Contribution to the 8^th International Communist Seminar, Brussels, 2-4 May 1999

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The worldwide military strategy of US imperialism

Ray O. Light

Ray O. Light Group (USA)

Lenin taught that, "to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics... [we must understand]... the economic essence of imperialism." (Lenin's April 1917 introduction to Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism). Imperialism is a political-economic phenomenon in the first place. In his 1920 Introduction to the same pamphlet, Lenin states further, "Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world by a handful of 'advanced' countries. And this 'booty' is shared between two or three powerful marauders armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, and Japan) who involve the whole world in their war over the sharing of their booty." (Lenin's emphasis)

Major General Smedley Butler of the US Marine Corps wrote in the 1930's:

Imperialism means war.

What then are the characteristic features of US imperialism's military strategy today ?

1. United States Imperialism is the only imperialist country today which is an economic power on a truly global scale. Hence, US imperialism requires a "worldwide military strategy". Our Seminar Agenda for this first session contrasts the military strategy of "German-led Europe" and of "Japan" with the "worldwide" US military strategy-correctly reflecting US imperialism's role as the world's policeman. US imperialism stands today as the one imperialist superpower-the "sina qua non" for international capital.

US imperialism is the only imperialist power which can unilaterally bomb and/or invade other countries without any other country's permission. A virtual monopoly control of the world's news media and other propaganda-culture media is key to US ability to "justify" any military target on short notice. Witness US media's ability to "demonize" anti-imperialist and pro socialist leaders such as Cuba's Fidel or Libya's Khadaffi and even (former) imperialist allies, lackeys and stooges such as Manuel Noriega in Panama , Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia.

In their (Fall '93) Foreign Policy article, entitled, "American Hegemony-Without an Enemy", Rand's Benjamin Schwarz and Cato Institute's Christopher Layne argue that since the end of WWII, US imperialism has been committed to an "activist internationalist agenda" that it would have pursued even had the USSR not emerged as geopolitical and ideological rival. They cite the National Security Council's NSC #68 from 1950 which articulated US Cold War strategy "designed to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish.... even if there were no Soviet threat."

In the post Cold War world, Schwarz-Layne are "extremely unsettled" by the fact that Republican President Bush and now Democratic President Clinton have remained consistent with NSC #68 and the proposition that "American prosperity depends upon a world order imposed by the United States". (Our Emphasis-ROL) As they state, "Rather than being a stimulus to peace that it is touted to be, economic interdependence-and the need to protect America's stakes in it-is invoked to justify a post-Cold War US military presence in Europe and East Asia and military intervention in the Balkan conflict."(p13) As then US Secretary of Defense William Perry stated in late 1996, " The United States is the only nation on earth today whose security interests are truly global in scope." (p73, Foreign Affairs, Nov-Dec '96)

What does this mean for the international proletariat and our revolutionary cause? In the short run, US imperialism's global economic stake provides tremendous strength to its military-diplomatic-cultural aggression anywhere in the world. However, in the long run, this same global economic stake leads inevitably to "strategic overextension". Even bourgeois think tank experts such as Schwarz-Layne recognize the inevitable doom for the American Empire over time as it pursues its "new world order".

2. Pragmatism is the second characteristic of the worldwide military strategy of US imperialism. In a recent authoritative article US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright elaborated current US foreign policy. (Foreign Affairs (FA), Nov./Dec.1998) She opened the article with a quote from the writing of one of her most famous post WWII predecessors, Dean Acheson. Following the Soviet led world-wide defeat of fascism, Acheson said, "...all our lives the danger, the uncertainty, the need for alertness, for effort, for discipline will be upon us....we are in for it and the only real question is whether we shall know it soon enough." This quote reflects the reality that imperialism has no future and that the remainder of its life is being lived in desperation. And this "every man for himself "outlook is the very essence of pragmatism.

