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1817@SURTITRE = An Existentialist Shift
On 17 October, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe both published the same long and detailed article setting forth the conditions of the sale entered into at the start of 2003 of 48 Martin F-16 fighter aircraft to Poland. The sale price was $3.5 billion, but the contract entailed a promise of American investment in Poland to the tune of $6 billion. The article observed that “the United States brought the full force of its powerful economy to bear on prospective military allies.” More to the point, Gregory Filipowicz, a Polish consultant explained to us that “Lockheed Martin didn’t win the contract, the US government did, with pressure and support coming from the very highest levels. They created a program that, politically and economically, it was very hard to say no to.”
But the article’s main contribution relates to what, in retrospect, constitutes the most interesting aspect of the sale. It turns out that the Polish military commitment in Iraq was decided in conjunction with the F-16 contract, the promises of heavy American investments having served as the quid pro quo for the Polish commitment. The article notes that the 12 October announcement by the Poles of the start of the withdrawal of their contingent in early 2005 came “after Polish officials complained that the F-16 deal was not producing as much US investment as they had anticipated, though they had long denied any relationship between the deal and the troops”.
It is this point that demands our attention, since it is something totally new. The Polish F-16 sale must necessarily be viewed from a political standpoint, in the light of the interpretation conveyed in the article cited, which, after all, merely articulates an obvious trend. That sale was one of the most long, drawn-out negotiations in the history of weapons sales, and its terms have changed substantially along the way.
The sale of the F-16s to Poland can only be understood in its historical perspective: the attempt by the Americans to ‘move into’ Eastern Europe and to move into Europe quite simply. In 1991, Richard Nixon wrote a long article in which he set forth a ‘back door’ tactic for ‘moving into’ Europe: move into Europe through Eastern Europe liberated from the Communist yoke, by the ‘back door’. The sale of the F-16s to Poland and the concomitant political initiative follow this paradigm to a tee. Along the way, however, something major has gone awry. And therein lies the interest of this affair, an affair that brings to mind the ‘Schlieffen Plan’ of 1914: a succession of tactical victories culminating in a strategic defeat.
• Negotiations for the sale of the F-16s started in 1991-92 (at the same time as other proposals made by other, European, competitors), at the same time as it appeared that the Eastern bloc under Soviet domination, Poland in particular, was disintegrating as a bloc; at the same time as Communism was collapsing in the former Soviet Union.
• The negotiations underwent an initial transformation, in response to an increase in US pressure, in 1993-94. During those two years, there were mid-term elections in the United States, with the mobilization of America’s Polish-American community to vote Democratic on the strength of the promise made by the Clinton Administration to open negotiations for Poland’s accession to NATO (at the same time as for two other former Soviet bloc countries, Czechoslovakia [soon to break up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia] and Hungary).
• Following Clinton’s reelection in November 1996, a powerful US lobby was formed, one that was favorable to the establishment of new ties between the US and former Sovietized Europe through NATO enlargement. Within this lobby, pride of place went to Bruce P. Jackson, as founder of an association favorable to NATO enlargement. Jackson was close to the Neoconservative group that sponsored the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Early in 2003, Jackson played an instrumental role in the ‘Letter of The Ten’ in which the leaders of the ten ex-Communist European countries – including Poland – expressed their support for United States policy in Iraq.
In a way, the fundamental role of one man in this affair – Bruce P. Jackson – makes it possible to better understand the dimensions and the implications of the structural evolution of power in the United States and that evolution’s impact on the shifts in the Polish F-16 procurement. The persona of Bruce P. Jackson was instrumental in creating the conditions for a fundamental paradigm shift in US defense industry, a paradigm shift that affected everything in its wake, including the Polish F-16 contract.
Jackson is a former US Army Special Forces intelligence officer, often tapped for ‘special missions’, in particular in Bosnia and in Kosovo, who in 1986-87 worked with Richard Perle in the Pentagon and who in 1993 entered Lockheed Martin, becoming that firm’s Vice-President in 1997 until his departure in 2001. Jackson never really separated these diverse activities and, according to various reports, he engaged in secret operations in Bosnia in 1994, at a time when he was already on Lockheed Martin’s payroll. This swashbuckling adventurer, a Neoconservative ideologue, is thus also an F-16 salesman (as well as a Republican Party strategist and fund-raiser). His influence marks the ‘ideologization’ of defense sales, with links between the country’s defense industry and its military industrial complex, and an ideological group like the Neoconservatives. The election of GW Bush to the presidency and the attack of 11 September 2001 would definitively seal this alliance.
Jackson’s role and importance in the Polish F-16 sale are succinctly summarized in this excerpt from an article by Stephen Gowans entitled “War, NATO Expansion and the Other Rackets of Bruce P. Jackson” in the 25 November issue of What’s Left: “Mr. Jackson was Vice President for Strategy and Planning at Lockheed Martin Corporation, which means that while Jackson was founding the US Committee for NATO and the Project for Transitional Democracies; while he was serving on the board of the Project for the New American Century; and while he was chairing the Republican Party subcommittee on foreign policy – all of which advocated more defense spending – Bruce P. Jackson was also working for a company that stood to gain the most from stepped up spending on weapons.”
The Polish F-16 sale, with its bottom-line snare (Poland’s commitment in Iraq in exchange for US investments in Poland), constitutes a perfect demonstration of the evolution of US policy and of NATO’s orientation. The schematic geopolitical evolution of this trend is in effect that of a policy driving toward the East, then shifting in a matter of years toward the Southern part of that East: a drive toward formerly-Communist Eastern Europe (with American policy militating actively for NATO enlargement), and then shifting toward the South, i.e. toward the Middle East and Iraq. This reorientation of American policy is one that the Americans would like to see followed by NATO. We can see the extent to which this analysis reflects and fairly dictates Poland’s orientation in this affair: the F-16 sale being presented initially as a concrete illustration of NATO enlargement toward the East – primarily through those East European countries, with Poland being the leader and the most powerful – and then becoming the basis for Poland’s commitment in Iraq.
What we have is a total shift in the matrix that gave rise to the Polish F-16 purchase. At the outset, the Polish sale was couched in a well-defined regional framework. It was a concrete demonstration of America’s influence over the countries of the former Communist Eastern Europe, newly members of NATO (and of the EU). The diplomatic and geostrategic matrix was clearly drawn in the context of trans-Atlantic relations and in the context of the policy of American influence in Europe. Viewed from that perspective, there was nothing fundamentally new, other than the methods employed, perhaps. It has now been 60 years that the Americans have exerted their influence on Europe – directly through NATO and indirectly through the sale of American weapons to European NATO countries – according to a series of programs developed within NATO itself, i.e. by the Americans. With the revelation of Poland’s commitment in Iraq, we can observe – as in the evolution of NATO, pressed by the Americans to become involved in Iraq – that the reference point has shifted from a regional context to a much broader geopolitical context.
The methods employed in the Polish sale – in particular with Jackson’s role – had already presaged the privatization of US diplomatic action, under the influence of the most extreme ideological groups and of US industry, in a way that was to become the new modus operandi of American political action following 11 September 2001. What we see from the conditions of the sale (the quid pro quo between US investments in Poland and Poland’s commitment in Iraq), is that this modus operandi corresponds to a new geopolitical orientation, which had not been fully grasped in the initial analyses of the affair. In a way, as Sartre said apropos of existentialism, “existence precedes quintessence”: a sale of fighter aircraft, which should be the consequence of a policy having major geopolitical implications, becomes the basis for that policy in the case of a country like Poland.
@SURTITRE = The Tipping Point
Swiss financial investment authority Franz-Heinrich Heismann recently observed that the power structure had, as he had predicted, changed substantially over the past ten years – but in a way that was exactly the converse of what had been expected: “An explosion toward Corporate Power was expected. Political power was expected to take a back seat to the economy. The reality is that, in a way, the contrary occurred: Corporate Power grew, but it was political power that invaded the domain of Corporate Power and not the economic doctrines of Corporate Power that invaded the political bastions.” It is a remarkable turnabout compared to the perception that prevailed in the nineties, when it was the economy and the financial world that dominated the thinking, with economic and financial globalization, the evanescent financial bubbles, etc.
