By Craig Hulet?
The last defense vestiges of the Cold, Korean and Iraq wars, the U.S. military “footprint” now is heaviest in Germany, South Korea and the Persian Gulf region. But with the Soviet Union finished, South Korea more able to defend itself and Saddam Hussein’s antagonistic regime supposedly crushed in Iraq, the U.S. military presence in all three regions has largely become an anachronism,... wholesale changes in the American-led empire''s military global presence are now under consideration. “We are re-analyzing our footprint,” Gen. James Jones, commander of U.S. troops in Europe. The entire globe is the strategic agenda now.
As the world grows more reluctant to follow Mr. Bush anywhere no matter what, fewer and fewer people believe we have been told the truth about Iraq’s WMD, and with Tony Blair now under full siege for misinforming the British Parliament Mr. George W. Bush Junior seems unaffected while pursuing the Oligarchy’s elite agenda for global hegemony. To his critics he simply writes them off with his usual curt and trivial style saying “Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion.”

This author and analyst while being interviewed on such mainstream national talk shows as the Jim Bohannon Show and Dave Ross was criticized rather vociferously when it was proposed America had evolved into an Empire-of-sorts. The argument placed against my thesis was that America didn’t impose itself through placing troops on everyone’s soil.

Regions:
But the announcement, Tuesday, April 29, 2003, that U.S. forces will bail out of Saudi Arabia this summer marks the start of what likely will be great changes in where America bases its troops worldwide. As was recently reported:

Reflecting the last defense vestiges of the Cold, Korean and Iraq wars, the U.S. military “footprint” now is heaviest in Germany, South Korea and the Persian Gulf region. But with the Soviet Union kaput, South Korea more able to defend itself and Saddam Hussein’s antagonistic regime crushed in Iraq, the muscular U.S. military presence in all three regions has largely become an anachronism, according to defense experts in the Pentagon and at think tanks. Throw in a host of touchy political realities - such as the anti-U.S. backlash in South Korea following high-profile crimes committed by GIs, and Islamic opposition to U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia - and wholesale changes in the American military''s global presence are now under consideration. “We are re-analyzing our footprint,” Gen. James Jones, commander of U.S. troops in Europe, said this week. (Hoffman)

Of the possible moves likely considered several surfaced in recent months. Here’s a look at some of the most major ones being contemplated as reported by Lisa Hoffman:

- Persian Gulf. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s announcement Tuesday that the bulk of America’s 5,000 troops in Saudi Arabia will leave the desert kingdom this summer sets in motion a major realignment in the region. Though still in flux, the plan is for no more than 400 U.S. troops to remain in Saudi Arabia, while most of the rest will move to the new state-of-the-art command complex built in the tiny Gulf nation of Qatar, which, unlike Saudi Arabia, is thrilled to have a U.S. presence within its borders.
- Another exodus already is under way in Turkey, where the 4,000 U.S. troops based at the Incirlik air base are moving out now that the 12-year-long “Operation Northern Watch” air operation over Iraq is over.
- Europe: Now that the Cold War is over, the need for more than 70,000 U.S. troops in Germany has largely evaporated, according to Rumsfeld and Jones. In fact, they say, more than 20 percent of the 499 U.S. military installations in Europe are not needed at all anymore. While Pentagon officials maintain retribution for Germany’s opposition to the war in Iraq is not playing a role, they say that the time is coming to substantially cut the U.S. presence there. Under consideration is a plan that would leave the sprawling Ramstein Air Base in place, but slash the number of Army soldiers in the 1st Armored and 1st Infantry divisions there from the current 30,000 to as few as 6,000. At the same time, Rumsfeld is looking kindly on a plan to shift some Germany-based forces to a number of smaller outposts in countries he has dubbed the “new Europe” - former Soviet bloc nations such as Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, that joined the Bush administration''s “coalition of the willing” in the war in Iraq.
- South Korea: For the past several years, popular opposition to the presence of some 37,000 U.S. forces in South Korea has been escalating, reaching a crescendo last year after the rape and killing of several South Korean girls by U.S. troops. At the same time, the Pentagon has calculated that South Korea is increasingly capable of defending itself in any clash with North Korea. Couple those factors with the enormous leaps in technology that now allow U.S. forces to wage a pounding fight far from the front lines, and the need for all the soldiers and Marines now in South Korea is diminished. Already, Maj. Gen. James Soligan, deputy chief of staff of U.S. Forces Korea (cq), has told South Korea that a “large portion” of those American troops will be moved from current positions close to the North Korean border to other bases far south of the capital, Seoul.
-Worldwide: Aware of the inevitability of complaints from host countries about the conduct or presence of U.S. forces, and the increasing expense of foreign basing, Pentagon planners are toying with the idea of creating offshore platforms that could serve as forward bases. Dubbed “lily pads,” these floating bases would function as a sort of cross between a land base and an aircraft carrier. (Sources: Cato Institute; kcandassociates.org; U.S. military eyes major reshuffling of global presence By Lisa Hoffman, Scripps Howard News Service April 29, 2003)

