Assessment of Jeremy Kuzmarov’s Warmonger: How Clinton’s Malign International Coverage Launched the U.S. Trajectory from Bush II to Biden (Readability Press, Atlanta, 2024), 423 pages.
William Jefferson Clinton—“Invoice” Clinton—was inaugurated because the 42nd president of the US on January 20, 1993. A Democrat, he was the primary president to be elected from among the many “Child Boomer” technology.
Clinton’s youthful attractiveness, smiling persona, private charisma, and presumed affiliation with the antiwar temper of the Sixties—stood in seeming distinction to the 12-year reign of two Republican conservatives—Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush—whose insurance policies centered on conflict: Reagan’s trillion-dollar navy buildup in opposition to what he referred to as the Soviet Union’s “Evil Empire,” and Bush’s campaign in opposition to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, resulting in what gave the impression to be a fast and decisive U.S. victory within the 1991 Gulf Battle that surprisingly stopped earlier than U.S. forces reached the capital of Baghdad in order that Saddam could possibly be eliminated.
It additionally appeared that behind the patriotic resolve of Reagan and Bush the U.S. had “received” the Chilly Battle. It was Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev along with his insurance policies of glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”) who negotiated the Intermediate-Vary Nuclear Forces (INF)Treaty with the U.S., withdrew Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1988, oversaw the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1989, and allowed the Berlin Wall to return down, adopted by Germany’s reunification. It was additionally Gorbachev who declared the tip of communism and watched the Soviet Union dissolve into its element elements in 1991, the most important being, after all, Russia itself.
A part of world historical past, the place the nations of the world stood on the point of doable reciprocal nuclear destruction for nearly half a century, gave the impression to be over. A brand new period of peaceable cooperation and concord appeared poised to start. With the election of Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Federation in 1992, American advisers had been able to rush in to assist in the constructing of a brand new Russian market financial system. Within the U.S., no much less a determine than Vietnam-era Secretary of Protection Robert McNamara had declared the potential for a “peace dividend” that might minimize America’s navy price range in half.
As president, Clinton had maybe the best alternative ever handed to a U.S. chief government to steer the nation and the world towards the creation of a brand new world of hope, alternative, prosperity, and, sure, the peace that had eluded mankind seemingly endlessly. Clinton’s insurance policies supposedly mirrored a centrist “Third Manner” philosophy, balancing political extremes below a big tent that was to incorporate everybody. His appointments of girls and minorities to state authorities positions whereas governor of Arkansas had anticipated in a constructive method right now’s “identification politics.” His business-friendly attitudes made him a “New Democrat.”
The phrase “hope” figured vastly in Clinton’s 1992 presidential marketing campaign. That was, in spite of everything, the title of the city within the stunningly backward state of Arkansas, the place the brand new man of the hour was born and served as governor from 1979-1981 and 1983-1992. Even the hour hand on the millennium’s clock was about to show, throughout this final decade of the 20th century, with its horrors of mass homicide and world conflagration quickly to fade away within the rear-view mirror.
After Clinton, Limitless Battle and Monetary Collapse
But, if we fast-forward into the primary quarter of the 21st century, what will we see? Before everything, we see a technology of countless conflict, kicking off with the assaults of September 11, 2001, an occasion that many view credibly as a false flag.
Quickly got here massively futile wars in opposition to Afghanistan and, once more, Iraq, with assaults later launched in opposition to Libya, Syria, and different international locations. We additionally see the explosion of low-grade hybrid battle, particularly within the Center East, the place the names of terrorist teams continuously change with uncertainty as to who really is paying their payments. Then there’s the endless battle in and round Israel.
However we additionally now can see that these wars had been telegraphed by the U.S./NATO bombings and assaults below Clinton in Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, and different locations. However these conflicts had been typically downplayed since below Clinton no American physique baggage had been coming residence. So if Clinton was a “warmonger,” as creator Jeremy Kuzmarov demonstrates, this was not at all times instantly evident. Clinton’s “spin machine” was high-volume and high-speed.
We additionally see right now the resurgence of Russia from its terrifying financial collapse through the Yeltsin years, being led after 1999 by Vladimir Putin. We then see the eruption of an enormous battle in Ukraine, with the U.S. having instigated, by way of a 2014 coup, a significant proxy conflict in opposition to Russia on the European mainland.
We now have one other violent outbreak involving Israel, at conflict, once more, in opposition to the Palestinian inhabitants it had shunted into Gaza and more and more smaller enclaves within the West Financial institution. Behind every part we sense the hidden hand of U.S. intelligence being concerned in each battle.
Right now, each the Ukraine and Israel conflicts are so fraught with hazard that commenters discuss credibly in regards to the risks of igniting World Battle III.
On the financial entrance, after Clinton rode the longest interval of U.S. prosperity in peacetime historical past, we noticed the collapse of the dot.com bubble in 2000, adopted by the regular erosion of U.S. finance behind an epidemic of “liars’ loans,” till the implosion of 2007-2009 led to authorities bailouts of $16 trillion simply to proper the ship.
So no matter we anticipated to occur through the Clinton years to guarantee that the world had actually modified for the higher and was going to remain that method, it didn’t. Had we blown our large alternative? Why was Clinton not likely the savior many had hoped he can be?
So had been Clinton’s eight years in workplace an phantasm? Had been there issues occurring that led in a vastly totally different path? Moreover, after all, the plain: Clinton’s dalliance with a White Home intern that led to his impeachment, although he was acquitted within the Senate trial. However by then we had recognized Clinton was a little bit of a rogue. For him, “bimbo eruptions” weren’t new.
Relating to home politics, Kuzmarov cites journalist Glen Greenwald, who wrote that Clinton helped flip “the Democratic Get together from one of many working class to one in every of Wall Road, Silicon Valley, banks, bank card firms, and the military-industrial complicated.”
Who Was the “Actual” Invoice Clinton?
