Amerika

American Blueprint for World Hegemony

It was John O’Sullivan who in 1845 formulated the concept of American Lebensraum – the Manifest Destiny Doctrine. He coined the term to signify the mission of the United States “to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”(1) For Josiah Strong, the American missionary imperialist par excellence, the Manifest Destiny had geopolitical destination—the creation of a world empire. The America would be the greatest of all empires. “Other nations would bring their offerings to the cradle of the young empire of the West , as they had once taken their gifts to the cradle of Jesus.”(2) Since the destiny and its destination were preordained by God , Americans possessed supreme title to space, preempting and superseding the right of others. Combined with the Monroe Doctrine, the theological rationale of the Manifest Destiny Doctrine provided an almost evangelical explanation of the geopolitical manifest design to conquer and subjugate space, first the whole Western Hemisphere and then, beginning with the war against Spain in 1898, the whole world. As Carl Schmitt has pointed out, in 1898 USA embarked on a war against Spain and latter against the world which has not ended yet. In this context the American war against Yugoslavia is only a continuation of the one hundred years war which the United States began in 1898.

In the history of the United States the expansionist impulse has been as powerful as religion. The continuity of American expansionist war aims since the time of the Manifest Destiny Doctrine has been the most predominant feature of American foreign policy in which the three components of American expansionist Weltanschauung confluence: The Manifest Destiny Doctrine – the theological component – conquest preordained by God and Providence to carry the will of the Almighty, and subsequently, conquest to establish democracy or in the interests of democracy or mankind, The Monroe Doctrine –the geopolitical component and the Open Door Doctrine —the economical component.

It was at the end of the last century that the intellectual foundations of the American geopolitical doctrine were formulated by Frederick Jackson Turner, Brooks Adams, admiral Mahan, and its implementation begun by Theodore Roosevelt and subsequently Woodrow Wilson. The geopolitical concepts advanced by Frederick Jackson Turner, Brooks Adams and admiral Mahan “became a world view, an expansionist Weltanschauung for subsequent generation of Americans and … important to understand America’s imperial expansion in the twentieth century,” writes the noted American historian William Williams. The policies of American Lebensraum, called “Open-Door” imperialism, and the enlargement of the American empire through expansion of the perimeter of the Monroe Doctrine, is the explanation of America’s foreign policy during this century, including the present policies of NATO expansion, assertion of American preponderance of power over the whole Eurasia and the war against Yugoslavia.

The architects of the American Lebensraum provided also the rationale for NATO. NATO as a geopolitical construct is firmly anchored in the “Frontier thesis” of the American expansionist foreign policy, appearing as a function and instrument of the Atlantic Grossraum, as envisioned by Turner, Adams and Mahan. Or as Senator Tom Connally stated: “the Atlantic Pact is the logical extension of the Monroe Doctrine”. The creation of the NATO signified the extension of the Monroe doctrine to Europe – Europe would become for the United States another Latin America, points out the American historian Stephen Ambrose. (3)

Frederick Jackson Turner’s main concept was that America’s uniqueness was the product of an expanding frontier. He defined American historical existence as perpetual geopolitical expansion toward new frontiers in the West. “The existence of an area of free land , its continuous recession , and the advance of American settlement westward explains the American development”(4) The “universal disposition of the Americans”, an “expanding people, is to enlarge their dominion” and that the ongoing geopolitical enlargement “is the actual result of an expansive power which is inherent in them”(5), claimed Turner. Thus American history is a history of “continually advancing frontier line…The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization…Movement has been its dominant, and …the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise”(6)

“The other idea ( in the American imperialist Weltanschauung) is the thesis of Brooks Adams that America’s uniqueness could be preserved only by a foreign policy of expansionism.”(7) Adams idea was calculated to preserve Turner’s explanation of American past and project it into the future. “Taken together, the ideas of Turner and Adams supplied American empire builders with an overview and explanation of the world, and a reasonably specific program of action from 1893 to 1953”, points out William Williams. “Expansion was the catechism by this young messiah of America’s uniqueness and omnipotence…Turner gave Americans a nationalistic world view that eased their doubts… and justified their aggressiveness.”(8) Turner, looking at the American past , saw in the final conquest of West the realization of Manifest Destiny in the Western Hemisphere. Adams saw the coming new frontier – the whole world. His mondial vision was inevitable leading to a one world empire—the American World Empire, not plurality of Grossraüme or Panregions, as envisioned by Carl Schmitt or general Haushofer.

