American Empire Project

Weaponizing the Pentagon's Cyborg Insects

A Futuristic Nightmare That Just Might Come True
By Nick Turse

Biological weapons delivered by cyborg insects. It sounds like a nightmare scenario straight out of the wilder realms of science fiction, but it could be a reality, if a current Pentagon project comes to fruition.

Right now, researchers are already growing insects with electronics inside them. They're creating cyborg moths and flying beetles that can be remotely controlled. One day, the U.S. military may field squadrons of winged insect/machine hybrids with on-board audio, video or chemical sensors. These cyborg insects could conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions on distant battlefields, in far-off caves, or maybe even in cities closer to home, and transmit detailed data back to their handlers at U.S. military bases.

Today, many people fear U.S. government surveillance of email and cell phone communications. With this program, the Pentagon aims to exponentially increase the paranoia. Imagine a world in which any insect fluttering past your window may be a remote-controlled spy, packed with surveillance equipment. Even more frightening is the prospect that such creatures could be weaponized, and the possibility, according to one scientist intimately familiar with the project, that these cyborg insects might be armed with "bio weapons."

For the past 50 years, work by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) -- the Pentagon's blue skies research outfit -- has led to some of the most lethal weaponry in the U.S. arsenal: from Hellfire-missile-equipped Predator drones and stealth fighters and bombers to Tomahawk cruise missiles and Javelin portable "fire and forget" guided missiles. For the last several years, DARPA has funneled significant sums of money into a very different kind of guided missile project, its Hybrid Insect MEMS (HI-MEMS) program. This project is, according to DARPA, "aimed at developing tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical systems [MEMS] inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis." Put simply, the creation of cyborg insects: part bug, part bot.

Bugs, Bots, Borgs and Bio-Weapons

This past August, at DARPA's annual symposium -- DARPATech -- HI-MEMS program manager Amit Lal, an associate professor on leave from Cornell University, explained that his project aims to transform "insects into unmanned air-vehicles." He described the research this way: "[T]he HI-MEMS program seeks to grow MEMS and electronics inside the insect pupae. The new tissue forms around the insertions, making the bio-electronic interface long-lasting and reliable." In other words, micro-electronics are inserted at the pupal stage of metamorphosis so that they can be integrated into the insects' bodies as they develop, creating living robots that can be remotely controlled after the insect emerges from its cocoon.

According to the latest reports, work on this project is progressing at a rapid pace. In a recent phone interview, DARPA spokesperson Jan Walker said, "We're focused on determining what the best kinds of MEMS systems are; what the best MEMS system would be for embedding; what the best time is for embedding."

This month, Rob Coppinger, writing for the aerospace trade publication Flight International, reported on new advances announced at the "1st US-Asian Assessment and Demonstration of Micro-Aerial and Unmanned Ground Vehicle Technology" -- a Pentagon-sponsored conference. "In the latest work," he noted, "a Manduca moth had its thorax truncated to reduce its mass and had a MEMS component added where abdominal segments would have been, during the larval stage." But, as he pointed out, Robert Michelson, a principal research engineer, emeritus at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, laid out "on behalf of DARPA" some of the obstacles that remain. Among them were short insect life-spans and the current inability to create these cyborgs outside specialized labs.

DARPA's professed long-term goal for the HI-MEMS program is the creation of "insect cyborgs" capable of carrying "one or more sensors, such as a microphone or a gas sensor, to relay back information gathered from the target destination" -- in other words, the creation of military micro-surveillance systems.

In a recent email interview, Michelson -- who has previously worked on numerous military projects, including DARPA's "effort to develop an ‘Entomopter' (mechanical insect-like multimode aerial robot)" -- described the types of sensor packages envisioned, but only in a minimalist fashion, as a "[w]ide array of active and passive devices." However in "Insect Cyborgs: A New Frontier in Flight Control Systems," a 2007 article in the academic journal Proceedings of SPIE, Cornell researchers noted that cyborg insects could be used as "autonomous surveillance and reconnaissance vehicles" with on-board "[s]ensory systems such as video and chemical."

Surveillance applications, however, may only be the beginning. Last year, Jonathan Richards, reporting for The Times, raised the specter of the weaponization of cyborg insects in the not-too-distant future. As he pointed out, Rodney Brooks, the director of the computer science and artificial intelligence lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicated that the Pentagon is striving toward a major expansion in the use of non-traditional air power -- like unmanned aerial vehicles and cyborg insects -- in the years ahead. "There's no doubt their things will become weaponized," he explained, "so the question [is]: should they [be] given targeting authority?" Brooks went on to assert, according to The Times, that it might be time to consider rewriting international law to take the future weaponization of such "devices" into account.

But how would one weaponize a cyborg insect? On this subject, Robert Michelson was blunt: "Bio weapons."

Cyborg Ethics

Michelson wouldn't elaborate further, but any program using bio-weapons would immediately raise major legal and ethical questions. The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention outlawed the manufacture and possession of bio-weapons, of "[m]icrobial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin… that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes" and of "[w]eapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict." In fact, not only did President George W. Bush claim that Iraq's supposed production and possession of biological weapons was a justification for an invasion of that nation, but he had previously stated, "All civilized nations reject as intolerable the use of disease and biological weapons as instruments of war and terror."

Reached for comment, however, DARPA's Jan Walker insisted that her agency's focus was only on "fundamental research" when it came to cyborg insects. Although the focus of her agency is, in fact, distinctly on the future -- the technology of tomorrow -- she refused to look down the road when it came to weaponizing insect cyborgs or arming them with bio-weapons. "I can't speculate on the future," was all she would say.

Michelson is perfectly willing to look into future, especially on matters of cyborg insect surveillance, but on the horizon for him are technical issues when it comes to the military use of bug bots. "Surveillance goes on anyway by other means," he explained, "so a new method is not the issue. If there are ethical or legal issues, they are ones of 'surveillance,' not of the 'surveillance platform.'"

Peter Eckersley, a staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights and civil liberties group, sees that same future in a different light. Cyborg insects, he says, are an order of magnitude away from today's more standard surveillance technologies like closed circuit television. "CCTV is mostly deployed in public and in privately owned public spaces. An insect could easily fly into your garden or sit outside your bedroom window," he explained. "To make matters worse, you'd have no idea these devices were there. A CCTV camera is usually an easily recognizable device. Robotic surveillance insects might be harder to spot. And having to spot them wouldn't necessarily be good for our mental health."

Does Michelson see any ethical or legal dilemmas resulting from the future use of weaponized cyborg insects? "No, not unless they could breed new cyborg insects, which is not possible," he explained. "Genetic engineering will be the ethical and legal battleground, not cybernetics."

Battle Beetles and Hawkish Hawkmoths

Weaponized or not, moths are hardly the only cyborg insects that may fly, creep, or crawl into the military's future arsenal. Scientists from Arizona State University and elsewhere, working under a grant from the Office of Naval Research and DARPA, "are rearing beetle species at various oxygen levels to attempt to produce beetles with greater-than-normal size and payload capacity." Earlier this year, some of the same scientists published an article on their DARPA-funded research titled "A Cyborg Beetle: Insect Flight Control Through an Implantable, Tetherless Microsystem." They explained that, by implanting "multiple inserted neural and muscular stimulators, a visual stimulator, a polyimide assembly and a microcontroller" in a 2 centimeter long, 1-2 gram green June beetle, they were "capable of modulating [the insect's] flight starts, stops, throttle/lift, and turning." They could, that is, drive an actual beetle. However, unlike the June bug you might find on a porch screen or in a garden, these sported on-board electronics powered by cochlear implant batteries.

DARPA-funded HI-MEMS research has also been undertaken at other institutions across the country and around the world. For example, in 2006, researchers at Cornell, in conjunction with scientists at Pennsylvania State University and the Universidad de Valparaiso, Chile, received an $8.4 million DARPA grant for work on "Insect Cyborg Sentinels." According to a recent article in New Scientist, a team led by one of the primary investigators on that grant, David Stern, screened a series of video clips at a recent conference in Tucson, Arizona demonstrating their ability to control tethered tobacco hawkmoths through "flexible plastic probes" implanted during the pupal stage. Simply stated, the researchers were able to remotely control the moths-on-a-leash, manipulating the cyborg creatures' wing speed and direction.

Robo-Bugs

Cyborg insects are only the latest additions to the U.S. military's menagerie. As defense tech-expert Noah Shachtman of Wired magazine's Danger Room blog has reported, DARPA projects have equipped rats with electronic equipment and remotely controlled sharks, while the military has utilized all sorts of animals, from bomb-detecting honeybees and "chickens used as early-warning sensors for chemical attacks" to guard dogs and dolphins trained to hunt mines. Additionally, he notes, the DoD's emphasis on the natural world has led to robots that resemble dogs, monkeys that control robotic limbs with their minds, and numerous other projects inspired by nature.

But whatever other creatures they favor, insects never seem far from the Pentagon's dreams of the future. In fact, Shachtman reported earlier this year that "Air Force scientists are looking for robotic bombs that look -- and act -- like swarms of bugs and birds." He went on to quote Colonel Kirk Kloeppel, head of the Air Force Research Laboratory's munitions directorate, who announced the Lab's interest in "bio-inspired munitions," in "small, autonomous" machines that would "provide close-in [surveillance] information, in addition to killing intended targets."

This month, researcher Robert Wood wrote in IEEE Spectrum about what he believes was "the first flight of an insect-size robot." After almost a decade of research, Wood and his colleagues at the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory are now creating small insect-like robots that will eventually be outfitted "with onboard sensors, flight controls, and batteries… to nimbly flit around obstacles and into places beyond human reach." Like cyborg insect researchers, Wood is DARPA-funded. Last year, in fact, the agency selected him as one of 24 "rising stars" for a "young faculty awards" grant.

Asked about the relative advantages of cyborg insects compared to mechanical bugs, Robert Michelson noted that "robotic insects obey without innate or external influences" and "they can be mass produced rapidly." He cautioned, however, that they are extremely limited power-wise. Insect cyborgs, on the other hand, "can harvest energy and continue missions of longer duration." However, they "may be diverted from their task by stronger influences"; must be grown to maturity and so may not be available when needed; and, of course, are mortal and run the risk of dying before they can be employed as needed.

The Future is Now

There is plenty of technical information about the HI-MEMS program available in the scientific literature. And if you make inquiries, DARPA will even direct you to some of the relevant citations. But while it's relatively easy to learn about the optimal spots to insert a neural stimulator in a green June beetle ("behind the eye, in the flight control area of the insect brain") or an electronic implant in a tobacco hawkmoth ("the main flight powering muscles… in the dorsal-thorax"), it's much harder to discover the likely future implications of this sci-fi sounding research.

The "final demonstration goal" -- the immediate aim -- of DARPA's HI-MEMS program "is the delivery of an insect within five meters of a specific target located a hundred meters away, using electronic remote control, and/or global positioning system (GPS)." Right now, DARPA doesn't know when that might happen. "We basically operate phase to phase," says Walker. "So, it kind of depends on how they do in the current phase and we'll make decisions on future phases."

DARPA refuses to examine anything but research-oriented issues. As a result, its Pentagon-funded scientists churn out inventions with potentially dangerous, if not deadly, implications without ever fully considering -- let alone seeking public or expert comment on -- the future ramifications of new technologies under production.

"The people who build this equipment are always going to say that they're just building tools, that there are legitimate uses for them, and that it isn't their fault if the tools are abused," says the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Eckersley. "Unfortunately, we've seen that governments are more than willing to play fast-and-loose with the legal bounds on surveillance. Unless and until that changes, we'd urge researchers to find other projects to work on."

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Adbusters, the Nation, the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, has just been published in Metropolitan Books' American Empire Project series. His website is NickTurse.com

Copyright 2008 Nick Turse

The Little Administration That Couldn't

Rebuilding the American Economy, Bush-style
By Tom Engelhardt

No one was prepared for the storm when it hit. The levees meant to protect us had long since been breached and key officials had already left town. The well-to-do were assured of rescue, but for everyone else trapped inside the Superdome in a fast-flooding region, there was no evacuation plan in sight. The Bush administration, of course, claimed that it was in control and the President was already assuring his key officials that they were doing a heck of a job.

No, I'm not talking about post-Katrina New Orleans. That was so then. I'm talking about the housing and credit crunches, as well as the Bear Stearns bailout, that have given the term "bear market" new meaning.

Now, don't get me wrong -- when it comes to the arcane science of economics, like most Americans, I'd benefit from an "Economics for Dummies" course. What I do know something about, though, is history, a subject that hasn't been on the Bush administration's course curriculum since the President turned out not to be Winston Churchill and conquered Iraq refused to morph into occupied Germany ‘n Japan 1945.

History may not repeat itself, but the administration's repetitive acts these past seven years make an assessment of our economic situation possible, even if you are an economics dummy.

Just consider the record: Administration officials proved incapable of rebuilding two countries that their military occupied and damaged. In Afghanistan and Iraq, while talking up the President's "freedom agenda," they were the equivalent of a natural disaster, a whirlwind of destruction.

In the case of Iraq, in disbanding its military, its government, and even its economy, they were literal nation-wreckers. On taking Baghdad, their first act of omission was to let the capital be looted. ("Stuff happens," commented Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the time.) Soon after, the administration's new viceroy in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III, promptly plunged the country into the equivalent of the Great Depression -- without a Bear Stearns bailout in sight.

In the case of Afghanistan, only a staggering boom in opiate growing -- the country now supplies an estimated 93% of the global market in illegal opiates, bringing about four billion dollars into the country -- has slightly offset the disaster of "liberation." By just about any other measure, Afghanistan is a wreck.

In the case of New Orleans, the Bush administration not only couldn't rebuild an American city that nature (and the Army Corps of Engineers) damaged, but turned a natural disaster into a man-made catastrophe that has yet to end.

Continue reading this post at TomDispatch.com.

The Golden Age of the Military-Entertainment Complex

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Pentagon-Style
By Nick Turse

Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch.com interviews Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How The Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.

In the late 1990s, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon -- a game in which the goal was to connect the actor Kevin Bacon to any other actor, living or dead, through films or television shows in no more than six steps -- became something of a phenomenon. Spread via the Internet (before becoming a board game and a book), Six Degrees has taken its place in America's pop culture pantheon among favorite late-night drunken pursuits.

