Over the past decade, the peoples of Pakistan and Yemen have become all too familiar with the horrors of the Pentagon’s latest toy: the unmanned aerial vehicle. Capable of raining death from above while its operator sits in air-conditioned comfort in an air force base thousands of miles away, drones represent the next stage in the evolution of 21st century warfare. And now they’re coming to Asia. The process of introducing drones to the Asia-Pacific has been unfolding for years now, but within the last few weeks a flurry of stories have been reported demonstrating that the deployment of UAVs in the region has begun in earnest.

In this episode of our EyeOpener Report James Corbett presents and discusses the introduction of drones to the Asia-Pacific in a new game of cold war-like tensions between the region’s two dominant powers-US and China, the Obama administration’s increasing use of drones as a weapon of warfare, and the political, moral and ethical issues that are raised by this new warfare technology of choice.

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Formalized under the so-called ANZUS treaty in 1951, the military alliance between Australia and the United States has long defined Australia’s role in the security context of the Asia-Pacific region. Formed in the wake of World War II when memories of Japanese aggression in the Pacific were still fresh in the minds of Australians, it was invoked most prominently during Australia’s commitment of over 60,000 troops in the Vietnam war from 1962 to 1975. Even given these decades of close cooperation, however, it still took many by surprise when it was announced last year at a joint press conference by US President Obama and Australian Prime Minister Gillard that that alliance was about to be deepened and expanded with the deployment of a permanent US marine presence in Darwin, Australia.

In this episode of our EyeOpener Report James Corbett presents and discusses the Asia-Pacific as one of the two main anticipated areas of operation for American armed forces in the coming decades, China’s recent naval aggressions in the South China Sea, the US marine deployment in Darwin, the deepening and expanded alliance between US and Australia, and the responsibility and role of Australians in pushing back against this alarming militarization of the region.

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The Neoconized Just War Doctrine

More than one policy pundit has scratched their head at the strange, increasingly irrational nature of what guides American and European foreign policy. In November of 2010, commentator William Pfaff resorted to the term “medieval mysticism� to describe the “the cloud of unknowing� surrounding the run up to the all important NATO summit in Lisbon. He marveled that only by invoking the mystical past could one contemplate what was in store as the West pondered a dark future.

As odd as it may seem to modern audiences, medieval mysticism and its attendant priesthoods are not as far beneath the surface of present day policy as one might think. In fact following the crisis brought about by the failure of advanced technology to defeat Communism in Vietnam, America’s premier defense intellectuals were quick to fall back on the Middle Ages for answers to what seemed eternal and imponderable questions. 

One vivid example came from future Reagan administration officials Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne in the summer 1980 edition of Foreign Policy magazine who declared in an article titled “Victory is Possible� that: “Nuclear War is possible. But unlike Armageddon, the apocalyptic war prophesied to end history, nuclear war can have a wide range of options… If American nuclear power is to support U.S. foreign policy objectives, the United States must possess the ability to wage nuclear war rationally.�

Having come of age at a time when the U.S. enjoyed an overwhelming nuclear advantage and unquestioned technological superiority, America’s plunge into military defeat in Vietnam and a rough nuclear parity with the USSR was cause for a deep philosophical reassessment. The “new rightâ€� embodied in groups like Team B, the Committee on the Present Danger and the American Security Council needed to undo the debilitating effects caused by their own failures and discrediting the strategic doctrine implemented by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara known as Mutual Assured Destruction or (MAD) topped a long list. Read more È

As the U.S. becomes more and more the kind of country it has traditionally opposed, the answer to where we are headed may lie more in the arcane traditions of a dim past than in a bright future.

On the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, numerous commentators from across a broad spectrum of opinion focused their alarm not so much on the horror of events in lower Manhattan ten years before, but on what America has become in the aftermath of that horror. Ten years on, the United States desperately expands what appears to be an increasingly irrational, corrosive and ultimately self-destructive national security mandate around the globe and here at home.

In the darkening gloom of  the upcoming 2012 Presidential elections as the U.S. builds up its forces in the Middle East and returns its attention to Asia’s Pacific rim, the CIA’s focus is no longer on analyzing intelligence on terrorists, but simply killing those perceived as a threat to its existence or perhaps more cynically, its livelihood. In the hardened fortresses of endless war, American soldiers walled off from human society claim their own lives in record numbers while in beltway foreign policy circles “Peace� has become a dirty word. In the darkening gloom, robot Predator drones target those thought to be “terrorists� or those suspected of being terrorists. Those unfortunate enough to be standing nearby are targeted as well and will one day be the target of drones piloted by computer software and facial recognition, making the machine-killing completely autonomous.

In this house of mirrors where endless war has made guilt and innocence or even facts irrelevant, the U.S. has left the realm of science and empiricism and entered a realm more mystical than real. It is a realm where ideology dictates plans and programs and not logic and empirical evidence.  It is a realm where ideology dictates who dies and who lives and is populated by men and women who can neither be understood nor reasoned with outside the confines of their own internal and hermetically sealed logic. 

From its inception during World War II, America’s military/intelligence apparatus has acted more as a subculture of America’s ruling elite than a bureaucracy dedicated to the nation’s security. It was said of America’s first spy agency the OSS that its initials stood for Oh-So-Social because of its abundant staffing with New York’s high society blue bloods. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks even titled their 1974 book on their life in the CIA and Foreign Service as The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. 

But over the last forty years and especially since the events of 9/11, that “Cult,� and its sister organizations in the military/intelligence community have emerged from behind the curtain to become a ubiquitous and forbidding presence.

In effect, 1974’s American “Cultâ€� of intelligence has grown to become in 2011 the dominant American “Cult-ure.â€� But what that culture really is and where it’s leading us remains a frightening proposition that each and every American needs to understand. Read more È