Category Archives: Imperialism

The attack on Western Europe: you cannot win a war if you don’t understand that you are fighting one. By Ugo Bardi

Posted on January 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

The Europeans are beginning to understand that the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine is against Europe. From Ugo Bardi at senecaeffect.com:

Image: Earth against UFOs (1956)
A typical science fiction trope is that when the aliens invade Earth, they do so in secret, capturing the minds of single earthlings rather than coming in with bombing raids. The task of the hero, then, is to convince the authorities that Earth is under attack before it is too late. Something similar may be happening with the war in Ukraine. Europeans, just like most Western citizens, still don’t seem to understand what’s going on, but the idea that it is a war directed against Western Europe is slowly gaining traction in the memesphere. It has not yet reached the mainstream discourse, and it probably never will. But some ideas don’t need to be shared by 51% of the people to start having an effect on politics. The message that Europe is being crushed by its supposed allies and its own government may eventually reach the “critical mass” needed to be heard and acted upon. I have already discussed this subject in some of my recent posts, “What is the next thing that will hit us” and others. Here is Noah Carl’s recent take on his blog, published with his kind permission. His conclusion is that:
 
“geopolitical developments since the start of Russia’s invasion certainly look convenient from the perspective of US hawks: Russia’s military has been severely weakened; Nord Stream 2 has been sanctioned and sabotaged; US LNG exports to Europe have surged; European companies have started relocating to America; and the NATO alliance is stronger than ever. 
US hawks 1; everyone else 0.“


Image: US Navy, FA-18 launch during Inherent Resolve, 2014
When it comes to explaining how we ended up with Russia launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Europe proceeding to cut itself off from its main energy supplier, there are two main camps.

One camp says that Putin is an imperialist bent on recreating the Soviet Union, who invaded Ukraine (a country he doesn’t consider real) in order to expand Russia’s territory and population. According to this camp, there’s nothing the West could have done to prevent Putin’s invasion short of allowing Ukraine to become a hollowed-out vassal state, or arming Ukraine to the teeth in the faint hope of deterring Russian bellicosity.

The other camp says that Putin saw US/NATO involvement in Ukraine as a threat to Russian interests (including both the security of Russia itself and the interests of ethnic Russians in the Donbas), and he invaded the country as a way to neutralise that threat. According to this camp, the West could have prevented Putin’s invasion by enforcing an agreement along the lines of Minsk II, i.e., one that enshrined Ukrainian neutrality.

The key element here is US/NATO involvement, since without such involvement Kiev would never have risked provoking its larger and more powerful neighbour. Despite this, few in the second camp try to explain why the US/NATO got involved in Ukraine. Or if they do, they chalk up to “misguided policy” or “policy mistakes”; US officials were just too wedded to the principle that every state can choose its own alliances.

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Decline of Empire: Parallels Between the U.S. and Rome, Part I, by Doug Casey

Posted on January 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

Doug Casey has his own take on the parallels between the U.S. and Roman empires, a subject that elicited a fair number of Internet articles. From Casey at internationalman.com:

rome

As some of you know, I’m an aficionado of ancient history. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss what happened to Rome and based on that, what’s likely to happen to the U.S. Spoiler alert: There are some similarities between the U.S. and Rome.

But before continuing, please seat yourself comfortably. This article will necessarily cover exactly those things you’re never supposed to talk about—religion and politics—and do what you’re never supposed to do, namely, bad-mouth the military.

There are good reasons for looking to Rome rather than any other civilization when trying to see where the U.S. is headed. Everyone knows Rome declined, but few people understand why. And, I think, even fewer realize that the U.S. is now well along the same path for pretty much the same reasons, which I’ll explore shortly.

Rome reached its peak of military power around the year 107, when Trajan completed the conquest of Dacia (the territory of modern Romania). With Dacia, the empire peaked in size, but I’d argue it was already past its peak by almost every other measure.

The U.S. reached its peak relative to the world, and in some ways its absolute peak, as early as the 1950s. In 1950 this country produced 50% of the world’s GNP and 80% of its vehicles. Now it’s about 21% of world GNP and 5% of its vehicles. It owned two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves; now it holds one-fourth. It was, by a huge margin, the world’s biggest creditor, whereas now it’s the biggest debtor by a huge margin. The income of the average American was by far the highest in the world; today it ranks about eighth, and it’s slipping.

