Exclusive: America’s neoconservatives, by stirring up trouble in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, are creating risks for the world’s economy that are surfacing now in the turbulent stock markets, threatening another global recession, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
If you’re nervously watching the stock market gyrations and worrying about your declining portfolio or pension fund, part of the blame should go to America’s neocons who continue to be masters of chaos, endangering the world’s economy by instigating geopolitical confrontations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Of course, there are other factors pushing Europe’s economy to the brink of a triple-dip recession and threatening to stop America’s fragile recovery, too. But the neocons’ “regime change” strategies, which have unleashed violence and confrontations across Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran and most recently Ukraine, have added to the economic uncertainty.
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, on Feb. 7, 2014. (U.S. State Department photo)
This neocon destabilization of the world economy began with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 under President George W. Bush who squandered some $1 trillion on the bloody folly. But the neocons’ strategies have continued through their still-pervasive influence in Official Washington during President Barack Obama’s administration.
The neocons and their “liberal interventionist” junior partners have kept the “regime change” pot boiling with the Western-orchestrated overthrow and killing of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the proxy civil war in Syria to oust Bashar al-Assad, the costly economic embargoes against Iran, and the U.S.-backed coup that ousted Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February.
All these targeted governments were first ostracized by the neocons and the major U.S. news organizations, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, which have become what amounts to neocon mouthpieces. Whenever the neocons decide that it’s time for another “regime change,” the mainstream U.S. media enlists in the propaganda wars.
The consequence of this cascading disorder has been damaging and cumulative. The costs of the Iraq War strapped the U.S. Treasury and left less government maneuvering room when Wall Street crashed in 2008. If Bush still had the surplus that he inherited from President Bill Clinton rather than a yawning deficit there might have been enough public money to stimulate a much-faster recovery.
President Obama also wouldn’t have been left to cope with the living hell that the U.S. occupation brought to the people of Iraq, violent chaos that gave birth to what was then called “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” and has since rebranded itself “the Islamic State.”
But Obama didn’t do himself (or the world) any favors when he put much of his foreign policy in the hands of Democratic neocon-lites, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Bush holdovers, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus. At State, Clinton promoted the likes of neocon Victoria Nuland, the wife of arch-neocon Robert Kagan, and Obama brought in “liberal interventionists” like Samantha Power, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
In recent years, the neocons and “liberal interventionists” have become almost indistinguishable, so much so that Robert Kagan has opted to discard the discredited neocon label and call himself a “liberal interventionist.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’”]
Manipulating Obama
Obama, in his nearly six years as president, also has shied away from imposing his more “realistic” views about world affairs on the neocon/liberal-interventionist ideologues inside the U.S. pundit class and his own administration. He has been outmaneuvered by clever insiders (as happened in 2009 on the Afghan “surge”) or overwhelmed by some Official Washington “group think” (as was the case in Libya, Syria, Iran and Ukraine).
Once all the “smart people” reach some collective decision that a foreign leader “must go,” Obama usually joins the chorus and has shown only rare moments of toughness in standing up to misguided conventional wisdoms.
The one notable case was his decision in summer 2013 to resist pressure to destroy Syria’s military after a Sarin gas attack outside Damascus sparked a dubious rush to judgment blaming Assad’s regime. Since then, more evidence has pointed to a provocation by anti-Assad extremists who may have thought that the incident would draw in the U.S. military on their side. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Was Turkey Behind Syrian Sarin Attack?”]
It’s now clear that if Obama had ordered a major bombing campaign against Assad’s military in early September 2013, he might have opened the gates of Damascus to a hellish victory by al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists or the even more brutal Islamic State, since these terrorist groups have emerged as the only effective fighters against Assad.
But the neocons and the “liberal interventionists” seemed oblivious to that danger. They had their hearts set on Syrian “regime change,” so were furious when their dreams were dashed by Obama’s supposed “weakness,” i.e. his failure to do what they wanted. They also blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin who brokered a compromise with Assad in which he agreed to surrender all of Syria’s chemical weapons while still denying a role in the Sarin attack.
