Tag Archives: China

Welcome to the Next Middle East War

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Well, it’s already started. The many wars in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran are beginning to come together into one single, bigger conflict. We are on the road to another war.

The shadow war, which has been going on between Iran and its sworn enemies, Israel and America, ever since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution now looks like escalating. In the last few weeks there have been ominous military, naval, diplomatic and psychological-warfare developments on all fronts. The omens are not good; we seem to be heading for a major bust-up not very far from here.

Intelligence officers use a system called an ‘Indicators and Warnings board’ to monitor events and assess where they are heading. Essentially it is a list of key questions, listing the critical information requirements. Examples might be:

• Are the potential enemy’s warplanes bombed-up and armed?
• Are the pilots on weekend leave?
• Is radio traffic normal?
• Have reservists been called up?

The answers are traffic-light coded – green for normal, amber for abnormal activity and red spelling danger.

Today, the I&W board for the Middle East is not looking encouraging. From Tehran to Tobruk the war drums are beating. Iran, as ever, is at the heart of the problem.

Should another red star be added to the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf?

The narrow Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most important oil chokepoint because of the large volumes of oil that pass through the strait. In 2018, its daily oil flow comprises 21 per cent of global petroleum liquids consumption. China’s gluttonous need for fuel makes the Gulf indispensable to Beijing.

This puts Iran in a strong position geographically; and for decades Tehran has been threatening to block the Straits. In July 2018, Tehran hinted that Iran could disrupt oil flows through the Strait in response to US sanctions and Trump’s calls to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero. A Revolutionary Guards commander warned that Iran would block all oil through the Strait if Iranian exports were stopped.

The USA has been willing to use its firepower in the past. It escorted ships here during the 1980s ‘Tanker War’. America fought its last naval battle in these waters against Iran in 1988. In July that year, the warship USS Vincennes even shot down an Iranian airliner, killing all 290 aboard, in what Washington said was an accident. Tehran said it was a deliberate attack.

This summer has seen Iranian attacks on tankers with the result that now the US Navy is putting together a coalition of nations to counter a renewed maritime threat from Iran.

This US move to build a maritime multinational force to patrol the key sea route across the Strait of Hormuz prompted outrage in Tehran. Iran’s Foreign Minister blamed the US, insisting that ‘any extra-regional presence is by definition a source of insecurity’ and that Iran ‘won’t hesitate to safeguard its own security.’ The result is that tankers are now being convoyed down the Straits. All it needs now to spark fighting is some out of control Revolutionary Guard commander chancing his luck – and the Iranian RGC is a law unto itself.

This is demonstrated daily in Syria, where the long arm of Tehran now reaches as far as the Israeli border. For months now an undeclared low intensity war has been waged by the Israelis, systematically targeting Iranian weapon dumps, training camps and missile sites across Syria. Unfortunately Netanyahu’s professed strategic goal – ‘the removal of all Iranian forces from Syria’ – is fantasy. The result is a dangerous instability, because Israel is confronting a nasty dilemma. An enemy sworn ‘to drive Israel into the sea’ is camped on his borders; and every day that Tel Aviv does nothing to pre-empt Iran’s expansion makes the potential enemy stronger.

Netanyahu has been steadily raising the stakes, ostensibly with the aim of forcing Iran back to its own turf. But what does Israel seek to achieve? Removing Iran’s forces from the entire Middle East? Changing the Iranian regime?

What kind of American backing can Israel expect? Israel is now upping the ante. It was undoubtedly responsible for recent explosions at Iran-linked sites in Iraq. Sabotage or air strikes were involved and Israel stands at the top of the list of potential culprits. Israel is on the verge of expanding its anti-Iran campaign from Syria deep into Iraq to check the threat from the Islamic republic. But any Israeli action in Iraq comes with high risk that it could ignite a major regional war.

So the danger of crossing the line between limited and full-scale warfare between Israel and Iran grows daily more likely, especially now that Hezbollah – Tehran’s Shi’a proxy, currently running Lebanon – appears to be gearing up for a missile strike on Israel’s cities.

To make this devil’s brew more dangerous still, Iran – smarting from increased US sanctions – is now openly accelerating its drive to get a nuclear weapon. The Mad Mullahs, hell bent on war, can just about be contained; but the Ayatollahs with a bomb? For Israelis that is a chilling step too far. It threatens the country’s existence. Israel has made it very clear: it will not allow an Iranian bomb – by force if necessary.

Others in the region are equally nervous of any Atomic Ayatollahs. Sunni Saudi Arabia has the money and technology to build a bomb quickly to deter the Shi’a of Iran; and only last week President Erdogan openly hinted that of Turkey has an interest in obtaining a bomb, adding to worries about the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

If this were not bad enough, everywhere you look in the Middle East there are many other dangerous flashpoints, many of them already the scene of fierce fighting. In Yemen, Sunni fights Shi’a (Saudi versus Iran), as the Houthis become part of Iran’s regional proxy warriors. On the Syrian border, Turkey is already busy fighting the Kurds. Gaza and the West Bank still simmer with anti-Israeli anger. Israel has already mobilised some reservists as a cornered Netanyahu looks for a grand gesture – probably a demonstration of Israel’s military might – to help him form a government after the recent elections.

Even sleepy little Cyprus, sitting secure in the eye of the hurricane, is now feeling the heat. Drawn by the lure of black liquid gold, powerful allies are now jockeying for position. Ankara suddenly finds itself having to confront a Greek-Cypriot defensive alliance of Israelis, Egyptians, Greeks and Italians – plus France and the USA – all hungry to get their hands on the spoils of the huge natural gas reserves off the coast. Gunboats now protect the Turkish prospecting ships as a symbol, a warning and a deterrent.

The truth is we are sitting in the middle of a region set to explode at any moment, thanks to an aggressive Iran-sponsored build-up. The plan appears to be to force Israel to concentrate on dealing with threats to its civilian population – from rocket barrages and commando raids – from Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. Consequently, Israel would not be able to focus on blocking the principal surge when it comes.

