THE DARK ART: 

Intelligence, Counterintelligence,

and the Mind of the State

Charles S. Viar

I.

Although the origins of intelligence have been lost in the mists of time, the practice is at least as ancient as warfare. In what is perhaps the oldest written reference to an intelligence operation, The Book of Numbers recounts God’s command that Moses dispatch a reconnaissance team to scout the Israelite advance upon the Promised Land: 

Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the Children of Israel. Of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, everyone a ruler among them…

Had the Canaanites possessed an effective counterintelligence capability, the story of the Israelite assault might have ended differently. For even a minimal foreknowledge of their intentions and capabilities would have made it possible for the Canaanites to organize a more effective defense. But as may be inferred from the Bible, they failed to detect the operation directed against them.

For that, they paid a fearsome price.

                                                                  II.

Narrowly defined as “evaluated information,” intelligence is a dynamic process that involves the collection, analysis, and dissemination of data to national policymakers and other government officials of lesser rank. Intelligence serves to forewarn them of likely actions, events, and developments within their sphere of responsibility; and aids in matching available resources to threats and opportunities alike. As such, it is the sine qua non of effective statecraft.

More broadly, intelligence also serves as a force-multiplier. Much as Archimedes Lever makes it possible to magnify mechanical force transmitted across space, covert and clandestine intelligence operations make it possible for states to enhance the power they project beyond their frontiers. History is littered with examples of small and middling states exercising disproportionate influence through the deft application of secret intelligence.

Given the enormous – and occasionally decisive – advantages conferred by effective intelligence in the Great Game of Nations, well-governed states seek to maximize the effectiveness of their own intelligence services and to protect themselves against hostile services deployed against them. Domestic security typically provides one level of defense, and counterintelligence another.

III.

Although counterintelligence has been recognized as an integral component of state security since the Chinese military scholar Sun Tzu published The Art of War in the Fourth or Fifth century BC, the concept remains muddled. For almost two and a half millennia, the term itself has defied definition.

According to James Angleton, the legendary former Chief of CIA Counterintelligence, the term is ineffable. Although Angleton’s Deputy Chief for Operations generally concurred, he believed counterintelligence could nonetheless be described in terms of core functions. Angleton’s Deputy Chief for Analysis, however, disagreed with both. According to Raymond G. Rocca, counterintelligence is self-defined: it applies to any action undertaken to counter, i.e., negate, the efforts of hostile intelligence services.

Having studied under all three of the practitioners listed above, the writer of this paper eventually concluded Rocca’s understanding is more nearly correct; and has since argued that counterintelligence can be best illustrated by contrast. Where counterespionage – or security – seeks to neutralize individual spies and spy rings, counterintelligence attempts to neutralize hostile intelligence services as a whole.   

IV.

In a more perfect world, intelligence services would aspire to comprehensive coverage of their targets. But in actual practice, physical, organizational, political, and budgetary constraints have traditionally forced them to limit their collection activities to data pertaining to the targeted state’s organization, capabilities, and intentions. More recently, intelligence services have been tasked with gathering financial, economic, and technical data as well; and with the development of remote collection techniques, the amount of raw data collected by major intelligence services has become staggering in both scope and volume.

From a theoretical standpoint, intelligence collection and analysis should not be especially difficult. But given the fact that intelligence services routinely devote a substantial portion of their resources to deception operations designed to deceive their adversaries, the task is far more difficult than it first appears. Tables of organization and orders of battle can be faked, deployment patterns and readiness indicators manipulated, and communications traffic played for purpose. Indeed, almost any sort of intelligence data can be fabricated and fed to foreign intelligence services through sacrificial spies, dangles, false defectors, and dispatched agents.

This inherent vulnerability to hostile deception operations lays bare what Angleton formally referred to as the Epistemological Problem:

Given the fact that foreign intelligence services routinely mount large and carefully crafted deception operations against us, how can we know what we believe to be true is actually so?

In less guarded moments, he called it “That damnable question.”

V.

As intelligence practitioners will attest, it is a damnable question indeed. Nonetheless, there are two solutions to the problem – one partial, the other complete.

The first solution is to look at intelligence data in terms of a jigsaw puzzle extending across time. After fitting together as many of the pieces as possible, one may flag those that are known to be true beyond doubt. Subsequent pieces that fit with those may be presumed true, in the absence of contrary evidence.

Although this approach has considerable merit – including especially the way it facilitates intuitive judgments – the results it generates are both probabilistic and tentative. The likelihood that new data may significantly alter the pattern is high. 

In contrast, the second solution can provide definitive answers – but only rarely, when two relatively unlikely events occur simultaneously: 1) a high-level penetration agent confirms the validity of specific intelligence data, and 2) a code break “backstops” the veracity of the confirming agent. In the world of intelligence, certainty depends upon serendipity.

The recruitment of high-level penetration agents is rare, and code breaks are even more so. They occur together perhaps once a decade, and when they do intelligence analysts emerge from their garrets to enjoy a brief moment of clarity. But when the agent is lost or the codes are changed, they are condemned to wander once more through what Angleton termed “The Wilderness of Mirrors” – an Epistemological Hell from which neither truth nor falsehood may be surely obtained. 

VI.

Determining the validity of intelligence data thus depends in part on recruiting from the enemy’s ranks senior political office holders or high-ranking government officials, and in part upon breaking their codes. But once effected, these unlikely circumstances open a window to other intriguing possibilities – including, specifically, offensive counterintelligence operations designed to penetrate, infiltrate, and suborn the target’s intelligence service in order to play it back against the state it serves. The ultimate goal of such operations is to entice or provoke the targeted state into undertaking ruinous and self-destructive actions.

As Angleton observed, successful politicians and senior government officials are a remarkably homogenous lot. For the most part, they derive from roughly comparable social circumstances and share core formative experiences in common. They attend the same schools – or at least the same types of schools – and are imbued with the same canon. They also hold remarkably similar beliefs and values, and share certain characteristic attitudes regarding the larger world. Together these form something akin to a collective psyche, or what Angleton termed the “Mind of the State.”

If states have minds, they also have states of mind – and as with individuals, it is their state of mind that makes them most vulnerable to deception. For a state of mind is a predisposition to belief or action; and if that predisposition can be accurately gauged, tempting or provoking the targeted decision-makers to ruin becomes a plausible exercise in perception management.

VII.

If there is a single failing common to decision-makers throughout history, it is an excessive faith in intelligence. For reasons that remain obscure, decision-makers seem unable or unwilling to grasp the implications of the Epistemological Problem Angleton described. Despite ample warnings, they almost invariably place far more credence in intelligence reports than they deserve; and it is upon this most basic failing that offensive counterintelligence plays.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote “Supreme excellence is to subdue the enemy without fighting” and argued this end may best be achieved by manipulating the “Golden Threads” of intelligence – that is, the lines of communications that connect agents recruited from within the enemy’s camp to one’s own.  The first Golden Thread may be activated by sacrificing deliberately misinformed low-level agents for capture, dangling double agents for enemy recruitment, and dispatching false defectors to the enemy’s camp. The second is brought into play by querying the agent-in-place to determine how the enemy decision-makers have interpreted the false information they delivered. If the information evokes the intended state of mind, the false message can be reinforced by repeating the process in different ways. If not, it can be modulated until it does.

By these means offensive counterintelligence operations can create a false picture of reality in the minds of targeted decision-makers, much as an artist paints an image upon a sheet of canvass. Brush stroke by brush stroke, the attacking service can exploit the enemy intelligence service it has suborned to systematically manipulate the Mind of the State.  

VIII.

The many critics of offensive counterintelligence argue that strategic deception operations of the size and scale suggested above are far too complex and complicated to be practical, as they are doomed to eventually collapse under their own weight. The criticism is true at least in part, but nonetheless disingenuous. Intelligence operations of any sort have a relatively short shelf life; and unless shut down by those that initiated them or uncovered by their intended targets, they will ALL eventually collapse for similar cause.

Perhaps more to the point, modern history is strewn with examples of successful strategic deceptions including the TRUST operation of the 1920’s, which saved the nascent Soviet state from ruin; the Soviet-sponsored WIN operation of the late 1940's and early 1950’s that forced the United States to abandon its policy of “Rollback” in Eastern Europe; and the Anglo-American deception operation that made possible the successful invasion of Normandy in 1944. All of these operations were conducted in the manner outlined above, and each inflicted massive damage upon the states they targeted.

Unfortunately, the United States abandoned its national counterintelligence capability in December of 1973 – and with it, the ability to mount large-scale strategic deception operations. Redefined and re-envisioned by successive administrations, counterintelligence had been reduced to little more than a security function until the Clinton Administration partially resurrected it after disastrous and overlapping penetrations of the CIA and the FBI were uncovered in the 1990’s. Expanded and reorganized in the aftermath of 9-11, a National Counterintelligence Executive now exists as a semi-autonomous supervisory agency. And yet despite the many long overdue reforms that have been undertaken since 2001, U.S. counterintelligence remains hobbled by an obtuse and legalistic definition, conceptual confusion, tangled jurisdictions, and – above all – by institutional timidity. For while offensive counterintelligence operations are now officially recognized, they remain tightly controlled and rarely sanctioned. They are tactical operations, most often mounted in reprisal.

Despite ample modern precedents, strategic deception operations of the sort advocated by Sun Tzu and refined by Angleton remain beyond the pale. This is unfortunate and – for those that seek to limit the suffering caused by armed conflict – deeply disconcerting.

For in the Great Game of Nations, offensive counterintelligence remains the only plausible means for achieving victory without war. If only in theory, it is the primary offensive instrument of state.

