By Abdulillah

It is becoming clear both here and the United States that in the coming decade the US economy will be in decline with respect to its debts and GDP growth, and with that, it has been recently noted that the US defense strategy will change with respect to the world and its role as its new policeman.

To many economists both in the US and abroad, it has become very clear that the best indicator for economic decline in the US is its GDP growth with respect to its debt, which it is said, that by the end of the decade will grow to more than 100 percent of GDP, and where it is further claimed that China presently has surpassed the US in manufacturing, and will by the year 2025 or sooner be spending a lot more on defense than the US.

Last year, the US Congressional Budget Office warned that unless the US government slashed its spending on both domestic entitlements and the military and raises taxes, it would be headed towards a major fiscal crisis, possibly affecting whether foreign nations will be using the US dollar as the reserve currency of choice, thus making it even harder for the US to pay back its present and growing debt.

This has effectively made the US strategic thinkers both in the military and government institutions to rethink its role as the sole military super-power “policeman of the world” and its present nation building program started by both Bush Administrations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Possibly moving most of its military sources in the future to both naval and air-power and significantly reducing its land based ground forces.

A move towards this can be seen today with the US pulling its ground forces out of Iraq, leaving it broken and unable to maintain a heterogeneous central government strong enough and acceptable to its people as well most of its Arab neighbors. And in Afghanistan where by 2014, US forces will leave that nation as well, reeling from 20 years of war with the Soviet Union and the present decade war being fought by the US and its allies against the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist (the new boogie-man paraded out by the US military defense industries and Apartheid Israel), for more of a drone air-power role.

Another most recent example of this shift in its military strategy role was also seen in the war on Libya to oust the Gadhafi regime by allowing the Europeans and the Libyan NTC rebels to do most of the heavy lifting, and using most of its military for naval and air-power support.

This new shift in its future military role towards more east-Asia and naval and air-power will affect the middle-east. This new role is now playing out in Iran, where the US is first ostracizing it in the community of nations, than sanctioning it, whilst it and its allies apply cold-war tactics of assassinations, and communication and web based assaults, possibly followed in the near future with an American and Apartheid Israeli naval and air-power coordinated attack on its nuclear sites.

This very same approach is now being used in Syria as well, albeit with the urging of the Arab League, which has been incapable of quelling the entrenched government of Assad and his goons from killing its own people. This urging of the Arab League in the UN can be argued by some experts in the middle-east as being too early in the conflict, and could signal to the US and Apartheid Israeli governments that that it will be soon acceptable for them to mount the same program being designed for Iran.

A softer approach is also being used now in Egypt, where the US, possibly with the assistance of Apartheid Israel, is funding some Non-Government Organizations (NGO”s) and other “Revolutionary Tourists”.

Recently; suspicions of this have been noted in Egypt, where Egyptian security forces raided several NGO offices and confiscated computers, records and funds as well as stopping at least six US citizens from leaving the country, including those directly funded by the US and the German governments, such as the National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute (IRI) and Freedom House, as well as Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

These new “democracy building” organizations”, said to be funded to work on initiatives like “training election monitors, educating voters and documenting human-rights violations” are said to have received over 65 million US dollars circumventing Egyptian authorities and ministries whom regulate these type exchanges.

Sheila Carapico a professor of political science and international studies at the University of Richmond and a visiting professor of political science at the American University in Cairo in a recent column titled “Egypt “NGO” Suspicions” notes that these “revolutionary tourists now came to lecture Egyptians on democratization. To liberals, leftists and Islamists alike, the whole notion of democracy promotion wreaked of postcolonial missionary zeal and conceit. Association with GO-NGOs like the Republican and Democratic institutes or Freedom House, widely considered a “Zionist” agency, became a greater liability than ever for prodemocracy activists.” And that “many sophisticated Egyptians reason that Western political projects are ultimately more attuned to NATO security interests than Western ideals”.

She continues in the article to indicate that “Broader populist, possibly xenophobic, suspicions of interlopers were fanned on the evening of December 29 when a bilingual Egyptian American, an erstwhile employee at IRI’s Zamalek office, gave an in-depth interview in Arabic on a TV program called The Truth (al-Haqiqah). She described a glaring anti-Islamist bias in party training, intelligence agents posing as IRI consultants, grant making according to an “American agenda,” deliberate provocation of sectarian divisions between Copts and Muslims and laughing hubris bordering on racism expressed among drunken expats after hours”.

Although I have never espoused conspiracy theories as they are typically full of many inaccuracies and critical thinking, it is clear that our University Political Departments should be learning and teaching more about this new US role, especially as it relates to the new defense strategy being played out, and how this will affect Jordan, Palestine and the Middle-East as a whole.