Now even China is involved. Beijing considers Iran to be its strategic partner in the greater Middle East and vital to China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ across Asia. The PRC knows that the Iranian network of roads, railroads and pipelines all the way to the Mediterranean is a major contribution to the ‘New Silk Road.’ But now, Beijing is becoming increasingly concerned by the sudden possible slide to war caused by Iran’s regional ambitions.

It may not come next week, it may not come next year, but be in no doubt, the Middle East is gearing up for a major war. And it’s important to remember that for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, according to their scriptures, a final battle between good and evil will usher in God’s brave new world, free from sin.

The place for this battle? The ancient city of Megiddo, better known by its Greek name – Armageddon – a real, geological location in Israel….

The Day Europe Died

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On 1 September, 80 years ago last month, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi legions invaded Poland to start World War II; a war that was to prove the deadliest and the most destructive war in human history. It marked the day when Europe finally committed suicide. Eighty years on, world leaders convened in Warsaw to mark and remember that terrible moment in history.

World War II lasted from 1939 to 1945 and involved 30 countries from every part of the globe. The war killed an estimated 70-80 million people, or 4 per cent of the world’s population. If war is about breaking things and hurting people, then World War II’s impact was horrific. Soldiers and civilians alike were slaughtered; huge tracts of Europe and western Russia were devastated, with whole cities razed; South East Asia was wracked by war; millions starved; Jews and undesirables were murdered on an industrial scale by the Nazis; and the use of atomic bombs on Japan signalled a new and deadly way of wiping out humanity.

The facts are terrifying. The Soviet Union suffered most, with over 20 million killed. Almost 3.5 million Soviet prisoners of war died in German slave labour camps. German soldiers were ordered to exterminate all Jews, communist leaders, as well as any Soviet civilians resisting the Aryan ‘Master Race’ in order to take their grain and livestock. During the two-year siege of Leningrad, more than 1 million residents starved to death.

Germany fared little better. It lost around 9 million people: 5.3 million soldiers; and 3.3 million civilians. The Nazis murdered 300,000 of their own citizens and the Allied bomber offensive killed 600,000, leaving Germany as a heap of rubble by 1945.

Poland lost 5 million people: 16 per cent of its total population. Of those, 2.7 million were Jews, and 240,000 were soldiers. Yugoslavia lost 1 million people including 445,000 soldiers. France lost 568,000 people, of which 218,000 were soldiers. The United Kingdom lost 60,000 civilians to German air raids and 384,000 military. The United States lost 405,000 soldiers.

Further afield, the war killed 30 million in the Pacific. China lost 20 million, 80 per cent of whom were civilians. In just one incident, the 1937 Nanking massacre, Japan killed around 300,000 Chinese.

Japan’s brutal Samurai Code (‘the way of the warrior’) led to 6 million deaths in China, Japan, Korea, Indochina and the Philippines. This included the slaughter of civilians in villages, slave labour in Korea and China, and the use of human experiments to develop biological weapons. In addition, up to 400,000 ‘comfort women’ were forced into sexual slavery; 90 per cent of these unfortunate females had died by the end of the war.

This lengthy litany of horrifying statistics is vital because they rub home the key point, all too easily forgotten as memory turns to history: Hitler’s war was nothing less than the biggest disaster in recorded history.

The irony is that the war should have come as no surprise. Hitler had, years before, spelled out in cold print his plans for a war to end wars.

As he held court in 1924 as a prisoner in Bavaria’s Landsberg Castle for leading an attempted coup in Munich, Hitler committed his plans to paper. In a turgid and badly written book called Mein Kampf (My Struggle, in English), Germany’s future Führer drafted his battle plan. Germany would rise again and seize by force lebensraum (‘living space’) and raw materials to the east. The malign megalomaniac who caused World War II openly warned the world what he intended to do.

The problem really started in 1914, when the great powers of Europe blundered into a cataclysmic European civil war, thanks to a system of unwise military alliances and epic diplomatic miscalculation. By 1918, exhausted and bankrupt, the old ‘Europe’ had fallen apart. Four empires lay in ruins: Germany; Austro-Hungary; Russia; and the Ottoman-Turks. Out of the ruins the Peace Treaty of Versailles made things worse.

Versailles imposed savage terms on Germany, holding Berlin responsible for the whole war and demanding unheard of sums as reparations. The German Weimar government printed money to meet its exorbitant payments, thus creating hyperinflation: a wheelbarrow full of millions of Reichsmarks was needed to buy a loaf of bread.

As Germans lost buying power, they looked for salvation. The harsh economic conditions made people turn to new leaders, principally the Communists and the Fascists. Adolf Hitler, a spellbinding orator and embittered veteran of the trenches played on ordinary Germans’ fears. Leading his National Socialist Party, he blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat and promised a return to power, full employment and prosperity. A generation of Germans welcomed his policies and his promise to make Germany great again.

Once again, nationalism was on the rise. In Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Japan’s warrior state, new leaders advocated militarism, re-armament and the use of naked force to overcome other nations and seize their natural resources.

In 1931 Japan struck. The island nation required oil and food imports to feed its growing population. In what many consider to be the true start of World War II, Japan invaded China, intent on grabbing the mineral riches of Manchuria. The powder train to a wider war was burning, because the global economy was in crisis; the Wall Street Crash of 1929-31 changed everything.

The Great Depression and economic crisis reduced global trade by 25 per cent. In Germany, unemployment reached 30 per cent. Communism began to look attractive to the millions of unemployed and broke. To quell rioting on the streets, Germany’s politicians and industrialists turned to Hitler and his Nazi Party as a bulwark against this growing ideological threat from the east.

On 30 January 1933 they appointed him Chancellor. It was a grave mistake.

Within months Hitler and his henchmen had seized full power. Following a disastrous fire at the Reichstag – almost certainly ignited by the Nazis – President Hindenburg published a decree on 28 February 1933 as an emergency response to what was widely believed to be a Communist Coup. It suspended many of the civil liberties of German citizens. It was swiftly followed by an ‘Enabling Act’ on 23 March 1933, as ‘A Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich’, an amendment to the Weimar Constitution. It gave the Chancellor power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag.

