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The United States: "War Against Terrorism" | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Foreign Languages Publishing House |
| First published | 2008 Pyongyang, Korea |
| Type | Book |
| Source | https://archive.org/details/the-united-states-war-against-terrorism/ |
Preface
Four years have passed since the United States declared a “war against terrorism” in the wake of the September 11 incident.
The flames of this war have devastated two sovereign states: Afghanistan and Iraq. In Kabul and Baghdad presidential palaces collapsed under the ruthless attack of the US Stealth bombers and Tomahawk cruise missiles. At present, these Islamic countries are, in fact, governed under the military rule of the Christian Americans.
Afghanistan has turned into a foothold from which the US forces are fanning out across Central Asia and its neighbouring areas, while Iraq has become a prototype for “democratization” of the Middle East, a process which is to be realized on the basis of the domino theory and aimed at pro-Americanism. This state of affairs is earning soaring acclaim from the US oil and military conglomerates.
The war, fought under the signboard of “protecting freedom and civilization from the threat of terrorism,” has gone beyond its limits, to serve as a strategic means for world supremacy by the Bush administration.
In the whirlwind of the “war against terrorism,” the neoconservatives in Washington have established preventive armed attacks and preemptive strikes as national strategy in disregard of the UN Charter, and are trumpeting to the world the arrogant theory of “neoimperialism,” namely, that the United States must play a role as befits an “empire of freedom.”
A spectre is haunting the world in the 21st century, the spectre of Pax Americana, a concept that advocates safeguarding the national interests of America even at the cost of war under the pretext that “US hegemony contributes to the peace and security of the world.” This is reminiscent of the days of the ancient Roman Empire and the 18th-century British Empire.
The recent developments in the US-led “war against terrorism” are sounding alarm bells across the world.
1. The Disappearance Of The “Iron Curtain”
The Bush administration’s “war against terrorism” was sparked off by the September 11 incident, but it was by no means accidental.
War is an extension of the foreign policy of the country concerned. The “war against terrorism” is, in essence, an extension of the policy pursued by consecutive US administrations for world supremacy, and an inevitable outcome.
The backdrop to the war is clear evidence of this.
1) The End of the Cold War
America Forfeits Justification for World Supremacy
On March 5, 1946, the then British Prime Minister Churchill delivered a speech at the College of Westminster, Fulton, Missouri, in the United States, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate, a speech, which later became world-famous, as it signaled the beginning of the Cold War.
In this speech, Churchill claimed that an “iron curtain” was descending across Eastern Europe under the supervision of the Soviet Union, warning against the “threat” of Soviet Communism.
“Protecting the free world” from the “threat” of the Soviet Union and other communist countries behind the “iron curtain” served as a justification for the attempt at world supremacy by the United States over the 40-year-long period of the Cold War since Churchill’s speech at Fulton. The existence of the Soviet “enemy” was of enormous service to the United States’ ambition for hegemony during the Cold War.
In 1947 President Truman, worried that Greece and Turkey might fall into the hands of the Soviet Union, advanced the doctrine that containment of communism would ensure world peace.
In a special article on 100 key documents that had brought changes to the United States, US News and World Report dated September 22, 2003, wrote:
President Harry S. Truman announced a principle that would lead the country till the breakdown of the Soviet Union, saying that he believed the United States must maintain a policy of committing itself to the support of free peoples fighting the subordination attempts made by armed minority groups and from external pressure.
In 1948 Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s proposal for rendering economic aid to European countries in order to restore the infrastructure of Europe after the Second World War, namely, the Marshall Plan, was passed by Congress. The following year saw the birth of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a US-led military bloc comprising the Western European countries and Canada.
The Truman Doctrine, supported by subsequent economic aid programmes and military alliance treaties, paved the way for the United States to expand the sphere of its political, economic and military influence from the Western Hemisphere, secured in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, to Western Europe, Asia and Africa.
During the Cold War the United States pursued containment as the centrepiece of its national strategy for widening its sphere of influence, a policy of imposing blockades on the hot spots of the world where revolutionary movements were gaining momentum, the socialist countries in particular, to cope with the alleged “threat of international communism.”
The cold East-West relations began to thaw after the Soviet-US summit talks on a warship anchored in the Mediterranean in early December 1989.
The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the rival of NATO, was announced on July 1, 1991, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union in December the same year.
As stated in the Review of the National Security Strategy of June 13, 1991, the United States considered it improbable for its relations with the Soviet Union to return to the former state of confrontation between the superpowers no matter what changes might occur in the latter, and thereupon officially abandoned its four-decade-long policy of containment of the Soviet Union, a core of its national strategy.
Consequently NATO forfeited its raison d’etre, and the United States was deprived of any justification for its pursuit of world supremacy. The stick which the US had been wielding on the excuse of “protecting the free world” from the “threat” of the Soviet Union and communism, lost its authority, and the focal point that had supported the pyramid of the US-led alliance diminished considerably. The Iron Curtain was lifted, widely opening the sphere of influence under the former Soviet Union, a much coveted region. The United States, however, lacked a specific justification to fill the “power vacuum” until September 11, 2001.
A “New World Order”–A Deficient Theory
The breakdown of the Soviet Union and the ensuing end of the Cold War added fuel to the ambition of the United States for world supremacy, prompting it to evolve another justification to this end.
Typical evidence of this is the “new world order” theory initiated by the senior President Bush.
He first mentioned this phrase on a tour of Eastern Europe in 1990 and in his State of the Union Address in January 1991, and further specified it in his speech delivered at the joint session of Congress on March 6 the same year following victory in the 1991 Gulf War. He said that a new world was approaching, and continued that the Gulf War provided a new prospect for the establishment of a “new world order of protecting the weak from the strong,” and sustained peace should be a task of the United States.
He was implying that the “new order” would be that of a unipolar world centring on the United States, which had emerged as the “sole superpower” in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent end of the Cold War. On several occasions he asserted that the United States had emerged as the only superpower in the world, that the 21st century would be a century of the United States, that the world is in desperate need of great American leadership, and that world peace and international order would be maintained by the might and leading role of the United States.
The theory, however, was no more than a superficial and general argument, lacking congruity from various angles.
First, doubts arose over the US relationship to the UN, the criteria for establishing the “new world order” and the qualification of the US for the role of world policeman.
Advancing the theory of a “new world order,” Bush underlined the need to elevate the role of the UN, but what was essential was that a mighty superpower should take the position of world policeman in straightening out the existing order. In this case, the UN would most probably be manipulated by the United States, and there might prevail an order in which the United States judged and settled all issues in conformity with its own interests.
Worse still, that of world policeman was too noble a position for such a country as the United States, whose past was stained with wars and military interventions.
Second, there was no specific reason for establishing a “new world order.” Bush came up with the theory of a new “threat” during a tour of the Asia-Pacific region in early 1992. Mentioning the “emergence of a new free world,” he claimed that the world was facing a new “challenge” and the United States, the sole superpower, would fulfil its responsibility for addressing the “threat” and “challenge.” The then Secretary of Defence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others kicked up a fuss about an “unexpected attack” and a new “threat,” claiming that making provision against them is a strategic task of the United States following the Cold War. However, there was no specific explanation in terms of what the new “threat” was.
In other words, Bush talked much about a “new world order,” and yet failed to formulate corresponding policies.
Neither did Clinton, successor to Bush, create any justification for the US in its bid for world supremacy.
Clinton, in pursuit of his predecessor’s “new world order,” presented such strategies as countering “regional conflicts” and “regional crises,” a revised version of the 40-year-long strategy of containing the Soviet Union, in his first term, and a “new containment strategy,” a copy of the containment policy in the days of the Cold War, in the second term.
In the 1990s the United States conducted military interventions in Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo over the issues of “human rights, democracy and humanitarianism,” only to be subjected to severe criticism by world opinion.
After the end of the Cold War, the United States attempted to make the “rogue states” of its own choice common “enemies” of mankind in the place of Germany during the Second World War and the Soviet Union of the days of the Cold War. Rejected by the international community, it only created serious problems in international relations.
These things mentioned above explain why the “war against terrorism” has become a one-in-a-million chance for the United States in its efforts to create a justification for its strategic goal of world supremacy, as in the days of the Cold War.
2) The “One And Only Superpower” Challenged
Multipolarization and Anti-American Fever
The US administration’s declaration of a “war against terrorism” resulted in some way from the crisis it faced in its domestic and foreign policies on the threshold of the 21st century.
In this regard it is noteworthy that the end of the Cold War was followed by the emergent trend towards multipolarization in international relations and soaring feelings worldwide against the US ambition for unipolarization.
Looking back on history, international order was dependent primarily on the will of the victors in war irrespective of the will of the overwhelming majority of the countries of the world. In the early 19th century the powers that defeated Napoleon’s aggression held sway in establishing the then international order, and throughout the 20th century the victor nations in World Wars I and II settled international issues at their will.
In the 1990s the United States, describing the end of the Cold War as its own “victory,” attempted to build a US-led unipolar world order through intensified political subjugation and economic and military intervention.
But the subsequent development of international relations tended to go against the direction of America’s ambition. In fact, it became more and more oriented towards independence and democratization as other countries and nations were desirous of independence and equality. Multipolarization is a good example. It contradicts the unipolarization advocated by the United States in that it essentially demands that issues of world significance be settled through negotiations between members of the international society of equal rights, not through the arbitrary behests of a specific nation.
On April 23, 1997, China and Russia made public the Joint Declaration of the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation on Global Multipolarization and the New International Order. The two signatories affirmed in this first-ever international document on multipolarization that they would, on the basis of the recognition that the bipolar system in international relations had been disrupted with the end of the Cold War at the end of the 20th century, make efforts to oppose hegemony, and power and bloc politics, and promote worldwide multipolarization free from the way of thinking of the Cold-War days.
The Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun commented that the terms “hegemony and bloc politics” mentioned by China and Russia in the declaration meant the diplomacy of the United States, the expansion of NATO and the intensification of the Japan-US security system, and that their support for multipolarization was evidently aimed at containing the United States.
The Western European allies of the United States and the majority of UN member states expressed support, official or unofficial, for multipolarization.
With the tide of multipolarization rising, opposition to American arbitrariness and dominationism gained momentum across the world.
A series of anti-American attacks prove this.
The Pattern of Global Terrorism 2000, an annual report of the US State Department, dated April 30, 2001, found that international terrorist attacks in 2000
numbered 423 in all, 200 of which were aimed at the United States.
All US-targeted incidents in the 1970s were abduction or assassination attempts, but from the early 1980s attacks on US embassies and other establishments
multiplied, especially car-bomb attacks.
April 1983 witnessed a suicide bombing at the US embassy in Beirut, which claimed 49 lives and injured at least 120 people–at that time the severest bomb attack against the United States. This incident was followed by a series of terrorist actions targeting American establishments and their staff members.
