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A systems view of Western policy today
By Karl North | July 12, 2019
Complex systems are resilient, or resistant to change from another viewpoint. Human societies are complex systems. Historically they have exhibited this inertia – a tendency to repeatedly snap back to business as usual or some facsimile of it when faced with a long period of inevitable change. Modern industrial society confronts just this situation – a long period of deindustrialization due to declining access to essential raw materials and damage to indispensable ecosystem processes.[1] Inertia in human society has multiple sources: political-economic, social and cultural. In this essay I will explore the political economy or general structure of power that shapes the policies of Western nations as a basis for better understanding how it will react to the long emergency. To better tackle the subject, a summary of the systems worldview will be useful.
A holistic or systems view of the universe holds that there are behaviors of wholes that are not predictable from the behaviors of the parts. That is, one cannot simply add up the behaviors of the parts and achieve an understanding of the whole. Missing from that analysis are emergent behaviors, so-called because they can be explained only by a study of the whole. Emergent behaviors are the result of what we call synergies, themselves the product of the web of interaction of multiple variables in the whole. A corollary of the core systems principle is that that the causes of the behavior of wholes are often multiple. A crowning lesson from systems science is that many behaviors of wholes are not predictable at all, while some are predictable in their rough shape over time only because they are driven by ecological imperatives, themselves obedient to the laws of energy and matter.
This worldview is still relatively rare, even actively resisted (more inertia), so that when we try to understand a complex whole such as foreign policy behavior patterns of the Western world in recent decades, we miss the synergies. What is worse, after several centuries of technological achievements, few denizens of the modern age are willing to accept the limits of scientific understanding described above. Instead of considering the whole social system and its power structure, we fix on parts. In the example that is the subject of this essay, many attempts to explain foreign and even some domestic policies of Western governments fix attention on a single source of the power that shapes policy, whereas I propose that policy is shaped by a synergistic alliance of three power sources. I will first summarize each of these most common explanations.
- Military industrial complexes (MICs), bolstered by their increasing role in propping up weakening Western economies, promote serial wars to serve their goal, which is ultimately to maximize the profits of their weapons industries. Over time, a part of the military high command in each nation is corrupted, lured by payoffs from the weapons industry and the opportunities for career advancement that wars offer, and the promise of lucrative retirement positions in the industry. Hence, the military high command multiplies demands for exotic war materiel and conforms to what serves the industry rather than what kind of weaponry best serves the defense of the nation. Cost overruns abound and quality of products declines, overloaded with expensive, unwieldly technology. The MIC encourages inter-service competition (boats for the Army, planes for the Navy, etc.) to bloat defense budgets.
- The Zionist fifth columns[2] in most Western nations, backed by disproportionate Jewish wealth and clannish organizational power, have grown over the 70 years of the existence of Israel to serve as a tail wagging the dog of national governments that bends policies to serve Israeli interests. As an example, a shrewd Zionist pattern of campaign contributions to both major political parties in the US has assured almost total congressional loyalty to Israeli interests. Zionists including Israeli dual citizens hold unusual numbers of high government positions and ownership of mass media. They stifle criticism with threats of accusation of anti-Semitism and increasingly with laws that criminalize anti-Semitism and even criticism of Israel. In the US, the large population of Christian evangelicals serve as willing foot soldiers for Israel in the electorate.
- A global hegemonist faction centered in the intelligence establishments is devoted to opening and maintaining the whole world’s economies to the unhindered penetration of transnational private capital. Published government documents that the general public rarely reads describe a geopolitical strategy for achieving worldwide hegemony. The CIA in conjunction with secret services of other Western nations maintains a permanent presence in all countries running a variety of clandestine operations aimed at providing support for compliant client regimes and overthrowing those that attempt to declare independence from Western imperial control. This permanent policy of interference in the affairs of foreign nations by officially sanctioned institutions of Western governments violates international law, the UN charter, and in most cases national constitutional law. Because its effect has been to destroy trust in Western diplomacy, a small but steady stream of renegades from the CIA has exposed its history of covert operations around the world, begun as early as L. Fletcher Prouty’s The Secret Team,[3] published in 1973. It is a work of massive detail based on Prouty’s key role as a CIA briefer to shape intelligence input to the National Security Council policy formation process during the war in Vietnam. The book quickly went through three editions, then mysteriously disappeared from commercial markets and even libraries, but Prouty has published recent editions updated with accounts of CIA operations since the original publication. These accounts reveal an organization dedicated to organized crime like any other mafia, except that it enjoys the cover of legitimacy as a permanent part of US government.
A systems view reveals that single causes are rare in complex systems. My thesis is that by themselves no one of the forces outlined above fully explains Western policy trends in the last half century. A critical view free of influence from establishment narratives (themselves often a CIA product) easily shows that most of these policy patterns fail to serve the welfare of the citizens of Western nations; while protecting and promoting the interests of private capital they actually impair the security and welfare of Western societies. Most countries invaded or at risk for invasion from Western “coalitions of the willing” posed no risk to the national security of the peoples of Western nations. Western “wars on terror” are actually state-sponsored terrorism that cause suffering numbering in the hundreds of thousands in foreign places – all out of proportion to the suffering and security risk of “terror” to domestic society – and worse, actually generate counter-terrorism. Taxation to support expensive “defense” establishments is contributing to the decline of standards of living in Western nations. Full bore global imperial pressure necessitates demonization of nuclear powers like China and Russia, which strains relationships and brings the risk of nuclear war closer. The penetration of Western-based transnational capital destroys Third World economies and often requires destabilization and overthrow of governments, all of which sends waves of unwanted immigrants into Western societies. Policies so contrary to true interests of citizens of Western nations necessitate the domestic manufacture of fear, justifying and enabling the creation of surveillance states and the suppression of dissent.
