UN body: If nuclear deterrence fails, outcome will be catastrophic
The file photo shows a nuclear explosion.
A United Nations institute has warned that worsening relations between nuclear-powered countries and their ever-increasing dependency on technologies for atomic bombs would significantly increase the risk of nuclear accidents in the world.
The UN Institute for Disarmament Research said in its report published on Friday that there will be "catastrophic" consequences when the time reaches that the nuclear deterrence does not work, whether deliberately or accidentally.
"Nuclear deterrence works, up until the time it will prove not to work," the report said, adding, "The risk is inherent and, when luck runs out, the results will be catastrophic."
"The threat of a nuclear weapon detonation event in 2017 is arguably at its highest in the 26 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union," it said.
The major report warned that relations between nuclear-power countries had deteriorated in recent times and that had triggered fresh concerns that the doomsday would finally come and governments would use the weapon in dire situations.
It said nuclear deterrence in countries such as North Korea, Pakistan and India was at the "greatest risk of breaking down," making a reference to Pyongyang's increasing number of tests and Pakistan and India's growing disputes over Kashmir, which could eventually break out into a real nuclear war.
Despite efforts in previous administrations in the United States and Russia for nuclear disarmament, the current governments have suggested that they would expand their arsenal of destructive weapons. That has intensified fears that the current cold war between Washington and Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine could go nuclear.
The UN report said terrorists were becoming increasingly capable of acquiring nukes through various methods.
"The more arms produced, particularly in countries with unstable societies, the more potential exists for terrorist acquisition and use of nuclear weapons."
It also warned that terrorists had become more sophisticated in their way of hacking the controlling system of weapons, adding that the chance for such sabotage activities had increased as more countries keep replacing their military officers with computers, therefore ruling out a potential safety check on the weapons.
Winston Churchill, TE Lawrence and Emir Abdullah of Jordan in the gardens of the Government House, Jerusalem, at a secret conference in 1921 Photograph: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images
One of the most controversial and understudied aspects of Winston Churchill's life – his involvement in the Middle East – is to be the focus of a major new permanent exhibition staged by the Imperial War Museum in London.
The exhibition blends "immersive" digital technology with historical artefacts – including a 1944 letter of condolence written by him after Jewish opponents of British policy in Palestine assassinated his friend Walter Guinness, Lord Moyne. The creators of the exhibition will have to tread carefully when it comes to sensitivities such as the debate about whether Churchill was antisemitic, and his complex views on Islam.
Churchill's involvement in the Middle East, starting when he became secretary of state for the colonies in 1921, has been "wildly misunderstood" compared with his time as prime minister but is now more important than ever, said Warren Dockter, a Churchill scholar and author of Churchill and the Islamic World.
While the Middle East is fraught with sensitivities, Dockter said that an understanding of it is crucial at a time when Islamic State is making a point of referencing the Sykes-Picot agreement – the 1916 plan in which Britain and France divided the region into spheres of influence for themselves and tsarist Russia – while neoconservatives in the west have sought to politicise Churchill's writings.
"Churchill literally created the kingdom of Jordan, for example, and the original Palestinian mandate. He is largely responsible for how Jordan and Iraq were divided up," Dockter said.
Opening later this year at the Churchill War Rooms in Westminster, key objects in the exhibition will include a map of the Arabian peninsula showing areas of influence of Arab chiefs. It was drawn up at the request of Churchill when he was responsible for settling questions relating to Britain's future rule in former Ottoman empire territory.
As colonial secretary, Churchill appointed TE Lawrence as a special adviser on Arab affairs, and a personally inscribed copy of Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom will be on show at the exhibition, as well as a flag flown by the last British high commissioner in Palestine in 1948.
Other objects include a photo album of a family holiday taken to the Middle East in 1934 by Churchill, his wife Clementine and their friends, Lord Moyne and Lady Moyne, who compiled it. Visitors will read the letter of condolence penned by Churchill to Moyne's son and one written by a US intelligence officer reporting to Washington on the shocked prime minister's renewed efforts to court the king of Saudi Arabia following the assassination.
Plans for the exhibition include a "jewel-like room full of objects, movement and colour, evocative of the Middle East" with a giant folio containing documents and historical items.
"We want the visitor to feel as if they have stumbled upon this rather extraordinary, if forgotten room, where a lifetime of objects, papers, old maps, photos, souvenirs and keepsakes have been stored," the plans state.
An "immersive experience" will include an easel – Churchill was a keen artist – which will act as a projection screen. "It is envisaged that Churchill's thoughts, ideas and musings will be blended with the developing painting giving a personal insight to accompany the events depicted on the folio, and paint a picture of the man himself."
The exhibition may not be without its detractors. In 2012, there was controversy over plans to site a Churchill Centre in Jerusalem, with critics citing Churchill's "latent antisemitism", although he was honoured in the city with a bronze bust commemorating him as a friend of the Jewish people and the Zionist cause.
In an uncomfortable parallel with recent events, other critics of Churchill have sometimes returned to his remarks as minister for war and air in 1919 that he was "strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes" when it came to suppressing rebels in what is now Iraq.
Dockter, a lecturer in international politics at the University of Aberystwyth who also wrote one of the earlier briefings for the exhibition plans, said that the gas claims were misplaced and that Churchill had been advocating the use of teargas.
As for allegations of antisemitism, he said that this was usually based on a misunderstanding of a particular article written by him in the 1920s, adding: "There are a lot of sensitivities about Churchill and Israel, for example, and you can argue that some Zionist leaders were outraged that he created a separate country for the Arabs. But he was not antisemitic in any sense of the word and usually the charges are the other way, that he was too Zionist at points.
"What I argue is that he took a pretty balanced approach, given the circumstances. It is a tremendously complex area, however. A lot of people do try to paint Churchill as Islamophobic but I genuinely think that he tried to do the best for all parties."
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US-led coalition forces carry out a large-scale attack on Syria's Omar oil field
US, British, French, Israeli and other energy interests could be prime beneficiaries of military operations in Iraq and Syria designed to rollback the power of the 'Islamic State' (ISIS) and, potentially, the Bashar al-Assad regime.
A study for a global oil services company backed by the French government and linked to Britain's Tory-led administration, published during the height of the Arab Spring, hailed the significant "hydrocarbon potential" of Syria's offshore resources.
The 2011 study was printed in GeoArabia, a petroleum industry journal published by a Bahrain-based consultancy, GulfPetroLink, which is sponsored by some of the world's biggest oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Total, and BP.
GeoArabia's content has no open subscription system and is exclusively distributed to transnational energy corporations, corporate sponsors and related organisations, as well as some universities.
Authored by Steven A. Bowman, a Senior Geoscientist for the French energy company CGGVeritas, the study identified "three sedimentary basins, Levantine, Cyprus, and Latakia, located in offshore Syria" and highlighted "significant evidence for a working petroleum system in offshore Syria with numerous onshore oil and gas shows, DHIs (direct hydrocarbon indicators) observed on seismic, and oil seeps identified from satellite imagery."
France's secret affair with Assad's Syria
At the time, when civil unrest was sweeping across Syria, CGGVeritas was contracted to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Sources.
The French company is one of the world's largest seismic surveyors. Backed by the French government which owns 18% voting rights in the firm, CGGVeritas had acquired seismic data on offshore Syrian resources in 2005, and since then has been the main point of contact for geophysical and geological datasets on behalf of the Syrian regime.
In 2011, the French firm had an exclusive contract with the Syrian government to provide technical support for that year's Syrian International Offshore Bid Round for firms to explore, develop and produce oil and gas from three offshore blocks in the Mediterranean Sea by the Syrian coast.
"Exploration activity has increased in the Eastern Mediterranean in recent years following a series of major multi-TCF (trillion cubic feet) gas discoveries made in the offshore southern Levantine Basin," wrote Bowman. "Licensing rounds are scheduled to be announced during 2011 for areas in offshore Syria, Lebanon, and Cyprus, which are believed to share strong geological similarities with these discoveries."
Describing offshore Syria as "a truly frontier area of exploration", Bowman — who was also involved in CGGVeritas evaluations of seismic datasets of energy resources in Libya — noted the discovery of several "flat-spots" which, if real, "will represent billion-barrel/multi-TCF [trillion cubic feet] drilling targets given the scale and volumetrics of the structures within which they occur."
Image of Syrian offshore fields from 2011 GeoArabia study
Western energy majors court Assad
CGGVeritas was also licenced by the British government for the North Sea, where for the last several years Bowman has held responsibility for identifying prospectivity and coordinating licencing round activities.
