by Andrew Gavin Marshall
from
GlobalResearch Website
|
Andrew Gavin Marshall is a
Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
He is currently studying Political Economy and History at Simon
Fraser University.
Andrew Gavin Marshall is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
|
Part 1
October 16, 2009
Introduction
In the face of total global economic collapse, the prospects of a massive
international war are increasing. Historically, periods of imperial decline
and economic crisis are marked by increased international violence and war.
The decline of the great European empires was
marked by World War I and World War II, with the Great Depression taking
place in the intermediary period.
Currently, the world is witnessing the decline
of the American empire, itself a product born out of World War II. As the
post-war imperial hegemon, America ran the international monetary system and
reigned as champion and arbitrator of the global political economy.
To manage the global political economy, the US has created the single
largest and most powerful military force in world history. Constant control
over the global economy requires constant military presence and action.
Now that both the American empire and global political economy are in
decline and collapse, the prospect of a violent end to the American imperial
age is drastically increasing.
This essay is broken into three separate parts.
-
The first part covers US-NATO
geopolitical strategy since the end of the Cold War, at the
beginning of the New World Order, outlining the western imperial
strategy that led to the war in Yugoslavia and the “War
on Terror.”
-
Part 2 analyzes the nature of “soft
revolutions” or “colour revolutions” in US imperial strategy,
focusing on establishing hegemony over Eastern Europe and Central
Asia.
-
Part 3 analyzes the nature of the
imperial strategy to construct a New World Order, focusing on the
increasing conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Latin America,
Eastern Europe and Africa; and the potential these conflicts have
for starting a new world war with China and Russia.
Defining a New
Imperial Strategy
In 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, US-NATO foreign policy had
to re-imagine its role in the world.
The Cold War served as a means of justifying US
imperialist expansion across the globe with the aim of “containing” the
Soviet threat. NATO itself was created and existed for the sole purpose of
forging an anti-Soviet alliance. With the USSR gone, NATO had no reason to
exist, and the US had to find a new purpose for its imperialist strategy in
the world.
In 1992, the US Defense Department, under the leadership of Secretary of
Defense Dick Cheney [later to be George Bush Jr.’s VP], had the
Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz
[later to be George Bush Jr.’s Deputy Secretary of Defense and President of
the World Bank], write up a defense document to guide American foreign
policy in the post-Cold War era, commonly referred to as the “New World
Order.”
The Defense Planning Guidance document was leaked in 1992, and
revealed that,
“In a broad new policy statement that is in
its final drafting phase, the Defense Department asserts that America’s
political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to
ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe,
Asia or the territories of the former Soviet Union,” and that, “The
classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one
superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior
and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations
from challenging American primacy.”
Further, “the new draft sketches a world in
which there is one dominant military power whose leaders ‘must maintain
the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to
a larger regional or global role’.”
Among the necessary challenges to American
supremacy, the document,
“postulated regional wars against Iraq and
North Korea,” and identified China and Russia as its major threats.
It further, “suggests that the United States
could also consider extending to Eastern and Central European nations
security commitments similar to those extended to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
and other Arab states along the Persian Gulf.” [1]
NATO and Yugoslavia
The wars in Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s served as a justification for
the continued existence of NATO in the world, and to expand American
imperial interests in Eastern Europe.
The
World Bank and
IMF set the stage for the destabilization
of Yugoslavia. After long-time dictator of Yugoslavia, Josip Tito, died in
1980, a leadership crisis developed.
In 1982, American foreign policy officials
organized a set of IMF and World Bank loans, under the newly created
Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), to handle the crisis of the $20
billion US debt.
The effect of the loans, under the SAP, was that
they,
“wreaked economic and political havoc... The
economic crisis threatened political stability ... it also threatened to
aggravate simmering ethnic tensions.” [2]
In 1989, Slobodan Milosevic became
President of Serbia, the largest and most powerful of all the Yugoslav
republics.
Also in 1989, Yugoslavia’s Premier traveled to
the US to meet President
George H.W. Bush in order to negotiate another financial aid
package. In 1990, the World Bank/IMF program began, and the Yugoslav state’s
expenditures went towards debt repayment.
As a result, social programs were dismantled,
the currency devalued, wages frozen, and prices rose.
The “reforms fueled secessionist tendencies
that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually
ensuring the de facto secession of the republic,” leading to Croatia and
Slovenia’s succession in 1991.[3]
In 1990, US the intelligence community released
a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), predicting that Yugoslavia
would break apart, erupt in civil war, and the report then placed blame on
Serbian President Milosevic for the coming destabilization.[4]
In 1991, conflict broke out between Yugoslavia and Croatia, when it, too,
declared independence. A ceasefire was reached in 1992. Yet, the Croats
continued small military offensives until 1995, as well as participating in
the war in Bosnia. In 1995, Operation Storm was undertaken by Croatia to try
to retake the Krajina region.
A Croatian general was recently put on trial at
The Hague for war crimes during this battle, which was key to driving the
Serbs out of Croatia and “cemented Croatian independence.”
The US supported the operation and the CIA
actively provided intelligence to Croat forces, leading to the displacement
of between 150,000 and 200,000 Serbs, largely through means of murder,
plundering, burning villages and ethnic cleansing.[5] The
Croatian Army was trained by US advisers, and the general on trial was even
personally supported by the CIA.[6]
The Clinton administration gave the “green light” to Iran to arm the Bosnian
Muslims and,
“from 1992 to January 1996, there was an
influx of Iranian weapons and advisers into Bosnia.”
Further, “Iran, and other Muslim states,
helped to bring Mujihadeen fighters into Bosnia to fight with the
Muslims against the Serbs, 'holy warriors' from Afghanistan, Chechnya,
Yemen and Algeria, some of whom had suspected links with Osama bin
Laden's training camps in Afghanistan.”
It was,
“Western intervention in the Balkans [that]
exacerbated tensions and helped to sustain hostilities. By recognizing
the claims of separatist republics and groups in 1990/1991. Western
elites - the American, British, French and German - undermined
government structures in Yugoslavia, increased insecurities, inflamed
conflict and heightened ethnic tensions.
And by offering logistical support to
various sides during the war, Western intervention sustained the
conflict into the mid-1990s. Clinton's choice of the Bosnian Muslims as
a cause to champion on the international stage, and his administration's
demands that the UN arms embargo be lifted so that the Muslims and
Croats could be armed against the Serbs, should be viewed in this
light.” [7]
During the war in Bosnia, there,
“was a vast secret conduit of weapons
smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies
of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist
groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah.”
Further, “the secret services of Ukraine,
Greece and Israel were busy arming the Bosnian Serbs.” [8]
Germany’s intelligence agency, the BND, also ran
arms shipments to the Bosnian Muslims and Croatia to fight against the
Serbs.[9]
The US had influenced the war in the region in a variety of ways. As the
Observer reported in 1995, a major facet of their involvement was through,
“Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI),
a Virginia-based American private company of retired generals and
intelligence officers. The American embassy in Zagreb admits that MPRI
is training the Croats, on licence from the US government.”
Further, The Dutch “were convinced that US
special forces were involved in training the Bosnian army and the
Bosnian Croat Army (HVO).” [10]
As far back as 1988, the leader of Croatia met
with the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to create “a joint policy to
break up Yugoslavia,” and bring Slovenia and Croatia into the “German
economic zone.”
So, US Army officers were dispatched to Croatia,
Bosnia, Albania, and Macedonia as “advisers” and brought in US Special
Forces to help.[11] During the nine-month cease-fire in the war
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, six US generals met with Bosnian army leaders to plan
the Bosnian offensive that broke the cease-fire.[12]
In 1996, the Albanian Mafia, in collaboration with the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA), a militant guerilla organization, took control over the
enormous Balkan heroin trafficking routes. The KLA was linked to former
Afghan Mujaheddin fighters in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden.[13]
In 1997, the KLA began fighting against Serbian forces,[14] and
in 1998, the US State Department removed the KLA from its list of terrorist
organizations.[15] Before and after 1998, the KLA was receiving
arms, training and support from the US and NATO, and Clinton’s Secretary of
State, Madeline Albright, had a close political relationship with KLA
leader Hashim Thaci.[16]
Both the CIA and German intelligence, the BND, supported the KLA terrorists
in Yugoslavia prior to and after the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The
BND had KLA contacts since the early 1990s, the same period that the KLA was
establishing its Al-Qaeda contacts.[17] KLA members were trained
by Osama bin Laden at training camps in Afghanistan.
Even the UN stated that much of the violence
that occurred came from KLA members, “especially those allied with Hashim
Thaci.” [18]
The March 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo was justified on the pretense of
putting an end to Serbian oppression of Kosovo Albanians, which was termed
genocide. The Clinton Administration made claims that at least 100,000
Kosovo Albanians were missing and “may have been killed” by the Serbs.
Bill Clinton personally compared events in
Kosovo to the Holocaust. The US State Department had stated that up to
500,000 Albanians were feared dead. Eventually, the official estimate was
reduced to 10,000, however, after exhaustive investigations, it was revealed
that the death of less than 2,500 Albanians could be attributed to the
Serbs.
During the NATO bombing campaign, between 400
and 1,500 Serb civilians were killed, and NATO committed war crimes,
including the bombing of a Serb TV station and a hospital.[19]
In 2000, the US State Department, in cooperation with the American
Enterprise Institute, AEI, held a conference on Euro-Atlantic integration in
Slovakia. Among the participants were many heads of state, foreign affairs
officials and ambassadors of various European states as well as UN and NATO
officials.[20] A letter of correspondence between a German
politician present at the meeting and the German Chancellor, revealed the
true nature of NATO’s campaign in Kosovo.
The conference demanded a speedy declaration of
independence for Kosovo, and that the war in Yugoslavia was waged in order
to enlarge NATO, Serbia was to be excluded permanently from European
development to justify a US military presence in the region, and expansion
was ultimately designed to contain Russia.[21]
Of great significance was that,
“the war created a raison d'être for the
continued existence of NATO in a post-Cold War world, as it desperately
tried to justify its continued existence and desire for expansion.”
Further, “The Russians had assumed NATO
would dissolve at the end of the Cold War. Instead, not only has NATO
expanded, it went to war over an internal dispute in a Slavic Eastern
European country.”
This was viewed as a great threat. Thus,
“much of the tense relations between the
United States and Russia over the past decade can be traced to the 1999
war on Yugoslavia.” [22]
The War on Terror and
the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
When Bill Clinton became President, the neo-conservative hawks from
the George H.W. Bush administration formed a think tank called the
Project for the New American Century, or
PNAC.
In 2000, they published a report called,
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and
Resources for a New Century.
Building upon the Defense Policy Guidance
document, they state that,
“the United States must retain sufficient
forces able to rapidly deploy and win multiple simultaneous large-scale
wars.” [23]
Further, there is “need to retain sufficient
combat forces to fight and win, multiple, nearly simultaneous major
theatre wars,” [24] and that “the Pentagon needs to begin to
calculate the force necessary to protect, independently, US interests in
Europe, East Asia and the Gulf at all times.” [25]
Interestingly, the document stated that,
“the United States has for decades sought to
play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the
unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the
need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends
the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” [26]
However, in advocating for massive increases in
defense spending and expanding the American empire across the globe,
including the forceful destruction of multiple countries through major
theatre wars, the report stated that,
“Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one,
absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl
Harbor.” [27]
That event came one year later with the events
of 9/11. Many of the authors of the report and members of the Project for
the New American Century had become officials in the Bush
administration, and were conveniently in place to enact their “Project”
after they got their “new
Pearl Harbor.”
The plans for war were,
“already under development by far right
Think Tanks in the 1990s, organizations in which cold-war warriors from
the inner circle of the secret services, from evangelical churches, from
weapons corporations and oil companies forged shocking plans for a new
world order.”
To do this,
“the USA would need to use all means -
diplomatic, economic and military, even wars of aggression - to have
long term control of the resources of the planet and the ability to keep
any possible rival weak.”
Among the people involved in PNAC and the plans
for empire,
“Dick Cheney - Vice President, Lewis Libby -
Cheney's Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld - Defence Minister, Paul
Wolfowitz - Rumsfeld's deputy, Peter Rodman - in charge of 'Matters of
Global Security', John Bolton - State Secretary for Arms Control,
Richard Armitage - Deputy Foreign Minister, Richard Perle - former
Deputy Defence Minister under Reagan, now head of the Defense Policy
Board, William Kristol - head of the PNAC and adviser to Bush, known as
the brains of the President, Zalmay Khalilzad,” who became Ambassador to
both Afghanistan and Iraq following the regime changes in those
countries.[28]
Brzezinski’s “Grand
Chessboard”
Arch-hawk strategist,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the
Trilateral Commission with
David Rockefeller, former National
Security Adviser and key foreign policy architect in Jimmy Carter’s
administration, also wrote a book on American geostrategy.
