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

[C. G. Estabrook]

I think he's talking about the much-discussed (in the UK) “special relationship” 
between the US & the UK -- the British government fantasy that they were 
partners with the US when they were at best lieutenants.

I think it was Kennedy's contemporary, Conservative British PM Harold Macmillan, 
who said that the Brits were the "Greeks in the Roman Empire of the Americans."

When Macmillan visited Washington DC for the first time after Kennedy was 
elected, he said that Washington reminded him of an Italian city-state in the 
Renaissance -- just after the Borgia brothers had come to town...


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> 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 
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