The Meaning of a Multi-Polar World
Right now, we live in a mono-polar world. Here is how US President Barack Obama proudly, even imperially, described it when delivering the Commencement address to America’s future generals, at West Point Military Academy, on 28 May 2014:
The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.
[Every other nation is therefore ‘dispensable’; we therefore now have “Amerika, Amerika über alles, über alles in der Welt”.]
That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us.
[He was here telling these future US military leaders that they are to fight for the US aristocracy, to help them defeat any nation that resists.]
In Ukraine, Russia’s recent actions recall the days when Soviet tanks rolled into Eastern Europe. But this isn’t the Cold War. Our ability to shape world opinion helped isolate Russia right away.
[He was proud of the US Government’s effectiveness at propaganda, just as Hitler was proud of the German Government’s propaganda-effectiveness under Joseph Goebbels.]
Because of American leadership, the world immediately condemned Russian actions; Europe and the G7 joined us to impose sanctions; NATO reinforced our commitment to Eastern European allies; the IMF is helping to stabilize Ukraine’s economy; OSCE monitors brought the eyes of the world to unstable parts of Ukraine.
Actually, his — Obama’s — regime, had conquered Ukraine in February 2014 by a very bloody coup, and installed a racist-fascist anti-Russian Government there next door to Russia, a stooge-regime to this day, which instituted a racial-cleansing campaign to eliminate enough pro-Russia voters so as to be able to hold onto power there. It has destroyed Ukraine and so alienated the regions of Ukraine that had voted more than 75% for the democratically elected Ukrainian President whom Obama overthrew, so that those pro-Russia regions quit Ukraine. What remains of Ukraine after the US conquest is a nazi mess and a destroyed nation in hock to Western taxpayers and banks.
Furthermore, Obama insisted upon (to use Bush’s term about Saddam Hussein) “regime-change” in Syria. Twice in one day the Secretary General of the U.N. asserted that only the Syrian people have any right to do that, no outside nation has any right to impose it. Obama ignored him and kept on trying. Obama actually protected Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate against bombing by Syria’s Government and by Syria’s ally Russia, while the US bombed Syria’s army, which was trying to prevent those jihadists from overthrowing the Government.
Obama bombed Libya in order to “regime-change” Muammar Gaddafi, and he bombed Syria in order to “regime-change” Bashar al-Assad; and, so, while the “US Drops Bombs; EU Gets Refugees & Blame. This Is Insane.” And Obama’s successor Trump continues Obama’s policies in this regard. And, of course, the US and its ally UK invaded Iraq in 2003, likewise on the basis of lies to the effect that Iraq was the aggressor. (Even Germany called Poland the aggressor when invading Poland in 1939.)
No other nation regularly invades other nations that never had invaded it. This is international aggression. It is the international crime of “War of Aggression”; and the only nations which do it nowadays are America and its allies, such as the Sauds, Israel, France, and UK, which often join in America’s aggressions (or, in the case of the Sauds’ invasion of Yemen, the ally initiates an invasion, which the US then joins). America’s generals are taught this aggression, and not only by Obama. Ever since at least George W. Bush, it has been solid US policy. (Bush even kicked out the U.N.’s weapons-inspectors, so as to bomb Iraq in 2003.)
In other words: a mono-polar world is a world in which one nation stands above international law, and that nation’s participation in an invasion immunizes also each of its allies who join in the invasion, protecting it too from prosecution, so that a mono-polar world is one in which the United Nations can’t even possibly impose international law impartially, but can impose it only against nations that aren’t allied with the mono-polar power, which in this case is the United States.
Furthermore, because the US regime reigns supreme over the entire world, as it does, any nations — such as Russia, China, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Ecuador — that the US regime (which has itself been scientifically proven to be a dictatorship) chooses to treat as an enemy, is especially disadvantaged internationally.
Russia and China, however, are among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and therefore possess a degree of international protection that America’s other chosen enemies do not. And the people who choose which nations to identify as America’s ‘enemies’ are America’s super-rich and not the entire American population, because the US Government is controlled by the super-rich and not by the public.
So, that’s the existing mono-polar world: it is a world that’s controlled by one nation, and this one nation is, in turn, controlled by its aristocracy, its super-rich.
If one of the five permanent members of the Security Council would present at the U.N. a proposal to eliminate the immunity that the US regime has, from investigation and prosecution for any future War of Aggression that it might perpetrate, then, of course, the US and any of its allies on the Security Council would veto that, but if the proposing nation would then constantly call to the international public’s attention that the US and its allies had blocked passage of such a crucially needed “procedure to amend the UN charter”, and that this fact means that the US and its allies constitute fascist regimes as was understood and applied against Germany’s fascist regime, at the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1945, then possibly some members of the US-led gang (of the NATO portion of it, at least) would quit that gang, and the US global dictatorship might end, so that there would then become a multi-polar world, in which democracy could actually thrive.
Democracy can only shrivel in a mono-polar world, because all other nations then are simply vassal nations, which accept Obama’s often-repeated dictum that all other nations are “dispensable” and that only the US is not. Even the UK would actually gain in freedom, and in democracy, by breaking away from the US, because it would no longer be under the US thumb — the thumb of the global aggressor-nation.
Only one global poll has ever been taken of the question “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?” and it found that, overwhelmingly, by a three-to-one ratio above the second-most-often named country, the United States was identified as being precisely that, the top threat to world-peace. But then, a few years later, another (though less-comprehensive) poll was taken on a similar question, and it produced similar results. Apparently, despite the effectiveness of America’s propagandists, people in other lands recognize quite well that today’s America is a more successful and longer-reigning version of Hitler’s Germany. Although modern America’s propaganda-operation is far more sophisticated than Nazi Germany’s was, it’s not entirely successful. America’s invasions are now too common, all based on lies, just like Hitler’s were.
On November 9th, RT headlined “‘Very insulting’: Trump bashes Macron’s idea of European army for protection from Russia, China & US” and reported that “US President Donald Trump has unloaded on his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, calling the French president’s idea of a ‘real European army,’ independent from Washington, an insult.”
On the one hand, Trump constantly criticizes France and other European nations for allegedly not paying enough for America’s NATO military alliance, but he now is denigrating France for proposing to other NATO members a decreasing reliance upon NATO, and increasing reliance, instead, upon the Permanent Structured Cooperation (or PESCO) European military alliance, which was begun on 11 December 2017, and which currently has “25 EU Member States participating: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.” Those are the European nations that are now on the path to eventually quitting NATO.
Once NATO is ended, the US regime will find far more difficult any invasions such as of Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012-, Yemen 2016-, and maybe even such as America’s bloody coup that overthrew the democratically elected Government of Ukraine and installed a racist-fascist or nazi anti-Russian regime there in 2014. All of these US invasions (and coup) brought to Europe millions of refugees and enormously increased burdens upon European taxpayers. Plus, America’s economic sanctions against both Russia and Iran have hurt European companies (and the US does almost no business with either country, so is immune to that, also). Consequently, today’s America is clearly Europe’s actual main enemy.
The continuation of NATO is actually toxic to the peoples of Europe. Communism and the Soviet Union and its NATO-mirroring Warsaw Pact military alliance, all ended peacefully in 1991, but the US regime has secretly continued the Cold War, now against Russia, and is increasingly focusing its “regime-change” propaganda against Russia’s popular democratic leader, Vladimir Putin, even though this US aggression against Russia could mean a world-annihilating nuclear war.
On November 11th, RT bannered “‘Good for multipolar world’: Putin positive on Macron’s ‘European army’ plan bashed by Trump (VIDEO)”, and opened:
Europe’s desire to create its own army and stop relying on Washington for defense is not only understandable, but would be “positive” for the multipolar world, Vladimir Putin said days after Donald Trump ripped into it.
“Europe is … a powerful economic union and it is only natural that they want to be independent and … sovereign in the field of defense and security,” Putin told RT in Paris where world leader gathered to mark the centenary of the end of WWI.
He also described the potential creation of a European army “a positive process,” adding that it would “strengthen the multipolar world.” The Russian leader even expressed his support to French President Emmanuel Macron, who recently championed this idea by saying that Russia’s stance on the issue “is aligned with that of France” to some extent.
Macron recently revived the ambitious plans of creating a combined EU military force by saying that it is essential for the security of Europe. He also said that the EU must become independent from its key ally on the other side of the Atlantic, provoking an angry reaction from Washington.
Once NATO has shrunk to include only the pro-aggression and outright nazi European nations, such as Ukraine (after the US gang accepts Ukraine into NATO, as it almost certainly then would do), the EU will have a degree of freedom and of democracy that it can only dream of today, and there will then be a multi-polar world, in which the leaders of the US will no longer enjoy the type of immunity from investigation and possible prosecution, for their invasions, that they do today. The result of this will, however, be catastrophic for the top 100 US ‘defense’ contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, because then all of those firms’ foreign sales except to the Sauds, Israel and a few other feudal and fascist regimes, will greatly decline. Donald Trump is doing everything he can to keep the Sauds to the agreements he reached with them back in 2017 to buy $404 billion of US weaponry over the following 10 years.
If, in addition, those firms lose some of their European sales, then the US economic boom thus far in Trump’s Presidency will be seriously endangered. So, the US regime, which is run by the owners of its ‘defense’-contractors, will do all it can to prevent this from happening.
