INTRODUCTION
On Saturday November 7th, U.S. Secretary
of Defense Ashton Carter, who had started his career at the Defense
Department during the Reagan Administration as an aide to then-Secretary
of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Cold-Warring against the communist
nations U.S.S.R. and China, delivered a speech saying,
“We are in the middle of a strategic transition to respond to the
security challenges that will define our future. … We’re responding to
Russia, one source of today’s turbulence, and China’s rise, which is
driving a transition in the Asia-Pacific.”
So: what has changed for him in all of
that time? The weapons are more advanced; he expressed pride in that.
And the former Warsaw Pact nations that were allied with the U.S.S.R.
surrounding Russia, have increasingly joined NATO and become Russia’s
enemies. (The U.S.S.R. terminated the Warsaw Pact, but the U.S. didn’t
terminate NATO; instead, NATO with its former Warsaw Pact members
increased from the 16 nations it had when the Soviet Union broke up, to
the 28 nations today. And U.S. President Barack Obama and SecDef Carter
want to increase that number to 29 by including Ukraine, which is on
Russia’s border.)
Carter’s speech presented Russia
repeatedly as constituting the “aggressor.” He actually used this term
three times, two of which concerned Russia explicitly: “We’re taking a
strong and balanced approach to deter Russia’s aggression.” “We are
adapting our operational posture and contingency plans as we – on our
own and with allies – work to deter Russia’s aggression.” “We are also
changing fundamentally our operational plans and approaches to deter
aggression.”
None of his usages of “aggression” referred to jihadists, nor to the top funders of jihadists, the Saudi and Qatari
royal families, respectively the Sauds and the Thanis. Instead, we arm
those people, and they then send some of those arms to jihadists in
Syria so as to remove from power Syria’s secular pro-Russian President,
Bashar al-Assad.
Secretary Carter, like his boss President
Obama, want Assad to be replaced by the fighters that the Sauds and
Qataris are arming. Carter and Obama call these fighters “moderate
Syrians,” though the secular Shiite Assad runs a non-religious
government, and all of the fighters against him want a Sunni Islamic
state, no secular state at all.
The U.S. government says that it supports
democracy in Syria, so long as Bashar al-Assad (whom polls show would
win any honest election there) isn’t on the ballot. But when America’s
ally the Qatari regime, which funds al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria), hired a
polling firm in 2012 to survey Syrians, the finding was that 55% of Syrians wanted Assad to remain as President. Then, as I reported on 18 September 2015, “Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. for ISIS,”
and those recent polls were from a British firm that has ties to
Gallup. So, it’s clear that any sort of democracy in Syria will be ruled
by Assad, not by anyone acceptable to the U.S. Establishment, and that
blocking him from the ballot would therefore make a mockery of any such
‘democratic’ election.
However, democracy in any Islamic state — as the U.S. and its allies claim to be pressing for there — is impossible, just as democracy in any religious
state is impossible. (An example of this is America’s ‘ally’ and
$3B-per-year recipient of our foreign aid, apartheid ‘democratic’
Israel, which still doesn’t even have a constitution, because religious
Jews there insist that any constitution must confirm all biblical laws.)
It’s impossible because sovereignty in any religious state rests with the given religion’s ‘god’ as set forth in its Scripture, and not,
not even possibly, with “We, the People …” Democracy is therefore
impossible without a strict separation between church and state. But
none of the military forces that are fighting against Assad will
tolerate such an outcome: they’re all Sunni Islamists.
So, there exists an underlying hypocrisy
behind the position that SecDef Carter is championing: victory for
supposedly some faction of the forces against Assad, and also democracy
in Syria.
Perhaps after the Soviet Union ended,
America got dumbed down so that it’s now the American dumbocracy. Or
should that instead be spelled “dumocracy”? Well, whatever …
ASHTON CARTER’S SPEECH
Near the opening of the SecDef’s speech, Carter triumphantly referred to America’s victory over the Soviet Union and the breaking down of the wall between East and West Berlin, and
he said: “for those of us who worked in government during
those dangerous days, as I did beginning in 1981, for Caspar Weinberger –
we know how tough that wall was to crack, let alone tear down.”
He mentioned the connection between Russia and 9/11:
That strength, which Reagan and others
helped realize – people like Jim Schlesinger, Brent Scowcroft, Bill
Perry, and Harold Brown, who were all mentors of mine – put the United
States in position to respond to the day’s crises, and take advantage of
Soviet missteps. It gave post-Cold War leaders the power to bring East
and West together and deepen the principled international order. And
when we were attacked on September 11th, it gave America the power to
respond.