In 2012, the US Department of the Interior published a US Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook, which observed that Assad's government-owned Syrian Petroleum Co.:
"… cooperated with several international oil companies, such as Chinese National Petroleum Co. (CNPC), Gulfsands Petroleum of the United Kingdom, Oil and Natural Gas Resources Corp. of India, Royal Dutch Shell plc. of the United Kingdom, and Total SA of France through subsidiary companies."
Two years earlier, the Syrian capital, Damascus, was host to the 7th Syrian International Oil & Gas Exhibition, convened by Assad's Ministry of Petroleum. The exhibition was sponsored by CNPC, Shell, and the French major Total, and was attended by over a hundred representatives of international firms, 40% of whom were based in Europe.
A 2010 draft document produced on behalf of the Syrian Ministry of Petroleum by the exhibition organiser, Allied Expo, described how British company Shell was planning to work closely with the Assad regime to develop Syria's gas production:
"Shell will devise a master plan for the development of the gas sector in Syria, following an agreement signed with the Ministry of Petroleum," say the presentation slides, created in October 2010 to promote plans for a new oil and gas exhibition in 2012. "The agreement includes an assessment of the overall undiscovered gas potential in Syria, potential for upstream gas production, need for gas transmission and distribution networks…"
Slide from 2010 Syrian Ministry of Petroleum presentation (mistake in final sentence is from the original)
Throughout 2010, Shell officials held numerous meetings with British government ministers. In July, Shell met David Cameron to discuss "business issues", Foreign Office minister David Howell to discuss "international energy matters", and Charles Hendry, minister of state at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
Slide from 2010 Syrian Ministry of Petroleum presentation
Such meetings with multiple government departments and often dozens of senior officials continued for every month through to the end of the following year, except June 2010. These included meetings with the Prime Minister's National Security Advisor Peter Ricketts; business secretary Vince Cable, various DECC ministers to discuss "energy issues" related to Qatar, along with several sessions with Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
Declassified British government memos show that in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, oil firms BP and Shell held several meetings with senior government officials to guarantee a role of British energy companies in post-conflict Iraq.
While publicly the government decried criticisms of an oil motive for British involvement in the war as "the oil conspiracy theory", one memo of a meeting between then Trade Minister Baroness Symons and UK oil firms revealed that in private, they believed "it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."
Slide from 2010 Syrian Ministry of Petroleum presentation
After the 2011 protests, even when Assad was brutalising demonstrators in the streets, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ruled out military intervention and insisted that the Syrian dictator was a "reformer" — which he took as a green light to escalate his crackdown.
As the cycle of violence intensified, Western governments disassociated from Assad when it became clear his rule had become completely unstable. With the outbreak of civil war, the plans of Shell and other oil majors to open up Syria's offshore resources were unexpectedly suspended.
Military action to protect Mediterranean oil and gas
The sudden crisis in Syria threw a spanner in the works for longstanding efforts to explore and open up lucrative energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean.
A report published in December 2014 by the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) provides compelling evidence that American, British and Gulf defence strategists see the Mediterranean as an opportunity to wean Europe off dependence on Russian gas, and boost Israel's energy independence.
As part of this process, the report revealed, military action is viewed as potentially necessary to secure Syria's untapped offshore gas resources, which overlap with the territorial waters of other Mediterranean powers, including Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey.
The report by Mohammed El-Katiri, an advisor to the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defence and formerly a research director at the UK Ministry of Defence's (MoD) Advanced Research and Assessment Group (ARAG), explicitly acknowledges that a post-conflict Syria would open up new prospects for energy exploration.
"Once the Syria conflict is resolved, prospects for Syrian offshore production — provided commercial resources are found — are high," wrote El-Katiri. Potential oil and gas resources can be developed "relatively smoothly once the political situation allows for any new exploration efforts in its offshore territories."
The US Army SSI report noted that Syria's offshore resources are part of a wider matrix of oil and gas deposits in the Levant basin encompassing the offshore territories of these competing states.
The region is estimated to hold approximately 1.7 billion barrels of oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which could be just a third of the basin's total hydrocarbons.
US-led military intervention has a key role to play, the report concludes, in "managing" conflicts and tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially the prospect of "Syria destabilising into de facto civil war."
