REFLECTIONS

...The Kuwaiti royal family, for instance, is reported to have invested more of its wealth in the United States and Europe than in its own homeland...

...security policy was clearly stated recently by General A.M...

...Unwilling or unable to contemplate a transition to a peaceable world, many senior U.S...

...But with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of Japan and Germany as formidable trade competitors, it is possible to demonstrate that America's most promising future involves a cooperative economic relationship with the Third World—not an endless round of debilitating military confrontations...

...This situation will become more critical as our nation and allies, as well as potential adversaries, become more and more dependent on these strategic resources...

...in Africa and South Asia, ethnic and tribal conflict increases as poor people take out their frustration on those slightly better or slightly worse off...

...True, many Third World nations are backing the United States in its crusade against Iraq...

...The global capitalist expansion celebrated by Western leaders has not contributed to the economic advancement of the poorer Third World nations...

...The Bush Administration has announced, moreover, that U.S...

...Changes in Europe and the Soviet Union do not promise a tranquil world nor an end to threats to American interests around the globe," the Air Force noted in June...

...If we are to have stability in these regions, maintain access to their resources, protect our citizens abroad, defend our vital installations, and deter conflict, we must maintain within our active force structure a credible military power projection capability with the flexibility to respond to conflict across the spectrum of violence throughout the globe...

...The increased lethality of weaponry and the proliferation of force in the developing world make regional conflicts more rather than less likely...

...For now, the ever-so-convenient invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein provides a compelling rationale for U.S...

...Their favored stand-in: growing instability and insurgency in the Third World...

...And "insurgencies and terrorism directed against U.S...

...For one-fourth of humanity—about 1.2 billion people—the 1980s were a time not of go-go growth but of deepening hunger, poverty, and desperation...

...A similar pattern prevails in most other regional conflicts in the underdeveloped "South...

...Human beings (not to mention other species) suffer in this process, as starving peasants flee to refugee camps or urban shantytowns...

...Iraq is not among the poorest of Third World nations, and Saddam Hussein had his own megalomaniacal reasons for seeking regional supremacy...

...The message, to friends and enemies alike, is that Americans are willing to risk their lives to insure the security of our friends and allies...

...the frustration that arises from seeing luxury goods advertised on television sets in showroom windows...

...If would be easy to dismiss such alarmist statements as mere Pentagon hype, designed to pry a few more dollars out of a deficit-conscious Congress...

...they represent the shape of things to come...

...military will always have a "mission" so long as the West remains dependent on Third World materials, and so long as conditions do not improve for the inhabitants of those areas...

...The world of the 1990s and beyond is likely to be characterized by a combination of political instability, serious economic dislocation, and [proliferating] military power...

...If this outlook becomes the prevailing mode in U.S...

...In the present crisis, for instance, the disputed borders among Iraq, Kuwait, and the other Gulf states were largely set by London and Paris following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire...

...Long accustomed to a privileged status in U.S...

...Gray, the commandant of the U.S...

...But here, too, Third World poverty expresses itself: With a large population (approximately eighteen million), Iraq cannot produce enough oil to provide affluence for all of its citizens (as is the case with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the other Persian Gulf sheikdoms), and so the super-wealth of Riyadh and Kuwait City has evidently aroused considerable resentment among the Iraqi masses...

...The Pentagon depicts the passing of the Cold War as a relatively insignificant event—a mere transition point on the road to a more violent and unstable future...

...In many of these societies, moreover, deepening recession accompanies rising affluence as authoritarian leaders seek to resist the tide of democratization sweeping across the world...

...This linkage between Third World turmoil and U.S...

...Similar arguments were advanced by U.S...

...The United States faces as complex and varied a security environment as it enters the 1990s as at any time in its history," the U.S...

...The United States faces a perpetual cycle of conflict with the angry and resentful communities of the Third World...

...military intervention in regional Third World conflicts...

...military involvement abroad...

...society because of the public's fear of Soviet aggression, America's military services are facing substantial cuts in their budgets and troop strengths as fear of the Soviet Union disappears...

...And while the likely defeat of Saddam Hussein is certain to be heralded as a victory for world cooperation, it will also set a precedent for recurring U.S...

...forces and Third World armies (or insurgents...

...in Latin America and the Philippines, insurgent movements (the Sendero Luminoso in Peru and the New People's Army in the Philippines) seize on the anger and, in many areas, the desperate struggle for survival pushes many would-be entrepreneurs into the illegal narcotics trade...

...military leaders strive to find a new rationale for preserving America's existing national-security establishment...

...security that can be billed as the rough equivalent of the Soviet threat...

...The Iran-contra affair, the excesses of "Operation Just Cause" in Panama, and "Desert Shield" are not aberrations...

