États-Unis: le premier danger pour le monde, avant l’islam

États-Unis: le premier danger pour le monde, avant l’islam

Jamais nous n’avons été aussi près d’une guerre nucléaire!

Ex: http://www.bvoltaire.fr

Jamais nous n’avons été aussi près d’une guerre nucléaire. Ce sont des « gôchistes » américains comme Noam Chomsky qui le déclarent. Loin d’être « gôchiste », mes observations, comme mes échanges avec des personnalités de haut rang russes et allemandes, me mènent à la même conclusion. Les analyses du journaliste américain de référence, Paul Craig Roberts, ne manquent pas d’aller dans ce sens. Ainsi que celles du très sérieux Deutsche Wirtschaft, qu’on ne saurait classer à « gôche ». J’entends déjà les procès en complotisme ! Non, depuis Bill Clinton, l’Amérique n’est plus une démocratie. Les administrations consécutives de ce grand pays sont devenues des entités d’assassins sans scrupules, qui s’affranchissent des lois internationales. La dernière menace est Obama, faux démocrate, qui dénonce les « comportements illégaux » du président Poutine qu’il a comparé à Ebola durant le G20 à Brisbane, et que Hillary Clinton traitait préalablement de « Hitler ». Déclarations provocatrices, que les Européens suivent comme des vassaux. La France se distingue particulièrement par son aplaventrisme politico-médiatique. Elle sert les États-Unis, occupés à mettre en œuvre leur nouvel ordre mondial, qui servira leurs seuls intérêts. Ça n’est pas de bon augure pour le monde. C’est pourquoi il est urgent que l’Europe se reprenne – et la France en particulier – pour se rapprocher de la Russie, de la Chine, de l’Inde, de l’Amérique du Sud, et contrer l’hégémonie de l’administration américaine, dont l’évolution politique ne garantit plus la paix mondiale.

L’administration américaine entreprend la déstabilisation de deux grandes puissances nucléaires – la Chine et la Russie – comme s’il s’agissait du Honduras ou de la Grenade. C’est sans précédent. Ils fomentent des émeutes et des guerres en Géorgie, en Ukraine. Des protestations à Hong Kong, et très récemment en Hongrie et en Tchéquie, où les manifestants manipulés scandaient par milliers : « Nous refusons d’être les esclaves des Russes. » Pas un mot ici. Comme si la Russie était toujours l’URSS. Les États-Unis incitent les pays baltes et la Serbie, à se détourner de la Russie. En réponse à toutes ces manigances, destinées à déstabiliser la Russie, une association militaire entre la Chine et le pays de Poutine est en train de se construire. Des premiers exercices sont prévus au printemps 2015 en Méditerranée, puis en mer de Chine, dans le but de montrer aux USA qu’ils ne se laisseront pas intimider. Les États-Unis font monter la pression depuis cette semaine, en déclarant qu’ils vont armer l’Ukraine, alors qu’ils se contentaient jusqu’à présent de livrer des fournitures militaires non létales. La Russie le leur déconseille vivement… Nous sommes dans une escalade mortifère. Nous estimions que l’islam était le plus grand danger mortel mais, depuis quelques semaines, un danger bien plus important s’annonce. L’administration américaine va-t-en-guerre qui ne veut pas reconnaître que les choses ont changé et que, désormais, un monde multipolaire est en train de se construire. Dont ils sont seuls responsables, puisqu’ils en sont les instigateurs malgré eux.

A Permanent Infrastructure for Permanent War

A Permanent Infrastructure for Permanent War

 

Ex: http://www.tomdispatch.com

In a September address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Barack Obama spoke forcefully about the “cycle of conflict” in the Middle East, about “violence within Muslim communities that has become the source of so much human misery.” The president was adamant: “It is time to acknowledge the destruction wrought by proxy wars and terror campaigns between Sunni and Shia across the Middle East.” Then with hardly a pause, he went on to promote his own proxy wars (including the backing of Syrian rebels and Iraqi forces against the Islamic State), as though Washington’s military escapades in the region hadn’t stoked sectarian tensions and been high-performance engines for “human misery.”

Not surprisingly, the president left a lot out of his regional wrap-up. On the subject of proxies, Iraqi troops and small numbers of Syrian rebels have hardly been alone in receiving American military support. Yet few in our world have paid much attention to everything Washington has done to keep the region awash in weaponry.

Since mid-year, for example, the State Department and the Pentagon have helped pave the way for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) launchers and associated equipment and to spend billions more on Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles; for Lebanon to purchase nearly $200 million in Huey helicopters and supporting gear; for Turkey to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM (Air-to-Air) missiles; and for Israel to stock up on half a billion dollars worth of AIM-9X Sidewinder (air-to-air) missiles; not to mention other deals to aid the militaries of Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

For all the news coverage of the Middle East, you rarely see significant journalistic attention given to any of this or to agreements like the almost $70 million contract, signed in September, that will send Hellfire missiles to Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, or the $48 million Navy deal inked that same month for construction projects in Bahrain and the UAE.

The latter agreement sheds light on another shadowy, little-mentioned, but critically important subject that’s absent from Obama’s scolding speeches and just about all news coverage here: American bases. Even if you take into account the abandonment of its outposts in Iraq -- which hosted 505 U.S. bases at the height of America’s last war there -- and the marked downsizing of its presence in Afghanistan -- which once had at least 800 bases (depending on how you count them) -- the U.S. continues to garrison the Greater Middle East in a major way.  As TomDispatch regular David Vine, author of the much-needed, forthcoming book Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Overseas Harm America and the World, points out in his latest article, the region is still dotted with U.S. bases, large and small, in a historically unprecedented way, the result of a 35-year-long strategy that has been, he writes, “one of the great disasters in the history of American foreign policy.” That’s saying a lot for a nation that’s experienced no shortage of foreign policy debacles in its history, but it’s awfully difficult to argue with all the dictators, death, and devastation that have flowed from America’s Middle Eastern machinations. Nick Turse

The Bases of War in the Middle East 
From Carter to the Islamic State, 35 Years of Building Bases and Sowing Disaster 

By David Vine

With the launch of a new U.S.-led war in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State (IS), the United States has engaged in aggressive military action in at least 13 countries in the Greater Middle East since 1980. In that time, every American president has invaded, occupied, bombed, or gone to war in at least one country in the region. The total number of invasions, occupations, bombing operations, drone assassination campaigns, and cruise missile attacks easily runs into the dozens.

As in prior military operations in the Greater Middle East, U.S. forces fighting IS have been aided by access to and the use of an unprecedented collection of military bases. They occupy a region sitting atop the world’s largest concentration of oil and natural gas reserves and has long been considered the most geopolitically important place on the planet. Indeed, since 1980, the U.S. military has gradually garrisoned the Greater Middle East in a fashion only rivaled by the Cold War garrisoning of Western Europe or, in terms of concentration, by the bases built to wage past wars in Korea and Vietnam.

In the Persian Gulf alone, the U.S. has major bases in every country save Iran. There is an increasingly important, increasingly large base in Djibouti, just miles across the Red Sea from the Arabian Peninsula. There are bases in Pakistan on one end of the region and in the Balkans on the other, as well as on the strategically located Indian Ocean islands of Diego Garcia and the Seychelles. In Afghanistan and Iraq, there were once as many as 800 and 505 bases, respectively. Recently, the Obama administration inked an agreement with new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to maintain around 10,000 troops and at least nine major bases in his country beyond the official end of combat operations later this year. U.S. forces, which never fully departed Iraq after 2011, are now returning to a growing number of bases there in ever larger numbers.

In short, there is almost no way to overemphasize how thoroughly the U.S. military now covers the region with bases and troops. This infrastructure of war has been in place for so long and is so taken for granted that Americans rarely think about it and journalists almost never report on the subject. Members of Congress spend billions of dollars on base construction and maintenance every year in the region, but ask few questions about where the money is going, why there are so many bases, and what role they really serve. By one estimate, the United States has spent $10 trillion protecting Persian Gulf oil supplies over the past four decades.

Approaching its 35th anniversary, the strategy of maintaining such a structure of garrisons, troops, planes, and ships in the Middle East has been one of the great disasters in the history of American foreign policy. The rapid disappearance of debate about our newest, possibly illegal war should remind us of just how easy this huge infrastructure of bases has made it for anyone in the Oval Office to launch a war that seems guaranteed, like its predecessors, to set off new cycles of blowback and yet more war.

 

 

On their own, the existence of these bases has helped generate radicalism and anti-American sentiment. As was famously the case with Osama bin Laden and U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, bases have fueled militancy, as well as attacks on the United States and its citizens. They have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, even though they are not, in fact, necessary to ensure the free flow of oil globally. They have diverted tax dollars from the possible development of alternative energy sources and meeting other critical domestic needs. And they have supported dictators and repressive, undemocratic regimes, helping to block the spread of democracy in a region long controlled by colonial rulers and autocrats.

After 35 years of base-building in the region, it’s long past time to look carefully at the effects Washington’s garrisoning of the Greater Middle East has had on the region, the U.S., and the world.

“Vast Oil Reserves”

While the Middle Eastern base buildup began in earnest in 1980, Washington had long attempted to use military force to control this swath of resource-rich Eurasia and, with it, the global economy. Since World War II, as the late Chalmers Johnson, an expert on U.S. basing strategy, explained back in 2004, “the United States has been inexorably acquiring permanent military enclaves whose sole purpose appears to be the domination of one of the most strategically important areas of the world.”

In 1945, after Germany’s defeat, the secretaries of War, State, and the Navy tellingly pushed for the completion of a partially built base in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, despite the military’s determination that it was unnecessary for the war against Japan. “Immediate construction of this [air] field,” they argued, “would be a strong showing of American interest in Saudi Arabia and thus tend to strengthen the political integrity of that country where vast oil reserves now are in American hands.”

By 1949, the Pentagon had established a small, permanent Middle East naval force (MIDEASTFOR) in Bahrain. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy’s administration began the first buildup of naval forces in the Indian Ocean just off the Persian Gulf. Within a decade, the Navy had created the foundations for what would become the first major U.S. base in the region -- on the British-controlled island of Diego Garcia.

In these early Cold War years, though, Washington generally sought to increase its influence in the Middle East by backing and arming regional powers like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Iran under the Shah, and Israel. However, within months of the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and Iran’s 1979 revolution overthrowing the Shah, this relatively hands-off approach was no more.

Base Buildup

In January 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced a fateful transformation of U.S. policy. It would become known as the Carter Doctrine. In his State of the Union address, he warned of the potential loss of a region “containing more than two-thirds of the world’s exportable oil” and “now threatened by Soviet troops” in Afghanistan who posed “a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil.”

Carter warned that “an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America.” And he added pointedly, “Such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

With these words, Carter launched one of the greatest base construction efforts in history. He and his successor Ronald Reagan presided over the expansion of bases in Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in the region to host a “Rapid Deployment Force,” which was to stand permanent guard over Middle Eastern petroleum supplies. The air and naval base on Diego Garcia, in particular, was expanded at a quicker rate than any base since the war in Vietnam. By 1986, more than $500 million had been invested. Before long, the total ran into the billions.

Soon enough, that Rapid Deployment Force grew into the U.S. Central Command, which has now overseen three wars in Iraq (1991-2003, 2003-2011, 2014-); the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2001-); intervention in Lebanon (1982-1984); a series of smaller-scale attacks on Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011); Afghanistan (1998) and Sudan (1998); and the "tanker war" with Iran (1987-1988), which led to the accidental downing of an Iranian civilian airliner, killing 290 passengers. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan during the 1980s, the CIA helped fund and orchestrate a major covert war against the Soviet Union by backing Osama Bin Laden and other extremist mujahidin. The command has also played a role in the drone war in Yemen (2002-) and both overt and covert warfare in Somalia (1992-1994, 2001-). 

 

 

During and after the first Gulf War of 1991, the Pentagon dramatically expanded its presence in the region. Hundreds of thousands of troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia in preparation for the war against Iraqi autocrat and former ally Saddam Hussein. In that war’s aftermath, thousands of troops and a significantly expanded base infrastructure were left in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Elsewhere in the Gulf, the military expanded its naval presence at a former British base in Bahrain, housing its Fifth Fleet there. Major air power installations were built in Qatar, and U.S. operations were expanded in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman.

The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003, and the subsequent occupations of both countries, led to a more dramatic expansion of bases in the region. By the height of the wars, there were well over 1,000 U.S. checkpoints, outposts, and major bases in the two countries alone. The military also built new bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan (since closed), explored the possibility of doing so in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, and, at the very least, continues to use several Central Asian countries as logistical pipelines to supply troops in Afghanistan and orchestrate the current partial withdrawal.

While the Obama administration failed to keep 58 “enduring” bases in Iraq after the 2011 U.S. withdrawal, it has signed an agreement with Afghanistan permitting U.S. troops to stay in the country until 2024 and maintain access to Bagram Air Base and at least eight more major installations.

An Infrastructure for War

Even without a large permanent infrastructure of bases in Iraq, the U.S. military has had plenty of options when it comes to waging its new war against IS. In that country alone, a significant U.S. presence remained after the 2011 withdrawal in the form of base-like State Department installations, as well as the largest embassy on the planet in Baghdad, and a large contingent of private military contractors. Since the start of the new war, at least 1,600 troops have returned and are operating from a Joint Operations Center in Baghdad and a base in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Erbil. Last week, the White House announced that it would request $5.6 billion from Congress to send an additional 1,500 advisers and other personnel to at least two new bases in Baghdad and Anbar Province. Special operations and other forces are almost certainly operating from yet more undisclosed locations.

At least as important are major installations like the Combined Air Operations Center at Qatar’s al-Udeid Air Base. Before 2003, the Central Command’s air operations center for the entire Middle East was in Saudi Arabia. That year, the Pentagon moved the center to Qatar and officially withdrew combat forces from Saudi Arabia. That was in response to the 1996 bombing of the military’s Khobar Towers complex in the kingdom, other al-Qaeda attacks in the region, and mounting anger exploited by al-Qaeda over the presence of non-Muslim troops in the Muslim holy land. Al-Udeid now hosts a 15,000-foot runway, large munitions stocks, and around 9,000 troops and contractors who are coordinating much of the new war in Iraq and Syria.

Kuwait has been an equally important hub for Washington’s operations since U.S. troops occupied the country during the first Gulf War. Kuwait served as the main staging area and logistical center for ground troops in the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. There are still an estimated 15,000 troops in Kuwait, and the U.S. military is reportedly bombing Islamic State positions using aircraft from Kuwait’s Ali al-Salem Air Base.

As a transparently promotional article in the Washington Post confirmed this week, al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates has launched more attack aircraft in the present bombing campaign than any other base in the region. That country hosts about 3,500 troops at al-Dhafra alone, as well as the Navy's busiest overseas port.  B-1, B-2, and B-52 long-range bombers stationed on Diego Garcia helped launch both Gulf Wars and the war in Afghanistan. That island base is likely playing a role in the new war as well. Near the Iraqi border, around 1,000 U.S. troops and F-16 fighter jets are operating from at least one Jordanian base. According to the Pentagon’s latest count, the U.S. military has 17 bases in Turkey. While the Turkish government has placed restrictions on their use, at the very least some are being used to launch surveillance drones over Syria and Iraq. Up to seven bases in Oman may also be in use.

 

 

Bahrain is now the headquarters for the Navy’s entire Middle Eastern operations, including the Fifth Fleet, generally assigned to ensure the free flow of oil and other resources though the Persian Gulf and surrounding waterways. There is always at least one aircraft carrier strike group -- effectively, a massive floating base -- in the Persian Gulf. At the moment, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson is stationed there, a critical launch pad for the air campaign against the Islamic State. Other naval vessels operating in the Gulf and the Red Sea have launched cruise missiles into Iraq and Syria. The Navy even has access to an “afloat forward-staging base” that serves as a “lilypad” base for helicopters and patrol craft in the region.

In Israel, there are as many as six secret U.S. bases that can be used to preposition weaponry and equipment for quick use anywhere in the area. There’s also a “de facto U.S. base” for the Navy’s Mediterranean fleet. And it’s suspected that there are two other secretive sites in use as well. In Egypt, U.S. troops have maintained at least two installations and occupied at least two bases on the Sinai Peninsula since 1982 as part of a Camp David Accords peacekeeping operation.

Elsewhere in the region, the military has established a collection of at least five drone bases in Pakistan; expanded a critical base in Djibouti at the strategic chokepoint between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean; created or gained access to bases in Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Seychelles; and set up new bases in Bulgaria and Romania to go with a Clinton administration-era base in Kosovo along the western edge of the gas-rich Black Sea.

Even in Saudi Arabia, despite the public withdrawal, a small U.S. military contingent has remained to train Saudi personnel and keep bases “warm” as potential backups for unexpected conflagrations in the region or, assumedly, in the kingdom itself. In recent years, the military has even established a secret drone base in the country, despite the blowback Washington has experienced from its previous Saudi basing ventures.

Dictators, Death, and Disaster

The ongoing U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, however modest, should remind us of the dangers of maintaining bases in the region. The garrisoning of the Muslim holy land was a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and part of Osama bin Laden’s professed motivation for the 9/11 attacks. (He called the presence of U.S. troops, “the greatest of these aggressions incurred by the Muslims since the death of the prophet.”) Indeed, U.S. bases and troops in the Middle East have been a “major catalyst for anti-Americanism and radicalization” since a suicide bombing killed 241 marines in Lebanon in 1983. Other attacks have come in Saudi Arabia in 1996, Yemen in 2000 against the U.S.S. Cole, and during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Research has shown a strong correlation between a U.S. basing presence and al-Qaeda recruitment.

Part of the anti-American anger has stemmed from the support U.S. bases offer to repressive, undemocratic regimes. Few of the countries in the Greater Middle East are fully democratic, and some are among the world’s worst human rights abusers. Most notably, the U.S. government has offered only tepid criticism of the Bahraini government as it has violently cracked down on pro-democracy protestors with the help of the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

 

 

Beyond Bahrain, U.S. bases are found in a string of what the Economist Democracy Index calls “authoritarian regimes,” including Afghanistan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Yemen. Maintaining bases in such countries props up autocrats and other repressive governments, makes the United States complicit in their crimes, and seriously undermines efforts to spread democracy and improve the wellbeing of people around the world.

Of course, using bases to launch wars and other kinds of interventions does much the same, generating anger, antagonism, and anti-American attacks. A recent U.N. report suggests that Washington’s air campaign against the Islamic State had led foreign militants to join the movement on “an unprecedented scale.”

And so the cycle of warfare that started in 1980 is likely to continue. “Even if U.S. and allied forces succeed in routing this militant group,” retired Army colonel and political scientist Andrew Bacevich writes of the Islamic State, “there is little reason to expect” a positive outcome in the region. As Bin Laden and the Afghan mujahidin morphed into al-Qaeda and the Taliban and as former Iraqi Baathists and al-Qaeda followers in Iraq morphed into IS, “there is,” as Bacevich says, “always another Islamic State waiting in the wings.”

The Carter Doctrine’s bases and military buildup strategy and its belief that “the skillful application of U.S. military might” can secure oil supplies and solve the region’s problems was, he adds, “flawed from the outset.” Rather than providing security, the infrastructure of bases in the Greater Middle East has made it ever easier to go to war far from home. It has enabled wars of choice and an interventionist foreign policy that has resulted in repeated disasters for the region, the United States, and the world. Since 2001 alone, U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Yemen have minimally caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and possibly more than one million deaths in Iraq alone.

The sad irony is that any legitimate desire to maintain the free flow of regional oil to the global economy could be sustained through other far less expensive and deadly means. Maintaining scores of bases costing billions of dollars a year is unnecessary to protect oil supplies and ensure regional peace -- especially in an era in which the United States gets only around 10% of its net oil and natural gas from the region. In addition to the direct damage our military spending has caused, it has diverted money and attention from developing the kinds of alternative energy sources that could free the United States and the world from a dependence on Middle Eastern oil -- and from the cycle of war that our military bases have fed.

David Vine, a TomDispatch regular, is associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and Mother Jones, among other publications. His new book, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, will appear in 2015 as part of the American Empire Project (Metropolitan Books). For more of his writing, visit www.davidvine.net.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2014 David Vine

Defective Faith

Defective Faith

By Laurence M. Vance

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

Review of Malcolm D. Magee, What the World Should Be: Woodrow Wilson and the Crafting of a Faith-Based Foreign Policy (Baylor University Press, 2008), x + 189 pgs., hardcover.

Although I purchased this book soon after it was published, other commitments compelled me to add it to my mountainous stack of books “to be read.” Since this year is the one hundredth anniversary of World War I, and I have already reviewed two books on World War I (Jack Beatty’s The Lost History of 1914 and Philip Jenkins’ The Great and Holy War), I figured that if I was ever going to read What the World Should Be, I might as well read it this year.

George W. Bush was not the first president to have a “faith-based” foreign policy. Most people know that Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was the U.S. president from 1913 to 1921. Some perhaps know that he was the governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. But few probably know that he was the son of a Presbyterian minister, president of Princeton University—then a Presbyterian institution that had always been headed by clergymen until Wilson—from 1902 to 1910, and had a faith-based policy of his own.

But like the faith-based foreign policy of Bush, Wilson’s was shaped by a defective faith.

Malcolm Magee is the director of The Institute for the Study of Christianity and Culture, “an academic research organization,” not “affiliated with any church or religious organization,” that “examines the intersection of religion, and particularly the Christian faith, and its surrounding culture.”

