By: Amir NOUR[1] for the Saker Blog
“We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can’t bomb it into peace”
(Michael Franti)[2]
David and Goliath in an upside-down world
President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to share Georges Clemenceau’s view that “war is too serious a matter to be left to the military”. All the more so, perhaps, since the French statesman is also said to have coined the acerbic comment “America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to decadence without the usual interval of civilization”.
Indeed, shortly after his inauguration as the 45th President of the United States, in January 2017, the American President bestowed additional authority upon the Pentagon and the CIA. In so doing, he yielded to the military’s pressure in the hope that this will help it defeat the so-called Islamic State more speedily and confront its other enemies more efficiently.
Trump’s decision quickly translated into a dramatic increase in drone strikes in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia—countries against which the U.S. is not officially engaged in a war—and only exacerbated the terribly bungled “War on Terror”. Unsurprisingly, it took Trump only seven months to surpass the number of civilian deaths that occurred during Obama’s entire eight-year presidency, according to non-profit monitoring group Airwars.[3] Another set of documents supplied by a whistleblower and published by The Intercept[4] in 2015, revealed the inner workings of this program in Afghanistan and concluded that these drone strikes caused the deaths of unintended targets nearly nine out of ten times. Heather Linebaugh, a US Army analyst who worked for this program, provided a damning testimony in this regard.[5]
Moreover, on 13 April 2017, the U.S. Air Force dropped America’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal, nicknamed the “Mother of all bombs” (MOAB), on an ISIS cave complex situated in the Afghan Province of Nangarhar, a remote area bordering Pakistan.
While President Trump called the strike “another very, very successful mission”, Afghanistan’s former President and American ally, Hamid Karzai, declared “this is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and dangerous weapons”. Also reacting to this bombing, two-time presidential candidate and Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dennis Kucinich, asked “How, after a campaign where he repeatedly questioned America’s adventures in Iraq and Libya—including warning President Obama not to strike Syria after an alleged government use of poison gas—did President Trump get trapped in these wars? How, after questioning the workings of the Pentagon and the CIA, and being the victim of government leaks, does he permit leaks and disinformation to take us to the brink of war?” Kucinich then warned that “the bombing is accelerating in country after country and the death toll of innocent civilians continues to rise and while the resentment against America continues to grow, and unless we soon reverse course, forces will be unleashed globally which will be irretrievable”.[6]
It is worth noting that this super bomb was used against one of the smallest militias the U.S. faces anywhere in the world. In effect, ISIS-Khorasan is estimated to count 700 fighters in Afghanistan, compared to 8,500 U.S. and 180,000 Afghan troops on the ground in this country today. Similarly, before combating this new foe, 430,000 Afghan and coalition troops have been unable to subdue their older common enemy, the Taliban, whose force was barely one twelfth as big; not to mention, of course, the immense mismatch between the opponents in terms of firepower and technology at their respective command.
And so, after16 years of American presence in Afghanistan, the “graveyard of empires”, and nine months after Trump’s inauguration, the New York Times announced on its front page, “soon, American Embassy employees in Kabul will no longer take a Chinook helicopter ride to cross the street to a military base less than 100 yards outside the present Green Zone security district”[7] ; a stark acknowledgement that even the city’s most highly-protected core zones have become too difficult to defend from Taliban attacks.
In fact, numerous careful studies of al-Qaeda and its different offspring, including ISIS, have shown that the United States and its allies are blindly following these terrorist organizations’ worldview and game plan. As is clearly stated, chiefly in a book attributed to Abu Bakr Naji entitled “Management of Savagery: The most Critical Stage Through Which the Islamic Nation Will Pass”, the goal is to “draw the West as deeply and actively as possible into the quagmire” and to “perpetually engage and enervate the United states and the West in a series of prolonged overseas ventures” in which they will undermine their own societies, expend their resources, and increase the level of violence, setting off a dynamic that William Roe Polk—an American specialist of high repute in Middle Eastern and insurgency history among others— has reviewed in length in one of his books.[8] Polk reveals a pattern that has been replicated over and over throughout recent history. That is, invaders are naturally disliked by the invaded population, who disobey them, at the start in small ways, eliciting a forceful response on the part of the invader, which in turn increases opposition and popular support for resistance. The ensuing cycle of violence then escalates until the invading forces are obliged either to withdraw, or to resort to methods and means that amount to genocide in order to gain their ends.
This dynamic of extreme violence in which the U.S. and its allies have found themselves fully trapped has indeed entailed particularly high costs. Scott Atran, a well-known specialist on terrorist organizations, has calculated that “the 9/11 attacks cost between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute, whereas the military and security response by the U.S. and its allies is in the order of 10 million times that figure”. Atran drew the obvious conclusion that “on a strictly cost-benefit basis, this violent movement has been wildly successful, beyond even Bin laden’s original imagination, and is increasingly so. Herein lies the full measure of Jujitsu-style asymmetric warfare. After all, who could claim that we are better off than before, or that the overall danger is declining?” This record, he advises, “should inspire a radical change in our counter-strategies”.
Why America isn’t great anymore
The United States’ posture in the world is not what it used to be not so long ago. Its long-lasting political meddling and military adventures in the Arab and Muslim world, and its blind support for Israel[9] have done it no favors. Much the contrary, they have certainly contributed, in no small measure, to deal irrevocable damage to the United States post-Cold War global primacy as well.
As former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas W. Freeman Jr., recounted in 2014, “A while back, the United States set out to reconfigure the Middle East. The result is that the region and our position in it are both in shambles (…) If we are at all honest, we must admit that the deplorable state of affairs in the Middle East is a product not only of the dynamics of the region but also of a lapse in our capacity to think and act strategically”.[10] For Freeman, this situation stems from the essential fact that the U.S. answered the end of the bipolar order with a mixture of denial, strategic incoherence, and inconstancy. And “false American assumptions and unrealistic U.S. objectives have therefore helped create the current mess in the Middle East”.
More recently[11], Chas Freeman reiterated his views by stating that “these fruitless and counterproductive wars have so far cost the United States at least $5.6 trillion (…) We have paid for our lurching to widening warfare in the Muslim world with a combination of borrowed money and disinvestment in domestic physical and human infrastructure. The result is not just the imposition of a crushing burden of debt[12] on our posterity, but lost growth and declining U.S. economic competitiveness”. Furthermore, he lamented, Americans have become accustomed to life under surveillance and in an endless state of apprehension about acts of terrorism. Such an unusual condition has predictably eroded their liberties, aggrandized the presidency, reinforced “cowardly herd instincts in Congress”, and helped to impoverish the US middle-class “while enriching the military-industrial complex”. These, he concluded, are “structural alterations to the American republic and way of life that will affect both for decades”.
According to Philip Alston[13], the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, “the American Dream is rapidly becoming the American Illusion”, and “instead of realizing its founders’ admirable commitments, today’s United States has proved itself to be exceptional in far more problematic ways that are shockingly at odds with its immense wealth and its founding commitment to human rights”. These are some of the main findings Mr. Alston released in December 2017, after a two-week fact-finding mission to the U.S. His final report will be available in Spring 2018 and will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in June 2018.
Today’s America is indeed a far cry from the model of Constitutional Republic the Founding Fathers dreamed of and brought forth. On July 4, 1900, the representatives of the Democratic party of the United States assembled in National Convention, on the Anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. They issued a Platform[14] in which they reaffirmed their faith in the “immortal proclamation of the inalienable rights of man” and their “allegiance to the Constitution framed in harmony therewith by the fathers of the Republic”. Among other principles reiterated: “We declare again that all governments instituted among men derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” and “that to impose upon any people a government of force is to substitute the methods of imperialism for those of a republic” ; “We are in favor of extending the Republic’s influence among the nations, but we believe that that influence should be extended not by force and violence, but through the persuasive power of a high and honorable example” ; “We oppose militarism. It means conquest abroad and intimidation and oppression at home. It means the strong arm which has ever been fatal to free institutions. It is what millions of our citizens have fled from in Europe. It will impose upon our peace loving people a large standing army and unnecessary burden of taxation, and will be a constant menace to their liberties” ; and “We assert that no nation can long endure half republic and half empire, and we warn the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home”.
Who in the world, and even in America itself, would trust a reaffirmation of this kind were it to be proclaimed today by President Donald Trump on behalf of the American people? |
Nobody explained this state of affairs more elegantly than a fictional character in an HBO television series called “The Newsroom”. In the opening sequence, a TV news anchor finds himself on a journalism panel. And when a student in the audience asks, “Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?” the anchor snaps “America isn’t the greatest country” and goes on to deliver a speech about why. He tells the student “just in case you accidentally wander into a voting one day, there are some things you should know. One of them is: there’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now, none of this is the fault of a 20 year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are, without a doubt, a member of the worst period generation period ever periods”.
