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World War III With China</strong> </span><br>
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<blockquote>
<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>How It Might
Actually Be Fought</strong> </span><br>
By <a
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/alfredmccoy"
target="_blank">Alfred W. McCoy</a></p>
<p>[<em>This piece has been adapted and expanded from
Alfred W. McCoy’s new book, </em><a
href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467732/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"
target="_blank">In the Shadows of the American
Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power</a>.]</p>
<p>For the past 50 years, American leaders have been
supremely confident that they could suffer military
setbacks in places like Cuba or Vietnam without having
their system of global hegemony, backed by the world’s
wealthiest economy and finest military, affected. The
country was, after all, the planet’s “indispensible
nation,” as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright <a
href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright" target="_blank">proclaimed</a>
in 1998 (and other presidents and politicians have
insisted ever since). The U.S. enjoyed a greater
“disparity of power” over its would-be rivals than any
empire ever, Yale historian Paul Kennedy <a
href="https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/linkscopy/EagleLand.html"
target="_blank">announced</a> in 2002. Certainly, it
would remain “the sole superpower for decades to
come,” <em>Foreign Affairs</em> magazine <a
href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-13/once-and-future-superpower"
target="_blank">assured</a> us just last year.
During the 2016 campaign, candidate Donald Trump <a
href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/08/18/trump-albany-rally-winning-sot.cnn"
target="_blank">promised</a> his supporters that
“we’re gonna win with military... we are gonna win so
much you may even get tired of winning.” In August,
while announcing his decision to send more troops to
Afghanistan, Trump <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/world/asia/trump-speech-afghanistan.html?mcubz=0"
target="_blank">reassured</a> the nation: “In every
generation, we have faced down evil, and we have
always prevailed.” In this fast-changing world, only
one thing was certain: when it really counted, the
United States could never lose.<br>
</p>
<p>No longer.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Trump White House may still be basking in the glow
of America’s global supremacy but, just across the
Potomac, the Pentagon has formed a more realistic view
of its fading military superiority. In June, the Defense
Department issued a <a
href="https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pdffiles/PUB1358.pdf"
target="_blank">major report</a> titled on <em>Risk
Assessment in a Post-Primacy World</em>, finding that
the U.S. military “no longer enjoys an unassailable
position versus state competitors,” and “it no longer
can... automatically generate consistent and sustained
local military superiority at range.” This sober
assessment led the Pentagon’s top strategists to “the
jarring realization that ‘we can lose.’” Increasingly,
Pentagon planners find, the “self-image of a matchless
global leader” provides a “flawed foundation for
forward-looking defense strategy... under post-primacy
conditions.” This Pentagon report also warned that, like
Russia, China is “engaged in a deliberate program to
demonstrate the limits of U.S. authority”; hence,
Beijing’s bid for “Pacific primacy” and its “campaign to
expand its control over the South China Sea.”</p>
<p><strong>China’s Challenge</strong></p>
<p>Indeed, military tensions between the two countries
have been rising in the western Pacific since the summer
of 2010. Just as Washington once used its wartime
alliance with Great Britain to appropriate much of that
fading empire’s global power after World War II, so
Beijing began using profits from its export trade with
the U.S. to fund a military challenge to its dominion
over the waterways of Asia and the Pacific.</p>
<p>Some telltale numbers suggest the nature of the future
great power competition between Washington and Beijing
that could determine the course of the twenty-first
century. In April 2015, for instance, the Department of
Agriculture <a
href="http://watchingamerica.com/WA/2015/04/28/us-projections-for-the-2030-world-economy-ranking/"
target="_blank">reported</a> that the U.S. economy
would grow by nearly 50% over the next 15 years, while
China’s would expand by 300%, equaling or surpassing
America’s around 2030.</p>
<p>Similarly, in the critical race for worldwide patents,
American leadership in technological innovation is
clearly on the wane. In 2008, the United States still
held the number two spot behind Japan in patent
applications with 232,000. China was, however, <a
href="http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/intproperty/941/wipo_pub_941_2010.pdf"
target="_blank">closing</a> in fast at 195,000, thanks
to a blistering 400% increase since 2000. By 2014, China
actually took the <a
href="http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_941_2015.pdf"
target="_blank">lead</a> in this critical category
with 801,000 patents, nearly half the world’s total,
compared to just 285,000 for the Americans.</p>
<p>With supercomputing now critical for everything from
code breaking to consumer products, China’s Defense
Ministry <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/technology/28compute.html"
target="_blank">outpaced</a> the Pentagon for the
first time in 2010, launching the world’s fastest
supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A. For the next six years,
Beijing produced the fastest machine and last year
finally <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/technology/china-tops-list-of-fastest-computers-again.html?_r=0"
target="_blank">won</a> in a way that couldn’t be more
crucial: with a supercomputer that had microprocessor
chips made in China. By then, it also had the most
supercomputers with 167 compared to 165 for the United
States and only 29 for Japan.</p>
<p>Over the longer term, the American education system,
that critical source of future scientists and
innovators, has been falling behind its competitors. In
2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development tested half a million 15-year-olds
worldwide. Those in Shanghai <a
href="http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf"
target="_blank">came in first</a> in math and science,
while those in Massachusetts, “a strong-performing U.S.
