The Pentagon failed to explain a total of $21 trillion expenditures, yet there’s no congressional hearing as wide ranging as the Trump-Putin collusion ever happening.

The US government can bully everyone else for as long wars are fought anywhere other than in American soil.

“The United States government authorizes itself to be the dictator of the world, and this couldn’t happen if it didn’t have allies who accept this type of humiliating treatment. An insatiable US military is essential in order for such a regime to be able to have any success at all.

For example, on May 10th, the US regime warned that if Venezuela’s government takes any actions against the participants in the failed April 30th US-backed coup-attempt in Venezuela, then the US regime will tighten the economic-sanctions screws even harder, which means that any nation that trades with Venezuela will be even more punished than before.

Economic sanctions are the first step of war, the end-step being a military invasion, but it’s really dictating to other countries whom they can trade with, and whom not. America’s economic sanctions are saying: Move aside, UN, WTO, etc.; we’re taking over as the judge, jury, policeman and executioner, for the entire world. Move aside — we do whatever we want, and we’ll crush you, too, if you resist. American ‘democracy’ is being spread by international dictatorship, and it’s now bolder than ever.

One of the excuses that the US regime offers for these economic sanctions is that they are necessary in order to punish Venezuela’s government for Venezuelans’ suffering from shortages of food, medicine, and other necessities, but the chief purpose of the sanctions — an economic blockade, actually — is precisely to engender such shortages.

They are a vastly bigger success than many in the public recognize, and so other reasons for those shortages, etc., are instead cited by the US regime and its allies. In other words, it’s an extremely effective operation to fool the public — not only about how effective the sanctions are (which is very); but also about why these extraordinary conditions now exist in Venezuela, Iran, and other countries that the US regime (and its allies) sanction.

In other words: the publics (at least in allied countries) are fooled to believe that the main source of the problems in those suffering countries is the government that the US regime is trying to overthrow, the victim nations themselves.

The mind-control operation here is that the extreme problems in the sanctioned countries are to be blamed on those nations’ internal political situation, instead of on the US and its allied regimes — their shared determination to overthrow and replace the targeted governments.

The US regime thinks that the American people (and the public in its allied regimes) will be too stupid to recognize the self-contradiction here (that it uses those sanctions in order to help, instead of to impoverish, the people in the targeted lands), and thus that they will blame only Venezuela’s government for the shortages, etc.

But the undeniable fact is that by blocking trade between Venezuela and its trading-partners, Venezuela not only can’t import, but can’t export, and so gets economically strangled — which is what is happening — and that’s the success of the sanctions.

On May 10th the US Treasury Department headlined “Treasury Identifies the Venezuelan Defense and Security Sector as Subject to Sanctions and Further Targets Venezuelan Oil Moving to Cuba”, and announced:

Today, Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin, in consultation with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, and pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13850, as amended, determined that persons operating in the defense and security sector of the Venezuelan economy may be subject to sanctions. In addition, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated two companies that operate in the oil sector of the Venezuelan economy, pursuant to E.O. 13850, as amended. OFAC has also identified two vessels, which transported oil from Venezuela to Cuba, as blocked property owned by the two companies.

“Treasury’s action today puts Venezuela’s military and intelligence services, as well as those who support them, on notice that their continued backing of the illegitimate Maduro regime will be met with serious consequences,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin.

The US regime accuses Venezuela’s government for its “continued backing of the illegitimate Maduro regime” — as if the stooge Guaido that the US regime demands to replace Maduro had beaten Maduro in the last Venezuelan election, when in fact Guaido is a long-time CIA asset who never even was, nor ever applied to be, a candidate in any nationwide Venezuelan election, much less is he someone who would have — or likely could have — won against Maduro in such. First come the US regime’s lies and sanctions, then (if those fail) comes, maybe, its military?

The purpose of the military is to apply the ultimate weapons, if and as needed, in order to impose one’s will. The US dollar is backed by blood — victims’ blood, the target-nations’ blood — and the dollar wouldn’t be the world’s reserve currency if it weren’t backed up ultimately by America’s military, “the policeman to the world.” (That’s how the thug calls itself, instead, a ‘policeman’.) The dollar would be just another currency.

Alliances are essential in order for an empire such as this to be able to function. But alliances also need enemies — and those are intended to be the victims. And trading with the ‘enemies’ (any sanctioned country) causes that trader to become likewise punished. As was stated before, these sanctions are actually economic blockades. A blockade doesn’t affect only its target-nation but also the nations which don’t join the economic war against that target. This is how a blockade works.

The purpose of the sanctions is to isolate the target-country by extending those sanctions also against any nation which doesn’t abandon that target-nation. After the target-nation becomes sufficiently abandoned, the empire invades it. That’s how an empire works, in our time (if not all times).

More blatantly than ever before, the US regime is now actually trying to terrorize the entire world into submission.

On April 29th, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or SIPRI (which is the standard authority on military spending around the world) headlined “World military expenditure grows to $1.8 trillion in 2018”, and reported that:

“Total military expenditure by all 29 North Atlantic Treaty Organization members was $963 billion in 2018, which accounted for 53 per cent of world spending.”

What is NATO defending itself against? Is it defending against non-NATO nations? Those 166 non-NATO nations constitute 85% of all nations, but collectively they spend (according to SIPRI) only 47% of the entire world’s military budget, so who is really benefiting from all of the weapons that NATO nations are producing and buying — other than the owners of those weapons-producing firms?