Who, then, was the “actual” Invoice Clinton? Creator Jeremy Kuzmarov tells us in his monumental historical past of Clinton’s presidency, which exposes Clinton as, primarily, a faux.
Kuzmarov is managing editor of CovertAction Journal and the creator of 4 earlier books, together with the groundbreaking exposé of President Barack Obama’s personal administration of conflict and mayhem: Obama’s Endless Wars: Fronting the International Coverage of the Everlasting Warfare State. (Readability Press, 2019) Kuzmarov can also be a revered scholar, with a PhD in historical past from Brandeis College, presently instructing on the College of Tulsa.
Writing about Clinton, with huge element and matchless documentation, Kuzmarov discloses the violence of the Clinton period that lies behind claims by apologists, as an illustration, of “humanitarian” actions overseas, mixed with a couple of extraordinarily properly publicized peacemaking efforts the place Clinton claimed credit score however that usually proved futile in the long term.
The title of Kuzmarov’s new guide is Warmonger: How Clinton’s Malign International Coverage Launched the U.S. Trajectory from Bush II to Biden, simply revealed by Readability Press. Kuzmarov is a uncommon instance of the merging of scholarship and journalism, presenting a mass of documented element in a transparent, descriptive, narrative model. Because the story line proceeds, we’re taken deeper into disclosures that usually result in disturbing conclusions. The impact is each enlightening and exhausting, because the reader learns increasingly more about how U.S. governance behaved so disreputably throughout a time that right now is commonly obscure in our recollection.
Kuzmarov exhibits us what by now could be a well-known sample in U.S. public life: the distinction between a politician with a smiling face and disarming method, one who at all times has “believable deniability,” presiding over a cesspool of low-grade battle, secret interventions, covert violence, and sometimes outright crime, as with the CIA’s perennial involvement with the world’s illicit drug commerce.
This sample was pioneered by Ronald Reagan and arguably carried ahead by each president till Biden right now, although some would exempt Trump. But it surely was with Clinton that the strategy, and the hypocrisy, might have reached epic ranges.
Warmonger incorporates 13 chapters that inform the story. Most of the chapters embrace essential inside details about the CIA. There could also be no higher supply than Kuzmarov, given his position as managing director of a revitalized CovertAction Journal in prying open the lid of the crypt of CIA operations.
It isn’t the place of any assessment to attempt to re-tell all the story, notably with a historical past so lengthy and sophisticated as this one. The guide itself is a “must-read” for anybody within the fact in regards to the fashionable American trajectory into the geopolitical catastrophes unfolding right now.
There are quite a few cases which might be essential for anybody to know who desires to delve into Clinton’s previous or the “actual” historical past of the Clinton administration. That is particularly so due to the prominence right now of the Clinton Basis and the position nonetheless being performed by the loser of the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in nationwide and world affairs.
Clinton a CIA Asset
Chapter 1: “The Schooling of a Governor” begins with a 1992 quote from John Brummett, Arkansas Instances columnist: “Clinton’s first impression knocks you out. You assume that is essentially the most spectacular son of a bitch you’ve ever seen, gregarious, with a humorousness. What a Governor! It’s a slick veneer. A few of us had been speaking about Slick Willie the opposite day, and we determined, properly we all know what he’s actually like and what he’s completed as governor, however hey he may make a superb president.”
Brummett was not suggesting Clinton as a doable president as a praise. Relatively he was declaring the distinction between “Slick Willie’s” public persona and his precise deeds throughout his prolonged Arkansas warm-up for the very best workplace within the land.
Maybe most significantly, the reader wants to know, as Kuzmarov paperwork, that Clinton was a CIA asset, even beginning as early as his faculty days. This instantly brings to thoughts the title of Douglas Valentine’s celebrated guide, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Unlawful Operations Corrupt America and the World (Readability Press, 2016). Valentine’s evaluation was absolutely born out in Chapter 2 of Warmonger: “Invoice Clinton and the Crimes of Mena: Made in Arkansas, Made in America.”
Clinton was a protégé of figures in excessive locations, together with Arkansas governor Winthrop Rockefeller. The Rockefeller connection put him at an early age in the identical community as individuals like Henry Kissinger. His household circle within the infamous metropolis of Sizzling Springs, Arkansas, had connections with organized crime, which figures at numerous factors in Clinton’s political life as a supply of marketing campaign contributions. But it surely was his connections with the CIA that decided his future.
Kuzmarov paperwork these connections, together with Clinton’s stint as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford College, however most telling maybe is an incident going down whereas Clinton was governor, when he was designated by the CIA as a possible future president. It occurred in Mena, Arkansas.
Whereas governor, Kuzmarov writes, “Clinton enabled using his state as a base for clandestine operations into Central America.”
Through the Reagan years, within the days of “Iran/Contra,” the CIA oversaw an enormous operation on the Mena Intermountain Regional Airport close to the city of Mena within the Ouachita Mountains. There the CIA performed actions dedicated to coaching of guerrillas for engagement overseas and for the drug and weapons smuggling that turned well-known when Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua in 1986. Kuzmarov offers an in depth account of the Mena operation during which Clinton was intimately concerned, together with the proliferation of weapons-manufacturing factories within the surrounding space.
Kuzmarov writes of a person named Terry Reed, who “was a Missouri-born Air Pressure intelligence officer who within the early Seventies served with Air Pressure intelligence in Thailand as a member of Activity Pressure Alpha, which managed the key air conflict in Laos and Cambodia…. In his 1995 guide, Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and the CIA, Reed claims that he met with Clinton in July 1984 outdoors the Cantina Mexican restaurant in Little Rock, the place Clinton gave him his blessing to undertake clandestine operations in Mexico with Barry Seal and Oliver North (AKA “Cathey”) in assist of the Contra operations.”
