August 6, 2010 was the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  Monday, August 9 was the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

At the invitation of Maui Peace Action and other interfaith and peace groups, I spoke at the Maui commemoration of the Hiroshima A-bombing. My talk was entitled “Remembering Hiroshima as an Act of Liberation”.

Humanity has been hostage to nuclear terror since Hiroshima.  Remembering this event is about facing the horror and transforming this violence into compassion, hope and social change.

As John Pilger explains powerfully in the article below, the world has also been hostage to a great lie to justify the Bomb, the argument that the Bomb was dropped to end the war and save lives:

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate “good war”, whose “ethical bath”, as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives.

In reality, Japan was trying to surrender, and the bomb was not necessary to end the war.   The real reason for dropping the bomb was to keep Russia out of the war in the Pacific and curtail its influence in the post-war world order, and to demonstrate the power of the weapon to the world.

In other words, the Bomb was dropped as an act of terrorism.   The U.S. “uses” nuclear weapons the same way an armed robber uses a loaded gun to threaten, intimidate and coerce obedience.

The Maui meeting was attended by approximately 70-80 people of all ages and different ethnicities.     It was prayerful, political and hopeful. I was impressed with the presentation by Buddhist youth involved in the Arms Down campaign of the world Religions for Peace.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20444.htm

The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today

By John Pilger

06/08/08 “ICH” — – On the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, John Pilger describes the ‘progression of lies’ from the dust of that detonated city, to the wars of today – and the threatened attack on Iran.

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, “a bluish light, something like an electrical short”, after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. “I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead.” Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.

In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb’s blast. It was the first big lie. “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin” said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. “I write this as a warning to the world,” reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called “an atomic plague”. For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared – and vindicated.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate “good war”, whose “ethical bath”, as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. “Even without the atomic bombing attacks,” concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, “air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that … Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including “capitulation even if the terms were hard”. Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.

Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus “war on terror”, the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make “pre-emptive” nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current “threat”. But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK – just as the lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.

The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America’s Defence Intelligence Estimate says “with high confidence” that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media “fact” that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.

This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.

In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country’s political and military establishment, threatened “an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland”. This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.

The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that “we did not know”? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called “a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence”? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.

www.johnpilger.com

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/2061/

Stop NATO
July 10, 2010

Pentagon Provokes New Crisis With China

Rick Rozoff

Three news features appearing earlier this week highlight tensions between the United States and the People’s Republic of China that, at least in relation to the language used to describe them, would have seemed unimaginable even a few months ago and are evocative more of the Korean War era than of any time since the entente cordiale initiated by the Richard Nixon-Mao Zedong meeting in Beijing in 1972.

To indicate the seriousness of the matter, the stories are from Global Times, a daily newspaper published in conjunction with the People’s Daily, official press organ of the ruling Communist Party of China, and Time, preeminent American weekly news magazine. Both accounts use as their point of departure and source of key information a July 4 report in Hong Kong’s major English-language daily.

On July 6 writer Li Jing penned a news article for Global Times called “US subs reach Asian ports: report,” which detailed the following recent developments:

“Three of the largest submarines of the US Seventh Fleet surfaced in Asia-Pacific ports last week, the South China Morning Post reported Monday [July 5]. The appearance of the USS Michigan in Pusan, South Korea, the USS Ohio in Subic Bay, the Philippines, and the USS Florida in the strategic Indian Ocean outpost of Diego Garcia was a show of force not seen since the end of the Cold War, the paper said, adding that the position of those three ports looks like a siege of China.” [1

The piece from the Hong Kong newspaper cited was entitled “US submarines emerge in show of military might: Message unlikely to be lost on Beijing as 3 vessels turn up in Asian ports,” and was in fact dated July 4.

The author, South China Morning Post Asia correspondent Greg Torode, described the simultaneous arrival of three “Ohio-class submarines” equipped with “a vast quantity of Tomahawk cruise missiles” as a reflection of “the trend of escalating submarine activity in East Asia….” [2]

He further added this noteworthy data: “Between them, the three submarines can carry 462 Tomahawks, boosting by an estimated 60 per cent-plus the potential Tomahawk strike force of the entire Japanese-based Seventh Fleet – the core projection of US military power in East Asia.”

The author quotes without identifying his name or nation a veteran Asian military attache with reported close ties to both Chinese and U.S. military officials: “460-odd Tomahawks is a huge amount of potential firepower in anybody’s language.

“It is another sign that the US is determined to not just maintain its military dominance in Asia, but to be seen doing so…that is a message for Beijing and for everybody else, whether you are a US ally or a nation sitting on the fence.” [3]

[USS Ohio]

On July 8 Time magazine’s Mark Thompson elaborated on the earlier report with language, including that of his title, “U.S. Missiles Deployed Near China Send a Message,” derived from the South China Morning Post piece, which Thompson claims contained information planted by “U.S. officials…on July 4, no less” [4] in a clear signal to the government in mainland China.

The Time journalist added details, though, not in the original story, replete with a good deal of editorializing that perhaps serves the same source he attributes the contents of the Hong Kong article to and for the same reason: As a shot across the bow to China.

