Category: Articles

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. A prime example is Plan Colombia, the US initiative to send military aid to Columbia to squash leftist insurgencies there under cover of the War on Drugs. The parallels between Plan Columbia and the Vietnam War’s “Operation Phoenix” are notable and numerous, both actions relying on intimidation on the part of paramilitaries. And in both cases, the US was/is directly involved.

Secretary of State Colin Powell is on record as saying he supports the current policy in Colombia, but wants to “try to regionalize the approach, (and) get all of the nations in the area to recognize that the problem is theirs as well as Colombia’s.” What’s left unsaid here is that the US intends to make it their problem whether these countries see it that way or not. The recent construction of forward air bases in Ecuador and El Salvador make this clear.

If one recalls US involvement in Indochina in the early 1960s, there was also a push to “regionalize” that conflict in order to pursue Vietnamese revolutionary forces into their places of refuge in Cambodia and Laos. In Laos, another aspect of this operation was the hiring of Laotians opposed to the Pathet Lao insurgency to interrogate, torture, and kill civilian supporters of the Pathet Lao. It was the leaders of some of these US-created paramilitaries who eventually helped the CIA set up a heroin dealing operation. Since the infusion of U.S. money as part of Plan Colombia, the role of the right-wing paramilitaries has become more pronounced. In fact, the numerous massacres of “suspected guerrilla sympathizers” by these forces (over 70 killed in the first 17 days of 2001) is reminiscent of the role played by various Vietnamese extralegal armies just before the massive U.S. military involvement in that country back in the early 1960s. There were a number of counterinsurgency programs operating in southern Vietnam at the time under a variety of agencies. Foremost in all of these programs’ missions, however, was the isolation of revolutionary forces from the general population and intimidation of the civilian population to prevent them from actively supporting the revolutionaries. These extralegal forces were usually composed of career criminals, former Vietnamese Army troops accused of excessive brutality while in uniform, defectors from the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, and released prisoners. They achieved their goals by psychological intimidation, physical torture, imprisonment, and murder — all of which they learned from their CIA and US military trainers. Some of Colin Powell’s early military career was spent in the jungles of Vietnam leading squads of these men.

Eventually, the various programs were coordinated under one CIA-managed operation known as Operation Phoenix. This program of planned assassination resulted in the deaths of nearly 50,000 Vietnamese. The modus operandi used in Operation Phoenix was further refined during the US war in Central America during the 1980s. By refined, it is generally meant that the methods stayed the same, but greater US deniability is created, usually by having local troops and agents commit the actual torture and murder. As for Powell, he continues to support this type of operation, calling it the “drain the sea” approach in his 1995 memoirs. Until recently, US advisors were supposedly only in Colombia to train members of the regular army. In fact, various reports from Latin American media have reported the presence of US “trainers” actually helping to carry out raids and other missions in the Colombian countryside. All of this was set up in 1991, under the tutelage of the U.S. Defense Department and the CIA. This was accomplished under a Colombian military intelligence integration plan called Order 200-05/91.

The role the paramilitaries play is one that supplements the strategy of the regular Colombian army. Indeed, some of the players are members of both. Sometimes the role is purely intelligence — that is, gathering names of suspected revolutionaries — and other times their role is much more murderous. To put it succinctly, the paramilitaries commit the war crimes that the Colombian regular army can’t due to public relations concerns of the Colombian and US governments. Some officers were trained at the School of the Americas (SOA) in Georgia — a notorious military training center that specializes in interrogation, torture and other “counterterror” methods. Many of those officers have certainly transferred their training at this school and by advisors in Colombia to their after-hours paramilitary activities. Human Rights Watch reports that at least seven SOA graduates are highly involved with the paramilitary. With the assistance and training of the CIA, DEA, and the US military and their private contractors, these armies conduct search-and-destroy missions in the Colombian countryside, easing the way for the regular armed forces to move in and hold territory. In an article in The San-Antonio Express News, it was pointed out that the most impressive offensive by one of the paramilitaries – the AUC – “has come in Putumayo province, which will be ground zero in the military phase of Plan Colombia – the place where American-made helicopters will land American-trained troops to do battle with forces protecting the coca fields.” (1/17/01) In other words, this is where the Colombian military intends to begin its offensive against the revolutionary forces. It is no coincidence that the AUC has concentrated its attacks there.

It is important to note that the United States is not very supportive of the current peace talks between FARC and the Colombian government. This is because a negotiated peace would ruin their plans for the region. One cannot reiterate enough that the US does not want a settlement that would legitimize the revolutionary forces in any way. The only acceptable solution as far as the US is concerned is total victory over the rebel forces. This was clearly stated by the Pentagon well before Plan Colombia was put into action. Any other result would create a situation that would force the US to negotiate with the FARC and ELN — something it is philosophically opposed too. A similar scenario arose in Vietnam in the early 1960s: much of the Saigon government wished to reach an agreement with the NLF revolutionary forces in order to preserve some power for themselves and prevent further Americanization of the war. The US response to this desire was to increase its military presence and isolate those elements that preferred negotiations over military engagement. This may already be happening in Colombia where negotiations are taking place between FARC and the government while US-led forces cooperate with the local paramilitaries in counterrevolutionary and fumigation efforts.

Tinctures are preserved herbal medicinal mixtures that can last for three to five years. More specifically, tinctures are an extract with an alcohol base, which works as a better solvent than water for some plant constituents. The concentration of the tincture depends upon the potency of the herb. Very potent or toxic herbs require a lower concentration than other herbs. When starting out at home, it is best to use only safe, non-toxic herbs such as dandelion, burdock, garlic, red clover, yellow dock, or mullein.

