Focus on security Vol3 no 5

Focus-on-Security 24
Volume 3 No.6
August 17, 2000

IN THIS ISSUE

As mentioned in the previous issue, we reproduce here three of the papers that were distributed at the Okinawa International Forum on People’s Security held in Okinawa, Japan during June 29-July 1, 2000.

More papers presented at the same event and related documents can now be viewed through our webpage : www.focusweb.org.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

From Hegemonic Insecurity to Peoples' Security
by Mushakoji Kinhide

Women’s Response to Militaristic Security : The case of Aceh Women
By Melani Budianta

Security : A Comprehensive Approach
by Marco Mezzera and Chirawatana Charoonpatarapong

From Hegemonic Insecurity to Peoples' Security

-An Overview-

Mushakoji Kinhide

1. Global Hegemonic Security as a Source of Peoples' Insecurity

1.1 The proliferation of Insecurity in the Post-Cold-War Global Age

The end of the Cold War has transformed the world military power distribution from a bipolar top-heavy system to a complex fragmented one, and the neo-liberal political economy generates different sources of insecurity by its exploitation/exclusion of the different sectors in the periphery of the global mega-competition. It generates power struggle and violence, especially local conflicts which militarization is accelerated by the new distribution of military power.

The United States which has become the sole Super-Power exercises its hegemony through a Trilateral Alliance of the "industrial democracies". It adapts the Cold War logic to the post-Cold-War situation by combining continuity and change. The continuity is meant to protect the military R and D of the military-industrial-technocratic complex by the maintenance of its nuclear "deterrence" strategy, the change factors are introduced by the new sources of insecurity which affect the security of the global economy. There are South to North threats, terrorism, drugs, trafficking, and massive movement of labour migrants from the impoverished South to the prospering North. There are also South/South threats represented by local conflicts in the developing and transitional regions.

The security issues which were treated during the Cold War period in connection with the danger of a nuclear holocaust were assumed to be all inter-State military security issues somehow connected to the security interests of the two super-powers. Even domestic conflicts were perceived to be war by proxies of the United States and the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War, the proliferation of domestic conflicts has become the concern of the world opinion. Some of them escalate into inter-State conflicts. Most of them involve different identity groups engaged in power struggle vis-a-vis the State or challenging State power among ethnic or religious identity groups. The proliferation of local armed conflicts are characteristics of developing and transition regions. In the industrial regions, there are not so many domestic conflicts. The States are linked by the global economic interdependence and can not fight inter-State wars.

Violence takes different forms, migrant communities and disfavored ethnic minorities are the target of hate crimes and other violent attacks by extremist groups claiming to represent the majority inhabitant hidden feeling. Transnational criminal organization prosper by participating in the global mega-competition with their laundered money earned by exploiting the economic refugees who seek entry into the rich countries, even by being trafficked or smuggled. The criminal organizations profit from the North-South not only by trafficking human persons gaps but also drugs. The industrial societies develop a violent speculative mass culture which leads to street violence, domestic violence, school violence. This trend is strengthened and perpetuated by the conspicuous consumption of violence and speculation encouraged by the mass media and electronic information channels.

The global mega-competition, deregulated and exclusionary, creates all sorts of non-military threats and insecurities. This is why "human security" comes to be included into the new definition of security. This includes food security, environment security, gender security, and other forms of human security" which come to be endangered by the unregulated speculative competitiveness of the neo-liberal global economy, by the violent cyber-culture, and by the interventionist hegemonic military security. The speculative global market is based on fear and greed, the ciber-culture, rationality and violence, the military security, sense of mission and exclusionism. This combination of money, technology and power creates a most insecure "security environment" for all, States or people, irrespective of whether they are powerful or powerless, and are situated in the centre or in the periphery of the world system. This is in this environment that the American hegemonic security is developed as a reaction to the power-holders' "fear" of the excluded others. The rich fear the poor, the system the anti-systemic forces, the State the "terrorists", the civil society the anti-social transnational organized crime. The contemporary problems of "peoples' security" lies in the fact that these economic, cultural and politico-military factors, exclude the people, make them the object of systemic fear, and the object of exclusion and desecuritization.

1.2 The New Global Colonial Order

The peoples' insecurity is one of the basic characteristics of the present global age. It is a consequence of the "New Colonial Global Order". The contemporary world economy is global in the sense that it is the final global stage of a capitalist economic expansion of the world system who has so far been able to feed its economic/technological growth by the exploitation of the surplus from its frontier land, the periphery, i.e. the colonies. The global economy is global in that it has reached a stage where the frontiers do not exist any more. So, the exploitation of the surplus can be done nowhere and must be done everywhere. The exclusionary processes of the global market creates insecurity for all the excluded and exploited new colonial groups, South to North, women to men, rural to urban, local communities to metropoles, ethnic minorities to global majorities.

The New Global Colonial Order is composed by one single "security community" in the global North which includes a complex network of inter-dependent overlapping "security communities", and a network of interacting fragmented "security communities" in the global South. The global North is the core region of the New Global Colonial order, it is the "North Atlantic security community" plus Japan, a fortress "protected" by the hegemonic alliance of NATO plus x (in Asia). The global South, the periphery of the same Order, is composed by States surviving in the mega-competition of multinational firms and "welcome States" by welcoming foreign capital even by sacrificing their role of "welfare state". They have to renounce their role of "security community" for their people. The peoples are fragmented and are forced to organize their own "security communities".

All the domestic conflicts involving States vs, ethnic groups or ethnic groups against one-another are all part of this fragmented web of "security communities" fearing each-other and over-reacting to each-other's attempt to increase their security. Unlike in the global North where all States do not fear that others would attack them, in the global South, each "security community" perceives other's efforts to increase security as a threat to their's. The mega-competition which engages MNCs in the core of the world system, takes the form of militarized competition among "security communities", States, religious groups, ethnic minorities etc.. What is believed to be pre-modern conflicts of under-developed traditional groups in the developing regions are ultra-modern (or post-modern) conflicts of identity groups engaged in a violent mega-competition in the periphery of the New Global Colonial Order complementing the "peaceful" mega-competition of the TNCs and States in the core of this Order.

The present global political economy thus generates in the North various sources of insecurity within the "security", It also generates insecurities between "security communities in the South. It also generate all sorts of global insecurity in both North and South. This is why the New Global Colonial Order has developed the concept of "global governance". This "governance" is colonial especially in that it is based on the tutelage of the South by the North, which deploy its military forces so as to be ready to intervene anywhere where the interests and values of the global order is put into jeopardy.

