US accounts for 40% of whole world's military expenditures
The immense city-within-a-city "embassy" in Baghdad not only remains, but its cost is also to rise under Obama to $1.8 billion a year, from an estimated $1.5 billion in Bush's last year. The Obama administration is also constructing mega-embassies in
Pakistan and Afghanistan that are completely without precedent. Throughout the Gulf region, billions are being spent to develop "critical base & port facilities," along with military training & arms shipments expanding the US global system of
militarization.
Meanwhile, global military expenses continue to rise. For 2008, the US accounted for over 40% of global military expenses, eight times as much as its nearest rival, China. The US is of course alone in having a vast network of military
bases around the world and a global surveillance and control system, and in regularly invading other countries (with impunity, given its power). From 1999 to 2008, global military spending increased 45%, with the US accounting for 58% of the total.
Eliminate nukes under UN; already voted 147-to-1 against US
It is clear how the threat of nuclear weapons can be ended: they can be eliminated, a legal obligation of the nuclear powers, as the World Court determined a decade ago. More broadly, there are sensible and feasible plans to restrict all production of
weapons-usable fissile materials to an international agency, to which states can apply for nonmilitary uses. The UN Committee on Disarmament has already votes for a verifiable treaty with these provisions in 2004. The vote was 147 to 1 (the US) with two
abstentions (Israel & Britain). A negative vote by the reigning global superpower amounts to a veto, in fact a double veto: the proposals cannot be implemented, and are banned from public awareness. But these outcomes are not graven in stone. There are
concrete steps that can be taken to progress toward these critical goals. And an informed & engaged public, worldwide, can act to ensure that the opportunity is not lost. One important step would be the establishment of nuclear weapons-free zones.
Iran has no nukes, but Israel & Pakistan & India do
Obama called for tough direct diplomacy "without preconditions" in order "to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior," namely pursuing a nuclear program and supporting terrorism. If Iran abandons its troubling behavior, the
US might move toward normal diplomatic and economic relations, Obama proposed, but "if Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation."
Furthermore, Obama proceeded, he will strengthen the
NPT "so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions." He made no mention of the conclusion of US intelligence that Iran had not had a weapons program for five years, unlike
US allies in Israel, Pakistan, and India, the three countries that all maintain extensive nuclear weapons programs (with direct US support), all unmentioned as well.
Guantanamo is a torture chamber beyond reach of law
Even without inquiry, it was reasonable to suppose that Guantanamo was a torture chamber. Why else send prisoners where they would be beyond the reach of the law--incidentally, a place that Washington is using in violation of a treaty that was forced on
Cuba at the point of a gun? Security reasons are alleged, but they are hard to take seriously. The same expectations held for secret prisons and rendition, and were fulfilled.
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld et al, did introduce some important innovations.
Ordinarily, torture is farmed out to subsidiaries under US supervision, not carried out by Americans directly in the government-established torture chambers. What the
Obama [ban on torture] ostensibly knocks off is that small percentage of torture now done by Americans while retaining the overwhelming bulk of the system's torture, which is done by foreigners under US patronage.
Pre-emptive war ok; “preventive war” is a war crime
The [Bush administration’s] strategy asserts the right of the US to undertake “preventive war” at will: Preventive, not pre-emptive. Pre-emptive war might fall within the framework of international law. Thus if bombers had been detected
approaching the US from a military base in Grenada, then, under a reasonable interpretation of the UN Charter, a pre-emptive attack destroying the planes and perhaps even the Grenadan base would have been justifiable.
But the justifications for
pre-emptive war do not hold for preventive war, particularly as that concept is interpreted by its current enthusiasts: the use of military force to eliminate an imagined or invented threat.
Preventive war falls within the category of war crimes.
[Bush’s revision after discovering no WMDs in Iraq] suggests that the administration will act against a hostile regime that has nothing more than the intent and ability to develop WMDs. This revision grants Washington the right of arbitrary aggression.
US & UK have regularly used chemical & biological weapons
Recent US/UK toleration for poison gas and chemical warfare is not too surprising. In 1919, Winston Churchill was enthusiastic about the prospects of “using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes”--Kurds and Afghans--and authorized the
RAF Middle East command to user chemical weapons “against recalcitrant Arabs as experiment,” dismissing objections by the India office as “unreasonable” and deploring the “squeamishness about the use of gas.”
The Kennedy administration pioneered the massive use of chemical weapons against civilians as it launched its attack against South Vietnam in 1961-1962. There has been much rightful concern about the effects on
U.S. soldiers, but not the incomparably worse effects on civilians.
There is also substantial evidence of U.S. use of biological weapons against Cuba, reported as minor news in 1977, and at worst only a small component of continuing U.S. terror.
Powerful states define rogue states according to their needs
The concept “rogue state” is highly nuanced. Thus Cuba qualifies as a leading “rogue state” because of its alleged involvement in international terrorism, but the United States does not fall into the category despite its terrorist attacks against
Cuba for close to 40 years, apparently continuing through last summer.
Cuba was a “rogue state” when its military forces were in Angola, backing the government against South African attacks supported by the United States.
South Africa, in contrast, was not a rogue state then, nor during the Reagan years, when it caused over $60 billion in damage and 1.5 million deaths in neighboring states, and with ample U.S./U.K. support.
The same exemption applies to Indonesia and many others. The criteria are fairly clear: a “rogue State” is not simply a criminal state, but one that defies the orders of the powerful--who are, of course, exempt.
Cold War fear of USSR was played to control US population
The Cold War was a kind of tacit arrangement between the Soviet Union and the US under which the US conducted its wars against the Third World and controlled its allies in Europe,
while the Soviets kept an iron grip on their own internal empire and their satellites in Eastern Europe-each side using the other to justify repression and violence.
Source: What Uncle Sam Really Wants, by Noam Chomsky, p. 80
, Jan 13, 1991
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