|
by
Russ Stein
During
the first Bush administration, the leaking of a foreign policy
memo by top Pentagon bureaucrat Paul Wolfowitz caused a
sensation, and a firestorm of criticism. Asserting that US
security requires that the United States tolerate no rivals to
its global dominance, Wolfowitz wrote, "the new regional
defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any
hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would,
under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global
power."
Wolfowitz
is currently the deputy defense secretary in the Bush
administration, and as far as I know, has never retracted or
repudiated these words.
Think
about Wolfowitz's unstated assumptions for a minute. One
assumption is that a large, resource rich region is necessary
for a power "to generate global power." Another
assumption is that global power requires that the region be
under the "consolidated control" of a dominant
power, which means a dominant government, in foreign-policy
speak. Yet another unstated assumption is that America has
global power.
America
obviously does have global power. From every two-bit banana
republic in the world, the supplicants come begging: for US
favor, US approval, and US cash. Every party to every
impossible and incomprehensible conflict in the world does PR
in DC, influencing our media, swaying our policies, and
diverting our attention from our own business.
But
who really has it? I don't have any global power. Do you?
Inadvertently,
the Wolfowitz memo provides us with stunning glimpse into the
real worldview of our ruling federal class in DC. We the
people are a "resource." That's right: your money,
your work, your business, your family, your property –
they're all just resources, under "consolidated
control," mind you, that fuel the global power enjoyed by
our "dominant" rulers. And the vast, beautiful,
temperate, rich land of the North American continent where we
live? That's the region with the requisite resources for
generating the global power of our government.
If
you thought we were a free and independent, self-governing
people, with a weak, divided, limited government of strictly
enumerated powers – you were wrong.
At
the core of the original America was an idea called
federalism, which is totally incompatible with Wolfowitz's
ideas. If federalism had been taken seriously, it could have
saved us from falling under the "consolidated
control" of a dominant federal government, and saved us
from the burden of a ruling class with global power.
March
16, 2002
Russ
Stein [send him mail]
is a defense lawyer out West. Here
is his blog.
Copyright © 2002 LewRockwell.com |
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