http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/41229

Stop NATO - August 14, 2009

Politicizing Ethnicity: US Plan To Repeat Yugoslav Scenario In Caucasus Could Cause World War

By Rick Rozoff


Matthew Bryza has been one of the U.S.'s main point men in the South Caucasus, the Caspian Sea Basin and Central Asia for the past twelve years.

From 1997-1998 he was an advisor to Ambassador Richard Morningstar, coordinating U.S. efforts in the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as in Southeastern Europe, particularly Greece and Turkey. Morningstar was appointed by the Clinton administration as the first Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Assistance to the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union in 1995, then Special Advisor to the President and the Secretary of State for Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy in 1998 and was one of the chief architects of U.S. trans-Caspian strategic energy plans running from the Caspian Sea through the South Caucasus to Europe. Among the projects he helped engineer in that capacity was the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan [BTC] oil pipeline - "the world's most political pipeline" - running from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey and the Mediterranean Sea.


Trans-Caspian, Trans-Eurasian Energy Strategy Crafted In The 1990s


In 1998 Bryza was Morningstar's chief lieutenant in managing U.S. Caspian Sea energy interests as Deputy to the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy, where he remained until March of 2001, and he worked on developing what are now U.S. and Western plans to circumvent Russia and Iran and achieve dominance over the delivery of energy supplies to Europe. 

Morningstar later became United States Ambassador to the European Union from 1999-2001 and this April was appointed the Special Envoy of the United States Secretary of State for Eurasian Energy, a position comparable to that he had occupied eleven years earlier.

In 2005 the George W. Bush administration appointed Bryza Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Condoleezza Rice, a post he holds to this day although he will soon be stepping down, presumably to become the U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, the nation that most vitally connects American geostrategic interests in an arc that begins in the Balkans, runs through the Caucasus to the Caspian Sea and then to Central and South Asia.

Last June Bryza delivered a speech called Invigorating the U.S.-Turkey Strategic Partnership in Washington, DC and reflected on his then more than a  decade of work in advancing American energy, political and military objectives along the southern flank of the former Soviet Union. His address included the following revelations, the first in reference to events in the 1990s:

"Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev welcomed international investors to help develop the Caspian Basin’s mammoth oil and gas reserves. Then-Turkish President Suleyman Demirel worked with these leaders, and with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, to develop a revitalized concept of the Great Silk Road in the version of an East-West Corridor of oil and natural gas pipelines.

"Our goal was to help the young independent states of these regions [the Caucasus and Central Asia] secure their sovereignty and liberty by linking them to Europe, world markets, and Euro-Atlantic institutions via the corridor being established by the BTC and SCP [South Caucasus Pipeline natural gas]pipelines....The Caucasus and Central Asia were grouped with Turkey, which the Administration viewed as these countries’ crucial partner in connecting with European and global markets, and with Euro-Atlantic security institutions.

"[C]ooperation on energy in the late 1990’s formed a cornerstone of the U.S.-Turkey strategic partnership, resulting in a successful 'first phase' of Caspian development anchored by BTC for oil and SCP for gas.


Iraq War Part Of Previous Geopolitical Plans


"Today, we are focusing on the next phase of Caspian development, looking to the Caspian Basin and Iraq to help reduce Europe’s dependence on a single Russian company, Gazprom, which provides 25 percent of all gas consumed in Europe.

"Our goal is to develop a 'Southern Corridor' of energy infrastructure to transport Caspian and Iraqi oil and gas to Turkey and Europe. The
Turkey-Greece-Italy (TGI) and Nabucco natural gas pipelines are key elements of the Southern Corridor.

"Potential gas supplies in Turkmenistan and Iraq can provide the crucial additional volumes beyond those in Azerbaijan to realize the Southern Corridor. Washington and Ankara are working together with Baghdad to help Iraq develop its own large natural gas reserves for both domestic consumption and for export to Turkey and the EU." [1]

Bryza took no little personal credit for accomplishing the above objectives, which as he indicated weren't limited to a comprehensive project of controlling if not monopolizing oil and natural gas flows to Europe but also in the opposite direction to three of the world's four major energy consumers: China, India and Japan. Since the delivery of the presentation from which the above is quoted the U.S. and its Western European NATO allies have also launched the Nabucco natural gas pipeline which intends to bring gas from, as Bryza mentioned, Iraq and also eventually Egypt and possibly Algeria to Turkey where Caspian oil and gas will arrive via Azerbaijan and Georgia.


Energy Transit Routes Used For Military Penetration Of Caucasus, Central And South Asia


Previous articles in this series [2] have examined the joint energy-geopolitical-military strategies the West is pursuing from and through the sites of its three major wars over the past decade: The Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bryza himself made the connection in the above-cited speech of last year:

"The East-West Corridor we had been building from Turkey and the Black Sea through Georgia and Azerbaijan and across the Caspian became the strategic air corridor, and the lifeline, into Afghanistan allowing the United States and our coalition partners to conduct Operation Enduring Freedom." [3]   

His work and his political trajectory - paralleling closely that of his fellow American Robert Simmons [4], former Senior Advisor to the United States Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs on NATO and current NATO Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia and Deputy Assistant Secretary General of NATO for Security Cooperation and Partnership - has continued through four successive U.S. administrations, those of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Barack Obama, and has taken him from the American embassy in Poland in 1989-1991 to that in Moscow in 1995-1997 to positions in the National Security Council, the White House and the State Department.

While in his current State Department role Bryza has not only overseen trans-Eurasian, tri-continental energy projects but has also been the main liaison for building political and military ties with the South Caucasus nations of Georgia and Azerbaijan and he remains the U.S. co-chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group monitoring the uneasy peace around Nagorno Karabakh, one of four so-called frozen conflicts in the former Soviet Union.

Although Azerbaijan is one of the interested parties in the conflict and the nation's president, Ilham Aliyev, routinely threatens war to conquer Karabakh, often in the presence of top American military commanders, aside from being a supposed impartial mediator with the Minsk Group Bryza in his State Department role secured the use of an Azerbaijani air base for the war in Afghanistan. In 2007 he stated, “There are plenty of planes flying above Georgia and Azerbaijan towards Afghanistan. Under such circumstances we want to have the possibility of using the Azeri airfield.” [5]

Bryza also recently announced that U.S. Marines were heading to Georgia to train its troops for deployment to Afghanistan where in the words of a Georgian official "First of all, our servicemen will gain combat experience because they will be in the middle of combat action, and that is a really invaluable experience. 

“Secondly, it will be a heavy argument to support Georgia’s NATO aspirations.” [6]


Oil For War: US, NATO Caucasus Clients Register World's Largest Arms Build-Ups


During his four-year stint as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs he has focused on the South Caucasus, and during that period Georgia's war budget has ballooned from $30 million a year when U.S.-educated Mikheil Saakashvili took power after the nation's "Rose Revolution" in 2004 to $1 billion last year, a more than thirty fold increase.

In the same year, 2008, Azerbaijan's military spending had grown from $163 million the preceding year to $1,850,000,000, more than a 1000% increase. In the words of the nation's president last year, "And it will increase in the years to come. The amount envisaged in the 2009 state budget will be even greater.” [7] 

Much of the money expended for both unprecedented build-ups came from revenues derived from oil sales and transit fees connected with the BTC pipeline Bryza was instrumental in setting up.


Pentagon's Role In Last August's Caucasus War


Regarding neighboring Georgia, a German press report on the second day of last August's war between that nation and Russia stated that "US Special Forces troops, and later US Marines replacing them, have for the last half decade been systematically training selected Georgian units to NATO standards" and "First-line Georgian soldiers wear NATO uniforms, kevlar helmets and body armour matching US issue, and carry the US-manufactured M-16 automatic rifle...." [8]

On the first day of the war the Chairman of the Russia's State Duma Security Committee, Vladimir Vasilyev, denounced the fact that the Georgian President Saakashvili "undertook consistent steps to increase [Georgia's] military budget from $US 30 million to $US 1 billion -  Georgia was preparing for a military action.” [9]

An Armenian news source the same day detailed that "Most of Georgia's officers were trained in the U.S. or Turkey. The country's military expenses increased by 30 times during past four years, making up 9-10 per cent of the GDP. The defense budget has reached $1 billion.

"U.S. military grants to Georgia total $40.6 million. NATO member states, including Turkey and Bulgaria, supplied Georgia with 175 tanks, 126 armored carriers, 67 artillery pieces, 4 warplanes, 12 helicopters, 8 ships and boats. 100 armored carriers, 14 jets (including 4 Mirazh-2000) fighters, 15 Black Hawk helicopters and 10 various ships are expected to be conveyed soon." [10]

"The procurement in recent years of new military hardware and modern weapons systems was indeed in line with Georgia's single-minded commitment to joining NATO." [11]

In addition to the country's standing army the Saakashvili regime has introduced a 100,000-troop reserve force, also trained in part by NATO.

In 2006 Saakashvili mandated a system of universal conscription in which "every man under 40 must pass military trainings" [12] and every citizen should “know to handle arms and if necessary should be ready to repel aggression.” [13]

Ten months later the government announced “a doctrine on total and unconditional defense” and that "service in the reserve troops would be compulsory for every male between the ages of 27 to 50." [14]

Matthew Bryza and his colleagues in the State Department and the Pentagon have served American and NATO interests in the South Caucasus and adjoining areas well over the past decade.


First US-Backed War In The South Caucasus: Adjaria


On August 10 Bryza, "who, as he himself put it, was a more frequent guest to Georgia than any other U.S. official," [15] was awarded the Order of the Golden Fleece by Georgia's Saakashvili in Tbilisi.

"Saakashvili thanked Bryza for assistance rendered in 2004 while solving problems in Adjaria." [16]. The allusion is to events early in that year when Saakashvili, flanked by then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, was inaugurated president after the putsch that was called the Rose Revolution and introduced his party flag as that of the nation, which as British journalist John Laughlin remarked at the time had not been done since Hitler did the same with the swastika in 1933.

Less than two months later Saakashvili threatened to invade the Autonomous Republic of Adjaria (Adjara), which had been de facto an independent country, and to "shoot down my plane" as Adjarian president Aslan Abashidze reported.

An Agence France-Presse report in March of 2004 said, "The situation was made all the more explosive because Russia has a military base in Adjara....Saakashvili warned in televised comments that 'not a single tank can leave the territory of the base. Any movement of Russia's military equipment could provoke bloodshed.'" [17]

An all-out war was only avoided because Russia capitulated and even flew 
Abashidze to Moscow, after which it withdrew from the Adjarian base.

Bryza's assistance to the Saakashvili government has also extended to backing it in its armed conflicts with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which in the second case escalated into all-out war a year ago.


State Department Passes The Baton To Veteran Balkans Hand


Now Bryza, the nominal mediator, is going to pass his role as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs to Tina Kaidanow.

But he will continue until next month as the US co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group on Nagorno Karabakh, where as recently as August 12 he met with Azerbaijani President Aliyev and either arbitrarily expanding the format of discussions or combining his dual functions he also discussed "bilateral relationship between Azerbaijan and the United States, energy cooperation and regional and international issues." [18] 

It was also Bryza who recently announced that U.S. Marines were headed to Georgia to train troops for the war in Afghanistan. "Matt Bryza, the outgoing US deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, said the US would provide training and equipment for Georgian servicemen bound for Afghanistan." [19]

As seen earlier, a Georgian official said of the development that "First of all, our servicemen will gain combat experience because they will be in the middle of combat action, and that is a really invaluable experience," [20] which training under fire could only be intended for future combat operations against Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Russia.

Bryza has also played a role in attempting to insinuate European Union and American observers into the South Caucasus conflict zones.

His successor in the State Department position, Kaidanow, possesses a political curriculum vitae which provides insight into what can be expected from her.

This April, before getting the nod to replace Bryza, Kaidanow said "I worked in Serbia, in Belgrade and in Sarajevo, then in Washington, and I went back to Sarajevo and am now in Kosovo. I don't know where my next challenge will be. It is under discussion." [21]

Ms. Kaidanow is a veteran Balkans hand. She "served extensively in the region, as Special Assistant to U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill in Skopje [Macedonia] 1998-1999, with specific responsibilities focused on the crisis in Kosovo...." [22] Before that she served in Bosnia from 1997-1998.

Prior to that her first major post in the U.S. foreign policy apparatus began under President Bill Clinton, where she served as director for Southeast European Affairs at the National Security Council.


Kaidanow: From Rambouillet To Ambassador To Kosovo


After transitioning from advising the National Security Council on the Balkans to implementing the U.S. agenda there, Kaidanow attended the Rambouillet conference in February of 1999 where the American delegation headed by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright threw down the gauntlet to Yugoslavia with the infamous Appendix B ultimatum and set the stage for the 78-day war that began on March 24.

From 2003-2006 she was back in Bosnia, this time as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy, from where she departed to become the Chief of Mission and Charge d'Affaires at the U.S. Office in Kosovo from July 2006 to July 2008; that is, while the Bush administration put the finishing touches to the secession of the Serbian province which resulted in the unilateral independence of Kosovo in February of 2008. Despite concerted pressure from Washington and its allies, a year and a half later 130 of 192 nations in the world refuse to recognize its independence and those who do include statelets like Palau, the Maldives, the Federated States of Micronesia, Samoa, San Marino, Monaco, Nauru, Liechtenstein and the Marshall Islands, presumably all paid handsomely for their cooperation.

Last year the Bush administration appointed Kaidanow the first U.S. ambassador to Kosovo, a post she took up on July 18, 2008.


Reproducing Kosovo In Russia's Southern Republics


On August 12 Russian political analyst Andrei Areshev spoke about her new appointment in reference to the lingering tensions over Nagorno Karabakh which pit Azerbaijan against Armenia and warned that "it is an attempt to sacrifice [Nagorno Karabakh's] interests to Azerbaijan's benefit and in regard to Moscow to give a second wind to the politicization of ethnicity in the North Caucasus with the possibility of repeating the 'Kosovo scenario,'" [23] adding that the same threat would also target Iran.

By the North Caucasus Areshev was referring to the Russian republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and North Ossetia where extremist secessionist violence has cost scores of lives in recent months, including those of leading officials. The writer's message was not that the U.S. would simply continue its double standard of recognizing Kosovo's secession while arming Georgia and Azerbaijan to suppress the independence of Abkhazia, Nagorno Karabakh and South Ossetia - none of which "seceded" from anything other than new post-Soviet nations they has never belonged to - but that a veteran of the U.S. campaign to fragment and ultimately destroy Yugoslavia may be planning to do the same thing with Russia. As the author added, "the existing realities in the Caucasus, including the existence of three de facto states, two of which are officially recognized by Russia, still create plenty of opportunities to build different combinations, which would ultimately
result in a long-term military and political consolidation of the United States in the region." [24]

With reference to Areshev including Iran along with Russia as an intended target of such an application of the Yugoslav model, the clear implication is that the West could attempt to instigate separatist uprisings among the nation's Azeri, Arab and Baloch ethnic minorities in an effort to tear that nation apart also.