The ratio of herb to fluid used is 1:1 for fresh plant and 1:5 for dried plant. This is plant weight to liquid volume. Measure the required amount of your chosen herb into a screw top jar and cover it with a spirit, such as vodka. Keep tightly covered in a warm place while infusing, and shake the bottle well twice a day. You can strain the tincture in 14-28 days, through a muslin cloth, squeezing well. I like to let the tincture soak for a full lunation cycle. Store in a cool place in a dark bottle, to prevent UV ray damage.

Here’s a recipe. Take eight (8) ounces (1/2 pound) of dried Echinacea and put in a one (1) quart jar. Fill jar with a forty percent (40%) alcohol level spirit to top and seal. Label jar with herb, date, alcohol content and moon sign (optional). Don’t forget to label, as an unknown tincture is wasted medicine. Recipe measurements are based on a general formula using pure grain alcohol such as everclear. Adjust the recipe according to the alcohol content of the spirit you use. For instance, if you’re using 40% vodka, and want an alcohol content of 40%, no water will be needed, and thus the last two lines of the equation can be omitted.

Formula:

Alcohol content:      

A. ______%



Water content :

B. ______%



Weight of plant used: 

C. ______grams



Fresh plant water:

B. ____x C.____ = D. _____ml



(omit if using dry plant material.)

Equivalent dry weight:

C. ____- D. ____= E. _____gm



Total liquid volume in tincture:  5  x E. ____= F._____ml



(Use 1x E. ____=F.___ ml, if using fresh plant material)

Total alcohol to be added:   F.____x A. ____=G._____ml

Distilled water to be added:

 F. _____ - G. _____ -D._____ =H. ______ml

This formula maybe a little confusing if you’re not used to using the metric system. Although metric conversions are not hard to find, only use this scientific method if you’re up to the challenge. If this doesn’t work for you, there is the traditional folk method, which just blows all the numbers away and leaves you to your own intuitive devices. This is especially useful when using fresh plant materials that are bulky but light weight. In those instances, the formula sometimes doesn’t work out and the alcohol won’t even cover the herb completely. I personally use a combination of both depending on what I’m tincturing.

Tinctures can be taken undiluted or with water or juice to mask the flavor a little. If a person does not wish to have the alcohol, she can place drops of tincture in boiled water or tea. This removes the alcohol without harming the herbal constituents. You can also try to use apple cider vinegar as a base, but it must be apple cider vinegar because the malic acid is digestible, whereas the acids in other vinegars are not digestible. Vinegar also helps drain the lymph nodes, and is beneficial both for arthritis and asthma, as well as seasonal tonics.

Best of Health to you.

Hey y’all! Slingshot is going to make this DIY column a regular feature! Please send us clear descriptions of any do-it-yourself project that’s fun and/or useful.

Visions of a global police state

On May 1st, as people around the world celebrated International Worker’s Day and the coming of spring, George W. Bush, speaking at the National Defense University in Washington, conducted a ceremonial opening of a different sort of celebration. It was to be a celebration of capitalist triumph, of the exercise of power and the expansion of dominion. After wistfully reminiscing about the Cold War and the ultimate triumph of capitalism over the Soviet Union, Bush reassured his audience that the party was not over. Even today there are tyrants out there, “tyrants gripped by an implacable hatred of the United States of America”, tyrants who, like their Soviet predecessors, “hate democracy, freedom and individual liberty”.

The centerpiece of this new celebration was to be the development of a military system termed national missile defense, which was to be achieved by funneling billions of dollars to corporations of the US military-industrial complex-the beacons and bottom-line guarantors of freedom and democracy. The older triumph was achieved through a game of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction-weapons which both sides unfortunately had to withhold from using due to the uncontrollable magnitude of mutual destruction which would otherwise ensue. Now, through the technological regime of missile defense, that annoying limitation could finally be overcome, freeing the holders of power to exercise the full power which they hold. The same corporate entities whose hard work and Yankee ingenuity secured victory in that cold, static struggle, far from becoming Cold War dinosaurs, would be granted a new lease on life in this heroic bid to make weapons of mass destruction safe for democracy.

A brief history of missile defense

The concept of missile defense is not new. In the wake of World War II, the US Army conducted studies, code-named Thumper and Wizard, which suggested the possibility of using interceptor missiles or directed energy weapons to counter ballistic missiles such as the V-2 rockets which were deployed by Hitler’s forces against London in the closing days of their Aryan empire. In 1956, development of a complex anti-ballistic missile system known as “Nike-Zeus” was initiated, with Western Electric Corporation as the prime contractor. The system was to employ a variety of radar subsystems to guide an interceptor missile which would deliver a megaton-range nuclear explosive to destroy the reentry vehicle of an incoming ballistic missile at high altitude. After some initial successful tests, the system was deemed impractical and was never deployed. Development of other systems continued into the 1960’s, when “Sentinel”, an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system of limited capacity, went through initial stages of deployment under Johnson. This system was renamed “Safeguard” under Nixon and redesigned to defend US missile silos against a preemptive strike.

