Andrei Martyanov — The Russian Peace Threat by Ron Ridenour

Short review of Ron Ridenour's new book. Ridenour is a foreign policy realist.

Reminiscence of the Future
The Russian Peace Threat by Ron Ridenour
Andrei Martyanov

John Perry — The True Nature of US Interventions

‘Make America Great Again’: Trump’s slogan seems both to yearn for a time when the United States had more influence, and to call for its pre-eminence to be restored. In its own way, it asserts that the US is – or should be – different. In fact it was only Trump’s predecessor, Obama, who was the first president to talk regularly about American exceptionalism, yet to Trump it is something that is long lost and it is his job to recover it. Yet belief in the US’s exceptional nature has been a constant feature of the country’s history, whoever has been president, and continues right up to the present day.

Its starting point in the early nineteenth century was the ‘Monroe doctrine’, the assertion of the US’s pre-eminent power in the western hemisphere, replacing the old colonial powers such as Spain and Portugal. Its domestic counterpart was the US’s God-given ‘manifest destiny’, which justified settlement of the whole North American continent, regardless of the presence of the people to whom much of the land already belonged. Whereas the Monroe doctrine at first reflected a degree of respect for the then newly emerging Latin American nations, by the end of the century it only thinly disguised a new kind of imperialism which justified US intervention anywhere in the hemisphere.

Soon after the end of the second world war, the former ‘great powers’ began to give up those colonies that had not already been returned to their rightful owners. But, fuelled by the cold war, the US began a new phase of imperialism. Dan Kovalik, in his new book The Plot to Control the World, quotes a report, which he says is almost certainly an underestimate, that the US interfered in 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000. And even that number omits more serious interventions such as US-provoked coups, assassinations and invasions. Yet, as Kovalik says, ‘American exceptionalism’ requires a belief that the US is a unique force for democracy and freedom in the world. This enables the New York Times to justify US interference in the affairs of other countries because the US is unique in using its power to challenge dictators or otherwise promote democracy, whereas Russia (say) more often intervenes to disrupt democracy or promote authoritarian rule... 

Counterpunch
The True Nature of US Interventions
John Perry

Links — 12 September 2018

The Vineyard of the Saker
The US State Department Openly Outlined Its Plans to Guarantee America’s Global Primacy

Sergey Latyshev
Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard

Russia Observer
Obama Marries The Liberals To The Neocons

Patrick Armstrong

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Harper: Neocons Keep Marching Through the Institutions

Global Inequality
On the Threshold of the Third Globalization: why Liberal Capitalism might Fail?

The Americas, armed trade and cheap energy: review of Kenneth Pomeranz's “The Great Divergence”
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

economicintesect.com
Extremism in America
Frank Li | Chinese ex-pat, Founder and President of W.E.I. (West-East International), a Chicago-based import & export company, B.E. from Zhejiang University (China) in 1982, M.E. from the University of Tokyo in 1985, and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 1988, all in Electrical Engineering

The Unz Review - 9 July 2017
The Russo-Chinese "Alliance" Explained
Andrei Martyanov

Mike Whitney — What the Media isn’t Telling You About North Korea’s Missile Tests

Here’s what the media isn’t telling you about North Korea’s recent missile tests.
Last Monday, the DPRK fired a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan’s Hokkaido Island. The missile landed in the waters beyond the island harming neither people nor property.

The media immediately condemned the test as a “bold and provocative act” that showed the North’s defiance of UN resolutions and “contempt for its neighbors.” President Trump sharply criticized the missile test saying:

“Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world. All options are on the table.”

What the media failed to mention was that, for the last three weeks, Japan, South Korea and the US have been engaged in large-scale joint-military drills on Hokkaido Island and in South Korea. These needlessly provocative war games are designed to simulate an invasion of North Korea and a “decapitation” operation to remove (Re: Kill) the regime.

North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un has asked the US repeatedly to end these military exercises, but the US has stubbornly refused. The US reserves the right to threaten anyone, anytime and anywhere even right on their doorstep. It’s part of what makes the US exceptional….

The US has a bad case of don't do what I do but what I tell you to do. The US is provoking not only North Korea militarily, but also China, Russia, and Iran. But the US considers these countries preparing to defend themselves to be an unacceptable provocation and national security threat.

