09 September 2010 By Rick Rozoff The Internet has provided the world with, if
nothing else, instantaneous access to news and
in-depth information previously available only to
governments and think tanks. It has also allowed for
the exchange of data and analyses between groups and
individuals around the globe, in part by making one
tongue, English, the language of the World Wide Web.
It remains to be seen whether the keystroke is
mightier than the sword. An illustrative case in point is an August 29
report from China’s Xinhua News Agency on a news
article by Egypt’s Middle East News Agency regarding a
study conducted by the Strategic Foresight Group in
India. The latter, a report published in a book
entitled The Cost of Conflict in the Middle East,
calculates that conflict in the area over the last 20
years has cost the nations and people of the region 12
trillion U.S. dollars. The Indian report adds that the Middle East has
recorded “a high record of military expenses in the
past 20 years and is considered the most armed region
in the world.” [1] The study was originally released in January of
2009 and was recently translated into Arabic by the
Institute for Peace Studies of Egypt. It estimates
that in a peaceful environment the nations of the
Middle East could have achieved an average annual
growth in gross domestic product of 8 percent. Sundeep Waslekar, president of the Strategic
Foresight Group and one of the report’s authors, was
quoted in January of last year saying of the region’s
nations, “The choice they have to make is the choice
between the danger of devastation and the promise of
peace.” [2] An account of the presentation of the report last
year added that the cost of conflict in the region is
estimated at 2 percent of growth in gross domestic
product. In regards to specific cases, it stated: “One conclusion is that individuals in most
countries are half as rich as they would have been if
peace had taken off in 1991. “Incomes per head in Israel next year would be
$44,241 with peace against a likely $23,304. In the
West Bank and Gaza Strip they would be $2,427 instead
of $1,220. “For Iraq, income per head next year is projected
at $2,375, one quarter of the $9,681 that would have
been possible without the conflicts of the past two
decades.” [3] Other sources estimate the overall rate of
unemployment in the Middle East at 20-25 percent, with
joblessness in nations like Lebanon and Yemen at 30
percent or more. This despite the fact that the region
has achieved one of the more impressive successes in
improving educational opportunities, measured by the
amount of years students spend in school, in the
world. The Middle East requires comprehensive regional
development, but instead is receiving billions of
dollars worth of arms. The area’s nations could be
spending that sum on rural and urban infrastructure,
dams and reservoirs, desalination and irrigation,
forestation and fisheries, industry and agriculture,
medicine and public health, housing and information
technology, equitable integration of cities and
villages, and repairing the ravages of past wars
rather than on U.S. warplanes, attack helicopters and
interceptor missiles. An American news report of a year ago revealed
that, according to a U.S.-based consultancy firm,
several Middle Eastern nations are slated to spend
over $100 billion on weapons in the upcoming five
years. Most of those arms purchases – “unprecedented
packages” – will be by Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates, and the “core of this
arms-buying spree will undoubtedly be the $20 billion
U.S. package of weapons systems over 10 years for the
six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council – Saudi
Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain.”
The expansion of American arms sales and military
presence in the Persian Gulf targets Iran in the first
place. The same feature documented plans for the U.S. to
supply Egypt with a $13 billion arms package and
Israel with $30 billion in weaponry over ten years,
the latter “a 25 percent increase over previous
levels.” [4] A year later it was disclosed that Washington will
sell $13 billion worth of arms and military equipment
to Iraq, “a huge order of tanks, ships and hardware
that U.S. officials say shows Iraqi-U.S. military ties
will be tight for years to come.” A $3 billion deal
for 18 F-16 Fighting Falcon multirole jet fighters is
also in the works. Iraq will become one of the largest
purchasers of U.S. weapons in the world. According to the U.S. Army’s Lieutenant General
Michael Barbero, ranking American officer in charge of
training and advising Iraqi troops, such military
agreements help “build their capabilities, first and
foremost; and second, it builds our strategic
relationship for the future.” [5] With 4.7 million Iraqis displaced since 2003, 2.2
million as refugees in Jordan, Syria and other
nations, and a near collapse of the nation’s civilian
infrastructure since the U.S. invasion, surely there
are better ways of spending $16 billion that on
American arms. To Iraq’s south, last month the U.S. announced one
of the largest weapons sales in its history: A $60
billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon
notified Congress of the colossal transaction which
the U.S. legislative body will approve later this
month. Over the next decade Washington will supply Saudi
Arabia with F-15SA Strike Eagle jet fighters (SA is
for Saudi Advanced), 72 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters,
60 AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters,
helicopter-carrying offshore patrol vessels and
upgrades for the 96 Patriot Advanced Capability-2
interceptor missiles already stationed in the kingdom. Last month Kuwait announced that it planned to
purchase more than 200 U.S. Patriot anti-ballistic
missiles in a $900 million deal. The U.S. Defense
Department also advised Congress of that transaction,
stating “Kuwait needs these missiles to meet current
and future threats of enemy air-to-ground weapons.”
The news agency which reported the above, Agence
France-Presse, also provided the following
information: “The U.S. has several military bases in Kuwait,
including Camp Arifjan, one of the biggest U.S.
military facilities in the region. There are between
15,000 and 20,000 U.S. troops stationed in Kuwait.”
