–Peter Fay, 2011, theclearview.wordpress.com
March 22, 2011
“*Since[diplomacy] is a mere temporary substitute [for war], a mere appearance of war’s energy under another form, a surrogate effect is almost exactly proportioned to the armed force behind it. When it fails, the recourse is immediate to the military technique whose thinly veiled arm it has been.” - Randolph Bourne, 1918, “The State<http://fair-use.org/randolph-bourne/the-state/> “*
It is common to American diplomacy, when faced with an impasse of opposition to its policies, to resort to what American writer Randolph Bourne called<http://fair-use.org/randolph-bourne/the-state/> the diplomatic “slight-of-hand” :
“Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war.”
For the Iraq war, this “cleverness of arts” comprised falsified evidence of weapons of mass destruction, bribing other countries to support American UN resolutions, wiretapping at the UN, threats of retaliation and excluding the US from international laws. This practice, well-hewed in the run-up to the Iraq war, is once again paying off in spades in the run-up to the war against Libya.
*Diplomatic Cover*
The need for diplomatic cover for an attack on a sovereign nation that has not attacked any other nation is patent. So in the rush to launch the imperialist onslaught on Libya, the American military knew a simple “no-fly zone” would not do as it was too constrictive. A no-fly zone would not provide the military with sufficient breadth to accomplish its goal in Libya: the overthrow of a sovereign ruler and “full spectrum dominance” of the Libyan nation. While initially Russia and China threatened a veto of any American or Nato attack, US diplomacy – what Bourne called “barter and intrigue” – sufficed in dissuading Russia: it reportedly promised Russia WTO membership if it dropped its veto of a war with Libya.
[continued at http://theclearview.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/diplomatic-slight-of-hand/]