{"id":317238,"date":"2017-07-14T00:32:39","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T23:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=317238"},"modified":"2017-07-14T00:32:39","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T23:32:39","slug":"destructiveness-americas-alliances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/destructiveness-americas-alliances\/","title":{"rendered":"The Destructiveness of America’s Alliances"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Alliances between nations are military. Without being military, they would be nothing. Trade agreements don\u2019t require any alliances at all. World War I wouldn\u2019t have occurred if there had not been alliances \u2014 it was built upon alliances<\/span><\/a>. It was not built on trade agreements. It wasn’t even built on trading-blocs. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, as the WTO (World Trade Organization) has said<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

In the two decades prior to World War I, a number of tariff wars broke out, usually provoked by the establishment of a new, more protectionist tariff, or in the course of renegotiation of bilateral treaties.17 After the expiry of a treaty, tariffs were often raised temporarily as a means of improving negotiating leverage. \u2026 Despite the widespread increase of protectionist measures before World War I in continental Europe, the United States19, Argentina and other countries, world trade continued to expand rapidly.20<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It goes on to observe: “Even though the contention that trade and peace dovetail is still very present today,119 it is not uncontested on theoretical and empirical grounds. \u2026 Empirical evidence appears to generally support the idea that increasing bilateral trade reduces the risk of bilateral conflicts.122 But studies can be found that support either side of the argument, predicting both a negative and positive relationship between trade and war.123”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

World War III, too \u2014 a nuclear<\/i> war \u2014 could be built upon alliances, which are now even more complex and unpredictable than ever. But that\u2019s not the only danger from America\u2019s alliances. America\u2019s alliances don\u2019t only increase the likelihood of wars, they sap the U.S. economy, and they also reduce democracy in America. Here is how:<\/span><\/p>\n

Firms producing military goods and services (the makers of aerospace, munitions, etc.), sell mostly to their nation\u2019s government (not to the general public), but also sell to the governments that are military allies of that government; and, so, virtually their entire sales are to governments. As a consequence, these firms depend enormously upon their own country\u2019s foreign policies, especially<\/i> its alliances. Such a firm cannot sell to a nation that is being treated by its nation\u2019s press as an \u2018enemy\u2019; and, on the other side of the matter, any nation that is treated as an \u2018ally\u2019 is virtually a \u201cmost favored nation\u201d to become part of the given military firm\u2019s foreign marketing-area. \u2018Enemy\u2019 nations are also needed by a military firm, however, in order for the domestic electorate to support increases in their government\u2019s military budget (and this goes along with there being \u201causterity\u201d for non<\/i>-\u2018defense\u2019 spending \u2014 and \u2018security\u2019 is thus trumpeted as a government\u2019s top obligation to the public that it supposedly \u2018serves\u2019, above such areas as health care, education, any services to the poor, and even above infrastructure). Both \u2018allies\u2019, and at least one \u2018enemy\u2019, are needed, in order for a nation\u2019s military firms to thrive. But they thrive at the expense of others \u2014 and those \u201cothers\u201d aren\u2019t merely their economic competitors, but include the entire non<\/i>-\u2018defense\u2019 economy. An economy that has no \u2018defense\u2019 firms, can thrive, but an economy that has no non<\/i>-\u2018defense\u2019 firms (which would be a modern Sparta), will inevitably fail. (Even Spartans couldn\u2019t eat their weapons.)<\/span><\/p>\n

A military firm\u2019s top domestic concern is to provide domestic employment so that its workers will be able to serve as an active political constituency for increases in military spending. The firm will thus spread their domestic employment (or \u201cjobs\u201d) around their country in order to be able the more effectively to lobby as large a percentage as possible of the nation\u2019s Representatives and Senators (or other parliamentarians), so as to have the maximum influence over the government\u2019s foreign policies (such as to overthrow a foreign government \u2014 \u201cregime-change\u201d \u2014 or otherwise to increase the demand for military expenditures). The lobbying investments by military suppliers are consequently a crucial part of their overall expenses. If their own government won\u2019t purchase from these companies, who will? Lobbying is vital for them, and it inevitably is lobbying for wars. The basic sales-message is that, \u201cIf you want peace, prepare for war.\u201d<\/span><\/a> That\u2019s the basic message, no matter how it\u2019s worded. For them: fear sells. This is especially the case because virtually no people in the domestic economy crave military weapons; and, so, in a field like this, only<\/i> fear sells. Panic is terrific, and \u201cthe U.S. is still fundamentally operating under the old martial law framework\u201d<\/span><\/a>. None of the post-9\/11 \u201cemergency\u201d powers has been cancelled, even 16 years after 9\/11. (One panic did that? Really? Is this panic permanent? Why? Is this a democracy?)<\/span><\/p>\n

