You’ve seen the headlines in the last weeks and days:
The Arab uprisings, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, Washington’s efforts to keep troops in Afghanistan and Iraq beyond pullout schedules, Egypt’s reopening of the border with Gaza, Pakistan’s role in the Afghan war, President Barack Obama’s speeches on the Middle East and Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intransigence, the Fatah-Hamas unity moves and plans to gain UN recognition of Palestinian statehood — and that’s not the half of it.
Each event looms large in the mass media and in political discourse, but each is only part of a much larger mosaic that constitutes the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) and Central Asia component of the Obama Administration’s foreign and military strategy.
This component is Washington’s top priority because any significant deterioration of U.S. domination in MENA, and the frustration of its ambitions in Central Asia — especially in combination with weakening economic and political influence in the world — could hasten America’s decline as the unipolar global “leader,” i.e., hegemon.
The U.S. inherited this position two decades ago upon the implosion of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp and is hardly prepared to step aside. The policy Washington adopted at that time, and which remains in force today, is to prevent the emergence of any powerful rival or military force potentially able to undermine American dominion.
No other country is grabbing for the global supremacy, but a number of states with advanced and developing economies think it’s time for a new international construct with multipolar leadership.
The Obama Administration’s sacrosanct mission, as with earlier Washington governments, is to keep the political and geographic ground gained by the U.S. in the 66 years since the end of World War II, when it became leader of the capitalist world’s Cold War contention with communism.
This ground was extended in the post-Cold War period mainly through U.S. control of global economic institutions, the political absorption of the states of Eastern Europe that had been in the Soviet orbit, unequaled military power, and for the last decade the “war on terrorism” launched by former President George W. Bush.
President Barack Obama took over from Bush in Iraq, greatly enlarged the Afghan war and extended fighting to western Pakistan, Yemen and now Libya. In addition, Obama seeks to retain smaller but substantial U.S. military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan years beyond their anticipated pullout dates at a time when public opinion backs a total withdrawal.
Washington has had its eye on dominating MENA for its energy resources for over 70 years and attracted several key regional nations such as Saudi Arabia to its orbit many decades ago. In more recent years, U.S. hegemony has been extended throughout the entire region with the exception of Iran, the acquisition of which was postponed because of the military-political debacle caused by the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In the decade since 9/11, Washington lengthened its imperial reach into Central Asia by projecting its formidable military power into Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries on Earth. The ostensible purpose was to capture bin Laden and defeat al Qaeda, the organization he founded in the 1980s with support from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. during the civil war against a progressive government in Kabul and its Soviet military protectors.
Washington’s $10-billion-a-month Afghan foray has become a military stalemate, but the adventure also allowed the U.S. to plant its flag for the first time in Central Asia — a major geopolitical advance, as we will explain. The Bush Administration was hardly unaware of this fact when it chose to wage war in Afghanistan instead of mounting an international police effort to apprehend bin Laden.
It is within this context of MENA/Central Asia strategy that the May 2 slaying of bin Laden by a Navy SEALS killer-team in Pakistan fits into the broader picture, as do the Iraq and Afghan wars, settling the Israel-Palestine conflict, the U.S. attitude toward the Arab uprisings and the other recent headlines regarding this region.
In domestic U.S. politics, the eradication of bin Laden has generated a brief renewal of national self-confidence, and the strengthening of Obama’s “national security” credentials, leading to elevated opinion poll ratings which the White House hopes will contribute to his reelection victory next year.
Internationally, the removal of bin Laden will only touch lightly upon most of the Obama Administration’s immediate foreign/military objectives. We will discuss some of these objectives under these subheadings: The Arab Uprisings, Keeping the Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and The Importance of Palestine.
THE ARAB UPRISINGS
First and foremost, the White House is dedicated to co-opting, neutralizing or ending the progressive uprisings taking place these last months against dictatorships and oppressive monarchies throughout the Arab world.
Washington has extended its support to nearly all these reactionary regimes for many decades, in return for which they contentedly spin in America’s hegemonic orbit. President Obama has extended his belated rhetorical blessings upon the democratic trend, but in actual practice all the White House has done is lead NATO into an unjust war for regime change in Libya.[1]
The U.S. government supports democracy except when it produces a government not to its liking or when a subject country renounces Uncle Sam’s jurisdiction or expresses opposition to America’s policies. President Obama does not want another Venezuela or Bolivia or Brazil to take root in MENA and is working to insure that does not happen, even though all were the products of democratic elections.
The Obama Administration seems no longer worried about the successful popular Egyptian uprising because it brought about a regime change that may only produce the form of democracy, but not its full content. The U.S. government, which supported and helped finance the Mubarak dictatorship for over 30 years, is breathing easily because its continuing relations with the powerful armed forces and the ruling elite evidently ensures that a democratic Egypt will remain within the imperial fold. Tunisia, which initiated the popular struggle against tyrants, also seems to have remained in Washington’s camp even though the long-term dictator they sent packing to Saudi Arabia was backed by the U.S. to the end.
KEEPING TROOPS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
The Obama Administration is anxious to retain military bases and thousands of troops in Iraq, which it is supposed to leave entirely at the end of this year, and in Afghanistan as well, when the U.S. is scheduled to depart at the end of 2014. President Obama is applying heavy pressure to Baghdad and Kabul to “request” the long-term presence of U.S. troops and “contractors” after the bulk of the occupation force withdraws.
Why keep troops in Iraq? The neoconservative Bush White House invaded Iraq, which was considered a pushover after 12 years of U.S.-British-UN killer sanctions, not only to control its oil, but as a prelude to bringing about regime change in neighboring Iran, thus providing Washington with total control of the immense resources of the Persian Gulf. The Iraqi guerrilla resistance destroyed the plan, for now.
Thus, the upshot of the war — in addition to costing American taxpayers several trillion dollars over the next few decades in principal and interest — is that Shi’ite Iran’s main enemy, which was the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad until 2003, has been replaced by the Shi’ite government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a politician who usually bends the knee to Washington but is quite friendly to Tehran, as are many Iraqi politicians. (The Shia are nearly 65% of the population; the Sunnis, nearly 35%.)
On May 16 Maliki declared that “Security, military and political cooperation between Iran and Iraq is essential, and we will certainly see the expansion of relations in these areas in the future.” Washington’s big fear is that Maliki may eventually thumb his nose at Uncle Sam, and that in time, Iraq and Iran will draw much closer together — a prospect deeply opposed by the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia.
According to Stratfor, the private intelligence resource, on April 26: “[T]he U.S. has reportedly offered to leave as many as 20,000 troops in the country” after its “pullout” at the end of this year. In addition, a large but undetermined number of “contractors” — often paramilitary hirelings — are to remain.
Further, according to an Inter Press Service report May 9, the State Department “intends to double its staff in Iraq to nearly 16,000 and rely entirely on private contractors for security.” So large a staff is almost unbelievable, but so is the immense size of the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone — the largest such facility in the world.
Perhaps the most important obstacle to retaining troops isn’t Maliki , who may cave in to domestic or American pressure, but the fighting cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, which once fought U.S. troops but has been quiet in recent years. Sadr threatens to unleash the army to fight any occupation forces left behind. In making his decision Maliki must keep in mind that it was the votes of the Sadr forces that assured his election victory. The U.S. suggests Sadr is doing Iran’s bidding.
Washington has told Maliki he must make his decision by August. There’s lots of maneuvering going on, and which way he will decide is unknown.
As has often been stated American foreign policy objectives can be summed up in all roads lead to Russia.
When the Soviet Union collapsed the Americans tried an economic take over of Russia. When this failed they began a program of desabilisation in the former USSR satalite countries and we had what were called “colour revolutions”. These are also failing – a spectacular example is Georgia.
So the Americans have embarked on the military option. which began with the war on Serbia. It has continued unabated with direct military involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya. Syria and Iran are also being lined up for the same treatment. Military bases and “defence shilds” are simultaneously being promoted in Poland, Romania erc.
But crunch time is reapidly approaching and it seems the Americans have learned nothing from the collapse of the Soviet Union – military might is no substitute for economic might and here the game has already been won by the world’s oldest civilisation, China.
Nice assessment, Edward. Narcissistic/sociopathic personalities gravitatate toward jobs that provide them with a means by which to exercise power. Most of these individuals function quite well in their capacity and their attitudes are not considered to be unusual, but are deemed “appropriate” and even necessary. The destruction of the US is coming about via internal pressures exerted by psychologically sick individuals who have been given unlimited power and unchecked influence. This phenonenon is not only responsible for the demise of our economy, but is also the cause of our emerging police state. We won’t emerge from this cycle because the nature of their illness prevents them from understanding that they are the problem and not hte solution. They’ll destroy everything they touch with lies and overt abuses, but they’ll tell their tales well enough to get others to believe that their actions are somehow justified – they are not to blame for the consequenes of those events they set in motion. I call this David Vincent Conway syndrome, so named for a DIA contractor working for Major General Michael Ennis, past Director of DIA and current HUMINT Director for US spy programs aimed at US citizens on US soil.
Thank you, Mary. I comment because I see that America has brought the world to a new age and I do not want it all thrown away. So I hope you will continue to tell the truth as you have written above.
And thank you “Foreign Policy Journal”
The latest news from Libya “China meets Libya rebels in latest blow to Gaddafi” see:-
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/03/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110603
I have been expecting the Chinese to show their hand for some time and the result is predictable since they sailed off with a million barrels of Libyan oil with America’s blessing.
So the attack on Russia is moving closer. I hope it is not inevitable but with recent social, economic, political and military developments I am very pessimistic.
This has been the bipartisan US geopolitical agenda for decades
George Washington U. national security archives — much more trustworthy than NYT and i keep forgetting to check it so just subscribed.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb245/index.htm
“Prevent the Reemergence of a New Rival”
The Making of the Cheney Regional Defense Strategy, 1991-1992
Declassified Studies from Cheney Pentagon Show Push for U.S. Military Predominance and a Strategy to “Prevent the Reemergence of a New Rival”
For more information contact:
William Burr – 202/994-7032
wburr@gwu.edu
New York Times headine, March 8, 1992.
Washington, D.C., February 26, 2008 – The United States should use its power to “prevent the reemergence of a new rival” either on former Soviet territory or elsewhere, declared a controversial draft of the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) prepared by then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney’s Pentagon and leaked to The New York Times in March 1992. Published in declassified form for the first time on the National Security Archive Web site, this draft, along with related working papers, shows how defense officials during the administration of George H. W. Bush, under the direction of Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Resources I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby tried to develop a strategy for maintaining U.S. preponderance in the new post-Cold War, post-Soviet era.
Remarkably, these new releases censor a half dozen large sections of text that The New York Times printed on March 8, 1992, as well as a number of phrases that were officially published by the Pentagon in January 1993. “On close inspection none of those deleted passages actually meet the standards for classification because embarrassment is not a legal basis for secrecy,” remarked Tom Blanton, director of the Archive.” The language that the Times publicized can be seen side-by-side with the relevant portions of the February 18, 1992 draft (see document 3 below) that was the subject of the leak.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb245/doc03_extract_nytedit.pdf
Excerpts from the leaked Defense Planning Guidance that The New York Times published on March 8, 1992, can be compared here with the excised version recently released by the Department of Defense through the National Security Archive’s mandatory review request. Before publishing on the Web, the Archive formally appealed the excisions to the Interagency Security Classification Panel and notified the Defense Department of the impending publication of this version of the February 18, 1992 draft.
Declassification Anomalies
Document 12 in this briefing book includes a near-final draft of the April 16, 1992 Defense Planning Guidance that Secretary Cheney issued in January 1993 in declassified form as the “Regional Defense Strategy” (see Document 15). Much of the language in the two documents is identical or nearly so. Nevertheless, the version of the April 16 draft as released by the Defense Department included excised words and phrases—such as Israel, Japan, India, Pakistan, and North Korean nuclear program—that later appeared in the unclassified strategy document. To illustrate this, the Archive has produced an edited version of Document 12, with the excised language filled in. Not all of the words and phrases that we have added are exact matches to the excised portions, but they are very close. These examples demonstrate the subjectivity of the declassification review process; that the country names appeared in a classified document made it look like the information was still sensitive, even though it was not.
Other Sources
For background on the creation of the Cheney Defense Planning Guidance, see James Mann, “The True Rationale: It’s A Decade Old,” The Washington Post, March 7, 2004. (Article used with the permission of the author and The Washington Post.)
The Post article draws on a chapter in Mann’s book, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004).