OMNI
US
WESTWARD IMPERIALISM, PACIFIC OCEAN, EAST ASIA, TPP NEWSLETTER #18, December
19, 2015.
Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
(#1 May 8, 2012; #2 August
22, 2012; #3 Nov. 25, 2012; #4 Jan. 12, 2013; #5 March 27, 2013; #6 July 5,
2013; #7 August 12, 2013; #8 Nov. 8, 2013; #9 Jan. 2, 2014; #10 Feb. 3, 2014;
#11 Feb. 26, 2014; #12 April 21, 2014; #13, June 26, 2014; #14 Sept. 24, 2014;
#15, Feb. 18, 2015; #16, April 12, 2015; #17, July 13, 2015 ). Thanks to Marc Quigley
What’s at
stake: What is the threat from surrounded China,
compared to the US—compared to Japan, compared to S. Korea? The expansion of US domination from San
Diego to Darwin and Diego Garcia, from Oakland/San Francisco to Okinawa, Seattle
to Seoul, Tacoma to Taiwan and Tokyo, Bangor Tridents! to all, serve aggressive,
encompassing, threatening US imperialism.
Contents #
17 at end
Contents US
Westward Imperialism, Pacific, E. Asia, Indian Ocean Newsletter #18
These essays move from US
military to economic expansion in the Pacific/E. Asia region: the US anti-China threat-fear machine, US
harms in the region, US global military bases, TPP.
CHINA
Dick, FEWOCIOUS CHINA Plans Its First Military Outpost in Africa
Two Essays
by Bruce Gagnon on US and China
Resistance to New US Naval Base at Jeju
Island
US Attempts to
Control Vietnam
Koohan
Paik, US Military Destruction of Pacific Water and Land, Flora and
Fauna
Fauna
Two Books by David Vine on
US Military Bases Throughout the World
Base Nation, From
the Conquest of 400 Native American Nations Via Forts to
the Garrisoning of the Planet Via “Lily Pads”
the Garrisoning of the Planet Via “Lily Pads”
Island of Shame: Diego
Garcia in the Indian Ocean
Dick’s Commentary on Kirkus Review of Simon
Winchester’s Pacific
Moberg:
TPP, The Corporate-Friendly Trade
Deal
Contact
Arkansas’ Congressional and Presidential Warriors
US Repels the China Threat in Africa
CHINA
“China Plans to Establish
Military Outpost in Africa” by Jane Perlez and Chris Buckley, The New York Times in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Nov. 27, 2015).
“China announced Thursday that it would establish its first overseas
military outpost” in Djibouti in the
Horn of Africa. China describes it as a
fueling station, but whatever its function it goes beyond “its historical focus
on protecting the nation’s borders.”
According to the authors, President Xi Jinping is leading China’s navy
“to live up to…the Communist Party’s ambitions to become a global maritime
power.”
US
David Vine, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad
Harm America and the World. Chap.
16, “The Lily Pad Strategy.” In 2001 the US began its Camp Lemonnier
base in Djibouti at an initial cost
of $30 million and a Voice of America radio transmitter. “Within a few years, there were more than
four thousand troops at the six-hundred acre base and hundreds of billions of
dollars in construction and annual spending.”
But US military presence in Africa really got going in 2007 when President George W. Bush
established Africa Command (Africom) “to bring peace and security to the people
of Africa.” Some 17 African countries
demurred, seeing it as a continuation of Western colonialism. Never mind, “since late 2001, the military
has spent around $30 billion or more on a growing military infrastructure,” and
has stationed, “on any day, likely between seven thousand and eleven thousand
U.S. troops.” “The military is now
operating in at least forty-nine of the fifty-four African countries. It may be operating in every single one”
(313)
Which nation is posturing,
which is the threat? Which a nation of
fear-and-war-mongers?
Dick Bennett
Peace Movement Must ‘Pivot’ into Asia-Pacific
By
Bruce K. Gagnon Fall 2015
Unexpectedly
on Sept. 16 the first Navy Aegis destroyer (outfitted with socalled “missile
defense” systems aimed at China) pulled into the new Navy base in Gangjeong
village on Jeju Island, South Korea. The base, which will port Pentagon
aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and Aegis destroyers, is rumored to be
heading toward an early December official opening. While I was in Gangjeong
village in late August, the Navy was beginning to work on construction of a new
front gate—in the process taking even more precious farming land from the small
village. As the Aegis arrived at the new Jeju Navy base, activists slid kayaks
off the rocks into the sea. (Their universal access to the public port is being
increasingly blocked by the South Korean Coast Guard.) They paddled out toward
what turned out to be five ships entering port on this occasion. Other
activists stood along the rocks with signs and banners as they tried to defend
the sacred memory of the beloved Gureombi coastline—now blasted and covered in
concrete. The 500-year-old fishing and farming community is being torn apart to
host the base. Just offshore, the UNESCO recognized endangered soft coral
forests, which form some of the most spectacular temperate Octocoral forests on
earth, are being destroyed, as dredging is under way to make it possible for
U.S. warships to port there. The U.S. Navy handed base specifications to the
Korean government some years ago. The villagers’ eight-year campaign against
the base has resulted in 700 people being arrested and more than 50 jailed (one
as long as 15 months, just for blocking cement trucks). On my last day on Jeju
Island, I was taken to Jeju City to do a radio interview about my experiences
there. As my translator and I sat in the station lobby waiting to go on the
air, we heard a news broadcast that said the South Korean Navy was planning to
file a court action against Gangjeong villagers for $20 million on behalf of
Samsung Corporation (the lead Navy base construction contractor). The claim is
that their eight-year nonviolent protest in the village has “obstructed
business operations” and resulted in delays and profit loss. Upon hearing about