Brzezinski is also a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations and the
Bilderberg Group, and has also been a board
member of Amnesty International, the Atlantic Council and the National
Endowment for Democracy. Currently, he is a trustee and counselor at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS),
a major US policy think tank.
In his 1997 book,
The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski outlined a
strategy for America in the world.
He wrote,
“For America, the chief geopolitical prize
is Eurasia. For half a millennium, world affairs were dominated by
Eurasian powers and peoples who fought with one another for regional
domination and reached out for global power.”
Further, “how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is
critical. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically
axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s
three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance
at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost
automatically entail African subordination.” [29]
He continued in outlining a strategy for
American empire, stating that,
“it is imperative that no Eurasian
challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also
challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated
Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of
this book.” [30]
He explained that,
“Two basic steps are thus required: first,
to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the
power to cause a potentially important shift in the international
distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of
their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their
seeking to attain them: [and] second, to formulate specific U.S.
policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above.” [31]
What this means is that is it of primary
importance to first identify states that could potentially be a pivot upon
which the balance of power in the region exits the US sphere of influence;
and secondly, to “offset, co-opt, and/or control” such states and
circumstances. An example of this would be Iran; being one of the world’s
largest oil producers, and in a strategically significant position in the
axis of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Iran could hold the potential to alter the
balance of power in Eurasia if it were to closely ally itself with Russia or
China, or both – giving those nations a heavy supply of oil as well as a
sphere of influence in the Gulf, thus challenging American hegemony in the
region.
Brzezinski removed all subtlety from his imperial leanings, and
wrote,
“To put it in a terminology that harkens
back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand
imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and
maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries
pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”
[32]
Brzezinski referred to the Central Asian
republics as the “Eurasian Balkans,” writing that,
“Moreover, they [the Central Asian
Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and
historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more
powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also
signaling an increasing political interest in the region.
But the Eurasian Balkans are
infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous
concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region,
in addition to important minerals, including gold.” [33]
He further wrote that,
“It follows that America's primary interest
is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this
geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered
financial and economic access to it.” [34]
This is a clear example of America’s role as an
engine of empire; with foreign imperial policy designed to maintain US
strategic positions, but primarily and “infinitely more important,” is to
secure an “economic prize” for “the global community.” In other words,
the United States is an imperial hegemon working for international financial
interests.
Brzezinski also warned that,
“the United States may have to determine how
to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of
Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power,”
[35] and he, “puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order
to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually
seek to challenge America's primacy.”
Thus, “The most immediate task is to make
certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to
expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly
its decisive arbitration role.” [36]
The War on Terror and
Surplus Imperialism
In 2000, the Pentagon released a document called
Joint Vision 2020, which outlined a project
to achieve what they termed, “Full Spectrum Dominance,” as the blueprint for
the Department of Defense in the future.
“Full-spectrum dominance means the ability
of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary
and control any situation across the range of military operations.”
The report “addresses full-spectrum
dominance across the range of conflicts from nuclear war to major
theater wars to smaller-scale contingencies. It also addresses amorphous
situations like peacekeeping and non-combat humanitarian relief.”
Further, “The development of a global
information grid will provide the environment for decision superiority.”
[37]
As political economist, Ellen Wood,
explained,
“Boundless domination of a global economy,
and of the multiple states that administer it, requires military action
without end, in purpose or time.” [38]
Further, “Imperial dominance in a global
capitalist economy requires a delicate and contradictory balance between
suppressing competition and maintaining conditions in competing
economies that generate markets and profit. This is one of the most
fundamental contradictions of the new world order.” [39]
Following
9/11,
the “Bush doctrine” was put in place, which called for,
“a unilateral and exclusive right to
preemptive attack, any time, anywhere, unfettered by any international
agreements, to ensure that ‘[o]ur forces will be strong enough to
dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hope
of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States’.” [40]
NATO undertook its first ground invasion of any
nation in its entire history, with the October 2001 invasion and occupation
of Afghanistan.
The Afghan war was in fact, planned prior to the
events of 9/11, with the breakdown of major pipeline deals between major
western oil companies and the Taliban. The war itself was planned over the
summer of 2001 with the operational plan to go to war by mid-October.[41]
Afghanistan is extremely significant in geopolitical terms, as,
“Transporting all the Caspian basin's fossil
fuel through Russia or Azerbaijan would greatly enhance Russia's
political and economic control over the central Asian republics, which
is precisely what the west has spent 10 years trying to prevent. Piping
it through Iran would enrich a regime which the US has been seeking to
isolate.
Sending it the long way round through China,
quite aside from the strategic considerations, would be prohibitively
expensive. But pipelines through Afghanistan would allow the US both to
pursue its aim of ‘diversifying energy supply’ and to penetrate the
world's most lucrative markets.” [42]
As the San Francisco Chronicle pointed
out a mere two weeks following the 9/11 attacks,
“Beyond American determination to hit back
against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, beyond the likelihood
of longer, drawn-out battles producing more civilian casualties in the
months and years ahead, the hidden stakes in the war against terrorism
can be summed up in a single word: oil.”
Explaining further,
“The map of terrorist sanctuaries and
targets in the Middle East and Central Asia is also, to an extraordinary
degree, a map of the world's principal energy sources in the 21st
century. The defense of these energy resources - rather than a simple
confrontation between Islam and the West -- will be the primary flash
point of global conflict for decades to come.”
Among the many notable states where there is a
crossover between terrorism and oil and gas reserves of vital importance to
the United States and the West, are Saudi Arabia, Libya, Bahrain, the Gulf
Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan and Algeria, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan,
Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Georgia and eastern Turkey.
Importantly,
“this region accounts for more than 65
percent of the world's oil and natural gas production.”
Further, “It is inevitable that the war
against terrorism will be seen by many as a war on behalf of America's
Chevron, ExxonMobil and Arco; France's TotalFinaElf; British Petroleum;
Royal Dutch Shell and other multinational giants, which have hundreds of
billions of dollars of investment in the region.” [43]
It’s no secret that the Iraq war had much to do
with oil. In the summer of 2001, Dick Cheney convened an Energy Task Force,
which was a highly secret set of meetings in which energy policy was
determined for the United States.
