[CTRL] Crisis Survey -- "A News-Rich Environment"

[Mrs. Jela Jovanovic, Secretary General]

 -Caveat Lector-

The Committee for National Solidarity
Tolstojeva 34, 11000 Belgrade, YU


[SIRIUS: The Strategic Issues Research Institute of the United States:
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[Strategic Issues Today: <todayiss.gif>]

Benjamin C. Works, Executive Director
--Speak the Truth and Shame the Devil--

SIT-REP 8-3; Tuesday, August 3, 1999

In This Issue:  Crisis Survey -- "A News-Rich Environment"

"Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sink the fire;
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Ninevah and Tyre."
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!
- Rudyard Kipling; Recessional, 1897
Summary:

Far-called our navies are wearing themselves out, our Marines, our Air
Forces and our Army as well.  Though we understand there is a phenomenon
called "mission fatigue," new missions are emerging while recruitment falls
further behind and pilots continue to bail out of the services.

There is a new "Clinton Doctrine" for "Genocide Prevention" if, when and
where we can: Sandy Berger enunciated the doctrine on Monday, July 26 and
continues to market the rationale.  But the Kosovo war proves that
"Genocide" has mutated from an absolute, historical-diplomatic and rational
measure of slaughter, to a relative and politically-defined measure of
political friction.  Protection of East Timorese may be warranted under
many grounds, but the "Clinton Doctrine" seems an overly-dramatic
misrepresentation for that intervention, as well as a clear misstatement of
the facts on the ground in Kosovo at the time the air war was initiated.
The Hutu slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda was a real genocide, but it was more
important to maneuver France out of its role of influence in the region,
than to head off that butchery, which left as many as a million dead,  in
just 3 months.

It is a news-rich environment, indeed.  Wesley Clark has been fired --oops;
accepted early retirement.  Seems the Administration has a scapegoat to
offer Russia and China who serves to protect Mme Albright's (and Jamie
Rubin's) legacy. (Since when do Press Secretaries become "stars" and policy
formulators?)  Then there is all the KLA-Mafia lawlessness in Kosovo --it's
not just murdering 30 Serbs and Roma (Gypsies) per week, its stolen cars,
extortion rackets, and 50 burned churches and monasteries., etc; ad
nauseum.  Scottish propaganda-babbler, George Robertson, has been tapped to
succeed Javier Solana as Secretary General of NATO.

Then there is "Hell in the Pacific;" China is upping the ante with Taiwan,
North Korea continues preparations for the launch of its new missile.  And
surprise of surprises, the Melbourne Australia newspaper, "The Age" reports
that the Clinton Administration, is preparing to commit a US Marine
battalion-sized task force to a four-year occupation of East Timor
--something, nobody inside the Beltway has been prepared to discuss with
Congress or the American People, as of yet.  At the other side of the
Pacific Rim, the Colombian Marxist guerrilla army, "FARC" blew off two big
bombs this weekend, killing dozens in the separate attacks  --US armed
forces have been training an anti-cocaine commando battalion for the
Colombian Army, which will be operational about January 2000.  More
battalions are needed as the FARC guerrilla widens and even laps across
borders into Venezuela and Panama.  That brings up the question of why the
US government has sat quietly by and allowed the Beijing-controlled
Hutchison-Whampoa Corporation to take over operation of the canal and the
port facilities at each end.

Then there is India-Pakistan, guerrillas are still trying to sneak into
India's side of Kashmir from Pakistani territory, though Islamabad
officially called the fight off a couple of weeks ago.  Then Saddam's air
defenses continue to provoke air ground skirmishes with our US air forces;
there have been over 63 incidents in the Northern No Fly Zone since
Christmas, 1998, with no end in sight --that operation is another Wesley
Clark enterprise as it falls within his NATO and European Command theater
of operations.  Lastly, August 7th marks the anniversary of those two
Islamic terrorist bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania;
intelligence reports from several sources (three confirmed to David
Hackworth alone) indicate the US is braced for an anniversary attack on the
US (possibly on US soil) on or about the anniversary --keep your head low
on Saturday.

The key point is that the new Clinton Doctrine of "Genocide Prevention" is
leaving our armed forces increasingly over-stretched and less capable of
putting on a show of force against our primary opponents and rivals.
.Obviously, I am not going to be able to address all of that in this
update, but I will have a crack at the most important interlocking and
overlapping elements.