this plan to demand $20 million from this small village (fewer than 2,000
citizens) I was told village elders cried out “The Navy is trying to kill our
village!” When the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
first got involved helping to support…(continued http://www.peaceinourtimes.org/ )
The Asia Pivot, U.S. Militarism, and Agent
Orange Relief
http://www.peaceinourtimes.org/ Fall
2015
In
1954 the fiercely independent Vietnamese crushed the U.S. backed French
Colonial Army at Dien Bien Phu and then in 1975, after some 15 years of brutal
fighting and millions of casualties, North Viet Nam and the National Liberation
Front of South Viet Nam defeated the U.S. military and its proxy South
Vietnamese army But the U.S. battle for
control of Viet Nam still rages. U.S. plans for the Asia Pivot, which seeks to contain
China and gain U.S. military and economic control of Southeast Asia, faces
a critical stumbling block in Viet Nam, which is very aware of U.S. global
ambitions to dominate and control. On March 11, 2015, U.S. Army Pacific
Commander Gen. Vincent Brooks demanded that Viet Nam stop allowing Russian
refueling jets to land in its Cam Ranh Bay military base. Brooks claimed Russia
was carrying out “provocative flights” and that it was “acting as a spoiler to
our interests and the interests of others.” The following day Viet Nam rejected
the demand in no uncertain terms, calling it “interference in the internal
affairs of Viet Nam, a sovereign state that determines its own policies for
cooperating with its friends and partners.” Viet Nam continues to trade with
China, Russia, and the United States. And while Russia supplies most of Viet
Nam’s military hardware, the Vietnamese are not averse to obtaining
sophisticated U.S. military technology as well. At the same time, since Viet
Nam has long been able to get whatever it needed from its closest ally, Russia,
it is doubtful that they will endanger that relationship by getting too cozy
with the United States. Viet Nam also has a relationship with China to weigh in
the balance, and there is concern among the Vietnamese about how China will
react to U.S.-Viet Nam military dealings. The Vietnamese have not
forgot…(continued at website above)
Pacific Environment Under Military Siege
By Koohan Paik
In
this age of ecological breakdown, pockets of wondrous biodiversity still
survive in the vast Pacific Ocean. The Gulf of Alaska teems with a multitude of
whale species; Southeast Asia’s “Coral Triangle” boasts 500 species of coral;
the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, the Galapagos Islands, and the
seven-miledeep Mariana Trench are still fairly intact. But these marvels may
soon be wiped out by unchallenged trends in global militarism. Widespread military exercises, defense-industry
profiteering, and base-building (mostly by the U.S.) are wreaking irreversible
destruction on coral reefs and other ecosystems, even without active war.
Marine
monuments and military range complexes It is true that, for decades,
deleterious war games have taken place on military range complexes spanning
from Asia’s east coast to the west coast of the Americas, and points
in-between. However, the scale and capacity for destruction has never been as
immense as it is now. It’s as if military activities have been suddenly
“supersized.” The U.S. Navy estimates that over the next five years, naval
exercises in the Gulf of Alaska will kill over 180,000 marine mammals.
But
most galling is the new, fraudulent manner in which the U.S. has come to gain
control of a whopping nine million square miles of the Pacific Ocean—an area
double the size of all 50 states. Yet this chicanery goes entirely unmentioned
in any media, let alone in Congress. So the American public remains oblivious.
The
U.S. started claiming huge swaths of the Pacific about a decade ago, in
anticipation of the threat of a rising China competing for finite resources and
regional hegemony. The sweeping dominion of the U.S. took the form of “range
complexes,” slated for military practice, and “marine monuments,” supposedly
intended for environmental protection.
The
first marine monument was designated in 2006, just before George W. Bush left
office. He designated the Northwest Hawaiian Islands as the Papahanaumokuakea
Marine National Monument. Environmentalists cheered this supposedly
conservationist move. What they didn’t realize was that, in one fell swoop,
without public participation or scrutiny, Bush had also paved the way for
militarizing vast tracts of the Pacific.
While
banning commercial enterprise, it turns out that a marine monument can easily
morph into a military “range complex.” This was the case with Papahanaumokuakea
Marine Monument, which overlaps with the Northwest Hawaiian Islands Range
Complex. Commercial and indigenous fishing are off-limits, but torpedoes,
sonar, and all manner of detonations can blast with impunity. For example, the
cyanide discharge from a single torpedo is in the range of 140-150 parts per
billion. The Environmental Protection Agency’s “allowable” limit on cyanide is
one part per billion. The Pentagon insists that these war simulations are
required to ensure military preparedness. But for the whales, turtles,
dolphins, coral, sea sponges, snails, anemones, reef fish, sea urchins and
thousands of other diverse and rare species, living in a range complex is no
“simulation.” A similar scenario took place when the Pacific Remote Islands
Marine National Monument was expanded to include the Marshall Islands, infamous
for its atomic-testing legacy. The new status has not stopped missiles and
hypersonic aircraft from scattering shrapnel into the Marshalls’ Kwajalein
lagoon. Apparently, the real function of the “marine monument” designation is
to introduce, without controversy, U.S. jurisdiction over the open seas.