Here is a new variant of the game: The goal is to connect Kevin Bacon to the Pentagon. A commonsense approach would be to consider Bacon's military roles -- the ROTC cadet in his first feature film, the 1978 comedy classic Animal House, for example, or the Marine Corps prosecutor, Captain Jack Ross, in the 1992 film A Few Good Men. But the game isn't as easy as it looks. Animal House was hardly a pro-military project and the Department of Defense actually denied A Few Good Men access to its facilities. The script, the Pentagon claimed, reinforced "the conclusion that not only is criminal harassment a commonplace and accepted practice within the Marine Corps, but that it requires a sister military service to uncover the wrongdoings..." A spokesman for the film understood why: "It is certainly not a recruiting film," he commented.

So does that mean game over? Perish the thought. In reality, there are no degrees of separation between Bacon and the Pentagon because the actor began his career in a "recruiting film" -- a real one. As Bacon recalled: "After the [Vietnam] war was over in [19]75, I was already thinking about becoming an actor and I got sent out on this Army recruiting film. It was a soft-sell kind of thing. I was a guy getting out of high school who didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, so I took the gig. It was my very first paying acting job."

As it happens, however, the military puts Bacon to shame when it comes to connections in Tinseltown. The Pentagon might, in fact, be thought of as the ultimate Hollywood insider -- a direct result of the ever-expanding military-corporate complex or "The Complex" as I call it in my new book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.

So let's play a new version of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, with the military standing in for Bacon. The object is to follow a few of the thousands of linkages and connections between Hollywood and the military that have made the Department of Defense a genuine legend of the silver screen, from the Silent Era to the ramped-up military-movie complex of today, ending with -- who else? -- Kevin Bacon. Just sit back with a big bucket of popcorn and enjoy the show...

Thirty Seconds Over Hollywood

Let's go back to 1915, when, in response to a request for assistance, U.S. Secretary of War John Weeks ordered the army to provide every reasonable courtesy to D. W. Griffith's pro–Ku Klux Klan epic Birth of a Nation. The Army came through with more than 1,000 cavalry troops and a military band. The film featured George Beranger, who would go on to star with Humphrey Bogart and Glen Cavender in San Quentin (1937) -- in which a former Army officer is hired to impose military discipline on the infamous prison. Cavender had also appeared alongside actor/director Syd Chaplin, Charlie's brother, in A Submarine Pirate (1915), for which the Navy provided a submarine, a gunboat, and the use of the San Diego Navy Yard. (The film was even approved to be shown in Navy recruiting stations.)

Syd Chaplin later starred in the non-military A Little Bit of Fluff (1928) with Edmund Breon, who appeared in the 1930 World War I aviation epic The Dawn Patrol. That film was written by John Monk Saunders, who penned another World War I drama, Wings (1927), featuring Gary Cooper. Wings received major support from the War Department (back in the days before it was called the Defense Department) and won the first Academy Award for Best Picture.

Gary Cooper provides the link to Sergeant York, a 1941 film directed by World War I Army Air Corps veteran (and The Dawn Patrol director) Howard Hawks that was denounced by many as war-mongering propaganda. Hawks went on to direct actor Ray Montgomery in Air Force (1943), a Warner Brothers' film about a bomber crew serving in the Pacific, which received assistance from the Army Air Corps. In fact, the War Department even fast-tracked a review of the script because the film was deemed "a special Air Corps recruiting job."

That same year, Montgomery also played a bit part, alongside Humphrey Bogart, in Warner Brothers' Action in the North Atlantic (assistance from the Navy). Bogart additionally starred with Lloyd Bridges in Columbia Pictures' 1943 Sahara, a World War II epic made with the full cooperation of the U.S. Army. Bridges would go on to appear with both Van Johnson and Spencer Tracy in the non-military Plymouth Adventures (1952). But long before that, both Johnson and Tracy took off in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a film celebrating the 1942 "Doolittle Raid" -- a U.S. terror-bombing effort that decimated civilian sites including factories, schools and even a hospital in Japan -- made, of course, with the assistance of the War Department.

Van Johnson fought his way through another MGM production, Battleground (1949), which not only featured tanks and trucks loaned by the Army, but, as extras, twenty members of the 101st Airborne Division. Battleground co-starred John Hodiak, who, that same year, played alongside Jimmy Stewart in the World War II adventure film Malaya. Stewart actually enlisted in the Air Force in World War II, then served in the Air Force Reserve, and retired as a brigadier general. While in the Reserves, he flew high in Strategic Air Command (1955), a film conceived at the urging of Curtis LeMay, the actual commander of the Air Force's actual Strategic Air Command (SAC). Even with Cold War–era demands on its equipment, SAC provided Paramount with B-36 bombers, B-47 jet bombers and a full colonel as a technical adviser.

But that was just one of SAC's (and LeMay's) connections to Hollywood. The 1963 film A Gathering of Eagles, for example, received SAC's wholehearted support. Written by Battleground screenwriter Robert Pirosh and featuring matinee idol Rock Hudson, it was praised for its realism by none other than LeMay.

Rock Hudson later starred with John Wayne in The Undefeated (1969), but not before "the Duke" made his military-entertainment masterpiece The Green Berets (1968), which enjoyed the full backing of the Vietnam-embattled Department of Defense. With loads of military input, The Green Berets proved to be, said Variety, a "whammo" and "boffo" box-office success. Critics, however, almost universally panned it. One New York Times film reviewer went so far as to call it "so unspeakable, so stupid, so rotten and false in every detail… vile and insane."

Wayne's Green Berets costar, George Takei (better known as Mr. Sulu on TV's Star Trek), was no stranger to the military-entertainment complex, having appeared in the 1960 Marines Corps-assisted Hell to Eternity and the 1963 film version of John F. Kennedy's PT 109. (For which the Navy provided a destroyer, six other ships, and a few sailors.) Takei, who would be "beamed up" in the Navy-supported 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, also once starred with Grant Williams, an actor who later showed up in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), a then-unbelievably big-budget (at least $25 million) Twentieth Century Fox film. For that movie, the Department of Defense provided research assistance, stock footage, a technical adviser, an old airplane hangar (which the film blew up), and the use of Navy ships at Pearl Harbor. Demonstrating a new willingness to go above and beyond for Hollywood, the Navy even loaded thirty "Japanese" airplanes onto the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown for the attack.

In Rehab Mode, the Military Goes Civilian

Military-Tinseltown cooperation obviously goes back a long way. But in the 1970s, a new, amped-up relationship was launched, largely in response to a growing negative impression of the U.S. military brought on by the Vietnam War -- and by the daunting prospect of having to field an all-volunteer military. The Pentagon was hungry for help in rehabilitating its image -- even lending support to "civilian" flicks -- and the film industry was happy to oblige.

Take Twentieth Century Fox's 1974 collaboration with the Navy on the non-military The Towering Inferno (1974). The Navy lent helicopters, and the studio said thanks in the form of an acknowledgment in the credits. The film featured longtime military-entertainment stalwart William Holden, who had already appeared in I Wanted Wings (an army-aided 1941 propaganda flick) and The Bridges at Toko-Ri (made with Navy assistance in 1955). He had also co-starred in 1948's Man From Colorado with Glenn Ford, who acted alongside Charlton Heston in Midway (1976), a production that was allowed to use the USS Lexington aircraft carrier for two weeks of filming. Heston, in turn, went on to star in Gray Lady Down -- a 1978 submarine thriller that benefited from the use of a real submarine, ships, and sailors, all courtesy of the Navy.

Gray Lady Down featured actor Stacey Keach, who starred in 1980's TV movie-adaptation of Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War. The Marine Corps provided an adviser (who tempered some of the more disturbing portions of Caputo's memoir), the use of military facilities, and 30 marines. Brian Dennehy, who also starred in A Rumor of War, would act alongside Scott Glenn in the 1985 western Silverado. But before he became a cowboy, Glenn played the part of Navy test pilot and NASA spaceman Alan B. Shepard in The Right Stuff (1983). That film was partially shot at Edwards Air Force Base and used various types of aircraft and equipment as well as Air Force personnel as extras.

Ed Harris, who blasted into orbit as astronaut John Glenn in The Right Stuff moved from the space capsule to the NASA control room in the 1995 blockbuster drama Apollo 13 (Air Force extras and equipment loaned by Vandenberg Air Force Base). Beside him in the co-pilot seat was none other than… Kevin Bacon. Apollo 13 also featured Bill Paxton, who, a year earlier, had been in the Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster, True Lies, which benefited from Marine Corps assistance. Paxton had also acted in 1990's Navy Seals (helped by the Navy) and, in 2000, would dive below the surface in the Navy-supported submarine action-drama U-571.

True Lies was but another link in the military-entertainment matrix. The film's co-star, Tom Arnold, shared billing in Exit Wounds (2001) with Steven Seagal (whose 1992 film Under Siege and 1996 film Executive Decision received, respectively, Navy and Army cooperation) and Bruce McGill, who would appear with Morgan Freeman in 2002's The Sum of All Fears. Shot on location at Whiteman Air Force Base and Offutt Air Force Base, The Sum of All Fears featured numerous USAF aircraft and enjoyed the input of multiple Air Force technical advisers.

Freeman's costar in The Sum of All Fears, Ben Affleck, had a lead role in the 2001 historical drama Pearl Harbor. Produced with the backing of the Navy, the film had its premiere on the deck of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Affleck was joined in Pearl Harbor by Cuba Gooding Jr. (who also starred in 2000's Navy-aided Men of Honor), Tom Sizemore (from 1991's Navy-aided Flight of the Intruder) and Josh Hartnett. That same year, Hartnett and Sizemore appeared in Ridley Scott's blockbuster Black Hawk Down, made with the full cooperation of the Army. The Pentagon sent the film eight helicopters and 100 soldiers, including members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

Pearl Harbor co-star Tom Everett appeared in Air Force One (1997), starring Harrison Ford, which used USAF aircraft, Air Force personnel as extras, and was filmed at both the Rickenbacker and Channel Islands Air National Guard bases. Its director, Wolfgang Petersen, also directed the George Clooney/Mark Wahlberg Air Force-aided weather drama The Perfect Storm (partially filmed at the Channel Islands base as well).

Wahlberg had a bit part in the 1994 Danny DeVito comedy Renaissance Man (made with Army involvement). In fact, the Oscar-winning, military-themed Forrest Gump received only limited help from the Army, in part because Renaissance Man and another 1994 comedy, In the Army Now, starring Pauly Shore and David Alan Grier, sucked up so much military attention that year. Grier went on to appear in the non-military The Woodsman (2004) with Benjamin Bratt, who had previously been cast in the 1994 Army-aided thriller Clear and Present Danger and would star in the ABC TV series E-Ring, a self-proclaimed "pulsating drama set inside the nation's ultimate fortress: the Pentagon." Its producer and co-creator Ken Robinson had worked in the actual Pentagon over "a couple decades." At Bratt's side in the non-military The Woodsman was not only Grier but -- you guessed it -- Kevin Bacon.

The Pentagon, the Sequel

In fact, one could take many (if not all) of Bacon's non-military roles and quickly find connections that lead directly to the Pentagon. For instance, have a look at Bacon's distinctly unmilitary Wild Things (1998) and you'll find movie veteran Robert Wagner, who was featured not only in such Navy-supported fare as The Frogmen (1951) and Midway (1976), but also in the Marine Corps–aided Halls of Montezuma (1950), Stars and Stripes Forever (1952), and In Love and War (1958); the Army-assisted Between Heaven and Hell (1956); the Air Force-supported The Hunters (1958); and finally The Longest Day (1962), an epic about World War II's D-Day landings made with the cooperation of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.

When it comes to military-entertainment connections, the point is: Bacon isn't special. Almost any current actor -- from Academy Award-winner Gwyneth Paltrow (in 2008's upcoming Air Force-aided Iron Man) to young actress Dakota Fanning (at the side of top-gunner Tom Cruise in the Army-aided, Steven Spielberg-directed 2005 remake of War of the Worlds) -- could be linked to the military. The reasons are simple. As David Robb, the author of Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, observed:

"Hollywood and the Pentagon have… a collaboration that works well for both sides. Hollywood producers get what they want -- access to billions of dollars worth of military hardware and equipment -- tanks, jet fighters, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers -- and the military gets what it wants -- films that portray the military in a positive light; films that help the services in their recruiting efforts."

But recruiting is just part of the equation, and the phrase "a positive light" is even a little soft. At the movies, the military gets sold -- at least in those legions of Pentagon-aided films -- as heroic, admirable, and morally correct. Often, it can literally do no wrong. This, of course, is no accident. Something must be exchanged for the millions of dollars in otherwise unavailable high-tech weapons systems and equipment, not to speak of personnel and military advisors, necessary to make the sort of "realistic," eye-catching war, action, and sci-fi movies that Hollywood (and assumedly its audiences) demand.

Speaking about the big-budget, live-action blockbuster Transformers (2007), Ian Bryce, one of its producers, characterized the relationship this way, "Without the superb military support we've gotten… it would be an entirely different-looking film… Once you get Pentagon approval, you've created a win-win situation. We want to cooperate with the Pentagon to show them off in the most positive light, and the Pentagon likewise wants to give us the resources to be able to do that."

On the military side, Air Force master sergeant Larry Belen spoke of similar motivations for aiding the production of Iron Man: "I want people to walk away from this movie with a really good impression of the Air Force, like they got about the Navy seeing Top Gun." But Air Force captain Christian Hodge, the Defense Department's project officer for Iron Man, may have said it best when he unabashedly predicted, "The Air Force is going to come off looking like rock stars."

On the Silver Screen, you can be sure of three things: the Complex is forever; the Pentagon has no equal (sorry Kevin!), and there will, most definitely, be a sequel…

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Adbusters, The Nation, the Village Voice and regularly for Tomdispatch. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, has just been published in Metropolitan Books's American Empire Project series.

Copyright 2008 Nick Turse

Testimony by Anthony Arnove

On March 14th, Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal took the stand alongside the members of Iraq Veterans Against the War and other concerned parties.  Arnove discusses the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and argues that the best way to support our troops is to bring them home.

Anthony Arnove's testimony, in its entirety is posted below.

Testimony by Anthony Arnove

March 14, 2008

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan

Thank you. It is an honor to speak here tonight alongside the courageous members of Iraq Veterans Against the War and others committed to telling the truth about the unjust and illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and organizing to end them.

I would like to make five basic points about the two occupations and then draw five broader conclusions about the geopolitical considerations driving U.S. policy.

