Things continue to spiral out of control in the U.S. as the myth of
policing fails and anti-civilizational forces move into the power vacuum.
And while I’m still completely committed to the end of the U.S.
empire and its imperial edicts, It’s also not lost on me what’s happening,
who’s making it happen and how they are taking advantage of this.
I warned you President Trump’s near atavistic pursuit of U.S.
‘enemies’ in places like Syria, Iraq, Iran and Venezuela would turn the world
against us. Look at the protests for George Floyd across Europe and tell me
things haven’t changed.
The empire is the
problem. It’s a lesson Justin Raimondo taught me at Antiwar.com
twenty years ago. And it’s only now that that idea has reached
any kind of critical mass.
Are we going to dismantle
the empire in an orderly fashion or a chaotic one? The animals on the streets
have cast their vote. What’s yours?
And while Trump has made a hash of foreign policy in so many
ways, I also told you that he was smart enough to only play the crazy Ivan role
up to the point of actually starting a shooting war.
This is his greatest accomplishment as President. Sadly, it
shouldn’t be that great an accomplishment.
And all detractors need
to remember this, including me. He hasn’t ended existing wars, but he hasn’t
started any new ones. And the U.S. political apparatchiks in D.C. have been
braying for wars for nearly four years.
Trump’s failure, however, is in not understanding that sanctions,
tariffs, and diplomatic strong-arming are acts of war.
They may be a real part of realpolitik but his failure to grasp
the nuances of that have led to the present situation internationally where he
is effectively being ignored in every way that matters.
At the same time he’s dealing with a domestic insurrection that is
both organic and organized, free-spirited and feral.
Here are a list of major incidents over the past week that support
the thesis of the failure of the U.S. empire.
They are all significant.
The first is Iran successfully staring down U.S naval blockade
threats to deliver refined petroleum and replacement parts to Venezuela. All
five tankers made it safely into port and expect another five in the future.
Like with last year’s drone incident and this January’s missile
attack on our bases, Iran called Trump’s bluff when push came to shove.
As Yra Harris said to me in my recent podcast, do
you think the U.S. will go to nuclear war over Turkey? No.
We didn’t do it in 1972 over Taiwan when Nixon sat down with
Mao. We’re not doing it today with Iran, China or Russia. Iran understands
this. Russia understands this. And China understands this.
So, all Trump has as an effective weapon is excising people from
the dollar system, itself the source of most of the U.S.’s real strength,
because the military truly can’t be used anymore like it was in the past.
And that weapon is being easily countered.
That is only accelerating the resistance to the U.S.’s hegemony
in the long run.
Next up is the completion of Nordstream 2. It’s happening. Yes,
Trump and his idiotic sanctions delayed it for a year or so, but that delay
forced Ukraine’s hand to sign a terrible gas transit deal with Gazprom which
will ensure in five years there will be no gas transiting across Ukraine.
So, does that change the dynamic in Ukraine? Ukraine was the
project of Obama, Clinton, Biden, McCain and Nuland. Why on earth would he continue
it today?
End the sanctions. End support of Ukraine. The Democrats will
scream Russia into a vacuum.
The Russian pipe-laying vessel is in Danish waters doing the
work and all Trump accomplished is ticking off the Swiss. None of the legal
arm-twisting worked.
More sanctions won’t stop it.
The pipeline will be finished by the end of the year.
The EU gas directive which forces un-bundling of the ownership
of the pipeline from the gas going through it was nullified by German courts.
Was anyone surprised by this? Germany gets to become the energy
distribution hub for Europe, tying them to Russia. Why would they vote against
that?
All the time, money and political capital spent to stop
Nordstream 2 which was never going to be stopped because of the economic and
political advantages to Germany, have come to naught.
Pipelines are important. They are the seams that bind countries
together. Trump knows this but he can’t stop it.
Putin and Russia now have major energy pipelines connecting them
to two major NATO countries, Turkey and Germany. All because the Obama
administration decided to stop South Stream going through Bulgaria.
So instead of Russia gaining the long-term relationship with and
loyalty of Bulgaria, it has gained even stronger relationships with Turkey and
Germany. If this isn’t a foreign policy own goal of epic proportions nothing
is.
And that’s on Obama, not Trump.
This solidifies Russia’s hold over the Black Sea and gives
Russia the ability to support kicking the U.S. influence out of the Eastern
Mediterranean. It also ensures that Turkey’s adventurism in the Mediterranean
is tempered by Putin, not Erdogan in the end.
When Turkey gets uppity to the point of needing a smack down,
Trump won’t hold the hammer, Putin will. And Trump will need Putin to deliver
that blow to protect Greece and/or Israel and what happens then?
Still think the Empire
needs to be kicked in the nuts by attacking it from within? It’s doing a fine
job of self-flagellation from my seat in the bleachers.
The war in Syria is, effectively, over. So is Iraq. Trump
understands this dynamic but won’t admit it publicly. In reality, he knows
there is little left to do except pull out of the region now. Hence he’s
quietly, for him, drawing down troops in Afghanistan at a far faster rate
than has been officially recognized.
The
Pentagon says that the goal has been for 8,600 troops to be left in the country
by mid-July, and they are so ahead of schedule they say they’ll meet that
number in June, which is just a few days away. The White House, by
contrast, suggested that the US has somewhere in the realm of 7,000 troops left
in Afghanistan and that this is set to drop even further.
Afghanistan first. Then Iraq. Then Syria. If reports of Bibi
Netanyahu’s pet traitor Jared Kushner’s days in the White House being numbered
are true, that timetable could accelerate quickly in the next couple of months
as we approach the election.
The big issue surrounding
the domestic insurrection today is the ruthlessness of the Empire abroad and at
home.
Trump has a chance here
to ‘win bigly’ as Scott Adams puts it, by reversing his worst foreign policy
excesses, lifting some of the sanctions on places like Iran and Venezuela and
reining in the lawlessness of both the jackals in D.C. and on the streets
across the U.S.
But he can’t do that if
people pile on the side of the vandals fomenting insurrection to cover up their
crimes.
