We are Hungry in Three Languages: Prelude to World War

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-stanton/54487/we-are-hungry-in-three-languages-prelude-to-world-war

We are Hungry in Three Languages: Prelude to World War
Foreign Policy
by John Stanton | February 27, 2014 - 9:25am

On 24 February 2014 US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel held a press conference to announce some of the details of Pentagon’s 2015 budget. Beyond the news of cuts in war fighting machinery and personnel — and the pox of “irresponsible” sequestration on the federal government — Hagel made a point of indicating that the world is becoming an increasingly volatile place. He also seemed to express a bit of disgust for nation building of the type attempted by the USA in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those sentiments are directly at odds with the core element of US national and global security strategy in operation since the late 19th Century. Those strategies employ the USA’s considerable instruments of national power to: 1) actively destabilize “elected” governments (Ukraine, Venezuela) through the use of NGO’s, intelligence agencies and proxy groups; 2) prop up brutal regimes (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt) through a US congressionally approved program, executed by the US military, called Foreign Internal Defense; 3) information operations conducted via the printed press, social media, radio, television and film that seek to shape the cognitive local to global environment in favor of US national interests.; and 4) existentially destroy foreign governments through direct military action in conjunction with the weaponry of finance capitalism to create new markets.

All of this is codified in one form or another in US political and military doctrine. Every American president from George Washington to Barack Obama has trumpeted in some fashion what President Obama and President Bush George W, Bush both proclaimed. The former indicated that the US will pursue its own interests no matter what any other nation on the planet thinks, even invoking God’s plan to put the care of the global environment in America’s hands. The latter put it more simply, “You are either with us or against us.” The heads of foreign governments—and their opponents– are well aware of US strategy, tactics and operations.

What Civilian Leadership?

In the middle of this sits the US Department of Defense and the military branches of the US government. While they certainly advocate for their budgetary interests, have their share of drunks, overstep the civil-military divide, and engage is occasional battlefield atrocities, the fact is that they take their guidance and instructions from American civilians who are elected and appointed to provide the guiding strategy—and funding — to which the military designs its own strategy, tactics and operations.