1. First, it is important to stress that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were launched on false pretenses and the occupations now continue under false pretenses. The Bush administration attacked Iraq claiming it was preempting the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and its links to al-Qaeda. Today we know the full extent of manipulation of intelligence that was used to start a war that was not defensive but offensive in nature. In Afghanistan, Washington claimed to be carefully targeting terrorists who had attacked the United States, but instead targeted the civil population of Afghanistan in an open form of collective punishment, banned under international law. The war’s planners consciously sought to make the general population of Afghanistan suffer, hoping that would help bring down the Taliban regime, and also sought to make an example of Afghanistan. (If I can make a brief aside, I also want to commend the organizers from IVAW that the title of this weekend and the banner on stage here refers to Iraq and Afghanistan — because Afghanistan has become the forgotten occupation. Or worse the good occupation, in contrast to the one in Iraq. It’s important that we include Afghanistan in our discussions. As we have heard from testimony this weekend, many soldiers in Iraq have been deployed to Afghanistan and we have to find a way to involve veterans of Afghanistan who oppose the occupation in our work.)

2. Second, the United States is not stemming but is fueling civil war in both countries. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington has armed militias that are involved in attacks on civilians, using alliances with the United States to gain money and weapons and also call in air strikes and ground attacks to settle political and sectarian scores. In Afghanistan, analyst Stephen Zunes notes, “the United States subcontracted security of much of the country to … warlords, who have actually served to destabilize the country.” The United States has used classic colonial divide and rule tactics in both countries for the same reason that all occupations of necessity must: to control and impose the occupier’s will upon a population that will not consent to its subjugation. This means the violence we have seen, the torture and homicides at Bagram and Abu Ghraib, and beyond, are the logical result, are the inevitable outcome, of U.S. policy at the highest levels. The violence does not have its origin in the ideas of the troops but emanates from the political leadership and policies set at the top of the chain of command and from the systematic violence and racism of both occupations. And, as we heard in testimony today, they stem from rules of engagement that guarantee civilians will be degraded, dehumanized, tortured, and killed.

3. Third, the U.S. is not confronting terrorism by staying in Afghanistan or Iraq. The main enemy that the U.S. confronts in both countries is not al-Qaeda but the very people we claim to have liberated. As army captain Dan Kearney told the New York Times Magazine, “The only reason anyone’s listening to me is ‘cause I’m dropping bombs on them.” In Iraq, poll after poll, including ones conducted by the U.S. government, show Iraqis feel less safe, not more safe, as a result of the occupation; feel we are fueling civil war not stemming it; that they view U.S. troops as occupiers not liberators; and they want an immediate end to the occupation. The more the U.S. tries to assert control in both countries, the more opposition grows. And let’s be clear: this is not a question of mismanagement, bad planning, or lack of planning, or this or that error in counterinsurgency strategy. It is a fundamental political fact of the occupation.

4. Fourth, the United States is not honoring those who died in Iraq and Afghanistan by continuing the occupations. Now more than 4,400 U.S. troops have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, though this number is rarely mentioned, more than 1,000 private contractors have been killed alongside U.S. forces, as well as scores of journalists — not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed. More than 29,000 U.S. troops have been wounded, many severely. Rates of post-traumatic stress disorder among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have skyrocketed, as have suicide rates, among many other problems, as others have documented on panels here at Winter Soldier. Each additional death and injury only compounds the senseless tragedy we have seen so far.

5. Fifth, the U.S. is not rebuilding or bringing democracy to either country. Electricity and access to safe water are below pre-invasion levels in Iraq, as a result of conscious policy decisions made by the occupation authorities. Unemployment has skyrocketed, again as a result of policy. Inflation is spiraling, putting basic necessities out of reach of Iraqis. Hospitals are in shambles. Iraq today is the world’s largest and fastest growing refugee crisis, with more than two million internally displaced and more than two million externally displaced. Child malnutrition in Iraq has grown worse: the United Nations reports that one in four Iraq children under five suffers chronic malnourishment. More than four million Iraqis are in need of food assistance, but the country’s food ration program is being cut as part of the neoliberal reconstruction of Iraq under the direction of the U.S. occupation. In Afghanistan, only 6 percent of the population has electricity, according to the Asian Development Bank. Action Aid International estimates that only 14 percent of U.S. aid to Afghanistan has reached legitimate development projects. Women’s oppression in Afghanistan — highlighted by many commentators as a reason to support the invasion — is as bad and in some cases worse than before the invasion. The Independent newspaper in London notes, “Grinding poverty and the escalating war is driving an increasing number of Afghan families to sell their daughters into forced marriages. Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited from going to school. With little … effective recourse, many of the victims are driven to self-immolation – burning themselves to death – or severe self-harm.” Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are at post-invasion highs, thanks in part to an expanded U.S. air war, a model we now see being applied with greater frequency in Iraq. Between January and September 2007, U.S. and NATO coalition allies dropped one million pounds of ordnance on Afghanistan, more than double the amount from all of 2006.

To those who argue we broke it, so we must fix it: rather than fixing the two countries, we are only breaking them further. And to those who say we cannot withdraw “precipitously,” there is nothing precipitous about pulling out after five or, in the case of Afghanistan, seven years of occupying another country. We have no right to be in either country in the first place.

Senator John McCain says troops may have to stay in Iraq one hundred or even one thousand or even ten thousand years. His position is clear. But Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton also would not end the occupation. As the Wall Street Journal reported on February 29, “Despite the rhetoric of the Democratic presidential candidates, significant numbers of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq regardless of who wins in November.”

Indeed, if you look at their actual proposals, Senators Clinton and Obama have said we must keep troops in Iraq for “counterterrorism operations,” force protection, and training Iraqi soldiers, or so-called Iraqification. The Journal notes that “Conducting such missions would require the sustained deployment of tens of thousands of American military personnel, foreign policy advisers from both campaigns acknowledge.”

This is a perfect example of the circular logic of the occupation. If there were no U.S. troops and no bases, and if the United States were not building in Baghdad the largest embassy in world history in order to influence Iraqi affairs, you wouldn’t need troops for force protection. “Counter-terrorism” is the same rationale that President Bush offers for why troops must stay. And training is the same discredited argument of Bush: “as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.”

In addition, Senators Clinton and Obama have both talked about increasing overall U.S. troop levels and adding more troops to the occupation of Afghanistan. One top aide to the Obama campaign interviewed recently by journalist Jeremy Scahill of the Nation magazine even left open the possibility that, if elected president, Obama would rely on greater numbers of mercenaries from companies such as Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and DynCorp in Iraq to replace troops redeployed to other theatres.

And that is why supporting the work of IVAW and building an independent antiwar movement is so important. We have to put pressure on whoever is in office in 2009.

The reason for the Democrats’ lack of an alternative, and for their repeated funding in Congress of a war many of them claim to oppose, is that the geopolitical stakes for the United States are so high. Neither party wants to preside over a defeat of the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan, and manage the consequences that would follow.

To understand why, we can dispense with all the public relations reasons for these wars — WMD, al-Qaeda, and liberating people living in tyrannical regimes — none of which hold up to scrutiny — and should instead look at the geopolitical interests driving both occupations.

Here, I want to make five brief points:

1. First, Afghanistan and Iraq were both meant to have a “demonstration effect,” signaling to other states that the U.S. government

            (i)         has the right (which on a limited basis it may extend to allies, such as Israel) to engage in “preemptive strikes” against any country it chooses;

            (ii)        will defer to the United Nations and other international bodies only when it suits its ends, and will dismiss them as “irrelevant” otherwise; and

            (iii)       will allow no challenge to the “credibility” of U.S. imperialism.

