By Ann WRIGHT

Each week the Pacific is getting even more crowded with military ships, submarines and aircraft from countries in the region and from outside.  NATO countries — United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Netherlands — are sending military vessels and aircraft.

The Russian navy conducted military maneuvers off Hawai’i.

The U.S. is on the verge of creating a permanent Pacific naval task force as a part of its aggressive response to China’s naval presence in the Pacific.  The largest land exercise in Asia and the Pacific is taking place in Australia with 17,000 U.S. and Australian military.

In March, President Joe Biden directed the Pentagon to establish a China Task Force to examine China-related policies and processes and give its recommendations to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The creation of a Pacific Naval Task Force would allow the secretary of defense to provide more of the Pentagon’s budget for challenging China’s presence in the Pacific.  The Pacific task force would also include NATO allies such as Britain and France, that have already sent their warships into the Pacific, as well as Japan and Australia.

At the recent NATO meeting in Brussels, most leaders agreed with Biden’s confrontational stance with China, declaring that Beijing is undermining global order and is  a security challenge.  A similar NATO naval task force, the Standing Naval Forces Atlantic,  composed of six-to-10 ships, destroyers, frigates and support vessels from multiple NATO nations, has operated for decades in Atlantic waters.

NATO ministers in Brussels in March. (Estonian Foreign Ministry, Flickr, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Russian War Practice Near Hawaii

It’s not only China that is causing the U.S. concerns in the Pacific. A U.S. missile defense test was delayed at the missile test facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai in May due to the presence of a Russian surveillance ship 13 miles off the island, at the edge of U.S. territorial waters.

The Kareliya, a Russian Navy Vishnya-class auxiliary general intelligence, or AGI, ship is based in the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok and is one of seven AGIs specializing in signals intelligence. For several weeks it sailed off the coast of Kauai, 100 miles from the massive U.S. naval facility at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu.

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, conducted on Kauai what it called Flight Test Aegis Weapon System 31 to demonstrate the capability of a ballistic missile defense (BMD)-configured Aegis ship to detect, track, engage and intercept a medium-range ballistic missile target with a salvo of two Standard Missile-6 Dual II (BMD-initialized) missiles.

To the chagrin of the MDA, with the Russian signals ship as a witness, the May 29 missile test eventually was carried out with ship-fired missiles but they failed to intercept a medium-range ballistic missile target.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor made this statement at the time, saying it was

“aware of the Russian vessel operating in international waters in the vicinity of Hawai’i, and will continue to track it through the duration of its time here. Through maritime patrol aircraft, surface ships and joint capabilities, we can closely monitor all vessels in the Indo-Pacific area of operations.”

A few days later, U.S. Air Force F-22 jets made two sudden flights out of Hawai’i with the Indo-Pacific Command eventually acknowledging that “several Russian ships and aircraft” were 200 miles to the west of the Hawaiian Islands and the F-22s had been sent out to keep watch on them.

The “several ships and aircraft” turned out to be the largest Russian naval maneuvers in the Pacific since the end of the Cold War. As reported by the Honolulu Star Advertiser on June 23, prior to the meeting of the Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden in Geneva on June 16, the Russian Ministry of Defense publicized the Russian naval maneuvers off Hawai’i as a naval and air exercise that practiced “destroying the aircraft carrier strike group of the mock enemy” and delivering a simulated strike with cruise missiles against “critically important” military infrastructure. The Russian press release described the military exercise as two detachments of ships, operating about 2,500 miles southeast of the Kuril Islands, that detected, countered and delivered missile strikes against an aircraft carrier strike group.

The missile strike practice was conducted by the flagship of the Pacific Fleet, the missile cruiser Varyag, the frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov and multiple corvettes.  Twenty surface warships, including a submarine and support vessels, were involved in the exercise with 20 aircraft, including long-range antisubmarine aircraft Tu-142M3, anti-submarine aircraft Il-38, high-altitude fighter-interceptors MiG31BM, deck anti-submarine and search-and-rescue helicopters Ka-27.

Russian missile cruiser Varyag in 2016. (Vadim Savitsky/Russian Defense Ministry’s Press Office/TASS)

The deployment of Russian “Bear” bombers as part of the exercise twice resulted in missile-armed Hawaii Air National Guard F-22 fighters scrambling to possibly intercept the turboprop planes — which headed in the direction of Hawaii but never came close, according to U.S. officials. No U.S. intercepts of the Russian aircraft were made.

The two long-range Tu-142MZ anti-submarine aircraft that provided support to the exercise had flown from Kamchatka Peninsula, spending more than 14 hours in the air and covering about 10,000 kilometers during the exercise, according to the news report.

Rounding out the air component of the Russian exercise were six Il-38 and Il-38N anti-submarine aircraft that searched for and tracked submarines of the “mock enemy.” The anti-submarine aircraft were escorted by MiG-31BM high-altitude interceptor fighters of the Pacific Fleet with refueling capability provided by II-78 aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

An open-source satellite view of the Russian flotilla was taken on June 19 when it was 35 nautical miles (40 statute miles) south of Honolulu and was being escorted by three U.S. Navy destroyers and a Coast Guard cutter.

A spokesman for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command at Camp H.M. Smith in Honolulu said on June 21 that the Russian vessels operated in international waters throughout the exercise and at the closest point, some Russian ships operated approximately 20 to 30 nautical miles (23 to 34 statute miles) off the coast of Hawaii and that they were tracked very closely by U.S. forces.

US & Russian Vessels Around Hawaii

Making for a crowded area around Hawai’i, the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group based in San Diego was operating off the east side of the Hawaiian Islands at the same time the Russian fleet was off the west side of the islands.  The Carl Vinson, the flagship of the carrier strike group, conducted exercises with Carrier Air Wing 2, Destroyer Squadron 1, the guided-missile destroyers USS O’Kane, USS Howard, USS Chafee, USS Dewey and USS Michael Murphy. The Chafee and Michael Murphy are based at Pearl Harbor.

French Air Force Arrives

On Sunday, June 27, in their first visit to Hawai’i, the French government sent 170 Air and Space Force personnel, three Rafale fighter aircraft, two A330 Phenix refueling tankers and two A400M Atlas transports to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu for training with Hawai’i-based U.S. F-22 fighters, C-17 cargo aircraft and KC-135 refuelers. The French squadron will depart Hawai’i on July 5 for Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada for more training with U.S. military units.  U.S. Pacific Air Force command emailed that “It is imperative that the U.S. accelerates change in synchronization with allies like France to ensure we are ready for the next fight.”

The British Are Coming Too

HMS Queen Elizabeth, left, with two escort vessels, off the coast of Scotland in 2017. (Ministry of Defence)

Besides the French military aircraft arriving in the Pacific, the new British  65,000-ton aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth and its carrier group is heading for the Pacific in what is called the “most important peacetime deployment in a generation” for the United Kingdom.

