The Trinity test of the Manhattan Project was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon / credit: U.S. Department of Energy
Editor’s Note: The following represents the writer’s opinion.
“This a critical moment for nuclear disarmament, and for our collective survival,” wrote Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will, commenting on the 10th Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference taking place since August 1 and ending August 26 at the United Nations.
I attended the conference for several days last week as an NGO delegate from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and have been closely watching the negotiations going on for the entire month over an outcome statement for the conference.
After two weeks, a draft preamble was submitted that reaffirms, among other things, “…that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, and commits to ensuring that nuclear weapons will never be used again under any circumstances.”
This could be an extraordinary breakthrough toward global nuclear disarmament. Right now, 191 countries are represented in this treaty and are seated in the General Assembly hall listening to each other. In the first week, we heard urgent warning statements from the nations without nuclear weapons, such as, “The clouds that parted following the end of the Cold War are gathering once more.” Meanwhile, a representative from Costa Rica scolded, “The lack of firm deadlines has provided the nuclear-armed states with a pathway to disregard their disarmament commitments as flagrantly as they have since the last Review Conference.”
In a hopeful step, 89 non-nuclear states in the last year have either signed or ratified a binding disarmament agreement called the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which requires disarmament commitments. These states no longer tolerate the double talk from the nine-nation nuclear mafia made up of UN Security Council member states China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), India, Israel and Pakistan.
How can the United States consider signing the draft preamble while the House and Senate are finalizing the National Defense Authorization Act, which calls for the modernization of its nuclear arsenal? How can the U.S. government even take part in this conference while it is seeking funding for a renewed nuclear edifice of destruction, including Modernized Strategic Delivery Systems and refurbished nuclear warheads? Over the next decade, the United States plans to spend $494 billion on its nuclear forces, or about $50 billion a year, according to a 2019 Congressional Budget Office report. Trillions of dollars for submarines, bombers and buried nuclear missiles. Things they are committing to not use. Please, does this make sense?
At one of the NGO meetings I attended in the basement of the UN, I blurted out, “This conference IS A FRAUD.” The nuclear mafia have no serious plans to disarm, as required by Section 6 of the NPT Treaty. Their duplicity could be rebuked to the world by a walkout in the final days of the conference by the countries that have signed and ratified the agreement, as well as by their supporters.
For the NPT Treaty to collapse would be tragic. But for it to continue when everyone knows it is a lie is a moral and mortal affront to the people of the world.
Robin Lloyd is secretary of the Toward Freedom Board of Directors. She is a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the United States.
The list of countries targeted by the U.S. military includes the vast majority of the nations on Earth, including almost every single county in Latin America and the Caribbean and most of the African continent.
From the beginning of 1991 to the beginning of 2004, the U.S. military launched 100 interventions, according to CRS.
That number grew to 200 military interventions between 1991 and 2018.
The report shows that, since the end of the first cold war in 1991, at the moment of U.S. unipolar hegemony, the number of Washington’s military interventions abroad substantially increased.
Of the total 469 documented foreign military interventions, the Congressional Research Service noted that the U.S. government only formally declared war 11 times, in just five separate wars.
The data exclude the independence war been U.S. settlers and the British empire, any military deployments between 1776 and 1798, and the U.S. Civil War.
It is important to stress that all of these numbers are conservative estimates, because they do not include U.S. special operations, covert actions, or domestic deployments.
The CRS report clarified:
The list does not include covert actions or numerous occurrences in which U.S. forces have been stationed abroad since World War II in occupation forces or for participation in mutual security organizations, base agreements, or routine military assistance or training operations.
The report likewise excludes the deployment of the U.S. military forces against Indigenous peoples, when they were systematically ethnically cleansed in the violent process of westward settler-colonial expansion.
CRS acknowledged that it left out the “continual use of U.S. military units in the exploration, settlement, and pacification of the western part of the United States.”