Azerbaijan:
In a more recent article which appeared in the English language Pravda, the headline read as follows: US Troops To Be Deployed in Azerbaijan (06/18/2003 12:46) If it happens, Americans will have to deal with all the problems of the region which this author has repeatedly pointed out in press releases and my recent book “The Hydra of Carnage.” Azerbaijan is key to understanding everything Mr. Bush has set out to do since 9/11. Afghanistan was the beginning and Iraq is but the middle of what this analyst would describe as a fundamental shift from Cold War military occupation to an Empire-based corporate occupation of regions considered vital to, first, America’s National Security Energy Strategy, and secondly, the force projection in specific regions where this strategic doctrine might be challenged.

As was reported in the recent issue of Pravda: “The presidential election is to take place in the republic of Azerbaijan on October 15th. The closer the date, the stronger the intrigue. At first it was rumored that incumbent Azeri President Geydar Aliyev was going to refuse to participate in the election and nominate his son, Ilkham Aliyev. However, the president has recently announced that he is strongly determined to run for the presidency.”

In fact, the 80-year-old president of Azerbaijan does not have any serious opponents at the election. But the intrigue has not vanished yet, the report argued going on to add this important note reported in the Azeri press:

Azeri mass media have recently reported that 15,000 American servicemen might soon be deployed from Germany to Azerbaijan. The corps, newspapers wrote, would be stationed in the country on a permanent basis. The Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote with reference to Wall Street Journal that American military men would guard the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and take part in the struggle with the international terrorism. These goals are not really clear. Pipeline perspectives are rather vague at present, although it has been said and written a lot about this project lately. The struggle with the international terrorism is not clear either, because Azerbaijan has not been listed as a country, where terrorists exercised their activities.

The neighboring republic of Georgia has been mentioned in this connection instead, but it has not been reported yet that American troops were going to be deployed there. It was said, though, that American instructors would train Georgian servicemen. What stops the Pentagon from doing the same in Azerbaijan, the reported questioned?

There is an opinion that the deployment of the American military contingent will pursue another objective - to guarantee the stability of the current political regime in Azerbaijan. It is very important for the American administration both from the political and economic point of view - the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the access to the Caspian oil.

As I have reported often and on a number of radio and TV talk shows Azerbaijan is the key, always has been to the entire region. It is an open secret that Azerbaijan takes an extremely important strategic position in the region - it borders on Iran. Nevertheless, as the Pravda article pointed out correctly “all Caucasian republics can boast of their strategic positions, but it does not mean that American army bases will be situated on their territories. There are a lot of problems and conflict zones in the region, both internal and foreign ones: Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Osetia. If the American administration is seriously interested in the U.S. military presence in the Caucasus, it means that American military men will have to deal with those issues sooner or later.”

