“Authority and authoritarian powers seek to collapse the values, the systems, and alliances that prevented conflict and tilted the world toward freedom since World War II.” clamored one boastful US President Donald Trump as he took the floor of the UN General Assembly.
While many will disagree as to which, or better yet, whose powers stand guilty as charged, Mr Trump does in fact make a point … he would of course need to point the finger at his own navel for accuracy, but for once few will disagree with his statement.
Others, braver than me perhaps could also remark that not much has changed since WWII, except maybe our collective ability to slap a nice veneer of democratic legitimacy over the most obscene of human rights violations – America’s counter-terrorism campaign comes to mind … but that discussion I’d like to reserve for some other time.
Today I’d like to delve into America’s fear, and by America I mean America’s deep-state – those powers that be, which have pulled and tugged at those strings, and thus manifested those realities we have learnt to contend with.
Could it be that America sung its last song through President Trump. I would encourage readers to see beyond the bravado and political posing Mr Trump demonstrated this September to read fear and insecurity in the narrative Washington proposed the world.
Consumed by its binary: “You are either with us, or you against us,” type of set up, the US has learnt to read world dynamics through the lense of war, no longer capable to wield diplomatic restraint so powerful its hegemonic greed has become.
America is a dying empire – a star so swollen by its own importance that it will soon collapse upon its centre and die a withering mess before a court of its peers. Only recently Professor Mohammad Marandi of the Tehran University stated that the US had become a “laughing stock” – an embarrassment not just to its people but all those who mapped their political principles upon that of so-called democratic America.
Beyond the farce that is President Donald Trump we are in fact witnessing the unravelling of a capitalist complex which basis is rooted in neo-imperialism – the last stage Lenin posited once of unfettered capitalism.
If Washington and by that I mean the war complex that, from behind, spins America’s wheel, continues to vehemently, if not clumsily, present Iran as the grand enemy of humanity, so that it could better distract communities from the instability it is itself sowing, its leadership’s credibility has reduced to such a trickle that it is fast losing traction.
A true product of its environment President Trump is together a reflection and a mirror to what the United States has become under the policies its leadership has formulated.
Let us remember that Mr Trump stands an elected state official. He was no more an accident than former President George W. Bush was – and we all know how much the world enjoyed ridiculing him for his love affair with gulf.
For the Donald, Twitter appears to be a better pastime … I would dare say that America has been reduced not to a punchline but 140 sad characters.
Very much like a Ponzy scheme would, Washington needs forever more enemies and threats to resist against, to justify its existence. And very much like any Ponzy scheme would, survival is by definition limited in time … in this particular case the term geography would be better suited since it is territorial hegemony the US craves.
Maybe there lies America’s inherent fault. It is ultimately its hunger for others’ sovereignty that could soon see disappear its own. Interestingly enough America has reproached, or rather, projected its own hunger onto that of others – those infamous others, it views as existential threats. On that front the list has grown ever larger and ever more nonsensical: Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, Syria, Libya …
For all the lead that Washington’s neocons have thrown at the Greater Middle East so that Iran’s resistance could be drowned out of existence, and all manners of reproach against western imperialism silenced, it has in fact managed to empower those it wanted to weaken.
How so you may ask?
I would say that America’s main sin has been to assume that Iran would play by its rules, according to its paradigm. Indeed it has not! Rather than engage Washington and its belligerence, Tehran has exerted patience and political resolve while closely holding on to its principle of sovereign independence.
I would argue that it is Iran’s resilience which ultimately has served as a catalyst and thus inspired other nations to emulate.
The one constant in a region wracked by instability, Iran’s gravitational pull was made strong by its propensity to accompany nations in their national ambitions rather than impose tutelage … and so began America’s descent into the gutters of History.
But America is not one to quietly go into the night. Indeed, the dying empire needs now to hold on to the pretense that it was once – the idea that it was once a great nation under God!
And so the military complex that is the American empire has sent his president to quack a grand quack so that maybe talks of imminent wars could somehow revive Washington’s standing on the international scene. It is relevance the US is desperately reaching for: geopolitical and economic relevance in the midst of a great geopolitical contraction and financial depression.
Unburdened by America’s web Iran quite literally out-waited the “Great Satan” … if not to say outsmarted!
America has lost … it just need to come to terms with it.
Catherine Shakdam is the Director of Programs of the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies and a political analyst specializing in radical movements, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
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