By late September 2013, the disappointed neocons were acting out their anger by taking aim at Putin. They recognized that a particular vulnerability for the Russian president was Ukraine and the possibility that it could be pulled out of Russia’s sphere of influence and into the West’s orbit.
So, Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, took to the op-ed page of the neocon-flagship Washington Post to sound the trumpet about Ukraine, which he called “the biggest prize.”
But Gershman added that Ukraine was really only an interim step to an even bigger prize, the removal of the strong-willed and independent-minded Putin, who, Gershman added, “may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad [i.e. Ukraine] but within Russia itself.” In other words, the new neocon hope was for “regime change” in Kiev and Moscow. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons’ Ukraine/Syria/Iran Gambit.”]
Destabilizing the World
Beyond the recklessness of plotting to destabilize nuclear-armed Russia, the neocon strategy threatened to shake Europe’s fragile economic recovery from a painful recession, six years of jobless stress that had strained the cohesion of the European Union and the euro zone.
Across the Continent, populist parties from the Right and Left have been challenging establishment politicians over their inability to reverse the widespread unemployment and the growing poverty. Important to Europe’s economy was its relationship with Russia, a major market for agriculture and manufactured goods and a key source of natural gas to keep Europe’s industries humming and its houses warm.
The last thing Europe needed was more chaos, but that’s what the neocons do best and they were determined to punish Putin for disrupting their plans for Syrian “regime change,” an item long near the top of their agenda along with their desire to “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” which Israel has cited as an “existential threat.”
Putin also had sidetracked that possible war with Iran by helping to forge an interim agreement constraining but not eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. So, he became the latest target of neocon demonization, a process in which the New York Times and the Washington Post eagerly took the lead.
To get at Putin, however, the first step was Ukraine where Gershman’s NED was funding scores of programs for political activists and media operatives. These efforts fed into mass protests against Ukrainian President Yanukovych for balking at an EU association agreement that included a harsh austerity plan designed by the International Monetary Fund. Yanukovych opted instead for a more generous $15 billion loan deal from Putin.
As the political violence in Kiev escalated with the uprising’s muscle supplied by neo-Nazi militias from western Ukraine neocons within the Obama administration discussed how to “midwife” a coup against Yanukovych. Central to this planning was Victoria Nuland, who had been promoted to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and was urging on the protesters, even passing out cookies to protesters at Kiev’s Maidan square.
According to an intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland didn’t think EU officials were being aggressive enough. “Fuck the EU,” she said as she brainstormed how “to help glue this thing.” She literally handpicked who should be in the post-coup government “Yats is the guy,” a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who would indeed become prime minister.
When the coup went down on Feb. 22 spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias who seized government buildings and forced Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives the U.S. State Department quickly deemed the new regime “legitimate” and the mainstream U.S. media dutifully stepped up the demonization of Yanukovych and Putin.
Although Putin’s position had been in support of Ukraine’s status quo i.e., retaining the elected president and the country’s constitutional process the crisis was pitched to the American people as a case of “Russian aggression” with dire comparisons made between Putin and Hitler, especially after ethnic Russians in the east and south resisted the coup regime in Kiev and Crimea seceded to rejoin Russia.
Starting a Trade War
Pressured by the Obama administration, the EU agreed to sanction Russia for its “aggression,” touching off a tit-for-tat trade war with Moscow which reduced Europe’s sale of farming and manufacturing goods to Russia and threatened to disrupt Russia’s natural gas supplies to Europe.
While the most serious consequences were to Ukraine’s economy which went into freefall because of the civil war, some of Europe’s most endangered economies in the south also were hit hard by the lost trade with Russia. Europe began to stagger toward the third dip in a triple-dip recession with European markets experiencing major stock sell-offs.