Heismann might have cited the case of Bruce P. Jackson and of Lockheed Martin (LM). To those who would reply that such theses on the politicization of corporate power are open to dispute since the aim of LM is to sell F-16s and that that goal has been achieved, we would point out that everything, in the past 50 or 60 years, shows that this type of goal is always achieved (especially in a case as specific as Poland, in the framework of NATO, as set forth above); and until now, it has been achieved without American companies such as Republic, North American, Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, Northrop, General Dynamics (the vendors of the F-84, the F-86 and F 100, the F-104, the F-4, the F-5 and the F-16, respectively –all aircraft sold to NATO countries), having had the least need to become politicized to the point of having to mount campaigns and organize initiatives to stir up and lock in political orientations.
As regards the case of the F-16s and Bruce Jackson, it is fair to ask to what extent such a pact, involving the supply of F-16s in exchange for a commitment in Iraq, would have been possible without the preliminary campaign of Bruce Jackson in the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe, and in Poland in particular. Without such a campaign, the entry of Poland and of the other Eastern bloc countries into NATO would not have been as readily achievable, and the developments that followed, with the accelerated integration into the US sphere of influence would have been much less feasible. In achieving this stellar performance, it can be said that Bruce Jackson and Lockheed Martin played a key, if not critical, role. The US government supported the Jackson/LM initiative, but in a far more detached way than might have been thought (in particular, moreover, because LM and Jackson had the geopolitical orientation they were known to have: this too bespeaks volumes as to the political dimension of the initiative).
The question posed by Professor Heismann and that we are applying to the case of Bruce Jackson and LM is one of determining the extent to which it was Lockheed Martin that became involved in politics in order to sell F-16s to Poland, or whether it was the political powers that chose to make a policy statement through Lockheed Martin and its sale (with strings attached) of F-16s to Poland. This is the thesis of the ‘Tipping Point’, the moment at which the buildup of pressure exerted by events is strong enough to break the general trend, with unforeseeable consequences in the political arena or in the economic field or both – in a direction and in ways that remain to be determined. To put the question differently: Would this sale (the economic aspect) have taken place if the war in Iraq (political aspect) had not taken place? The answer is: it is quite possible that it would not have. And that then would have constituted a radical change in the behavior of the European members of NATO in the second half of the 20th century.
This is a totally novel situation. Official US sources indicate that, less than a year earlier (in 2001), the sale of the F-16 was certainly not a ‘done deal’. Certain economic advantages – or promises of same – were agreed in the last months, under American politico-economic pressure, from the moment that the possibility of tying the sale to a Polish commitment in Iraq emerged. It is possible to advance the thesis that these pressures – pressures very advantageous for Poland – were crucial to the deal. A European analyst of defense economic issues summarizes this aspect of the F-16 sale to Poland: “In fact, it can be said without fear of contradiction that, but for the attack of 11 September 2001, the US assertiveness that followed and the pressures exerted on the European countries, the sale of the F-16 to Poland would not have taken place in that form. There would have been a more nuanced arrangement, with a split between European aircraft and American aircraft, or with the possibility of a sale of European aircraft only, or quite simply a postponement of any action.”
In the same article already mentioned (17 October issue of the Los Angeles Times), the author recounts this assessment of the Polish F-16 procurement, with the political impact that we have seen: “Although perhaps not rising to meet Kerry’s contention before the war that the United States formed a ‘coalition of the bribed’, the coerced, the bought and the extorted’ in Iraq, the type of economic incentives won by Poland were called ‘economic bribes’ this year by Representative Duncan Hunter of California, the Republican Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.”
This is generally the way the sale was assessed by the observers once all the conditions became known. Rather than rejecting these views on the basis of what has been set forth supra, we suggest that today the concept of ‘policy’ calls for a reappraisal. The actions of the Bush Administration demand nothing less, when one looks at the role that money plays in the formulation of its policy, including the most spectacular military applications. (Readers will recall the March-April 2003 offensive in the war against Iraq and the fact that certain Iraqi generals had been bought.
Thus, the F-16 sale, could appear as a case of ‘economic corruption’, although it may not qualify as such in the strict sense (unless a different meaning is ascribed to the concept of ‘corruption’). One of the more patent aspects of the difference in the definition of the concept is obviously the fact that this ‘economic corruption’ takes place in the full light of day –officially – and is presented as a legitimate act, whereas the classic case of corruption takes place in a clandestine, dissimulated, ambiance and is considered an illicit act. In the general context that we are considering here, this type of ‘corruption’, according to the notions of Representative Hunter, does not meet the normal criteria of corruption.