Moreover, Albright uses the word "pragmatism" here as well. It is no accident; for pragmatism is the philosophy of imperialism in general and US imperialism in particular. As William James, the preeminent philosopher of pragmatism would say, (Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)) "Pragmatism is willing to take anything." (p80) "Pragmatism asks its usual question....What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?" (p200) Indeed, the guiding principle for Albright and US imperialism is what has "cash value". Armed with pragmatism, Albright states, "In our era, neither the adversaries, nor the rules, nor even the location of the playing field are fully fixed." (p51)

The pursuit of maximum profit by any and all means, at any cost to the international proletariat and oppressed peoples as well as to their comprador, national bourgeois and petty bourgeois stooges and even to their imperialist partner-rivals is their only "principle". Consequently, US imperialism has no permanent alliances and allegiances beyond the loyalty to maximum profit on an individual/corporate and/or banking basis and to the US imperialist state apparatus only to the extent this serves their interests. (Remember the role of Ford and General Motors in Hitler's military arsenal during WWII when their occupied European plants turned out tanks etc. for the Nazi War Machine and were not bombed by the Allies.) Pragmatism governs US military strategic thinking as well as all other areas.

The absolute lack of shame of US imperialism, its pragmatic approach, can be seen in its relations with Honduras. In the 1980's, Honduras was openly run by the US ambassador as a vast military base of operations against the peoples of Nicaragua and El Salvador. To protect their massive military bases the US military defoliated the land surrounding the bases-leaving the land and the population vulnerable to future natural disasters. In the aftermath of the 1998 hurricane devastation, aggravated by the US military defoliation, US military aid to Honduras today provides a smokescreen behind which US imperialism is moving their main base of Latin American military operations from Panama to Honduras. - Pragmatism!

3. US Imperialism is capable of launching military aggression unilaterally but prefers to operate through coalition or multilateral aggression where possible. Militarily, US imperialism sometimes conducts its international class warfare with and sometimes without its European and Japanese imperialist partner-rivals, and with or without its United Nations figleaf, through NATO or UNO military forces, etc. In 1998 alone, US imperialism, the hegemonic world capitalist power, unilaterally bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, and Iraq with impunity. Today, US imperialism, through NATO mechanisms, threatens Serbia with mass destruction.

In late 1996, then Sec. of Defense Perry described several important programs by which the US military has been able to mobilize the military forces of allies and even former enemies to bolster its own military force in regional military engagements. For example, NATO's Partnership For Peace (PFP) was proposed by the US in 1993 and begun in 1994. It has been used to integrate Eastern and Central Europe and the former USSR countries into "a new overall European security architecture". In addition, a special NATO-Russia relationship followed the use of Russian troops in the Implementation Force (IFOR) under US military command (!) in Bosnia in 1996. That June, an agreement was reached in Brussels whereby Russian officers would be stationed at NATO headquarters and NATO officers would go to the Russian General Staff in Moscow-institutionalizing their military liaison program. Thus, NATO and PFP forces, under US leadership, have combined to invade, occupy and destroy the former Yugoslavia.

Elsewhere, Defense Ministerial of the Americas, including all 34 Western Hemisphere countries other than Cuba, are enmeshed in "defense sharing" and other joint military activities. In the Asia-Pacific Region, ASEAN Regional Forum and other multilateral military alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Australia are maintained. And "comprehensive engagement with China, including the Chinese military" is being pursued. Secretary Perry points to "American leadership" as the key to the success of all these endeavors.

4. US Imperialism must exercise military hegemony in all these coalitions and alliances. Lenin's Imperialism and the Split in Socialism written in the same year as "Imperialism" and without worry about the Tsarist censor describes the colonial monopoly position enjoyed by England at the end of the nineteenth century and points out that, "...without forcible redivision of the colonies the new imperialist countries cannot obtain the privileges enjoyed by the older (and weaker) imperialist powers."

Schwarz-Layne raise the quandary faced by defenders of the US Empire who believe "Washington must retain its preeminent role in world politics." As stated by the Pentagon's draft of the Defense Planning Guidance for the Fiscal Years 1994-1999,.

"America must prevent other states 'from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order...we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.'" (Our emphasis-ROL) Schwarz-Layne point out these "potential competitors" are Germany and Japan.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Carter and architect along with David Rockefeller of the TriLateral Commission, let slip US imperialist concerns about the rearmament of Japan. Brzezinski said, "It is far from clear that it is truly in the American interest to press Japan to assume larger military responsibilities." (p16, Foreign Affairs, Fall '91) In an October 1998 article, "Danger of Great Global Depression and Growing Crisis of War and Revolution in Asia", the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Japan (Left) points out, "Among these countries in the Asia-Pacific Region, it is only Japan and south Korea where US military bases are located. ( 45,500 and 36,400 military personnel respectively." (p 8) In fact the USA has military bases all over Japan including right in Tokyo itself. So with Japan as the world's largest creditor nation and the USA the largest debtor nation, how is Japan going to collect?!

