Iraq war: after Blair and Bush met, the tempo changed

  

Tuesday 2 April 2002 was a warm spring day, the first after the Easter weekend. The country was coming to terms with the death of the Queen Mother, a young singer called Gareth Gates had shot to No 1 and Admiral Lord Boyce, chief of the defence staff, was heading to Buckinghamshire for a meeting with the prime minister at Chequers.

A submariner in his early career, colleagues thought Boyce rather prickly, a trait cabinet minister Clare Short attributed to the long periods he had spent underwater.

Certainly, his summons to see Tony Blair seemed to have left him a little nonplussed. British forces were already deployed in Afghanistan, which was his priority. And though he had heard talk in the press and around Whitehall about a shift in interest towards Iraq, he wasn’t one for gossip or small talk.

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• Lord Prescott: 'Tony Blair led the UK to war illegally' Telegraph.co.uk‎ 
• Iraq turned Tony Blair toxic - he would have been hailed with Churchill as a true great
• Tony Blair | Politics | The Guardian

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Blair, however, wanted to chat about Saddam Hussein. “I guess my presence at Chequers on that particular occasion was simply … if there were questions coming up about what could be done militarily; what was our capability should we be asked to do something,” Boyce explained to the Chilcot inquiry.

If there had been a significant hardening of thinking in Downing Street, Boyce appeared to have left Chequers none the wiser. As far as he was concerned, attacking Iraq just wasn’t on the cards.

“There was no discussion on the detail of military action or military options,” he said. “Of course, Iraq wasn’t off our plot entirely. It was something which the MoD was keeping a watching eye on, if you like.

“At the meeting … no particular preparations were made. It was a scoping opportunity … we were certainly not doing any thinking about any sort of military adventure.”

The meeting was rather casual – and very Blairish. Others in the room included Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, and Sir John Scarlett, head of the joint intelligence committee (JIC).

But the cabinet secretary, Lord Wilson, hadn’t known it had taken place; the foreign and defence secretaries weren’t there either – and no minutes were taken. The discussion, it seemed, had been organised to help Blair prepare his thoughts for an important trip to the US at the end of the week.



President Bush and first lady Laura Bush greet British Prime Minister Tony Blair on his arrival at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, Saturday, April 5, 2002. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

What exactly happened on 6 and 7 April in Crawford, Texas, between the US president, George W Bush, and the man who was determined to be his best friend, not even Chilcot’s 2.6m-word report has been able to entirely unravel.

But if there was one event that changed the conversation about Iraq, it was this. Because while Blair insisted no deal was done and no hands shaken on military action, Chilcot’s report describes how the mood changed thereafter and how the Whitehall machine, at different speeds in different departments, reacting to different voices, began to hum; the tempo changed.

And little wonder.

We now know that Boyce was not fully in the loop. He had not been told that months earlier, in December 2001, there had been “quite substantive exchanges between No 10 and the White House” about the possibility of military action against Iraq. 

“They weren’t ones which we were apprised of,” Boyce told Chilcot. Nor would he have known that in the days before Crawford, Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, had sent a secret memo to Bush saying that “Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary” in Iraq. “He is convinced the threat is real … and success against Saddam will yield more regional success.”

In the weeks after Crawford, there were more obvious indications that Iraq was about to become Britain’s problem. Richard Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state, told Sir David Manning, Blair’s foreign policy adviser, that the US and the UK were already discussing the idea of Britain sending a 20,000-strong armoured division to Iraq. This was news to Manning – and he was miffed.

In a terse letter sent on 21 May, the Ministry of Defence was ordered to find out who was saying what to whom, seeing as “no options have yet been presented to ministers”.

Ten days later the MoD had got nowhere. In a return letter, a senior officer concluded the talk was just speculation and the Americans must have “misinterpreted” what they had been told.

It did not matter. Whether through accident or design, Chilcot noted that “by mid–May, the perception the UK might provide an armoured division for military operations had already gained currency in the US”. The idea “had got into the American bloodstream”.

Though Boyce doesn’t appear to have been privy to Blair’s thinking, the military had reason to be getting twitchy. We now know that shortly after Crawford, the MoD set up a small informal working group under Lt Gen Sir Anthony Pigott to “brainstorm” the possible options for and repercussions of British involvement in a military effort.

Pigott told Chilcot that he was trying to prevent the UK setting off on an “off the cuff … let’s go and do that” campaign. “We need to do some scoping work … What could we be dealing with here? What might be the big issues?”

But as work began, it became abundantly clear to senior military officials that the Americans had already decided to pursue regime change and that the push could come before the end of the year.

The Americans, it seemed, were determined to remove Saddam. And they had also assumed, for reasons that were not entirely clear to military chiefs, that Britain would be alongside them.

Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, was worried about what he was hearing from his officials, and in early June sought guidance from Blair ahead of a meeting with his opposite number, Donald Rumsfeld.



Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and defence secretary Geoff Hoon, attend an informal NATO ministers meeting in Poiana Brasov, Romania in 2004. Photograph: Vadim Ghirda/AP

The UK appeared to be in a tricky situation. In his note to the prime minister, Hoon said: “If we discuss the detail and timescales of a potential UK military contribution to a US‑led coalition, it could send a misleading signal that we have decided to support a specific line of military action.

“Equally, if we are not clear with the US at this stage about our military constraints, we face the danger of our not being able to bring anything meaningful to the table at the right time and the consequent loss of influence that would bring.”

Hoon wanted the Americans to know that the British needed “plenty of warning in order to be able to contribute to military action”. But Blair wasn’t happy. “That will send a wobbly message,” he wrote.

As the military tried to reconcile the mixed signals from Whitehall and Washington, the US formally invited the British to join a military planning team based at Central Command in Tampa, Florida.

Boyce said this early military planning was taking place in a “political void” and he says he stressed to the Americans that joining the team should not imply “a political commitment to contribute to an actual operation”.

But while he said he kept reiterating this to his American counterparts – “I can’t remember how many times I must have said … that our policy was not regime change” – they seemed to know better. “The reaction of the Americans was always: ‘Yes, I hear what you say but come the day, we know you will be there’,” he told Chilcot.

Elsewhere in Whitehall, there were others attempting to read the runes from Downing Street over exactly what was going on, and what Britain was being drawn into. The attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, was one. He had been watching events unfold and didn’t like what he was seeing. It irritated him when he heard ministers talking loosely about whether there was a clear basis for military action against Iraq, and he wanted the Americans to know that whatever conclusions they had drawn about the use of force, he did not share them.

He had steeled himself to report this to William Taft IV, legal adviser to the Department of State, at a meeting on 22 May. But in the end the two men somehow avoided the subject and just chatted.

Lord Goldsmith evidently thought it was more important to inform the prime minister of his misgivings, even though his advice was unsolicited and not “terribly welcome” by Downing Street.

Knowing that Blair was due to meet Bush again at the end of July, Goldsmith set about drawing up legal advice, which he presented to the prime minister on 23 July. He told Blair that, to his mind, the Americans were plain wrong to think they could take military action against Iraq to remove Saddam without going back to the UN.

“I had looked at whether there was a self-defence argument and didn’t believe there was. That was because I didn’t see any evidence of an imminent threat, and you need an imminent threat,” he told Chilcot. “I didn’t want there to be any doubt.”

The legalities, however, were not going to upset the special, increasingly intimate relationship between Blair and Bush. As the Chilcot report has now shown, any concerns about the legality of a conflict had not prevented Blair from offering unwavering support to the president, as set out in that now notorious memo, dated 28 July. “I will be with you, whatever,” Blair wrote.

Goldsmith did not see the prime minister again for three months, but in the meantime, he decided he needed to know more about the threat posed by Saddam, in case this changed his thinking. He asked for a briefing from the man who would know – Scarlett.



Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

Scarlett, though, was a busy man, who was having difficulties of his own. The JIC had already compiled one report on Iraq in May 2001 and had undertaken another assessment in March 2002, which had been drawn up ahead of Blair’s trip to Crawford. It had reached many of the same conclusions.

Iraq was assessed to retain some stocks of chemical weapons, but there were no details on locations or quantities; it was stated that there was clear evidence of continuing biological warfare activity – and intelligence about the likelihood of mobile production laboratories was being taken seriously.

