At the NATO summit in the Hague, almost all European nations reached an agreement to raise military spending to 5% of each county’s GDP. This comes as President Trump said the U.S. would not come to the defense of other NATO nations unless they hit 5% in military spending. “Trump wants to move towards a much, much more instrumental and crudely material, transactional politics,” says Richard Seymour, writer, broadcaster and activist. “I think this is a version of imperial decline that Trump is trying to manage.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Noam Chomsky offered a rule of thumb for predicting the ‘mainstream’ response to crimes against humanity:

‘There is a way to calibrate reaction. If it’s a crime of somebody else, particularly an enemy, then we’re utterly outraged. If it’s our own crime, either comparable or worse, either it’s suppressed or denied. That works with almost 100 percent precision.’ (Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, Monthly Review Press, 2010, p.27)

Now is an excellent time to put Chomsky’s claim to the test.

A BBC headline over a photograph of an emaciated Palestinian baby read: ‘“Situation is dire” – BBC returns to Gaza baby left hungry by Israeli blockade’

‘Left hungry’? Was she peckish? Was her stomach rumbling? The headline led readers far from the reality of the cataclysm described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 12 May:

‘The entire 2.1 million population of Gaza is facing prolonged food shortages, with nearly half a million people in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death.’

Another BBC headline read: ‘Red Cross says at least 21 killed and dozens shot in Gaza aid incident’

Given everything we have seen over the last 20 months, it was obvious that the mysterious ‘incident’ had been yet another Israeli massacre. Blame had indeed been pinned on ‘Israeli gunfire’ by Palestinian sources, the BBC noted, cautioning:

‘But the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said findings from an initial inquiry showed its forces had not fired at people while they were near or within the aid centre.’

Again, after 20 months, we know such Israeli denials are automatic, reflexive, signifying nothing. More deflection and denial followed from the BBC. We had to keep reading to the end of the article to find a comment that rang true:

‘Mohammed Ghareeb, a journalist in Rafah, told the BBC that Palestinians had gathered near the aid centre run by the GHF when Israeli tanks approached and opened fire on the crowd.

‘Mr Ghareeb said the crowd of Palestinians were near Al-Alam roundabout around 04:30 local time (02:30 BST), close to the aid centre run by GHF, shortly before Israeli tanks appeared and opened fire.’

A surreal piece in the Guardian by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett clearly meant well:

‘I have seen images on my phone screen these past months that will haunt me as long as I live. Dead, injured, starving children and babies. Children crying in pain and in fear for their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. A small boy shaking in terror from the trauma of an airstrike. Scenes of unspeakable horror and violence that have left me feeling sick.’

Such honest expressions of personal anguish are welcome, of course, but the fact is that the word ‘Israel’ appeared nowhere in Cosslett’s article. How is that possible? Of the mass slaughter, Cosslett asked: ‘What is it doing to us as a society?’ Her own failure to shame the Israeli genocidaires, or even to name them, gives an idea.

The bias is part of a consistent trend. The Glasgow Media Group examined four weeks (7 October – 4 November 2023) of BBC One daytime coverage of Gaza to identify which terms were used by journalists themselves – i.e. not in direct or reported statements – to describe Israeli and Palestinian deaths. They found that ‘murder’, ‘murderous’, ‘mass murder’, ‘brutal murder’ and ‘merciless murder’ were used a total of 52 times by journalists to refer to Israelis’ deaths but never in relation to Palestinian deaths. BBC insiders have described how the corporation’s reporting is being ‘silently shaped by even the possibility of anger from certain groups, foreign governments’.

The bias is not, of course, limited to Gaza. The BBC’s Diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams reported a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian bomber base, noting the ‘sheer audacity’ and ‘ingenuity’ of an attack that was ‘at the very least, a spectacular propaganda coup’.

Imagine the grisly fate that would await a BBC journalist who described an attack on the West in similar terms.

The exalted BBC Verify, no less, began a report on the same ‘daring’ attack: ‘It was an attack of astonishing ingenuity – unprecedented, broad, and 18 months in the making.’

Now imagine a BBC report lauding the ‘astonishing ingenuity’ of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

In similar vein, Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s veteran International Editor, described Israel’s pager attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria in September 2024 as ‘a tactical victory to Israel’ and ‘the sort of spectacular coup you would read about in a thriller’. Again, imagine Bowen describing a Russian attack on Ukraine as a ‘spectacular coup’ worthy of a thriller.

On X, the former Labour Party, now independent, MP Zarah Sultana commented over a harrowing image taken from viral footage showing a Palestinian toddler trying to escape from a fiercely burning building:

‘This photo should be on the front page of every major British newspaper.

‘But it won’t be — because, like the political class, they’re complicit.

‘It’s their genocide too.’

‘Very Modest Opposition’ From ‘The Morally Enlightened’

People utterly aghast at the political and media apologetics for, indifference to and complicity in the Gaza genocide – that is, people who missed the merciless devastation, for example, of Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria – might like to focus on an idea as unthinkable as it is undeniable. In their classic book, The Politics of Genocide, the late Edward S. Herman and David Peterson commented:

‘The conquest of the Western Hemisphere and the wiping-out of its indigenous peoples were carried out over many decades, with very modest opposition from within the morally enlightened Christian world. The African slave trade resulted in millions of deaths in the initial capture and transatlantic crossing, with a cruel degradation for the survivors.’ (Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, Monthly Review Press, 2010, p.22, our emphasis)

If the ‘very modest opposition’ was ugly, consider the underlying worldview:

‘The steady massacres and subjugation of black Africans within Africa itself rested on “an unquestioning belief in the innate superiority of the white race, … the very bedrock of imperial attitudes,” essential to making the business of mass slaughter “morally acceptable,” John Ellis writes. “At best, the Europeans regarded those they slaughtered with little more than amused contempt.”’ (p.22)

Has anything changed? You may be different, we may be different, the journalists cited above may be different, but as a society, as a collective, ‘amused contempt’ is an entrenched part of ‘our’ response to the fate of ‘our’ victims.

The brutality is locked in by an additional layer of self-deception. A key requirement of the human ego’s need to feel ‘superior’ is the need to feel morally superior. Thus, ‘our’ military ‘superiority’ is typically viewed as a function of ‘our’ moral ‘superiority’ – ‘we’ are more ‘organised’, ‘sophisticated’, ‘civilised’, and therefore more powerful. But a problem arises: how, as morally ‘superior’ beings, are ‘we’ to justify ‘our’ mass killing of other human beings for power, profit and land? How to reconcile such an obvious contradiction? Herman and Peterson explained:

‘This dynamic has always been accompanied by a process of projection, whereby the victims of slaughter and dispossession are depicted as “merciless Indian savages” (the Declaration of Independence) by the racist savages whose superior weapons, greed, and ruthlessness gave them the ability to conquer, destroy, and exterminate.’ (p.22)

‘They’ are ‘merciless’, ‘they’ are savages’; we are ‘God-fearing’, ‘good’ people. The projection is so extreme, that, with zero self-awareness, ‘we’ can damn ‘them’ for committing exactly the crimes ‘we’ are committing on a far greater scale.

Thus, on 9 October 2023, Yoav Gallant, then Israeli Defence Minister, announced that he had ‘ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed.’

Barbaric inhumanity, one might think. And yet, this was the rationale:

‘We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.’

In his book, Terrorism: How the West Can Win, published in 1986, Benjamin Netanyahu, now Israel’s Prime Minister, wrote:

‘In 1944 the RAF set out to bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen. The bombers, however, missed and instead hit a hospital, killing scores of children. This was a tragic accident of war. But in no sense can it be called terrorism. What distinguishes terrorism is the willful and calculated choice of innocents as targets. When terrorists machine-gun a passenger waiting area or set off bombs in a crowded shopping center, their victims are not accidents of war but the very objects of the terrorists’ assault.’ (Benjamin Netanyahu, Terrorism: How the West Can Win, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986, p.9, our emphasis)

Perhaps a plaque bearing these sage words can be sited atop one of the piles of rubble where Gaza’s hospitals once stood. Last month, WHO reported 697 attacks on health facilities in Gaza since October 2023. As a result, at least 94% of all hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed. In March 2025, a United Nations investigation concluded that Israel had committed ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza by systematically destroying its reproductive healthcare facilities.

Netanyahu has himself denounced the Palestinians as ‘Amalek’ – a reference to a well-known biblical story in which the Israelites are ordered by God to wipe an entire people from the face of the earth: men, women, children – everyone.

Denying Genocide Denial

Another useful way to test Chomsky’s assertion that ‘our’ crimes will be ‘suppressed or denied’ is to check the willingness of ‘mainstream’ media to mention the problem of ‘genocide denial’ in relation to Gaza.

As veteran Media Lens readers will know, the term is routinely deployed with great relish by critics of dissidents challenging the West’s enthusiasm for Perpetual War. In 2011, the Guardian’s George Monbiot devoted an entire column to naming and shaming a ‘malign intellectual subculture that seeks to excuse savagery by denying the facts’. ‘The facts’ being ‘the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda.’ Monbiot accused Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, David Peterson, John Pilger, and Media Lens of being political commentators who ‘take the unwarranted step of belittling the acts of genocide committed by opponents of the western powers’.

One can easily imagine a parallel universe in which journalists are having a field day denouncing the endless examples of ‘mainstream’ reporters and commentators belittling, denying or apologising for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Last month, the Telegraph published a remarkable piece by Colonel Richard Kemp asserting that the Israeli army ‘has been waging this hugely complex war for 19 months with a combination of fighting prowess and humanitarian restraint that no other army could match’.

Israel, it seems, has ‘been so determined to avoid killing the hostages and where possible to avoid harm to civilians in line with their scrupulously observed obligations under International Humanitarian Law’.

We can assess the evidence for this ‘scrupulously observed’ restraint in recently updated Google ‘before and after’ images of Gaza, revealing Israel’s erasure, not just of Gazan towns, but of its agriculture. Last month, the UN reported that fully 95 per cent of Gaza’s agricultural land has been rendered unusable by Israeli attacks, with 80 per cent of crop land damaged. According to the report, only 4.6 per cent of it can be cultivated, while 71.2 per cent of Gaza’s greenhouses and 82.8 per cent of its agricultural wells have been destroyed by Israeli attacks.

Using the ProQuest media database, we searched UK national newspapers for mentions of the term ‘Gaza’ and ‘genocide denial’ over the last twelve months. We found not a single mention.

No surprise, given that, as Chomsky noted, ‘our’ crimes are systematically ‘suppressed or denied’. Why would the press expose their own genocide denials?

There is another possibility, of course. Could the lack of usage instead be explained by the fact that what is happening in Gaza is not, in fact, a genocide? After all, doesn’t genocide mean killing, or trying to kill, all the people in a given group?

Answers were supplied in a report published by Amnesty International last December, ‘Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory: “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza’. The report concluded:

‘Amnesty International has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel committed, between 7 October 2023 and July 2024, prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part. Amnesty International has also concluded that these acts were committed with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such, who form a substantial part of the Palestinian population, which constitutes a group protected under the Genocide Convention.

‘Accordingly, Amnesty International concludes that following 7 October 2023, Israel committed and is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.’

Amnesty explained the reasoning:

‘Under Article II of the Genocide Convention, five specific acts constitute the underlying criminal conduct of the crime of genocide, including: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Each of these acts must be committed with a general intent to commit the underlying act. However, to constitute the crime of genocide, these acts must also be committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such…” This specific intent is what distinguishes genocide from other crimes under international law.’ (Our emphasis)

The report added a key clarification:

‘Importantly, the perpetrator does not need to succeed in destroying the targeted group, either in whole or in part, for genocide to be established. International jurisprudence recognizes that “the term ‘in whole or in part’ refers to the intent, as opposed to the actual destruction”. Equally important, finding or inferring specific intent does not require finding a single or sole intent. A state’s actions can serve the dual goal of achieving a military result and destroying a group as such. Genocide can also be the means for achieving a military result. In other words, a finding of genocide may be drawn when the state intends to pursue the destruction of a protected group in order to achieve a certain military result, as a means to an end, or until it has achieved it.’ (Our emphasis)

As Amnesty noted, other organisations have arrived at similar conclusions:

‘In the context of the proceedings it initiated against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ)… South Africa also provided its own legal analysis of Israel’s actions in Gaza, determining that they constitute genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Other states have since made public their own legal determination of genocide as part of their applications to the ICJ to intervene in the case. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied since 1967 reached similar conclusions in her reports in 2024. Meanwhile, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food concluded that Israel “has engaged in an intentional starvation campaign against the Palestinian people which evidences genocide and extermination”.’

Israel’s crimes clearly do qualify as a genocide. The refusal of the press to even discuss the possibility of genocide denial in relation to this assault points to their own complicity and culpability.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

China’s mixed and managed economy is designed to match its stage of development and is well managed. The U.S. non-managed economy has no design and does not match its advanced stage of economic development. China uses exports to grow its economy and limit debt. The U.S. runs severe deficits in its trade balance and needs a growing debt to finance the trade deficit and to increase the GDP. The rapidly growing debt portends economic decline, and there is no certified way to escape the predicament. U.S. hegemony and world leadership appears doomed. The sooner the U.S. leaders recognize the dangers and readjust the economy, the less will be the slide. More on this later. Facts and statistics supply the proof that the PRC has successfully met the challenges.

Overly contentious USA

Using sanctions from legislative directives, rather than pursuing cooperative efforts to combat China’s rise to the world’s number one industrial power, the U.S motivates China to become self-sufficient in technological applications, temporarily interrupts China’s advances, and eventually causes havoc to American companies

Citing security concerns, the U.S. Congress, in 2019, passed the National Defense Authorization Act and essentially banned use of telecommunication equipment from 5G network pioneer Huawei and smartphone manufacturer ZTE. In June 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated ZTE a national security threat. The security concerns proceeded from a possibility that the Chinese government could demand the habits of American citizens, similar to the information that Google and a host of advertising firms gather from internet searchers.

Huawei is of more major significance, but ZTE’s shrugging off the sanctions deserves mention. Its steady revenue growth until facing competition from other companies, relates its success.

This telecom company entered the smartphone market in 2010 and now has the 12th spot in the listing of the Largest Smartphone Manufacturers & Brands in the World. ZTE is also the 6th largest supplier in the Global 5G Infrastructure Market.

Huawei, global leader in development of 5G networks and China’s technology powerhouse, reeled from U.S. sanctions and stumbled as a boxer from an unaware punch. Predictions had Huawei barely surviving. Labelled as a company the U.S. could not do with, Huawei is now the company the world cannot do without. Refuting U.S. attempts to restrict its advances, Huawei expanded into new markets, into new industries, and developed unique alternatives to the denied technologies.

After years of “barely surviving,” Huawei is a leading network company on the globe, having constructed approximately 30% of worldwide 5G base stations, and is fourth in global smartphone manufacturing. After losing access to Google’s Android and Oracle’s software, Huawei developed its own operating system, Harmony OS, which has become the second most popular mobile operating system in China and, by 2025, was installed in over 900 million devices.

In 2022, the Commerce Department informed NVidia and AMD to restrict exports of AI-related chips to China, and informed chip equipment makers — Lam Research, Applied Materials and KLA — to restrict sending tools to the PRC for manufacturing advanced chips. China’s tech giant responded by challenging NVidia artificial intelligence dominance with its Ascend 910D AI processor chip, which “reflects China’s strategic push to develop indigenous semiconductor capabilities.” The U.S. did not respond to Huawei’s advance with its own technology advancements and again responded with threats. On May 15, 2025, the Trump administration warned that using Huawei’s AI chips might violate US export laws.

Ignoring U.S. threats, Huawei expanded use of its chips into the automotive industry and set a new standard for smart driving and self-driving technology.

Huawei’s ambitious undertaking includes the introduction of cutting-edge smart vehicles equipped with advanced autonomous driving technologies. The company is leveraging its prowess in artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to enhance vehicle performance and safety features. With a focus on seamless connectivity and user experience, Huawei is positioning itself as a significant player in the highly sought-after smart driving space, previously dominated by traditional automotive giants and tech firms like Tesla.

In August 2023, President Biden issued an Executive Order “Addressing United States Investments in Certain National Security Technologies and Products in Countries of Concern.” The order prohibited U.S. investments in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence technologies in China. In November 2024, “The U.S. reportedly ordered TSMC to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers that are often used in artificial intelligence applications.”

As a result, Xiaomi, a leading smartphone manufacturer, which has expanded into electric SUV car production, developed its 3-nanometre XRing O1 system-on-a-chip (SoC). Following Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, Xiaomi became the fourth tech company in the world to design a 3-nanometer mobile SoC for mass production. A Chinese company can now compete with American companies in selling the unique chips, and Qualcomm, which has been a long-standing supplier of mobile chips to Xiaomi, might have its sales disrupted.

Statistics tell the story

What have all these underhanded means to stifle the Chinese economy accomplished? Statistics in the following table tell the story. The Chinese economy surpassed the U.S. economy in 2022 and is leaving Uncle Sam far behind.

The U.S. has a higher GDP than China. China has a higher GDP/PPP. Unlike nominal GDP, which uses current exchange rates, GDP/PPP adjusts for differences in price levels between countries and provides a more realistic measure of the value of goods and services produced. Another consideration is the value given to components of the GDP. Capital, hard goods, and agriculture supply the most needed wants to a community, and their purchases play a more significant role in the economy. The service economy, a paramount feature of the U.S. economy, exaggerates its GDP. One dollar of purchase in goods production requires time for feedback to the manufacturer before other goods are replenished and additional purchases augment the GDP. Purchases in the service economy quickly pass the same money from one service provider to another and elevate the GDP. Industrial output, whether for domestic or foreign use, more appropriately demonstrates the robustness of an economy. China leads the United States in industrial output and demonstrated robustness by becoming the leading manufacturer and exporter of automobiles.

A comparison between two dynamos of each nation, U.S. Tesla and China BYD, automobile manufacturers and innovators that rose rapidly against established competitors, complete the story. BYD, which started at about the same time as Tesla, has surpassed Tesla in automobile sales.

BYD Revenue

Tesla Revenue

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More than that, BYD has accomplished what was never considered possible; with a fully charged battery and a full tank of gas, unbiased testing of its new hybrid auto technology showed a driving range of 1,305 miles before charge or fill up. Its fully electric models use advanced sodium ion batteries and, in 5 minutes, can be charged to obtain a 250 mile range. A vertically integrated company, which manufactures its parts and is a leading provider of electric car batteries, BYD sells its autos at the lowest prices in China.

Revisions by BYD include paring the price of its Seagull hatchback to 55,800 yuan ($7,780), a 20% reduction to a model that was already the carmaker’s cheapest and one that had garnered global attention for its sub-$10,000 price tag. The Seal dual-motor hybrid sedan (direct competitor to the $37,000 Tesla Model 3) saw the biggest price cut at 34%, or by 53,000 yuan to 102,800 yuan ($14,333). (ED: These may be temporary price cuts.)

Fatal Decline of the Imperial Power

The U.S. cannot compete with or contain China. Using China as a scapegoat for its global economic decline has proved counterproductive. Better for the U.S. to cooperate with the PRC, realistically examine its economy, become aware of its limitations, and take decisive action to prevent a fatal decline.

The hindrances to economic progress is fourfold:

(1) Debt drives the economy and the debt has become unmanageable.
(2) Manufacturers have established offshore facilities to open new markets and to compete more effectively.
(3) Off shore production and having the dollar as an international currency has produced a high trade deficit.
(4) U.S. markets in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America have eroded.

Debt drives the U.S. economy and, the two charts indicate that without increasing the exorbitant debt, the economy will stagnate.

GDP/PPP

All Sectors Debt

Given a money supply to purchase goods and services, how can production and eventual sales of goods and services advance without increases in the money supply? One way is to increase the velocity of money, which occurred with on-time inventory, credit card purchasing, and computer speedup of financial transactions. These phenomena occurred during past decades and exploded the GDP. Another means is by having a positive trade balance; selling goods externally. If these means are not occurring, and they no longer are, increases in the money supply are required to increase production and sell additional goods.

U.S. goods trade deficit increased in 2024 to a record $1.2 trillion, and, although many economists excuse the trade deficit, saying that,

a trade deficit can only arise if foreigners invest more in the US than Americans invest abroad. In other words, a country can only have a trade deficit if it also has an equally sized investment surplus. The US is able to sustain a large trade deficit because so many foreigners are eager to invest here,

is more a rationalization than a reality. The trade deficit arose because American industry found it more profitable to produce overseas and made the dollar the international currency. As an international currency, the dollar is in demand and its exchange rate is high compared to other currencies. The strong dollar raises the prices of U.S. goods, makes its exports expensive and its imports cheap. Yes, the balance of payments must be equalized, and the dollars return as either purchase of government securities ─ one principal reason for rise in government debt ─ or purchase of U.S. assets. The former has become unwieldly, leading to high interest rates and the latter gives foreign interests increased power in the American system. Having a positive balance of trade reduces government debt and foreign influence.

Government debt is not the total problem. A system that exists by debt is the real problem. For a free wheeling and profit first economy that generates huge trade deficits to grow, the money supply must grow. Because money is created by either bank loans (debt) or Federal Reserve borrowings from the Treasury (debt), all money is debt. For the economy to continually grow, debt must continually grow. Soon, financing the debt and its increasing interest rates will be a difficult problem. Credit will freeze, loans will default, and the money supply will shrink. Boom will become bust. The United States has no choice but to have its economy more managed and align government and industry in common goals that correct the trend to a fatal decline.

Tariffs as a government money raiser and incentive to produce locally will be another tax on the American consumer and will not stimulate private investment in internal production to replace foreign imports. So, why not maintain low priced imports and tax the consumer for another goal ─ government investment in competitive industries. Cooperation between government and industry, rather than free-wheeling economics will enable more rational decisions and predictable operations.

The United States pioneered the global economy but globalization is no longer a perfect fit for the economically mature nation. Markets once lost are usually lost for a long time. Preserving present markets and finding niche markets for specialized goods, which the omnipresent U.S. economy has many, will stabilize exports.

History shows that private industry has never been the source of solutions to economic lapses. Changes in life style and a return to the cohesion and social legislation that characterized the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era might solve the economic, social, and political declines predicted for America’s future. The democratic socialization of America is begging to begin.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This is exactly what has happened, as the US president Trump has said:

“The US president on Tuesday reiterated his claims on Canada’s territory as he increased tariffs, threatening to bring the country’s economy to its knees…. Mr. Trump has made repeated comments about Canada becoming America’s 51st state since winning the election in November, and last month specifically told the country’s departing prime minister, Justin Trudeau, that he did not believe that the border treaty between the two nations was valid.” (“Trump Intensifies Statehood Threats in Attack on Canada”, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, 11 March 2025, New York Times)

The Canadian people and politicians certainly are not taking this lightly. Many in the USA, seem to think this is more of Trump’s irrational ravings, “crazy things Trump says and does not mean”.  But the word border is a red flag alarm in political terms as most of the world’s great wars have concerned borders.

Astoundingly, Trump is going after the US’s long-standing good neighbour, political ally and, most important and commercial partner. Adding insult to injury, he spews all sorts of lies and insults about Canada.  In his ravings he has also physically threatened Mexico, Panama and Greenland.