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said on April 26 that “even as the Pacific’s importance to our future economy continues to rise — so the challenges to the freedom of navigation in that region continue to grow. Our trade with Asia depends on the shipping that sails through a range of Indo-Pacific choke points, yet they are increasingly at risk.”

HMS Queen Elizabeth, the centerpiece of Britain’s Royal Navy, departed the U.K. in May for a world voyage including stops in 40 nations and steaming through the South China Sea.  Defense Minister Wallace said that while China is “increasingly assertive, we are not going to the other side of the world to be provocative. We will sail through the South China Sea. We will be confident, but not confrontational.”

Adding to the numbers of naval vessels in the crowded South China Sea will be the nine escort vessels of  HMS Queen Elizabeth: destroyers HMS Defender and HMS Diamond, anti-submarine frigates HMS Kent and HMS Richmond, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s RFA Fort Victoria and RFA Tidespring, Dutch frigate HNLMS Evertsen and U.S. Navy destroyer USS The Sullivans.

US & the ‘International Rules-Based Order’

The State Department said the United States, which has maintained what it calls the “international rules-based order” in the Pacific since the end of World War II, is “committed to upholding a free and open Indo-Pacific in which all nations, large and small, are secure in their sovereignty and able to pursue economic growth consistent with international law and principles of fair competition.”  In 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense wrote in its strategy document that the Indo- Pacific region is the single most consequential region for America’s future.

Indo-Pacific biogeographic region. (Wikimedia Commons)

Admiral Phil Davidson said on April 30 when he relinquished leadership of the massive U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, “Make no mistake, the Communist Party of China seeks to supplant the idea of a free and open international order with a new order — one with Chinese characteristics — where Chinese national power is more important than international law.”

Davidson added that strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific “is not between two nations, it is a contest between liberty — the fundamental idea behind a free and open Indo-Pacific — and authoritarianism, the absence of liberty.”

China Responds

On May 27, at a China Ministry of National Defense press conference, Senior Colonel Tan Kefei said America keeps “stepping up military deployments in the Asian Pacific region, frequently conducts close-in reconnaissance against China, and even deliberately initiates dangerous circumstances between Chinese and U.S. military aircraft and vessels.”

He added that a strategy emphasizing military presence and military competition “will only heighten regional tensions and undermine world peace and stability.  No strategy should instigate countries to establish selective and exclusive military alliances, or to create a ‘New Cold War’ of confrontational blocs.” In relation to Taiwan, Tan said, “there is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is an integral part of China,” and that currently China-Australia relations “face serious difficulties.”

G7 & Quad Support Status Quo on Taiwan 

The Group of Seven, or G7 —made up of leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and United States —said on June 13 that, “We underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” adding that “we remain seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas and strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo and increase tensions.”

Three months earlier, on March 12, the first leaders’ meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad” — the United States, Japan, Australia and India — issued a statement saying they are:

“united in a shared vision for the free and open Indo-Pacific…We support the rule of law, freedom of navigation and overflight, peaceful resolution of disputes, democratic values and territorial integrity.”

Largest Land-War Maneuvers in Region

The largest land war practice in the region, the U.S.-Australian war maneuvers Talisman Sabre 2021 began in June in Australia.  Scaled down from 30,000 due to Covid, over 17,000 military personnel from the U.S., Canada, Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand and the U.K. will conduct war maneuvers including combined Special Forces operations, parachute drops, amphibious (marine) landings, land-force maneuvers, urban and air operations and the coordinated firing of live ammunition from late June until mid-August.  France, India and Indonesia will participate as observer nations. The U.S.-Australian hypersonic  weapon, capable of flying at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5), may be tested during Talisman Sabre 2021 at the Australian rocket range near the town of Woomer, South Australia.

In one month alone, this June, the U.S. IndoPacific Command military forces participated in over 35 war maneuvers with other countries.  Read more about the war preparations with these countries here.

consortiumnews.com

After the big North Korean missile scare in Hawaii a year ago, one would think that missiles are  the greatest threat to the island of Oahu. Yet, it’s not missiles that are the threat, it’s our own U.S. military and its massive jet fuel storage tanks that are leaking into Oahu’s drinking water aquifer.

Drinking water is currently safe to drink, but traces of petroleum chemicals are being detected in the groundwater near the tanks. 

Concerned citizens on the island, have for decades been trying to get the U.S. Navy to take the dangerous tanks out of Red Hill.  The military states that the underground fuel tanks are of strategic importance to U.S. national security and they are being maintained as good as 75-year old tanks can be. Yet, those who live on Oahu say: “That’s not good enough! You can’t have national security by jeopardizing the health security of your citizens.”

It is not surprising that the U.S. Navy has made little effort to remove the tanks and put replacements in a less dangerous place.  The military’s hold on the island of Oahu and its politicians is very strong both psychologically and economically. Oahu is filled with U.S. military bases and their accompanying corporations that supply the military with equipment and services.

The state of Hawaii is one of the most militarized states in the nation and Oahu is one of the most militarized islands with seven major U.S. military bases and a total of 36,620 military personnel:  Army 16,313, Navy 7,792 (drop of 8,000 from 2015), Marines 6,370 and Air Force 4,937, Coast Guard 1208.

When the 64,000 military family members and military contractors are added to the active duty military, the military-industrial complex on Oahu numbers about 100,000, which is 10 percent of Oahu’s total population of 988,000. The state of Hawaii has only 1.4 million citizens.

The U.S. military installations on the island of Oahu began being constructed soon after the overthrow of the sovereign nation of Hawaii by U.S. businessmen and a small contingent of U.S. Marines:

– Pearl Harbor Naval Base- headquarters of the US Pacific Fleet Navy and is the homeport for 25 warships,15 attack submarines, nine guided-missile destroyers and a guided-missile cruiser;

– Hickam Air Force Base- headquarters of the US Pacific Air Forces and has squadrons of F-15s, F22, C-17 and B-2 bombers;

– Kaneohe Marine Base- Marine Air Station and three Marine Regiments

– Schofield Barracks- 25thInfantry Division

And the Tropic Regions Test Center (TRTC)

– Camp Smith-headquarters of the United Indo-Pacific Command which is responsible for all U.S. military activity in the greater Asia and Pacific region including India, Camp Smith is also the headquarters of the U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific.

– Fort Shafter-headquarters for the U.S. Army Pacific

– Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies-military educational facility for military and civilian officials from countries from Asia and the Pacific for courses on international security strategy.

– Tripler Army Medical Center and Veterans Administration Medical Center-provides medical assistance to active duty military and veterans.

– U.S. Coast Guard 14th District for the Pacific (while not part of the Department of Defense-, during wartime, the Coast Guard can go under command of DOD)- three 225-foot buoy tenders, four 110-foot patrol boats, two 87-foot coastal patrol boats, four small boat stations, two sector commands, an air station, a Far East command, five detachments and over 400 aids to navigation.

Major military installations have been built on other islands of Hawaii. The Puhakaloa Training Area, the largest U.S. military training area in the world with 133,000 acres for artillery, mortar, small arms and crew-served weapons firing is located on the Big Island of Hawaii.  U.S. Air Force bombers flying from the continental U.S. drop ordnance on the area between the two volcanoes of the island of Hawaii.  