All the elite US military thinkers seem to insist, even now after the demise of the USSR, that Europe and Northeast Asia (Japan and Korea) along with the Persian Gulf and its oil, are the key areas in the world today. In late '96, according to Defense Secretary Perry, of the 1.5 million active duty US troops and 900,000 reserves, there were 100,000 in Europe and 100,000 in the Pacific while there were only 12,000 to 20,000 in the Arabian Gulf (albeit with some pre-positioned equipment etc). All this serves to keep US imperialism's biggest imperialist allies, Japan and Germany, "in their place".

5. US Imperialism has a huge and dangerous and high tech but also a bloated military-industrial complex. In late 1995, Brookings Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb cited the International Institute for Strategic Studies figures showing that US imperialism was projected to spend more than three times what any other country on earth spends and "more than all its prospective enemies and neutral nations combined" Said Korb, "Its $262 billion defense budget accounts for about 37% of global military expenditures; its NATO allies, along with Japan, Israel, and South Korea, account for 30 %. The fifteen other NATO nations will spend some $150 billion on defense in 1995. Russia, the second-biggest spender...80billion, Japan about $42billion and China about $7 billion. The world's six rogue states-Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba-have a combined annual military budget of $15 billion." ( p23, Foreign Affairs, Nov./Dec. 1995). And these so-called "rogue states" are considered the likely source of the two major regional wars which the US military is prepared to fight-one on the Korean Peninsula and the other in the Persian Gulf.

According to Korb, "... the United States will pay $15 billion more for defense this year, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it did in 1980 at the height of the Cold War." Korb cites the example of the B-2 strategic bomber developed to penetrate the highly sophisticated air defenses of the Soviet Union and drop nuclear bombs. Rather than kill the program outright because the Soviet Union was defunct, a compromise (agreeable even to the Air Force) was reached to build 20 at a cost of $44 billion. But an additional 20 were built at a cost of more than $30 billion, thanks to the California congressional delegation led by senior senator Diane Feinstein. This senator inadvertently blurted out that the B-2 should be saved because it delivered a "heavy payroll', corrected the next day to "payload".

In addition, US imperialism is the biggest arms salesman to other countries in the world. Recall Lenin's remark that the imperialists will sell us the rope to hang them with! Nevertheless, the colossal investment of materiel and manpower represented by 37% of the total military expenditures in the world represents a terrifying and massive array of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the bestial US imperialists.

6. The allocations from this huge US military budget are largely determined by corporate contracts and service rivalries , rather than by strategic military needs. So the military-industrial complex hinders the ability of US policy-makers to utilize the massive dollar inputs to maximum effect on behalf of US imperialism. Indeed, the fat profits from defense contracts and the cozy relations between the armed services' top brass and the private contractors does much to determine US military strategy rather than being determined by it. For example, in making overall assessments of US military strategy, such an authority as former Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner, a retired Admiral, makes sure to "feather the nest" of the Navy at the expense of the Army and Air Force. In contrast, retired Lieutenant General William Odom, a former head of the National Security Agency, argues openly in favor of the Army (and Air Force) at the expense of the Navy (and Marines). Odom writes that, "The heavy emphasis on carriers and amphibious forces has been financed by reducing ground and air forces." (p64, Foreign Affairs, July-August 1997) General Odom wants funds to "maximize the advantages of a high-tech M-1 tank, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and jet engine capabilities" instead of "sqandering" funds on "bureaucratically inspired programs like the Marine Corps' proposed amphibious assault vehicle or its V-22 Osprey helicopter...[and the] Sea Wolf submarine program."

While Secretary of Defense Perry admits that the US General Accounting Office and others question the effectiveness of high tech weaponry, especially precision guided munitions, he approvingly asserts that, " Today Force Dominance is the goal of the US military."(p78, Foreign Affairs Nov/Dec '96) And Force Dominance is composed of : air dominance (using stealth technology), precision strike forces (precision guided weapons), superior battlespace awareness , i.e. complete real time knowledge of the disposition of all enemy and friendly forces (using the Global Positioning System, national sensors and tactical sensors), and focused logistics ( advanced technology with capacity to track supplies around the globe-including contents of each shipment, time of arrival, etc.) Clearly, Force Dominance represents a bonanza for the military-industrial complex.

Thus, the US military-industrial complex, as an economic force in its own right, stands in the way of providing the most efficacious protection for US imperialist exploitation and oppression of the peoples around the world.

7. There has been a strategic shift, however, away from emphasis on preparation for a US-Soviet war on the European theater to the enhancement of overt US military intervention capabilities in the oppressed nations. Already by the Fall of 1982 former Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner and George Thibault, another Naval officer, had collaborated on an important proposal for a New Military Strategy in this direction. Turner-Thibault frankly admitted that, "If we look back at the only uses of US military forces in combat since WWII, we can hardly be proud. Korea was perhaps a tie; Vietnam a loss; the Mayaguez and the Iranian hostage operations disasters." (p124, Foreign Affairs, Fall 1982) They ascribe much of this string of combat failures to the strategic military concentration on the European theater of operations. Instead, they point out the need to develop "a Rapid Deployment Force for Persian Gulf contingencies". They argued for a military strategy that strengthens US capability for intervention in the Third World against opponents other than the Soviet Union. And over time, despite the corruption and inertia of the military-industrial complex, much of this shift has occurred.

8. The illusion of an all powerful US military has been created in military theaters stacked in favor of US imperialism. Since 1982 the US military has seen "combat" in Grenada, the smallest nation-state in the Western Hemisphere. Grenada is an island nation of 100,000 people where a few thousand Cuban construction workers valiantly outfought the US army of invasion quite effectively for a time. The US marines invaded Panama, its ally, arresting Noriega, its stooge, as the basis for maintaining its strong military presence and control. The US military has carried out a bestial all out war against the people of Iraq, allegedly aimed at Saddam Hussein, whose government had also stooged for US imperialism in the Iran-Iraq War. They have gone to Somalia where tribal forces proved too unwieldy for the US to control. And they have gone into the Balkans, along with their NATO allies, to take control, after providing a balance of terror in the former Yugoslavia through the creation of a Bosnian state, the Dayton Accords, the connivance of Milosevic, etc.

The most consistent theme here is the US imperialist use of their own stooges as military targets. And since the key to the effectiveness of high tech weaponry is accurate logistical and other information-who better to use your weaponry on than those whose military infrastructure you financed and built. By fighting these "patsies", US Defense Secretary Perry could state (by late 1996): "...every military in the world looks to the US armed forces as the model to be emulated." (P69, FA Nov/Dec '96)

9. The US military active force is smaller than at any time since the eve of the Korean War. (Korb, FA, Nov/Dec '95) And US military strategy requires wars of quick decision as well as an exit strategy. As we write (February 1999) the US military is having a hard time getting the approximately 200,000 "volunteers" it needs to replenish these relatively smaller ranks. No wonder that President Clinton in his 1999 State of the Union address pledged an additional $110 billion over the next six years to increase military pay, training, benefits, and pensions, etc.

Also, no wonder US imperialism now requires an "exit strategy" before it even engages in military action. The late nineteenth century English statesman Lord Rosebery pointed out: "Our commerce is so universal and so penetrating that scarcely any question can arise in any part of the world without involving British interests. This consideration, instead of widening, rather circumscribes the field of our actions. For did we not strictly limit the principle of intervention we should always be simultaneously engaged in some forty wars." (quoted in Layne & Schwarz, Foreign Policy Fall '93)

The US military strategy requires wars of quick decision as well as an exit strategy. General Odom noted that since the Persian Gulf War the major changes in force structure have been reductions in army and air force capabilities. He complains: "The navy's carrier fleet stands at 12, with a single carrier battle group costing at least an estimated $50 billion for a 10-year life cycle. The army's divisions, at $10 billion for a heavy division with a 10-year life cycle, have been cut from 18 to 10. Moreover, only about $50 billion is allocated for procurement of army forces during the next ten years, compared to $152 billion and $56 billion for carrier and land-based air power." Meanwhile, the marines retain three active divisions and one reserve division."( Our emphasis-ROL, p58, Foreign Affairs July/August 1997) Thus, the US military is somewhat vulnerable to a protracted ground war, and especially to more than one significant ground war at a time.