state,” placed 20th in science and 27th in math. By
2015, America’s standing had <a
href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-math-science-reading-skills-2016-12"
target="_blank">declined</a> to 25th in science and
39th in math.</p>
<p class="Default">But why, you might ask, should anybody
care about a bunch of 15-year-olds with backpacks,
braces, and attitude? Because by 2030, they will be the
mid-career scientists and engineers determining whose
computers survive a cyber attack, whose satellites evade
a missile strike, and whose economy has the next best
thing.</p>
<p><strong>Rival Superpower Strategies</strong></p>
<p>With its growing resources, Beijing has been laying
claim to an arc of islands and waters from Korea to
Indonesia long dominated by the U.S. Navy. In August
2010, after Washington expressed a “national interest”
in the South China Sea and conducted naval exercises
there to reinforce the claim, Beijing’s <em>Global
Times</em> <a
href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/0817/China-and-the-US-battle-to-assert-presence-in-South-China-Sea"
target="_blank">responded</a> angrily that “the
U.S.-China wrestling match over the South China Sea
issue has raised the stakes in deciding who the real
future ruler of the planet will be.”</p>
<p>Four years later, Beijing escalated its territorial
claims to these waters, <a
href="http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/04/chinassbnfleet/"
target="_blank">building</a> a nuclear submarine
facility on Hainan Island and <a
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_8701/index.html"
target="_blank">accelerating</a> its dredging of seven
artificial atolls for military bases in the Spratly
Islands. When the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The
Hague <a
href="http://www.pcacases.com/pcadocs/PH-CN%20-%2020160712%20-%20Award.pdf"
target="_blank">ruled</a>, in 2016, that these atolls
gave China no territorial claim to the surrounding seas,
Beijing’s Foreign Ministry <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/world/asia/south-china-sea-hague-ruling-philippines.html?mcubz=0"
target="_blank">dismissed</a> the decision out of
hand.</p>
<p>To meet China’s challenge on the high seas, the
Pentagon began <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/world/asia/south-china-sea-us-navy.html?mcubz=0"
target="_blank">sending</a> a succession of carrier
groups on “freedom of navigation” cruises into the South
China Sea. It also started shifting spare air and sea
assets to a string of bases from Japan to Australia in a
bid to strengthen its strategic position along the Asian
littoral. Since the end of World War II, Washington has
attempted to control the strategic Eurasian landmass
from a network of NATO military bases in Europe and a
chain of island bastions in the Pacific. Between the “<a
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176007/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy,_washington%27s_great_game_and_why_it%27s_failing_/"
target="_blank">axial ends</a>” of this vast
continent, Washington has, over the past 70 years, built
successive layers of military power -- air and naval
bases during the Cold War and more recently a string of
60 drone bases stretching from Sicily to Guam.</p>
<p>Simultaneously, however, China has conducted what the
Pentagon in 2010 <a
href="https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2010_CMPR_Final.pdf"
target="_blank">called</a> “a comprehensive
transformation of its military” meant to prepare the
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “for extended-range power
projection.” With the world’s “most active land-based
ballistic and cruise missile program,” Beijing can
target “its nuclear forces throughout... most of the
world, including the continental United States.”
