John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DMITRY ORLOV IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“The US Intelligence Community Is Tearing the Country Apart from the Inside”
https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/us-intelligence-community-tearing-country-apart-inside/ri24324
I might quibble about a sentence or two, but this piece by Orlov is pretty much right on the money.
This is what American intelligence services do.
I might offer an explanation for why things have changed so much.
The change reflects America's new effort to assert itself in the world, to reclaim the place it once effortlessly enjoyed in the 1950s.
It has badly slipped from that place over decades, and for several reasons, but there is now a concerted drive to reclaim it, actually, to more than reclaim it, to exceed its former level of influence, and by methods antithetical to friend and foe alike.
It is not content with the idea of just building excellent products, offering excellent services, and competing with the world. And I think at least part of the reason for that is because it no longer can compete over a whole range of economic activities.
It wants also to export things like the primacy of American law over other national laws and international ones, giving American corporations immense advantages. And it wants to exert its remaining military and financial muscle on gaining concessions from others, activity approaching economic extortion. There are in fact no ready markets for these two desired American exports, embracing American law and demands for imperial tribute.
I think, ultimately, the American establishment will fail in its effort. The only way it could succeed is through war and genuine tyranny, and while Americans seem to relish war as a pastime, at least as viewed on television with bowls of popcorn from couches in the evening after work, they are in fact not very good at it, at least judging from the results of more than seven decades of imperial wars having absolutely no relationship to defending anyone or any principle worth speaking of.
Anyway, the world is changing so rapidly with the combined effects of globalization and world trade, population growth, migration patterns, the emergence of new economic actors, the emergence of new economic blocs and alliances, and the impact of new technology in so many places that it simply cannot be contained the way America’s establishment so ardently desires. America’s very goal reveals a kind of inherent weakness.
The MAGA slogan reflects a wish for it to be 1959 again, an impossibility of course. But unfortunately, Trump and his truly dumb slogan are attached, like a barnacle on a ship’s hull, to something much larger, something having little to do with Trump except for using him so long as he seems useful.
That something is the American power establishment – something perhaps best defined as America’s wealthy individuals and corporations and their utterly compliant Congress served by agencies of the security services and the military, all of it driving for maintenance and expansion of world empire.
That, in fact, is “the swamp” Trump loved alluding to, and it is beyond influencing, and certainly by a such a weak, almost angry child-like figure as Donald Trump. He is indeed now engaged fully in their purpose, whether he understands it or not, his immense ego hoping to survive politically, but he does such a poor and destructive job, I doubt they’ll let him continue.
The very way the United States approaches its national-purpose task tells us something. It is alienating, with its demands and arbitrary acts, leaders in many of its oldest allies and associated states. People will only swallow so much crap before they strike out in new directions. We are seeing clear signals from Italy, Germany, and even smarmy Macron’s France that they are tired of being expected to eat plate-loads of crap in order to be considered as good allies.
The truth is that the benefits of being a good ally of the United States have declined substantially while the costs have risen steeply and continue to rise. These two graphs – benefits and costs - have crossed, or are about to cross, and it cannot be long until there are serious responses to that new reality.
At the very same time, everyone can plainly see the orientation of Russia and China towards not only doing sound business worldwide but in engaging in world-improving projects like the New Silk Road and the Northern Sea Route. They cannot miss the much-repeated theme of “working with partners,” a theme completely missing from America’s rhetoric.
The United States has weighed itself down in completely preventable and very bloody wars, a comparison in behavior with Russia and China not be missed by anyone looking. The wars have killed a couple of million people, cost an unbelievable amount of money that the United States does not even possess, and caused terrible side-effects like millions of desperate refugees.
And the United States takes no responsibility for any of it, going so far as to mock and demean, and at the highest level, the refugees and the countries who do try to help them. That kind of almost-criminal thinking only goes so far in places of traditionally more humane attitudes, places like Europe.
But in the meantime, as it tries to do its self-assigned, and pretty much hopeless, task, we are going to experience some frightening and dangerous times. And there will be many opportunities for utterly chaotic mistakes.