However, right now, Chris Hedges reports that Ecuador is in the process of killing Julian Assange, who is a major and well-known bane of America’s sellers to the US ‘Defense’ Department. Hedges wants to keep his American aristocratic funder (the owner of Truthdig), and so he doesn’t say that — nor how — the US regime itself is actually forcing Ecuador’s Government to do this. Hedges seems not even to care much about the ultimate perpetrator of this slow murder that he describes as being in process. Hedges instead focuses only against what Ecuador’s President, Lenín Moreno, is doing, that’s slowly murdering Assange. He also implicates Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the U.K. government, and US V.P. Mike Pence.
But actually, the top decision-maker, who ordered this crime, this murder, is Donald Trump, who won the US Presidency with Assange’s investigative-journalism help. That’s the kingpin, and all the others are merely soldiers in the US President’s organized crime. They all represent the US aristocracy, but only Trump is the commander here. The US regime — first under Obama, and now under Trump — is 100% of what’s forcing Ecuador’s Government to kill Julian Assange inside its London Embassy. Ecuador is doing this job, for the US regime, so excruciatingly that Assange will either soon be committing suicide, or else he will die more slowly, from the ever-increasing “torture” that Ecuador’s Government is applying, and which is also destroying Assange’s health. Or else, he will give himself up to the American ‘justice’ system (which Assange’s mother, Christine Ann Hawkins, explained on November 3rd would likely mean either to charge him with ‘espionage’, or else to apply indefinite detention at Guantanamo, without charge, trial or any access to the public).
There will then be ‘news’-coverage by the American propaganda-media, to demonize him. Ecuador’s President wants to do his job for his US masters (the US aristocracy) but not to get blame for the inevitable result. All along the line, the aristocracy know how to preserve deniability, and advise their agents so as to shift blame downward, whenever they can’t succeed in shifting it to the victim that they’re destroying. However, the ultimate blame belongs truly to the owners of the US regime. Even most ‘alternative news’ media might not (and they, in fact, do not) report this fact (because most of even the ‘alternative’ media are owned by aristocrats), but it’s clearly the case. And most of the public don’t care much about it, anyway, and continue to subscribe to those ‘news’ media, which the aristocrats are actually controlling, and to buy the products they advertise, producing yet more income for the aristocracy. The public thus helps the aristocracy to fund the aristocracy’s propaganda-vehicles, to control the public, to vote for the aristocrats’ candidates, and so control the government.
A multi-polar world could enable this to change. But it can’t change in a mono-polar world. Julian Assange has been trapped by, and in, this fascist mono-polar world. He is its enemy, and they are murdering him; but, above all, Donald Trump is murdering him.
But this is not a partisan operation on behalf of only a faction of the US aristocracy. The Hedges article links through to an important June 29th news-report in the Washington Times, titled “Mike Pence raises Julian Assange case with Ecuadorean president, White House confirms”. It makes clear that Moreno is doing the bidding of the White House, and that the White House is “heeding calls from Democrats wary of Mr. Assange.” America, after all, is a two-party dictatorship: both parties represent the same aristocracy, and murdering Assange is in the agenda of both of its factions, not of just one of the two parties. The US aristocracy are united on this matter. And that’s how this mono-polar world is being run.
Originally published on The Saker
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
2 questions: (1) Truthdig is funded by some aristocratic owner?….Blasting Chris Hedges, one of the most brilliant and reliable intellectuals out there, is ridiculous….(2) Assange helped Donald Trump become president?….Absurd!….Hillary and her Right-Wing Corporate Democrarts are responsible for that hideous outcome.
You we’re beginning to be insufferable early on, but when you got to the part where you stated that it had been “Scientifically Proven” that the U.S. was a Dictatorship…. well, honestly…. Since governments are “Political Entities” and not science. First, all forms of economics are considered “Soft Sciences” because nothing is Proven. It’s not hard science at all. Second, the same goes for political entities. Their forms of government are not hard science. Third, this nation especially is a mixture of several different policies, so Nothing about it is “Scientific”. Last, but not least, to lump the Trump Presidency, which is only two years in, with the previous administrations, who are doing so much to discredit his work, is wholly disingenuous.
The Saudi murder investigation gets interesting as the CIA leaks reports that they have intercepted evidence that the Crown Prince ordered the killing. Trump is unwilling to accept that. It’s another battle in the Intelligence Agencies v Trump the rogue (disobedient) President. The Crown Prince is not just a reckless Absolute Ruler but unless he’s taken down a peg or two he’ll be in power for decades. But worse than that for the Spooks he is best buddies with the young fellow they hate more than anybody, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law. Now it’s clearer why Erdoghan exposed the killing; he has joined the anti-Trump part of the American administration to knock both the too powerful Crown Prince off his perch but also to bump Kushner and thereby Trump. It almost makes you feel sorry for Trump, the President with very limited powers and ruthless enemies.
You need all the credulity of a Luke Harding to attribute any importance to “leaked reports” from the spooks. Personally, I find the bloke down the pub a more reliable source of information.
Exactly! The CIA never suffers a leak unless it’s deliberate – and it accuses the effective Head of a powerful state and ally of murder, not a minor matter. As the Agency media says, it’s the end for the Crown Prince. The other unusual aspect of the case was Turkey’s ‘striptease’ release of information. The CIA says they intercepted calls before the murder and had intelligence he was in danger. In a sense it was a CIA – Turkish sting, they knew it was to happen and went public!! – a very unusual response diplomatically. It’s Regime Change through public shame, a novel approach but they could hardly bomb the palace. The power hub that was Kushner and the Prince is at an end. No wonder Trump is unhappy, everyway he goes they undercut his power. Increasingly he looks isolated by his own people. Now the ‘complaint’ is Trump won’t listen to the tapes. If he had listened – well, imagine. Nor do they ever mention Kushner which is quite a give away. Will Trump dare keep standing up for the Prince? The spooks love playing with him in this way.
I’m not saying Salman is innocent. To coin a phrase, it’s “highly likely” (or maybe “bleeding obvious”) that he ordered this torture/ murder. But that’s based on his record of repression at home and terrorism abroad, not on some “leaks” from “anonymous intelligence sources” to tame media hacks like Harding, or Urban, or CNN or whoever. These people are proven liars and perjurers. They lie for a living. That’s what they do. Their “leaked reports” aren’t worth jack sh*t, unless you want to start believing the lies and fairy stories of the spooks about Skripal, “Assad gassing his own people”, Trump being a Kremlin agent, Steele’s peeing dossier, Putin rigging the Brexit Referendum, or whatever. Just because it’s Saudi Arabia doesn’t mean you have to suspend disbelief and swallow any old spook garbage. It’s quite possible Salman has been a bit of an uppity satrap and they want a more pliable stooge in his place. Or just a bit of blackmail and leverage to pressure compliance on oil production and pricing, or stop buying Russian S400s. Somehow I don’t think the CIA’s Torturer-In-Chief, Haspel, was clutching her pearls in horror when she found out Khashoggi had been bumped off.;
I’m not sure you get my point – or I’m not putting it well. The point is not whether the CIA report is true but the fact that they say it and effectively have cut the legs off the Prince, a close ally and friend of Kushner. It’s an attack on Trump by his old enemies and doubly intriguing because if, as now appears likely, Erdoghan was part of the plot to set up the Prince by releasing their intercepts on events in the consulate in some sort of collusion with the CIA who say they intercepted calls to Mr K inviting him to Istanbul and say they had intelligence he was to be kidnapped or killed. The Turks didn’t have to tell the World what happened and normally you imagine they wouldn’t, preferring to employ diplomatic blackmail just as the CIA didn’t have to leak that they concluded the Prince is a murderer. It’s another chapter in the Agencies v Trump war and one which puts Trump in a difficult position seemingly defending the murderer. It also exposes his lack of authority over ME issues. He’s still a Contender so far as the Agencies are concerned, not President. With Turkey joining the powerful anti Trump campaign his power drains away by the day. Erdoghan and the American military and Agencies will decide on Syrian policy in the NE, not Trump. The Spooks want to establish a permanent US base in Syria not least to prevent oil revenue flowing to Assad while Trump has (nervously) suggested getting out of Syria entirely. Such an ‘abdication’ of America’s role in the World was never going to be approved by those really in power. Mr K’s case is a window on the current American tussle; the CIA have been in power now since circa 1950 and are unlikely to give it up to a politician. We know how they deal with President’s who get uppity or dare formulate their own policy.
Excellent, Mr. Zuesse.
Indeed. Tsipras seemed to believe that the EU was inherently socialist and would be happy to accommodate the Greek’s socialism just as Jeremy Corbyn mistakenly believes that the EU would give a socialist labour party a better deal than the neoliberal, neoconolized Tory party. The only people who mistakenly believe the EU is socialist are right wing Brexiteers. The EU is strictly tied by Germany to neoliberal economic policies and now also Neocon Unipolar global imperialist foreign policy. No socialist country in Europe could overturn this as they can only be elected within independent time frames and as we found with Greece, there is no socialist support from all the other Neoliberal EU states which leaves the socialist state as an inevitable victim to be hounded from all side by neoliberal economic arguments as when Tsipras was ‘neoliberally’ waterboarded in Brussels. Greece has been fully bound and gagged by its odious debts to neoliberal policy and the EU is now turning the neoliberal budget gestapo screws on Italy for its rejection of neoliberal economics. Any socialist government cannot survive long enough to wait for the support of other countries as it slowly dawns on them that they need to return to a mode of government that embraces proper market regulation, economic planning and socialist values solely focused on the well being of the people and not the enrichment of 1% whom neoliberalist economics serves most directly.