Brooks Adams’ The Law of Civilization and Decay(9) (1895) was “a frontier thesis for the world.”(10) He propounded a policy of aggressive expansionism designed to make Asia an economic colony, allowing America to acquire a large new frontier in Asia. Essentially the conquest of Eurasia was commenced then. “One even reissued his foreign policy recommendations of the 1890’s as a guide for the United States in the Cold War,”(11) points out William Williams. In his book “American Empire”(12) (1911) Brooks Adams envisioned the coming of the American world empire and the conquest of all Eurasian geopolitical space. Theodore Roosevelt’s, and Woodrow Wilson’s interpretation of the westward movement as a civilizing conquest of Eurasia was influenced by the works of Turner and Adams. Adams” use economic and military power to expand the frontier of the United States westward”(13)

Brooks Adam’s expansionist design was the foundation of American foreign policy —expansionism first in Asia, then in Europe. “Wilson relied extensively on Turner’s frontier thesis in presenting his own interpretation of American history” ‘All I ever wrote on the subject came from him’”, pointed Woodrow Wilson.(14) Borrowing from the vocabulary of the Manifest Destiny Doctrine – Wilson’s slogan “World safe for democracy” – meant in reality world safe for policies of American Lebensraum. As William’s adds ” even more than in the case of Theodore Roosevelt, the policies of Woodrow Wilson and subsequently Franklin Delano Roosevelt were classic Turneris.(15) Turner’s frontier thesis made democracy (i.e. American dominion ) a function of an expanding frontier.” F.D. Roosevelt has always been …a Turnean in foreign policy…Roosevelt ‘s Turnerism was meanwhile blended with the realpolitik of Adams.” (16)

Woodrow Wilson was the first who gave a glimpse of the coming American world hegemony. Already conceiving Great Britain subjugated by the United States and thus John Bull transformed to an obedient servant of the overseas Atlantic Master, Adams saw the main enemy in continental Europe.

“The acceleration of movement, which is thus concentrating the strong, is so rapidly crushing the weak that the moment seems at hand when two great competing systems will be pitted against each other, and the struggle for survival will begin…Whether we like it or not , we are forced to compete for the seat of international exchange, or, in other worlds, for the seat of empire…..Our adversary (France, Germany and Russia) is deadly and determined…If we yield before him , he will stuffle us” (17)

Economic supremacy, claimed Adams, was the basis for all power (18). Free trade and economic internationalism i.e. international economy under American control, was the key to world domination. “Adams argued that the United States must take an increasingly large role in policing the world order. “Economic (and moral) power had to be translated into military power if America was to have, as Franklin D. Roosevelt (influenced by Adams) put it, its “rendezvous with destiny”.(19) Adams American Economic Supremacy (20)(1900) was the old handbook for American empire builders.

Childs writing in 1945 pointed out: “If Adams had written last year, for publication this year, he would have had to alter scarcely anything to relate his views to the world of today”(21). The same is true for the period after 1991. The father of containment George Kennan , in explaining and defending the policy of containment, mentioned Adam’s as one of the small number of American’s who had recognized the proper basis of foreign policy…Kennan’s analysis and argument was in many respects similar to that of Adams.”(22) The Truman Doctrine was a classic example of the Frontier Thesis designed to facilitate American expansionism, and in one speech Truman called it “The American Frontier”.

“By the end of W.W.II , American leaders were thinking even more explicitly within the pattern evolved in the 1890s.”(23) “Like a good many aspect of 20th century American history, the military definition of the world was a direct product of the frontier-expansionist outlook.(24)

Admiral Mahan provided the earliest rationale for NATO. “Expressing himself in a menacing and efficient attitude of physical force”, Mahan envisioned a future in which the industrial expansion led to a rivalry for markets and sources of raw materials and would ultimately result in need of power to open and conquer new markets. Sea power was the ultimate vehicle for this expansion, the new “open door’ colonialism demanded the services of American navy.

As Walter LaFeber points out, Mahan summarized his theory in a postulate : “In these three things—production , with the necessity of exchanging products, shipping , whereby the exchange is carried on, and colonies…—is to be found the key to much of the history , as well as the policy , of nations bordering on the sea”(25) Production leads to a need for shipping , which in turn creates the need for colonies.(26)

John Hay’s “Open Door Notes” – the proclamation of American Lebensraum in 1899, and 1900 signified the beginning of the American commercial invasion of the world, the future American imperialist expansionism through the policy of Open Door.(27) As I have already pointed out Woodrow Willson’s words “World safe for democracy” translated in reality “World safe for American Lebensraum”. Wilson saw overseas economic expansion as the frontier to replace the American continent that has been conquered. In a section of volume V of his “History of the American People”, which reads as a paraphrase of essays written by Brooks Adams, Wilson claimed that United States is destined to command “the economic fortunes of the world” through the “Open Door” expansionism. “Diplomacy, and if need be, power, must make an open way.” In a series of lectures at Columbia University in April of 1907, he was even more forthright:

“Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a marked, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down…Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused”(28).

