US Empire decline

Three experts on warfare, weapons and underlying conflicts – and even some views on peace-making – after NATO foreign ministers’ summit in Bucharest. Today I participated in CrossTalk, edited and performed by Peter Lavelle on RT, formerly Russia Today. It was a delightful preparation process that made clear what it would be about, length, participants etc – and treated the invited persons with respect and asked also – professionally – how we wanted to be presented. My praise goes to Aleksandra Danilova, RT, in this regard. You may think that is only natural, but not everybody does it the professional way, I can tell. Please see this half an hour below. You may also enjoy Peter Lavelle’s and my “pushbacks” at each other when I talked about the MIMAC – Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex and militarism. But it ends very nicely. The video – and all of RT’s programs – are on...

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, February 1945. Photo: US Army. Richard Falk – TFF Associate November 23, 2022 Disdaining Diplomacy, Seeking Victory Ever since the Ukraine War started on February 24, 2022, the NATO response, mainly articulated and materially implemented by the U.S., has been to pour vast quantities of oil on the flames of conflict, taunting Russian and its leader, increasing the scale of violence, the magnitude of human suffering, and dangerously increasing the risk of a disastrous outcome. Not only did Washington mobilize the world to denounce Russia’s ‘aggression’, but supplied a steady stream of advanced weaponry in great quantities to the Ukrainians to resist the Russian attack and even mount counterattacks. The U.S. did all it could at the UN and elsewhere to build a punitive coalition hostile to Russia but coupled this with a variety of sanctions and the demonization of Putin as a notorious...

Jan Oberg November 20, 2022 Perhaps you have no time to read thick analytical books, but you are interested in macro-history and how the world changes right before our eyes? If so, the two clips below from 2021 and 2022 are loaded with content that speaks volumes of history, conflict and world order change. And the decline of the West. Watch – and, in particular – listen carefully (here is The Guardian’s longer text with quotes): Something is happening, and we do know what it is, don’t we, Mr Jones…?

Caitlin Johnstone November 15, 2022 Listen to a reading of this article here So it turns out the US intelligence cartel has been working intimately with online platforms to regulate the “cognitive infrastructure” of the population. This is according to a new investigative report by The Intercept, based on documents obtained through leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, on the “retooling” of the Department of Homeland Security from an agency focused on counterterrorism to one increasingly focused on fighting “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation” online. Originally published in Caitlin Johnstone’s newsletter on November 1, 2022 While the DHS’s hotly controversial “Disinformation Governance Board” was shut down in response to public outcry, the Intercept report reveals what authors Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein describe as “an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms” in order to “curb speech it considers dangerous”: According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review,...

Caitlin Johnstone November 9, 2022 Listen to a reading of this article Mainstream punditry in the latter half of 2022 is rife with op-eds arguing that the US needs to vastly increase military spending because a world war is about to erupt, and they always frame it as though this would be something that happens to the US, as though its own actions would have nothing to do with it. As though it would not be the direct result of the US-centralized empire continually accelerating towards that horrific event while refusing every possible diplomatic off-ramp due to its inability to relinquish its goal of total unipolar planetary domination. Originally published in Caitlin Johnstone’s newsletter on October 28, 2022 The latest example of this trend is an article titled “Could America Win a New World War? — What It Would Take to Defeat Both China and Russia” published by Foreign Affairs, a magazine that...

Edward Curtin November 2, 2022 It should now be quite clear to any reasonable person that the Biden administration is hell-bent on destroying Russia and will risk nuclear war in doing so. It has already started World War III with its use of Ukraine to light the final match. The problem is that reasonable people are in very short supply, and, as Ray McGovern recently wrote in “Brainwashed for War with Russia,” the Biden administration and their media lackeys … will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in 77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China …. Most Americans are just as taken in by the media as they were 20 years ago, when they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They simply took it on faith. Nor did the guilty media express remorse – or a modicum of embarrassment. Originally published...