In the meetings and in various other means of
communication, Cheney and his aides met with top officials and
executives of Shell Oil, British Petroleum (BP), Exxon Mobil, Chevron,
Conoco, and Chevron.[44]
At the meeting, which took place before 9/11
and before there was any mention of a war on Iraq, documents of Iraqi
oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals were presented and discussed,
and,
“Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates (UAE)
documents likewise feature a map of each country’s oilfields, pipelines,
refineries and tanker terminals.” [45]
Both Royal Dutch Shell and British
Petroleum have since received major oil contracts to develop Iraqi
oilfields.[46]
The war on Iraq, as well as the war on Afghanistan, also largely serve
specifically American, and more broadly, Western imperial-strategic
interests in the region. In particular, the wars were strategically designed
to eliminate, threaten or contain regional powers, as well as to directly
install several dozen military bases in the region, firmly establishing an
imperial presence.
The purpose of this is largely aimed at other
major regional players and specifically, encircling Russia and China and
threatening their access to the regions oil and gas reserves.
Iran is now surrounded, with Iraq on one side,
and Afghanistan on the other.
Concluding Remarks
Part 1 of this essay outlined the US-NATO imperial strategy for entering the
New
World Order, following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The primary aim was focused on encircling Russia and China and preventing
the rise of a new superpower.
The US was to act as the imperial hegemony,
serving international financial interests in imposing the New World Order.
The next part to this essay examines the “colour revolutions” throughout
Eastern Europe and Central Asia, continuing the US and NATO policy of
containing Russia and China; while controlling access to major natural gas
reserves and transportation routes.
The “colour revolutions” have been a pivotal
force in geopolitical imperial strategy, and analyzing them is key to
understanding the New World Order.
Endnotes
[1] Tyler, Patrick E. U.S. Strategy Plan
Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop: A One Superpower World. The New
York Times: March 8, 1992. http://work.colum.edu/~amiller/wolfowitz1992.htm
[2] Louis Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia.
Duke University Press, 2002: Page 28
Michel Chossudovsky, Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing
Bosnia-Herzegovina. Global Research: February 19, 2002: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=370
[3] Michel Chossudovsky, Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing
Bosnia-Herzegovina. Global Research: February 19, 2002: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=370
[4] David Binder, Yugoslavia Seen Breaking Up Soon. The New York Times:
November 28, 1990
[5] Ian Traynor, Croat general on trial for war crimes. The Guardian:
March 12, 2008: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/12/warcrimes.balkans
[6] Adam LeBor, Croat general Ante Gotovina stands trial for war crimes.
The Times Online: March 11, 2008: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3522828.ece
[7] Brendan O’Neill, 'You are only allowed to see Bosnia in black and
white'. Spiked: January 23, 2004: http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA374.htm
[8] Richard J. Aldrich, America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian
Muslims. The Guardian: April 22, 2002: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/22/warcrimes.comment/print
[9] Tim Judah, German spies accused of arming Bosnian Muslims. The
Telegraph: April 20, 1997: http://www.serbianlinks.freehosting.net/german.htm
[10] Charlotte Eagar, Invisible US Army defeats Serbs. The Observer:
November 5, 1995: http://charlotte-eagar.com/stories/balkans110595.shtml
[11] Gary Wilson, New reports show secret U.S. role in Balkan war.
Workers World News Service: 1996: http://www.workers.org/ww/1997/bosnia.html
[12] IAC, The CIA Role in Bosnia. International Action Center: http://www.iacenter.org/bosnia/ciarole.htm
[13] History Commons, Serbia and Montenegro: 1996-1999: Albanian Mafia
and KLA Take Control of Balkan Heroin Trafficking Route. The Center for
Cooperative Research: http://www.historycommons.org/topic.jsp?topic=country_serbia_and_montenegro
[14] History Commons, Serbia and Montenegro: 1997: KLA Surfaces to
Resist Serbian Persecution of Albanians. The Center for Cooperative
Research: http://www.historycommons.org/topic.jsp?topic=country_serbia_and_montenegro
[15] History Commons, Serbia and Montenegro: February 1998: State
Department Removes KLA from Terrorism List. The Center for Cooperative
Research: http://www.historycommons.org/topic.jsp?topic=country_serbia_and_montenegro
[16] Marcia Christoff Kurop, Al Qaeda's Balkan Links. The Wall Street
Journal: November 1, 2001: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/561291/posts
[17] Global Research, German Intelligence and the CIA supported Al Qaeda
sponsored Terrorists in Yugoslavia. Global Research: February 20, 2005:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=431
[18] Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo: The US and the EU support a Political
Process linked to Organized Crime. Global Research: February 12, 2008:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8055
[19] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Breaking Yugoslavia. Geopolitical Monitor:
July 21, 2008: http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/content/backgrounders/2008-07-21/breaking-yugoslavia/
[20] AEI, Is Euro-Atlantic Integration Still on Track? Participant List.
American Enterprise Institute: April 28-30, 2000: http://www.aei.org/research/nai/events/pageID.440,projectID.11/default.asp
[21] Aleksandar Pavi, Correspondence between German Politicians Reveals
the Hidden Agenda behind Kosovo's "Independence". Global Research: March
12, 2008: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8304
[22] Stephen Zunes, The War on Yugoslavia, 10 Years Later. Foreign
Policy in Focus: April 6, 2009: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6017
[23] PNAC, Rebuilding America’s Defenses. Project for the New American
Century: September 2000, page 6: http://www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm
[24] Ibid. Page 8
[25] Ibid. Page 9
[26] Ibid. Page 14
[27] Ibid. Page 51
[28] Margo Kingston, A think tank war: Why old Europe says no. The
Sydney Morning Herald: March 7, 2003: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/07/1046826528748.html
[29] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books, 1997: Pages 30-31
[30] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books, 1997: Page xiv
[31] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books, 1997: Page 41
[32] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books, 1997: Page 40
[33] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books, 1997: Page 124
[34] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books, 1997: Page 148
[35] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books, 1997: Page 55
[36] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books, 1997: Page 198
[37] Jim Garamone, Joint Vision 2020 Emphasizes Full-spectrum Dominance.
