by Mark Curtis
Along with such power projection goes ‘effective public diplomacy’, that is, propaganda, and ‘a different and more comprehensive approach to public information efforts’ that can help people to ‘understand America’. And a major goal for the US in all this is ensuring global ‘free markets and free trade’ which are ‘key priorities of our national security strategy’.16
British forces have in recent years been quietly reconfigured from an ostensibly defensive role to an overtly offensive one. Since there are no major threats to the homeland, Britain now has a ‘new focus on expeditionary warfare’, the all-party House of Commons Defence Committee comments approvingly. This emphasis on power projection overseas was occurring well before September 11th and was already the major feature of the government’s ‘strategic defence review’ (SDR), concluded in 1998. September 11th has made an overt focus on military intervention overseas – a key feature of Blair’s outlaw state – easier to justify.
The SDR stated that ‘in the post cold war world, we must be prepared to go to the crisis, rather than have the crisis come to us’. ‘For the next decade at least, the direct air defence of the UK will be a lower priority.’ ‘Long range air attack’ will continue to be important ‘as an integral part of warfighting and as a coercive instrument to support political objectives’.17
This ‘coercive instrument’ is the modern version of imperial ‘gunboat diplomacy’, a polite way of saying that Britain will issue military threats to countries failing to do what we (probably really meaning the US) want. Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane similarly told the Royal College of Defence Studies in 2002 that ‘foreign policy and military capability go hand in hand’, and that ‘to have been able to order a destroyer to head for East Timor reinforces what our Ambassador says to the authorities in Jakarta where a power vacuum exists’.18 MacShane is here claiming a benign example of the use of ‘coercive diplomacy’. This use of military power to back up ‘what our Ambassador says’ is surely a strategy that Saddam Hussein (or Hitler) would well understand. It would be interesting to see the reaction of planners and commentators if, say, Iran were to announce that in future its foreign policy were to be backed up by ‘military capability’.
British aircraft carriers ‘can also offer a coercive presence which may forestall the need for warfighting, as recently in the Gulf’, according to the SDR. And ‘all ten attack submarines will … be equipped to fire Tomahawk land attack missiles to increase their utility in force projection operations’. Tomahawk cruise missiles entered service in 1998, representing ‘a major step forward in capability, enabling precision attacks to be undertaken at long range against selected targets, with a minimal risk to our own forces’, Defence minister John Spellar explained.19
The SDR goes on to outline the ‘new generation of military equipment’ that will be needed for this enhanced power projection, including attack helicopters, long-range precision munitions, digitised command and control systems, a new generation of aircraft carriers, submarines and escorts, the Eurofighter multi-role warplane and the development of a successor to the Tornado bomber.20
This is all before September 11th. By then, Blair’s military interventionism had already been quite extraordinary. Post-September 11th, a Foreign Office minister referred to ‘an effective doctrine of early warning and where necessary early intervention’. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said that ‘our aim must be to develop a clear strategy to head off threats to global order and to deal with the consequences within the evolving framework of international law’. Translated, this means that Britain will conduct military interventions to preserve Western supremacy (‘global order’) while defying international law, and trying to change it, to make such intervention easier, as noted in chapter 1.21
The Defence Committee notes that ‘we must … be free to deploy significant forces overseas rapidly’, and calls for ‘pre-emptive military action’. Similar to the US view, almost all areas of the world, it appears, could be the focus of British intervention. The Defence Committee states that:
The implications of an open-ended war on terrorism – particularly one that will address the problems of collapsing and failed states which create the political space for terror and crime networks to operate – suggest that operations in central Asia, East Africa, perhaps the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere, will become necessary as part of an integrated political and military strategy to address terrorism and the basis on which it flourishes.22
An intellectual framing for the new phase in global interventionism comes from Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat picked by Blair to be Britain’s special envoy in Afghanistan. He argues for ‘a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values’ which ‘aims to bring order and organisation’. It should be directed principally at ‘failed states’, countries where governments no longer have the monopoly on the use of force, or where this risk is high. Examples include Chechnya, other areas of the former Soviet Union, all of the world’s major drug-producing areas, ‘upcountry Burma’, some parts of South America, and all of Africa. ‘No area of the world is without its dangerous cases’, Cooper states.23
The new interventionism’s demands for new weapons systems is also a great boon for the arms corporations, another factor which explains elite enthusiasm for the project. September 11th itself was profitable. ‘This event [is] all good things for the defence industry’, commented Richard Aboulafia, senior military analyst with the Teal Group, a military consultancy, one week after September 11th. The Economist noted that ‘as always, war is good for the makers of military hardware, and the shares of defence contractors have been soaring since the attack’. Within a few weeks of September 11th, shares in Lockheed Martin, the second largest US arms company, rose by more than 30 per cent, shares in BAE systems rose by 7 per cent, Northrop Grumman by 32 per cent and Raytheon by 40 per cent.