We make no moral judgment on this aspect of the sale, using Hunter’s definition (although such a moral judgment obviously has its place). Rather, we simply observe that the exceptional nature of this transaction is confirmed by acts that some characterize as corruption, although differing in certain aspects from what is normally considered corruption.
In order to grasp the full political significance, it is necessary to place the Polish F-16 buy in its geographic setting – Europe. There are those who may consider the problem disposed of by recalling Rumsfeld’s distinction between ‘Old Europe’ and ‘New Europe’. That arbitrary distinction no longer makes much sense, if it ever did. The Times of London, which is not exactly pro-European or anti American, wrote on 16 November, in connection with Chirac’s visit to London:
“Europe is divided but Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘old’ versus ‘new’ Europe distinction is misleading. Was Spain ‘new’ Europe during the war and ‘old’ Europe now under its socialist government which has withdrawn troops from Iraq? And what about the Central European countries which are also pulling out their troops? On the European side, too, France leads a group disinclined to accept America’s lead. President Chirac talks about a multipolar world in which a united Europe is even more necessary in face of global powers.”
As we have seen, the exceptional nature of the Polish F-16 sale is the transition from regional considerations (trans-Atlantic, European and NATO) to global considerations (the link between the Polish buy and Poland’s commitment in Iraq). The fact that this transition is an integral part of a process of massive economic corruption (according to Representative Duncan Hunter (Republican) in no way diminishes its political significance. On the contrary, the fact that this transition is so barefacedly unspeakable only confers greater significance to it. In this process, the Poles play only a minor, supporting role, the reflection of a leadership that is simply the mutation or the transmutation of a Communist apparatchik bureaucracy adjusting to the Americanized world of capitalist opportunity. The leading role has been played by the Americans, whose diplomacy is today incapable of thinking about anything else than the fight against terrorism and recourse to military force as the top priority in that fight. Integral to the broader American role is the role played by American financial resources (with or without ‘corruption’, depending on one’s definition of the term) and the crucial role of America’s defense industry.
The American attitude is totally destabilizing and strains the country’s diplomatic resources in their efforts to implement it. For example, the military equipment whose sale can facilitate the ‘corruption’ of the partners, and thus lead more rapidly to decisions deemed favorable by Washington, is raised to level of high diplomacy. Accordingly, the decision of the choice of an item of military equipment is itself raised to the level of high diplomacy, and can become a way of signifying a diplomatic commitment without recourse to more traditional methods (such as a treaty, or any formal text between governments constituting the basis for a temporary accord of a more structured alliance).
Without realizing it, the Americans have given their European competitors new and telling arguments on why not to ‘buy American’. At the same time, they are depriving themselves of the main argument that has always been their strong point in weapon sales – presenting weapon sales as primarily economic, technological and military matters, thereby dissimulating the political-influence factor, a factor which would have been unacceptable if presented above board, since to have done so would have also placed in evidence America’s hegemonic ambitions.
This new interpretation of the Polish F-16 sale – one that has until now passed blithely as just one aspect of the regional relations between America and one of its vassal states – brings an exemplary quality that should influence the appraisal of high-technology weapon system sales. This exemplary quality encompasses a significant political dimension, since the F-16 sale has ultimately been made subject to political conditions of major national import. This example will now serve as an implicit reference point for the evaluation of weapon system sales in Europe. It reduces still further the fiction according to which such sales can be assessed strictly from the commercial, technological and military operational standpoint. It reinforces still further the idea that such sales are an integral part of the most fundamental European political corpus, the one that defines and gives form to the European security situation.
With this order of F-16s, everything has transpired as if Poland had signed an international treaty with America (without the formal constraints of a treaty, of course: we are speaking here of the ‘spirit’, since, as we see, the situation for Poland could change, if the conditions are not are not respected). Henceforth, it will certainly be easier to plead political necessity for the ‘European preference’ for anyone wanting to develop an argument in favor of European security that has political substance. The Poles have given the Europeans a lesson to remember: high-technology weaponry is at the very foundation of European sovereignty. It is a lesson that the politicians of every European country would do well to remember in their rush to persuade voters of their European commitment.
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