Until the early 1990s terrorist attacks took place outside the territory of the United States, but the 1993 bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in New York which claimed six lives and injured 1000, brought the theatre of terrorist activities to the US proper. Later on, similar attacks plagued America every year. In November 1995 there was a bomb attack on the US military training base in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. And the armed attack on the US army barracks in June 1996 claimed 19 lives and left over 400 injured. Even the federal building in Oklahoma became a target of bomb attackers in 1995. In August 1998 simultaneous bomb attacks were made on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and in October 2000 a suicide attack on a destroyer of the US Navy anchored at Aden, Yemen, claimed 17 lives, and wounded 39.
All of these attacks were undertaken by Islamic extremists, and there were innumerable failed attempts.
The mounting anti-American fever within the Islamic world resulted from the protests against the US-led Gulf War and the stationing of US forces in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries. In order to reverse the world trend towards multipolarization and allay the spiraling anti-Americanism across the world, the United States needed an event by which it could mislead opinion at home and abroad as in the days of the Cold War and bring about a radical change in the world political sphere.
Defection of James Jeffords and Economic Depression
In January 2001, when the United States was undergoing an unprecedented diplomatic crisis, George Bush II entered the White House as the 43rd President.
In actual fact, Al Gore, running on the Democratic platform, overwhelmed him by a margin of 337 000 votes at the presidential election on November 7, 2000, but he managed to win the presidency by manipulating the incoherent election system to his own advantage and spending an enormous sum of money on his campaign.
On taking office, Bush promised that he would closely cooperate with the Democratic Party. He soon backpedaled and resorted to arbitrary actions, revealing his true colors. This invited a forcible backlash not only from the Democrats but also from his own camp.
Immediately after Bush’s inauguration, moderate Republicans stood up against Bush supported by hardliners over the issues of taxation and missile defence, one of them being James Jeffords. The Senator from Vermont since 1998 deserted to the independents on May 24, 2001, as a token of protest against Bush’s policies. His desertion brought about a “political cataclysm” in the United States. After the 2000 presidential election the Republicans and Democrats shared equal numbers in the 100-seat Senate. The desertion tipped the balance in favour of the Democrats, reducing the number of Republican seats to 49. The Republicans lost control of the Senate and several chairs of its major subcommittees. In contrast, the Democrats became the majority party.
It is said that it was the first time in American history for a party to lose control of the Senate by a factor other than election.
The Democrats’ control of the Senate rendered it difficult for Bush to legalize his urgent political measures and appoint major administrative officers and federal judges.
With the overnight change of the political situation, the Democratic Party, driven on the defensive after the inauguration of the Bush administration and now the majority party in the Senate, launched a political counterattack.
The political unrest was coupled with economic depression. The US economy had enjoyed longest-ever boom after World War II since 1992. It began to slow down in the period before and after Bush’s inauguration, and entered a recession in March 2001, a couple of months after the emergence of the Bush administration. The Commerce Department announced that the economy plunged in the third quarter of 2001, the year of the September 11 incident, at the fastest rate since the first quarter of 1991.
The Bush administration, driven into a tight corner both politically and economically, was desperate for a war.
“Second Pearl Harbor”
The motive for this war arrived when Bush was on a visit to an elementary school in Florida on September 11, 2001.
That morning unidentified persons hijacked four Boeing passenger planes of United Airlines and American Airlines in the air and piloted them towards important buildings in Washington and New York almost simultaneously. One of them hit the north tower of the World Trade Centre in New York at 08:45 hours and another hit the south tower at 09:03 hours, razing the 110-storey twin-tower building to the ground. The effect reached a 47-storey building in the vicinity, turning it into debris. At 09:45 hours, the third plane hit the Pentagon. The fourth jumbo jet crashed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at about 10:00 hours.
The Global War on Terrorism: The First 100 Days, published in the United States on December 20, 2001, one hundred days after the incident, announced that over 3000 people were dead or missing after the attacks. It was considered far more disastrous than the 1995 attack on the federal building in Oklahoma, which claimed 168 lives, allegedly the greatest tragedy in the United States.
It was as catastrophic as Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in the Second World War.
Later, Osama bin Laden, the behind-the-scenes leader of the Islamic extremists, was blamed as the wirepuller of “the greatest national tragedy” since the Civil War, the “Second Pearl Harbour.”
The 2001 review of terrorism by the State Department said that the 19 hijackers had been affiliated with bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, dated November 11, 2001, carrying a photograph of bin Laden taken in a mountainous region of Afghanistan, wrote that bin Laden had confirmed for the first time that al-Qaeda had carried out September 11 attack.
The 9/11 incident was an attack on the US ambition to lead a unipolarized world.
The Bush administration had openly disowned one after another its international obligations, which previous administrations had pledged to meet before the international community, and pursued a hardline diplomacy based on self-centredness.
It suspended diplomatic activities for peace in the Middle East under the pretext of “safeguarding national interests.” Despite the deteriorating situation in the Middle East, it refused to become an even-handed intermediary in the region. While maintaining a high-handed stand towards Palestine, it boycotted the World Conference against Racism scheduled in Durban, South Africa, holding that criticism of Israel was unacceptable. This pro-Israeli policy incited anti-American feeling in the Arab world, which culminated in the extremism of 9/11.
Foreign media commented that the suicide strikes on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon were a counterattack against the “financial terrorism” which the United States had undertaken across the world in the past.
The Japanese weekly Economist, dated September 25, 2001, wrote: “The incident did not occur out of the blue. It had all the signs of inevitability. In 1999-2001 the United States enjoyed glory to the fullest amid its ‘unipolar rule’ over the world and its ‘revival.’ The glory was backed by the rapid development of its new economy centred on military supremacy and the latest science and technology. It was arrogant enough to assert that its standards are global ones. All this enabled it to chalk up the longest spell of economic expansion after the Second World War. However, unipolar rule reached a turning point. First, the myth of America’s high technology was shattered to smithereens. Second, the longest spell of economic expansion reached its limit. Against this backdrop, simultaneous terrorist attacks took place.”
And the Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, dated September 12, 2001, wrote: “Washington, centre of world politics, New York, centre of the world economy, and the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US military, were the targets of the terrorist attacks. The attacks can be said to signify opposition to the unipolar system in which politics and the economy are excessively concentrated in the hands of the United States.”
2. Ambition For World Hegemony Revealed
The Bush administration should have learned a serious lesson from 9/11; instead, it availed itself of the opportunity to unleash a merciless “war against terrorism” across the world.
The current campaign is different in its characteristics from the previous anti-terrorism operations, as it has proceeded from the US policy and strategy for world supremacy.
1) Curtain Raised On The Second “Cold War”
“Enemy of Human Civilization”
The major features of the successive US moves for world supremacy have been designating a “common enemy” of humanity, formulating domestic and foreign policies based on the logic of coping with it, and establishing a world order favourable for it to guarantee its political and economic interests.
The “common enemy” was fascist Germany during the Second World War, the USSR during the Cold War and “rogue states” in the wake of the Cold War.
Whereas the “common enemy” states during the Second World War and the Cold War made the United States the ringleader of world imperialism and the only “superpower,” things did not go as it had wished after the Cold War. The “rogue states” stigmatized by the United States were countries which staunchly defended their independence and dignity, setting themselves against its arbitrariness. The first feature of a “rogue state,” as defined by the United States, is development of nuclear and biochemical weapons and missiles, and the second is the sponsoring of terrorism. But this did not win global understanding or approval. So, on June 19, 2000, the spokesman for the State Department, Richard A. Boucher, officially changed the term “rogue state” to another one.
The term was revived in 2001 by Bush II and Corp.
But the rhetoric did not serve as a plausible excuse for the implementation of its strategy for world hegemony. For example, Bush officially announced on May 1, 2001, the building of a missile defence system to guard the United States and its friendly nations from missile attacks by “rogue states,” only to meet strong protests and denunciations by the world community.
Immediately after 9/11, the United States defined “terrorism” as the “common enemy” of humanity in the new century, as Nazism had been in the previous century, and, advocating that the destiny of the world depended on a “war against terrorism,” posed itself as the standard-bearer of the war.
In his statement to the US people related to 9/11, Bush announced that their freedom-worshipping life was threatened, and the country had become a victim of terrorist attacks because it had radiated the light of freedom. He added that the United States and its allies were united by the people who wanted peace and freedom, and the United States would continue to defend freedom, justice and the whole world.
The following day he asserted that 9/11 was an attack on freedom and democracy, and that the enemy had attacked not only the US people but all other freedom-loving peoples.
In a speech addressed to the US people made at the joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, Bush said that the “enemy of freedom” had conducted hostile acts in the United States on September 11, and the “war against terrorism” was a war between freedom and horror, between justice and brutality, which would determine not only the freedom of the United States but also the destiny of the whole world.
Secretary of State Powell described 9/11 as a “war against civilization,” not against the United States.
In a report titled, The Global War on Terrorism: The First 100 Days, made public on December 20, 2001, the United States clarified terrorism as an “enemy” that had to be eliminated.
With regard to this, the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun carried an article on December 23, 2001, which pointed out that it could be judged from the US definition of terrorism as the enemy of freedom that it was ready for an all-out war of the same level as the Second World War against Germany.
The Russian newspaper Izvestia, dated May 4, 2003, said that the United States had placed terrorism on a par with communism and Nazism, and regarded terrorists as a force trying to undermine the foundation of the “civilized world.” It added, “While Reagan and Roosevelt had considered communism and fascism their respective enemies, Bush regards terrorism as his enemy; while the United States regarded it as its task as the leader of the free world to liberate mankind from world communism in the era of the Cold War, it has assumed as its new historic mission now to safeguard civilization from Islamic extremists and international terrorists.”
As seen above, the Bush administration defined terrorism as the “common enemy” of humanity because, first, this was more advantageous than in the case of “rogue states” for it to rearrange the international political structure, which is growing multipolarized, into that whose centre is the United States. And second, it judged this definition would make it more convenient for it to use all legal and illegal means, including force of arms, to achieve its strategic goal, and, at the same time, would not raise big problems in international relations.
John Chipman, Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said: A new strategic era has arrived. The United States has international terrorism as an enemy in place of the former USSR. A new relationship and even a new alliance could be formed, and all this could become permanent.
The process of the “war against terrorism” waged since 9/11, clearly reveals the strategic intention of the Bush administration.
The director of the Inter-Service Intelligence of Pakistan described the US acts after 9/11 in this way: “The United States is manipulating the incident in its strategic interests, as a link in the whole chain of its scheme for world hegemony in the 21st century.”
“Axis of Evil”
In his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002, Bush defined the DPRK, Iran and Iraq as an “Axis of Evil,” saying, “States like these and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”
This “Axis of Evil” speech was aimed at justifying America’s strategy for world domination on the plea of “counterterrorism.”
Let us look into the origin of the expression of “Axis of Evil.”
The word “axis” is plagiarized from the term “Axis Powers” during the Second World War, and evil from “Evil Empire,” a rhetorical figure US President Ronald Reagan used to denounce the USSR during the Cold War.