His account of last week’s deployments included: “A new class of U.S. superweapon had suddenly surfaced nearby. It was an Ohio-class submarine, which for decades carried only nuclear missiles targeted against the Soviet Union, and then Russia.”

The U.S. has eighteen nuclear-powered Ohio class ballistic missile submarines, fourteen still armed with nuclear warhead-tipped Trident missiles and four which “hold up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles each, capable of hitting anything within 1,000 miles with non-nuclear warheads.”

“The 14 Trident-carrying subs are useful in the unlikely event of a nuclear Armageddon, and Russia remains their prime target. But the Tomahawk-outfitted quartet carries a weapon that the U.S. military has used repeatedly against targets in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Sudan.” [5]

With the arrival of the USS Ohio in the Philippines, the USS Michigan in South Korea and the USS Florida “in the strategic Indian Ocean outpost of Diego Garcia” [6] on the same day, “the Chinese military awoke to find as many as 462 new Tomahawks deployed by the U.S. in its neighborhood.” [7]

The Time report also revealed that all four Ohio class Tomahawk-armed submarines were operationally deployed away from their home ports for the first time.

Thompson wrote that the coordinated actions were “part of a policy by the U.S. government to shift firepower from the Atlantic to the Pacific theater, which Washington sees as the military focus of the 21st century.”

Regarding the submarines still carrying Trident missiles, he rhetorically added, “Why 14 subs, as well as bombers and land-based missiles carrying nuclear weapons, are still required to deal with the Russian threat is a topic for another day.” [8]

All three journalists cited – Jing, Torode and Thompson – place the U.S. submarine deployments within a broader and also a more pressing context.

The South China Morning Post writer stated: “In policies drafted under then-president George W. Bush, a Republican, and continued by the administration of his successor, Democrat Barack Obama, the Pentagon is shifting 60 per cent of its 53 fast-attack [as distinct from ballistic and guided missile] submarines to the Pacific – a process that is now virtually complete.

“But the presence of the larger cruise-missile submarines shows that, at times, the US forward posture will be significantly larger.”

The USS Ohio, for example, “has been operating out of Guam for most of the last year, taking advantage of the island’s expanding facilities to extend its operations in the western Pacific.

“It is due to return soon, but the Florida and the Michigan are likely to remain in the region for many months yet, using Guam and possibly Diego Garcia for essential maintenance and crew changes.”

Additionally, “The presence of the Florida, based on the US east coast, appears to confirm the US is still routinely bringing submarines under the arctic ice cap to East Asia.” [9]

Just as the Pentagon is moving nuclear submarines under the northern polar ice cap to the Indian Ocean, so it has recently reached an “agreement [that] will allow troops to fly directly from the United States over the North Pole” to Afghanistan and “the region” by way of Kazakhstan, which borders China as well as Russia. [10]

The U.S. military “siege of China” is proceeding on several fronts, on land as well as under water and in Central as well as South and East Asia. But what primarily had been a policy of surveillance and probing China’s perimeter is now entering a new phase.

That the U.S. currently has over 60 per cent of the Tomahawk cruise missiles assigned to its Japan-based Seventh Fleet near China emphasizes the qualitative escalation of Washington’s show of strength vis-a-vis Beijing. One related to, as was seen above, a strategic shift of attack submarines nearer China and also to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula that was exacerbated by the sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, in March.

There has even been speculation that U.S. submarine deployments and other “messages” delivered to China of late were designed to pressure Beijing into taking a tougher stance toward North Korea over the Cheonan incident. What journalists have been referring to as messages would in an earlier age have been called saber-rattling and gunboat diplomacy.

U.S.-China relations sharply deteriorated this January when the Obama administration finalized an almost $6.5 billion arms sales package for Taiwan which includes 200 Patriot missiles. [11] An article on the subject in the New York Times on January 31 was titled, revealing enough, “U.S. Arms for Taiwan Send Beijing a Message.”

China suspended military ties with the U.S., and bad blood has persisted throughout the year, resulting in Secretary of Defense Robert Gates scrapping plans to visit Beijing early last month when he was effectively disinvited by Chinese officialdom on the prompting of the military.

The White House and the Pentagon have been sending a number of unequivocal – and increasingly provocative – messages to China this year.

The new U.S. administration signalled a confrontational approach early on. In May of 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, barely three months in her post, stated, “The Obama administration is working to improve deteriorating U.S. relations with a number of Latin American nations to counter growing Iranian, Chinese and Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere….” [12]

Later in the year then Director of National Intelligence (and retired admiral and former commander-in-chief of the Pacific Command) Dennis Blair released the latest quadrennial National Intelligence Strategy report which said “Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea pose the greatest challenges to the United States’ national interests. [13]

While Blair headed up the Pacific Command (PACOM) from 1999-2002, his role included overseeing a vast area of the planet that includes China (since the Ronald Reagan administration assigned it to that military command in 1983).

Arrogating the right to divide the entire world into military zones, areas of operation, has never been attempted by any other nation, any group of nations, not even all the nations of the world collectively (in the United Nations or otherwise). But the U.S. has and does do just that. It has even added two new Unified Combatant Commands – Northern Command and Africa Command – in recent years, in 2002 and 2007 respectively.

