Pepe Escobar — Why Jihadism Won’t Be Allowed to Die

Geopolitics and geostrategy.

Russia Insider
Why Jihadism Won’t Be Allowed to Die

Pepe Escobar

Steve MacMillan — Brzezinski Wanted NATO to Become the “Hub of a Globe-Spanning Web” of Security Pacts

Another one for the Brzezinski file.

NEO
Brzezinski Wanted NATO to Become the “Hub of a Globe-Spanning Web” of Security Pacts

Steve MacMillan

John Helmer — The President’s Inferiority Complex , His Advisor’s Russia-Hating Obsession, And The Putsch Plotter With The Itchy Trigger Finger

Second installment on Zbig and Jimmy Carter. Another eye-opener.

Accounts such as these make it clear that there are no "good guys." "Our guys" are thugs, too.

These games of liquidating others in the cause of defeating the Kremlin has invigorated Carter, even today when Carter himself is on his last legs. Drawing the Russians on to the field of battle was his and Brzezinski’s aim; Afghanistan, after the Soviet military intervention began in December 1979, was their main chance. Their successors in the White House have the same chance against Russian forces on the battlefields of Syria and Ukraine. Though he has tried, Brzezinski is no longer in a position to advise them that if they don’t dare, they can’t win. Carter is still alive to demonstrate that if they dare, they are likely to lose.

It isn’t sure that’s what KGB trainee Putin scribbled down during his lectures at the Andropov Red Banner Institute in 1984. It’s certain he has noted it down now.

Helmer's accounts explain much about the current Russophobia in the government and press.

Dances with Bears
THE PRESIDENT’S INFERIORITY COMPLEX , HIS ADVISOR’S RUSSIA-HATING OBSESSION, AND THE PUTSCH PLOTTER WITH THE ITCHY TRIGGER FINGER
John Helmer

John Helmer — Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Svengali Of Jimmy Carter’s Presidency, Is Dead, But The Evil Lives On

Former President Jimmy Carter, who employed Brzezinski as his National Security Advisor between 1977 and 1981, the only high official post Brzezinski reached, saidhe “helped me set vital foreign policy goals, was a source of stimulation for the departments of defense and state, and everyone valued his opinion.” Of Carter’s three claims, only the first is true; the second is ironic hyperbole; the third is completely false. If Carter cannot tell the truth now about Brzezinski, after having 36 years to reflect on it, Carter reveals the principal source of Brzezisnki’s power, when he exercised it. For Carter was no innocent ventriloquized by the evil Svengali (lead image, left), as in the original Svengali tale. Carter was simply a bigger and more mendacious fool than Brzezinski, and is entirely to blame for doing what Brzezinski told him to do.

Brzezinski was an obsessive Russia-hater from the beginning to the end. That led to the monumental failures of Carter’s term in office; the hatreds Brzezinski released had an impact which continues to be catastrophic for the rest of the world....

The is a blockbuster article. ZB far worse than imagined and Jimmy Carter caught up in it. Explains a lot about Jimmy Carter. Apparently, he has not yet realized it based on his obit of ZB.

The dominant view is that at the close of WWII, the Allies, led by the US, having learned the lesson of what happened in punishing Germany after WWI, brilliantly "forgave" the Axis powers and generally helped to rehabilitate and rebuild them.

While there is some truth to this and it is the way it was sold through propaganda, this narrative is largely a fiction. The reality is that the Allies wished to integrate the former Axis powers into an alliance (NATO plus Japan) to confront the "rising threat" of communist USSR and China to "the Free World," and to do so as quickly as possible. 

ZB was a product of that mindset. But he combined it with a visceral hate of many Poles for Russia (Russophobia) that was the result of historical "path dependence" aka inter-tribal animosity.

Dancing with Bears
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, THE SVENGALI OF JIMMY CARTER’S PRESIDENCY, IS DEAD, BUT THE EVIL LIVES ON

John Helmer

Also

BURYING THE DOCTRINE OF ONE MORE HELICOPTER – US STRATEGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST IS DYING, ALONG WITH ITS AUTHORS, JIMMY CARTER AND ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI; VLADIMIR PUTIN, BASHAR AL-ASSAD GET TO DANCE ON THEIR GRAVES, DAVID BEN-GURION TOO

Jon Rappoport — Globalists interviewed: they admitted they controlled the government

The origin of "free trade" agreements as a key piece of neoliberal globalization?

Jon Rappoport's Blog

Globalists interviewed: they admitted they controlled the government
Jon Rappoport

Katehon — Alexander Dugin: China, the Great Game, and Globalism

Geopolitics as Trump takes over in the US from the vantage of Alexander Dugin:  Trump sees China as the primary threat to the US and not Russia.

Katehon
Alexander Dugin: China, the Great Game, and Globalism

Pepe Escobar — Shadow play: the New Great Game in Eurasia

So, right in the heart of Bali, spellbound after a serious conversation with a dukun — a spiritual master — it struck me: this should be the new Yalta, the perfect setting for a Trump-Xi-Putin summit setting the parameters ahead for the ever-evolving New Great Game in Eurasia.

Balinese culture makes no distinction between the secular and the supernatural — sekala and niskala. Sekala is what our senses may discern. Niskala is what cannot be sensed directly and can only be “suggested”. Massive geopolitical shifts ahead could not be more shrouded in niskala.

Captive to the vertiginous velocity of the here and now, the West still has much to learn from a highly evolved culture that prospered 5,000 years ago along the banks or the river Sindhu — now Indus — in what is currently Pakistan, and then migrated from the Majapahit empire in Java to Bali in the 14th century under the pressure of advancing Islam.

So, right in the heart of Bali, spellbound after a serious conversation with a dukun — a spiritual master — it struck me: this should be the new Yalta, the perfect setting for a Trump-Xi-Putin summit setting the parameters ahead for the ever-evolving New Great Game in Eurasia.

Balinese culture makes no distinction between the secular and the supernatural — sekala and niskala. Sekala is what our senses may discern. Niskala is what cannot be sensed directly and can only be “suggested”. Massive geopolitical shifts ahead could not be more shrouded in niskala.

Captive to the vertiginous velocity of the here and now, the West still has much to learn from a highly evolved culture that prospered 5,000 years ago along the banks or the river Sindhu — now Indus — in what is currently Pakistan, and then migrated from the Majapahit empire in Java to Bali in the 14th century under the pressure of advancing Islam.

With the Trump era about to begin, our current geopolitical juncture looks and feels like a massive Wayang kulit — a Balinese shadow play.

The historical origin of the shadow play lies most possibly in India, although it has been performed all across Asia. Good and evil coexist in shadow play — but Hinduism seeks to depict the clash as a sort of quirky partnership.

Kulit means skin, covering. Wayang is the puppet, made out of cow hide, painted and braced with sticks that the dalang — the puppet master — manipulates at will....

Asia Times
Shadow play: the New Great Game in Eurasia

Pepe Escobar

Mike Whitney — The Broken Chessboard: Brzezinski Gives up on Empire

The main architect of Washington’s plan to rule the world has abandoned the scheme and called for the forging of ties with Russia and China. While Zbigniew Brzezinski’s article in The American Interest titled “Towards a Global Realignment” has largely been ignored by the media, it shows that powerful members of the policymaking establishment no longer believe that Washington will prevail in its quest to extent US hegemony across the Middle East and Asia. Brzezinski, who was the main proponent of this idea and who drew up the blueprint for imperial expansion in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, has done an about-face and called for a dramatic revising of the strategy.…

The neocons, liberal interventionists and war hawks haven't gotten the message yet.