Canadians, taking Trump at his word, are furious. The upsurge of spontaneous boycotts of US goods and services, of cancelled trips to the US, of flag waving and assertions of nationalism, of booing US sports teams, is a phenomenon that has spread throughout this vast country. Rarely has a unity of federal, provincial and municipal governments been so solid and public in Canada.  Indeed, politicians would risk their positions if they did not respond to the passionate solidarity that voters are demanding. “Canadian observers say their outrage at Trump’s attacks have fueled unprecedented levels of unity and collective defiance.” (Washington Post, M. Powers, 20 March 2025) It has prompted the Canadian Conservative Party leader, P. Poilievre, who has been constantly emulating Trump, to do an about-face and now is trying desperately to distance himself from that toxic leader.

Until now, Canadians did not feel the need to assert their nationalism. But this has changed, and quickly with the nation’s, borders, economy, way of life, and sovereignty threatened by a US president, a compulsive liar, who incapable of empathy, has a tendency towards malice and shows astounding ignorance in his stream of pronouncements. He creates chaos quite deliberately to intimidate and dominate.

Although some in the US have spoken out in defence of Canada, the response so far has been muted. Canadians are realizing that many of those they thought were life-long friends are in fact vipers, and they feel stabbed in the back. In these past years, Canadian political elites have followed US foreign policies indiscriminately, especially in Latin America. They did the dirty work for the US especially in adventures of “regime change”. This besmirched Canada’s reputation, and it has been seen as a lapdog to US imperialism. For example, Canada’s influential deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland led the extreme right wing, anti-democratic Group of Lima against Venezuela, a country that has done no wrong to Canada, but did it to support US attempts at regime change in Venezuela.

Canadians have woken up to the frighting prospect that the US has turned its sights on Canada.  It sees the boot of imperialism on its own neck as its sovereignty, economy, and very existence as a nation threatened by the Americans.

Canada is country that emerged from the circumstances of a people who pointedly did not want to join the United States: a combination of English settlers who were loyal to the King and the Quebecois who would not relinquish their French language and culture. Not being Americans has been a sine qua non for Canadians.

The indigenous peoples were involved in this dispute, taking part in the struggles to be separate from the emerging USA. Undoubtedly indigenous peoples on both sides of the border have withstood much hardship and injustices. However, it is rarely in dispute that the First Nations of Canada have fared better than their kin to the south. “Saskatchewan First Nations Chief has said: ‘Our message is clear: our sovereignty isn’t negotiable.”  Indigenous leaders in Saskatchewan see the U.S. president’s threats to make Canada a 51st state as uninformed about Treaty agreements and First Nations’ inherent sovereignty. “(CBC. D. Patterson, 24 Feb. 2025)

Trump has surrounded himself of sycophant enablers, people short on political acumen and experience who have proceeded to dismantle key US institutions. With 13 billionaires in his cabinet plus one not even in the cabinet, the dismantling of federal government capacity follows the extreme right wing mantra of eliminating government regulations and agencies and deliberately weakening of democratic procedures, checks and balances,  all to give full reign to their power and private greed. US Congressman Bernie Saunders ceaselessly warns that the US is rapidly turning into an oligarchy “run by billionaires out to enrich themselves”. (Peter Wode Rolling Stones, Dec. 15, 2024)

Trump has also alienated other key allies such as the EU.  His gross, obscene, public humiliation of President Zelensky in the Oval Office pretty much eliminated any sort of respect that the world could give to him as a president, or to the USA as any sort of ally.

Trump’s folly arises out of the phase that capitalism finds itself in: casino capitalism, “when the winning payers begin to cash in their chips. Because the global economy no longer has any long-term prospects, one, last, mad spree of plunder is now ongoing all over the planet.” (Jonathan Cracy, “Scorched Earth”, Verso, 2022)This phase of Western capitalism has unmistakable characteristics: profound inequality, appalling ecological degradation including potentially catastrophic climate change, and the hollowing out of democratic institutions including international law. Trump’s megalomania and thirst for power fits perfectly with these features and hence his reviving of territorial imperialism for plunder. He wishes to take-over lands that have the resources needed by high-tech industries, such as Greenland and Canada which is a powerhouse of mining resources, as well as wood and water. Disdain for environmental protection is part of this thirst for plunder, hence the dismantling of his own country’s environmental protection regulations.  Trump promises to “drill baby drill” for oil and gas, mine resources anywhere, and cut trees even in national parks.

Trump’s contempt for people who are not white is as disgusting as it is relentless. His war on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a blatant demonstration of pure racism, an undeniable feature of fascist  white supremacy. “US government’s move to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion policies is a naked attempt to appeal to prejudice.” (The Guardian, A. Mahdawi, 13 March 2024)   The battlefield of prejudice is immigration. Every country has the right to regulate immigration, that is not in question; but the Republican Party’s mantra “blame the immigrant” (legal or illegal) for all the nation’s ills, has been taken by Trump to new heights. It is grotesque.

Only sheer racism can explain the horror of sending Latin Americans, mostly Venezuelans, to Guantanamo – the most dreaded, illegal, political prison of the USA.  These are the very same Venezuelans who were urged to migrate, to leave the nation ruled by a supposed dictator, Nicolas Maduro, and the doors of the US were opened wide for them. The US and the far-right Venezuelan extremists promoted this migration as another way of trying to destabilize the legitimate and democratic government of Venezuela.

The legal offence of not having immigration permits does not equate to mayor crimes such as murder or terrorism. Trump, in fact, increased the role and capacity of Guantanamo, this penal US national disgrace, by sending these people there. Worse was to come.  He paid $6 million to the fascist president of El Salvador to imprison 238 Venezuelans accusing them of being terrorist members of a criminal organization – Tren de Aragua- that the armed forces of Venezuela have already eradicated. Trying to make this illegal imprisonment legal, Trump’s henchmen evoked an ancient law from 1799 relating to foreign enemies of nations with which the USA is at war.  “To invoke wartime deportation powers, Trump asserted that Venezuela’s government controls the Tren de Aragua gang. A US intelligence assessment says it is not true.” (New York Times, 21 March 2025)

These prisoners, who were not tried in court, were handcuffed, beaten and sent to a country whose prisons are known for their brutality. Even the NAZI butchers got a trial a Nuremburg. And anyway, when did the USA formally declare war on Venezuela?

There are geopolitical consequences of this American descent into plutocracy and putative fascism. For most of the Western world that considered the USA as a “beacon of freedom and democracy”, it is clear they want to walk a fine line between not harming even more the global markets but, at the same time, prepare to defend themselves from predatory US  policies. One positive aspect of US madness, is that the movements and leaders of the far right in Europe and elsewhere who have taken Trump’s example as something to follow, now find themselves with a very unpopular mentor. The fascist tendencies of the US government under Trump are now quite visible and may no longer seem appealing to mainstream voters.

However, for Latin America, and particularly Venezuela, the stakes are very high indeed. Trump no longer intervenes based on the flimsy excuses of defending democracy. Now the interventions are done as punishment, where the victims are declared villains, where might is right, and where Trump’s decisions seem erratic at best. Clearly, Trump has no qualms ignoring the US’s own laws and judges, and even breaking his own “deals”.  With respect to Latin America, he has no intention of abiding by international laws of Human Rights, the UN Charter or Geneva Convention. The US has a long history of violating these international laws, but the openly shamefaced way the Trump administration is proceeding further dooms the bedrock of  rules, agreements, human rights and goodwill, on which international peace and prosperity depends.

Hopefully, Canada will take a good look at how Venezuela has coped with the illegal economic sanctions against it, and the many attempts at destabilization to overthrow its government. Venezuela – contrary to all pundits’ expectations- has not dissolved, people are fed, houses are built, and they have free health care and its increasingly self-reliant economy is far from broken (annual GDP growth of 3.1% in 2024 according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean). And more significantly, it still maintains its sovereignty.

Although the circumstances are quite different between Canada and Venezuela, Canada being one of the richest countries in the world with many more opportunities and choices, they do share one thing: the enmity of the US. A big tool of that animosity will be the lies: they will flood the press and internet with as many distortions and untruths about Canada that it can. This is how they demonized Venezuela and its president to the world. Canada should be warned and be prepared to counter this avalanche of misinformation that is already filling mainstream and social media.

There are three huge lessons Canada can take from Venezuela:

First: unity and steadfast resolve. Venezuelans defend their sovereignty passionately.

Second: move on, seek new friends, new allies and new markets. The world is big. Venezuela found out it is not alone. A common danger creates unity. Canada can link with others that are also threatened.

Third: make government more responsive to people’s needs, not just for their welfare, but also for their democratic resiliency, which is the antidote of fascism. Venezuelan communes for example, are a creative feature in participatory democracy.

Canada can do all this and with imagination, hard work and compassion and rather be crushed by the US imperial boot, emerge stronger and more successful than ever.

Canada might also take heart from these words of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, considered by many as one of Canada’s finest modern prime ministers:

The democracy which embodies and guarantees our freedom is not powerless, passive or blind, nor is it in retreat. It has no intention of giving way to the savage fantasies of its adversaries. It is not prepared to give advance blessing to its own destruction.

The post US Imperial Boot on Canada’s Neck appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Maria Paez Victor.

Recently racist and ignorant social media users have circulated the idea that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pets. US Vice presidential candidate JD Vance greatly boosted the anti-Haitian claim with a post to X stating, “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

Vance’s X post had over 11 million views with Donald Trump even referencing the claim in the presidential debate. This despite an absence of any evidence whatsoever. Springfield officials haven’t received any credible reports of Haitian immigrants abducting and eating pets.

The ‘Haitians eat pets’ tale is the latest in a long line of anti-Haitian claims. In the early 1980s Haitians were stigmatized as the originators of the HIV virus in the US. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) labeled Haitians as a risk group, which gave rise to “the 4-H’s” designation of Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, Heroin addicts and Haitians. At the time the Canadian Red Cross publicly identified Haitians as a “high-risk” group for AIDS, the only nationality singled out. In 1983 they called on homosexuals and bisexuals with multiple partners, intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs and recent immigrants from Haiti to voluntarily stop giving blood. A Canadian government pamphlet, which was distributed in shopping malls, also linked Haitians with AIDS. Again, this was despite a lack of evidence that the incidence of AIDS in Haiti was greater than in the US. By 1987 it was lower in Haiti than in the US and other Caribbean nations. But, as a result of the unfounded stigmatization, the country’s significant tourism basically collapsed overnight. Out of fear the virus may transmit through goods, some Haitian exports were even blocked from entering the US!

The Haitians are responsible for AIDS allegation still pops up. During an explosion of xenophobia against Haitian migrants in Guyana in 2019 reports focused on HIV/AIDS and Voodoo and in a 2016 radio outburst former Canadian Member of Parliament, André Arthur, labeled Haiti a “sexually deviant” country populated by thieves and prostitutes responsible for HIV/AIDS.

In another example of stigmatizing Haitians over disease, CDC incident manager for the Haiti cholera response, Jordan W. Tappero, blamed Haitian cultural norms for the 2010 cholera outbreak that caused tens of thousands of deaths. He told Associated Press journalist Jonathan Katz that Haitians don’t experience the “shame associated with open defecation.” As was then suspected and later confirmed, cholera was introduced to Haiti by UN forces who followed poor sanitation practices.

Ten months earlier influential US pastor Pat Robertson suggested the terrible January 2010 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas was due to a “deal made with Satan” two centuries earlier. Robertson claimed Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever … And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’” Robertson added, “you know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”

Canadian Protestant groups have promoted similar thinking about the August 1791 Bwa Kayiman (Bois Caïman) Vodou ceremony that helped launch the Haitian Revolution. In “Haiti’s Pact with the Devil?: Bwa Kayiman, Haitian Protestant Views of Vodou, and the Future of Haiti” Bertin M. Louis points out that some Haitian Canadian Protestants believe Haiti was consecrated to the devil. Mainstream Canadian voices have repeatedly denigrated voodoo. After the 2004 US/France/Canada coup the National Post published an editorial headlined “Voodoo is not enough”, arguing for “a coalition of the willing to permanently extract the country from the quagmire. A 1952 Globe and Mail story attempting to be sympathetic to the country began by noting, “Haiti’s principal export is not, as popularly supposed, Zombies.” One of the first books to expose North Americans to the voodoo zombie was Magic Island, a 1929 book by William Buehler Seabrook. The book sensationalized encounters with voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.

Voodoo has been demonized by white supremacist and Christian forces for over two centuries. Important for defeating slavery and securing Haitian independence, the religion offered spiritual/ideological strength to those who revolted against their slave masters in maybe the greatest example of liberation in the history of humanity.

The 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution was simultaneously a struggle against slavery, colonialism and white supremacy. Defeating the French, British and Spanish empires, it led to freedom for all people regardless of colour, decades before this idea found traction in Europe or North America. The Haitian revolt rippled through the region and compelled the post-French Revolution government in Paris to abolish slavery in its Caribbean colonies. It also spurred London’s 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

The Haitian Revolution led to the world’s first and only successful large-scale slave revolution. “Arguably”, notes Peter Hallward, “there is no single event in the whole of modern history whose implications were more threatening to the dominant global order of things.”

But, in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution thousands of photos, articles and books denigrated Haiti, depicting the slaves as barbaric despise the fact 350,000 Africans were killed, versus 75,000 Europeans, over the 13 years. Anti-Haitianism has deep roots.

It’s easy to mock those who claim Haitian immigrants are eating cats. But overt anti-Haitianism is also relayed by ‘sophisticated’ liberals. Their high-minded commentaries calling for foreign tutelage of the country appear regularly in the pages of the Globe and Mail and Boston Globe.

Anti-Haitianism flows out of and reinforces the country’s weakness, which is spurred by imperial domination. Technically “independent” for more than two centuries, outsiders have long shaped Haitian affairs. Through isolation, economic asphyxiation, debt dependence, gunboat diplomacy, occupation, foreignsupported dictatorships, structural adjustment programs, “democracy promotion”, coups and rigged elections, Haiti is no stranger to the various forms of foreign political manipulation.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

In contrast to its other Anglophone counterparts, the highest tribunal in the US professes an open brand of politics, with its occupants blatantly expressing views that openly conform to one side of the political aisle or the other.  Not that the idea of a conservative or liberal judge necessarily translates into opposite rulings.  Agreement and common ground can be reached, however difficult the exercise might be.  Justice should, at the very least, be seen to be done.

The current crop, however, shows little in the way of identifying, let alone reaching common ground.  Firm lines, even yawning chasms, have grown.  The latest decision on presidential immunity from criminal prosecution is one such case.  On July 1, the majority of the court held by six to three that a US president, including former occupants of the office, “may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, to a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”

Throughout the sequence of decisions, which began before the trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, Donald Trump has argued that he should be immune from prosecution, notably regarding federal charges of subverting the results of the 2020 election.  Those actions, he claims, formed part of his official duties.  Furthermore, as he suffered no conviction or either impeachment, he could not be tried in a criminal court.

The decision offers a grocery basket of elastic terms that will delight future litigants.  The total immunity, the decision states, covers “core constitutional powers”.  The president, former or sitting, further had “presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution” regarding all discharged official acts as a function of the separation of powers.  Falling for giddying circularity, the majority opinion goes on to remark that the immunity “extends to the outer perimeter of the President’s official responsibilities, covering actions so long as they are not manifestly or palpably beyond his authority.”  It does not, however, extend to “unofficial acts” or “unofficial conduct”.

The majority was also of the view that no court should inquire into the President’s motives when distinguishing official from official conduct.  “Such an enquiry would risk exposing even the most obvious instances of official conduct to judicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose, thereby intruding on the Article II interests that immunity seeks to protect.”  This shielding does have a remarkable effect, granting the president uncomfortably wide powers regarding decisions that can involve breaching the very laws the office is intended to protect.

The decision magnifies the scope of presidential power.  One might say it invests that power with imperial, distinctly anti-republican attributes.  For decades, it had been assumed that presidents would be spared civil suits to, in the words of the majority, “undertake his constitutionally designated functions effectively, free from undue pressures or distortions.”  To take the immunity to cover breaches of laws the executive is bound to be faithful in executing is a quite different creature.  To suggest that would be to echo, as indeed US District Court Judge Chutkan opined in December 2023, of a “divine right of kings to evade criminal responsibility.”

The three liberal justices violently disagreed with the majority in a judgment authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  “Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”  The dissent excoriates, not merely the reasoning of the court but the man whose actions it will benefit.  “Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.”

According to the lashing words of Sotomayor, the majority had invented “an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law.”  From the outset, it was unnecessary to make any finding on absolute immunity on the exercise of “core constitutional powers” given the facts outlined in the indictment.  This was further “eclipsed” by the decision “to create expansive immunity for all ‘official act[s]’.”  Whatever the terminology used – presumptive or absolute – “under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune from prosecution.”

With withering ire, Sotomayor also thought it “nonsensical” that “evidence concerning acts for which the President is immune can play no role in any criminal prosecution against him”.  It would make it impossible for the government to use the President’s official acts to prove knowledge or show intent in prosecuting private offences.

Despite the broad sweep of the judgment regarding immunity, there are pressing questions on whether Trump’s own conduct regarding claims of election subversion would fall within the ambit of the ruling.  The multiple lawsuits filed challenging the 2020 election result were peppered with admissions on his part that he was doing so in the personal capacity of a candidate rather than that of an office holder performing official functions.  Since then, he has had a change of heart, taking the rather primitive view articulated by that other advocate of an imperial executive, President Richard Nixon, who claimed that, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

The Supreme Court has remanded the questions on whether absolute immunity applies to such acts as pressuring state election officials and conduct around the events of January 6 to the lower courts.  But the consequences of the decision have been immediate in the context of the hush money case, for which Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.  His lawyers have already asked that the July 11 sentencing be delayed while also applying to set aside the conviction.  Thus, do shadowy motives, personal conduct and the official blur.

Much ink, resources and litigation, is bound to be expended over the next few years over what falls within official, as opposed to unofficial acts, that attach to the office of the US president.  Along the way, a few laws may well be broken.  With a delicious sense of irony, the Supreme Court ruling will also shield President Joe Biden from vengeful prosecutions planned by Trump and his courtiers.  The law can, every so often, be fantastically double-edged.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Corporation power and secondary colonisation, exercised through such ruthless entities as the United Fruit Company (now the jauntily labelled Chiquita), continued the legacy, collaborating with corrupt elites while exerting control over large swathes of the local economy.  The Banana Republic was axiomatic to the exertion of US power in the agriculture of the South.  Names like Lorenzo D. Baker, who first imported bananas to the US in 1870, preceding Philadelphia’s World Fair promotion in 1876, and Minor C. Keith and Andrew W. Preston, should be marked in bold in such efforts.  It is they who led the way to the creation of the United Fruit Company.

Marcelo Bucheli offers an adequate description about United Fruit as a broad based alliance that led to the creation of an “impressive production and distribution network” made up of “plantations, hospitals, roads, railways, telegraph lines, housing facilities, and ports in the producing companies, a steamship fleet (the Great White Fleet, which eventually became the largest privately owned fleet in the world), and a distribution network in the United States.”  Some fruit; some capital.

The company’s indelible staining of Latin America’s politics was ingloriously affirmed with its role in overthrowing the democratically elected Guatemalan leader Jacobo Árbenz, whose expropriating measures to award property to landless citizens proved too much.  The resulting Washington-backed coup, encouraged by such figures as United Fruit’s main shareholder Samuel Zemurray, resulted in a military dictatorship leading to 200,000 deaths.

In 1954, with the coup in full swing, Árbenz could only observe with tragic sadness that “the pretext of anti-communism” had been cited to overthrow his government.  “The truth is very different.  The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company and other US monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala would be followed by other Latin American countries”.

There is good reason then to take a rather withering view of the banana trade.  It has become the feature fruit of monstrous monopolies, a brutal currency of exchange, the means by which exploitation has been cultivated for huge corporate gain.  In some cases, its pricing has been kept low as the costs in production, be they in terms of land and people.  They are the unwanted ghosts in the unaccounted equation.

Following the fruit to lands of its cultivation is to take a journey to inequality.  The island of Mindanao in the Philippines produces 84% of the country’s bananas and hosts 25% of the country’s population.  On that same island live over 35% of the country’s poorest residents.  Historically, it was only the advent of the cooperative FARMCOOP and the passing of the Land Reform Law that enabled landless, indigent farmers to claim some degree of autonomy from the crushing conditions of the international banana market.

After the viciousness of imperialism, exploitation and profit, the banana now faces something of a different challenge.  Climate, it has become trite to say, is playing up.  The banana moguls, sellers and cultivators are getting anxious.  Supply lines and prices are being affected.  “Producers like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, will see a negative impact of rising temperatures over the next few decades,” predicts a confident Dan Bebber, a student of crop pathogens and sustainable agriculture.

Climate disruptions have also been something of an encouragement to threatening diseases to the crop, notably the TR4 fungus.  The World Banana Forum, which benignly sounds like the Sorghum Appreciation Society with polite tea breaks and conference papers, offered a stolid seriousness.  The BBC was there to gather some material, coming with such prosaic spurts as those of Pascal Lu, a senior economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): the impact of climate change was such as to pose an “enormous threat” to banana production.

CBS News was also at hand to be told by Sabine Altendorf, yet another economist at the UNFAO with an interest in supply chains of agricultural products, that any such infection would essentially doom the crop.  “Once a plantation has been infected, it cannot be eradicated.  There is no pesticide or fungicide that is effective.”

Lu offers a diplomatic splash on the whole matter.  He speaks of certification, keeping the bananas “greener” (no irony intended) and extols the value of such regulations as “they help producers seize the opportunity of making their production systems more sustainable.”   Inevitably, he offers the following: “But of course, they also come with costs for producers because they require more control and monitoring systems on the part of the producers and the traders.  And these costs have to trickle down to the final consumers.”

Ultimately, such certification remains overwhelmingly voluntary, by which the producers pay a fee for the process, thereby receiving price premiums and market access for upholding certain market standards.

The environmental ledger for humanity, and much of the globe, engenders worry.  Climate change is dooming us in various ways.  States and communities will be submerged.  Droughts will empty tracts of land of agrarian occupation.  Agricultural patterns will alter. It is making the cultivation of crops in certain areas of the world unfeasible and untenable.  And this potassium rich source, so revered for shape, size and flavour, its brutal legacy often ignored at the shopping counter, may have met its match.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

How, then, to justify the 18 charges being levelled against the WikiLeaks founder under the US Espionage Act of 1917, an instrument not just vile but antiquated in its effort to stomp on political discussion and expression?

Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp got the bien pensant treatment of the national security state, dressed in robes, and tediously inclined.  Prosaic arguments were recycled like stale, oppressive air.  According to Clair Dobbin KC, there was “no immunity for journalists to break the law” and that the US constitutional First Amendment protecting the press would never confer it.  This had an undergraduate obviousness to it; no one in this case has ever asserted such cavalierly brutal freedom in releasing classified material, a point that Mark Summers KC, representing Assange, was happy to point out.

