King of
Chaos
By Edward S. Herman
February 29, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- Diana Johnstone recently published a very good
book on Hillary Clinton entitled Queen of Chaos
(Counterpunch Books, 2015). Johnstone justifies the
title through her convincing critical examination of
Clinton’s performance as Secretary of State as well
as her broader record of opinions and actions. But
Clinton served under President Barack Obama, and the
policies which she pushed while in office were of
necessity approved by her superior, who worked with
her in “a credible partnership”.1
And after Mrs. Clinton’s exit from office Mr. Obama
carried on with replacement John Kerry in a largely
similar and not very peaceable mode. Most important
was their 2014 escalation of hostilities toward
Russia with the coup d’etat in Kiev, anger at the
responsive Russian absorption of Crimea, warfare in
Eastern Ukraine, and U.S.-sponsored sanctions
against Russia for its alleged “aggression.” There
was also simmering tension over Syria, with U.S. and
client state support of rebels and jihadists
attempting to overthrow the Assad government, and
with Russia (and Iran and Hezbollah) backing Assad.
There was also Obama’s widening use of drone warfare
and declared right and intention to bomb any
perceived threat to U.S. “national security”
anyplace on earth.
In any case, if Hillary Clinton was Queen of Chaos,
Obama is surely King. If Iraq, Libya and Syria have
been reduced to a chaotic state, Obama has a heavy
responsibility for these developments, although
Iraq’s downward spiral is in large measure allocable
to the Bush-Cheney regime. The Syrian crisis has
intensified, with Russia providing substantial air
support that has turned the tide in favor of Assad
and threatened collapse of the U.S.-Saudi-Turkish
campaign of regime change. This remains a dangerous
situation with Turkey threatening more aggressive
action and the Obama-Kerry team still unwilling to
accept defeat.2 Yemen has also descended into chaos
in the Obama years, and although Saudi Arabia is the
main direct villain in this case, the Obama
administration provides much of the weaponry and
diplomatic protection for this aggression and for
several years has done some drone bombing of Yemen
on its own. A fair amount of chaos also
characterizes Israel-Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia and
Morocco, along with many sub-Saharan regimes (Mali,
South Sudan, Ethiopia, Burundi, etc.). The
leadership of the superpower with long-standing
predominant influence over this region must be given
substantial (dis)credit for this widening chaotic
state, which has produced the main body of refugees
flooding into Europe and elsewhere and the surge of
retail terrorism.
It is often alleged that this chaos reflects a
terrible failure of U.S. policy. This is debatable.
Three states that were independent and considered
enemy states by Israel and many U.S. policy-makers
and influentials–Iraq, Libya and Syria–have been
made into failed states and may be in the process of
dismemberment. Libya had been ruled by a man,
Moammar Gaddafi, who was the most important leader
seeking an Africa free of Western domination; he was
chairman of the African Union in 2009, two years
before his overthrow and murder. His exit led
quickly to the advance of the United States African
Command (Africom) and U.S.-African state
“partnerships” to combat “terrorism”—that is, to a
major setback to African independence and progress.3
The chaos in Ukraine and Syria has been a great
windfall for the U.S.beneficiaries of the permanent
war system, for whom contracts are flowing and job
advancement and security are on the upswing. For
them the King of Chaos has done well and his
policies have been successful.
There has been little publicity and debate
addressing President Obama’s new and major
contribution to the nuclear arms race and the threat
of nuclear war. In April 2009 Mr. Obama claimed a
“commitment to seek the peace and security of a
world without nuclear weapons”.4 And on the release
of a Nuclear Posture Review on April 6, 2010 he
stated that the United States would “not develop new
nuclear warheads or pursue new military missions or
new capabilities for nuclear weapons.” But he wasted
no time in violating these promises, embarking soon
on a nuclear “modernization” program that involved
the development of an array of nuclear weapons that
made their use more thinkable (smaller, more
accurate, less lethal).
The New York Times reported that “The B61 Model 12,
the bomb flight-tested in Nevada last year, is the
first of five new warhead types planned as part of
an atomic revitalization estimated to cost up to $1
trillion over three decades. As a family, the
weapons and their delivery systems move toward the
small, the stealthy and the precise. Already there
are hints of a new arms race. Russia called the B61
tests ‘irresponsible’ and ‘openly provocative.’
