------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Feb. 21, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
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. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
