Imperial Conquest: America’s “Long War” against Humanity
The following text is background document in relation to Michel Chossudovsky’s presentation entitled:
The Globalization of War, US-NATO Threat Directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
The event is organized by Malaysia’s JUST Forum, IAIS Malaysia.
19 July 2018 (Thursday) 09:30am – 12:30pm
Jointly Organised by International Movement for a Just World (JUST) and IAIS Malaysia
Venue: IAIS Malaysia, Jalan Elmu, Off Jalan Universiti,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
***
The document below is Chapter I of Michel Chossudovsky’s Book entitled; The Globalization of War; America’s Long War against Humanity, Global Research Publishers, Montreal 2015.
The book was launched in Kuala Lumpur in 2015 by Tun Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Introduction
The U.S. and its NATO allies have embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. This “war without borders” is intimately related to a worldwide process of economic restructuring, which has been conducive to the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.The U.S. weapons producers are the recipients of U.S. Department of Defense multibillion dollar procurement contracts for advanced weapons systems. In turn, “The Battle for Oil” in the Middle East and Central Asia directly serves the interests of the Anglo-American oil giants. The U.S. and its allies are “Beating the Drums of War” at the height of a worldwide economic depression.
The military deployment of U.S.-NATO forces coupled with “non-conventional warfare” – including covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”– is occurring simultaneously in several regions of the world.
Central to an understanding of war, is the media campaign which grants it legitimacy in the eyes of public opinion. War has been provided with a humanitarian mandate under NATO’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). The victims of U.S. led wars are presented as the perpetrators of war. Civilians in Yugoslavia, Palestine, Ukraine, Libya, Syria and Iraq are responsible for their own deaths.
Meanwhile, the Commander in Chief of the largest military force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker. The granting of the Nobel “peace prize” in 2009 to President Barack Obama has become an integral part of the Pentagon’s propaganda machine. It provides a human face to the invaders, it demonizes those who oppose U.S. military intervention.
The Nobel Committee says that President Obama has given the world “hope for a better future”. The prize is awarded for Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special impor- tance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”
His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.1
Realities are turned upside down. “War is Peace” said George Orwell. The media in chorus upholds war as a humanitarian endeavor. “Wars make us safer and richer” says the Washington Post.
The Big Lie becomes The Truth. In turn, upholding The Truth –through careful documen- tation and investigative analysis of the horrors of U.S. led wars– is casually categorized as “conspiracy theory”.
While Washington wages a “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT), those who forcefully oppose America’s wars of aggression are branded as terrorists. War becomes peace, a worthwhile “humanitarian undertaking”. Peaceful dissent becomes heresy.
With unfolding events in Ukraine and the Middle East, humanity is at a dangerous cross- roads. At no time since the Cuban Missile Crisis has the World been closer to the unthinkable: a World War III scenario, a global military conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons.
The killing machine is deployed at a global level, within the framework of the unified com- bat command structure. It is routinely upheld by the institutions of government, the corpo- rate media and the mandarins and intellectuals of The New World Order in Washington’s think tanks and strategic studies research institutes, as an unquestioned instrument of peace and global prosperity.
A culture of killing and violence has become imbedded in human consciousness.
War is broadly accepted as part of a societal process: The Homeland needs to be “de- fended” and protected.
“Legitimized violence” and extrajudicial killings directed against “terrorists” are upheld in western democracies as necessary instruments of national security.
A “humanitarian war” is upheld by the so-called international community. It is not con- demned as a criminal act. Its main architects are rewarded for their contribution to world peace.
Nuclear weapons are heralded by the U.S. government as instruments of peace. The pre- emptive use of nuclear weapons is categorized as an act of “self-defense” which contributes to an illusive concept of “global security”. (See Chapter II).
The so-called “missile defense shield” or “Star Wars” initiative involving the first strike use of nuclear weapons has been developed globally in different regions of the world. The missile shield is largely directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
Meanwhile, in the context of unfolding events in Syria and Ukraine, there has been a breakdown of international diplomacy. Whereas a Neo-Nazi regime directly supported by the West has been installed in Kiev, the Russian Federation is now threatened by U.S.-NATO with military action on its Western frontier. (See Chapter IX).
New Cold War?
While this renewed East-West confrontation has mistakenly been labelled a “New Cold War”, none of the safeguards of The Cold War era prevail. Russia has been excluded from the Group of Eight (G-8), which has reverted to the G-7 (Group of Seven Nations). Diplo- macy has collapsed. There is no Cold War East-West dialogue between competing super- powers geared towards avoiding military confrontation. In turn, the United Nations Security Council has become a de facto mouthpiece of the U.S. State Department.
Moreover, nuclear weapons are no longer considered a “weapon of last resort” under The Cold War doctrine of “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD). Nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pen- tagon as “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”. In 2002, the U.S. Senate gave the green light for the use of nuclear weapons in the conventional war theater. Nukes are part of the “military toolbox” to be used alongside conventional weapons.
The “Communist threat” of The Cold War era has been replaced by the worldwide threat of “Islamic terrorism”. Whereas Russia and China have become capitalist “free market” economies, a first strike pre-emptive nuclear attack against both countries is nonetheless contemplated.
China and Russia are no longer considered to be “a threat to capitalism”. Quite the oppo- site. What is at stake is economic and financial rivalry between competing capitalist powers. The China-Russia alliance under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) constitutes a “competing capitalist block” which undermines U.S. economic hegemony.
In Asia, the U.S. has contributed under its “Pivot to Asia” to encouraging its Asia-Pacific allies including Japan, Australia, South Korea, The Philippines and Vietnam to threaten and isolate China as part of a process of “military encirclement” of China, which gained impetus in the late 1990s.
Meanwhile, war propaganda has become increasingly pervasive. War is upheld as a peace- making operation.
When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer possible. An inquisitorial social system emerges. (See Chapter X). The consensus is to wage war. People can no longer think for themselves. They accept the authority and wisdom of the established social order.
An understanding of fundamental social and political events is replaced by a World of sheer fantasy, where “evil folks” are lurking. The objective of the “Global War on Terrorism” nar- rative –which has been fully endorsed by the U.S. administration– has been to galvanize public support for a worldwide campaign against heresy.
Global Warfare
The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of U.S.-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously.
The concept of the “Long War” has characterized U.S. military doctrine since the end of World War II. Worldwide militarization is part of a global economic agenda.
Militarization at the global level is instrumented through the U.S. military’s Unified Com- mand structure: the entire planet is divided up into geographic Combatant Commands under the control of the Pentagon. U.S. Strategic Command (U.S.STRATCOM) Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska plays a central role in coordinating military operations.
While surrounding and confronting Russia and China, new U.S. military bases have been set up with a view to establishing U.S. spheres of influence in every region of the World. There has been a reinforcement of the six geographic commands including the creation in 2008 of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM).
As heralded by the Pentagon, AFRICOM becomes a “full-spectrum combatant command” responsible for what are described as “defense” and U.S. “national security” operations “through focused, sustained engagement with partners in support of our shared security objectives”. AFRICOM’s area of jurisdiction extends to the entire “African continent, its is- land nations, and surrounding waters”.2
This U.S. militarization of Africa supports the concurrent economic conquest of the conti- nent, the pillage of its natural resources, the acquisition of its extensive oil and gas reserves, etc.
AFRICOM is an instrument of a U.S. led neocolonial project in alliance with the United Kingdom which consists in expanding the Anglo-American sphere of influence specifically in Central Africa, Francophone West Africa and North Africa largely at the expense of France.
While the U.S. has military bases and/or facilities in more than 150 countries, with 160,000 active-duty personnel, the construction of new military bases is envisaged in Latin America including Colombia on the immediate border of Venezuela.
