Doctrine at Annapolis

Over the Thanksgiving weekend the Los Angeles Times ran an article by Atlantic Monthly correspondent Robert D. Kaplan, which summarizes his current lecture series at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. This is the important thing, to us at least, going on at Annapolis.
Kaplan uses Colombia as one of his two principal examples (the other being the Philippines) of how US imperialism can make successful inroads at relatively low costs in pursuit of its objectives. The essence being that the US having tested out the idea of small teams of Green Beret led agents (in over 100 countries) where they are working to win over local people, can get the US much further down the road to world domination then can any more adventures such as the one in Iraq.
Simultaneously US Defense Secretary Gates began promoting the same concept. Gates conjuring up a future vision of an Imperial World where cooperation as opposed to outright US brute force – toward allies and others – is seen as the way to go.
In other words, the Neo-Con collapse has led to a return to what went before, in the way the US ran the world. The truth is that the US rulers no longer have any choice.
The US cannot afford to fight any more wars of the size of Iraq. That is the pure and simple fact. The US has run out of financial rope. No amount of double-talk financial trickery can change the fact that US currency is overvalued now and will continue to be increasingly so, no matter what Washington does. They can’t borrow the money any more. They have no choice but to switch to lower cost tactics.
What we can expect is that these low-cost counter-revolutionary forces currently organizing civil disorder in Venezuela and Bolivia, and plotting the assassination of Chavez, Morales and other revolutionary leaders, will step up their efforts. The mechanics may change, featuring Green Berets in some places and mercenaries (Blackwater) in others, but the four fundamental pillars of US imperialism will continue to write the plots: The Republican Party Foundation, the Democratic Party Foundation, the US National Chamber of Commerce Foundation and the AFL-CIO International Foundation. We know the plots, and most importantly we have learned the keys to countering them: Vigilant special police, knowledge of the location of all foreigners every hour of every day within the target countries (again e.g., Venezuela and Bolivia) and the ability to lock up as many bourgeois as may be required in the target countries, when the US attack begins, until the cessation of the danger (e.g. invasion, reactionary student uprisings, rioting to support invasion, etc.)