________________

Intelligence Briefs is a publication of the Center for Intelligence Studies.1016 K Street NE. Washington, DC. 20002

202 / 397-1296

Copyright 2009. This paper may be reproduced in part or in whole for civic or educational purposes, provided that context is preserved and full attribution is given

 And the Norman System of Elite Perpetuation

Charles S. Viar

I.

Barack Obama’s election as the 44th President of the United States has been widely hailed as a watershed in American history. Among the general populace there is a widespread sense that Obama’s victory has brought one era to a close, and opened another. But for many black Americans, the election holds an even deeper and more poignant meaning: four centuries after their ancestors were first brought to these shores in chains, 143 years after the emancipation of their descendents, and 44 years after achieving lawful equality, Obama’s victory heralds the success of a centuries long struggle for acceptance by the larger and predominantly white society. For as one black commentator remarked, “Having the legal right to apply for membership is one thing. Being accepted by the Membership Committee is quite another.”

Within the context of the American experience, this interpretation is doubtless true. But when viewed from the larger historical perspective of the English-speaking peoples, the African-Americans’ struggle for acceptance seems more deeply rooted in an ancient system of elite co-option and perpetuation. For nine centuries beyond the Civil Rights Movement stands the ghostly apparition of William the Conqueror, who guides it still.

                                                                   II.

Centuries of relentless strife followed the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD.  According to historians and archeologists, not single book was penned nor a single stone structure erected for more than two hundred years; and it was not until Charlemagne consolidated power as King of the Franks in 771 AD that a semblance of political authority was restored. After successful military campaigns in Saxony, Italy, Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Poland, Hungary and beyond, on Christmas Day of 800 AD Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Imperator Romanorum in St. Peter’s Basilica. Having checked the Saracen advance in Spain and subdued the East, Charlemagne imposed a series of sweeping and far-reaching reforms that rationalized currency, civil administration, military organization, education, and even the ecclesia. Had the Fates not turned against him, Western Europe might well have experienced a Golden Age of peace and prosperity.

But it was not to be. Even before Charlemagne claimed the purple, Norse raiders landed upon the tidal island of Lindisfarny in 793, and sacked the abbey there with such ferocity that it shocked a world accustomed to casual brutality. Apparently emboldened by the success of the raiders, Danish King Godfred built a rampart across the length of the Schleswig Isthmus seven years later, and – from the safety of the 30 kilometer earthwork – launched a series of devastating attacks upon Frisia and Flanders. Although Godfred was assassinated before he could fulfill his boast of marching upon Charlemagne’s capital at Aachen, scores of other Norse warlords and kings-presumptuous stepped forward to take his place. For the next 255 years, the orderly and peaceful world that Charlemagne had imposed upon the West was recast by the relentless and savage attacks of the Vikings. 

III.

The two and a half centuries of war that began with the sack of Lindisfarny Abbey not only altered the course of European history, but transformed European society, governance, and geography as well.

The first of these transformations involved the hyper-militarization of Europe. Throughout his reign, Charlemagne had relied upon massed formations of infantry drawn from free-holders. But after his death, Louis, his son and successor, found the slow moving infantry formations he had inherited were unable to cope with the Vikings’ sea borne attacks. In response to the threat, he constructed fortifications manned by permanent garrisons along Europe’s coasts and estuaries, and created rapid-reaction forces composed of heavily armed horsemen. Because the cost of horses and armor was beyond the means of most free-holders, large land grants were awarded to select individuals in exchange for hereditary lifetime service as armored cavalry.

This led to the second great transformation, in which a military aristocracy displaced the proto-democratic system of free-holder infantry commanded by officers that were – often – elected by the soldiers they led. As Charlemagne’s successors mobilized their nations for war without end, a new form of feudalism characterized by an increasingly rigid and hierarchical social structure inevitably arose. 

But the third great transformation was by far the most consequential. For it was the Viking occupation of North Western France that set in motion an ironic chain of events that gave rise to the English-speaking nations of the world, and to the system of elite renewal and perpetuation that governs them still.

IV.

The European mobilization took more than a century to complete, and by then Charlemagne's Empire had been divided into three. During this time, the Vikings gained control over the entire length of Europe’s coastline and established sizeable settlements in England, Scotland, Ireland, and North West France. Aided by shallow-draft boats that could be operated with equal ease in the white waters of the European littoral and the continents’ rivers and larger streams, the Norsemen began moving inland. In 885 the Vikings marched upon Paris; and had they mastered siege equipment, they might well have taken the French capital. But the Vikings’ lack of military engineers saved the city on this and other subsequent occasions, as increasingly effective French defenses exacted an ever-larger toll upon them. Wearying of the game, the invaders signed a treaty with the French in 911. In exchange for French recognition of their conquests, they agreed to convert to Christianity, acknowledge the King of France as their master, and defend the French coast against their still warlike kin. Thus did the Duchy of Normandy arise.

According to most historians, the Normans were quickly assimilated. Few in numbers and overwhelmingly young and male, they intermarried freely, adopted the French language, and raised their children as Frenchmen.

Yet even after the passage of a century, they remained distinctive. For as Geoffrey Malaterra observed, the Normans were:

Specially marked by cunning, despising their own inheritance in the hope of winning a greater, eager after both gain and dominion, given to imitation of all kinds, holding a certain mean between lavishness and greediness, that is, perhaps uniting, as they certainly did, these two seemingly opposite qualities…

They were enduring of toil, hunger, and cold whenever fortune laid it on them, given to hunting and hawking, delighting in the pleasure of horses, and of all the weapons and garb of war.

Flexible, adaptive, and innovative, the Normans won reknown as exceptionaly able soldiers and – more importantly – supremely competent governors.

V.

All these traits were still in evidence 156 years later when William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066. The illegitimate son of Robert I, Duke of Normandy, William asserted a tenuous claim to the English throne after the death of Edward the Confessor. Opposed by the Archbishop of York – who had crowned Harold Godwinson as King – but supported by Pope Alexander II, William landed an army of 7000 men at Pevensey Bay in Sussex before marching upon Hastings. There on the 14^th of October, William imposed his claim by defeating Harold’s English army in a hard-fought battle. Coroneted in Westminster Abby on Christmas Day, King William spent the next fourteen years quelling the land.

Prior to the Normans, conquerors frequently employed various types of genocide to subdue the conquered: the defeated males were most often slaughtered, the females were either taken as slaves or sold into slavery, and the forcibly vacated lands were resettled by the victors. Although King Clovis had eschewed the tactic in order to create a unified French nation, Charlemagne nonetheless employed it against portions of Germany three centuries later. But annihilating the enemy was not an option for William – for like his progenitors in Normandy, he lacked the demographic resources to colonize the lands he had conquered. With perhaps 5000 knights drawn from an estimated 2000 aristocratic families, William’s only option was to establish a modus vivendi with the two million Anglo-Saxons he had subjugated.

Driven by necessity and design, William adopted a policy of conciliation. The civilian populace went unmolested, and in exchange for an oath of allegiance the surviving Anglo-Saxon nobles were permitted to retain their lands and titles. A series of bloody revolts, however, soon compelled him to adopt a more forceful strategy. As he despoiled the rebellious countryside in a deliberate effort to starve Northern England into submission, William also initiated a massive program to fortify and garrison strategic sites. Between 1068 and William’s death nineteen years later, the Normans are believed to have built more than 500 motte and bailey castles across the English countryside. But unlike similar fortifications the Normans had constructed in France, these were not designed to defend against foreign invasion. Their purpose was to ensure Norman rule through a policy of intimidation and reprisal.

VI.

By the time William died in 1087, Norman control was complete. But while subdued, the English countryside remained sullen; and rebellion was an ever-present possibility. With an estimated 92 per cent of the Anglo-Saxon nobility killed in battle or stripped of their titles, lands, and governmental authority for rebellion, the native population looked upon the new regime as an alien occupation. It was within this context of seething anger and resentment that the legends of Robin Hood first arose.

Whether Robin Hood actually lived remains an open question. Although some historians believe the legends are loosely based upon an actual figure, most are inclined to view them as folk tales reflecting the longings of a conquered people for a hero to deliver them from bondage. According to the first interpretation – the one most often depicted by Hollywood – Robin Hood was a champion of social justice. But according to the second, he was most likely a conflation of various Anglo-Saxon resistance leaders that battled the Norman Occupation from the forests and swamps of central England. The first makes for rollicking fun and adventure; the second gave rise to a political strategy of elite renewal and perpetuation so subtle that it has passed almost unremarked for nine centuries.

In a 1991 motion picture, John Irvin touched upon this strategy.  In his film, Robin Hood is presented as an Anglo-Saxon noble that has managed to retain his title, lands, and authority by virtue of his friendship with a powerful Norman Lord. But after clashing with his patron over the brutal mistreatment of one of his English peasants – and then publicly disparaging Norman justice – Robin is declared an outlaw. Fleeing to Sherwood Forrest to escape arrest and execution, Robin initiates a carefully calculated and tightly focused insurrection. His goal is not to drive the Normans from England, but merely to force them to acknowledge the rights of the conquered population. His loyalty to King Richard – and the Norman system of rule – is never in doubt.

Barely noted is the fact that Robin’s insurrection played into Norman hands. Having failed in their initial attempt to conciliate the defeated Anglo-Saxons, and lacking the manpower to forever maintain their rule by force, the Normans are acutely conscious of their need for Anglo-Saxon support to perpetuate their power. Guided by this coldly realistic understanding of their predicament, Robin’s Norman antagonist deftly exploits the conflict to achieve William’s original goal by granting under duress concessions the Normans would have freely made had the English not rebelled against them.

