Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
March 04, 2021

Biden's "Nothing Will Fundamentally Change" Promise Extends To His Foreign Policy

"America is back" claimed Joe Biden to no ones amusement. But the world has changed after four years of Trump and after a pandemic upset the world. The U.S. position in this world and its role in it have thereby also changed. To just claim one is back without adopting to the new situation promises failure.

As candidate Joe Biden promised that there would be no changes.

Joe Biden to rich donors: "Nothing would fundamentally change" if he's elected

Former Vice President Joe Biden assured rich donors at a ritzy New York fundraiser that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he is elected.

Biden told donors at an event at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday evening that he would not “demonize” the rich and promised that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” Bloomberg News reported.

That Biden statement destroyed the illusion of those who had hoped that he would lift the standard of living for the average Amercian.

Biden stayed true to his words at the fundraiser. There will be no rise in the minimum wage. The $2,000 checks he promised to all voters will now be only $1,400 checks. They will also be heavily means tested. Those who made more than $80,000 in 2019 but lost their income in 2020 will get no check at all.

Even as they hold the White House and the House and Senate majorities the Democrats are unable or unwilling to deliver basic progress. This will likely cost them their House majority in 2022 and the presidency in 2024.

Biden's "nothing will fundamentally change" attitude extends into foreign policy.

Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo - 0:29 UTC · Dec 21, 2019
Today, the #ICC prosecutor raised serious questions about the ICC’s jurisdiction to investigate #Israel. Israel is not a state party to the ICC. We firmly oppose this unjustified inquiry that unfairly targets Israel. The path to lasting peace is through direct negotiations.
---
Secretary Antony Blinken @SecBlinken - 1:34 UTC · Mar 4, 2021
The United States firmly opposes an @IntlCrimCourt investigation into the Palestinian Situation. We will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security, including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.

With that, and with its lack of punishment for the Saudi clown prince, the Biden administration has blinked on human rights which it had emphasized in earlier statements.

That nothing will change is also expressed in two policy papers the Biden administration released yesterday. The early emphasis on human rights, which distinguished it from the Trump administration, is already gone.

The common theme is now 'democracy' as if that were not just a form of government but a value in itself.

The White House published an Interim National Security Strategic Guidance (pdf). The paper is dripping with ideological LGBTQWERTY librulism. Its central claim is that 'democracy' is under threat:

At a time when the need for American engagement and international cooperation is greater than ever, however, democracies across the globe, including our own, are increasingly under siege. Free societies have been challenged from within by corruption, inequality, polarization, populism, and illiberal threats to the rule of law. Nationalist and nativist trends – accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis – produce an every-country-for-itself mentality that leaves us all more isolated, less prosperous, and less safe. Democratic nations are also increasingly challenged from outside by antagonistic authoritarian powers. Anti-democratic forces use misinformation, disinformation, and weaponized corruption to exploit perceived weaknesses and sow division within and among free nations, erode existing international rules, and promote alternative models of authoritarian governance. Reversing these trends is essential to our national security.

It then singles out China:

We must also contend with the reality that the distribution of power across the world is changing, creating new threats. China, in particular, has rapidly become more assertive. It is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system. Russia remains determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage. Both Beijing and Moscow have invested heavily in efforts meant to check U.S. strengths and prevent us from defending our interests and allies around the world. Regional actors like Iran and North Korea continue to pursue game-changing capabilities and technologies, while threatening U.S. allies and partners and challenging regional stability. We also face challenges within countries whose governance is fragile, and from influential non-state actors that have the ability to disrupt American interests.

To fight China the U.S. will (ab)use its allies:

We can do none of this work alone. For that reason, we will reinvigorate and modernize our alliances and partnerships around the world. For decades, our allies have stood by our side against common threats and adversaries, and worked hand-in-hand to advance our shared interests and values. They are a tremendous source of strength and a unique American advantage, helping to shoulder the responsibilities required to keep our nation safe and our people prosperous. Our democratic alliances enable us to present a common front, produce a unified vision, and pool our strength to promote high standards, establish effective international rules, and hold countries like China to account.

Good luck with that. Neither the European U.S. allies, nor the Asian ones, have any interest in following the U.S. into a confrontation with China. It is their greatest trading partner and they do not perceive it as an ideological or security threat.

A speech Secretary of State Anthony Blinken gave yesterday touches on the same points. It is headlined A Foreign Policy for the American People

The main theme is again 'democracy':

The more we and other democracies can show the world that we can deliver, not only for our people, but also for each other, the more we can refute the lie that authoritarian countries love to tell, that theirs is the better way to meet people’s fundamental needs and hopes. It’s on us to prove them wrong.

So the question isn’t if we will support democracy around the world, but how.

We will use the power of our example. We will encourage others to make key reforms, overturn bad laws, fight corruption, and stop unjust practices. We will incentivize democratic behavior.

But we will not promote democracy through costly military interventions or by attempting to overthrow authoritarian regimes by force. We have tried these tactics in the past. However well intentioned, they haven’t worked. They’ve given democracy promotion a bad name, and they’ve lost the confidence of the American people. We will do things differently.

The "lie that authoritarian countries love to tell, that their's is the better way to meet people’s fundamental needs and hopes" is targeted at China. But that China did and does much better than the U.S. to meet its people's needs and hope is not a lie. The pandemic has again demonstrated that.

The last quoted paragraph has seen some positive attention on social media. But it is based on a falsehood. The U.S. has not once used military means to 'promote democracy'. Not ever. It has used war to gain markets and power, to destroy its competition. The neo-conservatives have claimed to be motivated by 'democracy promotion'. But that was always just a pretext to hide the real reasons for waging war. Iraq became democratic not because the U.S. wanted it to be that. In fact, after invading Iraq the the U.S. pro-consul Paul Bremer tried to prevent universal elections in Iraq. Only the insistence of Ayatollah Sistani on a universal vote led to a somewhat democratic system in Iraq.

Blinken is, just like Pompeo before him, focused on China:

And eighth, we will manage the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century: our relationship with China.

Several countries present us with serious challenges, including Russia, Iran, North Korea. And there are serious crises we have to deal with, including in Yemen, Ethiopia, and Burma.

But the challenge posed by China is different. China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system – all the rules, values, and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to, because it ultimately serves the interests and reflects the values of the American people.

That there is no change from the Trump to the Biden administration in hostility to China is disappointing only for those who had expected some:

Pang Zhongying, a specialist in international relations at Ocean University of China, said Beijing would be disappointed with the Biden administration’s approach to “continue and even elevate” the tough policies of the Trump era and to strengthen alliances to deal with China.

“There does not seem to be any change yet in the serious tensions in China-US relations,” he said. “I think there may be some frustration in Beijing that after more than 40 days [of the new administration] they have not seen any change but there is actually more pressure from the US.”

Beijing will manage the conflict and it is likely to see it as a chance.

The U.S. failure to adopt to new circumstances will accelerate its demise. The U.S. empire was a historical abnormality and its twilight is near:

[The Realist professors of International Relations David Blagden and Patrick Porter] observe America’s “position as ‘global leader’ is premised on a set of impermanent and atypical conditions from an earlier post-war era”, but “the days of incontestable unipolarity are over, and cannot be wished back”. The result is that “overextension abroad, exhaustion and fiscal strain at home, and political disorder feed off one another in a downward spiral, cumulatively threatening the survival of the republic”.

The US empire is, then, at an impasse. Its moral and political justification of overseeing a global order of universal liberal democracy — the closest real-world equivalent to the Kantian perpetual peace that has both motivated and eluded liberal idealists for the past two centuries — is now beyond its capabilities to maintain.
...
How does this end for America? Biden and the presidents after him will be forced to make a hard choice: whether to retrench to a smaller and more manageable empire, or to risk a far greater and more dramatic collapse in defence of global hegemony.

Biden has made his choice. Nothing will fundamentally change under him. He is thereby likely to repeat all of Trump's foreign policy failures. There will be no new JCPOA with Iran nor will there be any win for the U.S. in the Middle East. North Korea will continue to test bombs and missiles. The U.S. will continue to be stuck in Afghanistan. The Chinese-Russian alliance will strengthen. U.S. allies will further distance themselves from it.

We can not yet know what,  at what point will cause the collapse of U.S. hegemony. But we are coming more near to it.

Posted by b on March 4, 2021 at 18:04 UTC | Permalink

Comments
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Did anybody expect anything else?

Posted by: Laguerre | Mar 4 2021 18:27 utc | 1

Frankly, Biden's speech to the grand poobahs sounded more like a plea for understanding than a promise, and if you take what the policy paper says at face value it suggests that "Biden" understands that we have to change to compete. It is also an admission that they have presided over a period of decline in Uncle Sugar land, so of course they don't want to dwell on that. I think Biden is worried the "owners" wom't let him do anything.

And it is totally appropriate that Biden is the guy up there trying to deal with this mess, because he as one of the prime intigators or the present situation, going back 40 years.

Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 4 2021 18:28 utc | 2

Patrick Porter's book, The False Promise of Liberal Order, is good.

But, his realist critique of vulgar liberal propaganda for US imperialism doesn't locate the source or material roots of US grand strategy.

Realist theory understands power, hegemony and balancing only in terms of military power. That is the only currency of power in realist thinking, because realism rests on a state centricity which insists on the autonomy of the state from any social or economic factors. Military power is thus all that remains.

This theory obviously fails to explain the real history of US foreign policy, which has used militarism and other tools in support of strategic economic interests on a global scale, primarily in the South. The military balance of power is by and large only an expression of the economic balance of power and the class interests of ruling classes derived from it.

Porter and other realists point out the contradictions of liberal theory and practice but fail to provide a scientific explanation for consistent US policies.

Posted by: Prof K | Mar 4 2021 18:43 utc | 3

"The Chinese-Russian alliance will strengthen."

There is a partnership currently but it's not yet an alliance. The rationale for one is very strong. Russia needs China or it will be overwhelmed by a hostile US and fairly hostile Europe. China needs Russia to save it from a resource embargo by US and allies. Together they will form a huge power bloc in Eurasia combining their respective territories with joint influence over Central Asia. Other countries in Asia like South Korea, Vietnam and India will see bloc and decide to stay neutral or side with the China-Russia bloc.

