Of course, the Cold War was not solely the fault of the United States, and rivalry between Russia and the West did indeed exist. Nevertheless, the ongoing Cold War and the alleged Soviet/Communist threat was evidently exaggerated far beyond its reality by the West, so that excessive military buildups and foreign invasions could be legitimised on the pretext of self-defence against contrived Communist attempts to attack or subvert independent colonies. This was in accord with the recognition that the “interests of other peoples should be stressed, not only those of Europe, but also of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This would have a better propaganda effect.” The fact that the military interventions undertaken by the Western powers, particularly America and Britain, were not really motivated by self-defence - or the defence of others - against Communist aggression, but were employed to ensure a monopoly over the world’s natural resources, is evident from their own internal documents, as shall become clear.

The official Cold War history refuted by George Kennan espouses that Western military operations constituted attempts to contain Soviet expansionism, whose aggressive endeavours to take control of other nations forced the West into defencive foreign policies involving massive military build-ups and frequent foreign interventions. Soviet aggression is supposed to have been typical of Communism, which needed to be contained due to its “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” to take over the world, as John F. Kennedy construed it. This assumption has been established dogma for some time. 

A glance at the relevant documents clearly discloses the absence of a viable Soviet threat of this kind. This dispels the notion that Western foreign policy was motivated toward defence against aggressive Soviet/Communist expansionism. In this regard, it is possible to consider the alleged imminent Communist threat region by region. A December 1950 Foreign Office paper pointed out that “only three Middle Eastern countries - Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan - are exposed to direct Soviet attack.” It then went on to illustrate that such an attack was considered pretty much inconceivable in all three cases. “Short of general war... an attack on Turkey is unlikely owing to the Western guarantees which she enjoys.” As for Iran (Persia), “the Soviet government must be aware that any attack on her would carry a grave risk of general war, and it is more likely that Soviet efforts to gain control of Persia will be confined to propaganda, diplomatic and subversive activity.” Regarding Afghanistan, “there is little danger of attack”.^[31]

Another document noted that “the success of indirect or subversive action by the Soviet government in any of the Arab states or in Israel is also improbable in the immediate future”.^[32] The following statement sums up the facts fittingly: “the Arab states are all orientated towards the West in varying degrees, opposed to communism and generally successful at present in minimizing or suppressing existing communist activities through restrictive measures.” In fact, Communist parties were “non-existent in Yemen and Saudi Arabia; outlawed in Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon and apparently unorganised in Jordan.” Moreover, “throughout the Arab states, at the present time, extreme rightist or ultra-nationalist elements may exercise greater influence and form a greater threat to maintenance of a pro-Western orientation than the communists”. Thus, the real threat to Western interests in world domination constituted the “anti-Western orientation of ultra-nationalist elements”, not Communism, for “the Soviet government does not appear to be exercising direct pressure upon the governments of these states.”^[33]

Regarding Africa, the State Department observed during 1950 that “today ‘Black’ Africa is orientated towards the non-Communist world. Communism has made no real progress in the area.”^[34] It was specifically noted that in North Africa “communism presents no menace at the present time”, as opposed to nationalism which “constitutes the real force of the future in this area” according to Assistant Secretary of State McGhee in 1950.^[35]

Concerning Asia, McGhee noted in 1950 that “Nationalism is the strongest force in Asia”, rather than Communism. In the Far East, Kennan, the head of US Policy Planning Staff affirmed that “the problem is not one primarily of Russians but of basic relations of Americans with Asiatics”.^[36] The State Department commented in 1950 that “communism does not immediately threaten the governments of South Asia”. Additionally, the “prospect for the period 1950 to 1955 is that... the non-Communist elements now governing in South Asia can be expected to retain power.”^[37] The US State Department reported in 1950 that “in most of Southeast Asia there is no fear of communism as we understand it.”^[38]

It is ironic that the widespread dogma of the Soviet threat was even disproved in a mainstream British broadsheet. On 1 January 1999, the Guardian newspaper of London reported on newly declassified British government documents from 1968. Among the documents was one based on an analysis by the Foreign Office joint intelligence committee. The newspaper summarised this as follows: “The Soviet Union had no intention of launching a military attack on the West at the height of the Cold War, British military and intelligence chiefs privately believed, in stark contrast to what Western politicians and military leaders were saying in public about the ‘Soviet threat’. ‘The Soviet Union will not deliberately start general war or even limited war in Europe,’ a briefing for the British chiefs of staff - marked Top Secret, UK Eyes Only, and headed The Threat: Soviet Aims and Intentions - declared in June 1968. ‘Soviet foreign policy had been cautious and realistic’, the department argued, and despite the Vietnam war, the Russians and their allies had ‘continued to make contacts in all fields with the West and to maintain a limited but increasing political dialogue with NATO powers’...”

