A RUDDERLESS WORLD
Focal Point of the
Global Crisis: Pakistan
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
This article was translated from German.
Seldom has a tour been more closely watched, by so many political observers worldwide, than Vice President Dick Cheney's just-concluded round of visits which took him to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, and Italy. A prominent foreign policy expert in the Russian parliament, Sergei Markov, recently stated that it was Cheney who had "issued the order" for the Georgian attack on South Ossetia. Meanwhile, there have been growing indications that U.S. military advisors, along with 127 U.S. troops, had been involved in the hostilities on the Georgian side, while advisors to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have now admitted, belatedly, that Georgia was definitely the aggressor. And so, it's not surprising that Cheney's trip has been the subject of hundreds of articles in the Russian media alone.
Cheney's intent, is, of course, to lend weight to Anglo-American interests, in the tradition of the British "Great Game." One major focus was the Nabucco natural gas pipeline, which the United States and the European Union have been backing as an alternative to the South Stream pipeline which begins in Russia and goes through Bulgaria to Austria and Italy. Cheney also promised Georgia that it would soon be admitted into NATO; and he brought them a $1 billion gift. Another situation heading for confrontation, is the fact that the flagship of the U.S. Mediterranean fleet, the USS Mount Whitney, docked at the Georgian port city of Poti, in order, so the United States claims, to deliver humanitarian aid—aid which could have been easily shipped on more spacious freighters. And, yet one more feature of the strategy of encirclement against Russia, will doubtless be the Sept. 15 visit to Tbilisi by a delegation from the 26 NATO member states, whose ostensible mission is to assess the damage resulting from Russia's military counterstrike.
The Indian Subcontinent
But precisely because the eyes of the world are focussed on Cheney's trip, this is not, in fact, the most important strategic theater. As Lyndon LaRouche has commented, Pakistan is now the primary target of British destabilization policy, and this is having an enormous effect on Afghanistan, on India's security, and, in the medium term, on Iran. The resignation of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, at British and Saudi instigation, which then received Bush Administration blessing, has enormously heightened that country's instability.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani has just survived an armed attack on his auto convoy. At least 20 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a Sept. 3 attack on the Pakistani province of Waziristan, near the Afghan border, carried out by U.S. International Assistance Force (ISAF) troops. Pakistan's government, parliament, and military issued extremely harsh condemnations of this encroachment, terming it a violation of the nation's sovereignty, its territorial integrity, and of the UN Charter. There had been no evidence of al-Qaeda activities or presence in the region. Further attacks have meanwhile been launched by airborne drones, resulting in yet more deaths and injuries.
Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, spokesman for the Pakistani Army, condemned these attacks as totally counterproductive. Nothing could be less useful than provoking uprisings by tribes in the region, he said, thereby making the fight against terrorism even more difficult, and endangering NATO supply lines from Pakistan into Afghanistan. And that is indeed a serious charge, given the out-of-control situation in Afghanistan, because when you consider that Russia has made further cooperation with, and supplies for NATO, contingent upon the West's behavior toward Georgia, the question nags ever more insistently: What was the real intent behind this attack?
The exacerbation of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan impinges upon India's and China's national security interests. Support for the Kashmir rebels coming from Pakistan-based terrorist networks; the recent terror attacks in India, which Indian authorities are investigating for suspected British and American string-pullers; ties between certain Uigurs in Xinjiang and networks in Pakistan—all this is part of a destabilization of what British intelligence hand Bernard Lewis has called the "Arc of Crisis," stretching from the Horn of Africa and the Mideast, to the Indian Subcontinent.
India, which has been the target of attacks by Western financial locusts on a scale comparable to Russia's situation during the Yeltsin era, is now being shaken by yet another scandal: The U.S.-Indian nuclear deal, which Indian scientists have long considered to be a sellout of Indian strategic interests, is now in danger of totally breaking down. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who just barely survived a no-confidence vote, which he had been forced to call because of his closeness to Bush, now faces an even more dramatic crisis.
Since Aug. 13, 2007, Singh has been assuring the Indian parliament that, as part of the agreement, the United States would guarantee India a supply of nuclear fuel. The White House had issued a muzzle edict, forbidding the release to Congress of any details of the agreement. But now U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) has released a 26-page document, in which the Administration responds to questions from Congress, which totally contradicts Prime Minister Singh's utterances.
The document specifies that following the agreement's adoption, India will not be permitted to conduct further nuclear tests, nor will it be permitted to stockpile strategic reserves of nuclear material. India—a nation with over 1 billion people, with a civilization which is one of the cradles of humanity, and with its own nuclear weapons—will see this as an unacceptable undermining of its sovereignty and status as an emergent world power. It is not inconceivable that this scandal will sweep the Prime Minister out of office.
Expect the Unexpected
One thing we can count on: The next two months, leading up to the U.S. Presidential elections, have in store a whole slew of escalations in the worsening strategic situation. No one can say today who the next U.S. President will be. But John McCain has admitted that economic policy is not his strong suit, while Barack Obama has not said a single word about the systemic crisis of the financial system. Over these two months, the escalation of the financial crisis will shatter all previous assumptions.
For some time, the fear has spread, that before the Bush Administration leaves office, it will launch a military attack against Iran. And given the situation in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, the Mideast, and Western Asia, it doesn't take much imagination to see what the consequences of that would be.
Fortunately, so-called "old Europe"—Italy, France, and Germany—has made clear that it does not intend to go along with the policy of the British and their American stooges for confrontation against Russia. But that notwithstanding, the vacuum of leadership in this strategic situation is truly terrifying.
The only hope, is to find a combination of nations which is prepared to eliminate the causes of the current crisis, before it is too late, and to replace the hopelessly bankrupt world financial system with a New Bretton Woods system. Fortunately, there is a growing debate on this very subject in Italy, France, and Russia. Only if a sufficiently powerful combination of nations is prepared to actively oppose the British policy of tension, balance of power, geopolitics, guerrilla warfare, etc., can we find a way out of this already far-gone situation.
And for this, the programs proposed by Lyndon LaRouche are indispensable.