Showbiz Politics: The Myth of US-Philippine Defense Pact Promoting Regional Peace

As I said yesterday, showbiz has practically consumed most of social affairs in the Philippines.

More evidence of showbiz in the context of the bilateral military agreement between the heads of state of the US and the Philippines. 

From the Philippine Inquirer:

“The Philippines-U.S. Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) takes our security cooperation to a higher level of engagement, reaffirms our countries’ commitment to mutual defense and security, and promotes regional peace and stability,” Aquino said during their joint press conference.

Hours after the EDCA was signed, Aquino said the two countries’ defense alliance, even before the agreement, served as a “cornerstone of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region for more than 60 years.”

The populist model for attaining "peace and stability" can be summarized as: the “bullied” should get a “big backer” to ward off the “bully”.

This may work perhaps if the object of contention has been about the bullied. But what if it isn’t? What if the target has been instead the “backer”, where the “bullied’ is really just a pawn in their rivalry?

[As a side note, the reason why the "bully" behaves this way maybe due to the actions of the "backer" or the "rivalry". That's one aspect offered to us by US political insider K. Philippa Malmgren, who observed that "access to the shipping lanes in and out of China has become an increasingly high-priority issue. After all, that's how 90 percent of critical food and energy supplies arrive in China and also how most things leave China. Yet all China sees is the ever-increasing presence of the U.S. Navy encircling them and rendering sea access less certain. Let's not forget that 10 percent of the world's fish supply comes from "near seas". (bold mine)]

History shares us some lessons here

Philippine participation in World War II according to the Wikipedia.org (bold mine)

The Commonwealth of the Philippines was invaded by the Empire of Japan in December 1941 shortly after Japan's declaration of war upon the United States of America, which controlled the Philippines at the time and possessed important military bases there.

Let us put on the military tactician’s thinking hat on. Let’s say the opposite side has decided to go to war with the “backer”.  Which would the military planners of the aggressing nation attack first? Nations allied to the enemy with bases or without bases? Well, world War 2 has provided the answer; The Philippines was bombed a day after Pearl Harbor in December 8, 1941

I rightly predicted that the Philippine political trend has been headed towards this direction in early 2012. Sell nationalism to get popular approval to justify the defense agreement.  But then I wrote about the treaty, the recently concluded agreement is reportedly a “pact”—between the two executive offices—without congressional approval.

Yet despite the ”pact”, the peace and stability model—the “bullied” should get a “big backer” to ward off the “bully”—unfortunately seem to have fallen through.

From today’s headlines at the Inquirer. (bold mine)

Obama gave no categorical commitment whether the 62-year-old Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) between the two countries—the backbone of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca) signed by Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and US Ambassador Philip Goldberg—would apply in case the Philippines’ territorial dispute with China escalates into an armed confrontation.

Steering clear of the question, Obama instead pointed to Beijing’s “interest” in abiding by international law, saying “larger countries have a greater responsibility” to do so.

“Our goal is not to counter China; our goal is not to contain China,” he said in a joint press conference with President Aquino in Malacañang, reflecting a delicate balancing act throughout his weeklong trip that earlier took him to Japan, South Korea and Malaysia.

So the “pact” turns out to be a noncommittal military agreement which reveals of the extent of its lopsidedness in favor of the US. The US President Obama seem to have stiffed the Philippine administration and their mainstream supporters when he said that the US had no "specific position on the disputes between nations". Ouch. The Philippine government and the mainstream seem to have heavily been expecting a "big backer" role the US should have supposedly assumed.

Why the noncommittal stance? Most possibly because the US cannot commit to fight each, and engage in, every conflict of her allies. The US has already had her hands full in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Mali, Somalia, Yemen and etc. The Washington Blog estimates 74 different wars which the US has been engaged in. Ukraine may now be in the pipeline. 

You see, to expect the US to make a full commitment and yet deliver her promises with overstretched resources and personnel…well, that’s entertainment! Aside from the dozens of wars, the US has hundreds of bases around the world (estimates vary: Ron Paul 900, Charlmes Johnson 737) if not more than a thousand (Aljazeera, Global Research). The US budget for military spending in 2014 has been estimated at US$ 630 billion

And the non-committal stance by the US essentially debunks the one of the many impossible things believed by domestic populist politics, particularly Nationalism (and Nationalism based spending) is BEYOND the scope of economics and economic reasoning.  The lesson here is Economics drives politics.

The US President may have also been aware that an explicit support could have raised the risks of moral hazard, where the Philippine goverment may become more adversarial in her relationship with China.

With the base pact, I expect that the political trend, as I wrote in 2012, will now revolve around...

In reality, military bases have mostly been used as a staging point for political interventions in local affairs and for justifying the maintenance and or growth of the defense budget for the US federal government.

Promoting regional peace? Hardly. Maybe more of amplifying risks of geopolitical instability. 

And this “pact” looks more like a validation of the 2 time war medal the late Major General Smedley Butler’s claim that “war is a racket”

India: The Rise of a Nuclear Power

A brewing cold war has been developing which has not been in the radar screens of the mainstream.

Writes historian Eric Margolis at lewrockwell.com:

While the United States beats the war drums over North Korea and Iran’s long-ranged nuclear armed missiles –which they don’t even possess – Washington remains curiously silent about the arrival of the world’s newest member of the big nuke club – India.

In January, Delhi revealed a new, 800km-ranged submarine launched missile (SLBM) designated K-15. Twelve of these strategic, nuclear-armed missiles will be carried by India’s first of a class of domestically built nuclear-powered submarine, "Arihant." India is also working on another SLBM, K-5, with a range of some 2,800km.

These new nuclear subs and their SLBM’s will give India the capability to strike many high-value targets around the globe. Equally important, they complete India’s nuclear triad of nuclear weapons delivered by aircraft, missiles, and now sea that will be invulnerable to a decapitating first strike from either Pakistan or China.

Last February, it was revealed that India is fast developing a new, long-ranged, three-stage ballistic missile, Agni-VI. This powerful missile is said to be able to carry up to ten independently targetable nuclear warheads, known as MIRV’s.

Agni-VI’s range is believed to be at least 10,000km, putting all of China, Japan, Australia, and Russia in its range. A new 15,000km missile capable of hitting North America is also in the works under cover of India’s civilian space program. India is also developing accurate cruise missiles and miniaturized nuclear warheads to fit into their small diameter.

These important strategic developments will put India ahead of other nuclear powers France, Britain, North Korea, and Pakistan, about equal in striking power to Israel and China, and not too far behind the United States and Russia.

Delhi says it needs a nuclear triad because of the growing threat of China, whose conventional and nuclear forces are being rapidly modernized.

This writer has been reporting on the nuclear arms race between India and China since the late 1990’s. China has replaced Pakistan as India’s primary nuclear threat. Even so, Indian and Pakistani nuclear forces remain on a frightening hair-trigger alert within only a 3-5 minute warning time of enemy attack, making the Kashmir cease-fire line (or Line of Control) the world’s most dangerous border.

Pls. read the rest here.

World spending on nuclear weapons as of 2011 from icanw.org

Charts of the Day: World Military Spending and Arms Trade

Two related charts of the day

First world defense spending

The Economist speculates that if the current rate of growth persists, China will surpass the US in terms of military budget. 

AMERICA still spends over four times as much on defence as China, the world’s second-biggest military spender. But it has been clear for some time that on current trends China’s defence spending will overtake America’s sooner than most people think. What is less clear is when that date will be reached. It all depends on the underlying assumptions. The 2013 edition of the Military Balance published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) shows convergence could come as soon as 2023. That is based on extrapolating the rate of Chinese military spending since 2001—a 15.6% annual growth rate—and assuming that the cuts in the America's defence budget required under sequestration are not modified. The latter is more likely than the former. The latest Chinese defence budget is based on spending increasing by a more modest 10.7% annually. That would mean that China overtakes America in 2032.