The hegemons from the global North, as we will see later, intervene in the conflicts between different "securities" to punish the culprit who start these conflicts. This intervention is in most case arbitrary and lacks international legitimacy as it was the case in the past centuries when the Western Powers were intervening in the South on any pretext and thus were expanding their colonial influence.

Such interventions by the North requires the maintenance of a network of forward-deployed military bases. It assumes, as in the old days of traditional colonialism, that the Western industrial democracies have the right and obligation to act as the missionaries of universal values, and assume the role of a global constabulary, as a "whitemen's burden. They should better realize that the conflicts are caused in most cases by the pressure from the global economy which forces each "security community" to maximize their power to grab some resources in order to achieve a minimum of security. Their competition to grab scarce resources is a zero-sum process where each community perceives others as competitors and potential threats to them. The only way to overcome these conflicts is to build into their inter-community relations some plus-sum elements and enable them to seek a common security.

1.3 Global Governance as the Legitimization of the New Global Colonial Order

Global governance is a hegemonic process accompanying the New Global Colonial Order giving to it a "civilized" appearance. For the mega-competition among MNCs and States to sustain itself in the core of the global order, it needs to get a sufficiently broad support from the international public opinion, or from the "civil societies" composing it. It needs to develop, a set of "stable" universal values in the name of which it can exercise its "governance". It has to build a security system of surveillance, control, and punishment not only of the states, hegemon and allies, but of the global economy and of the civil societies. It needs to create enough room for the "dissidents" in the civil society not to revolt against the New Global Colonial Order.

To use a neo-Gramscian definition of the New Global Colonial Order, the hegemonic forces, the United States and the G7 are engaged in a "passive revolution" to prevent the formation of an anti-hegemonic alliance. They use the discourse developed by these political forces, democracy and human rights, etc.. They co-opt their efforts to build alternatives, e.g. human development now adopted by the World Bank. They support "human security" as if they were ready to renounce their inhuman national security approach.

Global governance involves, in this way, two major problems. Firstly, on the economic and social level, it supports and sustains the neo-liberal global economy which is nothing but a global casino which absorbs and gambles with the surplus produced by the exploited and excluded majority of the people, both women and men but especially women, both in the North and in the South, but especially in the South.

Secondly, on the political-military level, it is a hegemonic governance (in the Gramscian scence), based on an alliance not only of the big industries and big powers, but also of the smaller enterprises and States, who hope to survive and join-in one day the mega-competition. Quite a number of the workers of the sub-contracting firms of big industries hoping to survive harsh labour-cut by working for their companies, and quite a number of the civic leaders who hope to get concessions from governments useful for the people, support "passively" the neo-liberal New Global Colonial Order for lack of alternatives.

A "passive revolution" is now taking place in the South in terms of "democracy", and in the North in terms of "human security". The conflicts in the South, and the "Peace" (doubtful but existing among states) in the North enables the neo-colonial myths of Pax Democratica (peace through the propagation of "democracy) to serve as a pretext for the hegemons to intervene militarily in some of the conflicts of the South which endanger the global economy, or simply meet the disapproval of the United States' military/industrial/technocratic complex..

Their intervention is highly selective and generates everywhere more insecurity than security, yet it is believed to bring democracy to the South "undemocratic" countries. The hegemonic alliance of the "industrial democracies" combines with this interventionist policy into the global South, a rejection policy vis-a-vis all "undesirable" elements to the human security of the North coming from the South. This includes AIDS/HIV, drugs, trafficked women, terrorists and "illegal" migrant workers. They exercise a kind of cultural cleansing to promote "human security" in the North.

2. The Constructed Environment of the Global Hegemonic Security

2.1 The Identification of Old and New "threats"

The United States, as the only hegemon in the post-Cold-War world, has developed a global strategy of international security. This doctrine represents the military side of the hegemonic project leading the neo-liberal global economy and maintaining the New Global Colonial Order. Whether this strategy reflects the interests of the MNCs engaged in the global mega-competition or that of the military technocrats is an object of debate between the security analysts. The answer is probably that the U.S. military agency is in itself a participant in the mega-competition and its doctrine is constructed to serve its military/economic interest, or to maximize its economic/political/strategic market share.

This strategic design is based on a carefully designed map of the global threats selected according to the hegemonic interests, ideology, and technical means. Propagated by the global media, the world public opinion has been brain-washed and is accustomed to perceive the international realities according to this map.

The U.S. military establishment and more broadly the military/industrial/technocratic complex needs to create a security environment where the disappearance of the Soviet Union does not create a lack of targets, a serious loss of market competitiveness for it. Thus the target list has been strengthened both in terms of issue areas and in terms of target agents.

The weapon target areas include nuclear, biological, chemical (NBC), conventional and special weapons. The United States and its allies have to be prepared to respond against any threat from the NBC level counter proliferation to the LIC (low-intensity conflict) level. New threats are identified as global trafficking of drugs, weapons and persons. Terrorism is now an area which is not only dealt with by the FBI but also under the responsibility of the Pentagon.

2.2 The Enemies and Allies of the Hegemon

The agents and agencies designed as either enemies or as allies in the above areas are well selected. The terrorists are the object of a global network of surveillance. The transnational criminal organizations follow. The designation of "rogue states" makes certain countries like Libya, Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, the targets of strengthened surveillance and economic sanctions. Certain individuals like Osama ben Ladin become the target of attack, even of missile attack.

The fundamental allies are NATO and Japan. More concretely, the United States has a Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programs which involve certain foreign agencies. It also develops counter-threat networks of specialized agents such as the arms-control treaty monitoring and on-cite inspection, force protection, etc.

The above map of threats, enemies and allies is highly selective. Which country to designate as "rogue state" is a political decision lacking any international agreement or legal standard. Terrorists for the United States are freedom fighters for anti-hegemonic states. The distinction between guerilla and terrorists is even more arbitrary. The control of transnational organized crime seems to be a legitimate task of the international community, yet the target is often transferred from the criminals to their victims and the trafficked women and the smuggled refugees are arrested in their place. All these arbitrary designations are based on interest calculation, sometimes in terms of the MNCs, some of the military/industrial/technocratic complex.

2.3 Shape, Respond. Prepare, / Deployment, Punishment Surveillance,

Shape, Respond, Prepare the three words sum up the essence of the hegemonic strategy of the United States. The security of the New Global Colonial Order is shaped by the forwarded-deployed armed forces. As Secretary of Defence William Cohen says, the U.S. armed forces help "shape world events" in ways that are advantageous to the United States and its allies by being seen in the forward-deployed countries.

The flexibility in response is a second aspect of the hegemonic strategy. To be able to respond to " a whole array of contingencies all the way from NEO operations to humanitarian missions, all the way up to war fighting" is the condition sought to in the U.S. global strategy. This flexibility is however, used mostly to punish so as to make credible the capacity and intention of the hegemon to respond to any "bad deed" disturbing the Order.

Prepare implies "surveillance". The hegemon has developed a global observation and information processing system, it is important to realize that this is a complex system which combines satellites with spies, immigration information and police bugging. Prepare, however, is also an economic operation consisting of allocating appropriate funds to meet eventual needs a. "how to allocate the resources to make the armed forces the best equipment" is what William Cohen is concerned. This economic aspect of "preparedness" is an important factor on which the military/industrial/ technocratic complex rely on in maintaining its competitiveness in the mega-competition with other government agencies and MNCs.

3. The Deconstruction of Hegemonic Security and the Construction of Peoples' Security

3.1 Hegemony Security as a Match/Pump System

The efforts of the hegemonic security system to shape, respond and prepare for any threat to the security of the New Colonial Security Order is simply a "match/pump" operation. To use a Japanese expression. One strikes a match and sets on fire, and then pump water to extinguish the fire you yourself have set on. Most conflicts in the South are started or complicated by the harsh effects of the mega-competition. The industrial countries who run this competition are in fact setting on the fire of conflicts in the South. They should first regulate the neo-liberal economy before sending fire engines to the South.

The exploitation and exclusion of the peoples from poorer countries or of the poorer peoples of the rich countries by the global economic agents is a consequence of the unregulated neoliberal competition which motivates the members of various "security communities" to increase their security by reducing others'. The global hegemon who wants to punish the agents of insecurity does not want to eliminate the fundamental human insecurity built into the global structures of the New Global Colonial Order.

The hegemonic security is in the service of the neo-liberal speculative global economy, and of the "welcome States" supporting it. It shapes a stable environment for their mega-competition. It respond and punish any "unfair" attempt to break the neoliberal "new constitutionalism" by an application of military or police means. It is prepared to act as a benevolent colonial ruler pacifying conflicts in the world regions under its trusteeship. It is also prepared to refuse access to the core region of its Order of unwelcome elements from the periphery.

In spite of the "good intention" of the hegemon to serve the global economy and its constitutional values, the match/pump nature of its security system betrays often its purpose and creates more problems for the New Global Colonial Order.

In fact, this Order creates itself colonial relations of dependence, sometimes paternally beneficial to the colonized Southern communities, and sometimes discriminatory and punitive to them, between the participants of the global mega-competition and those excluded from its benefits. The security of this Order depends on shaping the world in such a way that no anti-colonial activities can survive, a world where any anti-systemic attempt to seek security outside of the hegemonic security system is punished, and a world where the forward-deployed forces are well prepared and know all about the anti-systemic movements. Such a world needs a cooperation between all forces for "law and order" in the North and the South, be it military or police.

This is why a Military-Police Complex is now emerging, and is linking the core and the periphery of the Global Colonial Order. It utilizes all sorts of advanced technologies which guarantee a technically very high quality for their activities to shape, respond and prepare. However, their map of the security environment is highly selective and is full of blind-spots from where information is not collected. This is why the pacifying expeditions led by the hegemon, under the UN or without its blessing, often fail to reach their objectives, and permit the conflicts to turn into endemic situation of unrest, for lack of proper measures due to ignorance and misperceptions.

Even in the North, transnational criminal organizations as well as terrorists know how to reduce or eliminate the command and control capacity of the hegemonic military forces. The global security system shapes an insecure situation, it responds arbitrarily without giving the expected "lesson" to the "bad" target agent. It is prepared only to respond to certain rationally foreseeable events and can not be prepared to the projects, actions, and manifestations of the often irrational anti-systemic groups and emancipatory movements. Let alone those of the unpredictable individuals engaged in sabotage activities in different regions of the world.

3.2 Hegemonic Security as Peoples' Insecurity

This trilogy of the U.S. strategic project is not only ineffective, it also affects the peoples' security of many peoples. It has both a positive and negative effect on the national and international security of the hegemonic alliance. For the people living in the vicinity of the forward-deployed military bases, gender security and environment security is in constant danger. For the peoples of the targeted countries for punishment, be it collateral loss of lives of bombing or lack of medical supplies due to economic sanctions, the response by the hegemonic security system is always an additional threat to their security. The preparedness involving surveillance of the global movement of people, at least detrimental to the freedom of movement of many peoples of the global South. Bugging for drug trafficking information can easily turn into bugging for politically undesirable persons.

This is why the replacement of the hegemonic security regime by a peoples' security regime is essential to cope with the global insecurity generated by the global mega-competition. Yet it is impossible to achieve this goal unless the civil society assumes its role in the democratization of the security system. The difficulty faced by the civil society is considerable.

3.3 Some Questions About the Role of the Global Civil Society

The global civil society is in the process of learning to raise its voice against the basic injustices generated by the neo-liberal global economy, as with the WTO, or by the hegemonic military security as with land-mines. It can manifest its disagreement within certain boundary conditions. Can it oppose successfully the universalist logic of the hegemon when it speaks in the name of human rights and democracy? Can it criticize the hegemon siding with undemocratic counter-hegemonic forces? Can its voice reach those who are truly excluded and relegated to the ranks of the terrorists and criminals?

The civil society will have to form a counter-hegemonic alliance to promote successfully a global project of peoples' security. It will have to learn to exercise its hegemony, in the Gramscian sense of the term.　In this alliance where it should accept the cooperation of the different anti-hegemonic and anti-neo-liberal forces, under certain clear conditions not betraying the people.

The most serious problem faced by the global civil society is the fact that it is cut-off from the non-modern sectors of the peoples excluded from the global economy in their own region. By historical reasons, the global civil society is part of the modern West, and shares more values with the hegemons than with the excluded peoples. This lack of communication with the different sectors of the peoples' communities, the informal sectors and the different identity groups, constituting mutually suspicious "security communities" has to be overcome.

Peoples' security demands a new alliance between all the "security communities" who should develop a common peoples' security regime. For the moment there is a common security of the Trilateral hegemons which continue to shape, respond and prepare a more insecure world for the people.

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WOMEN’S RESPONSE TO MILITARISTIC SECURITY

The Case of Aceh Women

By Melani Budianta

Introduction

Entering the second millennium, the world has not yet seen its historical pages bleached from the color of violence. Tribal wars and royal feuds gave way to colonial expansions and world-wide wars championed by nation-states; and now when the cold war is over and the world as never before is so closely bound with telecomunicational links and global cultural-socio-economic exchanges, it still witnesses day after day, inter-community violences in an ever escalating scale. What remains as the faithful legacy of the previous ages is the presence not only of the military as the modern reorganization of the tribal warriors, but also of militarism, an ideology that give centrality to war preparedness and masculinist defence of boundaries (geographical, social, cultural).