But the Chilcot inquiry heard that intelligence gathered on Iraq was far from an exact science. It needed to be treated with great care, as Sir Mark Allen, former head of MI6’s counter-intelligence branch and one of its more maverick voices, was keen to stress. “Actually our knowledge of Iraq was very, very superficial,” he told Chilcot. “We were small animals in a dark wood with the wind getting up and changing direction the whole time. These were very, very difficult days.”

Scarlett knew this all too well and had been working on the basis that the March analysis could be filleted for publication. Instead, this dossier was put in cold storage until the autumn, when things suddenly gathered pace.

“I suppose the person who opened the freezer was the prime minister,” Scarlett told Chilcot. “He made a public announcement that the government assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities would be published in the coming weeks.”

The pressure was on. But MI6, known formally as the Secret Intelligence Service, appeared to have new and potentially important information that was passed to the prime minister on 12 September. A new source had provided intelligence that appeared to support claims that Iraq had “continued to produce chemical and biological agents” and had “military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons”.

This was used by Scarlett to help underpin key judgments in the government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which was published to much fanfare, and a fair degree of ridicule, on 24 September.

Though too late to be included in the document, MI6 privately disseminated a second report from the same sourcing chain, which stated VX, Sarin and Soman toxic chemicals had been produced by Iraq and had been loaded into a variety of containers, including “linked hollow glass spheres”. The source said there had been “accelerated production of substances for several years”.

But within weeks, senior officers at MI6’s HQ in Vauxhall, central London, were beginning to sweat; doubts had begun to emerge about the reliability of this information.

To the layman, the details the source had provided sounded like something from a Hollywood movie. And that’s because they were. More precisely, they had come from a film called The Rock, starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery.

As Chilcot noted: “In early October, questions were raised with SIS about the mention of glass containers. It was pointed out that: glass containers were not typically used in chemical munitions; and that a popular movie (The Rock) had inaccurately depicted nerve agents being carried in glass beads or spheres.” SIS began to realise it had been duped and eventually concluded the source had been lying. But, remarkably, it decided not to tell anyone who might need to know – such as the prime minister.

Another intelligence source that had been heavily relied upon by the JIC was codenamed Curve Ball, but this information also had health warnings. For a start, it had not come to British intelligence directly – it had been channelled through the German spy agencies.

And as Chilcot reported, SIS didn’t get to meet Curve Ball until much later, and when it did, agents didn’t like the look of him. They were forced to conclude the information he provided – specifically that Iraq had developed mobile facilities for the production of biological agent – was wholly unreliable.

Asked by Chilcot to summarise the unpalatable and chastening lessons that MI6 had had to learn, a senior officer told him: “It’s not so much a lesson. It’s an observation that we based a lot on not enough.”

While MI6 kept quiet about the doubts over the authenticity of some of the intelligence, the military and Goldsmith were simultaneously grappling with different, if intertwined, problems of their own. Having had a personal briefing from Scarlett, the attorney general remained unconvinced about the threat posed by Saddam, and hadn’t changed his mind about needing to go back to the UN to seek authority for military action.

But a new resolution that was being proposed did not go far enough, as far as he was concerned. Goldsmith met Blair on 22 October to outline his concerns that resolution 1441 – which stated that Iraq was in material breach of its UN obligations – still did not provide a sound basis for military action.

He gave the same gloomy prognosis to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, on 7 November, the day before the resolution was passed.

“My provisional view was that there wasn’t enough there,” Goldsmith told Chilcot. “As I have consistently said, from the legal point of view it would have been safer to have had a second resolution because it would have put the matter beyond doubt. Nobody could have then challenged the legality.”

Goldsmith was also angered by “Chinese whispers” across Whitehall that appeared to be putting a much more positive gloss on his advice. As far as he was concerned, even with resolution 1441, everything “would not be all right on the night”.

He told Chilcot that the gossip appeared to be coming from the “undergrowth, if I can say, beneath ministers. Sometimes people who are least involved in issues pick up things and they then come out. That is just the way government seems to work.



Lord Goldsmith arrives at Number 10. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

As Goldsmith told Downing Street what it didn’t want to hear, so the MoD was still seeking clarity from No 10 about the scale of Britain’s potential military commitment to any US-led invasion.

Declassified papers show Hoon presented the prime minister with a UK military options paper on 15 October – and said that an urgent decision had to be taken. “We need to decide this week,” the paper began. “US military planning for an operation in Iraq is gathering pace.”

Three basic packages were outlined, with the third being the most ambitious: it included more than 300 tanks and armoured vehicles and 28,000 personnel. It would be “a major element of the northern line of attack which the US now judge as essential”.

A memo dated 31 October sets out how Blair offered support for the more expensive and risky third option and concluded that we “should now tell the US … for planning purposes”.

Of all the scenarios, this seemed to be the one favoured by the MoD. If the UK were to attack Iraq, coming in from the north had clear advantages; the area was more stable than the south and contained many of the oil fields that needed to be protected and secured.

But there was a problem: Turkey. Britain needed to use it as a base.

In early discussions with his opposite number in Ankara, Boyce thought the Turks would allow the British to pitch camp. “Certainly when I spoke to the chief of the Turkish general staff, Gen [Hilmi] Ozkuk, in the very early days, there didn’t appear – well, he didn’t seem to think it would be a particular problem.”

Even after the Americans warned the MoD that “we were probably pushing against a closed door”, Boyce held out hope. “I was talking to Ozkuk and he was giving me, sort of, not exactly bright green lights but certainly not saying: ‘Don’t bother to darken my door again.’”



Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce leaves Downing Street February 6, 2003. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

The red light came at the turn of the year, which stopped British planning for an invasion from the north.

So, at the start of 2003, the situation looked bleak; the British military was scrabbling to find a new role, the attorney general was warning there was no basis for the use of force, and some of the intelligence that had been used to support claims of Saddam’s military capabilities was falling apart. Yet within weeks, UK forces would invade.

Never an organisation to shirk a challenge, Boyce and the other chiefs of staff assured Blair in early January that the UK still had enough time to prepare for an invasion from the south, through Kuwait. But with time running out, he conceded there was inevitably going to be “some equipment shortfall … though none which were being advised as showstoppers or of critical importance to mission accomplishment.”

The MoD was also concerned about what was happening with postwar planning and was attempting to seek assurances from the Americans that they had a robust blueprint – because Britain didn’t have one. A memo dated 16 January 2003 said: “The prime minister agrees … that much greater clarity about the US intentions is required.”

Boyce also warned Blair he was still worried about the legalities. “I made it clear to the prime minister in January 2003 that I would require an assurance of the legal base of the conflict. This was reiterated more than once in the following weeks.”

The prime minister, however, was to get a break from an unlikely source. The attorney general had given Blair his draft advice on the legality of any conflict on 14 January – and it was much the same as months before. But over the coming weeks, Goldsmith had an unexpected and quite sudden change of heart.

The process began on 23 January when he had a private meeting with Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s ambassador to the UN, who had evidently been sent to soften him up. “Sir Jeremy had made some good points and he had made some headway with me, but, frankly, there was still work for me to do and he hadn’t got me there, if you like, yet,” Goldsmith told Chilcot.

On 10 February the attorney general flew to Washington and had a number of meetings with top legal advisers who had all concluded that the use of force did not require a further UN resolution. “The US were convincing,” Goldsmith admitted. They told him that even the French didn’t think a new resolution was required – so why did he?

If it wasn’t quite an epiphany, Goldsmith nonetheless changed tack. He told the inquiry that he had asked himself: “Which side of the argument would you prefer to be on? And I took the view I would prefer to be on the side of the argument that said a second resolution wasn’t necessary.”

When he flew home, he informed Downing Street, though he did not give his advice in writing. It was the green light Blair had doubtless been praying for.

In his evidence to the inquiry, Hans Blix, head of the UN’s weapons inspectors, said that by the end of February, with almost 250,000 coalition forces on the border of Iraq, the momentum for war “was almost unstoppable”. “As I have said, sometimes perhaps a little roughly, the UK remained a prisoner on that train.”

If Downing Street didn’t quite see it that way, Wilson, the cabinet secretary, admitted to Chilcot that “everything was done at a rush … it did make it a tight-run thing.”

Perhaps inevitably, perhaps deliberately, certain things – and certain people – got overlooked. One of them was Clare Short, secretary of state at the Department for International Development. She had expected to be involved in discussions about the aftermath of any conflict, but had been kept out of any conversations until the last moment.