In any event, Kim has no choice but to stand firm. If he shows any sign of weakness, he knows he’s going to end up like Saddam and Gaddafi. And that, of course, is what’s driving the hyperbolic rhetoric; the North wants to avoid the Gaddafi scenario at all cost. (BTW, the reason Kim has threatened to fire missiles at the waters surrounding Guam is because Guam is the home of Anderson Airforce Base which is the point-of-origin for the B-1B nuclear-capable bombers that have been making threatening flyovers on the Korean Peninsula for some time now. The North feels like it has to respond to that existential threat.

Wouldn’t it help if the media mentioned that fact or does it better serve their agenda to make it look like Kim is barking mad by lashing out against the ‘totally innocent’ United States, a country that only seeks to preserve the peace wherever it goes?...

To what end?

Bottom line: The North is ready to deal. They want negotiations. They want to end the war. They want to put this whole nightmare behind them and get on with their lives. But Washington won’t let them because Washington likes the status quo. Washington wants to be a permanent feature in South Korea so it can encircle Russia and China with lethal missile systems and expand its geopolitical grip bringing the world closer to nuclear Armageddon.

That’s what Washington wants, and that’s why the crisis on the peninsula will continue to boil.

Counterpunch
What the Media isn’t Telling You About North Korea’s Missile Tests

Mike Whitney

Publius Tacitus — Our Grand American Delusion

City on a Hill? Leader of the Free World? Defender of Freedom? How about a mass of delusional crazies?

See? It's not just us saying this.

Publius Tacitus gets the economics wrong about borrowing by the currency issuer in its own currency and public debt, but his background is either military or intel, or both, so it is not in his realm of expertise.

Sic Semper Tyrannis 

Our Grand American Delusion

Publius Tacitus

Robert Parry — Castigating Trump for Truth-Telling

President Trump says much that is untrue, but he draws some of Official Washington’s greatest opprobrium when he speaks the truth, such as noting that senior U.S. officials have done a lot of killing, writes Robert Parry.

And torture, and abduction.…

Consortium News
Castigating Trump for Truth-Telling

Robert Parry

Patrick Armstrong — Trump Day One

My interest, as a non-American, is, first and foremost, in Washington’s future foreign policy (which really means, these days, war – there hasn’t been much of anything else this century). As I wrote four months ago “To me, the choice in the US election is utterly simple: the most important thing is stopping the perpetual wars of the New American Century.” I believed then and believe more strongly today that US President Trump carries the hope that this will be so....

The theme of his approach to foreign relations is this:

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.…

“The understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first“; when did we last hear an American President promise that? Indeed the theme of the Twenty-First Century has been that only “Exceptional America” has important interests. From a former Vice-President: “the most powerful, good and noble country in the history of mankind“; from a former President: “I believe America is exceptional, in part because we have shown a willingness… to stand up, not only for our own interests, but for the interests of all.” What other nation’s puny, erroneous and mundane interest can possibly stand against such glory, righteousness and sanctity?….

Russia Observer
Trump Day One
Patrick Armstrong

John Pilger — The Coming War on China

The real fake news about China and the "threat" it poses to America— US global hegemony, that is.

Scary stuff.

Counterpunch
The Coming War on China
John Pilger

Michael Brenner — How America Expunges Bad Memories

America is a place that expunges unpleasant memories that belie the happier vision of its “exceptionalism,” most notably the brutal ugliness of the Vietnam War and more recent war crimes in the Middle East, observes Michael Brenner.

Professor Brenner might have started with the Native Americans and African slaves. However, his point that when even recent unpleasant memories are buried under the veneer of exceptionalism, the country has a problem.

Now American "humanitarians" are wringing their hands and shredding crocodile tears over the "war crimes" that Assad and Putler are committing in Aleppo, while continuing to supply terrorists with arms, funneling arms to Saudi Arabia for its war on Yemen, and considering a military response in Syria that Gen. Dunford recently testified will kill a lot of civilians.

