finally, America’s insistence that it has legally taken our sovereignty has consequences for the fate of the Crown and Government lands. Whenever the US or state governments can assert an unchallenged claim to these lands, we as a nation are a step closer to losing them. Thus far, both governments have been able to assume ownership merely by possessing and controlling these lands and by virtue of US declarations in the Newlands Resolution, the 1900 Organic Act and the 1959 Statehood Act. The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court’s 2008 injunction against the sale of Ceded Lands because of our “un-relinquished claims” was a significant protection of our lands and claims which would afford us the time and the political support that our movement has only rarely received.

When the US Supreme Court’s opinion remanded the case back to Hawaiʻi, I concluded that we needed to fight this case again, arguing even more strenuously than ever that the Crown and Government lands are the property of the Hawaiian Nation and that the US permanent control over it is unlawful. OHA and the other plaintiffs chose to dismiss the suit in exchange for state legislation which, in my opinion, simply emphasizes the State’s possession of these lands and maintains the fiction that our national claim is limited or unobtainable. It is my belief that we should attempt to secure this injunction once more in the Hawaiʻi courts and require the United States to call forth or create the law that dispossesses us. That, at least, would clarify our relationship with America and bring forth the patriots who will lead us home.

Written in the Republic of Ireland
May 11-15, 2009
Jonathan Kay Kamakakawiwoʻole Osorio

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

South American Security Paradigm

Samuel Logan
International Relations And Security Network

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=98146
Months ahead of the planned closing of Eloy Alfaro airbase at Manta, Ecuador, the US and Colombia continue to negotiate terms that would allow the US military limited access to Colombian airbases. The agreement favors both nations, as the US struggles to maintain surveillance operations in the Pacific, and Colombia maneuvers to remain relevant in regional security matters while Brazil continues to exercise its regional leadership.

The most recent round of talks between Colombian and US officials in mid-March have likely sealed a new era of US Colombian relations, amidst an uncertain long-term future for Plan Colombia.

Yet even while Colombian Defense Minster Juan Manuel Santos last visited Washington for three days at the end of February, the US House of Representatives approved US$545 million for the continuation of Plan Colombia through the 2009 fiscal year, maintaining the same level of funding approved for fiscal year 2008.

This short-term support, however, is likely to dwindle over time as Colombian President Alvaro Uribe no longer enjoys the same level of support in the US Congress. He also faces an opposition growing in strength back home. His own vice president, Francisco Santos, told Colombian daily El Tiempo on 16 March that Plan Colombia had “outlived its usefulness,” according to Agence France Presse. Santos has also publically stated that Plan Colombia had a high political cost at home.

Plan Colombia, for all its faults and perceived failures, has at the very least earned some hard fought interdiction successes, which is in part why Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), have taken center stage in the hemisphere’s black market concerns. Plan Colombia gave Colombian presidents – especially Uribe and his predecessor Andres Pastraña – unprecedented access to the White House and halls of Congress. But these days are over.

The conclusion of Plan Colombia will mark a fundamental paradigm shift in how Washington will engage South American security matters over the next four years and beyond. Brazil is on deck to be the region’s principal partner for Washington.

The recent meeting between Brazilian President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva and President Barak Obama was a breakthrough for both nations. Lula has a US counterpart that he can publically embrace, and Obama has found a partner in Brazil who has enough socialist street credit to help him broker new relationships with Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia – considered three diplomatic sore spots in the region that Obama wants to focus on first.

Regarding matters of security, both Obama and Lula are aware of Washington’s pressing need to focus on Mexico and the border. Given the spectrum of international events, the Obama administration will have less time to spend on managing relationships and effectively policing South America. That job he would like to leave to Lula, with only little oversight from the US State Department.

During their mid-march meeting in the White House, the two men discussed matters of security, among other topics. Lula suggested that the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) create a new Council that would focus solely on drug trafficking and organized crime. UNASUR currently hosts the South American Defense Council, but the members have correctly agreed that drug trafficking and organized crime is not a military, but a police, problem.

If an organized crime council were formed in 2009, it is likely that Brazil would play a strong leadership role, one that would further establish an ongoing working relationship between Washington and Brasilia.