Meanwhile, accurate missiles now provide the PLA with
the ability “to attack ships, including aircraft
carriers, in the western Pacific Ocean.” In emerging
military domains, China has begun to contest U.S.
dominion over cyberspace and space, with plans to
dominate “the information spectrum in all dimensions of
the modern battlespace.”</p>
<p>China’s army has by now developed a sophisticated
cyberwarfare <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html?mcubz=0"
target="_blank">capacity</a> through its Unit 61398
and allied contractors that “increasingly focus... on
companies involved in the critical infrastructure of the
United States -- its electrical power grid, gas lines,
and waterworks.” After identifying that unit as
responsible for a series of intellectual property
thefts, Washington took the unprecedented step, in 2013,
of filing criminal charges against five active-duty
Chinese cyber officers.</p>
<p>China has already made major technological advances
that could prove decisive in any future war with
Washington. Instead of competing across the board,
Beijing, like many late adopters of technology, has
strategically chosen key areas to pursue, particularly
orbital satellites, which are a fulcrum for the
effective weaponization of space. As early as 2012,
China had already launched 14 satellites into “three
kinds of orbits” with “more satellites in high orbits
and... better anti-shielding capabilities than other
systems.” Four years later, Beijing <a
href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-06/16/content_25732439.htm"
target="_blank">announced</a> that it was on track to
“cover the whole globe with a constellation of 35
satellites by 2020,” becoming second only to the United
States when it comes to operational satellite systems.</p>
<p>Playing catch-up, China has recently achieved a bold
breakthrough in secure communications. In August 2016,
three years after the Pentagon abandoned its own attempt
at full-scale satellite security, Beijing <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/world/asia/china-quantum-satellite-mozi.html"
target="_blank">launched</a> the world’s first quantum
satellite that transmits photons, believed to be
“invulnerable to hacking,” rather than relying on more
easily compromised radio waves. According to one
scientific <a
href="http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-satellite-is-one-giant-step-for-the-quantum-internet-1.20329"
target="_blank">report</a>, this new technology will
“create a super-secure communications network,
potentially linking people anywhere.” China was
reportedly planning to launch 20 of the satellites
should the technology prove fully successful.</p>
<p>To check China, Washington has been building a new
digital defense network of advanced cyberwarfare
capabilities and air-space robotics. Between 2010 and
2012, the Pentagon extended drone operations into the
exosphere, creating an arena for future warfare unlike
anything that has gone before. As early as 2020, if all
goes according to plan, the Pentagon will loft a <a
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176324"
target="_blank">triple-tier shield</a> of unmanned
drones reaching from the stratosphere to the exosphere,
armed with agile missiles, linked by an expanded
satellite system, and operated through robotic controls.</p>
<p>Weighing this balance of forces, the RAND Corporation
recently released a study, <em>War with China, </em><a
href="https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1100/RR1140/RAND_RR1140.synopsis.pdf"
target="_blank">predicting</a> that by 2025 “China
will likely have more, better, and longer-range
ballistic missiles and cruise missiles; advanced air
defenses; latest generation aircraft; quieter
submarines; more and better sensors; and the digital
communications, processing power, and C2 [cyber
security] necessary to operate an integrated kill
chain.”</p>
<p>In the event of all-out war, RAND suggested, the United
States might suffer heavy losses to its carriers,
submarines, missiles, and aircraft from Chinese
strategic forces, while its computer systems and
satellites would be degraded thanks to “improved Chinese
cyberwar and ASAT [anti-satellite] capabilities.” Even
though American forces would counterattack, their
“growing vulnerability” means Washington’s victory would
not be assured. In such a conflict, the think tank
concluded, there might well be no “clear winner.”</p>
<p>Make no mistake about the weight of those words. For
the first time, a top strategic think-tank, closely
aligned with the U.S. military and long famous for its
influential strategic analyses, was seriously
contemplating a major war with China that the United
States would not win.</p>
<p><strong>World War III: Scenario 2030</strong></p>
<p>The technology of space and cyberwarfare is so new, so
untested, that even the most outlandish scenarios
currently concocted by strategic planners may soon be
superseded by a reality still hard to conceive. In a
2015 nuclear war <a
href="http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/air-force/2015/12/18/air-force-nuclear-war-game-tests-future-bomber-fleet/77515594/"
target="_blank">exercise</a>, the Air Force Wargaming
Institute used sophisticated computer modeling to <a
href="http://tinyletter.com/lseligman/letters/lara-s-weekly-roundup-air-force-nuclear-war-game-tests-future-bomber-fleet"
target="_blank">imagine</a> “a 2030 scenario where the
Air Force’s fleet of B-52s... upgraded with... improved
standoff weapons” patrol the skies ready to strike.
