[R-G] The geopolitical stakes of the Saffron Revolution

[Anthony Fenton]

  Chokepoint! The geopolitical stakes of the Saffron Revolution
By F. William Engdahl
Online Journal Guest Writer


Oct 15, 2007, 01:12

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2531.shtml

There are facts and then there are facts. Take the case of the recent  
mass protests in Burma or Myanmar depending on which name you prefer  
to call the former British colony.

First it’s a fact which few will argue that the present military  
dictatorship of the reclusive General Than Shwe is right up there  
when it comes to world-class tyrannies. It’s also a fact that Burma  
enjoys one of the world’s lowest general living standards. Partly as  
a result of the ill-conceived 100 percent to 500 percent price hikes  
in gasoline and other fuels in August, inflation, the nominal trigger  
for the mass protests led by Saffron-robed Buddhist monks, is  
unofficially estimated to have risen by 35 percent. Ironically, the  
demand to establish “market” energy prices came from the IMF and  
World Bank.

The UN estimates the population of some 50 million inhabitants spends  
up to 70 percent of their monthly income on food alone. The recent  
fuel price hike makes matters unbearable for tens of millions.

Myanmar is also deeply involved in the world narcotics trade, ranking  
only behind Hamid Karzai’s Afghanistan as a source for heroin. As  
well, it is said to be Southeast Asia’s largest producer of  
methamphetamines.

This is all understandable powder to unleash a social explosion of  
protest against the regime.

It is also a fact that the Myanmar military junta is on the Hit List  
of Condi Rice and the Bush administration for its repressive ways.  
Has the Bush leopard suddenly changed his spots? Or is there a more  
opaque agenda behind Washington’s calls to impose severe economic and  
political sanctions on the regime? Here some not-so-publicized facts  
help.

Behind the recent CNN news pictures of streams of saffron-robed  
Buddhist Monks marching in the streets of the former capital city  
Rangoon (Yangon) in Myanmar—the US government still prefers to call  
it by the British colonial name, Burma—calling for more democracy, is  
a battle of major geopolitical consequence.

The major actors

The tragedy of Burma, whose land area is about the size of George W.  
Bush’s Texas, is that its population is being used as a human stage  
prop in a drama which has been scripted in Washington by the National  
Endowment for Democracy (NED), the George Soros Open Society  
Institute, Freedom House and Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein  
Institution, a US intelligence asset used to spark “non-violent”  
regime change around the world on behalf of the US strategic agenda.

Burma’s “Saffron Revolution,” like the Ukraine “Orange Revolution” or  
the Georgia “Rose Revolution” and the various Color Revolutions  
instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding  
Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime  
change, down to the details of “hit-and-run” protests with “swarming”  
mobs of Buddhists in saffron, Internet blogs, mobile SMS links  
between protest groups, well-organized protest cells which disperse  
and reform. CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of  
mentioning the active presence of the NED behind the protests in  
Myanmar.

In fact the US State Department admits to supporting the activities  
of the NED in Myanmar. The NED is a US government-funded “private”  
entity whose activities are designed to support US foreign policy  
objectives, doing today what the CIA did during the Cold War. As  
well, the NED funds Soros’ Open Society Institute in fostering regime  
change in Myanmar. In an October 30 2003 Press Release the State  
Department admitted, “The United States also supports organizations  
such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society  
Institute and Internews, working inside and outside the region on a  
broad range of democracy promotion activities.” It all sounds very  
self-effacing and noble of the State Department. Is it though?

In reality the US State Department has recruited and trained key  
opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organizations. It  
has poured the relatively huge sum (for Myanmar) of more than $2.5  
million annually into NED activities in promoting regime change in  
Myanmar since at least 2003. The US regime change, its Saffron  
Revolution, is being largely run, according to informed reports, out  
of the US Consulate General in bordering Chaing Mai, Thailand. There  
activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the  
USA, before being sent back to organize inside Myanmar. The USA’s NED  
admits to funding key opposition media including the New Era Journal,  
Irrawaddy and the Democratic Voice of Burma radio.