Consortium News
How America Expunges Bad Memories

Michael Brenner | Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh

Branko Milanovic — Reframing the world

I listened this morning to a brilliant talk by Danny Quah on what changes in the world during the past twenty years or so portend for the intellectual leadership of the world, or to be more specific, how the political and economic life should optimally be organized given the global changes in economic power that we are witnessing. In the beginning of his speech Danny defines the two tenets of the Western (or as he puts it, American) framing of an optimal society: economic freedom and democracy. This is the well-known paradigm of liberal capitalist democracy that, according to Fukuyama and later Acemoglu and Robinson, represents the end point of human evolution. Danny links it, rightly in my view, in addition to “American exceptionalism”, that is to the belief that America, by its own example, shows to the world how it should be organized, and that ultimately, the way the world will end up by being organized will be as a form of a “Greater America”.

But then Danny says, something has gone wrong with this approach….

Important to be thinking about.

Global Inequality
Reframing the world
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The so-called liberal view is paradoxical in that liberalism is based on multi-polarity on one hand and on the other, opposing any view that self-styled "liberals" regard as threatening their conception of liberalism.

In the first place, there are many conceptions of liberalism based on different mixes of social, political and economic liberalism. This results in many possible organizational configurations. America is just one of these and its success historically has depended more on America's place in history and historical accident than the determinative result of an organizational idea. The same conditions do not exists elsewhere, so it is unlikely that the American organizational model can be exported successfully to any great degree.

Secondly, American "liberalism" based on "American exceptionalism" is itself a narrow form of liberalism. Based on what criteria can it claim to be"best"? American "exceptionalism" is largely imagined based on selectivity that is influenced by cognitive biases like nativism.

American liberalism is unlikely to be accepted as a paradigm in a so-called liberal world that is open to multipolarity, for the simple reason that most of the world's people are not Americans and have their own viewpoints that have been shaped over millennia by history and culture. Lockean liberalism was largely born in 18th century England and exported to colonies, where it became the organizing idea behind the founding the United States of America. But British and American liberalism are different and have developed in different ways. Liberalism was adopted in Continental Europe subsequent to WWI and WWII, and again then result was hardly homogenous.

America needs to get over itself and recognize that history is an organic process because it is an artifact of biological evolution as a complex adaptive system. Evolution is experimental and emergence is ongoing. 

Liberalism is a very recent phenomenon on the historical scene and it is far from established how viable it is as an evolutionary trait. There are pros and cons. Moreover, there are twists and turns based on the paradoxical nature of a liberalism as an organizing idea and the tradeoffs involved.

Hillary Clinton at the American Legion conference on American exceptionalism

Excellent takedown of both HRC and Trump, but mostly Hillary.

Consortium News
Hillary Clinton’s ‘Exceptionalist’ Warpath

Daniel Lazare

See also

The Scuffle over ‘American Exceptionalism’

Paul R. Pillar

American foreign policy has not worked for decades. Hillary believes all of its myths to her core. This is scary.

Salon
It is urgent that she’s stopped: Hillary Clinton’s nightmare neoliberalism and American exceptionalism makes the world a dangerous place 

Patrick L. Smith

Helena Norberg-Hodge and Steven Gorelick — Globalization and the American Dream

In reality, however, globalization is a continuation of a broad process that started with the age of conquest and colonialism in the South and the enclosures and the Industrial Revolution in the North. From then on a single economic system has relentlessly expanded, taking over other cultures, other peoples’ resources and labor. Far from elevating those people from poverty, the globalizing economic system has systematically impoverished them.…

"Progress" on the backs of others.

Counterpunch
Globalization and the American Dream
Helena Norberg-Hodge and Steven Gorelick

David F. Ruccio — American exceptionalism

The rule is, as countries get wealthier, their annual hours worked per capita tend to decrease.

But the United States is the exception. Americans work longer hours than people in any other advanced country (and just a bit less than people in much poorer countries).

American exceptionalism therefore means that people are forced to have the freedom to work longer hours in order to achieve a shorter life expectancy, less leisure time, and higher levels of inequality than in other advanced countries.

Occasional Links & Commentary
American exceptionalism
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Ruposters — Polish PM to John McCain: "You Have No Right to Lecture Us"

Smackdown.

Fort Russ
Polish PM to John McCain: "You Have No Right to Lecture Us"
Ruposters
Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ

Sputnik — Werewolf Brzezinski Against 'Chauvinist' Putin

In the early 2000s, Alexander Zinoviev wrote in his book The Russian Tragedy: "The main result of the change that occurred in the world is the fact that the United States has followed in the footsteps of Nazi Germany. There also developed an ideology of global aggressors, comparable with the racial ideology of fascism and Nazism, which asserts the supremacy of Western nations over the rest. The latter are considered subhuman."