"US diplomatic and military support has a pivotal role to play in the East Mediterranean's complex geopolitical landscape, and its importance will only grow as the value of the natural resources at stake increases," the Army SSI report said:
"US security and military support for its main allies in the case of an eruption of natural resource conflict in the East Mediterranean may prove essential in managing possible future conflict."
Neocons angling for Syria's Golan oil bonanza
One of the key potential conflicts flagged up by the report is between Syria and Israel, over oil exploration licenses granted by the Israeli government to search for oil in the Golan Heights.
The Golan was captured by Israel from Syria in 1967, and unilaterally annexed in 1981 with the introduction of Israeli law to the territory.
The report recognised the risk of "another armed conflict between the two parties should substantial hydrocarbon resources be discovered."
The company that has been granted exploration rights in the Golan Heights is a major American firm, Genie Oil and Gas. Data from exploratory wells explored by Genie's Israeli subsidiary, Afek Oil and Gas, confirmed "significant" quantities of oil and gas after drilling into a column of reserves 1,150 feet thick, "about 10 times larger than the global average."
Yuval Bartov, Afek's chief geologist, recently told the Economist his firm had discovered an oil reservoir "with the potential of billions of barrels."
Equity-holding board members of Afek's parent company, Genie Oil and Gas, include global media baron Rupert Murdoch.
In late 2010, Murdoch teamed up with Lord Jacob Rothschild to buy a 5.5% stake in Genie, worth around $11 million. Lord Rothschild is chairman of RIT (Rothschild Investment Trust) Capital Partners, a $3.4 billion investment trust fund formerly associated with the Rothschild investment bank.
RIT Capital invests primarily in public equity, debt markets, real estate equities, gold and oil, including "sectors that we have a deep knowledge of" such as "energy, resources, financial services, TMT [technology, media and telecommunications] and consumer-related."
Murdoch is the owner of News Corporation, the world's second largest media conglomerate before it split in 2013 into News Corp, where he is executive chairman, and 21st Century Fox, where he is co-executive chairman, running the corporation with his two sons, Lachlan and James.
As such, Murdoch is a dominant force over newspapers, publishers and TV networks in the English-language media, encompassing BSkyB, The Times and The Sun in the UK; the FOX cable network including FOX News, Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and National Geographic in the US; The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, and Herald Sun in Australia — to name just a few.
"I believe Genie Energy's technologies and vast shale oil licenses have real potential to spur a global, geo-political paradigm shift by moving a major portion of new oil production to America, Israel, and other western-oriented democracies," said Murdoch explaining his reasons for investing in the firm.
During the Leveson inquiry, it emerged that the global media baron had numerous undisclosed meetings with Prime Minister David Cameron, who appeared to have close relationships with Murdoch and other senior News Corp. officials.
Murdoch and Rothschild also serve on Genie's strategic advisory board. Joining them on the board are Larry Summers, former Director of President Obama's National Economic Council; ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, a former Vice-President of NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, Director of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, advisory board member of anti-Muslim hate group the Gatestone Institute, international patron to the Henry Jackson Society; Dick Cheney, former Vice-President under George W. Bush; and Bill Richardson, former Secretary of Energy under Clinton, Governor of New Mexico and Obama nominee for Secretary of Commerce.
Dismembering Syria to stave-off peak oil
Another of Genie Oil and Gas's subsidiaries is American Shale Oil, a joint project with the French major Total SA. Total was among the sponsors of the 2010 international oil and gas exhibition hosted by the Assad regime in Damascus.
American Shale Oil (AMSO) operates in the US in Colorado's Green River Formation, estimated to hold 3 trillion barrels of recoverable oil.
On its website, the company offers an extraordinary declaration regarding its rationale for focusing on unconventional oil and gas resources in the US and Israel:
"The peaking of world oil production presents the US and the world with an enormous challenge. Aggressive action must be taken to avoid unprecedented economic, social and political costs."
Screenshot of website of Genie Energy subsidiary
This candid statement demonstrates that the interests behind Genie Energy recognise the reality of 'peak oil' usually denied by the industry. Peak oil does not imply that the world is running out of oil, but rather the end of the age of cheap, easy oil as conventional oil production declines, and therefore an increasing shift to a new age of expensive, difficult oil.
Declassified documents along with senior US and British officials involved in the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq confirm that fears around the impact of 'peak oil' played an instrumental role in the Bush and Blair administration's plans for war.