F. D. Roosevelt conceived his New Deal in geopolitical tradition of Turner and Adams (29)— the New Deal as a New Frontier. American freedoms could not be preserved in a frontierless society. United States was again in search of new frontiers. “To expand the Open Door Policy to the world” became the leitmotiv of American foreign policy.(30) The Secretary of Commerce said: “We cannot permit the door to be closed against our trade in Eastern Europe anymore than we can in China.”(31) The Secretary of State Hughes extended the Open Door Policy to all European colonies and Eastern Europe(32). The Cold War was about the opening of the Russian and the Eastern European frontiers for American expansionism and Open Door imperialism. The policy of “containment”, i.e. the traditional blockade of the Fortress Heartland served the same purpose. Austin Bears had challenged in 1934 the New Deal (Roosevelt’s Administration) to break with the expansionist tradition. He implied that the New Deal would be involved in another war for empire. Speaking through the National Foreign Trade Council the corporation community opposed Beard resolutely: “National self-containment has no place in the economic policy of the United States.”(33)

“American leaders predicted that commercial expansion, as long as the door remained open, would provide the United States with the economic advantages of a formal empire without the political responsibilities and moral liabilities connected with colonies”(34) Nevertheless the end result of the “Open Door” expansionism was the economic colonization of new geopolitical space. As the German geopolitician Otto Maull remarked: “Complete economic penetration is the same as territorial occupation”. “Open Door” warfare inevitably leads to “Open Door ” occupation.

AMERICAN BLUEPRINT FOR WORLD HEGEMONY

The British geopolitician Peter J. Taylor introduces in his book “Britain and the Cold War.1945 as Geopolitical Transition” the concept of “Geopolitical world order” which denotes a geopolitical regime of hegemony by a historical country- hegemon in the international word-system and points out that “the geopolitical order that preceded the Cold War has been termed the World Order of the British Succession.”(36) Both Nazi Germany and the United States had identical plans for Weltherschaft and both countries were involved in a struggle for world hegemony as successor of the previous geopolitical order of Pax Britannica. “…we can interpret the two world wars as contests for the British succession between Germany and USA”(37). As a result of the World War II the dominant British political empire was replaced with a new American economic empire.(38) Already prior to World War II United States began to plan for the coming American world hegemony.

The minutes of the closet meetings that were held between the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations beginning in 1939 explicitly detail the role of the U.S. as a replacement for the British…The minutes of the Council’s Security Sub-Committee of the Advisory Committee of the Post-War Foreign Policy set the likely parameters of U.S. post-war foreign policy: ‘..the British Empire as it existed in the past will ever reappear and…the United States may have to take its place…’. The US ‘must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement after this war which will enable us to impose our own terms, amounting… to Pax Americana.’(39) . Americans could retain their vitality only by accepting the logic of endless expansionism.(40) In 1942 , the Council’s director , Isaiah Bowman , wrote, ’The measure of our victory will be the measure of our domination after victory…(The US must secure areas) strategically necessary for world control.’”(41)

The War and Peace Studies Project, initiated by the Council on Foreign Relations during the F.D. Roosevelt Administration immediately prior to the Second World War, was then the master plan and blueprint for a new global order for the postwar world, an order in which the United States would be the dominant power…The War and Peace Studies groups, in collaboration with the American government ,worked out an imperialistic conception of the national interests and war aims of the United States.” The American imperialism “involved a conscious attempt to organize and control a global empire. The ultimate success of this attempt made the United States…the number one world power , exercising domination over large sections of the world—the American empire… Such blueprinting was by its very nature determining the ‘national interest “(42) of the United States….The purpose of postwar planning was the creation of an international economic and political order dominated by the United States.(43)

Isaiah Bowman, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s chief geopolitician, defined the foreign policy objectives of the United States as pursuit of global policy of American Lebensraum in response to Nazi Germany’s Lebensraum. Thus the war aims of United States and nazi-Germany were identical. Bowman in collaboration with H.F. Armtrong even secured an article from MacKinder on the danger of a strong Soviet Union which was published in Foreign Affairs under the title “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace”(44)

The article is remarkable because in it the old British imperialist MacKinder in essence argues for transformation of the British Empire into an American dependence and for the establishment of American hegemony in Europe: …”Britain—moated stronghold—a Malta on a grander scale (for the westward movement of the American empire) and France as a defensible bridgehead”(45)

Memorandum E-B19 concluded with a statement of the essentials for the United States foreign policy, summarizing the “component parts of an integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy of the United States within the non-German world.” Another main element was the “coordination and cooperation of the United States with other countries to secure the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by foreign nations that constitutes a threat to the minimum world area essential to the security and economic prosperity of the United States and the Western Hemisphere.”(46)

At a meeting on October 19, 1940 Leo Posvolski, the Department of State’s chief postwar planer , “agreed with the Council’s initial blueprint for world power. His belief that the United States had to have more than just the Western Hemisphere as living space is indicated in his statement that ‘if you take the Western Hemisphere as the complete bloc you are assuming preparation for war’(47). Posvolski thus felt that the United States would have to go to war to gain more living space if limited to the Western Hemisphere, a conclusion clearly following from the Council’s work.”(48) American economy need an elbow room, a new extended living space in order to survive without major readjustments, claimed the planners of the Council on Foreign Relations. That elbow room was conceptualized as the Grand Area, (Grossraum) — the United States -led non German bloc which the United States during 1941 called “world economy”(sic!).

The Economic and Financial Group’s studies had shown how dangerous a unified Europe, with or without Nazi domination, would be to the United States. Hamilton Fish Armstrong pointed out in mid-June 1941 that a unified Europe could not be allowed to develop because it would be so strong that it would seriously threaten the American Grand Area. Europe, organized as a single entity, was considered fundamentally incompatible with the American economic system.”(49)

AMERICA’S MINIMUM LEBENSRAUM – THE GRAND AREA

The extensive studies and discussions of the Council group determined that, as a minimum , most of the non-German world, as a new American ‘Grand Area’, was needed for elbow room.’ In its final form, it consisted of the Western Hemisphere, the United Kingdom, the remainder of the British Commonwealth and Empire, the Dutch East Indies, China and Japan itself.(50)

Noam Chomsky summarizes the concept of American Lebensraum: “The Grand Area was to include the Western Hemisphere, Western Europe, the Far East, the former British Empire (which was being dismantled), the incomparable energy resources of the Middle East (which were then passing into American hands as we pushed out our rivals France and Britain), the rest of the Third World and, if possible, the entire globe.”(51) The whole China was also included.

Unlike Carl Schmitt who in his geopolitical works used the concept of Grossraum, (and Greater Area is the exact translation of Grossraum), and who advocated a world order based on coexistence of Grossraüme, the American concept had nothing to do with a delimited geopolitical space. US deliberately rejected after the war the scenario of several Monroes (52). Instead American expansionism had to be unlimited, rejecting thus the very notion of competing national interests.

The War-Peace studies conceptually embodied the geopolitical expansionism of Turner and Adams, the Weltanschauung of the American Open Door imperialism. NSC -68 was nothing by restatement of those geopolitical objectives, coached in the heavy theology of a modernized Manifest Destiny Doctrine. (53)

ATLANTICISM

“The main political objective , both in peace and war , must therefore be to prevent the unification of the Old World centers of power in a coalition hostile to her own interests”, wrote the American geopolitician Nicholas Spykman in his book Geography of Peace,(54) restating the main geopolitical objective of the United States in the post-war Europe. “Spykman simply is repeating for the United States what has been an overriding principle for British statecraft since the time of Henry VIII”, comments David Galleo (55).

To the same conclusion came also Hans J. Morgenthau : “United States European policies largely parallel those of Great Britain from Henry VIII to the end of the British Empire”. Like Great Britain in the past United States pursues one single objective in Europe— prevention of European unity, rejection of the principle of balance of power and assertion of unilateral American hegemony and preponderance of power.(56) After the war the policies of American Lebensraum resulted in the formation of the Atlantic Alliance, the new Grand Area envisioned by the planners of the Council on Foreign Relations and the War and Peace studies project. The American Grand Area was conceptualized and institutionalized as the Atlantic Alliance.

The Atlanticism—the organizing principle of American postwar policy toward Europe—was build on Europe’s political dependency. NATO— the linchpin of American post war control— was the instrument to manage American power projection in Europe, points Ronald Steel in his book “Temptations of a Superpower” (57), in which he emphasizes that for the American post-war planers a major objective was to prevent Europe from becoming in the future an economic competitor because an economic competitor is likely to become a political one too. The American national interest demanded prevention of Continental unity.