However, if China’s headlong economic growth stalls or if more money is needed to serve the health and social needs of rapidly-ageing population, China might slow spending on its military by something like half its current projection. If that happens, the crossover point could be delayed by up to a decade. It is also possible (though at present America’s fiscal travails suggest otherwise), that as China rises, America will feel forced to start spending more if the security guarantees it currently makes to allies such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are to retain their credibility into the third decade of the century. Already, China spends more on defence than all of those three together. It is all very well for America to talk about a strategic rebalancing towards Asia, but if the money is not there to buy the ships, the aircraft and all the expensive systems that go with them, it will eventually sound hollow.

The Economist is right to suggest that this trend may not continue as this will likely depend on the state of the China's economy. Of course this will really depend on priorities of the Chinese government.

But what they sorely missed is of the real nature of “strategic rebalancing”, which is not supposed to be about military buildup but about trade.

They forget about Bastiat’s wisdom where “if goods don’t cross borders, armies will”

Second chart global arms trade.

The Reuters notes that China has taken the fifth spot in arms exports with Pakistan being the main recipient.

An arms race serves as dangerous signal for world peace. Such also functions as a thermometer of the desperate state of welfare-warfare governments, who by resorting to inflationism, attempts to divert domestic political economic problems towards geopolitics. And they do this primarily through nationalist overtones.

The sad part is that instead of the remedy of channeling resources into productive uses, an arms race means more economic hardship for society, aside from greater risk of war.

As the illustrious American author Ernest Hemingway rightly admonished,

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists

Unfortunately people hardly ever learn.

Chart of the Day: China’s Defense Spending

From Reuters (chart included)

China will raise military spending by 10.7% this year to 740.6 billion yuan ($119 billion). China’s defense spending is contained at about 5.4% of total expenditure, up from 5.3% last year, and remains at about one-fifth of the Pentagon’s spending 

This compares to the Philippines at $1.8 billion (2010) which represents .81% of GDP (Index Mundi) or $209 billion in 2011 or 1.08% of GDP (Wikipedia.org)

I am not suggesting that the Philippines should compete with China to bolster her military expenditures.

What I am also saying is that the Philippines lacks the capability to match China’s armed forces.

On the contrary the Philippines should cut government spending which should include that of the military’s. The focus instead should be on fostering trade relations with the every nation in this world. Trade relations will reduce the opportunities for conflict because trade promotes harmonious relations even among diversified interest groups.

Nevertheless expanding and nurturing a huge army will eventually take a toll on the economy as scarce resources are diverted for non-productive activities.

Moreover, huge armies become a temptation for adventurism and domestic instability. Japan’s pre-World War II political and economic policies which led to the dominance of the military in shaping national decisions should serve as example.

The ‘late’ al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden once predicted that the overall strategy of guerilla warfare has been a war of attrition meant to bankrupt or financially bleed her foes, particularly the US. In the same way the Soviet Russia lost the Afghan War.

Developing political economic conditions in the US, predicated on the growing warfare and welfare state, have been indicating the path of such politics dictated internal decay.

And it must be remembered we are in the nuclear age, where the character of military conflict has changed relative to the 20th century.

As a final note charts of the US-China arms race in Asia I have previously posted here

US Military Suicides at New Record High

Apparently US foreign imperial policies have been countenanced with an internal blowback (which I earlier called this as the enemy from within) through continuing record rates of military suicides. 

From PressTV

US troop suicides are still maintaining high levels despite years of tracking the effects of mental trauma on soldiers.

With 2012 coming to an end. US officials report that the Army and Navy are already reporting record numbers of suicides.

Similar record numbers are being recorded in the Air Force and Marine Corps--making 2012 the worst year for military suicides since diligent tracking began in 2001. The traumatic effects are war are lasting say experts.

As researchers study the causes of suicides in the military, doctors are evaluating the ratio of suicide rates and frequent deployments.

According to latest estimates, suicides are happening faster than the rate of one per day. Last week, suicides among active military personnel reached 323, breaking the Pentagon's previous high of 310 suicides set in 2009.