On the island of Kauai, the Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands (PMRF) is the world's largest range capable of supporting surface, submarines, aircraft, and space operations simultaneously. PMRF has over 1,100 square miles of instrumented underwater range and over 42,000 square miles of controlled airspace.  The Navy is currently using PMRF to test "hit to kill" technology using direct collision of the anti-ballistic missile with its target destroying the target by using only kinetic energy from the force of the collision. The Navy's Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System and the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System, or THAAD are tested on Kauai at PMRF. 

On the island of Maui, the Maui High Performance Computing Center, a Department of Defense Supercomputing Resource Center managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and supporting the High Performance Computing Modernization Program, provided DoD scientists and engineers with one of the world’s largest computers to solve war-making computational problems.

According to the Hawaii Chamber of Commerce, the economic direct and indirect impacts of military expenditures in Hawaii generate $14.7 billion into Hawaii’s economy, creating more than 102,000 jobs. The military’s investments in Hawaii totals $8.8 billion. Military procurement contracts amount to about $2.3 billion annually, making it a prime source of contracting opportunities for hundreds of Hawaii’s small businesses, including significant military construction projects.

The power of the U.S. military on issues in the Hawaiian Islands and its politicians at all levels cannot be underestimated, nor can the protection the military is given by its retirees and the citizens who benefit from it. The pressure on city and state officials to accept the status quo is very strong.

Finally, the U.S. government has acknowledged the medical problems the contamination of the drinking supply caused at another community- the huge U.S. Marine Base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) New River, North Carolina.  From 1953 through 1987, tens of thousands of Marines and their families were contaminated by two on-base water wells that were contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE), benzene, vinyl chloride among other compounds from on-base leaking storage tanks and an off-base dry cleaner.

At long last, the Veterans Administration has acknowledged the dangerous situation on the bases in North Carolina that was ignored for decades.  The VA has declared that a large number of diseases are caused by the chemicals and that military and family members who have contracted these diseases and who are still living will be compensated.  We can expect the same type of diseases with the continuing leaks at Red Hill:

• Aplastic anemia and other myelodysplastic syndromes
• Bladder cancer
• Breast cancer
• Esophageal cancer
• Female infertility
• Hepatic steatosis
• Kidney cancer
• Leukemia
• Lung cancer
• Miscarriage
• Multiple myeloma
• Myelodysplastic syndromes
• Neurobehavioral effects
• Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• Renal toxicity
• Scleroderma
• Parkinson’s Disease

On the other side of the country from North Carolina, the Navy has already closed down one complex of underground jet fuel storage tanks at Point Loma, California, which had 54 storage tanks.  The riveted seams on the underground tanks began leaking as they aged.  When 1.5 million gallons of fuel spilled from the site in 2006, the U.S. Navy was decided to replace the tanks.

For us on Oahu, the bottom line is that when, not if, the massive jet fuel storage tanks leak into the aquifer of Honolulu, city, state and federal officials must be held accountable– the public has given them plenty of warning of their concerns.  As with  lead in the water supply in Flint, Michigan lead, officials knew that the drinking water was contaminated but didn’t do anything to stop the community from using it. Remarkably, none of the Flint officials have gone to jail yet, but the community is demanding accountability for malfeasance in office—which would be the same in Honolulu when disaster strikes on the jet fuel storage tanks.

So, we the citizens ask our elected leaders, why do they allow such a disaster continue to threaten our water supply in Honolulu when we know that 75-year-old tanks with corroding walls are continuing to leak.

I will make this personal.

I am 72 years old and served 29 years in the U.S. military. I retired 20 years ago.  The twenty jet fuel storage tanks are 75 years old and have served each of those 75 years and are still serving.

At 72, I have had the normal number of aches and pains including a hip replacement that didn’t turn out the best and skin cancer surgery that left skin grafts and patches on my face, head and leg.

At 75, the twenty-story jet fuel storage tanks also have had aches and pains as well as their skin getting thinner and thinner due to seven decades of corrosion.   Their skin or walls are as thin as the edge of a dime in some places.  Patching of the thin skin of the Red Hill jet fuel tanks didn’t turn out so well either, with the welding on one of the patches giving way in 2014 and 27,000 gallons of jet fuel leaking out of the tanks jeopardizing the Honolulu aquifer.

Those of us in our 70s, whether we are fuel tanks or humans, know all about leaks—it's a hazard of age.

I retired from the U.S. Army after 29 years of service.  After 75 years of service, it’s time to retire the leaking Red Hill Storage tanks—and protect our precious water supply.

commondreams.org

When Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard announced her candidacy for the presidency on CNN last month, I had a feeling I’d be writing about her a fair bit. Not because I particularly want her to be president, but because I knew her candidacy would cause the narrative control mechanizations of the political/media class to overextend themselves, leaving them open to attack, exposure, and the weakening of their control of the narrative.

Mere hours before her campaign officially launched, NBC News published an astonishingly blatant smear piece titled “Russia’s propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard,” subtitled “Experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.” One of the article’s authors shared it on Twitter with the caption, “The Kremlin already has a crush on Tulsi Gabbard.”

The article reported that media outlets tied to the Russian government had been talking a lot about Gabbard’s candidacy, ironically citing as an example an RT article which documented the attempts by the US mainstream media to paint Gabbard as a Kremlin agent. The article’s authors cited the existence of such articles combined with the existence of “chatter” about Gabbard on the anonymous message board 8chan (relevant for God knows what reason) as evidence to substantiate its blaring headline. Even more hilariously, the source for its weird 8chan claim is named as none other than Renee DiResta of the narrative control firm New Knowledge, which was recently embroiled in a scandal for staging a “false flag operation” in an Alabama Senate race which gave one of the candidates the false appearance of being amplified by Russian bots.

This article is of course absurd. As we discussed recently, you will always see Russia on the same US foreign policy page as anti-interventionists like Tulsi Gabbard, because Russia, like so many other nations, opposes US interventionism. To treat this as some sort of shocking conspiracy instead of obvious and mundane is journalistic malpractice. There are many, many very good reasons to oppose the war agendas of the US-centralized empire, none of which have anything to do with having any loyalty to or sympathies for the Russian government.

But we will continue to see this tactic used again and again and again against any and all opposition to US-led interventionism for as long as the Russiagate psyop maintains its grip upon western consciousness. And make no mistake, these smears have everything to do with anti-interventionism and nothing to do with Russia. There will never, ever be an antiwar voice who the political/media class and their centrist followers espouse as good and valid; they’ll never say “Ahh, finally, someone who hates war and also isn’t aligned with Russia! We can get behind this one!” That will never, ever happen, because it is the opposition to war and interventionism itself which is being rejected, and in the McCarthyite environment of Russia hysteria, tarring it as “Russian” simply makes a practical excuse for that rejection.