The dominoes soon toppled across the Atlantic as major U.S. stock indices dropped, creating anguish among many Americans just when it seemed the hangover from Bush’s 2008 market crash was finally wearing off.
Obviously, there are other reasons for the recent stock market declines, including fears about the Islamic State’s victories in Syria and Iraq, continued chaos in Libya, and exclusion of Iran from the global economic system all partly the result of neocon ideology. There have been unrelated troubles, too, such as the Ebola epidemic in western Africa and various weather disasters.
But the world’s economy usually can withstand some natural and manmade challenges. The real problem comes when a combination of catastrophes pushes the international financial system to a tipping point. Then, even a single event can dump the world into economic chaos, like what happened when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008.
It’s not clear whether the world is at such a tipping point today, but the stock market volatility suggests that we may be on the verge of another worldwide recession. Meanwhile, the neocon masters of chaos seem determined to keep putting their ideological obsessions ahead of the risks to Americans and people everywhere.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
Company man Barry-0 IS patron Poppy’s BS (Bush Shadow).
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The Judeo-Con masterplan for the Middle East isn’t the allocation of victory,
it is the perpetuation of defeat.
FREE AMERICA
DIRECT DEMOCRACY
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As usual, a great article from Parry. I’m only uneasy about Parry’s portrayal of Obama as somehow being cleverly manipulated by the “neocons or interventionist liberals”. Let’s remember that the zionists groomed and funded Obama even before he was a state senator. His zionist supporters called him the “First Jewish President” during the 2008 campaign. Obama is a puppet of the “deep state”. Why anyone still believes that he is actually a Democrat is beyond me. He does not support unions, he is prosecuting whistleblowers at historic rates, he claims the right to kill U.S. citizens whenever he feels it’s necessary without judicial review, he believes he can unilaterally go to war without Congressional approval, he protects the criminals on Wall Street becuase they were some of his biggest funders…………..The list goes on and on. And Hillary will be worse.
” There have been unrelated troubles, too, such as the Ebola epidemic in western Africa ”
This is another ginned up fake epidemic, like ‘AIDS in Africa’. And with ‘AIDS in Africa’ rapidly disappearing, they need a new cash cow. Like with ‘AIDS in Africa’, there is a real disease, however it is rare and it’s incidence is massively exaggerated for financial and professional gain, which is keeping a multi-billion dollar a year industry going decade after decade.
Even the same people are involved – Anthony Fauci, who couldn’t find a vaccine or cure for HIV infection in 33 years, now promises he has a vaccine for ebola ready by 2015. And of course he will – the ebola money is in a vaccine, not a cure. The AIDS money is in neither a vaccine of cure, it is in amelioration of existing symptoms.
What has happened, is that through continuous media exposure and fear mongering by public officials including Anthony Fauci, the usual suspects have ginned up an orphan disease with 3,000 victims since 1976, into a cause which could see the inoculation of 20,000,000 people or more – now that’s a market. I guess protecting and creating markets is why Anthony Fauci keeps his job.
Remember that they were trying to steamroll President Thabo Mbeki into giving ARVs to every pregnant woman in the South Africa, early 2000, when 25% of South Africans were supposed to be HIV positive – of course they never were, and the predicted stagnation and decline of the population never happened. However, the massive exaggeration of the scale and the Big Scary Numbers is their m.o.
Also, when the malaria season comes on, be prepared for ‘a massive spike in ebola cases’, mainly because early symptoms of both diseases are very similar, most early diagnoses will be based on a ‘clinical diagnosis’ of patients (not lab testing), and malaria cases outstrip ebola cases by factor of 1000. Also, as they put in ebola patients with malaria patients, there is going to be an increase in real ebola cases.
Check out the population growth charts in Uganda, the ‘epicenter of aids in the world’, in the 1990s:
Google: demographics uganda
Google: demographics mozambique
(There is a leveling off during the war years in Mozambique, from 1985 to 1988, which ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the winding down of Apartheid – and then they grew even faster.)