Wars have torturous psychological and emotional impact on individuals. Being distant from families can be part of such anguish. However more important is that of the trauma from combat violence. This can bring about the deeply rooted Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); common symptoms of which are “combat fatigue” or “shell shock”, that may lead to depression and subsequent suicides. Otherwise, traumatic war experiences could morph into health issues which may exacerbate mental disease that also leads to risks of suicides.

Politicians hardly care about this though. As they relentlessly pursue interventionists policies that always leads to war. It’s not their lives at stake anyway. Besides, wars have always served as justifications for expanding political and economic control over society, which is why the incessant propaganda, abetted by the mainstream media, on nationalism.

As economist Dr. Antony Mueller recently commented,

Clausewitz wrote that war is politics with other means. I say that war is the quintessence of politics. All politics leads to war. War is the ultimate fulfillment of politics. In order to abolish war we must abolish politics. The question is how.

The Enemy from Within: Afghan Forces Turning Against Their U.S. Trainers

Wars spawn their own monsters.

Aside from growing numbers of suicides within the US Army, in the Afghan war, Afghan forces have reportedly been turning against their US benefactors.

Writes the pro-war conservative Heritage Foundation,

American troops in Afghanistan face an increased threat from “insider” attacks in which the Afghan forces they are there to help and train are turning their guns on their American partners, raising serious questions about the viability of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

The attacks, which have killed 40 U.S. and NATO troops so far this year, are also referred to as “green-on-blue attacks,” because the military refers to local forces as “green” and allied forces as “blue.”*

Who are the Afghan security forces? While the Afghan Army leaders are professional and committed to working with their American counterparts, the recruits are mostly rural, illiterate men who can become disgruntled by cultural differences with their American trainers or susceptible to insurgent bribes or intimidation. U.S. military officials attribute only about 10 percent of the insider attacks to Taliban infiltration, despite Taliban claims of responsibility for most of the attacks.

There are about 350,000 Afghan security forces, including the police and army. As of October 1, there will be 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is centered on being able to train the Afghan forces so they can eventually face down the insurgent threat on their own. If the number of insider attacks does not abate, it will be increasingly difficult to justify a large-scale U.S. troop presence in the nation.

The backlash from US Imperial policies has been intensifying.

As a side note, here is an interesting social media video of US troops in Afghanistan doing a “call me maybe”. (hat tip from cbsnews.com)

Well this is just one of the explosive “call me maybe” videos, you can see more here.

Ironically, the New York Times decries such viral effects of social media as “the music industry itself, has been upended by social media”. This logic has it backwards, the Carly Rae Jepsen “call me maybe” phenomenon became a "viral" hit because of social media. I wouldn’t be listening to her music if not for these amazing videos. [My daughter and her classmates even made one]

US Military Suicides: The Enemy from Within

Fighting needless wars and playing the role of the global policeman to fulfill the political and financial goals of neocon politics and the military industrial complex has apparently been taking a heavy mental toll on US military personnel

From Yahoo/Reuters

Twenty-six active-duty soldiers are believed to have committed suicide in July, more than double the number reported for June and the most suicides ever recorded in a month since the U.S. Army began tracking detailed statistics on such deaths.

During the first seven months of this year, there were 116 suspected suicides among active-duty soldiers, compared to 165 suicides for all of last year, the Army said. The military branch reported 12 likely suicides during June.

The monthly totals for 2012 include confirmed suicides and cases still under investigation, the Army said.

Twelve reserve soldiers who were not on active duty also appear to have killed themselves in July, bringing the yearly total for that group to 71 suicides.

The Army, which has collected in-depth monthly suicide data since January 2009, confirmed 118 suicides among members of the branch's National Guard and Reserve components in 2011.

"Suicide is the toughest enemy I have faced in my 37 years in the Army," General Lloyd J. Austin III, vice chief of staff of the Army, said in the report released on Thursday.

The above data affirms what seems to be an escalating trend.

