More than 627.4 million tons of oil (including condensate) were produced at the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli and Shah Deniz fields, located in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, from the moment they were put into operation until December 1, 2023, Report
Day: December 13, 2023
It is clear from various military statistics that the United States has an overwhelming superiority over China in most if not all spheres of any likely war. Be it in nuclear weaponry, warships, submarines, military aircraft or military satellites, the US alone – without allies in the West, and Taiwan and possibly Japan – has the resources to outshoot China.
At the same time, the military capacity of the US is increasing every year. Latest reports show that the United States spends more on national defence than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, and Ukraine combined. US defence expenditure of US$870 billion in 2022 dwarfed that of China’s estimated US$230 billion.
The US is also the world’s leading armament producer and salesman. The US accounted for 40% of the total volume of international arms transfers between 2018–2022. Japan and Australia, members of the QUAD set up to counter China in the Indo Pacific region, are the US biggest weapons customers while Taiwan under President Tsai Ing-Wen has purchased several US$ billion worth of weaponry during Biden’s administration.
Meanwhile, current wars in Gaza and Ukraine are keeping US armament factories busy and ensuring big pay cheques for the political and military lobbies supporting them. They are also keeping investors in US ‘defence’ companies happy.
Any war, even a heightened threat in the Asian and Pacific region, will undoubtedly produce enormous returns to the US and western military industrial complex even if the larger share market drops.
China, despite its enormous industrial and manufacturing capability, ranks fourth in the world in armament exports after US, Russia and France, with an estimated 5.2%, or one-eighth of the US volume. China’s armament exports fell by 23% from 2013-17 to 2018-2022 whilst that of the US increased by 14%.
These figures speak for themselves as to which country – the US or China – is a more militarised one; and which country is benefiting from wars and the consequent suffering and misery in the world.
US Encirclement of China
Not satisfied with military superiority, US politicians and military leaders are engaging in new attempts to inflate China’s military capability and expenditure so as to justify further increases in US spending.
In spite of these efforts aimed at scare mongering through hyping the China challenge to US military supremacy, everyone knows that the US has its military boot print and agenda all round the world but especially in the Asian region.
Within the Indo-Pacific region, the US has for more than 70 years implemented a “first island chain” security network aimed at projecting US military power. Initially directed against the Soviet Union after the end of the 2nd world war and following the outbreak of war in Korea in 1951, it is now aimed primarily against China whose coastline the US considers as potential enemy territory.
The midpoint and key part of this first island chain is to be found in Taiwan popularly referred to by American policy makers as their “unsinkable aircraft carrier”.
In addition, a second American security island chain has been developed with Japan, the Philippines, Australia and the islands of Micronesia as components. As with the first chain, the target is China.
Within these two island chains are stationed hundreds of thousands of US military personnel. A recent US congressional report revealed that 375,000 US military personnel are presently based in 66 distinct ‘defence’, that is, military installations in the Indo Pacific region.
In contrast, China has one foreign military base – not in Asia but in Djibouti, Africa.
All evidence shows conclusively that China’s military capacity and capability is far inferior to the US for now and in the foreseeable future.
At the same time, Chinese leaders have repeatedly declared that China has no intention to challenge or unseat the American position in the region.
This does not mean that China will be a sitting duck or easy target should the US decide to take on China and what Chinese leaders regard as the country’s national interest and legitimate position in the Asian region.
Hence China today is in the midst of two major campaigns to turn its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into a “world-class military” by 2027 and to achieve “national rejuvenation” by 2049.
Will China’s growing technological prowess and nuclear arsenal be sufficient to deter US from the war which members of the American leadership are eagerly provoking, and which they are in a hurry to initiate for fear that US military superiority will be lost soon?
Meanwhile, the US has opened up new fronts to take down China.
Speaking at an annual national defence forum in Simi Valley in California, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo asked lawmakers, Silicon Valley and US allies to stop China from getting semiconductors and cutting-edge technologies key to national security
She said China is “the biggest threat we’ve ever had” and stressed that “China is not our friend”.
“Everyday China wakes up trying to figure out how to do an end run around our export controls… which means every minute of every day, we have to wake up tightening those controls and being more serious about enforcement with our allies.”
What she did not say is that she wakes up every day from nightmares on the rise and development of China, and perhaps with a Huawei handphone by her bedside ringing to wake her up to do battle.
Raimondo and her war obsessed colleagues should realise that any war between the US and China on any front – whether military, commercial, trade or economy – will not see only China as the loser.
The US, even if it wins, will definitely pay a heavy price.
The last barely functioning hospital in northern Gaza is a “humanitarian disaster zone”, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, highlighting the disastrous consequences of ongoing Israeli bombardment for critically ill and injured civilians across the enclave.
