All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
The
U.S. Government spends on its military, annually, in not just its
‘Defense’ Department, but all of its departments taken together, around $1.5 trillion dollars.
(Much of that money is hidden in the Treasury Department and others, in
order to convey to the public the false idea that ‘only’ around 800
billion dollars annually is now being spent for the U.S. military.)
On 25 April 2022, the Stockholm Internal Peace Research Foundation (SIPRI) headlined “World military expenditure passes $2 trillion for first time”,
and reported that, “US military spending amounted to $801 billion in
2021, a drop of 1.4 per cent from 2020. The US military burden decreased
slightly from 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2020 to 3.5 per cent in 2021.”
However, they did not include the full U.S. figure, but only the portions of it that are being paid out by the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department. Consequently, a more realistic
global total would have been around $2.8 trillion, which is around
twice the approximately $1.5T U.S. annual military expenditure. All of
the world’s other 172 calculated countries, together, had spent an amount approximately equivalent to that.
Prior to the creation by U.S. President Harry S. Truman of the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department, on 18 September 1947, replacing the U.S. War Department that had been created on 7 August 1789 by America’s Founders (shortly after the U.S. Constitution had become effective on 4 March 1789), the U.S. was a democracy — however flawed, but a real one, nevertheless.The U.S. actually began its transformation into a dictatorship (serving the owners of the military corporations and of their extraction-corporate dependencies such as Chevron)
when, on 25 July 1945, Truman decided that if the U.S. wouldn’t conquer
the Soviet Union, then the Soviet Union would conquer the U.S., and,
so, he started the Cold War, on that date, determined that his top priority as
the U.S. President, would be to place the U.S. Government onto a
virtually permanent war-footing, even though World War II against
imperialistic fascisms (the “Axis” powers) was just about to end at that
time, and would clearly be a victory for the U.S. allies — mainly, the
Soviet Union, and the UK empire.
.
Truman, very much unlike his immediate predecessor, FDR, who had been a passionately committed anti-imperialist, had previously been on the fence about empires; but, going forward after that date, he would be totally committed to making the entire world into the first-ever single global
empire, which would be in control over the entire planet by the U.S.
Government and shared only by its ‘allies’ (vassal nations).
.
That
was Truman’s American dream, and it contrasted starkly against FDR’s
dream of a future United Nations that would possess a global monopoly on
all strategic weaponry and serve as a democratic global federal
republic of all nations, each of which nation would have its own legal
system for internal affairs, but all of which nations would be subject
to the sole authority of the United Nations regarding all international
matters. Truman despised FDR and got rid of FDR’s entire Cabinet and
close advisors, within less than two years. Truman enormously admired General Dwight Eisenhower,
whose advice to him had clinched in Truman’s mind on 25 July 1945 that
Winston Churchill was right that if the U.S. would not conquer the
Soviet Union, then the Soviet Union would conquer the United States.
.
(Eisenhower, at the very end of his own Presidency, warned Americans against
the military-industrial complex that Truman and he himself had jointly
created. He was one of history’s slickest liars, and wanted history to
remember him as having been a man of peace. He was actually just as much
of an imperialist as Truman had been.) And that decision, by Truman, on
that date, is what placed the U.S. Government inexorably onto the path
toward future rule by a military-industrial complex that would rape the
U.S. Constitution — undo the most important achievement of America’s
Founders.
The U.S. Constitution had been written by people who loathed the very concept of “standing armies” — any permanent-war government. They had rebelled against an empire, and condemned all empires. This is the reason why they did everything within their power to design a Government that would prohibit
any such thing here. And their Government, designed in this way, served
the nation well throughout the years from 1789-1947, after which their
Constitution gradually became practically abandoned.
A document dated 21 January 1946 from the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and titled “STATEMENT OF EFFECT OF ATOMIC WEAPONS ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND MILITARY ORGANIZATION”, opened with a “Memorandum by the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army,” which itself opened:
“Upon
reading the Joint Strategic Survey Committee’s statement on the above
subject (J.C.S. 1477/5), I obtained a somewhat unfavorable over-all
impression. While most of the specific statements made seem reasonable,
the over-all tone seems to depreciate the importance of of the
development of atomic weapons and to insist unnecessarily strongly that
the conventional armed services will not be eliminated. While I agree
entirely, so far as the immediate future is concerned, with the latter
concept, I have not felt that there is strong public demand at the
present that the services be in fact eliminated. The general tone of the
statement might therefore be misconstrued by Congress and the public,
and be looked upon as an indication of reactionism on the part of the
military and an unwillingness under any circumstances to reduce the size
of the military establishment.”
That was at a time when the widespread American assumption was that there would have no
standing army in this country. Within less than two years of FDR’s
death on 12 April 1945, such a permanent-war U.S. Government became
officially created. FDR’s plan for a U.N. that would internationally
outlaw all empires became replaced by Truman’s plan for an America that
would itself become what Hitler, himself, had only aspired to create: the world’s very first all-encompassing global empire. Truman’s dream is today’s American dream, in today’s Washington DC; and here was how the Nobel Peace-Prize-winning U.S. President, Barack Obama (the other of history’s slickest liars), stated it to graduating West Point cadets, on 28 May 2014:
The
United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has
been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to
come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves
capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach
worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes
compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. …
It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.
It’s
endlessly onward and upward, for the U.S. All other nations are
“dispensable.” And that objective is backed-up now, by half of the
world’s military expenditures.
This is how it happened. It happened by deceit, at every step of the way.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s
next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL:
Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change.
It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order
to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the
world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social
‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Eric Zuesse, Global Research, 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment