Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
Right now I am working on a paper about international security, an exploration of various theories such as neo-realism and critical theory critiques of international relations. Here I'm dumping some stories I found which are tied to the issues:
Ariel Sharon's new proposal to "unilaterally" withdraw from much of Gaza with a good chomp of the West Bank in exchange gets a lot of news. The Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly features Jonathan Cook, saying its another Dead End:
A [PLO] statement issued on Friday ... rejected the "unilateral disengagement" plan. "The plan is a recipe for a takeover of most of the territories of the West Bank," the statement read.Such fears are not an over-reaction. On the heels of Sharon's announcement, the prime minister's office revealed that the plan involved transferring the Gaza evacuees to the West Bank to "consolidate" settlement blocs such as Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, Ariel near Nablus, and Gush Etzion south of Bethlehem. Israeli media soon became rife with rumour that Sharon would suggest to the White House that the price of evacuation would be the annexation of several large settlement blocs in the West Bank.
One source in the prime minister's office was quoted in Ma'ariv as saying, "We are putting out feelers, to see what the Americans will agree to."
The damaging effects of Israel withdrawing from Gaza unilaterally -- without a final peace deal establishing a sovereign Palestinian state -- are not hard to predict. Even if the army does pull back, it will simply be withdrawing to a new line around Gaza. The Strip would be effectively besieged, with no Palestinian control over entry or exit... It would be a settler-less occupation, but a continuing occupation nonetheless. That is hardly likely to dampen the flames of anger sweeping through Gaza's refugee camps.
Counter-intuitively, here perhaps lies some of the appeal of a Gaza evacuation for Sharon. The plan is soaking up headlines that should be reminding readers of the corruption scandal ensnaring Sharon. It ... turns the hostile gaze of the world away from the apartheid wall under construction in the West Bank. But watching from the sidelines as Palestinian political factions, along with the population of Gaza, descend into civil war may be the biggest prize of all.
The first signs of where Gaza is heading may have appeared last Thursday when a half-hour gun battle raged outside the headquarters of Razi Jabali, supreme commander of the police in Gaza. Amid rumours of treachery, betrayal and assassination attempts by the Preventive Security Organisation, one policeman was killed and 11 others wounded. Hatem Abdul-Qader, a senior Fatah member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, warned, "A withdrawal based on bad intentions and without coordination with the PA will transform Gaza into a living hell."
South Lebanon became the Hezbollah state, and a similar situation is liable to develop in the Gaza Strip. The point is that Israel is in the process of creating two Palestinian states, one in Gaza and the other in the West Bank. In Gaza, it is conducting its major military campaign against one organization, Hamas; it is proposing to withdraw from that organization's territory, evacuate settlements and demarcate a perfect boundary line with an enemy state. At the end of the process, Gaza is liable to become an entity cut off from the main Palestinian system, the autonomous province of an organization and not a separate section of the Palestinian state.The signs that this is happening are already discernible on the ground. Hamas is presenting Israel's declaration of withdrawal from Gaza as its military and political victory, and not that of the Palestinian Authority or of the organizations associated with Fatah. Islamic Jihad has been shunted aside by Hamas, which is unwilling, for the time being, to incorporate it into one organizational framework... At the moment, Hamas does not consider a hudna (cease-fire) to be a Palestinian interest - meaning a Hamas interest - and its representatives are explaining that the organization is in a state of momentum that must not be broken off by a cease-fire.
The formulations being used by Hamas leaders to describe their "victory" are amazingly like the ones we heard from the heads of Hezbollah after the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon. But that is as far as the resemblance extends. Because even if there is a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, its 1.25 million inhabitants will continue to be under Israeli responsibility. In contrast to South Lebanon, Gaza will have no economic hinterland... The result is liable to be another huge Palestinian diaspora, like the one in Lebanon, but without its civilian infrastructure.