The Clinton Doctrine:

The abbreviated article, which follows, lays down the post-facto
justification for interventions designed to make our liberals and misguided
neo-conservative crusaders get their feel-good fixes.  It lays the US open
to further political manipulation from friends of foreign ethnic factions;
leads us increasingly "abroad in search of monsters to destroy," as John
Quincy Adams warned against so long ago.  I note that Mr. Berger
deliberately misstates the facts of what was going on in Kosovo, in order
to justify the doctrine on an after-the-fact basis.

U.S. Outlines Genocide Intervention .c The Associated Press
 By BARRY SCHWEID

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is prepared to use force to protect
civilians against genocide in Africa and elsewhere under certain specified
conditions, President Clinton's national security adviser said Monday.

Sandy Berger, an architect of the air war against Yugoslavia over Serb
mistreatment of Kosovo civilians, set out three conditions for similar
American intervention in strife-torn Rwanda or any other nation where a
government undertakes a ``systematic effort to eliminate a people.''

That, he said, was Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's aim in Kosovo
before NATO bombs forced the withdrawal of Serb troops and special police
units accused of countless atrocities against ethnic Albanian civilians.

Berger, echoing Clinton, said ``not one penny'' in U.S. reconstruction aid
will go to Serbia so long as Milosevic remains in power.

The administration's preference for dealing with similar ethnic cleansing
campaigns is to build up the capacity of neighboring countries to intervene
rather than to send in American troops. That is the approach the
administration has taken in Africa to deal with bloody abuses in Rwanda.

However, Berger said, the United States would be prepared to step in if
three conditions were met: There was a systematic effort to eliminate an
ethnic group; the United States had a national security stake; and the U.S.
military had the capacity to act.

One major reason that some people challenged armed U.S.-NATO intervention
in behalf of the ethnic Albanians was whether the United States can legally
use force against a sovereign nation that had not attacked U.S. territory.
The other main group who questioned the airstrikes comprised people who
approved on humanitarian grounds but doubted that the administration would
do so much to help non-Europeans.

By laying down the rationale for future interventions, Berger seemed to be
seeking to put to rest both objections….

Berger said that more than 720,000 of the estimated 1 million ethnic
Albanian refugees have returned to Kosovo. Many of them are enraged by the
murder of relatives and the destruction of homes and schools.

``Had the United States done nothing,'' Berger said, ``an entire people
would have been erased.''

Source:  AP-NY-07-26-99 1640EDT

Erased?  I recall they were mostly chased into a sovereign country named
Albania, or into Macedonia, rather than being "erased."  "Removed" is
closer to the truth, and "displaced" is accurate as well; and remember, the
depopulation did not begin until after the bombing began --clearly post
facto.  Again, I will only stress that good policy and outcomes cannot grow
out of bad analysis and biased politics.  As doctrines go, this is a new
low; a glistering generality that is emotionally unassailable, but
impossible to subject to disciplined rules of analysis and action.
Hypocrisy has been ennobled and enacted as procedure.

China-Falun Gong Update:

The crackdown continues, and there are reports of some dramatic suicides by
Falun Gong devotees.  There is precious little hue and cry about that
--after all, Clinton "sold" the White House to Beijing.

A few readers wrote me about my Falun Gong report (Sit-Rep 7-30) and
expressed skepticism that China will ever evolve from its plutocratic
totalitarianism and penchant for fiscal corruption.  I agree in that I do
not expect China to magically transubstantiate into a democracy, as we in
the West understand that concept.  At best, a slow evolution into something
resembling a republic, but bound by the Party nomenklatura, the plutocrats
and other inside interests, will emerge.  In other words, China appears
headed down the "conglomeratist" road followed by Germany, Japan, Korea and
other financial oligarchies.

As to Falun Gong, it is a convenient "enemy within" that the government can
flog as a threat to the polity, much as Nero persecuted the early
Christians.  Inwardly oriented devotees are hardly likely to mount an
insurrection, nor can they vote en masse, to topple unpopular politicians.
But this incident represents a problem Beijing will have going forward, it
will not be able to maintain spiritual and political orthodoxy, however
much it tries.  The next generation of China's evolution will be worth
paying attention to.

China vs. Taiwan and WMDs:

When I left off last week, I was waiting for confirmation of saber-rattling
by Beijing.  We now have that, indicating another round of white-knuckle
days.  Though I do not believe China has the amphibious lift necessary to
invade Taiwan, it could blockade the island with submarines and attack the
lesser islands of Qemoy and Matsu.  On Saturday, July 31, a patrol boat of
the Chinese navy seized a small container vessel en route to deliver
supplies to the Taiwanese army garrison of Matsu.  The vessel and its crew
of ten are being held on smuggling charges.  Beijing's war ship openly
violated what it usually respects as Taiwan's territorial waters --about
the strongest signal it can send shy of a missile test-launch or actual
salvo against Qemoy and Matsu.