Hitler was now the legal dictator of Germany. With all power in his hands his plan for a war of conquest was now possible.

The rest, as they say, is history. Hitler, now ‘Supreme Leader’ of the Germans, tore up the Versailles Treaty, re-armed Germany and began his long European land grab for the Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and then Poland.

Finally Hitler did two things in that final summer of 1939 to make sure that no one stood in his way.

On 23 July, to the amazement of the world, Ribbentrop and Molotov signed a formal ‘Non-Aggression Pact’ between the two sworn ideological enemies. Unbelievably, Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Communist USSR were now allies.

Hitler’s final step towards the war he had dreamed about and planned for in Landsberg fortress was a typical deceit. Rather than openly declare war, he resorted to trickery.

On the eve of that fateful day – 31 August 1939 – a handful of doomed concentration camp prisoners were given Polish uniforms, unloaded rifles and ordered to attack an isolated German frontier post on the Polish border. The Wehrmacht machine gunners at Gleiwitz were waiting. The wretched prisoners were slaughtered to a man. Journalists were later invited to view the bodies at the scene as Doctor Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda machine swung into action to denounce a Polish atrocity.

At dawn the next day – 1 September 1939 – Hitler’s Panzers and Stukas attacked Poland to seize lebensraum to the East. World War II had begun. It had all been predicted by the Mein Kampf blueprint.

Hitler’s war would complete what 1914-18 had begun: the destruction of Europe. From 1945 onwards, America, fat on Europe’s gold and self-immolation, took over the role of world leader.

Curiously, that outcome does not feature in Mein Kampf….

What on Earth are ‘Rare Earths’?

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Right! Hands up all those who have heard of rare earths?

I thought so – well, just for our single clever clogs at the back, name them?

You can’t?  That proves my point.

Well, we’d all now better pay attention, because rare earths are very important and are will become more so in the future; even though most of us have never even heard of them. In fact, they are going to become just one more commodity over which nations can, and probably will, come into conflict. Rare earths are a modern showstopper.

First, what are rare earths? There are 17 ‘rare earth’ minerals. They are actually fairly abundant in certain areas, but difficult to mine. Their importance stems from their uses in some vital products on which the modern world depends, including: mobile phones; fibre-optic cables; lasers; nuclear reactors; and X-ray machines.

Understandably, most people have never even heard of these obscure elements. However, a list of these rare minerals and their uses shows their importance in our modern technologically advanced and digital world. For example:

  • Scandium Found in aerospace alloys and cars’ headlamps
  • Yttrium Used in energy-efficient lightbulbs, spark plugs and cancer treatments
  • Lanthanum Found in camera lenses, battery electrodes, and catalysts used in oil refineries
  • Cerium Used in self-cleaning ovens and industrial polishers
  • Praseodymium Used in lasers
  • Neodymium Used in electric motors for electric cars, hi-tech capacitors
  • Promethium Found in luminous paint
  • Samarium Used in the control rods of nuclear reactors, lasers and atomic clocks
  • Europium Used in fluorescent lamps, MRI scanners
  • Gadolinium Found in computer chips, steel, X-ray machines
  • Terbium Used in sonar systems on navy vessels, fuel cells on hi-tech cars
  • Dysprosium Used in hard disk drives and lasers
  • Holmium Used in mass spectrometers by hospitals and forensic scientists
  • Erbium Used as catalysts for the chemicals industry and in electrical grid batteries.
  • Thulium Found in portable X-ray machines and lasers
  • Ytterbium Used in stainless steel, thyroid cancer treatment and earthquake monitoring
  • Lutetium Used in LED lightbulbs, oil refining and medical PET scans

It is clear that access to these rare elements – which most normal people have never heard of – is vital to any modern advanced economy. To take just two examples, we would all notice if MRI scanners gradually disappeared or if computer memory chips suddenly became unavailable.  So where is the problem?

There are two: first rare earths are so-called because they are not abundant; second, ominously, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) controls the world’s supply. In a world driven by global supply and demand, the economic power and control of much needed rare earths are obvious.

These rare metals, which are excellent conductors of electricity, also come with a serious health warning. They are dangerous. To extract the usable material from their ore is a very dirty business, needing acid baths and even nuclear radiation. Many are extracted from radioactive ores that contain uranium and thorium. The toxic waste from this process is harmful and there is a danger of it leaking out into the surrounding environment after processing which risks polluting water supplies.

So, just as with plastic, the West has ducked responsibility, outsourcing the environmental challenges of rare earths by dumping the problem out in the dusty deserts and cheap mass labour of far-distant China. By doing so it has allowed Beijing to corner the global market. There’s a price; China holds 37 per cent of the world’s rare-earth deposits and it controls the rest. Even when rare earths are mined in the US – or in other nations, such as Estonia – the extracted material is sent to China for processing. It’s cheaper, easier and, most important, it avoids the environmental lobby’s inevitable shrieks of outrage.

The result is that Western scientific and technical efforts have failed to develop new, cost-effective rare earth substitutes. Many universities no longer offer courses and advanced degrees in ‘materials science’, ‘metallurgy’, or ‘mining engineering’. China has cornered the market. Rare earths are now an ace in Beijing’s hand. ‘The geopolitical and economic importance of rare-earth minerals is vastly inflated by China’s overwhelming near-monopoly on the mining of these elements,’ says Ole Hansen, the head of commodities at Saxo Bank (Saxo Markets, 23 May 2019). China churns out 260,000 tons of rare earths – that’s 95 per cent of global output.

The Chinese are well aware of the importance of these commodities. In May 2019, Chinese leader Xi Jinping made a dramatic and highly symbolic gesture. He visited one of China’s most important rare-earth metals mining and processing plants, in Ganzhou, along with Liu He, his US  chief negotiator in the trade talks.

