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http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RIP207A.html 9-11 and US Global Hegemony by Ed Rippy 19 July 2002 THE IDEOLOGY OF BENEVOLENT GLOBAL HEGEMONY: "ONLY WE CAN SAVE THE WORLD FROM ITSELF" In his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard," former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski cites Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington: "A world without U.S. primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth than a world where the United States continues to have more influence than any other country in shaping global affairs." [1] Brzezinski is still influential; he is Professor of Foreign Policy at John Hopkins University and has taught at Columbia and Harvard, he is Counselor-in-residence at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and he is a Trilateral Commission trustee. [2] To Huntington's statement he adds, "[T]he only real alternative to American [meaning "US" -- ER] leadership in the foreseeable future is international anarchy." [3] He names the key requirements for such "leadership:" "To put it in a terminology that hearkens 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 [i.e., to make sure they need US protection -- ER], to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." [4] Eurasia -- everything (roughly) east of Germany to the North Pacific Ocean -- is the key to the world: "A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. . . . About 75 percent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about 60 percent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." [5] Therefore, he concludes, "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 arbitrating role." [6] Within Eurasia the "pivotal" and most volatile area is Central Asia, centered roughly around the Caspian Sea: "Another major uncertainty looms in the large and geopolitically fluid space of Central Eurasia, maximized by the potential vulnerability of the Turkish-Iranian pivots. . . . This huge region, torn by volatile hatreds and surrounded by competing powerful neighbors, is likely to be a major battlefield. . . ." [7] The facing page holds a map with the area Brzezinski considers most "volatile" circled; Afghanistan is nearly in the middle. But this "decisive arbitrating role" requires policies, expenses and sacrifices that the US public is not willing to make under ordinary circumstances: "America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) [note Brzezinski's use of the euphemism "defense" when he means "hegemony" -- ER] and the human sacrifice (casualties even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization."[8] One infers from this that in Brzezinski's view, for the US to save the world from "international anarchy," democracy will have to go, or at least there must be "a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being." He gives an example: "The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor." [9] As we have seen in an earlier paper, the US government provoked and permitted that attack, as well as several others throughout its history. [10] Brzezinski is not the only one to see US global military dominance as imperative: according to Steven Mufson in the Washington Post, in March 2001 President Bush "immersed himself" in Robert Kaplan's book "Eastward to Tartary," which paints the Caspian region as "a realm haunted by the specter of conflict over Caspian pipelines" and other tensions. Bush invited Kaplan to the White House and met with him for nearly an hour. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and other top officials also attended. After the meeting, Kaplan gave his impression of Bush's view of the world: "The world is a bad place with a lot of bad people who can do us harm and the most important moral commitment for America is to preserve its power." Kaplan himself, in an article written before September 11, "predicted that international law would play a smaller role in conflicts as wars became increasingly unconventional and undeclared." "[I]n facing adversaries unconcerned with civilian casualties," he argued, "our moral values. . . represent our worst vulnerabilities" [11] (ellipsis in original). Others have pronounced similar views: for example, in 1980 Richard M. Nixon wrote: "We cannot win [the struggle against the Soviets] unless we understand the nature and uses of power. . . . We have to recover the geopolitical momentum, marshaling and using our resources in the tradition of a great power." [12] Ideological opposition to Communism or even anything which might accommodate Communism has long been a powerful force in US politics, so strong that even presidents have bowed before it. According to Daniel Ellsberg, of "Pentagon Papers" fame, in 1963 President Kennedy said, "In 1965 [after the upcoming election], I'll be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser [for pulling out of Vietnam]. But I don't care. If I tried to pull out completely now, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I'm reelected." [13] Other presidents felt the same pressure: "Like Kennedy and Johnson before him, Richard Nixon believes he cannot hold the White House for a second term unless he holds Saigon through his first." [14] Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Communism has lost its usefulness as a threat, to be replaced by "rogue states" and international terrorism. An example of a threat needed to maintain support for Cold-War levels of military spending is Saddam Hussein, as suggested to President Bush (the elder) by the National Security Council. [15] In sum, powerful elements in the