A Global Coup

by Guillaume Faye

  ***

  Being more aware of the necessity of informational war than the Europeans, the American government has just created two new organisms, namely the Under-Secretariat of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, which acts as a sort of global ministry with regard to propaganda and disinformation, and the Office of Global Communications, which aspires to achieve the very same goals in connection to the White House. The former’s most notable function is to ‘provide the moral foundations for global American leadership’. According to professor Libicky of the National Defense University (as quoted by InfoGuerre.com), the above-mentioned organisms have the competence to conduct economic war operations, as well as any efforts relating to espionage, psychological intoxication, informatic piracy, and internet-based attacks. As can be seen, American neo-imperialism has adopted a philosophy and methodology highly akin to those of the KGB.

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  As far as American economist Alan Tonelson is concerned, a man who has authored numerous articles on the topic in the economic press overseas, the American commercial deficit (which totalled 435.2 billion dollars in 2002, increasing by 21.5 % annually) will soon become unbearable and usher the country on ‘a road to financial ruin’, which may result in a crisis of the Argentinian type, only this time on a Pan-American scale. His theory is that America lacks the necessary means to implement its military imperialism and that the latter is thus highly temporary in nature.

  ***

  UMP representative Pierre Lellouche, who was once an RPR deputy, issued the following warning (RFI, March the 25th 2003): ‘Beware of an imminent American weakening in the aftermath of the war in Iraq!’

  He also expressed his regret at the absence of French support. In his view, but also that of the entire Atlanticist camp, an American weakening and retreat would be very damaging to France. I, on the other hand, fail to see how that could ever be possible. On what level does the USA protect us from potential dangers? Why should Europeans require an American ‘shield’? Anyone who sees the Americans as our protectors is utterly delirious. This was not even the case at the time of the Cold war. Let us suppose that an ethnic war (the primary danger from our perspective) were to break out in France, a war that would obviously garner the support of all those Muslim-Arab countries that have been exporting their colonising human surplus to our lands: it is very unlikely that the US would assist any potential French or European resistance. On the contrary, what the Americans would do is behave as they did in Kosovo and side with our enemies. I am referring to the American administration, of course, not the Americans themselves. The US government would take on a mediating role and become a reorganiser, so to speak, rejoicing at the Islamisation afflicting Europe.

  ***

  The hypocritical argument of a transatlantic solidary and unity continues to be promulgated everywhere. In The Herald (19/04/2003), Henry Kissinger expresses the belief that the birth of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis opposing the US during the Iraqi campaign is a potentially graver development than the bipolar tension of the Cold War. He feels that ‘revitalising Euro-American relations is an imperative if one is to avoid a return to the power policy of the 19th century’. He also warns against the emergence of a ‘Gaullist vision of Europe’, one that would have Germany and Russia follow suit. Furthermore, he obviously expresses his contentment at the pro-American ‘follow-my-leader’ attitude displayed by Great Britain and Spain. Kissinger dreads the prospect of a Europe divided between pro-American and anti-American countries, remaining averse to multilateralism and the ‘UN’s instrumentalisation in an effort to isolate America’.

  Acting as both the NAI’s advocate and that of the neoconservatives, Kissinger states:

  Our European adversaries in this recent controversy […] must refrain from presenting the USA as being Rambo and an obstacle to the pursuit of European interests; they must, instead, view America as a partner with common objectives.

  Espousing Blair’s viewpoint, he asserts that the contradiction between ‘American unilateralism’ and ‘multilateralism’ constitutes a hollow debate and that the US and Europe must form one whole, a single power basically, as if they were a couple united through conventional matrimony. All under American governance, of course… What Kissinger is doing is mocking everyone. His hypocrisy is absolute, since a diplomat and geopolitician of his calibre is perfectly aware of the fact that:

  1) European interests are in complete divergence to those of the US, as demonstrated by the relentless policy of weakening, submission and economic sabotage implemented by America against Europe; for it is, in fact, the Americans that are the actual aggressors, not the diffident Europeans.

  2) One cannot imagine how, following the end of the Cold War, the USA could ever assume the role of Europe’s ‘protector’. What threat does our continent require protection against?

  It is therefore clear that the notion of alleged global unity between European and American geostrategic interests — a notion supported by Blair, all Atlanticists and (obviously) all American hegemonists and justified through supposedly shared moral values — is but a tool of ‘mental disarmament’. Such arguments regarding the purported existence of a Euro-American unity of interests and power, which serve as one of the NAI’s pillars, will not stand up to scrutiny and collapse in the face of the facts, and in the face of American behaviour itself, which is fundamentally anti-European. Only a minority of British supporters, honoured to act as the Pentagon’s auxiliaries, still believe such nonsense. As a result of their anti-European approach, the American government and its new imperialism may end up being discredited by their own aggressiveness, even in previously Atlanticist milieus; and there will be nothing that Kissinger’s sermons can do about it.

  ***

  In Asia Times Online (12/05/2003), Henry C. K. Liu explains that the USA has moved ‘from the Cold War to a Holy War’.