American Forces Press Service: June 2, 2000:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45289
[38] Ellen Wood, Empire of Capital. Verso, 2003: page 144
[39] Ellen Wood, Empire of Capital. Verso, 2003: page 157
[40] Ellen Wood, Empire of Capital. Verso, 2003: page 160
[41] Andrew G. Marshall, Origins of Afghan War. Geopolitical Monitor:
September 14, 2008:
http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/content/backgrounders/2008-09-14/origins-of-the-afghan-war/
[42] George Monbiot, America's pipe dream. The Guardian: October 23,
2001:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/23/afghanistan.terrorism11
[43] Frank Viviano, Energy future rides on U.S. war. San Francisco
Chronicle: September 26, 2001:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/26/MN70983.DTL
[44] Dana Milbank and Justin Blum, Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With
Cheney Task Force. Washington Post: November 16, 2005:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501842_pf.html
[45] Judicial Watch, CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF
IRAQI OILFIELDS. Commerce Department: July 17, 2003: http://www.judicialwatch.org/printer_iraqi-oilfield-pr.shtml
[46] TERRY MACALISTER, Criticism as Shell signs $4bn Iraq oil deal. Mail
and Guardian: September 30, 2008: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-09-30-criticism-as-shell-signs-4bn-iraq-oil-deal
Al-Jazeera, BP group wins Iraq oil contract. Al Jazeera Online: June 30,
2009:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/200963093615637434.html
Part 2
November 3, 2009
Introduction
Following US geo-strategy in what
Brzezinski termed the “global Balkans,” the US government has
worked closely with major NGOs to “promote democracy” and “freedom” in
former Soviet republics, playing a role behind the scenes in fomenting what
are termed “colour revolutions,” which install US and Western-friendly
puppet leaders to advance the interests of the West, both economically and
strategically.
Part 2 of this essay on “The Origins of World
War III” analyzes the color revolutions as being a key stratagem in
imposing the US-led New World Order.
The “colour revolution” or “soft” revolution
strategy is
-
a covert political tactic of expanding
NATO and US influence to the borders of Russia and even China
-
following in line with one of the
primary aims of US strategy in the New World Order: to contain China
and Russia and prevent the rise of any challenge to US power in the
region.
These revolutions are portrayed in the western
media as popular democratic revolutions, in which the people of these
respective nations demand democratic accountability and governance from
their despotic leaders and archaic political systems.
However, the reality is far from what this
utopian imagery suggests. Western NGOs and media heavily finance and
organize opposition groups and protest movements, and in the midst of an
election, create a public perception of vote fraud in order to mobilize the
mass protest movements to demand “their” candidate be put into power. It
just so happens that “their” candidate is always the Western US-favored
candidate, whose campaign is often heavily financed by Washington; and who
proposes US-friendly policies and neoliberal economic conditions.
In the end, it is the people who lose out, as
their genuine hope for change and accountability is denied by the influence
the US wields over their political leaders.
The soft revolutions also have the effect of antagonizing China and Russia,
specifically, as it places US protectorates on their borders, and drives
many of the former Warsaw Pact nations to seek closer political, economic
and military cooperation.
This then exacerbates tensions between the west
and China and Russia; which ultimately leads the world closer to a potential
conflict between the two blocs.
Serbia
Serbia experienced its “colour revolution” in October of 2000, which led to
the overthrow of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
As the Washington Post reported in
December of 2000, from 1999 on, the US undertook a major “electoral
strategy” to oust Milosevic, as,
“U.S.-funded consultants played a crucial
role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-Milosevic
drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition
activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote
count. U.S. taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student
activists to scrawl anti-Milosevic graffiti on walls across Serbia, and
2.5 million stickers with the slogan "He's Finished," which became the
revolution's catchphrase.”
Further, according to Michael Dobbs,
writing in the Washington Post, some,
“20 opposition leaders accepted an
invitation from the Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI)
in October 1999 to a seminar at the Marriott Hotel in Budapest.”
Interestingly,
“Some Americans involved in the
anti-Milosevic effort said they were aware of CIA activity at the
fringes of the campaign, but had trouble finding out what the agency was
up to. Whatever it was, they concluded it was not particularly
effective. The lead role was taken by the State Department and the U.S.
Agency for International Development, the government's foreign
assistance agency, which channeled the funds through commercial
contractors and nonprofit groups such as NDI and its Republican
counterpart, the International Republican Institute (IRI).”
The
NDI (National Democratic Institute),
“worked closely with Serbian opposition
parties, IRI focused its attention on Otpor, which served as the
revolution's ideological and organizational backbone. In March, IRI paid
for two dozen Otpor leaders to attend a seminar on nonviolent resistance
at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest.”
At the seminar,
“the Serbian students received training in
such matters as how to organize a strike, how to communicate with
symbols, how to overcome fear and how to undermine the authority of a
dictatorial regime.” [1]
As the New York Times revealed, Otpor,
the major student opposition group, had a steady flow of money coming from
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Congress-funded
“democracy promoting” organization.
The United States Agency for International
Development (USAID)
gave money to
Otpor, as did the International
Republican Institute,
“another nongovernmental Washington group
financed partly by A.I.D.” [2]
Georgia
In 2003, Georgia went through its “Rose Revolution,” which led to the
overthrow of president Eduard Shevardnadze, replacing him with Mikhail
Saakashvili after the 2004 elections.
In a November 2003 article in The Globe and
Mail, it was reported that a US based foundation “began laying the
brickwork for the toppling of Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze,” as
funds from his non-profit organization “sent a 31-year-old Tbilisi activist
named Giga Bokeria to Serbia to meet with members of the Otpor (Resistance)
movement and learn how they used street demonstrations to topple dictator
Slobodan Milosevic.
Then, in the summer,
"the foundation paid for a return trip to
Georgia by Otpor activists, who ran three-day courses teaching more than
1,000 students how to stage a peaceful revolution.”
This US-based foundation,
“also funded a popular opposition television
station that was crucial in mobilizing support for [the] ‘velvet
revolution,’ and [it] reportedly gave financial support to a youth group
that led the street protests.” The owner of the foundation “has a
warm relationship with Mr. Shevardnadze's chief opponent, Mikhail
Saakashvili, a New York-educated lawyer who is expected to win the
presidency in an election scheduled for Jan. 4.”
During a press conference a week before his
resignation, Mr. Shevardnadze said that the US foundation “is set against
the President of Georgia.”
Moreover,
“Mr. Bokeria, whose Liberty Institute
received money from both [the financier’s foundation] and the U.S.
government-backed Eurasia Institute, says three other organizations
played key roles in Mr. Shevardnadze's downfall: Mr. Saakashvili's
National Movement party, the Rustavi-2 television station and Kmara!
(Georgian for Enough!), a youth group that declared war on Mr.
Shevardnadze [in] April and began a poster and graffiti campaign
attacking government corruption.” [3]
The day following the publication of the
previously quoted article, the author published another article in the
Globe and Mail explaining that the,
“bloodless revolution” in Georgia “smells
more like another victory for the United States over Russia in the
post-Cold War international chess game.”