Anticipating the creation of NATO, the leading American geopolitician of US postwar expansionism Nicholas Spykman, propounded in 1943 the idea that “European power zone can be organized in a regional League of Nations with the United States as a extra-regional member.”(58) Commenting on Spykman’s proposal, a leading American political scientist Clyde Eagleton pointed out that : “This is simply incredible-either that the United States would take on such a risk , or that other states would permit such interference from outside.”(59) Acceptance of the American proposals would only mean consent to the establishment of American protectorate over those European states.

Reformulating the old Turnerian “Frontier thesis” Spykman wrote “We have seen the frontier from an international point of view as an expression of a relative power relationship, as that line where conflicting pressures became equalized. From a national point of view of the individual state, the frontier is the front trench held during the temporary armistice called peace”(60)

The Europeanist influence tended to see the Atlantic system built around American hegemony as a transitional construction, born of exceptional European weakness, bound to be transformed if not discarded once that weakness had passed. Implied was the view that Europe was not to be dominated indefinitely.

Geopolitical Atlanticism envisioned just that indefinite domination. Political Atlanticism saw NATO as a pillar for such indefinite domination and as instrument for power managing of European geopolitical space. Atlanticism is a sort of political religion of expansionism with its geopolitical catechism and doctrine of immaculate conception of American foreign policy. (Although- befitting its Anglo-Saxon origin, the Atlantic catechism appears less systematized and less doctrinaire)”(61), write David P. Galleo and Benjamin M. Rowland in their book “America and the World Political Economy. Atlantic Dreams and National Realities”.

In the frameworks of the American imperialist Weltanschauung the establishment of American protectorate over Europe could be accomplished through NATO.(62) The Atlantic imperial mantle and American grand schemes for a world military empire were epitomized in the Atlantic Alliance. David Galleo and Benjamin Rowland point out that: “Hull’s free-trade imperialism might have been expected , but not a new Roman Empire with an Atlantic Mare Nostrum. It was almost as the United States , spurning Europe’s colonies, had decided to annex the mother countries instead (63).

The Atlantic Alliance, envisioned already by Brooks Adams, “marked the hegemony of America over Europe (64). Henceforth an American general , answerable to the President , will usurp the political prerogatives of Europe. And with the Truman Doctrine a spatially alien power —the United States, asserted and gained control over Western Europe, obliterating thus the independent political existence of former Great Powers, including its own ally Great Britain.

NATO AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE

The geopolitical concept of American Lebensraum—the Atlantic Great Area of American power preponderance —needed a direct power projection in order to guarantee American dominion. NATO became the institution of hegemony par excellence.

The architects of the American Empire envisioned for NATO the same role as admiral Mahan envisioned for the Navy – a vehicle for conquest of new markets and geopolitical space and an instrument for the implementation of the “open door ” policy and geopolitical space management. In short NATO became the military arm of the westward movement of the American Empire. The “frontier thesis” of the American foreign policy and the Monroe Doctrine did confluence in NATO. The Marshall Plan, followed by NATO, began in earnest the era of American military, political , and economic dominance over Europe, points Stephen Ambrose.(65)

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge considered NATO as one of series of regional organizations designed to hem in the Soviet Union. Thus NATO was also constructed as an instrument of the strategy of blockade of the fortress “Heartland” , identical with the Soviet Union. (Spykman’s concept of the countries of Rimland which had to be controlled by the United States must be seen as geopolitical theory of blockade).

NATO would assert American domination over Western Europe while simultaneously allowing the United States to assume a position of undisputed hegemony over Europe. What that hegemony would be “was adequately , if somewhat crudely , summed up in the frequent references to the extension of the Monroe Doctrine. Europe would become, for the American businessman, soldier and foreign policy maker, another Latin America” Senator Tom Conally declared “the Atlantic Pact is but the logical extension of the Monroe Doctrine.”(66)

NSC -68 represented the practical extension of the Truman Doctrine , which has been world-wide in its implications but limited to Europe in its application . The document provided justification for America’s assuming the role of world policeman.(67) It was designed to not only to preserving the power of USA but to extend and consolidate power by absorbing new satellites and to prevent the rise of competing system of power.