Kuzmarov continues: “In keeping with Reed, Clinton was glassy eyed and smoked a joint whereas seated on a captain’s chair on the road facet of a van whose inside revealed a cellular command put up outfitted with an array of electronics. He urged Reed to toke on the joint, telling him, ‘Go on, I’m the commander-in-chief right here, you received’t get busted.’”
Kuzmarov goes on: “Reed claimed that Clinton personally attended a gathering in a military bunker outdoors Mena whose members included North, Felix Rodriguez, and one in every of CIA Director William Casey’s high lieutenants, ‘Robert Johnson,’ who he considered future Legal professional Normal William Barr.”
Barr was a long-time CIA agent, beginning in graduate and legislation faculty, later shifting into the Reagan White Home. He served as U.S. lawyer basic below Bush I in 1991-1993. A lot later Barr once more turned lawyer basic below President Donald Trump in 2019-2020.
Relating to the assembly with Clinton, Terry Reed wrote, based on Kuzmarov, that Johnson “threatened to close down the Mena operation as a result of an excessive amount of cash was being skimmed off the highest… and Clinton was giving out too many contracts…to Arkansas ‘good ole boys’ who lacked safety clearances. The arrest of Clinton’s brother, Roger, had additionally introduced undesirable scrutiny.
“Within the assembly Johnson allegedly considerably referred to Clinton as ‘Mr. Casey’s fair-haired boy’ [referring to CIA Director William Casey] and stated that ‘you and your state have been our biggest asset.’ He added that ‘the fantastic thing about this, as you understand, is that you simply’re a Democrat, and with our potential to affect each events, this nation can get past partisan gridlock. Mr. Casey needed me to cross on to you that until you fuck up and do one thing silly, you’re No. 1 on the brief listing for a shot on the job you’ve at all times needed.’”
This incident makes clear who it’s that really selects U.S. presidents: Trace: it’s not “We the Folks.”
Clinton as President
Evidently having happy the CIA as to his {qualifications}, Invoice Clinton was elected president of the US in November 1992. The remainder of this assessment covers just some of the huge variety of imperial/felony enterprises carried out by Clinton and his associates throughout his eight-year presidential reign that lay the groundwork for the 21st century explosion of countless U.S. wars and right now’s doable lemming-like march towards Armageddon.
Clinton Fomented the Balkan Battle to Destroy Yugoslavia
In Chapter 3: “Clinton’s Soiled Battle within the Balkans,” Kuzmarov explains how a essential a part of instigating the Balkan Battle was U.S. covert motion. The intention was to secretly arm the inhabitants of Bosnian Muslims to facilitate their assaults on the Serbs residing inside their borders, then later to do the identical with the Albanian Muslims within the Kosovo province of Serbia.
U.S. motion within the Balkans was a proxy conflict to destroy the nation of Yugoslavia. It thus anticipated the long run U.S. proxy conflict in opposition to Russia in Ukraine which has comparable targets.
Such wars mirrored what Kuzmarov calls “an imperial mindset.” He writes that this mindset “was obvious within the Could 1997 Quadrennial Protection Assessment (QDR), which laid the muse for an period of countless conflict by asserting that the U.S. would now not be sure by the UN Constitution’s prohibition in opposition to the risk or use of navy power for functions apart from self-defense.” Quickly afterwards, “Clinton enthused that ‘Now we have individuals on the seas, individuals in overseas international locations, everywhere in the world, on each continent, we’re all over the place.’”
It was through the Clinton years that political figures started to name the U.S. “the indispensable nation.” On the connection between navy power and financial dominance, Kuzmarov cites New York Instances columnist Thomas Friedman as writing: “The hidden hand of the market won’t ever work with no hidden fist. McDonald’s can not flourish with out McDonnell Douglas…The hidden fist is known as the U.S. Military, Air Pressure, Navy, and Marine Corps.”
On the similar time, Clinton succeeded in retaining U.S. forces out of the bottom battle within the Balkans whereas offering a lot of the airpower in pummeling Serbian targets, together with hospitals, faculties, and different civilian infrastructure. U.S. navy contractors had been ready to make use of the conflict to experiment with huge new generations of navy {hardware}, together with digital surveillance and monitoring units, battlefield drones, chemical weapons, cruise missiles, and sensible bombs.
The Balkan areas had been unified after World Battle II to kind the communist state of Yugoslavia, led by conflict hero Josip Broz Tito, who died in 1980. Whereas sympathetic towards the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia was fiercely unbiased and a frontrunner of the world’s non-aligned motion. It consisted of an often-uneasy alliance of distinct ethnicities and religions dominated by the Orthodox Serbs from the capital area of Belgrade but additionally together with Roman Catholics, Croats, and the Muslim populations of a number of areas.
Kuzmarov refers again to the Nicaragua operation Clinton oversaw whereas governor, then explains how comparable issues had been completed within the Balkans:
“Invoice Clinton, as mentioned, was recruited as a CIA intelligence asset at Oxford, and as Governor of Arkansas helped to supervise and canopy up an unlawful arms, medicine, and gun operating operation to the Nicaraguan Contras, which was in violation of the 1984 Boland modification. As President, Clinton once more carried out a job that he was used to: overseeing a clandestine-arms smuggling operation. This time it was by way of Iran to Muslim-Croat forces in Bosnia, and was carried out in violation of a UN arms import embargo that had been adopted by the Safety Council in September 1991. On April 27, 1994, Clinton permitted the plan to ship arms from Iran regardless of not solely the arms embargo, but additionally the Clinton administration’s personal coverage of making an attempt to isolate Iran due to its alleged assist for worldwide terrorism.”
How was this covert operation carried out?
In keeping with Kuzmarov: “It was coordinated by the Nationwide Safety Council with out informing Congress or the intelligence neighborhood. To make the deliveries—which had been packaged as ‘humanitarian help’—U.S. officers cooperated with regional mafias and used cargo plane related to a CIA entrance firm, Southern Air Transport, avoiding use of U.S. Air Pressure planes.”
