March 25, 2005
"...But You Can't Bomb It Into Peace"
Dubya 2.0: "You Can Bomb The World To Pieces..." Hot on the heels of his having nominated John "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon" Bolton for the position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Paul "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction" Wolfowitz to head the World Bank; Philosopher-King George last week unveiled the 2005 model of his kinder and gentler Foreign Policy:
A new national defense strategy revealed [March 18th] by the Pentagon calls for greater U.S. military efforts to keep foreign nations from becoming havens for terrorism or being undermined internally by such additional threats as insurgency, drugs, and organized crime.
While U.S. forces have long helped bolster foreign militaries through a variety of assistance programs, the new emphasis on using force against internal threats in other nations marks a significant departure from the traditional focus on guarding against potential cross-border aggression.
Those scores of millions who've been on the receiving end of U.S.-manufactured weaponry (whether courtesy of the U.S. military itself, or courtesy of authoritarian governments the U.S. has happened to be helping "bolster") can probably be excused for wondering just how significant the departure really is. They may perhaps, at the least, be reassured that (in the words an anonymous defense official) the Bush Administration is "on the horns of a dilemma". To wit, "...we respect the sovereignty of nation-states" -- "kinder and gentler", indeed!
According to Donald H. Rumsfeld's Under-Secretary for Policy, it's all perfectly legal, too:
I don't think that there's anything in our Constitution that says that the President should not protect the country unless he gets some non-American's participation or approval of that.
Someone may want to alert the Under-Secretary that International Law supercedes the Constitution, and that the principal tenet of International Law is that each state is bound to "respect the sovereignty of nation-states". But in the meanwhile, the Boy Wonder is above the law: "it's a global free-fire zone".
This is the very definition of "barbarism", of course. But, hey, at least we're the ones kicking the asses and taking the names. Wake me when it's over, right? ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."
Reality Bites Maybe. But despite such awe-inspiring displays of military-intelligence omnipotence as the precision-bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, or the precision-bombing of Afghan and Syrian wedding parties, or the precision-bombing of Iraqi houses and open-air markets (not to mention bomb shelters), or the precision-bombing of Sudanese pharmaceutical plants; several recent analyses might help illustrate the ultimate futility World-Emperorship.
It's no secret that the U.S. military is now over-stretched and over-extended. Some will even say that the Army is "broken" -- or at any rate, in its most sever state of disrepair since the end of the Vietnam war. A Washington Post piece filed the day after the announcement of the new "defense" strategy, the Army's Vice Chief of Staff admits to being kept awake at night strains on manpower and materiel coupled with the military's recruiting malaise.
Keep this in mind as we briefly survey what the Empire is up against.
We begin in East Asia, where Blowback author Chalmers Johnson dissects the United States' policy of re-arming sparking Japanese re-armament in the process of ultimately going to war with China (with the fate of Taiwan as the pretext) -- are which, predicts Chalmers, "the United States would almost surely lose".
"It is unclear whether the ideologues and war lovers of Washington understand what they are unleashing," he continues, noting that not only is China well on its way to overtaking the United States as the World's largest economy, but that "the Chinese military 'is the only one being developed anywhere in the world today that is specifically configured to fight the United States of America' [quoting professor Arthur Lauder]."
Convincing arguments have been made that, yeah, Iraq was "all about oil"; but, more specifically, about controlling the flow of Middle East oil -- namely, to East Asia which must rely seriously upon imports for its energy needs. While such control yet exceeds the United States' grasp, the point may be moot anyway.
China has recently inked a $200 Billion deal to purchase Iranian oil and natural gas, is helping to build a deep-sea port in Pakistan, is purchasing from Venezuela and Russia -- with the latter of whom it has scheduled for later this year its first-ever joint military exercises, signaling a "new way of cooperation between the two militaries".
Russia which, having survived the economic shock-treatment of the '90s, is now humming along quite nicely owing to the state of oil prices these days. Russia, which has claimed that it "will develop missiles impervious to any defense", and which is supplying Syria, Iran, and now Venezuela with armaments. You might call it "Cold War 2.0".
But it is, ironically, in the economic sphere in which Russia might checkmate the United States imperial designs. Writing for the ever-informative Asia Times Online, investment adviser Jephraim Gundzik notes:
In 2005 Russia is likely to surpass Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil exporter. This, combined with continued contraction of global oil stocks, gives Moscow enormous leverage over international oil prices. Russia could easily push the price of crude oil above US$100 per barrel by reducing oil production. No other oil-producing country, including Saudi Arabia, has sufficient spare production capacity to counter a production cut by Russia.
By effectively controlling international oil prices, Russia could undermine US economic growth. More importantly, Russia could encourage the devaluation of the dollar by redenominating its substantial energy trade with Europe from dollars into euros. Redenomination, which is supported by both Russia and the European Union, would force Europe's central banks to rebalance their foreign exchange reserves in favor of the euro.
Rather than establishing economic and geopolitical hegemony around the world, the "war on terrorism" is making the US increasingly vulnerable to a sharp economic recession delivered to Washington by Moscow.
Sobering enough, one would think. But merely taking on Russia and China isn't enough: there's also the matter of the Western Hemisphere, where almost all of South America is in more less open revolt of the Bush Administration in particular, and the "Washington Consensus" in general.
James Petras, writing for the Counterpunch website outlines Washington's "triangular" plan to take down both Venezuela and Cuba: a "joint U.S.-Colombian attack of Venezuela backed by internal terrorists and the [Venezuelan] ruling class", which gets rid of another Democratically elected thorn in the United States' side, with the added benefit of cutting off Cuba's oil supply and thereby ending Castro's long reign.
Petras previously predicted the failed Venezuelan coup attempt a few months before it actually happened, so his words are not to be taken lightly. Regarding the previously referenced Russian/Venezuelan arms deal, Donald H. Rumsfeld perplexes that he "can't imagine why Venezuela needs 100,000 AK-47s". Maybe you should tighten-up that thinking cap, Donald.
But Petras also notes that the Bush Administration's designs on Chavez's head could seriously backfire: in Colombia, where the Uribe government is already on thin ice vis a vis the Colombian guerillas; in Venezuela itself, where Chavez, a former General, has the backing of the Venezuelan military (in addition to a majority of the population, that is); and also in the rest of region, where, Petras for obvious reasons concludes that, "Such an invasion would also be likely to provoke major unrest and instability throughout Latin America, threaten U.S. clients and undermining neo-liberal regimes and policies."
Posted by Eddie Tews at March 25, 2005 06:03 PM
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