What is the reason then for the United States to be engaged in what we see now as permanent warfare?

Let's consider what George Kennan said when he was the director of Policy Planning of the US State Department in 1948. Kennan honestly stated that the United States had 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of the world's population. Therefore, the real task, according to Kenan, for the years to come was for the United States to find ways to hold on "this position of disparity."1 American militarism since the end of World War II and now in this post Cold-War era has always been about sustaining "this position of disparity." Therefore, the United States must continue its political and economic domination, which necessitates the use of military force to obtain and maintain its hegemony in the world.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, even though the US did not cease it military aggression, it became harder for the United Sates to justify the endless increase of its military capacity. This is obvious in a 2000 article written by Condoleezza Rice, who served as an advisor to George W. Bush during his first presidential campaign. The summary of the article states:

With no Soviet threat, America has found it exceedingly difficult to define its "national interest." Foreign policy in a Republican administration should refocus the country on key priorities: building a military ready to ensure American power, coping with rogue regimes, and managing Beijing and Moscow. Above all, the next president must be comfortable with America's special role as the world leader.

Then came the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, which gave the power center in the US the rationale for further expansion of its military capacity. The United States subsequently declared a universal, unilateral, and protracted "global war on terrorism."

There are certain characteristics about American militarism in the Post Cold War era. I will first address these characteristics. Then I will talk about current American military expansion in Asia. The last part of my talk will dispel the myth of the invincibility of American military might. I will show that the basis of US hegemony is deteriorating and that even though the military strength of the US appears to be stronger than ever, the forces supporting this tremendous military superpower are crumbling. In the final analysis the United States cannot use its military power to maintain "this position of disparity," as Kennan called it. We, the people of the world, are standing up, and we are fighting to reverse "this position of disparity" by taking back what belongs to us.

1. American militarism in Post Cold War Era & how is it different from before?

Many na ƒÂ¯ve peace loving people in the United States wrongly believed that once the Cold War with the former Soviet Union ended, there would be peace on earth. They even dreamed that there would be "peace dividends" in the government budget that could finally be diverted to fund urgently needed education and health care. Have they been in for a big surprise!

In 2005 two years after the United States invaded Iraq, Andrew J. Bacevich published a book entitled: The New American Militarism, How American Are Seduced by War. This book is significant, because its author is not on the Left; in fact Bacevich is a very pro-establishment fellow. In addition to being a West Point Military School graduate and a Vietnam veteran, he authored many articles published by conservative magazines, such as Weekly Standard and National Review. Moreover, he was a former Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Bacevich gave evidence in his book that American Militarism has reached a new stage in which war has become the normal order of business in Washington and that it is, in fact, increasingly the American way of life. (Bacevich and Engelhardt 1)

Bacevich and others pointed out several characteristics of American militarism in the Post Cold War era. They are as follows:

1. The Normalization of War in Washington

One new characteristic of American militarism in the post-Cold War era that Bacevich pointed out is that it "manifests itself through an increased propensity to use force, leading, in effect, to the normalization of war." He said that the United States used to at least have some self-restraint regarding using force but now any self-restraint has all but disappeared. As a result the frequency of war has increased. He counted that there were six large-scale US military actions between 1945 and 1988 & a period of 43 years. However, between 1989 and 2003, a period of merely 14 years, the United States launched nine major military interventions. In Bacevich's words:

The brief period extending from 1989's Operation Just Cause (the overthrow of Manuel Noriega) to 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom (the overthrow of Saddam Hussein) featured nine major military interventions. And that count does not include innumerable lesser actions such as Bill Clinton's signature cruise missile attack against obscure targets in obscure places, the almost daily bombing of Iraq throughout the late 1990s, or the quasi-combat missions that have seen GIs dispatched to Rwanda, Columbia, East Timor, and the Philippines. Altogether the tempo of US military interventionism has become nothing short of frenetic. (Bacevich, TomDispatch 4)

As the United Sates increasingly views itself as the sole military power in the world, it has less and less restraint in using military action to force other nations to concede. The United States has long ceased behaving like a civilized country in the world it dominates. In the past the American ruling class put on a show that it had tried but failed with diplomacy before using military force, but today, in Dick Cheney's words, force "makes your diplomacy more effective going forward ¢â‚¬Â¦" (Bacevich 5)

With increasing military intervention and the never-ending quest for military supremacy, the Pentagon budget is reaching new records. Bacevich calculated that in real dollars (after adjustment for inflation) the Pentagon's spending is 12% larger than the average defense budget during the Cold War era. The projection is that by 2009 the total US military budget in real dollars will be 23% more than the Cold War average. (Bacevich 3) Not only there was never any "peace dividend" realized at the end of the Cold War, the US Congress has so far appropriated $700 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Report of Congressional Research Service, February 8, 2008).

