How America is Destroying Itself and the World Order
13:38 22.01.2024 (Updated: 14:44 22.01.2024)
© AP Photo / Ebrahim Noroozi
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Even as NATO's proxy war on Russia is flailing, the US has mired itself in numerous crises around the world.
A potentially catastrophic Middle East war to defend the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, while preparing for a delusional conflict against industrial powerhouse China, and borrowing $3 trillion every year.
All is to prop up an American economy plagued by record homelessness, highest suicide rate since the Great Depression, massive asset bubbles, and a brewing civil war.
The confluence of late-stage capitalism and late-stage imperialism is pushing the US – and its vassals in Europe – into an abyss of self-destructive behavior.
As the saying goes, “Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
US President Joe Biden addresses the nation on the conflict between Israel and Gaza and the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on October 19, 2023
© AFP 2023 JONATHAN ERNST
Hubris Blinds America
The implosion of the American empire has been spectacular and rapid.
Just thirty years ago, the US seemed invincible after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the recipe of “freedom, democracy and capitalism” seemed to have sealed the end of history. In the 1990s, the Internet revolutionized the world, and Wall Street – overlords of the USA – envisioned a world where Americans would engage in highly profitable sectors of the economy, while the poor masses of the Global South would do the dirty manufacturing and low-end service jobs.
Intoxicated with complacency and misled by groupthink, US elites made three strategic errors as they:
Deindustrialized America and offshored even high-end manufacturing
Financialized the economy and spurred casino capitalism
Embraced a predatory system and destroyed the middle class
The first stumble in this delusional journey occurred when the so-called “dot-com” bubble burst in 2001. If there was any doubt about the wisdom behind the fluff economy, it was put to rest in 2008, when the Great Financial Crisis crashed the economies of the US and Europe. In the next fifteen years, US debt grew twice as fast as US GDP. Meanwhile, China grew exponentially to surpass the entire EU’s economy, which had remained stagnant. By 2016, China also surpassed the US in PPP GDP.
China-EU GDP 2008-2022
© Photo : S.L.Kanthan
Similarly, India caught up with France and the UK by 2017, in terms of GDP. And the Russian economy, under Putin, grew staggering ten-fold between 2000 and 2013. A multipolar world was emerging.
However, the US was blinded by hubris, Cold War mentality, and perhaps racism. From experts to politicians and media to the public, nobody could believe the rise of China. “China will stumble, China must stumble,” Americans assured one other. And they found creative excuses for every success of China, even as China became #1 in one metric after another – from steel industry to automobile production, e-commerce to Fortune 500 firms, 5G to AI, smartphones to EV, TikTok to hypersonic missiles, and patents to scientific publications. Communist China was beating capitalist America in every sector imaginable.
If that was not enough, there was another potential threat to American hegemony – Putin’s Russia. Wall Street and globalists – with the help of a traitorous fifth column – had hoped to dismantle Russia once and for all in the 1990s. Thanks to the neoliberal shock doctrine imposed by the “Harvard Boys,” Russia’s GDP declined by 40%, poverty skyrocketed, critical industrial sectors vanished, and Russia was losing the CIA-instigated war in Chechnya.
However, Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000 and reversed the calamitous decline. The economy boomed at an average annual growth rate of 20% for 13 years, inflation subsided, foreign exchange reserves grew from virtually zero to $600 billion, and the middle class grew rapidly. Russia prospered and became once again the world’s leader not only in oil and gas but also in strategic products such as wheat and fertilizer. Putin made Russia diplomatically and militarily a superpower once again. Russia’s trade with Europe skyrocketed; and visionary Putin cemented strategic partnership with China, understanding the rise of a multipolar world in the 21st century. Putin also brought back Christianity and family values, and built/renovated 10,000 churches and monasteries.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin sends New Year address to the nation on New Year’s eve. Archive photo.
© Sputnik / Mikhail Klimentyev
/ Eventually, when US politicians could no longer ignore the success of China and Russia, they started illegal and unethical hybrid wars on geopolitical competitors. And the US started breaking every international norm and the so-called rules-based order.
Rules for Thee, Not for Me
While geopolitics is Machiavellian, the US took it too far, losing all sense of right and wrong. Believing that they can control the narratives worldwide, the imperialist cabal in Washington DC and New York decided to break all the rules and norms to achieve global domination, including full-spectrum dominance in military.