Yet
another example is deliciously wild Pagan isle, within the Mariana Trench
Marine National Monument in the western Pacific. Pagan is a kind of “Noah’s
Ark,” a miraculous habitat for precious populations of birds, snails, insects,
plants and animals that are found only there and nowhere else in the world. And
yet, now the Pentagon is proposing “full-spectrum” military exercises on Pagan.
That would mean year-round amphibious attacks, bombing, torpedoes, underwater
mines and other detonations from the air, from the sea, and from the ground,
bombing the 18-square-mile island out of recognition. Nearby Tinian Island is
also slated for live-fire training. So much for “marine monument” protection.
The designation is a fraud.
Base-building
and resistance
Base-building
is another ecocidal activity on the rise. There are already over 400 official
U.S. bases throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Meanwhile, clientstates, such as
Japan and South Korea, have been enlisted to build installations that would effectively
encircle China with missiles. New bases are also slated for Jeju Island, Korea;
and in Japan’s Ryuku chain—on Okinawa and Yonaguni, only 70 miles from Taiwan.
Wherever there are bases, there is perpetual leaching of trichloroethylene and
other toxic substances into soil and groundwater.
Islanders
determined to protect their homes have not remained silent. On Okinawa,
ferocious opposition has significantly delayed the two-decade-old plan to build
a U.S. base at lovely Oura Bay. Sadly, the Japanese government has successfully
installed dozens of 20-ton concrete blocks atop coral reefs there. However,
Okinawa’s anti-base governor Takeshi Onaga has joined the activists on the
ground to foil the project by any legal means available. The equally dedicated
islanders on Jeju in South Korea have not been so lucky. A South Korean navy
base designed to port Lockheed-Martin Aegis missile destroyers is near
completion at Gangjeong village, adjacent to a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The
base construction has destroyed a unique rocky wetlands and also a rare coral
ecosystem that was home to Korea’s last remaining dolphin pod.
Against the stars-and-stripes backdrop of
expanding range complexes, marine monuments and basebuilding, other nations are
also contributing to the demise of a healthy Pacific. The resource-rich sea
that is framed by China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam, has
become the region’s most contentious territory of dispute. In fact, the
Philippines is so distressed by China’s incursion into the area’s Spratly
Islands that it has agreed to allow U.S. troops and ships to return to its
former U.S. bases, from which they were passionately evicted in the 1990s. In
2015, over 11,000 American and Filipino troops participated in joint naval war
games, double the number of soldiers from previous years.
For
its part, China has built seven artificial-island bases, totaling 2,000 acres,
smack dab in the middle of the Spratlys. The islands are built from dredged and
crushed coral, upon some of the world’s most once-vibrant reefs, now certainly
dead. China has also broken its anti-imperialist policy to never build bases on
foreign soil, by constructing six installations circumscribing the Indian
Ocean—in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Myanmar and Djibouti.
Let the “base race” begin.
Ecocide,
for games and profit
Such
fever-pitch tensions are actually viewed by the Pentagon as a window of
opportunity. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter recently completed a barnstorming
tour of Asia to solidify alliances with nations, in addition to the
Philippines, seeking U.S. muscle. This has resulted in an unprecedented
onslaught of joint naval exercises for 2015.
Carter’s visit also inspired new war-games
partnerships for Japan and the Philippines; and for India and Singapore.
Meanwhile, the Philippines is trying to coax Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei to
enter a four-way military pact. And for the first time in history, China and
Russia are keeping pace by conducting joint military training this year, in the
Sea of Japan, as well as the South China Sea. Conservative estimates project
that all this turbo-charged saberrattling will result in a minimum loss of 10
percent of the world’s fish.
And
then there is the granddaddy of joint naval exercises—RIMPAC (Rim of the
Pacific). Part World Cup, part trade show, RIMPAC is the chance for 25,000
troops from 22 nations, 55 vessels, and more than 200 aircraft, to gather every
four years in Hawaii. For two weeks, they drop bombs, shoot missiles, set
explosions and sink aircraft carriers at the Papahanaumokuakea Marine Monument.
And sell a missile or two.
Lockheed-Martin,
traditionally a defense manufacturer, has shown its capitalist foresight by
moving into the undersea-mining-technology sector. The idea is to profit by
selling missiles and destroyers to nations fighting for mineral-rich
territories, and then sell the mining technology to whichever nation prevails.
Lockheed-Martin wins, both coming and going, while the creatures of the ocean
perish either way. Our oceans, which are already suffering from over-fishing
and gyres of plastic, supply up to 80% of our atmospheric oxygen. Our reefs,
the essential foundation for all marine life, are already dying due to
acidification. Yet war profiteers seem determined to bomb all life out of the
Pacific. Such behavior is intolerable. Don’t they know there are no winners on
a dead planet?
Koohan Paik is a journalist, media educator, and
Campaign Director of the Asia-Pacific program at the International Forum on
Globalization
|
|
"U.S.
national security policy rests on the assertion that 'forward presence'
contributes directly to global peace and security. In this powerful book,
David Vine examines, dismantles, and disproves that claim. Base
Nation offers a devastating critique, and no doubt Washington will
try to ignore it. Citizens should refuse to let that happen."
-ANDREW J. BACEVICH
|
|
See Newsletter #17 for a more information about Base Nation
|
|
U.S. MILITARY
BASES ABROAD, 2015
As of
2015, the United States controlled approximately 800 bases outside the fifty
U.S. states and Washington, D.C. The sheer number of bases as well as the
secrecy and lack of transparency of the overseas base network make any
graphic depiction challenging. This map reflects the bases' relative number
and positioning given the best available information.
|
Island of
Shame:
The Secret
History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia
David Vine. Princeton UP, 2011.
