The American Century is Over: Part 3, the Imperium

I may seem to be off topic, but I want to make full disclosure of the beliefs that underly my part of the discussion here.

State power in the United States has been seized by a cabal whose association goes back to the Reagan Administration, although they recruited George W. Bush to be their figurehead more recently. They have the support of a many powerful elites, who gain various advantages and favors in return, and of a large segment of the electorate, but I will not analyze the basis of their current power here, though I may touch on it incidentally.

To a large but not precisely knowable extent, their publicly stated beliefs, intentions and rationales are a carefully woven tapestry of falsehood. This can be shown in part because what they said quite openly when they were out of power during the Clinton administration and what they say as campaigners and office holders are quite different. It is also evident because much of what they say is demonstrably false and they surely know that. Finally it is evident because of internal contradictions, the flaws in the tapestry. This complicates the task of writing a succinct critique of the destructive path down which they are leading us, so I ask the reader not to demand that I fill in every blank. This is a blog, not a book.

First, they understand U.S. influence in the world, and the national interest in foreign affairs, as a function of military power. During the Clintonian exile, they called quite openly for U.S. military domination of the planet, starting by invading Iraq in order to establish military hegemony in the Middle East. (Go here for the story.) They knew, however, that the public did not like to think of the United States as an imperialist power, so they tarted up their call for domination as “spreading democracy.” Everybody knows, however, that freedom and democracy do not issue from the barrel of a tank or rain down as shrapnel from a 500 pound bomb. By freedom and democracy they mean regimes friendly to the United States. Even so, they knew that the public would not accept their project without a transforming event, a “new Pearl Harbor.”

Although GW Bush campaigned in 2000 on a platform of humility in foreign policy, we now know that he and the cabal wanted to invade Iraq on the day he took office. They got their new Pearl Harbor on Sept. 11, 2001, but it took a massive campaign of lies to turn public anger and fear over that event against the irrelevant regime in Iraq. At the height of the war fever, it seemed that the idea of an American imperium could be sold to the public after all. Supposedly learned savants were all over the airwaves promoting the Obligations of Great Powers and the Legitimacy of Empire, as a means of bringing order and stability to a dangerous world. The disastrous results of the war are now evident, and all of this yammering has abruptly vanished. But what was their real motivation?

It is, of course, their response to the problem of dependence on foreign petroleum resources. But their motivation has nothing to do with the health of the U.S. economy or even the national interest of the United States, however conceived. American businesses and consumers, after all, could have purchased petroleum from Saddam Hussein as easily as they would have bought it from the fantasized Ahmad Chalabi regime. What concerns the cabal is the value and profitability of the American oil companies that support them politically and enrich many of them personally.

That is why the first order of business upon occupying Iraq was to secure the oil infrastructure and move to exclude the French and Russian companies who had previously been Iraq’s partners in oil extraction. And it is why the second order of business was to begin the transfer of billions of dollars of revenues from sale of Iraqi petroleum and the seizure of state assets into the coffers of U.S. corporations, notably but not exclusively Vice President Cheney’s employer Halliburton, ostensibly for “reconstruction” work, which was never done. It is also why they are so committed to exploiting the oil fields in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and removing environmentalist restraints on oil field development elsewhere, even though domestic production cannot, under any circumstances, contribute significantly to reducing the dependency problem.

It is also why they have no interest in reducing consumption of petroleum or other fossil fuels; deny the reality of global warming; want to weaken fuel economy standards, clean air protections, mass transit subsidies, and other measures that could reduce demand for petroleum; and most certainly would never consider raising taxes on fossil fuels. They are in the oil business. That is the interest they work for and defend. And they have friends and contributors in other industries who they also work for. The interests of the people of the United States are no concern of theirs.

Next: Economic and social policy