October 22, 2016
Exclusive: Confident in a
Hillary Clinton victory, Washington’s foreign policy elite is readying plans
for more warfare in Syria and more confrontations with nuclear-armed Russia, an
across-the-spectrum “group think” that risks life on the planet, says Robert
Parry.
By Robert Parry
As polls show Hillary Clinton
closing in on victory, Official Washington’s neoconservative (and liberal-hawk)
foreign policy establishment is rubbing its hands in anticipation of more war
and more strife, including a U.S. military escalation in Syria, a take-down
of Iran, and a showdown with nuclear-armed Russia.
What is perhaps most alarming
about this new “group think” is that there doesn’t appear to be any significant
resistance to the expectation that President Hillary Clinton will unleash these
neocon/liberal-hawk forces of intervention that President Barack Obama has
somewhat restrained.
Assuming Donald Trump’s defeat
– increasingly seen as a foregone conclusion – the Republican leadership would
mostly be in sync with Clinton if she adopts a hawkish foreign policy similar
to what was pursued by President George W. Bush. Meanwhile, most Democrats
would be hesitant to challenge their party’s new president.
The only potential option to
constrain the hawkish Clinton would be the emergence of a “peace” wing of the
Democratic Party, possibly aligned with Republican anti-interventionists. But
that possibility remains problematic especially since those two political
elements have major policy disagreements on a wide variety of other topics.
There also isn’t an obvious
individual for the peace factions to organize around. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who
mildly criticized Clinton’s advocacy of “regime change” operations during the
primary campaign, is 75 years old and isn’t particularly known for his
stands on foreign policy issues.
If Trump loses, the bombastic
real-estate mogul would likely be a spent political force, possibly retreating
into the paranoid “alt-right” world of conspiracy theories. Even now, his
dovish objection to confronting Russia has been undermined by his tendency to
speak carelessly about other national security topics, such as torture,
terrorism and nuclear weapons.
One potential leader of a
peace movement would be Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, a 35-year-old military
veteran who is one of the few members of Congress to offer an insightful and
courageous critique of the dangers from an interventionist foreign policy. But
Gabbard would be putting her promising political career at risk if she
challenged a sitting Democratic president, especially early in Clinton’s White
House term.
Yet, without a modern-day
Eugene McCarthy (the anti-Vietnam War Democrat who took on President Lyndon
Johnson in 1968) to rally an anti-war movement from inside the Democratic
Party, it is hard to imagine how significant political pressure could be put on
a President Hillary Clinton. Virtually the entire mainstream U.S. media (and
much of the progressive media) are onboard for a U.S. “regime change” operation
in Syria and for getting tough with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Not Thought Through
These “group thinks” on Syria
and Russia, like previous ones on Iraq and Libya, have not been thought
through, but are driven instead by emotional appeals – photos of wounded
children in Syria and animosity toward Putin for not wearing a shirt and not
bowing to U.S. global supremacy. As with Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, there
is little consideration about what might follow a successful “regime change”
scenario in Syria or Russia.
In Syria, a “no-fly zone”
destroying Syria’s air force and air defenses could pave the way for a victory
by Al Qaeda’s recently renamed Nusra Front and/or Al Qaeda’s spinoff, the
Islamic State. How letting major terrorist groups control Damascus would be
good for either the Syrian people or the United States gets barely mentioned.
The dreamy thinking is that
somehow the hard-to-find “moderate” rebels – sometimes called the “unicorns” –
would prevail, even though they have existed mostly as cut-outs and conduits so
Al Qaeda and its allies can secure advanced U.S. weapons to use for killing
Syrian soldiers.
Yet, even more dangerous is
the already-launched destabilization campaign against nuclear-armed
Russia, a policy that may feel-good because we’re taught to despise Vladimir
Putin. But this latest neocon/liberal-hawk “regime change” scheme — even if it
somehow were “successful” — is not likely to install in the Kremlin one of the
U.S.-favored “liberals” who would allow the resumption of the 1990s-era
plundering of Russia’s wealth.
Far more likely, an angry
Russian population would go for a much-harder-line nationalist than Putin,
someone who might see nuclear weapons as the only way to protect Mother Russia
from another raping by the West. It’s not the cold-blooded Putin who should
scare Americans, but the hot-headed guy next in line.
But none of these downsides –
not even the existential downside of nuclear annihilation – is allowed to be
discussed among Official Washington’s foreign policy elites. It’s all about
giving Bashar al-Assad the “Gaddafi treatment” in Syria, punishing Iran even if
that might cause its leaders to renounce the nuclear-arms agreement, and
muscling NATO forces up to Russia’s borders and making the Russian economy
scream.
And, behind these policies are
some of the most skilled propagandists in the world. They are playing much of
the U.S. population – and surely the U.S. media – like a fiddle.
