World capitalist powers have “gifted” humanity with two world wars in the twentieth century. The goal was to re-divide the world and its resources among those powers. Part of the design was to destroy the USSR, which presented a main threat to both fascism and liberal capitalism. However, the USSR triumphed against fascism and was able to extend its influence to Eastern Europe and support for socialist and anti-colonial revolutions in Asia and Africa.
The Global Situation Since 1990
Some of the main features of the objective global situation show the instability in the global political economy. The demise of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc has changed geopolitical and economic realities across the globe.
First, the U.S. emerged as a unipolar power both economically and militarily and tried to turn the Russian Federation into a third-rate economic power, useful only for the extraction of natural resources for U.S. dominated global capitalism.
Second, while all that was taking place, China was steadily building its economic power, and by the beginning of the twenty-first century it loomed on the horizon as a main challenger of U.S. capitalism. China’s rise prompted the U.S. to devise a strategy to surround and vanquish it.
Third, since the early 1990s the U.S. has tightened its grip on world trade through the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and more recently the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Fourth, in the financial sphere the U.S. had already a tight grip on both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank since the end of WWII. Its main private banks and financial institutions have become global giants dominating an international financial system.
Fifth, U.S. oil companies have dominated much of global oil production and markets.
Sixth, the U.S. military has tightened its grip around the globe by establishing AFRICOM (Africa Command) under EUCOM in October 2007 (and as a separate command in September 30, 2008), bringing the number of U.S. Unified Combatant Commands to ten.
Seventh, instead of becoming a third-rate country, the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin has dealt a huge blow to the U.S. by rebuilding its economy contrary to the initial U.S. grand designs for it.
Eighth, the economic and financial crisis of 2008 that began in the U.S. and moved like a tsunami to the rest of the world has weakened the U.S. economy at a time when it has been wallowing in the mire in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ninth, as a consequence of U.S. global practices in all spheres to achieve its interests, blowback against U.S. policy has occurred as witnessed initially in the Arab uprisings in 2011 in which seemingly stable pro-U.S. regimes have been quickly brought down.
Tenth, the U.S. created chaos in the Middle East, with the rise and expansion of Islamist armies across the Middle East and beyond, aided and abetted by its regional allies, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel. It is crucial to understand that Islamists such as al-Qaeda, which the U.S. has branded as “terrorist,” constitute the Islamist armies, such as al-Nussra and ISIS, which the U.S. is currently using as instruments of its geopolitical strategy. By using these forces, the U.S. is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Islamists’ victims are mostly Muslims who do not subscribe to the religious interpretation of Islam to which the Islamists subscribe. The overwhelming majority of Muslims follow tolerant Islamic interpretations of the Qur’an.
Eleventh, the war in Ukraine has shifted the pressure onto the Russian Federation, with more intensity than it experienced during the 2008 U.S. – fomented crisis in Georgia.
Twelfth, the financial and political crisis engulfing the European Union centered in Greece’s financial default, is wreaking havoc in world markets.
U.S. Strategy: Global Domination
Western capitalist powers, led by the U.S., build their strategy based on the objective situation that they have helped to create in large measure. To dominate the world, the U.S. has to eliminate all rivals. Clearly, the U.S. perceives China as its main rival. China has the second largest economy in the world, and has extended its economic activities, search for raw materials, and political influence across all continents in one form or another. U.S. strategy will have to deny China access to resources to prevent it from continuing to develop its economic power.
The U.S. will have to isolate China from current and prospective allies. Severing those relations would deny China political, military and economic maneuverability. Once China is weakened, the U.S. would then be able to dominate China and the world. This might seem a tall order to any rational thinker, but the U.S. is the main player on the world stage, and it is compelled to pursue its strategic goal because it is driven to that goal, by the objective global situation.
The Centrality of the Middle East to U.S. Strategy
The Russian Federation, Central Asia and the Middle East are the main areas from which to isolate China. Once those are vanquished, it would be easy to deal with the rest of the BRIC countries, and the Shanghai Group and its allies. However, the main link in the chain in this strategy is the Middle East. U.S. domination of the Middle East would be a huge chunk gobbled up from Russian influence and would make it easier for the U.S. to deal a knockout blow to the Russian Federation. The Syrian port of Tartous constitutes the only warm-water port for the Russian fleet and serves as the forward defense of the Black Sea fleet. Putin moved quickly to annex the Crimean Peninsula to the Russian Federation to remove a direct threat to the Russian Fleet. Putin would not sacrifice losing a warm-water port. More importantly, U.S success in dominating the region would present an extremely serious threat to the Russian Federation, that would be even be more menacing than the U.S. current meddling in the Ukrainian-Russian crisis.
