On this day 14 years ago, former NFL player Pat Tillman was shot and killed by his fellow soldiers in Afghanistan, and the events surrounding his death still remain a mystery.
The post 14 Years Ago Today, Pat Tillman Was Killed and Gov’t Covered Up the Truth to His Death to Sell War appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
While the United States controls more than 90 percent of the world"s opium supply in Afghanistan, the rate of Americans who are addicted to heroin and who have died from drug overdoses has skyrocketed.
The post Before US Troops Protected Poppies In Afghanistan, There was No Opioid Epidemic in America appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The United States plans to send another thousand troops to Afghanistan to strengthen its contingent there. Now the Pentagon is deciding which military personnel will be sent to this country. We shall note that US troops have been stationed in this country since October 2001, which has cost US taxpayers $680 billion dollars. During this campaign, more than two thousand American soldiers have been killed and another 20,000 wounded. According to the US media, at present, there are 15,282 US troops in Afghanistan. It should be said that President Donald Trump fully complied with the request of General John Nicholson, who believes that under his leadership in Afghanistan there must be at least 16,000 soldiers.
Seventeen years seemed to be enough for peace to reign on the ancient land of Afghanistan. However, the tragedy of the Afghan people appears to have no end in sight. It can be said that Afghanistan, as a single state, has long been gone. The US and its coalition allies, gathered from all corners of the world, for many years have contributed to the persistence of a bloody conflict, and the settlement between the Afghans themselves has not progressed one iota. The Iranian newspaper Tehran Times wrote the following about this: ‘Washington, having occupied Afghanistan, took responsibility for the cessation of the war, the restoration of peace, the elimination of internal contradictions, the revival of an eroded economy. However, this did not happen, except for the presence of American troops in the country, the continuation of chaos and the war of all against all.’
Now on the backstages of the White House and the Pentagon there is approvingly discussed the plan that Eric Prince, the former head of the Blackwater Private Military Company (PMC), put forward, about the creation in Afghanistan of an analogue of the East India Company and the establishment of the similarity of the post of viceroy who would be responsible for everything that is happening in the country, as was done by Great Britain in India. The viceroy, according to Eric Prince’s idea, would solve all the issues in the country individually without bureaucratic delay and endless meetings with Washington and would answer only to the US president. The ‘brave warrior’ suggests sending contract soldiers to Afghanistan for a long time so that they live, bear all the hardships of the service and fight shoulder to shoulder with divisions consisting of local residents. The main investors of the project, according to Eric Prince, could be large Western corporations that are interested in the extraction of Afghanistan’s natural resources. It should be recalled that the cost of minerals in the country is estimated at between one and three trillion dollars. That’s where the genuine reasons are revealed and explain Washington’s entire policy in this country.
The US itself cannot leave Afghanistan either for reputational reasons or for fear that the country may fall into the sphere of influence of Iran, China and Russia, or the authorities will completely transfer to the Taliban, and Afghanistan will then become a hotbed of jihadists. The current administration in Washington needs to seek out some kind of third way. That’s why Eric Prince’s plan began to receive more attention. The idea of shifting all costs and losses of the war in Afghanistan to private companies and contractors looks increasingly tempting for the current president-businessman Donald Trump. And now we see how this diabolical plan to turn Afghanistan into an American colony on the model of British, and the appearance of new ‘contract soldiers’ begins to be implemented. If you look at them more closely, they turn out to be terrorists from Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra, rescued in Syria and Iraq by Americans, and then transferred by American planes in Afghanistan.
During the meeting of the Council of Heads of Security Authorities and Special Services of the CIS, Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service of Russia, noted that the movement of terrorist groups to Central Asia poses a threat to the security of the region: ‘The main centre for the concentration of bandits is Afghanistan, where there are already positions of the so-called “Islamic state” and where the militants have the opportunity to infiltrate the territory of the CIS countries’.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said that the north of Afghanistan is turning into a base for international terrorism, as he said during a speech at a meeting of the UN Security Council dedicated to the situation in Afghanistan and the Central Asian region.
It is interesting that Qatar, a small state situated in the Persian Gulf zone, has also actively entered into the settlement of the Afghan crisis. For example, recently a delegation of the Qatari representation of the Taliban arrived in Islamabad; the Pakistani media reported referring to anonymous sources from the pro-Taliban and diplomatic circles. According to the reports, the delegation included three high-ranking Taliban leaders, including Shahabuddin Dilawar. It is assumed that the recent visit was part of the efforts of the Qatari leadership to promote an intra-Afghan peace dialogue. A few weeks earlier, a Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Abbas, made a trip to Qatar, discussing the prospect of peace talks in Afghanistan, according to the Pakistani newspaper Daily Times.
But for the global hegemon – the United States – there is no opinion of the UN and other international organisations. They continue to violate all conceivable and unthinkable international laws, providing assistance to terrorists. For example, the US Department of Defence used a loophole in legislation to continue training, providing equipment and assisting other units of the Afghan security forces who committed ‘gross human rights violations’. Such confession is contained in a declassified report prepared by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko. Legislation prohibits the US government from assisting foreign forces that commit gross violations of human rights, but exceptions can be made for reasons of national security.
The Diplomat newspaper reported that during a recent telephone conversation between US President Donald Trump and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, the mining industry was discussed, and that the White House plans to send a special representative to Afghanistan to assess the necessary investments in mining. For example, the country has huge lithium reserves, the demand for which will increase as the electric vehicle industry and electronic gadgets grow, as this metal is used in the creation of batteries. Afghanistan is even called the ‘Saudi Arabia of lithium’. It should be noted that today the extraction of natural resources in Afghanistan is the second most important source of income for the Taliban.
The protection of deposits, mines, transportation, etc. looks like the ideal application of private military forces, and not American soldiers in uniform. Donald Trump’s team, as the US media writes, have already consulted with the head of the mining company, American Elements. In addition, billionaire Steve Feinberg, who personally advises Trump on Afghanistan and owns one of the most powerful corporations in the world of military contracts – DynCorp International, is constantly showing increased interest in the exploitation of Afghani deposits.
In other words, today’s northern Afghanistan is beginning to play an ever-increasing role for Washington. First of all, by sending terrorists from Syria and Iraq there, the American rulers are creating a new hotbed of tension on the border of the former republics of the USSR and, therefore, threatening Russia’s security. Secondly, by actively developing the richest deposits in the north of the country, President Donald Trump shows his voters the professional grasp of the ‘businessman’, who has no business creating a peaceful society in Afghanistan.
Viktor Mikhin, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
Billions have been spent on the conflict in Afghanistan. First the object was to liberate the country from the Soviets, at a time no one really thought that would happen as touch upon in Charlie Wilson’s War. But at least would at least make them bleed as the Americans and French had in Vietnam.
Then it was to remove the Taliban, the logical consequence of the sane groups who had been funded and armed before. Now it is to support the Afghan government to construct a virtual reality – pretending there is a functioning administration in a country the government can only partially control, whilst still depending on periodic US airstrikes to keep the Taliban at bay.
Like Al-Qaeda, whose presence in Afghanistan was the original ostensible reason for the US presence there, the Taliban claims responsibility for any act of terrorism to make itself look all-powerful. However it is, as it claims, the most probable suspect in the recent Kabul hotel bombing, which has claimed over 100 lives.