“Suddenly, there is a flurry of correspondence,” she told Chilcot. “There is all of this: ‘Keep Clare and DfID out of it,’ and then, just at the last minute, they are suddenly writing letters saying: ‘We must make preparations.’ And I’m saying to our military: ‘You’re going to have to feed people’, and they suddenly, in the last week, they ordered food. I mean, it was mad. But they did it, and they wanted to get closer to us suddenly at the last minute, and we didn’t sulk. The situation was too serious.”

She added: “But the chaos had its consequences. I think the British military should have said to Blair: ‘We are not ready.’ I think that was their duty and they failed in that duty.”

Chilcot revealed that by the time the war started, nobody in government appeared to have overall responsibility for postwar planning; and nobody in the military was taking responsibility for the shortfalls in vital equipment.

In one of Chilcot’s coldest and most damning conclusions, he said: “When Mr Blair set out the UK’s vision for the future of Iraq in the House of Commons on 18 March 2003, no assessment had been made of whether that vision was achievable, no agreement had been reached with the US on a workable post-conflict plan, UN authorisation had not yet been secured, and there was no decision on the UN’s role in post-conflict Iraq.”

A conflict that began in haste and endures today did not have to start when it did, nor in the way it did, Chilcot said. “The evidence is there for all to see. It is an account of an intervention which went badly wrong with consequences to this day.”

Iraq war: after Blair and Bush met, the tempo changed

by Nick Hopkins, theguardian.com

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/09/iraq-war-after-blair-and-bush-met-the-tempo-changed

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No need to redraw a New Map of the Middle East


On May 16, 1916, representatives of Great Britain and France signed an agreement that had been negotiated by Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot to divide up the Middle East into British and French spheres of influence after the end of the Great War and the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, now 100 years old, has been denounced ever since for perpetuating a supposedly artificial division of the Middle East into unpopular nation states whose existence only fuels conflicts. Many now suggest that it is time to discard Sykes-Picot in order to solve the region’s myriad problems.

As my Council on Foreign Relations colleagues, Steven A. Cook and Amr T. Leheta, suggest, this attributes rather too much influence to a treaty that was never actually implemented. In practice, Britain never ceded France all of the influence that Sykes-Picot had promised, and the actual boundaries of the modern Middle East were determined in a series of diplomatic conferences between 1920 and 1926. The ultimate result was to create the forerunner of the region we know today, giving birth to Palestine/Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, among others.

Is this division of the region artificial? Yes and no. The state boundaries were not entirely arbitrary—Iraq, for example, was formed by combining the Ottoman vilayets (provinces) of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra.

The boundaries of the Middle East are no more arbitrary than the boundaries of any other place. Look at Europe, where the borders between Germany and Poland shifted substantially after both World War I and World War II. Germany itself is just as artificial as Iraq having coming into existence only slightly earlier, in 1871. Indeed countries continue to form and break up all over the world—witness the independence of the former Soviet republics after 1991 or the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Whatever the origins of the modern map of the Middle East, people in the region have lived together in states long enough to be attached to them. Most Iraqis I’ve met, save the Kurds, have been Iraqi nationalists. So too with Syrians. Granted, those states are hardly functional today, but that doesn’t mean that breaking them up will magically solve their problems. Indeed redrawing the map could easily create more problems. In the case of Iraq, Sunnis would be loathe to give up Baghdad—and who would take Mosul, whose population is divided between Arabs and Kurds?

The United States shouldn’t necessarily be committed to preserving the current map of the Middle East, but nor should we be redrawing it from afar. What matters is not the borders but who rules within them. An ISIS state shouldn’t be acceptable no matter its boundaries. Let’s focus on reducing threats and ending civil wars, and then afterward let the peoples of states such as Iraq and Syria figure out their own future peacefully, as happened in the former Czechoslovakia.

Is it Time to Draw a New Map of the Middle East?
by Max Boot, nationalinterest.org
This article originally appeared in the Hoover Institution’s Military History in the News http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/it-time-draw-new-map-the-middle-east-16740

The crisis of Muslim nationalisms

Nationalism was a Western construct mainly designed and driven by the rise of the mercantile/trader classes. As an idea, it was a revolt against the feudal mindset and the traditional influence of the aristocratic sections who dominated Europe in alliance with the church.

The American and French revolutions in the 18th century were both prompted by the growing number of men and women sandwiched between powerful aristocrats and the downtrodden. This section would eventually rise as a separate and distinct class, described by Karl Marx as the bourgeoise and/or the middle-class.

The architects of both revolutions rejected colonialism, monarchism and political aspects of religion as central signifiers of a people’s identity. Instead, to express their growing political ambitions triggered by their economic successes, the architects of nationalism began to construct notions of identity based on shared political and economic interests, languages and cultural memories.

To American and French nationalists, this meant devising a system which would make the people direct participants in the state-building process; a people united by certain common political, economic and social interests derived through a consensus, which defined them as a single nationalistic entity.

In the Muslim regions, when Muslim imperial powers began to erode from the 19th century onwards, various concerned Muslim thinkers and activists responded by rejecting the decaying memories of a glorious imperial past.

They adopted notions of nationalism to find their peoples’ place in the rapidly changing paradigms of international order. For example, from within the decaying Ottoman Empire emerged the ‘Young Turks’ movement, which searched for a squarely Turkish identity based on a common language and cultural memories. Turkish nationhood was the result, which eschewed the imperial pretensions of the eroding Empire and defined Turkish nationalism as a modern, progressive component of Europe.

In the Arab world emerged a nationalism that was anti-colonial and revolutionary, but one that rejected old Muslim imperialism and notions of so-called ‘Pan-Islamism’ — a 19th century concept which attempted to stem the collapse of Muslim empires by advocating the modernisation of the concept of Muslim universalism and the caliphate.

Arab nationalism was strongest in Egypt, Algeria, Syria and Iraq. It painted its people and borders with exclusively nationalistic strokes but, at the same time, also adopted an Arab universalism based on the history and memory of a once powerful, enlightened and progressive nature of the Arab peoples.

In India, a region with a Hindu majority but with a 500-year history of Muslim rule, certain Muslim thinkers also adopted nationalistic notions after the demise of Muslim rule. Rejecting the decaying past, Muslim nationalism in India advocated the adoption of modern political thought and sciences so that an ‘enlightened’ Muslim nation could emerge in India to face the challenge of British colonialism, and, later, ‘Hindu majoritarianism’.

This nationalism was intellectually driven by the modern Muslim bourgeoise and bankrolled by the Muslim landed elite. It saw the Muslims of India as a separate nationalistic entity, united by memories of a once glorious past and an urge to revitalise its shared faith through a more rational, modern, and flexible reading and implementation.

Indian Muslim nationalism also largely bypassed Pan-Islamism because it believed that Muslim culture in the region had bearings which were separate from how Islam had evolved elsewhere.

Nationalism was the main engine behind the creation and liberation of various Muslim regions in the 20th century. But its influence and impact began to lose hold from the early 1970s onwards. Failed economies, and some disastrous wars, polarised the Muslim societies created on the basis of nationalism. And with the absence of democracy this polarisation began to be expressed by radical alternatives such as neo-Pan-Islamism, offered by a new generation of bourgeoise and petty-bourgeoise Muslims, and bankrolled by oil-rich Arab monarchies that had always seen Muslim nationalism as a threat.

The state in various Muslim countries tried to retain the status quo by rapidly adopting various aspects of Pan-Islamism, even to the extent of sacrificing many nationalist notions with which most Muslim liberation movements had originally been constructed.

The erosion of the nationalist narratives created wide open spaces. These spaces were rapidly occupied and then dominated by ideas initially rejected by the nationalists. These ideas were opposed to the nationalist narrative, criticising it for going against the grain of Islamic universalism and creating separatism based on indigenous cultures and languages in Muslim regions.

Ideas which offered alternative political and social models (as opposed to the ones based on nationalism) were largely based on a contemporary understanding of pan-Islamism. But some three decades after these ideas had managed to engrain themselves in the polity, state and psyche of various Muslim countries, from the 1970s onwards, these countries were left grappling with a new crisis.

For example, the new generation of Turks, Egyptians, Iraqis, Syrians, Pakistanis, etc, are now completely disconnected with the original notions of their countries’ nationhood and nationalist identities. In the past few decades they were more exposed to ideas of Islamic universalism, pushed aggressively by oil-rich Arab monarchies and their political allies.

In Pakistan, a young millennial is not quite sure what being a Pakistani now constitutes. Does it mean being a citizen of a Muslim-majority nation in South Asia, which evolved on the banks of River Indus and is part of the region’s 5,000-year-old history; or is he or she a member of some approaching universal Islamic set-up who should just see Pakistan as a temporary abode to mark time in, till that universal empire emerges? Is he or she first a Pakistani and then a Muslim, or vice versa? What about a non-Muslim citizen of Pakistan? Who or what is he?

Such confusion was triggered by the gradual erosion of the initial nationalist ideas in Muslim countries and the rise of a rather ill-defined and overtly ambitious notion of universalism in a world still defined by nationalistic boundaries. It made a whole generation vulnerable to the ways of those who promise the same universal utopia — but through unprecedented violence against the state and a number of imagined ‘enemies’.

Maybe the solution now lies in reinvigorating and updating the original notions of nationalism in Muslim countries so that future generations would feel more comfortable, sure and confident of being entities defined by their shared cultural heritage of a region that was carved, encapsulated and bordered by nationalist notions of state, society and nation — and not as some epic launching pad to jump-start a utopia from.
By Nadeem F Paracha

http://epaper.dawn.com/DetailImage.php?StoryImage=26_06_2016_424_002

Blowback Just in Time to Shape US Imperialism's Presidential Elections

The carnage in Orlando is blowback from U.S.-backed jihadist wars, yet Hillary Clinton, a key player in U.S. sponsorship of jihadists, seeks to profit politically from the horror. So does Donald Trump. “The fear that blowback unleashes has historically given the ruling class breathing room to further its anti-worker, pro-capital agenda.” Blowback is a right-wing wind, and “always ‘trumps’ the material interests of poor and working people in the US.”

“The Democratic Party has continued its desperate attempt to push those afraid of Trump toward the Clinton agenda of endless warfare and domestic surveillance.”

Fifty were shot dead and fifty plus more wounded at a night club in Orlando on June 11th. The nightclub, known to the community as an LGBTQ space, became the most gruesome example of US imperialist blowback to date. ISIS dubiously took credit for the shooting after word spread about the attacker's religious and national roots. Of course, blowback has never opened the eyes of Americans in a progressive direction. The majority of Americans were not informed that US intelligence has been linked to both the perpetrator and his father. What the incident will provide is a political climate of fear perfect for a tumultuous Presidential election season.

First on the order of the day for the ruling class is the elimination of Bernie Sanders from Democratic Party candidacy. With the Democratic National Convention approaching in July and Trump already having sealed the Republican Party nomination, the Orlando tragedy will be exploited endlessly for the political ends of the electoral machine.

The Clinton camp has already begun to use this moment of mass vulnerability to point the finger at Donald Trump. His overt racism, homophobia, and misogyny have been blamed for the murders. Clinton has, predictably, failed to offer real solutions to mass shootings other than appeals to gun control. The Democratic Party has continued its desperate attempt to push those afraid of Trump toward the Clinton agenda of endless warfare and domestic surveillance. Clinton’s handlers have framed her as the only force in the universe that can keep the American people safe from terrorism and bigotry.

“Trump's brand has made him wildly popular with disaffected, white Americans who have lost the industrial jobs and government supports that provided the material basis of its hatred toward oppressed races of people.”

Presidential elections are about brand, not truth. Voters are persuaded to identity with one of two corporate parties and look away as the candidates do their best to court real power players in Wall Street and the military state. Trump's brand has made him wildly popular with disaffected, white Americans who have lost the industrial jobs and government supports that provided the material basis of its hatred toward oppressed races of people. Trump has given this section of White America new life, stroking its diseased racist mind while appealing to real economic grievances.

Trump has commented on the shooting in Orlando as an "I told you so moment,” blaming "radical Islamic terrorism" for the attack. While such a position will make supporters happy, his message will have to change if he is serious about being the next Commander-in-Chief. Muslims and Latinos make up a significant portion of the electorate. Alienating them ensures a Clinton victory. Trump will have to rely on low voter turnout to win the Presidency unless his brand regarding the shooting can attract a wider base.

The shooting hurts Sanders the most, as it leaves zero room for him to strengthen his brand. His policy proposals will be temporarily suspended as a matter of national security. National security always "trumps" the material interests of poor and working people in the US. Healthcare, education, and job concerns are what propelled Trump and Sanders into the national spotlight. However, the fear that blowback unleashes has historically given the ruling class breathing room to further its anti-worker, pro-capital agenda. This includes the suppression of leftist politics, whether they emanate from the domestic agenda of Bernie Sanders or the foreign policy remarks of Donald Trump.

“Terrorism is a creation of US imperialism and it continues to come home in the form of blowback.”

A cornerstone of leftist thought and action is critical inquiry into the forces that shape material reality. When a mass shooting or so-called terrorist attack occurs, its causes should be fully investigated by the grassroots. The US government is adamantly opposed to such genuine inquiry. It has suppressed twenty right pages of the federal investigation into 9/11 and placed the so-called "Boston Bomber" in the hands of a Kangaroo court to be silenced and removed from public eye. Osama Bin-Laden was assassinated before given the opportunity to testify before international law. The US imperial state suppresses genuine inquiry into blowback incidents because they reveal the immense sickness that is US imperialism.

This case is no different. Not only was the shooter a mercenary for the corporately contracted security G4S, but he was also raised by a Taliban-aligned father who hosts a major Afghan television show. His father, Siddique Mateen, emigrated from Afghanistan in the 1980s at the same time that the CIA was training jihadist foot soldiers in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. These foot soldiers, called the Mujahadeen, went on to form the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Terrorism is a creation of US imperialism and it continues to come home in the form of blowback.

“The Middle East and North Africa have become havens for terrorism precisely because of US foreign policy.”

Given US imperialism's endless drone strikes and campaigns of destabilization, blowback should come as no surprise. The US has destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya in a little over a decade. Syria has been decimated from five years of US-sponsored jihadist proxy war. The Middle East and North Africa have become havens for terrorism precisely because of US foreign policy. This is the root cause of terrorism that will surely be buried under the weight of imperial lies for the duration of the election cycle.

In Huey Newton's letter to gay liberation movement, he calls on the Black Panther Party to unite against sexual oppression. Sexual oppression acted then as a barrier to building a strong and united movement against the American empire. It still does. However, the fight against sexual oppression must also be a fight against empire, white supremacy, and the rule of capital. These interlocked forces set the stage for sexual oppression and terrorism to thrive. The consequence is blowback, and it has come just in time for the ruling class to consolidate the rule of Empire in this election cycle.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/orlando_blowback_presidential_elections
More: http://takfiritaliban.blogspot.com

Constructing Visions of "Perpetual Peace": An Interview With Noam Chomsky

Through its commitment to militarism and global imperialism, the elite class that controls the United States is risking global catastrophe. In his new book Who Rules the World?, Noam Chomsky examines US policies from the drone assassination program to nuclear weapons, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Israel and Palestine, to show the workings and consequences of undemocratic imperial power. Order the book today by making a donation to support Truthout!

"Who rules the world?" This is one of those perennial questions. In the past, it has been empires or dominant states that dictated the course of history. The United States was able singlehandedly to influence developments and outcomes economically, politically and ideologically in much of the world throughout the post-war era. Although we are now witnessing the end of "Pax Americana," the US remains the most powerful and destructive imperial state in the history of the world.

However, states are not abstract entities or neutral institutions of human creation. On the contrary, while they may have a logic of their own due to their huge built-in bureaucracies, the policies they pursue reflect above all the interests of the dominant social classes and seek to reproduce the existing social and economic relations. In other words, states work on behalf of what Adam Smith called "the masters of mankind" whose "vile maxim" is "all for ourselves, and nothing for the other People."

Indeed, in the case of the United States, one of the most disturbing and dangerous developments is the growing insulation of the elite from any system of democratic accountability, and the implementation of policies with total disregard for the needs of the people. This is a development observed today in most of the western, capitalist societies around the world, proving that financial elites are in control of so-called "democratic" regimes.

