Author: TonyGosling
Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 11:41 am (GMT 0)
The Plan is for the United States to Rule the World
https://twitter.com/tomfeeley/status/810923012740579328
Dick Cheney’s Song of America
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1544.htm
The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.
By David Armstrong
Harper's Magazine, 0017789X, Oct 2002, Vol. 305, Issue 1829
Few writers are more ambitious than the writers of government policy papers, and few policy papers are more ambitious than Dick Cheney’s masterwork. It has taken several forms over the last decade and is in fact the product of several ghostwriters (notably Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell), but Cheney has been consistent in his dedication to the ideas in the documents that bear his name, and he has maintained a close association with the ideologues behind them. Let us, therefore, call Cheney the author, and this series of documents the Plan.
The Plan was published in unclassified form most recently under the title of Defense Strategy for the 1990s, (pdf) as Cheney ended his term as secretary of defense under the elder George Bush in early 1993, but it is, like “Leaves of Grass,” a perpetually evolving work. It was the controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft of 1992 – from which Cheney, unconvincingly, tried to distance himself – and it was the somewhat less aggressive revised draft of that same year. This June it was a presidential lecture in the form of a commencement address at West Point, and in July it was leaked to the press as yet another Defense Planning Guidance (this time under the pen name of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). It will take its ultimate form, though, as America’s new national security strategy – and Cheney et al. will experience what few writers have even dared dream: their words will become our reality.
The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.
The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable. Yet it is being sold now as an answer to the “new realities” of the post-September 11 world, even as it was sold previously as the answer to the new realities of the post-Cold War world. For Cheney, the Plan has always been the right answer, no matter how different the questions.
Cheney’s unwavering adherence to the Plan would be amusing, and maybe a little sad, except that it is now our plan. In its pages are the ideas that we now act upon every day with the full might of the United States military. Strangely, few critics have noted that Cheney’s work has a long history, or that it was once quite unpopular, or that it was created in reaction to circumstances that are far removed from the ones we now face. But Cheney is a well-known action man. One has to admire, in a way, the Babe Ruth-like sureness of his political work. He pointed to center field ten years ago, and now the ball is sailing over the fence.
Before the Plan was about domination it was about money. It took shape in late 1989, when the Soviet threat was clearly on the decline, and, with it, public support for a large military establishment. Cheney seemed unable to come to terms with either new reality. He remained deeply suspicious of the Soviets and strongly resisted all efforts to reduce military spending. Democrats in Congress jeered his lack of strategic vision, and a few within the Bush Administration were whispering that Cheney had become an irrelevant factor in structuring a response to the revolutionary changes taking place in the world.
More adaptable was the up-and-coming General Colin Powell, the newly appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, Powell had seen the changes taking place in the Soviet Union firsthand and was convinced that the ongoing transformation was irreversible. Like Cheney, he wanted to avoid military cuts, but he knew they were inevitable. The best he could do was minimize them, and the best way to do that would be to offer a new security structure that would preserve American military capabilities despite reduced resources.
Powell and his staff believed that a weakened Soviet Union would result in shifting alliances and regional conflict. The United States was the only nation capable of managing the forces at play in the world; it would have to remain the preeminent military power in order to ensure the peace and shape the emerging order in accordance with American interests. U.S. military strategy, therefore, would have to shift from global containment to managing less-well-defined regional struggles and unforeseen contingencies. To do this, the United States would have to project a military “forward presence” around the world; there would be fewer troops but in more places. This plan still would not be cheap, but through careful restructuring and superior technology, the job could be done with 25 percent fewer troops. Powell insisted that maintaining superpower status must be the first priority of the U.S. military. “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do,” he said at the time. He also insisted that the troop levels be proposed were the bare minimum necessary to do so. This concept would come to be known as the “Base Force.”
Powell’s work on the subject proved timely. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and five days later Powell had his new strategy ready to present to Cheney. Even as decades of repression were ending in Eastern Europe, however, Cheney still could not abide even the force and budget reductions Powell proposed. Yet he knew that cuts were unavoidable. Having no alternative of his own to offer, therefore, he reluctantly encouraged Powell to present his ideas to the president. Powell did so the next day; Bush made no promises but encouraged him to keep at it.
Less encouraging was the reaction of Paul Wolfowitz, the undersecretary of defense for policy. A lifelong proponent of the unilateralist, maximum-force approach, he shared Cheney’s skepticism about the Eastern Bloc and so put his own staff to work on a competing plan that would somehow accommodate the possibility of Soviet backsliding.
As Powell and Wolfowitz worked out their strategies, Congress was losing patience. New calls went up for large cuts in defense spending in light of the new global environment. The harshest critique of Pentagon planning came from a usually dependable ally of the military establishment, Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee. Nunn told fellow senators in March 1990 that there was a “threat blank” in the administration’s proposed $295 billion defense budget and that the Pentagon’s “basic assessment of the overall threat to our national security” was “rooted in the past.” The world had changed and yet the “development of a new military strategy that responds to the changes in the threat has not yet occurred.” Without that response, no dollars would be forthcoming.
