Pentagon Seeks Biggest Military Cuts Since Before 9/11
By THOM SHANKER and CHRISTOPHER DREW
The White House ordered the Pentagon to squeeze almost all growth from its spending over the next five years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.
Bienvenid@s a Citius64, donde Alfredo explora un poco el futuro, las tendencias del mundo por venir, los patrones de lo que apenas se asoma. Nuestro lema es Veritas Odit Moras: que la Verdad llegue rápido.
The White House ordered the Pentagon to squeeze almost all growth from its spending over the next five years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.


Diego Azubel/European Pressphoto Agency |

In at least one of the world’s regions—the greater Middle East—two of these three factors have been present for some time: Ethnic conflict has been rife there for decades, and following the difficulties and disappointments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States already seems likely to begin winding down its quasi-imperial presence in the region. It likely still will.
Now the third variable, economic volatility, has returned with a vengeance. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s “Great Moderation”—the supposed decline of economic volatility that he hailed in a 2004 lecture—has been obliterated by a financial chain reaction, beginning in the U.S. subprime mortgage market, spreading through the banking system, reaching into the “shadow” system of credit based on securitization, and now triggering collapses in asset prices and economic activity around the world.
After nearly a decade of unprecedented growth, the global economy will almost certainly sputter along in 2009, though probably not as much as it did in the early 1930s, because governments worldwide are frantically trying to repress this new depression. But no matter how low interest rates go or how high deficits rise, there will be a substantial increase in unemployment in most economies this year and a painful decline in incomes. Such economic pain nearly always has geopolitical consequences. Indeed, we can already see the first symptoms of the coming upheaval.
In the essays that follow, Jeffrey Gettleman describes Somalia’s endless anarchy, Arkady Ostrovsky analyzes Russia’s new brand of aggression, and Sam Quinones explores Mexico’s drug-war-fueled misery. These, however, are just three case studies out of a possible nine or more...
The problem is that, as in the 1930s, most countries are looking inward, grappling with the domestic consequences of the economic crisis and paying little attention to the wider world crisis. This is true even of the United States, which is now so preoccupied with its own economic problems that countering global upheaval looks like an expensive luxury. With the U.S. rate of GDP growth set to contract between 2 and 3 percentage points this year, and with the official unemployment rate likely to approach 10 percent, all attention in Washington will remain focused on a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package. Caution has been thrown to the wind by both the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The projected deficit for 2009 is already soaring above the trillion-dollar mark, more than 8 percent of GDP. Few commentators are asking what all this means for U.S. foreign policy.
The answer is obvious: The resources available for policing the world are certain to be reduced for the foreseeable future. That will be especially true if foreign investors start demanding higher yields on the bonds they buy from the United States or simply begin dumping dollars in exchange for other currencies.
Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus an empire in decline: That combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.
(CNN) -- A shootout in a border city that leaves five alleged drug traffickers sprawled dead on the street and seven police wounded. A police chief and his bodyguards gunned down outside his house in another border city. Four bridges into the United States shut down by protesters who want the military out of their towns and who officials say are backed by narcotraffickers.
Mexican police carry a body after a clash with gangs that left 21 dead in the state of Chihuahua on February 10.
What is most remarkable is that it was not much different from Monday or Sunday or any day in the past few years.
Mexico, a country with a nearly 2,000-mile border with the United States, is undergoing a horrifying wave of violence that some are likening to a civil war. Drug traffickers battle fiercely with each other and Mexican authorities. The homicide rate reached a record level in 2008 and indications are that the carnage could be exceeded this year.
Every day, newspapers and the airwaves are filled with stories and images of beheadings and other gruesome killings. Wednesday's front page on Mexico City's La Prensa carried a large banner headline that simply said "Hysteria!" The entire page was devoted to photos of bloody bodies and grim-faced soldiers. One photo shows a man with two young children walking across a street with an army vehicle in the background, with a soldier standing at a turret machine gun.
Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, calls it "a sickening vertigo into chaos and plunder."
By most accounts, that's not hyperbole.
"The grisly portrait of the violence is unprecedented and horrific," said Robert Pastor, a Latin America national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.
"I don't think there's any question that Mexico is going through a very rough time. Not only is there violence with the gangs, but the entire population is very scared," said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy center.
Speaking on a news show a few weeks ago, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called it a civil war. Birns agrees.
"Of course it's a civil war, but that only touches the violence of it," he said Wednesday. "It's also a civic conflict, as an increasing number of people look upon the law and democratic values as something that can be violated."
Hakim is not prepared to go that far.
