Christopher King argues that “a situation exists in which it may be in the interests of the United States to seek a ‘cold war’ situation with Russia and China as a pretext for defaulting on its external debt, attacking Iran, taking direct control of all Middle Eastern oilfields and effective control of Europe”.
Let us consider a puzzle about the Afghanistan war.
Recently, Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, formerly of the Pakistani army and head of the country’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency (1987-89), remarked: “In this situation, what are the Americans trying to achieve – I don’t know. There is much ambiguity about their political objectives. Every military conflict must have a political purpose. I cannot discern that there is any political purpose.”
Economic irrationality of US wars
I had been thinking the same thing.
General Gul had a key role in supplying matériel to the Afghan mujahidin and their defeat of the Soviet Union.
He knows what is going on.
If General Gul with his background and connections cannot understand American political objectives, they must be very unusual.
He surmises for want of a better explanation that the motivation is domestic American politics.
I have said previously that these wars are primarily for the US to consolidate its control of Europe and its economy through US bases and NATO.
I believe this to be the US’s European objective but it cannot be the entire picture either.
What may be puzzling General Gul is the cost of these wars.
Their cost is completely disproportionate to any evident benefits.
An estimate for all-in costs for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is USD 3 trillion to date.
[ … and the societal costs will probably never be determined ]
There is no evidence that the US is getting a commensurate return from its occupation of Iraq; nor that there is any significant return to be had from Afghanistan beyond perhaps building some pipelines that might more easily have been built by bribing the Taliban.
This figure demands a very good reason – something at whole-country economic level.