Even more significantly, he combined the visit with a stop at the monument in Yudu that marks the start of Mao’s ‘Long March’ during the Chinese civil war during the 1930s. The Long March, when the communist armies undertook a 6000-mile trek to the mountains of the north during the civil war, was a key event in communist China’s history. Xi was signalling a symbolic warning to America and the West that in any trade war, China is ready for a long, painful economic conflict.

The global effects of the visit to the Ganzhou plant were swift. Rare-earth equities leapt in value. America’s Blue Line Corporation of Texas rushed to sign a deal with Australia’s Lynas Corporation, one of the few rare-earths processors outside China. ‘I would expect US importers to develop local, domestic processing facilities over time and also to buy from non-China sources,’ said a spokesman.

Beijing is now openly ‘seriously considering’ restrictions on exports of 17 key elements; a move that will force up prices and dry up supplies of rare earths. The hit on US industry, and the military, would limit production of hard disk drives, lasers, fibre optics, LED lightbulbs, hospital scanners, low-carbon technology and camera lenses.

To make the point, Beijing raised tariffs on imports of US rare earth metal ores from 10 per cent to 25 per cent from 1 June 2019, making it less economical to send the material for processing in China. Such a move will prove costly to Washington and will be a key weapon in the trade war between the USA and China.

‘This will cause a lot of short-term pain for US companies. In the longer term it would accelerate the decoupling of the US and China,’ says Rory Green, an economist at TS Lombard. Even the IMF warns that the ‘delicate balance of the world economy could be split apart. Higher trade barriers would disrupt global supply chains and slow the spread of new technologies, ultimately lowering global productivity and welfare.’

Whilst some analysts regard cutting off supply to the USA as something of a nuclear option, others note China that the PRC already has form in ‘weaponising’ these vital metals. In 2010 there was a diplomatic spat with Japan that saw China cut the country out of its rare-earths exports. This action caused a price rise of around 20-30 per cent as a panicked Japanese market rushed to find (expensive) alternative sources.

The connections are now well-established between rare-earth elements, specialist metals – and their corresponding supply chains – and the US high-tech manufacturing sector, renewable energy, and military readiness. All these sectors in the US economy require rare earths in large quantities. Even for the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, the stakes cannot be higher. China could hold the USA (and the West, by extension) to ransom.

Does any of this matter to us?  Well, next time you look at your smart phone, that ubiquitous symbol of modern civilisation, remember that China copies and reproduces Apple’s products on an industrial scale. Apple is forced to manufacture its iPhone and other electronic products in China in order to maintain access to a steady supply of rare earths.

Think about a smart phone costing $1000 – or a Chinese knock off at £300.  Or worse – a world without your mobile phone? Unthinkable!

Rare earths matter.

Use Your Intelligence

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Just like the tip-off which led to the MPs’ expenses scandal in the UK, it was a simple telephone call to The Telegraph that started the political drama that has blown Whitehall, Westminster and the media ‘commentariat’ apart. Former Chief Whip, Gavin Williamson, hotly denies leaking any details of the Government’s dealings with Huawei, but amid the uproar over the sacking we seem to have entirely lost sight of the real scandal it exposed.

If ever there was a case for leaking something – whoever was responsible – the Huawei telecoms scandal is it. This is a case that goes to the heart of the UK’s national interest: awarding a fat contract, with serious security implications, for the new 5G (fifth generation) high-speed advanced communications systems, to an unreconstructed Communist state. The UK is offering a potentially hostile government the chance to infiltrate our most sensitive national communications. Theresa May, against the advice of her senior defence and security Cabinet ministers, wants to hand over the development of Britain’s digital infrastructure – including sensitive intelligence traffic – to a company that is nothing less than a front for Chinese intelligence.

Much worse, the decision stinks of political corruption. It turns out that the three fat cats of Huawei in the UK – Lord Browne, Dame Helen Alexander and Sir Andrew Cahn – will all benefit financially from being hired by the company. Palms have been greased. Huawei has bought its way into Britain’s elite: all three have close links to the cosy Westminster and Whitehall political-financial cabal, as well as both Tory and Labour party leaders.

The main cheerleader lobbying for Huawei turns out to be a Tory MEP, Nirj Deva, who encourages Huawei to turn up in MEPs’ offices uninvited, handing out cards and invitations. ‘It’s unbelievable; full on lobbying …’ complained a Brussels insider.

There is no doubt that Huawei has serious form over collecting secret intelligence and mis-using its computer hardware.

The battle over the latest 5G technology is becoming a 21st-century arms race. These new systems are much quicker than the current networks, allowing for rapid data downloads and controlling the sophisticated AI robots and self-driving cars that will dominate our future.

The fear in Washington is that if China, through Huawei, can gain access to these networks, it will give the PRC the capability to attack and disrupt UK communications. There are already concerns over the networks being used for spying and surveillance, as well as Huawei handing over critical information about Western countries to the Chinese government

Vodafone recently revealed that Huawei had supplied it with computer hardware with secret ‘backdoors’ that allowed Huawei unauthorised access to the carrier’s communications network in Italy. Vodafone asked Huawei to fix the backdoors. Huawei said the problem was accidental, but the backdoors weren’t fixed the next time Vodafone checked.

These computer ‘backdoors’ are easy to understand. You can put anti-virus software on to your computer or smartphone to prevent anyone from accessing your data or spying on you. But if the hardware has been built to respond to its maker, then your ‘front of house’ software apps are worthless. The machine is nicking your information out of the backdoor and spying on everything you do or say without you realising. That’s what Huawei does.

Worse, Huawei works directly for the Chinese government. Last December their Chief Financial Officer, Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Vancouver. She was charged with covering up Huawei’s links to a firm that was secretly trying to sell equipment to Iran in defiance of US sanctions. She now faces extradition to America.

The arrest of Meng and calls for her extradition quickly involved officials in Beijing. What was a supposedly ordinary businesswoman’s arrest suddenly became an international incident. China issued a formal diplomatic protest and the official Xinhua news agency attacked Canadian PM Justin Trudeau for ‘letting this nasty thing happen’

Washington knows what is going on. ‘Communications now networks form the backbone of our society and underpin every aspect of modern life,’ said Garrett Marquis, the spokesman for the National Security Council. ‘The United States will ensure that our networks remain secure and reliable.’