He doesn’t specifically say in his important and insightful book What the World Should Be: Woodrow Wilson and the Crafting of a Faith-Based Foreign Policy (hereafter What the World Should Be) why he became so interested in Wilson, but it is clear that Wilson among all the U.S. presidents is the president who is the most suitable candidate for studying the intersection of religion and culture

Magee plainly states the book’s thesis in his introduction: “The thesis of this book is that the future president was immersed in a particular Princeton and Southern Presbyterian tradition that he absorbed, quite literally, at the knees of his father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, his devout mother, Janet Woodrow Wilson, and the religiously active clergy, family, and friends he was surrounded by from his youth onward.”

What the World Should Be “is an attempt to let Wilson be Wilson, the man who throughout his life used such terms as covenant and freedom not in terms of their modern secular definitions but in terms of a very specific Calvinist rhetorical tradition, one largely unfamiliar today, especially among scholars of American foreign relations.”

After his important introduction, Magee develops his thesis in four chapters:

1. The Development of Woodrow Wilson’s Thought to 1913

2. The Challenge of the Present Age: The Persistence of the International Order

3. Keeping to the Principles in Peace and War

4. Negotiating the Tablets of Stone

After a brief epilogue, there are four appendixes, notes, a bibliography, and an index.

Magee deems Wilson to be “one of the most complicated individuals to occupy the White House.” To understand Wilson and his approach to foreign policy “requires an awareness of the religious convictions that informed his world view, his ideals, his assumptions and prejudices.” Wilson’s “religion was inseparable from the other aspects of his philosophy.” Magee believes that John Maynard Keynes’ “insight” that Wilson “thought like a Presbyterian minister, with all the strengths and weaknesses of that manner of thinking” is “missing, for the most part, from modern historical scholarship concerning U.S. foreign relations during the Wilson presidency.”

Wilson, who supported the views of his uncle James Woodrow on Theistic Darwinism (see Gary North for more detail on this), “believed the United States was divinely chosen to do God’s will on earth.” The United States was the “redeemer nation” destined by God to “instruct and lead the world.” While president of Princeton, Wilson said in a speech that the mighty task before us was “to make the United States a mighty Christian nation, and to Christianize the world.” Wilson viewed himself as “the divinely appointed messenger.” The United States was his parish, and he would “be an evangelist, a missionary, for the export of Christian democracy.” He compared himself to the prophet Ezekiel. He equated patriotism with Christianity and the United States with God’s chosen people.

What is of most interest in What the World Should Be is how Wilson viewed himself and the United States during World War I. He said soon after the war began that it “may have been a godsend.” Comments Magge: “He was unshaken by the conflict since, despite the carnage, it seemed to open possibilities for his own mission to bring God’s order to the world. He was called by God.” Being “predisposed to be an Anglophile,” Wilson interpreted information “in a way that favored British interests and penalized Germany while continuing to believe that he and the country were being absolutely neutral.” Wilson had some strange ideas about neutrality. His “active” neutrality “allowed America to act on behalf of the righteous.” The United States would “use its power as an aggressive neutral to conquer the forces of disorder and selfishness in the world on all sides.” Wilson referred to his policy of neutrality as the “peaceful conquest of the world.” U.S. neutrality would “conquer, convert, and change the nations.” The United States was chosen by God to be the “mediating nation of the world.” America was the “house of the Lord” and the “city on a hill.” The entrance of the United States into the war meant “salvation” to the Allies.” Wilson believed in using “neutral force to mediate peace.” Even as American soldiers were dying in Europe, the United States was “neutral in spirit” in fighting a “righteous war.” Naturally, before he led the country into war, Wilson advocated an increase in the military, the reserves, and military spending, but “purely for defense.” If war became necessary, it “must be a peacemaking war.” He wanted a “new international order” that would prevent such a war from happening in the future. The Versailles Treaty would allow him as president to “do great good for the downtrodden inhabitants of the world.” The paternalistic Wilson had a tendency to “see the nonwhite peoples as being in need of instruction.”

Everything that Magee says about Wilson’s religious political ideas is well documented, and he writes in a neutral tone. The problem with Wilson, as I see it, is not that he rejected his faith, but that his faith was defective. For another old-time Presbyterian whose views were contrary to those of Wilson, see J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937), a New Testament scholar who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1906 to 1929.

There are only two redeeming things about Wilson. One, he vetoed the Volstead Act, but his veto was overridden. And two, he criticized the 1846 Mexican War, but later sent U.S. troops to Mexico in 1914. And, of course, we can “thank” Wilson for the signing into law the Federal Reserve Act and the Revenue Act of 1913.

For a recent analysis of Wilson that is anything but neutral, see Judge Napolitano’s Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedoms.

The Best of Laurence M. Vance

Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from central Florida. He is the author of King James, His Bible, and Its Translators, The Revolution that Wasn't, The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom, and Social Insecurity. His latest books are War, Christianity, and the State: Essays on the Follies of Christian Militarism and War, Empire, and the Military: Essays on the Follies of War and U.S. Foreign Policy. Visit his website.

 

Previous article by Laurence M. Vance: It’s Worship-the-Veterans Day

Freedom and Democracy Are No Excuse for U.S. Interventions Overseas

Freedom and Democracy Are No Excuse for U.S. Interventions Overseas

By Michael S. Rozeff

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

When U.S. governments take Americans into war, we hear them justify it as a fight for freedom. Often they rationalize it as an anti-tyranny fight, a pro-peace fight and a pro-democracy fight.

Freedom appeals to Americans. It is a core American value, even if it’s not honored in practice here at home.

When politicians use freedom to justify war, they are making an emotional, not a reasoned, appeal. Why? It’s because freedom, while a good thing, is never alone a sufficient reason for the government to commit Americans to a fight for freedom in some foreign land. The war may cost Americans more than they benefit, and America’s wars have. American interventions may cost foreigners more than they gain, and America’s interventions have.

To justify American interventions on grounds of reason or rational interest, the government needs to present arguments. Costs and benefits have to enter the picture. Leaders are reluctant to make such arguments for fear of exposing their war policies as lacking justification from the point of view of American welfare. When they do present their arguments, they are invariably faulty, weak, deficient, exaggerated, illogical and mistaken. They are nonsense. Leaders cannot tell Americans what their real reasons for intervention are, if indeed they themselves are aware of them.

President Truman addressed the nation several times about American intervention in South Korea, such as on July 19, 1950 and September 1, 1950. He made the case for sending American armed forces to Korea. Consequently, between 1950 and 1953, Americans lost 33,686 dead and suffered 92,134 wounded.

The July address made a domino theory argument:

“This attack has made it clear, beyond all doubt, that the international Communist movement is willing to use armed invasion to conquer independent nations. An act of aggression such as this creates a very real danger to the security of all free nations.”

We now know that great doubt surrounded the meaning of the North Korean attack and its motivation. We now know that there was no monolithic international Communist movement, and that this imagined entity was not on any march to conquer independent nations of which South Korea was the first. There was no “very real danger” to America’s national security or other free nations far from Korea.

Truman went on with a freedom appeal: “This [attack] is a direct challenge to the efforts of the free nations to build the kind of world in which men can live in freedom and peace.”

The assertion he made is that war in Korea somehow undermined the work of other nations to live in freedom and peace. Somehow a war anywhere challenges peace everywhere. This linkage makes no obvious sense unless the war in question is the work of an incipient or active empire that has the intent of territorial expansion. Regional wars do not routinely meet that condition. North Korea was not such a power.

However, despite the limited nature of the war, Truman argued a second domino theory version:

“The free nations have learned the fateful lesson of the 1930′s. That lesson is that aggression must be met firmly. Appeasement leads only to further aggression and ultimately to war.”

The lessons of the 1930s are that America should not have entered World War I, should not have created a monetary system that led to inflation and a Great Depression, and should have stayed out of Europe’s wars. The victors in World War I should not have imposed a draconian peace at Versailles. Not all aggressions must be met by American force. Not all neutrality is appeasement. Not all aggression creates further aggression. Not all situations parallel those in the 1930s. Not all dictators are Hitlers. Truman’s domino theory of appeasement did not justify American intervention in Korea.

Truman’s September address deepened his appeals. He added that the war was for the sake of peace, and he embedded the freedom appeal in the millennia of history:

“These men of ours are engaged once more in the age-old struggle for human liberty. Our men, and the men of other free nations, are defending with their lives the cause of freedom in the world. They are fighting for the proposition that peace shall be the law of this earth.”

This passage includes an appeal to universal, earth-wide law and order, brought about by American soldiers in Korea.

Truman appealed again to a third domino theory: “If the rule of law is not upheld we can look forward only to the horror of another war and ultimate chaos.” The argument is that without someone like America upholding the international rule of law of the UN, war and chaos will result.

This theory is false. Not only have U.S. interventions created war and chaos, but many wars have been launched after 1950 despite the fact that the U.S. government chose to intervene in Korea, Vietnam and other places, with or without international approval.

Such welcome peace as there has been as compared with the two world wars has causes far afield from the U.S. intervening to keep the peace or intervening in places like Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Mali, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.

The upholding of international law by American force, a pax Americana, is imaginary. This is neither a necessary condition for peace nor a sufficient condition for peace.

To gain domestic support for an unpopular war, Truman raised the ante in his freedom appeal:

“It is your liberty and mine which is involved. What is at stake is the free way of life–the right to worship as we please, the right to express our opinions, the right to raise our children in our own way, the right to choose our jobs, the fight to plan our future and to live without fear. All these are bound up in the present action of the United Nations to put down aggression in Korea.

“We cannot hope to maintain our own freedom if freedom elsewhere is wiped out. That is why the American people are united in support of our part in this task.”

None of these exaggerations were true in 1950. None are true in 2014. They are no more true than the recent false idea that jihadists are intent on wiping out American freedoms.

Lyndon Baines Johnson continued the same rhetoric in his message to Congress of August 5, 1964:

“1. America keeps her word. Here as elsewhere, we must and shall honor our commitments.

“2. The issue is the future of southeast Asia as a whole. A threat to any nation in that region is a threat to all, and a threat to us.

“3. Our purpose is peace.. We have no military, political, or territorial ambitions in the area.

“4. This is not just a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.”

His point #1 adds a new rationale, which is the circular rationale that we will fight to maintain our credibility, having earlier made a statement or signed a treaty that we would fight. This is not an independent justification.

#2 is a domino theory, and #4 is Truman’s grandiose idea that this particular war is a much larger war to defend freedom. Truman’s idea no doubt has earlier roots too. #3 is an argument that we can go into this war because we have no ambitions but the noble one of peace. This argument is as false as the others. There are always other ambitions that may be called imperial.

Bill Clinton’s rhetoric on intervention in Kosovo is like that of his predecessors. He invoked the appeasement theory, once again referring to the irrelevant Hitler analogy. He provided a twist on a domino theory by worrying about the conflict spreading to neighboring lands. (This argument hasn’t bothered Bush or Obama In the Middle East.)

And Clinton added a new argument that American prosperity depended on Europe being “safe, secure, free, united, a good partner”. Whew! War for international bankers and international companies! Kosovo matters!

This argument is highly implausible, and it never explains why Europeans cannot intervene on their own if Kosovo’s so important. Now, just extend Clinton’s argument to all the rest of the world in which Americans have trade and investment relations and you have the makings of interventions anywhere on the planet.

The question arises as to whether the U.S. government exists to further American economic relations with the rest of the world, using war as one means. This is hardly what is meant by keeping the peace or defending the nation.

As for Bush, let us note one phrase in his Iraq speech that echoes Truman:

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

Bush’s phrase “leaves no doubt” eerily matches Truman’s “beyond all doubt”. Bush was totally wrong on this score, as wrong as was Truman in his day. Presidents have to make big and unproven claims because they are taking America into war, and war is big. They do not have to be false claims. Why then are they false? After all, in his speech, LBJ lied about the Gulf of Tonkin, as the U.S. Navy detailed account now admits:

“Questions about the Gulf of Tonkin incidents have persisted for more than 40 years. But once-classified documents and tapes released in the past several years, combined with previously uncovered facts, make clear that high government officials distorted facts and deceived the American public about events that led to full U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.”

This rhetoric, this emotional appeal to intervene militarily in some remote land for the preservation of freedom in America, continues to this day. This is Hillary Clinton:

“There really is no viable alternative. No other nation can bring together the necessary coalitions and provide the necessary capabilities to meet today’s complex global threats.”

“The things that make us who we are as a nation — our diverse and open society, our devotion to human rights and democratic values — give us a singular advantage in building a future in which the forces of freedom and cooperation prevail over those of division, dictatorship and destruction.”

Like Truman, Hillary still wrongly thinks that American forces are necessary and sufficient to produce peace. Additionally, she adds that only America is capable of this task, i.e., America is the indispensable nation in keeping the peace. Icing on the cake is her belief  that America has a comparative advantage in understanding and therefore implementing freedom and cooperation.

Wow! Aren’t we Americans great?!

Hillary’s rhetoric is unanchored to reality. She sweeps under the rug the long list of U.S. foreign policy debacles while grossly impugning and insulting the peoples of other lands.

It is easy for war advocates to speak of spreading freedom and democracy or defending them. This is a justification for possibly making war that is altogether too vague and too broad. This justification can never suffice for such legislation because a multitude of foreign situations fall into these categories or can be construed as falling into these categories. Specific interference by the U.S. needs specific justification, but when has that justification been accurate? Not in the case of Vietnam, not in Iraq, not in Serbia, not in Afghanistan, not in Korea, and not even in World War I. The U.S. interference that led to Pearl Harbor is another instance.

Is it the policy of the U.S. government to assure freedom and democracy in every land on earth and for all of its peoples? This is a practical impossibility that results in continual war. If it ever succeeded, the result would be global tyranny. Have Americans appointed themselves the unilateral and universal crusaders and administrators of freedom and democracy? This role is impossible too. It runs up against the individual developments in one nation after another. It runs aground on the ambiguities of what freedom means, what democracy means, and the flaws of democracy. It runs aground on the self-interests and imperial interests of those who control the U.S. government. This too is why freedom and democracy are not sufficient arguments for interventions.

Those who want to justify U.S. interference in Ukraine or Syria or anywhere else cannot use freedom and democracy as justification. They do not hold up. Being invited in doesn’t hold up. Stopping an aggression doesn’t hold up. A supposed foreign need doesn’t hold up. Upholding a mutual defense treaty doesn’t hold up, for these are really guarantees of the protection of a U.S. military umbrella.

Freedom and democracy are invoked by American leaders in favor of interventions overseas as if they were arguments, when they are nothing more than emotional appeals. America has declared itself a god, indispensable and uniquely qualified. Americans collectively are the god. Americans will enforce freedom and democracy everywhere. America goes to war under the banner of peace, freedom and democracy. Heathens shall be converted by the sword if need be. The freedom appeal is religious. Just as people fall away from religions, they fall away from allegiance to endless wars. The preachers stir them back up and incite them with new enemies and new fears. Your freedoms are under attack. You must fight or chaos will follow.

One president after another uses the rhetoric of freedom and democracy to bolster the appeal of their wars and interventions. They use them by themselves and linked to actual arguments. The linked arguments are typically domino theories or appeasement theories. These are either known to be false at the time or shown to be false later. Presidents assert certainties and absence of doubts when in fact the circumstances surrounding events are clouded and much more complex than they allege.

Should Americans believe what their presidents tell them when they make important war messages? The general answer seems to be that they should not. Do presidents systematically lie in their war messages? The answer is not clear. It is hard to assess this without deeper study of the circumstances surrounding their speeches. But because the messages are so faulty and mistaken as a rule, it appears that either presidents lie or else they intentionally exaggerate or else they believe in their own largely false rhetoric or else their information is poor. No matter what’s going on, the fact remains that if history is any guide, Americans should not believe what their presidents tell them when they ask them to go to war.

Common sense should tell Americans the same thing, not to believe these war messages, because most of the wars involve no direct attacks on America anyway. Germany didn’t attack the U.S. in either world war. Russia never attacked the U.S. during the Cold War. North Korea didn’t attack the U.S., and neither did Serbia, Vietnam, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Haiti or Syria, all places in which the U.S. has intervened, usually accompanied by some sort of justifications coming out of the White House.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free e-book The U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.

Previous article by Michael S. Rozeff: The Real Reasons for the War on Terror

OTAN: 65 años inventando enemigos

por Vicky Peláez

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

Ningún plan militar, por bien preparado que esté, tiene garantizada su supervivencia más allá del primer encuentro con el enemigo (mariscal de campo Helmuth von Moltke, 1800-1891)

Para que surgiera un pacto militar como la Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte (OTAN) hace 65 años, tenía que existir alguno o varios enemigos de los países de Europa Occidental o los tenía que inventar.

Estados Unidos, el mayor beneficiado en términos financieros, políticos, económicos y geoestratégicos durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, decidió establecer su control absoluto en esta parte de Europa.

La mano derecha de cada hegemonía es la fuerza militar, por eso Washington inventó la idea de la inseguridad de los europeos occidentales debido a la existencia de la Unión Soviética que, de acuerdo a los estrategas del departamento de Estado, representaba un permanente peligro latente para la democracia occidental debido a su ideología comunista.

Tras seis años de guerra, Europa estaba devastada sufriendo una severa crisis económica y también la espiritual, como lo describió De Gaulle en sus memorias. Sólo Estados Unidos tenía la capacidad de ayudar para recomponer la economía europea.

Washington percibió el momento adecuado para fortalecer su posición en Europa a través del Plan Marshall para la reconstrucción de los países europeos aportando 13 mil millones de dólares entre 1948 y 1951 que se gastaron en materias primas, productos semimanufacturados, comida, fertilizantes, maquinaria, vehículos y combustible.

Un año después del inicio del Plan Marshall surgió la idea de un pacto militar llamado OTAN cuyo propósito inicial, según el primer Secretario General de esta organización, Lord Ismay, era “mantener a los rusos afuera, a los norteamericanos dentro y a los alemanes abajo”.

Posteriormente el presidente norteamericano John F. Kennedy declaró: “Quiero construir dos torres en la OTAN, una norteamericana y la otra europea”. Al comienzo no siempre hubo acuerdo entre los miembros de esta organización y en 1966 Francia salió de la OTAN al considerar su presidente Charles De Gaulle que la “alianza estaba dominada inaceptablemente por los EEUU”.

Recién con Nicolas Sarcozy Francia retomó su membresía en la OTAN. Durante los primeros 42 años de la existencia de la Alianza hasta la disolución de la Unión Soviética en 1991 y el campo socialista en 1989 existió para el occidente un enemigo bien definido: la URSS “comunista” que, según la doctrina de la OTAN elaborada en los Estados Unidos, obligaba a la alianza estar preparada permanentemente para la guerra convencional contra aquel enemigo.

En aquellos 42 años la OTAN se convirtió en un brazo armado del Pentágono siendo su jefe principal no el Secretario General, que siempre había sido de origen europeo sino el Supremo Comandante Aliado nombrado por el departamento de Defensa norteamericano y por supuesto tenía que ser un general de las Fuerzas Armadas estadounidenses, manteniéndose esta tradición hasta ahora.

Hasta la desaparición del campo socialista, la definición del enemigo había sido una tarea simple para los miembros de la Alianza que se basaba en términos ideológicos como la lucha contra el comunismo y su principal pilar: la URSS.

Los problemas con la selección del próximo enemigo surgieron después que el presidente norteamericano George Bush padre declaró en 1990 que “un mundo antes dividido entre dos campos armados reconoce que ya sólo existe una potencia permanente: los Estados Unidos de América”.

La Guerra Fría había terminado pero Washington no podía permitirse el lujo de disolver la OTAN para no perder su hegemonía en Europa. Para esto Norteamérica había creado el Concepto Estratégico de la Alianza para 1991-1999, el primer período en el Siglo XX de la unipolaridad mundial, redefiniendo el papel de la OTAN, su estrategia y táctica.

En la reunión de los jefes de Estado y de gobierno de la Alianza en 1991 en Roma, el presidente Bush hizo dos propuestas: primero, dotar a la OTAN de capacidad de actuar fuera de la zona asignada en el período 1949 – 1990 modificando el Artículo V de la Alianza y segundo, vincular la defensa europea a la de los EE.UU. En la misma reunión el Secretario General de la organización, Willy Claes, afirmó que “actualmente el integrismo musulmán representa el mayor desafío para Europa desde la caída del enemigo soviético”.

Es decir, el “nuevo enemigo” fue definido. Además se discutieron otros peligros inminentes relacionados con los futuros conflictos en Cáucaso; la dispersión del armamento nuclear en Rusia, Bielorrusia, Ucrania y Kazajstán; los prontos conflictos en los Balcanes; y el posible surgimiento del nacionalismo expansionista en las ex repúblicas soviéticas. Así terminó la incertidumbre respecto a la necesidad de un “enemigo” para la existencia de la OTAN. Si no lo hay se lo inventa, una antigua táctica de todos los imperios.

En este mismo período se inició la expansión de la OTAN hacia el este incorporando en su seno ex repúblicas socialistas. Los 12 miembros con que nació la organización en 1949 crecieron a 28 y el liderazgo de Washington se convirtió en algo sagrado e indiscutible que otorgó a la Alianza el derecho de intervenir en cualquier parte del mundo.

Para esto fue elaborado el Segundo Concepto Estratégico de la OTAN para 1999 – 2010. Sus resultados eran la guerra en los Balcanes y la disolución de la República Federal de Yugoslavia, la participación de la Alianza en la guerra contra Afganistán e Irak.

