Deep Throat Returns: Insider Notes from the Pentagon

A New World Order

14 January 2003

What if a new world order happened and nobody noticed?

If we looked at global politics and power distribution from say, the moon, after making a few rounds, we might come to conclusions starkly different than those seen on the front pages of Earth’s newspapers and websites.

Anyone can look at global politics today and locate “superpower.” But from the moon, it might not be the unipolar world that the White House imagines.

Instead, the man in the moon might instead identify two world superpowers -- Israel and China. They are not known to be peer competitors, in fact have frequently served each other as business partners in the global defense supply chain.

I know I have taken some wild-assed positions in these spaces, but bear with me.

Israel picks up the phone and calls the White House, the United States Congress and the Pentagon with information, direction, advice, and demands. Most of these calls are not social, but relate directly to military policy, foreign policy, economic aid and even domestic politics.

China has (and to keep the focus on Iraq, neoconservative advisors to the President are counting on China to exercise) the same relationship with Pyongyang.

The dominant government ideologues in Israel and China think in terms of a great solution, where their government, power and culture is central, regionally militarily and economically dominant, stable and secure. Not a final solution, but almost exactly like one. Utopian.

Part of the process to achieve the great utopia includes, for both Israel and China, restriction of press freedom, state bureaus dedicated to censorship, and severe restraints on the practice or proselytizing of non-state sanctioned religions. Extensive government involvement in most aspects of the economy are also part of it. Maintenance of a police-style or security-focused state feeds both the necessary state control and a sustained “us against them” style patriotism.

By this time, if you are good American, you will say, “But WE are the only superpower, we are the global model and policeman, and as Willie Wonka says, “We are the music makers. And we are the dreamer of dreams!”

Well, maybe. But when you look at who’s getting what they want and how they are getting it, it looks like a couple of strategically-oriented countries with some less clever and more tactically-oriented proxies implementing their strategy.

Israel has the great, and more importantly, aggressive military forces of the United States at its service.

China has the less great, but also more importantly, very aggressive military forces of North Korea at its service.

For various reasons, the global view towards China and Israel seems to be (unless you are a Palestinian or a Chinese dissident) that these socialist-corporatist nuclear giants are pretty benign. To criticize an Israeli or a Chinese government official is to be out of step with the bulk of world opinion. In other words, we tread lightly and rarely call either government to task.

On the other hand, most of the world sees the U.S. and North Korea as militarist territory-hungry power mongers, full of threats and aggression, led by little men with some severe intellectual limitations advised by warlovers who don’t trust their respective departments of state.

Wait a minute! Aren’t we the ones who say who is and is not a member of the evil axis? Nobody else has an evil axis, and that ought to show you who is in charge of the unipolar world! Well, except for the inconvenient fact that North Korea was an afterthought on the original list, which simply included all the enemies of Israel (but Libya and Syria lost out). That’s what happens when you let your foreign legionnaires have a vote, and they happen to value diversity.

In any case, the need for a response – either diplomatically or militarily – to North Korean chest beating and real threats – apparently wasn’t expected by Israel.

From the man in the moon’s vantage point, China is pulling those strings and the game continues. Advantage, China.

A game of chess has a board, black and white pieces, and two players who think strategically. Who those players are on today’s global stage, however, is not black and white.

We live in an era when most of America is not sure how many U.S. troops are posted overseas and where they are, what they are doing, why they are doing it, how much it costs, or how it fits in the United States Constitution, history or tradition.

That’s a toughie. A starting point is to critically assess whether or not the U.S. is indeed that great city on the hill, or if we are simply one of the foolish virgins who slumbered, let their lights go out by failing to think about their future, and were ultimately locked out of it.