American Foreign Policy Is Not What it Seems — Mike Whitney’s Take — and Mine

02 December 2014

Is it dopes who make American foreign policy, or is something else in play?

Geopolitical analyst Mike Whitney has talent for going directly to the heart of matters.

Here is what he wrote recently in regard to American foreign policy:

The Obama administration is trying to rebalance US policy in a way that shifts the focus of attention from the Middle East to Asia . . . .

Washington wants to preserve its position as the world’s only superpower by controlling China’s explosive growth.

In order to achieve its goals in Asia, the US needs to push NATO further eastward, tighten its encirclement of Russia, and control the flow of oil and gas from east to west.

[T]he glorious US military has spent the last 13 years fighting sheep herders in flip-flops in Afghanistan . . . . And now the White House wants to take on Russia?

Can you appreciate the insanity of the policy?

This is why Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was sacked last week, because he wasn’t sufficiently eager to pursue this madcap policy of escalating the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. . . .

Obama is completely surrounded by rabid warmongering imbeciles, all of whom ascribe to the same fairytale that the US is going to [:]

dust-off Russia,

remove Assad,

redraw the map of the Middle East,

control the flow of gas and oil from the ME [Middle East] to markets in the EU [European Union],

and

establish myriad beachheads across Asia where they can keep a tight grip on China’s growth.

Tell me . . . doesn’t that strike you as a bit improbable?

If Mike Whitney’s list were truly the Administration’s geopolitical aims, it would indeed constitute a group of idiotic aspirations

President Putin and China’s leadership are more capable geopolitically than the past several U.S. administrations (including Obama’s) have been. China, especially, has both the economy and the population mass to fuel its coming Asian hegemony.

Unless the United States is willing to “nuke” it out, American military and economic influence in Asia is going to noticeably wane.

On the other hand, Whitney may be underestimating the Administration’s duplicity

National security is not actually American leadership’s goal. Military Industrial Complex profit is.

Given their intelligence, the people involved in Obama Administration policy-making cannot actually be imbeciles. Instead, they are personally (and probably unconsciously) greedy recognizers of the fact that they — and the plutocrats who own them — will be able to take the money and run long before History’s payback hits the fan strongly enough to take them down with it.

Warmongering is profitable for industries that cater to war. War only becomes unprofitable, when its profiteering pushers are defeated and subsequently subjugated by the entities that they have been oppressing.

When we mistake leadership’s actual goals . . .

. . . it is easy to underestimate its genius in crafting the BS that it substitutes for public consumption.

According to American leadership:

(i) Ukraine is about freedom;

(ii) our Eastern Hemisphere “pivot” honors commitments to Asian allies;

(iii) Middle Eastern meddling protects life, peace and the American way;

and

(iv) Afghanistan is about something noble, even though no one can articulate what that is.

The American public (likely the most ignorant and apathetic mass of folks in the developed world) predominantly believes these rationales

Until some of them involuntarily become the ones killed or maimed in the process of carrying our announced missions out. Which (by the way) is why the Military Industrial Complex goes to great lengths to prevent reinstitution of the military draft.

The moral? — Our leaders are not imbeciles . . .

. . . they’re just chasing prestige and profit at their plutocratic owners’ direction.

It is difficult to say “no” to the people who run the world. Why would anyone influential in American government want to jeopardize his or her income, recognition, and future job prospects by dropping the Turd of Dissension on Robber Barons’ white shoes?

I suspect that China’s burgeoning economic and military power will eventually put a stop to our harmful nonsense. By then, the People’s Republic will probably have its own ineradicably entrenched Military Industrial Complex. And we will have to bear the brunt of some of its excesses.

Payback’s a bitch. On the plus side, most of us, culpable or not, will not be around to experience it. On the negative, our children and grandchildren will.

The line, sin(s) of the father(s) is pertinent. Iraq is a good example of the principle, for people wise enough to apply it.

PeteFree.com

American Foreign Policy Is Not What it Seems — Mike Whitney’s Take — and Mine