So, who does benefit from all this? In my view, what best explains Western policy patterns is that the tail wagging the policy dog is not one of the sources of power and influence listed above but an alliance, sometimes close, sometimes loose, between all three, based on a strong overlap of interests and goals. As with any successful alliance, the whole is more powerful than the sum of the parts because each partner is willing to serve the interests of the others as long as its own goals are respected.
The coincidence of goals is most obvious in the foreign policies of Western governments regarding the societies in the Middle East. The MICs are on board for wars anywhere, so they are happy to support the Zionists in their quest to provoke the West into wars against their enemies in the Muslim world. These wars also fit well with the long-term project of global hegemonists – to fully control Russia and China for the penetration of international capital. They have been using Islamic extremists as proxies to stir up Muslim populations and destabilize the soft underbellies of these nations ever since they armed Osama bin Laden against Russia’s erstwhile ally Afghanistan during the Carter administration. So the use of these militants as proxies in the wars in the Middle East have provided opportunities to breed, train and develop the potential of extremist militias for deployment anywhere in the Muslim world, Muslim populations in the Russian Federation and China in particular.
Because the three power bases act in alliance rather than merely singly, they can draw on all sorts of resources and support in both the public and private sectors. The weapons industry spread itself strategically over the US states to guarantee congressional support for military budgets. The Zionists use their electoral campaign wealth to control governments, regularly test their readiness to act as agents of a foreign power (Israel) with legislative acts that gain near total approval, count on a tradition of support from both liberals and Christian fundamentalists, and, when all else fails, hold the accusation of antisemitism over everyone. The hegemonists have cultivated a long tradition of support for imperial policies that functions as misguided patriotism. Because these power bases have developed over at least the last half century to embed themselves in the collective consciousness, the public rarely questions this tragic state of affairs.
The brains and the operational hub of the alliance lie in the intelligence agencies, for several reasons. I will use the CIA as an example, because of its most extensive development in that agency.
First, the agency holds a monopoly on information gained secretly in its espionage role. Moreover, the veracity of its intelligence cannot be easily verified without blowing the cover of the source.
Second, the secrecy creates a mystique that makes its input more influential to the policy formation process in other institutions like the State Department and the branches of the military. The mystique is part of a cult developed around the agency as an elite club with exceptional skills and a special mission to spread the American form of society around the world. This not only fosters internal loyalty at whatever cost, but helps recruit people in other branches of government and the private sector who become loyal “assets” of use to the agency.
Third, and most important, the CIA is much larger in its real power structure, funding sources and logistic capacity than most people, even within government, realize. As Prouty and other former employees have described it, loyalists are embedded both officially and covertly in all branches of the military, the Pentagon and the State Department and its foreign service branches: the diplomatic corps, USIA and USAID. The CIA has several sources of funding in addition to the official “black budget”. Via joint projects with other branches of the defense establishment it sponges on their budgets. It has a long-standing practice of participation in organized crime, the illicit drug industry in particular, to fund expensive clandestine military operations, either by creating its own enterprise (as in Laos during the Indochina wars) or in association with criminal drug cartels. It stockpiles material around the world and moves it with airlines and shipping companies owned by itself or by loyal agency assets. This systematic expansion of the agency started when the CIA was created in 1947. By now, the CIA and other “intelligence” agencies exert immense covert influence on government policy and serve to coordinate the activity of the tri-part alliance.
In my view it is the tri-part alliance that I have described which best corresponds to references to a ‘deep state’ that have begun to appear in alternative media. Lacking however, in most discussions of a deep state is awareness that the structure of power in capitalist society goes deeper still. Behind the deep state is the real source of power, the global capitalist class. Government, mass media, the market economy and the knowledge institutions are all largely servile agents of private capital. This is not to suggest that the global capitalist oligarchy is always unified or that the main institutions of society always succeed in their assigned roles. Unlike simple dictatorships, power relations under capitalism are complex and abound in contradictions, which is why they are often described as ‘inverse totalitarian’ systems. In this way the ultimate bases of power remain in the background protected from popular rebellion, and few among the masses manage to draw aside the veil to view the full extent of the structure of power (or the faction fights within the capitalist oligarchy).
In sum, this troika, a deep state alliance centered in the US and its vassals has paved the way for private transnational capitalist interests to free-range the planet in recent decades, even to penetrate emerging industrial economies like China, Russia, India and Brazil to various degrees, and ultimately to consume more of the planet’s finite quantity of raw materials in the last half century than in than the rest of history. Meanwhile however, as this massive consumption has progressed, the Age of Modernity, with its worldview of endless resources and growth began to give way to the Age of Limits, unnoticeably to most proponents of growth and “progress”. Now, as the limits are beginning to bite, the world economy decelerates, will soon reverse itself permanently, and the relative tolerance of its social and ecological ravages the world’s people have shown is wearing thin. It will be interesting to observe how the alliance I have described confronts this great turning point.
[1] Many accounts exist that explain the end of the industrial age. Some notable examples:
The Long Emergency by James Kunstler
The Long Descent by John M. Greer
Peak Everything by Richard Heinberg
Many papers on my website: karlnorth.com
[2] James Petras, 2006. The Power of Israel in the United States.
[3] A complete version is available free online as a pdf – The Secret Team: the CIA and its allies in control of the United States and the world
Topics: Political and Economic Organization, Social Futures, Peak Oil, Relocalization, Systems Thinking Tools, Uncategorized | No Comments »
