The International Community

January 23, 2012

So what or who is “The International Community?” We hear it all the time from certain political leaders. For example, Hilary Clinton, President Barrack Obama’s Secretary of State, uses the term all the time.“We will take the issue of Iran’s nuclear program [certainly not ours!] to The International Community.” Is this the United Nations? Not exactly. It is:

I. The Sheriff.

The government of the United States of America. There are five U.S. Central Commands which cover the entire world, which is the U.S. sphere of influence. They are linked to 750 public bases in 38 countries plus other secret bases. The U.S. Navy has 12 aircraft carrier strike groups which operate in all international waters and are equipped with nuclear weapons. The U.S. Air Force has 94 B-52, 21 B-2 and 67 B-1 bombers which can be loaded with a wide range of bunker bombs as well as nuclear weapons. To back this up there are 500 nuclear-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles ready to go from their bases in the USA. One third of all U.S. aircraft today are unmanned drones, directed to bomb targets all around the world from bases in the USA. There are also 18 ballistic missile submarines, which are also decked out with nuclear weapons. At the bottom are around 1.4 million rank and file military personnel, backed by the private mercenary armies provided by corporations like Blackwater and DynCorp.

In support of this phalanx of military power there is by far the largest intelligence and surveillance operation the world has ever seen. This includes the Central Intelligence Agency, The National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, all working closely with Lockheed Martin Corporation. Together they do their best to monitor all telephone calls, who uses the Internet and for what purposes, read everyone’s e-mails and even monitor the books you get out of the public library. Suspects are red flagged in their data bases. This shows up on the agent’s screen when you cross an international border.

Individuals may not know they are being monitored. In the buildup of mass popular opposition to the U.S. attack on Iraq, members of the Green Party of the USA were banned from using commercial aircraft to attend and speak at peace rallies.

With this kind of raw power, it is not surprising that since the demise of the Soviet bloc, the U.S. government has been able to capture and use the United Nations. The U.S. government names the Secretary General, controls the Security Council and dominates all the official international aid agencies. But this is not enough.

II. The Deputy Sheriffs.

These are Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. With the Sheriff, they form the Anglo American Alliance to Control the World, a power structure based on white settler colonialism. These countries worked closely together to develop the first nuclear weapons, which the US government dropped on Japan. They have an exclusive treaty for the development and production of chemical and biological weapons, which were used widely in the Vietnam war. More recently they formed the UKUSA Signals Intelligence Alliance, which operates the Echelon program and its 120 spy satellites. Because of their special cultural relationship, these governments have agreed on the right to spy on each other with no advance permission required. Now that is solidarity!

The Deputy Sheriffs all have their Special Forces which work together in the field. They were first developed after World War II to specialize in counter insurgency warfare, where national liberation movements in the colonized world were trying to end European domination. The U.S. Special Forces were fine tuned during the Vietnam War. Under the Phoenix Program they were charged with disrupting civilian support for the Vietnamese National Liberation Front. The U.S. government admits that the Army Special Forces and the Navy SEALS “neutralized” 81,740 suspects and assassinated 26,369.

The Special Forces from the USA, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia have been working closely together in Afghanistan. Since 9/11 they no longer claim to be specializing in counter insurgency warfare or “unconventional warfare” but are now engaged in “counter terrorism.” There are no estimates on how many “Taliban suspects” have been “neutralized.” This is all top secret. The Special Forces have received wide publicity in Afghanistan for their very unpopular mission of “night raids,” where they kick in the doors of the houses of suspected rebels, roust the inhabitants, take people off to be interrogated for long periods of time, and on occasion kill suspects and family members.

III. The Posse.

The Posse consists of the advanced industrialized European capitalist states, most of whom at one time managed overseas colonies in the less developed world. The key organization here is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This organization was created in 1949 of European countries whose governments supported the U.S. Cold War with the Soviet bloc and other leftist governments. There were 12 original members, with Greece, Turkey, Germany and Spain added during the life of the conflict.

The Cold War ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. NATO strategy, always dictated by the US government, shifted to enlisting NATO membership from the former Soviet satellite countries. This was to take them out of the Russian sphere of influence and to solidify their commitment to free market capitalism. The second strategy was to create a missile system to encircle Russia.

However, in the post-Cold War era NATO lacked any overall stated purpose. There was no longer any threat of an invasion from the Warsaw Pact countries. The public was demanding a “peace dividend,” major cuts to military budgets. If NATO was to be maintained with a very large armed force, a new mission had to be found. The NATO posse responded with direct military intervention in the Bosnian war in 1993, extensive bombing during the Kosovo war in 1999, and a major role in the Afghanistan war after 2003.

In 2011 the NATO posse filled in for the USA in the military involvement in the civil war in Libya. This involved 9,658 air strikes in support of the rebels seeking to overthrow the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. The Canadian government took a leadership role here, not only running the military show, but with six CF-18 fighter-bombers carrying out 733 bombing sorties. Canadian political leaders in Ottawa and their academic supporters refer to this as “humanitarian intervention.”

IV. The Running Dogs.

At the bottom of this pyramid of power rests the small countries who give some sort of token support to actions by the Sheriff, the Deputies and the Posse in their military adventures. In 2003 President George W. Bush stated that there were 48 countries which contributed some personnel or other support to either or both the war on Afghanistan and the war on Iraq. These included the 28 current members of NATO plus 20 others, the running dogs. Together they are commonly referred to by U.S. government officials as comprising “The Coalition of the Willing.” The running dogs became involved as payback for economic, political and military assistance from the USA. In Eastern Europe, where there has been very strong public opposition to participation in the war on Afghanistan, governments explained that this was a price that had to be paid for membership in NATO.

Some might object that the political position of the governments of these countries does not represent the general opinion of the people of the 193 independent national states who are members of the United Nations. But given the power of the Sheriff, the Deputies and the Posse, it is the opinion that counts.