US 'turns page on a decade of war' … The United States is "turning the page on a decade of war", President Barack Obama said, as he unveiled a major strategic review that will cut $489 billion in defence spending over the next ten years … As the wars of the September 11 era pass, Mr Obama said America should abandon its traditional capability of fighting two major wars at once and focus on becoming a "leaner and smarter" fighting force with an emphasis on counter terrorism, reconnaissance, cyber warfare and maintaining a nuclear deterrent. In a rare appearance in the Pentagon press briefing room, Mr Obama however insisted that the US military would comfortably maintain its military supremacy, with proposed spending still larger than that of the next 10 countries combined. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: We've changed. We're gonna be more powerful but more gentle, too. We're going to emphasize the efficiency of killing rather than its scope.

Free-Market Analysis: The Obama administration has announced a new page in a decade of war. But is this really the case? We would argue that this downsizing is noteworthy because it acknowledges that the pretense of using "citizen armies" to realize the New World Order is actually drawing to a close.

What Obama is enunciating is nothing more than a dominant social theme, in our view. The idea is to indicate to the West and to America in particular that the country's war-fervor is abating. The US will continue to be triumphantly powerful but it won't be so brash or quite so destructive.

But really nothing much has changed in terms of power elite goals. What IS changing is the way force is going to be distributed and applied.

There is going to be a transition to a more secretive military methodology, in our view. It's already happening. The powers-that-be will seek to advance their agenda via mercenaries and intelligence agencies and to fund these activities via drug dealing and various other black ops.

Is there any other choice? The Anglosphere power elite that seeks to run the world cannot likely wean itself from its military methodologies. Its command-and-control agenda rests on the threat of violence and increasingly on its actuation.

Western economies are seemingly almost entirely in the thrall of this elite. Using the wealth of central banking, it has over time created a worldwide economy that is driven by war and directed by a few select, titanic corporations that are basically the handmaidens of Washington DC and the City of London.

It would seem to be the most successful, hidden dictatorship in the history of humankind. The secrecy – especially in the 20th century – allowed the entire world to be steered in a certain direction, toward world government. This strategy is still in effect even though it has been blown open by the Internet and the increasingly powerful "Reformation" that it is causing.

What we call the Internet Reformation is evidently and obviously shaking the power elite. This powerful entity has thus been increasingly forced to show its hand in numerous ways, both legislative and military. We have come to call it "directed history." The goal is global governance and events are "arranged" to facilitate it.

Throughout the 20th century, the "globalization" trends expanded. The state was to be celebrated in all ways. What was independent and inchoate was to be made dependent and ritualized. What was art was depersonalized in order to celebrate the efficacy of the state, as was architecture. Psychology was introduced to increase the efficiency of manipulations of the middle class. Money was drained of value and increasingly controlled behind the scenes by forces bent on inflation and currency debasement.

The continuance of this mad system is brought forth despite an increasingly generalized understanding of its manifestations. Over the past 300 years, with increasing energy and efficacy, a deliberate and calculated reign has been put into place that seemingly purposefully embraces everything that is most dysfunctional and destructive about human society.

Human beings are surely complex animals, in our view, with an incredibly broad spectrum of traits. When these traits are exercised privately, no overall harm is done. But when a tiny group of elites manage to gain control of the world's money supply (as has apparently occurred) and then begin to use the power of government force to deliberately implement their agenda, large-scale disasters are surely in the offing.

In the 20th century, perhaps 150 million people died directly as the result of elite war and its directed history. The 21st century was to see the further perfection of this system of war, corporatism, looting and bloodshed. Here's some more from the article:

The cuts would represent less than 10 per cent of the current annual defence budget of $650 billion. In one of the most significant strategy shifts since the end of the Second World War, the review US will turn its focus away from Europe towards the Asian Pacific region to counter the rising influence of China.

"Our military will be leaner but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats," [Obama] said at a news conference at the Pentagon flanked by Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, and senior generals.

"Even as our troops continue to fight in Afghanistan, the tide of war is receding," he said. "Even as our forces prevail in today's missions, we have the opportunity – and the responsibility – to look ahead to the force we need for the future. Our nation is at a moment of transition."

The defence budget since the September 11 attacks on the US had grown at an "extraordinary pace" which had to slow down, he said, given the soaring budget deficits the world's superpower is facing thanks to the recession and the cost of its ageing population. "We have to renew our economic strength here at home, which is the foundation of our strength in the world. That includes putting our fiscal house in order," the president said.

We don't believe any of this. We have learned in a decade of covering such reports that government officials usually say exactly the opposite of what they mean. The Anglosphere elite cannot afford to give up its corporate/military mechanism of control.

In fact, one could make an argument that what we consider to be a deliberately introduced financial crisis has resulted in the purposeful expansion of NATO to make it into a true fighting force worldwide. Couple NATO with the mercenary expansions of outfits such as those run by the infamous Erik Prince and the steady emergence of shadowy black ops run out the City of London, Washington DC and Tel Aviv and you begin to see an entirely new militaristic paradigm.

What is interesting, we would argue, is that this configuration increasingly resembles that of ancient Rome. When the empire was weakening due to financial mismanagement and corruption, the use of mercenaries and professional soldiers greatly expanded. It didn't work, however, in the long run because people need to be motivated by a belief structure in order to be willing to fight and lay down their lives.

Absent this belief structure, defeats mount up and victories are increasingly hard to come by. This explains the failures of the West in Afghanistan and Pakistan and probably in Yemen and Somalia as well.

Here is the puzzle: The closer the elites draw to the New World Older, the less effective their mechanisms of control may prove.