German-French Alliance

Making Europe the Partner of America in the “Long War:” Enter the Franco-German Entente (Excerpt)

Global Research
Originally Published on August 29, 2007

The victory over Iraq [in the Gulf War] was not waged as ‘a war to end all wars.’ Even the ‘New World Order’ cannot guarantee an era of perpetual peace.” - George H. Bush Sr., 41st President of the United States (March 6, 1991)

Former U.S. national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski explained that although Japan was important to American geo-strategy, Europe as a geopolitical entity (via the EU and NATO) constitutes America’s bridgehead into Eurasia.

“Unlike America’s links with Japan, NATO entrenches American political influence and military power on the Eurasian mainland,” and that “the allied European nations [were] still highly dependent on U.S. protection, any expansion of Europe’s political scope is automatically an expansion of U.S. influence,” Brzezinski explained in regards to Europe and Japan.

Brzezinski was paying more than just lip service to America’s allies in continental Europe; he was stressing that they were crucial, albeit as subordinates, to American global interests.

The strength of NATO would rest on the vitality of the European Union, an Anglo-American and Franco-German device. To emphasis this Brzezinski wrote that “the United States’ ability to project influence and power in Eurasia relies on close transatlantic ties.” Brzezinski also added that France and Germany, the Franco-German entente, would be America’s vital partners in NATO expansion and securing Eurasia, but a united Europe was an essential prerequisite. In regards to the Franco-German entente, Brzezinski wrote in 1998:

“In the western periphery of Eurasia, the key players will continue to be France and Germany, and America’s central goal should be to continue to expand the democratic European bridgehead.” This was essentially the forecast of the “EU expansion” that has gone hand-in-hand with earlier NATO expansion since the end of the Cold War. According to Brzezinski, it would be up to the Franco-German entente to led Europe: “ America cannot create a more united Europe on its own—that is a task for the Europeans, especially the French and the Germans.”

None of the Pentagon’s geo-strategic plans can go forward without the EU and NATO. For this to happen it is essential that a strategic consensus between the Anglo-American alliance and the Franco-German entente be forged. The Anglo-American alliance has pursued this track and deeper integration with the Franco-German side, while also taking an adversarial stance against the Franco-German entente. Iraq is a symbolic testimony to this rivalry, while Lebanon and NATO expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean is a parallel testimony to the strategic cooperation between the Anglo-American alliance and the Franco-German entente. A contradictory and confusing message is sent from these tracks, but there is always more to the picture. However, it is clear that Franco-German and Anglo-American interests must be synchronized for America to expand its global control.

The Endgame: A “Single Market” Under One World Administration?

“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer...” -Major-General Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corps Commander (War Is a Racket, 1935)

After the Second World War, it was believed that from the nucleolus of Britain and American that a “New World Order” would be formed. Britain and America even had a combined military staff and combined chiefs of military staff. Visions for a singular global polity have vividly been tied to the Anglo-American establishment. In 1966, Professor Carroll Quigley, a noted American historian, wrote in his book Hope and Tragedy: A History of the World in Our Time that economics and finance vis-à-vis banking conglomerates were the engine in this drive and the real forces controlling national policies. Carroll Quigley wrote in regards to the Anglo-American alliance:

“I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”

For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia,” insists Brzezinski. He also contends, “Now a non-Eurasian power [i.e., the U.S.] is preeminent in Eurasia—and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.” In 1997 Brzezinski also stated that, in order to co-opt the Franco-German entente, a “Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement, already advocated by a number of prominent Atlantic leaders, could also mitigate the risk of growing economic rivalry between a more united EU and the United States.”

There is opposition in North America to what is believed to be the emergence of a projected “North American Union.” This North American entity would further amalgamate Canada, the United States, and Mexico, but the mechanisms for a grander global confederacy have already been drawn. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the creation of the EU were stepping stones towards this aspiration. Economics is the key that fuses these polities.