The Pacific Command is the oldest and largest of the six current regional commands (the others being the Africa, Northern, European, Central and Southern Commands), and was formed during the dawning of the Cold War in 1947. Its area of responsibility takes in over 50 per cent of the world – 105 million square miles – 36 nations and almost 60 per cent of the world’s population.

300,000 troops from all major branches of the U.S. armed forces – the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy – are assigned to it, 20 per cent of all active duty American service members.

Pacific Command is in charge of military defense treaties with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines and South Korea.

The U.S. is also alone in assigning the world’s oceans and seas to naval commands. Washington has six naval fleets – the Fourth Fleet (the Caribbean, Central and South America) was reactivated in 2008 after being disbanded in 1950) – and just as Pacific Command is the largest unified, multi-service command, so the Seventh is the largest forward-deployed fleet, with 50-60 warships, 350 aircraft and as many as 60,000 Sailors and Marines at any given time. It is based in Japan and its area of responsibility includes over 50 million square miles of the (largely western) Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The U.S. also has eleven aircraft carriers, ten of them nuclear-powered and all eleven part of strike groups. [14] (China has no and Russia one carrier.)

The Time magazine article quoted from earlier mentioned that the deployment of four U.S. guided missile submarines to East Asia and the Indian Ocean is not the only development that China needs to be concerned about. The U.S. is simultaneously presiding over six-week biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military exercises in Hawaii with over 20,000 troops, 36 warships and submarines (25 American) and 180 planes and helicopters.

[RIMPAC 2010]

This year’s RIMPAC, which began on June 23 and is to be completed by the end of July, includes for the first time the participation of France, Colombia – with which the U.S. has recently concluded an agreement for the use of seven of its military bases [15] – and the Southeast Asia nations of Malaysia and Singapore. The other countries involved are Australia, Canada, Chile, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Peru, South Korea and Thailand. The five-week war games involve “missile exercises and the sinking of three abandoned vessels playing the role of enemy ships.” [16]

The combined task force commander for RIMPAC 2010 is commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, whose area of responsibility is approximately 50 million square miles of the eastern Pacific, Vice Admiral Richard Hunt, who stated, “This is the largest RIMPAC that we’ve had,” and one which “clearly focuses on maritime domain awareness dealing with expanded military operations across the complete spectrum of warfare.” [17]

Time’s Mark Thompson also wrote: “Closer to China, CARAT 2010 – for Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training – just got underway [July 5] off Singapore. The operation involves 17,000 personnel and 73 ships from the U.S., Singapore, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

“China is absent from both exercises, and that’s no oversight.” [18]

This February Cobra Gold 2010, “the largest multinational military exercise in the world,” [19}, was launched in Thailand (separated from China by only one nation, either Laos or Myanmar) and as with all previous Cobra Gold war games was run by U.S. Pacific Command and the Royal Thai Supreme Command. Joining the U.S. and Thailand in this year’s exercises, designed “to build interoperability between the United States and its Asia-Pacific regional partners,” [20] were the armed forces of Japan, Indonesia, Singapore and, for the first time, South Korea.

From June 8-25 the latest U.S. Air Force-led Red Flag Alaska air maneuvers were held near the eastern Pacific. “The Red Flag exercises, conducted in four-to-six cycles a year by the 414th Combat Training Squadron of the 57th Wing, are very realistic aerial war games. The purpose is to train pilots from the U.S., NATO and other allied countries for real combat situations.” [21]

Over a thousand airmen from five nations – the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Romania and Belgium – assembled at Alaska’s Elmendorf and Eielson Air Force Bases for air combat training which “unites forces from all over the world.”

“South Korea, a country already accustomed to working with U.S. troops, is also in Alaska to strengthen the two nations’ ties after the sinking of a South Korean warship by a North Korean submarine.

“‘We have the American Air Force in Korea, and the coalition and the combined working environment is very important,’ said Lt. Hoon Min Kim, a member of South Korea’s air force. ‘And being able to perform under a combined environment is therefore essential as well.’” [22]

The incorporation of progressively more Asia-Pacific nations into what has been referred to as an Asian NATO is by no means directed solely at North Korea nor is it understood as such by officials in Beijing.

Participants in that arrangement, among them Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Mongolia, have troops serving under NATO in Afghanistan. Recently 140 new South Korean forces arrived at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to reinforce a base in Parwan province recently subjected to repeated rocket attacks. Seoul’s troop strength in the war zone is now at 230.

This month the government of Singapore announced it will increase its soldiers in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force to “a record 162, from 97 last year.”

“Next month, the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) will send a 52-man unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) team – its biggest deployment to Afghanistan – to Oruzgan [Uruzgan], one of two provinces where Singapore has troops.” [23]

Earlier this year NATO announced that Mongolia and South Korea have become the 45th and 46th nations to provide it with troops for the war in Afghanistan. Mongolia borders both China and Russia and is the object of intense efforts by the U.S. to increase military cooperation and integration. [24] On July 6 NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy Dirk Brengelmann paid a two-day visit to South Korea, where he stated, “Our security interests and security interests of countries like Korea coincide today more than ever.”