Pravda asks the right question: “Is the game worth the candle?” The US ambassador to Baku Ross Wilson stated that the American administration did not have any plans to deploy troops in the republic. To all appearance, Washington does not have all the answers yet. I would argue more forcefully that this deployment is most necessary and must come-about. (Source: Read the original in Russian: Vasily Bubnov
"http://world.pravda.ru/world/2003/5/73/400/11368_Baku.html" (Translated by: Dimitri Sudokov for the English Edition)

Afghanistan:
In the most recent CNA all-inclusive newsline of /13:44 20.06.2003/ it was announced that a 2-day conference on the proposed project of laying a gas pipe line between Turkmenistan and Pakistan via Afghanistan is scheduled on June 25-26, 2003 at Ashgabat. The press account is quoted in full here:

Islamabad, June 20, 2003. (CNA). A 2-day conference on proposed project of laying gas pipe line between Turkmenistan and Pakistan via Afghanistan is scheduled on June 25-26 at Ashgabat. Pakistan`s Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Nauraiz Shakoor Khan will leave for Ashgabat, Turkmenistan on June 23 to attend the conference. The conference will review the progress of the project, PPI reports.
The gas pipeline project would give boost to trade, industrial and human resource development, regional cooperation. The minister said construction of the 1600- km pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan could start as early as next year. If India does not participate, even then this pipeline is going to come to Pakistan, he added. Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan are the three important participants in the project.
''''We formally invited India during TAP conference held in Manila in April to join the project, but India is still silent and did not respond to the proposal,'''' he said. The project is expected to cost $ 2-2.5 billion and take three years time to complete. The companies interested in investing in the pipeline had completed their pre-qualification and the groundwork could start in the first quarter next year, he added. The pipeline will carry up to 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year from Turkmenistan, Daulatabad fields. It is intended to supply northern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as Pakistan''s Sea ports for shipment to other Asian markets. (Source: credit Caspian News Agency “CNA/www.caspian.ru”)

This is the second pipeline deal being struck with the Harmid Karzai regime. (Karzai was a Unocal consultant through 1996 negotiating these very pipeline deals prior to his appointment as commissar of Afghanistan’s American occupying forces.) This is now clearly one of the unstated political objectives of Mr. Bush & Co. for removing the recalcitrant Taliban regime, who had rejected the Unocal/U.S. proposals because they would not allow the multilateral American-led institutions like the World Bank, IMF and WTO to dictate their economic structure; it was never because they wouldn‘t get rid of Usamah bin Laden. That myth doesn’t fly any longer for many reasons I have belabored too long, not the least of which bin Laden is in Eastern Afghanistan at this moment. The same scenario will play out as was pointed out above where other pipelines must be protected by U.S. military personnel. Indeed, this has been the case for decades, from Columbia to Saudi Arabia, it is just very rare Americans hear this news. (See my “Record of Terror” white paper and supplement, May/June 2003)

South Korea:
Currently in South Korea, most U.S. troops are deployed in the northern part of the country, between the capital, Seoul, and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates South Korea from communist North Korea. Now there is change afoot. During a recent visit to South Korea, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz announced Washington’s intention to “reposition” some of its military forces stationed in South Korea. The redeployment would entail moving those forces farther south.

The Asia Times noted that Wolfowitz “offered only a vague justification for such a move, contending that repositioning forces would make them more effective in meeting the threat posed by North Korea.” Given the heightened rhetoric emanating from the North Korean regime and Bush’s Axis of Evil misstep of the SitRep, that is a very odd argument to be making. Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, the principal rationale for stationing the troops near the DMZ has been that they would serve as “a tripwire in case of a North Korean attack, guaranteeing U.S. involvement in any conflict. North Korea, knowing that it would then face war not only with South Korea but also with the United States, would be deterred from taking such a reckless gamble.” according to the Asia Times article. That this is obviously true needs little elaboration.

Why is the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush Junior proposing to abandon the long-standing tripwire function of U.S. forces in South Korea? There is one unsettling possibility according to analyst Ted Galen Carpenter:

The administration is considering a preemptive military attack on North Korea’s nuclear installations and wants to move U.S. troops out of harm’s way. Even the most hawkish U.S. experts on Korea concede that if the United States did launch such an attack, the North would likely respond with an intense artillery and missile barrage of the Seoul metropolitan area and, possibly, with a ground attack through the DMZ. U.S. troops stationed between Seoul and the DMZ could easily end up being dead tripwire forces.

