When I began to think about the content of this month’s essay the most appropriate title that came to mind was “Empire in Denial,” since this was the logical sequel to last month’s “What are they smoking?” The United States as the “only superpower” is in fact an empire with world wide military bases and global influence but our government as well as the nation at large do not admit to it openly.

But before committing myself to the title I thought it wise to check on the Internet whether or not someone else had used it before lest I might be accused of plagiarizing the title. In so doing I found myself in good company because the well known British historian Niall Ferguson had indeed published, “An Empire in Denial. The Limits of US Imperialism,” in the fall of 2003 which was reprinted by the Harvard International Review. I had not been aware of this article but it has been my experience during my scientific career that at given times thoughts seem, so to say, hang in the air and different people who think alike will come to identical conclusions.

Since Ferguson has already said most of what was on my mind I can simply summarize the salient features and then continue with what had remained unsaid. In his six page article Ferguson spelled out the reasons why the U.S. is indeed today the world’s empire par excellence but it denies this fact officially and hides it under high sounding principles such as bringing liberty and rule of law to the downtrodden, which had, of course, been the slogan for the British, and all other colonial powers, in the past. He also emphasized the dangers which result when facts which everybody else agrees on are officially denied. He quoted a famous joke from Queen Victoria’s heyday “that the British had ‘conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind’,” and commented that, “in acquiring their empire, the United States had followed this example.”

Subsequently he went on to explain why this posture is dangerous.

“The problem with an empire that is in denial about its own imperial nature is that it tends to make two mistakes when it chooses to intervene in the affairs of lesser states. The first is to attempt economic and political transformation in an unrealistically short timeframe. The second is to allocate insufficient resources to the project. As I write, both of these mistakes are being made in Iraq and Afghanistan. . . . To put it bluntly, the United States is acting like a colossus with an attention deficit disorder engaged in cut-price colonization. . . .  It underestimates the need to act in partnership with allied great powers. And its efforts at nation-building are both short-term and under-funded.

Gary Dorrien had published a similar article on March 8, 2003 during the run-up to the Iraq war, “Axis of One: The ‘Unipolarist’ Agenda” which has the additional advantage of naming the major people who are behind this drive towards America’s perpetual dominion over the rest of the world. The interesting aspect is that the same handful of names keeps coming up over and over again in this context. I shall return to them and their methods later. Their basic idea is that America defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War which presents a unique historic opportunity.  The power that has thus been acquired must not only be used to solidify the gains but expanded to the extent that no nation on earth will ever be able to rival it for the rest of this century. In this spirit of empire and unilateralism it has already been dubbed, “The American Century.” 

Only from this point of view namely, “We are the boss and you do what we tell you to do,” can one understand the pronouncements of our leadership. For instance Mr. Rumsfeld chided the Chinese on a recent visit for pushing their arms program when “there is no enemy who threatens China,” and Mr. Cheney, scolded the Russians for backsliding on democracy. While he was in Latvia (a country which used to belong to Czarist Russia and later on to the Soviet Union) he also chastised Moscow “for its use of oil and natural gas as ‘tools for intimidation and blackmail.’” To emphasize his point that we are in charge of what goes in the “New World Order” he went to Kazakhstan, another member of the defunct USSR, on the following day in order “to promote export routes that bypass Russia and directly supply the West [The Salt Lake Tribune. May 6, 2006].” 

What angered our vice President was that they ship their oil, via pipelines, west to a Russian port on the Black Sea and east to China. That sort of thing is, of course, anathema to our supposedly non-existent empire.

To keep and expand an empire one obviously needs a state of the art military. The difference between the Clinton and the Bush administration could not be starker in this respect. At the end of the Clinton years I was concerned in War and Mayhem that our army was being ruined by social experimentation and suggested the Roman motto: si vis pacem para bellum. Little did I know then that the forces, which not only wanted to prepare for a possible future war but were positively eager to start one, were already waiting in the wings. What could not be known then either was that they would become the tutors of our incoming President who urgently needed an education in history, geography and international relations. This is described in a new book by James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet.

