IT WAS CLAUSEWITZ who said that war is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means.
In unveiling a large number of sites scattered all over the globe from Russia to the UK and the Congo, which the US characterises as being of ‘vital interest’ for the security of the United States, WikiLeaks has actually revealed a part of the imperialist politics which drive the US into imperialist wars.
This weekend Wikileaks published US documents marked ‘secret’ detailing hundreds of sites throughout the world designated by US imperialism as being of ‘vital interest’.
The documents expose how in February 2009, US embassies were instructed to update a list of sites, without the knowledge of the governments involved, in what was called a Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative.
Dividing the world into six regions, this lists sites and individual companies deemed essential for the US and which must be defended in the national interest.
The range of what is considered vital is truly staggering.
In Britain alone numerous sites are listed, including telecommunication hubs, landing sites for undersea transatlantic communication cables, such as Bude in Cornwall, a company in Lancashire that produces vaccine against foot and mouth disease, even a marine engineering company in Edinburgh.
The sites listed throughout the rest of the world are similarly exhaustive.
Doubtless, a company in Denmark manufacturing smallpox vaccine, or the plant in France producing a rabies vaccine will be surprised to learn that they are vital to the defence of US imperialism and likely to suffer US ‘protection’ should the State Department deem it necessary.
Gas pipelines in Siberia figure on the list along with the Suez canal and oil terminals in Iraq.
In every continent and virtually every country sites have been secretly identified and listed as vital to US security.
These leaked documents, which have been described as the most serious ones to appear so far, reveal the tentacles of US imperialism spread wide throughout the world. All of these interests are there to be ‘defended’ as far as the US is concerned, whether the government or the people of the particular country like it or not.
The Tories, revealed in earlier documents to be obsequious to US imperialism to the point of embarrassment, even to the State Department, quickly rushed to denounce this leak.
Former Tory foreign secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, complained that ‘this is the kind of information terrorists are interested in knowing’.
In fact, all of this information is publicly available, what is secret – and kept secret from Rifkind and succeeding UK governments and the rest of the world – is that US imperialism regards these sites as their property to defend either politically or militarily.
Presumably, Rifkind and the coalition government are comfortable with not knowing, and are prepared to only find out just how far US imperialism’s tentacles stretch when they wake up one morning to find US marines storming the beaches of Cornwall or Lancashire being subjected to a bit of shock and awe.
This is not as far-fetched as it may at first appear.
US imperialism invaded Iraq for its oil, and Afghanistan for its strategic position near the gas-rich Caspian Sea region.
Throughout the world the US government is waging either covert or overt war against any threat to its economic survival as the most powerful imperialist nation on the planet.
As the capitalist crisis deepens into all-out slump, collapse and currency and trade war so US imperialism becomes even more desperate in its struggle to survive, threatening war on its capitalist rivals, and especially on Russia and China, the degenerated and deformed workers’ states.
However, as the world crisis of capitalism drives US imperialism from political manoeuvres into war to secure its interests, so the same crisis is unleashing the world revolution, and driving the working class of the world forward to put an end to capitalism and imperialism, once and for all.
