Tag Archives: American empire

A Very Different Global State of Affairs Takes Hold, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on November 22, 2022 | 4 comments

More and more countries are pulling themselves from the U.S. orbit. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

How the world appears all depends on whether your gaze is firmly focussed on the hub of the wheel, Alastair Crooke writes.

How the world appears all depends on whether your gaze is firmly focussed on the hub of the wheel, or alternatively, were you to watch the wheel’s rotation around the hub – and the bearing it follows – you would see the world differently.

Looked at from a DC-centric perspective, all is still: Nothing (as it were), is moving geo-politically. Was there an election in the U.S.? Well, certainly there is no longer an ‘Election Day’ event as the new mechanics of ballots vs in-person voting, commencing up to 50 days earlier, and ploughing on, weeks after, has become far removed from the old notion of having ‘an election’, and an aggregate macro outcome.

From this ‘centric’ viewpoint, the Midterms change nothing – stasis.

So many of Biden’s policies were already in stone anyway – and beyond the ability of any Congress to change in the short run.

New legislation, if there were any, could be vetoed. And should the election ‘month’ end with the House controlled by Republicans and the Senate controlled by Democrats, there might not be any legislation at all, because of partisanship and an inability to compromise.

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America’s Suez Moment, by Philip Pilkington

Posted on November 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

Every empire has its inflection point when it starts going downhill. From Philip Pilkington at theamericanconservative.com:

The American obsession with Taiwan, much like the British obsession with the Suez Canal, is merely a distraction from much broader global geopolitical shifts.

In late-July 1956, three months before the Suez Crisis, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden wrote a letter to U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. At this stage it had become clear that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted to seize the Suez Canal, a key global shipping route and at that time still under the control of the British. “We cannot afford to allow Nasser to seize control of the canal,” Eden wrote, “If we take a firm stand over this now, we shall have the support of all the maritime powers. If we do not, our influence and yours throughout the Middle East will, we are convinced, be irretrievably undermined.”

The situation in the South China Sea today is very different to the situation in Egypt in the summer of 1956. The British at the time could be confident that Nasser was indeed moving to nationalize the Suez Canal. Today, despite much noise emanating from Washington, it is by no means clear that the Chinese have any intention of seizing the island of Taiwan with military force. Yet one can imagine that letters very similar to the one written by Eden are being written in Washington and read in capitals all over the world.

In 1956 the British sensed, correctly, that if they fought for the Suez Canal and lost this would precipitate a sharp decline in British influence in the world. Today America senses something very similar with respect to Taiwan. This feeling has built up in Washington because of what can only be described as the dismal failure of U.S. foreign policy strategy in Europe. This failure has become manifest in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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What would a Russian defeat mean for the people of the West? By The Saker

Posted on November 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Russia may be the only thing standing between the world and a global American empire. From The Saker at thesaker.is:

Regular readers of the blog know that I separate our poor and long-suffering planet into two basic parts: Zone A, aka the AngloZionist Empire, aka the World Hegemony aka the “Axis of Kindness” and what I call Zone B, or the Free World.  Very approximately, we need to separate the ruling elites and the people they rule over separately.  Here is, very roughly, what we get:

Zone A Zone B
Ruling elites Hate Russia/Putin Some fear the Hegemony, but others don’t
People mostly indifferent or hostile mostly support Russia/Putin

Next, I propose to make a simple though experiment.  Let’s assume that Russia loses the war against NATO.  We do *not* need to spell out how exactly such a defeat could/would happen, we simply assume that Russia is unable to achieve her goals of denazification and demilitarization of the Ukraine (and, really, all of NATO), that NATO forces are successful in defeating the Russian military machine (again, it does not matter how, with or without amazing Wunderwaffen) and that Russia very clearly loses.

We don’t even need to define what “defeat” would mean?  Maybe we can imagine that Russia gets keeps Crimea, but loses all her recently liberated regions from the former Ukraine, or maybe NATO manages to even occupy Crimea. I don’t see NATO tanks in downtown Moscow, but we can even imagine a purely psychological defeat in which both sides believe that Russia has lost and NATO won.

Again, details, no matter how improbable and far removed from reality, do not matter.  What matters is only this: once all the four groups above realize that NATO has defeated Russia, how would they react?

For the leaders of the Hegemony, this would be a dream come true.  In fact, the Neocons running the Hegemony will most likely decide that they need to “finish the job” which they did not finish in the 90s, and that Russia needs to be broken up into several parts.  This would be the West’s latest “final solution” for the “Russian problem”.

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The 3rd Largest Bond Market Is Flashing Red… Could a Financial Crisis Be Near? By Chris MacIntosh

Posted on November 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

The Japanese bond market is cracking wide open. From Chris MacIntosh at internationalman.com:

Bond Market

At a macro level it is worth understanding that for US hegemony to continue to exist it has relied on a level of global order – legal, political, and always backed up with the military.

The Mackinder Doctrine

The Mackinder doctrine essentially states that “who rules the World-Island -mainly the area ruled by Russia- commands the world”.

In order to retain this global power the US has been fueling both sides of proxy wars for decades, but these countries which have been subjugated have been relatively inconsequential in terms of global trade, like Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, etc. and certainly inconsequential in terms of military power.

But this has now all changed. The issue now is that the US is fighting multiple proxy wars on a much grander scale. This means that the cost of maintaining influence among all existing vassal states rises, and as this rises, the countries on that periphery (because they’re typically most heavily impacted) seek alternatives.

This is what we’re seeing with the BRICS becoming more and more emboldened. It is what we have been discussing with respect to OPEC+’s recent middle finger to the hegemon. It is much more a political statement than it is about oil. To highlight my point, consider that the US receives 7.5m barrels per day (bb/d) from OPEC+. That’s bugger all when the US is releasing 1m bb/d from the SPR right now. So clearly there is more at play than oil.

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Ukraine: A War to Save the Rules-Based International Order? By Ted Galen Carpenter

Posted on November 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

Rules-based international order is code for: do what the United States government tells you to do. From Ted Galen Carpenter at 19fortyfive.com:

HIMARS in Ukraine

HIMARS. This is similar to what is being used in Ukraine.

Washington’s Fraudulent, Rules-Based International Order: Among the many deceptive arguments that Joe Biden’s administration has made about the Ukraine war is that Russia’s invasion is an attack of unprecedented severity on the liberal, “rules-based international order” established at the end of World War II. That allegation has been a constant theme of administration officials and their allies in the news media and the foreign policy blob.  Proponents argue that the war is a global existential struggle between order and chaos, free societies and unprincipled aggressors.  Biden has stated the thesis succinctly that the Ukraine war is nothing less than “a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules‐​based order and one governed by brute force.”

The argument is shockingly disingenuous. Russia’s aggression, ugly as it might be, is hardly unprecedented in the post-World War II period. Indeed, there have been numerous violations just during the 3 decades since the end of the Cold War, and the lion’s share of them have come from the United States and its allies.

U.S. officials sanctimoniously condemning the use of force against another country may elevate chutzpah to record heights. The United States and its NATO partners bombed secessionist Bosnian Serbs in 1995 to impose a political settlement on Bosnia. Four years later, The United States not only led a NATO air war against Serbia (a fellow member of the United Nations), but proceeded to dismember that country. In 2003, Washington and its allies invaded and occupied Iraq—with NATO members providing well over 90 percent of the combat forces. In 2011, the U.S. and NATO waged an air war to depose Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. U.S. troops currently occupy portions of northeastern Syria against the explicit wishes of the Syrian government.

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Russia is on a Roll, by Julian Macfarlane

Posted on November 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

Sometimes all you’ve got to do to win is let your opponent lose. From Julian Macfarlane at julianmacfarlane.substack.com:

The Empire can’t do anything right recently—NATO, MI6, the CIA, and of course, their Nazi gang in Kiev could turn gold to shit just by looking at it.

One way or another, they are making things easier for the Russians to achieve their various goals— not just in the Ukraine—but at home rebuilding Russia as a nation— and abroad establishing a new multipolar world order, a kind of international democracy governed by law and reason.

Ukraine is just a linchpin— albeit an important one— keeping in mind that its Nazis are proxies for the West and everything they do is indicative of imperial decay. The difference between Ukrainian Nazis and Westerners is not so much ideology but really just the tattoos.

Western Ukraine’s mistakes amount to uicidal “self-demilitarization” and makes things so much easier for the Russians.

Kherson and Kharkov

Take the failed offensive in Kherson, where the Ukrainians came out of their “Maginot Grid” hideaways in the woods and townships to attack across an open steppe without air cover.

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The American “War for Righteousness” Is a War for Evil, by Boyd D. Cathey

Posted on October 30, 2022 | Leave a comment

America’s “righteous” wars have been launched in the most unrighteous ways, belying the notions of American exceptionalism and goodness. From Boyd D. Cathey at unz.com:

Back on October 25, 2022 Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) celebrated the withdrawal by the Democratic congressional “progressive caucus” of their abortive letter (October 24) imploring the Biden administration to engage in serious negotiations with Russia and Ukraine to possibly end the bloody conflict in Eastern Europe that threatens rapidly to become a nuclear conflagration which could end life on earth as we know it.

Raskin is not just any ordinary Democratic congressman; he’s an important member of the special House commission which has been busily investigating that dire threat to “our democracy,” the January 6, 2021 “insurrection.” Yes, he’s a far Leftist and Jewish and his message is often just as frenzied and fanatical as that of any member of the Squad. But with one major difference: he’s highly placed and well connected, part of the Democrat establishment, so when he speaks, he speaks with some authority for the party and its leadership.

