U.S. heading for its “Suez” moment

— Both parties collude to drive the country into war(s) it cannot win. —

As we have learned nothing from the mass bamboozlement that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, everyone and her brothers are obediently mouthing the security state’s declarations that Russia wants to invade Ukraine. This faith in the mouthpieces of our armament industries’ monetary interests is touching; plus, the believers in this Revealed Truth from our masters can go to bed mocking the conspiracists and nutters of the [choose one] blue/red team, which no doubt is very calming.

Our president and his national security team say that Russia is on the verge of invading Ukraine. What happens in a few weeks if no such invasion occurs? Will Biden et al. claim that they faced down the weak-kneed Russkies successfully by a vigorous combination of finger-wagging, solemn assurances, and threats to cut off Vladimir Putin’s allowance? Perhaps an emergency measure to send another $50 billion over to the Pentagon will get hustled through a suddenly unified Congress.

Meanwhile, the Russians’ demand to revamp the security architecture in Europe, including a NATO retreat from its borders, goes unanswered. Perhaps that is the idea—distract with a non-existent threat and escape the pressure to get serious about negotiations.

If so, it won’t do much but postpone the inevitable, which is straight for a “Suez moment.”

The destruction unleashed by World War 2 ended European colonialism and the long primacy of Britain and France in world affairs. Their postwar decline became painfully clear to both the old bwana powers when Egyptian President Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956.

Britain, France, and Israel thought they could march in and reverse Nasser’s decision to claim control over a piece of Egyptian territory. But Eisenhower, for a variety of reasons, told the invaders to go home and backed up his suggestion with threats of economic sanctions that none of the three could afford. They obeyed. It was a sign of who had emerged stronger from the war and which countries were barely intact.

Suez, as became clear later, was “the last fling of the imperial dice,” at least as far as Britain and France were concerned. (Israel, meanwhile, continues the tradition in a new form.) Britain’s prime minister Anthony Eden was forced out two months later as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. relegated the rest of the world to the role of chorus.

Our current bosses are hurtling toward a similar rude awakening despite the array of shiny armaments at the disposal of our top-heavy military establishment. Aside from successful invasions of tiny Caribbean islands (Grenada) or devastating bombing runs over defenseless troops with no air cover (Iraq), it’s hard to identify any significant U.S. military success in decades with the possible exception of the smashing of the ISIS franchise in Iraq with the help of the hated Iranians and their local allies.

No one doubts that Americans can destroy cities and reduce whole countries to rubble, but direct combat of the sort being contemplated is another animal entirely. The parade of failed generals now hibernating comfortably on defense-contractor corporate boards might attest to that.

Whether in Ukraine on the Taiwan Straits, U.S. policymakers are in the grips of delusion.

Does anyone doubt that Russian troops fighting on their own frontiers would have a massive psychological motivation that might be lacking among NATO’s untested soldiers? Does anyone really mean to find out?

Should we doubt the nationalistic fervor that would drive however many millions of soldiers the Chinese might set to work on reclaiming Taiwan? Is it worth accumulating heroic war stories to learn the answer?

We have lived for many years under the assumption that neither of those countries would dare to confront the United States given the arsenals of nukes that stand ready to rain down upon them. If one listens to the statements coming out of Beijing and Moscow, however, one gets quite a different impression: that the two powers feel directly threatened NOW and are willing to call the Americans’ bluff.

Does Washington’s policy elite really want to get into a nuclear showdown over an island 10,000 miles away or a failed state in the middle of Europe?

(Incidentally, watch any mainstream news about Ukraine and ask yourself how often the Russians are quoted offering their views on what is happening, should happen, or how to defuse the situation. Of course, all U.S. news is fair and balanced—between Republican Americans and Democrat Americans.)

According to some of those, escalation up to and including World War III is just what we need. Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker said in early December the U.S. should consider “first-use nuclear action” staged from the Black Sea. 

In case we think such nutters are only found in the GOP, Wicker was joined by Evelyn N. Farkas, a Pentagon official during the Obama administration, who advocates “readying military forces to deter Putin and, if necessary, prepare for war.” Minor issues like attempts to undermine the outcome of a presidential election fade into irrelevancy when the two sides link arms, cast their gaze toward foreign enemies, and rattle nuclear sabers.