That strength and the principled
international order were part of the inheritance I received when I was
sworn in as Secretary of Defense earlier this year.
In other words, he suggested that by
boosting America’s strategic nuclear forces in response to Russia’s
‘aggression,’ the U.S. will become better prepared to deal with and
overcome jihadist suicide-bombers and Saudi-Qatari-financed jihadist
groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. He intimated that, somehow, there is a
sort of dual-use advantage of strategic weapons: their application also
against non-state enemies. For example, America’s nuclear
deterrent forces were useful in our killing bin Laden? Oh, maybe not
that one. However, if those jihadist organizations are financed by Arabic royal families (such as bin Laden’s Al Qaeda was),
then those Arabic countries (Saudi Arabia and Qatar especially) are
state enemies of the United States; and so, their being hostile toward
Russia, as they have been and are, would mean that Russia is, actually,
our ally, which then raises the question of why we need to arm against
an ally (Russia) in order to be more effective against jihadists (the
countries that are owned or controlled by those royals — ‘our’ allies).
So, SecDef Carter’s reasoning seems a bit
shady here. But the United States would not have a crooked man occupy
such a straight office as he does. So, one must give him the benefit of
every doubt — like the press and the American public gave George W. Bush
and his ‘Defense’ Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before the press reported
that they had been liars. (Come to think of it: did the press report that? Is the press reporting it? Will the press report it? Those people clearly and incontrovertibly were liars. The press refuses to provide the documentation that it was lies and not ‘merely’ manipulated intelligence. And the press is repeating that performance with Obama’s lie
that it was Assad’s forces and not the forces that Obama supports who
were behind the August 2013 sarin gas attack which Obama is claiming to
be the reason he’s helping the anti-Assad forces — who actually perpetrated it.)
He went on to assert that America, by virtue of its exemplary troops and command-structure, has
maintained the “international order” and attracted foreign “partners”
in such a way as to lead the world in the fight against jihadists, and
he then implied that Russia is trying to impede America’s war against
jihadists, and that China, is also doing that, in some way (which he
declined to identify). He said:
At the most elemental, human level,
our troops are attractive partners, they perform and conduct
themselves admirably. I see this, and hear this from foreign leaders,
around the world. They make us proud.
Despite that widespread appeal, some
actors appear intent on eroding these principles and undercutting the
international order that helps enforce them. Terror elements like ISIL,
of course, stand entirely opposed to our values. But other challenges
are more complicated, and given their size and capabilities, potentially
more damaging.
Russia appears intent to play spoiler
by flouting these principles and the international community. Meanwhile,
China is a rising power, and growing more ambitious in its objectives
and capabilities. Of course, neither Russia nor China can overturn that
order, given its resilience and staying power. But both
present different challenges for it.
The United States, and the men and
women of the Defense Department, know that the good that a principled
international order has done, and will do. But in the face of Russia’s
provocations and China’s rise, we must embrace innovative approaches to
protect the United States and strengthen that international order.
In Europe, Russia has been violating
sovereignty in Ukraine and Georgia and actively trying to intimidate the
Baltic states. Meanwhile, in Syria, Russia is throwing gasoline on an
already dangerous fire, prolonging a civil war that fuels the very
extremism Russia claims to oppose. … Moscow’s nuclear saber-rattling
raises questions about Russia’s leaders’ commitment to strategic
stability, their respect for norms against the use of nuclear weapons,
and whether they respect the profound caution nuclear-age leaders showed
with regard to the brandishing of nuclear weapons.
He asserted that Russia’s actions are totally unacceptable, and he made clear that the U.S. has done nothing to provoke them:
We do not seek a cold, let alone a hot war with Russia. We do not seek to make Russia an enemy.
He makes clear that, in this country’s
differences with Russia, Russia alone is to blame. They are the
aggressors, he asserts. (President Barack Obama’s National Security Strategy 2015 applies
the term “aggression” 18 times, and 17 of them are referring to Russia;
so, in retrospect, it is clear why Ashton Carter won Obama’s support to
become the U.S. Secretary of Defense. The U.S., of course, has no
Secretary of War, and especially no Secretary of Offense; the U.S. never
invades a foreign country, nor even perpetrates a coup there, unless
the action is purely defensive on America’s part. Only Russia and China
do things like that.) So: although Russia and China are America’s
enemies; SecDef Carter is too gentlemanly to call them
‘enemies': the United States merely responds to their ‘provocations,’
like a gentle parent would respond to a child who “brandishes nuclear
weapons.”
SecDef Carter makes clear that, despite America’s lily-white intent:
The United States will defend our
interests, and our allies, the principled international order, and the
positive future it affords us all.
We’re taking a strong and balanced approach to deter Russia’s aggression, and to help reduce the vulnerability of allies and partners.
We are adapting our operational
posture and contingency plans as we – on our own and with allies – work
to deter Russia’s aggression, and to help reduce the vulnerability of
allies and partners. The United States is accordingly making a number of
moves in response, many but not all of which I can describe in
this forum. We’re modernizing our nuclear arsenal, so America’s nuclear
deterrent continues to be effective, safe, and secure, to deter nuclear
attacks and reassure our allies.
We’re investing in the technologies
that are most relevant to Russia’s provocations, such as new unmanned
systems, a new long-range bomber, and innovation in technologies like
the electromagnetic railgun, lasers, and new systems for electronic
warfare, space and cyberspace, including a few surprising ones that I
really can’t describe here. We’re updating and advancing our operational
plans for deterrence and defense given Russia’s changed behavior.
He is especially concerned about Russia’s
provocative actions to expand itself right up to the very borders of
NATO, threatening to invade NATO allies and thus invade the U.S. itself;
and he describes how the U.S. is dealing with Russia’s expansionist
threat:
For example in Eastern NATO states [the nations that border Russia],
we’re prepositioning tanks, infantry-fighting vehicles, artillery, and
the associated equipment needed to participate in exercises and also
to respond to crises and provocation.
We’re providing enabling capabilities –
a distinctively American characteristic – to strengthen NATO’s new Very
High Readiness Joint Task Force so it can respond flexibly to
contingencies in Europe’s East and South. This innovative capability has
already become real: in June, I visited the VJTF – its land component,
that is – in Germany.
We’re taking part in more and different kinds [of] exercises with our allies to improve training and interoperability. NATO performed admirably in Afghanistan and
the exercises today focusing on transitioning to newer threats that
also require networked partnership, but very different operational
approaches. In fact, TRIDENT JUNCTURE, the largest NATO exercise in 13
years, just ended…yesterday. General Breedlove, who is here, reports a
very successful integration of combined U.S. and partner Marines, Navy,
ground forces and air forces exercising against a high-end denied
environment. Over 4,000 American troops participated in this exercise.
We’re helping strengthen NATO’s Cyber
Defense Center of Excellence so it can help those nations develop cyber
strategies, critical infrastructure protection plans, and cyber defense
posture assessments.
And we’re providing equipment and training to aid Ukraine’s military as it confronts Russian-supported insurgents in Eastern Ukraine.
This summer I spent time with one of our rotational brigade combat
teams at Graf in Germany. They represent a new approach: they’ll fall-in
on prepositioned equipment, conduct live-fire and simulated maneuver
with partner nations, and improve their own readiness and cultural
awareness through immersion during this rotation.
So we’re doing all this; but, just as
Reagan did, we are also taking a balanced approach to Russia. … The
United States will continue to hold out the possibility that Russia
will assume the role of responsible power in the international order, a
direction they seemed headed for much of the post-Cold War era.
He refers there to the
time before Vladimir Putin replaced Boris Yeltsin in 2000 as Russia’s
leader. That was the time when the United States was saying favorable
things about Russia because Russia under Yeltsin was taking its guidance
from the United States, people such as Lawrence Summers of the World
Bank, and such as his Harvard Economics Department, and George Soros,
and other champions of clean and honest, non-corrupt government, like we also are now seeing in Ukraine, after Obama’s coup there in February 2014 cleaned up that country, and established peace there.
So: the reason why Russia and China are
now enemies of America is that they’re not doing what they are being
told to do, by the people who are the experts in democracy, and in
honest government, and in everything else that’s of benefit to the whole
world, except to nations like or allied with Russia or China, which
nations, perhaps, can only be amazed at the extent of America’s
hypocrisy, or at the extent to which the American government can bamboozle the American people, and even people in certain other countries, to believe anything the U.S. government says.
For example: not once in his speech does
Carter use the term “communism” nor any sort of reference to it — the
idea that NATO had been established to exist as the democratic
alternative to the Soviet Union’s communism and to their Warsaw Pact
(which ended in 1991 when the Soviet Union itself did) goes entirely
unmentioned and not even hinted at, because he doesn’t want to draw
attention to the fact, now being made incontrovertible by Barack Obama
and Ashton Carter, etc., that the real goal of the American aristocracy
wasn’t actually to end communism and bring democracy there; it was to
defeat them and to take control of their oil and other resources. That’s
what they’re trying to do in all this, while constantly accusing Russia
and China of aggression against NATO — which lost its supposed
reason-for-existence, in 1991, when the Warsaw Pact ended, but still
hangs on, in order to extend the American Empire. Why aren’t there
boycotts of Western ‘news’ media, the ones which fail to point out or
publish such truths? (Is it because their suckers aren’t reading sites
like you now are reading, the few honest sites that exist in the West?)
Russia and China use such crude
propaganda-techniques (sometimes even extending so far as truth, which
perhaps they think actually sells things), so that it is clear that
Ashton Carter has a lot to teach them. He’s hoping to teach them these
lessons to Russia and China with better bombers, and “new systems for
electronic warfare, space and cyberspace, including a few surprising
ones that I really can’t describe here.”
That will educate Russian and China not to continue with their “brandishing of nuclear weapons.”
CARTER’S BASIC MESSAGE
Ashton Carter’s message is Peace Through
Strength: the only way to establish peace is by building and deploying
more and better weapons, and by insulting ‘enemy’ nations without
calling them “enemies.” Our enemies are the nations that are ‘provoking’
‘peaceful’ nations: provoking the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, all of our
allies. After all, Saudi Arabia, right now, is using our marvelous
weapons in Yemen, to establish peace there. By using our weapons, those
kindly Saudi rulers are providing jobs for American workers. It’s the
only way to keep the world as peaceful as it is: it’s the American way.
He said in his speech, “We all remember
President Reagan’s calls for Moscow to tear down the Berlin wall and for
‘peace through strength.’ His foreign policy, and approach to the
Soviet Union, was both strong and balanced.” (Perhaps Carter was there
paying homage to the “Fair and Balanced” ‘news’ reporting at Fox ‘News’
Channel, where the type of thinking, such as he expressed, is routinely
being pumped to its viewers.)
This is how to prevent Russia from
engaging in ‘provocations,’ such as their defending themselves and
preparing for an ultimate existential attack: WW III. Russia refuses to
accept America’s magnanimous help. Russians are so uncouth that they
need to be terrorized into submission to the civilized United States.
For example, on October 19th, Bloomberg News bannered, “U.S. Approves $11 Billion Saudi Buy of Lockheed Littoral Ships”,
and reported that, “The Pentagon has notified Congress of a planned
sale to Saudi Arabia of as many as four Littoral Combat Ships made by
Lockheed Martin Corp. for $11.25 billion, as the U.S. works to bolster
defenses of its Gulf allies.”
The Saud family wants these ships so as
to be able to kill Russians in Syria and to assist the jihadists whom
the Sauds want to grab that country. This is ‘Peace Through Strength.’
So are the American bombs that the Saudi Air Force are dumping on Yemen
to kill the evildoers there. Unfortunately, George Orwell’s 1984 somehow
missed that one, ‘Peace Through Strength,’ but America’s war-marketers
don’t. After all, they’re paid to produce for their clients, and this is
very much a ‘free market’ operation the U.S. runs.
The American elite’s strategic motivation, ‘Peace Through Strength,’ is so admirable — to the idiots who trust liars such as the American elite.
And to U.S. ‘defense’ contractors, it’s nothing short of inspirational
(not to mention profitable; after all, ‘Greed Is Good’). These people
are real professionals, and no one can top their marketing expertise.
That’s the reason why there are all of those proposals in Congress to
cut the government to the bone, with that remaining bone being the
‘defense’ establishment. The rest of the government is the portion of it
with the ‘waste, fraud and abuse.’ It’s dispensable in ‘the one indispensable nation’ as President Obama calls it (implying that every other nation is dispensable); and he states this repeatedly, sometimes even to the military, so that they’ll know that every nation they’ll attack will be ‘dispensable.’ This Commander-in-Chief has their back. He knows that they’re the muscle that gets the job done for America.
They’re the muscle that’s attached to the
bone. And, of course, the bone is the equipment: it’s the weapons.
That’s firms such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, etc.
All we really need is the bone. It’s so
clean and honest. It’s not ‘waste, fraud and abuse.’ That’s why it’s the
foundation of The American Empire. Aristocrats everywhere know how
important that is. It produces the bullets and bombs to kill the bad guys, and get the job done, for America, and for the world.
It’s so patriotic! It’s so noble; it’s the ultimate Pax Americana.
And it’s so realistic: it recognizes that the only way to sustain the
peace is by means of constant war, to establish a stable world order,
with the one indispensable nation firmly in control of it — everywhere,
and not only in Syria.
Thank you, Ashton Carter, for your inspiring speech.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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