This is from In the Wilderness ..
[This is a sharp-eyed look at the madness of a major neocon talking-head regarding China policy. But for perspective-by-analogy, let me ask you a question about Iran. Ever wonder what would have come about in Iran had the Central Intelligence Agency not fomented an illegal coup d'etat against democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh? He moved to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, triggering the wrath of the American economic hitmen who engineered his sudden overthrow in 1953. That clever piece of finesse brought the bitter ordeal of the bogus Shah of Iran, his notorious Savak secret police, the 1979 Shiite revolution, and the eventual sabotage of the entire Carter Presidency - which was, let's remember, the last hope for a timely mitigation of Peak Oil. And now they're in something called the Axis of Evil.
The Iranian example is just as relevant for Venezuela, where Uncle Sam recently tried and failed to repeat the trick, as it is for China, where he can't. In every case, guys who haven't read Verse 61 of the Tao Teh Ching take it upon themselves to intervene in other people's affairs in the pursuit of their own short-term advantage. They do so in the name of "realism," because that category acts like a mirror to those who would operate under its cover: my policy reproduces an existing world of scarcity and danger and resentment; by comparison, yours is unrealistic - therefore, I'm the credible adult in charge, and you're the dreamer on the margin.
The Realist's low expectations of others are a mask for his desire for their goods. He wants to raid his neighbors, so he laments aloud that they are such a hostile people, it will be necessary to destroy them. In wrecking the place, the Realist makes the world match his vision of it, then boasts that he was right. --JAH]
China in America's cross-hairs:
Robert D. Kaplan and neocon hawks clamor for new Cold War
By
Larry Chin
© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. This story may NOT be posted on any Internet web site without express written permission. Contact admin@copvcia.com. May be circulated, distributed or transmitted for non-profit purposes only.
June 20, 2005 1100 PST (FTW) The feature story of the June 2005 issue of The Atlantic Monthly is Robert D. Kaplan's "How We Would Fight China: The Next Cold War". This inevitable war, according to Kaplan, "will link China and the United States in a future that may stretch over several generations." By comparison, "the Middle East is just a blip."
Kaplan's provocative China piece, detailed below, coincides with increasingly confrontational rhetoric by the Bush administration, the growing influence of neocon hardliners, growing concern about China within the elite cadres of the New World Order (from the G-7 to the Bilderberg Group), tensions between China and Japan (the US proxy in the region), and more East-West trade bickering (currencies, etc.). In February 2005, new CIA Director Porter Goss issued a warning to China regarding its military modernization. One day later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued a similar warning.
Does the militaristic Kaplan article, afloat upon the growing hostilities between the US and China, mark the beginning of a dangerous new phase of conflict and superpower war?
Who is Robert D. Kaplan?
In a post-9/11 political landscape crawling with warmongering policymakers and military-utopian intelligentsia, Kaplan deserves singling out. It is not Kaplan's wild views, but his influence - the fact that he has the ear of top military and intelligence brass, and enjoys a symbiotic relationship with elites at the highest levels - that is of greater importance.
Kaplan is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and the author of nine books on international affairs, including Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, and international travel books with distinctly political biases, such as Balkan Ghosts and Eastward to Tartary.
Fascinated (some would say obsessed) with military/intelligence and war, Kaplan's upcoming book, Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground is one of several books he is writing about the US armed forces.
Kaplan's essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. He has appeared on C-SPAN and CNN. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls Kaplan among the "most widely read" authors defining the post-Cold War (along with Francis Fukuyama and Harvard's Samuel Huntington).
Kaplan is a favorite of both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. According to U. S. News & World Report, "President Clinton was so impressed with Kaplan, he ordered an interagency study of these issues, and it agreed with Kaplan's conclusions." Kaplan was invited to meet with George W. Bush in the White House - and brief Bush on foreign policy.
Kaplan is also a consultant to the US Army's Special Forces Regiment, the US Air Force, and the US Marines. He has lectured at military war colleges, the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the FBI. Kaplan has lectured at the State Department. More recently, Kaplan was embedded with US forces during the attack on Fallujah, and has spent considerable time with the US military over the past three years. In other words, Kaplan is a military-intelligence insider.
Kaplan has a reputation for being one of the first American writers to forecast (from as far back as the 1980s) the Clinton-Bush administration wars in the Balkans and Central Asia, and the current 9/11 War (Afghanistan, Iraq).
In a post-9/11 political landscape crawling with warmongering policymakers and military-utopian intelligentsia, Kaplan deserves singling out. It is not Kaplan's wild views, but his influence - the fact that he has the ear of top military and intelligence brass, and enjoys a symbiotic relationship with elites at the highest levels - that is of greater importance.
Kaplan is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and the author of nine books on international affairs, including Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, and international travel books with distinctly political biases, such as Balkan Ghosts and Eastward to Tartary.
Fascinated (some would say obsessed) with military/intelligence and war, Kaplan's upcoming book, Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground is one of several books he is writing about the US armed forces.
Kaplan's essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. He has appeared on C-SPAN and CNN. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls Kaplan among the "most widely read" authors defining the post-Cold War (along with Francis Fukuyama and Harvard's Samuel Huntington).
Kaplan is a favorite of both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. According to U. S. News & World Report, "President Clinton was so impressed with Kaplan, he ordered an interagency study of these issues, and it agreed with Kaplan's conclusions." Kaplan was invited to meet with George W. Bush in the White House - and brief Bush on foreign policy.
Kaplan is also a consultant to the US Army's Special Forces Regiment, the US Air Force, and the US Marines. He has lectured at military war colleges, the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the FBI. Kaplan has lectured at the State Department. More recently, Kaplan was embedded with US forces during the attack on Fallujah, and has spent considerable time with the US military over the past three years. In other words, Kaplan is a military-intelligence insider.
Kaplan has a reputation for being one of the first American writers to forecast (from as far back as the 1980s) the Clinton-Bush administration wars in the Balkans and Central Asia, and the current 9/11 War (Afghanistan, Iraq).
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