America's fatal addiction to militarism
Chinese President Xi Jinping has stated the US and China can share a peaceful co-existence. Where there is no atonement there is no peace. America must put the militarist cork back in the bottle.
It is a pitiful spectacle to watch a whole civilization impale itself on a self-destructive militarism, the alcoholic who cannot put the cork back in the bottle.
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“You can have democracy. You can empire, but you can’t have both”
In a time of great strife dominated by false prophets Chalmers Johnson was one of many true prophets who fore saw the fate of America if it persisted down the road of empire. These prophets date back to America’s very beginnings, most prominently Mark Twain (Samuel Longhorne Clemens) who was truly the iconic American of great virtue and a another great prophet. If America had chosen Twain as their national icon instead of a mean-spirited Uncle Sam the world would very different today.
Late in his life Johnson wrote a definitive trilogy, three books: Sorrows of the Empire, Nemesis and Dismantling the Empire. He also wrote Blowback. Unfortunately, truth and great prophecy get the bum’s rush in a Philistinic barbaric culture hellbent on pillage and plunder.
We are in a time where America’s great prophets speak loudly to its traitorous detractors.
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“Although tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can only stay in power if it destroys first of all the institutions of its own people.— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism,(1951)
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Like all families, the family of Man must face our share of crises, the bigger the family the more frequent and momentous the crises become. They cannot be scheduled though they can be anticipated as the symptoms are there and the malignancy grows until it has an explosive presence. Accurate diagnosis is imperative from the outset, like a cancer going through its stages, from treatable to terminal.
Like all families we go through denialism, misreading the symptoms, procrastinating until the symptoms take on a glaring clarity staring us down. It is not made easier by the post modern world being a very complex place, with many diversions, deceptions and simultaneities demanding our attention. But we must gather the kernels of truth as there is no cure where the causes are not accurately identified.
Like all families it is so easy to duck and run from the brutal truths we face and pretend they are otherwise to avoid the bitter pills we must swallow.
When the malignancy is global and the roots run deep the cure is that much more illusive. There will be be no cure where there is no clarity and courage to accept culpability for the addiction having taken on such deep roots.
The consequences of not acting decisively and with humility once the addiction is identified as a matter of moral fortitude and the acid test of the human spirit. It is the true test of greatness to show contrition and pursue remediation once the affliction is identified. It requires a profound return to rational civility towards all others, now absent for too long.
The addiction will never be addressed where leadership and truth have been wantonly abandoned. The surgeons and sages and cannot work their magic when they are frozen out by an outrageous tyranny.
There must be tribunals, indictments, purging and reformation.
These can only take place where there is the equilibrium of peace, rationality, and civility and a commitment to genuine statecraft, statesmanship and true democracy.
Our culturally suicidal tendencies
In his famous farewell speech of 1960 retiring president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned his country and the world there was a cancerous malignancy growing within the halls of power in Washington. It came to be known as the Military Industrial Complex(MIC) more accurately, the Military Industrial Congressional Congress(MICC). The US Congress is an essential and integral part of the malignancy as it has to repeatedly misappropriate the trillions of dollars, decade after decade, to military spending.
To justify the monolithic growth of its military, wars have to be fought, enemies have to be concocted and a culture of fear, loathing and permanent apprehended insurrection has to be sustained. To justify the MICC America has to exist on the cusp of war constantly recruiting and vilifying foreign countries as threats in its war on the world and its delusional race for global primacy— as if by some divine decree it was appointed savior to the world and all others are heathens at the gate of its delusional paradise, constructed on hate, racism, endless war and endless violence.
It makes the farcical claims its “national security” must be pursued world wide. It claims it is the only country entitled to its generous “sphere of influence”, and all others are entitled to none. It claims a specious “exceptionalism”, where laws applying to all others are not applicable to itself. It claims the right to wage pre-emptive war at its discretion. It belongs to the Monty Python School of Geopolitics MPSG), all other need not apply.
