The [George W. Bush] aide, [Narcissus], … said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html
For the last few years I have been trying unsuccessfully to discern some consistent, organizing theme to American foreign policy in the supposedly post Cold War Era. A few facts that appear to be true relating to the MENA have really bothered me because of their contradictory nature. Recently, one of the members of this Committee posted a serious question for the Committee he had picked up somewhere else on the Internet.
The question is as follows:
Just trying to keep my scorecard straight. Let’s see. The Americans are using a Turkish airbase to bomb ISIS and protect our allies the Kurds.
The Turks are bombing our allies the Kurds while we are using their airbase. The Americans are supplying human shields for terrorist in Syria who are being bombed by the Russians.
On the Iraqi side, American air power is being used to protect and support the new Iranian puppet regime in Iraq installed by the Americans after the gulf war. The Mahdi army that we fought in Sadr City are now advanced element of the Iraqi army we are protecting.
Officers of “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” the Iranians are standing next to Iraqi officers who are standing next to American officers all cooperating to kill ISIS soldiers who have been receiving weapons from Americans through American proxies we consider”moderate rebels”.
Meanwhile, our “enemies” the Iranians are supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen while our “allies” the people who destroyed the trade centers have involved the U.S. in yet another unauthorized war by aggressively attacking the houthis who were helping the U. S. fight Al Queda in Yemen before .
In the meanwhile “moderate rebels” are undoubtedly being furnished weapons capable of bringing down Russian war planes. So while Russia is bombing ISIS, we are encouraging our proxies to shoot down their planes.
Will someone tell me whose side we are on today?
Then, one of the commenters here pointed me to a whole new viewpoint towards American foreign policy by giving me a link to the works of Andrew Horybko. That lead introduced me to a whole group of thinkers and theses I was unaware existed and viewpoints that previously had never entered my mind.
What formerly seemed nonsensical, suddenly seems consistent and intentional‑The established strategy of the foreign policy of the United States is to create chaos to destabilize the world.
I have long been aware of the neocon program, the Project for a New American Century. first publically espoused about 1997 and signed onto by Elliot Abrams, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney and others signed onto the (PNAC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Statement_of_Principles I have read many of their publications and most just seemed to be Israel-Firster tripe promoting a huge increase in the size of the U.S. Military coupled with some conservative dribble about American Dominance in the Twenty-First Century. I did not discern the project’s Statement of Principals to be a real manifesto directed at seeking total world domination by the cabal of its authors. When I refer to the project as a cabal, I do not mean that these men and women covertly met in the think tank offices and wrote out some conspiratorial tome. Instead, the growth of the Cabal most likely arose informally in the incestuous milieu of the elite policy mavens of Washington where the meme grew and developed at parties, receptions, and gatherings among those hungry for power and without ethics. Some gave the project’s goal the name “New World Order.” For lack of a better acronym for those who ascribe to the concepts of neocon colonialism, I will just lump the group who signed, ascribed to, and followed the fundamental ideas set forth in the PNAC as the “PNAC” or the “Cabal”. Membership is confirmed by adoption of the meme, not by formal initiation. For many in the Cabal, they may not even comprehend the reality of their joining or membership, but nevertheless, actually are members. From my view, this group includes almost all of the establishment members of the group Colonel Lang has named the Borg, including most from the Bush-Cheney group, through Hillary, to Obama as one of its most sophisticated players.