Unfortunately, Brzezinski’s more cautious approach is not likely to be followed by presidential-favorite Hillary Clinton who is a firm believer in imperial expansion through force of arms.…

Counterpunch
The Broken Chessboard: Brzezinski Gives up on Empire

Mike Whitney

Valentin Vasilescu — Geopolitical goal of the US in the last 70 years

In the last two decades we have witnessed the advancement of NATO up to Russia's borders, along with the challenge of real hysteria concerning the Russian menace. This is one of the measures of the plan followed step by step during the last 70 years by the White House, where the Cold War never ceased. To understand what lies behind this Washington's aggressive foreign policy, we must turn to geopolitical concepts. After the Second World War, experts in geopolitics in Washington took and adapted a geostrategic concept called Heartland Theory, published in 1904 in the Royal Geographical Society by Halford John Mackinder. American foreign policy was built on this doctrine, which resulted in planetary scale military aggression in order for him to put his hands on Russia's huge mineral reserves….

I have explained this previously here at MNE. This "World Island" and "Heartland" strategy was modified by Nicholas Spykman, who added the "Rimland" theory. These are fundamental aspects of international relations, geopolitics and geostrategy as "The Great Game." Zbigniew Brzezinski calls it "The Grand Chessboard" in his book of that title, the subtitle of which is American Primary and Its Geostrategic Imperatives.

It is not possible to grasp the hidden agenda without this knowledge and without understanding the hidden agenda, it is impossible to understand what is going on in the world, and has been not only since WWII but also post-WWI in the drive to counter the growing power of the USSR. This led to WWII as much as anything, along with the determination of the US to counter the rise of Japan in Asia.

Valentin Vasilescu provides an excellent summary explanation complete with maps. Read this and get the picture of what's really going on. It's also short. It's definitely worth reading in full and for those interested in IR, geopolitics and geostrategy, it's a keeper for the maps alone.

Why is the important economically? Because the global economy is made up of nation states that are open economies and therefore influence each other both politically and economically. The British Empire was based on control of world trade, necessary in a colonial era, through control of the sea by the British navy. The US inherited that role post WWII.

This is only the intro. There is much much more going on.

Katehon

Valentin Vasilescu: Geopolitical goal of the US in the last 70 years

Zbigniew Brzezinski — Toward a Global Realignment

A dose of realism in the analysis, whether one agrees with the prescription.

The American Interest
Toward a Global Realignment
Zbigniew Brzezinski

For a Russian view see Katehon

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s American New Strategy Towards Russia And China

Dan Sanchez — They Sow The Cyclone - We Reap The Blowback

How the US created jihadism beginning over forty years ago under the aegis of Henry Kissinger and then Zbigniew Brzezinski down to the present. A sordid tale of intrigue, deceit, and mayhem. You can't make this stuff up.

AntiWar
They Sow The Cyclone - We Reap The Blowback
Dan Sanchez
Also published at DanSanchez.me and Medium.com

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould — America Pivots to Brzezinski’s Delusion of Eurasian Conquest

"We are, and I don't want to sound alarmist but I am alarmed, closer to the actual possibility of war with Russia than we have ever been since the Cuban missile crisis. That's how bad it's been." (Stephen Cohen)

Paul Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Gould — Russia historian Stephen Cohen points to the neoconservative establishment for America's latest outbreak of what can only be referred to as late-stage imperial dementia. Neocons Robert Kagan and wife Victoria Nuland have certainly done the heavy lifting to make Ukraine the staging ground for what appears to be a NATO blitzkrieg on Moscow. But whatever the determination of the neocon plot, they are only the barking dogs of master imperialist Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose grand design has been creeping over the globe since he stepped into the Oval office as National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter in 1977....

Today it's Brzezinski's son Ian who finds Moscow at the root of America's problems regardless of the facts. He recently recommended to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the authority to make war on Russia should be taken out of President Obama's hands and given to NATO's top commander, General Phillip Breedlove; a man accused by the German government of exaggerating the Russian threat in eastern Ukraine by spreading "dangerous propaganda". 

The time has come for the American public to be let in on what US foreign policy has become and to decide whether the Brzezinski family's personal obsession with fulfilling Mackinder's directive for conquering the pivot of Eurasia at any cost, should be America's goal as well.

Sputnik | Opinion
America Pivots to Brzezinski’s Delusion of Eurasian Conquest
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould

Andrew Korybko — The US Is Juggling Chaos And Coordination In Order To Contain China

What to expect geopolitically and geostrategically over the next decade and longer. US policy is permanent global hegemony by preempting any rival.

How the US uses internal and peripheral destabilization instead of military force. Recall the US supporting the Afghan "freedom fighters" against the Russian occupation, that later morphed into Al Qaeda, radical Islamism, and ISIS.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's career began in the Carter administration. He is a Democrat. Hilary Clinton as secretary of state was fully involved in this strategy as was Bill Clinton in Serbia-Bosnia. There is no perceptible difference between the two parties on US foreign policy other than the GOP is more prone to involving the US directly in military action. But the outcome is the same.

Oriental Review
The US Is Juggling Chaos And Coordination In Order To Contain China
Andrew Korybko

Also

The ‘Umbrella Revolution’ and Secessionist Political Contagion in China (I)

The ‘Umbrella Revolution’ and Secessionist Political Contagion in China (II)

The Reverse Brzezinski: The Ultimate Eurasian Dilemma (I)

The Reverse Brzezinski: The Ultimate Eurasian Dilemma (II)

Extremely good strategic analysis of US foreign policy based on implementing Brzezinski's grand strategy.

Bringing everything full circle, Brzezinski has gone back to his basics of luring America’s adversaries into strategic entanglements from which they cannot retreat. His history of instigating the Soviet-Afghan War by having the CIA train and arm the Mujahideen before the Soviet intervention must never be forgotten. The concept of the Eurasian Balkans has largely overshadowed this chapter of Brzezinski’s past, but it does not mean that it is no less important for America’s contemporary strategic doctrine. As the US’ unipolar moment approaches dusk, the dawn of the multipolar era is around the corner. This necessitates a fundamental shift in the US’ previous pattern of offensive advancement into Eurasia, hence the revival of the Lead From Behind strategy.

See also:

Global Research
Going Rogue: America’s Unconventional Warfare in the Middle East
Sharmine Narwani

RT — Berlin and Paris look East: How close are we to a Common Economic Space?

This is an important post geopolitically and geostrategically. It not only articulates Russia's likely take on it, it is quite accurate in my view also.

In the end, the US cannot prevent Eurasia uniting economically from the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic.

North America is simply not positioned geographically to be able to do this longterm, and the US will sap itself by trying to do so, if it doesn't spark a nuclear conflagration that could easily render the entire Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable for centuries.

RT
Berlin and Paris look East: How close are we to a Common Economic Space?

Also

In an interview for Sputnik, Dr. Xu Jin, Director of the Department of International Politics at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, laid down his vision of the Chinese perspective on geopolitics, noting that Russian-Chinese relations serve as a model for relations between great powers....

Xu emphasized that in the Asia-Pacific region, "Russia and China can cooperate to deal with many problems, such as terrorism in Central Asia, or Japan's desire to violate the basic international principles set after WWII." He noted that in Asia, "Russia is China's most important partner, because a good Sino-Russian relationship means a stable strategic rear."

Sputnik 

Cooperation With Russia Allows China to Focus on East Asia – Analyst

As soon as relations with Iran are normalized, Tehran will be admitted to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); currently it enjoys observer status. Washington dreads the move – as it will advance Iran’s Eurasian integration, and solidify a Moscow-Tehran-Beijing political/commercial axis.

Russia already does very good business with Iran – from nuclear plants to weapons sales. No US deal with Iran will come through without a tacit Russian acquiescence – and the Americans know it. Beijing, for its part, tends to cling to the status quo – as in not desiring Tehran to get any closer to the West because that would mean a freer hegemon in its "pivoting to Asia" mode, which China, correctly, identifies as containment. 

Further on down the road, Tehran can use a rapprochement with the West to increase its bargaining power with Beijing. Assuming a deal is reached this summer, Tehran will be in an excellent position to extract concessions – on the economy, security, defense – from its Chinese partners. But the name of the game remains Eurasian integration....