Hotels attract international visitors, even in Afghanistan, and the presence of foreigners is the issue the Taliban has with the Afghan government. The bombing is exactly the sort of symbolic gesture which would satisfy the Taliban’s own supporters and embarrass the Afghan government, which should be guaranteeing the guests’ safety. It also demonstrates to a worldwide audience that the Taliban is still news: and they of all people should know the value of such publicity.
It is unlikely that many ordinary Afghans want the Taliban back in power. But many things the organisation represents, in default of anyone else representing them, do resonate with Afghans. The US probably thought, as the Soviets did in the 1970s, that importing their own vision would give people something new and better to believe in. But they ignored one vital lesson from history: that Afghanistan has never been permanently conquered by any other country, including the great powers who have flocked to it to secure trade routes.
Go into Afghanistan and you take on the whole identity of every Afghan, past and present. Successive military personnel and prospective conquerors have found that this is not a turn of phrase but a concrete reality. As long as the Taliban still represents that identity, however unpalatable many of its actions and teachings are, it cannot be defeated and Afghanistan cannot prosper. But can any of the powers which want to help the country move on make that happen?
Don’t play in our backyard
We were all brought up on stories coming out of Afghanistan. Few noticed or cared when it turned Communist in 1973, when the mighty Soviet Empire was thought to be too tightly controlled to ever disappear. Then the Soviets themselves intervened and removed the local Communists, an action few in the West, and increasingly fewer in the Soviet Union, could explain.
This coup was described at the time as the “will of the people”, as they usually are. But like the rise of the Taliban, it was popular will by default. The 1973 coup which overthrew the monarchy had not achieved many of its aims, and people had begun feeling let down and distrustful of the spate of murders and arrests. So when the Communists took action, where else could the public turn for a saviour? In this sense, the Communist takeover was indeed the “will of the people”
Afghan Communism was essentially secularist. It declared women’s rights and introduced severe repression designed to reduce the influence of Islam. Most Afghans objected to these things because they were foreign, and foreigners can’t tell Afghans what to do and get away with it.
The greatest ever British military defeat was in Afghanistan, and the Duke of Wellington was Commander-in-Chief of the British Army at the time. In spite of three wars, the British had been driven out each time because Afghans make their own rules, they do not respect those imposed from outside.
When various armed groups rose in revolt in 1979 the Afghan government respected the “will of the people” by remaining in power but murdering the president, so the one-party regime could distance itself from Moscow. For the West, this did not signify a political change in the country. But the Soviets objected to this win-win situation and intervened to put a Soviet loyalist in power. Thus began nearly forty years of continuous war, which anyone, at least in policy positions, who knew the history of the place could have seen coming.
Afghans always claim that their ultimate victory over the Soviet Union, with considerable Western material help, was the factor which led to the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Unfortunately the West then made the same mistake the Soviets had—forgetting the end game and what would come next.
The US stated it would organise free elections to choose the next government but then allowed the particular mujahedeen faction which controlled the part of Kabul where the government buildings are, and few other places, to declare itself the Afghan government. This government was then recognised around the world, without the people being consulted, which was seen as another foreign takeover.
None of the other many groups the West had happily armed had a better claim to run the country, but all disagreed with Burhan Rabbani’s group claiming to be the whole government. As the fighting continued, and alliances between different groups were made and broken weekly, the people lost faith in any of the combatants, who continued their campaigns without popular support, often targeting whole civilian populations due to political changes those populations had not made or even known about.
This is why the Taliban was able to advance on Kabul without fighting a major battle. Rather than preaching radical Islam and further terrorism, it upheld the system of Pashtunwali – the traditional code of values of the Pashtun community, which had been historically dominant. Even if people aren’t Pashtuns, they understand and respect this code. In effect it was Margaret Thatcher’s concept of “Victorian Values” – a morally superior system from a better age which would restore the country to its former glory.
Afghans soon realised that the Taliban is an amoral and corrupt gang of thugs whose radical interpretation of Islam is that of a psychopath justifying his behaviour by quoting scripture. But the alternative is foreigners, or those perceived as taking orders from the foreigners who put them there and have constructed the contemporary virtual state. The Taliban itself is used by the US for its own purposes, as all terrorist groups ultimately are, being part of the drug supply chain which funds ISIS as well as the Taliban itself. But no one else has come along to give Afghans another set of values they can support, shorn of the unacceptable extremes which characterise the Taliban in the West.
The further we get from the days of Taliban rule, the more persuasive its support for Afghan independence and traditional values will seem. These things still are, and always will be, the “will of the people”. The West will not be able to counter them by offering blue jeans and milkshakes in return for joining the Afghan army. It will have to make the preservation and promotion of Afghan values the centrepiece of its own policy – but as we have seen in many other countries, it cannot do that simply because it is the West.
I’ve always spelt it that way and always will
Every great empire thinks that its own way of doing things is better than anyone else’s, simply because it rules so many other people. If it wants to conquer more people, it does the same things it always does because those ways are demonstrably superior, simply because it has a larger territory.
When empires start to decline, as Russians remember, their leaders start to question those ways of doing things at look at other models. But this is an internal process: in foreign policy the old ways are promoted with ever greater vigour, to justify the country in the eyes of the world. Belgians always objected to what their King Leopold was doing in the Belgian Congo, which was his own private business, and took it into state hands to stop those abuses, but many of those crimes against humanity continued because Belgium couldn’t admit it was wrong and remain in charge.
The US empire is now in decline due to its economic weakening and military overstretching. Americans themselves are questioning the long-held belief that The American Way is the one every other country would freely choose to follow, given the chance. So how does the US defend itself? By being even more insistent that the US model must be introduced into every nation.
It is this, rather than what Western troops have done, which has led to the Taliban remaining a force in Afghanistan. Afghans respect democracy, but not one they are told to have by a foreign power, structured the way a foreign power wants it. Traditionally they have had different systems of their own, such as the institution of the Loya Jirga, roughly equivalent to the House of Lords. Similarly, though a Pashtun will not be a tenant of another Pashtun they have no problem being a tenant of a representative of one of the hundreds of other ethnic groups in the country, and this spills over into political relations, making a flat universal franchise a nonsense.
Similarly, Afghans have sophisticated trading relationships with each other, and the rest of the world, based on Islamic monetary principles which have been around for centuries longer than the ideas of Adam Smith and David Ricardo which form the basis of modern free trade. Most also pay voluntary taxes under the Zakat system, which has an effect on governmental use of taxation. Above all, if they see a moral case for taking a welfare action they just do it, without seeing the need to do things like register charities and record how the money is used. They will not be told what they can and cannot do by an aid programme, however well intentioned.
The way to defeat the Taliban is to institutionalise the traditional Afghan systems, which are understood even by those who do not like or practice them, in the same way the Orthodox Church and its teachings and practices are understood by non-Orthodox in Russia. If these are made the basis of government practice, and then protected by foreign troops for that reason, this will turn foreign occupiers with their infidel Western ways into friends.
But it will also mean that the US doesn’t have as much to offer as it thinks it has, and call its role in all other countries into question. The US is capable of riding this storm by adopting the same policy everywhere, and encouraging a more diverse global order based on partnership. But there are very few signs the US is thinking in this way – indeed, quite the opposite has been the policy for generations, whatever the complexion of the White House.
