PENTAGON REFUSES TO RELEASE SECRET PLAN FOR WORLD DOMINATION
By George Novack
Despite the mountain of evidence accumulated over the past twenty years, many liberals refuse to believe that the executive heads of the U.S. ruling class are methodically proceeding to police the world in defense of capitalism. The Marxists are wrong, they claim, in attributing deliberate designs of world domination to Washington. The policy makers there do not pursue any single foreign policy line but stumble unthinkingly into one mess after another.
Thus each case of counterrevolutionary intervention into the affairs of other peoples is construed in isolation and not seen as one more piece in a consistent pattern of imperialist aggression.
This thesis would be much harder to uphold if an informative document which the Pentagon has in its possession were made public. This is a study, completed two years ago by the Douglas Aircraft Corporation, under army sponsorship, at a cost to the taxpayers of $89,500. It was originally entitled "Pax Americana" but was later given the less provocative label of “Strategic Alignments and Military Objectives."
It was revealed in Washington February 15, that Senator Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, requested the Department of Defense last November 29 to declassify, or remove security restrictions, from the document. Fulbright told the department he was making the request because the study involved foreign policy and "the important conclusions of the report" were in agreement with "so many recent statements made by Government officials."
The Department of Defense has refused Fulbright's request to release tlie secret study, even though it concedes that there is relatively little "militarily sensitive" information in it. But politically the document is highly explosive. For it reportedly sets forth plans on how the United States can "maintain world hegemony in the future."
This was acknowledged by Paul C. Warnke, assistant secretary of defense, in his answer to Fulbright last December 14 that, even if all classified contents were deleted, the department would still be opposed to publishing the text because its conclusions might be construed as United States policy and thus "could produce serious repercussions abroad."
Since the conclusions dealt with
military objectives and alignments over
the next twenty years, he said, "it
would be inappropriate to make official
estimates of what their validity may
be now."
Democratic Senator Hartke of In-
diana, who first called Fulbright's at-
tention to the existence of the study,
called upon the Defense Department to
"come out in the open with this." He
said, "I think in a self-governing so-
ciety that the American people are en-
titled to know what military involve-
ments are being planned which are con-
trary to general American principles.
"The unfortunate situation we are
involved in in Southeast Asia could have
been avoided if the American people had
been aware as to what was being planned
and what was going on," Hartke continued.
"Secretary of State Rusk should appear
in public before the Foreign Relations
Committee and explain the document."
Fulbright has linked the recom-
mendations of the Douglas Aircraft re-
port with a number of policy statements
on the U.S. role in Asia made by Johnson
and top advisers. One is the president's
declaration on July 12, 1966, that "the
crucial arena of man's striving for in-
dependence and order" was Asia, and that
the United States was determined "to
meet our obligations in Asia as a Pacific
power."
Another was the proclamation of
Vice-President Humphrey after the Hono-
lulu Conference on Asian Affairs in
April, 1966, of a "Johnson doctrine,"
whica he said was "a pledge to ourselves
and to posterity to defeat aggression,
to defeat social misery, to build viable,
free political institutions."
Fulbright, Hartke and their fel-
low senatorial "doves" are not anti-
imperialists opposed in principle to a
global strategy for American capitalisn.
But they do have serious tactical dis-
agreements with the administration's
deepening involvement and overcommitments
in Southeast Asia and they fear the per-
ils of head-on collision with China or
the Soviet Union. By insisting on the
exposure of official military aims in
that area they wish to embarrass the
White House and arouse public opinion
to pressure Johnson to revise his course.
However, the administration is not
in the least disposed to draw back. The designs of the president and his generals bring to mind the Japanese general and premier, Baron Tanaka, author of the infamous "Memorial" which he submitted to the Japanese emperor in 1927.
This document outlined in detailed steps a program of imperialist expansion, beginning with the establishment of Japanese control in Manchuria and leading to domination of all China, Indonesia, the South Sea Islands, the Maritime Provinces of the USSR, and eventually India and the whole Pacific basin. He even envisaged ultimate Japanese control of Europe.
At the time the document was branded as a Chinese forgery by the Japanese, although most foreign chancellories were convinced of its authenticity. (Shortly pefore his death Leon Trotsky wrote an interesting account of how the Soviet intelligence service secured the "Memorial" from the archives of the Japanese government and made it public through the U.S. press. His article was published in Fourth International, June 1941.)
Beginning with the military intervention in Shantung and then the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Japan proceed-
A LETTER FROM
The USLA Reporter, published by the U.S. Committee for Justice to Latin- American Political Prisoners, announced in the February issue that it has received a few dozen samples of postcards painted by hand by Hugo Blanco and other political prisoners jailed in Peru's notorious El Frontén prison.
The prisoners make the postcards for sale. With the money they are able to get somewhat better food than is served on the prison menu. They hope that through the good offices of the committee, orders for the postcards can be obtained from countries outside of Peru.
The vivid colors of the postcards do not reproduce well, but the USLA Justice Committee is preparing a display that will give an indication of the colors and will announce details on how the postcards can be ordered.
In an accompanying