America’s Transition from a Democracy to a National Security State, in
Five Easy Steps
By Robert
Abele
Global Research, December
19, 2015
There seems to be a formula
for a superpower’s intent to dominate the world: massive surveillance +
use of military might in foreign wars and domestic control of citizens (e.g.
armored cops; packed prisons, etc.) + control of each method by elites for their
own interests = international and domestic dominance by fear and force.
Domestically this is called the National Security State. It is a state which is
now in place in the U.S. government.
The National Security State
is a state that has the following characteristics (from Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Brave
New World Order; Gary Wills, Bomb Power; and Andrew Bacevich, Washington
Rules):
1) It is fixated on alleged foreign enemies and the
“threat” they pose to the homeland;
2) It uses the “threat” for the justification of any
military solutions to “pacifying” those enemies.
3) It maintains political and economic power not
primarily in the people, but in the military (and defense contractors).
4) It uses propaganda methods to narrow the parameters
of political debate and to put fear in the populace regarding perceived state
enemies (e.g. the Truman Doctrine speech of 1947: “Totalitarian regimes”
anywhere in the world “undermine…the security of the United States”).
5) It uses many appeals to “national security” as a rationale
for its drive toward more expansive hegemony.
Here is how the formula
works.
1) Make hegemony the goal
of the state, whether domestic or foreign (Chomsky
calls it “the imperial grand strategy”—see Hegemony or Survival, Ch. 2).
It is the “We must rule” syndrome (see
Andrew Bacevich, Washington Rules). Dominance is generally defined as
forcing others to live by ruler-chosen patterns, and that is what hegemony is
about: Washington determining the rule of other nations. This, in my view, is
part of the new understanding of the doctrine of “American Exceptionalism” that
started after WWII and is culminating in the Bush and Obama years. It implies
that the U.S. is not just qualitatively different from other nations, but
“better” or “above” others, and thus “naturally” suited to dominate others.
2) Observe (i.e. by
clandestine and electronic surveillance) and eliminate any potential
competition for hegemony. The practice arguably began
in 1945 with the organization of the Strategic Services Unit, a secret
intelligence and counter-espionage unit of the U.S. government, which was
gradually absorbed by the CIA, starting in 1947, culminating in the creation of
National Security Agency organization. By 1952, a full National Security State
was already in place, ready for any alleged threat to the U.S.
The
rhetoric of the National Security State slants the rationale for this action as
“a threat to our national interests,” when really it is only a threat to the
interests of the agents doing the bidding of the state complex. Examples of it
abound in U.S. history. In just recent history, we can see it in President
Reagan’s “War on Terror” in Central America in the 1980’s, to the U.S. war on
Iraq, Libya, and Syria, to the government and media’s rhetoric concerning those
who question U.S. foreign policy as “anti-American” or even “terrorist.” Add to
that the fact that the U.S. has approximately 755 U.S. military bases around
the world, that they attempt to topple national leaders, from Iran to Cuba to
Venezuela. When they are not toppling, they are spying on world leaders, such
as Angela Merkel of Germany and Dilma Vanna Rousseff of Brazil. We see it all
in Obama’s alarming widening of Bush’s “war on terror,” by rebranding the “war
on terror” as “challenges to America’s interest,” while maintaining Bush-era
policies of the war on terror.
3) Use domestic terror—i.e.
appeal to the idea of “Supreme Emergency” by an “ongoing threat”—e.g.
Communism; al Qaeda; terrorism; Isil; Isis
Defined by
political scientist Michael Walzer (in Just and Unjust Wars) as a threat
that causes a fear beyond the ordinary fears of war. This threat and the
fear it generates may “require” certain measures that the war convention bars.
The “war convention” is the set of norms, customs, professional codes, legal
precepts, religious and philosophical principles, and reciprocal arrangements
that shape our judgments of military conduct—set forth most explicitly in
international law.