Moving in the direction of a regional effort to cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking, Colombia and Brazil signed an agreement on 11 March that grants mutual overflight privileges during hot pursuit situations. This agreement will allow the military and police forces of both nations to pursue their quarry up to 48 kilometers inside of each nation.

With this agreement, Brazil has taken a demonstrable step forward towards investing in regional security. Officials in Bogota recognize Brazil’s leadership role, and as the country sheds the mantle of Plan Colombia, Bogota will do well to engage Brazil on its southern flank and Washington to the north, to keep the country relevant as a self-sufficient regional security program evolves.

Nevertheless, Washington still needs Colombia. Of the 822 missions flown from the Manta airfield in 2008, intelligence gathered by these flights resulted in the interdiction of 229 tonnes of cocaine. Officials in Colombia recognize Brazil’s decision to take a leadership role, but they are smart to not abandon Washington, and for that both the US and Brazil will see that Colombia is richly rewarded.

China Daily (3/13/09)

Pentagon reaction to row ‘inappropriate’

Naval officers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) yesterday criticized the Pentagon for what they described as an “inappropriate reaction” after a confrontation between a US spy ship and five Chinese vessels in the South China Sea on Sunday.

They were responding to a media report that the US Navy on Wednesday assigned one of the world’s most advanced destroyers to the area to escort the USNS Impeccable, which continues to be in the vicinity.

The Virginian-Pilot report quoted a US defense official as saying that the destroyer Chung-Hoon “is going to keep a close eye on the Impeccable”.

A Chinese naval source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the PLA has taken note of the US latest move and was watching developments closely.

Another navy source said the deployment of the destroyer reflects the Pentagon’s intention to “keep on pressing” China in the South China Sea.

But “the timing and the extent have gone beyond what you could call proportionate,” he said, without elaborating.

Shi Yinhong, a professor in American studies at Renmin University of China, said the US’ latest move is aimed at “maintaining its ‘right’ to spy in other countries’ exclusive economic zones”.

March 9, 2009: The Pentagon says five Chinese ships, including a naval vessel, harassed USNS Impeccable in international waters off Hainan. China says the US ship was carrying out an illegal survey. [China Daily]

“The Pentagon has been doing this for decades. It will by no means stop in the South China Sea, especially against the backdrop of China’s military modernization drive,” he said.

But he said China will never back off on issues concerning national security.

Fu Mengzi, assistant president of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said the incident should be interpreted separately from US President Barack Obama’s China policy.

“Obama seeks cooperation with China. But some hawkish US military officers don’t like it, which led to the spat over the sea confrontation,” he said.

He urged decision-makers in Washington to be “calm and cautious” when dealing with the incident, as direct confrontation will cast a shadow over the two nations’ joint efforts to combat the global economic downturn.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Wednesday that Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, who is in Washington on a visit, will meet Obama (early today Beijing time), and that US National Security Advisor James Jones will join the meeting. They are expected to discuss the standoff in the South China Sea among other issues.

“I don’t think it (the standoff) will overshadow the meeting,” Jones said.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said after meeting Yang: “The important point of agreement coming out of my discussions with Minister Yang is that we must work hard in the future to avoid such incidents and to avoid this particular incident having consequences that are unforeseen.”

On the same day, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said “from time to time, there are going to be elements that come up that cause some tension”.

“But the most important thing is that the US and China need to work together to solve a whole host of issues that the international community confronts.”

On Capitol Hill, Republican Randy Forbes, who is co-chairman of the Congressional China Caucus, said he expects to introduce a resolution condemning the Chinese “harassment” of US forces.

He added that Congress must send “a clear, loud message” that the United States will protect the “right of its ships to operate in international waters”.

CNSNews.com

Naval Confrontation: China Pushing U.S. Further Away From Its Territory

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor

(CNSNews.com) – Disputes between the United States and China over naval movements in the South China Sea are not likely to end anytime soon, analysts say, as the two sides are divided over what activities are allowed. International law on the matter is vague.

Beijing said Tuesday that a U.S. naval ship confronted by Chinese ships earlier this month had been carrying out “illegal surveying in China’s special economic zone,” in contravention of Chinese and international laws.

The Pentagon said the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, was harassed for several days by five Chinese ships, including a navy ship, in international waters about 75 miles south of China’s southern Hainan Island.