Since we live in a high-tech age the military forces of the US are being remodeled to fit new demands. As part of this plan ground forces are de-emphasized and technology which consists of rather expensive “smart weapons” carries the day. In addition, the sky is no longer the limit, when it comes to military spending, but outer space is also fair game for our Air Force. The US Air Force Transformation Plan of November 2003 which can be found on the Internet http://www.af.mil/library/posture/AF_TRANS_FLIGHT_PLAN2003.pdf - states:

“The mission of space control is to ensure the freedom of action in space for the United States and its allies and, when directed, to deny such freedom of action to adversaries. . . . The Air Force is the primary Service charged with achieving this objective. Achieving space superiority is the essential component of this objective.”

Assume now that you do not have the good fortune to be a citizen of the US but one of China or Russia how would you feel when big brother is not only watching you from the sky but is in the process of deploying laser and other weapons that can incinerate not only your satellites but your house? Melissa Rossi wrote in “What Every American Should Know about Who’s Really Running the World”:

“Other countries are livid: After four decades of agreements not to weaponize space, they don’t want the United States to turn our last frontier into a battleground.

Pressure is on the U.S. government to sign a treaty for the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS), which essentially every country in the world except the United States and Israel supports, but the Americans don’t want to touch it. It’s a huge issue, causing countries around the world to once again call the United States a hegemon, but as usual, the Bush administration doesn’t much care.”

Another aspect that hasn’t fully sunk into the American psyche is where our tax dollars really go to. According to Rossi’s book the proposed 2006 budget allocated $ 443.5 billion to Defense including Homeland Security. The US dominates the field in the percentage of global military spending with 47%, Japan is a distant second with 5% while China spends an estimated 2% and so does Iran. National defense is important but I doubt that we need nearly half a trillion dollars to deal with assorted Taliban, bin Ladens, or al- Sadrs in our “War on Terror.” Furthermore, all this gadgetry is totally useless when it come to the so called asymmetric “colonial” wars we are really confronted with, as in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The question arises therefore: do we have a paranoid government which genuinely feels itself threatened by everybody or are other factors at play? I believe that there are three elements that have brought about a confluence of interests and account for our present situation. This becomes apparent when one studies the list of names that have been provided in the previously mentioned article on, “Axis of One.” These people labor in so-called thinktanks and show up ever so often on cable TV as pundits and on the print media’s editorial pages. Some of them carry exalted titles such as “Senior Fellow,” “nationally renowned expert” and the like. This leads one to believe that these thinktanks are part of universities where rigorous academic rules of scientific discipline apply. Nothing could be further from the truth as Brian Whitaker shows in his article: “US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,777100,00.html.”

 It appeared in the Guardian on August 19, 2002 while the war drums for the invasion of Iraq were being pounded. The thinktanks which run under impressive names such as “The Heritage Foundation,” “American Enterprise Institute,” “The Middle East Forum,” etc are private institutions and to put it bluntly propaganda machines. They are not bound by the rules which govern academia and some have even their own printing presses where their thoughts can be dispensed to wide audiences.

Viewers of news programs on cable TV, and readers of the major print media frequently encounter the same “experts” and this is also not happenstance. While preparing this essay I rediscovered an article by Max Boot which had appeared in the July/August 2003 issue of the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs, to which I subscribe. I had kept the article because I felt that the hubris it exuded was unjustified. The article was called: “The New American War” and dealt with “Waging Modern War.”  In it Mr. Boot provided numbers as to how the efficiency of the American military had increased between the first and the second Gulf War. Total casualties for U.S. and allied forces were 365 versus 150, the duration 46 days versus 26 and the cost $50 versus $20 billion. In bold print one could also read “The U.S. victory in Iraq makes the German blitzkrieg positively incompetent by comparison.” We were told in addition that “the occupation of the entire country was completed on April 14, when marines rolled into Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit. The hard task of ‘nation-building’ lay ahead, but the bulk of the military campaign was over.” Three years later our troops as well as Iraqis are still getting killed, our death toll nears 2500 and the financial costs stand currently at somewhat more than $284 billion and are climbing steadily. A running total can be found on http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182. Thus, this New American Way of War does not seem to be all it has been cracked up to be but is still advocated and that’s where our money goes. Imagine how much oil we could have bought ourselves for this money and how much good we might have done with it instead of investing in killing and maiming people.

