- For over 30 years, F. William Engdahl has been a leading
researcher, economist, and analyst of the New World Order with extensive
writing to his credit on energy, politics, and economics. He contributes
regularly to business and other publications, is a frequent speaker on
geopolitical, economic and energy issues, and is a distinguished Research
Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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- Engdahl's two previous books include "A Century
of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order" explaining
that America's post-WW II dominance rests on two pillars and one commodity
- unchallengeable military power and the dollar as the world's reserve
currency along with the quest to control global oil and other energy resources.
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- Engdahl's other book is titled "Seeds of Destruction:
The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation" on how four Anglo-American
agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting all life forms to
force-feed GMO foods on everyone - even though eating them poses serious
human health risks.
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- Engdahl's newest book is reviewed below. Titled "Full
Strectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order,"
it discusses America's grand strategy, first revealed in the 1998 US Space
Command document - Vision for 2020. Later released in 2000 as DOD Joint
Vision 2020, it called for "full spectrum dominance" over all
land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum
and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win
global wars against any adversary, including with nuclear weapons preemptively.
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- Other means as well, including propaganda, NGOs and Color
Revolutions for regime change, expanding NATO eastward, and "a vast
array of psychological and economic warfare techniques" as part of
a "Revolution in Military Affairs" discussed below.
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- September 11, 2001 served as pretext to consolidate power,
destroy civil liberties and human rights, and wage permanent wars against
invented enemies for global dominance over world markets, resources, and
cheap labor - at the expense of democratic freedoms and social justice.
Engdahl's book presents a frightening view of the future, arriving much
sooner than most think.
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- Introduction
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- After the Soviet Union's dissolution in late 1989, America
had a choice. As the sole remaining superpower, it could have worked for
a new era of peace and prosperity, ended decades of Cold War tensions,
halted the insane arms race, turned swords into plowshares, and diverted
hundreds of billions annually from "defense" to "rebuild(ing)
civilian infrastructure and repair(ing) impoverished cities."
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- Instead, Washington, under GHW Bush and his successors,
"chose stealth, deception, lies and wars to attempt to control the
Eurasian Heartland - its only potential rival as an economic region - by
military (political, and economic) force," and by extension planet
earth through an agenda later called "full spectrum dominance."
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- As a result, the Cold War never ended and today rages
with over a trillion dollars spent annually on "defense" in all
forms even though America has no enemy, nor did it after the Japanese surrendered
in August 1945. So the solution was to invent them, and so they were.
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- Post-Soviet Russia, "The 'new' Cold War assumed
various disguises and deceptive tactics until September 11, 2001"
changed the game. It let George Bush "declare (a) permanent (Global
War on Terror) against an enemy who was everywhere and nowhere, who allegedly
threatened the American way of life, justified (police state) laws,"
and is now destroying our freedoms and futures.
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- The roots of the scheme go back decades - at least to
1939 when powerful New York Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) insiders
planned a post-war world with one nation alone triumphant and unchallengeable.
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- Engdahl's book is a geopolitical analysis of the past
two decades - peering into "the dark corners of Pentagon strategy
and actions and the extreme dangers ('full spectrum dominance' holds for)
the future," not just to America but the entire world.
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- Things are so out-of-control today that democratic freedoms
and planetary life itself are threatened by "the growing risk of nuclear
war by miscalculation" or the foolhardy assumption that waging it
can be limited, controlled, and safe - like turning a faucet on and off.
The very notion is implausible and reckless on its face, yet powerful forces
in the country think this way and plan accordingly.
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- The Guns of August 2008
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- On the 8th day of the 8th month of the 8th year of the
new century, a place few people in the West ever heard of made headlines
when Georgia's army invaded South Ossetia - its province that broke away
in 1991 and declared its independence. For a brief period, world tensions
were more heightened than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
when only cooler heads avoided possible nuclear war.
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- Like then, the crisis was a Washington provocation with
tiny Georgia a mere pawn in a dangerous high-stakes confrontation - a new
Great Game that former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski described
in his 1997 book, "The Grand Chessboard."
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- He called Eurasia the "center of world power extending
from Germany and Poland in the East through Russia and China to the Pacific
and including the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent." He explained
that America's urgent task was to assure that "no state or combination
of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or
even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role." Dominating
that part of the world is key to controlling the planet, and its the main
reason for NATO's existence. From inception, its mission was offense.
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- Post-Cold War, Washington used the illusion of democracy
to dominate everywhere - with the long arm of the Pentagon and NATO as
enforcers. Euphoric East Europeans couldn't know that American-style democracy
was even more repressive than what had ended. Decades of Voice of America
and Radio Free Europe propaganda was soon revealed to be no different than
the Soviet system they rejected and in some ways much worse.
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- Western-imposed "shock therapy" meant "free
market" hokum, mass privatizations, ending the public sphere, unrestricted
access for foreign corporations unemcumbered by pesky regulations, deep
social service cuts, loss of job security, poverty wages, repressive laws,
and entire economies transformed to benefit a powerful corporate ruling
class partnered with corrupted political elites. Globally, Russia got billionaire
"oligarchs," China "the princelings," Chile "the
piranhas," and in new millennium America the Bush-Cheney "Pioneers"
and Obama Wall Street Top Guns wrecking global havoc for self-enrichment.
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- As for ordinary people, Russia is instructive for what's
heading everywhere:
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- -- mass impoverishment;
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- -- an epidemic of unemployment;
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- -- loss of pensions and social benefits;
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- -- 80% of farmers bankrupted;
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- -- tens of thousands of factories closed and the country
de-industrialized;
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- -- schools closed;
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- -- housing in disrepair;
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- -- skyrocketing alcoholism, drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, suicides,
and violent crime; and
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- -- a declining population and life expectancy because
the country was looted for profit and all safety nets ended; what Milton
Friedman called "freedom."
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- Mikhail Gorvachev tried to revitalize Soviet Russia with
Glasnost and Perestroika but failed. In return for agreeing to "shock
therapy" and nuclear disarmament, GHW Bush promised no eastward NATO
extension into newly liberated Warsaw Pact countries. The Russian Duma,
in fact, ratified Start II, providing a firm disarmament schedule - contingent
on both countries prohibiting a missile defense deployment as stipulated
under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM).
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- On December 14, 2001, the Bush administration withdrew
from ABM and much more. It claimed the right to develop and test new nuclear
weapons (in violation of NPT), rescinded the Biological and Toxic Weapons
Convention, greatly increased military spending, refused to consider a
Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty to increase already large stockpiles, and
claimed the right to wage preventive wars under the doctrine of "anticipatory
self-defense" using first-strike nuclear weapons.
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- The door was now open for enhanced militarization, creation
of the US Missile Defense Agency, and proof again that trusting America
is foolhardy and dangerous. Both GHW Bush and Bill Clinton lied by enticing
former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO, one by one.
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- At the beginning of the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski described
America's arrogance this way:
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- "Presidential travels abroad assumed the trappings
of imperial expeditions, overshadowing in scale and security demands the
circumstances of any other statesman (reflecting) America's anointment
as the world's leader (to be) in some respects reminiscent of Napoleon's
self-coronation."
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- Brzezinski understood the dangers of imperial arrogance,
causing the decline and fall of previous empires. Even a superpower like
the US is vulnerable. He was very comfortable with an American Century,
only leery of the means to achieve and keeping it. In 2008, with 28 NATO
country members, including 10 former Warsaw Pact ones, Washington sought
admission for Georgia and Ukraine, and did so after announcing in early
2007 the planned installation of interceptor missiles in Poland and advanced
tracking radar in the Czech Republic, both NATO members.
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- Allegedly for defense against Iran and other "rogue"
states, it clearly targeted Russia by guaranteeing America a nuclear first-strike
edge, and that provoked a sharp Kremlin response. Washington's deployment
is for offense as are all US/NATO installations globally.
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- Vladimir Putin expressed outrage in his February 2007
Munich International Conference on Security address stating:
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- "NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders.
(It) does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance
itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represent
a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have
a right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened
to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact?"
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- Putin's speech drew a storm of US media Russia-bashing.
Last August, it got this writer to comment in an article titled "Reinventing
the Evil Empire," saying: Russia is back, proud and re-assertive,
and not about to roll over for America, especially in Eurasia. For Washington,
it's back to the future with a new Cold War, but this time for greater
stakes and with much larger threats to world peace.