Though commerce in military goods and services is merely a portion<\/i> of a nation\u2019s overall commerce, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower\u2019s 17 January 1961 Farewell Address<\/span><\/a> (since he had lacked the courage to challenge as the sitting<\/i> President the increasing control over the U.S. federal government by the owners of that portion<\/i> of the U.S. economy) warned his successors that \u201cWe must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.\u201d Privatizing this part of a nation\u2019s industry, arms-making (such as the U.S. does), is thus inevitably inviting the owners of those corporations to control the government\u2019s entire foreign policies: those corporations aren\u2019t controlled by the government, so much as they control the government \u2014 at least its foreign policies, and those foreign policies will include not just military matters but also diplomatic ones, which includes trade-agreements; and, consequently, the scope of control over the government by the weapons-makers is far larger than is those firms\u2019 mere percentage of the total national economy. In a nation such as the U.S., in which over half of all discretionary governmental spending is military<\/span><\/a>, their control will be (and is) enormous.<\/span><\/p>\n

A country whose \u2018defense\u2019 industry is privatized, is thus a country that is largely controlled by its military-industrial complex, and this is especially the case if the nation devotes a relatively large portion of its GDP to military production, such as the U.S. does. The clients of that military-industrial complex, and of that country, are not merely the private owners of these companies, but are also the foreign governments with which the given country is allied. This is the real reason why the U.S. government is allied with the countries that it is, including many (such as the Sauds, to whom the Trump Administration recently sold $350 billion of U.S.-made weapons<\/span><\/a>) that are dictatorships. The U.S. even creates dictatorships, and these (like the Sauds) are very good for America\u2019s \u2018defense\u2019 firms. For examples, consider the Iran coup in 1953, Guatemala coup in 1954, Chile coup in 1973, Honduras coup in 2009<\/span><\/a>, and Ukraine coup in 2014<\/span><\/a> \u2014 just to mention a few of America\u2019s pro-dictatorship foreign policies in recent decades. The U.S. now turns democracies into dictatorships, far more often than it turns dictatorships into democracies. Military industry exists in order to coerce and kill people; no nation\u2019s public want<\/i> to be coerced or killed. Military industry isn\u2019t like others; it is entirely based on fear of foreigners. That\u2019s just a fact, even if economic theory (produced mainly by imperial powers) simply ignores this crucial economic fact and its huge implications.<\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s allies \u2014 the nations whose governments\u2019 interests the U.S. spends its public\u2019s blood and money to protect \u2014 are mainly Saudi Arabia and its GCC, or Gulf Cooperation Council, of fundamentalist-Sunni royal families (countries whose owners take the Sunni-interpreted Quran as their basic Law), but include also the fundamentalist-Jewish state of Israel (whose owners take instead as their basic Law the Torah), and also NATO, which is the secular anti-Russia alliance headed by the U.S. government, and which continues even after the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance had ended in 1991 and thereby had actually terminated NATO\u2019s founding raison d\u2019\u00eatre<\/i> \u2014 and yet NATO still<\/i> doesn\u2019t end, but instead expands to surround and threaten Russia even more. The U.S. government also has Asia-Pacific allies: mainly Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS<\/span><\/a>); and these alliances, too, are Cold War relics, not authentic national-security expenses for the U.S. government in service to the American people \u2014 nothing of the sort. It\u2019s purely profit and loss, not serve and protect. Only the military firms\u2019 stockholders are being served, and protected.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of these alliances are highly profitable for U.S. military contractors, which use the alliances as virtual marketing organizations for American firms\u2019 military wares, selling their weaponry to foreign countries where the U.S. has military bases. The top U.S. \u2018defense\u2019 contractors are (in order)<\/span><\/a>: 1: Lockheed Martin. 2: Boeing. 3: General Dynamics. 4: Raytheon. 5: Northrop Grumman. 6: McKesson. 7: United Technologies. 8: L-3. 9: Bechtel. 10: BAE. These are therefore the main companies that control U.S. military policies, and distort U.S. diplomatic policies to comply with those military demands.<\/span><\/p>\n

They are served in Washington via \u201cthe permanent government,\u201d which relies upon \u201cthe revolving door\u201d between government and \u201cthe private sector,\u201d which includes the think tanks, the lobbying firms, and, of course, everything that\u2019s financed by the military contracting firms (including both scholarships<\/span><\/a> and university chairs<\/span><\/a>, and many other positions).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A few people of exceptional integrity publicly condemn the system, such as Michael J. Glennon<\/span><\/a>, who headlined in the June 2017 Harper\u2019s<\/i>, \u201cTrump\u2019s tussle with the bureaucratic state\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and he wrote: <\/span><\/p>\n