“The U.S. has undertaken over 500 international military interventions since 1776, with nearly 60 percent undertaken between 1950 and 2017,” the project wrote. “What’s more, over one-third of these missions occurred after 1999.”
The Military Intervention Project added: “With the end of the Cold War era, we would expect the U.S. to decrease its military interventions abroad, assuming lower threats and interests at stake. But these patterns reveal the opposite—the U.S. has increased its military involvements abroad.”
A C-130 Hercules aircraft from the Republic of Korea Air Force sits on the flight line at Rosecrans Air National Guard Base, St. Joseph, Missouri, May 12, 2022. C-130s from the ROKAF, Little Rock Air Force Base, and Dyess AFB were attending the Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center’s Advanced Tactics Aircrew Course / credit: Michael Crane / U.S. Air National Guard
Editor’s Note: This analysis originally appeared in People’s Dispatch.
Between August 22 and September 1, the United States and South Korea concluded their largest joint military drills in the Korean Peninsula since 2017, under the name ‘Ulchi Freedom Shield’. Over the last four years, the scope of the annual exercises had been scaled back, first because of U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts at diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and later because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With these drills, however, the United States and South Korea seem to be attempting to send a clear message to both North Korea and China of their united military posture in the region, and come at a time when the U.S. encirclement of China continues rapidly.
The military relationship between the United States and South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), has a long history, stretching back at least as far as the Korean War. The United States has maintained a force of at least tens of thousands of troops in South Korea since prior to the Korean War, and, while South Korean forces are otherwise independent, at times of war they are subordinated to the command of a U.S. general as part of the ROK/U.S. Combined Forces Command. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, making it the country with the third-highest number of U.S. troops outside of the United States.
While the recent exercises have been conducted against a nameless enemy, it is not hard to see towards whom their message is aimed. The site of the exercises is only 32 kilometers from the border and De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. Live-fire tank and troop maneuvers have been practiced as the United States and the ROK engage in simulations and seek to increase interoperability of their deployments and technologies. War-gamed attempts to seize “weapons of mass destruction” and mount a defense of Seoul suggest that they are preparations for potential conflict with North Korea.
Trump’s attempts to seek a diplomatic end to the North Korean nuclear program were unsuccessful, as have been U.S. economic sanctions and blockades. These exercises must be seen as a continuing show of force towards the same chief end. As part of his campaign and even more recently, new South Korean Premier Yoon Suk-yeol has touted his willingness to engage in “decapitation strikes” against the North Korean leadership, as part of a broader turn towards support for, and from, U.S. interests in the region.
He has also more recently offered a bouquet of economic enticements for North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, an offer that was rejected out of hand by Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, who pointed out that it was merely the restatement of a similar offer that had been made and dismissed in the past. The North sees its nuclear arsenal as non-negotiable and the key to its global legitimacy, and is no doubt also aware of what has happened to other countries, such as Libya and Iran, that have agreed to put holds on their military nuclear capabilities at the behest of the United States. With U.S. bases and troops having been positioned so close to its border for almost its entire existence as a country, it is easy to understand why North Korea does not see a reduction in its military capabilities as a particularly pressing or, indeed, sensible priority.
The resumption of these joint military exercises has also been viewed with alarm by China, which, like North Korea, has repeatedly pointed to U.S. attempts to set up a NATO-like organization in Asia. As tensions in the region reached unprecedented levels recently following U.S. politician Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan, it seems the U.S. military presence in the region is only likely to increase in the near future.
South Korea and the United States also recently participated in trilateral military exercises with Japan near Hawai’i, signaling what might be a new low in hostilities that trace their roots to the Japanese occupation of Korea, which only ended in 1945, when the administration of South Korea was handed over briefly to the United States. This too has been noted with concern by China, and suggests that the United States is coordinating its allies in the region as it attempts to extend its global hegemony ever-further eastward.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi walking towards the dais to address the nation at Red Fort in Delhi, on the occasion of 75th Independence Day on August 15, 2021 / Indian Prime Minister’s Office
Editor’s Note: The following analysis was produced in partnership by Newsclick and Globetrotter.