In light of these details one sees that there was negligible Soviet/Communist threat to the Middle East, ‘Black’ Africa, North Africa, the Far East, South Asia and Southeast Asia; all of which are supposed to have been under the poise of Communist takeover according to allegedly indisputable mainstream traditions. Clearly, this does not entail that there was no Soviet power at all that was at least worth consideration. But it certainly removes the standard justification for the majority of military interventions undertaken by the West, and leaves one to wonder what the real reasons behind such interventions were.

Other documents point directly to the absurdity of the West’s attempts to justify Western military interventions and buildups in terms of the Russian threat. It has just been shown that the regions over which the “Evil Empire” of Communism - as Ronald Reagan rendered it - was poised to extend its clutches according to the conventional wisdom, were actually empty of viable Communist influence. Apart from this, in terms of military and economic strength, Russia was alleged to have been escalating to a level superior to that of the Western powers. The following excerpts from two internal documents expose the flagrant absurdity of this idea: “it is hard to accept a conclusion that the USSR is approaching a straight-out military superiority over us when, for example (1) our Air Force is vastly superior qualitatively, is greatly superior numerically in the bombers, trained crews and other facilities necessary for offensive warfare; (2) our supply of fission bombs is much greater than that of the USSR, as is our thermonuclear potential; (5) our Navy is so much stronger than that of the USSR that they should not be mentioned in the same breath; (4) the economic health and military potentials of our allies is, with our help, growing daily; and (5) while we have treaties of alliance with and are furnishing arms to countries bordering the USSR, the USSR has none with countries within thousands of miles of us”;^[39] “... the expansion of the US economy was double that of the USSR during the previous 1949, and that was probably below our rate of expansion for the previous year... In fact, all the evidence... points the other way, that the actual gap is widening in our favour.”^[40]

II.I The Real Threat: Third World Independence

That self-defence against the Soviet/Communist threat did not constitute the central motivation for the Western military buildups and operations, is further evident from a section of the very document that strongly espoused the doctrine of the Soviet threat: National Security Council Directive - NSC68 - which clearly affirms that such policies would have been pursued regardless of the Soviet Union. “Our overall policy at the present time,” it indicates, “may be described as one designed to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish... This broad intention embraces two subsidiary positions. One is a policy which we would probably pursue even if there were no Soviet threat.” One witnesses here that the Soviet threat was not the central motivation for the aforementioned policy of “developing a healthy international community” (with this phrase, in light of other documents, referring simply to a pattern of relationships involving the West’s domination of the resources of the world).^[41] Rather, it is evident that the Soviet threat was essentially irrelevant. The policies of the West at this time would be followed through even if there were no such threat - which, it so happens, there was not.  It is not surprising then that former Under-Secretary of State and future Deputy Secretary of Defence Robert Lovett, pointed out regarding the alleged international Communist threat, “if we can sell every useless article known to man in large quantities, we should be able to sell our very fine story in larger quantities.”^[42]

All this also reminds us of another important question: Why fear Communism? Given that Kennedy’s global “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” was basically non-existent, and given that fear of Communism nevertheless appeared to be a genuine component of Western foreign policy, what exactly was it about Communism that was feared? For there was no imminent Communist danger throughout most of the globe, and this is particularly highlighted by the fact that even where Communist activities were occurring, there was negligible implication in potential world domination. Indeed, one wonders why the notion of a global Communist threat was so excessively contrived by the Western governments even in some of their other now declassified secret documents, when Soviet inaction was self-evident. It seems that regardless of the facts, the Communists’ “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” to take control of the world had to be presupposed as an indisputable logical axiom. Since this axiom would henceforth remain independent of the evidence, it could be effectively utilised to justify self-interested military interventions.

All this is clearer when one recalls the ultimate objective of Western foreign policy, as led by the United States: to maintain the “position of disparity” in which a nation such as the US could retain at least “50 per cent of the world’s wealth” regardless of “human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization” which are only “idealistic slogans”. These aims should be understood in context with the basic definition of Communism and Communists adopted by policy makers. According to a 1949 State Department intelligence report, the term ‘Communists’ refers to those people who are committed to the belief that “the government has direct responsibility for the welfare of the people”.^[43] Naturally, such a broad definition applies to a whole range of people who wish their government to defend “human rights”, contribute to the “raising of living standards” and consult with its people in the name of “democratization”.

A Foreign Office memorandum of 1950, affirms the above definition of ‘Communism’: “... it is obvious that when an area falls into Communist hands, its economic and trading value to the Western world becomes greatly reduced, while Western capital assets are liquidated with little or no compensation”.^[44] In other words, the primary sign of ‘Communism’ is merely the reduction of a region’s economic and trading value to the West: a threat to the maintenance of disparity. Similar conclusions were reached in 1955 in a study conducted by a study group from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the National Planning Association, headed by Williams Professor of Government at Harvard, William Yandell Eliot. The study affirmed that the essential threat constituted by the ‘Communist’ powers is the instigation of economic transformation “in ways which reduce their willingness and ability to complement the industrial economies of the West.”^[45] As Professor Chomsky has observed, the logical implication of these simple definitions is that any non-Western government which takes on itself “the direct responsibility for the welfare of the people” becomes party to the “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy”.^[46] This is because, when non-Western governments begin establishing “human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization”, they naturally do so by harnessing the raw materials within their own lands. Clearly, such indigenous self-determination is in direct contradiction to Western interests that involve the “protection of our raw materials”^[47] from non-Western populations, to effectively plunder them for Western interests - the fundamental element of US-led Western foreign policy. Thus, in accord with the definition of Communism adopted by policy makers, nationalist movements for self-determination and independent development were categorised as Communist movements. It was only a short step to then add that the Soviet Union was directing these movements.

Therefore, in the recognition that genuine independent development in the non-Western world meant the destabilisation of Western hegemony and the loss of the position of disparity organically linked to that hegemony, a policy was necessary to enforce that hegemony against indigenous populations with ideas of their own. Thus, the British Treasury observed in 1945 that the maintenance of the position of disparity could stabilise “only if there is a high US national income and a rapid and non-autarkic [non-self-sufficient] economic growth of the underdeveloped countries and we must manifestly do all in our power... to secure these.” Furthermore, “the danger to us of autarkic [self-sufficient] industrialisation undertaken for its own sake” was emphasised.^[48] Therefore, in light of Western elite interests, the only viable “economic growth” of the underdeveloped countries was synonymous with their being “non-autarkic” - dependent upon the Western powers. Independent development was a “danger” since it would mean independence from the West, the loss of Western access and control over raw materials, and the consequent disruption of the position of disparity. Thus, the megalomaniacal communist threat, which barely existed in the form that was publicly alleged, could be pinpointed as the basis for “securing non-autarkic growth” via military invasions in non-Western nations where indigenous populations began struggling for genuine independence to the detriment of Western greed. It has already been shown that the objective communist threat did not exist in the megalomaniacal form preached then and now, and that this was well understood within powerful circles responsible for policy planning, as is evident from certain internal documents. Certainly, one cannot deny the fact of Russia’s sphere of influence, or the fact that Russia was a horribly repressive anti-humanitarian regime. However, what is unequivocally demonstrated by the documents discussed is that the Cold War was ideologically exaggerated and manipulated to justify military operations that were orientated toward self-interested Western consolidation.

In this context it is worth emphasising how the wholly nationalistic character of these movements - as opposed to communistic - was also often explicitly acknowledged in the documentary record, as can be understood region by region. Mark Curtis has demonstrated this quite unequivocally, and we shall review a few of these explicit acknowledgements despite danger of repetition.

The State Department in 1950 stated that “throughout the Arab states, at the present time, extreme rightist or ultra-nationalist elements may exercise greater influence and form a greater threat to maintenance of a pro-Western orientation than the communists”, acknowledging that “the Soviet government does not appear to be exercising direct pressure upon the governments of these states.”^[49] Another document observes that “In some territories” of ‘Black’ Africa, there was a “growing spirit of nationalism on the part of the natives, which should not, however, be confused with communism.”^[50] In North Africa, not Communism, but nationalism “constitutes the real force of the future in this area”, according to Assistant Secretary of State McGhee in 1950.^[51] McGhee also affirmed that: “Nationalism is the strongest force in Asia.”^[52] The US summarised the basic universal principle in 1954, when acknowledging that “ultranationalist” tendencies need to be suppressed, because US interests are threatened by “radical and nationalist regimes” that propose popular policies designed to foster “immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses”. Such “ultranationalist” policies are to be eliminated since they are at odds with the US/Western desire for “a political and economic climate conducive to private investment” and the accompanying profits for US/Western investors.[53] Thus, the West was endeavouring to subvert, sabotage and destroy local ‘nationalist’ movements that believed in independence from the West; genuine self-determination; real participation of the people; and utilisation of domestic resources for the sake of genuine socio-economic progress.

While the West exaggerated the so-called Soviet threat to legitimise the countless military operations perpetrated to subjugate non-Western populations and enforce the “position of disparity” under Western hegemony, the former USSR utilised the West - particularly the US - in the same way. However, the US remained the dominant force in the world thanks to the results of the Second World War. Boston University historian Howard Zinn observes: “The war not only put the United States in a position to dominate much of the world; it created conditions for effective control at home.” Professor Zinn notes that the US administrations of the time “worked to create an atmosphere of crisis and cold war”. Even though “the rivalry with the Soviet Union was real”, the United States “presented the Soviet Union as not just a rival but an immediate threat. In a series of moves abroad and at home, it established a climate of fear - a hysteria about Communism - which would steeply escalate the military budget, stimulate the economy with war-related orders. This combination of policies would permit more aggressive actions abroad, more repressive actions at home... Revolutionary movements in Europe and Asia”, that were in fact ‘nationalist’ in orientation, “were described to the American public as examples of Soviet expansionism”.^[54]

The prediction of Western foreign policy from hereon is simple, given that the Western powers - following the lead of the United States and its junior partner, the United Kingdom - are interested in monopolising the economic resources of the world. They are by no means adverse to doing all in their power to secure this access, and are willing to subvert, sabotage and destroy in the name of enforcing the position of disparity. Any attempt to rebel against this institutionalisation of Western hegemony constitutes a danger to self-orientated Western trading and business interests, and will therefore be met with whatever means necessary to enforce that hegemony by exterminating the indigenous aggression, be it through political, economic or military channels. Terrorism, in other words, is an integral dimension of U.S.-led Western foreign policy.

There is no dispute over the fact that the United States, as the last remaining superpower, is the primary driving force behind world order. A brief review of the recent considerations of the policy elite highlights what is in store for the world in the coming years. In the post-Cold War era, the Western powers continue to derive strategies to expand, enforce and stabilise the global order under US/Western hegemony. The absence of the Soviet threat has only lent the United States a virtually free reign to pursue its economic and strategic interests without deterrence. Today the Western powers, under American leadership, are continuing to implement policies designed to consolidate this hegemony in toto.

III.I Global Western Hegemony

A forum of the Western industrialised nations established in 1975, the G6 (evolving to become the G7 and G8) focused initially on macroeconomic policy coordination. With time this forum has steadily increased its influence over world affairs in all crucial respects. Tom Barry, a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center, observes: “At the center of the current debate of global governance is the G8/G7, a self-constituted forum of the major free-market democracies, whose deliberations and declarations have come to shape key decisions in the management of global political and economic affairs… By virtue of its combined economic, military, and diplomatic power and influence, the G8/G7 exercises tremendous influence over the multilateral institutions of global governance. This power gives the G8/G7 great influence on the policies, programs, and decisions of the UN Security Council, World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).” Barry notes that the G8/G7 behaves in a way suitable only of “a wealthy club whose main concern is maintaining the global economic and political stability necessary for its members to continue accumulating wealth.” Not only has the G8/G7 “failed to implement many of the recommendations of past summits”, especially those committing the Western powers to “debt relief, reductions of carbon emissions, conflict prevention, and reform of the international financial architecture”, but the consistent failure of the US to execute policy within the “UN framework or to pay its UN dues” strongly suggests that “the US-dominated G8/G7 functions as the actual center of global governance.” Furthermore, the policies consistently employed by the G8/G7 reinforce the view that this international forum “is more concerned about increasing the most powerful nations’ wealth than about its professed goal of increasing global prosperity and democracy.”[55]

It is therefore clear that global hegemony belongs ultimately to the United States. A 46-page Pentagon draft document leaked by Pentagon officials in March 1992 is very useful to understand the ongoing principles behind US policy, confirming the predictable fact that US policy planning has remained much the same as it was around 50 years ago. This is predictable because domestic political structures in the West have changed little in the previous century. Hence, it is safe to assume that the basic policies that are characterised by these structures are the same.

III.II The Pentagon On US Objectives

The Pentagon document states that the United States’ “first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival”, who may threaten America’s domination of global resources in the post-Cold War era. This would naturally involve the US endeavour “to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.” This world order must “account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from seeking to overturn the established political and economic order” under US hegemony. US military dominance must be maintained as “the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”. Such military dominance implicates the preservation of “NATO as the primary instrument of Western defence and security”, since NATO extends US hegemony over Western Europe. Thus, the US “must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine NATO” and thereby US hegemony over Europe. A “dominant consideration underlying the new regional defence strategy” is the necessity for the US to “endeavour to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power”, these regions including Western Europe, East Asia, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East, which should therefore be integrated into the US-dominated global capitalist system, and thereby brought under US hegemony. What is therefore paramount to maintain is “the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the US... The US should be postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated.” There is no doubt that this Pentagon draft document reflects the fundamental motivations and concerns of US policy planners today; it is clear already that its principles have been acted on in Iraq and Kosovo.^[56]

Such essentially self-interested aims have therefore continued to motivate Western policies in their US-led pursuit of constructing, enforcing and stabilising their conception of the ‘new world order’. The fact remains, however, that despite the public rhetoric of politicians, the ‘new world order’ is not so new in its basic principles, and its implications for the majority of the world’s population are not very hopeful. On the contrary, the ‘new world order’ is merely the continuation of the old in a post-Cold War (i.e. post-Soviet Union) framework, with domination of the world’s resources being the primary motivation underlying the formulation of policy objectives and plans. With most of the West’s puppet-regimes throughout the non-Western world already established, the West continues to ensure that these clients are equipped to repress their restless populations sufficiently. Meanwhile, the West continues to maintain its own military spending at monumental levels to preserve its global military hegemony, which is the fundamental basis of the ‘new world order’. NATO-expansionism is being propelled with these factors in mind. As former US President George Bush commented on the Pentagon document: “We are the leaders and we must continue to lead.”[57]

III.III Further Documentation on US Global Strateg

Other reports throw light on the strategies to be adopted in following through with the basic aims outlined in the Pentagon document. Then Senator William Cohen of the Armed Services Committee (later US Defense Secretary) has noted, in accord with the above fundamentals, the continuing need to “project power into other regions and maintain access to distant markets and resources”. Effectively elaborating on this ‘need’, Marine Corps Commandant General A. M. Gray observes that the end of the Cold War would barely effectuate changes in US/Western foreign policies. This is because: “In fact, the majority of the crises we have responded to since the end of World War II have not directly involved the Soviet Union” - rather they have involved subjugating indigenous populations. Thus, as was the case then, and therefore remains the case now, “The underdeveloped world’s growing dissatisfaction over the gap between rich and poor nations”, which has widened thanks to the West’s monopolisation over the underdeveloped world’s domestic resources, “will create fertile breeding ground for insurgencies. These [popular] insurgencies have the potential to jeopardize regional stability” in terms of US/Western hegemony “and our access to vital economic and military resources” - “vital”, of course, for the maximisation of US/Western elite profits and power. “This situation will become more critical as our Nation and its allies, as well as potential adversaries, become more and more dependent on these strategic resources” to maximise corporate profits. “If we are to have” the “stability” of US-led Western hegemony “in these regions, maintain access to their resources, protect our citizens abroad, defend our vital installations, and deter conflict, we must maintain within our active force structure a credible military power projection capable with the flexibility to respond to conflict across the spectrum of violence throughout the globe.” Thus, the ultimate aim of “maintain[ing] military credibility in the next century” is to ensure continued “unimpeded access” to “developing economic markets throughout the world” and “to the resources needed to support our” profit-orientated “manufacturing requirements”.^[58

These clearly self-interested objectives can be further comprehended in light of careful reading of other US statements and documents, which reveal that the NATO bombing of Kosovo is simply a single step in an overall strategy to maintain a world order under US hegemony, while expanding that hegemony. This US strategic vision, designed in accord with the objectives just discussed, can be seen to have three primary components. These were discussed by Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College Michael T. Klare, in the Nation magazine. Klare notes that firstly, there is an increasingly pessimistic appraisal of the global security environment; he cites the testimony of CIA Director George Tenet on 2 February 1999: “In this last annual threat assessment of the twentieth century I must tell you that US citizens and interests are threatened in many arenas and across a wide spectrum of issues”, ranging from regional conflict and insurgency to terrorism, criminal violence and unrest; most of which originates in people oppressed within the established system of injustice.

The real meaning of Tenet’s observation is therefore clear from the second component of the new strategic vision, elucidated by Klare: “the assumption that as a global power with far-flung economic interests, the United States has a vested interest in maintaining international stability.” Integrating all this with the objectives outlined previously, it is clear that the US conception of “international stability” is equated to its “far-flung economic interests” - such as unimpeded access to the resources of the world - which may be threatened “in many arenas and across a wide spectrum of issues” by indigenous populations. Accordingly, as Michael Klare observes, in order to maintain the “international stability” of world order under US hegemony, juniored by the other Western powers, “the United States must be prepared to act on its own or in conjunction with its most trusted allies (meaning NATO)”.

This, of course, has further logical implications leading to the third component: “a conviction that to achieve global stability, the United States must maintain sufficient forces to conduct simultaneous military operations in widely separated areas of the world against multiple adversaries, and it must revise its existing security alliances - most of which, like NATO, are defensive in nature - so that they can better support US global expeditionary operations.” This has led to the less publicised “US effort to convert NATO from a defensive alliance in Western Europe into a regional police force governed by Washington. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright first unveiled this scheme this past December at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.” This conversion of NATO would allow the US to mobilise militarily almost immediately and without obstruction from international law (i.e. from the UN), allowing it to strike at will anywhere when the “stability” of US hegemony is under threat from indigenous populations and other “potential adversaries”. Klare cites a revealing statement by Albright at the meeting in this regard, calling on NATO to extend its operational zone into distant areas and to combat a wide range of such emerging threats: “Common sense tells us that it is sometimes better to deal with instability when it is still at arm’s length than to wait until it is at our doorstep.” Notably, one aspect of this third component - the maintenance of the ability “to conduct simultaneous military operations in widely separated areas of the world against multiple adversaries” led to the simultaneous military interventions in Iraq and Kosovo. It is clear, therefore, that the Kosovo intervention was conducted in part as a test of this aspect of US strategic objectives, confirming the US ability to conduct multiple wars.

The overall implications of these strategic considerations are that US/Western interests are primarily to ensure a favourable climate of investment, including unimpeded access to resources. Ongoing military expansion is designed expressly to allow the US-led West to enforce the “stability” of its global hegemony anywhere, anytime, without obstruction, and on the slightest signs of an emerging threat. The source of these objectives is the US corporate/military-industrial complex - probably the ultimate centre of power in the ‘new’ world order. This fact and its implications are noted by Interhemispheric Resource Center analyst Tom Barry: “To a large degree, how the US government defines its ‘national interests’ and regards its ‘national security’ determines the way it exercises its leadership. Thus far it has opted for a narrow definition of national interests and a broad definition of national security. Increasingly, the United States regards its national interests as the economic interests of corporate America: what’s good for US-based global corporations is good for America. More difficult to define is the current concept of national security, although it clearly extends far beyond the US government’s sovereign right to defend national borders.”[61] The current US conception of national security is, of course, formulated in accordance with the desire to protect and secure US “national interests”. Once America’s interests are defined in terms of “the economic interests of corporate America”, then the concept of security is logically subservient to the objective of protecting those interests globally. It is this that results in the brand of military strategies discussed, in which military intervention becomes subordinate to the task of imposing a “stability” throughout the world whose bedrock is the establishment of conditions suitable for US corporate investment.

Brzezinski further notes that “After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there [i.e. in Eurasia], as are all but one of the world’s overt nuclear powers, and all but one of the covert ones. Eurasia accounts for 75 percent of the world’s population, 60 percent of its GNP, and 75 percent of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia’s potential power overshadows even America’s.

“Eurasia is the world’s axial supercontinent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world’s three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa.” These crucial political, strategic and economic considerations provide the United States with an overriding imperative to not only prevent the region from pursuing a course of development independent from the US which may then go on to constitute a challenge to US hegemony; but also to strengthen and expand  hegemony over this highly lucrative region in accord with securing US elite interests.

“With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard,” Brzezinsky observes, “it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy and historical legacy.” Brzezinski thus concludes: “In volatile Eurasia, the immediate task is to ensure that no state or combination of states gains the ability to expel the United States or even diminish its decisive role”, a role which he describes as a “benign American hegemony.” NATO is naturally the most suitable basis for this supposedly “benign” expansion of US hegemony. “Unlike America’s links with Japan, NATO entrenches American political influence and military power on the Eurasian mainland. With the allied European nations still highly dependent on US protection, any expansion of Europe’s political scope is automatically an expansion of US influence. Conversely, the United States’ ability to project influence and power relies on close transatlantic ties.

It is thus worth noting the acute analysis of American analyst Tom Barry, who observes that the doctine of the United States as benevolent “global peacekeeper” is “untenable: morally, financially, and politically. Washington is not an impartial arbiter and enforcer of global peace and security. It is a globocop but a selective one”, undertaking interventions only in accordance with what is “regarded to be strategically or economically important.” Barry notes, for instance, that even after “a half century the US still has not ratified one of the two Geneva human rights accords, and recently Washington has sought to undermine accords banning land mines, prohibiting the use of child soldiers, and establishing an international criminal court.” In other words, “Rather than being an operative principle of US foreign policy, advancing human rights is part of the US foreign policy toolbox, increasingly used during the past couple of decades, although only selectively and rarely against countries regarded to be strategically or economically important. The credibility of US human rights policy is further undermined by US unwillingness to subject itself to scrutiny of its own practices”. The US foreign policy agenda “likely to continue into the next administration”, therefore consists of the following five factors: “It is (1) retrograde, (2) driven by [corporate] special interests, (3) guided by short-term objectives, (4) interventionist and above international law, and (5) domineering.”[78]

It is therefore unsurprising to see that the United States is propelling military expansion with the view to dominate the Earth climatically. Extensive documentation indicates the existence of a US programme of research on the inducement of climatic manipulations for military purposes. A recent study commissioned for the US Air Force called for “US aerospace forces to ‘own the weather’ by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications... From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control, weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary... In the United States, weather-modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications. Our government will pursue such a policy, depending on its interests, at various levels.”[79]

This plan has resulted in the establishment of the High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) based in Gokoma Alaska. HAARP, jointly managed by the US Air Force and the US Navy, is being pursued under the auspices of the US Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) and is operated by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate. The respected scientist Dr Rosalie Bertell has described HAARP as follows: “It is related to fifty years of intensive and increasingly destructive programs to understand and control the upper atmosphere. It would be rash not to associate HAARP with the space laboratory construction which is separately being planned by the United States. HAARP is an integral part of a long history of space research and development of a deliberate military nature. The military implications of combining these projects is alarming... The ability of the HAARP/Spacelab/rocket combination to deliver very large amount of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, are frightening. The project is likely to be ‘sold’ to the public as a space shield against incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a device for repairing the ozone layer.”[80]

The specifically military nature of HAARP has been confirmed by US military documents confirming that the programme’s primary aim is to “exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes… HAARP could contribute to climate change by intensively bombarding the atmosphere with high-frequency rays... Returning low-frequency waves at high intensity could also affect people’s brains, and effects on tectonic movements cannot be ruled out.”[81] Scientist Dr Nicholas Begich describes HAARP as “A super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere [upper layer of the atmosphere] by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything - living and dead.”[82] According to Dr. Bertell HAARP acts as “a gigantic heater that can cause major disruption in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet.”[83]

The catastrophic implications of HAARP for the environment have been acknowledged by the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defence Policy. Public hearings were held in Brussel in February 1998 on the issue.[84] According to the Committee’s ‘Motion for Resolution’ submitted later to the European Parliament, the Committee “Considers HAARP... by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body”. Additionally, the Committee expressed “regrets [at] the repeated refusal of the United States Administration... to give evidence to the public hearing... into the environmental and public risks [of] the HAARP program.”[85] Unfortunately, the Committee’s call was dismissed on the pretext that “the links between environment and defense” are not within the European Commission’s jurisdiction.[86]

IV.II Military Expansionism in Space

It is therefore also unsurprising to see that the United States is propelling military expansion with the view to dominate space. According to Professor of Journalism at the State University of New York, Karl Grossman: “The US military explicitly says it wants to ‘control’ space to protect its economic interests and establish superiority over the world.”[87] Grossman cites several crucial documents elucidating the new military vision and its inextricable linkage to US economic imperialism. A 1996 report of the US Space Command entitled Vision for 2020, begins by asserting: “US Space Command - dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict.” The report reminisces that a century ago “Nations built navies to protect and enhance their commercial interests”; in the nuclear age, however, military domination to “protect and enhance” American “commercial interests” must pertain to all spectrums. “The medium of space is the fourth medium of warfare - along with land, sea, and air… The emerging synergy of space superiority with land, sea, and air superiority will lead to Full Spectrum Dominance.” Karl Grossman reports that “Corporate interests are directly involved in helping set the US space doctrine - a fact the military flaunts. In its 1998 ‘Long Range Plan’, the US Space Command acknowledges seventy-five participating corporations - including Aerojet, Hughes Space, Lockheed Martin, and TRW.” Grossman notes that contrary to the “PR spin” that this expansion into space is related to issues of defence, “the volumes of material coming out of the military are concerned mainly with offense - with using space to establish military domination over the world below.”[88]

Commander-in-chief of US Space Command Richard B. Myers admitted that “space is increasingly at the center of our national and economic security… The threat I believe is real.” Elaborating on what he implied by “threat”, Myers stated to his audience: “It’s a threat to our economic well-being. This is why we must work together to find common ground between commercial imperatives and the President’s tasking to me for space control and protection.”[89] Similarly, the Council on Foreign Relations advocated that: “The most immediate task of the United States in the years ahead is to sustain and extend its leadership in the increasingly intertwined fields of military and commercial space. This requires a robust and continuous presence in space.”[90] Grossman reports that as a result the US government is “pouring massive amounts of public money - $6 billion a year, not counting what is secretly spent - into the military development of space.”[91]

These US moves toward unprecedented military expansion are ominous. Considering the increasingly volatile state of world affairs, as well as the unaccountable nature of world order and its subservience to unhindered elite interests, the prospects for future peace and stability appear to be on the wane.

V. New Threats for a New Order

The maintenance of high levels of military spending, of course, has entailed the manufacturing of new threats by which to justify such spending. In the current world order, the Soviet/Communist “threat” has become defunct. One of the major new ideological constructions being highlighted as an alleged threat to national security, and thus being utilised as a pretext on which to maintain massive investment in the military, is ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. This phenomenon can be found within the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe.[92]

V.I The Islamic Threat, Among Others

Former bureau chief of the Jerusalem Post and adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, Leon T. Hadar, documented in the early 1990s the move of the US towards the demonisation of Islam, among other appropriate “threats”: “Now that the Cold War is becoming a memory, America’s foreign policy establishment has begun searching for new enemies. Possible new villains include ‘instability’ in Europe - ranging from German resurgence to new Russian imperialism - the ‘vanishing’ ozone layer, nuclear proliferation, and narcoterrorism. Topping the list of potential new global bogeymen, however, are the Yellow Peril, the alleged threat to American economic security emanating from East Asia, and the so-called Green Peril (green is the color of Islam). That peril is symbolized by the Middle Eastern Moslem fundamentalist - the ‘Fundie’, to use a term coined by The Economist.”[93]

Thus, according to Amos Perlmutter in the Washington Post, “Islamic fundamentalism is an aggressive revolutionary movement as militant and violent as the Bolshevik, Fascist and Nazi movements of the past”. It is “authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-secular” and by its inherent nature cannot be reconciled with the “Christian-secular universe”. Its goal is the establishment of a “totalitarian Islamic state” in the Middle East. Thus, the US should ensure that the movement is “stifled at birth”.[94] The rise of Islamic movements throughout countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia are contributing to an elitist “urge to identify Islam as an inherently anti-democratic force that is America’s new global enemy now that the Cold War is over”, writes Jim Hoagland.[95] The rise of political Islam, unless quelled with appropriate Western policy, will thus lead “the Middle East and the once Soviet Central Asian republics [to] become in a few years the cultural and political dependencies of the most expansionist militarized regime in the world today, a regime for which terrorism is the governing norm.”[96] This view stems directly from the official perspective of the Western political establishment. Then Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Willy Claes, described Islam as “at least as dangerous as communism was.” He added: “NATO is much more than a military alliance. It has committed itself to defending basic principles of civilization that bind North American and Western Europe.”[97]