The list of American imperialist and illegal actions over the last thirty years is quite astounding. In 1992, the Pentagon even created a 46-page Pax Americana memo which was leaked to the NY Times. Rejecting a multilateral and democratic approach, the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” described how the US should remain as a sole superpower, while ensuring that no geopolitical rivals such as Russia, China, Iran or even Germany emerge in the future.
While some leaders like Senator Joe Biden paid lip service condemning the memo, the actions of the empire spoke louder. Just a couple of months after the memo, the US started laying the groundwork for NATO expansion. In 1996, Bill Clinton openly invited former Warsaw Pact countries and post-Soviet republics. In 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO.
The US was also busy bombing Iraq and Serbia in the 1990s. Brutal US sanctions killed at least half a million Iraqi children. In total violation of international laws, the US repurposed the Mujahideen from Afghanistan and sent them to Chechnya, Kosovo, Xinjiang, and many parts of Central Asia. The Islamist jihadists became the global proxy warriors for the American empire – and they continue to be so till this day.
In the late 1990s, a cabal of warmongers such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richar Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Robert Kagan – husband of Victoria Nuland – created a think tank called the Project for New American Century (PNAC).
In September 2000, they published a rather dark white paper titled, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” In this document, for example, they casually talk about the need for race-specific biological weapons.
More importantly, they urged vast investment in the American military and major wars in the Middle East. As for how to overcome the reluctance of Americans to support such mad aggression during peaceful times, they had a suggestion: “a catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” Lo and behold, exactly one year later, 9/11 happened. How lucky for the imperialists!
Many people from PNAC ended up in major leadership roles under the Bush administration. Once in power, they blatantly lied about the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and invaded Iraq. As General Wesley Clark revealed a few years later, these neocons had concocted concrete plans in 2001 to attack 7 sovereign nations in 5 years – Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Somalia, and Iran.
All these attacks would be illegal, unethical, immoral and in violation of international laws. However, the warmongers in the US did not care, since nobody could stop them. These people have the same moral compass as those in the mafia.
The US has been waging wars of aggression non-stop for the last thirty years – either directly attacking weaker countries such as Iraq and Libya or perpetrating proxy wars through terrorists (against Syria) and neo-Nazis (in Ukraine, against Russia). In Asia, the US is arming Taiwan in violation of one-China principle and is rearming Japan after creating loopholes in the constitution that the US wrote for them after WW2. After sabotaging peace talks with North Korea, the US is preparing South Korea for a war. In the Philippines, the US is building new military bases that are aimed at China.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and US Vice-President Joe Biden pose for the media prior to a meeting on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016.
© AP Photo / Michel Euler
In the Middle East, it is unclear if the US and Israel colluded to create the current conflagration. Rather than working on a statehood for Palestine, the “United States of Israel” is slaughtering tens of thousands of women and children in Gaza, attacking the Houthis in Yemen, bombing Syria (which has not attacked Israel), and is allegedly preparing for an invasion of Lebanon. Perhaps, the eventual goal is to start a consequential war against Iran, which has been Israel’s enemy #1 for a long time. In Iraq, the government has repeatedly demanded the US military to leave, but the US simply refuses. Similarly, the US is occupying illegal military bases in Syria and stealing oil.
The above list is only American wars and does not include color revolutions, hard and soft coups, and countless coercions behind closed doors. Here are some examples from the last two decades:
In Brazil, the US (NSA) leaked a misleading phone call and ousted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (because she wanted closer relations with China and Russia)
In Bolivia and Honduras, the US enabled military coups. How about that for spreading democracy?
In Iran, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Serbia, and Hong Kong, the US funded protests and attempted regime changes. Fortunately, they all failed.
The entire Arab Spring was an American project. It led to many regime changes, but disastrous results for the people of the region.
In Xinjiang, the US funded and armed separatists, who were flown into Syria and trained with Al Qaeda* and ISIS*. The goal was to eventually send them back to China.
In Ukraine, the US State Department and George Soros – CIA frontman – spent two decades and billions of dollars nurturing neo-Nazis and spreading anti-Russia sentiments. The US orchestrated two color revolutions in Ukraine – in 2004 and 2014. The second one led to persecutions of ethnic Russians all over Ukraine, and what could be considered as genocide of ethnic Russians in the Donbass region. The US also engineered the current conflict by sabotaging all chances for peace.
As you can see, this is complete anarchy and disregard for laws, rules and morality. This is also utter hypocrisy, since the US would not tolerate any such actions from other countries.
