[Peace-discuss] A Little More Than Mackinder & Less Than Kind (cf. Hamlet 1.2)

Wed Mar 8 03:11:24 UTC 2017

Almost two years ago, Alfred McCoy offered a summary account of US imperial policy and its continuity over more than a century: "Washington's Great Game and Why It's Failing” <http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176007/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_washington%27s_great_game_and_why_it%27s_failing_/#more <http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176007/tomgram:_alfred_mccoy,_washington's_great_game_and_why_it's_failing_/#more>>.

Since World War II, US presidents have killed more than 20 million people in 37 nations - and not by accident. McCoy describes the roots of  the policy that led to those US murders:

"Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island [Europe-Asia-Africa]; who rules the World-Island commands the world" (Halford Mackinder).

At least since the Open Door (1899), the cornerstone of US foreign policy has been to prevent the integration of Eurasia (the 'Heartland') as a challenge to the economic hegemony of the US. (That's what the unpleasantness with the Japanese in the 1940s was about, e.g.)

But we don’t speak of such things in polite society in the US (certainly not in the academy).

To quote Harold Pinter, British playwright and 2005 Nobel Prize winner in literature: 

“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.”

—CGE

> On Mar 7, 2017, at 8:51 PM, Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu> wrote:
> 
> Yeah, that's right. Control and domination of the oil and gas for the world. Fab 
> American Unlimited Imperialism
> 
> Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898.  Then the Republican administration of President  William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions.  Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy.   But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific” would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic Obama administration  are  threatening to set off World War III.

> By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf and Africa  under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled “humanitarian intervention”/responsibility to protect.  Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago:  control and domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas.  The Bush Jr./ Obama  administrations  have  already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation.  In this regard, the Bush Jr. administration  announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species.  Libya and the Libyans became the first victims to succumb to AFRICOM under the Obama administration. They will not be the last.

> This current bout of U.S. imperialism is what my teacher, mentor and friend  Hans Morgenthau denominated “unlimited imperialism” in his seminal work Politics Among Nations (4th ed. 1968, at 52-53): 

> “The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination–a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror’s lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind… “

> It is the Unlimited Imperialists along the lines of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are now in charge of conducting American foreign policy. The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like twin  Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity.
> 
> 
> Francis A. Boyle
> Law Building
> 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
> Champaign, IL 61820 USA
> 217-333-7954 (phone)
> 217-244-1478 (fax)
> (personal comments only)
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl G. Estabrook [mailto:galliher at illinois.edu] 
> Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2017 8:45 PM
> To: Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu>
> Cc: Peace-discuss List <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Subject: Re: [Peace] Anti-Empire Report, March 7, 2017
> 
> Yes, it’s about the oil (and gas). But it’s about control of Mideast energy resources, not just (or even primarily) about access to them.
> 
> (Trump is right, if somewhat lacking in detail…) As we say in the intro to AWARE ON THE AIR, 
> 
> "The US doesn’t need oil* from the Mideast, but Mideast gas and oil are needed by America’s economic competitors in Europe and Asia, and so control over them gives the US a major  advantage over Russia, China, Germany, and other countries - a chokehold which benefits only the American 1%. 
> 
> "The Bush and Obama administrations launched wars in the Mideast and killed well over a million people to control world energy, but they did manage to hide much of what they’re doing from the American people, if not from the rest of the world.”
> _____________
> *Most of the oil imported into the US (and not re-exported) comes from the Atlantic basin - Canada, Nigeria, Venezuela… Only about 10% of what is consumed domestically is from the Mideast, and the bulk of that from the KSA. (From memory - I haven’t looked at these figures recently.)
> 
> Regards, CGE
> 
> 
>> On Mar 7, 2017, at 6:29 PM, Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> It’s still all about the oil. At least Trump was honest and admitted it. Unlike his predecessors. Fab.
>> 
>> Francis A. Boyle
>> Law Building
>> 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
>> Champaign, IL 61820 USA
>> 217-333-7954 (phone)
>> 217-244-1478 (fax)
>> (personal comments only)
>> 
>> From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2017 6:28 PM
>> To: peace <peace at lists.chambana.net>; Peace-discuss List <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>> Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Anti-Empire Report, March 7, 2017
>> 
>> https://williamblum.org/aer/read/149
>> 
>> "For the record: I don’t support the US fighting ISIS in Syria. I don’t trust the Pentagon’s motivation, or their choice of bombing targets. They’re probably still into regime change. I’d leave the job to Russia and its allies.zFor the record: I don’t support the US fighting ISIS in Syria. I don’t trust the Pentagon’s motivation, or their choice of bombing targets. They’re probably still into regime change. I’d leave the job to Russia and its allies."
>> 
>> ###
> 

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