Bush’s definition of the DPRK, Iran and Iraq as an “Axis of Evil,” with the intention of associating them with the Axis Powers of the Second World War– Germany, Italy and Japan–“is too childish an idea.”
(Japanese magazine Sekai Shuho, February 26, 2002) Foreign media pointed out that if they were to form an axis, the three countries must have something in common, but they have none.
Time magazine, dated February 11, 2002, wrote that the expression “Axis of Evil” was inciting misunderstanding, and there was no alliance between the three countries and no clear relationship between weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, as Bush had claimed.
Then, what was Bush’s aim in his “Axis of Evil” speech?
At that time the United States was trying to put an end to the Afghan war and at the same time to expand and protract the “war against terrorism.” What was important here was to decide on the next target. Although the United States was extending the theatre of the war to the Philippines and other areas, allegedly for destroying terrorist groups related to al-Qaeda, they were not suitable areas from its strategic point of view. They could not create the conditions for the United States to wage a worldwide protracted “war against terrorism” from the point of view of their geopolitical situation and military strength.
Consequently, Bush intended to justify the strategy for a US-dominated world political structure through a “war against terrorism” by designating the three countries as an “Axis of Evil,” which reminded people of the confrontation during the Second World War and the Cold War.
In accordance with the “Axis of Evil” logic, the United States designated Iraq as the next target of attack after Afghanistan, and went over to the next stage of the “war against terrorism.”
The Japanese weekly Sekai Shuho wrote that when he was speaking about the “Axis of Evil,” Bush was, without doubt, aiming at making the US people clearly understand that the three countries were targets of attack and implanting in them a crisis awareness that the “battle for the civilized world” remained unfinished.
After the Iraq war, the Bush-led “war against terrorism” targeted the DPRK and Iran, following the sophistry of the “Axis of Evil” claim.
The “War against Terrorism” Is a Policy
The anti-terrorist campaigns the United States conducted prior to 9/11 were limited operations to defend individual objects from specific terrorist groups.
The US administration had had FBI assume the responsibility for detecting and checking all terrorist acts in the United States itself.
Entering the mid-1990s, it began to realize the necessity for close cooperation between all government agencies. The Clinton administration submitted to Congress a bill on comprehensive anti-terrorist measures.
The bill did not define the “war against terrorism” as the general direction of US policy: It envisaged consolidating such powers of the federal government as investigating and checking terrorist plans and deporting dangerous criminals from the country, and illegalizing the transfer of nuclear materials except for peaceful purposes.
After 9/11 the Bush administration defined the operations against terrorism as a war, and subordinated to it all of its internal and external policies, strategies and tactics.
After a meeting of the National Security Council held in the White House on September 12, 2001, a day after the attack, Bush officially upgraded it to an “act of war,” not merely a terrorist attack.
At 9:30 on September 17, 2001, he convened a meeting of the War Cabinet in the White House and announced to the participants that the “war against terrorism” had started that day.
Mobilized in the war were all the forces of investigation, including the CIA and FBI, all the standing armed forces and reserve troops, the departments of Treasury and Justice and all other government organs.
The country’s internal and external policies were also oriented towards the campaign. The expenditure of the government budget increased. The power of the CIA was increased to a great extent, and government agencies were reorganized on the largest scale since the end of the Cold War.
In accordance with a proposal made by Bush in a TV speech on June 6, 2002, 20 federal agencies were merged on March 1, 2003, to form the Department of Homeland Security, a federal organ specializing in counterterrorism.
Formation of the department with 170 000 employees and a USD 36 billion budget was the greatest reorganization of government agencies since President Truman created the Department of Defence and the National Security Council in the 1940s to cope with the Cold War.
National strategies were reviewed or newly made for the “war against terrorism.”
In the Quadrennial Defence Review it submitted to Congress shortly after 9/11, the Department of Defence officially gave up the win-win strategy of the 1990s, and defined the defence of the US proper as the foremost task of the US armed forces.
In 2002 it submitted to Congress the Nuclear Posture Review, in which it changed ternary nuclear strategy and nuclear deterrence strategy, and justified nuclear preemptive strike. At the end of that year it submitted to Congress a strategic plan to cope with weapons of mass destruction in place of the strategic document of 1993, in which it justified enlistment of all means and methods, including nuclear weapons, in the anti-terrorism campaign.
The Bush administration worked out a national strategy for the defence of the US proper, the first of its kind in history, and submitted it to Congress on July 16, 2002.
In the report, titled, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, made public on September 20, 2002, the White House formulated preemptive strike as a national strategy on the pretext of neutralizing weapons of mass destruction before actualization of the threat of the use of such weapons.
These manoeuvres remind people of the days of the Cold War. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said that the “war against terrorism” would assume the aspects of the Cold War.
The Sunday Telegraph, dated September 30, 2001, wrote that the “war against terrorism” was, in a nutshell, a new Cold War, and would set a new organizational principle, and the activities of American diplomacy and all other sectors centred on it would become radically clear. Adding that such a principle had never come into being in the previous ten years, it continued that, just like the Cold War, it would have a strong appeal to US citizens, diplomats and statesmen.
An analyst of the Brookings Institution said that to liken the “war against terrorism” to the Cold War was right in view of its scope and role in changing US foreign policy, and that if the US administration maintained the war as its first task in the following four years, the war would be as significant as the Cold War had been.
The Russian newspaper Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie wrote, “The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent US war against terrorism exercised a very great influence on US domestic and foreign policies. The war became the first and foremost direction in US policy-making. To destroy all the terrorist organizations in the world threatening the United States, has become the focus of its strategy. The American economy, military, and internal and external policies would be subordinated to this foremost direction. If one analyses the official documents and practical measures of the present US administration, one can conclude that it has begun formulating new strategic principles.
“The objective of Bush is to preserve and consolidate the US position as the only and unrivalled superpower in international relations in the 21st century.”
2) “Ripples” Strategy
Long-Term Period
On September 14, 2001, Bush explained to British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the phone his plan for the “war against terrorism” in the context of the strategy called “ripples.”
He said that the war should be waged in the mode of ripples made by a stone thrown into a pond, with the focus on the central ring and extended to the other rings.
This shows that Bush harboured a plan from the start of the “war against terrorism” not to stop at retaliation for 9/11, but to protract the war until the strategic aim of dominating the world in the 21st century was attained.
In a speech addressed to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, Bush said that the war would not end after retaliation or sporadic air raids. Saying that it should not be considered that the war would stop after a campaign or a battle, he assured the lawmakers that it 24 would be noted as an unprecedented war with protracted operations.
Shortly after 9/11, Cheyney and Rumsfeld declared that the war would be a long-drawn-out one extending over several years, and Wolfowitz said America would wage a large-scale “war against terrorism” for a long period without any interval.
The British newspaper The Times, dated September 20, 2001, reported that the United States and Britain were planning a ten-year-long war against terror, named Noble Eagle.
On October 18, 2001, John Chipman, director of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that an era would soon come when the “war against terrorism” became a daily business, and part and parcel of the structure of the new international relations. It would be a characteristic of the war that only a long-term effort could guarantee victory, just like in the Cold War, he added.
The “war against terrorism,” already in its fourth year (at the time of writing this book) is expected to continue for many years to come.
In his weekly radio address on August 23, 2003, Bush said that there could be no retreat in the war against “terrorists who had declared war on a free state and its citizens,” and that the war would be protracted. In a report titled, War against Terrorism submitted to Congress on September 19 the same year, he wrote that it was not clear how long the war would continue, and the scale and period of deployment of US troops were unpredictable.
Osama bin Laden and his deputy Omar, the first targets of the war, are still at large.
There are various reasons for this: One is that the United States is trying to prolong the war, intentionally delaying their arrest. The United States claimed before the start of the Afghan war that it had located their whereabouts, but starting the campaign it showed no sign of its intention to destroy them. If it had been determined to eradicate them, it should have attacked a villa in Kandahar, their hiding place, in its first air raid. It bombed the city only after Omar had fled, killing only some of his family members. What is strange is that, though CIA had located on October 8, 2001, Omar’s cavalcade leaving Kandahar and himself entering a building in the suburbs of Kabul and asked the Headquarters of the Central Command in Florida to attack it, the commander of the Central Army did not accede to the request. It is said that he ordered an attack on the cars parked in front of the building, claiming that a missile attack on the building was unlawful, as it had not been listed as a target. Omar came out of the building after the attack on the cars and succeeded in hiding before the full-scale air raid started. When the campaign was nearing a conclusion, the United States did not pay foremost attention to bin Laden. At a news briefing, the operations chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the US Army would no longer seek information about the hiding places of bin Laden and the like or discuss it officially.
In an interview with US News and World Report, dated December 30, 2002, Bush said that al-Qaeda organizations were active in 40-60 countries and the “war against terrorism” was the priority policy in 2003.
After a few months, the Iraq war started. What disappeared in the oil-rich country after the war was the anti-US Saddam regime, and what appeared were anti-US militants from other Islamic countries, including al-Qaeda militants, who had not been there before. Paradoxically speaking, the “war against terrorism” provided the al-Qaeda network with wider scope for its activities. The United States is prolonging the war, pursuing al-Qaeda scattered all over the world.
It cannot be ruled out that the continued existence of bin Laden conforms to the long-term strategy of the United States.
On a Global Scale
Bush attempted to fight the “war against terrorism” on a global scale from the very day of 9/11. He wrote in his diary of that day that a “surprise attack on Pearl Harbour” of the 21st century had taken place and it would provide him with an opportunity to rally the world and counterattack against terrorism.
In a consultation with Bush on September 15, 2001, CIA Director George John Tenet mentioned a confidential document, Worldwide Attack Matrix. The document described the secret operations now under way in 80 countries and others that he proposed. They included regular propaganda campaigns as a preparation for military attacks, dangerous, secret operations and efforts for frustrating terrorist plots or attacks in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He described it as an “overseas scenario” going beyond Afghanistan. The scope of activities of the CIA–80 countries across the world–was quite surprising. (American book, Bush at War, authored by Bob Woodward)
The target of the “war against terrorism” is not confined to individual groups; all the countries that are a thorn in the side of the United States in its dream of world hegemony are included in it.
The war has so far been fought in two stages.
The first stage, from September 11, 2001 to early March 2002, was the Afghan war, aimed at eliminating al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Abu Sayyaf Group, and other individual groups. In this period America overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and expanded the war to the Philippines, Yemen and Georgia. In the Philippines it staged a six-month-long joint military exercise, Balikatan 02-1, with the Philippine armed forces from January 31, 2002, and conducted other joint military exercises until the end of that year. The target was the insurgent Abu Sayyaf. The heavily armed 3 000-strong force was holding an American couple as hostages and was in contact with al-Qaeda. At the “invitation” of the government of Yemen, the United States dispatched an advance unit of its special forces to that country on March 12, 2002, and trained and armed the Yemeni army to track al-Qaeda members hiding in Yemen. Under the pretext of “training” the Georgian forces to fight terrorists in the Pankisky Valley, the United Stated began to deploy special forces in Georgia from April 2002, officially expanding the theatre of the “war against terrorism.”
