"The world is in the early stages of a new military revolution...

"...over Bosnia the Americans have deployed JSTARS [Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System], a ground-surveillance system in the sky: a single screen can display, in any weather, the position and type of every vehicle within an area 200 kilometres (125 miles) square...

"The revolution in military affairs revolves around three advances. The first is in gathering intelligence. Sensors in satellites, aircraft or unmanned aircraft can monitor virtually everything going on in an area. The second is in processing intelligence. Advanced command, control, and computing systems, known as C4, make sense of the data gathered by the sensors and display it on screen. They can then assign particular targets to missiles, tanks or whatever. The third is in acting on all this intelligence in particular, by using long-range precision strikes to destroy targets. Cruise missiles, guided by satellite, can hit a building many hundreds of miles away...

"The Pentagon already has, or is developing, most of the technologies required for space weapons. For instance it has just awarded a $1.1 billion contract for an airborne laser to hit ballistic missiles. If that technology works, it could be adapted for a satellite...

"Aircraft carriers, like other surface ships, risk being sunk by cruise missiles. Some will be replaced by ‘arsenal ships’, semi-submersible, stealthy barges, carrying hundreds of missiles but few sailors..."

The technologies mentioned above may not sound strikingly futuristic — after all GPS services are available commercially. But employing them as part of a total system, as we saw in Desert Storm, can provide very effective "control of theater," neutralizing weapons and defenses of the enemy, while permitting one’s own weapon systems to have free play throughout the field of battle. One could imagine someone touching a screen in the Pentagon, causing a cruise missile to be launched from a "stealthy barge," and destroying a specific target on the other side of the world — with all the action displayed up-to-date on the screen via secure digital satellite links.

These kind of information-intensive systems are as much software as hardware — permitting radical system advances to be deployed very rapidly, overnight in some cases. One must take seriously the Economist’s claim that we are indeed in the early stages of a "new military revolution."

What’s the Point of This Arsenal?

More important than the technology details are the why questions... what is all this for?...why the urgency? The Economist’s own answers to these questions are both brief and naive on all points:

"This embryonic revolution, unlike the development of nuclear weapons, has not emerged in response to any particular threat to the United States or its allies. It has come about because it is there, that is, because generals want to play with new technologies in case a future threat emerges. In that it may resemble Blitzkrieg, which was based on the technologies of the 1920’s, when defence budgets were declining and there seemed little prospect of another world war."

During the Manhattan Project, the scientists developing the first "atom bomb" were told Germany was making rapid progress on its own atomic research, and thus the Los Alamos team did believe they were rushing against the clock to protect against an enemy atomic threat. But allied intelligence knew the Nazis were stymied in their efforts, and lied to the scientists in order to create a false sense of urgency and keep the project going at full steam. Some of the scientists had serious moral reservations about working on the bomb, and the project might have been in jeopardy if the fiction of an imminent German atomic threat was not maintained. But fiction it was, from the perspective of top-level U.S. strategists.

The strategic motivation for urgent development of The Bomb lies elsewhere than Germany. In the film Day After Trinity, narrated by Robert Oppenheimer, he matter-of-factly explains how Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been carefully spared bombing during the war so that they could serve as clean, live-target test sites for the two new types of weapons (U-235 and Plutonium). Following the Hiroshima bombing, the Japanese sent out urgent communiques expressing a desire to discuss surrender — these were blocked by U.S. intelligence in order that the second test could be carried out. And as planned, when the medical inspectors descended on the rubble, they knew that all the bizarre injuries and diseases they cataloged could be credited to The Bomb.

So in truth, The Bomb was not developed in response to a comparable threat, but rather, quite simply, for the enhanced geopolitical advantage which it afforded. The urgency, as well, did not arise from a threat, but rather from a desire to carry out the tests while there was still an enemy the weapons could be deployed against. The bombings, too, were carried out for reasons other than those found in naive historical accounts.

The official party line — that those particular bombings were necessary to shorten the war — does not stand up to analysis. It ignores the fact that the first bomb already cracked Japanese resolve, and that a military target could have been attacked first, with escalation to a city left as an option. On the other hand, the bombings — as carried out — did accomplish two other objectives: they allowed the effects on people and buildings to be observed (of both weapon types), and they demonstrated to the Russians and allies alike that the U.S. had the stomach to use these new weapons in anger against civilians.

These objectives related to the postwar geopolitical situation — not to the defeat of Japan. When the cover-story smokescreens have been all cleared away, it becomes apparent that the Manhattan Project — taken in its entirety, including the two tests — was designed to give the U.S. a strong postwar geopolitical advantage: the possession of an unmatched, proven weapon of mass destruction, and a world which knew the U.S. would use the weapon if deemed necessary.

Also contrary to the Economist’s theories, Germany’s development of blitzkrieg weapons was not a case of "playing" with new technologies and was not carried out with "little prospect" of another war. William Manchester tells the story in The Arms of Krupp: beginning in the 1920’s, a select team of engineers, with the connivance of German intelligence and long before Hitler, took on the top-secret task of designing a suite of advanced military hardware that was aimed at achieving military superiority in a specific time-window (late 1930’s, early 1940’s) — during which period Germany was to regain its honor and further its expansionist ambitions. Krupp supported Hitler in his election campaign, and became Fuhrer of industry in the Third Reich. The scheme came close to working, and the weapons systems can hardly be blamed for Germany’s eventual defeat.

There is a reason so much space has been devoted to these issues in an article whose topic is China. If we want to understand the strategic significance of America’s current rushed development of a next-generation weapons system, then the Economist is right: we should compare it to previous similar developments. In both examples the Economist cited, it turns out the programs were designed to achieve military superiority over known future adversaries, in an anticipated future conflict scenario. The anticipated scenarios did come to pass, and the weapons systems served their objectives rather well. Contrary to the Economist’s off-the-shelf historical assumptions, these were examples of well thought-out projects, in pursuit of real strategic goals.

Similarly as well, permit me to suggest, America’s current hi-tech-warfare developments do not arise primarily from the play of generals nor even the profit-seeking of arms developers. As with both the A-bomb and Nazi blitzkrieg, what we are seeing with hi-tech warfare is the preparation of a weapons suite crafted with particular — and once more not defensive — missions in mind.

Missions for the Arsenal: (1) Enforcing Globalization

The end of the Cold War, to state the obvious, has created an entirely new geopolitical situation. In the immediate postwar era the primary geopolitical reality had been the rivalry between the two superpowers; in the post-cold-war era there is not, as yet anyway, any similar rivalry between more-or-less comparable powers. Instead, the U.S. and its NATO allies have become, on a collaborative basis, the world’s sole dominant military power.

With UN resolutions serving as the source of legitimacy, a multilateral system for policing international "order" has been adopted by the Western powers — the old days of competitive, sphere-of-influence imperialism are long dead. The evolution of the new multilateral policing system can be traced in the headlines of the nineties — in the hot spots of Iraq, Bosnia, and Albania...

Desert Storm, although almost entirely an American operation, was carried out under UN approval and no expense was spared recruiting and publicizing participation by allies.

In Bosnia, non-U.S. NATO troops carried the multilateral flag most of the time, but the U.S. joined in at a critical moment and provided cruise-missile support which was decisive in assuring a military outcome deemed acceptable to the U.S. and its allies.

In Albania we see a multilateral intervention without direct U.S. military involvement and which has, for the first time, an open-ended military mandate. Italy took the lead by suggesting that individual Western powers volunteer to join in an Albanian intervention. The troops — primarily from Italy and Greece — don’t have their hands tied by restrictive rules of engagement. From The Militant (28 April 1997):

"The occupying troops have been ordered to shoot ‘if they face dangerous situations.’ The plan for the... intervention, drafted in Rome by the participating governments, lists potential ‘dangerous situations.’ Among them are ‘involvement in clashes between government forces and the rebels and attacks by armed civilians that may attempt to appropriate the humanitarian aid.’ Among the ‘potential problems’ that the [participants] expect are ‘planted mines at regional roads and the chance of facing guerrilla warfare.’

"Italian Adm. Guido Venturoni, who is commanding the operation, told reporters April 14 that the force ‘will not go into Albania as the blue helmets went into Bosnia, where they were constrained to stand by during grave acts of violence without intervening because the rules of engagement did not permit it.’"

Thus, under the auspices of the UN and NATO, the world now has a de facto official policing force. The force is of, by, and for the dominant Western powers, and there is no effective court of appeal to protect the sovereignty of any country this police force decides to invade. To the rebels in Albania, and for the Third World in general, there would seem to be little difference between this new regime and traditional European imperialism. Instead of competitive, sphere-of-interest imperialism, there is now a collaborative arrangement — but the result is a system where the Euro-American powers take it upon themselves to intervene when and where they desire, maintaining global "order" according to their own criteria.

With ongoing tension in the Muslim world, chronic civil war in black Africa, near chaos in the former Soviet sphere, and a rising sense of activism on the part of the new policing partners, the prospects are for collective intervention — or the threat of same — to become routine, rather than for emergency use only.

This policing regime is the military branch of globalization. The U.S. and the European powers make up the multilateral force and they are also the prime instigators of globalization. As the legislative/administrative branch of globalism (WTO, GATT, IMF, etc) consolidates its dominion over planning the world’s future, the military branch is coming online just in time to assure that the globalist designs will not be thwarted by upstart Third-World peoples who have more nationalist or socialist agendas than globalism finds acceptable.

Some readers may find this assessment a bit harsh — after all, haven’t NATO interventions been for humanitarian purposes? To be sure, the humanitarian angle has been emphasized in the media, and it is humanitarian sympathies that create support in Western populations for the interventions. But a close look at the interventions — how they were carried out, their timing, which local parties were favored — reveals that humanitarian concerns played very little role, and that the real purpose has been to promote regimes that are favorable to globalism (ie international capital investment.) The much-delayed intervention in Bosnia, for example, could hardly have been worse-timed to reduce human suffering, but succeeded quite well in promoting the territorial gains of the Western-preferred Croat side.

The globalist program for the Third World has become very clear. IMF guidelines require explicitly that social spending be cut, as part of focusing Third-World finances on debt servicing. Meanwhile, corporate employers pay starvation wages to their Third-World workers and offer very little economic stability — moving their plants whenever they find a better deal elsewhere. As if that weren’t enough, the free-trade agreements wreak havoc with Third-World economies, as internal markets are lost to cheap imports, and export markets become unpredictable. The squeeze on Third-World peoples is immense, and globalism — both in policy and practice — seems intent only on tightening the screws still further.

This is a sure-fire formula for social unrest, and insurgencies of one stripe or another are in fact already widespread, as we see in Albania, Mexico, Columbia, Peru, and elsewhere. As the globalist squeeze continues, one can only expect the constituency of these insurgences to increase.

There is a common focus for the discontent: neoliberalism, the IMF, corporate policies, and repressive governments subservient to outside interests. International capitalism itself — and its globalist agenda — is increasingly being perceived as the root cause of the troubles. Whereas in the old communist world anti-capitalism was a subject of public indoctrination and rhetoric, in much of the Third World it is becoming a heartfelt general sentiment.

Keeping the populace under control has become the primary occupation of many Third World governments, and sophisticated arms and training are routinely supplied by Western powers to facilitate this mission — increasing the local debt burden in the process.

But when an insurgency grows to civil-war proportions — as in Bosnia, Albania or Zaire — it then shows up on the globalist radar screens, indicating that elite global leaders (euphemistically referred to as the international community) had better formulate a tactical approach to the situation, and alert the media to begin producing whatever emotional news stories (riot scenes, suffering refugees, strutting dictators, whatever) are appropriate to generating support for the chosen tactics — tactics appropriate to the scenario...

If there is disagreement as to which side to back (as in Zaire) then the tactic might be to let the locals fight it out, making money on arms sales in the process. In this case the media’s job is to paint the situation as confusing, with no clear good guys and bad guys — too messy to "entangle ourselves" in.

If an unfavored side gains more territory than the West deems appropriate, as did the Serbs in Bosnia, then the tactic might be to call in the multilateral force to tilt the battlefield toward a more global-friendly side, as we saw with Croatia. In this case the media’s job is to demonize the unfavored side with regular atrocity stories, while portraying the favored side as victims.

Finally, if a general popular uprising threatens to overthrow a global-friendly government, as in Albania, the tactic may be to rush to the support of the government, beef up its security infrastructure, and make sure the rebels get the message that their antics won’t be tolerated. In this case, the media’s job is to sensationalize scenes of anarchy and disorder, to portray the operations of the multilateral force as being "defensive" actions against "unruly mobs," and to leave out mention of the political content of the uprising.

It should be clear that the media can easily spin the news coverage in any direction called for by the interventionist agenda. In Bosnia, for example, the Croats could have been demonized just as easily as the Serbs — the Croats practiced large-scale ethnic cleansing, raped and pillaged, and carried out mass executions of civilians; they also provided excellent demon sound-bites with their overt fascist rhetoric and nazi salutes — but the camera goes where it’s directed to go, and the Serbs have socialist leanings.

Elite corporate interests openly control the major news distribution channels, own much of the media outright, set the overall globalist agenda, control the flow of investments and loans to the Third World, are the major players in the international arms business, and have intimate ties with the Western governments and intelligence services which set the agenda of the multilateral force. It should not be at all surprising that news coverage, official pronouncements, and interventionist operations are all coordinated smoothly so that when intervention occurs, it seems natural and inevitable — perhaps even too little and too late — to the general public.

So we can expect the multilateral force to be used wherever the perpetrators of globalism see fit — the media can always find material to paint the picture as required to achieve popular (and UN) acquiescence in whatever missions are proposed. The only danger to this well-polished military/media policing scheme is the spectre of friendly casualties — when Western boys start coming home in body bags, non-interventionist sentiment can be expected to arise spontaneously, putting the operation on the defensive in the media, and perhaps causing domestic political difficulties of all sorts. Minimizing Western casualties is a strategic political necessity to the globalist planners, and this ties back in to the significance of next-generation hi-tech weaponry.

The task of global management can be expected to involve conflicts of various sizes, from anti-"terrorist" operations (Tripoli bombing), to brushfire civil wars (Bosnia), to restructuring of "renegade" regimes (Grenada, Panama) — all the way up to full scale wars (Desert Storm and worse). To handle flexibly this wide range of conflicts — and without sacrificing too many of "our boys" — one can understand why the U.S. needs its multi-faceted, hi-tech, C4-based arsenal. The U.S. will most likely specialize as the heavy artillery of the multilateral force, to be brought in when only the latest weaponry can do the job without major risk to multilateral personnel.

But why does this arsenal need to be upgraded with such urgency? Isn’t it already far ahead of all comers? Didn’t Iraq (which had a highly-rated military) find itself totally immobilized by the weapons the U.S. already had available in the early nineties? Who is the anticipated adversary, and what is the anticipated scenario, which could explain the strategic sense behind this intensive buildup?

One thing is clear, and that is America’s determination to upgrade its military prerogatives on the world stage. A trial balloon was sent up not that long ago whose aim was to add nuclear capability to the internationally-approved war chest. I refer, of course, to Libya and its purported biological warfare plant, a plant which seems, significantly, to no longer be of serious concern. If that balloon had not met with international alarm, Libya might well have become the next in the sequence of America’s field-test blitzkrieg deployments — this time bringing tactical nukes (precise and clean?... but of course) into the arsenal. Once that precedent is achieved, by whatever means, tactical nukes will, presumably, be thereafter a routine tactical option, albeit used reservedly, of the multilateral force.

Missions for the Arsenal: (2) The China Question

In considering why tactical nukes would be deemed necessary by U.S. military planners (not in Libya, but in the long run) — and in considering why the U.S. seeks to advance further its hi-tech capability when it is already so far ahead of the pack — one is led inevitably to look at the China question.

China is the only remaining significant wild card in the globalization game. There are small countries which are anti-globalist, notably Cuba, but their size precludes them from challenging the steamroller in any serious way. Medium sized "renegades" like Libya can cause a bit more trouble, but Iraq stands as an example of how readily they can be humbled if they get too far out of line. But China — if it does not conform to the demands of the new globalist regime — could be a significant thorn in the side of that regime.

What does globalism demand of China? Economically — to abandon socialism (gradually) and to embrace free-trade (right away); politically — to abandon hopes of creating a Chinese-dominated Asian sphere of influence; human rights and democracy are not a requirement, as "most favored nation" status testifies, rhetoric on the topic notwithstanding.

I assume the economic requirement, as stated above, is obvious to everyone — that’s simply the public agenda of economic globalism.

The political requirement relates to the role of the multilateral police force, whose task it is to maintain a world order harmonious with globalist investment needs. A regionally hegemonous China would be perceived as threatening to a NATO-centric world order, just as Japan’s Co-Prosperity Sphere was considered threatening to U.S. and European national interests at the time. The West has traditionally been comfortable when powers balanced one another in Asia, and this attitude has had no reason to change.