...and allied interests, insofar as they imperil "access" to particular mines, ports, or oil fields...

...During the Cold War, however, the central U.S...

...Human suffering mounts: the agonies of torture and confinement, the misery brought on by hunger and sickness, and the torment of watching loved ones waste away for lack of adequate food, water, and shelter...

...leaders imply that we should retain our superpower status by excelling in the area we know best-using military power to subdue weaker Third World nations...

...And even within the wealthier Third World countries, huge reservoirs of appalling poverty gather and grow...

...officials employ secrecy, deceit, and unconstitutional methods in their efforts to combat ambiguous threats abroad...

...Existing farmlands are overcropped, and marginal lands—hillsides, tropical forests, and dry pasturelands—are imprudently brought under cultivation...

...interests...

...The difference between words of support and actions of conviction, is that we're willing to put U.S...

...The Kashmir Michael T. Klare is an associate professor of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts...

...Even if the loss of life among Americans can be kept fairly low, there will be an inevitable erosion of our humanitarian and democratic values as U.S...

...These tasks will not be accomplished quickly or easily...

...For much of the Middle East and North Africa, resentment against Western-style development fuels a dramatic upsurge in Islamic fundamentalism, sometimes accompanied by insurgency or terrorism...

...troops on the ground," Cheney explained earlier this year...

...This is an awesome challenge, but not an insurmountable one if the hundreds of billions of dollars now spent annually by developing countries on military forces were converted to civilian programs, and if the Third World's $1.2 trillion debt were significantly diminished...

...Some comes from the oligarchs, generals, banks, and corporations that benefit from the Third World's dependent economic status...

...military thinking—and the current Persian Gulf crisis elevates it to high national policy—we can expect a continuing series of armed encounters between U.S...

...may not be the 'world's policeman,' but its power projection forces will remain the free world's insurance policy...

...In many cases, however, the legacy of colonialism and the poverty-inducing mechanisms of the world economic system will have instigated or exacerbated the conflicts...

...The U.S...

...These feelings are multiplying in the Third World, and give rise to a wide variety of insurgent, sectarian, and criminal movements...

...Consider, for instance, the following assessment of America's post-Cold War security posture by Senator John McCain of Arizona, an influential Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee...

...military forces" and increases "the likelihood that U.S...

...Despite all the aid provided by the richer countries, and despite the often frantic efforts of Third World nations to join the world capitalist system, they have discovered that there is no apparent escape from underdevelopment...

...But what does it take to serve as the "free world's insurance policy...

...The picture in the Persian Gulf is more complicated...

...The only way to reduce significantly the level of Third World violence is to tackle the root cause of poverty—unsupportable debt levels, archaic political and economic structures, inadequate commodity prices, excessive military expenditures, and inadequate health, education, and birth-control services...

...In El Salvador and the Philippines, a feudal land system that enriches a few large landowners at the expense of the landless majority inspires and sustains the guerrilla movements...

...Not all will be attributable to intervention, direct or indirect, from the industrial powers...

...But there is another obstacle to change—the U.S...

...Not all Third World countries fit this pattern...

...But this should not obscure the fact that Iraq is a wholly autonomous Third World power, while most of the Arab leaders aligned with Washington have long since cast their lot with the West...

...More than one billion human beings suffer these afflictions on a daily basis...

...The continuing long-term decline in primary commodity prices throttles Third World economies, and environmental degradation corrodes their agricultural societies...

...dispute originated in the divide-and-conquer policies of imperial Britain, while the bloodshed in Lebanon has its roots in the "confessional system" (consigning dominance to the Christian minority) imposed by the French after World War I. Most of the victims of these conflicts, whatever their origins, will be people of the South...

...dependence on oil imports and other Third World materials is growing, McCain argued that "our strategy and force mix must reflect the fact that our allies [Germany and Japan] are even more dependent on global stability and the free flow of trade than we are...

...Such North-South encounters will, in fact, become the dominant motif in international relations...

...military officials experience in response to an imminent loss of their power and prestige...

...The result: exhausted farmlands, depleted water supplies, soil erosion, the silting of waterways, desertification, deforestation, and other forms of environmental decline...

...military forces will be called upon to defend U.S...

...Because Third World poverty and desperation inevitably generate anger and resentment against the West, the U.S...

...Such countries may boast urban centers with modern buildings and affluent suburbs-Seoul, Taipei, Bangkok, Jakarta, Cairo, Lagos, Sao Paulo—but the huts and hovels of the very poor huddle nearby...

...We need a worldwide campaign to shift the terms of trade between North and South, and we must make a determined effort to overcome the delusionary attraction of military "superpowerhood...

...military's desperate search for an alternative justification for its bloated existence in the face of a rapidly diminishing Soviet threat...

