---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 23:04:48 -0700 >From: "Boles (office)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Cc: "Savage, Dan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: the US Mafioso racket >Here's a block from an article in today's IHT (originally from the W. Post) on the shift of US forces to East Asia as a conscious following of the center of the world-economy to there. In light of the planned attack on N. Korea as pointed out by Spectors (a country of starving people! Good God these fugn elites are heinous!), this chunk of the article, especially the discussion of military "games," seems again to support the idea of the US focusing on areas where disturbances will drive financial flows to US markets. The scenario that would most upset this strategy, would be peace with China or N. Korea. And that is the opposite of what the Pentagon foresees. According to the article, US leaders seem desperate in trying to find excuses to keep US troops in Japan and S. Korea if N. Korea "collapses peacefully." Gee, how odd it is that it is the US planning to start a war there. Obviously, peace is not in the Pentagon's interest or that of the Industrial Military Complex, which is, of course, the most competitive industry that the US has outside of banking and software. >I've bolded parts and added comments in brackets which I thought interesting. ------------ >Paris, Saturday, May 27, 2000 Changing Winds of U.S. Defense Strategy Pentagon Is Shifting Attention to Asia ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- >By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Service It is now a common assumption among national security thinkers that the area from Baghdad to Tokyo will be the main location of U.S. military competition for the next several decades. >''The center of gravity of the world economy has shifted to Asia, and U.S. interests flow with that,'' said James Bodner, the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. >When General Anthony Zinni, one of the most thoughtful senior officers in the military, met with the Army Science Board earlier this spring, he commented offhandedly that America's ''long-standing Europe-centric focus'' probably would shift in coming decades as policymakers ''pay more attention to the Pacific Rim, and especially to China.'' This is partly because of trade and economics, he indicated, and partly because of the changing ethnic makeup of the U.S. population. >Just 10 years ago, said Major General Robert Scales Jr., commandant of the Army War College, roughly 90 percent of U.S. military thinking about future warfare centered on head-on clashes of armies in Europe. ''Today,'' he said, ''it's probably 50-50, or even more'' tilted toward warfare using characteristic Asian tactics, such as deception and indirection. >[Good grief the racism here is nauseating! Bhuaaah.] >The U.S. military's favorite way of testing its assumptions and ideas is to run a war game. Increasingly, the major games played by the Pentagon - except for the army - take place in Asia, on an arc from Tehran to Tokyo. >The games are used to ask how the U.S. military might respond to some of the biggest questions it faces: Will Iran go nuclear, or become more aggressive with an array of hard-to-stop cruise missiles? Will Pakistan and India engage in nuclear war - or, perhaps even worse, will Pakistan break up, with its nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Afghan mujahidin? Will Indonesia fall apart? Will North Korea collapse peacefully? [Note this for later] And what may be the biggest question of all: Will the United States and China avoid military confrontation? >One Pentagon official estimated that about two-thirds of the forward-looking games staged by the Pentagon over the last eight years have taken place partly or wholly in Asia. >Last year, the U.S. Air Force's biggest annual war game looked at the Middle East and Korea. [Obviously because that's where the Pentagon and Clinton's team planned to attack!] >The games planned this summer, ''Global Engagement Five,'' to be played over more than a week at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, will posit ''a rising large East Asian nation'' that is attempting to wrest control of Siberia, with all its oil and other natural resources, from a weak Russia. At one point, the United States winds up basing warplanes in Siberia to defend Russian interests. [But of course, not US interests] >Because of the sensitivity of talking about fighting China, ''What everybody's trying to do is come up with games that are kind of China, but not China by name,'' said an air force strategist. >''I think that, however reluctantly, we are beginning to face up to the fact that we are likely over the next few years to be engaged in an ongoing military competition with China,'' noted Aaron Friedberg, a Princeton political scientist. ''Indeed, in certain respects, we already are.'' The new attention to Asia is reflected in two long-running, military-diplomatic efforts. >The first is a drive to renegotiate the U.S. military presence in Northeast Asia. This is aimed mainly at ensuring that U.S. forces still will be welcome in South Korea and Japan if the North Korean threat disappears. >[Here comes their nightmare:] To that end, the U.S. military will be instructed to act less like post-World War II occupation forces and more like guests or partners. >Pentagon experts on Japan and Korea say they expect that ''status of forces agreements'' gradually will be diluted, so that local authorities will gain more jurisdiction over U.S. military personnel in criminal cases. In addition, they predict that U.S. bases in Japan and South Korea will be jointly operated by American and local forces, perhaps even with a local officer in command. >[Oh yeah, they'd love to give up jurisdiction of US military personnel, and they'd love even more to give up command control to a "local" officer. If there's one thing that military leaders absolutely cannot stand, it's to have power over and control of people.]