A summit between the EU and U.S. has shed light on plans for economic amalgamation. The term used at the summit was “single market” by “renewing the Trans-Atlantic partnership.” This is the same term used to describe the “common market” as it intensified Western European integration, which eventually gave birth to the European Union. At the summit, President Bush Jr. met with Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, and Federal Chancellor Merkel. Frau Merkel, while officially there on behalf of the EU, represented the interests of the Franco-German entente while President Bush Jr. represented Anglo-American interests. Jose Manuel Barroso as the President of the European Commission represented both Anglo-American and Franco-German interests, because the EU is a joint Anglo-American and Franco-German body. America is a de facto EU power due to its alliance with Britain, one of the three major EU powers along with France and Germany.

An agreement was reached between the EU and U.S. to integrate the markets and regulations of America and Europe even further. This agreement was another layer to add to the strategic consensus that was reached at NATO’s Riga Summit. Both sides also stated that economics is the driving spirit in their relationship and that politics mattered very little. The liberal and conservative leaders of America and Europe are merely two sides of the same coin.

Decades after the end of the Cold War the globe is wrapped within a state of almost perpetual war dominated by the military might of America. The last lines in The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and the Geostrategic Imperatives reveal the ultimate objective of Anglo-American policy: “These efforts will have the added historical advantage of benefiting from the new web of global linkages that is growing exponentially outside the more traditional nation-state system. That web—woven by multinational corporations, NGOs (…) already creates an informal global system that is inherently congenial to more institutionalized and inclusive global cooperation [a reference to global government].”

Brzezinski goes on to predict that: “In the course of the next several decades, a functioning structure of global cooperation, based on geopolitical realities, could thus emerge and gradually assume the mantle of the world’s current ‘regent’ [a reference to the U.S.],” and “Geostrategic success in that cause would represent a fitting legacy of America’s role as the first, only, and last truly global superpower.” All around the globe nation-states are being absorbed into larger and larger political and socio-economic entities. This is part of the story of globalization, but it has its dark side. This is the globalization of the few and not of the many.

The Fight for Civilization and the Gathering Storm

“When all is said and done, the conflict in Afghanistan will be to the war on terrorism what the North African campaign was to World War II: an essential beginning on the path to victory. But compared to what looms over the horizon—a wide-ranging war in locales from Central Asia to the Middle East and, unfortunately, back again to the United States—Afghanistan will prove but an opening battle.” -Robert Kagan and William Kristol, The Gathering Storm (The Weekly Standard, October 29, 2001)

One cannot help but remember what was elucidated in 2001 during the start of the “Global War on Terror” by two members of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), stating that Afghanistan was only part of a “wide-ranging war.” Both Robert Kagan and William Kristol are deeply linked to U.S. foreign and military policy extending from writing presidential speeches to having a former spouse as the U.S. ambassador to NATO. It is not coincidental that a portion of their editorial from October of 2001 in The Weekly Standard has actually materialized. These men should be taken for their words when they say that Afghanistan is merely the “opening battle” compared to what is waiting in the horizon.

Referring back to Robert Kagan and William Kristol:

“This war will not end in Afghanistan. It is going to spread and engulf a number of countries in conflicts of varying intensity. It could well require the use of American military power in multiple places simultaneously. It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid. And it is going to put enormous and perhaps unbearable strain on parts of an international coalition that basks in contented consensus.”

The “international coalition” being referred to is NATO and the international military network based around the U.S. and the “unbearable strain” is war, but of an unknown scale. On August 10, 2007 Lieutenant-General Douglas Lute, the “War Czar” overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and any expanded theatre, publicly talked about restoring a mandatory military draft. The march to war is not waning, but driving the world towards the abyss.

Afghanistan was the first volley in an advance phase of the global conflict that was in its preparatory stages decades ago during the Iraq-Iran War, the Gulf War, and the Kosovo War. Where this global conflict, this “long war” will lead us is unknown, but all humanity is in this together. The American people will sooner or later feel the pain of war as their freedom is effected. Autocracy is a prerequisite to grand empires. Brzezinski has pointed out that “America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad,” and “never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy.” Deviancy is being normalized all over the globe because of this global project. Those that are behind such projects must be reduced to social leprids, as outcasts, denounced by all societies.

Resistance in the Middle East: The Power of the People

“The Iraqi Resistance is by definition democratic as it is the spontaneous expression of a people who took its destiny into its hands, and is by definition progressive as it defends the interests of the people.” -Hana Al-Bayaty (March 18, 2007)

Anglo-American planners have underestimated the capacity of the power of ordinary people and the human spirit. In the Middle East it has been the resistance of ordinary people that has brought militant globalization to a standstill. Popular resistance movements have bogged down the military might of the remaining global superpower.

