SIT-REP 7-14; Wednesday, July 14, 1999

Round Up: Kosovo, Kashmir, Iran, North Korea, Taiwan

Note to Readers: I will be in Pittsburgh, PA for the weekend, addressing the Serb National Federation's annual meeting, and in Washington, DC next week, attending to the business of "Soldiers For The Truth." My time, therefore, will be very limited, so please keep e-mail communication down to the absolutely necessary.

Summary: It is time to take a look at Kosovo and beyond, to other foreign affairs matters that are generally not going well for the United States or for the "Clinton Legacy." In the nearly 5 weeks since NATO "peacekeeping forces" entered Kosovo, chaos still rules, the KLA continues to assert its power and authority, and the cleansing by terror, arson, rape and murder continues of all ethnic groups which do not support the KLA and its allies from the Heroin Mafia and the Greater Albanian forces within the Albanian government of Tirana, the Secret Police and other factions.

At the same time, there are increasingly obvious problems with China-Taiwan, India-Pakistan, the two Koreas and Iran. The Clinton vision of a robust non-proliferation regime is all but dead --in reality it was never viable. There is now an unbroken string of countries developing weapons of mass destruction (missiles, chemical, nuclear and/or biological weapons) right across Asia, with neighbors looking at the developments and necessarily contemplating their own acquisition of WMD as a defensive safeguard. Israel, Syria (Chemicals & Scuds only, we think), Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, China and North Korea. Suddenly, Saudi Arabia is looking at Pakistan's program and Greece worries that Turkey is on the way to developing a nuclear program --with Russian reactor technology. Anything mankind has built that confers profit, power and/or advantage, it will build, despite regulatory regimes based on prohibitionist theory. WMDs are a perfect example and the recent air war against Yugoslavia demonstrates the potentil peril to sovereign countries lacking a powerful means of retaliation.

North Korea has at least 10-12 plutonium bombs and will test a missile with a 3,750+ mile range in the next month or so. That test will mark the end of the US's ability to maintain any illusion that its policies have had any success in containing Pyongyang's weapons programs. Northeast Asia is unsafe and unstable. Our forces in Korea, Okinawa and Japan are now "hostages."

The new Israeli government of Ehud Barak is the shining exception; it has renewed the Middle East peace drive and Secretary Albright, needing to refurbish her tarnished reputation after Kosovo, has already announced she will visit the Middle East next month.

Kosovo & Yugoslavia:

The Marines of the 26^th MEU, who led the US entry into Kosovo a little under 5 weeks ago, quickly began to wonder if they were not sitting in another "Beirut" situation. Fortunately for the Corps, the 26^th is being pulled out to be replaced by Army troops from the !st Infantry Division. But American troops are, in my opinion, sitting in another Beirut as targets. This is because NATO's KFOR and the pusillanimous politicians of NATO have opted to let the KLA empower itself and terrorize everybody else.

The western papers have all but stopped reporting on the violent chaos that is Kosovo today, but my inbox is full of reports from the European Press, from independent journalists and with releases from the good people of the Serbian Orthodox Church inside Kosovo --Bishop Artimije, Father Sava and others. Those voices for tolerance and moderation over the last eight years and more have all but given up their attempt to work with KFOR in settling down the province, since it won't protect them, much less their parishoners.

I have now received reliable reports (mostly from the legitimate media) on terrorism and ethnic cleansing, not just of Serbs, but of Roma (Gypsies --increasingly reported by the western press), Croats, Gorani (Macedonian Muslims --about 40,000 in Kosovo) and even Kosovo's last 10 Jews, now hiding in central Serbia. Last year, these groups, plus Circassians, Egyiptians, Turks and Greeks were being harassed --as the KLA entered Prizren last month, the Turks mostly fled; the Greeks are also leaving the province.

It is so bad for more moderate Albanians --Ibraham Rugova's urban pacifist-secessionists of the League for a Democratic Kosovo (the LDK) and those loyalists who supported Belgrade-- that Mr. Rugova, twice elected "president" of the unofficial government of Kosovo, feels it safer to remain in Italy and out of the range of KLA assassins: many in the KLA have declared "blood feud" vendettas against him.

The other thing clear about the many reports is that the terror against these communities is province-wide and focussed on liquidating any "intelligentsia" --the KLA is "decapitating" the society of any potential leaders. There have been dozens of confirmed murders, plus some 130 kidnappings in the last few weeks, but NATO and the UN do not track these events on a "scorecard." This xenophobic violence is going on under the noses of the KFOR soldiers who rarely lift a finger to stop arson, to arrest Albanian criminals, or to protect property --religious sites and housing-- from destruction. Serbian war criminals are to be punished, but the KLA is not, it seems.

KFOR is violating the laws of action-reaction; stimulus-response, "unintended consequences" and equity. Civilization cannot abide in proximity to lunatics with guns controlling a population, but that is precisely the situation NATO has created.

All this indicates to me that "Operation Allied Force" and the "KFOR" pacification are only setting the stage for a next Balkan war, triggered by Albanian aggression-terror and by a need among Serbs, Greeks, Macedonians and others, not just for revenge, but for a necessary retribution to an out-of-control criminal conspiracy. It will be a matter of self-defense, of law and order.

In Yugoslavia, demonstrations against the Milosevic regime continue in cities and towns around the country, but have not yet begun in Belgrade. Vuk Draskovic, tired of competing with other egoists among the opposition parties' leaderships, stayed on the sidelines initially, but indicated yesterday, that he will rally his Serbian Renewal Movement followers in coming days. Draskovic is the man to watch; as he was in the anti-Milosevic demonstrations of 1996-97, when several hundred thousands marched for weeks. But as with the demonstrations in Iran (next article), it remains to be seen how long demonstrations will take to usher Mr. Milosevic out of power. One key factor this time appears to be the willingness of Army reservists to demonstrate for back pay. As the chaos continues inside Kosovo, can the opposition find more abiding issues that will unite opposition rank-and-file? That is what to look for. Another thing is a strengthening connection with the workers from all the bombed out factories; the demonstraors need labor as well as the army to support a successful campaign for change.

Iran:

In the July 14^th Wall Street Journal, Mr. Dilip Hiro wrote one of the best commentaries on the seven days of demonstrations in the cities of Iran, "Another Iranian Revolution? Not Yet." The street rallies began among both moderate and radical students --almost 2/3rds of Iran's population is under 25-- but have boiled down to the student radicals only.

"As a rule," Hiro observes, "regimes fall when they lose touch with the general public and worsen the situation by becoming increasingly repressive. The recent protests notwithstanding, there is little sign of that in Iran today· clerics·act as neighborhood counselors and helpers, ready to aid the indigent."

These marchers are drawing an increasingly significant counter-march of Islamicist supporters of the ayatollahs and are not doing the government of President Khatemi any favors, though their original cause was well within reason..

The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 began as a pre-mature middle-class "revolution of rising expectations," with the bourgeoisie seeking a role in the Shah's government. These tiny classes were co-opted by the vastly larger peasantry led by their astute religious leaders.

Twenty-one years later, the revolution is near exhaustion, but not dead. Meanwhile the educated classes are growing in size, but are still young and still outnumbered in an economy that is not healthy. A "revolution of rising expectations" remains premature, and President Khatemi is making some progress towards the rule of law without loud and uncontrolled commotions on the streets. Mr. Hiro observed that President Khatemi has an opportunity to win a more moderate Parliament in elections next February, but suggests that excesses by student radicals now might queer that chance by inflaming religious fundamentalists, and observes a rule of political change:

I think the trend is with President Khatemi, but Iran will be a delicate foreign policy subject for the next generation.

Kashmir:

Moving east along the chain of WMD powers, it appears that India has all but won this round of fighting with Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas in the remote mountains of Kashmir. But it also appears that this was but another round in a continuing saga.

The fighting began in May, with the infiltration of guerrillas from Pakistan, and indications that the Pakistani Army and government were supporting those guerrillas. In the opening days of the mountain-top fighting, India's Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Vajpayee --a loud supporter of strong national defense and nuclear weapons-- was embarrassed by the loss of three aircraft and by the slow performance of India's Army.

Then India's numerical superiority began to assert itself and the guerrillas began to get ground down; Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, facing a possible general war as India mobilized forces on its borders, began to offer negotiations. But Mr. Vajpayee, head of a care-taker government facing Parliamentary elections in September-October, could hardly quit while he was behind, so the fighting continued.

Now, India has allowed the guerrillas several days to evacuate themselves back into Pakistan (until Friday, July 16), but the politically weak PM Sharif has chosen to cast this retreat as a military victory for Pakistan and the Islamic forces. Meanwhile, AP reported the following:

You have two politically weak governments, with nuclear weapons and missiles and an exacerbated conflict for sovereignty over a contested province. Interesting.

In Washington, DC on business a few weeks ago, I got an interesting tip; the Department of Energy nuclear labs, such as Livermore, are not only filled with Chinese American scientists, they are also teeming with Indian-born scientists, as well. My contact suggested that leakage to New Delhi would be just as important as the leakage to Beijing.

North Korea:

I admit to spending three days at the beach in Rhode Island last weekend; that gave me time to catch up on my reading. I read Bill Gertz' "Betrayal," Christopher Hitchen's "No One Left to Lie To," half of Paul Bracken's "Fire in The East" and the July American Spectator, not to mention the daily papers. I'm glad I took the time to catch up on the issue of proliferation of WMD's in Asia, particularly China's espionage and North Korea's ongoing program of WMD cheating. Pyongyang is setting the standard for other powers seeking to perfect their control over WMDs as a means of keeping the West and US "hegemonism" at bay and the US has an image problem where the other side has many independent fingers poised to press "the red button;" not what Mr. Clinton led us to believe would be the case.