Not only there is "widespread doubt about whether the military might truly guarantees the security of common people" (Bello, 2000), but also a growing realization that the military and militarism might be the roots of the problem. The accumulating cases of violation of human rights that occurred in the military controlled regions in Indonesia (abbreviated as DOM or Daerah Operasi Militer in Indonesian), such as Aceh, and the previous East Timor, are the strongest evidences of such an argument. In other regions wrecked with ethnic and religious conflicts in Indonesia such as in Ambon, para-military engagement is strongly evident. These inter-cultural conflicts fed on the popular sentiment that places honor of "primordial" boundaries (religious, ethnic, cultural) at a critical stake, a sentiment that demanded a total defence with one’s soul and blood. That these sentiments are flared by professional "provocators", agents paid by unknown sources in order to ignite mass violence and chaos, shows that what really at stake are disguised power-related interests, be it political, or economic. In this case militaristic predisposition became the means for "divide-et-empera" strategy that works only to the destruction of the people.

It should not be surprising that one of the strongest criticism of the military and militarism come from the human rights activists, and most consistently from the women’s groups. The concept of security based on militarism carries with it the values of masculinism. War preparedness against any possible enemies and the significance of physical strength in such atmosphere are often separated by a thin line from machismo and the culture of violence. Recourse to violent measures such as kidnapping, rape and torture and even killing in the name of security was not uncommon in conflict-ridden regions, some of which were officially declared to be "areas of military operation" (DOM).

Many human rights and NGO activists have reported the victimization of women and children in the DOM areas. The May rapes of 1998 in Jakarta and other cities of Indonesia are the tragic manifestations of the Militaristic culture. Women’s bodies in these incidents and other similar incidents in West Irian, Aceh and East Timor served as targets of violence in order to terrorize and demoralize the social/ethnic group to which the women belong.

The aggressors in this case were not limited to the military or the militias. There have been reports that violation of women’s bodies occurred in civilian conflicts, for example in ethnic and religious conflicts in Ambon and other Maluku Islands. Committed by the military or civilians, these crimes suggested the prevalence of a sexist, militaristic ideology, in which women are seen not as a subject but an object or instruments to be used in defeating the enemy.

Women’s Response to Militaristic Violence

The case I am discussing below illustrates how women, who are most prone to be the victim of military violence can serve as a significant force in society to bridge boundaries and to advocate for peaceful, non-militaristic concept of security. This is the story of the women from Aceh, one of the most violence ridden region in Indonesia at the turn of the twentyfirst century. From 20 to 22 February 2000, around 450 Acehnese women participated in All Aceh Women’s Conference in Banda Aceh (Duek Pakat Inong Aceh). According to Bianpoen, a Jakarta women’s activist and reporter who was invited to cover the event, this was "a historic event, not only because it was the first in 400 years that women [in Aceh] spoke about their concerns and rights in public sphere, but also because they did so despite intimidating threats on their lives" (Bianpoen, 2000).

The congress was also significant because it managed to gather representatives of various parties engaged in the prolonged and bloody conflicts in Aceh, including students, women that supported the Free Aceh Movements, women in government’s institutions, and various NGOs, a democratic effort that had never successfully been done before. Bianpoen quoted Dr Gde Ismail, a historian of the Syah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, "Women have given us, men, an example of how to solve differing opinions in a democratic manner" (Bianpoen, 2000).

It was not an easy task, given the worsening social and political condition in Aceh, where the region had become a killing field for the warring sides, the people who fights for the free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian military. According to Naimah Hasan, the initiator of the congress, the situation was such that five or six people were killed in a day, reaching up to 145 victims in the month of February alone. Many widows with five to seven children had to live on hard to find daily wage of Rp 5,000, which is less than one dollar (Jakarta Post, 13 March 2000). Children suffered from mental trauma and under severe malnutrition and could not go to school. There were many refugees who moved out of their villages out of fear of both the warring parties (Kompas, 3 March 2000). The congress was also held amidst the peak of the crisis, when "Aceh was on the brink of deciding the province’s future (Bianpoen 2000)." A great number of Acehnese had demanded the government that a referendum was to be held in Aceh to decide the status of the province. But there were also many voices that did not agree to have the referendum as the means to find peaceful solution to the Aceh problem.

Naimah Hasan testified to the terrors and threats that she and the women faced in holding the congress. Some threats insisted that the outcome of the congress should be pro-referendum and others against it (Bianpoen 2000). There were allegations that the congress was the Indonesian government’s tool to undermine the free Aceh movement. Three days before the congress Naimah Hasan found a poster stuck to the door of her house, misspelling the title of the congress to mean that it is an occasion for "selling the Acehnese women." (Kompas, 3 March 2000). In fact, Hasan said that in the tense atmosphere of the conflict, women, who made 52% of the 4,5 million of the Acehnese population, had been intimidated from voicing their own opinions. (Kompas 3 March 2000).

By trying to make the congress inclusive and democratic, the women had actually said "no to both of the warring parties (Bianpoen 2000)". The actual process of producing a resolution told of the difficulties of choosing a democratic path. They had to spend 7 hours to decide whether or not they would put a pro-referendum issue on the resolution. Twenty participants, led by pro Referendum supporter Cut Nur Asikin, walked out of the congress. Most of the participants finally decided to drop the issue of referendum as they did not want "to be trapped by the dilemma" (Kompas, 3 March 2000).

Instead, the 22 points resolution puts justice and peace as the main concern (Bianpoen 2000). It believes that "the future of Aceh depended on the application of the Islamic law that give ample space for women’s participation in making social change in a peaceful atmosphere." (Duek Pakat Inong Aceh, 2000). The resolution demanded at least 30 percent participation in all political and institutional decision-making and proposed 22 recommendations in the field of Islamic Law, Politics, Social Change, Economy, and Peaceful solution in Aceh. They include demands that the government stop military violence, conduct fair trials for rights abusers, and respect Acehnese decision to observe Islamic law. They also proposed specific figures of what they consider as fair economic distribution of local resources. They demand equal rights for women in traditional institution and women’s access in the economy. The resolution ended by urging people not to dwell on revenge, to" break the chain of violence and hatred" and to continue doing non-violence activities in achieving peace (Duek Pakat Inong Aceh, 2000).