Google: demographics south africa
Population growth not only never slowed down let alone reversed like predicted because of ‘excess mortality from HIV/AIDS’, it accellerated.
While the population is going through the roof and UNAIDS hypothesized that 50% of the around 500,000 deaths a year were from HIV/AIDS, the actual Death Notification Forms Survey, consistently listed 2.0 to 2.6% of all deaths under B20-B24 HIV/AIDS Diseases – see Table 4.4.
Back to Anthony Fauci, on vaccinating entire populations ‘because of ebola’.
Ka-ching! The total population of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia is 20 million people. Of course, there will be vaccine deaths, and illness from the side effects to go along with it.
Although John Connolly and Craig Timberg didn’t get to the hart of the claims made about Southern Africa (they still used surveys of pregnant women, Zambia still pads it’s data with them too), it became clear a decade ago, that the dire predictions weren’t coming true for West-, East- and Central Africa:
However, instead of admitting that their data was wrong, they first launched a defensive action, and then simply moved their focus to South Africa, much in the way the IMF/World Bank move on to a new victim after their SAPs ‘creatively destroy’ another economy.
They moved over to South Africa, and targeted President Thabo Mbeki.
Call me crazy, but I always believed that AIDS was man made.
In 1969 I was in Port AU Prince Haiti. Myself and a couple other Navy Sailors were approached by some young American missionary’s who said they wanted to show us something. The Missionary’s and us took 3 cabs about 30 miles outside of town. We entered into a forest or jungle when suddenly we came across these people, who were half naked and skinny with bloated stomachs. It was something out of the ‘Walking Dead’. We didn’t get out of the cabs, but when we left that place we pulled over and asked these young missionary’s what was that…it was horrific. The missionarys said that Papa Doc would take the men for what ever offense and put them in this place. If the men escaped then they took their family and put them in this hell hole.. They went on to explain that Papa Doc was injecting them with some virus which would break down their impunity system, and that was what we saw…this was 1969.
Years later this disease would come to America. At first it was for some unknown reason a gay disease…really! I knew then that something awful was going on. Okay, maybe I should wear a tinfoil hat you say…but I saw this first hand. It was something that at the time was being used as a weapon. I’m sorry but there are things that just don’t add up, and this to me is one of them.
Joe, I don’t know about Papa Doc, but the disease was described by anthropologists in Africa in the late fifties/early sixties. It was known to be a disease carried by monkeys and transmittable to humans. The symptoms were described as chronic wasting leading to death. Somewhere along the line, they started calling it “slims” disease, because it made victims thin. In the 1950’s a case with bizarre symptoms showed up in the United States which baffled doctors. The patient didn’t respond to treatment and died. A pathologist took some tissue samples and had them frozen. They were “on ice” for about thirty years, and reexamined in the 1980’s out of academic curiosity. Bingo- the guy was HIV positive, but no explanation was ever determined where or how he got it. AIDS is one of “History’s Mysteries”, and I’m expecting a lot of bizarre stories to pop up about Ebola, too. Stay tuned…
F.G. Thanks for sharing your knowledge of this. I came to the belief this disease was man made because the missionary’s suspected Papa Doc of injecting this into these Haitian victims. The missionary’s had a intimate relationship with the Haitian people, and this is why I believed the missionary’s story.
I could also never figure out why AIDS in America at first seemed to be contained to the male gay community. You must admit this is very strange.
Also in the fifties the US Agricultural dept. was working there in Haiti. I believe they were working with fissal production. Maybe there is no connection…just me, I guess.
I guess the morale of the story is don’t trust what a missionary tells you, and horrific diseases have been around for a long time.
Unless you actually have tests that show there was an African epidemic of HIV before the epidemics in New York and Los Angeles, that could have been any disease.
Mr K, yeah, you are right I should have never brought it up.