Precisamente en este tiempo se decidió en 2009, aprovechando el ambiente de cierto acercamiento entre Estados Unidos y Rusia, bautizado como “Perezagrusca”, establecer cierta cooperación de la OTAN con Rusia. En realidad fue un tanteo de la posibilidad de una suave y bien camuflada expansión del dominio norteamericano hacia este país.

De allí surgió en la reunión de Lisboa de la Alianza en 2010, a la que asistió el presidente de Rusia, Dmitri Medvédev, considerado en Washington como pro atlantista, el “Consejo de la OTAN – Rusia” prometiendo la seguridad y prosperidad para el pueblo de aquel país. Sin embargo, lo que Medvédev y Obama caracterizaron como un momento “histórico” en relaciones entre la OTAN y Rusia no duró mucho.

El principio de igualdad que reclamaba el presidente Medvédev en relaciones con la Alianza nunca fue aceptado por la mayoría de sus miembros y en especial por Polonia y los países bálticos. Todo fue un juego de distracción y de desinformación. Mientras Barack Obama hablaba del acercamiento con Rusia, la OTAN puso en marcha un plan secreto para instalar bases militares en Polonia, Lituania, Estonia y Letonia y concretaba detalles de la instalación de Sistemas Antimisiles en estos países. También estaba en su fase final la preparación de un golpe de Estado en Ucrania. Los futuros pro nazi miembros de Maidan ya estaban recibiendo la preparación militar en Polonia y Lituania.

El Nuevo Concepto Estratégico para los años 2010 – 2020 elaborado en Lisboa formalizó en realidad lo que uno de los famosos especialistas en el Sistema Económico Mundial, Samir Amin, llamó el concepto del “imperialismo colectivo” que se ve claramente en la guerra mediática, económica y financiera contra Rusia que emprendió la OTAN bajo el liderazgo de Washington aprovechando el golpe de Estado que ellos mismos promovieron en Ucrania. La desinformación hábilmente propagada reemplazó la verdad convirtiendo a Rusia que no tenía nada que ver en “agresor” y a los nazis ucranianos en “víctimas”.

A la vez Polonia y los países bálticos siguiendo las instrucciones del departamento de Estado norteamericano iniciaron una campaña histérica sobre una inminente invasión rusa. Aprovechando el momento, uno de sus curadores del norte, el Director de Asuntos Europeos en el Consejo de Seguridad Nacional, Charles Kupchan, hizo una advertencia precisamente un día antes de la visita de Obama a Estonia que “Rusia no debe ni pensar meterse en Estonia o en cualquier otro miembro de la OTAN”. También el jefe real de la OTAN, el general norteamericano Philip Breedlove lanzó una amenaza a Rusia ordenando reforzar la capacidad bélica de la Alianza en “el aire, tierra y mar”.

Se espera que en la cumbre de esta semana de la OTAN que se celebrará en Cardiff, Reino Unido, se modificará el llamado Nuevo Concepto Estratégico de la Alianza elaborado para el período 2010 – 2020 teniendo en cuenta los acontecimientos en Ucrania, Siria e Irak, dando el visto bueno a la creación de bases militares permanentes en Polonia y los países bálticos utilizando el Acta de Prevención de la Agresión Rusa (RAPA) elaborado por el Congreso norteamericano y dirigido hacia el rearme de Europa del Este. También Washington, que paga el 73 por ciento del presupuesto de la OTAN, exigirá mayor aporte de los miembros al mantenimiento de la capacidad bélica de la Alianza y poner en orden las fuerzas armadas de cada país que reciben menos de un por ciento del presupuesto estatal.

Para darse cuenta de la situación de las fuerzas armadas de los miembros de la OTAN que inventaron a Rusia como el “nuevo enemigo” habría que citar lo que la más importante revista alemana Der Spiegel reveló sobre el estado de preparación de los militares alemanes para una posible confrontación. Dice la publicación que de los 109 aviones Euro Fighters solamente 8 son disponibles para el combate y de los 67 helicópteros CH-53 sólo siete pueden volar. Esta es la situación en la mayoría de los miembros de la Alianza.

La Apariencia y la Realidad están en completa contradicción en la OTAN, igual como pasó en la “Guerra de las Galaxias” difundida hábilmente por el aparato propagandístico del gobierno de Reagan en los años 1980 que hizo asustar a los dirigentes soviéticos iniciándose la incertidumbre. Ahora la OTAN está lanzando una campaña propagandística parecida olvidándose que la Rusia de ahora aprendió de las experiencias del pasado y sabe perfectamente lo que significa la frase escrita por el poeta alemán Friederich Freiher von Hardenberg: ”Cuando veas un gigante, examina antes la posición del sol; no vaya a ser la sombra de un pigmeo”.

Fuente: RIA Novosti

The World Is Doomed By Western Insouciance

The World Is Doomed By Western Insouciance

Don’t expect to live much longer

By Paul Craig Roberts

PaulCraigRoberts.org & http://www.lewrockwell.com

European governments and the Western media have put the world at risk by enabling Washington’s propaganda and aggression against Russia.

Washington has succeeded in using transparent lies to demonize Russia as a dangerous aggressive country led by a new Hitler or a new Stalin, just as Washington succeeded in demonizing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Qaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, Chavez in Venezuela, and, of course, Iran.

The real demons–Clinton, Bush, Obama–are “the exceptional and indispensable people” above the reach of demonization. Their horrific real crimes go unnoticed, while fictitious crimes are attributed to the unexceptional and dispensable people and countries.

The reason that Washington demonizes a leader and a country is to permit the creation of circumstances that Washington can use to act with force against a leader and a country.

Washington’s incessant lies alleging “Russian aggression” have created Russian aggression out of thin air. John Kerry and the State Department’s Marie Harf issue new lies daily, but never any supporting evidence. With the stage set, the US Senate, the NATO commander and the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff are busy at work energizing the wheels of war.

Senate bill 2277 provides for beefing up forces on Russia’s borders and for elevating Ukraine’s status to “ally of the US” so that US troops can assist the war against “terrorists” in Ukraine.http://un.ua/eng/article/522930.html See also: http://www.globalresearch.ca/collapse-of-ukraine-government-prime-minister-yatsenyuk-resigns-amidst-pressures-exerted-by-the-imf/5393168

NATO commander Breedlove is preparing his plans for stockpiling war material on Russia’s borders so that US/NATO troops can more quickly strike Russia. http://rt.com/news/175292-nato-poland-supply-base/

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, is at work preparing American opinion for the upcoming war.

On July 24 Dempsey told the Aspen Security Forum, a high level group where US opinion is formed, that Putin’s aggression in Ukraine is comparable to Stalin’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and that the Russian threat was not limited to Ukraine or Eastern Europe but was global.http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/07/25/gen-dempsey-were-pulling-out-our-cold-war-military-plans-over-ukraine

The intellects in the Aspen Forum did not break out laughing when Dempsey told them that Russia’s (alleged but unproven) involvement in Ukraine was the first time since 1939 that a country made a conscious decision to use its military force inside another sovereign nation to achieve its objectives. No one asked Dempsey what Washington has been doing during the last three presidential regimes: Clinton in Serbia, Bush and Obama in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen, Obama in Libya and Syria.

Here are Dempsey’s words: “You’ve got a Russian government that has made a conscious decision to use its military force inside another sovereign nation to achieve its objectives. It’s the first time since 1939 or so that that’s been the case. They clearly are on a path to assert themselves differently not just in Eastern Europe, but Europe in the main, and towards the United States.”

Washington’s view that the world is its oyster is so ingrained that neither Dempsey nor his upper echelon audience at the Aspen Forum noticed the absurdity of his statement. Washington and the brainwashed US population take if for granted that the “exceptional, indispensable nation” is not limited in its actions by the sovereignty of other countries.

Washington takes for granted that US law prevails in other countries over the countries’ own laws–just ask France or Switzerland, that Washington can tell foreign financial institutions and corporations with whom they can do business and with whom they cannot–just ask every country and company prevented from doing business with Iran, that Washington can invade any country whose leader Washington can demonize and overthrow–just ask Iraq, Honduras, Libya, Serbia, and so forth, and that Washington can conduct military operations against peoples in foreign countries, such as Pakistan and Yemen, with which Washington is not at war.

All of this is possible, because Washington has claimed the title from Israel of being “God’s Chosen People.” Of course, Israel’s loss of the title has not stopped Israel from acting the same way.

Washington now has in motion the wheels of war. Once the wheels of war begin to turn, momentum carries them forward. The foolish, indeed utterly stupid, governments and media in Europe seem unaware of Washington’s orchestration of their future or lack thereof, or they are indifferent to it. They are dooming themselves and all of humanity by their insouciance. Heaven help if the British PM or French president or German chancellor were not invited to the White House or the Polish nonentity did not get his Washington stipend.

Readers who cannot tolerate problems without solutions always request solutions. OK, here is the solution:

The only possibility of avoiding war is that Putin take his case to the UN. If Washington can send Colin Powell to the UN unarmed with any truth to make Washington’s case for war against Iraq, Putin should be able to take his case to the UN against Washington’s war against Russia.

The case that the emperor has no clothes is an easy one to make.

Unlike Washington, Putin is willing to share the evidence that Russia has about who is doing what in Ukraine. It is a simple matter to establish that Washington organized a coup that overthrew an elected government, supports violence against those who object to the coup, and has turned a deaf ear to Russia’s repeated pleas for Kiev and the separatists to negotiate their differences.

Putin should make it clear to the world that Washington continues with provocative military steps against Russia, with force buildups on Russia’s borders and calls for more buildups, with S.2277 which reads like a US preparation for war, with provocative actions and accusations by top US generals and government officials against Russia, and with efforts to isolate Russia and to inflict economic and political injury on Russia.

Putin should make it clear to the world that there is a limit to the provocations that Russia can accept and that Russia believes that Russia is in danger of preemptive nuclear attack by Washington. Putin can describe Washington’s withdrawal from the ABM treaty, the construction of ABM bases on Russia’s borders, and the announced change in Washington’s war doctrine that elevates US nuclear forces from a retaliatory role to a preemptive first strike role. These actions are clearly directed at Russia (and China–wake up China! You are next!).

Putin must state clearly that the likely consequence of the world continuing to enable Washington’s lies and aggression will be not merely another disastrous war but the termination of life.

The governments of the world, especially Washington’s vassals in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan, need to be told that it is their responsibility to stop their enabling of Washington’s aggression or to accept their responsibility for World War III.

At least we could all have the enjoyment of watching the arrogant Samantha Powers and the craven British lapdog rise and walk out of the UN proceedings. There is no doubt whatsoever that Washington is unable to answer the charges.

Here again is the Wolfowitz Doctrine that controls US foreign policy and that condemns Planet Earth to death:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that posses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

A hostile power is defined as any country that is not a Washington vassal.

The Wolfowitz Doctrine commits the United States, its peoples, Washington’s gullible EU allies and those peoples to war with Russia and China. Unless Russia and China surrender, the world will be destroyed.

The destruction of the world is what the idiot EU governments and the presstitute Western media are fostering by their enablement of Washington’s lies and aggression.

 

The Best of Paul Craig Roberts    

 

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Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House. Visit his website.

Copyright © 2014 Paul Craig Roberts

Previous article by Paul Craig Roberts: Scheming Aggressive War

BHL veut faire la guerre à la Russie: s’engagera-t-il?         

par Nicolas Bonnal

Ex: http://www.bvoltaire.fr

 

BHL est à Marcel Proust ce que Doc Gynéco est à Jean-Philippe Rameau.

   

    

Bernard-Henri Lévy vient d’accuser les Européens de lâcheté dans le New York Times. Il demande la guerre contre la Russie – qui servira à anéantir le Vieux Continent. Mais que ne fera-t-on pas pour éviter le Munich numéro 1000 des « néocons » à la française ?

Le bougre occupe depuis quarante ans le devant de la scène intellectuelle française, comme on dit. Il est l’intellectuel institutionnel que l’on doit écouter et le commandeur des croyants auquel on se doit maintenant d’obéir, le doigt sur la couture du pantalon, surtout quand on est président de la République et que l’on rêve de n’importe quel exploit martial pour éviter de trop ramer dans les sondages. Et cela, alors que le ludion en question était déconsidéré depuis longtemps par tous ses pairs, Aron, Sartre et Bourdieu y compris.

L’escogriffe plumitif traîne depuis bien longtemps au Quartier latin sa carcasse de précieux dégoûté. Aussi, je ne me moquerai pas de son riad avec laquais, de ses chemises à 700 euros, de son dandysme de Prisunic, de sa discourtoise insuffisance. Je ne soulignerai pas non plus que ses succès en librairie ont vingt ou trente ans, qu’il vend maintenant à 3.000 exemplaires, que ses postures ont fini par lasser le grand public qui le découvrait il y a maintenant 40 ans ou presque, au temps du toujours extasié Pivot. Car BHL est à Marcel Proust ce que Doc Gynéco est à Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Par ses poses, il me fait penser aux libéraux américains ou même russes. On sait donc que tout libéral qui se respecte déteste son pays, son histoire et ses racines, et l’idée même d’identité. On sait que, comme tout libéral qui se respecte, il n’a de cesse de souligner que ce pays est viscéralement raciste et antisémite. Et l’on sait que, comme tout aigri qui se respecte, il n’a de cesse de dénoncer comme nationaliste ou populiste tout esprit qui s’opposera à ses schématisations artisanales et à ses imprécations teigneuses : cf. sa diatribe sur le populisme américain et le maccarthysme local toujours renaissant qui refusait de faire de ce cancre las l’émule de Tocqueville !

Puissance malfaisante, ce représentant attitré de la gauche caviar et du néo-conservatisme azimuté synthétise toutes les tares de la charia moderne : le monde ne sera vivable que lorsqu’il sera en tout point identique et mort. C’est le rallye mondain du Paris-Qatar. Les moins riches se loueront une chambre à Gaza en remerciant les journaux de lutter contre le racisme.

Il serait temps pourtant que je reconnaisse ses intenses mérites, que je lui tresse des lauriers. Car c’est ici qu’avec son argent, son bagout, ses réseaux, son sens du chantage il m’impressionne et maintenant me fait peur. Ce nouveau grand inquisiteur triomphe avec toute la force de sa mauvaise volupté.

Je fais un pari : après la Libye, il imposera sa guerre mondiale à la foule fatiguée des zombies européens.

Les Etats-Unis cherchent la guerre au moyen de l’arme énergétique

par Eberhard Hamer

Ex: http://horizons-et-debats.ch

Les Etats-Unis n’hésitent pas à boycotter les livraisons d’énergie quand il s’agit de préparer une guerre. Comme toutes les sanctions cela correspond au début d’une guerre économique. Les Etats-Unis sont rois en la matière.

• Lors de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les Etats-Unis ont privé le Japon d’énergie et de ce fait, obligé les Japonais à entrer dans l’affrontement militaire.
• Il en est de même de la guerre en Irak, commencée par les Etats-Unis par le boycott des exportations de pétrole.
• Il y eu un boycottage économique et pétrolier contre l’Iran – et cela aurait pu aboutir plusieurs fois à un affrontement militaire qui fut, heureusement, rejeté par l’armée américaine.
• Si le boycottage du pétrole contre l’Iran n’a pas vraiment fonctionné, c’est que la Chine s’est offerte comme client de substitution et que la Russie en est resté son client.
• Actuellement, dans le cas de l’Ukraine, l’arme énergétique est utilisée contre la Russie. Les sanctions des Etats-Unis et de leurs satellites correspondent à un début d’hostilité et ce, parce que la Russie s’oppose à abandonner l’Ukraine aux industries américaines, à l’OTAN et aux missiles américains.

Ce n’est pas un hasard que la construction de l’oléoduc South Stream allant de la Russie vers l’Autriche et passant par la Bulgarie, ait été stoppée lorsque le ministre des Affaires étrangères américain accompagné de trois sénateurs l’exigeait avec insistance. L’oléoduc South Stream aurait rendu l’Europe du Sud aussi sûre en matière énergétique – grâce au pétrole et au gaz russe – que l’aurait fait l’oléoduc North Stream traversant la mer Baltique l’Europe du Nord grâce à Gazprom.

Si l’oléoduc principal de la Russie vers l’Allemagne et passant par l’Ukraine et la Pologne était peu sûr, c’est que l’Ukraine s’était branché plusieurs fois clandestinement sur cet oléoduc et étant donné sa non-solvabilité s’était vu privé de livraisons. Des spécialistes américains viennent de faire sauter justement cet oléoduc pour prouver aux Européens l’incertitude des livraisons de pétrole russe.

La lutte menée par le gouvernement américain contre le fait que l’Europe s’approvisionne en énergie en Russie a maintes raisons:

1. Les Etats-Unis considèrent comme danger pour leur propre autorité économique en Europe le lien économique étroit que leurs provinces satellites européennes ont avec la Russie. Pour cette raison ils tentent de perturber toute relation positive entre l’Europe et la Russie.
2. D’après la doctrine de Brzezinski postulant l’encerclement de la Russie, et en contradiction du consentement donné en 1990 dans le contexte de la Réunification allemande, à savoir que l’OTAN ne s’élargirait pas vers l’Est en traversant l’Oder et la Neisse, les Américains n’ont pas seulement attiré l’Allemagne, mais aussi les pays baltes, la Pologne, la Hongrie, la Roumanie et la Turquie au sein de l’OTAN, ils ont donc systématiquement déplacé la zone de déploiement des missiles américains en direction de Moscou.
3. En Ukraine, on ne voulait pas seulement élargir l’espace économique américain (UE) et l’OTAN, mais on voulait en même temps affaiblir la Russie de manière décisive.
4. Le budget de l’Etat russe repose principalement sur l’exportation d’énergie. Qui veut donc affaiblir la Russie doit empêcher ces exportations. C’est pourquoi Obama a évoqué le «manque de fiabilité» des livraisons de pétrole russe et exigé que l’Europe achète du pétrole et du gaz américains (ce qui n’est guère possible à court terme).
5. Parallèlement à la guerre énergétique c’est aussi une guerre monétaire qui est menée. Les Etats-Unis ont lancé non seulement des sanctions contre des compagnies et des banques russes, mais ils menacent aussi les investissements russes de par le monde. En réponse à ces sanctions, la Russie vient de se séparer de ses réserves en dollars (200 milliards) et en accord avec la Chine, l’Inde et l’Iran ne pratique plus le commerce extérieur moyennant des dollars, mais en utilisant la monnaie des pays correspondants. Une façon d’affaiblir considérablement l’empire du dollar d’autant plus que les Etats-Unis n’ont pratiquement plus d’or et que le dollar est donc une «monnaie sans couverture ni valeur».

Jusqu’ici il n’y a pas d’indices – hormis les conjurations américaines – qui laissent supposer que l’approvisionnement en énergie de l’Europe est peu sûr. Les Russes ont toujours été fidèles aux contrats et sont existentiellement intéressés à poursuivre leurs livraisons de gaz à l’Europe. Donc pas de quoi s’inquiéter et pas de raison de changer de fournisseur de gaz en faveur des Etats-Unis.

La destruction à l’explosif de l’oléoduc ukrainien montre que la CIA pourrait également faire sauter l’oléoduc North Stream en mer Baltique pour provoquer des pénuries sur le marché de l’énergie entre la Russie et l’Europe.

Si l’on considère les sanctions des Etats-Unis et de leurs satellites contre la Russie, la guerre monétaire déjà en cours et maintenant aussi le combat mené par les Etats-Unis contre l’approvisionnement en pétrole de l’Europe par la Russie. Et si l’on prend en considération que le soulèvement sur la place du Maïdan de Kiev s’est fait grâce à l’argent américain, aux agents américains et aux troupes de mercenaires américains (Blackwater), et si l’on y ajoute que l’OTAN, à l’origine une alliance défensive, s’est transformé en une troupe de mercenaires au service des Etats-Unis, disponible dans le monde entier, alors le risque d’une guerre en Europe n’a jamais été aussi grand depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale à cause des diverses offensives menées par les Etats-Unis contre la Russie. Une fois de plus nous pourrions nous retrouver dans une guerre que personne n’a voulue.

Ce n’est pas Poutine qui est l’agresseur, mais Obama, respectivement l’oligarchie financière qui tire les ficelles. L’«amitié transatlantique» devrait signifier pour nous d’empêcher les Etats-Unis de s’aventurer en attaquant davantage de pays au lieu de les suivre aveuglement et en toute obédience. Au plus tard avec la guerre du pétrole, nous sommes maintenant directement concernés.   

(Traduction Horizons et débats)

L'avenir des relations entre l'Europe et la Russie se joue peut-être en ce moment

par Jean-Paul Baquiast

Ex: http://www.europesolidaire.eu

 

De quelles relations parlons-nous ? Ou bien d'une coopération stratégique eurorusse de longue durée, dans tous les domaines importants sur lesquels reposera demain la puissance des grands États, ou bien d'une hostilité pouvant déboucher sur des conflits ouverts, imposée par les États-Unis à une Europe considérée par eux comme une simple base arrière de l'Otan.

La question n'est pas que théorique. Aujourd'hui Washington a clairement relancé une guerre, sinon chaude, du moins tiède, contre Vladimir Poutine. L'objectif est de pousser le Président de la Fédération de Russie à une intervention militaire en Ukraine, aux conséquences qui seraient catastrophiques pour l'image internationale de la Russie. Mais si Poutine n'intervenait pas, cela pourrait provoquer une rébellion contre lui des forces politiques russes radicales, l'accusant de mollesse. Poutine pourrait être renversé par des aventuriers beaucoup plus durs que lui. Cette perspective conviendrait parfaitement à Washington, qui pourrait alors agiter le spectre d'une Russie redevenue stalinienne.

Or l'Europe, plus particulièrement l'Allemagne et la France, n'auraient rien a gagner à suivre les États-Unis dans cette aventure. Elles ruineraient au contraire les perspectives prometteuses d'une future alliance euroBRICS, qui commencerait nécessairement par une alliance eurorusse 1). Certains signes montrent qu'Angela Merkel, et dans une moindre mesure François Hollande (qui apparaît comme un suiveur), l'avaient compris. Ils avaient mis en place avec la Russie un groupe dit des trois, dont l'objectif était de rechercher des solutions communes sur la question ukrainienne. Malheureusement ce groupe des trois, face au développement des combats en Ukraine entre "légitimistes" et "résistants de l'Est", semble être entré en sommeil. Il serait urgent au contraire de le réactiver, et mieux encore, de lui fixer de nouvelles ambitions. Avec un peu de bonne volonté partagée, il pourrait s'intéresser à des dossiers chauds sur lesquels Obama accumule les erreurs et les prises de risque pour la paix du monde : l'Irak, l'Iran, la question israélo-palestinienne notamment.

Mais pour qu'un tel groupe se poursuive et se renforce, il faudrait une démarche positive des gouvernements européens, sortant de leur addiction à un atlantisme de plus en plus dangereux. Il leur faudrait expliquer à leurs opinions publiques, notamment en Allemagne et en France, pays plus réceptifs que ceux de l'Europe orientale, que le vrai allié de l'Europe est désormais Vladimir Poutine. Ce ne peut plus être désormais Obama et son entourage de « néocons » bellicistes. Ceux-ci sont en train de prendre l'Amérique toute entière en otage de leurs délires anti-russes, y compris une Amérique à laquelle beaucoup d'Européens sont restés attachés, à tort ou à raison, depuis la deuxième guerre mondiale.

1) Nous consacrerons prochainement une étude sur cette question,  actualisant des articles précédemment publiés ici.

Reprise et mise à jour d'un article publié le 12 juillet sur The French Saker
http://www.vineyardsaker.fr/2014/07/12/lavenir-des-relations-entre-leurope-et-la-russie-se-joue-peut-etre-en-ce-moment/

 

Raus aus der Ukraine!

Raus aus der Ukraine!

von Johannes Schüller

Ex: http://www.blauenarzisse.de

Patrick „Pat“ J. Buchanan ist der einflussreichste rechte Publizist der USA. In Sendern wie „Fox News” verteidigt er Putin.

Ein Gespräch über die ukrainische Krise.

Blaue​Narzisse​.de: Die deutsche Bild–Zeitung behauptet, 400 Söldner von einer US-​amerikanischen Sicherheitsfirma wären bereits in der Ukraine. Was halten Sie davon?

Pat Buchanan: Ich habe diese Nachrichten gelesen, weiß aber nicht, ob sie wahr oder falsch sind. Ich habe keine Kenntnisse von US-​Soldaten in den ostukrainischen Städten Luhansk oder Donezk.

Der Konflikt in der Ukraine erscheint wie ein großes geopolitisches Schlachtfeld. Aber es gibt auch eine Frontlinie zwischen einem konservativen Russland und einer liberalistischen USA. Was sind die eigentlichen Motive hinter dem Konflikt?

Der tiefe Graben zwischen den USA und Russland hat viele Gründe. In erster Linie nehmen die Russen wahr, dass die USA Vorteile ausnutzen. Diese haben sich besonders aus dem Rückzug der russischen Armee aus Mittel– und Osteuropa sowie dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion ergeben. Die Vereinigten Staaten, so die russische Perspektive, brachten dadurch ein halbes Dutzend ehemaliger Staaten des Warschauer Pakts und drei Sowjetrepubliken in die Nato. Wir haben unser Bündnis aus dem Kalten Krieg in den russischen Raum und vor Russlands Zentrum ausgedehnt. Viele US-​Amerikaner lehnten diese Expansion der Nato nach Osteuropa und ins Baltikum ab. Sie erschien ihnen damals als provokative Torheit.

In kultureller und sozialer Hinsicht sehen viele Russen Amerika weniger als Führungsnation christlicher Werte, die sie einst war. Sie erscheint ihnen vielmehr als weltweite Inkarnation dessen, was man „Hollywood-​Werte” nennen könnte. Die Traditionalisten in den USA befinden sich in einem erbitterten Kampf gegen diese, an Antonio Gramsci orientierte Kulturrevolution. Ebenso scheint eine wachsende Zahl von Russen ihnen ebenso zu widerstreben.

Was wäre eine angemessene Außenpolitik für die USA und für die EU in der Ukraine?

Das Ziel beider Mächte sollte eine unabhängige, freie und neutrale Ukraine außerhalb jedes Militärbündnisses sein. Darüber hinaus müsste sie ein dezentral geordnetes Land werden. Die USA und die EU sollten sich als Ziel setzen, dass die ukrainischen Regionen, ebenso wie die US-​Bundesstaaten, ein maximales Maß an Selbstbestimmung zugesichert bekommen. Diese Regionen könnten zugleich in Einklang mit der nationalstaatlichen Union stehen. Denn wir wollen weder einen Bürgerkrieg in der Ukraine noch einen zweiten Kalten Krieg mit Russland.

Die Ukraine erscheint in diesem Konflikt aber nur als Spielball fremder Mächte. Ist denn so etwas wie eine eigene und unabhängige Politik für diese Nation überhaupt denkbar?

Das ukrainische Volk hat schreckliches in seiner Geschichte ertragen müssen. Das fängt bei der von Stalin initiierten Hungersnot, dem Holodomor, an, setzt sich über Hitlers Eroberungsfeldzug fort und reicht bis zur Teilung im Zweiten Weltkrieg sowie im Kalten Krieg. Deshalb mag, auch wegen der ethnischen Unterschiede zwischen den Ukrainern, nationale Einheit ein utopisches Ideal bleiben. In meiner letzten Analyse dazu habe ich deshalb betont, dass eine Teilung dem Bürgerkrieg vorzuziehen wäre. Aber das müssen die Ukrainer selbst entscheiden.

Wie ist das gesellschaftliche Klima dazu in den USA? Existiert so etwas wie eine neue Friedensbewegung, die sich gegen Interventionen in der Ukraine und Syrien wendet?

Eine Friedensbewegung? Nein, niemand denkt hierzulande noch, dass die USA einen Krieg beginnen werden. Die meisten US-​Amerikaner wollen, dass sich die Vereinigten Staaten aus einem ethnischen Konflikt in einem Land, das sie nicht mal auf der Karte finden, heraushalten.

Als es im August 2013 möglich schien, dass Präsident Barack Obama Luftangriffe gegen Syrien beginnen könnte, stand die Nation auf, um „Nein!” zu sagen. Nach dem Irak und Afghanistan wollen die Amerikaner, dass ihr Land auf Kriege verzichtet, die keine unserer lebensnotwendigen Interessen berühren.

Trotzdem: Diese Situation kann sich ändern. Die Dämonisierung von Präsident Putin steigert sich schnell und die Neigung der politischen und medialen Eliten zur Intervention, etwa mittels dem Entsenden von Verteidigungswaffen, wächst. Wenn die Ukraine in einem langen Bürgerkrieg versinkt, wird sich die Aufmerksamkeit der USA noch stärker auf sie richten. Dann wird das gewichtige Argument folgen, die Vereinigten Staaten müssten unbedingt etwas unternehmen.

Aber momentan wiederholen selbst die erbittertsten neokonservativen „Falken” bzw. Interventionisten eher diesen Refrain: „Keine amerikanischen Stiefel auf diesen Boden!” Sie kennen eben die Stimmung in den USA. Ein Land, das einen Kampf sucht, sieht anders aus.

Welche Position sollten Konservative auf dem großen Schlachtfeld Ukraine wählen?

Die Ukraine ist nicht unser Schlachtfeld! Es ist ein Konflikt zwischen Ukrainern sowie zwischen Russland und der Ukraine. Wir haben dabei keine andere Rolle als Zar Alexander II. während des US-​amerikanischen Bürgerkrieges. Und wir sollten weder Truppen noch Waffen in die Ukraine senden, noch Kiew irreführen und davon überzeugen, dass wir es wollen.

Konservative sollten sich gegen eine militärische Invention und gegen die Spaltung der Ukraine wenden. Ebenso müssen sie aber erkennen, dass das Schicksal der Ukraine nicht unseres ist. Wir können darüber weder bestimmen noch entscheiden.

Mr. Buchanan, thank you very much!

Hier geht es zum ersten und zum zweiten Teil des Buchanan-​Porträts aus der Feder seines Weggefährten Paul Gottfried.

Usa : Une impuissante arrogance

Usa : Une impuissante arrogance

 

La politique internationale américaine a perdu sa boussole

 

Jean Bonnevey
Ex: http://metamag.fr

Les Usa continuent à se comporter comme s’ils étaient le phare du monde et l’unique super puissance. Ils se mêlent donc de tout, jugent et interviennent quand ils le peuvent. Ils le font sans tenir compte de leurs erreurs passées. Ils n’arrivent plus à s’en tenir à une doctrine cohérente et efficace. En fait, ils ont été incapables de s’adapter raisonnablement à la chute de l’URSS. Ils sont devenus relativement surpuissants au moment même où leur domination internationale reculait. Ils ne l’ont pas admis, ni géré. Il y a un échec américain et même un aventurisme qui rend le monde moins sûr depuis la fin des deux blocs. 

La lutte contre le terrorisme islamique aurait pu être la colonne vertébrale d’une diplomatie combattante contre les tenants d’un obscurantisme religieux universel. Mais il n’en a rien été. Le péché original reste sans doute la guerre inutile et imbécile contre l’Irak. Ce pays n’existe plus. Le modèle  de démocratie multiculturelle et ethnique que les Usa voulaient offrir au monde arabo-musulman est un chaos sanglant. Un  pays divisé, éclaté, une insécurité qui explose et des élections inutiles sont là pour le prouver. Le retrait américain avant toute stabilisation de l’Irak est la preuve de la faiblesse américaine et de son incapacité à agir dans un temps long. Cette preuve est confirmée par la recrudescence de la violence en Afghanistan alors que les élections vont confirmer dans ce pays les clivages ethniques. Le soutient aux révolutions égyptiennes et tunisiennes n’ont pas été menées à bien. L’intervention contre la Lybie, même modeste, aux cotés des Français et des Anglais a déstabilisé non seulement un pays mais l’ensemble du Sahel et au-delà certaines régions de l’Afrique noire. On prend en Syrie, malgré tout cela, des risques inconsidérés par rapport à toute la région. Enfin, une fois de plus, les Usa ont échoué dans leur tentative de relancer le dialogue entre Israël et les palestiniens. Ils n’osent pas défier l’état juif dans sa vision de ce qu’il doit être de la région et de la paix qu’il veut imposer.

Tant d’échecs devraient pousser les Etats-Unis à une mise à plat de leur politique internationale ou, en tout cas, à moins d’arrogance. Et pourtant, l’Ukraine le prouve, les Usa veulent régenter, au nom de la démocratie, toutes les puissances susceptibles de la concurrencer sur le plan politique, militaire et surtout énergétique. La Russie a le sentiment que Washington veut l’enfermer dans un  espace réduit et contrôlé par des états soumis à l'influence américaine. C’est indiscutable. Les Usa en ont-ils encore les moyens alors que leur leadership est contesté également par la Chine en attendant le tour de l’Inde où les nationalistes hindous vont certainement prendre le pouvoir.

L’arrogance américaine est en contradiction avec la réalité internationale et les conséquences de la politique des Usa dans le monde depuis le début du siècle. Washington veut que le XXIème siècle soit comme le XXème un siècle américain. Ce pari s’annonce irréaliste et déjà largement perdu. Il met en danger les équilibres mondiaux historiques et civilisationnels avec tous les risques que cela comporte à moyen terme.

Or How We are Hoodwinked into Accepting a New World War

The Strangelove Effect

by JOHN PILGER

 

Ex: http://www.counterpunch.org

I watched Dr. Strangelove the other day. I have seen it perhaps a dozen times; it makes sense of senseless news. When Major T.J. “King” Kong goes “toe to toe with the Rooskies” and flies his rogue B52 nuclear bomber to a target in Russia, it’s left to General “Buck” Turgidson to reassure the President. Strike first, says the general, and “you got no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops.”

President Merkin Muffley: “I will not go down in history as the greatest mass-murderer since Adolf Hitler.”

General Turgidson: “Perhaps it might be better, Mr. President, if you were more concerned with the American people than with your image in the history books.”

The genius of Stanley Kubrick’s film is that it accurately represents the cold war’s lunacy and dangers.  Most of the characters are based on real people and real maniacs. There is no equivalent to Strangelove today, because popular culture is directed almost entirely at our interior lives, as if identity is the moral zeitgeist and true satire is redundant; yet the dangers are the same. The nuclear clock has remained at five minutes to midnight; the same false flags are hoisted above the same targets by the same “invisible government”, as Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations, described modern propaganda.

In 1964, the year Strangelove was made, “the missile gap” was the false flag. In order to build more and bigger nuclear weapons and pursue an undeclared policy of domination, President John Kennedy approved the CIA’s  propaganda that the Soviet Union was well ahead of the US in the production of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. This filled front pages as the “Russian threat”. In fact, the Americans were so far ahead in the production of ICBMs, the Russians never approached them. The cold war was based largely on this lie.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its “Nato Enlargement Project”. Reneging a US promise to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand “one inch to the east”, Nato has all but taken over eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucuses, Nato’s military build-up is the most extensive since the second world war.

In February, the United States mounted one of its proxy “colour” coups against the elected government of Ukraine; the shock troops were fascists. For the first time since 1945, a pro-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No Western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism on the border of Russia.  Some 30 million Russians died in the invasion of their country by Hitler’s Nazis, who were supported by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the UPA, responsible for numerous Jewish and Polish massacres. The UPA was the military wing, inspiring today’s Svoboda party.

Since Washington’s putsch in Kiev — and Moscow’s inevitable response in Russian Crimea, to protect its Black Sea Fleet — the provocation and isolation of Russia have been inverted in the news to the “Russian threat”. This is fossilised propaganda. The US Air Force general who runs Nato forces in Europe  – General Breedlove, no less — claimed more than two weeks ago to have pictures showing 40,000 Russian troops “massing” on the border with Ukraine. So did Colin Powell claim to have pictures of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What is certain is that Obama’s rapacious, reckless coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.

Following a 13-year rampage that began in stricken Afghanistan well after Osama bin Laden had fled, then destroyed Iraq beneath a false flag, then invented a “nuclear rogue” in Iran, dispatched Libya to a Hobbesian anarchy and backed jihadists in Syria, the US finally has a new cold war to supplement its worldwide campaign of murder and terror by drone.

A Nato Membership Action Plan or MAP — straight from the war room of Strangelove — is General Breedlove’s gift to the new dictatorship in Ukraine. “Rapid Trident” will put US troops on Ukraine’s Russian border and “Sea Breeze” will put US warships within sight of Russian ports. At the same time, Nato war games throughout eastern Europe are designed to intimidate Russia. Imagine the response if this madness was reversed and happened on America’s borders. Cue General “Buck” Turgidson.

And there is China. On 24 April, President Obama will begin a tour of Asia to promote his “Pivot to China”. The aim is to convince his “allies” in the region, principally Japan, to re-arm and prepare for the eventual possibility of war with China. By 2020, almost two-thirds of all US naval forces in the world will be transferred to the Asia-Pacific area. This is the greatest military concentration in that vast region since the second world war.

In an arc extending from Australia to Japan, China will face US missiles and nuclear-armed bombers. A strategic naval base is being built on the Korean island of Jeju less than 400 miles from the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai and the industrial heartland of the only country whose economic power is likely to surpass that of the US.  Obama’s “pivot” is designed to undermine China’s influence in its region. It is as if world war has begun by other means.

This is not a Strangelove fantasy. Obama’s defence secretary, Charles “Chuck” Hagel, was in Beijing last week to deliver a menacing warning that China, like Russia, could face isolation and war if it did not bow to US demands. He compared the annexation of Crimea with China’s complex territorial dispute with Japan over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. “You cannot go around the world,” said Hagel with a straight face, “and violate the sovereignty of nations by force, coercion or intimidation”. As for America’s massive movement of naval forces and nuclear weapons to Asia, that is “a sign of the humanitarian assistance the US military can provide”.

Obama is currently seeking a greater budget for nuclear weapons than the historical peak during the cold war, the era of Strangelove. The United States is pursuing its longstanding ambition to dominate the Eurasian landmass, stretching from China to Europe: a “manifest destiny” made right by might.

John Pilger is the author of Freedom Next Time. He can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com

Dilema shakespeariano de Obama: ¿guerra fría contra Rusia o China?

por Alfredo Jalife-Rahme

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

Hoy el “nuevo muro” entre Washington y Moscú se recorrió de Berlín a Kiev: al borde de la balcanización entre la parte “occidental” (eurófila) de Ucrania y su parte “oriental” (rusófila), cuando la superestratégica Crimea ha retornado a la “madre patria” rusa.

Después de su sonoro fracaso en Crimea, con su política de asfixiante cerco a Rusia y su pretendido “cambio de régimen” con disfraz “democrático” en Moscú, Zbigniew Brzezinski comenta en Twitter (19/3/14): “Si Occidente apoya, Ucrania libre (sic) puede sobrevivir (sic). Si no lo hace, Putin puede desestabilizar toda Ucrania”.

El fulminante revire del zargeoestratégico global, Vlady Putin, tiene hoy a la parte “oriental” en jaque con su exquisito movimiento de ajedrez en Crimea, que colocó a la defensive a Zbigniew Brzezinski, ex asesor de Seguridad Nacional de Carter, íntimo de Obama y connotado rusófobo, quien tendió la letal trampa jihadista a la URSS en Afganistán que, por sus metástasis, derrumbó el Muro de Berlín y mutiló al imperio soviético.

Los ciudadanos de Estados Unidos y Gran Bretaña no desean más aventuras bélicas en Siria ni en Ucrania, cuando sus multimedia se olvidan de las bravatas atómicas de John McCain, quien goza la menor aceptación como senador, y explotan una amenaza de Dmitry Kiselyov, presentador de la televisión Rossiya-1, quien espetó que Rusia podría “convertir a Estados Unidos en ceniza radiactiva”(http://news.yahoo.com/state-tv-says-russia-could-turn-us-radioactive-212003397.html ).

Sí existen líneas rojas, no sólo de Estados Unidos, sino también de Rusia, lo cual es susceptible de desembocar en una guerra nuclear de “destrucción mutua asegurada” (MAD, por sus siglas en inglés), cuando las “cenizas radiactivas” serían “mutuas”.

Un editorial del rotativo chino Global Times (http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/849399/Putin-faces-war-of-attrition-with-West.aspx) comenta que las sanciones, de corte sado-masoquista, para lastimar la economía de Rusia, “señalarán el grado de determinación de Occidente para contener a Rusia”, cuando Putin”ha mostrado su dedicación para asegurar los intereses de Rusia, que han impresionado al mundo entero (sic)”.

El rotativo considera que Obama no ha tomado aún “una decisión final en la forma de contener a Rusia estratégicamente”, cuando “Putin despedazó las ofensivas (¡supersic!) de Occidente en el este de Europa, que empezaron al final de la guerra fría”.

Hoy “el límite estratégico entre Rusia y Occidente está siendo redefinido”: Rusia, “estrangulada durante un largo periodo, ha acumulado demasiada fuerza para lanzar una contraofensiva” y puede “enfrentar una guerra de desgaste con Occidente”.

El rotativo chino tampoco se hace ilusiones y sentencia que “la fuerza de Rusia es limitada (¡supersic!). Ni tiene la fuerza nacional de la anterior URSS ni la ayuda del Pacto de Varsovia. Si Occidente está determinado a emprender una confrontación prolongada (sic) con Moscú, Rusia sufrirá desafíos sin precedente”. Sin duda. Pero es mucho mejor que el “cambio de régimen” preprogramado de Estados Unidos en Moscú.

Su pronóstico es adverso: las”sanciones económicas desembocarán en una situación perder-perder. Occidente compartirá el peso de las pérdidas económicas, mientras Rusia estará sola” (¡supersic!), cuando “la estabilidad de Rusia no está garantizada”.

Por lo pronto, “Moscú le ha dado a Occidente y a sus seguidores una lección, obligándolo a reconsiderar el papel de Ucrania en Europa” y aconseja que “Putin debe dejar algún espacio para que Occidente se retire en una manera elegante, lo cual maximizará los intereses de Rusia”. De acuerdo.

El editorial chino arguye que”Occidente se percató que ha perdido la batalla por Crimea”, que “puede ser una victoria para Moscú o el inicio de una confrontación sin fin entre Rusia y Occidente”.

Juzga que a Putin le conviene”mantener el pleito en baja (sic) intensidad, que se acomode a los intereses de largo plazo de Rusia”.

El editorial no se jacta que el gran triunfador resultó China (a mi juicio, junto a Irán e India), lo cual expresa sin tapujos el investigador geoestratégico Artyom Lukin: “el triunfador en Ucrania… es China” (http://www.fpri.org/articles/2014/03/ukraine-and-winner-china ).

Juzga que las sanciones de Occidente contra Rusia “empujarán inevitablemente a Moscú a los brazos de Pekín”, lo cual “incrementará la probabilidad de que sus políticas se alineen frente a Occidente”, lo cual, a su vez, “reforzará las posiciones estratégicas de China en Asia”.

China “se sentirá más confiada en su rivalidad con Estados Unidos para su primacía en la región Asia/Pacífico, después de haber adquirido a Rusia como una zona estratégica segura en su espalda, así como un acceso privilegiado a su abundante energía, a su base de minerales y a sus tecnología militar avanzada”, a juicio de Artyom Lukin, en la visita de Putin a China en mayo “será muy visible cuando los eventos de Ucrania ayudarían a concretar el proyectado gasoducto de Rusia a China”.

No soslaya que los comentarios de la prensa oficial china son “simpáticos a Moscú”, al enfatizar la”determinación de Putin para proteger los intereses de Rusia y los ciudadanos rusófilos”, mientras los ciudadanos chinos expresan su admiración (¡supersic!) por Putin y su desafío a Occidente en portales como Weibo.

Artyom Lukin aduce que existe una”probabilidad cero (sic) para que Pekín apoye cualquier castigo político y económico en contra de Moscú”: algo así como una “neutralidad benevolente” de China con el Kremlin.

Cita a “algunos estrategas de Estados Unidos quienes lamentan que una presión excesiva (¡supersic!) de Occidente puede alterar el equilibrio geopolítico al empujar a Rusia más cerca de China”.

Artyom Lukin arguye que ahora Estados Unidos se encuentra en una posición delicada para confrontar a dos grandes potencias en Eurasia en forma simultánea y “tendrá que decidir cuál región es más importante a sus intereses: la Europa oriental post soviética (cuyo corazón es Ucrania) o Asia oriental”.

Considera que una batalla sin compromisos en Ucrania oriental de Estados Unidos contra Rusia, “en 10 o 15 años puede significar la pérdida de Asia oriental”.

Concluye en forma optimista que la “presente situación en Ucrania no resultará en una guerra, pero puede convertirse en un paso mayor hacia la transformación del orden internacional a una bipolaridad confrontativa” entre “Occidente, encabezado por Estados Unidos, frente al eje China/Rusia”, lo cual se subsume en mi tesis del “G-7 frente a los BRICS” (ver Bajo la Lupa, 16/3/14): el nuevo “muro de Kiev” de la bipolaridad metarregional.

Si no malinterpreto a Artyom Lukin, Rusia exhorta a Occidente a la cesión de “Ucrania oriental” a cambio de no arrojarse a los brazos de China y, por extensión, a los BRICS e Irán.

Mientras Michelle Obama llega con sus hijas a una visita de siete días a Pekín, por invitación de la esposa del <mandarín Xi, no hay que soslayar la búsqueda de Zbigniew Brzezinski de un acercamiento de Estados Unidos con China para castigar a Rusia, como sucedió con Nixon hace 43 años.

Entramos a la “teoría de juegos”, con tres rivales geoestratégicos, de característica no lineal hipercompleja.

Obama se encuentra ante el shakespeariano dilema geoestratégico de su vida: ¿quién será el máximo competidor geopolítico de Estados Unidos: Rusia o China, o los dos?

www.alfredojalife.com

Twitter: @AlfredoJalife

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Quince aniversario de la agresión salvaje de la OTAN que destruyó Yugoslavia

Quince aniversario de la agresión salvaje de la OTAN que destruyó Yugoslavia

Ex: http://paginatransversal.wordpress.com

 

Hace quince años, el 24 de marzo de 1999, la aviación de EEUU y la OTAN atacó un país ubicado en pleno centro de Europa: Yugoslavia. Los bombardeos duraron más de dos meses. Casi dos mil civiles murieron a raíz de la agresión. Los ataques aéreos fueron el punto culminante después de muchos años de una hostil campaña occidental en contra de ese poderoso Estado balcánico. Con las bombas y los misiles, que cayeron desde el cielo nocturno sobre Belgrado, Pristina y otras ciudades serbias, culminó la formación de un nuevo mapa de Europa del Este.

El analista político Alexánder Bovdunov, señala: –La idea era crear un foco de tensión en Europa, dificultando al máximo su conversión en un centro geopolítico independiente, por un lado, y por otro, aplastar y eliminar dentro de lo posible las fuerzas potencialmente capaces de ser aliados de los rusos. En primer término, Serbia y los serbios. Por algo fue que en ese conflicto EEUU y Europa, que le seguía la corriente, comenzaron respaldando a los croatas para terminar sofocando al Estado serbio y desatando el conflicto en torno a Kósovo para minimizar la influencia de los serbios en la región. Uno de los principales objetivos era demostrar que EEUU era capaz de imponer su voluntad al mundo entero y hacer lo que quisiera en cualquier punto de Europa. Gracias a Washington, en el mapa europeo surgió un cuasi Estado: la República de Kósovo. Su papel se limita prácticamente a ser otra cabeza de puente de EEUU en Europa.

El analista Vasili Kashirin explica: –Es un satélite fiable y leal de Occidente. En Kósovo está ubicada la mayor base militar de EEUU en el Viejo Continente. Los estadounidenses han construido allí toda una ciudad-fortaleza. Han llegado para quedarse durante décadas y no piensan abandonar ese territorio. Desde el punto de vista militar, fue un indudablemente triunfo de EEUU. Después de fraccionar Yugoslavia en pequeños países y enclaves, Occidente continuó imponiendo su “democracia alada” en Iraq, Afganistán y Libia, y al devastarlos, estuvo a punto de agredir a Siria, pero en ese momento el mecanismo de influencia unipolar falló, porque Rusia se opuso a la política “euroatlantista” en la región.

Vasili Kashirin señala: –La correlación global de fuerzas ha cambiado. Rusia ya no es tan débil como era en1999,lo demostró el año pasado durante la crisis siria, al impedir con su diplomacia razonable y posición que Occidente agrediera militarmente a Siria. El siguiente error del “euroatlantismo” fue su actitud respecto a Crimea. El deseo natural de Moscú de defender a la población ruso parlante de la península frente a los ultranacionalistas ucranianos, absolutamente justificable desde el punto de vista humano, ha sido interpretado por Occidente como una agresión militar rusa contra Ucrania. Y el resultado de la libre expresión de la voluntad de los crimeos a través de un referéndum ha sido calificada por el mismo como una violación de la integridad territorial del Estado ucraniano. A su vez, Vasili Kashirin califica la reacción de Occidente como una aplicación automática de la política de doble rasero. Solo que los tiempos han cambiado y esta política ha dejado de ser igual de eficaz que antes. Su incongruencia es demasiado evidente para todos.

Fuente: El Espía Digital

Who Has Been More Aggressive?

Who Has Been More Aggressive?

By Michael S. Rozeff

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

Who has been more aggressive, George H.W. Bush in Panama or Vladimir Putin in Crimea? Who has been more aggressive, the U.S. in its actions against Noriega or Russia with respect to Crimea?

These two situations differ but they are comparable in important respects. The U.S. launched a full-scale invasion of Panama. Russia, whatever it did in Crimea, it didn’t launch a full-scale invasion. The U.S. was trying to get rid of Noriega for some years. Russia had not been trying to annex Crimea. It acted in response to Ukraine events in a region it deemed very important just as the U.S. acted in a region it deemed important for reasons of its own. What were they? I won’t go into the detail this invasion deserves. Let’s see what George H.W. Bush’s invasion message said.

“For nearly two years, the United States, nations of Latin America and the Caribbean have worked together to resolve the crisis in Panama. The goals of the United States have been to safeguard the lives of Americans, to defend democracy in Panama, to combat drug trafficking and to protect the integrity of the Panama Canal Treaty. Many attempts have been made to resolve this crisis through diplomacy and negotiations. All were rejected by the dictator of Panama, Gen. Manuel Noriega, an indicted drug trafficker. Last Friday, Noriega declared his military dictatorship to be in a state of war with the United States and publicly threatened the lives of Americans in Panama. The very next day forces under his command shot and killed an unarmed American serviceman, wounded another, arrested and brutally beat a third American serviceman and then brutally interrogated his wife, threatening her with sexual abuse. That was enough.”

The Russians have made the claim too of safeguarding Russians as well as their bases. They too have made the claim of safeguarding democracy and there has been a vote to back that claim up. No drug trafficking is involved in Crimea, but that was a poor excuse for Bush to have used anyway. Russia has made the claim that the coup in Ukraine introduced a rogue government just as the U.S. made claims against Noriega. Bush mentioned the failure of negotiations. Whatever they were or weren’t or how they were handled, let’s note that the Ukrainian government had reached an agreement on Feb. 21 that was soon broken by violent mob activity. This was in Ukraine, not Crimea, but there is a political link and it does provide Russia with a parallel rationale that it has used.

These comparisons suggest, at a minimum and understating the case, that the Russians have not behaved in a way that differs that much from how the U.S. has behaved. But in fact the Russian actions have been much milder. There has been no big invasion. A vote was held. The Russians had standing treaty rights in Crimea.

Bush also claimed that Noriega declared war against the U.S. This claim inverted the truth. Noriega said that the U.S. had declared war on Panama. See author Theodore H. Draper’s work on that claim. I quote Draper:

“As I have now learned, Bush’s statement was, at best, a half-truth, at worst a flagrant distortion. On December 15, Noriega had not simply declared war on the United States. He said, in effect, that the United States had declared war on Panama, and that, therefore, Panama was in a state of war with the United States. Just what Noriega said was known or available in Washington by December 16 at the latest. How Noriega’s words came across as a simple declaration of war is a case history of official management of the news and negligence by the press.

“The key passage in Noriega’s speech on December 15 accused the President of the United States of having ‘invoked the powers of war against Panama’ and ‘through constant psychological and military harassment of having created a state of war in Panama, daily insulting our sovereignty and territorial integrity.’ He appealed for ‘a common front to respond to the aggression,’ and stressed ‘the urgency to unite as one to fight against the aggressor.’

“The resolution on December 15 by the Panama Assembly also took this line—’To declare the Republic of Panama in a state of war for the duration of the aggression unleashed against the Panamanian people by the US Government.’”

This war item may appear to digress from the comparison because the Crimean situation doesn’t involve antagonism between Russia and Crimea, whereas the Panama-U.S. situation did. Its relevance is that the U.S. went considerably further militarily in Panama than Russia did in Crimea, using a false and exaggerated claim as an important reason.

Let us reach a conclusion. If the U.S. could launch a large-scale aggression against the government of Panama for some reasons similar to those invoked by Russia (protection of citizens and democracy) and for one unjustifiable reason (drugs), and also with a lie or half-truth (Noriega unilaterally declaring war on the U.S.), then do not the Russian actions in Crimea, where it has treaty rights for bases and military personnel and where it has a longstanding interest in an adjacent strategic region, appear not to be anything excessive as such things go and far milder than the U.S. action in Panama? This seems to be an inescapable conclusion.

If Russia is the big bad bogeyman in Crimea, what was the U.S. in Panama in 1989? If the U.S. claimed noble aims and getting rid of a criminal in Panama’s government, how far different are the Russian claims that the Crimeans have a right to dissociate from a criminal gang in Kiev and to do so by a peaceful vote? Whose actions are milder, those of the Russians in Crimea or those of the U.S. in Panama? Whose actions are more aggressive, those of the Russians in Crimea or those of the U.S. in Panama? It may be that the Russians will invade Ukraine itself, in which case they will be open to much greater and more severe criticism. For the moment, we are addressing Crimea.

There is a difference between Panama and Crimea in that Crimea has voted to join the Russian Federation whereas Panama was a separate country and remains so. However, the U.S., having once invaded the country, obviously has reserved its option, by violence if necessary, to make and unmake Panama’s government at its will and according to its interests.

Seen against this comparison, the statements being made by top U.S. officials or former officials like Hillary Clinton, that Putin is a new Hitler, are wild exaggerations. If Russia has violated international law through its activities surrounding the Crimean vote, as the warmongers in the U.S. shout, how much more did Bush’s invasion of Panama violate international law? And, by the way, how could Bush invade Panama and then inform Congress when it is Congress that must declare war? And how could Bush invade Panama without a U.N. Security Council Resolution authorizing it? This U.S. invasion was not even a case of applying the already-expansive Monroe Doctrine, for there was no foreign force invading this hemisphere.

I have not explained why Bush invaded Panama or why the U.S. was so concerned about Noriega in the years preceding that invasion. I have limited the discussion to one question, which is this. Who has been more aggressive, George H.W. Bush in Panama or Vladimir Putin in Crimea? I think it’s evident that Bush was far more aggressive.

Before too many U.S. officials get too upset over Putin, before they absorb too much of the neocon warmongering nonsense and exaggerations, before they lead the U.S. into dangerous confrontations for which there is no need, before they shock the world’s economy with armed confrontations, it would pay them on behalf of Americans in this land to study their own history as well as that of Russia and to gain some much needed perspective so that they can behave with at least some degree of maturity and statesman-like wisdom.

The time is long past for those in Washington and throughout this land who understand and despise the neocon ideas to stand up against them and marginalize them. The neocons should be viewed, not as a constraint on appropriate political actions and responses, but as a spent moral force lacking in moral standing that has been wrong time and again in recommending actions that supposedly benefitted Americans but in reality have dragged this country further and further down.

Remaking the world, freeing peoples, playing global saviour, acting as the world’s policeman, and attempting to be the world’s conscience have all got to be seen as bad and wrong for any state. States cannot do any of these things without becoming monsters of power who are creatures of their own interests and their own bureaucracies who oppress the people they rule. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Syria should all attest to that. Even the Vietnam War should attest to that.

A  state that has the power to do supposedly good things will invariably have the power to do very bad things, and it will. This is both basic human nature and the basic outcome of bureaucratic governments. Power corrupts. Of equal importance is that any such state will consist of bureaucracies that do the actual ruling, and they become self-perpetuating and separated from the interests of the people for whom they are supposedly doing good. Instead, they become unjust, out for themselves, corrupt, slow to act, inconsistent in their actions, and impervious to accountability.

The basic neocon idea is that of an expanding U.S. hegemony according to U.S. political ideas and blueprints. The idea is a monopoly of power, a superpower. This is the basic idea of empire, and it is both bad and wrong, practically and morally. A monopoly on power is the wrong way to strive for the good. The good needs to be constantly discovered and re-discovered at a decentralized level, within each person’s mind and conscience. A person’s own life and willing associations with others provide more than ample scope for challenging a person to figure out what is good and bad as well as what is right and wrong. No one person and certainly no one powerful state knows the good or can achieve it. The good is not provided in any blueprint. It is always a work in progress, dependent on local and individual details and conditions that are unknown to state powers. The attempts by states to achieve the abstract good must fail. They are going against the nature of the human condition.

America has a very serious problem, which is that both parties stand for the empire and the neocon ideas are very much tied in with the ideas that ground the empire. Right now, the empire is viewed by far too many people as good and right. As long as those who might separate themselves from neocon ideas and criticize them strenuously remain locked in support of the empire and/or reluctant to take issue with it, both parties are going to be tools of neocon thinking.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

Tune Out the War Party!

 

Tune Out the War Party!

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

With Vladimir Putin’s dispatch of Russian troops into Crimea, our war hawks are breathing fire. Russophobia is rampant and the op-ed pages are ablaze here.

Barack Obama should tune them out, and reflect on how Cold War presidents dealt with far graver clashes with Moscow.

When Red Army tank divisions crushed the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956, killing 50,000, Eisenhower did not lift a finger. When Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall, JFK went to Berlin and gave a speech.

When Warsaw Pact troops crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, LBJ did nothing. When, Moscow ordered Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski to smash Solidarity, Ronald Reagan refused to put Warsaw in default.

These presidents saw no vital U.S. interest imperiled in these Soviet actions, however brutal. They sensed that time was on our side in the Cold War. And history has proven them right.

What is the U.S. vital interest in Crimea? Zero. From Catherine the Great to Khrushchev, the peninsula belonged to Russia. The people of Crimea are 60 percent ethnic Russians.

And should Crimea vote to secede from Ukraine, upon what moral ground would we stand to deny them the right, when we bombed Serbia for 78 days to bring about the secession of Kosovo?

Across Europe, nations have been breaking apart since the end of the Cold War. Out of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia came 24 nations. Scotland is voting on secession this year. Catalonia may be next.

Yet, today, we have the Wall Street Journal describing Russia’s sending of soldiers to occupy airfields in Ukraine as a “blitzkrieg” that “brings the threat of war to the heart of Europe,” though Crimea is east even of what we used to call Eastern Europe.

The Journal wants the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush sent to the Eastern Mediterranean and warships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet sent into the Black Sea.

But why? We have no alliance that mandates our fighting Russia over Crimea. We have no vital interest there. Why send a flotilla other than to act tough, escalate the crisis and risk a clash?

The Washington Post calls Putin’s move a “naked act of armed aggression in the center of Europe.” The Crimea is in the center of Europe? We are paying a price for our failure to teach geography.

The Post also urges an ultimatum to Putin: Get out of Crimea, or we impose sanctions that could “sink the Russian financial system.”

While we and the EU could cripple Russia’s economy and bring down her banks, is this wise? What if Moscow responds by cutting off credits to Ukraine, calling in Kiev’s debts, refusing to buy her goods and raising the price of oil and gas?

This would leave the EU and us with responsibility for a basket-case nation the size of France and four times as populous as Greece.

Are Angela Merkel and the EU ready to take on that load, after bailing out the PIIGS — Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain?

If we push Russia out of the tent, to whom do we think Putin will turn, if not China?

This is not a call to ignore what is going on, but to understand it and act in the long-term interests of the United States.

Putin’s actions, though unsettling, are not irrational.

After he won the competition for Ukraine to join his customs union, by bumping a timid EU out of the game with $15 billion cash offer plus subsidized oil and gas to Kiev, he saw his victory stolen.

Crowds formed in Maidan Square, set up barricades, battled police with clubs and Molotov cocktails, forced the elected president Viktor Yanukovych into one capitulation after another, and then overthrew him, ran him out of the country, impeached him, seized parliament, downgraded the Russian language, and declared Ukraine part of Europe.

To Americans this may look like democracy in action. To Moscow it has the aspect of a successful Beer Hall Putsch, with even Western journalists conceding there were neo-Nazis in Maidan Square.

In Crimea and eastern Ukraine, ethnic Russians saw a president they elected and a party they supported overthrown and replaced by parties and politicians hostile to a Russia with which they have deep historical, religious, cultural and ancestral ties.

Yet Putin is taking a serious risk. If Russia annexes Crimea, no major nation will recognize it as legitimate, and he could lose the rest of Ukraine forever. Should he slice off and annex eastern Ukraine, he could ignite a civil war and second Cold War.

Time is not necessarily on Putin’s side here. John Kerry could be right on that.

But as for the hawkish howls, to have Ukraine and Georgia brought into NATO, that would give these nations, deep inside Russia’s space, the kind of war guarantees the Kaiser gave Austria in 1914 and the Brits gave the Polish colonels in March 1939.

Those war guarantees led to two world wars, which historians may yet conclude were the death blows of Western civilization.

The Best of Patrick J. Buchanan

USA Wages War More Often than Just Annually

USA Wages War More Often than Just Annually

By Yuri Skidanov
Pravda.ru

The United States, an example of public and social order for the countries of the “golden billion,” has a unique history. In the 237 years of its existence, it has been either at war, or preparing for a new attack, looking for victims. During the period from 1798 to 2012 Washington used military force abroad 240 times, more frequently than annually.

The results of this military – aggressive development are impressive. Five percent of the world’s population who are lucky enough to be U.S. citizens consume, according to various estimates, from 25 to 30 percent of the planet’s resources. How did the country manage to achieve such prosperity for its 320 million people?

It all started a long time ago, in 1620, when “Mayflower” ship with 142 settlers on board left the British port of Plymouth, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and on November 11 dropped the first batch of “pilgrims” on the North American coast. Their descendants in the United States today have become a semblance of royal aristocracy in Europe.

However, not the best members of society, mildly put, were sent from Britain to North America. Many of them had a clear tendency for significant and small violations of the law and light attitude towards the norms of public morality. Perhaps such a disposition of the first settlers identified some of the historical features of the U.S. Code.

In 1776, 13 American colonies united into the United States, and rebelled against their legitimate ruler, King of Great Britain. The war for independence lasted thirteen years and ended in a victory of the colonists. The legitimacy of the U.S. formation can be equated to the legitimacy of the Great October Socialist Revolution that resulted in the Bolsheviks coming to power. The war for independence was the first and last war with an external enemy on the United States territory, and it can hardly be called aggressive or predatory.

Before completing the formation of the government and public institutions, the U.S. began unleashing wars and conflicts, one after another. Here are the most important ones. 1798-1800 – the war with France, the former ally of the United States in the fight for independence. As a result, some North American colonies of France went under the control of the United States, which was the prelude to their accession later.

The next full-scale war, the first Tripoli or Barbary war, the one that the United States fought in the Mediterranean with Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania (modern Libya) ten thousand miles away from its borders, predetermined the wars of the 20-21^stcentury in the same region. This war can safely be called the first war of the policy of “big stick” under which Washington, disregarding the rules of the international law, advanced or protected its economic interests. The reason for the war was the demand of Arab States that a tribute be paid to Tripoli for the use of the trade routes in the Mediterranean.

The first Barbary War did not end well for the United States. They had to buy out 300 U.S. soldiers from captivity, while the Americans captured only 100 Arab soldiers, and the desired result – getting rid of tribute – could not be achieved. Only the second Barbary War in 1815 brought success. As a result, the American merchant vessels, unlike the French and English ones, were given priority in the freedom of movement in the Mediterranean.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States fought with the British, Mexican, Japanese, Nicaragua, Hawaii, and the Philippines, not to mention dozens of local military operations. As a result, the territories of modern states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah were conquered. Protectorate was established over Hawaii, the U.S. military government was introduced in Cuba, and a colonial regime established in the Philippines.

In the twentieth century, the aggressive U.S. operations have become even more widespread. Virtually the entire Central America and much of Latin America were under the U.S. control. The United States and Russia were at war, albeit without much result, landing their troops in Archangelsk and Vladivostok. Now not just the Mediterranean or Central America, like it was in the nineteenth century, but the entire world is covered by the U.S. military machine.

U.S. soldiers fought in China (1925), Korea (1950), again in China (1958), and Lebanon (1958). The biggest defeat in the history of the United States was suffered in Vietnam, where 60,000 people were killed and over 300,000 wounded. After the war, about 100,000 of its veterans committed suicide. In parallel, Americans conducted armed operations in Latin America – Panama, Brazil (overthrow of the legally elected President Joao Goulart in 1964) , Cuba, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, and Chile. Africa was not forgotten either, and in 1960, the U.S. organized a coup during which dictator Mobutu came to power, and the legally elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was killed.

Recent achievements of the U.S. foreign policy are fresh in memory – from the bombing of sovereign Yugoslavia to the completely illegal invasion of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the defeat of Libya. Syria so far has managed to avoid the role of the next object of the export of American-style democracy, but this situation may change any time.

Of course, it is impossible to list all the facts of war and armed aggression by the United States in the information material. However, this is more than enough to make a conclusion – the leaders of the United States of all time had an unbeatable claim of being the major war criminals of the modern and contemporary history.

If we were to apply the norms developed by the Nuremberg Tribunal to the U.S. foreign policy, as well as the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague whose effect on the U.S. citizens Washington refuses to recognize, they would fit right in. Of course, the U.S. is at war with nearly the entire world not because of the psychological characteristics of its politicians and presidents.

The U.S. gets obvious economic benefits and great distributed very unevenly within the country, leaving virtually nothing for “cannon meat” – young individuals from lower social classes that form the basis of the Armed Forces of the United States. The formula for economic prosperity and model democracy is simple: attack and rob.

Reprinted from Pravda.ru.

Neocons Push Israeli-Saudi Alliance

by Robert PARRY

Ex: http://www.a-w-i-p.com

Exclusive: Early U.S. presidents warned against the dangers of “entangling alliances,” prescient advice that the neocons want President Obama to ignore amid demands from Israel and Saudi Arabia that America tie itself up in the endless and bloody sectarian conflicts of the Middle East, reports Robert Parry.

American neocons are rallying to the new Israeli-Saudi alliance by demanding that President Barack Obama engage more aggressively against the two countries’ foes in the Middle East, thus “bolstering Israeli and Saudi confidence,” as the Washington Post’s deputy editorial-page editor Jackson Diehl declared.

For years, the Washington Post has served as Official Washington’s neocon flagship, bristling in support of every hawkish demand for U.S. intervention in the Mideast, most notably assembling a flotilla of misguided consensus in support of President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq and then pounding any American skeptics who dared emerge over the horizon.

Diehl’s column on Monday [10/28/13] represented an extension of the neocons’ knee-jerk support of Israeli interests to those of the Saudi monarchy, Israel’s new secret friend. Diehl hoisted the banner of this odd-couple alliance in excoriating President Obama for letting down these two “allies” as they maneuver to crush what’s known as the Shiite crescent extending from Iran through Iraq and Syria to the Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon.

In sync with the regional interests of Saudi Arabia and Israel, Diehl argued that the United States should toughen up its military posture in the Middle East with the goal of “reshaping conditions on the ground,” specifically going after Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and damaging the new Iranian government of President Hassan Rouhani, or in Diehl’s words, “weakening Assad [and] degrading Iranian strength.”

Diehl added, “That work could be done without deploying U.S. troops, but it would be hard, expensive and require a lot of presidential attention.” Presumably, Diehl wants the U.S. military to launch those cruise missiles that were poised to “degrade” Assad’s regime in late August, and he hopes the U.S. diplomatic corps will rebuff Iran’s overtures for a diplomatic settlement over its nuclear program.

Like other neocons, Diehl takes Obama to task for giving peace a chance – by accepting Assad’s surrender of Syria’s chemical weapons, by seeking a negotiated settlement to the Syrian civil war (with Assad agreeing to send representatives to Geneva although the fractious Saudi-backed Syrian rebels and their jihadist allies still balk), by working with Iran on a deal that would swap tighter international controls over Iran’s nuclear program for sanctions relief, and by pressing for meaningful talks between Israel and Palestine toward a two-state solution.

Diehl deems this diplomatic offensive a series of “foreign policy fantasies,” the title of his Washington Post op-ed. By pushing diplomacy over confrontation, Obama has, in Diehl’s view, “driven a wedge between the United States and some of its closest allies [leaving] U.S. allies in the region – Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey – marooned in a scary new world where their vital interests are no longer under U.S. protection.

“Israel and Saudi Arabia worry that Obama will strike a deal with Iran that frees it from sanctions without entirely extirpating its capacity to enrich uranium — leaving it with the potential to produce nuclear weapons. But more fundamentally, they and their neighbors are dismayed that the United States appears to have opted out of the regional power struggle between Iran and its proxies and Israel and the Arab states aligned with the United States.

“It is the prospect of waging this regional version of the Cold War without significant U.S. support that has prompted Saudi leaders to hint at a rupture with Washington — and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to talk more publicly than ever about Israel’s willingness to act alone.”

Fighting for Others

Diehl — like virtually all his compatriots in the mainstream U.S. news media — leaves out the detail that Israeli already possesses one of the most sophisticated though undeclared nuclear arsenals in the world, while U.S. intelligence agencies still conclude that Iran is not working on even a single nuclear bomb.

Diehl also doesn’t bother to explain exactly why the American people should continue to expend vast amounts of money, prestige and blood to take sides in these interminable and often incomprehensible conflicts in the Middle East. The neocons simply behave as if every American should understand why a Shiite-dominated regime is so much more objectionable than a Sunni one; why an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia is preferable to a limited democracy like Iran; and why Israel has some fundamental right to possess East Jerusalem and other Palestinian lands.

For many Americans, it’s perhaps even harder to understand why the likes of Jackson Diehl and his boss, editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt, continue to reign over the Washington Post’s editorial section more than a decade after they helped guide the American people into the disastrous war in Iraq.

Not only has there been no accountability for their journalistic errors, including reporting Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of WMDs as “flat fact” when it was no fact at all, but also none for the ugly character assassination against war critics, such as former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson whose wife, CIA officer Valerie Plame, saw her career destroyed when the Bush administration exposed her identity on the Post’s op-ed pages and Hiatt then kept up a years-long campaign to destroy Wilson’s reputation. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Why WPost’s Hiatt Should Be Fired.”]

Beyond no accountability at the Post, there appear to have been no lessons learned. Hiatt, Diehl and the other neocons simply continue to place the policy desires of Israel, in particular, and now its new buddy, Saudi Arabia, above the foreign policy of the U.S. government and above the interests of the American people.

In the early years of the Republic, Presidents George Washington and John Adams warned against the dangers of “entangling alliances” that could draw the United States into faraway and expensive conflicts that would drain the Treasury and create unnecessary enemies. In his Farewell Address, Washington saw the risk of foreign influence coming not only from adversaries but from allies who would seek to twist American domestic opinion in their favor.

Washington warned: “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”

Those early warnings seem particularly prescient today regarding the Middle East, given the extensive and expensive efforts by Israel and Saudi Arabia to win favor in Official Washington through lobbying, propaganda and financial favors doled out to many influential Americans.

While Israel’s skills at lobbying and propaganda are renowned, Saudi Arabia also can throw its weight around through its ownership of American debt, its ability to manipulate oil prices and its stakes in major U.S. corporations, including in the powerful Wall Street financial sector.

Now that these two longtime rivals, Israel and Saudi Arabia, have formed a behind-the-scenes alliance – joining together on key regional issues such as countering Iranian influence, subverting the Assad regime in Syria, and backing the military coup in Egypt – the Obama administration finds itself confronting an imposing phalanx of political and economic clout.

The ease with which neocons like Jackson Diehl lift up the banner of this new combination of Israeli-Saudi interests is a telling sign of the two countries’ impressive geopolitical muscle. [For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Israeli-Saudi Alliance Slips into View.”]
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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com
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Article published here: Consortiumnews.com. Image: © N/A
URL: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2013/11/18/neocons-push-israeli-saudi-alliance

Désarroi de la France neocon

Désarroi de la France neocon

Ex: http://www.dedefensa.org

On sait que Le Grand Journal de Canal Plus (LGJ pour les initiés) est notre meilleure référence pour mesurer la bassesse en cours de cette époque ; car il n’y a “nulle part ailleurs” où les choses sont plus basses qu’en France, à Paris plus précisément, par rapport à ce qu’est la France et ce que devrait être la France.

(En général, le LGJ est intéressant seulement d’une façon indirecte, par antithèse et selon le principe de l’inversion, en montrant avec une sorte de jubilation presque indécente ce qui est détestable et bas dans la France d’aujourd’hui, c’est-à-dire la futilité de l’esprit qui pose au sérieux, le refus d’affronter les vrais symptômes de la Grande Crise d’effondrement du Système, le parisianisme, le côté bouffon qu’a introduit le nouveau présentateur Antoine de Caunes qui est talentueux dans ce domaine, le côté si l’on veut Bouffes parisiennes que nous signalions le 7 novembre 2011 pour le cas US, – mais la chose vaut pour tout le bloc BAO : «[U]ne sorte d’esprit d’autodérision, d’irresponsabilité, de ridicule affiché presque comme une vertu qui serait celle de la dissolution des mœurs civiques et de la psychologie. Jacques Bainville saisit bien cela lorsqu’il décrit la France de l’immédiat avant-1870, plongée dans les “folies Offenbach”, elle-même (la France) symbolisée par le succès qu’on fit à La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein. [...] L’analogie est dans l’esprit de la situation, certes, et nullement dans la description de la situation elle-même, qui est secondaire dans ce cas...»)

Eh bien, tout pouvant arriver, il se trouve que, jeudi soir, dans l’émission du 5 décembre 2013, une partie était directement intéressante, sans nécessité d’antithèse et d’inversion. Il s’agissait de deux invités, l’ancien ministre des affaires étrangères Bernard Kouchner dans un gouvernement Sarkozy et le député UMP et ancien secrétaire d’État (sous les ordres de Kouchner), Pierre Lellouche. Au menu : l’intervention française, immédiate suivant le vote de l’ONU, en Centrafrique. Les deux invités sont intervenus, eux, à leur façon ; Lellouche pour faire un cours d’expert presque professoral expliquant la situation, assez argumenté et professionnel, et très difficile à interrompre ; Kouchner tenta bien d’intervenir, sans vraiment beaucoup de succès, lorsque Lellouche semblait devoir reprendre son souffle. (Kouchner, rigolard et réussissant enfin à en placer une, s’adressant à ses interlocuteurs de LGJ devant un Lellouche un peu pincé  : «Vous comprenez pourquoi il était difficile de travailler avec lui...»)

Que dirent nos “experts” sur l’essentiel ? “Messieurs, fallait-il intervenir” ? «Il n’y a pas d’alternative» (Lellouche), «Qu’est-ce qu’on peut faire d’autre ? [...] Qu’est-ce qu’on pouvait faire d’autre ?» (Kouchner). D’une certaine façon, personne (nous y compris, certes) ne pourrait vraiment développer une remarque dans un sens contraire, compte tenu des dynamiques en cours, des précédents, des engagements déjà réalisés et toujours en cours, et ainsi de suite selon la logique impérative des choses. Le consensus est l’enfant d’une situation forcée, dont les prémisses remontent à l’intervention française en Libye, où les événements dictent désormais les décisions-sapiens. Cela s’appelle “être piégé”.

Il ressort de tout cela une “posture à-la-française”, absolument paradoxale dans le chef du notaire-chef-de-guerre, le général-Poire, qui devient le seul dirigeant purement neocon du bloc BAO, sous les regards ébahis des derniers neocons survivants de Washington, devenus pro-français à l’insu de leur plein gré. Le nommé Karim, intervenant soi-disant polémique habituel du LGJ, est venu en effet présenter une séquence où l’on voit le sénateur Lindsey Graham faire l’apologie du French leadership au Moyen-Orient et le sénateur McCain “tweeter” “Vive la France” : belle brochette Graham-McCain, il ne manquerait plus qu’un Cheney ou un GW... Lellouche confirme, qui vient juste de rencontrer McCain. (Il n’est pas un débat, Lellouche présent, où l’on annonce quelque prise de position d’un sénateur ou l’autre à Washington, qui ne soit aussitôt renforcée du témoignage péremptoire du même Lellouche qui, justement, revient de Washington...). La France belliciste, la France neocon, la France enchaînant intervention sur intervention, – tout le beau monde réuni au LGJ opine, de Lellouche à Kouchner, et tous plutôt d’un air sinistre. Nous ne sommes plus aux temps heureux et fantasques d’un BHL-dégrafé haranguant les foules libyennes et chacun comprend plus ou moins précisément dans quel piège se trouve enfermée la France.

Lellouche, péremptoire : «Le premier problème, c’est que nous ne nous donnons pas les moyens qu’il faut ... Le deuxième problème, c’est que nous sommes tout seuls.» Il n’a tort en rien, tant il est facile aujourd’hui, par temps de grande crise, d’avoir raison en tout pour le constat du désastre. Il est vrai qu’il y a une contradiction très tendance entre cette France interventionniste tous-azimuts (doctrine gaulliste, sort of, avec inversion et caricature garanties), et cette France qui ne cesse de rogner son budget de la défense et de réduire ses bataillons parce qu'elle est absolument exsangue.

Il est vrai également que la France est toute seule. «L’Amérique devient néo-isolationniste, elle en a marre de faire la guerre, elle se retire ... La France est toute seule pour faire le boulot sérieux» (Lellouche again et toujours). Ce “La France est toute seule” désigne sans aucun doute l’Europe comme coupable de la chose, ce jugement avec l’approbation contrainte de Kouchner. Il est vrai que l’aspect européen de cette intervention française reste à marquer d’une pierre blanche, – ou, disons, plutôt noire, cela pour ceux qui cultivent encore quelque espoir dans la chose. Il y a eu des manœuvres brutales de Lady Ashton, qui cultive un port de tête beaucoup plus volumineux depuis l’accord P5+1-Iran et les articles élogieux écrits à son crédit, et qui a tout fait pour empêcher tout débat sérieux entre les pays-membres, qui aurait mis en évidence que le Royaume-Uni s’opposait à une participation européenne à l’intervention en Centrafrique. (Il est possible que cette intervention de Ashton et l’opposition britannique, qui sont d’une impudence extraordinaire, laissent des traces dans une tension extrême, sinon n’alimentent quelque incident sérieux, entre d'une part les Français, décrits comme absolument furieux, et Lady Ashton et les Britanniques d’autre part.)

Pourquoi cette attitude britannique, – puisque, à cet égard, Ashton s’en est faite la zélée et nationale messagère ? Il s’agit là d’une opposition pure et viscérale, et purement britannique, et également électorale (pour plaire aux “eurosceptiques” du cru) à tout ce qui peut prendre une “allure européenne” organisée. Dans cette opposition, qui confine ici à la gratuité et au vide tant aucune alternative n’est possible et tant l’idée d’une défense intégrée européenne est devenue un objet de musée qui ne fait de mal à personne, on distingue, presque à nu, une certaine perversité intrinsèque britannique, le besoin éventuellement assaisonné de jouissance de s’opposer, de détruire et de déstructurer. Si l’on insiste sur ce point, c’est parce qu’il participe à la mise en évidence d’une façon évidente, sinon aveuglante, de l’élargissement du désordre et du chaos, y compris et même de plus en plus au sein du bloc BAO. Bien que plongés dans une bassesse générale et quasiment coordonnée qui forme l’essentiel de l’activité du bloc, les acteurs n’en conservent pas moins leurs spécificités et leurs antagonismes, et ceux-ci apparaissent d’une façon de plus en plus visible à mesure que progressent désordre et chaos.

En d’autres termes, oui, Lellouche (et Kouchner lorsqu’il peut parler) a (ont) raison : la France est seule, et cette situation n’est pas précisément réjouissante. (Par exemple, Lellouche dit son incertitude sur la situation au Mali, où la France a une responsabilité majeure, tandis que les perspectives pour la Centrafique, selon nos deux experts, comporte des risques évidents d’enlisement.) Ainsi apparaît le paradoxe général et à plusieurs tableaux de la situation actuelle, de la France, du bloc BAO, des entreprises de stabilisation ou d’intervention dite humanitaire où l’on sent à plein nez les effluves irrésistibles des conceptions neocon...

• En un peu moins de quatre ans, depuis la Libye-2010, la France a effectué un virage à 180° par rapport à la tradition principielle de sa politique. Elle a ainsi largement contribué à la déstabilisation, désordre et chaos sans véritable sens, d’une bonne partie du continent africain ; on sait qu’il s’agit de la conséquence inéluctable et diabolique de cette sorte d’interventions qui sont bien de type neocon. Il est intéressant d’entendre Lellouche se référer, à propos de l’affaire centrafricaine, à la nécessité du rétablissement de la stabilité pour la sécurité générale à cause des effets de cette affaire sur la situation de l’immense “bande sahélienne” allant de l’Océan Atlantique à la Corne de l’Afrique, qui s’est créée dans sa nuisance actuelle à partir de l’affaire libyenne et donc de l’intervention française, et qui constitue selon ses propres mots un «réservoir de crise de déstabilisation, constitué de réseaux criminels, de drogue, d’enlèvements, et aussi de réseaux salafistes fondamentalistes» ; il est intéressant, disons-nous, de voir mentionner prioritairement l’existence des “réseaux criminels” (le crime organisé sur place), c’est-à-dire le pur désordre et l’illégalité totale et sans but idéologique, alors même que toutes ces entreprises du bloc BAO ont été lancées dans leur esprit affiché du point de vue de la communication, selon le faux-nez humanitaire et droitdel’hommiste transformé pour la cause en stratégie générale contre “la menace terroriste et idéologique” évidemment universelle. L’effet principal de nos interventions n’est même plus en priorité “la menace terroriste”, c’est d’abord le désordre et le chaos purs du banditisme et du crime organisés ; la barbarie déstructurante de l’expert postmoderne accouchant de la barbarie nihiliste du bandit.

• Au moment où la France s’installe avec ce qui paraîtrait être, ou qui paraissait être dans tous les cas, une réelle satisfaction dans son nouveau rôle, aspirant on s’en doute à être premier de classe, les inspirateurs et les maîtres en narrative de l’aventure se retirent au nom d’une fatigue et d’un découragement, pour ne pas dire un désenchantement qui actent les échecs successifs, extraordinairement marquants, opérationnalisant cette politique depuis 2002. Cet abandon par les “amis anglo-saxons” se marque évidemment par l’indifférence américaniste et, encore plus, par la félonie britannique. A cet égard, la France récolte ce qu’elle a semé, jusqu’à la pirouette ultime de retrouver par en-dessous, très en-dessous, son destin qui est d’être seule et, sans doute, pense-t-elle, exceptionnelle, – bref, l’“exception française” récitée à la sauce la plus paradoxale du monde.

• Le paradoxe se poursuit, sans surprise bien entendu, en constatant que toutes ces entreprises de remises en ordre dont la France prétendrait assurer aujourd’hui seule la gestion courante, débouchent sur une multiplication des désordres. Ce phénomène se fait notamment sur les terres extérieures, mais aussi et désormais de plus à plus à l’intérieur du bloc BAO lui-même, et notamment au sein de la Sainte-Europe qui parvient même à être désunie jusqu’à la trahison au bord de l’affrontement bureaucratique interne (France-UK) à propos d’une affaire qui semblerait aussi simple que celle de la Centrafrique dans son orientation et dans sa gestion. (On voit le même phénomène dans la question iranienne [le 5 décembre 2013].)

Cette brève intervention de soirée du couple Lellouche-Kouchner qui représenta sans aucun doute, et assez bien, le courant néo-neocon réinventé par la France, ou disons la caricature de la France, avait une forte dimension symbolique. Finalement et sur le fond, malgré l’ambiance clownesque qui marque la nouvelle formule du LGJ, malgré sa brièveté, la susdite “soirée” parut sinistre. L’amertume et le désenchantement des deux intervenants étaient palpables, chacun pour leur compte. On n’y trouvait plus la moindre trace de l’euphorie, de l’enthousiasme, du simulacre de grandeur si l’on veut, qui marquèrent les commentaires autour des interventions libyenne et malienne. C’était une intervention de fin d’époque, cette brève ivresse qui saisit cette France étonnante par sa capacité d’inversion d’elle-même, entre la Libye-2010 et le Mali-2013. C’était une soirée funèbre, dont on retiendra l’aspect symbolique. Pour le constat de conclusion, on envisagera qu’il s’agit d’un signe de plus de l’échec d’occulter la propre crise du bloc BAO avec la narrative de l’intervention arbitraire sur les terres extérieures, comme si la crise se trouvait là-bas ; on envisagera donc qu’il s’agit d’un signe de plus, plus sophistiqué parce qu’on est au pays de l’intelligence-reine comme le montrent ces événements, du mouvement général de repli de la crise vers le bloc BAO lui-même, et assez logiquement puisque c’est là qu’on trouve son cœur et son essence même.

Leur guerre sans fin, signe de leur pathologie incurable

Leur guerre sans fin, signe de leur pathologie incurable

Ex: http://www.dedefensa.org

Il a été porté à notre attention un texte déjà ancien du 28 août 2013, de Brandon O’Neill, sur son site Skiped (O’Neill collabore aussi au Daily Telegraph). Bien que datant (à cause de la rapidité des choses) par rapport aux événements de la phase paroxystique actuelle de la crise syrienne, le texte garde tout son intérêt parce qu’il aborde un sujet qui ne dépend pas de l’actualité pressante de l’heure en cours mais plutôt de la tendance du bloc BAO à ces guerres d’agression présentant comme principal argument la nécessité de défendre la vertu morale de ceux qui attaquent ; et qu’il aborde le sujet de la Syrie, bien entendu, comme exemple archétypique, car plus l’on avance dans cette sorte d’activité guerrière plus le modèle se raffine dans toute son absurdité et tout son nihilisme, et donc chaque nouveau cas crée en quelque sorte un nouveau modèle archétypique. O’Neill présente cette sorte de guerre comme “une thérapie” («Bombing Syria: war as therapy») : la guerre comme “poursuite de la thérapie par d’autres moyens” au lieu de comme “poursuite de la politique par d’autres moyens”.

Cette thérapie est nécessairement singulière. Il s’agit non pas de traiter ceux qu’on agresse mais bien soi-même en pratiquant ces agressions. Ceux qu’on attaque, ceux qui sont en-dessous (les agressions sont le plus souvent aériennes), sont finalement et objectivement des victimes, pour que les agresseurs puissent voir leur valeur morale rehaussées parce qu’ils ont porté secours aux victimes qu’ils ont bombardées. Il s’agit de “porter secours” à une catégorie d’être humains en les bombardant pour pouvoir mieux se soigner soi-même ; c’est la fameuse formule appliquée au Vietnam où l’on détruisait des villages pour “mieux les protéger”, mais élargie et explicitée décisivement dans sa réelle nature par la pathologie qui doit être traitée de celui qui “détruit pour protéger” ; de “détruire pour protéger celui qu’on tue” à “détruire pour soigner celui qui tue”.

Ci-dessous, quelques extraits du texte de Brandon O’Neill (le souligné en gras est de l’auteur lui-même).

«War used to be the pursuit of politics by other means. Today, if the statements made by the Western politicos and observers who want to bomb Syria are anything to go by, it’s the pursuit of therapy by other means. The most startling and unsettling thing about the clamour among some Westerners for a quick, violent punishment of the Assad regime is its nakedly narcissistic nature. Gone is realpolitik and geostrategy, gone is the PC gloss that was smeared over other recent disastrous Western interventions to make them seem substantial, from claims about spreading human rights to declarations about facing down terrorism, and all we’re left with is the essence of modern-day Western interventionism: a desire to offset moral disarray at home by staging a fleeting, bombastic moral showdown with ‘evil’ in a far-off field.

»Easily the most notable thing in the debate about bombing Syria in response to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians is the absence of geopolitical considerations, or of any semi-serious thought about what the regional or international consequences of dropping bombs into an already hellish warzone might be. Instead, all the talk is of making a quick moral gesture about ourselves by firing a few missiles at wickedness. In the words of a Democratic member of the US Foreign Affairs Committee, there might be ‘very complex issues’ in Syria, but ‘we, as Americans, have a moral obligation to step in without delay’. Who cares about complexity when there’s an opportunity to show off our own moral decency?

»All the discussion so far has focused, not on the potential moral consequences of bombing Syria, but on the moral needs of those who would do the bombing. US secretary of state John Kerry says failing to take action on Syria would call into question the West’s ‘own moral compass’. Others talk about Syria as a ‘test for Europe’, as if this rubble-strewn country is little more than a stage for the working-out of our values. [...] One pro-bombing commentator says the situation in Syria ‘holds a mirror up to Britain’, asking ‘what sort of country are we?’. Like Narcissus, the beaters of the drum for war on Assad are concerned only with their own image, their own reflection, and the question of whether they’ll be able to look at themselves in the mirror if they fail to Do Something. [...]

»... All that matters is that we in the West add physical weight – in the shape of bombs – to our ‘moral impulse’. Such blasé barbarism was taken to its logical conclusion by Norman Geras, co-author of the pro-war Euston Manifesto, when he wrote: ‘Since it is urgent that we respond somehow, out of solidarity, of our “common human heritage” with the victims, action must be taken even if it means meeting chaos with chaos and (by implication) that the chaos we cause turns out to be worse than the chaos we’re trying to bring to an end.’

»This is extraordinary stuff. It exposes what lies at the heart of modern Western interventionism – a desire to make a massive, fiery display of our own ‘moral impulse’, of the West’s flagging sense of ‘common human heritage’, regardless of the consequences on the ground or around the world. In our era, Western intervention is increasingly demanded and pursued, not as a specific, targeted thing that might change the shape of a conflict or further the geopolitical interests of Western nations, but as a kind of bloody amplifier of the presumed probity of the Western political class. At a time when both politics and morality at home are in a profound state of disarray, when there’s little of substance that can unite Western elites or populations, we’re seeing a desperate turn to foreign fields in search of the sort of black-and-white clarity and sense of mission that eludes our rulers domestically... [...]

»What we have today is a form of purely moralistic warfare, self-consciously detached from anything so tangible as geopolitics, national interests or regional stability. Such showboating interventionism is more lethally unpredictable than anything which existed in earlier imperialistic or colonial eras. At least those old warmongers tended to be guided by clear political or territorial ambitions, meaning their interventions had some logic, and potentially some endpoint. Today, when war is fuelled by narcissism rather than politics, and the aim is emotional fulfilment rather than territorial gain, there are no natural limits or rules to the warmongers’ behaviour.»

O’Neill cite à la fin de son texte l’auteur et essayiste devenu politicien, le Canadien Michael Ignatieff, exposant effectivement, dans les années 1990, cette idée du “narcissisme” à propos du courant en Occident en faveur du bombardement des Serbes bosniaques, et des attaques effectivement effectuées (l’originalité du propos étant qu’Ignatieff lui-même était partisan de ces attaques, donc partie prenante de ce “narcissisme” qu’il identifiait) : «We intervened not to save others, but to save ourselves, or rather an image of ourselves as defenders of universal decencies...» Ignatieff était un précurseur car, depuis, comme l’on sait, la formule s’est généralisée. Selon les critères avancés, on peut faire entrer les guerres d’Irak et d’Afghanistan dans ces catégories “humanitaires-narcissiques” puisque le but affiché est également l’apport de nos ”valeurs” à ces populations, selon la thèse du narcissisme développée par O’Neill.

Cela n’écarte pas d’autres buts greffés sur ce motif fondamental, concernant les intérêts, les montages hégémoniques, etc., mais dans l’esprit de la démonstration ces buts sont accessoires et secondaires, ou bien de simple opportunité (puisque l’intervention humanitaire a lieu, adjoignons-lui des buts lucratifs et autres du même genre). L’ensemble de cette campagne depuis les années 1990, qui montre une certaine incohérence dans les axes pseudo-stratégiques considérés, dans la façon dont les interventions ont lieu, dans la faiblesse sinon la contre-productivité des résultats obtenus (le bloc BAO est infiniment plus faible dans sa position relative aujourd’hui qu’il ne l’était au début des années 1990), substantive largement l’explication de O’Neill. La durée (pas loin de vingt ans) permet effectivement de tirer des conclusions concernant une tendance générale et systématique, et l’explication du “narcissisme” est tout à fait acceptable.

... Elle est même impérative pour nous, puisqu’elle rejoint évidemment, sous un autre nom, une appréciation constante de notre part depuis des années de l’activisme du bloc BAO. (Nous n’employons pas le terme “narcissisme ” que nous trouvons trop restrictif et privé de certaines dimensions essentielles, mais privilégions le champ général de la psychologie et sa pathologie.) L’explication du “narcissisme” rejoint notre explication générale fondamentale selon laquelle c’est la psychologie qui est en jeu, cela étant favorisé par l’écrasante puissance du système de la communication dans la détermination des projets pseudo-“politiques“ et de leur opérationnalisation. Les explications d’intérêts, de plan géopolitique, offertes d’une façon parcellaire et souvent contradictoire sur le long terme (la conquête de l’Irak pour en faire un État-satellite occidentalisé, devenu un allié de l’Iran, très proche d’Assad, etc., est un exemple), ne jouent qu’un rôle de rationalisation au coup par coup. Malgré l’apparence, elles participent au “comment?” de ces guerres (“comment a-t-on pu lancer cette guerre?” dans le sens de “comment a-t-on pu avoir l’inconscience, l’irresponsabilité, etc...”, en répondant “en lui adjoignant des explications-alibis de type rationnel et géostratégiques”) ; elles ne répondent nullement au “pourquoi ?” fondamental  : “pourquoi toute cette campagne chaotique, contre-productive, épuisante et affaiblissante, exaspérante finalement pour les populations du bloc BAO et même de plus en plus pour une partie de ses directions (Congrès aux USA), depuis la fin de la Guerre froide?”. L’explication psychologique, et dans le sens d’une pathologie collective dont les signes sont évidents jusqu’à l’obscénité psychiatrique chez un Fabius, un Kerry, etc., avec la cohérence de la durée qui rend impérative la logique psychiatrique, explique d’une façon très satisfaisante sinon impérative l’aspect erratique, chaotique de ces campagnes spécifiques, et de l’ensemble en général. Il suffit d’ouvrir sa raison à d’autres références que les références classiques, du type géopolitique, fortement contrôlés tout au long du XXème siècle, pour s’en convaincre ; l’ouverture de la raison à la recherche de la vérité d’une situation du monde qui pulvérise tous les standards en vigueur jusqu’ici ne doit pas être considérée comme une erreur, une naïveté ou une extravagance effrayante, sinon à participer complètement de la logique psychiatrique en cours .... Encore une fois, depuis qu’il s’est affirmé hégémonique et complètement conquérant (selon l’interprétation classique, géostratégique), le bloc BAO n’a fait que s’affaiblir, reculer partout, remporter des victoires tactiques poussives et coûteuses aboutissant à des désastres stratégiques selon la fameuse “formule de la Marne”. Cela demande une explication hors des références-Système, alors qu’on couvre cet ensemble de tous les attributs de la puissance conquérante.

Pour nous, l’interprétation d’O’Neill est une manière de nous confirmer dans le sens de notre analyse psychologique du phénomène (tout comme, bien entendu, l’“incompréhension” des Russes du comportement du bloc BAO [voir le dernier constat en date de la chose, le 7 septembre 2013]). Bien entendu, ce que ne fait pas O’Neill, c’est d’explorer la cause de ce qu’il nomme “narcissisme”, cause allant bien au-delà de la période de ces “guerres narcissique”. (Sans aller plus avant dans une tentative d’explication, O’Neill implique cela lorsqu’il écrit : «War used to be the pursuit of politics by other means. Today, if the statements made by the Western politicos and observers who want to bomb Syria are anything to go by, it’s the pursuit of therapy by other means.» Cela signifie que la thérapie était en cours avant la guerre, – sans succès comme on le comprend, – donc que la pathologie existait déjà. C’est cela qui est essentiel.)

C’est un point que nous explorons constamment, et que nous situons dans la logique écrasante du malaise aigu d’une “contre-civilisation” (bloc BAO) dépendante d’un Système qui est né du “déchaînement de la Matière“ et qui est en cours d'effondrement. Cette prépondérance absolue de forces supérieures, à tendance autodestructrice à partir de leur dynamique de surpuissance, explique largement, et peut-être exclusivement à notre sens, ce comportement “narcissique” ou autre. La pathologie collective infestant la psychologie ne peut être laissée à une seule analogie médicale qui se contente de décrire le “comment?” sans s’intéresser vraiment au “pourquoi?”, par impuissance d’ailleurs, comme dans le cas des sciences modernes qui en restent toujours, à leur terme de l’analyse, aux causes opérationnelles (un faux-“pourquoi?”, en réalité partie ultime du “comment?”). Dans tous les cas, cette approche, qui est complètement la nôtre, ne laisse aucun espoir que le bloc BAO puisse changer son orientation chaotique, et affirme comme un destin inéluctable la chute du bloc BAO suivant, ou accompagnant celle du Système. Leur “guerre sans fin” a une fin, et c'est leur chute. Seules les modalités de cette chute, sa chronologie, sa “méthodologie” restent inconnues. Quant à la situation lorsque cette chute sera accomplie, c’est l’inconnue centrale et totale, avec une seule assurance : aucun précédent historique de notre histoire, des plus contrôlés aux plus catastrophiques, ne peut figurer comme référence. Il s’agit d’une terra incognita.

Laurent Ozon et les Troupes d'Occupation Mentale. Réponse aux menteurs

Laurent Ozon et les Troupes d'Occupation Mentale.

Réponse aux menteurs

Intervention en Syrie : la recherche d'un prétexte à tout prix

La recherche d'un prétexte à tout prix...

par Eric Dénécé

Ex: http://metapoinfos.hautetfort.com

Nous reproduisons ci-dessous une excellente analyse d'Eric Dénécé, spécialiste des questions de renseignement et ancien analyste Secrétariat Général de la Défense Nationale, qui anime depuis quelques années les travaux du Centre français de recherche sur le renseignement (CF2R). Eric Dénécé a récemment publié La face cachée des « révolutions » arabes (Ellipses, 2012) et Les services de renseignement français sont-ils nuls ? (Ellipse, 2012).

 

 

Intervention en Syrie : la recherche d'un prétexte à tout prix

La coalition réunissant les Etats-Unis, le Royaume Uni, la France, la Turquie, l'Arabie saoudite et le Qatar vient de franchir un nouveau pas dans sa volonté d'intervenir en Syrie afin de renverser le régime de Bachar El-Assad. Utilisant ses énormes moyens de communication, elle vient de lancer une vaste campagne d'intoxication de l'opinion internationale afin de la convaincre que Damas a utilisé l'arme chimique contre son peuple, commettant ainsi un véritable crime contre l'humanité et méritant  « d'être puni ».

Aucune preuve sérieuse n'a été présentée à l'appui de ces affirmations. Au contraire, de nombreux éléments conduisent à penser que ce sont les rebelles qui ont utilisé ces armes. Ces mensonges médiatiques et politiques ne sont que des prétextes. Ils rappellent les tristes souvenirs du Kosovo (1999), d'Irak (2003) et de Libye (2010) et ont pour but de justifier une  intervention militaire afin de renverser un régime laïque, jugé hostile par les Etats-Unis  - car allié de l'Iran et ennemi d'Israël - et impie par les monarchies wahhabites d'Arabie saoudite et du Qatar. Il est particulièrement affligeant de voir la France participer à une telle mascarade.

La falsification des faits

Depuis deux ans, des informations très contradictoires et souvent fausses parviennent en Europe sur ce qui se passe actuellement en Syrie. Il est ainsi difficile de comprendre quelle est la situation exacte dans ce pays. Certes, le régime syrien n'est pas un modèle démocratique, mais tout est mis en œuvre par ses adversaires afin de noircir le tableau, dans le but d'assurer le soutien de l'opinion internationale à l'opposition extérieure et de justifier les mesures prises à son encontre, dans l'espoir d'accélérer sa chute.

Cette falsification des faits dissimule systématiquement à l'opinion mondiale les éléments favorables au régime :

- le soutien qu'une grande partie de la population syrienne - principalement les sunnites modérés et les minorités (chrétiens, druzes, chiites, kurdes) - continue d'apporter à Bachar El-Assad, car elle préfère de loin le régime actuel - parfois par défaut - au chaos et à l'instauration de l'islam radical ;

- le fait que l'opposition intérieure, historique et démocratique, a clairement fait le choix d'une transition négociée et qu'elle est, de ce fait, ignorée par les pays occidentaux ;

- la solidité militaire du régime : aucune défection majeure n'a été observée dans l'armée, les services de sécurité, l'administration et le corps diplomatique et Damas est toujours capable d'organiser des manœuvres militaires majeures ;

- son large soutien international. L'alliance avec la Russie, la Chine, l'Iran et le Hezbollah libanais ne s'est pas fissurée et la majorité des Etats du monde s'est déclarée opposée à des frappes militaires, apportant son soutien total aux deux membres permanents du Conseil de Sécurité de l'ONU - Russie et Chine - qui ont clairement indiqué qu'ils n'autoriseraient pas une action armée contre la Syrie. Rappelons également que le régime syrien n'a été à ce jour l'objet d'aucune condamnation internationale formelle et demeure à la tête d'un Etat membre à part entière de la communauté internationale ;

- le refus délibéré des Occidentaux, de leurs alliés et de la rébellion de parvenir à une solution négociée. En effet, tout a été fait pour radicaliser les positions des ultras de Damas en posant comme préalable le départ sans condition du président Bachar.

Au contraire, l'opposition extérieure, dont on cherche à nous faire croire qu'elle est LA solution, ne dispose d'aucune légitimité et demeure très éloignée des idéaux démocratiques qu'elle prétend promouvoir, en raison de ses options idéologiques très influencées par l'islam radical.

De plus, la rébellion syrienne est fragmentée entre :

- une opposition politique extérieure groupée autour des Frères musulmans, essentiellement contrôlée par le Qatar et la Turquie ;

- une « Armée syrienne libre » (ASL), composée d'officiers et d'hommes de troupe qui ont déserté vers la Turquie et qui se trouvent, pour la plupart, consignés dans des camps militaires faute d'avoir donné des gages d'islamisme suffisants au parti islamiste turc AKP. Son action militaire est insignifiante ;

- des combattants étrangers, salafistes, qui constituent sa frange la plus active et la plus violente, financés et soutenus par les Occidentaux, la Turquie, le Qatar et l'Arabie saoudite.

Ainsi, la Syrie connaît, depuis deux ans, une situation de guerre civile et des affrontements sans merci. Comme dans tous les conflits, les victimes collatérales des combats sont nombreuses, ainsi que les atrocités. Toutefois, les grands médias internationaux qui donnent le ton - qui appartiennent tous aux pays hostiles à la Syrie - cherchent à donner l'impression que les exactions, massacres et meurtres sont exclusivement le fait du régime et de son armée.

Si certaines milices fidèles au régime ont commis des exactions, cela ne saurait en aucun cas dissimuler les innombrables crimes de guerre qui sont chaque jour, depuis deux, ans l'œuvre de la rébellion, et dont sont victimes la population syrienne fidèle au régime, les minorités religieuses et les forces de sécurité. Ce fait est systématique passé sous silence. Pire, les nombreux actes de barbarie des djihadistes soutenus par l'Occident, la Turquie et les monarchies wahhabites sont même souvent attribués au régime lui-même, pour le décrédibiliser davantage.

L'Observatoire syrien des droits de l'Homme (OSDH), principale source des médias sur les victimes de la « répression », est une structure totalement inféodée à la rébellion, crée par les Frères musulmans à Londres. Les informations qu'il diffuse relèvent de la pure propagande et n'ont donc aucune valeur ni objectivité. S'y référer est erroné et illustre l'ignorance crasse ou de la désinformation délibérée des médias.

Enfin, face à ce Mainstream médiatique tentant de faire croire que le Bien est du côté de la rébellion et de ses alliés afin d'emporter l'adhésion de l'opinion, toute tentative de vouloir rétablir un minimum d'objectivité au sujet de ce conflit est immédiatement assimilée à la défense du régime.

Les objectifs véritables d'une intervention en Syrie

Dès lors, on est en droit de s'interroger sur les raisons réelles de cet acharnement contre Bachar Al-Assad et d'en rechercher les enjeux inavoués. Il en existe au moins trois :

- casser l'alliance de la Syrie avec l'Iran ; le dossier iranien conditionne largement la gestion internationale de la crise syrienne. En effet, depuis trois décennies, Damas est l'allié de l'Iran, pays phare de « l'axe du mal » décrété par Washington, que les Américains cherchent à affaiblir par tous les moyens, tant en raison de son programme nucléaire, de son soutien au Hezbollah libanais, que de son influence régionale grandissante ;

- rompre « l'axe chiite » qui relie Damas, Bagdad, Téhéran et le Hezbollah, qui est une source de profonde inquiétude pour les monarchies du Golfe qui sont, ne l'oublions pas, des régimes autocratiques et qui abritent d'importantes minorités chiites. Ainsi, Ryad et Doha ont désigné le régime iranien comme l'ennemi à abattre. Elles veulent la chute du régime syrien anti-wahhabite et pro-russe, afin de transformer la Syrie en base arrière pour reconquérir l'Irak - majoritairement chiite - et déstabiliser l'Iran. Elles cherchent aussi à liquider le Hezbollah libanais. En cela, leur agenda se confond avec celui de Washington ;

- détruire les fondements de l'Etat-nation laïc syrien pour le remplacer par un régime islamiste. Cela signifie livrer Damas aux forces wahhabites et salafistes favorables aux pétromonarchies du Golfe, ce qui signifie l'éclatement du pays en plusieurs entités en guerre entre elles ou, pire, l'asservissement voire le massacre des minorités non sunnites.

Ces objectifs non avoués n'ont pas été jusqu'ici atteints et ne le seront pas tant qu'existera le soutien sino-russe et tant que l'axe Damas-Téhéran ne se disloquera pas.

Le faux prétexte des armes chimiques

Face à la résistance de l'Etat syrien et de ses soutiens, la coalition américano-wahhabite a décidé d'employer les grands moyens afin de faire basculer l'opinion et de justifier une intervention militaire : accuser Damas de recourir aux armes chimiques contre sa propre population.

Une première tentative a été entreprise en avril dernier. Malheureusement, l'enquête des inspecteurs de l'ONU a révélé que l'usage d'armes chimiques était le fait de la rébellion. Ce rapport n'allant pas dans le sens que souhaitait la coalition américano-wahhabite, il a été immédiatement enterré. Seul le courage de Carla del Ponte a permis de révéler le pot aux roses. Notons cependant que les « médias qui donnent le ton » se sont empressés de ne pas lui accorder l'accès à leur antenne et que cette enquête a été largement passée sous silence.

Les événements du 21 août dernier semblent clairement relever de la même logique. Une nouvelle fois, de nombreux éléments conduisent à penser qu'il s'agit d'un montage total, d'une nouvelle campagne de grande envergure pour déstabiliser le régime :

- le bombardement a eu lieu dans la banlieue de Damas, à quelques kilomètres du palais présidentiel. Or, nous savons tous que les gaz sont volatils et auraient pu atteindre celui-ci. L'armée syrienne n'aurait jamais fait cela sauf à vouloir liquider son président !

- les vecteurs utilisés, présentés par la presse, ne ressemblent à aucun missile en service dans l'armée syrienne, ni même à aucun modèle connu. Cela pourrait confirmer leur origine artisanale, donc terroriste ;

- de plus, des inspecteurs de l'ONU étaient alors présents à Damas et disposaient des moyens d'enquête adéquats pour confondre immédiatement le régime ;

- les vidéos présentées ne prouvent rien, certaines sont même de grossières mises en scène ;

- enfin, le régime, qui reconquiert peu à peu les zones tenues par la rébellion, savait pertinemment que l'emploi d'armes chimiques était une « ligne rouge » à ne pas franchir, car cela déclencherait immédiatement une intervention militaire occidentale. Dès lors, pourquoi aurait-il pris in tel risque ?

Aucune preuve sérieuse n'a été présentée à l'appui la « culpabilité » de l'armée syrienne. Au contraire, tout conduit à penser que ce sont les rebelles qui ont utilisé ces armes, car contrairement à ce qui est avancé par la note déclassifiée publiée par le gouvernement français, les capacités chimiques des terroristes sont avérées :

- en Irak (d'où proviennent une partie des djihadistes de la rébellion syrienne), les autorités ont démantelé début juin 2013 une cellule d'Al-Qaida qui préparait des armes chimiques. Trois laboratoires ont été trouvés à Bagdad et dans ses environs avec des produits précurseurs et des modes opératoires de fabrication de gaz sarin et moutarde ;

- en Syrie, le Front Al-Nosra est suspecté avoir lancé des attaques au chlore en mars 2013 qui auraient causé la mort de 26 Syriens dont 16 militaires ;

- pour sa part, Al-Qaida a procédé en 2007 une douzaine d'attaques du même type à Bagdad et dans les provinces d'Anbar et de Diyala, ce qui a causé la mort de 32 Irakiens et en a blessé 600 autres. En 2002, des vidéos montrant des expérimentations d'armes chimiques sur des chiens ont été trouvées dans le camp de Darunta, près de la ville de Jalalabad, en Afghanistan.

Les errements de la politique étrangère française

A l'occasion cet imbroglio politico-médiatique dans lequel ses intérêts stratégiques ne sont pas en jeu, le gouvernement français mène une politique incompréhensible pour nos concitoyens comme pour l'étranger.

Depuis deux ans, la France, par le biais de ses services spéciaux, - comme d'ailleurs les Américains, les Britanniques et les Turcs - entraîne les rebelles syriens et leur fournit une assistance logistique et technique, laissant l'Arabie saoudite et le Qatar les approvisionner en armes et en munitions.

Ainsi, la situation syrienne place la France devant ses contradictions. Nous luttons contre les djihadistes au Mali, après les avoir aidés à prendre le pouvoir à Tripoli - en raison de l'intervention inconsidérée de l'OTAN en Libye, en 2011, dans laquelle Paris a joué un rôle clé - et continuons de les soutenir en Syrie, en dépit du bon sens. Certes le régime de Bachar Al-Assad n'est pas un modèle de démocratie et il servait clairement les intérêts de la minorité alaouite, mais il est infiniment plus « libéral » que les monarchies wahhabites : la Syrie est un Etat laïque où la liberté religieuse existe et où le statut de la femme est respecté. De plus, il convient de rappeler que Damas a participé activement à la lutte contre Al-Qaïda depuis 2002. Pourtant, nous continuons d'être alliés à l'Arabie saoudite et au Qatar, deux Etats parmi les plus réactionnaires du monde arabo-musulman, qui, après avoir engendré et appuyé Ben Laden, soutiennent les groupes salafistes partout dans le monde, y compris dans nos banlieues. Certes, notre soutien aux agendas saoudien et qatari se nourrit sans nul doute de l'espoir de quelques contrats d'armement ou pétroliers, ou de prêts financiers pour résoudre une crise que nos gouvernants semblent incapables de juguler.

Une question mérite donc d'être posée : la France a-t-elle encore une politique étrangère ou fait-elle celle du Qatar, de l'Arabie saoudite et des Etats-Unis ? Depuis la présidence de Nicolas Sarkozy la France aligne ses positions internationales sur celles des Etats-Unis et a perdu, de ce fait, l'énorme capital de sympathie que la politique du général de Gaulle - non ingérence dans les affaires intérieures des Etats et défense du droit des peuples à disposer d'eux-mêmes - lui avait constitué.

Si les élections de mai 2012 ont amené un nouveau président, la politique étrangère n'a pas changé. En fait, nous observons depuis plusieurs années la conversion progressive d'une partie des élites françaises  - de droite comme de gauche - aux thèses néoconservatrices américaines : supériorité de l'Occident, néocolonialisme, ordre moral, apologie de l'emploi de la force ...

Surtout, un fait nouveau doit être mis en lumière : la tentative maladroite des plus hautes autorités de l'Etat de manipuler la production des services de renseignement afin d'influer sur l'opinion publique et de provoquer un vote favorable des parlementaires. Ce type de manœuvre avait été conduit par Washington et Londres afin de justifier l'invasion de l'Irak en 2003, avant d'être dénoncé. Onze ans plus tard, le gouvernement recourt au même artifice grossier et éculé pour justifier ses choix diplomatiques et militaires. Compte tenu de la faiblesse des arguments présentés dans la note gouvernementale - qui n'est pas, rappelons-le, une note des services -, celle-ci ne sera d'aucune influence sur la presse et l'opinion. En revanche, par sa présentation, elle contribue à décrédibiliser le travail des services de renseignement, manipulés à leur insu dans cette affaire.

Le mépris des politiques français à l'égard des services est connu. Est-ce un hasard si cette affaire survient alors que l'actuel ministre des Affaires étrangères est celui-là même qui, en 1985, alors qu'il était chef du gouvernement, a fort élégamment « ouvert le parapluie », clamant son absence de responsabilité à l'occasion de l'affaire du Rainbow Warrior ?

Une chose au moins est sûre : une remise à plat de notre position à l'égard de la Syrie et de notre politique étrangère s'impose, car « errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum ».

Eric Dénécé (Centre français de recherche sur le renseignement, 6 septembre 2013)

Soutenez l'effort de guerre!

NATO Charts Out Global Role

Sahel To Central Asia: NATO Charts Out Global Role

Rasmussen: NATO Must be Ready for Any Future Threat

By Cheryl Pellerin

Ex: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/

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“Missile defense is a core element of our collective defense,” [Rasmussen said], “and the deployment of Patriot missiles to Turkey is a real response to a real threat.”

Many European allies contribute to NATO’s missile defense system, but Rasmussen said he can envision European navies upgrading their ships with missile defense radars and interceptors so they can deploy alongside United States vessels.

To make sure that NATO remains the gold standard of Euro-Atlantic security into the 21st century, he said, the alliance must build on its gains from operations like its International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan “rather than cash in what some may perceive as a post-ISAF dividend.”

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MUNICH: On the second day of the Munich Security Conference, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the international audience here that the end of the war in Afghanistan gives the alliance a chance to plan for the future.

The end in 2014 of NATO’s biggest operation gives NATO a chance to generate key capabilities, engage robustly with new geopolitical realities and rebalance its priorities and commitments, he said.

“In other words, an opportunity to plan for the future,” Rasmussen said, adding that such a plan must determine what NATO will do next, how NATO will do it, and what kind of alliance it will be.

“We will continue to respond to crises whenever and wherever the allies judge their security interests are at stake because this is our core business,” the secretary-general said.

“When I look at our world, I see an arc of crises stretching from the Sahel to Central Asia,” he added, “[but]…this does not mean we will have to intervene everywhere nor that we are set for confrontation. But it does mean we must stand ready to deter and defend against any threat.”

Rasmussen said NATO must keep its operational edge and retain a complete range of capabilities, with increased importance for missile and cyber defense and special operations forces.

“Missile defense is a core element of our collective defense,” he added, “and the deployment of Patriot missiles to Turkey is a real response to a real threat.”

Many European allies contribute to NATO’s missile defense system, but Rasmussen said he can envision European navies upgrading their ships with missile defense radars and interceptors so they can deploy alongside United States vessels.

“We must also improve our cyber resilience,” he said, describing a potentially critical role for NATO in defining a common training approach among allies and in providing expert help to allies who come under cyber attack.

“We will also need forces with the skills and speed to act decisively,” Rasmussen said, envisioning a vital role for NATO’s new Special Operations Forces Headquarters in planning and coordinating missions and improving the ability of allied special operations forces to work together.

To make sure that NATO remains the gold standard of Euro-Atlantic security into the 21st century, he said, the alliance must build on its gains from operations like its International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan “rather than cash in what some may perceive as a post-ISAF dividend.”

A better choice is to reinvest the ISAF dividend in defense for a maximum return, Rasmussen said, including through NATO’s Connected Forces – which seeks to create forces that act and think as one – and its Smart Defense initiatives.

NATO’s multinational response force can deploy quickly when needed, but Rasmussen wants the alliance to revitalize that force, he said, “to keep our ability to train and operate together as allies and with partners, take advantage of the United States’ decision to rotate dedicated units to Europe and conduct more demanding, realistic and frequent exercises.”

The NATO Response Force should become the engine of the alliance’s future readiness, he added, and multinational cooperation is key to keeping costs down and capabilities strong.

Rasmussen sees NATO connecting more closely with the alliance’s most able operational partners, reinforcing its cooperation with the United Nations and the European Union, deepening its strategic relationship with Russia and shifting from operational engagement to operational readiness.

Such readiness and flexibility come at a cost, he added.

“In the decade since 2001, the U.S. share of NATO defense expenditure has increased from 63 percent to 72 percent,” the secretary-general said, and in the last few years all but three European allies have cut their defense budgets.

“I am concerned about this gap in defense spending but I am even more concerned by the gap in some key capabilities,” he added.

To correct this, Rasmussen said, he would like to see the alliance moving toward a day when no single ally provides more than 50 percent of certain critical capabilities.

“This will require European allies to do more,” Rasmussen said, adding that a strong European contribution to NATO’s capabilities will sustain a strong U.S. commitment to NATO.

All allies must also show the political will to support each other, living up to NATO’s role as the political forum for transatlantic consultations on common security concerns, he said, “…because now and after 2014, we can only stay successful together.”

Indian Summer of the Neocons

The irresistible appeal of attacking Iran

 

By Colin Liddell

 

Ex: http://www.alternativeright.com/

 

 

 

Gulf War III: These ladies have an intuitive grasp of American foreign policy.

 

Sometimes empires just die, but often they have one last spurt before they go, and more often than not the spurt is all part of the dying. A good analogy is the Indian Summer, a period of unexpectedly warm weather that appears to turn the tide of approaching Winter. Less astute minds are sure to mistake this as proof of eternal summer and get frostbitten later. Those believing in the permanence of American hegemony are in for a similar nasty surprise, especially as in the coming years we are going to see the reassertion once again of American power.

This last hurrah won’t have the same post-9-11 naivety about turning everyone into "instant Americans" by giving them “democracy,” “freedom,” and cell phones over the craters of their bombed-out homes; even though that shrill note will probably continue to resonate through the propaganda. No, the new Neocons who will further this policy will be motivated much more by a cynical sense of realpolitik, realfinanz, and the increasingly jarring clatter of the gears of the machine that once smoothly ran the world.

It is not particularly important who wins the Presidential election today. Romney is a better fit with the dynamic of a late season assertion of American power; Obama a better fit with the economic decline powering it. Whoever is elected President, we will see a similar trajectory, whereby the hegemonic power of America will be asserted not as a burgeoning of true, broad-based power as it was in the post-WWII period, but instead as a flashy gesture disguising frailty and ultimate collapse.

Fall Guy

The crucible for this last act of overextended power will of course be Iran, the perfect fall guy because you just know they are not going to vary their route – their route being the one that leads towards a nuclear capability to balance that of Israel. Right on schedule, just when Uncle Sam wants to remind the world of what he looked like 50 years ago with his shirt off, the Iranians can be relied on to provide a convenient casus belli, especially if you have a few experts and a pet media to help refine the evidence and airbrush the fact that Israel and Pakistan have no business owning nukes either.

There is a tendency to view the coming war with Iran too narrowly. It is typically presented as an issue of security for Israel with a side order of protecting the free flow of Gulf oil and therefore that panacea of all dreams, the global economy. The security of the cute little tyrannies that dot the southern shore of the Gulf also gets the occasional mention. The real issue however is the maintenance of US power vis-à-vis its major global rivals set against a general background of its decline.

Riddled with flaws and weaknesses that are only getting worse, America is the yesterday man of tomorrow, but at least today the country still has some killer assets – and I don’t just mean its drones (either of the media or aeronautical variety).

The growth of America’s weaknesses means that its assets can no longer be kept on the shelf to exert their silent and secret power, but must now be vigorously milked for all they are worth. This is what will determine American foreign policy in the coming years, and impel it into inevitable war.

First the weaknesses: America is not a country in the conventional sense. This means it is held together artificially and mainly through bribery. Ultimately this means imports from China and elsewhere. This weakness is enshrined in the shape of the US economy. Modern Americans are incapable of enduring a fraction of the hardship, discipline, and endurance which workers in China, Japan, or even parts of Europe are capable of. This means that America is fighting a natural tendency to decline to levels of poverty where it can develop these traits again, but such a decline would inevitably rip the country apart. So, the inevitable must not be allowed to happen, and the only way to stop this is with magic money. But magic money is like the emperor with no clothes. Sooner or later the inconvenient child is bound to point the finger, and spark off the mass perception of nudity. Already the Emperor has unfastened his top button and unzipped his fly.

Another important weakness that America has is the power of the Jewish or Zionist lobby, supplemented by the religious right. This is a problem for two reasons. First it leads to unnecessary military involvements – both Afghanistan and Iraq can be laid at the door of this unholy relationship. Secondly, the anti-US sentiments of the Islamic world threaten to undermine the status of a dollar. Recent years have seen moves to decouple oil rich economies from the petro-dollar. The existence of a viable alternative world reserve currency in the Euro makes these dangers very real. And later something even better may come along.

Unused Assets

Now its strengths: America’s main strength has always been its position, a large secure continental landmass with unhindered access to the two largest oceans. This has made it the ideal country to carry out Alfred Mahan’s vision of world hegemony through sea power, something it has improved on by bottling up other major continental powers through its alliances with Japan and Britain, its two unsinkable aircraft carriers. Much of the Chinese anger directed at Japan recently over the issue of the insignificant Senkaku rocks is provoked by the way that US allies like Japan and Taiwan effectively serve as a fleet of blockading ships. More than this, China’s vast thirst for oil can only be quenched with supplies from the Middle East and Africa that America can easily cut off anytime it chooses. The main goal of Chinese foreign policy is to overcome this strategic weakness.

Secondly, although America is a major oil importer itself, it is relatively self-sufficient and secure in this respect compared to other major powers. Part of this is because it is now mainly a consumer economy rather than an industrial one. Also, in recent years domestic oil production has boomed to the point where the US is now tipped to overtake even Saudi Arabia as the biggest oil producer. A good conspiracy theorist could make much of this surprising revelation – almost as if a major Gulf war has been in the offing for the past few years of rising production.

A third strength that America has is its political and economic unity. Although the economy has major and even terminal flaws, the fact that it is united is a clear strength, especially with regard to the Eurozone, which is struggling in the no-man’s land between monetary union and deeper economic union during an economically difficult period.

A fourth strength is the US’s ability to project power. Although the campaign in Afghanistan in particular has revealed the limitations of US military power against Fourth Generation Warfare, the US is still able to control much of the world’s airspace and sea lanes. Even though it would be defeated if it entered certain of the 'houses' in the 'global village,' it still controls most of the streets between those houses.

This also gives the US the glamour of Superpower status that helps to sustain the perceived value of the dollar against inflationary economic policies, and so helps the machinery of domestic bribery on which unity and everything else depends.

These strengths, it should be noted, really come into their own when set against the weaknesses of America’s main rivals for global power, namely China and the EU, whose strengths, by the way, are equally potent when set against America’s weaknesses. These strengths and weaknesses can be summarized as follows:

US weaknesses vis-à-vis its rivals

Ethnic disunity and the financial costs this brings (vs. China/ to a lesser extent the EU)
Lack of toughness and discipline of its people (vs. China/ to a lesser extent the EU)
Reliance on debt-financed spending (vs. China/ to a lesser extent the EU)
Resistance to the dollar caused by pro-Israel foreign policy (vs. the EU)


US strengths vis-à-vis its rivals

Military power projection and global positioning (vs. China/ to a lesser extent Russia)
Relative energy independence (vs. China and the EU)
Political and economic unity (vs. the EU)
Superpower status (vs. China/ to a lesser extent the EU)

There is a kind of negative complementariness between America’s strengths and those of its rivals. If Europe and China are allowed to strengthen, the US will weaken by a similar amount.

For example, if the Eurozone is allowed to recover and consolidate its monetary and economic union this will provide the basis for an alternative reserve currency that would not only be popular with Islamic countries but also China and Russia, keen to see America weakened. Also, any weakening in America’s power projection and global positioning would create a vacuum that, in the Western Pacific, would be filled by China, which is keen to protect and control the sea lanes it depends on. Such a weakening of US prestige would also undermine the power of the dollar and lead to a vicious cycle.

These factors create the machinery, which, if worked one way, leads to the collapse of American Imperial power, but if worked the other, offers the possibility of hamstringing America’s opponents and extending US power for a few more decades.

If America was capable of slow and gentle decline as pre-multicultural Britain was, it might be easy to accept the end of the American Imperium, but the ending of Empire is also likely to have an enormous economic and social cost, with the essential falsity of the present economy being revealed, a process that would effectively tear the nation apart.

The unacceptable nature of such a fate provides the impulse for America to move the other way, whoever gets elected today; which leads us back to the prospect of war with Iran.

Iran having nuclear weapons only matters to the USA because it matters to Israel, as the Iranians would be no more likely to nuke anything than Israel. But Iran’s nuclear ambitions provide a convenient casus belli that can be sold to the unwarlike, consumerist masses, and which would allow America to capitalize on its strengths relative to its main rivals.

The nature of such a war would be largely confined to the skies with some peripheral naval and land operations. The war aim would be to destroy Iran’s air force and nuclear research capabilities. The war, however, would actually be directed at other powers, with Iran serving the role of surrogate enemy.

It would interrupt oil supplies possibly for weeks or even months to a degree which the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq never did. While post-election America would suffer from the resultant spike in oil prices, it would bear up a lot better than either China or the EU. The crisis would lead to a short period of intense economic dislocation as oil prices shot up and businesses closed down, at least temporarily. This would send a sharp signal to China that America controlled its sea lanes and oil supply. It would also turn one of China's strengths – the hard-working self-reliance of its population – into a weakness with sudden unemployment possibly feeding into public unrest. Furthermore it would also turn an American weakness – its underclass-bribing welfare system – into a strength.

In the Eurozone a sudden economic crisis like this would likely create enormous strains on an already fragile and unbalanced system, causing sharp increases in government borrowing costs for some nations, and possibly seeing countries like Greece and Spain exiting the Euro, or even new countries emerging like Catalonia or Northern Italy. This picture of confusion and division would further diminish the status of the Euro as a rival world currency to the dollar. Meanwhile the “flight to safety” caused by the war would strengthen the dollar.

The Mighty Donut

While a war against Iran serves a useful local goal for America’s Middle Eastern allies, it also has clear benefits for America’s global position, on which its domestic economy depends. Peace makes the world focus on the hole in the American donut; war makes it focus instead on the doughy ring.

There is a kind of impersonal necessity at work, so forget which telegenic narcissistic autocue-reading sociopath  is riding the presidential golf buggy.

Failing empires cannot afford the luxury of unutilized assets because this makes these assets effectively a punitive tax on that empire, one that its rivals do not share. America’s control of the seas and air is more than worthless in a world that is entirely peaceful; it is debilitating. It’s all hole and no donut!

To capitalize on these assets a certain amount of chaos is needed. The war against Iran and its repercussions for China and Europe, America’s real rivals, provides a nice, measured degree of this. For these reasons, limited war and a period of reassertion of American power is extremely likely.

But what will be the unintended consequences of this? In the case of Europe, further economic dislocation can only be good news for the continent’s nationalists. While for China and Russia, the exercise of US power will only impel them to strengthen their alliance and develop their ability to project power. There will also be attempts to draw Japan away.

The consequences in the Middle East will be more complex, but America’s blatant use of power for the benefit of Israel and the Gulf states will create a deep animus that may serve to unite Sunnis and Shiites against their common enemy. In other words, short-term gains in American power will be paid for through long-term losses.