Noam Chomsky, a professor emeritus at MIT, has written extensively about "the masters of mankind" and on the role of the US in world affairs. His latest book, titled Who Rules the World? which was released last month by Metropolitan Press, has already received rave reviews. In it, he examines the pursuit and exercise of power by the United States and provides a scathing critique of mass media -- particularly the way the New York Times reports on national and international news -- while laying out in both moral and political terms the responsibility of intellectuals.

On the occasion of the publication of Who Rules the World?, Noam Chomsky granted Truthout this exclusive interview, in which he expounds on the crisis in today's democracies, the apparent end of Pax Americana, the historical significance of Castro's Cuba, the deadly threat of nuclear weapons, the means of exploitation under today's capitalism, and the shape and form of a society free of oppression and exploitation.

CJ Polychroniou: Noam, the decline of democracy as a reflection of political apathy is evident in both the United States and in Europe, and the explanation provided in Who Rules the World? is that this phenomenon is linked to the fact that most people throughout Western societies are "convinced that a few big interests control policy." This is obviously true, but wasn't this always the case? I mean, people always knew that policymaking was in the hands of the elite, but this did not stop them in the past from seeking to influence political outcomes through the ballot box and other means. So, what specific factors might explain political apathy in our own age?

Noam Chomsky: "Resignation" may be a better term than "apathy," and even that goes too far, I think.

Since the early 1980s, polls in the US have shown that most people believe that the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves... I do not know of earlier polls, or polls in other countries, but it would not be surprising if the results are similar. The important question is: are people motivated to do something about it? That depends on many factors, crucially including the means that they perceive to be available. It's the task of serious activists to help develop those means and encourage people to understand that they are available. Two hundred and fifty years ago, in one of the first modern works of political theory, David Hume observed that "power is in the hands of the governed," if they only choose to exercise it, and ultimately, it is "by opinion only" -- that is, by doctrine and propaganda -- that they are prevented from exercising power. That can be overcome, and often has been.

Thirty-five years ago, political scientist Walter Dean Burnham identified "the total absence of a socialist or laborite mass party as an organized competitor in the electoral market" as a primary cause of the high rate of abstention in US elections. Traditionally, the labor movement and labor-based parties have played a leading role in offering ways to "influence political outcomes" within the electoral system and on the streets and shop floor. That capacity has declined significantly under neoliberal assault, which enhanced the bitter war waged against unions by the business classes throughout the postwar period.

In 1978, before Reagan's escalation of the attack against labor, United Auto Workers President Doug Fraser recognized what was happening -- far too late -- and criticized the "leaders of the business community" for having "chosen to wage a one-sided class war in this country -- a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society," and for having "broken and discarded the fragile, unwritten compact previously existing during a period of growth and progress." The union leadership had placed their faith -- partly for their own benefit as a labor bureaucracy -- in a compact with owners and managers during the postwar growth and high profits period that had come to an end by the 1970s. By then, the powerful attack on labor had already taken a severe toll and it has gotten much more extreme since, particularly since the radically anti-labor Reagan administration.

The Democrats, meanwhile, pretty much abandoned the working class. Independent political parties have been very marginal, and political activism, while widespread, has [often] … sidelined class issues and offered little to the white working class, which is now drifting into the hands of their class enemy. In Europe, functioning democracy has steadily declined as major policy decisions are transferred to the Brussels bureaucracy of the EU, operating under the shadow of northern banks. But there are many popular reactions, some self-destructive (racing into the hands of the class enemy) and others quite promising and productive, as we see in current political campaigns in the US and Europe.

In your book, you refer to the "invisible hands of power." What is the exact meaning of this, and to what situations and circumstances can it be applied in order to understand domestic and global political developments?

I was using the phrase to refer to the guiding doctrines of policy formation, sometimes spelled out in the documentary record, sometimes easily detectable in ongoing events. There are many examples in international and domestic affairs. Sometimes the clouds are lifted by high-level disclosures or by significant historical events. The real nature of the Cold War, for example, was considerably illuminated when the Soviet Union collapsed and it was no longer possible to proclaim simply that the Russians are coming. That provided an interesting test of the real motives of policy formation, hidden by Cold War pretexts [that were suddenly] gone.

We learn from Bush I administration documents, for example, that we must keep intervention forces aimed at the Middle East, where the serious threats to our interests "could not be laid at the Kremlin's door," contrary to long deceit. Rather, the serious problems trace to "radical nationalism," the term regularly used for independent nationalism that is under control. That is actual a major theme of the Cold War, masked by posturing about the Great Enemy.

The fate of NATO is also revealing. It was constructed and maintained in alleged defense against the Russian hordes. By 1991, [there were] no more Russian hordes, no Warsaw Pact, and Mikhail Gorbachev was proposing a broad security system with no military pacts. What happened to NATO? It expanded to the East in violation of commitments to Gorbachev by President Bush I and Secretary of State James Baker that appear to have been consciously intended to deceive him and to gain his acquiescence to a unified Germany within NATO, so recent archival work persuasively indicates.

To move to another domain, the free-market capitalism extolled in doctrine was illustrated by an IMF study of major banks, which showed that their profits derived mostly from an implicit taxpayer insurance policy.

Examples abound, and are highly instructive.

Since the end of the Second World War, capitalism throughout the West -- and in fact throughout the globe -- has managed to maintain and expand its domination not merely through political and psychological means but also through the use of the repressive apparatus of the state, including the military. Can you talk a little bit about this in connection with the theme of "who rules the world"?

The "mailed fist" [the threat of armed or overbearing force] is not lacking even within the most free societies. In the postwar US, the most striking example is COINTELPRO, a program run by the national political police (FBI) to stamp out dissidence and activism over a broad range, reaching as far as political assassination (Black Panther organizer Fred Hampton). Massive incarceration of populations [deemed] superfluous for profit-making (largely African-American, for obvious historical reasons) is yet another means.

Abroad, the fist is constantly wielded, directly or through clients. The Indochina wars are the most extreme case, the worst postwar 20th-century crime, criticized in the mainstream as a "blunder," like the invasion of Iraq, the worst crime of the new century. One highly significant postwar example is the plague of violent repression that spread through Latin America after JFK effectively shifted the mission of the Latin America military from "hemispheric defense" to "internal security," a euphemism for war against the population. There were horrendous effects throughout the hemisphere, reaching Central America with Reagan's murderous wars, mostly relying on the terrorist forces of client states.

While still the world's predominant power, there is no doubt that the US is in decline. What are the causes and consequences of American decline?

US power peaked, at a historically unprecedented level, at the end of World War II. That couldn't possibly be sustained. It began to erode very soon with what is called, interestingly, "the loss of China" [the transformation of China into a communist nation in 1949]. And the process continued with the reconstruction of industrial societies from wartime devastation and decolonization. One reflection of the decline is the shift of attitudes toward the UN. It was greatly admired when it was hardly more than an instrument of US power in the early postwar years, but increasingly came under attack as "anti-American" as it fell out of control -- so far out of control that the US has held the record in vetoes after 1970, when it joined Britain in support of the racist regime of Southern Rhodesia. By then, the global economy was tripartite: German-based Europe, Japan-based East Asia, and US-based North America.

In the military dimension, the US has remained supreme. There are many consequences. One is resort to "coalitions of the willing" when international opinion overwhelmingly opposes US resort to violence, even among allies, as in the case of the invasion of Iraq. Another is "soft coups," as right now in Brazil, rather than support for neo-Nazi National Security States as was true in the not-distant past.

If the US is still the world's first superpower, what country or entity do you consider to be the second superpower?

There is much talk of China as the emerging superpower. According to many analysts, it is poised to overtake the US. There is no doubt of China's emerging significance in the world scene, already surpassing the US economically by some measures (though far below per capita). Military, China is far weaker; confrontations are taking place in coastal waters near China, not in the Caribbean or off the coast of California. But China faces very serious internal problems -- labor repression and protest, severe ecological threats, demographic decline in work force, and others. And the economy, while booming, is still highly dependent on the more advanced industrial economies at its periphery and the West, though that is changing, and in some high-tech domains, such as design and development of solar panels, China seems to have the world lead. As China is hemmed in from the sea, it is compensating by extending westward, reconstructing something like the old silk roads in a Eurasian system largely under Chinese influence and soon to reach Europe.

You have been arguing for a long time now that nuclear weapons pose one of the two greatest threats to humankind. Why are the major powers so reluctant to abolish nuclear weapons? Doesn't the very existence of these weapons pose a threat to the existence of the "'masters of the universe" themselves?

