May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Bigger doesn't imply better. Bigger often is a sign of obesity, of lost control, of overcomplexity, of cancerous
cells
“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot
stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility
while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about
the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining
an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot
pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city
swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those
of the rest of the world combined.”
New American militarism is connected with the desire to establish global neoliberal empire ruled
by the USA (the dream of total world dominance). It became official policy since the collapse
of the USSR and involves "heliocentric" view on foreign policy, when the USA is the center of
the world order and other states just rotate around it on various orbits. The US population is by-and-large-completely
brainwashed into this vision.
Opposition to the US militarism is almost non-existent due contemporary US popular culture infused
with the language of militarism and American exceptionalism. As Bacevich noted:
In any Clancy novel, the international order is a dangerous and threatening place, awash with
heavily armed and implacably determined enemies who threaten the United States. That Americans have
managed to avoid Armageddon is attributable to a single fact: the men and women of America’s uniformed
military and its intelligence services have thus far managed to avert those threats. The typical
Clancy novel is an unabashed tribute to the skill, honor, extraordinary technological aptitude and
sheer decency of the nation’s defenders. To read Red Storm Rising is to enter a world of ‘virtuous
men and perfect weapons’, as one reviewer noted. ‘All the Americans are paragons of courage, endurance
and devotion to service and country. Their officers are uniformly competent and occasionally inspired.
Men of all ranks are faithful husbands and devoted fathers.’ Indeed, in the contract that he signed
for the filming of Red October, Clancy stipulated that nothing in the film show the navy in a bad
light.
The "New American militarism" or as it called "Neocon mentality"
is not that different from the early Soviets militarism (of Trotskyite variety), eager to spread
the blessings of Scientific Socialism toward other countries on the tips of bayonets. Here the
role of scientific socialism is played by neoliberal ideology. With the slogan "Transnational
elite unite" and Davos style Congresses of the new "Neoliberal International" of comprador
elites. While converting other countries into neoliberal model using color revolution of direct military
invasion or combination of both) are disguised as spread of "democracy".
In this new Crusade for world hegemony the key ideas of Trotsky Permanent Revolution remains intact
-- a crusade for establishing new social system on all counties on the Earth. This is just Great Neoliberal
Crusade, instead of Communist Crusade. This new justification for Crusades has the same problems
as two previous. But it does not matter as the key role of democracy here is the same as in quote "the
goal justifies the means"
Professor Andrew Bacevich wrote several short books on the subject. he avoids the term neoliberalism
and did not try to explain new American militarism in terms of the quest for neoliberal empire expansion.
But he is a very good observer and the books contain many insights into US elite thinking and blunders.
Among them we can note two:
While all three books are excellent and raise important issues, they overlap. Probably the
most original and the most important on them is Washington Rules, were Bacevich attempts to explain
"Permanent War for Permanent Peace" that the USA practice since the end of WWII. All three books have
the same weaknesses: Bacevich does not see connection between Neoliberalism demand for economic expansion
and "New American Militarism" and regime of permanent wars that the USA pursue since WWII.
He provide sharp critique of neocons, but never ask the question: which political forces brought
those pathetic second or third rate thinkers to the forefront of formulation of the US foreign policy
and maintain them for more then a decade after Iraq debacle.
He also mistakenly believe that American people (who were completely estranged from any influence
on nation's policies) bear some guilt for the policy which was formulated to benefit the first hundred
of the largest US corporations. In other words he does not understand that the USA is yet another occupied
country.
[Neocons] advocate permanent war for permanent peace
Professor Basevich
The foreign policy of the USA since 1945, but especially, after the dissolution of the USSR was and
is "open militarism". Recently John Quiggin tried to define militarism is came to the following
definition (crookedtimber.org):
100 years after the Battle of the Somme, it's hard to see that much has been learned from the
catastrophe of the Great War and the decades of slaughter that followed it. Rather than get bogged
down (yet again) in specifics that invariably decline into arguments about who know more of the historical
detail, I'm going to try a different approach, looking at the militarist ideology that gave us the
War, and trying to articulate an anti-militarist alternative.
Wikipedia offers a definition
of militarism which, with the deletion of a single weasel word, seems to be entirely satisfactory
and also seems to describe the dominant view of the political class, and much of the population
in nearly every country in the world.
Militarism is the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain
a strong military capability and be prepared to use it
aggressively[^1] to defend or promote national
interests
This new epidemic of the US militarism started after the dissolution of the USSR was called by Professor
Bacevich (who is former colonel of the US army) it New
American Militarism.
global interventionism is used to achieve those ends.
Professor Bacevich had shown that the main driver of the US militarism is neocons domination of the
US foreign policy, and, especially, neocons domination in State Department regardless of whether Republicans
or Democrats are in power. They profess that the US that is uniquely qualified to take on the worldwide
foes of peace and democracy, forgetting, revising, or ignoring the painful lessons of World War II,
Vietnam, and Iraq. And that establishing and maintaining the neoliberal empire is worth the price we
pay as it will take the USA into the period of unprecedented peace.
Bacevich scored a direct hit on the foundations of the American national security state with this
scathing critique, and demolishes the unspoken assumptions that he believes have led the United States
into a senseless, wasteful, and counter-productive "perpetual war for perpetual peace".
Bacevich scores a direct hit on the foundations of the American national security state with this
scathing critique, and demolishes the unspoken assumptions that he believes have led the United States
into a senseless, wasteful, and counter-productive posture of nearly perpetual war. These assumptions
take the form of the "credo" -- which holds that the United States has the unique responsibility
to intervene wherever it wants, for whatever purpose it wants, by whatever means it wants --
and the supporting "trinity" of requirements for the U.S. to maintain a global military presence,
to configure its military forces for global power projection, and to counter threats by relying on
a policy of global interventionism.
Lessons that President Obama is clearly never able to learn. In this sense his book
Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War is an excellent peace of research with sections
that some may find very troubling as it suggest that the USA elite is suicidal and is ready to sacrifice
the county for achieving its delusional goal of world domination.
UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper CXXXVII:
September 27, 2010, 7:00 p.m.
Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (New York: Metropolitan
Books/Henry Holt and Company, August 2010).
Thesis
The Washington consensus on national security policy that constitutes convention wisdom in American
foreign policy began with the Cold War and survived, remarkably, the Vietnam War and the disintegration
of the Soviet Union, no longer serves American interests, but the failure of the Obama administration
to alter it shows that change can only come from the American people.
Introduction: Slow Learner
The author's faith in orthodoxy began to crumble when visiting the BrandenburgGate in Berlin in
the winter of 1990-1991(1-4). In October 1990 a visit to Jenarevealed the backwardness of EastGermany
(4-6). During his years in the Army, Bacevich had kept down doubts; after the end of the Cold War
he retired, and his loss of status freed him to educate himself (6-10).
"George W.Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into opposition"
(10). "This book aims to take stock of conventional wisdom" (11). The past 60 years of American history
shows continuity: a symbiotic "credo" (formulated by Henry Luce in 1941 as the "American Century")
and a "sacred trinity" ("the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United
States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection,
and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism")
together define "the rules to which Washington adheres" (11-15).
In this book, "Washington" refers to the upper echelons of the three branches of government, the
main agencies of the national security state, select think tanks and interest groups, "big banks
and other financial institutions, defense contractors and major corporations, television networks
and elite publications like the New York Times, even quasi-academic entities like the Council on
Foreign Relations and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government" (15).
This book aspires to
(1) trace the history of the Washington rules;
(2) show who wins, who loses, and who pays under them;
(3) explain how itis perpetuated;
(4) show that the rules have lost what utility they might once have had;
and (5) re-legitimate "disreputable (or 'radical') views to our national security debates" (16).
The American Century is ending, and it "has become essential" to devise an "alternative to the
reining national security paradigm" (16-18).
Ch. 1: The Advent of Semiwar.
As president, Barack Obama's efforts to change the U.S.'s exercise of power "have seldom risen
above the cosmetic"(20). He made clear he subscribes to the "catechism of American statecraft," viz.
that 1) the world must be organized, 2)only the U.S. can do it, 3) this includes dictating principles,
and 4) not to accept this is to be a rogue or a recalcitrant (20-21).
It follows that the U.S. need not conform to the norms it sets for others and that it should maintain
a worldwide network of bases (22-23).
Imagine if China acted in a comparable manner (23-25). The extraordinary American military posture
in the world (25-27). To call this into question puts one beyond the pale(27). James Forrestal called
this a permanent condition of semiwar, requiring high levels of military spending(27-28).
American citizens are not supposed to concern themselves with it (29-30). As to how this came
about, the "standard story line" presents as the result of the decisions of a "succession of presidential
administrations," though this conceals as much as it reveals (30-32).
Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address on the "military-industrial complex" was a rare exception (32-34).
More important than presidents were Allen Dulles [1893-1969] and Curtis Lemay [1906-1990] (34-36).
Bacevich attributes the vision for an American-dominated post-World War II world with the CIA
playing an active role to the patrician Dulles (36-43). The development of the U.S. military into
a force capable of dominating the world, especially in the area of strategic weapons, he attributes
to the hard-bitten Curtis LeMay, organizer of the StrategicAir Command (SAC) (43-52). Dulles and
LeMay shared devotion to country, ruthlessness, a certain recklessness (52-55). They exploited American
anxieties and insecurities in yin (Dulles's CIA) yang(LeMay's SAC) fashion, leaving the mainstay
of American military power, the U.S. Army, in a relatively weak position(55-58).
Ch. 2: Illusions of Flexibility and Control
Kennedy kept Dulles and LeMay to signal continuity, but there was a behind-the-scenes struggle
led by Gen. Maxwell Taylor to reassert the role of the U.S. Army by expanding and modernizing conventional
forces that was "simultaneously masked by, and captured in, the phrase flexible response " (60; 59-63).
This agenda purported to aim at "resisting aggression" but really created new options for limited
aggressive warfare by the U.S. (63-66).
McNamara engaged in a struggle with LeMay to control U.S. policy on nuclear weapons, but he embraced
the need for redundancy based on a land-sea-air attack "triad" and LeMay et al. "got most of what
they wanted" (66-72).
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy instituted the morally and legally "indefensible"
Operation Mongoose," in effect, a program of state-sponsored terrorism" against Cuba (80; 72-82 [but
Bacevich is silent on its wilder elements, like Operation Northwoods]).
U.S. recklessness caused the Cuban Missile Crisis, and to his credit Kennedy acknowledged this
(albeit privately) and "suspended the tradition" in defusing the crisis (82-87).
Bacevich rejects as a romantic delusion the view that in the aftermath of this crisis Kennedy
turned against the military-industrial complex and the incipient Vietnam war and shows no interest
in Kennedy's assassination itself (87-92).
He sees a parallel between escalation in Vietnam and post-9/11 aggression as "fought to sustain
the Washington consensus" (107; 92-107).
Ch. 3: The Credo Restored.
William Fulbright's The Arrogance of Power (1966) urged a rethinking of the Washington rules (109-15).
A radicalized David Shoup, a Medal of Honor winner and former commandant of the MarineCorps, argued
in "The New American Militarism" (Atlantic, April 1969) that the U.S. had become "a militaristic
and aggressive nation" (120; 115-21). The 1960s Zeitgeist shift made LeMay "an embarrassment,
mocked and vilified rather than venerated," which showed that the Washington rules had incurred serious
damage in Vietnam; the Army was in dire shape (122; 121-27).
Yet astonishingly, in the subsequent decade the "sacred trinity" (cf. 11-15) was "fully restored"
(127). As in post-1918 Germany, élites looked for scapegoats and worked to reverse "the war's apparent
verdict" (128). The Council on Foreign Relations 1976 volume entitled The Vietnam Legacy: The
War, American Society, and the Future of American Foreign Policy is an expression of élite consensus
that the Vietnam war was insignificant, an anomaly (129-34).
By 1980, Democrats and Republicans were again on the same page (134-36).Reagan's election
"sealed the triumph of Vietnam revisionism" (136; 136-38). And the end of the Cold War posed
no challenge to the Washington rules, as Madeleine Albright's pretentious arrogance exemplifies (138-45).
Ch. 4: Reconstituting the Trinity
The period from 1980 to 2000 saw "notretrenchment but reconfiguration" (147). The new mission
was not American defense but facilitation of a new world order (148-50). After 9/11 this pretense
was dropped and "[a]ctivism became the watchword" (150, emphasis in original;150-52). Resorting to
war became "notably more frequent and less controversial" in 1980-2000, finding "its ultimate expression
in the Bush Doctrine of preventive war" (152-53). Americans "passively assented" (154).
Behind the scenes, the shape this took was struggled over by the officer corps and civilian semi-warriors
pushing RMA(Revolution in Military Affairs) (154-64).Initially, U.S. élites held that victory in
Iraq demonstrated that speed could be substituted for mass in military campaigns (165-75). But the
experience of the occupation revealed this to be a fantasy (175-81).
Ch. 5: Counterfeit COIN.
Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, replacing "shock and awe" as "the Long War" replaced the "global
war on terror," is the latest doctrinal effort to preserve the Washington rules (182-86). The so-called
"surge" implicitly marked a quest for conditions allowing the U.S. to leave Iraq without admitting
defeat (186-91).Gen. David Petraeus emerged as an advocate (and as salesman, through FM3-24, the
manual he revised and which Bacevich insists is in its emphasis on narrative replete with postmodernism)
of counterinsurgency doctrine as "a substitute [for warfare] suited to the exercise of great power
politics in the twilight of modernity" (197; 191-97). Implicitly, the manual argues that "war as
such . . . no longer worked" (198; 198-202). Petraeus took credit for progress in Iraq that he did
not achieve (202-04).
The general with a Princeton Ph.D. was lionized with a view to normalizing war and lowering expectations,
a view now embraced by the Obama administration(205-11). Proponents of global counterinsurgency (GCOIN)
emerged, like John Nagl and Gen. Benet Sacolick (211-13). Obama embraced the GCOIN version of the
Long War with Gen.Stanley McChrystal to carry it out in Afghanistan, forfeiting the opportunity to
reassess American policy (213-21).
Ch. 6: Cultivating Our Own Garden.
Time-honored no-nonsense American pragmatism has turned into an absurdity-swallowing herd mentality
(222-23). The problem set the U.S. faces has radically changed from the time of the early Cold War,
but the "sacred trinity" (cf. 11-15) that proposes to address them remains essentially the same (224-25).Eisenhower
would have been appalled(225-26). The size of the Pentagon budget, the size of the U.S. nuclear
arsenal, and the extent of overseas military presence cannot be justified(226-27).
These persist because of the interests they serve, not the mission the fulfill, and are likely
to do so for sometime (228-30). Bacevich invokes George Kennan, William Fulbright, and Martin Luther
King Jr. in urging that the U.S. needs a new approach, to model freedom rather than impose it (231-37).
First and foremost, America should save not the world but itself (237).
Bacevich proposes a new trinity:
the purpose of the military is to defend the U.S. and its vital interests;
soldiers' primary duty stations are on American soil;
force should be used only as a last resort and in self-defense, in accord with the Just War
tradition (238-41).
The American public must shoulder its complicity in what has happened, fostered by an all-volunteer
force and debt-financed budgets (241-47). It is tragic that Barack Obama, elected to institute
change, has lacked the courage to alter the Washington rules, instead "choosing to conform"
(247-49). "If change is to come, it must come from the people"(249). The need for education "has
become especially acute" (249; 249-50).
Except from Macmillan
Introduction: Slow Learner Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young
man in a hurry is nearly uneducable: He knows what he wants and where he's headed; when it comes
to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the inclination.
All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.
My own education did not commence until I had reached middle age. I can fix its start date with
precision: For me, education began in Berlin, on a winter's evening, at the Brandenburg Gate, not
long after the Berlin Wall had fallen. As an officer in the U.S. Army I had spent considerable time
in Germany. Until that moment, however, my family and I had never had occasion to visit this most
famous of German cities, still littered with artifacts of a deeply repellent history. At the end
of a long day of exploration, we found ourselves in what had, until just months before, been the
communist East. It was late and we were hungry, but I insisted on walking the length of the Unter
den Linden, from the River Spree to the gate itself. A cold rain was falling and the pavement glistened.
The buildings lining the avenue, dating from the era of Prussian kings, were dark, dirty, and pitted.
Few people were about. It was hardly a night for sightseeing. For as long as I could remember, the
Brandenburg Gate had been the preeminent symbol of the age and Berlin the epicenter of contemporary
history.
Yet by the time I made it to the once and future German capital, history was already moving on.
The Cold War had abruptly ended. A divided city and a divided nation had re united. For Americans
who had known Berlin only from a distance, the city existed primarily as a metaphor. Pick a date—
1933, 1942, 1945, 1948, 1961, 1989—and Berlin becomes an instructive symbol of power, depravity,
tragedy, defiance, endurance, or vindication. For those inclined to view the past as a chronicle
of parables, the modern history of Berlin offered an abundance of material. The greatest of those
parables emerged from the events of 1933 to 1945, an epic tale of evil ascendant, belatedly confronted,
then heroically overthrown.
A second narrative, woven from events during the intense period immediately following World War
II, saw hopes for peace dashed, yielding bitter antagonism but also great resolve. The ensuing stand-off—the
"long twilight struggle," in John Kennedy's memorable phrase— formed the centerpiece of the third
parable, its central theme stubborn courage in the face of looming peril. Finally came the exhilarating
events of 1989, with freedom ultimately prevailing, not only in Berlin, but throughout Eastern Europe.
.... ... ...
Although commonly depicted as the most advanced and successful component of the Soviet Empire,
East Germany more closely resembled part of the undeveloped world.
... ... ...
Briquettes of soft coal used for home heating made the air all but unbreathable and coated everything
with soot. In the German cities we knew, pastels predominated—houses and apartment blocks painted
pale green, muted salmon, and soft yellow. Here everything was brown and gray
... ... ...
Bit by bit, my worldview started to crumble. That worldview had derived from this conviction:
that American power manifested a commitment to global leadership, and that both together expressed
and affirmed the nation's enduring devotion to its founding ideals. That American power, policies,
and purpose were bound together in a neat, internally consistent package, each element drawing strength
from and reinforcing the others, was something I took as a given. That, during my adult life, a penchant
for interventionism had become a signature of U.S. policy did not—to me, at least—in any way contradict
America's aspirations for peace. Instead, a willingness to expend lives and treasure in distant places
testified to the seriousness of those aspirations. That, during this same period, the United States
had amassed an arsenal of over thirty-one thousand nuclear weapons, some small number of them assigned
to units in which I had served, was not at odds with our belief in the inalienable right to life
and liberty; rather, threats to life and liberty had compelled the United States to acquire such
an arsenal and maintain it in readiness for instant use.2 I was not so naíve as to believe that the
American record had been without flaws. Yet I assured myself that any errors or misjudgments had
been committed in good faith. Furthermore, circumstances permitted little real choice. In Southeast
Asia as in Western Europe, in the Persian Gulf as in the Western Hemisphere, the United States had
simply done what needed doing. Viable alternatives did not exist. To consent to any dilution of American
power would be to forfeit global leadership, thereby putting at risk safety, prosperity, and freedom,
not only our own but also that of our friends and allies.
The choices seemed clear enough. On one side was the status quo: the commitments, customs, and
habits that defined American globalism, implemented by the national security apparatus within which
I functioned as a small cog. On the other side was the prospect of appeasement, isolationism, and
catastrophe. The only responsible course was the one to which every president since Harry Truman
had adhered. For me, the Cold War had played a crucial role in sustaining that worldview.
Given my age, upbringing, and professional background, it could hardly have been otherwise. Although
the great rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union had contained moments of considerable
anxiety — I remember my father, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, stocking our basement with water
and canned goods — it served primarily to clarify, not to frighten.
The Cold War provided a framework that organized and made sense of contemporary history. It offered
a lineup and a scorecard. That there existed bad Germans and good Germans, their Germans and our
Germans, totalitarian Germans and Germans who, like Americans, passionately loved freedom was, for
example, a proposition I accepted as dogma. Seeing the Cold War as a struggle between good and evil
answered many questions, consigned others to the periphery, and rendered still others irrelevant.
Back in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, more than a few members of my generation had rejected
the conception of the Cold War as a Manichean struggle. Here too, I was admittedly a slow learner.
Yet having kept the faith long after others had lost theirs, the doubts that eventually assailed
me were all the more disorienting. Granted, occasional suspicions had appeared long before Jena and
Berlin
My own Vietnam experience had generated its share, which I had done my best to suppress. I was,
after all, a serving soldier. Except in the narrowest of terms, the military profession, in those
days at least, did not look kindly on nonconformity. Climbing the ladder of career success required
curbing maverick tendencies. To get ahead, you needed to be a team player. Later, when studying the
history of U.S. foreign relations in graduate school, I was pelted with challenges to orthodoxy,
which I vigorously deflected. When it came to education, graduate school proved a complete waste
of time — a period of intense study devoted to the further accumulation of facts, while I exerted
myself to ensuring that they remained inert.
Now, however, my personal circumstances were changing. Shortly after the passing of the Cold War,
my military career ended. Education thereby became not only a possibility, but also a necessity.
In measured doses, mortification cleanses the soul. It's the perfect antidote for excessive self-regard.
After twenty-three years spent inside the U.S. Army seemingly going somewhere, I now found myself
on the outside going nowhere in particular. In the self-contained and cloistered universe of regimental
life, I had briefly risen to the status of minor spear carrier. The instant I took off my uniform,
that status vanished. I soon came to a proper appreciation of my own insignificance, a salutary lesson
that I ought to have absorbed many years earlier. As I set out on what eventually became a crablike
journey toward a new calling as a teacher and writer—a pilgrimage of sorts—ambition in the commonly
accepted meaning of the term ebbed. This did not happen all at once. Yet gradually, trying to grab
one of life's shiny brass rings ceased being a major preoccupation.
Wealth, power, and celebrity became not aspirations but subjects for critical analysis.
History—especially the familiar narrative of the Cold War—no longer offered answers; instead,
it posed perplexing riddles. Easily the most nagging was this one: How could I have so profoundly
misjudged the reality of what lay on the far side of the Iron Curtain? Had I been insufficiently
attentive? Or was it possible that I had been snookered all along? Contemplating such questions,
while simultaneously witnessing the unfolding of the "long 1990s"— the period bookended by two wars
with Iraq when American vainglory reached impressive new heights—prompted the realization that I
had grossly misinterpreted the threat posed by America's adversaries. Yet that was the lesser half
of the problem. Far worse than misperceiving "them" was the fact that I had misperceived "us." What
I thought I knew best I actually understood least. Here, the need for education appeared especially
acute.
George W. Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into opposition.
Claims that once seemed elementary—above all, claims relating to the essentially benign purposes
of American power— now appeared preposterous. The contradictions that found an ostensibly peace-loving
nation committing itself to a doctrine of preventive war became too great to ignore. The folly and
hubris of the policy makers who heedlessly thrust the nation into an ill-defined and open-ended "global
war on terror" without the foggiest notion of what victory would look like, how it would be won,
and what it might cost approached standards hitherto achieved only by slightly mad German warlords.
During the era of containment, the United States had at least maintained the pretense of a principled
strategy; now, the last vestiges of principle gave way to fantasy and opportunism. With that, the
worldview to which I had adhered as a young adult and carried into middle age dissolved completely.
*
What should stand in the place of such discarded convictions? Simply inverting the conventional
wisdom, substituting a new Manichean paradigm for the old discredited version—the United States taking
the place of the Soviet Union as the source of the world's evil—would not suffice. Yet arriving at
even an approximation of truth would entail subjecting conventional wisdom, both present and past,
to sustained and searching scrutiny. Cautiously at first but with growing confidence, this I vowed
to do. Doing so meant shedding habits of conformity acquired over decades. All of my adult life I
had been a company man, only dimly aware of the extent to which institutional loyalties induce myopia.
Asserting independence required first recognizing the extent to which I had been socialized to accept
certain things as unimpeachable. Here then were the preliminary steps essential to making education
accessible. Over a period of years, a considerable store of debris had piled up. Now, it all had
to go. Belatedly, I learned that more often than not what passes for conventional wisdom is simply
wrong. Adopting fashionable attitudes to demonstrate one's trustworthiness—the world of politics
is flush with such people hoping thereby to qualify for inclusion in some inner circle—is akin to
engaging in prostitution in exchange for promissory notes. It's not only demeaning but downright
foolhardy. This book aims to take stock of conventional wisdom in its most influential and enduring
form, namely the package of assumptions, habits, and precepts that have defined the tradition of
statecraft to which the United States has adhered since the end of World War II— the era of global
dominance now drawing to a close. This postwar tradition combines two components, each one so deeply
embedded in the American collective consciousness as to have all but disappeared from view.
The first component specifies norms according to which the international order ought to work and
charges the United States with responsibility for enforcing those norms. Call this the American credo.
In the simplest terms, the credo summons the United States—and the United States alone—to lead, save,
liberate, and ultimately transform the world. In a celebrated manifesto issued at the dawn of what
he termed "The American Century," Henry R. Luce made the case for this spacious conception of global
leadership. Writing in Life magazine in early 1941, the influential publisher exhorted his fellow
citizens to "accept wholeheartedly our duty to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence
for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." Luce thereby captured what remains
even today the credo's essence.3 Luce's concept of an American Century, an age of unquestioned American
global primacy, resonated, especially in Washington. His evocative phrase found a permanent place
in the lexicon of national politics. (Recall that the neoconservatives who, in the 1990s, lobbied
for more militant U.S. policies named their enterprise the Project for a New American Century.) So,
too, did Luce's expansive claim of prerogatives to be exercised by the United States.
Even today, whenever public figures allude to America's responsibility to lead, they signal
their fidelity to this creed. Along with respectful allusions to God and "the troops," adherence
to Luce's credo has become a de facto prerequisite for high office. Question its claims and your
prospects of being heard in the hubbub of national politics become nil. Note, however, that the duty
Luce ascribed to Americans has two components. It is not only up to Americans, he wrote, to choose
the purposes for which they would bring their influence to bear, but to choose the means as well.
Here we confront the second component of the postwar tradition of American statecraft. With regard
to means, that tradition has emphasized activism over example, hard power over soft, and coercion
(often styled "negotiating from a position of strength") over suasion. Above all, the exercise of
global leadership as prescribed by the credo obliges the United States to maintain military capabilities
staggeringly in excess of those required for self-defense. Prior to World War II, Americans by and
large viewed military power and institutions with skepticism, if not outright hostility. In the wake
of World War II, that changed. An affinity for military might emerged as central to the American
identity. By the midpoint of the twentieth century, "the Pentagon" had ceased to be merely a gigantic
five-sided building.
