- Zbigniew Brzezinski's Geopolitical Strategy For US Global Hegemony
Authored by Vladislav Sotirovic via Oriental Review,
“If we have to use force, it is because we are America.
We are the indispensable nation.”
(Madeleine K. Albright, February 1998)
Madam Secretary
As a matter of very fact, regardless to the reality in global politics that the Cold War was over in 1989, Washington continued to drive toward the getting the status of a global hyperpower at any expense for the rest of the world.
The Balkans undoubtedly became the first victim in Europe of the old but aesthetically-repackaged American global imperialism. The US’ administration is a key player during the last 25 years of the Balkan crisis caused by the bloody destruction of ex-Yugoslavia in which Washington played a crucial role in three particular historical cases:
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Only due to the US’ administration (more precisely due to the last US’ ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmermann), a Bosnian-Herzegovinian President Alija Izetbegović (the author of the 1970 Islamic Declaration) rejected already agreed Lisbon Agreement about peaceful resolution of the Bosnian crises which was signed by the official representatives of the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks in February 1992. Alija Izetbegović was one of those three signatories. The agreement was reached under the auspices of the European Community (the EC, later the European Union) that was represented by the British diplomat Lord Carrington and the Portuguese ambassador José Cutileiro. However, under the US’ protection, a Bosnian-Herzegovinian Bosniak-Croat Government declared independence on March 3rd, 1992 which local Serbs decisively opposed. Therefore, two warmongers, Warren Zimmermann and Alija Izetbegović pushed Bosnia-Herzegovina into the civil war which stopped only in November 21st, 1995 by signing the Dayton Accords in Ohio (Slobodan Milošević, Bill Clinton, Alija Izetbegović and Franjo Tuđman).
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It was exactly the US’ administration which crucially blessed the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs from the Republic of Serbian Krayina committed by Croatia’s police and army forces (including and neo-Nazi Ustashi formations) on August 4−5th, 1995. For the realization of this criminal operation (under the secret code Storm/Oluja) Washington gave to Zagreb all logistic, political, diplomatic and military support. As a consequence, around 250,000 Croatia’s Serbs left their homes in two days which were quickly occupied by the Croats.
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South Serbia’s Autonomous Province of Kosovo-Metochia was firstly occupied in June 1999 by the NATO/KFOR’ forces and later in February 2008 politically separated from its motherland when Albanian-dominated Kosovo’s Parliament proclaimed the formal independence primarily as a direct consequence of the Serbophobic policy by the US’s administration of President Bill Clinton and his warmongering hawk Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. Today, Kosovo, except its northern part, is ethnically cleansed from the Serbs and transformed into a mafia state with a silent blessing by Washington and the rest of the Western gangsters from the NATO and the EU who recognized its quasi-independence.
Here is very important to stress that, basically, during the Bill Clinton’ administration, the US’ foreign policy in regard to the Balkans (ex-Yugoslavia) was primarily designed and directed by Madeleine K. Albright who became a chief US’ war criminal at the very end of the 20th century.
Who was Mrs. Albright – the author of Madam Secretary: A Memoir, New York: Talk Miramax Books, 2003, 562 pages. Madeleine K. Albright was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937.
Former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright
She was confirmed as the 64th US’ Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001. Her career in the US’ government included positions in the National Security Council and as US’ ambassador to the United Nations. The highest-ranking warmonger female hawk in the history of the US’ Government was telling an unforgetable whitewashed story of lies in her memoirs of the US’ imperialism at the turn of the 21st century. She was the first woman in the US’ history to be appointed to the post of Secretary of State (Minister of Foreign Affairs).
For eight years during the first and second Bill Clinton’s terms, she succeeded drastically to ruin America’s image of a democratic and freedom fighting country mainly due to her direct and crucial involvement into the US-led NATO’s aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the FRY) in 1999 composed by Serbia and Montenegro that was the first aggression of this organization in its 50 years long history of the preparation for the invasion of Russia. The aggression lasted for 78 days from March 24th to June 10th, 1999 and was one of the most brutal and barbaric in the modern history of the world breaking all international laws, rules of war and, most important, the Charter and principles of the UNO.
Madeleine K. Albright tried in her memoirs to whitewash her extremely important and even crucial participation in the post-Cold War US’ policy of imperialism but primarily her focal role in the preparation and conduction of the US/NATO’s unprecedented war on the FRY as being one of the most influential policy-makers in her adopted country. The Madam Secretary’s memoirs are firstly the story of a woman of great warmongering character with a fascinating talent to lie and whitewash the truth. Her memoirs are surely a valuable contribution to the political history of aggressive diplomacy of the project of the US’ global hegemony after the collapse of the USSR.
