'Truth,' it has been said, 'is the first casualty of war.'—Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden
In this issue:
Has the Flip flopping US President Donald Trump Opened Two War Fronts, in Syria and in the Korean Peninsula?
-The Syrian War Front: The False Premise
-The Syrian War Front: Truth Dies in the Hands of Politics
-The Korean Peninsula Front: The Syrian Link
-How a War in the Korean Peninsula Might Unfold
Has the Flip flopping US President Donald Trump Opened Two War Fronts, in Syria and in the Korean Peninsula?
Geopolitical risk has ostensibly been crescendoing.
As I have been saying here, this is a symptom of an underlying disease. People’s time preference has been rising, not just in the Philippines but around the world. Or, the propensity for short-term (usually simplified) solutions on complex problems, mostly through the use of force or violence, has only been escalating. A good example of the short-termism syndrome is the growing popularity of the strongman rule.
The Syrian War Front: The False Premise
On April 7, the Trump administration fired 59 tomahawk missiles targeted at the Shayrat air base in Syria. The reason for such action was that the Trump administration blamed a recent chemical attack on the Syria’s government.
Note that the 59 tomahawk missiles had an estimated worth of US $60 million to $93.8 million. This should put intoprism the scale of money involved in such undertaking. It tells us that outside the “us versus them” geopolitical dimension, various interests group profits or benefits from such actions. Two-time Medal of Honor awardee retired Marine Major General Smedley Butler was right: “War is a racket”!
What’s fascinating has been the apostasy by the Donald.
As a private citizen, Mr. Trump fiercely lambasted the US government’s war on Syria. Using his famous tweet storm, he chided the Obama administration to ‘Stay Out of Syria’ in 2013.
The “stay out of Syria” theme was likewise evident in the path to the Whitehouse. In the climax of the Presidential campaign period, candidate Trump chastised his rival “Democrat Hillary Clinton's plan for Syria would "lead to World War Three"”!
So what has changed?
The Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons against their own people has reportedly prompted president Trump’s pivotal U-turn.
Yet the history of war has been laden with false premises.
Trumped up charges against the government of Saddam Hussein, who had been accused of storing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), served as the principal justification for the US government’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. After losses of tens of thousands of lives, truth ultimately came out on March 31, 2005: “The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction reports that the intelligence community was "dead wrong" in its assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities before the US invasion.” Saddam was thus exculpated. But the US government never admitted to this.
Moreover, the legacy—the direct costs of the war in terms of lives (200k or 151k-600k), resources or money ($ 1.1 to 2 trillion)—lingers on. That’s because the American government has only failed to wrap up the war. In fact, the US government has re-engaged Iraq in 2014. There are significant indirect costs too (regional stability costs, counterfactual economic costs, opportunity costs, refugees).
But insiders control political institutions. Worst, power corrupts absolutely.
The ouster of Trump’s Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, a staunch nationalist, from the National Security Council, in place of war hawks (generals) have signaled Trump’s volte-face.
This was partly due to the influence of Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who reportedly was incensed by the chemical attack. “Trump’s dramatic U-turn”, according to the Sun, “was sparked by daughter Ivanka’s heartbreak after gas attack”. Thismust have triggered an intense power struggle involving presidential son in law Jared Kushner that led to the ouster of Bannon. Kushner apparently jumped to the side of ardent ant-Russian, national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, the architect of the Syrian attack.
Revulsion to civilian deaths from conflict should be natural. But crucial questions should be asked: who was responsible and why?
Could it be that Syrian strike had been used as camouflage to the 200 civilian deaths from the airstrikes by the US government in Mosul Iraq, just last March or less than a month ago?
The world expressed shock and outrage for 70 fatalities supposedly due to the actions by the Syrian government, but how about the 200 civilians slain by the US government’s airstrikes? Where are the denunciations? Why the selective preference?
Where was the outrage when the US government ‘mistakenly’ strafed the Kunduz hospital operated by NGO Doctors without Borders that killed 42 civilians and medical workers and injured dozens more in 2015?
Apparently, “mistakes” by the US government should be passed off as nonevents; move along, nothing to see here.
Yet such perceived “injustice” exactly sows the seeds of conflict. Actions have consequences.
Even more interesting, US warships practiced the launch of Tomahawks even before Trump gave a-go-ahead for the airstrike against Syria.
This also posits to the growing influence of military advisers on the Trump administration. Trump has now been captured by the military industrial complex.