As has been pointed out, the countries the US has recently taken a shine to invading, such as Libya, Iraq and Syria, all made one decision prior to the US intervention – abandoning the dollar, and thus becoming more independent of US financial control. Similarly, the Western model, which is the US one coloured differently depending which country is preaching it, is still the only one its friends are allowed to accept. Viktor Yanukovych had his own plans for Ukraine, which needed both Western and Russian help to be realised. However he was told to choose, which meant his plans would have to fit the model of the chosen donor rather than being Ukraine’s, and we all know what happened there.
The West cannot become the guardians of all Afghans think is good, because the West has no respect for those things and cannot develop that respect. However bad the Taliban is in practice, it still defends those values in theory. The good deeds done by the West in Afghanistan only work for as long as people do not see, or care about, the strings attached. But every time the West makes any false step, even in faraway countries, Afghans see the strings and not the good deeds, and they find themselves agreeing with the Taliban, however reluctantly.
Sold out by yourselves
The West’s failure to respect Afghans presents opportunities to both Russia and China. Both of these countries are positioned, either directly or via proxy Muslim states, to do both the things the US won’t do – support a government and system based on Afghan traditions, and remove the radical element from the Taliban whilst leaving its positive values in place. Russia is unlikely to try, given its previous history in Afghanistan. But China will have no qualms becoming the new protector of Afghanistan, provided the price is right.
Evil Red China is as Red as ever. But the West can’t do without its funds, so suddenly this doesn’t matter. If China wants something which is in Afghanistan, like roads, minerals or licorice, the Afghan national plant which isn’t used to make confectionery there, it will pay for it provided it sees the benefit. As it has found, it will not need to tell the government what to do to obtain the influence it needs to achieve its goals, and the West’s kowtowing to it has set the template for how other countries respond to Chinese economic co-operation proposals, which are made by the state-owned companies US economics is determined to destroy as a matter of faith.
The Chinese would approach Afghanistan the way the West can’t – by supporting the locals and their culture from behind the scenes to pursue their own interests. But this also creates a problem for the West. Such is its desire to impose its own ways of thinking that everything good which comes out of Afghanistan must be a Western achievement. The West will be treading a dangerous path if it helps Afghanistan get back on its feet and then flogs off vast array of the new infrastructure to the Chinese, making Beijing the senior partner in any such geopolitical arrangement.
The Taliban found out the hard way that it cannot murder its way into the hearts of the Afghan people. But some of its values are still, unfortunately, the best available from an Afghan viewpoint. Treating it as an irredeemable enemy, which has bombed its way to the negotiating table, won’t solve that. Only a change of political approach and winds would remove the Taliban from the scene, but if the West makes that change, Afghanistan might ultimately be responsible for the death of another Great Empire.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Download RebuildingAmericasDefenses (PDF)
Sacred Owls mentions this document from The Project for the New American Century think tank led by William “Bill” Kristol, an American neo-conservative political analyst and commentator in our song “Inside Job“. He is the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and a political commentator on several networks.
I met his pal (co-conspirator) Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama while he visited Florida International University during a geo-political conference along with Fareed Rafiq Zakaria (author of The Post American World), Marco Rubio, and other neo-conservatives. He is a key Reagan Administration contributor to the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine, Fukuyama is an important figure in the rise of neoconservatism, although his works came out years after Irving Kristol‘s 1972 book crystallized neoconservatism.
Fukuyama was active in the Project for the New American Century think tank starting in 1997, and as a member co-signed the organization’s 1998 letter recommending that President Bill Clinton support Iraqi insurgencies in the overthrow of then-President of Iraq Saddam Hussein.
He was also among forty co-signers of William Kristol’s September 20, 2001 letter to President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks that suggested the U.S. not only “capture or kill Osama bin Laden” (US State Dept. asset code name “Tim Osman” AKA “USOSAMA”), but also embark upon “a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq”.
He referred to this think tank and series of documents signed by and with contributions from Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, & many others as “Bill with a fax machine” dismissing it as something harmless. Read it for yourself. Keep in mind that it was published September 2000, one year before 9/11/01, which was the catalyst for the Iraq war, the founding of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which all laid the ground work for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and the list continues to grow.
This is a prime example of the thought process of the pawns of the ruling class. The use of problem, reaction, solution strategies to work on the emotions of their subjects to limit resistance and manufacture consent.
US Central Command has launched an investigation after a video was leaked online allegedly showing a US troop shooting into the cab of a civilian truck.
In recent months the US President has reversed yet another campaign pledge to pull out of Afghanistan, America’s longest war, and instead has begun to deploy an added 3,000 troops there. At the same time he has lashed out at the government of Pakistan accusing it of aiding the Afghan Taliban and pledging to cut all US military aid to that country as reprisal. A deeper view into the situation suggests that both moves are linked and have to do with not the Taliban and the Afghan terrorists. It has very much to do with ongoing developments of peaceful construction of the Chinese-led Belt, Road Initiative and desperate attempts of Washington to try to stop those developments using other pretexts.
In June 2017 After intense discussions with his military Trump authorized an added up to 4,000 US soldiers ostensibly to further train an Afghan military in dealing with an increasingly successful Taliban force. By December the Pentagon was engaged in a massive air campaign it said was aimed at destroying the Taliban drug labs.
Arguing that the Pakistan ISI intelligence service was complicit in giving Taliban, the CIA-trained and al Qaeda-associated Haqqani and other terrorist groups sanctuary across the border, Trump then froze military aid to Pakistan. It is allegedly to force Pakistan’s military and intelligence to cut support for the Taliban and other Islamist groups. In one of his infamous tweets, the US President wrote, “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools…They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”
The Pakistan aid cut could involve two billion worth of equipment and coalition support funding. Administration sources stated that, “all options are on the table,” including stripping Pakistan of its status as a “major non-NATO ally” or calling in vital IMF loans.
As a direct result of the US pressure, the Pakistani government did not automatically renew for a full year refugee status for some 1.4 million Afghan refugees, instead ordering them to return to Afghanistan by end of January. This, to a country where US bombings have escalated threefold, creating a de facto new destabilization across all Afghanistan.
Another Hidden Agenda
In fact what Washington is doing in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has little if anything to do with restoring a functioning government in Kabul or stabilizing Pakistan, once a close US ally during the 1980’s US-backed Al Qaeda war against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the CIA Operation Cyclone, using Mujahideen mercenaries it trained and armed in a costly ten year war.
The true aim is geopolitical and is directly aimed at the growing influence of China, in cooperation in part with Russia, in stabilizing Afghanistan and drawing the country, along with Pakistan, into the game-changing Belt, Road Initiative, China’s multi-nation multi-trillion dollar rail and deep water port infrastructure network. China is eager to draw Afghanistan into the China-Pakistan Corridor part of the BRI, for economic reasons as well as to control terrorist groups among China’s Uighur Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province being trained by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
China Invites Afghanistan to Belt, Road Initiative
In fact Washington has never been serious about building genuine democracy in Afghanistan. Rather its priority was building NATO bases deep inside Eurasia to potentially target China and Russia. Another benefit was allowing Taliban and others to grow the world’s largest opium crops, exporting the heroin via US military aircraft via Manas Airbase to create serious addiction problems inside Russia and Central Asia.
The renewed US interest in Afghanistan coincides with the growing efforts of especially China to stabilize Afghanistan following the 2014 US troop withdrawal and using economic development to reduce the breeding ground for radical Muslim terrorism near the border to China’s Muslim Xinjiang province.
