U.S. domination of Central Asia
Rumsfeld's 'blitzkrieg' and the forces that drive it
By Sara Flounders
"Blitzkrieg"--the devastatingly effective Nazi war
strategy--is how Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld describes
current U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan. And the
Pentagon, Rumsfeld maintains, must shift its priorities to
building a high-tech military capable of launching similar
lightning strikes across the world. (Financial Times, Feb.
1)
Blitzkrieg is the term the Nazis used for their rapid
advance as their tanks and troops rolled across Europe,
conquering markets, resources and territory for German capital.
It was a strategy involving extensive use of aerial bombardment
of cities and overwhelming forces against small countries that
had no defense against German military might.
Rumsfeld's use of the same belligerent word Hitler's
generals used is not an accidental slip. Rumsfeld was speaking
at a war college--the National Defense University--to the very
officers and strategists who are planning future U.S. wars.
Along with Nazi military terminology, Rumsfeld made it clear
he was embracing the Nazi justification of overwhelming force
and pre-emptive strikes. The focus of his talk was that the
U.S. must be prepared to launch pre-emptive strikes. "The best
defense and in some case the only defense is a good offense,"
he said.
Rumsfeld's call for an even more aggressive U.S. military
posture came as a reinforcement to George Bush's State of the
Union address and the president's use of the term "axis of
evil" to threaten Iraq, Iran and north Korea.
Rumsfeld also underscored the developing view of U.S.
imperialism that other imperialist countries, which are at the
same time allies and competitors, "must not be given a veto
over U.S. military goals."
In a Feb. 4 interview with Jim Lehrer on PBS, Rumsfeld went
a little further. "When the Germans transformed their armed
forces into the blitzkrieg, they transformed only about 5 to 10
percent of their force. Everything else was the same, but they
transformed the way they used it--the connectivity between
aircraft and forces on the ground, the concentration of it in a
specific portion of the line. One would not want to transform
100 percent of your forces. You only need to transform a
portion."
Rumsfeld raised this to argue that President Bush's wild
increase of $50 billion for the military budget "reflects the
priorities that are appropriate to our times."
Encirclement and occupation
In blitzkrieg fashion the Pentagon smashed into Central
Asia, using the excuse of a "war against terrorism" to
establish a permanent military presence in oil-rich Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan, four bases in
Afghanistan and four more in Pakistan.
A front-page article in the Jan. 9 New York Times confirmed
that the Pentagon is preparing a "long-term footprint in
Central Asia" with military bases.
The rapidly expanding U.S. military occupation is arousing
deep apprehension among all the countries in the region. It is
increasingly clear that the aim is to consolidate U.S.
corporate domination over the vast oil and gas deposits in the
region and the pipelines that will carry this enormous source
of wealth to market.
U.S. News & World Report has put the value of Central
Asian and Caspian Sea resources as high as $4 trillion.
Articles in the Pakistani, Indian and Russian press, and a
number of European newspapers, have raised alarm regarding the
long-term U.S. presence in the heart of Asia. Many note
similarities to the continuing U.S. military presence in bases
throughout the Middle East, Balkans and Korean peninsula.
The Feb. 10 Toronto Star quoted a blunt denunciation of U.S.
aims by Kommersant--Russia's main business newspaper.
Kommersant stated, "The main goal of the military presence is
to uphold the economic interests of U.S. companies, primarily
the oil and gas sectors."
Another Russian newspaper, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, warned, "The
so-called honeymoon in relations between Russia and Washington,
which started after the Sept. 11 attacks, seems to be gradually
developing into a new cold war."
Chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People's
Liberation Army Gen. Fu Quanyou warned that positioning U.S.
troops in Kazakhstan, which shares a 1,000-mile border with
China, "poses a direct threat to China's security."
Adding to Russian apprehension about encirclement are NATO
plans for one of the largest military exercises since the end
of the Cold War. These "war games" are set to begin in late
February in the Baltic Sea on Russia's northern border. Some
40,000 military personnel from 27 countries that belong to NATO
or its Partnership for Peace program will participate in
"Operation Strong Resolve 2002" with ground, maritime and
airforce units.
These transforming developments have happened with lightning
speed. Now U.S. oil corporations are rushing to consolidate
their position. The Feb. 3 Hindustan Times of India reported
that a consortium has revived plans to build a gas pipeline
that will link gas fields in Turkmenistan to India after
stretching 1,000 miles across Afghanistan.
At the beginning of the last century the Caspian region
generated one-half of the world's petroleum. The Nobel and
Rockefeller dynasties built vast fortunes based on their
ownership of this valuable resource. But after the socialist
Russian Revolution in 1917, these resources belonged to the
many peoples of the Soviet federation of socialist states.
Nevertheless, the giant oil monopolies never gave up on
their drive to reclaim these vast fortunes. Immediately after
the breakup of the Soviet Union, oil company executives flooded
back into the Central Asian republics to reclaim their past
wealth through new privatization schemes and pipeline routes.
Only these imperialists had the enormous capital to invest to
modernize the industry.
Today the Bush administration is top-heavy with CEOs from
oil and gas corporations that have an enormous stake in the
control and development of resources in this region. These
lucrative contracts, worth billion of dollars, only have value
if they are backed up and defended by military force.
War is not over
The U.S. military command secured its position in
Afghanistan through a terror campaign of high-altitude bombing
and overwhelming force. The tactics utilized by this occupation
army are beginning to leak out into the U.S. and world
media.
On Jan. 23, Pentagon commando units mistakenly identified as
Taliban fighters some Afghan forces who were actually loyal to
the U.S.-puppet regime. In a nighttime raid on their village,
U.S. forces reportedly shot 21 people in their sleep. Some of
the men were found shot in the back, their hands still bound by
U.S.-Army-issued plastic handcuffs. Twenty-seven prisoners who
were released two weeks later related that they had been
kicked, beaten and imprisoned in cages at a U.S. base in
Kandahar.
In another incident, the Feb. 5 Washington Post reported
that Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-appointed president of Afghanistan,
said U.S. forces admitted to him that they had killed 65
innocent people on their way to his inauguration. U.S. jets
destroyed a convoy of vehicles near the city of Khost.
But it is not just the few "mistakes" that are the crime in
Afghanistan. Almost four months of pulverizing bombs have
turned hundreds of villages into rubble. Infrastructure that
barely functioned before has been destroyed.
Warlords are back in control of every city. Even the few
United Nations emergency relief convoys are being looted.
Hospitals are not functioning. In the midst of a cold winter,
following a year of drought and famine, hundreds of thousands
of refugees have been abandoned. As in all the countries
Washington has occupied--from Korea to Vietnam, the Philippines
and Kosovo--it is unable to solve any of the enormous social
problems it has created.
The same capitalist drive for new markets in a capitalist
recession, which fueled the German military blitzkrieg across
Europe 60 years ago, is fueling the Pentagon today. The
corporate CEOs are backing military expansion to combat
economic contraction.
But the Pentagon's vast overreach, its new bases, and the
massive subsidies to the military-industrial complex in the
form of an inflated military budget, have not jump-started the
economy. Instead they are dragging the economy down, while
creating a volcano of opposition abroad and growing anger here
in the United States.
Reprinted from the Feb. 21, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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