The Historical Turning-Point Has Arrived

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

It affects both international relations, and America’s domestic policies...

We see it all around us. 

Regarding international relations: On June 29^th, Politico bannered «House panel votes to force new debate on terror war», and reported that, «Congress may finally be getting fed up with war on autopilot. A powerful House committee voted unexpectedly Thursday to require Congress to debate and approve US military action in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other far-flung countries». 

On July 23^rd, the always-insightful Wayne Madsen at Strategic Culture Foundation headlined «The End of the ‘New American Century’ Pronounced by the Pentagon», and reported that, «The days of US-led dubious «coalitions of the willing» taking unilateral military action are over». He summarized an extremely important new study, which had been commissioned by the Obama Administration but was issued only recently (last month), titled «AT OUR OWN PERIL: DOD RISK ASSESSMENT IN A POST-PRIMACY WORLD», which calls for the US government to abandon unilateralism altogether, and to employ military power only in conjunction and cooperation — as equals — with a small circle of four historically long-term international allies (page 100) «the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and France are particularly active US global partners» on a global basis, but «the regional variety» of ally includes (in addition to those four) «Japan and the Republic of Korea in the Pacific, and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel in the Middle East come to mind in this regard. Obviously, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alliance is a clear example of a regionally-based entente as well».

In other words (page 103): «There is universal recognition as well that the United States and its defense establishment no longer exercise the degree of unchallenged strategic dominance enjoyed from the end of the Cold War through the immediate post-9/11 period». Bullying by America («regime-change») is, in so many words, said to be passé — not wrong, just no longer practicable (except, perhaps, when it has the participation of those ‘allies’, such as it did in Iraq, and in Libya, and — what are they really trying to say there — other than, perhaps, what they think the new President, Trump, might be wanting them to say?). 

For such a document to be asserting that NATO — America’s oldest, largest, most formalized, and most clearly military, alliance — is of only «regional» military concern to the United States, comparable to the military concern that the US has regarding individual countries such as Jordan or Japan elsewhere, is a huge break away from prior US military thinking. It is certainly a repudiation of the Cold War conception of US military commitments and objectives. It upends them.

This is also (whatever it is) a repudiation of Barack Obama’s famously repeated assertions that all other nations except the US are «dispensable». In the imperial view, only the imperial nation is essential; all other nations are mere vassal-states, of subordinate (if any) concern. It was always the view that imperial nations held. It might even be said to define «imperialism». Typical from Obama was this — that imperial President’s most thorough statement of the imperial doctrine, on 28 May 2014, to graduating cadets at West Point, «Remarks by the President at the United States Military Academy Commencement Ceremony»:

Meanwhile, our economy remains the most dynamic on Earth; our businesses the most innovative. Each year, we grow more energy independent. From Europe to Asia, we are the hub of alliances unrivaled in the history of nations. America continues to attract striving immigrants. The values of our founding inspire leaders in parliaments and new movements in public squares around the globe. And when a typhoon hits the Philippines, or schoolgirls are kidnapped in Nigeria, or masked men occupy a building in Ukraine, it is America that the world looks to for help. (Applause.) So the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come.

But the world is changing with accelerating speed. This presents opportunity, but also new dangers. We know all too well, after 9/11, just how technology and globalization has put power once reserved for states in the hands of individuals, raising the capacity of terrorists to do harm. Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. And even as developing nations embrace democracy and market economies, 24-hour news and social media makes it impossible to ignore the continuation of sectarian conflicts and failing states and popular uprisings that might have received only passing notice a generation ago.

It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world. The question we face, the question each of you will face, is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead.

He was telling America’s future military leaders that they would be waging wars for the only «indispensable nation», against the BRICS nations, where «rising middle classes compete with us» (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), wars under the guise or cover of excuses such as «the values of our founding» and «to attract striving immigrants» and in instances such as when «masked men occupy a building in Ukraine» (whom his own Administration had actually hired to execute his coup to overthrow the then-existing Russia-friendly President of Ukraine by a rabidly anti-Russia fascist regime on Russia’s very border — but he didn’t mention any of that), etc.

When Obama’s agent who handled Ukraine told the US Ambassador in Ukraine, 23 days before the coup culminated, to appoint «Yats» to run that country after the coup would be completed, and she said there privately to that American Ambassador, «F—k the EU!» this was Obama’s unilateralism, in the raw, not fit for public consumption but far more real than his exquisitely deceitful public words ever were. (George W. Bush had lacked such PR skill, of which Obama was a master.) And, now, this landmark military study, which his Administration had commissioned, says: It’s over. That era is ended. The era which culminated with the regimes of George W. Bush and of Barack Obama, is now a proven disaster and must therefore be replaced. (That it’s a proven disaster is known to everyone except the propagandists — including ‘news’media — for America’s Establishment; but, that America’s military policy must be changed in accord with this recognition, is, until now, real news, to everyone.)

And, the evidence that the historical turning-point has arrived regarding also America’s domestic policies, was clearly shown and explained in my article «Obama US Economic Recovery was America’s Weakest»; and, it was additionally placed into the broader global economic perspective by the current Chief Economist for the World Bank, Paul Romer, when he delivered a now-historic address on 5 January 2016 titled «The Trouble With Macroeconomics», in which he documented that (the mostly US-created, but globally regnant) macroeconomic theory itself, is a lie, and is known privately among economists to be fraudulent, though they don’t say so in public. Bloomberg News bannered about that speech, on 18 November 2016, «The Rebel Economist Who Blew Up Macroeconomics», which reported that the lecture «landed among Romer’s peers like a grenade». Only outside of the world of professional economists does the fact that economic theory is fraudulent remain still unknown, or in any sense «news».

We are living in a new world, and don’t really know yet where it’s going. The only thing that’s clear is that the turning-point has been reached, and that we are there, right now. The turning-point is now. But where the US and the world are heading, can only barely be glimpsed. The latest landmarks, summarized here, might indicate the way forward.