As Congressman Ron Paul wrote last May,

Unfortunately, when presidents misuse our military on an unprecedented scale – and Congress lets them get away with it – the resulting stress causes military suicides to increase dramatically, both among active duty and retired service members. In fact, military deaths from suicide far outnumber combat deaths. According to an article in the Air Force Times this month, suicides among airmen are up 40 percent over last year.

This seems even a greater threat than the external enemies the US government has spawned or has been waging war against as the enemy has emerged from within: the loss of moral fiber (strength of character or firmness of purpose-dictionary.com)

This backlash from imperialist US foreign policies has not just been impairing the mental health of the US military but can likewise be observed in the developing “road to serfdom” political economic trends of the US (see links here, here and here).

All these seems ominous to a quote widely attributed to Soviet Union Premier Joseph Stalin but has been disputed by snopes.com

America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.

Chart Porn: The US-Asia Arm Race

The conservative Heritage Foundation comes up with a deck of wonderful charts on Asia.

Writes the Zero Hedge,

Asia is a study in contrasts. It is home to economic freedom and political liberty; it is also home to political instability and tyranny. Some of Asia’s borders are unsettled and volatile. And military budgets and capabilities are expanding, sometimes faster than economic growth. The rise of China as a great power presents both sides of this equation. It is being watched carefully by all the countries of the region. It is the U.S. that is recognized as the catalyst in ensuring a prosperous peace over conflict. America is a Pacific power. That much is a matter of geography and history. But the facts – and America’s principles and interests – demand more than resignation to geography. They call for continued American leadership, commitment, and the predominant comprehensive power that has enabled Asia’s very welcomed, opportunity-laden rise."

Thus prefaces the Heritage Foundation its Asian 'Book of Charts', which summarizes most of the key economic, financial, trade, geopolitical, most importantly militaristic tensions both in Asia and, by dint of being the global marginal economic force, the world itself. And while we will present the complete deck shortly, of particular interest we find the summary in 7 easy charts how Asia is slowly but surely catching up on that accepted by conventional wisdom GloboCop - the United States.

We present it in its entirety below.

In my view, the current sensationalist brouhaha over territorial claims has been more of a political diversion (from domestic political and economic woes, e.g. in China and the US) and a complicit attempt by both US-China to promote the interests of the neo-conservative protected military industrial complex through an arms race and a resurgent build up of bases around the world in order to justify government expenditures on defense and inflationism.

[Perhaps the real reason is the encirclement and domestic infiltration strategy against Russia by the US, but indirectly implemented with China as the bogeyman or as the smoke screen].

Lastly these may have been part of the desperate attempts by welfare-warfare governments to curb civil liberties (through nationalism and financial repression) in face of growing forces of decentralization.

More great charts of Asia here.

Note: charts can mean different things or perspectives depending on the person’s interpretations and biases.

America’s Asia Military Strategy: Encirclement via Air Power

Naval presence, according to historian Eric Margolis, has not been the real issue of US military expansion in Asia, which has been aimed at a supposed encirclement strategy of China, as already half of US warships, aircraft, and logistics vessels have already been deployed in the region.

The real goal is to expand air power.

Writes Eric Margolis,

However, naval forces are no longer the primary expression of America’s power. The US Air Force has dominated much of the non-communist globe since the 1950’s and serves America’s strategic interests in the same way the Royal Navy imposed the British Empire’s military and commercial power. Air power has played the decisive role in all of America’s military victories since World War I.

The Pentagon plans to strengthen its Pacific air power. This likely includes re-establishing US air bases in the Philippines and Australia, and expanding air bases in Guam, Okinawa, and South Korea.

America has been at war for decades. Its aircraft and warships are aging rapidly. Equally threatening, Congress may force deep military spending cuts as deficits worsen – at a time when the US military is being ordered to keep China bottled up on the Asian mainland.

China need only build its military power close to home. The United States must project and maintain its naval and air power 10,000 km across the Pacific Ocean, a hugely expensive, complex undertaking that gives cash-rich China an important, even decisive advantage.

The recent report of a Drone strike against supposed terrorists in Mindanao coupled by a free hand use of Subic and Clark facilities seems to validate this theory as well as partly my theory of the stealth resurrection of US bases here.

From Scarborough Shoal to Senkaku Islands

What’s all the ado over territorial claims these days?

The tensions over Scarborough Shoal have yet to be concluded and now Japanese politicians have jumped into a parallel controversy over the disputed Senkaku Islands to pique China.

Reports the Japan Times,

The central government will consider buying the disputed Senkaku Islands, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Wednesday, adding fuel to a fire already lit by Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara.

Noda's statement came after Ishihara dropped his bombshell Monday in Washington by revealing that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is trying to buy the islands from its owner "to protect Japanese territory."

The hawkish governor said he was prompted to make the move as he could no longer stand the central government's "cowardice" for not taking any action against claims to the islands by China and Taiwan.

During a Lower House Budget Committee session on Wednesday morning, Noda stressed Japan's control over the islands in the East China Sea. The prime minister also explained that the government has been in contact with an island owner.

"It is as clear as day that the Senkaku Islands are an integral part of Japan's sovereign territory in light of international law and history, and Japan effectively controls them," Noda said.

And the natural response by China has been to rebuke and to apply partial gunboat diplomacy as with the Scarborough Shoal incident.

From another news report from Japan Times,

China warned Wednesday that Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara's plan to buy the disputed Senkaku Islands will not only harm Japan's ties with China but also its international standing.

"I want to reiterate that the Diaoyu Islands have been China's inherent territory since ancient times and China holds indisputable sovereignty over them," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a regular news briefing, using the Chinese term for the Senkaku Islands.

"We do not wish such statements in Japan to encroach on China's sovereignty and harm China-Japan ties," Liu said. "A few politicians have repeatedly made such statements. I believe they not only damage the overall state of China-Japan relations but also harm Japan's international image."

Ishihara said in Washington on Monday that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is negotiating with the owner of three major islands in the uninhabited chain.

On Tuesday, Ishihara added that Beijing's dispatch of fishery patrol boats to their vicinity is "halfway to a declaration of war" against Japan.

As I earlier postulated, the verbal joust over territorial claims could be about promoting the arms industry or the military industrial complex.

Last year, world military spending has been flat.

Notes the Economist,

WORLDWIDE military spending was flat in 2011 compared with the year before, according to data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a think-tank, but this masks some significant changes. America, Western Europe and Latin America, which between them make up 65% of the global total of $1.634 trillion (at 2010 prices), all spent less than they had in 2010. This is the first time America made a year-on-year reduction since 1998, trimming its budget by 1.2% to $690 billion. To keep the total flat, there were some big rises elsewhere. Russia's spending increased by 9.3% to $64.1 billion, which may have had something to do with the build-up to the presidential election earlier this year. It is now the third biggest spender worldwide, ahead of both France and Britain. The chart below gives a sense of how much defence spending has changed relative to economic performance in the past decade for 116 countries and territories for which data are available. China, for instance, which spent $129 billion last year, has increased spending broadly in line with its GDP growth

And considering that Bank of Japan (BoJ) has aggressively been ramping up on monetary stimulus measures, a threat of war which could most likely translate to call for a domestic build up of arms that would justify more inflationist policies.

Wars has always been financed by monetary inflation, as the great Ludwig von Mises wrote in Nation, State and the Economy (p. 195)

In all great wars monetary calculation was disrupted by inflation. Earlier it was the debasement of coin; today it is paper-money inflation. The economic behavior of the belligerents was thereby led astray; the true consequences of the war were removed from their view. One can say without exaggeration that inflation is an indispensable intellectual means of militarism. Without it, the repercussions of war on welfare would become obvious much more quickly and penetratingly; war-weariness would set in much earlier.

So the blaring drumbeats of war may not only be about promoting arms sales and military spending, but about further justifications for monetary inflation.

Lessons from the Joint Resignations of the Chiefs of Turkey’s Armed Forces

Turkey’s highest ranking military officers has reportedly resigned en masse.

