by Scott Horton Antiwar.com April 24, 2005

“[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.” -John Quincy Adams 1821

Woodrow Wilson’s decision to bring the United States into Europe’s “Great War” (1914-18) wasn’t made in 1917. In fact, his agents had already reached an agreement with the governments of England and France to involve the U.S. in the autumn of 1915. He then spent all of 1916 campaigning for reelection on the slogan, “He kept us out of war.” When Wilson, who had already invaded Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, finally got Congress to declare war against the Central Powers on April 8, 1917, based on the ridiculous Zimmerman Telegram, the renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare by the Germans, and trumped up charges of atrocities against the Belgians, he didn’t just get more than 100,000 Americans killed, he solidified the last century’s turn toward warfare and totalitarianism that eventually killed over two hundred million people. So says Jim Powell, author of Wilson’s War: How Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and World War II. Perhaps he left the Cold War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the wars against terror and Iraq out of the book’s title for brevity’s sake.

Powell makes a compelling argument that by the time the U.S. got involved, World War I was a stalemate. Peace was sure to break out soon. The soldiers on all sides were sick, freezing, and in various states of mutiny.

The Russians in particular had been devastated, many of their soldiers were without weapons, and their luck on the battlefield was running out. The commanding generals were so incompetent that Czar Nicholas II left the capital to lead the war from the front. What little existed of a modern economy was being ruined. Primarily due to his refusal to withdraw from the war, Nicholas II was deposed in a popular uprising on March 15, 1917. As soon as the U.S. Congress declared war less than a month later, Wilson began applying diplomatic pressure and paid the Russians $325 million to continue the fight. An Anglophile to the core, Wilson didn’t care about the fate of the Russians. His concern was in keeping German forces split along two fronts. The payoff worked: Russia’s provisional prime minister Aleksandr Kerensky kept the Russians involved in the war.

Finally, on their fourth try, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his sidekick Leon Trotsky seized power. As Powell says in the book,

“If Russia’s Provisional Government had quit the war and negotiated peace with Germany in early 1917, we might never had heard of Lenin. He would have returned home to find Russians celebrating the end of the war. Soldiers would have been returning home and the process of reviving the economy would have begun … Finally of course, the Czar was gone, and the Russian army would have been there to defend the Provisional Government, virtually ruling out prospects for a Bolshevik coup.

Alexander Kerensky and some others in the Provisional Government wanted Russia to stay in the war, and maybe they would have prevailed if they had decided on their own. But relentless diplomatic pressure from Britain and France, and diplomatic pressure and bribes from Woodrow Wilson, helped assure that the virtually bankrupt Provisional Government would stay in the war.”

Wilson’s intervention led to the creation of the Soviet Union, the Cheka, KGB, Red Terror and Operation Keelhaul. Because of him, Joseph Stalin inherited a dictatorship; next came Lend-Lease, the Gulag Archipelago, Cold War, nuclear arms race, Korean and Vietnam wars, the Contra “freedom fighters,” and the Afghan Mujahidin.

Though the Germans were more interested in seeking a negotiated peace than the Allies led by Britain and France, the Western battlefield was still on French soil. Without the help of conscripted American soldiers it is much more likely that the Allies would have negotiated sooner and demanded less vengeful terms. And vengeful terms they were: Clause 231 and 232 of the Treaty of Versailles forced the Germans to accept blame for the entire war, and to “make compensation for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allied and Associated Powers and to their property during the period of belligerency of each as an Allied or Associated Power against Germany by such aggression by land, by sea, and from the air, and in general all damage.” This amounted to an open ended claim for German reparations. These articles were to be enforced by “measures as the respective Governments may determine to be necessary in the circumstances.” This, as all school children presumably know, caused the German Government to turn on the printing presses, leading to terrible hyperinflation and the complete destruction of the German economy.

Wilson’s handler, Colonel Edward Mandell House, had tried to send an ambassador to Versailles, and keep Wilson at home. At least that way a diplomat would have had the excuse that he had to follow instructions from the boss back home. Wilson, however, insisted on “playing his role” on the “world stage,” and at Versailles, this advantage was lost – he was the boss. He supposedly thought he could restrain the hateful impulses of the British and French. If he had had details in mind for just peace terms, it might have been different. Instead he was thoroughly dominated by the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and the British foreign secretary Lord Edward Grey.

One wish of Wilson’s was granted: he had demanded that the German Kaiser resign. He would only accept surrender from a “democratic government,” presumably meaning one like his. Due to this decision, the German democrats who had opposed the war were discredited for being those responsible for signing the terrible treaty. The opposition took all the heat, rather than the people who got the country into the war in the first place.