Not a Succes Story Yet: The need of Strategic Alliances

The processes of holding the All Aceh Women’s Congress shows the importance as well as problems of cross-regional alliances in a multicultural society. The plan to hold this congress came out from a meeting held by 2000 women of 68 organizations in Aceh. Two Jakarta women from a group called PeKa (Women for Peace and Justice) were invited to give their views in the meeting, and participated in formulating the basic ideas for the All Aceh Women’s congress. The role of the Jakarta women were undoubtedly important in supporting the case of the Aceh Women.

The emergence of PeKa was initially a cross regional response to a plea from an activist from an Aceh women’s NGO called Flower Aceh, that women of other region should help each other because "all women want is peace (Bianpoen 2000)." Besides this apparent synergy of cross regional activism, however, lurks a number of problems. The presence of the Jakarta women during the December meeting invited criticism and negative responses from many Acehnese participants. Living in the legacy of Jakarta centralistic hegemony. The ethnocentrism of Javanese politicians in the ruling elite, and the wounds inflicted by the Indonesian military, a strong anti-Jakarta/anti Javanese sentiments rose not only in Aceh but in many regions in Indonesia. The presence of the Jakarta women was also used by those who do not like the women’s congress to take place to insinuate that the congress is a Jakarta made ploy.

Alliances across national boundaries are also significant in supporting local movements. The visit of UN representative, and visit of women’s activists from other countries helped not only to strengthen the women’s morale but also to learn from each other mistakes and strategies. Email communications also helped to disseminate information world wide, especially when international pressure is needed to push a certain issue locally. Like the case of the Acehnese women above, however, such alliances risk at times to be used to flare up nationalistic concerns, causing allegations that such and such activism were "funded by foreign capitals" or serving foreign interests.

Besides such problematic alliance, there are other problems that complicate the struggle of the Aceh women, and one of the worst one is male chauvisnism that goes hand in hand with patriarchy. Most of the media, and the social and political forces in the region, that are still heavily colored by patriarchal bias are hesitant in acknowledging the contribution of the women. In the subsequent attempts of peace making by the central government as well as the local communities, the voices of women and their suggestions were not very much headed. Only one among the many women leaders who convened in the All Aceh Women’s Conference was invited to be in the peace commission.

In order to have stronger presence in society, the conference has formed one formal body called the Balai Syura, an organization that will maintain the networking amongst women and will implement the resolutions in the forms of community programs. Yet it is obvious that in order to make the story of the Aceh women a success story, more strategic alliances needs to be build amongst as many forces as possible in the society, not only amongst women, but in fact in the very places, where patriarchal perspectives ruled the strongest.

Conclusion: Towards a Gender Sensitive Conception of Security

One basic characteristic of militaristic concept of human security is the tendency to sacrifice human rights and human dignity for the sake of security. This is the consequence of militaristic, war preparedness nature of many nationalist version of security, which is most insensitive to the issues of gender. The case of the Acehnese women discussed above also suggests that in conflict areas, the safety of women and children are often not considered when the warring parties stick to their own definition of ‘national’ security. In places where sexism and violence against women is still prevalent, the concept of security should include security against violence that is strengthened by assurance of gender sensitive legal protection. In the words of Debra Yatim, the coordinator of PeKa, a women’s group which advocates Peace and Justice. "Peace is not only a state, but also a culture that needs to be developed in time. A culture of peace includes the concept of human rights, democracy, social justice, protection for the weak, solidarity and last but not least gender equality." (Bianpoen, 2000)

Aceh women’s activism discussed above showed otherwise that the notion security that forgets human’s rights is no security, that securing human’s right should be the underlying principle of any definition of security. It upholds an alternative notion of security as the tolerance of differences and the ability of living together in a multicultural society. While militaristic security always emphasizes vigilance over boundaries, the women’s notion of security emphasizes inclusiveness and the crossing of boundaries.

By accepting and appreciating difference, women activism discussed above correct the notion of security that imposes uniformity over cultural diversity. In the time where cultural differences are highlighted, as in the case of Aceh, Ambon, and other conflict-ridden areas recently, the position of women could be precarious. To opt for peace the women could be considered a traitor to their own culture, religious or ethnic group. The Aceh women’s activism discussed above suggested that their commitment to peace does not mean foregoing cultural values. In fact they underline the importance of respecting other people’s value in securing peace. Here the notion of security as the ability of living together in difference is highly pertinent.

The Acehnese women put their lives at stake in order to hold a meeting to discuss their views of what security means. Their courage speaks of their firm belief that women’s equal participation in democracy is essential to peace and security. To listen to those voices, which in many places are still forgotten or silenced, is most important in redefining ways to secure life. Despite all the risk and problems, international and cross the boundaries networking and alliances must be maintained to keep these voices from being silenced. The story of the Aceh Women is far yet from being a success story. In order to make it into one, more strategic alliances must be made, across national, cultural, and gender boundaries. The most difficult task is to gather these alliances in the face of the strong resistance of patriarchal biases that desires to keep the voices from being heard. How is it to be done remains a challenge that the participants of this Okinawa conference has decided to meet, because in such solidarity lies the key to offer a more humane version of security, in which, one’s security is not the other’s insecurity but every human being’s life guarantee.

IN THIS ISSUE

We open this issue of Focus-on-Security with themuch awaited final declaration of the Okinawa International Forum on People’s Security, which was held in Okinawa on June 29-July 2.

Following from that, a short report on the event written by one of Focus staff representatives that attended and helped organizing the event.

Finally, in a piece written on the eve of the G8 Summit – "The Summit Meeting from Hell" – Chalmers Johnson reflects on the absurd situation of security subservience that Japan is still maintaining with the US and that eventually only comes to the advantage of the US "military-industrial-university complex".

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Declaration of Okinawa International Forum on People’s Security

Towards People’s Security in the Asia Pacific Region

People's Conference Calls For Demilitarization Of Asia Pacific On Eve Of G8 Summit In Okinawa

by Marissa de Guzman

The Summit Meeting from Hell

by Chalmers Johnson

The Declaration of Okinawa International Forum on People’s Security

Towards People’s Security in the Asia Pacific Region

July 2, 2000 Urasoe, Okinawa

Redefining security

We, the participants of the Okinawa International Forum on People’s Security, are gathered here today with a strong desire to work towards a world where the genuine peace and security of peoples, individuals, communities, and nations, are guaranteed and protected. We are a diverse community, coming from different parts of Asia, the Pacific, and the United States, sharing a common vision and recognizing that our struggles for peace, justice, and equality are bound together and inter-connected, and believing that our real security as people and peoples lies not in the structures of force, military, and economic power which have dominated our everyday lives and societies and exploited and destroyed our natural resources and environment.