As compelling as this vision is it hasn't happened yet. It takes time sure but there must be reluctance from within the countries and other challenges. Which side is dragging its feet more? It would be interesting to understand why things aren't moving faster.

Posted by: dsfco | Mar 4 2021 18:54 utc | 4

As Ron Paul observed in Biden’s Syria Attack: An Actual Impeachable Offense:

When President Biden says “America is back,” what he really means is “the war party is back.” As if they ever left.

The neocons just shifted their attention to the other side of the same coin.

Posted by: Canadian Cents | Mar 4 2021 19:02 utc | 5

As compelling as this vision is it hasn't happened yet. It takes time sure but there must be reluctance from within the countries and other challenges. Which side is dragging its feet more? It would be interesting to understand why things aren't moving faster.
Posted by: dsfco | Mar 4 2021 18:54 utc | 4

A guess: PRC having vastly greater economic power thinks its share of influence should be greater. Russia having vastly superior military power & technology, disagrees. For example the Chinese government might like access to the most advanced Russian military technology; the Russians having been invaded many times from both East & West, probably take the long view.

Posted by: eps | Mar 4 2021 19:25 utc | 6

This would be a revelation if it went viral:

"'Man Has No Idea What He's Doing': Biden Says He's 'Happy to Take Question' But WH Cuts Feed."

"'I'd be happy to take questions if that's what I'm supposed to do, Nance,' Biden said. 'Whatever you want me to do.'" [My Emphasis]

I've refrained from calling Biden a walking corpse or otherwise making fun of his dementia because I cared for my mom during her losing battle with Alzheimer's, and it's extremely tragic and not at all funny. But given this evidence and the fact that his minders cut him off, it ought to be very clear that Biden is in no way in control of his administration or even of himself. So, there's absolutely no way that he ordered the missile strike on the Iraqi troops, or is making any other policy decisions. The voting public can rightfully say it was defrauded.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 4 2021 19:34 utc | 7

Ah yes, the sound of mega-wealthy zippers drawing down, and loud sucking noises are deafening.

Thanks Joe....

Posted by: vetinLA | Mar 4 2021 19:36 utc | 8

My open thread report on China's Two Sessions cited some very forceful pushback I hope barflies will read. The following is my further commentary on the political systems:

China's consensual model of democracy cannot be fathomed by many in the West primarily because it lacks the egalitarian and meritocratic society AND culture of China. The West's ordering based on Class is undemocratic in its basis as most at MoA realize and wealth doesn't command any respect whereas in China wisdom trumps all. The West's democratic structures have barely advanced beyond the feudal structures they emerged from and that Neoliberals are trying hard to revert to, so there's no effort or desire to increase the performance of governance since what's now happening serves those in control just fine. And although China doesn't attempt to export its system, the West does and expects China to mimic its behavior, which is why it sees China as a political threat. Of course, other nations look at China's system and its performance and may attempt to emulate on their own initiative--and the West just can't allow the threat of that Good Example to exist. So, it's repeating its actions of 100+ years ago by trying to halt egalitarian human development. So, it's the Class-based system the West promotes and defends, which it tries to conceal behind a Potemkin Village festooned with democratic trappings.

Blinken holds a worthless hand of cards as proven by the facts.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 4 2021 19:43 utc | 9

"The more we and other democracies can show the world that we can deliver, not only for our people, but also for each other, the more we can refute the lie that authoritarian countries love to tell, that theirs is the better way to meet people’s fundamental needs and hopes. It’s on us to prove them wrong."

Seriously, could there be a less self aware bunch of deluded hypocrites in this world? 'Deliver to our people'?? they can't even deliver a $2,000 cheque, let alone healthcare in the middle of a pandemic.

I feel like the only thing that will ever get these people's heads out of their a$$e$ is the same thing that tragically ended up Gheddafi's one...

Posted by: Et Tu | Mar 4 2021 19:43 utc | 10

karlof1 @7, interesting. If that had been Trump, the mainstream media would be busy drawing attention to it.

Saker also had a post related to observations of twilight/decline: Book review: “Disintegration” by Andrei Martyanov

Perhaps it's fitting in some way that Biden is the figurehead?

Posted by: Canadian Cents | Mar 4 2021 19:45 utc | 11

Bemildred @ 2:

If you read the Salon.com article that B linked to, where Biden is pleading with the Wall St set to support him, you'll see how desperate he was in grovelling to prospective donors. That might suggest more personal, maybe even ulterior motives at work on Biden's part, given that he's been in politics for, what, half a century (and must have had ambitions of being POTUS for a good portion of that time), and that he and his son have had entwined business and political interests in Ukraine and possibly elsewhere which could later become the subject of a Congressional inquiry, unless Biden could get the top job which might afford him some immunity from investigation for a time at least.

All Biden's prospective donors wanted to understand was that Biden would not hike up any current taxes or impose new ones on them if he were to become President and carry out the minimum work required to stop the Great Unwashed from marching into Wall St offices, mansions and holiday resorts and torching them.

Posted by: Jen | Mar 4 2021 19:51 utc | 12

@karlof1 | Mar 4 2021 19:34 utc | 7

I wonder if anyone seriously believes this patient won the election. I don't.

Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 4 2021 19:54 utc | 13

Posted by: Jen | Mar 4 2021 19:51 utc | 12

I agree, that makes sense. I thought he got the nod in part because he wanted the job, and he does indeed have good reason to want the job.

Anyway that is how I read him too, more begging that promising. Like he knows it's not his decision to make. "Please Boss, can I just try it a little? Just make a few little concessions?"

The other thing is he needs resources (money) if he wants to "rebuild" and there is one obvious place to get it, so he is not going toget far without taxes.

Posted by: Bemilldred | Mar 4 2021 20:02 utc | 14

Canadian Cents @11--

Thanks for your reply! Yes, the situation is apt. The coming political fallout is unknown but ought to be very heated. IMO, Harris will be POTUS by Summer, a situation that will be much worse than Truman becoming POTUS. It's easy to see why policy direction's on autopilot as there's no mind at the controls.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 4 2021 20:02 utc | 15

"But that China did and does much better than the U.S. to meet its people's needs and hope is not a lie."

The difference is, it seems to me, that the Chinese establishment pursue national interests (as they perceive them), while the US liberals pursue interests of global financial capital (a-la Soros Fund Management and suchlike). Obviously people's needs and hopes are better aligned with the former M.O.

Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Mar 4 2021 20:08 utc | 16

The only concern of the Democrats is to stay in power....Nothing else matters.

Posted by: Dennis18 | Mar 4 2021 20:13 utc | 17

Norwegian @13--

I haven't had any trust in the veracity of POTUS elections since 2000, and 2020 was no different. I didn't write about it much because doing so IMO was a waste of time. IMO, in no way whatsoever is anyone in the current or former administration qualified to deal with the several crises the USA faces--not one soul. They're visionless bureaucrats doing the bidding of those that control them--and that's not the public. During the primaries, it was well proven that very few wanted Harris as POTUS, a perception IMO that remains. Now she'll be elevated to a position so far beyond her abilities it's farcical. But at least she can talk.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 4 2021 20:14 utc | 18

Mao Cheng Ji @16--

Aside from the differences I've written about; when it comes to China's "establishment," the key difference is they arose from the great mass of Chinese and weren't born into what in the West is clearly seen as the Ruling Class--The Monetary Nobility if you will. China's government when compared to the USA's is absolutely Of the People, By the People, and For the People--a reality the Outlaw US Empire cannot change unless it morphs into what it proclaims itself to be.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 4 2021 20:22 utc | 19

Stolen elections go way back in the US. It is (or was, ancient history now) widely believed that the 1960 Presidential election was stolen by Richard Daley's Democrat machine in Chicago for John Kennedy.

Posted by: bob sykes | Mar 4 2021 20:25 utc | 20

>>We can not yet know what, at what point will cause the collapse of U.S. hegemony. But we are coming more near to it.

Who says that there will be a collapse? There will be slow decline imo, because the US is the most resoursful country in the world with the best geopolitical position in the world, best strategic depth, and the largest alliance network. The US dollar still remains 62 % of world currency reserves, although it declined in payments.

The US was able to print trillions of dollars, and thus register better economic growth rates than many others. This year, it expects growth of 6 - 7 %, one percent less than China. It registered far better economic performance during the Covid Pandemic than many other countries.

The US is the most influential Empire the world has seen since 19th century Britain.

It has lots of power - see where the UN and the IMF are located.

This thing can not "collapse", unless there is internal separatist conflict, which i see as unlikely, much more likely is a One Party Democratic Party State consolidating power. Just as it happened in California.

And collapse can not happen via the dollar either, rather a slow decline too. There is too much inertion behind the dollar. This money does not have somewhere else to go. No capital markets exist to replace US treasuries either.

It may take 20 years before the US becomes more like "one big power among many". But it will still be influential power.

But i can certainly say that: US influecne will be declining. And the US dollar will be declining in the long run too. Countries that rapidly gain in per capita GDP see their currencies rise. So i would invest in CNY, Indian rupee and ASEAN currencies. Stay away from the US dollar, as all of that debt and stimulus means that there will be long term inflation and a long term drop in the dollar value.

Another point that should be mentioned is the military decline of the US. The long wars during the last 20 years had very negative effect on its equipment. And the rest of the world is catching up, and even becoming better (in missiles especially), making carrier groups more and more obsolete, and making overseas US bases big fat targets. Modern weapons guarantee a blood bath for the aggressor in peer to peer conflict.

Both Trump and Blinken acknowledged the military weakness of the US, claiming no more wars.

So there is some weakening but the US will remain a factor just like Britain was a factor, using divide and rule tactics and offshore balancing. The US role will be like the one of Britain in Europe. In this sense, only a United Eurasia (like the EU of Europe, but for the whole of Eurasia) can bring down the US for good.

Posted by: Passer by | Mar 4 2021 20:49 utc | 21

i wish b would do a post on what is happening in india, or even scotland... i get tired of watching a dog trying to catch its tail after a while.. one more story on biden and the usa just doesn't cut it for me... i can dream, lol....

@ 21 passer by... reasonable comments... it is hard to know.. sometimes surprises happen, but most likely not.. a slow falling away is more likely...

little did people know they were voting for the dementia party, as opposd to the democrat party...

