Most here are familiar with Maj.General Smedley Butler, USMC (1881-1940), who was awarded two Congressional Medals of Honor. In his essay, War is a Racket, he wrote:
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
General Butler also related how he had helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests, Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank, a number of Central American countries more pleasant for Wall Street interests, the Dominican Republic more conducive to the sugar industry, and China more compatible with the interests of Standard Oil.
While in the Marine Corps General Butler and the US military were fighting for US interests in Latin America and elsewhere. What are US strategic national interests today? If we can understand what our interests are then it is easier to understand America's foreign policy.
Former CIA officer Philip Agee, in the 1970's, wrote that US interests are defined traditionally as unfettered access to the primary products and raw materials, to the labor and to the markets of foreign countries. I think Smedley Butler would have agreed.
In September of 2000 a report from a neo-conservative organization, Project for a New American Century, called Rebuilding America’s Defenses (PDF), outlines the ideas behind global dominance and empire in the form of a global Pax Americana. A few months later George W. Bush was appointed as president by the US Supreme Court. Within less that a year came 9/11, their "New Pearl Harbor" and an opportunity to place their plans into action.
The PNAC philosophy was formed in response to the ending of Cold War hostilities with Russia and the emergence of America as the world's only preeminent superpower. Claiming that this is a "strategic moment" that should not be squandered, members of PNAC say that America should use its position to advance its power and interests into all areas of the globe. They believe the time is ripe for establishing democracies in regimes considered hostile to US interests and are not hesitant to advise the use of military means to achieve those ends.
In September of 2002 the document known as The National Security Strategy of the United States outlined U.S. President George W. Bush’s national security policy to guide the U.S. military, known as the Bush doctrine. In it, for the first time, the United States reserved the option to wage preventive wars.
AEI claims, I believe mistakenly, that this is a return to previous US security policy and that it is a policy that we are likely to maintain for decades to come.
The Bush Doctrine, articulated by the president ... in a series of speeches and encapsulated in the new National Security Strategy paper released in September, represents a reversal of course from Clinton-era policies in regard to the uses of U.S. power and, especially, military force. ... in fact the Bush Doctrine represents a return to the first principles of American security strategy. The Bush Doctrine also represents the realities of international politics in the post-cold-war, sole-superpower world. ...it is likely to remain the basis for U.S. security strategy for decades to come.
Mother Jones puts it this way:
The United States has many times sent armed forces to take over foreign countries for weeks, years, even decades. But the Bush doctrine is the first to elevate such wars of offense to the status of official policy, and to call "preemptive" (referring to imminent peril) what is actually preventive (referring to longer-term, hypothetical, avoidable peril). This semantic shift is crucial. When prevention of a remote possibility is called preemption, anything goes. CIA caution can be overridden, Al Qaeda connections fabricated, dangers exaggerated -- and the United States will have a doctrine to substitute for international law.
Traditional US interests, as noted by Philip Agee (above), remain basically unchanged - unfettered access... Take note of the fact that Iraq, Iran and Venezuela do not allow the unfettered access to their natural resources. We've already invaded and occupied Iraq. It's no secret that the CIA orchestrated a failed coup to overthrow Hugo Chavez in 2002 and that other attempts are now being planned. Iran, another resource-rich country, is being demonized as a nuclear threat. Given even the remote possibility that Iran might some day have "nukes", the Bush Doctrine allows for a preventive attack on Iran because it might at some point in time be a threat to US hegemony in the Gulf Region.
Chomsky argues that current US policies in Afghanistan and Iraq are not a specific response to September 11, but simply the continuation of a consistent half-century of foreign policy, an "imperial grand strategy" in which the United States has attempted to "maintain its hegemony through the threat or use of military force." Smedley Butler would probably agree with Chomsky but note that we've now notched our aggressive polices a few clicks higher up the scale.
We are now moving at a rapid pace towards a critical point in history. I share the views of Chalmers Johnson expressed in his book Nemesis:
We are on the cusp of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation is started down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play - isolation, overstretch, the uniting of forces opposed to imperialism, and bankruptcy. ...
If we choose to keep our empire, as the Roman Republic did, we will certainly lose our democracy and grimly await the eventual blowback that imperialism generates.
The dynamics are already coming into play. Who is going to stand up to the establishment military-industrial-congressional-media-oil complex? Let us all hope there is someone who can rally the public before it is too late. The government that is seated in 2009 could well be the pivoting force that determines which path we choose.
Time is running out for the winds of change.