2. American Quest for Permanent Military Supremacy

Another significant change in American militarism in the post-Cold War era is its quest for permanent military supremacy. During the Cold War the Soviet Union was the real or perceived enemy of the United States, so the US military strove to match and surpass that of the Soviet Union. In the post-Cold War era the United States has become the world's sole superpower, and it has every intention to keep it that way. The plan for the United States to maintain its sole military super power status had been conceived long before the 9/11 attacks.

In 1992, during the older Bush administration, the "Defense Planning Guidance" (DPG) was drafted under the supervision of Paul Wolfowitz, the disgraced ex-President of the World Bank, who was then serving as the Deputy Secretary of Defense under Dick Cheney. The DPG established the United States' strategy of maintaining its military hegemony in three major areas. First, the US would pursue a policy that will prevent any state from developing military capabilities equal to or greater than its own. Second, the US would carry out preemptive strikes against states that develop new military capabilities that might eventually endanger the United States and its friends or allies. These preemptive strikes were to be carried out before any imminent threat. The last part of the DPG insisted that US officials and military personnel are immune to prosecution by any international war crime tribunals. (Excerpts from DPG, New York Times, March 10, 1992; Monthly Review, January 2006) This near final draft of the DPG was leaked to the press and caused strong reactions from U.S allies, because the DPG named both Germany and Japan as potential military powers that could one day match the US, and it emphasized that they should never be allowed to present that challenge.

The DPG did not get approval as the official US military strategy at the time, but the US continued to find ways to assert its sole super power status in the post-Cold War era. In "Endless Military Superiority" in the Nation Michael T. Klare described the meaning of the Pentagon's quest for permanent supremacy. According to Klare, as early as 1999 Bush gave a significant speech restating many of the concepts of the DPG, especially embracing the idea of permanent military superiority. Klare said that in this speech, reportedly prepared with the help of Wolfowitz, Bush said, "Our forces in the next century must be agile, lethal, readily deployable and require a minimum of logistical support," and "We must be able to project our power over long distances, in days or weeks rather than months," and to identify targets by a variety of means and to destroy them almost instantly "with an array of weapons" (2).

After the 2000 elections the White House was occupied by key figures that helped draft the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. The attacks in 2001 provided the opportunity to carry out the major provisions in the DPG. The US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 followed closely the strategy spelled out in the 1992 DPG, including the "preemptive" strikes on sovereign nations that "might eventually endanger the United States" or "that have not yet emerged to challenge us." Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq had any military capability to challenge the United States' military superiority, nor did any possibility exist for them to threaten the security of the United States in the future. However, the US was able to use its hegemony to perpetuate the "weapons of mass destruction" lies as justification to invade and to occupy these sovereign nations. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, however, set the important precedent that the US will not hesitate to act unilaterally with its superior military power against any country.

The 9/11 attacks also enabled the Bush administration to launch a large-scale propaganda campaign to generate fear among American people. They provided the opportunity to press the US Congress for large military appropriations to fight the wars and to research and produce new and more sophisticated surveillance devices and more "agile and lethal" weapons. This was when the shift in the Pentagon took place. In Klare's words,

When alluding to this shift, the Pentagon officials speak of replacing the  ¢â‚¬Ëœthreat-based strategy' that long governed US military planning with what they describe as a  ¢â‚¬Ëœcapabilities-base approach.' This means that the Defense Department will no longer organize its forces to counter specific military threats posed by clearly identifiable enemies, but instead will acquire a capacity to defeat any conceivable type of attack mounted by any imaginable adversary at any point in time &from now to the far-distant future. Put differently, this is a mandate for the pursuit of permanent military supremacy." (1)

In a statement, former Pentagon Chief Rumsfeld said that the building of US military force was to be "against the unknown, the uncertain, the unseen, and the unexpected" and prepare "to deter and defeat adversaries that have not yet emerged to challenge us."2 It may seem far-fetched in its scope, but he was simply expressing identical points made in the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance.

After the fall of the former Soviet Union and the deterioration of Russia's nuclear weapons, the United States has monopolized the nuclear offensive system. In "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy" (Foreign Affairs in 2006) the authors said, "The United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike." Nuclear supremacy means, according to the authors of this article, that the United States has a nuclear triad comprising of strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic-missile-launching submarines, and it has the ability to destroy all of an adversary's nuclear forces with the first strike. Nuclear primacy means that if nothing changes, " ¢â‚¬Â¦ Russia and China - and the rest of the world & will live in the shadow of the U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come." (Lieber and Press 43-44) What the authors mean that no matter how many nuclear weapons any country in the world possesses it will no longer have the chance to launch a counter attack against the United States.

In addition to its overwhelming superiority in military weapons in every category, the U.S. is also modernizing its military equipment at faster pace than any other country in the world. According to the Power and Interest News Report, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reveals that China now spends $40 billion annually on its military equipment, but that the United States spends ten times that amount - a total of $400 billion. The News Report then states, " ¢â‚¬Â¦such an unbelievably high rate of spending by the United States will guarantee that China will have the utmost difficulty competing for raw military power."

However, it is not enough to posses and to add to this tremendous stock of newer and more sophisticated weaponry; the United States needs to prove its military superiority to the world by demonstrating the destructive power of these weapons. The invasion of Iraq provided the opportunity for the Pentagon to demonstrate what it meant to "shock and awe" Iraq. The US carried out the invasion of Iraq by first bombing the country and its infrastructure to smithereens to show the overwhelming power of US military might. During the first two weeks of the US invasion, it was not a war fought by two sides; Iraq was totally defenseless against the weapons of mass destruction that the US unleashed.

To be the sole military power of the world, it is not enough for the United States to be fighting two wars simultaneously. It must have its eyes on the rest of the world.

1. American Military Expansion in Asia

The Iraqi War has put the Bush administration on the defensive; there is no way out for the US except admitting defeat. Even back in 2005, two years after the US invaded Iraq, the war was not going well for the United States. Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, traveled and lectured extensively around the world in March that year to demonstrate that the US was maintaining its worldwide hegemony. A 2005 Singapore Business Times article entitled "Condi Talks Down to Europe, Asia" states:

Ms. Rice disparaged the Europeans for considering the lifting of an arms embargo

on China & a move, she explained, that could threaten the delicate military balance in East Asia, as the US regards itself as the peacekeeper in the area and would look harshly on any European interference. "It is the United States, not Europe, that has defended the Pacific," she said. She then lectured the Chinese on the need to pressure the North Koreans, and told reporters that China could be "a positive influence in the region," adding, however, that it could just as easily become the region's biggest problem. (Antiwar.com, March 31, 2005, reprinted from Singapore Business Times, 2005)

Rice's statement indicates that the Bush administration intended to refocus its attention on Asia from the quagmire in the Middle East, and to put in place a strategic plan to contain China. While fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the Bush administration has nevertheless been paying close attention to Asia. The Bush administration has been busily reaffirming the US strategy to engage in a coordinated, systematic effort to contain China from expanding its power and influence. In February 2006 the US Defense Department issued its Quadrennial Defense Review. This review named China among the emerging and major powers as having the greatest potential to compete with the United States militarily. Following this review, in early March, the Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Command, Admiral William Fallon testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that the QDR set the defense strategy and its military posture for the next 20 years: to have a greater military presence in the Pacific Ocean. Also, the US has been planning to boost military integration with allies in that region in order to deter emerging major powers. (TMC Net News, March 7, 2006) This shows the US intends to target China as a military threat in order to carry out its military expansion in Asia, even though China has no military capability to become a threat.

