The 49-page report, which the president is required to present to Congress, is the fullest presentation of U.S. strategic goals on “national security” since the last report issued four years ago.

The harshest threats are directed against the Iranian government. Washington claims Tehran “sponsors terrorism,” “disrupts democracy in Iraq,” and “refuses to provide objective guarantees that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.” The government of north Korea is also singled out by the report as posing “a serious nuclear proliferation challenge.”

In another threat aimed at Iran, the document goes on to say that Washington “makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, because they are equally guilty of murder. Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror…has chosen to be an enemy of freedom, justice, and peace. The world must hold those regimes to account.” Elaborating upon its approach of halting the development of a nuclear industry in Iran, the document states, “The best way to block aspiring nuclear states or nuclear terrorists is to deny them access to the essential ingredient of fissile material.” This includes steps “to deter, interdict, or prevent any transfer of that material from states that have this capability to rogue states or to terrorists.”

At the same time the report calls for “closing a loophole in the Non-Proliferation Treaty that permits regimes to produce fissile material that can be used to make nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear power program.” And it proposes that “the world’s leading nuclear exporters create a safe, orderly system that spreads nuclear energy without spreading nuclear weapons. Under this system, all states would have reliable access at reasonable cost to fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors. In return, those states would remain transparent and renounce the enrichment and reprocessing capabilities that can produce fissile material for nuclear weapons.”

This new approach was reflected in the recent nuclear deal Washington signed with the government of India to provide nuclear technology for the 14 of its 22 nuclear plants that are classified as for civilian nuclear energy production.

Military spying operations are taking on a more prominent role as part of the U.S. rulers’ transformation of their armed forces into more lethal and agile units ready to move quickly into theaters of conflict around the world. The media reported in early March that Special Operations Forces are functioning out of U.S. embassies in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America as part of government spying operations. The 2007 U.S. military budget proposals project double the funding for these elite forces. The National Security Strategy document points to their expanded use as a means to “dissuade any hostile military competitor from challenging the United States.”

Spying operations under the Pentagon’s control receive about 80 percent of the $40 billion annual budget for Washington’s overall intelligence gathering. Tensions between the Department of Defense and the CIA—founded in 1946 under the Democratic administration of Harry Truman and run for decades by liberals—became public last year over the Pentagon’s growing control over spying operations during congressional debate over “intelligence reform.”

Under the banner of promoting “democracy,” the new National Security Strategy report makes a point of targeting seven states as “tyrannies” with “despotic systems.” These are the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma, and Zimbabwe.
 
 
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