U$A, the so called Indispensable Leader of a Mono Polar World, in a minority bloc:
UN General Assembly 16 Nov. voted overwhelming in favor resolution reaffirming Syria’s sovereignty over occupied Golan. 151 states voted in favor, only US and Israeli voting against.
https://sana.sy/en/?p=151258
In the real world it’s Food First: “Give us this day our daily bread”. People in the EU$A are no longer living in the real world but in a Bankers World of the Bottom Line. A North American posts his disgust in SyrPer:
PacificNorthWest #280545
How Christian of them… (Kansas is the epicenter of the Backwoods Bible Belt)
Kansas City officials poured bleach on food meant for the homeless people, rather than let a Community Organization serve food without a permit.
I just want to thank Off-guardian website for the excellent work. The world desperately needs so many more free media outlets like off-guardian. All articles they put are worth reading. Superb analysis from very good contributors. Keep up the good work.
What can you say about a country that imprisons people for decades without trial in medieval conditions in its dungeons in a global gulag in 44 satellite countries (the ones it doesn’t simply murder out of hand or torture to death???) The Count of Monte Cristo probably had a much easier time in the Chateau D’If. One poor devil was stripped naked in a freezing cell and chained to a wall in a standing position and just left till he died 17 days later. Others had their eyes gouged out and private parts cut off. But of course the Orange Baboon himself thinks all that is great and can’t get enough of it. Not that this will stop the Exceptional and Indispensable People from climbing on their high horse and giving pious lectures and lofty sermons to the rest of humanity about their human rights failings.
It’s not just the Orange baboon but also the brown baboon that preceded him and the white baboon before that.
US foreign policy doesn’t change when parties swap power because the US has become a one party fascist state; different faces and ties but the same fascist party.
The US was a great democracy once upon a time but is now a cancer. I hope that the still many good people of the US can cut the cancer out and start to recover.
Imagine.
You’re a multi billionaire, with most of your BLOOD SOAKED lucre hoarded away in US dollars.
Then, all of a sudden, the world’s most traded currency becomes the Yuan.
The stuff of nightmares, isnt it?
Mmm, what to do?
Excellent article Eric. Here in Australia, it never ceases to amaze me how many swoon at the feet of Obama, and regard him as a wonderful, humane President!! Especially those who comment on ABC Facebook! Completely blind, and drunk on the Establishment’s Kool Aid. Even when you point out facts about Libya, Yemen, Syria, and how many people Obama deported from the United States, you get an angry defensive response; ‘Trump is the new Hitler’ ‘Trump is far worse’ etc etc. And of course, Australia is also a very subservient vassal state of the Anglo Zionist Empire, and follows orders to a tee. Also, the regular hard hitting articles on OffGuardian, The Greanville Post, Moon Of Alabama, The Saker, etc is an antidote to the blessings of the herd all round me. Those who believe the propaganda put out by the mainstream.
Pence’s astounding economic and military diktat to China earlier this week seems have gone completely under the radar in the western media. It’s a logical unfolding of Obama’s pivot to Asia and signals only one thing: ww3.
China’s announcement that it is preparing for war is a bluff. Traditionally, China imposes an iron rule at home and bullies immediate neighbours, but it has tended to avoid wider wars. In any case, China knows that it is nowhere near near strong enough to tackle the United States. Lest we forget, the US navy patrols the South China Sea. China does not patrol off the coast of California. Nor should we forget that for the second half of the twentieth century, the two economic miracles took place in Germany and Japan, Both nations were soundly defeated in world war two and both were forbidden anything more substantial that a small defence force.
Lest we forget the US started WW2 & was Hitler’s funder, equipment & fuels supplier – even supplying the Luftwaffe with the vital anti-knock additive to keep their aircraft in the air up to May 1945…..Henry Ford was awarded the highest honours by Germany for his supplies – Google it !!
Lest we forget that the US (uk) plan was to get Hitler to defeat the Soviet Union & then come in a defeat the Germans so the US could take everything from Lisbon to Vladivostok…….
Lest we forget the US don’t have any hypersonic weapons, F35 is a great plane if only it were 1990 & is currently out-matched technically by Russia & China in a war of 2018 which is the only reason we have not gone into WW3 already !
Everything stated above is independently verifiable.
If you wish to know China, then study China. Debateable claims over whether the US started WW2 are irrelevant when discussing the possibility of the US response to China leading to WW3. China isn’t ready to go to war with the US, nor is Russia. A few hypersonic weapons might well deter the US, but in the situation of a nuclear war breaking out would not in themselves lead to victory, if victory could even be considered. in a war involving nuclear weapons.
This has nothing to do with favouring the US. It is simply an assessment based upon the known facts of the situation. The US is certainly a bully. but doesn’t take on countries prepared to defend themselves. Both Russia and China know all too well the old adage. ‘If you wish for peace, prepare for war’. Their position is entirely rational, but is also in part based upon bluff.
