In his article "Marching as to War," American paleoconservative author Pat Buchanan expresses incredulity over American Vice President Joe Biden's post-Ukraine-coup trip through the former Soviet bloc countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. During the junket, Biden reiterated America's commitment to "protect" these nations: "our word" is "solemn" and "iron clad." According to Buchanan, Biden was "affirming war guarantees General Eisenhower would have regarded as insane."[41]
Here we may say that while Biden's actions may have been insane during the Eisenhower administration, they are perfectly logical under the Obama administration. In keeping with the theory of the Power Principle, or Kohr's notion of "critical quantities of power," the collapse of the Soviet Union eliminated the primary check to the American empire. The dogs of war could be fully unleashed. Now that Russia is resurgent, and the US declining economically, there is a great deal of barking going on.
On April Fool's Day, 2014, NATO Sectary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stated:
NATO's greatest responsibility is to protect and defend our territory and our people. And make no mistake, this is what we will do. We will make sure we have updated military plans, enhanced exercises and appropriate deployments.[42]
Rasmussen is nothing if not worldly, considering that "his" people evidently include populations from countries as varied as Albania, Croatia, France, Iceland, Italy, Romania, the UK and the USA.
The illegal bombing of Serbia by the Clinton administration may be regarded as the starting point in the New Cold War, for it was during the assault that NATO began its eastward shift.
The destruction of Yugoslavia was "rational," argues historian Michael Parenti, because "Yugoslavia was the one country in Eastern Europe that would not voluntarily overthrow what remained of its socialist system and install a free-market economic order"Yugoslavs were proud of their postwar economic development and of their independence from both the Warsaw pact and NATO."[43]
Considerably less rational was the behaviour of US General Wesley Clark during the conflict. According to British pop singer James Blunt (best known for his song "You're beautiful"), who commanded 30,000 NATO troops in Bosnia, he was instructed by the US General to attack a squadron of Russian soldiers at the Pristina Air Base.
The direct command [that] came in from Gen Wesley Clark was to overpower them. Various words were used that seemed unusual to us. Words such as 'destroy' came down the radio.[44]
Like Vasili Arkhipov during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Stanislav Petrov during the 1983 nuclear-warning "computer glitch," James Blunt disobeyed orders. He was backed up by British General Sir Mike Jackson. Said Jackson: "I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War III."[45]
In contravention of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which demands "good-faith" efforts to work toward nuclear disarmament, the United States is projected to spend 1 trillion maintaining and expanding its nuclear weapons systems over the next 30 years [46] -- assuming we survive that long.
End of Part 1
Scott Noble is a documentary filmmaker. His films can be viewed online at Metanoia-Films.org
NOTES
[1] Mark Townsend and Paul Harris, "Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us" The Observer (22 February 2004)
[2] Peter Kaufman, "The Rationality of Irrationality," click here
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