As soon as the U.S. started to bomb Serbian navy amenities within the Bosnian theater in Operation Deliberate Pressure, Kuzmarov writes that the motion noticed the direct participation of the U.S. vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers and the workplace of the CIA director in Langley, VA. U.S. bombing included 10,000 rounds of depleted uranium, which had disastrous long-term opposed well being results on the native populations.
Just like supporting the Muslim and Croat forces in Bosnia in opposition to the Serbs, the U.S. additionally gave huge support to Albanian Muslims in Kosovo, a Serbian province, the place partisans had shaped the Kosovo Liberation Military, or KLA. One supply of funding was CIA drug cash. Whereas making typically doubtful allegations of Serbian “ethnic cleaning,” the U.S. launched one other gigantic bombing assault, Operation Noble Anvil.
The aim once more was to devastate the ethnic Serbs and make it not possible ever to reassemble the Yugoslav nation or something resembling it within the Balkan area. The conflict ended with Kosovo nonetheless a province of Serbia however with appreciable autonomy because it emerged “on the middle of the worldwide drug commerce and prostitution rings in Europe.” A newly-built U.S. navy base, the large Camp Bondsteel, got here to deal with Kosovo’s predominant jail. Quickly U.S. companies had been within the area being guarded by the U.S. navy whereas constructing pipelines.
The shattering of any Serbian-led nation was later made everlasting by the admission of Balkan “statelets” into NATO—Slovenia in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020. These would be a part of beforehand admitted Romania and Bulgaria and long-time members Greece and Turkey in cementing U.S. management of Southeastern Europe.
President Invoice Clinton was 100% complicit within the planning and execution of this part of what we all know right now as Globalism, although he gave solely hints in public. Even then, any U.S. navy motion was at all times given the “humanitarian” sheen. Clinton and his high aides like Strobe Talbott and Madeline Albright had been particularly liable to citing British failure to cease Hitler earlier than he launched World Battle II and carried out the Holocaust in justifying navy motion in opposition to whomever they claimed had been the “unhealthy guys.”
Clinton Oversaw the Looting of Russia
In the beginning of Chapter 4, “The Failed Campaign to Remake Russia,” Kuzmarov writes:
“In March 2000, the Republican-controlled Home of Representatives launched a damning 286-page indictment of Clinton’s Russia coverage entitled ‘Russia’s Street to Corruption: How the Clinton Administration Exported Authorities As an alternative of Free Enterprise and Failed the Russian Folks.’ Written with enter from eight congressional committee chairmen, the report highlighted how Clinton’s coverage was carried out by a troika consisting of a) Vice President Al Gore, b) Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, and c) Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, an previous Oxford good friend of Clinton’s with household connections to the CIA who had enthused within the Eighties that the ‘United States was turning the tables on Moscow by aiding the mujahidin rebels [in Afghanistan] to the tune of many hundreds of thousands of {dollars} per yr.’
“Excluding Congress and the Russian legislature from their decision-making, the troika pushed for the transformation of previously state-owned monopolies by way of an ill-planned privatization program and backed corrupt officers by way of an elaborate overseas support program, which propped up a authorities whose insurance policies had been bankrupting the Russian individuals. The standard of financial recommendation that the Clinton administration supplied was so unhealthy and outcomes so dismal that 81 % of Russians believed it was ‘purposely designed to make Russia a second-rate energy.’ When Clinton addressed the Russian Duma in 1999, solely a 3rd of the representatives confirmed up, and Clinton was ‘jeered and insulted’ each ‘inside and out of doors the chamber.’”
The Russian privatization program was overseen by a working group from Harvard College below contract to USAID, a CIA-front, finishing up a model of financial “shock remedy” that beforehand had failed in Bolivia. Kuzmarov writes that the 2 lead Harvard “consultants” had been dismissed after they “had been discovered to have used their administration of a U.S. overseas support program to advertise their very own private enterprise investments.” Later they had been required to pay fines of $2 million every by a U.S. federal courtroom.
Kuzmarov continues: “The privatization scheme resulted in ‘the most important giveaway of a nation’s wealth in historical past,’ based on Mortimer Zuckerman, proprietor of the U.S. World & Report (2011), and the ‘largest theft of the century, maybe of human historical past,’ based on Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister for Finance, Boris Fyodorov. Russia’s gold reserves had been looted and its wealth taken by predatory monetary pursuits and mafia-connected oligarchs who had been capable of buy state-owned firms for a fraction of their precise value. Over $150 billion left the nation in simply six years, a lot of it to be saved in Western or offshore banks. Russian poverty and inequality rose dramatically throughout that point, with the decline of the social security web.”
By 1998, Russia had defaulted on its debt and devalued its foreign money. The inhabitants was devastated. In some locations, vodka was the one viable foreign money. Thousands and thousands had been thrown out of labor; many dedicated suicide. President Boris Yeltsin suppressed political opposition with Clinton’s assist, and when he ran for re-election in 1996, it was U.S. funding of Russia’s price range deficits and groups of American marketing campaign consultants affiliated with the Nationwide Endowment on Democracy that stored him in energy. Kuzmarov quotes Invoice Clinton as saying of Yeltsin, “I need this man to win so unhealthy it hurts.” Time ran a canopy story: “Yanks to the Rescue.”
Later it got here to gentle that Yeltsin had been guided by the CIA all through his political profession going again to the Seventies. When he resigned and handed over the reins of presidency to his vice-president, Vladimir Putin, in 1999, he informed the People to not fear. Whereas Yeltsin’s public approval ranking had plummeted to 2 %, he informed his U.S. advisers that Putin was an “administrator” who wouldn’t be altering something.
