Leaked Wikileaks Doc Reveals US Military Use of IMF, World Bank As “Unconventional” Weapons
By
Arjun Walia
from Collective Evolution
Arjun Walia
from Collective Evolution In Brief
- The Facts:In light of
recent events in Venezuela Wikileaks published a revealing document that
highlights
the fact that financial institutions are not independent, that they are owned by, and in turn own/work together with the US government to fulfill agendas. - Reflect On:The secrecy in our world runs rampant, under the guise of 'national security' when it's really because secrets need to be kept to avoid the population waking up to the tremendous amount of unethical corruption that plagues our geopolitical world.
As most of you reading this will know, Julian Assange was recently dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Assange has long been subjected to ridicule and character assassination
by the Deep State owned mainstream media, and for one reason, it’s the
same reason they’ve been wanting to snatch him up for so long. It’s
because for years he has been sharing information that the global elite
around the world did not want him to share. He’s been publishing
information that threatens various elitist, corporate, and political
interests around the globe as well as information showing just how much
the public is deceived to, lied to, and manipulated in several different
ways in order to justify actions that do not resonate with the majority
of people on planet Earth.
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Various media outlets have been
silenced, censored, and have and their revenue streams taken away,
including us. This is why we created CETV, a platform to combat the censorship we are currently experiencing. In Episode 5, we go deep into Assange’s arrest. I also recently published an article about his arrest, and the truth behind his arrest: What Julian Assange’s Arrest Tells Us About Our World. We’ve published many Wikileak leaks as well, the latest one being a document exposing a “Secret Us Base on the Moon.”
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I recently came across an article published on MintPress News. It was written by Whitney Webb is,
who is a staff writer for MintPress News and has contributed to several
other independent, alternative outlets. Her work has appeared on sites
such as Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire
among others. She also makes guest appearances to discuss politics on
radio and television. She currently lives with her family in southern
Chile.
In her article,
she references a leaked military manual on “unconventional warfare”
that was recently highlighted by WikiLeaks. The U.S. Army states that
major global financial institutions — such as the World Bank,
International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) — are used as unconventional,
financial “weapons in times of conflict up to and including large-scale
general war,” as well as in leveraging “the policies and cooperation of
state governments.”
The rest of her article is posted below:
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The document,
officially titled “Field Manual (FM) 3-05.130, Army Special Operations
Forces Unconventional Warfare” and originally written in September 2008,
was recently highlighted by
WikiLeaks on Twitter in light of recent events in Venezuela as well as
the years-long, U.S.-led economic siege of that country through
sanctions and other means of economic warfare. Though the document has
generated new interest in recent days, it had originally been released by WikiLeaks in December 2008 and has been described as the military’s “regime change handbook.”
WikiLeaks’ recent tweets on the subject
drew attention to a single section of the 248-page-long document, titled
“Financial Instrument of U.S. National Power and Unconventional
Warfare.” This section in particular notes that the U.S. government
applies “unilateral and indirect financial power through persuasive
influence to international and domestic financial institutions regarding
availability and terms of loans, grants, or other financial assistance
to foreign state and nonstate actors,” and specifically names the World
Bank, IMF and The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), as well as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), as
“U.S. diplomatic-financial venues to accomplish” such goals.
The manual also touts the “state
manipulation of tax and interest rates” along with other “legal and
bureaucratic measures” to “open, modify or close financial flows” and
further states that the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control
(OFAC) – which oversees U.S. sanctions on other nations, like Venezuela
— “has a long history of conducting economic warfare valuable to any
ARSOF [Army Special Operations Forces] UW [Unconventional Warfare]
campaign.”
This section of the manual goes on to
note that these financial weapons can be used by the U.S. military to
create “financial incentives or disincentives to persuade adversaries,
allies and surrogates to modify their behavior at the theater strategic,
operational, and tactical levels” and that such unconventional warfare
campaigns are highly coordinated with the State Department and the
Intelligence Community in determining “which elements of the human
terrain in UWOA [Unconventional Warfare Operations Area] are most
susceptible to financial engagement.”
The role of these “independent”
international financial institutions as extensions of U.S. imperial
power is elaborated elsewhere in the manual and several of these
institutions are described in detail in an appendix to the manual titled
“The Financial Instrument of National Power.” Notably, the World Bank
and the IMF are listed as both Financial Instruments and Diplomatic
Instruments of U.S. National Power as well as integral parts of what the
manual calls the “current global governance system.”
Furthermore, the manual states that the
U.S. military “understand[s] that properly integrated manipulation of
economic power can and should be a component of UW,” meaning that these
weapons are a regular feature of unconventional warfare campaigns waged
by the United States.
Another point of interest is that these
financial weapons are largely governed by the National Security Council
(NSC), which is currently headed by John Bolton. The document notes that
the NSC “has primary responsibility for the integration of the economic
and military instruments of national power abroad.”