And after pausing for a while, the news anchor adds “It sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore”.[15]
So much so that a WIN/Gallup International survey conducted in 65 countries found that for the 66,000 people polled, “The United States is the greatest threat to world peace”.[16]
The Pentagon answers the age-old question “Is America in decline?”
Ever since Ibn Khaldun, the great Arab historiographer and historian[17]—acknowledged as the forerunner of the modern disciplines of historiography, sociology, economics, and demography—laid the foundations for its study, the rise and fall of civilizations, empires, and nations, has been a favorite theme among past and contemporary historians. And just as human beings, nations too have life-cycles, passing from youth to maturity to old age and death. So far, there has been no exception to this rule.
U.S. Secretary of State Dean Gooderham Acheson was known to have played an essential part in writing the Truman Doctrine whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. The Doctrine then became the foundation of U.S. foreign policy, and led to the establishment, on 4 April 1949, of NATO, a military alliance that is still in effect today with 29 member states. Acheson is also known for having said in 1962 that “Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role”.
Perhaps the same can be said today of the United States in light of the Trump administration’s incoherent, if not chaotic foreign policy. Paradoxically, the use of the slogan “Make America great again” during the 2016 presidential campaign only reinforces this claim, since the phrase—which has been regularly used by both Republican and Democrat politicians following its first coinage by Ronald Reagan in 1980—is a distant cousin of the “Make Britain Great Again” slogan which dates back to the 19th century, when it was used by the British Conservative politician Disraeli. Clearly, both the old British version and its modern American equivalent refer to the notion of a lost “greatness”, or one to regain.
According to The American Conservative [18], since the early 2000’s there has been an ongoing conversation among scholars, policymakers, and members of the broader American foreign policy establishment about whether U.S. power is in decline. But the question actually extends back to the 1980s, with the publication of Yale historian Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and other important books on the subject by scholars David Calleo and Robert Gilpin. Even though the controversy surrounding decline dissipated when the Soviet Union imploded and Japan’s economic bubble burst, it “remained dormant through the ‘unipolar moment’ of the 1990s but was rekindled with China’s rapid great-power emergence in the early 2000’s”, and the resulting shift of world geopolitical and economic power from West to East.
If we are to believe French historian Pierre Melandri[19], however, the issue of American decline started well before the publication of Paul Kennedy’s immensely successful book in 1987, the very year when, for the first time since 1917, the U.S. lost its status as the largest creditor nation in the world. As early as 1973, he indicated, a Japanese Prime Minister had already diagnosed such a process of decline when he observed that “the United States is no longer the Sun surrounded by planets, it is one planet among others”.
Back in 2002, Andrew J. Bacevich concluded his book[20], written in the aftermath of 9/11, with a fundamental observation. He said that the question that urgently demanded attention and that Americans can longer afford to dodge is not whether the United States has become an imperial power, but what sort of empire they intend theirs to be. Because for policymakers to persist in pretending otherwise, that is “to indulge in myths of American innocence or fantasies about unlocking the secrets of history” is to increase the likelihood that the answers they come up with will be wrong. That way “lies not just the demise of the American empire but great danger for what used to be known as the American republic”.
In 2011, a blogger by the name of Danios[21] reproduced a year-by-year timeline of America’s wars, which revealed that since the United States was founded in 1776, it has been at war during 214 out of her 235 calendar years of existence. In other words, there were only 21 calendar years in which the U.S. did not wage any wars, and the only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression!
Away from the blogosphere, an editorial of The New York Times[22] asserted that the United States has been at war continuously since the attacks of 9/11 and now has just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories. It concluded that “Senators who balk at paying for health care and the basic diplomatic missions of the State Department approved a $700 billion defense budget for 2017-18, far more than Mr. Trump even requested. Whether this largess will continue is unclear. But the larger question involves the American public and how many new military adventures, if any, it is prepared to tolerate”.
In the same vein, Richard N. Haas, the president of the Council of Foreign Relations—often described as the U.S. most influential foreign policy think tank—argued in his best-selling book[23] that the rules, the policies, and institutions that have guided the world since World War II have largely run their course in a world “in disarray” which the U.S. is unable to shape in its image and interests. Haas thinks that the U.S. remains the greatest country in such a world, but its foreign policy has at times made matters worse—both by what America has done and by what is has failed to do.
A similar advice, or rather warning, has been given by no other powerful American conservative voice than Robert Kagan. In a Brookings article[24], he affirmed that “the liberal world order established in the aftermath of World War II may be coming to an end, challenged by forces both without and within”. He concluded by saying that “if the next president governs as he ran, which is to say if he pursues a course designed to secure only America’s narrow interests; focuses chiefly on international terrorism—the least of the challenges to the present world order (…) then the collapse of the world order, with all that entails, may not be far off”.
Most significantly, in June 2017, a Pentagon study[25] was released and caused rivers of ink to flow, both in the U.S. and overseas. It is worth noting that the commissioning and preparation of this report began in June 2016, six months before the end of the Obama administration, and was completed in April 2017, four months into the Trump administration. It required and involved extensive consultations with officials across the Pentagon and a handful of American think-tanks of a somewhat neoconservative persuasion.
Among the report’s most stunning conclusions are : “the status quo that was hatched and nurtured by US strategists after World War II and has for decades been the principal ‘beat’ for DoD is not merely fraying but may, in fact, be collapsing. Consequently, the United States’ role in and approach to the world may be fundamentally changing as well”; the “volatile restructuring of international security affairs appears increasingly inhospitable to unchallenged American leadership”. Another important conclusion is that the report’s authors agree with the pronouncement of British Prime Minister Theresa May in her speech in Philadelphia[26], six days after the inauguration of Donald Trump: “The days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image are over (…) the UK will only intervene where there are British national interests”.
This extraordinary report seems to have sounded the death knell of the US-led dubious “coalitions of the willing”, ushering in an irreversible post-imperium era.
After empire: towards a collective grand strategy of “Great Convergence”?
If we are to be realistic, there’s no way we can deny the facts, the whys and the wherefores of our fast-changing world. Old and new global empires are no more, youthful nations are rising, and ordinary people are getting more and more empowered.
But how did this unprecedented reality come into being? How is it that once-powerful states, institutions, corporations, interest groups, and political parties and leaders are finding it increasingly harder to defend their redoubts, let alone impose their agendas? And if today’s world is really inexorably moving from the tutelage of the sole superpower—America—and no other great power is willing or able to step in to lead it, then whose world will it be? And, most importantly, how can this sui generis “global village” best attend to and manage not only rising transnational threats and challenges, but opportunities as well?
Joseph Nye wrote a comprehensive analysis[27] about power and its exercise during the last five centuries and up to a recent past. He pointed out that the traditional markers of power have so far been understood as the edge gained by great empires and nations, thanks principally to such factors as control of colonies, trade and finance, larger populations, primacy in Industrial Revolution and mastery of sea lanes, conventional and nuclear weapons, and numbers of men under arms. But the global information age of the 21st century, he says, is quickly rendering these measures obsolete, hence remapping power relationships. Two main power shifts are occurring: a power transition among states, and a power diffusion away from all states to nonstate actors. Nye concluded his study by affirming that the United States will need a strategy to cope with the “rise of the rest”—among both state and nonstate actors. It will need “a smart power strategy and narrative that stress alliances, institutions, and networks that are responsive to the new context of global information age. In short, for success in the twenty-first century, the United States will need to rediscover how to be a smart power”.
Delving deeper in the changing nature of power in this century, Moisés Naím[28] observes that power is losing its value, since it has become “easier to get, harder to use and easier to lose”. It no longer buys as much as it did in the past, and battles to get it are yielding diminishing returns. As a result, power is spreading, and long-established, big players are increasingly being challenged by newer and smaller ones. It is shifting “from brawn to brains, from north to south and west to east, from old corporate behemoths to agile start-ups, from entrenched dictators to people in town squares and cyberspace”. In reality, Naím insists, power is decaying. One of the most convincing arguments he gives to demonstrate how the exercise of power has changed is in the realm of armed conflicts. Adapting a Churchillian turn of phrase, Naím says that “never in the field of human conflict have so few had the potential to do so much to so many at so little cost”. Thus, the “micropowers, while seldom winning are making life harder for the megaplayers”, by denying them “victory” in the increasing number of asymmetric conflicts, also known as fourth-generation wars.
For his part, challenging the view shared by most Western strategists—who recognize that the dominance of the West is on the wane, but are nonetheless confident that its founding ideas, such as democracy, capitalism, and secular nationalism, will continue to spread, ensuring that the Western order will outlast its primacy—Charles Kupchan[29] argues that the world is headed for political and ideological diversity. Whereby, emerging powers will “neither defer to the West’s lead nor converge toward the Western way”. The reason for such a claim is that “the ascent of the West was the product of social and economic conditions unique to Europe and the United States”. And as other nations rise, Kupchan further explains, they are “following their own paths to modernity and embracing their own conceptions of domestic and international order”. He then draws the conclusion that the Western order will not be displaced by a new great power or dominant political model, nor will the 21st century belong to America, China, Asia, or anyone else. It will be “no one’s world (and) for the first time in history, an interdependent world will be without a center of gravity or global guardian”. This situation will require a strategy for striking a historic bargain between the West and the rising rest by “fashioning a new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, and governance”.
Kupchan’s perspective is widely shared by Kishore Mahbubani, a much-respected Singaporean writer, professor and diplomat. In one of his books[30], he asserts that we are becoming more integrated and interconnected, and thus “the potential for a peaceful new global civilization is evolving before our eyes almost unnoticed”. Yet, he argues that challenges remain, and a number of major geopolitical fault lines remain to be resolved. For that to materialize, Mahbubani is of the opinion that: policymakers all over the world must change their preconceptions and accept that we live in one world; national interests must be balanced with global interests; the U.S. and Europe must cede some power (including within the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN Security Council); China and India, Africa and the Islamic world must be integrated; and the world order must be reconstructed.
For those and many other eminent authors and commentators, the “international community” has no better and wiser choice than to embark on a life-saving journey from “empire to community”. This is what Amitai Etzioni[31] advocated, arguing that a “clash of civilizations” can be avoided, and that the new world order need not look America. Because, he contends, “Eastern values, including spirituality and moderate Islam, have a legitimate place in the evolving global public philosophy”.
Also addressing this issue in a lecture[32], Prof. Edward Said observed that “the truly weakest part of the clash of cultures and civilizations thesis is the rigid separation assumed between them despite the overwhelming evidence that today’s world is, in fact, a world of mixtures, of migrations and of crossings over, of boundaries traversed. One of the major crises affecting countries like France, Britain and the U.S. has been brought about by the realization, now dawning everywhere, that no culture or society is purely one thing. Sizeable minorities, North Africans in France, the African Caribbean, and Indian populations in Britain, Asian and African elements in this country (i.e. America), dispute the idea that civilization, that prided themselves on being homogeneous can continue to do so. There are no insulated cultures or civilizations. Any attempt made to separate them into the watertight compartments alleged by Huntington and his ilk does damage to their variety, their diversity, their sheer complexity of elements, their radical hybridity. The more insistent we are on the separation of the cultures, the more inaccurate we are about ourselves and about others. The notion of an exclusionary civilization is to my way of thinking an impossible one”. Prof. Said then asked what he considered as the “real question”, that is “whether in the end we want to work for civilizations that are separate or whether we should be taking the more integrative but perhaps more difficult path which is to try to see them as making one vast whole, whose exact contours are impossible for any person to grasp, but whose certain existence we can intuit and feel and study”. He concluded his lecture by quoting some lines by the great poet, author and politician from Martinique Aimé Césaire “the work of man is only just beginning and it remains to conquer all the violence entrenched in the recesses of our passion and no race possess the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of force, and there’s a place for all at the rendez-vous of victory”.
This is precisely the main topic that we shall address in a forthcoming analysis.
* **
- Algerian researcher in international relations, author of the book “L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot” (“The Orient and the Occident in time of a new Sykes-Picot”), Editions Alem El Afkar, Algiers, 2014: downloadable free of charge, by clicking on the following links: http://algerienetwork.com/blog/lorient-et-loccident-a-lheure-dun-nouveau-sykes-picot-par-amir-nour/ (French)
http://algerienetwork.com/blog/العالم-العربي-على-موعد-مع-سايكس-بيكو-ج/ (Arabic) ↑ - From Michael Franti & Spearhead’s song “Bomb the World”: http://youtu.be/ICL-40nkOPA ↑
- Read Newsweek’s article: http://www.newsweek.com/trump-has-already-killed-more-civilians-obama-us-fight-against-isis-653564 ↑
- Read The Intercept’s “The Drone Papers”: http://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ ↑
- Heather Linebaugh, “I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on”, The Guardian, 29 Dec. 2013: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/drones-us-military ↑
- Read the opinion entitled “Dennis Kucinich: The ‘Mother of All Bombs’ is actually the mother of all warmongering”, Fox News, 14 April, 2017. ↑
- Rod Nordland, “U.S. Expands Kabul Security Zone, Digging In For Next Decade”, The NYT, 16 Sept., 2017. ↑
- William R. Polk, “Violent politics: A history of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerilla War, From the American Revolution to Iraq”, Harper Perennial, 2008. ↑
- Besides UN General Assembly vote (128 in favor, 9 against, 35 abstentions) considering Donald Trump‘s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital “null and void” (read The Guardian’s article https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/21/united-nations-un-vote-donald-trump-jerusalem-israel), a Gallup International Association (GIA) opinion poll, conducted in December 2017 in 24 countries, revealed a widespread disagreement with the US President’s decision: more than two in three (71%) disagree with the proposal (59% strongly). Commenting on this survey, GIA’s President Kancho Stoychev said: “It’s rare for an opinion survey to register such unanimity on a single issue which indicates a deep pain among the Muslim world from the Middle East to Far Asia. But the overall reaction to the Trump decision is also predominantly negative in Europe. It seems that decades of trust in the balancing role of US diplomacy are evaporating.” ↑
- See “Obama’s Foreign Policy and the Future of the Middle East”, 21 July 2014. ↑
- Chas W. Freeman, “The Middle East in the New World Disorder”, 11 December, 2017. ↑
- As of November 2017, the outstanding U.S. public debt stood at around $20.59 trillion. The U.S. ranked first in the world. ↑
- Read http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22546&LangID=E ↑
- To read the Platform: http://www.presidency.uscb.edu/edu/ws/?pid=29587.Home ↑
- Watch the video entitled “A Great Speech About Why America Isn’t Great Anymore”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=share&v=q49NOyJ8fNA&app=desktop ↑
- Read in the New York Post, 5 January 2014. ↑
- British historian Arnold J. Toynbee called Ibn khaldun’s “Muqaddimah” or “Prolegomena” (Introduction)—which covers world history of humanity up to the author’s time, and addresses the question of why nations rise to power and what causes their decline— “a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place.” [Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th ed., vol. 9, p. 148]. ↑
- Christopher Layne, “Is the United States in Decline?”, The American Conservative, August 8, 2017.↑
- Pierre Melandri, “La fin de l’empire américain?” (The end of the American Empire ?), in “La fin des empires” (The end of Empires), sous la direction de Patrice Guenniffey & Thierry Lentz, Le Figaro Histoire/Perrin, Paris, 2016. ↑
- Andrew J. Bacevich, “American Empire: The Realities and the Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy”, Harvard University Press, 2002. ↑
- See “America Has Been At War 93% of the Time”: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/america-war-93-time-222-239-years-since-1776.html ↑
- Read “America’s Forever Wars”, The New York Times, October 22, 2017. ↑
- Richard Haas, “A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order”, Penguin Press, 2017. See: https://www.cfr.org/book/world-disarray ↑
- Robert Kagan, “The Twilight of the Liberal World Order”, Brookings, January 24, 2017. ↑
- Read “At Our Own Peril : DoD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World”: https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1358 ↑
- Read the official transcript of the speech on https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-speech-to-the-republican-party-conference-2017, 26 January, 2017. ↑
- Joseph S. Nye, “The Future of Power”, PublicAffairs, New York, 2011. ↑
- Moisés Naím , “The End of Power”, Basic Books, New York, 2013. ↑
- Charles A. Kupchan, “No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest and the Coming Global Turn”, Oxford University Books, 2012. ↑
- Kishore Mahbubani, “The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World”, PublicAffairs, 2013. ↑
- Amitai Etzioni, “From Empire to Community”, Pelgrave Macmillan, 2004. ↑
- Edward Said, “ The Myth of ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ ”, Media Education Foundation, 1999; To read the transcript: http://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Edward-Said-The-Myth-of-Clash-Civilizations-Transcript.pdf ↑
“And after pausing for a while, the news anchor adds “It sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest”.
Lies from start to finish.
The USA has never “stood up for what was right”. The USA has never “fought for moral reasons”. The USA has never “passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reasons”. The USA has never “waged wars on poverty, not on poor people”. (Indeed, its political history is a long tale of corruption in the interests of making the rich even richer and preventing the poor from having a say).
“We sacrificed”. Oh, spare me! Sacrificed – what? When? For whom?
“We cared about our neighbors”. Cared about their money and their natural resources, you mean. As for the neighbours themselves, they could all have died and Americans would only have been pleased.
“We put our money where our mouths were”. I don’t really know what that means. But if it is supposed to mean that Americans were honest and truthful… they have had a well-earned reputation for treachery and deceit for hundreds of years. Just ask the Native Americans. The USA could very well be renamed “The United States of Hypocrisy”.