VII.

Political elites are self-defined: they are the few that make the decisions for the many. Regardless of the manner in which elites are selected – though brute force, inheritance, or democratic election – they are ubiquitous. For in every nation, the many are ruled by the few.

Although that tautology is maddening for philosophers, the more difficult problem posed by elite rule is biological. Because the likelihood of lineal succession declines with each generation, elites face relatively rapid extinction. For that reason, family, ethnic, or even racially based elites cannot perpetuate their control for historically meaningful timeframes without co-opting new members from the ranks of those they rule. This problem was well understood in Ancient Rome, where exceptional citizens drawn from every corner of the Empire were routinely elevated to Senatorial Rank, and perhaps even better in Norman England. Given their meager demographic resources, the Normans had no choice but to eventually co-opt the conquered Anglo-Saxons, and bring them into their system – perhaps not as equals, but nearly so – with the promise that their children or at least their grandchildren would one day achieve full equality. By co-opting Robin and his Anglo-Saxon followers, the Normans triumphed in apparent defeat.

Unable to negotiate an accord with an amorphous and leaderless population, the formative nature of Norman oppression – and the Anglo-Saxon resistance it deliberately provoked, molded, and shaped – eventually provided the necessary preconditions for the accommodation that eluded William. For appalling as it may be, it is nonetheless a fact that equality means little if not hard-won; and it is upon this perverse quirk of human nature that William’s successors built their system of elite perpetuation:

Exploit the conquered for as long as you are able. But when you can no longer rule by force alone, apologize for the past, co-opt their leadership, and bring them into the system - first as underlings, and then eventually as equals.

Although rarely recognized and never publicly acknowledged, this system is clearly identifiable throughout the histories of England, its successor state Great Britain, and the larger British Empire; and it remains everywhere in evidence throughout the English-speaking world today. With the exception of the American colonies – an aberration occasioned by an unassimilated King plagued by episodic madness – the British have never fought to retain power over their subjects abroad. After periods of more or less lengthy oppression, they invariably accommodated the demands of their imperial subjects in accordance to the formulae above, by apologizing – however insincerely – for past injustices, co-opting the leadership of the once conquered, and acceding to their demands. In the process, they created a global English-speaking elite whose interests are closely tied to their own.

The Norman system of elite perpetuation is a part of America’s cultural legacy, and it is likewise evident throughout our history as well. Like the Normans in England, British settlers tried first to achieve a modus vivendi with the Native American tribes, but when that failed they adopted a policy of control strikingly similar to that employed by William. Indeed, the wooden forts that sprang up upon the colonial landscape were almost identical to the Norman motte and bailey castles that preceded them.

This pattern persisted after the American colonies seceded from the British Empire. For as British historians are quick to note, the Anglo-American elite that emerged from the Revolutionary War was deeply ambivalent about extending the blessings of liberty to all; and for that reason, the more cautious faction that prevailed resorted to the Norman system to ensure the survival of their still-tentative Republic. Beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts, each succeeding wave of immigrants was subjected to rigid controls and often-egregious exploitation. But as they organized in response, they were able to secure their rights in protracted struggles often aided by war. German immigrants of the 1840’s commanded battalions of more recent Irish immigrants in the Civil War, as Irish immigrants and their descendants’ commanded battalions of Italian, Polish, and Jewish immigrants in World War I. By the time of the Second World War, the descendants of involuntary African immigrants were commanding units of their own; and after that war, multi-racial formations as well. And like other groups, they legitimized their struggle against injustice through service. For like the Robin Hood of legend, they took pains to ensure their loyalty to the larger system was never in doubt.

Within the American experience, the African-Americans’ struggle for equality and acceptance is often regarded as a special case because their forbearers were brought to these shores in chains. But when one steps back and views their efforts from the broader sweep of history, it seems much closer to the traditional pattern. For while it is tempting to attribute the oppression of African-Americans to racism alone, it is an oft-forgotten fact that European immigrants had been freed from serfdom for at least one generation, and often several more. Thus from the perspective of the elite, the less onerous treatment they received was appropriate to their condition. In contrast, the African-Americans were in fact if not in name a conquered people; and for that reason the treatment they received was more akin to that the Normans visited upon the Anglo-Saxons. For while the legal status of African-American slaves was slightly worse than that of Anglo-Saxon serfs, their conditions of servitude were virtually identical. One need only substitute a motte and bailey castle for a plantation manor to grasp the point.

Viewed from that perspective, Barack Obama’s election as the 44^th President of the United States is far more than a triumph for African-Americans. It is also a triumph for the Norman system of elite perpetuation, which first arose in Norman England and later spread throughout the English-speaking world to become the unstated global norm. 

For almost a millennia, that system has employed deliberate oppression and carefully calculated accommodation to slowly and methodically mold and shape an ever-more inclusive political elite that now spans the world. For by accident or design, it was William the Conqueror that set in motion the process of global integration; and it is his ghostly hand that guides it still.

 ____________________________________________________________________

                             INTELLIGENCE BRIEFS

                            A publication of the Center for Intelligence Studies

  Vol. 19, No.4                                                                                           October, 2008

  ____________________________________________________________________

        THE TWILIGHT OF THE UNITED STATES:

               GLOBALISM & THE NEW WORLD ORDER

                        Nevin Gussack & Charles S. Viar

    Just weeks before the 2008 presidential election, the financial bottom fell out as a tsunami of sub-prime mortgage debt crashed upon Wall Street. On September 14,  the venerable investment house of Lehman Brothers collapsed, while on the same day fears of a similar calamity enabled Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch for a pittance. Two days later the Federal Reserve Bank was forced to issue an $85 billion loan to AIG – the nation’s largest insurer – to save it from failing. Accompanied by dire warnings of a global economic catastrophe comparable to the Great Depression, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson submitted a $700,000,000,000 bailout plan to Congress three days thereafter. Having initially rejected Paulson’s first draft the Congress approved a revised and expanded version on October third without discernable effect. The following week the New York Stock Exchange posted the single largest loss since its creation in 1817, as stocks declined in value by nearly three trillion dollars.

   The rolling crisis clearly marked an historical watershed. In addition to beggaring hundreds of thousands of small investors, its has inflicted severe and perhaps eventually mortal wounds upon the American model of capitalism and hobbled America’s ability to influence world events. At the same time it has ushered in an entirely new era of government economic intervention and control, as evidenced by the Treasury Department’s pledge to use a portion of the $700,000,000,000 bailout to undertake a de facto nationalization of America’s banks. 

   The sudden and supposedly unexpected crisis of American capitalism appears to have sealed the fate of Republican presidential contender John McCain, virtually ensuring victory for Democrat Barack Obama. Perhaps more importantly, it has demoralized America’s friends and encouraged its enemies abroad. European socialists were quick to assert the superiority of their version of state capitalism over the American model, as were Leftists and Populists across Latin America. Not surprisingly, radical Muslims celebrated the financial meltdown as divine retribution for America’s supposed mistreatment of Muslims. 

   As of this writing, the debate over the causes of the September collapse has barely begun. But certainly, it has been a long time in coming – for the level of financial risk has increased in proportion to the rise of Free Trade ideology, and its implicit corollary of global integration.

   Signs and portents have been apparent since the early 1970’s, when the present flood of cheap imported goods from low-wage Third World countries first challenged American manufacturers. For the better part of four decades, inequitable trade policies have forced essential heavy industries in the Mid West to either close or relocate offshore, while the decline of light manufacturing and textiles along the East Coast has devastated the once prosperous blue-collar work force and placed severe financial strains upon the seaboard’s middle class. Compounding the problem is the apparently endless stream of immigrants – many, and perhaps most of whom are illegal – that has placed unprecedented demands upon social services and set in motion spiraling tax increases at the state and local levels. At the same time the sheer number of these immigrants has placed upward pressure on prices, and downward pressure on wages and salaries.

   Perhaps emblematic of the “New Economy” that has taken root in the United States since the embrace of Free Trade is the utilization of former industrial sites for unnecessary and often unproductive functions. Examples of this abound, such as the deliberate eviction of manufacturers from New York City, New Jersey, Baltimore, and other former industrial centers in order to free land for luxury housing, shopping malls, sports stadiums, and other non-essential developments. Apparently, the political class has concluded that wealth-consumption is now more important than wealth-creation.

   They seem to have also concluded the interests of business are more important than the well-being of their citizens, for they have stood silently aside as various industries – including especially the energy, banking, and insurance sectors – have visited callous abuse upon consumers, adding to the already great burdens carried by working and middle class families. Business ethics that once stressed the importance of equitable exchange have been subverted by predatory attitudes that exult short-term profit. Whereas business leaders such as Henry Ford once deliberately paid above market wages, the surfeit of immigrant labor has encouraged managers to extract maximum benefit from their employees in exchange for reduced wages and salaries and minimal health care and retirement benefits. In the New Economy espoused by Free Trade ideologues and embraced by the political class, a high school diploma can no longer ensure employment; and even a college degree cannot guarantee admission to the Middle Class.

   This is surely not the America our parents intended for their children and grandchildren. Nor is it an America capable of preserving international peace and stability. For the flight of manufacturing industries to low wage Third World countries and the still adamant refusal of the political class to earnestly pursue energy independence has placed us in a remarkably vulnerable position. Like Britain after the Great War, we are now forced to depend upon potentially unreliable foreign sources for core components of our national defense.