However by the tip of his presidency, Invoice Clinton would betray former Secretary of State James Baker’s earlier promise to Gorbachev by overseeing the admission into NATO of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999, with others to observe, which started to put the groundwork for the 21st century escalation of tensions. It was a part of an unstated U.S. plan to maintain Russia weak and in limbo because it started to ring that nation with new navy outposts and foment anti-Russian unrest in former Soviet parts like Georgia, Ukraine, Chechnya, and the Central Asian “stans”—Uzbekistan, and many others. Russophobia prevailed. Within the phrases of senator and future U.S. president Joe Biden, Russia would “by no means have a seat on the desk.”
Nonetheless, with Vice President Al Gore working with the Yeltsin authorities on commerce relations, U.S. oil firms invested closely in improvement of Arctic oil fields. Kuzmarov writes: “Organized crime got here to manage as much as 50 % of the Russian financial system and infiltrated the very best ranges of the state, looting tons of diamonds, jewels, silver, and gold from the Russian Nationwide Treasury.”
When Clinton took workplace in 1993, relations with a considerably weakened Russia had landed on his doorstep, a package deal neatly tied with a festive bow. Kuzmarov masterfully weaves the story of how the Clinton administration did every part doable to subvert and management the U.S.’s biggest rival after the half-century Chilly Battle standoff that had dominated world geopolitics for almost a half-century.
However Clinton did nothing to include a harmonious, democratic Russia into the world’s neighborhood of countries for the sake of a way forward for world peace. As an alternative, he handled Russia as a carcass to be picked clear by a grasping horde of businesspeople and criminals, each Russian and American, overseen by Harvard lecturers, U.S. politicians, and, as at all times, the CIA. The response to this inept assault got here with the resurgence engineered by Putin and his political allies, resulting in the disaster over Ukraine right now.
Clinton Broke the U.S. Pledge To not Broaden NATO Eastward
As famous above, Clinton reneged on the pledge given by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that the U.S. wouldn’t prolong NATO “one inch eastward.” This was in change for Gorbachev’s settlement that East and West Germany can be allowed to reunite as a NATO member.
Clinton, nevertheless, oversaw the accession into NATO of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999. With Clinton quickly ending his two phrases in workplace in January 2001, the geopolitical implications had been left to Bush II/Cheney and subsequent administrations.
Few commentators have famous that what I feel we are able to name this U.S. “Drang Nach Osten,” or “Drive to the East,” bore a robust resemblance to the same hoped-for geopolitical enlargement carried out by Germany below Adolph Hitler, in opposition to whom the Western Allies, together with the Soviets, went to conflict in World Battle II. Now, Germany was part of NATO, with NATO’s solely justification being potential conflict in opposition to Russia. So what did Clinton and his successors assume was imagined to occur subsequent?
Kuzmarov covers these occasions in Chapter 5: “NATO Enlargement: A Strategic Blunder of Epic Proportions.”
Kuzmarov writes: “In an April 2022 essay in The Atlantic, Clinton tried to defend the coverage of NATO enlargement by claiming that it was designed to bolster Europe’s safety if Russia returned to ‘ultranationalism’ and previous ‘aspirations to empire like [in the era of] Peter the Nice and Catherine the Nice.’ This ipso facto justification is in keeping with the sample of Western leaders exaggerating Russia’s purported expansionist designs. It additional evades the truth that NATO enlargement match with a bigger coverage that was designed to capitalize on the collapse of the Soviet Union to advance American regional energy, undercut Russian affect in Jap Europe and Central Asia, and hold Russia weak.
“This coverage bore the imprint of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s former Nationwide Safety Council adviser and Albright’s mentor, who noticed management over Eurasia as key to world domination and consolidation of the U.S. empire—which was far vaster and extra aggressive than any projected Russian one.”
Now, in 2024, nations within the Collective West, beginning with the shrill voices of the Balkan states, admitted to NATO in 2004, persevering with by way of Poland, then extending west to Germany, the U.Ok., and even to U.S. President Joe Biden, are all screaming and waving their arms about the specter of an expansionist Russia as Russia thrashes Ukraine in its “particular navy operation,” which is a consequence of the U.S.-sponsored Maidan coup of 2014. This even though Russia exhibits no signal in any respect of such intentions and that its capability to tackle a united NATO in an all-out conflict is questionable.
Kuzmarov additionally factors out that within the 1996 presidential election, Clinton was making an attempt to make a robust enchantment within the Midwest the place giant numbers of voters had been of Polish and East European heritage. He was additionally on the receiving finish of marketing campaign donations from U.S. oil firms concerned in exploration within the Black and Caspian Sea basins. The aerospace trade and massive Wall Road banks and funding companies had visions of greenback indicators dancing earlier than their eyes each time NATO enlargement was talked about.
Kuzmarov concludes that: “Containment doctrine creator George F. Kennan warned that NATO enlargement would quantity to a ‘strategic blunder of epic proportions’ and the ‘most fateful error of American coverage in all the post-Chilly Battle period,’ as it could ‘inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion, restore the environment of the chilly conflict to East-West relations,’ and ‘impel Russian overseas coverage in a path decidedly to not our liking.’”
The American public didn’t appear to care. So Clinton moved forward to set the stage for what could also be, because the 21st century proceeds, world catastrophe.
Different Clinton Maneuvers
Kuzmarov’s catalogue of Clinton-era debacles continues to maneuver by way of 423-pages (together with endnotes and index) of meticulous documentation and sobering prose. Among the many dozens of extra subjects lined are the next.
Southeast Asia
Monetary imperialism in Southeast Asia noticed a profitable rebel in opposition to the Washington Consensus and IMF austerity measures led by Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed; in the meantime, the Clinton administration continued to construct up its navy presence on the East Asian rim as a containment measure in opposition to China.
Large arming of Taiwan with U.S. weapons additionally came about, laying the groundwork for right now’s escalation of tensions with mainland China over when—or if—the U.S. would observe by way of on its dedication finally to assist Chinese language reunification. U.S. arms gross sales to Japan and different Pacific rim nations additionally soared.