My new view of the PNAC as a cabal for world domination first focused when a SST commenter linked me to an article by Andrew Horybko (http://stanjestvari.com/2014/12/05/andrew-korybko-the-color-revolution-model-an-expose-of-the-core-mechanics/ and ultimately to Andrew Horybko’s book, Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach to Regime Change. (eBook available on Amazon Kindle for cheap.) From there, I followed-up with some works by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, The Kagans, and some discussions of the perversion Gene Sharp’s theories of “non-violent” struggle to accomplish violent subversion and some articles and lectures on www.csis.org. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sharp http://www.aeinstein.org/
The intellectual heart of the project to the establish The New World Order and the strategy of achieving it is Brzezinski’s key idea, of a Balkanized Crescent. This concept is built on Halford John Mackinder’s concept of the Asian Heartland as the Pivot of History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_History. The fundamental principle of Balkanizing-the-Crescent is that in a nuclear world where it is too dangerous to take direct action against Russia, Russia can be weakened by the creation of chaos in its near neighbors. By creating chaos in its neighborhood (Russia’s “Rimland” using Mackinder’s name) in a Balkanized Crescent, Russia is forced to act to protect its interests in its Rimland and is weakened thereby. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimland The necessity of Russia (né the Soviets) tamping out the nearby fires thereby weakens Russia’s power and freedom of action to the benefit of the U.S. and the global power of its Cabal leaders. Moreover, given the centrality in the Crescent of competing proto-regional hegemons centered around Arabia and Iran, in Kissinger’s words, a pair of Sunni and Shiite Crescents, chaos in those sub-Crescents can prevent the development of either Arabia or Iran from obtaining hegemony in the region. As an added benefit, Israel is contained by being caught in the middle.
Gene Sharp, who, after studying Gandhi, developed a series of processes and formulas for using small, well-funded groups to destabilize countries from within. The logic of the PNAC Cabal expands this idea all across the coastlines from the Indian Ocean, across the Mediterranean and up around to the Baltic Sea; this is the Crescent to be balkanized under the Colour Revolution meme and the dream of the PNAC.
An amalgam of the ideas presented by these thinkers seems to gel into a theory of using various types of provocateurs, special forces, spies, NGOs, community organizers, paid peasant soldiers, and a comparatively small amount of money to work towards destabilizing the Balkanized Crescent. Andrew Horybko has given the strategy a usable meme name, Colour Revolution. Horybko makes an interesting argument that the Balkanize-the-Crescent strategy is being actively and currently pursued by the US in the present to further the goals set forth last century by the PNAC clique who still dominate the execution of American foreign policy. See, http://csis.org/publication/russia-and-color-revolution ; https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/17/lost-on-the-dark-side-in-syria/
As I reviewed these disparate works they have raised a question in my mind as to whether the real actions of the United States are, in fact, a consistent application of Korybko’s explication of the Colour Revolution meme and strategy? Is current American foreign policy stuck in the, now mythical, bi-polar Cold War Era meme of Russia [the Soviets] against the West and is America’s goal not peace, but to surround Russia [subconsciously, the old Soviet Union boogeyman] with Brzezinski’s Balkanized crescent of chaos, focused upon weakening our now dissolved adversary, the USSR and even Europe, to promote total American world domination?
Listen to any lecture or read the papers by the Kagans, Brzezinski or Kissinger and the old Cold War meme still resonates loudly. Many of these incriminating materials are available on the CSIS.org web site. If we are still captured by the Soviets v. US meme, or if the cabalists do indeed seek to obtain total world domination, then the Balkanize-the-Crescent strategy becomes clear: The apparent contradictions of supporting ISIS and Sunni militias at the same time makes sense. Neither will be crushed, both will simultaneously be supported and subverted. All protestations to the contrary are merely psyops.
Using a perversion of Sharp’s insights and formulas as the tactical tool for expression of the strategic goal of total domination, destabilize everything around Russia so Russia will act to expend resources to stabilize its immediate neighborhood and thereby become weakened by attrition. And, just for good measure, include Europe in the destabilization plan to keep the Europeans subservient and in tow by flooding it with refugees and provoking the skinheads with targets for their xenophobic rage.
If this Balkanize-the-Crescent strategy is the real strategy, it has been profoundly successful. The Crescent around Asia’s Rimland has been destabilized through a masterful series of Colour Revolutions and supported insurgencies going back to the Carter Administration’s first support to the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan when Brzezinski enticed the Soviet Union into a fatal quagmire. The strategy has continued up until the present as we send arms to the “moderate” jihadists in Syria, all the while supporting the Iraqi Army and the Shia militias trying to fight the brothers of the “moderate’ jihadists in Syria and helping KSA to bomb Shia Houthis in Yemen.