Those people are the real beneficiaries of NATO’s existence after the end of the Soviet Union and of its communism in 1991. And doesn’t the leader of NATO, which is the US, perpetrate around 90% of the world’s invasions and coups — roughly 90% of the world’s aggressions? So: what is NATO defending against?

The US doesn’t even attempt to do regime-changes against NATO nations, except against Turkey in 2015, and US propagandists blamed that coup-attempt’s failure on Russia, which is the country against which NATO had been founded by the US in 1949. Today’s US regime continues to direct NATO to be primarily against Russia. NATO at its founding claimed to be ‘anti-communist’, but is actually — and has always been — the anti-Russian military alliance.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia expressed the desire to become a member of NATO but was quietly blocked by the US regime. Corporations such as Lockheed didn’t want it as an ally (a market), but only as a target (an ‘enemy’), because such firms need both ally-nations and target-nations in order to thrive. How else can military sales keep growing, than this — especially after Russia left the Cold War in 1991?

SIPRI’s report says,

“The largest absolute increase in spending in 2018 was by the USA ($27.8 billion).”

US President Trump demands that all 29 NATO member-nations spend at least 2% of their GDP on ‘Defence’. According to NATO’s 10 July 2018 “Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2011-2018)”, only 4 of the then-28 NATO nations actually did: US=3.5%. Greece=2.7%. Estonia=2.2%. And UK=2.1%.

Clearly, the US government carries the torch for torching things (bombing them, etc.) in its target-countries (the friends and allies of Russia), but America’s leadership wants their foreign allies (such as Europe) to extract more money from their taxpayers, in order to support the US team’s aggressions (‘defences’).

So: too much weapons-buying is not enough to satisfy NATO, which is the members’ weapons-manufacturers’ top PR and marketing organization. (Actually, NATO after 1991 no longer has any other actual reason for being.)

But the biggest foreign market-area for America’s ‘defense’ contractors isn’t NATO — it’s the Middle East, where the war-business is thriving. Furthermore, unlike the NATO countries, many of which are themselves major weapons-producers and not merely major consumers of weapons, Middle Eastern countries are insignificant as weapons-manufacturing lands — so, they import instead of manufacture almost all of their military equipment. This makes them even more lucrative to have as allies.

SIPRI’s report says that “Six of the 10 countries with the highest military burden (military spending as a proportion of GDP) in the world in 2018 are in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia (8.8 per cent of GDP), Oman (8.2 per cent), Kuwait (5.1 per cent), Lebanon (5.0 per cent), Jordan (4.7 per cent) and Israel (4.3 per cent).” Since those nations also are US allies, they too are huge markets for NATO’s (mainly for America’s) weapons-making giants.

In fact, according to SIPRI, “Arms exports to Saudi Arabia by supplier, 2013-17” were 61% from US, 23% from UK, and the remaining 16% came from 9 countries. So, perhaps the “Special Relationship” that the US has is not just UK, but their shared special relationship with Saudi Arabia (and maybe even including Israel, which is strongly allied with those other three dictatorships). (Though UK probably isn’t entirely a dictatorship as the US and Israel are, it’s close.)

The US regime is the power that rules NATO, and it leads the way in financing its weapons-makers: it spends not the standard 20% of its military costs on weaponry, but 28% of its enormous 3.5% of GDP military on weaponry. (The US spends exactly 1% of its total GDP on military weapons.) That’s not nearly as high a GDP percentage as the highest GDP percentage, non-NATO Saudi Arabia’s 8.8%, but Saudi Arabia’s GDP is around a thirtieth as large as America’s.

Still, the Sauds’ 8.8% of GDP going to their military is of huge benefit to the ruling corporations, because the Sauds are, by far, the largest foreign buyer of US-made weapons. Consequently, the Sauds control the US Government far more than do any other foreign government. (Some say that Israel’s regime does, but, to a large extent, Israel’s powerful influence over America’s regime is due to the special relationship that exists between the Sauds and Israel’s regime.)

The payers of that “military burden” turn out to be a list of the world’s biggest buyers of NATO (mainly US) weapons — the weapons that are marketed by firms such as Lockheed Martin and BAE, and that are marketed only to America’s Government and to its military allies (mainly in Europe and the Middle East).

These weapons are to be used against the main countries that America’s billionaires want ultimately to conquer and take over so as for America’s billionaires to control and exploit:

America’s billionaires especially want to conquer and exploit Iran and Russia and any nation that’s allied with (or even merely friendly toward) either of those two currently independent nations — which therefore are America’s chief targets, instead of America’s allies. (US ‘news’-media call them ‘enemies’, not targets.)

America’s soldiers think that they are America’s military, but actually they are only the users, and the trainers in the use, of these firms’ products — products which are officially guidelined to constitute at least 20% of the government’s ‘defence’ budget. And the government’s taxpayers pay the tab for all of this, and they’ve been successfully brainwashed to respect NATO, instead of to detest and despise its continued existence after 1991.

Eric Zuesse is an American writer and investigative historian.

• https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/05/17/americas-insatiable-military/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4dzECaBxFU

Until today, there’s no nationwide condemnation about the economic sabotage from within. Instead, they would rather put all blame against China, and the immigrants, even when their own forefathers were unwanted immigrants, too, long before they were born.

The Chinese workers who have helped build their transcontinental railroads were all considered as slaves in their history books, even when what they really have experienced was the first wave of a Silk Road type of economic assistance for their new born republic.