All the biggest conflicts in the world can be described as unipolarism vs multipolarism: the unipolarists who support the global hegemony of the US-centralized empire at any cost, versus the multipolarists who oppose that dominance and support the existence of multiple power structures in the world. The governments of Russia, China, Iran and their allies are predominantly multipolarist in their geopolitical outlook, and they tend to be more in favor of non-interventionism, since unipolarity can only be held in place by brute force and aggression. Unipolarists, therefore, can always paint western anti-interventionists as Russian assets, since the Russian government is multipolarist and opposed to the interventionism of the unipolarists.

The nonstop propaganda campaign to keep the coals of Russia hysteria burning white hot at all times can therefore be looked at first and foremost as a psychological operation to kill support for multipolarism around the world. It can of course be used to manufacture consent for escalations against Russia, China, Syria, Venezuela, Iran etc as needed, but it can also be used to attack the ideology of anti-interventionism itself by smearing anyone who opposes unipolar oppression and aggression as an agent of a nefarious oppositional government.

The social engineers have succeeded in constructing a narrative control device which encapsulates the entire agenda of the unipolar world order in a single bumper sticker-sized talking point: “Russia opposes Big Brother, therefore anyone who opposes Big Brother is Russian.” This device didn’t take an amazing intellectual feat to create; all they had to do was recreate the paranoid insanity of the original cold war, and they already had a blueprint for that. It was simply a matter of shepherding us back there.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, there emerged a popular notion of a “peace dividend” in which defense spending could be reduced in the absence of America’s sole rival and the abundant excess funds used to take care of the American people instead. The only problem was that a lot of people had gotten very rich and powerful as a result of that cold war defense spending, and it wasn’t long before they started circulating the idea of using America’s newly uncontested might for a very expensive campaign to hammer down a liberal world order led by the beneficent guidance of the United States government. Soon the neoconservatives were pushing their unipolarist narratives in high levels of influence with great effect, and shortly thereafter they got their “new Pearl Harbor” in the form of the 9/11 attacks which justified an explosion in defense spending, interventionism and expansionism, just as the neoconservative Project for a New American Century had called for. And the rest is history.

And now our collective consciousness is planted right back in the center of that paranoid, hawkish political environment of the first cold war. The main difference now is of course that Russia is nothing remotely like a superpower today, and that the establishment Russia narrative is made entirely out of narrative, but the most important difference is that this time the establishment narratives are not taking place within the hermetically sealed bubbles of major news media corporations. People are able to communicate with each other and share information far more easily than they were prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, and westerners are able to easily access Russian media and anti-interventionist narratives if they want to.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world, as I never tire of saying. This difficulty in replicating the hermetically sealed media environment of the original cold war poses a severe challenge for narrative control, and it is for this reason reason that there is now so much skepticism of the establishment Russia narrative. It is also the reason for the establishment’s aggressive maneuvers to censor the internet, to demonize Russian media, and to smear anti-interventionist perspectives.

But we can’t keep living this way. We all know this, deep down. The people at the helm of the unipolar world order are advancing an ecocidal world economy which is stripping the earth bare and filling the air with poison while at the same time pushing more and more aggressively against the multipolarist powers, one of which happens to have thousands of nuclear warheads at its disposal. The unipolarity so enthusiastically promoted by the neoconservatives and their fellow travelers has reached the end of the line after just a few short years, and now it’s time to dispense with it and try something else. They will necessarily smear us with everything but the kitchen sink for saying so, but we are right and they are wrong. The state of the world today proves this beyond a doubt.

medium.com

The Kanaks are in the same position as the native Hawai’ians. An influx of white Europeans from the U.S. mainland doomed any chance that Hawai’i would ever regain its independence, stolen by unscrupulous American colonizers and missionaries in the late 19th century.

French Polynesia has also seen its hopes for independence dashed by the interests of the white European settler community. Oscar Manutahi Temaru, the leader of the pro-independence Maohi people of French Polynesia, flew to New Caledonia in advance of its referendum, to campaign for a “yes” vote. Kanak and Maohi independence leaders were surprised to see a few Corsican Assembly members fly all the way from Ajaccio to assist their Kanak friends. Not all white Europeans in New Caledonia support the colonial status of the territory. In addition to Corsicans, Bretons, Basques, and Occitanians, mindful of French cultural and political imperialism in metropolitan France, rallied to support the “yes” vote for independence.

The Kanaks also received support from their fellow Melanesians. The West Papua National Committee, which is fighting for independence from Indonesia, urged all Kanaks to vote yes for independence. Support also came from political leaders in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea.

While Temaru’s “Tavini Huiraatira no Te Ao Maohi” movement and New Caledonia’s “Front de Liberation National Kanak et Socialiste” (FLNKS) are united in their desire for France to sever its colonial overseer role in the South Pacific, it may be too late. These island groups, along with the French territory of Wallis and Futuna, have seen too many white Europeans, along with their tourist-oriented businesses, take up residence on the islands.

After 165 years of being a French colony, voters in New Caledonia voted “yes” or “no” on the question: “Do you want New Caledonia to accede to full sovereignty and become independent?” Prior to the referendum, media in Australia, most notably, that owned by neo-conservative war monger Rupert Murdoch, warned that an independent New Caledonia could fall prey to Chinese domination. The anti-China meme is being hyped by Australia as China flexes its military muscle against hostile moves by the Donald Trump kleptocracy in the Asia-Pacific region. These include provocations by the U.S. Navy in the Strait of Taiwan, South China Sea, and East China Sea.

Just prior to the New Caledonian independence referendum, the United States and Australia made two significant military moves in the region. They served two purposes. The first was a signal to China that the Western powers consider the South Pacific to be in their geo-political sphere of influence. The second was to send a message to the voters in New Caledonia that independence, as far as Washington and Canberra were concerned, was not an option.

The United States dispatched the guided-missile destroyer USS Shoup (DDG-86) to its South Pacific territory of American Samoa as a show of force in the region. Although American Samoa is 1595 miles northeast of New Caledonia, it was a rare visit by a well-armed U.S. warship to the territory. At the same time of the U.S. ship visit, Australia’s neo-conservative and evangelical Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, hammered out a naval agreement in Sydney with visiting Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill. Australia will redevelop the Lombrum naval base on the Papua New Guinea island of Manus. It was not a coincidence that the Australian-PNG agreement occurred while Admiral John Richardson, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, was visiting Australia. Richardson said he hoped that American Navy ships will be able to use the new naval base, alongside Australian naval vessels. The United States is currently expanding a U.S. Marine Corps training base in Darwin in northwestern Australia , as well as its presence at Tindal Royal Australian Air Force Bases in the Northern Territory.

The United States and Australia have been working to block any attempts by China to expand its influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Both countries warned that China was interested in establishing a South Pacific naval base after it agreed to invest $114 million on re-developing a World War II-era wharf in Luganville, on the Vanuatu island of Espiritu Santo. The reports of Chinese military interest in the Luganville wharf resulted in a delegation of U.S. officials, including U.S. Marines, paying a visit to the Luganville harbor master. The Americans were interested in using the deep-water wharf, redeveloped in 2016 by the Shanghai Construction Company, to accommodate a U.S. aircraft carrier.