In late December Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced that both China and Pakistan are looking to include Afghanistan in their estimated $57 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a key rail, highway, port and pipeline corridor of the vast Belt, Road Initiative. He declared, “China and Pakistan are willing to look at with Afghanistan, on the basis of win-win, mutually beneficial principles, using an appropriate means to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan.” That would mark a major stabilization of the entire region where Pakistan and Afghanistan have often been at odds since the US invasion of Kabul in 2001. Such stability in the context of the Belt, Road Initiative would severely weaken US military influence across the entire region.
For its part, the current government in Kabul is very eager to discuss joining China’s Economic Silk Road project. In October, 2017 Kabul hosted a forum of mayors of cities along the historic silk road and discussed the prospects of joining the China project. Among the projects in discussion between China, Pakistan and Afghanistan a Peshawar-Kabul motorway, the Landi Kotal-Jalalabad Railway, the Chaman-Speen Boldak Railway, a hydropower dam on Kunar River, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan electricity transmission line, and the trans-Afghan highway to Central Asia from Peshawar, Pakistan. These projects, along with the Logar-Torkham Railway line, would be a part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Clearly this would create a far more stable dynamic than the present US strategy of endless fighting.
At the same time that US President Trump was tweeting aid cuts to Pakistan for allegedly harboring Taliban from Afghanistan, the central bank of Pakistan announced that it would permit trade settlement with China, its largest trade partner, in Chinese yuan, another blow to the domination of the dollar. For its part, the Pakistani government has reacted to the pressure from Washington by suspending all military and intelligence cooperation with the US according to the Pakistani Defense Minister.
Washington these days has little positive to offer to the nations of Afghanistan or Pakistan. Threats, more troops, cuts in aid are not what is gaining the interest of those countries. Economic development is, and there is no development more attractive than that of building infrastructure corridors linking Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and potentially Turkey to China, Russia, select EU economies to create entire new markets and industries. To try to stop this is the real background to Washington’s recent military reversal in Afghanistan and its pressure on Pakistan, not the Taliban.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge
German police report 10 arrests have been made for sexual assault
following New Year’s Eve celebrations
Over a dozen arrests were made for New Year’s Eve sex attacks in Germany as women were groped in Berlin and Cologne by “predominantly young men from Syria or Afghanistan,” despite “safety areas” set up to curb sexual offenses. Meanwhile, thugs in France torched nearly 1,000 cars and brutally kicked a French policewoman in the head as other thugs filmed the attack and uploaded it to the internet.
🆘
#France : Ils n"y ont pas été de mains mortes sur la policière hier soir à #Champigny .
Coups de pompes dans la tête et j"en passe .. pic.twitter.com/ZlWYIUOPuP— -₽ – 🅣 – 🅐 – (@PorteTonAme) January 1, 2018
— -₽ – 🅣 – 🅐 – (@PorteTonAme) January 1, 2018
The two officers arrived at the scene of an out of control party in Champigny in the south-east Paris suburb of Champigny-sur-Marne, a 12 minute drive from the “no-go zone” in Noisy-le-Grand.
After they were attacked, the thugs ran into a nearby housing complex after destroying the patrol car – which was turned upside down. One source told the Daily Mail, “The captain had tried to defend the pair using a tear gas canister, but was badly beaten up,” adding “At one stage he produced his service weapon, but did not get a shot off. The female officer has been written off work for at least a week, while the captain will be off for at least 10 days.”
Flipped over police car, Champigny-sur-Marne (Daily Mail)
Thugs assault policewoman, Champigny-sur-Marne (Daily Mail)
The incident sparked outrage across France – prompting president Emmanuel Macron to decree that the culprits would be brought to justice, stating “Those guilty of the cowardly and criminal lynching of police doing their duty on the night of December 31st will be found and punished,” adding “Force will support the law. Honour to the police and full support to all the agents attacked in such a low level fashion.”
In Berlin, at least 13 cases of sexual assault were reported on New Year’s Eve despite a widely touted “safety area” set up by the German Red Cross at the Brandenburg Gate – intended to protect women trying to ring in the new year without getting felt up or raped.
A tweet made by the Berlin police reads (translated): “At events to #Welcome2018 in #Berlin so far unfortunately occasional sexual assaults were reported. We do not tolerate such acts. Suspects were arrested.”
Bei den Veranstaltungen zu #Welcome2018 in #Berlin wurden bislang leider vereinzelt sexuelle Übergriffe gemeldet. Solche Taten dulden wir nicht!
Es wurden Tatverdächtige festgenommen. Wir haben zivile Kolleg. auf der #Festmeile, die gegen diese Taten vorgehen.— Polizei Berlin Einsatz (@PolizeiBerlin_E) December 31, 2017
Thomas Neuendorf, of Berlin police, told Ruptly that the victims were “groped between their legs and on their buttocks,” adding that the perpetrators were “predominantly young men from Syria or Afghanistan.”
Meanwhile in Cologne, Germany, nine women reported being inappropriately touched during New Year’s Eve celebrations, according to Police – who added that three suspects had been identified and arrested.
German police frisk a man in front of the Central Station in Cologne (Image: EPA)
In Hamburg, “a very small number” of sexual assaults were reported, while Munich police have yet to report in. “Experience shows that such a thing [sexual assault] often emerges only one or two days later,” said a spokesman for the Munich police.
In 2015, Germany suffered the worst string of New Years Eve attacks in modern history, with over 1,500 criminal cases reported – including one in which “heavily intoxicated” men of “Arab or North African” origin were accused of attacking local women in the Cologne city center.
Automobiles in France didn’t escape the torch this year either, despite the deployment of 90,000 security forces. 945 cars were set on fire in Paris despite some 99,000 soldiers and police officers patrolling the country after two years of high-profile New Year’s Eve attacks.
According to the French interior ministry, most of the cars were either “totally destroyed” or “more lightly affected,” a 17% rise over last year’s car torchings according to The Telegraph. The custom is said to have began in Strasbourg, France in the 1990’s, in the city’s high-immigrant districts – which quickly caught on across the country.
French police arrested 454 people overnight, 301 of which were taken into custody. The French interior ministry had originally released the much lower figure of 650 cars torched, claiming “once again this year, the overall number of vehicles burned demonstrates that, however intolerable, the phenomenon is contained.”
The far-Right Front National, however, denounced what it called the government’s “extremely hazy security record”.
“The new interior minister Bruno Le Roux…(initially) didn’t communicate the number of vehicles burned and considers that the number of cars directly set on fire to be ‘contained’ while even this constitutes a significant rise” the FN said in a statement.
Torched cars, sexual assaults, and thugs beating up the police: just part of life in Europe’s new normal. Just don’t thank Angela Merkel’s “open door” policies for the outcome: you may be branded a extremist who gets their talking points from the KGB, and promptly sequestered.
Authore by Leonid Brershidky via Bloomberg.com,
During Russian President Vladimir Putin"s annual press conference on Thursday, a friendly journalist asked Putin whether the escalating tension in relations with the U.S. and the crumbling of arms control treaties would draw Russia into an unsustainable arms race. "We will ensure our security without engaging in an arms race," the president replied, citing widely diverging dollar numbers for the U.S. and Russian defense budgets.
That"s a simplistic answer from a politician starting an election campaign (of sorts: Putin is headed for re-election in March without giving anyone else a chance). The more pointed question that should be asked is this: How, with a relatively small and decreasing military budget -- 2.77 trillion rubles ($42.3 billion) for 2018, down from some 3.05 trillion rubles this year -- is Russia is still a formidable military rival to the U.S., with its enormous and increasing budget of almost $692.1 billion in 2018, up from $583 billion this year?