It is the politicizing of ethnic, linguistic and confessional differences that was exploited by the West to bring about or at any rate contribute to the dissolution of Yugoslavia into its federal republics and then yet further on a sub-republic level with Kosovo and Macedonia (still in progress).

Having worked under the likes of Christopher Hill and later Richard Armitage in the Rice State Department, Kaidanow surely knows how the strategy is put into effect. Much as does her former Balkans colleague Philip Goldberg, U.S. ambassador to Bolivia until that nation expelled him last September for fomenting subversion and fragmentation there based on the Balkans precedent.

Only a week before the announcement of Kaidanow's transfer from supervising the "world's first NATO state" (as a former Serbian president called it) in Kosovo, where the U.S. has built its largest overseas military base since the Vietnam War, Camp Bondsteel, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov again warned of the precedent Kosovo presented and admonished nations considering legitimizing it through diplomatic recognition to "think very carefully before making this very dangerous decision that has an unforeseeable outcome and is not good for stability in Europe." [25]

The situation Kaidanow will enter into is one in which a year ago a war had just ended and currently others threaten. 


A Year Later: Resumption Of Caucasus War Threats


A year after the beginning of the hostilities of 2008, August 8, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev warned:

"Georgia's actions in the Trans-Caucasian region continue to cause serious anxieties. Georgia does not stop threatening to restore its 'territorial integrity' by force.

"Armed forces are concentrated at the borders near Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and provocations are committed." [26]

On August 1 the Russian Defense Ministry expressed alarm over renewed Georgian shelling of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali and stated: "Events in August 2008 developed in line with a similar scenario, which led to Georgia unfolding military aggression against South Ossetia and attacking the Russian peacekeeping contingent." [27]

Two days later South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity announced that "Russian troops will hold drills in the republic. These will be preventive measures, everything will be done in order to ensure security and keep the situation under control." [28]

The following day Andrei Nesterenko, spokesman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, said that "Provocations from the Georgian side ahead of the anniversary of the August events last year are not stopping. In connection with this, we have stepped up the combat readiness of Russian troops and border guards." [29]

On August 5 Russian Duma Deputy Sergei Markov wrote:

"Western countries' accountability for the war in South Ossetia is not
recognized altogether. Politically, the West, primarily NATO, supports
Saakashvili, and this support made him confident in the success of his military venture. Moreover, during the war preparations and onset of combat, high-ranking officials in Washington did not answer their telephone calls although they must have been in the office at 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. Moscow time....

"The U.S. Congress did not make any inquiry into the conduct of Vice President Dick Cheney or presidential nominee John McCain during the start of the war. Georgian troops were equipped with NATO weapons, and trained in line with NATO standards." [30]

At the same time the above-mentioned Andrei Nesterenko also said that "Georgia continues to receive Western arms and help in modernizing its army....Lasting peace...is way, way off. Over the past 12 months, the Georgians were responsible for about 120 firing incidents. Over the past seven days alone, South Ossetian villages came under Georgian mortar attacks multiple times." [31]

As a reflection of how thoroughly Georgian leader Saakashvili is an American creature and how inextricably involved Washington has been and remains with all his actions, a commentary of early this month reminded readers that:

"Under George Bush, Washington already committed itself to put all Georgian bureaucrats on its payroll, having paid a little more than $1 billion as a compensation for Saakashvili's small war. The first tranche of $250 million has already been transferred....[A] considerable part of these funds will be allocated for compensation and salaries of government officials of all ministries.... In other words, all of Georgia's government officials are already on the U.S. payroll, a fact which nobody even tried to conceal during the last few years of Bush's term." [32]

Russia wasn't alone in attending to the anniversary of the war. A U.S. armed forces publication reported a year to the day after its start that "U.S. European Command has its eyes firmly focused on the volatile Caucasus region, where tensions between Georgia and Russia continue to mount on the anniversary of last year's five-day war....[C]ommanders are on guard for any sign of a repeat.

"[W]ith Georgia prepared to commit troops to the effort in Afghanistan as early as 2010, pre-deployment counterinsurgency training will be taking place. EUCOM also will be working with the Georgians to develop the Krtsanisi National Training Center outside of Tbilisi into a modern pre-deployment combat training center....Following the war, EUCOM conducted an assessment of Georgian forces, which uncovered numerous shortcomings related to doctrine and decision-making." [33]

Last year's war began immediately after the completion of the NATO Immediate Response 2008 military exercises which included over 1,000 American troops, the largest amount ever deployed to Georgia. The day after the drills ended Georgia shelled the South Ossetian capital and killed several people, including a Russian peacekeeper.


The War That Was, The World War That Might Have Been 


What a resumption of fighting between Georgia and South Ossetia will entail is indicated by an examination of the scale of the catastrophe that was narrowly averted a year ago.

A few days ago the government of Abkhazia shared information on what Georgia planned had its invasion of South Ossetia proven successful. The plan was to, having launched the war on the day of the Olympic Opening Ceremony in Beijing while world attention was diverted, have Georgian troops and armor rapidly advance to the Roki Tunnel which connects South Ossetia with the Russian Republic of North Ossetia and prevent Russia from bringing reinforcements into the war zone.

Then a parallel assault on Abkhazia was to be launched. The government of Abkhazia documented Georgia's battle plans earlier this week, stating "the attack could have been carried out from the sea and from the Kodori Gorge, where Georgian special forces were building their heavily fortified lines of defense.

"Most people in Abkhazia were almost certain that if Georgia succeeded in
conquering Tskhinvali, their republic would have been next....Military intelligence issued a warning that the Georgian army was planning to
invade Abkhazia from the sea. Another possibility was that the enemy would come from the Kodori Gorge, an area that Georgian special forces entered in 2006, violating international peace agreements.

"On August 9 last year, the Abkhazian army launched a preventive attack against Georgian troops in the Kodori Gorge." [34] 

Last week Abkhazian Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba demonstrated that Georgia was not alone in the planned attack on and destruction of his nation when he said "[W]e have always emphasized that the U.S. bears considerable responsibility for the events that took place in August 2008 in South Ossetia. 

"Therefore, we do not trust the Americans. All these years the U.S. has been arming, equipping and training Georgian troops and continues to do so, again restoring military infrastructure, and again preparing the Georgian army for new acts of aggression.

"What were the American instructors training the Georgian army for here, on Abkhazia's territory, at the upper end of the Kodori Gorge? For an attack on Abkhazia." [35]

An August 7 report from an Armenian news source substantiated that the plans for last August's war were on a far larger scale than merely Georgia's brutal onslaught against South Ossetia in an attempt to conquer and subjugate it and later Abkhazia. Stating that neighboring Azerbaijan was simultaneously planning for a war against Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh, a political analyst was quoted as saying, "Armenia would be in a state of war should Georgia's plan not have failed in 2008," adding that "last year Azerbaijan thrice attempted attacks on the NKR [the Nagorno Karabakh Republic], yet the attempts were frustrated thanks to NKR forces." [36]

A coordinated attack by Georgia on South Ossetia and Abkhazia and by Azerbaijan on Nagorno Karabakh would have led to a regional conflagration and possibly a world war. As indicated above, Armenia would have been pulled into the fighting and the nation is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) along with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

A week ago the secretary general of the CSTO, Nikolai Bordyuzha, was quoted as asserting:

"How will the CSTO react if Azerbaijan wants to get back Nagorno Karabakh in a military way and war begins between Azerbaijan and Armenia?"