Simultaneously, “shiny new intercontinental ballistic
missiles” stand by for launch. Then, in a bold tactical
gambit, B-1 bombers with “full Integrated Battle Station
(IBS) upgrade” slip through enemy defenses for a
devastating nuclear strike.</p>
<p>That scenario was no doubt useful for Air Force
planners, but said little about the actual future of
U.S. global power. Similarly, the RAND <em>War with
China</em> study only compared military capacities,
without assessing the particular strategies either side
might use to its advantage.</p>
<p>I might not have access to the Wargaming Institute’s
computer modeling or RAND’s renowned analytical
resources, but I can at least carry their work one step
further by imagining a future conflict with an
unfavorable outcome for the United States. As the
globe’s still-dominant power, Washington must spread its
defenses across all military domains, making its
strength, paradoxically, a source of potential weakness.
As the challenger, China has the asymmetric advantage of
identifying and exploiting a few strategic flaws in
Washington’s otherwise overwhelming military
superiority.</p>
<p>For years, prominent Chinese defense intellectuals like
<a
href="http://www.cas.fudan.edu.cn/viewprofile.en.php?id=66"
target="_blank">Shen Dingli</a> of Fudan University
have rejected the idea of countering the U.S. with a big
naval build-up and <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/31/AR2010123101858.html"
target="_blank">argued</a> instead for “cyberattacks,
space weapons, lasers, pulses, and other directed-energy
beams.” Instead of rushing to launch aircraft carriers
that “will be burned” by lasers fired from space, China
should, Shen argued, develop advanced weapons "to make
other command systems fail to work." Although decades
away from matching the full might of Washington’s global
military, China could, through a combination of
cyberwar, space warfare, and supercomputing, find ways
to cripple U.S. military communications and thus blind
its strategic forces. With that in mind, here’s one
possible scenario for World War III:</p>
<p>It’s 11:59 p.m. on Thanksgiving Thursday in 2030. For
months, tensions have been mounting between Chinese and
U.S. Navy patrols in the South China Sea. Washington’s
attempts to use diplomacy to restrain China have proven
an embarrassing failure among long-time allies -- with
NATO crippled by years of diffident American support,
Britain now a third-tier power, Japan functionally
neutral, and other international leaders cool to
Washington’s concerns after suffering its
cyber-surveillance for so long. With the American
economy diminished, Washington plays the last card in an
increasingly weak hand, deploying six of its remaining
eight carrier groups to the Western Pacific.</p>
<p>Instead of intimidating China’s leaders, the move makes
them more bellicose. Flying from air bases in the
Spratly Islands, their jet fighters soon begin buzzing
U.S. Navy ships in the South China Sea, while Chinese
frigates play chicken with two of the aircraft carriers
on patrol, crossing ever closer to their bows.</p>
<p>Then tragedy strikes. At 4:00 a.m. on a foggy October
night, the massive carrier USS <em>Gerald Ford</em>
slices through aging Frigate-536 <em>Xuchang</em>,
sinking the Chinese ship with its entire crew of 165.