In the most serious incident, Chinese vessels “shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity” to the U.S. ship on Sunday, coming as close as 25 feet away, the Pentagon said. The U.S. has formally protested to the Chinese government, and says its ships “will continue to operate in international waters in accordance with customary international law.”

China’s reference to its economic zone arises from the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which recognizes exclusive economic zones (EEZ) stretching 200 nautical miles (about 230 miles) from a country’s coastline. The U.S. has not ratified UNCLOS.

EEZs aim to balance the desire of coastal states to control and exploit offshore resources beyond their 12 nautical mile territorial limit against other maritime powers’ interests in maintaining freedom of navigation. Experts say ambiguities in UNCLOS language, which is open to differing interpretations by different countries, have given rise to numerous disputes.

Beijing has long sought to prevent other countries from carrying out surveillance or surveying operations within its EEZ, and in 2002 enacted a law outlawing such activities without authorization. (At the same time, however, China frequently sends survey vessels into areas that Japan considers to be within its EEZ; the two countries have clashed for decades over surveying activities in waters both claim.)

Ron Huisken of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University said Wednesday that “both sides have dug in” and he did not expect that appealing to the “law” would help to resolve the issue.

He said he expected that China, “within the substantial gray areas in international law,” would want to reach informal understandings with the U.S. Navy that “err on the side of China’s interests in pushing the U.S. further away from its territory.”

“Traditionally, however, the U.S. has been fiercely protective of the freedom of the high seas,” he added. “A betting man would anticipate a steady diet of such incidents.”

Is intelligence-gathering a peaceful or threatening activity?

UNCLOS provides for “freedom of navigation and overflight” in EEZs. It says military activities inside a country’s EEZ must be “peaceful” and may not adversely affect the environment or economic resources of the coastal state.

Whether surveillance or surveying activities constitute “peaceful” acts is a matter of dispute, however.
In 2002, officials and scholars from the U.S. and several Asian countries, including China, met on the Indonesian island of Bali for a dialogue on “military and intelligence-gathering activities in EEZs,” co-sponsored by the East West Center in Hawaii and an Indonesian institute.

According to a East West Center report summarizing the dialogue, participants grappled with issues such as at what point a coastal country can reasonably regard intelligence-gathering to be a threatening activity.

One area of consensus was the determination that “no specific rules exist governing military activity in the EEZ except that they be peaceful, that is, non-hostile, non-aggressive, that they refrain from use of force or threat thereof, and that they do not adversely affect economic resources or the environment.”

But the many disagreements included different views of the meaning of terms like “peaceful” and “threat of force.”

China’s view on the matter was spelled out in a paper written in 2005 by two Chinese scholars, one of them a senior colonel in the armed forces, which stated unambiguously that “military and reconnaissance activities in the EEZ … encroach or infringe on the national security interests of the coastal State, and can be considered a use of force or a threat to use force against that State.”

Submarine detection

The USN Impeccable is a twin-hulled ocean surveillance ship designed to detect quiet foreign diesel and nuclear-powered submarines and to map the seabed for future antisubmarine warfare purposes, according to U.S. Navy data.

Towed behind and below the vessel are two sonar systems – an active one that emits a low frequency pulse and a passive one that listens for returning echoes. The system is known as SURTASS (surveillance towed-array sensor system).

“The SURTASS mission is to gather ocean acoustical data for antisubmarine warfare and rapidly transmit the information to the Navy for prompt analysis,” the Military Sealift Command said in a statement when the Impeccable was christened in 2000.

“China certainly would realize what this ship is up to, and would view its presence in those waters as threatening,” Jon Van Dyke, professor of law at the University of Hawaii School of Law – and an expert in maritime disputes and military activities in EEZs – said Wednesday.

“The U.S. anti-submarine low frequency active sonar is deemed vital by the United States in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, because we would then need to be able to find and destroy China’s subs, which are increasing in numbers,” he said.

During Sunday’s confrontation in the South China Sea, the Impeccable’s towed sonar systems appeared to be a particular target.

One of three photographs released by the U.S. Navy of the incident shows a crewmember on one of the Chinese vessels using a grapple hook in what the Navy said was “an apparent attempt to snag the towed acoustic array” of the Impeccable.