Whereas the outcome of the New Caledonia independence referendum was never in doubt — since the territory’s European population, coupled with pressure from Paris, Canberra, and Washington — ensured a “no” vote, next year’s independence referendum in nearby Bougainville is another story. Scheduled for June 15, 2019, the referendum on independence from Papua New Guinea is expected to pass overwhelmingly. That has Australia and the United States concerned, with China being used, once again, as the “bogeyman.” Papua New Guinea Prime Minister O’Neill, in violation of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, is beginning to drag his feet on holding the referendum. Independence is strongly opposed by Rio Tinto, Inc., the foreign owner of Bougainville’s highly-productive Panguna copper mine. Rio Tinto has at its disposal an army of lobbyists in Port Moresby, Canberra, and Washington ready to indefinitely postpone the referendum.

In the 1990s, Bougainville was plagued by the presence of foreign mercenaries fighting the pro-independence rebels on the island. Some of these mercenaries are now found working for Erik Prince, the founder of the infamous Blackwater and brother of Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos. Prince’s new firm, Reflex Responses (R2), based in Abu Dhabi, is providing mercenary support to mining and oil companies interesting in quelling local rebellions where they have installations and other vested interests.

The South Pacific has always been considered a serene zone of tranquility. World War II, followed by Cold War testing by the Americans, British, and French of atomic and hydrogen bombs in the region’s waters, served as a catastrophic change for the native islanders of the region. South Pacific islanders deserve to be left alone by European colonizers and white European settlers and squatters. France should quit Kanaky, Maohi, and Wallis and Futuna. The United States should vacate Guahan (Guam), Eastern Samoa, the Northern Marianas, and Hawai’i. Australia should return to Norfolk Island its self-governance and grant the Torres Strait Islands self-determination. New Zealand must free Niue, the Cook Islands, Tokelau, and Rēkohu (Chatham Islands). And neo-colonizers should also get the message. Indonesia should free West Papua, Papua New Guinea recognize Bougainville’s independence, and Chile grant self-determination to Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

The South Pacific should be permitted to become, as its name implies, “pacific.”

The chief political party backing independence, the “Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS),” finds itself battling a perception management campaign, largely being waged in France and Australia, that independence will bring New Caledonia into the orbit of an expanding sphere of influence of China. The canard of Chinese influence has recently been advanced by Australia to call for an abatement of ties between Vanuatu, the former Anglo-French colony of New Hebrides, and China. Vanuatu, which has accepted financial assistance from China, is being used as a bogeyman by Canberra, backed by U.S. military interests in Hawaii, to argue against independence for New Caledonia.

The battle for independence of New Caledonia is opposed by 60 percent of the 270,000 eligible voters of the island group, who represent French white transplants to the colony. Some 40 percent of the population, largely the indigenous Kanaks, favor independence. Current polling indicates that the independence option will go down to defeat.

In the world’s current race to gain control over natural resources important to high-tech supremacy, New Caledonia possesses one-quarter of the world’s known nickel resources. In addition to the racist attitudes of metropolitan French migrants who moved to New Caledonia and who do not want to share political and economic power with the indigenous Kanaks, control of the nickel industry, important in the production of batteries, means the pro-independence forces in New Caledonia have an uphill battle.

French mining companies have ensured that the Kanaks, who work in the mines, do not have the opportunity to advance up the economic ladder to ownership positions in the mining industry. France has ensured that an all-too-typical colonialist system lives on in New Caledonia with the native subjugated population serving the interest of the French state and a mercantilism-based inequitable economic system.

Anti-independence propaganda being distributed to the world’s media largely emanates from the neo-conservative and pro-Zionist Lowy Institute based in Sydney, Australia and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-funded East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Such propaganda warns that an independent New Caledonia will be subject to Chinese and even “Islamist” influence. These propaganda mills are nothing more than fronts for Western mining companies. The same arguments being used against New Caledonia’s independence in the November 2018 referendum are also being used to disparage independence in the referendum scheduled for Bougainville, an island of Papua New Guinea, in 2019. In New Caledonia, it is the nickel exploiters who dominate the debate on independence, in Bougainville it is the copper companies who have long exploited the Panguna copper mine.

French President Emmanuel Macron, a product of the Rothschild Bank, an enterprise that wrote the book on exploitation of native peoples by unscrupulous European colonialists for well over two centuries, said, during a May 2018 visit to New Caledonia, that, “after 164 years of colonization I recognize New Caledonia is a jewel.” Macron showed his cards when he called for a “sovereignty in partnership” between New Caledonia and France. Macron, playing to the music of big power politics, said that New Caledonia’s future is inextricably linked to a French “Indo-Pacific axis” that must not “fall under a new hegemony.”

Macron’s visit was accompanied by a 4,000-strong “March for France” in Noumea, the capital city. Macron might as well have said that he sees New Caledonia as nothing more than a jewel in the French colonial crown. Macron also said he wanted to preserve the status quo in New Caledonia with the assistance of the two regional colonial powers, Australia and New Zealand.

The French “Caldoches” – migrant colonialists and their offspring in New Caledonia — are led by the Caledonia Together Party. Its leader, Philippe Gomes, was born in Algeria during the French colonial rule of that country. Gomes is one of the “pied-noirs,” or “black feet,” the term used by French Europeans who enjoyed special privileges in Algeria and were firmly opposed to Algerian independence. It is particularly galling for the Kanaks to see a pied-noir from Algeria, with all the social baggage of brutal French colonialism in that country, now leading the political force in New Caledonia who wants the territory to remain French. Gomes is more at home with multi-millionaires from the French mainland, who have built massive holiday homes and berthed expensive yachts in New Caledonia, than with the native Kanaks.

Kanaks, who live only a short walk from Noumea’s European cafés and boutiques, live in squalor. Many do not have access to the water, sewage, or electrical systems. In 1988, many Kanaks lost their lives in anti-French demonstrations on the island of Ouvéa, protests that were brutally suppressed by French military force in “Operation Victor.” Pro-independence sentiment in New Caledonia is generally found in certain geographic areas. For example, the pro-independence Melanesian Progressive Union, which joins the FLNKS is supporting total independence for New Caledonia, finds most of its support in the North Province. Pro-independence sentiment is also strong in the largely underdeveloped Loyalty Islands.

In 1980, the pro-independence Caledonian Union (UC), a Kanak-European mixed party, stated that it planned to unilaterally declare independence in 1982. Prior to the declaration, the UC Secretary-General, Pierre Declercq, a native of metropolitan France, was assassinated in his home in Noumea. The killers were never found but native Kanaks believed the assassination was carried out by agents of the French intelligence service, the “Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage” (SDECE). The successor of the SDECE, the “Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure”  (DGSE), had no problem bombing the Greenpeace ship “Rainbow Warrior” in Auckland harbor in New Zealand in 1985. The action, “Operation Satanique,” resulted in the death of one of the crewmen.