The main instruments that the U.S. is currently using to effect its regional goal are the multiple Islamist armies, such as al-Nussra, ISIS, Jund el-Sham, Jaish al-Fateh, receiving support from U.S. regional allies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel) and often directly from the U.S. itself. This is the case in Syria where various such Islamist armies have been recruited from around the globe by regional regimes with U.S. support.
Should the U.S. succeed in the region, it could then strike within the Russian Federation using those same forces. The Russian Federation has already experienced attacks by Chechen Islamists fighters in the 1990s and many of them are currently fighting in Syria and Iraq.
In addition to the resources that are being exploited in the Middle East, recent discoveries of huge oil and gas fields in the Mediterranean add to the prize of domination that the U.S. covets. But before the U.S. can secure the entire Middle East for itself, it has to defeat the forces that have resisted its grand design. Internal contradictions among regional powers help the U.S. goal. The U.S. relies heavily upon Israel in effecting its policies. That was most evident when Israel launched devastating air attacks against Lebanon on July 12, 2006. The goal was to destroy Hizbollah, a Muslim Shi’ite-based party that had liberated most of the South of Lebanon from Israeli occupation in 2000. Even the U.S.-supported Lebanese government blamed Hizbollah for the devastation, instead of condemning Israeli aggression. Israel’s defeat after 33 days was a defeat for the U.S., which unleashed Israel on Lebanon to bring Lebanon directly and permanently into Israel’s sphere of influence and to weaken Syria’s influence in Lebanon.
Since the late 1990s the U.S. had been working to convince the Arab world of adopting the so-called, “Turkish Model” as the best way to govern most Arab states. The focus was primarily on Egypt as it was the most populous Arab state, commanding a most important strategic location. In fact, the U.S. held talks with the international leadership of the Muslim Brothers, an Islamist organization the British helped establish in 1928 to counter both nationalist and communist forces that had been a threat to British occupation of Egypt. The U.S. thinking had been that a state governed by the Muslim Brothers would have positive relations with it, and the U.S. would dominate through them. That dream came to naught, especially after the Egyptian military ousted Egyptian president Morsi, a Muslim Brother, on July 3, 2013 in response to popular demand, when 30 million Egyptians took to the streets demanding an end to the Muslim Brothers’ rule.
U.S. Tenacity in Pursuing World Domination
The U.S. has not relented in its failed attempts to achieve its strategic regional goal. The plan has for decades called for the disintegration of the Middle East and the formation of over 40 entities based on sectarian and national loyalties. This is the lens through which the invasion of Iraq can be seen, and the current war in Syria.
President Obama has portrayed the war in Syria for instance, as a matter of Sunni and Alawite (an offshoot sect of Shi’a Islam) Muslims fighting against each other, when, in fact, the so-called Alawite controlled state’s population is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, and so is the Syrian Arab Army loyal to the state. Similarly, U.S. policy makers have advanced plans to divide Iraq into three states (Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish). The point behind these moves is to weaken the Arab world and maintain Israeli superiority in the region as a bulwark against forces that resist U.S. domination.
Iran has been in the cross-hairs of the U.S. since the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah, a main ally of the U.S. in the Persian Gulf. Failing to topple the Iranian regime through the Iran-Iraq war that Saddam Hussein had launched in 1980, the U.S. continued to do so through instituting sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The latest episode of plans to vanquish Iran is represented by the nuclear negotiations between Iran on the one hand, and on the other hand, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany. Try as they might, the U.S. and its Western allies could not prevent Iran from developing its scientific base and resisting Western aggression in the region. More importantly, the U.S. has succeeded in creating chaos, producing refugees, destroying human beings and infrastructure, but it has not been able to achieve its regional or overall goal of domination.
It is clear from the historical record that the U.S. has integrated the instrument of war in its expansionist policy. The U.S. is relentless and tenacious in its quest for world domination. It will stop at nothing, even if that means increasing the probability of war. The stakes are high for humanity, because a war against the Russian Federation and China would mean world war.
September/October Vol25.Ed5
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
P.O. Box 477113 Chicago, IL 60647 rally@lrna.org
Free to reproduce unless otherwise marked.
Please include this message with any reproduction.