@ Kevin,
Even an arch Chinaphobe like the FT’s Martin Wolff noted this week that no great sovereign power could ever be seen to submit to the demands made by Pence. For China, it would be a modern version of the unequal treaties it was forced to sign with the west in the 19th century. No leader of modern China could ever accept such a humiliation. And the Americans know this.
Kevin, might I recomend “Loosing Military Supremacy, The Myopia of American Strategic Planning” by Andrei Martyanov. There is also a South Front film on You Tube which demonstrates US military weakness.
That the US navy “patrols” the South China Sea while China’s navy patrols within Chinese maritime territory is not in itself a demonstration of the US ability to prevail over the Chinese or of Chinese military weakness relative to the US. Advances in missile range and in missile defence system capabilities are making flotillas centred around aircraft carriers sitting ducks for attack. The US strategy of sending battleship fleets around the world’s oceans might be effective propaganda for those of us in poodle nations like Australia enamoured of such idiocy to gawp at but in a real war, such fleets are on their own against enemies who know the territory (because it is their own) better than the Americans do.
The Chinese don’t bluff and bluster like Uncle Sam. They don’t bully anyone, they trade peacefully for mutual benefit. China built more infrastructure in Africa in 10 years than the colonial powers did in 100. China doesn’t patrol the California coast because it doesn’t want to. It’s got better things to do. China builds things. America bombs things. Most people prefer building things to bombing things. If Trump and his cronies start something with China, they’ll find out the hard way it’s a bit different from comic opera invasions of Grenada and Panama.
China doesn’t bully anyone? China bullies wherever it has the economic power to do so. A few years ago, Desmond Tutu was celebrating an important birthday and his good friend Tenzin Gyatso the fourteenth Dalai Lama was invited to the event. As you correctly observe, China has a good deal of power and influence in Africa and actually owns much of the infrastructure it has built there. China told South Africa that it would not view favourably a visit to South Africa by that most famous of refugees and the Dalai Lama was denied a visa to attend the celebrations of his old friend. Is that not bullying when two men of peace cannot spend time together celebrating a birthday?
Is it not bullying that Tibetans are now second class citizens in their own country and unable to obtain a secondary education in their own language? Is it not bullying that after a recent self immolation, the Chinese police who tried to put out the fire sent the bereaved family the bill for damage to their uniforms?
Much of China is still at a third world level economically, but the Chinese Communist Party has great plans for the future. If China does become pre-eminent nation, you will see bullying and a great deal of it. After all, that is what power and its application is all about and the Chinese have always showed themselves to be ruthless in the application of power.
Not sure if I agree with the ‘pacifism’ of China. It works for now, but what if China becomes the new USA?
And the Dalai Lama is not as peaceful as is propagandized.
Actually he is never against war, and much in favor to ‘listening to teachers’ (in favor of authority). No surprise there since the Dalai Lama is a CIA construct
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
Your last sentence is factually incorrect. Dalai Lamas ruled Tibet long before the United States, let alone the CIA, existed. Was the US acutely aware of the geopolitcs of the China’s invasion and annexation of Tibet? Of course they were because as Mao correctly surmised, whoever controls Tibet controls Asia.
The CIA trained and funded Tibetan rebels who were based in Mustang in Nepal. Sadly, it was a condition of rapprochment between the US and China that the US cease their support . Many of those brave fighters committed suicide, feeling unable return to a Tibet controlled by China.
Ask yourself this. You are the de facto king of a country which has been invaded by a foreign power. You send a minister on a Tibetan passport to plead for support from the United Nations, but the rest of the world, exhausted from fighting world war two looks the other way. You try peacefully for nine years to accomodate the invading power’s demands whilst minimising the damage that the invaders are doing to your country, but eventually, your life in danger, you are forced to flee to another country, which thankfully allows you to settle there.
Your number one aim is the welfare and resettlement of those fellow Tibetan refugees who follow you into exile and who 59 years later still flee your country. You must protect your national language and culture and must as best you can protect the interests of those who you were forced to leave behind Would you not turn to whoever was willing to help? Would that make you a CIA construct as you so pithily put it?
@kevin morriss: “Nor should we forget that for the second half of the twentieth century, the two economic miracles took place in Germany and Japan, Both nations were …. were forbidden anything more substantial that a small defence force.”
At last, more than 70 years after I was trying to persuade my fellow British engineers that we ought not to be putting 70% of our Research & Development into toys like the Hawker Harrier which (in those days) contributed less than 1% to our exports, I find someone else has finally connected the dots. Germany and Japan were forbidden by the victorious virtuous Allies to have their best engineers manufacture glamorous expensive weapons fit for a king, they were restricted to designing humdrum household articles like cars, washing machines, cameras and TV sets at prices which ordinary people worldwide could afford.
Yes indeed Vexarb, I am glad that at least someone understood my point, but I joined the dots, as you put it long ago.