This illustrates that Genie Energy's activities via Israel in Syria remain integral to the wider strategic goal of dominating the world's remaining oil and gas resources, due to concerns about the impact of 'peak oil.'
Obama appears to have few objections to the premise of Genie Energy's oil exploration activities in the Syrian Golan Heights: that the territory will ultimately be ceded to Israel.
In early November, as Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook reports, "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took advantage of a private meeting… with Barack Obama — their first in 13 months — to raise the possibility of dismembering Syria."
According to Israeli officials familiar with the conversation:
"Netanyahu indicated that Washington should give its belated blessing to Israel's illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria during the 1967 war…. Netanyahu claimed that Syria was no longer a functioning state, allowing 'for different thinking.'"
Obama's response was telling — he did not clarify to Netanyahu that the dismemberment of Syria was out of the question:
"[A]n unnamed White House official confirmed that Netanyahu had raised the matter. The official said: 'I think the president didn't think it warranted an answer. It wasn't clear how serious he [Netanyahu] was about it.'
There is thus a surprisingly broad and powerful nexus of US, British, French and Israeli interests, encompassing defence, security, energy and media sectors, at the forefront of pushing for the break-up Syria.
An overriding motive for this is the control of what is believed to be potentially vast untapped oil and gas resources in Syria and the wider Eastern Mediterranean. Relatedly, the US and Britain aim to rollback Russian and Iranian influence in the region.
According to the 2012 US Department of the Interior's Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook on Syria, the Syrian civil war has put paid to Assad's ambitions to transform Syria into a gas transshipment hub to Europe allied with Russia and Iran:
"In the summer of 2011, Iran, Iraq and Syria signed a memorandum of understanding on laying a 5,000-kilometer pipeline, to be named the Islamic Gas Pipeline. The proposed pipeline would transport gas resources from Iran's South Pars field and would extend through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon and to Europe under the Mediterranean Sea. Iran had suggested that the Islamic Gas Pipeline could serve as an alternative to the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline, which was set to supply Europe with gas resources by way of Turkey and Austria."
The other alternative was a proposed pipeline backed by the US that would transport gas from the Qatar-owned part of the field overlapping with Iran, known as the North Field.
At 872 trillion cubic feet, the latter comprises the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world. Together, Qatar's North Field and Iran's South Pars constitute the world's single largest natural gas deposit.
The Qatar pipeline would run through Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey where gas could then be transported to Europe. Companies that have a stake in developing Qatar's North Field include the US-based ExxonMobil and France's Total.
CGG Veritas, the French-government backed firm previously contracted to Assad's regime in Syria to scope the country's offshore resources, had also conducted seismic surveys of the North Field on behalf of Qatar, after which it was contracted to survey Qatar's Dukhan field.
The conflict that increasingly engulfed Syria after Assad signed the Russia-backed pipeline deal with Iran has effectively annulled the Iran-Syria pipeline project, which was supposed to have been completed in 2016.
"The war and sanctions had an adverse effect on Syrian hydrocarbon sector activity, including development, exploration, export, production, transportation, and distribution," observed the US Geological Survey report:
"As the war continued in the country, Syria's prospect of becoming a significant energy transit country to Iraq, the Mediterranean area, and Europe was severely diminished."
ISIS is a figleaf for the Mediterranean scramble
Despite that, or perhaps because of it, Russia is intent on laying its stake in the ground.
SoyuzNefteGaz, a Russian oil and gas company, began oil prospecting operations in September 2015 on Syria's western coast — the same area scoped by CGGVeritas.
The operations follow on from a 2013 agreement between Syria and Russia, under which SoyuzNefteGaz would pump in an initial investment of around $90 million.
Russia's increasing military build-up in Syria, justified as an offensive against ISIS, is more likely about propping up Assad within a self-contained Alawite mini-state allied with Iran.
Putin's announcement after Turkey's shooting down of a Russian jet that Turkey has been systematically facilitating ISIS oil sales illustrates how the terror-entity has become a figleaf to justify military action.
As INSURGEintelligence has previously reported, there is significant evidence that high-level elements of Turkish government and intelligence agencies have covertly sponsored Islamist terrorist groups in Syria, including ISIS, and that this has involved permitting black market oil sales.
Why, however, did Vladimir Putin wait until the murder of a Russian pilot before announcing Russia's possession of intelligence on Turkish state-sponsorship of ISIS?