I would like to add that this comes on the heels of Trump’s major defeat to repeal and replace Obamacare. This is aside from the delays in the ballyhooed Tax reforms. Hence, the twin major political setbacks must have been so painful to the esteem of Mr. Trump for him to take on a desperate route of attacking Syria to salvage what remains of his political capital.
In short, Trump’s turnaround has hardly been founded from accurate and relevant information but based most likely from political influences from vested interest groups, from nepotism and from Trump’s inflated ego.
Further, why would Syria’s Assad slaughter his own people, when the Syrian Army, backed by Russia and Iran, has been on a winning streak against Syrian rebels?
Or could it be that the real objective for the bombardment of the Syrian base had been to preserve the positions of US supported rebels, who were fighting to overthrow the Assad government? Or simply put, the war hasn’t been about the ISIS but about the toppling of Syria’s Assad.
The Syrian War Front: Truth Dies in the Hands of Politics
The US government has a Syrian Train and Equip Program in support of Syrian rebels. Both the CIA and the Pentagon have trained and supported different groups, which reportedly included the Al-Nusra Al Qaeda factions in Syria. With the latter group including the ISIS on the run, actions by the US effectively stanched the bleeding. What more than to strike the base from which had crippled US-trained rebels?
And yet why didn’t Trump demand an extensive investigation of the ‘outrageous’ chemical attack? It may have been committed by the rebels (whether by design or by accident). It could also an aftereffect of the bombing of rebel bases that stored chemical weapons by the Syrian government that spread outside the area of attack. Or it may have been a false flag, a planted or deliberately contrived attack to lay blame on the Syrian government in order to force Mr. Trump’s hands. Apparently, truth dies in the hands of politics.
And this conversation between a Syrian government official and chemical producers supposedly serve as the evidence? Guilt by association? Fallacies or fake news could lead to Armageddon???
Russia claims that chemical attack was staged.
More than 2 dozen former US intelligence officials appealed or urged president Trump “to rethink his claims blaming the Syrian government for the chemical deaths in Idlib and to pull back from his dangerous escalation of tensions with Russia”. Some US lawmakers posited that the lack of proof fail to justify Trump’s actions against Syria.
Besides, Trump has depended on the intelligence networks that got him embroiled in the controversy that linked him with the Russians to supposedly influence the US elections.
As was in the case of Iraq, would reliance on information derived from such highly politicized agencies be worth the risk of a possible armed confrontation or even a thermonuclear exchange with Russia?
Didn’t Mr. Trump warn his rival in the presidential elections that this approach could “lead to World War Three”?
Or was the assault on Syria been engineered to demolish the allegation of his ties with the Russians???
If this would be the case, and if it stops here, then risks of a full-blown conflict should recede. But of course, this won’t be announced.
What this shows is that all these haven’t been about the shibboleth “America First” but Trump’s ego first.
On the other hand, if the Trump administration have now been controlled by the deep state—unidentified or invisible political operators or elites from private and public institutions with huge clout on policymaking—then the Middle East turmoil has just gotten much deeper.
Trump’s airstrike on Syria changes the playing field in the Middle East power politics.
If expectations that the Trump administration will escalate its war against Syria, then this would only incentivize its biggest adversaries, in particular, the Muslim Sunni faction led by Saudi Arabia and their allies as well as Israel to expand the theater of war against the Iran, Syria, and the Hezbollah as well as their patron, Russia.
So far, Mr. Trump has said that there will be “no troops in Syria” even though his National Security adviser, Mr. McMaster has pressed for 150,000 ground troops.
Given Mr. Trump’s capriciousness, everything can change without notice. That’s how fluid events are today.
Another example of Mr. Trump’s flipflop: in his campaign, Mr. Trump branded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as “obsolete”. In the wake of his airstrike, he backtracked and called “NATO is no longer obsolete”. Convenience over principle.
As a side note, Mr. Trump reversed his policy outlooks in just ONE DIZZYING day notes the Star. Aside from NATO, his outlook took a U-turn in China, Export-Import Bank, National debt and interest rates.
Just how can one deal with a person who changes his mind as fast as he changes his underwear?
Of course, the obvious response to these was for Russia, Iran and Syria to jointly warn the US from further attacks which they claim as constituting “flagrant violations” of the international law.
