This essay is a response to the request by Brian Berletic to formulate thoughts that challenge his idea about what is driving US policy.
Dear Brian,
First of all let me express my gratitude for all the enlightening articles and videos you published, which most certainly informed my own thinking on what was going on in the world, well before recent developments, from the early ‘Landdestroyer’-days. Thus my own thinking is not that far removed from yours. But what is missing, in a sense, is how all these ‘Think Tanks’ are connected to the level required to produce a coherent strategy, as they not only respond to actual developments, but anticipate on them as well. Or, more likely, set the stage by carefully planning key-events and capabilities to take advantage. What form of ‘Intellect’ are we dealing with. And no, I’m not saying ‘aliens’ or something like that, but the bulk of the ‘political class’ in our Western societies do not strike me as people thinking ahead, or past the next elections.
The ‘ThinkTank’-world as you describe it is not some ‘hush-hush’ secret cabal, but, as you correctly observed, ‘hiding out in the open’. On my own blog I suggested that the bulk of these ‘policy papers’ they publish are not the original idea to be discussed, even though they are presented as such, but the blueprint needed to inform those who will be asked to implement certain policies which were finalized well before those papers are published. They often read like an ‘instruction manual’. I illustrated this on my blog by suggesting that the plan to engage Russia in a war over NATO-expansion was not born in 2019, when the Rand Corporation published its paper on how to ‘Overextend and Unbalance Russia’, but way back in 2007, when Putin went to Munich to warn his friends at NATO that further expansion of the alliance would be seen as an existential threat to Russia, and would lead to war. And we can go back even further, to Putin asking Clinton whether Russia could join NATO itself? In other words, we need to ask when certain policies were conceived, and why?
Not easy to answer that one, since people contributing to it may not have been on the same page, but eventually they end up embracing the policy paper from the ‘ThinkTank’ which provides them with clear instructions on what to expect. A similar proces gave birth to the policy presented by the ‘ThinkTank’ which identified itself as ‘Project for a New American Century’. All of them have in common that they expose an ‘Imperialist Mindset’, or rather a calling not to squander the ‘Unipolar Moment’ and ‘End of History’, this sense of victory after the ‘Cold War’ ended. Which famously generated this statement from one of Bush’s people that there was no longer a need for the ‘Reality Based’ community, since the US became an Empire after the Soviet Union collapsed. Ron Suskind quoted him as follows: ‘That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’
Yet this person, sounding as if he embraced chaos, obviously meant that some ‘insiders’ would be at the helm, while the rest of us was trying to figure out what they were up to next. Which inspired Pepe Escobar to state that the US had become the ‘Empire of Chaos’. Through that lens we can identify where these people lost control. American leadership was not rejected at first, and after ‘9/11’ the world united behind the US, fighting terror. The Russians, and more than a few others, rejoiced because the US appeared to have abandoned the ‘flawed’ initiative of using Sunni extremists as proxies to overextend and unbalance disobedient countries, like they did in Afghanistan back in the Eighties. It is not impossible that ‘9/11’ was planned to have this effect, if we look at the desire expressed by ‘PNAC’ to have a ‘New Pearl Harbor’ in order to create the correct mindset for an Empire. If not, it was the perfect gift. And we know that the Israeli Mossad was aware of what was going to go down, since we’ve got this story of the ‘Dancing Israeli’s’ filming how these aircraft struck the Twin Towers, celebrating.
That latter, underreported incident is pointing us in the direction of strategists which are not defined by their passport, but by being on the same page, regardless of nationality. Which makes me think of this impeccably researched book ‘One Nation Under Blackmail’ by Whitney Webb, who has been vocal in warning people against embracing the present administration as a relief, much like you yourself. The striking ‘resemblance’ between this “Project 2025’ policy paper, and Trump’s actual policies, is no coincidence, of course. But how did we end up with the Heritage Foundation taking over from the Rand Corporation, which took over from the ‘PNAC’? Or is the change merely optical? A different brandname for the same product? With the antics of political infighting merely for the show, as a distraction? Are we dealing with politicians picking ‘ThinkTanks’ to serve them? Or are the ‘ThinkTanks’ picking the politicians they need to implement their policies? And are there people in the shadows picking ‘ThinkTanks’ to become prominent?
‘Realist’ John Mearsheimer has complained endlessly about the fact that foreign policy in the US is the slave of Israel, ever since president Johnson sold out, incredibly after the Israeli’s nearly sank a US Navy ship in the Mediterranean, the ‘USS Liberty incident’, which killed 34 crew members. And Whitney Webb expanded on this narrow perspective of one nation controlling US foreign policy by exposing a much larger network of cynical insiders almost spanning the globe. At least the ‘Western’ world, but with inroads into ‘hostile’ countries through various criminal organizations and weapons traders.
Cataloging policy papers to get a feel of where we are going, and who is fighting who, outside the open wars which attract our attention, certainly is useful. But if these policy papers are merely the instruction manuals for those who are ‘out of the loop’, but important in the execution of plans which look ahead much further, even past paradigm shifts and upsets not yet on our radar, and not exposed in those policy papers either, we are still at risk of being taken for granted, whether we resist, or bend over backwards to please our ‘Masters’.
Hopefully the above is food for thought, even if it doesn’t come close to pointing you in this or that direction.
Jake.