ISRAEL USES DIME BOMBS IN GAZA

Israel’s invasion of Gaza bears a striking resemblance to its ill-fated war in Lebanon in 2006 in which it failed to defeat Hezbollah. This time round, it was unable to destroy Hamas. However, the campaign may well be remembered for the fact that the Israeli Defense Forces experimented with at least one a new weapon in an urban setting.
According to doctors, who treated the thousands of injured, and the more than one thousand dead Palestinians, one of the weapons that featured in the 22 day bombardment of Gaza was the DIME bomb - dense inert metal explosive - which causes horrifying injuries. It is composed of tungsten and high tensile steel alloys called HTMAs which, according to a 2005 Department of Health report, can cause cancer. The weapon was developed by the U.S. military, which has not tested it on the battlefield and by all accounts regards it as being at the experimental stage. That did not stop Israel first using it in a limited way in Gaza in the summer of 2006, firing it from drones. However, at that time, the Israel military denied having it and doctors were unable to prove otherwise even though they noticed patients with severe injuries that has no signs of shrapnel.
Explosives experts say a Dime bomb narrows the range of the explosion it creates and intensifies its impact within a narrow radius. According to Italian investigative reporters, who were first to draw attention to the existence of the weapon, it is a precision device developed in the U.S. in 2005. The U.S. military was keen to have DIME bombs in its arsenal for use in urban areas of Iraq and Afghanistan because they had the potential to limit the kind of collateral damage often caused by conventional explosives. When a regular bomb explodes in an urban setting the blast extends outwards over a wide area, often inflicting unnecessary casualties. For reasons yet unknown, the U.S. military did not do any battlefield tests on DIME in Iraq or Afghanistan and it was left to the Israelis to test its effectiveness. So far, there has been no admission by the U.S. that it supplied Israel with DIME bombs or the technology to build them.
Nevertheless, there is now evidence, gleaned from photographs of wounded civilians in Lebanon in 2006, which confirms DIMEs were fired from Israeli drones. In the latest 22-day shock and awe bombardment of Gaza, physicians and surgeons were quickly confronted by wounds they had not seen before. Eric Fosse, a Norwegian surgeon, who has worked in Gaza for some time, is convinced DIME weapons were used a lot because some of the people he treated had terrible injuries that showed no evidence of shrapnel. He says it was as if tungsten, which explodes like a powder when a Dime weapon hits its target, had “dissolved” into tissue, leaving no obvious trace. There were also signs of intense heat at the site of severe amputations. There is a possibility DIME bombs were not the only experimental weapons used in Gaza because some surgeons reported seeing injuries which defied explanation and did not appear to have been caused by traditional explosive shells or missiles. For example, in some instances surgeons could not stop bleeding from wounds. The reaction of the Israeli military to these claims is that it abides by international law.
If the past is anything to go by, calls now being made for a U.N. inquiry into the use of DIME bombs and white phosphorous in Gaza will go unheeded. It is not the first time Israel has knowingly used such weapons in a fashion that contravenes the Geneva conventions, and it may not be the last. Anytime U.N. bodies have condemned the IDF Israeli leaders have shrugged off the matter, claiming the U.N. is anti-Semitic. Israel also appears immune to world criticism, confident that it has the backing of Washington. It knows the U.S. will always block any attempt by the U.N.’s highest body, the Security Council, to censure it. It is also dismissive of the International Court in The Hague, which may well open an investigation into the latest bombardment of Gaza. Over decades, there have been scores of U.N. resolutions condemning Israel – 65 of them between 1955 through 1992 – yet Israel ignored them all.
After the war in Lebanon in 2006, many international groups were disappointed the U.N. did not launch an inquiry into Israel’s use of cluster munitions, which it acquired from the United States. There was clear evidence that Israel deliberately fired 1,800 cluster munitions containing 1.2 million bomblets into Lebanon. After the war, an IDF commander told the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, that “what we did was insane and monstrous. We covered entire towns in cluster bombs.”
The problem with cluster munitions is that they are indiscriminate weapons that do not always detonate on impact. The bomblets can lie in soil for years, only exploding when a child or adult steps on them. Haaretz also carried reports that Israeli soldiers fired phosphorous shells into Lebanon, breaching international laws, which ban the use of that weapon against civilians or military.
One of the big questions arising from the latest invasion of Gaza is what did Israel actually achieve. For 22-days, its military pounded Gaza from land and air without stating its goals. By all accounts, Hamas did not put up much of a fight and therefore kept most of its structure in place. That has left many observers with the feeling that the invasion was an exercise in revenge, designed to hurt the civilian population with the aim of detaching it from Hamas. In other words, the Israelis believed that if Palestinian civilians suffered enough they would be more likely to blame Hamas, thereby weakening its power base. If that was the strategy, it was a naïve one. The survival of Hamas, allied to unprecedented levels of bitterness throughout the Arab world, can only serve to embolden Hamas the way the invasion of Lebanon in 2006 energized Hezbollah. Israel’s news blackout on its Gaza operation also proved counterproductive, though not in terms of the only audience Israel cared about, namely the American public. By preventing media access the battlefield Israel knew that American cable channels, unlike their European counterparts, would not use footage from Al Jazeera, the only television network with staff in Gaza. As a consequence, the American public saw little of the carnage and the killing of civilians, making it possible for Israel to engage in a limited war, which ultimately may prove to be yet another failure. Even the news censorship ensured that the majority of people across the globe saw only Al Jazeera’s coverage of dead and injured Palestinians, portraying Israel as the aggressor.

THE WAR IN OUR BACKYARD

Since December 2006, Mexican drug gangs have killed twice the number of people who perished on 9/11. In fact, the Mexican death toll, mostly of civilians not connected with the drugs trade, far exceeds the total of U.S. fatalities in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to Mexican Attorney General, Eduardo Medina Mora, 8,150 people have been murdered since Felipe Calderon became the country’s president in December 2006. Calderon is on record saying his country is fighting a war that must be won. Former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, says the lack of coverage of the drug war and its impact on the U.S. is due to the failure of the U.S. mainstream media to focus on it. In his view, we now have a war on our doorstep that may turn out to be one of the major priorities for the incoming Obama presidency. The Justice Department is also beginning to accept that the greatest threat to the U.S. from organized crime syndicates comes not from within, or from trans-national syndicates operating out of Eastern Europe, but from across our border in Mexico. In Acapulco, once the playground of the rich, hundreds have died.
The sheer scale of the violence has echoes of brutal conflicts in other parts of the world. Three days before Christmas, twelve men were decapitated and their heads and bodies dumped at different sites. The bodies were found at two locations while the heads, all in a plastic bag, were left in a village on the outskirts of Chilpancingo, a city in Guerrero state. The victims were believed to be soldiers and a police commander involved in the war against the cartels. The horror of the crime hardly shocked Mexicans who had become only too familiar with grisly murders. In some instances, drug gangs have tossed decapitated heads into dance halls and cafes to warn people not to inform on them to the police or military.
President Calderon has committed 45,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal officers to the battle because the cartels are heavily armed with weapons smuggled across the border from the U.S. The Mexican governments says thousands of high powered weapons are being smuggled each year into Mexico, a claim confirmed by ATF statistics, which show that since 1966 the Bureau has examined 62,000 guns seized in Mexico and has traced them all of them to the U.S. Some weapons such as .50 caliber Browning sniper rifles and grenade launchers were stolen from U.S. military facilities. In recent years, the rise in weapons smuggling has meant drug gangs have had the upper hand in shootouts with not only the local and federal police but also troops sent to confront them.
Mexico has steadily become the major trafficking route into the U.S. for Colombian cocaine growers. More worrisome for U.S. drug enforcement agencies is that Mexican cartels are now heavily involved in the processing of cocaine in parts of Colombia. For years, the Bush administration ignored the growing threat from Mexico’s cartels and instead provided hundreds of millions of dollars to the Colombia to fight FARC guerillas and narco-trafficking. In October 2007, President Bush decided it was time to address the problem in Mexico, using tactics that have not worked well in Colombia, namely throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at the issue. In what became known as the Merida Initiative, because it was launched in the Mexican town of Merida, President Bush allocated $1.6 billion to be spent over four years targeting narco-traffickers across Central America. Of that sum, $400 million was promised to Mexico, and as much again to Colombia, which receives generous military aid annually from Congress. The Merida plan stipulated that the money should not be given in cash but spent on devising law enforcement and military training programs, as well as strategies to eradicate corruption. Some observers argued it was too little too late to stem the growth of the Mexican cartels. There was also much criticism of the fact that “Merida” was loaded with too many conflicting drug detection programs. Congress added to the complexity by introducing other ways to spend the $1.5bn allotment by encouraging a variety of federal and private agencies to apply for money for their pet anti-drug projects. For some critics, the scheme was simply a confusing, unregulated exercise in spending massive amounts of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
One of the difficulties for the U.S. in working with the Mexican authorities is that Mexico has traditionally been a nation riddled with corruption from top to bottom, much like Colombia. In November 2008, that was brought home to U.S. and Mexican authorities with a frightening reality. Mexico’s former drug czar, Noe Ramirez, was arrested for accepting a bribe of $450,000 from the Pacific cartel. According to the country’s attorney general, the cartel had promised Ramirez a similar sum each month for alerting it to police operations. Ramirez had been at the center of President Calderon’s war against d rugs from the day he took office in December 2006. Immediately following the Ramirez scandal, Mexico’s head of Interpol, Ricardo Gutierrez, was also arrested for working for a different cartel. It was believed he had done incalculable damage to the war on drugs. His arrest happened a short time after authorities seized two other senior anti-drug agents for receiving bribes totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the wake of the arrests, the country’s military entered Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, and removed 500 policemen from their duties. It is thought the numbers of policemen and local officials in Tijuana compromised by the cartels may be in excess of 2,000. In this kind of environment, U.S. drug enforcement and intelligence agencies are reluctant to trust their Mexican counterparts yet corruption in public life should come as any surprise to those who have watched the rise of Mexican drug lords. As far back as February 1997, the country’s then drug czar, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was jailed for taking bribes directly from the a drug baron, who lived next door to him.
Some veteran law enforcement analysts believe this is a war that may take decades to win and could cost tens of billions of U.S. funded dollars. They argue that a complete overhaul of the Mexican political and judicial systems is the only way to curb the power of the cartels and that will require major U.S. involvement, including joint military and law enforcement operations
While the Bush administration is certainly guilty of ignoring the steady rise of the cartels, Mexico must share the majority of the blame for failing to end corruption at all levels of life, especially within the police, military and judiciary. Too little was done before 9/11 and it was only with the arrival of Felipe Calderon as president in December 2006 that a serious effort was made by the Mexican government to tackle the problem head on. In contrast, Washington’s focus post 9/11 was on Iraq and Afghanistan with occasional talk about the need for a border fence and the danger of Islamic terrorists entering the U.S. from Mexico. The truth is that with Mexico in the grip of a drugs war being won by the most unscrupulous people imaginable, terrorists might now find it easier to enter the U.S. by linking up with Mexican cartels that are expanding their operations to Europe and Africa.

JAPAN READIES FOR PERCEIVED CHINA THREAT

In 2009, Japan is expected to launch a major five-year expansion of its self defense forces in response to China flexing its military muscle in the region.
Japan’s decision to abandon a decades’ old tendency to ignore the need for a competitive military has not gone unnoticed in China where there has been growing criticism of Japan’s desire, in particular, for a bigger navy and closer military ties to the United States.