British companies will also profit from Bush’s massive military spending increases – the biggest in twenty years, meaning that the US alone will account for 40 per cent of global military spending. BAE Systems already sells more to the Pentagon than to the Ministry of Defence, so the increases on the other side of the Atlantic will earn nice profits for some on this side.24
Meanwhile, the House of Commons Defence Committee and others have been calling for increases in British military spending. In July 2002, the government obliged. Gordon Brown announced an extra £1 billion a year in the military budget, the biggest increase since the cold war ended, to counter the ‘urgent moral challenge’ of international terrorism.25
The new interventionism also include a role for nuclear weapons. The US is building an arsenal of smaller nuclear weapons (‘mini-nukes’) for use on the battlefield. A classified Pentagon report leaked to the media identified plans to wage nuclear war against seven countries – China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria – as well as in an Arab-Israeli conflict. The US has also reversed a previous policy that it would not use nuclear weapons against states that did not possess them – now, no states are ruled out.26
The British government has matched the US, in a reversal of past Labour and Conservative policy. Now, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has stated that Britain should be prepared to use nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear states, and if British forces were attacked with chemical or biological weapons. Countries are also likely to be threatened with nuclear annihilation; Britain delivered threats to Iraq in both 1991 and 1998, saying that it would use nuclear weapons in response to Iraqi use of chemical or biological weapons. Britain also continues to refuse to adopt a ‘no first use’ pledge on nuclear weapons, Labour quietly dropping this previous manifesto commitment after the 1997 general election.27
The Blair government apparently sees nuclear weapons as war fighting weapons, not simply as a deterrent, as the myth has it. Trident has a ‘sub-strategic’ role, meaning it is intended for use on the battlefield as well as to deter an all-out nuclear exchange. Malcolm
Rifkind, Defence Secretary under Thatcher, asserted that because the threat of an all-out nuclear assault might not be ‘credible’, it was important to ‘undertake a more limited nuclear strike’ to deliver ‘an unmistakeable message of our willingness to defend our vital interests to the utmost’. The Blair government similarly says that ‘the credibility of deterrence … depends on retaining the option for a limited nuclear strike’. Geoff Hoon said in March 2002 that ‘I am absolutely confident, in the right conditions, we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons.’ He publicly repeated Britain’s willingness to use nuclear weapons three times in one month in early 2002.28
The government even says in the SDR that nuclear weapons are to deter ‘any threat to our vital interests’. Such ‘vital interests’ include not only Britain’s survival but its international trade and dependence on ‘foreign countries for supplies of raw materials, including oil’.29
The Labour government keeps one nuclear submarine on patrol at all times, with forty-eight nuclear warheads. This is called the ‘minimum necessary’ to provide for Britain’s ‘security’. It is an argument that anyone – perhaps Saddam Hussein – might use for acquiring nuclear weapons, in fact with more reason, given a greater likelihood of being attacked (that is, by us).
The government has no intention whatsoever of abolishing its nuclear weapons, even though all nuclear weapons states are required to move towards disarmament under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. While paying lip service to this treaty, the government is actively defying it. In late 1998, a draft resolution was under discussion at the UN called ‘Towards a nuclear weapons free world: The need for a new agenda’. The government said that ‘we oppose the current draft of this resolution … since it is inconsistent with maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent’. Meanwhile, it says it wants Trident to remain in service for thirty years and that ‘we intend to … design and produce a successor to Trident should this prove necessary’. And it is also developing a new generation of ‘mini-nukes’ in a massive £2 billion project.30
This is occurring at a time when Iraq is targeted for destruction by the US and its junior partner supposedly for attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Britain displayed its customary attitude to international law following the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in 1996. This stated that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law. Conservative Defence minister Nicholas Soames said that ‘we do not believe the court’s advisory opinions will have any implications’ for British policy.31 Neither does the most recent government of the outlaw state.
Curbing domestic enemies
The ‘war against terrorism’ is also providing a pretext for states, usually Western allies, to crack down on internal dissent. In chapter 10, I outline how British foreign policy is largely based on supporting elites who promote British and Western interests, especially commercial interests. These favoured elites are regularly brutal and repressive of demands for greater political participation and human rights. Britain, contrary to myth, generally sides with the elites against more democratic forces. The new war is a new-found ally in this process.
