Aug. 13—Two top Washington officials of the U.S. Defense Department—they call it the Department of War—spoke out this week in person from the eastern and western Pacific Ocean, declaring the United States to be the leader of the world, with new and expanding alignments accordingly.
In Panama on Aug. 12, Defense (“War”) Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed a meeting of the Shield of the Americas, formed this past March under President Donald Trump, for the purpose as indicated in its alternate name, A3C: Americas Counter-Cartels Coalition, to collaborate militarily for U.S. purposes in the Western Hemisphere, which at times will be “lethal,” as he emphasized. Hegseth announced that the current 17 A3C member nations have been joined by Colombia, whose representatives he met in Panama. U.S. Southern Command commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan also participated in the A3C meetings Aug. 11-12. He made a show of being aboard the USS Gridley, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, as it went through the Panama Canal. From the legislative branch of the U.S. government, which should be a check and balance, instead come war whoops. Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez, for example, on an Aug. 9 social media post, had superimposed the photo of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over that of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro when he was kidnapped by U.S. forces. Rep. Gimenez wrote, “What’s in store for you….”
In the Philippines on Aug. 10, U.S. Defense Undersecretary for (War) Policy Elbridge Colby made a lengthy presentation in Manila on the supremacy of the United States. “We will mean what we say, and say what we mean. We will not engage in peacocking or moralizing speeches. We will continue to speak softly. But we will continue to carry the world’s biggest stick. We will maintain our peerless and formidable strength here in the world’s key region.” He also said the U.S. would reign supreme in other regions, e.g., restoring the Cold War outlook in Europe.
Adding to the madness and theatrics, the U.S. State Department released on Aug. 11 a YouTube video promoting the “Donald Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. The five-minute faux documentary asserts that, yes, the Monroe Doctrine (1823) was to keep out predatory Europeans from the Americas, but now, under Trump and the War Party, the doctrine will be fulfilled in all its glory, by the United States dominating the entire Western Hemisphere.
This hyper-ventilated War Party militarism in the Asian and American Pacific is in complete accordance with two glaring realities: First, the irresolution of the conflicts in and around Ukraine and Iran shows the strategic failure of the United States and trans-Atlantic war faction, while continuing to perpetrate horrible death and destruction; and secondly, behind the militaristic façade, the condition of the Western economies is a worsening disaster, and is physically unable to deliver on its excessive commitments.
The response of the policy-advocate Elbridge Colby to these realities? In his Manila speech, he dismissed critics of his United States triumphalism as simply tools of the “commentariat” of the world. But on the most dangerous level, he is a leading spokesman for reclassifying nuclear weapons as a “rational option” for President Trump, as Colby referred to them Aug. 4 at the annual U.S. Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium.
What we are seeing is the intensifying of geopolitics—the extension of NATO in particular—into the Pacific. A warning against this was given by Russian President Vladimir Putin while on his visit to the Northern Pacific. He toured economic sites of the Russian community on the island of Iturup, the largest in the Kuril Islands, contested between Russia and Japan. In Putin’s stern warnings on Aug. 12, he nevertheless pointed to the positive impact of multilateral collaboration as shown in the region, by India, China, and Russia using the Northern Sea Route and by the positive concept of using diplomacy to settle territorial disputes, as had been on track years before between Russia and Japan over the Kuril Islands, until Japan’s recent, hostile geopolitical turn.
The active involvement of every citizen and nation now is invaluable to bring out the truth about world affairs and put forward concept-solutions serving all humanity. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and initiator of the International Peace Coalition, put it this way in her weekly webcast Aug. 12, speaking of the rapid changes underway in the world: “I think the most important thing is that you start to think about yourself as being absolutely crucial in making the difference in this unbelievable tectonic change. We have periods where, for decades, politics actually moves smoothly forward; you know, not very exciting, but going back and forth between the different parties, but nothing big changes.
“This time, everything changes. We have a breakdown of the old order, and the emergence of a new order. What we don’t know yet is if it will be World War III, or a new paradigm of the cooperation of the nations on this planet in a peaceful way. And the question is: Are there enough people who mobilize themselves to actually put an alternative on the table? Because in periods like this, the subjective factor is what may make the difference; because it may tilt the situation in one way or another.”
Mobilize to attend, and invite others to, the Sept. 4 international EIR Roundtable, “An Alternative to War and Looting in the Americas.”