Like "Wall Street" at the end of the nineteenth century, it had become Leviathan, its actions
veiled in secrecy, its reach extending around the world. Yet while the concentration of power in
Wall Street had once evoked deep fear and suspicion, Americans by and large saw the concentration
of power in the Pentagon as benign. Most found it reassuring. A people who had long seen standing
armies as a threat to liberty now came to believe that the preservation of liberty required them
to lavish resources on the armed forces. During the Cold War, Americans worried ceaselessly about
falling behind the Russians, even though the Pentagon consistently maintained a position of overall
primacy. Once the Soviet threat disappeared, mere primacy no longer sufficed. With barely a whisper
of national debate, unambiguous and perpetual global military supremacy emerged as an essential predicate
to global leadership. Every great military power has its distinctive signature. For Napoleonic France,
it was the levée en masse— the people in arms animated by the ideals of the Revolution. For Great
Britain in the heyday of empire, it was command of the seas, sustained by a dominant fleet and a
network of far-flung outposts from Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope to Singapore and Hong Kong.
Germany from the 1860s to the 1940s (and Israel from 1948 to 1973) took another approach, relying
on a potent blend of tactical flexibility and operational audacity to achieve battlefield superiority.
The abiding signature of American military power since World War II has been of a different order
altogether. The United States has not specialized in any particular type of war. It has not adhered
to a fixed tactical style. No single service or weapon has enjoyed consistent favor. At times, the
armed forces have relied on citizen-soldiers to fill their ranks; at other times, long-service professionals.
Yet an examination of the past sixty years of U.S. military policy and practice does reveal important
elements of continuity. Call them the sacred trinity: an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials
of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence,
to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats
by relying on a policy of global interventionism. Together, credo and trinity—the one defining purpose,
the other practice—constitute the essence of the way that Washington has attempted to govern and
police the American Century. The relationship between the two is symbiotic. The trinity lends plausibility
to the credo's vast claims. For its part, the credo justifies the trinity's vast requirements and
exertions.
Together they provide the basis for an enduring consensus that imparts a consistency to U.S. policy
regardless of which political party may hold the upper hand or who may be occupying the White House.
From the era of Harry Truman to the age of Barack Obama, that consensus has remained intact. It defines
the rules to which Washington adheres; it determines the precepts by which Washington rules. As used
here, Washington is less a geographic expression than a set of interlocking institutions headed by
people who, whether acting officially or unofficially, are able to put a thumb on the helm of state.
Washington, in this sense, includes the upper echelons of the executive, legislative, and judicial
branches of the federal government. It encompasses the principal components of the national security
state— the departments of Defense, State, and, more recently, Homeland Security, along with various
agencies comprising the intelligence and federal law enforcement communities. Its ranks extend to
select think tanks and interest groups. Lawyers, lobbyists, fixers, former officials, and retired
military officers who still enjoy access are members in good standing. Yet Washington also reaches
beyond the Beltway to include big banks and other financial institutions, defense contractors and
major corporations, television networks and elite publications like the New York Times, even quasi-academic
entities like the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
With rare exceptions, acceptance of the Washington rules forms a prerequisite for entry into this
world. My purpose in writing this book is fivefold: first, to trace the origins and evolution of
the Washington rules—both the credo that inspires consensus and the trinity in which it finds expression;
second, to subject the resulting consensus to critical inspection, showing who wins and who loses
and also who foots the bill; third, to explain how the Washington rules are perpetuated, with certain
views privileged while others are declared disreputable; fourth, to demonstrate that the rules themselves
have lost whatever utility they may once have possessed, with their implications increasingly pernicious
and their costs increasingly unaffordable; and finally, to argue for readmitting disreputable (or
"radical") views to our national security debate, in effect legitimating alternatives to the status
quo. In effect, my aim is to invite readers to share in the process of education on which I embarked
two decades ago in Berlin. The Washington rules were forged at a moment when American influence and
power were approaching their acme. That moment has now passed. The United States has drawn down the
stores of authority and goodwill it had acquired by 1945. Words uttered in Washington command less
respect than once was the case. Americans can ill afford to indulge any longer in dreams of saving
the world, much less remaking it in our own image. The curtain is now falling on the American Century.
Similarly, the United States no longer possesses sufficient wherewithal to sustain a national security
strategy that relies on global military presence and global power projection to underwrite a policy
of global interventionism. Touted as essential to peace, adherence to that strategy has propelled
the United States into a condition approximating perpetual war, as the military misadventures of
the past decade have demonstrated.
To anyone with eyes to see, the shortcomings inherent in the Washington rules have become plainly
evident. Although those most deeply invested in perpetuating its conventions will insist otherwise,
the tradition to which Washington remains devoted has begun to unravel. Attempting to prolong
its existence might serve Washington's interests, but it will not serve the interests of the American
people.
Devising an alternative to the reigning national security paradigm will pose a daunting challenge—especially
if Americans look to "Washington" for fresh thinking. Yet doing so has become essential. In one sense,
the national security policies to which Washington so insistently adheres express what has long been
the preferred American approach to engaging the world beyond our borders. That approach plays to
America's presumed strong suit—since World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold War,
thought to be military power. In another sense, this reliance on military might creates excuses for
the United States to avoid serious engagement: Confidence in American arms has made it unnecessary
to attend to what others might think or to consider how their aspirations might differ from our own.
In this way, the Washington rules reinforce American provincialism—a national trait for which
the United States continues to pay dearly. The persistence of these rules has also provided
an excuse to avoid serious self-engagement. From this perspective, confidence that the credo and
the trinity will oblige others to accommodate themselves to America's needs or desires — whether
for cheap oil, cheap credit, or cheap consumer goods—has allowed Washington to postpone or ignore
problems demanding attention here at home.
Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland and Detroit. Purporting
to support the troops in their crusade to free the world obviates any obligation to assess the implications
of how Americans themselves choose to exercise freedom. When Americans demonstrate a willingness
to engage seriously with others, combined with the courage to engage seriously with themselves, then
real education just might begin.
In their article ‘The American Century’ Has Plunged the World Into Crisis. What Happens Now?"
Conn Hallinan and
Leon Wofsy outlined important
reasons of the inevitability of the dominance of chicken hawks and jingoistic foreign policy in
the USA political establishment:
U.S. foreign policy is dangerous, undemocratic, and deeply out of sync with real global
challenges. Is continuous war inevitable, or can we change course?
There’s something fundamentally wrong with U.S. foreign policy.
Despite glimmers of hope — a tentative
nuclear agreement with Iran, for one, and a long-overdue thaw with Cuba — we’re locked into seemingly
irresolvable conflicts in most regions of the world. They range from tensions with nuclear-armed
powers like Russia and China to actual combat operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.
Why? Has a state of perpetual warfare and conflict become inescapable? Or are we in a self-replicating
cycle that reflects an inability — or unwillingness — to see the world as it actually is?
The United States is undergoing a historic transition in our relationship to the rest of the world,
but this is neither acknowledged nor reflected in U.S. foreign policy. We still act as if our enormous
military power, imperial alliances, and self-perceived moral superiority empower us to set the terms
of “world order.”
While this illusion goes back to the end of World War II, it was the end of the Cold War and collapse
of the Soviet Union that signaled the beginning of a self-proclaimed “American Century.” The idea
that the United States had “won” the Cold War and now — as the world’s lone superpower — had the
right or responsibility to order the world’s affairs led to a series of military adventures. It started
with President Bill Clinton’s intervention in the Yugoslav civil war, continued on with George W.
Bush’s disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and can still be seen in the Obama administration’s
own misadventures in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and beyond.
In each case, Washington chose war as the answer to enormously complex issues, ignoring the profound
consequences for both foreign and domestic policy. Yet the world is very different from the assumptions
that drive this impulsive interventionism.
It’s this disconnect that defines the current crisis.
Acknowledging New Realities
So what is it about the world that requires a change in our outlook? A few observations come to
mind.
First, our preoccupation with conflicts in the Middle East — and to a significant extent, our
tensions with Russia in Eastern Europe and with China in East Asia — distract us from the most compelling
crises that threaten the future of humanity. Climate change and environmental perils have to be dealt
with now and demand an unprecedented level of international collective action. That also holds for
the resurgent danger of nuclear war.
Second, superpower military interventionism and far-flung acts of war have only intensified conflict,
terror, and human suffering. There’s no short-term solution — especially by force — to the deep-seated
problems that cause chaos, violence, and misery through much of the world.
Third, while any hope of curbing violence and mitigating the most urgent problems depends on international
cooperation, old and disastrous intrigues over spheres of influence dominate the behavior of the
major powers. Our own relentless pursuit of military advantage on every continent, including through
alliances and proxies like NATO, divides the world into “friend” and “foe” according to our perceived
interests. That inevitably inflames aggressive imperial rivalries and overrides common interests
in the 21st century.
Fourth, while the United States remains a great economic power, economic and political influence
is shifting and giving rise to national and regional centers no longer controlled by U.S.-dominated
global financial structures. Away from Washington, London, and Berlin,
alternative centers of economic
power are taking hold in Beijing, New Delhi, Cape Town, and Brasilia. Independent formations
and alliances are springing up: organizations like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South
Africa); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (representing 2.8 billion people); the Union of South
American Nations; the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur; and others.
Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous
domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out
over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and
our infrastructure crumbles.
Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional.
Short Memories and Persistent Delusions
But instead of letting these changing circumstances and our repeated military failures give us
pause, our government continues to act as if the United States has the power to dominate and dictate
to the rest of the world.
The responsibility of those who set us on this course fades into background. Indeed, in light
of the ongoing meltdown in the Middle East, leading presidential candidates are
tapping neoconservatives like
John Bolton
and Paul Wolfowitz
— who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power — for advice. Our leaders
seem to forget that following this lot’s advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first
place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned.
While the Obama administration has sought, with limited success, to end the major wars it inherited,
our government makes wide use of killer drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and has put troops
back into Iraq to confront the religious fanaticism and brutality of the so-called Islamic State
(ISIS) — itself a direct consequence of the last U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reluctant to find common
ground in the fight against ISIS with designated “foes” like Iran and Syria, Washington clings to
allies like Saudi Arabia, whose leaders are fueling the crisis of religious fanaticism and internecine
barbarity. Elsewhere, the U.S. also continues to give massive support to the Israeli government,
despite its expanding occupation of the West Bank and its horrific recurring assaults on Gaza.
A “war first” policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives
like former Vice President
Dick Cheney
and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John McCain.
Though it’s attempted to distance itself from the neocons, the Obama administration adds to tensions
with planned military realignments like the “Asia
pivot” aimed at building up U.S. military forces in Asia to confront China. It’s also taken a
more aggressive position than even other NATO partners in fostering a new cold war with Russia.
We seem to have missed the point: There is no such thing as an “American Century.” International
order cannot be enforced by a superpower alone. But never mind centuries — if we don’t learn to take
our common interests more seriously than those that divide nations and breed the chronic danger of
war, there may well be no tomorrows.
Unexceptionalism
There’s a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign policy
must confront: that U.S. culture is superior to anything else on the planet. Generally going by the
name of “American exceptionalism,” it’s the deeply held belief that American politics (and medicine,
technology, education, and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the belief
is an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the world.
Americans, for instance, believe they have the best education system in the world, when in fact
they’ve dropped from 1st place to 14th place in the number of college graduates.
We’ve made students of higher education the most indebted section of our population, while falling
to 17th place in international education ratings. According to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation, the average American pays more than twice as much for his or her education than those
in the rest of the world.
Health care is an equally compelling example. In the World Health Organization’s ranking of health
care systems in 2000, the United States was ranked 37th. In a more recent
Institute of Medicine report in 2013, the U.S. was ranked the lowest among 17 developed nations
studied.
The old anti-war slogan, “It will be a good day when schools get all the money they need and the
Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier” is as appropriate today as it was in the
1960s. We prioritize corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the wealthy, and massive military budgets
over education. The result is that Americans are no longer among the most educated in the world.
But challenging the “exceptionalism” myth courts the danger of being labeled “unpatriotic” and
“un-American,” two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning
voices.
The fact that Americans consider their culture or ideology “superior” is hardly unique. But no
other country in the world has the same level of economic and military power to enforce its worldview
on others.
The United States did not simply support Kosovo’s independence, for example. It bombed Serbia
into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar
Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force
in regions thousands of miles from its borders.
The U.S. currently accounts for anywhere from 45 to 50 percent of the world’s military spending.
It has hundreds of overseas bases, ranging from huge sprawling affairs like Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo
and unsinkable aircraft carriers around the islands of Okinawa, Wake, Diego Garcia, and Guam to tiny
bases called “lily
pads” of pre-positioned military supplies. The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson
estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide, about the same as the British Empire had at
its height in 1895.
The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans
have been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were
major undertakings: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some
were quick “smash and grabs” like Panama and Grenada. Others are “shadow wars” waged by Special Forces,
armed drones, and local proxies. If one defines the term “war” as the application of organized
violence, the U.S. has engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945.
The Home Front
The coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.
According Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for the Afghanistan
and Iraq wars — including the long-term health problems of veterans — will cost U.S. taxpayers around
$6 trillion. One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S. spends each year on defense-related
items. The “official” defense budget of some half a trillion dollars doesn’t include such items as
nuclear weapons, veterans’ benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security, nor the billions
a year in interest we’ll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the U.S. had already
paid out $316 billion
in interest.
The domestic collateral damage from that set of priorities is numbing.
We spend more on our “official” military budget than we do on Medicare, Medicaid, Health and Human
Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Since 9/11,
we’ve
spent $70 million an hour on “security” compared to $62 million an hour on all domestic programs.
As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic
inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic
problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply
racism — the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth —
continues to plague our homeland.
The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security
state to levels that many dictators would envy. The
Senate torture report, most
of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus
that runs
the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised.
Bombs and Business
President Calvin Coolidge was said to have remarked that “the business of America is business.”
Unsurprisingly, U.S. corporate interests play a major role in American foreign policy.
Out of the top 10 international arms producers, eight are American. The arms industry spends millions
lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and it defends its turf with an efficiency and vigor that
its products don’t always emulate on the battlefield. The F-35 fighter-bomber, for example — the
most expensive weapons system in U.S. history — will cost $1.5 trillion and doesn’t work. It’s over
budget, dangerous to fly, and riddled with defects. And yet few lawmakers dare challenge the powerful
corporations who have shoved this lemon down our throats.
Corporate interests are woven into the fabric of long-term U.S. strategic interests and goals.
Both combine to try to control energy supplies, command strategic choke points through which oil
and gas supplies transit, and ensure access to markets.
Many of these goals can be achieved with standard diplomacy or economic pressure, but the
U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 “Carter
Doctrine” — a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin
America — put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis the Middle East:
“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, and such an assault will be repelled
by any means necessary, including military force.”
It’s no less true in East Asia. The U.S. will certainly engage in peaceful economic competition
with China. But if push comes to shove, the Third, Fifth, and Seventh fleets will back up the interests
of Washington and its allies — Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Australia.
Trying to change the course of American foreign policy is not only essential for reducing international
tensions. It’s critically important to shift the enormous wealth we expend in war and weapons toward
alleviating growing inequality and social crises at home.
As long as competition for markets and accumulation of capital characterize modern society, nations
will vie for spheres of influence, and antagonistic interests will be a fundamental feature of international
relations. Chauvinist reaction to incursions real or imagined — and the impulse to respond by military
means — is characteristic to some degree of every significant nation-state. Yet the more that some
governments, including our own, become subordinate to oligarchic control, the greater is the peril.
Finding the Common Interest
These, however, are not the only factors that will shape the future.
There is nothing inevitable that rules out a significant change of direction, even if the demise
or transformation of a capitalistic system of greed and exploitation is not at hand. The potential
for change, especially in U.S. foreign policy, resides in how social movements here and abroad respond
to the undeniable reality of: 1) the chronic failure, massive costs, and danger inherent in “American
Century” exceptionalism; and 2) the urgency of international efforts to respond to climate change.
There is, as well, the necessity to respond to health and natural disasters aggravated by poverty,
to rising messianic violence, and above all, to prevent a descent into war. This includes not only
the danger of a clash between the major nuclear powers, but between regional powers. A nuclear exchange
between Pakistan and India, for example, would affect the whole world.
Without underestimating the self-interest of forces that thrive on gambling with the future of
humanity, historic experience and current reality elevate a powerful common interest in peace and
survival. The need to change course is not something that can be recognized on only one side of an
ideological divide. Nor does that recognition depend on national, ethnic, or religious identity.
Rather, it demands acknowledging the enormous cost of plunging ahead as everything falls apart around
us.
After the latest U.S. midterm elections, the political outlook is certainly bleak. But experience
shows that elections, important as they are, are not necessarily indicators of when and how significant
change can come about in matters of policy. On issues of civil rights and social equality, advances
have occurred because a dedicated and persistent minority movement helped change public opinion in
a way the political establishment could not defy.
The Vietnam War, for example, came to an end, despite the stubbornness of Democratic and Republican
administrations, when a stalemate on the battlefield and growing international and domestic opposition
could no longer be denied. Significant changes can come about even as the basic character of society
is retained. Massive resistance and rejection of colonialism caused the British Empire and other
colonial powers to adjust to a new reality after World War II. McCarthyism was eventually defeated
in the United States. President Nixon was forced to resign. The use of landmines and cluster bombs
has been greatly restricted because of the opposition of a small band of activists whose initial
efforts were labeled “quixotic.”
There are diverse and growing political currents in our country that see the folly and danger
of the course we’re on. Many Republicans, Democrats, independents, and libertarians — and much of
the public — are beginning to say “enough” to war and military intervention all over the globe, and
the folly of basing foreign policy on dividing countries into “friend or foe.”
This is not to be Pollyannaish about anti-war sentiment, or how quickly people can be stampeded
into supporting the use of force. In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans
agreed
that “over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism.” Only 37
percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State
began, those
numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force,
46 percent opposed it.
It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public
into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS,
disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it
has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war,
a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy.
Making Space for the Unexpected
Given that there is a need for a new approach, how can American foreign policy be changed?
Foremost, there is the need for a real debate on the thrust of a U.S. foreign policy that chooses
negotiation, diplomacy, and international cooperation over the use of force.
However, as we approach another presidential election, there is as yet no strong voice among the
candidates to challenge U.S. foreign policy. Fear and questionable political calculation keep even
most progressive politicians from daring to dissent as the crisis of foreign policy lurches further
into perpetual militarism and war. That silence of political acquiescence has to be broken.
Nor is it a matter of concern only on the left. There are many Americans — right, left, or neither
— who sense the futility of the course we’re on. These voices have to be represented or the election
process will be even more of a sham than we’ve recently experienced.
One can’t predict just what initiatives may take hold, but the recent U.S.-China climate agreement
suggests that necessity can override significant obstacles. That accord is an important step forward,
although a limited bilateral pact
cannot
substitute for an essential international climate treaty. There is a glimmer of hope also in
the U.S.-Russian joint action that
removed
chemical weapons from Syria, and in negotiations with Iran, which continue despite
fierce opposition
from U.S. hawks and the Israeli government. More recently, there is Obama’s bold move — long overdue
— to restore diplomatic
relations with Cuba. Despite shifts in political fortunes, the unexpected can happen if there
is a need and strong enough pressure to create an opportunity.
We do not claim to have ready-made solutions to the worsening crisis in international relations.
We are certain that there is much we’ve missed or underestimated. But if readers agree that U.S.
foreign policy has a national and global impact, and that it is not carried out in the interests
of the majority of the world’s people, including our own, then we ask you to join this conversation.
If we are to expand the ability of the people to influence foreign policy, we need to defend democracy,
and encourage dissent and alternative ideas. The threats to the world and to ourselves are so great
that finding common ground trumps any particular interest. We also know that we won’t all agree with
each other, and we believe that is as it should be. There are multiple paths to the future. No coalition
around changing foreign policy will be successful if it tells people to conform to any one pattern
of political action.
So how does the call for changing course translate to something politically viable, and how do
we consider the problem of power?
The power to make significant changes in policy ranges from the persistence of peace activists
to the potential influence of the general public. In some circumstances, it becomes possible — as
well as necessary — to make significant changes in the power structure itself.
Greece comes to mind. Greek left organizations came together to form Syriza, the political party
that was successfully elected to power
on a platform of ending austerity. Spain’s anti-austerity Podemos Party — now the number-two party
in the country — came out of massive demonstrations in 2011 and was organized from the grassroots
up. We do not argue one approach over the over, but the experiences in both countries demonstrate
that there are multiple paths to generating change.
Certainly progressives and leftists grapple with the problems of power. But progress on issues,
particularly in matters like war and peace and climate change, shouldn’t be conceived of as dependent
on first achieving general solutions to the problems of society, however desirable.
... ... ...
Conn Hallinan is a journalist and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. His writings appear
online at Dispatches From
the Edge. Leon Wofsy is a retired biology professor and long-time political activist. His comments
on current affairs appear online at Leon’s
OpEd.
"...These rules have pushed the United States to a state of perpetual war. With enemies supposedly
everywhere, the pursuit of security has become open-ended. "
"...One is reminded of
John Winthrop,
who, in 1630, told the future residents of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "We shall be as a City upon a Hill,
the eyes of all people are upon us." Over subsequent decades, Winthrop's sermon became the American
mission, fired by self-righteousness and fueled by self-confidence. From that mission emerged the idea
of Manifest Destiny -- American ideals should spread across the continent and around the globe. Along
the way, Americans lost sight of what Winthrop actually meant. His words were both inspiration and warning:
Aspire to greatness, but remain honorable. Power lies in virtue. Winthrop envisaged a shining beacon,
worthy of emulation. He saw no need to come down from the hill and ram ideals down the throats of the
recalcitrant. "
"...Back in 1963, the Kennedy administration was faced with a steadily disintegrating situation
in Vietnam. At a turbulent cabinet meeting, Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked: If the situation
is so dire, why not withdraw? Arthur Schlesinger, present at the meeting, noted how "the question hovered
for a moment, then died away." It was "a hopelessly alien thought in a field of unexplored assumptions
and entrenched convictions." The Washington rules kept the United States on a steady course toward disaster.
"
"...Barack Obama once promised that change was coming, but then quickly adhered to the old rules
by escalating an unwinnable and certainly unaffordable war in Afghanistan. Failures, as Steffens hoped,
have been illuminating, but after each flash of light, darkness has prevailed. "
"We need some great failures," the muckraking journalist
Lincoln Steffens
wrote in his autobiography. "Especially we ever-successful Americans -- conscious, intelligent, illuminating
failures." What Steffens meant was that a people confident in righteousness need occasionally to
be reminded of their fallibility. The past 50 years have produced failures aplenty -- the Bay of
Pigs, Vietnam and Iraq among them. Unfortunately, as Andrew Bacevich and John Dower demonstrate,
the light of failure has not penetrated the darkness of delusion. As a result, wars provide a repeating
rhythm of folly.
"Washington
Rules" and "Cultures
of War" are two excellent books made better by the coincidence of their publication. In complementary
fashion, they provide a convincing critique of America's conduct of war since 1941. Steffens would
have liked these books, specifically for the way they use past failures to explain the provenance
of our current predicament.
Read "Cultures of War" first. It's not an easy book, but it is consistently perceptive. Dower
examines Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Sept. 11 and the second Iraq War, drawing disconcerting linkages.
Pearl Harbor and Iraq, he feels, demonstrate how otherwise intelligent leaders are drawn toward
strategic imbecility. Both attacks were brilliantly executed in the short term, but neither
paid sufficient attention to the long-term problem of winning a war. More controversially, Dower
pairs Hiroshima with Sept. 11, both acts of terror born of moral certitude. Osama bin Laden and Harry
Truman justified wanton killing with essentially the same Manichean rhetoric. Motives, context and
scale might have been different; methods were not. For both leaders, the ability to separate good
from evil made killing easy.
In 1941, Americans drew comfort from the stereotype of the irrational Oriental. They assumed that
the Japanese would be easily defeated because they were illogical -- as their attack upon Pearl Harbor
proved. That attack was indeed illogical (given the impossibility of defeating the United States
in a protracted war), but it was not peculiarly Japanese. As Dower reveals, the wishful thinking,
delusion and herd behavior within the court of Emperor Hirohito was a symptom of war, not ethnicity.
The same deficiencies, in 2003, convinced those in the Oval Office that invading Iraq was a good
idea.
Since the culture of war encourages patterned behavior, folly proliferates. This is the essence
of the Washington rules that Bacevich elucidates. The rules dictate that protection of the American
way of life necessitates a global military presence and a willingness to intervene anywhere. Power
and violence are cleansed by virtue: Because America is "good," her actions are always benign.
These rules have pushed the United States to a state of perpetual war. With enemies supposedly
everywhere, the pursuit of security has become open-ended.
The alternative, according to Bacevich, is not isolationism or appeasement, two politically loaded
words frequently used to pummel those who object to Washington's behavior. He advocates, instead,
a more level-headed assessment of danger, advice all the more cogent since it comes from a former
soldier. Iraq and Afghanistan did not threaten America; in fact, those countries and the world have
become more dangerous because of heavy-handed American intervention. Nor does North Korea pose a
threat. Nor did Vietnam.
One is reminded of
John Winthrop,
who, in 1630, told the future residents of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "We shall be as a City upon
a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." Over subsequent decades, Winthrop's sermon became the
American mission, fired by self-righteousness and fueled by self-confidence. From that mission emerged
the idea of Manifest Destiny -- American ideals should spread across the continent and around the
globe. Along the way, Americans lost sight of what Winthrop actually meant. His words were both inspiration
and warning: Aspire to greatness, but remain honorable. Power lies in virtue. Winthrop envisaged
a shining beacon, worthy of emulation. He saw no need to come down from the hill and ram ideals down
the throats of the recalcitrant.
The power of virtue is Bacevich's most profound message. Instead of trying to fix Afghanistan's
Helmand Province, he
insists, Americans should fix Detroit and Cleveland. Instead of attempting to export notions of freedom
and democracy to nations that lack experience of either, America should demonstrate, by her actions,
that she is still a free, democratic and humane nation. Her real strength lies in her liberal tradition,
not in her ability to kill.
Back in 1963, the Kennedy administration was faced with a steadily disintegrating situation
in Vietnam. At a turbulent cabinet meeting, Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked: If the situation
is so dire, why not withdraw? Arthur Schlesinger, present at the meeting, noted how "the question
hovered for a moment, then died away." It was "a hopelessly alien thought in a field of unexplored
assumptions and entrenched convictions." The Washington rules kept the United States on a steady
course toward disaster.
Those unexplored assumptions and entrenched convictions have now pushed the United States
into a new quagmire. Despite that predicament, both Dower and Bacevich try to end positively. "If
change is to come, it must come from the people," argues Bacevich. Dower agrees. But these feeble
attempts at optimism are the least convincing parts of two otherwise brilliant books. Barack Obama
once promised that change was coming, but then quickly adhered to the old rules by escalating an
unwinnable and certainly unaffordable war in Afghanistan. Failures, as Steffens hoped, have been
illuminating, but after each flash of light, darkness has prevailed.
Gerard De Groot is a professor of history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland
and author of "The Bomb: A Life."
For his first 40 years, Andrew Bacevich lived the conventional
life of an army officer. In the military world where success depended on conformity, he followed
the rules and “took comfort in orthodoxy…[finding] assurance in conventional wisdom.” Comfort, that
is, until he had a chance to peer behind the Iron Curtain, and was shocked to find East Germany more
third-world shambles than first-rate threat.