A news report of his visit paraphrased his comments as asserting that “The world’s biggest military alliance, NATO, is looking to increase cooperation with South Korea and other partners beyond Europe and North America,” and added that “Speaking of cooperation, Brengelmann noted NATO’s show of support for South Korea in light of the sinking of its warship Cheonan….The diplomat said some NATO members also serve on the U.N. Security Council and that the NATO members will try to ensure any Security Council action on the Cheonan sinking will represent their views expressed in the NATO statement.” [25]

Another country that shares borders with China and Russia, Kazakhstan, has allowed the U.S. and NATO transit and overflight rights for the Afghan war and last week the nation’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, signed a law permitting the Pentagon to ship “special cargo” – armored vehicles – through his country.

The U.S. and NATO have transited hundreds of thousands of troops through the Manas Air Base (now Transit Center at Manas) in Kyrgyzstan, which also borders China, since 2001 and in recent months troops have passed in and out from Afghanistan at the rate of 55,000 a month, 660,000 a year. [26] Washington has announced plans to open new training bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the second nation also adjoining China.

With Afghanistan and Pakistan, which also have borders with China, the U.S. and NATO have a military presence in five nations on China’s western flank and a foothold in Mongolia. The U.S. and NATO war in South Asia will enter its tenth year this autumn with no sign of Western military presence departing from China’s backyard.

The U.S. military remains ensconced in Japan and South Korea, has returned to the Philippines (including camps in Mindanao), is solidifying bilateral and multilateral military relations with practically all nations in Southeast Asia, and for the past five years has cultivated India as a military partner. [India is currently an observer at the RIMPAC exercises.) Japan, Taiwan and Australia are being integrated into a U.S.-designed regional and broader global interceptor missile system.

The U.S. is conducting regular military exercises, building military partnerships, stationing troops and opening bases around China’s periphery, in addition to the positioning of warships, submarines and aircraft carriers in the waters off its coasts.

What alarms China most at the moment, though, is a proposed joint U.S.-South Korean military exercise in the Yellow Sea, enclosed by both Koreas to the east and China to the north and west.

China’s Global Times recently quoted Xu Guangqian, military strategist at the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Sciences, issuing this warning: “China’s position on the Yellow Sea issue demonstrates its resolution to safeguard national rights and interests. It also reflects that China is increasingly aware of the fact that its strategic space has confronted threats from other countries.” [27]

China, which just concluded six days of naval drills of its own in the East China Sea, had more reason to be concerned when it was disclosed earlier this month that a U.S. aircraft carrier would join the maneuvers off its Yellow Sea coast.

On July 8 China renewed its opposition to the planned U.S.-South Korean war games, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang telling reporters, “China has expressed its serious concerns with relevant parties. We are firmly opposed to foreign military vessels engaging in activities that undermine China’s security interests in the Yellow Sea or waters close to China.” [28]

An unsigned editorial in the Chinese Global Times of July 8 stated, “Beijing sees the joint exercise not only as being aimed at Pyongyang, but also as a direct threat to its territorial waters and coastline,” and blamed South Korean President Lee Myung-bak for worsening relations between the two nations:

“It is not known whether Lee had thought of China’s reaction when he announced in May the drill with the US.

“Did he foresee Chinese people’s anger? Or, did he intend to provoke the country on the other side of the Yellow Sea?

“It is a shame and a provocation on China’s doorstep.

“If a US aircraft carrier enters the Yellow Sea, it will mean a major setback to Seoul’s diplomacy, as hostility between the peoples of China and South Korea will probably escalate, which Beijing and Seoul have been working for years to avoid.” [29]

President Lee met with his American counterpart, Barack Obama, on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in Toronto late last month, during which a previous arrangement to transfer wartime command of South Korean forces to the nation in 2012 were postponed if not abandoned. In Obama’s words, “One of the topics that we discussed is that we have arrived at an agreement that the transition of operational control for alliance activities in the Korean peninsula will take place in 2015.” In the five-year interim “if war were to break out on the Korean peninsula the United States would assume operational command of South Korean forces.” [30]

If Washington is planning direct intervention on the Korean Peninsula as its military buildup in the region, including off China’s shores, might indicate, the words of former South Korean president Kim Young-Sam a decade ago are worth recalling. Two years after stepping down as head of state, Kim revealed to one of his nation’s main newspapers that he had intervened to prevent a second Korean war, that his government “stopped US President Bill Clinton from launching an air strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities in June 1994.”

He initiated a last-minute phone conversation with the U.S. president which “saved the Korean peninsula from an imminent war,” as “The Clinton government was preparing a war” by deploying an aircraft carrier off the eastern coast of North Korea “close enough for its war planes to hit the North’s nuclear facilities in Yongbyon.”

Furthermore, Kim warned the U.S. ambassador in Seoul that “another war on the Korean peninsula would turn all of Korea into a bloodbath, killing between 10 and 20 million people and destroying South Korea’s prosperous economy.” [31]

Any catastrophic event on the Korean Peninsula, and war is the ultimate cataclysm, could lead to hundreds of thousands of North Korean refugees fleeing to Russia and millions to China.