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- Over the past two decades, Washington upped the ante,
encroaching on Russia's borders and encircling it with it with NATO/US
bases clearly designed for offense and to block the spread of democratic
freedoms to former Soviet Republics. "Diabolical propaganda"
made it work by projecting imperial America as a colonial liberator bringing
"free market" capitalism to the East. It succeeded as "long
as the United States was the world's largest economy and American dollars
were in demand as (the) de facto world reserve currency...." For decades,
America "portray(ed) itself as the beacon of liberty for newly independent
nations of Africa and Asia," as well as former Soviet Republics and
Warsaw Pact nations.
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- Geopolitical Reality - America's New Manifest Destiny,
Global Expansion to the Vastness of Eurasia
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- For over a century, America sought "total economic
and military control over (Soviet) Russia" through the full strength
of its military-industrial-security sectors - by war or other means. From
1945, the Pentagon planned a first-strike nuclear war, an "all out
conventional war (called) TOTALITY (as) drafted by General Dwight Eisenhower"
per Harry Truman's order, the same man who used atomic weapons against
a defeated Japan instead of accepting its requested surrender.
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- With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, America's superpower
supremacy depends on "precluding Eurasian countries from developing
their own defense pillars or security structures independent of US-controlled
NATO," especially to prevent a powerful China-Russia alliance capable
of serious challenge, along with other Eurasian states, notably oil rich
ones.
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- As geopolitical strategist Halford Mackinder (1861 -
1947) observed in his most famous dictum:
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- "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
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- Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
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- Who rules the World-Island commands the World."
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- Mackinder's World-Island was Eurasia, all of Europe,
the Middle East and Asia.
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- Early in the last century and notably post-WW II, America
determined to rule even at the risk of all out nuclear war. For its part,
Britain intended to stay in the game, and in April 1945, Winston Churchill
urged Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt "to launch an immediate
full-scale war against the Soviet Union, using up to 12 captured German
divisions (as) cannon fodder to destroy Russia once and for all."
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- Instead, Washington invented a post-war enemy, and got
Europe and Asian countries to feel threatened enough to agree to US dictates,
even ones contrary to their own interests. As for America, in 1945, Truman
ordered Eisenhower "to prepare secret plans for a surprise nuclear
strike on some (Soviet) cities (despite knowing the Kremlin) posed no direct
or immediate threat to the United States" or its close allies.
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- A nuclear-armed Russia with intercontinental missile
capabilities halted the threat - until the 2001 Bush Doctrine asserted
the right to wage preventive wars, with first-strike nuclear weapons, to
depose foreign regimes perceived dangerous to US security and interests.
That was the strategy behind the 2008 Georgian conflict that could have
escalated into nuclear war.
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- Defused for the moment, "a number of leading US
policy makers (see Russia today) as unfinished business (and seek its)
complete dismemberment (as) an independent pivot for Eurasia." Nuclear
superiority, encirclement, and "diabolical propaganda" are three
tools among others to finish the job and leave America the sole remaining
superpower. Disempowering Russia and China will create an open field for
a "total global American Century - the realization of 'full spectrum
dominance,' as the Pentagon called it."
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- Today, under Obama as under Bush, the risk of nuclear
war by miscalculation is highest in nearly half a century. With America
the clear aggressor, Russia may feel its only option is strike first while
able or delay and face the consequences when it's too late. The closer
offensive nuclear missiles are to its borders, the nearer it gets to disempowerment,
further dismemberment, and possible nuclear annihilation.
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- Its reaction left few doubts of its response. In February
2007, Strategic Rocket Forces commander Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov said
"Moscow would target US Ballistic Missile Defense sites with its nuclear
arsenal if Washington" proceeded with its plans. Putin delivered harsh
rhetoric and announced Russia would spend $190 billion over the next eight
years to modernize its military by 2015 and that state-of-the-art weapons
would take precedence. His message was clear. A New Cold War/nuclear arms
race was on with Russia ready to contend "out of national survival
considerations," not a desire for confrontation.
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- "Missile Defense" for Offense
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- On March 23, 1983, Ronald Reagan proposed the idea in
a speech calling for greater Cold War military spending, including a huge
R & D program for what became known as "Star Wars" - in impermeable
anti-missile space shield called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
The idea then (and now) was fantasy, but a glorious one for defense contractors
who've profited hugely ever since.
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- The Clinton administration gave it modest support until
the National Missile Defense Act of 1999 proposed an active missile defense
"as soon as is technologically possible...."
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- When George Bush became president, Donald Rumsfeld wanted
war preparations to include missile defense and space-based weapons to
destroy targets anywhere in the world quickly for "full spectrum dominance."
