US depends on sophisticated military to impose imperial order – Fidel

US depends on sophisticated military to impose imperial order – Fidel
Written by Larry Moonze in Havana, Cuba
Sunday, May 10, 2009 5:18:25 PM

FORMER Cuban president Fidel Castro has said the US depends on wealth and use of sophisticated military means to impose its imperial order the world over.

Castro on Thursday said the United States today had seven fleets and more than 800 military bases scattered throughout the planet with which it imposes its military might on the world.

“There are politicians inside and outside the United States who take offense if someone dares to describe that system as an empire as if there were another word that could better define it,” Castro said.

He said one only had a better idea of the military power with which the superpower supported the economic and social system it had imposed on humankind by referring to some recently published data.

Castro said the US military power was based on its nuclear arsenal.

“It has 534 Minuteman III and Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), 432 Trident C-4 and D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) installed on board of 17 Ohio submarines, and around 200 long-range nuclear bombers that can be supplied in mid-air among them 16 invisible B-2,” he said.

Castro said the missiles carried several warheads and that the number of nuclear warheads deployed ranged between 5,000 and 10,000.

He said USA’s armed forces were made up of more than two million men.

“Added to all these there are hundreds of military and communication satellites which make up the space shield and are the means for an electromagnetic war,” Castro said. “Russia, the other big nuclear power, has been surrounded by offensive nuclear weapons. It is hardly necessary to add one more word, except for being reminded that thanks to the monopoly over money and natural resources, the United States announced yesterday through the Pentagon's principal commander for cyber-war that that country was determined to lead the global effort to use computer technology to deter or defeat the enemies, while protecting people's constitutional rights.”

He said the world was not only threatened by the cyclical economic crises which were ever more serious and frequent.

Castro said unemployment, bankruptcy, and the huge losses in goods and wealth were inseparable companions of the blind market laws which governed the world economy today.

“Neo-liberalism proscribes any interference by the State considering it a disturbing element for the economy as if the domestic order, the army, health, education, culture, science, the courts, the judges, and many other activities could exist without the state and its laws,” he said.

Castro noted that there was even an attempt to submit the human minds using the mass media and the most modern techniques of the so-called entertainment industry.

“What supports that order?” he asked. “Wealth and the use of force. For that they have all the money in this world and the most sophisticated military means. Besides, they are the big producers and exporters of weapons that pose no threat whatsoever to their international hegemony, but spur local wars, multinationals profits and their allies' dependence.”

Castro said the US mints unlimited amounts of the hard currency required by international trade and with that, they acquire properties for their multinationals and take hold of the natural resources and the fruits of peoples' labour in order to prop up the societies of consumption and waste that they have created.

He said furthermore, the US kept a monopolist control over the international credit and investment agencies.

Castro said in 2004 alone, US multinationals' profits abroad amounted to US $700 billion for which they paid to the treasury only US $16 billion dollars in discounts which granted special privileges to US companies investing in other countries.

Castro said that policy affected those who conducted business inside the US and created jobs in that country.

“The mere attempt by the present US administration to reduce that privilege gave rise to a protest by important US business organisations whose economic and political power no one can deny,” said Castro.