All through the Nineties, the Clinton administration used the Nationwide Endowment for Democracy to have interaction in covert motion to advertise pro-U.S. regime change in Cambodia, Myanmar, Mongolia, and different Asian international locations. Financial sanctions had been additionally starting for use as a significant software of low-grade warfare; as an illustration, in opposition to North Korea. There CIA brokers labored to sabotage North Korean agriculture. The U.S. additionally went to the brink of conflict over North Korea’s tiny nuclear program.
The 1997 Asian monetary disaster plunged Southeast Asia into poverty and allowed U.S. firms to purchase bankrupt firms and banks at discount basement costs. Any nation with what the U.S. perceived as leanings towards socialism and away from privatization, neoliberalism, and many others., was topic to those instruments of subversion and coercion.
Offshoring of Jobs
Colossal offshoring of American jobs by free-trade agreements like NAFTA undercut the home productiveness of nations like Mexico, resulting in the disaster in unlawful immigration that continues to plague the U.S.
With mainland China, outsourcing of American jobs would develop drastically, particularly after admission of China to the World Commerce Group, a measure opposed by U.S. organized labor. China would even be counted on to speculate its earnings within the buy of U.S. Treasury bonds; finally China would change into the world’s second largest holder of U.S. authorities debt, after Japan.
Drug Trafficking
Whereas shielding drug kingpins from publicity, Clinton presided over development of drug trafficking in Arkansas and worldwide and the opening of the Mexican border, whereas elevating enforcement and penalties on the stage of customers and native distributors.
U.S. prisons started to be stuffed by blacks below “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” sentencing guidelines. The Clinton administration additionally started to fund state and native police companies for buy of enormous portions of military-style gear, together with night-vision helicopters. But amongst U.S. drug customers, overdose deaths had begun its decades-long climb.
The U.S. additionally facilitated an enormous development of drug utilization in Russia, in addition to drug trafficking in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Turkey, Cambodia, Peru, and Colombia. In Mexico, the federal government used drug revenues to repay U.S. financial institution loans.
Though the CIA had lengthy been concerned in drug-related crime, it was through the Clinton administration that right now’s oceanic worldwide drug disaster actually gained traction, together with the crime and political corruption related to it. Clinton-era financial institution deregulation additionally facilitated world cash laundering; some say it’s illicit drug cash that retains the bankrupt Western banking system afloat. In Latin America and elsewhere, privatization and free market insurance policies of the IMF and World Financial institution have left native populations with few options to drug manufacturing merely to outlive.
Center East
Of Clinton’s bombing marketing campaign in opposition to Iraq, testifying to the failure of George H.W. Bush’s Gulf Battle to resolve the U.S. relationship with Iraq, Secretary of State Madeline Albright stated on community TV that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi kids as a consequence of illness and hunger had been “value it.”
Kuzmarov gives a prolonged account of Clinton’s drive for U.S. hegemony within the Center East: “In 1983, the U.S. navy possessed no navy bases anyplace within the Center East. By the mid-2000s, U.S. Central Command at McDill Air Pressure base in Tampa, Florida, had constructed up a navy footprint of over 125 bases throughout the area. Journalist Chip Gibbons in contrast Clinton to a ‘relay runner’ who handed off to George Jr. the hawkish baton handed on to Bush by his father, particularly on the subject of Iraq. That is an apt analogy for Clinton’s overseas coverage within the Center East extra broadly, which set the groundwork for the post-9/11 Battle on Terror.”
Clinton’s chief goal was Iraq, however, amazingly, the preliminary aim was not a lot for the U.S. to revenue from Iraq’s oil, however to maintain it from competing with sources just like the British North Sea and Azerbaijan. It was additionally below Clinton that the U.S. now started to conjure up tales about alleged Iraqi possession of “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” together with sufficient of 1 chemical agent supposedly ample to kill each particular person on earth.
Clinton additionally proceeded to beat the conflict drums in opposition to Iran, which the U.S. had been doing because the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Kuzmarov notes of Iran that “American coverage…was pushed largely by Israeli pursuits.” The U.S. additionally offered giant portions of arms to Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, together with torture gear. In the meantime, the Saudis gave lavish donations to the Democratic Nationwide Committee. Word that at a time when the Clinton administration was utilizing commerce offers to export jobs abroad, as an illustration to Vietnam the place some staff earned six cents an hour, the U.S. weapons trade was changing into America’s largest and most worthwhile manufacturing sector, dealing in large contracts with the rising listing of de facto “allies.”
Whereas the U.S. pivot towards the Center East throughout Clinton’s two phrases noticed a burgeoning U.S. navy and financial presence, it additionally provoked resistance and blowback that mushroomed into what turned the Bush/Cheney “Battle on Terror.” The U.S. and its consumer state of Israel nonetheless view themselves because the harmless events on this epochal battle the place what People see are hordes of Islamic fundamentalists—“Islamists”—inexplicably resenting the takeover of their society and assets.
In the meantime. lecturers sought to justify the large stage of violence coming from this a part of the world by citing the supposed existence of a “Conflict of Civilizations,” with Israelis claiming to be the “Chosen Folks” and Christian Zionists going as far as to image the battle by way of “Finish Instances,” the “Rapture,” and even “Armageddon.”
Most of the “terrorist” incidents throughout Clinton’s two phrases had some measure of CIA or FBI involvement, making it not possible to find out which had been false flags and which not. However all of them stored the information media busy churning up public concern and conditioning residents for the approaching horrors of 9/11 and its aftermath that continues right now. Writes Kuzmarov: “Clinton successfully framed the battle in opposition to terrorism in apocalyptic and morally righteous phrases, which helped situation the general public to simply accept a extra aggressive, militarized response.”
