February 26, 2015 | Original Here Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter
The Neoconservative Threat To International Relations
Paul Craig Roberts
For the illustrated version go here: http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-trust-now-shattered-russia-u-s-world-annihilation-threatened/
This week I was invited to address an important conference of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Scholars from Russia and from around the world, Russian government officials, and the Russian people seek an answer as to why Washington destroyed during the past year the friendly relations between America and Russia that President Reagan and President Gorbachev succeeded in establishing. All of Russia is distressed that Washington alone has destroyed the trust between the two major nuclear powers that had been created during the Reagan-Gorbachev era, trust that had removed the threat of nuclear armageddon. Russians at every level are astonished at the virulent propaganda and lies constantly issuing from Washington and the Western media. Washington’s gratuitous demonization of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has rallied the Russian people behind him. Putin has the highest approval rating ever achieved by any leader in my lifetime.
Washington’s reckless and irresponsible destruction of the trust achieved by Reagan and Gorbachev has resurrected the possibility of nuclear war from the grave in which Reagan and Gorbachev buried it. Again, as during the Cold War the specter of nuclear armageddon stalks the earth.
Why did Washington revive the threat of world annihilation? Why is this threat to all of humanity supported by the majority of the US Congress, by the entirety of the presstitute media, and by academics and think-tank inhabitants in the US, such as Motyl and Weiss, about whom I wrote recently?
It was my task to answer this question for the conference. You can read my February 25 and February 26 addresses below. But first you should understand what nuclear war means. You can gain that understanding here: http://thebulletin.org/what-would-happen-if-800-kiloton-nuclear-warhead-detonated-above-midtown-manhattan8023
The Threat Posed to International Relations By The Neoconservative Ideology of American Hegemony, Address to the 70th Anniversary of the Yalta Conference, Hosted by Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Moscow, February 25, 2015, Hon. Paul Craig Roberts
Colleagues,
What I propose to you is that the current difficulties in the
international order are unrelated to Yalta and its consequences, but
have their origin in the rise of the neoconservative ideology in the
post-Soviet era and its influence on Washington’s foreign policy.
The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the only constraint on
Washington’s power to act unilaterally abroad. At that time China’s
rise was estimated to require a half century. Suddenly the United States
found itself to be the Uni-power, the “world’s only superpower.”
Neoconservatives proclaimed “the end of history.”
By the “end of history” neoconservatives mean that the competition
between socio-economic-political systems is at an end. History has
chosen “American Democratic-Capitalism.” It is Washington’s
responsibility to exercise the hegemony over the world given to
Washington by History and to bring the world in line with History’s
choice of American democratic-capitalism.
In other words, Marx has been proven wrong. The future does not belong to the proletariat but to Washington.
The neoconservative ideology raises the United States to the unique
status of being “the exceptional country,” and the American people
acquire exalted status as “the indispensable people.”
If a country is “the exceptional country,” it means that all other
countries are unexceptional. If a people are “indispensable,” it means
other peoples are dispensable. We have seen this attitude at work in
Washington’s 14 years of wars of aggression in the Middle East. These
wars have left countries destroyed and millions of people dead, maimed,
and displaced. Yet Washington continues to speak of its commitment to
protect smaller countries from the aggression of larger countries. The
explanation for this hypocrisy is that Washington does not regard
Washington’s aggression as aggression, but as History’s purpose.
We have also seen this attitude at work in Washington’s disdain for
Russia’s national interests and in Washington’s propagandistic response
to Russian diplomacy.
The neoconservative ideology requires that Washington maintain its
Uni-power status, because this status is necessary for Washington’s
hegemony and History’s purpose.
The neoconservative doctrine of US world supremacy is most clearly
and concisely stated by Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neoconservative who
has held many high positions: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense,
Director of Policy Planning US Department of State, Assistant Secretary
of State, Ambassador to Indonesia, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy,
Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank.
In 1992 Paul Wolfowitz stated the neoconservative doctrine of American world supremacy:
“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new
rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere,
that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet
Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional
defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile
power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated
control, be sufficient to generate global power.”
For clarification, a “hostile power” is a country with an independent
policy (Russia, China, Iran, and formerly Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi,
Assad).
This bold statement struck the traditional American foreign policy
establishment as a declaration of American Imperialism. The document
was rewritten in order to soften and disguise the blatant assertion of
supremacy without changing the intent. These documents are available
online, and you can examine them at your convenience.
Softening the language allowed the neoconservatives to rise to
foreign policy dominance. The neoconservatives are responsible for the
Clinton regime’s attacks on Yugoslavia and Serbia. Neoconservatives,
especially Paul Wolfowitz, are responsible for the George W. Bush
regime’s invasion of Iraq. The neoconservatives are responsible for the
overthrow and murder of Gaddafi in Libya, the assault on Syria, the
propaganda against Iran, the drone attacks on Pakistan and Yemen, the
color revolutions in former Soviet Republics, the attempted “Green
Revolution” in Iran, the coup in Ukraine, and the demonization of
Vladimir Putin.
A number of thoughtful Americans suspect that the neoconservatives
are responsible for 9/11, as that event gave the neoconservatives the
“New Pearl Harbor” that their position papers said was necessary in
order to launch their wars for hegemony in the Middle East. 9/11 led
directly and instantly to the invasion of Afghanistan, where Washington
has been fighting since 2001. Neoconservatives controlled all the
important government positions necessary for a “false flag” attack.
Neoconservative Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who is
married to another neoconservative, Robert Kagan, implemented and
oversaw Washington’s coup in Ukraine and chose the new government.
The neoconservatives are highly organized and networked,
well-financed, supported by the print and TV media, and backed by the US
military/security complex and the Israel Lobby. There is no
countervailing power to their influence on US foreign power.
The neoconservative doctrine goes beyond the Brzezinski doctrine,
which dissented from Detente and provocatively supported dissidents
inside the Soviet empire. Despite its provocative character, the
Brzezinski doctrine remained a doctrine of Great Power politics and
containment. It is not a doctrine of US world hegemony.
While the neoconservatives were preoccupied for a decade with their
wars in the Middle East, creating a US Africa Command, organizing color
revolutions, exiting disarmament treaties, surrounding Russia with
military bases, and “pivoting to Asia” to surround China with new air
and naval bases, Vladimir Putin led Russia back to economic and military
competence and successfully asserted an independent Russian foreign
policy.
When Russian diplomacy blocked Washington’s planned invasion of Syria
and Washington’s planned bombing of Iran, the neoconservatives realized
that they had failed the “first objective” of the Wolfowitz Doctrine
and had allowed “the re-emergence of a new rival . . . on the territory
of the former Soviet Union” with the power to block unilateral action by
Washington.
The attack on Russia began. Washington had spent $5 billion over a
decade creating non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine and
cultivating Ukrainian politicians. The NGOs were called into the
streets. The extreme nationalists or nazi elements were used to
introduce violence, and the elected democratic government was
overthrown. The intercepted conversation between Victoria Nuland and the
US ambassador in Kiev, in which the two Washington operatives choose
the members of the new Ukrainian government, is well known.
If the information that has recently come to me from Armenia and
Kyrgyzstan is correct, Washington has financed NGOs and is cultivating
politicians in Armenia and the former Soviet Central Asian Republics.
If the information is correct, Russia can expect more “color
revolutions” or coups in other former territories of the Soviet Union.
Perhaps China faces a similar threat in Uyghurstan.
The conflict in Ukraine is often called a “civil war.” This is
incorrect. A civil war is when two sides fight for the control of the
government. The break-away republics in eastern and southern Ukraine
are fighting a war of secession.
Washington would have been happy to use its coup in Ukraine to evict
Russia from its Black Sea naval base as this would have been a strategic
military achievement. However, Washington is pleased that the “Ukraine
crisis” that Washington orchestrated has resulted in the demonization
of Vladimir Putin, thus permitting economic sanctions that have
disrupted Russia’s economic and political relations with Europe. The
sanctions have kept Europe in Washington’s orbit.
Washington has no interest in resolving the Ukrainian situation. The
situation can be resolved diplomatically only if Europe can achieve
sufficient sovereignty over its foreign policy to act in Europe’s
interest instead of Washington’s interest.
The neoconservative doctrine of US world hegemony is a threat to the
sovereignty of every country. The doctrine requires subservience to
Washington’s leadership and to Washington’s purposes. Independent
governments are targeted for destabilization. The Obama regime overthrew
the reformist government in Honduras and currently is at work
destabilizing Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina, and most
likely also Armenia and the former Central Asian Soviet Republics.
Yalta and its consequences have to do with Great Power rivalries.
But in the neoconservative doctrine, there is only one Great Power–the
Uni-power. There are no others, and no others are to be permitted
Therefore, unless a modern foreign policy arises in Washington and
displaces the neoconservatives, the future is one of conflict.
It would be a strategic error to dismiss the neoconservative ideology
as unrealistic. The doctrine is unrealistic, but it is also the guiding
force of US foreign policy and is capable of producing a world war.
In their conflict with Washington’s hegemony, Russia and China are
disadvantaged. The success of American propaganda during the Cold War,
the large differences between living standards in the US and those in
communist lands, overt communist political oppression, at times brutal,
and the Soviet collapse created in the minds of many people nonexistent
virtues for the United States. As English is the world language and the
Western media is cooperative, Washington is able to control explanations
regardless of the facts. The ability of Washington to be the aggressor
and to blame the victim encourages Washington’s march to more
aggression.
This concludes my remarks. Tomorrow I will address whether there are
domestic political restraints or economic restraints on the
neoconservative ideology.
Paul Craig Roberts, Address to the 70th Anniversary of the Yalta Conference, Moscow, February 26, 2015
Colleagues,
At the plenary session yesterday I addressed the threat that the
neoconservative ideology poses to international relations. In this
closing session I address whether there are any internal restraints on
this policy from the US population and whether there are economic
restraints.
Just as 9/11 served to launch Washington’s wars for hegemony in the
Middle East, 9/11 served to create the American police state. The
Constitution and the civil liberties it protects quickly fell to the
accumulation of power in the executive branch that a state of war
permitted.
New laws, some clearly pre-prepared such as the PATRIOT Act,
executive orders, presidential directives, and Department of Justice
memos created an executive authority unaccountable to the US
Constitution and to domestic and international law.
Suddenly Americans could be detained indefinitely without cause
presented to a court. Habeas corpus, a constitutional protection which
prohibits any such detention, has been set aside.
Suddenly people could be tortured into confessions in violation of
the right against self-incrimination and in violation of domestic and
international laws against torture.
Suddenly Americans and Washington’s closest allies could be spied on
indiscriminately without the need of warrants demonstrating cause.
The Obama regime added to the Bush regime’s transgressions the
assertion of the right of the executive branch to assassinate US
citizens without due process of law.
The police state was organized under a massive new Department of
Homeland Security. Almost immediately whistleblower protections,
freedom of the press and speech, and protest rights were attacked and
reduced.
It was not long before the director of Homeland Security declared
that the department’s focus has shifted from Muslim terrorists to
“domestic extremists,” an undefined category. Anyone can be swept into
this category. Homes of war protesters were raided and grand juries
were convened to investigate the protesters. Americans of Arab descent
who donated to charities–even charities on the State Department’s
approved list–that aided Palestinian children were arrested and
sentenced to prison for “providing material support to terrorism.”
All of this and more, including police brutality, has had a chilling
effect on protests against the wars and the loss of civil liberty. The
rising protests from the American population and from soldiers
themselves that eventually forced Washington to end the Vietnam War have
been prevented in the 21st century by the erosion of rights,
intimidation, loss of mobility (no-fly list), job dismissal, and other
heavy-handed actions inconsistent with a government accountable to law
and to the people.
In an important sense, the US has emerged from the “war on terror” as
an executive branch dictatorship unconstrained by the media and barely,
if at all, constrained by Congress and the federal courts. The
lawlessness of the executive branch has spread into governments of
Washington’s vassal states and into the Federal Reserve, the
International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, all of which
violate their charters and operate outside their legal powers.
Jobs offshoring destroyed the American industrial and manufacturing
unions. Their demise and the current attack on the public employee
unions has left the Democratic Party financially dependent on the same
organized private interest groups as the Republicans. Both parties now
report to the same interest groups. Wall Street, the
military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and the
extractive industries (oil, mining, timber) control the government
regardless of the party in power. These powerful interests all have a
stake in American hegemony.
The message is that the constellation of forces preclude internal political change.
Hegemony’s Archilles heel is the US economy. The fairy tale of
American economic recovery supports America’s image as the safe haven,
an image that keeps the dollar’s value up, the stock market up, and
interest rates down. However, there is no economic information that
supports this fairy tale.
Real median household income has not grown for years and is below the
levels of the early 1970s. There has been no growth in real retail
sales for six years. The labor force is shrinking. The labor force
participation rate has declined since 2007 as has the civilian
employment to population ratio. The 5.7 percent reported unemployment
rate is achieved by not counting discouraged workers as part of the work
force. (A discouraged worker is a person who is unable to find a job
and has given up looking.)
A second official unemployment rate, which counts short-term (less
than one year) discouraged workers and is seldom reported, stands at
11.2 percent. The US government stopped including long-term discouraged
workers (discouraged for more than one year) in 1994. If the long-term
discouraged are counted, the current unemployment rate in the US stands
at 23.2 percent.
The offshoring of American manufacturing and professional service
jobs such as software engineering and Information Technology has
decimated the middle class. The middle class has not found jobs with
incomes comparable to those moved abroad. The labor cost savings from
offshoring the jobs to Asia has boosted corporate profits, the
performance bonuses of executives and capital gains of shareholders.
Thus all income and wealth gains are concentrated in a few hands at the
top of the income distribution. The number of billionaires grows as
destitution reaches from the lower economic class into the middle class.
American university graduates unable to find jobs return to their
childhood rooms in their parents’ homes and work as waitresses and
bartenders in part-time jobs that will not support an independent
existence.
With a large percentage of the young economically unable to form
households, residential construction, home furnishings, and home
appliances suffer economic weakness. Cars can still be sold only
because the purchaser can obtain 100 percent financing in a six-year
loan. The lenders sell the loans, which are securitized and sold to
gullible investors, just as were the mortgage-backed financial
instruments that precipitated the 2007 US financial crash.
None of the problems that created the 2008 recession, and that were
created by the 2008 recession, have been addressed. Instead,
policymakers have used an expansion of debt and money to paper over the
problems. Money and debt have grown much more than US GDP, which raises
questions about the value of the US dollar and the credit worthiness of
the US government. On July 8, 2014, my colleagues and I pointed out
that when correctly measured, US national debt stands at 185 percent of
GDP. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/07/08/deteriorating-economic-outlook/
This raises the question: Why was the credit rating of Russia, a
country with an extremely low ratio of debt to GDP, downgraded and not
that of the US? The answer is that the downgrading of Russian credit
worthiness was a political act directed against Russia in behalf of US
hegemony.
How long can fairy tales and political acts keep the US house of
cards standing? A rigged stock market. A rigged interest rate. A
rigged dollar exchange value, a rigged and suppressed gold price. The
current Western financial system rests on world support for the US
dollar and on nothing more.
The problem with neoliberal economics, which pervades all countries,
even Russia and China, is that neoliberal economics is a tool of
American economic imperialism, as is Globalism. As long as countries
targeted by Washington for destabilization support and cling to the
American doctrines that enable the destabilization, the targets are
defenseless.
If Russia, China, and the BRICS Bank were willing to finance Greece,
Italy, and Spain, perhaps those countries could be separated from the EU
and NATO. The unraveling of Washington’s empire would begin.
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