Release the Dogs of War! | Article by Alberto Vizcarra Ozuna

“Cry ‘devastation!’ and unleash the dogs of war.” This line is from Act III, Scene 1 of the play. Julius Caesar William Shakespeare, addressed by Colonel (right) Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to North American Secretary of State Colin Powell, during his latest participation (September 6) in the weekly dialogues organized by the International Coalition for Peace, convened by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

An appeal to a literary work, to a historical drama whose depth has made it immortal and universal, could be the most appropriate way to warn the world of the current errors of the imperial financial elite, which in its obsession with power turns away from this reasoning and puts the world on the brink of a third world war, which will undoubtedly be an existential defeat for humanity.

Colonel Wilkerson draws an analogy between Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar’s Rome and Anglo-American imperial policy. And he says it bluntly: “We in the American Empire have decided to cry destruction and unleash the dogs of war.” He then goes on to say that “the dogs of war today are very sophisticated… and they will destroy us all.” He explains that when the National Security Strategy of the United States was published in 2002, drafted by some of the people who are now active participants in this doctrine, the dominant idea that the United States, the American Empire, would tolerate no opposition to its primacy in the world.

You may be interested > Political Viewpoint: Goodbye | Jorge Alcocer V.

In this regard, he describes a dialogue he had then with Secretary of State Powell about the consequences of maintaining a doctrine based on the predominance of force over all nations. He says he warned Powell that such a strategy would result in the United States concentrating on its military capabilities and eventually becoming a kind of national security state, which “means that all its intellectual potential, all its industry, all its thinking would be directed at the enemy all the time, seven days a week.” He concludes that the currently dominant factions have already placed the United States in such a situation.

Wilkerson does not extrapolate when he draws an analogy between the Rome of Julius Caesar, as described in Shakespeare’s drama, and the imperial politics that took control of the American government. Rome at that time was going through an internal crisis, connected with the tension of maintaining itself as a republic or becoming an empire, which escalated into a civil war, leaving the dilemma unconsidered and ending in a tragic dispute for power; sealed by the brutal murder of Julius Caesar and the phrase of the emerging Mark Antony, reflecting on a war that allows plunder or plunder after victory. It is not foreign to the imagery of Shakespeare’s dramas that at the feet of the king are domestic dogs, whose names are “Famine, Sword, and Fire.”

Colonel Wilkerson’s criticism of a war-oriented military strategy does not represent the voice of an isolated individual. The same idea is echoed, from their critical perspectives, by such figures as Dr. Ted Postol, Professor Emeritus at MIT and a leading expert on nuclear weapons; Ambassador Jack Matlock, a scholar of Russian history and culture who was chosen by President Reagan for the crucial post of Ambassador to the Soviet Union; Colonel (R) Professor Dr. Wilfried Schreiber, a senior fellow at the Welt Trends Institute for International Policy in Potsdam, Germany; Lieutenant Colonel (R) Ralph Bosshard, of the Swiss Armed Forces and a consultant on military and strategic issues; Donald Ramotar, former President of Guyana, who found in the International Peace Coalition a platform for dialogue and discussion that allows the United States and the countries of the Global South to be involved in the construction of a new economic and security architecture, whose Blueprint overcomes the axiomatic shortcomings contained in the geopolitical blueprints that governed the world during the Cold War under the so-called “balance of terror,” better known as the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

You may be interested in > Maximum Boss | Article by Hector Tajonar

The growth of the strategy of imperial supremacy has upset all military balances. The war in Eastern Europe and the growing tension in Southwest Asia contain geopolitical elements that will provoke a third world war. The US and Britain have already taken the blatant step of using the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine to carry out, with advice and logistical support, an invasion of Ukrainian troops into the Kursk region, into Russian territory; in addition to threatening to use this platform as a launching point for long-range missiles that will reach deep into Russian territory, including Moscow and other cities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reaction to such brutality leaves no room for speculation, ruling that if Ukraine is allowed to attack deep into Russian territory using Western long-range weapons, it would mean that NATO countries are at war with Russia.

All about the expansion of the empire to deepen the processes of primitive accumulation. always calls for war. And this time is no exception. The Western dollar-based financial system supports an official debt that, in addition to speculative derivatives, exceeds $2 billion, an amount that is an order of magnitude greater than the world’s gross domestic product, which in 2023 barely reached $100 trillion. This is an unpaid debt and a bankrupt system, so they have unleashed the dogs of war.

From Yaqui Valley, Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, September 18, 2024.