Hainan Island is home to a strategic Chinese Navy base that reportedly houses ballistic missile submarines.

Last May, the Jane’s group of defense publications released new commercially available satellite images which it said confirmed reports about the existence of an underground submarine base near Sanya, on the island’s southern tip.

It said 11 tunnel openings were visible at the base, as was one of China’s advanced new Type 094 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), known by NATO as the Jin-class and reportedly boasting 12 missile silos.

The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence in 2006 said China would probably aim to build and deploy five Jin-class submarines in order to have “a near-continuous at-sea SSBN presence.”

Resolving differences

Van Dyke, who played a key role in the EEZ dialogue in Bali in 2002, said Wednesday that in the course of those meetings it emerged that the Chinese Navy was behaving towards Japan and other neighbors in the same way as the U.S. Navy behaves towards China, “with regard to coastal surveillance etc.”

In trying to find a way to resolve its differences with China over permitted activities in EEZs, Van Dyke said, “the U.S. will probably try to convince China that it is in China’s interest – as an emerging naval power – to support the [U.S.-held] view that international law permits naval activities in the EEZs of other countries.”

Another factor that could “reduce the urgency of this confrontation” would be improving relations between China and Taiwan, he said.

Hainan island was also the location of an earlier, serious military-related incident involving the U.S. and China, which also raised questions in international law about legitimate activities in EEZs.

In April 2001, a U.S. Navy EP-3 spy plane on a “routine surveillance mission” was involved in a mid-air collision with one of two Chinese F-8 fighter jets which had been deployed to intercept the slow-moving aircraft. The Chinese pilot was killed.

Following the collision, the EP-3 issued a mayday warning and made an emergency landing at a military airfield on Hainan. The 24-person crew was held there for 11 days before being permitted to leave, and China only allowed the plane to be dismantled and airlifted home months later.

Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday that the harassment of the Impeccable was the “most serious” military dispute between the U.S. and China since the 2001 mid-air collision.

Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=44839

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer66.html

The Anti-Empire Report

February 3rd, 2009

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org

Change (in rhetoric) we can believe in.

I’ve said all along that whatever good changes might occur in regard to non-foreign policy issues, such as what’s already taken place concerning the environment and abortion, the Obama administration will not produce any significantly worthwhile change in US foreign policy; little done in this area will reduce the level of misery that the American Empire regularly brings down upon humanity. And to the extent that Barack Obama is willing to clearly reveal what he believes about anything controversial, he appears to believe in the empire.

The Obamania bubble should already have begun to lose some air with the multiple US bombings of Pakistan within the first few days following the inauguration. The Pentagon briefed the White House of its plans, and the White House had no objection. So bombs away – Barack Obama’s first war crime. The dozens of victims were, of course, all bad people, including all the women and children. As with all these bombings, we’ll never know the names of all the victims – It’s doubtful that even Pakistan knows – or what crimes they had committed to deserve the death penalty. Some poor Pakistani probably earned a nice fee for telling the authorities that so-and-so bad guy lived in that house over there; too bad for all the others who happened to live with the bad guy, assuming of course that the bad guy himself actually lived in that house over there.

The new White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, declined to answer questions about the first airstrikes, saying “I’m not going to get into these matters.”1 Where have we heard that before?

After many of these bombings in recent years, a spokesperson for the United States or NATO has solemnly declared: “We regret the loss of life.” These are the same words used by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on a number of occasions, but their actions were typically called “terrorist”.

I wish I could be an Obamaniac. I envy their enthusiasm. Here, in the form of an open letter to President Obama, are some of the “changes we can believe in” in foreign policy that would have to occur to win over the non-believers like me.

Iran
Just leave them alone. There is no “Iranian problem”. They are a threat to no one. Iran hasn’t invaded any other country in centuries. No, President Ahmadinejad did not threaten Israel with any violence. Stop patrolling the waters surrounding Iran with American warships. Stop halting Iranian ships to check for arms shipments to Hamas. (That’s generally regarded as an act of war.) Stop using Iranian dissident groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran. Stop kidnaping Iranian diplomats. Stop the continual spying and recruiting within Iran. And yet, with all that, you can still bring yourself to say: “If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.”2

Iran has as much right to arm Hamas as the US has to arm Israel. And there is no international law that says that the United States, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not. Iran has every reason to feel threatened. Will you continue to provide nuclear technology to India, which has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while threatening Iran, an NPT signatory, with sanctions and warfare?