In order to understand the threat that NATO poses against the security of Russia and other European countries, it is necessary to go to the origin of the so called Atlantic Alliance. The North Atlantic Treaty, in its origin, was not an alliance at all, but an unilateral US guarantee of what US termed European security, and factually an assertion of American hegemony in Western Europe under the disguise of security. The essential condition of the original US-European relationship , formulated in 1949, was totally one-sided. Its raison d’etre allegedly was security — in reality it was hegemony, in fact an enlargement of the Monroe Doctrine, such as the announcement of the Truman Doctrine, which initially mostly effected Great Britain which had to cease—as in the case of Greece— her spheres of influence to the United States. It allowed the United States to gain supreme command over Western European armed forces and also to station American troops on European soil. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal in April of 1949 correctly characterized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “as nullifying the principles of the United Nations.”(68)

Historically speaking the unilaterally proclaimed Truman Doctrine was an extension of the Monroe Doctrine across the Atlantic, i.e. a major enlargement of the American Grossraum— a globalization of the principles of the Western Hemisphere Grossraum, where the United States is the sole bearer of sovereignty — and thus the first direct assault on the sovereignty of European states. Although ostensibly promoted as a device of containment and a policy for global intervention, it was in reality a device of subjugation and expansionism, serving American policy of Lebensraum.. The British foreign policy scholar Kenneth Thompson called the Truman Doctrine a national and expedient act designed initially to replace British with American power in Central Europe.(69)

Charles de Gaulle, the great French statesman with a kin eye for geopolitics and propensity to dismantle American myths, rightfully asserted that NATO was a mere appendage to the United States and that NATO and (French) national sovereignty were incompatible objectives. Already in 1951 (June 12) the Paris weekly Le Monde summarized the essence of the Atlantic Alliance and its military arm NATO:

“The fundamental inequality of the alliance is turning it more and more into a hidden protectorate in which protestation of national pride are not enough to compensate for a growing enslavement. The Roman Empire had its citizens, its allies, and its foreigners. The new American Empire has its allies of the first zone (the Americans), its allies of the second zone (the British), and its continental protégés: In spite of all their haughtiness, the latter are becoming to an ever increasing extend the Filipinos of the Atlantic.”

Leopold Kohr concluded that the Atlantic Alliance is not a partnership of equality , and that there is only one nation which is truly free in this new arrangement, “the imperial nation, the American.”(70) As Walter LaFeber has pointed out with the formation of NATO United States accomplished their victory in what LaFeber calls the First Cold War which President Wilson started already at the Versailles Peace Conference after the end of the First World War and the end result of which was the establishment of American control over the Western Europe i.e. over a significant portion of Eurasia.

After the end of the Cold War the role of NATO as instrument of American expansionism, an instrument for administration, control and enlargement of the American empire, became more clear than ever. Quoting the French author J.J. Servan Schreiber Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne describe the roll of the USA in the post-cold war period as a head of world empire. “Fifty years after NATO founding, as the post-cold war alliance finds itself at war, the time has come to reassess US imperial policy in Europe. The war in Yugoslavia is a watershed in NATO’s history. Today , the United States has expanded the alliance’s geographical scope and created a new role for it: intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states whose domestic policies offend NATO’s values – even when such states pose no security threat to the alliance’s partners… Hidden by all lofty (and misleading) rhetoric about NATO and transatlantic partnership is a simple fact: US policy in Europe aims not to counter others’ bids for hegemony but to perpetuate America’s own supremacy…NATO expansion may prove to be a diplomatic blunder on a par with the 1919 Versailles Treaty…”.(71)

Schwarz and Layne point out that NATO serves the following important functions:
Defending and expanding the imperial frontiers of the United States.

Establishment of permanent US protectorate over the continent and

Undermining the emergence of independent Western Europe.

NATO was used to undermine the pre-existing world order based on the Helsinki agreement and to obliterate the independent role of the United Nations. NATO became an instrument of conquest of the Eastern Europe – “peacefully” as in the case of the Visegrad–countries (Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic ) or by resorting to outright war of aggression (Yugoslavia). Containment of Western Europe and conquest of the Eastern Europe are the two main functions of NATO.

In the verdict rendered at the concluding session of the International War Crimes Tribunal Investigating U.S. NATO War Crimes in Yugoslavia on January 23, 2000 in Kiev, Ukraine, NATO was declared a criminal institution within the purview of the Nuremberg codex.

Once again, and now after the end of the Cold War, Europe as a geopolitical entity is faced by a historical choice — either independent geopolitical existence as a Mitteleuropa or European community, or a future as dependent appendage to the American empire. An independent geopolitical existence — Europe for Europeans — translates into a Mitteleuropa as antihegemonic block facing and competing with the American Atlantic Grossraum. The most simple geopolitical axiom is that NATO is a threat to a future European independence. And above all- NATO is a threat to Russia.

ENDNOTES

(1) See Anders Stephenson Manifest Destiny. American Expansion and the Empire of Right (Hill and Wang, New York, 1995) p. XI.

(2) Josiah Strong Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York, 1985) , p. 20. Here quoted from Walter LaFeber The New Empire (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1963) , p. 74.