The equalizing value of the two countries" well-balanced nuclear deterrents is enough of a reason to avoid direct confrontation. But leaving that aside, Putin may well understand the nature of modern military challenges better than U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. legislators -- and Russia"s authoritarian system may be more efficient when it comes to military allocations. Note that Russia is now almost an equal to the U.S. as a power broker in the Middle East, where the Russian military has just helped Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad effectively win a civil war -- in which the U.S. was helping the other side. At the same time, Russian defense spending numbers are deceptive. The country is far more militarized than its defense spending suggests. That level of security spending is only sustainable at the expense of Russia"s future.
Trump"s military spending hike, which makes it necessary to remove the existing cap on defense expenditure, is a dubious and likely outdated response to decreased global security.
Quite aside from the cost of maintaining the world"s most powerful military, the U.S., according to the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, has spent at least $2 trillion on its wars since 2001. But, considering the less transparent costs, such as those of caring for veterans, war-related increases to the Department of Defense base budget and interest on the debt taken on to cover defense spending, it"s closer to $4 trillion at the very least. The Afghan conflict has cost the U.S. at least $840 billion -- more than four times Afghanistan"s cumulative GDP since 2001. Since the 2018 U.S. defense budget contains additional funds for sending 3,500 more troops to Afghanistan, the results of the massive outlay over the years are clearly suboptimal.
Today"s wars aren"t fought with fat wads of money. The adversaries are mostly small, agile forces that aren"t as well-resourced as nation states. Fighting them requires a combination of local knowledge, brute force applied only at important points in a conflict and ability to shift risks onto the shoulders of irregular fighters. Russia kept cutting its defense budget all through its participation in the Syrian war. Yabloko, an opposition party, earlier this year put the cost of the Syrian operation for Russia at about 140.4 billion rubles ($2.4 billion at the current exchange rate) since September, 2015; that"s some 4 percent of what the U.S. allocated to overseas contingency operations in 2017 alone -- and the outcome is as good as Russia could have expected.
The U.S. is pumping money into comparatively inefficient warfighting -- and into preparing for the kind of large-scale war that"s not likely to take place because of existing nuclear arsenals and unauthorized nuclear proliferation. Even North Korea, with its unknown but probably small nuclear capability, is dangerous enough to deter the U.S. from attacking. At his press conference, Putin made the point that the U.S. couldn"t know for sure where to strike in North Korea -- and if the Kim regime managed to get a single long-range, nuclear-armed missile in the air, the results could be catastrophic.
U.S. defense budgets, of course, feed a large, powerful domestic industry; even the indirect U.S. involvement in a conflict lifts the stock prices of major defense contractors, research has shown. In Russia, the biggest contractors are state-controlled; they have far less lobbying clout, and the technocratic Russian government has kept them on a short leash, though some of the military"s purchasing decisions have served regional development rather than defense purposes. Such an arrangement, which would have been inefficient in most other industries, probably reduces wasteful spending in the budget-dependent military-industrial complex.
That said, in relative terms, Russia is spending more on force-related functions than the U.S. does. Trump"s budget proposal allocated $71.8 billion to the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. Add that up with the defense spending, and the total security budget will stand at $764 billion, less than 19 percent of total federal spending. Russia will spend a combined 29 percent of its federal budget -- some 4.8 trillion rubles -- on defense and domestic security. That"s probably not all of the security-related outlay either, as Mark Galeotti pointed out earlier this year: Even some of the education and development spending in Russia goes toward military goals.
In the U.S., federal law enforcement outlay is a fraction of defense spending. In Russia, the two areas of government expenditure are almost equal. That"s the difference between a country with a relatively liberal domestic order and a near-dictatorship, which relies heavily on the suppression of dissent and must keep large law enforcement agencies under centralized control.
Russia could show the world how to spend efficiently on more than adequate defense -- but instead it is engaged in an arms race against its own development. For years, it has been underfunding areas such as education and health, undermining what Putin told the press conference was his vision of the country"s future -- flexible, technology-driven, highly productive. Judging by Putin"s answers to reporters on Thursday, he still prefers not to notice that.
Update: as of 9:30am ET, the @JulianAssange accounts has returned, although it appears to be a truncated or restored one, which shortly after its reappearance shows just over 1,000 followers.
A "returned" Assange tweeted the following cartoon.
— Julian Assange ???? (@JulianAssange) December 25, 2017
* * *
Julian Assange"s Twitter account was mysteriously deleted on Christmas Eve, leaving perhaps the most important witness in the Trump-Russia investigation cut off from the rest of the world while he sits in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Attempting to access Assange"s Twitter account results in the following message:
This page only appears when an account has been deleted, not suspended - by either Twitter or the account owner.
It wasn"t clear whether the account was suspended or deleted by Twitter or Assange himself -- or why or for how long. Twitter wasn"t commenting
This tweet by the WikiLeaks Task Force - an official WikiLeaks handle, suggested that people shouldn"t jump to conclusions, as "haters and conspiracy theorists rush to post the usual attention seeking rubbish," before wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.
Julian"s account disappears, so haters and conspiracy theorists rush to post the usual attention seeking rubbish. Ah, Twitter.
Merry Christmas, people.https://t.co/oCBOW2Tc5L pic.twitter.com/GmdXG36Xt3
— WikiLeaks Task Force (@WLTaskForce) December 25, 2017
The official Wikileaks Twitter account was still live but wasn"t mentioning the Assange account.
According to CBS, an account purporting to be an alternative Assange account was claiming Twitter had deleted his official one ahead of a blockbuster story he"s preparing to break. There was no confirmation that Assange was authoring that alternative account -- and that account has now been suspended by Twitter.
Meanwhile, Journalist Charles Johnson - who traveled with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to London to meet with Assange in August, posted the following on Facebook after Assange"s Twitter account went down:
Moreover, on December 1, WikiLeaks" official account tweeted "Merry Christmas from @WikiLeaks" with an embedded video referencing perpetual war, and the hashtags #Yemen #Libya #Iraq #Syria #Pakistan #Afghanistan #Somalia #Ukraine
Merry Christmas from @WikiLeaks https://t.co/lmsmphuH2Nhttps://t.co/cGRnpjx6O8https://t.co/PkYqIcOZJW #Yemen #Libya #Iraq #Syria #Pakistan #Afghanistan #Somalia #Ukraine
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 1, 2017
Some have suggested that the events are part of some Christmas-linked plan, although so far there has been no confirmation.
The account deletion comes on the heels of a break-in last Monday at the Madrid office of WikiLeaks lawyer Baltasar Garzon"s, in what police described as a "very professional" operation. Garzon told El Periodico and Ser magazine "They had not taken what they have been looking for," and client security "has not been affected," however police are analyzing his computer equipment to determine whether any files were taken or copied.
Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange published a tweet calling a Jimmy Dore video "Brilliant" - prominently featuring Assange"s interview with a Dutch television host in which the WikiLeaks founder strongly implies that slain DNC IT staffer Seth Rich was the source of emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. (Assange clip at 21:30)
During the clip, Assange can be seen nodding his head in response to a question about Rich:
In August, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher travelled to London with journalist Charles Johnson for a meeting with Assange, where Rohrabacher said the WikiLeaks founder offered "firsthand" information proving that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia, and which would refute the Russian hacking theory.
