Empire
of Whiners
By Pepe
Escobar
July
27, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- As a new report by the Army War College tracks
the loss of "US primacy" around the world, it
prescribes more of the same; propaganda,
surveillance and war.
It’s public knowledge that from the point
of view of the Pentagon, the United States faces
five
existential threats:
Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and terrorism,
in that order. Way beyond rhetoric, all Pentagon
actions should be understood and analyzed
under this framework.
Now
global public opinion may have access to an even
more intriguing document; a new
study by the
Army War College titled At Our Own Peril: DoD
Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World. Readers
are actively encouraged to download it and study
the fine print.
Researcher Nafeez
Ahmed has proposed some helpful
decoding
of this “post-primacy” predicament, that took
virtually ten months to be put together.
The
intellectual firepower concerned involved all
sections of the Pentagon scattered around the
world, as well as the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA), the National Intelligence Council,
and proverbial neocon-heavy think tanks such
as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS),
the RAND Corporation, and the Institute for the
Study of War.
All that
for what? To enounce the obvious – that the US
has lost its “primacy”; and to propose more
of the same, as in Orwellian surveillance;
“strategic manipulation of perceptions”, a.k.a.
propaganda; and a “wider and more flexible”
military, as in more wars.
If this
is the best US military “intelligence” can come
up with, peer competitors Russia and China might
as well grab a gin and tonic and relax by the
pool.
Oh you
damn revisionists
The
study is a classic piece of myopic
Exceptionalism – which might at least allow
for some entertaining value if presented
with some rhetorical flourish.
Russia
and China are duly described as “revisionist
forces” (doesn’t that sound like Mao in the
1950s?) which should be prevented from pursuing
their own legitimate national interests. Why?
Because that represents a threat that undermines
US hegemony.
Readers
of the study should desist from finding any
concrete evidence that both Russia and China
pose a serious threat to US national security.
They should rely on US corporate media, which
blares all these “threats” 24/7.
No
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- No
Government
Grants
-
This
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Media
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It gets
curioser and curioser when it comes to Iran and
North Korea – both also demonized non-stop
by media and US Think Tankland. The problem is
not that they pose a nuclear threat; the problem
is they are obstacles to the smooth expansion
of the “US-led order.”
In
parallel, what really irks US military intel are
“murkier, less obvious forms of state-based
aggression”. As in the “threat” represented
by Sputnik and RT, for instance.
“Facts”,
any real facts that challenge the legitimacy
of the hegemon are considered by the study as a
major driver of US decline. OK, the Pentagon
does not do irony, so don’t expect any expert
to acknowledge that these real facts
simultaneously unmask the Empire’s actions and
debunk its rhetoric.
The
study’s circular logic is a hostage of – what
else – imperial logic; US military power is
essentially depicted as a key tool to coerce and
force other nations into following the Empire’s
diktats.
Which
leads those “experts” to bomb the concept
of defense to smithereens — and turn it
into offense; the Empire always reserves itself
the right to go heavy metal when it pleases. If
any actor questions this sovereign imperial
right – for instance, North Korea launching a
missile or China creating facts on the South
China Sea – this becomes a threat, and it must
be eliminated.
Even
progressive US
analysts still don’t get why, after a short 70
years of hegemony, American geopolitical primacy
in Eurasia is at an end. As much as the internal
war between Trump and the deep state may be
accelerating the process, this is still all
about the post-9/11 world.
The
adventures of the War Party – from Afghanistan
and Iraq to Libya and Syria; the US government’s
astonishing, unpayable debt; the steady erosion
of the petrodollar; the inexorable march
of Eurasia integration – reflected in US
military obsession with the three key vectors,
China, Russia and Iran.
These are
only some of the factors involved.
Beijing
and Moscow don’t need to be reminded by studies
like this of the real game – as in US proxy wars
deployed from Ukraine to the South China Sea
with the ultimate target of disrupting the 21st
century’s top story; Eurasia connectivity.
Same
for Tehran, which identifies very well the
multiple machinations, instrumentalizing the GCC
petrodollar gang, aimed at perpetuating a Sunni-Shi’ite
fratricidal war.
Which
brings us to “the next war” insistently
monopolizing the rumor mill in the Beltway. Were
the US government foolish enough to provoke a
war against Iran, that would be due to the
Exceptionalism mindset; an economy where endless
war is the only tool to boost GDP and pay
off debts; deep state hegemony; and the eternal
Return of the (Neocon) Living Dead inside Think
Tankland, the CIA and the Pentagon itself.
“Post-primacy”? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Pepe
Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst.
This article was first published by
Sputnik
-
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.