The concert master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence  
regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert  
Einstein Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group funded by  
an arm of the NED to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots  
around the world. Sharp’s institute has been active in Burma since  
1989, just after the regime massacred some 3,000 protestors to  
silence the opposition. CIA special operative and former US military  
attache in Rangoon, Col. Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine  
operations, introduced Sharp to Burma in 1989 to train the opposition  
there in non-violent strategy. Interestingly, Sharp was also in China  
two weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.

Why Myanmar now?

A relevant question is why the US government has such a keen interest  
in fostering regime change in Myanmar at this juncture. We can  
dismiss rather quickly the idea that it has genuine concern for  
democracy, justice, human rights for the oppressed population there.  
Iraq and Afghanistan are sufficient testimony to the fact  
Washington’s paean to democracy is propaganda cover for another agenda.

The question is what would lead to such engagement in such a remote  
place as Myanmar?

Geopolitical control seems to be the answer. Control ultimately of  
the strategic sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea.  
The coastline of Myanmar provides naval access in the proximity of  
one of the world’s most strategic water passages, the Strait of  
Malacca, the narrow ship passage between Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Pentagon has been trying to militarize the region since September  
11, 2001, on the argument of defending against possible terrorist  
attack. The US has managed to gain an airbase on Banda Aceh, the  
Sultan Iskandar Muda Air Force Base, on the northernmost tip of  
Indonesia. The governments of the region, including Myanmar, however,  
have adamantly refused US efforts to militarize the region. A glance  
at a map will confirm the strategic importance of Myanmar.

The Strait of Malacca, linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, is the  
shortest sea route between the Persian Gulf and China. It is the key  
chokepoint in Asia. More than 80 percent of all China’s oil imports  
are shipped by tankers passing the Malacca Strait. The narrowest  
point is the Phillips Channel in the Singapore Strait, only 1.5 miles  
wide at its narrowest. Daily more than 12 million barrels in oil  
supertankers pass through this narrow passage, most en route to the  
world’s fastest-growing energy market, China or to Japan.

If the strait were closed, nearly half of the world's tanker fleet  
would be required to sail further. Closure would immediately raise  
freight rates worldwide. More than 50,000 vessels per year transit  
the Strait of Malacca. The region from Maynmar to Banda Aceh in  
Indonesia is fast becoming one of the world’s most strategic  
chokepoints. Who controls those waters controls China’s energy supplies.

That strategic importance of Myanmar has not been lost on Beijing.

Since it became clear to China that the US was hell-bent on a  
unilateral militarization of the Middle East oil fields in 2003,  
Beijing has stepped up its engagement in Myanmar. Chinese energy and  
military security, not human rights concerns drive their policy.

In recent years Beijing has poured billions of dollars in military  
assistance into Myanmar, including fighter, ground-attack and  
transport aircraft; tanks and armored personnel carriers; naval  
vessels and surface-to-air missiles. China has built up Myanmar  
railroads and roads and won permission to station its troops in  
Myanmar. China, according to Indian defense sources, has also built a  
large electronic surveillance facility on Myanmar’s Coco Islands and  
is building naval bases for access to the Indian Ocean.

In fact Myanmar is an integral part of what China terms its “string  
of pearls,” its strategic design of establishing military bases in  
Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia in order to counter US control over  
the Strait of Malacca chokepoint. There is also energy on and  
offshore of Myanmar, and lots of it.

The gas fields of Myanmar

Oil and gas have been produced in Myanmar since the British set up  
the Rangoon Oil Company in 1871, later renamed Burmah Oil Co. The  
country has produced natural gas since the 1970s, and, in the 1990s,  
it granted gas concessions to the foreign companies ElfTotal of  
France and Premier Oil of the UK in the Gulf of Martaban. Later  
Texaco and Unocal (now Chevron) won concessions at Yadana and Yetagun  
as well. Alone Yadana has an estimated gas reserve of more than 5  
trillion cubic feet with an expected life of at least 30 years.  
Yetagun is estimated to have about a third the gas of the Yadana field.

In 2004 a large new gas field, Shwe field, off the coast of Arakan  
was discovered.

By 2002 both Texaco and Premier Oil withdrew from the Yetagun project  
following UK government and NGO pressure. Malaysia’s Petronas bought  
Premier’s 27 percent stake. By 2004 Myanmar was exporting Yadana gas  
via pipeline to Thailand worth annually $1 billion to the Myanmar  
regime.

In 2005 China, Thailand and South Korea invested in expanding the  
Myanmar oil and gas sector, with export of gas to Thailand rising 50  
percent. Gas export today is Myanmar’s most important source of  
income. Yadana was developed jointly by ElfTotal, Unocal, PTT-EP of  
Thailand and Myanmar’s state MOGE, operated by the French ElfTotal.  
Yadana supplies some 20 percent of Thai natural gas needs.

Today the Yetagun field is operated by Malaysia’s Petronas along with  
MOGE and Japan’s Nippon Oil and PTT-EP. The gas is piped onshore  
where it links to the Yadana pipeline. Gas from the Shwe field is to  
come online beginning 2009. China and India have been in strong  
contention over the Shwe gas field reserves.

India loses, China wins

This past summer Myanmar signed a Memorandum of Understanding with  
PetroChina to supply large volumes of natural gas from reserves of  
the Shwe gasfield in the Bay of Bengal. The contract runs for 30  
years. India was the main loser. Myanmar had earlier given India a  
major stake in two offshore blocks to develop gas to have been  
transmitted via pipeline through Bangladesh to India’s energy-hungry  
economy. Political bickering between India and Bangladesh brought the  
Indian plans to a standstill.

China took advantage of the stalemate. China simply trumped India  
with an offer to invest billions in building a strategic China- 
Myanmar oil and gas pipeline across Myanmar from Myanmar’s deepwater  
port at Sittwe in the Bay of Bengal to Kunming in China’s Yunnan  
Province, a stretch of more than 2,300 kilometers. China plans an oil  
refinery in Kumming as well.

What the Myanmar-China pipelines will allow is routing of oil and gas  
from Africa (Sudan among other sources) and the Middle East (Iran,  
Saudi Arabia) independent of dependence on the vulnerable chokepoint  
of the Malacca Strait. Myanmar becomes China’s “bridge” linking  
Bangladesh and countries westward to the China mainland independent  
of any possible future moves by Washington to control the strait.

India’s dangerous alliance shift

It’s no wonder that China is taking such precautions. Ever since the  
Bush administration decided in 2005 to recruit India to the  
Pentagon’s ‘New Framework for US-India Defense Relations,’India has  
been pushed into a strategic alliance with Washington in order to  
counter China in Asia.

In an October 2002 Pentagon report, ‘The Indo-US Military  
Relationship,’ the Office of Net Assessments stated the reason for  
the India-USA defense alliance would be to have a ‘capable partner’  
who can take on ‘more responsibility for low-end operations’ in Asia,  
provide new training opportunities and ‘ultimately provide basing and  
access for US power projection.’ Washington is also quietly  
negotiating a base on Indian territory, a severe violation of India’s  
traditional non-aligned status.

Power projection against whom? China, perhaps?

As well, the Bush administration has offered India to lift its 30  
year nuclear sanctions and to sell advanced US nuclear technology,  
legitimizing India’s open violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation  
Treaty, at the same time Washington accuses Iran of violating same,  
an exercise in political hypocrisy to say the least.

Notably, just as the Saffron-robed monks of Myanmar took to the  
streets, the Pentagon opened joint US-Indian joint naval exercises,  
Malabar 07, along with armed forces from Australia, Japan and  
Singapore. The US showed the awesome muscle of its 7th Fleet,  
deploying the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk; guided  
missile cruisers USS Cowpens and USS Princeton and no less than five  
guided missile destroyers.

US-backed regime change in Myanmar together with Washington’s growing  
military power projection via India and other allies in the region is  
clearly a factor in Beijing’s policy vis-à-vis Myanmar’s present  
military junta. As is often the case these days, from Darfur to  
Caracas to Rangoon, the rallying call of Washington for democracy  
ought to be taken with at least a grain of good salt.
F. William Engdahl is the author of "A Century of War: Anglo-American  
Oil Politics and the New World Order," Pluto Press Ltd.. To contact  
by e-mail: info at engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. Further articles can be  
found at his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.