The recent Quad leaders meeting in the White House on September 24 appears to have shifted focus away from its original framing as a security dialogue between four countries, the United States, India, Japan and Australia. Instead, the United States seems to be moving much closer to Australia as a strategic partner and providing it with nuclear submarines.
Supplying Australia with U.S. nuclear submarines that use bomb-grade uranium can violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) protocols. Considering that the United States wants Iran not to enrich uranium beyond 3.67 percent, this is blowing a big hole in its so-called rule-based international order—unless we all agree that the rule-based international order is essentially the United States and its allies making up all the rules.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had initiated the idea of the Quad in 2007 as a security dialogue. In the statement issued after the first formal meeting of the Quad countries dated March 12, 2021, “security” was used in the sense of strategic security. Before the recent meeting of the Quad, both the United States and the Indian sides denied that it was a military alliance, even though the Quad countries conduct joint naval exercises—the Malabar exercises—and have signed various military agreements. The September 24 Quad joint statement focuses more on other “security” issues: health security, supply chain and cybersecurity.
Has India decided that it still needs to retain strategic autonomy even if it has serious differences with China on its northern borders and therefore stepped away from the Quad as an Asian NATO? Or has the United States itself downgraded the Quad now that Australia has joined its geostrategic game of containing China?
Naval ships from India, Australia, Japan, Singapore, and the United States steam in formation in the Bay of Bengal on September 5, 2007, during Exercise Malabar 07-2. The formation included USS Kitty Hawk, USS Nimitz, INS Viraat, JS Yuudachi, JS Ohnami, RSS Formidable, HMAS Adelaide, INS Ranvijay, INS Brahmaputra, INS Ranjit, USS Chicago and USS Higgins / credit: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Stephen W. Rowe
Before the Quad meeting in Washington, the United States and the UK signed an agreement with Australia to supply eight nuclear submarines—the AUKUS agreement. Earlier, the United States had transferred nuclear submarine technology to the UK, and it may have some subcontracting role here. Nuclear submarines, unlike diesel-powered submarines, are not meant for defensive purposes. They are for force projection far away from home. Their ability to travel large distances and remain submerged for long periods makes them effective strike weapons against other countries.
The AUKUS agreement means that Australia is canceling its earlier French contract to supply 12 diesel-powered submarines. The French are livid that they, one of NATO’s lynchpins, have been treated this way with no consultation by the United States or Australia on the cancellation. The U.S. administration has followed it up with “discreet disclosures” to the media and U.S. think tanks that the agreement to supply nuclear submarines also includes Australia providing naval and air bases to the United States. In other words, Australia is joining the United States and the UK in a military alliance in the “Indo-Pacific.”
Earlier, President Macron had been fully on board with the U.S. policy of containing China and participated in Freedom of Navigation exercises in the South China Sea. France had even offered its Pacific Island colonies—and yes, France still has colonies—and its navy for the U.S. project of containing China in the Indo-Pacific. France has two sets of island chains in the Pacific Ocean that the United Nations terms as non-self-governing territories—read colonies—giving France a vast exclusive economic zone, larger even than that of the United States. The United States considers these islands less strategically valuable than Australia, which explains its willingness to face France’s anger. In the U.S. worldview, NATO and the Quad are both being downgraded for a new military strategy of a naval thrust against China.
Australia has very little manufacturing capacity. If the eight nuclear submarines are to be manufactured partially in Australia, the infrastructure required for manufacturing nuclear submarines and producing/handling of highly enriched uranium that the U.S. submarines use will probably require a minimum time of 20 years. That is the reason behind the talk of U.S. naval and air bases in Australia, with the United States providing the nuclear submarines and fighter-bomber aircraft either on lease, or simply locating them in Australia.