The United States is ensuring its military hold on Asia by strengthening its military cooperation with its allies. Japan is, of course, the closest ally of the United States. There is also Australia followed by other countries that are friendly to the United States & New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and India. Global Research, Canada published an article in 2007 by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya entitled "Global Military Alliance: Encircling Russia and China & US Sponsored Military Partnership in the Far East and the Pacific Rim." In this article the author states that there was a proposal to create a NATO-like organization in the Far East and the Pacific Rim as part of the unified global military alliance. Nazemroaya also stated that Ellen Bork, deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and Gary Schmitt, a resident scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, have advocated the creation of a military network in Asia similar to NATO.3 Actually the formation of such a military alliance in Asia is more than just a proposal or merely an idea advocated by the conservative faction in the US government. Instead, major concrete steps have already been taken toward making such a network a reality. Japan already has had long-term military cooperation with the United States. According to the Global Research article, in 1999 Japan and the United States started their joint missile defense research program. The Japanese government has not only funded the deployment of the Patriot PAC -3 and the Aegis Standard Missile & 3, Japan has also allowed its territory to be used so US military radar facilities are linked to the global missile shield project. Nazemroaya said, "Japan has gradually been amalgamating and harmonizing its military policies with those of the US and NATO." In January 2007 Japanese Prime Minister Abe visited NATO Headquarters and then made subsequent visits to some NATO members and eventually formed military cooperation agreements with NATO. Japan is also in the process of rewriting its constitution to allow it to formally form military forces.

Australia, another close ally of the United States, is also playing an important role in the new initiative in forming a unified global military alliance. In March 2007 Australia signed a bilateral security treaty with Japan as a way to deepen its military links. It was Japan's only security treaty other than the one it signed with the US. In 2007 Australia also reached an agreement with the United States to allow the building of a US military base in Geraldton Western Australia. This new military base was built to provide the United States with an important link for a new network of international satellites to fight wars in the Middle East and Asia. (Nicholson, February 15, 2007)

The September 5, 2007 newsletter by the Insider was entitled: US, Japan, India & Australia Announce Military Alliance Against China. The newsletter stated that these four countries formed the "Quadrilateral Initiative" (informally named the Quad) in Manila in May 2006 and began flexing their muscles by bringing ships, aircraft and submarines for a week of war games in the Bay of Bengal on September 4, 2007. Following the meeting of the four powers, China sent formal protests to the four governments. Quad members assured China that their strategic partnership was only aimed at maintaining regional security and was not targeting any particular country. China, however, was not convinced. Japan's attempt to redeploy its military forces and the formation of military alliances led by the United States has meant increasing militarism in Asia and the Pacific Rim.

The United States made it very clear long before 2007 that it would not stand for any challenge to its domination over Asia. In 1998 Admiral Joseph W. Prueher, then the Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Command, spoke to a student audience at Fudan University in Shanghai. The topic was "Asia-Pacific Security and China." Prueher said that the United States had a responsibility to the region extending from the west coast of North America to the east coast of Africa & a region that includes 43 nations. He also said, "As a Pacific nation, our economic, political and military interests in the Pacific are diverse and lasting. These interests drive our permanent and active involvement in the region ¢â‚¬Â¦" Prucher asserted that US trade with this region was over $500 billion per year, which amounted to approximately 35% of total US trade and double the US trade with Europe. Moreover, he said that Asia was important to the United States militarily and assured the audience that "the United States has regarded its dominance over Asia as permanent and would not let it be challenged by anyone." (Prucher 1998)

US imperialism regards its domination over Asia as its right. The US regards Asia as an important integral part of its vast empire and its domination over Asia is closely linked to its global hegemony. In the name of freedom and democracy, the US protects its economic interests by its military might. Let's not have any illusion that the US imperialism can somehow be reformed or modified. It will always behave in the most savage and barbaric way in order to maintain its interests

1. The Myth of the Invincibility of American Military Might.

From what has been said above about the tremendous US military expansion since the end of the Cold War, it seems that the American military might is invincible. Many or even most people believe that is the reality of the world we currently live in. On the one hand we must regard this overwhelming military power of the United States very seriously. The military power of the United States has destroyed countries and killed many people. To say anything to the contrary is not in line with the reality of our world today. On the other hand, however, the American empire, which is based on sheer raw military power, is, as someone once said, nothing but a paper tiger. It is true that the United States has won some battles by using its sophisticated military hardware like the two weeks of "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq following the invasion. However, since the end of World War II the United States has not won any wars, and it is sure to be defeated in Iraq as well.

