The U.S. military carried out strikes against two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and groups it backs, the Pentagon said on Thursday, in response to a spate of attacks against U.S. forces in both Iraq and Syria.
With WWIII ramping up in the East, I wonder if there is something else that this fiasco is covering for. For sure, the genocide of the Palestinians is a great distraction from the impending housing market/economic collapse we are all sure to witness (my opinion) and the return of student loans, and the repeal of all the COVID assistance but what else might the bourgeoisie be up to in the US?
Is it really just that this is the end of this empire and that Oct 7th provides the excuse needed to wage a war that the bourgeoisie needs to maintain it’s rate of profit?
I heard someone mention that the conflicts in Ukraine, Palestine, Taiwan, as well as some dubious movements in Myanmar and Thailand, are the formation of a new sort of Iron Curtain built by the west to keep China’s market acquisitions at bay. It could just also be the frontline of a new war. Maybe I’m thinking about it too much.
You’re greatly overestimating the late-stage empire. The brinkmanship and provocation aren’t part of some plan, they’re just ordinary imperialism. What has changed is the empire is too unstable to enforce its own hegemony and so preexisting enemies of the empire have been able to strike major blows against it.
Soft power is dead. Military power is all that’s left. The empire is not in control of any of these conflicts and is on the back foot.
Soft power is dead because the two most recent Presidents of the US are completely incompetent at it.
China and Russia and India are happily projecting soft power even as the US seems to have forgot how.
I think it’s actually due to the decline of the US as a stable partner. Not just Presidents, but the whole government is seemingly unable to function.
In that last sentence you have it right
The Ukrainian situation is Russia demonstrating that the US cannot mask its activities as defensive anymore. It did this by calling the bluff and attacking, and so far the bluff has been called. The US attempted to activate sleeper cells in the caucauses and in Iran to open up additional fronts. They failed. Then Russia activated sleeper cells in Africa and more fronts against the West opened up.
While all this is happening, China is playing the US soft power game and making connections where the US operates - Saudi Arabia, Colombia, other South American countries, a bunch of African countries. And in Taiwan they are allowing the US propaganda machine to demonstrate how violent it is while showing China as the more responsible state, inexorably drawing Taiwan closer and closer.
China is also playing the sanctions games and demonstrating not only that its production is unstoppable at all levels of technology, but also that it has the power and willingness to starve key foreign industries without hurting anyone in the foreign gen pop.
In theory this could all be part of a Western strategy, and if it was we should look at what that would mean. First, the US failed to achieve its objectives in Afghanistan and Vietnam. That should show us what failure looks like. Second, the US successfully destroyed Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Yugoslavia, and successfully devastated North Korea but failed to destroy it.
What would the state of play look like if the West was winning right now?
First, Iran would be having a revolution. Second, Russia would be fighting on multiple fronts. Third, the Belt and Road would be getting sabotaged and countries would be backing out of agreements and not signing new ones. Fourth, the Saudi Royal Family, which is under the aegis of the US for decades, would be snubbing China. Fifth, Xinjiang terrorist attacks would be increasing or at least not decreasing.
There’s just no evidence that the West is in control of the situation. Programs, like East Turkestan separatism, that they have invested in for decades are in decline. Arms superiority assumptions are not bearing out against goat farmers nor against low-tier Russian forces. Spy networks are not functioning where they need them to function. Dozens of world leaders demonstrably feel less compulsion to support the West rhetorically and symbolically.
Wow thank you. That was enlightening. I will have to read it a couple if times.
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Are you implying that Chinese actions in Africa are harmful to Africa and that South America should look towards the School of the Americas instead?
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Go look a bit closer. China’s wave of investment in Africa has coincided directly with a massive increase in development and industrialization in Africa, something that wasn’t achieved over the many decades of Western support.
“Predatory loans” are disingenuous: the value of infrastructure often isn’t in the direct operation of it, but in the knock-on effects that has on the economy at large. If someone told me they wanted to build a subway system for free so long as they get all the fare revenue, I’d tell them to go right along. If someone told me they wanted to build a hydroelectric dam so long as they get all the revenue from selling that electricity to the grid, I’d tell them to get the project started already. Moreover, the entire point of this infrastructure is to move African countries off of their entirely resource-based economies.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/china-debt-trap-diplomacy/617953/
Event The Atlantic, imperialist rag that it is, agrees that the Chinese debt trap is a lie. Just compare IMF loans with Chinese loans. There’s no question that China’s terms are better, lead to better outcomes, and that China has forgiven billions in debt when some of their bets didn’t produce the expected results.
Buitl by the west? None of these conflicts have been started by the west!