“And we never beat our chest”. Ever seen a picture of Teddy Roosevelt? US history right from 1776 is an unbroken exhibition of chest-beating, racism, unctuous hypocrisy, treachery, theft and, above all, mass murder.
Good Points Tom Walsh ….
I believe Prof Chomsky and Dr Michael Parenti also stated in their essays that the US birth has been one of the most violent in recent history.
“America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation.
Well said, Tom. The USA was founded by the richest oligarchs in the thirteen colonies, and set out, from the beginning to establish a New Roman Empire, but a global one, ruled by hereditary, moneyed, elites, behind a facade of ‘democracy’, with a populace ruthlessly brainwashed, and any dissenters handled by Gestapos like the FBI, or by private thuggery employed by the parasite elites. First they exterminated the Indigenous Americans, holding the Bible aloft, and referring to the Old Testament Holy Genocides of the Israelites against their various ‘enemies’ (ie those who ‘got in the way’)as their religious justification.
Having cleansed America of tens of millions of ‘savages’ (brilliant projection, that)they commenced terrorising the world. In 1900, as the Democrats were babbling their unctuous hypocrisies, the USA was committing a genocide in the Philippines, killing all males over TEN in some regions, and using water-boarding (‘the water cure’) as well. The black Americans still existed as virtual slaves, terrorised by the Klu Klux Klan and barbaric lynchings, often treated as carnivals by white Americans, to wait sixty years for a ‘Civil Rights’ movement, that was immediately reversed by the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, ‘gangsta’ culture and mass impoverishment.
Then the USA commenced terrorising the entire planet. Latin America has been terrorised for 200 years, since the Monroe Doctrine, and even today, the Pink Wave of recent years has been DESTROYED and Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador etc returned to semi-fascist Rightwing rule, vicious austerity and repression. Coups sufficed in Paraguay and Honduras, Chile went full Pinochetist and Nazi and Venezuela is being crucified’ to discourage the others’. And as we see in Puerto Rico, even being a second-class part of the USA doesn’t spare you vicious oppression, malignant neglect and exploitation.
As for the Middle East, the entire War of Terror on Moslems is driven by a few motivations. First and foremost is the Zionazi Oded Yinon Plan, born of Talmudic hatred of the goyim, Zionist settler hatred of the Indigenous who must be expelled or exterminated so that the Chosen Herrenvolk can have their God-ordained lebensraum, and the horror and hatred that flowed from the Nazi Judeocide. Germans only pay through the nose for that abomination, but the Palestinians and all Zionazistan’s neighbours pay with their blood, year after year, for it. And what the Zionazis want, their puppet hyper-power, bought by US and Diaspora Jewish money power and ‘interference’ that exceeds that of Russia by several orders of magnitude, delivers, UNQUESTIONINGLY these days. The merest murmur of dissent brings a chorus of abuse as an ‘antisemite’ and immediate and total ostracism. The apogee of this Zionazi ambition was THEIR 9/11 false-flag attack, the most successful such coup in history, the New Pearl Harbor that the Zionazi ‘neo-conservatives’ had so presciently predicted a few years before.
Second, the USA wants to control Middle Eastern hydrocarbons, ‘the greatest material prize in history’, as the Pentagon long ago observed. Third, there is Big Money in destruction and genocide, that the MIC elites happily snaffle up. And money wasted on military expenditure is not there to aid the US underclass, who the elites despise with genocidal ardour, and who they plainly plan to be rid of, one day soon.
The War of Terror, with jihadist gangs ALL founded, controlled, financed and armed by the USA and its stooges like the Saud espots, Israel, the UK etc, since the CIA created al-Qaeda in the 1980s, will never end. The jihadists will morph into new shapes, with new targets, certainly Russia, Iran and China, as well as Africa in its entirety, with their strings pulled by the USA, the Sauds and Israel, the Real Axis of Evil. Nothing can stop this process, as the USA is now totally controlled by various gangs of belligerent psychopaths, ALL controlled by the Zionazis, themselves regressing beyond the insane and genocidal barbarity of the likes of Bibi.
@Mulga Mumblbrain Very well said ! Especially the beginning. I only want to add a very important detail:
And in a barbaric evil act, slaugthered it’s own citizens in the thousands by razing THREE Towers in NY to the ground in order to propel the nation into another war.
Btw. THIS event IS and WAS the final DEATH WARRANT, because there is no escape from it’s consequences other than total dissolution of the order or the ride down right to the bottom of hell !!
9/11 has morphed into the mother of all lies and therefore the wooden stake right through the heart. There can never be a return to civilization really as long this lie is not resolved.
I have come to the conclusion that all this didn’t happen by mere stupidity but rather diabolical intent, because one can very clearly see the negative intelligence in effect at every important juncture !!
Therefore the rise as the ‘fall’ of the American Empire (and it’s British inheritance) is a carefully planned and nurtered for event !
By whom ? For what purpose ?
@HDan Whom?
– Some says we were too well being in 1990´s and the world was running too peaceful forward wealth without the Powers that be´s influence.
– Others says the financial world, the bankers, Rothschilds, decided to shift from USA to China as the world center, as the USA was sucked up and China the new fat lamb.
– Seeing on who make the decisions, its obvious that we are managed by Finance. Everything you think is civilisation, concepts, media campaigns, wars for you or your society´s sake are business/profit models for Finance.
Speeding fines is a profit model invented and created by Finance, illuding you that “they” care for your health in the traffic.
(You only need personal responsibility to “drive after the conditions” as when you are responsible for sailing a ship).
Women´s liberation is a profit model where you split the family, make each member vulnerable, illude them to be alone is freedom.
(Thus both mother and father work 8-16 to get sucked by taxes, non necessary products, double consuming) etc.
” and China the new fat lamb”
Exactly.
http://www.atimes.com/article/communist-party-get-rich-still-glorious/
“…More than 200 of China’s legislators hold individual wealth nearly equivalent to Belgium’s annual GDP, according to a report released at the start of the Communist Party’s annual parliamentary session.
A key focus of the sessions is eliminating poverty and creating a “moderately prosperous society”, a project President Xi Jinping has frequently cited as a national priority in a country that suffers from a gaping chasm between the rich and poor.
…[]…
The opening of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s rubber-stamp legislature, will be held Sunday, with the country’s economic elite and top leaders rubbing shoulders for some two weeks in the imposing corridors of the Great Hall of the People, situated off Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Out of the more than 5,100 delegates to these two assemblies, 209 possess individual wealth of more than 2 billion yuan ($290 million), Shanghai-based luxury magazine publisher the Hurun Report said in a survey.
More than 100 of the wealthy individuals are members of the NPC, and 97 are from the CPPCC.
According to the survey, their cumulative assets tallied “almost 3.5 trillion yuan” ($507 billion) — nearly equivalent to the annual GDP of countries such as Belgium, Sweden or Poland.
The majority of the wealthy delegates were businessmen, rather than politicians who had spent their careers within the party apparatus.
Among them are the heads of internet giants, such as Pony Ma of Tencent and Robin Li of Baidu, smartphone maker Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun, and Zong Qinghou, head of soft drink producer Wahaha.
Despite a large-scale anti-corruption campaign launched in 2013 by President Xi to clean up the Communist Party’s ranks, the heads of private businesses remain welcome in the cavernous halls of power as Beijing seeks to rebalance its economy towards domestic consumption and the services sector.
Nevertheless, some wealthy entrepreneurs could be tempted to keep a low profile this year as the Communist Party ups its attacks on real estate “speculators” and “financial crocodiles”.
While Xi has pledged to lift more than 45 million people out of poverty by 2020, his time in office has already been exceptionally good for the country’s wealthiest politicians.
While the economy as a whole has expanded at a rate of under seven percent in recent years, the legislature’s 100 or so dollar billionaires have seen their cumulative wealth jump 64 percent since 2013 when he assumed the presidency, Hurun said.”
HDan, I think it is quite clear, at least in my opinion, that 9/11 was essentially a Zionazi project, by the MOSSAD, the IDF, who provided the sappers, US sayanim, and Sabbat Goy US stooges, up to and including Cheney, Rumsfeld and other elements of the US intelligence agencies. In any case, the idea that 19 al-Qaeda patsies pulled it off is so ludicrous that only an idiot, brainwashed for life, could entertain its possibility.
Re: “And after pausing for a while, the news anchor adds “It sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest”.
Thanks, Tom, I’m so glad you replied to this typical Anglo-Saxon smug, self-congratulatory horse manure. It’s really nauseating in its self-delusion, its self-righteous superiority complex, its lethal hypocritical humanitarianism.
Here’s an interesting article:
Self-determination: Western hypocrisy or promissory note?
https://www.cablemagazine.scot/kirkwood-self-determination-hypocrisy/
What was noted by the Australians in war was that the Americans had a certain attitude; “I’m alright Jack” that was completely foreign to most Australians Within Asia, most Australian POW’s survived due to a culture of comradeship, duly expressed by ‘Weary Dunlop’, while too many Americans simply resorted to looking after No. 1.