Clash of civilizations?

While not focusing too much on the many examples of Brzezinski's ingenious mythmaking, we should note, however, that this character still has significant influence on the formulation of US foreign policy. Unfortunately, his speech at the Wilson Center in June is not just senile dementia, but a quintessence of views held by certain politicians in the United States, who believe that there should be no place in the world for nations, not to mention civilizations, independent of the United States.

Sputnik | OpEd
Werewolf Brzezinski Against 'Chauvinist' Putin
Vladimir Lepekhin, | director of the EurAsEC Institute, a member of the Zinoviev Club at Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency

Also

Andriy Biletsky, a Ukrainian parliamentarian who also leads the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, has taken a concept straight from academia and mixed it with his own racist rhetoric, stating that Ukraine's war in Donbass is really a "war of civilizations" between Ukraine, the guardian of Europe, and Russia, which he calls "Eurasia."

Ukrainian Battalion Commander Claims War in East is 'War of Civilizations'
The Pentagon's 'Long War' Pits NATO Against China, Russia and Iran
Pepe Escobar

The former US assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research Toby Gati said that the difference is for West the WWII is history, and for Russia it is a current event.

While WWII is History for Some, Remains Reality for Russia – Ex-US Official

Now for the really scary one — leveling the United States with a doomsday attack. Yes, it is really a strategy.

The Vineyard of the Saker
Nuclear Special Forces — Only BRICS countries will survive
The Saker

Leslie H. Gelb — Countering the Neocon Comeback

Uh-oh.

Democracy — A Journal of Ideas
Countering the Neocon Comeback
Leslie H. Gelb | President Emeritus and Board Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

Joe Firestone — The Lawless Society

The release of the Senate's torture report reminds us of the central fact of American society, today. Any semblance of equal justice under the law is now gone from what our leaders claim is the world's leading democracy.
Instead, of a constitutional democracy living under the law. We have a gangster government that fails to enforce the law, but instead prosecutes whistle blowers who make public, violations of it. Here is an off the top of the head list of our continuing and systematic failures to create justice.…

This is a crime wave composed of wholesale obstruction of justice. If we can't end it, then democracy will be gone for good.

Corrente
The Lawless Society

Joe Firestone

Then throw some Grade A hypocrisy in to the mix.

BBC
US Congress passes bill to impose Venezuela sanctions

The bill targets current and former Venezuelan officials who directed "significant acts of violence or serious human rights abuses against persons associated with the anti-government protests in Venezuela that began on 4 February".

Compare

The Guardian
Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy
Naomi Wolf

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

Corporate state, you say?

Mother Jones
Watch Elizabeth Warren Slam Republicans For Doing Citibank's Dirty Work
Erika Eichelberger and AJ Vicens

On Thursday afternoon, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) took to the Senate floor to rail against a Wall Street giveaway that corporate-friendly lawmakers snuck into the massive spending bill that Congress needs to pass this week in order to avert a government shutdown. The measure—which was written by Citigroup—would allow big banks like Citigroup to engage in a broader range of risky trades with taxpayer-backed money.

Add to to this impunity of the ruling elite, imposition of a state security apparatus state, a hegemonist foreign policy, and skyrocketing inequality. 

The United States is loosing all credibility as a liberal democracy under the rule of law.

International Business Times (Jan. 2, 2014)

In Gallup Poll, The Biggest Threat To World Peace Is ... America?

Eric Brown

Is the most dangerous country in the world the United States of America? According to a new poll from WIN and Gallup International, the U.S. represents the largest threat to world peace today. 

In their annual End of Year poll, researchers for WIN and Gallup International surveyed more than 66,000 people across 65 nations and found that 24 percent of all respondents answered that the United States “is the greatest threat to peace in the world today.” Pakistan and China fell significantly behind the United States on the poll, with 8 and 6 percent, respectively. Afghanistan, Iran, Israel and North Korea all tied for fourth place with 4 percent.

Nice work in bringing down the curtain on the Great Experiment, folks. Gives new meaning to "American exceptionalism."

Are we witnessing the end of the republic?

Oh, and then there is blowback.