The nearly nine-year war in Afghanistan being waged by the U.S. and NATO has led to an explosion of violence and destabilization in three nations flanking China: Afghanistan itself, Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Also, since 2001 Afghanistan has become the world’s largest producer of opium and hashish, flooding the European and other drug markets. A forum entitled “Afghan Drug Production – A Challenge to the International Community” was held in Moscow a month ago.

A Russian report on the meeting stated “The situation around drug production in Afghanistan has gained a catastrophic character. Some 100,000 people died globally from Afghan drugs in 2009 alone. In all, Afghan-made opiates have claimed one million human lives in the past decade, and 16 million more ruined their health.” [32] 30,000 of the drug-related deaths occurred in Russia. The United Nations estimates that Afghanistan currently accounts for 92 per cent of world opium cultivation.

China and Russia are viewed as, if not challengers to U.S. global dominance, impediments to its further consolidation. And not in the military sphere but in the fields of economics, trade, energy and transportation. Destabilization of their neighborhoods and frontiers is one manner of limiting competition.

All means fair and foul are employed to eliminate obstacles to uncontested supremacy, and what the world’s sole military superpower (the term is President Obama’s from his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech) truly excels at is expanding its international military machine with an unflinching willingness to use it.

1) Global Times, July 8, 2010
2) South China Morning Post, July 4, 2010 http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2c913216495213d5df646910cba0a0a0/?vgnextoid=6c48dbee25999210VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=teaser&ss=Asia+%26+World&s=News (Subscribers only)
3) Ibid
4) Time, July 8, 2010

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2002378,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

5) Ibid
6) South China Morning Post, July 4, 2010
7) Time, July 8, 2010
8) Ibid
9) South China Morning Post, July 4, 2010
10) Kazakhstan: U.S., NATO Seek Military Outpost Between Russia And China
Stop NATO, April 14, 2010

Kazakhstan: U.S., NATO Seek Military Outpost Between Russia And China

11) U.S.-China Military Tensions Grow
Stop NATO, January 19, 2010

U.S.-China Military Tensions Grow

12) Associated Press, May 1, 2009
13) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 16, 2009
14) U.S. Consolidates Military Network In Asia-Pacific Region
April 28, 2010

U.S. Consolidates Military Network In Asia-Pacific Region

15) Colombia: U.S. Escalates War Plans In Latin America
Stop NATO, July 22, 2009

Colombia: U.S. Escalates War Plans In Latin America

16) Time, July 8, 2010
17) Navy Times, July 6, 2010
18) Ibid
19) American Forces Press Service, January 13, 2010
20) Ibid
21) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_(USAF)
22) KTUU TV, June 24, 2010
23) AsiaOne, July 1, 2010
24) Mongolia: Pentagon Trojan Horse Wedged Between China And Russia
Stop NATO, March 31, 2010

Mongolia: Pentagon Trojan Horse Wedged Between China And Russia

25) Yonhap News Agency, July 6, 2010
26) Kyrgyzstan And The Battle For Central Asia
Stop NATO, April 7, 2010

Kyrgyzstan And The Battle For Central Asia

27) Global Times, July 6, 2010
28) Agence France-Presse, July 8, 2010
29) Global Times, July 8, 2010
30) Agence France-Presse, July 27, 2010
31) Agence France-Presse, May 24, 2000
32) Itar-Tass, June 9, 2010

http://www.spark946.org/bugsboard/index.php?BBS=eng_1&action=viewForm&uid=64&page=1

The Struggle against US bases in Korea – for Denuclearization and Peace

May 1, 2010

Oh Hye-ran,  Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea (SPARK)

Korea-U.S. Alliance – Obstacle to Peace

In July 1953, only 2 months after they signed the “Korean War Armistice Agreement,” South Korea and the United States entered into an alliance through the “Korea-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty”. A military alliance is an arrangement in which parties come together for the purpose of a potential war. The South Korea-U.S. alliance is premised on a temporary truce after the Korean War, and its continued existence means the state of war has not yet ended.

Article IV: 60 of the Korean War Armistice Agreement recommended that “a political conference” be held “within three (3) months after the Armistice Agreement is signed”, “to settle through negotiation the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea and the peaceful settlement of the Korean question”. The Korea-U.S. alliance contradicts Article IV: 60, which recommends the replacement of the Armistice Agreement with

Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea (SPARK) presentation May 5, 2010, a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty side event:

Truth about the N. Korean nuclear issue and the key to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula

1. The reality of the US nuclear war threat against the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, i.e. North Korea)

(1) The establishment of ROK (Republic of Korea, i.e. South Korea)-US alliance: the beginning of the US attack threat towards the DPRK

The Korean War that began in 1950 came to a conclusion with the Korean War Armistice Agreement on July 27, 1953. However, according to international law, the Agreement only meant a temporary cease fire and as such it did not end the war. Thus, Article IV 60 in the Agreement stated that a political conference should be held to discuss “the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea, the peaceful settlement of the Korean question, etc.” But, on August 8, 1953, the US and the ROK signed a Mutual Defense Treaty and established alliance relationship. The Mutual Defense Treaty is an act of violating Article II 13, 3 and 4 that prohibits the increase of military personnel and equipment in Korea from outside and Article II 12 that prescribes the complete cessation of all hostilities in Korea. Thus, the Mutual Defense Treaty is a breach of the purpose of the Korean War Armistice Agreement for the peaceful settlement of the Korean question.