Application of this principal means that we truly have no allies and no friends because we subvert them all.
The whole process in the MENA can be visualized as a stoking and damping of three fires, Jewish, Sunni, and Shia; making sure all burn hot, but none burns brighter than the others, while making sure that the three consume all of the fuel, so none becomes overly fierce so as to escape confinement. Russia is intended to suffer burns from all three.
Like plying an alcoholic with booze, we have paid billions into Israel to enable the Zionists to torture and oppress the Palestinians and punish Lebanon in order to guarantee an abiding cancer of Muslim anger against the Jews that spreads it festering seed throughout all of MENA. We have destabilized Israel’s enemy Iraq and have armed its Shia masses who have ethnically cleansed much of Iraq, concentrating the Sunni in fanatical hell holes. We have covertly encouraged ISIS while arming JAL so together, they can destabilize Syria and Iraq. We have armed Turkey and KSA to entice each of them to founder into the Cauldrons of Syria and Yemen and to breed the seeds of their own civil wars. At the same time, we have created an epidemic of opium and a tsunami of migrants and refugees from Syria and Afghanistan into Europe that will most certainly destabilize that entire continent for decades. Iran is countered by a Sunni stronghold that will not go away and that will challenge it for decades even if it is forced into an underground guerilla movement. We have promoted the KSA while all the time knowing it was funding and growing the Wahhabi faith and poisoning a generation all over Asia and Africa with the virus of Salafist Jihadism and now funding the extension of settlements in the West Bank. We have supported fascists in Ukraine to defeat a democratically elected government friendly to Russia and left Ukraine in turmoil and dissent. Russia has willingly allowed itself to be sucked into lengthening wars of attrition in Syria and Ukraine that will be followed by a longer, tumultuous, costly attempt at a post-war stabilization process that can never occur because all of those who could create a follow-up civil society are either dead or gone. Our successfully “Balkanized Crescent” now extends from Sweden to Yemen and everything in between from the Sub Saharan Africa up through Italy, Greece, Hungary, Romania, and the steppes of Ukraine to the Arctic Ocean.
In all, the condition on the ground today supports a Grade of A-Plus for the strategists and tacticians of the Cabal executing the Colour Revolution process. The future for years is simply chaos within the West Asian Rimland far into the future. All of this gained for a mere $75.00 dollar a week paycheck for a few thousand peasant fighters with no employee benefits and a hugely profitable boondoggle for the domestic defense industry supplying the replacement troops, hardware, and materiel. What a deal!
If the quest of the Cabal is continuation of the Cold War for world domination by proxy and not peace, then the facts listed in the scorecard question above all make sense. The U.S. supports all sides in the MENA conflict including even our Al Qaeda frenemies wherever they may be used be to maximize the operation of chaos. The strategy is arms for all as long as “they” are over-there and have sufficient willingness and talent to contribute to chaos sufficient to support the investment.
Even a few hits “over here” or in Paris are good because they reinforce the deception of the American People and increase support for the Cabal’s quest for world domination and increasing authoritarian control at home. Fear at home is good for the Cabal’s business of chaos for profit. An examination of the countries destabilized this century confirms the majesty, effectiveness, and extent of the operation.
We should have considered ourselves duly warned of the dreams dreamt by Jeb and Dick. They were proclaimed widely and openly as the destiny of American exceptionalism. Who could have imagined that in just eighteen years from the 1997 proclamation of the Project for a New American Century its program would have been so effective that all of Europe, western Asia, and North Africa would be so completely destabilized and vulnerable to the expanding chaos in a vast and growing Balkanized Crescent now sucking in Russia with a Siren’s song of reviving dreams of empire.