The problems in Australia today emanate from that ‘I’m alright Jack’ attitude that emanated from the ‘American Culture’.
Today in the US military there are three camps I am told, the whites, the blacks and the Latinos, In other words the American house is divided and thus it must fall.
Whew! That was long, and heavy. The upshot is that we are in a colossal mess. There is an underlying but unstated assumption running through this long essay that somehow we will find some kind of way through it or out of it that preserves some of the better values that have appeared in the long course of our history together.
This is most probably not true. The greater likelihood is that we are on the cusp of universal disaster and ignominious extinction as a failed species, after having inflicted extensive damage to the whole web of life on this planet. The belief in our specialness and guaranteed destiny to persist forever runs really deep in our psyches, even among those who should know better. The reality of our extreme vulnerability is invisible to the egoistically centered mind……..
“The greater likelihood is that we are on the cusp of universal disaster and ignominious extinction as a failed species, after having inflicted extensive damage to the whole web of life on this planet.”
Be careful to only speak for yourself, or this virus may indeed accomplish the extinction you fear.
It is good for global events spectators to criticize hubris, where great personal faults of the actors and nations they are observing multiply great public faults and compound global crises.
However to remain a spectator or remove oneself as an actor in a situation that involves all of humanity’s past, present and future and take such a non-active, pessimistic stance is actually…..worse!. It is willful suicide or passive acceptance of such on a global scale……a cowardly cop out. Or rather, a silly one. You’re better than that…I will risk saying. LOL.
And the hard fact is that the adoption of such a pessimistic approach by millions of young people does result in an alarming number of personal suicides.Whereas, that in them which makes them human could have been developed and put to a purpose in solving the crisis. Their creativity, Their reason. Their care for something greater than their own sufferings, fears, or temporary pleasures.
Don’t take the “easy” way out. Think! Back, back from the window ledge! Don’t jump! Believe it or not, you have that within you which is not the Scourge of the Universe!
Bro 93 – Thanks for your well meant feedback to me, but you are making some assumptions about me that are not completely accurate. I am an activist, and will be hopefully until my dying day. In fact my sharing here is part of my activism. That I challenge people to wake up to the extreme dark side of their culture, and try to shake them out of their comatose condition with regard to our desperate and critical situation, is part of my activism. I will not sing lullabies to individuals who share in the responsibility for our near term extinction. Keep your eyes closed if you choose, as so many to do, but having your head in the sand will not shield you from the nuclear nightmare now unfolding with accelerating rapidity.
And BTW I dream of a world at peace where we all share and help each other be as happy as possible, and I do what I can to see that dream become our reality, instead of the nightmare we are presently cooking up for each other.
“I dream of a world at peace where we all share and help each other ”
you’ll probably enjoy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Humanizing-Economy-Co-operatives-Age-Capital/dp/086571651X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522365744&sr=8-1&keywords=humanizing+the+economy
That statement by Georges Clemenceau about the US – if he ever made it – is based on Oscar Wilde’s famous observation “that the US is the only country in the world which entered barbarism without entering civilization”.
When it comes to the US, there is not much that need be said. Until 1776 the American territories were a colony of the British Crown and after 1776 the US became the personal colony of the Rothschild’s banking empire. George Washington and his “revolutionaries” were freemasons who were on the payroll of the Rothschild’s. Washington and the Rothschild’s simply repeated the methods of Oliver Cromwell from the 17th century; both started insurrections financed by private bankers. The Rothschild’s control of the US was solidified in 1913 with the creation of the so-called Federal Reserve, a private bank which has taken on the role of a central bank, contrary to the US Constitution.
The US was created so that the Rothschild’s could plunder it and use it to fight wars for their benefit. The US financed those wars. The US student debt is now 1.5 trillion dollars, while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone have cost more than 6 trillion dollars.
When the UK played that little false flag in England, Theresa May expelled 23 Russian diplomats while Trump expelled 60. He did as he was told.
In 1998 Igor Panarin, Dean of the Russian Diplomatic Academy, predicted that the US would breakup into six parts, with the northern US states either becoming part of Canada, or under Canadian influence. This I believe. Analysts have years ago stated that in the Montana-Colorado region there is more oil than in Saudi Arabia. It is untouched. Is this oil reserved for Canada, bearing in mind that the head of Canada is the Queen of England ? Will Canada take over from the US ? It would not surprise me in the least.
And “Perfidious Albion” ? When the BRICS were created, analysts reported that covert negotiations were held between London and Moscow on Britain joining the BRICS. What was Britain doing ? Offering Russia a deal and preventing Germany from joining the Russian/Chinese political and economic camp ?
As for the US, I think it has passed the point of no return. It has the largest foreign and domestic debt in the world, the dollar is printed backed by nothing and between 28.000 – 70.000 factories have been closed down with 1/3 of the labor force unemployed. I don’t see how Trump can “Make America Great Again”. With what ? Dr. Jim Willie, who has a Phd in statistics, has stated that the US Government is preparing to introduce a new, domestic dollar. Hardly assuring news for the future of the US, bearing in mind China has introduced the petro-yuan.
The world is moving towards the East, politically and economically, and this cannot be stopped short of a wider war, which I hope does not ensue.
Tom Welsh, couldn’t agree with you more. Well said.
It’s difficult for me to see when America was ever a great nation. USA was built on genocide, slavery, militarism, unregulated capitalism, and a sacred mythology of freedom and democracy.
We hear and read of the endless accusations of Russian meddling in the latest US election. To put that unfounded meddling in perspective, here are som facts:
To quote William Blum from his book ‘Rouge State’: Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:
“Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
Plus … although not easily quantified … has been more involved in the practice of torture than any other country in the world … for over a century … not just performing the actual torture, but teaching it, providing the manuals, and furnishing the equipment.”
Of course hypocrisy of this magnitude is not meant to be criticized, but respected…
Good points. The truth matters, even if it disturbs some tender ears. In fact, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is our only hope for exiting this fatal cultural spiral to extinction.
America would still be “a great nation” today, or at least the the undisputed hegemon
of the planet today, if it had not run out of oil in the 1970s. If Nixon had taken a Hitlerian
approach to the problem of ‘peak oil” in America then and marched on the ME, we’d be
sitting pretty on untold tons of oil, but the world economy would not have survived and
the oceans might still be black from the sabotaged and sunken tankers delivering oil to
America, like the galleons delivering gold and silver to Spain after Columbus.
Splendid article.
No you can not put down a guerilla. You cant. I have been in it. Got out alive in time.
Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria will bleed us dry. Look at the state of the US, a povo nation, plenty of weapons, but mainly poor people, failing infrastructure, 21 million kids in poverty.
US is the sole provider of guaranteed destruction, poverty and “freedom”.
This whole thing that humanity is the cancer upon the face of the earth is how elite is absolving themselves of any responsibilities for what they’ve done. Every time you see all those images of floating plastic in the oceans you can be sure that 99% of this guilt creating products are made in the brainwashing factories of G.Soros and other “philanthropists and nature lovers” like him.
Not to say that the rest of us did not participate in the damage but our impact is negligible compare to what was done by BP spill, atomic weapon testing, spraying of heavy metals (for our common good) in the skies and the list can go on forever.
To summarize all these sentiments, it is easy to see that the thieves and the true perpetrators of crimes are always working hard to push the guilt on those who have very little to do with economic crimes, wars for profit, demonic revolutions and raping of nature.
Saying that, the article is well researched and contains some good points.
Great news:
We’re coming out of Syria very soon, let others take care of it
Why would it be a good idea to believe anything the snake says https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/trump-says-the-us-leaving-syria-very-soon-let-the-other-people-take-care-of-it
“Trump said it was “stupid, stupid” that “we didn’t keep the oil” while occupying Iraq.”
BAH
More ignorance from Trump. We should have started confiscating other nation’s oil the minute
we realized we had run out when Nixon was president. But the capitalists wanted the global
economy to flourish and they overruled those who wanted to impound as much oil as they could.
Moscow is very concerned about extra military equipment from usa arriving at al Tanf…..
!
Moscow: US Deploying Hardware to Al-Tanf,, Boosting Military
Presence in Syria
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/03/29/moscow-us-deploying-hardware-to-al-tanf-boosting-military-presence-in-syria/
The French are invading kurdistan now,just announced by Macron.
US leaving(??),France entering..
We will have a fight between NATO countries,France against Erdogan.
Interesting..
France wants to declare independance of so called Royava..
Of course without any ok from Damas.
France is pushed to intervene to fight for Israel by BHL.All french politicians are sold to Israel like in the US/UK.
They will get counter attacks from Erdogan in France probably(bataclan was done by Erdogan).
But they don’t care about french people,Israhell uber alles.
France Deploys Military Forces to Assist Kurdish Militants in Manbij – Reports
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201803291063046900-syria-manbij-kurds-forces-assitance/
France is even more of a stooge state to the Zionazis than the USA, if that is possible to imagine.
Thanatopia ‘takes care’ of countries in the same fashion that the Nazis ‘took care’ of Jews, Roma, gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses and socialists.
When Trump says ‘…let others take care of [Syria]’, I think about France, UK… At least we can hope that the US will get out. I don’t believe that France and the UK can cope with the Syrian Army, Russia, Hezbollah, Iran, China… They are very stupid if they do not negotiate their defeat right now – waste of lives, money, credibility, and complete defeat at the end, anyway.
The point of the interventions was precisely achieved – the sowing of chaos and destabilization is a critical puzzle piece needed to control the global and, most important, Eurasian map. Control energy flows. Check. Perch atop the by-way of the Eurasian peninsula. Check. Turn enemies (non-aligned states) into either shambles or puppets, with destruction the prerequisite. Check.
Looks like a crazy success to me. If only they could have destroyed everyone more quickly and this fickle OBOR issue might not have cropped up.
9/11 was an inside job. bin Laden had nothing to do with it, except to be the patsy.
The American Empire will attack its own homeland to further its plans for world-wide hegemony.
”Today’s America is indeed a far cry from the model of Constitutional Republic the Founding Fathers dreamed of and brought forth.”
The only thing these sweet little Founding Fathers would find outright shocking were they to see today’s US would be the increasing prevalence of the Spanish language and the decaying WASP demographics. Everything else would be to their liking, if not in an entirely spotless condition, of course.
The achievements of Lenin and Stalin make these Founding Fathers look like a bunch of Ukronazis.
Thanks Amir for this well sourced and balanced article.
” …Kishore Mahbubani, a much-respected Singaporean writer, professor and diplomat. In one of his books[30], he asserts that we are becoming more integrated and interconnected, and thus “the potential for a peaceful new global civilization is evolving before our eyes almost unnoticed”. Yet, he argues that challenges remain, and a number of major geopolitical fault lines remain to be resolved. For that to materialize, Mahbubani is of the opinion that: policymakers all over the world must change their preconceptions and accept that we live in one world; national interests must be balanced with global interests; the U.S. and Europe must cede some power (including within the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN Security Council); China and India, Africa and the Islamic world must be integrated; and the world order must be reconstructed.”
I watched KM lecture at Harvard Kennedy school – I think 2014- and found him an eloquent and mesmerising speaker, due to his impeccable choice of words delivered in calm manner. Rare. However, I sat up when he likened the Planet to a boat, with 7 billion plus passengers. Surely, I thought, he is not proponent of one world government?
In the present article the usual suspects set up for global plunder and domination are cited.
I know there are many good and true people working for these institutions, but I also know about the undermining that goes on, in order to achieve true objectives.
As a lifelong student of Life with all my own horrors of nightmares and dreams, I found the words of the UN Declaration of Human Rights to be hauntingly similar to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.
In my own quest for God, I have witnessed with increasing horror, the ongoing death of Christ. Or as some name it, Logos.
How well is the UN Declaration serving the human race these days?
The answer is well known to the sacred community of this Vineyard.
On this Good Friday in the so-called west, let us reflect on the eternal betrayal and crucifixion of the Christ. And ask God of all Creation for Mercy and Forgiveness. God especially bless and protect our Saker, precious leader of this Community, and Mr Putin.
@Babushka You don’t need to worry about ‘Logos’ or God both are as healthy and strong as ever.
Where God shines there is never darkness. Logos and truth cannot be corrupted, but humans can.
However a HUMAN having the light of God is indestructable because he resides in both ‘Logos’ and God. His path is not without fault, becase he is both a physical and spiritual being, only the path shining in front of him is like a guide offered as a gift by God, because only he is able to provide us with light !
0 divided by 0 equals 0, anything > 0 divided by 0 equals INFINITY in real ‘philosophical’ Math ! (I’m not righting Mathematicians but rather highlight that in (real) Philosophy the above is of PARAMOUNT importance and makes for all the difference !!!!)
“Where God shines there is never darkness. Logos and truth cannot be corrupted, but humans can. ”
Let me see, God is omnipotent and omniscient. Nevertheless, the deity knowingly allows the freewill of man to create such havoc and distaste such that God is so affronted, knowingly by the vast majority of humanity, that, on death, they are to be punished by eternal hellfire “according to the good pleasure of his will” (Ephesians 1:5).
The real truth is that God is not omnibenevolent and that you are therefore trusting in a liar.
@”The real truth is that God is not omnibenevolent”
Fascinating. Pilatus asked to Jesus: “Quid est veritas?” (what is the truth?) But Jesus didn’t answer… Why? Maybe because the answer was in the question itself: the anagram is exactly “Est vir qui adest” (he is this man face to you). You are alive and able to ask yourself questions and give yourself answers, like Pilatus, therefore God was ad minima benevolent with you. The risurrection of Jesus Christ “first of many” is the evidence that God was not only benevolent with you, but with all people of good will in the world. And about the other people of the world, we can not read in the depht of human hearts and (luckily) are not concerned to intend people to hell or to paradise in advance, hence may I say no need to decide if God is omnibenevolent or not: better read Romans, chapter 11. I don’t know what is the real truth, but I only know that the Truth is real: ask Job for a comment.
“Where God shines there is never darkness. Logos and truth cannot be corrupted, but humans can.” This is a good will for happy Resurrection, Passover, Easter to you all the people of this community. May God our Father bless you all.
Matthew 26:24
“The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.”
The creator created the man knowing it would have been better not to have done so (for the man).
Many things describe that but not omnibenevolence.
Going To War With Russia .
In a game of one-up-man-ship, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has been blowing the proverbial bridges between Russia and the western world to pieces in the last several weeks with comments that have really been beyond the pale. He suggested that Russian President Putin was the person that gave the go ahead for the attempted assassination of a former Russian spy in England. He then absolutely blew that out of the water by claiming yesterday that holding the World Soccer Cup in Russia was akin to Hitler’s 1936 Olympics. This last point I personally took huge exception to, because the fact is the 25 million or so Soviets that died actually fighting Hitler saved England fro German invasion – an invasion that England would have lost hands down. In truth, Johnson might just as well of accused modern day Israel of being a Nazi state. That’s just how bizarre Johnson’s attack on Russia was. And perhaps more importantly in the scheme of things, how incendiary the attack was.
What is becoming clear is that the US, and its western allies, are laying the groundwork for a massive war, perhaps a world war, with Eurasia and its allies in the Middle East. With the appointment of Bolton on the same day as Trump signed the first trade action against China (and he emphasized it was the first of many) the signs are very clear. The West is going to war with the East. The likely initial targets are Syria, and Iran. Any attack on Iran is a declaration of war on Russia. Iran after all is not just an important ally to Russia, but it sits right on the border with Russia. In other words, Russia would be pulled into such a war out of self-defence if for no other reason…
https://rocksolidpolitics.blogspot.be/2018/03/
Top Pundit Satanovsky: We Will Only Have Peace After America is Defeated.
Was there ever a detente with the US? We had one after the war in Vietnam. Valery Gerasimov mentioned it and he knows how it goes. The military proved to be much more efficient than diplomats. Let’s recall some figures. During the war in Vietnam the USSR lost 16 soldiers. The US lost 58,300 not including the injured. 100,000 — 150,000 of those” Rambos” commit suicide upon returning home due to their psychological trauma. The number of aircraft the US lost… Remember we promised them a missile response if they strike Damascus. Vietnam, when our economy was in a bad state. 9,408 American airplanes, helicopters, and drones and more than 2,500 South Vietnamese ones. McCain should remember the 2,500 South Vietnamese machines. In this regard we also had an open military conflict with the US in Korea, you can call it a proxy war. The international coalition there was much larger than in Vietnam: South Korea, Japan, Thailand, and many others. Australia and New Zealand too, by the way.
https://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2999672&cid=4441
Years of Russian Cooperation and Friendship Wasted, Only Force WIll Prevail Now.
Give me a second, Michael. Let’s not interrupt each other for a second. Why? Because Russia can’t do otherwise. We’ve got to admit that restoring trust will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. For many years, we’ve been trying to conform to some international system of obligations, some system of agreements, some system of trust. We used to discuss it a lot, claim that it was necessary because it would give us a chance to move forward and bring a new thaw, and so on. And here’s their response to our goodwill. In the future, we’ll know what it’s like to look for trust in the West, what it’s like to meet their own international requirements, and what’s it like to search for common sense. Common sense only works when it works to their advantage. And if it benefits us even a bit, they aren’t interested in it at all.
https://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=3000072&cid=4441
The ENTIRE world will never be at peace until Thanatopia, the greatest force for destruction and genocide in history, is no more. Being decent human beings, not bloodthirsty Death-worshipers like the Thanatopia elites, we must hope that the process is peaceful, and results in several pacific, socially just and disarmed states succeeding the current regime.
hey guys don’t get your underwear twisted on this, this whole thing is a PSYOP!…it’s a distraction and distortion to manipulate the sleeping masses view ,away from the failure our undeclared meters for nearly 500 years or more.These psychos had a full blown chemical factory in DOUMA which was discovered by evil putin and the barrel bomber of a president,’guess you did not hear about it huh?…ofcourse not cause the alternate media was intoxicated by this post russian spy poisoning False flag psyop.
The west are sour losers cause they could not bomb an ancient city as called for by the good book, also they did not have a bigger dick than evil putin, get over it ,their dream of glory is disappearing everyday,they are naked and the world does not turn for them as they wanted anymore.
it’s a crying shame that the alternate media did not see this hoax for what it was, and still is.
Quite informative. I was not aware that U.S. genocidal tendencies were so much on the rise. But I think what is missing here is an appreciation of the dollar system, and how it has trapped the rest of the world into supporting (indeed funding) the cited U.S. aggression and attitude. Worth mentioning is are the steps being taken to finally change this scenario – and the U.S. response to that. As for the chaotic policy swings, these are “water testing” exercises to gauge the “market response” (and geopolitical attitudes) toward various positions. Helpful also in managing expectations about our “crazy uncle in the closet, ole’ Sam.”
As far as the American sheople I would suggest that they are actually self-dis-empowered … as they beg to have their freedoms and liberties restricted. One might consider it a response to being in a constant state of anxiety over potential terrorism, but I think it is merely a symptom of the propaganda crisis in America.
http://roacheforque.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-wests-propaganda-crisis.html
Great article. Thanks to the author, and to Saker for publishing. Please keep this coming.
I look forward to the rendezvous with victory, in the next analysis.
And as to this one – optimism is justified by the facts as compiled and presented here. This degree of stepping back to view what’s really happening in our part of history is necessary, to see it clearly. Wonderful perspective. Excellent story, well told.
The article cites forces at work in our world and in our human experience and our institutions. It seems that the sum of changes towards diversity is far greater than the sum of controls towards hegemony.
Just as we all hoped.
Sadly, I used to have great respect for this site, but this article was so ludicrous I simply couln’t go on; ”wildly successful, beyond even Bin laden’s original imagination….”
REALLY!?
STILL trying to sell that lie?
And EVEN the general idiot-Amerikan now knows that the so-called ‘al Qaeda’ and ISIS are merely fictional names for US/Occupied Palestine (aka Israel) proxy-armies.
“War is not meant to be won, but maintained”. We are in Afghanistan to block Russia and China, and export heroin. Nothing more.
‘War on Terror’?
Is that like our ‘War on Drugs’, with the US troops GUARDING the poppy fields in the ‘stan, and the CIA as the biggest supplier of coke into the US?
That idiot-traitor Bush, standing on that warship in front of some banner which reads;
“MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”
Yea, it was. Endless war, control of oil and resources, 1000% increase in heroin exports….and ‘officials are stunned at the growing opioid crisis in the US”.
I have to laugh at how pathetic and transparent the lies are, but then I think;
“How good does [it] need to be? You only have to sell it to Amerikans. “A nation with a collective, room-temp IQ”
“The US and Israel are the 2 greatest threats to world peace today, and perhaps even to humanity itself” ~ Stephen Lendmen
Forgive me; I didn’t continue after too much BS and nonsense. Couldn’t stomach any more ‘Official Lie’ crapola.
PS: To all commenting here? We are few, but at least we ALL see through this shite. Well – most of us. A few here thought this was a “good, well-balanced article”.
Good lord……………..
Dear Occams,
First of all, please accept my thanks for the comment you posted recently in relation to my latest article. In doing so, you provided me with the pleasant opportunity not only to convey my kindest regards and best wishes to all the members and readers of this outstanding blog of The Saker, but also to contribute to the debate on the huge topic of this article, chiefly by trying to set the record straight for all to consider as far as your comment is concerned, and for which, once again, I am very grateful, for the following reasons:
1- To the best of my knowledge, this is the FIRST forthright criticism on the part of a reader, whether on this blog or elsewhere on the net (unfortunately limited to very few websites, for obvious reasons…). And it did me a great service; that is, to remind me never to think of nourishing any feeling of self-satisfaction, sufficiency, or triumphalism. It was not my intent, in any way, when I sent my modest article to The Saker, an article which is, by the way, part 3 of a comprehensive 4-part analysis on the topic of the relationship between The West and the Islamic world, through a retrospective and prospective lens.
2- Here’s the comment I posted on this very blog, on March 3rd, to explain my real and only purpose: “To Mario and all other respected readers and commentators. At the outset, I’d like to thank all of you for showing interest in my modest contribution to a huge international issue, which will undoubtedly impact our fast-changing, uncertain, and indeed perilous “small” and “unique” village. I’d also like to advise that this article is the first part of a comprehensive study, both retrospective and prospective, on the fate and the role of Islam as a great religion and of the Islamic civilization in history, in the past and in the future. So I beg your patience and kind understanding in relation to my personal efforts, taking in account the constraints of the obvious human limits in terms of time and knowledge. Dear Mario, my intent through this work is not to be a 100% credible (who in the world could be?). My genuine and only objective is to make known what I see as little-known, and often deliberately made unknown by certain vested interests, and in doing so discharging my duty as a citizen of the world, our common world. In other words, I’m trying my best to respond positively to the wise appeal of Dr. NG Maroudas: “The most alarming symptom of degeneracy in the West is that we are allowing mischievous Leaders to stoke up the fires of (usually imaginary or trite) Religious and Ethnic differences again, instead of aiming for our common humanity. All the best to you all”.
3- I’ve tried, in vain so far, to understand your point. Because ALL the arguments you put forward are all the more acceptable to me as I have, myself, made them the very foundation of my whole thesis in this article and in 4 others, graciously published by The Saker and elsewhere, in different languages. You may want to double-check my claim by reading those in English:
“Islam and the West: What Went Wrong and Why”
/islam-and-the-west-what-went-wrong-and-why/
“9/11 and the Green Scare: It’s High Time for a Paradigm Shift”
/9-11-and-the-green-scare-its-high-time-for-a-paradigm-shift/
“The Neoconservatives and the “Coming World”: A response to the questions of a virtual friend”
/the-neoconservatives-and-the-coming-world-a-response-to-the-questions-of-a-virtual-friend/
“The Western roots of “Middle-Eastern” terrorism”
/the-western-roots-of-middle-eastern-terrorism/)
4- As a matter of principle, and except for only one (which I guess I do not need to explain publicly here since it’s a personal conviction), I do not believe in “absolute truths”. I do believe, however, in “relative truths”. One of which is, perhaps, “A few here thought this was a ‘good’, ‘well-balanced’ article”. The evidence and reason for my claim?
First, the “evidence”: So far, the article has been viewed over 10,000 times and counting (on this blog only), and your comment, if I’m not mistaken of course, is as I said the first outspoken criticism of the overall content of this article of mine (and others I referred to above). To the contrary, all of us can review and appreciate the comments that have been published here and there, and I can tell you that I have received very positive reviews of these articles through different means (emails, tweets etc.) from a great number of authors, political personalities, academics etc. One of those —who could hardly be considered as a leftist, conspiracy-believer, or a staunch advocate of Islam— is Dr Moisés Naim who was kind enough to recommend my article to his 222,000+ followers, on his Twitter account (Moisés Naím@MoisesNaim). For those interested in knowing more about this distinguished public figure, no matter what his opinions are, here’s his resume, in his own words: https://www.moisesnaim.com/biography
Second, the “reason”: in my quest for “objectivity” (if at all humanly possible), I have endeavored to quote all kinds of sources, from the extreme right to the extreme left. Moreover, if you had had been kind and patient enough to go through the whole article, you would’ve noticed that almost ALL the quotes and references in my last article are those of Westerners. I have deliberately “repressed” any “Muslim” voice in order, precisely, not to be “biaised” toward the “civilization and culture” of the region of our “one and only small global village” I belong to. The only “Arab” voice I “allowed” is the one of the great Edward Said (who was Christian and American, by the way). For what purpose? Mainly to respond to Samuel Huntington’s thesis of the “Clash of civilizations”, and to quote the wonderful words of Aimé Césaire.
5- In light of the above, could you please explain to us what is it exactly that justifies your “Sadly, I used to have great respect for this site, but this article was so ludicrous I simply couldn’t go on”?