The first question when one reads an article like the one by Boot is obviously: who is this person? Foreign Affairs listed him as “Senior Fellow in National Security Studies on Foreign Relations.” This sparked my interest further and with the help of Wikipedia one learns that Max Boot was born in Moscow in 1971 and came with his family to Los Angeles in 1976. His academic credits are a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley (1991) and a master’s degree from Yale in diplomatic history (1992). After graduation he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and in “2004 was named by the World’s Affairs Council of America one of the ‘500 most influential people in the United States in the field of foreign policy.’” This is truly a meteoric career and one wonders what this World’s Affairs Council that bestows such honors consists of. WACA, its official acronym, lists itself on the Internet as the largest International Affairs non-profit organization in the United States, it asks you to become a member and to make a donation. As such it is another private organization which has no credentials other than money and pushes those people whose viewpoint they want to be heard into the forefront of the national consciousness.

When one pursues the career of Mr. Boot further one finds that he is being featured as speaker by Benador Associates, a public relations firm with offices in New York City, Washington, Paris and London. On the website www.benadorassociates.com  one is greeted by the picture of a good looking young woman, Eleana Benador, the CEO of the firm, which was established in 2001. This lady likewise had an astounding career for one so young. The website states that she was born in Lima Peru, is Swiss-American, and spent most of her life in Europe where she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, in Vienna, as well as Geneva. She is fluent in French, English, German and Spanish, understands and speaks Portuguese, Italian and Dutch, reads Hebrew and some Russian. In essence she runs a speaker’s bureau, organizes meetings, and publishes books dealing mainly with the Middle East. Since she was able to build her membership within the short space of two years one may wonder where the start-up captial came from.

The political outlook is not only mainly hawkish but also leans towards the policies of the state of Israel. Although Ms. Benador does not list her religious affiliation she seems to adhere to the orthodox or ultra-orthodox persuasion of Judaism because she refers to the deity as G-d in the announcement regarding the birth of her son Gabriel. As such Palestinians can take little comfort from the workings of her group although she does have some Arabs and one dissident Iranian, Amir Taheri, as members.

Mr. Taheri, a journalist by profession, was executive editor-in-chief of Kahyan, Iran's main daily newspaper, from 1972-1979 but lost his job with the fall of the Shah and has since lived in the West where he contributes to major newspapers in France, Germany, the UK and the US. He is also a frequent commentator on CNN and works extremely hard. The Benador website lists for the month of May 2006 twenty articles in various newspapers as well in the publication by Benador Associates. As an expatriate, by force rather than choice, he has every right to want his country’s government to be democratic in the Western  meaning of the word but one may also be allowed to take some of  his views with a grain of salt. Political refugees may have an ax to grind and can do more harm than good with their efforts. The siren song of  Ahmed Chalabi which lured us into Iraq and then failed to pan out is just the most recent example. The Iraq disaster has, however, not in the least discomfited Ms. Benador and some of her members because it’s now full steam ahead towards preparing the American public for war with Iran.

But thinktanks are only one tool to push the American people in the desired direction because there is an even more influential semi-governmental agency which advises the Defense Department. According to the official website its full designation is: Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee (DPBAC) but it is more commonly referred to as Defense Advisory Board. The members are selected by the Under Secretary of Defense and consist primarily of private sector individuals with distinguished backgrounds in national security affairs. There are approximately thirty members but no more than four are allowed to be government officials. The functions of the Board are to “serve the public interest by providing the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary and Under Secretary for Policy with independent, informed advice and opinion concerning major matters of defense policy. It will focus on long-term, enduring issues central to strategic planning by the Department of Defense and will be responsible for research and analysis of topics, long or short range, addressed to it by the Secretary of Defense.”