State security contradicts people’s security. The military doesn’t protect people, it destabilizes societies. We work to create people’s security clearly differentiated from the security of the state by coming together, building alliances beyond borders of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, economic and social status, and transforming the structures that perpetuate and sustain injustices and inequalities. People themselves, particularly those socially oppressed and suffering from lack of security, are the main actors in creating people’s security so they can live in justice without fear and anxiety. People’s security is based on human rights, gender justice, ecological justice, and social solidarity. It calls for demilitarization. Our means to achieve it is non-violent.

Meeting in Okinawa

The South-North Korean summit which took place just two weeks ago marks a historic process -- a continuing process in which a whole people are taking upon themselves the task of finding solutions to one of the most crucial and difficult issues in East Asia, that of peace, reconciliation, and autonomous national reunification of the divided Korean peninsula. This landmark event opens many possibilities and thus encourages us - and yet it further inspires us and strengthens our resolve to continue to work towards the removal of the biggest sources of insecurity of the peoples in this region: the overwhelming, suffocating, and violently dangerous military presence of the United States of America.

Okinawa represents a most appropriate site of our gathering. Okinawa is the site of the single largest concentration of overseas U.S. military bases --- it is also the site of a dynamic popular protest against a foreign military presence which has been enforced and continues to be enforced on the land, resources, lives, and dignity of a struggling people. Okinawa is where the people have experienced and engraved in their historical memory that the military is nothing but a machinery of organized destruction of human lives and communities.

Preposterously, the G-8 summit is going to be held at Nago in Okinawa where a major new US base is being imposed against the will of the people. U.S. President Bill Clinton declared that the G-8 summit in Okinawa shall clearly demonstrate the value of the U.S.-Japan alliance, while the late Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo of Japan announced that the G-8 summit in Okinawa was intended to send the world a "message of peace." But what kind of "message of peace" does this bring to the people of the world?

Meeting here in Okinawa, whose very land and people, women and young children, bear witness to the continuing legacy of the folly of war and the machinery of war, we are painfully reminded of the tragedy and violence that have marked our collective histories as Asian and Pacific peoples. Meeting here in Okinawa, therefore, offers us a precious opportunity to express our deepest solidarity with the struggle of the Okinawan people, and at the same time challenges us to confront and address the immediate and long-standing critical issues that threaten the security of peoples of Asia and the Pacific.

Pentagon Refocuses on Asia and the Pacific

Despite the disappearance of the Cold War enemy, the Pentagon recently came out with "Joint Vision 2020" which envisages Asia as the prime focus of U.S. military in the coming decades. It represents a re-focusing of U.S. military might on Asia rather than Europe. It affirms tighter military coordination between the U.S. and Japan and covets continued U.S. military presence in the East Asia region beyond eventual reunification of the Korean peninsula.

Okinawa has for many years been the "lynchpin" of the U.S. military strategy in the Asia-Pacific region and its role is being reinforced as the U.S.-Japan military alliance is being redefined and strengthened by the adoption of a joint war plan called the Joint Defense Guidelines. Under the redefined alliance with the U.S., Japan is heading toward a status of war-capable big power. For the U.S., keeping its bases secure in Okinawa is a key to its strategy of continuing its regional and global hegemonic dominance. There is no doubt in our minds that with the pursuit of such strategy, neither the U.S., nor Japan or its other allies are true bearers of peace.

Militarized Security: A Source of Our Insecurity

We have reached the conclusion that :

Firstly, the U.S. military, whose presence in the region continues to be centered on the Japanese and South Korean territories and is supported by the ruling elites in many of our countries, has no intention of protecting the interests of the vast majority of the peoples of Asia and the Pacific. It serves to safeguard the interest of U.S. hegemony as the core of the neo-liberal globalization which has been plundering our natural resources, destroying our environments, and exploiting the vast majority of our peoples, particularly women, children, farmers, workers, migrant workers, tribal communities and indigenous peoples. In other words, it has no other aim but to protect corporate profit and U.S. and allied economic interests. The expansion of U.S. military power in the region, in alliance with Japan, is a form of military globalization, shaping, protecting, and often enforcing political and economic globalization, and serves as threat to, and not as a guarantee of, our security as peoples.

Secondly, our own experiences with the power of the military in our own countries, as it dominates and influences our everyday lives and the histories of our countries, have also taught us that military establishments, be they regional or local, do not protect the people, but only defend and protect themselves. They are the major source of danger to the rights of the people in many countries. Indeed, the institutionalized linkages between the Pentagon and many of our militaries are a source of great insecurity.

Thirdly, we believe that the military structure and ideology is based on, perpetuates, and multiplies male dominance, gender oppression, and exploitation, often of a most brutal and violent nature. They revolve around aggression and war preparedness targeted against enemies --and where there are no real enemies, enemies are created, constructed, or imagined. It carries values of masculinism and masculine power of domination based on physical strength, and notions of superiority of race, economic status, or national and ethnic chauvinism. It has, therefore, often claimed as its victims and targeted as its objects of violence and domination, women, the girl-child, and children. It is not surprising that some of the strongest criticisms of the military, of military bases, and of militarism, come from women and women's movements. The history of women's struggles and peace-building everywhere, especially of solidarity transcending traditional borders and boundaries amidst situations of war, militarisation, and violent conflicts, offer inspiration and lessons for the way to peace and to building alternative systems and structures of people's security.

Finally, we believe that we in Asia and the Pacific need to take responsibility for finding solutions to immediate and longstanding threats to peace and search for the way towards building a region where genuine people’ security is guaranteed and protected. Freedom from fear and hunger, genuine democratization, gender justice, economic and social justice, equality and mutual trust and respect amongst peoples, alternative development practices, and the genuine care for and protection of the environment are the real bases for such people’s security.

Our action toward people’s security

It is people’s security that is subverted and undermined by corporate-led globalization, the acceleration of which is the agenda of the G-8 Summit in Nago. Ultimately, it is this process of destructive globalization that is guarded by the U.S. military presence. And ultimately, the struggle for equality, decent work and standards of living, gender equality, and ecological stability cannot be separated from the dismantling of oppressive military structures.

Acting together, we must:

- Come to terms with our own histories, with the complicity of our societies, and of our own selves, in the toleration or perpetuation of violence or violent structures, relations and values. We must endeavor to raise our mutual trust by being sensitive to the likelihood of this complicity permeating our mutual relationships.

- This is especially urgent in Japan, whose government and people still have to take responsibility for their imperial past including aggression, colonial domination and accompanying atrocities such as military sexual slavery. Furthermore, they must assume responsibility for the impact of current Japanese economic domination and re-emerging militarism. This applies in different ways to the United States.