The author, Mark MacKinnon, explained
that Eduard Shevardnadze’s downfall lied,
“in the oil under the Caspian Sea, one of
the world's few great remaining, relatively unexploited, sources of
oil,” as “Georgia and neighboring Azerbaijan, which borders the Caspian,
quickly came to be seen not just as newly independent countries, but as
part of an ‘energy corridor’.”
Plans were drawn up for a massive “pipeline that
would run through Georgia to Turkey and the Mediterranean.”
It is worth quoting MacKinnon at length:
When these plans were made, Mr. Shevardnadze
was seen as an asset by both Western investors and the U.S. government.
His reputation as the man who helped end the Cold War gave investors a
sense of confidence in the country, and his stated intention to move
Georgia out of Russia's orbit and into Western institutions such as the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union played well at
the U.S. State Department.
The United States quickly moved to embrace Georgia, opening a military
base in the country [in 2001] to give Georgian soldiers "anti-terrorist"
training. They were the first U.S. troops to set up in a former Soviet
republic.
But somewhere along the line, Mr. Shevardnadze reversed course and
decided to once more embrace Russia. This summer, Georgia signed a
secret 25-year deal to make the Russian energy giant Gazprom its sole
supplier of gas. Then it effectively sold the electricity grid to
another Russian firm, cutting out AES, the company that the U.S.
administration had backed to win the deal. Mr. Shevardnadze attacked AES
as "liars and cheats."
Both deals dramatically increased Russian
influence in Tbilisi.
Following the elections in Georgia, the
US-backed and educated Mikhail Saakashvili ascended to the Presidency and
“won the day.” [4]
This is again an example of the intimate
relationship between oil geopolitics and US foreign policy. The color
revolution was vital in pressing US and NATO interests forward in the
region; gaining control over Central Asia’s gas reserves and keeping Russia
from expanding its influence.
This follows directly in line with the US-NATO
imperial strategy for the new world order, following the collapse of the
USSR. [This strategy is outlined in detail in Part 1 above].
Ukraine
In 2004, Ukraine went through its “Orange Revolution,” in which opposition
and pro-Western leader Viktor Yushchenko became President, defeating
Viktor Yanukovych.
As the Guardian revealed in 2004, that
following the disputed elections (as happens in every “color revolution”),
“the democracy guerrillas of the Ukrainian
Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory - whatever
the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev,” however, “the campaign
is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived
exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries
in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and
topple unsavory regimes.”
The author, Ian Traynor, explained that,
“Funded and organized by the US government,
deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American
parties and US non-government organizations, the campaign was first used
in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot
box.”
Further, “The Democratic party's National
Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican
Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies
involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO”
and the same billionaire financier involved in Georgia’s Rose
Revolution.
In implementing the regime-change strategy,
“The usually fractious oppositions have to
be united behind a single candidate if there is to be any chance of
unseating the regime. That leader is selected on pragmatic and objective
grounds, even if he or she is anti-American.”
Traynor continues:
Freedom House and the Democratic party's NDI
helped fund and organize the "largest civil regional election monitoring
effort" in Ukraine, involving more than 1,000 trained observers. They
also organized exit polls. On Sunday night those polls gave Mr
Yushchenko an 11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has
followed.
The exit polls are seen as critical because they seize the initiative in
the propaganda battle with the regime, invariably appearing first,
receiving wide media coverage and putting the onus on the authorities to
respond.
The final stage in the US template concerns how to react when the
incumbent tries to steal a lost election.
[...] In Belgrade, Tbilisi, and now Kiev, where the authorities
initially tried to cling to power, the advice was to stay cool but
determined and to organize mass displays of civil disobedience, which
must remain peaceful but risk provoking the regime into violent
suppression.[5]
As an article in the Guardian by
Jonathan Steele explained, the opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko,
who disputed the election results,
“served as prime minister under the outgoing
president, Leonid Kuchma, and some of his backers are also linked to the
brutal industrial clans who manipulated Ukraine's post-Soviet
privatization.”
He further explained that election rigging is
mainly irrelevant, as,
“The decision to protest appears to depend
mainly on realpolitik and whether the challengers or the incumbent are
considered more ‘pro-western’ or ‘pro-market’.”
In other words, those who support a neoliberal
economic agenda will have the support of the US-NATO, as neoliberalism is
their established international economic order and advances their interests
in the region.
Moreover,
“In Ukraine, Yushchenko got the western nod,
and floods of money poured in to groups which support him, ranging from
the youth organization, Pora, to various opposition websites. More
provocatively, the US and other western embassies paid for exit polls.”
This is emblematic of the strategic importance
of the Ukraine to the United States,
“which refuses to abandon its cold war
policy of encircling Russia and seeking to pull every former Soviet
republic to its side.” [6]
One Guardian commentator pointed out the
hypocrisy of western media coverage:
“Two million anti-war demonstrators can
stream though the streets of London and be politically ignored, but a
few tens of thousands in central Kiev are proclaimed to be ‘the people’,
while the Ukrainian police, courts and governmental institutions are
discounted as instruments of oppression.”
It was also explained that,
“Enormous rallies have been held in Kiev in
support of the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, but they are not shown
on our TV screens: if their existence is admitted, Yanukovich supporters
are denigrated as having been ‘bussed in’. The demonstrations in favor
of Viktor Yushchenko have laser lights, plasma screens, sophisticated
sound systems, rock concerts, tents to camp in and huge quantities of
orange clothing; yet we happily dupe ourselves that they are
spontaneous.” [7]
In 2004, the Associated Press reported
that,
“The Bush administration has spent more than
$65 million in the past two years to aid political organizations in
Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet
U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite an exit poll indicating he won
last month's disputed runoff election.”
The money, they state,
“was funneled through organizations such as
the Eurasia Foundation or through groups aligned with Republicans and
Democrats that organized election training, with human rights forums or
with independent news outlets.”
However, even government officials,
“acknowledge that some of the money helped
train groups and individuals opposed to the Russian-backed government
candidate.”
The report stated that some major international
foundations funded the exit polls, which according to the incumbent leader
were “skewed.”
These foundations included,
“The National Endowment for Democracy, which
receives its money directly from Congress; the Eurasia Foundation, which
receives money from the State Department, and the Renaissance
Foundation,” which receives money from the same billionaire financier as
well as the US State Department.
Since the State Department is involved,
that implies that this funding is quite directly enmeshed in US foreign
policy strategy.