Sputnik International
CIA Torture Report Could Strip Some Governments of Their Power: US Senator

The release of the US Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's enhanced interrogation practices will lead to some foreign governments, who took part in the CIA program, to lose their ability to govern, Senator Richard Burr has told Sputnik.

"There are going to be some governments that are going to be difficult to maintain their control without special elections, because their public will respond and say, "We never should have done this," Burr, who is set to chair the Intelligence Committee, said Thursday, referring to the consequences of the release of the so-called torture report.
Released by the committee Tuesday, the report contains information indicating certain foreign governments" participation in questionable US interrogation techniques. 

"We [the United States] had countries around the world that were our partners throughout this. They allowed us to interrogate prisoners in their countries without the knowledge of the public," Burr explained. 

The 500-page report does not contain the names of the countries, who aided the United States in the detention and interrogation program, but civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Open Society Justice Initiative have worked to decode the report and release the names of over fifty countries, who participated in the program.

Europe Must Answer for Participation in CIA's Abduction of Suspects: HRW

Human Rights Watch stated Thursday that European countries must expose their role in the CIA's abduction, illegal transfer and torture of terrorism suspects, following the recent report on CIA's interrogation techniques.

 

The challenge of liberalism

The challenge of liberalism in a world of different traditions and cultures.

Irregular Times
Hindus Threaten Violence Over Image Of Krishna With Coca-Cola
J Clifford

The Vineyard of the Saker

The West: the most sexually dysfunctional society on the planet

Vineyardsaker

Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy

There are various answers depending on different traditions. The attempt to impose the American version of liberal democracy on the world is destined not only to fail but to provoke conflict.

American Conservative

Putin’s Philosophy — The Russian leader’s paradoxical, strong-state “liberal-conservatism”

Paul Robinson | Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

The World Post
Xi Launches Cultural Counter-Revolution to Restore Confucianism as China's Ideology
Nathan Gardels | Editor-in-chief

Patheos
Shri Narendra Modi, Hinduism, and Resurgent India
David Frawley, (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) is an American Hindu author

Narendra Modi is a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh faction of the BJP, a Hindu nationalist party (Hindutva). RSS is dedicated to Indian culture and values. Modi has also stated that he will reinvigorate India's ties to Buddha, who is also recognized as one of the ten Hindu avatars (incarnations of the God in human form).

And no, the Islamic revolt against the American Empire at its periphery is not about their "hating our freedoms," but rejecting Western liberal values that they see the US attempting to impose on the rest of the world by force against the will of the vast majority who are traditionalists.

Valery Fadeev — An exception to American exceptionalism — Parts I, II, III

A Russian viewpoint.

The foreign policy of the US has a clear and simple moral basis – the exceptionalism of the American nation.…

This is precisely why Vladimir Putin’s article in the New York Times last year generated such a hysterical reaction in the US. To quote Putin, “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.” Putin “dared” to criticize the most sacred of American values – that nation’s exceptionalism. He made it clear that he did not share such a “messianic” view of how a global system of states should be organized, and that there may be other axiological bases, which he can describe, on which to ground such a system.

Oriental Review.org

An exception to American exceptionalism (I)

An exception to American exceptionalism (II)

An exception to American exceptionalism (III)

Valery Fadeev | Editor-in-Chief of the Russian EXPERT magazine

The text was adapted and translated by ORIENTAL REVIEW.

This series is important in that it shows how the current situation is based on the creation of global architecture. Will it be unipolar under US hegemony and exporting American culture and values, or will it be multipolar and multicultural.

Ron Jacobs — The Rational Unreason of Imperial War

I’m not one to disparage the potential and real violence of the entity calling itself the Islamic State. Then again, I am also not one to call for the unleashing of violence by the entity calling itself the United States. As the entire world knows, it is due in large part to the latter’s violence that we are where we are today—in Iraq and elsewhere. Those champions of US military violence who insist on its innate humanitarianism also want us to believe that the violence is undertaken with no economic or hegemonic designs real or implied. Of course, this is nonsense. Powerful states do not intentionally act against their own interests, especially when it comes to military intervention. 

Instead of humanitarianism, one should always consider power and money when it comes to the machinations of empire.…

Psychopaths are highly rational.

By pretending war is reasonable, the possibility of preventing it becomes ever more remote.

Dissident Voice

The Rational Unreason of Imperial War
Ron Jacobs