Military aid to Israel has increased. The Obama presidency has expressed its unbending support for Israel and the Israeli military, which is slated to play a key role in U.S.-NATO led wars in the Middle East. The unspoken agenda is the outright elimination of Palestine and the instatement of “Greater Israel”.
“War without Borders”
The 2000 Project for the New American Century (PNAC), first formulated by the Neocons, was predicated on “waging a war without borders”. The PNAC is a neoconservative think tank linked to the Defense-Intelligence establishment, the Republican Party and the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which plays a behind-the-scenes role in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy.
In September 2000, a few months before the accession of George W. Bush to the White House, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) published its blueprint for global domination under the title: “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”3
The PNAC’s declared objectives are:
• defend the American homeland;
• fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
• perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
• transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs;”4
• fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
• perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
• transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs;”4
Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney (G. W. Bush administration) had commissioned the PNAC blueprint prior to the 2000 presidential elections.
The PNAC outlines a roadmap of military conquest. It calls for “the direct imposition of U.S. forward bases” throughout Central Asia and the Middle East “with a view to ensuring economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential “rival” or any viable alternative to America’s vision of a “free market’ economy”.5
Distinct from theater wars, the so-called “constabulary functions” imply a form of global military policing using various instruments of military intervention including punitive bomb- ings and the sending in of U.S. Special Forces, etc. Global constabulary functions also include covert operations and “regime change” all of which are carried out in accordance with a “hu- manitarian mandate”.
Military actions are implemented simultaneously in different regions of the world (as outlined in the PNAC) as well as sequentially.
This military agenda undertaken under the banner of “Responsibility to Protect” largely prevails under the Obama presidency. Media propaganda has been instrumental in sustaining the fiction of humanitarian warfare.
New Weapons Systems
The PNAC’s “revolution in military affairs” (meaning the development of new weapons sys- tems) consists of the Strategic Defense Initiative, the concurrent weaponization of space and the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons.
The Strategic Defense Initiative, (Star Wars), not only includes the controversial “Missile Shield”, but also a wide range of offensive laser-guided weapons with striking capabilities any- where in the world, not to mention instruments of weather and climatic warfare under the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). The latter is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an in- strument of conquest capable of selectively destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions.
Also contemplated is the Pentagon’s so-called FALCON program. Formulated during the Bush Junior administration, FALCON is the ultimate New World Order weapons’ system, to be used for global economic and political domination. It can strike from the continental U.S. anywhere in the World. It is described as a “global reach” weapon to be used to “react promptly and decisively to destabilizing or threatening actions by hostile countries and ter- rorist organizations”.5
This hypersonic cruise weapon system developed by Northrop Grumman “would allow the U.S. to conduct effective, time-critical strike missions on a global basis without relying on overseas military bases.”6
FALCON would allow the U.S. to strike, either in support of conventional forces engaged in a war theater or in punitive bombings directed against countries that do not comply with U.S. economic and political diktats.
The Military Road-map in the Middle East
According to (former) NATO Commander General Wesley Clark, the Pentagon’s military road-map consists of a sequence of countries: “[The] Five-year campaign plan [includes]… a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.” In Winning Modern Wars (page 130) General Clark states the following:
“As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.6
Syria and Iran
The ongoing war on Palestine, Syria and Iraq is a stepping stone towards a war on Iran, which could lead to a process of military escalation. Russia and China, which are allies of both Syria and Iran, are also targeted by U.S.-NATO. In Iraq, under the banner of a “civil war”, an undercover war of aggression is being fought which essentially contributes to further destroying an entire country, its institutions, its economy. The undercover operation is part of an intelligence agenda, an engineered process which consists in transforming Iraq into an open territory.
Meanwhile, public opinion is led to believe that what is at stake is the confrontation be- tween Shia and Sunni. America’s military occupation of Iraq has been replaced by non-con- ventional forms of warfare. Realities are blurred. In a bitter irony, the aggressor nation is portrayed as coming to the rescue of a “sovereign Iraq”.
The break up of Iraq and Syria along sectarian lines is a longstanding policy of the U.S. and its allies. The proposed re-division of both Iraq and Syria is broadly modeled on that of the Federation of Yugoslavia which was split up into seven “independent states” (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia (FYRM), Slovenia, Montenegro, Kosovo).
Oil Geopolitics
The geopolitics of oil and oil pipelines is crucial in the conduct of U.S.-NATO military oper- ations. The broader Middle East-Central Asian region encompasses more than sixty percent of the World’s oil reserves.
There are at present five distinct war theaters in the Middle East-Central Asian region: Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Libya and Syria. A process of military escalation could potentially lead to the merging of these separate war theaters, leading towards a broader Middle East-Central Asian war, engulfing an entire region from North Africa and the Mediter- ranean to Afghanistan, Pakistan and China’s Western frontier.
The Legacy of World War II. Demise of Competing Imperialist powers
What is referred euphemistically as the “post war era” is in fact a period of continuous wars and militarization. This must be understood when focusing on contemporary U.S. led wars.
The U.S. emerges in the wake of the Second World War unscathed. Most of the fighting was conducted by its allies, a strategy which the U.S. has used consistently in post-world war II conflicts. Moreover, a careful examination of World War II suggests that U.S. corporate interests including Rockefeller’s Standard Oil supported both America’s allies as well as its enemies including Nazi Germany well beyond the U.S.’s entry into World War II in December 1941. The strategic objective was to weaken both sides, namely to destabilize competing imperialist powers.
Corporate America Supported Nazi Germany
Corporate America neither wanted Hitler to lose this war nor to win it; instead they wanted this war to go on as long as possible. Henry Ford had initially refused to produce weapons for Great Britain, but now he changed his tune. According to his biographer, David Lanier Lewis, he “expressed the hope that neither the Allies nor the Axis would win [the war],” and he suggested that the U.S. should supply both the Allies and the Axis powers with “the tools to keep on fighting until they both collapse.”
On 22 June 1941, the Wehrmacht rolled across the Soviet border, powered by Ford and GM engines and equipped with the tools produced in Germany by American capital and know-how.
While many leaders of corporate America hoped that the Nazis and the Soviets would remain locked for as long as possible in a war that would debilitate them both, thus prolonging the Eu- ropean war that was proving to be so profitable, the experts in Washington and London predicted that the Soviets would be crushed, “like an egg” by the Wehrmacht. The U.S.SR, however, became the first country to fight the Blitzkrieg to a standstill.
Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels, Profits über Alles! American Corporations and Hitler, Global Research, June 8, 2004.
Emerging as the victor nation in the wake of World War II, the U.S. has determined the political and economic contours of post-War Western Europe. U.S. troops are stationed in several European countries. Both its World War II adversaries (Germany, Japan, Italy) as well as its allies (France, U.K. Belgium, the Netherlands) have been weakened. With the ex- ception of the U.K. which is part of the Anglo-American axis, these countries are outgoing colonial powers, displaced by U.S. hegemony. Their pre-World War II colonial territories in- cluding Indonesia, The Congo, Indochina, Rwanda (among others) have been gradually in- tegrated over a period of half a century into a dominant U.S. sphere of influence.
In Africa, the process of displacement of France’s sphere of influence is still ongoing. The U.S. is currently taking over the control of France and Belgium’s former colonies in Central Africa and West Africa. Washington also exerts a decisive role in the Maghreb. (See Chapter VIII).
“Internal Colonialism” in the European Union
A complex form of “internal colonialism” is also emerging in the European Union. U.S. fi- nancial institutions and business conglomerates together with their European partners are prevalent in setting the monetary, trade and investment agenda.
Politics are subordinated to dominant financial interests. What is also unfolding in terms of secret trade negotiations (under the TTIP and CETA), is a process of economic and political integration between the EU and North America. These agreements together with the Trans- Pacific Partnership (TPP) constitute the building blocks of a process of global economic dom- ination.