Briefing reporters from Gaza, Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, described corridors overflowing with trauma patients at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, where doctors treat people on the floor and fuel, oxygen, food and water are scarce.
In just 66 days of fighting, the Strip has been transformed from a “reasonably functioning health system” producing health indicators “on par with neighbouring countries” to a situation where more than two thirds of its 36 hospitals and over 70 per cent of primary health care facilities are out of commission, Dr. Peeperkorn said.
Meanwhile WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva that the Kamal Adwan Hospital – also in the north – was being “forcefully evacuated” on Tuesday morning, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Some 68 patients including 18 in intensive care and six newborns are reportedly at the site, alongside thousands of displaced people seeking safety. The hospital has been surrounded by Israeli troops and tanks for days, with armed clashes reported nearby, UN humanitarian affairs coordination office OCHA said. On Monday, the hospital’s maternity department was reportedly hit during shelling and two mothers were killed.
Mission fraught with ‘serious incidents’
Amid sky-high humanitarian needs in Gaza’s devastated north, Al-Ahli Hospital is severely short-staffed, Dr. Peeperkorn said, with over 200 patients but only enough resources to support 40. Unable to perform vascular operations, staff are carrying out limb amputations “as the last resort to save lives”.
Last Saturday a WHO-led UN and Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) convoy encountered “serious incidents” during a mission to deliver trauma and surgical supplies for 1,500 patients to the hospital and transfer 19 critical patients and their companions to Nasser Medical Complex in south Gaza, the UN health agency said.
Detention at gunpoint
Dr. Peeperkorn described the numerous obstacles faced by this mission, including inspections at the Israeli military checkpoint at Wadi Gaza on the way north, where two PRCS staff were detained for over an hour. According to a statement released by the UN health agency on Tuesday, “WHO staff saw one of them being made to kneel at gunpoint and then taken out of sight, where he was reportedly harassed, beaten, stripped and searched”.
The WHO medic stressed that “nobody can be detained when they are part of a medical mission” and emphasized the fact that such vital humanitarian missions “cannot afford any delays”.
Dr. Peeperkorn said that arriving in north Gaza, which now “looks like a wasteland”, the humanitarians saw many people in the street surprised at the sight of the convoy, as there had been very little aid access to the north of the enclave for months now.
Deadly delays
Upon entering Gaza City the aid truck with the medical supplies and one of the ambulances which were part of the convoy were hit by bullets, WHO said, and on the way back towards southern Gaza, with the patients from Al-Ahli Hospital on board, “the convoy was again stopped at the same checkpoint, where PRCS staff and most of the patients had to leave the ambulances for security checks”.
Critical patients remaining in the ambulances were searched by armed soldiers, and one of the same two PRCS staff temporarily detained earlier on the way in was taken for interrogation a second time. Significant delays ensued and “PRCS reported afterwards that during the transfer process, one of the injured patients died, as a result of his untreated wounds”, WHO said.
After his release later that night “after joint UN efforts” the PRCS staff member said that he had been beaten and humiliated, then “left to walk towards the south with his hands still tied behind his back, and without clothes or shoes”.
Health system ‘must be protected’
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed on social platform X on Tuesday his concern about “prolonged checks and detention of health workers that put lives of already fragile patients at risk”.
“The people of Gaza have the right to access health care,” he insisted. “The health system must be protected. Even in war.”
Disease on the rise
The scale of displacement in the Strip, where some 1.9 million people, the vast majority of Gaza’s population, have been forced to flee their homes, and conditions in overcrowded shelters including the lack of proper sanitation, have led to a massive increase in diseases, Dr. Peeperkorn said. There were already some 60,000 cases of diarrhoea in children under five and more than 160,000 cases of acute respiratory infections. Scabies, skin rashes, chicken pox and even meningitis are on the rise, alongside severe trauma and spinal injuries.
Meanwhile health workers lack basic essentials and are “completely preoccupied by the safety of their families”.
The UN health agency official stressed that it was imperative to make the primary healthcare system functional again and bring back maternal and child health, obstetric care, treatment for non-communicable diseases, oncology and mental health support among others.
More hospital beds in Rafah
In the south, which Dr. Peeperkorn called the “backbone” of Gaza’s health system, on Monday the Palestine Red Crescent Society began preparations for establishing a field hospital in collaboration with the Qatari Red Crescent Society, in Rafah governorate. WHO said that the hospital is set to have 50 beds, including an operating room, intensive care unit, reception and radiology.
The UN health agency stressed the importance of adding hospital capacity in the enclave. According to Gaza’s health authorities only one per cent of Palestinians injured in hostilities, or some 400 people, have so far been evacuated outside of Gaza for hospitalization through the Rafah border crossing.