The
problem here is that most of what governments classify as “Supreme Emergency”
is not only a permanent or ongoing state, but is at root only an expression of
institutional self-interest or expediency, the direct result of the impetus
toward hegemony. Further, under this category, “Supreme Emergency” becomes the
rule rather than the exception, and then the institutional mindset of the
government becomes a “State of Exception” (see Georgio Agamben, States of
Exception) rather than a “State of Emergency.” For example, we now know that
during WWII, when Winston Churchill used the term of “Supreme Emergency” to
describe Britain’s situation in 1939, it was a rhetorical phrase designed to
weaken the resistance of the British people and government to maintaining the
war convention’s proscription of extreme brutality.
This very
practice of using Supreme Emergency to justify draconian government policies has
continued today. Some examples under President Bush include Bush’s claim to
have the power to detain, without charge, any person—including U.S. citizens—he
declared to be “enemy combatants” or “suspected terrorists;” his claim to power
of preventive war and indefinite detention; and the “Domestic Security
Enhancement Act of 2003,” which empowers the state to rescind one’s citizenship
for providing any type of “material support” to an organization that the state
has deemed to be involved with terrorism.
The
practice of Supreme Emergency has continued under President Obama. For a few
examples: Obama’s claim to have the executive power to order the assassination
of U.S. citizens; his continuing the concentration camps in Guantanamo, Iraq,
and Afghanistan; his failure to halt all practice of torture; and his
escalating drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, all of which are done under the
banner of “responding to terrorist threats,” or more directly, “preventing
attacks against America.”
And as
ever, the U.S. mainstream media act as enablers of all of this. Glenn Greenwald
and the reporters for The Intercept present regular and substantive
examples of this, as does Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. For one of the
latest excellent analyses, see Greenwald, “The Greatest Obstacle to Anti-Muslim
Fearmongering and Bigotry: Reality” (6/24/15).
Thus we
can see that the point of “Supreme Emergency” is to keep the citizens in fear,
and thus in hatred of the “different other,” whether it be a “foreign threat”
or a racial threat (e.g. fear of African-Americans, Muslims, etc.) to enable
foreign and domestic dominance. Any “threat” will do. The method here is to
build up the “threat” while in fact, the government and its agencies see
citizens and their power as enemies—i.e. as threats to State dominance.
Because
this practice has now been established, U.S. citizens have grown numb to it. As
a result, the government no longer even appeals to specific threats. Rather,
government officials now only appeal to a vague “threat” intended to serve the
purpose of keeping fear alive. For example, the FBI continues to make
statements to the effect that they have “prevented x number of
terrorist attacks” through surveillance, while detailing none of them. The last
such “terrorist threat” was the July 4 weekend (see Fair.org, “Got to be
Thwarting Something,” 7/11/15).
4) Regular,
unannounced, non-Congressionally-approved wars
Use the following two-step
mechanism:
a) “The National Security
State has automatic Just Cause for any military action.” The National Security State sees any state that
does not cater to its dictates as an enemy, thus creating a casus belli.
This is precisely the opposite of the ethical and legal concept of “Just
Cause,”
For
example, consider recent Mideast military actions, done directly or by proxy.
From whence comes the oil of the future, and where is the greatest potential
anti-U.S. unrest that threatens U.S. hegemony? Experts generally agree upon the
following list: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Angola, Libya,
Nigeria, Sudan, the Caspian Sea area (consisting of Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), and Latin
America (consisting of Venezuela, Mexico, Columbia, and Ecuador).
What are
the U.S. global strategies for securing its dominance in these regions for the
21st century? Among other actions, the U.S. and NATO now have
troops and military bases established in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and now, critically, in Ukraine. The first four of
these countries have agreed to supply oil and natural gas to NATO countries,
thus undermining agreements and sought-after agreements involving these
countries and Russia, China, and Iran. In conjunction with this, the U.S. is
directly undermining the attempts of Russia, China, and Iran to continue their
agreements with Central Asian countries for oil and natural gas. This is
especially true with the TAPI (Turmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas
pipeline to run from the Caspian Sea to India, which killed the
Iranian-Pakistan-India deal to run a pipeline between them (IPI). In sum, TAPI
is the finished product of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. NATO will be expected
to use military power to protect the pipeline, and thus consolidates Western
power in the region (see Rick Rozoff, “Wars Without Borders: Washington
Intensifies Push into Central Asia,” Global Research, January 30, 2011).