Overall, with the technology available at the time, ABM systems and development efforts proved costly, and their effectiveness remained highly uncertain. As enthusiasm waned, in 1972 the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed, which limited each side to two ABM installations with no more than 100 weapons each (reduced to one installation each in a 1974 amendment to the treaty). The Safeguard program continued on a more limited scale, and an ABM facility went into full operation 1 October 1975 in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The next day, Congress voted to shut down the program, and the facility was decommissioned after less than 5 months of operation. While its operational track record may be underwhelming, the Safeguard program did make one significant achievement: namely, the transfer of 21 billion dollars to the military-industrial complex. This achievement-one that had been made with various related programs in the past and would be repeated in the future-embodied the establishment of a pattern crucial to the continued operation of the military-industrial complex and the world system which it safeguards.

Star Wars

In September 1982, Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb and the godfather of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (the US ruling class’s main advanced weapons research facility), visited Ronald Reagan in a private meeting arranged by right-wing business interests acting through the Heritage Foundation. Teller informed Reagan of a device he had been working on-a nuclear bomb-pumped X-ray laser-which he claimed could be deployed in space and used to shoot missiles out of the sky. In March of the following year, Reagan announced the launching of a comprehensive program that would protect free people from the Evil Empire by rendering nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete”. This complex program, known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), was to be centered around Teller’s X-ray laser system. As he had done in the past when it came to big-ticket research items, Teller and his team had deliberately falsified and exaggerated their technological prowess: after 12 years of effort, the proposed laser system proved unfeasible.

In the meanwhile, the Army had continued work on hit-to-kill (HTK) vehicles-kinetic energy weapons that would knock a missile out of the sky. After several unsuccessful tests of the system, built primarily by Lockheed, the developers, desperate for a show of success and for continued funding, resorted to rigging the test procedure to ensure the desired results. “The test achievements vividly demonstrate the undergirding technical genius resident in our society”, opined SDI Organization director James Abrahamson. He was right, in a sense: as long as the money keeps flowing, you’re in business.

In 1988, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory shifted focus to the development of what was called “Brilliant Pebbles” – a network of orbiting HTK interceptors. “Lasers may be useful someday, but meanwhile we must destroy missiles as David slew Goliath”, quipped Teller. This program picked up on an earlier project from the 60’s known as BAMBI (Ballistic Missile Boost Intercept), and was finally terminated in 1996 after failing every test.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the urgency and rationale for SDI was substantially weakened, and with the temporarily reduced US defense budget, the scope of the project was pared down. The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization was downgraded to Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, and the emphasis of its work shifted to theater missile defense (TMD).

A boon for TMD came in Operation Desert Storm-the US-led attack against Iraq during which modified Patriot surface-to-air missiles were publicized as knocking down Iraqi Scuds missiles. The military establishment proudly issued claims of 100% effectiveness. An analysis by some MIT academicians of several celebratory videos showing the victorious feats of US military technology revealed that the footage which television viewers were led to believe showed successful intercepts was deceptive, since the Patriot missiles were designed to explode in mid-air, whether or not they hit or were near the intended interception target. In a subsequent report by the General Accounting Office, the effectiveness was downgraded to “unknown”. Subsequently, the development of missile defense-related programs continued quietly, receiving some $4 billion in annual funding.

The missile defense lobby continued its efforts, centered around the Center for Security Policy, a “non-partisan educational corporation” funded by weapons contractors and headed by former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney, which succeeded in getting missile defense inserted as a plank in Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract With America platform. A report issued in 1998 by the Rumsfeld Commission, which was tasked with identifying ballistic missile threats to the US, found such a danger emanating from “rogue states”. The following year, Clinton signed the National Missile Defense Act, mandating the deployment of a missile defense system.

Work contin
ues on an NMD system based on Raytheon’s EKV (exoatmospheric kill vehicle), a variant of the HTK technology. Controversy has again surfaced regarding the veracity of the testing. “It’s not a defense of the United States. It’s a conspiracy to allow them to milk the government. They are creating jobs for themselves for life”, said former TRW engineer Nira Schwartz, who was promptly fired for her opinion. (TRW, along with Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon, are the primary contractors for the current NMD system).

Critiquing NMD

Over 100 billion dollars has been spent so far on missile defense programs-with nothing to show for it, some would say. Now, G. W. Bush is pushing for a 240 billion dollar NMD program. This effort, just as those which preceded it, has not been without its critics and detractors.

One popular form of critique of this conservative program heard within the liberal establishment is the “briefcase critique” (a.k.a. poor man’s nuke). The briefcase theory, while taking any missile defense system to be unworkable, holds that, even if by some miracle it did work, it still wouldn’t do any good, since supporters of rogue states or terrorist organizations would bring their nuclear bomb into the US inside a briefcase anyhow. This theory and its analogues and variants stand in the long line of the “boondoggle” critique tradition, which holds that, whether it be well-meaning or sinister, the military is above all hopelessly bumbling and incompetent.

This line of criticism is often combined with concerned calls to the effect that an NMD program would spark a new arms race, as other nations would feel the need to counter the advantages which an NMD shield would provide to the United States. It is not generally made clear by the advocates of these critiques why other nations would feel this need, when NMD itself is claimed to be unworkable and ineffective.

A third point of criticism deals with the corporate welfare angle. Given that an NMD project would channel large sums of money to weapons contractors, it is suggested that perhaps this is the main, if not only, motivation behind the project. This is often combined with concerns regarding the honesty of the contractors and strategists behind the project: since what they are after is personal gain (financial and/or psychological), they would naturally have a propensity to falsify the supposed threat and/or the capacity of their systems to deal with it.

These critiques all have some truth behind them, yet they seem more to circle around, rather than penetrate, the questions at hand.

The question of the feasibility or workability of an NMD program is a technically complex one, and more to the point is a question which cannot be answered without first delineating what the program is supposed to achieve. To cite a banal truth, what may not have been possible ten or twenty years ago may indeed be possible with today’s technology or become possible with future development. It is likewise obvious that what has and continues to fuel such development is the channeling of enormous funds and other resources for the purpose. In attempting to implement something organizationally and technologically complex and new, even with the most sincere intentions, one cannot know with certainty that any given line of effort will produce a specific result, or what the whole significance of that line of effort will be. Thus, to carry on such efforts, the ability to “bilk the taxpayers” becomes more of a necessity than a luxury. Being able to maintain momentum and dignity-which under capitalism above all means profit-in the organizations pursuing such efforts is likewise essential.

However, these facts of military-industrial necessities cannot be presented to the public directly, as doing so could lead to a disclosure of the full range of purposes behind the efforts. To put it another way, if the potential (and inevitable) critics knew exactly what they were criticizing, their criticism could become penetrating and effective, thereby seriously undermining the efforts in question. But, lacking an effective critique capable of changing the object of its criticism, people collectively adapt to the situation by channeling their criticism and dissipating their forebodings to a straw bogeyman. The image of the terrifying ugliness of a society that even partially finds the development and deployment of systems of world-wide annihilation necessary and essential to its continued existence and the promotion of its moral values is subsumed in the comic-book pastel colors of a fumbling and bumbling, ever so slightly risqué, king-with-no-clothes type figure.

Though it may occasionally appear to protest in proud and righteous indignation against this infringement on its dignity, this figure of the military-industrial complex of technofascist domination is in truth quite happy with having been cast in this clownish role-a role which it carefully helped to craft through its subordinates in the mind-control industry. For this typecasting effectively relegates any fundamental criticism of its activities that may be presented in the public sphere to the realm of fringe paranoiacs, thereby neutralizing it.

In the end, the difference between a solid technical system that protects “the lives of Americans” and an ill-conceived boondoggle, between hard-earned profits for the valiant defenders of freedom and corporate welfare, is a semantic subtlety. Thus, for instance, some liberal critics of NMD have sought to bolster their position by announcing how NMD does not live up to free-market discipline (“If this program were in the corporate world, everyone associated with it would be fired”, states political columnist Molly Ivins). Yet the dynamic of the “corporate world”-in today’s New Economy more than ever-reveals precisely the opposite of what such statements as the above seem to imply: so long as you manage, by hook or by crook, to keep the cash flowing in and the stock value (actual or anticipated) up, you are golden. And if you keep it up long enough, eventually you will have something real, whether as a fruit of your own work or through absorption of others’ work on the capital markets. The market value of your stock is, however, a nominal value, defined solely in terms of market relations: thus, some ultimately disastrous consequence in the future, even if it is already more or less known, need not nullify your current stock value, any more than, say, the cataclysmic consequences of pollution nullify the market value of polluting enterprises. In this context, what protects the lives of Americans is whatever the relevant Americans believe protects the lives of Americans. The relevant Americans in this case are the institutionalized military – industrial – corporate – governmental – technocratic complex-what some call the ruling class.

Seen in this light, the situation may indeed appear somewhat surreal. It is telling in this regard to note that the cited facts and statements presented here have hardly been kept secret-many have appeared in prominent establishment organs such as the New York Times. Also published in said organ was a 1987 Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum stating “The Pentagon should improve and update deception plans covering the missile defense program’s costs and abilities”. The intended overt effect of such publications is to verify people’s suspicions by substantiating the limited liberal critiques-the “yes, there was indeed some wrongdoing, but shucks…” type of thing. However, corroborating and thus rationalizing such suspicions in such a context produces the covert effect of de-rationalizing any substantive criticism which may go beyond the narrow confines of the corroborated suspicions and which could challenge the existing institutions and hierarchies of power.

The publication of such critiques thus serves the purpose of facilitating a psychological catharsis, releasing and thus effectively draining people’s pent-up negative (critical) energy, which becomes subsumed in a dialogue that, in the e
nd, can do no more than reaffirm the rightness and inevitability of the target of its critique. To put it another way: feeling so much better now from the catharsis process, the reader can more or less go back to normal-“normal” being in this case an ultimate acceptance of the existing reality of capitalist power relations of hierarchical domination and exploitation, both in the general sense and in the specific context in question (in this case, NMD).

It should be emphasized here that the problem with such critiques as the above is not so much their intellectual or analytical (in)adequacy per se, nor their truth value, but rather their susceptibility or conduciveness to psychological warfare. This entails, among other things, an inability to consistently maintain the insights gained and apply them in one’s life activity. The thinking becomes compartmentalized into atomistic micrologies, and as such can be easily channeled into a controlled release. Having been shat out (cathartically discharged), the critical energy and insight is dissipated and turns to shit. Politically, for many people, this fecal character takes the form of the operational belief that there is no problem caused by Republicans that cannot be remedied by Democrats. This can be observed in the case of NMD, which has been portrayed and understood by many people as yet another crazed right-wing Republican militarism. Now, simply exposing such people to the fact that, e.g., NMD was signed into law by a popular beloved Democrat, would not generally shake them of their conviction. They likely have already been apprised of such facts, but are operationally unable to remember or process them. The image of the stupid American, insofar as there is some relative truth in it, is not due to a genetic defect, but is rather the result of exposure to high concentrations of these psychological warfare operations, the global end point of which is the eradication of objectivity.