Trust among Chinese citizens in their government is a record 91 percent, the highest seen in a decade. The result is even more striking compared to the U.S., where trust in government is at 39 percent. By Deborah Lehr October 24, 2022 Fraught U.S.-China relations will continue entering 2022. This year, leaders of both countries will be focused on domestic politics, the ongoing pandemic and uneven economic recoveries — challenges that have further added to existing bilateral tensions. Originally published at Edelman on January 18, 2022 It is an important political year in both countries. U.S. President Joe Biden is facing midterm elections with the Republicans likely to gain seats in the House and potentially the Senate, complicating his administration’s ability to implement its policy agenda. By contrast, China’s Xi Jinping is on the verge of assuming a third term as President and is strongly positioned to ensure that his...

You should ask yourself, ask friends, others and decision-makers in the West why the type of important news and conversations like the one I have here – including on nuclear abolition – is possible on Russia’s RT (and explicitly appreciated, watch the end) but not possible in the Western mainstream media. Interestingly, the conversation develops into the issue of the risks of nuclear war and why – I argue strongly – nuclear weapons must be abolished and that the nuclear weapons powers implicitly adhere – all of them – to a philosophy of terrorism. Remember how it was once called the balance of terror – a word that disappeared from the nuclear discourse after September 11, 2001. There are many definitions of terrorism, but one essential element in them all is that terrorism is about deliberately harming or killing civilians, targeting innocent people and not military forces, to achieve a...

By Connor Echols October 17, 2022 A recent piece in Foreign Affairs revealed that Kyiv and Moscow may have had a tentative deal to end the war all the way back in April. Russia and Ukraine may have agreed on a tentative deal to end the war in April, according to a recent piece in Foreign Affairs. “Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement,” wrote Fiona Hill and Angela Stent. “Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.” Originally published at Responsible Statecraft on September 2, 2022 The news highlights the impact of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s efforts to stop negotiations, as journalist Branko Marcetic noted on Twitter....

Former US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland testifies during a hearing on Policy Response to Russian Interference in the 2016 US Elections before the Senate Intelligence Committee at Capitol Hill in Washington, USA on June 20, 2018. (Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) A Cold War true believer who sabotaged Obama’s foreign policy, Nuland is a huge risk at the State Department Medea Benjamin – Nicolas J.S. Davies – Marcy Winograd October 13, 2022 Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her, because the U.S. corporate media’s foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Biden’s pick for deputy secretary of state for political affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia.  Nor do they know that from 2003...

Jan Oberg September 29, 2022 People from the Danish Defence Academy, other military experts – e.g. those of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation – most major Danish media and – of course – the Ukrainian President’s advisor uniformly point – to Russia as the saboteur of the Nordstream gas pipelines near Bornholm, the Danish island south of Sweden. The Danish Prime Minister Frederiksen and Defence Minister Bødskov, however, are a little lower than usual on Russia, pointing out how important – and difficult – it is to get clarity on this kind of thing so far down on the ocean bed. Read Denmark Radio’s always politically correct public service “take”: “Ukraine on the gas leak in Baltic Sea: Russian terrorist attack. Russia wants to create panic before winter, says advisor to Ukraine’s president” and here on the prime time news, TV-Avisen, Defence Minister Bødskov explains that we may never get clarity...

When Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene are the only people objecting to endless war, it’s all gone wrong Editor’s noteThis article was published by “salon” on May 26, 2022. Perhaps better than any other short analysis, it describes and summarises the present situation in the United States of America. For me as editor of The Transnational, it raises of course the question: How is this going to end? But it also highlights one of the biggest enigmas of our time – at least for intellectuals: How is it possible that so many media, politicians and researchers with their names, values and ethics stand behind the United States, believe its official words, faithfully explain, legitimate and support in every way the narrative of the good America – the narrative that completely omits Hedges’ perspectives and is overflowing with fake and every comparison between the reality and the narrative – not...