A nation is only as legitimate as the people(s) who live in it define it. America is not at war with individual nations, but with the people(s) of these nations. Nor are the American people at war with these nations, it is the American ruling establishment and elites that are at war with these people(s).

The forces of resistance are the forces of the will of the people, without the support of the people none of them could last or stand up to some of the most powerful war machines in human history.

The wars in the Middle East are as much about choice as they are about the right to live. What is at stake is self-determination and liberty. These wars represent the drive to impose an overall monopoly of controls over other nations by a few who have hijacked the foreign policies of America and Britain to serve their own goals.

The Iraqi Resistance and the other resistance movements of the Middle East are movements of the peoples and by nature egalitarian. Would anyone in the so-called West dare label the French, Czechoslovakian, Greek, Libyan, Chinese, Malaysian, and Soviet resistance movements against Germany, Italy, and Japan during the Second World War as terrorist movements? However, the occupying Axis governments labeled these movements as terrorists. Did not France and the other areas occupied by Germany and the Axis Powers not have governments that said the Axis Powers were welcomed forces bringing stability as do the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan? For example, in France there was the Vichy Government; when Germany was defeated the leaders of the Vichy Government in France were executed as traitors.

The U.S. government misleadingly claims that it is bringing democracy to these lands, but since when was democracy forced from the top down to the bottom? Is this not the opposite of democracy; things being forced down from the top to the bottom? Democracy is an expression of the masses that manifests itself upwards and not from the opposite direction.

No force on earth can defeat the popular will of the people; this is why domestic populations are manipulated into supporting wars. It is only division that allows small groups to take temporary reign over the people(s). However, for every scheme and plan to create division and anarchy amongst the people(s) of the world there is a plan to unite them and strengthen them. This is one of the greatest fears of many in positions of power. This is the fear of any awakening of large societal groups and populations.

There is no greater ally to the movements of resistance in the Middle East and beyond than unadulterated public opinion in the rest of the world. The people(s) of Britain, Israel, and the U.S. are also victims of their own governments who manipulate their fears and create animosity between them and other nations. This in itself is a great crime. What differences exist between nations are only a means to test the best of them.

Fear and hate are the weapons of the real terrorists, the masters of deception, and those who belittle others for profit and personal gain. These are the terrorists who give orders in positions of political leadership in the White House and elsewhere at the expense of their own people and the rest of humanity.

The world is now embarking into the abyss of perpetual war and a period in which the contemplation of the use of nuclear weapons is being made. A stand must be made by individuals of good conscience and will. It seems possible that it will be a matter of time before the citizens of Europe, North America, and other lands will be compelled or necessitated to join the peoples of occupied lands in resistance.

War must be averted on two fronts; in the shorter-term (as differentiated from “short-term”) or near future, war must be averted from emerging in the Middle East, and in the longer-term in Eurasia. Only the resistance of the people and public opinion can stop war from enveloping the globe. Public opinion must translate into public action if humanity it to be spared from a massive war—a war that could prove to become a nuclear armageddon.

Countdown to 1984?

“In brief, the U.S. policy goal must be unapologetically twofold: to perpetuate America’s own dominant position for at least a generation and preferably longer still; and to create a geopolitical framework that can absorb the inevitable shocks and strains of social-political change...” -Zbigniew Brzezinski (The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, 1997)

In a twist of Orwellian fate, the earth seems closer to appearing like a rendition of the world in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. However, the road ahead is not scripted. The future is only anticipated and planned, but never certain in a universe of infinite probabilities. Time will tell where the road ahead will guide us. Those that see themselves as masters of destiny have had their ideas proven wrong in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia, and Lebanon. It may look as if opposition to a war agenda is like tiny raindrops beating against an unrelenting mountain, but mountains can be eventually eroded by those tiny raindrops. There exists a “sensitive dependence on initial conditions,” commonly called the “butterfly effect,” whereas the flaps of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil may set off a tornado in Texas. Individual actions can offset the march to war that is unfolding on this planet.

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