Posted by: james | Mar 4 2021 21:03 utc | 22

@ Passer by | Mar 4 2021 20:49 utc | 21 who wrote
"
And collapse can not happen via the dollar either, rather a slow decline too. There is too much inertion behind the dollar. This money does not have somewhere else to go. No capital markets exist to replace US treasuries either.
"
I disagree with your arguments.

I think the decline will be slow then fast and we are approaching the fast portion
The capital market you write of has a large fictitious part that represents the inflation in dollars into private pockets since 2008. The capital market will shrink significantly with financial collapse but unfortunately the elite have their "capital" in secure positions.

In support of my arguments is the link below that describes the ongoing build up of public banking world wide.

Public Banks and Covid 19 - Combatting the Pandemic with Public Finance

It is not a matter of if but when. The when is defined as foreign countries stopping buying US Treasuries (which is occurring) along with a world wide financial crash which exists in all but the reporting of such.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 4 2021 21:05 utc | 23

bob Sykes @ 20

Richard J. Daley, also known as King Richard I, ran the most honest elections Chicago has ever had. Which is not saying much. Prior to Richard the basic system was City Hall told ward bosses what the numbers would be night before, ward bosses passed orders to precincts. Precincts did as told. It was notorious that African American precincts always turned out big numbers for the machine even though polling places never opened the doors.

I could tell quite a few stories about my own adventures in voting in Chicago in more recent years. Main reason to vote was until very recently a voters receipt was good for a free drink at many taverns. Also the precinct captain often kept track of who showed and who neglected to show. Only the truly delusory ever believed in an honest count. In 1960 there would have been few places in US where anyone expected an honest count. And fewer where that expectation came to pass.

Posted by: oldhippie | Mar 4 2021 21:15 utc | 24

#1 Did anybody expect anything else?

Well, I really didn't expect a unicorn but hoped for a pony. Now I'll have to settle for road apples.

Posted by: Bart Hansen | Mar 4 2021 21:20 utc | 25

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 4 2021 21:05 utc | 23

>>It is not a matter of if but when. The when is defined as foreign countries stopping buying US Treasuries (which is occurring) along with a world wide financial crash which exists in all but the reporting of such.

Yes, it occuring for treasuries, but slowly, see chinese reserves, still staying above 1 billion. Now foreign investors are a minority. The US dollar though still remains nearly two thirds of world currency reserves.

After seeing the Covid crisis, i became more sceptical of collapse theories. They can print all the money they want to fix problems in the system. The only potential problem is inflation. And the bigger the currency, the less the inflation.

When the US prints, it gains from it, as it steals billions from the rest of the world via low inflation. So via this method it can get itself out from a deep whole, as you saw during the pandemic.

Trillions of dollars were printed, but US long term debt by 2030 increased only by 9 %. How is this possible? Because interest rates are low.

You need to replace the dollar in order to stop the US from saving itself on the back of the rest of the planet.

After 2030, you may have a world with basket of currencies augmented by crypto and gold. And US debts will become too high. Then it will get hard for the US to print without big inflation.

Posted by: Passer by | Mar 4 2021 21:25 utc | 26

Former Vice President Joe Biden assured rich donors at a ritzy New York fundraiser that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he is elected.

One may safely assume that his rich donors are the same parasites whom Bush II addressed as "The Haves and the Have Mores" with a sly giggle.

Fun Fact: "Donors" rhymes with "Owners" and means the same thing...

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 4 2021 21:26 utc | 27

I am in agreement with psychohistorian @23 here. When the US dollar starts losing its golden glow as a secure investment and reserve currency then trillions of dollars will flood home. It will become a race to unload dollars so as to not be left holding the hot potato.

Well, the US$ is already losing its attraction, but there will be a tipping point beyond which the race starts. That tipping point is probably closer than many people expect.

The US will still be a somewhat powerful country, but only a regional power. The days of global hegemony will end rather quickly. There will be no more super carriers or nuke subs and the F-35 will be the last super plane that the US ever fields. Allies like South Korea and Japan will flip to neutrality without hesitation.

Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 4 2021 21:31 utc | 28

Would some people please extract their heads from their nether regions? This "election" was NOT stolen, the outcome was managed to suit the elites, like they all are, since 2000, at least. Our rulers used DJT until he was no longer needed, then, threw him under the bus. Like the egotistical ass that he is, he refused to see it, and never will.

The U$A is an OLIGARCHY, and has been for some time now.

Posted by: vetinLA | Mar 4 2021 21:33 utc | 29

Biden is the most fitting US President in modern history. He is a fantastic representation of the political system that has metastasized around the institutions of government. He's almost redundant, that's not intended as an insult. An empty husk has its political uses and as simple continuation device for the forever war's he should do fine. It looks almost certain that it's a question of when not if the cognitive wheels will grind to a halt. Despite his grim determination to remember his lines you're left wondering if the effort is even worth it. If the systems barely functioning meat suit simply drooled over the lecturn at his next engagement what would be the substantive difference for the US, it's people and policies. Trump was nothing more than entertaining distraction but cucked almost every decision he had to make and was dealt with easily by the systemic, vested interests groups mitigating the slightest correction, the smallest bit of change. Biden is a real life deepfake, an illusion, just like the bona fides of the American political system claiming to represent the people. The vested interests will continue to gorge themselves on wealth and power while Biden gazes vaccously into the nearest camera.

Posted by: I know nothing | Mar 4 2021 21:35 utc | 30

vetinLA @29

DJT was supposed to be thrown under the bus more than four years ago. From that perspective it was the 2016 election that was stolen... by the electorate. That wasn't supposed to happen which is why the establishment totally lost their shi... uh, cool.

Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 4 2021 21:39 utc | 31

pfizer not the USA, wants military bases
very interesting.. extension of the office of the president to a private corporation

This does not comport with Article II(Section 2) of the USA constitution.. which says
"The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the usa, and of the Militia of the serveral states, when into the actual service of the USA,

but no where do I find a private corporation may exercise the power of the Office of the President ...? What did I mis?

Posted by: snake | Mar 4 2021 21:42 utc | 32

karlof1 #7

Ron Klain


From msn...

“You won’t have to worry about my tweets when I’m president,” Joe Biden promised.

Now, six weeks into the Biden administration, it’s not the president but his White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, whose online activity is generating the most intrigue in Washington.

For a White House that prides itself, so far, on being light on leaks and staying mostly on message, Klain’s frequent tweets can at times offer rare insight into the thinking and priorities of the Biden West Wing.

Klain may have one of the busiest and most demanding jobs in Washington, but he is tweeting, retweeting and liking posts seemingly all hours of the day, setting off cellphone screens across Washington an average of 60 times a day, according to an NBC News review of his Twitter use."


Klain manages the image and likely the means whereby decisions are made. Joe fronts a camera. The demands are few as Biden does not demand emotional investment be it anxiety or infatuation as he is as boring as batshit. The opposite of Trump. We no longer need to sit on the edge of our stools in breathless anticipation of a Trump oddity or blooper, we are just going to watch a four year parade of denigration of an old man by an evil empire.

Klain orchestrates the gig.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 4 2021 21:46 utc | 33

William Gruff@31 lies yet again. The electorate voted for Clinton, not Trump. Trump only fluked out because of the moronic Electoral College claptrap, which the Gruffs will explain they have always rejected whenever a Democratic Party candidate loses the election but carries the EC.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Mar 4 2021 21:46 utc | 34

Whenever some rightwinger here rants about the sheeple (or whatever your preferred term of abuse is) believing the propaganda, believing Trump won the electorate in 2016 is a prime example of propaganda leading a fool to believe the opposite of reality, even a reality the fool saw with their own eyes. Though Gruff probably knows Trump lost the vote in 2016 too.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Mar 4 2021 21:49 utc | 35

>>The U.S. empire was a historical abnormality and its twilight is near

The author Aris Roussinos did not check very well what he was citing.
I would not be so optimistic as him.

From the article (Twilight of the American empire), if you read what actually Eurocrats plan (Borrel's senior advisor), they see the EU as a copy paste of the US. Whose role will be countering Russia and China because the US is now too weak to do it alone.

This said, Europeans and Biden’s America will likely share most foreign policy positions. European autonomy is necessary not because the EU and the US are set to diverge, quite the contrary. To take two prominent cases, the transatlantic agenda will often match on both Russia and China in the coming years.


In other words "we need to empower the EU to better protect a dualistic US - EU Empire" or "The West".

Posted by: Passer by | Mar 4 2021 21:51 utc | 36

Thanks b for the research and journalism.

One of the favourite tropes of the transparent cabal who have seized power in the US and other captive nations is that the solution to the Palestine/Israel problem is "the path to peace is through direct negotiations.'

This proposition requires the occupied bartering away their land and amending their borders, always for the benefit of the illegal occupier.

These 'negotiations' are expressly forbidden by the Geneva Conventions. Every functioning government in the world knows this.

The alien invaders are under an obligation to simply get out. Every 'agreement' is null and void.

The New Zealand government and the NZ superannuation fund has recently decided to divest their investments in Israeli banks citing international law, the Geneva Conventions and reputation damage as key factors.

Read the decision making document here:

https://www.nzsuperfund.nz/assets/documents/responsible-investment/R-GNZS-IC-Paper-Exclusion-of-Israeli-Banks-January-2021.pdf

Expect a MSM wall of silence on this one.

It is sheer hypocrisy for the usual suspects to talk about human rights, rules based international law, democracy and our values, while advocating the opposite policies in the middle east.

Is it possible they actually believe their own propaganda and their own lies through Bernays like repartition?

Posted by: Paul | Mar 4 2021 21:57 utc | 37

karlofi@15 I don't think Harris will ever be president. It is evident that Biden is in control now and will finish his term. However he won't seek a second term and Harris will not be nominated by the Dems.

Posted by: Jim6Pack | Mar 4 2021 22:11 utc | 38

@karlof1 19,
yes, I agree, to a point.

I mean, yes, compared to the western system, where a typical national-level politician has a law degree and not a single day of honest work in his whole life. Chinese political system is definitely superior in that respect. But then the Soviet leaders were also men of the people, and that didn't end well. So, it's a good, desirable practice, but not sufficient by itself.