There can be little doubt that Putin had previously been more interested in protecting Russian relations with Turkey as an emerging gas transshipment hub to Europe, under which he and Erdogan planned to build the multibillion Russia-Turkey gas pipeline, Turkish Stream — now suspended after the recent diplomatic furore.
US, British and French military operations have been similarly inconsistent, inexplicably failing to shut down ISIS supply lines through Turkey, failing to bomb critical ISIS oil infrastructure including vast convoys of trucks transporting black market oil, and refusing to arm the most effective and secular Kurdish ground forces combating ISIS.
It has become increasingly clear that the US-led coalition strategy is aimed primarily at containment of the group's territorial ambitions within Syria.
Shortly before the Paris attacks, Obama explained:
"From the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria it — they'll come in, they'll leave. But you don't see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain."
This strategy is, however, consistent with the de facto partitioning of Iraq and Syria apparently favoured by the nexus of neoconservative defence and energy interests described above.
As Russia expands its military presence in the region in the name of fighting ISIS, the US, Britain and France are now scrambling to ensure they retain a military foothold in Syria — an effort to position themselves to make the most of a post-conflict environment. As the US Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook put it:
"Most of the international investors who pulled out of Syria following the deterioration of the safety and security situation throughout the country… are expected to remain so until the military and political conflicts are resolved."
In this context, as Russia and Iran consolidate their hold on Syria through the Assad regime — staking the claim to Syria's untapped resources in the Mediterranean — the acceleration of Western military action offers both a carrot and a stick: the carrot aims to threaten the Assad regime into a political accommodation that capitulates to Western regional energy designs; the stick aims to replace him with a more compliant entity comprised of rebel forces backed by Western allies, the Gulf states and Turkey, whilst containing the most virulent faction, ISIS.
It is unlikely that this blood-soaked strategy to beat Russia and Iran to Mediterranean energy riches has any prospect of success, for any of the parties.
Judging by recent history, it is also likely to backfire in ways that cannot be foreseen, nor controlled.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the 'System Shift' column for VICE's Motherboard, and is a weekly columnist for Middle East Eye.
He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award, known as the 'Alternative Pulitzer Prize', for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work, and was twice selected in the Evening Standard's 'Power 1,000' most globally influential Londoners, in 2014 and 2015.
Nafeez has also written and reported for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, Counterpunch, Truthout, among others.
He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Anglia Ruskin University, where he is researching the link between global systemic crises and civil unrest for Springer Energy Briefs.
Nafeez is the author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT, among other books. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner's Inquest.
This article was amended on 2nd December 2015 to include evidence of secret meetings in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War between British government officials and UK oil majors.
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"Mutual Deterrence" Speech by Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara
In a complex and uncertain world, the gravest problem that an American Secretary of Defense must face is that of planning, preparation and policy against the possibility of thermonuclear war. It is a prospect that most of mankind understandably would prefer not to contemplate. For technology has now circumscribed us all with a horizon of horror that could dwarf any catastrophe that has befallen man in his more than a million years on earth.
Man has lived now for more than twenty years in what we have come to call the Atomic Age. What we sometimes overlook is that every future age of man will be an atomic age, and if man is to have a future at all, it will have to be one overshadowed with the permanent possibility of thermonuclear holocaust. About that fact there is no longer any doubt. Our freedom in this question consists only in facing the matter rationally and realistically and discussing actions to minimize the danger.
No sane citizen, political leader or nation wants thermonuclear war. But merely not wanting it is not enough. We must understand the differences among actions which increase its risks, those which reduce them and those which, while costly, have little influence one way or another. But there is a great difficulty in the way of constructive and profitable debate over the issues, and that is the exceptional complexity of nuclear strategy. Unless these complexities are well understood rational discussion and decision-making are impossible.
One must begin with precise definitions. The cornerstone of our strategic policy continues to be to deter nuclear attack upon the United States or its allies. We do this by maintaining a highly reliable ability to inflict unacceptable damage upon any single aggressor or combination of aggressors at any time during the course of a strategic nuclear exchange, even after absorbing a surprise first strike. This can be defined as our assured-destruction capability.