...Because any interruption in such areas could jeopardize Western economic well-being, and because no one else is available to do the job, the United States must—in the view of senior U.S...

...Army noted in its fiscal 1991 Posture Statement...

...troops may remain in the Gulf region long after the present crisis is resolved...

...Marine Corps: "The underdeveloped world's growing dissatisfaction over the gap between rich and poor nations will create a fertile breeding ground for insurgencies [which] have the potential to jeopardize regional stability and our access to vital economic and military resources...

...And while the East-West antagonisms of the past can be described as an irreconcilable clash between two great systems, Western-style capitalism and Soviet-style communism, the North-South antagonisms of the future can be viewed as an inexorable clash between two opposing maladies: Third World Poverty Syndrome and Post-Superpower Stress Syndrome...

...But once the Persian Gulf crisis recedes, the Pentagon will need fresh occasions to demonstrate our willingness "to put U.S...

...the anger that arises from being displaced from one's home or family plot by the henchmen of greedy landlords and corporations...

...goal of "containing" Soviet power in Eurasia subordinated these traditional concerns...

...troops on the ground...

...But now, with the end of the Cold War, they are again coming to the fore as U.S...

...Such perverse pride in supplying the cannon fodder for Third World police operations is particularly evident in the elite Washington reaction to the Administration's handling of the Gulf crisis...

...Furthermore, our strategy "must reflect the fact that no other allied or friendly nation will suddenly develop power projection forces, and that it would not be in our interest to encourage other nations to assume this role...

...What's more, the sympathy Saddam Hussein has mustered in the Arab world arose from the perception that most of the region's oil wealth has accrued to the benefit of Western banks and multinationals, not to the Arab masses...

...Many of these nations emerged from colonialism with ravaged natural resources and one-crop plantation systems that are highly vulnerable to price-cutting by major consumers in the North...

...officers have attempted to conjure up a new threat to U.S...

...If we are to avert this ghastly future, we must work on two fronts: We must weaken the grip of the Third World Poverty Syndrome abroad and resist the spread of Post-Superpower Stress Syndrome at home...

...The answer, according to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, is that we, alone among the great powers, are willing to spill the blood of our young soldiers...

...But for most of Latin America, all of sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia and the Middle East, the 1980s were a time of diminished economic health, not of development...

...To make matters worse, many poor families try to increase their size, in order to compensate for rising infant-mortality rates and to increase the number of hands available for agricultural (or other) labor—thus increasing the population growth at a time of diminishing economic resources...

...leaders—be prepared to use force to protect these vital interests...

...But there is something deeper here: a sense that America's glory days as the world's number one superpower are fading, and that other powers—Japan and Germany—are emerging as the powerhouses of the 1990s...

...Recognizing that we cannot compete altogether successfully in the realm of commerce (where Japan's and Germany's demilitarized economies provide a significant advantage), many U.S...

...Such conflicts will have their own unique causes and characteristics...

...But because these conflicts will occur in areas that house energy supplies or other vital raw materials, the conflicts will seem to Washington to pose a threat to U.S...

...Some will entail conflicts between states, while others will involve fighting between states and insurgents, or between one ethnic or religious group and another...

...Those who so recently predicted America's imminent decline," former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard L. Armitage wrote on August 16, "must now acknowledge that the United States alone possesses sufficient moral, economic, political, and military horsepower to jump-start and drive international efforts to curb international lawlessness...

...This combination "presents new challenges for U.S...

...Those nations of the Third World that borrowed heavily to develop their infrastructures now stagger under the crushing weight of debt to foreign banks...

...leaders in the early decades of the Twentieth Century to justify interventions in Panama, Nicaragua, Cuba, the Philippines, and other Third World domains...

...REFLECTIONS Michael T. Klare The New World War The current crisis in the Persian Gulf may be the opening battle in a new world war—a war that pits the United States and its Western industrial allies against the embittered and insurgent forces of the Third World...

...Unfortunately, there is much resistance to this solution...

...Post-Superpower Stress Syndrome is a psychological disorder senior U.S...

...Such views are, of course, not new to American military discourse...

...This is a confrontation that can only end in tragedy for all concerned-bloodshed and further suffering in the Third World, gradual impoverishment, and moral decay at home...

...But there is also resentment, frustration, and anger—the resentment that arises from seeing chauffeur-driven Mercedes on the streets of impoverished Third World cities...

...Military expenditures eat up a significant portion of government expenditures, and when export sales generate a surplus, the rich elites tend to siphon it off and deposit it in foreign banks...

...citizens and property around the world have not abated...

...This resentment is shared by the poor inhabitants of Jordan, Egypt, and other Arab countries who have expressed sympathy for the Iraqi cause...

...After noting that U.S...