President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, as he prepared to leave office in January 1961, warned Americans about the “military industrial complex,” what he saw as an overly close relationship between the government and its defense contractors. He told us to be vigilant. Ike was the last American commander in chief who had been an armed forces general, who, like America’s founding president, George Washington, was concerned about a Congress awash in lucrative defense deals becoming tainted, and vulnerable to corporate influence.
Interestingly, President-elect Trump shares some of Ike’s characteristics, including his love for golf, Scotland, peace and business.
But far more importantly, does he share Ike’s fear of Congress becoming overly infatuated with the economics of war planning, as members self-reward themselves by inflating budgets, while the defense contractors laugh all the way to the bank?
Now is the time to heed Ike’s warning, again. For a Republican president, with a Republican Congress, three retired generals in key security and military cabinet posts, and a “world class player” of an oil man as secretary of state, it is time for We the People to indeed be vigilant – Again!
Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general as national security adviser; James Mattis, a retired Marine general as defense secretary; and John Kelly, a retired general as head of the Department of Homeland Security. All three have distinguished themselves as leaders in combat and command. They have the ability to be peacemakers.
General Mattis was the head of Central Command from 2010 until his retirement in 2013. He was in charge of both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and has said: “It’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot… It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up front with you. I like brawling.”
Rounding out the central command of the commander in chief’s military industrial complex is the Exxon Mobil chief executive Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. These appointees have been endorsed and recommended by several leading Republican figures, including the former secretary of state James Baker; Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser; and the former defense secretary Robert Gates, all of whom have led America off to war.
But listening to Mr. Trump’s “thank you” speech in Fayetteville, N.C., last Dec. 6, where he announced “Mad Dog” Mattis as his choice for defense secretary, I was dismayed to hear him say he was going to undo sequestration, the military cutbacks that went into effect on March 1, 2013, a subject I wrote about in Custom Maid Revolution for New World Disorder. The beneficiaries of undoing sequestration? Allowing defense contractors and oil companies to map out the next war — and the military budget to fight it.
Fear is the ultimate weapon of a military-industrialized Congress designed to justify its outrageous oil and gas prices, and military defense budgets, to defend against the very real and imaginary enemies that the politicians themselves created. Politically crafted – very craftily – to build well-oiled military machines in cities, counties, states, borders, nationally and globally to defend and protect a frightened public by draining education budgets, thus denying us the knowledgeable human capital necessary to live harmoniously free of fear.
Western fears of China in the South China Sea are unfounded. There should be greater worry of what America’s longstanding weapons of self-destruction in the region can do. That the reconnaissance flights, aircraft carrier groups, research vessels and underwater drones in and over what China considers its’ sovereign territory are only conducting “research” is a big lie. In fact, America is conducting military surveys, and China rightfully doesn’t care for it.
The American drone recently seized by a Chinese naval vessel is used to gather data on Chinese naval actions and the navigation details of Chinese submarines. The data is crucial to the U.S. for mapping military action and battle plans in the South China Sea. Why? To contain China?
The seizure and return of the drone was quick and amicable, unlike the dispute between the two militaries after the April 2001 midair collision between a U.S. Navy surveillance plane and Chinese fighter jet about 110 kilometers from Hainan Island that led to the death of a Chinese pilot.
If the situation were reversed and China flew a spy plane or launched an underwater drone off the coast of California to project its sphere of influence, the U.S. would do the same. “We seem to be conducting something we cannot control very well. If planes were flying 20 to 50 miles from our shores, we would be very likely to shoot them down if they came in closer, whether through error or not,” said President Eisenhower in 1956. He was speaking after the Chinese shot down a U.S. spy plane over the East China Sea killing all 16 crewmen.
President Eisenhower apologized for the flight of captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers over Russia and ended the U-2 flights over that country. Why didn’t America do the same after China brought down the U.S. plane in 2001, or do so now after the drone incident? After all, can’t satellites do the same job and not be so intrusive?
China is trying to block U.S. surveillance efforts of its military activities at home and in the region and has demanded the U.S. stop spying on many occasions.
China has deployed powerful antiaircraft and antimissile systems to all its new artificial islands in the Spratlys archipelago in the South China Sea. The reason: to defend itself and contain America’s longstanding presence and dominance. It is not interfering or disrupting the free navigation of the more than $5 trillion in trade a year. No different than what America has done in Guam, Okinawa, South Korea, Diego Garcia, Taiwan and until the 90s, Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay naval facilities in the Philippines.
Now that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is ignoring the arbitration ruling on the South China Sea and is forging a closer economic and military relationship with China and Russia — at America’s expense — isn’t it time America reassess its military and economic posture in Asia?
What’s done is done in the Spratlys. Time to move on and accept modern-day geopolitical and military reality.
Let’s not forget that China is not the only country militarizing the Spratly Islands. America took the lead by convincing Duterte’s predecessor, President Benigno Acquino III, to file the China border lawsuit in The Hague, as it increased military patrols and joint military exercises in the area, while looking sideways as Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia militarized nearby islands, albeit on a smaller scale.
