The end of the Cold War in 1989 provided a fantastic opportunity for a major reset in relations between the American people and the people of Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and other nations that US officials had long designated as official enemies of the United States. For almost 45 years following the end of World War II, US officials had inculcated a mindset of deep fear among the American people — fear that the Russians, Chinese, and other communist nations were coming to get us.
It was all one great big racket designed to justify the conversion of the US government from our founding governmental structure of a limited-government republic to a national-security state, a type of totalitarian-like governmental structure that wields omnipotent powers, such as the power of engaging in state-sponsored assassinations.
Fear-mongering, propaganda, and indoctrination are central to a national-security state governmental structure. The national-security state must convince the citizenry that there are scary enemies coming to get them so that the citizenry will continue to support and embrace the national-security state governmental structure and the ever-increasing power and taxpayer-funded largess that is necessary to sustain it.
The racket worked almost perfectly. Americans fell for it hook, line, and sinker. “The Russians are coming!” people cried. “The Reds are everywhere!”
One big exception was when President Kennedy achieved a personal “breakthrough” after the Cuban Missile Crisis by recognizing that the Cold War and the anti-communist crusade were nothing more than one great big racket. After he vowed to bring the racket to an end in his Peace Speech at American University in June 1963, the US national-security establishment dealt with him in Dallas five months later.
Thus, the Cold War racket continued all the way until 1989, when the Soviet Union suddenly and unexpectedly dismantled itself. The Berlin Wall came crashing down and West Germany and East Germany recombined into one nation. The Warsaw Pact dissolved, Russian troops withdrew to Russia, and Eastern European countries gained their independence.
There was an obvious readiness among Russian officials to do a complete reset with respect to relations with the United States. They made it clear that they desired to establish a world of peaceful and friendly relations. The same held true for China, notwithstanding the fact that it was still headed by a communist regime. The same was true for Cuba.
This was a time of great optimism and hope for the American people and the people of the communist world. Why, for a few years afterward, there were even libertarian conferences being held in both China and Russia.
But the hope and optimism did not characterize the US national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. Remember: They needed big official scary enemies to justify their existence. They knew that many Americans were advocating a post-Cold War “peace dividend,” which would have entailed a severe reduction in military-intelligence spending. There was even the danger that Americans might even begin demanding the restoration of their founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.
The US national-security establishment was not going to let that happen, at least not without a big fight. A deadly invasion of Iraq, followed by 11 years of brutal and deadly economic sanctions against the Iraqi people, produced the “blowback” of the 9/11 retaliatory attacks. The national-security establishment was back to the races, this time replacing communism with terrorism as the new official enemy of the American people.
At the same time, however, they never gave up hope of restoring the Cold War to America. It had proven to be too lucrative a racket to simply let it go. If they could combine their “war on communism” racket with their “war on terrorism” racket, they could virtually guarantee that the national-security state governmental structure would remain a permanent and perpetual part of the US government.
That’s why they used their old Cold War dinosaur NATO to begin moving eastward toward Russia, absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact in the process. It wasn’t exactly consistent with the peaceful and friendly world that people had in mind at the end of the Cold War.
Moreover, once the US national-security state became mired in forever wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, US officials could see that China and Russia were prospering, especially given that they weren’t mired in such wars. They could also see that China and Russia were gaining popularity and influence around the world, while there was ever-growing animosity toward the US and its forever deadly and destructive propensity toward war and aggression.
That’s when the US government decided that it was time to “degrade” both China and Russia and initiate the continuation of the old Cold War racket. A vicious trade war and a brutal system of economic sanctions were launched against China, with the aim of diminishing the economic prosperity of that nation. Moreover, the old Cold War dinosaur NATO was used to provoke Russia into invading Ukraine, which provided US national-security state officials with the opportunity to use Ukraine as a proxy or agent to give Russia its own “Afghanistan,” thereby “degrading” Russia through the loss of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers and ever-increasing war expenditures.
Thus, what began with lots of hope and optimism at the end of Cold War I ended up with Russia and China being restored to the top tier of America’s official enemies as part of Cold War II.
According to a recent article in Politico, however, the US government is now shifting its attention to Latin America, using its decades-old, ongoing, never-ending, perpetual drug war as its excuse. That shift in official enemies is clearly reflected by the new US obsessiveness with Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
The irony is that when Cold War I ended, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were so panicky over having lost Russia as their official enemy, they were suggesting that they could help fight the drug war as their new mission. And so here they are — with their new official enemies — drugs and drug lords in Latin America.
Don’t think for a minute, however, that they are giving up on Russia and China as official enemies. They are just hedging their bets by adding more official enemies to keep the American people agitated and afraid. In that way, Americans will continue to look on the US national-security state to keep them “safe” and “secure” from all those scary official enemies.
Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.
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