(3) Ambrose, Stephen E. The Military Dimension: Berlin, NATO and NCS-68 in Paterson, Thomas G.(ed.) The Origins of the Cold War (D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, MA, 1974) p. 178.

(4) Turner, Frederick Jackson The Significance of the Frontier in American History (Henry Holt and Co, New York, 1995) p. 1.

(5) Turner, Frederick Jackson ibid. p.33.

(6) Turner, Frederick Jackson, ibid. p.p. 33, 59.

(7) William Appleman Williams The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy in Henry W. Berger (ed.) A William Appleman Williams Reader (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1992) p. 90.

(8) William Appleman Williams The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy p. 91.

(9) Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay (The MacMillan Co, New York, 1896).

(10) William Appleman Williams The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy p. 92.

(11) William Appleman Williams The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy p. 96.

(12) Brooks Adams The New Empire (The MacMillan Co, New York, 1900).

(13) ibid. p. 96.

(14) Williams ibid. 97.

(15) ibid. p. 98.

(16) ibid. p. 99, 100.

(17) Brooks Adams America’s Economic Supremacy, p.p. 80, 104-05, David P. Calleo and Benjamin Rowland America and the World Political

Economy p. 273.

(18) Thomas J. McCormick America’s Half-Century (John Hopkins University Press , Baltimore, 1995) p. 18.

(19) McCormick ibid. p.p. 18-19.

(20) Brooks Adams America’s Economic Supremacy (The MacMillan Co, New York, 1900).

(21) Ibid. p. 100.

(22) ibid. p. 101.

(23) William Appleman Williams The Contours of American History , Norton and Company, New York, 1988, p. 474.

(24) William Appleman Williams Contours of American History p. 473.

(25) A.T. Mahan The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (Boston, 1890) pp.. 53, 28.

(26) Walter LaFeber The New Empire. An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898 (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1963) p. 88.

(27) Williams ibid. p. 86.

(28) Williams, William Appleman The Tragedy of American Diplomacy p.p. 71, 72.

(29) Graebner p. 134.

(30) Graebner p. 134.

(31) (Charles Evans Hughes p.. 86).

(32) William Appleman Williams The Contours of American History p. 454.

(33) Lloyd C. Gardner The New Deal, New Frontiers, and the Cold War: A Re-examination of American Expansion, 1933-1945 in David Horowitz (ed) Corporations and the Cold War (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1969) p. 108.

(35) Dorpalen, Andreas The World of General Houshofer. Geopolitics in Action (New York, 1942), p.224.

(36) Peter J. Taylor “Britain and the Cold War. 1945 as Geopolitical Transition” (Guilford Publications,Inc, New York 1990) p. 17. The concept of “Geopolitical regime of hegemony” , used by Taylor, is quite similar to the concept of “Historical regime of hegemony ” in the political writings of Antonio Gramsci.

(37) Peter J. Taylor ibid. p. 17.

(38) Peter J. Taylor ibid . p. 17.

(39) Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod To Win a Nuclear War. The Pentagon’s Secret War Planes (South end Press, Boston, 1987) p.p. 63, 64.

(40) Those views were expressed by Reinhold Niebuhr who, like many American Cold War planners viewed the American future political destiny as Manichean interpretation of the virtually uninterrupted warfare- from the point of the revamped Manifest Destiny Doctrine. In this conjunction one may recall the view of the American foreign policy by William Appleman Williams.

In order to understand the foreign policy of expansionism of the United States Williams urged his students “to study the pirates as a protocommunity which sought in the Renaissance era and afterwards to create its own rules , and prompted widespread fear in the existing empires”. See Paul M. Buhle and Edward Rice-Maximin William Appleman Williams . The Tregedy of Empire (Routledge, New York and London, 1995) p. 236.

One may also recall that while still allies already during the World War II the United States started to prepare for war with the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1945 , at the time of the Conference in Potsdam United States adopted a policy of ‘string the first blow’ in a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. To that effect a secret document JCS 1496 was drafted on July 19, 1945. (p. 30).

The first plan for nuclear attack was drafted soon afterwards by General Dwight Eisenhower at the order of PresidentTruman. The plan. called TOTALITY (JIC 329/1) envisioned a nuclear attack on the Soviet with 20 to 30 A-bombs. The plan earmarked 20 Soviet cities for obliteration in a first strike: Moscow, Gorki, Kuibyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov, Kazan, Leningrad, Baku, Tashkent, Chelyabinsk, Nizhni Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Molotov, Tbilisi, Stalinsk, Grozny, Irkutsk, and Jaroslavl Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod To Win a Nuclear War. The Pentagon’s Secret War Planes (South end Press, Boston, 1987) pp. 30, 31.