- Overcome through frank dialogue and interaction the people-to-people conflicts, hatreds, and suspicions of the past that have often been instigated by the war machinery itself and allow the U.S. military to pose as the "preserver of the peace" and prevent us from creating the regional structures to solve our problems among ourselves.

- Address the situation of conflicts in our own societies and work towards the building of mutual trust and respect amongst our communities, nations, and peoples. One community’s security should never be another community’s insecurity.

- Work towards a peaceful and de-militarized and nuclear-free Asia-Pacific region which promotes alternative ways of people-to-people and state-to-state cooperation and which is based on multilateral systems enhancing people’s security.

- Take action so that people’s security is pursued and created not only in the military, diplomatic, and political areas but also in the areas of everyday life, such as family, gender relations, social movement, and culture.

Immediate steps toward peace

As immediate steps towards these, we demand:

1) Unconditional retraction of the new U.S. project of constructing new military bases in Okinawa based on the Special Action Committee on Facilities and Areas in Okinawa (SACO) agreement.

2) Immediate closure of U.S. bombing range at Maehyangri in South Korea.

3) Immediate and unconditional termination of all U.S. military presence from Okinawa, Mainland Japan, Korea, and throughout the region.

4) Immediate and unconditional stop to all nuclear testing and dumping and trans-shipment of nuclear and toxic wastes in the Pacific and the immediate clean-up following the withdrawal of military bases and sites.

5) Abandonment of the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) program that only serves to aggravate arms race, further destabilize the regional relationships, and, in the process of implementation would destroy the Pacific islands’ environment and violate the sovereignty and dignity of their citizens and communities.

6) Ending and reversing the process of U.S.’ "reentry into Southeast Asia," notably the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, through Visiting Forces Agreement and other arrangements; the U.S. military should not resume military cooperation with the Indonesian armed forces

7) Implementation of drastic and significant cuts in military budgets and military spending and re-channeling the resources towards meeting the basic needs of people especially for schools, hospitals, and the delivery of other social services as well as for conflict prevention.

8) Immediate investigation into acts of military repression and violence against civilian population; perpetrators should be punished and victims should be justly compensated. The human rights abuses by the Indonesian armed forces should be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted.

9) Complete cleaning of the vacated base sites by the governments concerned based on thorough investigations into their ecological conditions, participated in by the people’s groups concerned.

10) An end to foreign military training and arms export/sales in the region.

11) An end to the neo-liberal globalization exploiting our people and destroying our environments, which is being safeguarded and protected by an expanded and globalized military hegemony.

We call on all peace-loving peoples of the world, and all peoples desirous of building a world where the genuine security of peoples is protected and guaranteed, to join hands with us, to act together with us, for we believe that it is in our creative power and our own people-to-people alliance, crossing borders and boundaries, where lie the beginnings of our people's security.

People's Conference Calls For Demilitarization Of Asia Pacific On Eve Of G8 Summit In Okinawa

Marissa de Guzman

Focus on the Global South

About one hundred and thirty participants from nine countries/areas in the Asia Pacific gathered in Okinawa earlier this month to discuss true people's security, to learn about the Okinawan experience, redefine the concept of security, and to forge alliances across borders, nationalities, races, and genders to secure people’s security and peace. Held in Urasoe-so, Urasoe City, Okinawa, from 29 June to 1 July, the Okinawa International Forum on People’s Security was held at an opportune time, slightly after the historic Korean summit of the two Kims and right before the highly-publicized G8 summit. It was organically linked with other G8 summit-related people’s events in Okinawa, particularly the international women’s summit for demilitarized security and the Asian environment network conference. The forum was organized jointly by the Focus on the Global South, the Tokyo and Okinawa organizing committees consisting of committed peace, anti-base, women’s, religious, and other civic groups.

Okinawa served as the perfect venue for the conference for it is where the presence of huge military bases show us clearly how destructive and dangerous military structures are to the human lives and the environment. Okinawa is called the "lynchpin" of the post-Cold War U.S. strategy that affects the whole of the Asia-Pacific region. It is where 75% of the U.S. bases in Japan are still concentrated despite heavy opposition (91% in the 1996 referendum) from the local people that are suffering from various counts of military-related violence, abuses and hazards. It is Okinawa where the people serve as living testimonies to the destructive nature of war machinery and military power in the rape of resources, women and children, and the very dignity of human beings both as peoples and as communities.

The conference was given extremely prominent daily press coverage by the two local newspapers, the Ryukyu Shimpo and Okinawa Times. In addition to daily reporting of the conference proceedings, the former carried an editorial fully supporting the idea of people’s security and commending action to change the status quo to get rid of bases.

The two day forum was packed with insightful inputs by speakers from diverse backgrounds shedding light on the various facets of people’s security, followed by intense discussion. Part of the productive outputs of the conference is a declaration that the participants agreed to and which contains the key points they wished to convey to the concerned people around the world.

The participants from Asia, the Pacific and the U.S. voicing their concerns and sharing their countries' stories, the conference became a melting pot of experiences, consolidated efforts and aspirations and articulated its position against the U.S. military presence in Asia, Profoundly questioned and finally negated on the basis of actual experiences of the people was the very idea that the military power protects people's security. The participants agreed that military power, be it global, regional or national, does not seek what's good or what's just for the people but merely seeks to protect its own interests and some abstract entity like the statehood. People's dialogues also made clear that the continued US military presence in the Asia Pacific region, despite the end of the Cold War and justified even in the lack of threats in the region, serves an ulterior purpose of US economic and political domination of the Asia-Pacific region. Apparently, this US military presence guards the US-led corporate globalization agenda in the Asia Pacific. And it is precisely this corporate interest-oriented globalization that subverts and undermines people's security. The struggle for equality, decent work and standards of living, gender equality, and ecological stability that confronts the globalization processes in social, economic, and environmental areas and the struggle for demilitarization should thus been closely interlinked.

It is essential, the participants agreed, that people and people’s groups should get allied beyond borders and boundaries to settle their affairs among themselves through peaceful and non-violent processes. This is because violent conflicts among the people are used as the justification of the US military presence and allow military forces to act in the name of public peace.

In light of events that have cemented the belief that state security, through military power, is incompatible with people's security, it has now been the pursuit of many to call for a comprehensive people's security where the need is to preserve life and health and to live in a safe and sustainable environment free from avoidable harm and danger. Economic security, in the form of right to employment as well as freedom from discrimination based on gender, age, ethnicity or nationality, right to representation, coupled with empowerment for all including women and the oppressed call for an integrated approach. The key thing to distinguish this comprehensive people's security from the state security and even from the UNDP’s human security in that this is grounded on the people's perspectives - where the people are seen as main agents of securing their peace. In this view, comprehensive people's security is not only for the people and of the people. More importantly, it is by the people.