It is important to understand that assured destruction is the very essence of the whole deterrence concept. We must possess an actual assured-destruction capability, and that capability also must be credible. The point is that a potential aggressor must believe that our assured-destruction capability is in fact actual, and that our will to use it in retaliation to an attack is in fact unwavering. The conclusion, then, is clear: if the United States is to deter a nuclear attack in itself or its allies, it must possess an actual and a credible assured-destruction capability.
When calculating the force required, we must be conservative in all our estimates of both a potential aggressor's capabilities and his intentions. Security depends upon assuming a worst plausible case, and having the ability to cope with it. In that eventuality we must be able to absorb the total weight of nuclear attack on our country -- on our retaliatory forces, on our command and control apparatus, on our industrial capacity, on our cities, and on our population -- and still be capable of damaging the aggressor to the point that his society would be simply no longer viable in twentieth-century terms. That is what deterrence of nuclear aggression means. It means the certainty of suicide to the aggressor, not merely to his military forces, but to his society as a whole.
Let us consider another term: first-strike capability. This is a somewhat ambiguous term, since it could mean simply the ability of one nation to attack another nation with nuclear forces first. But as it is normally used, it connotes much more: the elimination of the attacked nation's retaliatory second-strike forces. This is the sense in which it should be understood.
Clearly, first-strike capability is an important strategic concept. The United States must not and will not permit itself ever to get into a position in which another nation, or combination of nations, would possess a first-strike capability against it. Such a position not only would constitute an intolerable threat to our security, but it obviously would remove our ability to deter nuclear aggression.
We are not in that position today, and there is no foreseeable danger of our ever getting into that position. Our strategic offensive forces are immense: 1,000 Minuteman missile launchers, carefully protected below ground; 41 Polaris submarines carrying 656 missile launchers, with the majority hidden beneath the seas at all times; and about 600 long-range bombers, approximately 40 percent of which are kept always in a high state of alert.
Our alert forces alone carry more than 2,200 weapons, each averaging more than the explosive equivalent of one megaton of TNT. Four hundred of these delivered on the Soviet Union would be sufficient to destroy over one-third of her population and one-half of her industry. All these flexible and highly reliable forces are equipped with devices that ensure their penetration of Soviet defenses.
Now what about the Soviet Union? Does it today possess a powerful nuclear arsenal? The answer is that it does. Does it possess a first-strike capability against the United States? The answer is that it does not. Can the Soviet Union in the foreseeable future acquire such a first-strike capability against the United States? The answer is that it cannot. It cannot because we are determined to remain fully alert and we will never permit our own assured-destruction capability to drop to a point at which a Soviet first-strike capability is even remotely feasible.
Is the Soviet Union seriously attempting to acquire a first-strike capability against the United States? Although this is a question we cannot answer with absolute certainty, we believe the answer is no. In any event, the question itself is -- in a sense -- irrelevant: for the United States will maintain and, where necessary strengthen its retaliatory forces so that, whatever the Soviet Union's intentions or actions, we will continue to have an assured-destruction capability vis a vis their society.
A flurry of reports suggest the 93-year-old diplomat is positioning himself as a intermediary between Vladimir Putin and President-elect Donald Trump. He has publicly praised Mr Trump, and traveled to Trump Tower in New York to offer his counsel built on decades of lobbying and diplomacy.
A report in the German tabloid Der Bildheadlined 'Kissinger to prevent new Cold War', claimed the former envoy was working towards a new relationship with Russia.
The US leader reportedly told Mr Putin to 'cut it out' (AP)
This would involve the US accepting that Crimea, a Ukrainian territory that Russia seized in March 2014, now belongs to Moscow. In exchange, Russia would remove troops and military supplies to rebels in eastern Ukraine which have fighting a war against the Ukrainian government.
The report did not provide details, but claimed that "sources" said that Mr Kissinger was drawing up a "master plan" for Ukraine.
Last week, Politico said Mr Kissinger was one of the few Americans to meet frequently with Mr Putin, along with movie star Steven Seagal and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, Mr Trump's pick for the next secretary of state.
Former ambassador to Russia: Putin wanted 'revenge' against Clinton
"The 93-year-old Kissinger is positioning himself as a potential intermediary - meeting with the president-elect in private and flattering him in public," it said.
"Like Trump, Kissinger has also cast doubt on intelligence agencies' conclusion that Russia sought to sway the election in Trump's favor, telling a recent interviewer 'They were hacking, but the use they allegedly made of this hacking eludes me'."
