Global Hegemony.

[pnorman]

Here's an interesting item I came across, while looking for something else.
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The drive to heighten hegemony

For about a decade the United States has been the world's sole superpower. It has had global supremacy, both economic and military. Today there is evidence that members of the U.S. corporate elite, the dominant influence in Washington, have been engaged in a global offensive to maintain and strengthen U.S. hegemony. The Clinton Administration has sought to give neo-liberal leadership to this offensive, which takes economic and military form. Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times authority on foreign affairs, throws light on this twin thrust of current U.S. foreign policy when he comments on the relationship between U.S. strength in the global market place and its strength in the world's military arena: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist -- McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the first designer of the F15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy , and Marine Corps." Thomas Friedman is a well respected, well-connected journalist, and a supporter of current U.S. foreign policy in its broadest outlines. His views on this matter are evidently close to those of the Washington establishment, Republican and Democratic. The preeminent official spokesperson for this policy seems to be William J. Cohen, Clinton's Secretary of Defense, an outstanding Republican. Addressing the executives of Fortune's 500 leading U.S. corporations, meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October 1998, Secretary Cohen told them, "Business follows the flag . . . We provide the security. You provide the investment."(1)

During the Cold War a concern for the foreign interests of the major U.S. corporations was always a sub-text of the military imperative. Today it is the main text. "Free markets and democracy" (with free markets given priority) have now replaced "the Evil Empire" as the catchwords of U.S. foreign military policy.
President Clinton and U.S. nuclear weapons

The military side of the current offensive is to be seen particularly in Washington's effort to maintain and extend the Cold War policies and positions that the United States developed to compete with its rival superpower, the Soviet Union. One of these was a large nuclear weapons arsenal. President Clinton, despite the growing current of anti-nuclear weapons sentiment at home and abroad, has insisted on maintaining this arsenal indefinitely, with both Republican and Democratic parties in major agreement. Republican conservatives in the Senate, however, recently defeated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to which President Clinton had given weak support. They want the United States to keep nuclear weapons but without international restrictions. Thus their defeat of the Treaty can be seen as the right-wing Republicans' contribution to U.S. military hegemony, achieved unilaterally, as they prefer.

The Republican vote opened the door to a new nuclear arms race, making the world a more dangerous place for Okinawans and all other inhabitants of this planet. At almost the same time, the U.S. press carried the news of declassified national security documents showing the Pentagon had secretly stored hundreds of nuclear weapons in Okinawa during the Cold War.(2) Okinawans are citizens of Japan, the world's only atom-bombed nation. News of the Treaty's defeat shocked public opinion internationally. For Okinawans it must have been especially disturbing.
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http://www.boondocksnet.com/centennial/sctexts/schirmer2000.html

pnorman

[blogbear]

1. Little boys may or may not grow up but they keep playing 'king of

the mountain'