The USA has urged its allies not to use Chinese equipment. Washington fears that Huawei’s equipment would enable China to spy on the USA or its allies and use cyber attacks to disrupt industries like power, transportation and manufacturing. Rob Joyce, a senior adviser at the US National Security Agency, warns that allowing Huawei to supply 5G technology was like handing China a ‘loaded gun’. The USA has even threatened to withdraw from cooperation with its allies if they install Huawei equipment on telecommunication networks. Australia quickly banned Huawei, citing the fact that Chinese law forces technology companies to hand over network data to help the Chinese government with ‘intelligence work.’

A recent study by London’s Royal United Services Institute said it would be ‘naive’ and ‘irresponsible’ to allow Huawei access to Britain’s 5G networks. But tin-eared, soon-to-be-replaced Prime Minister May thinks she knows better – or she has been got at. The big danger is that her decision is risking UK’s national security – and the country’s special relationship with the USA – because the Huawei scandal has already thrown Britain’s unique relationship with US intelligence into jeopardy

The USA means business. The State Department raised the stakes by threatening to stop sharing intelligence if the UK pushed ahead with Huawei’s involvement. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warns that America, which is the lead member of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing group, will refuse to share information with the UK if it decides to use Huawei technology in sensitive areas. Washington ‘would not be able to pool its findings with countries that decide to use Huawei equipment for fear it would not be secure.’

This development is a bombshell. To journalists, the ‘special relationship’ conjures up all kinds of ill-informed drivel. However, to professionals it means just two deadly serious things: intelligence and nuclear policy.

The ‘special relationship’ started in August 1941 with the Atlantic Charter, an agreement between Churchill and Roosevelt to share intelligence. Since then those intelligence links have become deeply entrenched.

The secret treaty was renewed by the BRUSA Agreement (1943) and the UKUSA Agreement (1946) between the UK and the USA. Since then, this alliance of intelligence operations has widened to include Australia, Canada and New Zealand, cooperating with the UK and the USA, mainly in signals intelligence, and known as the ‘Five Eyes.’

Britain ‘punches above its weight’ globally for two principal reasons: as a victor in 1945, plus its nuclear and intelligence power. That guarantees a seat at the UN Security Council. Take away access to global intelligence and that looks vulnerable. Britain gets access to the US Fort George G Meade’s above top-secret signals intelligence and shares its own sigint ‘take’ with the USA. Ironically a lot of that comes from the British Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus, with their extraordinary reach and propagation over the Middle East and Russian Federation. GCHQ officers are deeply embedded in the US NSA signals intelligence agency and vice-versa.

The old Joint Air Reconnaissance Centre, now the Defence Intelligence Fusion Centre (DIFC) in Cambridgeshire, gets free access to much of the top secret US satellite product. MI6 shares its human intelligence with the CIA at Langley and MI5 relies heavily on counter-jihadi terrorist intelligence from the FBI, plus a number of US intelligence agencies. The brutal truth is that the UK needs access to US intelligence far more that the US needs to share its own product with Britian. To defy the White House over intelligence is the equivalent of chucking the crown jewels into the Wash.

And for what? To save the Treasury a few bob and to enrich Mrs May’s sleazy political chums? Whoever leaked the Huawei scandal was doing Britons a favour.

‘Intelligence’ can have several meanings: this one is madness.

The Reality of ‘Red October’

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‘We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order.’ VI Lenin (speech to Second All-Russian Congress of the Soviets)

On 25 October 1917, (pre-revolution calendar) Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Russian Bolshevik Party, organised a successful coup d’etat and seized power in St Petersburg, then known as Petrograd.

Despite 90 years of Soviet propaganda, the events of ‘Red October’ were never a spontaneous uprising and a revolution by the people. It was an armed insurrection by a minority to overthrow a provisional government. Also, it was not – again despite Soviet claims – universally popular: fighting went on in Moscow and Petrograd for two weeks as the Bolsheviks tried to crush and silence their enemies, to be followed by a prolonged and brutal civil war.

Lenin himself was astounded by his revolution’s success, saying, ‘It takes your breath away.’ However, having seized power, he showed himself as authoritarian as any Czar. When the Second Congress of Soviets assembled on (modern calendar) 7 November 1917 it voted to ratify the revolutionary transfer of state power and, after a walk-out by the opposition – who claimed the coup was illegal – made Lenin ruler of Russia. Lenin’s Marxist Bolsheviks were now the government of a nation that was 3000 miles wide and had 11 time zones. Lenin’s famous call to arms was to unleash misery and death for millions: ‘We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order.’

Russia’s new ruler made crystal clear his aims and means of achieving them: ‘The goal of socialism is Communism,’ and ‘Personal liberty is precious – so precious that it must be rationed.’ In addition, just to show that he meant business, ‘Hang without fail, so the people can see them, no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.’ The rich and middle class got the message and promptly fled abroad clutching their valuables, leaving their property to be seized by the State.

It rapidly became clear that Lenin was no harmless old revolutionary theorist, obsessed with permanent opposition to the bourgeoisie – he turned out to be a ruthless, rabble-rousing, power-hungry class warrior, determined to crush the rich for ever, using ‘The Party’ and his Red Guards to provide muscle when required.

Like all professional revolutionaries however, his priority was money – other people’s money. One of his first decrees was to close down all the banks and steal their money in the name of the State, leaving millions penniless.

Revolutionary socialists had always understood the importance of money to fuel their socialist dream.  Josef Dzhugashvili, a,k.a ‘Stalin’ – which translates as ‘Man of Steel’ – or perhaps ‘steal?’ – was just one of many revolutionary bank robbers. He was the main planner of an infamous stagecoach hold-up in Tiflis in 1907. The Bolsheviks attacked a security coach, killing 40 guards and civilians. The thieves got away with over a million roubles, describing their atrocity as a legitimate ‘redistribution of capital for the Revolution.’

