DANGEROUS FLAILING AND BELLOWING OF THE BEAST
John Chuckman
When I think of America’s place in the world today, the
image that comes to mind is of a very large animal, perhaps a huge bull
elephant or even prehistoric mammoth, which long roamed as the unchallenged
king of its domain but has become trapped by its own missteps, as caught in a
tar pit or some quicksand, and it is violently flailing about, making a
terrifying noises in its effort to free itself and re-establish its authority.
Any observer immediately knows the animal ultimately cannot succeed but
certainly is frightened by the noise and crashing that it can sustain for a
considerable time.
I think that is the pretty accurate metaphor for the situation
of the United States today, still a terribly large and powerful society but one
finding itself trapped after a long series of its own blunders and errors, a
society certain ultimately to become diminished in its prestige and relative
power with all the difficulties which that will entail for an arrogant people
having a blind faith in their own rightness. America simply cannot accept its
mistakes or that it was ever wrong, for Americanism much resembles a
fundamentalist religion whose members are incapable of recognizing or admitting
they ever followed anything but the divine plan.
America has made a costly series of errors over the last
half century, demonstrating to others that the America they may have been in
awe of in, say, 1950, and may have considered almost godlike and incapable of mistakes,
has now proved itself indisputably, in field after field, as often not even
capable of governing itself. The irony of a people who are seen as often unable
to govern themselves advising others how to govern themselves brings a distinct
note of absurdity to American foreign policy.
America’s establishment, feeling their old easy superiority in
the world beginning to slip away in a hundred different ways, seems determined
to show everyone it still has what it takes, determined to make others feel its
strength, determined to weaken others abroad who do not accept its natural
superiority, determined to seize by brute force and dirty tricks advantages
which no longer come to it by simply superior performance.
Rather than learn from its errors and adjust its delusional
assumptions, America is determined to push and bend people all over the world
to its will and acceptance of its leadership. But you cannot reclaim genuine
leadership once you have been exposed enough times in your bad judgment, and it
is clear you are on the decline, just as you cannot once others realize that
they can do many things as well or better than you.
In the end, policies which do not recognize scientific facts
are doomed. Policies based on wishes and ideology do not succeed over the long
run, unless, of course, you are willing to suppress everyone who disagrees with
you and demand their compliance under threat. The requirement for an imperial
state in such a situation is international behavior which resembles the
internal behavior of an autocratic leader such as Stalin, and right now that is
precisely where the United States is headed. Stalin’s personality had a fair
degree of paranoia and no patience for the views of others. He felt constantly
threatened by potential competitors and he used systematic terror to keep
everyone intimidated and unified under him.
Stalin’s sincerely belief in a faulty economic system that
was doomed from its birth put him in a position similar to that of America’s
oligarchs today. They have a world imperial system that is coming under
increasing strain and challenge because others are growing and have their own
needs and America simply does not have the flexibility to accommodate them.
America’s oligarchs are not used to listening to the views of others. Stalin’s
belief in a system that was more an ideology than a coherent economic system is
paralleled by the quasi-religious tenets of Americanism, a set of beliefs which
holds that America is especially blessed by the Creator and all things good and
great are simply its due. Americanism blurrily assumes that God’s promise in
the Old Testament that man should have dominion over the earth’s creatures
applies now uniquely to them. Such thinking arose during many years of easy
superiority, a superiority that was less owing to intrinsic merits of American
society than to a set of fortuitous circumstances, many of which are now gone.
In Vietnam, America squandered countless resources chasing
after a chimera its ideologues insisted was deadly important, never once
acknowledging the fatal weaknesses built right into communism from its birth. Communism
was certain eventually to fail because of economic falsehoods which were part
of its conception, much as a child born with certain genetic flaws is destined
for eventual death. America’s mad rush to fight communism on all fronts was in
keeping with the zealotry of America’s Civic Religion, but it was a huge and
foolish practical judgment which wasted colossal resources. In Vietnam, America
ended in something close to total shame – literally defeated on the battlefield
by what seemed an inconsequential opponent, having also cast aside traditional ethical
values in murdering great masses of people who never threatened the United
States, murder on a scale (3 million) comparable to the Holocaust. It used
weapons and techniques of a savage character: napalm, cluster bombs, and secret
mass terror programs. The savagery ripped into the fabric of America’s own
society, dividing the nation almost as badly as its Civil War once had. America
ended reduced and depleted in many respects and paid its huge bills with devalued
currency.
Following Vietnam, it has just been one calamity after
another revealing the same destructive inability to govern, the same thought
governed by zealotry, right down to the 2008 financial collapse which was caused
by ignoring sound financial management and basically instituting a system of unlimited
greed. The entire world was jolted and hurt by this stupidity whose full
consequences are not nearly played out.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were completely
unnecessary, cost vast sums, caused immense misery, and achieved nothing worth
achieving. We now know what was kept hidden that more than million Iraqis died
in an invasion based entirely on lies. These wars also set in motion changes
whose long term effects have yet to be felt. Iraq, for example, has just about
had its Kurdish, oil-producing region hived off as a separate state.
America’s primitive approach to the Soviet Union’s collapse,
its sheer triumphalism and failure to regard Russia as important enough to help
or with which to cooperate, ignored America’s own long-term interests. After
all, the Russians are a great people with many gifts, and it was inevitable
that they would come back from a post-collapse depression to claim their place
in the world.
So how do the people running the United States now deal with
a prosperous and growing Russia, a Russia which reaches out in the soundest traditional
economic fashion for cooperation and partnership in trade and projects? Russia
has embraced free trade, a concept Americans trumpeted for years whenever it
was to their advantage, but now for Russia is treated as dark and sinister.
Here America fights the inevitable power of economic forces, something akin to
fighting the tide or the wind, and only for the sake of its continued dominance
of another continent. Americans desperately try to stop what can only be called
natural economic arrangements between Russia and Europe, natural because both
sides have many services, goods, and commodities to trade for the benefit of
all. America’s establishment wants to cut off healthy new growth and permanently
to establish its primacy in Europe even though it has nothing new to offer.
America’s deliberately dishonest interpretation of Russia’s measured
response to an induced coup in Ukraine is used to generate an artificial sense
of crisis, but despite the pressures America is capable of exerting on Europe,
we sense Europe only goes along to avoid a public squabble and only for so long
as the costs are not too high. The most intelligent leaders in Europe recognize
what the United States is doing but do not want to clash openly, although the
creation of the Minsk Agreement came pretty close to a polite rejection of
America’s demand for hardline tactics.
The coup in Ukraine was intended to put a hostile government
in control of a long stretch of Russian border, a government which might
cooperate in American military matters and which would serve as an irritant to
Russia. But you don’t get good results with malicious policy. So far the coup
has served only to hurt Ukraine’s economy, security, and long-term interests.
It has a government which is seen widely as incompetent, a government which
fomented unnecessary civil war, a government which shot down a civilian
airliner, and a government in which no one, including in the West, has much
faith. Its finances are in turmoil, many important former economic connections
are severed, and there is no great willingness by Europe, especially an
economically-troubled Europe, to assist it. It is not an advanced or stable
enough place to join the EU because that would just mean gigantic subsidies
being directed to it from an already troubled Europe. And the idea of its
joining NATO is absolutely a non-starter both because it can’t carry its own
weight in such an organization and because that act would cross a dangerous red
line for Russia.
Kiev is having immense problems even holding the country
together as it fights autonomous right-wing outfits like the Azov Battalion in
the southeast who threaten the Minsk Agreement, as it tries to implement
military recruiting in Western Ukraine with more people running away than joining
up, as it finds it must protect its own President with a Praetorian Guard of
Americans from some serious threats by right-wing militias unhappy with Kiev’s
failures, as it must reckon with the de facto secession of Donetsk and the
permanent loss of Crimea – all this as it struggles with huge debts and an
economy in a nosedive.
America is in no position to give serious assistance to
Ukraine, just plenty of shop-worn slogans about freedom and democracy. These
events provide a perfect example of the damage America inflicts on a people
with malicious policy intended only to use them to hurt others. There is such a
record of this kind of thing by America that I am always surprised when there
are any takers out there for the newest scheme. One remembers Kissinger
encouraging the Iraqi Kurds to revolt against Saddam Hussein and then leaving
them in the lurch when the dictator launched a merciless suppression. I also think
of the scenes at the end of the Vietnam War as American helicopters took off in
cowardly fashion from the roof of the embassy leaving their Vietnamese
co-workers, tears streaming down their faces, vainly grasping for the
undercarriages of helicopters, a fitting and shameful end to a truly brainless
crusade.