"The 4th term of the Collective Security Treaty says that aggression against one member of Collective Security Treaty Organization will be regarded as aggression against all members." [37]

Even if the CSTO had not responded to an Azerbaijani assault on Karabakh which would have ineluctably dragged member state Armenia into the fighting as it was obligated to do, Turkey would have intervened at that point on behalf of Azerbaijan and being a NATO member could have asked the Alliance to invoke its Article 5 military assistance clause and enter the fray. Russia would not have stood by idly and a war could have ensued that would also have pulled in Ukraine to the north and Iran to the south. In fact the U.S. client regime in Ukraine had provided advanced arms to Georgia for last year's conflict and threatened to block the return of Russian Black Sea fleet ships to Sevastopol in the Crimea during the fighting.

Along with synchronized attacks on South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorno Karabakh, Ukraine may well have been ordered to move its military into the site of the fourth so-called frozen conflict, neighoring Transdniester, either in conjunction with Moldova or independently.

A year ago Russian maintained (and still has) peacekeepers in Transdniester, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and, while not in Karabakh, also in Armenia. Over 200 Russian soldiers were killed and wounded in the fighting in South Ossetia and if those numbers had been matched or exceeded in three other battle zones Russian forbearance might have reached its limits quickly.


After Yugoslavia, Afghanistan And Iraq: Pentagon Turns Attention To Former Soviet Space


In June of 2008 the earlier quoted Russian analyst Andrei Areshev wrote in article titled "The West and Abkhazia: A New Game" that "The prevention of a military conflict is Russia’s priority, but it is not a priority for our 'partners.'

"This should not be forgotten....As for experiments undertaken by the United States that acted so 'perfectly' in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, they do not spell any good." [38]

Two months before he had written "The U.S., the ground having slipped from under its feet in Iraq and Afghanistan, is now preoccupied with
gaining control over the most important geopolitical regions in the post-Soviet territory - Ukraine, Transcaucasia and Central Asia....

"The regions of Transcaucasia, integrated in NATO, Georgia in the first place (especially in case of the successful annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia), will serve U.S. interests aimed at destabilization of the North Caucasus." [39]

Last week a group of opposition Georgian scholars held a round table discussion in the nation's capital and among other matters asserted:

"The whole August war itself...served the interests of the US. The Americans tested Russia's readiness to react to military intervention, while at the same time ridding Georgia of its conflict-ridden territories so it could continue its pursuit of NATO membership.

"[H]ad Russia refrained from engaging its forces in the conflict, the nations [republics] of the Northern Caucasus would have serious doubts about its ability to protect them. This would in turn lead to an array of separatist movements in the Northern Caucasus, which would have the potential to start not only a full-scale Caucasian war, but a new world war." [40]

What the West's probing of Russia's defenses in the Caucasus may be intended to achieve and what the full-scale application of the Yugoslav model to Russia's North Caucasus republics could look like are not academic issues.

Armed attacks in the republics of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia have been almost daily occurrences over the last few months. In June the president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was seriously wounded in a bomb attack and two days ago the republic's Construction Minister was shot to death in his office.

Similar armed attacks on and slayings of police, military and government officials are mounting in Dagestan and Chechnya.

The shootings and bombings are perpetrated by separatists hiding behind the pretext of religious motivations - in the main Saudi-based Wahhabism. Until his death in 2002 the main military commander of various self-proclaimed entities like the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Caucasus Emirate was one Khattab (reputedly born Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem), an ethnic Arab and veteran of the CIA's Afghan campaign of the 1980s, who also reportedly fought later in Tajikistan and Bosnia.

Assorted self-designated presidents and defense ministers of the above fancied domains have been granted political refugee status by and are living comfortably in the United States and Britain.

That plans for carving up Russia by employing Yugoslav-style armed secessionist campaigns are not limited to foreign-supported extremist troops was demonstrated as early as 1999 - the year of NATO's war against Yugoslavia - when the conservative Freedom House think tank in the United States inaugurated what it called the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. By the middle of this decade its board of directors was composed of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alexander Haig, Steven Solarz, and Max Kampelman.

Members included the three main directors of the Project for the New American Century: Robert Kagan, William Kristol and Bruce P. Jackson. Jackson was the founder and president of the US Committee on NATO (founded in 1996) and the chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (launched months before the invasion of that nation in the autumn of 2002).

Other members of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya included past CIA directors, National Security Advisers, Secretaries of State and NATO Supreme Allied Commanders like the previously mentioned Zbigniew Brzezinski and Alexander Haig and James Woolsey, Richard V. Allen and a host of neoconservative ideologues and George W. Bush administration operatives with resumes ranging from the Committee on the Present Danger to the Project for the New American Century like Morton Abramowitz, Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Richard Pipes and Norman Podhoretz.

The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya has evidently broadened its scope and is now called the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus. Its mission statement says:

"The American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC) at Freedom House is dedicated to monitoring the security and human rights situation in the North Caucasus by providing informational resources and expert analysis. ACPC focuses on Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachayevo-Cherkessia and Adygeya, as well as the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia."

Abkhazia and South Ossetia are of course in the South Caucasus and not in Georgia except in the minds of those anxious to expel Russia from the Caucasus, North and South, and transparently have been included as they are targets of designs by U.S. empire builders to further encircle, weaken and ultimately dismantle the Russian Federation.

Russian political leadership has been reserved if not outright compliant over the past decade when the U.S. and NATO attacked Yugoslavia, invaded Afghanistan and set up military bases throughout Central and South Asia, invaded Iraq in 2003, assisted in deposing governments in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Adjaria, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan to Russia's disadvantage and brazenly boasted of plans to drive Russia out of the European energy market.

But intensifying the destabilization of its southern republics and turning them into new Kosovos is more than Moscow can allow.


1) U.S. Department of State, June 24, 2008
2) Black Sea: Pentagon's Gateway To Three Continents And The Middle East
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/37498
  Eurasian Crossroads: The Caucasus In US-NATO War Plans    
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/38551
  Azerbaijan And The Caspian: NATO's War For The World's Heartland
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/39970
  West's Afghan War And Drive Into Caspian Sea Basin 
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40624
3) Ibid
4) Mr. Simmons' Mission: NATO Bases From Balkans To Chinese Border
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/37672
5) PanArmenian.net, March 31, 2007
6) Russian Information Agency Novosti, August 6, 2009
7) AzerTag, January 1, 2008
8) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, August 9, 2008
9) Russia Today, August 8, 2008
10) PanArmenian.net, August 8, 2008
11) The Financial, June 27, 2008
12) Prime News (Georgia), August 10, 2006
13) Civil Georgia, April 2, 2007
14) Civil Georgia, December 7, 2006
15) Civil Georgia, August 11, 2009
16) Trend News Agency, August 11, 2009
17) Agence France-Presse, March 14, 2004
18) AzerTag, August 12, 2009
19) Rustavi 2, August 11, 2009
20) Russian Information Agency Novosti, August 6, 2009
21) World Investment News, April 22, 2009
22) Azeri Press Agency, August 12, 2009
23) PanArmenian.net, August 12, 2009
24) Ibid
25) Black Sea Press, August 6, 2009
26) Itar-Tass, August 8, 2009
27) Russian Information Agency Novosti, August 1, 2009
28) Interfax, August 3, 2009
29) Daily Times (Pakistan), August 5, 2009
30) Russian Information Agency Novosti, August 5, 2009
31) Voice of Russia. August 5, 2009
32) Russian Information Agency Novosti, August 6, 2009
33) Stars and Stripes, August 8, 2009
34) Russia Today, August 9, 2009
35) Russian Information Agency Novosti, August 4, 2009
36) PanArmenian.net, August 7, 2009
37) Azeri Press Agency, August 6, 2009
38) Strategic Culture Foundation, June 12, 2008
39) Strategic Culture Foundation, April 18, 2008
40) Russia Today, August 7, 2009
===========================
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(italiano / english)

La sua idea e' quella di un sistema ''che somigli piu' ad un codice militare di guerra che di pace'' / «In Afghanistan i Tornado possono sparare» / Fino a che punto si può far finta che una missione chiamata «di pace» non sia in un territorio di guerra? / Per farla apparire nei limiti dell’articolo 11 della Costituzione, la missione italiana viene presentata come pacifica mentre agisce in quella che gli alleati definiscono una guerra / Dal 2001 in Afghanistan sono morti 15 [soldati italiani]. Manca però un dato: quanti miliziani afghani sono stati uccisi dai nostri soldati in scontri a fuoco? «Il numero preciso non viene tenuto»

dal romanzo “ L’ultimo disertore” di Antonio Camuso

Vinta l’ultima resistenza dei combattenti della brigata Bellomo, i bersaglieri cinesi della Garibaldi entrarono, a bordo dei blindati Puma e Lince, tra ciò che rimaneva delle case di Bari Vecchia.