Israel
Subsequent, we now have Clinton’s relations with the state of Israel, which Kuzmarov covers in Chapter 10: “Clinton and Israel: The Most Professional-Israeli President Since Truman.” U.S. relations with Israel within the Nineties had been keyed to the 1993 Oslo Accords, touted within the media as an epochal breakthrough for peace however ridiculed by others as a capitulation to Israel by Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestinian Liberation Group, with out getting a lot in return. The accords collapsed when Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated and his alternative Benjamin Netanyahu took over in an Israeli reign of provocations and brutality that continues right now and has been labeled as genocide.
The U.S., by way of a secret CIA coaching program, taught the brand new Palestinian Authority find out how to police and oppress their very own individuals, because the Israeli maintain on the West Financial institution and Gaza ramped up. Below Clinton, weapons gross sales and giveaways to Israel soared, whereas Israel itself constructed its personal hi-tech industries with intelligence and navy functions.
Kuzmarov writes that: “Noam Chomsky factors out that Clinton’s elevated assist for Israel was a consequence of the tip of the Chilly Battle and disappearance of the Soviet Union as an ally of the Arab states and was mixed with a twin containment coverage aimed toward each Iran and Iraq who threatened joint American-Israeli regional hegemony.”
Regardless of displaying sympathy at instances towards the Palestinians, Clinton really weakened the power of the U.S. to carry Israel to account. Kuzmarov says he “did a disservice each to the nation and to the Jewish individuals by giving Israeli leaders a false sense of invincibility by advantage of their limitless backing by the US.” This “limitless backing” was repeated within the message delivered by President Joe Biden to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu when Israel launched into the present genocidal assaults on Gaza. Biden’s “clean examine” has enabled extra crimes in opposition to humanity—partly the results of the Clinton presidency when a number of steps had been taken into right now’s abyss.
Africa
The subsequent two chapters of Warmonger cowl Africa: Chapter 11: “Clinton and Africa: Black African Lives Didn’t Actually Matter,” and Chapter 12: “The U.S. Assault on the African Heartland: U.S. Collusion within the Rwandan Genocide and Congo Wars.”
The drama of Africa’s relationship to Europe and America extends far again in historical past however is most pertinent right now in the way in which the Western powers have changed their colonization of that massive continent, and their centuries-long seizure of black African slaves, with new patterns of financial exploitation by way of such mechanisms as IMF and World Financial institution lending, self-serving funding by worldwide firms, and taking sides in proxy wars. One sub-Saharan African nation that appears to be on its approach to escaping the ravages of neocolonialism could also be South Africa, probably as a consequence of its membership within the Russian/Chinese language-sponsored BRICS+.
However regardless of well-publicized gestures like appointing Jesse Jackson particular envoy for “democracy promotion,” Kuzmarov writes that “Clinton was finally no actual good friend of Africa. In keeping with Human Rights Watch, his administration adopted a ‘selective method to human rights’ and turned a ‘blind eye in African international locations thought-about to be strategically or economically vital.’ The Pentagon on the similar time started planning a community of navy installations throughout the continent from Somalia to Senegal, which started to be constructed after 9/11.”
Additional, “Clinton heralded Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda as ‘a part of a brand new technology’ of African leaders dedicated to democracy,” although, “In 1998, Museveni and Kagame, the 2 ‘nice democrats,’ invaded and plundered the Democratic Republic of Congo with U.S. backing, inflicting what Glenn Ford characterised as ‘the worst genocide since World Battle II.’”
Kuzmarov additionally covers Clinton’s disastrous “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia; intervention on behalf of oil pursuits in Sudan and the August 1998 bombing of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum; U.S. assist of a “particular relationship whereby [oil-rich] Nigeria served as a base for coaching Africans to hold out clandestine operations throughout the continent on behalf of out of doors pursuits”; help and adviser assist for the Nigerian dictatorship of Sani Abacha; interference in an prolonged civil conflict in Liberia; huge involvement within the massacres, genocides, and useful resource lootings in Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo; exploitative vaccination packages by U.S. Huge Pharma; and failure to ease Africa’s overseas debt of $130 billion.
The tales of U.S. and Western exploitation of Africa, privatization of the general public commons, and plundering of its assets go on and on. Kuzmarov summarizes by writing:
“Ghanian President Kwame Nkrumah’s 1965 guide, Neo-Colonialism: The Final Stage of Imperialism, supplied a classy framework for understanding how Western capitalist pursuits had been intent on penetrating and exploiting the African continent even after the European international locations had relinquished their formal colonies.
“Had he nonetheless been alive within the Nineties, Nkrumah would have acknowledged the Clinton administration’s insurance policies as an ideal embodiment of what he had warned in opposition to. Clinton carried out basic neocolonial insurance policies by aggressively making an attempt to open up Africa to overseas financial exploitation whereas ramping up U.S. navy intervention below the quilt of peacekeeping operations that utilized primarily African proxy forces.
“Clinton’s insurance policies finally helped pave the way in which for Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administration insurance policies that resulted in a significant enlargement of the U.S. navy footprint in Africa. Below Clinton, the promised new period of enlightenment and African renaissance by no means got here to cross, as wars backed by the West festered, new dictators rose, and African economies remained underdeveloped and weak to exploitation.”
Latin America
Lastly, in Chapter 13: “The Third Conquest of Latin America,” Kuzmarov gives his tackle how the U.S. below Clinton moved to resume and safe its maintain on its conventional southern playground of Mexico and Central and South America. He had already lined relations involving Clinton’s half-hearted engagement within the interdiction of drug visitors and the dire results of NAFTA on abnormal Mexicans. He now writes: “An extended-term aim was the institution of a brand new free-trade zone for all the Americas, the Free-Commerce Settlement of the Americas (FTAA), which was christened in 2005.” He provides that: “Latin America turned a vital showpiece for a brand new greenback diplomacy within the Nineties and obtained a great deal of high-tech weaponry that was used to repress social actions.”