   In addition to our potentially disastrous reliance upon foreign oil, other egregious examples abound. One is the outsourcing of the conversion kits used by the Air Force to convert gravity bombs to smart bombs. Because the primary supplier of these kits was located in Switzerland, that country imposed an arms embargo on the United States after 9-11 to protect its neutral status. As a result, the Air Force was compelled to launch a global scavenger hunt for new suppliers. Another example is the Boeing Company’s outsourcing of engineering to their Moscow Design Center in the late 1990s, while another is the U.S. reliance upon metal imported from Communist China. As the American Iron and Steel Institute has noted, this reliance has introduced an unnecessary element of vulnerability into the production of advanced weapons systems, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Key infrastructure and defense industries have also suffered from outsourcing and globalization, as evidenced by the proposed management of various port facilities by an Arab firm based in Abu Dubai, and the purchase of helicopters, aerial refueling tankers, and small arms from European conglomerates such as Fabrique National, EADS, and Beretta. 

   Since the 1970’s, U.S. economic policy has been dominated by those in business and government that subscribe to the notion that the displacement of blue collar and even professional employment is the inevitable and desirable result of global integration. These individuals mistakenly endorsed the view that trade and international business contacts would modify the hostile intentions of Communist states in the era of Détente; and despite clear evidence to the contrary, they still maintain it is true for the remaining Communist states, as well as for Islamic theocracies and other dictatorial regimes. Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, the “free traders” and “free marketeers” argued that American workers should be re-trained for often lower paying service jobs, or channeled into more speculative industries such as real estate, investment, and insurance. Not surprisingly, the senior executives of these industries have been consistently outspoken in their support of globalism – which they have justified in terms of projected profits. These same executives have been especially enthusiastic about trade with Communist China and other dictatorial regimes, which they maintain is a matter of enlightened national self-interest. Goldman Sachs, for example, stated on its website: 

GloCo must forcefully argue the case for globalization, showing that it helps the greater good as well as the bottom line. GloCo needs to demonstrate that globalization is likely to yield broad and sustainable benefits, including wider consumer choice, greater opportunity, economic development and more inclusive governance structures. It is in GloCo’s own self-interest to pursue these challenges with vigor.

   Although the American public has been generally unaware, such arguments are not new. Once the province of the Utopian Left, globalist ideology took root in American financial circles after the turn of the Twentieth Century, and expanded into commerce and manufacturing following the Second World War. By mid century, they had become so pronounced that James Paul Warburg stated before the U.S. Senate on February 17, 1950 that:

We shall have a World government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World government will be achieved by conquest or consent.

   Unlike the outspoken Warburg, American academics and business leaders have been generally less inclined to publicly make the connection between the diffusion of financial services and manufacturing and the impulse for global government. Nonetheless, by the 1980’s they were willing to openly discuss the transformation of corporations generally into truly global entities in scholarly journals and trade publications. David Hartman, then Vice President and chief international economist at Data Resources Institute, was quoted by Industry Week on September 5, 1988 stating:

There aren't American companies anymore and there aren't Japanese companies or German companies. Everybody is global. Everybody is selling and producing in all markets.

   Prophesy then, it is today an established fact for the formerly American, European, and Japanese firms that have made the transition to global corporations. It is also a source of comfort to our potential enemies, for as Chinese Communist Party theorist Chen Qimao of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies (SIIS) noted: 

Certain far-sighted intelligent U.S. personages have already clearly pointed out that in the new century the U.S. will be transformed from a superpower to a common power (putong daguo).

   Thus the fact that American military power is inseparably tied to America’s manufacturing capabilities is well understood by our adversaries. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about American policymakers, who have turned a blind eye to our increasing vulnerabilities. For almost two hundred years, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans served as barriers against foreign aggression – but with the rise of globalism, they have become commercial highways instead. Approximately 10,000 cargo ships carrying commodities or manufactures no longer produced by the United States – or no longer produced by the U. S. in sufficient quantities – off-load in American ports each year, and all of them are potentially subject to hostile interdiction. For that reason alone, energy independence and re-industrialization should be urgent strategic priorities.

   But unfortunately both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have preferred to excerpt these issues from their strategic context, and treat them as solely economic problems instead. In an effort to assuage his party’s blue-collar base, Obama has promised to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. But so far at least, he has not explained how that might be accomplished or why it should be a national rather than a partisan priority. For his part, John McCain has stated that American manufacturing is in irreversible decline. After publicly proclaiming, “Those jobs are gone forever,” McCain offered displaced blue collar workers federal funding for job retraining instead.

   Perhaps most importantly, neither has offered a compelling strategy for energy independence – an occurrence that is particularly odd, given the fact that the cost of the federal bailout for Wall Street is almost precisely equal to the amount of money sent abroad to pay for oil imports. The obvious connection between the hemorrhage of American wealth to foreign lands and the financial crisis at home is one that both candidates prefer to ignore.

   In the meantime, oil-producing states of hostile or uncertain intent continue to reap vast profits while our traditional enemies arm themselves against us. The Russian military build up that began – ironically – with the collapse of Soviet Communism in 1991 continues apace, including the deployment of the new TOPAL intercontinental ballistic missile, the construction of nuclear powered aircraft carriers, new generations of tactical fighter aircraft, a stealth-type strategic bomber, and a new generation of armored combat vehicles. Apparently in response to America’s declining fortunes, the Russians have also resumed probing Western air defenses with their Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers, conducted large-scale military exercises with Communist China, and strengthened their ties to anti-American regimes in North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela. Meanwhile, the Chinese continue to threaten US interests in various ways, including the deployment of their DF-31 and DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles and their efforts to increase their influence in strategically important areas in the world that include Panama, Venezuela, Cuba, and the vicinity of the Suez Canal. Despite their recent capitalist experimentations, neither Russia nor China has permitted their military-industrial firms to outsource their production.

   Even with the uncertain recovery of the stock market that began on October 13, the Great Crash of 2008 has changed the world in fundamental ways. With Chinese, other Asian, and Russian capital markets supplying almost all the liquidity the Treasury Department pressed into service to keep the U.S. economy afloat, the power and influence of these countries can only increase – a fact that holds profound and deeply disquieting implications for the future. For as the Financial Times has noted, policymakers in Washington and Western Europe can no longer hope to shape the new world order in their own image:

For more than two centuries, the U.S. and Europe have exercised an effortless economic, political and cultural hegemony. That era is ending...

                                  

                                    

                                                   Addendum

As of this writing, the U.S. national debt stands at $ 10,266,382,646,543.62, or approximately $86,023.00 for each and every family in America. 

____________________________________________________________________

INTELLIGENCE BRIEFS

A publication of the Center for Intelligence Studies

 Vol. 19, No. 3                                                                                           May/Jun 2008

______________________________________________________________________

                     Past is Prologue: 
        The Emerging Sino-Russian Axis
 
                                  Nevin Gussack & Charles S. Viar

   During the course of the primary election campaign, the major candidates addressed at length what they considered to be the chief threat to the United States: radical Islamic terrorism and subversion. However, none of the Republican and Democratic candidates adequately addressed the most recent manifestation of Sino-Russian collusion, which dates to the early 1990s. Singly and in combination, the Russians and the Chinese have spent the better part of the past two decades supporting still existing communist parties, anti-American dictatorships, and international terrorist movements, thus perpetuating a pattern of relations that first became evident after the October 1949 triumph of communism in China. The Sino-Soviet alliance that followed from the Chinese Communist victory was an imposing menace, for the combined populations, growing industrial capabilities, excessive conventional and nuclear military capabilities, and their fascination with unconventional weapons of mass destruction not only threatened the strategic interests of the United States and its allies but jeopardized their physical survival as well. And while the Sino-Soviet strategic partnership appeared to have unraveled during the 1960’s, the most recent variant forged in the early 1990’s is ominously reminiscent of the old. Traceable to the Russian Federation’s aggressive efforts to enhance military and strategic cooperation with the Chinese Communists after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the renewed Sino-Russian partnership assumed official form with the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – generally referred to as the Shanghai Pact – in 2001. Now the single largest military alliance on earth, the Shanghai Pact suggests a continuity of ideological and strategic hostility towards the United States that has gone officially unremarked in America. 

     Historically, the ruling Chinese Communist Party always had a much closer relationship with the Soviet Union and the international Communist movement than is commonly supposed. Lenin realized the potential power of a strategic alliance with China when he reputedly stated: “The road to Paris lies through Peking.”  This translated into action when the USSR and its Comintern collaborators provided military advisers and other support to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists while they were allied with the Chinese Communist Party. After the Nationalists split with the Soviets in the late-1920s, the Soviets shifted their support to the Chinese Communists. As Dr. Stephen Mosher and KGB defector Major Anatoly Golitsyn noted from archival and personal experience, Stalin not only provided Mao’s communists with political support but also a financial subsidy of some $300,000 per year, or approximately $4 million in today’s U.S. dollars. This support continued after the collapse of the Japanese occupation forces in 1945, when the Soviets handed the strategic province of Manchuria to the Chinese Communists. Concurrently, the Soviets also provided them with large quantities captured Japanese Army weapons – ranging from small arms to combat aircraft – as well as large quantities of Soviet-manufactured arms. In a lengthy article in the journal International Security, scholar Douglas J. Macdonald outlined the massive amount of military aid the USSR provided to Mao’s forces. He revealed that the USSR transported 220,000 Chinese Red Army troops and cadres to Manchuria, rebuilt weapons factories, and provided advisers and troops to assist Mao’s efforts to conquer mainland China.  This information has since been confirmed by other experts such as the ex-British Communist Freda Utley, who wrote about Soviet control and assistance to Mao in her book The China Story, and Golitsyn, who disclosed the extensive role of Soviet intelligence in supporting the Chinese Communists during the final stages of the Chinese civil war. Stalin was quoted as stating: “We will of course give the new China all possible assistance. If socialism is victorious in China and our countries follow a single path, then the victory of socialism in the world will virtually be guaranteed. Nothing will threaten us. Therefore, we cannot withhold any effort or means in our support of the Chinese Communists.” Thus did Stalin perpetuate Lenin’s strategic design to destroy the West by conquering the East.

     China was the keystone for communist expansion into Asia, and for that reason the Soviets openly provided the Chinese Communist regime with massive amounts of economic and military aid between 1949 and 1960. The Soviets even helped the Chinese expand their domestic conventional arms and nuclear industries, thus allowing Beijing to achieve a large degree of military self-sufficiency. According to the October 1957 New Defense Technology Agreement, the Soviets pledged to provide the Chinese with additional large-scale assistance to develop various types of missiles and warheads, as well as assistance in organizing technical institutes to train Chinese scientists, engineers, and technicians. In return, the Chinese were expected to play a subordinate role in Soviet long-term military and political strategies. According to Freda Utley, the Chinese agreed: “In the event of the outbreak of a Third World War, the Chinese Red Army shall fight alongside the army of the Soviet Union. The Commander of the Joint Forces to be nominated by the Soviet Union and the Deputy Commander to be nominated by China.  The Soviet Union shall assist in the establishment of a joint Sino-Soviet Air Force.  The organization of the Chinese Communist Party shall be expanded, and the Far Eastern Cominform shall be located in China.  In the event of an outbreak of war in Europe involving the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communists shall send an expeditionary force of 100,000 men and a labor force of one million to assist the Soviet Union in the prosecution of the war.” Even as late as 1959, the New York Times noted that the Chinese pledged “all out support” to the East Germans in the event of an “imperialist assault” on the “whole socialist camp.” According to scholars Douglas J. Macdonald and John Lewis Gaddis, the Chinese, under Soviet instructions, provided the North Koreans and the Viet Minh (Vietnamese communists) military assistance in the forms of weapons, advisers, and even troops in their efforts of conquest. MacDonald and Gaddis further revealed that the Soviets implemented a “division of labor” scheme where the Chinese would serve as Moscow’s proxy and agent in assisting communists in Asia. The Chinese also collaborated with the Soviets in other locations in the Third World, such as entering into barter trade agreements with Fidel Castro’s Cuba starting in 1959, and aligning themselves with radical Middle Eastern regimes such as Nasser’s Egypt.

     Despite the apparently bitter Sino-Soviet split of the mid 1960’s, Moscow and Beijing nonetheless continued to co-operate closely in many arenas of global conflict. Although influential elites in the multinational corporations, intelligence agencies, and both major American political parties preferred to view China as a card to be played against the Soviet Union, a closer examination of the historical evidence suggests that despite certain professed ideological differences, the Chinese and the Soviets still viewed capitalist imperialism as their ultimate enemy. In the struggle against imperialism – in effect, the United States – the foreign policies and positions of the USSR and China coincided closely, as evidenced by public statements and now declassified secret documents. Thus at the very height of the supposed split in 1966, the Chinese nonetheless sent this communiqué to Moscow: “The great peoples of China and the Soviet Union will eventually sweep away all obstacles and unite on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism… The Soviet people may rest assured that once the Soviet Union meets with imperialist aggression and puts up resolute resistance, China will definitely stand side by side with the Soviet Union and fight against the common enemy.” This assessment was lent authoritative credence by the now declassified transcript of a May 31, 1984 conversation between the former communist rulers of East Germany and North Korea, Erich Honecker and Kim il Sung. More than two decades into the so-called split, it stated in part:“Given the complex world situation, I hope that the Soviet Union and China work things out. I believe that the development of relations with the US is not targeted against the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai already told me that when they established relations with the US. They told us every time they met with Japan and the U.S. The only objective of these relations is to obtain developed technology and credit…” This is certainly plausible, for at the time the Soviets and the Chinese were singly and jointly engaged in supporting radical left-wing regimes hostile to the United States, “national liberation” movements, and terrorist organizations, especially in the Third World. Thus the Chinese collaborated with the Soviets to provide arms to the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War by making their ports and railroads available for the transshipment of Soviet weapons to the North Vietnamese regime; and also co-operated with the Soviets in arming North Korea in East Asia; Cuba and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in Central America; the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Baathist dictatorships in Iraq and Syria, South Yemen, and Qaddafi’s Libya in the Middle East; Burma’s once self-declared left-wing but now neo-fascist junta in South East Asia; and the Frelimo and MPLA insurgencies in sub-Saharan Africa. The common denominator that characterized these recipients of Soviet and Chinese largess was their self-declared war upon the “imperialism” and “hegemony” of the United States.

     In May 1989, then-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev met with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing to openly re-establish party-to-party ties, solidify socialism, and facilitate technological exchanges. The successful summit meeting restored at least in part the Sino-Soviet alliance of the 1950s, as Soviet allies and satellites hastened to follow suit and strengthen their relations with China as well. However difficult that may have been on the party-to-party level, it appears to have been a simple matter on the military level. For as both the Chinese Xinhua news agency and BBC reported, the Soviets and their satellites in Europe had quietly maintained military relations with Beijing throughout the so-called split through military attaches stationed at their respective embassies. In fact, military relations remained so close that the East Germans, Poles, Bulgarians, and Czechs celebrated their “army days” in Beijing with high-ranking commanders of the Chinese army throughout the 1970s and 1980s. As the so-called “Thaw” took hold in the late 1980s, the Chinese and the European and Third World Communist states simply expanded their military ties through the exchange of formal delegations. By the fall of 1989, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Cuba, and East Germany had all sent high-ranking military delegations to Beijing, and China reciprocated by sending delegations of their own to the communist capitals in Eastern Europe. Reports of renewed Soviet-Chinese military cooperation surfaced in 1991 in the Hong Kong newspaper Cheng Ming, which reported that the Soviets had made a commitment to supply the Chinese with heavy weapons, and training for their officers and pilots. And during the last days of the Cold War, the Soviets also endorsed Deng’s notion of the “Five Nation Alliance,” which was designed to serve as a new communist organizational structure. Originally intended to encompass China, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Vietnam, and Mongolia, it has been superceded by the Shanghai Pact, which has become the gravitational center for an associated second-order grouping that includes North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Myanmar (Burma) and other anti-American regimes. 

     Clearly, the collapse of Soviet communism did not mark the end of Russia’s cooperation with Communist China and other radical regimes. Nor did it put an end to the influence of communist ideology or communist-inspired policies. While president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin openly celebrated the birth of the Soviet secret police, praised Stalin, and continued to carry a Soviet-era identification card embossed with the Soviet Union’s acronym. Moreover, he frequently lapsed into Soviet-style rhetoric. In 2005, for example, Putin decried the alleged efforts of the United States to export “capitalist democracy” throughout the world. Two years later his public criticism became sharper still when he asserted “there [is]a desire among several international actors to dictate their will to each and everyone and to act not in accordance with the norms of international life and law…This is very dangerous and unhealthy... In our view it is nothing other than diktat, than imperialism.” And at the 2007 V-E Day Parade, Putin further complained that the dangers [posed by the United States] “are not diminishing...they are only transforming, changing their appearance. In these new threats, as during the time of the Third Reich, are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world.” Thus on the basis of both words and deeds, one may plausibly argue that neither Putin nor the country he ruled fully surrendered their communist inclinations. This unfortunate supposition remains acutely relevant, for the former president now serves as prime minister to his handpicked successor and – presumably – still controls Russia’s foreign policy.

     The centerpiece of that foreign policy is clearly the alliance with China – a country still governed by the Communist Party and still committed to world socialism and the defeat of the United States. Top Chinese Army General Chi Haotian stated in a secret 2005 speech that chemical and biological weapons would be utilized in an eventual attack against the United States in order to preserve the infrastructure and industries, destroy potential resistance, and create Lebensraum for subsequent Chinese colonization. Perhaps more incredibly, Mo Xiusong, the vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, re-affirmed the Chinese commitment to world socialism in an exchange with a Republican Party delegation from the United States: “Is the long-term aim of the Chinese Communist Party still world Communism?” Mo responded, “Yes, of course. That is why we exist.” More than mere rhetoric, this ideological statement clearly guides Chinese policy, as evidenced by China’s continued and open support for the world communist movement and its less publicized assistance to various Islamic radicals, such as al Qaeda and the Taliban. Veteran Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz and Al Santoli – a former Congressional aid then serving as the head of the American Foreign Policy Council’s China Reform Monitor – revealed that both the Taliban and al Qaeda continued to receive covert shipments of sophisticated Chinese- manufactured weapons even after the attacks of 9-11.

     As noted above, the Russian-Chinese alliance formalized in the Shanghai Pact has become the gravitational center for other anti-American states, including Iran. That country has ominously been granted observer status to the Pact, and its president Mahmud Ahmadinejad has exhorted Russia, China, and the four other Central Asian member states to cooperate in an openly anti-American bloc: “It can... turn the SCO into a strong and influential economic, political and trade institution at both regional and international levels…(It) can throw off the threats of domineering powers to use their force against and interfere in the affairs of other states.” Perhaps as a result, the Shanghai Pact demanded the United States withdraw from its bases in East Asia – and in an apparent effort to underscore its point, began conducting large-scale joint military exercises in that area. As early as 2001, China and Russia conducted joint exercises that included the simulated use of nuclear weapons to defeat a hypothetical American intervention on the Chinese mainland. Four years later, some 10,000 Chinese communist and Russian troops participated in another joint exercise dubbed Peace Mission, which was clearly designed to hone the skills that would be needed to eject U.S. forces from the region.