After praising his fellow Leftists for withdrawing their plea for negotiations to end a cruel and vicious conflict—oddly, is that not what Leftists traditionally claim they do, demand “peace” and an “end to violence”?—and jumping on the jingoist and warmongering bandwagon, a spiraling path which may well end in nuclear holocaust, Raskin uttered his most important and revealing paragraph and the real reasons the US is deeply involved in a faraway conflict in Eastern Europe.

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The ‘War of Terror’ may be about to hit Europe, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on October 24, 2022 | 1 comment

Nothing says the war in Ukraine will stay confined to Ukraine. From Pepe Escobar at thesaker.is:

Never underestimate a wounded and decaying Empire collapsing in real time.

Imperial functionaries, even in a “diplomatic” capacity, continue to brazenly declare that their exceptionalist control over the world is mandatory.

If that’s not the case, competitors may emerge and steal the limelight – monopolized by US oligarchies. That, of course, is absolute anathema.

The imperial modus operandi against geopolitical and geoeconomic competitors remains the same: avalanche of sanctions, embargos, economic blockades, protectionist measures, cancel culture, military uptick in neighboring nations, and assorted threats. But most of all, warmongering rhetoric – currently elevated to fever pitch.

The hegemon may be “transparent” at least in this domain because it still controls a massive international network of institutions, financial bodies, politicos, CEOs, propaganda agencies and the pop culture industry. Hence this supposed invulnerability breeding insolence.

Panic in the “garden”

The blowing up of Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) – everybody knows who did it, but the suspect cannot be named – took to the next level the two-pronged imperial project of cutting off cheap Russian energy from Europe and destroying the German economy.

From the imperial perspective, the ideal subplot is the emergence of a US-controlled Intermarium – from the Baltic and the Adriatic to the Black Sea – led by Poland, exercising some sort of new hegemony in Europe, on the heels of the Three Seas Initiative.

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PATRICK LAWRENCE: Grave New World

Posted on October 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

Of course you would not expect anything out of Washington, regardless of party, to reflect recognition of a world that is moving from a unipolar to a multipolar order. From Patrick Lawrence at consortiumnews.com:

Biden’s long-delayed National Security Strategy is the kind of pablum that disguises danger and comes with a price.

President Joe Biden’s motorcade, June 2021. (White House, Cameron Smith)

The Biden administration — excuse me, the Biden–Harris administration if you please — has at last released its National Security Strategy, a document every president is required to release according to a law passed 40–odd years ago.

These are supposed to tell we, the people, what the plan is, how our republic proposes to make its way in the world over the four years a new occupant of the White House will reside there.

It took them long enough: It is nearly halfway through Biden’s term, and his policy people have repeatedly delayed releasing these 48 pages. Now that they are published, I can’t say as I blame them. I wouldn’t want to put this muddle on paper either.

“From the earliest days of my Presidency, I have argued that our world is at an inflection point,” the text appearing above Biden’s signature begins.

“How we respond to the tremendous challenges and the unprecedented opportunities we face today will determine the direction of our world and impact the security and prosperity of the American people for generations to come.”

You have to say “Amen” to this. It is an exact description of our circumstances. But this is the problem with the new NSS. It is a long nod to our time as one of momentous change, but it is the work of an administration patently incapable of conducting the nation’s business abroad in any kind of new way.

These documents are meant to tell Americans and the world where we are headed and to reassure us that steady hands are at the helm. I do not feel reassured. I feel frightened.

The leadership of the United States — and this goes beyond the Biden regime’s various ineptitudes — is simply unable to get clean of its addiction to global primacy and its obsessive pursuit of it even as the nation’s power declines.

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The U.S. Is Leading the World Into the Abyss, by Edward Curtin

Posted on October 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

The truly sad part of all this is how many Americans will fall into the abyss, blissfully following and believing the propaganda. From Edward Curtin a lewrockwell.com:

A few years after WW I, the poet T.S. Eliot opened his famous poem “The Wasteland” with these words: “April is the cruelest month … “  I think he may be wrong, for this October may be the cruelest month of all, followed by November.  Unprecedented.  You can hear the clicking and grating of spades if your antennae are attuned.

We are on the brink of ominous events created by the U.S. war against Russia.  Yet so many people prefer to turn away and swallow the lies that the U.S. wants peace and not war and is the aggrieved party in the crisis.

A friend of mine, who is constantly charging me with having turned right-wing because of my writing that accuses many traditional liberal/leftists of buying the national security state’s propaganda on the JFK assassination, “9/11,” Syria, Ukraine, Covid-19, censorship, the “New” Cold War, etc., and whose go-to news sources are The Guardian, CNN, The New York Times, NPR, ABC, seems oblivious to the fact that right and left have become useless terms and that these media are all mouthpieces for the CIA and their intelligence allies in the new Cold War; that the so-called right and left are joined at the hip with their obsession with Pax Americana.

There are no right and left anymore; there are only free and independent voices or those of the caged parrots repeating what they have been taught to say:

“Polly wants a war!”  “Polly wants a war.”

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