The second stage, from mid-March 2002 to October 2003, consisted of continued campaigns against individual groups, the “state sponsors of terrorism” still being targets. On March 15, 2002, Bush officially confirmed that the first stage of the “war against terrorism” had been concluded and the second stage had started. He said that the second stage was aimed at checking provision of places of refuge, rest and regrouping and state-level sponsorship to terrorists, adding that it would become an “untiring, merciless campaign.”
In the second stage the United States deployed its troops even in Djibouti, fighting the countries it categorized as forming an “Axis of Evil.” The first victim was Iraq. Some years have passed since the Iraq war started, but the United States has yet to find any evidence of “Iraq’s WMD programme,” the excuse of the war.
On October 2, 2003, David Kay, adviser to the CIA and top US weapons inspector heading a team of 1 200 inspectors who were trying to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, confessed to journalists that they had not found any weapons of mass destruction.
In a Comprehensive Way
The “war against terrorism” gave the United States an opportunity to resort to every means without any restraint in realizing its dream of world hegemony.
In his weekly radio address on September 29, 2001, Bush declared that the “war against terrorism” was quite different from the previous wars, and his administration would resort to military, diplomatic, financial, legal and all other possible means to win it. He had in mind an all-out war, enlisting the national strength–political, military, diplomatic and secret operations capacity–as in the Cold War.
The first method is the open use of armed forces against sovereign countries. The typical examples are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Operation Enduring Freedom against the Taliban regime started at about 21:00 hours on October 7, 2001.
The forces of the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan, supported by US troops, occupied Mazar-e Sharif on November 10, Kabul on November 13, and the whole territory by December 10. On December 22, the Taliban’s control of the country came to an end.
The objective of the war was not the capture of bin Laden or retaliation for terrorist attacks, but to exert a long-term influence on Afghanistan to secure a foothold in Central Asia, a region with abundant strategic resources: First, to secure a strategic foothold for containing Russia and China and encircling Iran; second, to secure military means for winning firm control over the two major oil regions in the world–the Caspian Sea area and the Middle East; and third, to secure a centre of operations and advanced base needed for expanding and prolonging the “war against terrorism.”
The Iraq war, codenamed Iraqi Freedom, started at 05:30 hours on March 20, 2003.
With the fall of Baghdad on April 9, the US troops surged all across Iraq. On April 16, Bush officially announced the victory in the war.
The war was the first one fought in line with Bush’s definition of the “Axis of Evil” and the first war testing the US strategy of preemptive strike, a strategy for coping with weapons of mass destruction.
The alleged aim of the war was to remove “Iraq’s threat of terror by means of weapons of mass destruction.” But, the ulterior motives were, first, to overthrow the Saddam regime, which had openly held up the anti-US banner in the Arab world for over ten years, thus realigning the political force in the Middle East in its favour, second, to win exclusive control over the strategic region with energy resources and the world oil market, and third, to create an environment favourable for Bush’s second term of office and the Republicans’ prolonged stay in power.
The second method is clandestine activities.
In an interview with NBC on September 16, 2001, Cheyney said that the current campaign against terrorism, unlike the Gulf War that had had clear targets of attack, would be waged against all the terrorist organizations in hiding in the world, and it would be a “dirty war” fought not only by military attacks but by clandestine operations.
According to the proposal made in the confidential document Worldwide Attack Matrix, the CIA would conduct secret anti-terrorist operations across the world, wielding the most comprehensive and repressive authority in its history.
Tenet, Director of the CIA, explained that his agency’s anti-terrorist activities over several years had enabled it to pinpoint targets and analyse their networks with ease. What was needed were funds, flexibility and wide-ranging authority, which would facilitate rapid action on the part of the agency against the targets it had pinpointed.
Though highly interested in the proposal, Rumsfeld expressed his opinion that the presidential order should be compiled on a more discreet and limited scale.
Bush did not try to reserve his judgment on the proposal. “Okay!” he nearly shouted. (American book, Bush at War)
The United States openly resorts not only to economic and diplomatic sanctions but also to military blockades.
Military blockades, a link in the whole chain of the “war against terrorism,” are effected through the Proliferation Security Initiative, which Bush proposed in Krakow, Poland, in late May 2003 and explained in detail at the G-8 summit held in Evian-les-Baines, France. It aims at enforcing economic blockades on the countries that possess, develop and export weapons of mass destruction and searches of their vessels at sea, and further building an international cooperation system for preemptive strike. The targets are Korea and Iran, two of the three countries Bush claimed to be constituting an “Axis of Evil.”
A US-led alliance of the initiative involving 11 countries was formed. This constituted a means for a multinational blockade against Korea.
In September 2003, four nations of the alliance conducted marine exercises on the sea off northeastern Australia, for “clamping down on vessels suspected of transporting weapons of mass destruction.” The exercises, the first of ten rounds of air, ground and maritime exercises the alliance plans to hold to “check trafficking in weapons of mass destruction,” was a prelude to the blockade against Korea.
3. “Killing-three-birds-with-one-stone” Tactics Of The “War Against Terrorism”
The “war against terrorism” is by no means for the benefit of human civilization or world peace. On the contrary, it is aggravating conflict and war between civilizations across the world.
The war is aimed solely at realizing the political ambitions of Bush and the Republicans, the interests of the big monopolies, and US hegemonism.
1) Long-term Office
Unprecedented Boosting of Presidential Power
After being inaugurated for his first term, President Bush did his best to implement the Missile Defence Programme and his other election commitments, so as to win popularity and assure a second term for himself. In this regard, Congress was the greatest obstacle.
The US Constitution grants more power to Congress than to the President. But, following the Second World War the presidential power continually expanded, and in the Cold-War days Congress was relegated to being a rubber stamp of the President. After the Cold War it 33 restored its authority, which was further strengthened in the days of President Clinton. The power of the President as the commander-in-chief, his prerogative power over the armed forces, was especially restricted. Bills suggested by the President were vetoed or amended, restricting the President’s executive power. Clinton could not even exercise his power of nominating Cabinet secretaries. A typical example was the vetoing in succession by Congress of the two men he recommended for the post of Attorney General.
After Bush came to office, control over the Senate was transferred to the Democrats, and he experienced difficulty in railroading his major policies through Congress.
The White House found its way out of this situation in war. In the light of the political history of the United States, the presidential power tends to be increased in wartime.
The brains trust of the White House, including Karl Rove, Bush’s senior political adviser, decided to follow in the footsteps of President Ronald Reagan, who had realized his dream of a second term by strengthening his presidential power by capitalizing on the Cold War. The strategic documents his advisers had compiled 20 years previously served as guidelines.
The 9/11 incident provided Bush with an opportunity to appear as a wartime President like Reagan.
Immediately after 9/11, Bush and his administration created a warlike atmosphere across the country. They prolonged the “war against terrorism,” attacking
Afghanistan and Iraq, and imbuing the whole country with jingoism. Claiming that the whole country would 34 keep an eye on the administration and on its rapid and strong war capacity during a war, they insisted that the wartime authority should be in the hands of the administration.
The White House spokesman said that the Bush
administration had already grown weary of the ceaseless investigations and examinations by Congress, and each administration had the right to adjust its relations with Congress with the change of time.
Availing himself of this atmosphere, Bush resorted, on his own accord, to acts going beyond the legal presidential power.
First, he handled international treaties without the approval of Congress.
A typical example of this was the unilateral
abrogation of the ABM Treaty. Despite strong protests from Congress, Bush declared that the United States would quit the treaty, which Congress had already ratified, thus giving a cold shoulder to Congress.
For the United States to enter into a treaty, a two-thirds vote of the Senate is needed. Once a treaty is ratified, it becomes part of the supreme legislation of the country like other laws and regulations, in accordance with the Constitution. The President has no right to abrogate a treaty unilaterally; he has to persuade the Senate and the House of Representatives to consent to its abrogation.
Bush, however, unilaterally declared the annulment of the ABM Treaty. He also vetoed the draft amendment to the Biological Weapons Convention, seeing to it that it needed no ratification by Congress. This weakened the power of Congress.
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As ratification by Congress of the officials designated by him was delayed, Bush began to skip over the ratification procedure, availing himself of the war in Afghanistan. Setting up the Office of Homeland Security, he instituted the post of its head equivalent to that of a Cabinet secretary, appointed him without any sanction of Congress, and denied a Congressional hearing on his designation.
Bush also usurped the judicial power. After 9/11, he set up a special military tribunal by a presidential order, and allowed it to try “foreign terrorists” in place of federal courts. This was the third instance of its kind in US history; the first by Lincoln during the Civil War and the second by Roosevelt during the Second World War.
The Washington Post, dated November 20, 2001, wrote that Bush was trying to usurp, by resorting to the administrative power, the power of Congress established on the basis of history and the Constitution, and attempting to wield supreme power.
Way to Win the Election Campaign
During the mid-term election in 2002, the Republicans set it as their strategy to win by drawing on the high popularity of Bush and by using the “war against terrorism” as a powerful means of the election campaign.
The early circumstances were unfavourable for the Republicans. The long spell of economic stagnation, successive large-scale scandals involving Enron and Worldcom, and the distortion of information about 9/11 destroyed Bush’s popularity and drove the administration into a corner. The voters’ concern returned from the “war 36 against terrorism” to the economy. To reverse this trend, Bush, in his State of the Union Address in January 2002, a mid-term election year, made the “Axis of Evil” speech and expanded the “war against terrorism” to various parts of the world. He fanned the fervour for a war in Iraq, leaking to the media various reasons for attacking Iraq, and dispatching Cheyney and Rumsfeld to the Middle East to prepare for the Iraq war. In a speech at a West Point Academy graduation ceremony in June, Bush made public the strategy of preemption targeting Iraq.
Entering the fall, he toured various states in order to raise funds for the Republican candidates in the mid-term election. His theme was the “war against terrorism.” In October he obtained a resolution of Congress sanctioning an attack on Iraq.
In his address to the UN General Assembly on
September 12, 2002, he presented an ultimatum to the UN demanding its authorization for the US attack on Iraq. And by means of coercion and backroom dealing he saw to it that the UN Security Council railroaded on November 8 a resolution on disarming Iraq. This meant legalization of a military attack on Iraq.
All these developments brought to the whole country a “wartime atmosphere,” as in the days after 9/11. The popularity of “wartime” President Bush had reached 70
percent by the very election day. The “war against terrorism” again became a matter of great concern to the voters, and the Democrats’ election strategy of defeating the Republicans over the issue of the economy proved ineffective. In the mid-term election held on November 5, 2002, the Grand Old Party or the GOP won 51 of the 100
seats in the Senate, thus regaining control of the Senate, 37 which it had lost after the defection of James Jeffords.
In actual fact, the Iraq war started four months after the mid-term election.
The “war against terrorism” served as an important means for Bush’s reelection in 2004.