In testa, un FRECCIA /psy-operation dotato di altoparlanti, anch’essi blindati, ripeteva con tutta la potenza delle centinaia di watt dell’amplificatore, le rituali formule sulle norme del diritto internazionale per le operazioni di peacekeeping,  adottate in sede ONU dopo la Grande Rivolta di fine 2012.
“-...tutti coloro che possono dimostrare di non aver condotto  o appoggiato azioni terroristiche, eversive dell’ordine pubblico  potranno essere rilasciati in breve tempo e godranno dei benefici di protezione secondo le norme del diritto umanitario. Tutti coloro che abbandoneranno le armi e si consegneranno spontaneamente alle autorità e collaboreranno con esse nella cattura dei sovversivi avranno diritto di essere trattati come prigionieri di guerra. Tutti coloro che  continueranno a resistere saranno passibili delle pene  e dei trattamenti che le Nazioni Unite e la Confederazione hanno stabilito secondo gli articoli...”-

Il maresciallo Gavino Sassu, sogghignava nell’ascoltare tutto ciò, mentre  masticava un pezzo di corteccia di una pianta psicotropa, originaria della Somalia  e che ormai circolava liberamente tra il personale delle unità impiegate nelle repressione delle rivolte urbane.                                        

Sapeva bene che, dietro quelle roboanti parole, nelle prossime ore vi sarebbe stato un susseguirsi di violenze, stupri e saccheggi da parte dei Guardiani della Sicurezza Urbana, che avrebbero condotto i rastrellamenti dei civili, sotto la copertura delle mitragliatrici e dei cannoncini dei suoi bersaglieri.

Li vedeva già scendere dai neri camion blindati IVECO RG12-E21  senza curarsi che tutte le formule di rito fossero finite di esser lette alla popolazione e senza attendere che tra le macerie si aggirassero gli infermieri della Croce Rossa Internazionale alla ricerca di feriti e moribondi. 

Lui, Gavino Sassu, purtroppo avrebbe avuto poco da ridire o da appellarsi ai suoi superiori: la modifica dei codici militari e dei regolamenti di disciplina iniziata nel 2009, con il complice assenso delle opposizioni di centro-sinistra, e il varo successivo di un “codice speciale per guerre umanitarie” (adeguato a quello che il Consiglio di Sicurezza ONU aveva adottato, onde legittimare le operazioni militari  nelle megalopoli e nelle province ribelli dell’Impero globale)  gli impedivano di rendere testimonianza dinanzi a tribunali civili  di efferatezze o violazioni a cui avesse assistito, pena l’incriminazione presso i tribunali militari di guerra, di violazione del segreto militare e attentato alla sicurezza dello Stato Italiano e alla Pace internazionale.

Al massimo il suo compito sarebbe stato quello di redigere un rapporto in cui avrebbe dovuto segnalare le violazioni che in seguito sarebbe stato trasmesso allo Stato Maggiore Difesa e in copia conforme alle organizzazioni ONU incaricate “della protezione di popolazioni soggette ad operazioni di lotta al terrorismo internazionale”.

Un rapporto che si sarebbe aggiunto a migliaia di altri e al quale, quelli che lui chiamava i “contabili della sofferenza umana “ dopo mesi o anni, avrebbero aggiunto note ed osservazioni  da inserire nella Relazione Annuale sul Rispetto dei Diritti Umani presso il  Palazzo di Vetro e sul quale lo stesso Consiglio di Sicurezza  avrebbe avuto diritto di veto.
Gavino, quando sentì  l’altoparlante terminare di diffondere quelle assurdità, richiuse lo sportello del suo blindato e dopo aver dato, per radio, disposizione ai suoi uomini di non scendere dai mezzi e tenere sotto tiro  finestre e tetti,  accese il suo PC, cliccò sulla Nona di Bethoven, alzando al massimo il volume delle cuffie e chiuse gli occhi, cercando di non pensare a nulla... Sul tavolo, tra foglietti, mappe e dispacci giaceva accartocciata, da  giorni, la comunicazione della sua nomina a tenente... Fuori, i miliziani in uniformi nere e grigie sciamavano tra le rovine  di Bari urlando nelle mille lingue dell’Impero...

Brindisi, 15 agosto 2009
Antonio Camuso

Osservatorio sui Balcani di Brindisi
http://www.pugliantagonista.it/osservatorio.htm
osservatoriobrindisi@...

=== 4 ===

Rick Rozoff


A press report on August 10 revealed that the government of Italy is planning to modify if not dispense with its post-World War II constitutional limitations on conducting offensive military operations; that is, to reverse a 61-year ban on waging war.

The news story, reminding readers that "Italy's post-World War II constitution places stringent limits on the country's military engagements," stated the Italian government intends to introduce a new military code "specifically for missions abroad," one that - in a demonstration of evasiveness and verbal legerdemain alike - would be "neither of peace nor of war." [1]

On August 10 and 11, respectively, the nation's Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa and Foreign Minister Franco Frattini were interviewed in the daily Corriere della Sera in in tandem they bemoaned what they described as undue restrictions on the Italian armed forces in performing their combat roles in NATO's war in Afghanistan.

Commenting on La Russa's and Frattini's assertions, another news account summarized them as follows:

"Italy's 2,800 soldiers operate under a military peace code, which largely restricts them to shooting back if they are attacked. Changes could give the troops heavier equipment and allow them to go on the offensive." 

Frattini is quoted as saying, "We need a code for the missions that aim to bring peace, which cannot be achieved only through actions for civilians but also through real military actions." [2]

The tortuous illogicality of that claim is an attempt to circumvent both the letter and the spirit of Article 11 of the 1948 Italian Constitution which reads in part that "Italy repudiates war as an instrument offending the liberty of the peoples and as a means for settling international disputes."

The rest of the Article includes, and in doing so anticipates the nation's inclusion in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization the following year, "it agrees to limitations of sovereignty...."

Article 11 is emblematic of similar ones in the post-World War II constitutions adopted by, or rather imposed on, those powers responsible for unleashing history's deadliest war in Europe and Asia: The members of the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis or Tripartite Pact.

The 1949 Constitution of the Federal Republic, amended and extended to all of the country after unification in 1990, contains a Ban on preparing a war of aggression, Article 26, which reads: Activities tending and undertaken with the intent to disturb peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for aggressive war, are unconstitutional. They shall be made a punishable offense. 

The 1947 U.S.-authored Japanese constitution contains an equivalent, Article 9, which states:

"Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 

"In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."

