Clarity Press has just
published a new book by Andrei Martyanov, The (Real) Revolution in
Military Affairs ( https://www.claritypress.com/product/the-real-revolution-in-military-affairs/ ).
Martyanov’s
book is, in a way, two books. One is about the revolution in military
affairs that has left the United States behind. The
other is about the self-medicating and propagandistic version of reality that
Americans mistake for reality. Martyanov convinced me that the Pentagon’s war planners need to
upgrade their understanding of war and how to conduct one, but I found more interesting
the fake reality supported by controlled explanations from which Americans seem
unable to escape that is described in the other part of his book. It
turns out that it is not only the insouciant general population but also the
ruling elites themselves who are locked in The Matrix.
Slogans
masquerade as ideas. The media is devoid
of integrity. Fantasies
such as Russiagate, Saddam
Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Russian invasions,
Venezuela represented as “a threat to American national security,” Western
Democracy in which voters decide nothing, self-regulating financial markets—really
the fantasies are endless, and they leave America as the blind man of the
world.
Martyanov
concludes that “the unipolar world is over,” but the neoconservatives don’t
know it or don’t accept the fact; that “American liberalism—a euphemism for
imperialism” has run its course; that the race and gender splits fomented by
Identity Politics and the economic split between the 1 and 99 percenters has
left the United States as an unstable polity with unstable policies.
A country with instability on the
American scale tends to unleash wars, and wars have been the sole activity of
the US in the 21st century, leaving “a trail of destruction, suffering, refugee
camps and death on an industrial scale.” Consequently, the rest of the world is
organizing to put a halt to Washington’s aggression and violent overthrow of
countries.
With
America unable to produce leadership, handicapped by inferior weapons systems,
and left behind by the revolution in military affairs, the neoconservatives
drowning in their own arrogant hubris could easily foment a conflict that will
leave America in ruins.