In this series, Weaknesses of the National Security Strategy 2022, I’ve been discussing and refuting the claims made in the National Security Strategy 2022, which I refer to as the Sullivan & Biden NSS, even though it’s not clear whether or not Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, wrote the document.
Claim 4. The USG defends against “aggression and coercion in all its forms.” Sullivan & Biden state: “Today Europe stands at the front lines of the fight to defend the principles of freedom, sovereignty, and non-aggression, and will continue to work in lockstep to ensure that freedom prevails. America remains unequivocally committed to collective defense as enshrined in NATO’s Article 5 and will work alongside our NATO Allies to deter, defend against, and build resilience to aggression and coercion in all its forms.”[1]
It’s extremely hypocritical for Sullivan & Biden to claim that the USG is opposed to “aggression and coercion in all its forms,” when aggression and coercion in all their forms are the signature marks of US foreign policy. There isn’t enough space here to list all the actions of USG aggression and coercion. I’d suggest William Blum’s Killing Hope, Murray Polner and Thomas Woods Jr.’s We Who Dared to Say No to War, and Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, to learn more about USG aggression and coercion. But let’s focus here on just a few of the multiple available examples of coercion as a routine tool of US foreign policy, for the USG is, in fact, the King of Coercion.
If the USG is opposed to aggression and coercion, why did it use force to evict Spain from Cuba in 1898 and then impose a military governorship onto Cuba? Why did it force Cuba to accept into its constitution dis-empowering conditions that would allow for the building of the US naval base at Guantánamo as well as US military intervention, such as when US sugar business interests in Cuba were threatened by revolution protesting a rigged re-election of a pro-US leader?
By 1914, US businesses, including sugar, mining, and railway corporations, controlled almost all of Cuba’s economy. Eventually, “banks like Chase Manhattan grew so powerful that they could dictate the Cuban government’s budget and tax policies and force cabinet changes.”[2] The corporate law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, the USG, and the US marines 5-year occupation of Cuba served to preserve these conditions for as long as they could.[3] But all of this, evidently, was performed in a manner magically devoid of aggression and coercion.
But maybe the USG was aggressive and coercive only in the 1800s and early 1900s, right? Maybe it’s evolved since those days when it used massive amounts of aggression and coercion upon the Native Americans, killing their food sources and then holding off their food rations if they didn’t obediently give up their land and comply with life on the reservations.
Think again! There’s been no evolution whatsoever! For if the USG is opposed to coercion, why did it tell the Italians in massive US propaganda campaigns in the 1940s that they had better vote right wing or their US aid would be dropped and they wouldn’t be allowed to ever emigrate to the US?[4] Why put on this illegal pressure and interfere in foreign elections in order to ensure the election of pro-NATO leaders in Italy?
And why in the 1950s, if it were opposed to aggression and coercion, did the USG, along with private organizations including the Ford Foundation, recruit, equip, train, and fund its own secret army which included former officials of the Luftwaffe and SS to perform terrorist acts on East Germany, including damage to power stations, dams, canals, docks, gas stations, public buildings, public transportation, railways, bridges, and thousands of cattle, just to make the USSR and non-capitalist economies look bad?[5] You’d think if non-capitalist economies really were bad, the USG wouldn’t have to go out of its way to make them look bad. Why this coercion, this manipulation of truth, to try to shape and contort thoughts?
If the USG is opposed to aggression and coercion, why does the USG pressure leaders into obedience if they don’t want to be targeted by a coup? If foreign leaders don’t give US investors the deals they want but put their own people’s needs first, if foreign leaders, such as Guatemala’s Jacobo Gúzman Arbenz, make plans for land reform, if foreign leaders, such as Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, don’t agree to host US military bases, if foreign leaders, such as Iraq’s Abd al-Karim Qasim, don’t agree to cut off ties with the USSR, why do they become targets of USG coups? If you were a foreign leader, and you knew the truth, that the USG can topple or assassinate any world leader it wants, would you feel free to displease the USG? Or would you feel coerced by all the previous examples of coups to obey? This history of coup-making is an extreme form of coercion and aggression that leaders the world over have to deal with daily.
Why, if it’s opposed to coercion, did the USG’s CIA pay at least a million dollars to workers in British Guiana to go on strike in 1963, in the effort to topple British Guiana’s leader, Cheddi Jagan and push for a capitalist economy? Why did the CIA finance and organize anti-Jagan protests? Why did the USG withhold economic aid to British Guiana while Jagan was in power?
Why did US oil companies refuse to provide petroleum to British Guiana, forcing Jagan to ask Cuba for oil, which in turn reinvigorated US accusations that he was a dangerous Communist? The USG continually used the power of money to push and shape British Guiana according to USG dictates, or, as Sullivan & Biden would call it, according to their “vision,” which only helped push British Guiana into poverty. As Jagan himself stated, “‘The United States. . . is not prepared to permit a Socialist government or a government committed to drastic and basic reforms to exist in this hemisphere, even when this government has been freely elected. . . . It is all too clear that the United States will only support a democratic government if it favors a classic private enterprise system.’”[6]
And why, if the USG is opposed to coercion, do the US-dominated IMF and World Bank go out of their way to sabotage reforms that help the poor? Consider what happened to Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, twenty years ago. In America’s Other War: Terrorizing Colombia, Doug Stokes writes that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Brazilian Workers’ Party was elected president of Brazil in 2002. Lula had pledged to help Brazil’s poor majority, to institute agrarian reform, and to enable people to eat three times a day.
According to Stokes, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and banks sabotaged Lula’s chances of achieving these reforms. “Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and ABN Amro issued warnings to investors that caused a run on Brazil’s currency, the real. . . . Moody’s rating agency altered Brazil’s rating from stable to negative.” As a result, Brazil’s currency plummeted in value, but since most of Brazil’s debt is linked to the dollar, Brazil’s debts increased enormously. Brazil was compelled to accept a loan from the IMF which, as is typical of IMF loans, was conditional upon cuts in government spending that wouldn’t allow for Lula’s types of reforms to help the poor. Meanwhile, Citibank and Fleet Boston were the two major banks to benefit from the IMF loan.[7] This is extreme, criminal, anti-democratic manipulation.
And if the USG is opposed to aggression and coercion, why did it use both in Bolivia? Che Guevara, for example, had been battling in different parts of Latin America as well as the Congo out of rage over US-instigated coups, such as in Guatemala and Congo, and rage over the conditions of the poor, such as the copper miners in Chile, who were horridly oppressed by the unified actions of governments and US corporate leaders. It seems the CIA was primarily provoked—not by Che’s brutality—but by his noble concern for the impoverished and oppressed and his commitment to creating societies that uphold economic justice: societies where you don’t have people working essentially as slaves for corporations of businessmen and investors who merrily enjoy millions in profits from the labor of those who work in dangerous, unsanitary, grueling conditions no different from slavery. Che stood for values utterly repulsive to the US policymaker-businessmen-banker-lawyer clique.
The USG, with the help of the Green Berets and their mercenary arm of anti-Castro Cubans, tortured local Bolivians to try to find Che, hunted him down, and had him killed in 1967—and all, we are to believe, without aggression and coercion. In 1971, without Che around, Nixon and Kissinger were free to instigate a coup of Bolivia’s President Juan José Torres, who’d angered Nixon by nationalizing the tin mines owned by US businesses. In fact, US congressional hearings later found that Gulf Oil had bribed several officials in past Bolivian administrations. Some officials, including Bolivia’s Interior Minister, were on the CIA’s payroll.[8] In other words, these officials were not representing or serving Bolivians, they were representing and serving the USG who, in turn, has been serving certain US businessmen, in order to coerce Bolivians to follow their dictates.
Why are US leaders not ashamed to be so concerned about preserving and augmenting the profits of US businessmen who are already wealthy while Bolivians are living in poverty and working in squalid conditions? It’s a question that must be asked in a formal hearing and that should be asked of presidential candidates. Have they even visited with these people? I suggest business leaders take the time to get off their private jets and live the lives of the people for at least two weeks and walk with them everywhere they go, work beside them, eat with them, and experience what it’s like to be them.
Torres, who was later killed, was replaced with Hugo Bánzer. The result? The usual result of US coups: Bánzer initiated the typical and predictable post-US-coup reign of terror, in which more than 2,000 Bolivians were arrested without trial and widespread brutal violations of human rights commenced, with torture being commonplace. The CIA, always eager to root out evil, helped promote the terror campaign by providing names and addresses of Catholic clergy, because clergy had the Christian vice particularly annoying to people of the Nixon-Kissinger brand of being compassionate defenders of human rights who truly cared about people. Such caring was immoral, especially given the conviction that those who cared about the common people more than big business and banks were automatically considered to be Communists, who were, by definition, godless and immoral.[9]
The US policymaker-CEO-banker-lawyer clique was evidently pleased with Bánzer. With its mountain of silver gone centuries earlier, thanks to Spain, and its workers paid peanuts, thanks to US businesses, Bolivia was impoverished. In the 1980s and 1990s, as a condition for receiving loans, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund coerced the Bolivian government into selling or leasing its publicly owned airlines, railroad, electric utilities, and oil and gas pipelines to private companies. Why? Presumably so that the new owners could make profits off impoverished Bolivians.
The next big coercive move was to force Bolivia to privatize its water. In 1996, the World Bank promised millions of dollars in loans to Cochabamba, Bolivia on the condition that it privatize its water. In 1999, the Bolivian government leased off Cochabamba’s water for forty years to the sole bidder for the project: Aguas del Tunari, a quarter of it owned by Bechtel. This contract and its subsequent rate increases led to the Cochabamba Water War, a conflict between common people and the corporation. In response, the US government’s buddy, dictator Bánzer, shut off power to the city, banned meetings of more than two people, and instituted martial law.[10]
The USG likes to hide its greed, authoritarianism, and coercive tactics behind the multi-nation cloak of the IMF and the World Bank. But it’s doubtful that these two organizations enable poor nations to receive more than they give. In fact, it was Putin who, in his 2007 speech at Munich, condemned the Western habit of “aiding” poor nations by giving with one hand and taking with the other. He has it right.
Why, through the US-dominated World Bank and IMF, are nations told that if they want to borrow money, they’ve got to sell out their populations, allow foreign investors to privatize utilities, and cut public food subsidies? The USG is the largest shareholder in both institutions, and therefore, because of the peculiar rules that wealth brings power, it has the greatest voting power. Moreover, conveniently being the only nation in these organizations that has 15 percent or more of the voting power, it’s the only nation able to veto major decisions, which conveniently require 85 percent of the vote.[11] But don’t such voting rules essentially allow the USG to coerce poorer nations to accept highly instrusive economic, political, and even military conditions in order to receive a loan?
Imagine going to the bank for a loan and being told: “Absolutely, you can have this loan because we care about YOU. You’ve suffered enough, and we’re here to help. Just follow these ten modest steps that we’ve drawn up especially with your needs in mind so that you can have what it takes to develop a stable household guaranteed to prosper and to possess the money to pay us back with interest in ten years:
- Starve your children until they’re able to get a job.
- Cut off health care to your grandparents or at least make them pay cash for major surgery.
- Sell your car and rent one from us on a daily basis at a bargain rate.
- Stop mowing your lawn and pay a select private company we provide to mow it and kill all those dandelions and insects you shouldn’t have with our friendly and healthy herbicides and insecticides.
- Plow over and destroy your vegetable garden, stop the homemade cooking, and sell your refrigerator and oven so you can dine at our bank’s privately-owned restaurants at every meal.
- Sell your swingset to our bank’s signature company that will charge your kids an unbeatable rate to use it.
- Stop reading to your children before bed and purchase our automatic storyteller online to do it for you.
- Cut down half the trees in your yard and sell them to us for timber.
- Use one-third of the loan money we offer you to purchase top-notch weapons from us.
- If we go to war, agree to help us kill our enemies or we won’t be so generous to you the next time around.
How would you react to such an offer? Laugh aloud? Gasp in horror? Make a dash for the door?
But these examples parallel the types of loan conditions required of underdeveloped nations by the World Bank and IMF!
Many people within underdeveloped nations would like their national economic system and the international economic system to be much more just and egalitarian in terms of the fair earning of wealth for labor and resources and the fair distribution of wealth and power. Instead, not only are economic relations between underdeveloped and overdeveloped nations and corporations unjust and inegalitarian, but underdeveloped nations receiving World Bank and IMF loans are not even allowed to have caring, egalitarian, and just economic policies domestically, within their own countries. Ironically, if international economic trade relations were just to begin with, underdeveloped nations would not need nearly so many loans. But the loans themselves add to the injustice of both the international and domestic economic systems!
In a bizarre and inhumane twist, World Bank and IMF loan recipients—nations that are so poor they need a loan—are essentially not allowed to help the poor within their own nations. Loan conditions prohibit them from creating or maintaining economic relations within their own nations that help to rectify current and past inequalities and injustices in their economic systems.[12]
To be eligible for loans, underdeveloped nations have been required to adopt “free” market economic principles and adhere to austerity budgets with drastic cuts in funding for the needy who, according to “free” market logic, will starve to death for some time but eventually not die of hunger, perhaps by finding a job in their weakened state of health. This is a very major string attached to World Bank and IMF loans: the forced conversion of economic ideology and cultural values in order to implement harsh economic measures toward the non-wealthy. And is it even worth the sacrifice? Who actually benefits from these loan deals?
In fact, the effect of US bribes and loans that act as bribes is so deleterious that in 1963, the Cambodian National Congress, following the recommendation of Cambodia’s leader, Sihanouk, a target for years of USG coup plots, voted to voluntarily “‘end all aid granted by the United States in the military, economic, technical and cultural fields.’” Sihanouk understood how US aid corrupted Cambodian officials who transformed into “‘a clientele necessarily obedient to the demands of the lavish bestower of foreign funds.’”[13]
The USG also is a star player in coercing nations to participate in its killing and in promoting to leadership venal minds who’ll play the game. Why did South Korea’s President Park Chung Hee send 320,000 conscripted troops to kill Vietnamese for the USG in order to win millions in USG aid?[14] Why did South Korea’s government facilitate the kidnapping of South Korean females to serve the sexual needs of US troops based in South Korea?[15] Why did the CIA get involved in the Southeast Asian heroin trade and give airplane rides for heroin shipments in order to lure Asians into agreeing to become members of the CIA’s fighting forces attacking China, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam?[16] Why have so many nations’ governments agreed to US military bases—800 worldwide, despite massive protests from their populations?
Why, at the start of the Persian Gulf War, did the USG pressure the Saudi king to allow US troops to occupy Saudi Arabia? And why did the USG force and bribe so many nations to support the USG side in the Persian Gulf War? Massive protests against the Gulf War took place in many Third World nations as well as within the United States, but the USG formed alliances with those governments who agreed to support the war in spite of popular opposition within their own nations.[17]
Protests were initiated against the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other sheikdoms. Petitions were delivered to the ruling elites in these countries to uphold democratic and Islamic principles of consultation and participation.[18] Similar demands were made in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, nations whose populations again erupted in the 2011 Arab Spring. Egypt’s participation in the US-led coalition was essentially “participation that went in the face of popular sentiment that opposed siding with America against another Arab state.”[19] How could the USG possibly consider that pressuring these governments to defy their own populations was an example of democracy?
The obligation to support US strategic interests, including US military pursuits, has been tied to the aid. During the Gulf War of 1991, many nations that ended up in the allied coalition were promised aid. In 1991, for example, India’s government under Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar was caught secretly refueling Gulf-bound US warplanes. Indian public anger was immense, because such actions undermined India’s non-aligned status. But, according to a statement by Subramaniam Swamy, a member of India’s parliament at the time known for his pro-US views, India’s government agreed to the refueling because it “‘facilitated the one billion dollar loan that India had received from the International Monetary Fund earlier this year’ (India Express, August 16, 1991).”[20]
Aid was also tied to military conditions when the USG wanted help, or at least an appearance of multilateral support, in its 2003 invasion of on Iraq. According to Njoki Njoroge Njehu, director of the 50 Years is Enough campaign, because the war against Iraq was of strategic interest to the United States, “several African members of the UN Security Council, including Cameroon, Guinea and Angola, were virtually held to ransom when the United States was seeking council support for the war in 2003.”[21]
In other words, neither the populations nor the governments of these nations were allowed to decide whether or not they wanted their nation to support or participate in the US 2003 invasion of Iraq or whether they preferred alternative approaches of conflict resolution. The USG decided this for them. Evidently, having the “privilege” of being on the Security Council doesn’t really give you greater power or authority in UN decision making if you’re a poor nation. It just means you’re going to be a target for bribes and threatened punishments—coercion—if you don’t vote the way the USG wants you to.
Such behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing is considered “diplomacy,” such behind-the-scenes bribery is considered “aid,” and the coercive, elbow-twisting US government is considered a “democracy” that respects the concept, “government by the consent of the people.” It’s the same use of bribery that the USG used in Afghanistan: the habit of making so-called allies based upon their willingness to salivate for money.[22] It’s the breeding of a worldwide culture of corruption! It’s the breeding of individuals and entire governments whose primary motive is venal: they’re corruptible! They have no morals but will do what you want for money! That is what the USG breeds abroad!
And why did the King of Coercion punish Yemen after the Persian Gulf War for not supporting the USG? Yemen didn’t think that force should be used against Iraq in 1991; it therefore supported Iraq. As a result, Yemen found it extremely difficult in the post-Persian Gulf War period to access foreign aid, and Saudi Arabia, the US partner, forced between half a million and a million Yemenis working in Saudi Arabia to leave the country. These men’s families were then crushed by poverty.[23] Yemen was punished for having a different point of view. This is entirely undemocratic. It’s also coercion.
If the USG disapproves of coercion, why, after the war, did the USG push to slap a decade of UN sanctions onto Iraq? Sanctions that killed?
Who’s responsible for the Nord Stream explosions and their massive methane leak? According to Seymour Hersh’s February 2023 report, Sullivan & Biden are responsible.[24] The USG portrays the liquefied natural gas shipments to Europe as a rescue mission from the “big bad wolf” Russia, but you can’t say people are being rescued if the “heroes” cut off all their other avenues. It’s quite coercive to blow up pipelines in order to force Europeans to buy your LNG. Is this what happened?
In my review of US foreign policy over the decades, I find that US foreign policymakers expect foreign nations’ governments to follow what I call the unofficial Four Commandments:
First Commandment: Thou shalt not obstruct US businesses’ profit-making abroad.
Second Commandment: Thou shalt not significantly help the poor or give decent amounts of fertile land to the landless.
Third Commandment: Thou shalt not be enemies with our friends, or friends with our enemies.
Fourth Commandment: Thou shalt not reject US military bases and weapons.
And to get foreign leaders to observe these commandments, the USG will use coercion—in the form of bribes or threats—and aggression.
But, ignoring all of this, Sullivan & Biden instead warn in the NSS 2022 of the allegedly malicious nature of China and of a behavior that the USG would never, ever do in its wildest dreams: “Beijing frequently uses its economic power to coerce countries.”[25]
People will have different points of view, and different facts to support their perspectives. Perhaps there are ideas to counter the ideas I’ve presented here. Regardless, the facts and ideas I’ve presented should be taken into consideration and responded to fully by the USG, just as those who hold opinions such as mine should listen to any ideas or complicating factors that support other points of view. This is how we engage in cooperative dialogue, this is how we can benefit from the knowledge that we all collectively hold, this is how we serve and cherish truth rather than manipulate it, and this is how we avoid behaviors such as aggression and coercion.
Kristin Christman has been independently researching US foreign policy and peace since 9/11. Her channel focuses on US-Russian relations at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuNEw9-10lk-CwU-5vAElcg. Kristin graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College with a BA in Russian, and she holds Master’s degrees in Slavic languages from Brown University and public administration from SUNY Albany. She has been a guest with former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter and UNAC coordinator Joe Lombardo on Cynthia Pooler’s program, Issues that Matter, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDlaLNJih7U. Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice recently published her article on suicide, culture, and peace in their special edition on suicide, Vol. 33 No. 4. [email protected]
[1] National Security Strategy 2022, Oct. 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov, 38.
[2] James D. Cockcroft, Latin America: History, Politics, and US Policy (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1998), 295.
[3] Thomas G. Paterson, J. Garry Clifford, and Kenneth J. Hagan, American Foreign Policy: A History Since 1900 (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath And Company, 1991), 227-29;
Cockcroft, Latin America, 293-94;
Our Hidden History Interview, “Sullivan & Cromwell: Capitalism, Intelligence, & Fascism with Hugo Turner,” Nov. 24, 2018, https://ourhiddenhistory.org.
[4] William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, rev. ed. (London: Zed Books, 2014), 27-34.
[5] Blum, Killing Hope, 62-63.
[6] Blum, Killing Hope, 108-114, quote 112.
[7] Doug Stokes, America’s Other War: Terrorizing Colombia, (New York: Zed Books, 2005), 49-50.
[8] Cockcroft, Latin America, 485-89, 497-99;
The History Channel, The True Story of Che Guevara, A&E Television Networks, 2006, DVD;
Blum, Killing Hope, 225-26.
[9] Robert P. Baird, “US Paid Money to Support Hugo Banzer’s 1971 Coup in Bolivia,” May 30, 2010, https://hcranalysis.wordpress.com;
Blum, Killing Hope, 228;
US Department of State, Memoranda with Nixon, Kissinger, 40 Committee: #79 Sept. 26, 1969, #80 Oct. 17, 1969, #93 Oct. 7, 1970, #97 Mar. 15, 1971, #101 June 11, 1971, #104 June 29, 1971, #105 July 6, 1971, #106 July 9, 1971. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976. Volume E-10. Documents on American Republics, 1969-1972. https://history.state.gov.
[10] Amy Goodman, “Cochabamba, the Water Wars and Climate Change,” TruthDig, Apr. 21, 2010, https://www.truthdig.com;
NOW with Bill Moyers, “Leasing the Rain,” PBS, July 5, 2002, https://www.pbs.org.;
Jim Schultz, “Bolivia’s War over Water.” Democracy Center. 2003. https://democracyctr.org.
[11] Éric Toussaint and Damien Millet, Debt, The IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, (New York: Monthly Review, 2010), 54-58, 95-101;
Gordon Gray and Thomas Wade, “U.S. Participation in the International Monetary Fund (IMF): A Primer,” October 23, 2018, www.americanactionforum.org.
[12] Toussaint and Millet, Debt, The IMF, and the World Bank, 106.
[13] Blum, Killing Hope, 136.
[14] Anthony Kuhn, “A Vietnam War massacre case from 1968 forces a new reckoning in South Korea,” Aug. 12, 2023, https://news.wgcu.org.
[15] Choe Sang-Han, “South Korea Created a Brutal Sex Trade for American Soldiers,” New York Times, May 3, 2023.
[16] Blum, Killing Hope, 24.
[17] Mowlana, Hamid, George Gerbner, and Herbert Schiller, eds. Triumph of an Image: The Media’s War in the Persian Gulf—A Global Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992).
Noam Chomsky, “The Media and the War: What War?” 55-56
Hamid Mowlana, “Roots of War: The Long Road of Intervention,” 47;
John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (New York: Oxford Univ., 1992), 197.
[18] Dilip Hiro, Holy Wars: The Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism (New York: Routledge, 1989), 54.
[19] Noah Feldman, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 167.
[20] Mowlana, Gerbner, and Schiller, Triumph of the Image,
- Sainath, “The New World Odour: The Indian Experience,” 69.
[21] Anup Shah, “Sustainable Development: The US and Foreign Aid Assistance,” updated August 16, 2006, http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp, 24-25.
[22] Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021).
[23] Liz Sonneborn, United Arab Emirates, (New York: Scholastic, Children’s Press, 2008), 53, 70.
[24] Seymour Hersh, “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline,” Feb. 8, 2023, https://seymourhersh.substack.
[25] NSS 2022, 23.
