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

[Morton K. Brussel]

Why just Britain?  --mkb


On Oct 7, 2009, at 10:45 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> No.  It's a riot: the NYT syndicates Chomsky, mainly to foreign  
> newspapers -- a
> profitable enterprise I'm sure, because he's much admired around the  
> world --
> but won't publish him here, because he exposes their propaganda  
> position!
>
> The remark, "Kennedy planners were making decisions that threatened  
> Britain with obliteration, but they were not informing the British  
> about it" -- refers to the so-called Cuban missile crisis in 1962,  
> when Kennedy threated nuclear war to prevent Khrushchev's doing in  
> Cuba what he (Kennedy) was doing in Turkey.
>
> In fact, it seems that the world was saved on that occasion by the  
> good sense of one Soviet naval officer, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov.
>
> On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of 11  
> United States Navy destroyers headed by the aircraft carrier USS  
> Randolph entrapped a nuclear-armed Soviet Foxtrot class submarine  
> B-59 near Cuba and started dropping depth charges. Allegedly, the  
> captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing  
> that a war might already have started, prepared to launch a  
> retaliatory nuclear-tipped torpedo.
>
> Three officers on board the submarine -- Savitsky, Political Officer  
> Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and Commander Arkhipov -- were entitled  
> to launch the torpedo if they agreed unanimously on doing so. An  
> argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was  
> against making the attack, eventually persuading Savitsky to surface  
> the submarine and await orders from Moscow. The nuclear war which  
> presumably would have ensued was thus averted.
>
> At the conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Cuban  
> Missile Crisis held in Havana on October 13, 2002, Robert McNamara  
> admitted that nuclear war had come much closer than people had  
> thought. Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive,  
> said that "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world."
>
>
> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>> 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  
>>> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss  
>>> mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
>>> > http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss  
>> mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss