Could Conflict in Afghanistanagainst Islamic fundamentalist terroristsfurther the strategic goals ofUSA?
marks Kosovo (maps from Hammond Atlas of the World (Hammond1993)).
Could Conflict in Afghanistanagainst Islamic fundamentalist terroristsfurther the strategic goals ofUSA?
marks Kosovo (maps from Hammond Atlas of the World (Hammond1993)).
The operations of the USA and NATO that produced air attacks onSerbia beginning on 24 March 1999 are interesting. There are manyother parts of the world, from Indonesia to Africa and many otherplaces, that you could get a lot of heart-rending "refugee/atrocityvideo" if you wanted to do so, so that raises the question:
Around 1991, the USA and its allies displaced Iraq from Kuwait inanother large military action, but in Iraqthe USA had the interest of Persian Gulf Oil.Is there a comparable prize in Kosovo?
Maybe there is not such a prize in Kosovo itself, but if youconsider Kosovo and Serbia to be the first of a series ofstepping-stones:
you see a lot of prizes.
On 8 June 1999, ITAR-TASSreported:
"... A conference devoted to the planning and conducting of joint exercises Cooperative Determination-99 in the framework of NATO's Partnership for Peace Programme will open in the capital of Azerbaijan [Baku, which is on the coast of the Caspian Sea,] on Tuesday [8 June 1999]. Participants in the exercises of multinational peacekeeping forces will include Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kirghizia, Moldavia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. ...".
Moldavia (M), Ukraine (Uk), Georgia (G), Azerbaijan (A),Uzbekistan (Uz), and Kirghizia (K) are shown above inNATO blue color. They extend thereach of NATO to the Caspian Sea and beyond, all theway to China's western Xinjiangregion. They surround Southern Russia and WesternKazakhstan. Between them and Yugoslavia are only Romaniaand Bulgaria, as to which NATO said, in a communiquereleased 24 April 1999 by the heads of state and governmentparticipating in the NATO summit in Washington, reported byThe Wall Street Journal:
"... The NATO of the 21st century starts today - ... We warmly welcome the participation of three new allies -- the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland - ... We pledge that NATO will continue to welcome new members ... Our commitment to enlargement is part of a broader strategy ... Today we recognize and welcome the continuing efforts and progress in both Romania and Slovenia. We also recognize and welcome continuing efforts and progress in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Since the Madrid summit we note and welcome positive developments in Bulgaria. We also note and welcome recent positive developments in Slovakia. We are grateful for the cooperation of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia with NATO in the present crisis and welcome its progress on reforms. We welcome Albania's cooperation with the alliance in the present crisis and encourage its reform efforts. ....".
On 22 April 1999, CNN carried anAP report that said:
"... Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece are all to some extent struggling with a desire for full acceptance by the West, and an aversion for the NATO air attacks ... All four have, or want, strong ties with the West and NATO. ... bombing Yugoslavia has been equated by some as an attack against Orthodoxy. ... On a visit to Belgrade this week, Russia's Orthodox patriarch Alexy II took advantage of that belief to say the Kosovo conflict deteriorated due to external intervention. ... Archbishop Christodoulos of Greece has blamed NATO and not the Serbs for the plight of the refugees, calling alliance bombers "the pawns of Satan." ... Romania's government is waiting for parliamentary approval later this week to give NATO unlimited access to its airspace for the bombing campaign. Bulgaria is waiting for similar approval and its prime minister, Ivan Kostov, told reporters at NATO headquarters that Bulgaria "fully supports" the use of force in Kosovo. ...".
On 25 April 1999, the LondonTelegraph reported:
"... Romania has said it will respect a Nato oil embargo, but it is unclear if Bulgaria, which is also not an EU member, will stop petroleum shipments by truck across its western borders with Yugoslavia. ... Moscow's special envoy to Yugoslavia condemned Nato plans for an oil embargo on Serbia. Viktor Chernomyrdin ... made clear Russia intended to carry on trading and was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying: "The problem in Kosovo can neither be solved by bombing nor by a blockade. Russia should not be dragged into the conflict in the Balkans. If we do not find common ground at the negotiating table, we could be dragged into a third world war." ...".
A scary (to me) part of this scenario is that nobody (includingRussia) has conventional weapons capable of deterring the USA/NATOwar machine,
I really don't like that scenario, since I am a NYYankee fan.
According to an article on 9 May 1999 by Michael R. Gordon inThe New York Times:
The plane carried out its mission correctly and struck its assigned building. ...NATO officials said that the Central Intelligence Agency had picked the target ...
"We hit what we were aiming for," a NATO official said. ...
A military spokesman for NATO said a single aircraft was involved and three bombs were dropped. While allied officials declined to provide further details, the air raid may have been carried out by a United States B-2 "stealth" bomber. ...
Javier Solana, NATO's Secretary General, insisted ... that ... "The attacks will continue... " ... .
[NATO] officials said Saturday .... [that] ... the [NATO] military command mistakenly believed that it was a headquarters for a Yugoslav arms agency [the Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement] ... .
People in Belgrade said that it was difficult to confuse the Chinese Embassy with ... the Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement. The Chinese Embassy is a marble structure with blue mirrored glass and flies the Chinese flag. It is one of the few embassies in Belgrade that houses some staff members and other Chinese residents. The directorate, which coordinates Yugoslavia's weapons imports and exports, is housed in a white office building. That building is several hundred yards away, on the other side of a major thoroughfare, Lenjinov Bulevar. Both structures are several years old. ... .".
Clinton's lying is not restricted to such things as "I did not have sex with that woman [Monica Lewinsky]".On 20 April 1999, CNN carried a Reuters report about killings at a Colorado high school that quoted USA President Clinton as saying: "... We do know that we must do more to reach out to our children and teach them ... to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons ...".
"... A prominent army professor at National Defense University in Beijing, Zhang Zhaozhong asserted in a full-page article in the Beijing Youth Daily on Monday [10 May 1999] that the U.S. had deliberately bombed China's embassy. "We must understand this situation clearly" and prepare a strong response, he wrote. A day earlier, he had complained that China's defense budget is too small. ..", according to an article by Matt Forney in The Wall Street Journal on 12 May 1999.
According to an 8 May 1999 Associated Press article appearing inThe New York Times APonline:
"Ted Turner told University of Georgia graduates ... "Here's the class of '99, and y'all are just starting out. Wouldn't it be terrible to have nuclear war in the next week or two and mess up y'alls careers before they have gotten started? ...If we drop a bomb on the Russian Embassy, we could be at war with Russia and China tomorrow, and they both got lots of nuclear weapons.
We might not even get to see the millennium.".
According to a 13 May 1999 Associated Press article appearing inThe New York Times APonline:
"Retired Adm. Joseph W. Prueher ... has been picked to be America's ambassador to Beijing, the White House said today. Prueher, 56, would succeed James Sasser ... The selection of Prueher comes ... after NATO warplanes ... bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, triggering angry protests across China. ... Prueher was commander of the unified Pacific Command until March. ... he ... sent American warships into the Straits of Taiwan in 1996 to warn China not to use war games to disrupt elections in Taiwan. ...".
According to a 15 May 1999 AssociatedPress article appearing in TheNew York Times AP online:
"... Taiwan's ... President Lee Teng-hui was to unveil the book, called "Taiwan's Viewpoint," on Wednesday. ... He calls on Chinese leaders to give autonomy to Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and a separate northeast region. "What the Chinese Communists should do is to give up the binding concept of a Great China, and give autonomy to the regions with distinctive features," he wrote. ... Lee also wrote that Taiwan can probably resist Beijing's efforts for reunification with continued support from the United States. ...".
all parts of a USA Policy of Irrationality whereby the USA is using Brinksmanship and Bluffing to try to intimidate China and the Rest of the World,
or
while the Military Capital ofChina was $200 million dollars.
while the Military Capital ofChina would be $410 million dollars.
If a USA-China conflict occurred 15 years from now, China may betoo strong for the USA to have a good chance of victory, but, asreported on 14 May 1999 in TheNew York Times AP online:
"... According to one [Chinese student], the United States wants to use the Yugoslav war to dominate Europe and then move on to Russia and China. ... the bombing was seen as a test of China's resolve. ... "This is part of the United States' global strategy," said [Chinese] foreign policy expert Shen Jiru. "The United States thinks [that now China is] weak and believes [that China] will be unbeatable ... 15 years [from now]." ...".
Acccording to MattDrudge, a 1 June 1999 report from Itar-Tassstated: "... Leonid Ivashov, the Russian Defense Ministry'sinterntional mlilitary department chief, said on [1 June19990] ...
"... The events in Yugoslavia have shown that NATO is a military alliance accountable only to the US State Department ... US-led NATO is waging a large-scale war for complete destruction of sovereign Yugoslavia ... The world community is entering the 21st century with a destroyed system of legal norms.NATO with the US at the head is imposing on the world the dictate of force, using rigorous methods for suppressing dissent.... consequences of the aggression of the North Atlantic bloc for all countries of the world will be a build-up of the arms race, active proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as an expansion of conflicts ...
NATO has set a precedent for the world - the use of force for solving conflict situations.
Practically the entire world community except for Russia and China is silently watching how the alliance is using the missile and bomb strikes for solving in fact an ethnic conflict ... Russia qualifies the situations as an aggression ... In response to NATO's dictate, Russia is taking measures for strengthening its military-technical potential, as well as potential of its allies ... ". ...".
According to an 18 February 2002 article by Robert Wall inAviationWeek, "... For most of the next decade (and perhaps longer),Russia's conventional forces will remain chronically weak and willpose a diminshing threat to U. S. interests. ... However, ... Russiais likely to work on countermeasures and new weapon systems thatcould defeat U. S. missile defenses. ...".
An INSIGHT Websitearticle by J. Michael Waller, which was referenced on the websiteof Matt Drudge shortly before the 18March 2000 election for President of Taiwan, publishes quotationsfrom "... an internal document from the Chinese Communist Party'sCentral Military Commission ...", and links to a copy of thedocument, which purports to be from the "... General PoliticalDepartment of the People's Liberation Army ..." and to be dated "...August 1, 1999. ...". The document says: "...
1. ... Li Denghui's "seven-block theory" ... instigating minority nationalities to split away from the motherland should not be underestimated. If Taiwan issue were to drag on, Taiwan would not only set an example for the handful of splittists among minority nationalities, but also become a base for splitting activities ...2. ... the Party's Central Committee (PCC) ... has also stated that we would not give up the option of using military power. ... Considering long-term interests, peaceful reunification is still the best option, ... it is very unlikely that EU will fight a full-scale war with us simply because of the United States. ...
3. ... it is better to fight now than future -- the earlier, the better. ... an early war will delay the success of our reform whereas a later war will jeopardise the full achievement of the reform. ... an early war has another advantage over a later war ... we evidently enjoy superiority in terms of the number of short-range and middle-range missiles. ... we do not foresee a nuclear war between China and the U.S. ... In comparison with the US nuclear arsenal, our disadvantage is mainly numeric ... we have built up the capability for the second and the third nuclear strikes ... It is obvious that after the first fatal strike, the Taiwan forces have no way to organise effective resistance. Under such circumstances, we will be able to control Taiwan before the US intervention and then concentrate our forces to fight the U.S. ...
4. ... Internationally, President Jiang Zemin will go to Biskek in late September to attend the five-country summit meeting, including China, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakstan, and Tajikstan. ... The above efforts will not only eliminate security concerns in the rear ... but also serve to ensure our exchanges with the outside world by land routes during the war. ...".
According to AssociatedPress articles on 18 and 19 March 2000, "... TaiwanPresident-elect Chen Shui-bian is to succeed retiring President LeeTeng-hui in May, ending the Nationalist Party's 51-year rule ... thevice president-elect ... [was] pioneering feminist Annette Lu... Beijing deeply distrusts Chen because his Democratic ProgressiveParty favors taking Taiwan from de-facto to formal independence. Butthe president-elect, who has softened his stance on independence toappeal to nervous voters, immediately pledged to seek dialogue withBeijing. ... Chen captured 39 percent of the vote, with ... formerNationalist ... James Soong, who bolted ranks to run as anindependent ... not far behind at 37 percent. ... Nationalist Partycandidate Lien Chan ... trailed badly with 23 percent ... China'sgovernment announced Saturday that it would wait to see how Taiwan'snew president handles relations between the island and the mainland,despite its earlier warnings that a Chen Shui-bian victory could leadto war. ... Chinese academic Yan Xuetong, a scholar at a think-tanklinked to China's spy agency, warned on Sunday that war with Taiwanwas inevitable within a decade. ''Short-term, nothing will happen.Long-term, war is unavoidable,'' Yan said in an interview. ''For me,long-term is definitely within 10 years.'' ...".
According to an 18 February 2002 article by Robert Wall inAviationWeek, "... Around 2005-2010, China's buildup of its conventionalforces will likely have moved along far enough to ... provide anincreasingly credible military threat for short-duration attacksagainst Taiwan. ... by 2010 ...[China]... is expected to havea much better conventional force ... Moreover, China will thenpossess a sophisticated integrated air defense system. ...".
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