Paul Craig Roberts — How Much War Does Washington Want?

Paul Craig Roberts on another tear.

The government of China, having read Washington’s war plans for war against China and being fully away of Washington’s “pivot to Asia,” in which the “indispensable nation” announced its “safe-guarding of peace” by surrounding China with naval and air bases, understands that it has the same Washington enemy as does Russia.
What the entire world faces, every country, every individual regardless of their political orientation, is a Washington-engineered confrontation with Russia and China. This confrontation is enabled by Washington’s bought-and-paid-for European and UK puppet states. Without the cover provided by Europe, Washington’s acts of aggression would result in war crimes charges against the government in Washington. The world would not be able to enforce these charges without war, but Washington would be isolated.

It's about encirclement of Russia and China to secure The Heartland as the global pivot.

Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;

who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;

who rules the World-Island controls the world."

(Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality, p. 194)

Counterpunch
How Much War Does Washington Want?
Paul Craig Roberts

See also, Russia, Knuckle Under—Or Else! by Norman Pollack

Americans’ self-delusion that a post-Cold War era has been suddenly closed because of Russia annexing Crimea, is incorrect for several reasons. Chiefly, the continuity has never been broken. Each supposed thaw in relations has provided gathering space for primarily US cumulative arms-building, global market-penetration, emphasis on creating a national-security state, with Russia not bathed in innocence yet also hands-down outclassed by America in every department: a broad swath of military intervention, efforts at and success in regime change (implemented through the breadth of paramilitary operations), size of military expenditures (even as measured against gross domestic product), and the degree of ideological conditioning in support of war and the doctrine of permanent war. We speak of Russian totalitarianism, but say nothing about the substratum of ideological mind-bending in the West and especially America conditioning their peoples to equating freedom and democracy with the institutions and practices of advanced capitalism—no other standard on offer (in America the democracy-capitalism equation and consequent narrowing of permissible ideological BOUNDARIES since inception).

Today “Putinism” has become the term of choice for insinuating the combined Hitler-Stalin image as the nemesis of America reaching deeply into the national psyche. Exceptionalism has become all-consuming triumphalism, dulling moral sensibility and demanding conformity—since 1945 a progressive tightening of boundaries already set in place, now adding to capitalist absolutism the vigorous antisocialism which generates increased ethnocentrism and xenophobia. A combination of industrial-commercial-financial might, especially following a world war that devastated Europe and Russia, established the terms from the beginning of America’s claims to global hegemony. Today, from the US perspective, that context of arrogance and superiority has not changed, which makes the emergence of a multipolar power system then and now unthinkable, Russia no matter its policies—whether or not in response to US actions—the implacable foe, a paranoid currently directed as well to China.

There are always economic reasons behind power politics. Who profits from this?