(2) The US nuclear weapons deployment in the Korean Peninsula and its nuclear war threat against the DPRK

a. The US nuclear war threat against the DPRK

During the Korean War the US twice warned of its use of nuclear weapons. On June 21, 1957, the US declared one-sidedly the abolition of Article II 13, 4 and launched its tactic nuclear weapons in the ROK. The US, from 1976 to 1994, practices the Teamspirit exercise that was the largest scale nuclear attack exercise against the DPRK. Such exercise has continued with different names. While the US withdrew tactic nuclear weapons from the ROK in 1991, it has maintained the so-called “extended nuclear deterrence” (nuclear umbrella). From January to June in 1998, the US operated nuclear weapons drop exercises. The Bush government designated the DPRK as a target for first nuclear strike in the US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) of 2002 and strived to develop nuclear bombs to destroy the DPRK underground nuclear facilities. The US military station in Pyongtaik which will have the US “KORCOM” is being built for protection from the DPRK nuclear attacks in the case of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.

b. The US operation plans to attack the DPRK

The US designed Operation Plan 5027 with a view to occupy Pyongyang. The OPLAN 5027-98 includes a preemptive strike plan against the DPRK. In 2002 the ROK Defense Minister and the US Secretary of Defense agreed to the strategic planning guidance manifesting that OPLAN 5027 purports to destroy the DPRK military army, overthrow the DPRK regime, and promote conditions for the reunification of Korea. In preparation for the US’s returning wartime operation control authority to the ROK, the US has been working on “New Combined Operation Plan 5012” which will integrate the existing OPLAN 5027 and 5026. Along with 5027, the US has designed several Operation Plans. OPLAN 5026 is designed for the US preemptive precise strike against the DPRK and 5029 is designed for the US military intervention at the time of an emergency situation in the DPRK, including the seizure of weapons of massive destruction. Particularly, OPLAN 5029 is a very provocative plan in that the US intends to deploy military troops into the DPRK even in peace-time. As such, it is an act of intervening in domestic affairs and a breach of international law.

2. The US Repeated breach of Agreements and The DPRK nuclear weapons

(1) 1994 DPRK-USA Agreed Framework and Joint DPRK-USA Communique

As the US suspicion about the DPRK nuclear weapons plan in 1994 generated the so-call first N. Korean Nuclear Crisis, the Agreed Framework between the USA and the DPRK was adopted to resolve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. Its main content states that the DPRK will “freeze its graphite-moderated reactors and related facilities and that the US would provide “formal assurances to the DPRK, against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons by the US and “undertake to make arrangements for the provision to the DPRK of a LWR (Light Water Reactor) project by a target date of 2003.

But, anticipating the imminent demise of the DPRK, the US did not fulfill the requirements of the Agreed Framework. In 1998, the US raised suspicions about the possibility of the DPRK’s Geumchang-ri nuclear weapons plan and practiced a simulated nuclear attack targeted at the DPRK, but failed to find any evidence. The 2000 DPRK-US Joint Communique included replacing the 1953 Armistice Agreement with permanent peace arrangements.

But in 2001 the Bush administration ignored the agreed point. In the January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush referred to the DPRK, Iran, and Iraq as states that constitute an “axis of evil” and thus as a target for use of nuclear weapons. In September 2002 the Bush administration announced a shift in U. S. policy toward possible “preemptive military action” as its National Security Strategy, and then invaded Iraq in 2003. This is the background which led the DPRK to announce on February 10, 2005 that it had acquired nuclear weapons. This indicates that the US threat of use of nuclear weapons against the DPRK has eventually driven the DPRK to develop nuclear weapons.

(2) September 19 Joint Statement and the Disarray of Six-Party Talks

Confronted by the DPRK’s announcement of its acquisition of nuclear weapons, the Bush administration agreed to negotiate with the DPRK, of which outcome was the September 19 2005 Joint Statement. The Joint Statement includes the provisions of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the normalization between the DPRK and the US, and between the DPRK and Japan, financial and energy support for North Korea, and the promotion of a peaceful Korean Peninsula, and Peace and Security in North-East Asia. But, on the next day after signing the Joint Statement, the US put into effects financial sanction against the DPRK, making it explicit that it had no intention to comply with the Joint Statement.

In response to such an act of violation, the DPRK proceeded with a nuclear test on October 9, 2006 and it was a fatal blow to the US. Then, the US agreed to “Initial Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement” at the Six-Party Talks on February 13, 2007 and restored the Joint Statement. On October 3, 2007, the US agreed to the second steps to implement the Joint Statement. But, the US made additional requirements allowing “extracting sample ores, unnoticed visit, and examining unreported facilities,” which are beyond the agreed stipulations at Six-Party Talks, such as the DPRK’s disablement of nuclear weapons and its responsibility of report. As David Albright, the Director of the US Science and International Security Institute, expressed, this was tantamount to “demanding the right to inspect the DPRK’s military facilities,” a “demand which no sovereign nation can accept.”

