{"id":11334,"date":"2011-09-02T08:21:17","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T16:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=11334"},"modified":"2011-09-02T08:26:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-02T16:26:10","slug":"the-more-things-change-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/02\/the-more-things-change-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The More Things Change…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve written a guest blog<\/a> over at the Silver Circle Underground<\/a>, a blog related to a forthcoming sci-fi film about a future revolt against the Federal Reserve. I was asked to write about what US foreign policy will be like in 2019, when the film is set. I’ve cross-posted it below.<\/em><\/p>\n

The consistency of United States foreign policy is truly remarkable. Since its inception, America\u2019s approach was expansion and control; first with westward annexation \u2013 humbly called Manifest Destiny \u2013 and then with interventions and impositions to the south through the\u00a0Monroe Doctrine<\/a>. But exceptionally since the end of World War II, US policy has remained notably undeviating.<\/p>\n

US national security planners understood, correctly, that unlike war torn Europe America would emerge from the war as an economic and military powerhouse with unrivaled security and influence. The world was divided up into war zones and plans were set to implement an Imperial Grand Strategy over a region encompassing the Western Hemisphere, the Far East, the former British Empire, with a high focus on Middle East oil reserves. As a\u00a0Top Secret National Security Council briefing<\/a>\u00a0put it in 1954, \u201cthe Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,\u201d as it \u201ccontains the greatest petroleum resources in the world\u201d as well as \u201cessential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0primary aim, according to official documents was to maintain<\/a>\u00a0\u201cunquestioned power\u201d with \u201cmilitary and economic supremacy,\u201d while ensuring the \u201climitation of any exercise of sovereignty\u201d by states that might interfere with its global designs. As an illustration of how unchanged the US imperial approach has been, these precise strategies were reiterated in the\u00a02002 National Security Strategy<\/a>. It was of foremost importance that \u201cour forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.\u201d Similarly, in former Secretary of Defense\u00a0William Cohen\u2019s 1999 annual report<\/a>\u00a0to President Clinton, the crucial task was to \u201cretain the capability to act unilaterally\u201d to prevent \u201cthe possibility that a regional great power or global peer competitor may emerge\u201d and to ensure \u201cuninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maintaining global hegemony through the threat or use of military force has been the singular approach in American foreign policy, and it manifests in ugly ways. Regime changes (often just a synonym for international terrorism) in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Iraq and more are prime examples.<\/p>\n

So to consider what US foreign policy will look like in 2019, a mere eight years from now, is really to consider how little will change. Some specifics may change, as has happened in this Arab Spring \u2013 a hated and feared development in the annals in Washington, as it signifies a potential for the policies of Middle East government\u2019s to more closely reflect the will of the people (something national security planners have been\u00a0actively preventing<\/a>\u00a0for decades). But the fundamentals will prove as durable as they have since WWII.<\/p>\n

The United States will still have\u00a0approximately 900 military bases<\/a>\u00a0in 150 countries around the world<\/a>, although the numbers may increase slightly. Our army is\u00a0likely to still<\/a>\u00a0have a presence in Iraq<\/a>, and a\u00a0large-scale military occupation will still be going on in Afghanistan<\/a>. The likelihood of our\u00a053,960 troops being pulled out of Germany<\/a>, or the\u00a057,586 in South Korea<\/a>\u00a0is next to zero. We will still be supporting tyrannies throughout the Middle East in Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and\u00a0perhaps even<\/a>\u00a0still Egypt<\/a>. We will continue to\u00a0impose a power structure subservient to Washington<\/a>\u00a0throughout Latin America<\/a>, probably fighting the same sorts of\u00a0proxy wars<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0drug war<\/a>\u00a0adventures<\/a>\u00a0we are now. We will still have a massive military industrial complex, a\u00a0sprawling and unaccountable national security state<\/a>, and a\u00a0foreign policy largely dictated by the powerful<\/a>, with\u00a0help from the banksters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One aspect of imperial policy that looks to be changing rather rapidly, although simply upholding the same imperial approach, is air power. Increasingly, military technology has developed such that unmanned, remotely controlled aerial vehicles can bomb countries and assassinate enemies of the state without declaring war, asking the permission of Congress, or even making it public at all. Ominously, this could lead the aggressors in Washington to\u00a0keep wars increasingly secret and unaccountable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some perceive the fall of the American Empire just around the corner, with rising powers like China presenting problems for US global hegemony. But the US domain of power is still too far-reaching. And in 2019, we can expect it to remain the most dominant \u2013 and the most violent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written a guest blog over at the Silver Circle Underground, a blog related to a forthcoming sci-fi film about a future revolt against the Federal Reserve. I was asked to write about what US foreign policy will be like in 2019, when the film is set. I’ve cross-posted it below. The consistency of United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-11334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11334"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11337,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11334\/revisions\/11337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11334"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}