Brzezinski pointed out that one consequence of the Cold War's end was the freedom of action the United States enjoyed in conducting the war against Iraq (in 1991). But he continues with worry-"That military victory has plunged America into a deep, probably protracted, political and military absorption in the Middle East's various crises."(p17 FA, Fall '91)

Hence the need for coalition "peacekeeping operations", Partners for Peace, defense sharing and the like.

10. Within the USA, there still exists overwhelming popular support for the US military, especially when it goes into combat. Even in the midst of the Clinton sex scandal, there was bilateral political support for the bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan and later Iraq during 1998. And the US pacifists, led by Jesse Jackson, were demonstrating in support of Clinton as he rained bombs on the people of Iraq. Contrary to the revisionist illusions promoted over the year, especially from Khrushchev onward, that the "great American people" are peaceloving and oppose the imperialist war mongers, the US people by and large, including even most of the proletariat, has supported "their own" imperialists throughout the entire 50 year period of post WWII hegemony for US imperialism in the capitalist world.

In "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism" Lenin discusses the connection between England's colonial monopoly and the bribery of a large strata of the English working class that existed 100 years ago. With remarkable clarity, Lenin points out, "The capitalists can devote a part... of these superprofits to bribe their own workers, to create something like an alliance... between the workers of the given nation and their capitalists against the other countries."(p114, Collected Works Vol. 23) This is precisely what happened to the US working class (at least its white majority) over the past 50 years.

This fact that there is no significant political party, even a bourgeois labor party as exists in all other imperialist countries, that challenges US imperialism and its drive to war, provides dramatic proof of this reality. This relatively stable rear area has given US imperialism great flexibility in carrying out its cunning and bellicose role as the hegemonic imperialist global power.

11. US imperialism creates, props up, trains and arms reactionary military forces all over the world who help perpetuate the worldwide system of enslavement and oppression that is imperialism, the last dying stage of capitalism.1998 witnessed the ouster of Mobutu in the Congo and Suharto in Indonesia, two of the world's most corrupt, brutal, and long ruling puppets of US led international imperialism, whose countries had been systematically stripped of their tremendous natural resources while their people grew increasingly impoverished. 1998 also witnessed an extradition battle involving Chile's former dictator, Pinochet. All three were military generals who placed themselves in the service of international capital and were responsible for death squads and mass torture, etc. as part of their routine military practice on behalf of US imperialism. These three tyrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America respectively are the caliber of military leadership which US imperialism has forced on the oppressed peoples in the period of US hegemony in the capitalist world. It is such tyrants who have provided the native military support for US led international capital. ( This is why the notorious "School of the Americas", for example, continues to operate today despite its widespread exposure.)

Yet the superexploitation of the proletariat and the national oppression suffered by the hundreds of millions of colonial and dependent peoples of the world generate and regenerate the grave diggers of the old and dying capitalist socio-economic system.

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IN CONCLUSION

The US Empire represents a barbaric, powerful, and lethal enemy of the world proletariat and oppressed peoples in the short run. The worldwide military strategy of US imperialism is key to the perpetuation of this brutal empire. But in the long run, the very global reach of the Empire will provide much of its vulnerability and help hasten its demise.

It is the responsibility of the international communist movement to lead the international proletariat and oppressed peoples to develop such unity in struggle against the main enemy- against imperialism, headed by US imperialism, and to isolate this enemy to the maximum, so as to inflict on these reactionaries utter and decisive defeat from all sides.

Since US imperialist military strategy is making preparations to wage two major regional wars simultaneously, our challenge ( to revive the revolutionary internationalist sentiments of the late Che Guevara) should be to produce "THREE, FOUR, MANY VIETNAMS!!!"

Contribution to the 8th International Communist Seminar, Brussels, 2-4 May 1999

Theme: Imperialism means War

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