US government have long held it necessary for the US to dominate the world militarily, and for threats to US security to maintain public acceptance of the economic, social, and human costs of this dominance. THE CIA AND WALL STREET There is a strong connection between the CIA's top officers and Wall Street: Clark Clifford, who wrote the National Security Act of 1947 (which established the CIA) was a Wall Street banker and lawyer, and chairman of First American Bancshares, which made the first US ties with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (known less formally as the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International" for its huge amounts of money laundering). The Dulles brothers, who gave Clifford the basic design for the CIA and served as Secretary of State and Director of the CIA, were partners in Sullivan and Cromwell, the most powerful law firm on Wall Street. Former CIA director Bill Casey had earlier been chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Dave Doherty, Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange, was previously the general counsel for the CIA. The CIA's Executive Director, A. B. Krongard, used to be the chairman of A. B. Brown (now owned by Deutsche Bank). Former Director of the CIA George Bush (the elder) is a consultant to the Carlyle Group, a holding company which is the eleventh largest military contractor for the US. John Deutch, another former CIA director, is on the board of Citigroup, and CIA Executive Director (under Deutch) Nora Slatkin is a highly placed executive at Citigroup. [16] Given these connections, it is not too surprising that where the CIA has been involved, one often finds US banks, weapons, and multinational corporations. There is a symbiotic relationship between economic and military power: it takes money to maintain military forces, and it takes military forces to control resources and markets. As Brzezinsky puts it, "America's economic dynamism provides the necessary precondition for the exercise of global primacy. . . . More important, America has maintained and has even widened its lead in exploiting the latest scientific breakthroughs for military purposes." [17] Military research and development is expensive, so keeping US financial centers well lubricated is an aspect of "national security." US economic primacy is not confined to legal markets: "Le Monde Diplomatique," the premier news source for international diplomats, found US intelligence services, banks, and other multinational corporations at the top of a huge global network of organized crime and money laundering -- "a coherent system closely linked to the expansion of modern capitalism." "Diplo" (as the journal is affectionately known to its readers) cites cartels, insider dealing and speculation, fraudulent balance sheets, embezzlement of public funds, spying, blackmail, and betrayal, among a host of other seamy practices. But these cannot succeed without governments willing to 'keep restrictive regulations to a minimum, to abolish or override such rules as do exist, to paralyse inquiries. . . and to reduce or grant amnesty from any penalties." In turn, the businesses finance parties' election campaigns, "promoting the most promising political personalities" and having them "followed and closely watched by armies of lobbyists who can be found close to every decision-making authority." Counting only business with a transnational component, "Diplo" says "the world's gross criminal product totals far above $1000bn [i.e., $1 trillion] a year, nearly 20% of world trade." Modern crooks "go for the highest gains: hedge funds, inflating the bubble of financial speculation, emerging markets, property, new technologies." Calling the US "international financial crime's number one partner," "Diplo" says that "the secret services of the world's most powerful state apparatus. . . have moved into economic warfare." [18] Given the close links between the CIA and Wall street we have seen above, it is certainly well suited to the task. PROXIES: SAUDI ARABIA, PAKISTAN The US makes heavy use of proxies in its international power politics. This confers several advantages: it lowers the direct expense, makes it harder for others to know what it's doing, and provides deniability, especially keeping the US Congress and public in the dark -- important since many of its activities are illegal or otherwise unacceptable (the drug trading [19] comes immediately to mind). Further, proxies can enlist others who would not knowingly aid the US. The proxies we are most concerned with regarding 9-11 and the Afghan war are the Saudis, Pakistan's secret service (the Inter-Services Intelligence Service or ISI), and the Taliban. Osama bin Laden also figures largely in the plot. In 1945 President Roosevelt held a secret meeting with King Ibn Saud. They cut a deal that the US would get priviledged access to Saudi oil and in return would guarantee the Saud family's throne. [20] The Saudis matched US contributions to the Mujaheddin when they were fighting the Soviets, gave $26 million to the ISI to help set up a friendly government in Afghanistan in 1989, [21] and bankrolled Osama bin Laden's first training camp in Pakistan (in collaboration with the CIA). [22] The CIA had built up the ISI and used it and Pakistan's military both to run the covert war against the Soviets and the burgeoning heroin trade. [23] In 1986 the CIA started helping the ISI recruit fundamentalist Muslims from around the world to join the Mujaheddin. Osama bin Laden was one of the young recruits, a great prize because his family was very rich and close to the Saudi royal family. [24] He rounded up Middle Eastern youth and sent them to the US visa bureau in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), which issued them illegal visas to the US (Michael Springman, visa officer at the time, protested long and loud, and lost his job as a reward. He later found out that the Muslims went to the US for training in covert military operations before going to Afghanistan). Apparently this arrangement continued: fifteen of the suspected September 11 hijackers allegedly got visas from the same bureau. [25] Labeviere calls bin Laden "one of the top agents recruiting Arab volunteers for the great crusade against the Communist invaders." [26] Due to his increasing notoriety, bin Laden lost his Saudi citizenship in 1994, and his family disowned him, but he is said to remain secretly in close contact with Saudi intelligence as well as his family. [27] There is at least one contradictory report, saying that according to an extensive dossier supplied by his friends, bin Laden never got any money from the CIA and "has never had any contact with US officials." [28] The first claim may be true, since Saudi Arabia supplies money at the CIA's behest, but the other contradicts multiple other sources and is difficult to credit. After the defeat of the Soviets, military advances by the Taliban regularly followed visits by high-level US State Department officials. [29] When the Taliban had overextended themselves and were vulnerable, some of the same officials arranged a cease-fire and arms embargo -- but Pakistan resupplied the Taliban, who proceeded to take over most of Afghanistan. The resupply happened in plain view and if US officials had wanted to stop it they surely could have. As Dana Rohrabacher, senior member of the House Committee on International Relations put it, "This [Clinton] Administration is responsible for the Taliban." [30] The Taliban, in league with the local drug and transport mafias, managed the smuggling routes, which had been split between several competing warlords. They charged a (relatively) low and uniform tax, and smuggling of all sorts boomed. [31]. Since US banks and stock markets are heavily dependent on criminal money, [32] the CIA probably protected the smuggling, especially since it had built up the drug business to begin with. In fact, terrorist networks are in cahoots with organized crime of all sorts, and the Islamist terrorists are no exception. If local governments get in the way, the terrorists can use their crime networks to transport weapons to attack them with: for example, auto theft rings supplied cars to transport guns in Algiers for the Armed Islamic Group there. And the criminals' ill-gotten gains, when laundered, fatten the (otherwise) legitimate businesses of their friends. [33] The White House has continued to obstruct investigations into Saudi-based terrorists: the FBI suspected the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, and run by a relative of Osama bin Laden, of financing terrorism. But the White House ordered agents to "back off" their investigation. [34] John O'Niell, former head of counterterrorism for the FBI, met such obstruction in his investigations of al-Qaeda that he resigned in protest. He became head of security for the World Trade Center and died there on September 11. [35] Despite attacks on US forces in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Khobar, and Aden, the US has continued to protect Islamist terrorists because they are so useful to US geopolitics ("Islamism" being the fundamentalist ideology stemming from the Koran which transcends -- and rejects -- the secular state). These Islamists are ready to do business with just about anyone to finance their activities. As Swiss journalist Richard Labeviere puts it, through them the US "generates a new zone of political instability" in Central Asia that renders first US "presence," then "arbitration," necessary. The Central Asian states "have little chance" of becoming "future exporters of products with high added value" -- i.e., competitors. Thus, Islamism is "soluble in capitalism," "an antidote to nationalist temptations," and "a rampart against the ever-present threat of a return of socialism." [36] After the fall of the Soviet Union, the various warlords of the anti-Soviet alliance began competing for power, and the US State Department grew nervous at the Islamist extremists who were gaining it. But the CIA and the Saudis did not want to give up "the assets of such a profitable collaboration." In 1991, bin Laden, the CIA, and the Saudi secret services held a series of meetings; exactly what they agreed remains secret, but the CIA was determined to maintain its influence in Afghanistan, "the vital route to Central Asia where the great oil companies were preparing the energy eldorado for the coming millenium." The Saudis also wanted to preserve the bin Laden-Hekmatyar-Pakistan alliance "at all costs." The Islamists are of the Sunni branch of Islam, like the Sauds, and thus an ally against Iran, which is heavily in the Shi'ite school. [37] In fact, the French newspaper Le Figaro reported that a CIA official visited bin Laden in July 2001 while he was undergoing kidney treatment at the US hospital in Dubai [38] (the CIA issued a denial the day after the report, but the Figaro stood by its story). [39] This continued support by the CIA has created great tension with the FBI: for example, Ramzi Youssef, lead defendant in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was recruited by the CIA in Pakistan. [40] We shall return to the issue of high-level obstruction of FBI investigations of al-Qaeda below. However, many Islamists and other Arabs have a deep hatred of the US and