The line of argument that presents the military as bumbling idiots and revels in pronouncements of Bush’s stupidity in the end constitutes no more than a defeatist psychology, an expression of an ill-conceived vain wish to resist on one hand what one knows on the other hand to be all too inevitable. In a way, the advocates of this critique of NMD seek to broach the positivistic divide, to go beyond assertions that NMD is a bad move to a critical understanding that it is part of a bad game. However, under the immense pressure of existing reality, they fail to do so, thereby reverting ultimately to a celebration of the very world system which continues to bring forth the objects of their critique.

Rogue states

The debate over NMD as a whole shows little coherence, with various parties claiming whatever suits their particular political angle and interests. But one point which nearly all arguments seem to accept is the concept of the rogue state. The rogue state (now renamed “state of concern”) is the entity which poses the threat which NMD is to defend against. The questions of when, how and why it will pose a threat and what is the best way to deal with it are widely disputed.

The primary stated task of the currently proposed NMD system is to defend against a small number of ballistic missiles launched by a rogue state. It has been noted in this connection that a rogue who has gone to the trouble of developing a ballistic missile would certainly develop countermeasures against NMD (such as having the missile release multiple decoy balloons, one of which would contain the warhead). One of the elements of the Pentagon deception strategy referred to above is downplaying the potential significance of such countermeasures, such as by eliminating or minimizing the number and effectiveness of countermeasures used during testing. This has the overt effect of making the NMD system look better and thus easing the obtaining of further funding, etc. At the same time, it covertly suggests that, since we went to all this trouble to misrepresent how well our NMD system can deal with a rogue state’s missile and all, that must indeed be the whole purpose of the system-thereby obscuring and shifting attention away from what that purpose may really be, while simultaneously providing a locus for people’s critical apprehensions and concerns to be dissipated through the external confirmation of their validity. The concerned liberal can find release for his concerns that there is something bad about NMD in the confirmation that there is indeed something bad about it-it can’t deal with countermeasures, or barring that, that the warhead is really in a briefcase-thus freeing himself from the need to delve deeper into the matter. For what is deeper is darker.

While an NMD system is a theoretically possible way to counter a rogue missile, given the diplomatic, political, financial and technical difficulties involved in its implementation, as well as the uncertainty of its performance, it would hardly be the most effective or plausible way to achieve such a task. Traditional methods such as diplomatically cajoling or economically incentivizing the rogue, or else delivering a preemptive strike against his facility, would be more likely employed for such a purpose. Thus, in this respect as well, the rogue state theory appears implausible as a substantive explanation for NMD.

The rogue state is more sensibly interpreted as functioning primarily as a conceptual device to provide some ground for rationalizing NMD, just as it has been used for rationalizing and justifying other unsavory aspects of US policy. Thus, arguments for and against NMD dealing with the extent of such states’ roguishness are essentially no different than the boondoggle theory analyzed above: they ultimately can only justify and rationalize the object of their critique.

Along the lines of the briefcase critique, it has furthermore been suggested that rogue states, if they wanted to deliver a weapon of mass destruction, would not use a missile even if they had one, since that would reveal where it came from and thus subject the rogue state to annihilation by the US. This line of reasoning assumes that rogue states or the despots who rule them are essentially rational in their behavior. While such an assumption is indeed borne out by the facts, it does not seem to jibe well with the concept of a rogue state, which is often understood as being run by a crazed evil tyrant gripped by an implacable hatred of the United States.

The crazed, tyrannical, implacable, irrational character of the rogue state on one hand and a pattern of rational behavior on the other suggests that the concept may have a double meaning. It has been noted that a person’s self-identity-what somebody means by “I”-is not necessarily coterminous with the entire psychical entity making up the person. Certain aspects of one’s personality, thoughts and behaviors, in particular those aspects deemed bad, may be externalized and effectively understood as being the property of something or someone else, of another entity distinct from “me” (extreme cases of this are observed in schizophrenia). In this way, it is possible that the concept of the rogue state, while being a designation for certain insubordinate third-world countries such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, at the same time functions as a sort of geopolitical alter-ego of the United States, allowing the United States to externalize certain aspects of its activity and reinterpret them as being done (caused) by somebody else. This analysis would seem to agree with the widely observed situation whereby the United States unreservedly continues to view itself as good and righteous, despite the fact that it has and continues to unreservedly commit acts which in themselves it proclaims to be evil.

The rogue state, or some such other rogue entity, emerges as a shadow to the glory of the democratic capitalist order, revealing the dark chaos within that order. The holders of power seek to silence the rogue, to deny any validity or objectivity to his viewpoint. Only the technological s
ystems of surveillance deployed by the global rulers of capitalism must be allowed to speak. And if they say ballistic missile attack, then democracy itself has spoken: let the annihilation begin.

Military-industrial globalization

NMD is a technologically complex weapons system consisting of many subcomponents deployed around the world as well as in space. As such, it is by nature a global system. Prior to giving his May 1st missile defense speech (which never mentioned the word national), the Bush administration sent out teams around the world in a major marketing effort to sell the US NMD to other world leaders. Despite accusations of US unilateralism and reports of steadfast opposition from around the world, there is little ground to conclude that other national ruling classes are fundamentally opposed to the NMD concept. A better interpretation would be to say they are playing hard-to-get in hopes of getting a better deal.

There is little question that NMD is going to be expensive, no doubt eventually exceeding the already high cost estimates. To spread out these costs, the US ruling class wishes to get support from other national ruling classes. In conjunction with this, there have already been proposals to rename the system Allied Missile Defense (AMD), which right-wing columnist William Safire has argued would be a preferable alternative to the European Rapid Reaction Force (a new Western European transnational military force, the formation of which was spurred by European concerns over US domination as experienced in the attack on Yugoslavia, during which the US used its satellite reconnaissance superiority to call all the shots while keeping its European “junior partners” in the dark).