Beijing demands an apology and reparations. When
Washington refuses, China’s fury comes fast.</p>
<p>At the stroke of midnight on Black Friday, as
cyber-shoppers storm the portals of Best Buy for deep
discounts on the latest consumer electronics from
Bangladesh, Navy personnel staffing the <a
href="http://newatlas.com/sst-delivery/30063/"
target="_blank">Space Surveillance Telescope</a> at
Exmouth, Western Australia, choke on their coffees as
their panoramic screens of the southern sky suddenly
blip to black. Thousands of miles away at the U.S.
CyberCommand’s operations center in Texas, Air Force
technicians detect malicious binaries that, though
hacked anonymously into American weapons systems
worldwide, show the distinctive <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/science/06cyber.html?mcubz=0"
target="_blank">digital fingerprints</a> of China’s
People’s Liberation Army.</p>
<p>In what historians will later call the “Battle of
Binaries,” CyberCom’s supercomputers launch their killer
counter-codes. While a few of China’s provincial servers
do lose routine administrative data, Beijing’s quantum
satellite system, equipped with super-secure photon
transmission, proves impervious to hacking. Meanwhile,
an armada of bigger, faster supercomputers slaved to
Shanghai’s cyberwarfare Unit 61398 blasts back with
impenetrable logarithms of unprecedented subtlety and
sophistication, slipping into the U.S. satellite system
through its antiquated microwave signals.</p>
<p>The first overt strike is one nobody at the Pentagon
predicted. Flying at 60,000 feet above the South China
Sea, several U.S. carrier-based MQ-25 Stingray <a
href="https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/us-navy-descoping-stealth-requirement-for-stingray-t-423039/"
target="_blank">drones</a>, infected by Chinese
“malware,” suddenly fire all the pods beneath their
enormous delta wingspans, sending dozens of lethal
missiles plunging harmlessly into the ocean, effectively
disarming those formidable weapons.</p>
<p>Determined to fight fire with fire, the White House
authorizes a retaliatory strike. Confident their
satellite system is impenetrable, Air Force commanders
in California transmit robotic codes to a flotilla of
X-37B <a
href="http://www.space.com/32839-x37b-military-space-plane-one-year-mission-otv4.html"
target="_blank">space drones</a>, orbiting 250 miles
above the Earth, to launch their Triple Terminator
missiles at several of China’s communication satellites.
There is zero response.</p>
<p>In near panic, the Navy orders its Zumwalt-class
destroyers to fire their RIM-174<strong> </strong><a
href="http://www.space.com/5006-navy-hits-satellite-heat-seeking-missile.html"
target="_blank">killer missiles</a> at seven Chinese
satellites in nearby geostationary orbits. The launch
codes suddenly prove inoperative.</p>
<p>As Beijing’s viruses spread uncontrollably through the
U.S. satellite architecture, the country’s second-rate
supercomputers fail to crack the Chinese malware’s
devilishly complex code. With stunning speed, GPS
signals crucial to the navigation of American ships and
aircraft worldwide are compromised.</p>
<p>Across the Pacific, Navy deck officers scramble for
their sextants, struggling to recall long-ago navigation
classes at Annapolis. Steering by sun and stars, carrier
squadrons abandon their stations off the China coast and
steam for the safety of Hawaii.</p>
<p>An angry American president orders a retaliatory strike
on a secondary Chinese target, Longpo Naval Base on
Hainan Island. Within minutes, the commander of Andersen
Air Base on Guam launches a battery of super-secret X-51
“Waverider” <a
href="http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/05/19/air-force-getting-closer-to-testing-hypersonic-weapon.html"
target="_blank">hypersonic missiles</a> that soar to
70,000 feet and then streak across the Pacific at 4,000
miles per hour -- far faster than any Chinese fighter or
air-to-air missile. Inside the White House situation
room the silence is stifling as everyone counts down the
30 short minutes before the tactical nuclear warheads
are to slam into Longpo’s hardened submarine pens,
shutting down Chinese naval operations in the South
China Sea. Midflight, the missiles suddenly nose-dive
into the Pacific.</p>
<p>In a bunker buried deep beneath Tiananmen Square,
President Xi Jinping’s handpicked successor, Li Keqiang,
even more nationalistic than his mentor, is outraged
that Washington would attempt a tactical nuclear strike
on Chinese soil. When China’s State Council wavers at
the thought of open war, the president quotes the
ancient strategist Sun Tzu: “Victorious warriors win
first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to
war first and then seek to win.” Amid applause and