According to the SFGate,

The chiefs of staff of Turkey's military stepped down Friday as tensions dramatically increased over the arrest of dozens of officers accused of plotting to overthrow the Islamic-rooted government.

The resignation of so many top commanders, a first for Turkey, a NATO member, signals a deep rift with the government, which has confronted a military that once held sway over Turkish political life. The arrests of high-ranking military officers would once have been unimaginable.

The resignations of Turkey's top general, Isik Kosaner, along with the country's navy, army and air force commanders, came hours after a court charged 22 suspects, including several generals and officers, with carrying out an Internet campaign to undermine the government. The commanders asked to be retired, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.

In Brussels, a NATO spokeswoman declined to comment on the resignations. Turkey's military is the second largest in the 27-member alliance. It has about 1,800 troops as part of NATO's 140,000-strong force in Afghanistan.

The Turkish government responded by quickly appointing the remaining highest-ranking commander, Gen. Necdet Ozel, as the new land forces commander and the acting chief of staff, the office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced. President Abdullah Gul approved the appointment.

This puts to light the question “who protects us from our protectors?” when men in uniform try to exert political pressure on the civilian government.

Nevertheless, these events can present themselves as windows of opportunities for the Turkish people to even pare down on the vertical hierarchical structure of the world’s sixth largest armed forces that should free up resources for the private sector to use, and importantly, to reduce dependency on so-called ‘protectors’, who in reality signify as instruments of state initiated violence on her people.

Bluntly put, a shrinkage of government equates to the advance of civil liberties.

From Google Public Data

While it isn’t clear in the report on what has prompted for such an incident (except for the charges of plotting to overthrow government), my suspicion is that these protestations could signify adverse reaction to, or symptoms of a resistance to change, to Turkey’s recent transition towards greater economic freedom.

Evidence of this can be seen by the substantial decline of military expenditures as % to GDP.

And coincidental to the diminishing expenditures of Turkey’s government on her military, is the significant liberalization of the economy as shown by the chart above from the Heritage Foundation.

Of course the Turkish people may choose to consider the privatization of national defense route.

As Gustave de Molinari (1818–1912), a prominent Belgian-born French economist, student of Jean-Baptiste Say, and teacher of Vilfredo Pareto wrote in his article “De la Production de la Securité” of February 1849. (bold emphasis mine)

If there is one well-established truth in political economy, it is this: That in all cases, for all commodities that serve to provide for the tangible or intangible needs of consumers, it is in the consumer’s best interest that labor and trade remain free, because the freedom of labor and trade have as their necessary and permanent result the maximum reduction of price.

And this: That the interests of the consumer of any commodity whatsoever should always prevail over the interests of the producer.

Now in pursuing these principles, one arrives at this rigorous conclusion: That the production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition.

Whence it follows: That no government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity. . . .

Either this is logically true, or else the principles on which economic science is based are invalid. (Gustave de Molinari, Production of Security, J.H. McCulloch, trans. [New York: Center for Libertarian Studies, 1977], pp. 3–4)

Read here for a multi essays or treatises of how national defense can be provided for by the private sector—The Myth Of National Defense: Essays On The Theory And History Of Security Production

Or as the letter below from US founding father Samuel Adams to militia James Warren

A standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a Body distinct from the rest of the Citizens. They have their Arms always in their hands. Their Rules and their Discipline is severe. They soon become attachd to their officers and disposd to yield implicit Obedience to their Commands. Such a Power should be watchd with a jealous Eye. I have a good Opinion of the principal officers of our Army. I esteem them as Patriots as well as Soldiers. But if this War continues, as it may for years yet to come, we know not who may succeed them. Men who have been long subject to military Laws and inured to military Customs and Habits, may lose the Spirit and Feeling of Citizens. And even Citizens, having been used to admire the Heroism which the Commanders of their own Army have displayd, and to look up to them as their Saviors may be prevaild upon to surrender to them those Rights for the protection of which against Invaders they had employd and paid them. We have seen too much of this Disposition among some of our Countrymen. The Militia is composd of free Citizens. There is therefore no Danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them.