Global Domination Part 2: Proxy Wars & Elite Units
Source: Global Research
Disastrous Proxy Wars by Great Powers Create Military, Monetary, Financial and Economic Chaos Worldwide
Global Research, May 17, 2023
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th President of the United States, (1953-1961), (in his ‘Farewell Address’, Jan. 17, 1961)
“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” George F. Kennan (1904-2005), American diplomat and historian, (in his preface to Norman Cousins’ 1987 book ‘The Pathology of Power’)
“A nation cannot become free and at the same time continue to oppress other nations.” Fredrich Engels (1820-1895), German social scientist and father of Marxist theory, (in “Speech on Poland’, 1847)
Sometimes politicians like to sprinkle their speeches and statements with words like “diplomacy” and “peace“. This does not insure, in so doing, that they really mean what they say. In fact, such grandiloquent talk could be a cover-up for their real intentions, which may be the very opposite to diplomatic solutions and peaceful coexistence to solving world problems. In the realm of politics, actions count more than words.
A good point in this case could be what U.S. President Joe Biden meant when he said, during a talk at the State Department on February 4, 2021: “diplomacy is back at the center of our Foreign Policy.”
He repeated the same message a few months later, in a speech at the United Nations, on September 21, 2021, saying that “we’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy“, and pledging that “we are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs.”
And to be well understood, Mr. Biden made the following commitment: “We must redouble our diplomacy and commit to political negotiations, not violence, as the tool of first resort to manage tensions around the world.” He even went on quoting the opening words of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “The equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom justice, and peace in the world.”
These were noble pledges.
The reality: The U.S. Government has largely abandoned multilateralism for a unilateral foreign policy mainly concentrated on NATO
However, what has really happened during the first three years of the Biden administration?
Following in the footsteps of a few preceding administrations, the Joe Biden administration has de facto abandoned the search for the common good of all countries within a multilateral approach. Indeed, far from actively leading the world with diplomacy in the hope of reducing military conflicts around the world, the Biden administration has embarked upon a bellicose foreign policy.
This is a policy inspired by neoconservative advisers, and it calls for increased military U.S. interventions abroad, on a permanent basis, outside of the framework of the U.N. Charter, which, it should be emphasized, was signed by all member nations. It has instead chosen to mainly pursue its foreign policy within the narrow framework of an increasingly offensive NATO.
Presently, there are two mainly U.S.-NATO-led proxy wars that are of immediate concern: a hot one in Ukraine directed at Russia, and one brewing in Taiwan and aimed at China.
In Ukraine, this has taken the form of the U.S. and other NATO countries shipping huge amounts of arms and equipment, and even some covert operations personnel, to that country neighboring Russia, including illegal depleted uranium weapons.
Even if public opinion in Western countries is still strongly behind the Russian-Ukrainian war, especially among the young and less among older generations, one of the consequences of the war, according to some polls, has been to isolate somewhat the United States and its NATO allies in certain parts of the world. In some countries, for example, notably in Asia, Africa and South America, the position seems to be “none of our business“.
Fall-outs from the American-NATO-led proxy wars against Russian and China
According to official propaganda, Russian embarked upon an ‘unprovoked’ war against Ukraine, on February 24, 2022. However, things are a bit more complicated, because the United States and NATO have been heavily involved in that unnecessary war since at least 2014, and credibly since 1991, as far as the U.S. government is concerned.
First of all, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, it is widely established through declassified documents that U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, and the representatives of important European nations, made a solemn commitment to Russia, on February 9, 1990, that NATO would not be expanded “one inch” into Eastern Europe—conditional to Russia’s acceptance of the reunification of the two Germanys.
Secondly, as professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago has often said (and I agree), there would not have been a Ukraine War if Joe Biden had not been in the White House. It was, indeed, President Biden’s insistence on having NATO expand to the very doorsteps of Russia, with missiles pointed toward Moscow, that was the main reason why Russia felt directly threatened and why it invaded Ukraine.
Even Pope Francis arrived at the same conclusion, that the main trigger of the Ukraine War was “NATO barking at Putin’s door.”
Thirdly, let us remember that it was the Obama administration (2009-2017), with then Vice-President Joe Biden involved, that bankrolled, to a large extent, the overthrow of the elected pro-Russia Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014.
This was clearly established by then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland (a well-known neocon), who confirmed publicly, on December 13, 2013, that the U.S. government had invested $5 billion in Ukraine, under the pretext of ‘promoting democracy’, One may ask if it an accepted practice by democracies to overthrow elected governments?
Fourthly, published documents indicate that the policy of encircling Russia militarily, an act of war implicitly not allowed under the U.N. Charter, is a neoconservative idea originating from the Rand Corporation—a think-tank heavily financed by the military-industrial complex (MIC) and deeply involved in framing U.S. foreign policy.
Indeed, the policy of an aggressive military stand against Russia is well outlined in a 2019 report, entitled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia“. Therefore, when Defense Secretary Gen. Lloyd Austin said publicly, on April 25, 2022, that the Biden administration’s objective in Eastern Europe was to “see Russia weakened“, it was a clear indication that the Rand Corporation’s strategy of militarily encircling Russia had become the official foreign policy of the Biden administration, even at the risk of turning such a localized conflict into a global one.
That may be a reason why people in the know do not swallow the propaganda line that the U.S. and NATO are in Ukraine to “save democracy“. In fact, there is no democracy in Ukraine, since the Ukrainian government of Volodymyr Zelensky has abolished eleven political parties.
Failed attempts by third parties to bring peace to Ukraine
The above could explain why the Biden administration has been quick to turn down any attempt to prevent or to end the Ukraine War.
For example, even when it was still possible to avoid a conflict, on December 7, 2021, during a Biden-Putin direct phone talk, President Biden undiplomatically turned down demands to consider Russian security considerations and stop pushing NATO right to Russia’s border. [N.B.: It is relevant to remember that when the shoe was on the other foot, in October 1962, and the USSR wanted to place missiles in Cuba, at 90 miles from the USA, it was seen by the John F. Kennedy administration in Washington D.C. as an unacceptable breach of American security.]
The Israeli government and the government of Turkey both have attempted to mediate a peace between Russia and Ukraine, but without any success.
First, in the beginning days of the conflict, in early March 2022, then Israeli Prime Minister (June 2021-June 2022) Naftali Bennett attempted to mediate a speedy end to the Russia-Ukraine confrontation. He came very close to succeeding when Russian President Vladimir Putin dropped his demand to seek Ukraine’s disarmament and Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky promised not to join NATO. A bilateral peace deal was ready to be signed in April 2022.
Secondly, in March 2022, the Turkish government also tried to bring a peace agreement closer between Russia and Ukraine. After successful talks were held in Istanbul, between officials of both countries, the two sides agreed on the framework for a tentative deal.
Considering that both Russia and Ukraine were willing to make concessions and with peace deals close at hand, why did the Israeli and the Turkish attempts at mediation fail?
Former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett gave an answer: the Biden administration commissioned then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to go to Kyiv and sabotage any peace deal. Some Western powers saw it to their advantage that the war in Ukraine continue.
Not too surprisingly, the latest attempt to end the Ukraine War—China‘s 12-point peace proposal for a “Political Settlement for the Ukraine Crisis“, made on February 24, 2023—has so far also been derailed.
It would seem that those who planned for and ‘invested’ much in such a war do not wish to lose face. For one, President Biden has branded the Chinese plan (which calls for de-escalation toward a cease-fire in Ukraine, respect for national sovereignty, establishment of humanitarian corridors, resumption of peace talks and a stop to unilateral sanctions), as “not rational“.
While President Joe Biden has concentrated his efforts on fueling the fire of war in Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping seems to have filled the void and has developed the stature of a peace broker around the world.
In the end, considering the many parties involved in the conflict (Russia, Ukraine, United States, NATO, European Union), and their intransigence, the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, threw in the towel and confessed, on May 9, 2023, that peace negotiations in Ukraine were “not possible at this time”. Warmongers are in charge in many nations, and no ceasefire can be expected at this time in Eastern Europe.
Flight from the U.S. dollar as a consequence of financial and economic sanctions
Holding financial assets denominated in U.S. dollars has recently become a risky proposition. Any government imprudent enough to do so exposes itself to political pressures from the U.S. government and, if it does not abide, its dollar assets could be arbitrarily frozen, unilaterally seized or simply confiscated. The list of countries so punitively ‘sanctioned‘ has been getting longer and longer each month.
One would think that an international currency should not be ‘weaponized’ in that way, unless one really wishes to destabilize the entire international monetary and financial system and create chaos in the world economy.
On April 16, 2023, even the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (1946-) mused aloud about the possibility of the U.S. dollar loosing its dominance in international finance and as a reserve currency.
Indeed, even if it is not easy, some countries have stopped settling their cross-border trade in U.S. dollars and are either using the Chinese Yuan, the Indian Rupee (INR), bilateral barter or their local currencies to do so. There are calls on the part of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to avoid using the U.S. dollar, as a response to unilateral U.S.-led financial and economic sanctions.
Such a movement to dedollarize global trade is an ominous development for international monetary and financial markets, with potentially enormous consequences, both monetary and economic.
In fact, the entire international monetary framework of the Bretton Woods System of payments, established in 1944 around the U.S. dollar (linked at the time to gold at a fixed rate of $35 per ounce), could be in jeopardy. Indeed, if the international payment system were to become more fragmented, the volume of international trade and the flows of capital movements could decline, and this could have a disastrous impact on the growth of the world economy.
Conclusions
As things stand now, despite efforts, hopes do not look promising for a quick resolution to the proxy war in Ukraine, and for lowering the escalating tensions over Taiwan.
First, if Great Powers hiding behind their veto at the U.N. Security council cannot contribute to peace in the world, they should at least not actively contribute to war. Unfortunately, in the 21st Century, the United Nations has become the carpet on which Great Powers wipe their feet.
Secondly, with its proxy wars, the U.S. government should realize that it is losing its moral ascendency and influence in the world. And it is evident why this is the case: the Biden administrations’s current neocon-inspired foreign policy of using NATO as its main instrument of intervention around the world, especially with its proxy conflicts with Russia and China, while snubbing the United Nations and its Charter, is shrouded with risks and may be a very bad idea.
Indeed, such a policy is isolating the United States and its NATO allies from the rest of the world. In the future, this could undermine their legitimacy, efficiency and influence outside North America and Western Europe. Pushed to the limit, such a development could result in unraveling the very international framework of global institutions that was established in the aftermath of World War II.
Thirdly, if one adds the persistent and threatening danger of a nuclear war to the equation, it would seem obvious to clear minds that a negotiated peace in Ukraine, in particular, should be preferable to a murderous and disastrous war, without ends, with few possible winners, other than arms dealers, and many losers all around.
This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay.
International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals “The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles” of the book about geopolitics “The New American Empire“, and the recent book, in French, “La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018“. He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University. Please visit Dr Tremblay’s site or email to a friend here.
Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
Source: Global Research
The Pentagon’s Increased Use of Elite Military Units
By Shane Quinn
Global Research, May 18, 2023
Under president Barack Obama (2009–17) covert operations and raids by American military special forces intensified. Organisations like the US Special Operations Forces (SOF), Navy SEALs and CIA were infiltrating different states, violating their national sovereignty in kill/capture offensives aimed ostensibly at Islamic insurgents.
The countries targeted were those such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, etc. The kill/capture targets highlighted by Washington comprised part of a Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL), which even included some American citizens abroad deemed as enemies, and which was based on legal or extralegal assumptions according to classified information from president Obama.
The Pentagon chose to wage “unconventional war” through elite military units, through proxy forces and sabotage groups.
In executing night raids and other activities, the US special forces were often focused on countries outside of Washington’s influence, in efforts to align them with the Western liberal order. For example president George W. Bush, Obama’s predecessor, had sent special forces such as the Green Berets, along with US Marine Corps troops, to the Caucasus state of Georgia where they trained Georgian military personnel (1). The goal was to turn Georgia, which borders Russia to the north, into a permanent US client nation.
John Nagl, a US lieutenant-colonel, described the kill/capture campaign as “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine”. Nagl said that, in a 3 month period in 2010, US forces from the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) carried out 3,000 military operations in Afghanistan (2). This involved entering villages in the middle of the night, in order to kill or take prisoner Islamic militants.
From mid-2010 to mid-2011, US special forces liquidated or captured 12,000 Islamic fighters according to the US military (3). Many of the night raids were executed through faulty intelligence or recklessness, and as the months went by hundreds of innocent people and civilians were also killed. Under the leadership of General Stanley McChrystal, appointed by Obama as the top commander in Afghanistan in summer 2009, the US special forces killed or took prisoner 700 insurgent officers. In another 3 month period, from July to September 2010, US-led NATO forces executed 3,279 operations, resulting in the deaths of 293 insurgent commanders and the capture of 2,169 Islamic fighters. (4)
In July 2010, General David Petraeus succeeded McChrystal as overall commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan, as McChrystal had irreconcilable differences with the Obama administration. In a 1 year period, from 25 April 2010 to 25 April 2011, the US Special Operations Forces killed 3,200 insurgents and captured 800. Between February to May 2011, NATO purported it had carried out 1,400 operations in Afghanistan, which they said resulted in the deaths or capture of 500 “insurgent leaders” and 2,700 “lower-level insurgents” (5). These attacks, because of their often indiscriminate nature, would have again resulted in significant loss of life to non-combatants.
In 2011 president Obama authorised the construction of a network of US military bases on the Arabian Peninsula, and in the Horn of Africa (east Africa), with another base on the island of Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.
More US bases were established in central and east Africa, such as in South Sudan, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic. Obama dispatched special forces soldiers to central areas of Africa, apparently to assist in hunting down Joseph Kony, the Ugandan-born rebel commander (6). Kony was often described as “the world’s most wanted warlord” in Western media and he was never found. The US commandos have been operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), the Central African Republic and South Sudan.
The likelihood is that, rather than the main focus being the capture of people like Kony, the US has attempted to increase its presence in Africa for strategic purposes. Hundreds of American soldiers from the Special Operations Forces have been stationed at the US military base in Djibouti, east Africa, called Camp Lemonnier, where they work under concealed identities and have co-ordinated the flight path for American aircraft and drones. About 3,200 people, including some civilians, were stationed at Camp Lemonnier where US troops have provided training to foreign militants.
The Camp Lemonnier base is of importance, due to its location between east Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The Port of Djibouti offers access to the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, and from Camp Lemonnier the US military can hit targets in nearby Somalia and Yemen within minutes. Washington continued to launch strikes over Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, countries which the Americans were not officially at war with. (7)
Washington was implementing a kill/capture offensive inside Pakistan, traditionally a pro-American country. An independent research organisation based in Pakistan, the Conflict Monitoring Center, estimated that the kill/capture raids in Pakistan during the 5 years up to June 2011 resulted in the deaths of 2,052 people, the majority of whom were civilians. From July 2008 to June 2011, the CIA carried out 220 attacks within Pakistan, and in doing so the CIA claimed to have killed 1,400 “suspects” along with 30 civilians. (8)
The American raids and drone strikes inside Pakistan swelled the ranks of armed radical groups, like the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid believed that, around 2011, the Taliban within Pakistan was more formidable than the Taliban in Afghanistan. The US military attacks on Pakistan and Afghanistan also boosted the legitimacy of Al Qaeda, whose members could rely on numerous safehouses in which to plan their operations.
Mistrust between the US and Pakistan increased on 26 November 2011, when NATO helicopters and aircraft bombed an outpost in northern Pakistan in an unprovoked attack, killing at least 24 Pakistani soldiers, in the Mohmand District (9). Pakistan’s government quickly retaliated, by cutting supply routes for US-NATO troops into Afghanistan, and demanded that Washington shut down its drone launch base. The Americans, despite these actions, did not want to lose Pakistan as an ally; because Pakistan, a strategically important country and nuclear power, shares borders with Afghanistan, India, Iran and China, and has a lengthy coastline which provides the Pakistanis with access to lucrative sea routes.
The US was pursuing two kill/capture campaigns inside Yemen (10). One was overseen by the CIA and the other was executed by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). General James Jones, of the US Marine Corps, said Yemen was “an embryonic theater that we weren’t really familiar with”. The Americans, however, were aware that Yemen like Pakistan is strategically placed, beside crucial sea lanes and the Persian Gulf’s oil reserves.
The CIA was operating as a de facto paramilitary force. On top of the CIA’s intelligence activities, it was partaking in many of the tasks assigned to the special forces. On 17 September 2001, Bush had authorised a secret presidential finding, which enabled the CIA to develop teams with the goal of catching, killing or apprehending designated insurgents in different countries.
Obama greatly surpassed Bush in the deployment of elite units, such as from the Joint Special Operations Command. In the middle of 2010, the US Special Operations Forces were present in 75 countries at that time (11). Colonel Tim Nye, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Special Operations Forces would probably be operating in 120 countries by late 2011. Unsurprisingly then, Obama had requested a 5.7% increase in the Special Operations Forces budget for 2011, amounting to $6.3 billion with a contingency fund of another $3.5 billion. By 2015 it was reported the Special Operations Forces were active in 135 countries that year, clearly a mind-boggling number. (12)
The combined population, of the US and its allies, is much lower than that of the states of Eurasia and the Global South, many of whom increasingly desire a multipolar world rather than a unipolar world governed by the US. European nations like Britain, in decline for generations and losing its sovereignty, has hung on to the coat-tails of the US empire. The American-led NATO continues expanding but this is not, as the liberal media insists, a strategic defeat for Russia or China. NATO enlargement endangers the world, including the US, which would suffer a total defeat in a nuclear war as is known.
When Obama assumed the presidency in January 2009, he was faced with the upheaval that Bush left behind. There was the very high cost and failure of the war in Iraq, and ongoing uncertainty with the conflict in Afghanistan, another distant country which most Americans had a limited understanding of.
A survey conducted by the American media in March 2012, over a decade after the US invasion of Afghanistan was launched, revealed that 69% of American adults who partook in the survey did not want their nation involved in the war in Afghanistan. Only 23% of respondents felt America was “doing the right thing” by participating in the war. Twenty-seven per cent of Americans believed the conflict “has been mostly a success for the US”, just 25% felt the fighting was progressing well, and 59% stated that it had not been a successful war. (13)
Obama decided to pursue more cost-effective methods, and which he felt would not risk as many American lives. Obama, advised by intelligence expert and CIA director John Brennan, changed the “war on terror” to a “high-tech war”. The conflicts created more jobs in the US arms industry, and shored up the tax revenues of the states where the weapons firms are based, such as in Texas, California, Virginia, Massachusetts and Maryland.
Between 2001 and 2007, the US arms companies Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing Defense, Space & Security recorded over $30 billion in yearly sales, and Raytheon and General Dynamics posted annual revenues of more than $20 billion during the same period (14). In June 2015 Obama sanctioned the National Military Strategy which outlined that Iran, Russia, China and North Korea are the countries most challenging to US interests in various regions. Yet the Pentagon’s Military Strategy conceded that none of the above countries was seeking a direct armed conflict, against the US or its allies. (15)
With Obama as president, US foreign policy continued to be focused on expansionist doctrines. In announcing a “pivot” to Asia, Obama tried to encircle and contain China with the construction of large numbers of bases in the Asia-Pacific areas, while he maintained the Pentagon military budget at over $600 billion per year. Contingency plans have been made for a US military attack on China, which is a nuclear state.
The American commander, Douglas MacArthur, had wanted to pursue a US-backed invasion of China in the early 1950s. General MacArthur, who at the time was commanding US-led forces in the Korean War, wished to extend the conflict to China in order to overthrow the communist government in Beijing. MacArthur supported the use of atomic bombs during the Korean War, but he had fallen out with president Harry Truman, and he was removed from his position as overall commander in April 1951. (16)
Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Notes
1 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer; 1st ed., 23 June 2017) p. 48
2 Ibid., p. 130
3 “What is the secretive U.S. ‘Kill/Capture’ Campaign?’, PBS, 17 June 2011
4 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 130
5 “Daily brief: U.S. prepared for fights with Pakistanis during bin Laden raid: report”, Foreign Policy Magazine, 10 May 2011
6 “Obama sends U.S. military advisers to central Africa”, Reuters, 14 October 2011
7 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 136
8 Ibid., p. 138
9 “Pakistan outrage after ‘NATO attack kills soldiers'”, BBC News, 26 November 2011
10 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 213
11 “A Secret War in 120 Countries: The Pentagon’s New Power Elite”, Commondreams.org, 4 August 2011
12 “American special operations forces have been deployed to 135 countries this year alone”, The Independent, 25 September 2015
13 “Poll: Support for war in Afghanistan hits all-time low”, CBS News, 26 March 2012
14 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 132
15 “Pentagon releases National Military Strategy”, Defense News, 1 July 2015
16 “Douglas MacArthur”, Spartacus Educational, September 199 (updated November 2021)
Featured image is from Struggle-La Lucha
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Shane Quinn, Global Research, 2023
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