For its part, Japan has not timid about the reasons for its planned military build-up. In recent times, it has unapologetically broken with previous diplomatic protocols by describing China as a potential threat. It is the kind of language that has angered Chinese leaders who would prefer to see Japan retain its constitutionally required pacifism, which derived from a US-mandated constitution following World War Two. The constitution severely restricted Japan’s military, ensuring it could not be re-constructed for anything but self defense purposes and it also curtailed its size and capabilities. For several years now, Washington has been encouraging Japan to step outside of the strictures of its constitution. It has also mounted joint exercise between various branches of the Japanese self defense forces and the U.S. military and has persuaded the Japanese to play a more pro-active role in peacekeeping duties in Iraq and elsewhere.
The motivation for Washington’s back door pressure on Japan to modernize its military relates to a strategy to provide a counterbalance to Chinese military aggression and to send a signal to the Chinese that the U.S. will not tolerate China wielding unquestioned dominance of the high seas in that region and across Asia. The U.S. has recently initiated new security arrangements with Japan and has forged closer ties between the Australian and Japanese militaries, which see China as a future danger to stability in Asia.
Signs that the U.S. and Japan were agreed on a new security approach to the region were evident in an agreement by Japan to build a missile defense system with U.S. help and to purchase four advanced U.S. destroyers with the most up-to date surface- to-air missile capabilities. In conjunction with parts of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the Japanese navy has acceded to a Pentagon request to participate in intelligence gathering on China’s maritime activities.
The Japanese have made it clear to Washington that, despite growing trade with China, there has been a lack of transparency on China’s part regarding the expansion of its military and the sums spent on new weaponry. In the past year, there has been concern expressed within Japan’s military and civilian leadership that the country’s hi-tech weaponry may have been compromised by a previous reliance on Chinese made components. As a consequence, Japan has undertaken a new program to break the reliance on Chinese manufactured computer chips.
One of the major issues facing Japan and China is territorial and relates to disputed areas of the East China Seas, which contain large deposits of oil and gas. In 2007, Japan complained that China’s gas exploration was reducing natural gas reserves in Japan’s territorial waters. Japan has argued for a demarcation line to be drawn equidistant between the two countries, thereby following a practice enshrined in the international Law of the Sea Treaty. China refused and aggressively argued that its continental shelf reached further into the disputed waters and it was therefore entitled to a greater share of the territory. China’s posture reflected an outmoded method of solving maritime disputes and signaled the unorthodox steps China was prepared to adopt in its desperate need for energy to feed its massive infrastructure projects and to satisfy the growing demand for energy by its more than 1 billion inhabitants. While some agreements have been made regarding joint exploration, tensions in the disputed areas have not lessened and China has been reluctant to cede ground on many of its territorial claims. Japan therefore sees an ongoing Chinese naval build up as a precursor to China employing force in pursuit of its claims. In response, it is likely by 2010 that Japan will have a fleet of over 30 destroyers, two new aircraft carriers, 17 conventional submarines, the latest early warning surveillance aircraft and over 250 modern fighter aircraft.
Japan’s planned military expansion is also predicated on the assertion that, like the U.S., it would deem a Chinese mainland attack on the island of Taiwan a threat to Japan’s security and the stability of East Asia. In that event, the Japanese military would have to provide support to the U.S. military which, in respect of explicit term assurances contained in the Taiwan Relations Act, would have to come to that island’s defense.
China has an obsessive view of sovereignty when it comes to claiming Taiwan as part of mainland China. But sovereignty is a cover for a much great recognition by China that the island of Taiwan presents limits to China’s ability to move forcefully into the Pacific in order to exert even greater influence in the region. Possession of Taiwan would also expand China’s costal area and maritime zone in terms of economic advantages from fishing and energy exploration. More significantly, it would also allow China to seal off important shipping lanes to American allies in the region. China’s army and naval elites have made their views on the issue clear in the following statement:
‘‘China is semi-concealed by the first island chain. If it wants to prosper, it has to advance into the Pacific, in which China’s future lies. Taiwan, facing the Pacific in the east, is the only unobstructed exit for China to move into
the ocean. If this gateway is opened for China, then it becomes
much easier for China to maneuver in the West Pacific.’’