Close to 50,000 people have been injured in Gaza since 7 October and some 8,000 of them require “urgent and immediate medical intervention”, WHO said.
Despite a focus on boxing China in the Indo-Pacific, US involvement in the Middle East continues to be widespread and problematic. While Israel is given its regular steroid diet of murderous arms, US military personnel find themselves scattered throughout a myriad of bases and countries. Recently, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul decided that Syria should not be one of them.
In his bill to the Senate, Paul called for “the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in Syria that have not been authorized by Congress”, leaving a 30-day timeframe for the measure to take place. It notes, among a number of events, that US armed forces in Syria and Iraq since October 17 “have been attacked at least 52 times, with 28 attacks in Syria and 24 attacks in Iraq. Such attacks resulted in at least 56 members of the United States Armed Forces being injured, of whom at least 25 members have sustained traumatic brain injuries.” Such are the travails of empire.
The concern is valid enough. With the Israel-Hamas war continuing in its heaving murderousness, allies for the Palestinian cause are getting tetchy. From the US perspective, that tetchiness deserves retaliation, notably targeting any forces backed by Iran throughout the Middle East. The soldiers, in other words, are not just in harm’s way, but likely to cause widening harm.
As Paul explained to his fellow senators, “It seems to be, though our 900 troops have no viable mission in Syria, that they’re sitting ducks.” Even more saliently, he insisted that they were “a tripwire to a larger war, and without a clear-cut mission, I don’t think they can adequately defend themselves, yet they remain in Syria.”
The problem here, as with all childish impulses of US power, is the fear that its freedom loving forces might look like insufferable sissies in the face of armed savages who have no innate sense of that same freedom.
The impulse for remaining in Syria is treated by desk spanking wonks in the Pentagon and State Department as one of those good ideas to dampen and snuff out any prospect of renewal on the part of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. But this, as we have known for a while, is merely a case of medium and vehicle. In December 2018, President Donald Trump noted that the caliphate aspirants had lost 99 of their territory. “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there,” he declared. He subsequently promised a “full” and “rapid” withdrawal of US forces.
Apoplexy, and various sabotaging efforts from those hostile to the suggestion, followed. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned in protest. As Ambassador Jim Jeffrey, who served as special representative for Syria Engagement put it to Defense One, “When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That’s the story.”
The broader reason for maintaining US personnel in the Levant and Iraq is largely based on keeping the theocratic mullahs in Teheran in check. On this point, former US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, is helpfully candid. “ISIS hasn’t controlled Tanf (near the junction of Syria/Jordan/Iraq) for 7 years. The real (but unstated) reason the US is there is to block Iran from using a road coming from Iraq into Syria.”
Pundits with their stick-figure commentary (it’s all in the form, not substance, see?) continue to scratch for their crust and wisdom on the theme that withdrawing occupation forces from a territory spells doom and disaster for the broader project. Call it civilisation, democracy, or whatever fable might so happen to satisfy the memorandum and itch of the moment. Yes, the US did invade and impose itself with muscular violence, but why leave the violated party even as the effects of molestation continue to be felt? “With a withdrawal of US forces from Syria (as well as Iraq) becoming more likely,” warn the earnest authors of a report for the New Lines Institute, “US policy makers must understand the long-term effects of withdrawal will cause and then adapt accordingly. This is particularly urgent given the possibility of a US withdrawal triggering malign actors in Syria, including Iran, to rush to fill the power vacuum.”
Pentagon advisor Michael Rubin was also one to rush to the podium of common values in justifying what he regarded as a rather modest US investment in Syria for excellent returns. Washington had, for instance, supported the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES), and insisted that more funding was needed. The ongoing relationship with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was also of value.
Paul, at least on this score, was always going to struggle in getting the resolution across the line. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, may, or may not have been suffering some seizure in observing that passing “such a resolution would be a gift to Iran and its terrorist network.” The removal of US forces from the Middle East was “exactly what they’d like to see.” The resolution was duly defeated, with 13 members favouring it, and 84 opposed.
The more level-headed observers have, like Paul, concluded that Washington’s forces in Syria are merely ripening targets, fodder for deeper and wider conflict. Justin Logan of the CATO Institute has made the self-evident point that US forces in Syria, after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, “have served as little more than shooting gallery targets for regional militias backed by Iran. Contrary to their ostensible purpose, they are not fighting ISIS.”
Such conservative outlets as the National Review agree. One of its senior writers, Michael Brendan Dougherty, is lacerating about the presence. “Our troops in Syria have no mission, and they have no lawful reason given to them by our Congress to remain there. In the meantime, they serve as convenient targets for Iranian-backed militias who otherwise would have no way of threatening American lives.” For those inclined towards permanent wars, that remains a most desirable state of affairs.
