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American geopolitics after WWII & Its relationship to the Middle East

By Tom Wheat

  The belief in America and what Americans believe in, -- is our democratic tradition. However, as America has expanded in Cultural and economic influence it has also had to rely on its conventional military, including traditional allies, and allies of necessity. This line has begun to blur as well. The last time the military was part of a social movement was in WWII when we were battling the Nazi's and Fascist absolutism. America became the world leader due to its ability to mass-produce and through victory by being the dominant player received the torch of empire from English colonialism. Participatory Democracy was viewed as having triumphed over autarky. American ideals were thought to be universal.

At the end of WWII we inherited the mantle of European colonialism. The country was transformed from a relatively free democratic republic into a country that came to field an agenda of liberal economic expansion at the expense of actual freedom and democracy in the countries so affected by our imperialist expansion. Now as a world super power we had to create a national security state and a central intelligence agency to reinforce our dominance in world affairs. This forced us to compromise many of our innate republican ideals of freedom.  We then proceeded to support any fascist regime ready to be economic suzerain so long as it wasn't socialist.

As World War II ended along with traditional European colonialism there was a genuine belief among these countries that self-determination and sovereignty would be restored, and that key social reform would be implemented. Many Asian intellectual elites looked to American models while the warlords of Asia, the wealthy autocratic elite admired American weapons to contain their populace and enact power plays against their rivals.

At the height of our expansion after WWII we entered an era of unparalleled economic prosperity. However, the democracy that created the power of unlimited mass production became the military industrial complex that guided US foreign policy after the war.

In reality the Cold War was a means in which the military industrial complex created during WWII sought to maintain its function as a supplier of military hardware. Only by perpetually existing in a state of emergency could we continue to justify increased defense spending, while in the process we were making more enemies in the third world with our reactionary philosophy of propping up the dictator to safeguard democracy. In this process we came to train assassins and later would be terrorists, such as Osama Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein, among countless others.

Cold War military interventions were often based more on ideology and trade expansion than out of real military necessity. With the Cold War, Interventions in Korea and Vietnam were based on the Domino theory, an ideology that there was a real threat to democracy and capitalism posed by the emergence of soviet client states in Asia.  In this process the US military supported regimes that did not adhere to true notions of either capitalism or democracy.

 For example, the early pro US regimes of S. Korea and especially Vietnam The Tandem of presidents' Diem, and Nguyen illustrated how corruption could not only undermine a military campaign (through government bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption) but also the value of supporting a regime that ran anathema to every American's ideal hurt citizen and troop morale and also mobilized the majority of the local population into total opposition towards what they perceived as an occupying alien imperial force.

  Many individual soldiers on the other hand truly believed that intervention in these Asian countries was justified, politically and ideologically. Most GI's truly felt that their presence and the war that they were fighting would eventually bring peace and freedom to a country under the threat of the soviet expansionary menace. That with victory the American way of life would come to the third world. The benefits of capitalism at home would come to the peoples of the third world.

The war on the other hand had an economic incentive to be fought. South East Asia had originally been part of Imperial Japan's, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. A trade bloc whereby the Japanese would dominate East Asia as its dominate sphere of influence and like the European colonial's Japan wanted to establish client states with advantageous trade terms facilitating the flow of tin and rubber along with other cash commodities.

We lost the Vietnam War because we lost the collective will of our people and of the host country we were supposedly defending against the alleged evil of communism. So while our government preached the ideology of the Soviet evil empire the reality was that US mid-western grain farmers engaged in active trade with Russia. This is only just one illustration of the economic power plays that have lead men into the battlefield. War is good business for some people.

According to George Kennan, the architect of American Foreign policy, the Cold War could be described as being based on a bipolar system of mutual antagonism. With the rise of the Cold war it became necessary to maintain massive defense spending for the ideology of freedom, of which the direct application came to be support for fascist regimes counter to the ideals of freedom. In the 1960's we were still masters of the universe. However, we attempted to fight three wars at a time when we had only the economic power to wage two wars. The wars fought were the Cold War, Vietnam War, and the War on Poverty. The end result of that was by 1968 we had managed to acquire a huge deficit and European currency traders made a run on the American dollar. The Nixon response was to de-link the dollar from gold and float the currency. At this point Americans began to lose their economic freedom. Soon we would have stagflation, inflation, oil embargos and a host of maladies that would become a burden to the American empire and also would lead to the erosion of American freedom.  After the 60's hangover subsided, American awareness for politics also began to drift into the abyss of corporate relativism. The Burden of empire was exacting its toll like Rome we also began to intellectually wither.