There is no dispute that Israel needs to withdraw from Gaza, and fast; but it also has to find a new landlord for Gaza, just as fast. That can only be the Palestinian Authority, which in the meantime is not enthusiastic about the idea of the unilateral withdrawal. "Gaza and Jericho first" was a good proposal for another period, when an economic infrastructure still existed in the Gaza Strip and Hamas was a limited organization, fighting for its status. For the PA to be able to accept control of Gaza now, it will have to wage a tremendous struggle with Hamas. However, Israel's continued war against Hamas, and the showcase manner in which it is being waged, with the large number of Palestinian casualties it is exacting, is only enhancing the organization's status and will make it even more difficult for the PA to rehabilitate its status in the Gaza Strip.
You, the people of Yesha [Judea, Samaria, Gaza], are leading ... You are responsible for your lives and you must prepare. The government is handing over the settlers to the armed Palestinian gangs ... They have already betrayed Jews to others in the past ... To be a betrayer and an `informer' is part of the spiritual way of life of the left ... This pathological government is collaborating twice: once with a terrorist organization, a second time against Jews ... What haven't we done - we explained, we voted no-confidence numberless times. Nothing helped, they are determined. So the time has come to stop talking, the time has come to act.
Reversing a trend that predicated the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has increased its military budget to more than $400 billion and its intelligence budget to more than $40 billion. Current projections point to a defense budget of more than $500 billion before the end of the decade, with another $50 billion for the intelligence community. Led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Department of Defense has moved aggressively to eclipse the State Department as the major locus of U.S. foreign policy, arrogating management of the intelligence community, and abandoning bipartisan policies of arms control and disarmament crafted over the past four decades. Funding cuts have prompted the Department of State to close consulates around the world and assign personnel of the well-funded CIA to diplomatic and consular posts. Though current defense costs represent nearly 20% of Washington?s expenses, less than 1% of the federal budget is devoted to the needs of the State Department.
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The militarization of the intelligence community has been particularly profound. Nearly 90 % of the $40 billion budget for intelligence activity is allocated to and monitored by the Pentagon, and more than 90 % of all intelligence personnel report to the Pentagon. The Pentagon controls the tasking, collection, and analysis of all satellite photography. Moreover, such key intelligence bodies as the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency), and the National Reconnaissance Office are designated as ?combat support? agencies. This is exactly what President Harry S. Truman was trying to avoid in 1947 when he created the Central Intelligence Agency separate from the Pentagon, and made the CIA director of central intelligence as well.Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has gone further than any other defense secretary to control intelligence collection and analysis. He created the position of undersecretary of defense for intelligence without vetting this move with the Senate intelligence committee. In preparing the case against Iraq, he created the Office of Special Plans, which collected specious intelligence and misused intelligence community collection to justify the war and to create a congressional consensus in favor of war. Rumsfeld?s moves received rubber stamp approval from the Senate Armed Forces Committee, undermining the oversight roles of the Senate and House intelligence committees.
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The doctrinal policies of the Bush administration have helped to make the international arena a more dangerous place. In his commencement address at West Point in June 2002, President Bush endorsed preemptive attacks, and several months later, the White House issued its National Security Strategy, which discarded the policy of détente and containment and endorsed preemptive or preventive military actions against states with which the U.S. is at peace. Ominously, the strategy report warned that the U.S. would ?make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them.? The Pentagon?s Defense Planning Guidance and the Quadrennial Defense Review projected an indefinite future of continuous and worldwide war, endorsed the policy of regime change, and championed preemptive attack as the means for securing peace through international acceptance of U.S. hegemony. The Nuclear Posture Review of 2002 lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons, and the 2003 defense bill eliminated restrictions on researching low-yield nuclear weapons...
A confidential report prepared by the US-led administration in Iraq says that the attacks by insurgents in the country have escalated sharply, prompting fears of what it terms Iraq's "Balkanisation". The findings emerged after a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the top US general in Iraq, John Abizaid, on Thursday."January has the highest rate of violence since September 2003," the report said. "The violence continues despite the expansion of the Iraqi security services and increased arrests by coalition forces in December and January."
The report makes clear how dependent Iraq's stability is on investment in the country's economy. "A fear of some is the 'Balkanisation' of Iraq if security, economic and infrastructure situations do not improve," it says.
It attributed much of the civilian violence to rising ethnic tensions between Kurds, Shias and Sunnis, noting that several bodies were found in the south "with hands bound and bullet wounds to the head".