U.S. military, especially air, bases in Germany, Italy and Japan have been used in every major military campaign waged by the Pentagon from the Korean War to the current one in Afghanistan for basing bombers and for the transit of troops, weapons and equipment.

So despite constitutional requirements to repudiate and renounce and bans against preparing for war, the three former Axis nations have indeed been partners to a series of armed conflicts for sixty years.

But for most of that period, indeed for almost a half century, the nations' legal prohibitions against direct military aggression have been observed even in the breach. Italy was a founding member of NATO in 1949, though unlike most others didn't send troops for the Korean War. Along with the United States, Britain, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg did.

Greece and Turkey deployed contingents as a precondition for NATO membership, which they received in 1952, but West Germany, which joined in 1955, didn't.

Although Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Thailand supplied troops, Japan didn't.

The war proscriptions were abandoned by two of the three nations, Germany and Italy, in NATO's war against Yugoslavia in early 1999. Both countries supplied military aircraft for the 78-day air war and the U.S. and NATO air base at Aviano served as the main hub for daily bombing runs against military targets, non-military infrastructure and civilians. U.S., British, Canadian, Spanish, Portuguese and other warplanes operated out of the base.

The semantic acrobatics of the current Italian Foreign Minister Frattini in attempting to deny that war is war have already been examined, and comparable statements by German and Italian cabinet ministers and parliamentarians in 1999 were no less convoluted and transparently false. Germany and Italy had gone to war against a nation (with no troops outside its own borders) for the first time since the days of Hitler and Mussolini and, moreover, against a nation that the two fascist leaders had attacked 59 years earlier.

The post-World War II, post-Nuremberg restriction against military aggression by the defeated Axis powers was violated and for the past decade Germany, Italy and Japan have continued asserting themselves as military powers on a regional and international scale, culminating in the three nations participating in various degrees in the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan currently.

Germany now has the maximum amount of troops parliamentary limitations - at least for the time being - allow: 4,500 and another 300 manning NATO AWACS recently deployed for the escalation of the war. It has the fourth largest contingent in Afghanistan after the U.S., Britain and Canada.

Italy has the sixth largest amount of troops, 3,250, in command of Western Afghanistan near the Iranian border, and just as the 1999 war against Yugoslavia was the first air war either nation had engaged in since World War II, so Afghanistan is the first ground war.

Germany has lost 38 soldiers so far and Italy 15.

A poll conducted by a major Italian daily in late July showed that 56% of Italians want a withdrawal of their nation's troops from the Afghan war theater, but Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Foreign Minister Frattini and Defense Minister La Russa insist they will stay and have recently added 500 more troops and committed to deploying more Predator drones, Tornado warplanes and military helicopters.

Late last month defense chief La Russa said, "It is possible we will also increase the number of helicopters to have better aerial coverage, as well as deploying our Tornadoes offensively." [3]

At the same time Foreign Minister Frattini spoke in a similar vein: "We will increase the use of Predator (unmanned surveillance aircraft) and Tornado (fighters), not just for reconnaissance but for real coverage (of troops)."

An Italian news account at the time added, "He also said Italy would reinforce the armour of its Lince troop carriers and send new generation armoured vehicles." [4]

Five previous articles in this series have documented Germany's rise as a post-Cold War global military power [5,6,7,8,9], including the ongoing transformation of the Bundeswehr into an "international intervention force," [10] and the Merkel administration's policy "to drop some of [Germany's] post-World War II inhibitions about robust security measures, including the use of military force abroad and at home" [11] and a 2006 German Defense Ministry White Paper demanding that the army "be thoroughly restructured into an intervention force" [12], with one of its authors stating "it is time that Germany moved on from its postwar inhibitions about force." [13]

On August 8, weeks after "German troops embarked on their largest military offensive since World War II in Kunduz," it was reported that "German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said in a newspaper interview...that the country's armed forces could be in Afghanistan for up to 10 more years." [14] 

That the German government is openly advocating the use of its army at home as well as abroad, and did just that by deploying Bundeswehr forces in Kehl this April against anti-NATO protesters during the 60th anniversary Alliance summit, was dangerous ground first trod by the Berlusconi government in Italy a year ago when 3,000 troops were deployed in Rome, Milan, Naples and Turin against immigrants and Roma (gypsy) communities as well as - allegedly at least - crime syndicates.

The use of the military for domestic purposes is a disturbingly reminiscent of practices not seen in Italy and Germany since the era of Mussolini and Hitler.

Two months afterwards it was reported in an article called "NATO pours rent money into Mafia coffers" that in Naples, where NATO's Allied Joint Force Command Naples was established in 2004, "government funding earmarked to support NATO end[ed] up in the pockets of Italy's most violent criminal organisation." [15]

Another news story last November recounted this:

"The head of Naples’ anti-mafia task force, Franco Roberti, censured NATO and U.S. officials for knowingly leasing houses to suspected mob bosses in a story published in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera. Rent paid by Americans and NATO personnel garner landlords between 1,500 and 3,000 euros a month — fees that can be two or three times above the market value." [16]

Italian troops were back on the streets of the nation's cities and the Casalese camorra was not only unmolested but enriched.

Last year Berlusconi also confirmed that the plans reached during his previous tenure as prime minister to expand the U.S. Camp Ederle at Vicenza with the nearby Dal Molin airport into "the biggest American military base outside the US" [17] would continue apace. Camp Ederle already hosts 6,000 U.S. troops and will soon house all six battalions of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, some currently in Germany. The 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years.

Late last July U.S. troops from the Vicenza-based Southern European Task Force (Airborne) contributed to a force of 1,000 soldiers deployed to Georgia for the NATO Immediate Response 2008 exercises - the largest number of American troops deployed to the Caucasus nation at one time - to train the armed forces of their host nation for a war with Russia that would ensue within days.

"U.S. personnel responsible for training members of the Georgian military remain stationed inside the volatile country, where fighting erupted Friday [August 8] between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

"The U.S. European Command said on Monday that there were no plans at this time to withdraw the U.S. military trainers from the country." [18]

In January of 2008 the Italian government announced that it was building a highway to connect Vicenza with the Aviano air base. "Airborne soldiers based at Caserma Ederle in Vicenza use Aviano for training and for hooking up with planes for long deployments: The 173rd Airborne Brigade’s last three deployments downrange have all involved launches from Aviano." [19]

Decades-long interpretations of the Japanese Constitution's Article 9 against remilitarization have agreed that the nation could not rearm for military actions abroad and could not engage in what is euphemistically called collective self-defense. The first is a self-evident prohibition against deploying troops, warships and warplanes outside of Japanese territory and waters to participate in armed hostilities.

The second is a ban on entering into bilateral and multilateral military treaties and alliances that obligate Japan to aid other nations engaged in war and join programs like the U.S.-led global missile shield project.

Over the past eight years successive Japanese governments have violated both components of the constitutional ban on stationing troops in conflict zones and on entering into joint defense arrangements which are in truth only partially defensive in nature.  

Tokyo first tested the waters on stationing troops abroad when it deployed 600 soldiers to East Timor in 2002 to join those from Australia, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Fiji, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand and the United States. 

The following December the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi  authorized 600 soldiers and hundreds of more support personnel to be sent to Iraq nine months after the invasion of the country by the U.S. and Britain. 

The Iraqi deployment marked the first time that Japanese military forces were sent to an active war zone since World War II. 

Much as with Italian and German leaders who cannot pronounce the word war even while prosecuting one, Tokyo called its deployment force the Japanese Iraq Reconstruction and Support Group. The name aside, Japaneses troops were stationed in support of allies who had invaded Iraq in violation of international law and without United Nations sanction and were at the time conducting large-scale combat operations. The nation's soldiers remained there until 2006 when the focus of the U.S. and its NATO allies started shifting back to Afghanistan.

In 2006 Japan compensated for its troop withdrawal by providing the occupation forces airlift operations in Iraq, then ended that mission last December when the Afghan War emerged as the uncontested priority of its Western military allies.

Japan has supported the latter war from its inception and "Despite its pacifist constitution, Japan has participated in an Indian Ocean naval mission since 2001 that provides fuel and other logistical support to the US-led coalition fighting in Afghanistan." [20] It provided the majority of fuel to U.S. and NATO warships in the Indian Ocean, including those firing Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan. Japan briefly withdrew its naval forces at the end of 2007, but redeployed them a year later where they remain in support of the world's major war.

What is remarkably still referred to as pacifist Japan, then, has actively supported the West's last two wars.

In an interview last month with the U.S. Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes Japanese Democratic Party Diet member Keiichiro Asao, touted to become the nation's next defense minister should his party, substantially ahead in current national polls, win the next election, spoke of the Afghan War and said "If peace talks proved successful in part of Afghanistan, even if other areas were still combat zones, 'then we might send ground troops to that area to help build back civil society.'" [21]

Troops on the ground in the world's preeminent theater of war would strip away the remaining vestiges of Japan's post-World War II demilitarization and the nation would fully join the ranks of Germany and Italy as war belligerents.

And just that has been planned for years, as in January of 2007 the Japan Defense Agency was transformed into the Ministry of Defense, a ministry that hadn't existed since the nation's defeat in World War II. 

In the same month it was reported that then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma were "considering authorizing [Japan's] troops to launch pre-emptive strikes during international peacekeeping operations" and planned "to study ways to ease the constitutional ban on Japan to use force to defend its allies in so-called 'acts of collective self-defense.'

"The government plans to achieve the goal by changing the interpretation of the constitution," stated the Yomiuri daily newspaper. [22]

Three months later a report titled "Japan To Consider Fighting for Allies Under Attack" detailed that "Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is leaning toward allowing Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense in four cases," which include "the use of Japan’s missile defense system against a ballistic missile attack on an allied country, such as the U.S.," the Kyodo News Agency revealed. [23]

The other three instances in which Tokyo would be prepared to violate the constitutional ban against so-called collective defense are cases of "a counterattack when a warship sailing along with a Japanese vessel comes under attack, or when a military unit in a multinational forces is attacked, and in some situations when Japan is working as part of a UN peacekeeping operation." [24]

It's worth recalling that Prime Minister Abe continued the tradition of his predecessor Koizumi in paying annual visits to the Yasukuni shrine where  Japanese war dead including 14 convicted World War II era war criminals are buried.

"'It's not appropriate for the government to specifically draw a conclusion' on the war responsibility of the war criminals," Abe told the Japanese Diet on October 3, 2006. [25]

The visits by Japanese prime ministers to the shrine from 2001-2006 outraged China, the two Koreas, Thailand, the Philippines and other nations that had already "specifically draw[n] a conclusion" about the war crimes perpetrated against their countries and peoples and the rehabilitation of the guilty parties in a bid to revive Japanese militarism.

The most dangerous application of Japanese plans for preemptive military attacks and the first of the four scenarios laid out by the government in 2007 to justify joint military action is that pertaining to so-called missile defense, which in fact is incorporating Japan into a US-led global interceptor missile grid which includes land, air and sea components and which will be integrated with the deployment of surveillance satellites and missiles in space.

On August 11 the commander of the Russian Air Force, Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin, warned that "By 2030...foreign countries, particularly the United States, will be able to deliver coordinated high-precision strikes from air and space against any target on the whole territory of Russia." [26]

The following day Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi addressed the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and warned against an "arms race in outer space," stating that "Outer space is now facing the looming danger of weaponization" and "Countries should neither develop missile defense systems that undermine global strategic stability nor deploy weapons in outer space." [27]

In 2005 the U.S. and Japan agreed to establish a missile defense facility at the American Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo. A local news sources, Kyodo, said of the project that "Japan's success will have an impact on the nuclear potential of China and Russia in East Asia. There is no doubt that the two countries will step up their efforts to develop missiles with a higher performance." [28]

In May of 2007 Pentagon chief Robert Gates "urged Japan to declare the right to collective defense so its missile defense shield can be used to intercept North Korean ballistic missiles targeted at the United States...." [29]

North Korea is the pretext employed to expand the global missile shield system with its threat of nuclear blackmail and threat of a first strike against Russia and China to the East. However, as reported of the Gates' initiative at the time, "The U.S. demand on collective defense reflects its strategy to boost its deterrence toward China and also carries Washington's hope that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will partially allow the use of such a right by revising the Constitution." [30]

In the same month, May of 2007, it was revealed that "Japan's defense ministry has been providing U.S. forces with intelligence gathered by its Air Self-Defense Force's early warning radar network since late April" and that "The ministry began permanent linking of the ASDF's intelligence gathering network with the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Air Force at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo before the two countries agreed to boost information-sharing for missile defense at a top security meeting in Washington on May 1...." [31]

Two years ago the ruling Liberal Party completed post-Cold War plans to reverse the situation where "Japan's pacifist Constitution bans warfare and overseas military action. The Japanese government's current interpretation is that the Constitution prohibits Japan from exercising the right to defend an ally under attack" [32]. That is, Article 9 will be either eviscerated of any real force or scrapped altogether.

As Japan intensifies its demand that Russia's Kuril Islands be ceded to it in a resurgence of post-World War II revanchism, Tokyo has joined its former allies in Berlin and Rome in casting off constraints placed on the use of its military abroad, including in "preemptive" actions, imposed on it after World War II.

With the collapse of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe a generation ago and with NATO moving it to take over former Warsaw Pact territory, many demons that had lain dormant for decades have been awakened from their slumber, including unabashed militarism, irredentist and other demands to redraw borders, and World World II revisionism and revanchism. And Fascism.

In February of 2007 the Bucharest Court of Appeal in Romania, which joined the German-Italian-Japanese Axis during World War II, ruled that the participation of 800,000 Romanian troops in Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was a "war for the liberation of Bessarabia and Bucovina" (modern day Moldova). [33]

In late July of this year the mayor of the Romanian city of Constanta, Radu Mazare, wore a Nazi military uniform at a fashion show in the city and said "I wanted to dress like a general from the Wehrmacht because I have always liked this uniform, and have admired the strict organization of the German army." [34]

Two years earlier Rein Lang, the Justice Minister of Estonia, a member in good standing of NATO and the European Union, celebrated his fiftieth birthday in pub in a "Hitler night" celebration which included a one-man play called Adolf in which the lone actor recited "Hitler’s monologue before [his] suicide with a swastika in the background. In this monologue the Fuhrer called on his allies to 'further promote ideas of the Third Reich.'" [35]

This July 26 veterans of the Estonian SS 20th Division celebrated a 1944 battle with the Soviet army in the latest of a series of annual commemorations of the Nazi past. The events included a march and "Supporters of fascism from the Baltic states, Holland, Norway, Denmark and even from Georgia took part in the parade." [36]

As a Russian commentator said of trends in the country, "People who make no attempt to conceal their appreciation of Nazism and Nazi ideology are running Estonia." [37]

Three months before 300 Latvians marched in the annual Legionnaires Day parade which honors the nation's Waffen SS veterans who "took part in punitive operations and mass killings of Jews, Belorussians and Latvians." [38] Latvia is also a member of NATO and the EU. The yearly marches are staged in the capital of Riga and although not endorsed by the government the latter provides police protection to the Nazi sympathizers and has arrested anti-fascist protesters in the past.