But who was her mentor?…
If we are speaking about the US’ foreign policy, the fundamental question is what are the US policy’s interests and its implications in both the Balkans and Europe.
The US’ involvement in the Balkans and Europe
The achievement of a New World Order after 1990 is being tested for some time in Washington. We have to keep in mind that for some first 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the strongest military and economic power, the leaders of the NATO and the UNO, the initiators of the international peacekeeping missions and negotiations in the regions of „failed states“ in which they provoked the crises and wars, especially at the Balkans, the champions against the international terrorism and crime that was a reaction to their dirty foreign policy of unmasked imperialism and global hegemony, were the USA. Nevertheless, the US’ interests in the Balkans cannot be understood apart from a larger picture of the American interests in Europe in general.
There are many American scientists and politicians who argued that a leadership in Europe will either be American or it will not be, since France and Germany (the axis-powers of the EU) were not too strong to take over and Germany was still in the 1990s too preoccupied with the consequences of its reunification (i.e., the absorption of the DDR). However, the recent (on November 11th, 2018) French President Emmanuel Macron’s initiative to create a joint European Army shows that probably the Europeans finally became enough matured to maintain security in their own home by themselves but not anymore under the umbrella of the US-led NATO. The question, in essence, is not if, but what kind of leadership the US has and will have in the case that the current post-Cold War’s international relations are not going to be drastically changed?
In this respect, the US need to be aware that the best leadership is the one shared with other partners, in this case with the EU/NATO, more specifically France, Germany, and Britain but, of course, Russia have to be seriously taken into the consideration too. With the involvement of Russia into a common European security system on the bases of equal reciprocity, friendship and partnership, the final aim will be to obtain a common vision and an efficient coordination in conflict management, as well as in political and economic cooperation. At such a way, the cases of violent destructions and civil wars, for example on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia, will be avoided for sure.
U.S. Marines escorting Yugoslavian soldiers in Kosovo to be handed over to Yugoslavian authorities
The US’ political analysts are keen to suggest that the American presence in Europe should not be regarded as a competition, but rather as a part of the transatlantic partnership between the two continents, as well as a necessity demonstrated by the sad experience in the former Yugoslavia. According to official Washington, the NATO’s intervention in both Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999 (in both cases against the Serbs) under the US’ leadership was the only credible action along with many initiatives taken by the international community. However, on the other side, military intervention is in many cases creating more political and security problems for a longer period of time. It is understandable that the US cannot assist apathetically to the collapse of countries vital to their own interest but such principle is valid to be applied for any great power too. Besides, regional instability only expands, engaging other areas and creating new confrontations. Thus, the economic support offered to some countries, and the military one offered to others shows that the US formally believe in the regional stability as an enforcer of the international stability but in reality only if such stability is put under the umbrella of Washington’s interests and benefits. The case of Kosovo is, probably, the best example of such practice: by bringing a formal stability this province of Serbia is put at the same time under the full Western (primarily American) political control and economic exploitation.
In supporting the NATO’s expansion, there is a hesitation in treating all aspirant countries in a non-discriminatory fashion. And that, because interests are more important than global security, can be the reason. The advocates of the „Pax Americana’s“ view of the global security would publically say that they are not propagating the US as the savior of the world, or the world’s policeman, but they are just the most fervent supporters of the global peace and stability. However, in the practice they are working oppositely: as many as conflicts and insecurity issues in the world, there are more chances and practical opportunities for Washington to become the regional policeman and global savior of the order. In their relationship with other NATO’s countries, the USA regard the process of integration in the Euro-Atlantic space (i.e., the area of the US’ control and administration) as a two-way street in which each partner needs to accomplish its tasks. An addition to those is, of course, the geostrategic position (Turkey instead of Greece, for instance, in the 1974 Cyprus crisis) and short, medium and long-term declarative promises like the economic gratification of security which can at the end to be turned to its opposite side. For instance, the US’ offering military, political and financial assistance to the countries of East-Central and South-East Europe as a mean to build up their security shield against „aggressive“ Russia can be easily transformed into their very insecurity reality coming from the US’ imperialistic policy toward Russia as there were already the cases with Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 as the „Pax Americana’s“ approach in international relations is as its countereffect just provoking the Russian (and Chinese) counteraction in enhancing its own nuclear and other military potentials as Vladimir Putin exactly stressed during his electoral campaigns.
The US’ geopolitical strategy by Zbig
(Vietnam) war criminal Henry Kissinger (ex-US’ Secretary of State), summarized the post-Cold War’s international relations from the American geopolitical viewpoint:
„Geopolitically, America is an island off the shores of the large landmass of Eurasia, whose resources and population far exceed those of the United States. The domination by a single power of either of Eurasia’s two principal spheres – Europe or Asia – remains a good definition of strategic danger for America, Cold War or no Cold War. For such a grouping would have the capacity to outstrip America economically and, in the end, militarily“.
It is not surprising that in the 1990s there were raised voices in Washington which required that the US has to find a way of dominating Eurasia at any reasonable cost. The US’ neocon warmongering hawks, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, recognized that the area of the enlarged Middle East (with the Balkans, North Africa, and Central Asia) is from the strategical viewpoint, economically, ideologically and above all geopolitically at the center of the Eurasian issue. However, the US’ neocon hawks’ much wider global geopolitical aims which were coming closer to the aim to continue domination in the Middle East were launched during the Bill Clinton’s presidency as a result of a wider shift in the American foreign policy’s profile led by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright (“Madam Secretary”) and her extremely Russophobic mentor Zbigniew Brzezinski (known as Zbig).
Warsaw-born Zbig (1928−2017) was a focal personality in the US’ foreign policy’s elite establishment since President Jimmy Carter’s administration in which he was a National Security Advisor. During the Ronald Reagan’s administration, Zbig was the main mediator between Washington and its clients in Afghanistan – the anti-Soviet Taliban forces and Osama bin-Laden with whom Zbig has several common photos (in 1979) on which he is training Osama to operate with just donated American guns to fight the Soviets. Further, Zbig has a great influence on the first Bill Clinton’s administration and he was at the same time an early advocate of the NATO’s eastward expansion (started in 1999). It is assumed that it was exactly Zbig who was instrumental in getting the US’ President Bill Clinton to commit himself to this course of the American imperialism in 1994. Furthermore, Brzezinski’s influence on the US’ foreign policy became stronger during the second Clinton’s administration through a Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright – his former pupil at Columbia University.
It is worth to note that Albright was working under his supervision in Carter’s administration.
If we have to summarize Zbig’s chief imperatives of the US’ imperialistic global policy and geostrategy of the making America world’s hegemon, they are going to be as follows:
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To prevent collusion and maintain security among the US’ vassal states (the NATO/EU).
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To keep tributaries pliant and protected.
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To keep the barbarians (the Russians and their supporters) from coming together.
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To consolidate and perpetuate the prevailing geopolitical pluralism in Eurasia by manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could finally attempt to challenge the US’ supremacy in the world.
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Those that must be divided and eventually ruled are Germany, Russia, Japan, Iran, and China.
Former US national security advisor Zbigniew Former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
The American direct and infamous participation in the destruction of ex-Yugoslavia in 1991−1995 followed by the 1998−1999 Kosovo’s War can be understood, therefore, as the steps in the realization of Zbig’s geopolitical strategy of making America global hegemon. The US-led bombing of Serbia and Montenegro from March to June 1999 (78 days) was carried out by enlarged NATO and the UNO was only called at the end to sanctify the resulting colonial policy of Washington. The aggression on Serbia and Montenegro was formally justified by a reference to the TV-show plight of Kosovo’s Albanians, developing at the same time the new doctrine of the „humanitarian imperialism“. We have to keep in mind on this place that the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s were fought in a geographical area which is the crucial courtyard of the Eurasian continent that is as such opening a direct way to the ex-Soviet republics on the shores of the Caspian and the energy sources they control. Nevertheless, Kosovo’s War became for the US the genuine precursor of its later invasion of Iraq in 2003.
„Madam Secretary“ was a firm advocate of bombing Serbia and Serbs in Washington primarily due to the direct influence by notorious Russophobe Zbig who saw the Balkan Serbs as „little Russians“ and the Balkan wars of the destruction of ex-Yugoslavia as a testing ground for the US’ policy throughout the whole Caspian and Central Asian area. However, in addition, being an advocate for the US’ oil companies wishing to establish their business on the territory of ex-Soviet Union in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Zbig regarded the American political and geostrategic supremacy in this region as a crucial aim of the US’ foreign policy in the 1990s. In order to accomplish his aim, among other manipulations and instruments, Zbig championed the American support to the Islamic Pakistan, the Taliban Afghanistan (till 9/11) and the Islamic resurgence in Saudi Arabia and even Iran.
Multidimensional aspect of security
It is true that globalization, stability, and security offer to the countries a greater capacity to cooperate and focus on the economic prosperity of its citizens but in practice, this particularly means much more important businesses and more money for the US’ economy and citizens. Today, security has multidimensional aspects. If during the Cold War security only had a military-political component, today it has gained a new aspect – the economic one. The non-military aspects of security comprise everything from macroeconomic stability to environmental health. The proponents of the US’ global hegemony will all the time argue that where there is a harmony (established by the US) and well-being the chances of conflicts to erupt are smaller and the gain is exclusively financial and economic (primarily for the US).
There is, of course, a combination between interest per se and their consequences. To illustrate, the case of Macedonia could be interesting. Macedonia at the first glance benefits of the US’ military presence on her territory since 1991 as it is a geostrategic spot in the Balkans of the highest importance. As a matter of fact, this military presence maintained Macedonia’s economic level at a higher standard than some of the other countries in the area up to 2001, despite the fact that was still the poorest of the former Yugoslav six republics affected by two economic embargos by Greece in 1991−1993. Macedonia was illustrated till 2001, especially by the Western media, as being a success story in conflict prevention and peace maintenance primarily due to the presence of the US/NATO’s military troops. However, in 2001 erupted inter-ethnic conflict between the Slavic Macedonians and the local Albanians (supported by the Kosovo Liberation Army) what brought the question of the US/NATO’s efficiency in the region.
The NATO’s eastward expansion is a particular story of Zbig’s geostrategic designs against his eternal enemy – Russia. It is a fact that just before the NATO’s aggression on Serbia and Montenegro in 1999, this military organization accepted as the member states three East-Central European countries: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic (the next eastward enlargement was in 2004). Therefore, the southern flank of the NATO between Hungary and Greece became now interrupted only by the territory of ex-Yugoslavia. Subsequently, such situation gave NATO a considerable strategic interest in controlling the Balkans where the Serbs were the most numerous and geostrategically important nation. However, as a direct effect of the NATO’s eastward enlargement, the Iron Curtain was moved further to the east and closer to Russia’s borders with all spectrum of the expected and unexpected consequences of such anti-Russian Drang nach Osten. Now, the Iron Curtain, once dividing Germany, it came in 1999 to run down the eastern borders of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, ending on the state-borders of the ex-Yugoslav republics, now independent states. The crux of the matter is that a decade-long process of the NATO’s eastward enlargement became at the beginning of 1999 blocked in the Balkans by the Serbs – the only ex-Yugoslav nation firmly opposing a NATO’s membership. Subsequently, it was exactly Washington to assume the role of leading the NATO to the new anti-Russian front and borders. That was the crucial reason why the Serbs had to be bombed in 1999 and Kosovo occupied by the US-led NATO’s troops in the form of the UNO KFOR. What regards this issue, both Zbig and „Madam Secretary“ were clearly speaking through the mouth of the US’ President Bill Clinton: the stability (the US’ control) in the Balkans could only be established if the EU and the USA do for this region what it was done for Europe after the WWII and Central Europe after the Cold War – occupation and economic-financial exploitation within the formal framework of the NATO’s and EU’ (the USA) enlargement.
Conclusion
The brutal expansion of the NATO is very visible since 1999 and even expected if we are taking into consideration the final aims of the US’ foreign policy in Eurasia framed by a notorious foreign policy gangster – Zbigniew Brzezinski.
As a consequence, the EU is going to continue to be America’s main colonial partner in the NATO’s preparations for the war of aggression against Russia and most probably at the same time China.
Subsequently, there will be a need for much work and a common will to overcome violence, injustice, and suffering in order to achieve a global security without the hegemonic dominance by any great power.
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- Russia "Accidentally" Exposes Model Of Hypersonic 6th-Generation Fighter Jet
Russia’s newest Su-57 fifth-generation stealth fighter jet has certainly made numerous headlines as a direct challenger to America’s F-22 and or F-35 combat planes. Now, it seems Russia is outlining its path to develop a sixth-generation fighter, according to media reports.
The new combat jets will be hypersonic; the first flight is scheduled for the mid-2020s. This was reported in June 2016 by TASS, citing the head of the Directorate of military aircraft programs, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) Vladimir Mikhailov. “The [prototype] rise into the air, as we plan, no later than two or three years after 2020”, said Mikhailov. UAC plans to fly a hypersonic sixth-generation fighter before 2025. Mikhailov stated the program for the jet is currently underway, including engineering design.
More recently, as first reported by Defence Blog, Russia’s Zvezda news channel “accidentally” revealed a model of the hypersonic 6th-generation fighter jet.
Military experts told the blog that Russia’s hypersonic combat plane is referred to as the Pigeon, because of the tail design.