It’s interesting to see that just a day after the US airstrike whereby only 23 of the 59 targets had been hit, Syrian warplanes went on sorties again to bomb rebels.
This means the either Trump had purposely missed those targets or that the vaunted US forces were hardly as accurate as they have been portrayed in media. If it is the latter, conventional warfare would expose the flaws of the US military. And the use of the nuclear option would seem increasingly attractive when major weakness have been revealed.
In addition, a few days after the airstrike against the Assad government, US forces accidentally killed 18 friendly or allied Syrian rebels. Again, more of the same, recklessness.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went to Moscow to meet his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week. Apparently, hardly anything substantial came out of the meeting, which according to the New Yorker, “featured the same tropes that defined summits with Tillerson’s predecessors, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry: a long list of grievances directed at the U.S. by the Russian side; a basic disagreement over the role of Bashar al-Assad and the preferred contours of a political solution to the civil war in Syria; and vague expressions of optimism with little in the way of concrete breakthroughs.”
The Korean Peninsula Front: The Syrian Link
Another perspective could be that air raid on Syria could have been intended to cajole the Chinese government to commit to the side of the US government.
Has the timing not been a surprise?
Mr. Trump feted China’s president Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago estate just right after US forces struck Syria. Mr. Trump even declared that both of them talked about the US airstrike Syria over ‘beautiful cake’.
A falling out between the China and its client state, North Korea has emerged after the latter’s persistent missile tests. Both Russia and China condemned Pyongyang last February after the latter conducted a new ballistic missiles test. The Chinese government even suspended coal shipments from Pyongyang last February to signal its protest.
Even worse, the assassination of the half-brother of North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jung Un, Mr. Kim Jong Nam in Malaysia, widened this gap. Mr. Kim Jong Nam, who lived in China for about a decade, was under the protective custody of the Chinese government. Thus the assassination, which was allegedly under the orders of the North Korean government, left the Chinese government with a “sense of betrayal”.
Perhaps, Mr. Trump persuaded Mr. Xi that the Syrian strike could have merely been a one-off signaling event.
Thus, a quid pro quo emerged post the Mar-a-Lago bilateral meeting.
President Trump backed off from calling China a currency manipulator. The Chinese government surprisingly abstained from voting in the UN Security Council to condemn Syria for the recent chemical attack, which Russia vetoed. The Chinese government also suspended coal imports from North Korea and instead opted for US supplies. The Chinese government also warned rogue ally North Korea against carrying out nuclear tests which it said that such act constituted a “dangerous and irresponsible”.
But because the US government sent an armada led by US carrier Carl Vinzon into the Korean Peninsula, the Chinese government said that “They are 'not obliged to defend North Korea from an attack'. Reason? The development of nuclear weapons signified a breach in the 1961 mutual defence pact or the Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty.
It’s unclear whether Trump’s sending a US fleet was part of the agreement with Xi or if this has gone beyond the Mar-a-Lago summit.
While the taunting between North Korea and the US government continues, the Chinese government has reportedlyamassed 150,000 troops at its border with North Korea, backed by various military vehicles.
While such actions have been explained as having meant to contain an influx of refugees and from ‘unforeseen circumstances’, it could imply of other possible responses:
One, the Chinese government may move against North Korea in tandem with US strikes (if this was part of the deal).
Two, once the North Korean government collapses, the Chinese government would act to immediately install a China friendlyregime, hence keeping North Korea as a buffer from US bases in South Korea.
Three, the Chinese government has set a limit to the actions undertaken by the US government. Should US actions move beyond such limits or parameters, the Chinese government may act to defend North Korea.
Part of the psy war was for North Korea to parade new missiles in its 105th anniversary ‘day of the sun’ celebrations.
And in defiance of the warnings on missile tests, North Korea launched a missile test today (April 16), which unfortunately blew up.
And given Trump’s vacillating positions, whatever goodwill that Mr. Trump has attained in the Mar-a-Lago meeting with Mr. Xi seems highly tenuous.
Proof? Mr. Trump called Mr. Xi to talk about North Korea. Here’s UK’s Sunday Express: “The unexpected telephone call came after Mr Trump tweeted: “North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! “I explained to the President of China that a trade deal with the U.S. will be far better for them if they solve the North Korean problem!” Tensions have escalated further today after reports that Japan is planning to join a US Navy strike group in the waters off the Korean peninsula.” (italics mine)
Hence, the Chinese government appealed to its Russian counterpart to help contain the North Korean crisis. Both havecautioned the US and North Korea from taking measures that would spiral out of control.