“Other countries involved included Great
Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Norway, Sweden and
Denmark.”
Also involved in funding certain groups and
activities in the Ukraine was the International Republican Institute and the
National Democratic Institute, which was chaired by former Secretary of
States Madeline Albright at the time.[8]
Mark Almond wrote for the Guardian in 2004 of the advent of
“People Power,” describing it in relation to the situation that was then
breaking in the Ukraine, and stated that,
“The upheaval in Ukraine is presented as a
battle between the people and Soviet-era power structures. The role of
western cold war-era agencies is taboo. Poke your nose into the funding
of the lavish carnival in Kiev, and the shrieks of rage show that you
have touched a neuralgic point of the New World Order.”
Almond elaborated:
"Throughout the 1980s, in the build-up to
1989's velvet revolutions, a small army of volunteers - and, let's be
frank, spies - co-operated to promote what became People Power. A
network of interlocking foundations and charities mushroomed to organize
the logistics of transferring millions of dollars to dissidents. The
money came overwhelmingly from Nato states and covert allies such as
"neutral" Sweden.
[ ...] The hangover from People Power is shock therapy. Each successive
crowd is sold a multimedia vision of Euro-Atlantic prosperity by
western-funded "independent" media to get them on the streets. No one
dwells on the mass unemployment, rampant insider dealing, growth of
organized crime, prostitution and soaring death rates in successful
People Power states.
As Almond delicately put it,
“People Power is, it turns out, more about
closing things than creating an open society. It shuts factories but,
worse still, minds. Its advocates demand a free market in everything -
except opinion. The current ideology of New World Order ideologues, many
of whom are renegade communists, is Market-Leninism - that combination
of a dogmatic economic model with Machiavellian methods to grasp the
levers of power.” [9]
As Mark MacKinnon reported for the
Globe and Mail, Canada, too, supported the efforts of the youth activist
group, Pora, in the Ukraine, providing funding for the “people power
democracy” movement.
As MacKinnon noted,
“The Bush administration was particularly
keen to see a pro-Western figure as president to ensure control over a
key pipeline running from Odessa on the Black Sea to Brody on the Polish
border.”
However, “The outgoing president, Leonid
Kuchma, had recently reversed the flow so the pipeline carried Russian
crude south instead of helping U.S. producers in the Caspian Sea region
ship their product to Europe.”
As MacKinnon analyzes, the initial funding from
western nations came from Canada, although this was eventually far surpassed
in amount by the United States.
Andrew Robinson, Canada’s ambassador to Ukraine at the time, in 2004,
“began to organize secret monthly meetings
of Western ambassadors, presiding over what he called "donor
co-ordination" sessions among 28 countries interested in seeing Mr.
Yushchenko succeed. Eventually, he acted as the group's spokesman and
became a prominent critic of the Kuchma government's heavy-handed media
control.”
Canada further,
“invested in a controversial exit poll,
carried out on election day by Ukraine's Razumkov Centre and other
groups, that contradicted the official results showing Mr. Yanukovich
had won.”
Once the new, pro-Western government was in, it
“announced its intention to reverse the flow of the Odessa-Brody
pipeline.” [10]
Again, this follows the example of Georgia, where several US and NATO
interests are met through the success of the “colour revolution”;
simultaneously preventing Russian expansion and influence from spreading in
the region as well as advancing US and NATO control and influence over the
major resources and transport corridors of the region.
Daniel Wolf wrote for the Guardian that,
“For most of the people gathered in Kiev's
Independence Square, the demonstration felt spontaneous. They had every
reason to want to stop the government candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, from
coming to power, and they took the chance that was offered to them. But
walking through the encampment last December, it was hard to ignore the
evidence of meticulous preparation - the soup kitchens and tents for the
demonstrators, the slickness of the concert, the professionalism of the
TV coverage, the proliferation of the sickly orange logo wherever you
looked.”
He elaborated, writing,
“the events in the square were the result of
careful, secret planning by Yushchenko's inner circle over a period of
years. The true story of the orange revolution is far more interesting
than the fable that has been widely accepted.”
Roman Bessmertny, Yushchenko's campaign
manager, two years prior to the 2004 elections,
“put as many as 150,000 people through
training courses, seminars, practical tuition conducted by legal and
media specialists. Some attending these courses were members of election
committees at local, regional and national level; others were election
monitors, who were not only taught what to watch out for but given
camcorders to record it on video. More than 10,000 cameras were
distributed, with the aim of recording events at every third polling
station.”
Ultimately, it was an intricately well-planned
public relations media-savvy campaign, orchestrated through heavy financing.
Hardly the sporadic “people power” notion
applied to the “peaceful coup” in the western media.[11]
The “Tulip Revolution”
in Kyrgyzstan
In 2005, Kyrgyzstan underwent its “Tulip Revolution” in which the incumbent
was replaced by the pro-Western candidate through another “popular
revolution.”
As the New York Times reported in March
of 2005, shortly before the March elections,
“an opposition newspaper ran photographs of
a palatial home under construction for the country's deeply unpopular
president, Askar Akayev, helping set off widespread outrage and a
popular revolt.”
However, this,
“newspaper was the recipient of United
States government grants and was printed on an American
government-financed printing press operated by Freedom House, an
American organization that describes itself as ’a clear voice for
democracy and freedom around the world’.”
Moreover, other countries that have, “helped
underwrite programs to develop democracy and civil society” in
Kyrgyzstan were Britain, the Netherlands and Norway.
These countries collectively,
“played a crucial role in preparing the
ground for the popular uprising that swept opposition politicians to
power.”
Money mostly flowed from the United States, in
particular, through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED),
as well as through,
“the Freedom House printing press or
Kyrgyz-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a
pro-democracy broadcaster.”
The National Democratic Institute also
played a major financing role, for which one of the chief beneficiaries of
their financial aid said,
“It would have been absolutely impossible
for this to have happened without that help.”
The Times further reported that:
"American money helps finance civil society
centers around the country where activists and citizens can meet,
receive training, read independent newspapers and even watch CNN or surf
the Internet in some. The N.D.I. [National Democratic Institute] alone
operates 20 centers that provide news summaries in Russian, Kyrgyz and
Uzbek.
The United States sponsors the American University in Kyrgyzstan, whose
stated mission is, in part, to promote the development of civil society,
and pays for exchange programs that send students and non-governmental
organization leaders to the United States. Kyrgyzstan's new prime
minister, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was one.