Oh, and also about the thing called 'democracy'. I think there is something to say for 'grassroots democracy' as practiced in places like Cuba, Vietnam, China. Direct mass-participation on the local community level. I'd suggest that this arrangement deserves to be called 'democracy' more than any hierarchical structure with rigid top-to-bottom control, even if you do get a chance every few years to pick one of the two establishment-approved candidates. Oh well.

Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Mar 4 2021 22:17 utc | 39

regarding the financial dynamic - those who control the money, currency and lending as such, control a lot... this may be changing, but i think it is naive to believe those who have made oil exchangeable in usa$ -this is only one example) won't work hard to keep and maintain this same control... on a related note, for anyone who missed the spiders web video that debs shared, i also highly recommend this video to get a better overview on finance, in particular the finance of the city of london from the historian peter cain... it is 1 hour long.. you can start at 10 minutes in if you want.. he helps clarify why things are they way they are financially... of course it can change.. maybe collapse is ultimately how it will play out... i am not convinced of that myself..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oDHnr-bOLM

Posted by: james | Mar 4 2021 22:18 utc | 40

psychohistorian @23 & William Gruff @28--

Here's the synopsis for today's Keiser Report:

"In this episode of Keiser Report, Max and Stacy look at the 'growing concern that market-based inflation expectations have become unreliable as indicators,' i.e. the central banks have destroyed the price signal foundational to free and fair markets. In this environment, we see Goodhart’s Law at work: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Billionaire hedge fund investor Paul Singer says of the 'market craziness' that there is a 'scarcity of honest profits.'"

From Shadowstats most recent Flash Commentary on 24 Feb:

"Despite Happy Headline Gains in January 2021 Real Retail Sales, Production and Construction, the Underlying Payroll Employment Numbers Tell the Opposite Story • First-Quarter 2021 GDP Remains at Risk of Relapsing into Quarterly Contraction • January 2021 Producer Price Index Monthly Inflation Hit a Record, 10-Year High • U.S. Dollar Collapse Accelerates."

Shadowstats next Benchmark Commentary will cover "major definitional and accuracy issues with current Federal Reserve and Federal Government Monetary and Economic data, along with corrective approaches." Of course, that's one way of saying Here's how the government lies about the economy and how you can see through them and come close to the truth.

Would Putin or the Chinese allow their governments to operate in such a manner? IMO, once the USA began to lie about the basic economic stats it became a failed state and has been in decline ever since despite all outward appearances. Earlier this week, Strategic-Culture published an Infographic to answer this question:

"Is the American Dream Still Alive?"

Do note the point of separation between productivity and wages that's been pointed at now for several decades and how closely it follows Nixon's exit from the Gold Standard.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 4 2021 22:19 utc | 41

From the article (Twilight of the American empire) cited by b.

"When Joe Biden announced to the Munich Security Conference last week that “America was back” at the centre of the Atlantic alliance, his European virtual audience responded with a collective shrug. For all their protestations of fealty, Europe’s leaders, defiantly pushing ahead with trade and energy deals with America’s rivals, are not interested in any great ideological crusade on the hegemon’s behalf.

As Nathalie Tocci, chief advisor to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles, notes in a recent paper, “the European project developed under… an order made up of international organisations, laws, norms, regimes and practices premised on US power”. Yet today, “that world is fast fading”.


On the contary, this guy did not read carefully what eurocrats plan. They hope to save the "US and the West" by "taking more responsibilities" and serving as a battering ram against US rivals. Citations from the article of Nathalie Tocci, chief advisor to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

"A revamped transatlantic bond will require greater European responsibility and thus autonomy"

"Given that European strategic autonomy does not imply that the EU prefers to act alone, there is nothing that suggests that pursuing such an agenda would be to the detriment of NATO or the transatlantic bond. Quite the contrary."

"A stronger transatlantic bond will be critical in addressing and redressing many of the systemic challenges that China poses,"

"Moving in this direction is as necessary for European autonomy as it is for a revamped transatlantic bond."

"The first relates to engagement with the US and other like-minded liberal democracies to define common parameters for the governance of global public goods"

"working with like-minded partners would increase the chances of liberal norms asserting themselves"

" it is only by partnering internationally, notably with the US as well as Japan, South Korea and other Asian economies, that the EU can ensure a more level playing field "

"This said, Europeans and Biden’s America will likely share most foreign policy positions. European autonomy is necessary not because the EU and the US are set to diverge, quite the contrary. To take two prominent cases, the transatlantic agenda will often match on both Russia and China in the coming years. "

" the 21st-century confrontation between liberal democracies and authoritarian, autocratic and, more broadly, illiberal systems will likely be more balanced than the Cold War political confrontation between democratic capitalism and Soviet communism. "

In other words: The EU did not expect a US decline and forever believed that there will be a "Big Brother" to "take care of things".

Now that the US decline is a fact, the EU must take more responsibilites to protect a "collective West" vs the rest of the world, because the US is too weak to do it alone.

For this, the EU must serve as a battering ram against Russia and China.

This eurocrat creature N. Tocci claims that it seeks greater autonomy for the EU, yet being boxed in in a confrontation with Russia and others puts it in a position to remain a forever puppet of the US.

As this "strategy" fully conforms with the US principle of Divide and Rule across Eurasia.

That is, the US gains if EU and Russia fight each other. When two people fight each other, the third one wins.

Posted by: Passer by | Mar 4 2021 22:55 utc | 42

karlof1 @19:

It's OT here but seems you are on a thread of comparing political systems. Wonder if this clip has ever been posted here at MOA. Worth a view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0YjL9rZyR0&t=399s

Note that it was first posted on Jul 2013. Viewed today the point Eric Li made would be much more conspicuous.

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Mar 4 2021 23:22 utc | 43

karlof1 @ 7 –

Kudos to you, sir! I am very sympathetic to your experience of caring for your mother's dementia. I too, cared for my mother who was afflicted with Alzheimer's for 13 years. It was often challenging and particularly saddening because she had been so aware and sharp of mind before the onset. That effort cut short my career, but I'm gratified that I was able to keep her healthy and comfortable at home until age 95.

Yes, Pres. Biden is just a figurehead without much cognizance/cognition. I surmise the power lies in the Dem Party elite, including and especially Hillary working behind the scenes. Very unsavory foreign policies, but seemingly a very encouraging domestic agenda which we would never get with a Republican president. The question remains whether social welfare programs and infrastructure improvements can be made in spite of continuing military expansion. They typically are squelched or postponed, and Congress always finds excuses for not dealing with the needs of the people that are now crying out for help.

Posted by: norecovery | Mar 4 2021 23:23 utc | 44

Mao Cheng Ji @ 39:

Soviet leaders were of the people as you say, yes, but when you drill into the details of their careers before they became General Secretaries of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, you find they had careers as political administrators and propagandists. Only Leonid Brezhnev had a technical background. They were the early equivalents of people like former UK Prime Minister David Cameron who went straight into the British Conservative Party after leaving Oxford University with typical graduate qualifications for a career party hack and who for a time worked for a media communications company; or like current Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison who worked in marketing executive roles in which his most outstanding qualities were his sheer ineptitude and flouting procurement guidelines.

From Nikita Khrushchev onwards, all General Secretaries with the exceptions of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko (neither of whom lasted long as leaders) had some personal or family connection with the Ukrainian SSR. This may not have been coincidence: it may suggest that there was a network of individuals selecting future leaders for promotion based on close personal career connections.

Until recently most people in the most senior levels of the Communist Party of China, from whom China's leaders are drawn, had technical, engineering or scientific backgrounds. Current members are now drawn from most walks of life though several of them have worked in factories or done manual labour at some point in their working lives.

Posted by: Jen | Mar 4 2021 23:27 utc | 45

steven t johnson #34

The electorate voted for Clinton, not Trump. Trump only fluked out because of the moronic Electoral College claptrap, which the Gruffs will explain they have always rejected whenever a Democratic Party candidate loses the election but carries the EC.

My take is that the HRC was deemed to have failed on that 9/11 memorial day she did a feint at fainting or whatever the seizure was. She deliberately DID NOT CAMPAIGN in three states other than ad blitzing. She was more detested by more people in key states than Trump was.

This has nothing to do with William Gruff.

Hillary failed. She was organised by self confident, privileged, idiotic fools, example: Podesta use 'password' as his password for his most confidential emailer. The hackers had both Hillary and Podesta by the short and curleys: they were extreme risk. The likelihood of the entire Clinton home server contents being in the possession of more than two contending nations is quite high IMO. Add the Debbie Wasseman Shultz hacking debacle and you get a 'trust and confidence' deficit. Trump had none of that baggage.

Better for the oligarchs to go with the guy who confessed to grabbing women by the short and curleys than to throw your lot in with morons and where you had to share 'control' with the hacker universe:

Trump was elected by the democracy that the USA fears to amend. Live with it.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 4 2021 23:41 utc | 46

"This will likely cost them their House majority in 2022"
So what? Yes every congresscritter greatly cares about his own seat, but for the Dem Party it only leads to embarrassment. "It was politically unfeasible", "Those evil Repubs made us do it"--that's when Dems are in their element; Obama also ditched the overall majorities he rode in on as soon as he could. The Dems need to look relevant, and to have a little something to block Republican plans they don't care for, and all is good. And '24... who knows; one way or another, Biden just beat Trump; why could't he, or his stuffed corpse, do it again?

Anyway, the real arbiters here are the donors. And they like their pendulum swings, lest their puppets get too uppity, and because one-party rule would be too ... overt. This is what gloomy Repubs fail to understand these days.


"Neither the European U.S. allies, nor the Asian ones, have any interest in following the U.S. into a confrontation with China."
Beg your pardon? Both the Canadian and Dutch parliaments have just lobbed genocide accusations against China. Now that Bad Man Trump is gone, they're desperate to show their servility. Fundamentally, this is who they are.

Posted by: Ma Laoshi | Mar 4 2021 23:43 utc | 47

I apologize for being off-topic here, but I was trying to check on Julian Assange's status and I forgot the name of the independent journalist in the UK who was attending the hearings and blogging about them on a daily basis. He was often linked here in comments and by b - my brain just isn't working. Can anyone help jog my memory?

Posted by: _K_C_ | Mar 4 2021 23:43 utc | 48

Craig Murray: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 4 2021 23:50 utc | 49

I also cared for my mother who had Alzheimers. Yes, definitely a trial. I did meet many people dealing with memory loss. It does seem to me that Biden has dementia, and not Alzheimers. What an awful struggle it must be to hang in there trying to stay cogent. I could almost feel pity, but the cast of characters, the Clintons, Obamas, and so on, just seem grotesque. Has anyone made it through the Springsteen Obama podcast? I can’t. If it is dementia, I don’t see this having a happy ending for anyone the way its being handled.

Posted by: Geoff | Mar 4 2021 23:53 utc | 50

Oriental Voice #43

Worth a view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0YjL9rZyR0&t=399s

Note that it was first posted on Jul 2013. Viewed today the point Eric Li made would be much more conspicuous.

Thank you. This video and others by Eric Li are on topic always: the accountability and responsiveness to the people by government is always our most pertinent desire.

China's configuration of representative democracy, public service delivery, private service facility and the mechanisms of policy creation and refinement are valuable elements of human progress and achievement. They appear odd to outsiders who have no interest in analysis and this gives malign actors a means to manipulate and accuse them of totalitarian intentions.

Many here at the bar see through that obstructive nonsense and hopefully can take the extraordinary achievements of China and integrate the good with the systems we have crafted.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 4 2021 23:56 utc | 51

Ma Laoshi #47

"Neither the European U.S. allies, nor the Asian ones, have any interest in following the U.S. into a confrontation with China."
Beg your pardon? Both the Canadian and Dutch parliaments have just lobbed genocide accusations against China. Now that Bad Man Trump is gone, they're desperate to show their servility. Fundamentally, this is who they are.

Thank you, EXACTLY that. The China rise has them absolutely spooked and their inner sinophobia and russophobia is cranking hard. These Dutch, Canadian, Englander, Australian, USAi warmongers are on a savage roll and we are witnessing another of the great follies of humanity but must do everything possible to divert this madness.

Time will tell and time will give great leaders the the chance to shine if we are active and fortunate.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 5 2021 0:06 utc | 52

Oriental Voice @43--

Thanks for your reply! The comparison of systems has been an ongoing OT discussion here for several years now in an effort to educate. The annual events happening in China provide yet again another opportunity to compare and educate. If the USA's national government's initially published goals were to facilitate the rise of an oligarchy and Corporate Oligopoly, then its system of governance would be very highly rated, but that isn't what's stated in the Constitution's Preamble, which provides the governing rationale as well as the yardstick by which it's to be measured. Of course, that's not taught in the USA's schools for obvious reasons. So although China's system aims at accomplishing exactly what the Preamble says, it must be fought because it does so.

////

norecovery @44--

Thanks very much for your reply! Our experiences are quite similar. Mom was a teacher and avid literary bug and keen fan of Masterpiece Theatre until she finally lost the ability to recall several years before she finally passed. I very much doubt Biden will be kept as a figure head, and it's likely that was the plan from the outset. We shouldn't allow the political world to interfere with our enjoyment of our one priceless life. But since it intrudes into our lives daily, we have a hard time getting past the intrusion.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 5 2021 0:15 utc | 53

I argue the biggest challenge to US power in coming few years will not come from outside powers but rather will come from inside. US has become wildly divided between two ideologic poles that has a created a lasting effect on her interior security. As has become more and more visible, this newly felt internal insecurity is due to inequality, poverty, and government’s incompetence to provide security and social services at a minimum level. This internal insecurity is a collective mass insecurity by the American citizenry knowing that their government is incompetent to handle the next crises, this feeling now resides deep in every American’s bone, including the ruling elites.

This internal insecurity, incompetence crises, has made US regime more concerned and insecure from her own internal affairs and less capable to address her major external policy challenges. Obviously failing governments that can not provide security, economic, justice and health services to their citizenry they blame their opposition and foreign powers. This is exactly what is happening in US now and that is exactly what one would constantly hear from government propaganda echo chambers of US media. US is in deep slippery slope internal crises that she cannot avoid even if Jesus Christ get elected and becomes president. This is a major reason that she has become incompetent to implement her external policies in likes of Belarus, Iran, Venezuela, etc.

Posted by: kooshy | Mar 5 2021 0:23 utc | 54

@ _K_C_ maybe craig murray... but he has been dealing with the lawsuit brought on him also by big brother...

Posted by: james | Mar 5 2021 0:38 utc | 55

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 5 2021 0:06 utc | 52

The EU is psychologically beholden and bound to the US.

This is a result of WW 2. If great good americans liberated bad europeans from themselves, and put them in the right way, why would anyone be against them? Why would one want no US troops, wouldn't that mean that the liberator is bad? But if the US liberator is bad then that could mean that Hitler who resisted the liberator was good? And that is not acceptable. Therefore it is right that we have to be the junior partner of the US, otherwise our whole world will end.

History starts after 1945 and things before that were bad. But if the US liberator is bad then that means that the after WW2 period was wrong and that the before WW2 (non-american) period was right? But that is not acceptable, therefore we must be together with our liberator from evil, even if that would mean in submission to him.

Because the great liberator will know better what's good for us and for everyone. Didn't he prove it in WW2? It is only because of our US liberator that we saw the right way. Without him, we might return to our bad pre-war habits. Which is not acceptable. And so we must follow him. Our world can not exist without him.


There is no escape from this mental trap which is why i said several times that Europe will be forever puppet of the US, as long as the US exists.

Posted by: Passer by | Mar 5 2021 0:44 utc | 56

You can see that principle working in Eastern Europe, where the collapse of the "Soviet liberator" led to increase in nationalism.

In the same way, Western Europe fears that the collapse of the US liberator might lead to resurgence of nationalism. And that is not acceptable. Therefore it must forever stay in the hugs of the US.

Posted by: Passer by | Mar 5 2021 0:57 utc | 57

Mentioning a previous article I quoted a while ago here, it's worth mentioning how the USA is now afraid to straight out call China "communists" or even "socialists". Sure, the main reason for this is that the liberals spent some good 40 years+ calling post-1978 China capitalist. But it may also be because those two terms already have some popularity among the masses in the USA (or at least are not demonized as much as during the Cold War).

The reason the EU calls China "State Capitalist" is obvious: there are a shit ton of Communist and Socialist parties in Europe (many of them forming the European Left in the European Parliament), so they would anger a lot of its own people by using those terms in a clearly inimical context. Instead, they used an obscure term from almost 100 years ago.

Note also that both the EU and the USA are afraid to openly defend capitalism by the term. They prefer either to use "democracy", "liberalism", "liberal democracy", "freedom [of something]". That indicates they don't perceive capitalism as something they could gather popular support behind for their geopolitical ambitions. Yes, it also means they want to paint capitalism as part of the laws of physics - but that doesn't explain the EU's choice for the term "State Capitalism" to designate China (i.e. that an unnatural capitalism is possible).

--//--

@ Posted by: Passer by | Mar 4 2021 22:55 utc | 42

There are at least three factors that contribute to this stance by the EU (and the European Peninsula in general):

1) Atlanticism is still a thing in Europe, at least among its elites. This is the ideological explanation and is pretty much straightforward;

2) Europe is merely going for the low-hanging fruit in these turbulent times. This is the "inertial" explanation;

3) Europe's post-war legitimacy lies in the welfare state, i.e. on the condition where Europe stands out in the world as the place with the highest life standards and the highest cultural/humanist development. In this condition, it is unacceptable for Europe to enter in a new Eurasian union as a mere peninsula, as a peripheral part of a richer China (as was the case in the "Dark Ages"). This is the "I don't want to go back to the Dark Ages" explanation, i.e. the European people doesn't feel comfortable to belong to a world where it is not the top dog in culture and life standard.

I think the three are true, but #3 is the decisive one. The key here is that every social system has a specific metabolism, that is, a specific mechanism through which it reproduces itself across the generations. #3 also explains why Europe doesn't want to give up NATO so easily, as the protection from the USA frees up material resources for the Europeans to build and feed their welfare states.


--//--

@ Posted by: Passer by | Mar 4 2021 20:49 utc | 21

I've already expressed my opinion on the eventual fall of the American Empire, so I'll be more succinct here:

I'm certain the USA won't collapse like the USSR. In fact, the USSR's fall is kinda unique in History, considering its relative importance and size. Very unlikely such a gracious and peaceful collapse of such a military superpower ever repeats in Human History.

But there's a reason the USSR fell as easily and graciously as it did: its centralized system. The USSR was the CPSU; once Gorbachev humiliated the Party and destroyed it, he automatically destroyed the USSR. What followed was a neoliberal genocide by Boris Yeltsin, but that's not on the Soviet socialist system (it could have reformed successfully and become a China with more natural resources and a better military).

The USA's system is capitalism. Capitalism is not a centralized system; instead, it is governed by a confederation of capitalists, who partition between themselves the different sectors of the economy. This system has a necessarily diffused administrative and command architecture. It's also highly cannibalistic: those capitalist hate each other and try to devour each other constantly, and they constantly do so successfully - hence the rarity of capitalist very long dynasties. The technological evolution/revolutions of capitalism also expand this confederation of capitalists because they create new sectors of the economy while destroying others, which makes the system even more decentralized and chaotic.

That's why I think the USA will first wither, then maybe collapse. Either way, it will be chaotic, possibly with high levels of destruction and civil wars - what we call the "Mad Max Scenario"/Roman Empire scenario. The chances of the USA going down with a world war are also great, as capitalism is a very virulent system: the British Empire went out with a bang (the two WWs it caused).

A few factors are given in my opinion:

1) the USA cannot be seriously considered a true world empire without a solid Eurasian foothold. That means if it loses NATO (i.e. the European Peninsula), it loses its status as a world empire (it would technically have Israel and the Arabian Peninsula, but they don't have the military architecture on NATO's degree) as Japan is an island too near China, Australia is a distant continent, India is in an existential crisis (neutrality or become an American puppet?) and SE Asia is a true zone in dispute;

2) the USA cannot be considered a world empire without the Dollar Standard. Without the Dollar Standard, you can still retain the status by being the industrial superpower, but that post seems to be in China's hands now. Of all the factors that one could mention as being single-handedly capable of bringing the American Empire down in a collapse-style process, the end of the Dollar Standard is the only one I can think of in the social sphere (i.e. not taking into account natural catastrophes such as a giant meteor);

3) the USA cannot be considered a world empire if it doesn't dominate the Seven Seas. Luckily, it still does (and that's an important base for the Dollar Standard), but it's important to highlight the fact that at least China is building up its naval capabilities, to a point of being able at least to be the sovereign over the South China Sea (which opens up a bridge to the junction between the Pacific and the Indian). Russia also seems to be decided to fight to the death for its Tartus base in Syria (its only warm waters port) and has turned back the Black Sea into its particular lake, and is on a comfortable pace to do the same with the Arctic (while it was frozen, it belonged to whoever dominated the North Atlantic; unfrozen, it belongs to whoever has the largest and best fleet of icebreakers);

4) The USA cannot be considered an empire if it doesn't dominate the entire American Continent. That means that, at the moment the USA loses Brazil (which commands Latin America sans Mexico and the Caribbean), it will no longer be an empire. Yes, it would still have Japan and Australia (and the rest of Oceania), but that would be like the Byzantine Empire without Syria and Egypt: just a glorified Greek kingdom that still calls itself an empire.

Note that none of these must be the cause: they may be the consequence of internal strife and civil war, followed by an economic collapse from within. Remember: 2008 happened in the US territory, at the heart of the Empire (Wall Street), not in some random Arab banana republic or some corrupt artificial Latin America narco-state.

And 2008 definitely wasn't the last big crisis of the capitalist world. Any long term prediction of any capitalist country that doesn't take into account crises is an invalid one.

Posted by: vk | Mar 5 2021 1:05 utc | 58

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 4 2021 20:22 utc | 19

China's government when compared to the USA's is absolutely Of the People, By the People, and For the People.

A dictatorship of the proletariat, perhaps, as a certain philosopher once postulated?

Thank-you for your posts on the Chinese system on this and many other threads. As a left-libertarian I am not overly enthused at the notion of the authoritarian, one-party state, but I am getting an inkling that China is perhaps more meritocratic than merely technocratic, is working in the (at least intended) interests of its people rather than of the elites - and 100 million people out of poverty in eight years is, if true, an impressive achievement.

I particularly like the concept of win-win verses the western zero-sum, and the values placed on competence and wisdom over nepotism, hubris and might-is-right. I do not know how deeply these positive values are instituted in China's political culture, but I do like the idea of them. I still value the positives of the western liberal enlightenment but I see precious little of these in the current political and cultural climate here. It seems that while China is churning out STEM graduates, the west is busy churning out experts in Critical Race Theory and Transgender Studies. It seems obvious to me who is going win the long game.

Posted by: Ash Naz | Mar 5 2021 1:26 utc | 59

Who says that there will be a collapse? There will be slow decline imo, because the US is the most resoursful country in the world with the best geopolitical position in the world, best strategic depth, and the largest alliance network. The US dollar still remains 62 % of world currency reserves, although it declined in payments.

The US was able to print trillions of dollars, and thus register better economic growth rates than many others. This year, it expects growth of 6 - 7 %, one percent less than China. It registered far better economic performance during the Covid Pandemic than many other countries.

The US is the most influential Empire the world has seen since 19th century Britain.

It has lots of power - see where the UN and the IMF are located.

This thing can not "collapse", unless there is internal separatist conflict, which i see as unlikely, much more likely is a One Party Democratic Party State consolidating power. Just as it happened in California.

And collapse can not happen via the dollar either, rather a slow decline too. There is too much inertion behind the dollar. This money does not have somewhere else to go. No capital markets exist to replace US treasuries either.

It may take 20 years before the US becomes more like "one big power among many". But it will still be influential power.

But i can certainly say that: US influecne will be declining. And the US dollar will be declining in the long run too. Countries that rapidly gain in per capita GDP see their currencies rise. So i would invest in CNY, Indian rupee and ASEAN currencies. Stay away from the US dollar, as all of that debt and stimulus means that there will be long term inflation and a long term drop in the dollar value.

Another point that should be mentioned is the military decline of the US. The long wars during the last 20 years had very negative effect on its equipment. And the rest of the world is catching up, and even becoming better (in missiles especially), making carrier groups more and more obsolete, and making overseas US bases big fat targets. Modern weapons guarantee a blood bath for the aggressor in peer to peer conflict.

Both Trump and Blinken acknowledged the military weakness of the US, claiming no more wars.

So there is some weakening but the US will remain a factor just like Britain was a factor, using divide and rule tactics and offshore balancing. The US role will be like the one of Britain in Europe. In this sense, only a United Eurasia (like the EU of Europe, but for the whole of Eurasia) can bring down the US for good.

Who says there will be a collapse...????

I DO !!

If you take those blinders off... it's all around you!

It's gone to the point the country cannot properly feed the National Guard Troops guarding the Capitol!

Any time... I expect to hear Trump offering to use the kitchen(s) at his hotel(s) to feed them... at his expense...

Look again at those Iranian missiles hitting that US base in Iraq.... Where were the interceptors???

There weren't any!!

Then there is the Littoral Combat Ship, Zumwalt Destroyer, F-35, Abrams Tank, Humvee, AR-15 (notable for it's jams).

Exactly how old are US frontline aircraft??? B-52, B-1, B-2, F-16, F-15, F-18... all designed in 50s or 60s....

Arleigh Burke Destroyer... 70s...

Ditto with the subs...

Wake up!

INDY

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Mar 5 2021 1:57 utc | 60

@dsfco | Mar 4 2021 18:54 utc | 4

"As compelling as this vision is it hasn't happened yet."
Some on-the-ground experience with the Chinese mentality: "we're big, we've been around forever, and we have nukes too; who'd dare to mess with us? Besides, our leaders and our own children are Western-educated; we love the West, so why would they want to?" Now Hong Kong has been on fire; and after sending medical supplies all over the world, China frankly has trouble keeping up with provocations coming from the US, Australia, India, UK, Canada, Netherlands, etc; and their national champion Huawei was crushed just like that.

I think and hope that the wake-up alarm clock has been ringing HARD in Beijing. I see it here and elsewhere in frankly triumphalist alt-media that so many haven't yet realized what the Dark Throne stands for.


I think the people negotiating such treaties for a living see the problems better than us. For starters, Russia mostly ignores the defense treaty it already has with Syria, so would their commitment be credible, or how would one make it so? Maybe Russia feels it is of good will, but it just doesn't have the muscle to chase out US/Turkey/Israel simultaneously. So then you'd get to a more collective security model. But does Moscow want to put its nuke umbrella over say Iran, and de facto back up whatever their theocrats get into their turbaned heads? At least, the Kremlin would demand some sort of veto over Tehran's security decisions; but then you're back to the idea of a centralized empire which Iran won't surrender to.

So they all keep looking at each other and piously recite "there is still time." Didn't work out for Gadhafi. Anyway, after the current decade China will be the leading economy--a date which COVID just advanced by ~2 years. So either the US will accept losing primacy, or go apes pretty soon.

Posted by: Ma Laoshi | Mar 5 2021 2:02 utc | 61

@59 Ash Naz - "100 million people out of poverty in eight years is, if true, an impressive achievement"

May I please state purely on my own word, if you will, that yes, it is true. The numbers are formal statistics that can be found everywhere - except close to my hand at the moment ;)

But more to the point, since you seem interested in these events, let me remind us all that the 100 million were the last remaining ones, out of a population of 1.3 billion or more. Everyone else was already out of poverty.

Consider what this means, in an age when we see the unfortunates and underprivileged in the US left to live and die on the sidewalk - the Chinese state exerted effort strongly to lift up those last remaining people. It wasn't enough to call the society moderately prosperous if 9 out of 10 people fit that description; it had to be everyone.

~~

As to the "authoritarianism" of the government, that's a longer story, and should really begin with the premise that western notions of governance cannot be applied to Chinese notions very well, if at all. This is especially true of Libertarianism, which views government as a potential threat. The opposite obtains in China, where government is traditionally regarded as an elder, with a seat at the family table - unless it should fall into disgrace. If the government fails to perform in China as Chinese culture and tradition say that it should, then it is considered justified for the people to overthrow it.

In both the US and China, I think, the government is judged by the one overarching metric, which is its ability to do the job. In China it is harmonious with the culture to argue and oppose a government that doesn't work for the benefit of the people. Such a government has lost the "Mandate of Heaven" and culturally there is no wrongdoing involved in decrying it.

I think the same cannot be said of the US, but I leave it to others to say what can be said of it. I think "authoritarianism" as practiced by the western culture of governance is a terrible and frightening thing. But in China it means a different thing. China has always had "one government" - this is why the emphasis in the culture is so strong that the government must be virtuous, and industrious.

More exposure to commentators such as Jeff Brown, Godfree Roberts and Martin Jacques, as well as the above-cited Eric Li, can help to show that the Communist Party of 100 million members - and to which Xi Jinping had to apply ten times before being accepted - is a whole different breed of cat from the western notion of government.

And it works.

Posted by: Grieved | Mar 5 2021 2:11 utc | 62


I'm conflicted: on the one hand, I'm impatient for the fall of the US Empire so that its elite can no longer commit crimes around the globe with impunity.

On the other hand, as a recently retired Canadian, and knowing that our country's economy is closely tied to that in the US, I hardly want to see my own situation adversely impacted in material terms.

I suppose this is an age-old conflict in materialistic cultures...

Posted by: Jimmee | Mar 5 2021 2:22 utc | 63

one empire falls, and another one eventually takes its place... there's plenty of idealism in between all this too.. did the british empire collapse?? in fact, as debs link to the spiders web and the link i provided from the talk with peter cain - uk historian - point out, the city of london continues to be the biggest player in the financial world today... so, one could say the british empire hasn't completely disappeared either... in fact, the focus on money via financial capitalism has never been greater...

Posted by: james | Mar 5 2021 2:36 utc | 64

tungsten @33

Biden front of camera (and barely managing that) with Chief of Staff Klain running the show.

Reminds me of Obama front of camera (managing that extremely well) with Rahm Emmanuel running the show, ensuring the interests of those who put Obama where he was.

Rahm left the position after two years to run for Mayor of Chicago, following Richard M Daley, who's brother, William, took over the role of White House Chief of Staff (after Rouse was interim for several months), also to ensure the interests of those who put Obama where he was.

Why do people lose sight of Obama's political origins?

Posted by: Castellio | Mar 5 2021 2:37 utc | 65

James @64

Timely comment. Necessary correction.

Posted by: Castellio | Mar 5 2021 2:39 utc | 66

Grieved @62

Yes, I'm sure you are right that the western notion of state, government and authoritarianism is different to that in China, or Russia even. This is partly why I don't buy into Sinophobic and Russophobic narratives and human rights blah blah that The Empire pushes against every country that doesn't comply.

Left-libertarianism can seem to imply an inherent contradiction, in that leftism implies some kind of statism. Yet for those of us in the west that see the tyranny in our own societies both in capitalist plutocracy and statist control, both are things to be feared. Perhaps it's some kind of grown-up word for anarchism, which is seen as a childish desire for a world without rules, which can only benefit the criminal, despot and capitalist, rather than a world without rulers, who by definition, with their power, will be corrupt. Can we have rules without corrupt rulers?

And oh, the irony of the war=pigs who talk about the "rules-based-system" where the only rules are the ones they make up as they go along and never apply to themselves - well, that's the sort of thing that Magna Carta kicked back against.

Posted by: Ash Naz | Mar 5 2021 3:24 utc | 67

"Those who made more than $80,000 in 2019 but lost their income in 2020 will get no check at all."

Not likely and not really. Zero income for the entire 2020 is not likely. Nnt really because it's easy enough to show some small amount of income for 2020 and qualify.

Not that anyone will be getting more than a pittance.

Posted by: Lawrence Magnuson | Mar 5 2021 3:25 utc | 68

"How does this end for America? Biden and the presidents after him will be forced to make a hard choice: whether to retrench to a smaller and more manageable empire, or to risk a far greater and more dramatic collapse in defence of global hegemony."

Posted by: jiri | Mar 5 2021 3:33 utc | 69

"How does this end for America? Biden and the presidents after him will be forced to make a hard choice: whether to retrench to a smaller and more manageable empire, or to risk a far greater and more dramatic collapse in defence of global hegemony."

Doesn't look good. Looks like a big war, either way.

Posted by: jiri | Mar 5 2021 3:34 utc | 70

@ Ash Naz

For me, I'm not attached to concepts, culture or religion or ideologies or other gobbledygooks, you will find many politicians/philosophers/priests waxing all kind of shit to excuse the status quo. Rather I stick to the objective bottom line, the well-being of a person.

Anarchism belief in that the government will always be corrupted is the same as killing the baby early because the baby is gonna grow old and die anyway.

But "statism" belief that you need always need a government no matter what is also bad, that's "battered wife" syndrome.

Ask yourself the simple question, does the government provide for you, your family, your friends food, healthcare, education and necessities to life?
The same question can be posed for market, laws, church, rules and most of the ideologies/establishment out there.

If it helps the people, it is good and must be maintained.
If it harms the people, it is bad and must be discarded and replaced with a better one.

Posted by: Smith | Mar 5 2021 3:43 utc | 71

james,

I think I watched the 'spiders web' film you have been been regularly referring to recently a year or so ago, wondering whether it would offer convincing evidence that the British Empire is still operating behind the curtain of the City. I recall coming away from it slightly disappointed that it seemed to be more about offshore tax scams for rich people rather than a coherent demonstration of a nefarious intrigue of a secret, surviving, empire pulling the strings of geopolitics today.

I must admit to being fascinated by the City of London Corporation, an ancient organisation that describes itself today as the 'government' of the City.

https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-us/law-historic-governance/the-citys-government

But, even if MI6 and the CIA do sometimes appear to be the same thing, I find it hard to believe that the City is secretly running an invisible British Empire today, and if anyone is giving anyone orders, the direction of that particular flow is surely from Washington to London, and not the other way round.

Posted by: Ash Naz | Mar 5 2021 3:49 utc | 72

The US literally has the "nuclear option" to maintain its global hegemony.

The US has 10,000 nuclear weapons. It only needs to use a few hundred at most to destroy its main rivals in such a way that they don't rise again for the next few centuries.

Will it use it? The track record says yes. It used nuclear weapons on Japan just to make an example for the world to see. It stands to reason that it will use a few more to maintain its hegemony. As a US foreign minister once said about the deaths of a million or so children in Iraq,"It was worth it". If a few million deaths are OK to hold on to Iraq, it is logical that a few billion is worth it for the whole planet.

The US could also suffer damage.But then the US has also never been shy about losing lives in the US to maintain its hegemony.

Interesting times ahead. The US goal of full spectrum dominance is on schedule and raring to go.

Posted by: jiri | Mar 5 2021 3:57 utc | 73

Posted by: Smith | Mar 5 2021 3:43 utc | 71
Ask yourself the simple question, does the government provide for you, your family, your friends food, healthcare, education and necessities to life?

An interesting question, though perhaps another version of that is to ask which things we want the government to provide and which would we prefer to provide for ourselves and through a market?

Putin raised something this at the recent Zoomy thing he did (was it the WEF?) implying that some things might be best done one way, and some another. The important thing is that people get all these things, and whether it is through the state, or the market, whichever way works the best - is the best.

Posted by: Ash Naz | Mar 5 2021 4:08 utc | 74

@ Ash Naz

The market, even the most ideal one, doesn't provide for you, or anyone, but just a platform to trade. But to trade, you must have something to give.

So if you have nothing, the market will leave you to dry.

Posted by: Smith | Mar 5 2021 4:15 utc | 75

@Smith

Yes, but a sane society should try to minimise those who have nothing to trade, by ensuring that as many people as possible do have something to give. Was it Lenin who said "If you don't work, you don't eat"? Or Marx that said "in a society where no-one works, no-one eats".

The idea from some 'leftists' that sees in society only helpless victims in perpetual need of government handouts with no agency and no productive capacity is a depressing one IMO.

Posted by: Ash Naz | Mar 5 2021 4:29 utc | 76

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Mar 5 2021 1:57 utc | 60

There is also those crude NK ballistic missiles that flew over SK and Japan unopposed, despite all the many "invincible" US missile defense systems in the region.

Posted by: J W | Mar 5 2021 4:47 utc | 77

@ Ash Naz

You can't minimize the "have-not" with a market, you need a body that rises above the "give & take" ideology and help those who presently have nothing without asking for anything in return, that's where the state should come in.

We must note that Lenin and Marx said "work", not "trade". There are those who don't work, yet have plenty to trade i.e. the capitalists fatcats who live by interests, and there are people who work all days and overtime at night, yet they can barely scrape off. The state, if it exists, must correct that imbalance in the balance.


Posted by: Smith | Mar 5 2021 5:01 utc | 78

^ must correct that imbalance in the market*

Posted by: Smith | Mar 5 2021 5:02 utc | 79

Exactly how old are US frontline aircraft??? B-52, B-1, B-2, F-16, F-15, F-18... all designed in 50s or 60s....

Arleigh Burke Destroyer... 70s...

Ditto with the subs...

Wake up!

INDY

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Mar 5 2021 1:57 utc | 60


Most of these are the creation of peak Cold War USA where they consider USSR as a serious threats. They designed to last, capable of enduring the after-effect of the atom bombs. After the fall of their Arch Nemesis, the Pentagon is just a massive grifting syndicate siphoning trillions of dollars. The equipments are designed with subpar materiel that needs to be replaced so often to maximize profit. Of course to balloon the price tag they crammed as many as useless features to them, further worsening their reliability.

Post-Cold War USA military armaments are big fat jokes.

Posted by: Hangar | Mar 5 2021 5:58 utc | 80

Passer by @21 and @26, had a thought related to your mention that "the US dollar still remains 62% of world currency reserves", or "nearly two thirds of world currency reserves". That seems to correspond to the IMF figure of 61.5% from December 2019. The IMF figure from December 2020, however, is now down to 60.4%.

A few months ago I read that Goldman Sachs had suggested the USD could drop 6% in 2021, while Citigroup suggested that it could drop as much as 20%.

Assuming no other changes to reserves, a 6% drop in the USD seems to imply the 60.4% percentage would become less than 58%. And a 20% drop in the USD seems to imply that US dollar holdings could fall to around 50% of world currency reserves.

And if it gets to around 50%, does a tipping point, as William Gruff @28 mentioned, kick in?

On the other hand, other Wall Street strategists think the USD will strengthen in 2021, so who knows ...

Posted by: Canadian Cents | Mar 5 2021 6:08 utc | 81

I agree with b's writing
"
Even as they hold the White House and the House and Senate majorities the Democrats are unable or unwilling to deliver basic progress. This will likely cost them their House majority in 2022 and the presidency in 2024.
"

I would just point out that this is a feature, not a bug of the two faced money party. How can any hold "their side" accountable when the sides keep shifting, the lipstick changes color, some feathers get ruffled and the global money folks do their thing under the aggressively enforced myth of freedumb and democracy....the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 5 2021 6:14 utc | 82

Something to think about.
Whilst the Biden Admin was busy crossing people-friendly things off its to-do list, and deciding which tails to chase, CGTN was broadcasting the:

Agenda for the 4th Session of the 13th National People's Congress commencing Friday, March, 2021.

- Deliberate the Government Work Report.
- Review the final draft of the 14th Five-Year Plan 2021 - 2025 for national economic and social development and China's long-range objectives through the year 2035.
- Review the report on the implementation of economic plans for 2020 and 2021.
- Review the report on the execution of the central and local budgets for 2020 and 2021.
- Deliberate the draft ammendments to the Organic Law of the NPC.
- Deliberate the draft ammendments to the Rules of Procedure for the NPC.
Deliberate a draft NPC decision on improving the electoral system of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region.
- Deliberate the work report of the NPC Standing Committee.
- Deliberate the work report of the Supreme People's Court.
- Deliberate the work report of the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

......
Note the use of the term "Deliberate" throughout the document in preference to the US-equivalent term "Accidentalate" and China's dedication to long-term planning AND Regular Review of those plans.
In stark contrast, the US equivalent of a long-range plan seems to be:
"What's for lunch?"

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 5 2021 6:18 utc | 83

Passer by #56

I think nationalism and self respect is way stronger than that. Especially in Europe with its millennia of invasions and waves of migration.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 5 2021 7:01 utc | 84

re : jiri | Mar 5 2021 3:57 utc | 73. "The US has 10,000 nuclear weapons. It only needs to use a few hundred at most to destroy its main rivals in such a way that they don't rise again for the next few centuries . . . If a few million deaths are OK to hold on to Iraq, it is logical that a few billion is worth it for the whole planet. The US could also suffer damage.But then the US has also never been shy about losing lives in the US to maintain its hegemony.

Sorry, if the US uses nuclear weapons anywhere, all bets are off about who will survive. The US would do more than "suffer damage", especially if it gets into a direct military conflict with Russia and/or China -- unless you consider nuclear armageddon and nuclear winter to be "damage".

Posted by: Perimetr | Mar 5 2021 7:18 utc | 85

[The US could also suffer damage.But then the US has also never been shy about losing lives in the US to maintain its hegemony.

Interesting times ahead. The US goal of full spectrum dominance is on schedule and raring to go.

Posted by: jiri | Mar 5 2021 3:57 utc | 73]

The US do not have a functional Nuclear Shelters for their citizens. That's a first.
It's also do not have nuclear proofed infrastructure such as power infrastructure, farms, water system, etc.
It doesn't have citizens cohesion necessary to survive shattered government authorities (easy to riot, looting, and murdering happen. Too divided)
Nor it trained or can be controlled in any nuclear warfare scenario protocols to reorganize and rebuild (recent covid measures reveals their Karen mentality).
It never have or achieve food securities and independence.
It never have energy independence.
It's industrial sector hollowed up with middle managerial class the one that have the knowledge to ensure their crews and workers can remain in production rapidly aging and or moving aboard with no replacement due to corporate 'restructuring' culture (no regular s became senior enough to have their level of experience).
I can go on and on of how delusional your statement is but I'll just stop for now because it's dumb when you have to specifically point this out.


The only one that can take nuclear war and win their race for rebuilding perhaps just Russia.

Posted by: Lucci | Mar 5 2021 9:43 utc | 86

@4 dsfco
If Russia and China really ever formed a bloc Europe and several countries in the Middle East and Asia would immediately switch firmly into the American camp and form a bloc, too. That`s precisely what Washington wants! Bejing does the opposite, making deals with key allies of the USA, like recently the EU, Japan, Australia, New Zealand (RCEP) etc. - thus stalling the US efforts. The "Eurasian Bloc" is a Russian wet dream but it`s not in the interest of China.

@42 Passer by
You are reading this wrong. It says in sweet EU diplomacy talk: "Accept a partnership on equal level if you want our continued support."

Posted by: m | Mar 5 2021 10:33 utc | 87

Just as a pointless aside, I dragged out my old DVD of a mid-1980s British comedy called "Whoops Apocalypse", about the events leading up to nuclear Armageddon. Hilarious, despite the grim plot.

The US President is a man way out of his depth (obviously Ronald Raygun), while the British PM is clinically insane.

So far, so normal...

But it was the depiction of the Soviet leadership that is most striking: apparatchiks so interchangeable that when the Soviet Premier has a heart attack while meeting the US Ambassador they simply drag the body out and wheel in a replacement as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

But look at the world now: the recent Presidential election was between two men of pensionable age, with the "winner" showing definite the signs of dementia. While over in the Kremlin there is a man who - whatever faults he may have - is definitely not an apparatchik and certainly is not sclerotic.

Difficult to come by, but if you ever get the chance then do yourself a favor and watch the show. It is a work of absolute genius from start to finish.

Posted by: Yeah, Right | Mar 5 2021 10:59 utc | 88

"U.S. allies will further distance themselves from it."

If the author thinks that Australia will therefore stop grovelling and abasing itself before the US, he's very much mistaken.

Posted by: Boot Hill | Mar 5 2021 11:12 utc | 89

We all post in blog comments, we all have strong opinions. How often do we though go back to earlier years and read our comments though? How often were we wrong? Or right? Its like formulating theories on how the universe functions while only dealing with the obvious physical manifestations whilst ignoring the various planes that are unseen or unknown. The result is that we make the available facts fit our theories not the other way around, why else would ideas differ so much? Not every person that disagrees with you is a drooling idiot, they just have a different but equally limited view of the same phenomenon.

Posted by: Gravel Rash | Mar 5 2021 11:59 utc | 90

@90 Gravel Rash ... "why else would ideas differ so much?"

John Maynard Keynes, when criticized for changing his stance on monetary policy: "When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?"

A smart man.

Posted by: Yeah, Right | Mar 5 2021 12:36 utc | 91

Gravel Rash @Mar5 11:59 #90

equally limited view

You go too far here.

Commenter's experience and motives vary. Some have a stronger historical knowledge. Some are more cynical while some are more inclined to give TPTB the benefit of the doubt. Some are biased by ideological blindspots. Some are paid to influence.

moa Readers get a spectrum of opinion. Some Readers will delight at viewpoints that they share, others will give more weight to opinions from commenters that are most independent and most knowledgeable.

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 5 2021 13:47 utc | 92

On the Dollar Standard today:

Fed lures banks to buy unwanted US Treasuries

I recommend everybody to read it all, but here's the crucial paragraph for the topic being discussed here:

Foreigners, who took up a great deal of Treasury debt during and after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, have stopped buying Treasuries. China, the largest official holder of US government bonds, isn’t motivated to bail America out at the moment.

This Treasury debt buying spree during 2008-2009 is what the American people still call "the Obama Recovery". In fact, Obama had nothing to do with it: it was China that saved the USA from collapse in 2008 as it bailed it out.

But now it's different. On the USA is buying USA. The problem here is that we aren't talking about manufacturing and commodities, but fictitious capital: you know something's wrong when you have to buy your own debt in order to create a raison d'être for your own debt's existence.

Posted by: vk | Mar 5 2021 13:54 utc | 93

Posted by: Gravel Rash | Mar 5 2021 11:59 utc | 90
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Mar 5 2021 12:36 utc | 91
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 5 2021 13:47 utc | 92

I think you all make sound points.
We do indeed become too fond of our own theories sometimes. It has a name: Dogma.
We do indeed not all live in the same part of reality, or in the same way, and that is as it should be.
And that may often explain why we see the world in different ways.
How we see the world is learned, not given.
And that goes on all life long, and that is as it should be.
And Jack is right. What you get here is more to consider with less attendant bullshit.
There is an old hacker saying: "Your mileage may vary (YMMV)".
That's the spirit.

Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 5 2021 14:03 utc | 94

Bankers rule the world. Corporations are international fiefdoms serving the banks. The deep state is just the goon squad to steal resources from locals, and to kill any uppity serf who might have any aspiration for freedom. Trump was for show, so as to turn the guns on pesky, uppity, and white Americans. I am both dreading and please they hate my side. Biden is the senile old coot who just signs proclamations. The real advantage to Biden is he doesn't tweet to stir up the masses. Apparently that was a no, no.

Posted by: Old and Grumpy | Mar 5 2021 15:07 utc | 95

All the democrats have to do is inact standard mail in voting as a federal law. They will never have to worry about losing another election. Who is going to stop them? It has done wonders for California. They have it down to an art form. Every state will have a Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi. Mindless ramblings about the glories of democracy. Fairness and equality for all types! But especially powerful politicians smart enough to marry investment bankers.

Posted by: goldhoarder | Mar 5 2021 15:59 utc | 96

Hoarsewhisperer @83--

Yes, that's quite a list. Pepe Escobar's article today reviews that and more. What's most remarkable is China hasn't had much if any additional COVID troubles as it immediately bottles-up all outbreaks no matter how small and eradicates them. Of course, the populace is even more mindful than it was 14 months ago. Pepe links to this video interview between Wang Huiyao, the director of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization, and Sinologist Kerry Brown of King’s College, London, where "Brown re-examines 250 years of entrenched Western positions on China [and] remarks on how it is 'more difficult than ever' to engage in a reasonable debate."

The economic disparity between China and the Outlaw Empire is vaster than portrayed thanks to Neoliberal, Enron, accounting of GDP which adds in several trillions when they ought to be subtracted, which shows actual GDP as shrinking since the 1990s--and that's the economic reality that got Trump elected.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 5 2021 17:56 utc | 97

Posted by: m | Mar 5 2021 10:33 utc | 87

Not a russian wet dream, there is a reason SCO starts with Shanghai.

And it is not an EU sweet talk either, because a confrontation between some "liberal" world and "illiberal" world is mentioned.

I wouldn't call autonomy being "lets help the US fight Russia", on the contrary this is following a US divide and rule strategy. When two people fight each other the third one wins.


Posted by: Passer by | Mar 5 2021 19:58 utc | 98

@ Ash Naz | Mar 5 2021 3:49 utc | 72

i am sorry i missed your post until now! thanks for replying and checking out the documentary... i hear what you are saying, but i think if you appreciate the idea of trusts as a means of hiding who is doing what with money, while also acknowledging that this opaque system running as the 'city of london' is the most major financial centre in terms of $, then i think it becomes vastly more important to understand what is at play here... for more insight into this system, from a more neutral place - watch peter cain video which runs 1 hour and addresses the same topic from an historians point of view... i think it is really quite important, but if info comes available to alter my view on this - i am happy to reconsider... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oDHnr-bOLM

Posted by: james | Mar 5 2021 21:08 utc | 99

There is some discussion if Russia and China formed a "block" or not.

Newsflash: independent countries cooperate on issues of common interest, and on other issues, not so much.

This is indeed a surprise to many, because it is not the case with the "Atlantic block", NATO and friends, so to speak. The best example was Trump breaking the agreement with Iran and invoking secondary sanctions on anyone and his cousin who dares disobey his decree. Europeans, Germany, France and UK, proclaimed that they disagree, and collectively embarked on the most resolute resistance they could imagine: implored US authorities to get so-called waiver. They did not get any, so they were a bit sad and designed an "alternative payment system". Which did not work. If I recall, they tried with an alternative to the alternative too, with similar results. And they even did not "like" Trump. There are many examples of countries being literally forced to eat their words and follow the herd, to the detriment of their interests. Examples in the other direction are rare.

This is not a "block" but a hegemon with vassals. Lacking a hegemon, any action has to be agreed upon, and that sometimes happens, sometimes not.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Mar 6 2021 13:32 utc | 100

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