Similar
U.S. machinations were undertaken with West Africa and even Latin America. For
example, the U.S. has established smaller-type military bases– what the Defense
Department refers to as “lily pads”—in an arc running from the Andes in South
America through North Africa and across the Middle East, to the Philippines and
Indonesia. These locations are consummate with the fact that the bases are
located in or near the oil-producing states of the world. In Latin America, the
U.S. military uses bases in Paraguay to monitor, and to be in position to move
against the Bolivian and Venezuelan governments, since both countries
nationalized their oil companies.
Furthermore,
according to The London Guardian, the April, 2002 military coup in
Venezuela was clandestinely supported and organized by the U.S. in response to
President Hugo Chavez’s nationalizing Venezuela’s oil company, PDVSA.
Don’t be
fooled by the recent U.S. agreement with Iran. The U.S. still has military eyes
targeting Iran. It is widely known that the Bush administration nearly went to
war with Iran twice during Bush’s tenure. Also, Obama himself attempted to
foment a coup within Iran through proxy, through “The Green Revolution” in
2009. The role of Iran is dual: geographic and geologic. Geographically, Iran
sits between three important sea shipping lanes: the Caspian Sea, the Persian
Gulf, and the Sea of Oman, and is the geographical point of intersection for
the Middle East, Asia, and the steppes of Russia. Geologically, next to Saudi
Arabia (264.3 billion barrels), Iran has the largest oil reserves in the world
(132.5 billion barrels). That the U.S. wants control of Iran is beyond doubt.
Iran is completely surrounded by U.S. military bases, in the Persian Gulf, in
Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Turkey, in Iraq, in Cyprus, in Israel, in Oman,
and in Diego Garcia. Iran itself has become an “Observer State” (along
with India and Pakistan) to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Created by China in 2001, and with members including Russia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, these members and have pledged mutual
economic and military aid.
b) “The National Security
State is its own Proper Authority.”
The U.S.
has a long history of doing what it wants, regardless of U.N. resolutions or
International Law. But if one begins with the Bush administration and the
American writers who supported the war in Iraq, they made it clear that they
did not believe that the U.S. needed U.N. authorization to pursue “preventive
war.” However, simultaneously and in contradictory fashion, they all
likewise stated that in attacking Iraq they were enforcing UNSCR 687 and 1441.
Contradictory
to the U.S. position stands international law. The Nuremberg Tribunal
concluded: “preventive action in foreign territory is justified only in case of
‘an instant and overwhelming necessity for self-defense, leaving no choice of
means, and no moment of deliberation’.” By this definition attacks on Iraq,
Libya, and Syria were all unjustified.
Further,
the idea that the U.S. can bypass international bodies and use only its own
authority to send its military into another country presumes that unilateralism
trumps international law by allowing one dominant nation to determine what is
best for both itself and the world and then to act on it, whether or not it is
in concert with the rest of the world. Because it excludes dialogue and
more importantly the demands of universality of principle required by ethical
thinking, the idea of any nation being its own proper authority to wage war has
no place in a moral or legal analysis of war.
Finally, a
violation of the U.N. Charter is concomitantly a violation of Article IV of the
U.S. Constitution, which says that “all Treaties made…under the Authority of
the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land…”
Therefore,
the proper authority criterion is not met by U.S. and NATO incursions in other
countries today. Further, it risks setting the world on fire with war, possibly
even using nuclear weapons. (For more on this point, see Michel Chossudovsky, Toward
a WWIII Scenario, and The Globalization of War)
Part Two
will complete and analyze this shift.
Dr. Robert Abele holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette
University and M.A. degrees in Theology and Divinity. He is a professor of
philosophy at Diablo Valley College, in California in the San Francisco
Bay area. He is the author of four books, including A User’s Guide to the USA
PATRIOT Act, and The Anatomy of a Deception: A Logical and Ethical Analysis of
the Decision to Invade Iraq, along with numerous articles. His new book,
Rationality and Justice, is forthcoming (2016).
The
original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright
© Robert
Abele, Global Research, 2015
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