Finally, to give a sense or a template of how conflict has been brewing underneath, the Japanese air force scrambled fighter jets 1,168 times in 2016, mostly to intercept Chinese planes. This exceeded the cold war high of 944 during the cold war or in 1984. In 2015, the comparable figure was at 875.
How a War in the Korean Peninsula Might Unfold
Let us see how a US-North Korean standoff may occur.
Historian Eric Margolis deals first with the thermonuclear exchange scenario. (bold mine)
The US could literally blow North Korea off the map using tactical nuclear weapons based in Japan, South Korea and at sea with the 7th Fleet. Or delivered by B-52 and B-1 bombers and cruise missiles. But this would cause clouds of lethal radiation and radioactive dust to blanket Japan, South Korea and heavily industrialized northeast China, including the capital, Beijing.
China would be expected to threaten retaliation against the United States, Japan and South Korea to deter a nuclear war in next door Korea. At the same time, if heavily attacked, a fight-to-the-end North Korea may fire off a number of nuclear-armed medium-range missiles at Tokyo, Osaka, Okinawa and South Korea. These missiles are hidden in caves in the mountains on wheeled transporters and hard to identify and knock out.
This is a huge risk. Such a nuclear exchange would expose about a third of the world’s economy to nuclear contamination, not to mention spreading nuclear winter around the globe.
A thermonuclear blast would menace Asia first!
The next is conventional warfare.
A conventional US attack on North Korea would be far more difficult. The North is a small nation of only 24.8 million. Its air and sea forces are obsolete and ineffective. They would be vaporized on the first day of a war. But North Korea’s million-man army has been training and digging in for decades to resist a US invasion. Pyongyang’s 88,000-man Special Forces are poised for suicide attacks on South Korea’s political and military command and control and to cripple key US and South Korean air bases, notably Osan and Kunsan.
North Korea may use chemical weapons such as VX and Sarin to knock out the US/South Korean and Japaneseairbases, military depots, ports and communications hubs. Missile attacks would be launched against US bases in Guam and Okinawa.
Short of using nuclear weapons, the US would be faced with mounting a major invasion of mountainous North Korea, something for which it is today unprepared. It took the US six months to assemble a land force in Saudi Arabia just to attack feeble Iraq. Taking on the tough North Korean army and militia in their mountain redoubts will prove a daunting challenge.
US analysts have in the past estimated a US invasion of North Korea would cost some 250,000 American casualties and at least $10 billion, though I believe such a war would cost four times that much today. The Army, Air Force and Marines would have to mobilize reserves to wage a war in Korea. Already overstretched US forces would have to be withdrawn from Europe and the Mideast. Military conscription might have to be re-introduced.
US war planners believe that an attempt to assassinate or isolate North Korean leader Kim Jung-un – known in the military as ‘decapitation’- would cause the North Korean armed forces to scatter and give up. I don’t think so.
This is the reason why the US used the MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast) or the Mother of All Bombs in Afghanistan last week which reportedly claimed 94 lives. The bomb is “primarily intended for soft to medium surface targets covering extended areas and targets in a contained environment such as a deep canyon or within a cave system.”
It’s a signal to Pyongyang that the US government would use MOABs to flush out “the mountain redoubts”.
And if I’m not mistaken, Trump’s actions entail the creation of two war fronts: Syria and the Korean Peninsula.
Worst, instead of lesser adversaries, Trump representing the US deep state seems as upping their ante to include nuclear powers in the roster of enemies.
Probably, the US deep state sees Russia and China as a growing threat to the US hegemony.
Probably too, that economic pressures at home require the diversion of their citizen’s attention towards external foes to maintain their political survival.
Perhaps too, it’s all about the moolah and of the special privileges as the policeman of the world.
And it could be a cocktail mix of the above.
As the frame of thinking becomes increasingly tunneled, violence becomes more of the option.
Yet, Mr. Margolis offered a simple but very relevant solution:
All this craziness would be ended if the US signed a peace treaty with North Korea ending the first Korean War and opened up diplomatic and commercial relations. No need for war or missile threats. North Korea is a horrid, brutal regime. But so is Egypt, whose tin pot dictator was wined and dined by Trump last week.
But peace is bad politics and bad business for the neoconservatives and the military industrial complex.
Please pray for global peace.
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