It is very important to know that no matter what big lies the ruling class of the Unites States has been telling the American people, they will eventually understand that the wars, big wars and small wars, fought in their name, have had nothing to do with protecting their security or "nation building" or spreading democracy. These wars have been all about the United States maintaining its domination over the world and the use of its mighty military force has always been used to ensure its hegemony. All the wars the United States launched after World War II have been unjust wars to pillage other nations' resources and enslave their people. Once a rather na ƒÂ¯ve but well meaning American asked me, "Why has the US always helped the wrong side?" I told her, "The United States is the wrong side." United State is on the wrong side of the people and it is on the wrong side of justice.

Many American solders in Iraq and Afghanistan and those who have returned are confused about why they went there in the first place. Currently the United States is facing increasing difficulties recruiting enough volunteers to fight this war. The US government discontinued the military draft in 1973 and with 159,000 soldiers now in Iraq and another 27,000 in Afghanistan even after the military stepped up its recruiting efforts, it has been falling way behind its recruiting goals in all branches of the military. When confronted with a lack of soldiers to fulfill the US ambition to fight the "global war on terrorism," Bush in his State of the Union Address in 2007 called for the establishment of a "volunteer civilian reserve corps" to "ease the burden on the armed forces."

The "volunteer civilian reserve corps" in fact is a private army, which has existed since the 1990s. Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, in an interview by Amy Goodman broadcast on Democracy Now, said that Blackwater was established in 1996 as a private military training facility and is now the most powerful mercenary firm in the world. He said that Blackwater has 20,000 soldiers at the ready, the world's largest private military base, and a fleet of twenty aircraft including helicopter gunships. Not only are thousands of this private army deployed around the world to protect American officials and diplomats, they also train troops in Afghanistan and "have been very active in the Caspian Sea, where they set up a Special Forces base miles from the Iranian border." Moreover, according to Scahill, "Blackwater has also been directly negotiating with the Southern Sudanese regional government to come in and start training the Christian forces of the South of Sudan." (Jeremy Scahill, interview by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, January 26, 2007)

In fact, Blackwater is only one of the many contractors who have been hired by the US government to fight in Iraq. Faced with increasing difficulties to recruit volunteers to fight in Iraq and elsewhere and overwhelming opposition to reinstating the draft, the US government has had to depend increasingly on these private companies to hire mercenaries for its current and future wars. This is a sign that more and more American people are no longer willing to shed their blood to pursue endless wars launched by their government. According to recent television news, many soldiers were not permitted to leave the military after they had already completed their terms of service. This has caused anger, resentment and bad morale. As the wars drag on, more Americans have come to understand that while a small minority is benefiting from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are not among them.

The war in Iraq has also totally discredited Rumsfield, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bush and the whole gang and their theory of the military capability of the United States to fight a war with technically sophisticated weapons operated by few soldiers. These people rose to power by advocating the transformation of conventional armed forces into a lean and mobile force, winning wars not with soldiers believing in the cause, but with superior military hardware. Now that there are 159,000 soldiers tied down in Iraq and another 27,000 in Afghanistan, their theory of agile and mobile forces winning wars with lethal weapons has become nothing but a fantasy. As a result Rumsfield had to be fired by his staunch supporter George W. Bush. Gone with Rumsfield is the dream of American imperialism using its advanced weapons of mass destruction to conquer the world. That dream is dead. It is forever vanished.

In order to finance the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the US Federal deficit has escalated. War funding averaged about $93 billion a year between 2003 and 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006, and then $171 billion in 2007. Kent Conrad, Senate Budget

Committee Chairman, said, "We're seeing the war costs continue to spiral upward. It is the additional troops plus additional costs per troop plus the over-reliance on private contractors, which also explodes the costs." The monthly cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has risen to $11 billion, and is being added to Washington's mountain of debt, which has skyrocketed to more than $9 trillion, up from $5.6 trillion in 20014.