This is a dangerous game, and yet the assorted neocons that populate the U.S. foreign policy apparatus march in lockstep, confident that U.S. domination of the world over the last 75 years—and especially the last 30—is destined to continue indefinitely. They seem not to notice that our country is profoundly weakened by internal divisions, stripped of its industrial base, run by Sovietesque gerontocrats who rule a populace who believe in very little of what they say and even less of what they do.

Underlying the strategic myopia of what renegade CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Counter-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think Tank Complex), sometimes called “The Blob,” is a philosophical view of geopolitics and indeed of humanity itself that rejects any possibility of cooperative coexistence among the peoples of the world. The concept that China and Russia might be allowed to pursue their interests in relative peace and that a modus vivendi might be reached among all the heavily armed world powers to tackle other urgent global problems makes no appearance in the encyclopedic textbooks of their incestuous think tanks.  

No doubt such zero-sum thinking has been the norm for millenia of human history, the motivation for its endless destructive wars and periodic bouts of pitiless slaughter. Therefore, with such encouraging outcomes, we should keep doing the same thing?

We, or at least they, seem to think that nothing has changed since ancient times when the Romans cast about constantly to see where the natives might be getting restless and sent out punitive patrols to rein them in, kill a few thousand, and restart the flow of tribute. They feared allowing their subjects any real independence or permitting encroachments into the empire’s far-flung territories by rivals. That’s how Washington thinks. They speak as if failure to dominate means being dominated as if the world were a vast international S&M dungeon with no room for “vanilla” behavior of any kind.

While rival blue and red camps brawl in Congress and soon will do so on the streets as well, a curious unanimity prevails between them when facing the prospect of disobedient foreign actors flexing their local muscles. Democrats and Republicans alike hasten to undermine presidents who fail to maintain a properly belligerent attitude toward our official enemies; this applies to both Trump and Biden and especially to the permanent foreign policy/ security apparatus that surrounds them.

The only danger to our blobiferous MICIMATT parallel state is the frightening idea that peace may break out and obviate the need for more trillions deposited at the Pentagon for distribution among friendly industries and lobbyists.

The incapacity of our leadership to contemplate any approach other than intimidation and demands for obedience is not merely a function of narrowness of vision or Beltway groupthink, though these are real enough. It is also the expression on the world stage of our 40-year surrender to the neoliberal article of faith that markets, and markets alone, must determine our course of action in all spheres of life.

Such ideological enslavement gave cover to the titans of financial power and their friends in elite circles such that when they acted to make themselves immensely rich at the expense of most everyone else, they could convince themselves they were being smart. Did the greed come first or the ideas justifying it? Does it matter?

Did Bill Clinton really believe his own rhetoric that inviting China into the World Trade Organisation and enabling the Chinese Communist Party to set millions of wage slaves in competition with the American industrial heartland would convert China into a democratic capitalist imitation of ourselves? Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t. The industrialists and financiers drooling over the profit opportunities offered by crushing U.S. workers were all too happy to pretend to believe it whether they did or not. No one paused to consider the long-term consequences because the quarterly profit statements were rosy, and that is enough because Markets.

Do members of Congress really think the U.S. needs to escalate war fever against Russia and China, or do their role as recipients of legal bribes from the MICIMATT dictate their shared worldview? Northrup Grumman doesn’t care.

We have gone so far down this road that the system is incapable of righting itself. Biden, the product of a lifetime of toadying to these corporate cowboys and parroting their justifications, is the perfect expression of our decadent and paralyzed state.

It is my belief that the U.S. will continue down the confrontational precipice with its two rivals and, in one form or another, sooner or later, lose, either little by little or all at once. I expect this process will take no more than five to seven years and that we will wake up by the end of the decade as no longer the world’s preeminent power.

The shock of taking our new place as the chastised victims of our leaders’ hubristic overreach will be something to behold and to experience. Once accomplished, a stimulating discussion about where we want to go next will be possible for the first time in living memory.

[Let me know if you would like email alerts of new posts.] <tfrasca@yahoo.com>