| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Contradictory US Foreign Policy
http://real-agenda.com/feed
These days, US foreign policy is often contradictory, as we can see in Syria, where troops trained by the Pentagon are fighting troops trained by the CIA. And yet it remains perfectly coherent on two points – to divide Europe between the European Union on one side and Russia on the other – and to divide the Far East between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on one side and China on the other. Why? And can this be predicted? For more than a century, in an attempt to explain and therefore anticipate US foreign policy, we have been visualising a struggle between the isolationists and the interventionists. The former adopted the line of the «Pilgrim Fathers», who fled old Europe to build a new world based on their religious beliefs, and therefore distant from European cynicism. The latter, in the tradition of certain of the «Founding Fathers», intended not only to seize their independence, but also to pursue the project of the British Empire for their own benefit. Today, this distinction has lost almost all validity, since it has become impossible to live in autarchy, even for a country as vast as the United States. Although it has become commonplace to accuse one’s political adversaries of isolationism, no US politician – with the exception of Ron Paul – now defends such an idea. The debate has shifted to a confrontation between the partisans of perpetual war and the adepts of a more measured use of force. If we are to believe the work of professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, the present policy of the United States is decided by a collection of interest groups, independent of the desires of its citizens [1]. In this debate, therefore, it is legitimate to note the influence, on the one hand, of the military-industrial complex, which dominates the US economy and whose interest is to pursue a state of «endless war» – and, on the other, the toll companies (software, high-tech, entertainment) who, although their production is more virtual than real, make their money wherever the world is at peace. This analysis of the debate leaves aside the question of the access to raw materials and energy sources, which was dominant in the 19th and 20th centuries, but has lost its urgency, without having completely disappeared. Since the «Carter Doctrine», which treats the access to hydrocarbons from the «Greater Middle East» as a question of «national security» [2], we have seen Washington create CentCom, move more than 500,000 men to the Gulf, and seek to impose control over the whole region. We remember that Dick Cheney, persuaded of the imminence of «peak oil», decided to prepare the «Arab Springs», and war against all the states in the region which it did not yet control. But this policy lost its meaning even while it was in application, because the United States, apart from their production of gas and shale oil, took control of the hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Mexico. Consequently, in the years to come, the United States will not only have abandoned the «Greater Middle East», but may engage in a major war against Venezuela, the only middle-range power which could compete with and threaten their exploitation in the Gulf of Mexico. In a series of interviews with The Atlantic, President Obama tried to explain his doctrine [3]. In order to do so, he replied lengthily and repetitively to those who accuse him of contradictions or weakness, particularly after the affair of the «red line» in Syria. He had indeed declared that the use of chemical weapons was a red line which should not be crossed, but when his administration alleged that the Syrian Arab Republic had used them against its own population, he refused to wage a new war. Leaving aside the question of whether the accusation was true or not, the President stressed that the United States had no interest in risking the lives of its soldiers in this conflict, and that he had chosen to economise their forces in order to face genuine threats against US national interests. This declaration of reserve is known as the «Obama Doctrine». So what are these «genuine threats» ? The President didn’t say. At best we can look at the work of the US National Intelligence Council and the preceding remarks on the power of the interest groups. It appears that the United States has abandoned the post-9/11 «G.W. Bush Doctrine» of global domination to return to that of his father – commercial excellence. Once the Cold War ended for want of combatants, the era was dedicated only to economic competition within the deregulated capitalist system. As a matter of fact, it was specifically to reassure himself that the era of ideological conflicts was really over that President Obama reached out to Cuba and Iran. It was indispensable to calm the opposition of these two revolutionary states, the only ones to contest not only US supremacy, but also international rules. The bad faith displayed by the United States in their application of the 5+1 agreement only goes to show that they do not care about Iranian nuclear technology, but are seeking only to restrain the Khomeinist revolution. It’s in this context that we witness the return of the «Wolfowitz Doctrine», according to which everything must be done to prevent the emergence of a new competitor, and this begins with the bridling of the European Union [4]. […]
The post Contradictory US Foreign Policy appeared first on The Real Agenda News.
More news from The Real Agenda: http://www.real-agenda.com
Source: http://real-agenda.com/contradictory-us-foreign-policy/