However, the domestic deficits and debt is only one indicator that economically the United States is no longer capable of continuing these wars, let alone further expanding them. Another indicator is the escalation of the US external debt. Many countries including Japan, China, countries in European Union, and many other countries, which are running trade surpluses with the United States, are in fact loaning US money to finance its military aggression. The United States has been running a current account deficit consistently for many years by having other countries selling approximately 50% more goods and services to the US than they buy from the US. The United States simply pays for its excess imports with printed dollar bills. All the dollars accumulated in central banks abroad are in fact the foreign debt of the United States.

Approximately two thirds of the foreign exchange reserves in the Central Banks of all nations in the world are US dollars, because half of the international trade and most of the financial transactions are carried out in dollars. The United States has enjoyed tremendous advantages by having its dollar used as international currency and has used the special status of the dollar to dominate the world economically. At the end of World War II the US was able to persuade other nations to use the US dollar as international reserves, because the US was then a solid economic power and also guaranteed the convertibility of dollar into gold. In 1974 the United States unilaterally declared that the United States no longer honored the convertibility of dollar into gold. The willingness of other countries to hold the US dollar had actually already declined. Then the large US current account deficits since the 1980s have caused the value of the dollar to fall continuously against all major currencies as well as against gold. This is a sign that Japan and European countries not only caught up with and in some ways surpassed the United States economically. The creation of the euro was designed as a way to challenge the dollar. The value of euro has been stable and on the rise, because the European Union has not had deficit in its current account. Euro has gradually replaced the dollar as a more desirable currency to hold. However, the United States still has had the political and military hegemony that no other country can challenge.

As more countries accept the euro for their exports, the dollar will lose its status as the world currency. The United States cannot let this happen. Oil has been the most significant part of world trade. OPEC countries have had agreements with the United States that they would continue to accept only dollar as payment for oil. Iraq was the only country that dared to upset the rule by declaring in November 2000 that it would switch to euro5. There seems to be a connection between this daring act of Saddam Hussein and his eventual downfall. Since 1999 Iran has been talking publicly about switching to the euro6 ; since then, Iran has been included by George W. Bush as a country in the "axis of evil."7

The more recent decline of the dollar value against the euro, Japanese yen and Chinese RMB has severely threatened the reserve status of the dollar. As long as the US foreign debt continues to grow and thus flooding the international financial market with more and more dollars, the value of the dollar will continue to fall. The declining dollar is making further US borrowing increasingly difficult and the day of reckoning is getting closer and closer. When the US dollar loses it reserve currency status the economic hegemony of the United States collapses.

On the one hand, the United States has been borrowing money from other countries to pursue its military aggression, and this cannot continue for much longer. On the other hand, the increasing shares of military spending in the US domestic budget has severely limited funds urgently needed for health care, education, and physical infrastructure & road, bridges, the aged water system and transportation. The US government has lost its way even in the bourgeoisie sense of nation-bb-building& building a strong nation with strong people & to lead the world. The deterioration of the forces that supported American militarism is too obvious to miss.

To conclude, American military force may appear to be mighty, but it is not invincible. US imperialism cannot continue to rule the world with its sheer raw military power & no matter how strong and destructive that power is. It is up to us, the people of the world, to change this old, outdated, injustice, and destructive world order and build a new one for the future.

References

Bacevich, Andrew J., The New American Militarism, How Americans are Seduced by War, Oxford University Press, 2005

Bacevich, Andrew J. and Tom Engelhardt, The New American Militarism and Bacevich, Andrew J. The Normalization of War, Tom Dispatch, Antiwar.com April 21, 2005

Klare, Michael T., "Endless Military Superiority," The Nation, June 27, 2002

Lieber, Keir A. and Daryl G. Press, "The rise of US Nuclear Primacy," Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006 42-54

Marquardt, Erich, Power and Interest News Report, September 8, 2003

Nazemroaya, Mahdi Darius, "Global Military Alliance: Encircling Russia and China & US sponsored military partnership in the Far East and the Pacific Rim." The Global Research Ca, www.globalresearch.ca , May12, 2008

Nicholson, Brendan, US gets military base in Western Australia, The Age. February 15, 2007

Prueher, Joseph W., Command in Chief, US Pacific Command, "Asia-Pacific Security and China, a U. S. Pacific Command Perspective, Remarks prepared for delivery at Fudan University, Shanghai, China, November 13, 1998.

Rice, Condoleezza, "Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interest," Foreign Affairs, January/February 2000

Notes

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