And so the declaration called on the people to act together in the belief that "it is in our creative power and our own people-to-people alliance, crossing borders and boundaries, where lie the beginnings of our people's security." This concluded the conference declaration as well as the conference, a valiant step in a concerted effort to promote a comprehensive people's security.

The conference presented the following 11 immediate demands to the governments concerned. 1) Unconditional retraction of the new U.S. project of constructing new military bases in Okinawa based on the Special Action Committee on Facilities and Areas in Okinawa (SACO) agreement.

2) Immediate closure of U.S. bombing range at Maehyangri in South Korea.

3) Immediate and unconditional termination of all U.S. military presence from Okinawa, Mainland Japan, Korea, and throughout the region.

9) Complete cleaning of the vacated base sites by the governments concerned based on thorough investigations into their ecological conditions, participated in by the people’s groups concerned.

10) An end to foreign military training and arms export/sales in the region.

11) An end to the neo-liberal globalization exploiting our people and destroying our environments, which is being safeguarded and protected by an expanded and globalized military hegemony.

The Summit Meeting from Hell

Chalmers Johnson

Never in recent memory have the Japanese people appeared to be less in charge of their nation's destiny. They seem not to know what they should be doing in a post-Cold War world and to be content to live in what is clearly an American satellite. At the same time, most Americans are ill-informed about recent trends in both Japan and East Asia. They, too, thoughtlessly follow the lead of their military-industrial-university complex and remain uninterested in the Japanese and Okinawan people who have been subordinated to American power.

During June and July, 2000, major events began to bring the intrinsic relationship between Japan and the United States into the open. In mid-June, the leaders of South and North Korea met for the first time in the North Korean capital and pledged to end the division of their country that the United States and the former USSR imposed in 1945. These were not empty commitments. Within a few weeks North and South Korea had agreed to visits by families divided by the Korean war and to repatriate political prisoners. Two genuine American allies, Italy and Australia, recognized North Korea several months ago, and the Philippines did so on July 12. President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea, whose initiative brought about these achievements, declared that the threat of war on the Korean peninsula is over.

The U.S. military responded in a surly manner. It said that it did not trust these agreements and wanted to keep U.S. troops in Korea even if it were reunited. The Japanese, America's much touted main allies in the Pacific, were made to look like simpletons. The so-called U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines, which Secretary of Defense Cohen and Secretary of State Albright forced on Japan two years ago, are intended to make Japan a secure rear-area for American forces if they should decide to attack North Korea. They allow the United States to take over Japanese airfields, hospitals, ports, and other facilities whenever the U.S. declares a security "emergency." The Americans justified the Guidelines to the Japanese entirely in terms of the alleged threat from North Korea.

For the same stated reason, the United States pressured Japan into joining its missile defense program. As a result of continuous U.S. scare propaganda about the threat of a North Korean missile, Japan also committed itself to building very expensive military reconnaissance satellites. But on July 8, the U.S. military's test of its so-called National Missile Defence (NMD) system abjectly failed. The U.S. fired a missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which released a mock nuclear warhead over the Pacific Ocean. Another missile launched from Meck Island in Kwajalein Atoll attempted-and failed-to shoot the warhead from the sky. A similar test in January 2000 also failed. Given the billions already wasted on it, the whole American star wars operation begins to look like one huge con game.

Again, Japan's government leaders were made to look stupid for going along with the American military. By ensnaring themselves in the domestic U.S. debate between Clinton and Congress over who is more macho in using force, the Japanese have antagonized China, revealed that over the past year they did not know what was going on in Korea, and wildly overreacted to the starving "rogue state" in North Korea.

On July 21-22, Japan is host to the annual summit meeting of the leaders of the eight major democratic nations plus Russia. The late Japanese prime minister Obuchi decided to hold it in Okinawa, an island prefecture of Japan's that is also the site of thirty-nine American military bases. Anti-American revolt has been endemic there ever since Okinawa's reversion to Japanese sovereignty in 1972, which produced no change in the American presence. The Okinawans dislike the Americans, and they hate the Japanese-as the former governor of Okinawa, Masahide Ota said to me in February 1996. The reason is obvious: they are continuously exposed to the rape of Okinawan women and teenagers by American marines and sailors, environmental pollution, noise pollution, and the Pentagon's arrogant presumption that people it has colonized and victimized for the past fifty-five years welcome its presence. They hate the Japanese for foisting these troops onto their small island.

On the eve of the summit, which the Japanese government has worked diligently to prepare, the U.S. military in Okinawa showed that it simply cannot control its own men. Early in the morning of July 3, a drunken marine broke into a private home and groped a 14-year-old girl as she was sleeping in her bed. Only a few days earlier a group of drunk marines got into a fight with a taxi driver in order to help one of their mates escape from paying him. An on July 10, at 3:00 in the morning, a drunken airman from Kadena Air Force Base ran a red light, hit an Okinawan pedestrian, and sped from the scene. With allies like these, the Japanese government does not need enemies. To add to the growing fiasco of this potential "summit meeting from hell," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared that she was too busy with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to attend.

Japan is stumbling with no relief in sight. It has no control whatsoever over how and where the U.S. uses its troops in Okinawa. There is virtually no precedent for an independent state accepting foreign troops on its soil, giving up all control over their use, and still pretending to be sovereign.

In a general election on June 25, the Liberal Democratic Party exploited Japan's rigged political system to hang onto power. According to public opinion polls, Japan now has its least popular government since the end of the Allied Occupation in 1952. Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has no mandate to do anything at all; he simply tries to keep his mouth shut, since every time he open it he makes the situation worse for his party. If the American public paid even slightly as much attention to the fascist remarks of Japan's prime minister as it does to those of Joerg Haider in Austria, World War II would begin again.

When and if President Clinton lands at Kadena Air Force Base on July 20, he will face some 25,000 Okinawans surrounding the airfield in a human chain. They will all be holding up red cards. This so-called red card movement is intended to show the Okinawans' true feelings by giving the American president the final sanction in soccer (European football). When a soccer referee holds up a red card it means that a player has so violated the spirit of the game he must get off the field at once. That's what the Okinawans want the Americans to do-get their bases out now. Will the American press report these events? If its past performance in Japan is any guide, the answer is unequivocal: No.

CHALMERS JOHNSON is author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of

American Empire (Metropolitan Books, 2000).