The series of maneuvers Hitler used to seize power were difficult enough as it was. Without the destruction of the German economy by the demands of massive reparations and the discrediting of the moderate factions, Adolph Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party would never have been able to seize power. Hitler’s entire propaganda program was based on the idea of punishing the “traitors of 1918” (those who signed the Versailles treaty), and restoring dignity to a country so humiliated by the aftermath of the first world war. Wilson enabled the rise of Nazi Germany and its bloody fruition, World War II – 50 million individuals killed, the master race, the holocaust, the American Empire and the Bush family fortune.

Wilson’s blunder also paved the way for our current conflicts in the Middle East. With the overwhelming victory of the Allies, made possible by US involvement, the British Empire expanded by over a million square miles. The French were able to greatly expand their territories as well. The current nation-states of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen and what was then called Palestine were drawn on a paper napkin by Winston Churchill with no regard for local populations at all [Update: The napkin thing is actually not right, but same difference -SH]. On top of all this, Lord Grey’s successor, British foreign secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour, issued his famous “declaration,” in the form of a letter to Lord Lionel Rothschild declaring the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…” This has been, and will continue to be, a cause of major problems for the West, and the United States in particular, to say nothing of the people who live there.

The common refrain that “if only the Versailles treaty had been ratified by the U.S. Senate and we had participated in the League of Nations everything would have been great,” is as old as Wilson himself:

“This is the Covenant of the League of Nations that you hear objected to, the only possible guarantee against war. I would consider myself recreant to every mother and father, every wife and sweetheart in this country, if I consented to the ending of this war without a guarantee that there would be no other. You say, ‘Is it an absolute guarantee?’ No; there is no absolute guarantee against human passion; but even if it were only 10 percent of a guarantee, would not you rather have 10 percent guarantee against war than none? If it only creates a presumption that there will not be war, would you not rather have that presumption than live under the certainty that there will be war? For, I tell you, my fellow citizens, I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it.”

Consider the unlimited arrogance of this man, who could send a hundred thousand people to their deaths, set up millions more for the same fate, and then blame those who would preserve America’s independence for the consequences of the first part of his program by their refusal to go along with the rest of it.

Woodrow Wilson’s presidential legacy consists of central banking, national income taxes, the destruction of the separation of powers, the Palmer raids, massive expansion of the national government’s power and the worst slaughter of Americans since 1865. No wonder he’s George W. Bush’s hero. Let’s hope the consequences of the foreign adventures of our current megalomaniac-in-chief are not as harmful as those of his predecessor.

By Scott Horton Antiwar.com April 06, 2005

Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, and the guest on my March 26 radio show [stream] [download mp3], spent decades as what he now calls a “spear-carrier for empire.” According to Mr. Johnson, we have “[t]o a certain extent … been at war since 1940.” When the U.S. government told him that our military dominance of much of the planet was strictly for the purposes of “containing communism,” he believed them and presumably taught his University of California students the same. He was even employed for six years as a consultant to the Central Intelligence Agency.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Johnson, like many other political thinkers, expected NATO to be dissolved and our “containment” to end. When this didn’t happen, he had to reevaluate his past positions. While most of the establishment just carried on with their spears, inventing new excuses for American empire along the way, a few who supported empire during the Cold War – Johnson, Pat Buchanan, Jude Wanniski, etc. – wanted out. They understood an inescapable fact of history: empires fall. Ancient Babylon, Greece, Macedonia, Rome, Spain, Britain, Germany, and Russia: the people of all these states had to pay the price for letting their “leaders” take their societies past the point of no return.

It is easy to be a cheerleader for empire. “We’re winning the War on Terror!” Many Americans apparently believe that the military will keep the rest of the world (which they see as inexplicably perturbed at us) at bay, and that we may continue pretending our choice of direction secures our long-term security. In the past, it may have been easy to imagine America and its Constitution lasting many more lifetimes, but it is becoming harder to suspend disbelief as the body count, price tag, and growing resentment wrought by our current adventures continue to mount. More Americans seem to be catching on. Empire weakens us.

By definition, empire means overextension, dependence on the conquered, debt, taxes, and highly centralized power. None of these things are conducive to a lasting, limited republic. The “father of the Constitution,” James Madison, said as much.

Not despite but because of overwhelming military and political dominance over its satellites and the endless reach of its internal bureaucracy, the Soviet Union came crashing down. Its people were unable to support their top-heavy leviathan state any longer.

Short of outright occupation, there are still many ways of controlling foreign powers, and economic pressure of one kind [.pdf] or another usually paves the way for a new kind of colonialism that calls itself anything but what it is. For those in denial about America’s status as world empire, Chalmers Johnson reports in Sorrows of Empire that there are currently 725 American military bases in 153 countries. Most of these, while tangible expressions of forward-deployed military power, are permitted by the governments of these countries, often even by their citizens. These are “friendly” occupations that breed dependence on the U.S. for the locals’ defense and economy, which in turn ratchets up pressure on cooperative states to relinquish their most valuable domestic resources through agreements private interests would have to pay much more to secure. Many of these occupations create “blowback,” including resentment against us for policies most Americans don’t know about or understand. Blowback is what killed 3,000 on 9/11.

Empire’s solution? Wage more war and build more bases, and on it goes.

If we believe in the free markets we claim to be exporting, let’s show the world by example, and offer to buy their oil. How much oil could the average American have bought at the local Quick-E-Mart with money the government has wasted occupying the Middle East and Central Asia? A lot. It is much more costly to steal oil than to buy it. American elites apply their mistaken belief in the domestic power of government to international relations as well: if America needs oil, they must use military force to “secure” it. They apparently think that if they don’t send in the Marine Corps, the people of the Middle East will just leave the oil in the ground and make no money. If they were to do so, it would only be as short-term revenge for recent meddling by the U.S. government. The more aggressive our government is, the more reluctant to trade with us freely others will be. If the U.S. treats the people of the Middle East with respect, of course they’ll sell the oil. Regardless, it happens to be under the ground in their countries; it’s up to them to sell or not.

Those waging war while preaching freedom and property rights ought to understand this. Perhaps they just don’t care.

The new domino theory (with America as the Reds) holds that once we erect “democracies” in the Middle East, the remaining “non-democracies” will fall in line. This is laughable. Our $2.57 trillion government foments coups, hires mercenaries to train the “national guard” for amirs and sultans, encourages revolutions, installs airbases on holy land, and so forth, all of which ultimately brings our rivals together. The instability spread by having Americans in camouflage all over Asia will only make it harder in the end for us to get the oil we need. Even if ends justified means, the rhetorical gloss of freedom and democracy ought to be fading fast for even the most devout statists.

(For the record, none of our allies in the region – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lybia, Jordan, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, or Pakistan – are democracies. Okay, I’ll give you Djibouti. And Israel is a democracy only if you don’t count the folks living in the occupied West Bank or Gaza.)

According to Chalmers Johnson, what was, in more rational times, America’s biggest fear, a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis, is now being realized. The aggressive position of the U.S. made it happen. We might as well add China to the list, too. The old Sino-Soviet split is healing quite nicely, as the Chinese-Russian “friendship treaty” of 2001 and their upcoming joint military exercises would seem to indicate. The Europeans are also warming to China. They will begin selling them weapons again next year. It’s good that everyone wants to be friends, but these new friendships are motivated by an increasingly common view of America as their greatest potential threat.

We’ve gone so far down the path to empire and ruin that it may be too late to turn back the tide with writing or voting. We may be left with two choices: the bankruptcy and dissolution faced by the British Empire and the Soviet Union, or the total devastation and unconditional surrender suffered by both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. If the anti-imperial forces of this country were to put everything they have into taking the House of Representatives in 2006, immediately halting the expenditure of Treasury money on this imperial mess, and bringing the troops home from their 725 or so foreign bases, we might be able to win some forgiveness for our recent violence. The former soldiers may end up as local cops or Homeland Security troops, but perhaps we’ll be spared the airstrikes.

By Scott Horton Antiwar.com April 02, 2005

George Bush’s nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has provoked a storm of controversy, setting off cries of “loose cannon!” and “unilateralism!” from the more internationalist of the American interventionists. Currently undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, Bolton is a figure whose study provides a telling illustration of the current debate within the foreign policy establishments in the U.S. and the EU. Should the U.S. government, for example, kill people in foreign lands as it alone sees fit, or only when approved by the French and the Russians on the UN Security Council?

Although he is such a lying warmonger that he is often mistaken for a neoconservative, Bolton positions himself rhetorically somewhere closer to libertarians and antiwar conservatives regarding the application of international law to the United States. Tom Barry, co-founder and policy director of the International Relations Center (IRC), no fan of Bolton’s, and my radio show guest on March 19 [stream] [download mp3], has written of Bolton on IRC’s RightWeb:

“From the early days of the first Bush administration, Bolton mounted a campaign to halt all international constraints on U.S. power and prerogative, fiercely opposing existing and proposed international treaties restricting landmines, child soldiers, biological weapons, nuclear weapons testing, small-arms trade, and missile defense.

