https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/nato-neoconservatism-empire
Jeffrey D. Sachs | 2024 年 7 月 13 日 | 共同梦想
为了美国的安全和世界和平，美国应该立即放弃新保守主义对霸权的追求，转而采取外交和和平共处。
1992 年，美国外交政策例外主义进入了高潮。美国一直将自己视为一个注定要领导的特殊国家，而 1991 年 12 月苏联的解体让一群坚定的思想家（后来被称为新保守主义者）相信，美国现在应该作为无可争议的唯一超级大国统治世界。尽管新保守主义者造成了无数外交政策灾难，但《2024 年北约宣言》仍在继续推动新保守主义者的议程，将世界推向核战争的边缘。
新保守主义者最初由 1992 年的国防部长理查德·切尼领导。此后的每一位总统——克林顿、布什、奥巴马、特朗普和拜登——都推行了美国霸权的新保守主义者议程，导致美国陷入永无休止的战争，包括塞尔维亚、阿富汗、伊拉克、叙利亚、利比亚和乌克兰，以及北约无情的东扩，尽管 1990 年美国和德国向苏联总统米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫明确承诺北约不会向东移动一英寸。
新保守主义者的核心思想是，美国应该在军事、金融、经济和政治上占据主导地位，超越世界任何地方的任何潜在竞争对手。它特别针对中国和俄罗斯等竞争对手，因此使美国与它们直接对抗。美国的傲慢令人震惊：世界上大多数国家都不想被美国领导，更不想被一个明显受军国主义、精英主义和贪婪驱动的美国国家领导。
新保守主义计划美国在“新美国世纪计划”中阐述了其军事主导地位。该计划包括北约不断向东扩张，以及将北约从一个针对已不复存在的苏联的防御联盟转变为一个用于促进美国霸权的进攻联盟。美国军火工业是新保守主义者的主要金融和政治支持者。从 1990 年代开始，军火工业率先游说北约东扩。乔·拜登从一开始就是一个坚定的新保守主义者，先是担任参议员，然后担任副总统，现在是总统。
为了实现霸权，新保守派的计划依赖于中央情报局的政权更迭行动、美国主导的选择性战争、美国海外军事基地（目前在至少 80 个国家拥有约 750 个海外基地）、先进技术的军事化（生物战、人工智能、量子计算等）以及信息战的无情使用。
美国对霸权的追求促使世界在乌克兰发动了世界两大核大国俄罗斯和美国之间的战争。乌克兰战争的起因是美国不顾俄罗斯的强烈反对，坚持将北约扩大到乌克兰，参与推翻中立政府的暴力 Maidan 政变（2014 年 2 月），以及美国破坏要求乌克兰东部俄罗斯族地区自治的《明斯克二号协议》。
《北约宣言》称北约是一个防御联盟，但事实却并非如此。北约一再发动进攻行动，包括政权更迭行动。北约领导了对塞尔维亚的轰炸，目的是将该国一分为二，北约在科索沃分离地区设立了一个主要军事基地。北约在美国发动的许多战争中发挥了重要作用。北约对利比亚的轰炸是为了推翻穆阿迈尔·卡扎菲的政府。
美国对霸权的追求在 1992 年是傲慢和不明智的，今天绝对是妄想，因为美国显然面临着强大的对手，他们能够在战场、核武器部署以及先进技术的生产和部署方面与美国竞争。按国际价格计算，中国目前的 GDP 比美国高出约 30%，而且中国是世界上许多关键绿色技术的低成本生产国和供应商，包括电动汽车、5G、光伏、风能、模块化核电等。中国现在的生产力如此之大，以至于美国抱怨中国“产能过剩”。
可悲的是，北约的宣言重复了新保守主义的妄想，这令人震惊。
尽管美国的挑衅导致了 2014 年战争的爆发，但宣言错误地宣称“俄罗斯对其侵略乌克兰的战争负有全部责任”。
北约宣言重申了《北约华盛顿条约》第 10 条，根据该条，北约东扩与俄罗斯无关。然而，美国永远不会接受俄罗斯或中国在美国边境（比如墨西哥）建立军事基地，正如美国最初宣布的那样
1823 年门罗主义的诞生，并一直得到重申。
《北约宣言》重申了北约对生物防御技术的承诺，尽管越来越多的证据表明，美国国立卫生研究院的生物防御支出资助了实验室制造可能导致 Covid-19 大流行的病毒。
《北约宣言》宣布北约打算继续部署反弹道宙斯盾导弹（就像它已经在波兰、罗马尼亚和土耳其所做的那样），尽管美国退出反弹道导弹条约并在波兰和罗马尼亚部署宙斯盾导弹严重破坏了核军备控制架构。
《北约宣言》对乌克兰通过谈判实现和平毫无兴趣。
《北约宣言》加倍强调乌克兰“不可逆转地走向全面欧洲-大西洋一体化，包括加入北约”。但俄罗斯永远不会接受乌克兰加入北约，因此“不可逆转”的承诺就是不可逆转的战争承诺。
《华盛顿邮报》报道称，在北约峰会前夕，拜登对承诺“不可逆转地”让乌克兰加入北约抱有严重疑虑，但拜登的顾问们却无视这些担忧。
新保守主义者给美国和世界带来了无数灾难，包括几场失败的战争、数万亿美元浪费的战争驱动军事支出导致的美国公共债务的大量积累，以及美国与中国、俄罗斯、伊朗等国日益危险的对抗。新保守主义者把末日时钟调到了午夜（核战争）前仅剩 90 秒，而 1992 年时是 17 分钟。
为了美国的安全和世界和平，美国应该立即放弃新保守主义者对霸权的追求，转而采取外交和和平共处。
可惜，北约却恰恰相反。
The NATO Declaration and the Deadly Strategy of Neoconservatism
https://www.commondreams.org/
Jeffrey D. Sachs | July 13, 2024 | Common Dreams
For the sake of America's security and world peace, the U.S. should immediately abandon the neocon quest for hegemony in favor of diplomacy and peaceful co-existence.
In 1992, U.S. foreign-policy exceptionalism went into overdrive. The U.S. has always viewed itself as an exceptional nation destined for leadership, and the demise of the Soviet Union in December 1991 convinced a group of committed ideologues—who came to be known as neoconservatives—that the U.S. should now rule the world as the unchallenged sole superpower. Despite countless foreign policy disasters at neocon hands, the 2024 NATO Declaration continues to push the neocon agenda, driving the world closer to nuclear war.
The neoconservatives were originally led by Richard Cheney, the Defense Secretary in 1992. Every President since then—Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden—has pursued the neocon agenda of U.S. hegemony, leading theU.S. into perpetual wars of choice, including Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine, as well as relentless eastward expansion of NATO, despite a clear U.S. and German promise in 1990 to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch eastward.
The core neocon idea is that the U.S. should have military, financial, economic, and political dominance over any potential rival in any part of the world. It is targeted especially at rival powers such as China and Russia, and therefore brings the U.S. into direct confrontation with them. The American hubris is stunning: most of the world does not want to be led by the U.S., much less led by a U.S. state clearly driven by militarism, elitism and greed.
The neocon plan for U.S. military dominance was spelled out in the Project for a New American Century. The plan includes relentless NATO expansion eastward, and the transformation of NATO from a defensive alliance against a now-defunct Soviet Union to an offensive alliance used to promote U.S. hegemony. The U.S. arms industry is the major financial and political backer of the neocons. The arms industry spearheaded the lobbying for NATO's eastward enlargement starting in the 1990s. Joe Biden has been a staunch neocon from the start, first as Senator, then as Vice President, and now as President.
To achieve hegemony, the neocon plans rely on CIA regime-change operations; U.S.-led wars of choice; U.S. overseas military bases (now numbering around 750 overseas bases in at least 80 countries); the militarization of advanced technologies (biowarfare, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, etc.); and relentless use of information warfare.
The quest for U.S. hegemony has pushed the world to open warfare in Ukraine between the world’s two leading nuclear powers, Russia and the United States. The war in Ukraine was provoked by the relentless determination of the U.S. to expand NATO to Ukraine despite Russia’s fervent opposition, as well as the U.S. participation in the violent Maidan coup (February 2014) that overthrew a neutral government, and the U.S. undermining of the Minsk II agreement that called for autonomy for the ethnically Russian regions of eastern Ukraine.
The NATO Declaration calls NATO a defensive alliance, but the facts say otherwise. NATO repeatedly engages in offensive operations, including regime-change operations. NATO led the bombing of Serbia in order to break that nation in two parts, with NATO placing a major military base in the breakaway region of Kosovo. NATO has played a major role in many U.S. wars of choice. NATO bombing of Libya was used to overthrow the government of Moammar Qaddafi.
The U.S. quest for hegemony, which was arrogant and unwise in 1992, is absolutely delusional today, since the U.S. clearly faces formidable rivals that are able to compete with the U.S. on the battlefield, in nuclear arms deployments, and in the production and deployment of advanced technologies. China’s GDP is now around 30% larger than the U.S. when measured at international prices, and China is the world’s low-cost producer and supplier of many critical green technologies, including EVs, 5G, photovoltaics, wind power, modular nuclear power, and others. China’s productivity is now so great that the U.S. complains of China’s “over-capacity.”
Sadly, and alarmingly, the NATO declaration repeats the neoconservative delusions.
The Declaration falsely declares that “Russia bears sole responsibility for its war of aggression against Ukraine,” despite the U.S. provocations that led to the outbreak of the war in 2014.
The NATO Declaration reaffirms Article 10 of the NATO Washington Treaty, according to which NATO’s eastward expansion is none of Russia’s business. Yet the U.S. would never accept Russia or China establishing a military base on the US border (say in Mexico), as the U.S. first declared in the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and has reaffirmed ever since.
The NATO Declaration reaffirms NATO’s commitment to biodefense technologies, despite growing evidence that U.S. biodefense spending by NIH financed the laboratory creation of the virus that may have caused the Covid-19 pandemic.
The NATO Declaration proclaims NATO’s intention to continue to deploy anti-ballistic Aegis missiles (as it has already done in Poland, Romania, and Turkey), despite the fact that the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania has profoundly destabilized the nuclear arms control architecture.
The NATO Declaration expresses no interest whatsoever in a negotiated peace for Ukraine.
The NATO Declaration doubles-down on Ukraine’s “irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.” Yet Russia will never accept Ukraine’s NATO membership, so the “irreversible” commitment is an irreversible commitment to war.
The Washington Post reports that in the lead-up to the NATO summit, Biden had serious qualms about pledging an “irreversible path” to Ukraine’s NATO membership, yet Biden’s advisors brushed aside these concerns.
The neoconservatives have created countless disasters for the U.S. and the world, including several failed wars, a massive buildup of U.S. public debt driven by trillions of dollars of wasteful war-driven military outlays, and the increasingly dangerous confrontation of the U.S. with China, Russia, Iran, and others. The neocons have brought the Doomsday Clock to just 90 seconds to midnight (nuclear war), compared with 17 minutes in 1992.
For the sake of America's security and world peace, the U.S. should immediately abandon the neocon quest for hegemony in favor of diplomacy and peaceful co-existence.
Alas, NATO has just done the opposite.
https://www.commondreams.org/