The prototype for this fascist resurgence was Croatia in 1991 with the rehabilitation and glorification of the Nazi-allied Ustashe and the new brown plague has even spread to Ukraine, where last year President Victor Yushchenko, product of the 2004 "Orange Revolution" and a U.S. client whose poll ratings recently have sunk to under 1%, "conferred posthumously the title of Hero of Ukraine on Roman Shukhevich, one of the chieftains of Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought along with the Third Reich, and has signed a decree on celebrating the day of the Insurgent Army's formation." [39] 

In his waning days Yushchenko is intensifying efforts to drag his nation into NATO despite overwhelming popular opposition and has officiated over developments like the erection of statues in honor of Stepan Bandera, leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. 

With the return of Germany, Italy and Japan to waging and supporting wars and the revival of Nazi sentiments in Europe a student of the future could be forgiven for thinking that the Axis powers were the victors and not the losers of World War II and that the Nuremberg trials had never occurred.


1) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, August 10, 2009
2) Associated Press, August 11, 2009
3) Defense News, July 22, 2009
4) Reuters, July 26, 2009
5) New NATO: Germany Returns To World Military Stage
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40658
6) From WW II To WW III: Global NATO And Remilitarized Germany
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40691
7) Germany: First New Post-Cold War World Military Power
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40717
  [Correction: 1999 marked NATO's fiftieth anniversary summit]
8) Germany And NATO's Nuclear Nexus 
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40763 
9) Germany: World Arms Merchant In First Post-WW II Combat
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40888
10) Der Spiegel, August 10, 2009
11) Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2008
12) Newsweek, November 13, 2006
13) Ibid
14) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, August 8, 2009
15) Sydney Morning Herald, November 6, 2008
16) Stars and Stripes, November 27, 2008
17) ANSA (Italy), September 22, 2006
18) Stars and Stripes, August 12, 2008
19) Stars and Stripes, January 2, 2008
20) Agence France-Presse, August 10, 2009
21) Stars and Stripes, July 21, 2009
22) Associated Press, January 14, 2007
23) Agence France-Presse, April 7, 2007
24) Ibid
25) Japan Times, December 28, 2006
26) Russian Information Agency Novosti, August 11, 2009
27) Associated Press, August 12, 2009
28) Kyodo News, December 21, 2007
29) Kyodo News, May 17, 2007
30) Ibid
31) Xinhua News Agency, May 13, 2007
32) Xinhua News Agency, June 30, 2007
33) InfoTag (Moldova), February 21, 2007
34) Sofia News Agency, July 20, 2009
35) Voice of Russia, July 6, 2007
36) Voice of Russia, July 27, 2009
37) Voice of Russia, July 6, 2007
38) Voice of Russia, March 13, 2009
39) Voice of Russia, October 25, 2008

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(srpskohrvatski / italiano)

Ecco come uno che ha vissuto, studiato e lavorato all'estero - e non è chiaro con quale metodo e da chi è stato designato per la carica di Governatore della Banca Nazionale della Serbia - dichiara la presunta necessità di diminuire i salari, anche quelli già sotto la media:

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"La risposta del Governo alla crisi dovrebbe consistere anche nella diminuzione degli stipendi sotto la media nazionale, e nell'aumento dell'IVA - ha ribadito il governatore della Banca Nazionale della Serbia, Radovan Jelasic. Lui è del parere che le possibilità d'aumentare la tassa immobiliare siano piuttosto limitate, e che ormai si sia esagerato troppo con l'aumento delle accise, salvo nel caso delle sigarette e degli alcoolici, e perciò rimangono poche misure ancora disponibili."

http://www.tanjug.rs/RssSlika.aspx?29598

BEOGRAD, 9. avgusta (Tanjug) - Vlada bi na krizu trebalo da odgovori i smanjenjem plata koje su ispod proseka i povećanjem PDV-a, ocenio je guverner Narodne banke Srbije Radovan Jelašić. On je smatra da su mogucnosti povećanja poreza na imovinu prilično ograničene, a već se preteralo i sa povećanjem akciza, osim kod cigareta i alkohola, tako da ne preostaje mnogo drugih mera. (Kraj)

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Commento: bisogna sottolineare che, su richiesta del FMI e della BM, il Governo della Serbia già nella primavera scorsa aveva seriamente discusso della diminuzione di tutti gli stipendi, anche di quelli minimi al livello di circa 90 euro. Sarebbe stato uno schiaffo alla povera gente, e il solo fatto che se ne sia discusso ci dice tanto sui ristretti margini di autonomia della Serbia nello scenario internazionale. In questi giorni la Serbia sta ricevendo un aiuto a fondo perduto dall'UE: probabilmente in Serbia devono dimostrare che sono in grado di stringere ulteriormente la cinghia, se richiesto... Si vedano anche le critiche del Governatore al Governo serbo:

(english / italiano)

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(english / italiano. 

Vedi anche: 

http://www.veritas.org.rs/indexen.htm )

=== 1 ===

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2009&mm=08&dd=04&nav_id=60937

Beta News Agency - August 4, 2009

Anniversary of Operation Storm marked 

BELGRADE: Today marks the 14th anniversary since a Croat military onslaught on the country's Serb area of Krajina that ended in the murder of more than 2,000 people.

The attack, known as Operation Storm, also saw over 200,000 Serbs driven out of Croatia as refugees.

The Veritas center for documentation and information says that only in the former Sector South 22,000 Serb homes were pillaged, demolished or set on fire. The 1995 assault came despite the fact that the area was under UN protection. 

In Belgrade's Church of St. Marko this Tuesday, the dead will be remembered in a service dedicated to their souls, followed by a commemoration for the fallen Serbs in Croatia. 

Several dozen refugees have traveled from Serbia to their hometowns in Croatia where they too will attend services in rebuilt Serbian Orthodox temples. Then, they will place flowers along Petrovačka Road, along which they fled to become refugees 14 years ago. 

The refugees will do the same on the Sremska Raca border crossing, where they entered Serbia in the summer of 1995. 

In Belgrade on Monday, President Boris Tadic said the return of refugees, problems concerning the return of Serb property in Croatia, and the exhumation and identification of the victims are the issues that must be resolved as part of improving the overall relations between Serbia and Croatia. 

Tadic met with a delegation of the Association of Families of the Missing and Killed in Croatia, headed by association president Cedomir Maric, his office said in a statement. 

The delegation informed him about their problems and expressed dissatisfaction because the exhumation and identification of the victims of the war in Croatia is proceeding slowly. 

According to the delegation's figures, some 2,230 Serbs are still listed as missing in Croatia. 

Meanwhile, that country is today celebrating the anniversary as its national holiday.  

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(italiano / srpskohrvatski)

BANjALUKA - Član Predsedništva BiH, Haris Silajdžić, bio je " mozak sklapanja finansijske konstrukcije za teroristički napad 11. septembra na Sjedinjene Američke Države. Uloga Silajdžića je bila da zatvori finansijski okvir cele terorističke operacije, tvrdi član Ekspertskog tima za borbu protiv terorizma i organizovanog kriminala jugoistočne Evrope, Dževad Galijašević, koji kaže za "Novosti" da poseduje dokaze za svoje tvrdnje, koje je spreman da ustupi američkim bezbednosnim agencijama.

[...] Preko fiktivne firme, koja se predstavljala kao deo velikog konzorcijuma Kuvajtske investicijske agencije, izvršena je prodaja zeničke Željezare za jednu konvertibilnu marku, dok su Kuvajćani novac od preprodaje Željezare iskoristili za izvođenje napada na SAD.

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(segnalaz. a cura di DK)