That experience, combined with the introspection that followed his subsequent retirement from
the army, led Bacevich to reevaluate the relationship between truth and power. After having taken
his superiors at their word for decades, he slowly came to understand “that authentic truth is never
simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high…is inherently suspect. The exercise
of power necessarily involves manipulation and is antithetical to candor.”
Washington Rules:
America’s Path to Permanent War is Bacevich’s fourth book on the subject of American exercise
of power. This time, he takes up the question of the political calculations that have produced the
basic tenets of American foreign policy since the beginning of the Cold War, examining how and why
they came to exist and to survive all challenges to their supremacy.
Bacevich describes two components that define U.S. foreign policy.
The first is what he dubs the “American credo,” which calls on “the United States — and the
United States alone — to lead save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world.”
Second is what he calls the “sacred trinity,” which requires that the United States “maintain
a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projections,
and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism.”
These rules, Bacevich argues, are no longer vital to the existence of the United States, and have
led to actions that threaten to break the army and bankrupt the treasury. Rather, they are kept in
place by individuals who derive personal benefit from their continuance. Bacevich does not hesitate
to blame a Washington class that “clings to its credo and trinity not out of necessity, but out of
parochial self-interest laced with inertia.”
This is a theme that runs throughout the book: that those who make the rules also benefit from
them, and thus their demands should always be regarded skeptically.
While abstaining from questioning the patriotism of past leaders, Bacevich is not reluctant to
point out how many policies that were later widely embraced were originally trumpeted by ambitious
men who had as much to gain personally by their acceptance as did the country:
General Curtis LeMay, who built a massive nuclear arsenal as head of Strategic Air
Command;
Allen Dulles, who backed coups across the globe as CIA director;
General Maxwell Taylor, who rode the idea of “flexible response” from retirement to
the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The story of foreign policy, then, is not so much different than any government bureaucracy
through which vast sums of money flow, and is driven as much by officials jockeying for status than
by genuine concern for policy outcomes. Whether in disputes between the Army and the Air Force
or the Pentagon and the White House, and whether over money or over purpose, different sectors of
the national security establishment propose and promote new doctrines that necessitate increasing
their budgets and enhancing their importance.
But Bacevich is not content to only blame leaders. In contrast to George Washington’s ideal of
the citizen who would consider it his duty to actively serve his country, Bacevich finds today’s
Americans “greedy and gullible,” pursuing personal gain in the stead of collective benefit. Any solution,
he argues, must come from an awakened people who demand change from the people they put in office.
As for what that change should look like, Bacevich proposes a new credo and trinity. As a new
mission statement, he offers: “America’s purpose is to be America, striving to fulfill the aspirations
expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as reinterpreted with the passage
of time and in light of hard-earned experience.”
As a new trinity, he suggests that “the purpose of the U.S, military is not to combat evil or
remake the world but to defend the United States and its most vital interests…the primary duty station
of the American soldier is in America…consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should
employ force only as a last resort and only in self defense.”
Bacevich writes in the short, clipped style with which he also speaks, presumably a legacy of
his West Point education and decades in the military. His style allows for easy comprehension and
neat packaging of his ideas, and readers will not get bogged down in flowery language.
Parts of Bacevich’s thinking require further scrutiny and remind readers of his self-identification
as a conservative (lowercase “c”). Economically, he is no fan of stimulus spending, and socially
he places blame on individual failings and personal flaws, choosing not to mention an unequal economic
system that leaves tens of millions of Americans with barely the resources to take care of their
families, much less have time to be informed and active citizens.
In fact, the emphasis throughout the book is on the fact that expansionism, at this particular
moment, is not wrong but impossible. Bacevich is, after all, a realist when it comes to international
relations theory, and though he happens to agree with liberal anti-imperials on many issues, it is
often for different reasons.
However, debates over theory can wait for when the republic is in less immediate peril. This is
the second work Bacevich has published under the auspices of the American Empire Project, a book
series documenting America’s imperial adventures and their disastrous consequences. The contribution
of conservative authors to this task is vital. They remind us that opposition to imperialism is hardly
just a liberal cause, and in fact for much of American history was actually a rallying point for
conservatives across the country.
Washington Rules is valuable for putting in print what those inside the military establishment
don’t dare admit: that, even aside from moral concerns, U.S. international strategy is neither successful
nor sustainable and maintained more by lies than by actual results. Bacevich can truly be said to
be a realist in that he understand that leaders, when faced with the choice of admitting failure
or lying, will almost always choose the latter.
Andrew Feldman is an intern with Foreign Policy In Focus.
This is the bluntest, toughest, most scathing critique of American imperialism as it has become
totally unmoored after the demise of the Soviet Communist empire and taken to a new level by the
Bush administration. Even the brevity of this book - 182 pages - gives it a particular wallop since
every page "concentrates the mind".
In the event a reader knows of the prophetic work of the American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr,
you will further appreciate this book. Bacevich is a Niebuhr scholar and this book essentially channels
Niebuhr's prophetic warnings from his 1952 book, "The Irony of American History". The latter has
just been reissued by University of Chicago Press thanks to Andrew Bacevich who also contributed
an introduction.
In essence, American idealism as particularly reflected in Bush's illusory goal to "rid the world
of evil" and to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East or wherever people are being tyrannized,
is doomed to failure by the tides of history. Niebuhr warned against this and Bacevich updates the
history from the Cold War to the present. Now our problems have reached crisis proportions and Bacevich
focuses on the three essential elements of the crisis: American profligacy; the political debasing
of government; and the crisis in the military.
What renders Bacevich's critique particularly stinging, aside from the historical context he gives
it (Bush has simply taken an enduring American exceptionalism to a new level), is that he lays these
problems on the doorstep of American citizens. It is we who have elected the governments that have
driven us toward near collapse. It is we who have participated willingly in the consumption frenzy
in which both individual citizens and the government live beyond their means. Credit card debt is
undermining both government and citizenry.
This pathway is unsustainable and this book serves up a direct and meaningful warning to this
effect. Niebuhrian "realism" sees through the illusions that fuel our own individual behavior and
that of our government. There are limits to American power and limits to our own individual living
standards and, of course, there are limits to what the globe can sustain as is becoming evident from
climate changes.
American exceptionalism is coming to an end and it will be painful for both individual citizens
and our democracy and government to get beyond it. But we have no choice. Things will get worse before
they get better. Bacevich suggests some of the basic ways that we need to go to reverse the path
to folly. He holds out no illusions that one political party or the other, one presidential candidate
or the other, has the will or the leadership qualities to change directions. It is up to American
citizens to demand different policies as well as to govern our own appetites.
While this is a sobering book, it is not warning of doomsday. Our worst problems are essentially
of our own making and we can begin to unmake them. But we first have to come to terms with our own
exceptionalism. We cannot manage history and there are no real global problems that can be solved
by military means, or certainly not by military means alone.
Without Exception
By Edwin C. Pauzer VINE VOICE on September 24, 2008
This is one of those books you might find yourself sitting down to read chapter and verse over
and over again, only because the writing is so intelligent and so profound. "The Limits of Power:
The End of American Exceptionalism," by Andrew Bacevich, is one of those works that will enthrall
the reader with its insight and analysis.
According to the author, the US has reached its limit to project its power in the world. His rationale
for this conclusion are three central crises we now face: economic and cultural, political, and military,
all of which are our own making.
The first crisis is one of profligacy. Americans want more, whether it is wealth, credit, markets,
or oil, without consideration for cost or how these things are acquired. There is complete apathy
in what policies are being produced as long as they provide plenty.
The political crisis was born of our mobilization in World War II to meet the threat of tyranny,
and from the Cold War to meet the challenge of the Soviet Union. Both gave rise to unprecedented
presidential power, an ineffectual Congress, and a disastrous foreign policy. Bacevich contends
that our legislature no longer serves their constituents or the common good "but themselves through
gerrymandering, doling out prodigious amounts of political pork, seeing to the protection of certain
vested interests" with the paramount concern of being re-elected. Our presidents have been willing
accomplices in keeping the American dream or greed alive by using our military as part of a coercive
diplomatic tool to feed and fuel the first crisis.
Bacevich traces the end of the republic to the start of both wars, which gave rise to the "ideology
of national security." The mission of the new Department of Defense is not defense, but to project
power globally where we will view any nation as a threat that tries to match us in military might.
At the same time, the largest intelligence agencies in the world are created to afford us more security,
but after seventy years are unable to defend our cities and buildings in the US while it worries
about intrigues worldwide. Competition and rivalry lead to a lack of cooperation, intelligence, and
security when it was needed most.
The third crisis is our military which has been employed to satisfy the neuroses of the first
and second crises. The author puts much of the blame squarely at the feet of inept military leadership,
which he believes has confused strategy with operations. Content with the resilience of the American
fighting man or woman, he is scathing in his critique of their leadership finding them "guilty of
flagrant professional malpractice, if not outright fraud." He illustrates how improvised explosive
devices that cost no more than a pizza have checked a military that is designed for speed and maneuver--that
was considered invincible.
Andrew Bacevich contends that nothing will change as long as Americans are told to go to Disney
World instead of making sacrifices, as long as the same one half percent of our population continue
to populate the military that the president sees as his personal army, as long as an apathetic public
and an ineffectual Congress continue to make periodic, grand gestures of curbing presidential power,
the United States will have reached the limits of its power and exceptionalism.
This book profoundly moved me, and I was impressed by the insight that Professor Bacevich could
bring in such few pages. Passages of this book should be plastered in the halls and offices of Congress,
as well as the West Wing.
This book really stands out as a jewel in a sea of mediocre publications by radio and TV personalities
who think they know what they are talking about when it comes to economics or geopolitics. The difference
is that Andrew Bacevich does
--without exception.
Also Recommended:
Mayer, Jane, "The Dark Side, The Inside Story How The War on Terror Turned into a War on America's
Ideals."
Schlesinger, Arthur, "War and the American Presidency."
Mann, Thomas & Ornstein, Norman, "The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How
to Get It Back on Track."
Zinni, Tony (Gen. Ret.), "The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and
Purpose."
Niebuhr, Reinhold, "The Irony of American History."
For your convenience some of them which I judge to be the most insightful are reproduced below:
Andrew J. Bacevich's The New American Militarism: How Americans Are seduced By War,
Oxford University Press, New York, 2005, ISBN 0-19-517338-4, is the most coherent analysis of how
America has come to its present situation in the world that I have ever read. Bacevich, Professor
of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University,
is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and holds a Ph.D. in history from Princeton.
And he is retired military officer. This background makes him almost uniquely qualified to comment
on the subject.
Bacevich admits to an outlook of moderate conservatism. But in ascribing fault for our plight
to virtually every administration since W.W. II, he is even handed and clear eyed. Since he served
in the military, he understands the natural bureaucratic instincts of the best of the officer corps
and is not blinded by the almost messianic status that they have achieved in the recent past.
His broad brush includes the classic period, the American Revolution - especially the impact of
George Washington, but he moves quickly to the influence of Woodrow Wilson and his direct descendants
of our time, the Neoconservatives. The narrative accelerates and becomes relevant for us in the depths
of the despair of Vietnam. At that juncture, neocon intellectuals awakened to the horror that without
a new day for our military and foreign policy, the future of America would be at stake. At almost
the same time, Evangelical Christians abandoned their traditional role in society and came to views
not dissimilar to the neocons. America had to get back on track to both power and goodness. The results
of Vietnam on American culture, society, and - especially - values were abhorrent to both these groups.
The perfect man to idealize and mythologize America's road back was Ronald Reagan. Again, Bacevich
does not shrink from seeing through the surreal qualities brought to the Oval Office by Reagan to
the realities beneath them. The Great Communicator transformed the Vietnam experience into an abandonment
of American ideals and reacquainted America with those who fought that horrible war. Pop culture
of the period, including motion pictures such as Top Gun and best selling novels by many, including
Tom Clancy completely rehabilitated the image of the military.
The author describes how Evangelical leaders came to find common cause with the neocons and provided
the political muscle for Reagan and his successors of both parties to discover that the projection
of military might become a reason for being for America as the last century closed.
One of his major points is that the all volunteer force that resulted from the Vietnam experience
has been divorced from American life and that sending this force of ghosts into battle has little
impact on our collective psyche. This, too, fit in with the intellectual throw weight of the neocons
and the political power of the Evangelicals.
Separate from but related to the neocons, Bacevich describes the loss of strategic input by the
military in favor of a new priesthood of intellectual elites from institutions such as the RAND Corporation,
The University of Chicago and many others. It was these high priests who saw the potential that technology
provided for changing the nature of war itself and how American power might be projected with `smart
weapons' that could be the equivalent of the nuclear force that could never be used.
So it was that when the war we are now embroiled in across the globe - which has its antecedents
back more than twenty years - all of these forces weighed heavily on the military leaders to start
using the force we'd bought them. The famed question by Secretary of State Madeline Albright to General
Colin Powell: "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if
we can't use it?" had to have an answer and the skirmishes and wars since tended to provide it.
Bacevich clearly links our present predicaments both at home and abroad to the ever greater need
for natural resources, especially oil from the Persian Gulf. He demolishes all of the reasons for
our bellicosity based on ideals and links it directly to our insatiable appetite for oil and economic
expansion. Naturally, like thousands of writers before him, he points out the need for a national
energy policy based on more effective use of resources and alternative means of production.
It is in his prescriptions that the book tends to drift. The Congress must do its constitutionally
mandated jobs or be thrown out by the people. Some of his ideas on military education are creative
and might well close the gap between the officer corps and civilians that he points to as a great
problem.
But it is the clearly written analysis that makes this book shine. It should be a must read for
those who wonder how we got to Iraq and where we might be heading as a society. The nation is in
grave danger, and this is a book that that shows how we got to this juncture. Where we go from here
is up to us. If we continue as we are, our options may narrow and be provided by others.
READ THIS BOOK
===This review is from: The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Hardcover)
In his book The New American Militarism (2005), Andrew Bacevich desacralizes our idolatrous infatuation
with military might, but in a way that avoids the partisan cant of both the left and the right that
belies so much discourse today. Bacevich's personal experiences and professional expertise lend his
book an air of authenticity that I found compelling. A veteran of Vietnam and subsequently a career
officer, a graduate of West Point and later Princeton where he earned a PhD in history, director
of Boston University's Center for International Relations, he describes himself as a cultural conservative
who views mainstream liberalism with skepticism, but who also is a person whose "disenchantment with
what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies,
is just about absolute." Finally, he identifies himself as a "conservative Catholic." Idolizing
militarism, Bacevich insists, is far more complex, broader and deeper than scape-goating either political
party, accusing people of malicious intent or dishonorable motives, demonizing ideological fanatics
as conspirators, or replacing a given administration. Not merely the state or the government, but
society at large, is enthralled with all things military.
Our military idolatry, Bacevich believes, is now so comprehensive and beguiling that it "pervades
our national consciousness and perverts our national policies." We have normalized war, romanticized
military life that formally was deemed degrading and inhuman, measured our national greatness in
terms of military superiority, and harbor naive, unlimited expectations about how waging war, long
considered a tragic last resort that signaled failure, can further our national self-interests. Utilizing
a "military metaphysic" to justify our misguided ambitions to recreate the world in our own image,
with ideals that we imagine are universal, has taken about thirty years to emerge in its present
form. It is this marriage between utopians ends and military means that Bacevich wants to annul.
How have we come to idolize military might with such uncritical devotion? He likens it to pollution:
"the perhaps unintended, but foreseeable by-product of prior choices and decisions made without taking
fully into account the full range of costs likely to be incurred" (p. 206). In successive chapters
he analyzes six elements of this toxic condition that combined in an incremental and cumulative fashion.
After the humiliation of Vietnam, an "unmitigated disaster" in his view, the military set
about to rehabilitate and reinvent itself, both in image and substance. With the All Volunteer
Force, we moved from a military comprised of citizen-soldiers that were broadly representative
of all society to a professional warrior caste that by design isolated itself from broader society
and that by default employed a disproportionate percentage of enlistees from the lowest socio-economic
class. War-making was thus done for us, by a few of us, not by all of us.
Second, the rise of the neo-conservative movement embraced American Exceptionalism as our
national end and superior coercive force as the means to franchise it around the world.
Myth-making about warfare sentimentalized, sanitized and fictionalized war. The film Top Gun
is only one example of "a glittering new image of warfare."
Fourth, without the wholehearted complicity of conservative evangelicalism, militarism would
have been "inconceivable," a tragic irony when you consider that the most "Christian" nation on
earth did far less to question this trend than many ostensibly "secular" nations.
Fifth, during the years of nuclear proliferation and the fears of mutually assured destruction,
a "priesthood" of elite defense analysts pushed for what became known as the Revolution in Military
Affairs (RMA). RMA pushed the idea of "limited" and more humane war using game theory models and
technological advances with euphemisms like "clean" and "smart" bombs. But here too our "exuberance
created expectations that became increasingly uncoupled from reality," as the current Iraq debacle
demonstrates.
Finally, despite knowing full well that dependence upon Arab oil made us vulnerable to the
geo-political maelstroms of that region, we have continued to treat the Persian Gulf as a cheap
gas station. How to insure our Arab oil supply, protect Saudi Arabia, and serve as Israel's most
important protector has always constituted a squaring of the circle. Sordid and expedient self
interest, our "pursuit of happiness ever more expansively defined," was only later joined by more
lofty rhetoric about exporting universal ideals like democracy and free markets, or, rather, the
latter have only been a (misguided) means to secure the former.
Bacevich opens and closes with quotes from our Founding Fathers. In 1795, James Madison warned
that "of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises
and develops the germ of every other." Similarly, late in his life George Washington warned the country
of "those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious
to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hotile to republican liberty."
K. Johnson:
Relevant and Objective, January 3, 2007
Author Andrew Bacevich has superb credentials on military, diplomatic, and historical issues.
A Vietnam Veteran, 25+ year career in the Army and now professor of International Relations, Bacevich
is one of the few that has the experience *and* knowledge to dissect what has been occurring in
American socio-political culture and society for the last several decades. Bacevich notes the
current focus on the military to solve the world's problems and to promote America's interests
is not the sole work of a President and Congress, but the combination of culture, mentality, political,
and now primarily economic, interests. This book has tons of footnoting, which allows you to delve
further into these issues on your own.
The author astutely reinforces the fact that the Militarist Mentality won't change, regardless
of which political party is in control of the Executive and Houses of Congress in the United States.
Here only some examples out of many:
Entry of the U.S. military into the Middle East:
THE CARTER DOCTRINE:
The Carter Doctrine was prescribed at the State of the Union Address in 1980.
Another civilian prescription utilizing the military as medicine to alleviate and even cure, political
symptoms. This Doctrine began a new era of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, specifically using
the American military to enforce its economic interests and lifestyle dependence on oil. The Carter Doctrine was a major shift in American foreign policy in the Middle East. It specifically
stated that use of the military can and will be used to enforce U.S. economic interests.
At his State of the Union Address, Carter stated:
"Any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be
declared as an assault on the vital interest of the United States of America, and such an assault
will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force" (p. 181).
Worth noting is that the Carter Doctrine was declared during the Cold War, when there was a
adversary to check U.S interests. Today, that rival is gone.
Some argue the so-called 'War on Terror' is merely a historical continuation of American
foreign policy interests in using its military to promote its geo-political and economic interests.
WAR AS SPECTATOR SPORT:
War has been, and now is presented as a spectacle. No different than a spectator sport.
Live reports, video display, and laymen presentations of new technology, usually via video, to
the civilian public at press conferences.
One example of many are current U.S. newspaper reports: they don't use the term "wounded" when
reporting about American soldiers in Iraq. They use the euphemistic term, "injured." "17 Iraqis
'wounded' and 3 American soldiers 'injured.'" Similar to a football game. Slogans such as "Shock
and Awe, Support the Troops," and deck of cards identifying the most wanted Baath party members.
"Freedom is not Free." Many American military personel (and civilians) have internalized this
propaganda.
Using Hollywood To Enhance "Honor" and perpetuate myths:
Bacevich carefully details the planned and choreographed footage of George W. Bush dressed
as a fighter pilot on the USS Abraham Lincoln. This was intentionally and specifically lifted
from the movie "Top Gun." Immediately after this planned footage, an action figure doll was created
and sold for $39.99. It was called the "Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush: U.S. President and
Naval Aviator" (p. 31).
Well-dressed, handsome, and beautiful anchors report about the war in such series as "The Week
in War." More simulation of the spectator sport of war in our pop culture. One segment in the
"Week in War program" is called "The Fallen," where the photo of a soldier, his name, age, and
hometown are presented, and the date of his death. Then the cameramen go to his family's home.
Often a family picture of the "fallen soldier" is shown. Then, an interview with the somber, and
at times tearful family in their living room, sitting on their couch: "He was a good kid. He always
wanted to help people."
The "Fallen" is related to a concept that the Germans began about 300 years ago. This concept
is called the "Cult of the Fallen Soldier." When a soldier is killed in war he is elevated to
a higher status because of his death. He is placed on a pedestal, because somehow, and in some
enigmatic way, he "sacrificed" for a noble cause that is often abstract or confusing to the public.
To further simplify the confusion and sullenness resulting from the soldier's death, religion
is often injected into the deceased soldiers elevation on a pedestal. You can see this Cult
of the Fallen Soldier in Arlington, Virgina today, and in many military cemeteries around the
world.
GLORIFICATION OF THE MILITARY THROUGH MOVIES:
Bacevich notes moves and their role. "Top Gun" had a tremendous impact in many ways. Pop culture,
and Navy recruiting sky-rocketing. As for the flurry of "Vietnam war movies," again the noble
concepts of "courage, honor, fear, triumph" are latently and explicitly reinforced to the public
of all ages and socio-economic levels.
It took me a chapter or two to get used to Bacevich's writing style, but I grew to like it.
Chapters: 1) Wilsonians Under Arms 2) The Military Professions at Bay 3) Left, Right, Center
4) California Dreaming 5) Onward 6) War Club 7) Blood for Oil 8) Common Defense
"Support" for the military is often incorrectly linked with one's "patriotism." This faulty
thinking is perpetuated by the electronic and print media in often subtle forms but extremely
effective forms, and at times very explicit and in aggressive manners. The government intentionally
steers the publics' focus to the 'Military aspects of war' to avoid attention to the more realistic
and vital 'political aspects.' The latter being at the real heart of the motivation, manner, and
outcome of most *political* conflicts.
Bacevich notes journalists: journalist Thomas Friedman complained that a Super Bowl half-time
show did not honor the "troops." He then drove to the Command Center to visit and speak with the
"troops." Soon after, he carried on with his own self-centered interests, like everyone else.
The military in and of itself is not dangerous nor pernicious. The military doesn't formulate
foreign policy. The military just implements it, carrying out the orders and instructions of elitist
civilians who have never served in the armed forces. It's not the military nor the men and women
serving in it, we must be wary of. It's the civilians masters with vested interests in the governmental
and corporate world who must be held accountable.
General Creighton Abrams wanted to diminish the influence of civilian control over the military
after Vietnam. Civilians and politicians were making military decisions. It seems the situation
is similar in 2007. Chairman of the JCS Peter Pace sounds political. History will be the judge.
This is a very insightful book for those interested in recent history as well as the current
situation the United States is in. The troops should be supported for what they do. Because unfortunately
they are the ones that pay the price for elitist decisions made by upper-class civilians from
the Ivy League cliques that run the U.S. politically and economically.
Highly recommended and relevant to our contemporary times and our future.
Andrew Bacevich did excellent research and writing in this book. I'll think we'll be hearing
a lot more of him. Hopefully He'll get more access to the public. If - the mainstream media allows
it.
Robert S. Frey
An Informed, Insightful, and Highly Readable Account of American Foreign Policy Today,
December 23, 2006
Andrew J. Bacevich's "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War," should
be read and considered carefully by every member of the national political leadership in the United
States as well as by adult Americans in general. Bacevich brings impeccable credentials to his
work in this book--professor of history and international relations at Boston University, West
Point graduate, and veteran of the Vietnam conflict. His writing is engaging, insightful, and
historically well anchored. Importantly, this work is highly accessible and eminently readable.
The level of documentation is very valuable as well. Finally, the book is not about fault-finding
and finger-pointing toward any one national figure or group.
What I found most beneficial was that the book presented well-argued alternative historical
"meta-narratives" that are much more closely aligned with post-World War II historical events
and processes than the ones currently accepted as "conventional wisdom." A case in point is the
periodization of World War IV beginning with President Carter's pronouncements regarding the Persian
Gulf area in 1980 rather than with the terrorist attacks on America on 9/11. "The New American
Militarism" carefully and credibly brings together the many seemingly disparate actions, decisions,
and events of the past 60+ years (e.g., the atomic bombing of Japan, Vietnam, oil shortages of
the 1970s and 80s, the end of the Cold War, the First Gulf War, etc.) and illustrates important
patterns and trends that help to explain why United States' foreign policy is what it is today.
Dr. Bacevich's book helps us understand and appreciate that the global projection of American
military power today has deep roots in the national decisions and behaviors of the second half
of the twentieth century.
Robert S. Frey, M.A., MBA, MSM
Adjunct Professor, History
Brenau University
Dr. Lee D. Carlson
Interesting, insightful, and motivating, October 21, 2006
Why is it that some people, including this reviewer, are reluctant to criticize the writings
or verbalizations of those Americans that have been or are currently in the military? This is
particularly true for those officers and soldiers who have served in combat. To be critical of
someone is who has faced such horror would be a sacrilege. Their opinions on subjects, especially
those related to war and the military, are given much higher weight than those that have never
been in the military. What is the origin of this extreme bias and does it not thwart attempts
to get at the truth in matters of war and politics? If a war is illegal or immoral, are not the
soldiers who participate in it themselves war criminals, deserving the severest condemnation?
The author of this book sheds light on these questions and gives many more interesting opinions
on what he has called the 'new American militarism.' If one examines carefully American history,
it is fair to say that Americans have been reluctant to go to war, preferring instead to settle
conflicts via negotiation and trade agreements. Americans have been led to the horrors of war
kicking and screaming, and breath a sigh of relief when they are over. Historically, Americans
have applied extreme skepticism to those politicians, like Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to participate
in World War I to make the world "safe for democracy." So if Americans are "seduced by war", as
the author contends they have been in recent decades, an explanation must be found. It is
tempting to say that they have been merely "brainwashed", and contemporary neuroscience lends
some credence to this claim, but one must still be open to alternative explanations, and let the
evidence determine the proper interpretation. Once the causes have been identified, it
becomes necessary to find methodologies and strategies to counter these causes, lest we find ourselves
in another unnecessary and brutal conflict, initiated by some who do not directly participate
in it, and have no intention ever to do so.
This book is not a scientific study, but instead is a collection of opinions, mostly supported
by anecdotal evidence, to support the author's thesis. On the surface his opinions do seem plausible,
but one must still apply to his writings the same level of skepticism applied to other studies
of the same kind. It does seem reasonable to believe for example that current attitudes about
war are governed by the American failure in Vietnam, Carter's supposed ineptitude in dealing with
the resulting loss in "self-esteem" of the American populace, and Reagan's exploitation or correction
of this loss. But more evidence is needed to set such a conclusion in stone.
The author though is intellectually honest enough to admit that he has not obtained the "definitive
version of the truth" on the new American militarism within the pages of his book. His words are
more "suggestive than conclusive" he writes, and he welcomes criticism and alternative interpretations.
Vietnam, oil and energy considerations, 9-11, and the media all have a role to play in the current
American attitudes about war he argues. Further analysis though is needed, and cognizance must
be made that all readers, including this reviewer, are embedded in the same culture as the author,
and subjected to the same ideological, historical, and media pressures. We must be extremely cautious
in our acceptance of what we find in print and indeed in all information outlets. And we must
learn that soldiers, active duty or otherwise, are not infallible and must be subjected to the
same criticism as any other citizen. This is again, very difficult to do, and this difficulty
is perhaps the best evidence for the author's thesis.
R. Albin:
Exceptional Polemic; 4.5 Stars, October 19, 2006
This concise and well written book is the best kind of polemic; clear, well argued, and
designed to provoke debate. Bacevich is definitely interested in persuading readers of
the truth of his views but his calm and invective free prose, insistence on careful documentation,
and logical presentation indicate that his primary concern is promote a high level of discussion
of this important issue. Bacevich argues well that a form of militarism based on an exaggerated
sense of both American mission and American power, specifically military power, has infected public
life. He views this militarism as both leading to unecessary and dangerous adventures abroad,
epitomized by the Iraq fiasco, and corrupting the quality of domestic debate and policy making.
Beyond documenting the existence of this phenomenon, Bacevich is concerned with explicating how
this form of militarism, which he views as contrary to American traditions, came to be so popular.
Bacevich argues well that the new militarism came about because of a convergence of actions
by a number of different actors including our professional military, neoconservative intellectuals
and publicists, evangelical Christians, resurgent Republican party activists, and so-called defense
intellectuals. For a variety of reasons, these sometimes overlapping groups converged
on ideas of the primacy of American military power and the need to use it aggressively abroad.
Bacevich devotes a series of chapters to examining each of these actors, discussing their motivations
and actions, often exposing shabby and inconsistent thinking. Some of these, like the role of
neoconservative intellectuals and the Religous Right, are fairly well known.
Others, like the behavior of professional military over the last generation, will be novel
to many readers. Bacevich's chapters have underlying themes. One is the persisent occurrence of
ironic events as the actions of many of these groups produced events counter to their goals.
The post-Vietnam professional military attempted to produce a large, vigorous military poised
to fight conventional, WWII-like, combats. This force was intended to be difficult for politicians
to use. But as these often highly competent professionals succeeded to restoring the quality
of the American military, the temptation to use it became stronger and stronger, and control
escaped the professionals back into the hands of politicians as varied as Bush II and Clinton.
Another theme is that politicians seized on use military force as an alternative to more difficult
and politically unpalatable alternatives. Jimmy Carter is described correctly as initiating the
American preoccupation with control of the Persian Gulf oil supplies, which has generated a great
deal of conflict over the past generation. Bacevich presents Carter as having to act this
way because his efforts to persuade Americans to pursue sacrifice and a rational energy policy
were political losers. Ronald Reagan is presented as the epitome of this unfortunate trend.
Bacevich is generally convincing though, perhaps because this is a short book, there are some
issues which are presented onesidely. For example, its true that Carter began the military preoccupation
with the Persian Gulf. But, its true as well that his administration established the Dept. of
Energy, began a significant program of energy related research, moved towards fuel standards for
vehicles and began the regulatory policies that would successfully improve energy efficiency for
many household items. No subsequent administration had done more to lessen dependence on foreign
oil.
Bacevich also omits an important point. As he points out, the different actors that sponsored
the new militarism tended to converge in the Republican Party. But, as has been pointed out by
a number of analysts, the Republican Party is a highly disparate and relatively unstable coalition.
The existence of some form of powerful enemy, perceived or real, is necessary to maintain
Republican solidarity. The new militarism is an important component of maintaining the internal
integrity of the Republican party and at unconciously appreciated as such by many important Republicans.
An interesting aspect of this book is that Bacevich, a West point grad, former career Army
officer, and self-described cultural conservative, has reproduced many of the criticisms put forward
by Leftist critics.
Bacevich concludes with a series of interesting recommendations that are generally rational
but bound to be controversial and probably politically impossible. Again, this is an effort to
change the nature of the discussion about these issues.
Adam Bahner
How Permanent Military Deployment Became Congruent With World Peace, June 29, 2006
In The New American Militarism, Andrew J. Bacevich contends that American culture and policy
since the end of the Cold War has merged a militaristic ethos with a utopian global imaginary.
He notes that American militarism is a "bipartisan project" with "deep roots" that even garner
support on the political margins, with some leftist activists seeing a humanitarian mission for
U.S. global military hegemony. He traces these roots to the worldview of Woodrow Wilson, who envisioned
a globe "remade in America's image and therefore permanently at peace." Yet Wilson's view was
moderated by a public and policy perception of war as an ugly, costly, brutal, traumatic and unpredictable
last resort. This is corroborated by the massive military demobilizations that followed U.S. involvement
in both world wars. Bacevich also points to works of popular culture, from Erich Maria Remarque's
All Quiet On The Western Front to Oliver Stone's Platoon, that reflect on the inhumanity of war
from World War I through Vietnam.
Bacevich sees a massive deviation from these historical trends after the end of the Cold War.
While conceding that a permanent military mobilization was expected during the Cold War (from
roughly NSC-68 to the fall of the Berlin Wall)--no significant demobilization followed. Forces
slated for deactivation were quickly mobilized for Operation Desert Storm. No successful popular
culture critiques of that war's brutality would emerge. The author sees the end of the cold war
and Desert Storm as framing a period of "new American militarism" that breaks from historical
precedent in several regards. He claims that since the 1988 presidential campaign, the character
of the presidency has emphasized military more than civilian leadership. This contradicts previous
presidents of military stature (e.g. Grant, Eisenhower) who obsessively positioned themselves
as civilians. Post-Cold War military budgets have been dramatically larger despite no global adversary.
The public has uncritically accepted a permanent military stance. The perception of war as ghastly
and treacherous has been replaced with war as a clinical and technologically managed spectacle.
The link between the covenant of citizenship and military service has been replaced by a specialized
force of volunteers. The numbers of veterans serving in congress has steadily decreased since
World War II. Bacevich correlates this with the shunning of military service by elites as the
military has increasingly drawn from areas of the population that are poor and brown. Because
of this, force is "outsourced" and in turn the stature of soldiers has dramatically increased
through an infrastructure of praise by the majority who are not involved in military operations.
Senior military officers have tremendous clout in politics, policy, and spending.
To understand this new militarism, Bacevich notes that it is point-for-point an inversion of
Vietnam's military milieu. There, politicians up through the president framed themselves as civilians,
officers felt out of touch with bureaucratic decisions, and war was perceived as carnal and bumbling.
The book traces cultural responses to Vietnam that reformed the American relationship to militarism.
As military leaders like Creighton Abrams sought to mandate broad political investment for military
action by creating interdependence with reserves and to limit the criteria for deployment with
the Weinberger doctrine, politicians like Ronald Reagan rehabilitated an American demoralization
that peaked with Carter's failed Operation Eagle Claw by invoking popular culture mythologies
like Rambo.
Bacevich is unabashedly religious. He ultimately couches America's outsourced and technocratic
militarism as a departure from natural Gods in the pursuit of a scientistic idol that more perfectly
regulates human affairs. He openly sees in this scientism the same flaw and outcome as Communism
or Fascism. He suggests that affirmation of military service across economic privilege would raise
the stakes of military engagements and help to contradict the cultural illusions that form the
basis of American militarism. (That war is technical, distant, clinical, predictable, outsourced,
humane, and everything contrary to what writers like Remarque tell us.) He meticulously synthesizes
a new paradigm that relates the difficult subjects of military policy and popular sanction. In
this regard, The New American Militarism is an exciting contribution to historical scholarship.
M. Ward:
The New American Militarism - A Bipolar Look at Todays State of Affairs, February
4, 2006
Andrew J. Bacevichs', The New American Militarism, gives the reader an important glimpse of
his background when he wrote that, as a Vietnam veteran, the experience baffled him and he wrote
this book in an effort to "sift through the wreckage left by the war." After the Vietnam War,
the author stayed in the military because he believed being an American soldier was a "true and
honorable" calling. Bacevich states he is a devoted Catholic and a conservative who became disillusioned
with mainstream conservatism. He also states that he believes the current political system is
corrupt and functions in ways inconsistent with genuine democracy.
Bacevich states that he tried to write this book using facts in an unbiased way. However, he cautions
the reader that his experiences have shaped his views and that his views are part of this book.
This is a way to tell the reader that although he tried to remain unbiased, his background and
biases find voice in this book. I believe the authors warning are valid; he draws heavily upon
his background and biases to support his thesis.
The book is about American militarism, which Bacevich describes as the "misleading and dangerous
conceptions of war, soldiers, and military institutions" that have become part of the American
conscience and have `perverted' US national security policy. According to Bacevich, American militarism
has subordinated the search for the common good to the permanent value of military effectiveness
that will bankrupt the US economically and morally. Bacevich supports this thesis by discussing
issues that have contributed to this state of affairs.
Bacevich believes the current state of American militarism has roots dating back to the Wilson
administration. Wilson's vision was to remake the world in America's image. God Himself willed
the universal embrace of liberal democracies and Wilson saw the US as a `divine agent' to make
the world a safe and democratic place. Today, with no serious threat to keep our military forces
in check, we are now, more than ever, free to spread liberal democracy using military force, if
necessary.
Considering the military, Bacevich makes the point that the militarism of America is also due,
in part, to the officer corps of the US military trying to rehabilitate the image and profession
of the soldier after the Vietnam War. Officers attempted to do this by reversing the roles of
the soldiers and the politicians that was problematic during the Vietnam War. They tried to establish
the primacy of the military over the civilians in decisions as to how to use the military. The
Weinberger and Powell doctrines were the manifestation of this idea by spelling out conditions
for the use of the US military in combat.
Neo-conservatives further enhanced the trend of militarism. They see US power as an instrument
for good and the time was right to use the military to achieve the final triumph of Wilson's idea
of spreading American liberal democracy around the globe.
Religion also played a role. According to Bacevich, evangelical Protestants see the US as a
Christian nation singled out by God and Americans are His chosen people. These evangelicals believed
the Vietnam War was not only a military crisis, but also a cultural and moral crisis threatening
our status. Evangelicals looked to the military to play a pivotal role in saving the US from internal
collapse due to the higher expression of morals and values found in the military. The military
would become the role model to reverse the trend of godlessness and social decay.
Another set of actors that contributed to American militarism were the defense intellectuals
whose main contribution was to bring the military back under civilian control. According to Bacevich,
they laid the groundwork of our current policy of `preventative war' and reinforced American militarism.
Finally, Bacevich accuses politicians of deceiving the American public as to the true nature of
American militarism by wrapping militarism in the comfortable trappings of nationalism. By using
labels such as the Global War on Terrorism, politicians are using a political sleight-of-hand
trick to hide our true militaristic nature in patriotic terms. Bacevich concludes his book with
a list of recommendations to mitigate the current trend of American militarism.
Bacevich seems to create a mosaic of conspiracy perpetrated by sinister actors aimed at deceiving
an unsuspecting public as to the true nature of American militarism. Until the last chapter where
Bacevich tells the reader that there is no conspiracy, it is very easy to believe there might
be one lurking in the shadows. I was shocked when I reached Bacevich's recommendations. The contrast
between his recommendations and the rest of the book is astounding. I was expecting highly provocative
recommendations that would match the tone of the rest of the book. However, his recommendations
were solid and well thought out...delivered in the calm manner one would expect from a political
scientist. Nevertheless, in the end, Bacevich's message leading up to his recommendations were
hard to swallow. I believe he wrote this book not to enlighten but to be provocative in order
to sell books and build his status in academic circles. If Bacevich's aim was to build a convincing
argument on a serious subject, he needed to be less provocative and more clinical.
David Friedman:
What is militarism? What is it, particularly as applied to today's America? West Point educated
Andrew Bacevich opens his book with a concise statement: "Today as never before in their history
Amercans are enthralled with military power. The global military supremacy that the United States
presently enjoys . . . has become central to our national identity." This is the basic premise
of The New American Militarism. Anyone who does not accept the accuracy of this statement, or
is unconcerned about its implications should probably not read this book--it will only annoy them.
For those, however, who are concerned about how militarism is increasingly seeping into our core
values and sense of national destiny, or who are disturbed by the current glaring disconnect between
what our soldiers endure "over there", and the lack of any sacrifice or inconvenience for the
rest of us "over here", this book is a must-read.
Refreshingly, Bacevich approaches the new American militarism as neither a Democrat nor Republican,
from neither the left nor the right. No doubt, those with a stake in defending the policy of the
present Administration no matter how foolish, or in castigating it as the main source of our current
militarism, will see "bias" in this book. The truth though is that Bacevich makes a genuine effort
to approach his subject in a spirit of open and disinterested inquiry. He has earned the right
to say, near the end of his book, that "this account has not sought to assign or impute blame."
As a result, he is not stymied by the possibility of embarrassing one political side or the other
by his arguments or conclusions. This leads to a nuanced and highly independent and original treatment
of the subject.
In chronicling the rise of American militarism, Bacevich rightly starts with Wilson's vision
of American exceptionalism: an America leading the world beyond the slaughterhouse of European
battlefields to an international order of peaceful democratic states. But where President Wilson
wanted to create such a world for the express purpose of rendering war obsolete, Bacevich notes
that today's "Wilsonians" want to export American democracy through the use of force. He follows
this overview with an insider's thumbnail history of American military thinking from Vietnam to
the first Gulf war. He explains how the military in effect re-invented itself after Vietnam so
as to make it far more difficult "to send the Army off to fight while leaving the country behind."
Today's highly professionalized and elite force is largely the result of this thinking. In turn
this professional military presented to the country and its civilian leaders a re-invented model
of war: war waged with surgical precision and offering "the prospect of decision rather than pointing
ineluctably toward stalemate and quagmire." Gulf War I was the triumphant culmination of this
model. The unintended and ironic consequence, of course, was that war and the aggressive projection
of American military power throughout the world came to be viewed by some in our nation's leadership
as an increasingly attractive policy option.
The body of the book analyzes how the legitimate attempt to recover from the national trauma
of Vietnam led ultimately to a militarism increasingly reflected in crucial aspects of American
life. In religion he traces how a "crusade" theory of warfare has supplanted the more mainstream
"just war" theory. In popular culture he discusses the rise of a genre of pop fiction and movies
reflecting a glamorized and uncritical idealization of war (he examines "An Officer and A Gentleman",
"Rambo: First Blood Part II", and "Top Gun" as examples). In politics he identifies the neo-conservative
movement as bringing into the mainstream ideas that "a decade earlier might have seemed reckless
or preposterous"; for example the idea that the United States is "the most revolutionary force
on earth" with an "inescapable mission" to spread democracy -- by the sword if necessary. Bacevich
calls these ideas "inverted Trotskyism", and notes that the neo-conservative movement shares with
Mao the assumption that revolution springs "from the barrel of a gun".
Bacevich concludes his book with a pithy ten-point critique offered as a starting point for
"a change in consciousness, seeing war and America's relationship to war in a fundamentally different
way." Among his points are greater fidelity to the letter and the spirit of the Constituional
provisions regarding war and the military, and increased strategic self-sufficiency for America.
Perhaps the most important points of his critique are those about ending or at least reducing
the current disconnect between er how we might reduce
Patrick Connor
Careful observers will note the abolute claims that lie under the surface of these criticisms.
If you criticize anything about the United States, you're automatically anti-Bush. If you question
the wisdom of viewing the military as a first-option in handling international problems, you're
even worse: a liberal anti-Bush peacenick. History supposedly demonstrates that diplomacy never
works with any "tyrant" (whatever that is), while war allegedly always work. It's just one stark
claim after another, with never any gray area in the middle.
If you read the book, this "you're either with us or with the terrorists, either dream war
or hate President Bush" mentality should remind you of something. It very closely resembles the
description Bacevich gives of neoconservatism, which he says engenders a worldview that is constantly
in crisis mode. Things are always so dire for neocons, Bacevich explains, that only two feasible
options present themselves at any given time: doing what the neocons want (usually deploying military
force in pursuit of some lofty but unrealistic goal), or suffering irreversible and potentially
fatal setbacks to our national cause.
Is it really surprising that the reviews of this book from a neocon mindset are also the reviews
giving one star to a book that sytematically critiques and upends neoconservatism?
In actuality, as many have pointed out already, Bacevich is "anti-Bush" only insomuch as he
is anti-neoconservative. Bacevich openly states that he throws his full weight behind traditionally
conservative issues, like small government and lower taxes. Indeed, he is a devoutly religious
social conservative who himself severed twenty years in the Army officer corps. This is why his
exposee on America's new militarism has so much credibility.
Since he was in the military, he knows that sometimes the military is necessary to handle situations
that develop in the world. However he also understands that the military is often grossly unfit
to handle certain situations. This is the main theme of his book. At its core, the story is about
how, in response to Vietnam, military leaders worked frightfully hard to rebuild the military
and to limit the freedom of starry-eyed civilians to use the armed forces inappropriately.
Their most important objective was to ensure that no more Wilsonian misadventures (like Vietnam)
would happen. The officer corps did this by carving out a space of authority for the top brass,
from which they could have unprecedented input in policy decisions, and be able to guide strategy
and tactics once the military deployed into action. After ascending to a position of greater prominence,
they implemented the "Weinberger Doctrine," followed by the "Powell Doctrine," both specifically
tailored to avoid Vietnam-style quagmires. The Gulf War, claims Bacevich, saw the fruition of
fifteen years of hard work to accomplish these reforms. And they worked beautifully.
However, the end of the last decade saw the Neo-conservatives challenge the status quo. And
with the election of W. Bush, they were finally in a position where their ideas could again have
a disproportionate influence on foreign policy. What we now have in Iraq is another military quagmire,
where the solution must be political, but where military occupation renders political solutions
impossible.
This story is about how the military profession emerged from the post-Vietnam wilderness, dazzled
the world during the first Gulf War, then once again lost its independent ability to craft related
policies with the arrival of Rummie and the neocons.
It's a fascinating story, and Bacevich relates it skillfully.
Andrew S. Rogers:
Baedecker on the road to perdition, December 5, 2005
I was sorry to see Andrew J. Bacevich dismiss Chalmers Johnson's 2004
The Sorrows
of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
quite as quickly as he did (on page 3 of the introduction, in fact), because I think these two
books, taken together, provide probably the best -- and certainly the most historically-informed
-- look at the rise and consequences of American empire. I endorse "The New American Militarism"
as heartily as I did "The Sorrows of Empire."
Bacevich's capsule summary of Johnson's work notwithstanding, both these books take the long
view of America's international military presence and are quick to grasp one key point. As Bacevich
notes on page 205, "American militarism is not the invention of a cabal nursing fantasies of global
empire and manipulating an unsuspecting people frightened by the events of 9/11. Further, it is
counterproductive to think in these terms -- to assign culpability to a particular president or
administration and to imagine that throwing the bums out will put things right."
In several insightful chapters, Bacevich traces the rise of militarism over the course of several
administrations and many decades. A former Army officer himself, the author is particularly insightful
in charting the efforts of the military's officer corps to recover from the stigma of Vietnam
and reshape the *ethos* of the armed services as an elite intentionally separate from, and morally
superior to, the society it exists to defend. But the officers are only one of the strands Bacevich
weaves together. He also looks at the influence of the "defense intellectuals;" the importance
of evangelical Christians and how their view of Biblical prophecy shapes their understanding of
politics; the rise of (yes) the neo-conservatives; and even the role of Hollywood in changing
America's understandings of the "lessons of Vietnam" and the re-glamorization of the military
in films like "Top Gun."
The author is a sharp-eyed analyst, but also an engaging writer, and he gives the reader a
lot to think about. I was intrigued, for example, by his discussion of how "supporting the troops"
has become the *sine qua non* of modern politics and how doing so has replaced actual military
service as an indicator of one's love of country. More fundamentally, his identification and analysis
of "World War III" (already over) and "World War IV" (currently underway, and declared [surprisingly]
by Jimmy Carter) struck me as a remarkably useful lens for interpreting current events.
In tying his threads together, Bacevich is not afraid to make arguments and draw conclusions
that may make the reader uncomfortable. As the passage I quoted above makes clear, for example,
someone looking for a straightforward declaration that "It's all Bush's fault!" will have to go
someplace else. As a further implication of the above passage, Bacevich argues that the "defense
intellectuals," the evangelicals, and even the neocons were and are doing what they believe are
most likely to promote peace, freedom, and the security of the American people. "To the extent
that we may find fault with the results of their efforts, that fault is more appropriately attributable
to human fallibility than to malicious intent" (p. 207). Additionally, Bacevich is unashamed of
his military service, holds up several military leaders as heroes, has some choice words for the
self-delusions of leftist "peace activists," and even argues that federal education loans should
be made conditional on military service.
This doesn't mean the president and his fellow conservatives get off much easier, though. Bacevich
is roundly critical of Bush and his administration, including Colin Powell; dismisses the Iraq
invasion ("this preposterous enterprise" [p. 202]); and in a move that will probably get him crossed
off the Thayer Award nominations list, suggests officer candidates be required to graduate from
civilian universities instead of West Point (his alma mater) or Annapolis -- intellectually-isolated
institutions that reinforce the officer caste's separation from civil society.
So this book isn't one that will blindly reinforce anyone's prejudices. In part for that reason
-- but mostly for its trenchant analysis, readable prose, and broad historical view -- I'm happy
to list "The New American Militarism" as one of the best and most important books I've read in
some time. Perhaps even since "The Sorrows of Empire."
Izaak VanGaalen:
Militarism and Public Opinion, August 12, 2005
According to many of the custodians of public opinion, Andrew Bacevich has earned his right
to a fair hearing. Not only is he a graduate of West Point, a Vietnam veteran, and a conservative
Catholic, he is a professor of international relations and a contributor to "The Weekly Standard"
and "The National Review." Obviously, if he were a left-leaning anti-war Democrat and a contributor
to, say, "The Nation," he wouldn't be taken seriously as a critic of American militarism - he
would be merely another "blame-America-first" defeatist.
Bacevich sees militarism manifesting itself in some disquieting ways. Traditionally America
has always gauged the size of its military with the magnitude of impending threats. After the
Civil War, World War I and II, the military was downsized as threats receded. Not so after the
fall of the Soviet Union. The military budget has continued to grow and the expenditures are greater
- by some measures - than all other countries combined. American military forces are now scaling
the globe and the American public seems quiet comfortable with it. And everyone else is growing
uneasy.
The mindset of the current officer corps is dominant control in all areas "whether sea, undersea,
land, air, space or cyberspace." In other words, supremacy in all theaters. Self-restraint has
given way to the normalization of using military force as a foreign policy tool. From 1989 (Operation
Just Cause) to 2002 (Operation Iraqi Freedom) there have been nine major military operations and
a number of smaller ones. The end of the Cold War has given the US a preponderance of military
strength (the proverbial unipolar moment) that has enamoured successive administrations with the
idea of using military force to solve international problems. In earlier times, war was always
an option of the last resort, now it is a preventative measure.
War, according to Bacevich, has taken on a new aesthetic. During World War I and II, and also
Vietnam and Korea the battlefield was a slaughterhouse of barbarism and brutality. Now, with the
advent of the new Wilsonianism in Washington, wars are seen as moments of national unity to carry
out a positive agenda, almost as if it were international social work.
The modern soldier is no longer looked upon as a deadbeat or a grunt, but rather as a skilled
professional who is undertaking socially beneficial work. In fact, in a poll taken in 2003, military
personnel consider themselves as being of higher moral standards than the nation they serve.
In the political classes, the Republicans have traditionallly been staunchly pro-military,
but now even Democrats have thrown off their ant-military inclinations. When Kerry was running
for president he did not question Bush's security policies, he was actually arguing that Bush
had not gone far enough. Kerry wanted to invest more in military hardware and training. Even liberal
Michael Ignatieff argues that US military intervention should be used to lessen the plight of
the oppressed and that we should be assisting them in establishing more representative government.
But superpowers are not altruistic; they are only altruistic to the extent that it serves their
self-interest. That's probably why Ignatieff will not get much of a hearing and Bacevich will.
This book should give us pause as to why the range of opinion in the America on the use of military
force is so narrow. If there is one voice that stands a chance of being heeded, it is from this
conservative ex-soldier. \
Douglas Doepke:
The US may have been an expansionist and aggressive power as history shows. But unlike European
peers, the American public never really took to the seductions of militarism. That is, until now.
This is an important and occasionally brilliant book that tells a forty-year tale of creeping
over-reliance on the military. And a heck-of an important story it is. I like the way Bacevich
refuses to blame the Bush administration, even though they're the ones who've hit the accelerator.
Actually the trend has been in motion for some time, especially since 1980 and Reagan's revival
of military glory, contrived though it was.
Each chapter deals with an aspect of this growing militariism movement. How intellectual guru
Norman Podhoretz and other elites got the big engine together, how twenty million evangelical
passengers abandoned tradition and got on board, and how a crew of enthusiastic neo-cons charted
a destination -- nothing less than world democracy guaranteed by American military might. All
in all, the ride passes for a brilliant post-cold war move. Who's going to argue with freeing
up the Will of the People, except for maybe a few hundred million Sharia fanatics. Yet, it appears
none of the distinguished crew sees any contradiction between dubious means and noble end, nor
do they seem particularly concerned with what anybody else thinks. (Sort of like the old Soviets,
eager to spread the blessings of Scientific Socialism.) However, as Bacevich pounts out, there's
a practical problem here the crew is very alert to. Policing the world means building up the institutions
of the military and providing a covering mystique to keep John Q. Public supportive, especially
with tax dollars and blood supply. In short, the mission requires sanitizing the cops on the beat
and all that goes into keeping them there. It also means overcoming a long American tradition
of minding-one's-own-business and letting the virtues of democratic self-governance speak for
themselves. But then, that was an older, less "responsible" America.
Bacevich's remedies harken back to those older, quieter traditions -- citizen soldiers, a real
Department of Defense, a revived Department of State, and a much more modest role in international
affairs.With this book, Bacevich proves to be one of the few genuine conservatives around, (a
breed disappearing even faster than the ranks of genuine liberals). Much as I like the book, especially
the thoughtful Preface, I wish the author had dealt more with the economic aspects of build-up
and conquest. But then that might require a whole other volume, as globalization and the number
of billion-dollar servicing industries expands daily. At day's end, however, someone needs to
inform a CNN- enthralled public that the military express lacks one essential feature. With all
its hypnotizing bells and whistles, history shows the momentum has no brakes. Lessons from the
past indicate that, despite the many seductions, aggressive empires make for some very unexpected
and fast-moving train wrecks. Somebody needs to raise the alarm. Thanks Mr. Bacevich for doing
your part.
Still his critique of neocons is a class of its own has value in itself as it comes from professional
military officer. Professor Bacevich argues that the US new militarism which emerged after the
dissolution of the USSR is the result of a convergence of actions by a number of different groups including
our professional military, neoconservative intellectuals and publicists, evangelical Christians, resurgent
Republican party activists, and so-called defense intellectuals (see
New American Militarism).
Andrew Bacevich has a wonderful essay, in the form of an open letter to Paul Wolfowitz,
in the current
Harper's. You have to subscribe to read it -- but, hey, you should be
subscribing
to any publication whose work you value. This essay isolates the particular role Wolfowitz had in
the cast of characters that led us to war. As a reminder, they included:
Dick Cheney, who was becoming a comic-book churl by this stage of his public life;
Colin Powell, the loyal soldier, staffer, and diplomat whose "Powell Doctrine" and
entire life's work stood in opposition to the kind of war that he, with misguided loyalty, was
to play so central a role in selling;
Tony Blair, the crucial ally who added rhetorical polish and international resolve
to the case for war;
Donald Rumsfeld, with his breezy contempt for those who said the effort would be difficult
or long;
Paul Bremer, whose sudden, thoughtless dismantling of the Iraqi army proved so disastrous;
Condoleezza Rice, miscast in her role as White House national-security advisor;
George Tenet, the long-time staffer who cooperated with the "slam-dunk!" intelligence
assessment despite serious disagreement within the CIA;
and of course George W. Bush himself, whose combination of limited knowledge and strong
desire to be "decisive" made him so vulnerable to the argument that the "real" response to the
9/11 attacks should be invading a country that had nothing to do with them.
But Paul Wolfowitz was in a category of his own because he was the one who provided the
highest-concept rationale for the war. As James Galbraith of the University of Texas has put it,
"Wolfowitz is the real-life version of Halberstam's caricature of McNamara" [in The Best and the
Brightest].
Bacevich's version of this assessment is to lay out as respectfully as possible the strategic duty
that Wolfowitz thought the U.S. would fulfill by invading Iraq. Back before the war began, I did
a much more limited version of this assessment
as an Atlantic article. As Bacevich puts it now, Wolfowitz was extending precepts from
his one-time mentor, Albert
Wohlstetter, toward a model of how the United States could maximize stability for itself and
others.
As with the best argumentative essays, Bacevich takes on Wolfowitz in a strong rather than an oversimplified
version of his world-view. You have to read the whole thing to get the effect, but here is a brief
sample (within fair-use limits):
With the passing of the Cold War, global hegemony seemed America's for the taking. What others
saw as an option you, Paul, saw as something much more: an obligation that the nation needed to
seize, for its own good as well as for the world's....
Although none of the hijackers were Iraqi, within days of 9/11 you were promoting military
action against Iraq. Critics have chalked this up to your supposed obsession with Saddam. The
criticism is misplaced. The scale of your ambitions was vastly greater.
In an instant, you grasped that the attacks provided a fresh opportunity to implement Wohlstetter's
Precepts, and Iraq offered a made-to-order venue....In Iraq the United States would demonstrate
the efficacy of preventive war.... The urgency of invading Iraq stemmed from the need to validate
that doctrine before the window of opportunity closed.
Bacevich explains much more about the Wohlstetter / Wolfowitz grand view. And then he poses the challenge
that he says Wolfowitz should now meet:
One of the questions emerging from the Iraq debacle must be this one: Why did liberation at gunpoint
yield results that differed so radically from what the war's advocates had expected? Or, to sharpen
the point, How did preventive war undertaken by ostensibly the strongest military in history
produce a cataclysm?
Not one of your colleagues from the Bush Administration possesses the necessary combination
of honesty, courage, and wit to answer these questions. If you don't believe me, please sample
the tediously self-exculpatory memoirs penned by (or on behalf of) Bush himself, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Rice, Tenet, Bremer, Feith, and a small squad of eminently forgettable generals...
What would Albert [Wohlstetter] do? I never met the man (he died in 1997), but my guess is
that he wouldn't flinch from taking on these questions, even if the answers threatened to contradict
his own long-held beliefs. Neither should you, Paul. To be sure, whatever you might choose to
say, you'll be vilified, as Robert McNamara was vilified when he broke his long silence and admitted
that he'd been "wrong, terribly wrong" about Vietnam. But help us learn the lessons of Iraq so
that we might extract from it something of value in return for all the sacrifices made there.
Forgive me for saying so, but you owe it to your country.
Anyone who knows Andrew Bacevich's story will understand the edge behind his final sentence. But
you don't have to know that to respect the challenge he lays down. I hope Paul Wolfowitz will at
some point rise to it.
For another very valuable assessment of who was right and wrong, when, please see
John Judis's piece in The New Republic.
Obama was a neocon, Trump is a neocon. what's new ?
Chinese leaders appeared to be acting on the advice of the 6th century BC philosopher and general Sun Tzu, who wrote in The Art
of War, "there is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare."
Candidate Trump railed against the invasion of Iraq during his campaign, at one point blaming George W. Bush directly and saying,
"we should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East." As president-elect, Trump continued to promise a very
different foreign policy, one that would "stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be
involved with."
The election of Donald Trump gave the international community pause: Trump appeared unpredictable, eschewed tradition, and flouted
convention. He might well have followed through on his promise to move the U.S. away from its long embrace of forever war. China's
government in particular must have worried about such a move. If the U.S. focused on its internal problems and instead pursued a
restrained foreign policy that was constructive rather than destructive, it might pose more of an impediment to China's rise to global
power status.
But the Chinese need not have worried. With a continued troop presence in Afghanistan and Syria, a looming conflict with Iran,
and even talk of an intervention in Venezuela, Trump is keeping the U.S. on its perpetual wartime footing.
This is good news for Beijing, whose own foreign policy could not be more different. Rather than embracing a reactive and short-sighted
approach that all too often ignores second- and third-order consequences, the Chinese strategy appears cautious and long-ranging.
Its policymakers and technocrats think and plan in terms of decades, not months. And those plans, for now, are focused more on building
than bombing.
This is not to say that China's foreign policy is altruistic-it is certainly not. It is designed to cement China's role as a great
power by ensnaring as many countries as possible in its economic web. China is playing the long game while Washington expends resources
and global political capital on wars it cannot win. America's devotion to intervention is sowing the seeds of its own demise and
China will be the chief beneficiary.
So intelligence agencies are now charged with protection of elections from undesirable candidates; looks like a feature of neofascism...
Notable quotes:
"... The Department of Justice admitted in a Friday court filing that the FBI used more than one "Confidential Human Source," (also known as informants, or spies ) to infiltrate the Trump campaign through former adviser Carter Page, reports the Daily Caller ..."
"... Included in Hardy's declaration is an acknowledgement that the FBI's spies were in addition to the UK's Christopher Steele - a former MI6 operative who assembled the controversial and largely unproven "Steel Dossier" which the DOJ/FBI used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Page. ..."
"... In addition to Steele, the FBI also employed 73-year-old University of Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, a US citizen, political veteran and longtime US Intelligence asset enlisted by the FBI to befriend and spy on three members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election . Halper received over $1 million in contracts from the Pentagon during the Obama years, however nearly half of that coincided with the 2016 US election. ..."
"... In short, the FBI's acknowledgement that they used multiple spies reinforces Stone's assertion that he was targeted by one. ..."
"... Stefan Halper's infiltration of the Trump campaign corresponds with the two of the four targets of the FBI's Operation Crossfire Hurricane - in which the agency sent former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and others to a London meeting in the Summer of 2016 with former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer - who says Papadopoulos drunkenly admitted to knowing that the Russians had Hillary Clinton's emails. ..."
"... Interestingly Downer - the source of the Papadopoulos intel, and Halper - who conned Papadopoulos months later, are linked through UK-based Haklyut & Co. an opposition research and intelligence firm similar to Fusion GPS - founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums ..."
"... Downer - a good friend of the Clintons, has been on their advisory board for a decade, while Halper is connected to Hakluyt through Director of U.S. operations Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books. (h/t themarketswork.com ) ..."
The Department of Justice admitted in a
Friday court filing that the FBI used
more than one "Confidential Human Source," (also known as informants, or spies ) to infiltrate the Trump campaign through former
adviser Carter Page, reports the Daily Caller
.
"The FBI has protected information that would identify the identities of other confidential sources who provided information or
intelligence to the FBI" as well as "information provided by those sources," wrote David M. Hardy, the head of the FBI's Record/Information
Dissemination Section (RIDS), in court
papers submitted Friday.
Hardy and Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys submitted the filings in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
for the FBI's four applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Page. The DOJ released heavily
redacted copies of the four FISA warrant applications on June 20, but USA Today reporter Brad Heath has sued for full copies of
the documents. - Daily Caller
Included in Hardy's declaration is an acknowledgement that the FBI's spies were in addition to the UK's Christopher Steele
- a former MI6 operative who assembled the controversial and largely unproven "Steel Dossier" which the DOJ/FBI used to obtain a
FISA warrant to spy on Page.
The DOJ says it redacted information in order to protect the identity of their confidential sources, which "includes nonpublic
information about and provided by Christopher Steele," reads the filing, " as well as information about and provided by other confidential
sources , all of whom were provided express assurances of confidentiality."
Government lawyers said the payment information is being withheld because disclosing specific payment amounts and dates could
"suggest the relative volume of information provided by a particular CHS. " That disclosure could potentially tip the source's
targets off and allow them to "take countermeasures, destroy or fabricate evidence, or otherwise act in a way to thwart the FBI's
activities." - Daily Caller
Steele, referred to as Source #1, met with several DOJ / FBI officials during the 2016 campaign, including husband and wife team
Bruce and Nellie Ohr. Bruce was the #4 official at the DOJ, while his CIA-linked wife Nellie was hired by Fusion GPS - who also employed
Steele, in the anti-Trump opposition research / counterintelligence effort funded by Trump's opponents, Hillary Clinton and the DNC.
In addition to Steele, the FBI also employed 73-year-old University of Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, a US citizen, political
veteran and longtime US Intelligence asset enlisted by the FBI to befriend and spy on three members of the Trump campaign during
the 2016 US election . Halper received over $1 million in contracts from the Pentagon during the Obama years, however nearly half
of that coincided with the 2016 US election.
Stefan Halper
Halper's involvement first came to light after the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross reported on his involvement with Carter Page and
George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign aide. Ross's reporting was confirmed by the NYT and WaPo .
In June, Trump campaign aides Roger Stone and Michael Caputo claimed that a meeting Stone took in late May, 2016 with a Russian
appears to have been an " FBI sting operation " in hindsight, following
bombshell reports in May
that the DOJ/FBI used a longtime FBI/CIA asset, Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, to perform espionage on the Trump campaign.
Roger Stone
When Stone arrived at the restaurant in Sunny Isles, he said, Greenberg was wearing a Make America Great Again T-shirt and
hat. On his phone, Greenberg pulled up a photo of himself with Trump at a rally, Stone said. -
WaPo
The meeting went nowhere - ending after Stone told Greenberg " You don't understand Donald Trump... He doesn't pay for anything
." The Post independently confirmed this account with Greenberg.
After the meeting, Stone received a text message from Caputo - a Trump campaign communications official who arranged the meeting
after Greenberg approached Caputo's Russian-immigrant business partner.
" How crazy is the Russian? " Caputo wrote according to a text message reviewed by The Post. Noting that Greenberg wanted "big"
money, Stone replied: "waste of time." -
WaPo
In short, the FBI's acknowledgement that they used multiple spies reinforces Stone's assertion that he was targeted by one.
Further down the rabbit hole
Stefan Halper's infiltration of the Trump campaign corresponds with the two of the four targets of the FBI's Operation Crossfire
Hurricane - in which the agency sent former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and others to a London meeting in the Summer of
2016 with former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer - who says Papadopoulos drunkenly admitted to knowing that the Russians had
Hillary Clinton's emails.
Interestingly Downer - the source of the Papadopoulos intel, and Halper - who conned Papadopoulos months later, are linked
through
UK-based Haklyut & Co. an opposition research and intelligence firm similar to Fusion GPS - founded by three former British intelligence
operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations
pay huge sums .
Alexander Downer
Downer - a good friend of the Clintons, has been on their advisory board for a decade, while Halper is connected to Hakluyt
through Director of U.S. operations Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has
co-authored two books. (h/t
themarketswork.com )
Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to the U.K. Downer said that in May 2016, Papadopoulos told him during a
conversation in London about Russians having Clinton emails.
That information was passed to other Australian government officials before making its way to U.S. officials. FBI agents flew
to London a day after "Crossfire Hurricane" started in order to interview Downer.
It is still not known what Downer says about his interaction with Papadopoulos, which TheDCNF is told occurred around May 10,
2016.
Also interesting via
Lifezette - " Downer is not the only Clinton fan in Hakluyt. Federal contribution records show several of the firm's U.S. representatives
made large contributions to two of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign organizations ."
Halper contacted Papadopoulos on September 2, 2016 according to The Caller - flying him out to London to work on a policy paper
on energy issues in Turkey, Cyprus and Israel - for which he was ultimately paid $3,000. Papadopoulos met Halper several times during
his stay, "having dinner one night at the Travellers Club, and Old London gentleman's club frequented by international diplomats."
They were accompanied by Halper's assistant, a Turkish woman named Azra Turk. Sources familiar with Papadopoulos's claims about
his trip say Turk flirted with him during their encounters and later on in email exchanges .
...
Emails were also brought up during Papadopoulos's meetings with Halper , though not by the Trump associate, according to sources
familiar with his version of events. T he sources say that during conversation, Halper randomly brought up Russians and emails.
Papadopoulos has told people close to him that he grew suspicious of Halper because of the remark. -
Daily Caller
Meanwhile, Halper targeted Carter Page two days after Page returned from a trip to Moscow.
Page's visit to Moscow, where he spoke at the New Economic School on July 8, 2016, is said to have piqued the FBI's interest
even further . Page and Halper spoke on the sidelines of an election-themed symposium held at Cambridge days later. Former Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6 and a close colleague of Halper's, spoke at the event.
...
Page would enter the media spotlight in September 2016 after Yahoo! News reported that the FBI was investigating whether he
met with two Kremlin insiders during that Moscow trip.
It would later be revealed that the Yahoo! article was based on unverified information from Christopher Steele, the former
British spy who wrote the dossier regarding the Trump campaign . Steele's report, which was funded by Democrats, also claimed
Page worked with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on the collusion conspiracy. -
Daily Caller
A third target of Halper's was Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis, whose name was revealed by the Washington Post on Friday.
In late August 2016, the professor reached out to Clovis, asking if they could meet somewhere in the Washington area, according
to Clovis's attorney, Victoria Toensing.
"He said he wanted to be helpful to the campaign" and lend the Trump team his foreign-policy experience, Toensing said.
Clovis, an Iowa political figure and former Air Force officer, met the source and chatted briefly with him over coffee, on
either Aug. 31 or Sept. 1, at a hotel cafe in Crystal City, she said. Most of the discussion involved him asking Clovis his views
on China.
"It was two academics discussing China," Toensing said. " Russia never came up. " -
WaPo
Meanwhile, Bruce Ohr is still employed by the Department of Justice, and Fusion GPS continues its hunt for Trump dirt after having
partnered with former Feinstein aide and ex-FBI counterintelligence agent, Dan Jones.
It's been nearly three years since an army of professional spies was unleashed on Trump - and he's still the President, Steele
and Downer notwithstanding.
"... Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation. ..."
"... This article was originally published by The Nation . ..."
There have been plenty of purely criminal and commercial " rogue " operations by
intelligence agents in history, but also " rogue " ones that were purposefully
political. We know, for example, that both Soviet and US intelligence agencies - or groups of
agents - tried to disrupt the Eisenhower-Khrushchev détente of the late 1950s and early
1960s, and that some intelligence players tried to stop Khrushchev's formal recognition of West
Germany, also in the early 1960s.
It is reasonable to ask, therefore, whether the attacks on Skripal and Khashoggi were "
rogue " operations undertaken by political opponents of the leaders' policies at home
or abroad, with the help of one or another intelligence agency or agents. Motive is a - perhaps
the - crucial question. Why would Putin order such an operation in the UK at the very
moment when his government had undertaken a major Western public-relations campaign in
connection with the upcoming World Cup championship in Russia? And why would MbS risk a
Khashoggi scandal as he was assiduously promoting his image abroad as an enlightened
reform-minded Saudi leader?
We lack the evidence and official candor needed to study these questions, as is usually the
case with covert, secretive, disinforming intelligence operations. But the questions are
certainly reason enough not to rush to judgment, as many US pundits do. Saying " we do not
know " may be unmarketable in today's mass-media environment, but it is honest and the
right approach to potentially fruitful " analysis. "
2. We do know, however, that there has been fierce opposition in the US political-media
establishment to President Trump's policy of " cooperating with Russia ," including in
US intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and FBI - and at high levels of his own
administration.
We might consider Nikki Haley's resignation as UN ambassador in this light. Despite the
laurels heaped on her by anti-Trump media, and by Trump himself at their happy-hour farewell in
the White House, Haley was not widely admired by her UN colleagues. When appointed for
political reasons by Trump, she had no foreign-policy credentials or any expert knowledge of
other countries or of international relations generally. Judging by her performance as
ambassador, nor did she acquire much on the job, almost always reading even short comments from
prepared texts.
More to the point, Haley's statements regarding Russia at the UN were, more often than not,
dissimilar from Trump's -- indeed, implicitly in opposition to Trump's. (She did nothing, for
example, to offset charges in Washington that Trump's summit meeting with Putin in Helsinki, in
July, had been " treasonous .") Who wrote these statements for her, which were very
similar to statements regarding Russia that have been issued by US intelligence agencies since
early 2017? It is hard to imagine that Trump was unhappy to see her go, and easier to imagine
him pushing her toward the exit. A president needs a loyalist as secretary of state and at the
UN. Haley's pandering remarks at the White House about Trump's family suggests some deal had
been made to ease her out, with non-recrimination promises made on both sides. We will see if
opponents of Trump's Russia policy can put another spokesperson at the UN.
As to which aspects of US foreign policy Trump actually controls, we might ask more urgently
if he authorized, or was fully informed about, the joint US-NATO-Ukraine military air exercises
that got under way over Ukraine, abutting Russia, on October 8. Moscow regards these exercises
as a major " provocation ," and not unreasonably.
3. What do Trump's opponents want instead of " cooperation with Russia "? A much
harder line, including more " crushing " economic sanctions. Sanctions are more like
temper tantrums and road rage than actual national-security policy, and thus are often
counterproductive. We have some recent evidence. Russia's trade surplus has grown to more than
$100 billion. World prices for Russia's primary exports, oil and gas, have grown to over $80 a
unit while Moscow's federal budget is predicated on $53 a barrel. Promoters of anti-Russian
sanctions gloat that they have weakened the ruble. But while imposing some hardships on
ordinary citizens, the combination of high oil prices and a weaker ruble is ideal for Russian
state and corporate exporters. They sell abroad for inflated foreign currency and pay their
operating expenses at home in cheaper rubles. To risk a pun, they are " crushing it.
"
Congressional sanctions - for exactly what is not always clear - have helped Putin in
another way. For years, he has unsuccessfully tried to get " oligarchs " to repatriate
their wealth abroad. US sanctions on various " oligarchs " have persuaded them and
others to begin to do so, perhaps bringing back home as much as $90 billion already in
2018.
If nothing else, these new budgetary cash flows help Putin deal with his declining
popularity at home - he still has an approval rating well above 60 percent - due to the
Kremlin's decision to raise the pension age for men and women, from 60 to 65 and from 55 to 60
respectively. The Kremlin can use the additional revenue to increase the value of pensions,
supplement them with other social benefits, or to enact the age change over a longer period of
time.
It appears that Congress, particularly the Senate, has no Russia policy other than
sanctions. It might think hard about finding alternatives. One way to start would be with real
" hearings " in place of the ritualistic affirmation of orthodox policy by "
experts " that has long been its practice. There are more than a few actual
specialists out there who think different approaches to Moscow are long overdue.
4. All of these dangerous developments, indeed the new US-Russian Cold War itself, are elite
projects -- political, media, intelligence, etc. Voters were never really consulted. Nor do
they seem to approve. In August, Gallup asked its usual sample of Americans which policy toward
Russia they preferred. Fifty-eight percent wanted improved relations vs. only 36 percent who
wanted a tougher US policy with more sanctions. (Meanwhile, two-thirds of Russians surveyed by
an independent agency now see the United States as their country's number-one enemy, and about
three-fourths view China favorably.)
Will any of the US political figures already jockeying for the Democratic presidential
nomination in 2020 take these realities into account?
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York
University and Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation.
This article was originally published by The
Nation .
UK politicians in Skripal story behaved by cheap clowns. Their story with door knob was pathetic. They tried to invent
the legend with poisoning on the fly and that shows. There is definitely something else brewing here and Shamir proposed his
version with Skripal double dealings or something along those line is quite plausible.
We will never know, but I think British discredited themselves for the whole world in this story. Trump was not better will
using this tory to impose additional sanctions on Russia. This is just another proof that he is another neocon who during election
campaign like Obama played the role of isolationalist and then appointed Haley to UN and hired Pompeo as his Secretary of
state and Bolton as his security advisor -- a typical "bat and switch" operation in US politics.
Notable quotes:
"... Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly. ..."
"... As we had learned from videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home. ..."
"... There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan Bandera was. ..."
"... However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services. ..."
"... Such a massive operation against Russian agents and their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal their full knowledge of enemy agents. ..."
"... I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director and actors. ..."
Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that
GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly
matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr
Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the
secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps
he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly.
Two GRU agents, supposedly experts on extraction (they allegedly sneaked the Ukrainian
president Yanukovych from Ukraine after the coup and saved him from lynching mob) were sent to
Salisbury to test the ground and make preparations for Skripal's return. As we had learned from
videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the
beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his
daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home.
There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually
been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if
the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan
Bandera was.
However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to
expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive
expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services.
Still, the Russians had no clue how the West had learned identities of so many diplomats
connected to GRU. They suspected that there was a mole, and a turncoat who delivered the stuff
to the enemy.
That is why Vladimir Putin decided to dare them. As he knew that the two men identified by
the British service had no connection to the alleged poisoning, he asked them to appear on the
RT in an interview with Ms Simonyan. By acting as village hicks, they were supposed to provoke
the enemy to disclose its source. The result was unexpected: instead of revealing the name of a
turncoat, the Belling Cat, a site used by the Western Secret Services for intentional leaks,
explained how the men were traced by using the stolen databases. Putin's plan misfired.
The Russian secret service is not dead. Intelligence services do suffer from enemy action
from time to time: the Cambridge Five infiltrated the upper reaches of the MI-5 and delivered
state secrets to Moscow for a long time, but the Intelligence Service survived. Le Carre's
novels were based on such a defeat of the intelligence. However they have a way to recover.
Identity of their top agents remain secret, and they are concealed from the enemy's eyes.
But in order to function properly, the Russians will have to clean their stables, remove
their databases from the market place and keep its citizenry reasonably safe. Lax, and
not-up-to-date agents do not apparently understand the degree the internet is being watched.
Considering it should have been done twenty years ago, and meanwhile a new generation of
Russians has came of age, perfectly prepared to sell whatever they can for cash, it is a
formidable task.
There is an additional reason to worry. Such a massive operation against Russian agents and
their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal
their full knowledge of enemy agents. It made president Putin worry; and he said this week: we'll
go to heaven as martyrs, the attackers will die as sinners. In face of multiple and recent
threats, this end of the world is quite possible.
Great story. If told many people would believe it. But now it is kind of late. So why it
wasn't told within few days or weeks of Skripal affair? Why it is the British media that has
initiative and Russian media is reactive and defensive? The story that Skripal wanted to
return and that two agents were lured in there should have been told right away and that it
turned out be MI5 provocation should have been insinuated. And the two agents should have
been interviewed on Russian media. Instead we get defensive inept and indolent Russian
reactions.
I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never
know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people
like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director
and actors.
@utu " Instead we get
defensive inept and indolent Russian reactions."
The reaction 'if we want to kill somebody that somebody does not survive' I cannot see as
inept and indolent.
Excellent piece by Israel Shamir which I think gives the correct explanation of the Skripal
poisoning. This was a classic fishing, 'click bait' operation which produced a very valuable
haul for Western Intelligence. The only question is whether Skripal cooperated with it
– which I think he did – not knowing that both he and his daughter were meant to
die. Hence Putin's rage against Skripal a few weeks ago ( calling him a scumbag traitor etc,
etc) after the Russian operatives were identified because retired agents are supposed to stay
retired.
Russia made a very serious mistake with the RT interview with the 2 operatives. Better not
to say anything if you can't give the whole story. The GU weren't happy to show their
incompetence, but compounded the original mistake with obvious lying. That was a propaganda
gift to the Western media and has helped convince original disbelievers of Russian
perfidy.
Russia needs to step up its game especially in the media dept.
@Anatoly Karlin " British
or American human capital, but there are certainly consummate professionals relative to what
passes for today's Russian intelligence services. "
On what this 'certainly' is based, I see no argument whatsoever.
Already a long time ago, I must admit, the CIA director had to admit to senator Moynihan that
he had lied about the CIA not laying mines in Havana harbour.
A professional in espionage does not get caught.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 'Secrecy', New Haven 1998
Anyone acquinted with Sept 11 understands that the USA's secret army, the CIA, was
involved.
Another blunder.
As far as I know British secret services never get caught.
How clever the Russians are, suppose quite clever, I for one do not think that the stupid
stories about for example Skripal have any truth in them.
Until now the asserted Russian meddling in USA elections have not been proved.
Do not know of anything credible that Russian intelligence people are said to have done.
But of course Russian intelligence does exist.
"A related problem is that since there is now a free market economy, with many more
attractive career options for talented people, the high quality people go to work in other
spheres, leaving the intelligence agencies with the dregs;" .
A direct result of erasing ideology so as to erase personality cult towards highly
respected people in former USSR .When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with
your opponent, i.e free market .) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific
human capital to secret service officials, are out there in the global market for possible
selling to the best postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said,
almost everybody has a price .The challenge is finding out where that little bunch who have
not are ..Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little"
advantage How to overcome this would be part of "what is to be done" ..
If the Russians wanted to kill them they would be dead. Period. It is all FN hoax.
The latest English came up with was that poison was smeared on the door handle and that both
touched the door handle. Give me a break. Such a idiocy. Just imagine the exit procedure
where both are touching the door knob.
And than both Russians went to garbage dump carrying the little bottle and thru it there.
What an exemplary citizen neat behavior by Russians,
All English story is such a stupid idiocy that it turns my stomach.
However, the presence of Russian spies in Salisbury can be explained by its nearness to
Porton Down, the secret British chemical lab and factory for manufacturing chemical weapons
applied by the White Helmets in Syria in their false-flag operation in Douma and other
places. It is possible that a resident of Salisbury (Mr Skripal?) had delivered samples
from Porton Down to the Russian intelligence agents. This makes much more sense than the
dubious story of Russians trying to poison an old ex-spy who did his stretch in a Russian
jail.
If Mr. Skripal has been poisoned by the stuff of which he himself took samples in Porton
Down, this would run completely parallel to the earlier poisoning of Mr. Alexander
Valterovich Litvinenko, who also became ill because of carrying poison (polonium) around.
If [Yulia Skripal] had not had the courage to make this call while slipping the
observance of British intelligence, she would probably be dead by now.
Both Skripals are most likely DEAD, murdered by British "intelligence"
services.
The formulaic and curiously uninterested treatment of the matter in the British media
seems inconsistent with the Skripals still being alive.
The article above suggests that the Skripals were unwitting or witting participants in a
sting to expose Russian intelligence agents. More importantly, Sergey Skripal appears to have
had a role in the creation of the DNC's "dossier" to undermine the Trump presidencey.
Whatever the background, Sergey Skripal became privy to important secrets that the Brits
and their seditious allies in the U.S. Deep State do not want exposed.
In the Skripal case the British have not explained why, after claiming to have found the
closest approach to a smoking gun in the form of traces of novichok in that hotel room, the
hotel was not then immediately quarantined.
And assuredly, with Putin's name on the line, the Russians have to do a better job if they
are to refute the standing accusations – the RT interview was something of a PR
disaster.
The Belloncat data, although superficially convincing, could so easily have been faked by
anybody with reasonable knowledge of Russian internet infrastructure and some proficiency in
Photoshop.
But I did not know about these massive intelligence security breaches in Russia. Wow,
that's huge. Even though it's not clear to me how this indicates Putin's plan misfired. If
anything he got exactly what he wanted: confirmation that the "West" had access to the entire
passport database. Knowing what your enemy has in intelligence is a huge win, now they can
work on correcting it (hard as it may be, it would be impossible without knowing).
But the fact is Russia has not really disputed the results so I am fairly confident that
not only was Belling Cat right, but Israel is right, and now we have the situation where
Russia knows that Western intelligence has full access to Russia's passport database.
@Tyrion 2 Had some
experiences with Chinese and Mossad spies, not to mention Russian Jewish hard-drug dealers.
Here are a few examples.
There was an AMES postdoc at UCSD, a Chinese applied-math brain who had a 10-plus female
handler. She'd stop by occasionally to check up on him. He always get extremely anxious when
she was around. Couldn't figure out if it was fear, sexual excitement, or a combination of
both.
There was an old Chinese man and his foxy young female protege, who enjoyed filming U.S.
military maneuvers along the San Diego coast. I observed their operation for days.
There was a swing-shift cleaning crew in a Southern California high-tech mfg facility that
was all Chinese, in an area that typically employed Latin American crews. Its head honcho was
a beautiful Chinese lady. They made it their job to sort through trash bins and save papers.
The feds busted them.
As far as the Mossad, I spent two years on a rental property in SD county, which was
occupied by them as well. Mostly Israeli kids using the property and a local Israeli-owned
vegetarian restaurant as their "scorpion den." Got fairly familiar with some of their
espionage work and methods.
I don't go looking for this stuff. I'm just able to recognize it. As an empath I can read
people, quite well. It's a natural gift.
Can't stomach Israel's insensitive nature. That's why you'll typically find me pointing
out their self-serving bullshit.
This is a pretty good article but also falls on its face at the end
Mr Shamir's 'inside' information confirms my own take on Petrov and Boshirov which I
published a few days after that RT interview with Ms Simonyan
I wrote this on Col Lang's blog on Sept 14
'Yeah those two 'tourists' do look the part don't they I would say they are probably GRU
or something similar but nobody 'poisoned' the Skripals that's total kabuki theater another
Potemkin village production from the reality masters
Something is afoot here though perhaps these two were lured to Salisbury as part of a
frame up plot, perhaps by Skripal himself or perhaps the Brits caught wind of their plans
to visit [on some standard spying mission, certainly not assassination] and put in motion
the elaborate hoax
Everybody there protested loudly including Andrey Martyanov [Smoothie] I also added
this
' I disagree with everyone here it seems these guys aren't tourists but they also didn't
try to kill anyone that's stupid
It's some sort of spy game
Here's one scenario double agent Skripal makes convincing noises about flipping back
someone at GRU [or some similar outfit] sends these two to Salisbury to check it out a very
stupid move which is why Putin is now miffed enough to display these guys publicly and
their field career surely over also a slap in the face to the silly Limeys for playing
dirty pool even in the cloak and dagger game there are unwritten rules '
This is now exactly the story that Mr Shamir is presenting here but he is a day late and a
dollar short
I also don't agree with his take that this is all somehow a big loss for Russian intel the
Brits are the ones who have painted themselves in a corner their Skripal story is a wet paper
bag waiting to fall apart the fact that they lured the Russians to Salisbury, under whatever
pretext, be it Skripal or Porton Down/white helmets etc was their only small tactical victory
because they could then later expose those two after months of Russian denials in order to
show the Russians were in fact somehow involved
But that exposure came months later all that time the Russians would have known that
Boshirov and Petrov had been captured on candid camera and would have had time to work on
their countermove
Mr Shamir writes this like the game is over that is ridiculous the Brits have no way out
of the Skripal hoax there was never any poisoning the original diagnosis of the Skripals in
the Salisbury hospital was opioid overdose that came out in the first BBC interview with the
hospital staff months after the 'poisoning'
It was not until 48 hours after the Skripals were admitted to hospital and the convenient
intervention of Porton Down that the medical diagnosis was 'changed' to nerve agent
poisoning
BUT this is an unsustainable story that WILL FALL APART the simple reason is medical and
chemical fact both nerve agents and agricultural pesticides are based on the exact
same chemical compound organophosphates
'There are nearly 3 million poisonings per year resulting in two hundred thousand
deaths.'
That is the simple reason why emergency doctors EVERYWHERE are trained to recognize and
treat this kind of poisoning especially in rural, agricultural areas like
Salisbury
That is why it took months for media to gain access to the medical staff at that hospital
the British spooks needed to do a lot of 'persuading' with medical professionals that would
have wanted no part in such trickery and fakery
But this is a ticking time bomb that is bound to blow up in the faces of the very stupid
Brits
So yes they pulled off a minor coup in luring those two to Salisbury but the game is very
very far from over
As for Skripal he is in on it for sure as I speculated in my original comment on the
matter..the Russian intel services are perfectly aware of this, yet Mr Shamir's supposedly
well connected source has zero knowledge of this which tells me this source is actually a
useless clown who 'knows' exactly what an internet commenter [myself] already knew two months
ago
PS the fact that the Brits supposedly have all kinds of database info on the Russian intel
apparatus and personnel files etc doesn't mean anything the author is a making a big deal out
of this, but his story lacks meat on its bones most 'intel' is open source material
anyway
As for sensitive stuff that may have been 'sold' by 'corrupt' bureaucrats one must ask if
such 'info' is actually real or a clever plant providing fake info is the oldest spy trick in
the book and this article simply takes for granted that such a trick would not have been
employed why not ?
@FB How would a fake
database leak include the real data on the two GRU agents that just happened to be sent to
UK? Maybe it was to make the data leak seem real?
In spycraft it is always impossible to know how deep the deception goes. That's why the
very article to which you are responding started with:
It is hard to evaluate the exact measure of things in the murky world of spies and
counter-spies, but it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the
subterranean battle.
I think that a clear strategy by the western "intelligence" services is starting to emerge
vis-a-vis the Russians. By accusing any Russian that they can get their hands on, of being a
spy, they want to scare the ordinary Russians from visiting the west, so afterwards any
Russian actually caught traveling to the west can be safely assumed to be a spy – since
by the calculations of the clever western intelligence – only someone who is actually a
spy while at the same time being Russian, would dare to travel to the west. How smart is
that?
Joking aside, it really is becoming unsafe for Russian nationals to travel to the west.
Even though the west reserves the generosity of calling somebody equal only for those that
are from the 3rd world – Russians clearly don't deserve such generosity.
Despite this, exceptions can be made and some unfortunate Russian soul could be accused of
being equal with those highly evolved westerners and against their will can be offered
protection from Mother Russia.
Pretty much like it happened to Yulia Skripal. She was only visiting her gastarbeiter
father in GB, who apparently expressed desire to return to Russia, against pretty much
everybody's wishes, and all of a sudden Yulia Skripal found herself bestowed with the western
generosity of being declared equal, and was disappeared from public eye in order to protect
her from those with whom she is clearly not equal – the Russians.
Thank God at least MI-6 proved equal to the task and discovered her equalness in a nick of
time and saved her. The moral of the story: Only democracy has the power to recognize who is
equal and who is not. Then, on the other hand, capitalism can keep acquiring new monikers
such as "democracy" – all they want, Russia still has better quality of equality,
despite ditching socialism.
@CalDre Yes I 'stubbornly'
refuse to take at face value this silly statement
it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the subterranean
battle.'
Because it's not backed up by anything other than hot air as for that supposed 'data'
about Petrov and Boshirov
that was put out by Bellingcat
Ie mickey mouse stuff as with everything these clowns do, it is meant only to bamboozle
the most utterly stupid bipeds
A very nice clue is the fact that a Russian website called 'The Insider' is Bellingcat's
acknowledged partner here
If you read the article in English they claim to have 'dug' up a lot of info from various
sources such the central Russian resident database and passenger check in data for their
flight to the UK
Big deal that Shamir is building a mountain out of a molehill is more than clear
In fact this entire Shamir tale appears to have one subtle purpose to publicize and
glorify the Bellingcat outfit
which irredeemably lost any credibility a few weeks back when illiterate poofter Eliott
Higgins refused a debate challenge by the distinguished MIT physicist and former presidential
advisor Ted Postol actually calling Postol an 'idiot' a move that astounded even those
willing to entertain Higgins on a semi-credible level
@Anatoly Karlin Be that as
it may, the "Western side" had (publicly known) Aldrich, Hanssen and Benghazi fiasco.
Boils down to, from the comment below:
When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with your opponent, i.e free market
.) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific human capital to secret
service officials, are out there in the global market for possible selling to the best
postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said, almost everybody has
a price..
and
Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little"
advantage.
And, on top of it, in West, since the fall of The Wall, we've been having "Cooking the
Intelligence to Fit the Political Agenda".
This commenter begs to differ with M. Karlin's assessment (8) of the relative competence of
Russian sovok and CIA. "consummate professionals relative to what passes for today's Russian
intelligence services"? Mais non.
CIA always gets caught. All they do is step on their crank, again and again. They depend
not on professionalism but on what Russ Baker describes as a strange mix of ruthlessness and
ineptitude. Both stem from impunity in municipal law.
For example: CIA torture and coercive interference got comprehensively exposed, worldwide,
in the '70s. What happened? Don Gregg gave the Church and Pike committees an ultimatum: Back
off or it's martial law. CIA got busted again in the '80s for the criminal enterprises under
the Iran/Contra rubric. By then CIA had installed Tom Polgar, Former Saigon Station Chief, as
chief investigator for the cognizant Senate Select committee, and Polgar assured Gregg that
his hearings would not be a repeat of the abortive Pike and Church flaps.
So CIA are clowns. They can afford to be clowns because they know they can get away with
it. Getting away with it is their only skill, and the only skill they need.
The persistent category error at this site is failing to realize that CIA is the state.
They rule the USA.
If you are finding your way out of the dark forest of propaganda there are two speeches by
Putin that I point people toward. First, at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Video
here : Transcript
here
Second, at the UN General Assembly September 2015, Video here : Transcript here .
I fail to see how any rational person could disagree with the sentiments he expresses.
Warning! You may become a Putin-bot!
The governor General Abdul Raziq, the police chief and the intelligence chief of Kandahar
have all been killed today. Bodyguards turned their guns on them. Two U.S. soldiers were
wounded. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan was present but not hurt.
Raziq was a brut, thief, killer, drug baron and the CIA's man in Kandahar.
In 2011 Matthieu Atkins portrait him:
Our Man in Kandahar Abdul Raziq and his men have received millions of dollars' worth of U.S. training and
equipment to help in the fight against the Taliban. But is our ally -- long alleged to be
involved in corruption and drug smuggling -- also guilty of mass murder?
The United States, specifically Cheney and Petraeus and Rodham, imposed the Imperial
Executor form of Federalist government upon a people who were a well-organized heirarchical
society while William the Conqueror was still head chopping Anglo-Saxons in bear skins.
Cheny wrote the Afghan petroleum and strategic resources laws *in English* at the
beginning of the 2001 invasion. The US imposed a new flag, a new pledge of allegiance, a new
national song and even a new national currency on the Afghan people, then imposed the first
imperial caesar, Karzai.
You break it, you own it!
For the $TRILLIONS hoovered up by Deep State and their war profiteering minions, we could
have put every Afghan male of military age through Harvard Business School.
Cheney, Petraeus and Rodham ALSO created the Federal Republican Guard ANA and ANP,
goombahs, renegade hijackers and shakedown artists who, like those same ANA/ANP 'personal
guards' mentioned in b's article, assassinated the governor and the others. And umm, yes,
I've been on the muzzle end of those ANA/ANP thugs in an attempted kidnapping, so been there,
done that.
AFA Russ' defense of William the Conqueror as some 'high point' of a Western Civilization
of Red Haired Yettis, they were still head-chopping each other in England while Afghanistan
ruled from East Persia to Western India, an advanced civilization far more ancient than
Anglo-Saxon bearskin cave dwelling knuckle draggers, at the time.
Of course, now today we have the White Scientocratic Triumphal Exceptionalist Civilization
and its Miracle of the Two Planes and Three Towers to prove it, even if Johnny and Jillian
can't read, write or do their ciphers.
just watched the Atlantic council's Championing the Frontlines of Freedom: Erasing the
"Grey Zone", only interesting thing to come out of the conference was Kurt Volker's (US
Special Representative for Ukraine) comments;
Escalating sanctions vs Russia every 1-2 months there will be new & expanded
sanctions on Russia.
Stable borders should not be a requirement to be a part of NATO, "Occupied" states can
be taken into NATO and receive support from NATO to liberate themselves (he stressed that
the US would not be escalate the conflict, but how the hell could anyone guarantee
that).
Opposition to Russia is now bipartisan, regardless of the Nov elections, US Senate
& Congress are unified against Russia
when asked how "We" (the Atlantic council) can make political elites care about Baltic
states (plus Ukraine/Georgia), WITHOUT knowing the historical and political details of
these states he, unsurprisingly answered "this is about spreading our liberal values"
(translation: the American people don't need to be informed about the region are changes
are non-negotiable). the long and the short of the 3 hour conference was the new cold war
vs Russia will continue indefinitely, I would say this is the start of another generation
conflict that will last 10-20 years at least
Ok i'l stick my neck out !
It's over for America ! That's my assessment their day is d d d done ! Am basing my view on
the worldwide picture politically, the mind set of the general public I talk to, the many
sites I visit on the net left and right. Plus overall wisdom and overstanding (a Rasta thing)
Empires fall, this one has more than had its day. If it was a buseness what does it produce ?
And at what cost? It just robs other peoples hard earned resources and assets! For all it's
wealth it treats it's own public like dirt milking them dry. It's intelligent public it
curupt's. Nature abbor's greed, and wil correct that imbalance.
I think Putin understands this, and understands as I do 'desperate people do desperate
things' hence his speech.
Censoring the truth on a massive network like the internet is truly impossible and plainly
desperate !!!
Fascism is always eclectic and its doctrine is composed of several sometimes contradicting each other ideas. "Ideologically speaking,
[the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..." (Ideologically speaking,
[the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..."
)
Some ideas are "sound bite only" and never are implemented and are present only to attract sheeple (looks
National Socialist Program ). he program championed
the right to employment , and called for the institution of
profit sharing , confiscation of
war profits , prosecution of usurers and profiteers,
nationalization of trusts , communalization of department stores,
extension of the old-age pension system, creation of a
national education program of all classes, prohibition
of child labor , and an end to the dominance of
investment capital "
There is also "bait and switch" element in any fascism movement. Original fascism was strongly anti-capitalist, militaristic and
"national greatness and purity" movement ("Make Germany great again"). It was directed against financial oligarchy and anti-semantic
element in it was strong partially because it associated Jews with bankers and financial industry in general. In a way "Jews" were codeword
for investment bankers.
For example " Arbeit Macht Frei " can be viewed as
a neoliberal slogan. Then does not mean that neoliberalism. with its cult of productivity, is equal to fascism, but that neoliberal
doctrine does encompass elements of the fascist doctrine including strong state, "law and order" mentality and relentless propaganda.
The word "fascist" is hurled at political / ideological opponents so often that it lost its meaning. The Nazi Party (NSDAP) originated
as a working-class political party . This is not true about
Trump whom many assume of having fascist leanings. His pro white working class rhetoric was a fig leaf used for duration or elections.
After that he rules as a typical Republican president favoring big business. And as a typical neocon in foreign policy.
From this point of view Trump can't be viewed even as pro-fascist leader because first of all he does not have his own political
movement, ideology and political program. And the second he does not strive for implementing uniparty state and abolishing the elections
which is essential for fascism political platform, as fascist despise corrupt democracy and have a cult of strong leader.
All he can be called is neo-fascist s his some of his views do encompass ideas taken from fascist ideology (including "law and order";
which also is a cornerstone element of Republican ideology) as well as idealization and mystification of the US past. But with Bannon
gone he also can't even pretend that he represents some coherent political movement like "economic nationalism" -- kind of enhanced
mercantilism.
Of course, that does not mean that previous fascist leaders were bound by the fascism political program, but at least they had one.
Historian Karl Dietrich Bracher writes that, "To [Hitler,
the program] was little more than an effective, persuasive propaganda weapon for mobilizing and manipulating the masses. Once it had
brought him to power, it became pure decoration: 'unalterable', yet unrealized in its demands for nationalization and expropriation,
for land reform and 'breaking the shackles of finance capital'. Yet it nonetheless fulfilled its role as backdrop and pseudo-theory,
against which the future dictator could unfold his rhetorical and dramatic talents."
Notable quotes:
"... Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago. ..."
"... Further back in time, the mythic past was a time of glory of the nation, with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals, its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present, these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics. ..."
"... In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal cosmopolitanism, and respect for "universal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence. ..."
"... fascist myths distinguish themselves with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests and civilization-building achievements. ..."
"... The function of the mythic past, in fascist politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology -- authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity, and struggle. ..."
It's in the name of tradition that the anti-Semites base their "point of view." It's in the name of tradition, the long, historical
past and the blood ties with Pascal and Descartes, that the Jews are told, you will never belong here.
-- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
It is only natural to begin this book where fascist politics invariably claims to discover its genesis: in the past. Fascist
politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously
pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist
mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago.
Further back in time, the mythic past was a time of glory of the nation, with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals,
its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present,
these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics.
In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal
cosmopolitanism, and respect for "universal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the
face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence.
These myths are generally based on fantasies of a nonexistent past uniformity, which survives in the traditions of the small towns
and countrysides that remain relatively unpolluted by the liberal decadence of the cities. This uniformity -- linguistic, religious,
geographical, or ethnic -- can be perfectly ordinary in some nationalist movements, but fascist myths distinguish themselves
with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests
and civilization-building achievements. For example, in the fascist imagination, the past invariably involves traditional, patriarchal
gender roles. The fascist mythic past has a particular structure, which supports its authoritarian, hierarchical ideology. That past
societies were rarely as patriarchal -- or indeed as glorious -- as fascist ideology represents them as being is beside the point.
This imagined history provides proof to support the imposition of hierarchy in the present, and it dictates how contemporary society
should look and behave.
In a 1922 speech at the Fascist Congress in Naples, Benito Mussolini declared:
We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. . . . Our myth is
the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total
reality, we subordinate everything.
The patriarchal family is one ideal that fascist politicians intend to create in society -- or return to, as they claim. The patriarchal
family is always represented as a central part of the nation's traditions, diminished, even recently, by the advent of liberalism
and cosmopolitanism. But why is patriarchy so strategically central to fascist politics?
In a fascist society, the leader of the nation is analogous to the father in the traditional patriarchal family. The leader is
the father of his nation, and his strength and power are the source of his legal authority, just as the strength and power of the
father of the family in patriarchy are supposed to be the source of his ultimate moral authority over his children and wife. The
leader provides for his nation, just as in the traditional family the father is the provider. The patriarchal father's authority
derives from his strength, and strength is the chief authoritarian value. By representing the nation's past as one with a patriarchal
family structure, fascist politics connects nostalgia to a central organizing hierarchal authoritarian structure, one that finds
its purest representation in these norms.
Gregor Strasser was the National Socialist -- Nazi -- Reich propaganda chief in the 1920s, before the post was taken over by Joseph
Goebbels. According to Strasser, "for a man, military service is the most profound and valuable form of participation -- for the
woman it is motherhood!" Paula Siber, the acting head of the Association of German Women, in a 1933 document meant to reflect official
National Socialist state policy on women, declares that "to be a woman means to be a mother, means affirming with the whole conscious
force of one's soul the value of being a mother and making it a law of life . . . the highest calling of the National Socialist
woman is not just to bear children, but consciously and out of total devotion to her role and duty as mother to raise children for
her people." Richard Grunberger, a British historian of National Socialism, sums up "the kernel of Nazi thinking on the women's question"
as "a dogma of inequality between the sexes as immutable as that between the races." The historian Charu Gupta, in her 1991 article
"Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany," goes as far as to argue that "oppression of women in Nazi Germany in fact furnishes
the most extreme case of anti-feminism in the 20th century."
Here, Mussolini makes clear that the fascist mythic past is intentionally mythical. The function of the mythic past, in fascist
politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology -- authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity,
and struggle.
With the creation of a mythic past, fascist politics creates a link between nostalgia and the realization of fascist ideals. German
fascists also clearly and explicitly appreciated this point about the strategic use of a mythological past. The leading Nazi ideologue
Alfred Rosenberg, editor of the prominent Nazi newspaper the Völkischer Beobachter, writes in 1924, "the understanding of and the
respect for our own mythological past and our own history will form the first condition for more firmly anchoring the coming generation
in the soil of Europe's original homeland." The fascist mythic past exists to aid in changing the present.
Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished
Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Stanley is the author of Know How; Languages in Context;
More about Jason Stanley
This could have been such a helpful, insightful book. The word "fascist" is hurled at political / ideological opponents so
often that it has started to lose its meaning. I hoped that this book would provide a historical perspective on fascism by examining
actual fascist governments and drawing some parallels to the more egregious / worrisome trends in US & European politics. The
chapter titles in the table of contents were promising:
- The Mythic Past
- Propaganda
- Anti-Intellectual
- Unreality
- Hierarchy
- Victimhood
- Law & Order
- Sexual Anxiety
- Sodom & Gomorrah
- Arbeit Macht Frei
Ironically (given the book's subtitle) the author used his book divisively: to laud his left-wing political views and demonize
virtually all distinctively right-wing views. He uses the term "liberal democracy" inconsistently throughout, disengenuously equivocating
between the meaning of "representative democracy as opposed to autocratic or oligarchic government" (which most readers would
agree is a good thing) and "American left-wing political views" (which he treats as equally self-evidently superior if you are
a right-thinking person). Virtually all American right-wing political views are presented in straw-man form, defined in such a
way that they fit his definition of fascist politics.
I was expecting there to be a pretty heavy smear-job on President Trump and his cronies (much of it richly deserved...the man's
demagoguery and autocratic tendencies are frightening), but for this to turn into "let's find a way to define virtually everything
the Republicans are and do as fascist politics" was massively disappointing. The absurdly biased portrayal of all things conservative
and constant hymns of praise to all things and all people left-wing buried some good historical research and valid parallels under
an avalanche of partisanism.
If you want a more historical, less partisan view of the rise of fascist politics, I would highly recommend Darkness Over Germany
by E. Amy Buller (Review Here). It was written during World War II (based on interviews with Germans before WWII), so you will
have to draw your own contemporary parallels...but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
American politicians and media are becoming increasingly unhinged.
Threatening friends and allies with tariffs on automobiles, and using these threats to
impose unilateral trade agreements which include language designed to upend future trade with
China ("non-market economies") - as done recently with Mexico and Canada - will hasten the
isolation of the U.S., particularly when it demands European countries follow this line. The
opportunity to secure a gradual soft landing for the dissolution of its hegemonic moment
exists for the Americans, but its arrogant and delusional establishment will not turn from
its confrontational policy, ensuring a harsh reality lesson sooner than most might
predict.
If one had to identify the main reason behind the utter failure of the U.S. political
establishment and military leadership, both civilian and in uniform, to identify and prioritize
weapons programs and procurement that was truly in line with the national defense needs of the
country, it would be the institutional corruption of the U.S. military industrial complex. This
is not a fault of one party, but is the inevitable outcome of a thoroughly corrupted system
that both generates and wastes great wealth at the expense of the many for the benefit of the
few.
Massive defense budgets do not lead to powerful military forces nor sound national defense
strategy. The United States is the most glaring example of how a nation's treasure can be
wasted, its citizens robbed for generations, and its political processes undermined by an
industry bent on maximizing profitability by encouraging and exacerbating conflict. At this
point it is questionable that the United States' could remain economically viable without war,
so much of its GDP is connected in some way to the pursuit of conflict.
There is no doubt that the War Department was renamed the Department of Defense in an
Orwellian sleight of hand in 1947, just a few years after end of World War II. The military
industrial complex grew into a monolith during the war, and the only way to justify the
expansion of the complex, was by finding a new enemy to justify the new reality of a massive
standing military, something that the U.S. Constitution expressly forbids. This unlawful state
of affairs has persisted and expanded into a rotten, bloated edifice of waste. Wasted effort,
wasted wealth and the wasted lives of millions of people spanning every corner of the planet.
Tens of thousands of brave men and women in uniform, and millions of civilians of so many
nations, have been tossed into the blades of this immoral meat grinder for generations.
President Donald Trump was very proud to announce the largest U.S. military budget in the
nation's history last year. The United States spent (or more accurately, borrowed from
generations yet to come) no less than $874.4 billion USD. The declared base budget for 2017 was
$523.2 billion USD, yet there are also the Overseas Contingency Operations and Support budgets
that have to be considered in determining the total cost. The total DOD annual costs have
doubled from 2003 to the present. Yet, what has the DOD really accomplished with so much money
and effort? Very little of benefit to the U.S. tax payer for sure, and paradoxically the
exorbitant waste of the past fifteen years have left every branch of the U.S. military
weaker.
The U.S. Congress has the duty and responsibility of reigning in the military adventurism of
the executive branch. They have the sole authority to declare war, but more importantly, the
sole authority to approve the budget requests of the military. It is laughable to think that
the U.S. Congress will do anything to reign in military spending. The Congress and the Senate
are as equally guilty as the Executive in promoting and benefitting from the military
industrial complex. Envisioned as a bulwark against executive power, the U.S. Congress has
become an integral component of that complex. No Senator or Representative would dare to go
against the industry that employs so many constituents within their state, or pass up on the
benefits afforded them through the legalized insider-trading exclusive to them, or the
lucrative jobs that await them in the defense industry and the many think tanks that promote
continued prosecution of war.
"... the radical, scorched-earth leverage now being pursued in Trump's companion foreign
policy lunge is aimed, not just at returning the US to its status quo ante , but is
aimed rather at forcing the capitulation of all resistance to US hegemony." [Emphasis
original]
Crooke attempts to show Trump's put all his chips on Red: "But the crux of it is that when
you put 'all' on one colour or the other in roulette, you either win big, or lose all."
Pepe Escobar on Brazil's election as an example of the "Future of Western Democracy"
examined in an essay 3x the length of his asiatimes.com reports:
"Stripped to its essence, the Brazilian presidential elections represent a direct clash
between democracy and an early 21st Century, neofascism, indeed between civilization and
barbarism.
"Geopolitical and global economic reverberations will be immense. The Brazilian dilemma
illuminates all the contradictions surrounding the Right populist offensive across the West,
juxtaposed to the inexorable collapse of the Left. The stakes could not be higher ."
[My emphasis]
Yes, the two issues are linked. Pepe's piece makes it easier to see the strategic
reasoning behind the immigrant invasion unleashed by Turkey and EU response, but it was
planned by Obama, not Bannon and Trump.
@Greece 9
Nonsense, it sure was Obummer and his evil SOS 'genius'Hillary the Hun that sent wave after
wave of refugees to the EU with a little help from Erdy the Turd.
Let us not mince words here Greece: you cannot whitewash Obummer and his warmongering
ghouls and the same goes for dumping all responsibility on Trump and his warmongering
ghouls.
Remember prophets and false prophets in your warmongering book are eloquently described
and whitewashed too in recent times. The western ghouls all hide behind the Abrahamic texts
that salaciously awaits the apocalypse. As do all warmongers who hide behind their precious
divine scribbles.
I'm with karlof 1 here because no amount of propaganda will make me forget who are the
perpetrators of evil.
ut @ 24 said;"Remember prophets and false prophets in your warmongering book are eloquently
described and whitewashed too in recent times. The western ghouls all hide behind the
Abrahamic texts that salaciously awaits the apocalypse. As do all warmongers who hide behind
their precious divine scribbles.
Qatar is jubilating! Turkey, too! Saudi Arabia will be criticized and isolated as most GCC
countries would dissaprove and prefer to dissociate from such a crime. Dismembering the body
of a dead moslem man is a very serious crime in Islam.
Kuwait and Bahrein are already cozyng up with Syria, the UAE is slowly moving out the
Yemen war and reviewing ist relation with Syria.
Kashoogi's alleged martyr may save Yemenis lives and may have the Western world faced to
the reality that in the region, the evil is not Iran but their best friend, Saudi Arabia and
its smiling monster MBS.
Kashoogi may have succeeded unintentionally to destabilize MBS and probably trigger his
removal. The USA will have no problem in sacrificing MBS for the sake of keeping the Saudi
milking under control. The only problem will be that it will reflect on Kushner-MBS Grand
Palestinian plan.
Maybe Kashoogi's love for fiancee made him take the risk to get a divorce paper from the
Saudi Arabia consulate and be killed.
@75 Why should Trump make a big issue about some dead Arab? Because he was a journalist?
Trump hates journalists.
If bleeding heart progressives want to make a fuss so be it. He knows his base don't give
a shit about the world outside the USA as long as they buy American arms.
"the GRU's disregard for global values and rules that keep us all safe".
Like the values and rules that led the NSA to eavesdrop on Chancellor Merkel's phone calls
for years, and to use American Embassies as listening posts. Mutti Merkel was very
understanding, considering they were only doing it to keep us all safe.
"... This is not new and has been going for at least a century. And the US elites have a long tradition of false flags to to get the people of America riled up for war. ..."
"... As Petras says: "The ten theses define the nature of 21st century imperialism" because, I feel, they are the same values that defined the British Colonial Empire. ..."
Few, if any, believe what they hear and read from leaders and media publicists. Most people
choose to ignore the cacophony of voices, vices and virtues.
This paper provides a set of theses which purports to lay-out the basis for a dialogue
between and among those who choose to abstain from elections with the intent to engage them in
political struggle.
Thesis 1
US empire builders of all colors and persuasion practice donkey tactics; waving the carrot
and wielding the whip to move the target government on the chosen path.
In the same way, Washington offers dubious concessions and threatens reprisals, in order to
move them into the imperial orbit.
Washington applied the tactic successfully in several recent encounters. In 2003 the US
offered Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi a peaceful accommodation in exchange for
disarmament, abandonment of nationalist allies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In 2011,
the US with its European allies applied the whip – bombed Libya, financed and armed
retrograde tribal and terrorist forces, destroyed the infrastructure, murdered Gaddafi and
uprooted millions of Africans and Libyans. . . who fled to Europe. Washington recruited
mercenaries for their subsequent war against Syria in order to destroy the nationalist Bashar
Assad regime.
Washington succeeded in destroying an adversary but did not establish a puppet regime in the
midst of perpetual conflict.
The empire's carrot weakened its adversary, but the stick failed to recolonize Libya
..Moreover its European allies are obligated to pay the multi-billion Euro cost of absorbing
millions of uprooteded immigrants and the ensuing domestic political turmoil.
Thesis 2
Empire builders' proposal to reconfigure the economy in order to regain imperial supremacy
provokes domestic and overseas enemies. President Trump launched a global trade war, replaced
political accommodation with economic sanctions against Russia and a domestic protectionist
agenda and sharply reduced corporate taxes. He provoked a two-front conflict. Overseas, he
provoked opposition from European allies and China, while facing perpetual harassment from
domestic free market globalists and Russo-phobic political elites and ideologues.
Two front conflicts are rarely successful. Most successful imperialist conquer adversaries
in turn – first one and then the other.
Thesis 3
Leftists frequently reverse course: they are radicals out of office and reactionaries in
government, eventually falling between both chairs. We witness the phenomenal collapse of the
German Social Democratic Party, the Greek Socialist Party (PASOK), (and its new version Syriza)
and the Workers Party in Brazil. Each attracted mass support, won elections, formed alliances
with bankers and the business elite – and in the face of their first crises, are
abandoned by the populace and the elite.
Shrewd but discredited elites frequently recognize the opportunism of the Left, and in time
of distress, have no problem in temporarily putting up with Left rhetoric and reforms as long
as their economic interests are not jeopardized. The elite know that the Left signal left and
turn right.
Thesis 4
Elections, even ones won by progressives or leftists, frequently become springboards for
imperial backed coups. Over the past decade newly elected presidents, who are not aligned with
Washington, face congressional and/or judicial impeachment on spurious charges. The elections
provide a veneer of legitimacy which a straight-out military-coup lacks.
In Brazil, Paraguay and Venezuela, 'legislatures' under US tutelage attempted to ouster
popular President. They succeeded in the former and failed in the latter.
When electoral machinery fails, the judicial system intervenes to impose restraints on
progressives, based on tortuous and convoluted interpretation of the law. Opposition leftists
in Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador have been hounded by ruling party elites.
Thesis 5
Even crazy leaders speak truth to power. There is no question that President Trump suffers a
serious mental disorder, with midnight outbursts and nuclear threats against, any and all,
ranging from philanthropic world class sports figures (LeBron James) to NATO respecting EU
allies.
Yet in his lunacy, President Trump has denounced and exposed the repeated deceits and
ongoing fabrications of the mass media. Never before has a President so forcefully identified
the lies of the leading print and TV outlets. The NY Times , Washington Post
, the Financial Times, NBC, CNN, ABC and CBS have been thoroughly discredited
in the eyes of the larger public. They have lost legitimacy and trust. Where progressives have
failed, a war monger billionaire has accomplished, speaking a truth to serve many
injustices.
Thesis 6
When a bark turns into a bite, Trump proves the homely truth that fear invites aggression.
Trump has implemented or threatened severe sanctions against the EU, China, Iran, Russia,
Venezuela, North Korea and any country that fails to submit to his dictates. At first, it was
bombast and bluster which secured concessions.
Concessions were interpreted as weakness and invited greater threats. Disunity of opponents
encouraged imperial tacticians to divide and conquer. But by attacking all adversaries
simultaneously he undermines that tactic. Threats everywhere limits choices to dangerous
options at home and abroad.
Thesis 7
The master meddlers, of all times, into the politics of sovereign states are the
Anglo-American empire builders. But what is most revealing is the current ploy of accusing the
victims of the crimes that are committed against them.
After the overthrow of the Soviet regime, the US and its European acolytes 'meddled' on a
world-historic scale, pillaging over two trillion dollars of Soviet wealth and reducing Russian
living standards by two thirds and life expectancy to under sixty years – below the level
of Bangladesh.
With Russia's revival under President Putin, Washington financed a large army of self-styled
'non-governmental organizations' (NGO) to organize electoral campaigns, recruited moguls in the
mass media and directed ethnic uprisings. The Russians are retail meddlers compared to the
wholesale multi-billion-dollar US operators.
Moreover, the Israelis have perfected meddling on a grand scale – they intervene
successfully in Congress, the White House and the Pentagon. They set the Middle East agenda,
budget and priorities, and secure the biggest military handouts on a per-capita basis in US
history!
Apparently, some meddlers meddle by invitation and are paid to do it.
Thesis 8
Corruption is endemic in the US where it has legal status and where tens of millions of
dollars change hands and buy Congress people, Presidents and judges.
ORDER IT NOW
In the US the buyers and brokers are called 'lobbyists' – everywhere else they are
called fraudsters. Corruption (lobbying) grease the wheels of billion dollars military
spending, technological subsidies, tax evading corporations and every facet of government
– out in the open, all the time and place of the US regime.
Corruption as lobbying never evokes the least criticism from the mass media.
On the other hand, where corruption takes place under the table in Iran, China and Russia,
the media denounce the political elite – even where in China over 2 million officials,
high and the low are arrested and jailed.
When corruption is punished in China, the US media claim it is merely a 'political purge'
even if it directly reduces elite conspicuous consumption.
In other words, imperial corruption defends democratic value; anti-corruption is a hallmark
of authoritarian dictatorships.
Thesis 9
Bread and circuses are integral parts of empire building – especially in promoting
urban street mobs to overthrow independent and elected governments.
Imperial financed mobs – provided the cover for CIA backed coups in Iran (1954),
Ukraine (2014), Brazil (1964), Venezuela (2003, 2014 and 2017), Argentina (1956), Nicaragua
(2018), Syria (2011) and Libya (2011) among other places and other times.
Masses for empire draw paid and voluntary street fighters who speak for democracy and serve
the elite. The "mass cover" is especially effective in recruiting leftists who look to the
street for opinion and ignore the suites which call the shots.
Thesis 10
The empire is like a three-legged stool it promotes genocide, to secure magnicide and to
rule by homicide. Invasions kills millions, capture and kill rulers and then rule by homicide
– police assassinating dissenting citizens.
The cases are readily available: Iraq and Libya come to mind. The US and its allies invaded,
bombed and killed over a million Iraqis, captured and assassinated its leaders and installed a
police state.
A similar pattern occurred in Libya: the US and EU bombed, killed and uprooted several
million people, assassinated Ghadaffy and fomented a lawless terrorist war of clans, tribes and
western puppets.
"Western values" reveal the inhumanity of empires built to murder "a la carte" –
stripping the victim nations of their defenders, leaders and citizens.
Conclusion
The ten theses define the nature of 21 st century imperialism – its
continuities and novelties.
The mass media systematically write and speak lies to power: their message is to disarm
their adversaries and to arouse their patrons to continue to plunder the world.
When was the last time "Nation building" resulted in a livable country. Iraq? Libya?
Americans, and I am one, can barely keep their own country from sinking into a pit of decay.
Why "deliver Democracy" when Dubai makes much of the US look like shit in terms of
infrastructure, crime and poverty.
When was the last time "Nation building" resulted in a livable country.
Why "deliver Democracy" when Dubai makes much of the US look like shit
Because what a ZOG does with it's host nation has nothing to do with improving anything
for the occupied peoples.
Think of it like the Communist Manifesto. They thump it around, preaching utopia and
equality and all that sugar and honey. This is because they want you to buy what they are
selling. But they don't have any intention of ever delivering. None whatsoever.
All they're really trying to do is whip up an army of useful idiots to be used as blunt
instruments. And once these useful idiots are done fulfilling their role in the
redistribution of wealth and power, they are discarded only to realize too little too late
that they have been working against their own interests all along.
The same thing goes for exporting Democracy. It's never been about improving anyone's
lives. In the West or any of their target nations. It's been about whipping useful idiots up
into an army that can be used as a blunt instrument against the obstacles in the way of
(((someone's))) geopolitical ambitions.
This is not new and has been going for at least a century. And the US elites have a long
tradition of false flags to to get the people of America riled up for war.
False Flag Events Behind the Six Major Wars
False flags to fool Americans into the Spanish American War, WW1, WW2, Korean War, Vietnam
War and the War on terror.
Interesting is that a USA textbook already describes USA imperialism, without using the
word:
Barbara Hinckley, Sheldon Goldman, 'American Politics and Government, Structure, Processes,
Institutions and Policies', Glenview Ill., 1990
Vietnam was a mess for a decade at least and created an immigration crisis in
Australia. The US had a surplus budget when Clinton left office. When Bush left office, oil prices
were sky-high and the economy was dreadful. Who benefits. Israel? Syria is a mess that threatens their borders.
A great comment with the proper name calling for the ZUSA in relation to the current
situation in Turkey:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/08/how-turkeys-currency-crisis-came-to-pass.html#comments
Excerpts:
" The Dollar op indicates that the USA ( or rather those who pull the strings in the
US ) finally admits that our Ally is responsible for almost all mischievous events which
took place in Turkey.
The USA is not a country, but rather a useful contract killer on a larger scale
compared to the PKK-FETO-ISIS etc.
The US is now stepping forward fearlessly because 'the arms of the octopus', as Erdogan put
last week, has been severed in Turkey."
These two definitions do stick:
1. the US is manipulated by the puppeteers -- people (the US citizenry at large) have no
saying in the US decisions (mostly immoral and often imbecile); the well-being of the US is
not a factored in the decisions
2. the US has become a "contract killer" for the voracious puppeteers
Prof. Petras, thanks. A while back I read something called Confessions of an Economic Hit
Man (?) in which the writer describes his efforts to put other nations into debt to
American institutions and American-controlled or -influenced international institutions for
the ulterior purpose of political control. Sounded plausible enough, and I saw the author
speak on TV on his book tour.
How do any of us know we're living in a country gone massively wobbly? Can a German
sipping wine in Koblenz in 1936 even imagine Hitler's Germany will be a staple of American
cable shows eighty years hence, and not in a good way? Can a Russian in the same year imagine
that the latest round of arrests won't be leading to a Communist utopia now, or ever?
FWIW-my guess is America's imperial adventures are heavily structural, being that foreign
policy is strongly within the President's purview, and Congress can be counted on to
rubber-stamp military expeditions. Plus, empire offers a good distraction from domestic
politics, which are an intractable mess of rent-seeking, racial animus, and corporate
interests.
I don't like it much having to live in a racketeerized America, but there's not a whole
lot we can do.
Professor Petras glasses are becoming little bit foggy, but his scalpel still cuts to the
bone.
But this article is lecture for beginner class, or the aliens visitors who just landed on
Earth
Yet in his lunacy, President Trump has denounced and exposed the repeated deceits and
ongoing fabrications of the mass media.
A damned good article, Sir! And bless you for calling bankster propaganda anything
but "mainstream."
Ours is a problem in which deception has become organized and strong; where truth is
poisoned at its source; one in which the skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to
misleading a bewildered people.
-Walter Lippman, A Preface to Politics ( 1913 ), quoted in The Essential
Lippmann, pp. 516-517
Lippman was an Allied propagandist among many other things.
The 10 theories that led Petras to conclude "{the message is "to disarm their adversaries and
to arouse their patrons" to continue to plunder the world}" is an example, that the American
people are clueless about how events documented by Petras research, led Petras to conclude
the USA is about plunder of the world .
There is a distinct difference between USA governed Americans and the 527 persons that
govern Americans.
Access by Americans to the USA 1) in person with one of its 527 members, 2) by communication
or attempted communication via some type of expression or 3) by constitutionally allowed
regime change at election time. None of these methods work very well for Americans , if at
all; but they serve the entrenched members of the USA, massive in size corporations and
upstream wealthy owners, quite well.
Secondly, IMO, Mr. Petras either does not understand democracy or has chosen to make a
mockery of it?
The constitution that produced the USA produced not a democracy, but a Republic.
A republic which authorized a group ( an handful of people) to rule America by rules the USA
group
decides to impose. Since the group can control the meaning of the US Constitution as well
as change it's words, the group has, unlimited power to rule, no matter the subject matter or method
(possible exceptions might be said to be within the meaning of the bill of rights; but like
all contract
clauses, especially a contract of the type where one side can amend, ignore, change or
replace or use
its overwhelming military and police powers to enforce against the other side, leaving the
other side no
recourse, is not really a contract; it might better be called an instrument announcing the
assumption of
power which infringes inalienable human rights).
Therefore just because 527 members of the USA government might between themselves practice
Democracy does not mean the governed enjoy the same freedoms.
So the USA is ruled by puppets, 527 of them, puppets of the Oligarchs. Since the
ratification of the USA constitution, Americans have been governed by the USA [The US
constitution (ratified 1778) overthrew and disposed of the Articles of Confederation
(Government of America founded 1776). Not a shot was fired, but there was a war none-the-less
(read Federalist vs Anti-Federalist and have a look at the first few acts of the USA).
(Note: The AOC, was the American government that defeated the British Armies [1776-1783],
the 1776 American AOC American Government was the government that surveyed all of the land
taken from the British by the AOC after it defeated the entire British military and stopped
the British aristocrat owed, privately held corporate Empires from their continuous raping of
America and abuse of Americans. those who did the work.
The AOC was the very same American Government that hired G. Washington to defeat and chase
the British Aristocratic Corporate Colonial Empires out of America. The 1776 American AOC
Government was the very same government that granted freedom to its people (AOC really did
practice democracy, and really did try to divide and distribute the vast American lands taken
from the British Corporate Colonial Empire equally among the then living Americans. The AOC
ceased to exist when the US Constitution installed the USA by a self proclaimed regime
change process , called ratification). There were 11 presidents of the AOC, interestingly
enough, few have heard of them.
Once again the practice of political self-determination democracy is limited to the 525
USA members who have seats in the halls of the Congress of the USA or who occupy the offices
of the President of USA or the Vice-President of the USA. All persons in America, not among
the 527 salaried, elected members of the USA, are governed by the USA.
@Heisendude Israel has no constitution, and therefore no borders.
A constitution also describes borders.
An Israeli jew one asked Ben Gurion why Israel has no defined borders, the answer was
something like 'we do not want to define borders, if we did, we cannot expand'.
@Jeff Stryker Why does Israel assist all sorts of bandits, including, but not limited to,
ISIS, in Syria? Just recently Israel helped in extracting the White Helmets, a PR wing of
Nusra (Syrian branch of Al Qaida) from South Syria. Please explain.
@Anonymous Those 527 are bought and paid for lackeys. We don't know how many real owners
of the USA there are, don't know many of their names, but we do know that when those lackeys
imagine that they are somebodies and try to govern, they are eliminated (John Kennedy is the
most unambiguous example).
You may have heard of it. Globalism, N(J)ew World Order. That which the
(((internationalists))) are always working towards. A one world government with them at the
top, the ruling class.
Vietnam was a mess for a decade at least and created an immigration crisis in
Australia.
Australia is a white nation. All white nations are supposed to suffer and ultimately
collapse upon the creation of their New World Order. Vietnam was a complete success for the
one's who really wanted that war.
The US had a surplus budget when Clinton left office. When Bush left office, oil prices
were sky-high and the economy was dreadful.
Bush was a neocon, wars for Israel with that 'surplus' were the intention all along. As
wars under Hillary would have been as well. And as they potentially could still be if Trump
proves to be a lap dog for Israel as well. He campaigned on no pointless wars, but there's no
saying for sure until he either brings all our troops home or capitulates and signs Americans
up to be cash cows and cannon fodder for more Israeli geopolitical ambitions.
Who benefits.
Those same rootless cosmopolitans that always benefit from playing both sides of the
field, seeding conflict and then cashing in on the warmongering, genocidal depopulation and
population displacement in the name of their geopolitical ambitions.
Israel? Syria is a mess that threatens their borders.
Israel made that mess. Threatened their borders with war. Land theft. Y'know. Golan
Heights. Genocide land theft and displacement are all Israel does. Their borders have
expanded every year since their creation.
Everything that's happening in the Middle East is because of the Rothschild terror state
of Israel and the Zionist Jews who reside in it .. as well as in our various western
ZOGs.
Have you really never heard of the Oded Yinon Plan ? Their genocidal outline for
waging wars of aggression for the purpose of expanding their borders and becoming the
dominant regional superpower by balkanizing the surrounding Arab world.
The only nations of significance left on their check list are as follows : Syria, Iran,
Saudi Arabia. And many will argue that the House of Saud has always been crypto, helping
Israel behind the scenes. Their sudden post-coup cooperation with their former 'enemies' is
little more than a sign that they are needed as a wartime ally more in the current phase of
their Yinon Plan than as controlled opposition funding and arming ISIS while keeping the
public eye off of Israel's role in their creation and direction. Sure enough, it seems there
is a rather strong push for an alliance between KSA, Israel and the US for war with Iran.
Technological progress, particularly the progress in information technology is pushing
mankind with accelerated speed toward final solution and final settlement.
Corruption is endemic in the US where it has legal status and where tens of millions of
dollars change hands and buy Congress people, Presidents and judges.
Yep. I have been ranting for years calling for a Anti-Corruption Political Party Platform
by some group.
The corruption of our politicians is the cause of all the problems everyone else is ranting
about.
In some ways I think most people deserve what they are going to get eventually because
they ignore the corruption of their heroes .whether it be Trump, Hillary or any other.
I tell you sheeple .if someone will cheat and lie to others they will do the same thing to
you ..you are stone cold stupid if you think other wise.
@Biff Jeff and Mikeat are both correct if my friend's account of his participation in a
recent trade show there is true. My friend's wife is a ding bat Hillarybot and she got to
yammering to me after returning about all the wonderful diversity she saw in the streets of
Dubai, but I shut her down pretty quickly by pointing out that the diversity darlings in
Dubai were paid help for the Sheikdom and weren't even second class temporary residents by US
standards; that they can be (and are) summarily deported to some slave market in Yemen if
they don't mind their Ps and Qs VERY carefully in that society. She's also a wino, but
confessed that the Trader Joe's box grade merlot sold for about US$18 to $25 a goblet in a
tourist zone food and beverage joint. (and that didn't slow her down one bit) Hubby had to
watch her close, as obvious public drunkenness (even in the tourist zone) has high potential
for extreme justice.
The New Economy plan being promoted there is the development of a sort of Disneyworld on
steroids international vacation attraction, as the leaders seem to think that their oil is
going to run out soon.
@peterAUS CNN, Washpost and NYT since a very long time suffer from a serious mental
disorder.
It reminds me of Orwell's The Country of the Blind.
When the man who could see was cured all was well.
@DESERT FOX While the Fed is a focal point, it is not the central issue. If Americans,
were actually in voting control of the central issue Americans could and probably would
abolish the fed and destroy its income by removing the income tax laws, very early on.
But if the Fed and Income taxes are not the central issue, what is the central issue?
Could it be majority will "control of the structure and staffing of that structure" that
often people call government? Look back to the creation of the US Constitution! There the
central issue for the old British Aristocracy accustomed to having their way, was: can
Aristocrats stay in control (of the new American democracy) and if so, how should "such
control" be established so that British corporate power, British Aristocratic wealth and
British Class Privilege can all survive the American revolution? {PWP}.
The question was answered by developing a form of government that enabling the Oligarch
few to make the rules [rule of law] that could control the masses and to produce a government
that had a monopoly on the use of power, so that it could enforce the laws it makes, against
against the masses and fend off all challenges. The constitution blocked the people's right
to self determination; it empowered the privileged, it favored the wealthy, and most of all
it protected and saved pre-war British owned PWP as post war PWP.
Today those who operate the government do so in near perfect secrecy (interrupted only
occasionally by Snowden, Assange, and a few brave others). It spies on each person, records
each human breath taken by the masses, relates relationships between the masses, because
those in charge fear the power of the masses should the masses somehow find a way to impose
their will on how things are to be. How can rules made by Aristocrats in secret, be
considered to be outcomes established by self- determination of the masses who are to be
governed?
Ratification is the process that abolished Democracy in America. The story of those
who imposed ratification has not yet been told. Ratification was used to justify the
overthrow of the Articles of the Confederation (AOC was America's government from 1776 to
1789). To defeat the British empire the AOC hired the most wealthy man it could find to
organize an Army capable to defeat the British Military. The AOC warred on the British Armies
with the intent to stop colonial corporate empires from continuing to rape American
productivity and exploit the resources in America for the benefit of the British Corporate
Empires [Read the Declaration of Independence].
You might research.. How did George Washington achieve his massive, for its time, wealth?
I don't think tossing coins across the mile wide Potomac made him a dime? How did GW attain
such wealth in British owned, corporately controlled Colonial America? Why was George
Washington able to keep that British earned wealth after the British were chased out of
America? More importantly many gave their all, life, liberty and property to help chase the
British out, GW gave ..?
Title by land grants [Virginia and West Virginia] are traceable to GWs estate.
What the land grant landowners feared most was that the new American democracy, might
allow the masses to revoke or deny titles to real estate in America, if such title derived
from a foreign government (land grant). The Articles of Confederation government was talking
about dividing up all of the lands in America, and parceling it out, in equal portions, to
all living AOC governed America. Deeds from kings and queens of England, France, Spain,
Portugal, and the Netherlands to land in America would not be recognized in the chain of
title? Such lands would belong to the new AOC government or to the states who were members of
the AOC.
You might check out Article 6, (Para 1) of the US Constitution.. it says in part
" All Debts contracted and Engagements[land grants and British Corporate Charters] entered
into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States
under this Constitution, as under the confederation.
(meaning loans to British Banks would be repaid and land deals made with foreign nations
and corporations including those that resulted in creating a land Baron in British Colonial
America, were to be treated as valid land titles by US Constitution. Consider the plight of
Ex British Land Grant Barron Aristocrat [EBLGBA] who finds himself in now independent
democratic America? Real Americans might decide EBLGBAs were some kind of terrorist, or
spies. Under such circumstances, the EBLGA might look at Americans as a threat to their
Aristocracy, a threat to their PWP..
Example: A Spanish Land Grant property in America ( King of Spain gave 5 million acres of
land in America to ZZ in 1720 (ZZ is a Spanish Corporation ZZ doing business in America), the
land transaction was recognized as valid under British Colonial Law in America. But would
Independent AOC America recognize a deed issued by a Spanish King, or British Queen to Real
Estate in America?
After the Revolution, the question does a EBLGBA retain ownership in the American located
land that is now part of Independent America? Ain't no dam deed from a Spanish government
going to be valid in America. King of England cannot give a deed to land that is located in
independent America.
So if, a corporation, incorporated under British Law, claims it owns 5 million acres of
American land because the Queen of England deeded it the the corporation: does that mean the
5 million acres still belongs to British Corporation X, and of course to the person made
Aristocrat by virtue of ownership of the British Corporation). Is a British Corporation now
to be an American Corporation? British Landed Gentry (land grant owners) in independent post
war America, were quick to lobby for the constitution because the constitution protected
their ownership in land granted to them by a foreign king or queen in fact the constitution
protected the PWP.
I agree with your Zionist communist observation. It is imperative for all persons
interested in what is happening to study the takeover of Russia from the Tzar by Lenin and
his Zionist Communist because what the Zionist did to the Christians in Russia in 1917 seems
to be approaching for it to happen here in America and because that revolution was a part of
the organized Zionist [1896, Hertzl] movement to take control of all of the oil in the world.
Let us not forget, Lenin and crew exterminated 32 million White Russians nearly all of whom
were educated Christians living in the Ukraine.
As Petras says: "The ten theses define the nature of 21st century imperialism" because, I
feel, they are the same values that defined the British Colonial Empire.
So the USA is ruled by puppets, 527 of them, puppets of the Oligarchs. Since the
ratification of the USA constitution, Americans have been governed by the USA [The US
constitution (ratified 1778) overthrew and disposed of the Articles of Confederation
(Government of America founded 1776). Not a shot was fired, but there was a war
none-the-less (read Federalist vs Anti-Federalist and have a look at the first few acts of
the USA).
What a relief to find that there are a few (very few) others who have a clue. The
"constitution" was effectively a coup d'etat. We proles, peasants and other pissants have
been tax and debt slaves ever since, and the situation has continuously worsened. Lincoln's
war against Southern independence, establishment of the Federal Reserve, Wilson's and
especially FDR's wars, and infiltration of the US government and industry by Commies,
Zionists and other Eastern European goon-mafiosi scum have completely perverted what this
country is supposedly about.
I doubt the situation will ever begin to improve unless and until the mass of brainwashed
dupes understand what you wrote.
@Anon Please comment more often. Excellent info there.
You might research.. How did George Washington achieve his massive, for its time,
wealth?
True. Especially since the guy was a third rate, (probably mostly incompetent), Brit
military officer and terrorist who treated the men under his command like sh!t.
Reminds me of Ol Johnny Boy McCain and other such scum.
@jilles dykstra "Ben Gurion: 'we do not want to define borders, if we did, we cannot
expand'.
-- Right. Hence the mass slaughter in the Middle East.
Hapless Canada is going to accept the "humanitarian" terrorists from While Helmets
organization. The rescue is a joint Israel-Canada enterprise: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/435670-white-helmets-canada-syria/
-- -- -- -
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland (a committed banderist and admirer of Ukrainian
neo-Nazis) and Robin Wettlaufer (Canada's representative to the Syrian Opposition and a harsh
critic of Assad "regime") have been playing a key role in the evacuation of the White
Helmets. But there are some questions to Robin: "Did Canadians get to vote on whether or not
to bring potential terrorists or supporters of terrorists to Canada? No. No vote in the
Parliament, no public discussion. Why did the Canadian government refuse the entry of 100
injured Palestinian children from Gaza in 2014, a truly humanitarian effort, and yet will
fast-track the entry of potentially dangerous men with potential ties to terrorists?"
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/435670-white-helmets-canada-syria/
-- Guess Robin Wettlaufer, due to her ethnic solidarity, would be fine with these injured
Palestinian children being smothered by someone, but the well-financed White Helmets are the
extremely valuable material for realizing Oded Yinon plan for Eretz Israel (see Ben Gurion
answer).
The US had a surplus budget when Clinton left office
It turns out that 'budget surplus' does not mean what most people think it means. When your household has a budget surplus, its rate of debt accumulation reverses
(i.e., the total value of household debt falls). Credit cards get paid down, mortgages get
paid off, and eventually you end up with a large and growing positive net worth. That's what
running a 'budget surplus' means , right?
Not so for governments : the US government could run perpetual budget 'surpluses'
and still grow government debt without bound – because they do not account for things
the way they insist that we serfs account for things there are a bunch of their expenditures
that they simply don't count in their 'budget'.
It's a bit like if you were to only count the amount your household spent on
groceries , and declare your entire budget to be in 'surplus' or 'deficit' based on
whether or not there's change after you do your weekly shopping. Meanwhile, you're spending
more than you earn overall, and accumulating debt at an expanding rate.
Runaway debt is what destroys – whether it's families or countries.
There has only been one year since 1960 in which the US Federal Debt has fallen :
1969 .
During the much-touted "Clinton Surpluses", the US Federal Debt rose by almost a
quarter- trillion dollars . The first two Bush years had larger surpluses than
either of the two Clinton surpluses – but still added $160 billion to the
Federal debt.
I know those don't sound like big numbers anymore – much given that Bush added $602
billion per year on average, and Obama added twice Bush 's amount (1.19 trillion per
year).
"... Thanks to media, to this day very few people in the West know that towards the end of the 78-day war, US and UK deliberately targeted several completely civilian facilities (bridges, hospitals and schools) and in just a few days of such targeting killed about 200 civilians. ..."
Kiza
says: October
7, 2018 at 7:50 am GMT 500 Words @Quartermaster
I am not going to insult you personally, but as a cheap paid troll you have absolutely no clue
about the subject you are typing about for your Israeli masters. FB has not explained
everything perfectly but what he wrote is correct. It is not true that an airforce would target
radar installations only with HARM missiles, which all NATO countries and Israel have, but in
practice HARM are the only missiles to reliably target mobile air defence. During the attack on
Serbia, US flew more than 90% of NATO missions and it managed to destroy three missile
batteries and one radar station (using HARM). But the mobility of the Serbian immobile air
defences had two major effects:
1) Unlike Iraq, Serbia let NATO bomb targets without always switching on its air defences to be
detected and destroyed; this grossly reduced NATOs air effectiveness because with every bomber
they had to constantly send at least one support plane with jammers, HARMs etc. NATO tried to
claim a virtue out of this by saying that they were soft on Serbia and will get tougher, but in
reality their military attack was becoming difficult to manage, expensive and risky (the NATO
unity was beginning to fray).
2) It was a running joke in Serbia how NATO planes would attack some completely empty hill
(Serbia is a relatively hilly country), create literally free fireworks for the villagers, just
because there was an air defense installation on the hill maybe 5-10 hours ago. A similar joke
was how the Serbian military or even the local villagers would spread a strip of black builders
plastic over a river and NATO planes flying at above 5 km to avoid manpads would blast this $2
bridge with $200,000 worth of bombs (adding mission cost to the cost of bombs).
Regarding US F117, it was more "stealth" than F35 and similar stealth to the smaller F22,
but the Serbians used the Checkoslovakian TAMARA passive radar, using ionospheric scatter, and
also launched multiple operator guided missiles at F117 without a proper engagement radar to be
HARMed. Self-confident in stealth the pilots of F117 did not manoeuvre, thus it was easy to
predict their path even without the targeting and engagement radar.
Forcing US to retire F117 was the second costliest damage the Serbians have done (Lockheed
did not cry, through their lobbyists they turned the loss into an opportunity to sell more
rubbish). But the biggest cost to US was that Milosevic sold several unexploded cruise missiles
and all F117 parts to China and used the money to rebuild and repair all civilian buildings in
Serbia destroyed by NATO. Later, UK and US did a colour revolution in Serbia, got their hands
on Milosevic, who then died from a health "accident" in NATO jail.
@Cyrano
You are spot-on. The Serbian military fought NATO to a draw, proven by the fact that the
peace treaty signed in Kumanovo in FYRM, did not contain the Rambouye clauses and even left
Kosovo under Serbian jurisdiction as per UNSC 1244.
Even this military draw was forced on Serbia by increased bombardment of civilian targets
in Serbia combined with open threats of carpet bombing by US B57. Serbia is a fairly densely
populated country, no jungles to hide in as in Vietnam. The civilian targets were bombed to
show that they could do carpet bombing with impunity (with the help of MSM). Thanks to
media, to this day very few people in the West know that towards the end of the 78-day war,
US and UK deliberately targeted several completely civilian facilities (bridges, hospitals
and schools) and in just a few days of such targeting killed about 200 civilians.
Naturally, any agreements with the West are totally pointless. After the Kumanovo
agreement, US and UK organized a color revolution in Serbia, took Kosovo away and got their
Serbian puppets to agree to all Rambouye demands. Serbia did not lose the war, but it lost
the agreement peace with the West.
' to my knowledge the Serbians did not use a radiating radar to shoot-down one/two F117.
They used a passive radar, which does not emit at all, it only receives a rough and noisy
location of the stealth plane '
This is complete nonsense once again you choose to pontificate on things in which you have
no knowledge
In your earlier comment,
you identified this 'passive radar' allegedly used by the Serbs as the Czech 'Tamara' system
which the Serbs did not possess
Not only that but this kind of system is not used for guiding SAM shots, and is certainly
not any kind of 'anti-stealth' weapon this category of device is known as an emitter locator
system [ELS], and is used to listen in on radio emissions from hostile aircraft and to then
track them, by means of a number of geometrically deployed antennas that can then triangulate
the bearing and direction of the aircraft
However, the basic physics involved means that these emitter locators are effective at
tracking signals OTHER THAN the aircraft's onboard radar this would include the IFF
[identification friend or foe transponder signal] and other onboard radio emitters which are
OMNIDIRECTIONAL emitters
An aircraft radar's narrow pencil beam could not reach multiple [at least 2] ELS antenna
[which would be geographically dispersed] to provide the needed triangulation
' A topic which appears to crop up with monotonous regularity [is] Warsaw Pact equipment
"capable of detecting stealth aircraft".
These claims invariably involve either the Czech designed and built Tesla-Pardubice
KRTP-86 Tamara or ERA Vera Emitter Locating Systems, or the Ukrainian designed and built
Topaz Kolchuga series of Emitter Locating Systems.
More than often this equipment is described as 'anti-stealth radar', 'radar' or
'passive radar', all of which are completely incorrect.
Much of everything else you have farted out here regarding the Serb takedown of the F117
is similar bullshit
The
3′rd battery of the 250′th Air Defense missile Brigade, commanded by then Lt
Col Zoltan Dani killed both F117s [the second one made it back to Aviano, Italy but was
scrapped, as USAF Col Riccioni confirms in his F22 report I linked to earlier] as well as the
kill on the F16 of then 555′th squadron Commander, then Lt Col David Goldfein, who,
since 2016 happens to be Gen Goldfein and the USAF
Chief of Staff
Here is Goldfein's F16 canopy and tail feathers on display at the Belgrade Aviation
Museum
Incidentally, Col Riccioni mentions in that same report that Goldfein was doing 'other
than what he was supposed to be doing' when shot down I guess in today's USAF that means you
have the 'right stuff' to become The Chief
Also incidentally, the Goldfein kill was overseen by Col Dani's Deputy Maj Bosko Dotlic,
as Col Dani was off duty at the time
The point is that that one single S125 battery accounted for ALL the confirmed kills of
the Serb IADS in 1999 [although there are many more 'probable' kills that either ditched in
the Adriatic, or limped back but were scrapped]
This speaks to my earlier point about human competence and the 'hawks' and 'doves' just
like a small fraction of fighter pilots rack up the overwhelming majority of kills the same
goes for air defense commanders, submarine captains, tank commanders etc
You have spewed here a whole lot of garbage about 'secret' anti-stealth weapons and 'lucky
shots' etc which is a complete insult to the historical record and the great work by Col Dani
and his men and to the entire principle of working and training hard to achieve professional
competence in a military skill
Here is a picture of the side of the 3′rd Battery Command Cabin, with Three kills
stenciled in the F117 [black] on top a B2 [not confirmed] and Goldfein's F16 in white at
bottom
As per standard Russian air defense design doctrine, the S125 uses a separate
acquisition and tracking radar which DOES operate at a lower frequency in this case the
P15 'Flat Face'
which operates in the decimetric wavelength band [which is similar to ATC radar frequency of
about 1.2 to 1.4 GHz...ie L band]
As explained previously the acquisition radar serves to find and track the target at long
range and cues the engagement radar to scan a precise sector where the acquisition radar has
found the target the engagement radar's increased precision [due to its higher frequency and
antenna size] then provides pinpoint accuracy to guide the missile
It is this combination of separate radars working together that allows the targeting of
low observable aircraft and what the 3′rd Battery did was a textbook example of using
the equipment to its full potential despite the fact that this old radar technology was in
fact susceptible to jamming, which the Nato forces employed massively
Col Dani also trained his men hard to be able to disassemble their radar and launchers
within 90 minutes and load everything up on trucks and move to another location he also
exercised strict discipline with regard to emissions allowing the radar to be turned on only
for very short bursts at a time about a minute or two at most
This is all textbook Soviet operating procedure and the difference was the exceptional
work ethic and competence that Col Dani maintained in his unit
It should be noted here that the Serb air defense was in fact very successful overall war
is a game of survival and attrition and what the Serbs accomplished was noted by air combat
practitioners
'The air campaign over Kosovo severely affected the readiness rates of the United States
Air Force's Air Combat Command during that period. Units in the United States were the most
badly affected, as they were were stripped of their personnel and spare parts to support
ACC (Air Combat Command) and AMC (Air Mobility Command) units involved in Operation Allied
Force.
The Commander of the USAF's Air Combat Command, General Richard E Hawley, outlined this
in a speech to reporters on 29 April, 1999.[10] Further, many aircraft will have to be
replaced earlier than previously planned, as their planned fatigue life was prematurely
expended.
PGM inventories needed to be re-stocked, the warstock of the AGM-86C Conventional
Air-Launched Cruise Missile dropping to 100 or fewer rounds.[11] Of the more than 25,000
bombs and missiles expended, nearly 8,500 were PGMs, with the replacement cost estimated at
$US1.3 billion.[12]
Thus the USAF suffered from virtual attrition of its air force without having scored
a large number of kills in theatre. Even if the United States' best estimates of Serbian
casualties are used, the Serbians left Kosovo with a large part of their armoured forces
intact.
Incidentally, several years ago the downed USAF pilot Col Dale Zelko, traveled to Serbia
to visit the man who shot him down Col Dani a film The Second Meeting was made here is
a trailer
PS I will have more to say later, as you have littered this thread with all kinds of
technically incorrect crapola
@Johnny
Rico NATO failed to defeat the Yugoslav army so NATO targeted Serbian civilians. You have
suffered far more losses than you acknowledge so you started killing women and children. You
rained the main marked and the main hospital of my hometown with cluster bombs. That's why
Serbia accepted UN resolution 1244 and the Kumanovo agreement. Given the ultimatum in
Rambouillet, that's not what I would call a capitulation. The only reason Serbia signed was
because you threatened to mass murder Serbian civilians. Why would you threaten to massacre
civilians if you had so soundly defeated the Yugoslav army? Never have so many American
military died during training exercises than during the aggression against Serbia. We
consider you to be shit at war. Extremely armed fags who pee in their pants when they face
opposition. But believe what you want.
@Kiza
The Russians failed to defend Serbia in 1999. That's the Serbian approach.
Why on Earth would Russians defend Serbs who only remember "Russian" brothers when they're in
dire straits?
Why would the Russian "love" us more than we "love" them? What is their interest? Because
Serbs love "Tolstoevsky"?
Don't blame the Russian for Serbian failures. In true love as in a true contract, you have to
give in order to take. Russia has given us a lot with no expectance of return. If she
expected anything, we have given her nothing. We aren't Russia's spoiled child.
NATO failed to defeat the Yugoslav army so NATO targeted Serbian civilians.
Actually, they started to target civilian infrastructure. The objective was to intimidate
the regime in Belgrade into surrender by pushing the country towards stone age.
I guess you could be onto something here:
You have suffered far more losses than you acknowledge .
and
Never have so many American military died during training exercises than during the
aggression against Serbia.
As for
That's why Serbia accepted UN resolution 1244 and the Kumanovo agreement.
there was a little matter of Russia guaranteeing something too, I guess. While the
drunkard was in the Kremlin.
Perceptions aside (Argentinians still believe they sank Royal Navy aircraft carrier in
'82, for example) NATO delivered what its political masters wanted at the time.
Serbs lost .BADLY.
@Vojkan
Yes. It's pretty much standard American practice to bomb civilian infrastructure immediately,
regardless of the degree of resistance put up by the opposing military.
@Vojkan
I don't mean to interfere in inter-Serbian squabble, but I'll volunteer an opinion anyway. I
think you are exaggerating what Russia has done for Serbia for example. How so? As a proud
Balkaneer ( I am exaggerating here a little bit myself – the proud part) I have to say
that we in the Balkans have always benefited from the simple fact that usually Russia's
enemies are our enemies too, so when Russia takes care of their enemies, they automatically
take care of our enemies too.
But I don't think that the Russians would necessarily put their neck on the line for the
Balkan Slavs to defend them against enemies that are not their enemies as well. So,
unfortunately for Serbia, that equation didn't work for them in the 90's – simply put
– Serbia's enemies were not automatically Russia's enemies too. Russia was still trying
to be friends with the west. I forgot who it was, but some prominent Russian politician at
the time said: "We are not going to start nuclear war with US over Serbia".
But it seems that Serbia is always the canary in the mine – whenever someone attacks
Serbia – Russia is next. That's why that buffoon Yeltsin had to go. Friendship with the
west was over the moment they attacked Yugoslavia (Serbia). Now the Russia didn't start a
nuclear war over Serbia, but they still might have to – to defend themselves, and as
always Serbia will benefit from this – if anything is left over from this world after
things go nuclear.
@peterAUS
Serbs did lose badly. Albeit not on the battlefield. Though there never was a real
battlefield.
I have no reason to doubt the accounts of my friends in the military who sought in the rare
conversations I've had with them on the subject, to humble down their achievements.
I believe Russians capitalised on the Serb's defeat. I can't blame them for that. No one is
responsible for what happened to Serbs, as it happened, but Serbs. They're so keen on making
the wrong decisions for the sake of appearing glorious, you can't blame the devil for that.
It's their informed choice
@Beefcake
the Mighty To be fair, they only did it after they realised that the Serb military were
too smart to be depleted by aerial bombardment and that in order to defeat them, you'd have
to fight them on the ground. That's why NATO bombarded civilians. On a man to man basis,
Serbs and Russians are the best soldiers in the world. No navy seal, no marine, no SAS can
match them. Fighting for their homes gives them the little bit of adrenaline needed to
prevail.
@Cyrano
My point was never "Russians" are our brothers. My point is, whatever cultural, religious or
blood affinity I have with the Russians, they have their interests and we have ours. I cannot
expect of Russians to defend Serbia for "ses beaux yeaux". The same goes the other way
around. To some people Russia has "betrayed" Serbia, to some other Serbia has "betrayed"
Russia. Yet the West sees us as one whole, Russia and little "Russia". I didn't ask myself
before but now I love Russia infinetely more than the West. Russia has asked me nothing, has
given me nothing and is expecting nothing from me.
If we can have a mutually beneficial relationship with Russia, great. We will never have that
with the USA or the UK or Germany or France. They're guilty of the spoilation of Serbs' lives
and private properties. Russians never spoiled Serbs of anything.
@Frederick
V. Reed The idea of 'stealth' aircraft is in fact mostly a gimmick designed to enrich the
military contractors it doesn't actually work very well at all, as proved in 1999 when the
Serb air defense, using ancient Soviet surface to air missiles of 1950s vintage, shot down
the USAF F117 aircraft and damaged another that was then written off, and therefore counts as
a kill
–F117 canopy displayed at the Belgrade Aviation Museum
But let's look at the idea of 'low observable' aircraft technology in a little more
detail, and how it may be countered by air defense
Ufimtsev, working at the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering, developed a coherent
theory on the behavior of radio wave scattering off solid objects he published his seminal
work Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction in 1962 the Soviet
military saw no real value in this and allowed it to be published
In 1971, the USAF translated this work into English and a couple of engineers at Lockheed
realized that Ufimtsev had provided the mathematical foundation to predict how radar waves
deflect off an aircraft it was a lightbulb moment the main insight of Ufimtsev's work was
that the size of a radar return was more a function of the edge geometry of the aircraft than
its actual size
Retired USAF Lt Colonel William B O'Connor, who flew the F117 gives a good telling of the
story
here
The end result is that the F117 and B2 were developed by programming Ufimtsev's math into
powerful computers in order to come up with aircraft shaping geometry that minimized radar
reflection subsequent 'low observable' aircraft like the F22 and F35 all build on this basic
physics
Now while the idea of reducing an aircraft's radar return sounds good in principle it has
a lot of real-world drawbacks for instance the shaping can only be optimized for one
particular aspect, such as a head-on if the aircraft turns into a bank for instance its radar
return will increase by as much as 100 fold owing to the simple fact that a banking aircraft
exposes its broad underbelly, which has no way to be optimized to also be 'stealthy' the
shaping cannot accomplish the same result of scattering radio waves off in all directions,
from all angles
There are other challenges the vertical tail surfaces will also bounce back radio waves
this is why a tailless, flying wing design like the B2 is better suited to the task but this
kind of configuration brings with it compromises in aircraft maneuverability and agility
Aside from the aircraft geometry, which is the main means of achieving 'low observability'
there are also special coatings that are designed to 'absorb' radio waves although this is
only of limited effectiveness and depends a lot on the thickness of the rubbery coating I had
the opportunity to physically examine a piece of the wreckage of that F117 shot down in
Serbia, and the thickness and weight of that coating was surprising it was about 1/16 inch
thick in places along the vertical stabilizers and seemed to weigh more than the underlying
composite honeycomb structure itself [typical of Lockheed lightweight structural design]
This additional weight is a major disadvantage of 'stealth' aircraft aircraft must be as
light as possible to perform well that is just basic physics but these logical design
considerations have seemingly been sidelined in what can only be explained as a money-making
gimmick that only detracts from actual aircraft capability
The F35 is far worse of course but Col Riccioni passed away before he could fully train
his guns on this very deficient aircraft
The fact of the matter is that the F117 was more 'stealthy' than the F22 or F35 this due
to its faceted design wherein the airframe shape was defined largely by a series of flat
plates [remember that the whole physics of radio reflection boils down to edge
geometry...]
The current MIC propaganda is that the faceted shape is not necessary due to improved
supercomputers that can calculate the math for curved surfaces well, the physical fact is
that curved surfaces reflect in all directions and no amount of 'supercomputing' can change
that Col Riccioni, who is no slouch in physics, having designed and taught the first
graduate-level course in astronautics at the USAF Academy, confirms that the F117 was a more
'stealthy' design than the F22 and the F35 is considered not as stealthy as the F22
As for defending against 'low observable' aircraft with surface to air missiles [SAMs] let
us review some of the pertinent factors that go into this equation a SAM system consists
basically of powerful radars that spot and track enemy aircraft and guide a missile shot to
the target the only way to kill a SAM system by means of an attacking aircraft is to target
its radars with a special type of missile that homes in on radio signals known as
anti-radiation missiles [HARMs] such as the US AGM88
The problem becomes one of reach how far can the SAM missiles reach and how far can the
HARMs reach ?
A long range SAM like the S300/400 wins this contest easily the S300 can hit targets as
far as 250 km away [400 km for S400] while the best Harms can reach about 150 km at most and
that's if fired at high aircraft speed and altitude so it becomes a question of how do you
get within the SAM missile kill zone to fire your Harm in the first place ?
In the 1999 bombing of Serbia, the US and 18 participating Nato allies mustered over 1,000
aircraft and fired a total of over 700 Harms at Serb air defenses, over the course of 78 days
but managed to knock out only three 1970s era mobile SAM units the 2K12 'Kub'
This campaign was truly a David vs Goliath match, yet the Serbs effectively fought the
alliance to a draw
NATO never fully succeeded in neutralizing the Serb IADS [integrated air defense
system], and NATO aircraft operating over Serbia and Kosovo were always within the
engagement envelopes of enemy SA-3 and SA-6 missiles -- envelopes that extended as high as
50,000 feet.
Because of that persistent threat, mission planners had to place such high-value
surveillance-and-reconnaissance platforms as the U-2 and JSTARS in less-than-ideal orbits
to keep them outside the lethal reach of enemy SAMs.
Even during the operation's final week, NATO spokesmen conceded that they could confirm
the destruction of only three of Serbia's approximately 25 known mobile SA-6
batteries.'
Lambeth notes that things could have been much different had the Serbs had the S300
'One SA-10/12 [early S300 variant] site in Belgrade and one in Pristina could have
provided defensive coverage over all of Serbia and Kosovo. They also could have threatened
Rivet Joint, Compass Call, and other key allied aircraft such as the airborne command and
control center and the Navy's E-2C operating well outside enemy airspace.
Fortunately for NATO, the Serb IADS did not include the latest-generation SAM equipment
currently available on the international arms market.'
Since 1999, the last major SEAD [suppression of enemy air defense] operation by Nato the
Russian air defense capabilities have only become more lethal the radars employed on the
S300/400 series are phased array types which are very difficult to jam and much more precise
in guiding a missile to the target
Phased array means that instead of a parabolic dish, the antenna consists of several
thousand individual antenna elements that are electronically steered in order to create a
very precise radar beam [instead of a dish antenna being mechanically rotated and tilted]
'With electronic beam steering, very low sidelobes and a narrow pencil beam mainlobe,
the 30N6 phased array is more difficult to detect and track by an aircraft's warning
receiver when not directly painted by the radar, and vastly more difficult to jam.
While it may have detectable backlobes, these are likely to be hard to detect from the
forward sector of the radar. As most anti-radiation missiles rely on sidelobes to home in,
the choice of engagement geometry is critical in attempting to kill a Flap Lid.'
© Reuters /
Jonathan Ernst Inconvenient thoughts on Cold War and other news. Intelligence agencies, Nikki
Haley, sanctions, and public opinion. 1. National intelligence agencies have long played major
roles, often not entirely visible, in international politics. They are doing so again today, as
is evident in several countries, from Russiagate in the United States and the murky Skripal
assassination attempt in the UK to the apparent murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi
consulate in Turkey. Leaving aside what President Obama knew about Russiagate allegations
against Donald Trump and when he knew it, the question arises as to whether these operations
were ordered by President Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) or were "
rogue " operations unknown in advance by the leaders and perhaps even directed against
them.
Putin compares
Khashoggi case to Skripal poisoning, asks why Russia condemned despite lack of proof
'Ambitious as
Lucifer': Steve Bannon takes dig at Nikki Haley and her 'suspicious' resignation