Re: [Peace-discuss] Barack Obama and the ‘Unipolar Moment’

[Morton K. Brussel]

Was this truly published in/by the NYT???  Inconceivable.

  --mkb

And what of Chosky's mysterious statement that:
Kennedy planners were making decisions that threatened Britain with  
obliteration, but they were not informing the British about it.


On Oct 7, 2009, at 9:12 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> ["Though the world is unipolar militarily, since the 1970s it has  
> become
> economically 'tripolar,' with comparable centers in North America,  
> Europe and
> northeast Asia. The global economy is becoming more diverse,  
> particularly with
> the growth of Asian economies."  It seems to me that the question  
> is, Will the US be allowed, by its citizens and others, to use its  
> unipolar military dominance to redress the tripolar economic  
> balance?  --CGE]
>
> 	Barack Obama and the ‘Unipolar Moment’
> 	By Noam Chomsky - October 6, 2009
>
> Every powerful state relies on specialists whose task is to show  
> that what the
> strong do is noble and just and, if the weak suffer, it is their  
> fault.
>
> In the West, these specialists are called “intellectuals” and, with  
> marginal
> exceptions, they fulfill their task with skill and self- 
> righteousness, however
> outlandish the claims, in this practice that traces back to the  
> origins of
> recorded history.
>
> With just that much background, let us turn to the so-called  
> unipolar moment.
> Symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, the collapse  
> of the
> Soviet Union putatively left a unipolar world, with the United  
> States as the
> sole global superpower and not merely the primary superpower, as it  
> was before.
>
> Within months, the George H. W. Bush administration outlined  
> Washington’s new
> course: Everything will stay much the same, but with new pretexts.
>
> We still need a huge military system, but for a new reason: the  
> “technological
> sophistication” of Third World powers. We have to maintain the  
> “defense
> industrial base” — a euphemism for state-supported high-tech industry.
>
> We must maintain intervention forces directed at the energy-rich  
> Middle East —
> where the significant threats to our interests “could not be laid at  
> the
> Kremlin’s door,” contrary to decades of deceit.
>
> All this was passed over quietly, barely reported. But for those who  
> hope to
> understand the world, it is quite instructive.
>
> The George W. Bush administration went far to the extreme of  
> aggressive
> militarism and arrogant contempt. It was harshly condemned for these  
> practices,
> even within the mainstream.
>
> Bush’s second term was more moderate. Some of the most extreme  
> figures were
> expelled: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and others.  
> Vice
> President Richard Cheney could not be removed because he WAS the  
> administration.
> Policy began to return toward the norm.
>
> As Barack Obama came into office, former Secretary of State  
> Condoleezza Rice
> predicted he would follow the policies of Bush’s second term, and  
> that is pretty
> much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style that  
> seems to have
> charmed much of the world.
>
> One basic difference between Bush and Obama was expressed very well  
> in another
> era, by a senior adviser of the Kennedy administration at the height  
> of the
> Cuban missile crisis.
>
> Kennedy planners were making decisions that threatened Britain with
> obliteration, but they were not informing the British about it.
>
> At that point the advisor defined the “special relationship” with  
> Britain: “our
> lieutenant — the fashionable word is 'partner.'"
>
> Bush and his cohorts addressed the world as “our lieutenants.” Thus,  
> in
> announcing the invasion of Iraq, they informed the United Nations  
> that it could
> follow U.S. orders or be “irrelevant.” Such brazen arrogance  
> naturally aroused
> hostility.
>
> Obama adopts a different course. He politely greets the leaders and  
> people of
> the world as “partners,” and only in private does he continue to  
> treat them as
> “lieutenants.”
>
> Foreign leaders much prefer this stance, and the public is also  
> sometimes
> mesmerized by it. But it is wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric  
> and pleasant
> demeanor.
>
> The current world system remains unipolar in one dimension: the  
> arena of force.
> The United States spends almost as much as the rest of the world  
> combined on its
> military and it is far more advanced in the technology of destruction.
>
> The United States is also alone in having hundreds of global  
> military bases and
> in occupying two countries in the crucial energy-producing regions.
>
> NATO is part of the Cold War apparatus that Obama can deploy.
>
> As the unipolar moment dawned, the fate of NATO came to the fore. The
> traditional justification for NATO was defense against Soviet  
> aggression. With
> the USSR gone, the pretext evaporated. But NATO has been reshaped  
> into a
> U.S.-run global intervention force, with special concern for control  
> over energy.
>
> Post-Cold War NATO has inexorably pushed to the east and south.  
> Obama apparently
> intends to carry forward this expansion.
>
> In July, on the eve of Obama’s first trip to Russia, Michael McFaul,  
> his special
> assistant for national security and Russian and Eurasian affairs,  
> informed the
> press, “We’re not going to reassure or give or trade anything with  
> the Russians
> regarding NATO expansion or missile defense.”
>
> McFaul was referring to U.S. missile defense programs in Eastern  
> Europe and to
> NATO membership for Russia’s neighbors, Ukraine and Georgia, both  
> steps
> understood by Western analysts to be serious threats to Russian  
> security that
> would likely inflame international tensions.
>
> A few weeks ago the Obama administration announced a readjustment of  
> U.S.
> anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe. That led to a great deal of  
> commentary
> and debate, which, as in the past, skillfully evaded the central  
> issue.
>
> Those systems are advertised as defense against an Iranian attack.  
> But that
> cannot be the motive. The chance of Iran launching a missile attack,  
> nuclear or
> not, is about at the level of an asteroid hitting the Earth —  
> unless, of course,
> the ruling clerics have a fanatic death wish and want to see Iran  
> instantly
> incinerated.
>
> The purpose of the U.S. interception systems, if they ever work, is  
> to prevent
> any retaliation to a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran — that is, to  
> eliminate any
> Iranian deterrent. In this regard, antimissile systems are a first- 
> strike
> weapon, and that is understood on all sides. But that seems to be a  
> fact best
> left in the shadows.
>
> The Obama plan may represent less provocation to Russia but,  
> rhetoric aside, it
> is irrelevant to defending Europe — except as a reaction to a U.S.  
> or Israeli
> first strike against Iran.
>
> The present nuclear standoff with Iran summons the Cold War’s  
> horrors — and
> hypocrisies.
>
> The outcry over Iran overlooks the Obama administration’s assurance  
> that the
> Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement is exempt from the just-passed U.N.  
> resolution on
> the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which India greeted by  
> announcing
> that it can now build nuclear weapons with the same destructive  
> power as those
> in the arsenals of the world’s major nuclear powers, with yields up  
> to 200 kilotons.
>
> And, over the objections of the United States and Europe, the  
> International
> Atomic Energy Agency called on Israel to join the NPT and open its  
> nuclear
> facilities for inspection. Israel announced it would not cooperate.
>
> Though the world is unipolar militarily, since the 1970s it has become
> economically “tripolar,” with comparable centers in North America,  
> Europe and
> northeast Asia. The global economy is becoming more diverse,  
> particularly with
> the growth of Asian economies.
>
> A world becoming truly multipolar, politically as well as  
> economically, despite
> the resistance of the sole superpower, marks a progressive change in  
> history.
>
> © 2009, New York Times News Service
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