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Systems Dynamics Follow Their Own Rules – and Not Groupthink, by Alasdair Crooke

Posted on January 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

What happens when reality refuses to follow the rules. The decline and fall of the American empire is offering a concrete demonstration. From Alasdair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

While America’s cultural and economic ascendency is portrayed as an End of History ‘normal’, it represents an obvious anomaly, Alastair Crooke writes.

Toward the end of his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), “[Yale Historian] Paul Kennedy expressed the then-controversial belief that great power wars were not a thing of the past. One of the main themes of Kennedy’s history was the concept of overstretch – that is to say, that the relative decline of great powers often resulted from an imbalance between a nation’s resources and its commitments”, writes Professor Francis Sempa.

Few in the western Ruling Class even accept that we have reached such a point of inflection. Like it or not, however, great power combinations are fast rising across the globe. U.S. influence already is shrinking back to its Atlanticist core. This shrinkage is not simply a matter of resources vs commitments; that is too simplistic as an explanation.

Metamorphosis is occurring both as the result of the exhaustion of the political and cultural dynamics which powered the previous era, as much as is energised by the vitality of new dynamics. And by ‘dynamics’ is meant too, the exhaustion and coming demise of underlying mechanical financial and cultural structures which in, and of, themselves are moulding the new politics and culture.

Systems follow their own rules – the rules of physical mechanics too – as in, what happens when a further grain of sand is added to a complex, unstable sand pile. Thus, unlike in politics, neither human opinion, nor election outcomes in Washington, will necessarily have the capacity to mould the next era – any more than the opinion of Congress alone can reverse a cascade in a financial sand pile – if big enough – by pouring more sand grains on its top.

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Posted in Collapse, Economy, Eurasian Axis, Foreign Policy, Government, Imperialism, Propaganda, War

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2022… The Year That Marked the End of America’s Hegemony, by the Strategic Culture Editorial Board

Posted on January 1, 2023 | 1 comment

The war in the Ukraine will mark the end of the American empire. From the Strategic Culture Editorial Board at strategic-culture.org:

The war in Ukraine has dominated the past year. Other global crises of soaring energy and food costs are collateral damage from the conflict in Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine has dominated the past year. Other global crises of soaring energy and food costs are collateral damage from the conflict in Ukraine.

The conflict is not simply a localized one in the center of Europe on Russia’s doorstep involving a reactionary anti-Russian regime in Kiev. The conflict represents a historic showdown between the United States and its allies in the NATO military alliance it leads, and Russia. The showdown has been a long time coming.

It didn’t have to happen in this violent, atrocious way.

Russia had long warned the United States and its NATO partners that the expansion of the alliance towards Russia’s borders was an unacceptable strategic security threat. Moscow’s warnings went unheeded year after year.

Almost one year ago, Russia offered a last-ditch diplomatic way to avoid conflict by appealing for a comprehensive security treaty, one based on the previously accepted principle of “indivisible security”. That diplomatic initiative was dismissed out of hand by Washington and its European allies.

Moscow had repeatedly warned that it would not accept the further militarization of the NeoNazi-espousing Kiev regime. Eight years of low-intensity war against Russian-speaking people in former Southeast Ukraine had to stop. Ukraine’s militarization by NATO and its touted membership of the alliance was Russia’s red line. It was the United States and its NATO partners who chose to cross that line. In that case, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to take military-technical measures. The military defanging of the Kiev regime that began on February 24 was the result.

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2023: The Future Has Arrived: The End of 500 Years of Conquistador Civilisation, by Batiushka

Posted on December 31, 2022 | Leave a comment

Most of the world does not want to be colonized, de jure or de facto. That’s not that difficult to understand. From Batiushka at thesaker.is:

Foreword

It is often said that the systemic Western European superiority complex, a disease which consists of the self-justified domination and exploitation of the surrounding world, began with the First ‘Crusade’ (1096-1099). Technically, this is true, but before it there were other events which we may call ‘Pre-Crusades’. For example, there was the massacre by the barbarian Frankish leader Charlemagne of 4,500 Saxons at Verden in 782. This bloodbath was the foundation of Frankish Europe, which still survives as the core of the lies of the EU today. After the collapse of Charlemagne’s Europe and a period of consolidation, 200 years later there came the events of the earlier eleventh century which did exactly presage the First Crusade at its end. First, there was the Frankish ‘Reconquista’ Crusade which began to accelerate in the eleventh century in Iberia. Then came the ‘Norman’ (in fact they were the collective campaigns of all the Frankish-made scum of North-Western Europe) Crusades or Conquests in Sicily, Southern Italy and in England in 1066.