It boils down to this; Yugoslavia didn't have weapons of mass destruction and it got bombed for 78 days. On July 6, 1999, in "Kosovo Victory Doesn't Inspire Americans," Carla Ann Robbins of the Wall Street Journal reported (p. A8):

Add to that realization the fact that the NATO air campaign only killed about 7 tanks, 6 armored infantry carriers and about 161 Yugoslav soldiers and you have an even greater "management problem." Our conventional air power may be useful in some ways, but against opponents with unconventional weapons, we cannot deter or defeat them; we need something more --"Star Wars" is only one element of what we may need.

I believe that North Korea will test its Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the Taepodong-2 despite threats by the US, Japan and South Korea to cut off further financial assistance. That missile is expected to give Pyongyang the ability to hit Alaska, Hawaii, Guam and the northwesternmost parts of the United States; Pyongyang has already shown it can hit Japan and Okinawa with last year's test.

Additionally I have received published reports that Pyongyang is building a protected missile base within about 12 miles of the Chinese border where it can protect 10- medium range Rodong missile launchers from US air attacks.

Bill Gertz, Paul Bracken and others agree that North Korea has never adhered to its agreements with the US, South Korea and Japan --the so-called "Agreed Framework." In 1994, then-Secretary of Defense William Perry agreed that North Korea had sufficient plutonium for 4-5 bombs; now it is unsafe to estimate less than 12 bombs. That is sufficient to generate tens of thousands of US military casualties, plus hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties in Japan, South Korea and corners of the US. Future presidents will have to deal with this as a perennial "clear and present danger."

One of the stupidest ideas to come down the pike from the ivory towered land of liberalism is the idea of a comprehensive teat ban: if countries test their weapons, at least you know how far their technology has progressed. We learned much about progress from Chinese, Pakistani and Indian tests in the last three years. Now we have no idea where China, India, Pakistan and North Korea are headed. Today, all we can monitor are the missile tests.

America's response, thus far, is to offer Tokyo, Seoul and Taiwan participation in its forthcoming "Theater ballistic Missile Defense (TMD) system, and that option suddenly looks good to Seoul, which rejected it just months ago. But will TMD deliver security in time? The North Korean threat is locked, cocked and good to go, while our defensive systems are some years away.

China & Taiwan:

Taiwan's economy is a generation or more ahead of Beijing's and in the last decade, parliamentary democracy, in the hands of the 98% native Taiwanese majority, has taken hold. Meanwhile the mainlander-exiles, the financially powerful Plutocrats, have clearly aligned their capital with Beijing for the long haul.

Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui, has abandoned the "One China" principle of the old Kuomintang -- Chang Kai Shek's exiled mainlanders' assertion of sovereignty over the mainland. Lee, basing his political support on the native Taiwanese majority, now stands for two Chinas, since he cannot get any respect from Beijing's autocrats. This is dangerous to assert without a stockpile of WMDs and Taiwan has none of those --it counted on the US for deterrence until now and the US has only offered an as-yet unperfected Theater ballistic Missile Defense as a solution to China's threats. Mr. Lee's timing does not make any sense, given the strains in relations already evident. Beijing's public reaction is not good.

Both Taipei and Beijing ought to consider a more balanced "design for living," but Beijing does not appear to be disposed to moderation just now. Nor is there an "honest broker" in sight who can negotiate past this apparent impasse. The regime needs to increase its hold on power and needs to keep its military and military-industrial complex happy. A threat to its autocratic hold on power by Taiwan is not what Beijing is disposed to tolerate when it has US hegemonism on its mind.

I shall set aside the issue of China's espionage and weapons successes partly, in order to get to an important point: Paul Bracken reported in "Fire in The East" that between its 1995 and 1996 missile confrontations with Taiwan, Beijing demonstrated that it had solved the accuracy problem in a single year --it took the US and the Soviet Union 25 years. In 1995, China's missiles were accurate within about two miles, the next year they were accurate within about 200 yards. Then 200 mobile missiles deployed in an array against Taiwan, became 500 or 600 missiles.

A resolute President would have ways of calming Beijing down and defusing the current contratemps between mainland and island, but the Clinton Administration will be inclined to behave weakly. I do not believe that Beijing has sufficient amphibious "lift" to haul an army of conquest across the Formosa Strait, but it would not take that long to build such a capability. Hand in hand with the Korean mess and other Asian issues, where US forces in Asia are already under a nuclear missile threat, these problems will be at the fore of presidential considerations for many years to come.

Japan has already negotiated an indirect concession to Beijing in the form of entry into the World Trade Organization, and that is something Mr. Clinton would gladly confirm if he can avoid a messy confrontation as part of the outcome. We shall see what other ideas the Clinton team come up with.

If matters continue on their present course, Beijing is within range of maneuvering US military forces out of northeast Asia, where they have provided stability and a reasonable "balance of power" for two generations.

© Copyright 1999 by Benjamin C. Works -- SIRIUS www.siri-us.com