Yet again, the Svengali argument, gingered with seduction, was run before a British court.  Assange, assuming all the powers of manipulation, cultivated and corrupted the disclosers, “soliciting” them to pilfer classified government materials.  With limping repetition, Dobbin insisted that WikiLeaks had been responsible for revealing “the unredacted names of the sources who provided information to the United States,” many of whom “lived in war zones or in repressive regimes”.  In exposing the names of Afghans, Iraqis, journalists, religious figures, human rights dissidents and political dissidents, the publisher had “created a grave and immediate risk that innocent people would suffer serious physical harm or arbitrary detention”.

The battering did not stop there.  “There were really profound consequences, beyond the real human cost and to the broader ability to the US to gather evidence from human sources as well.”  Dobbin’s proof of these contentions is thin, vague and causally absent: the arrest of one Ethiopian journalist following the leak; unspecified “others” disappeared.  She even admitted the fact that “it cannot be proven that their disappearance was a result of being outed.”  This was certainly a point pounced upon by Summers.

The previous publication by Cryptome of all the documents, or the careless publication of the key to the encrypted file with the unredacted cables by journalists from The Guardian in a book on WikiLeaks, did not convince Dobbin.  Assange was “responsible for the publications of the unredacted documents whether published by others or WikiLeaks.”  There was no mention, either, that Assange had been alarmed by The Guardian faux pas and had contacted the US State Department of this fact.  Summers, in his contribution, duly reminded the court of the publisher’s frantic efforts while also reasoning that the harm caused had been “unintended, unforeseen and unwanted” by him.

With this selective, prejudicial angle made clear, Dobbin’s words became those of a disgruntled empire caught with its pants down when harming and despoiling others.  “What the appellant is accused of is really at the upper end of the spectrum of gravity,” she submitted, attracting “no public interest whatsoever”.  Conveniently, calculatingly, any reference to the enormous, weighty revelations of WikiLeaks of torture, renditions, war crimes, surveillance, to name but a few, was avoided.  Emphasis was placed, instead, upon the “usefulness” of the material WikiLeaks had published: to the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden.

This is a dubious point given the Pentagon’s own assertions to the contrary in a 2011 report dealing with the significance of the disclosure of military and diplomatic documents by WikiLeaks.  On the Iraq War logs and State Department cables, the report concluded “with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former US leadership in Iraq.”  On the Afghanistan war log releases, the authors also found that they would not result in “significant impact” to US operations, though did claim that this was potentially damaging to “intelligence sources, informants, and the Afghan population,” and intelligence collection efforts by the US and NATO.

Summers appropriately rebutted the contention about harm by suggesting that Assange had opposed, in the highest traditions of journalism, “war crimes”, a consideration that had to be measured against unverified assertions of harm.

On this point, the prosecution found itself in knots, given that a balancing act of harm and freedom of expression is warranted under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.  When asked by Justice Johnson whether prosecuting a journalist in the UK, when in possession of “information of very serious wrongdoing by an intelligence agency [had] incited an employee of that agency to provide information… [which] was then published in a very careful way” was compatible with the right to freedom of expression, Dobbin conceded to there being no “straightforward answer”.

When pressed by Justice Johnson as to whether she accepted the idea that the “statutory offence”, not any “scope for a balancing exercise” was what counted, Dobbin had to concede that a “proportionality assessment” would normally arise when publishers were prosecuted under section 5 of the UK Official Secrets Act.  Prosecutions would only take place if one “knowingly published” information known “to be damaging”.

Any half-informed student of the US Espionage Act knows that strict liability under the statute negates any need to undertake a balancing assessment.  All that matters is that the individual had “reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the US,” often proved by the mere fact that the information published was classified to begin with.

Dobbin then switched gears.  Having initially advertised the view that journalists could never be entirely immune from criminal prosecution, she added more egg to the pudding on the reasons why Assange was not a journalist.  Her view of the journalist being a bland, obedient transmitter of received, establishment wisdom was all too clear.  Assange had gone “beyond the acts of a journalist who is merely gathering information”.  He had, for instance, agreed with Chelsea Manning on March 8, 2010 to attempt cracking a password hash that would have given her access to the secure and classified Department of Defense account.  Doing so meant using a false identity to facilitate further pilfering of classified documents.

This was yet another fiction.  Manning’s court martial had revealed the redundancy of having to crack a password hash as she already had administrator access to the system.  Why then bother with the conspiratorial circus?

The corollary of this is that the prosecution’s reliance on fabricated testimony, notably from former WikiLeaks volunteer, convicted paedophile and FBI tittle-tattler Sigurdur ‘Siggi’ Thordarson.  In June 2021, the Icelandic newspaper Stundin, now publishing under the name Heimildin, revealed that Assange had “never asked him to hack or to access phone recordings of [Iceland’s] MPs.”  He also had not “received some files from a third party who claimed to have recorded MPs and had offered to share them with Assange without having any idea what they actually contained.”  Thordarson never went through the relevant files, nor verified whether they had audio recordings as claimed by the third-party source. The allegation that Assange instructed him to access computers in order to unearth such recordings was roundly rejected.

The legal team representing the US attempted to convince the court that suggestions of “bad faith” by the defence on the part of such figures as lead prosecutor Gordon Kromberg had to be discounted.  “The starting position must be, as it always is in these cases, the fundamental assumption of good faith on the part of those states with which the United Kingdom has long-standing extradition relationships,” asserted Dobbin.  “The US is one of the most long-standing partners of the UK.”

This had a jarring quality to it, given that nothing in Washington’s approach to Assange – the surveillance sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency via Spanish security firm UC Global, the contemplation of abduction and assassination by intelligence officials, the after-the-fact concoction of assurances to assure easier extradition to the US – has been anything but one of bad faith.

Summers countered by refuting any suggestions that “Mr Kronberg is a lying individual or that he is personally not carrying out his prosecutorial duties in good faith. The prosecution and extradition here is a decision taken way above his head.”  This was a matter of “state retaliation ordered from the very top”; one could not “focus on the sheep and ignore the shepherd.”

Things did not get better for the prosecuting side on what would happen once Assange was extradited.  Would he, for instance, be protected by the free press amendment under US law?  Former CIA director Mike Pompeo had suggested that Assange’s Australian citizenship barred him from protections afforded by the First Amendment.  Dobbin was not sure, but insisted that there was insufficient evidence to suggest that nationality would prejudice Assange in any trial.  Justice Johnson was sharp: “the test isn’t that he would be prejudiced.  It is that he might be prejudiced on the grounds of his nationality.”  This was hard to square with the UK Extradition Act prohibiting extradition where a person “might be prejudiced at his trial or punished, detained, or restricted in his personal liberty” on account of nationality.

Given existing US legal practice, Assange also faced the risk of the death penalty, something that extradition arrangements would bar.  Ben Watson KC, representing the UK Home Secretary, had to concede to the court that there was nothing preventing any amendment by US prosecutors to the current list of charges that could result in a death sentence.

If he does not succeed in this appeal, Assange may well request an intervention of the European Court of Human Rights for a stay of proceedings under Rule 39.  Like many European institutions so loathed by the governments of post-Brexit Britain, it offers the prospect of relief provided that there are “exceptional circumstances” and an instance “where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.”

The sickening irony of that whole proviso is that irreparable harm is being inflicted on Assange in prison, where the UK prison system fulfils the role of the punishing US gaoler.  Speed will be of the essence; and the government of Rishi Sunak may well quickly bundle the publisher onto a transatlantic flight.  If so, the founder of WikiLeaks will go the way of other prestigious and wronged political prisoners who sought to expand minds rather than narrow them.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The appeal to the High Court, comprising Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp, challenges the extradition order by the Home Secretary and the conclusions of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser who, despite ordering his release on risks posed to him on mental health grounds, fundamentally agreed with the prosecution.  He was, Varaitser scorned, not a true journalist.  (Absurdly, it would seem for the judge, journalists never publish leaked information.)  He had exposed the identities of informants.  He had engaged in attempts to hack computer systems.  In June 2023, High Court justice, Jonathan Swift, thought it inappropriate to rehear the substantive arguments of the trial case made by defence.

Assange’s attorneys had informed the court that he simply could not attend in person, though it would hardly have mattered.  His absence from the courtroom was decorous in its own way; he could avoid being displayed like a caged specimen reviled for his publishing feats.  The proceedings would be conducted in the manner of appropriate panto, with dress and procedure to boot.

Unfortunately, as things chugged along, the two judges were seemingly ill versed in the field they were adjudicating.  Their ignorance was telling on, for instance, the views of Mike Pompeo, whose bilious reaction to WikiLeaks when director of the Central Intelligence Agency involved rejecting the protections of the First Amendment of the US Constitution to non-US citizens.  (That view is also held by the US prosecutors.)  Such a perspective, argued Assange’s legal team, was a clear violation of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

They were also surprised to be informed that further charges could be added to the indictment on his arrival to the United States, including those carrying the death penalty.  To this could be added other enlightening surprises for the judicial bench: the fact that rules of admissibility might be altered to consider material illegally obtained, for instance, through surveillance; that Assange might also be sentenced for an offence he was never actually tried for.

Examples of espionage case law were submitted as precedents to buttress the defence, with Edward Fitzgerald KC calling espionage a “pure political offence” which barred extradition in treaties Britain had signed with 158 nation states.

The case of David Shayler, who had been in the employ of the British domestic intelligence service MI5, saw the former employee prosecuted for passing classified documents to The Mail on Sunday in 1997 under the Official Secrets Act.  These included the names of various agents, that the agency kept dossiers on various UK politicians, including Labour ministers, and that the British foreign intelligence service, MI6, had conceived of a plan to assassinate Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.  When the UK made its extradition request to the French authorities, they received a clear answer from the Cour d’Appel: the offence charged was found to be political in nature.

Mark Summers KC also emphasised the point that the “prosecution was motivated to punish and inhibit the exposure of American state-level crimes”, ample evidence of which was adduced during the extradition trial, yet ignored by both Baraitser and Swift.  Baraitser brazenly ignored evidence of discussions by US intelligence officials about a plot to kill or abduct Assange.

For Summers, chronology was telling: the initial absence of any prosecution effort by the Obama administration, despite empanelling a grand jury to investigate WikiLeaks; the announcement by the International Criminal Court that it would be investigating potential crimes committed by US combatants in Afghanistan in 2016, thereby lending gravity to Assange’s disclosures; and the desire to kill or seek the publisher’s extradition after the release of the Vault 7 files detailing various espionage tools of the CIA.

With Pompeo’s apoplectic declaration that WikiLeaks was a hostile, non-state intelligence service, the avenue was open for a covert targeting of Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.  The duly hatched rendition plan led to the prosecution, which proved “selective” in avoiding, for instance, the targeting of newspaper outlets such as Freitag, or the website Cryptome.  In Summer’s view, “This is not a government acting on good faith pursuing a legal path.”

When it came to discussing the leaks, the judges revealed a deep-welled obliviousness about what Assange and WikiLeaks had actually done in releasing the US State Department cables.  For one thing, the old nonsense that the unredacted, or poorly redacted material had resulted in damage was skirted over, not to mention the fact that Assange had himself insisted on a firm redaction policy.   No inquiry has ever shown proof that harm came to any US informant, a central contention of the US Department of Justice.  Nor was it evident to the judges that the publication of the cables had first taken place in Cryptome, once it was discovered that reporters from The Guardian had injudiciously revealed the password to the unredacted files in their publication.

Two other points also emerged in the defence submission: the whistleblower angle, and that of foreseeability.  Consider, Summers argued hypothetically, the situation where Chelsea Manning, whose invaluable disclosures WikiLeaks published, had been considered by the European Court of Human Rights.  The European Union’s whistleblower regime, he contended, would have considered the effect of harm done by violating an undertaking of confidentiality with the exposure of abuses of state power.  Manning would have likely escaped conviction, while Assange, having not even signed any confidentiality agreements, would have had even better prospects for acquittal.

The issue of foreseeability, outlined in Article 7 of the ECHR, arose because Assange, his team further contends, could not have known that publishing the cables would have triggered a lawsuit under the Espionage Act.  That said, a grand jury had refused to indict the Chicago Times in 1942 for publishing an article citing US naval knowledge of Japanese plans to attack Midway Island.  Then came the Pentagon Papers case in 1971.  While Summers correctly notes that, “The New York Times was never prosecuted,” this was not for want for trying: a grand jury was empanelled with the purpose of indicting the Times reporter Neil Sheehan for his role in receiving classified government material.  Once revelations of government tapping of whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was revealed, the case collapsed.  All that said, Article 7 could provide a further ground for barring extradition.

February 21 gave lawyers for the US the chance to reiterate the various, deeply flawed assertions about Assange’s publication activities connected with Cablegate (the “exposing informants” argument), his supposedly non-journalistic activities and the integrity of diplomatic assurances about his welfare were he to be extradited.  The stage for the obscene was duly set.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Artist’s rendering of the B-21 in flight. Image: Northrup Grumman.

Two press reports stood out to me this week: the release of the names of two US Navy SEALs who drowned two weeks ago in the Arabian Sea and the Air Force’s production authorization for the B21 Raider bomber. Both stories symbolize an imperial inertia that defines American national security policies, an inertia that is damaging our democracy and jeopardizing futures.

The SEALs died taking part in a blockade mission against Yemen, a mission that dates back nearly a decade and is part of a two-decade-long history of US military action against Yemen (the US first launched a drone strike in Yemen in 2002). US policy towards Yemen is part of the larger, failed and counterproductive Global War on Terror, which itself is part of a larger, failed and counterproductive US Middle East policy. US Middle East policy, in its current form, goes back to the 1970s and is part of a larger, failed and counterproductive US militarized foreign policy. Can anyone go to the families of those two SEALs killed carrying out those policies and explain what their deaths were for without resorting to grotesque and false tropes of freedom and security, the same aspirational and patriotic fairy tales that have been used to justify 250-plus military operations by the US since 1991?

The other story relates to the authorization of production of the B21 Raider, which is set to replace the B1 and B2 bombers but not the 70-year-old B52s. That the youngest B52 was produced in 1962 and won’t be replaced, but the bombers built in modern times must be replaced, tells you a great deal about the strategy of the American weapons industry. This fleecing of the American taxpayers by the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is nothing new. Both political parties have hollowed out the American economy to the benefit of weapons makers. If any citizen has the gall to ask their members of Congress why our living standards are so far below those of the world’s other wealthy nations, the answers come back as some variation of “we can’t afford those things.”

What’s new about the B21 is that the cost for years was classified, even to members of Congress. Budget figures, as well as contract details, production schedules and test results, are still being kept hidden. Reports say Northrup Grumman will produce 100 of the planes, and, with an estimated total program cost of more than $200 billion, keeping quiet about the price tag of $2 billion airplanes is a politically savvy move if not a democratic one.

Alongside the story of the B21 was a reference to the nation’s new intercontinental ballistic missile, the LGM-35 Sentinel, exploding in cost and years behind schedule. Both the Raider and the Sentinel are part of the $2 trillion modernization of American nuclear weapons begun during the Obama Administration. Cynically it is understandable why both the Pentagon and the weapons makers want to keep the B21 program hidden. MIC officials often speak of the lessons learned from the gross cost overruns, lengthy delays and failed testing of weapons systems like the F35, the Littoral Combat Ship and the Future Combat System, among many, many others, and those lessons seem to be: don’t let anyone know what’s going on. The roster of weapons that don’t work and have cost us trillions is seemingly infinite and, in a sanely functioning and non-corrupt democracy, Pentagon budgets would be decreasing, generals would be fired and defense industry share prices would be labeled as SELL. It would be far easier to write about the weapons the US taxpayers have funded that have performed as advertised and stayed within budget, but that would probably only amount to a tweet or two.

The only thing more likely than more American families continuing to lose loved ones to failed and counterproductive overseas wars will be a lack of any effective congressional resistance to US Middle East policy, most urgently Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. Likewise, the only thing more likely than the B21 being another poorly performing MIC cash cow will be the lack of meaningful political opposition to the overall MIC gravy train. The inertia of both a militarized foreign policy that, through its actions, creates a circular reality that justifies continued military action and a military-industrial complex that now says the American people don’t have the right to know how much our weapons cost demonstrate a dangerous reality of American democracy and a terrible path ahead.

The post Imperial Costs: Two Stories Summarize the Cost of Empire to Democracy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Matthew Hoh.

Like many folks I have spent a fair amount of time the last few days in front of a television watching the US cable news stations – primarily CNN and MSNBC with an occasional look at FOX – cover the Israel-Hamas war. I am struck by the extreme and unabashed imbalance in humanitarian concern demonstrated by these news outlets.

Twp nights ago, CNN broadcast an Israel soldier who says that Hamas is “pure evil” because it kills children, infants, women, and old people. I hold no brief for the murderous Islamist outfit Hamas, but the problem here is that the US-backed Judeo-fascist, racist, apartheid, terror and occupation state of Israel has long murdered Palestinian children, infants, women, and old people with impunity. Beneath and beyond the episodic terror of United States (US)-backed Israeli shootings and bombing raids, the Palestinians live under miserable daily conditions of extreme poverty, disease, and trauma imposed by decades of US-backed occupation and apartheid.

That other, far more empowered US-backed evil and terror, is essential context for Hamas’s despicable attack. The other and far more empowered terror, backed by the most world’s leading imperial aggressor (the US), is for all intents and purposes deleted from in the frankly warmongering and racist coverage one sees on CNN and MSNBC, where a retired US general practically salivated two nights ago as he enthused over the sending of a US naval flotilla to back up “our valued ally” while (in the former general’s words) “the Israeli Defense Forces go into Gaza high and hard.”

The cable news is brazenly demonstrating the imperial and racial selectivity of its moral sentiments. It is taking the Noam Chomsky-Edward Herman thesis on the Western media’s propagandistic distinction between officially worthy (US and US-allied) and officially “unworthy” (those on the “wrong” side of the US American Empire and its network of allies) victims to GROTESQUE extremes. It parades the airwaves with one gut-wrenching and highly personalized story of Israeli victimization after another, replete with grieving relatives and photographs and biographies of murdered and captured Israelis and Americans. It is of course impossible for any decent human being not to feel sadness and disgust what has been done to these people by the monsters of Hamas.

The problem is that there is no serious balance when it comes to the lives of Palestinians. For every terrible story of Israeli victimization, there are multiple other examples of Palestinian victimization by the terror imposed by the US-sponsored state of Israel, and here, it is important to note that there two kinds of terror experienced by the Palestinians, especially the two million plus Palestinians stuck in the open-air prison that is the Gaza Strip. There’s the immediate and sudden terror of a bomb or artillery shell destroying one’s home, school, park, or hospital, creating mass bloodshed. (An award-winning Israeli documentary released in 2013 exposed how Israel turned millions of Gazans and other Palestinians into literal human laboratories for the testing of new weapons.) And then there’s the ongoing dull terror of savage poverty and hyper-ghettoization imposed by the US-backed racist, Judeo-fascist, apartheid and ethno-state of Israel. The US media, essentially a propaganda arm of the American Empire, has nothing to say about the savage contrast between the opulent First World lives enjoyed by those on one side of the Israel-Gaza border and the severe Third World wretchedness endured by those on the other side. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency:

“The Gaza Strip has a population of approximately 2.1 million people, including some 1.7 million Palestine Refugees. For at least the last decade and a half, the socioeconomic situation in Gaza has been in steady decline. ..A[n] Israel-imposed and US-backed] blockade on land, air and sea was imposed by Israel following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007. There are now very few options left for the people of Gaza, who have been living under collective punishment as a result of the blockade that continues to have a devastating effect as people’s movement to and from the Gaza Strip, as well as access to markets, remains severely restricted….The blockade and related restrictions contravene international humanitarian law as they target and impose hardship on the civilian population, effectively penalizing them for acts they have not committed…Food security in Gaza has deteriorated with 63 per cent of people in the Gaza Strip being food insecure and dependent on international assistance. The continuing intra-Palestinian divisions exacerbate the humanitarian and service delivery crisis on the ground. With 81.5 per cent of the population living in poverty, an overall unemployment rate of 46.6 per cent (48.1 per cent for Palestine Refugees living in the camps) at the end of the third quarter of 2022 and an unemployment rate of 62.3 per cent among youth (15-29 years, refugees and non-refugees), the already fragile humanitarian situation in Gaza threatens to deteriorate further. The economy and its capacity to create jobs have been devastated, resulting in the impoverishment and de-development of a highly skilled and well-educated society. Access to clean water and electricity remains at crisis level and impacts nearly every aspect of life. Clean water is unavailable for 95 per cent of the population. Electricity is available up to an average of 11 hours per day as of July 2023. However, ongoing power shortage has severely impacted the availability of essential services, particularly health, water, and sanitation services, and continues to undermine Gaza’s fragile economy, particularly the manufacturing and agriculture sectors.”

These are the ongoing “realities on the ground” in what I heard an MSNBC reporter in Israel call “the so-called open-air prison” that is Gaza. We can drop the “so-called.” Gaza itself is a giant human rights crime, imposed by the US-backed occupation state of Israel. It might be considered almost as a concentration camp.

His genocidal anti-Semitism aside, Adolph Hitler would admire the nightmare that Israel has created for the people of Gaza and Palestine. He and his propaganda minister Goebbels would appreciate the massive racial and imperial hypocrisy of a media that portrays Hamas as “pure evil” and “animals” for murdering white-skinned Israeli civilians but won’t say the same for the Israeli officials and military personnel who regularly murder Palestinian civilians and who create and enforce lives of pure misery for the brown skinned masses of Gaza.

Israeli pain and suffering pales before that of the Palestinian people and the Gazans. The comparisons of Israeli and Palestinian distress aren’t even remotely close, truth be told. Where are CNN and MSNBC’s heartfelt and highly personalized portrayals of Palestinian and Gazan lives subjected to the “pure evil” of Israeli torment and violence? Where is the Vanderbilt heir and former CIA staffer Anderson Cooper looking close to tears as he asks a Palestinian mother how it feels to see her children murdered by Israeli snipers and buried in rubble caused by Israeli bombs? When does Al Velshi cross into Gaza to interview a Hamas member who has seen his mother die from Israeli-imposed medicine blockades, his sister killed in Israeli bombardments? The US media puts up Israeli Defense Force soldiers who tell personal stories of loss at the hands of Palestinian “animals” but refuses to broadcast the other side of the lethal Israel-Palestine coin.

Whence the massive shock and surprise the bloody rebellion of some among a population of desperate and trapped people? You consign millions to a living Hell and wonder why all Hell breaks loose? Where in US war and entertainment media is the elementary observation that racist and material violence, torture, and oppression on the scale of what Israel has done to Gaza and Palestine more broadly since the 1948 Nakba[1] naturally produces violent hatred, a desperate urge to liberation, and a bloody thirst for revenge on the part of a segment of the Wretched of the Earth?

