US Empire/West 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...

Efforts to blame Iran for acts of sabotage went nowhere — but this feels way too much like 2003 all over again Last week a senior Pentagon official accused Iran of having sabotaged four oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman on May 12 and of firing a rocket into Baghdad’s Green Zone on May 19. Iran executed these events, he said, either directly or through regional “proxies.”   But instead of creating sensational headlines, the briefing by Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, the director of the Joint Staff, was a flop, because it was clear to reporters covering it that he could not cite a single fact to back it up. The story got only the most cursory coverage in major news outlets, all of which buried Gilday’s accusation deep in stories about the announced deployment of 1,500 more U.S. troops to the Middle East. Relatively few readers would even...

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...

, the US taxpayers are paying US $ 32 million. That is now close to US$ 5000 billion in total! Add to that the tragedy of the absurd: from Vietnam to Syria, 1955 till today or 64 years, there is no documentable evidence that all of its wars, interventions, occupations, meddlings, regime changes have been anything but failures. There is no evidence either that today’s world is a better place than it would have been without these wars, alliances, deterrence and confrontational policies. But there is plenty of hard evidence that the United States of America is in relative decline as a world power. Plenty of facts to show that others – who spend much less on their military and have no Empire – are growing and destined to surpass the US on fundamental indicators in just a few years. As the largest military machine in human history, it has...

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...

Ab At The Transnational, we believe in diversity. And in the likelihood that world events are complex and can be seen from more than one – usually US/Western – perspective. You may have wondered why the, now retired, UN representative for Venezuela, the brilliant lawyer, humanist and poet, Alfred De Zayas, has not been used extensively as an authority of both Venezuela and international law? Well hardly because, like me, you had not heard of him, had you? That’s why we should be grateful to Abby Martin and The Empire Files for having given us this conversation. It debunks – in a fact-based and comprehensive, law-respecting manner – most of what you’ve been told and all of what, as of writing, 54 countries have done in support of the regime policies of the US rather than in support of Venezuela as a sovereign state. And of the UN and its...

January 19, 2019 “The naive and dangerous idea that the U.S. is exceptional has made us a danger to ourselves.” Jeffrey Sachs sits down with Rob Johnson to discuss his new book, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, Columbia University Press, 2018.

I have long believed that the three red lines in Washington that no elected president can significantly transgress without being ejected from the Oval Office are unwavering support for the priorities of Wall Street, the Pentagon, and Israel. With the announced withdrawal of American troops in Syria (and their 50% cut in Afghanistan), transgressed one of these red lines. What is more, he upset what the mainstream media has been calling ‘the last adult in the room,’ the Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, who made the country critically ponder Trump’s transgression by his thinly veiled rebuke in the form of a letter of resignation that has been treated as scripture by such hegemonic media outlets as CNN and the NY Times. It has become clear that Trump transgressed two of the three red lines, a reality further aggravated by the Christmas shutdown of the Federal Government and his babyish tantrum...

Iran’s PressTV today asked me to comment on an official Turkish comment on President Trumps statement concerning the Saudi Arabian murder of Mr. Khashoggi. That gave me the opportunity to say a bit about the relationsship between these two countries, the two largest military powers in NATO – and what that may mean. Furthermore, I was asked to say a few words about whether or not the world situation can become better. In that part I speak about the net destructive role of today’s United States of America and what we may be facing the next few years. If you are busy, my participation begins about 1:35 min into the clip.      

  There is a widely accepted idea among some Americans that Trump does not reflect American values. They are wrong   By Hamid Dabashi In an erudite and timely piece for the New York Times, published just a few days before the midterm elections in early November 2018, my distinguished Columbia University colleague Andrew Delbanco wrote a poignant essay about “The Long Struggle for America’s Soul.” In this learned piece, Professor Delbanco writes passionately about the long US history of human suffering that had come before the cruel behaviours and policies of the democratically elected President Donald Trump, focusing specifically on slavery. “Even free black people in the North …” we learn in this piece, “found their lives infused with terror of being seized and deported on the pretext that they had once belonged to someone in the South. The Fugitive Slave Act forced them to dread every footstep on the...