Meanwhile, presidential and parliamentary elections in the EU, including Germany, Italy and France (for example, Sarkozy and Hollande) are increasingly the object of covert political interference by the U.S. (modeled on the “color revolutions”), namely U.S. sponsored regime change in the European Union.
The fundamental question is to what extent are European leaders political proxies?
U.S. Sponsored Wars and Military-Intelligence Operations
The entire period (1945- present) has been marked by a succession of U.S. sponsored wars and military-intelligence interventions in all major regions of the World.
We are not dealing with piecemeal military operations pertaining to specific countries and regions: There is a military road-map, a sequence of military operations. Non-conventional forms of intervention including State sponsored terrorist attacks rather than theater war have also been launched.
America’s war is a cohesive and coordinated plan of worldwide military conquest which serves dominant financial and corporate interests. The structure of alliances including NATO is crucial.
The European Union plays a central role in this military agenda. The member states of the EU are allies of the Anglo-American axis, but at the same time, a restructuring process is occurring within the EU, whereby previously sovereign countries are increasingly under the jurisdiction of powerful financial institutions.
The imposition of the IMF’s deadly economic reforms on several European countries is in- dicative of America’s interference in European affairs. What is at stake is a major shift in EU political and economic structures, whereby member states of the EU are de facto re-cate- gorized by the IMF and treated in the same way as an indebted Third World country.
Military Action in Support of Economic Warfare
While the U.S. has intervened militarily in major regions of the World, the thrust of U.S. foreign policy is to have these wars fought by America’s allies or to resort to non-conven- tional forms of warfare.
The thrust of this agenda is twofold.
1) U.S. military might is coupled with that of “Global NATO” including Israel (a de facto member of the Atlantic Alliance). We are dealing with a formidable force, in terms of ad- vanced weapons systems. U.S. military bases have been established in all major regions of the World under the geographical command structure. A new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has been established.
2) Military action supports powerful economic and financial interests. A strategy of “Eco- nomic Warfare” under the neoliberal agenda is implemented in close coordination with military planning.
The purpose of warfare is not conquest per se. The U.S. lost the Vietnam war, but the ul- timate objective to destroy Vietnam as a sovereign country was achieved. Vietnam together with Cambodia today constitute a new impoverished frontier of the global cheap labor econ- omy.
Moreover, the countries which fought for their sovereignty against U.S. imperialism in Asia (including Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines) have been inte- grated into bilateral military cooperation agreements with the Pentagon. This structure of alliances imposed on defeated nations is being used by the U.S. to foment conflict with China.
The imperial project is predicated on economic conquest, implying the confiscation and appropriation of the wealth and resources of sovereign countries. In the Middle East, suc- cessive wars have been geared towards the confiscation of oil and gas reserves.
Countries are destroyed, often transformed into territories, sovereignty is foregone, national institutions collapse, the national economy is destroyed through the imposition of “free mar- ket” reforms under the helm of the IMF, unemployment becomes rampant, social services are dismantled, wages collapse, and people are impoverished.
The ruling capitalist elites in these countries are subordinated to those of the U.S. and its allies. The nation’s assets and natural resources are transferred into the hands of foreign in- vestors through a privatization program imposed by the invading forces in coordination with the IMF and the World Bank.
The History of Nuclear Weapons: The Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
America’s early nuclear weapons doctrine under the Manhattan Project was not based on The Cold War notions of “Deterrence” and “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD). Moreover, contemporary post Cold War U.S. nuclear doctrine is based on the notion that nuclear weapons can be used in the conventional war theater and that these weapons are “harmless to civilians”.
The strategic objective in the use of both conventional and nuclear attacks has been to trigger “mass casualty producing events” resulting in tens of thousands of deaths.
This strategy first applied towards the end of World War II in Japan and Germany was to terrorize an entire nation, as a means of military conquest.
In Japan, military targets were not the main objective: the notion of “collateral damage” was used as a justification for the mass killing of civilians, under the official pretense that Hiroshima was “a military base” and that civilians were not the target.
In the words of president Harry Truman:
We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. … This weapon is to be used against Japan … [We] will use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. … The target will be a purely military one…It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.7The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians..8
[Note: the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; the Second on Nagasaki, on August 9, on the same day as Truman’s radio speech to the Nation]
Harry Truman
Nobody within the upper echelons of the U.S. government and military believed that Hiroshima was a military base, Truman was lying to himself and to the American public.
To this day, the use of nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945 is justified as a necessary cost for bringing World War II to an end and ultimately “saving lives”.
Prior to Hiroshima, the U.S. extensively used fire bombs in Japan resulting in large civilian casualties. In Germany, allied forces extensively bombed and destroyed German cities in the latter part of the war targeting civilians rather than military installations.
Post-Cold War Era: Pre-emptive Nuclear Warfare
The U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal has grown considerably. In the Post-Cold War era, Arm- sControl.org (April 2013) confirms that the United States:
possesses 5,113 nuclear warheads, including tactical, strategic, and non-deployed weapons.9
According to the 2013 official New START declaration, out of more than 5113 nuclear weapons,
the U.S. deploys 1,654 strategic nuclear warheads on 792 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers…
Moreover, according to The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) the U.S. possesses 500 tactical nuclear warheads, many of which are deployed in non-nuclear states including Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands.
In the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review presented to the U.S. Senate in early 2002, the Bush Administration established so-called “contingency plans” for an offensive “first strike use” of nuclear weapons, not only against the “axis of evil” (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and North Korea), but also against Russia and China. U.S. nuclear doctrine under the Obama administration also includes a “first strike” use of nuclear weapons against non- nuclear states.
The History of U.S. War Crimes
The notion of “mass casualty producing events” prevails to this date in U.S. military strate- gies. Invariably, as in the case of Syria, the civilian casualties of war committed by the ag- gressor are blamed on the victims.
The period extending from the Korean war (1950-53) to the present is marked by a suc- cession of U.S. sponsored theater wars (Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yugoslavia), various forms of military intervention including low intensity conflicts, “civil wars” (The Congo, Angola, Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan), military coups, U.S. spon- sored death squadrons and massacres (Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines), covert wars in support of Al Qaeda “freedom fighters” (Soviet-Afghan war), U.S.-NATO covert wars using Al Qaeda as foot-soldiers (Syria), U.S.-NATO sponsored humanitarian military interventions: Libya in 2011 (aerial bombings combined with support to Al Qaeda rebels).
The objective has not been to win these wars but in essence to destabilize these countries as nation states as well as impose a proxy government which acts on behalf of Western in- terests.
Accounting for these various operations, the United States has attacked, directly or in- directly, some 44 countries in different regions of the developing world, since August 1945, a number of them many times …
The avowed objective of these military interventions has been to effect ‘regime change’. The cloaks of “human rights” and of “democracy” were invariably evoked to justify what were unilateral and illegal acts.”10
The avowed objective of these military interventions has been to effect ‘regime change’. The cloaks of “human rights” and of “democracy” were invariably evoked to justify what were unilateral and illegal acts.”10
The Vietnam War
Eight million tons of bombs (four times the amount used by the U.S. in all of World War II) were dropped indiscriminately, leaving destruction which, if laid crater to crater, would cover an area the size of the state of Maine. Eighty percent of the bombs fell on rural areas rather than military targets, leaving ten million craters. Nearly 400,000 tons of napalm was dropped on Viet- namese villages. There was no pretense of distinguishing between combatants and civilians.
The callous designation of as much as three-fourths of South Vietnam as a “free fire zone” jus- tified the murder of virtually anyone in thousands of villages in those vast areas. … The CIA’s Phoenix program alone killed as many as 70,000 civilians who were suspected of being part of the political leadership of the Viet Cong in the south.