Russia
Stop surrounding the country with new NATO members. Stop looking to instigate new “color” revolutions in former Soviet republics and satellites. Stop arming and supporting Georgia in its attempts to block the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhasia, the breakaway regions on the border of Russia. And stop the placement of anti-missile systems in Russia’s neighbors, the Czech Republic and Poland, on the absurd grounds that it’s to ward off an Iranian missile attack. It was Czechoslovakia and Poland that the Germans also used to defend their imperialist ambitions – The two countries were being invaded on the grounds that Germans there were being maltreated. The world was told.

“The U.S. government made a big mistake from the breakup of the Soviet Union,” said former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev last year. “At that time the Russian people were really euphoric about America and the U.S. was really number one in the minds of many Russians.” But, he added, the United States moved aggressively to expand NATO and appeared gleeful at Russia’s weakness.3

Cuba
Making it easier to travel there and send remittances is very nice (if, as expected, you do that), but these things are dwarfed by the need to end the US embargo. In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the almost forty years of this aggression. The suit held Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others. We can now add ten more years to all three figures. The negative, often crippling, effects of the embargo extend into every aspect of Cuban life.

In addition to closing Guantanamo prison, the adjacent US military base established in 1903 by American military force should be closed and the land returned to Cuba.

The Cuban Five, held prisoner in the United States for over 10 years, guilty only of trying to prevent American-based terrorism against Cuba, should be released. Actually there were 10 Cubans arrested; five knew that they could expect no justice in an American court and pled guilty to get shorter sentences.4

Iraq
Freeing the Iraqi people to death … Nothing short of a complete withdrawal of all US forces, military and contracted, and the closure of all US military bases and detention and torture centers, can promise a genuine end to US involvement and the beginning of meaningful Iraqi sovereignty. To begin immediately. Anything less is just politics and imperialism as usual. In six years of war, the Iraqi people have lost everything of value in their lives. As the Washington Post reported in 2007: “It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.”5 The good news is that the Iraqi people have 5,000 years experience in crafting a society to live in. They should be given the opportunity.

Saudi Arabia
Demand before the world that this government enter the 21st century (or at least the 20th), or the United States has to stop pretending that it gives a damn about human rights, women, homosexuals, religious liberty, and civil liberties. The Bush family had long-standing financial ties to members of the Saudi ruling class. What will be your explanation if you maintain the status quo?

Haiti
Reinstate the exiled Jean Bertrand Aristide to the presidency, which he lost when the United States overthrew him in 2004. To seek forgiveness for our sins, give the people of Haiti lots and lots of money and assistance.

Colombia
Stop giving major military support to a government that for years has been intimately tied to death squads, torture, and drug trafficking; in no other country in the world have so many progressive candidates for public office, unionists, and human-rights activists been murdered. Are you concerned that this is the closest ally the United States has in all of Latin America?

Venezuela
Hugo Chavez may talk too much but he’s no threat except to the capitalist system of Venezuela and, by inspiration, elsewhere in Latin America. He has every good historical reason to bad-mouth American foreign policy, including Washington’s role in the coup that overthrew him in 2002. If you can’t understand why Chavez is not in love with what the United States does all over the world, I can give you a long reading list.

Put an end to support for Chavez’s opposition by the Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, and other US government agencies. US diplomats should not be meeting with Venezuelans plotting coups against Chavez, nor should they be interfering in elections.

Send Luis Posada from Florida to Venezuela, which has asked for his extradition for his masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airline in 1976, taking 73 lives. Extradite the man, or try him in the US, or stop talking about the war on terrorism.