3. The Obama Administration and the Continuing US Threats against the DPRK

After his inauguration, President Obama sent Sallig Harrison to deliver his message to the DPRK that if the DPRK hands in its reported 30.8 kg plutonium to the IAEA, the US will consider a peaceful treaty and the normalization of relations between the US and the DPRK. When Stephen Bosworth as Obama’s envoy visited Pyongyang in February 2009, the DPRK proposed the US withdrawal of hostile policies toward the DPRK, the elimination of the US extended nuclear deterrence toward the ROK, and the abolishment of the US-ROK alliance as the precondition for its abolishment of nuclear weapons. As the DPRK did not receive a proper response from the Obama administration, the DPRK launched a satellite on April 5, 2009. The UN Security Council reproached the DPRK’s satellite launch, which is their exercise under international law, through Chair’s unprecedented statement. In response, the DPRK enacted its second nuclear test on May 25, 2009, and the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1874 (2009).

In 2010 QDR report, the Obama administration referred to the DPRK as one of the main nations threatening its national security. The 2010 BMDR states that “North Korea, which has demonstrated its nuclear ambitions and continues to develop long-rang missiles, is of a particular concern.” The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review has not excluded the DPRK and Iran from nations targeted for the US preemptive nuclear strikes. In March 2010, the US executed the preemptive attack exercises against N. Korea called Key Resolve/Foal Eagle. The Key Resolve is an exercise to train to deploy the US military army in foreign countries, following OPLAN 5027, to the Korean Peninsula in the event of war. Walter L. Sharf, the Chief Commander of US Armed Forces in Korea, openly revealed the fact that the US Army special forces to destroy the N. Korean WMD has been participating in the military exercise.

4. Eliminating the hostile US-DPRK relation is essential to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula

(1) The DPRK’s nuclear program is a means to its survival.

A report from the US Atlantic Council Working Group has stated that the reason why the DPRK has acquired nuclear weapons lies in its fear of the US military operations against the DPRK (A Framework for Peace and Security in Korea and Northeast Asia, 2007, p. 1). Dennis Blair, the former director of the USDNI, said that “Pyongyang probably views its nuclear weapons as being more for deterrence, international prestige, and coercive diplomacy than for warfighting” and that “we also assess Pyongyang probably would not attempt to use nuclear weapons against U.S. forces or territory unless it perceived the regime to be on the verge of military defeat”(Testimony at Senate Select committee on Intelligence, 2009, 2, 12). Henceforth, it is fair to say that the DPRK’ s development of nuclear weapons is for self-defense rather than for attack.

(2) The DPRK has declared that it will commit to denuclearization if a peace treaty is established.

The North Korean nuclear issue is the product of a deep-rooted hostile state between the US and the DPRK. The long-standing hostility between the US and the DPRK stemmed from the fact that the US and the DPRK failed to legally settle the unfinished Korean War. Consequently, if the US and the DPRK wish to end their hostile relation for a peaceful relation, it is imperative that both states legally end the Korean War and conclude a peace treaty which provides mutual respect for sovereignty and mutual no-invasion. In this context, in January 2010, the foreign ministry of N. Korea declared that the denuclearization has been its consistent policy goal and that “a peace treaty will impel the elimination of the US-DPRK hostile relations and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula with rapid speed.”

5. The reason why US-ROK alliance should be abolished along with the elimination of the US-DPRK hostile relations

(1) US-ROK alliance cannot coexist.

US-ROK alliance regards the DPRK as its military enemy and aims at the overthrow of the DPRK’s socialist system by military and non-military means under the flag of value-based alliance. In this regard, the US-ROK alliance is a fundamental contradiction to a peace treaty which promotes the legal purge of the US-DPRK hostility. Therefore, as soon as the US and the DPRK eliminate their hostile relation, US-ROK alliance should be abolished.

(2) The DPRK is no longer a military threat.

The Korean Bank has shown that the GNI of South Korea ($934,700 million), as of 2008, amounts 37.7 times over the GNI of North Korea ($24,700 million). In 2008, according to S. Korean Unification Ministry’s estimation, the military defense expense of N. Korea was $550 million, but S. Korea spent $24.7 billion, which is 45 times more than N. Korea’s expense. The S. Korean government also admits that S. Korea’s military forces (even excluding the US army forces in S. Korea) is superior to N. Korea’s. N. Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons does not reverse S. Korean military forces superior to N. Korea. Viewed from limitations in military effect of N. Korean nuclear weapons and the nature of deterrence of N. Korean nuclear weapons with respect to the US and S. Korea, N. Korea’s nuclear weapons cannot be perceived as a military threat against S. Korea.

(3) The invasive nature of US-ROK alliance

The US-ROK alliance is claimed as a defense alliance, but in reality it is an offensive alliance targeting military occupation of the DPRK. As the US and S. Korea promote “ROK-US Strategic Alliance,” the invasive nature of US-ROK alliance has been manifest. In June 2009, the ROK-US summit adopted “Joint Vision for the Alliance of ROK and USA” to build up “a comprehensive alliance.” A comprehensive alliance provides a model for a dependence alliance that subjects S. Korean national interests and strategies to those of the United States. A comprehensive alliance, standing for value-based alliance, considers nations of different social value and system as potential enemies. As a consequence, N. Korea is perceived as the object for absorptive unification. As such, it stands for a global alliance which allows the ROK-US alliance forces to intervene in local and global security matters beyond the geographical sphere of the Korean Peninsula.