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  ‘Do as I say, not as I do’: in spite of all the pressure that America has been exerting upon us in an effort to accomplish the destruction of Europe’s single agricultural policy, what the US has been practicing, whether on this level or another, can only be described as pure protectionism, with Europeans lacking the courage to protest against it. In April 2003, the American Congress passed an ‘agricultural law’ that raises the subventions granted to American farmers by 80 million dollars in the space of a decade. Unlike their soft European counterparts, American leaders (whose economic policy is only ‘liberal’ by name) have decided to further reinforce the protection of their national industry and defence technologies using the 2004 Defense Authorisation Bill, which restricts the access of foreign companies to the American military market, an access that was extremely difficult to begin with.

  ***

  Just like Europe, the USA now faces an extremely dangerous mass immigration. This, however, does not seem to trouble the NAI’s neoconservatives, whose ‘patriotism’ is limited to international imperialism and a concern to fuel both the American oil industry and the US military-industrial complex.

  The survey conducted in September 2003 by the American Census Bureau yielded the following figures: in the 1990s, the number of Hispanic immigrants in the US rose from 7 to 14 million. The total count of immigrants that have been granted official residency (meaning that they were not born in the USA) has increased from 19.6 million to 31 million. During that same period, the rate of South-East Asian immigrants grew by 141 % and that of sub-Saharan Africans by as much as 174 %. If one only counts the development that has taken place since G. W. Bush became President, there are 2.5 million legal and illegal immigrants that have settled in the USA, despite all the measures that have been taken since 9/11 to bring immigration under control.

  In relation to this, American nationalist and anti-imperialistic conservative Patrick Buchanan has used the term ‘suicide pill of mass immigration’. He has stated the following on Americancause.org:

  In America today, we have a nation within a nation, one that is growing
inexorably and is composed of people who have come to us from continents and countries that have never been completely assimilated into western civilisation. Most of those who arrive here are illiterate, do not speak any English and have a very low level of income.

  In Buchanan’s eyes, the current immigration process is weakening America, whose real level of life began to diminish in 2002, especially since those immigrants consume social services and benefits without bringing anything in return in terms of work force and wealth creation. The Left is obviously pleased with this situation, while the Republicans in power remain idle-handed.

  In the meantime, thousands of industrial jobs are disappearing. We delocalise and export our industrial positions abroad, whereas foreign countries export their poor to the US. The latter are then sustained at the expense of the American taxpayer. This is what they call “free exchange”.

  Furthermore, Buchanan complains of the fact that American taxpayers finance immigrant schooling, even when it comes to the children of illegals. A solid analysis by any means, but what would Buchanan say if he analysed the situation in Europe, and particularly that of France?

  He then adds insult to injury:

  In 1960, 97 % of the American population was composed of inhabitants who had been born in the US, and school results improved year by year. However, since the number of Third World schoolchildren keeps growing, school results are plummeting, and our education lobby is getting worried about it, constantly demanding “more money and more means”. It simultaneously demands, in a completely inconsequential manner, more open borders, which will cause the school level to drop a little further.

  Deploring the fact that the Right is not remedying the situation by containing the immigrant inflow, Buchanan quotes John Stuart Mill’s words: ‘The Tories are the stupid Party’. No further comment is necessary.

  Annexes (Part II)

  A Few Comments on the Topic of Neo-Militarism

  On September the 16th 2003, The Los Angeles Times published a surprising declaration made by General Ricardo Sanchez, the head of American military operations in Iraq. In it, he begins by acknowledging the huge on-location combat difficulties and their impact on American troop morale (thus admitting that US troops are as fragile as they are inexperienced in combat). He then goes on to issue the following tragicomic warning, one that unveils the NAI’s entire essence, with its simultaneously derisory and para-religious aspect:

  We are beginning to realise that this battlefield is critical for America itself. I am absolutely convinced that it is imperative for us to prevail here; for if we do not win, it is our American cities that will become the next combat zone. We cannot allow ourselves to let that happen.

  Iraq’s occupation and pacification are therefore presented as embodying the central confrontation between the civilised world and the barbarity of Evil. According to Belgian geopolitical website dedefensa.org:

  [T]his notion is, in fact, widespread among US military forces, whose members are constantly subjected to such conditioning and are thus convinced that they fight in the name of God [AN: And yet, Muslims are equally convinced that they fight in ‘God’s name’]. One must not look upon this as an act of manipulation, but at worst, one of self-manipulation. Just like George Bush himself, each GI is convinced that God is on his side — regardless of whether He actually is or not — and that the current conflict is the ultimate battle, meaning that of Armageddon.

  What we are dealing with here is therefore a delusional reconstruction of reality, a purely virtual approach characterised by a grandiloquent dimension; this speaks volumes about the rather infantile and pathetic aspect pervading the NAI’s ‘imperial will and ideology’:

  Yes, indeed, Iraq is where the ultimate overseas war is being waged. Should this war ever be lost, it would lead to the ultimate struggle for America’s survival.

  America proceeds to considerably exaggerate the stakes (now that it has trapped itself in the quagmire of this utterly pointless ‘battle’) so as to mobilise the simple minds of an ever-fragile American public opinion and raise GI morale.

