chez Nadezhda :: Reasserting US Hegemony: Russian rollback, Chinese containment and Iranian regime change

Back in 2005 I wrote three pieces that met with a lot of read resistance concerning one of the real neoconservative goals for invading Iraq. (Why Iraq, One More Piece on China, Email Responses)
My original theory held that the invasion of Iraq was part of a greater strategy, one of containment of an up and coming peer competitor, China. The excerpt below discusses the multi-faceted necon foreign policy strategy. Notice how this ambitious strategy intersects in many areas, specifically how the control of resources adds to the control of peer competitors and how the spread of democracy (i.e. controllable regimes) aids in the control of resources.

chez Nadezhda :: Reasserting US Hegemony: Russian rollback, Chinese containment and Iranian regime change:
"The U.S. is currently conducting five separate strategic grand offensives:
(a) the roll back of the old Soviet imperial periphery across Eastern Europe, down through the Russian 'Near Abroad' of Ukraine and Georgia and Central Asia;
(b) the on again off again stuttering efforts to isolate China as the new 'Peer Competitor' across both the Asian Pacific rim and also in Central Asia [ed. - and in recent months, competition in Africa has been added to the list];
(c) conduct an international war on 'terrorism' (such as it is);
(d) lead new international cooperation regarding nuclear and WMD
proliferation[ed. - 'lead' is a charitably neutral way of describing the Bush
Admin goals of (i) leaving to the US the determination of which countries are
worthy of obtaining nuclear technology and weapons and (ii) ensuring that no
unfriendly state can achieve deterrence against the US use of force]; and
(e) bootstrap the Middle East into modernity through unilateral American
force of arms.
(Sprinkle 'democracy' on all of the above). "

I stand beside my original contention that the War on Terror is really nothing more than a pretext to accomplish some of the other items on the list. There was simply no other way to invade and transform Iraq without the lies and deceptions concerning terror linkages and WMD.

But alas things have not worked out the way the neoconservatives hoped.

Then, of course, there is this from the Jamestown Foundation concerning who is really winning in Iraq.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership has been at pains not to appear to
be gloating over the American quagmire in Iraq. Yet in terms of geopolitical
calculus, there is little doubt Beijing sees America's worsening problems in
Iraq as beneficial to China's global standing, diplomatically and militarily.
Capitalizing on fissures in the international community over Iraq and America's
war on terror, China has strengthened ties with key members of the European
Union and the United Nations in an effort to counterbalance U.S. hegemony.

And of course there is this from Bill Lind:

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the "Coalition's" defeats continue slowly to unroll. In
Lebanon, it appears Hezbollah may win not only at the moral and mental,
strategic and operational levels, but, astonishingly, at the physical and
tactical levels as well. That outcome remains uncertain, but the fact that it is
possible portends a revolutionary reassessment of what Fourth Generation forces
can accomplish. If it actually happens, the walls of the temple that is the
state system will be shaken worldwide.

Of course the insanity of the entire "democracy building at the end of a rifle" idea is something Southerners know about first hand and should have been the first to vocally oppose this fiasco. Steven LaTulippe puts it best:

America invaded a sovereign nation based on lies and fabricated intelligence.
The general goal seems to have been a form of militarized nation building. This
ideology (which I call "Reconstructionism") is based on the belief that the
Middle East must be destroyed to be redeemed. Like Sherman burning Atlanta or
Truman nuking Nagasaki, the proponents of this theory believe that bombing the
Middle East and leveling its cities will create, somehow, a new beginning for
the region.
Once America has finished trampling out the vintage where the
grapes of wrath are stored, the neocons contend, a more just and modern Middle
East will arise from the ashes.