Another revolutionary socialist would-be Robin Hood, Mao Zedong, recruited ‘bands of brigands and bandits’ to support his revolutionary cause by theft. In 1927, he organised his own great train robbery in Hupei and stole a huge shipment of banknotes. Interestingly, Mao later organised another wave of ‘revolutionary bank robberies’ when he was actually Chinese dictator. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), he unleashed his Red Guard thugs to hold up dozens of banks to ‘shake up society’ in 1966. Ironically, in 1969 Mao suddenly remembered that he was also responsible for China’s law and order, and ordered his Red Guards to stop.

Revolutionary socialists sometimes make fat-cat capitalists seem almost benevolent. Peru’s Maoist movement, the Sendero Luminoso (‘Shining Path’) were not just brutal terrorist murderers responsible for the deaths of 30,000 Peruvians and $20 billion in damage. They were also accomplished thieves. Bank robberies – or ‘revolutionary expropriations’ – soon became a favourite means of raising funds for their planned revolution in Peru. In 1981, Shining Path carried out over 50 bank robberies in Lima alone, and the wave of bank robberies continued throughout the mid-1980s, along with international heists in Brazil and Mexico.

The lesson is that the Socialist State of Lenin’s dreams had as much need of hard cash as any capitalist one. But Lenin’s ‘socialist revolution’ did not confine itself to just stealing other people’s hard-earned savings.

The Russian Civil War demonstrated that not everyone, in what was to become the USSR, favoured Lenin and the Bolsheviks being in power. In the face of mounting anger and opposition from the now less-than-revolutionary masses, Russia’s new dictator ordered a crack-down on all opposition and protest. In December 1918, he ordered the creation of the Cheka, or the ‘All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combatting Counter-Revolution and Sabotage,’ the original bloodthirsty Soviet secret police organisation. The Chekists were led by a Polish aristocrat-turned-communist, the psychopathic Felix Dzerzhinsky, who ruthlessly murdered all Communism’s opponents. Lenin, and later Stalin’s, new secret police made the Czar’s rule seem compassionate by comparison.

The Cheka’s task was to hunt out ‘enemies of the state’. This led to what became known as the ‘Red Terror’. Suddenly anyone could be arrested. The Cheka became sole judge, jury and invariably executioner. Following a failed assassination on Lenin in September 1918, Russians came to dread the Cheka’s midnight knock on the door. Fellow Bolshevik Leon Trotsky even compared Lenin’s crackdown to Robespierre’s French Jacobin ‘Reign of Terror’ – in 1940, he got an ice pick through the brain for his pains. In all, an estimated 20 million Russians would eventually die at the hands of their Party masters in Communism’s ‘Revolutionary Paradise.’

Fat on stolen money, and with dissenting voices silenced, Lenin now turned to actually governing his new Russia. A Decree on Land policy confirmed the actions of the peasants, who had quietly redistributed private land among themselves during the chaos. The Bolsheviks now reinvented themselves as representing an alliance of workers and peasants. The Hammer and Sickle became the symbol of the new Soviet Union. Other decrees ensured there could be no turning back from Lenin’s new Socialist order:

  • All private property was nationalised by the government
  • All Russian banks were nationalised
  • Parliament was abolished in favour of The Party
  • Private bank accounts were expropriated
  • The properties of the Church (including bank accounts) were expropriated
  • All foreign debts were repudiated
  • Control of the factories was given to the workers’ committees called ‘Soviets’
  • Wages were fixed at higher rates than during the war; and a shorter, eight-hour working day was introduced

In our time, we have seen something similar in Venezuela. In 2005, Hugo Chávez announced Venezuela’s ‘great socialist leap forward’. Since then, the oil-rich country has followed the strict ‘socialist path’ and – just like the USSR – ruined its economy and impoverished its people. Despite a wealth of natural resources, Venezuela has turned into an economic and humanitarian disaster zone, thanks to an attempt by the government to run a ‘revolutionary socialist economy’ for Chavez’s deeply corrupt Party.

Meanwhile, the disappearance of Venezuelan credit and normal banking has aggravated runaway inflation and a recession, causing hundreds of thousands to flee the country amid chronic shortages, rising malnutrition and increased incidence of preventable disease.

Lenin’s decrees, plus his and Stalin’s desire for state control of everything (including the economy), eventually ruined the USSR, just as it is ruining Venezuela today. The lesson is that Marxist theory may work well in theory and dreams of stirring up ‘socialist revolutions’, but history has shown us that it cannot run a modern state properly. Lenin’s ‘October Revolution’ turned out to be a disastrous experiment with people’s lives and property that just didn’t work. It soon became obvious to all that in Lenin’s new ‘Socialist Order’ some quickly became more equal than others – just like before the Revolution.

The ‘October Revolution’ may have been one of the twentieth century’s defining events; it was also one of the most bloody and tragic.

It stands as a model for how not to reform society.

Watch Out! There’s a War About

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For once I find myself in total agreement with Vladimir Putin, who observed recently in a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious that ‘the world is becoming a more chaotic place.’ Whilst Pres-for-life Vlad’s BGO doesn’t exactly qualify him as a great thinker, this time he is absolutely right. There’s a definite feeling abroad of an unravelling in world affairs; an uneasy sense that something nasty is lurking round the corner of history ….

As Nigel Molesworth put it so succinctly in Down with Skool: ‘History started badly and hav been getting steadily worse.’ Looking at our increasingly troubled world, maybe ‘the gorilla of 3B’ got it right.

But first, the good news. A few months ago we were all nervously observing a ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ US President threatening fire and fury at North Korea’s ‘Little Rocket Man’ over nuclear missiles. It was definitely steel helmet (and don’t forget your respirator) time. Now, thanks to Trump’s interesting blend of diplomacy, brutal economic sanctions and the threat of violence, Kim Wrong ’Un seems to have a sudden change of heart and is smiling for the cameras and shaking hands across the border. Sigh of relief all round?

