World War IV
<a href=www.abs-cbnnews.com>ABS-CBNNews VANTAGE POINT By LUIS V. TEODORO
The next targets of U.S. regime change are likely to be Iran and Syria, but will include Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as other governments the US regards as actually or potentially hostile.
World War IV has begun. Although the war is barely noticed by Filipinos, the Philippines is already part of it. The clearest indication of that involvement is the Philippines’ being part of the “Coalition of the Willing.” The less obvious signs are the bombings in Davao, the Balikatan “exercises” and the return of the U.S. military bases.
WW I lasted from 1914 to 1918, WW II from 1939 to 1945. The entire world was in WW III from 1945 to 1990, though much of it didn’t know it. The longest world war yet, WW III was also known as the Cold War, in which the United States and the Soviet union, though several times coming close to a nuclear exchange, fought several wars by proxy: in Korea and Vietnam, for example, and finally in Afghanistan in the 1980s. (The war in Afghanistan, which resulted in the USSR's withdrawal, was among the reasons why the USSR and the entire Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1990.)
The characterization of the Cold War as WW III comes from James Woolsey, who was director of the US Central Intelligence Agency during the Bill Clinton presidency. If he’s right, the next world war will be the first in the 21st century, but the fourth since 1914.
Woolsey says WW IV -- a war supposedly against terrorism and oppressive regimes, but in truth a war for US global dominance -- began with the US invasion of Iraq.
Woolsey doesn’t use the word “invasion,” since like all U.S. hawks he believes that the United States attacked Iraq to “liberate” the Iraqis. But he did suggest in a speech at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in the first week of April that, once the US has removed Sad- dam Hussein, Iraq will be the base from which it will remake the Middle East.
The next targets of U.S. regime change are likely to be Iran and Syria, but will include Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- US allies the United States believes have be- come too erratic to depend upon -- as well as other governments the U.S. regards as actually or potentially hostile. These are, among others, Libya, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and China.
The means to wage “war” against these countries, says U.S. author Richard Bennett, will be diplomatic and economic pressure, propaganda campaigns and espionage, “but if all else fails, [will include] military action . . . up to and including full-scale war.”
It’s all in keeping with the Bush doctrine to remake the world to America’s liking (a prerogative that once belonged only to God and the sovereign peoples of each nation).
The campaign is couched in terms like “bringing democracy” to various countries and “liberating” them from oppressive regimes, but it’s actually meant to assure total US global dominance in land, sea, air and, eventually, space.
“As we [the U.S.] move toward a new Middle East . . . over the decades to come, we will make a lot of people nervous,” Woolsey said in his UCLA speech. Addressing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak -- whose government has been appeasing the US by arresting and torturing anti-U.S. demonstrators in the last few weeks -- and the Saudi Arabian royal family (with which the Bush family has had close business ties), Woolsey said, “we [the U.S.] want you nervous.
“We want you to realize that now, for the fourth time in a hundred years, this country and its allies are on the march and that we are on the side of those whom you, the Mubaraks and the Saudi royal family most fear: we’re on the side of your own people.”
That the U.S. will be -- it has never been -- on the side of the people suffering under oppressive regimes (which in most cases it either put in power or sustains) anywhere is of course mostly myth, the U.S. being on the side of the U.S. and its economic and strategic interests.
But besides pointedly suggesting that past friendships and even canine devotion are of no consequence to the current U.S. rulers, Woolsey’s warning does suggest that the U.S. did not invade Iraq just to oust Saddam Hussein, but to seize control of Iraqi oil, establish a permanent military presence in the Middle East, and remake the entire region.
The plan is all there in black and white -- in the September 2000 report of the Project for a New American Century (“Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century”), which had for members U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. (PNAC claims to be a “nonprofit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership.”)
To maintain U.S. global “preeminence” (read: total dominance), the report envisions a Pax Americana in which the United States would have global dominance “precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with U.S. principles and interests.” The U.S., urges the report, must have the capability to fight “multi-theater wars” to extend U.S. power throughout the planet.
The invasion of Iraq began the process. Neither Saddam Hussein nor his “weapons of mass destruction,” or his being a dictator, the PNAC Report makes clear, is really the issue.
The report speaks of “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf . . . [which] transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” The report admits that what is envisioned is for the U.S. “to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security.”
To achieve this, “the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification” for moving U.S. forces into the region.
Where does the Philippines figure in this grand design for a war that’s likely to last for decades, perhaps for much of this century?
The United States has been establishing military bases all over the world in the last two years, in compliance with one of the report’s major recommendations: that the US shift “permanently based [military] forces to Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia” (where the Philippines is located) so US troops can be quickly deployed in the event of war with the regimes (in Asia, North Korea and China particularly) the Bush coterie abhors.
Once host to U.S. bases, the Philippines since 2001 has opened its territory to U.S. forces, and allowed the construction of “temporary” facilities for them. The Balikatan exercises and the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement, which assure U.S. troops a presence in the Philippines that’s likely to become permanent over time, are thus part of U.S. preparations for the wars that, following the PNAC Report, it is likely to wage.
The bombings in Davao have achieved two things. They have demonized the Muslim groups and justified repression as well as the use of U.S. troops in “training” their Philippine counterparts. In this context, the escalating violence in that long-suffering region is as much a part of World War IV as the U.S. attack on Iraq.
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LUIS TEODORO/TODAY