And please try not to repeat the nonsense about Venezuela being a dictatorship. It’s a freer society than the United States. It has, for example, a genuine opposition daily media, non-existent in the United States. If you doubt that, try naming a single American daily newspaper or TV network that was unequivocally against the US invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam. Or even against two of them? How about one? Is there a single one that supports Hamas and/or Hezbollah? A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a story concerning a possible Israeli attack upon Iran, and stated: “Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations.”6

Alas, Mr. President, among other disparaging remarks, you’ve already accused Chavez of being “a force that has interrupted progress in the region.”7 This is a statement so contrary to the facts, even to plain common sense, so hypocritical given Washington’s history in Latin America, that I despair of you ever freeing yourself from the ideological shackles that have bound every American president of the past century. It may as well be inscribed in their oath of office – that a president must be antagonistic toward any country that has expressly rejected Washington as the world’s savior. You made this remark in an interview with Univision, Venezuela’s leading, implacable media critic of the Chavez government. What regional progress could you be referring to, the police state of Colombia?

Bolivia
Stop American diplomats, Peace Corps volunteers, Fulbright scholars, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, from spying and fomenting subversion inside Bolivia. As the first black president of the United States, you could try to cultivate empathy toward, and from, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Congratulate Bolivian president Evo Morales on winning a decisive victory on a recent referendum to approve a new constitution which enshrines the rights of the indigenous people and, for the first time, institutes separation of church and state.

Afghanistan
Perhaps the most miserable people on the planet, with no hope in sight as long as the world’s powers continue to bomb, invade, overthrow, occupy, and slaughter in their land. The US Army is planning on throwing 30,000 more young American bodies into the killing fields and is currently building eight new major bases in southern Afghanistan. Is that not insane? If it makes sense to you I suggest that you start the practice of the president accompanying the military people when they inform American parents that their child has died in a place called Afghanistan.

If you pull out from this nightmare, you could also stop bombing Pakistan. Leave even if it results in the awful Taliban returning to power. They at least offer security to the country’s wretched, and indications are that the current Taliban are not all fundamentalists.

But first, close Bagram prison and other detention camps, which are worse than Guantanamo.

And stop pretending that the United States gives a damn about the Afghan people and not oil and gas pipelines which can bypass Russia and Iran. The US has been endeavoring to fill the power vacuum in Central Asia created by the Soviet Union’s dissolution in order to assert Washington’s domination over a region containing the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world. Is Afghanistan going to be your Iraq?

Israel
The most difficult task for you, but the one that would earn for you the most points. To declare that Israel is no longer the 51st state of the union would bring down upon your head the wrath of the most powerful lobby in the world and its many wealthy followers, as well as the Christian-fundamentalist Right and much of the media. But if you really want to see peace between Israel and Palestine you must cut off all military aid to Israel, in any form: hardware, software, personnel, money. And stop telling Hamas it has to recognize Israel and renounce violence until you tell Israel that it has to recognize Hamas and renounce violence.

North Korea
Bush called the country part of “the axis of evil”, and Kim Jong Il a “pygmy” and “a spoiled child at a dinner table.”8 But you might try to understand where Kim Jong Il is coming from. He sees that UN agencies went into Iraq and disarmed it, and then the United States invaded. The logical conclusion is not to disarm, but to go nuclear.

Central America
Stop interfering in the elections of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, year after year. The Cold War has ended. And though you can’t undo the horror perpetrated by the United States in the region in the 1980s, you can at least be kind to the immigrants in the US who came here trying to escape the long-term consequences of that terrible decade.

Vietnam
In your inauguration speech you spoke proudly of those “who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom … For us, they fought and died, in places like … Khe Sanh.” So it is your studied and sincere opinion that the 58,000 American sevicemembers who died in Vietnam, while helping to kill over a million Vietnamese, gave their life for our prosperity and freedom? Would you care to defend that proposition without resort to any platitudes?

You might also consider this: In all the years since the Vietnam War ended, the three million Vietnamese suffering from diseases and deformities caused by US sprayings of the deadly chemical “Agent Orange” have received from the United States no medical attention, no environmental remediation, no compensation, and no official apology.

Kosovo
Stop supporting the most gangster government in the world, which has specialized in kidnaping, removing human body parts for sale, heavy trafficking in drugs, trafficking in women, various acts of terrorism, and ethnic cleansing of Serbs. This government would not be in power if the Bush administration had not seen them as America’s natural allies. Do you share that view? UN Resolution 1244, adopted in 1999, reaffirmed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to which Serbia is now the recognized successor state, and established that Kosovo was to remain part of Serbia. Why do we have a huge and permanent military base in that tiny self-declared country?