A de facto directorate of several hundred managers sitting atop dozens of military, diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies, from the Department of Homeland Security to the National Reconnaissance Office, has come to dominate national security policy, displacing the authority not only of Congress but of the courts and the presidency as well. The precise sizes of the agencies\u2019 budgets and workforces are classified in many cases, but the numbers are indisputably enormous \u2014 a total annual outlay of around $1 trillion, and employees numbering in the millions. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Truman\u2019s hope proved misplaced. <\/i>[Here<\/span><\/a> was Truman\u2019s dashed hope. And here<\/span><\/a> is how much it became dashed.] As one administration followed another, democratic accountability diminished, triggering an enormous transfer of power from elected officials to bureaucrats. Yet it was necessary to maintain the illusion that national security was controlled by our constitutionally established democratic institutions. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Despite Obama\u2019s gestures toward harmony, it became increasingly difficult to believe that the three constitutionally established branches of government actually controlled U.S. security policy. After reports emerged that the NSA had eavesdropped on the cell phone conversations of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, for example, Obama\u2019s national security adviser claimed the president knew nothing about it; some of these programs, Secretary of State John Kerry confessed, were on \u201cautomatic pilot.\u201d The courts, for their part, used ringing rule-of-law rhetoric in high-profile detention cases, but in lower-profile disputes about national security, judges were noticeably less impassioned, often dismissing challenges to unlawful war-making, torture, surveillance, and kidnapping on dubious jurisdictional grounds. And Congress\u2019s role in defining national security became more and more ceremonial.<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n

Glennon had headlined earlier, in the January 2014 Harvard National Security Journal<\/i>, \u201cNational Security and Double Government\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and he wrote there: \u201cThe public believes that the constitutionally-established institutions control national security policy, but that view is mistaken. Judicial review is negligible; congressional oversight is dysfunctional; and presidential control is nominal. Absent a more informed and engaged electorate, little possibility exists for restoring accountability.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

But, of course, \u201ca more informed and engaged electorate\u201d requires an honest press; and, for example, America\u2019s most influential newspaper on international relations and on politics, the Washington Post<\/i>, is owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder and head of Amazon.com, which company supplies the cloud-computing services (Amazon Web Services, or AWS) to the U.S. CIA and Pentagon, and which newspaper (the WP<\/i>) is rabid against America\u2019s \u2018enemies\u2019 such as especially Russia and Iran. The Washington Post<\/i> is intensely neoconservative, thus boosting the business of AWS. On 23 April 2015, the newspaper reported<\/span><\/a> that, \u201cAmazon is by far the largest provider of cloud infrastructure and services to the federal government, including to the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon. The company declined to say how many U.S. government agencies it serves, but it has 1,500 government clients globally. Amazon also has a government-only cloud for storing sensitive data<\/span><\/a>.\u201d Only AWS and the U.S. government know what\u2019s in it. AWS is so profitable to Amazon that it accounts for all of Amazon\u2019s net profits<\/span><\/a> \u2014 the retail Amazon.com continues, during some quarters, to lose money, but the profits from AWS now dwarf<\/span><\/a> any such ongoing retail losses. Amazon makes its money from the U.S. government, not so much from consumers<\/span><\/a>. AWS has brought stability to Amazon\u2019s profitability<\/span><\/a>; Wall Street places a premium on any firm that has stability of profitability. And the Washington Post<\/i> is public relations, or propaganda, for wars, to increase Amazon\u2019s profit-source, which is military, much more than it is retail (the business by which America\u2019s consumers know Amazon). Thus, for example, bombs in Syria are balms in Amazon, and in other U.S. \u2018defense\u2019 contractors.<\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s recent invasions have all been promoted (or \u201cPR\u201ded) by \u2018humanitarian\u2019 concerns (such as against \u2018barrel bombs\u2019 and \u2018chemical weapons attacks\u2019, so as to \u2018protect\u2019 the people whom American bombs and bullets actually cripple and kill by the thousands or even millions of victims, but the entire network of America\u2019s allies supports these invasions, as if the \u2018humanitarian\u2019 \u2018explanation\u2019<\/span><\/a> of an invasion is a reason, and not a mere (and cynical) rationalization, for the invasion. If America didn\u2019t have so many allies, then the death and destruction that America did to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and other Russia-friendly countries, wouldn\u2019t be happening \u2014 it would be too embarrassing for even people such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, to do for their financial backers, who bought them their powers and established the system that narrowly constrains what they can do and still \u2018succeed\u2019 as the nation\u2019s \u2018leader\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under Trump\u2019s Presidency, the Public-Enemy-Number-One country is Iran. (Under Obama, it was Russia<\/span><\/a>.) Iran is the country that America\u2019s two main Middle-Eastern allies, the Sauds and the Israelis, want to conquer or even destroy. And, the oil companies of America and of its allies, also want to take back the Iranian Oil Company, about which, wikipedia says<\/span><\/a> that, until<\/b> the U.S.-coup regime of the Shah ended in 1979, and the company was nationalized:<\/span><\/p>\n