Atop that, on Monday, Beijing tersely announced that it had tested a new,
more accurate, long-range missile, the Dong Feng-31, a single-warhead,
mobile Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) with a range of 5,000
miles --sufficient to reach the US.  The missile is mobile, similar in
concept to Russia's new mobile missile, deployed last year.  These are
almost impossible for US intelligence resources to track, so again, China
has improved the viability of its strategic nuclear forces, another signal
of the utter failure of Mr. Clinton's non-proliferation strategy.

There were also indications that it was activating mobile missiles in
Fujian Province, across the Formosa Straits from Taiwan.  As readers may
recall, a few hundred miles up the China Sea, North Korea is preparing its
own test-launch --that of a missile that analysts rate as capable of
hitting Alaska and Hawaii.

Further, there are reports that Chinese President Jiang Zemin is cutting
back Prime Minister  Zhu Rongji's supporters in the government,
particularly in banking after Zhu's failures to fire up economic growth and
to gain membership in the World Trade Organization --the conservatives are
pushing the progressives back, it appears and the military is gaining in
influence, again.

It's about these weapons of mass destruction (WMDs); long range missiles
and nasty warheads.  America's opponents know this is the way to go in
insulating themselves from American feel-good interference in their highly
controlled internal affairs.  It is worth reminding SIRIUS readers that you
build a missile with a particular range, to reach a particular set of
targets.  China, Korea, Pakistan and Iran are all building longer range
missiles that will be capable of hitting targets well beyond their
neighbor's territory. Instead of the one Cold War nuclear stalemate, we
have several overlapping situations.  All that and Russia, in de facto
bankruptcy, has reverted to its WMDs as its first line of power projection.
 In April, as a Duma team was meeting with Curt Weldon's
inter-parliamentary team from Congress, the Russians suggested they could
black out the United States for a month with electro-magnetic pulse (EMP)
weaponry.  About the same time (as James Hackett reported in "No Space
Weapons Vacuum." a Washington Times column of July 12), Russia actually
tested an EMP weapon in space, demonstrating an ability to knock out our
spy and communications satellites.

On a guardedly pessimistic note, Lockheed Martin had its second consecutive
successful test of its 800-mile range anti-missile missile, the THAAD
(Theater High-Altitude Air Defense).  THAAD is behind schedule and is
conceived as a longer range defense than the Patriot system.  The US hopes
to deploy THAAD to protect Japan, Korea, and may offer it to Taiwan, as
well.  China & North Korea's missiles are operational and THAAD is several
years away, given the program smooths out its technological challenges from
here. If two more tests are passed by February, the missile will go into
"engineering and manufacturing development" (EMD), a pre-production mode,
and deployment is years away, while the ICBM missile threat from China,
Korea, and others is more imminent.

The Navy and Marines:

The Navy was stretched thin during the Kosovo Air War and had to maintain
its mission in the Arabian Gulf, helping to enforce the no-fly zone over
southern Iraq.  Then North Korea challenged South Korea over a disputed
crab fishing ground.  Aircraft carriers had to zoom east --the Teddy
Roosevelt from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Gulf, the Kitty Hawk, from
the Gulf back to the Western Pacific.  This is the Navy already short
14,000 crewmen and hundreds of pilots.

Now, when the US should be concentrating its well-manned and well-supplied
forces to mount a credible demonstration of rapid military power projection
in the China -Korea vicinity, we instead have overworked crews and
half-empty ammunition lockers.  And when a Marine (amphibious)
Expeditionary Unit (MEU) from the 3rd Marine Division (based in Hawaii and
Okinawa) should be cruising around to show the flag as part of that
demonstration, the Clinton Administration appears to be preparing to divert
that unit to engage in a new UN-sponsored peacekeeping mission in the
former Portuguese colony of East Timor.

A source tells me that the other day, the US Admiral in command of the
Pacific (his office is acronymically referred to as "CinCPac" or CINCPAC)
let slip that in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the US could do
little but keep to the sidelines and "let it happen," as Americans are wont
to say in the 1990s.

East Timor:

The Suharto regime overran the small Portuguese colony of East Timor  --the
eastern half of the island of Timor, about 90 miles off Northwest Australia
-- in the wake of the May 1974 Portuguese Revolution against the aging
dictator Salazar.  The Timorese never accepted this occupation by an
Islamic majority neighbor, given Timorese were converted to Catholicism
centuries ago.  The Age (Melbourne) has reported about this proposed
intervention for several days and reflects some conflicting views regarding
a US proposal that Australia lead the international occupation mission.  It
is interesting that the story has received no attention in the US Media, as
yet --let's not talk about it just now, what with Kosovo; and then there's
that idea of putting US troops on the Golan Heights, as well, in case
Israel and Syria come to terms.