     Equally worrisome are the startling analyses of Russian and Chinese long-range intentions provided by former Russian intelligence officers. Former GRU Colonel Stanislav Lunev has stated that the Soviet/Russian nuclear war plan against the United States was still active and that the Chinese had been delegated the task of occupying the post-war continental United States. According to Lunev, anti-American Third World nations were also expected to join the invasion of America in exchange for looting rights. KGB Col. Sergei Tretyakov lent credence to Lunev’s warning when he declared: “I want to warn Americans…You believe because the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia now is your friend. It isn’t, and I can show you how the SVR [i.e., KGB] is trying to destroy the U.S. even today and even more than the KGB did during the Cold War.”

     With their attention focused upon the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, American policy makers have thus far ignored the emergent dangers posed by the most recent incarnation of the Russian-Chinese alliance, or the role of the Shanghai Pact as the gravitational center for radical, anti-American regimes. This is unfortunate, for at the end of the day the war on terror is no more than a sideshow in a much larger strategic struggle. Simply put, Islamic terrorists can inflict serious harm upon us – but the Russian-Chinese alliance can destroy us altogether.

     Coming to grips with the renewed threat posed by the Shanghai Pact will not be easy, for it will require American political leaders and foreign policy specialists to reconsider their core assumptions regarding the Sino-Soviet “split” and the relationship of these two powers from the 1980s through the dawn of the 21^st Century. This will be especially painful for the U.S. intelligence community, which in the 1970’s staked its reputation and institutional integrity upon the belief that the Sino-Soviet split was not only real but also a basis for strategic policy. Perhaps even more painful will be the re-evaluation of the current policy of free trade – still strongly supported by corporate America – and the dubious wisdom of de-industrialization that flows inevitably from it.

__________________________________________________________________________________

            The Incredible Shrinking Dollar

                                  Charles S. Viar

     In his 2003 book entitled Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America, British historian Jason Goodwin opens with an instructive vignette. Having fallen seriously ill touring India at age 17, Goodwin was desperately seeking transportation from Ahmadabad to Bombay, where modern medical treatment was available. After being informed by a ticket clerk at the Bombay rail station it would be at least two and perhaps three days before the railroad would have a vacant sleeping car, Goodwin pulled a single U.S. dollar from his pocket and slipped it under the pile of rupees he had already placed upon the counter. Without another word, the clerk produced a first class ticket to Bombay and pushed it across the divide.

     Thus began Goodwin’s love affair with the dollar. Aside from the fact that the dollar is indispensable for mischief in the Third World – it is, in fact, the only currency universally acceptable for bribes – he freely confessed to liking the sound of American denominations, and openly admitted the joy he derived from small scale currency speculation. 

     But all that was in 2003, before the value of the dollar tanked on international currency markets. Since 2006, it has lost more than a third of its value against the Euro. Indeed, the value of the dollar has declined so far and so fast that many foreign retail outlets now refuse it – and as incredible as it may seem, Yahoo News recently reported that a high-end New York boutique has begun refusing dollars as well. Although the story is probably apocryphal, it points to the complications a falling dollar may inflict upon the already battered U.S. economy.

     Since President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in 1971, the value of the dollar abroad has been determined by international supply and demand: the greater the number of dollars circulating overseas, the lower the purchasing power per note. Because federal budget surpluses diminish the number of dollars circulating worldwide, they increase the value of the dollar on international currency markets; while federal deficits, which increase the number of dollars in circulation, have the opposite effect.

     As a result, the value of the dollar abroad is effectively determined by federal expenditures – which are broadly, although not exclusively – controlled by the President. Thus through the budget, the President wields substantial influence over the relative cost of imported goods.

     Historically, foreign imports have played a comparatively minor role in the larger U.S. economy. However, the increasing importance of foreign oil has changed that. Imported oil now accounts for a major share of American purchases abroad, and its cost is an important factor in the present downward pressure upon American standards of living.  

     Since assuming office in January of 2001, President Bush has spent more money and generated greater budget deficits than any other president in American history. As a result, the cost of imported goods has skyrocketed while the price of American goods sold abroad has declined in rough proportion. That’s good news for American exporters – notably, farmers and manufacturers – but it is especially good news for domestic oil producers. When President Bush assumed office in 2001, the price of oil per barrel hovered in the mid 30’s. Since then it has nearly tripled in price, and now stands at about $110 per barrel. And because deficit spending erodes the purchasing power of the dollar at home at a lesser rate than the purchasing power of the dollar abroad, the costs associated with domestic oil production have increased arithmetically while the sale price of domestically produced oil has increased geometrically. The spread between the incremental increase in costs and the nearly three-fold increase in sale price thus translates into an astonishing windfall profit for domestic oil producers.

     Although the relationship between the President’s profligate spending and the dramatic benefits it has conferred upon three of the most important interest groups that form the President’s political base has been ignored by the mainstream media, it has not escaped the attention of his political opponents. Democrat congressional leaders have privately condemned it as an epic form of corruption, and this has encouraged rank and file Democrats on Capitol Hill to press for an 11^th Hour impeachment – after the November election, but before President Bush leaves office on January 20, 2009.

     But as much as congressional Democrats may support the idea in principle, it remains a practical impossibility – the time line is simply too short. Moreover, such a maneuver could easily backfire: by approving the President’s budgets, the Legislative Branch has made itself an accomplice – and while the American people would almost certainly support removing the President and the Congress in toto, they are clearly not prepared to hang the one without the other.

     Perhaps more importantly, any honest discussion of the of relationship between federal budgets, the value of the dollar abroad, and political corruption writ large would lend uncomfortable credence to former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul’s complaint that the present system of public finance – managed by the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank – has resulted in a systemic corruption that now permeates the warp and woof of American government. Because both parties feed from this particular trough, neither is especially willing to focus public attention upon it.

                                                PASSING THE BUCK

     Although the two remaining candidates for the Democrat presidential nomination have not addressed the issues raised above, Sen. Hillary Clinton has occasionally come close in condemning the President for his alleged cronyism. And despite the fact that Forbes magazine has ranked her as the most corporate-friendly member of the U.S. Senate, she has repeatedly criticized the President for placing business interests above those of the American people. Thus while it seems reasonable to infer that Sen. Clinton is aware of the relationship between deficit spending, rising oil prices, and presumed corruption, she has thus far preferred to focus upon the problem of price alone. 

     Sen. Barack Obama has been even more circumspect, by attributing rising oil prices to industry concentration instead. For that reason, Obama’s energy and environmental policy advisor has suggested Obama would, if elected, initiate an investigation of the major oil companies, seek a windfall profits tax, and perhaps release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce the costs of oil products.

     For his part, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has avoided discussing either the cause or effects of rising oil prices by focusing upon the larger problem of foreign dependence.

     The reticence of senators Clinton, Obama, and McCain is not coincidental. Rather, it is rooted in the general reluctance of the political class to resurrect a contentious debate over currency and public finance that has lain dormant now for almost a century. 

     Although the Constitution specifically grants the federal government the authority to issue fiat money – that is, currency backed by nothing more than the faith and credit of the U.S. Government – since the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, the overwhelming majority of dollars in circulation have been issued as Federal Reserve Notes. Made legal tender by an act of Congress, these notes are no more than privately issued IOU’s exchanged for U.S. Treasury bonds. For that reason the number of Federal Reserve Notes in circulation are – in theory – precisely equal to the federal debt.

     Although rarely discussed by the political class, this has important systemic ramifications – for as a practical matter, the only way to increase the amount of currency in circulation to meet the demands of a growing economy is to increase the size of the federal debt. Thus the legislation that established the Federal Reserve Bank made economic growth  contingent  upon  government  debt,  and  –  according to critics  –  undermined  a  traditional  and  critically    important aspect of democratic control. Given the Federal Reserve Bank’s ability to issue and exchange essentially unlimited numbers of Federal Reserve Notes for government securities, the political class is now substantially free from the popular accountability that flows from taxation. As long as projected tax receipts remain in rough balance with projected interest payments upon the federal debt, the political class is at liberty to borrow and spend as it pleases – to create a dysfunctional welfare state, to manipulate foreign exchange rates for special interests, or to wage war without end.

     Regardless of the form it takes, the resultant Empire of Debt is fundamentally incompatible with the democratic process. And in the end, it may well destroy it.

                                                 THE STUPID CRISIS

     Unfortunately, the winner of the 2008 presidential contest will have far more immediate concerns than the long-term effects of public debt upon the political system. First and foremost amongst them will be a redux of the economic malaise that bedeviled America during the 1970’s – a period characterized by high unemployment, low rates of economic growth, and crippling inflation.

     Although most economists do not believe the United States is headed for another round of stagflation, many anticipate a relatively brief period of sharply diminished economic growth accompanied by an inflationary surge. The so-called “Misery Index” that economists use as an informal measure of the phenomenon has leapt from 7 to 9 in less than a year. Today it stands at about half the rate of the mid-1970’s.