  However, one must not give in to the impression that this vision is cynical in essence, for it comprises a certain rate of childish sincerity. As revealed by Patrick Buchanan, the belief that if Americans ‘do not fight against the terrorists in Iraq’, then they will ‘have to fight them in American cities’ is a common one in Washington.

  This represents a staggering psychological evolution from a ‘triumphant America’ stage (with the ridiculous Top Gun ceremony conducted by George W. Bush on board the USS Abraham Lincoln when, dressed in US Air Force attire, he declared the ‘mission’ to be ‘accomplished’) to a phase where America is in mortal danger: ‘We must either claim victory in Iraq, or face America’s total defeat’. One is thus truly under the impression of witnessing a tragicomic event in which the leaders of the ‘Empire’ are literally losing their footing.

  ***

  In the American Conservative (15/09/2003), Patrick Buchanan expands on the naivety that characterises those neoconservative leaders who found themselves outwitted by cunning Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. In his view, by first invading Afghanistan then Iraq, Bush has done precisely what the Islamists required in order to resume their jihad.

  Our enemies know us better than we know ourselves. We react exactly as they have anticipated and do precisely what they want us to. Filled with hurt pride and outraged patriotism, we hasten into the trap and swallow the bait that they threw us on September 11th. The terrorists who hurled those planes against the Pentagon and the WTC were not hoping to overthrow the American government or force the US to surrender. They are fanatical, but not insane. They wanted to injure, bleed and provoke America by striking it with a whip. By sending an American army to occupy Baghdad, we have become toys in the hands of Al-Qaeda. We are thus exactly where they want us to be. Where they have us at their mercy. We are where they can kill us, in their own garden.

  By giving in to provocation and intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq, the NAI has done what Al-Qaeda and the terrorists wanted it to: it has widened the field of battle and terrorism, spread the Dar-Al-Harb, the Domain of War, and lured the naïve ‘Judeo-Crusaders’ into the minefield, so as to convince the Muslim masses that an ‘aggression’ against Islam and its sacred lands was justified. The simple-minded American administration cannot contend with Islam’s age-old strategy. The defeat that America suffered on 9/11 has thus turned out to be twofold.

  ***

  Within the new ideological atmosphere surrounding the NAI and its neoconservatives, one encounters certain traits of the McCarthyism that typified the 1950s, when all alleged communists were hunted. On a periodical basis, America allows the demons of intolerance to resurface. Here are a few examples.

  David Frum, a National Review editorialist who contributes to the drafting of Bush’s speeches, is among those who have openly declared themselves to be the enemies of the ‘Axis of Evil’. Frum is, in fact, the man who coined the very expression (‘Axis of Evil’). He displays hostility towards all conservatives and Rightists who do not follow Bush, labelling them ‘anti-patriotic conservatives’ and urging the Republican Party to ‘turn its back on these heretics’. On its part, the Antiwar.com website has qualified Frum as a ‘political commissioner’. David Keene, who stands at the head of the American Conservative Union (ACU), has participated in a polemical debate in which he stood up for intellectual Robert Novak, a man who Frum accused of being ‘anti-Semitic’ because he chose to criticise the Iraqi campaign. A very intense polemic ensued within the American Right, which the above-mentioned website described as follows:

  Due to their pretentious claims of being the moral and ideological guardians of the Faith, Frum and his friends have irritated the rest of the Right to such an extent that they have managed to achieve within the conservative movement what the American military has accomplished in Iraq: to trigger a generalised rebellion against the forces of occupation.

  What w
e are thus witnessing may well be an attempt on the part of the ruling neoconservative apparatus to take control of the American intelligentsia and media on both an ideological and a propagandist level. According to anti-Bush Rightists, the destabilising attacks targeting Patrick Buchanan and Bob Novak, who are both opposed to the Iraqi operation for America’s sake, are actually motivated by the fact that the two have been accused of refusing to aid Israel, a country which they are said to detest… As can clearly be seen, current American political debates revolve around the entity of Israel.

  Indeed, the focus of numerous debates that shake the American conservative intelligentsia and involve a confrontation between the adversaries and partisans of the NAI and its neoconservatives is actually on the Israeli issue and the topic of antisemitism. What is certain is that the neocons have formed a kind of historical alliance between practicing Protestants and Jews; and yet, one must not submit to the belief that those who oppose ‘Bush’s wars’ are actually anti-Jewish. There are, in fact, many Jews amongst them, including Elie R. Bernstein and Catherine Lewine, who espouse the view that, far from ‘helping’ the Jewish state, the American elephant’s intervention in the Middle-East only serves to fuel the Muslim-Arab anthill that lies at the gates of Israel and will cause an upsurge of terrorist acts, which is already happening, of course. With regard to this issue, the same ideological division can be observed not only among American Jews, but also among Israelis.

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  American neo-militarism can be summarised using the following formula proposed by William Pfaff: ‘straddling the world’.

  William Pfaff, a regular chronicler at the International Herald Tribune, is among the most pertinent critics denouncing both the NAI and its militarism. What follows is a synthesis of his analyses regarding the current bout of American militarism, which, according to him, greatly contributes to the development of the very terrorism that it allegedly longs to eradicate.