America, like the Philippines, should agree with China on who can do what, and how international law should be applied. It is in America’s, China’s and the world’s best interest not to jeopardize global trade. The regional focus should be peaceful business-trade and co-existence, insured by America and China jointly.
America doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes it made in Vietnam, Korea and Iraq with China over the geopolitics of the Pacific, especially Taiwan and the South China Sea.
When President Eisenhower pondered whether to send bombers and troops to Vietnam to rescue French troops at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, he realized, as a professional soldier, how exhausting the war would be and how destructive it would be to his budget. So the idea of intervention died despite the grandiosity of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s “born again” rhetoric. This was a nation still in touch with its limits, a democracy, not yet an empire. Even Nixon questioned America’s involvement in Vietnam. “Is it possible we were wrong from the start in Vietnam?” the president asked National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, in October 1969. The same questions can be raised about Afghanistan and Iraq.
In Custom Maid Spin for New World Disorder, written as America invaded Iraq in 2003, I warned America it would be the one to be “shocked and awed” and that it would be creating new terrorist camps and organizations. At the time, I was ridiculed and cursed for being an unpatriotic American. Time has unfortunately proven me correct. America must learn from its 20th and 21st century military misadventures.
America should be siding with China against Japan and insist that Japan return the islands in the East China Sea known as the Diaoyu in China, and the Senkaku in Japan, to China per the terms of the Cairo Declaration of 1943 and the Potsdam Proclamation of 1945. The U.S. government’s continued support of Japan under the U.S.-China mutual defense treaty in regional disputes between China and Japan is a shortsighted, outdated foreign policy, a subject I have written about at length in Custom Maid Revolution for New World Disorder – especially now that Japan has amended Article 9 of its pacifist constitution to allow its military to go on the offensive again. It’s an even doubly shortsighted policy if you believe that North Korea is to be neutralized. That can only happen with China’s support and partnership with America, Russia, South Korea and Japan, a topic I have also written about extensively.
War is not the answer. “We must never repeat the devastation of war,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters in Tokyo before departing for Honolulu to visit the USS Arizona War Memorial with President Obama last Dec. 27 to commemorate the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, his words rang hollow. The hypocrisy of Abe’s visit was brought to light when Japan’s defense minister, Tomomi Inada, who was at Abe’s side at the USS Arizona, visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo upon her return from Hawaii. The shrine honors Japan’s war dead as well as 14 Class-A war criminals, including Hideki Tojo, Japan’s prime minister at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, and Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the attack. Not only does Japan still honor its war criminals, unlike Germany, Japan also still refuses to apologize or atone for its horrific war crimes.
“It’s beyond deplorable that a responsible Japanese politician would worship at Yasukuni Shrine which beautifies past colonial invasion and aggression war, and enshrines war criminals,” said South Korea’s foreign ministry.
Not only should America re-think its policy of defending countries like Japan that can’t defend themselves, as well as its alliance with Japan to contain China – but is should align itself with countries like China that can defend themselves – and want to partner with America. America should join forces and embrace China – not Japan – a country every nation in Asia doesn’t trust or want to embrace the way they do. The Japanese left brutal scars after WWII from it years of colonial rule across Asia, and they have been unacceptably unapologetic ever since.
Is Japan really the country America should partner with in the Pacific? Why not partner with a winner? Why not China, the same winning partner America had in World War II to fight and defeat Japan?
Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” is a tactical book Mr. Trump and I once discussed that is as relevant today as when it was written in the fifth century BC. Sun Tzu’s statement, “It is best to win without fighting,” still holds true today. Another Chinese classic I highly recommend the president-elect should read is Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching (Book of Change).
Starting a war with China over the islands in the South China Sea or Taiwan is not in America’s best interest. In the words of Ike, containing the “military-industrial” Congress is. American foreign and military policy should focus on the reality of the 21st century and China’s rising role in it. Business and trade should come first, not the war business.
Change is good, as long as it is the right change. No point short-changing America.
More on change in next week’s blog on climate change.
In the meantime, I want to share an e-mail that is sure to bring a smile and chuckle about the absurdity of how the military develops useless systems that I wrote about in Custom Maid War for New World Disorder as the Marines were battling in Fallujah. It was a mock McDonnell Douglas Warranty Information Form posted on the company’s website by an employee with a sense of humor. It best summed up the tragic missile comedy We the Apathetic People have allowed to flourish – The Military Industrial Complex. The company, of course, does not have a sense of humor, and made the web department take it down immediately.
Let’s not forget that America only started to get involved in global foreign wars in World War I. With American involvement in the great war, the u.S ended an isolationist tradition that dated to the founding of the republic. In his farewell address, George Washington set out the ‘great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations,” which was “to have with them as little political connection as possible.” Four years later in his inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson described the goals of u.S. International relations as “peace, commerce, and honest frindship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” John Quincy Adams reinforced the American impulse for isolationism in his July 4, 1821 address saying America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”