Like these ‘Pre-Crusades’, the genocidal ‘conquests’ of the First Crusade essentially took place inside Europe, or else close by in the Near East. These Viking-type raiding and trading military expeditions, led on horseback and operating from castles, were expanded into Western Europe (the Celtic lands invaded from the Frankish base in England) and into Eastern Europe (the Baltics and Russia). However, the revolution came with the export of this aggressive Eurocentric mentality to distant lands through the ‘Conquistadors’ (same word) in what we now call Latin America 500 years ago. They were the fruit of Columbus’ imperialist and capitalist venture of 1492 and were followed by da Gama’s money-seeking ventures to southern Africa and India in 1497. They triggered a global revolution because they led to the worldwide genocide and plunder of other peoples and the destruction of their civilisations. Clive of India, Rhodes of Africa, Clinton of Serbia, Bush of Iraq and Biden of the Ukraine were only the conquistadors of later times. However, today we are seeing the end of their Conquistador Civilisation.

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The High Cost of Blowing Up the World: Ukraine and the 2023 NDAA, by Matthew Ehret

Posted on December 28, 2022 | Leave a comment

Way back in 2000 the neocons dreamed of the U.S. government’s complete control of the world. Now we’ve reached the point where to do so, they may have to blow up the entire world, and they might do just that. From Matthew Ehret at strategic-culture.org:

Will Americans wake up to the reality that they’ve been walking on the wrong side of history for too long or has the point of no-return been crossed?

Bipartisan insanity was on display again this week as the U.S. congress responded to Biden’s requested $37 billion in additional aid to Ukraine by giving him $45 billion bringing the total U.S. support to its Davos-managed disposable ward up to $111 billion.

The aid was part of an overall omnibus spending bill passed by both houses of Congress was a gargantuan $1.7 trillion and included $858 billion in defense spending which far exceeds any sum ever spent by a U.S. government in history.

Of that $858 billion, $817 billion is allocated directly to the U.S. Department of Defense while the remaining $29 billion will be allocated to national security programs within the department of energy.

Continuing to Weaponize Taiwan

2023 NDAA Funds will be used to “strengthen” Taiwan in the Pacific with $12 billion authorized to assist Taiwan in purchasing weapons from the U.S. military industrial complex (with the $12 billion in ‘loans’ needing to be paid back over the course of the next five years of course). Of this fund, $100 million will be given directly to contractors to fill up a “contingency stockpile” to be used by Taiwan “in case of any future conflict”.

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The Democrats are Now the War Party, by Chris Hedges

Posted on December 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

Once upon a time there was a definable bloc within the the Democratic party that was highly skeptical of American military engagements. No more. From Chris Hedges at chrishedges.substack.com:

The Democratic Party has become the party of permanent war, fueling massive military spending which is hollowing out the country from the inside and flirting with with nuclear war.

Democratic Dark Side – by Mr. Fish

The Democrats position themselves as the party of virtue, cloaking their support for the war industry in moral language stretching back to Korea and Vietnam, when President Ngo Dinh Diem was as lionized as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. All the wars they support and fund are “good” wars. All the enemies they fight, the latest being Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, are incarnations of evil. The photo of a beaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris holding up a signed Ukrainian battle flag behind Zelensky as he addressed Congress was another example of the Democratic Party’s abject subservience to the war machine.

The Democrats, especially with the presidency of Bill Clinton, became shills not only for corporate America but for the weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon. No weapons system is too costly. No war, no matter how disastrous, goes unfunded. No military budget is too big, including the $858 billion in military spending allocated for the current fiscal year, an increase of $45 billion above what the Biden administration requested.

The historian Arnold Toynbee cited unchecked militarism as the fatal disease of empires, arguing that they ultimatley commit suicide.

There once was a wing of the Democratic Party that questioned and stood up to the war industry: Senators J. William Fulbright, George McGovern, Gene McCarthy, Mike Gravel, William Proxmire and House member Dennis Kucinich. But that opposition evaporated along with the antiwar movement. When 30 members of the party’s progressive caucus recently issued a call for Biden to negotiate with Putin, they were forced by the party leadership and a warmongering media to back down and rescind their letter. Not that any of them, with the exception of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have voted against the billions of dollars in weaponry sent to Ukraine or the bloated military budget. Rashida Tlaib voted present.