Pity you played the Obama violin, almost got a tweet,
Chaos, they like chaos. 9/11 was chaos. This 9/11 thing won’t break us, this will only create new business opportunities. And, it did. Just look at the security industries. Take your pick, cop stuff, military stuff, the list goes on. When you stand in the TSA line check out all the equipment, and sensor product. Somebody, made money there.
Then, there is the spoiled elite. Maybe the Neocon’s. I would not put it pass their group think to say, ‘if I can’t have it, you can’t have it’ mentality, which drives their decision making. Is it beyond belief that these people could be that selfish? Although, what we are doing to Europe over the Ukraine thing, almost looks like we’re at war more with Europe. Europe, needs Russia, it just makes sense. You want what Russia does with Europe, then out sell them…isn’t that capitalism? No, when your nothing more than a big hammer, well then everything starts looking like a nail. Is, that how that goes?
Besides that, the stock market going down means it’s a good time to buy…everybody knows that….Just ask any Wall Streeter. It’s not, and it has never been their job to better the commons. Trust me, chaos is making money for someone, somewhere. Remember, greed is good? Well, now it’s chaos is good!
You want to watch chaos make lots of money? Then keep your eye on the pharmaceutical industry when the Ebola fear forces a national…scratch that, I mean the international mandatory vaccination mandate be put into effect. The spin off industries like air filters, gloves, hazmat product will be huge….but in the mean time tune into CNN, FOX, MSNBC, ……why hell, out of them. That will be where the Chaos is whipped up with a capital “C”s!
I have attached to this comment an article which will strengthen my point. Basically it says we Americans continue to shop right through all these terrible events. 9/11, why I’ll just go shopping….read the article;
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-17/peak-ebola-even-goldman-now-warning-about-ebola-fear-factor
Joe ,
The BBC seems to have a terror + control system that they seem to put out 24/7 with the Ebola scare.
Their despite limited impact on consumer sentiment to date, the “fear factor” associated with Ebola appears more significant than past instances of pandemic concern etc etc followed
by the BBC News Night’s “feeling good” about a German history exhibition of their country trying to recover from the ever haunting tragic Holocaust memory that we are constantly reminded about. .
Very subtle ( NOT) to distract “us” from the carnage “we” are causing in the Middle East.e
Ah, thee who controls the narrative wins the war. We are truly living in an age of creative writing. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Take care Hillary.
Joe Tedesky
The Masters of Chaos have implement their agendas in the Middle East and elsewhere with the approval of both political parties through legislation.
An excellent article. The vultures make money on chaos, even economic crashes.
Trying to take the major Russian naval base in Crimea was clearly a HUGE provocation. Just imagine if Russia tried to take a major U.S. naval base.
American productivity hasn’t increased in ten tears, with the exception of certain defense sector industries. But the stock market has shown remarkable gains during the recent “recovery”, until now. In the news, a 107 year old blind black man in Arkansas was shot dead during the execution of a “no knock” warrant. In another “no knock” incursion, a 7 year old girl was shot dead. That one was executed on “the wrong house”. Our ambassador to the UN rants about human rights abuses…in Hong Kong, and a college dropout has become the most influential man in American education. The department of defense has embarked on a $30 million campaign to sanitize the historical reality of the Vietnam war, and our government just participated in a European conference chaired by the unelected political proxy of a convicted pedophile and financial fraudster.
In Europe, auto manufacturers are running out of abandoned airstrips and unused port facilities where they have been parking the unsold inventory of three years worth of cars they can’t sell. The European south has resorted to the Reaganomic strategy of “privatization”. They’re unloading prime real estate, historical landmarks, castles and exclusive seaside properties to speculative Arabian potentates who are traveling the Mediterranean in private yachts like it was a K-mart “blue light special”. (I wonder why that isn’t in the news?) The last wave of comparable von Mises and von Hyek privatization occurred under the von Hitler program. In an apparent act of collusion between Saudi Arabia and the Neocons, the price of oil has been dropped to recent historic lows in order to damage Iranian and Russian financial interests. Too bad the ensuing glut on the market makes the fantasy of Bakken Shale fracking prohibitively expensive.