And now of course the US client state Israel has responded to the Hamas attacks by intensifying the Hell caught by the Gaza masses. Tel Aviv has imposed a state of siege on the already blockaded Gaza Strip. As The Irish Times reports:

“Israel’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to the blockaded Gaza Strip is against international law, the European Union’s chief diplomat has said, after foreign ministers met to discuss a response to the spiraling conflict with militant group Hamas. ‘Israel has the right to defend itself, but it has to be done accordingly with international law,’ Josep Borrell told media. ‘Some of the actions… cutting water, cutting electricity, cutting food to a mass of civilian people, are not in accordance with international law.’ His comments came a day after Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, announced a ‘complete siege’ of the narrow strip of land that is home to two million people, saying that ‘no electricity, no food, no water, no gas’ would be allowed to reach Gaza. Mr Borrell described the humanitarian situation as ‘dire’, as 150,000 Palestinians are now internally displaced, while intense Israeli air strikes caused a rising death toll.”

Where in US war and entertainment media is the proper denunciation of this clear human rights crime? And where CNN and Woke Imperialist MSNBC’s shock and horror at the language of Israel’s genocidal fascist prime minister, the corrupt authoritarian Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed to reduce Gaza to rubble in a display of “mighty vengeance” that will be remembered “through the ages”?

Where is CNN and MSNBC’s shock and horror over Israel warning the people of Gaza to “flee” when Israel has trapped them with nowhere to go and has even bombed the one crossing out of the open-air prison to Egypt? By the time this essay appears, my guess is that Israel will have already doubled Hamas’s kill count and will be well on its way to killing at least ten times more Palestinian civilians than the number of Israelis butchered by Hamas.

The retired US general who went on MSNBC to rave about the IDF’s coming attack on the oppressed Gazan masses used his time on the “left” (LOL) network to tell Iran to “restrain your creature Hezbollah,” It is unthinkable that the network would bring on someone to tell Washington to “restrain your creature Israel” from killing tens if not hundreds of thousands of Gazans!

I saw no shock on the face of CNN and MSNBC hosts when they reported that the White House had explicitly “NOT URGED RESTRAINT” on Israel when Biden spoke to Netanyahu on the phone after the attack.

One darkly amusing thing I heard on cable news was the claim that an Israel ground incursion into Gaza would be “unprecedented.” Really? As professor Anthony Zenku has noted: “In July 2014, Israel’s military invaded Gaza and killed 1,881 people, including hundreds of children. US politicians and mainstream media didn’t call it terrorism, the attack wasn’t labeled as ‘unprecedented,’ and the US and its allies didn’t demand that Israel be held accountable.” Prior to that, Israel invaded Gaza, killing many thousands, on January 3, 2009, and November 14, 2012.

Also missing on “liberal” US cable news is of course the basic historical fact that Israel has carried out its torture of the people of Gaza and Palestine with the support of the United States, which provides Tel Aviv billions of dollars’ worth of military aid every year. As the Arab Center reported six weeks ago:

“If there is one thing that characterizes American-Israeli relations more than any other it is US military aid to Israel, which currently amounts to nearly $4 billion dollars a year. Few things in Washington have seemed more guaranteed than this US aid, as well as congressional approval for it. This support has been so sacrosanct that any critical conversation around it has long been considered taboo…US Military aid to Israel, or more precisely US military financing for Israel, functions through the United States’ Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program. Israel is the single largest recipient of US military financing through this program, at $3.8 billion a year. Egypt comes in second at $1.3 billion. Together they make up the majority of the nearly $10 billion annually allotted for this purpose. Egypt’s military financing itself was a product of negotiations to bring the country under American influence as part of the Camp David Accords in the late 1970s. The peace accords, sealed with financing for the Egyptian military and economy, brought an end to hostilities and recognition of Israel by Egypt. In other words, the majority of the FMF program serves Israeli interests.”

US sponsorship and funding of Judeo-fascist Israel, a hyper-militarized ethno-religious state based on the violent theft of Palestinian land and the brutal oppression of the Palestinian people, goes back many decades. The US is a critical force behind the misery of Gaza, where recent brazen Israeli provocations including the opening of a cherished Muslim mosque to Jewish prayer have made a bloody conflict seem inevitable in recent months.

Now that Hamas has struck, inflicting what is being called “Israel’s 9/11,” the cable talking heads don’t flinch as the imperial hawk Joe Biden announces that Washington gives “rock solid and unwavering support” to Israel. Biden’s statement amounts to giving the far-right genocidal fascist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a blank check as he acts on his pledge to respond with “mighty vengeance” and tells Gazans to “flee” from an Israel-made penal colony they can’t escape – a place where every day is 9/11. Indeed, the US is sending advanced weaponry to help Israel kill Gazans en masse and positioning a naval war flotilla to warn off any regional forces (above all Hezbollah and Iran) who might be moved to try to protect the people of Gaza from horrendous assault.

The mainstream media treats it as a normalized and apparently approved fact that Israel is going to kill untold thousands of Palestinians in response to a Hamas attack for which little if any real historical context is permitted. The Black misleader and imperialist US House Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) advanced his party’s sickening line by going on MSNBC four days ago to say that “right now Israel has to do what it’s got to do.” The MSNBC host asked, “so level the place?,” meaning Gaza, and Meeks didn’t flinch.

Other Democratic Congresspersons went on MSNBNC to say that “We’ve got to give Israel room” to “act decisively here” – that is to generate mountains of rubble and Palestinian corpses.

The conversation about Israel’s role in the Hamas attack on CNN and MSNBC has turned on Israeli intelligence failures; little or nothing is said about Israel’s savage oppression and torture of Gaza.

There, to bs sure, some concerns expressed by a US cable news talking head or two (e.g. Lawrence O’Donnell) about the possibility that Israel could “overreact” and thereby hurt US interests in the Middle East and around. The death of Palestinians is incidental to that strategic concern.

And so it goes with US war and entertainment media, where images of death and incitements to massive imperial assault appear between a regular parade of infantile drug, car, insurance, and financial service commercials. It’s called Manufacturing Consent.

Endnote

+1. The Nakba, a critical piece of history that imperialist CNN and MSNBC won’t tell viewers about, “means ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic…[it] refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Before the Nakba,” the United Nations explains, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. However, the conflict between Arabs and Jews intensified in the 1930s with the increase of Jewish immigration, driven by persecution in Europe, and with the Zionist movement aiming to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.” Further:

“Jewish militias launched attacks against Palestinian villages, forcing thousands to flee. The situation escalated into a full-blown war in 1948, with the end of the British Mandate and the departure of British forces, the declaration of independence of the State of Israel and the entry of neighboring Arab armies. The newly established Israeli forces launched a major offensive. The result of the war was the permanent displacement of more than half of the Palestinian population… 75 years later, despite countless UN resolutions, the rights of the Palestinians continue to be denied. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) more than 5 million Palestine refugees are scattered throughout the Middle East.   Today, Palestinians continue to be dispossessed and displaced by Israeli settlements, evictions, land confiscation and home demolitions.”

Home to masses of Palestinians fleeing Israeli occupation, Gaza was seized by Israel from Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War. Over the last 56 years Israel has turned it into an appalling monument to human cruelty under different nominal authorities, including civilian Palestinian servitude, the Palestinian National Authority, and (since 2007) Hamas, whose rise to “power” elicited Israel’s criminal blockade.

“In the wake of the horrors of the Vietnam War and the unconscionable lies used to justify it,” the renowned physician and social critic Gabor Mate writes, “I…had to arrive…at the heartrending realization that the dream that had been a balm to my soul, that of a triumphant Jewish national rebirth in my people’s ancestral biblical home, had been achieved by imposing a nightmare on the Palestinian inhabitants of the land, a nightmare that continues to this day. When the truth struck home, I was once again astonished that my imagined universe could have been such a distorted version of the real one. Visiting the West Bank and Gaza, I wept every day for two weeks.”

The post Manufacturing Consent: The Western War Media’s Selective Outrage and Imperial Amnesia appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Paul Street.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The post Imperial Protectionism: US Foreign Policy for the Middle Class appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Sullivan, for one, wistfully laments the passing of the order forged in the aftermath of the Second World War, one that “lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty” and “sustained thrilling technological revolutions.” Then came “cracks in those foundations”, with globalisation leaving “many working Americans and their communities behind.” Overdependence on the global market, he suggests, became the enemy, a point accentuated by the global pandemic, the disruptions in supply chains, the Ukraine War, and a changing climate.

It does not take long to realise the nativist tilt, at least in the economic sense, is in the offing. It is one crowned by “a modern industrial and innovation strategy” that will foster “economic and technological strength”, diversity and resilience in supply chains, high standards in terms of labour and the environment, good governance, and “deploys capital to deliver on goods like climate and health.”

Sullivan goes on to talk about the need for “an international economic system that works for our wage-earners, works for our industries, works for our climate, works for our national security, and works for the world’s poorest and vulnerable countries.” This will envisage a greater role for the US government: “targeted and necessary investments in places that private markets are ill-suited to address on their own – even as we continue to harness the power of markets and integration.”

Anticipating the critics of this “new Washington consensus” who see it as a case of “America alone” or “American and the West to the exclusion of others”, Sullivan insists they are “just flat wrong.”

As Sullivan’s address gathers momentum, there is much to suggest that the sceptics rightly sense something afoot. The market, for one, comes in for some withering treatment, along with privatisation, trade liberalisation and deregulation. “There was one assumption at the heart of this policy: that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently – no matter what our competitors did, no matter how big our shared challenges grew, and no matter how many guardrails we took down.” In Sullivan beats a protectionist heart.

Foreign policy for the American middle class does not envisage an open market where decisions to sell and purchase products and services are accordingly made without distortions. Echoing yet another aspect of Trump’s America First (not so, Sullivan would cry!) is the pursuit of an agenda favouring generous subsidies and, by virtue of that, imposing impediments on trade with partners.

It is also a policy that will focus on “de-risking and diversifying, not decoupling” from China. Investing “in our own capacities” will continue. Export controls would be “narrowly focused on technology that could tilt the military balance. We are simply ensuring that US and allied technology is not used against us. We are not cutting trade.”

The Brookings Institution address by Sullivan, with its rhapsodic, protectionist tones, should also be read along with that of the US Treasury Secretary’s remarks made at Johns Hopkins University a few days prior. In many ways, Secretary Janet Yellen’s address betrays the dizzy muddle that afflicts much of President Joe Biden’s policy making. On the one hand, she openly admits that a US decoupling from China’s economy should not be sought. “A full separation of our economies would be disastrous for both countries. It would be destabilizing for the rest of the world.”

All very good, but for one problem: Washington wanted a “China that plays by the rules”. Yellen frankly admits that by Beijing doing so, the US would benefit, suggesting exactly who made them up to begin with. “For instance, it can mean demand for US products and services and more dynamic US industries.”

Despite both Sullivan and Yellen taking time to point out, at points, that China is not the absolute, irredeemable bogeyman, the realities are different. Yellen also talks of the parochialism of US economic interest, or what she prefers to call “modern supply-side economics” that focuses on expanding the productive capacity of the US economy. This has been marked by the passage of three bills: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, intended to modernise everything from roads to high-speed Internet access; the CHIPS and Science Act, which seeks to expand semiconductor manufacturing capacity; and the Inflation Reduction Act, with a focus on investments in clean energy.

In all these measures, Yellen insists that they are not nativist so much as self-interested without impairing economic relations with other states: “Our economic strategy is centred around investing in ourselves – not suppressing or containing any other economy.”

Eyeballs must have rolled at that very observation, given the aggressive role industrial policy now plays in the US. The “Buy American” requirements now see subsidies being thrown at US manufacturing, a policy that by any estimation would be heretical to the free-market anti-protectionists. As Biden stated in his State of the Union address in February, there would be a requirement that “all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects be made in America” using “American-made lumber, glass, drywall, fiber optic cables.” Ditto “American roads, American bridges, and American highways”.

In the spirit of America First protectionism, the trade war with China, now in its fifth year, continues, whatever Yellen might claim, with a strong focus on stifling technological innovation in Beijing.

Biden has also shown no willingness to re-join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump exited with much demagogic fanfare. A few ideas have been floated, such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP), neither of which offer the signatories much by way of incentives. For one, they insulate the US market, barring preferential access.

However successful such policies might be in protecting the beleaguered, ravaged middle class of the US, the group of states most concerned will be Washington’s allies. With all the babble about rules and the international order, it is clear that the US imperium hopes to continue dictating the economic pattern to both friend and foe.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

A number of officials are keen to push the line that Washington’s policy towards the Pacific is clearly back where it should be. It’s all part of the warming strategy adopted by the Biden administration, typified by the US-Pacific Island Country summit held last September. In remarks made during the summit, President Joe Biden stated that “the security of America, quite frankly, and the world, depends on your security and the security of the Pacific Islands. And I really mean that.”

Not once was China mentioned, but its ghostly presence stalked Biden’s words. A new Pacific Partnership Strategy was announced, “the first national US strategy for [the] Pacific Islands”. Then came the promised cash: some $810 million in expanded US programs including more than $130 million in new investments to support, among other things, climate resilience, buffer the states against the impact of climate change and improve food security.

The Pacific Islands have also seen a flurry of recent visits. In January this year, US Indo-Pacific military commander Admiral John Aquilino popped into Papua New Guinea to remind the good citizens of Port Moresby that the eyes of the US were gazing benignly upon them. It was his first visit to the country, and the public affairs unit of the US Indo-Pacific Command stated that it underscored “the importance of the US-Papua New Guinea relationship” and showed US resolve “toward building a more peaceful, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.”

In February, a rather obvious strategic point was made in the reopening of the US embassy in the Solomon Islands. Little interest had been shown towards the island state for some three decades (the embassy had been closed in 1993). But then came Beijing doing, at least from Washington’s perspective, the unpardonable thing of poking around and seeking influence.

Now, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare finds himself at the centre of much interest, at least till he falls out of favour in the airconditioned corridors of Washington. His policy – “friends to all, enemy to none” – has become a mantra. That much was clear in a May 2022 statement. “My government welcomes all high-level visits from our key development partners. We will always stand true to our policy of ‘Friends to All and Enemies to None’ as we look forward to continuing productive relations with all our development partners.”

For the moment, the US interim representative, Russell Corneau, was satisfied in noting that the embassy would “serve as a key platform” between Washington and the Solomon Islands. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in fairly torturous language, declared that the reopening “builds on our efforts to place more diplomatic personnel throughout the region and engage further with our Pacific neighbours, connect United States programs and resources with needs on the ground, and build people-to-people ties.” Sogavare, adopting his hard-to-get pose, absented himself from the ceremony.

This month, the Deputy Assistant to the US President and Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific National Security Council Kurt Campbell has been particularly busy doing his rounds. The Solomon Islands has been of particular interest, given its security pact with Beijing. No sooner had Sogavare had time to compose himself after two high profile visits from Japan and China, there was Campbell and his eight-member delegation.

“We realise that we have to overcome in certain areas some amounts of distrust and uncertainty about follow through,” Campbell explained in his usual middle-management speak to reporters in Wellington. “We’re seeking to gain that trust and confidence as we go forward. Much of what we are doing has been initiated by the president, but I want to underscore that it’s quite bipartisan.”

In Honiara, Campbell was forward in admitting that the US had not done “enough before” and had to be “big enough to admit that we need to do more, and we need to do better.” Doing more and doing better clearly entailed dragging out from Sogavare a promise that his country would not create a military facility “that would support power projection capabilities” for Beijing.

Earlier in the month, Qian Bo, China’s Pacific Island envoy, was also doing his bit to win support for the cause. His Vanuatu sojourn was a wooing effort directed at the Melanesian Spearhead Group, comprising Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Kanak independence movement in New Caledonia. But as with any muscle-bound hegemon seeking to impress, the crumbs left were treated with some circumspection.

A leaked letter from Micronesia’s President David Panuelo took a more dim view of China’s offerings. In the March 9 document, the cogs and wheels of calculation were busy, taking into account the US proposal of US$50 million into Micronesia’s national trust fund and annual financial assistance of US$15 million. “All of this assistance, of course, would be on top of the greatly added layers of security and protection that come from our country distancing itself from the PRC.” Micronesian officials, he charged, had been the targets of bribes and offers of bribes from the Chinese embassy.

Not all his colleagues in the Pacific are in accord with Panuelo, though the view suggests that both Beijing and Washington are finding, in these small countries, political figures more than willing to exploit the rivalry. To that end lie riches.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

While advocates of peace and a multipolar world order welcomed Friday's China-brokered agreement reestablishing diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, U.S. press, pundits, and politicians expressed what one observer called "imperial anxieties" over the deal and growing Chinese influence in a region dominated by the United States for decades.

The deal struck between the two countries—which are fighting a proxy war in Yemen—to normalize relations after seven years of severance was hailed by Wang Yi, China's top diplomat, as "a victory of dialogue and peace."

The three nations said in a joint statement that the agreement is an "affirmation of the respect for the sovereignty of states and non-interference in internal affairs."

"The U.S. encourages war while China pushes the opposite."

Iran and Saudi Arabia "also expressed their appreciation and gratitude to the leadership and government of the People's Republic of China for hosting and sponsoring the talks, and the efforts it placed towards its success," the statement said.

United Nations spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric thanked China for its role in the deal, asserting in a statement that "good neighborly relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are essential for the stability of the Gulf region."

Amy Hawthorne, deputy director for research at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, toldThe New York Times that "China's prestigious accomplishment vaults it into a new league diplomatically and outshines anything the U.S. has been able to achieve in the region since [President Joe] Biden came to office."

Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., called the deal a sign of "a battle of narratives for the future of the international order."

CNN's Tamara Qiblawi called the agreement "the start of a new era, with China front and center."

Meanwhile, Ahmed Aboudouh, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, another D.C. think tank, wrote that "China just left the U.S. with a bloody nose in the Gulf."

At the Carnegie Endowment, yet another think tank located in the nation's capital, senior fellow Aaron David Miller tweeted that the deal "boosts Beijing and legitimizes Tehran. It's a middle finger to Biden and a practical calculation of Saudi interests"

Some observers compared U.S. and Chinese policies and actions in the Middle East.

"The U.S. is supporting one side and suppressing the other, while China is trying to make both parties move closer," Wu Xinbo, dean of international studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the Times. "It is a different diplomatic paradigm."

Murtaza Hussein, a reporter for The Intercept,tweeted that the fact that the agreement "was mediated by China as a trusted outside party shows shortcomings of belligerent U.S. approach to the region."

While cautiously welcoming the agreement, Biden administration officials expressed skepticism that Iran would live up to its end of the bargain.

"This is not a regime that typically does honor its word, so we hope that they do," White House National Security Council Strategic Coordinator John Kirby told reporters on Friday—apparently without any sense of irony over the fact that the United States unilaterally abrogated the Iran nuclear deal during the Trump administration.

Kirby added that the Biden administration would "like to see this war in Yemen end," but he did not acknowledge U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in a civil war that's directly or indirectly killed nearly 400,000 people since 2014, according to United Nations humanitarian officials.

U.S relations with Saudi Arabia have been strained during the tenure of President Joe Biden. While Biden—who once vowed to make the repressive kingdom a "pariah" over the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—has been willing to tolerate Saudi human rights abuses and war crimes, the president has expressed anger and frustration over the monarchy's decision to reduce oil production amid soaring U.S. gasoline prices and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration is currently trying to broker a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel following the Trump administration's mediation of the Abraham Accords, a series of diplomatic normalization agreements between Israel and erstwhile enemies the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

The United States, which played a key role in overthrowing Iran's progressive government in a 1953 coup, has not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since shortly after the current Islamist regime overthrew the U.S.-backed monarchy that ruled with a brutal hand for 25 years following the coup.

Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Middle East Programs for the Atlantic Council, urged the U.S. to maintain friendly relations with brutal dictatorships in the region in order to prevent Chinese hegemony there.

Panikoff wrote in an Atlantic Council analysis:

We may now be seeing the emergence of China's political role in the region and it should be a warning to U.S. policymakers: Leave the Middle East and abandon ties with sometimes frustrating, even barbarous, but long-standing allies, and you'll simply be leaving a vacuum for China to fill. And make no mistake, a China-dominated Middle East would fundamentally undermine U.S. commercial, energy, and national security.

Other observers also worried about China's rising power in the Middle East and beyond.

New York Times China correspondent David Pierson wrote Saturday that China's role in the Iran-Saudi Arabia rapprochement shows Chinese President Xi Jinping's "ambition of offering an alternative to a U.S.-led world order."

According to Pierson:

The vision Mr. Xi has laid out is one that wrests power from Washington in favor of multilateralism and so-called noninterference, a word that China uses to argue that nations should not meddle in each other's internal affairs, by criticizing human rights abuses, for example.

The Saudi-Iran agreement reflects this vision. China's engagement in the region has for years been rooted in delivering mutual economic benefits and shunning Western ideals of liberalism that have complicated Washington’s ability to expand its presence in the Gulf.

Pierson noted Xi's Global Security Initiative, which seeks to promote "peaceful coexistence" in a multipolar world that eschews "unilateralism, bloc confrontation, and hegemonism" like U.S. invasions and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

"Some analysts say the initiative is essentially a bid to advance Chinese interests by displacing Washington as the world's policeman," wrote Pierson. "The plan calls for respect of countries' 'indivisible security,' a Soviet term used to argue against U.S.-led alliances on China's periphery."

The U.S. has attacked, invaded, or occupied more than 20 countries since 1950. During that same period, China has invaded two countries—India and Vietnam.

"The Chinese, who for years played only a secondary role in the region, have suddenly transformed themselves into the new power player."

New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker also published an article Saturday about how the "China-brokered deal upends Mideast diplomacy and challenges [the] U.S."

"The Americans, who have been the central actors in the Middle East for the past three-quarters of a century, almost always the ones in the room where it happened, now find themselves on the sidelines during a moment of significant change," fretted Baker. "The Chinese, who for years played only a secondary role in the region, have suddenly transformed themselves into the new power player."

Some experts asserted that more peace in the Middle East would be a good thing, no matter who brokers it.

"While many in Washington will view China's emerging role as mediator in the Middle East as a threat, the reality is that a more stable Middle East where the Iranians and Saudis aren't at each other's throats also benefits the United States," tweeted Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

"Unfortunately, the U.S. has adopted an approach to the region that has disabled it from becoming a credible mediator," he lamented. "Too often, Washington takes sides in conflicts and becomes a co-belligerent—as in Yemen—which then reduces its ability to play the role of peacemaker."

"Washington should avoid a scenario where regional players view America as an entrenched warmaker and China as a flexible peacemaker," Parsi cautioned.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Friday marks one year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Over the past year, at least 8,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, according to the United Nations, but the true death toll is believed to be higher. The U.N. refugee agency said this week that more than 8 million refugees have fled the fighting in Ukraine. This week, U.S. President Joe Biden met with NATO leaders in Warsaw, while Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Western countries sending military aid to Ukraine bear responsibility for prolonging the death and destruction of the war. We begin today’s show looking at the war’s impact and future with Nina Krushcheva, a professor of international affairs at The New School and the great-granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Hanna Perekhoda, a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Lausanne and member of the democratic socialist organization Sotsialnyi Rukh. Perekhoda is from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The post Blood, Money and Imperial War appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ron Jacobs.

More than two millennia ago, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounted a disastrous conflict Athens waged against Sparta. A masterwork on strategy and war, the book is still taught at the U.S. Army War College and many other military institutions across the world. A passage from it describing an ultimatum Athens gave a weaker power has stayed with me all these years. And here it is, loosely translated from the Greek: “The strong do what they will and the weak suffer as they must.”

Recently, I read the latest National Defense Strategy, or NDS, issued in October 2022 by the Pentagon, and Thucydides’s ancient message, a warning as clear as it was undeniable, came to mind again. It summarized for me the true essence of that NDS: being strong, the United States does what it wants and weaker powers, of course, suffer as they must. Such a description runs contrary to the mythology of this country in which we invariably wage war not for our own imperial ends but to defend ourselves while advancing freedom and democracy. Recall that Athens, too, thought of itself as an enlightened democracy even as it waged its imperial war of dominance on the Peloponnesus. Athens lost that war, calamitously, but at least it did produce Thucydides, a military leader who became a historian and wrote all too bluntly about his country’s hubristic, ultimately fatal pursuit of hegemony.

Imperial military ambitions contributed disastrously to Athens’s exhaustion and ultimate collapse, a lesson completely foreign to U.S. strategists. Not surprisingly, then, you’ll find no such Thucydidean clarity in the latest NDS approved by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. In place of that Greek historian’s probity and timeless lessons, the NDS represents an assault not just on the English language but on our very future. In it, a policy of failing imperial dominance is eternally disguised as democratic deterrence, while the greatest “strategic” effort of all goes (remarkably successfully) into justifying massive Pentagon budget increases. Given the sustained record of failures in this century for what still passes as the greatest military power on the planet — Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, of course, but don’t forget Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and indeed the entire $8 trillion Global War on Terror in all its brutality — consider the NDS a rare recent “mission accomplished” moment. The 2023 baseline “defense” budget now sits at $858 billion, $45 billion more than even the Biden administration requested.

With that yearly budget climbing toward a trillion dollars (or more) annually, it’s easy to conclude that, at least when it comes to our military, nothing succeeds like failure. And, by the way, that not only applies to wars lost at a staggering cost but also financial audits blown without penalty. After all, the Pentagon only recently failed its fifth audit in a row. With money always overflowing, no matter how it may be spent, one thing seems guaranteed: some future American Thucydides will have the material to produce a volume or volumes beyond compare. Of course, whether this country goes the way of Athens — defeat driven by military exhaustion exacerbated by the betrayal of its supposedly deepest ideals leading to an ultimate collapse — remains to be seen. Still, given that America’s war colleges continue to assign Thucydides, no one can say that our military and future NDS writers didn’t get fair warning when it comes to what likely awaits them.

Bludgeoning America with Bureaucratese

If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.

That’s a saying I learned early in my career as an Air Force officer, so I wasn’t exactly surprised to discover that it’s the NDS’s guiding philosophy. The document has an almost Alice in Wonderland-like quality to it as words and phrases take on new meanings. China, you won’t be surprised to learn, is a “pacing challenge” to U.S. security concerns; Russia, an “acute threat” to America due to its “unprovoked, unjust, and reckless invasion of Ukraine” and other forms of “irresponsible behavior”; and building “combat-credible forces” within a “defense ecosystem” is a major Pentagon goal, along with continuing “investments in mature, high-value assets” (like defective aircraft carriers, ultra-expensive bombers and fighter jets, and doomsday-promising new ICBMs).

Much talk is included about “leveraging” those “assets,” “risk mitigation,” and even “cost imposition,” a strange euphemism for bombing, killing, or otherwise inflicting pain on our enemies. Worse yet, there’s so much financial- and business-speak in the document that it’s hard not to wonder whether its authors don’t already have at least one foot in the revolving door that could, on their retirement from the military, swing them onto the corporate boards of major defense contractors like Boeing and Raytheon.

Perhaps my favorite redefined concept in that NDS lurks in the word “campaigning.” In the old days, armies fought campaigns in the field and generals like Frederick the Great or Napoleon truly came to know the price of them in blood and treasure. Unlike U.S. generals since 1945, they also knew the meaning of victory, as well as defeat. Perish the thought of that kind of campaigning now. The NDS redefines it, almost satirically, not to say incomprehensibly, as “the conduct and sequencing of logically-linked military initiatives aimed at advancing well-defined, strategy-aligned priorities over time.” Huh?

Campaigning, explains the cover letter signed by Secretary of Defense Austin (who won’t be mistaken for Frederick II in his bluntness or Napoleon in his military acuity), “is not business as usual — it is the deliberate effort to synchronize the [Defense] Department’s activities and investments to aggregate focus and resources to shift conditions in our favor.”

Got it? Good!

Of course, who knows what such impenetrable jargon really means to our military in 2023? This former military officer certainly prefers the plain and honest language of Thucydides. In his terms, America, the strong, intends to do what it will in the world to preserve and extend “conditions in our favor,” as the NDS puts it — a measure by which this country has failed dismally in this century. Weaker countries, especially those that are “irresponsible,” must simply suffer. If they resist, they must be prepared for some “cost imposition” events exercised by our “combat-credible forces.” Included in those are America’s “ultimate backstop” of cost imposition… gulp, its nuclear forces.

Again, the NDS is worthy of close reading (however pain-inducing that may be) precisely because the secretary of defense does claim that it’s his “preeminent guidance document.” I assume he’s not kidding about that, though I wish he were. To me, that document is to guidance as nuclear missiles are to “backstops.” If that last comparison is jarring, I challenge you to read it and then try to think or write clearly.

Bringing Clarity to America’s Military Strategy

To save you the trauma of even paging through the NDS, let me try to summarize it quickly in my version — if not the Pentagon’s — of English:

1. China is the major threat to America on this planet.
2. Russia, however, is a serious threat in Europe.
3. The War on Terror continues to hum along successfully, even if at a significantly lower level.
4. North Korea and Iran remain threats, mainly due to the first’s growing nuclear arsenal and the second’s supposed nuclear aspirations.
5. Climate change, pandemics, and cyberwar must also be factored in as “transboundary challenges.”

“Deterrence” is frequently used as a cloak for the planetary dominance the Pentagon continues to dream of. Our military must remain beyond super-strong (and wildly overfunded) to deter nations and entities from striking “the homeland.” There’s also lots of talk about global challenges to be met, risks to be managed, “gray zone” methods to be employed, and references aplenty to “kinetic action” (combat, in case your translator isn’t working) and what’s known as “exploitable asymmetries.”

Count on one thing: whatever our disasters in the real world, nobody is going to beat America in the jargon war.

Missing in the NDS — and no surprise here — is any sense that war is humanity’s worst pastime. Even the mass murder implicit in nuclear weapons is glossed over. The harshest realities of conflict, nuclear war included, and the need to do anything in our power to prevent them, naturally go unmentioned. The very banality of the document serves to mask a key reality of our world: that Americans fund nothing as religiously as war, that most withering of evils.

Perhaps it’s not quite the banality of evil, to cite the telling phrase political philosopher Hannah Arendt used to describe the thoughts of the deskbound mass-murderers of the Holocaust, but it does have all of war’s brutality expunged from it. As we stare into the abyss, the NDS replies with mind-numbing phrases and terms that wouldn’t be out of place in a corporate report on rising profits and market dominance.

Yet as the military-industrial complex maneuvers and plots to become ever bigger, ever better funded, and ever more powerful, abetted by a Congress seemingly lustful for ever more military spending and weapons exports, hope for international cooperation, productive diplomacy, and democracy withers. Here, for instance, are a few of the things you’ll never see mentioned in this NDS:

1. Any suggestion that the Pentagon budget might be reduced. Ever.
2. Any suggestion that the U.S. military’s mission or “footprint” should be downsized in any way at all.
3. Any acknowledgement that the U.S. and its allies spend far more on their militaries than “pacing challengers” like China or “acute threats” like Russia.
4. Any acknowledgment that the Pentagon’s budget is based not on deterrence but on dominance.
5. Any acknowledgement that the U.S. military has been far less than dominant despite endless decades of massive military spending that produced lost or stalemated wars from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq.
6. Any suggestion that skilled diplomacy and common security could lead to greater cooperation or decreased tensions.
7. Any serious talk of peace.

In brief, in that document and thanks to the staggering congressional funding that goes with it, America is being eternally spun back into an age of great-power rivalry, with Xi Jinping’s China taking the place of the old Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin’s Russia that of Mao Zedong’s China. Consistent with that retro-vision is the true end goal of the NDS: to eternally maximize the Pentagon budget and so the power and authority of the military-industrial-congressional complex.

Basically, any power that seeks to push back against the Pentagon’s vision of security through dominance is defined as a threat to be “deterred,” often in the most “kinetic” way. And the greatest threat of all, requiring the most “deterrence,” is, of course, China.

In a textbook case of strategic mirror-imaging, the Pentagon’s NDS sees that country and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as acting almost exactly like the U.S. military. And that simply cannot be allowed.

Here’s the relevant NDS passage:

“In addition to expanding its conventional forces, the PLA is rapidly advancing and integrating its space, counterspace, cyber, electronic, and information warfare capabilities to support its holistic approach to joint warfare. The PLA seeks to target the ability of the [U.S.] Joint Force to project power to defend vital U.S. interests and aid our Allies in a crisis or conflict. The PRC [China] is also expanding the PLA’s global footprint and working to establish a more robust overseas and basing infrastructure to allow it to project military power at greater distances. In parallel, the PRC is accelerating the modernization and expansion of its nuclear capabilities.”

How dare China become more like the United States! Only this country is allowed to aspire to “full-spectrum dominance” and global power, as manifested by its 750 military bases scattered around the world and its second-to-none, blue-water navy. Get back to thy place, China! Only “a free people devoted to democracy and the rule of law” can “sustain and strengthen an international system under threat.” China, you’ve been warned. Better not dare to keep pace with the U.S. of A. (And heaven forfend that, in a world overheating in a devastating way, the planet’s two greatest greenhouse gas emitters should work together to prevent true catastrophe!)

Revisiting the Oath of Office

Being a retired U.S. military officer, I always come back to the oath of office I once swore to uphold: “To support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Naturally, if China, Russia, or any other country or entity attacks or otherwise directly menaces the U.S., I expect our military to defend this country with all due vigor.

That said, I don’t see China, Russia, or weaker countries like Iran or North Korea risking attacks against America proper, despite breathless talk of world “flashpoints.” Why would they, when any such attack would incur a devastating counterattack, possibly including America’s trusty “backstop,” its nuclear weapons?

In truth, the NDS is all about the further expansion of the U.S. global military mission. Contraction is a concept never to be heard. Yet reducing our military’s presence abroad isn’t synonymous with isolationism, nor, as has become ever more obvious in recent years, is an expansive military structure a fail-safe guarantor of freedom and democracy at home. Quite the opposite, constant warfare and preparations for more of it overseas have led not only to costly defeats, most recently in Afghanistan, but also to the increasing militarization of our society, a phenomenon reflected, for instance, in the more heavily armed and armored police forces across America.

The Pentagon’s NDS is a classic case of threat inflation cloaked in bureaucratese where the “facts” are fixed around a policy that encourages the incessant and inflationary growth of the military-industrial complex. In turn, that complex empowers and drives a “rules-based international order” in which America, as hegemon, makes the rules. Again, as Thucydides put it, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer as they must.

Yet, to paraphrase another old book, what does it profit a people to gain the whole world yet lose their very soul? Like Athens before it, America was once a flawed democracy that nevertheless served as an inspiration to many because militarism, authoritarianism, and imperial pretense didn’t drive it. Today, this country is much like Thucydides’s Athens, projecting power ever-outwards in a misbegotten exercise to attain mastery through military supremacy.

It didn’t end well for Athens, nor will it for the United States.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by William Astore.

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior and was authored by Andrea Chalupa & Sarah Kendzior.

Four years after the release of the record-shattering first Black Panther movie, and two years after the unexpected death of the original film’s star Chadwick Boseman, Disney/Marvel bring us the inevitable sequel. Rather than recast the protagonist, King T’Challa, aka the Black Panther, dies offscreen in the opening five minutes. From there, his sister Princess Shuri (Letetia Wright) and mother Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) try to process the death while being confronted with a new menace to their fictional kingdom of Wakanda, home of the powerful vibranium metal that has granted their scientists all sorts of advanced technology.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has always been a funhouse mirror of American liberalism, which can be attributed in part to how the franchise began life reliant upon an open door policy with the Pentagon, trading script approval for access to military locations and hardware. (For further details, readers are encouraged to peruse 2017’s National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood by Alford and Secker.) After the George Floyd protests and the blossoming of grassroots mutual aid networks that were created to support the most vulnerable Black and Brown populations during the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was next to inevitable that director Ryan Coogler would reflect this by bringing into discourse the Afro-futuristic Wakanda with an Indigenous Latin American polity, Talokan, and its lord-protector, Namor (Tenoch Huerta).

This occasions several questions. First, does the conflict between Black Wakandans and Latin American Talokan-ians adequately estimate the complexities of real world Black and Latin American communal intercourse? Second, should we expect such complexity from a comic book movie? Third, can we truly grapple with such questions in a picture that still holds allegiance with the American empire?

In response to the first question, I feel that the picture missed some key components. Even though the film features a brief moment set in Haiti (and even includes a precious tyke named Toussaint, as in the L’Ouverture, the leader of the Black Jacobins who overthrew French slavery and colonialism), one would never know that the Caribbean island is also home to the Dominican Republic, which has its own Afro Latin American population. In other words, with regard to the second query, the film vocally invites the critics to grapple with such complexity but shirks actual engagement.

And the reason why it missed this mark is directly linked to the negative answer for the last inquiry. The imperium is the elephant in the room and the third rail of Marvel’s chic wannabe-wokeness. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and many more thinkers in the long-lived Black Radical Tradition understood that it was impossible to liberate the people from the scourges of racism and white supremacy until and unless the imperium was put on the chopping block. By contrast, this film yet again features Martin Freeman as a Wakanda-friendly CIA agent whose allegiance to Langley is never fundamentally negated. Yes, the picture virtue-signals to radical concepts, such as having Wakandan characters call Freeman’s character a “colonizer.” But an adjective is utterly meaningless unless it is corroborated by a meaningful discussion of the underlying concepts, which I would argue does not occur. The continued failure to dismantle allegiance to Langley reifies an American Exceptionalism in Kente cloth.

When the original picture was released, I saw it as impossible for me to adequately estimate the work, due in no small part to my whiteness. But my friend and fellow geek, Dr. Todd Steven Burroughs, whose book on the Panther is essential reading, said it best in a recent interview:

The comic book geek and the Africana scholar forever warring inside me go back and forth on it. This is a white corporate product starring characters originally created by white Americans with some later help from African-Americans, and now it’s a film produced by a white conglomerate, one written and directed by African-Americans starring both African-Americans and the children of continental Africans. This is not an authentic, organic African cultural product–which shows our powerlessness to do one ourselves. Remember: America was comfortable having a Black president serve two terms but there is still no Black American that can greenlight a Hollywood film. The great writer Haki Madhubuti has called the first film “dangerous.” And if you are committed to African liberation, how can you not call it that?… Black Panther only shows that the billion-dollar Disney/Marvel Cinematic Universe can make popular any kind of story starring anyone, that it can make anybody in the world into a popular superhero, but it is not an advance for Black, African and African Diasporic filmmaking. I’m excited as any fantasy-loving Marvel Zombie about this sequel–I got my ticket for the November 10 Thursday afternoon sneak preview weeks ago–but the African reality always is in the back of my mind. At the same time, I quietly agonize, I do acknowledge what this franchise means: African children–and some adults–around the world get to see themselves as the most powerful people on Earth. I think that’s where any importance really lies. So it’s complicated for me, internally and externally, intellectually and emotionally.

The choice of Namor the Sub-Mariner as villain merits some discussion. The character is technically the oldest in the Marvel stable, having premiered in 1939, seventeen months before the first appearance of Captain America. Originally he was the King of Atlantis, seeking revenge on the surface dwellers for the impact on his realm wrought by ecological degradation. Owing in no small part to the success DC’s Aquaman films, a character who is likewise the half-human monarch of the legendary undersea kingdom grinding an ax over pollution, Marvel instead opted to rebrand the character as an Aztec whose people were forced to become aquatic after consumption of a flowering plant blooming from vibranium. It is a fascinating redeployment of the character.

But it also seems reliant upon some of the more noxious stereotypes about the Aztec nation. The entire population is a blood-thirsty warrior race lacking any internal debate or political discourse opposing its militarism. True, their king is motivated by anticolonialism (or at least a comic book version of it). But while Wakanda has a relatively complex political discourse, including space for hearty dissent, the people of Talokan are utterly subservient and unquestioning with regards to a series of political decisions that the (admittedly pro-imperial) Wakandans vocally describe as insane. This is a return to some of the most toxic characterizations of Indigeneity known to Hollywood and I feel compelled to articulate this point. Namor’s quest in this film is a flat, simplistic caricature of what true liberation from colonialism and imperialism actually should be, a deeply disturbing rendition that is being communicated to impressionable youth. (My God, Marvel is so devious it makes me sound like Tipper Gore!) Lest the reader be ascertain a mistaken impression, my point is not that these Indigenous characters are not entitled to violent means by which to emancipate themselves. Instead, as Frantz Fanon and many others said previously, national liberation is not mere violence. Rather, it is a politics that includes many nuances, including not just violence but debate, dissent, and discussion of allegiances, alliances, and solidarity.

Consider for contrast Captain America: Civil War (2016, dirs. The Russo Brothers). That picture’s entire plot was predicated upon a debate between Tony Stark/Iron Man and Steve Rogers/Captain America over whether or not to submit to a government superhero registration program that combined elements of McCarthyism with the Patriot Act, a debate that ended in violent blows and no certitude about who had been truly “right” at the conclusion of the argument. Why is it that Robert Downey, Jr. and Chris Evans are entitled to such nuances in their characterizations and screenplays? I suspect that the answer is really just skin deep…

John Ford, arguably the dean of Golden Age Hollywood Westerns (aren’t these superhero movies our new Westerns?), sought to imbue his Indigenous antagonists with psychological complexity and anticolonial politics, indebted to the Hollywood Communist Party’s Popular Front. Cochise (Miguel Inclán) in Fort Apache ends up being the sane, decent human being while the leader of the white man, Col. Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda), is a genocidal maniac with Custer-like delusions of grandeur. Ford’s masterpiece, The Searchers, goes even further, making Chief Scar (Henry Brandon) utterly justified in murdering the settlers whilst Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) is little more than a militant fascist renegade on the loose. Ford was neither an outlier nor for that matter an enemy of the state. During his most progressive moment, climaxing in World War II, he directed a combat documentary called Midway, shouldering a camera during the famous battle and including a reverential scene of the Stars and Stripes ascending the flagpole. Flaws and all (none of which I ignore; for every progressive rendering of Indigenity there are three “Drunken Mexicans,” “Noble Savages,” and “Exotic Temptresses” that literally defined so many negative Western genre stereotypes), he sought to create a cinematic synthesis of American patriotism and Popular Front progressivism. What’s more, in the two aforementioned pictures and quite a few others, the vehicle of delivery was no less than John Wayne, who was never even remotely close to liberal! What can be said of a franchise that is more conservative than Ford?!

This movie is frankly a booby-trap of the most grotesque sort. On the one hand, staying silent about its regressive politics and narrative habits neglects the duties of a radical film critic. Simultaneously, articulating such critiques invites every accusation imaginable, from “racist” to “sexist” to “hypocrite.” Is it at all possible to raise a concern about this film while avoiding such accusations? Maybe not. Does Marvel have the capacity to do better? I think so. The studio has been far more regressive and insidious than its print and television antecedents were during the 1980s and 1990s. The old X-Men cartoon broadcast on Fox Kids included episodes about AIDS, concentration camps, and Other-ing of minorities. What’s more, in perhaps one of the more frightening instances of life imitating comic books, the mutant-hunting Sentinels, a longtime staple of the title going back to 1965, ended up being almost perfect renditions of our macabre drone kill list program. Their refusal to do better is indicative of an agenda that we need to be wary of children uncritically internalizing.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Andrew Stewart.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

Russia wants a peaceful Ukraine, Americans prefer one at war.

— Israel Shamir, “Putin Prefers a Bad Peace”

Even before the current round of nuclear brinksmanship in Ukraine, U.S.-Russian relations had descended to a lower point than U.S.-Soviet relations reached during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We’ve been courting nuclear annihilation for some time.

Those who would like to exempt Washington from blame now will have to account for U.S. hostility towards Russia and the USSR, both of which long pre-date anything that could remotely be construed as provocation by Putin. After all, the United States invaded and occupied parts of the former USSR from 1918-1920, maintained a harshly belligerent stance all during the Cold War, and unleashed a plague of financial locusts to loot state enterprises throughout the former USSR as soon as the Berlin Wall came down, while enrolling the newly “independent” states into an anti-Moscow military alliance that extended to the very borders of Russia. Standards of living plunged, death rates soared, diplomacy suffocated, and Boris Yeltsin’s proposed U.S.-Russian partnership was immediately forgotten.

If a China-Russia alliance had installed hostile governments in Canada and Mexico at the end of WWII, after which all of Latin America went full Communist while narco-terrorists began killing Anglo Texans and banning English, it’s unlikely any blame would fall on Washington if it attempted to resolve the situation by force, as it surely would. So we can dismiss pious moral grandstanding about the “evil” Putin as the boundless hypocrisy it transparently is.

Furthermore, we should note that the rhetoric employed in this mad rush to terminal war is curious and irrational. For example, labeling Putin a “war criminal” actually legitimizes war, since it implies there is some ethical or at least inoffensive way to conduct mass slaughter, which is all that modern warfare is. Transparent attempts to miss this point by labeling massacre “collateral damage” should be dismissed with ridicule.

And it can hardly be repeated too often that the USA is far and away the guiltiest “criminal” where war is concerned, having by far the greatest war industry ever seen in human history headquartered on its soil and forming the heart of its economy (the Defense Industrial Base), which it has used to fight an endless series of wars directly or by proxy throughout the world for the past eighty years. No other contemporary or historical power has achieved anything close to this commitment to mass killing.

So it is absurd to define the situation in Ukraine as a uniquely evil instance of military aggression by Vladimir Putin. In a world of asymmetrical power with no effective world government, technically sophisticated powers always have the upper hand in violent conflicts with their neighbors, which are inevitable. And, of course, they insist on having friendly neighbors, preferably cooperative, though submissive will do.

Hostile neighbors no one accepts. How much of the Americas does the United States permit be part of a hostile military alliance? According to the Monroe Doctrine, not one square inch. How did Washington react to Cuba installing Soviet nuclear missiles 90 miles from Florida in 1962? (Spoiler alert: it nearly blew up the planet.) What did the media do when Rafael Correa jokingly proposed an Ecuadorian military base in Miami to balance Washington’s Mena Air Base in Ecuador? It laughed, though the punchline is far from a joke.

A majority of the world is fed-up with the hypocrisies of unilateral world order under U.S. control, and is not averse to accommodating an emerging China-Russia-India based new world order. Yes, the current war in Ukraine is causing further expansion of NATO (supposedly a good thing), but this, in turn, is devouring resources needed to stave off European economic collapse, while an emerging Russia-China-India alliance accelerates the collapse of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. client state, Biden’s phone calls in the early stages of the current war went unanswered while Putin’s were cordially received. Got respect?

