from Strategic Culture:
The United States defines itself in zero-sum terms. Its national myth – let’s indulge the preposterous arrogance for a moment – is that it is an exceptional nation in the history of the world. It is supposedly the indispensable leader of the “free world”, a paragon of democratic virtue and it possesses the most powerful and benevolent military force the world has ever seen.
Thankfully, many decent American citizens know that this is propaganda hogwash. Still, its political class and complacent mass media view the United States as the world’s supreme uni-power. All other nations must pay homage to this consummate hegemon.
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Therein lies a fatal contradiction. This untenable definition is essential for justifying its presumed privileges. And yet, by doing so, the U.S. cannot brook any genuine equality or mutual respect essential for peaceful multilateral relations. It must be the top dog – at all costs. That is a definition of imperialism. The concomitants are aggression, belligerence, lawlessness, and duplicity – of course, all concealed with impossibly virtuous rhetoric, or in short, propaganda. So-called allies are merely servile functionaries to augment American global ambitions.
Hence, when the real world does not match the mythical notions of the U.S., there is consequently an ineluctable existential crisis. The zero-sum, all-dominant demands of the would-be hegemony are not achievable. In this situation, the hegemonic power behaves like a drunk in a bar who is refused another drink. Mayhem and violence are almost inevitable.
American narcissism denies there that the U.S. is an empire. It is preferred to pretend that its power is benign and ever-so-magnanimous. Let’s leave such vanity aside. The U.S. is an empire with military garrisons dotted around the world to ensure its economic and political interests are enforced down the barrel of a gun. No nation has conducted as many wars as the United States in its 248-year history.
The exploitation of its allies and the rest of the world with financial leverage through the arbitrarily appointed dollar as the primary global reserve currency is another mechanism of coercion and neocolonial predation of other nations’ resources.
However, all this American pretense and delusion of absolute power is coming to a shuddering, calamitous end. The empire is fragmenting and failing. And that presents a dangerous existential crisis.
There are abundant signs of the crash. The Eastern Economic Forum this week in Russia’s far-east is proof again that a multipolar world is emerging in which the locomotive of economic development is in Eurasia and the Global South. The United States and its Western allies are no longer the economic power they once were. There is a tectonic shift away from the minority Western control of the global economy which is in itself a welcome direction for a more just and peaceful international order.
The majority of world nations have ignored the petulant demands for sanctions on Russia from the clique known as the Collective West. Every day sees the erosion of presumed Western moral authority. That presumption was always a neocolonialist conceit. Increasingly, the world can see that the Western emperor has no clothes. What is seen more and more is the naked ugly truth of the U.S. and Western exploitation and abuse of the rest of the planet for their selfish ends. That is why this week the United States ramped up sanctions on Russian media under the absurd pretext that Russia is interfering in the forthcoming American presidential elections. The hypocrisy of the United States – which is incomparable in its massive interference and sabotage of nations – is flagrantly obvious to the world. The attack on Russian media and independent American media is not about alleged Russian interference. It is all about the U.S. rulers trying to prevent a growing awareness across the globe of its vile duplicity and lawlessness. In other words, the U.S. and Western authorities are irreparably shattered and exposed for their worthless pretensions.
The continuing Western-enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza has done much to expose the heinous reality of Western power.
There was a time when the U.S. and its Western vassals could dictate terms and use military and financial force to compel their objectives and desires. Not anymore and that is a sure sign of the fatal structural weakness of the U.S.-led Western imperialist axis.
The U.S. and its European lackeys thought that they could subjugate Russia with economic sanctions. The economic warfare campaign has failed miserably. Russia’s economy is powering ahead with the new markets of Eurasia and the Global South. It is not Russia that has been isolated and weakened. Paradoxically, it is the U.S. and the European economies that are suffering from their own machinations. The Europeans are particularly pathetic. The treasonous political leaders of the European Union have slavishly followed the American agenda of hostility toward Russia – and now the European populations are paying a painful price in terms of political turmoil and economic recession. The reports this week of an expected shutdown of Volkswagen in Germany due to soaring energy costs epitomize the doomed fate of Europe as a loyal accomplice of U.S. imperialism.
Another sign of historic failure is the disaster of the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. Ukraine has been destroyed in what has become the biggest war in Europe since the end of the Second World War. The Kursk offensive that began four weeks ago with NATO planning is a dead-end for the Americans and the European sponsors of the Kiev regime. The chaotic reshuffling of the Kiev regime this week speaks of the desperation, as does the rapidly collapsing Ukrainian defenses in the Donbass region.
American and European notions of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia through the proxy war in Ukraine are now bitter ashes in the mouths of the U.S. imperial rulers.
This brings us to the reports this week that the Biden administration is considering yet another reckless escalation in the proxy war. It was reported that Washington is set to approve of supplying the NeoNazi Kiev regime with long-range JASSM missiles. Potentially, these stealth cruise missiles launched from aircraft have a range to hit Moscow from Ukrainian airspace. Thus, the ladder of U.S. and NATO escalation keeps going up. Previously, the NATO powers approved HIMARS, ATACMS, Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles and F-16 fighter jets.
If Washington goes ahead and green-lights the JASSM weapon then this is potentially the last straw for all-out war. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned this week that the NATO powers know Russia’s nuclear doctrine and therefore should not mess with Russia’s red lines.
Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for President Putin, commented that Russia sees no limit to U.S. escalation. That is partly why Putin, speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum, facetiously mocked the choice of American presidential candidate as irrelevant. It hardly matters who is in the White House. The U.S. empire is in crash mode. Its insane recklessness towards Russia (and China) is symptomatic of a psychotic pyromaniac who is ready to burn all because an existential crisis has hit a wall.
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