Just imagine any other country doing similar things, especially in Western Hemisphere or in an American vassal. For example, think about China sponsoring color revolutions in South Korea; Russia arming anti-US rebels in Mexico; or, Iran invading Kuwait and establishing a military base. For most people, such scenarios would be unthinkable, only because we are so used to the US being the sole bully on the global stage.
Then there are situations where the US demands others subject themselves to certain international organizations and treaties, while the US exempts itself. For example, the US does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and even threatened to arrest the judges if the ICC looked into US war crimes. However, the US loved the ICC’s farcical indictment of Russian president Putin after a new puppet chief judge was appointed.
Similarly, the US and its vassals – UK, France and Germany – have already said they will not accept the verdict of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) if Israel is found guilty of genocide in Gaza. The West will accept only verdicts they like!
The US has refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), but harasses China about it. Also, recently, the U.S. just added one million square km of ocean floor to itself, without asking the UN or any other country. It must be nice to have such wonderful privileges of an empire.
Prior to the illegal war on Iraq and during the proxy war on Syria, the US threatened and bullied OPCW inspectors to falsify reports about Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad having possessed or used chemical weapons. Similarly, when the UN Human Rights group went to Xinjiang and found that there was no “genocide,” the US viciously attacked the chief, Michelle Bachelet, until she wrote a new report which said that “human rights violations MAY have occurred.”
Regardless of these constant violations of obvious international laws and ethics, US politicians and media cannot stop bloviating about rules-based order.
Fake Democracy & Fake Freedom
If the foreign policies are hypocritical and cynical, the domestic policies in the US and the EU are no exceptions. While claiming to spread democracy and freedom, Western elites consistently deprive their own people of freedom and democracy.
In the US, there are all sorts of censorship and propaganda that I described in my previous Sputnik article. As for the elections in the US, any outsider can easily observe that there is only one party in the US. Both Democrats and Republicans are controlled by the same banksters, corporations and oligarchs. Wikileaks emails revealed, for example, how Hillary Clinton was chosen as the nominee even before the primaries began – and Bernie Sanders was simply a “controlled opposition.”
A study by Princeton University revealed that the US is an oligarchy that is of the 1%, for the 1% and by the 1%. However, the US pretends to be the beacon of democracy and justifies all its wars with a fake slogan of “spreading freedom and democracy.” The US quickly rejects any democratic outcomes it does not like – for example, the Crimea referendum in 2014. At home, many Americans are convinced that the 2020 elections were rigged against Donald Trump, who is also now being persecuted like in a Banana Republic.
Europe is much worse than the US in terms of free speech, elections and democracy. Free speech is highly restricted in Europe, and people get arrested for simple posts on social media. France pretends to be a place of “Liberté,” while trying to ban protests that are pro-Palestine. In Germany, people get arrested for simply expressing support for Russia on social media or merely holding a sign that says, “Stop the genocide in Gaza.” Germany is even trying to ban AfD, the most popular political party now – just like Zelensky banned all opposition parties. What a beautiful garden of democracy and freedom!
As for the EU itself, it is an undemocratic and authoritarian hellhole. European citizens get to vote for only the European Parliament, which meets once a month and acts as a rubber stamp. The real power lies with the European Commission and the Council of EU, whose leaders like Ursula von der Leyen are appointed by oligarchs (with approval from the US) and not by the people. Most European countries did not even have referendums to determine if their country should join the EU, which is also like Hotel California – you can become a member but never leave.
Given all these troubling facts, it’s really paradoxical that Europe joins the US as a sidekick in all the illegal wars around the world. Now, the EU is also considering expanding NATO to Asia to start a war with China, a country that has somehow managed to be incredibly successful without the dysfunctional democracy and freedom of Europe.
Conclusion
The hypocritical and rogue American Empire is on the cusp of collapsing. The fact that Russia has not only withstood all the US sanctions but has single-handedly defeated the trio of US, EU and NATO is a wake-up call for the rest of the world. The world now sees the US as a dying empire.
In the Middle East, the US has two options – either force Israel into negotiations with Palestinians or engage in a bloody war that would set the whole region on fire, turning the entire global Muslim community against the US for generations. Furthermore, it’s only a matter of time that the US military will be ejected from Iraq and Syria – another embarrassment to the mighty superpower.
The final nail on the coffin will be the dedollarization movement, propelled by BRICS expansion. Within a couple of years, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members will be selling oil for Chinese yuan and other currencies. Then, the entire world will find alternatives to the US dollar and the SWIFT system to trade all goods and services. The dramatic story of the American Empire gone wild will conclude with its peaceful defeat by the Global South.
*terror organisations banned in Russia and other states
