Objectives of the U.S. War against Terror [Archives:2002/03/Law & Diplomacy]

(Part 5 of 10)
Ahmad M. Abdulghani
Chairman ofthe al-Jazeera & al-Khaleej Center for Studies
Many people may think that the wars that the United States fought incurred heavy losses on it, especially the Korean and Vietnamese wars. In fact, the USA achieved historic victories beside the collapse of the USSR and its socialist Pact. It also took advantage of the colonial legacy of the European countries when outlining its global strategy. The most important thing is that it developed its own techniques to introduce changes in the whole world in a drive to make of itself free from any moral or legal commitments.
The USA has been able to neutralize its European allies in their formerly dominated regions and subsequently take over the situation there. It has also been able to convince its European allies to take part in different wars under the pretext of protecting the achievements of the Western civilizations. Under the later pretext the USA has dragged the European allies to support its foreign policies whatsoever. Consequently, the European allies have so far failed to adopt their own policies, as each attempt has been doomed unsuccessful. The France of president De Gaulle is just a case in point. The United States went in so far that it foiled any attempt to establish strong relations between its European allies but within the US foreign policy’s parameters.
The USA took part in many wars in different parts of the world and although these wars sounded to have no relations to each other, the fact is that all these wars have been a well-orchestrated episodic wars. Apart from the strategic objectives of these wars they also represented a need for manufacturing and upgrading its weaponry. It has also benefited from those wars in understanding the psychology of the societies it warred with. The USA has further been able to re-draw the military and security systems of these countries within the context of its relations with them. This is mainly meant for making these countries satellite states for the USA. These wars have also given the USA a chance to have a military presence in so many countries of the world either under the pretext of protecting these countries or training the armies of these countries on the modern US-made weapons, as well as for precluding any leakage of military information about these sophisticated arms. And this is what happened when it sold an AWACS squadron to a Gulf state in the beginning of the 1980s and demanded it to entrust their operation to US experts.
In the contrary of that the USA has attempted to avoid any involvement in Mid-Asia as it restricted its activities to the outer boundaries of the continent and this had spared it a lot of predicaments.
For the fact that the US strong economy has played a major role in its success mostly in all domains it has also benefited from wars economically through selling all the old military hardware at very expensive prices. In addition, it has bounded many countries with oppressive agreements that enabled it to exploit the wealth of those countries beside giving its companies the upper-hand in running the resources of those countries as well.

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