Rohrabacher brought that message back to Trump"s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, to propose a deal. In exchange for a presidential pardon, Assange would share evidence that would refute the Russian hacking theory by proving they weren"t the source of the emails, according to the WSJ.
“The possible “deal”—a term used by Mr. Rohrabacher during the Wednesday phone call—would involve a pardon of Mr. Assange or “something like that,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. In exchange, Mr. Assange would probably present a computer drive or other data-storage device that Mr. Rohrabacher said would exonerate Russia in the long-running controversy about who was the source of hacked and stolen material aimed at embarrassing the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.”
‘He would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof,’ Mr. Rohrabacher said.
When Trump was asked in late September about the Assange proposal, he responded that he"d "never heard" of it, causing Rohrabacher to unleash on John Kelly, who he blamed for blocking the proposal from reaching the President, Rohrabacher told the Daily Caller:
“I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller Tuesday in a phone interview.
“This would have to be a cooperative effort between his own staff and the leadership in the intelligence communities to try to prevent the president from making the decision as to whether or not he wants to take the steps necessary to expose this horrendous lie that was shoved down the American people’s throats so incredibly earlier this year,” Rohrabacher said.
Contributing to the notion of deep-state interference, CIA director Mike Pompeo referred to WikiLeaks as a "hostile intelligence service" in April, calling Julian Assange "a fraud, a coward hiding behind a screen" for exposing information about democratic governments rather than authoritarian regimes. This quite the ironic statement, considering Pompeo used leaked emails from WikiLeaks as proof "the fix was in" against President Trump.
Mike Pompeo was sharing Wikileaks documents on his Congressional Twitter account less than a year ago pic.twitter.com/cl5P6vnXSE
— Jessica Schulberg (@jessicaschulb) April 13, 2017
Let"s also not forget Donald Trump proclaiming "I Love Wikileaks!" less than a month before the 2016 election.
So Julian Assange - ostensibly the most important witness in the Russia hacking investigation, offered to prove that Russia was not the source of the leaked emails in exchange for a pardon. This proposition was conveyed through Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who Rohrabacher says never allowed the deal to reach Trump for consideration. Months later, WikiLeaks attorney Baltasar Garzon"s office was raided in a "very professional" operation which is being labeled an attempted robbery. Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange tweets a Jimmy Dore video containing his own strong implication that Seth Rich was the source of the leaked emails, and six days later his Twitter account is gone.
That said, tweets directly from the WikiLeaks urge not to jump to conclusions.
Assange"s account deletion also comes on the heels of several new Twitter rules rolled out on December 18, which many feared was the beginning of a "purge" of conservative accounts over user behavior both on and off the platform. The rules are aimed at people who associate with hate groups that "use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes" - however nothing Assange has done comes close to fitting that description.
So did Julian Assange delete his Twitter account - and if so, why? Was this yet another rogue Twitter employee lashing out on their last day, as was the case with President Trump"s temporary account deletion in early November? Or did Twitter delete the account of one of the most important figures in the 2016 election.
The twin scourges of opioid addiction and worsening wealth inequality are literally draining the lifeblood from the American public. Case in point: The Centers for Disease Control confirmed earlier today that the average life expectancy at birth declined in 2016 for the second consecutive year - the first multiyear decline since 1963, when a flu epidemic led to a rash of deaths as hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans succumbed to the virus.
The increase has been fueled by a 21% rise in drug overdose deaths, according to the Washington Post.
Let that sink in for a second: In 1963, penicillin was a relatively recent innovation. We live in an age of unprecedented medicinal efficacy. Despite this, Americans are sicker than ever before.
And as if that weren’t enough, they’re also spending more on health-care than ever before. Data from the NHE shows the US spent a staggering $3.3 trillion on healthcare in 2016, equivalent to roughly 18% of GDP.
“I think we should take it very seriously,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, told the Washington Post. “If you look at the other developed countries in the world, they’re not seeing this kind of thing. Life expectancy is going up."
As we’ve highlighted time and time again, more than 42,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses alone in 2016 - a 28% increase over 2015. When deaths from drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine and benzodiazepines are included, the overall increase was 21%.
A multiyear decline in life expectancy is more commonly associated with AIDS epidemics in southern and eastern Africa or wars in Syria and Afghanistan, said Majid Ezzati, a professor of public health at Imperial College London who has studied life expectancy.
“The story does come down to young people,” he said. “It’s the overdose story, to a large extent."
Last year - when the CDC data showed the first annualized drop in life expectancy since the early 1990s - public health observers declared that this could be the beginning of a seriously troubling trend that could have far reaching repercussions for the US economy. Experts, including Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, examined the impact of so-called “diseases of despair” - drug overdoses, suicides and alcoholism - as well as small increases in deaths from heart disease, strokes and diabetes as the Baby Boom generation ages into retirement.
Furthermore, the 2016 data shows that just three major causes of death are responsible: unintentional injuries, Alzheimer’s disease and suicides, with the bulk of the difference attributable to the 63,632 people who died of overdoses. That total was an increase of more than 11,000 over the 52,404 who died of the same cause in 2015. This trend was largely driven by deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which more than doubled from the previous year. Heroin and prescription opioid overdose deaths also rose, but more modestly.
At the same time, a long decline in deaths from heart disease continued a six-year trend of leveling out, Anderson said. The small decrease last year in the rate of the nation’s leading cause of death no longer canceled the drug epidemic’s impact on life expectancy, Anderson said.
“The key factor is the increase in drug overdose deaths,” he said.
Overall, life expectancy dropped by a tenth of a year, from 78.7 to 78.6. It fell two-tenths of a year for men, who have much higher overdose death rates, from 76.3 to 76.1 years. Women’s life expectancy held steady at 81.1 years.
While drug mortality has been increasing among all age groups since 1999, it’s highest among those ages 25 to 54. Their fatal overdose rate for all drugs was roughly 35 cases per 100,000 individuals in 2016, compared with 12 deaths per 100,000 for people under 24 and six deaths per 100,000 among seniors 65 and older.
Examining this data through the lens of gender reveals another startling detail: The bulk of this increase is driven by a spike in overdose deaths among men.
As WaPo points out, men of all ages (26 deaths per 100,000) are twice as likely to die of a drug overdose as women (13 per 100,000). At the state level, West Virginia stands alone as the epicenter of overdose mortality, with 52 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2016. The next two states, New Hampshire and Ohio, each saw 39 deaths per 100,000 last year.
“This is no longer an opioid crisis,” said Patrick Kennedy, a former Rhode Island congressman who was a member of President Trump’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. “This is a moral crisis . . . we know how to answer this problem, but we can’t get around our own prejudices."
During the campaign, President Trump promised to do everything in his power to combat the opioid epidemic. But so far, his actions have fallen far short of the recommendations from a committee that he created in March to study options to suppress the crisis. Most notably, Trump ignored a recommendation from the committee to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency - a designation that would’ve allowed the hardest-hit states to access federal disaster-relief funds. Instead Trump declared it a national health crisis, leaving states empty-handed.
Another factor that shows just how damaging opioids have been to the American public: last year, rates of heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, strokes, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, and kidney disease fell, as did the nation’s overall death rate. But this wasn’t enough to offset the impact of opioids.
Increasing incidences of Alzheimer’s disease have also contributed to this trend.
“As people avoid [cancer and heart disease], they’re going to survive long enough to die of Alzheimer’s,” he said.