The problem is we have forgotten the progression of the classic Greek myth moves from destiny, through hubris, and, finally, to Nemesis and destruction. As President Bush’s aid, Narcissus, bragged, “[W]e'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." We are studying, but we will all pay the price as trillions of dollars’ worth of wealth is destroyed, millions are displaced, and more millions die—all to assuage some ancient fear of the mythical big-bad wolf prowling in the forests north of the Caucuses and the desire for world domination of a few evil people. We may slay the wolf, but most likely, we will be ruined first and the whole world may burn because of our quest.
One of the most helpful aspects of participating in this Committee of Correspondence is that it operates as a peer review of its participant’s positions and wacky ideas. This screed is written by a dilatant and as an armchair-general. I am sure I have missed a lot and failed to take many important facts and theories into consideration. As an American I surely hope I am in error here and that my observations are incorrect in some way. Else, I and the rest of the United States citizenry must take responsibility for being the blind authors of a vast continent of human suffering. If the deed has been done, PNAC Cabal intentionally created chaos in our name and on our dime and, perhaps with our consent.
Most here understand much more than I. Please convince me I am in error.
"A place to look at for the start of this is the University of Chicago's Great Books program."
only thing wrong with the Great Books project was the embalming job by Great Bore mediators such as Mortimer Adler and Harold Bloom.
Posted by: rjj | 21 November 2015 at 04:03 AM
In my earlier comment (18 November 2015, 11:25 PM) I had refrained from expressing an opinion on the main issue raised. However, this thoughtful and thought-provoking post, and the excellent discussion on it, obliges me to place my views on the record (even though they be of an outside observer).
I tend to agree with Origin that US policy is largely made by a small group of people in positions at the top of the power structure (the Cabal, as he calls it). Because they share common views and goals tends to shape the ongoing consensus that exists among them, without there being any need for a 'conspiracy'. However, I would add another element to the mix that supports and propels their policies forward. This is the old "military-industrial complex", now reinforced by a group of think-tanks and sundry 'intellectuals'.
I doubt if the primary goal of the Cabal is to "create chaos" in the 'crescent rimlands'. Rather, their goal is the primacy of US power throughout the world (creating chaos in certain areas is a means to that end). The main goal of the military-industrial complex is to make money through the militarization of the US and its international allies. (This is not very different from the dynamics that underlay the old British Empire. The goal of the politicians was the primacy of British power in the world; the aim of the merchant (and later the industrial) class was to make money off the conquered lands).
I think it is incorrect to view Israel as merely being used by the Cabal to create chaos in the ME. It seems to me that it is Israel, through its adherents in the Cabal, which seeks to shape US policy in the ME in its own interests, which are to destabilise the Muslim countries of the region.
There is no doubt that these policies have not proven beneficial to the US and its people, a point reiterated by Ingolf (and others). But that was not the goal of the Cabal; they sought unrivalled power for the US, not prosperity for its people. However, even on their own terms, it is open to question whether the means they have used are not self-defeating. What they have done is to push Russia, which once earnestly sought to join the West, into the arms of China, thus creating the potential for a vast continental power in Eurasia, a power that will rival the US. While the scope for creating chaos in the rimlands of this continental power will remain, the chances of thereby defeating this power have diminished significantly.
Hanging over all this (and all of us) as a dark cloud is the ever-present danger of a deadly miscalculation that leads to an unstoppable spiral into nuclear oblivion for our world. It appears more and more thinking people, even in the US, now pin their hopes (as I do) on the Russian and Chinese leaders, instead of the US, to avert this cataclysm. That in itself is an appropriate judgement on the Cabal.
Posted by: FB Ali | 21 November 2015 at 12:46 PM
Then it is a misunderstanding of terms, what you call the Cabal many of us here see as the Borg, it's Brain, Neo-Cons, the Deep State, etc. After all Neo-Con Michael Leeden has publically stated that they are after societal destruction, and Bremer is a Kissinger disciple.
One key thing you left off in your quote from Narcissus was when he told Susskind that we are an empire now and that is what going on, Imperial Games of no rules for me only for thee. It won't last long.
Posted by: Thomas | 21 November 2015 at 12:51 PM
"I think it is incorrect to view Israel as merely being used by the Cabal to create chaos in the ME. It seems to me that it is Israel, through its adherents in the Cabal, which seeks to shape US policy in the ME in its own interests, which are to destabilise the Muslim countries of the region."