            This sounds innocuous enough and the DPBAC had played a relatively minor role in the formulation of foreign policy during previous administrations but the Vulcans changed that too, as the Wikipedia article on DPBAC explains under the headline “Controversies.” Richard Perle, whose desire for regime change in Baghdad had antedated the Bush administration, was made Chairman and like-minded others were also appointed. The Board not only has members who are linked in spirit to Israel’s ruling circles but also some who have “strong ties to private business, especially defense contractors. Members disclose their business interests with the Pentagon, but they are not made available to the public, leaving only the Pentagon [i.e. Mr. Rumsfeld] as the ethical arbitar [sic] of the Board.” After Seymour Hersh exposed some of Mr. Perle’s potential conflicts of interest in the March 17, 2003 issue of The New Yorker the latter resigned his position as Chairman but remained on the Board.

When it became apparent that the Iraq war was not going as planned its chief architect Paul Wolfowitz, who had been Deputy Secretary of Defense, was rewarded with the Presidency of the World Bank and as mentioned earlier became the Jerusalem Post’s Man of the Year (Hot issues November 1, 2003). Wolfowitz’s right hand man, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, who was the direct pipeline via the indicted Lewis Libby to the vice President’s office and who also had strong ties to Israel’s leadership, was likewise replaced. Wolfowitz’s job went to Gordon England and Feith’s to Eric Edelman. Mr. England had a distinguished career in the U.S. Navy and in the private sector defense industry.

            Mr. Edelman, on the other hand, comes with some baggage. He had served under “Scooter” Libby in the vice President’s office and Senate approval of his nomination had initially been held up by Senator Levin of Michigan for the White House’s failure to release pertinent documents. Our President was not concerned about such trifles and made a “recess appointment.” He is legally entitled to use this device for emergency purposes but it has become a habit how to get around the Senate. Our ambassador to the UN is another example and most recently the appointment of Peter Flory as Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Mr. Flory likewise had not escaped the watchful eye of Sen. Levin and on April 7, 2006 the Senator’s office released a memo which expressed his displeasure about how the President treats Congress. As he wrote, “At the core this is an issue of the executive branch refusing to provide the Senate with documents that are relevant to the confirmation proceeding.” The problem was the disconnect between the official intelligence community i.e. CIA, NSA and State Department which did not find a substantial link between Saddam and al-Qaeda versus the version peddled by Douglas Feith et al. that was acted upon. At stake is the role played by Mr. Flory at that time. Levin wrote that after much prodding Secretary England released a considerable number of documents but “that there were 58 additional documents the Department would not release.” Carl Levin is not just another senator but he has been in his job since 1978 and is the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. If Congress is to play a role in our republic the executive branch would have to start treating it as the co-equal partner the Constitution intended it to be. Our president has apparently no intention of doing so and when forced will employ the Richard Nixon tactic of invoking “executive privilege.”

In the international arena there seems to be a dispute within the administration about what to do with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The hawks want some type of military intervention, of whatever kind, while more reasonable people point to the Iraq problem as an example where unilateral action can lead to. This precipitated a letter from the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to our President. The “18-page letter” was immediately dismissed by the White House and our Foreign Secretary informed us that the letter covered “history, philosophy and religion.” She stated furthermore, "There's nothing in here that would suggest that we're on any different course than we were before we got the letter." The President chimed in with "It looks like it did not answer the main question that the world is asking, and that is, 'When will you get rid of your nuclear program?' "

The letter itself had not been published by the major print media at the time and the impression was given that it merely consisted of an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic rant as the cartoon published in The Salt Lake Tribune, and pasted below, shows.

Anyone who was not satisfied with this offhand government dismissal could find the letter, in its English translation, immediately on the Internet. The first surprise was that the usually quoted 18-19 pages shrunk to 9 and that the tone of the letter was respectful, addressing our President at one point as “Your Excellency.” It consisted mainly of a series of questions to Mr. Bush that relate to how one “can be a follower of Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him)” and pursue a foreign policy that brings war and misery to people?

The letter was written from the point of view of a devout Muslim who believes that all of us, including Presidents, who profess adherence to one of the three monotheistic religions, will face a judgment not only by people on earth but by God. This judgment is to be feared rather than the fears that are spread by the US. Whatever other purpose Ahmadinejad had in mind the letter was intended to address our President’s conscience and to show him the disconnect between his words and his actions as it is perceived in the rest of the world. He concluded that “Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. . . . Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.”

