Mark Curtis - Great Deception

The Great Deception

The Great Deception

Anglo-American Power and World Order

Mark Curtis

First published 1998 by Pluto Press

345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

Copyright Mark Curtis 1998

The right of Mark Curtis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available.

ISBN 9780745312347 pbk

ISBN 0745312349 pbk

ISBN 9780745312392 hbk

ISBN 074531239X hbk

ISBN 9781783715756 ePub

ISBN 9781783715763 Mobi

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Printed on demand by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne

Contents

Part I
Foreign Policy

Part II
Development

Part III
The Middle East

Part IV
The United Nations

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms

Introduction

This study attempts to analyse past and present US and British foreign policy, the special relationship between them and their policies towards development, the Middle East and the United Nations. Their policies in these three areas are especially important to consider since they are central to sustaining current world order: US and British priorities determine much of the development agenda, especially in the area of the international economy; the US remains the de facto controlling power in the Middle East, with Britain playing a key role in the Gulf; and the two states agendas largely determine the functioning or otherwise of the UN Security Council. By consulting the formerly declassified planning record, as well as a variety of contemporary sources, it is possible to show the reality of policy in these areas, and the radical difference between this reality and that presented by mainstream media and academic commentators.

Citizens of the United States and Britain bear a heavy burden. These two countries have largely shaped the post-Second World War world and the current international order, usually in close alliance with each other. The human consequences of their policies are immense. World order currently means three-quarters of the worlds population living in poverty (an average income of $2 a day) and works only to the benefit of a minority elite. It also signifies economic and political power increasingly concentrated in unaccountable private organisations in whose interests international relations increasingly function. Any honest inquiry shows that the policies carried out in the names of the people of these two great democracies are in fact responsible for much of humanitys suffering at the end of the twentieth century. The magnitude of this culpability is matched by the degree to which it is overlooked or suppressed by the so-called free press and independent academia in these two countries.