The new plane is expected to have a twin-tail configuration that allows it to use its own shockwaves to increase lift and decrease drag. The jet would be able to travel at five times greater than the speed of sound, over Mach 5-6.
Defense Blog did not specify on the type of engine that would be used in the aircraft, nor did they specify maximum speed, range, and or altitude height.
Despite President Trump’s mixed feelings about Russia, a clear consensus is emerging on both sides of the Atlantic: there is a new Cold War brewing, with new dangers dead ahead.
The race for sixth-generation fighter jets and other futuristic technologies has started, and this was evident early this year as US Air Force Research Laboratory released a video of what its sixth-generation fighter jet could look like.
The promotional video shows a conceptual sixth-generation fighter jet, firing what appears to be a directed energy gun that cuts an enemy fighter in half.
Most of the capabilities of Russian and US sixth-generation fighter are unknown at the moment, but some have speculated it could have autonomous flight, extended combat range, and larger payloads. It is likely that these aircraft will travel at hypersonic speeds and be able to deploy hypersonic weapons.
The bottom line: Whichever country can develop and deploy hypersonic warplanes and weapons first, they will be the dominant superpower for generations to come. As of right now, it is anyone’s guess.
- US Army Major On America's Global War 'To Infinity & Beyond'
Authored by Danny Sjursen via TomDispatch.com,
Planet of War
Still Trapped in a Greater Middle Eastern Quagmire, the U.S. Military Prepares for Global Combat
American militarism has gone off the rails – and this middling career officer should have seen it coming. Earlier in this century, the U.S. military not surprisingly focused on counterinsurgency as it faced various indecisive and seemingly unending wars across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa. Back in 2008, when I was still a captain newly returned from Iraq and studying at Fort Knox, Kentucky, our training scenarios generally focused on urban combat and what were called security and stabilization missions. We’d plan to assault some notional city center, destroy the enemy fighters there, and then transition to pacification and “humanitarian” operations.
Of course, no one then asked about the dubious efficacy of “regime change” and “nation building,” the two activities in which our country had been so regularly engaged. That would have been frowned upon. Still, however bloody and wasteful those wars were, they now look like relics from a remarkably simpler time. The U.S. Army knew its mission then (even if it couldn’t accomplish it) and could predict what each of us young officers was about to take another crack at: counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Fast forward eight years — during which this author fruitlessly toiled away in Afghanistan and taught at West Point — and the U.S. military ground presence has significantly decreased in the Greater Middle East, even if its wars there remain “infinite.” The U.S. was still bombing, raiding, and “advising” away in several of those old haunts as I entered the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Nonetheless, when I first became involved in the primary staff officer training course for mid-level careerists there in 2016, it soon became apparent to me that something was indeed changing.
Our training scenarios were no longer limited to counterinsurgency operations. Now, we were planning for possible deployments to — and high-intensity conventional warfare in — the Caucasus, the Baltic Sea region, and the South China Sea (think: Russia and China). We were also planning for conflicts against an Iranian-style “rogue” regime (think: well, Iran). The missions became all about projecting U.S. Army divisions into distant regions to fight major wars to “liberate” territories and bolster allies.
One thing soon became clear to me in my new digs: much had changed. The U.S. military had, in fact, gone global in a big way. Frustrated by its inability to close the deal on any of the indecisive counterterror wars of this century, Washington had decided it was time to prepare for “real” war with a host of imagined enemies. This process had, in fact, been developing right under our noses for quite a while. You remember in 2013 when President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began talking about a “pivot” to Asia — an obvious attempt to contain China. Obama also sanctioned Moscow and further militarized Europe in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine and the Crimea. President Trump, whose “instincts,” on the campaign trail, were to pull out of America’s Middle Eastern quagmires, turned out to be ready to escalate tensions with China, Russia, Iran, and even (for a while) North Korea.
With Pentagon budgets reaching record levels — some $717 billion for 2019 — Washington has stayed the course, while beginning to plan for more expansive future conflicts across the globe. Today, not a single square inch of this ever-warming planet of ours escapes the reach of U.S. militarization.
Think of these developments as establishing a potential formula for perpetual conflict that just might lead the United States into a truly cataclysmic war it neither needs nor can meaningfully win. With that in mind, here’s a little tour of Planet Earth as the U.S. military now imagines it.
Our Old Stomping Grounds: Forever War in the Middle East and Africa
Never apt to quit, even after 17 years of failure, Washington’s bipartisan military machine still churns along in the Greater Middle East. Some 14,500 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan (along with much U.S. air power) though that war is failing by just about any measurable metric you care to choose — and Americans are still dying there, even if in diminished numbers.