Our mind managers warn us of the horrors of forced neutrality via Finlandization, and urge instead that we strive for regime change in Moscow. Strange. Finland is a success story, having achieved balance and stability via social democratic prosperity. On the other hand, U.S.-fostered regime change converts countries into corpse-strewn wastelands on a regular basis. Think Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Trying out this strategy on Russia obviously carries a high risk of nuclear annihilation. What stupendous prize awaits us if we successfully navigate this potentially species-terminating risk? The preservation of “our interests and our values,” as Hillary Clinton so loves to say.

In other words, converting whole cities to radioactive ash is a small price to pay for preserving our favorite abstractions. Got it.

We hear Putin is a strongman, an authoritarian, a totalitarian dictator, though we also hear people are fleeing Russia in droves. Why are they at liberty to do that in a “dictatorship”?

By the way, was Abraham Lincoln also a dictator, he who suspended habeas corpus, jailed journalists, shut down hundreds of newspapers, and locked up thousands of political enemies? And what about Woodrow Wilson, who destroyed unions, imprisoned editors, closed newspapers, and assumed dictatorial control of finance, the press, farms, and commerce and transportation?

Or maybe FDR was a dictator, who imprisoned over 100,000 U.S. citizens without charge and burned more civilians alive in a single night than either atomic bomb killed six months later?

What do we actually mean when we call Putin a dictator? That the media isn’t free? But a major part of Russian, state-owned media has long transmitted pro-Western, anti-Russian content, paid for by Russian taxpayers. Try and find taxpayer-funded, Putin-sympathetic content that reaches mass audiences in the U.S. Good luck.

What about free speech? Well, the Russian people have never had it, and therefore don’t care much about it. Americans have it in theory, but find its political potency nullified in practice by tsunamis of state and corporate propaganda. The most popular use of speech in the contemporary U.S. is not to reveal errors of argument and evidence, but to denounce others for being “idiots.” How free are we then?

Is Putin a nationalist? In recent years state-enterprise CEOs in Russia were seen earning millions of rubles a year while everyone else had to tighten their belts. The Russian central bank bought U.S. Treasury Bonds and supported the U.S. dollar at the expense of the ruble. Where is the nationalism in such policy?

Is Putin anti-democratic? The annexation of Crimea was overwhelmingly supported by Crimeans (97% vote).

Didn’t Putin back Assad? Yes, because he was the legitimate head of state in Syria, while the alternative was rule by Islamic terrorists supported by the United States and Israel, but no sane person in Syria. Israel wants the dismemberment of Syria in order to keep the occupied Golan Heights forever.

Much demonology is spouted from the simple fact that Putin is the former head of the K.G.B. But Putin is critical of the Bolsheviks and is not himself a Communist. Nevertheless, he considers the demise of the USSR a “world tragedy,” since overnight twenty-five million Russians found themselves foreigners living in fourteen new countries.

Is Putin anti-Israel? Well, Daesh oil flowed to Israel, and Putin said nothing, valuing his relations with then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel, of course, supported Al-Nusra, and they were declared terrorists by the United Nations. But Israel is admirable by definition, because … the Holocaust. Strange, though, that Putin gets no credit for aiding the Holy State.

We are told that no threat to the Russian state exists, so therefore no cause for war in Ukraine exists. But the Russian state and everything else can be blown off the map in a matter of minutes. The fact that the world is wired up to explode in a nuclear holocaust has been an American initiative from the beginning, and its dominant enemy has been (1) the USSR, and (2) Russia. NATO is by definition hostile to Russia, and lost even an ostensible reason for existing in 1991 with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Why is it still around? Because Russia is still around, and Washington doesn’t like that fact. Its efforts to achieve regime change in Moscow can and may end human civilization, which isn’t likely to improve matters for Ukrainians.

Is Putin an extremist? No. There is nothing radical in him. He has no plans for social re-arrangement. He merely seeks to have Russia respected as an independent, wealthy, and “great” nation, and yes, he wants Russia to be treated as an equal. But he also wants to fit into the world, not rebel against it. These modest ambitions are a threat to US/NATO hegemony and world dominance, which represent the triumph of Western extremism.

Keeping things in perspective, Putin is a Russian patriot. He wants to see Russia be a strong, healthy country where people lead good lives, are happy, and Russia occupies a prominent position internationally. He’s not a chauvinist or reactionary nationalist.

The Orange Revolution was totally unexpected in Russia, which can’t really be said to have a political opposition because there is no one who embodies and represents the views of a Russian majority. Having said that, Putin has been something of the “golden boy” in Russian politics for the past generation. He is good at addressing issues and speaking in clear terms that average people understand. The initial “democracy” of the Yeltsin period has been curtailed, but the middle class has developed rapidly on Putin’s watch.

Yeltsin spoke to the U.S. Congress in 1992, and offered Washington a partnership in which each nation would treat the other as an equal. For thirty years now the U.S. has rejected this. In the year of the U.S./NATO attack on Serbia (1999), Yeltsin protested, “Russia is not Haiti. You can’t treat us like Haiti.” Washington considers Haiti a “shithole” country, as one of America’s more honest presidents memorably put it.

Washington is incapable of giving Russia its due diplomatic respect. According to the reigning “Wolfowitz Doctrine,” the U.S. should dominate the world and not allow any rivals for power to emerge. Russia therefore is and should be treated as a second rate power. This is a non-negotiable position.

Naturally, Putin does not accept this, and never accepted the U.S. view that Russia lost the Cold War. Russia saw the end of the Cold War as an opportunity for them to become part of the international community. At the core of Russian beliefs is that Russia must be a Great Power. The Russian people have never doubted that Russia is a great country. Having their noses rubbed in the Wolfowitz Doctrine year after year is insulting, degrading, and an open invitation to mutual suicide.

The USSR’s forcing its rule onto Eastern Europe was a big mistake, though understandable given two Western invasions in a generation that left much of the country a smoldering ruin. The U.S. ignoring the possibility of Russia “coming back” to international prominence was a big American mistake. Washington continues to think of Russia as at most a regional power whose wants and needs can be ignored. But no nuclear-armed country can be ignored.

At the end of the Cold War the U.S. promised not to expand NATO — not one inch — to the East, a promise it quickly violated.

Now we wait to learn if our three-decade refusal to concede Russia minimal diplomatic respect and cooperation will eventuate in nuclear war.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michael K. Smith.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Patrick Bond.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

“The American Century Is Over.” So claims the July 2022 cover of Harper’s Magazine, adding an all-too-pertinent question: “What’s Next?”

What, indeed? Eighty years after the United States embarked upon the Great Crusade of World War II, a generation after it laid claim to the status of sole superpower following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and two decades after the Global War on Terror was to remove any lingering doubts about who calls the shots on Planet Earth, the question could hardly be more timely.

“Empire Burlesque,” Daniel Bessner’s Harper’s cover story, provides a useful, if preliminary, answer to a question most members of our political class, preoccupied with other matters, would prefer to ignore. Yet the title of the essay contains a touch of genius, capturing as it does in a single concise phrase the essence of the American Century in its waning days.

On the one hand, given Washington’s freewheeling penchant for using force to impose its claimed prerogatives abroad, the imperial nature of the American project has become self-evident. When the U.S. invades and occupies distant lands or subjects them to punishment, concepts like freedom, democracy, and human rights rarely figure as more than afterthoughts. Submission, not liberation defines the underlying, if rarely acknowledged, motivation behind Washington’s military actions, actual or threatened, direct or through proxies.

On the other hand, the reckless squandering of American power in recent decades suggests that those who preside over the American imperium are either stunningly incompetent or simply mad as hatters. Intent on perpetuating some form of global hegemony, they have accelerated trends toward national decline, while seemingly oblivious to the actual results of their handiwork.

Consider the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. It has rightly prompted a thorough congressional investigation aimed at establishing accountability. All of us should be grateful for the conscientious efforts of the House Select Committee to expose the criminality of the Trump presidency. Meanwhile, however, the trillions of dollarswasted and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost during our post-9/11 wars have been essentially written off as the cost of doing business. Here we glimpse the essence of twenty-first-century bipartisanship, both parties colluding to ignore disasters for which they share joint responsibility, while effectively consigning the vast majority of ordinary citizens to the status of passive accomplices.

Bessner, who teaches at the University of Washington, is appropriately tough on the (mis)managers of the contemporary American empire. And he does a good job of tracing the ideological underpinnings of that empire back to their point of origin. On that score, the key date is not 1776, but 1941. That was the year when the case for American global primacy swept into the marketplace of ideas, making a mark that persists to the present day.

God on Our Side

The marketing began with the February 17, 1941, issue of Life magazine, which contained a simply and elegantly titled essay by Henry Luce, its founder and publisher. With the American public then sharply divided over the question of whether to intervene on behalf of Great Britain in its war against Nazi Germany — this was 10 months before Pearl Harbor — Luce weighed in with a definitive answer: he was all in for war. Through war, he believed, the United States would not only overcome evil but inaugurate a golden age of American global dominion.

Life was then, in the heyday of the print media, the most influential mass-circulation publication in the United States. As the impresario who presided over the rapidly expanding Time-Life publishing empire, Luce himself was perhaps the most influential press baron of his age. Less colorful than his flamboyant contemporary William Randolph Hearst, he was politically more astute. And yet nothing Luce would say or do over the course of a long career promoting causes (mostly conservative) and candidates (mostly Republican) would come close to matching the legacy left by that one perfectly timed editorial in Life’s pages.

When it hit the newsstands, “The American Century” did nothing to resolve public ambivalence about how to deal with Adolf Hitler. Events did that, above all Japan’s December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet once the United States did enter the war, the evocative title of Luce’s essay formed the basis for expectations destined to transcend World War II and become a fixture in American political discourse.

During the war years, government propaganda offered copious instruction on “Why We Fight.” So, too, did a torrent of posters, books, radio programs, hit songs, and Hollywood movies, not to speak of publications produced by Luce’s fellow press moguls. Yet when it came to crispness, durability, and poignancy, none held a candle to “The American Century.” Before the age was fully launched, Luce had named it.

Even today, in attenuated form, expectations Luce articulated in 1941 persist. Peel back the cliched phrases that senior officials in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon routinely utter in the Biden years — “American global leadership” and “the rules-based international order” are favorites — and you encounter their unspoken purpose: to perpetuate unchallengeable American global primacy until the end of time.

To put it another way, whatever the ”rules” of global life, the United States will devise them. And if ensuring compliance with those rules should entail a resort to violence, justifications articulated in Washington will suffice to legitimize the use of force.

In other words, Luce’s essay marks the point of departure for what was, in remarkably short order, to become an era when American primacy would be a birthright. It stands in relation to the American empire as the Declaration of Independence once did to the American republic. It remains the urtext, even if some of its breathtakingly bombastic passages are now difficult to read with a straight face.

Using that 1941 issue of Life as his bully pulpit, Luce summoned his fellow citizens to “accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world” to assert “the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.” (Emphasis added.) For the United States duty, opportunity, and destiny aligned. That American purposes and the means employed to fulfill them were benign, indeed enlightened, was simply self-evident. How could they be otherwise?

Crucially — and this point Bessner overlooks — the duty and opportunity to which Luce alluded expressed God’s will. Born in China where his parents were serving as Protestant missionaries and himself a convert to Roman Catholicism, Luce saw America’s imperial calling as a Judeo-Christian religious obligation. God, he wrote, had summoned the United States to become “the Good Samaritan to the entire world.” Here was the nation’s true vocation: to fulfill the “mysterious work of lifting the life of mankind from the level of the beasts to what the Psalmist called a little lower than the angels.”

In the present day, such towering ambition, drenched in religious imagery, invites mockery. Yet it actually offers a reasonably accurate (if overripe) depiction of how American elites have conceived of the nation’s purpose in the decades since.

Today, the explicitly religious frame has largely faded from view. Even so, the insistence on American singularity persists. Indeed, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary — did someone mention China? — it may be stronger than ever.

In no way should my reference to a moral consensus imply moral superiority. Indeed, the list of sins to which Americans were susceptible, even at the outset of the American Century, was long. With the passage of time, it has only evolved, even as our awareness of our nation’s historical flaws, particularly in the realm of race, gender, and ethnicity, has grown more acute. Still, the religiosity inherent in Luce’s initial call to arms resonated then and survives today, even if in subdued form.

While anything but an original thinker, Luce possessed a notable gift for packaging and promotion. Life’s unspoken purpose was to sell a way of life based on values that he believed his fellow citizens should embrace, even if his own personal adherence to those values was, at best, spotty.

The American Century was the ultimate expression of that ambitious undertaking. So even as growing numbers of citizens in subsequent decades concluded that God might be otherwise occupied, something of a killjoy, or simply dead, the conviction that U.S. global primacy grew out of a divinely inspired covenant took deep root. Our presence at the top of the heap testified to some cosmic purpose. It was meant to be. In that regard, imbuing the American Century with a sacred veneer was a stroke of pure genius.

In God We Trust?

By the time Life ended its run as a weekly magazine in 1972, the American Century, as a phrase and as an expectation, had etched itself into the nation’s collective consciousness. Yet today, Luce’s America — the America that once cast itself as the protagonist in a Christian parable — has ceased to exist. And it’s not likely to return anytime soon.

At the outset of that American Century, Luce could confidently expound on the nation’s role in furthering God’s purposes, taking for granted a generic religious sensibility to which the vast majority of Americans subscribed. Back then, especially during the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, most of those not personally endorsing that consensus at least found it expedient to play along. After all, except among hipsters, beatniks, dropouts, and other renegades, doing so was a precondition for getting by or getting ahead.

As Eisenhower famously declared shortly after being elected president, “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” Today, however, Ike’s ecumenical 11th commandment no longer garners anything like universal assent, whether authentic or feigned. As defining elements of the American way of life, consumption, lifestyle, and expectations of unhindered mobility persist, much as they did when he occupied the White House. But a deeply felt religious faith melded with a similarly deep faith in an open-ended American Century has become, at best, optional. Those nursing the hope that the American Century may yet make a comeback are more likely to put their trust in AI than in God.

Occurring in tandem with this country’s global decline has been a fracturing of the contemporary moral landscape. For evidence, look no further than the furies unleashed by recent Supreme Court decisions related to guns and abortion. Or contemplate Donald Trump’s place in the American political landscape — twice impeached, yet adored by tens of millions, even while held in utter contempt by tens of millions more. That Trump or another similarly divisive figure could succeed Joe Biden in the White House looms as a real, if baffling, possibility.

More broadly still, take stock of the prevailing American conception of personal freedom, big on privileges, disdainful of obligations, awash with self-indulgence, and tinged with nihilism. If you think our collective culture is healthy, you haven’t been paying attention.

For “a nation with the soul of a church,” to cite British writer G.K. Chesterton’s famed description of the United States, Luce’s proposal of a marriage between a generic Judeo-Christianity and national purpose seemed eminently plausible. But plausible is not inevitable, nor irreversible. A union rocked by recurring quarrels and trial separations has today ended in divorce. The full implications of that divorce for American policy abroad remain to be seen, but at a minimum suggest that anyone proposing to unveil a “New American Century” is living in a dreamworld.

Bessner concludes his essay by suggesting that the American Century should give way to a “Global Century… in which U.S. power is not only restrained but reduced, and in which every nation is dedicated to solving the problems that threaten us all.” Such a proposal strikes me as broadly appealing, assuming that the world’s other 190-plus nations, especially the richer, more powerful ones, sign on. That, of course, is a very large assumption, indeed. Negotiating the terms that will define such a Global Century, including reapportioning wealth and privileges between haves and have-nots, promises to be a daunting proposition.

Meanwhile, what fate awaits the American Century itself? Some in the upper reaches of the establishment will, of course, exert themselves to avert its passing by advocating more bouts of military muscle-flexing, as if a repetition of Afghanistan and Iraq or deepening involvement in Ukraine will impart to our threadbare empire a new lease on life. That Americans in significant numbers will more willingly die for Kyiv than they did for Kabul seems improbable.

Better in my estimation to give up entirely the pretensions Henry Luce articulated back in 1941. Rather than attempting to resurrect the American Century, perhaps it’s time to focus on the more modest goal of salvaging a unified American republic. One glance at the contemporary political landscape suggests that such a goal alone is a tall order. On that score, however, reconstituting a common moral framework would surely be the place to begin.

This column is distributed by TomDispatch.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Andrew Bacevich.

The post Imperial Detritus: After the American Century appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Andrew Bacevich.

"The American Century Is Over." So claims the July 2022 cover of Harper's Magazine, adding an all-too-pertinent question: "What's Next?"

What, indeed? Eighty years after the United States embarked upon the Great Crusade of World War II, a generation after it laid claim to the status of sole superpower following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and two decades after the Global War on Terror was to remove any lingering doubts about who calls the shots on Planet Earth, the question could hardly be more timely.

Rather than attempting to resurrect the American Century, perhaps it's time to focus on the more modest goal of salvaging a unified American republic.

"Empire Burlesque," Daniel Bessner's Harper's cover story, provides a useful, if preliminary, answer to a question most members of our political class, preoccupied with other matters, would prefer to ignore. Yet the title of the essay contains a touch of genius, capturing as it does in a single concise phrase the essence of the American Century in its waning days.

On the one hand, given Washington's freewheeling penchant for using force to impose its claimed prerogatives abroad, the imperial nature of the American project has become self-evident. When the U.S. invades and occupies distant lands or subjects them to punishment, concepts like freedom, democracy, and human rights rarely figure as more than afterthoughts. Submission, not liberation defines the underlying, if rarely acknowledged, motivation behind Washington's military actions, actual or threatened, direct or through proxies.

On the other hand, the reckless squandering of American power in recent decades suggests that those who preside over the American imperium are either stunningly incompetent or simply mad as hatters. Intent on perpetuating some form of global hegemony, they have accelerated trends toward national decline, while seemingly oblivious to the actual results of their handiwork.

Consider the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. It has rightly prompted a thorough congressional investigation aimed at establishing accountability. All of us should be grateful for the conscientious efforts of the House Select Committee to expose the criminality of the Trump presidency. Meanwhile, however, the trillions of dollars wasted and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost during our post-9/11 wars have been essentially written off as the cost of doing business. Here we glimpse the essence of twenty-first-century bipartisanship, both parties colluding to ignore disasters for which they share joint responsibility, while effectively consigning the vast majority of ordinary citizens to the status of passive accomplices.

Bessner, who teaches at the University of Washington, is appropriately tough on the (mis)managers of the contemporary American empire. And he does a good job of tracing the ideological underpinnings of that empire back to their point of origin. On that score, the key date is not 1776, but 1941. That was the year when the case for American global primacy swept into the marketplace of ideas, making a mark that persists to the present day.

God on Our Side

The marketing began with the February 17, 1941, issue of Life magazine, which contained a simply and elegantly titled essay by Henry Luce, its founder and publisher. With the American public then sharply divided over the question of whether to intervene on behalf of Great Britain in its war against Nazi Germany—this was 10 months before Pearl Harbor—Luce weighed in with a definitive answer: he was all in for war. Through war, he believed, the United States would not only overcome evil but inaugurate a golden age of American global dominion.

Life was then, in the heyday of the print media, the most influential mass-circulation publication in the United States. As the impresario who presided over the rapidly expanding Time-Life publishing empire, Luce himself was perhaps the most influential press baron of his age. Less colorful than his flamboyant contemporary William Randolph Hearst, he was politically more astute. And yet nothing Luce would say or do over the course of a long career promoting causes (mostly conservative) and candidates (mostly Republican) would come close to matching the legacy left by that one perfectly timed editorial in Life's pages.

When it hit the newsstands, "The American Century" did nothing to resolve public ambivalence about how to deal with Adolf Hitler. Events did that, above all Japan's December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet once the United States did enter the war, the evocative title of Luce's essay formed the basis for expectations destined to transcend World War II and become a fixture in American political discourse.

During the war years, government propaganda offered copious instruction on "Why We Fight." So, too, did a torrent of posters, books, radio programs, hit songs, and Hollywood movies, not to speak of publications produced by Luce's fellow press moguls. Yet when it came to crispness, durability, and poignancy, none held a candle to "The American Century." Before the age was fully launched, Luce had named it.

Even today, in attenuated form, expectations Luce articulated in 1941 persist. Peel back the cliched phrases that senior officials in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon routinely utter in the Biden years—"American global leadership" and "the rules-based international order" are favorites—and you encounter their unspoken purpose: to perpetuate unchallengeable American global primacy until the end of time.

To put it another way, whatever the "rules" of global life, the United States will devise them. And if ensuring compliance with those rules should entail a resort to violence, justifications articulated in Washington will suffice to legitimize the use of force.

In other words, Luce's essay marks the point of departure for what was, in remarkably short order, to become an era when American primacy would be a birthright. It stands in relation to the American empire as the Declaration of Independence once did to the American republic. It remains the urtext, even if some of its breathtakingly bombastic passages are now difficult to read with a straight face.

Using that 1941 issue of Life as his bully pulpit, Luce summoned his fellow citizens to "accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world" to assert "the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." (Emphasis added.) For the United States duty, opportunity, and destiny aligned. That American purposes and the means employed to fulfill them were benign, indeed enlightened, was simply self-evident. How could they be otherwise?

Crucially—and this point Bessner overlooks—the duty and opportunity to which Luce alluded expressed God's will. Born in China where his parents were serving as Protestant missionaries and himself a convert to Roman Catholicism, Luce saw America's imperial calling as a Judeo-Christian religious obligation. God, he wrote, had summoned the United States to become "the Good Samaritan to the entire world." Here was the nation's true vocation: to fulfill the "mysterious work of lifting the life of mankind from the level of the beasts to what the Psalmist called a little lower than the angels."

In the present day, such towering ambition, drenched in religious imagery, invites mockery. Yet it actually offers a reasonably accurate (if overripe) depiction of how American elites have conceived of the nation's purpose in the decades since.

Today, the explicitly religious frame has largely faded from view. Even so, the insistence on American singularity persists. Indeed, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary—did someone mention China?—it may be stronger than ever.

In no way should my reference to a moral consensus imply moral superiority. Indeed, the list of sins to which Americans were susceptible, even at the outset of the American Century, was long. With the passage of time, it has only evolved, even as our awareness of our nation's historical flaws, particularly in the realm of race, gender, and ethnicity, has grown more acute. Still, the religiosity inherent in Luce's initial call to arms resonated then and survives today, even if in subdued form.

While anything but an original thinker, Luce possessed a notable gift for packaging and promotion. Life's unspoken purpose was to sell a way of life based on values that he believed his fellow citizens should embrace, even if his own personal adherence to those values was, at best, spotty.

The American Century was the ultimate expression of that ambitious undertaking. So even as growing numbers of citizens in subsequent decades concluded that God might be otherwise occupied, something of a killjoy, or simply dead, the conviction that U.S. global primacy grew out of a divinely inspired covenant took deep root. Our presence at the top of the heap testified to some cosmic purpose. It was meant to be. In that regard, imbuing the American Century with a sacred veneer was a stroke of pure genius.

In God We Trust?

By the time Life ended its run as a weekly magazine in 1972, the American Century, as a phrase and as an expectation, had etched itself into the nation's collective consciousness. Yet today, Luce's America—the America that once cast itself as the protagonist in a Christian parable—has ceased to exist. And it's not likely to return anytime soon.