A White House meeting held in late December 2002
discussed the major policy problems of 2003, setting the “war against terrorism” as an important matter that should be kept going for homeland security and for the presidential election of the following year.
The theme of the reelection campaign of the Republicans, starting in the fall of 2003, was the “war against terrorism.”
On the eve of the election the mass media broadcast an image of bin Laden threatening continued attacks on America. This led the voters, in fear and uneasiness over terrorism, to cast their votes for Bush.
2) Expansion Of High Profits Of American Monopoly Capital
For the Control of Global Oil Resources
The real target of the “war against terrorism” is oil.
Securing oil resources is a major foreign policy of the Bush administration, and the “war against terrorism” is part of the policy.
The United States consumes 25% and imports 15% of the total oil output of the world. According to specialists, the oil deposits so far confirmed in the United States amount to 30 billion barrels. They cannot last more than 38 four or five years if the United States consumes its own oil at the rate of 7.2 billion barrels a year, as now, without importing any. It relies on imports for the 60% of its domestic needs; in 2020 it will have to import oil for 90% of its domestic needs.
With regard to the composition of the Bush administration, President Bush, Vice-President Cheyney and other core members all hail from the oil industry. As they enjoyed strong financial support from the oil industry in the 2000 presidential election, they are obliged to return the favour.
Cheyney once said in 1998: We must at any cost find our way into any country which has oil.
The countries and regions where the flames of the “war against terrorism” are raging are, without exception, those that have oil resources or where oil pipelines pass through.
The Afghan war was directly related to oil and its transport in the Caspian, the third-biggest oil region in the world.
Samuel R. Berger, national security adviser to former President Bill Clinton, confessed that America’s vital interests in Central Asia, including Afghanistan, are to safely transport oil and natural gas at any cost.
The existing pipelines in Central Asia, from which the United States imports oil, pass through Russia. So the United States had to find another transport channel for Caspian oil to avoid Russia’s monopoly of the pipelines.
The southward channel passing through Iran was ideal, but America’s relations with the country were a stumbling block. Other options were channels from Baku in Azerbaijan to Ceyhan in Turkey on the Mediterranean, 39 through Tbilisi in Georgia and from Baku to India through the Herat Valley in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The former met strong opposition from Russia.
When the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 1996, American oil companies approached the Taliban to consult about laying a pipeline through the country.
Involved in this was Zalmay Khalilzad, who served at the National Security Council as special adviser to Bush and then as US ambassador to Afghanistan.
Though the plan was killed, the United States created the conditions, through the Afghan war, favourable for seizing the Caspian and the Central Asian regions.
ABC TV reported that the military campaign in Afghanistan was, to a certain extent, a war for securing oil for America.
The Iraq war, to all intents and purposes, was also a war for oil. Iraq has oil deposits of 112 billion barrels, the next-biggest oilfield after that of Saudi Arabia, and the cost of drilling one barrel was 50 cents before the war, the cheapest in the world. If the United States brought this oil country under its control, it would prove favourable for it to relieve its burden of oil imports, which was estimated to spiral 90 percent till 2020.
Moreover, this would deal a telling blow to OPEC, restrict the influence of Russia and other oil suppliers, and seize the lifeline of the European economy.
The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, dated July 19, 2003, reported, quoting data from the US Department of Commerce, that, in its report published in May 2001, the Cheyney-headed working group on the comprehensive national energy policy of the Bush administration expressed interest in concessions for oil in Iraq.
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After the war, the Iraqi “authority” announced the resumption of oil exports and made public the result of bidding for the sale of 10 million barrels of oil stored at Iraqi ports from the days before the war. The United States claimed one half, and four million barrels of the remainder were won by companies from Spain, Turkey, France and Italy.
In a TV interview, James Woolsey, who had been Director of the CIA in the Clinton administration, said that for the United States, Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction were not a matter of concern, but the securing of oil through the “democratization” of Iraq was.
The dispatch of US troops to help the Transcaucasian and Black Sea countries fight the “war against terrorism” was also related to oil.
Entering 2002, the United States took the lead in inducing early membership for Romania and Bulgaria, countries that have ports on the Black Sea, of NATO, and intensified its military advance into Georgia and other Transcaucasian countries. These actions promoted a plan for laying an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Turkey, by-passing Russia.
In mid-March 2002, immediately after the plan for US special forces to advance into Georgia was made public, Steven Mann, Bush’s Caspian-energy envoy, visited Georgia, and discussed with the authorities the laying of an oil pipeline from Baku through Tbilisi to Ceyhan. In mid-September, after US special forces were deployed in Georgia, the US-led project was kicked off in Azerbaijan.
The Western and Turkish media reported that a plan for moving 15 000 GIs from Germany to Azerbaijan was under discussion in the United States, the objective of 41 which was to protect the pipeline.
The “war against terrorism” then expanded to Africa, a promising oil region.
Expansion of Arms Production
Much in vogue in America is a saying: When a war breaks out, CNN and the military-industry complexes smile unobserved.
Availing themselves of the “war against terrorism,” the US military-industry complexes, which had been eclipsed after the Gulf War, bounced back.
US munitions enterprises, including the four major corporations–Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and TRW–are enjoying a wartime boom.
On September 17, 2001, when the New York Stock Exchange reopened after 9/11, the value of the stocks of most companies nosedived, whereas the value of the stocks of the munitions companies rose–27% for Raytheon, 15% for Lockheed Martin and 16% for Northrop Grumman. This was not accidental.
After 9/11, the Defence Department discussed the issue of using US forces in the “war against terrorism” on a long-term basis. In order to put spurs to the production of a wide range of armaments, including precision-guided weaponry, and replenish their stocks, it asked the munitions industry to secure spare parts.
The corporations that have claimed the lion’s share of the profits of the war are Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
In 2001 about 10 000 precision-guided weapons were produced, more than half of which were used in the Afghan war. For the Iraq war, the Pentagon ordered 40
42 000-50 000. A factory under Raytheon, which produces laser-guided bombs, switched partially to a three-shift workday, doubling production, and delivered the finished products five months ahead of schedule. And a factory under Boeing, which specializes in producing Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits, turned to a two-shift workday, increasing its monthly production of 1 000
kits to 1 500 kits and producing about 9 000 kits from January to mid-July 2002, an amount equivalent to that produced in the whole of the previous year. Production in a factory specializing in producing small-calibre bullets reached a 15-year peak.
According to a Pentagon official, the funds it spent from March 20, 2003, the day the Iraq war started, to September of that year totaled about USD 60 billion.
When the war was at its height, the monthly expenditure reached USD 5 billion. All this money flowed into the coffers of US monopolies.
Inflow of Foreign Capital
The United States, the largest debtor country in the world, relies on foreign capital. A sustained inflow of foreign capital has a special bearing on its economic stability.
In the late 1990s a financial crisis swept over Asia, Russia and Latin America. This brought a boom in
investment in stock in America. As of September 1998, the figure had reached USD 3.5 trillion, and the rate of annual interest from the investment, 60%. Availing themselves of the boom, international financial
speculators diverted money from the regions hit by the 43 financial crisis to the United States, to the tune of USD
250 billion. This, added to USD 600 billion of petrodollars invested by Arabs, “overheated” the US
economy. By the end of the 1990s the United States claimed 30% of the worldwide foreign investment and 45% of the total capital in the world market.
In contrast, the savings of US consumers showed a downward trend, to minus 0.2%. In order to pay its national debt of USD 3.5 trillion, the United States had to sell stocks. A slight confusion in the financial market, and there was a danger that speculative funds might be diverted to Europe, a region which had not experienced the financial crisis and had introduced a single currency, the euro.
With a view to checking a diversion by creating
turmoil in Europe, the United States scapegoated
Yugoslavia, a “powder-keg” in the Balkan area, and led NATO in an air campaign on the country, starting March 24, 1999. It proved effective in the following period.
However, from the second half of 2000, with the falling of stock prices of hi-tech businesses, the US economy showed signs of weakening, and began to decline in the following year. When starting military operations in Afghanistan, the administration paid special attention to the unstable financial market, at the same time as calculating to reverse the economic trend. According to foreign media, it started the war on October 7, 2001 in consideration of the fact that the New York Stock Exchange, the largest of its kind in the world, would be closed the next day, i.e., on the 8th. The timing was aimed at checking the fluctuation of stock prices in advance. Around the same time, Enron, the largest energy business in the world, went bankrupt after 44 many years of exaggeration of corporate profits, and in 2002
the Worldcom scandal broke out. An economic credit crisis arose across the country, stock prices recording their lowest in five years and millions of investors experiencing losses.
This led to the decrease of expenditure on production and consumer confidence, and the cooling of the “overheated” economy.
The economy cried out for another war, and the Iraq war started in 2003.
The long-term “war against terrorism” can be said, as seen above, to be related to the calculation that, if the world political situation remained extremely fluid due to incessant wars, at least USD 1 trillion of international speculative funds would circulate in the US financial market, and its economy would “overheat” again.
The Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, dated April 16, 2003, wrote: “The new stage of the tragedy in the Near East provided an opportunity to draw a very important mid-term conclusion.
“First, the United States has won an opportunity to strengthen its overall influence in the world oil market since the oil crisis of 1973. This is a consequence of Bush’s consistent line of promoting globalization ‘smoothly.’ Up until early 2000, globalization went ahead in the direction consistent with the American interests, but 9/11 showed it was deviating from the designated direction. Washington is now attempting to put it back on the previous track. If the attempt has been started with the oil war, might the international financial issue serve as an excuse for another war? If this is true, a worldwide economic war will break out.”
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3) Building A Basis For World Hegemony
Re-Formation of the Friend-And-Foe Relations
Establishing a world order with which to win world hegemony in the 21 st century is an ambition the Bush administration has entertained since its first inauguration.
In January 2001 Rumsfeld told President-elect Bush that the United States would surely find itself in a “crisis” some time in the future, and at that time the whole world would have its eyes on the new President.
Bush replied that he would be “moving forward” to meet the crisis.
Then 9/11 came.
During telephone talks with leaders of other countries immediately after the incident, Bush convinced himself that it was a challenge and, at the same time, an opportunity for fine-tuning international relations in the interests of the United States. Wielding a new yardstick called “terrorism,” Bush declared that the United States would determine its relations with other countries by means of this yardstick.
In an address to the joint session of Congress held on September 20, 2001, and televised across the country, Bush said, “…We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorists. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with US, or you are with the terrorists.”
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Secretary of State Colin Powell asserted that future American diplomacy would consider terrorism as a new yardstick with which to review US relations with other countries.
These ultimatums revealed that the United States had made it its policy to divide the world into friends and foes with such a yardstick.
The “war against terrorism” was not its only goal.
There was a greater strategic goal: to break out of the international isolation brought about by the unilateralist foreign policies of the new administration.
After 9/11 the world public focused on the terrorist attack, and diplomatic sympathy for the United States became evident on an international scale. And in the whirlwind of the “war against terrorism,” attacks of the world public on the unilateralist policies of the United States abated. Availing itself of this trend, the administration suddenly appointed a US ambassador to the UN, a post that had long remained vacant, and took such unprecedented steps as paying contributions overdue to the UN, lifting sanctions it had imposed on several countries and recognizing the establishment of a Palestinian state.
At the same time as diluting its unilateralism, the administration used the “war against terrorism” as a lever to free itself from isolation and draw more countries under its influence.
Another goal of the policy was to establish a new, US-led “international order against terrorism.”
During the Cold War, the world was divided largely into two camps–the East and the West. The end of the Cold War brought the end of East-West relations centring 47 on the two superpowers; a multilateral relationship between nations began to be established, and there was a forceful demand for a multilateral discussion of issues of international concern. This was a thorn in the side of the United States, which aspired after a unipolarized world order.
The 9/11 incident was a heaven-sent opportunity for the United States to check the emerging post-Cold War multilateral international relations, and set up a US-led international order.
The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, dated October 4, 2001, wrote: “The terrorist attacks on the United States have brought a meaningful turn in its diplomatic strategy. The guideline of the foreign policy of the Bush administration is to build an international network for routing terrorism.
While maintaining the basic ideals of expanding democracy, promoting the market economy and putting emphasis on human rights pursued by successive administrations during and after the Cold War, it is revising its diplomatic policies towards Russia, China and the Middle East, nuclear management strategy, relations with the UN and other detailed foreign policies, with top priority on counterterrorism. The change in American diplomatic strategy will probably define the orientation of the international order in the 21 st century.”
Worldwide “Anti-Terrorism” Alliance
After 9/11 the United States did its best to involve as many countries as possible in its own “war against terrorism.”
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Bush claimed that the terrorist attack was an attack on all freedom-loving people, and all countries should fight “terrorism” in concert, stressing that the “war against terrorism” required an international effort. In one hundred days after 9/11, he met 51 heads of state to canvass their support. Powell and other officials of the US administration exhorted the international community to cooperate with the United States. Bush and his special envoys, visiting other countries, resorted to every means and method, including open threats and behind-thescenes negotiations, to form an “anti-terrorism” alliance.
At first the administration named the operation in Afghanistan “Infinite Justice”; but in consideration of the reaction of Muslims who believe that only Allah grants “infinite justice,” it renamed it “Enduring Freedom.”
Richard A. Boucher, spokesman of the State Department, said that the United States even asked some of the seven countries, which it had formally named “rogue states” for their alleged sponsoring of “terrorism,” to cooperate with it in its campaign.
On September 18, 2001, Secretary of Commerce Don Evans warned that such sanctions as blocking access to the American market and reconsidering food assistance would be imposed against those countries that were unwilling to cooperate with the United States in the campaign. This led many countries to donate troops and help with logistics in the “war against terrorism,” and to allow US-led forces to pass over their territorial airspace or use bases in their territories during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or promise cooperation or express understanding–overt or covert cooperation with the United States. The antagonistic relationship between the 49 United States and Russia in the days of the Cold War turned into a partnership. The 9/11 incident had forced the United States to review its former policy of “building up the stability and prosperity” of the world single-handed, and to seek a new, powerful ally in the international community–Russia. It made public that terrorism was a “common enemy,” and Russia was no longer its “enemy.”
A historian at Columbia University specializing in Russian affairs said: I don’t want to exaggerate, but this is the first time since December 7, 1941, when the United States and the Soviet Union joined hands against their common enemy, that they have taken the opportunity to discard their ill feelings and to cooperate with each other.
The emergence of a new enemy has obliged us to reassess other allies and enemies across the world.
Along with the US-Russia relationship, the US-China relationship also improved. The United States gained a foothold in Central Asia and Caucasia, regions which had formerly been totally outside its influence. The security structure in South Asia was completely transformed. The framework of a US-led comprehensive security alliance made its appearance.
In contrast to the lukewarm relationship between the United States and Western Europe which was opposed to the former’s Iraq war and “war against terrorism,” the relationship between the United States and Eastern Europe became closer. This brought about a tremendous change in cross-Atlantic relations. Moreover, Japan, a vanquished nation in the Second World War, now loomed large as a dangerous, jingoistic force.
The Japanese magazine Sekai Shuho reported that a 50 checkerboard-like structural change has taken place in international politics.
With regard to this, The New York Times, dated September 30, 2001, commented: Terrorism is changing the world. The aftereffects of the assassination of the Austrian archduke by a lunatic Bosnian Serb in 1914 (the First World War, division of the Middle East by the imperialist forces, and others) are still felt after 90 years. Today, when hair-raising terrorist acts are breaking the old alliances and rallying strange bedfellows, we are faced with a question of whether a contemporary lunatic has defined a new axis for the development of history, and caused consequences far beyond his imagination.
Obstacles Are My Enemy
For the United States, the only “superpower” after the end of the Cold War, 9/11 was a godsend, as it eyes world hegemony.
Bush divided the world into those on the US side and those on the “terrorist” side, through childish logic.
Labelling the countries that pursue anti-US independence, that are not obedient to it and that are situated in regions of strategic importance as siding with the “enemy,” he resorted to unprecedented pressure and military blackmail. If the United States could find a “reasonable excuse,” it immediately and unhesitatingly committed military aggression.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the Saddam Hussein government of Iraq became miserable victims of the “war against terrorism.”
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The next targets of the “war,” which is continuing in line with Bush’s “ripples” strategy, are the DPRK, Iran and Cuba.
These countries, though small, stick to the principle of independence, and reject the American view on values.
The US pressure on the DPRK has surpassed anything it has tried before.
It not only designated the DPRK as a target of nuclear preemptive strike, declaring it part of the “Axis of Evil”; it also picked a quarrel with it about the so-called nuclear, human-rights and missile issues, to justify its attempts to ignite a new war in Korea.
The US attempt to crush the DPRK and realize domination over the whole Korean peninsula constitutes the core of its policy towards the DPRK and the key to its building of a foundation on which to achieve world hegemony.
The atmosphere on the Korean peninsula is more electric than the atmosphere created on the eve of the Iraq war.
Aegis destroyers of the US 7th Fleet, equipped with hi-tech missile systems, are deployed in the East Sea of Korea for action, and M1-A1 Abrams tanks, Stryker armoured vehicles, Shadow 200 unmanned surveillance planes, F-17 Stealth bombers and other hi-tech military hardware are deployed in south Korea. CON PLAN 5027, OP PLAN 5030, New OP PLAN 04, New OP PLAN 5026, and the like, are scenarios it has drawn for a possible second Korean war. In accordance with these war scenarios, it has staged RSOI (Reception, Staging, Onward Movement and Integration), Foal Eagle, Ulji Focus Lens and other military exercises every year in and around south Korea. Aerial reconnaissance acts against the DPRK numbered 2 280 in 2004 alone. These manoeuvres, an extension of the “war 52 against terrorism,” are an open infringement of the DPRK’s sovereignty and acts of state terrorism.
The Songun politics the DPRK now pursues acts as a deterrent to the “war against terrorism” and safeguards peace in Northeast Asia as well as on the Korean peninsula.
The US aggressive moves against Iran are also gaining momentum. With abundant resources of oil, Iran is situated in a place of geopolitical importance. The real objective of the US “war against terrorism” in the Middle East is oil. As the Iraq war expressly showed, the United States is ready to involve itself in any war in any place if the prize is oil. This means that the events that took place in Iraq might be reproduced in Iran as well. Entering 2005, the signs became more evident. Bush said on January 17 that a military option was still on the table.
Vice-President Cheyney said that Iran was the most volatile region in the world. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice asserted on January 18 that the Iranian issue should be brought to the UN Security Council for discussion of possible sanctions against it. In response to the open jingoistic remarks of the US authorities, Iran took a hard line, adopting measures to frustrate a possible US military attack.
The US attitude towards Iran faces opposition from the EU and many other countries.
Cuba, an anti-US, socialist country situated just under the nose of the United States, is under constant US threat.
To cope with a possible military strike by the United States, Cuba put all its people under arms and fortified the whole country. In December 2004, four million civilians joined the soldiers and reserve forces in the last stage of 53 Bastion 2004, a military exercise aimed at perfecting the principles of “all-people war” against possible US aggression.
Cuba’s firm anti-US stand and strong countermeasures will inevitably foil any US attempt to stifle it.
If the United States continues the “war against terrorism” with the logic that any country that is not on its side is on the enemy’s side, it will inevitably meet self-destruction.
4. “Bush Doctrine”
The “war against terrorism” is a brainchild of the “Bush doctrine.” Consisting of flotsam and jetsam of neoconservatism, the doctrine is transforming itself to “neoimperialism” with the “war against terrorism” as the momentum.
The day is over for the reactionary theories that have supported the US administration in its “war against terrorism”–They have reached their lowest ebb.
1) Neoconservatism
Unilateralism
Neocons of the second generation have gained the upper hand in the United States, exerting a great impact on the foreign policy of the administration.
About 20 neocons, supported by Cheyney, de facto 54 maker of the foreign policy of the administration, are now in important posts of national defence and diplomacy. The Bush administration’s “war against terrorism” is based theoretically on neoconservatism.
The British magazine New Statesman, dated April 7, 2003, wrote: Bush was not “elected” but “appointed.”
Those of 9/11 and other unexpected incidents now made the foreign policy of the “only superpower” something to be decided by a small group that does not represent any strand of opinion of US citizens and the authoritative foreign-policy makers. The core of this group now holding supreme power is the neoconservative defence specialists.
Neoconservatism is characterized first by
unilateralism applied in, and intensified through, the “war against terrorism.”
It is a motto of the Bush administration not to ask for other’s opinion.
The administration does not lend an ear to
international opinions that are not to its liking, and ignores what the international community endeavours to solve in unity if the solution is deemed to be
unfavourable for the United States.
Outlining his foreign policy at the debates with Al Gore during the election campaign in 2000, Bush made clear his unilateral foreign policy based on the US
national interest-first principle, saying, “What is most important is what most perfectly accords with US interests.”
The unilateralism of the administration finds
expression, first of all, in its noncompliance with the obligations it has assumed under international law.
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Since taking power in January 2001, Bush has slighted the “achievements” of his predecessors,
particularly challenging the agreements his predecessors entered into in their foreign policies. He unilaterally abrogated or refused to comply with such international agreements as the ABM Treaty, SALT II, Biological Weapons Convention, Chemical Weapons Convention,
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Convention on the
Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on their
Destruction (“The Ottawa Convention”), Rome Statute for the creation of an international criminal court, and Kyoto Protocol.
With regard to this, the world public denounced the Bush administration, saying, “It has launched a large-scale offensive against international treaties from the first day of its inauguration,” and “Its single-handed challenge to the world community strikes the people dumb.”
What is most astonishing is that, in spite of opposition and denunciation by the world, Bush reduced to a scrap of paper the ABM Treaty, which had served for decades as a “cornerstone of strategic stability for the world.”
The ABM Treaty was concluded in 1972 between the United States and the Soviet Union on the assumption that their stockpile of strategic offensive weapons, numbering 11
200 and 11 000, respectively, numbers that could destroy each other four times over, could be reduced if effective defences were not available. The treaty limited both superpowers to only one ABM deployment area each, outside the capital area. In accordance with the treaty, the Soviet Union had kept an ABM base in Krasnoyarsk, and the United States one in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
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Based on this treaty, the two superpowers concluded in the following three decades 32 agreements and treaties related to arms control and reduction, including SALT I, SALT II and NPT, promising that they would not threaten nonnuclear nations with nuclear weapons nor resort to preemptive strike against them. Under this treaty, a “cornerstone of the strategic stability of the world,” an international security structure had existed.
Viewing that the treaty was a stumbling block to realizing the Missile Defence System, the Bush
administration notified Russia on December 13, 2001, i.e., in the last stage of the Afghan war, that the United States would withdraw from the treaty, and six months later–on June 14, 2002–quit the treaty according to its Article 15.
Unilateralism is also expressed in the administration’s slighting of international organizations.
The Bush administration harbours enmity against any international organization, be it the UN or another, if it is deemed to be shackling its freedom to act, and bypasses it.
A typical example is the Iraq war. The south Korean magazine Shindong-A (May, 2003) wrote, “For the hawks in the Bush administration, the UN Charter that recognizes war as only a self-defensive means against aggression from outside is nothing more than a scrap of paper.”
On the day the United States started the Iraq war in defiance of the UN, UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan lamented, “Today is a most sad day for the UN and the international community.”
Opposed to the newly-established International
Criminal Court (ICC), the administration schemed to 57 weaken its authority. As an international court for trying individual suspects of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes, it was set up in The Hague on July 1, 2002, with the support of nearly 140 countries.
The next day Bush made public that the United States could never recognize the court and it would no longer participate in UN-sponsored peace-keeping operations unless exemption from the ICC was ensured for the GIs enlisted for those operations.
The Bush administration suspended its donations to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA). The spokesman of the State Department said on July 22, 2002 that the United States would not pay the USD 34 million, which had already been earmarked by Congress for the family planning programme of the UNFPA, adding that the money would be used by the United States, not by the UNFPA, through USAID.
Bush does not hesitate to boycott international
gatherings which do not cater to his taste. He boycotted, in pursuit of his pro-Israeli policy, the World Conference against Racism held in South Africa from late August to early September 2001. He was also absent from the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in
South Africa from late August to early September 2002.
The United States denounces the World Trade
Organization (WTO), saying that the multilateral trade dispute settlement organization is changing into an anti-US organization. The world’s mass media are unanimous in noting that the WTO might be reduced to an
organization with a right only to wide-ranging
negotiations and without any substantial rights if the present US hostility prevails, the United Nations being 58 such an organization now. They are also afraid that IMF
is drifting in the same direction.
The unilateralism of the Bush administration finds its most glaring expression in the “war against terrorism.”
At an international security meeting held in Munich, Germany, the then US Undersecretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz said that, if necessary, the United States might change the present anti-terrorism alliance to act independently, and might use various alliances with different missions in the “war against terrorism.” He was making this self-justified stand clear in front of the defence ministers of 43 countries, including the US’s allies in the West, China and Russia.
Already at a War Cabinet meeting on September 15, 2001, Bush, declaring the “war against terrorism,” said that he had no intention of allowing other countries to standardize the conditions attached to the war, as the United States might act single-handedly at any time.
The Los Angeles Times, dated October 24, 2001, wrote that people both within the United States and without were convinced that after 9/11 the administration had changed unilateralism into multilateralism, but the reverse was the actual situation. It pointed out that the administration had neither given up unilateralism nor changed its attitude towards the Kyoto Protocol,
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and other international obligations, and was slighting the United Nations, adding that the war against terrorism was, in a manner of speaking, instigating it to follow unilateralism more than ever before.
Prof. Charles A. Kupchan of international affairs at Georgetown University had this to say: Slighting the 59 United Nations, overturning governments of other countries, preemptive strike, “surgical” air raids, occupation of other countries–the trend towards
unilateralism is getting more and more undisguised.
Everything has lost its balance. The United States is at the moment in a virtual hysteria.
US specialists in foreign relations said that Bush is not inclined to lend an ear to what others have to say, lamenting that the present administration is the only one over the past 40 years to be so self-opinionated and, if things go on in this way, the United States might become a real rogue state itself.
Arms-First Principle
The neocons in the Bush administration are not only unilateral but inherently hawkish.
Their world outlook has taken its cue from the world outlook of Ronald Reagan, who in the 1980s called the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire,” and their advocacy is rooted in the ideological confrontation of the Cold-War days, the core of which is the belief that strength means justice. They think that now that the United States has overwhelming military strength it is high time to realize Reagan’s dream.
These forces are entrenched in the Pentagon, in which they advocate the attainment of political objectives by force of arms. The neo-conservative organization Project for the New American Century, formed on June 3, 1997, elucidated in its basic policy that the objective of the United States in the new century should be armaments expansion, arms increase and confrontation with hostile countries.
This captivated Bush, and the “war against terrorism”
has turned into an arena of neocons advocating the arms-first principle.
Immediately after his inauguration as President, Bush, under the signboard of “American internationalism,”
defined world domination by force as his foreign policy.
At his annual policy speech delivered in late February 2001, Bush set “American internationalism” as the diplomatic doctrine of his administration, a revised version of the strength-is-almighty theory. In his early days as President, he said that his administration would deal with international issues by dint of strength, claiming that its major concern would be directed to demonstrating to the world the “strength and authority of America” and that “peace is secured by armed force.”
Advertizing American values as the “best,” Bush and Powell repeatedly said that they would be proliferated on the basis of “military and economic strength.”
Availing itself of the “war against terrorism,” the administration has opted for preemptive strike as its war strategy, and put the arms-first principle into effect.
In his first review of the national security strategy submitted to Congress in September 2002, Bush
advanced the framework of the national security strategy of the United States in the 21st century generalizing the national security policies he had clarified privately since his inauguration. Within this framework preemptive strike was defined as the pillar of the US national security strategy.
Previously the United States had ostensibly pursued a “defensive” strategy allegedly to deter an “enemy’s”
attack or repulse aggression. War deterrence against the 61 Soviet Union, the Gulf War that repulsed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Afghan war in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attack can be taken as examples.
Entering 2002 this “defensive” strategy switched over to preemptive strike.
On January 31, Donald Rumsfeld, in a lecture he gave on US military strategy at the National Defence
University, mentioned the strategy of preemptive strike.
In June the same year in a speech at a graduation ceremony at West Point, Bush made public for the first time the formulation of the strategy.
In reflection, the review on national security strategy submitted by Bush clarified that the United States would resort to “preemptive strike if necessary” so as to prevent terrorist aggression. And the United States gave up the strategy of “deterrence and blockade” of the Cold-War days, and switched over to the strategy of preemptive strike.
Preemptive strike means, in brief, employing
preventive measures in national defence, a change of the concept of national defence, so as to defeat the “enemy”
before he challenges the United States. This was reflected in Rumsfeld’s words that “the best defence is a well-prepared attack.”
Bush claims that deterrence against aggression by threat of retaliation is meaningless, as terrorist groups have no territory or people to defend, and, if a “rogue state” launches a missile attack on the United States or provides terrorist groups with weapons of mass
destruction covertly, the strategy of blockade itself would be ineffective.
It was none other than Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of 62 Defence and a representative neocon, who agitated the Bush administration after 9/11 to adopt the new strategy of preemptive strike aimed at countering terror-
sponsoring countries with force.
In accordance with this strategy, the policy of nuclear deterrence has changed to one of nuclear preemptive strike.
In the Cold-War days the United States had adopted the strategy of deterring a Soviet nuclear attack by securing its absolute nuclear supremacy in the world and possessing the capability to prevail over the enemy mainly by means of nuclear offensive weapons, and this nuclear deterrence strategy had been maintained even after the Cold War.
Bush submitted the Nuclear Posture Review to
Congress in January 2002. Outlining the orientation of the nuclear policy the United States should pursue in the forthcoming five to ten years in the report, Bush insisted on changing the strategy of nuclear deterrence. In the part not made public, the report pinpointed the DPRK, along with China, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria, as targets of nuclear attack, and further expanded the scope and methods of the use of nuclear weapons.
This overturned the former US nuclear strategy of possessing nuclear weapons as a deterrent force and not being prepared to resort to them except as a final means, and it created new excuses for resorting to nuclear weapons. The document also advocated nuclear
preemptive strike against nonnuclear states by defining five nonnuclear states as targets of nuclear attack. This was an abandonment of its former strategy of refraining from using nuclear weapons against the nonnuclear 63 signatories to the NPT unless they attacked it in collusion with a nuclear state.
By developing mini-nuclear weapons of a new type as a means for nuclear preemptive strike, the Bush
administration has turned nuclear weapons from a war deterrent into a war means.
In accordance with the review, the three constituents of the conventional nuclear deterrence strategy–ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bomber-borne nuclear weapons–have been changed into strategic nuclear weapons, the MD system and hi-tech conventional weapons. For the United States, nuclear weapons are no longer a means of deterrence; they are a means of war.
The United States raised military expenditure to a peak level following the end of the Cold War, so as to implement the strategy of preemptive strike. In 2003 US
military expenditure reached USD 400 billion, an
increase of USD 100 billion over 2001. This was equal to more than one half of the total military expenditure of all the other countries in the world.
Along with expansion of military expenditure, the United States is attempting to undertake fundamental military reorganization by increasing the mobility and flexibility of its troops, establishing the MD system and improving information gathering capability, so as to maintain lasting military supremacy.
The neoconservative arms-supremacy principle of the administration is being put into effect in the form of war against sovereign states.
After the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, neocons are insisting that military attacks should be launched against 64 the DPRK, Syria and other countries.
The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, dated April 3, 2003, wrote, “Neoconservatism claims that American-style ‘democracy’ and ‘economic liberalism’ must be proliferated across the world even by resorting to war, and this is a historical mission of the United States, the sole superpower. Modernization of the armed forces, overthrowing of governments of countries hostile to the United States, and consciousness of the unique role of the United States in the international community–these objectives set up by neoconservatism are identical with those of the present administration.”
Religion-Tinged Foreign Policies
There are many Jews among the neocons, but
Cheyney, Rice and Rumsfeld are all Christians. This is because, irrespective of the difference in their religious beliefs, the neocons and the Bush administration have a common interest in making foreign policy religiontinged.
The foreign policy of Bush is greatly influenced in many cases by religion. He tenaciously cultivated Christian Rightists in the Republican Party and owed much to them in defeating Al Gore during the 2000 election.
A characteristic of the Bush administration
distinguishable from other Republican administrations since the Second World War is representation of the interests of the alliance of big business and Rightist religious groups, its support base.
This alliance is contemptuous of the non-religious 65 societies of other developed countries and plays a greater role in policy-making than it did in the previous administrations. If these two groups agree on an opinion, the administration follows it blindly in disregard of what others say inside and outside of the United States. If they do not, it hesitates. For example, they agree on policies towards Latin America and disagree on policies towards the Middle East. The business circles support Saudi Arabia, while the Christian Rightists support Israel. This is the starting-point of community between them and the neocons, most of whom are Jews and support Sharon’s government.
Bush frequently speaks about his religious devotion, and introduces it to the work of his administration. He intends to provide billions of dollars to Christian organizations under federal social plans to enable them to participate in public work. This policy, running counter to the civil law and the US Constitution that separates church from politics, is related to his religious devotion.
While pursuing this initiative, he has often said that religious devotion had made it possible for him to quit drinking and start life anew in his forties.
His religious devotion, combined with ignorance, has entailed grave consequences in the “war against
terrorism.”
Immediately after 9/11, Rumsfeld opened a Cabinet meeting by offering a prayer.
In his State of the Union Address on January 30, 2002, Bush called north Korea, Iran and Iraq an “Axis of Evil.” Underlying this remark is his intention to divide the world into “good and evil” by using the issue of terrorism as a yardstick. In other words, the countries that 66 support and cooperate with the United States in the “war against terrorism” belong in the category of “good,” and those that do not, in the category of “evil.” The theory of an “Axis of Evil” is based on a very simple, and yet very dangerous, conception that “evil” must be eliminated.
Bush is said to have come to acquire a “political view” and a world outlook of “good and evil” after reading in Camp David in March 2001 Eastward to Tartary written by Robert Kaplan. The gist of the book, dealing with disputes in various regions of the world, is that “the world is dark, and historically great countries fought against a dark future.”
Bush invited the author to the White House, and held a 45-minute-long discussion with him and his own advisers. In the end he held the view that “there are evil gangs in the world, and the United States must fight them and, if necessary, wipe them out,” and invented the theory of an “Axis of Evil.” According to Bush’s point of view, the world is divided into “good countries and evil countries” by the yardstick of terrorism, and the “war against terrorism” to wipe out the “evil countries” is a “righteous war.”
Moreover, this “war” is precisely “peace.”
The neocons are making this religious content of Bush’s foreign policies concrete and promoting it.
In the United States some advocate a theory of “cultural conflict,” which alleges that Islamic culture is fundamentally contradictory to Christian culture. Neocons view that 9/11 proved this conflict and the only way to eliminate it is to reform the entire Islamic world and lead it to Western-style democracy. This led the ultimate aim of the United States in the Iraq war to be to 67 make the Islamic force in the Middle East “democratic” in an American way.
At a press conference held in the White House on September 16, 2001, Bush described the nature of the “war against terrorism” as a “Crusade,” repeating the words “evil” and “evildoers” seven times. Related to several expeditions undertaken by Christians in the Middle Ages against Muslims and to recover the Holy Land claiming that the God was on their side, the crusades arouse a feeling of disgust and negation among Muslims. With regard to the wording, Muslims accused the United States of planning a military onslaught aimed at dividing Islamic society. Later Bush had to disown his words and apologize, but the religious ideal behind his foreign policies has never changed.
2) Neoimperialism
Spectre of “Pax Americana”
The “war against terrorism” led to a chorus of “Pax Americana.” Like Pax Romana or Pax Britannica, Pax Americana claims that “peace and stability will settle in the world if America holds sway in it.” In other words, it means peace and stability will be secured in the world if America with overwhelming military strength establishes order as the world’s policeman, just as peace existed after the Roman Empire had prevailed over its neighbouring tribes and states or as the world was relatively peaceful after Britain had overwhelmed Spain and other major competitors and secured colonies in India and various 68 other parts of the world. Some political scientists in the United States, including neocons, supplied this theory to the Bush administration as its theoretical foundation for the “war against terrorism.”
William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, as well as chairman and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, a project that involved such hawks as Cheyney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, in a book published in January 2003, rationalized the Iraq war, alleging that US hegemony is helpful not only to its own national interests but also to world peace.
The organization, in its inaugural declaration, asserted that America must regard as its aim promotion of
political and economic “liberalization” in the world, and the maintenance and extension of an international order consistent with America’s stability, prosperity and principles so as to fulfil its global responsibilities.
Open propaganda of “neoimperialism” started gaining momentum after a certain success was achieved in the “war against terrorism” in Afghanistan.
Now the major US media are hyping an American
empire on a par with the Roman and British empires, and this has become a general trend. The New York Times and other mass media have fanned the concept of neoimperialism. A US writer wrote in his book titled, Politics of the Brave, that people in the future would probably view the United States in the 21 st century as either a republic or an extraordinary empire.
Books on “empire” are bestsellers. The authors of these books claim that the capitalist system had undergone a radical change after industrialization and a system of a 69 global nature, not restricted by the boundaries of bourgeois nation states, has been formed, adding that the system, an “empire” fundamentally different from imperialism, is a prototype of the American model, that this “empire” does not run counter to freedom and democracy, but instead it regards as its mission the proliferation of “freedom and democracy” across the world.
The Russian daily Izvestia, dated August 27, 2003, wrote, “The empire now being formed attempts not only to place all regions of the world under its control and force them to serve its strategic interests but also to phase out all boundaries of states, nations, religions, cultures and societies, and shackle mankind in one political and economic system, thus facilitating a qualitative change of global structure. Looming large in this empire is ‘Americanism’ of a politico-economic form rather than America itself.”
Since 9/11 several US scholars and politicians have made their writings public one after another. In them they declared, basing themselves on the military and economic strength of the United States, that “the American Empire has already emerged,” asserting that America today is not simply an empire “on which the sun never sets” (British Empire) but a new and only world empire, unprecedented in history, a country that transforms the Earth anew according to its will.
Americans believe that their country is a kind of new empire and they will enjoy special benefits from it. The result of an opinion poll made public on September 30, 2003, showed that only 40% of Americans thought that to see America as “imperialism” was wrong.
American conservative circles, elated at the victories 70 in the Afghan and Iraq wars, are brazen-faced enough to claim that the United States must recognize its mission as a “global empire” and make preparations for it. The conservative mass media go to the length of claiming that the most practical method of coping with terrorism is for the United States not to hesitate to play its due imperialist role, and the United States, as a “free empire,” must not hesitate if force of arms is required.
Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, wrote in the Washington Post, dated April 20, 2003, that, though President Bush does not reveal it, the United States now entertains an ambition for an empire and the era of Pax Americana has arrived for the whole world. Noting that after 9/11 the Bush administration has pursued imperial objectives on the plea of the “war against terrorism,” he went on to write that the time has come for the administration to declare its intention of “imperial dominance,” and make preparations for such dominance like training officers, centring on the Pentagon, who would deal with the affairs of the new imperial era.
Daydream of “Global Empire”
The Republican programme stipulates that the United States must refrain from becoming an empire and
controlling the world on the merit of its strength and pursue a low-key foreign policy.
The foreign policy of the Bush administration is never simple, though.
On June 26, 2003, Condoleeza Rice said that the Bush administration regards the concept of a “multipolar world”
is something that would eventually resurrect competition 71 between the big powers that had existed in the Cold-War days, and such a harmful plan would be doomed to failure.
She continued that the idea of a multipolar world still espoused by some countries has never brought about unity but only become an unavoidable evil, and it has contributed nothing to peace, though it has not prompted a war. Noting that the plan for a multipolar world is a theory that prompts competition of interests and strength, and, in the worst case, contention for the victory of one’s own values, she said that this theory is now posing a danger to the “war against terrorism.” What she had in mind is that other powers should not challenge the United States, but rally behind it for the “war against terrorism,” and thus secure global peace. This coincides exactly with the concept of “Pax Americana.” Rice made it clear that as there is only one pole in the world, i.e., a “global empire”–the United States–all countries must act accordingly and subordinate themselves to it.
The Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, dated July 30, 2003, carried an interview with US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. Clarifying the State Department’s view of a multipolar world in
reference to Rice’s remarks, he openly expressed the hope for a US-led unipolar world by saying that only one pole exists for all countries.
The Bush administration advocates the concept of “bankrupt states” in pursuit of its “neoimperialist”
ambitions.
This concept appeared in the 1990s. In 1994 the
special group for failed states funded by the CIA was organized with a mission to estimate “state failure”
worldwide and raise the alarm about this. According to a 72 report of the special group, state failure is precipitated by a sudden partial or total collapse of the power of the central government in a state, and the ensuing social unrest. In those days the failed states were “Westphalian states” deprived of the authority of their governments and capability of law enforcement.
Since 9/11 the United States has claimed that, as the “failed states,” serving as a source of or shelter for terrorism, pose a great threat to global security, the countries that sponsor international terrorism or allow the free activities of terrorists in their territories should also be viewed as “failed states.” Alleging that these countries are deprived of their raison d’etre, it insists that the international community, or some countries, or one country, has a right to take action with regard to such countries, and further to change their regimes to root out terrorism, which threatens the international community.
The concept of “bankrupt states” (“rogue states” and “Axis of Evil” included) much touted by the Bush
administration serves, in practice, US military intervention in other countries.
While neoimperialism is a policy of the Bush
administration, the concept of “bankrupt states”
vindicates neoimperialism. Neocons have called upon the Bush administration to set up a new US-led international organization in the 21st century involving the Western countries, an organization that can replace the UN, so as to counter, by imperialist methods, the “bankrupt states,”
terrorism and other complex issues facing the
international community at the moment.
The South Korean monthly Shindong-A wrote, in its May 2003 issue, that the United States under the Bush 73 administration is demonstrating its intention to establish US-controlled international relations in the same way as the Roman Empire did, and has bypassed the UN in
invading Iraq, thus emerging as the “global empire” of the 21st century.
However, the United States has something to learn from the lessons of the previous empires in its foreign and security policies. The US and Western mass media warn that it will have to pay dear and find itself in a cul-de-sac of its own making if it tries to become an “empire”
by dint of the “war against terrorism.”
Newsweek, dated July 2, 2003, wrote in an article that the neocons have found themselves in a fix and face ever-increasing challenges both within the United States and without.
Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright,
lambasting the Bush administration’s unilateral foreign policy based on strength, said that the administration has aroused ill feeling among its allies and potential allies, and created difficulties for its own interests through unilateral actions and intemperate words.
USA Today, dated September 23, 2003, commented that Bush’s call for UN assistance in the reconstruction of Iraq means the administration admitted silently that its foreign policy had reached a turning-point, and this pressure has weakened the neoconservative forces in the Pentagon and in the offices of Vice-President Cheyney and Undersecretary of State John Bolton.
The Washington Post, dated April 20, 2003, warned in an article titled The Perils of Empire contributed by Paul Kennedy: “To be sure, history never repeats itself, but it often deals hard blows to those who ignore it entirely.”
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The “war against terrorism” pursued by the Bush administration will eventually end in failure due to its unilateralism that infringes upon the sovereignty of nation-states, illogicality combined with a childish attempt at division of the international political forces, and anachronism.