Pro-independence parties called for a boycott of a 1987 independence referendum. A mere 59 percent of eligible voters participated, resulting in a lop-sided anti-independence result of 98.3 percent. The Noumea Accord of 1998 paved the way for this year’s independence referendum. So far, only one pro-independence party, the Labor Party, said it will not participate in the November referendum. Its leader, Louis Kotra Uregei, has called the vote an “electoral farce,” with France and its well-off transplants on the islands holding all the cards.

The Labor Party’s reasoning is a sound one. It argues that France has stacked the deck against independence by permitting the electoral roll for the plebiscite to discriminate against native Kanaks who have no fixed address. The French authorities and the non-Kanak majority in the territory have refused the franchise to 12,000 Kanaks. The Kanaks put much of the blame on French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who showed an unusual interest in determining who is and who is not eligible to vote. The Kanaks object to Caldoches who are recent arrivals in New Caledonia voting in the referendum. The 1988 Noumea Agreement specifies that only Caldoches who arrived prior to 1994 may vote, but the Kanaks believe there has been a manipulation of the electoral rolls to favor the Europeans.

By all rights, Kanaky should be an independent country. However, the machinations of Macron, Philippe, Gomes, and others seem intent on preventing a new country from joining the international parade of nations.

On Dec. 28, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Russia limits the scope of US military observation flights over its territory starting from Jan. 1, 2018. Moscow cancels overnight stops at three airfields for US observation planes, as well as scraps a number of bilateral agreements that were made to facilitate observation flights. The step is taken in response to US curbs on similar Russian flights over Hawaii and Alaska coming into force on the first day of 2018. The restrictions are reversible and could be lifted if the US backtracked on its policies.

In September, the US warned Russia that the restrictions on flights over the Kaliningrad region – a non-contiguous section of Russian territory squeezed between Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic Sea – were seen as a violation of the treaty. Russia restricted flights over the Kaliningrad region because some parties to the treaty crossed the length and breadth of the flight path, causing problems in the use of the region’s limited airspace and to the Kaliningrad international airport. It prompted Moscow to restrict the maximum flight distance over the Kaliningrad Region to 500 kilometres without changing the total flight distance of 5,500 km and hence coverage of Russia’s territory. The regulation does not run contrary to the OST or the signatories’ subsequent decisions. The flight range of 500 km is sufficient for observing any part of the region. The US, Canada, Turkey and Georgia have established restrictions within the treaty on flying over their territories.

Russia has been accused of the unlawful denial to permit observation flights in the 10 kilometer border area of the so-called Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But the two entities are sovereign states recognized as such by Russia. The Open Sky Treaty states that the flights must not violate a ten-kilometer corridor along the border of another state.

Another accusation said Moscow overused the force majeure provision to change the coordinated plans of observation flights due to flights made by the country’s leaders in close proximity to the planned paths of observation flights. But the provision was invoked only once.

Why the US has chosen to keep Russian surveillance aircraft away from Alaska and the Hawaii? Alaska is home to four air bases, three naval facilities, Minuteman III ICBMs sites. On November 2, the military finished installing the 44^th Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) at the Missile Defense Complex at Fort Greely, Alaska, completing the deployment of 14 additional GBIs ordered by President Obama in 2013. Hawaii is where United States Air Force Hickam Air Force Base and the Naval Station Pearl Harbor as well as Pacific Missile Range Facility are located.

Actually, it’s not a severe blow; Russia can use satellites to observe these areas. But it’s a start. The restrictions could unleash a chain reaction to bury the treaty as part of a broader process of arms control erosion. For instance, Georgia has closed its skies to Russian observation flights in a clear and gross violation of the OST. It calls the 2018 flights into question. The decision could be explained by the desire to conceal from observers the construction of military facilities.

The Open Skies Treaty continues to be a valuable instrument for security and stability at the time of arms control crisis. The OST enhances transparency and the risk of war. With the treaty in force, the US gains as much as Russia but by having provoked Moscow into taking retaliatory measures it has made one more step to make the world slide an unfettered arms race.

Signed in 1992 and in force since 2002, the treaty, a fundamental trust-building measure, permits its 34 ratified member-states to conduct observation flights over one another’s territory while capturing aerial imagery of military personnel and materiel. US officials assert that Russia violated the agreement by imposing restrictions on flights over the Kaliningrad Oblast, a non-contiguous section of Russian territory squeezed between Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic Sea.

Under the treaty, nations get a quota of flights they can fly over one another’s territory. Russia began restricting that flight distance to 500km for all flights over Kaliningrad since 2014. “US experts have determined that 500 kilometers is insufficient to enable the United States to observe Kaliningrad in its entirety in one flight,” warns the State Department’s 2016 adherence report.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on his reappointment on September, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US may scrap the treaty “if Russia is not in compliance.” According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the US military see a diminishing value of the treaty, which was negotiated in the early 1990s and came into force in 2002, due to advances of satellite imaging technology.

Russia restricted flights over the Kaliningrad region because some parties to the treaty crossed the length and breadth of the flight path, causing problems in the use of the region’s limited airspace and to the Kaliningrad international airport. The new regulation is in compliance with the treaty. The US, Canada, Turkey and Georgia have established restrictions within the treaty on flying over their territories.

The US claims that observation flights near Russia’s borders with South Ossetia and Abkhazia have been restricted in breach of the treaty. US media fail to present the Russian position on the issue. Moscow points out that that the two entities are sovereign states recognized as such by Russia. The Open Sky Treaty states that the flights must not violate a ten-kilometer corridor along the border of another state. As one can see, the refusal is in compliance with the treaty’s provisions.

Russia has some “no-fly zones” stipulated by national law. The treaty also allows for deviations under “force majeure,” or an event beyond a state’s control. Normally, it has not been a problem but it has become one as the bilateral relationship has deteriorated and anti-Russia hysteria has been whipped up in America.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia would take its own measures against the United States in response to any new US restrictions. Commenting on the expected announcement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said treaty members “should strictly follow its terms and raise any complaints through mechanisms of the treaty.”

Russia also has claims that a number of participating states, including Canada and the United States, are interfering with observation flights but it does not let it come into the open. “We have serious claims that a number of participating states are interfering with observation flights,” retired Maj. Gen. Alexander Peresypkin, a member of Russia’s Vienna delegation, told the Wall Street Journal.

Like in the case of INF Treaty, the US makes controversial issues come into the public domain before officials and experts are engaged in serious discussions to address the differences. It should be noted that the Trump administration has not yet formed a good team capable of negotiating with Russia on arms control related issues.

Mikhail Ulyanov, the head of the Russian foreign ministry’s department on arms control, “As for the claims against us, we do not consider them grounded. In fact, the agreement is very complex; its provisions cannot always be straightforwardly interpreted, so it is necessary to look for compromises and solutions.” Steve Rademaker, former Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control and the Bureau of International Security and Non-proliferation, told Congress that Russia complies with the Open Skies Treaty.

The United States launched the arms control erosion process by withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. It still has not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) 20 years after it was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1996. In 2016, Russia suspended the bilateral Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PDMA) because of Washington’s failure to observe the terms of the deal. Now the US Congress is moving decisively to start dismantling the Open Skies Treaty along with other major arms control agreements currently in place.

There are only the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty still left in force. The future of both is in doubt. President Trump has already decried the New Start Treaty. The INF Treaty has become a controversial issue with both sides accusing each other of violations. The US has already taken practical steps leading to the withdrawal from it. Now Washington is on the way to tear up the treaty, which has enormous importance for confidence building.

The Vienna Document on confidence- and security-building measures is limited in its ability to garner information on the ongoing military activities. The Vienna Document and the Open Skies Treaty complement each other. Tearing up the Open Skies Treaty means killing the confidence-building regime between Russia and NATO. With the treaty in force, transparency is enhanced and the risk of war and miscalculation is reduced. It’s important to keep it in place and settle the disputes at the round table.

Under Donald Trump's strongman policies, the United States is experiencing the same rapid decentralization that has seen other federations split apart in rapid fashion. Granted, the United States does not have the same underlying causes of ethnicity, language, and religion that helped propel the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, but the unilateral actions of the federal government are resulting in a steady movement by the American states away from the center in Washington, DC. Trump and his advisers, who rode the slogan of «states’ rights» into the White House, have shown a tendency toward disregarding the authority of the states and their representation in Washington, as embodied by the Congress, in favor of a strong unitary executive. The movement of the states toward more independence against the wishes of the center, as well as the Trump administration’s attempt to supersede the interests of the states is fraught with dangerous possibilities.

Federal forms of government are only successful when there is continual dialogue between the national and sub-national governments. When that dialogue is replaced by unilateral dictates from the center, the sub-national entities show their opposition by starting to ignore the national government. It was British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's unpopular poll tax in the 1980s that helped lead to the devolution of power from London to newly-formed regional governments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The devolution of powers to Scotland helped lead the path to the political dominance of the Scottish National Party and a referendum on Scottish independence. The atrophy of successive Belgian governments led directly to a federalized Belgium where substantial powers were devolved to Dutch-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia, and the Brussels-Capital Region, each with their own parliaments and governments.

While it is illegal for American states to secede, as witnessed by the military defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War, other forms of sub-national autonomy may be the ultimate outcome of the Trump administration's practical disregard for the federalism as embodied by the U.S. Constitution.

The drive toward more state autonomy from Washington is influenced by a number of policies enacted by the Trump administration, including those dealing with the environment, drug usage, health care, personally-identifiable data, relations with Cuba, immigration policy, and foreign trade. Although there are other issues that have driven wedges between the Trump administration and its Republican boosters in Congress, the aforementioned «big seven» are the current catalysts that have many states opting to seek their own political paths, without interference from Washington.

Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord resulted in the creation of the «United States Climate Alliance», a group of states that remain committed to achieving the goals of the Paris Accord, regardless of Washington's wishes. The first three states to declare independence from Trump and his Environmental Protection Agency's policies were California, Washington, and New York. Connecticut soon followed. The Republican governors of Massachusetts and Vermont also joined the alliance, putting an end to criticism that the U.S. Climate Alliance was a Democratic Party contrivance. These states were followed by Rhode Island, Oregon, Hawaii, Virginia, Minnesota, and Delaware. Other states that remain committed to supporting the Paris Accord but have not formally joined the U.S. Climate Alliance are Colorado, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Illinois, Iowa, and Maine. The District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which are not states, also adhered to the Paris Accord.

The Climate Alliance has served as a backdrop to some governors conducting bilateral talks with leaders of foreign governments on not only the environment but also immigration. Washington Governor Jay Inslee met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Seattle and they jointly backed the Paris Accord. Inslee also discussed Mexican immigrants in his state in talks with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City. California Governor Jerry Brown flew to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. There, the two leaders reiterated their support for the Paris Accord and discussed bilateral economic interests. These included China-California trade issues during a time in which Trump is threatening to unleash a global trade war.

When it comes to thumbing noses at Washington and the Trump administration, the Pacific Coast states – which are becoming a sort of Pacific States of America sub-alliance within the United States – are leading the pack.

Washington, Oregon, and California have rejected threats by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to begin enforcing federal marijuana laws. The three states have legalized marijuana for both medical and recreational uses. These states were recently joined by Nevada. As Washington and Colorado, the latter also legalizing pot for medical and recreational use, have discovered, the tax revenue brought into state coffers by the marijuana economy have helped bail them out of financial destitution. Trump officials have not offered up any federal offsets for the loss of marijuana revenue, so the states have basically told Trump, Sessions, and the Drug Enforcement Administration to mind their own business when it comes to enforcement of federal drug laws within their states. These multi-use marijuana states are joined by Alaska, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia.

Another group of states have declared their support for continued Medicaid expansion benefits under the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act (ACA) and have rejected the sweeping cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, and veteran's health benefits being made by congressional Republicans and members of the Trump administration. Again, among the states instituting expanded Medicaid to cover low-wage earners in their states are the three core anti-Trump Pacific states of California, Oregon, and Washington, joined by Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. Other Medicaid expansion states are Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

A pattern of early devolution is developing in the United States. This is also being seen in other policy areas.

An overwhelming 44 states have rejected a request for personally-identifiable voter registration data by Trump's politically-motivated President's Commission on Election Integrity, also known as the «Kobach Commission», named after the vice chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. The commission is a ruse designed to conduct mass suppression of voting rights in the spirit of the old Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state-funded body entrusted by Mississippi's governor to suppress civil rights of African-Americans in the state. In a tweet, Trump asked, «what are they [the states] trying to hide». The simple answer is that they are not hiding anything but protecting personal data pursuant to state statutes. It is shocking that Trump does not understand the basic federal and state laws regarding the privacy of data.

California's Secretary of State Alex Padilla laid down the gauntlet to the Kobach Commission in declaring, «I will not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally». Mississippi's Republican Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann told Kobach's commission to «go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from».

Trump's decision to roll back economic and travel agreements with Cuba established by the Obama administration has also set off a rebellion among states that see greater trade and travel opportunities with Cuba as helping their own states.

Trump's decision was met with defiance by Minnesota. That state's Democratic Lieutenant Governor led a bipartisan trade delegation to Cuba that declared its support for the Obama-led detente between the United States and Cuba. Louisiana Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards and the state's Agricultural Commissioner Mike Strain, a Republican, declared that Trump's sanctions on Cuba will not affect Louisiana's growing agricultural trade with the island nation. They intend to increase trade with Cuba and not diminish it, regardless of Trump's actions.

The other issue that has spurred states to challenge the authority of Trump is immigration. The first aspect is Trump's travel ban affecting the issuance of standard and special refugee visas to individuals from six designated Muslim countries: Iran, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia. Iraq was later dropped from the list. Among the states that filed federal suits against implementation of the federal government we find two of the rebellious Pacific states – Washington and Oregon.