At the outset of that American Century, Luce could confidently expound on the nation's role in furthering God's purposes, taking for granted a generic religious sensibility to which the vast majority of Americans subscribed. Back then, especially during the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, most of those not personally endorsing that consensus at least found it expedient to play along. After all, except among hipsters, beatniks, dropouts, and other renegades, doing so was a precondition for getting by or getting ahead.

As Eisenhower famously declared shortly after being elected president, "Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is." Today, however, Ike's ecumenical 11th commandment no longer garners anything like universal assent, whether authentic or feigned. As defining elements of the American way of life, consumption, lifestyle, and expectations of unhindered mobility persist, much as they did when he occupied the White House. But a deeply felt religious faith melded with a similarly deep faith in an open-ended American Century has become, at best, optional. Those nursing the hope that the American Century may yet make a comeback are more likely to put their trust in AI than in God.

Occurring in tandem with this country's global decline has been a fracturing of the contemporary moral landscape. For evidence, look no further than the furies unleashed by recent Supreme Court decisions related to guns and abortion. Or contemplate Donald Trump's place in the American political landscape—twice impeached, yet adored by tens of millions, even while held in utter contempt by tens of millions more. That Trump or another similarly divisive figure could succeed Joe Biden in the White House looms as a real, if baffling, possibility.

More broadly still, take stock of the prevailing American conception of personal freedom, big on privileges, disdainful of obligations, awash with self-indulgence, and tinged with nihilism. If you think our collective culture is healthy, you haven't been paying attention.

For "a nation with the soul of a church," to cite British writer G.K. Chesterton's famed description of the United States, Luce's proposal of a marriage between a generic Judeo-Christianity and national purpose seemed eminently plausible. But plausible is not inevitable, nor irreversible. A union rocked by recurring quarrels and trial separations has today ended in divorce. The full implications of that divorce for American policy abroad remain to be seen, but at a minimum suggest that anyone proposing to unveil a "New American Century" is living in a dreamworld.

Bessner concludes his essay by suggesting that the American Century should give way to a "Global Century… in which U.S. power is not only restrained but reduced, and in which every nation is dedicated to solving the problems that threaten us all." Such a proposal strikes me as broadly appealing, assuming that the world's other 190-plus nations, especially the richer, more powerful ones, sign on. That, of course, is a very large assumption, indeed. Negotiating the terms that will define such a Global Century, including reapportioning wealth and privileges between haves and have-nots, promises to be a daunting proposition.

Meanwhile, what fate awaits the American Century itself? Some in the upper reaches of the establishment will, of course, exert themselves to avert its passing by advocating more bouts of military muscle-flexing, as if a repetition of Afghanistan and Iraq or deepening involvement in Ukraine will impart to our threadbare empire a new lease on life. That Americans in significant numbers will more willingly die for Kyiv than they did for Kabul seems improbable.

Better in my estimation to give up entirely the pretensions Henry Luce articulated back in 1941. Rather than attempting to resurrect the American Century, perhaps it's time to focus on the more modest goal of salvaging a unified American republic. One glance at the contemporary political landscape suggests that such a goal alone is a tall order. On that score, however, reconstituting a common moral framework would surely be the place to begin.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Andrew Bacevich.

Photograph Source: Palácio do Planalto from Brasilia, Brasil – CC BY 2.0

Valentín, the man next to us in line as we made our way across the international border, asked what we had been doing in Tijuana. We had been at the Workers Summit of the Americas, organized as an alternative to Biden’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. Our summit was as a place where countries besieged by and barred from the US could participate and was held in cooperation with a kindred counter-summit in Los Angeles.

Valentín, who had been born in Mexico and spent most of his working life in the United States, had seen the border from both perspectives. He commented about Biden’s summit that although the US is rich in resources, industry, and agriculture, “it wants it all,” which pretty much sums up what imperialism is about.

Historical debt to Mexico

That border had not always been at Tijuana. As the immigrant rights movement reminds us, “we did not cross the border, the border crossed us.”

Texas seceded from Mexico and was annexed to the US in 1845. The following year, the Mexican-American War was provoked by the US in a campaign of conquest. Two years later, Mexico was forced to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceding nearly half its national territory. The US gained what would become parts or all of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Colorado. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 added southern Arizona and New Mexico to the spoils of war.

In all, 55% of Mexico, over half of her sovereign territory, was taken by the Colossus of the North. Consequently, the US owes Mexico an historical debt for the theft of its sovereign territory. This debt should be included with other major US historical debts such as those incurred by the exploitation of African slave labor and the genocide of its original peoples.

Mexican Revolution

Besides acknowledging the theft of Mexican lands, those of us on the left should also recognize Mexico’s considerable political contributions. The Mexican Revolution stands in the pantheon of great 20th century revolutions. Before the Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, and other revolutions, before the many Third World liberation struggles of the last century, came the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910.

As the first of the major 20th century revolutions, the Mexican Revolution guaranteed labor rights, nationalized subsoil rights, secularized the state and curbed the power of the Roman Catholic Church, and granted inalienable land rights to indigenous communities. Women’s rights were advanced, and women fought as soldiers and even commanders in General Emilio Zapata’s revolutionary army.

There was no established path for the Mexicans when they made their revolution. That path was made by walking; they led the way.

Cracks in the imperial façade

For the first time since its 1994 launch in Miami, the US was hosting the Summit of the Americas, convened by the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS). However, as AP News described, Biden’s maneuverings in the leadup to his summit was a “scramble” to “avoid a flop.”

That was in part because, today, Mexico again led the way challenging imperial hubris. Its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), stood up to Biden’s imperial summons to come to the summit. AMLO would only dignify the event with his presence if all the countries of Our Americas were invited. Even after the US dispatched a team to Mexico City to cajole him to attend – but still refusing to invite the heads of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela – AMLO stood by his original principled stand.

Joe Biden surely found it lonely with the presidents of Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines similarly boycotting his summit. The presidents of El Salvador and Uruguay also purposely missed the party, albeit for different reasons.

Biden’s summit took place, but the buzz both inside the meeting and outside was the hypocrisy of the US attempt to try to appear to be promoting a “Summit for Democracy” while its actions have proven the opposite. The US-imposed illegal sanctions and blockades – unilateral coercive measures – on countries whose people fail to elect leaders sufficiently obedient to Washington are, in fact, a denial of democracy.

And speaking of unelected leaders, the Trump-anointed and Biden-supported so-called “interim president of Venezuela,” Juan Guaidó, wasn’t on the guest list for the Los Angeles summit either. Even though the US and a handful of sycophantic allies still embarrassingly recognize the puppet as the Venezuelan head of state, he was closeted.

Inside Biden’s summit, Argentinian President Alberto Fernández delivered what the press called a “damning speech” condemning the US president to his face for excluding other states. Belize, Chile, and a number of Caribbean countries also criticized the exclusions, calling for a realignment of regional institutions.

Outside Biden’s summit, the official Cuban government statement commented: “Arrogance, fear of inconvenient truths being voiced, determination to prevent the meeting from discussing the most pressing and complex issues in the hemisphere, and the contradictions of its own feeble and polarized political system are behind the US government’s decision to once again resort to exclusion in order to hold a meeting with no concrete contributions yet beneficial for imperialism’s image.”

As Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace commented: “For the peoples of our region, the failure of Biden’s Summit of the Americas would be a welcome event.”

Even a corporate press report admitted: “President Joe Biden sought to put on a show of hemispheric unity at a Los Angeles summit this week, but boycotts, bluster and lackluster pledges instead exposed the shaky state of US influence in Latin America.”

Workers’ Summit of the Americas

In contrast, the Workers’ Summit of the Americas in Tijuana called for the unity of grassroots working class, peasant, political, and social movements to create a permanent forum for solidarity and linking of progressive struggles.

Organizers from workers, peace, human rights, and solidarity organizations from north of the Rio Grande included Alliance for Global Justice, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, Fire This Time, Unión del Barrio, Troika Kollective, Black Lives Matter – OKC, the Latino Community Service Organization (CSO), Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the Task Force on the Americas.

Mexican participation included Movimiento Social Por la Tierra, Sindicato Mexicano Electricista, and Frente Popular Revolucionario. Venezuelans included militants with the Plataforma de la Clase Obrera Antiimperialista (PCOA). Among the other participating organizations were Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo de Nicaragua (ATC), and the Haitian MOLEGHAF.

Host Jesús Ruiz Barraza, rector of CUT-University of Tijuana, opened the encuantro on June 10. US political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, via recording, welcomed “the delegates of the excluded” in Tijuana. Former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, addressed the encuantro, also via recording.

Nelson Herrera of the Venezuelan PCOA, Rosario Rodríguez Remos of the Workers’ Central Union of Cuba, and Fausto Torres Arauz of the ATC of Nicaragua spoke. Revered Venezuelan campesino leader Braulio Alvarez, who had twice survived assassination attempts and is now a deputy in the National Assembly, addressed the meeting along with Venezuelan union leader Jacobo Torres de Leon.

The second day was devoted to movement building and featured workshops on solidarity with the countries excluded from the Biden summit along with workshops on regional integration.

With flags and banners flapping in the sea breeze, the last day convened on the international border. Speakers from both sides of the border and from throughout Our Americas addressed the crowd.

Standing in front of the border wall, Venezuelan-American activist with the FreeAlexSaab campaign William Camacaro called for the immediate release of the Venezuelan diplomat from a Miami prison. That day, June 12, marked the second year of Alex Saab’s imprisonment for the “crime” of engaging in legal international trade to buy needed food, fuel, and medicine for the Venezuelan people, but in contravention of the illegal US sanctions designed to asphyxiate that independent nation.

The final declaration of the Workers Summit called for a robust internationalism to promote solidarity with the sovereign nations and peoples suffering from sanctions imposed by the US and its allies. Latin America and the Caribbean were proclaimed a zone of peace.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Roger Harris.

Valentín, who had been born in Mexico and spent most of his working life in the United States, had seen the border from both perspectives. He commented about Biden’s summit that although the US is rich in resources, industry, and agriculture, “it wants it all,” which pretty much sums up what imperialism is about.

Historical debt to Mexico

That border had not always been at Tijuana. As the immigrant rights movement reminds us, “we did not cross the border, the border crossed us.”

Texas seceded from Mexico and was annexed to the US in 1845. The following year, the Mexican-American War was provoked by the US in a campaign of conquest. Two years later, Mexico was forced to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceding nearly half its national territory. The US gained what would become parts or all of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Colorado. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 added southern Arizona and New Mexico to the spoils of war.

In all, 55% of Mexico, over half of her sovereign territory, was taken by the Colossus of the North. Consequently, the US owes Mexico a historical debt for the theft of its sovereign territory. This debt should be included with other major US historical debts such as those incurred by the exploitation of African slave labor and the genocide of its original peoples.

Mexican Revolution

Besides acknowledging the theft of Mexican lands, those of us on the left should also recognize Mexico’s considerable political contributions. The Mexican Revolution stands in the pantheon of great 20th century revolutions. Before the Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, and other revolutions, before the many Third World liberation struggles of the last century, came the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910.

As the first of the major 20th century revolutions, the Mexican Revolution guaranteed labor rights, nationalized subsoil rights, secularized the state and curbed the power of the Roman Catholic Church, and granted inalienable land rights to indigenous communities. Women’s rights were advanced, and women fought as soldiers and even commanders in General Emilio Zapata’s revolutionary army.

There was no established path for the Mexicans when they made their revolution. That path was made by walking; they led the way.

Cracks in the imperial façade

For the first time since its 1994 launch in Miami, the US was hosting the Summit of the Americas, convened by the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS). However, as AP News described, Biden’s maneuverings in the lead-up to his summit was a “scramble” to “avoid a flop.”

That was in part because, today, Mexico again led the way challenging imperial hubris. Its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), stood up to Biden’s imperial summons to come to the summit. AMLO would only dignify the event with his presence if all the countries of Our Americas were invited. Even after the US dispatched a team to Mexico City to cajole him to attend – but still refusing to invite the heads of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela – AMLO stood by his original principled stand.

Joe Biden surely found it lonely with the presidents of Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines similarly boycotting his summit. The presidents of El Salvador and Uruguay also purposely missed the party, albeit for different reasons.

Biden’s summit took place, but the buzz both inside the meeting and outside was the hypocrisy of the US attempt to try to appear to be promoting a “Summit for Democracy” while its actions have proven the opposite. The US-imposed illegal sanctions and blockades – unilateral coercive measures – on countries whose people fail to elect leaders sufficiently obedient to Washington are, in fact, a denial of democracy.

And speaking of unelected leaders, the Trump-anointed and Biden-supported so-called “interim president of Venezuela,” Juan Guaidó, wasn’t on the guest list for the Los Angeles summit either. Even though the US and a handful of sycophantic allies still embarrassingly recognize the puppet as the Venezuelan head of state, he was closeted.

Inside Biden’s summit, Argentinian President Alberto Fernández delivered what the press called a “damning speech” condemning the US president to his face for excluding other states. Belize, Chile, and a number of Caribbean countries also criticized the exclusions, calling for a realignment of regional institutions.

Outside Biden’s summit, the official Cuban government statement commented: “Arrogance, fear of inconvenient truths being voiced, determination to prevent the meeting from discussing the most pressing and complex issues in the hemisphere, and the contradictions of its own feeble and polarized political system are behind the US government’s decision to once again resort to exclusion in order to hold a meeting with no concrete contributions yet beneficial for imperialism’s image.”

As Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace commented: “For the peoples of our region, the failure of Biden’s Summit of the Americas would be a welcome event.”

Even a corporate press report admitted: “President Joe Biden sought to put on a show of hemispheric unity at a Los Angeles summit this week, but boycotts, bluster and lackluster pledges instead exposed the shaky state of US influence in Latin America.”

Workers’ Summit of the Americas

In contrast, the Workers’ Summit of the Americas in Tijuana called for the unity of grassroots working class, peasant, political, and social movements to create a permanent forum for solidarity and linking of progressive struggles.

Organizers from workers, peace, human rights, and solidarity organizations from north of the Rio Grande included Alliance for Global Justice, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, Fire This Time, Unión del Barrio, Troika Kollective, Black Lives Matter – OKC, the Latino Community Service Organization (CSO), Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the Task Force on the Americas.

Mexican participation included Movimiento Social Por la Tierra, Sindicato Mexicano Electricista, and Frente Popular Revolucionario. Venezuelans included militants with the Plataforma de la Clase Obrera Antiimperialista (PCOA). Among the other participating organizations were Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo de Nicaragua (ATC), and the Haitian MOLEGHAF.

Host Jesús Ruiz Barraza, rector of CUT-University of Tijuana, opened the encuantro on June 10. US political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, via recording, welcomed “the delegates of the excluded” in Tijuana. Former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, addressed the encuantro, also via recording.

Nelson Herrera of the Venezuelan PCOA, Rosario Rodríguez Remos of the Workers’ Central Union of Cuba, and Fausto Torres Arauz of the ATC of Nicaragua spoke. Revered Venezuelan campesino leader Braulio Alvarez, who had twice survived assassination attempts and is now a deputy in the National Assembly, addressed the meeting along with Venezuelan union leader Jacobo Torres de Leon.

The second day was devoted to movement building and featured workshops on solidarity with the countries excluded from the Biden summit along with workshops on regional integration.

With flags and banners flapping in the sea breeze, the last day convened on the international border. Speakers from both sides of the border and from throughout Our Americas addressed the crowd.

Standing in front of the border wall, Venezuelan-American activist with the FreeAlexSaab campaign William Camacaro called for the immediate release of the Venezuelan diplomat from a Miami prison. That day, June 12, marked the second year of Alex Saab’s imprisonment for the “crime” of engaging in legal international trade to buy needed food, fuel, and medicine for the Venezuelan people, but in contravention of the illegal US sanctions designed to asphyxiate that independent nation.

The final declaration of the Workers Summit called for a robust internationalism to promote solidarity with the sovereign nations and peoples suffering from sanctions imposed by the US and its allies. Latin America and the Caribbean were proclaimed a zone of peace.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Roger D. Harris.

However, much leftist commentary has increasingly seen this supply of arms as evidence of the war becoming a “proxy” war in which Ukraine, rather than fighting for its very existence, is essentially just acting as cat’s paw for an alleged US imperialist aim of waging “war against Russia,” perhaps even aiming to “Balkanise” Russia. A quick review of some left media just the last couple of days brings up an article that labels the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “U.S. war against Russia” which “threatens world peace;” while even in Socialist Worker, which strongly condemns the Russian invasion and certainly cannot be accused of softness on Putinism, we can read that “today any element of a war of liberation against Russian imperialism is wholly subsumed by, and subordinated to, Nato’s war on Russia.”

An important part of this discourse is the claim that supplying arms goes against the importance of “negotiations,”, which allegedly the US and western states are vetoing, along with the assertion that the US aim is to “weaken” Russia rather than just help Ukraine. Some of this is based on a number of ‘gotcha’ moments when one or another representative of the US ruling class said something a little out of line. Yet a serious analysis will demonstrate that these assumptions and alleged dichotomies have no basis in reality, and the more serious US imperial analysts highlight interests and fears that not only show the ‘gotcha’ moments have little to do with western policy, but ultimately state very similar fears to many of these leftist analysts regarding the potential for a dangerously destabilised Russia resulting from a loss of Russian ‘credibility’, and therefore advocate rather similar limits to US support and stress on negotiations.

‘Negotiations’ versus war?

Writing in Counterpunch on April 29, Richard Rubenstein asks: “If Putin now offered a ceasefire in order to negotiate the status of the Donbass republics and to assert other Russian needs and interests, would the U.S. and Ukraine be justified in refusing to talk in order to punish or “weaken” him?” And answers: “Of course not!”

There is just so much unreality in all these discussions that begin with such statements. “Would the US and Ukraine be justified”? The US and Ukraine are two different countries. What the US does is one thing, but Ukraine is under invasion and occupation. Ukraine is fighting for its existence. If it decides it wants to fight on in order to get as much of its country back as it can and to thus have a stronger position at the bargaining table, that is up to Ukraine, not the US or western leftists. If Ukraine decides it cannot handle the superior Russian firepower any longer and is forced to sign a ceasefire with humiliating conditions, that is up to Ukraine, not up to the US or western leftists. Ukraine’s decisions, in other words, should not be subject to the approval of either western imperialism or the western imperial left. Either way, we should simply demand Russia get out.

Now the first assumption in these endless articles spouting the wisdom of “ceasefire and negotiations” and of Rubenstein’s question above is that Russia is dying to negotiate, and has “reasonable” concerns, or as Rubenstein puts it, “other Russian needs and interests,” which apparently exist inside another sovereign state. I wonder if Rubenstein would seek to justify the ongoing US occupation of part of Cuba’s sovereign territory as due to “US needs and interests.” The related assumption is either that Ukraine is opposed to negotiating, or that many in Ukraine, perhaps Zelensky, would be ready to negotiate, but the US is opposed to negotiations or to any concessions to Russia, and is “banning” Ukraine from negotiating or compromising, or by pumping in arms, it is “encouraging” Ukraine to fight and not negotiate.

This scenario, however, is entirely fictional. No-one making these endless statements has ever presented any evidence whatsoever. They just make it up, because it fits their schema that this is a “proxy war” being waged by US imperialism, which is apparently using Ukraine and Ukrainian lives for its (the US’s) “war on Russia,” as opposed to the actual war of conquest being waged by Russian imperialism against its former colony that stares anyone in the face who wants to look.

It is a remarkably western-centric view, even for the always western-centric Manichean “anti-imperialist” left, to imagine that the millions of Ukrainians who have risen up at the grass-roots level in an extraordinary mobilisation to defend Ukraine’s right to exist as a state and nation are not doing so in their own interests but are merely being fooled into being “proxies” for US imperialism’s schemes.

Ukraine has been either negotiating, or offering to re-start negotiations, more or less continually. It should not be obliged to; Ukraine would be in its full rights to simply say Russian troops need to leave Ukraine and there is nothing to negotiate except the pace and logistics of that withdrawal. But it negotiates anyway because of the position it is in. So when western leftists demand Ukraine do something it is already doing, what they really mean is that Ukraine should surrender to Russia’s “reasonable” demands.

So they should come clean – what do these wise western sages demand that Ukraine do to satisfy Russia so that it will allegedly agree to a ceasefire and negotiations? For the most part, they demand Ukraine accepts Russia’s full program of Ukrainian surrender.

Even on paper, Russia’s demands for Ukrainian surrender – no right to join a security alliance of its choice, demilitarisation, recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and of Donbas – look remarkably like Israel’s “reasonable” demands for Palestinian surrender, including recognition of annexation by force and the whole package. In both cases, justification for calling such maximum demands “reasonable” derives easily from the view that “there is no such thing as Palestine/Ukraine.” Just as western imperialist leaders reject one and support the other, the western imperial left do exactly the same but merely reverse them. In contrast, the Russian and Israeli leaders of small-scale imperialist states engaged in old-style conquest-imperialism have long had a healthy respect for each other’s projects.

Ukraine’s negotiating proposal: No NATO, no military solutions to occupied regions

But are these “reasonable” Russian demands even what Russia is really waging this war for?

Let’s take the NATO demand. It is hard to understand why anyone can still think that Russia launched this war due to its alleged “security concerns” about “NATO enlargement.” NATO enlargement took place in 1999-2004, when 10 countries joined, including the only three “on Russia’s borders,” ie, the three tiny Baltic states. The four that have been allowed into NATO at different moments in the last 18 years were small Balkan states nowhere near Russia, often after long and difficult processes.

Ukraine applied to join in 2008, and the accusation that the US is pushing to “expand” into Ukraine is based on the fact that NATO did not say “no” that year, as its charter prevents it saying no to any European country. Yet 14 years later, Ukraine has still not even been given a Membership Action Plan (MAP), to allow it to begin attempting to meet the conditions of membership. No serious observer thinks Ukraine has any chance of being admitted for many years or decades.

But in any case, Zelensky made the major concession on NATO in negotiations just a few weeks into the war. It’s full elaboration as a written proposal was on March 30. The first few points of the 10-point plan are as follows:

Proposal 1: Ukraine proclaims itself a neutral state, promising to remain nonaligned with any blocsand refrain from developing nuclear weapons — in exchange for international legal guarantees. Possible guarantor states include Russia, Great Britain, China, the United States, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Israel, and other states would also be welcome to join the treaty.

Proposal 2: These international security guarantees for Ukraine would not extend to Crimea, Sevastopol, or certain areas of the Donbas [ie, the areas currently controlled by Kremlin stooges]. The parties to the agreement would need to define the boundaries of these regions or agree that each party understands these boundaries differently.

Proposal 3: Ukraine vows not to join any military coalitions or host any foreign military bases or troop contingents. Any international military exercises would be possible only with the consent of the guarantor-states. For their part, these guarantors confirm their intention to promote Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.

Note the second point also touches on Russia’s other surrender conditions. One of them, the Crimea issue, is further elaborated on in point 8:

Proposal 8: The parties’ desire to resolve issues related to Crimea and Sevastopol shall be committed to bilateral negotiations between Ukraine and Russia for a period of 15 years. Ukraine and Russia also pledge not to resolve these issues by military means and to continue diplomatic resolution efforts.

