[Peace-discuss] US imperial policy

[C. G. Estabrook]

...As soon as Clinton came into office, he began the expansion of NATO to the 
east. The process accelerated with Bush junior’s aggressive militarism. These 
moves posed a serious security threat to Russia, which naturally reacted by 
developing more advanced offensive military capacities. Obama’s National 
Security Advisor, James Jones, has a still-more expansive vision: he calls for 
extending NATO further east and south, becoming in effect a U.S.-run global 
intervention force, as it is today in Afghanistan -- “Afpak” as the region is 
now called -- where Obama is sharply escalating Bush’s war, which had already 
intensified in 2004. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer informed a 
NATO meeting that “NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and 
gas that is directed for the West,” and more generally have to protect sea 
routes used by tankers and other “crucial infrastructure” of the energy system. 
These plans open a new phase of Western imperial domination —- more politely 
called “bringing stability” and “peace”...

--from
Noam Chomsky, "Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours," Boston Review SEP/OCT 2009
<http://bostonreview.net/BR34.5/chomsky.php>