It is quite remarkable to see how little concern top planners show for the prospects of their own destruction -- not a novelty in world affairs (those who initiated wars often ended up devastated) but now on a hugely different scale. We see that from the earliest days of the atomic age. The US at first was virtually invulnerable, though there was one serious threat on the horizon: ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] with hydrogen bomb warheads. Archival research has now confirmed what was surmised earlier: there was no plan, not even a thought, of reaching a treaty agreement that would have banned these weapons, though there is good reason to believe that it might have been feasible. The same attitudes prevail right to the present, where the vast buildup of forces right at the traditional invasion route into Russia is posing a serious threat of nuclear war.

Planners explain quite lucidly why it is so important to keep these weapons. One of the clearest explanations is in a partially declassified Clinton-era document issued by the Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which is in charge of nuclear weapons policy and use. The document is called Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence; the term "deterrence," like "defense," is a familiar Orwellism referring to coercion and attack. The document explains that "nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict," and must therefore be available, at the ready. If the adversary knows we have them, and might use them, they may back down -- a regular feature of Kissingerian diplomacy. In that sense, nuclear weapons are constantly being used, a point that Dan Ellsberg has insistently made, just as we are using a gun when we rob a store but don't actually shoot. One section of the report is headed: "Maintaining Ambiguity." It advises that "planners should not be too rational about determining...what the opponent values the most," which must be targeted.

"One of the most disturbing and dangerous developments is the growing insulation of the elite from any system of democratic accountability," says Noam Chomsky.
Photo by: Photo: Don J. Usner
"That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project," [the report says, adding that] it is "beneficial" for our strategic posture if "some elements may appear to be potentially `out of control'." Nixon's madman theory, except this time clearly articulated in an internal planning document, not merely a recollection by an adviser (Haldeman, in the Nixon case).
Like other early post-Cold War documents, this one has been virtually ignored. (I've referred to it a number of times, eliciting no notice that I'm aware of.) The neglect is quite interesting. Simple logic suffices to show that the documentary record after the alleged Russian threat disappeared would be highly illuminating as to what was actually going on before.

The Obama administration has made some openings towards Cuba. Do you anticipate an end to the embargo any time soon?

The embargo has long been opposed by the entire world, as the annual votes on the embargo at the UN General Assembly reveal. By now the US is supported only by Israel. Before it could sometimes count on a Pacific island or some other dependency. Of course Latin America is completely opposed. More interestingly, major sectors of US capital have long been in favor of normalization of relations, as public opinion has been: agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, energy, tourism and others. It is normal for public opinion to be ignored, but dismissing powerful concentrations of the business world tells us that really significant "reasons of state" are involved. We have a good sense from the internal record about what these interests are.

From the Kennedy years until today there has been outrage over Cuba's "successful defiance" of US policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine, which signaled the intention to control the hemisphere. The goal was not realizable because of relative weakness, just as the British deterrent prevented the US from attaining its first "foreign policy" objective, the conquest of Cuba, in the 1820s (here the term "foreign policy" is used in the conventional sense, which adheres to what historian of imperialism Bernard Porter calls "the salt water fallacy": conquest only becomes imperial only when it crosses salt water, so the destruction of the Indian nations and the conquest of half of Mexico were not "imperialism"). The US did achieve its objective in 1898, intervening to prevent Cuba's liberation from Spain and converting it into a virtual colony.

Washington has never reconciled itself to Cuba's intolerable arrogance of achieving independence in 1959 -- partial, since the US refused to return the valuable Guantanamo Bay region, taken by "Treaty" at gunpoint in 1903 and not returned despite the requests of the government of Cuba. In passing, it might be recalled that by far the worst human rights violations in Cuba take place in this stolen territory, to which the US has a much weaker claim than Russia does to Crimea, also taken by force.

But to return to the question, it is hard to predict whether the US will agree to end the embargo short of some kind of Cuban capitulation to US demands going back almost 200 years.

How do you assess and evaluate the historical significance and impact of the Cuban revolution in world affairs and toward the realization of socialism?

The impact on world affairs was extraordinary. For one thing, Cuba played a very significant role in [the] liberation of West and South Africa. Its troops beat back a US-supported South African invasion of Angola and compelled South Africa to abandon its attempt to establish a regional support system and to give up its illegal hold on Namibia. The fact that Black Cuban troops defeated the South Africans had an enormous psychological impact both in white and Black Africa. A remarkable exercise of dedicated internationalism, undertaken at great risk from the reigning superpower, which was the last supporter of apartheid South Africa, and entirely selfless. Small wonder that when Nelson Mandela was released from prison, one of his first acts was to declare:

During all my years in prison, Cuba was an inspiration and Fidel Castro a tower of strength… [Cuban victories] destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa … a turning point for the liberation of our continent -- and of my people -- from the scourge of apartheid … What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?

Cuban medical assistance in poor and suffering areas is also quite unique.

Domestically, there were very significant achievements, among them simply survival in the face of US efforts to bring "the terrors of the earth" to Cuba (historian Arthur Schlesinger's phrase, in his biography of Robert Kennedy, who was assigned this task as his highest priority) and the fierce embargo. Literacy campaigns were highly successful, and the health system is justly renowned. There are serious human rights violations, and restrictions of political and personal freedoms. How much is attributable to the external attack and how much to independent policy choices, one can debate -- but for Americans to condemn violations without full recognition of their own massive responsibility gives hypocrisy a new meaning.

Does the US remain the world's leading supporter of terrorism?

A review of several recent books on Obama's global assassination (drone) campaign in the American Journal of International Law concludes that there is a "persuasive case" that the campaign is "unlawful": "U.S. drone attacks generally violate international law, worsen the problem of terrorism, and transgress fundamental moral principles" -- a judicious assessment, I believe. The details of the cold and calculated presidential killing machine are harrowing, as is the attempt at legal justification, such as the stand of Obama's Justice Department on "presumption of innocence," a foundation stone of modern law tracing back to the Magna Carta 800 years ago. As the stand was explained in the New York Times, "Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It, in effect, counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent" -- post-assassination. In large areas of tribal Pakistan and Yemen, and elsewhere, populations are traumatized by the fear of sudden murder from the skies at any moment. The distinguished anthropologist Akbar Ahmed, with long professional and personal experience with the tribal societies that are under attack all over the world, forcefully recounts how these murderous assaults elicit dedication to revenge -- not very surprisingly. How would we react?

These campaigns alone, I think, secure the trophy for the US.

Historically, under capitalism, plundering the poor and the natural resources of weak nations has been the favorite hobby of both the rich and of imperial states. In the past, the plundering was done mostly through outright physical exploitation means and military conquest. How have the means of exploitation changed under financial capitalism?

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles once complained to President Eisenhower that the Communists have an unfair advantage. They can "appeal directly to the masses" and "get control of mass movements, something we have no capacity to duplicate. The poor people are the ones they appeal to and they have always wanted to plunder the rich." It's not easy to sell the principle that the rich have a right to plunder the poor.

It's true that the means have changed. The international "free trade agreements" (FTAs) are a good example, including those now being negotiated -- mostly in secret from populations, but not from the corporate lawyers and lobbyists who are writing the details. The FTAs reject "free trade": they are highly protectionist, with onerous patent regulations to guarantee exorbitant profits for the pharmaceutical industry, media conglomerates, and others, as well as protection for affluent professionals, unlike working people, who are placed in competition all of the world, with obvious consequences. The FTAs are to a large extent not even about trade; rather, about investor rights, such as the rights of corporations (not of course mere people of flesh and blood) to sue governments for actions that might reduce potential profits of foreign investors, like environmental or healthy and safety regulations. Much of what is called "trade" doesn't merit that term, for example, production of parts in Indiana, assembly in Mexico, sale in California, all basically within a command economy, a megacorporation. Flow of capital is free. Flow of labor is anything but, violating what Adam Smith recognized to be a basic principle of free trade: free circulation of labor. And to top it off, the FTAs are not even agreements, at least if people are considered to be members of democratic societies.

Is this to say that we now live in a post-imperialist age?

Seems to me just a question of terminology. Domination and coercion take many and varied forms, as the world changes.