Stock prices have been propped up by free money, which has permitted corporate fraudsters to cut production, cut overhead, lay off workers and elevate share prices by buying their own stocks. Profits remain unchanged, creating the illusion of sound practices, while product marketability deteriorates due to consumer insolvency.
Neocon “chaos” is easily explained. The schizophrenic amalgamation of mutually exclusive ideologies which comprise the Neocon world view was born during the Reagan era. It includes an attitude of intellectual superiority validated with purchased academic credentials and loyalty to an effete political philosophy which resembles Fabian Socialism – the impossible mixture of Marxism and Fascism. But they’ve got what they wanted – a Reagan Republican in the White House. Short of the world’s highest “dead cat bounce” or an all-out war, nothing can save the Neocons now – unless Americans remain hopelessly stupid. That’s not impossible. As they say in Europe, “The mother of stupidity is always pregnant”. In keeping with that observation, Neocons are determined to insure that the next President is equipped with a uterus. Reagan’s treason could be excused with senile dementia. I wonder what the Neocons will claim?
FGS,
Fun and profound look at the world today.
Thanks.
We want a jumpstart to the Impeach Movement
R PARRY has good insights too;
together you can make it happen!
I’m playing catch-up with Middle Eastern history. Query: why is Syria’s Bashar al-Assad out of favour ?
I”ll let SyrianGirlPartisan tell you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP3mXVRd89Y
Because he was taking action against the terrorists in Syria and our neocons, like McCain are on the terrorists side. I love the picture that McCain had taken with Al Baghdadi, his friend and partner in war crime.
Another aspect is the extent of “privatization”….where wealthy oligarchs purchase former state assets for pennies on the dollar and call it “capitalism” or “democracy”. Citizens watch as state assets are sold. It’s part of that concentration of wealth issue. Individuals can be bought off.
And yes, I recommend Syrian Girl also.
There are several reasons for people in the State Department to want Assad gone. He is a staunch ally of Iran and Russia, both of which the neocons want to undermine and then destroy. He is running a reasonably secular, modern and civlized country in the vicinity of Israel, and Israel does not want any organized societies within a thousand miles of its borders. Worst of all, perhaps, he has shown signs of helping Iran to sell its oil and wishing to trade in currencies other than the dollar. (If enough nations stop using the dollar, it will no longer be the world’s reserve currency, and US inflation will be contained within US borders, leading to instantaneous hyperinflation).
Thank you for your responses – appreciate any teaching moments (I’m slowly starting to comprehend that there’s a proxy global neo-con war).
Oh, poor Obama, an innocent victim of evil neocons…
More like an accessory to crime. But they knew in 2008 he would never stand up for the citizens….he is a lawyer.
If putting Geithner into Treasury didn’t say sell-out, then you were not paying attention.
Obama is a willing accessorie to many crimes. His zionist supporters that groomed and funded his 2008 campaign called him the “first Jewish President”. He was compromised from the very beginning, the zionists had their hooks in him years before he became president.
Opinion time; but I suspect Mr. Parry’s thread title is more accurate than some of his text which follows. I’m influenced in this view by a recent post I read here:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/10/syria-arming-insurgents-probably-achieved-its-real-aim-.html
“Regime Change” is always, nice, but isn’t usually achieved these days. Israel and the US turning Egypt into a boot-licking servant would be an exception.
No, simply creating chaos is enough in most cases.
I suspect that the American Elites haven’t really given this issue enough thought, for there is an excellent chance the scheme will be turned against them.
Naomi Klein’s book THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM describes historical antecedents of this policy. The basic policy has been going on since the end of WW II, although the name “Neocon” wasn’t used until somewhat later. “A rose by any other name will smell as sweet”; likewise a skunk by any other name will smell as foul.