All of that money and manpower gave the coalescing Kyrgyz opposition
financing and moral support in recent years, as well as the
infrastructure that allowed it to communicate its ideas to the Kyrgyz
people."
As for those,
“who did not read Russian or have access to
the newspaper listened to summaries of its articles on Kyrgyz-language
Radio Azattyk, the local United States-government financed franchise of
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.”
Other “independent” media was paid for courtesy
of the US State Department.[12]
As the Wall Street Journal revealed prior to the elections,
opposition groups, NGOs and “independent” media in Kyrgyzstan were getting
financial assistance from Freedom House in the US, as well as the US
Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Journal reported that,
“To avoid provoking Russia and violating
diplomatic norms, the U.S. can't directly back opposition political
parties. But it underwrites a web of influential NGOs whose support of
press freedom, the rule of law and clean elections almost inevitably
pits them against the entrenched interests of the old autocratic
regimes.”
As the Journal further reported, Kyrgyzstan,
“occupies a strategic location. The U.S. and
Russia both have military bases here. The country's five million
citizens, mostly Muslim, are sandwiched in a tumultuous neighborhood
among oil-rich Kazakhstan, whose regime tolerates little political
dissent; dictatorial Uzbekistan, which has clamped down on foreign aid
groups and destitute Tajikistan.”
In the country, a main opposition NGO, the
Coalition for Democracy and Civil Rights, gets its funding,
“from the National Democratic Institute for
International Affairs, a Washington-based nonprofit funded by the U.S.
government, and from USAID.”
Other agencies reported to be involved, either
through funding or ideological-technical promotion (see: propaganda), are
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Albert Einstein
Institute, Freedom House, and the US State Department.[13]
President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan had referred to a “third force”
gaining power in his country.
The term was borrowed from one of the most
prominent US think tanks, as “third force” is:
"...which details how western-backed
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can promote regime and policy
change all over the world. The formulaic repetition of a third "people
power" revolution in the former Soviet Union in just over one year -
after the similar events in Georgia in November 2003 and in Ukraine last
Christmas - means that the post-Soviet space now resembles Central
America in the 1970s and 1980s, when a series of US-backed coups
consolidated that country's control over the western hemisphere."
As the Guardian reported:
"Many of the same US government operatives
in Latin America have plied their trade in eastern Europe under George
Bush, most notably Michael Kozak, former US ambassador to Belarus, who
boasted in these pages in 2001 that he was doing in Belarus exactly what
he had been doing in Nicaragua: "supporting democracy".
Further:
"The case of Freedom House is particularly
arresting. Chaired by the former CIA director James Woolsey, Freedom
House was a major sponsor of the orange revolution in Ukraine. It set up
a printing press in Bishkek in November 2003, which prints 60 opposition
journals.
Although it is described as an "independent"
press, the body that officially owns it is chaired by the bellicose
Republican senator John McCain, while the former national security
adviser Anthony Lake sits on the board. The US also supports opposition
radio and TV."[14]
So again, the same formula was followed in the
Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union. This US
foreign-policy strategy of promoting “soft revolution” is managed through a
network of American and international NGOs and think tanks.
It advances NATO and, in particular, US
interests in the region.
Conclusion
The soft revolutions or “colour revolutions” are a key stratagem in the New
World Order; advancing, through deceptions and manipulation, the key
strategy of containing Russia and controlling key resources.
This strategy is critical to understanding the
imperialistic nature of the New World Order, especially when it comes to
identifying when this strategy is repeated; specifically in relation to the
Iranian elections of 2009.
Part 1 of this essay outlined the US-NATO imperial strategy for entering the
New World Order, following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. The
primary aim was focused on encircling Russia and China and preventing the
rise of a new superpower. The US was to act as the imperial hegemon, serving
international financial interests in imposing the New World Order.
Part 2 outlined the US imperial strategy of
using “colour revolutions” to advance its interests in Central Asia and
Eastern Europe, following along the overall policy outlined in Part 1, of
containing Russia and China from expanding influence and gaining access to
key natural resources.
The third and final part to this essay analyzes the nature of the imperial
strategy to construct a New World Order, focusing on the increasing
conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Latin America, Eastern Europe and
Africa; and the potential these conflicts have for starting a new world war
with China and Russia. In particular, its focus is within the past few
years, and emphasizes the increasing nature of conflict and war in the New
World Order.
Part 3 looks at the potential for “A New World
War for a New World Order.”
Endnotes
[1] Michael Dobbs, U.S. Advice Guided
Milosevic Opposition. The Washington Post: December 11, 2000: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18395-2000Dec3?language=printer
[2] Roger Cohen, Who Really Brought Down Milosevic? The New York Times:
November 26, 2000: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/magazine/who-really-brought-down-milosevic.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
[3] Mark MacKinnon, Georgia revolt carried mark of Soros. The Globe and
Mail: November 23, 2003: http://www.markmackinnon.ca/dispatches_georgia3.html
[4] Mark MacKinnon, Politics, pipelines converge in Georgia. The Globe
and Mail: November 24, 2003: http://www.markmackinnon.ca/dispatches_georgia2.html
[5] Ian Traynor, US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev. The Guardian:
November 26, 2004: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
[6] Jonathan Steele, Ukraine's postmodern coup d'etat. The Guardian:
November 26, 2004: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.comment
[7] John Laughland, The revolution televised. The Guardian: November 27,
2004: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/nov/27/pressandpublishing.comment
[8] Matt Kelley, U.S. money has helped opposition in Ukraine. Associated
Press: December 11, 2004: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041211/news_1n11usaid.html
[9] Mark Almond, The price of People Power. The Guardian: December 7,
2004: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/dec/07/ukraine.comment
[10] Mark MacKinnon, Agent orange: Our secret role in Ukraine. The Globe
and Mail: April 14, 2007: http://www.markmackinnon.ca/dispatches_ukraine4.html
[11] Daniel Wolf, A 21st century revolt. The Guardian: May 13, 2005:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/13/ukraine.features11
[12] Craig S. Smith, U.S. Helped to Prepare the Way for Kyrgyzstan's
Uprising. The New York Times: March 30, 2005: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E4D9123FF933A05750C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
[13] Philip Shishkin, In Putin's Backyard, Democracy Stirs -- With U.S.
Help. The Wall Street Journal: February 25, 2005: http://www.iri.org/newsarchive/2005/2005-02-25-News-WSJ.asp
[14] John Laughland, The mythology of people power. The Guardian: April
1, 2005: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/01/usa.russia
Part 3
Under construction...