Additional, Kuzmarov provides that “In keeping with historian Greg Grandin, Clinton carried ahead the legacy of Ronald Reagan in presiding over the ‘third conquest’ of Latin America, ensuing from giant scale privatization packages starting within the Eighties that led to the promoting off of Latin American state belongings to personal capitalists and intensified looting of its assets by multinational firms and foreigners.” In the meantime, “Unemployment charges almost doubled from 4.6% in 1990 to eight.6% in 1999 and forested areas had been depleted at a fee two instances better than in the remainder of the world.”
Clinton destroyed rice cultivation in Haiti in favor of Riceland Meals, headquartered in Arkansas and a marketing campaign donor. By means of the chaotic adjustments of presidency within the Nineties, U.S. management over Haiti grew, together with the standard neoliberal privatization and funding measures. Exploitation of Haiti continued after Clinton left workplace by way of actions of the Clinton International Initiative.
In Cuba, which had fallen on laborious instances with the autumn of the Soviet Union, Clinton’s focusing on of Fidel Castro for regime change failed, at the same time as he tightened the U.S. commerce embargo and engaged the Nationwide Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the CIA in subversion. Clinton’s electoral assist from Florida’s Cuban-American voters shot up within the 1996 election.
Clinton additionally supported reactionary forces in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and elsewhere in favor of the identical sort of economic/navy oppression the U.S. had been training for many years. Predictably, leftist actions now started to re-emerge throughout the area. Right now, particularly with China rising as a participant in Western Hemisphere economies and Brazil changing into a constitution member of BRICS+, Latin America is more and more divided between its lengthy heritage as a U.S. footstool and a area on the alternative facet of the geopolitical fence from the U.S. as a part of the “International South.”
Conclusion
Kuzmarov’s final chapter presents his last evaluation of the overseas coverage parts of Clinton’s presidency with the descriptive title: “Laying the Groundwork for the U.S. International Coverage Disasters That Adopted.”
Historical past’s Judgment on Clinton
In my very own guide, Our Nation, Then and Now, lately revealed by Readability Press, I clarify intimately, utilizing open sources, how in 1940-1941 the Council on International Relations, even then essentially the most influential “assume tank” within the historical past of the U.S., was placing collectively an in depth plan whereby the U.S. would acquire navy domination over all the world by way of the approaching World Battle II and its aftermath. This domination by power of arms was meant as a car for financial and monetary management by Western oligarchs.
The plan has been carried ahead relentlessly since then, the one bump within the highway being the shortened time period of President John F. Kennedy, who had a special imaginative and prescient, however was disposed of by the powers-that-be by assassination and cover-up.
The plan was executed, first, by conflict in opposition to Germany and Japan. Subsequent, the U.S. engaged in opposition to its World Battle II ally, the Soviet Union, in a Chilly Battle lasting 45 years. With the autumn of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. got down to full its self-defined mission of world conquest by the subjugation of Europe, through its domination of NATO, then the Far East, the Center East, and Africa, whereas extending its already highly effective hegemony over Latin America. The whole U.S. institution got down to execute the plan, led by the CIA, navy, and diplomatic corps, all closely infiltrated by what we now name “Neocons,” with the personal sector absolutely engaged behind Wall Road and the banks, together with the Federal Reserve and the multinational firms, right down to hamburger flippers like Burger King, and soft-drink purveyors like Coke and Pepsi.
President Invoice Clinton was 100% a part of that plan, although he was exceptionally good at hiding it—however not from the hundreds of thousands of individuals world wide whose lives he ended or harmed by his actions; nor those that performed together with rising U.S. hegemony and benefitted from it—together with the navy and intelligence institutions of the nations who turned U.S. shoppers or prospects.
Jeremy Kuzmarov has completed a masterful job in documenting and explaining this era of U.S. historical past, so I’ll give him the final phrase:
“This all prefigured the rhetoric and technique of George W. Bush and different post-9/11 leaders, marking Clinton as an vital bridge determine between the Reagan-Bush I period and Bush II-Obama-Trump-Biden eras, together with in serving to to situation the American public to simply accept heavy handed, illegal, and sometimes doubtful overseas coverage strategies.”…
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“A key a part of Clinton’s legacy is the slippery slope he created that inexorably led to the later overseas coverage excesses of the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, which now are continued by the Biden administration. Because of Clinton’s legacy, the U.S. has sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of {dollars} combating unjustifiable and unwinnable wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria—and now in Ukraine, which might very simply flip nuclear. Relatively than being among the finest presidents in American historical past, Clinton ought to rank close to the underside with others of this technology. Clinton’s charisma and allure might have received over the voters of his day, however historians and up to date commentators shouldn’t be blind to the truth that his deleterious insurance policies set in movement the start of America’s imperial decline.”
On this excellent chronicle of presidential actions boding ailing for the long run, Jeremy Kuzmarov drives residence repeatedly that Invoice Clinton’s deceit in posing as a humanitarian, whereas furthering the target of U.S. world conquest at any value, made him most likely essentially the most impactful CIA operative in historical past.
Richard C. Prepare dinner is a retired U.S. federal analyst who served with the U.S. Civil Service Fee, FDA, the Carter White Home, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury. As a whistleblower on the time of the Challenger catastrophe, he broke the story of the flawed O-ring joints that destroyed the Shuttle. Prepare dinner documented his story in his guide “Challenger Revealed.”
After serving at Treasury, he uncovered the disastrous flaws of a financial system managed by personal finance in his guide “We Maintain These Truths: The Hope of Financial Reform.” As an adviser to the American Financial Institute and whereas working with Congressman Dennis Kucinich, he advocated the alternative of the Federal Reserve System with a real nationwide foreign money.
His newest guide is “Our Nation, Then and Now” (Readability Press, 2023).
https://www.claritypress.com/product/our-country-then-and-now/
“Each human enterprise should serve life, should search to counterpoint existence on earth, lest man change into enslaved the place he seeks to ascertain his dominion!” Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943), Translation by Posthumus Tasks Amsterdam, 2014.