With a new afterword by the
author
Reviews | Table of Contents
Introduction[PDF] pdf-icon
Google full text of this book:
Search This Book
*The author will donate all
royalties from the sale of this book to the Chagossians.*
The American military base on the
island of Diego Garcia is one of the most strategically important and secretive
U.S. military installations outside the United States. Located near the remote
center of the Indian Ocean and accessible only by military transport, the
little-known base has been instrumental in American military operations from
the Cold War to the war on terror and may house a top-secret CIA prison where
terror suspects are interrogated and tortured. But Diego Garcia harbors another
dirty secret, one that has been kept from most of the world--until now.
Island of Shame is the first
major book to reveal the shocking truth of how the United States conspired with
Britain to forcibly expel Diego Garcia's indigenous people--the Chagossians--and
deport them to slums in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where most live in dire
poverty to this day. Drawing on interviews with Washington insiders, military
strategists, and exiled islanders, as well as hundreds of declassified
documents, David Vine exposes the secret history of Diego Garcia. He chronicles
the Chagossians' dramatic, unfolding story as they struggle to survive in exile
and fight to return to their homeland. Tracing U.S. foreign policy from the
Cold War to the war on terror, Vine shows how the United States has forged a
new and pervasive kind of empire that is quietly dominating the planet with
hundreds of overseas military bases.
Island of Shame is an
unforgettable exposé of the human costs of empire and a must-read for anyone
concerned about U.S. foreign policy and its consequences. The author will
donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Chagossians.
Reviews:
"[A] meticulously
researched, coldly furious book that details precisely how London and
Washington colluded in a scheme of population removal more redolent of the
eighteenth or nineteenth century than the closing decades of the twentieth. . .
. [O]ne likes to think that if Barack Obama were somehow to stumble across a
copy of David Vine's fine book, he would instantly realize that a great
injustice has been done--one that could easily be put right."--Jonathan
Freedland, New York Review of Books
"This angry and angering
book is well researched, compelling, and valuable to understanding and emerging
US 'empire.'"--Choice
"For Vine imperialism,
military prerogative and racism have all combined to deny a people a home
simply because they were in the way. His succinct style and controlled outrage
make for a damning indictment."--Phil Chamberlain, Tribune
"Island of Shame is not just
a gut-wrenching account of how a tropical paradise of powder-white beaches and
palm fronds was turned into a massive launch pad for America's military
expansionist programme. A large chunk of the book is devoted to how the
Chagossians came to build their complex but happy society in the islands and
the resulting tragedy of their displacement. Above all, Vine is a top flight
researcher. . . . We owe Vine a great debt for shining his light on this island
of horrors."--Latha Jishnu, Business Standard
"David Vine's story of the
Chagossians is an exemplary piece of both socially embedded reportage and
investigative journalism, despite a tendency to indulge in the self-conscious
idiom of academic ethnography and reflexive criticism of US 'imperialism.' At
heart, however, he speaks truth to power. Power, though, is not
listening."--Colin Murphy, Irish Times
More reviews
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations and Tables
ix Foreword by Michael Tigar xi Abbreviations and Initialisms xvii A Note to
the Reader xix Introduction 1
Chapter 1. The Ilois, The
Islanders 20
Chapter 2. The Bases of Empire 41
Chapter 3. The Strategic Island
Concept and a Changing of the Imperial Guard 56
Chapter 4."Exclusive
Control" 72
Chapter 5."Maintaining the
Fiction" 89
Chapter 6."Absolutely Must
Go" 99
Chapter 7."On the Rack"
112
Chapter 8. Derasine: The
Impoverishment of Expulsion 126
Chapter 9. Death and Double
Discrimination 137
Chapter 10. Dying of Sagren 149
Chapter 11. Daring to Challenge
164
Chapter 12. The Right to Return
and a Humanpolitik 180
Epilogue 197
My Thanks 199
Further Resources 203
Notes 205
Afterword to the Paperback
Edition 249
Index 255
Kirkus Review of Winchester
“s Pacific and Dick’s Commentary.
PACIFIC: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal
Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers by Simon Winchester
KIRKUS
REVIEW
The
preternaturally curious writer about everything from the Oxford English
Dictionary to volcanoes to the Atlantic Ocean (Atlantic: A Vast
Ocean of a Million Stories, 2010, etc.) returns with a series of
high-resolution literary snapshots of the Pacific Ocean.
Winchester,
who now lives in Massachusetts, does not do the expected: there is no chapter
about the geological history of the ocean, followed by a slow chronology.
Instead, realizing the difficulty of his own task, the author focuses on 10
aspects of the ocean and its inhabitants—islanders, those on the shores—and
uses them to illustrate some historical points. He issues dire warnings about
the damage we’re doing to the natural world and about the geopolitical
forces—especially the military rise of China—that threaten us all.
Occasionally, Winchester makes what seem to be odd pairings (a chapter on both
a volcano in the Philippines and the rise of China) and narrative choices (a
chapter on the rise of Japan accelerated by manufacturing transistor radios),
and he also looks at the international nightmare caused by the 1968 case of the
USS Pueblo and North Korea. No matter what the putative
subject of the chapter, though, we learn a lot about the ocean: its challenged
wildlife, the swirling areas of plastic debris, the Pacific Plate, El Niño, and
the Pacific’s vast dimensions. As we’ve come to expect from Winchester, there
are plenty of delights. A chapter on surfing has guest appearances by both Jack
London and the Beach Boys; and the author examines America’s egregious abuse of
islanders during aboveground nuclear testing. Deep worries abound, as well: the
dying coral reefs, climate change, and military posturing of the superpowers.
The author ends with a hopeful but probably doomed wish for international
fraternity.
Winchester’s
passionate research—on sea and land—undergirds this superb analysis of a world
wonder that we seem hellbent on damaging.
Pub Date: Oct.
27th, 2015, Harper/HarperCollins.
Review Posted Online: July 15th, 2015; Kirkus Reviews
Issue: Aug. 1st, 2015
Dick’s
commentary:
The book contains some solid topics, but as this review reveals
without saying it directly (“odd pairings” an understatement), Winchester’s
mind is topsy-turvy. And apparently he is
not well-informed about some of his topics: how could he be if “preternaturally curious.
. . about everything” (though of course he omits numerous major topics)?. Take China for instance, as you know from the preceding essays, and
by all preceding newsletters on US Pacific/E. Asia expansion. What military rise of and threat from
surrounded China, compared to the US—compared to Japan, compared to S. Korea? Kirkus Reviews, written by academic
librarians, are famously mainstream and supposedly informed, but here US
imperial assumptions apparently overwhelmed the reviewer. Perhaps other sections are more reliable. Even if so, the selection and placement disorder
(spd) and the failure to report on the expansion of US domination from San
Diego to Darwin and Diego Garcia and from Oakland to Okinawa (no mere “posturing”!) serve aggressive,
threatening US nationalism. What do you
think are the criteria for becoming a finalist for the Kirkus Prize—“snapshots”
of “plenty of delights”?
In my newsletters regarding US imperial depredations
I am able to report on only a few of the multitude of revelations. Send me more.
And I do not give equal time to mainstream rationalizers of US National
Security State and Empire because the US already spends annually $600 billions
for the Pentagon, hundreds of billions more for its invasions and interventions,
and hundreds of billions more for nuclear weapons in the Energy Department, all
of which the mainstream media generally support by their flag patriotism,
selection, placement, and topsy-turvy.
A few references
especially for the final sentence:
J. William Fulbright’s
books, articles, and speeches, particularly The
Pentagon Propaganda Machine.
James R. Bennett, “National
Power and Objectivity in the Classroom.”
College English (Dec. 1989,
805-824). http://www.ncte.org/journals/ce/issues/v51-8
Two book-length annotated
bibliographies: Control of Information in the United States, Control of the Media in
the United States.
THE CORPORATE-FRIENDLY
TRADE DEAL
DAVID MOBERG, “8
Terrible Things About the TPP,” In These
Times (Jan. 2016). http://inthesetimes.com/article/18695/TPP_Free-Trade_Globalization_Obama
In These Times WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL...
DONATE
There is a lot at stake
with the TPP agreement.
8 Terrible Things About
the Trans-Pacific Partnership
It’s no wonder the Obama
administration tried to keep this secret—the corporate-friendly trade
agreement, decoded.
BY DAVID MOBERG
Share
TweetRedditStumbleUponEmailPrint
Like the WTO agreements or
NAFTA, the TPP is an attempt to set the rules of the global economy to favor
multinational corporations over everything else, trampling on democracy,
national sovereignty and the public good.
In October, President
Obama hailed the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as “the most
progressive trade deal in history.”
But progressive
public-interest organizations say that the final text, the fruit of seven years
of secretive trade talks between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim
countries, dashed even their low expectations. The deal not only continues most of the troubling features of trade
agreements since NAFTA but also breaks worrisome new ground.
Like most recent
international economic agreements, the TPP only glancingly resembles a classic
trade deal, concerned mainly with tariffs and quotas. Rather, like the WTO
agreements or NAFTA, it is an attempt to set the rules of the global economy to
favor multinational corporations over everything else, trampling on democracy,
national sovereignty and the public good. The more than 600 corporate lobbyists
who had access to the draft texts used their insider status to shape the deal,
while labor unions, environmentalists and others offered testimony from
outside, with little impact.
Like most post-World War
II trade deals, the TPP also has a strategic political goal: tying as many
countries as possible to the United States as trade partners—often under terms
unfavorable to the average American worker—in order to win political support
against anyone seen as a rival to the American economic model. When Obama
defends the TPP, he often casts it as a challenge to China’s growing role in
defining the Asian economy.
In June, with the help of
GOP leaders, Obama very narrowly won “fast-track” authority on the deal, restricting
Congress to an up-or-down vote, with no amendments. He would no doubt like that
vote soon. Repudiating the TPP could become a campaign talking point across
party lines. Already, all three Democratic presidential candidates and most of
the Republicans have come out in opposition to it.
But Congress has never
rejected a trade agreement under fast-track authority, and some TPP opponents
suspect that the administration gave a small group of Democrats a pass to vote
no on fast track as long as they pledged to vote yes on the final agreement if
needed. This is likely to be a close fight.
To inform that fight,
we’ve asked experts to explain, in plain English, some of the deal’s most
alarming implications.
#1 IT GIVES 9,200 FOREIGN
FIRMS THE RIGHT TO CIRCUMVENT OUR COURTS AND ATTACK THE LAWS WE RELY ON FOR A
CLEAN ENVIRONMENT, SAFE FOOD AND DECENT JOBS.
Foreign corporations would
be empowered to drag the U.S. government in front of investor-state dispute
settlement (ISDS) tribunals composed of three private arbitrators. Many ISDS
arbitrators are lawyers who rotate between suing governments for corporations
and acting as the “judges.”
There is no limit on the
amount of our tax dollars the government can be ordered to pay when foreign
corporations successfully argue that their TPP rights have been undermined.
Compensation orders could include a corporation’s estimate of the future
profits it would have earned in the absence of the public policy it is
attacking. Even when governments win, under TPP rules they can be ordered to
pay for the tribunals’ costs and legal fees, which average $8 million per case.
The TPP’s expansion of the
ISDS system would come just as a surge in ISDS cases elevating corporate
profits over the public interest has led other countries, such as South Africa
and Indonesia, to begin revoking their ISDSenforced treaties. Recent cases
include Eli Lilly’s attack on Canada’s cost-saving medicine patent system,
Philip Morris’ attack on Australia’s public health policies regulating tobacco,
Chevron’s attack on an Ecuadorian court ruling that ordered payment for mass
toxic contamination in the Amazon, and Vattenfall’s attack on Germany’s
phase-out of nuclear power.
Almost all of the 50 past
U.S. ISDS-enforced pacts are with developing nations with few investors here,
allowing the United States largely to dodge ISDS tribunals and fines to date.
But the TPP would extend ISDS powers to more than 9,200 U.S. subsidiaries of
some 1,000 corporations in TPP nations, including the economic powerhouse of
Japan.
The tribunals are
unaccountable to any electorate. There is no outside appeal on their dictates.
In effect, the TPP elevates these foreign firms to equal status with the entire
U.S. government.
—Lori Wallach, Director,
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
#2 ITS ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTIONS ARE MOSTLY TOOTHLESS, AND IT WOULD DIRECTLY ENCOURAGE FRACKING.
Our air, water and health
are all at stake with the TPP, which is why so many environmental groups have
expressed grave concern.
Most noticeable is that
the roughly 6,000 pages of TPP text don’t even mention the words “climate
change,” much less attempt to address the fact that the TPP would increase
climate-disrupting emissions. The deal takes a step back from the environmental
protections of all U.S. free-trade agreements since 2007 by failing to require
TPP countries to fulfill their obligations in a set of core international
environmental treaties.
The TPP’s weak
conservation rules won’t do enough to adequately protect marine life and
wildlife from harmful practices such as shark finning or illegal logging. But
fossil fuel corporations would be empowered to challenge our public health and
climate safeguards in unaccountable ISDS tribunals. This corporate power grab
has been used in past deals to challenge clean energy initiatives, bans or
moratoriums on fracking, and more.
Speaking of fracking, we
could see a whole lot more of this dirty and destructive practice in our
backyards thanks to the TPP. The pact would require our Department of Energy to
automatically approve all exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to all TPP
countries—including Japan, the world’s largest LNG importer. This means more
fracking, air and water pollution, climate emissions and reliance on fossil
fuels—when we should keep those fuels in the ground and fully embrace clean
energy.
—Ilana Solomon, Director,
Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program
#3 WE’D LOSE MILLIONS OF
MANUFACTURING JOBS.
Between 1997 and 2014,
America lost more than 5 million manufacturing jobs. The vast majority,
according to the Economic Policy Institute, vanished as a result of growing
trade deficits with America’s free-trade and investment-deal partners. Some
850,000 jobs were lost to NAFTA after it took effect in 1994. China’s entry
into the WTO in 2001 cost the United States a staggering 3.2 million
manufacturing jobs over the next dozen years.
But the numbers on the TPP
look even worse. The Wall Street Journal calculates that by 2025, the deal
would increase the U.S. trade deficit in manufacturing, car assembly and car
parts by $55.8 billion a year. At that rate, based on the U.S. Department of
Commerce formula for jobs created by exports, the TPP would cost another 323,000
American manufacturing workers their jobs. That’s almost a million jobs every
three years.
And that is a conservative
estimate, because the TPP negotiators failed to include enforceable methods to
stop foreign labor abuses, including poverty wages and perilous working
conditions. This facilitates a race to the bottom. Corporations move factories
overseas because they can’t get away with paying Americans the $107 a month
that is the wage floor in Vietnam.
Also, disastrously, the
TPP would lower the minimum requirement for cars and auto parts to be
considered produced by a U.S. trade partner. The proportion would fall from 62.5 percent under NAFTA to 45
percent under the TPP, which means more than half of a vehicle could be
manufactured in China while auto companies would still benefit from zero U.S.
tariffs.
For decades, regulations
for free-trade agreements like the TPP have lined the pockets of the wealthy
and emptied those of workers. This must stop.
—Leo Gerard, President,
United Steelworkers
#4 IT DOES NOTHING TO FIX
OUR ENORMOUS TRADE DEFICIT.
Our current trade deficit
is close to $500 billion annually, or 3 percent of our GDP. This money is
creating demand and employment in other countries, not the United States, and
implies the loss of close to 3 million U.S. jobs a year.
This matters hugely in the
context of an economy facing a shortfall in demand, or “secular stagnation.” In
more normal times, the demand lost to the trade deficit could be replaced by
more investment or consumption spending. But under secular stagnation, neither
will fill that loss.
Yet the TPP fails to
address the main reason for our large and persistent trade deficit: currency
manipulation by other countries. Lowering one’s currency by 10 percent against
the dollar has the same effect as imposing a 10 percent tariff on all imports
and paying a 10 percent subsidy on exports. Raising the price of exports and
lowering the price of imports makes U.S. goods and services less competitive
internationally and domestically.
A number of countries,
including TPP parties Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam, have engaged in this
practice over the last two decades, driving up the U.S. trade deficit.
Ordinarily we would expect
the value of a currency of a country running a large trade deficit to decline.
That would make its goods and services more competitive internationally,
bringing its trade closer to balance. However, the dollar has not fallen in
response to the trade deficit because the central banks of China and other
countries have purchased huge amounts of dollar-based assets, such as U.S.
government bonds. By holding these assets, central banks prop up the value of
the dollar, keeping the U.S. trade deficit large.
The Obama administration
opted not to make currency management an issue in TPP negotiations. As a
result, there is only a side agreement that provides no new authority to combat
currency management beyond what exists in current law.
—Dean Baker, Co-director,
Center for Economic and Policy Research
#5 IT WOULD MAKE MEDICINES
MORE EXPENSIVE, AND COMPROMISE ACCESS FOR MANY PEOPLE IN THE PACIFIC RIM.
In all countries, people
and health systems depend on low-cost generic medicines to make treatment
affordable. Prices of patented drugs are rising every year. Absent generic
competition, there is little reason for drug companies to bring drug prices
down. The brand-name pharmaceutical industry business model relies on
maximizing profits by selling at very high prices to the few rather than
affordable prices to the many. Most countries, including our own, ration care.
The problem is especially
grave in developing countries, and the TPP would make it worse. TPP rules would
require countries to change their laws in order to expand drug companies’
monopoly powers, leading consumers and healthcare providers to pay higher
prices on more drugs for longer—or go without needed treatment. TPP rules are
not about providing basic patent protections, as White House messaging
sometimes suggests. All TPP countries already have those rules.
Instead, TPP rules are
lobbyist-driven bonuses for the industry. The rules include patent term
extensions and patents on new uses of old medicines, and procedural
requirements to give pharmaceutical companies greater opportunity to influence
government drug coverage and reimbursement decisions. There are marketing
exclusivity rules, which create pharmaceutical monopolies even when a product
is offpatent. There is no compelling evidence that these rules will spur
medical innovation or create jobs.
Some brave TPP negotiators
fought the pharmaceutical industry and the U.S. Trade Representative for many
years. If it were not for their efforts, the TPP would threaten even more
lives. Nevertheless, if the deal is approved, the TPP’s final rules will lead
to preventable suffering and death.
—Peter Maybarduk,
Director, Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program
#6 IT WOULD COMPROMISE THE
SAFETY OF OUR FOOD.
Most immediately, the TPP
would open up a flood of seafood, dairy, fruit and vegetable imports to the
United States at a time when import inspections are already severely
underfunded. The United States currently inspects just 2 percent of food
imports, and there is evidence that fish and seafood are already compromised:
Consumer Reports found that 60 percent of seafood (91 percent of which is
imported) tested was contaminated.
The TPP also gives
companies new ways to challenge food safety processes and inspections. It would
create a “rapid response mechanism” that would allow foreign companies to
challenge food safety decisions and would compel inspectors to make those new
assessments quickly, creating new pressures on already hard-pressed inspectors
with no new resources or even basic agreement on what food safety should look
like.
The deal would also
increase corporate control over agriculture. The TPP is modeled on past
free-trade deals that have made wildly inaccurate promises about benefits for
small farmers. Under NAFTA, when U.S. corn exports to Mexico increased
dramatically, more than 2 million Mexican farmers were driven from their lands.
But the number of U.S. family farmers fell sharply, too. Exports increased, but
revenues for most farmers did not. Along the way, large multinational companies
gained more control over production, so farmers have fewer options of where to
buy or sell their goods. It shouldn’t surprise us that trickledown economics
doesn’t work for farmers any better than it does for factory workers.
The TPP aims above all to
give multinational corporations more power over standards and supply chains,
which expands a U.S. agricultural system designed to produce crops for export
rather than to provide consumers with healthy food.
—Karen Hansen-Kuhn,
Director of Trade, Technology and Global Governance, Institute for Agriculture
and Trade Policy
#7 IT WOULD DESTABILIZE
GLOBAL FINANCE.
During nearly all of the
seven years negotiators worked on the TPP, the world was mired in or recovering
from the worst economic crisis in 75 years—one triggered by the collapse of a
deregulated, overgrown and corrupt financial sector. Negotiators must not have
noticed, because the TPP gives the world’s biggest banks and finance companies
even more power. They could much more easily challenge and overturn laws and
regulations in countries where they invest—plus collect compensation if their
profits don’t meet the firm’s “expectations” as a result of public policies.
The new terms will make it easy for big finance to file challenges to
government regulations or policies in ISDS tribunals and win. The loser? Global
financial stability.
The TPP would prohibit
capital controls, which permit countries to block destabilizing flights of “hot
money” from investors who hope to take momentary advantage of speculative
opportunities, then pull out of the country just before the bubble they create
collapses. It would also stop enactment of financial transaction taxes, a means
of dampening speculation and raising needed public revenue.
The list goes on. TPP
“market access” rules would undermine efforts to limit the size of banks or to
establish “firewalls” between financial activities, such as restoring U.S.
Glass-Steagall Act regulations, which were eliminated in 1999, contributing to
the subsequent financial crisis. It would make it impossible for countries to
reject financial “innovations” such as derivatives—the foundation of many
“bubbles” that burst in 2008—if they exist in any other TPP nation. Despite
evidence swirling around them every day in the form of global financial chaos,
negotiators crafted the TPP’s financial rules following a flawed deregulatory
model that was an affront to democracy and sound economic policy—just to
protect the “expectations” of profits by big multinational banks and financial
firms.
—David Moberg, Senior
Editor, In These Times
#8 IT WOULD STRENGTHEN
ALREADY-FLAWED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY REGULATIONS IN AWFUL WAYS, PARTICULARLY ON
THE INTERNET.
Copyright laws in America
have already had a profound effect on Internet users. The Digital Millennium
Copyright Act, or DMCA, was intended to update copyright for the digital age.
But over the years, the terms of the law have infringed on fair use and free
speech. This ranges from YouTube users flagged for copyright violation because
they posted videos of their baby dancing to a Prince song, to more troubling
instances of investigative journalists being censored based on things like
sketchy defamation claims.
Without an opportunity for
the public to weigh in, the U.S. Trade Representative—the lead U.S. negotiator
on the TPP—and negotiators for other countries were flooded by lobbyists from
corporations, Hollywood and music executives, pushing for more stringent
protections on their content.
The result? An agreement
that forces what’s broken with copyright law in the United States upon other
countries. The TPP will lengthen onerous copyright terms from a previous trade
agreement—keeping information and art locked away from the public domain for
decades and opening the floodgates for further abuse of copyright laws and
censorship.
What’s more, Internet
service providers will continue to hastily remove content flagged as a
copyright violation, with little review. And countries will be required and
incentivized to deliver heavy-handed sentences and fines to alleged infringers.
Perhaps most shocking to
anyone who owns a website is a requirement that countries publish databases of
names and addresses associated with certain domains. This is a paricularly
troubling step for activists and journalists who could face threats and
intimidation for the issues they champion— deterring many from speaking out at
all.
This is not a done deal.
The TPP must go to lawmakers in each country for final passage. Before that
happens, activists must be swift to ring the alarm bells and ensure that the
very architecture of the Internet is not broken.
—Sara Cederberg, Campaign
Director, Demand Progress
DAVID MOBERG
David Moberg, a senior
editor of In These Times, has been on the staff of the magazine since it began
publishing in 1976. Before joining In These Times, he completed his work for a
Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked for Newsweek. He
has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
and the Nation Institute for research on the new global economy. He can be
reached at davidmoberg@inthesetimes.com.
(See US Continental Westward Imperialism Newsletters)
Contents: US Westward Imperialism, Pacific/E. Asia
Newsletter #17, July
12, 2015 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2015/07/us-westward-imperialism-pacifice-asia.html
US Westward Imperialism
Network of Military Bases
From
Tacoma to Tajikistan
Opposition
to New Base on Okinawa
Pentagon’s
Vietnam War Whitewash Campaign and VfP Counter Campaign
US Global Imperial
Military Bases and Nuclear Threat
David
Vine, Books on US Global Harms and Diego Garcia
No
to the New Trident WMD
Mona
Lee, GZ Center: Ending the Nuclear Arms Race
TPP Trans-Pacific
Partnership
(OMNI published 4 articles
in #15, 10 in #16, now 9 in #17)
Fran Alexander, Fooling the People
Joyce Hale: Benefitting Corporations, Can the Public Follow the
Dots?
Senator Sessions Exposes Contents
Grayson: TPP vs. Democracy
Warren to Obama
Baker, Four Reports including how Corporate Media Report TPP:
The
Washington Post
Washington Post
Contact President Obama and
Congressmen
Senator John Boozman: (202)224-4843
Website Email: http://www.boozman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me
Senator Tom Cotton: (202)224-2353
Website Email: http://www.cotton.senate.gov/content/contact-tom
Rep. Rick
Crawford, 1st District: (202)225-4076
Website Email: http://crawford.house.gov/contact/
Rep.
French Hill, 2nd District: (202)225-2506
Website Email: https://hill.house.gov/contact/email
Rep.
Steve Womack, 3rd District: (202)225-4301
Website Email: http://womack.house.gov/contact/
1119 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Washington, DC 20515
3333 Pinnacle Hills, Suite 120
Rogers, Arkansas 72758
Rogers, Arkansas 72758
Rep.
Bruce Westerman, 4th District: (202) 225-3772
President Barack Obama: Comments: 202-456-1111, Switchboard: 202-456-1414
The
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
For research
purposes, specific subjects can be located in the following alphabetized index,
and searched on the blog using the search box. The search box is located
in the upper left corner of the webpage.
Newsletter Index: http://omnicenter.org/dick-bennetts-peace-justice-and-ecology-newsletters/dicks-newsletter-index/
Newsletter Index: http://omnicenter.org/dick-bennetts-peace-justice-and-ecology-newsletters/dicks-newsletter-index/
(479)
442-4600
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Fayetteville, AR 72703
2582 Jimmie Ave.
Fayetteville, AR 72703
Each of these newsletters
is a small anthology intended to provide knowledge for personal communication,
letters and columns to the editor, and research papers at schools. All together they constitute a large
collection of writings on each subject from the point of view of world peace,
nonviolence, social and economic justice, human rights, participatory
democracy, affirmative government, stewardship of the planet’s earth and air
and all species.
END US WESTWARD IMPERIALISM, PACIFIC,
E. ASIA (INTO INDIAN OCEAN WHERE WESTWARD MEETS EASTERN IMPERIAL MOVEMENT)
NEWSLETTER #18
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