I don’t know but I very much doubt that the present
government of Ukraine can endure, and it is always possible that it will slip
into an even more serious civil war with factions fighting on all sides,
something resembling the murderous mess America created in Libya. Of course,
such a war on Russia’s borders would come with tremendous risks. The American
aristocracy doesn’t become concerned about disasters into which they themselves
are not thrust, but a war in Ukraine could easily do just that. In ironic
fashion, heightened conflict could mark the beginning of the end of the era of European
subservience to America. Chaos in Ukraine could provide exactly the shock
Europe needs to stop supporting American schemes before the entire continent or
even the world is threatened.
I remind readers that while Russia’s economy is not as large
as America’s, it is a country with a strong history in engineering and science,
and no one on the planet shares its terrifying experiences with foreign
invasion. So it has developed and maintains a number of weapons systems that are
second to none. Each one of its new class of ballistic missile submarines, and
Russia is building a number of them, is capable of hitting 96 separate targets
with thermo-nuclear warheads, and that capability is apart from rail-mounted ICBMs,
hard-site ICBMs, truck-mounted missiles,
air-launched cruise missiles, sea-launched cruise missiles, and a variety of
other fearsome weapons. Modern Russia does not make threats with this awesome
power, and you might say Putin follows the advice of Theodore Roosevelt as he
walks softly but carries a big stick, but I do think it wise for all of us to
keep these things in mind as America taunts Russia and literally play a game of
chicken with Armageddon. I don’t believe America has a legitimate mandate from
anyone to behave in this dangerous way. Europe’s smartest leaders, having lived
at the very center of the Cold War and survived two world wars, do understand
this and are trying very carefully not to allow things to go too far, but America
has some highly irresponsible and dangerous people working hard on the Ukraine
file, and accidents do happen when you push things too hard.
In another sphere of now constant engagement, instead of
sponsoring and promoting fair arrangements in the Middle East, America has
carried on a bizarre relationship with Israel, a relationship which is
certainly against the America’s own long term interests, although individual American
politicians benefit with streams of special interests payments - America’s
self-imposed, utterly corrupt campaign financing system being ultimately
responsible - in exchange for blindly insisting Israel is always right, which
it most certainly is not. An important segment of Israel’s population is
American, and they just carried over to Israel the same short-sightedness,
arrogance, and belligerence which characterize America, so much so, Israel may
legitimately be viewed as an American colony in the Middle East rather than a
genuinely independent state. Its lack of genuine independence is reflected also
in its constant dependence on huge subsidies, on its need for heavily-biased
American diplomacy to protect it in many forums including the UN, and on its
dependence upon American arm-twisting and bribes in any number of places,
Egypt’s generous annual American pension requiring certain behaviors being one
of the largest examples.
Here, too, inevitability has been foolishly ignored. The
Palestinians are not going anywhere, and they have demonstrated the most
remarkable endurance, yet almost every act of Israel since its inception, each
supported by America, has been an effort to make them go away through extreme
hardship and abuse and violence, looking towards the creation of Greater
Israel, a dangerous fantasy idea which cannot succeed but it will fail only
after it has taken an immense toll. Despite America’s constant diplomatic and
financial pressure on other states to support its one-sided policy here, there
are finally a number of signs that views are turning away from the preposterous
notion that Israel is always right and that it can continue indefinitely with
its savage behavior.
Recently, we have had a great last effort by America and
covert partners to secure Israel’s absolute pre-eminence in the Middle East through
a whole series of destructive intrusions in the region – the “Arab Spring,” the
reverse-revolution in Egypt, the smashing and now dismemberment of Iraq, the
smashing and effective dismemberment of Libya, and the horrible, artificially-induced
civil war in Syria which employs some of the most violent and lunatic people on
earth from outside and gives them weapons, money, and refuge in an effort to
destroy a stable and relatively peaceful state.
I could go on, but I think the picture is clear: in almost
every sphere of American governance, internally and abroad, America’s poor political
institutions have yielded the poorest decisions. America has over-extended
itself on every front, has served myths rather than facts, has let greed run
its governing of almost everything, and has squandered resources on achieving
nothing of worth.
I view America’s present posture in the world – supporting
dirty wars and coups in many places at the same time and treating others as game
pieces to be moved rather than partners – as a desperate attempt to shake the
world to gain advantages it couldn’t secure through accepted means of
governance and policy. America is that great beast, bellowing and shaking the
ground, and for that reason, it is extremely dangerous.