its policies, so any collaboration must be well-hidden and confined to people far removed from the rank and file. Many within the CIA may be alarmed at the monster they helped create, but the dependence of US banks and stock markets on the criminal money which it generates [41] makes letting go difficult. And Saudi Arabia, the original partner (with Pakistan and the CIA) in setting up the "Afghan Arabs," also has a sizable chunk of cash parked in the US: "as much as two-thirds of the estimated $1000 billion that Arabs hold abroad [i.e., $667 billion] is thought to be invested in the US or deposited in American banks." [42] While this figure is for all Arabs, not just Saudis, the latter certainly represent a major share. Another benefit bin Laden's fighters confer on the US government is their ability to influence the succession of governments in the Middle East: for example, the current Saudi king's health has declined and Crown Prince Abdullah is running the country in his stead. The succession is uncertain, [43] and Abdullah has distanced himself somewhat from the US and warmed a bit towards Iran, Syria, and Iraq. The US would prefer another prince, Sultan, on the Saudi throne -- and "various qualified observers estimate" 3,000 of bin Laden's troops in northern Yemen -- just across the Saudi border where they can intervene to see that the next Saudi king has values similar to the current one. [44] OIL, AFGHANISTAN, AND RUSSIAN POWER Russia, through its pipelines, controls most Caspian oil, [45] and since the fall of the Soviet Union the US has wanted to keep Russia from maintaining control over the Central Asian Republics. [46] Pipelines and rail connections to the Mediterranean and Arabian seas are necessary to link the Central Asian economies to the West (and coincidentally enrich Western businesses) and enable them to avoid remaining under the sway of Russia. [47] Further, the military importance of oil [48] means that a US presence in the Caspian oilfields would bolster US military power in the area. According to Unocal oil vice-president John J. Maresca, the best route for a pipeline to the Arabian Sea runs through Afghanistan. [49] Both a US company (Unocal) and an Argentinean company (Bridas) had been negotiating with the Taliban to build such a pipeline from the mid-1990s. [50] However, the negotiations were unfruitful, and Maresca told Congress that Afghanistan needed an internationally recognized government (unlike the Taliban) in order for Unocal to build the pipeline. [51] Two analysts at the RAND Corporation, one a former official in the Reagan and Bush (the elder) Administrations, also wrote that "Afghanistan could prove a valuable corridor for [Central Asian] energy as well as for access to markets in Central Asia. [52] Two days after the US began bombing Afghanistan, the US ambassador to Pakistan visited Pakistan's Petroleum Minister, who told her that the pipeline now appeared possible "in view of the recent geo-political developments in the region." The Ambassador told him that the US had lifted a number of sanctions against Pakistan and hoped that "US investors would avail [themselves of] the opportunities." [53] Unocal may be back in the mix, but reports differ: A natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to a seaport in Pakistan has won approval from the governments involved, and the Afghan Minister for Mines and Industries told Reuters that Unocal would be the lead company in the consortium building it. However, Unocal denies any interest. [54] Several sources report that Hamid Karzai, head of Afghanistan's interim government, once worked as a consultant for Unocal, [55] but the company denies this. [56] OPIUM IN CENTRAL ASIA The CIA has a long history of protecting the drug trade on several continents, [57] and Afghanistan was producing over 60% of the world's heroin by 1989. [58] Aside from bankrolling covert armies, money from drugs (and other crime) supports international banks, businesses, and stock markets: the amount of laundered drug money alone equals an estimated 8-10 percent of all world trade. [59] US banks handle tens of billions of dollars a day from their foreign correspondent banks, many of which launder criminal money. [60] And major publicly-traded US corporations enjoy a loophole in the banking laws which makes it easy for them to launder money with a low risk of detection [61] (but several of them have been detected doing it anyway, prompting high-level meetings with US Department of Justice officials). [62] In 2000, the Taliban eliminated poppy farming in the areas they controlled, causing about a 95% drop in Afghanistan's harvest. [63] However, this did little to reduce the heroin flow because of large existing opium stockpiles; indeed some believe the ban was imposed to keep the price from falling due to oversupply. [64] Another possibility is that the Taliban hoped to gain international recognition by stopping poppy growing. [65] While the ban on cultivation did not immediately impact drug-related cash flows, if it had continued until the stocks ran low, it would have. However, when the US started bombing, the farmers started replanting poppies, and since the Taliban's removal Afghanistan's opium crop is booming again. [66] Despite perfunctory vows to fight drugs, the new government in Afghanistan has taken the office and equipment away from its drug control agency, [67] and the US has exempted Afghanistan (as well as Haiti) from sanctions for its drug production. [68] Further, Uzbekistan, bordering Afghanistan to the north and also under strong US influence, is "awash in a sea of poppies." 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