Not about oil? You must be joking!
"Western industrialised societies are largely dependent on the oil
resources of the Middle East region and a threat to access to that
oil would constitute a grave threat to the vital national interests.
This must be dealt with; and that does not exclude the use of force
if necessary."
(US Secretary of State Alexander Haig, March 11 1981.)
"Our aim is not simply to appropriate oil in one way or another (say
in easily accessible Nigeria or Venezuela) but to crush OPEC.
Therefore we have to use direct force in order to get hold of large
and concentrated oil deposits which can be opened up rapidly so as to
put an end to the artificial oil shortage and thus to lower the
price... Since this is the ultimate and there is only one target
possible: Saudi Arabia... Fortunately, these are not only rich
oilfields but they are also concentrated in a very small area, a
fraction of the Saudi Arabian territory... While Vietnam was full of
trees and brave people and our national interest was almost
invisible, what we have here is no trees, very few people and a clear
objective."
(Advisor to the US Defence Department Professor Miles Ignotas, March
1975.)
"The economic health and well-being of the United States, Western
Europe, Japan depend upon continued access to the oil from the
Persian area."
(President Carter, Department of State Bulletin, April 1978.)
"We must be prepared for waging a conventional war that may extend to
many parts of the globe. Many of the resources that we need for
energy and many essential strategic minerals are found thousands of
miles from our shores... If we are to safeguard our access, and the
access of the free world, to these resources, we must increase our
military and naval strength."
(US Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger, April 28 1981.)
"The United States will in fact have no other choice but to establish
a world order it is able to live with, a world where there is
relatively free access to the world's resources."
(US Wall Street Journal, Nov 26 1979.)
"As the largest producer, the largest source of capital, and the
biggest contributor to the global mechanism, we must set the pace and
assume the responsibility of the majority stockholder in this
corporation known as the world... Nor is this for a given term of
office. This is a permanent obligation."
(Leo D. Welch, Secretary-Treasurer of US Standard Oil Company, 1946.)
"...to set forth the political, military, territorial and economic
requirements of the United States in its potential leadership of the
non-German world area, including the United Kingdom itself as well as
the Western hemisphere and the Far East. The first and foremost
requirement of the United States in a world in which it proposes to
hold unquestionable power in the rapid fulfilment of a programme of
complete re-armament... to secure the limitation of any exercise of
sovereignty by foreign nations that constitutes a threat to the
minimum world area essential for the security and economic prosperity
of the United States."
(Economic and Financial Group of the US Council of Foreign Relations.
1940.)
"To use our strategic air power successfully we must have bases so
located around the world that we can reach any target we may be
called upon to hit."
(US Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.)
"It will become increasingly difficult in the near future to protect
US overseas interests with conventional weapons... I have in mind
situations far from our shores,... where we would have difficulty,
from a logistics point of view, at least, in reaching the areas in
which we have considerable US interests.
…we have an added motivation... the need for the United States to
look more and more overseas for the resources to provide economic
strength... we will be looking increasingly towards Africa and the
Middle East, as well as South America, for the materials required by
our industrial economy... We will require free access and intercourse
with many far distant nations of the world in order to remain a
leading export - import nation…
We may have confrontations with nuclear or non-nuclear nations whose
geographical location is such that we have no adequate means of
protecting our interests with conventional weapons... The use of
nuclear weapons with varying capabilities might be the only effective
method of accomplishing our objectives, protecting our interests, and
minimising the overall death and destruction that might accrue."
(US Vice Admiral Gerald E Miller, Congressional Testimony, March 18
1976.)
"Fate has written our policy for us; the trade of the world must and
can be ours. And we shall get it, as our Mother England has told us
how... We will cover the ocean with our merchant marine. We will
build a navy to the measure of our greatness... Our institutes will
follow our trade… American law, American order, American
civilisation, and the American flag will plant themselves on shores
hitherto bloody and benighted, by those agencies of God henceforth
made beautiful and bright."
(US Senator Albert Beveridge, 1898.)
"Leadership towards a new system of international relationships in
trade and other economic affairs will devolve largely on the US
because of our great economic strength. We should assume this
leadership and the responsibility which goes with it, primarily for
reasons of pure national self interest."
(Roosevelt's US Secretary of State Cordell Hull.)
"Military needs have now become the single dominant factor in
American economic policy overseas."
(The Times Sept 17 1951.)
"The United States, as an island nation heavily dependent on overseas
raw materials, must continue its forward deployment of forces in Asia
and the Pacific region. There is no cheaper way to American security."
(US Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci.)
"The plan says that 'we must revitalise and enhance special-
operations [nuclear B.M.] forces to project US power where the use of
conventional forces would be premature, inappropriate or
infeasible'... As outlined in the paper, the strategy for Southwest
Asia, including the Persian Gulf, directs American forces to be ready
to force their way in if necessary, and not to wait for an invitation
from a friendly government, which has been the publicly stated
policy."
(US Defense Dept, in New York Times May 30 1982.)
"Fundamental national interests require the United States to use
military force in defence of our interests with comparative freedom
if it should become necessary to do so not only in Europe, but in
other strategically critical parts of the world. In my view – and I
speak for President Reagan – this must remain the minimum goal of our
nuclear arsenal."
(Former US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Director Eugene
Rostow.)
"The US is leader of the free world, and under this administration is
beginning to act like it. If the Europeans don't like it, that's too
bad, it's too late to do anything about it now."
(US Vice President George Bush, Chicago, August 16 1982.)