Sputnik
The Real Story on Iran, US, Russia and China
Pepe Escobar

F. William Engdahl — Russia Turns East at Shocking Speed with China Mega Energy Deals

While Western mainstream media concentrates attention on the emissions agreement signed by US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi at the recent APEC Beijing Summit, Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi quietly signed major new energy agreements that will have enormous geopolitical significance in bringing about the very nightmare that US strategists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski warned about way back in 1997 when America seemed indomitable as sole Superpower.…

They reportedly discussed “the current international and regional security situations, regional issues as well as the relationship between the two militaries”, said Xinhua. One can wonder just what those “situations” might be, perhaps the brazen US and EU intervention into Ukraine to give the excuse for financial warfare and a proxy war against Russia, and perhaps the US National Endowment for Democracy’s “Umbrella Revolution” in Hong Kong, designed to rattle Beijing as well as the Obama “Asia Pivot” military focus on China? The Washington neo-conservative hawks and their backers in the CIA, State Department and NSC are managing to accelerate the very Eurasian alliance that is they are trying to destroy.…First appeared:

New Eastern Outlook
Russia Turns East at Shocking Speed with China Mega Energy Deals

F. William Engdahl

See also Hungary’s Viktor Orban: Washington’s New Enemy ImageFirst appeared

John Helmer — Circle The Russian Wagons – Belief In Patriotism, Sacrifice, And Putin Rise In Reaction To Us, Eu Sanctions, Media War

Russians digging in for the long haul?

What he doesn't mention is how long Europe can wait impatiently watching its Russian markets slipping to development in Russia and substitution from non-Western countries.

Dances with the Bears
Circle The Russian Wagons – Belief In Patriotism, Sacrifice, And Putin Rise In Reaction To Us, Eu Sanctions, Media War

John Helmer

Nathan Gardels — Brzezinski: Why We Need a U.S.-China 'Pacific Charter' for Global Stability

Brzezinski throwing in the towel on US hegemony and accepting a bipolar world?

China today is a major power, co-equal economically with the United States. It is militarily significant. And it has a major stake, just as the U.S. does, in international stability.…

China recognizes the reality that there is not longer a single hegemon in the world upon which the responsibility of stability rests. Now we need a shared commitment to achieve that stability. It only makes sense that the two largest and most influential powers establish the foundation of order in which others -- Europe, Japan, India, the ASEAN nations, Latin America -- are, of course, included.

Does the president know? Do the neocons know? Is the Asian pivot still on?

WorldPost

Brzezinski: Why We Need a U.S.-China 'Pacific Charter' for Global Stability

Nathan Gardels | Editor-in-Chief

Not so fast.

Reuters
Obama urges China to be partner in ensuring world order
Matt Spetalnick And Michael Martina

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday a successful China was in the interests of the United States and the world but Beijing had to be a partner in underwriting international order, and not undermine it.

"Our message is that we want to see China successful," Obama told a news conference. "But, as they grow, we want them to be a partner in underwriting the international order, not undermining it."

Translation: Follow our (neoliberal) rules.

Jonathan Larson — Sergei Glaziev—Putin's economic brain

If Putin listens to this advice, the US Brzezinski doctrine is going on the rocks.

real economics
Sergei Glaziev—Putin's economic brain
Jonathan Larson

Francis P. Sempa on Mackinder and Spykman

Mackinder's heartland theory and Spykman's rimland theory of political geography provided the basis for Zbigniew Brzezinski' The Grand Chessboard as a basic document shaping US geopolicy and global strategy. Sempa provides useful summaries. This background is key in understanding US foreign policy, US military policy, US economic policy, and US trade policy. It's about power.

American Diplomacy
Mackinder's World

Spykman's World
Francis P. Sempa

Don Quijones — Is This One of the Men Pushing Obama Toward War With Russia?

Better known now as Mika's dad.

Raging Bull-shit
Is This One of the Men Pushing Obama Toward War With Russia?
Don Quijones