Child’s Play

In his comments as part of a Real News panel on Afghanistan, Sunil Ram, a contributing editor of the private defense journal of the Royal Canadian Military Institute, noted that stability has rarely been an objective, let alone goal, of US foreign policy. Rather, says Ram, generating instability — aimed at rivals like Russia and China — has been the rule of US interventions since World War II. The transition from ideological conflict to resource wars has not changed that.

As the Pentagon gears up its machinery of destabilization on the African continent, we should expect to see increasing chaos and violence similar to the situation perpetuated by NATO in Afghanistan and the US in Iraq. While this policy portends massive bloodletting among Third and Fourth World peoples attempting to navigate between mercenaries and warlords, the anarchy that ensues will not actually benefit Americans outside the military industry, but it will harm Chinese commercial interests in African natural resources.

One might be tempted to ask why the US Treasury is regularly emptied to pursue a policy of disrupting free trade, but then one has to suspend disbelief to accept the conventional wisdom that US troops are only used to steal oil and mineral wealth. The unpleasant truth of the matter is that US operational policy — a secret kept from Congress since Truman signed into law the national security state — is concocted for fun and profit by mischief-makers in the National Security Agency, without regard to truth or consequences. Child’s play, when you think about it.