As one unnamed “hawk” quoted in the New York Times put it, “By setting up our military in Iraq . . . we can set an example to other countries: ‘If you cooperate with terrorists or menace us in any way or even look at us cross-eyed, this could happen to you.’ ”

2. Second, the invasions were intended to give the United States greater control over the Middle East and Central and Western Asia, home to the vast majority of the world’s oil reserves, home to most of the world’s natural gas reserves, and also home to vital pipelines and shipping routes for energy. In the words of former Bush speechwriter David Frum, “An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein—and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans.” The United States interest in Middle Eastern and Asian energy is not primarily motivated by consumption needs, but by the geopolitical advantages that flow from controlling this oil and natural gas. U.S. policy planners understand that the main power centers that could emerge as peer rivals to the United States in the future and that could threaten its status as the world’s sole superpower — namely India and China, and the combined economies of the European Union — all are more reliant on energy imports from the Middle East than is the United States. Regional hegemony, therefore, gives the United States tremendous leverage and influence vis-à-vis competing economic and political powers that are dependent on these energy resources. As oil gets more expensive to extract, and as exploration is forced to seek out more dangerous geographic and political terrain for new oil fields, control over these energy resources and trade routes has grown even more important to U.S. imperial strategy.

3. Third, the plan for a quick and easy victory and regime change in both Afghanistan and Iraq was meant to establish client states in two strategically located countries that would provide the United States with important bases for military personnel and equipment and also bases for the projection of U.S. power, particularly to isolate or engineer regime change in nearby Iran and Syria. These regional bases of power were also intended to enhance the ability of the United States to project power globally. That is, Washington hoped to use regional hegemony to preserve — and expand — its global hegemony and to enhance its ability to intervene economically and politically, in the affairs of any country around the world where the U.S. might have interests, no matter what the location, using U.S. military might to bully countries into compliance. Of course, this has backfired. Instead of being in a stronger position, the United States is in a weaker one — regionally and internationally. And now that Iran has emerged as a stronger regional player as a result of U.S. actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the stakes have become even higher, and we see greater threats of an attack, particularly an aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities also intended to facilitate regime change in that country. Meanwhile, Venezuela and Russia have also started to develop energy relationships with Iran and other countries and to develop new trade relations and energy supply routes that threaten U.S. control and domination of energy markets. Keep in mind that Venezuela is one of the leading suppliers of oil for import to the United States and Russia has the world’s largest natural gas reserves.

4. Fourth, both occupations were linked to a set of economic objectives that extended far beyond the question of the huge subsidies and profits created for political allies and the national security-military industrial complex to the much bigger prize of imposing a neoliberal model throughout all of the Middle East and Western and Central Asia that would give the United States privileged access to these markets and open them to much greater foreign ownership and control, with lower tax rates, less money diverted to social needs of the population, and fewer protections for workers and the poor.

5. Fifth, the Bush administration thought that, by its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, it could bury once and for all the so-called Vietnam syndrome, eliminating the public’s reluctance to see Washington intervene militarily in the affairs of other countries and undermining international opposition to U.S. unilateralism. Having thus staked U.S. credibility on the line, Washington planners concluded that any defeat would lead not just to a failure to achieve key war aims, but a profound setback for vital military, political, and economic interests. That’s why they are holding on so tenaciously to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, seeking to salvage some other outcome, no mater what the human cost.

These were the real objectives that drove the invasion of Afghanistan and of Iraq and that explain why the United States is continuing the two occupations, despite all the harm they have caused to the people of both countries, to the regions, to the U.S. population in terms of social and economic costs and the attacks on our civil liberties, particularly for Muslims, Arabs, and immigrant groups, and to the troops being asked to wage these unjust, illegal wars.

The truth is, the architects of both occupations have contempt for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan they claim to have liberated and they have contempt for the very troops they claim so loudly to support. The best way we can support the troops, in reality, is to bring them home — now, not in sixteen months or sixteen years — and to provide them the social, economic, medical, and psychological assistance that they need and deserve. Genuine support, not empty rhetoric and bumper sticker slogans. And best way we can support the people of Afghanistan and Iraq is to withdraw from their countries immediately and unconditionally and pay reparations for the enormous harm and destruction we have caused, opening the possibility for genuine humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, and self-determination in those countries.

We cannot count on our elected — or unelected — officials to realize their folly and end the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, or the imperial project of which they are key components. Only the pressure of a movement, a movement hat centrally involves soldiers, veterans, and their families, can achieve this.

The stakes could not be higher — for the people of Iraq, for the people of Afghanistan, for the people of the United States, for the troops, or for the people of the world.

Thank you.

Blowing Them Away Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

Globalization Bush-style
By Tom Engelhardt

Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a small town somewhere near the Southern California coast. You're going about your daily life, trying to scrape by in hard times, when the missile hits. It might have come from the Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) -- its pilot at a base on the outskirts of Tehran -- that has had the village in its sights for the last six hours or from the Russian sub stationed just off the coast. In either case, it's devastating.

In Moscow and Tehran, officials announce that, in a joint action, they have launched the missile as part of a carefully coordinated "surgical" operation to take out a "known terrorist," a long-term danger to their national security. A Kremlin spokesman offers the following statement:

"As we have repeatedly said, we will continue to pursue terrorist activities and their operations wherever we may find them. We share common goals with respect to fighting terrorism. We will continue to seek out, identify, capture and, if necessary, kill terrorists where they plan their activities, carry out their operations or seek safe harbor."

A family in a ramshackle house just down the street from you -- he's a carpenter; she works at the local Dairy Queen -- are killed along with their pets. Their son is seriously wounded, their home blown to smithereens. Neighbors passing by as the missile hits are also wounded.

As it happens, there are no terrorists in the vicinity. Outraged, you organize your neighbors and march angrily in protest through the town, shouting anti-Russian, anti-Iranian slogans. But, of course, there is nothing you can really do. Iran and Russia are far away, their weaponry powerful, your arms nonexistent. The state of California is incapable of protecting you. This is, in fact, at least the fourth time in recent months that a "terrorist" has been declared "taken out" from the air or by a ship-based cruise missile, when only innocent Californians have died.

As news of the "collateral damage" from the botched operation dribbles out, the Russian and Iranian media pay next to no attention. There are no outraged editorials. Official spokesmen see no need to comment further. No one is held responsible and no promises are made in either Tehran or Moscow that similar assassination strikes won't be launched in the near future, based on "actionable intelligence," possibly even on the same town. In fact, the next day, seeing UAVs once again soaring overhead, you load your pick-up and prepare to flee.

Continue reading this post at TomDispatch.com.

The First Sixth-Anniversary-of-the-Iraq-War Article

By Tom Engelhardt

Please don't write in with a correction. I know just as well as you do that we're approaching the fifth, not the sixth, anniversary of the moment when, on March 19, 2003, George W. Bush told the American people:

"My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger… My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail."

At that moment, of course, the cruise missiles meant to "decapitate" Saddam Hussein's regime, but that killed only Iraqi civilians, were on their way to Baghdad. I'm perfectly aware that articles galore will be looking back on the five years since that day. This is not one of them.

Think of this piece as in the spirit of Senator John McCain's recent request that Americans not obsess about the origins of the Iraq War, but look forward. "On the issue of my differences with Senator Obama on Iraq," he typically said, "I want to make it very clear: This is not about decisions that were made in the past. This is about decisions that a president will have to make about the future in Iraq. And a decision to unilaterally withdraw from Iraq will lead to chaos."

The future, not the past, is the mantra, which is why I'm skipping next week's fifth anniversary of the Iraq War entirely. Now, let me ask you a future-oriented question:

What's wrong with these sentences?