China is said to be especially worried about plans
for a nuclear-tipped cruise missile.”5 The Times
does cite a number of U.S. analysts who consider
this enterprise dangerous as well as “unaffordable
and unneeded”.6 But the modernization plan has not
aroused much comment or widespread concern. And it
would very likely be considered too modest by all
the leading Republican presidential candidates.7
What is driving Obama to move in such an anti-social
direction, perversely generating threats to national
security and wasting vast resources that are
urgently needed by the civil society?8 Obama is a
weak president, operating in a political economy and
political environment that even a strong president
could not easily manage. The military-industrial
complex is much stronger now than it was in January
1961 when Eisenhower, in his Farewell Speech, warned
of its “acquisition of unwarranted influence” and
consequent threat to the national well-being. The
steady stream of wars has entrenched it further, and
the pro-Israel lobby and subservience of the mass
media have further consolidated a permanent war
system. It also fits the needs of the corporate
oligarchy.9
It is interesting to see that even Bernie Sanders
doesn’t challenge the permanent war system, whose
spiritual effects and ravenous demands would seem to
make internal reform much more difficult. We may
recall Thorstein Veblen’s more than a century-old
description of war-making as having an “unequivocal”
regressive cultural value: “it makes for a
conservative animus on the part of the population”
and during wartime “civil rights are in abeyance;
and the more warfare and armament the more
abeyance.”
“At the same time war-making directs the popular
interest to other, nobler, institutionally less
hazardous matters than the unequal distribution of
wealth or of creature comforts.”10
With a permanent war system in place, the vetting of
political candidates and the budgetary and policy
demands of the important institutions dominating the
political economy, war-making and nourishing the
Pentagon and other security state institutions
become the highest priorities of top officials of
the state. They all prepare for war on a steady
basis and go to war readily, often in violation of
international law and even domestic law. Subversion
has long been global in scope.11 Reagan’s war on
Nicaragua, Clinton’s attacks on Yugoslavia and Iraq,
Bush-1’s wars on Panama and Iraq, Bush-2’s wars on
Afghanistan, Iraq and a propagandistic “War on
Terror,” and Obama’s wars on Libya, Afghanistan,
Iraq, and many other places, show an impressive
continuum and growth..
Mr. Obama’s Cuba and Iran policies deviate to some
extent from his record of power projection by rule
of force. In the case of Cuba, the opposition to
recognition of the Cuban reality had diminished and
a growing body of businessmen, officials and
pundits, and the international community, considered
the non-recognition and sanctions an obsolete and
somewhat discreditable holdover from the past. It is
likely that the new policy recognized the
possibility of “democracy promotion” as a superior
route to inducing changes in Cuba. It should also be
noted that the policy change thus far has not
included a lifting of economic sanctions, even
though for many years UN Assembly votes against
those sanctions have been in the order of 191-2 (in
2015). A more immediate factor in the changed policy
course may have been the fact that several Latin
American countries threatened to boycott the 2015
OAS Summit if Cuba was not admitted. As Jane
Franklin notes, “Obama had to make a choice. He
could refuse to attend and therefore be totally
isolated or he could join in welcoming Cuba and be a
statesman.”12 Obama chose to be a statesman.
In the case of Iran, the new agreement (The Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action signed in Vienna on
July 14, 2015) was hammered out in an environment in
which Iran had long been made the villain that
needed to be constrained. This followed years of
demonizing and pressure on Iran to scale back its
nuclear program, regularly claimed, without
evidence, to be aiming at developing nuclear
weapons. U.S. hegemony is nowhere better displayed
than in the fact that Iran was encouraged to develop
a nuclear program when ruled by the Shah of Iran, a
U.S.-sponsored dictator, but has been under steady
attack for any nuclear effort whatsoever since his
replacement by a regime opposed by the United
States, with the steady cooperation of the UN and
“international community.”
Israel is a major regional rival of Iran, and having
succeeded in getting the United States to turn
lesser rivals, Iraq and Libya, into failed states,
it has been extremely anxious to get the United
States to do the same to Iran. And Israel’s leaders
have pulled out all the stops in getting its vast
array of U.S. politicians, pundits, intellectuals
and lobbying groups to press for a U.S. military
assault on Iran.13 The tensions between the United
States and Iran have been high for years, with a
sanctions war already in place. But with many
military engagements in progress, tensions with
Russia over Ukraine and Syria at a dangerous level,
and perhaps resentment at the attempted political
bullying by Israeli leaders, the Obama
administration chose to negotiate with Iran rather
than fight. The agreement finally arrived at with
Iran calls for more intrusive inspections and some
scaling down of Iran’s nuclear program, while it
frees Iran from some onerous sanctions and threats.
This was a rare moment of peace-making, and probably
the finest moment in the years of the King’s rule.
Iran is still treated as a menace and in need of
close surveillance. But there was a slowing-down in
the drift toward a new and larger war, allowing the
Obama administration to focus more on warring in
Iraq and Syria and taking on any other threat to
U.S. national security.
Notes
First
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