In “Donald Trump y la nueve Estrategia Cibernética Nacional de EE.UU.” (Donald Trump and the new U.S. National Cybernetic Strategy), the Cuban journalist Raúl Antonio Capote reports that John Bolton, National Security Advisor of the United States, has announced that President Donald Trump had signed a plan for a National Cybernetic Strategy that authorizes the U.S. government to carry out offensive cyberattacks.   The article appeared in the Cuban daily newspaper Granma, the Official Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.  Its slant on the issue of cyberattacks is different from that of the major corporate-owned international media of communication, in that it takes seriously the denials of governments that are accused by the USA of cyberattacking.
 
      Capote notes that the Trump cybernetic strategy overturns a directive issued by Barack Obama in 2013, which was emitted following the release of archives dealing with U.S. espionage programs by the ex-NSA analyst Edward Snowden.  Reacting to the revelations contained in those archives, the Obama directive required intelligence agencies and the Pentagon to obtain the approval of other governmental departments before launching a cyberattack.  The Trump strategy not only eliminates these checks, but also legalizes offensive cyberattacks against other nations. 
 
     Capote explains Bolton’s justification for the new strategy:  offensive cyberattacks are necessary in response to hostile cyberattacks that have been perpetuated and that are being planned against the United States, and offensive cyberattacks by the USA will deter future attacks by demonstrating to U.S. adversaries that the cost of cyberattacking is too high.  A document emitted by the NSA specifically named Iran, Russia, China, and the Democratic Popular Republic of Korea, among others, as having used cyberspace as a means of aggression against the United States.
 
      Capote notes that other U.S. entities are making claims similar to those of Bolton and the NSA.  The Associated Press reports that Russian hackers have obtained U.S. military secrets.  And the U.S. Office of Personnel Administration has communicated that hackers have carried out various attacks against important web pages of the United States, including the informational network of the Pentagon; and that pirates have robbed the access data of millions of functionaries of the United Sates, including employees of the Department of Defense. 
 
       Capote emphases that Moscow refutes accusations of cyberattacks against the United States.  The Russian government has said repeatedly that such accusations are absurd, and they are intended to detract attention from U.S. domestic issues and from U.S. cyberattacks against companies, military units, and public services in Russia, Iran, the Democratic Popular Republic of Korea, and China.  The Russian foreign minister has called for a Russian-USA work commission of specialists to examine the issue of cybersecurity. 
 
      In articles published in the USA, denials by governments of such U.S. accusations of cyberattacking, if they are mentioned at all, have a dismissive tone.  Capote, however, takes the Russian denial and counteraccusation of U.S. cyberattacks seriously.  In fact, he buttresses Russian denials with the observation that the U.S. government, through its intelligence service and companies tied to the military-industrial complex, has carried out for a decade an offensive against the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Capote cites the example of a U.S. cyberattack carried out against an Iranian electronuclear plant, with the intention of sabotaging the Iranian nuclear program.
 
     Capote asserts, in addition, that FireEye, a cybernetic security company with numerous contracts with the CIA, has been named as possibly responsible for the fabrication of false attacks, with the objective of pointing to Russia and Iran as cyber-delinquent countries.  Both the USA and the UK accused Russia in 2017 of a cyberattack that caused millions of dollars of damage in Europe, Asia, and America, but Russia maintains that the source of the virus in that attack was the intelligence services of the United States.  Capote notes that Microsoft has confirmed that the event occurred was caused by a virus produced by the National Security Agency that wound up in the hands of pirates. 
 
       With accusations and counter-accusations among various nations, what are citizens to believe?  My orientation is to view the contrasting claims and counterclaims in a broader context.  The United States is accusing four nations that it has been trying to demonize in recent years.  False accusations of cyberattacks is fully consistent with U.S. efforts to distort reality in order to demonize nations that it cannot control through economic or military force or through cooptation (see “Freedom of the press and socialism” 10/15/2018).  In addition, such false accusations are fully consistent with the history of fabrication of pretexts to justify the U.S. interventionism and interference in the affairs of nations, as U.S. imperialist policy unfolded during the course of the twentieth century (see various posts in the category U.S. imperialism).  This history tendency has increased since 1980, as economic, military, and ideological aggression toward other nations increasingly has defined the U.S. approach to foreign affairs. 
 
     In contrast to the U.S. legacy of distortions, interventions, and interferences, the four accused nations in recent decades have been trying to improve their economic and political status by seeking cooperation and mutually beneficial trade with other nations of the world.  They are accused of actions that are inconsistent with the approach that they have been taking with respect to foreign affairs (see various posts in the categories Third World, Latin American unity and integration, and South-South cooperation).
 
