Not 'humanitarian assistance' but 'coercion'
How the warmakers talk to each other
By
Deirdre Griswold
Forget the platitudes of Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright
and William Cohen as they try to round up public support, or at
least acquiescence, for U.S. interventions abroad. What do the
strategists of U.S. foreign policy say when they're talking to
each other?
A flavor of their thinking can be found in a book called
"U.S. Intervention Policy for the Post-Cold War World: New
Challenges and New Responses," published in 1994 by W.W.
Norton.
The book is a product of the American Assembly, an affiliate
of Columbia University that meets twice a year. Its chapters
are written by "a distinguished group of authorities
representing government, academia, business, industry,
nonprofit organizations, military, the law, science,
technology, and the media convened to make recommendations to
U.S. policy makers," according to a preface by Daniel A. Sharp,
president of the American Assembly.
This particular volume publishes material presented to a
program held at Arden House in Harriman, N.Y., in April 1994.
The location--a virtual fiefdom of the Harriman banking
family--and support for this project by the Rockefeller Family
Fund show which wing of the U.S. ruling class is most
intimately involved in the Assembly.
The book has much interesting material in it. For the
purposes of this article, we'll quote from just one chapter,
"New Techniques of Political and Economic Coercion" by Timothy
R. Sample. Sample is executive director of the Potomac
Institute for Policy Studies, was department manager for
multimedia and education resources for military and
intelligence support with GTE Government Systems, and spent 16
years working for the federal government, including the
Director of Central Intelligence.
He is typical of the military intellectual who changes hats
between the government and private business.
Sample's purpose is to "explore the changes of this
post-cold war period in terms of opportunities for new and
expanded techniques of international influence, especially
coercive techniques, that could increase our ability to gain
our goals and objectives throughout the world. ..."
He finds that "advances in technology provide techniques for
coercion that are either new or have become more affordable and
thus more feasible."
Coercion, he says, "is only one of four basic actions
available to achieve our international objectives, the others
being influence, intervention, and covert action." Sample
favors coercion because it's cheaper, but he sees it as
complementary to the others.
"Coercion is an action designed to significantly affect the
behavior of a government, thereby inflicting the type of pain
that forces a government to submit to our wishes."
Sample sees trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT as
"bringing about new opportunities for coercion."
"Regardless of the specific measures used, the goal of
internal measures is ... to target and operate on a country's
politically important constituencies. Therefore, the targets
are the military, business, or the population at large. In the
post-cold war era, these targets appear more vulnerable than
before."
Sample is enthusiastic about the new technologies. "An
unintended result of this increasing dependence on technology
is an increasing vulnerability to manipulation of the
information being transmitted by that technology. This
vulnerability, as will be seen below, offers significant new
opportunities for coercion."
How to fool public opinion
"In addition to the basic telecommunications and business
computer capabilities, high-technology applications in
multimedia and computer graphics, and in data access and
encryption devices, provide other tools necessary to exploit
this new age environment. Such technology offers new ways to
manipulate public opinion. For example, recent developments in
computer graphics provide the capability to take two pictures,
digitize them, and combine them in such a way that they look
like one original, at a quality that can fool even the most
experienced photographer.
"Alternatively, this technology can take a single photograph
and, through the same process, rearrange images within the
photograph to create an entirely different scene. As, or
perhaps more, importantly, these techniques can also be used
with videotape, optical disc, or almost any storage medium.
"With the increased use of digitized products in
broadcasting and print media publications, such tools could
effectively be used in an intervention or coercion scenario by
creating false images of leaders or situations. Imagine the
worldwide reaction, especially in Tehran or Moscow, if, for
example, fabricated (but believable) images of Ukrainian
leaders meeting with Iraqi officials to sell nuclear weapons
were produced and aired on television or published in
newspapers. Such `evidence' would likely draw swift action by
the international community on both countries--perhaps before
much investigation was done."
All this should be kept in mind as a torrent of war
propaganda justifying U.S./ NATO intervention in Yugoslavia
washes over the world.
Sample says that "New technology can also permit coercion
techniques using a country's broadcast media. ... The ability
to take the message out of the hands of the government ...
effectively takes the influence out of the hands of the
leadership and can specifically support intervention and
coercion."
Isn't this also the goal of the missile attacks on Belgrade
television?
"Computer bulletin boards could become the information age
equivalent of the VOA [Voice of America].
"Yet another post-cold war intervention technique, this time
not dependent on technology, is the promise of financial
incentives in return for specific actions. ... For many
countries the results will be indebtedness that will allow a
country like the United States to have influence." This is
what's behind the announcement that NATO is now going to send
funds to all the countries ringing Yugoslavia.
From Wall Street to the cabinet
On the relationship between corporations and the government,
Sample talks about Wall Street tycoons who became foreign
policy makers:
"One of the key aspects of the success of Averell Harriman,
Dean Acheson, John McCloy, and Robert Lovett ... was that they
saw the utility of bolstering the government and its influence
in the world by utilizing their backgrounds and businesses for
the country's development. Consequently, business interests
were often synonymous with the interests of the nation. Thus
while business saw cooperation with government as positive and
in their mutual interests, government saw that promotion of
United States business abroad was better than regulation.
"Today's multinational, free market businesspeople are
becoming less dependent on government and less concerned about
a government's influence, unless it directly affects their
business. The expansion of these businesses has far outpaced
the activities, and in some cases, the influence of government.
As a result, the ability of the United States to carry out an
effective coercion policy may well rely upon reestablishing a
relationship between government and industry that is mutually
beneficial.
"The values of reestablishing such a relationship between
government and multinational business people are many. As
stated earlier, a CEO's influence in many developing countries
can be more extensive than that of a government. As a result,
business's access to and intelligence on foreign businesses, as
well as their host governments, could supply additional tools
for coercion providing there is a solid, mutually cooperative
relationship between business and government.
"The cost for government is probably allowing business to
have a stronger voice in foreign policy (and perhaps domestic
policy) and giving business access to government intelligence
holdings on foreign competitors. The latter issue has been
debated by the Clinton administration."
Unlike his frank and brutal language elsewhere, Sample's
talk about "reestablishing" a relationship between government
and business is misleading. This relationship has never
wavered. But Sample resorts to double speak in the area he
knows is most touchy: the purpose of all these strategies.
Sample's chapter--and indeed the whole book--show once again
that U.S. "democracy" is a cover for a government of, by and
for the billionaire corporate ruling class, which methodically
and systematically seeks to rule the world for its own benefit,
by any means necessary.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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