However, let’s not get too excited. North Koreans have a consistent track record in talks with the South and the US: consistently lying and trousering the ‘Danegeld’ paid to them to behave themselves, whilst they ignore any agreements. We need to watch this ‘deal’ very carefully.

And let us not forget that Dictator Kim was threatening nuclear war whilst still presiding over appalling human-rights abuses as he ruthlessly executed friends and family alike to eliminate his rivals. Nonetheless, if President Trump really succeeds in negotiating an end to Kim’s nuclear provocations and the Korean War (‘Neutral ground or dramatic backdrop?‘, Telegraph, 23 April 2018), he will have defused a potentially apocalyptic global crisis.

Good luck with that.

Now for the bad news; and there is far too much, as Putin warns.  Intelligence analysts are warning that trouble is looming from at least three other directions: Syria and Iran; Israel; and a global economy deep in debt.

First, Syria, where the endless civil war to keep Assad and his Shi’a allies in power has morphed into something new – and much more worrying. UN Secretary General Guterres warns: ‘The Cold War is back with a vengeance – and a difference.’ The difference is that it is no longer cold. Something very dangerous is unfolding in the war-torn Middle East. A little-known Iranian-backed Shi’a group calling itself the ‘Baqir Brigade’ has declared jihad on US forces in Syria,  where Russian and American troops are only a rifle range apart.  The US, UK and France have already attacked Syrian military targets as a reprisal for the latest gas attack. The dangers are obvious. Any Russia and US fighting in Syria could detonate a hot war and set the entire Middle East on fire.

Further north, Turkey has invaded Syria to crush the Kurds – the warriors who really defeated ISIS on the ground. Meanwhile the Iranians and their Lebanese Shi’a proxy, Hezbollah, have set up a new battle front on Israel’s border. Iran effectively runs Syria now and is turning its malevolent eye against Israel.

This time the Mullahs are really playing with fire. Israel is not a normal country. Tel Aviv will fight like a cornered cat against an enemy that has sworn to ‘sweep the Jews into the sea.’ And Israel possesses nuclear weapons precisely to deter anyone stupid enough to threaten Israel’s very existence. Israel has warned that ‘it will retaliate with every means possible,’ if attacked by Iran and its friends.

Ironically, Iran’s nuclear ambitions may be unravelling at the very moment it tries to intimidate Israel. Tehran thought that it had pulled a stroke with nice Mr Obama with his 2016 no-nukes deal to get sanctions lifted, whilst continuing to build its Shi’a empire in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and now Yemen. Trump is having none of that. Despite Macron’s pleading for a cosy continuation of flogging French and EU goodies to oil-rich Iran, Trump pulled the plug on 12 May 2018 and re-imposed economic sanctions, blocking Iranian oil sales and wrecking Tehran’s not-so-secret nuclear plans.

This is bad news for the world economy, which is now just as vulnerable to a financial crisis as it was in 2008. Oil is the motor of commerce. Oil prices, which dropped to $30 a barrel in 2009 and 2016, are now rising as production cuts by OPEC and Russia have finally sold the world glut of oil; so supply dries up. Iranian sanctions alone will remove 500,000 barrels a day from the market.

Even America’s new oil-shale output cannot fill this gap between supply and demand. Now Brent crude has risen to $72 a barrel and will probably go higher now that Trump has re-imposed sanctions. This could be a global economic bombshell as various geostrategic crises explode. Saudi Arabia is already talking about $100 crude, setting off a speculators’ scramble;  ‘We are pretty confident that oil will be in triple digits by next year,’ opines Jean-Louis Le Mee from Westbeck Capital.

IMF reports warn of a chain-reaction for world finance. One is well-understood: debt. Global debt has been alarmingly high since the 2008 financial crisis. Since then, nations have continued to borrow hand over fist, pushing worldwide debt to $200 trillion (a trillion is a million, million million.)  That is nearly three times the size of the entire global economy.

The second economic problem is that the Chinese and German economies are going into reverse. Germany’s economy in particular is stalling surprisingly quickly. The economic miracle by the EU’s motor of industry is over and now even Berlin faces economic problems, warns Düsseldorf’s Macroeconomic Policy Institute: ‘The danger of recession has increased markedly. It is a more critical picture than just a month ago.’

All this is happening as Korea teeters on a knife edge, Washington and Moscow go head to head, Syria faces multiple wars, Israel and Iran are shaping up for a catastrophic showdown, and the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran over Yemen gets out of control with missile attacks on Saudi targets by Iranian-backed Houthis. A full blown religious war between Sunni and Shi’a has started. One intelligence analyst warns: ‘All it will take is one Houthi missile sinking a 200,000-ton oil tanker in the Gulf and the consequences would be global.’

Even here, on our island in the sun, alarming events are going on all around us. Suddenly bankrupt Greece is preparing to lease two French multi-purpose frigates to bolster its defences in the Aegean Sea, amid rising tensions with Turkey. Fighters are again on the alert over contested islands. Turkey sails warships to Cyprus to protect hydrocarbon finds. Hostages are being held on both sides. President Erdogan suddenly announces a snap election to choose the country’s next president and parliament on 24  June 2018, to give himself greater executive powers.

All this at a time when the Turkish economy is overheating, raising the possibility of another financial crisis like 2001, when the AKP first came to power promising a strong economy. With Turkish national borrowing skyrocketing and Ankara having to lure foreign money with promises of 13% interest on government bonds, this doesn’t look much like economic competence. The truth is that we are ‘living through interesting times,’ as the old Chinese curse puts it.

Whilst most normal people are just trying to get on with their lives, get to work, earn enough to raise a family and enjoy themselves, all around us alarming events look like coming to the boil. Politically we are living through world-changing history.

It’s an increasingly unstable and dangerous world.  We need to watch out for what is really going on out there.

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North Korea: A Third World War?

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Just like Cyprus, Korea is still officially at war.

An armistice (a ‘temporary cessation of hostilities’) remains the international legal position in Korea. Just as there is still no peace treaty between Greece and Turkey for the events of 1974, there is still no peace treaty between North and South Korea following the 1953 end of fighting in the Korean War.

