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Most geopolitics’ nerds know George C. Marshall as President Harry S. Truman’s Secretary of State, 1947-49, and Secretary of Defense, 1950-51, credited with initiating $13 billion Marshall Plan for rebuilding European economies devastated by the war.

But few people know that as Chief of Staff of the US Army during World War II, Gen. George C. Marshall organized the largest military expansion in the US history, inheriting an outmoded, poorly equipped army of 189,000 men that grew into a force of over eight million soldiers by 1942, a fortyfold increase within the short span of three years.

Rumors circulated by the end of the war that Marshall would become the Supreme Allied Commander for the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. However, Franklin D. Roosevelt selected relatively modest Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower for the momentous march to victory, because Roosevelt felt threatened by Marshall’s power and ambitions.

Image: President Dwight D. Eisenhower (National Archives)

Thus, after the war, Eisenhower was hailed as liberator of Europe from the Nazi occupation who subsequently rose to prominence as the president, whereas the principal architect of the US deep state and a military genius who was instrumental in making the United States a global power died in relative obscurity.

Ever since Marshall, however, the United States has been ruled by the top brass of the Pentagon while presidents have been reduced to the ceremonial role of being public relations’ representatives of the deep state, pontificating and sermonizing like priests to gullible audiences at home and abroad on the virtues of supposed American democracy, rule of law and civil liberties.

Though a clarification is required here that US presidents indeed have the power to order withdrawal of troops from inconsequential theaters of war, such as the evacuation of US forces from Iraq as directed by former President Obama in 2011 or the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan as ordered by President Biden in 2021, as the perceptive military brass is courteous enough to bow to sane advice of purported chosen representatives of the people and ostensible commander-in-chief of the armed forces in order to maintain the charade of democracy in the eyes of the public.

But in military oligarchy’s perpetual conflict with other major world powers deemed existential threats to the US security interests, such as arch-rivals Russia and China, as in the Ukraine War, civilian presidents, whether Biden or Trump, don’t have the authority to overrule the global domination agenda of the Pentagon.

In fact, the deep state has murdered US presidents in cold blood for appeasing adversaries and daring to stand up to the deep state, for instance the assassination of the Kennedy brothers in the sixties after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

Though credulous readers of mainstream media designate alternative media’s erudite writers casting aspersions over perfectly “natural murders” of John and Robert F. Kennedy that were nothing more than “coincidences” as cynical “conspiracists.”

The gullible sheeple believe the Kennedy brothers didn’t die at all. In fact, they were raised from the dead by the Almighty and ascended alive into heaven like Jesus Christ and will be resurrected on the Day of Judgment to give credible testimony regarding their real executioners. Religiously held beliefs regarding the purported strength of American democracy are just beliefs, no matter how absurd, hence there is no cure for “the united state of denial.”

Sarcasm aside, it’s noteworthy the national security and defense policies of the United States are formulated by the all-powerful civil-military bureaucracy, dubbed the deep state, whereas the president, elected through heavily manipulated electoral process with disproportionate influence of corporate interests, political lobbyists and billionaire donors, is only a figurehead meant to legitimize militarist stranglehold of the deep state, not only over the domestic politics of the United States but also over the neocolonial world order dictated by the self-styled global hegemon.

All the militaries of the 32 NATO member states operate under the integrated military command led by the Pentagon. Before being elected president, General Dwight Eisenhower was the first commander of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).

The commander of Allied Command Operations has been given the title Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), and is always a US four-star general officer or flag officer who also serves as the Commander US European Command, and is subordinate to the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The incumbent Godfather of the Cosa Nostra is Gen. Charles Q. Brown since October 2023 following the retirement of Gen. Mark Milley who completed his tenure of four tumultuous years, including the Ukraine War and the Capitol riots, in September as the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Although officially the CIA falls under the Department of State, the FBI under the Department of Justice and the NSA under the Department of Defense, all of these security agencies take orders from the Pentagon’s top brass, the de facto rulers of the imperial United States.

Moreover, it’s worth pointing out that although the Pentagon is officially headed by the Secretary of Defense, who is typically a high-ranking retired military officer, the Secretary is simply a liaison between the civilian president and the military’s top brass, and it’s the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff who calls the shots on military affairs, defense and national security policy.

In Europe, 400,000 US troops were deployed at the height of the Cold War in the sixties, though the number has since been brought down after European clients developed their own military capacity following the devastation of the Second World War. The number of American troops deployed in Europe now stands at 50,000 in Germany, 15,000 in Italy and 10,000 in the United Kingdom.

Since the beginning of Ukraine War in 2022, the United States has substantially ramped up US military footprint in the Eastern Europe by deploying tens of thousands of additional NATO troops, strategic armaments, nuclear-capable missiles and air force squadrons aimed at Russia, and NATO forces alongside regional clients have been provocatively exercising so-called “freedom of navigation” right in the Black Sea and conducting joint military exercises and naval drills.

Regarding the global footprint of the United States troops, 275,000 US military personnel are currently deployed across the world, including 45,000 in Japan, 28,500 in South Korea and 36,000 in the Middle East, in addition to the aforementioned number of US troops deployed in Europe.

Clearly, through the transatlantic NATO military alliance, the overseas deployment of US forces in client states and the presence of aircraft-carriers in the international waters that are similar to floating air bases, the deep state rules not only the imperial United States but the entire unipolar world.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Middle East and Eurasia regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.

Featured image: General of the Army George Catlett Marshall, Chief of Staff. U.S. Army, 1 September 1939-18 November 1945 (From the Public Domain)