We have seen in recent years several so-called progressive leaders march to power through the ballot box only to betray their vows to the people the moment they took office. What means or mechanisms should be introduced in truly democratic systems to ensure that elected officials do not betray the trust of the voters? For example, the ancient Athenians had conceived of something called "the right to recall," which in the 19th century became a critical although little known element in the political project for future social and political order of certain socialist movements. Are you in favor of reviving this mechanism as a critical component of real, sustainable democracy?

I think a strong case can be made for right of recall in some form, buttressed by capacities for free and independent inquiry to monitor what elected representatives are doing. The great achievement of Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and other contemporary "whistleblowers" is to serve and advance these fundamental rights of citizens. The reaction by state authorities is instructive. As well-known, the Obama administration has broken all records in punishment of whistleblowers. It is also remarkable to see how intimidated Europe is. We saw that dramatically when Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane flew home from a visit to Moscow, and European countries were in such terror of Washington that they would not let the plane cross their airspace, in case it might be carrying Edward Snowden, and when the plane landed in Austria it was searched by police in violation of diplomatic protocol.

Could an act of terrorism against leaders who blatantly betrayed the trust of voters ever be justified?

"Ever" is a strong word. It is hard to conjure up realistic circumstances. The burden of proof for any resort to violence should be very heavy, and this case would seem extremely hard to justify.

With human nature being what it is, and individuals clearly having different skills, abilities, drives and aspirations, is a truly egalitarian society feasible and/or desirable?

Human nature encompasses saints and sinners, and each of us has all of these capacities. I see no conflict at all between an egalitarian vision and human variety. One could, perhaps, argue that those with greater skills and talents are already rewarded by the ability to exercise them, so they merit less external reward -- though I don't argue this. As for the feasibility of more just and free social institutions and practices, we can never be certain in advance, and can only keep trying to press the limits as much as possible, with no clear reason that I can see to anticipate failure.

In your view, what would constitute a decent society and what form of a world order would be needed to eliminate completely questions about who rules the world?

We can construct visions of "perpetual peace," carrying forward the Kantian project, and of a society of free and creative individuals not subjected to hierarchy, domination, arbitrary rule and decision. In my own view -- respected friends and comrades in struggle disagree -- we do not know enough to spell out details with much confidence, and can anticipate that considerable experimentation will be necessary along the way. There are very urgent immediate tasks, not least dealing with literal questions of survival of organized human societies, questions that have never risen before in human history but are inescapable right now. And there are many other tasks that demand immediate and dedicated work. It makes good sense to keep in mind longer-term aspirations as guidelines for immediate choices, recognizing as well that the guidelines are not immutable. That leaves us plenty to do.
Constructing Visions of "Perpetual Peace": An Interview With Noam Chomsky by C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout. Org
http://flip.it/hroni

What we really need to reject is Islamophobia-phobia

In a large and growing segment of American society, fear of being tagged “racist” about Muslims (though Islam is not a race) provides a much more direct threat to your livelihood than radical Islam.

Former police officer Daniel Gilroy told Florida Today that he repeatedly raised red flags about Omar Mateen when both men worked at the same security firm, but his employer did nothing because Mateen was a Muslim.

The pattern is familiar. Before the Islamist attack that left 14 dead in San Bernardino last December, neighbor Aaron Elswick told ABC 7 News in Los Angeles that shooter Syed Farook was “kind of suspicious” and “wanted to report it” but “didn’t want to profile” him.

Before Army Maj. Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people at Ft. Hood in 2009, “He made his views known, and he was very vocal, he had extremely radical jihadist views,” Lt. Col. Val Finnell told FoxNews.com.

Finnell took health-services classes with Hasan, who said, “I’m a Muslim first, and I hold the Shariah, the Islamic Law, before the United States Constitution,” according to Finnell.

That statement alone disqualified Hasan from military service. No one did anything, Finnell added, because “they were too concerned about being politically correct.”

Perhaps nothing could have been done to stop Mateen’s rampage, but I have a sickening suspicion that we’re going to learn that many more warnings went unseen by those who blindfolded themselves with political correctness.

No one wants Muslims to feel harassed as a class but it’s silly to pretend that being a Muslim makes you just another patch in the glorious American quilt, like being black or Jewish or gay.

In a poll of British Muslims, a majority said homosexuality should be illegal. Nearly a quarter said Shariah law should be imposed in Britain. Four percent — that’s tens of thousands of people — admitted they sympathized with suicide bombers.

The Islamophobic-phobic-in-Chief poo-poohs both the terrorist threat and its ideological root. President Obama likes to say that bathtubs kill more Americans than terrorists. I’d like to see him try that argument with the families of the victims of the Orlando massacre.

Last year Obama actually chided us that we shouldn’t look askance on Islam because Christians committed violent acts, too, during the Crusades, 600 or so years ago. I’d like to see him tell the Orlando families that, too.

Obama is the avatar of the false moral equivalence that, having infected elite universities in the 1960s, has gradually metastasized to infect virtually the entire elite class of American society, along with a large chunk of the cringing, guilt-ridden bourgeoisie.

The supreme rule is the severely undergraduate notion that everyone and everything is roughly equal. We like our ideas, but, hey, if you have a different point of view, that’s groovy, too.

Taking it to its most absurd conclusion, as Obama does, the ideal holds that Western liberal democracy and murderous medieval fanaticism each should be given a fair hearing.

At his National Prayer Breakfast speech last year, Obama euphemistically referred to global jihad as “this”: “This is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith … We should start with some basic humility. I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt — not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right.”

They believe this, we believe that. Who’s to say who’s wrong? Obama’s response to the global culture clash is a shrug. When it comes to an ideology opposed to everything the US stands for — tolerance for gays being one of the top items on the list — Obama must be the first president in history to see himself as a trans-national figure who has to be scrupulously neutral about America’s role.

Hillary Clinton might be the second. In an unusually candid moment at Georgetown in 2014, she let slip that she saw Islamist fanatics as a sort of loyal opposition with reasonable requests: “Smart power,” she said then, means “showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view. Helping to define the problems, determine the solutions.”

How would that work? “Omar, you want to massacre dozens of gays. Would you be willing to compromise on that?”

What we really need to reject is Islamophobia-phobia
by Kyle Smith, nypost.com June 13
http://nypost.com/2016/06/13/what-we-really-need-to-reject-is-islamophobia-phobia/

The new Great Game in Central Asia

THE recent India-Iran-Afghanistan agreement to develop a trade route from Chabahar to Central Asia has been portrayed by Indian commentators as having changed the historical ‘Great Game’ for control of the connection between South and Central Asia through Afghanistan. It has been claimed that the agreement will end India’s ‘isolation’ from Central Asia and Pakistan’s ‘stranglehold’ over Afghanistan and create a ‘new security paradigm’ and a ‘geopolitical shift’.

But the Great Game has already changed. It is being played on a wider canvas with different players and rules. The power contest in Asia is now mainly between China and America, and, to a lesser extent, between America and Russia — with India, Pakistan, Iran and others in subsidiary roles. In this context, the strategic and economic implications of the tripartite agreement are likely to be limited.

Chabahar port has been on the drawing board for many years. Its main purpose was and will remain to expand Iran’s oil and other trade including with India.

Implementation of the trade route to Central Asia will remain challenging until peace can be restored in Afghanistan. With the collapse of the inter-Afghan negotiations, Afghanistan is likely to witness a further escalation of conflict and chaos. Transit to Central Asia via Iran, or Pakistan, is not viable at present.

Even once the route is operational, its economic significance will remain modest. India’s oil needs can be met by Iran (and Saudi Arabia). The Central Asians do not have pipelines to Chabahar; they do to China. New gas pipelines are being constructed to Europe. Their mineral resources are also flowing north, east and west; not south.

America is and will remain a major player in the new Asian Great Game.
With a population of only around 50 million, Central Asia will not become a huge market for manufactured goods. It will be twice as expensive for India to send goods to Central Asia through Chabahar than it would be overland across Pakistan. Indian goods are thus unlikely to be competitive against Chinese products shipped overland.

The strategic advantages for India are also questionable. Its influence in Afghanistan will be more dependent on Iran. Pakistan’s cooperation will continue to be essential to restoring peace in Afghanistan. Indian shipping lanes to Chabahar will be vulnerable to disruption. India’s limited influence in Central Asia will not dent that of Russia and China.

The new Great Game will increasingly revolve around China’s One Belt, One Road vision of land and sea connections between Asia, Europe and beyond. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the first component of this ambitious project.