It was incorporated in London as a\u00a0holding company\u00a0called ‘Iranian Oil Participants Ltd’ (IOP).[15][16]\u00a0The founding members of IOP included British Petroleum (40%), Gulf (later Chevron, 8%),\u00a0Royal Dutch Shell\u00a0(14%), and Compagnie Fran\u00e7aise des P\u00e9troles (later\u00a0Total S.A., 6%). The four Aramco partners – Standard Oil of California (SoCal, later Chevron) – Standard Oil of New Jersey (later Exxon, then ExxonMobil) – Standard Oil Co. of New York (later Mobil, then ExxonMobil) – Texaco (later Chevron) – each held an 8% stake in the holding company.[7][15] \u2026 Similar to the\u00a0Saudi-Aramco “50\/50” agreement of 1950,[17]\u00a0the consortium agreed to share profits on a 50\u201350 basis with Iran, “but not to open its books to Iranian auditors or to allow Iranians onto its board of directors”.[18]<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n

So: the U.S. government blames Iran for the 9\/11 attacks<\/span><\/a> (which were actually perpetrated by the Sauds<\/span><\/a>, \u2018our ally\u2019), and U.S. President Trump has stacked his Administration with people who hate Iran<\/span><\/a> (the country that the Sauds hate<\/span><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States is a fundamentally different country than its Founders had intended. George Washington\u2019s famous Farewell Address asserted that, \u201dIt is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world\u201d; and the third President, Thomas Jefferson, said in his equally famous Inaugural Address, that there should be \u201cPeace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations \u2013- entangling alliances with none.\u201d Jefferson\u2019s comment there was also a succinct tip-of-the-hat to yet another major concern that the Founders had regarding treaties (\u201centangling alliances\u201d) \u2013- that by discriminating in favor of the treaty-partners, they also discriminate against non-partner nations, and so endanger \u201cpeace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,\u201d which was the Founders\u2019 chief goal in their foreign policies. Today\u2019s America instead seeks wars, and craves friendship with only \u2018allies\u2019, but demands \u201cregime change\u201d to \u2018enemies\u2019, who thus are especially necessary to the military-industrial complex (the firms that profit from wars), who now rule in the empire\u2019s center.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not personal; it is systemic. As Glennon said, \u201cit was necessary to maintain the illusion that national security was controlled by our constitutionally established democratic institutions.\u201d The only people who stand above the system<\/span><\/a> are the ones whose interests set the system up as it is, and keep it running, \u201con \u2018automatic pilot.\u2019\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Alliances are a crucial part of that system, just as has been the case for every empire in the past. And, it\u2019s something that America\u2019s Founders had tried their best to prevent<\/i>. Long after the American Revolution, the foxes have retaken the American chicken coop. Only this time, it\u2019s America\u2019s aristocracy (domestic \u201cfoxes\u201d), not Britain\u2019s (foreign ones), who are in control. It\u2019s no longer \u201cour constitutionally established democratic institutions,\u201d but our own aristocracy<\/span><\/a>. They determine which other nations\u2019 governments are \u2018our\u2019 allies, and which are \u2018our\u2019 enemies. They rule the world \u2014 or at least they try to, like a slave-master with his whip.<\/span><\/p>\n

NOTE: The following American publications were offered this article as an exclusive but all turned it down with no reason given: Foreign Policy, The New Yorker, TIME, U.S. News, The New Republic, The Nation, New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, BusinessWeek, Harper\u2019s<\/i>. In a nation such as the United States<\/span><\/a>, articles like this are not good for business. One might question that; but, in any case, an article like this is unpublishable in the U.S., except as a freebie from an author \u2014 and, even as a freebie, it won\u2019t be published except in a few small online sites (only sites that aren\u2019t controlled by the U.S. aristocracy); it belongs in the category of \u201cAmerican Samizdat\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org Alliances between nations are military. Without being military, they would be nothing. Trade agreements don\u2019t require any alliances at all. World War I wouldn\u2019t have occurred if there had not been alliances \u2014 it was built upon alliances. It was not built on trade agreements. It wasn’t even built […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":317239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[115,30,27,32,96,3604,93,535,698,38,757,524,754,523,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-317238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-bush","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-eu","15":"tag-global-news","16":"tag-hillary-clinton","17":"tag-iraq","18":"tag-nato","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-syria","21":"tag-ukraine","22":"tag-usa-news","23":"tag-warfare","24":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}