The second aspect of Trump's immigration policy is the Department of Homeland Security's rounding up of undocumented migrants throughout the United States and their deportation to their countries of origin. California is about to become a «sanctuary state», which means it will refuse to assist federal law enforcement in the detention of illegal migrants.

Foreign trade may be the catalyst that drives some states away from the federal government in a constitutional showdown. Multicultural Hawaii, which is showing a desire to separate itself completely from Trump’s policies and has an active Native Hawaiian independence movement to help spur it on, is the only state to sue the administration over the constitutionality of Trump's visa ban. Hawaii sees itself as America’s gateway to the Pacific and Asia and freedom of travel is key to that view. Hawaii will not participate willingly in a Trump trade war as attested to by the state’s very active trade offices in Beijing and Taipei.

Other states, particularly the Pacific rebels, are not likely to adopt trade war policies by the Trump administration. The U.S. Constitution carves out foreign trade as a responsibility of the federal government and it will be trade issues that will see the first rifts between Washington, DC and the states. California has a major trade office in Beijing. Washington state and Oregon maintain trade offices in Shanghai. Some state trade representatives are afforded the same diplomatic courtesies by their host nations as diplomatic consuls. The states will not give up their foreign trade opportunities to satisfy the whims of a trade megalomaniac like Trump.

The decentralization forces now at play in the United States, spurred by the troubling power-grabbing moves by the Trump administration, are noteworthy for being largely bipartisan, largely trans-continental – except for a few regressive southern states and a few states in the prairies and mountain west – and showing no signs of abatement. If this is the situation six months into the Trump administration, political scientists are wondering if there will even be a «United» States at the end of Trump's term in office, particularly if that comes in January 2025.

Hilary Clinton defined in very clear terms delineated the rising US interests in the Asia-Pacific region. She called the Asia-Pacific as the ‘pivot point’ and “the world’s strategic and economic centre of gravity will be the Asia-Pacific.” She pointed out, “One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will be to lock in a substantially increased investment — diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise — in this region.” She further argued, the US has mostly come out of the burdens imposed on its exchequer by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The international security assistance force is scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan within a few years. This leaves, as Clinton reasoned, the US enough leeway and resources to divert from these areas towards Asia-Pacific, which has not been drastically affected by ongoing global churning, caused by financial crises as clearly visible in Europe. The US will be interested to forge new partnership in this region towards strengthening its economy. The Trans-Pacific Partnership with having few members of the region such as Chile, New Zealand, Brunei and Singapore will likely be further strengthened by the joining of the US, Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Peru. During a visit to Tokyo last year in November, President Obama clearly delineated the US approach towards this power hub, and emphasized that his role as ‘the US’ first Pacific President’ will be multi-vectored in coming months. He declared, “The fortunes of America and the Asia-Pacific have become more closely linked than ever.” The last year has witnessed whirlwind tour of the US diplomats and leaders to this region, with the visits of President Obama, Hilary Clinton, and Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta. This time as well Clinton’s visit will cover a wide array of countries with vast and diverse political set ups in the region such as Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia, the last one hosting East Asian summit later this month.

The contours of the emerging power play in Asia Pacific will be mainly threefold: trade, strategic alliances and clashes over the values governing nation states… Among the three, the urgent attention will be given to trade. As the global scenario witnessing scattering of old economic and power centres, with the shifting of economic base towards Asia Pacific, increasing attention will be given to this emerging region, which accounts for world’s 44 per cent of world trade, 40 per cent of global population and about 54 per cent of global Gross Domestic Product. The economic growth of the countries in the region has accounted for 70 per cent of global growth in the past decade. While the Euro zone and also the US are grappling with the financial crises, the Asia Pacific region has witnessed steady growth in all these years. Starting from China down to the countries of Australia, New Zealand, or other countries of southeast Asia like Singapore, and even the countries of South America such as Peru, and other countries of this region as well have not suffered as other parts of the globe particularly in Europe or the US. Hence, in the field of trade, the US objective will be to brace up its relations with the regional countries. This summit will likely witness the strengthening of Trans-Pacific Partnership, with the US in the lead. The US trade objectives may clash with that of China, which has recently raised its tirade against the trade policies of the US. The Chinese official daily Xinhua of 11 November 2001 while analyzing the positives and negatives of the APEC summit urged the US to withdraw its protectionist policies. It quoted Assistant Commerce Minister Yu Jianhua who said, “China hopes the meeting will further promote the liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region, push forward economic and technology cooperation, oppose trade protectionism.”  The US on the other hand has harped on the point that China must appreciate its currency Yuan in order to have fair trade. The emerging trade matrix will likely see increasing tussle between the US and China in the region.

Another important component of this emerging power play is forging or shaping of alliances. The region is full of diversities, with different powers having different strategic objectives. There are numerous fault lines among the players in the region. China has differences with India on issues of border as well as sea dealings. Few months back China sent an official protest to India in order to not to enter into negotiations with Vietnam to explore energy resources in South China Sea. Similarly, China has differences with other South China Sea littoral countries. India has also evinced a keen interest to play a significant role in the region. This month, Asia Young Leaders Summit is being held in New Delhi, where members from 30 countries of Asia-Pacific region will congregate. While India enjoys good relations with Russia, which in turn has good relations with China, it will be interesting to see how the emerging aspirations of the US will influence these alliances. The regional alliances like Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Ganga-Mekong Cooperation Project (GMC), Bangladesh India Myanmar Sri Lanka Thailand Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) will unlikely remain untouched by the emerging power engagements in this region. Hence, when Clinton during her speech talked about the US interests in the region that spans from ‘the Indian subcontinent to western shores of the Americas,’ it is rather the assertion of emerging US approach in the region. The US has currently about 50,000 troops stationed in Japan and South Korea. There are various contentious issues in the region, ranging from South China Sea to North Korea and many others. China’s insistence on its ‘pacific rise,’ and its policy of ‘harmony and reconciliation,’ will have to go through increasing contestation and rising or breaking or moulding of alliances in the region.

However, the sore point in the emerging matrix will be interrogation of values practiced by nation states. Clinton during her speech said, “We have made very clear our serious concerns about China’s record on human rights.” The whole Asia Pacific region has sheltered different kinds of regimes, with having different kinds of political set ups, which will come under increasing questioning by the US and its allies in coming days. The countries like China, the second largest economy in the world, which has expressed its policy of ‘peaceful rise’ will likely take these statements and policies as unnecessary interference in their internal affairs, while the US will likely use this as a point for drumming support to strengthen and fulfill its objectives in the region. The point that needs emphasis is that the region that is so vast, so diverse, there will be bound to be subtleties in policies and diplomatic maneuvers to reshape the emerging contours of power balance in the region.

With the shifting of power centre from west to east, the coming years will also witness shifting of strategies and alliances. In this emerging matrix, besides the US, the other global players like Russia, India and China have to play greater roles towards maintaining the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region.