Nunn’s message was clear. Powell and Wolfowitz began filling in the blanks. Powell started promoting a Zen-like new rationale for his Base Force approach. With the Soviets rapidly becoming irrelevant, Powell argued, the United States could no longer assess its military needs on the basis of known threats. Instead, the Pentagon should focus on maintaining the ability to address a wide variety of new and unknown challenges. This shift from a “threat based” assessment of military requirements to a “capability based” assessment would become a key theme of the Plan. The United States would move from countering Soviet attempts at dominance to ensuring its own dominance. Again, this project would not be cheap.
Powell’s argument, circular though it may have been, proved sufficient to hold off Congress. Winning support among his own colleagues, however, proved more difficult. Cheney remained deeply skeptical about the Soviets, and Wolfowitz was only slowly coming around. To account for future uncertainties, Wolfowitz recommended drawing down U.S. forces to roughly the levels proposed by Powell, but doing so at a much slower pace; seven years as opposed to the four Powell suggested. He also built in a “crisis response/reconstitution” clause that would allow for reversing the process if events in the Soviet Union, or elsewhere, turned ugly.
With these now elements in place, Cheney saw something that might work. By combining Powell’s concepts with those of Wolfowitz, he could counter congressional criticism that his proposed defense budget was out of line with the new strategic reality, while leaving the door open for future force increases. In late June, Wolfowitz, Powell, and Cheney presented their plan to the president, and within as few weeks Bush was unveiling the new strategy.
Bush laid out the rationale for the Plan in a speech in Aspen, Colorado, on August 2, 1990. He explained that since the danger of global war had substantially receded, the principal threats to American security would emerge in unexpected quarters. To counter those threats, he said, the United States would increasingly base the size and structure of its forces on the need to respond to “regional contingencies” and maintain a peacetime military presence overseas. Meeting that need would require maintaining the capability to quickly deliver American forces to any “corner of the globe,” and that would mean retaining many major weapons systems then under attack in Congress as overly costly and unnecessary, including the “Star Wars” missile-defense program. Despite those massive outlays, Bush insisted that the proposed restructuring would allow the United States to draw down its active forces by 25 percent in the years ahead, the same figure Powell had projected ten months earlier.
The Plan’s debut was well timed. By a remarkable coincidence, Bush revealed it the very day Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait.
The Gulf War temporarily reduced the pressure to cut military spending. It also diverted attention from some of the Plan’s less appealing aspects. In addition, it inspired what would become one of the Plan’s key features: the use of “overwhelming force” to quickly defeat enemies, a concept since dubbed the Powell Doctrine.
Once the Iraqi threat was “contained,” Wolfowitz returned to his obsession with the Soviets, planning various scenarios involved possible Soviet intervention in regional conflicts. The failure of the hard-liner coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, however, made it apparent that such planning might be unnecessary. Then, in late December, just as the Pentagon was preparing to put the Plan in place, the Soviet Union collapsed.
With the Soviet Union gone, the United States had a choice. It could capitalize on the euphoria of the moment by nurturing cooperative relations and developing multilateral structures to help guide the global realignment then taking place; or it could consolidate its power and pursue a strategy of unilateralism and global dominance. It chose the latter course.
In early 1992, as Powell and Cheney campaigned to win congressional support for their augmented Base Force plan, a new logic entered into their appeals. The United States, Powell told members of the House Armed Services Committee, required “sufficient power” to “deter any challenger from ever dreaming of challenging us on the world stage.” To emphasize the point, he cast the United States in the role of street thug. “I want to be the bully on the block,” he said, implanting in the mind of potential opponents that “there is no future in trying to challenge the armed forces of the United States.”
As Powell and Cheney were making this new argument in their congressional rounds, Wolfowitz was busy expanding the concept and working to have it incorporated into U.S. policy. During the early months of 1992, Wolfowitz supervised the preparation of an internal Pentagon policy statement used to guide military officials in the preparation of their forces, budgets, and strategies. The classified document, known as the Defense Planning Guidance, depicted a world dominated by the United States, which would maintain its superpower status through a combination of positive guidance and overwhelming military might. the image was one of a heavily armed City on a Hill.
The DPG stated that the “first objective” of U.S. defense strategy was “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.” Achieving this objective required that the United States “prevent any hostile power from dominating a region” of strategic significance. America’s new mission would be to convince allies and enemies alike “that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”
Another new theme was the use of preemptive military force. The options, the DPG noted, ranged from taking preemptive military action to head off a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack to “punishing” or “threatening punishment of” aggressors “through a variety of means,” including strikes against weapons-manufacturing facilities.
The DPG also envisioned maintaining a substantial U.S. nuclear arsenal while discouraging the development of nuclear programs in other countries. It depicted a “U.S.-led system of collective security” that implicitly precluded the need for rearmament of any king by countries such as Germany and Japan. And it called for the “early introduction” of a global missile-defense system that would presumably render all missile-launched weapons, including those of the United States, obsolete. (The United States would, of course, remain the world’s dominant military power on the strength of its other weapons systems.)
The story, in short, was dominance by way of unilateral action and military superiority. While coalitions – such as the one formed during the Gulf War – held “considerable promise for promoting collective action,” the draft DPG stated, the United States should expect future alliances to be “ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished.” It was essential to create “the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S.” and essential that America position itself “to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated” or in crisis situation requiring immediate action. “While the U.S. cannot become the world’s policeman,” the document said, “we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends.” Among the interests the draft indicated the United States would defend in this manner were “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism.”
The DPC was leaked to the New York Times in March 1992. Critics on both the left and the right attacked it immediately. Then-presidential candidate Pat Buchanan portrayed candidate a “blank check” to America’s allies by suggesting the United States would “go to war to defend their interests.” Bill Clinton’s deputy campaign manager, George Stephanopoulos, characterized it as an attempt by Pentagon officials to “find an excuse for big defense budgets instead of downsizing.” Delaware Senator Joseph Biden criticized the Plan’s vision of a “Pax Americana, a global security system where threats to stability are suppressed or destroyed by U.S. military power.” Even those who found the document’s stated goals commendable feared that its chauvinistic tone could alienate many allies. Cheney responded by attempting to distance himself from the Plan. The Pentagon’s spokesman dismissed the leaked document as a “low-level draft” and claimed that Cheney had not seen it. Yet a fifteen-page section opened by proclaiming that it constituted “definitive guidance from the Secretary of Defense.”
Powell took a more forthright approach to dealing with the flap: he publicly embraced the DPG’s core concept. In a TV interview, he said he believed it was “just fine” that the United States reign as the world’s dominant military power. “I don’t think we should apologize for that,” he said. Despite bad reviews in the foreign press, Powell insisted that America’s European allies were “not afraid” of U.S. military might because it was “power that could be trusted” and “will not be misused.”
Mindful that the draft DPG’s overt expression of U.S. dominance might not fly, Powell in the same interview also trotted out a new rationale for the original Base Force plan. He argued that in a post-Soviet world, filled with new dangers, the United States needed the ability to fight on more than one front at a time. “One of the most destabilizing things we could do,” he said, “is to cut our forces so much that if we’re tied up in one area of the world ..... and we are not seen to have the ability to influence another area of the world, we might invite just the sort of crisis we’re trying to deter.” This two-war strategy provided a possible answer to Nunn’s “threat blank.” One unknown enemy wasn’t enough to justify lavish defense budgets, but two unknown enemies might do the trick.
Within a few weeks the Pentagon had come up with a more comprehensive response to the DPG furor. A revised version was leaked to the press that was significantly less strident in tone, though only slightly less strident in fact. While calling for the United States to prevent “any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests,” the new draft stressed that America would act in concert with its allies – when possible. It also suggested the United Nations might take an expanded role in future political, economic, and security matters, a concept conspicuously absent from the original draft.
The controversy died down, and, with a presidential campaign under way, the Pentagon did nothing to stir it up again. Following Bush’s defeat, however, the Plan reemerged. In January 1993, in his very last days in office. Cheney released a final version. The newly titled Defense Strategy for the 1990s retained the soft touch of the revised draft DPG as well as its darker themes. The goal remained to preclude “hostile competitors from challenging our critical interests” and preventing the rise of a new super-power. Although it expressed a “preference” for collective responses in meeting such challenges, it made clear that the United States would play the lead role in any alliance. Moreover, it noted that collective action would “not always be timely.” Therefore, the United States needed to retain the ability to “act independently, if necessary.” To do so would require that the United States maintain its massive military superiority. Others were not encouraged to follow suit. It was kinder, gentler dominance, but it was dominance all the same. And it was this thesis that Cheney and company nailed to the door on their way out.
The new administration tacitly rejected the heavy-handed, unilateral approach to U.S. primacy favored by Powell, Cheney, and Wolfowitz. Taking office in the relative calm of the early post – Cold War era, Clinton sought to maximize America’s existing position of strength and promote its interests through economic diplomacy, multilateral institutions (dominated by the United States), greater international free trade, and the development of allied coalitions, including American-led collective military action. American policy, in short, shifted from global dominance to globalism.
Clinton also failed to prosecute military campaigns with sufficient vigor to satisfy the defense strategists of the previous administration. Wolfowitz found Clinton’s Iraq policy especially infuriating. During the Gulf War, Wolfowitz harshly criticized the decision – endorsed by Powell and Cheney – to end the war once the U.N. mandate of driving Saddam’s forces from Kuwait had been fulfilled, leaving the Iraqi dictator in office. He called on the Clinton Administration to finish the job by arming Iraqi opposition forces and sending U.S. ground troops to defense a base of operation for them in the southern region of the country. In a 1996 editorial, Wolfowitz raised the prospect of launching a preemptive attack against Iraq. “Should we sit idly by,” he wrote, “with our passive containment policy and our inept cover operations, and wait until a tyrant possessing large quantities of weapons of mass destruction and sophisticated delivery systems strikes out at us?” Wolfowitz suggested it was “necessary” to “go beyond the containment strategy.”
Wolfowitz’s objections to Clinton’s military tactics were not limited to Iraq. Wolfowitz had endorsed President Bush’s decision in late 1992 to intervene in Somalia on a limited humanitarian basis. Clinton later expanded the mission into a broader peacekeeping effort, a move that ended in disaster. With perfect twenty-twenty hindsight, Wolfowitz decried Clinton’s decision to send U.S. troops into combat “where there is no significant U.S. national interest.” He took a similar stance on Clinton’s ill-fated democracy-building effort in Haiti, chastising the president for engaging “American military prestige” on an issue” of the little or no importance” to U.S. interests. Bosnia presented a more complicated mix of posturing and ideologics. While running for president, Clinton had scolded the Bush Administration for failing to take action to stem the flow of blood in the Balkans. Once in office, however, and chastened by their early misadventures in Somalia and Haiti, Clinton and his advisers struggled to articulate a coherent Bosnia policy. Wolfowitz complained in 1994 of the administration’s failure to “develop an effective course of action.' He personally advocated arming the Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs. Powell, on the other hand, publicly cautioned against intervention. In 1995 a U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign, combined with a Croat-Muslim ground offensive, forced the Serbs into negotiations, leading to the Dayton Peace Accords. In 1999, as Clinton rounded up support for joint U.S.-NATO action in Kosovo, Wolfowitz hectored the president for failing to act quickly enough.
After eight years of what Cheney et al. regarded as wrong-headed military adventures and pinprick retaliatory strikes, the Clinton Administration – mercifully, in their view – came to an end. With the ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency, the authors of the Plan returned to government, ready to pick up where they had left off. Cheney of course, became vice president, Powell became secretary of state, and Wolfowitz moved into the number two slot at the Pentagon, as Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy. Other contributors also returned: Two prominent members of the Wolfowitz team that crafted the original DPG took up posts on Cheney’s staff. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who served as Wolfowitz’s deputy during Bush I, became the vice president’s chief of staff and national security adviser. And Eric Edelman, an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush Administration, became a top foreign policy adviser to Cheney.
Cheney and company had not changed their minds during the Clinton interlude about the correct course for U.S. policy, but they did not initially appear bent on resurrecting the Plan. Rather than present a unified vision of foreign policy to the world, in the early going the administration focused on promoting a series of seemingly unrelated initiatives. Notable among these were missile defense and space-based weaponry, long-standing conservative causes. In addition, a distinct tone of unilateralism emerged as the new administration announced its intent to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in order to pursue missile defense; its opposition to U.S. ratification of an international nuclear-test-ban pact; and its refusal to become a party to an International Criminal Court. It also raised the prospect of ending the self-imposed U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing initiated by the President’s father during the 1992 presidential campaign. Moreover, the administration adopted a much tougher diplomatic posture, as evidenced, most notably, by a distinct hardening of relations with both China and North Korea. While none of this was inconsistent with the concept of U.S. dominance, these early actions did not, at the time, seem to add up to a coherent strategy.
It was only after September 11 that the Plan emerged in full. Within days of the attacks, Wolfowitz and Libby began calling for unilateral military action against Iraq, on the shaky premise that Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network could not have pulled off the assaults without Saddam Hussein’s assistance. At the time, Bush rejected such appeals, but Wolfowitz kept pushing and the President soon came around. In his State of the Union address in January, Bush labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an “axis of evil,” and warned that he would “not wait on events” to prevent them from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States. He reiterated his commitment to preemption in his West Point speech in June. “If we wait for threats to fully materialize we will have waited too long,” he said. “We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” Although it was less noted, Bush in that same speech also reintroduced the Plan’s central theme. He declared that the United States would prevent the emergence of a rival power by maintaining “military strengths beyond the challenge.” With that, the President effectively adopted a strategy his father’s administration had developed ten years earlier to ensure that the United States would remain the world’s preeminent power. While the headlines screamed “preemption,” no one noticed the declaration of the dominance strategy.
In case there was any doubt about the administration’s intentions, the Pentagon’s new DPG lays them out. Signed by Wolfowitz’s new boss, Donald Rumsfeld, in May and leaked to the Los Angeles Times in July, it contains all the key elements of the original Plan and adds several complementary features. The preemptive strikes envisioned in the original draft DPG are now “unwarned attacks.” The old Powell-Cheney notion of military “forward presence” is now “forwarded deterrence.” The use of overwhelming force to defeat an enemy called for in the Powell Doctrine is now labeled an “effects based” approach.
Some of the names have stayed the same. Missile defense is back, stronger than ever, and the call goes up again for a shift from a “threat based” structure to a “capabilities based” approach. The new DPG also emphasizes the need to replace the so-called Cold War strategy of preparing to fight two major conflicts simultaneously with what the Los Angeles Times refers to as “a more complex approach aimed at dominating air and space on several fronts.” This, despite the fact that Powell had originally conceived – and the first Bush Administration had adopted – the two-war strategy as a means of filling the “threat blank” left by the end of the Cold War.
Rumsfeld’s version adds a few new ideas, most impressively the concept of preemptive strikes with nuclear weapons. These would be earth-penetrating nuclear weapons used for attacking “hardened and deeply buried targets,” such as command-and-control bunkers, missile silos, and heavily fortified underground facilities used to build and store weapons of mass destruction. The concept emerged earlier this year when the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review leaked out. At the time, arms-control experts warned that adopting the NPR’s recommendations would undercut existing arms-control treaties, do serious harm to nonproliferation efforts, set off new rounds of testing, and dramatically increase the prospectus of nuclear weapons being used in combat. Despite these concerns, the administration appears intent on developing the weapons. In a final flourish, the DPG also directs the military to develop cyber-, laser-, and electronic-warfare capabilities to ensure U.S. dominion over the heavens.
Rumsfeld spelled out these strategies in Foreign affairs earlier this year, and it is there that he articulated the remaining elements of the Plan; unilateralism and global dominance. Like the revised DPG of 1992, Rumsfeld feigns interest in collective action but ultimately rejects it as impractical. “Wars can benefit from coalitions,” he writes, “but they should not be fought by committee.” And coalitions, he adds, “must not determine the mission.” The implication is the United States will determine the missions and lead the fights. Finally, Rumsfeld expresses the key concept of the Plan: preventing the emergence of rival powers. Like the original draft DPG of 1992, he states that America’s goal is to develop and maintain the military strength necessary to “dissuade” rivals or adversaries from “competing.” with no challengers, and a proposed defense budget of $379 billion for next year, the United States would reign over all its surveys.
Reaction to the latest edition of the Plan has, thus far, focused on preemption. Commentators parrot the administration’s line, portraying the concept of preemptory strikes as a “new” strategy aimed at combating terrorism. In an op-ed piece for the Washington Post following Bush’s West Point address, former Clinton adviser William Galston described preemption as part of a “brand-new security doctrine,” and warned of possible negative diplomatic consequences. Others found the concept more appealing. Loren Thompson of the conservative Lexington Institute hailed the “Bush Doctrine” as “a necessary response to the new dangers that America faces” and declared it “the biggest shift in strategic thinking in two generations.” Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley echoed that sentiment, writing that “no talk of this ilk has been heard from American leaders since John Foster Dulles talked of rolling back the Iron Curtain.”
Preemption, of course, is just part of the Plan, and the Plan is hardly new. It is a warmed-over version of the strategy Cheney and his coauthors rolled out in 1992 as the answer to the end of the Cold War. Then the goal was global dominance, and it met with bad reviews. Now it is the answer to terrorism. The emphasis is on preemption, and the reviews are generally enthusiastic. Through all of this, the dominance motif remains, though largely undetected.
This country once rejected “unwarned” attacks such as Pearl Harbor as barbarous and unworthy of a civilized nation. Today many cheer the prospect of conducting sneak attacks – potentially with nuclear weapons – on piddling powers run by tin-pot despots.
We also once denounced those who tried to rule the world. Our primary objection (at least officially) to the Soviet Union as its quest for global domination. Through the successful employment of the tools of containment, deterrence, collective security, and diplomacy – the very methods we now reject – we rid ourselves and the world of the Evil Empire. Having done so, we now pursue the very thing for which we opposed it. And now that the Soviet Union is gone, there appears to be no one left to stop us.
Perhaps, however, there is. The Bush Administration and its loyal opposition seem not to grasp that the quests for dominance generate backlash. Those threatened with preemption may themselves launch preemptory strikes. And even those who are successfully “preempted” or dominated may object and find means to strike back. Pursuing such strategies may, paradoxically, result in greater factionalism and rivalry, precisely the things we seek to end.
Not all Americans share Colin Powell’s desire to be “the bully on the block.” In fact, some believe that by following a different path the United States has an opportunity to establish a more lasting security environment. As Dartmouth professors Stephen Brooks and William Woblforth wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, “Unipolarity makes it possible to be the global bully – but it also offers the United States the luxury of being able to look beyond its immediate needs to its own, and the world’s, long-term interests. ..... Magnanimity and restraint in the face of temptation are tenets of successful statecraft that have proved their worth.” Perhaps, in short, we can achieve our desired ends by means other than global domination.
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+56 Morgan's avatar
Morgan · 278 weeks ago
Fully agree David Emme
In order to power and fuel this quest for domination the US people will have to be bled too to provide funding at all costs for an empire that at the end of the day only benefits the 'owners' of US 'Democracy' the super rich. It is not the 'US' doing this it is the elites who exist with two types of mask (dem and repub) which are united on the subject of empire...
Apart from the elites nobody else in America is asked 'Do you want an empire'? Consent for the US empire has never been sought or given by the American people.
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1 reply · active 12 weeks ago
+34 Morgan's avatar
Morgan · 278 weeks ago
Tales from the poorhouses and workhouses of English Victorian society would make a nice attachment to a story on US tent cities on how strangely being a citizen of an empire, like being a resource rich third world country - can be a curse or even a mortal danger to your standard of living.
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+64 Deadbeat's avatar - Go to profile
Deadbeat · 278 weeks ago
What is useful about this article is that it directly contradicts the decades long canard of the pseudo-left that these Middle East and North African wars are for "oil (tm)". This article clearly says the goals of these wars is DOMINATION. However Harper's Magazine, based in New Your City, clearly misidentifies the beneficiary as the United States.
Harper is trying to pin as the primary culprit "gentile" Dick Chaney. For this article to even be written today means that the anti-Zionist message is being heard and sinking in. Chaney is being thrown "under the bus" to divert attention from the overall project. As we can see, missing from this article is the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and the names of the signatories that constitute a treasonous conspiracy and proves that a coup occurred in the U.S.
Identifying the Zionist plans as Chaney's brainchild is not only ridiculous but also irrelevant. What matters is WHO Chaney is carrying water for and that is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the whole Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC). Therefore the purpose of the Harper article is to try to minimize the "fallout" rather than say that America has been taken over by Zionism. Harper seeks to BLAME "America" instead and direct our focus on a NARROW group of neo-cons.
But here's the big problem with Harper's narrative. During the "anti-communism" days one COULD argue that was in America's interest because the U.S. HAD to "prove" that Capitalism was a better economic system than Soviet Communism. It did this by RAISING LIVING STANDARDS and using Keynesian policies and regulations to manage the system. If the rulers hadn't done that then people would have continued to call Capitalism into question as they did during the Great Depression.
However now in 2011, with Soviet Communism long extinguished, the Zionists in control of the American political apparatus don't have to convince the American people of anything as their goals are domination and supremacy. They do not FEAR the people because Zionists see themselves as SUPREME and WILL USE the power of the state they now control to suppress ALL challenges. Those that are hip to Zionism will be ostracized by the pseudo-Left and labeled "anti-Semites" or "racists". The purpose of the pseudo-Left is to protect the Zionist "empire" with their left-wing pretensions, propaganda and distortions of reality and truth.
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28 replies · active 4 weeks ago
+18 James's avatar
James · 278 weeks ago
When all is considered, the ultimate outcome of this kind of ideology will be a the complete economic destruction of the United States. Where is the money and people going to come from to support this ideological nightmare? The U.S. is head over heels in debt. The American people are getting poorer by the day with no income by which to levy taxes on. Soon, there will have to be a draft to obtain more soldiers to man this insanity., since all the volunteer fools will no longer be available. The rich can't support all of these wars on just their economic resources, sooner or later they will run out of money. If there is an angry uprising by the American populace, these, "rich elites" may be facing mobs that will take their palaces and riches away from them. Don't forget the energy problem we are in the middle of. As the oil resources dwindle, so will the military. The military runs on oil. It will be oil available to the military or the American people. I think we all know who will prevail. Agriculture will suffer immensely as well, and as food becomes scarce, the people will finally rise up.
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3 replies · active 5 weeks ago
+6 Massachusetts Slave's avatar
Massachusetts Slave · 278 weeks ago
lol...Banks rule the World.
Too many people. The World won't put up with the U.S. trying to dominate them.
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3 replies · active 85 weeks ago
+40 rehmat1's avatar - Go to profile
rehmat1 · 278 weeks ago
What Zionist Christian Dick had in mind was - One World Government ruled by the Jewish elite via United States as the sole world power. That's what the good-old THE PROTOCOLS predicted over 100 years ago.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/rabbi-pos...
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9 replies · active 4 weeks ago
-6 the 18 year old's avatar
the 18 year old · 278 weeks ago
shut up guys dont talk like this lol.
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2 replies · active 278 weeks ago
0 observation's avatar
observation · 278 weeks ago
The neo-cons took over our Republic and have since given the criminals a free pass to daily commit atrocities in the free world (Islaam). The west is subject to an ancient conspiracy of epidemic proportions there fore the common people no longer have morals regarding human life. this perpetual machine/conspiracy cannot be destroyed at the roots until people follow the Sunnah of Rasulullah salalahu alayhee wasalam collectively which is what the mujahideen are doing in places like Afghanistaan, Chechnya, and Arabia. The continuing long-term unrest in the muslim lands will continue because Islaam is the only way of life on earth standing up to this global corporate synchronized network of conspirators. The obvious is now open and the world is in an emperor had no clothes age. One final thought. The Qur'an is a Recitation, not ordered chronologically, revealed 1444 years ago to a man who was by all accounts illiterate yet honest, real, trustworthy, and human. Never known to have told a lie, this man then went on to speak the most miraculous poetry the world has ever known. For 1444 years Almighty Allah's words through His messenger have been preserved by over 39 generations and to this very day no matter in China or Chile, the Qur'an is the same letter for letter from front to back. These words preserved with 100% authenticity and this way of life in the Deen offer the chance to submit 100% to a way of life based on complete proof, knowledge, science, and faith. The minute people at large realize the haqq (truth) and implement Islaam, the conspirators will have no chance whatsoever and free humanity will be thanking the Mujahideen.
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2 replies · active 273 weeks ago
+8 jack 's avatar
jack · 278 weeks ago
Absolute power requires absolutey a Mine full of money .
The US doesn't have it .
Already its infrastrucure is turning into a waste land .
The age of the petro dollar is long gone despite the elimination of Hussein and Gaddafi .
An idea has firmly been created that the US dollar is dead as an international currency .
South America China Brazil Russia Iran India and some European countries all have this idea.
You cant defeat an Idea.
Cheneys manicidal hegenomic theory was twenty years ago before the money masters * the whole of America up .
You see if you have an ideait must be sustainable and realistic .
Cheney and his Zionist friends live in an unsustainable unreality .
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5 replies · active 85 weeks ago
+8 Geltmeister's avatar
Geltmeister · 278 weeks ago
PNAC - "Full spectrum dominance via a new Pearl Harbour".
Durr, what could that mean?
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1 reply · active 105 weeks ago
+6 Bill Duke's avatar
Bill Duke · 278 weeks ago
Would the dollar be the worlds reserve currency if the UNITED STATES, INC. did not ALREADY rule the world??
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1 reply · active 4 weeks ago
+16 3bancan's avatar
3bancan · 278 weeks ago
(2nd ed)
The plan for the United States to rule the world is a copy/adaption of the ideology, strategy and tactics of the Jewish nazi genocidal barbarians in historic Palestine. No wonder that the majority of the neocons are Jews.
"The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable"
More and more politicians all around the world are enthusiastically accepting and endorsing it. And everyone can see that it "works" perfectly.
The z i o n a z i f i c a t i o n of the world is marching on...
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1 reply · active 273 weeks ago
+7 capt jim's avatar
capt jim · 278 weeks ago
Think real hard about it!
If you were an evil, baby-murdering, lying and stealing, weird, and creepy war criminal would you put your name on the package?
Don't think so, you would design a figurehead, and always have a sacrificial "zinc" so to speak, for the flack to hit and not Jew!
The Pope, most Kings, all presidents, and a sorted variety of the usual suspects when the power is threatened.
When one studies the subject, one sees how it is certain individuals and their empires who are in it for KILOTONS!
Poor Iran has to live near a maniacal nation with un-licensed and un-inspected untold number of nuclear weapons ( m0st sources put it at 200-300--but it's the NEVER-inspected thing that sets off my bells!
How loud was their cry for IRAN to have the inspections for peaceful nuclear power--what hypocrites you are--now I'm taking Spanish lesson, I'm just trying to get the accent right! --try that last line like that,) this is for Dylan)
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2 replies · active 109 weeks ago
-1 Bob Marshall's avatar
Bob Marshall · 278 weeks ago
www.addictedtowar.com www,globalresearch.ca
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+8 Bob Marshall's avatar
Bob Marshall · 278 weeks ago
'Americans buy war like children gobble candy." Henry Kissenger. He should know.
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+11 Ron's avatar
Ron · 278 weeks ago
World domination by a single military power is not possibe in a nuclear age. We can spend as much as we like---we spend more than the rest of the world combined---,and the best technology and equipment can be erased by any country with nuclear arms and the resolve to use them.
Vietnam demonstrated the utter futility of the much heralded 'boots on the ground' approach. Most of our technology proved less than effective against a group of people wearing black pajamas, sandals made of automobile tires and who carried a bag of rice and a rifle. Insurgency warfare by a people who never wanted us there gave us all we could handle and more.
How can we dominate the entire world when we can't impose our will on tiny Vietnam?
China, which also has nuclear weapons, has the luxury of numbers so vast that occupation of that nation would be virtualy impossible assuming, of course, that we were foolhardy enough to invade.
Dick Cheney, a certifiable war criminal, would lead us off a cliff we could never survive, and the refusal of a so-called law-and-order president to hold hearings on war crimes by the Bush administration speaks volumes about who we are and what we are doing in the world.
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4 replies · active 84 weeks ago
+16 Pritch's avatar
Pritch · 278 weeks ago
It's not the people in North Dakota, Montana, or Wyoming who want to rule the world. It's Zionist occupied Washington DC that wants to rule the world. Washington DC is controlled by a Zionist cult and does not represent the people in the USA.
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3 replies · active 273 weeks ago
+8 Fupi Matata's avatar
Fupi Matata · 278 weeks ago
The plan is not for US to rule the world,but Zionism led USA to lead the World.It is the Zionists who conspired to create 2nd world war and the firs,armed and financed the West's war efforts in returns of receiving real estate as a reward in the oil rich Middle East>The Rockefekker sponsored Balfour declaration was a reward for their war aid to the West.The proverbial 12 pieces of silver to kill an innocent,non involved(In Jewish Holocaust) Arab in middle East
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1 reply · active 273 weeks ago
+5 strefanash's avatar - Go to profile
strefanash · 278 weeks ago
Every power that has sought world domination has fallen. It is only stupidity hubris and ignorance whereby the Americans think they will be different.
But they will not be different. So if America want to fall, by all means let them continue their insane arrogance
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1 reply · active 278 weeks ago
+7 FollowTheFacts's avatar - Go to profile
FollowTheFacts · 278 weeks ago
…I remember reading this article the first time…a lot of hindsight is possible now…but who cares…
….but…what's pathetic about the "united states" is the false and flawed philosophical underpinnings of the construct itself and the fact that the citizenry as a whole does not understand those basic facts – the union is itself an "empire"…this primary layer of "empire" provides the resources for expansionist pursuit, should such be desired…
"Empire" must always be maintained by threat, or use, of deadly force.
And the "union" itself is based, ultimately, on the implied threat of deadly armed force…the many parts, the states, do not have the option of freely and peacefully extracting themselves from the centralized whole. And that is the first and most monumental and inextricable fact. – The desires of the center can only be fulfilled if the whole does not openly object.
….there is open objection already! – It is just not "loud" enough not to be effectively silenced…but what's the guarantee things will remain that way?
…another point – this prattle about "evil empire" is oxymoronic – if it's "empire" – it's "evil" by definition. there is no such things a a "good empire." – And there you have the next fatal flaw with this "vision"…
People may be slow to understand and accept, but they will eventually.
The pursuit of "empire" is criminal – this is basic and can't be hidden, it can only be obscured temporarily….the "dream of empire" is a sick vision spawned by demented minds that will eventually collapse by its own depravity and contradicting assumptions.
I do also believe that there is another "layer" to this – the zionist layer…the Zionists do not ultimately want an "American empire"…but the muscle provided by the US serves eminently well for the moment and for the pursuit of Zionist Total Global Control….
…either way…it has to be defeated…(it's a) pity the human mind is so criminally inclined…
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0 Fitzhenrymac's avatar
Fitzhenrymac · 278 weeks ago
Nothings changed. This extremely good summary of the Vietnam war's origins from Pilger's book 'Heroes' is well worth reading. It shows that US imperialism is embedded in its world view. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pilger_John/Vie...
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2 replies · active 278 weeks ago
-2 antonietta ferrari's avatar
antonietta ferrari · 278 weeks ago
The Northern Army And its Allies Will Punish The English Speaking World & Israel http://www.peterjamesx.com/Docs%202008/The%20Nort...
The Northern Army Part 2 http://www.peterjamesx.com/Docs%202011/Northern%2...
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+8 Rep Raoul's avatar
Rep Raoul · 278 weeks ago
@Capn Jim
Ah yes, the never-inspected thing. JFK tried, and "someone" took him out. Everything was blamed on "lone gunman" Oswald, who was promptly murdered by ... a Jew, Jacob Rubenstein.
http://ironlight.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/kennedy...
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3 replies · active 273 weeks ago
+9 urganda's avatar - Go to profile
urganda · 278 weeks ago
for the JEWNITED States to rule the world, borrowing another poster's terminology, I generally use U$rael to convey a similar idea
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1 reply · active 278 weeks ago
-15 Revnant's avatar - Go to profile
Revnant · 278 weeks ago
Posting problems again? Well the way things are going this will be my last rant on the subject.
I figured people here would mention "America" as if there's something erudite to generalize about an entire country and Bankers (okay, PROGRESS although the "English-speaking world" was a new one.)
But I figured "Jews" would be front and center. The Protocols even! I always wondered whether there was an underground ICH Elders of Zion Bookclub. Now I know.
These people have zero explanation for the rise and fall of Sumerian Kingdom, the Shang Dynasty or the Roman Empire (whose Jewish revolt didn't shrink the length of the empire one iota.) Did these civilizations require Jews to bring them to ruin? Come present day and they can't explain why I couldn't bring back a Cuban cigar that I can PERSONALLY buy in the Carribean back to the States without being accosted by Customs BEFORE 9/11 (that year when my luxurious stolen Gentile riches bought me a ONE-day stay in Jamaica the first AND only vacation outside the United States I could afford.) These people think Iranian and Iraqi sanctions were bad (although bad they were)? Cuba's leader isn't exactly leading the charge against the "Jew World Order" http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/... how long has his country been sanctioned?
Hint: If you ever figure out how to import "antique" cars from Cuba, you won't be guessing long.
By the way hows that proposed Iraqi pipeline to Israel going? I heard that fairy tale making its way through here more than once. Back in the real world the second most profitable American corporation is scoring big in the second largest oil reserves known to the world today http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/05/exxon.... Make that the largest http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/in...
Then the "Zionist-led" West allows Iran to trade with China and Russia whenever they feel like like it despite an embargo, essentially collaborate with them in subduing Iraq and then add Saudia Arabian arms deals to the mix, one that exceeds any sold to "master" Israelis by far (with taxpayer money the U.S. pays the Saudis to host their bases which UNLIKE the amount paid to the Israel is never disclosed) and you have Arabs with no special love for Zionism with nearly invincible M1 Abarams Main Battle Tanks, advanced "Linebacker" Bradley Fighting Vehicles while Israel is still stuck using armor cannibalized from Egyptian tanks and Armored Personal Carriers dating back to the Vietnam War (which worked oh so well against a MINORITY INSURGENCY in a certain SMALL COUNTRY in 2006). Meanwhile, you have Saudia Arabia without so much as a Qassam striking their territory bombing Yemen into submission in '09 killing as much as 8,000 Yemenis. Not one NOT TWO but EIGHT times as many people as in Israels albeit heinous "Cast Lead" in Gaza with NO comparative international outrage.
Oh yeah, its all for the well-being of Israel huh? No other motives at all?
Note: For those who will get their * and giggles thumbing my post down or throwing racist (and I use this term sparingly and reluctantly but the Jew-baiting around here takes the cake) epithets. You can have your slice of Nazi Germany and take your chtaka at a self-proclaimed Jew who ACTUALLY challenges you to back up your claims and does so respectfully. It just shows me you don't have the balls to do the same thing in public.
Otherwise, if anyone can explain all these holes in this theory I might just come back and read it. Otherwise get working on making my resume cause you can sure write it. Someone didn't inform the Zionist Overlords that they should cancel my debts I accrued living in a WONDEROUS apartment complex living paycheck to paycheck. They could, you know, put the "Jew" in the "Jew World Order" don't you know.
Alternatively, you can just ignore me. If I'm going to be talking to walls, I'll take the hint. At least I know where you're "wisdom" will be coming from. In the end, I hope you do yourselves a favor.
Don't be tools. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbvP5w99sB8
Please.
Okay the article, right. My only critique of this article is it doesn't emphasize the fundamental struggle defining if not the world then then most definitely the 21st century today. Class warfare. As the Capitalists are edging WWIII closer and closer, if you don't have class consciousness NOW. You won't have it ever.
P.S.-I had to say it. My old Bolshevik great-grandfather didn't consider it an old Jewish joke being thrown into a gulag by Stalin for twenty-years. Maybe it was because he abondoned his Torah studies for the Revolution?
P.S.S-Speaking of which, ask Svetlana Stalin how that romance with her Jewish boyfriend Aleksei Kapler turned out.
My recent post Injustice, Aggression and the Instruments of Evil
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