      The U.S. accusations lack credibility, for anyone who understands the essentially imperialist character of U.S. foreign policy and its legacy of generating misinformation in pursuit of its objectives, and who is informed about the actual foreign policies of the accused four nations.  Incredulity was indeed the response of Capote, who concludes his article by asking what more could be expected from those who are experts in fabricating pretexts, and by expressing concern that these incredulous accusations may have the goal of attaining some dark purpose.
 
      The people of the United States are not well informed about the foreign policies of other nations, and as a result, the U.S. accusations of cybernetic attacks by foreign governments may have credibility among the people.  Therefore, they could effectively function to attain popular support for any kind of aggressive measure, economic or military, against nations that supposedly are carrying out cyberattacks against the United States.  In the face of this danger, the people of the United States and the peoples of the world have the right to demand a comprehensive, open, and scientifically informed international commission on cybernetic security.

     Barack Obama became the first US President to visit Hiroshima, where he paid homage to the victims of the first nuclear bomb in history, unleashed against the Japanese city by the United States seventy-one years ago.   The television images of the President embracing one of the survivors of the blast were poignant.

     Taking a perspective different from that of CNN news coverage, the Cuban daily Granma, the newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, described the President’s visit as polemical.  The article noted that, on the one hand, the US government has persistently justified the detonating of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, and a subsequent nuclear attack three days later against the city of Nagasaki, as necessary in order to accelerate the end of World War II; but on the other hand, many have denounced the dropping of the atomic bombs as war crimes.  The article summarizes well the reasoning of those who take the latter position: “Many specialists agree that it was a disproportionate use of force when the country [Japan] already was on the verge of surrender, and that the nuclear attack opened the doors to the use of a kind of weaponry that could destroy humanity.”  

     The Granma article notes that some had hoped that President Obama would apologize for the attack, which he did not do.  The article speculated, however, that rather than an apology, perhaps some have been hoping, in Japan and the rest of the world, that the United States would take concrete steps to ensure that such attacks never happen again, such as reducing the enormous military expenditures of the United States.   Reflecting on the Granma article, I ask, Could Obama’s moving gesture be considered hypocrisy?

     I am of the generation that was born immediately after World War II.  We grew up hearing, and to a large extent accepting, the official claim that the dropping of the bomb was necessary to force Japanese surrender.  As we entered colleges and universities, we had the possibility to reflect collectively on this and other issues, a situation established by the civil rights movement, the resistance of the people of Vietnam, and the emergence of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements in the Third World.  Our generation was progressing, albeit with confusion, toward consciousness that the United States was claiming to be something that it was not: a beacon of democracy in the world.  Our anger was fueled not only by the crimes, but also by the hypocrisy.

     In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as movements of blacks, students, women, Chicanos, Native Americans and ecologists were acquiring force, I believed that a more progressive nation was emerging, and that the conservative discourse would soon wither away.  But it did not come to pass.  Rather, a conservative mood has prevailed since 1980.  A nation that claims to defend democracy in the world, but in fact does not, persists.  Hypocrisy is alive and well, even celebrated.  

     Now in the twilight of my life, I think about how we went so wrong, how we as a nation managed to bury progressive tendencies that had been gradually emerging throughout the history of the Republic.  I think about the structures and the assumptions that have constrained and channeled the energies of those of us who believed that humanity stood at the dawn of a more just and democratic era.  In the academic world, we have confronted bureaucracy, fragmentation into disciplines, and false assumptions concerning scientific objectivity.  In the world of activism, we have been burdened by the imposition of accepted patterns of protest and by an incapacity to approach issues comprehensively and with profundity.  As a result, we have not been able to provide our people with an historical interpretation that is an alternative to the dominant World War II narrative, an interpretation that recognizes, for example, US interest in 1945 in provoking a quick Japanese surrender to the United States, as against a Japanese surrender to the Soviet Union, which had started its march against Japan just as the United States was unleashing its atomic bombs.  And we have not been able to formulate a coherent and viable alternative to the various post-World War II ideological constructs of the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terrorism; even though the colonized peoples of the earth have been formulating in theory and in practice an alternative global project.  In general, we have failed to lead our people to an alternative theory and practice, an alternative national project rooted in honest formulation and an openness to listening to the alternative voices that emerge from below, and rooted as well in the democratic values that the nation has proclaimed since its birth.


Key words: Obama, Hiroshima, World War II, hypocrisy

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  The next post will be on Monday, January 6, 2014.