6- Whatever your response, dear Occams —with which, I can tell you right now, I’m not going to argue— I would just like to conclude by saying that I’m luckier than a lot of people. The reason for that? Back in 2014, I had the privilege to converse with Lord Lothian about his outstanding presentation before a distinguished audience at Georgetown University on the situation in the Middle East (a conversation I later included in my book referred to in my article: see footnote number 1 and the text of the conversation: https://www.globalresearch.ca/when-will-the-west-ever-learn-from-history/5618903 ). One of the questions I posed, and the response I got from him, is as follows:
“Amir Nour: What’s your response to those critics according to whom, your “brave” stance is conceived from a Realpolitik perspective, i.e. from the title chosen deploring the “loss” of the Middle East, to the insistence on “perceptions” rather than “realities”, and the concluding remarks highlighting the wish to “win back”, one day, the “lost region”, your pamphlet simply reproduces the Western conventional wisdom on Middle East affairs?
Lord Lothian: Cynicism and scepticism are the traditional and easily discharged weapons of the critics. After forty years in politics they do not bother me. The details of the criticisms set out in this question arise from a misunderstanding of nuance, one which was not lost on my Georgetown audience with their historic perception of winning friends and influencing people. I also needed to find a snappy title to engage American interest – which it did. When I speak of ‘winning back’ I am referring to hearts and minds and trust which in 1916 we might have achieved but which through our subsequent actions we comprehensively squandered and which hopefully it is not yet too late to begin to win back. In truth therefore it wasn’t so much that the West lost the Middle East but that it never had it to lose in the first place. Failure to win might have been a more accurate description but it would not have caught the attention that my title has. Claiming as the critics do that my lecture simply reproduces the Western conventional wisdom on Middle East affairs sits strangely with the criticism I have received from western pundits who feel that I have been most unfair to the West. Being criticised by both sides is not a bad place to be”…
Amir NOUR
It’s rare to see a reply from an author, as most generally ‘hit and run’, or, someone like Mike Adams of Natural News, who, if you deign question his lord regarding any outlandish claim made, he won’t answer you….
He just bans you from his site(s).
As many have discovered. A few of us surmise he is cointel, Limited Hangout, ets, etc. I don’t have the ability to run diagnostics, but it WOULD be interesting to see if CIA-sponsored ‘Goolag’ hosts his site. Given their growing censorship, it would be telling.
On to other matters.
The West has done a remarkable job of making bad guys to justify war, murder, genocide, or simply to ‘test’ new weapons out. Especially ‘Brown people’. Asia, Middle East, Pacific Islands, but as people – even Amerikans (and if they can figure it out, then the rest of the world knew it a LONG time ago) that the ‘terrorists’ were actually OUR terrorists – funded by tax-payers.
Of course, with American …what? 8-second attention span, they quickly forget and go on ‘sponsoring terrorism’.
SAID attention span (and lack of intelligence, propagandized, brainwashed, etc) which allowed such a pathetic and transparent lie such as 9/11 to go on and on, while the rest of the world laughed at such gullibility AND at our ”search for 9/11 mastermind terrorist planner Usama bin Laden” – who had NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11, and was dead not long after, besides.
Even after being treated in a US hospital meeting with his CIA-handlers, did ‘Tim Ossman’ still perish from Marfans Syndrome.
So forgive my cynicism, but when ANYONE, FOR WHATEVER REASON, starts to ‘left-handedly’ refer to the Official Lie as somehow ‘real, ”bin Laden plotted 9/11!”, “We Got Him! (Jesus Tapdancing Christ, was THAT ever the biggest load of horseshit shoveled down the throat of Amerika – and HAPPILY chewed on and swallowed, or what!!???)
How can ANYONE believe that? Just how stupid can Amerikans be?
Well, stupid ENOUGH to believe Zion-shill Mark LeVine.
Oh, LeVine got it right; There IS an Axis of Evil. It’s the US/UK/Israel.
THEY cause all the problems. PERIOD.
Stupid enough to watch a white puff of smoke (Boston), I guess, and believe it was a bomb that “removed limbs from bodies” – but was unable to knock down plastic beverage cups on tables IN FRONT OF THE ‘BOMB’! Or blows glass behind the ‘bomb’……….TOWARDS THE BOMB?
As someone once said (Ray McGovern, ex-CIA analyst, perhaps?); “If Americans had even the most basic knowledge of physics, the lie of 9/11 would never have been believed”.
3 buildings to dust – with 2 aircraft?
Realllllly? How terrrrrrrrribly….interesting. There’s a LOT of organizations out there that could benefit from “al-Qaeda’s” ability to defy physics, you know?
Bury a 400,000lb commercial aircraft from sight, into a small hole?
Or fit another 124′ x 47′ wide aircraft into a 16’ diameter hole? With no damage to the windows on either side! AND leave a PRISTINE, untouched lawn after flying in Ground Effect! WOW!
Defy the planes PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS to perform fighter jet maneuvers? Fly 500+ knows AT SEA LEVEL!
Wow. I’m IMPRESSED!
‘Scripted terror – all of it” ~ Former FBI agent when asked of the ‘terrorist attacks’ in the USA.
Paddock?
Scripted. Took me ALL of 3 seconds to identify a 7.62 belt-fed weapon from the original videos.
What did they go after? Bump stocks. Killed the Hearing Protection Act stone-dead. You ever shoot? A suppressor is a WONDERFUL thing for your ears, but I would imagine you believe – as Hollywood ‘edumucates’ everyone, they’re ‘silencers’, when they actually just lower the Db’s down the no-damage to hearing level.
Parkland. Why are YOU not talking about the 3 other mystery shooters, who were SEEN, and RECORDED, carry what certainly appears to be a bodybag out of a building, escorted by 2 cops, throw the bag into the bed OF AN UNMARKED TRUCK, the driver throws a bunch of trash out the window (evidence being planted of ‘Cruz’?), and they split.
Boston? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease. ‘Chechen terrorists’? “A nation with a collective, room-temp IQ”.
A guy loses 2 legs, but there’s no blood, wheeled a city block, legs DOWN, fully conscious, to MIRACULOUSLY appear a few short weeks later…..
At a basketball game?
And looking completely different?
I would laugh out loud at the Amerikan gullibility if it weren’t so sad. And dangerous.
Orlando? Pfffft. Carrying ‘the injured’ THE WRONG WAY, conveniently PAST the MSM liars, only to set the wounded guy DOWN and stand around when they thought they were off-camera.
It’s allllllllllllllllll a script. Underwear and Shoe Bombers.
And anyone who promotes these lies – even in a left-handed ‘exposure’ kind of fashion which does nothing but promote The Lie, I feel is a shill.
So I’m sorry this is so long, but it’s rare I can directly converse with someone who is promoting a lie for ‘them’. I’ve called out Paul Craig Roberts (who won’t respond, of course) on his CONSTANT reference to ‘the terrorist attacks on 9/11’.
So many times, in fact, that in his last article, he FINALLY referred to 9/11 as something like “too many questions for the Official Narrative to be true”.
GEEE!! YA THINK!??
Israel and the US DID 9/11. Virtually ALL of the problems in the Middle East stem from the Jews and Americans meddling, murder…and genocide.
ALL of the ‘ISIS’ terror attacks are US/Israeli-scripted BS. PERIOD. So-called ISIS would NEVER bite the hand that’s feeding them. PERIOD.
So a final thought/question;
The FACTS and EVIDENCE of 9/11 being a US/Israeli joint operation far outweigh The Official Lie.
You know this. Dr. Roberts knows this. All the shills promoting The Lie know this.
Why are you SO AFRAID to come out and say it?
Are you threatened?
Is there some sort of financial gain (paid for by ‘them’) by publishing the above misdirection?
A lie, carefully wrapped around a truth or two, to give credibility to it all; “Well-sourced and balanced”? Pffftttt. SORRY – I beg to differ, and I’ll base my argument on fact and evidence. A TRUTH will stand on it’s own. A lie has to be carefully concealed.
(I also read your 9/11 Green Scare article. Same takeaway. Oh. And by the way? Before WW2, Amerika had a VERY active hand; Prescott Bush and his oil cronies were selling oil and materiel to Hitler before, during, and after. Good thing a son got elected Prez’ so they could all save hanging – with a pardon!)
As I have also often stated online, the US is the laughing stock of the entire world, but everyone is afraid to laugh out loud for fear of being bombed.
Especially if our owners, Israel – or Mr. Rothschild himself, tell us to.
“And it’s not going to end until the American people stops believing its false narrative and the lies that have given birth to it.”
Well? When are you going to write a short, concise article telling all you reach that 9/11 was done by the US and Israel, facts and evidence prove this “beyond a reasonable doubt”, and it IS the lie from which all this madness stems.
Hey. Time to shit or get off the pot. We’re poised to invade Syria (kicking of WW3) with tank/troop buildup in Jordan, awaiting the NEXT False Flag ‘poison gas attack’ OUR proxy-armies are going to carry out ON INNOCENT CIVILIANS.
Well…..BROWN civilians. Not so important.
It’s past time to choose a side and take a stand.
The most destructive and evil always wins at war. Then writes a history of how they saved the world from evil.