[6] The American Fifth Fleet is headquartered in
neighboring Bahrain. The U.S. is also providing Bahrain, Qatar and the
United Arab Emirates with Patriot Advanced
Capability-3 missile interception batteries. Last year Washington approved the transfer of a
Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) missile
shield system to the United Arab Emirates. The deal,
estimated to cost $7 billion, is the first transfer of
the advanced interceptor missiles outside the U.S. In May the Barack Obama administration requested
$205 million from Congress for the Israeli Iron Dome
layered interceptor missile shield, in the words of a
Pentagon spokesman “the first direct U.S. investment
in the Iron Dome system.” [7] In the autumn of 2008 the U.S. opened an
interceptor missile radar base in Israel’s Negev
Desert centered on a Forward-Based X-Band Radar with a
range of 2,900 miles. This August 15 Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak
announced his country is to receive – one can’t say
buy – 20 U.S. F-35 Joint Strike Fighters worth $96
million apiece along with spare parts, maintenance and
simulators. “The $2.7 billion deal will be paid for
using U. S. military assistance.” [8] The fifth
generation stealth warplanes are the world’s most
advanced. According to Israeli government sources in
reference to the prospect of eventual deployment of
Russian air defenses to Iran and Syria, “the purchase
of F-35 fighters would effectively eliminate the
threat from Russian-made S-300 air defense systems
because a series of computer simulations had clearly
demonstrated that new U.S. stealth fighters outperform
the Russian missiles.” This year the State Department confirmed that $2.55
billion in U.S. military assistance was given to
Israel in 2009 and that the figure will “increase to
$3 billion in 2012, and will total $3.15 billion a
year from 2013 to 2018.” [9] That is, will grow by
almost 25 percent. Since the administration of Jimmy Carter and his
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski bought
off Anwar Sadat and through him Egypt in 1978 at the
expense of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and other Arab
states, Washington has provided Cairo with $1.3
billion a year in military aid, adding up to $50
billion by 2008. In January of this year General David Petraeus,
then head of U.S. Central Command and now in charge of
150,000 American and NATO troops in Afghanistan,
visited Yemen and called for more than doubling
military aid to the strife-torn nation from $70 to
$150 million annually. He was later forced to retract
his comments, but the Wall Street Journal reported on
September 2 that “The U.S. military’s Central Command
has proposed pumping as much as $1.2 billion over five
years into building up Yemen’s security forces.” The
United Nations Statistics Division estimated Yemeni
gross national income per capita for 2008 at $1,260. The U.S. has launched several missile strikes
inside Yemen over the past nine months and “U.S.
Special Operations teams…play an expansive role in the
country.” [10] Funding for what the Pentagon describes
as a counterterrorism program in the country has grown
from $5 million a year in fiscal year 2006 to over
$155 million four years later. Washington is planning to add unmanned aerial
vehicles (drones) equipped with lethal missiles
operated by the Central Intelligence Agency to its
operations in Yemen, replicating the same arrangement
in Pakistan. After the so-called Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in
2005 – modeled after comparable “color revolutions” in
the former Soviet states of Georgia, Ukraine and
Kyrgyzstan in 2003, 2004 and 2005 respectively – led
to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country
and the installation of pro-Western Fouad Siniora as
prime minister, the U.S. reestablished military
contacts with Lebanon, which had been broken off after
1983. A dozen U.S. military officials travelled to
Beirut at the end of the year, inspecting bases as
part of a “comprehensive assessment of the condition
of U.S.-made equipment in the Lebanon armed forces.”
[11] After the Israeli invasion of the country the
following summer, Washington started military aid to
the nation of four million people which two years
later had exceeded $410 million. According to an
Associated Press account in 2008, “The [George W.
Bush] administration has spent about $1.3 billion in
the past two years trying to prop up Siniora’s
Western-allied government, including about $400
million in military aid.” [12] On October 6, 2008 the U.S. established a joint
military commission with Lebanon “to bolster military
cooperation.” The, by Lebanese standards, unprecedented donations
of arms and military equipment by the Pentagon were
explicitly for internal use – against Hezbollah – and
for deployment at the Syrian border. Not for defending
the nation against the country that had invaded it in
1978, 1983 and 2006 – Israel. On August 2 of this year, a day before two Lebanese
soldiers were killed in a firefight with Israeli
troops on Lebanese territory, Congressman Howard
Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, blocked a $100 million security assistance
package to the Lebanese military. There should be no
misunderstanding: The Pentagon has not built up the
armed forces of post-”Cedar” Lebanon to defend the
nation, its people or even the army itself. The sum blocked by Berman, added to that already
provided by the Pentagon, well exceeds half a billion
dollars. That amount of money would go a long way in
alleviating the suffering of 900,000 Lebanese
displaced and in rebuilding some of the 30,000 housing
units destroyed by the Israeli military in 2006. Weapons are the most expensive of manufactured
goods and the least productive, generating no value
and designed only to destroy and kill. They are not
produced solely or primarily to be displayed in
parades or at air shows. The Middle East is that part of the world that has
known the least peace in the past 60 years and that is
in most need of it. Regional disputes – over land and
borders, over water and other resources – need to be
resolved in a non-antagonistic manner. The foreign and national security policies of the
region’s states need to be demilitarized. Conventional
and nuclear disarmament is imperative. Washington pouring over $100 billion in news arms
into the Middle East will not contribute to the safety
and security of its inhabitants. It will not benefit
the nations of the region. In truth not a single one
of them. 1) Xinhua News Agency, August 29, 2010 Comments 💬 التعليقات |