US Empire decline

Trump besøger Danmark, og verdens økonomiske og militære supermagt har haft travlt over sommeren med at håndtere konflikter med Kina, Rusland, Iran, Sverige og Tyrkiet. For USA er altid en af parterne i verdens konflikter, og måske vi skulle tale med den amerikanske præsident om netop det?   Onsdag den 31. juli 2019 kunne man læse i de danske medier, at den amerikanske præsident Donald Trump og hans kone Melania Trump besøger Danmark den 2-3. september 2019. Det er en stor nyhed, for det sker kun sjældent, at verdens muligvis mægtigste menneske besøger Danmark. I juli 1997 holdt Bill Clinton tale på Kongens Nytorv i København foran 80.000 mennesker, hvor han takkede Danmark for deltagelsen i krigen i Bosnien. I juli 2005 kom George W. Bush og besøgte Anders Fogh, der sammen to år forinden havde kastet deres nationer ind i Irak-krigen uden FN-mandat. I 2009 kom Barack Obama forbi...

Crop of Book Cover for The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. Photo: Counterpunch.org By Michael Welton August 10, 2019 I first discovered John Mearsheimer’s work in 2014 when he published a courageous article in Foreign Affairs on why the Ukraine crisis was the West’s fault. The blame could not be laid at Putin’s doorstep. From Mearsheimer’s realist political perspective, you had to be pretty dumb to imagine that Putin would permit NATO ships to dock at Sevastopol in the Crimea or wrench the Ukraine into the Euro-NATO orbit. Anyone who has two brain cells to rub together can figure out that Russia would not tolerate such developments. And it didn’t! The Mueller report did not find any evidence, either, of Russian meddling in the US election of 2016. Perhaps I am too optimistic, but the lifting of dense fog around Russia and Ukraine, Russian meddling and far-fetched ideas (espoused...

The Trump administration imposed sanction on Iran’s foreign minister, Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif last night – as if the present intensified sanctions – primary on Iran and secondary on, in principle, everybody else, were not enough already. Here is AlJazeera’s story which also includes Iranian President Rouhani’s and Zarif’s own – witty – response to the move. The Trump administration thereby continues its one-sided provocative tension escalation making it more and more difficult to envision a peaceful solution to what is, in a larger perspective, an ongoing harassment of major regional power and a 7000–year-old civilisation since the CIA-led coup d’etat against the first democratically elected Iran Prime Minister Dr. Mossadegh in 1953. Dr. Zarif – whom I happen to have had the honour of saying hello to at a conference in Tehran and whose work I have followed over several years – is not only one of the world’s...

Trump’s statement amounts to a de facto declaration of war on Iran. Objectively speaking, it is a lie that Iran threatens the US. It is a lie that the US sends aircraft carriers to the region in self-defence. It’s lies as blatant as the one about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. You may think that this is just psychological warfare and positioning. It is not. Because: Over time, this type of statements develop its own dynamics and the US will not be able to back down from what it threatens to do without loosing face. President Trump’s statement is a blatant violation of international law, the UN Charter’s Article 2.4 which states:“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” In...

Former president says peaceful China ‘ahead of us in almost every way’. By Brett Wilkins May 13, 2019 The only US president to complete his term without war, military attack or occupation has called the United States “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.” During his regular Sunday school lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter revealed that he had recently spoken with President Donald Trump about China. Carter, 94, said Trump was worried about China’s growing economy and expressed concern that “China is getting ahead of us.” Originally published at commondreams.org Carter, who normalized diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing in 1979, said he told Trump that much of China’s success was due to its peaceful foreign policy. Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of...

By Gordon M. Hahn April 26, 2019 Three almost uninterrupted centuries of Russian self-comparison, self-assessment, self-identification with the West and ever deeper involvement in the intra-Western geopolitical and imperial competition have come to an end. Harsh lessons Russians have drawn from its three centuries of intimate interaction with the West — its Occidental Era — were reinforced by the post-Cold War failure to create a ‘common European home’ from Vancouver to Vladivostok, leading to the conclusion that Russia had betrayed the meaning of its national seal – the double-headed eagle looking both west and east. Although Russia still references the West as a competitor as well as standard in some respects, Vladimir Putin’s Russia now rejects the post-modernist West and its neo-imperial civilizational, indeed, ‘civilizationalist’ ambitions in Russia’s neighborhood. Instead of seeking to be part of the West or defeat the Western geopolitical paradigm, it seeks along with China and,...