Visitors are invited to review posts to the blog since July 16, 2013.  The goal of the blog is to provide a foundation for understanding structures of colonial and neocolonial domination of the world-system and for understanding the revolutionary movements that have sought to develop alternative structures.  The intention is to formulate an understanding of the essential characteristics of revolutionary processes, in order to contribute to the establishment of the subjective conditions necessary for a new popular revolution in the United States. 

I provide here a review of the most important themes.

Epistemological reflections: “What is personal encounter?” 7/25/2013; “What is cross-horizon encounter?” 7/26/2013; “Overcoming the colonial denial” 7/29/2013.

The origin and development of the modern world-system:  “What is a world-system?” 8/1/2013; “The modern world-economy” 8/2/2013; “Unequal exchange” 8/5/2013; “The origin of the modern world-economy” 8/6/2013; “Modernization of the West” 8/7/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development” 8/8/2013; “Consolidation of the world-economy, 1640-1815” 8/19/2013; “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013.

Neocolonialism: “Neocolonialism in Africa and Asia” 9/11/2013; “Neocolonialism in Cuba and Latin America” 9/12/2013; “The neocolonial world-system” 9/13/2013; “The characteristics of neocolonialism” 9/16/2013.

U.S. imperialism:  “The origin of US imperialist policies” 9/18/2013; “US Imperialism, 1903-1932” 9/19/2013; “Imperialism and the FDR New Deal” 9/20/2013; “The Cold War and Imperialism” 9/24/2013; “Kennedy and the Third World” 9/25/2013; “The Alliance for Progress” 9/26/2013; “US Imperialism in Latin America, 1963-76” 9/27/2013; “Imperialism falters in Vietnam” 9/30/2013; “Jimmy Carter” 10/1/2013; “Reaganism” 10/4/2013; “Imperialism as neoliberalism” 10/7/2013; “The “neocons” take control” 10/8/2013; “Obama: More continuity than change” 10/9/2013; “Imperialism as basic to foreign policy” 10/10/2013

Colonialism, semi-colonialism, and neocolonialism in Latin America:  “The open veins of Latin America: Gold and silver” 8/16/2013; “Contradictions in colonial Latin America” 8/22/2013; “Semi-colonial Latin American republics” 8/23/2013; “Free trade in the 19th century” 8/26/2013; “The punishment of independent Paraguay” 8/27/2013; “The open veins of Latin America: Sugar” 8/28/2013; “Indigo, coffee, and liberal reform” 9/2/2013; “The Open Veins of Latin America: Coffee” 9/4/2013; “Liberal reform in 19th century Honduras” 9/5/2013; “The open veins of Latin America: Rubber” 9/6/2013; “The open veins of Latin America: Coffee, Part II” 10/14/2013; “The Open Veins of Latin America: Bananas” 10/15/2013; “The Underground Sources of Power” 10/16/2013; “Petroleum in Latin America” 10/17/2013; “Petroleum in Venezuela” 10/18/2013; “Copper in Chile” 10/22/2013; “Tin in Bolivia” 10/23/2013; “Iron in Venezuela and Brazil” 10/24/2013; “The natural resources of the periphery” 10/25/2013.

The American Revolution: “The US popular movement of 1775-77” 11/1/13; “American counterrevolution, 1777-87” 11/4/13; “Balance of power” 11/5/13; “Popular democracy” 11/6/13; “Social and economic rights” 11/7/13; “Right of nations to self-determination” 11/8/13; “The rights of women” 11/11/13; “Sustainable development” 11/12/13; “The limitations of American democracy” 11/13/13; “What is revolution?” 11/14/13.

The French Revolution: “Bourgeois revolution in France, 1787-1799” 11/25/2013; “The French Revolution in global context” 11/26/2013; “Class and the French Revolution” 11/27/2013; “Popular assemblies” 11/28/2013; “Popular militias” 11/30/2013; “Revolutionary Terror” 12/2/2013; “Revolution and religion” 12/3/2013; “History from below” 12/4/2013.

The Haitian Revolution: “Slave rebellion in Haiti” 12/9/2013; “Toussaint L’Ouverture” 12/10/2013; “The problem of dependency” 12/11/2013; “Toussaint seeks North-South cooperation” 12/12/2013; “Toussaint and racial conciliation” 12/13/2013; “Toussaint and revolutionary terror” 12/16/2013; “The isolation and poverty of Haiti” 12/17/2013; and “Lessons from the Haitian Revolution” 12/18/2013.