Admiral Harry Harris / AP



Harry Harris, the rise of an American warlord



By Emanuel Pastreich



Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Command in Hawaii, was slated to start work as ambassador to Australia this month. Suddenly, out of the blue, the Trump White House announced on April 24 that Harris would be assigned to South Korea.



The assignment was unprecedented at multiple levels. Assigning a military officer as ambassador to Korea when Seoul is trying to develop peaceful ties with North Korea, and the rest of East Asia, is extraordinary. Assigning a military officer who has close ties with the far-right in Japan is also extraordinary granted the sensitivity about Japan's colonial domination of Korea.



The fact that Harris was born in Japan to a Japanese mother is not a reason to oppose his appointment. Yet his being awarded the "Order of the Rising Sun" at exactly the same moment he was assigned at ambassador to Korea was extremely odd.



And then there is that matter of his role at the Guantanamo Prison camp at the time that torture and abuse were carried out within a carefully constructed legal limbo. In normal times, Harris' role in that blatantly illegal operation would be enough to end a career, at the very least.



But these are not normal times.



Many in Australia were less than pleased that this combative and virulently anti-Chinese military officer was appointed to Australia in the first place.



Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been much more willing to collaborate with this confrontational posture towards China than was Tony Abbot, or Kevin Rudd before him. Yet Turnbull is still struggling to keep the opposition even in the conservative business community under control.



Harris was desperately needed by the anti-China factions in the U.S. military to shore things up in Australia and help stamp out local opposition to the drive for war with China. The economic pressure from Beijing, and from the domestic mining, agriculture and educational sectors in Australia, was forcing even the Goldman Sachs protege Turnbull to buckle.



The reasons for assigning Harris were no mystery to insiders. Harris is not any military officer. He is the leader of a drive to push for military, economic and cultural confrontation with China across Asia. He is a taunting and provocative speaker who is not focused on professionalism, or the details of military hardware.



But there is one other country that is pivotal to the drive to confront China that has significant factions in government and in industry willing stand up to defend ties with China: South Korea.



A hard-right retired army general, James Thurman, was already lined up to be U.S. ambassador to Korea. Why was this last minute request made by CIA director Mike Pompeo (now secretary of state) that Harris be sent to Seoul instead?



Although the documentation concerning this sudden shift may not be released in our lifetimes, the intentions are clear.



Recent negotiations between North and South Korea resulted in an agreement for the first Inter-Korean summit in 11 years and the joint statement issued at that summit on April 28 demonstrated that the both sides have reached consensus across the board for mutual cooperation that could, in effect, end the state of war between the two nations in a matter of weeks, or months.



Whether Washington wants a peace treaty or not could end up being an irrelevant detail.



Such rapid progress in inter-Korean relations went further than Trump's nannies in the Pentagon could stand and they judged that it was time to call in a heavyweight like Admiral Harris to make sure the Koreans did not get carried away.



Harris is not a pawn of the powers in the Pentagon who are deeply worried that a breakthrough in negotiations could alter the U.S. posture in Asia, and tip Washington towards military retrenchment at the very moment that they were working overtime to create a state of war with China to justify a massive increase in the number of fighter planes, warships and submarines.



He is one of the central players in the military driving the push for massive military confrontation with China.



To put it bluntly, few in the federal government are willing to go as far, and to do so in such a ruthless manner, as is Harry Harris.



The Koreas have launched a process of conciliation with North Korea, coupled with serious discussions about economic and political integration with China, Japan and Russia, that threatens to go from a trickle to a waterfall. Someone needs to be there who will not hesitate to do what needs to be done to stop that process.



How Dirty Harry got on the fast track





Admiral Harry Harris' career took off in the years after he served as commander of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp from March 2006 to June 2007. The grotesque tale of how this cluster of black sites (supposedly not subject to the Geneva Conventions according to the Bush administration) served as the location for the sadistic abuse of prisoners in a manner that skirted all accountability has been described in detail by a former guard Joseph Hickman in his book "Murder at Camp Delta."

Hickman focuses a large section on the death of three prisoners during Harris's administration from what were described as "suicides." The initial report was that the prisoners killed themselves by stuffing rags down their own throats (although we cannot be sure that they were in fact suicides).



Six years of research led Hickman to the conclusion that the prison deliberately administered overdoses of anti-malarial drugs with psychoactive side effects to psychologically destroy the detainees. All this happened under Harris's watch, if not direct supervision.



Harris was the one calling the shots in what Hickman characterizes as "America's battle lab." Harris was the one calling the shots in what Hickman characterizes as "America's battle lab."

John Kiriakou, former employee of the CIA, was the only one to go to jail for his actions related to the torture programs run at the time — and he was sentenced for going public about those criminal actions! He remarked about the program run by Harris at the time, "There are credible allegations that the program included human experimentation. I can't even think about it. It makes me sick."

That is to say that Guantanamo resembled the notorious Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army that carried out covert chemical warfare research on living prisoners.

Nor was Harris the only such administrator of a torture camp who has been promoted by the Trump administration. The current candidate for CIA director Gina Haspel also oversaw extensive torture programs, and has risen up the ranks as a result.





Prisoners held in sensory isolation in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp/ Reuters



Harry Harris not only did not ask for an investigation into the true cause of the deaths, he publicly referred to the suicides in this grotesque manner:





"They are smart, they are creative, and they are committed. They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us." ( Mother Jones

That is to say that Harris presented the suicides of prisoners under horrible psychological abuse as a nefarious conspiracy of inhuman enemies.



Harris's shameless behavior did not result in his dismissal, let alone his prosecution, but rather led to a series of high-profile promotions, culminating in his appointment as commander of Pacific Fleet in 2013. And then, unexpectedly, he was tapped in May of that year to serve as commander of the entire Pacific Command located in Hawaii.



The timing of that promotion also was no accident.



The Pacific Command was a hotbed of discontent about the mindless militarism that had decimated strategic planning and accountability in the military at the time. The Pacific Command was home to a significant faction of officers who spoke openly about the need to treat climate change as the most important security threat and who were willing to entirely rethink the concept of security.



Many of these officers and professors felt that that cooperation with China, on climate change and on other security issues, was not only possible, but essential for the U.S.



The Pacific Command had committed over the previous decade to a series of large-scale projects aimed at developing electric batteries and various forms of alternative energy infrastructure.



The Pacific Command had launched a global project to promote collaboration between nations in the Pacific and East Asia in the response to climate change and to establish networks for humanitarian responses to related disasters.





In so many words, the Pacific Command was laying the foundations for new set of alliances with partner nations that was directly aimed at climate change and if that project had been scaled up, it would have posed a direct challenge to the military alliance system that has defined the U.S. military since the Korean War ( Andrew DeWit ).

As a result, the Pacific Command was engaged in broad discussions with China about possible collaboration, especially related to climate change. Those efforts were in part reflected in the declaration of Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping at the Hangzhou summit (September 3, 2016) in which both nations agreed to cooperate in the response to climate change and to increase military collaboration.



All these moves were deeply irritating to those in the Pacific Command who wanted to stick with overpriced ships and fighter planes that assured big revenue for contractors (and cushy retirement packages for officers).



But what made those conservatives see red was the decision of Pacific Command to include the Chinese navy in the biannual RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific Exercise). Not only was Pacific Command drifting away from the China threat mantra common in the corridors of the Pentagon, it was asserting policy independence from K Street lobbyists and from other far-right organizations on the mainland for whom the "China threat" was not only strategic, but a part of racist politics.



The large number of Asian Americans in Pacific Command no doubt had something to do with the hesitation to buy into such posturing.



But those pushing for a commitment to climate change in the Pacific Command had no intention of backing down even as the conservative backlash grew. The battle came to a head on March 9, 2013, when the commander of the Pacific Command at the time, Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, delivered a talk at Harvard University in which he declared that climate change was the primary long-term security threat in the Pacific region.





Locklear was stating a fact so obvious that his audience should have yawned, but in fact this statement was revolutionary in its implications ( Boston Globe ).



Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, former commander of the Pacific Command / AFP



Locklear, was the representative of a powerful faction in the Pacific Command, known as the "Harvard of the military" for the high intellectual achievement of its members, that wanted to put climate change front and center in security policy and to push for the elimination of fossil fuels.





That effort at Pacific Command (and elsewhere) is best represented by the documentary movie "The Burden" made by military veterans on the negative impact of fossil fuels on not only the climate but also on military effectiveness.

If the right wing did not respond decisively, there was a serious danger that Locklear's speech at Harvard would result in a fundamental shift in U.S. strategic policy, that is to say a move away from the "war on terror" to something more complex with a strong focus on climate change.



The powers that be, whether those benefiting from the budgets for special forces and intelligence, or those making a fortune off of the traditional carrier battle groups and finicky fighter planes, could not tolerate this move.



The attacks on Locklear within the military were fast and furious (although for the most part not public). Within two months he was unceremoniously replaced by Harry Harris.



Harris was assigned to the Pacific Command for the same reason he was assigned to Guantanamo: to keep a lid on dissent and to make sure that the worst in American policy went forward over the objections of working-level experts.



Harris was unable to end cooperation with China, or to eliminate research on climate change at the Pacific Command. But he did his damnedest.



In the process, Harris became a political figure to a degree unprecedented in the Pacific Command, giving numerous speeches in Japan (where Japanese think of him as a native son), in Australia and elsewhere in Asia and in the Pacific. His speeches were not objective assessments of strategic issues, or scientific analysis of serious issues, but openly political diatribes.



Harris could not control the fiercely independent study groups with tens of billions of dollars that had no intention of giving up their work on renewable energy and the environment. But he made sure that the discussion on security was focused on his beloved "freedom of navigation" campaigns.



"Freedom of navigation" is a catchy way of saying that the U.S. is obligated to send military vessels into the waters surrounding the islands claimed by China in the South China Sea regularly, often intentionally crossing over the 12 nautical mile EEZ (exclusive economic zone).



This is a needless provocation (imagine how the U.S. would respond if Chinese ships regularly sailed close to Hawaii) became central to the planning in the Pacific Command.



When Donald Trump came to power in 2017, the "war with China" factions in the military were his big supporters. It was not so much they had any particular organic tie to him, but rather that they wanted someone who would champion their cause.



Those officers stood out in opposition to the groups who planned for war with Russia, who planned for war with Iran, or those who were deeply invested in the "war on terror." They also fought for control of the budget with those focused on non-traditional security issues like climate change, and with a host of smaller factions that nevertheless had access to immense budgets.



The shifting nature of the military



Although Harris, like Trump, has seized the spotlight by making inflammatory and insensitive statements to the press, he has also acquired his own loyal following. His abrasive style has a certain charm and he is perceived as a straight shooter.





The Navy Times cites China expert Bonnie Glaser saying, "He (Harris) speaks his mind and he speaks it publicly, so he's something of a rarity."

His remarks to the Armed Forces Committee in February are representative of such rhetoric.



"If USPACOM has to fight tonight, I don't want it to be a fair fight. If it's a knife fight, I want to bring a gun. If it's a gun fight, I want to bring in the artillery, and the artillery of all of our allies."



It is hard to imagine a more reckless and inflammatory statement for the commander of the Pacific Command to make. In effect, Harris is bragging that all the conventions concerning military relations that have kept the peace, and avoided wars, for the last 500 years do not apply to him.



Yet, for rank and file officers, frustrated by government bureaucrats who dish out harmless mush in order to avoid offending anyone, Harris comes across as a lively, refreshing figure.



But the increase in Harris's influence is not merely a product of the rise in the fortunes of the "war with China" faction after Trump's inauguration as president. It is linked to the growing power of the military as a whole in the U.S. government.