China seems to be doing well in reaching an accommodation with globalism’s economic demands, but China’s nationalist aspirations may turn out to be deep-seated and stubborn.

There are a pair of articles in Foreign Affairs (March/April 1997) — a Council-on-Foreign-Relations journal highly revealing of the globalist agenda — called The China Threat — A Debate. In the first article — The Coming Conflict with America — Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro present the case that armed conflict between the U.S. and China may be inevitable.

They tell us: "China’s sheer size and inherent strength, its conception of itself as a center of global civilization, and its eagerness to redeem centuries of humiliating weakness are propelling it toward Asian hegemony." And they pass on an ominous sentiment attributed to General Mi Zhenyu, vice-commandant of the Academy of Military Sciences in Beijing: "For a relatively long time it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance. We must conceal our abilities and bide our time" — giving fair warning to be wary of what may appear to be softening in Chinese behavior.

What makes these observations especially dire is the article’s evidently authoritative description of Uncle Sam’s attitude on the matter:

"China’s goal of achieving paramount status in Asia conflicts with an established American objective: preventing any single country from gaining an overwhelming power in Asia. The United States, after all, has been in major wars in Asia three times in the past half-century, always to prevent a single power from gaining ascendency."

The implication is clear that the United States can be expected to act decisively to alter what seems to be China’s expansionist path, even by warfare if that becomes necessary. This traditional American attitude toward Asian balance-of-power is consistent with globalization’s need for an orderly world system, and with Europe’s own military traditions. In what follows, the focus is on the U.S. vs. China — but the U.S. role should be understood in the context of the U.S. as the heavy artillery of the multilateral globalist police force.

The article tells us that China is spending astronomical sums on military modernization — aimed at the ability to knock out U.S. Carrier Task Forces, as well as dominating Asia. We are told that China’s leaders "cannot be counted on to relinquish their monopolistic hold on power" and that "The most likely form for China to assume is a kind of corporatist, militarized, nationalist state, one with some similarity to the fascist states of Mussolini or Francisco Franco."

We are shown a map with seven "flash points," and various plausible scenarios are explored, each of which could easily lead to armed conflicts. It is explained that Japan must be our special partner in counter-balancing Chinese hegemony.

Robert S. Ross, in Beijing as a Conservative Power, takes up the debating position that "engagement" is the proper approach to China — "Treat China as an enemy and it will be one." Details are revealed regarding air and sea power, showing that China cannot be any kind of real threat for a long time to come. That provides time to build relationships and seek to integrate China, adequately if not ideally, into an acceptable scheme of things.

Recent history is visited, and we learn that China has been acting quite to U.S. benefit in geopolitical terms. It balanced the Soviet Union; it stabilized Southeast Asia when Uncle Sam was forced out of Vietnam. We are urged to "invite China to participate in international rule-making," and to "reinforce China’s interest in regional stability and strengthen its commitment to global stability. Engagement, not isolation, is the appropriate policy."

Both articles take it as a given that the U.S. has the "strategic interest" — translation: the right — to insure that a "favorable" balance of power is maintained in Asia: it is categorically unacceptable that China achieve outright hegemony and freedom-of-action in Asia. The debate is about means, not ends.

I must say that the first article is more convincing — the fundamental case for eventual confrontation seems more solid than the likelihood of namby-pamby coaxing bringing about a paradigm shift in China’s thousands-year-old sense of national greatness and sovereign pride.

Given the degree of societal dedication to be expected, and the prowess of China’s scientific and engineering communities, one might anticipate (in this age where offense dominates defense) that China may be able to achieve some technological leap-frog in the local military balance of power — something as surprising as a Sputnik that neutralizes, at least temporarily many of the American advantages.

For strategic military planners on both sides, one must assume that the race has been joined. Can China create a window of opportunity — based on focused achievement of regional military parity — during which time it could establish a firm hold on its own sphere of influence? Could it hold this parity long enough for the new status quo to become accepted by the international community, as has, it seems, the occupation of Tibet?

Click here to go to Part Two of this article

Richard Moore, an expatriate from Silicon Valley, currently lives and writes in Wexford, Ireland. He currently runs the Cyberjournal "list" on the Internet. Email: rkmoore@iol.ie FTP: ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib Address: PO Box 26, Wexford, Ireland.