And while only limited provisional data is available for 2017, things don’t look any better.
“My guess is that when all of the data are in that the [2017] trend line will be at least as steep as for 2016, if not steeper,” Anderson said.
And in case you wondered what all this has to do with me... apart from it"s "your" life expectancy, well this is what happened to the only thing that really matters to everyone... The Dow... the last time that US life expectancy dropped for two straight years...
Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,
The last section of the new US National Security Strategy (NSS) describes the envisaged application of the Trump Doctrine in a regional context all across the world, and it’s worthwhile to examine what storylines will most likely be advanced by the policy document’s intrinsic infowar component. This analysis is divided according to the geographic categories contained in the NSS and proceeds along that order, after which a brief summary will be presented in highlighting the most discernable global trends.
The US says that “a geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order is taking place in the Indo-Pacific region” as China employs multifaceted influence strategies in a concerted effort to get regional states to follow its economic and political models. Although presented by China as being mutually beneficial, the NSS describes Beijing’s Silk Road relationships as being detrimental to its partners’ sovereignty. In response, Washington claims that “states throughout the region are calling for sustained U.S. leadership in a collective response that upholds a regional order respectful of sovereignty and independence”, which implies the creation of what the author has previously described as a ‘China Containment Coalition’ (CCC) to preserve the existing US-led unipolar system them. The suggested outcome of this initiative is the US’ “quadrilateral cooperation with Japan, Australia, and India”, with the latter once again being referred to as a “Major Defense Partner” whose “growing relationships throughout the region” will be supported by the US.
Elsewhere in the area, North Korea is identified as “a global threat that requires a global response”, later revealed in this section as being missile defense cooperation between the US, Japan, and South Korea towards the eventual aim of “an area defense capability”, one which was previously described in the document as “not intended to undermine strategic stability or disrupt longstanding strategic relationships with Russia or China.” Looking southwards, the US wants to “reenergize [its] alliances with the Philippines and Thailand and strengthen [its] partnerships with Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and others to help them become cooperative maritime partners”, with it being inferred that “reenergizing” is a euphemism for “winning back” Manila and Bangkok. Altogether, the US plans to use ASEAN and APEC as regional institutions for advancing its geopolitical and economic interests, with the former probably seeing some of the ASEAN states become the US’ “Lead From Behind” partners in “containing China” while the latter will result in more bilateral trade deals.
Russia is fear mongered as engaging in “subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America’s commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments”, suggesting that any objective developments that even remotely hint at either of these three conclusions will be dismissed as ‘Russian propaganda’ and their messengers discredited as ‘Russian agents/trolls’. China is also mentioned in this section as having “gain[ed] a strategic foothold in Europe by expanding its unfair trade practices and investing in key industries, sensitive technologies, and infrastructure”, showing that the US is now paying attention to the progress that its 16+1 framework has made in the “Three Seas” region of Central and Eastern Europe and will likely go on the information offensive against it in the coming future.
Daesh and the Migrant Crisis are also listed as posing serious threats to the EU as well.
In reassuring the continent, the US says that its “European allies and partners increase [its] strategic reach and provide access to forward basing and overflight rights for global operations”, which explains the self-interested reason why Washington will evidently abide by its Article 5 commitment to NATO. It believes that deepening transatlantic collaboration is necessary to protect Europe from the aforementioned threats that were described, with military spending increases geared towards modernizing capacities and building a ‘missile defense shield’ to ‘protect’ against Russia, Iran, and even supposedly North Korea too, while US efforts to “contest China’s unfair trade and economic practices and restrict its acquisition of sensitive technologies” in the EU will probably mean that Junker’s September 2017 proposal for a “European Enabling Framework” ‘screening process’ will become a roadblock to Beijing’s plans.
Furthermore, the US wants to expand its energy exports to Europe, which might see it getting more involved in the activities of LNG terminal-hosting “Three Seas” states such as Croatia and thus setting the stage for a “Balkan Pivot” to more directly counter China there.
Right off the bat, the US blames Iran for all of the region’s woes by stating that “the interconnected problems of Iranian expansion, state collapse, jihadist ideology, socio-economic stagnation, and regional rivalries have convulsed the Middle East”, accusing what it labels as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” of “tak[ing] advantage of instability to expand its influence through partners and proxies, weapon proliferation, and funding” that oftentimes takes the form of Iran “develop[ing] more capable ballistic missiles and intelligence capabilities, and [undertaking in] malicious cyber activities.” Iran is painted as the ultimate evil in order to whitewash Israel, which the US attempts to unabashedly do in the passage where the authors write that “the threats from jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region’s problems.”
In fact, the NSS notes, “states have increasingly found common interests with Israel in confronting common threats”, in a nod to the de-facto alliance between the GCC and Israel against Iran. The US lists its chief objectives as strengthening cooperation with the GCC and what it describes as the “independent state” of Iraq, with the latter phrase hinting that Washington will work behind the scenes to counter Tehran’s influence in Baghdad. This presumption is apparently confirmed by the next passage where the US commits to “work[ing] with partners to…neutralize Iranian malign influence”, which again implies a similar “Lead From Behind” strategy just like it wants to employ in the Indo-Pacific.
Moreover, the US says that it will “seek a settlement to the Syrian civil war that sets the conditions for refugees to return home and rebuild their lives in safety”, signaling a step back from its previous regime change obsession and possibly opening the doors for a pragmatic ‘New Détente’ deal with Russia over this issue. In addition, the expected US commitment “to helping facilitate a comprehensive peace agreement that is acceptable to both Israelis and Palestinians” is reiterated in the text, though this is nothing more than rhetoric for distracting from the US’ determinedly pro-Israeli policies. Most interestingly, however, is the penultimate policy prescription that the US will “help (its) partners procure interoperable missile defense and other capabilities to better defend against active missile threats”, which demonstrates that its missile defense plans are indeed Eurasian-wide and stretch all across the EU-Mideast-Northeast Asian Rimland.
The US draws significant attention what it describes as Pakistan-based threats on multiple occasions, slyly speaking tongue-in-cheek when talking about the Pakistan that it’s supposedly seeking in order to indirectly accuse the Pakistan of today of embodying these said threats. For example, when the authors write that their country “seeks a Pakistan that is not engaged in destabilizing behavior…will press Pakistan to intensify its counterterrorism efforts, since no partnership can survive a country’s support for militants and terrorists who target a partner’s own service members and officials…(and) will also encourage Pakistan to continue demonstrating that it is a responsible steward of its nuclear assets”, it’s essentially saying that Pakistan is destabilizing the region, supporting anti-American militants and terrorists who target US forces in Afghanistan, and irresponsibly wielding nuclear weapons which might one day fall into the hands of the same terrorists that it’s accused of backing.
India, US, Japan annual Malabar naval drills
All of these hostile narratives against Pakistan explain why the US wants the world to think that “the prospect for an Indo-Pakistani military conflict [which] could lead to a nuclear exchange remains a key concern requiring consistent diplomatic attention”, as the thinly veiled inference is that Islamabad is solely responsible for this dangerous state of affairs. It’s predictable that Washington would weave such a one-sided storyline because it envisions New Delhi as its 21st-century partner for ‘containing China’, with its strategists writing that the US “will deepen [its] strategic partnership with India and support its leadership role in Indian Ocean security and throughout the broader region”.
Concerning Central Asia, the NSS says that the US “will encourage the economic integration of Central and South Asia to promote prosperity and economic linkages that will bolster connectivity and trade”, and since it’s improbable that this is an oblique statement of support for CPEC, the only realistic conclusion is that it’s an American endorsement for the Central Asian component of India’s Chabahar project. As even the most inexperienced observer would know, this port is based in Iran, so the US will have to work overtime in crafting a semi-cohesive explanation for why it doesn’t mind India working with Washington’s hated nemesis in Tehran, though the answer could probably be simplistically summed up as ‘realpolitik’ for ‘containing China’.
Another point to mention is that the US says that it “seeks Central Asian states that are resilient against domination by rival powers, are resistant to becoming jihadist safe havens, and prioritize reforms”, and that it “will work with the Central Asian states to guarantee access to the region to support [its] counterterrorism efforts.” Evidently, the US is aiming to exploit the new Daesh threat to the region that it helped transfer from “Syraq” to Afghanistan as an excuse for reestablishing the military partnerships that it used to have with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, possibly up to the point of once again basing its troops on their territory. While pretending that this is only in the interests of “counterterrorism efforts”, the real motivation would be to boost their “resilien[cy] against domination by rival powers”, or in other words, try to dislodge them from the joint Russian-Chinese multipolar orbit of the SCO.
The US claims that “democratic states connected by shared values and economic interests will reduce the violence, drug trafficking, and illegal immigration that threaten [their] common security”, but in reality it’s only concerned about leveraging its economic connectivity with Latin American states to counter the three mentioned threats and doesn’t actually care too much about “democratic states” or “shared values”. After all, the US supports the Honduran government of Juan Orlando Hernandez despite the OAS requesting an electoral redo after the incumbent was suspected of stealing the election and then openly resorting to deadly force to suppress opposition protests against him. The Trump Administration’s visceral hatred of anything socialist is also on full display in condemning Cuba and Venezuela, which it believes have served as magnets for inviting Chinese and Russian influence into the region via economic and military means, respectively.
The NSS emphasizes the US’ “regional efforts to build security and prosperity through strong diplomatic engagement” and its desire to “isolate governments that refuse to act as responsible partners in advancing hemispheric peace and prosperity”, suggesting that the incipient anti-Venezuelan coalition model that’s forming could be replicated against the similarly multipolar-aligned ALBA states of Bolivia and Nicaragua due to their socialist ideals and in the event that they forcibly react against any forthcoming Hybrid War provocations against them. The declaration that the US “will encourage further market-based economic reforms and encourage transparency to create conditions for sustained prosperity” adds credence to the claims that it will probably expand its “Operation Condor 2.0” unconventional campaign of restoring its hegemonic hemispheric influence against those states and possibly other ones as well.
US President Donald Trump attends a working dinner with Latin American leaders in New York
On the economic front, the document says that the US “will modernize [its] trade agreements and deepen [its] economic ties with the region and ensure that trade is fair and reciprocal”, which is just a reaffirmation of Trump’s well-known intent to renegotiate NAFTA, but which could also extend to the US’ other hemispheric multilateral trade deal of CAFTA-DR and the bilateral ones that it has with Chile, Colombia, and Peru (the latter three of which plus NAFTA-member Mexico constitute the four states of the Pacific Alliance trading bloc). The phrasing about “deepening economic ties with the region” might indicate the US’ plans to reach bilateral trade deals with the Mercosur members, probably beginning with Brazil and then having the rest of the bloc fall in line afterwards. Altogether, the interweaving of bilateral trade deals all throughout the hemisphere would represent the de-facto fulfillment of the long-sought “Free Trade Area of the Americas” (FTAA).
The final section of the NSS’ regional context review is the most direct about the US’ intentions to “contain China” and obstruct its Silk Road strategy. The authors confidently write that Africa “represent[s] potential new markets for U.S. goods and services”, the demand of which “is high and will likely grow” because of what it hints as being the desire of many countries to replicate its political and economic models. This is obviously the infowar narrative that will be spun in serving as the ‘carrot’ for attracting African partners (subordinates), while the ‘stick’ is the equally weaponized storyline that “some Chinese practices undermine Africa’s long-term development by corrupting elites, dominating extractive industries, and locking countries into unsustainable and opaque debts and commitments.”
US President Donald Trump congratulates African leaders
In case there was any doubt that the US wants to challenge China’s dominance in Africa, the document unambiguously announces that the US “will offer American goods and services, both because it is profitable for [it] and because it serves as an alternative to China’s often extractive economic footprint on the continent.”
To this end, the US “seeks sovereign African states that are integrated into the world economy”, which is a just another way of saying that it wants its partners to abandon the Chinese model of state-driven development and open up their economies to Western businessmen and their Indo-Japanese partners instead. “Support[ing] economic integration among African states” could be seen as developing an anti-Chinese trading bloc in the future, though this is unlikely since all existing economic organizations on the continent are closely aligned with the People’s Republic, as are most of the countries that are party to the massive 2015 Tripartite Free Trade Area in China’s most active “sphere of Silk Road influence”.
However, where the US is most capable of making African inroads is through military-security relations in “partner[ing] with governments, civil society, and regional organizations to end long-running, violent conflicts”, which carries with it a whiff of “Lead From Behind” “nation-building” that America is much more experienced with (for better or for worse) than China. By using the existing anti-terrorist pretext present throughout most of Africa to degree or another and especially in the transregional Sahel, the US will probably seek to leverage its military advantages to “stabilize” these states in exchange for them disengaging from China and/or clinching profitable trade deals with the US afterwards, since it will otherwise be exceptionally difficult for the US to economically counterbalance China any other way.
After examining the Trump Doctrine in all of its regional contexts, it’s possible to detect several interconnected global trends that are present in the US’ National Security Strategy:
Demonization Of Strategic Rivals:
The US is hell-bent on framing its strategic multipolar rivals of Russia, China, and Iran as responsible for global destabilization in order to deflect attention from it and its partners’ responsibility for this state of affairs, with the distinct possibility that Pakistan will soon be added to this list of adversaries as America moves towards making India its top international ally in the future.
Assembling “Lead From Behind” Coalitions:
The demonization of the US’ strategic rivals provides it with the ‘plausible pretext’ for assembling regional coalitions against them all throughout the Eurasian supercontinent and potentially even in Latin America too if it gets its way against Venezuela, thus formalizing a new model of unipolar proxy control that has flexibly adapted to multipolar challenges.
Building “Missile Defense Shields”:
One of the most prominent state-to-state manifestations of “Lead From Behind” cooperation between the US and its subordinates is the construction of “missile defense shields” on trumped-up pretexts in order to undermine Russia and China’s nuclear second-strike capabilities, with the possibility existing that the same model can one day be implemented in South Asia to support India against Pakistan.
Exploiting Non-State Threats:
Another way in which the US plans to utilize its “Lead From Behind” coalitions is to exploit the prevalence of threatening non-state actors such as jihadists and transnational criminal organizations by using them as a ‘plausible pretense’ for setting up a range of differently sized regional bases in its partnered countries to support special forces raids against these shared menaces.
Stopping The Silk Road:
The combination of demonizing infowars, “Lead From Behind” coalitions, and multidimensional partnerships with its allies naturally leads one to the conclusion that the US plans to employ all instruments of its power (Hybrid War) in stopping China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity so as to counter multipolarity and indefinitely preserve the declining unipolar system.
