by Jeremy Hammond

Created on: September 19, 2008

The use of force in international relations is a common practice in the world today, as it has historically been, with the responsible party never failing to claim some noble cause or worthy justification for its actions. Such declarations of benevolence aside, the reasons publicly stated as pretext for wars are almost never true.

One is often left to deduce, therefore, the true reasons policy-makers in government make the decision to send a country's military into armed combat, not by their statements intended for public audience, but by their actions and their statements not intended to be so widely received.

The United States provides a useful case study. Take the Mexican-American war in 1845. In seeking a Congressional declaration for that conflict, President James Polk said, "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil".

The war was thus, as he presented it, an act of self-defense. In truth, he had deliberately provoked the attack he referred to by sending the army to the Rio Grande into what Mexico regarded as its territory, inhabited by Mexicans. The thin veil of a pretext aside, the true reason for the war could better be summed up by journalist John O'Sullivan's remark that it was the "manifest destiny" of the U.S. "to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."

Or take the "splendid little war", as Secretary of State John Hay called the Spanish-American war. When the USS Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana Harbor, Cuba, the event was used as a pretext for imperial expansion by accusing Spain of having blown up the ship. The press joined in with calls of "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" The public bought into the deception and the government got their war for imperial expansion, taking over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines.

Generations later, during the Kennedy administration, the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed arranging "A 'Remember the Maine' incident", suggesting, "We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and Blame Cuba." This was just one in a whole series of proposed false pretexts for war against Cuba to remove Fidel Castro from power by force, collectively called "Operation Northwoods".

In a memo to the Secretary of Defense, the Join Chiefs also proposed "to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over

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