Indeed there was nothing “new” in the letter it simply summarized the complaints the rest of the world has against our government and its hypocrisy. This is not what our ruling circles like to hear and that is why the letter had to be ridiculed. I don’t know if the Iranian President was aware that he had actually followed a precedent set by President Roosevelt on April 14, 1939 when he wrote to,

 “His Excellency Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of the German Reich, Berlin, Germany

You realize, I am sure, that throughout the world hundreds of millions of human beings are living today in constant fear of a new war or even a series of wars.

The existence of this fear – and the possibility of such a conflict – are definite concerns to the people of the United States for whom I speak, they must also be to the peoples of the other nations of the entire Western Hemisphere. All of them know that any major war even if it were to be confined to other continents, must bear heavily on them during its continuance and also for generations to come. . . .

On a previous occasion I have addressed you in behalf of the settlement of political, economic, and social problems by peaceful methods and without resort to arms.

But the tide of events seems to have reverted to the threat of arms. If such threats continue, it seems inevitable that much of the world must become involved in common ruin.”   

Since FDR also listed 31 countries, including “Iraq, the Arabias, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iran,” Hitler was supposed to promise not to attack; his answer was the Reichstag speech of April 28 which was greeted with hilarious laughter as recounted in War and Mayhem.

The outcome of that rejection is known and one of the results of the ensuing war was the creation of the state of Israel which has become a major destabilizing factor for the entire world. WWII did not lead to the ruin of America as FDR had feared in his letter. On the contrary it led to the greatest prosperity and power the country had ever enjoyed but it is now in dire danger that a belated judgment for the violations of international law our government is committing and supporting, will befall us.

There is still time to give Ahmadinejad’s letter a chance for consideration and the article in the May 29, 2006 issue of The New Yorker by Hendrick Hertzberg entitled “The Letter,” is neither dismissive nor vituperative. There is room for talking rather than shooting and killing.

We may now ask the final question: What drives this quest for perpetual war by America? As mentioned earlier, there seem to be three converging streams. These are: the financial interests of defense contractors, those of the oil industry and the promoters of Israeli government policies. All three overlap in the same individuals while others have only one or two of the mentioned concerns on their minds. On the whole their number is, however, relatively small yet they were able to neutralize the State Department under General Powell. To what extent our new Foreign Secretary will be able to take a broader view on what is good for our country remains to be seen. Her reaction to the Iranian President’s letter to Mr. Bush was not particularly encouraging but there’s still hope although time is running out.

Ahmadinejad was right when he said that liberal democracy has failed so far but radical Islam is not the answer either. A synthesis needs to be struck under a system where individual rights are respected and unbridled greed, which currently rules our country, is curbed. Let us remember also that WWI, which is the cause of all our troubles, did not start on June 28, 1914 with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. It started from an unprecedented arms build-up during the first decade of the 20^th century to insure “security.” In the Introduction of the English translation of Clausewitz’s On War, Col. F. N. Maude wrote, “Europe is an armed camp, and peace is maintained by the equilibrium of forces, and will continue just as long as this equilibrium exists, and no longer.” This was written in 1908. In 2006 America is initiating another arms race even into outer space and sad to say it’s not for security, as officially pronounced, but for money. Our major exports appear to be related to military equipment because everything else can be produced cheaper abroad. How else can we explain that the Czech Republic and Poland are supposed to become anti-missile sites by 2011 to “ward off possible attacks by Iran [The Salt Lake Tribune; May 22, 2006].”    

This is the dilemma America faces: fear is spread around the world to create and sell weapons systems which are useless in addressing the real adversary, namely some benighted fanatics who try to goad us into just such actions. Today’s terrorists are not a monolithic group but different people with different motives. To lump all of them under a War on Terror is not only disingenuous but harmful and cannot lead to peace for the world. These groups need to be addressed individually, their potential grievances taken into account, and dealt with appropriately. But if we continue on the current path and invest in military spending, rather than redirecting our major heavy industries towards peaceful purposes, the inevitable outcome will be a repeat of 1914 and 1939 from which this country will not escape as unscathed as before.