The calls to withdraw from or amend the 1972 ABM treaty that stands in the way of the proposed NMD system, which has evoked concern in some circles (“it will ignite a new arms race”), are not an isolated effort intended solely to promote NMD, but rather form part of a greater shift toward military globalization. Thus, for instance, the Defense Science Board Task Force on Globalization and Security, a division of the Department of Defense, asserting that “globalization is largely irresistible”, has found traditional arms control regimes to be no longer effective, and instead has advocated the need for “a new approach to maintaining military dominance” based on “transnational defense industrial collaboration and integration” through a “fully globalized commercial sector”. Such “deregulation” of the arms industry would allow US weapons manufacturers to merge with and absorb their national rivals and freely deliver armaments around the globe in a manner consistent with free-market profit maximization. In this context, accusations of profit-seeking vs. concern for US national security interests become largely moot: US national security interests become institutionally intertwined with continued profits and expanding markets for US military-industry corporations. Consequently, such accusations can be freely published in the New York Times, as they no longer serve as anything more than harmless diversions.

Warnings of a new arms race are likewise deceiving, in that they shift critical attention away from-and thus affirm-the reality of the existing arms race. Across the world, in this “age of peace and prosperity”, there are calls being issued and efforts made towards increased militarization, while wars continue to rage on an unprecedented scale. Thus, more so than sparking a new arms race, development of the NMD system will serve as a justification for continuing the existing and already increasing trend of militarization. This is of course a desirable outcome for the system’s proponents in the ruling class, one which would support their quest for globalized systems of power relations that favor their continued domination. In the meanwhile, to diffuse apprehensions of a new arms race, Bush has announced unilateral arms reductions to be linked with NMD, following a strategy outlined by the Heritage Foundation, which suggests that “BMD proponents should begin to stress nuclear disarmament as a new end point” and thereby “disarm BMD opponents by stealing their language and cause”.

Already, would-be competitors to the US project have emerged, with Russian President V. Putin making an offer last year of a joint Russian-European missile defense system in an effort to preempt and derail any future US proposals. Russia possesses a limited operational missile defense system as provided under the ABM Treaty. The response by the Bush administration has been to propose a US-Russian collaboration in the sphere of missile defense, a theme which was a central topic of Bush’s meeting with Putin this June. The initial proposal, echoing a similar offer made 15 years ago by Reagan during the early stages of SDI, has been received rather unenthusiastically. Historically, Russia has been loath to rely on foreign technology for its defense-related needs, and will no doubt demand substantial concessions if it is to go along with this proposal. The proposal also included a US offer to purchase relatively obsolete Russian S-300 missiles.

Continued in Part II

This move comprises several aims. First, by collaborating with Russia, the US military-industrial complex stands to benefit from possible advances in Russian technology. Russia has a been making a fairly strong, if underfunded, research effort in NMD-related fields, and has already transferred some directed energy weapon technology to the US. However, regardless of what specific technological advantages are gained from such a partnership, the very fact and precedent of having such a partnership is significant. Geopolitically, military-industrial collaboration with Russia would have the effect of preventing a potential anti-US alliance between Russia and China, both of which have an interest in countering US domination. After a series of talks, the formation of such an alliance has not made substantial progress, but the potential for it is there. Moreover, such collaboration would open up the Russian military industry for absorption into the better-funded US transnational arms corporations, thereby extending their market penetration and eliminating potentially troublesome competitors.

Seen in this light, the NMD program signifies the end of the Cold War era and the emergence of a new world order. The Cold War order was based on bipolar opposition of two competing systems of holding power, and militarily was characterized by a thermonuclear standoff stabilized under the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The new world order, on the other hand, is characterized by the global penetration of a single system of domination and the drive towards totalization of that system, and in the military sphere is driven by the need to enforce and protect that system through the institutions and technologies of a global police state. The NMD program represents an effort towards the development and deployment of the technological and organizational arrangements necessary for implementing such a global policing regime.

Elements of a global police state

G. H. W. Bush’s declaration of a new world order at the time of Operation Desert Storm was well timed, as that operation in a way showcased the features of the emerging world system, particularly its military aspects: a multinational coalition totally dominated by the United States intervening to restore order (i.e. secure the interests of the transnational corporate ruling class and shift the regional balance of power in a direction favorable to continued US domination), completely unopposed and facing no ramifications, with its chosen viewpoint being delivered unquestioned and in real time through the corporate media into the brains of a spellbound home audience cheering in awe at the images of violent destruction. A key factor enabling the United States to dominate the situation was its control of information, including reconnaissance satellite data, media channels, monitoring and disruption of communication systems, etc.

However, this operation also revealed some inadequacies of the existing enforcement system. Thus, for instance, while the US was able to secure international funding for this intervention and assemble a broad multinational coalition, the process created substantial tension with various “junior partners”, such as France, who didn’t like being junior partners and being forced to do things they did not necessarily find in their best interest, and who would think twice before doing this sort of thing again-especially after Kosovo. The operation likewise strained relations with more distant partners such as Russia and China, who stood aside this time, but in the end were rather troubled by the affair (and all the more so after Kosovo). Furthermore, assembling the military forces in theater was both logistically and politically complicated and time-consuming, increasing the chances for domestic opposition, especially if there should be casualties or a protracted conflict.