In Syria, U.S. forces remain trapped between hostile powers, one mistake away from a possible outbreak of hostilities with Russia, Iran, Syrian President Assad, or even NATO ally Turkey. While American troops (and air power) in Iraq helped destroy ISIS’s physical “caliphate,” they remain entangled there in a low-level guerrilla struggle in a country seemingly incapable of forming a stable political consensus. In other words, as yet there’s no end in sight for that now 15-year-old war. Add in the drone strikes, conventional air attacks, and special forces raids that Washington regularly unleashes in Somalia, Libya, Yemen, and Pakistan, and it’s clear that the U.S. military’s hands remain more than full in the region.
If anything, the tensions — and potential for escalation — in the Greater Middle East and North Africa are only worsening. President Trump ditchedPresident Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and, despite the recent drama over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has gleefully backed the Saudi royals in their arms race and cold war with Iran. While the other major players in that nuclear pact remained on board, President Trump has appointed unreformed Iranophobe neocons like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to key foreign policy positions and his administration still threatens regime change in Tehran.
In Africa, despite talk about downsizing the U.S. presence there, the military advisory mission has only increased its various commitments, backing questionably legitimate governments against local opposition forces and destabilizing further an already unstable continent. You might think that waging war for two decades on two continents would at least keep the Pentagon busy and temper Washington’s desire for further confrontations. As it happens, the opposite is proving to be the case.
Poking the Bear: Encircling Russia and Kicking Off a New Cold War
Vladimir Putin’s Russia is increasingly autocratic and has shown a propensity for localized aggression in its sphere of influence. Still, it would be better not to exaggerate the threat. Russia did annex the Crimea, but the people of that province were Russians and desired such a reunification. It intervened in a Ukrainian civil war, but Washington was also complicit in the coup that kicked off that drama. Besides, all of this unfolded in Russia’s neighborhood as the U.S. military increasingly deploys its forces up to the very borders of the Russian Federation. Imagine the hysteria in Washington if Russia were deploying troops and advisers in Mexico or the Caribbean.
To put all of this in perspective, Washington and its military machine actually prefer facing off against Russia. It’s a fight the armed forces still remain comfortable with. After all, that’s what its top commanders were trained for during the tail end of an almost half-century-long Cold War. Counterinsurgency is frustrating and indecisive. The prospect of preparing for “real war” against the good old Russians with tanks, planes, and artillery — now, that’s what the military was built for!
And despite all the over-hyped talk about Donald Trump’s complicity with Russia, under him, the Obama-era military escalation in Europe has only expanded. Back when I was toiling hopelessly in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army was actually removing combat brigades from Germany and stationing them back on U.S. soil (when, of course, they weren’t off fighting somewhere in the Greater Middle East). Then, in the late Obama years, the military began returning those forces to Europe and stationing them in the Baltic, Poland, Romania, and other countries increasingly near to Russia. That’s never ended and, this year, the U.S. Air Force has delivered its largest shipment of ordnance to Europe since the Cold War.
Make no mistake: war with Russia would be an unnecessary disaster — and it could go nuclear. Is Latvia really worth that risk?
From a Russian perspective, of course, it’s Washington and its expansion of the (by definition) anti-Russian NATO alliance into Eastern Europe that constitutes the real aggression in the region — and Putin may have a point there. What’s more, an honest assessment of the situation suggests that Russia, a country whose economy is about the size of Spain’s, has neither the will nor the capacity to invade Central Europe. Even in the bad old days of the Cold War, as we now know from Soviet archives, European conquest was never on Moscow’s agenda. It still isn’t.
Nonetheless, the U.S. military goes on preparing for what Marine Corps Commandant General Robert Neller, addressing some of his forces in Norway, claimed was a “big fight” to come. If it isn’t careful, Washington just might get the war it seems to want and the one that no one in Europe or the rest of this planet needs.
Challenging the Dragon: The Futile Quest for Hegemony in Asia
The United States Navy has long treated the world’s oceans as if they were American lakes. Washington extends no such courtesy to other great powers or nation-states. Only now, the U.S. Navy finally faces some challenges abroad — especially in the Western Pacific. A rising China, with a swiftly growing economy and carrying grievances from a long history of European imperial domination, has had the audacity to assert itself in the South China Sea. In response, Washington has reacted with panic and bellicosity.
