Some geopolitical links

Going back to my title, I quote from the 1997 book of the late Presidential advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives to make the point of what US foreign and defense policy under Trump today is. It is nothing less than application of the Brzezinski geopolitical challenge and the preventive war notion of the Bush-Wolfowitz doctrine in context of today’s emerging resistance to an American sole superpower domination.

Brzezinski, was of course architect of Jimmy Carter’s Afghan war against the Soviet Army using Mujahideen Islamic terrorists trained by the CIA, Saudi Intelligence and Pakistan ISI.

In 1997 he wrote that it was “imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America.” He further declared, “Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances…a grand coalition of China, Russia, perhaps Iran…Averting this contingency…will require US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.”

When we add to this the recent Pentagon National Defense Strategy document that defines Russia and China as the greatest potential threat to American hegemony, then combine this with the growing ties between Russia, China and Iran since lifting of sanctions in 2015, especially in Syria, it becomes clear what Washington is doing. They are in an all-out effort to break what I call the Eurasian Challenge to the sole hegemon—Russia, China, Iran.

As Brzezinski pointed out, for American purposes of continued domination, it matters not that there are ethnic, religious and other differences between Russia, China and Iran. US foreign policy since September 2001 has increasingly forced those three to cooperate, despite those differences, for what they see as defense of their national sovereignty....

Ironically, the simultaneous opening of a de facto three-front war, even if on the level of economic warfare at present, creates a strategic imperative for the three powers to work even more closely.

https://journal-neo.org/2018/05/14/brzezinski-s-ghost-shapes-washington-eurasia-geopolitics/Engdahl is a good geopolitical analyst, but unfortunately he doesn't know MMT and stumbles into some economic and financial blunders, although not so much in this piece. But ignoring that, he makes some good points, and he is right that the US is now at war with Russia, China, and Iran. Here we go.

https://journal-neo.org/2018/05/14/brzezinski-s-ghost-shapes-washington-eurasia-geopolitics/

NEO — New Eastern Outlook

Brzezinski’s Ghost Shapes Washington Eurasia Geopolitics

F. William Engdahl

See also

China, led by President Xi, accelerated implementation of the concept of so-called Ecological Civilization, eventually engraving it into the constitution of the country. A man who did tremendous work in China, working tirelessly on the Ecological Civilization concept in both China and in the United States, John Cobb Jr., has been, for years, a friend and close comrade of mine. A 93-year-old Whiteheadian philosopher, one of the most acknowledged Christian progressive theologians, and a self-proclaimed ‘supporter of Revolution’, John Cobb’s is a brave ‘alternative’ and optimistic voice coming from the United States.…

Excellent piece that is surprising in many ways, especially the influence in China of an American Protestant theologian deeply committed to ecology as fundamental to Christian doctrine.

NEO — New Eastern Outlook
China’s determined march towards the ecological civilization
André Vitchek in conversation with John Cobb

Also

As of last week, Washington has assembled a considerable list of dangers and disasters, and they are of a piece. I propose we look at them this way, for it is this larger context we have to think about. The Trump administration now has a clear foreign policy, all fleshed out to see. It may be shaped by the president, or the president may be the ventriloquist’s dummy of his minders. This remains hard to discern. But either way, it comes to this: America grows ever more indifferent to alliances other than those dependent on a common adversary. Friendships with other nations seem no longer to matter, or even whether America is admired or respected. All signs indicate we now enter that late-imperial phase when power alone, raw power, is all we have to show the world....

Haspel’s confirmation as CIA director, now all but assured, completes what is effectively a kind of war cabinet, the chief members of which are John Bolton, the new national security adviser, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Widen the definition of war and you can include Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. It is true that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis looks like reason made flesh in this scrum of provincials and ignoramuses. But this is merely because, as a retired general, Mattis favors wars he is certain of winning, and there are not many of those around just now. If there were he would fight them....

 Salon
After the Iran deal: A foreign policy built on arrogance, ignorance and sheer desperation

Patrick Lawrence, foreign affairs columnist for Salon

Also

With Iran back in the news, I found this old file of mine from 1981. Thanks to The Washington Post, in 1976 I spent eight or nine weeks in Iran gathering notes for six front-page articles. The discoveries I made were eye-opening. I had married an Iranian who was raised in England and had who had never gone back to Iran.…

I kept developing sources on Iran, and in Feb. 1981, I wrote the following story. I am presenting it to you because on a military channel they had a program on the Iranian Hostage Crisis, but didn’t mention the following. With greetings to all.

"U.S. Policy in Iran: “What the Traffic Would Bear”
Iranians Killed by U.S. Marines during the First Embassy Takeover

Sic Semper Tyrannis
"U.S. Marines Shot to Kill"
Richard Sale

Also

Insofar as imperialism is about the struggle over and capture of economic territory (which must be broadly defined to include not just geographical territory such as land and natural resources, but also the creation of new markets, sources of labor, and forms of surplus transfer such as are reflected in intellectual property), these changes have created distant demands upon imperialist structures and processes. In the absence of a world state, and in a much more complex and constantly changing politico-economic environment, how can capital (which is increasingly global in orientation) generate the superstructures through which the transfers of value are ensured and the investment risks are moderated and contained? It will be argued that there has been an endeavor to resolve this by refashioning the global institutional architecture in ways that operate to increase the conditions of “stability” for large capital while increasing its bargaining power vis-à-vis working people and citizens, as well as nation-states and even smaller capitalist enterprises.

Neoliberalism → neo-imperialism → neocolonialism.

Neoliberalism is a political theory based on economic liberalism as dominant over social and political liberalism and in which state power, captured by capital, is used to promote the interests of capital and rent-seeking. Neoliberalism uses financial and economic power backed by military power to dominate weaker states and to create vassals and colonies under the cover of economic theory.

Monthly Review
The Creation of the Next Imperialism — The Institutional Architecture
Jayati Ghosh | Professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and executive secretary of International Development Economics Associates