An uptick in cultivation brought on by junta mismanagement of the economy has made Myanmar the world’s largest source of opium, according to the United Nations, which warned that the trend is expected to accelerate amid conflict in the country’s remote border regions.
Data collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, showed a 18% year-on-year increase in cultivation from 40,100 hectares (99,100 acres) to 47,100 hectares (116,400 acres) in the second full growing season since the military’s Feb. 1, 2021 coup d’etat. This year marked the third consecutive increase in cultivation since the takeover.
The increase has pushed Myanmar’s potential yield to 1,080 metric tons (2.38 million pounds), which the UNDOC said in a report released Tuesday is its highest since 2001 and catapults the country into the top spot among the world’s producers. Opium can be used to make heroin.
As the Taliban – Afghanistan’s de facto authority – reimposed a strict ban on poppy cultivation and opium production in 2022, the country’s production decreased by 95 percent, and Myanmar has become a major cultivation and production hub of opium, according to the statement of UNODC.
“The economic, security and governance disruptions that followed the military takeover of February 2021 continue to drive farmers in remote areas towards opium to make a living,” UNODC Regional Representative Jeremy Douglas said in the report, entitled “Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2023: Cultivation, Production and Implications.”
“The intensification of conflict in Shan and other border areas is expected to accelerate this trend,” Douglas said.
On Oct. 27, the “Three Brotherhood” Alliance of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the Arakan Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army launched “Operation 1027,” named for the starting date of the campaign, in Shan state. Rebels say they have made notable gains against the military in several key cities and claim to have captured more than 170 military outposts since the start of the campaign.
The Karenni Army, Karenni National Defense Force, and anti-junta People’s Defense Force paramilitaries initiated the second major offensive by ethnic armies against the military – “Operation 1111” – along the shared border between northern Myanmar’s Shan and Kayah states on Nov. 11.
Conflict spurs cultivation growth
The UNODC said the data for its report was based on a survey of 370 poppy farm plots in Shan, Kachin, Chin and Kayah states and showed the most significant annual increase in cultivation in Shan with a 20% uptick, followed by Chin and Kachin, which increased by 10% and 6%, respectively.
Overall, cultivation increased from around 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) last year to 47,000 hectares (116,000 acres) in 2023.
Opium yield also increased by 16% to nearly 23 kilograms per hectare (20 pounds per acre), beating the country’s previous record a year earlier, which the report said highlighted “more sophisticated farming practices and investments in irrigation systems and fertilizers.”
Meanwhile, the average price paid to farmers per kilogram (2.2 pounds) grew by 27% to U.S.$355, despite an expanding supply, suggesting that opium had become more attractive as a crop and commodity amid strong demand for the drug in Southeast Asia, UNODC said. Farmers earned around 75% more than they did in 2022.
The U.N. said that the growth in opium cultivation is part of “a growing illicit economy” in the Mekong region that includes drug trafficking, money laundering and online criminal activities, generating healthy profits for organized crime rings. Myanmar, and in particular Shan state, is also a leading source of methamphetamine in Southeast Asia.
“The crime and governance challenges in the region are compounded by the crisis in Myanmar,” Douglas said. “Southeast Asia needs to come together to find solutions to both traditional and emerging threats.”
‘We need to accept reality’
A resident of Yangon named Jewel told RFA Burmese that the erosion of rule of law under the junta means that people can now buy whatever drugs they want in Myanmar’s largest city, including opium, without any difficulty.
“At the bars and clubs, narcotics can be consumed openly at one’s table,” she said. “In the past, authorities confiscated narcotics at these places but, at present, no one is arrested. Trade of these drugs is allowed for easy consumption.”
Ying Leng Ham, the spokesperson of the Shan Human Rights Foundation, said that production and transportation of commodities in Myanmar have been severely disrupted by armed conflict that erupted in the wake of the coup.
“In these circumstances, the people have no choice because they can’t make a living from local products such as tea leaves and avocados,” he said. “With no other option, they have turned to poppy cultivation.”
Tin Maung Thein, the chairman of the Myanmar Anti-Narcotics Association in Shan’s Kyaukme township, warned that the trend in his state and for the country in general is likely to continue under junta rule.
“International experts use technical methodology to collect data on narcotic drug production and consumption which is beyond our capacity,” he acknowledged. “However, we have seen significant growth in cultivation in our state, so their figures aren’t surprising. We need to accept reality.”
The UNODC cautioned that any effort to curb cultivation of opium in Myanmar and elsewhere in the region must take into account what it called “the complex realities and vulnerabilities” faced by people living in opium-cultivating areas.
“In the current situation, farming communities are caught between insecurity and economic hardships,” said Benedikt Hofmann, UNODC’s deputy regional representative. “Even more people will look at opium as a viable crop if there are no alternatives, especially in the absence of the rule of law.”