“In a 1994 speech at the liberal World Federalist Association, Bolton declared that ‘there is no such thing as the United Nations.’ To underscore his point, Bolton said. ‘If the UN secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.’”

What’s so wrong with that? The question is not whether one approves of child soldiers, germ weapons, or landmines, but whether “international law,” which clearly implies international force, is the best way to accomplish the goal of stopping their use. Do we really need foreigners to tell us not to use child soldiers, germ weapons, or landmines? Aren’t we smart enough to recognize SDI as a ridiculous waste of money ourselves?

It is true that the UN would probably sanction any just defense of America, but their approval does not “bestow” legitimacy, it could only be a recognition of it. The idea that the U.S. may not act without the approval of “the international community” is quite dangerous to our independence. As Bolton correctly notes in an article in the January/February 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs:

“If the American citadel can be breached, advocates of binding international law will be well on the way toward the ultimate elimination of Treaty of Westphalia-style nation-states. It is thus important to understand the root of American intransigence: namely, the fact that the United States and its Constitution would have to change fundamentally and irrevocably before binding international law becomes possible. This constitutional issue is not merely a narrow, technical point of law, certainly not for the United States.”

As Ludwig von Mises Institute scholar [.pdf] Joseph Stromberg put it: “The problem is this: can the president and Senate in effect repeal or overturn fundamental provisions of the Constitution by colluding with foreign states?”

The reason people are having such a hard time hearing this truth from John Bolton is because he is an eager operative of one of the most belligerent and murderous regimes on Earth.

Right now, the U.S. government is picking a fight with Iran based on their supposed failure to live up to their obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty. The Iranians are put in the position of kneeling before the International Atomic Energy Agency in order to attempt to put off war with the U.S., a war that could never be waged without the requisite accusations that Iran is violating their international agreements. Who cares if Iran did have the bomb? That would just be all the more reason for us to avoid conflict with them in the first place – a lesson North Korea has apparently taken to heart.

According to former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, the Bush administration is preparing to use the same script against Iran that they used, for “bureaucratic reasons,” against Iraq. Namely: accuse them of developing WMD, demand the IAEA refer them to the Security Council for Sanctions, complain when Russia and China veto, say something about “I’m going to do whatever it takes to defend America,” then attack. The nomination of Bolton to the UN would seem to fit right into that plan. If anyone can accuse the UN of not doing enough, it’s him.

It would be a mistake to think that principles of independence must be intertwined with the type of hypocrisy toward the subject of international law possessed by the Bush administration, which always cites the enforcement of “international law” as the excuse for their violence.

Take Dr. Ron Paul, for example. He’s a libertarian Republican representing Texas District 14 in the U.S. House of Representatives who each session files the “Sovereignty Restoration Act,” which would get the United States out of the United Nations and end the practice of suborning American law and policy to international consensus. Dr. Paul is the harshest critic of the warfare state in the U.S. House by far. Before the invasion of Iraq, he filed a declaration of war just to vote against it, and to call out the War Party cowards among his colleagues who would support aggression against a country that had never attacked us, but would pass their authority and responsibility to choose to do so over to George W. Bush.

Paul is no isolationist. He supports open relations with the world; he just doesn’t support the arrogant and costly idea of America as world savior, or the UN as a body that helps to keep us out of foreign conflict.

The anti-UN positions of Bolton, Reagan-era neocon UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Richard Perle, are being used to co-opt this traditional conservative sentiment against foreign intervention in U.S. policy and turn it into anger at the UN for standing in the way of our wars. How dare they? Don’t they know we’re fighting to enforce their decrees?

It is interesting to see American politicians worried at the thought of ever being held responsible for their crimes by the international system they created, such as the International Criminal Court. Though it may seem like justice to see someone like Kissinger or Cheney thrown in the dock, when our politicians are criminals, we are the ones who should prosecute them. If foreigners can grab Bush and Cheney, they can grab us, and to turn them over to a court that can’t even define the crimes over which they supposedly have jurisdiction would hardly measure up to our rules of due process or our concepts of national sovereignty.

Try to see a bright side to the appointment, which still awaits Senate confirmation, of John Bolton to the UN ambassador spot: he may continue to help undermine the multilateralist Wilsonian ideology that is so often used to justify American Empire. And since he’s such an outspoken proponent of violent solutions to problems that really don’t concern us, perhaps he can help to discredit the more nationalistic brand of empire in the minds of more Americans as well.

Secretary General Kofi Annan is proposing changes to the UN Security Council. Let’s abolish it. John Bolton would be out of a job, and our excuses for meddling in country after country would disappear. Let the U.S. be unilaterally at peace.