Mr Trump's views on Russia's annexation of Crimea appeared to change during the course of the election campaign - reportedly as a result of the influence of former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has worked for Ukraine's deposed pro-Russian president. Inquiries to Mr Kissinger's lobbying firm in New York were not immediately answered on Tueday.
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Mr Trump voiced opposition and said it "should never have happened."
However, in August he told one US interviewer: "The people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were."
Politico said that Mr Kissinger, who levied as secretary of state to presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has long argued that promoting a greater balance of power between the US and Russia would improve global stability.
Yet skeptics fear Mr Kissinger, who was behind the massive, secret US bombing campaigns in Indo-China in the late 1960s and 1970s, risks rewarding Russia despite its controversial role in events such as the Syrian civil war, where Mr Putin has sided with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
"I think Kissinger is preparing a diplomatic offensive," Marcel Van Herpen, a Russia specialist directs the Cicero Foundation, a Dutch think tank, told the website.
"He's a realist. The most important thing for him is international equilibrium, and there's no talk of human rights or democracy."
Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger may be in his nineties, but he's continuing to play a key, globe-spanning role in one of the most substantive foreign policy negotiations of the US presidency so far.
Kissinger, who brokered a ground-breaking detente between the US and China's Communist Party's in 1972, has served a valued go-between for the two nations for more than four decades, earning him the nickname of "old friend of the Chinese people." It's privilege he has shared with at least 600 people, although Kissinger may be the living person who has held the nickname the longest.
As recently as December, when then US president-elect Donald Trump threatened upheaval between the world's most powerful nations, by accepting a congratulatory call from Taiwan's Tsai Ing-wen, Kissinger was already in Beijing with Chinese president Xi Jinping, reassuring him that "overall, we hope to see the China-US relationship moving ahead in a sustained and stable manner." (A Bloomberg report suggested that Xi may have turned to the venerable diplomat to better understand Trump, telling Kissinger he was "all ears" regarding what he had to say about the future of US-China relations.)
Kissinger met with the incoming Trump administration soon after the election, and helped to connect Chinese politicians with the US president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Washington Post reports—connections that ultimately led to this week's meeting.
In doing so, he's opened up a now familiar controversy in the US—who does Kissinger work for, exactly, and whose side is he on?
Kissinger is "representing China's interests and trying to influence American foreign policy," said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan group that advocates for citizens' rights in Congress. "That crosses the threshold for FARA," he said, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The act, passed in 1938, aimed to stop pro-Nazi agents from spreading propaganda inside the US, but was widened during the spread of Communism in Russia to include work for all foreign governments. Anyone who is acting for a foreign political party in the US, including public relations and lobbying work, must register as a foreign agent, something Kissinger has never done.
They are hardly new questions for Kissinger, who has served as the unofficial voice of the Chinese government in the West since he left the Gerald Ford administration in January 1977.
In 1997, Kissinger became a key advisor to a 1,000 strong corporate lobbyist group seeking better US-China relations, an arrangement that "strains the limits of lobbying disclosure laws and possibly violates the Foreign Agents Registration Act," Justice Department officials said at the time.
"He has been doing this for a long time," said Richard Painter, the former chief ethics officer for the George W. Bush administration said this week. The real question that needs to be answered is "What is the relationship between him and the foreign entity" he is advocating for, Painter said. "If he is doing this of his own accord, then no, I don't think he'd have to register," Painter said.
Kissinger & Associates, his firm in New York, did not respond to emailed questions.
Kissinger's alliance with the Trump administration isn't unexpected, since he's made overtures to successive US administrations to act as a bridge-builder with China. Hillary Clinton relied on his counsel as secretary of state and said she considers him a "friend," which drew outrage from the left. His presence has been a hard one to dismiss for many presidents, including former president George W. Bush, who controversially put him in charge of the 9/11 commission, a post he soon resigned from citing the difficult of resolving concerns over conflicts of interest.
Kissinger's 600-page 2011 book "On China" is a bible for foreign businessmen and diplomats trying to work out political and trade deals in China, and it reads like the antithesis of the Trump administration's approach to China so far, and a clue, perhaps, to Xi's stance. As the New Republic review of the book summarizes:
Rather than attempt to crush an opponent with superior force, traditional thinkers in China "placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict." The Chinese approach to strategy has always stressed "subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage."