The strategy included "deployment of a revolutionary new technique
of regime change to impose or install 'US-friendly' regimes throughout
the former Soviet Union and across Eurasia."
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- Controlling Russia - Color Revolutions and Swarming Coups
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- "Swarming" is a RAND Corporation term referring
to "communication patterns and movement of" bees and other insects
and applying it to military conflict by other means. It plays out through
covert CIA actions to overthrow democratically elected governments, remove
foreign leaders and key officials, prop up friendly dictators, and target
individuals anywhere in the world.
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- Also through propaganda and activities of the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI),
and National Democratic Institute (NDI) - posing as NGOs but, in fact,
are US government-funded organizations charged with subverting democracy,
uprooting it where it exists, or preventing its creation by criminally
disruptive means. Methods include non-violent strikes, mass street protests,
and major media agitprop for regime change - much like what's now playing
out in Iran after its presidential election.
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- Other recent examples include the Belgrade 2000 coup
against Slobodan Misosevic, Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution ousting Eduard
Shevardnadze for the US-installed stooge, Mikheil Saakashvili, and the
2004-05 Ukraine Orange Revolution, based on faked electoral fraud, to install
another Washington favorite, Viktor Yushchenko. The idea is to isolate
Russia by cutting off its economic lifeline - the "pipeline networks
that (carry its) huge reserves of oil and natural gas from the Urals and
Serbia to Western Europe and Eurasia..." They run through Ukraine,
a nation "so intertwined (with Russia) economically, socially and
culturally, especially in the east of the country, that they were almost
indistinguishable from one another."
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- Achieving geopolitical aims this way is far simpler and
cheaper than waging wars "while convincing the world (that regime
change was the result of) spontaneous outbursts for freedom. (It's) a dangerously
effective weapon."
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- In 1953, cruder CIA methods toppled democratically elected
Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh - the agency's first successful
coup d'etat to install Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran.
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- In 1954, it deposed the popularly elected Jacobo Arbenz
and replaced him with a military dictator - on the pretext of removing
a non-existent communist threat. Arbenz, like other targets, threatened
US business interests by favoring land reform, strong unions, and wealth
distribution to alleviate extreme poverty in their countries.
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- Short of war, various tactics aim to prevent them: "propaganda,
stuffed ballot boxes, bought elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue,
false stories about opponents in the local media, transportation strikes,
infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping,
beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even
assassination (culminating in) a military (or other coup to install) a
'pro-American' right-wing dictator" - while claiming it's democracy
in action. For decades, countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and
other world regions have been frequent victims.
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- Since the CIA's 1947 creation, "national security"
and a fake communist threat justified every imaginable crime from propaganda
to economic warfare, sabotage, assassinations, coup d'etats, torture, foreign
wars and much more.
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- However, by the 1960s, new forms of covert regime change
emerged along the lines that RAND studies called "swarming" -
the idea being to develop social manipulation techniques or disruptive
outbreaks short of wars or violent uprisings. After 2000, as mentioned
above, they played out in Central Europe's Color Revolutions. According
to State Department and intelligence community officials, "It seemed
to be the perfect model for eliminating regimes opposed to US policy,"
whether or not popularly elected. Every regime is now vulnerable to "new
methods of warfare" by other means, including economic ones very much
in play now and earlier.
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- Organizations like the Gene Sharp Albert Einstein Institution,
George Soros' Open Society Foundation, Freedom House and others are very
much involved, and Sharp's web site admits being active with "pro-democracy"
groups in Burma, Thailand, Tibet, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus,
and Serbia. They all conveniently "coincided with the US State Department's
targets for regime change over the same period."
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- Eurasian Pipeline Wars
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- Central to the current conflict is control of the region's
vast oil and gas reserves, and as long as Russia can use its resources
"to win economic allies in Western Europe, China, and elsewhere, it
(can't) be politically isolated." As a result, Moscow reacts harshly
to military encirclement and bordering Color Revolutions - hostile acts,
the geopolitical equivalence of war.
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- For America to remain the sole superpower, controlling
global oil and gas flows is crucial along with cutting off China from Caspian
Sea reserves and securing the energy routes and networks between Russia
and the EU.