(41) Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod To Win a Nuclear War. The Pentagon’s Secret War Planes (South end Press, Boston, 1987) pp. 63,64.

(42) Lavrence H. Shoup & William Minter Imperial Brain Trust (Monthly Review Press, New York 1977, p. 117.

(43) Lawrence Shoup & William Minter ibid. p. 118.

(44) Martin Geoffrey The Life and Thought of Isaiah Bowman (Archon Books, Hamden, Connecticut, 1980) p. 177. One may also recall that Isaiah Bowman already in his in 1921 published book “The New World” envisioned the coming American world empire. Carl Haushofer published in 1934 a trilogy of books titled “Macht und Erde” which, according to Otto Maull, was written as the German response to Bowman’s “The New World”. Martin Geoffrey, ibid. p. 165.

(45) MacKinder, Halford “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace” in Democratic Ideals and Reality (W.W. Norton & Co, New York, NY 1962) p. 274. MacKinder’s article was originally published in Foreign Affairs, vol.1 (July 1943) p.p. 595-605.

(46) Memorandum E-B19, October 19, 1940, CFR, War-Peace Studies , NUL. Here quoted after Shoup & Minter, ibid. p. 130.

(47) Posvolsky’s statement is in Memorandum A-A11, October 19, 1940 War Peace Studies , Baldwin Papers, Box 117, YUL from which Shoup &

Minter quote .

(48) Shoup & Minter ibid. p. 131.

(49) Shoup & Minter, ibid. p. 137.

(50) Shoup & Minter , ibid p. 136.

(51) Noam Chomsky What Uncle Saw Really Wants p. 12 (Odonian Press, Berkeley, 1992). The policies of American Lebensraum and the geopolitical construct of the American Greater Area are discussed in dept in Joyce and Gabriel Kolko The Limits of Power. The world and United States Foreign Policy (Harper and Row, New York, 1972) .

(52) See Taylor, Peter J. Britain and the Cold War. 1945 as Geopolitical Transition (Gilfor Publications, New York, 1990. Not only Carl Schmitt but also General Haushofer advocated peaceful coexistence of several competing “Grand Areas” or “Monroes”. Carl Schmitt used the concept of Grossraum, General Haushofer of “Pan-region”.

(53) The political objectives stated in the NSC-68 were after the end (sic!) of the Cold War again restated in the Pentagons Defense Planning Guidance. With the Soviet Union gone United States embarked on a new policy of expansionism.

(54) Nicholas Spykman Geography of Peace , New York, 1944.

(55) David Galleo ibid. p. 30.

(56) Hans J. Morgenthau The Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy Robert A. Goldwin (ed) Readings in American Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, New York, 1971) p. 642.

(57) Ronald Steel Temptations of a Superpower ( Harvard University Press, 1995) p. 70.

(58) N. Spykman America’s Strategy in World Politics p. 468.

(59) Clyde Eagleton, Review of America’s Strategy in World Politics , 222 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (July 1942), 189-190, P. 190. here quoted in David Willkinson Spykman and Geopolitics in C. Zoppo and C. Zorgbibe (eds) On Geopolitics: Classical and Nuclear (Martinus Nijhoff, Dortrecht, 1985), p. 82.

(60) Nickolas J. Spykman and A.A. Rollins “Geographical Objectives in Foreign Policy I, American Political Science Review , vol. 33 , 1939 , p.394

(61) David P. Galleo and Benjamin M. Rowland America and the World Political Economy. Atlantic Dreams and National Realities (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1973) p. 18.

(62) Ibid. p. 44.

(63) Ibid. p. 46.

(64) Ibid. p. 61.

(65) Stephen E. Ambrose, The Military Dimension : Berlin, NATO and NSC-68 in Thomas G. Paterson The Origins of the Cold War (D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, 1974) p. 178.

(66) Stephen E. Ambrose The Military Dimension : Berlin, NATO and NSC-68 in Thomas G. Paterson The Origins of the Cold War (D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, 1974) p. 117.

(67) Stephen E. Ambrose , ibid. p. 182.

(68) The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 1949.

(69) Kenneth Thompson -Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics- An American Approach (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1960) – at p. 124.

(70) Leopold Kohr -The Breakdown of Nations -ibid., at p. 203.

(71) Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne “NATO: At 50, It’s Time to Quit” (The NATION Magazine, May 10, 1999 pp.17, 18.

Tags: Geopolitics and Eurasia, Nikolai von Kreitor