Deception: essence of US foreign policy

A B Shahid

US foreign policy stance over Iraq's alleged accumulation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and Iraqi designs to "dominate" the region, are disputed by almost every head of government except, of course, Britain's Tony Blair who relies on his eloquence to make up for the credibility gap in the US approach, but without success. History proves that US policy on Iraq could be yet another case of deception -- the hallmark of US foreign policy since early 1900s.

In 1918, US forces joined the West European coalition that invaded Russia to strangle the Socialist Revolution at its birth because it threatened the future of capitalism. A nation recovering from the trauma of a devastating war, facing chaos arising out of a fundamental change in its social set-up, and grappling with a famine that eventually left millions dead, was invaded on the pretext of lending a "helping hand". The erstwhile US Army Chief of Staff referred to this friendly invasion as "an expedition that affords one of the finest examples in history of honourable, unselfish dealings ...to be helpful to a people struggling to achieve a new liberty." It was a case of killing the Russians with "kindness".

In 1945, for dropping A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the official rationale given by the US was "eliminating the need for a land invasion that could endanger the lives of American soldiers". Tragically, not many Americans know till today that, months before the A-bombs were dropped, Japan had offered to surrender but the US government consistently ignored that request. The truth is that the bombs were dropped, not to intimidate the already shattered Japanese, but to put the fear of America into the Russians who were perceived to be the biggest challenge to face up to in the post-war world. This was the first lethal shot of the Cold War.

During the Cold War, repeated Soviet offers to dissolve the Warsaw Pact if NATO did the same, were rebuffed each time by the US to sustain its war mongering about the "Soviet threat". An editorial in the Los Angeles Times pointed out that accepting such an offer "increases the difficulty faced by US policy-makers in persuading Western public opinion to continue expensive and often unpopular military programs." This fear prompted deception on a continuing basis, and a series of requests by the Soviet Union for minimising the risk of accidental war by establishing a direct dialogue with senior NATO officials were also rejected as "inappropriate" and potentially "divisive" [for NATO].

Throughout the Cold War era, the actual level of Soviet military and economic strength were magnified, data and events were falsified to exaggerate the Soviet threat, and worst-case scenarios were touted feverishly as if these were imminent because they provided the justification for creation of NATO. Among the British documents declassified in 1999, an analysis by Foreign Office Joint Intelligence Committee dating back to 1968 states that Soviet Union had no intention of invading the West. The Committee recorded its frustration with anti-Soviet stance of the politicians because, even during the Vietnam War, Warsaw Pact states made regular contacts with the West to sustain a political dialogue.

Robert Blum, a former US State Department staffer believes that "US cherishes its enemies; without enemies, it would be a nation without a purpose. The various components of the state need enemies to justify their swollen budgets, to aggrandise their work, to protect their jobs, to give themselves a mission". This is corroborated by no less than retired Gen Douglas McArthur in his book "American Caesar" wherein he says "our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear, in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour, with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil..... to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."


In a 1998 interview, Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter admitted that the State Department version that the US armed fundamentalist Afghan Mujahideen groups after the Soviet invasion was a lie. Arming the fundamentalist Afghans started six months before the Russians made their move because the fundamentalist insurgency was a trap to induce Soviet intervention. Quite unashamedly, Brzezinski went on to add that the day the Soviets crossed the border he wrote to Jimmy Carter "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam."

Over the next decade, USSR remained entangled in a conflict that demoralised it beyond repair. The US-inspired insurgency served to decimate America's enemy number one. Interestingly enough, this was done in the name of saving the Afghans whom the US later condemned to self-destruction. Author Garry Wills believes "it is when America is in her most altruistic mood that other nations better get behind their bunkers" because deception is now the name of the foreign policy game. Even after a decade of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, America -- the saviour -- is busy saving governments and peoples from each other. Altruism remains the hallmark of America's love affair with itself.

Since 1945 until the end of the last century, various US governments attempted to overthrow over 40 foreign governments, and crushed over 30 popular nationalist movements against tyrant (usually US-sponsored) regimes. In the process, it ended the lives of several million people, and condemned millions more to a life of poverty, despair and chaos. Americans continue to delude themselves with the idea that their altruism covers up the real face of their foreign policy. The US government wants the world to believe that the Iraqi regime must be overthrown to save the Iraqis from themselves. The difference is that instead of abandoning Iraq after the invasion, it plans to rule the oil-rich country for an indefinite period. Pity the abandoned Afghanis: they didn't have oil!

With the Soviet Union obliterated, the US continues its war mongering touting new threats: it keeps telling its citizens about the pressing need for waging wars against proliferation of WMD, espionage, drugs trafficking, organised crime, but more often, terrorism. It wants them to believe in lethality of these threats although the corner stone of the US foreign policy remains its insatiable desire to extend political, economic, and military hegemony over as much of the globe as possible, to prevent the rise of any regional power that might challenge American supremacy, and to create a world order in America's image, as befits the world's only superpower.

So, the Cold War continues under new names but, in essence, it is now a "North-South" struggle -- an effort to prevent the rise of any society that may set a credible example of an alternative to the capitalist model, and to prevent the rise of any power that might challenge American supremacy. The US Defence Department continues to believe that its "first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival"...that it "must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." What a shocking world we live in courtesy US governments! This is without the slightest disrespect to the common Americans, who are as much the target of this deception as any other people. But, there will be no sanity in this world unless they stop this juggernaut from rolling on.

The writer is a freelance contributor