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- It's why America invaded and occupies Afghanistan and
Iraq, incited Baltic wars in the 1990s, attacked Kosovo and Serbia in 1999,
threatens Iran repeatedly and imposes sanctions, and keeps trying to oust
Hugo Chavez. For its part under Vladimir Putin, Russia's economy began
to grow for the first time in decades. It's rich in oil and gas, and uses
them strategically to gain influence enough to rival Washington, especially
in alliance with China and other former Soviet states like Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, united in the 2001-formed Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) with Iran and India having observer status.
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- Under Bush-Cheney, Washington reacted aggressively. "full
spectrum dominance" is the aim with Russia and China the main targets.
Controlling world energy resources is central, and nothing under Obama
has changed. Iraq's occupation continues and Afghanistan operations are
enhanced with increased troop deployments under newly appointed General
Stanley McChrystal's command - a hired gun, a man with a reputation for
brutishness that includes torture, assassinations, indifference to civilian
deaths, and willingness to destroy villages to save them.
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- As long as Russia and China stay free from US control,
"full spectrum dominance" is impossible. Encircling the former
with NATO bases, Color Revolutions, and incorporating former Soviet states
into NATO and the EU are all part of the same grand strategy - "deconstruct(ing)
Russia once and for all as a potential rival to a sole US Superpower hegemony."
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- Vladimir Putin stands in the way, "a dynamic nationalist
(leader) committed to rebuilding" his country. In 2003, a defining
geopolitical event occurred when Putin had billionaire oligarch, Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, arrested on charges of tax evasion and put his shares in
giant Yukos Oil group under state control.
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- It followed a decisive Russian Duma (lower house) election
in which Khodorkovsky "was reliably alleged" to have used his
wealth for enough votes to gain a majority - to challenge Putin in 2004
for president. Khodorkovsky violated his pledge to stay out of politics
in return for keeping his assets and stolen billions provided he repatriate
enough of them back home.
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- His arrest also came after a report surfaced about a
meeting with Dick Cheney in Washington, followed by others with ExxonMobil
and ChevronTexaco. They discussed acquiring a major stake of up to 40%
of Yukos or enough to give Washington and Big Oil "de facto veto power
over future Russian oil and gas pipelines and oil deals." Khodorkovsky
also met with GHW Bush and had ties to the Carlyle Group, the influential
US firm with figures like James Baker one of its partners.
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- Had Exxon and Chevron consummated the deal, it would
have been an "energy coup d'etat. Cheney knew it; Bush knew it; Khodorkovsky
knew it. Above all, Vladimir Putin knew it and moved decisively to block
it" and hit hard on Khodorkosky in the process. It "signaled
a decisive turn....towards rebuilding Russia and erecting strategic defenses."
By late 2004, Moscow understood that a New Cold War was on over "strategic
energy control and unilateral nuclear primacy," and Putin moved from
defense to a "new dynamic offensive aimed at securing a more viable
geopolitical position by using (Russia's) energy as the lever."
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- It involves reclaiming Russia's oil and gas reserves
given away by Boris Yeltsin. Also strengthening and modernizing the country's
military and nuclear deterrent to enhance its long-term security. Russia
remains a military powerhouse and displays impressive technology at international
trade shows, including the S-300 and more powerful S-400, reportedly more
potent than comparable US systems.
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- Controlling China with Synthetic Democracy
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- From the 1940s to today, America's China strategy has
been "divide and conquer," only tactics have varied from "big
stick" to "carrot-and-stick" diplomacy. Key is to keep Russia
and China from cooperating economically and militarily, "maintain
a strategy of tension across Asia, and particularly Eurasia" (that,
of course includes the Middle East and its oil riches) - for the overarching
goal of total "control of China as the potential economic colossus
of Asia."
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- With America embroiled in Eurasian wars, policy now "masquerad(es)
behind the issues of human rights and 'democracy' as weapons of psychological
and economic warfare."
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- Another initiative as well is ongoing - the 2007 AFRICOM
authorization, the US Africa Command to control the continent's 53 countries
no differently than the rest of the world, using military force as necessary.
China's increasing need for Africa's resources (including oil), not terrorism,
is the reason.
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- The 2008 Army Modernization Strategy (AMS) focuses on
"full spectrum dominance," controlling world resources, and the
prospect of wars for three to four decades to secure them. China and Russia
are most feared as serious competitors - the former for its explosive economic
growth and resource requirements and the latter for its energy, other raw
material riches, and military strength.
