The US ruling class is risking World War III to keep global wealth flowing to them, an American political analyst and anti-war activist has said.
“The oligarchs of Wall Street are desperate to keep the wealth of the world flowing into their coffers. They dream of reclaiming the position they enjoyed in the world economy after the Second World War,” Bill Dores in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.
He called on the American people to act urgently to stop the corporate servants in Washington from dragging the US into a global conflict that could turn into a nuclear war.
“The menace of a full third world war, even a nuclear one, is very real,” Dores warned.
“It grows by the minute. It does not come from Russia or China or Iran. It flows from the financial desperation of the US corporate ruling class, which owns both political parties, the White House, Congress, the Pentagon and the CIA,” he added.
‘20th-century world wars killed 100 million people’
The analyst said that the “world wars of the 20th century killed upwards of 100 million people.”
“The wars left much of the world in ruins, hundreds of millions maimed, orphaned, and homeless. They saw the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war - by the United States on the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he stated.
“But for the bankers and CEOs of Corporate America, many of whom supported Hitler in the 1930s, the world wars were the best thing that ever happened,” he added.
“It’s a problem for them that they have not been able to have another war on that scale,” Dores continued.
Wars made Wall Street the world’s financial center
“World War I put the colonial empires of West Europe, grown rich from the plunder of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, in debt to US banks. New York City replaced London as the world’s financial center,” the anti-war activist revealed.
“World War II’s massive destruction cemented Wall Street’s position at the center of the world economy. In 1945 the US produced 50 percent of global GDP and held 80 percent of the world’s hard currency reserves. The war made the dollar the world’s reserve currency,” he said.
So-called ‘golden age of capitalism’
Dores said noted that US historians call it the “golden age of capitalism.”
“It was an age that could only be preserved by war and destruction. The military-financial state in Washington has tried to preserve it that way ever since,” he explained.
45-year mass murder spree called ‘Cold War’
“That was the object of the 45-year mass murder spree they called the ‘Cold War.’ Two years after World War II ended, President Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the US Air Force and the CIA. The permanent US war economy was born. It has kept the world at war for eight decades,” he observed.
“The Cold War wasn’t cold. While they built tens of thousands of nuclear weapons to threaten the USSR, the Pentagon and CIA and its proxies murdered tens of millions of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It was in reality a war against the right of the people of those continents to freedom and economic development, a war to destroy any avenues of economic life on this planet that don’t run through Wall Street. It was also used to keep West Europe and Japan under Washington’s thumb,” Dores said.
(There is an article on the Press TV website about a book called The Jakarta Method, by Vincent Bevins, that documents some of these crimes.)
“The Cold War supposedly ended with the overthrow of the Soviet Union. The US need for war didn’t. Washington launched a 30-year war to regain the near monopoly Corporate America once held on the world’s energy supply,” the analyst said.
‘Russia was inevitably a target’
“Starting with Iraq, Washington invaded, bombed or sanctioned energy-producing countries that didn’t pay tribute to Wall Street. Russia is the biggest. It was inevitably a target,” Dores said.
“In their drive to control the world economy, the US ruling class could not tolerate even a capitalist Russia. NATO’s drive to the east began less than a decade after the USSR fell, before President Putin was elected,” he stated.
“People in the United States have no need for Wall Street banks to command the world economy. We don’t need endless wars for corporate power, especially since those corporations use their power against us. We need to act urgently to stop the corporate servants in Washington from dragging us into World War III,” Dores concluded.