There was a historically unprecedented level of chemical warfare in Vietnam, including the in- discriminate spraying of nearly 20 million gallons of defoliants on one-seventh the area of South Vietnam.
Lenora Foerstel and Brian Willson, United States War Crimes, Global Research, January 26, 2002
This entire “post war period” is marked by extensive war crimes resulting in the death of millions of people. What we are dealing with is a criminal U.S. foreign policy agenda. Crim- inalization does not pertain to one or more heads of State. It pertains to the entire State system, it’s various civilian and military institutions as well as the powerful corporate inter- ests behind the formulation of U.S. foreign policy, the Washington think tanks, the creditor institutions which finance the military machine.
Iraq: The 1991 Gulf War
In 1996, former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright was asked by Lesley Stahl on the CBS 60 Minutes’ show if she thought the price of half a million dead children was worth it. She replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”
Quoted by Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail, Iraq: Children Starved of Childhood, Global Research, February 15, 2008
What distinguishes the Bush and Obama administrations in relation to the historical record of U.S. sponsored crimes and atrocities, is that the concentration camps, targeted assassi- nations and torture chambers are now openly considered as legitimate forms of intervention, which sustain “the global war on terrorism” and support the spread of Western democracy.
U.S. sponsored crimes are not limited to the casualties of war and the physical destruction of the nation’s infrastructure. Countries are destroyed, often transformed into territories, sovereignty is foregone, national institutions collapse, the national economy is destroyed through the imposition of “free market” reforms, unemployment becomes rampant, social services are dismantled, wages collapse, and people are impoverished.
In turn, the nation’s assets and natural resources are transferred into the hands of foreign investors through a privatization program imposed by the invading forces
Destroying Internationalism: The Truman Doctrine
The broader objective of global military dominance in the wake of World War II in support of an imperial project was formulated under the Truman administration in the late 1940s at the outset of the Cold War. It was reaffirmed by U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush in a historical 1990 address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress and the Senate in which he proclaimed a New World Order emerging from the downfall of the Berlin Wall and the dis- integration of the Soviet block.
The ideological underpinnings of this agenda are to be found in what is known as the “Tru- man Doctrine”, first formulated by foreign policy adviser George F. Kennan in a 1948 State Department brief.
What this 1948 document conveys is continuity in U.S. foreign policy, from “Containment” during The Cold War to “Pre-emptive” Warfare and “War on Terrorism”. It states in polite terms that the U.S. should seek economic and strategic dominance through military means:
Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its popu- lation. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national se- curity. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of al- truism and world-benefaction.…In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to “be liked” or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers’ keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and–for the Far East–unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.11
U.S. Sponsored Killings in Indonesia, 1965
The United States and British governments, supported by Australia, were deeply complicit in the murder of more than half a million alleged communist sympathizers in the wake of the 1965 Indonesian coup. According to professor Brad Simpson of Princeton University the U.S. and British governments did “everything in their power” to ensure that the Indonesian army would carry out the mass killings.
John Braddock, Historian says U.S. backed “efficacious terror” in 1965 Indonesian massacre,World Socialist Web Site, July 7, 2009
Renowned New York Times columnist James Reston celebrated “A gleam of light in Asia” and wrote a kid-glove version he had clearly been given. The Australian prime minister, Harold Holt, who was visiting the U.S., offered a striking example of his sense of humor: “With 500,000 to a million communist sympathizers knocked off,” he said, “I think it’s safe to assume a reorientation has taken place.”
John Pilger, Spoils Of A Massacre, The Guardian Weekend, London, 14 July 2001
The planned disintegration of the United Nations system as an independent and influential international body has been on the drawing board of U.S. foreign policy since the inception of the United Nations in 1946. Its planned demise was an integral part of The Truman Doctrine as defined in 1948. From the very inception of the UN, Washington has sought on the one hand to control it to its advantage, while also seeking to weaken and ultimately destroy the UN system. In the words of George Kennan:
“Occasionally, it [the United Nations] has served a useful purpose. But by and large it has created more problems than it has solved, and has led to a considerable dispersal of our diplomatic effort. And in our efforts to use the UN majority for major political pur- poses we are playing with a dangerous weapon which may some day turn against us. This is a situation which warrants most careful study and foresight on our part.
In our efforts to use the UN majority for major political purposes we are playing with a dangerous weapon which may some day turn against us. This is a situation which warrants most careful study and foresight on our part.12
Although officially committed to the “international community”, Washington has largely played lip service to the United Nations. Today the UN is in many regards an appendage of the U.S. State Department. Rather than undermining the UN as an institution as proposed in the late 1940s by George Kennan, the U.S. and its allies exert control over the UN Sec- retariat and key UN agencies.
Since Gulf War I, the UN has largely acted as a rubber stamp. It has closed its eyes to U.S. war crimes, it has implemented so-called peacekeeping operations on behalf of the Anglo-American invaders, in violation of the UN Charter. Following the de facto “dismissal” of Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali, both Secretary General Kofi Annan and his successor Ban Ki-moon became tools of U.S. foreign policy, taking their orders directly from Washington.
Needless to say, successive Democratic and Republican administrations, from Harry Tru- man to George W. Bush and Barack Obama have been involved in carrying out this hege- monic blueprint for global domination, which the Pentagon calls the “Long War”.
Kennan’s writings point to the importance of building a dominant Anglo-American alliance based on “good relations between our country and [the] British Empire”. In today’s world, this alliance largely characterizes the military axis between Washington and London, which plays a dominant role inside NATO to the detriment of Washington’s European allies. Kennan also pointed to the inclusion of Canada in the Anglo-American alliance, a policy which today has largely been implemented (under NAFTA and the integration of military command struc- tures). Canada was viewed as a go between the U.S. and Britain, as a means for the U.S. to also exert its influence in Britain’s colonies, which later became part of the Common- wealth.
“Federated Europe”
A blueprint of a European Union predicated on “a weakened Germany” had also been en- visaged under the Truman doctrine. George F. Kennan had envisaged the formation of a “Federated Europe” which would be based on the strengthening of the dominant Anglo- American alliance between Britain and the U.S. , the weakening of Germany as a European power and the exclusion of Russia.
Of relevance in relation to recent developments in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, Kennan explicitly pointed in his 1948 State Department brief, to “a policy of containment of Germany, within Western Europe”. What Kennan’s observations suggest is that the U.S. should be sup- portive of a European Project only inasmuch as it supports U.S. hegemonic interests.
In this regard, we recall that the Franco-German alliance largely prevailed prior to the on- slaught of the March 2003 U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq, to which both France and Germany were opposed.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a turning point. The election of pro-U.S. political leaders (President Sarkozy in France and Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany) was conducive to a weakening of national sovereignty, leading to the demise of the Franco-German alliance.
Today both the French president and the German Chancellor are taking their orders directly from Washington.
Moreover, in today’s context, the U.S. is committed to preventing Germany and France from developing political and economic relations with Russia, which in the eyes of Washing- ton would undermine America’s hegemonic ambitions in the European Union.
Building a U.S. Sphere of Influence in East and South East Asia
The Truman Doctrine discussed above was the culmination of a post World War II U.S. military strategy initiated with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and the surrender of Japan.
In East Asia, it consisted in the post-war occupation of Japan as well as the U.S. takeover of Japan’s colonial Empire including South Korea (Korea was annexed to Japan under the 1910 Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty).
Following Imperial Japan’s defeat in World War II, a U.S. sphere of influence throughout East and South East Asia was established in the territories of imperial Japan’s “Great East Asia Co- Prosperity Sphere”.
America’s hegemony in Asia was largely based on establishing a sphere of influence in countries under the colonial jurisdiction of Japan, France and the Netherlands.
The U.S. sphere of influence in Asia –which was built up in the course of the 20th Century – included the Philippines (a U.S. possession which was occupied by Japan during World War II), South Korea (annexed to Japan in 1910, U.S. proxy state in the wake of World War II), Thailand (a Japanese protectorate during World War II), Indonesia (a Dutch colony occupied by Japan during World War II, which becomes a de facto U.S. proxy State following the es- tablishment of the Suharto military dictatorship in 1965).
This U.S. sphere of influence in Asia also extended its grip into France’s former colonial possessions in Indochina, including Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which were under Japan- ese military occupation during World War II.
Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” which overtly threatens China is the endgame of this historical process.
The Korean War and The Truman Doctrine
The Korean War (1950-1953) was the first major military operation undertaken by the U.S. in the wake of World War II, launched at the very outset of what was euphemistically called “The Cold War”. In many respects it was a continuation of World War II, whereby Ko- rean lands under Japanese colonial occupation were, from one day to the next, handed over to a new colonial power – The United States of America. This handover of South Korea to the U.S. took place on September 8, 1945, three weeks after the surrender of Japan on Au- gust 15, 1945.
At the Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945), the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed to dividing Korea, along the thirty-eighth parallel. There was no “Liberation” of Korea following the entry of U.S. forces. Quite the opposite.
A U.S. military government was established in South Korea on September 8, 1945. More- over, Japanese officials in South Korea assisted the U.S. Army Military Government (U.S.AMG) (1945-48) led by General Hodge in ensuring this transition. Japanese colonial administrators in Seoul as well as their Korean police officials worked hand in glove with their new colonial masters.
From the outset, the U.S. military government refused to recognize the provisional gov- ernment of the People’s Republic of Korea (PRK) (in South Korea), which was committed to major social reforms including land distribution, laws protecting the rights of workers, min- imum wage legislation and the reunification of North and South Korea.
The PRK was non-aligned with an anti-colonial mandate, calling for the “establishment of close relations with The United States, U.S.SR, England, and China, and positive opposition to any foreign influences interfering with the domestic affairs of the state.”13
The PRK was abolished by military decree in September 1945 by the U.S.AMG. There was no democracy, no liberation, no independence.
While Japan was treated as a defeated Empire, South Korea was identified as a colonial territory to be administered under U.S. military rule and U.S. occupation forces.
America’s handpicked appointee Sygman Rhee was flown into Seoul in October 1945, in General Douglas MacArthur’s personal airplane.
Extensive War Crimes against the Korean People
The crimes committed by the U.S. against the people of Korea in the course of the Korean War but also in its aftermath are unprecedented in modern history.
Moreover, it is important to understand that these U.S. sponsored crimes against humanity committed in the 1950s have, over the years, contributed to setting “a pattern of killings” and U.S. human rights violations in different parts of the World.
The Korean War was also characterized by a practice of targeted assassinations of political dissidents, which was subsequently implemented by the CIA in numerous countries including Indonesia, Vietnam, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Iraq.
Invariably, these targeted killings were committed on the instructions of the CIA and car- ried out by a U.S. sponsored proxy government or military dictatorship. More recently, tar- geted assassinations of civilians, “legalized” by the U.S. Congress have become, so to speak, the “New Normal”.
According to I.F. Stone’s “Hidden History of the Korean War” first published in 1952 (at the height of the Korean War), the U.S. deliberately sought a pretext, an act of deception, which incited the North to cross the thirty-eighth parallel ultimately leading to all-out war.
[I. F. Stone’s book] raised questions about the origin of the Korean War, made a case that the United States government manipulated the United Nations, and gave evidence that the U.S. military and South Korean oligarchy dragged out the war by sabotaging the peace talks,14
In Stone’s account, General Douglas MacArthur “did everything possible to avoid peace”.
U.S. wars of aggression are waged under the cloak of “self defense” and pre-emptive attacks. Echoing I. F. Stone’s historical statement concerning General MacArthur, sixty years later U.S. President Barack Obama and his Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are also “doing everything possible to avoid peace”.
This pattern of inciting the enemy “to fire the first shot” is well established in U.S. military doctrine. It pertains to creating a “War Pretext Incident” which provides the aggressor a jus- tification to intervene on the grounds of “Self- Defense”. It characterized the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1941, triggered by deception and provocation. U.S. officials had advanced knowledge of the Japanese attack. Pearl Harbor was the justification for America’s entry into World War II.
The Tonkin Gulf Incident in August 1964 was the pretext for the U.S. to wage war on North Vietnam, following the adoption of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution by the U.S. Congress, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to wage war on Communist North Vietnam.
I. F. Stone’s analysis refutes “the standard telling” … that the Korean War was an unprovoked aggression by the North Koreans beginning on June 25, 1950, under- taken at the behest of The Soviet Union to extend the Soviet sphere of influence to the whole of Korea, completely surprising the South Koreans, the U.S., and the U.N.”But was it a surprise? Could an attack by 70,000 men using at least 70 tanks launched simultaneously at four different points have been a surprise?Stone gathers contemporary reports from South Korean, U.S. and U.N. sources docu- menting what was known before June 25. The head of the U.S. CIA, Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenloetter, is reported to have said on the record, “that American intelli- gence was aware that ‘conditions existed in Korea that could have meant an invasion this week or next.” (p. 2) Stone writes that “America’s leading military commentator, Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times, a trusted confidant of the Pentagon, reported that they [U.S. military documents] showed ‘a marked buildup by the North Korean People’s Army along the 38th Parallel beginning in the early days of June.’ ”15 (p. 4) How and why did U.S. President Truman so quickly decide by June 27 to commit the U.S. military to battle in South Korea? Stone makes a strong case that there were those in the U.S. government and military who saw a war in Korea and the resulting instability in East Asia as in the U.S. national interest.16
According to the editor of France’s Nouvel Observateur Claude Bourdet:
If Stone’s thesis corresponds to reality, we are in the presence of the greatest swindle in the whole of military history… not a question of a harmless fraud but of a terrible maneuver in which deception is being consciously utilized to block peace at a time when it is possible.16
In the words of renowned American authors Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy:
We have come to the conclusion that [South Korean president] Syngman Rhee delib- erately provoked the North Koreans in the hope that they would retaliate by crossing the parallel in force. The northerners fell neatly into the trap.17
On 25 June 1950, following the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 82, General Douglas MacArthur, who headed the U.S. military government in occupied Japan was ap- pointed Commander in Chief of the so-called United Nations Command (UNCOM). According to Bruce Cumings, the Korean War “bore a strong resemblance to the air war against Impe- rial Japan in the second world war and was often directed by the same U.S. military leaders” including generals Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay.
While nuclear weapons were not used during the Korean War, what prevailed was the strategy of “mass killings of civilians” which had been formulated during World War II. A policy of killing innocent civilians was implemented through extensive air raids and bombings of German cities by American and British forces in the last weeks of World War II. In a bitter irony, military tar- gets were safeguarded.
This unofficial doctrine of killing of civilians under the pretext of targeting military objec- tives largely characterized U.S. military actions both in the course of the Korean war as well as in its aftermath. According to Bruce Cumings:
On 12 August 1950, the U.S.AF dropped 625 tons of bombs on North Korea; two weeks later, the daily tonnage increased to some 800 tons.U.S. warplanes dropped more na- palm and bombs on North Korea than they did during the whole Pacific campaign of World War II.18
The territories North of the thirty-eighth parallel were subjected to extensive carpet bomb- ing, which resulted in the destruction of seventy-eight cities and thousands of villages:
What was indelible about it [the Korean War of 1950-53] was the extraordinary de- structiveness of the United States’ air campaigns against North Korea, from the wide- spread and continuous use of firebombing (mainly with napalm), to threats to use nuclear and chemical weapons, and the destruction of huge North Korean dams in the final stages of the war. ….
As a result, almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed.19
U.S. Major General William F. Dean “reported that most of the North Korean cities and vil- lages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wastelands”.
General Curtis LeMay who coordinated the bombing raids against North Korea brazenly acknowledged that:
Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the popu- lation. … We burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea, too.20
According to Brian Willson:
It is now believed that the population north of the imposed thirty-eighth Parallel lost nearly a third its population of eight to nine million people during the thirty-seven-month-long “hot” war, 1950-53, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerence of another.21
North Korea has been threatened of an attack with U.S. nuclear weapons for more than 60 years.
From The Truman Doctrine to the Neocons: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama
There has been continuity throughout the post-World War II era, from Korea and Vietnam to the present.
The neoconservative agenda under the Bush administration should be viewed as the cul- mination of a (bipartisan) “Post War” foreign policy framework, which provided the basis for the planning of the contemporary wars and atrocities including the setting up of torture chambers, concentration camps and the extensive use of prohibited weapons directed against civilians.
Under Obama, this agenda has become increasingly cohesive with the legalization of ex- trajudicial killings of U.S. citizens under the anti-terrorist legislation, the extensive use of drone attacks against civilians, the massacres ordered by the U.S.-NATO-Israel alliance di- rected against Syrian and Iraqi civilians.
From Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, to the CIA sponsored military coups in Latin Amer- ica and Southeast Asia, the objective has been to ensure U.S. military hegemony and global economic domination, as initially formulated under The Truman Doctrine.
Despite significant policy differences, successive Democratic and Republican administra- tions, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama have carried out this global military agenda.
This entire “post war period” is marked by extensive war crimes resulting in the death of more than twenty million people. This figure does not include those who perished as a result of poverty, starvation and disease.
The Criminalization of U.S. Foreign Policy
What we are dealing with is a criminal U.S. foreign policy agenda. Media propaganda has served to obfuscate this agenda. U.S. interventionism is invariably upheld as a humanitarian endeavor. Meanwhile, so-called “progressive leftists” and “anti-war activists” supported by corporate foundations have upheld this agenda on humanitarian grounds. (See Chapter XI)
Criminalization does not pertain to one or more heads of state. It pertains to the entire State system, it’s various civilian and military institutions as well as the powerful corporate interests behind the formulation of U.S. foreign policy, the Washington think tanks, the cred- itor institutions which finance the military machine.
War crimes are the result of the criminalization of the U.S. State and foreign policy appa- ratus. We are not only dealing with individual war criminals, but with a process involving decision makers acting at different levels, with a mandate to carry out war crimes, following established guidelines and procedures.
What distinguishes the Bush and Obama administrations in relation to the historical record of U.S. sponsored crimes and atrocities, is that the concentration camps, targeted assassi- nations and torture chambers are now openly considered as legitimate forms of intervention, which sustain “the global war on terrorism” and support the spread of Western democracy.
The U.S. Supported the “Dirty War” in Latin America
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a behind-the-scenes role in the 1976 mil- itary coup in Argentina as well as in the formulation of Operation Condor which consisted in a coordinated campaign by U.S.-backed Latin American military governments in the 1970s and 1980s to hunt down, torture and murder tens of thousands of opponents of those regimes.
Kissinger’s top deputy on Latin America, William Rogers, told him two days after the 1976 coup that:
we’ve got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood, in Argentina before too long.22
The Wars of the Twenty-first Century: From The Cold War to the “Global War on Terrorism”
The alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorists attacks, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war, ironically under the auspices of the CIA, “to fight the Soviet invaders”.
From the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in the early 1980s, the U.S. intelligence appa- ratus has supported the formation of the “Islamic brigades”.
The Just War Theory
The “Just War” theory (Jus ad Bellum) has a longstanding tradition. It has been used throughout history to uphold the dominant social order and provide a justification for waging war.
The “Just War” theory has served to camouflage the nature of U.S. foreign policy, while providing a human face to the invaders.
In the case of Afghanistan, 9/11 played a key role in justifying the invasion. The NATO led wars on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya are considered “Just Wars”, waged on humanitar- ian grounds under the Atlantic alliance’s “Responsibility to Protect”(R2P) doctrine.
The September 11, 2001 Attacks and the Invasion of Afghanistan
September 11, 2001 provided a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. cor- porate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.
The September 11, 2001 attacks also played a crucial role in the formulation of U.S. mil- itary doctrine, namely in sustaining the legend that Al Qaeda is an enemy of the Western world when in fact it is a construct of U.S. intelligence, which is used not only as a pretext to wage war on humanitarian grounds but also as an instrument of non-conventional war- fare.
On September 12, 2001, NATO invoked for the first time in its history “Article 5 of the Washington Treaty – its collective defense clause” declaring the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon “to be an attack against all NATO members.”
Afghanistan was tagged, without a shred of evidence and prior to the conduct of an in- vestigation, as the ”state sponsor” of the 9/11 attacks. The invasion of Afghanistan in early October 2001 was presented as a counter-terrorism operation directed against the perpetrators of 9/11 and their state sponsors.
Trade unions, NGOs and many “progressive” intellectuals endorsed the U.S.-NATO led inva- sion. The events of 9/11 played a key role in gaining the support of various sectors of American society including the opponents and critics of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.
The war on Afghanistan was prepared prior to 9/11. War preparations were already in an advanced stage of readiness. The green light to wage war by the U.S. and NATO on Afghanistan was provided within twenty-four hours of the 9/11 attacks.
The press reports failed to reveal a fact which is known and acknowledged by military analysts: a major theater war cannot, under any circumstances, be planned and carried out in a matter of four to five weeks.
The legal argument used by Washington and NATO to invade Afghanistan in early October 2001 was that the September 11 attacks constituted an undeclared “armed attack” “from abroad” by an unnamed foreign power, and that consequently “the laws of war” apply, allowing the nation under attack, to strike back in the name of “self-defense”.
The “Global War on Terrorism” was officially launched by the Bush administration on Sep- tember 11, 2001. On the following morning (September 12, 2001), NATO’s North Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels, adopted the following resolution:
If it is determined that the [September 11, 2001] attack against the United States was directed from abroad [Afghanistan] against “The North Atlantic area“, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty” (see text box below).23
Article 5 of the Washington Treaty
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recog- nised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North At- lantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security. (source: www.nato.int)
Afghanistan was invaded on October 7, 2001 under NATO’s doctrine of collective security: an attack on one member of the Atlantic Alliance is an attack on all members of Atlantic al- liance. The presumption was that the U.S. had been attacked by Afghanistan on September 11, 2001, an absurd proposition.
Pre-emptive war directed against “Islamic terrorists” is required to defend the Homeland. Realities are turned upside down: America and the Western World are under attack.
In the wake of 9/11, the creation of this “outside enemy” served to obfuscate the real economic and strategic objectives behind the American-led wars in the Middle East and Cen- tral Asia, which encompass more than sixty percent of the World’s oil and gas reserves.
Waged on the grounds of self-defense, the pre-emptive war is upheld as a “just war” with a humanitarian mandate.
Propaganda purports to erase the history of Al Qaeda created by the CIA, drown the truth and “kill the evidence” on how this “outside enemy” was fabricated and transformed into “Enemy Number One”.
What the media does not mention is that the terrorists are paid killers, supported by the U.S. NATO and Israel.
Non-Conventional Warfare: Using Al Qaeda Rebels as the Foot Soldiers of the Western Military alliance
This strategy of using al Qaeda rebels as the foot soldiers of the Western military is of crucial significance. It has characterized U.S.-NATO interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. It is currently part of a covert agenda to destabilize Iraq by supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant (AQIL).
The Islamic State
While Washington is accusing several countries of “harboring terrorists”, America is the Number One “State Sponsor of Terrorism”: The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) – which operates in both Syria and Iraq– is covertly supported and financed by the U.S. and its allies including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Moreover, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s Sunni caliphate project coincides with a longstanding U.S. agenda to carve up both Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan, among others.
Who is behind the Islamic State Project?
In a bitter irony, until July 2014, the rebels of the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were heralded as Syria’s “opposition freedom fighters” com- mitted to “restoring democracy” and unseating the secular government of Bashar al Assad.
And who was behind the jihadist insurgency in Syria?
Those who ordered the bombing campaign are those who are behind the Caliphate Project. The Islamic State (IS) militia, which is currently the alleged target of a U.S.-NATO bombing campaign under a “counter-terrorism” mandate, was and continues to be supported covertly by the United States and its allies.
In other words, the Islamic State (IS) is a creation of U.S. intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s Gen- eral Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-’Āmah ( ةماعلا تارابختسالا ةسائر�). More- over, according to Israeli intelligence sources (Debka) NATO in liaison with the Turkish High Command has been involved in the recruitment of jihadist mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian crisis in March 2011.
In relation to the Syrian insurgency, the Islamic State fighters together with the Al Qaeda af- filiated jihadist forces of the Al Nusrah Front are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance. They are covertly supported by U.S.-NATO-Israel. Their mandate is to wage a terrorist insurgency against the government of Bashar al-Assad. The atrocities committed by Islamic State fighters in Iraq are similar to those committed in Syria.
As a result of media disinformation, Western public opinion is unaware that the Islamic State terrorists have from the very outset been supported by the United States and its allies.
U.S. sponsored Al Qaeda terror brigades (covertly supported by Western intelligence) have also been deployed in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen. The objective is to create sectarian and ethnic divisions with a view to destabilizing or fracturing sovereign countries modeled on former Yugoslavia.
America’s Global Strike Plan: The Role of U.S. Strategic Command (U.S.STRATCOM)
Modern global warfare requires a centralized and unified command structure.
Global military operations in the post 9/11 era are coordinated out of U.S. Strategic Com- mand Headquarters (U.S.STRATCOM) at the Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska, in liaison with the regional commands of the unified combatant commands as well as coalition com- mand units in Israel, Turkey, the Persian Gulf and the Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean.
Military planning and decision making at a country level by individual allies of U.S.-NATO as well as “partner nations” is integrated into a global military design including the weaponiza- tion of space.
Under its new mandate, U.S.STRATCOM has a responsibility for “overseeing a global strike plan” consisting of both conventional and nuclear weapons. In military jargon, it is slated to play the role of a global integrator charged with the missions of Space Operations; Information Operations; Integrated Missile Defense; Global Command & Control; Intelligence, Surveil- lance and Reconnaissance; Global Strike; and Strategic Deterrence…24
U.S. Military Deployed in 150 Countries
The U.S. military is deployed in more than 150 countries “with over 160,000 of its active-duty personnel serving outside the United States and its territories and an additional 110,000 deployed in various contingency operations.”
There are approximately 68,000 U.S. troops stationed in Europe; approximately 80,000 in East Asia and the Pacific region; nearly 4,900 in North Africa, the Near East, and South Asia; over 1,750 in the Western Hemisphere; nearly 400 in Sub-Saharan Africa; and less than 100 in states of the former Soviet Union.
“Total Military Personnel and Dependent End Strength By Service, Regional Area, and Country”. De- fense Manpower Data Center. July 31, 2014.
U.S.STRATCOM’s responsibilities include: “leading, planning, & executing strategic deter- rence operations” at a global level, “synchronizing global missile defense plans and opera- tions”, “synchronizing regional combat plans”, etc. U.S.STRATCOM is the lead agency in the coordination of modern warfare.25
In turn, U.S. Strategic Command (U.S.STRATCOM) is in permanent liaison with the regional headquarters of the unified combat command system, which is made up of six “areas of re- sponsibility”. The regional commands are headed by a four star general who has the mandate to carry out U.S. war plans within the geographic area of responsibility. U.S. European Com- mand (U.S.EUCOM) is responsible for military operations in Europe, Russia and Turkey. U.S.CENTCOM coordinate military operations in the Middle east and Central Asia. the juris- diction of U.S. Pacific Command includes South Asia, South East Asia, China, Japan, Korea and Australia.
The Contemporary War Theater: Towards a World War III Scenario?
In 2005, at the outset of the military deployment and build-up directed against Iran, U.S.STRATCOM was identified as “the lead Combatant Command for integration and synchro- nization of DoD-wide efforts in combating weapons of mass destruction.”26 (See Chapter III). The central role of U.S.STRATCOM applies to Iran and the broader Middle East as well as to China, Russia and North Korea.
Concurrently with U.S.-NATO’s deployments in the Middle East directed against Syria and Iran, U.S.-NATO has been building up its weapons arsenal in Poland on Russia’s Western border (Kalingrad). The deployment of U.S. forces in Poland was initiated in July 2010 (within 40 miles from the border), with a view to training Polish forces in the use of U.S. made Patriot missiles.27 In August 2014, the Pentagon announced the deployment of U.S. troops and National Guard forces to Ukraine. U.S.-NATO is also planning further deployments of ground forces in Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania as well as in Georgia and Azerbaijan on Russia’s southern border.
These deployments which are envisaged in the 2014 draft text of the “Russian Aggression Prevention Act” (RAPA) (S.2277 – 113th Congress (2013-2014)) are also part of a NATO “defensive” strategy in the case of a “Russian invasion.”
Deployment on Russia’s Southern border is to be coordinated under a three country agree- ment signed in August 2014 by Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan:
Following the trilateral meeting of Azerbaijani, Turkish and Georgian defense ministers, Tbilisi announced that the three countries are interested in working out a plan to strengthen the defense capability.
“The representatives of the governments of these three countries start to think about working out a plan to strengthen the defense capability,” Alasania said, adding that this is in the interests of Europe and NATO.“Because, this transit route [Baku-Tbilisi-Kars] is used to transport the alliance’s cargo to Afghanistan,” he said.
Alasania also noted that these actions are not directed against anyone.28
China, Russia and Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”
The “Pivot to Asia” from a military standpoint consists in extending U.S. military de- ployments in the Asia-Pacific as well as harnessing the participation of Washington’s allies in the region, including Japan, South Korea and Australia. Military preparedness under the pivot to Asia threatens China, Russia and North Horea.
These countries have signed bilateral military cooperation agreements with Washington. As U.S. allies, they are slated to be involved in Pentagon war plans directed against Russia, China and North Korea:
U.S. Regional Commands
Japan and South Korea are also both part of a grand U.S. military project involving the global stationing of missile systems and rapid military forces, as envisioned during the Reagan Administration.29
In August 2014, the U.S. and Australia signed a military agreement allowing for the de- ployment of U.S. troops in Australia. This agreement is part of Obama’s Pivot to Asia.
This Pentagon strategy of military encirclement of both China and Russia requires both centralized military decision making (Pentagon, U.S.STRATCOM) as well coordination with NATO and the various U.S. regional commands.
The Russian Federation is the World’s largest country with maritime borders in the Pacific and Arctic oceans. U.S. war plans pertaining to Russia are coordinated out of U.S. Strategic Command Headquarters (U.S.STRATCOM) in Omaha, Nebraska, turn is in liaison with U.S. European Command (U.S.EUCOM) as well as the other five geographic Combat Commands.
While Russia is formally within the “jurisdiction” of U.S. European Command (U.S.EUCOM), in case of war with Russia, all three regional combat commands (U.S.EUCOM, U.S.PACOM, U.S.NORTHCOM would be involved. In practice, U.S.NORTHCOM is an extension of NORAD (North American Air Defense agreement between the U.S. and Canada). In turn the various command structures are in permanent liaison with NATO headquarters in Brussels.
The Dangers of a Third World War
While this renewed East-West confrontation has mistakenly been labelled a “New Cold War”, none of the safeguards of The Cold War era prevail.
International diplomacy has collapsed. Russia has been excluded from the Group of Eight (G-8), which has reverted to the G-7 (Group of Seven Nations). There is no “Cold War East- West dialogue” between competing superpowers geared towards avoiding military confronta- tion. In turn, the United Nations Security Council has become a de facto mouthpiece of the U.S. State Department.
U.S.-NATO will not, however, be able to win a conventional war against Russia, with the danger that military confrontation could lead to a nuclear war.
In the post-Cold war era, however, nuclear weapons are no longer considered as a “weapon of last resort” under the Cold War doctrine of “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD). Quite the opposite. nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pentagon as “harmless to the sur- rounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”. In 2002, the U.S. Senate gave the green light for the use of nuclear weapons in the conventional war theater. Nukes are part of the “military toolbox” to be used alongside conventional weapons.
When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. In a bitter irony, nukes are now upheld by Washington as “instruments of peace”.
The public remains largely unaware of the grave implications of these war plans.Moreover, twenty-first century military technology combines an array of sophisticated weapons systems whose destructive power would overshadow the nuclear holocausts of Hiroshima and Na- gasaki. Lest we forget, the United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons against civilians.
The danger of World War III is not front-page news. The mainstream media has excluded in-depth analysis and debate on the implications of these war plans.
Notes
1. Nobel Press Release, October 9, 2009, emphasis added.
2. “Through focused, sustained engagement with partners in support of our shared security objectives”. AFRICOM’s area of jurisdiction extends to the entire “African continent, its island nations, and surrounding wa- ters”.
3. Project for A New American Century (PNAC), Rebuilding America`s Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Re- sources for a New Century, Washington D.C. 2000.
4. Ibid.
5. See Chris Floyd, Bush’s Crusade for Empire, Global Outlook, No. 6, November, 2003.
6. See Secret 2001 Pentagon Plan to Attack Lebanon, Global Research, July 23, 2006.
7. President Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945.
8. President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945.
9. ArmsControl.org, April 2013.
10. Eric Waddell, The United States’ Global Military Crusade (1945-2003), Global Research, 2003.
11. George F. Kennan, 1948 State Department Brief, emphasis added.
12. Ibid.
13. Martin Hart-Landsberg, Korea: Division, Reunification, & U.S. Foreign Policy. Monthly Review Press. New York, 1998 pp. 65–6). The PRK was abolished by military decree in September 1945 by the U.S.AMG.
14. Jay Hauben, Book Review of I.F. Stone’s Hidden History of the Korean War, OmnyNews, 2007. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-history-of-the-korean-war/5342685.
15. Ibid.
16. Quoted in Stephen Lendman, “America’s War on North Korea”, Global Research, April 1, 2013, http://www.globalresearch.ca/americas-war-on-north-korea/5329374.
17. Ibid.
18. Bruce Cumings, Korea: Forgotten Nuclear Threats, 2005.
19. Ibid.
20. Quoted in Brian Willson, Korea and the Axis of Evil, Global Research, October 2006.
21. Ibid.
22. Argentina, Declassified documents, Kissinger sought immediate support for the new military regime in spite of staff warnings on bloodshed, National Security Archive, March 23, 2006.
23. NATO Communiqué, September 12, 2001 quoted in Michel Chossudovsky, September 11, 2001: The Crimes of War Committed “In the Name of 9/11′′, Global Research, http://www.globalresearch.ca/september- 11-2001-the-crimes-of-war-committed-in-the-name-of-911/5311561, Perdana Global Peace Foundation, No- vember 2012. emphasis added.
24. Defense Threat Reduction Agency and U.S. Strategic Command (U.S.TRATCOM) , http://www.dtra.mil/about/WhoWeAre.aspx.
25. Ibid.
26. Michel Chossudovsky, Nuclear War against Iran, Global Research, January 3, 2006.
2. “Through focused, sustained engagement with partners in support of our shared security objectives”. AFRICOM’s area of jurisdiction extends to the entire “African continent, its island nations, and surrounding wa- ters”.
3. Project for A New American Century (PNAC), Rebuilding America`s Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Re- sources for a New Century, Washington D.C. 2000.
4. Ibid.
5. See Chris Floyd, Bush’s Crusade for Empire, Global Outlook, No. 6, November, 2003.
6. See Secret 2001 Pentagon Plan to Attack Lebanon, Global Research, July 23, 2006.
7. President Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945.
8. President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945.
9. ArmsControl.org, April 2013.
10. Eric Waddell, The United States’ Global Military Crusade (1945-2003), Global Research, 2003.
11. George F. Kennan, 1948 State Department Brief, emphasis added.
12. Ibid.
13. Martin Hart-Landsberg, Korea: Division, Reunification, & U.S. Foreign Policy. Monthly Review Press. New York, 1998 pp. 65–6). The PRK was abolished by military decree in September 1945 by the U.S.AMG.
14. Jay Hauben, Book Review of I.F. Stone’s Hidden History of the Korean War, OmnyNews, 2007. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-history-of-the-korean-war/5342685.
15. Ibid.
16. Quoted in Stephen Lendman, “America’s War on North Korea”, Global Research, April 1, 2013, http://www.globalresearch.ca/americas-war-on-north-korea/5329374.
17. Ibid.
18. Bruce Cumings, Korea: Forgotten Nuclear Threats, 2005.
19. Ibid.
20. Quoted in Brian Willson, Korea and the Axis of Evil, Global Research, October 2006.
21. Ibid.
22. Argentina, Declassified documents, Kissinger sought immediate support for the new military regime in spite of staff warnings on bloodshed, National Security Archive, March 23, 2006.
23. NATO Communiqué, September 12, 2001 quoted in Michel Chossudovsky, September 11, 2001: The Crimes of War Committed “In the Name of 9/11′′, Global Research, http://www.globalresearch.ca/september- 11-2001-the-crimes-of-war-committed-in-the-name-of-911/5311561, Perdana Global Peace Foundation, No- vember 2012. emphasis added.
24. Defense Threat Reduction Agency and U.S. Strategic Command (U.S.TRATCOM) , http://www.dtra.mil/about/WhoWeAre.aspx.
25. Ibid.
26. Michel Chossudovsky, Nuclear War against Iran, Global Research, January 3, 2006.
27. Stars and Stripes, July 23, 2010.
28. Azeri News, August 22, 2014, emphasis added.
29. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Military Alliance: Encircling Russia and China, Global Research, October 5, 2007.
29. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Military Alliance: Encircling Russia and China, Global Research, October 5, 2007.
America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the “Globalization of War” whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine –coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.
This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history. It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.
The ultimate objective is World conquest under the cloak of “human rights” and “Western democracy”.
The Globalization of War
America’s “Long War” against Humanity
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REVIEWS:
“Professor Michel Chossudovsky is the most realistic of all foreign policy commentators. He is a model of integrity in analysis, his book provides an honest appraisal of the extreme danger that U.S. hegemonic neoconservatism poses to life on earth.”
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury
““The Globalization of War” comprises war on two fronts: those countries that can either be “bought” or destabilized. In other cases, insurrection, riots and wars are used to solicit U.S. military intervention. Michel Chossudovsky’s book is a must read for anyone who prefers peace and hope to perpetual war, death, dislocation and despair.”
Hon. Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Minister of National Defence
“Michel Chossudovsky describes globalization as a hegemonic weapon that empowers the financial elites and enslaves 99 percent of the world’s population.
“The Globalization of War” is diplomatic dynamite – and the fuse is burning rapidly.”
Michael Carmichael, President, the Planetary Movement
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2018
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