I have previously argued that the term Indo-Pacific may make sense to the United States, the UK or even Australia, which are essentially maritime nations. The optics of three maritime powers, two of which are settler-colonial, while the other, the erstwhile largest colonial power, talking about a rule-based international order do not appeal to most of the world. Oceans are important to maritime powers, who have used naval dominance to create colonies. This was the basis of the dominance of British, French and later U.S. imperial powers. That is why they all have large aircraft carriers: they are naval powers who believe that the gunboat diplomacy through which they built their empires still works. The United States has 700-800 military bases spread worldwide; Russia has about 10; and China has only one base in Djibouti, Africa.
Behind the rhetoric about the Indo-Pacific and open seas is the U.S. play in Southeast Asia. Here, the talk of the Indo-Pacific has little resonance for most people. Its main interest is in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which was spearheaded by the ASEAN countries. Even with the United States and India walking out of the RCEP negotiations, the 15-member trading bloc is the largest trading bloc in the world, with nearly 30 percent of the world’s GDP and population. Two of the Quad partners—Japan and Australia—are in the RCEP.
The U.S. strategic vision is to project its maritime power against China and contest for control over even Chinese waters and economic zones. This is the 2018 U.S. Pacific strategy doctrine that it has itself put forward, which it de-classified recently. The doctrine states that the U.S. naval strategy is to deny China sustained air and sea dominance even inside the first island chain and dominate all domains outside the first island chain. For those interested in how the U.S. views the Quad and India’s role in it, this document is a good education.
The United States wants to use the disputes that Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia have with China over the boundaries of their respective exclusive economic zones. While some of them may look to the United States for support against China, none of these Southeast Asian countries supports the U.S. interpretation of the Freedom of Navigation, under which it carries out its Freedom of Navigation Operations, or FONOPS. As India found to its cost in Lakshadweep, the U.S. definition of the freedom of navigation does not square with India’s either. For all its talk about rule-based world order, the United States has not signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) either. So when India and other partners of the United States sign on to Freedom of Navigation statements of the United States, they are signing on to the U.S. understanding of the freedom of navigation, which is at variance with theirs.
The 1973 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty created two classes of countries, ones who would be allowed to a set of technologies that could lead to bomb-grade uranium or plutonium, and others who would be denied these technologies. There was, however, a submarine loophole in the NPT and its complementary IAEA Safeguards for the peaceful use of atomic energy. Under the NPT, non-nuclear-weapon-state parties must place all nuclear materials under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, except nuclear materials for nonexplosive military purposes. No country until now has utilized this submarine loophole to withdraw weapon-grade uranium from safeguards. If this exception is utilized by Australia, how will the United States continue to argue against Iran’s right to enrich uranium, say for nuclear submarines, which is within its right to develop under the NPT?
India was never a signatory to the NPT, and therefore is a different case than that of Australia. If Australia, a signatory, is allowed to use the submarine loophole, what prevents other countries from doing so as well?
Australia did not have to travel this route if it wanted nuclear submarines. The French submarines that they were buying were originally nuclear submarines but using low-enriched uranium. It is retrofitting diesel engines that has created delays in their supplies to Australia. It appears that under the current Australian leadership of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Australia wants to flex its muscles in the neighborhood, therefore tying up with Big Brother, the United States.
For the United States, if Southeast Asia is the terrain of struggle against China, Australia is a very useful springboard. It also substantiates what has been apparent for some time now—that the Indo-Pacific is only cover for a geostrategic competition between the United States and China over Southeast Asia. And unfortunately for the United States, East Asia and Southeast Asia have reciprocal economic interests that bring them closer to each other. And Australia, with its brutal settler-colonial past of genocide and neocolonial interventions in Southeast Asia, is not seen as a natural partner by countries there.
India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have lost the plot completely. Does it want strategic autonomy, as was its policy post-independence? Or does it want to tie itself to a waning imperial power, the United States? The first gave it respect well beyond its economic or military clout. The current path seems more and more a path toward losing its stature as an independent player.
Prabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the free software movement.