In comparison to the Chabahar route, the strategic and economic implications of CPEC are enormous. It will transform China from a one- to a two-ocean power; enable a part of its $4000 billion annual trade to circumvent the Malacca straits and other potential choke points in the Indian Ocean and shorten China’s supply lines to the Gulf, West Asia and Africa. For these reasons, if no other, China has a vital stake in Pakistan’s strategic stability and socioeconomic development. The Chinese commitment of $46bn for CPEC projects is but the first instalment of the massive capital which China is prepared to deploy in Pakistan.

Instead of being distracted by the moves of its adversaries, Pakistan must remain focused on the implementation of CPEC. This strategic enterprise should not be allowed to be stalled or delayed by external pressure or internal politics, inefficiency or corruption. It would be wise to create a separate and independent CPEC Authority which can be a ‘one-stop-shop’ entrusted with achieving CPEC’s enormous potential for Pakistan’s development. CPEC projects must go beyond infrastructure development to encompass manufacture, consumer goods, housing, health, textiles, finance and other sectors. To this end, the interaction between Pakistani and Chinese private- and public-sector companies must be actively expanded and intensified. Some of the externally imposed limitations on CPEC investment projects, such as restrictions on ‘sovereign guarantees’ for debt finance, need to be removed expeditiously.

CPEC faces threats from Pakistan and China’s adversaries. These will have to be met forcefully.

India’s opposition has been announced openly. New Delhi will continue to utilise Afghanistan as a base to destabilise Pakistan and undermine CPEC. The recent spate of attacks on Chinese workers in Pakistan is no accident. Pakistan will have to further enhance security for them and consider direct action to remove the Afghan-based threat from the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

Iran has assured that Chabahar is not designed to compete with Gwadar or CPEC. Pakistan and Iran can cooperate for mutual benefit: to end terrorism in Balochistan, expand trade, and construct the Iranian gas pipeline and a Gwadar-Chabahar economic corridor. However, Tehran often wants to run with the hare and hunt with the hound. Some recent events have sent disturbing signals which Pakistan cannot ignore.

To balance the growing Indo-Iranian relationship, Pakistan must maintain and reinforce its relationship with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It would be in Pakistan’s interest to help in giving substance and form to the ‘Islamic coalition’ hastily formed by Riyadh. It should also convince the GCC states of the benefits of CPEC as a path to their closer connection with China.

America is and will remain a major player in the new Asian Great Game. To bolster its strategic contest with China, the US is moving towards a military alliance with India. The Obama administration is also cooperating tactically with Iran in the fight against the militant Islamic State group in Iraq and, less clearly, in Syria. It wants Iran to help in stabilising Afghanistan. But the US-Iran relationship could again become hostile if new sanctions are imposed by the US Congress or differences arise over Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah or Israel.

For Islamabad, the major threat now is possible hostile US action to destabilise Pakistan and disrupt CPEC. Wisely, China has invited US participation in CPEC. The US has declared, perhaps diplomatically, that it is not opposed to CPEC. But the signals from Washington, as it hosts India’s Modi, are ominous. The new Great Game is about to get tougher and rougher.

The new Great Game
by Munir Akram, dawn.com. The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1264242/the-new-great-game

Letter from Jerusalem

Once again I fear violence and bloodshed. How ironical that our holiest month should witness a clash between the Muslims and Jews. How unfortunate that we who have lived in Jerusalem for decades should be barred from visiting the holiest of the holy sites during this month just because we are Muslims. You were lucky to sit amidst cedars and olive trees breathing the sacredness of a divine presence inside the Holy City of Jerusalem when you came last year, a week before fasting began. You and I sat on a bench looking straight at the grandeur of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the actual site where Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) prayed before ascending to Heaven.

The sun was setting, a gentle breeze made the evening more beauteous. You looked heavenwards to see the blue of the sky turn into a riot of colours creating a rhapsody that sent shivers of spirituality down our spines. Yes, you and I sat, silently absorbing its divinity in every fibre of our mortal being. We wanted to take in the totality of the meaning of our existence on earth. It was God around us.

The silence was broken as the azaan called us for maghrib prayers. As if in a trance, we walked to enter the Holy Mosque. I noticed the expression on your face. It was one of awe. The sprawling red carpets wall-to-wall presented an expanse of space. Unknowingly, you wandered off to the male section, thinking that men andwomen could choose to pray wherever they wished. A man standing next to you pointed to the women`s area. He looked irritated. You looked unhinged too! Why have segregation in the house of God, you complained to me. I just shrugged my shoulders. Earlier, remember when we entered the Muslim Quarters that we call Al Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) where Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are situated, you were stopped at the gate and told to cover yourself from head to toe. We went and got an abaya for you to wear.

Prayers being over, I showed you the south end of the mosque. You saw the bullet holes on the pillar. In 1951, King Abdullah of Jordan was gunned down here. His grandson, Prince Hussein, who later became the king, survived due to the medals he was wearing over his chest.

The late King Hussein of Jordan donated the gold, that you saw covering the Dome of the Rock. Our Prophet (PBUH) ascended to heaven during his Night Journey from here.

Last Ramazan, Israeli police stopped the males in my family from offering prayers at Al Aqsa Mosque. The situation was tense as daily fights broke out between Palestinians and the Israelis. Tension continues with deaths on both sides. As Arab-Palestinians, we demand immediate end of Israeli occupation of Jerusalem forcibly conquered in 1967. Clashes have erupted between Muslim worshipers and Israeli police whenever Jewish men have sneaked into the Muslim Quarters. Jews are not allowed there.But the Jews lay claim to Al Aqsa and call it the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

Read A History ofGod by Karen Armstrong to understand how Jews, Christians and Muslims over the centuries have laid claim to Jerusalem as their holy place, and how these three monolithic religions have `shaped and scarred` the city for thousands of years. Recently, you must have read Unesco`s executive board resolution declaring Israel as the `occupying power` where stand Al Aqsa Mosque / Al Haram al-Sharif the third holiest site for Muslims after the mosques of alHaram in Makkah and Al Nabawi in Madina.

While criticism against Israeli occupation of Jerusalem by foreign countries continues, it`s America, where you presently reside, that stands solidly behind Israel. Israel receives the highest military aid from the US. Not surprising, the IS [militant Islamic State groupj has jumped in and is now threatening to attack Israel to `free` Jerusalem. It`s not good news for us Muslims who are already treated with hate and suspicion by the Israeli police. Imagine what will happen if IS was to infiltrate into Israel. It will be a doublewhammy for Arab-Israelis like us. We don`t want the IS thugs to come and occupy us! Last Sunday, I went to the same café where you and I had our falafels. `How is your friend from Pakistan who now lives in America`? She was not wearing the hijab?` remembered Ibrahim, the aging proprietor of the café. `Do write to her from me and ask if she has changed her mind and is now covering her head as allGod-fearing pious Muslim women are supposed to do.` I know that you don`t feel the need to wear the hijab and I respect your decision, but in East Jerusalem, where the Arab-Palestinian population is concentrated, most women, as you must have noticed, have their heads covered. To cover or not to cover one`s head is solely a personal choice. It has nothing to do with being a good or a bad Muslim. So, when next, I visit Ibrahim`s falafel place (the best in Jerusalem!) I`ll tell him that you are still running around without a hijab! On a more serious note, what do you think of `President` Donald Trump? He`s disastrously toxic for the Muslims in America. We too have a `Trump` in the Israeli cabinet. Avigdor Lieberman, the ultranationalist Palestinian-hater, is the new defence minister. He holds the second most powerful position in the Israeli government and hasthreatened to conquer Gaza controlled by the Palestinians to build more settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank. He has called for removing Arabic as an official language. With this extremist at the helm of affairs, the hope of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel is gone.

Oh! By the way, I ran into your friend Ayesha, the manager of the hotel where you stayed last year. She looked concerned, as she`ll have a lot of empty rooms to fill this Ramazan. The possibility of bloody clashes between the Muslims and the Jews will keep tourists away. Last year was different when you came. We walked the ancient alleyways late into the night, enjoying the feel of freedom. There were tourists all around. They too wanted to live in the moment transcendence unequalled in the world except Jerusalem!
"Letter from Jerusalem"
By Anjum Niaz
  http://epaper.dawn.com/DetailImage.php?StoryImage=05_06_2016_424_002