When the US sabotaged General Suharto's economy during the Asian meltdown,
it was able to coerce Indonesia into allowing this plebiscite. That's an
interesting twist to the fiscal sabotage executed last year (SIRIUS wrote a
couple of reports on the Indonesian mess which remain in the web site's
musty 1998 archive).

The UN-monitored election --a plebiscite on independence-- is expected at
the end of the month, and voter registration.  As this registration is
being undertaken, Indonesian "militias"  --informal paramilitaries'-- have
been active, trying to terrorize the locals.  That is why the US apparently
feels a 4-year international occupation is warranted.  But that means that
the US will have to provide a fresh battalion every 6 months, a total of 8
deployments; the 3rd Marine Division only has 6 infantry battalions, at
last count, and its real mission includes Korea and the Arabian Gulf.  So,
if undertaken, this additional peacekeeping mission will further disrupt
the Marines --and probably the Army, if, as in Kosovo, the mission is
passed on to our 25th Infantry Division, stationed in Hawaii, and also
tasked for Korea.

I agree that it is a worthy outcome to secure Timorese independence, but
worry about this proposed commitment of troops when we have these greater
problems  SIRIUS squarely opposes a four-year commitment in this effort,
given that Indonesia is likely to go along with the deal peaceably.

Kosovo:

It is increasingly obvious that the KLA is an out of control, totalitarian
gang of cutthroats.  Liberation of Kosovo has delivered everybody there
from bad to worst.

Serbs and Gypsies got the worst of this deal, but moderate Albanians are
also living in fear.  Ibrahim Rugova, visited Kosovo for a day, and has
done his best to stay away; he knows that KLA death threats against him and
his key followers are real. Baton Haxhui, editor of an Albanian newspaper
recently charged, "Each day it is becoming more dangerous to think and
speak independently."

As to the violence, it hasn't slowed down; 50 or more churches and
monasteries have been damaged or destroyed --old and new buildings alike.
By July 26, NATO security forces reported 196 murders --mostly Serbs and
Gypsies.  Over 200 more have been kidnapped --presumed dead and at least
130,000 are refugees.  Of a remaining population of 50,000 Serbs and
another 50,000 Gypsies, some 30 are being murdered per week, according to
wire reports in the last few days.

The situation is so bad, that e-mail from American military in Kosovo
indicate a clear understanding that the KLA are the problem, not the Serbs
or Gypsies. I have indications from these reports that US soldiers are
actively trying to suppress guerrilla activities, arson and destruction of
monuments.  But they are outnumbered and obedient to orders which seek to
prevent NATO casualties.

It is also so bad, that NATO and UN border officials cannot actively
interdict smuggling through Macedonia and Albania into Kosovo, because,
they lamely report, nobody has written new customs legislation --Kosovo is
supposed to still be part of Yugoslavia, which has very clear customs laws,
but NATO and the UN will not even respect that element in their version of
re-establishing the rule of law.

About the pathetic state of law and order, the UN complains that though
NATO began preparing its occupation forces in February, the UN was only
invited to prepare police and administration personnel in June.  Oops. More
Bad Planning --it underscores the intrinsic sneakiness of all this
geographic-social engineering by sword point. .

Bill and Hillary --An Aside:
"What rage for fame attends both great and small!
Better be damned than mentioned not at all!"
- John Wolcot (aka Peter Pindar); To the Royal Academicians, 1782-85

Peter Pindar had it right about the ambitious egoists among us: This is
merely an aside, but the Clinton's cannot stand not being talked about;
they have found that good or bad, they can dominate the news.  The worst
thing that can happen is for the Kennedys to bump the Clintons off the
front page.  That happened with Jackie's death and the estate auction, and
last month with the unexpected death of JFK, Jr.

Hillary, not content to blame all the couple's troubles on "The Vast Right
Wing Conspiracy," of which, I am considered a member --though I am really a
"centrist" by nature-- has played the abused child card in the new Talk
Magazine.  It appears to be a flop; most media points saw right through the
lame invocation of "psycho-babble," and maybe America has reached its
saturation point.  But count on the Clintons to continue to jam the
headlines with more concocted talking points, for better or worse.  Such
egoism.


© Copyright 1999 by Benjamin C. Works -- SIRIUS www.siri-us.com
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Secretary General
Mrs. Jela Jovanovic
Art  historian

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