The most powerful nation on earth is also the most indebted and is now in such a parlous state that the American dream has become a nightmare of crumbling infrastructure. China knows, as does Russia, that the whole game changes if the dollar ceases to be the currency of international trade. This of course means economic warfare, but the balance is delicate for the more parlous its situation, the more likely the United States is to resort to warfare to maintain its pre-eminent position. Once again, US military strategists are speaking of winning a war with nuclear weapons and we must accept that the US is the only state that has a global reach. I do hope that Russia’s putting hypersonic missiles into service next year will make the US think more than twice but we must be realistic. Assumptions based upon a few hypersonic weapons are naieve.
The balance may shift greatly when the ineffective F-35 quarterback comes into general service and the US is left only with its ageing legacy aircraft to carry on attacking defenceless countries without risk as is their habit. I doubt that the US wants to put the F-35 up against S-400s or other sophisticated Russian and Chinese opposition as it will be exposed as the massive corrupted neoliberal waste of resources that it is.
The death of NATO is falsely prophesied:
From Eric’s own link to the EDA. PESCO, rather than the end of NATO, signals the furtherance of NATO. As well as a new militaristic expansion and sub-imperial role for the EU …a sub-imperial NATO operating in MENA and Eastern Europe. Something no one wants to be part of the Brexit debate (see earlier comment on open thread).
The MIC and banking interests will not lose out: it is their secret agenda that is being enacted to streamline requisition, defence budgets and procurement under singlepoint control. This will be followed by singlepoint centralisation of taxation, if no one demurs. And no one can demur, because the policy machinations have been enacted beyond public scrutiny and democratic control. David Elliss is about to publish a series of public briefings on PESCO and EU Military Unification. If you are not a UK Column subscriber, you will have to wait, I’m afraid …but this is very real (downvoting won’t make it go away!)
The EU is set to become an expansionist, militaristic, supra-national, and sub-imperial synarchy (rule by secret corporate elite) …extending, not fragmenting, capitalisms military powers of persuasion. Though non-declared, the UK is an active part of this: including its nuclear capability …soon to the BIS’ nuclear capability. So much for a transition to multi-polarity? This is antagonistic to the expressed view.
Part of that expansion is Eastwards, to strengthen the NATZO occupation of the Baltics. Search for Stoltenberg’s ‘Military Schengen’ …the borderless rapid deployment of military material. Which should be ready in time for the deployment of Intermediate Range missiles, currently being designed by the MIC. With Aegis, a very sinister ‘string of pearls’ for Russia. Or a Soweto ‘rubber necklace’, perhaps?
All of this will be built on Russophobic false flag ideological disinformation. A firewall ‘Iron Curtain’ of information control will descend to prevent the manufactured cyberthreat. It’s all very ‘My First Cold War’ tellytubby propagandic and transparently unfolding. But, no apparently the EU are the good guys …and we should remain. Just like Tony and Gordon and Kier want us to. Some of us can see through the deliberate Whitehall farce of the Brexit Betrayal. Sorry, thought I was back on the other forum for a sec…
Anyway, what is not happening is a multi-polar world: it’s much darker for humanity than that. Particularly economically peripheralised and redundant, except territorially, Eastern Europe. Still, they’ll have plenty of Sturmtruppen und Gauleiters.
The easiest way for the uninformed to see through the complete hypocrisy of the American and Western propaganda is of course to simply reverse the roles of the parties involved. If Russia for example was claiming to be the “indispensable nation” while lawlessly invading and brutalizing Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya & Syria while also fomenting coups against democracy in Ukraine and Honduras, well, one can easily imagine the response of Western media and citizens. If Russia were conducting major military exercises along the Canadian and Mexican borders with the U.S., and lining up missile batteries short minutes from major American cities one can also easily imagine the West’s outrage at such obvious provocations and amoral war mongering.
Of course engaging in this simple exercise in logic and rational thought is totally forbidden in MSM and in discourse here in America, and constitutes a essentially a “thought crime” in the uber-Orwellian world of American “exceptionalism” and our sacred mission of achieving “full-spectrum dominance” of the entire planet. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump – the faces change, but the policy doesn’t.
Gary Weglarz: bang on the money. The faces do change, but the policies don’t. Yeah, I’ve used the word Orwellian a lot lately, mainly in my futile attempts to point out to friends how things really are, especially pertaining to United States, Russia, China, and the Neocon nutters in Washington. Its like talking to a brick wall most of the time.
While of course there are differences in the collective, we can profit by looking at the unipolar identity in ourself.
This is perhaps the very last thing we will look at because our own judgements are what we like to operate out from rather than look at.
Multi-polar is a framework for acknowledging self in others and recognizing others in our self.
It may start as balancing of powers in seeking mutual interests – but until it opens a quality of trust in SELF as the basis for a real relationship with others it remains ‘polarised’ in fear and distrust.
The optical illusion of two faces that can also be seen as a vase or chalice is an example of a receptive embrace to polarity from within the excluded or discarded ‘relational space’.
Indeed the ‘relational’ communication is effectively denied voice or a hearing.
Focusing on the power of being denied is asserting self-lack.
Self-lack is compelled to seek self-expansion by which to protect ‘powerlessness’ from exposure – but anything grown upon a foundation in lack is of the same opinion still.
The USA was set up or chosen for self-inflation as the idea of self-expansion as a saviour to the ‘old world’. Has it been a glove puppet all along? Or is it enough to recognize that pride comes before a fall?
There is a greatness that is at no one else’s expense, and a humility that takes it not to a sense of personal power or status.
Perhaps making America (sic) great again, would include honouring its indigenous peoples, and release the belief that nativity must be enslaved or destroyed for living and sharing power in our lives.
A question has just occurred to me: if, as Obama has said, the USA is the only indispensable nation and all the others can be got rid of, if the US so decrees, does it not follow that Israel has no “right” to exist, it being a nation, like all the others: that is, not the US?
No, Obama only said the US is the indispensible nation. From that one can infer every other nation is dispensible, but he did not spell that out.
The Greeks had a word for it – Hubris.
Well, no. Since Israel controls and manipulates the indispensable nation, that makes it indispensable as well. You know our congress and senate critters declare fealty to Israel, right?
if there can be only one, lets call it the united states of israel.
Israel=US
Problem solved.
Or to be a bit more precise: Israel is a very large US military base in the Middle that does exactly what the US wants.
That it behaves as a ‘Jewish’ State, is just to confuse people. To let them talk about zionists, anglozionists, whatever, hides the real issue, that is that Israel=US
And since you can’t solve a problem if you do not know the problem, the idea that Israel is not US works fine for both Israel and the US.
Let’s not forget the aggression from the FCO. Last night the BBC broadcast it’s documentary on the Foreign Office which included unnamed civil servants briefing Johnson about the enourmous dangers posed by Russia. Without a sign of a blush the programme explained the rift had occurred when Russia ‘illegally seized Crimea’ from Ukraine. No mention of events in Kiev just weeks earlier when the West illegally seized the Ukraine! This now the normal interpretation of events in 2014; Russian annexed Crimea for no very good reason it would appear except greed and power hunger. It was apparently unconnected with the CIA’s regime change! The diatribes about Russia in that relatively small clique of people and their version of history that they must know is false makes you wonder how strong the pressure must be. The only good bit in the programme was the dazed look of idiocy on Johnson’s face; why he is described as ‘intellectual’ is a mystery when you consider his poor class of degree from Uni despite all his advantages. A couple of Latin words is enough for him to be a hailed a Great Brain; Great Drain would be nearer to the truth. The palpable hostility from the Staffers as he bumbled away was encouraging; not everybody accepts the nonsense. (Thankfully his career is now on the slide as the Mighty Mail dramatically turns against him and his ilk).
Ever since Boris “I Am A Fervent Zionist” Johnson bottled it when Cameron jumped ship, he’s been a spent force. He’s going nowhere.
“America is a more successful and longer-reigning version of Hitler’s Germany”
Bingo, Mr Zuesse.
Zuesse might have added that the US gave refuge to hundreds of Nazi bureaucrats, scientists and others – including collaborators in extremist nationalist organisations in Nazi-occupied parts of eastern Europe – but that might be actually stating that the US is Hitler’s Germany reincarnated.
It wasn’t necessary to reincarnate Hitler’s dream; the baton had been passed in early 1942, spook to spook initially. Germany looked as if it might be defeated; the British and French Empires of the East collapsed completely, a spent force. Who else could take on the white man’s burden? The American Empire was born. It was totally at one with Nazi social conservatism and the glorification of violence but their fierce Anti-Communism was a strong bond. The only adjustment the future Head of the CIA, Allen Dulles, Chief Spook In Switzerland, banker, financier, lawyer, had to make was to drop anti Jewish policies. (Apparently they are still aiming at Moscow!)
yep. the infamous operation paper clip. Wernher von Braun and NASA. no telling how many CIA. Hitlers Germany extended. The Bushs were affiliated with Nazis. you have to ask, given the history of the US since then, did the Nazis really lose the war? Certainly not ideologically.
The unipolar world is only really about two things. The universal application of Neoliberal economics and imperialist Neoconservative foreign policy. They will try and destroy any nation or government that tries to think differently. For instance if a country elects a socialist government then they immediately suggest that the election must have been rigged, because since the fall of communism no-one in their right neoliberal mind would vote for a socialist government. If the election is rigged then that socialist government is now no longer a government but a ‘regime’ as we find with Syria.
When the EU didn’t like the governments Greece/ Italy/ Spain had elected, they just sent in their goons to rule in their place instead.