     Even though stagflation remains poorly understood, a majority of economists believe it is caused by the combination of cost-push and demand-pull inflation. According to Alan Greenspan and others, during the 1970’s it was driven by an excess of bureaucratic rules and regulations that prevented the private sector from fully exploiting managerial and technological innovations. The concern today is the rising cost of oil, which is driven by increased international competition, dwindling supplies, and the weakness of the dollar. Of these three factors, the diminished purchasing power of the dollar is by far the most important, as at least half of the total increase in oil prices can be attributed to foreign exchange rates. Had the present Administration exercised greater fiscal restraint, the price of oil would have increased at a lesser rate and had far fewer inflationary effects upon the economy.

     But it might have had none at all, if the United States had adopted a sensible energy policy. By the mid-point of the 1960’s, it had become apparent that the era of cheap oil was rapidly coming to a close; and that alternative sources of energy would eventually have to be found. At the time, solar power was in its infancy, but wind power had been used for centuries and alternative fuels were well understood. During the Second World War synthetic oil accounted for nearly half of Germany’s total oil production; and Australia had fueled its civilian vehicles with wood alcohol. From a technical standpoint, converting from oil to alternative fuels was an undemanding challenge. With a far less impressive technical base, Brazil began switching to alternative fuels in 1975; and is today on the threshold of energy independence.

     More than 30 years later, the political class in the United States maintains that converting from oil to alternative fuels is impractical until such time as it becomes clear which alternative fuel will emerge as the single best substitute. But such thinking reflects an outmoded model of centralized control, production, and distribution that is increasingly remote from contemporary realities. The solution to the energy crisis – and an important element of long term price stability – is decentralized electrical production. Given the present level of technology, there is no compelling reason why commercial, government, and even residential structures cannot be fitted or retrofitted to produce the bulk of the energy they consume through either passive or reactive means, such as solar collecting facades or advanced wind turbines. Whatever deficit remains may be supplied through the existing electrical grid by coal fired generators, wind farms, wave capture, or nuclear power – and to the extent that internal combustion engines may still be required, biodiesel can be manufactured from almost any form of organic waste.

     And yet, the political class dawdles as the nation teeters on the brink of crisis. Substantially freed from popular oversight and accountability by the present system public finance, they  are  far  more  attentive  to the desires of  the than they are to the needs of the people they are sworn to serve. 

                                             AND RIPPLING FAILURE

     Unfortunately, the dysfunctionality of the political class has spread far beyond its bounds and now afflicts critical portions of the federal bureaucracy as well. During the 1990’s, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation not only lost 500 handguns and some 200 laptop computers – most of which contained classified information – but an electronic surveillance van equipped with state-of-the-art electronic monitors as well. Despite claimed efforts by the FBI’s leadership to tighten controls over weapons and classified information, public source reports suggest the loss rate of handguns and computers remains unchanged. But on the bright side, the problem with mobile surveillance vans has apparently been solved – so far at least, no more have been stolen.

     Perhaps more ominously, the federal bureaucracy has taken its cue from the political class and studiously avoided even the most rudimentary measures to secure our borders, ports, and harbors. Perhaps as a result, neither the Navy nor the Coast Guard have acquired the capability to detect, seize, or sink the miniature submarines that now routinely violate our territorial waters. Owned and operated by drug cartels and designed to carry multiple tons of narcotics to our shores, they capable of carrying improvised nuclear explosives as well.

     Interestingly, the breakdown that afflicts the U.S. national security apparatus seems to be a part of a more general phenomenon. During the third week of March, a Canadian civilian found classified architectural plans for the headquarters of an elite counter-terrorist unit in a pile of garbage on an Ottawa Street; while in Israel, police refused to believe the manager of a sewage treatment plant when he reported a large quantity of money lodged in the facilities pipes. Incredibly, the Israeli police formally dismissed the report even after officers had visually inspected the pipes and seen the money for themselves. Apparently large amounts of discarded currency are not a matter of concern, even in a country under siege.

     Although bureaucracies have been subject to human and organizational failures since their first inception, in the absence of hard data to the contrary it is difficult to escape the suspicion that the number, scope, and severity of administrative and operational failures has increased rather dramatically in recent years. Part of the problem undoubtedly involves scale – Napoleon once remarked that he could supervise five generals under ordinary circumstances and three in the midst of crisis, and there is no compelling reason to believe that our own officials can do better. Simply put, the sheer size of contemporary government mitigates effective control.

     But an impressionistic survey suggests that something deeper may be at work. The number of incidents that could be cited like those above are legion; and they seem to occur most frequently in those nations that have embraced the twin policies of free trade and “globalism.” Coincidentally or not, these same nations – which in addition to the United States notably include the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Israel – also employ roughly similar systems of public finance with arguably similar results: a political class wedded to deeply unpopular policies, yet seemingly exempt from the normal mechanisms of democratic control.

     Thus the phenomenon of elections in which Tweedledee is replaced by Tweedledum, with little or no policy result.

     Although the observation may be overbroad, the political classes of nominally democratic states now seem to more closely resemble the directors of transnational corporations than politicians of the past. In response to falling barriers and vanishing frontiers, contemporary captains of industry and finance are now deeply engaged in mergers and acquisitions in order to reposition themselves to better to exploit the emergent global market; and one cannot help but wonder if their accomplices in political class are not engaged in an analogous effort, to preserve their power and to ensure their position in a still dimly perceived but nonetheless emergent global order.

     Time will tell.

     But as we approach the second decade of the New Millennium, it is clear that the national interest no longer determines national policy. Indeed the very concept seems to have either been lost or discarded, somewhere in the shuffle. 

 ____________________________________________________________________

           The Supreme National Interest    

          and the NAFTA Super Highway

                       Charles S. Viar

      After more than a year of official obfuscation and denial, plans for the NAFTA Super Highway have been authoritatively confirmed. In a formal speech to the Manitoba provincial assembly on 20 November 2007, Lieutenant Governor John Howard described the provincial government’s role in developing what he termed a Mid Continent Trade Corridor designed to connect Canada’s northern port of Churchill with trade markets throughout the central United States and Mexico. Shortly thereafter, the province of Alberta posted the proposed route of the Mid Continent Trade Corridor on its Ministry of Infrastructure and Transportation web site.

      Because the proposed route of the Mid Continent Trade Corridor is virtually identical to that of the still officially denied NAFTA Super Highway, there can be no doubt that the Mid Continent Trade Corridor and the NAFTA Super Highway are one and the same. Nor can there be any doubt that the plan to connect Mexico, the United States, and Canada is both real and proceeding apace.

2.

      In the course of a press conference held during the August 2007 summit meeting in Montebello, Quebec, a Fox News reporter asked President Bush if he would be willing to categorically deny plans for a NAFTA Super Highway. Rather than answer the question, Mr. Bush condemned it as a political scare tactic instead and implied that it was part of an ill-defined conspiracy theory. Then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper followed with a light-hearted denial. After stating that there would be no NAFTA Super Highway, he assured the assembled audience that rumors of an “interplanetary connection” were untrue as well.

      Thus despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Transportation had already disbursed more than $2.5 million to the North American Super Corridor Coalition to conceptualize the ten-lane transcontinental highway, and even though the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway known as the Trans-Texas Corridor was already well in progress at the time, the leaders of the United States and Canada continued to deny the plan’s existence as the leader of Mexico stood mute.

      That they did so may be attributed in part to the growing opposition to the NAFTA Super Highway in Canada and the United States. But another factor was surely the manifest illogic of erasing national frontiers in a world at war.

3.

      This is not the first time that the United States has confronted the dilemma otranscontinental trade. For at 12:45 PM on the afternoon of May 10, 1869, the last spike of the Transcontinental Railway was driven into place at Promontory Point, Utah. Made entirely of gold, it was a symbolic testament to the value Americans placed upon national unity in the aftermath of succession and civil war.

     The transcontinental railroad had first been proposed in 1836, but did not become a realistic prospect until February of 1848, when the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo ratified the territorial conquests made in the Mexican War. In 1853 the Congress directed then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to conduct a feasibility study for the railroad; and in 1862 President Lincoln - ironically - signed the Pacific Railroad Act, authorizing its construction.

      The completion of the railway seven years later marked a watershed in American history. Prior to the railroad, overland transportation from Missouri to California had taken six months by wagon and was prohibitively expensive. But the railroad reduced total transit time to a mere six days, and made overland trade and commerce between the eastern and western states a practical possibility. Perhaps more importantly, it enabled the large-scale settlement of the west. For it took only 21 years thereafter to close the frontier.

      Historians emphasize the revolutionary effect the transcontinental railroad exerted upon America's commerce, industry, and populace. But there was another result as well, one that has passed almost entirely unnoted. For the railroad forced American strategists to face for the first time the question of continental defense; and it was from this quandary that an American Grand Strategy first arose.

4.

      It is sometimes said the Civil War was the first war of the Twentieth Century, for it presaged in all essential respects World War I and World War II. During the course of this conflict the North and the South mobilized their respective societies to an historically unprecedented degree. The result was a conflict characterized by mass - a levy en masse, to raise vast armies; mass production to arm and equip them; and mass transportation to move them quickly and efficiently from one theater of operations to another. The war also produced a plethora of exotic, technologically based weaponry: repeating rifles, prototypical machine guns, aerial observation, mechanically powered warships, steel hulls, revolving turrets, land mines, naval mines, armored trains, submarines and other less notable instruments of war. When combined with the near instantaneous communications provided by field telegraphy, the result was mass carnage. In the course of four years of bitter fighting, the combined casualties of the Union and the Confederacy totaled some 620,000 dead.

      Moreover, the War Between the States almost became an international conflict. Following the outbreak of hostilities, the British moved to reinforce their Canadian garrison. Although the British ultimately declined to intervene on behalf of the Confederacy, they maintained close clandestine contacts with the South throughout the war. Until the Union victory at Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, the possibility of a British attack could not be discounted.

