Western hegemony and globalization appear to be approaching an impasse. This moment of change appears to have been accelerated by the government-engineered lockdowns amid the COVID crisis. How significant is this time in history compared to other major watershed moments of the last 100 years?
Will the world descend into melange of competing anarcho-states, something more akin to a ‘Game of Thrones’ world?
Via Patrick J. Buchanan…
How great a burden can even an unrivaled superpower carry before it buckles and breaks? We may be about to find out.
Rome was the superpower of its time, ruling for centuries almost the entirety of what was then called the civilized world.
Great Britain was a superpower of its day, but she bled, bankrupted and broke herself in the Thirty Years War of the West from 1914-1945.
American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had a flying visit to Europe this week during which he wielded hostile jibes against China and Russia using anachronistic Cold War rhetoric.
It is obvious Washington is trying to divide the world into “us and them” with such polarizing policy. But this ungainly American policy is bound to fail because it does not match the realities of today’s world.
Eric Zuesse, originally posted at Strategic Culture
Patrick COCKBURN
The new Cold War launched by the West against China and Russia is escalating by the day. In a single week, the Kremlin has been unmasked trying to discover the secrets of Britain’s pursuit of a vaccine against coronavirus and revelations are promised about covert Russian interference in British politics. Boris Johnson made a U-turn on Huawei, announcing that it is to be kicked out of participation in the 5G network because it poses a threat to British security, though a curiously slow-burning one since they will only be evicted over seven years.
Gerald SUSSMAN
If it’s an election year, there must be a Russiagate story. The Clintons and their neoliberal progeny, including the current standard bearer for corporate liberalism, have turned the Democratic Party into a branch office of the Deep State Inc., whose propaganda drones, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC act like hired guns for the Office of War Information.
This is likely to lead to many violations of civil liberties committed in the name of national security.
Daniel LARISON
Hal Brands urges us to look on the bright side of decades of destructive international rivalry:
But on balance, the Cold War was a force for equality because the reality of race relations in the U.S. was incompatible with America’s efforts to win hearts and minds in the Third World.
Just when you thought the leaders of NATO could not push the limits of insanity any further, something like NATO 2030 is announced.
After helping blow up the Middle East and North Africa, dividing the Balkans into zones of war and tension, turning Ukraine upside down using armadas of neo Nazis, and encircling Russia with a ballistic missile shield, the leaders of this Cold War relic have decided that the best way to deal with instability of the world is… more NATO.
If the English-language press had done its job, and not parroted press releases that promote vaccination as the only escape from the social isolation we’ve endured the last three months, the public would be asking many questions about the ongoing protests and their relation to the logistics of vaccine trials. To test a vaccine, typically […]