laughter, the vote is unanimous. War it is!</p>
<p>Almost immediately, Beijing escalates from secret
cyberattacks to overt acts. Dozens of China’s
next-generation SC-19 missiles lift off for strikes on
key American communications satellites, scoring a high
ratio of kinetic kills on these hulking units. Suddenly,
Washington loses secure communications with hundreds of
military bases. U.S. fighter squadrons worldwide are
grounded. Dozens of F-35 pilots already airborne are
blinded as their helmet-mounted avionic displays go
black, forcing them down to 10,000 feet for a clear view
of the countryside. Without any electronic navigation,
they must follow highways and landmarks back to base
like bus drivers in the sky.</p>
<p>Midflight on regular patrols around the Eurasian
landmass, two-dozen RQ-180 surveillance drones suddenly
become unresponsive to satellite-transmitted commands.
They fly aimlessly toward the horizon, crashing when
their fuel is exhausted. With surprising speed, the
United States loses control of what its Air Force has
long <a
href="http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/p023961.pdf"
target="_blank">called</a> the “ultimate high ground.”</p>
<p>With intelligence flooding the Kremlin about crippled
American capacity, Moscow, still a close Chinese ally,
sends a dozen Severodvinsk-class nuclear submarines
beyond the Arctic Circle bound for permanent,
provocative patrols between New York and Newport News.
Simultaneously, a half-dozen Grigorovich-class missile
frigates from Russia’s Black Sea fleet, escorted by an
undisclosed number of attack submarines, steam for the
western Mediterranean to shadow the U.S. Sixth fleet.</p>
<p>Within a matter of hours, Washington’s strategic grip
on the axial ends of Eurasia -- the keystone to its
global dominion for the past 85 years -- is broken. In
quick succession, the building blocks in the fragile
architecture of U.S. global power start to fall.</p>
<p>Every weapon begets its own nemesis. Just as musketeers
upended mounted knights, tanks smashed trench works, and
dive bombers sank battleships, so China’s superior
cybercapability had blinded America’s communication
satellites that were the sinews of its once-formidable
military apparatus, giving Beijing a stunning victory in
this war of robotic militaries. Without a single combat
casualty on either side, the superpower that had
dominated the planet for nearly a century is defeated in
World War III.</p>
<p><em>Alfred W. McCoy, a </em><a
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176324/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_how_the_pentagon_snatched_innovation_from_the_jaws_of_defeat/"
target="_blank">TomDispatch<em> regular</em></a><em>,
is the Harrington professor of history at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of
the now-classic book </em>The Politics of Heroin: CIA
Complicity in the Global Drug Trade<em>, which probed
the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert
operations over 50 years, and the just-published </em><a
href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467732/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"
target="_blank">In the Shadows of the American
Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power</a><em>
(Dispatch Books) from which this piece is adapted.</em></p>
<p><em>Follow </em>TomDispatch<em> on <a
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href="http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch"
target="_blank">Facebook</a>. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Alfred McCoy's </em><a
href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467732/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"
target="_blank">In the Shadows of the American
Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power</a><em>,
as well as John Dower's </em><a
href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467236/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"
target="_blank">The Violent American Century: War and
Terror Since World War II</a><em>, John Feffer's
dystopian novel </em><a
href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608467244/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"
target="_blank">Splinterlands</a><em>, Nick Turse’s </em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608466485/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"
target="_blank">Next Time They’ll Come to Count the
Dead</a><em>, and Tom Engelhardt's </em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463656/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"
target="_blank">Shadow Government: Surveillance,
Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World</a><em>.</em></p>
<p>Copyright 2017 Alfred W. McCoy</p>
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