On September 20, the Bush administration released a new National Security Strategy (NSS) document. The document justifies US aggression on a world scale – pre-emptive strikes, “regime change”, unilateral action. “We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively”, it states.
The document has been likened by the Moscow Times to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and described by the New York Times as Bush’s “how I’ll rule the world” blueprint.
York University political science professor James Laxer, writing in the September 24 Toronto Globe and Mail, said, “For the past decade, analysts have been debating the question of whether the United States would follow the course of former powerful states such as Britain and Rome and proclaim itself an empire. In George W. Bush’s National Security Strategy, submitted to the US Congress on Sept. 20, the White House espouses a doctrine that is explicitly imperialist.”
Bush has brazenly spelt out the US ruling elite’s imperialist policies and its readiness to use its two principal weapons in pursuit of those policies – military and economic power. The document represents an escalation of imperialist arrogance. The Clinton administration and others before had the same aims and objectives on behalf of the US ruling class, but were not so blatant in stating them.
The NSS justifies pre-emptive strikes against states or regimes the US rulers do not like or countenance: “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equalling, the power of the United States.”
The Bush gang claims a right to decide which countries can have weapons of mass destruction and any state’s military would be subject to its control. Might becomes right; international law is trashed. As Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez has pointed out, with “the concept of pre-emptive war… the charter of the United Nations would be left without any meaning at all. It doesn’t authorise any pre-emptive action. That concept is nonexistent in international law.”
The Bush doctrine for world domination is not only about justifying Washington’s “right” to unilaterally use military force against “potential adversaries”, but also sets the goal of imposing “free market” capitalism on the rest of the world. In this, the newly articulated strategy is hardly a radical break but a continuation of a more than 100-year-old US foreign policy of aggressively opening up foreign countries to the goods and capital of US corporations.
The difference, not of kind, but degree, is an adaptation to a new set of circumstances, or more specifically, to the falling away of constraints: the absence of any rival power capable of preventing Washington from pursuing its long-standing ambition of opening up the entire world to be exploited by US monopoly capitalism.
“We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world”, the NSS asserts.
“We seek instead to create a balance of power that favors human freedom: conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty.”
But nations which can “choose”, must choose a certain type of “liberty”, which includes low tax rates, “free trade”, “sound fiscal policies”, etc. Nations which do not choose this type of “liberty” will not, of course, be truly “free” – and if a country isn’t free, why then, it must be a rogue state run by evildoers, and its people must be “liberated” by the “pre-emptive action” of the US military machine.
Moreover, this military machine is to be free of any restrictions or the obligation to submit to any international regulation: “We will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept.”
“In the new world we have entered”, the Bush gang warns, “the only path to peace and security is the path of action”. And so, by this doctrine, the US must wage constant war, because without war there can be no peace!
Source: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/united-states-bushs-blueprint-world-domination