I had argued before the March 2003 offensive against Iraq that there was a difference between what Bush was saying and what he was doing over the threat from North Korea and what he was prepared to do with Iraq. That Bush was prepared to attack Iraq with enormous military force and yet utilize diplomacy (at that time) regarding what seemed a greater threat from North Korea argued, at least to my humble way of thinking about such things, that it was proof Iraq did not have WMD capability of threatening any level of serious American interests. In other words: If Iraq had WMD we wouldn’t attack, only if we knew Iraq “did not have the capability” would we be willing to do so. I went so far on KING 5 Television to state it thusly: “Nobody wants to say this president is lying or exaggerating.” (Robert Mak, KING 5 Up-Front, see transcript on their site)

Even so, Carpenter is right in pointing out that “True, Bush administration officials have stated that they want to solve through diplomacy the crisis created by North Korea’s resumption of its nuclear-weapons program. But those same officials have stressed that all options, including the use of military force, remain on the table. When South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun went to the United States in May, he sought an assurance that the controversial doctrine of preemptive war embedded in the administration’s national-security strategy would not apply to North Korea. U.S. officials rebuffed his request.” What this means, well it seems to me at least, is that with the (wrong) perception of easy victories in both Afghanistan and Iraq (both boiling-over with renewed guerrilla activity taking American lives every week now since May1st through June/July 2003), the administration’s more hawkish members, fresh with a blood-lust flush on their cheeks, may think it time to push yet another third-world nationalistic leader down.

Indeed, the national-security strategy document approved in September 2002, noted in the above piece by carpenter, clearly would seem to apply to the North Korean situation. “We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends,” the document affirmed. The administration’s policy on combating weapons of mass destruction, adopted in December 2002, stated the point even more succinctly, emphasizing that the United States would not “permit the world’s more dangerous regimes” to pose a threat “with the world’s most destructive weapons.” Nuclear weapons in the hands of secretive, Stalinist North Korea would fill that category according to Carpenter. This would seem less likely should both Great Britain’s Parliament and the U.S. Congress each pursue intelligence enquiries into “what they knew and when did they know it”? regarding both Bush and Blair. But I think Carpenter is still correct to point out this strange redeployment of U.S. troops. Why? Because Mr. Bush seems immune to criticism of any nature, often remarking trivially in response to fully serious questions from his own recently retired seasoned counter-terrorism analysts that Bush exaggerated the claims for WMD against all sound intelligence data from both CIA and the Pentagon’s DIA; and then with often a rather flippant “They are entitled to their opinion.”

As Carpenter is not remiss in addressing “Even if one takes the Bush administration at its word that it wants to settle the crisis through diplomacy, it begs a crucial question: What does the United States do if diplomacy (or diplomacy combined with economic pressure) fails to induce North Korea to abandon its nuclear program? Is the administration prepared to live with a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons? The statement issued by Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi after their recent summit suggests otherwise. The two leaders stated bluntly that they “would not tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea.” (Ibid.)

If diplomacy fails, it is not clear how that result can be prevented except through military force. The Bush administration may not be committed to such a course yet, but in deciding to move U.S. forces away from the DMZ and South, “it is creating a precondition for pursuing that option. South Koreans, who know how horribly their country would suffer if the United States launched preemptive strikes on the North, now have reason to be very, very nervous...” as Carpenter is again correct to point out.

(Sources: 06/12/03: Asia Times; KING 5 “Up-Front” with Robert Mak; Record of Terror www.kcandassociates.org ; and Ted Galen Carpenter (vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute) Author of Peace & Freedom: Foreign Policy for a Constitutional Republic. This article is republished with the permission of the “http://www.cato.org/”.)

The Globe:
But these particular regions are not alone and not the only ones of importance. As it did in its seemingly quick but still clearly unfinished military campaign in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, the Pentagon is hastily planning to re-deploy U.S. forces and equipment around the world in ways that will permit Washington to play “GloboCop,” according to another well-thought-out piece in the American analytical field. It is now being more openly argued by analysts who know these issues well that while “preparing sharp reductions in forces in Germany, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, military planners are talking about establishing semi-permanent or permanent bases along a giant swathe of global territory - increasingly referred to as “the arc of instability” - from the Caribbean Basin through Africa to South and Central Asia and across to North Korea. The latest details were disclosed by the Wall Street Journal on June 10, 2003 and include plans to increase U.S. forces in “Djibouti on the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea from Yemen, set up semi-permanent ‘forward bases’ in Algeria, Morocco and possibly Tunisia, and establish smaller facilities in Senegal, Ghana and Mali that could be used to intervene in oil-rich West African countries, particularly Nigeria.” (Source Wall Street Journal, 6/10/03)

Similar bases - or what some call “lily pads” - are now being sought or expanded in northern Australia, Thailand (whose prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was here for talks the week of 6/10/03), Singapore, the Philippines, Kenya, Georgia; also throughout Central Asia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Qatar, Vietnam and Iraq. Azerbaijan was mentioned in the same article again.

‘We are in the process of taking a fundamental look at our military posture worldwide, including in the United States,’ said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on a recent visit to Singapore, where he met with military chiefs and defense ministers from throughout East Asia about U.S. plans there. ‘We’re facing a very different threat than any one we’ve faced historically.’ (Ibid.)

Those plans represent a major triumph for Wolfowitz, who 12 years ago argued in a controversial draft “Defense Planning Guidance” (DPG) for realigning U.S. forces globally so as to “retain pre-eminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our own interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations.” (Source: Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service June 13, 2003)

The same draft, also argued for “a unilateral U.S. defense guarantee” to Eastern Europe “preferably in co-operation with other NATO states,” and the use of pre-emptive force against nations suspected of having weapons of mass destruction - both of which views are now codified as U.S. strategic doctrine.

The draft DPG also argued that U.S. military intervention should become a “constant fixture" of the new world order. It is precisely that capability towards which the Pentagon’s force realignments appear to be directed. Interestingly the very same draft was largely repudiated by the first Bush administration after it was leaked to the New York Times. But that isn’t so strange upon some reflection as Bush the Senior had the diplomatic skill and power (two very different things) to bring a coalition together with the simple use of the telephone, something the Bush the Younger lacks in both skill and power to achieve today.

Empire argues for such a global “footprint” and Bush Junior is setting the course for, no matter what Republican talk-show hosts would rather choose to believe. This is empire-building of the rawest kind. But not empire the way most on the Left see it and not how the far Right envision it. It is not America as America but American-led and corporate. But it shall look rather reminiscent of Rome “[W]ith forward bases located all along the so-called “arc of instability,” (where) Washington can pre-position equipment and military personnel that would permit it to intervene with force within hours of the outbreak of any crisis.... In that respect, the new global strategy would be similar to the U.S. position beginning in the 19th century vis-à-vis Latin America, where the U.S. has frequently intervened to protect its interests from real or perceived threats....” according to the well-informed Mr. Lobe (Ibid.) As he wrote and I must quote it here for the younger generations with little concern for current history which has nothing to do with the acronymic-age of MTV, ESPN, etc.:

Nearby countries so involved included Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti and several others. The interventions were usually followed by long occupations and the establishment of friendly but authoritarian regimes, like those of Batista, Somoza and “Papa Doc” Duvalier. The U.S. Contra war against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s might be considered a sequel to the earlier action. America’s increasing role in Colombia’s current civil war also fits the pattern....On a grander scale, the U.S. has assisted military takeovers in larger countries like Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, with the usual bloody results. (Ibid., Lobe)

According to Max Boot, a neo-conservative writer at the Council on Foreign Relations, Wolfowitz’s 1992 draft - now mostly codified in the September 2002 National Security Strategy of the USA - is not all that different from the 1903 Theodore Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine asserted Washington’s “international police power” to intervene against “chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society.” The new and proposed deployments are being justified by similar rhetoric. Just substitute “globalization” for “civilization.”

The emerging Pentagon doctrine, founded mainly on the work of retired Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, chief of the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation, and Thomas Barnett of the U.S. Naval War College, argues that it is precisely countries and regions that are “disconnected” from the prevailing trends of economic globalization that posed the greatest dangers. “Disconnectedness is one of the great danger signs around the world,” Cebrowski told an audience at the Heritage Foundation last month in an update of the “general loosening of the ties of civilized society” formula of a century ago. (Ibid.)

This seems to make the ideas not just acceptable but a simple evolution of what we have always done in the past. But I would argue that while the progressive Left “needs” to believe this (which makes their standard [Howard} Zinnian approach seem the more valid: i.e., America has always been a Rich-White-Man’s-State), but they are wrong; the radical Right does so too, as these poor saps actually think (now anyways) that this empire, if it exists, is likened unto Rome and in some cases they believe that as Romans, therefore it shall benefit them personally as Rome did Romans. The two extreme sides are both wrong. This empire is, while seemingly familiar in many past regards, a “corporate empire” to benefit the monopoly corporation’s elite, stock holders, outright majority owners and the “banking fraternity” inextricably intertwined within Corporatism’s circle of friends. That they see threats that concern their interests does not mean their interests are yours or mine; their interests do not in fact interest me at all, nor should they you if you understand what this all means. But the corporate-state’s interests are the same as the elite’s, as Lobe points out well:

Barnett’s term for areas of greatest threat is “the Gap,” places where “globalization is thinning or just plain absent.” Such regions are typically “plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and - most important - the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of terrorists.”...“If we map out U.S. military responses since the end of the Cold War, we find an overwhelming concentration of activity in the regions of the world that are excluded from globalization''s growing Core - namely the Caribbean Rim, virtually all of Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and much of Southeast Asia,” Barnett wrote in Esquire magazine earlier this year. (Ibid., Lobe)

The challenge in fighting terrorist networks is both to “get them where they live” in the arc of instability and prevent them from spreading their influence into what Barnett calls “seam states” located between the Gap and the Core. According to Lobe again, “Such seam states, he says, include Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Greece, Turkey, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. Those nations, the logic goes, should play critical roles, presumably including providing forward bases, for interventions into the Gap.”

At the same time, if states “loosen their ties” to the global economy, “bloodshed will follow. If you are lucky,” according to Barnett, “so will American troops.” Lucky? Lucky for whom? I had argued years ago during Persian Gulf I that what Bush the Senior was “about” was something very different than what most perceived. I stated categorically that the states that remained “outside of the emerging global interdependence,” outside of the process of globalization,” would be seen as exercising their “nationalism” and would no longer be tolerated. If one was “outside the process of GATT, the WTO, NAFTA and the host of international governing organizations (IGOs)” one would be “outside of The Law,” that is to say: “An Outlaw.” I gave the name to it of “Global Triage,” and “they” would “decide who lives and dies as a regime.” (See my Global Triage: Imperium in Imperio, Artful Nuance Publishing, 1999; and see also www.kcandassociates.org for audio/video tapes of lectures and interviews. 1988-1999)

On the eve of the war in Iraq, which has been followed by an occupation increasingly under siege, Barnett predicted that taking Baghdad would not be about settling old scores or enforcing the disarmament of those famous weapons of mass destruction, yet to be found. Rather, he wrote, and this is very important: [it] “will mark a historic tipping point - the moment when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.” And some would still dare argue this is not empire building? This is not a familiar empire but it certainly is Empire. Barnett’s arc corresponds perfectly to regions of oil, gas and mineral wealth, which Lobe is quick to concede is also “a reminder again of Wolfowitz’s 1992 draft study.” It asserted then that the key objective of U.S. strategy should be “to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.” Any “other” nation-state from challenging American hegemony in other words; any region forming any alliance of states which could offer resistance to American preponderance.

But understand what is missing in these above very good analyst’s works: This empire is not, I must repeat, a simple Roman model, but a corporate model which leaves America as a nation-state a simple cog in the wheel, and Americans simple subjects to the corporate dictate; which may well leave American’s scrambling for jobs in far off lands; scrambling for work and food here at home; scrambling for understanding why they were so duped. And so easily it would seem.

(Further sources: Wall Street Journal 6/10/03; KC& Associates’ thirty press releases from March through May 29, 2003; Pentagon Dreams of Playing ‘GloboCop’ By Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service June 13, 2003: Jim Lobe writes on U.S. foreign policy for IPS, Foreign Policy in Focus, TomPaine.com and Alternet. [Republished with the permission of the "http://www.cato.org/] )

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Mr. Craig B Hulet; Security, Military Affairs & International Relations Expert (Author: The Hydra of Carnage: Bush’s Imperial War-making and the Rule of Law: An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire. Available @ www.kcandassociates.org); Hulet was Special Assistant to Congressman Jack Metcalf (Ret.). www.craigbhulet.com cali-AT-localaccess.com
Copyright The Artful Nuance and Craig B Hulet