You could also add for their own Imperial Goals. The Ukrainian Oligarchs trying to drag US into their war are dual citizens in Israel.
Posted by: Thomas | 21 November 2015 at 01:07 PM
I think I am misunderstood women prefer handsome men -
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 21 November 2015 at 01:44 PM
This is a rather curious discussion. Although Furrukh tends to come down on Origin's side, there's almost nothing in his reply that I disagree with. Indeed his summary of what drives US foreign policy isn't markedly different to mine. In tone, perhaps, but not in content.
That "US policy is largely made by a small group of people in positions at the top of the power structure" is surely true. Then again, I imagine it's also true in most countries. The influence of those who benefit from conflict, together with that of ideologically oriented think tanks, is, I would have thought, common ground for pretty much everyone on SST. Ditto Israel, although as is evident in this thread, opinions here are a little more divided.
So what's the real difference between Origin and those of us who disagree with him? For me at least, it's his conclusion that this "small group of people" (in his terms, the Cabal) have for decades been deliberately promoting chaos in order to ensure the US stays at the top of the heap. That chaos has been the overwhelming result of US policy is hardly controversial; I can't imagine many, if any, of this Committee would disagree. The question is whether that was the intent.
There's no doubt there are times when chaos is exactly what's sought (like Syria of late), but I think the ever increasing chaos has for the most part been unintentional. The policies that give rise to it stem primarily from a failure to properly grasp either history or present reality, together with a warped, often delusional intellectual framework and an innate presumption of superiority. In other words, the "blindness" the Colonel mentions.
Take Iraq. Did Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al have in mind what actually happened? To the extent they'd thought it through at all, I'm pretty sure they figured they could manage events, that the overthrow of Saddam would trigger a (profitable) transformation not only in Iraq, but in time across the Middle East. Ditto with Iran in 1953 (to take another of Origin's examples); the goal wasn't chaos, the goal was a satrap in place. That it ultimately failed disastrously, producing chaos, seems to me yet another result of a deficient underlying framework. And aren't many of the policies presently producing chaos, if we trace them back, deeply rooted in these two catastrophic foreign policy failures? Certainly, viewed through Origin's template that this was (and is) about preventing unfavourable shifts in the power balance, there was no reason to do anything dramatic in the Middle East in 2002; things were OK for the US.
There's little to quibble with in Origin's description of where things stand. Chaos (and policies that can only result in further chaos) have indeed become ever more common. To my mind the question is whether that's more a consequence of cascading failure than of any conscious plan.
Posted by: Ingolf | 21 November 2015 at 06:03 PM
Gen. Ali, Ingolf and all,
One of the peculiar things about a Committee of Correspondence is the way it winds around and explores a topic from so many different sides.
What started all of this was the simple question posed at the very beginning of this thread. Whose side are we on? The question arose in my mind because it seems that the U.S. is both supporting and subverting the Sunnis we supposedly hate, IS-AQ-JAN and supporting the "moderate" rebels who are supporting the Sunnis we supposedly hate. At the same time, I have always been puzzled at the source of the fierce hatred expressed by so many against Assad. After, the U.S. which has a strong Christian element in its heritage seems a probable supporter of Assad because he has protected the small remaining Christian minority in Syria while the ones we support-subvert seem to want nothing but Salafist ethnic cleansing. The facts just made no sense. I was looking for the U.S. master game plan to obtain the Cabal's goal of total domination.
After going through the progressions of thought I outlined, I came to believe that the STRATEGY being applied is the tool of intervening at all points to disrupt, that is to destabilize all parties in the local theater and across the globe. There has been a misunderstanding of the immediate target of the strategy, destabilization, with the goal that the strategy is intended to foster, domination, or as Gen. Ali phrases it, primacy of power.