I suppose it is of interest that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have found something to agree about – the criminal indictment of Julian Assange.  Trump is acutely vulnerable to the exposure of truth and Clinton blames her electoral defeat in 2016 partly on what WikiLeaks disclosed about her improper use of a government computer to send private emails. Such are the perverse ways of the deeply unjust. The liberal media is not happy with this indictment, although it also wants to distance itself from justifications for Assange’s claims of journalistic privilege, viewing him as a lone wolf with rogue traits. There are solemn assessments evaluating the narrowly framed government indictment charging cyber-crime, that is, publishing illicitly obtained classified documents from a digital source, apparently an apolitical everyday occurrence for government employees. What is apparently at legal issue is deciding whether or not Assange should be protected by reference to...

Have you ever thought of why virtually everything you hear in the West about China is negative and judgemental? And that it builds exclusively on Western criteria, values and perspectives – and not on an attempt to understand China on its own, as different from the West? Here is a Singaporean diplomat, expert in philosophy and international affairs who, in about 4 minutes, explains it in a delightfully succinct, pedagogical way. His name is Kishore Mahbubani and here is his homepage.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, celebrated its 70th Anniversary on April 4, 2019. Some of us don’t see anything worth celebrating about an incredibly expensive, dangerous and harmful alliance which should have been closed down exactly 30 years ago. Why 30 years ago? Because in 1989, the First Cold War in the Western sphere – Europe – between the Warsaw Pact and NATO came to an end thanks to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. When that happened and the Berlin Wall came down, NATO too should have been dissolved. Its raison d’etre until then had always and unambiguously been the very existence of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact (which, by the way, was established 6 years after NATO, in May 1955) and its socialist/communist ideology. But NATO instead continued to expand – today 29 countries of which 10 former Warsaw Pact members...

The International Criminal Court (ICC) which prosecutes crimes against humanity is under attack again by the Trump Administration for pursuing Americans. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama supported it. George W. Bush tried to close it down but then decided to cooperate with it. Donald Trump is against it and encouraged John Bolton, his National Security Advisor, to publically savage it earlier this month. To be published in May is a first-rate book on the CIA, its paramilitary armies, operators and assassins. The book is still under wraps so I can’t break the embargo by telling you its title and author. All I can say is that it’s meat for the ICC. The CIA crosses the moral lines all the time: Surprise your target, torture or kill your enemy, vanish without a trace. Then deny it. That was and is its intent – as described in riveting, well-researched detail. The whole book...

By Thore Vestby March 27, 2019 To gather national strength, just create an enemy. In Europe, the Americans are doing this daily on many levels, from small businesses to countries and the continent itself. It is apparent from the media coverage last year that China has been designated “the great danger”. The United States is devoting huge resources to discrediting China in Europe. It is mobilising its political and diplomatic corps to get the world, especially Western nations, to believe that if Chinese economic progress continues, the world might collapse. The strategy seems to be to spread insecurity, suspicion and falsehoods, and to threaten misery if countries fail to follow the US. Originally published by The South China Morning Star on March 26, 2019 Washington has threatened retaliation if the EU limits US involvement in pan-continental military projects. It has warned Turkey not to purchase S-400 rockets from Russia. It...

Not so Germany, China and Russia Like the above diagram, it looks dark. For the US. Perhaps that’s the reason you have not seen it on the front pages of the Western mainstream press? Not only does this remarkable Gallup survey – made in the US – tell that Germany’s leadership, i.e. Chancellor Merkel, is the most highly approved by others in terms of leadership. Congratulations to the Chancellor, so well deserved! It also tells that the approval rates turn steadily upward for the two countries which the U.S. – bizarre as it is since they would both make great partners – constantly perceives as enemies: China and Russia. You can find a lot of very interesting and precise poll results for the period 2007-2018 pertaining to all the world’s regions in the report, “American First?” Rating World Leaders: 2019. Above you see the summary ratings for the world, based...