Tag Archives: American Empire

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, says the escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Iran today is a continuation of two decades of U.S. policy disasters in the Middle East, starting with the 2003 run-up to war with Iraq under the Bush administration. “America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no end in sight? It’s part of who we are. It’s part of...

Prof. Harry Targ, in his important piece “United States foreign policy: yesterday, today, and tomorrow,” (MR online, October 23, 2919), reminds us of the factional dispute among U.S. foreign policy elites over how to maintain the U.S. empire. On the one hand are the neoliberal global capitalists who favor military intervention, covert operations, regime change, strengthening NATO, thrusting China into the enemy vacuum and re-igniting the Cold War with Russia. All of this is concealed behind...

This post is a review of British historian Adam Tooze's histories of WWII (The Wages of Destruction) – and of WWI (The Deluge), which Alastair Crooke applies to current world affairs based on US strategy to diminish political and economic rivals through economic (trade) policy that is really economic warfare. He posits that Tooze's work establishes a precedent for thisStrategic Culture FoundationThe Great Switch: The Geo-Politics of Looming Recession Alastair Crooke | founder and director of...

Backgrounder on Afghanistan. Not really about Trump except the first few paragraphs. Trump just talking though his butt. The real not-so-hidden agenda lies elsewhere. And, as everywhere, "follow the money."Asia TimesPepe Escobar: How to kill 10 million Afghans and not win Pepe Escobar

The reason that Donald Trump is considered so outré is that he is replacing the genteel veneer of "soft power" of the ascendant American imperium with hard power. America the "liberator" is showing its colors as the bully. Elite critics of Trump don't disagree with what he is doing, but rather how he is doing it. No one is supposed to see it, and Trump is making things obvious.CounterpunchThe US Imperium Comes Out Binoy Kampmark

It's hard to believe an American Ambassador would say this but in the Trump era, it's completely normal... Just being honest. It's called imperial prerogative. Historically, this is the tradeoff when there is an empire. The American Empire is just being true to form.HullaballooYou wanna trade with the US? Well, we own you if you do.digby

Oh, my. The Fourth Reich? And not Germany this time?Times are getting rude.The Vineyard of the SakerWhy Russia Has No Right to Surrender to the West Aleksandr Neukropny Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina SiardSee alsoThe Ghion HournalDestroying The Laws Rainer SheaSee alsoThe National InterestDon't Let Ukraine Drag America into War Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest

President Putin sees this plainly: “The Americans keep on indulging in these games as the actual goal of such games is not to catch Russia in violations, and compel it to abide by the treaty; but to invent a pretext to ruin that treaty – part of its belligerent imperial strategy”. Or, in short, to impose a ‘rule-less, US, global order’. What is happening is that Bolton and Pompeo seem to be precisely taking Trump back to the old 1992 Defence Policy Guidance document, authored by Paul...

Introduction: Few, if any, believe what they hear and read from leaders and media publicists. Most people choose to ignore the cacophony of voices, vices and virtues.This paper provides a set of theses which purports to lay-out the basis for a dialogue between and among those who choose to abstain from elections with the intent to engage them in political struggle.… James Petras WebsiteA Decalogue of American Empire-Building: A DialogueJames Petras | Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at...

Turkey joins Russia in declaring it is under US attack. Erdogan said those who plotted against Turkey in a failed coup attempt in July 2016 were now trying to target the country through its economy, and pledged to fight back. He did not name any countries. This is how WWIII starts. Leaders don't choose such words lightly.The US now engaged in hybrid war with China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. Did I forget anyone?ReutersTurkey is a 'target of economic war',...