And therein lies an almost insoluble problem. Because North Korea is now hell bent on going nuclear. And if it does, we will be confronting a serious threat to world stability and peace. Does this matter or concern us, thousands of miles away?

Yes, it does; for in the delicate balance between North and South Korea, backed respectively by China and the USA, with Japan and the South China Sea in the wings, there are now some very dangerous regional catalysts for conflict – even a major war between superpowers.

‘Fanaticism armed with power’ has always been the greatest threat to peace since the end of the Second World War. That is why the Big Five and the Security Council have strenuously tried to limit the spread of nuclear weapons.  In North Korea under its homicidal and unstable leader Kim Jong-Un, it now looks very much as if fanaticism is acquiring power – nuclear weapons. We are headed for confrontation, if not a war, because not only is the Korean dictator determined to get nuclear weapons, he is now quite openly threatening to use them.

Kim claims that his country has attained the status of a nuclear power and says he is prepared to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) against American targets. The little sealed-off communist country has carried out five nuclear tests and several missile launches recently, despite stern warnings from the UN. Only last week Kim warned that his North Korean army could ‘deal deadly blows’ without any warning against the US and South Korea. US intelligence believes that Pyongyang is in the final stages of readying itself for another yet nuclear experiment – possibly within a matter of days.

The question is; does Kim really mean it, or just blustering? The answer is, no-one knows. The fat, blood thirsty little despot has a track record of mouthing off with blood-curdling threats and then backing off.

North Korea is a strange place; a closed country with insufficient arable land and few natural resources, squeezed between China and South Korea, which is still protected by tens of thousands of U.S. forces. In the north, since the end of the Korean War, Pyongyang has accepted Chinese protection while maintaining domestic control and military power – the so called “poison-shrimp” strategy: best to ignore, because invading it would be more dangerous.

But things are changing rapidly.  With Kim’s promise to go nuclear soon, North Korea now poses a grave risk to stability, not just in the region but to the rest of us. The situation is not unlike the alliance system just before the outbreak of war in 1914, when the small fry went to war in the Balkans and dragged the major nations backing them into hostilities. The problem today is that superpower China underwrites and backs Pyongyang; over the border in the South, superpower America guarantees Seoul’s security.  A very nervous Japan looks on, horrified.

Whatever we think of Kim, his policy is very clear and rational: to stay in power by building a nuclear deterrent. With this he hopes to neutralise the long-standing threat of America, determined to destabilise his government and forcing the collapse of the North Korean regime. But now America is facing a genuine challenge to its leadership in the Far East.  Washington has to make a big decision soon. There are some serious questions to be answered.

First, how dangerous is North Korea’s nuclear capability, really? The answer is no-one for sure.

North Korea is now thought to have some 50 kg of weapons-grade plutonium, enough to make 10 nuclear bombs, according to South Korea intelligence.  Pyongyang has also made significant advancements in its ability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead, as well as its ability to enrich uranium. The big problem is where exactly are these nuclear assets? North Korea has at least ten nuclear sites, scattered around the country, many deep underground.

Although the United States is unmatched when it comes to military power projection, any attempt to cripple North Korea’s nuclear programme by force faces some serious problems. Major intelligence gaps complicate Washington’s decision-making.  There is no doubt that if the US decides to carry out an air strike against North Korea, using B2 bombers with Ordnance Penetrators and 900-kilogram GBU-31 JDAMs, it could destroy North Korea’s known nuclear production infrastructure and associated nuclear sites.

The problem is that although the immediate impact would be devastating for Pyongyang, it might not be fatal. Even with the United States’ advantage in intelligence and equipment, uncertainty about the exact locations and dispositions of North Korean nuclear assets means that the complete success of any conventional strike on North Korea cannot be assured. Realistically, without the use of nuclear weapons or the invasion and total occupation of North Korea, the United States and its allies cannot guarantee absolutely the complete removal of the threat of a North Korean counter-attack in some form or other.

The most immediate and expected method of retaliation would be with conventional artillery. North Korea has an incredible 13,000 guns positioned along the border, many of them within range of Seoul, one of the world’s most densely-populated cities, just 35 miles away.

Just a single volley could deliver more than 350 tons of explosives across the South Korean capital, with massive civilian casualties.  North Korea also has an advanced chemical warfare capability, as well as large commando and sabotage forces. The latter are capable of being inserted into South Korea through tunnels or off-shore, to wreak havoc by attacking key infrastructure, logistics nodes, and US command-and-control facilities, causing mayhem behind the lines.

The conclusion is that any American pre-emptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear programme will come at a heavy price. North Korea’s revenge response to any attack is something that  U.S. policymakers cannot ignore. And China cannot be expected to stay neutral if America moves in. Beijing is already flexing its muscles with the US Navy over control of the South China Sea, and has warned Washington that deploying Terminal High Altitude Air Defence Missiles (THAAD) to protect South Korea is ‘a hostile act.’ Things are hotting up.

Kim Wrong-Un understands that he now has very little time to field his credible nuclear deterrent. But once he has one, then the chance of American intervention becomes increasingly unlikely. A diplomatic resolution is obviously preferable to direct intervention, because attacking North Korea guarantees massive destruction in return. But that needs China’s agreement and support to rein in its erratic and increasingly dangerous neighbour. And North Korea isn’t looking for diplomacy.

Logic dictates that now would be the best time to strike, before North Korea can finalise its nuclear capability. The result is that America’s new president is now between a rock and a hard place, thanks to his predecessor’s failure to act. If Trump orders a strike, then the consequences for South Korea could be devastating, as Pyongyang would almost certainly respond. But if nothing is done, then North Korea will become a nuclear power, placing American bases in Japan, Okinawa and American carrier groups in the region at risk for the first time. Would the unthinkable then become the inevitable: would Japan go nuclear for self-protection?

There will never be a perfect time to launch an operation to destroy North Korea’s nuclear capability. But one thing is evident: every week that goes by brings Pyongyang closer to a credible nuclear deterrent. Confrontation, even war, looms.

The omens are not good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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