“Independent” but controlled
Though the unconventional warfare manual is notable for stating so openly that “independent” financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF are essentially extensions of U.S. government power, analysts have noted for decades that these institutions have consistently pushed U.S. geopolitical goals abroad.
Indeed, the myth of World Bank and IMF
“independence” is quickly eroded by merely looking at the structure and
funding of each institution. In the case of the World Bank, the
institution is located in Washington and the organization’s president
has always been a U.S. citizen chosen directly by
the president of the United States. In the World Bank’s entire history,
the institution’s Board of Governors has never rejected Washington’s
pick.
This past Monday, it was reported that President Donald Trump nominated former
Bear Stearns economist David Malpass to lead the World Bank. Malpass
had famously failed to foresee the destruction of his former employer
during the 2008 financial crisis and is likely to limit World Bank loans
to China and to countries allied or allying with China, given his
well-established reputation as a China hawk.
In addition to choosing its president, the U.S. is also the bank’s largest shareholder,
making it the only member nation to have veto rights. Indeed, as the
leaked unconventional warfare manual notes, “As major decisions require
an 85% supermajority, the United States can block any major changes” to
World Bank policy or the services it offers. Furthermore, the U.S.
Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs banker and “foreclosure king,”
Steve Mnuchin, functions as the World Bank’s governor.
Though the IMF is different from the
World Bank in several respects, such as its stated mission and focus, it
too is largely dominated by U.S. government influence and funding. For
instance, the IMF is also based in Washington and the U.S. is the
company’s largest shareholder — the largest by far, owning 17.46 percent of the institution – and also pays the largest quota for the institution’s maintenance, paying $164 billion in
IMF financial commitments annually. Though the U.S. does not choose the
IMF’s top executive, it uses its privileged position as the
institution’s largest funder to control IMF policy by threatening to withhold its IMF funding if the institution does not abide by Washington’s demands.
Protestors hold an effigy of Captain
America with a photo of IMF Director Christine Lagarde during meetings
by the IMF and World Bank in Lima, Peru, Oct. 9, 2015. Geraldo Caso
Bizama | AP
As a consequence of the lopsided
influence of the U.S. on these institutions’ behavior, these
organizations have used their loans and grants to “trap” nations in debt
and have imposed “structural adjustment” programs on these debt-saddled
governments that result in the mass privatization of state assets,
deregulation, and austerity that routinely benefit foreign corporations
over local economies. Frequently, these very institutions – by pressuring countries to deregulate their financial sector and through corrupt dealings with state actors – bring about the very economic problems that they then swoop in to “fix.”
Guaidó hits up IMF
Given the close relationship between the
U.S. government and these international financial institutions, it
should come as little surprise that – in Venezuela – the U.S.-backed
“interim president” Juan Guaidó – has already requested IMF funds, and thus IMF-controlled debt, to fund his parallel government.
This is highly significant because it
shows that top among Guaidó’s objectives, in addition to privatizing
Venezuela’s massive oil reserves, is to again shackle the country to the
U.S.-controlled debt machine.
As the Grayzone Project recently noted:
Venezuela’s previous elected socialist president, Hugo Chávez, broke ties with the IMF and World Bank, which he noted were “dominated by US imperialism.” Instead Venezuela and other left-wing governments in Latin America worked together to co-found the Bank of the South, as a counterbalance to the IMF and World Bank.
However, Venezuela is far from the only
country in Latin America being targeted by these financial weapons
masquerading as “independent” financial institutions. For instance,
Ecuador – whose current president has sought to bring the country back
into Washington’s good graces – has gone so far as to conduct an “audit”
of its asylum of journalist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in
order to win a $10 billion bailout from
the IMF. Ecuador granted Assange asylum in 2012 and the U.S. has
fervently sought his extradition for still sealed charges ever since.
In addition, last July, the U.S. threatened Ecuador with
“punishing trade measures” if it introduced a measure at the UN to
support breastfeeding over infant formula, in a move that stunned the
international community but laid bare the willingness of the U.S.
government to use “economic weapons” against Latin American nations.
Beyond Ecuador, other recent targets of massive IMF and World Bank “warfare” include Argentina, which awarded the largest IMF bailout loan in history just
last year. That loan package was, unsurprisingly, heavily pushed by the
U.S., according to a statement from Treasury Secretary Mnuchin released last year. Notably, the IMF was instrumental in
causing the complete collapse of the Argentinian economy in 2001,
sending a poor omen for last year’s approval of the record loan package.
Though it was released over a decade
ago, this “U.S. coup manual” recently highlighted by WikiLeaks serves as
a salient reminder that the so-called “independence” of these financial
institutions is an illusion and that they are among the many “financial
weapons” regularly used by the U.S. government to bend countries to its
will and even overthrow U.S.-disfavored governments.
Top Photo | A masked demonstrator
wearing a detail of a 100 U.S. dollar bill protests the government’s
plans to make a deal with the IMF and increase the price of utilities
such as gas and electricity in Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 14, 2018.
Natacha Pisarenko | AP
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