NATO
From protecting Europe against a [mythical] Soviet invasion to becoming an occupation army in Afghanistan. Put an end to this historical anachronism, what Russian leader Vladimir called “the stinking corpse of the cold war.”9. You can accomplish this simply by leaving the organization. Without the United States and its never-ending military actions and officially-designated enemies, the organization would not even have the pretense of a purpose, which is all it has left. Members have had to be bullied, threatened and bribed to send armed forces to Afghanistan.

School of the Americas
Latin American countries almost never engage in war with each other, or any other countries. So for what kind of warfare are its military officers being trained by the United States? To suppress their own people. Close this school (the name has now been changed to protect the guilty) at Ft. Benning, Georgia that the United States has used to prepare two generations of Latin American military officers for careers in overthrowing progressive governments, death squads, torture, holding down dissent, and other charming activities. The British are fond of saying that the Empire was won on the playing fields of Eton. Americans can say that the road to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram began in the classrooms of the School of the Americas.

Torture
Your executive orders concerning this matter of utmost importance are great to see, but they still leave something to be desired. They state that the new standards ostensibly putting an end to torture apply to any “armed conflict”. But what if your administration chooses to view future counterterrorism and other operations as not part of an “armed conflict”? And no mention is made of “rendition” – kidnaping a man off the street, throwing him in a car, throwing a hood over his head, stripping off his clothes, placing him in a diaper, shackling him from every angle, and flying him to a foreign torture dungeon. Why can’t you just say that this and all other American use of proxy torturers is banned? Forever.

It’s not enough to say that you’re against torture or that the United States “does not torture” or “will not torture”. George W. Bush said the same on a regular basis. To show that you’re not George W. Bush you need to investigate those responsible for the use of torture, even if this means prosecuting a small army of Bush administration war criminals.

You aren’t off to a good start by appointing former CIA official John O. Brennan as your top adviser on counterterrorism. Brennan has called “rendition” a “vital tool” and praised the CIA’s interrogation techniques for providing “lifesaving” intelligence.10 Whatever were you thinking, Barack?

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi
Free this Libyan man from his prison in Scotland, where he is serving a life sentence after being framed by the United States for the bombing of PanAm flight 103 in December 1988, which took the lives of 270 people over Scotland. Iran was actually behind the bombing – as revenge for the US shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July, killing 290 – not Libya, which the US accused for political reasons.11 Nations do not behave any more cynical than that. Megrahi lies in prison now dying of cancer, but still the US and the UK will not free him. It would be too embarrassing to admit to 20 years of shameless lying.

Mr. President, there’s a lot more to be undone in our foreign policy if you wish to be taken seriously as a moral leader like Martin Luther King, Jr.: banning the use of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, and other dreadful weapons; joining the International Criminal Court instead of trying to sabotage it; making a number of other long-overdue apologies in addition to the one mentioned re Vietnam; and much more. You’ve got your work cut out for you if you really want to bring some happiness to this sad old world, make America credible and beloved again, stop creating armies of anti-American terrorists, and win over people like me.

And do you realize that you can eliminate all state and federal budget deficits in the United States, provide free health care and free university education to every American, pay for an unending array of worthwhile social and cultural programs, all just by ending our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not starting any new ones, and closing down the Pentagon’s 700+ military bases? Think of it as the peace dividend Americans were promised when the Cold War would end some day, but never received. How about you delivering it, Mr. President? It’s not too late.

But you are committed to the empire; and the empire is committed to war. Too bad.

Notes
Washington Post, January 24, 2009 ↩
Interview with al Arabiya TV, January 27, 2009 ↩
Gorbachev speaking in Florida, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, April 17, 2008 ↩
http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/polpris.htm ↩
Washington Post, May 5, 2007, p.1 ↩
New York Times, January 11, 2009 ↩
Washington Post, January 19, 2009↩
Newsweek, May 27, 2002 ↩
Press Trust of India (news agency), December 21, 2007 ↩
Washington Post, November 26, 2008 ↩
http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm ↩
–

William Blum is the author of:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.