"One has to be careful and not overdo it," he said. "Mexico is a long way from being a failed state. Mexico has real institutions. It paves roads and collects the garbage. It holds regular elections."
Enrique Bravo, an analyst with the Eurasia consulting group, points out that the violence so far is mostly affecting just drug gangs and is primarily localized along the U.S. border and Mexico's western coast.
The violence along the border is particularly worrisome, analysts say.
"The spillover into the United States is bound to expand and bound to affect U.S. institutions," Birns said.
Pastor and Hakim note that the United States helps fuel the violence, not only by providing a ready market for illegal drugs, but also by supplying the vast majority of weapons used by drug gangs.
Pastor says there are at least 6,600 U.S. gun shops within 100 miles of the Mexican border and more than 90 percent of weapons in Mexico come from the United States.
And it's not just handguns. Drug traffickers used a bazooka in Tuesday's shootout with federal police and army soldiers in Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from McAllen, Texas.
"The drug gangs are better equipped than the army," Hakim said.
Pervasive corruption among public officials is central to the drug cartels' success.
"There is so much money involved in the drug trade, there is so much fear involved in the drug trade, that no institution can survive unaffected," Birns said.
"This has really revealed just how corrupt Mexican officeholders are," Hakim said.
In one recent instance, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who was the nation's top anti-drug official from 2006 until August 2008, was arrested on charges that he accepted $450,000 a month in bribes from drug traffickers while in office.
Such dire problems call for a new way of looking at the situation, some say.
Pastor calls the problem in Mexico "even worse than Chicago during the Prohibition era" and said a solution similar to what ended that violence is needed now.
"What worked in the U.S. was not Eliot Ness," he said, referring to the federal agent famous for fighting gangsters in 1920s and '30s. "It was the repeal of Prohibition."
That viewpoint has picked up some high-level support in Latin America.
Last week, the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil called for the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use and a change in strategy on the war on drugs at a meeting in Brazil of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.
"The problem is that current policies are based on prejudices and fears and not on results," former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria said at a news conference, in which the 17-member commission's recommendations were presented.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has taken the war on drugs to the cartels and some say it's not working.
"It's as if the burden of being the main arena of the anti-drug war has overwhelmed Mexican institutions," Birns said. "The occasional anti-drug battle is being won, but the war is being lost. And there's no prospect the war is going to be won."
In the meantime, the killings will continue at a record pace.
On Wednesday, the Mexican cities of Correon and Gomez Palacio reported at least eight shootouts involving heavily armed men.
SALVADOR CAMARENA | México 18/02/2009
"No venimos para que saquen la nota, venimos para que sepan que aquí estamos". Los reporteros se quedaron petrificados. El modus operandi fue idéntico en los tres periódicos de Tampico, puerto del fronterizo estado de Tamaulipas: primero, dos camionetas todoterreno con lunas tintadas cerraban la circulación en la calle; luego, salidos de la nada y portando pancartas, un centenar de personas se "manifestaba" en contra del Ejército Mexicano. Y finalmente, a los periodistas que salían de las redacciones, algunos manifestantes les tomaban fotos y video. La noticia, por supuesto, nunca se publicó.
Lo anterior no pasó ayer ni la semana pasada. Ocurrió en octubre de 2008. A diferencia de otras manifestaciones populares, recuerda un periodista que las presenció y que pidió el anonimato, en ésta "no gritaban, ni nada, era silenciosa, todo era muy silencioso; y las pancartas que portaban son muy parecidas a las de Monterrey. En Tampico se decía que los habían enviado los señores".
Si hace meses estas 'manifestaciones' pasaron inadvertidas porque se realizaban en ciudades medianas, en los últimos seis días han sacudido Monterrey, la capital industrial de Nuevo León, sede de corporaciones como el gigante cementero CEMEX o de emporios mediáticos como Grupo REFORMA.
La situación entró en crisis este martes, cuando se registraron una decena de estas "protestas" en cuatro estados del país que bloquearon no sólo calles y carreteras, sino que incluso cerraron puentes fronterizos con Estados Unidos en Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros y Ciudad Juárez. ¿Qué piden los manifestantes? Formalmente, que el Ejército no realice más operativos en contra del crimen porque, alegan, los soldados violan los derechos humanos. Pero esa demanda no se la cree nadie.
Para empezar, porque las fuerzas armadas mexicanas gozan de amplia popularidad entre la población: una encuesta realizada en septiembre de 2008 por María de las Heras -una de las tres firmas encuestadoras más prestigiosas de México- las pone en primer lugar de buena imagen por sobre todas las instituciones. Y en segundo lugar, porque la opinión pública desconfió de la legitimidad de estas protestas mucho antes de que las autoridades señalaran que son financiadas por el crimen organizado, que tras haber recurrido a las narcomantas ahora explora una nueva estrategia de presión y de imposición de su propaganda: usa a mujeres, niños, adolescentes y ancianos.
"Está quedando claro que no se trata de ciudadanos que se manifiestan espontáneamente, ni que quieren ser considerados así", explica Raúl Trejo Delarbre, estudioso de fenómenos de comunicación colectiva. "Todo indica que es una expresión para tener peso público de los interesados en reclamar ante el Ejército".
Las manifestaciones son conocidas ya como las de los tapados, porque las personas que participan van embozadas. Al principio, las autoridades de Nuevo León se limitaron a contener a los manifestantes y a señalar que a cada uno de ellos el crimen organizado les pagaba unos 500 pesos (unos 25 euros, pero casi diez veces el salario mínimo diario) por aparición. Luego, el 10 de febrero fue detenido un presunto organizador, Juan Antonio Beltrán Cruz, alias El Queco, de 20 años y en cuyo domicilio encontraron armas largas, mil cartuchos y falsos uniformes policiales. Dos días después apareció muerto el policía que había capturado a El Queco
"Hay elementos para pensar que se trata del cártel del Golfo el que está detrás de las manifestaciones", dijo este martes Natividad González Paras, gobernador de Nuevo León. Un día antes y al anunciar que desplegarían más policías, el Ministro de Seguridad Pública Genaro García Luna había advertido de que "no podemos permitir que el derecho ciudadano de manifestarse en la vía pública lo usen delincuentes o criminales para poder mostrarse con una demanda que no está ligada a un esquema social o que tenga soporte social".
"Esto es nuevo en México, por lo general las actividades delincuenciales transcurrían en el sigilo, en el secreto que es parte de la ilegalidad, pero en estas ocasiones ya tenemos grupos de narcotraficantes que buscan ser vistos, en primer lugar porque ésta es una manera de dirimir rivalidades y enconos mutuos, pero también para influir en la apreciación que la sociedad tiene de ellos, este sí es un cambio notable en la sociedad mexicana", subrayó Trejo Delarbre.

| Dejan cabezas en dependencias de Celaya | ||||||
Grupo Reforma | ||||||
| Dos cabezas dentro de hieleras fueron halladas en el estacionamiento de la Subprocuraduría de Justicia y la unidad de narcomenudeo en Celaya. (12:40) | ||||||
|
EL PASO - Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.
The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.
"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."
The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., is one of the Defense Departments combat commands that includes members of the different military service branches, active and reserves, as well as civilian and contract employees. One of its key roles is to help transform the U.S. military's capabilities.
In the foreword, Marine Gen. J.N. Mattis, the USJFC commander, said "Predictions about the future are always risky ... Regardless, if we do not try to forecast the future, there is no doubt that we will be caught off guard as we strive to protect this experiment in democracy that we call America."
The report is one in a series focusing on Mexico's internal security problems, mostly stemming from drug violence and drug corruption. In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security and former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey issued similar alerts about Mexico.
Despite such reports, El Pasoan Veronica Callaghan, a border business leader, said she keeps running into people in the region who "are in denial about what is happening in Mexico."
Last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon instructed his embassy and consular officials to promote a positive image of Mexico.
The U.S. military report, which also analyzed economic situations in other countries, also noted that China has increased its influence in places where oil fields are present.
The most likely existential security threat to the United States isn't likely to originate from southwest Asian terrorists or a conventional war with China. Instead, it will originate from Mexico's open source insurgency as:
Sam Dillon, writing for the NYTs, provides us with a good waypoint check on this scenario. Here is a good example of how quickly the infection can spread:
Jerez, a town of 60,000 a few miles northwest of Felipe Angeles in Zacatecas, was until recently a calm place, largely untouched by organized crime, said Abel Márquez Haro, a grocery wholesaler. But recently, scores of men driving Chevrolet Suburbans and carrying automatic rifles established a menacing presence, threatening residents on the street and extorting businesspeople. The identities of the men remain a mystery, but many people in the town say they assume they are traffickers who have abandoned another Mexican state, perhaps to avoid an army crackdown.
NOTE: IF your are wondering how a global depression might impact national security, this is it (I suspect that the biggest hew and cry will be over how the fiscal crisis has led to the rapid defunding of hideously expensive conventional weapons systems, of no use to this threat). If you want spice, think about the implications of an economic collapse of Pakistan (needs to borrow), Russia (needs $70+ oil), and China (needs growth in US consumer spending).