If anybody can find any evidence of US “rejection” of Ukraine’s plan, any attempt to “ban” Ukraine from making these concessions, please provide sources. Such evidence will not be forthcoming. In late April, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, far-right Republican Senator Rand Paul accused the Biden administration of provoking the war by “beating the drums to admit Ukraine to NATO.” In his response, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that the White House would be open to an agreement that resulted in Ukraine becoming “an unaligned, neutral nation.” “We, Senator, are not going to be more Ukrainian than the Ukrainians. These are decisions for them to make,” Blinken told Paul. “Our purpose is to make sure that they have within their hands the ability to repel the Russian aggression and indeed to strengthen their hand at an eventual negotiating table,” he added. While he saw no sign Putin was ready to negotiate, he said “If he is and if the Ukrainians engage, we’ll support that.”

That is not because Biden or Blinken are great peaceniks or not imperialists. It is simply that the “no negotiations” position imputed to them by many excitable leftists is simply not a position that interests the main body of US imperialism (the odd talking head or armchair warrior notwithstanding).

As opposed to the imaginary and evidence-free view that Ukraine may want to negotiate but the West will not allow it to, others claim (just as wrongly) that Ukraine refuses to negotiate, but the US and the West must negotiate anyway. This is a rather odd demand – since Russia is not invading the US or western Europe, and they are not invading Russia, what exactly is the US supposed to negotiate about?

The point being, of course, that these “anti-imperialists” here reveal themselves as super-imperialists: they are demanding that the US and the West negotiate “on behalf of” Ukraine! So presumably, if the US or France “negotiates” with Putin for Ukraine to cede Crimea and Donbas to Russia, Ukraine should happily accept being divided up by imperialist powers, and this Kissingerian chessboard ‘realist’ geopolitics is now supposedly the essence of an emancipatory leftist position!

Is there a new US aim to “weaken Russia”?

On a related track, the statement by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on April 25 that the US aims to “see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do these kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine” created great excitement. This is supposedly a declaration either of real, or new, US aims in this war. Now, even if interpreted this way, this would prove nothing about the war of resistance waged by the Ukrainian people against imperial Russia’s attempt to wipe them off the map. Obviously, US imperialism has its own reasons for aiding this resistance (indeed, providing large numbers of the very weapons that it not only did not provide to the anti-Assad Syrian rebellion, but actively blocked others from providing). But if the US aims to weaken Russia via supporting this Ukrainian resistance, that is not a choice made by Ukraine; Ukraine did not invade Russia to give the US an avenue to weaken Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine; if Ukraine’s resistance allows the US to weaken Russia by aiding it, Russia can thank Putin for that.

But in any case, the statement can mean virtually anything; Ukraine simply maintaining its right to existence, or to exist without suffering large territorial losses – a defeat of the aims of the Russian invasion – will weaken Russia. So anyone not advocating a Russian victory over Ukraine could also be considered to be in agreement with Austin. By providing any aid at all since Day 1, the US was helping “weaken Russia.”

Some proclaim that this was not the original US aim, but Austin’s statement heralded a “new” strategic turn in US policy. But if so, they need to explain what has changed in practice. Previously, they claim, the US was aiding the Ukrainian resistance with the aim of helping Ukraine resist the Russian invasion – for its own reasons, of course, but within these confines. Now the US is doing the same thing, aiding the Ukrainian resistance, but with the aim of weakening Russia. Pardon me for being confused about what has changed in practice.

A common claim is that by supplying arms to Ukraine, the US aims to drag out the war, so as to bog down and wear out Russia, the weakening of Russia being paid for by Ukrainian death and suffering. Social media is full of western leftist wits proclaiming “the US will fight Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood.” Apparently, the reason millions of Ukrainians are resisting the Russian invasion is not because they don’t want to be overrun by a brutal imperialist power, but because they are unconsciously acting against their own interests, dying for a US aim of weakening Russia. If only they knew what these brave and smart western lefties knew, that their real interests lie in accepting colonial oppression, occupation, massacre and dispossession.

The obvious question arising from this assertion that the US wants to drag out the war to weaken Russia is ‘how can the war end more quickly?’ On the one hand, the assertion could mean that by allowing Ukrainians to better resist Russian conquest, these western arms prevent the rapid end of the war via total Russian victory, with its attendant massacres and war crimes, imposition of a fascistic regime of repression, and annexation of a large part of Ukraine. If these leftists advocate a rapid end of the war via this conclusion, so it is not “dragged out,” they should say so openly and stop beating around the bush.

But if they do not mean this, the only other way for the war to end more quickly and not bog Russia down would be for a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of arms deliveries to Ukraine, so that it could convincingly and quickly evict Russia from its territory; while Russia would still be somewhat weakened by defeat, at least the war would not drag on, and hence the alleged aim of getting Russia stuck there and drained would not be fulfilled. In that case they should be denouncing the US for not supplying Ukraine arms of sufficient quantity and quality to do this, but only enough to fight on but not win. But it is unlikely they mean this either.

So if the idea is not a rapid end to the war via crushing Russian victory, nor via Ukraine swiftly driving out the invader, then the statement has no meaning, it is merely a piece of cheap rhetoric.

But of course, as tankies become pacifists, it is back to demanding “ceasefire and negotiations.” No rapid Russian victory, no total Ukrainian victory, but also no dragging out the war, because as we know, “negotiations” can end the war. That always works, and no-one ever thought of it before.

All Ukraine has to do is surrender to Russia’s “reasonable demands,” leading to a satisfied Russia calling a ceasefire; or if not, the US must negotiate this surrender “on Ukraine’s behalf.” Leaving aside how much this Imperial Left stance contradicts leftist stances in virtually every other struggle by a nation and people against imperialist aggression, occupation and conquest, how realistic is this ‘strategy’ on its own terms?

Russia engaged in a war of old-style conquest imperialism

To answer this, how has Russia responded to Ukraine’s proposals in March, discussed above, for no NATO, for neutrality with security guarantees, no joining any military blocs, a 15-year negotiation on Crimea with no military solutions? With what we have seen since – the complete destruction of Mariupol, the Bucha massacre, all the rest of the horror since. The last thing Russia wanted was for Ukraine to call its bluff.

The problem is that this “anti-imperialist” left do not understand the nature of imperialism; or by claiming that Russia is not an imperialist power, but rather just a large capitalist power with average expansionist tendencies, they imagine the same imperialist logic does not apply.

Russia is engaged in a war of late 19^th century style imperialist conquest. Obviously, it is not unique in the world as western media claims, we’ve had Israel, Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey and others engage in wars of conquest and annexation in recent decades, greeted by either western indifference, or avid western and especially US support. Pointing out western hypocrisy is politically important as we confront the onslaught of self-serving and laughable propaganda about the world being divided between “democracy and autocracy,” about there allegedly being a “rules-based international order” that no-one ever violated before Putin did, and so on. But fighting hypocrisy does not inform analysis of a concrete situation. These other cases are all of relatively small countries; the largest, Indonesia, was eventually defeated in East Timor (with the aid of a change in imperialist policy, indeed imperialist intervention in defence of east Timor), though not in West Papua. Turkey held back from formal annexation of northern Cyprus which it still occupies; and although it never faced western sanctions, its puppet ‘republic’ is not recognised by any country in the world. Obviously Israel/Palestine is the most globally consequential of these cases.

But this is the first time a major global imperialist power has engaged in 19^th century-style ‘direct conquest’ imperialism since 1945. This is not a morality contest here, obviously the US invasion of Iraq was extraordinarily brutal and criminal, but the aim was not conquest as such; and of course both the US and Russia and others have engaged in massive and brutal “interventions” after being “invited in,” but once again this has not been about conquest as such. We need to wrap our heads around this fact.

In late April, Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, stated that Russia planned to forge a land corridor between Crimea and Donbas in eastern Ukraine; this is rather obvious anyway – that is why Mariupol had to be conquered and destroyed, being right in the middle and a key port. These are of course Russian-speaking regions, where the ‘liberator of Russians’ slaughtered them. But he went on, noting that “control over the south of Ukraine is another way to Transdniestria, where there is also evidence that the Russian-speaking population is being oppressed.”

In other words, the entire south of Ukraine, its entire Black Sea coast, is Russian imperialism’s aim. Not only linking Donbas to Crimea, but also seizing Odessa and linking Crimea to the Russian-controlled fake ‘republic’ of Transdniestria, which Russia seized from Moldova decades ago (how amazing that a region under effective Russian control is also “oppressing” Russians now!). And if we take the more extreme ‘Eurasianist’ views into account, Moldova – a neutral state, like Ukraine, outside NATO – should probably also be worrying about its existence.

Of course, the enormous mobilisation of Ukrainian resistance has probably put the brakes on the more extreme Russian geographic aims – at this stage it looks like Russia will consolidate the Donbas to Crimea link conquest and will not have the capacity to venture beyond to Odessa – but that doesn’t alter the fact that these are Russia’s aims. And even just consolidating this part of the conquest locks Ukraine out from most of the Black Sea.

The evidence that Russia aims to annex its new conquests can be seen wherein “Russian officials have already moved to introduce the ruble currency, install proxy politicians in local governments, impose new school curriculums, reroute internet servers through Russia and cut the population off from Ukrainian broadcasts” in these conquered regions. Marat Khusnullin, Russia’s deputy prime minister for infrastructure, also stated that Russia intends “to charge Ukraine for electricity generated by the Ukrainian nuclear plant that Russian forces commandeered in the early weeks of the invasion.”

The Black Sea, of course is full of hydrocarbons. Let’s not make things too complicated. Russian imperialism wants them. It certainly doesn’t want its former colony to share any of them, and by cutting it off from most of its sea coast, can effectively blockade it into submission.

Where to now for US policy?

The opinions on where US policy is heading in response to this situation range from ‘the US will continue to escalate until it leads to war with Russia’ to ‘the US will cut a deal with Russia and sell out Ukraine’. The scenario involving the US pressuring Ukraine into making a compromise that is not fully just once it feels Russia has been weakened enough, rather than pushing for full victory, is just as possible, if not more, than the projections of it drifting into war with Russia. Whatever the case, it is clear that the US and other imperialist powers are supporting Ukraine for their own reasons and their interests are not identical.

What then are the US interests involved? Obviously, US imperialism has already ‘won’ due to Putin’s invasion: US ‘security’ hegemony over Europe is now stronger than at any time since the end of the Cold War, NATO is now adding new members, the many years of the Russian-German gas pipeline development have suddenly come to nothing. Obviously, US and western imperialism more generally does not want a Russian conquest of the entire Black Sea; and allowing Russia conquer much beyond where it already held in Ukraine before the invasion would not be good for US or NATO “credibility.” But once that drive is defeated, there may be little appetite to keep backing Ukraine.

The simple fact is that US imperialism has not been in any “war drive” against Russia, and has no interest in one. There were no signs of any US build-up against Russia before the war, and while relations have been tense since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, they have been relatively normal, including a great deal of cooperation in places like Syria. While a certain amount of anti-Russian rhetoric may have characterised some US statements in comparison to the more accommodating Franco-German approach, this can be understood as part of keeping NATO – its tool for hegemony in Europe – “relevant”, in particular among some of the more anti-Russian eastern European ruling elites (and even this had been wearing thin before Putin saved NATO – just a few months ago, a string of east European right-wing populist rulers were increasingly close to Moscow).

But it is important to not confuse this symbolic US-Russia “rivalry” – related to credibility, the size of the countries, military power, Cold War hangovers – to actual inter-imperialist competition. Their economies are just too different in both character and size for the US to see Putin’s hydro-carbon-based economic fiefdom as a serious global competitor – that award goes to rising, hyper-dynamic Chinese imperialism. And getting bogged down in Ukraine is not conducive to the US ‘pivot to Asia’ where its Chinese rival is based, though for this very reason it may be very much in China’s interests.

Yes, massive quantities of arms have gone to Ukraine, but there have also been clear limits: the US blocking of Poland from delivering warplanes for instance; and a no-fly zone has been placed off-limits by the US and the West from the outset.

One problem with confusing some rhetorical flourishes with US imperialist policy is that each of these ‘gotcha’ moments has been walked back by other US government figures. After Austin mentioned weakening Russia, Press Secretary Jen Psaki explained this simply meant “our objective to prevent that [Russia taking over Ukraine] from happening … but, yes, we are also looking to prevent them from expanding their efforts and President Putin’s objectives beyond that, too.” When Biden said that Putin shouldn’t remain in power, this was immediately hosed down by others in the US government. And when Rep. Seth Moulton stated “We’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians. We’re fundamentally at war, although somewhat through a proxy, with Russia,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded “President Biden has been clear that U.S. forces are not and will not engage in a conflict with Russia. We are supporting the Ukrainian people as they defend their country.” Finally, in early May, the US government imposed new limits on the intelligence it shares with Ukraine.

Richard Haas, Thomas Friedman, Eliot Cohen: Voices from the US ruling class

Indeed, we can also find ‘gotcha’ moments of a different kind. On May 9, Biden expressed concern that Putin “doesn’t have a way out right now, and I’m trying to figure out what we do about that.”

This concern – to give Putin some “way out” to avoid the kind of destabilisation that could result from an outright defeat for Russia – is likely much closer to real US imperial interests that the imaginary spectre of the US aiming to “Balkanise Russia”, more likely the very thing everyone wants to avoid. Such concerns are consistent with those expressed in several pieces by leading US ruling class strategists in the serious media. While these strategists do not create US policy, the explanations they give for what US policy should be are not only logical, but also coincide with the very limits of Biden’s approach, and express a number of similar concerns.

The first of these is an article in Foreign Affairs by Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has served in various US governments since the late 1970s, including for Secretary of State Colin Powell in the Bush administration, as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department from 2001 to 2003 during the lead-up to the Iraq war. So no lightweight. Haas begins:

“In principle, success from the West’s perspective can be defined as ending the war sooner rather than later, and on terms that Ukraine’s democratic government is prepared to accept. But just what are those terms? Will Ukraine seek to recover all the territory it has lost in the past two months? Will it require that Russian forces withdraw completely from the Donbas and Crimea? Will it demand the right to join the EU and NATO? Will it insist that all this be set forth in a formal document signed by Russia?

“The United States, the EU, and NATO need to discuss such questions with one another and with Ukraine now. … To be sure, the Ukrainians have every right to define their war aims. But so do the United States and Europe. Although Western interests overlap with Ukraine’s, they are broader, including nuclear stability with Russia and the ability to influence the trajectory of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.

“It is also essential to take into account that Russia gets a vote. Although Putin initiated this war of choice, it will take more than just him to end it. He and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will both have to consider what they require in the way of territory and terms to halt hostilities. They will also have to decide if they are prepared not only to order an end to the fighting but also to enter into and honor a peace agreement. Another complexity is that some aspects of any peace, such as the lifting of sanctions against Russia, would not be determined by Ukraine alone but would require the consent of others.”

Discussing several scenarios, Haas sees the scenario in which Ukrainian success reaches the point that it attempts to take back all territory seized since 2014, rather than only territory seized in 2022, as a destabilising outcome:

“… it is near impossible to imagine Putin accepting such an outcome, since it would surely threaten his political survival, and possibly even his physical survival. In desperation, he might try to widen the war through cyberattacks or attacks on one or more NATO countries. He might even resort to chemical or nuclear weapons. … Arguably, these aims are better left for a postconflict, or even a post-Putin, period in which the West could condition sanctions relief on Russia’s signing of a formal peace agreement. Such a pact might allow Ukraine to enjoy formal ties to the EU and security guarantees, even as it remained officially neutral and outside NATO. Russia, for its part, might agree to withdraw its forces from the entirety of the Donbas in exchange for international protections for the ethnic Russians living there. Crimea might gain some special status, with Moscow and Kyiv agreeing that its final status would be determined down the road.”

Discussing the lessons learned from the Cold War and the balance achieved which guaranteed peace (between the superpowers that is), Haas notes that these are consistent with the very limitations of Biden’s strategy:

“From the outset of the crisis, the United States made it clear that it would not place boots on the ground or establish a no-fly zone, since doing so could bring U.S. and Russian forces into direct contact and raise the risk of escalation. Instead, Washington and its NATO partners opted for an indirect strategy of providing arms, intelligence, and training to Ukraine while pressuring Russia with economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation.”

From here on “ … success for now could consist of a winding down of hostilities, with Russia possessing no more territory than it held before the recent invasion and continuing to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction. Over time, the West could employ a mix of sanctions and diplomacy in an effort to achieve a full Russian military withdrawal from Ukraine. Such success would be far from perfect, just preferable to the alternatives.”

The second piece was by long-term imperial columnist Thomas L Friedman in the May 6 New York Times. Like Haas, Friedman is no stranger to being hawkish when he believes such a stance is in US interests, but takes a similar view to what actual US interests are in this case.

He also warned that certain US actions “could be creating an opening for Putin to respond in ways that could dangerously widen this conflict — and drag the U.S. in deeper than it wants to be,” which is all the more dangerous given Putin’s unpredictability, and the fact that “Putin is running out of options for some kind of face-saving success on the ground — or even a face-saving off ramp.”

Moreover, for Friedman, the problem is not only Russia, as “President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has been trying to do the same thing from the start — to make Ukraine an immediate member of NATO or get Washington to forge a bilateral security pact with Kyiv” something Friedman clearly sees as against US interests.

Like Haas, he ultimately thinks that Biden has the right balance:

But my sense is that the Biden team is walking much more of a tightrope with Zelensky than it would appear to the eye — wanting to do everything possible to make sure he wins this war but doing so in a way that still keeps some distance between us and Ukraine’s leadership. That’s so Kyiv is not calling the shots and so we’ll not be embarrassed by messy Ukrainian politics in the war’s aftermath. The view of Biden and his team, according to my reporting, is that America needs to help Ukraine restore its sovereignty and beat the Russians back — but not let Ukraine turn itself into an American protectorate on the border of Russia. We need to stay laser-focused on what is our national interest and not stray in ways that lead to exposures and risks we don’t want.”

While much of the western left sees the US making Ukraine its ‘protectorate’, Friedman sees this as an evil Ukrainian plot which the US must be, and is, on guard against. “But we are dealing with some incredibly unstable elements, particularly a politically wounded Putin. Boasting about killing his generals and sinking his ships, or falling in love with Ukraine in ways that will get us enmeshed there forever, is the height of folly.”

Before moving to the third, more hawkish, piece, it is worth noting that the editorial in the May 19 New York Times makes similar points to Haas and Friedman. While stating that the US goal to help Ukraine rebuff Russian aggression “cannot shift,” nevertheless “in the end, it is still not in America’s best interest to plunge into an all-out war with Russia, even if a negotiated peace may require Ukraine to make some hard decisions.” The editorial warns that “a decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal. Though Russia’s planning and fighting have been surprisingly sloppy, Russia remains too strong, and Mr. Putin has invested too much personal prestige in the invasion to back down.” Therefore, “as the war continues, Mr. Biden should also make clear to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his people that there is a limit to how far the United States and NATO will confront Russia, and limits to the arms, money and political support they can muster.”

So, apart from the odd gaffe, it seems difficult to find serious US ruling class opinion saying what much of the left is claiming it is saying. Actually, they appear to saying remarkably similar things to each other! Perhaps we can find the evidence in a more serious hawk?

The third piece by Eliot A. Cohen, writing in The Atlantic on May 11, may be such an example. A professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, former Counselor of the Department of State, former editor of The National Interest, the title of his book The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force tells us his views on the use military power. Not surprisingly, therefore, this article is more hawkish in tone than those of Haas and Friedman.

Cohen does not necessarily insist Ukraine must take back all territory lost, but he argues that Ukraine must define what its objectives are and that US policy should recognise “it will be up to Ukraine to decide what it wishes to accomplish.” Having borne “the burdens of blood and sacrifice on a scale not seen since World War II” and with a cause “indisputably just,” Ukraine “has every right to decide what it can and cannot accept and strive for.” This is combined with the fact that Russia “has acted with unspeakable barbarity” and these “moral facts” should therefore “modify or even outweigh coolly geopolitical calculations of the European balance of power.” And when the war ends, western objectives should include helping to put Ukraine “in a condition to defeat further Russian aggression.”

Cohen is an unalloyed partisan of US imperialism, but, from this, obviously hypocritical, perspective, we can at least say there appears to be more respect for Ukraine’s self-determination than the more geopolitically-oriented views of Haas and Friedman, with their insistence on distinguishing the US from the Ukrainian interest.

Therefore, it is here we may expect to see some evidence of the alleged US imperialist desire to wage war on, to humiliate, or even ‘Balkanise’ Russia.

In reality, Cohen warns precisely about the dangers involved in Russia’s defeat. He does not want Russia defeated in Ukraine in order to bring it to its knees and humiliate or ‘Balkanise’ it; on the contrary, he argues that while Ukrainian victory is necessary for other reasons, the negative side-effects of this are nevertheless very much against US and western interests.

“But all of this leaves the problem of Russia. … If it is convulsed from within, it is less likely to be dominated by liberals (many of whom have fled the country) than by disgruntled nationalists. Putin may go, but his replacements are likely to come from similar backgrounds in the secret police or, possibly, the military.” And it will be “more than usually difficult to bring it back into a Eurasian order that it, and no one else, has attempted to destroy” with its “utterly unjustified” attack on Ukraine with “its exceptional brutality, the shamelessness of Russia’s lies and threats, and the grotesqueness of its claims to hegemony in the former Soviet states.”

The result will be “the hardest task of American statecraft going forward: dealing with a Russia reeling from defeat and humiliation, weakened but still dangerous.” Indeed, the old Cold Warrior even sees the old Soviet Union as a more “rationalist” enemy, whereas a defeat for Putinist Russia “will be much more like dealing with a rabid, wounded beast that claws and bites at itself as much as it does at others, in the grip not of a millennial ideology but a bizarre combination of nationalism and nihilism.”

Far from wanting to make “war on Russia”, Cohen thinks that apart from strengthening states on Russia’s borders, all the West will be able to do is “hope against hope that the new “sick man of Europe” will, somehow and against the odds, recover something like moral sanity.”

All US and western imperialist wars since 1945 have been against countries in regions of the former colonial world that they aimed to maintain domination of – from Indochina to Iraq and Afghanistan to Panama and Grenada and Nicaragua, and the current drone wars – and the list goes on. Quite simply, there has been no US “war drive” against Russia, not because the US does not engage in war drives, but because post-Soviet Russia has neither been an ideological enemy – quite the opposite – nor powerful enough to be a genuine imperialist rival.

On the contrary, it is Putin’s sudden resort to primitive conquest-imperialism that has thrown the established imperialist modus vivendi between the US, Europe and Russia to the woods, and the western reaction has been crisis management on the run. While the US has, naturally enough, taken full advantage of what Putin has offered them up on a plate by restoring unchallenged US hegemony in Europe via a strengthened NATO, the point is that this is the US goal in itself; there is no US or western interest in massive destabilisation, a huge black hole, in a gigantic country like Russia which, just a few months ago, was plenty lucrative for western capital, and was an integral part of the world capitalist economy.

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