      But by that time, the danger from the far south had become even greater. In 1862 the British, French, and Spanish landed a combined force of 10,000 troops in Mexico for the ostensible purpose of collecting that country's international debt. The British and the Spanish were apparently sincere in their purpose and withdrew after two years, but the French were not. Taking advantage of the American imbroglio, they landed additional troops in 1864 and installed a puppet-regime in Mexico City headed by the self-styled emperor, Maximilan. The French presence eventually totaled some 30,000 regular soldiers, supported by an additional 6,000 European mercenaries under the command of Maximilan. From their secure base of operations in Mexico, the French intended to break the Union blockade of the Confederacy; and had it not been for the series of unexpected Union victories that stayed their hand in the summer and fall of 1864, they might have succeeded.

      Although the foreign threats that arose during the Civil War have been relegated to historical footnotes, their impact upon American strategic thinking was pronounced and long lasting. For the threats posed by Britain and France made it plausible to suppose that one or more European powers might invade the United States, and exploit America's well-developed railroad network for the purpose of conquest. The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad thus complicated an increasingly difficult strategic calculus by opening the possibility of a foreign invasion from the West. From that point forward, the United States was subject to attack from all four points of the compass by resurgent foes; and the task of defending against this became the central - albeit still theoretical - dilemma of American strategy.

5.

     American strategists attempting to deal with this dilemma labored under unique political restraints. The United States was an artifact, deliberately constructed by the hands of men; and it possessed for that reason certain inherent limitations. The federal Constitution extended certain guarantees to each state, including republican government and, inter alia, territorial integrity. Because the legitimacy of the system hinged upon these guarantees, the first and foremost object of the federal government was their assurance. The primary goal of National Policy was thus from the onset defined in terms of geographical permanence. For unlike the nations of Europe, which exchanged territory in accordance to the fortunes of war, the United States could not cede land that belonged to its separate states. If it did, the union would likely unravel.

     For this reason it was essential to neutralize foreign threats before they could menace the territorial integrity of the United States. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, this was accomplished through intimidation. While still mobilized, the United States demanded from Great Britain a comprehensive resolution of all outstanding territorial issues, including the perpetual demilitarization of the northern border; and from France, the withdrawal of French forces from Mexico. 

     In the face of overwhelming power, the British and the French complied. This substantially reduced the threat of foreign invasion, for without forward bases in the Western Hemisphere neither country had the capacity to successfully seize and hold American territory. Nor at the time did any other power, or any other group of powers. For the enormous geographic extent of the United States, its emergent industrial and technological capabilities, and its burgeoning population gave it an absolute advantage in defense.

      But the relative invulnerability of the United States in the post-Civil War era depended entirely upon the geopolitical equilibrium in Europe. For if any power or group of powers succeeded in uniting the Eurasian landmass under a single rule, the United States would face the threat of attack from both East and West simultaneously; and against the aggregate resources of Europe and Asia combined, America could not prevail. It would be overwhelmed by sheer mass.

      Although the danger was then remote, it was by no means unfounded. For Napoleon had nearly succeeded in the task at the dawn of the century; and the resurrected French Empire of Louis Bonaparte had expressed similar aspirations. More ominously, a united Germany emerged in 1870; and immediately thereafter, German strategists began plotting a similar course of action. Deadly serious in intent, they would twice attempt the feat in the next century, and fail only by the narrowest of margins. But this could not be foreseen at the time; and in the decades immediately after the Civil War, success by one power or another seemed likely.

6.

      War is an art rather than a science, and for that reason its most basic concepts are difficult to illustrate in practice. If there are sharp theoretical distinctions between the Supreme National Interest, National Policy, Grand Strategy, strategy and tactics, in actual practice they tend to blend imperceptibly from one to another.

      Nonetheless, these basic categories are roughly distinguishable as they address different aspects of time, space, scale, and intended result. The Supreme National Interest refers to the most basic interests of states, and is most often understood in terms of those conditions presumed necessary for their survival. National Policy flows from the Supreme National Interest, and provides a general conceptual framework to govern efforts to ensure that these conditions remain unchanged and unchallenged. Grand Strategy refers to a more specific framework employed to organize the entire range of state power to achieve particular, well-defined objectives in support of National Policy, and includes diplomacy, economic suasion, covert or clandestine influence operations, and force or threats of force. Strategy refers to intellectual designs that govern particular efforts undertaken in accordance with the Grand Strategy, most often at the theater or regional level. And tactics refers to efforts that are integral to the strategic effort, that are typically far more limited in terms of time, space, scale, and result.   

      As noted earlier, the Supreme National Interest of the United States flows inexorably from America’s federal structure of government; and for this reason National Policy was cast in prophylactic terms. Thus given the geographic vulnerability of America, it came to be defined as preventing any single Power, or any single group of Powers, from achieving dominion over Eurasia.

      The Grand Strategy that logically followed from this National Policy was therefore based upon the principle of strategic denial. It was for this reason that the United States purchased Alaska, dismembered the remnants of the Spanish Empire, built a two-ocean navy, constructed the Panama Canal, and annexed Hawaii. And it was for this reason as well that the United States entered the Great War in 1917 to prevent the German Empire from crushing France and Russia and establishing hegemony over Eurasia; and World War Two, to prevent the Axis Powers from consolidating their separate conquests in Europe, Russia and Asia; and the Cold War, to prevent the Sino-Soviet Empire from seizing Western Europe and the Asian periphery. Thus the re-projection of American military power to the European Continent in 1947, and America’s subsequent armed interventions in Korea, the Formosa Straits, and South East Asia. 

7.

      Although the nature of war is invariant, an extraordinary range of factors conditions its expression. Among them are the regional and international environments within which conflicts occur; the political, economic, and technological sophistication of the contending states; their cultures; and their demographic dynamics. It is for this reason that other forms of armed conflict have eclipsed the large-scale conventional wars that characterized international conflict from the time of Napoleon through the end of the Second World War. Due in large part to the increasing availability and lethality of individual weapons and explosives, asymmetric warfare pitting large, developed nations against smaller, less developed states and non-state terrorist organizations has become the norm – and it is within this context that the strategic threat assessment of the NAFTA Super Highway should be performed.

      According to the best available information, the present NAFTA Super Highway design provides for a ten lane highway – with five lanes running in either direction, separated by two high speed rail lines and oil and natural gas pipelines – that shall run from the southern Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas though the central United States to the northern Canadian port of Churchill. Although trucks from Mexico will supposedly be electronically monitored by the new SENTRI surveillance system, the first physical inspections shall be preformed in Kansas City. As a practical matter, the NAFTA Super Highway will alter America’s southern border with Mexico by extending a nine hundred yard section almost 1000 miles north into the nation’s heartland. Thus if the present plan proceeds, as a practical matter the current border of approximately 1970 miles will more than double in length – with the largest part of it protected only by an electronic monitoring system with no proven ability to detect nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons; or any other form of contraband such as automatic weapons, explosives, drugs, terrorists, or illegal aliens. Clearly, the NAFTA Super Highway will render the daunting task of securing our southern border impossible.

      The risks of the NAFTA Super Highway are therefore many, and obvious. Within the present strategic context, the unrestrained illegal entry of persons and goods may be likened to invading armies of the past. If the NAFTA Super Highway is built, the present tidal wave of illegal immigration and illicit drugs and narcotics originating in or transiting through Mexican territory will fast become a tsunami; and the terrorists that have been probing our southern border since 9-11 will likely succeed. Perhaps more importantly, the probability of loosing one or more American cities to an improvised nuclear detonation will increase dramatically. Indeed, a majority of past and serving intelligence officers polled by the Center for Intelligence Studies believe that a catastrophic loss will become a virtual certainty if the trade corridor is constructed – and it is by no means clear that the Union would survive a calamity encouraged, if not actively courted, by a willfully irresponsible federal government. Thus at the very least, the NAFTA Super Highway is an affront to the Supreme National Interest of the United States.

      But unfortunately, there are others as well. At the time of this writing, an estimated ten per cent of Mexico’s population now resides within American territory; and if public opinion polls are accurate, another ninety per cent of that country’s remaining population would follow in their footsteps if given the opportunity. Already Mexican immigrants constitute the single largest minority in America; and if present trends continue, they will become an electoral majority in at least five southwestern states by 2025. Deprived of any real incentive to assimilate to an alien culture by demographic dominion, they are more likely to demand that American society adapt to them. Thus the already frayed ties that bind Americans to one another are likely to fray even further; and with the passage of time, it is not clear that the raison d’etra for the Union will persist. 

      But perhaps that is the point. The Bush Administration is the most internationalist in history, and President Bush has publicly stated that he looks forward to a time when America will no longer be a geographic place but rather a global ideal. More pragmatically, Administration officials maintain that the emergence of China has so altered the strategic balance that the United States must create new transnational structures to offset China’s growing advantage. Functional integration with Mexico and Canada will provide such a structure, and thereby preserve America’s present preponderance of power for the foreseeable future.

      Although superficially plausible, the argument is internally inconsistent: clearly, one cannot preserve American power and influence by subsuming the nation into a transnational structure that will transform it into something altogether different. Perhaps for this reason, only the multinational corporations that stand to profit from transnational integration actually support the Administration’s plan. But so great is their influence upon the Bush Administration that it has apparently redefined the Supreme National Interest without public debate or discussion, and abandoned a National Policy that has endured for almost a century and a half.

The quest for corporate profits seemingly reigns supreme, even in a world at war.