Lock-Step Consensus
The propaganda campaign is
driven by a consensus among the major think tanks of Official Washington,
where there is near universal support for Hillary Clinton, not because they all
particularly like her, but because she has signaled a return to
neocon/liberal-hawk strategies.
As Greg Jaffe wrote for
the neocon-dominated Washington Post on Friday, “In the rarefied world of the
Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obama’s departure from the
White House — and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish
Hillary Clinton — is being met with quiet relief.
“The Republicans and Democrats
who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more
assertive American foreign policy, via a flurry of reports shaped by officials
who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House.
“It is not unusual for
Washington’s establishment to launch major studies in the final months of an
administration to correct the perceived mistakes of a president or influence
his successor. But the bipartisan nature of the recent recommendations, coming
at a time when the country has never been more polarized, reflects a remarkable
consensus among the foreign policy elite.
“This consensus is driven by a
broad-based backlash against a president who has repeatedly stressed the
dangers of overreach and the need for restraint, especially in the Middle East.
… Taken together, the studies and reports call for more-aggressive American
action to constrain Iran, rein in the chaos in the Middle East and check Russia
in Europe.”
One of the lead organizations
revving up these military adventures and also counting on a big boost in
military spending under President Clinton-45 is the Atlantic Council, a think
tank associated with NATO that has been pushing for a major confrontation with
nuclear-armed Russia.
Jaffe quotes former Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright, who is leading the Atlantic Council’s bipartisan
Mideast team as saying about Syria: “The immediate thing is to do something to
alleviate the horrors that are being visited on the population. … We do think
there needs to be more American action — not ground forces but some additional
help in terms of the military aspect.” (This is same “humanitarian” Albright
who – in responding to a United Nations report that U.S. economic sanctions on
Iraq in the 1990s had killed a half million Iraqi children – coldly said, “we
think the price is worth it.”)
One of Albright’s partners on
the Atlantic Council’s report, Bush’s last National Security Advisor Stephen
Hadley, added that if Assad continues to bomb civilians, the United States
should strongly consider “using standoff weapons, like cruise missiles, to
neutralize his air force so that he cannot fly.”
The plans call for “safe
zones” where Syrian rebels can base themselves behind U.S. military protection,
allowing them to strike Syrian government forces but preventing the Syrian
government from striking back. Little attention is paid to the fact that the
so-called “moderate” rebels have refused to separate themselves from Al Qaeda’s
forces who are in command of the rebel movement in east Aleppo and other urban
areas.
As journalist/historian Gareth
Porter has written:
“Information from a wide range of sources, including some of those the United
States has been explicitly supporting, makes it clear that every armed
anti-Assad organization unit in those provinces [of Idlib and Aleppo] is
engaged in a military structure controlled by [Al Qaeda’s] Nusra militants. All
of these rebel groups fight alongside the Nusra Front and coordinate their
military activities with it. …
“At least since 2014 the Obama
administration has armed a number of Syrian rebel groups even though it knew
the groups were coordinating closely with the Nusra Front, which was
simultaneously getting arms from Turkey and Qatar.”
Ignoring the Masses
It also doesn’t seem to matter
to these elites that many American commoners are fed up with these costly and bloody
“regime change” schemes. As Hadley told the Post’s Jaffe, “Everyone has kind of
given up on the Middle East. We have been at it for 15 years, and a lot of
Americans think it is hopeless. … We think it is not.”
But it is not just the
Republican neocons and old Democratic hawks who are determined to whip the
American people into line behind more war. As Jaffe wrote, “A similar sentiment
animates the left-leaning Center for American Progress’s report, which calls
for more military action to counter Iranian aggression, more dialogue with the
United States’ Arab allies and more support for economic and human rights
reform in the region.”
These “liberal hawks” are
enthused that now almost the entire foreign policy elite of Official Washington
is singing from the same sheet of martial music. There is none of the discord
that surrounded Bush’s war in Iraq last decade.
As Brian Katulis, a senior
Middle East analyst at the Center for American Progress, said, “The dynamic is
totally different from what I saw a decade ago.” He added that the current
focus from all sides is on rebuilding a more muscular and more “centrist
internationalism.”
In other words, the Iraq War
“group think” that enveloped Official Washington before that catastrophe wasn’t
total enough. Now, there is almost a totalitarian feel about the way the
foreign policy elites, coordinating with the major U.S. news media, are marching
the American people toward possibly even worse disasters.
No serious dissent is allowed;
no contrarian thoughts expressed; no thinking through where the schemes might
end up – unless you want to be marginalized as an Assad “apologist” or a Putin
“puppet.” And right now, there doesn’t seem to be any practical way to stop
this new march of folly.
Investigative reporter Robert
Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and
Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen
Narrative, either in print
here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
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