Sunday, January 10, 2021

The American Empire has fallen, though Washington may not know it yet — Nebojsa Malic


This op-ed is substantially in agreement with what I said here several days ago. The Post WWII Era is over. The world is now in new territory. Interestingly also, this coincides with Brexit, too. A world led since WWII by the Anglo-American Empire is transforming.

As an aside, a major purpose of the American-led trade war against China is to prevent Western capital flowing to Asia, which has been a growing trend. Part of this is "Bring the jobs home." But those jobs (investments) are simply moving from China to other Asian countries with less expensive labor. 

Capitalism is cannibalizing itself as it pursues to increase or at least maintain return on capital invested — unless the Empire can colonize those nations or turn them into vassals. This game is getting long in the tooth, especially as dragon spreads its newly grown wings.

Regarding the current polarization in the US and UK, the overwhelming dynamic seems to be nationalism versus globalism. The Post WWII era was characterized by increasing "liberal internationalism" manifesting as "liberal interventionism," which were code for neoliberalism, neo-imperialism, and neocolonialism. This orientation had social, political and economic consequences nationally and internationally that led to the current state of unrest. 

While this is not the only factor involved, it is a principal dynamic. The result has been growing asymmetry that provoked a foreseeable reaction.
Nebojsa Malic, Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT

Monkey see, monkey do.
Chinese, Russian, as well as independent media have lately called attention to the US double standard when it comes to how mass protests and the storming of government buildings are treated and presented in foreign countries vs. at home.
Zero Hedge
Pro-China Authorities Block HK-Protest Website Simultaneous With US Big Tech's Own Crackdown
Tyler Durden

4 comments:

Ahmed Fares said...

A nation can serve its interests or its ideals. If it serves its interests, the benefits are front-loaded and the costs are back-loaded. If it serves its ideals, the costs are front-loaded and the benefits are back-loaded.

America has always put its interests ahead of its ideals. It holds itself out as a beacon of freedom, while supporting the very regimes that suppress those freedoms.

Think Saudi Arabia here for oil and how that led to Americans dying on 9/11 and the war on terror with its $7-trillion cost and rising. Or how US support for the Shah of Iran led to the 1979 Iranian revolution. It's a long list.

35 countries where the U.S. has supported fascists, drug lords and terrorists

Peter Pan said...

Which nations are examples of 'serving its ideals'?

Ahmed Fares said...

Peter Pan,

The Good Country Index measures how much each of the 163 countries on the list contribute to the planet, and to the human race, through their policies and behaviors.

Good Country Index

Looking through the above list, I see mostly Nordic countries, which is what I suspected before even looking it up. Canada is at number 11, the US not so good at number 40. Again, I didn't need a list to know that Canada would be higher than the US.

Which is probably why Americans put Canadian flags on their belongings when travelling overseas. It turns out there's actually a term for that: "flag jacking".

Flag-jacking (French: prise de drapeau) is the act of travelers wearing a foreign flag on their clothing or backpack in an attempt to disguise the country they are visiting from; this occurs most prominently in cases where American tourists wear Canadian flags in an attempt to pass as Canadians. The intention is that by showing the flag of a country regarded favorably by the region they are visiting, they will receive friendlier treatment or service than they might otherwise have encountered.

Flag jacking

Peter Pan said...

I'll have to think about Canada serving its ideals. Multiculturalism comes to mind, but there was opposition to it back then, and there's hostility on the right towards it today. Like the US, we are a nation of immigrants.

I consider the Nordic countries more civilized than Canada.