Israel decides to continue its offensive in the Palestinian territory of Gaza despite a French proposal for a humanitarian truce, a spokesman says. Israel's fourth day of attacks has sent the Palestinian death toll to more than 375.
| |
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, articulista del Times de Londres, se va a la historia de la Gran Depresión y encuentra un momento en 1931, en la historia británica, el cual fue el decisivo, el punto de quiebre para que el empezara no solo el fin del Imperio Británico, sino el ascenso del nazismo y el inicio ocho años más tarde de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El espera que todas las salvaguardas actuales no hagan que la historia se repita. Copio:Last Updated: 7:15PM GMT 01 Dec 2008
Whether it is the Indian rupee, the Shanghai bourse, or Kremlin debt, the stars of the credit boom have fallen to earth. Investors are retreating into 3-month US Treasury bills – the ultimate safe-haven. The yield has fallen to 0.02pc, less than zero after costs. You pay Washington to guard your money.The working assumption of the "Great Boom" is – or was – that we live in a benign era where most societies are converging towards some form of market liberalism; where trade and capital flows are unrestricted; where governments have enough legitimacy to keep order by light touch; where a major war is unthinkable.
This illusion is now being tested.
We should not to read too much into the Bombay carnage. It may or may not be significant that the Deccan Mujahideen – whoever they are – picked India's financial hub to launch their spectacular.
Even so, the love affair with Bombay's bourse was cooling anyway. The Sensex index is down almost 60pc from its peak.
The exodus of foreign capital may now quicken, laying bare the horrors of Indian public finance. The combined federal and state deficit is 8pc of GDP. Plainly, spending will have to be slashed.
If the atrocity now propels the Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi into office at the head of a revived Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), south Asia will once again face a nuclear showdown between India and Pakistan.
Events are moving briskly in China too. Wudu was torched by rioters this month in a pitched battle with police. Violence has spread to the export hub of Guangdong as workers protest at the mass closure of toy, textile, and furniture factories.
"The global financial crisis has not bottomed yet. The impact is spreading globally and deepening," said Zhang Pin, head of the national development commission. "Excessive bankruptcies and business closures will cause massive unemployment and stir social unrest".
We are about to find out whether China has made the wrong bet with a development strategy of vast investment in manufacturing plant for mass export at thin margins to the US and Europe.
The shocking detail in the World Bank's latest report on China is that wages have fallen from 52pc to 40pc of GDP since 1999. This is evidence of an economic model that is disastrously out of kilter, and unlikely to retain popular support.
The Communist Party lost its ideological mission long ago. The regime depends on perpetual boom to stay in power. As the economy sours, there must be a high risk that it will resort to the nationalist card instead.
Tokyo certainly thinks so. When I visited Japan's Defence Ministry last year the deputy minister showed me charts detailing the intrusion of China's fast-growing fleet of attack submarines into Japanese waters. "We see its warships in the Sea of Japan all the time," he said.
Shoichi Nakagawa, the head of the ruling LDP party, was even more explicit. "What happens when China attacks Japan? Will the US retaliate on our behalf?" he said.
As for Europe, it is already fragile. Iceland, Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, and Serbia have turned to the IMF. Russia is a hostage to oil prices. If Urals oil stays below $50 a barrel for long, we are going to see an earthquake of one kind or another.
It is too early in this crisis to conclude whether Europe's monetary union is a source stability, or is itself a doomsday machine. The rift between North and South is growing. The spreads on Greek, Irish, Italian, Austrian, and Belgian debt remain stubbornly high. The lack of a unified EU treasury has become glaringly clear. Germany has refused to underpin the system with a fiscal blitz.
In the 1930s, it was not obvious to people living through debt deflation that their world was coming apart. The crisis came in pulses, each followed by months of apparent normality – like today.
The global system did not snap until September 1931. The trigger was a mutiny by Royal Navy ratings at Invergordon over pay cuts. Sailors on four battleships refused to put out to sea. They sang the Red Flag.
News that the British Empire could not uphold military discipline set off capital flight. Britain was forced off the gold standard within five days. A chunk of the world followed suit.
Nor was it obvious that Germany would go mad. Bruning persisted with deflation, blind to the danger. The result was the election of July 1932 when two parties committed to the destruction of Weimar – the KPD Communists and the Nazis – won over the half the seats in Reichstag.
We can hope that governments have acted fast enough this time – with rate cuts and a fiscal firewall – to head off such disasters. But then again, the debt excesses are much greater today. If in doubt, cleave to those countries with a deeply-rooted democracy, a strong sense of national solidarity, a tested rule of law – and aircraft carriers. The US and Britain do not look so bad after all.