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The Harder They Come …, by Naresh Jotwani

Posted on December 22, 2022 | Leave a comment

Long after the neocons have been knocked from their pedestal, they still won’t understand or acknowledge their fall. From Naresh Jotwani at thesaker.is:

Alastair Crooke is a sage whose thoughtful writings pack vast breadth and depth of understanding of history and geopolitics. His analysis is free of the slightest hint of bias or narrow partisanship – a fact which seems almost incredible given that he worked for the UK Government for a couple of decades. In fact, the sage and his writings testify to a constant and priceless element of western tradition – namely, independent thought.

It was therefore as a surprising and rare slip of the pen, that one read the following paragraph in an article written very recently by him:

But … can the West, which has been so deep in denial about both the incredible economic and military transformation that has occurred in Russia since 1998, and in such vehement denial too, of the capacities of the Russian military, simply slide effortlessly into another narrative? Yes, easily. The neocons never look back; they never apologise. They move to the next project …

Reference in the first sentence is made to “the West”. One has to assume that the reference is to the ruling dispensation – or shall we say regime? – in certain countries, because clearly not every human being in these countries has been in denial about events in Russia since 1998.

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The Road from Serfdom, by Batiushka

Posted on December 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

The non-West is throwing off the yoke of the West. From Batiushka at thesaker.is:

Introduction: The Pathology

Just like Zionist Jews (and, as we have often said before, far from all Jews are Zionists), the Western elite suffers from a pathological superiority complex, which maintains that it has the right to play at God. Thus, the Western elite belittles Christ-God, proclaiming itself to be the Vicar of God, that is, the Substitute for God, on earth. As such, it resembles Judaism and even Islam, which also proclaim that they are unique Civilisations. However, they have not developed the practical technology of violence. Of Israelite origin, this complex has a theological name and a millennial history of self-justification, the details of which I will not bother readers with here. This ‘Holy and Roman’ Imperial complex was from the outset an ideology which says that the Western elite are the Chosen People and all their crimes are therefore justified. ‘Gott mit uns’ (‘God with us’), as the German Army used to proclaim or, more recently, as George Bush stated: ‘I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did. And then God would tell me George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq. And I did’. (1)

Cowboys and Indians

The Scottish-American historian, Niall Campbell Ferguson (yes, he would have to be a ‘cursed’ Campbell – ask a Scotsman what that means) is one of their most eloquent contemporary spokesmen, for whom the West is Best and the Rest is Messed (2). This pathology, because that is what it is, has become hereditary narcissism among a large portion, though not all, of Western people. These narcissists call the Non-West ‘backward’, ‘underdeveloped’, ‘evil’ and ‘primitive’. This is because they have not yet ‘advanced’ to the depths of Western barbarism. The problem is that such Westerners view the world through the lens of cowboy films, quite appropriately called ‘Westerns’. In these there are white hats and black hats, good and bad, in other words, the West and the Rest. And the Rest are ‘Red Indians’, ‘natives’, ‘savages’ and must be scalped (the practice spread by Western settlers) and ‘cleared’ like wild animals or else sent to ‘reservations’ in deserts or on some other worthless land, so that ‘progress’ can take place and the natural resources of their stolen lands can be ‘developed’ for ‘civilised’ people to profit by.

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Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’, or, Don’t Spit in the Well, by Batiushka

Posted on November 28, 2022 | 1 comment

The U.S. has been playing chicken with a global comeuppance for quite some time. It looks like now’s the time. From Batiushka at thesaker.is:

‘The Ukrainian people will be liberated from their Neo-Nazi rulers, they deserve to live as friends and good neighbours and prosper alongside their Slav brothers’.

Sergei Lavrov, TASS, 26 November

Introduction

There is such a thing as retribution. This is what it says directly in the verse, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord’ (Rom. 12: 19) and what lies behind the New Testament, ‘Do as you would be done by’. However, other cultures have other words for retribution, ‘karma’ for example in India. Then there is the proverb, similar in several languages, which in English appears as: ‘Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind’. (See Galatians 6: 7). Then there is another saying which is also pretty universal. The Maltese form says: ‘Don’t spit in the air’ – there is no need to quote the second half – you can imagine the spit falling back onto the spitter.

In Russian we have the same proverb, only that is to do with spitting in the well – since you might yourself need to drink the water. Others quote: ‘What goes around, comes around’. Australians and others speak about ‘the boomerang effect’ and Americans speak of ‘blowback’ and ‘payback’. The fact is that there is a universal spiritual law, the law of cause and effect, that when you do something good, there are always good consequences, and when you do something bad, there are always bad consequences. Sooner or later. Anyone who has lived a little can confirm it from experience. Basically, you simply cannot get away with it. And this is what is happening to the Western world today. It’s payback time.

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