The first set of difficulties can be seen as stemming from the ad hoc nature of the operation, the parameters of which had not been adequately institutionalized-who is to say what the proper way to intervene against a rogue state is-and thus inevitably prone to be a source of contention. The implementation of an NMD system would remedy such problems by providing an established technological and organizational framework within which an intervention is to be carried out, thereby codifying the intervention process and eliminating the need to deal with the same problems each time an intervention is made.

The second set of problems of crossing national boundaries and airspaces and of complex troop deployment can be substantially alleviated under an NMD program by moving the weapons platform into outer space. The militarization of space is a direct and primary goal of the NMD program. “…the means by which the placement of space-based weapons will likely occur is under a second US space policy directive-that of ballistic missile defense”, writes J. Oberg in Space Power Theory, a manual published by the US Space Command, the agency in charge of NMD operations (the first directive being to “ensure freedom of action in space and, if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries”). “DOD [Department of Defense] must have the appropriate capabilities to deny when necessary an adversary’s use of space systems”, noted Defense Secretary William Cohen in a 2000 posture statement. According to a study commissioned by the Pentagon, to gain such capability, “DOD must develop the means to control and destroy space assets (both in space and at ground level)”.

Much of the confusion and incoherent argumentation regarding NMD as a program for defending against missiles stems from the fact that NMD is not essentially a means of missile defense. NMD is a program for the development and deployment of space weaponry, which may or may not be useful for countering certain ballistic missile attacks. Given the controversial, classified, and often uncertain nature of space weapon technologies, many of which may not yet be fully developed, missile defense provides a convenient political, fiscal and ideological cover for promoting and conducting the program. Thus, for example, in 1998 Clinton cut all funding for the KEAsat kinetic energy antisatellite weapon being developed by Boeing, while pouring billions into the NMD program, for which Boeing is the primary contractor and which includes development of the essentially the same weapon technology.

With current military operations already heavily dependent on satellite-based services, the development and deployment of antisatellite capabilities constitutes an immediate objective of NMD. Antisatellite weapon systems would furthermore enable a credible first-strike capability by allowing the operator to disable or delay an adversary’s response, thereby giving greater leverage to the US’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and freeing it up from the Cold-War era constraints of mutually assured destruction.

NMD furthermore envisions the development of space-based unmanned bombers, airborne and space-based laser platforms, and various other directed energy weapons, which, in addition to possible uses against satellites and ballistic missiles, can be deployed against ground targets, allowing the more rapid and fine grained sort of response required for a global policing regime. “…space offers us the prospects…of inflicting violence-all with great precision and nearly instantaneously, and often more cheaply”, expounded NMD advocate Sen. Bob Smith.

In addition to the annihilation of targets, directed energy weapons also hold the promise of more sophisticated aggression, including weather modification and manipulation of living organisms. Such technologies could be deployed covertly, reducing the risk of public scrutiny. Furthermore, they would provide the ability to dissuade, degrade, torture or otherwise neutralize opponents without raising the moral and political controversy attendant to directly killing or maiming them.

The recently unveiled Vehicle Mounted Acti
ve Denial System (VMADS)-which the Air Force Times heralded as “the biggest breakthrough in weapons technology since the atomic bomb”-is an example of the fruits of NMD research. Marketed as a non-lethal crowd dispersal weapon, VMADS, which emits a wide electromagnetic beam, is intended to disperse and neutralize through inflicting burn-like pain, allowing torture without a trace, as well as degrading human targets through long-term side effects, and dissuading through the fear of the already widely published concerns about such side effects or of “the amount of time the weapon must be trained on an individual to cause permanent damage or death”, which is “classified”.

Full Spectrum Dominance

NMD is the primary program for attaining capabilities of “Global Engagement”, which the US Space Command defines as “the application of precision force from, to, and through space”. This is an essential component for achieving the overall US military vision of “Full Spectrum Dominance”, which together with other technologies and institutions of control, such as biotechnology and free-market democracy, is to secure the global dominion of a corporate master race. The logic of this machine of domination is insatiable: it can never have enough, and must continue to expand its systems of control into all spheres where power can be exercised. And therein lies its terminal weakness: beyond total dominion, there is only oblivion.

NMD beguiles with the promise of a capability to strike instantly against any rogue element that dares to oppose the institutions of global capitalism. Yet the binary image of the rogue as a mad, evil tyrant to be neutralized and destroyed or an unfortunate victim of circumstance to be incentivized and reformed-mirroring the nature vs. nurture, educate vs. incarcerate, liberal vs. conservative pseudo-debate of bourgeois society-fails to disclose the significance of the rogue state in relation to NMD and the world system which it is to secure.

Collectively and individually, we externalize our violence, our evil-the ugliness inherent in our way of life, in the structure of our society and world. How else could we go on living, taking ourselves to be good, upright people, feeling good about ourselves, when the world is the way it is? That ugly spirit falls upon those most susceptible, and they give vent to it through what we call an evil act. We say it is their fault, prosecute and punish them with a righteous zeal of denial, that we may go on feeling good about ourselves.

The image of the rogue state, above all, starkly discloses the failures of the world system, tearing open the façade of its advanced godly civility to reveal the hollowness of its claimed superiority and the barbaric chaos that permeates its order. In view of this, the theatrical struggle against the rogue becomes above all a struggle to protect the relevance of the systems of power which in their totalizing quests of delusional godliness can achieve no more than a lowly absurdity of contradictions. The rogue or criminal as such neither threatens nor resists the superstructures of the police regime-he exists orthogonally to them, mirroring the very power relations of the systems which he is accused of violating.

Once we see the real character and content of an NMD program, it becomes clear that the race to establish an NMD regime of global surveillance and punishment is fundamentally not an effort to fend off rogue states or achieve any other specific practical purpose: the purpose of NMD is NMD. Thus, rational arguments and critiques about why NMD would not work or how it is not the best way to achieve a given purpose necessarily fail to get to the heart of the matter. NMD is not rational, or rather, it is rational or makes sense only in the context of the historical unfolding of global capitalism, which itself is not rational insofar as it is driven by the systemic inevitability of institutions rather than by the ideation or work of rational actors. And the nature of the institutions of global capitalism-of the free market-is such that whenever an opportunity presents itself, you have to take it, regardless of how idiotic, destructive or substantively useless it may be. It is the logic of inexorable, cancerous growth.

Thus, when the course of technological and organizational development becomes such as to enable the implementation of a global policing regime, it is institutionally inevitable that “players” will step forward to fulfill that role, to occupy that market segment-the only question is, who will get there first. In this case, the US ruling class has stepped forward, leveraging its lead in the fields of surveillance, punishment and incarceration and in the technologies of destruction and violent domination-even as its would-be competitors chomp at its heels, plying their own analogous wares. Given the global scope of the product, whoever is able to bring an NMD product to market first stands to capture overwhelming if not total market share, thereby squeezing out the competition and establishing monopoly control. In this context, any party that for whatever reason is willing and able to develop and deploy competing products threatens the monopoly. In this respect, the distinction between rogue and non-rogue states is spurious.

One such category of products is of course ballistic missiles. While NMD is promoted as a defense against ballistic missile threats to you, what ballistic missiles threaten most of all is NMD itself, both in the sense that they represent a competing technology, a competing paradigm of domination, and even more so in the sense that the successful use or threat of use of a ballistic missile would greatly undermine the credibility of an NMD program, which has been marketed as a ballistic missile stopper, and possibly generate demand for a different approach, such as diplomacy. But given the present lack of a substantial ballistic missile threat from those states most likely to come under US aggression, an NMD program becomes plausibly marketable. The marketing of NMD, like that of other capitalist products, instantiates the psychology of commodity fetishism-creating a perceived need and offering a product perceived to meet that need.

Which brings us back to the briefcase critique. Although technically, using a briefcase could be a means for the terrorist delivery of a weapon of mass destruction surreptitiously and in circumvention of any missile defense system, such a delivery would not generally be effective as a counteraction or direct challenge to the system of global enforcement provided under the NMD program, unless it specifically targeted and destroyed components of the NMD system. This, however, would for the most part be rather difficult to do with a briefcase, since those components are in outer space-which is indeed a major reason why they need to be in outer space: to protect them from briefcases. To put this in more general terms, a critical requirement for systems of enforcement or domination is that they be designed such that persons subjected to the system will, for technological, financial, organizational, intellectual or other reasons, be unable to disrupt or subvert the operation of the system. Such denial of subversion capabilities is to a large extent effected by creating a situation whereby persons wishing to go against the system, will act in such as way as to reproduce the power relations inherent in the system being resisted.

The enforcement of a global police regime may thus mean that such surreptitious deployments of weapons of mass destruction may come to make sense to some people as a viable thing to do, thereby reinforcing the global order of domination. In this respect the briefcase critique is valuable: it reveals that a regime based on the rule of violence cannot provide security from violence. Yet in its appeals to the regime, this critique belies a dangerous assumption: that the capitalist ruling class fundamentally does not attend mass destruction. This assumption, which buys into the hypocrisy of democratically
elected leaders, is baseless. The market does not fundamentally value life, unless sold under patent as a market product.

The failing of the briefcase critique and other micrological arguments about the relative merits of systems of domination is that they reinforce the sense of inevitability of some such system. And while the fascist police program of NMD is correctly viewed as an inevitable extension of the institutions that blindly drive the machine of global capitalism, those institutions themselves are not inevitable.

Resistance, when misdirected in accordance with the requirements of existing power hierarchies, is futile. Such resistance is allowed and even encouraged under capitalist democracy. Yet resistance guided by radical insight is effective: such resistance is outlawed and brutally persecuted through technocratic enforcement systems. We must understand the nature of our freedom, that we may become free. Our freedom is a system, floating in space…

The paradigm of policing necessarily entails a counter-element which is to be policed, prosecuted and punished: an offender, a criminal, a rogue state. The contradictions of such a paradigm reveal that crime cannot be prevented by policing, educating, or through any other special measure, but only by creating the conditions under which it need not occur: a healthy, cohesive community living in harmony with its environment and thus with itself. Many such diverse communities can collectively form a healthy, cohesive, peaceful global community of people. At all cost, we must not lose sight that such a community is possible.

Yet such a vision can be valid only insofar as it reveals and implements the historical process of its attainment-otherwise, it devolves into an illusion. The epitome of capitalism is the eradication of objectivity-of people’s objective history-making capabilities. It has no vision of a community of people and offers as its end point only the subordination of all human activity to a violent institutionalized hierarchy of market relations enforced by a global police state apparatus.

So do we need NMD? In our public dialogue, the question seems to be answered by focusing on some aspect of what NMD is, what it can or cannot do, what its ramification will be. Yet in some ways, the answer depends more on who “we” are. If we are the US capitalist ruling class, which seeks above all to propagate and perpetuate its dominion, we need it badly. To say no to NMD, we must say no to capitalism. Otherwise, our voice has no meaning.