(4) S. Koreans’ suffering from the ROK-US alliance

As of September 30, 2008, there are 87 USAFK bases in S. Korea, equivalent to the land of 32,436 acre. In addition, US army forces in S. Korea have been using 37 ROK-US common training fields (in total, at least 49.000 acre). 5 main airports for S. Korean army are designated as Collateral Operation Bases to be used for the US military reinforcements. The financial burden of S. Korean people due to ROK-US alliance is huge. Under the pretense of “defense expense sharing,” S. Korea has paid for the annual expense of US Armed forces in Korea for 22 years since 1980 and is paying about $700 million this year. Further, S. Korea should spend about $6.3 million to cover the expense for the USAFK base transfer only this year. The total expense for the USAFK base transfer is estimated more than $13 billion and S. Korea is expected to pay almost all of it.

Further, residents of areas surrounding US military bases have suffered enormously. Due to US military base expansion and transfer, many village people in Pyongtaik and Mugeun-ri have been forced to abandon their cherished life base inherited from their ancestors. Furthermore, with respect to the issue involved in restoration of returned and polluted military stations, the US Army resists accepting its accountability and pushes the estimated $ 1 billion estimated for restoration to S. Korean government’s responsibility.

6. Danger of Extended Deterrence and Illusion of a “Nuclear-free World” Construction

(1) Danger of Nuclear Extended Deterrence

The United States has promised to provide “nuclear umbrella(extended deterrence)” for S. Korea. However, it should be noted that the US incurred war crisis in the Korean Peninsula 4 times during the Cold War period and 5 times since the beginning of the post-Cold War period. The extended deterrence policy has turned out not to increase alliance security, but for constant war crisis.

Further, the nuclear extended deterrence (first strike threat against N. Korea) policy has created a reverse effect that enabled N. Korea to obtain nuclear weapons. As the Obama government reaffirmed the extended deterrence policy in the recent NPR, the DPRK responded to it by announcing that it would increase nuclear weapons acquisition and pursue modernization.

The reaffirmation of the first use policy is meant to abandon ‘Geneva Agreed Framework (1994)와 9․19 Joint Statement(2005) on security assurance for non nuclear states and undermine the international reliability upon the US nuclear reduction imperative to implement the vision of a “nuclear-free world.” Thus, the US persistence on its nuclear umbrella policy demonstrates that the US will not give up its hegemony over against N. Korea and at the same time that it will deal with its alliance party S. Korea under the US dominant hegemony.

(2) Problem involved in strengthening conventional military forces in the name of the reduction of nuclear weapons role

The US moves toward the direction that strengthens conventional arms capacities in exchange for a reduction in the nuclear weapons role. But, it becomes evident that those countries, including N. Korea, that have been threatened by possible nuclear attacks from the US will feel more exposed to US conventional military attacks. Then, it would make these countries more difficult to give up nuclear weapons programs and the military arsenal increase.

(3) Nuclear Umbrella Policy as a US hegemony policy over against N. Korea puts the entire Korean people into danger.

The US’s nuclear war scenario against N. Korea allows the US to strike 700 targeted areas, including nuclear weapons, missiles, and operation (center) bases, in N. Korea even before N. Korea attacks S. Korea or immediately after a war. In 1994 the Clinton administration proposed a “surgery-model precision attack” targeting the Youngbyon nuclear facilities and exercised a simulation test. The result derived from the test was that the attack will become a full-scale war, incurring the heavy casualties of 52, 000 American soldiers and 490,000 S. Korean soldiers. Thus, the Clinton administration had to cancel its attempt to attack N. Korea. In 2004, an American anti-nuclear group, Natural Resources Defense Council also conducted a similar simulation and reported the estimated casualty number from 840,000 to 1,250,000.

7. Towards the genuine achievement of a “nuclear-free world”

It is urgent that NGOs not allow the vision of a “nuclear-free world” to be rendered into another logic of the US nuclear hegemony. In order to undertake this task, NGOs should demand that nuclear weapons states, including the US, should embrace a no-first use policy, legally binding NSAs toward non-nuclear states, the abolishment of an extended deterrence policy, and the responsibilities of nuclear weapons reduction.

We believe that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through concluding a peace treaty can contribute to and enhance the vision of a “nuclear-free world.” N. Korea has declared that if the US abolish its hostile policy toward N. Korea, its nuclear umbrella, and the US-ROK alliance, N. Korea will give up its nuclear weapons. For sixty years since the Korean War Armistice Agreement on July 27, 1953, the Korean Peninsula has been in a war state. A peace treaty in the Korean Peninsula can mark a turning point leading N. Korea to give up nuclear weapons.

Concluding a peace treaty in the Korean Peninsula, one of the main world conflict regions, we believe, will bring the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and further promote the denuclearization of North-East Asia. This will be an important step towards a nuclear-free world.