  The Middle east Conflict

  The present state of the Middle East crisis is a situation borne of political and economic adversarial antagonisms. On the one hand US economic security is dependant upon Arab oil and on the other hand our own military industrial complex is wedded to Israel both ideologically and in terms of collective political and economic security.

  On the one hand we supply Israel with Arms and ask that they be our regional peacemakers and the fjord in the path of Pan Arabism. In the course Israel has become dependant entirely on the US for its own survival. While Israel is an effective short-term wall that divides the Arab world from total military consolidation its own institutional structure also profits from threats to its own security.  It is a paradox of reason that nonetheless still exists when a third of the Israeli economy is geared directly towards military defense.  Since heavily militarized economies by nature are inflationary our foreign aid package to Israel guarantees that that country will not have to bear the burden of that inflation. Every year we supply Israel with a 15 billion dollar foreign aid/DOD funding package. The reason for this adversarial relationship is the fact that we use Israel as a regional power to leverage the Arabs to supply oil at a rate consistent with our economic expansion.

Secondly our demand for oil forces us into economic stagnancy whereby we will go to any lengths to sacrifice technological innovation for trade practices that will guarantee that oil will be the sole form of fuel through every cycle of boom and bust in the economy until the economy collapses when the supply of oil runs out. So goes the wealth of nations.

The mercantilist practices of OPEC also insure that the vast economic bounty of vibrant trade with the West goes solely into the hands of sheiks and little left is doled out to the populace, the masses of whom exist in utter poverty. It is in a state of poverty that the Arab youth of the Middle East turn towards the solace of politicized religion, an ephemeral god that can imbue their own hopeless economic plight with a profound sense of purpose and destiny. So as they are starving it is better for them blow themselves up for the reward of heaven then to face a dismal existence of poverty and despotism on earth. Countries where the prevailing system of rule is Autocracy can only breed poverty, in the countries where such policies constitute the philosophy of the regime. This policy of rule by a few elites predicated on strategic necessity, and collective arms pacts is in anachronism that leads to terrorism.

Since we refuse to diversify and implement any other sustainable means, such as bio fuels, hydrogen fuel cell, and plasma fusion, or even hemp fuel, we will continue to aid and abet the cycle of Arab terrorism and Israeli aggression thereby assuring that the ripple effects will be felt in our economy and our collective security as well.

To some extent this containment policy system is a holdover from the Cold War when we waged an economic battle with the Soviet Union in regards to which hegemon would control the Middle East and how Arab oil producing client states could be established. However, the binomial of supply and maintenance the demand for arms to safeguard that supply forces us to contend with autocracy in the place of freedom.  It is unfortunate that the Palestinians are caught up in the geopolitics of oil and the arms trade. A situation we largely help to manufacture due to our dependence on Arab oil and Israel's overwhelming dependence on a militarized economy for both economic and political survival.

Arab countries find it convenient to politically manipulate the Palestinian plight to further their own aims in regards to their own desire to leverage the US since their economies are solely geared towards oil exportation. Seldom have they held to the Palestinian cause for long when it became evident that we would give into their demands to buy more oil.

So long as our economy is dependant on oil and arms to safeguard that oil we will have Middle Eastern terrorism to contend with both at home and abroad.

In the Middle East the scenario was the same as well. The Palestinian -Israeli situation could be summed up as an ageless blood honor clan feud locked into a system of global transnational political and economic policies surrounding arms sales and oil production.

There are those in the Israeli and Arab camps that clearly profit from the violence in the Middle East. Every true attempt at peace has either been derailed by assassination (Rabin) or empty assurances of further extensions of autonomy (Oslo accords) to the Palestinians. Before and during British occupation the majority of the inhabitants of Palestine/Israel were Palestinian. To some degree they had their country taken from them in 1948 before they ever saw independence.

The state of Israel once an image of Zion reborn was transformed into a nuclear power. The Saudis were allowed to continue their medieval dictatorship despite being number one supporters of terrorism all because they have the world's largest oil reserves. The Israeli's became our regional means of leverage against the Arabs. The Arabs supply us with oil which makes a few Sheiks rich enough to leverage American Israeli leverage through arms sales and support to terrorist organizations. The Israelis respond with demands for more foreign and military aid.  The end result is that more military hardware is either supplied directly or indirectly all throughout the Middle East by the United States. Such a system demands that you add fuel to the fire and yet bemoan the blaze when the intention was to put out the fire.

Israel's politicians have used the instability and violence in the Middle East to work out advantageous military contracts with our own military industrial complex. Further escalation of the conflict means that the 30% of the Israeli economy that is tied directly to the military budget can receive military hardware from the US at bargain basement prices in the name of collective security. Since most militarized economies suffer from inflation, Israel has an advantageous arrangement with the US whereby our military foreign aid package offsets that inflation.

  So it is not surprising that a good portion of the ruling class in the Middle East sleeps in the same bed as the US oil lobby. The military industrial complex also profits from the mid east malaise.  Continuous conflict insures that US can continually justify an annual 15 billion dollar military aid package to Israel. 30% of the Israeli economy is directly tied toward national defense. Israel has access to the latest weapons systems from the US. They also have nuclear weapons. Dependence on Arab oil forces us to support undemocratic regimes in the farcical name of democracy and free trade. Arab leaders see our dependence on oil as leverage by means to expand their own regional economic autonomy visa via the threat of embargo.  The system of fair trade has been reduced to the power politics of majority oligopolies and minority cartels.

All the political rhetoric about democracy and human rights is only used as justification for military intervention in countries not in the US economic sphere of friends. For those inside the circle the rules need not apply. Hence, The principle became propaganda used to increase foreign aid budgets on capital hill. In fact the practice constitutes outright hypocrisy. For example, we supported Saddam Hussein in the 80's in his war with Iran despite the fact that he used chemical weapons against Iran and also against his Kurdish minority. Through the vehicle of free trade American Chemical chemicals were the first to develop his chemical weapons arsenal. Iraq's neighbor, Turkey is our ally, and yet it has used poison gas against the same Kurdish minority in its own borders. Nothing is said about Turkey only about Iraq. Yet it is these same Kurds we laud as heroes for opposing Saddam's brutal regime.   The concept of Human rights then became only an ideological discourse applied only to those countries that were not in the US political economic orbit as a psychological justification for military intervention. If you are in the circle then the moral standards need not apply. In truth US Democracy and capitalism became dependant upon autocratic despots to safeguard its geopolitical ambitions. The price for empire was the sacrifice of our democratic principals.

After Vietnam we had the despot Shah of Iran to prop up. Also when we were beginning to decry the autocrat Kadafi, US oil interests with some US government support had long been pursuing economic ties to Libya despite Libya being named as a state sponsor of terrorism. With the fall of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah, US policymakers saw it necessary to arm Saddam.  In a classic divide and conquer strategy, it was hoped that the split of the former Persian state would yield a malleable set of regional interests politically weakened by tribal and religious conflict, and eventually have the region transformed into an oil producing client state for America.

Thus, the unintended consequence of this was that in 1981 we set out to supply Saddam with arms poison gas, for use against Kurds and the Iranians, courtesy of American Chemical companies.  That war went on until 1988. In 1989 the soviet Afghan war began, and so we began to supply afghan tribal factions along with Osama Bin Laden's own faction of mujahadin. Victorious indeed we were against the soviets, except that old allies became new enemies and new enemies fast became old friends.

Democracy in practice has only existed briefly before it was undone by oligarchy just ask the ancient Athenians.  The US committed itself to supporting autocratic regimes based on vague geopolitical principals, of collective security. The rhetoric of American foreign policy today touts the expansion of democratic principles and yet its practice of doling out foreign aid is based more on the horizontal integration of the world's economic wealth into the hands of the power elite classes as opposed to actual infra-structural investment in a third world country. Third World countries are designed more on the lines of a mercantile system in which all domestic production in those countries is geared for export.  The poverty of these nations fans the flames of nationalism and since dissent is not tolerated in these countries it will always be the US who is viewed as the sole aggressor and infidel. The more we retaliate and continue to prop up despotic regimes just for the sake of extracting oil out of a country without real regard as to the genuine welfare of the people whose natural resources we exploit, the more we insure that the cycle of autocracy, poverty and terrorism will come to be increasingly more visible in our own country

Historically, one can look to past empires for evidence of the same trends we are witnessing today. The rise of imperial Rome saw to the dissolution of the roman republic and the expansion of empire. The second Punic wars transformed a relatively prosperous society into a society of slaves and aristocrats. In the last 100 years prior to the reign of Augustus, Rome was at civil war and by the election of Augustus the roman senate the last bastion of republicanism was divested of its power and existed in name only. Rome continued to expand yet the price for that expansion was freedom and imperialism was what ultimately did in the empire. The same could be said about British Victorian colonialism.

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Middle east summary of Peace agreements.

Gandhi quote

"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French...What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct...If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs... As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds." Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in "A Land of Two Peoples" ed. Mendes-Flohr.

UN Security Council resolution 242

UN SECURITY Resolution 242

UN Security Council resolution 338

UN Security Council Resolution 338

history of Palestine/Israel until 1988

History of the Conflict until 1988

Avi Shlaim  professor of International Relations at Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000)
Avi Shlaim