Japan, the United States and Australia are well aware of China’s thinking on the subject and Japan, as China’s neighbor is moving ahead, with Washington’s encouragement, to be ready for the day China decides to enforce its Taiwan ambitions.

WILL OBAMA REALLY END CUBA'S ISOLATION?

There is reason to believe that in 2009 a Barack Obama administration will take the major step of seeking a rapprochement with Cuba, thereby setting in motion a diplomatic policy that will effectively end 47 years of that nation’s isolation.
Were it to happen, it would have the backing of younger Cuban Americans, most European Union leaders and the whole of Latin America. It would also be applauded by the American oil and gas industry, which has been quietly arguing for some years now that Cuba represents a major energy resource and a cheap gas supplier for Florida.
Recently, Raul Castro, who has taken over the reins of power in Cuba from his brother, Fidel, made his first trip abroad to attend a meeting of a 33-nation Latin American and Caribbean summit held in Brazil’s second largest city, Rio de Janeiro, which was also once its capital. During the summit, the Rio Group, an organization established in 1968 to promote Latin American integration, made Cuba its 23rd member. In response, every nation at the summit roundly condemned America’s ongoing 1962 embargo against Cuba. They stressed that the embargo had been an abject failure and, in the present political climate, there was greater need for diplomacy and serious political dialogue.
Making Cuba part of the Rio Group was a signal to the incoming Obama presidency, as well as a loud denunciation of the Bush policy vis a vis Cuba. Many experts in the United States believe there is plenty of evidence to show that during his two terms in office George Bush failed to keep an eye on his own backyard. Aside from the Cuban issue, he took his eye off the ball when it came to most of Latin America and was solely preoccupied with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a consequence, China stealthily moved into Latin American and began spending large sums of money to establish close political and diplomatic links with major players like Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela. The Chinese government also invested in industries in both Brazil and in five years has constructed an important economic base, just the one it has built across Africa. Lately, with the cooling of relations between Moscow and Washington, Russia has also drawn closer to Latin American, especially to Venezuela and Cuba. Lately, Russian warships even visited ports in Cuba and Venezuela. During the Rio summit, the Bush White House sent a message to Cuba that the embargo would not be lifted, demonstrating to those at the event how out of touch the outgoing Bush White House has been with respect to Latin American affairs.
Brazil, whose landmass occupies almost half of Latin America, has tried consistently to persuade the Bush administration of the need for a change of policy towards Cuba, arguing that the embargo is nowadays perceived as a crude relic of a past that can have little positive outcomes in the future. Leading Latin American newspapers commentators covering the Rio summit wrote that U.S. policies towards Latin American had failed and it was time for change. Some editorials warned that Latin America would not wait indefinitely for Washington to see the light and would forge new alliances. For some that was an obvious reference to China and Russia.
Raul Castro chose his language carefully when speaking at the summit, taking care to avoid the familiar anti-U.S. rhetoric of his brother, Fidel. In response to questions from journalists about Barack Obama, he denied that Brazil’s president, Lula Da Silva, had offered to act as a mediator between himself and Obama in 2009. Nevertheless, the very fact the issue was raised seemed to indicate that Brazil could well be working behind the scenes to encourage the incoming U.S. president to re-think the way the U.S. deals with Latin America, and in particular with Cuba. Most Latin American leaders have welcomed the prospect of an Obama presidency and none more so than Brazil’s’ leader, who is on record saying that Obama would be truly presidential if he took the courageous step of lifting the embargo on Cuba.
Lula Da Silva tends to see himself as the voice of Latin America and many believe he has the charisma and political skills to lessen the influence of figures like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. He knows that in Raul Castro, who has said he would happily meet Obama, he has a more conservative figure than Fidel, and therefore an opportunity to shape a new political era between Washington and its closest neighbors. Such an era could end the growing anger of some Latin American leaders like Ivo Morales of Bolivia, who has demanded that his neighbors expel U.S. ambassadors until the embargo against Cuba is lifted. Lula Da Silva rejected such talk at the summit and Raul Castro did not respond to it.
Barack Obama has voiced willingness to change U.S. policy towards Cuba and if the Brazilian president can convince Raul Castro to release unconditionally his country’s political prisoners that might open the door to Obama acting decisively to end the embargo. Of course that could not happen immediately, but a President Obama could begin by lifting travel restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba.
In 2009, the new U.S. administration will be aware of several important facts about Cuba. One is that China is quickly overtaking Venezuela as Cuba’s premier business partner. China’s need for energy is its major reason for forgoing closer ties with Havana and Beijing will be happy if the U.S. continues to refuse to do business with Cuba. In the meantime, China has also invested billions of dollars in one of Brazil’s largest petroleum companies and its eyes are on Cuba’s large, untapped oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico. For some observers, the U.S. embargo is a case of Washington cutting off its nose to spite its face because it does not make economic sense to continue to isolate Cuba when all signs are that the Fidel Castro era is coming to an end. Brazil is trying to signal to the incoming Obama foreign policy team that if the new U.S. administration waits too long to forge a new partnership with Cuba, it will lose out to China and Russia, as well as to Latin American energy competitors.
Cuba at its widest point is 90 miles off the Florida coast, sitting atop what a U.S. geological survey confirms is 4.6 billion barrels of crude oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - the same, if not more energy than exists in Alaska’s National Wildlife Reserve. Before long, China may be tapping into those energy reserves in Florida’s backyard unless the incoming Obama Administration takes Brazil president, Lula Da Silva’s advice, and seek a new relationship with Cuba’s Raul Castro.

CHINA PART 3: STEALTH ON LAND AND IN SPACE

In 2009, China will continue to use its massive wealth to expand its influence and its search for natural resources in countries across the globe. It will also work hard to gain the upper hand in the development of weapons in outer space.
On land, China’s business activities throughout Africa and Latin America speak to its recognition since 1993 that not only does it need to import a lot of oil to fuel its economy on the march to superpower status but it also needs constant supplies of other natural materials such as wood and iron ore to rebuild its infrastructure.
Those needs have helped prioritize the key elements of China’s foreign and economic policies, which are not only aimed at buying influence and raw materials but also at presenting China as a global player and a more generous friend and partner than the United States. To that end, China has offered loans without strings attached to countries throughout the Africa and Latin America, and especially to those nations rich in oil and gas in zones ignored during the two terms of the Bush presidency. For example, in 2007 China used its foreign exchange to buy $300 million in Costa Rican federal bonds in exchange for Costa Rican closing its embassy in Taiwan and expelling Taiwanese diplomats. In September 2007, Angola received $837 million as the first part of a $2.1 billion loan from the Chinese. In the opinion of western banking experts there were no strings attached to the loan, thereby undermining the International Monetary Fund and western lending institutions. When China makes many of its loans, it also provides grant aid for infrastructure projects in order to improve road and rail links for the flow of natural resources to air ports and ports so materials can be transported more speedily to China. In countries that do not have laws requiring local labor for such projects, China flies in Chinese labor, including engineering experts from the PLA, the Peoples Liberation Army.
While it goes about its business globally, China at the same time maintains a seemingly cooperative relationship with the United States, taking care to appear supportive of U.S. concerns, especially when they relate to the global war on terror. At the same time, however, China’s economic dealings worldwide are designed is to undermine the U.S. by providing the kind of package deals that poorer nations long for. For instance, when China offers loans without strings attached, the loans are part of a package that also includes military assistance, weapons, trade agreements, cultural exchange programs, medical aid and help with infrastructure development.
The PLA is at the apex of China’s economic foreign policy, with the focus directed at building links into Africa, Latin America and S. East Asia. In 2008, China signed two trade agreements with Peru and Costa Rica and it has also outlined plans to spend $100 billion on Africa projects by 2010. According to China’s Commerce Ministry, trade between China and sub-Saharan African totaled $59 billion in 2007. That represented an annual growth increase of 30%. U.N. statistics show that by the end of 2007, China had spent almost $100 billion in investments abroad. Presently, China is using its huge cash reserves to forge economic links with countries that include Nigeria, Russia, Zambia, Kazakhstan and Thailand.
Unlike the United States and American private investors, China is always ready to risk large sums of money to get what it wants. It is also willing to do business with rogue regimes, which have control over natural resources. The Chinese use debt relief and development grant aid as the major tools to get their feet in the door in many parts of the world. But they have also been doing business right under the nose of the U.S. in the Middle East. In 2008, China’s national petroleum company, CNPC, signed a $3billion contract with the Iraqi government, giving Beijing a 75% stake in oil pumped from the Adhab oil field. At the same time, China waived payments on loans it had made to 33 countries worldwide and passed on a debt of $10 billion it was owed by Iran. It even gave Iran $7 million to spend on education and public health projects. Iran’s debt mattered less to China than the fact that Iran sits on a fifth of the world’s oil and gas reserves.
In many instances since 2001, the committee of the ruling Communist Party in Beijing agreed to projects abroad on the advice of the PLA, which identified areas of the globe ripe for investment, notably Africa and Latin America that were being ignored by the Bush presidency. In tandem with economic loans and grant aid, China allowed the PLA in many cases to develop strategic relationships with countries that were benefiting from China’s largesse. A striking example was the PLA’s role in working with Brazil and Argentina to jointly develop communications and surveillance satellites. The militaries of both countries are due to engage in joint exercises over the next 18 months. Meanwhile, China sells those nations, as well as Venezuela, conventional weapons at knock down prices.
While all of this should be of great concern to the incoming Obama presidency, a more pressing issue is how China has, without too much public exposure, used its wealth to match the U.S. in rocket, satellite and anti-satellite weaponry.
While the U.S. is not due to go back to the moon until 2020, China may get there in the next three years, using a robotic rover, with a manned mission likely in 2015. That would signal the fact that China has made immense strides in its space programs, some of which could eventually pose a major security threat to the U.S. and its allies. Put simply, China has streamlined its outer space activities by having them routed through the PLA, whereas America has a virtual division of resources allocated to the Pentagon and NASA. There are rumors that the incoming Obama administration may seek to develop its own streamlining by forcing NASA to work with the Pentagon on rocket development. China has also been able to increase the size of its space development plans by raising tens of millions of dollars through the provision of launch facilities to countries like Brazil.
China sees outer space programs as a way of expanding its global communications and more importantly as a means to gaining a strategic advantage by overtaking the U.S. in creating space weaponry. The sheer scale of China’s space program can be explained by the fact that it now employs 200,000 engineers and every satellite it launches has a dual capability to allow for military surveillance usage. Some experts believe that, if the U.S. is not careful, China could gain the upper hand in space over the next decade by developing more sophisticated anti-satellite weapons than the ones it already possesses. It could also build satellites capable of jamming U.S. hardware in space. In those circumstances, China would have an edge over the U.S. and its allies in battlefield situations since global satellite communications are an integral element in deciding the outcome of modern conflicts.
A recent report to Congress warned about this issue and quoted Jing-don Yuan, a professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He said China had concluded that outer space was an essential arena for future warfare and was important not only for intelligence gathering but also for enhancing command and control of combat forces.
In 2008, China launched 15 new military satellites.