-
- AMS also included another threat - "population growth"
threatening America and the West with "radical ideologies" and
hence instability as well as unwanted "resource competition"
that expanding economies require - everything from food to water, energy
and other raw materials. These issues lay behind AFRCOM's creation and
strategy for hardline militarism globally.
-
- America's second president, John Adams, once said: "there
are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The
other is by debt," or more broadly economic warfare. With much of
US manufacturing offshored in China, both methods are constrained so an
alternative scheme is used - human rights and democracy by an America disdaining
both at home or abroad.
-
- Nonetheless, in 2004, the State Department's Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor targeted China on these issues with millions
in funding, headed by a right-wing conservative, Paula Dobriansky. She's
a CFR member, NED vice chairman, Freedom House board member, senior fellow
at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, and member of the Project for
a New American Century (PNAC) at which she endorsed attacking Iraq in 1998.
Now she targets China with "soft warfare" strategy that's just
as deadly.
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- Other tools include the Dalai Lama organizations in Tibet,
Falun Gong in China, "an arsenal of (global) NGOs" carefully
recruited for their mission, and, of course, the Western media, including
public television and radio in America and BBC globally.
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- Weaponizing Human Rights - From Darfur to Myanmar to
Tibet
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- In targeting China, Washington's human rights/democracy
offensive focused on Myanmar, Tibet, and oil-rich Darfur. Called the "Saffron
Revolution" in Myanmar (formerly Burma), it featured Western media
images of saffron-robed Buddhist Monks on Yangon (formerly Rangoon) streets
calling for more democracy. "Behind the scenes, however, was a battle
of major geopolitical consequence" with Myanmar's people mere props
for a Washington-hatched scheme - employing Eurasian Color Revolution tactics:
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- -- "hit-and-run swarming" mobs of monks;
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- -- connecting protest groups through internet blogs and
mobile text-messaging links; and
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- -- having command-and-control over protest cells, dispersed
and re-formed as ordered with no idea who pulled the strings or why - a
hidden sinister objective targeting China for greater geopolitical control
and destabilizing Myanmar to do it.
-
- Also at stake is control of vital sea lanes from the
Persian Gulf to the South China Sea with the Myanmar coastline "providing
shipping and naval access to one of the world's most strategic waterways,
the Strait of Malacca, the narrow ship passage between Malaysia and Indonesia."
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- Since 9/11, the Pentagon tried but failed to militarize
the region except for an airbase on Indonesia's northernmost tip. Myanmar
rejected similar overtures - hence its being targeted for its strategic
importance. "The Strait of Malacca, linking the Indian and Pacific
Oceans, (is) the shortest sea route between the Persian Gulf and China.
(It's) the key chokepoint in Asia" so controlling it is key. China
has close ties to Myanmar. It's provided billions in military assistance
and developed the infrastructure. The country is also oil-rich, on its
territory and offshore.
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- China is the world's fastest growing energy market. Over
80% of its oil imports pass through the Strait. Controlling it keeps a
chokehold over China's life-line, and if it's ever closed, about half the
world's tanker fleet would have thousands of extra miles to travel at far
higher freight costs.
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- In summer 2007, Myanmar and PetroChina signed a long-term
Memorandum of Understanding - to supply China with substantial natural
gas from its Shwe gas field in the Bay of Bengal. India was the main loser
after China offered to invest billions for a strategic China-Myanmar oil
and gas pipeline across the country to China's Yunnan Province. The same
pipeline could give China access to Middle East and African oil by bypassing
the Malacca Strait. "Myanmar would become China's 'bridge' linking
Bangladesh and countries westward to the China mainland" trumping
Washington should it succeed in controlling the Strait - a potential geopolitical
disaster America had to prevent, hence the 2007 "Saffron Revolution"
that failed.
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- India's Dangerous Alliance Shift
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- From 2005, India was "pushed into a strategic alliance
with Washington" to counter China's growing influence in Asia and
to have a "capable partner who can take on more responsibility for
low-end operations" - directed at China and to provide bases and access
to project US power in the region. To sweeten the deal, the Bush administration
offered to sell (nuclear outlaw) India advanced nuclear technology. At
the same time, it bashed Iran for its legitimate commercial operations,
and now Obama threatens hardened sanctions and perhaps war without year
end 2009 compliance with clearly outrageous demands.
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- Part II continues Engdahl's important analysis to conclusion.
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- Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre
for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday
- Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished
guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
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