According to Human Rights Watch, ‘the anti-terror campaign led by the United States is inspiring opportunistic attacks on civil liberties around the world’. Countries such as Russia, Uzbekistan, China, India and Egypt ‘are using the war on terror to justify abusive military campaigns or crackdowns on domestic political opponents’.32
Russian President Vladimir Putin has embraced the ‘war against terrorism’ to defend Russian brutality in Chechnya while Britain and the US have virtually abandoned even the pretence of concern for the plight of Chechens, as outlined in chapter 7. The Chinese government has similarly used ‘antiterrorism’ to pursue new draconian and often brutal measures to counter political agitation in Xinjiang province. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, has referred to Arafat as ‘our Bin Laden’.33
US military aid to repressive regimes has been significantly stepped up since September 11th. Tajikistan has been rewarded for its support of the new war by the US lifting an eight-year arms ban. Uzbekistan, a truly gruesome dictatorship, is receiving $43 million in military aid, while the Philippines is to get $100 million. Sanctions imposed on Pakistan and India for conducting nuclear tests have been lifted and US military cooperation with Indonesia has been extended. Overall, the US arms export process has been made easier.34
Western governments are similarly using the ‘war against terrorism’ to curb civil liberties and erode international law. Britain has been leading the international community in promoting a legal definition of terrorism that may stifle domestic political dissent. According to Amnesty International, the UK’s Terrorism Act of 2000 ‘may contravene UK obligations under international human rights law’ in terms of the rights to liberty, a fair trial and freedom of association. Plotting the overthrow of a foreign government from Britain became a criminal offence – meaning surely that Blair should immediately lock himself up, given his plans for Saddam.
On seeking to curb the rights of asylum seekers, Britain has been surpassed only by Australia. Australian Prime Minister John Howard built his candidacy for re-election in November 2001 around his summary expulsion of asylum seekers who had reached Australia, in blatant violation of international refugee law.35
Human Rights Watch has issued a challenge to the US and its allies in the ‘war against terrorism’, saying that ‘they must decide whether this battle provides an opportunity to reaffirm human rights principles or a new reason to ignore them’. ‘Unfortunately, the coalition’s conduct so far has not been auspicious … Its leading members have violated human rights principles at home and overlooked human rights transgressions among their partners’. Human Rights Watch then says:
In Egypt, Saudi Arabia and many of the other countries where Osama Bin Laden strikes a chord of resentment, governments restrict debate about how to address society’s ills. They close off avenues for peaceful political change. They leave people with the desperate choice of tolerating the status quo, exile, or violence … The West has quietly accepted this pattern of repression because, in the short term, it seems to promise stability, and because the democratic alternative is feared. In an environment in which the political centre has been systematically silenced, these governments can credibly portray themselves as the only bulwark against extremism.
Although the correlation is not always neat, these experiences suggest that the appeal of violent and intolerant movements diminishes as people are given the chance to participate meaningfully in politics and to select from a range of political parties and perspectives … But if the West continues to accept repression as the best defence against radical politics, it will undermine the human rights culture that is needed in the long run to defeat terrorism.36
However, the US and Britain are not only tolerating, but in many cases actively promoting, the repressive policies of favoured elites. The long-term consequences may be immense.
But there are good reasons for this strategy to continue, seen from the perspective of US and British elites. The context is one where many parts of the Islamic world are offering serious resistance to US global hegemony, whether economic or military. Islamic radical forces are the major barriers to total US domination of the Middle East. As in Egypt, the ‘war against terrorism’ is a new pretext for rolling back further the greatest sources of resistance to US power within many Middle Eastern countries. The new war may therefore be seen as a way of helping to contain and control the Islamic world – a surely naïve and dangerous view, as it is more likely to generate more violent opposition.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld explains that the US has to do what it can ‘to encourage the moderate Muslim voices’ who ‘aspire to enjoy the blessings of freedom and democracy and free enterprise’. ‘One possible model for the aspirations of the Muslim world for democratic progress and prosperity’, Rumsfeld conti
nues, is Turkey – a country that has killed, displaced and repressed hundreds of thousands of its citizens in the past decade. Rumsfeld also describes the ‘larger war’ beyond that against terrorism, a ‘battle of ideas’ to show that ‘free markets and open societies do improve lives’.37
Both US and British ministers have tried to use the ‘war against terrorism’ for still other purposes. For example, both US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and Britain’s Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt have tried to push their agenda of ever greater trade ‘liberalisation’ on developing countries by saying that we should ‘fight terror with trade’ (see also chapter 9) – surely showing, at least, that the promotion of the ‘war against terrorism’ has a truly comical side. At the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Qatar two months after September 11th, the US and the EU, led by Britain, tried to add new policy areas to the WTO’s trade rules. This was in the face of opposition from almost all developing countries. This agenda – to achieve new global agreements on investment and government procurement – aims to open up more areas of national economies to control by Western transnational corporations. Promoting global ‘free trade’ is identified by the US as a key part of its global ‘security’ strategy, alongside the ‘war against terrorism’ and part of the ‘battle of ideas’ referred to by Donald Rumsfeld.