Never mind that the South China Sea is Beijing’s Caribbean (a place where Washington long felt it had the right to do anything it wanted militarily). Heck, the South China Sea has China in its name! The U.S. military now claims — with just enough truth to convince the uninformed — that China’s growing navy is out for Pacific, if not global, dominance. Sure, at the moment China has only two aircraft carriers, one an old rehab (though it is building more) compared to the U.S. Navy’s 11 full-sized and nine smaller carriers. And yes, China hasn’t actually attacked any of its neighbors yet. Still, the American people are told that their military must prepare for possible future war with the most populous nation on the planet.
In that spirit, it has been forward deploying yet more ships, Marines, and troops to the Pacific Rim surrounding China. Thousands of Marines are now stationed in Northern Australia; U.S. warships cruise the South Pacific; and Washington has sent mixed signals regarding its military commitments to Taiwan. Even the Indian Ocean has recently come to be seen as a possible future battleground with China, as the U.S. Navy increases its regional patrols there and Washington negotiates stronger military ties with China’s rising neighbor, India. In a symbolic gesture, the military recently renamedits former Pacific Command (PACOM) the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM).
Unsurprisingly, China’s military high command has escalated accordingly. They’ve advised their South China Sea Command to prepare for war, made their own set of provocative gestures in the South China Sea, and also threatened to invade Taiwan should the Trump administration change America’s longstanding “One China” policy.
From the Chinese point of view, all of this couldn’t be more logical, given that President Trump has also unleashed a “trade war” on Beijing’s markets and intensified his anti-China rhetoric. And all of this is, in turn, consistent with the Pentagon’s increasing militarization of the entire globe.
No Land Too Distant
Would that it were only Africa, Asia, and Europe that Washington had chosen to militarize. But as Dr. Seuss might have said: that is not all, oh no, that is not all. In fact, more or less every square inch of our spinning planet not already occupied by a rival state has been deemed a militarized space to be contested. The U.S. has long been unique in the way it divided the entire surface of the globe into geographical (combatant) commands presided over by generals and admirals who functionally serve as regional Roman-style proconsuls.
And the Trump years are only accentuating this phenomenon. Take Latin America, which might normally be considered a non-threatening space for the U.S., though it is already under the gaze of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM). Recently, however, having already threatened to “invade” Venezuela, President Trump spent the election campaign rousing his base on the claim that a desperate caravan of Central American refugees — hailing from countries the U.S. had a significant responsibility for destabilizing in the first place — was a literal “invasion” and so yet another military problem. As such, he ordered more than 5,000 troops (more than currently serve in Syria or Iraq) to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Though he is not the first to try to do so, he has also sought to militarizespace and so create a possible fifth branch of the U.S. military, tentatively known as the Space Force. It makes sense. War has long been three dimensional, so why not bring U.S. militarism into the stratosphere, even as the U.S. Army is evidently training and preparing for a new cold war (no pun intended) with that ever-ready adversary, Russia, around the Arctic Circle.
If the world as we know it is going to end, it will either be thanks to the long-term threat of climate change or an absurd nuclear war. In both cases, Washington has been upping the ante and doubling down. On climate change, of course, the Trump administration seems intent on loading the atmosphere with ever more greenhouse gases. When it comes to nukes, rather than admit that they are unusable and seek to further downsize the bloated U.S. and Russian arsenals, that administration, like Obama’s, has committed itself to the investment of what could, in the end, be at least $1.6 trillion over three decades for the full-scale “modernization” of that arsenal. Any faintly rational set of actors would long ago have accepted that nuclear war is unwinnable and a formula for mass human extinction. As it happens, though, we’re not dealing with rational actors but with a defense establishment that considers it a prudent move to withdraw from the Cold War era Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia.
And that ends our tour of the U.S. military’s version of Planet Earth.
It is often said that, in an Orwellian sense, every nation needs an enemy to unite and discipline its population. Still, the U.S. must stand alone in history as the only country to militarize the whole globe (with space thrown in) in preparation for taking on just about anyone. Now, that’s exceptional.
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Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army major and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. He lives with his wife and four sons in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast “Fortress on a Hill,” co-hosted with fellow vet Chris Henriksen.
- Tim Cook's Billion Dollar Hypocrisy
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been heralded by the media for repeatedly discussing how much his company respects user privacy, and by extension, how much he detests the flagrant abuse of said privacy by ad-driven companies such as Google and Facebook. He has said it on company earnings calls, he said it during a Vice News interview recently and even more recently he said it during an Axios interview on HBO and covered by ARS Technica.
Tim Cook However, it has become extraordinarily easy to draw a straight line from what Tim Cook says to the hypocrisy of what his company actually does. Namely, Tim Cook wants to be an advocate for user privacy – but not so much that he considers revamping or abandoning Apple’s multi billion-dollar partnership with Google, the provider of the default search engine on all Apple products. Google is, of course, notorious for making money off of user data.
