Elias Davidsson - America's Betrayal Confirmed

Senator Sam Nunn was more explicit:

A study by the Defense Budget Project last August predicted the private sector defense industry employment would decline by over 800,000 jobs from 1990 to ’96 as a result of the defense spending reductions in the Budget Summit Agreement, which was entered into last year. The largest single year of decline, almost 300,000 jobs, will be eliminated in the fiscal year ’93, beginning October the 1st.{24}

None of these authors openly expressed the real reasons for the United States to maintain a powerful global military machinery. These reasons were spelled by others.

Political Columnist Charles Krauthammer explained in 1991 that “economic power is a necessary condition for a great power status. But it certainly is not sufficient, as has been made clear by the recent behavior of Germany and Japan, which have generally hidden under the table since the first shots rang out in Kuwait.” He then insisted that U.S. global military deployment

is in many ways an essential pillar of the American economy. The United States is, like Britain before it, a commercial, maritime, trading nation that needs an open, stable world environment in which to thrive. In a world of Saddams, if the United States were to shed its unique superpower role, its economy would be gravely wounded. Insecure sea lanes, impoverished trading partners, exorbitant oil prices, explosive regional instability are only the more obvious risks of an American abdication. Foreign entanglements are indeed a burden. But they are also a necessity.{25}

Krauthammer’s view was endorsed by Thomas Friedman, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and former advisor to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Friedman expressed his view in an unusually frank manner in the New York Times:

For globalism to work, America cannot be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is… The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist - McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. {26}

General Alfred M. Gray, who served as the 29th commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps between 1987 and 1991, offered further justifications for asserting U.S. global hegemony:

The Underdeveloped World’s growing dissatisfaction over the gap between rich and poor nations will create a fertile breeding ground for insurgencies. These insurgencies have the potential to jeopardize […] our access to vital economic and military resources. This situation will become more critical as our nation and allies, as well as potential adversaries, become more and more dependent on these strategic resources. If we are to have stability 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 capability with flexibility to respond to conflicts across the spectrum of violence throughout the globe.{27}

Such views were crystallized in an official, but classified, document leaked to the New York Times, which published excerpts thereof in 1992.{28} The document was drafted by Dick Cheney, then Defense Secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz, his Under Secretary for Policy. The policy statements in this document were developed “in conjunction with the National Security Council and in consultation with the President.” The document is known in Pentagon parlance as the “Defense Planning Guidance” and is also known as “The Wolfowitz Doctrine.”

America’s first objective in the post-cold-war era, as defined by the authors of this document, was “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.” They mentioned, however, three additional aspects to this objective: (1) Establishing and protecting a new international order; (2) Discouraging advanced industrial nations from challenging U.S. leadership; and (3) Maintaining mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from “even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”

Another objective mentioned in the document was for the U.S. to “retain the pre-eminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations.” Such interests include the “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism or regional or local conflict, and threats to U.S. society from narcotics trafficking.”

While the document stated unmistakably the goal of the United States to remain the sole and leading superpower, it did not reveal the priorities assigned to the various interests that underpinned imperial policies. Placing side by side the need to ensure “access to vital raw materials” with the need to combat “threat to U.S. citizens from terrorism” manifested probably less the confused mind of the authors than their intent to confuse.

The major positive effect for the U.S. arising from the demise of the Soviet Union was not military but political. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union provided dozens of Third World nations political, military and technical support that allowed these nations to assert their independence towards the West. The emergence of a resilient Non-Aligned Movement illustrates this situation. The demise of the Soviet Union reduced substantially the capacity of poorer nations to resist Western pressure and blackmail.

It was to be expected that the U.S., as the sole remaining superpower, would capitalize on this situation to entrench its global hegemony and impose its will on recalcitrant governments. U.S. leaders refrained for good reasons from gloating about the huge opportunities that the demise of the Soviet bloc opened for the United States. Occasionally the term “opportunity” appeared in speeches or articles, but was toned down by emphasizing countervailing challenges and threats.

Sometimes, however, the cat was out of the bag.

President George Bush Sr. recognized already in May 1989 the opportunities opened by what he called the “end of an idea: the final chapter of the Communist experiment.” Addressing graduates of the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, he said:

So today, I want to speak about our security strategy for the 1990s, one that advances American ideals and upholds American aims. Amid the many challenges we’ll face, there will be risks. But let me assure you, we’ll find more than our share of opportunities. We and our allies are strong - stronger, really, than at any point in postwar period…There’s an opportunity before U.S. to shape a new world…The economic foundation of this new era is the proven success of the free market…This time is a time of tremendous opportunity, and destiny is in our own hands. We must combat misguided notions of economic nationalism that will tell us to close off our economies to foreign competition just when the global marketplace has become a fact of life.{29} [Emphasis added.]

When President Bush Sr. highlighted the opportunities opened by the demise of the Soviet bloc, he unwittingly revealed that the purpose of America’s security strategy — the theme of his talk — was not, as one would expect, to ensure the defense of the homeland, but to “shape a new world,” by which he meant a global order run by multinational corporations and global investors.