On March 19, 2009, the date of the sixth anniversary of President Bush's invasion of Iraq, as surely as the sun rises in the East I'll be sitting here and we will still have many tens of thousands of troops, a string of major bases, and massive air power in that country. In the intervening year, more Americans will have been wounded or killed; many more Iraqis will have been wounded or killed; more chaos and conflict will have ensued; many more bombs will have been dropped and missiles launched; many more suicide bombs will have gone off. Iraq will still be a hell on Earth.

Prediction is, of course, a risky business. Otherwise I'd now be commuting via jet pack through spire cities (as the futuristic articles of my youth so regularly predicted). If you were to punch holes in the above sentences, you would certainly have to note that it's risky for a man of 63 years, or of any age, to suggest that he'll be sitting anywhere in a year; riskier yet if you happen to live in those lands extending from North Africa to Central Asia that Bush administration officials used to call the "arc of instability" -- essentially the oil heartlands of the planet -- before they turned them into one. It's always possible that I won't be sitting here (or anywhere else, for that matter) on March 19, 2009. Unfortunately, when it comes to the American position in Iraq, short of an act of God, the sixth anniversary of George Bush's war of choice is going to dawn much like the fifth one.

Continue reading this post at TomDispatch.com.

The Bad News at the Pump

The $100-plus Barrel of Oil and What It Means
By Michael T. Klare

On Monday March 3, the price of crude oil reached $103.95 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, surpassing the record set nearly 30 years ago during another moment of chaos in the Middle East. Will that new mark prove distinctive in the annals of world history or will it be forgotten as energy prices drop, just as they did following their April 1980 peak?

When oil costs are plotted over time, the 1980 oil crisis -- prompted by Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian revolution -- stands out as a sharp spike on that price curve. Both before and after that moment, however, oil supplies proved largely sufficient to meet rising global demand, in part because the Saudis and other major producers were capable of compensating for declining Iranian production. They simply increased their output substantially, dumping a surplus of oil onto the global market. Aided by the development of new fields in Alaska and the North Sea, prices dropped precipitously and stayed low through the 1990s (except for a brief spike following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990).

Nothing similar is likely to happen now. For the present surge in prices -- crude oil costs have risen by 74% over the past year -- no such easy solution is in sight. To begin with, we face not a sudden spike, but the results of a steady, relentless climb that began in 2002 and shows no signs of abating; nor can this rise be attributed to a single, chaos-causing factor in the energy business or in global politics. It is instead the product of multiple factors endemic to energy production and characteristic of the current era. There is no prospect of their vanishing any time soon.

Three factors, in particular, are responsible for the current surge: intensifying competition for oil between the older industrial powers and rising economic dynamos like China and India; the inability of the global energy industry to expand supplies to keep pace with growing demand; and intensifying instability in the major oil-producing areas.

A Tsunami of Energy Needs

The crucial role of the developing economic dynamos in Asia on the global energy market was already evident as this century dawned. With their phenomenal rates of growth, these countries must have more oil (and other forms of energy) to power their expanding industries, fuel their new cars and trucks, and satisfy the aspirations of their burgeoning middle classes. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), combined oil demand from China and India, already at 8.9 million barrels per day in 2004, is expected to hit 12.1 million barrels by 2010 and 15.5 million barrels by 2020. These are staggering rises. If you include anticipated consumption by Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, and other rapidly industrializing nations, demand from the developing world is truly expected to soar.

To this tsunami of new energy needs must be added an already high level of consumption by the mature industrial powers led by the United States, the European Union, and Japan. This shows little sign of lessening, which means we face an unprecedented surge in the total demand for oil. According to the DoE, combined world oil consumption, which reached 83.7 million barrels per day in 2006, is projected to hit 90.7 million barrels in 2010 and 103.7 million in 2020. We're talking about an increase of 20 million barrels per day in just 15 years. To achieve this would require a mammoth, unbelievably costly effort on the part of the world's giant oil companies (and their lenders and government backers), and even then it might not be possible.

American consumers, facing gas-pump hell, are, at the moment, being further punished by the fact that most global oil transactions are denominated in dollars. Given the declining value of the dollar relative to other currencies, we wind up paying more per barrel than competitors who can convert their euros, yen, or other strong currencies into dollars before bidding against us on the international energy market. Global investors, sensing the trend, are dumping the dollar for these other currencies or buying oil futures, only adding to the slide of the U.S. currency and the rising price of crude.

A Tough Oil World

Lurking behind soaring demand is another crisis entirely -- a crisis of production. The energy industry is now in the difficult process of transitioning from a world of easily tapped oil supplies to one in which mainly tough-oil options prevail. Those "easy-oil" supplies are the ones we've long been familiar with: the giant petroleum reservoirs in friendly, stable countries that provided most of the world's oil during the formative years of the Petroleum Age, stretching from the late nineteenth century until the Arab oil embargo of 1973.

These mammoth reservoirs include Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Burgan in Kuwait, and Cantarell in Mexico -- monster fields that produce hundreds of thousands or even millions of barrels of crude per day. In the last quarter-century, however, discoveries of "elephant" fields like these have been almost nonexistent. The world is, as a result, becoming increasingly dependent on smaller fields, often in remote, unwelcoming locations that require far more expense to develop and bring online. This, too, is adding to the price of oil.

As an illustration of this trend, take Kashagan, a giant oil field discovered in 2000 in Kazakhstan's sector of the Caspian Sea. It represents the single largest discovery worldwide in the past 40 years. Although it does harbor significant reserves of oil and gas, the field poses staggering challenges to the international consortium of energy companies attempting to develop it. It contains, for example, high concentrations of poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas, which makes its development using conventional (and so cheaper) production technology impossible. Development costs to bring the field online have already soared from an estimated $57 billion to $135 billion with no end in sight. In the meantime, the projected date for the start-up of production at Kashagan has been continually pushed back. Once expected to come online in 2005, it's now slated for 2011 -- at the earliest. This, in turn, has led a frustrated Kazakh government to demand that the state-owned KazMunaiGaz energy company be given a larger stake in the field's operating consortium.

Most of the other big discoveries of recent years -- the "Jack" field in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Doba field in Chad, fields off Russia's Sakhalin Island, and the Tupi field in the deep Atlantic off Brazil -- exhibit similar characteristics. They are either far offshore and difficult to develop or entail problematic relationships with unreliable governments -- or, worse yet, some combination of the two. You can essentially do the math yourself when it comes to the future cost of oil produced at such sites.

So here's the bad news at the pump: The inability of the global energy industry to keep pace with rising demand is only likely to become more pronounced as, in the years ahead, the world reaches maximum sustainable daily petroleum output and commences what just about all energy experts now agree will be an irreversible decline. No one can be sure when exactly this will occur, but a growing chorus of specialists believes that we are moving ever closer to that moment of "peak" oil output -- with some specialists placing it as soon as 2010-12.

Oil as a Conflict-producer

Finally, let's not forget that the equivalent of the Iranian Revolution of 1980 remains with us. The oil heartlands of the planet are increasingly in crisis and the price of oil is regularly driven up by that as well. Iraq, with the world's second largest reserves of petroleum, is convulsed by war. Nigeria, a major supplier to the United States and Europe, has experienced a significant reduction in output recently due to ethnic violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta region. Venezuela's production has fallen because many anti-Chávez oil technocrats have been purged from the state-owned oil monopoly PdVSA. Iran's output has suffered as a result of the economic sanctions imposed by the United States. Political violence, corruption, and state interference in the energy sector have also led to depressed output in Chad, Mexico, Russia, and Sudan.

At one time, the world's major oil producers could compensate for a downturn in output in any area by ramping up production from the "spare" (or reserve) capacity at their disposal. This was critical in 1990, following the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, and again in 2001, following the attacks of 9/11. Both times, Saudi Arabia simply upped production, adding hundreds of thousands of barrels per day in spare capacity, thereby averting a catastrophic energy crisis in the United States. But the Saudis and the other members of OPEC no longer possess significant spare capacity. They're pumping oil for all they're worth in order to benefit from the current surge in prices. Hence, any sudden loss of production in conflict-torn areas translates quickly into rising prices.

Can we expect the levels of conflict in oil-producing regions to subside sooner or later, bringing prices down? Unfortunately, this is a wholly unrealistic prospect because oil production itself increasingly acts as a goad to conflict. While extracting petroleum generates enormous wealth for privileged elites, it leaves others in many countries, usually of a different ethnic or religious identity, with few benefits from the resource in their midst. Take the Niger Delta area, where ethnic minorities continue to fight to obtain a larger share of oil revenues that historically have been monopolized by elites in the distant national capital, Abuja. The Kurds in Iraq have similarly been struggling to take control over the oil revenues generated by the giant fields in portions of that war-ravaged country they claim. This threatens to turn the oil-producing city of Kirkuk, in particular, into a future battleground.

While no one can predict just where the next conflicts will break out over the allocation of oil revenues or the control of valuable oil fields, it is safe to predict that such conflicts will remain an abiding, price-hiking feature of the global political landscape. Instability is now not only the norm, but spreading in these areas, and high oil prices are an inevitable corollary.

An Energy "Black Monday"

The bottom line: Oil prices are high today not, as in 1980, due to a temporary disruption in the global flow of petroleum but for systemic reasons that are, if anything, becoming more pronounced. This means news headlines with the phrase "record oil price" are likely to be commonplace for a long time to come. The only good news may lie in just how bad the news really is. Sooner or later, ever rising energy costs are likely to push the United States and other oil-consuming nations into deep recession, thus depressing demand and possibly beginning to bring energy prices down. But this is hardly a recipe for lower prices that anyone would voluntarily choose.

What, then, will be the lasting consequences of higher energy costs? For the ordinary American consumer the answer is simple, if grim: A diminished quality of life, as discretionary expenses disappear in the face of higher costs for transportation, home heating, and electricity, not to speak of basics like food (for which, from fertilizers to packaging, oil is a necessity). For the poor and elderly, the implications are dire: In some cases, it will undoubtedly mean choosing among heat in winter, adequate nutrition, and medicine.

Finally, there are the implications for the United States as a whole. Because the U.S. relies on petroleum for approximately 40% of its total energy supply, and because nearly two-thirds of its crude oil must be imported, this country will be forced to devote an ever-increasing share of its national wealth to energy imports. If oil remains at or above the $100 per barrel mark in 2008, and, as expected, the United States imports some 4.75 billion barrels of the stuff, the net outflow of dollars is likely to be in the range of $475 billion. This will constitute the largest single contribution to America's balance-of-payments deficit and will surely prove a major factor in the continuing erosion of the dollar.

The principal recipients of petro-dollars -- the major oil-producing states of the Persian Gulf, the former Soviet Union, and Latin America -- will undoubtedly use their accumulating wealth to purchase big chunks of prime American assets or, as in the case of Hugo Chávez of Venezuela or the Saudi princes, pursue political aims inconsistent with American foreign policy objectives. America's vaunted status as the world's "sole superpower" will prove increasingly ephemeral as new "petro-superpowers" -- a term coined by Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana -- come to dominate the geopolitical landscape.

So, while March 3 may have only briefly made the headlines here, it may well be remembered as the true "black Monday" of our new century, the moment when energy costs became the decisive factor in the balance of global economic power.

Michael T. Klare, the author of Resource Wars (2001) and Blood and Oil (2004), is a professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. His latest book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, will be published on April 15th by Metropolitan Books.

Copyright 2008 Michael T. Klare

Fidel Castro, the First Superdelegate

By Greg Grandin

"Long ere the second centennial arrives," Walt Whitman predicted in 1871, "there will be some forty to fifty great States," among them Cuba. It was a common enough belief. From Thomas Jefferson onward, many Americans thought that, as Secretary of State James Blaine said in 1881, "Cuba must necessarily become American."

Based on its current population, if the island had become a U.S. state, it would hold about the same weight in deciding American presidential elections as does Ohio. History, of course, took a different turn; yet, over the last five decades, Cuba could still count one superdelegate.

Fidel Castro hasn't been seen in public since July 2006, when a near-fatal stomach illness forced him into semi-retirement. In the U.S., however, he remains a contender, at least in terms of the hold he has on the imagination of candidates running for the White House. Here's a short history of Castro's long run in U.S. presidential politics:

1960: John F. Kennedy, flanking his Republican opponent Vice President Richard Nixon on the right on matters of foreign policy, was the first presidential candidate to brand Fidel Castro an "enemy." In August 1960, having just accepted the Democratic nomination, JFK told a Miami gathering of American veterans that, for the "first time in our history, an enemy stands at the throat of the United States." The Cubans, he declared, are our "enemies and will do everything in their power to bring about our downfall." During the campaign, he repeatedly hammered Nixon on Cuba, demanding that the Eisenhower White House cut off trade to the island and provide aid to "fighters for freedom" to overthrow Castro.

In fact, months before Kennedy's August speech, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had already authorized the funding of a campaign of paramilitary sabotage in Cuba, as well as the training of a small army of Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro. Republicans had no problem with what today goes by the name "regime change," having already orchestrated two successful coups -- in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954 -- against governments they perceived as hostile to U.S. interests. They just preferred to do it quietly.

As Eisenhower's vice president, Nixon was obligated not to reveal his administration's secret foreign policy plans, so he could only lamely respond to Kennedy's taunts. Cuba, he insisted, was not "lost." Nixon knew that the White House had started training Cuban exiles, and he was probably aware that the CIA was working on a plan to poison Castro's cigars, but the vice president could only barely allude to such knowledge, which just made him sound complacent. "The United States," Nixon said, "has the power, and Mr. Castro knows it, to throw him out of office any day that we would choose to."

Kennedy, of course, won the election. As president, he carried out the Republican invasion plan, the botched Bay of Pigs operation. When that failed, Kennedy authorized "Operation Mongoose," a broad-spectrum covert operation that used sabotage, assassinations, and psychological warfare in hopes of sparking an uprising against Castro. He also imposed a trade embargo on Cuba. A stickler for legality, JFK held off signing the decree cutting of trade with the island until his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, could purchase him a cache of 1,200 Petit Upmann Cuban cigars.

1964: Castro, who by one recent count has survived more than 600 assassination attempts, never allowed a free vote in Cuba; "The revolution," he once reportedly remarked, "has no time for elections." But he made time for those held in the U.S. In 1964, the Havana daily Revolución condemned both President Lyndon Johnson and his Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, writing that the two candidates reflected the "structural degeneration" of American democracy. But in the weeks leading to the election, Castro, fearing Goldwater's "extremism" and convinced that Johnson would pursue a "policy of moderation," stepped up his anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. rhetoric, hoping to spark a backlash in the president's favor. Johnson won in a landslide, without the need for a (back)hand from Fidel.

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