It is my view that the adoption of the strategic tool of destabilization, applied to every nail is really a strategic failure because it really means that the party applying the tool, the U.S. has lost its guiding light. When chaos is all that can be added to the equation, more positive strategies and results cannot be used or achieved. The Beacon on the Hill is now dimmed and nearly extinguished.
In response to Ingolf, I think the final, desperate resort to destabilization and the only strategic tool commonly employed is a cascading failure of morals, imagination, and foreign policy expertise. The Cabal simply cannot learn a better way, so they can only find a hammer to use whether it is on a nail or a piece of fine china. It is also a conscious plan because, surely, those in the Cabal know a hammer is not a good tool, yet, in desperation and lack of skill or imagination, the hammer is intentionally used because they know it works most of the time. It may now be that considering the multiplicity of contexts in the world, that old hammer is still the highest and best technology available to remain dominant. If you hammer enough nails, many will be bent, but most will hold. In my view, the choice of strategy is intentional.
As for my position that Israel is being played too, I am sticking to it, not having yet seen a sufficient argument to the contrary. I will concede that we may prefer Israel in many circumstances, but to the extent we may prefer Israel, we are just hastening its demise. Also, Israel often acts as our proxy using their hammer to pound our nails. In the end, if Israel gets too haughty or gangs up with the wrong party, the U.S. will subtly crush it as it would any other challenger, anywhere on the globe.
Posted by: Origin | 21 November 2015 at 08:31 PM
Andrew B.
Colonel Lang forwarded me your email today. I, not he, am the author of this thread under my byline of Origin. In order to maintain my anonymity, I will not reply to it directly. From reading your works, it seems to me you could add to this Committee of Correspondence. As long as you follow the Colonel's rules, I am sure you will be welcome. Of course, the Colonel has final moderator's power as he should as the owner of the site.
Posted by: Origin | 21 November 2015 at 08:39 PM
The last post should be Andrew K instead of B. My typo
Posted by: Origin | 21 November 2015 at 08:42 PM
"I think the final, desperate resort to destabilization as the only strategic tool commonly employed is a cascading failure of morals, imagination, and foreign policy expertise. The Cabal simply cannot learn a better way, so they can only find a hammer to use whether it is on a nail or a piece of fine china."
You plead your case eloquently, Origin, but it seems to me you also acknowledge the central point I was trying to make. Namely, that the increasing use of this primitive and unpredictable tool is a confession of failure on many levels.
If the worldview of the foreign policy elite (no matter how "smart" they may be) is out of sync with the real world, isn't it to be expected that its actions over time will generate ever more unintended consequences? And that its reaction to those will in turn produce more of the same with each cycle likely to be increasingly chaotic?
I don't think we need to posit a retrofitted rationale to satisfactory explain what's happened. When most of the negative feedback pouring in is ignored because it doesn't fit prevailing preconceptions and desires, then rather than self-correcting the machinery will in time shake itself to pieces.
Posted by: Ingolf | 21 November 2015 at 10:16 PM
Ingolf, Origin, FB Ali,
Origin says “…fierce hatred expressed by so many against Assad. After, the U.S. which has a strong Christian element in its heritage…” to which I agree but I do not find this puzzling. There is an intellectual conformity amongst the policy elite; which I credit to their early training amongst institutions that are no longer known for promoting anything of our Christian heritage, quite the opposite since the ‘60s. It seems to me that this hatred expressed against Assad is a manifestation of reality (the complexities of human nature, especially the role religious belief plays in a mans life) imposing itself quite ruthlessly upon an intellectual conception held by the Cabal. They certainly have the intellectual ability to see this but I doubt the courage; certainly not the courage to speak out due to the cost. Which says all that needs be said about what they truly value.
Posted by: Fred | 22 November 2015 at 08:42 AM
Wow wow. Twice as many comments as the "story"
Surprise surprise !
Posted by: de castro | 25 November 2015 at 09:11 AM
Graf Andrássy wanted to use the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina as counterbalance and anchor against the Slavic sea (Russia's "pan-slavism" lurking ominously behind)
Posted by: glupi | 26 November 2015 at 02:24 AM