Some geopolitical links

Going back to my title, I quote from the 1997 book of the late Presidential advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives to make the point of what US foreign and defense policy under Trump today is. It is nothing less than application of the Brzezinski geopolitical challenge and the preventive war notion of the Bush-Wolfowitz doctrine in context of today’s emerging resistance to an American sole superpower domination.

Brzezinski, was of course architect of Jimmy Carter’s Afghan war against the Soviet Army using Mujahideen Islamic terrorists trained by the CIA, Saudi Intelligence and Pakistan ISI.

In 1997 he wrote that it was “imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America.” He further declared, “Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances…a grand coalition of China, Russia, perhaps Iran…Averting this contingency…will require US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.”

When we add to this the recent Pentagon National Defense Strategy document that defines Russia and China as the greatest potential threat to American hegemony, then combine this with the growing ties between Russia, China and Iran since lifting of sanctions in 2015, especially in Syria, it becomes clear what Washington is doing. They are in an all-out effort to break what I call the Eurasian Challenge to the sole hegemon—Russia, China, Iran.

As Brzezinski pointed out, for American purposes of continued domination, it matters not that there are ethnic, religious and other differences between Russia, China and Iran. US foreign policy since September 2001 has increasingly forced those three to cooperate, despite those differences, for what they see as defense of their national sovereignty....

Ironically, the simultaneous opening of a de facto three-front war, even if on the level of economic warfare at present, creates a strategic imperative for the three powers to work even more closely.

See also

China, led by President Xi, accelerated implementation of the concept of so-called Ecological Civilization, eventually engraving it into the constitution of the country. A man who did tremendous work in China, working tirelessly on the Ecological Civilization concept in both China and in the United States, John Cobb Jr., has been, for years, a friend and close comrade of mine. A 93-year-old Whiteheadian philosopher, one of the most acknowledged Christian progressive theologians, and a self-proclaimed ‘supporter of Revolution’, John Cobb’s is a brave ‘alternative’ and optimistic voice coming from the United States.…

As of last week, Washington has assembled a considerable list of dangers and disasters, and they are of a piece. I propose we look at them this way, for it is this larger context we have to think about. The Trump administration now has a clear foreign policy, all fleshed out to see. It may be shaped by the president, or the president may be the ventriloquist’s dummy of his minders. This remains hard to discern. But either way, it comes to this: America grows ever more indifferent to alliances other than those dependent on a common adversary. Friendships with other nations seem no longer to matter, or even whether America is admired or respected. All signs indicate we now enter that late-imperial phase when power alone, raw power, is all we have to show the world....

Haspel’s confirmation as CIA director, now all but assured, completes what is effectively a kind of war cabinet, the chief members of which are John Bolton, the new national security adviser, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Widen the definition of war and you can include Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. It is true that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis looks like reason made flesh in this scrum of provincials and ignoramuses. But this is merely because, as a retired general, Mattis favors wars he is certain of winning, and there are not many of those around just now. If there were he would fight them....