Declassified: US Imperialism, Terror, and Support for Tyranny

[Horhey]

The "Unipolar Moment"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_drFPB4XKJE#ws

With just that much background, let us turn to the "unipolar moment," which has been the topic of a great deal of scholarly and popular discussion since the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, leaving the US as the sole global superpower instead of merely the primary superpower as before. We learn a lot about the nature of the Cold War, and about events unfolding since, by looking at how Washington reacted to the disappearance of its global enemy, the "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy" to take over the world, as John F. Kennedy described it.

A few weeks after the fall of the Berlin wall, the US invaded Panama. The purpose was to kidnap a minor thug who was brought to Florida and sentenced for crimes that he had committed, for the most part, while on the CIA payroll. He had switched from valued friend to evil demon by attempting some successful defiance, dragging his feet on supporting Reagan's terrorist wars in Nicaragua. The invasion killed several thousand poor people in Panama, according to Panamanian sources, and reinstated the rule of US-linked bankers and narcotraffickers. It was hardly more than a footnote to history, but it did break the pattern in some respects. One was that a new pretext was needed, and it was quickly supplied: the threat of Hispanic narcotraffickers seeking to destroy the United States. The "drug war" had been declared by Richard Nixon, but took on a new and significant role during the unipolar moment.

The need for a new pretext also guided the official reaction in Washington to the collapse of the superpower enemy. Within months, the Bush senior administration outlined Washington's new course: in brief, everything will stay much the same, but with new pretexts. We still need a huge military system, but for a new reason:

In a new era, we foresee that our military power will remain an essential underpinning of the global balance, but less prominently and in different ways. We see that the more likely demands for the use of our military forces may not involve the Soviet Union and may be in the Third World, where new capabilities and approaches may be required. With the goal of contributing to an international environment of peace, freedom and progress within which our democracy -- and other free nations -- can flourish.

The growing technological sophistication of Third World conflicts will place serious demands on our forces and may continue to threaten U.S. interests even without the backdrop of superpower competition. In the future, we expect that non-Soviet threats to these interests will command even greater attention. We must have the means to reinforce our units forward deployed or to project power into areas where we have no permanent precense. This is necessary in Middle East because of the free world's reliance on energy supplies from this pivital region.

We have to maintain the "defense industrial base" -- a euphemism for state-supported high-tech industry. We must maintain intervention forces directed at the Middle East energy-rich regions -- where the significant threats to our interests "could not be laid at the Kremlin's door," contrary to decades of deceit. All of this was passed over quietly, barely even reported. But for those who hope to understand the world, it is quite instructive.

In reality, the "threat to our interests" had always been indigenous nationalism. Military commanders echoed the political echelon, emphasizing that the end of the Cold War would not change security policy significantly:

In fact, the majority of the crises we have responded to since the end of World War II have not directly involved the Soviet Union.

Marine General A.M. Gray observed, quite accuratley, in May 1990. The problems remain, as before:

The underdeveloped world's growing dissatisfaction over the gap between rich and poor nations will create a fertile breeding ground for insurgencies. These insurgencies have the potential to jeopardize regional stability and our access to vital economic and military resources. This situation will become critical as our Nation and allies and potential adversaries become more and more dependent on these strategic resources.

If we are to have stability in these regions, maintain access to their resources, we must maintain within our active force structure a credible military power projection capability with the flexibility to respond to conflict across the spectrum of violence throughout the globe.

Our superpower political and military status is dependent ' upon our ability to maintain the economic base derived from our ability to compete in established and developing economic markets throughout the world. If we are to maintain this status, we must have unimpeded access to these markets and to the resources needed to support our manufacturing requirements.

Crucially, we must maintain our "unimpeded access" to "developing economic markets throughout the world" and "to the resources needed to support our manufacturing requirements." We therefore need "a credible forcible entry capability," forces that "must truly be expeditionary" and capable of executing a wide variety of missions from counterinsurgency and psychological warfare to the deployment of "multidivision forces."

We must also bear in mind the rapidly increasing technological advances in weaponry and their availability to the new regional powers that will be springing up throughout the Third World, so that we must develop military capacities exploiting the far reaches of electronics, genetic engineering and other biotechnologies, and so on, "if our Nation is to maintain military credibility in the next century."

[maledoro]

The only things one could get out of this thread as far as exposing any hidden agendas are the free publicity for Stockwell and his book and the attention for Horhey.

As the other users on this thread pointed out, there was nothing earthshaking about it, and it was full of circular reasoning as there was nothing to support Stockwell's claims other than Amazon's description of the book. Anybody can make a YouTube video, post a "memo" on a dubious website, write a book, and have a book retailer promote it.

[Horhey]

The "New Vision" of the "Gatekeeper" of so called Global "Free Markets"

At the end of September 1993, the Clinton Administration finally addressed "the vision thing" in the domain of foreign policy, with major addresses by the President and Secretary of State, and of particular significance, by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, who laid forth the intellectual foundations of the new Clinton doctrine at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

A new National Export Strategy was announced that set guidelines for international economic policy, and a White House panel on intervention applied the doctrine in this particular sphere, all within a few days. The seriousness of the enterprise was duly recorded with such headlines as "U.S. Vision of Foreign Policy Reversed" (Thomas Friedman, New York Times), implying a dramatic policy change.

The new vision is based on a picture of the contemporary world that has risen well beyond opinion, to the heights of truism. The picture is sketched eloquently by the Times chief diplomatic correspondent, Thomas Friedman:

America's victory in the cold war was a victory for a set of political and economic principles: democracy and the free market. At last, the world is coming to understand that the free market is the wave of the future -- a future for which America is both the gatekeeper and the model.

The term "gatekeeper" has an ominous ring. The whole affair merits some thoughts about how we keep the gates, who we let in, and what kind of model we are to offer to the world. We begin with Anthony Lake's address, recognized to be the centerpiece of the new vision.

1. "From Containment to Enlargement"

A long-time liberal dove, Clinton's National Security Adviser Anthony Lake explained that:

Throughout the cold war, we contained a global threat to market democracies: now we should seek to enlarge their reach, particularly in places of special significance to us.

The successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement -- enlargement of the world's free community of market democracies.

That is the new vision that replaces the defensive stance of the past half century. To evaluate the announcement of the new vision, we turn to US behavior in regions where its influence is reached. There are many choices, the US being a global power. But the most illuminating will surely be the Western Hemisphere, where the US has long run the show virtually without interference, so its deepest values and convictions are revealed with great clarity.

There is no need to review further how we have "contained a global threat to market democracy" in "our little region over here," as FDR's Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, described the Western hemisphere. It is enough to recall a warning issued by Simon Bolivar in 1822, as he sought to liberate Latin America from Spanish rule:

There is at the head of this great continent a very powerful country, very rich, very warlike, and capable of anything. The United States seems destined to plague and torment the continent in the name of freedom.

-- including the evasion of "inconvenient fact."

Perhaps the "global threat" refers to indigenous Communists. Still more interesting, perhaps, is the way the concept "Communist" is understood. Here the record is voluminous and consistent: to gain the title "Communist," it is enough to work "from the bottom up," appealing to the "poor people" who "have always wanted to plunder the rich," as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles described the plague:

The poor people are the ones they [the communists] appeal to and they've always wanted to plunder the rich.

That is precisely why the US "dirty wars" in Central America, motivated by the "sincere impulse" to bring democracy, was in large measure a war against the Church -- "Communists," in the technical sense, once the Bishops had adopted "the preferential option for the poor." Nothing changes in this regard as new visions replace the old.

We learn more about our role as "gatekeeper and model" from a World Bank study reported in the London Financial Times just as the new vision of foreign policy was released here. The World Bank found that Latin America has "the most unequal income distribution in the world," and predicted "chaos" unless governments "act aggressively against poverty," which is truly appalling in its depth and scale:

stabilisation and structural adjustment have brought magnificent returns to the rich— in a continent with the world's most unequal distribution of income. Failures to act aggressively on poverty will likely encourage distributive conflicts, prompting discontent and perhaps even a return to populism, dirigisme and chaos.

The simple truths were underscored by Clinton's Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen:

I'm tired of a level playing field. We should tilt the playing field for U.S. businesses. We should have done it 20 years ago.

In fact, "we" (meaning state-corporate power) have been doing it for two centuries, dramatically so in the past 50 years.

[Ghost Rider]

Wait, what is this even about?

[maledoro]

Wait, what is this even about?

Someone who hate the US.

[Ghost Rider]

Wait, what is this even about?

Someone who hate the US.

More hate? They should just give it a rest already.

[Horhey]

The "Clinton Doctrine"

President Clinton informed the United Nations in 1993 that the US will act "multilaterally when possible, but unilaterally when necessary:"

The Role of Peace Operations in U.S. Foreign Policy Serious threats to the security of the United States still exist in the post-Cold War era. New threats will emerge. The United States remains committed to meeting such threats.

When our interests dictate, the U.S. must be willing and able to fight and win wars, unilaterally whenever necessary.

A position reiterated a year later by UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright and in 1999 by Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and in Clinton's National Security Strategy:

The United States reserves the right to the unilateral use of military power to defend it's vital interests which include:

*Ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources;

*Preventing the emergence of a hostile regional coalition or hegemon;

And indeed anything that Washington might determine to be within its "domestic jurisdiction."

The US is hailed as the leader of the "enlightened states" that are entitled to resort to violence as they see fit. In the Clinton years its foreign policy has ascended to a "noble phase" with a "saintly glow" (according to the New York Times), as America is "at the height of its glory," as for the first time in history a state is dedicated to "principles and values," acting from "altruism" and "moral fervor" alone as the leader of the "enlightened states," hence free to use force where its leaders "believe it to be just"—only a small sample of a deluge from respected liberal voices.

Rogue states that are internally free-and the US is at the outer limits in this respect-must rely on the willingness of the educated classes to produce accolades and to tolerate or deny terrible crimes.

[Ghost Rider]

Wait, what is this even about?

Someone who hate the US.

^^
This an authoritarian way of thinking. Anyone who critizes their government's policies hates their country. This is by definition "unamerican". No secret police here is forcing you to be obediant. North Korea couldnt've done it better.

I really don't know how to respond. Are you hating the US or is it something else?

[Horhey]

Militarizing Space to "Protect US Interests and Investments"

This is not a Bush program. It's a bipartisan program. Some of the major and most interesting planning documents related to these issues are from the Clinton period. The United States Space Command recently put out a glossy booklet. It's worth looking at. It's called Vision for 2020. It's a vision of the space command, of where they're going. Missile defense fits in as a small footnote.

It starts on the front page with the wording, with nice graphics, that the vision is militarization of space in order "to protect U.S. interests and investment." That requires several things. For one thing, it requires the militarization of space. It requires anti-satellite weapons to be able to destroy any communication or surveillance of any potential adversary. It requires means to protect U.S. satellites, because missile defense doesn't work unless these satellites are operative.

And remember, the technical problem of shooting down a satellite is a lot simpler than shooting down a missile. A satellite is fixed, either stable or in a fixed orbit. You can predict where it's going to be. An anti-satellite weapon is kind of like a poor country's option. Attacking missiles is much harder. So it requires anti-satellite weapons, protection against anti-satellite weapons of some adversary. It requires what's called "full-spectrum dominance," where you've got to control everything because it's too dangerous. First-strike weapons from space are required:

"Full Spectrum Dominance"

Militarizing Space "to protect U.S. interests and investments" from the "have nots" (victims of Corporate-Globalization):

USSPACECOM VISION FOR 2020

US Space Command—dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment.

Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict.

The emerging synergy of space superiority-equal to land sea, and air superiority-will enable us to achieve Full Spectrum Dominance.

INTRODUCTION:

Navies and armies have evolved to protect national interests and investments. As sea commerce advanced in the 18th and 19th Centuries, nations formed navies to project power and to protect and enhance their commercial interests. Similarly, during the westward expansion of the continental United States, military outposts and cavalry emerged to protect our wagon trains, settlements and railroads.

Air power emerged differently because it evolved to support land and sea operations (e.g., communications and reconnaissance), not to protect national economic interests. Over time, however, air power became a separate instrument of warfare, protecting national interests and ensuring freedom of action in the air.

Eventually, space power will parallel both models. For several decades, it has mainly supported land, sea, and air operations—strategically and operationally. Early in the 21st Century, space will become another medium of warfare. As the United States relies more on space-based capabilities, space forces may protect the country's commercial assets in this medium.

Space power will help overcome the widening gap between increasing military commitments and diminishing resources. In fact, space power is vital to attaining the operational concepts of Joint Vision 2010. These operational concepts are described below, along with the contributions from space capabilities (Figure 2-1).

POLITICAL:

*The United States will remain a global power and exert global leadership.

*The globalization of the world economy will also continue- with a widening between 'haves' and 'have-nots'.

*The main causes of warfare will be national-ism, ethnic separatism, religious extremism, and scarce resources.

*Nation-states will continue to fragment, sparking regional unrest.

*Non-state actors (e.g., drug cartels, crime syndicates, terrorist organizations, as well as non-governmental organizations and multi-national corporations) will become more important.

*The United States won't always be able to forward base its forces. One of the long acknowledged and commonly understood advantages of space-based platforms is no restriction of country clearances to over fly a nation from space.

*Widespread communications will highlight disparities in resources and quality of life-contributing to unrest in developing countries.

ECONOMIC:

*We need to turn to space as an essential program to support our economic competitiveness and to help our assessment of ways to reverse the negative trends in the environment.

*The global economy will continue to become more interdependent. Economic alliances as well as the growth and influence of multinational corporations will blur security agreements.

*The gap between have and have-not nations will widen, creating regional unrest.

MILITARY:

*Forward presence will continue to be important to shaping and preparing a region, but sovereignty issues may impede it.

*Coalitions will continue to be important to future US military operations, but the United States will keep the ability to act unilaterally if required.

*The United States won't always be able to forward base its forces. One of the long acknowledged and commonly understood advantages of space-based platforms is no restriction of country clearances to over fly a nation from space.

When the American EP-3 spy plane was over China in April, it was clearly trying to obtain information that would be useful for a potential first nuclear strike. And the Chinese knew that, certainly. First strike is U.S. policy, even against non-nuclear states. When the American EP-3 spy plane was over China in April, it was clearly trying to obtain information that would be useful for a potential first nuclear strike. And the Chinese knew that, certainly. First strike is U.S. policy, even against non-nuclear states.

It's been pointed out by critics in the mainstream, in Foreign Affairs, for example, that there's an inherent contradiction in the current plans that the strategic analysts are worried about, namely that you can't both have missile defense and anti-satellite weapons, because a missile defense system requires satellites to coordinate and control it. So if there are going to be anti-satellite weapons, they're going to destroy a missile defense system. Vision for 2020 and the Rumsfeld Commission report have an answer for that.

The answer is, as I said, full-spectrum dominance, such total dominance of space that no adversary will even come close.

[Ghost Rider]

Wait, what is this even about?

Someone who hate the US.

^^
This an authoritarian way of thinking. Anyone who critizes their government's policies hates their country. This is by definition "unamerican". No secret police here is forcing you to be obediant. North Korea couldnt've done it better.

I really don't know how to respond. Are you hating the US or is it something else?

The entire premise of your statement is unamerican. "Hating the US"? You might find this type of rethoric in totalitarian states. It's like this man. Every time he challenges me with nonsonse I will respond with more.

So you hate the US?

[chupacabras acheronsis]

this is all under the assumption that American Influence doesn't benefit the Population here.

[Ghost Rider]

this is all under the assumption that American Influence doesn't benefit the Population here.

Ah, that clears a few things up.

[AliceApocalypse]

and America is just to big to be united. it's not a country which can agree on anything but TV shows.

I don't agree with the TV shows. except the old ones. and V.

[Ghost Rider]

and America is just to big to be united. it's not a country which can agree on anything but TV shows.

I don't agree with the TV shows. except the old ones. and V.

I agree.

[Horhey]

From "Control of Space" to "Ownership of Space"

The U.N. Committee on Disarmament adopted a resolution that called for stronger measures to prevent militarization of space, recognizing this to be:

a grave danger for international peace and security.

And another that reaffirmed:

the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of poisonous gases and bacteriological methods of warfare.

Both passed unanimously, with two abstentions, the United States and Israel. U.S. abstention amounts to a veto: typically, a double veto, banning the events from the news record and from history.

The world's intelligence agencies can read the AIR FORCE SPACE COMMAND STRATEGIC MASTER PLAN as easily as I can. And they will draw appropriate conclusions, increasing the risk to all of us. We should recall that history - including recent history - offers many examples of leaders consciously enhancing very serious threats in pursuit of narrow power interests. By now, however, the stakes are much higher.

The Space Command released plans to go beyond U.S. "control" of space for military purposes to "ownership," which is to be permanent, in accord with the Security Strategy. Ownership of space is "key to our nation's military effectiveness," permitting "instant engagement anywhere in the world. . . . A viable prompt global strike capability, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, will allow the United States to rapidly strike high-payoff, difficult-to-defeat targets from stand-off ranges and produce the desired effect . . . [and] to provide warfighting commanders the ability to rapidly deny, delay, deceive, disrupt, destroy, exploit and neutralize targets in hours/minutes rather than weeks/days even when U.S. and allied forces have a limited forward presence," thus reducing the need for overseas bases that regularly arouse local antagonism.

Similar plans had been outlined in a May 2002 Pentagon planning document, partially leaked, which called for a strategy of "forward deterrence" in which missiles launched from space platforms would be able to carry out almost instant "unwarned attacks."

Military analyst William Arkin comments that:

No target on the planet or in space would be immune to American attack. The U.S. could strike without warning whenever and wherever a threat was perceived, and it would be protected by missile defenses. Hypersonic drones would monitor and disrupt targets. Surveillance systems would provide the ability to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign city.

The world is to be left at mercy of U.S. attack at will, without warning or credible pretext. The plans have no remote historical parallel. Even more fanciful ones are under development.