Malignancies become lethal addictions and this is where America finds itself today, in a death spiral of its own making where militarism has destroyed its self-esteem and totally corrupted its paranoid view of the world. It has become a lobotomized predator seeing the world through a gun barrel. Where it is so determined to destroy others it blindly destroys itself.
Militarism is its lethal addiction and it is incapable of putting the cork in the bottle.
“The crazies in the basement”-(1)
With the collapse of the USSR in1991 the “crazies in the basement” were jubilant. The USA was now the world’s sole superpower and they could do what they wanted; just as President Harry Truman declared when he was advised the Manhattan Project had successfully tested the world’s first atomic bomb— for further gratuitous testing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
With the collapse of the USSR the “crazies in the basement” in the dark halls of power jubilantly saw a new opportunity to pursue global primacy and rule the world just as they did at the end of WW ll except that Russia was the blocker.
Grand plans such as the PNAC, the Wolfowitz Doctrine, Full Spectrum Domination, and the Bush ll Doctrine were put in place as manifesto’s for Washington’s renewed pursuit of global primacy.
With Russia as the main remnant of the USSR Washington installed Boris Yeltsin as their puppet, but hi presidency was foreshortened and he appointed Vladimir Putin as his successor. Putin was open to rapprochement with the West but quickly learned the West’s intentions toward Russia were hostile. He proceeded to rebuild Russian nationalism and the rebuilding of his country. He was not prepared to be a puppet of the West.
As western aggression toward both Russia and China became more pronounced the two were forced into a new arms race and into what is now an enduring political and economic defense alliance ( they have a thorough understanding of reciprocity and its benefits), and the progenitors of a long over due multipolar world order that is more just and fair to all.
For those misguided souls who think the Ukrainian conflict was started by Russia in February 2022, it was the end of Cold war ll and the opening chapter of WW lll using Ukraine as the Trojan horse to attack Russia. It was planned decades ago, so too was using Taiwan as the Trojan horse to attack China, now pending.
The Folly of Triumphalism
At the end of WW ll the USA saw the world as theirs to have and was both triumphant and arrogant. Cold War l (largely of their own making) forestalled their dream of global hegemony. The collapse of the USSR was another opportunity. Though there was a golden opportunity for a great peace dividend, triumphalism again reigned supreme the warfare state doubled down and planned its final conquest of the world.
Here again its plans are thwarted by the economic emergence of South Asia, China and Russia representing 87% of the world’s population. Washington’s elites were becoming increasingly desperate as their dominance was being over taken by time and a natural cycle history. They were warned by the Rand Corporation that if China was not stopped by 2025 it would become the world’s dominant economy. Ironically China’s “economic miracle” was accelerated by America’s own misstep’s; especially when it gave up its industrial base to China to generate greater corporate profits—no doubt on the false assumption China would be the provider of cheap labor for its global empire. Like Russia, China has a mind of it own as the world’s oldest continuous civilization.
Where there is no atonement there is no peace.
The very essence of the present world crisis centers on the fact this is America’s third and last chance for global hegemony and as Chalmers and others have pointed out this is a delusional ambition for an empire’s whose time has passed .
Its rage and fury, directed at Russia and China is not because of any wrong doing on their part, but only because they insist on the right to exist on their own terms. The USA has a very long history of belligerent intervention in other countries and refuses to accept these two emerging powers cannot be pushed into a corner like two banana republics.
For the best part of a century the USA has been able to bully the world to comply with its every wish. Now that cycle has come to an end, a multipolar world is emerging. It must finally heed the wisdom of its prophets and recognize its addiction to militarism is utterly self-destructive to itself and the world community.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has stated the US and China can share a peaceful co-existence. Where there is no atonement there is no peace. America must put the militarist cork back in the bottle.
“He who does not know history is destined to remain a child.”—Cicero
America is a country that does not know its own history, it has murdered its true prophets and remains the self-destructive child obsessed with militarism.
Afterword:
Footnote:
1) David Ray Griffin is another of America’s true prophets. His book, Bush and Cheney, How they ruined America and World is essential reading to understanding present times and this crisis.
And another 'cork' on the notion of being an exceptional nation...