Tim Cook‘s recent weak response to this issue seems to make it clear that while he postures as an advocate for user data, he doesn’t really have any interest on following up on his statements in any tangible fashion. When asked about keeping Google as Apple’s default search engine, Cook said:
I think their search engine is the best. Look at what we’ve done with the controls we’ve built in. We have private Web browsing. We have an intelligent tracker prevention. What we’ve tried to do is come up with ways to help our users through their course of the day. It’s not a perfect thing. I’d be the very first person to say that. But it goes a long way to helping.”
Meanwhile, Google pays Apple to use its search engine as the default on iPhones and other Apple devices. That money goes into a segment of Apple’s revenue that happens to be the company’s only bright spot of late for investors: its services business. While concerns about iPhone saturation now seem to be widespread as Apple no longer reports iPhone unit sales, Apple suppliers furiously slash guidance – and watch their stock tank – the service segment for the company remains the sole bright light for any stockholder to hang onto at this point.
Bloomberg estimates that Apple brings in between of $3 billion and $9 billion from its licensing agreements with Google and a majority of analysts put that number between $3 billion and $4 billion. The services segment as a whole recently hit $10 billion in revenue during the final fiscal quarter of 2018.
Apple Services Revenue At the same time, Cook’s answer about possible Federal privacy regulations has been as two-faced as his stance on Google. While he has said he’s “not a big fan of regulation”, he also has said that companies have to recognize when the free market approach has failed.
“I’m a big believer in the free market. But we have to admit when the free market is not working. And it hasn’t worked here. I think it’s inevitable that there will be some level of regulation. I think Congress and the administration at some point will pass something.”
Yet when it boils down to Google, there really is no way to put a polish on it: Tim Cook is a hypocrite. The suggestion that Google is the only effective search engine is nonsense, and if anything, should open up Google to antitrust litigation. For Cook, however, the bottom line is simple: either practice what you preach and throw Google out or simply come out and say what is already well known – at a time when public perception of Apple’s growth is suddenly in crisis, it simply can’t afford to lose the billions in “growing service revenues” the company is – happily – getting from Google.
- Government Agency Warning: Space Storms Could Cause Mass Blackouts
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
The Met Office has told United Kingdom ministers that space storms could cause massive blackouts and destroy computers. According to the government agency’s study, a space storm could bring down the internet and all communications.
According to The Sunday Times, a new report is claiming that huge solar flares can generate such intense magnetic fields over Earth which in a flash could burn out delicate electronics and even set them on fire. The report, co-authored with scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and Cambridge University said the UK should construct an early warning system because of their risk.
Great Britain is at a major risk of being crippled by huge electrical disturbances caused by solar storms in space unless a satellite network is built that can detect them coming. (And if you guessed the taxpayers are going to foot the bill, you’d be correct.)
“We find that for a one-in-100-year event, with no space weather forecasting capability, the gross domestic product loss to the United Kingdom could be as high as £15.9bn,” The Met Office study said.
“With existing satellites nearing the end of their life, forecasting capability will decrease in coming years, so if no further investment takes place, critical infrastructure will become more vulnerable to space weather.”
It’s not like solar storms of this magnitude have never occurred either. According to Fox News, in 1859 a giant solar flare doubled the sun’s brightness for a few minutes, followed by a surge in magnetism that caused powerful electrical currents in telegraph wires across Europe igniting widespread fires. Another such solar event in 1989 struck Quebec in Canada and burned out power cables led to a blackout. Researchers fear another such event would burn out high-voltage cables and substations across the United Kingdom.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=5969071830001&w=466&h=263Watch the latest video at foxnews.com
However, should the government be able to detect the solar storms that could cause massive damage, they say that they would be able to notify citizens that they will need to turn off their devices to avoid their destruction. The UK and other countries already have satellites that are capable of doing the job of warning, such as the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, launched in 1995 and the 2006 twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (Stereo) probes. But because these satellites have spent years in space exposed to fierce radiation, they will soon become ineffective and new ones will be needed.
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In the meantime, there are a few things you could expect during a grid failure and a few things you can do to prepare yourself for the possibility.
If you are looking for a simple guide for beginners or for more advanced preppers to help you prepare for the possibility of a power grid failure, try reading The Prepper’s Blueprint. Written by Tess Pennington, the book expertly lays out effective ways everyone can begin to prepare for any apocalyptic situation.
“If we have learned one thing studying the history of disasters, it is this: those who are prepared have a better chance at survival than those who are not.” -The Prepper’s Blueprint
- "What's Happening Now": