'Maintaining
Imperial Order'
By
Anna Pha
Guardian
03 July, 2003
Empires have come and gone
in world history - the Roman empire, the Mongols, the British and Ottoman
empires. The objective of the leaders of Nazi Germany was world domination
but they were resisted and they failed. The British empire disintegrated
after WW2. Now, a new and even more powerful and dangerous nation has
launched its crusade for a New World Order - a new world-wide American
empire. They have become so arrogant that they do not hide their objectives
and the ways by which they intend to enforce their domination. This
article, the first of three, brings you what their spokespersons have
said.
"The United States has
no rival. We are militarily dominant around the world. Our military
spending exceeds that of the next six or seven powers combined, and
we have a monopoly on many advanced and not so advanced military technologies.
We, and only we, form and lead military coalitions into war. We use
our military dominance to intervene in the internal affairs of other
countries, because the local inhabitants are killing each other, or
harbouring enemies of the United States, or developing nuclear and biological
weapons." (S R Rosen, "The Future of War and the American
Military", Harvard Magazine, May-June 2002)
"A political unit that
has overwhelming superiority in military power, and uses that power
to influence the internal behaviour of other states, is called an empire.
Because the United States does not seek to control territory or govern
the overseas citizens of the empire, we are an indirect empire, to be
sure, but an empire nonetheless. If this is correct, our goal is not
combating a rival, but maintaining our imperial position, and maintaining
imperial order." (Emphasis added)
"[I]mperial strategy
focuses on preventing the emergence of powerful, hostile challengers
to the empire: by war if necessary, but by imperial assimilation if
possible", writes Rosen.
You may say that this is
just extremist language but its author is part of a circle of very powerful
and dangerous people and organisations who are in control of the Bush
administration's foreign policy.
In September 2000, prior
to Bush's appointment to the US presidency and one year before the September
11 attack on the World Trade Centre, the Project for a New American
Century (PNAC) (one of the many US think tanks) published a statement
called Rebuilding America's Defense: Strategy, Forces and Resources
for a New Century.
The report identifies core
tasks for the US military to achieve. These include:
"MAINTAIN NUCLEAR STRATEGIC
SUPERIORITY.
"DEVELOP AND DEPLOY
GLOBAL MISSILE DEFENCES to defend America and American allies and to
provide a secure basis for US power projection around the world.
"CONTROL THE NEW 'INTERNATIONAL
COMMONS' OF SPACE AND 'CYBERSPACE', and pave the way for the creation
of a new military service - US Space Forces - with the mission of space
control.
"EXPLOIT THE 'REVOLUTION
IN MILITARY AFFAIRS' to ensure long-term superiority of US conventional
forces..
"INCREASE DEFENCE SPENDING
gradually to a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross domestic
product, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defence spending
annually." (PNAC) (Upper case from the original text)
Michael Ledeen is a member
of another of the "think tanks" - the American Enterprise
Institute (AEI). He published an article "We'll Win this War"
in the AEI's The American Enterprise magazine in December 2001.
"We must wage revolutionary
war against all the terrorist regimes, and gradually replace them with
governments that turn to their own people's freely expressed desires
as the basis of their political legitimacy", he writes.
"If we act like the
revolutionary (!) force we truly are, we can once again reshape the
world, as we repeatedly did throughout the last century. But if we settle
for token victories and limited accomplishments, we will permit our
enemies to reorganize, and attack us with even greater venom in the
future." (Emphasis added)
Shock and Awe warfare Shock
and Awe is the method of warfare to achieve these goals. It has just
been tested in Iraq. It is explained by Rosen:
"The maximum amount
of force can and should be used as quickly as possible for psychological
impact - to demonstrate that the empire cannot be challenged with impunity.
[W]e are in the business of bringing down hostile governments and creating
governments favourable to us.
"Conventional international
wars end and troops are brought back home. Imperial wars end, but imperial
garrisons must be left in place for decades to ensure order and stability.
This is, in fact, what we are beginning to see, first in the Balkans
and now in Central Asia..
This type of warfare is explained
in the strategy document, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance,
which was published by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
(JINSA) in 1996. It says:
"The military posture
and capability of the United States of America are, today, dominant.
Simply put, there is no external adversary in the world that can successfully
challenge the extraordinary power of the American military in either
regional conflict or in 'conventional' war as we know it once the United
States makes the commitment to take whatever action may be needed."
(Emphasis added)
Rapid Domination "The
aim of Rapid Dominance is to affect the will, perception, and understanding
of the adversary to fit or respond to our strategic policy ends through
imposing a regime of Shock and Awe.
"Clearly, the traditional
military aim of destroying, defeating, or neutralizing the adversary's
military capability is a fundamental and necessary component of Rapid
Dominance. Our intent, however, is to field a range of capabilities
to induce sufficient Shock and Awe to render the adversary impotent.
This means that physical and psychological effects must be obtained.
"`Dominance' means the
ability to affect and dominate an adversary's will both physically and
psychologically. Physical dominance includes the ability to destroy,
disarm, disrupt, neutralize, and to render impotent. (Emphasis added)
"Psychological dominance
means the ability to destroy, defeat, and neuter the will of an adversary
to resist; or convince the adversary to accept our terms and aims short
of using force. The target is the adversary's will, perception, and
understanding..
" deception, confusion,
misinformation, and disinformation, perhaps in massive amounts, must
be employed." (Emphasis added)
"Theoretically, the
magnitude of Shock and Awe Rapid Dominance seeks to impose (in extreme
cases) is the non-nuclear equivalent of the impact that the atomic weapons
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese.
"The impact of those
weapons was sufficient to transform both the mindset of the average
Japanese citizen and the outlook of the leadership through this condition
of Shock and Awe. The Japanese simply could not comprehend the destructive
power carried by a single airplane. This incomprehension produced a
state of awe..
"It will imply more
than the direct application of force. It will mean the ability to control
the environment and to master all levels of an opponent's activities
to affect will, perception, and understanding.
"This could include
means of communication, transportation, food production, water supply,
and other aspects of infrastructure as well as the denial of military
responses. Deception, misinformation, and disinformation are key components
in this assault on the will and understanding of the opponent."
The JINSA document continues:
"The first priority of a doctrine of Rapid Dominance should be
to deter, alter, or affect the will and therefore those actions that
are either unacceptable to U.S. national security interests or endanger
the democratic community of states and access to free markets.
"Should deterrence fail,
the application of Rapid Dominance in these circumstances should create
sufficient Shock and Awe to the immediate threat forces and leadership
as well as provide a clear message for other potential threat partners.
The doctrine of Rapid Dominance has applications in a variety of areas
such as countering WMD, terrorism, and perhaps other tasks.
"...in addition to improving
our force capabilities, the US must develop an intelligence repository
far more extensive than during the Cold War, covering virtually all
the important regions and organizational structures throughout the world."
(JINSA)
Space control Space control
is also necessary in the eyes of the imperial war hawks. As long ago
as 1976, the Joint Strategy Review by the National Defense Panel said,
"Unrestricted use of space has become a major strategic interest
of the United States." (as quoted in Rebuilding America's Defenses)
"Building an effective,
robust, layered, global system of missile defenses is a prerequisite
for maintaining American preeminence." (PNAC)
"The Clinton Administration's
adherence to the 1972 ABM Treaty frustrated development of useful ballistic
missile defenses", says the PNAC strategy document.
"No system of missile
defenses can be fully effective without placing sensors and weapons
in space ... US armed forces are uniquely dependent upon space."
(PNAC)
"The US Space Command
foresees that in the coming decades, . an adversary might also share
the same commercial satellite services for communications, imagery,
and navigation.The space 'playing field' is levelling rapidly, so US
forces will be increasingly vulnerable." (PNAC) (Italics are quote
from US Space Command.)
"For US armed forces
to continue to assert military preeminence, control of space - defined
by Space Command as 'the ability to assure access to space, freedom
of operations within the space medium, and an ability to deny others
the use of space' - must be an essential element of our military strategy."
(Emphasis added)
"As Space Command also
recognizes, the United States must also have the capability to deny
America's adversaries the use of commercial space platforms for military
purposes in times of crises."
"But, over the longer
term, maintaining control of space will inevitably require the application
of force both in space and from space, including but not limited to
anti-missile defenses and defensive systems capable of protecting US
and allied satellites; space control cannot be sustained in any other
fashion, with conventional land, sea or airforce, or by electronic warfare."
(Emphasis added) (PNAC)
Nuclear weapons "Shutting
the country down would entail both the physical destruction of appropriate
infrastructure and the shutdown and control of the flow of all vital
information and associated commerce so rapidly as to achieve a level
of national shock akin to the effect that dropping nuclear weapons on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese. Simultaneously, Iraq's armed
forces would be paralysed with the neutralization or destruction of
its capabilities. Deception, disinformation, and misinformation would
be applied massively." (JINSA)
This does not rule out the
use, development or testing of nuclear weapons. Rebuilding America's
Defences (PNAC) is quite categoric on this question. The maintenance
of a moratorium on nuclear tests is "an untenable situation"
it says.
"...there may be a need
to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets
of military requirements, such as would be required in targeting the
very deep underground, hardened bunkers that are being built by many
of our potential adversaries." (Emphasis added)
"US nuclear superiority
is nothing to be ashamed of; rather, it will be an essential element
in preserving American leadership in a more complex and chaotic world."
(Emphasis added) (PNAC)
* * *
AEI: the American Enterprise
Institute.
JINSA, Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance,
(JINSA) 1996.
Ledeen, M, We'll Win this
War, The American Enterprise magazine, December 2001.
PNAC: Project for a New American
Century (PNAC), Rebuilding America's Defense: Strategy, Forces and Resources
for a New Century, September 2000.
Rosen, SP, The Future of
War and the American Military, Harvard Magazine, May-June 2002.
All documents quoted available
from each organisation's website.