"Whether we like it or not, we must all recognise that the victory
which we have won has placed upon the American people the continuing
burden of responsibility for world leadership. The future peace of
the world will depend in large part upon whether or not the United
States shows that it is really determined to continue its role as a
leader among nations."
(US President Truman's message to Congress, Dec 19 1945.)
"Geographically, our territory extends to the Aleutians, Hawaii and
Guam in the middle of the Pacific Ocean... We are a global power with
global tasks. We have to be prepared to fulfil the tasks facing us in
Asia in the same ways as we are prepared to fulfil them elsewhere."
(Former US Defence Secretary Brown, in Amerika Dienst, Bonn, March 8
1978.)
"We make use of the Monroe Doctrine according to our needs, our will
and the power of our weapons."
(US Secretary of State Knox, 1919.)
"US global power projection rests upon a co-operative Caribbean and a
supportive South America. The exclusion of Old World maritime powers
from Cuba, the Caribbean and Latin America has helped the United
States generate sufficient surplus power for balancing activities on
European, Asian and African continents... Latin America, like Western
Europe and Japan, is part of America's power base. Any United States
power base, be it in Latin America, Western Europe or the Western
Pacific, cannot be allowed to crumble if the United States is to
retain adequate extra energy to be able to play a balancing role
elsewhere in the world. For a balancing state like the United States,
there is no possibility of flexible global action if its power is
immobilised or checked in any one area."
(From the Santa Fe Document, Inter-American Security Inc. Washington,
1980.)
"The central concern of the foreign policy of the United States must
be the creation of a world order which is oriented to the broadest
possible extent towards our national interests as a free, democratic
and capitalist great power."
(US Wall Street Journal.)
"You know, there was a time when our national security was based on a
standing army here within our own borders and shore batteries of
artillery along our coasts... The world has changed. Today, our
national security can be threatened in far away places. It is up to
all of us to be aware of the strategic importance of such places and
to be able to identify them... ...all are vital to us and if it went
to world powers hostile to the free world, there would be a direct
threat to the United States and to our allies."
(Ronald Reagan, in a Television Address, Oct 27 1983.)
"You can have a limited nuclear war. The USA has already fought such
a war, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Japanese not only lived
through it but are flourishing."
(Eugene Rostow, director of US Arms Control and Development Agency.)
"In Asia our efforts were far less successful... the conception of
force was too nakedly shown, too much stress was laid on the military
side, while we largely ignored the importance of preliminary economic
preparations for the alliances we wished to make. But the same
military measures will often be found unobjectionable if the way to
them is paved with economic aid...
The most significant example in practice of what I mean was the
Iranian experiment with which, as you will remember, I was directly
concerned. By the use of economic aid we succeeded in getting access
to Iranian oil and we are now well established in the economy of that
country. The strengthening of our economic position in Iran has
enabled us to acquire control over her foreign policy and in
particular to make her join the Bagdad Pact. At the present time the
Shah would not dare even to make any changes in his cabinet without
consulting our Ambassador...
For us to have in Asia, Africa and other under-developed areas a
political and military influence as great or greater than we obtained
through the Marshall Plan in Europe. It is necessary for us to act
carefully and patiently, and in the early stages confine ourselves to
securing very modest political concessions in exchange for our
economic aid (in some exceptional cases even without any concessions
in return). The way will then be open to us, but at a later stage, to
step up both our political price and our military demands...
In this case governmental subsidies and credits may take the form of
military appropriations. The hooked fish needs no bait. At the same
time economic support for those strata of the local business
community which are ready to co-operate with the US should be
increased and the necessary conditions would be created for
businessmen of this type to be put in key economic positions and
accordingly for their political influence to be increased.
...the main emphasis in economic assistance as regards government
subsidies and credits should be on creating conditions in which
eventually the economic relations established by us would work for
and make it natural for these countries to join military pacts and
alliances inspired by us. The essence of this policy should be that
the development of our economic relations with these countries would
ultimately allow us to take over key positions in the native
economy... By this means we can hope to divert the foreign policy of
these countries in a more desirable direction...
...support should be given in particular... to native businessmen who
are struggling against their colonial status.
...if we do not support them we lose all hope of exercising a
restraining influence on them until it is too late. If this happens
the desire for independence may result in a nationalism so strong as
to escape not only from the control of the old colonial powers but
also from our own control.
Extensive economic aid... should always be presented as an expression
of a sincere and disinterested desire on the part of the US to help
and co-operate with them."
(Letter from US Council on Foreign Relations member millionaire
Nelson Rockefeller to President Eisenhower, January 1956.)
"Now the Pacific has become an Anglo-Saxon lake, and our line of
defence runs through the chain of islands fringing the coast of Asia."
(US General MacArthur, Daily Mail March 2 1949.)
"...an American Empire which will be... capable of exercising
decisive world control... It must be granted that the United States
cannot within the allotted time win the leadership of a viable world
political order merely by appeals to rational conviction. Power must
be there, with the known readiness to use it, whether in the indirect
form of paralysing economic sanctions, or in the direct explosion of
bombs. As the ultimate reserve in the power series there would be
monopoly control of atomic weapons. 'Independence' and 'freedom' are
after all abstractions."
(US theorist James Burnham, "The Struggle for the World." 1947.)
"For defensive purposes the sovereignty of the United States extends
to the whole continent."
(US Secretary of State Richard Olney, 1895.)
"In the event of a major war, certain objectives were clear. The
United States should follow "what has been our one and only basic
policy in the last thirty years. This is that we prefer to fight our
wars, if they be necessary, in someone else's territory."
(US declassified documents JCS 1496/2 and JCS 1519, 1945.)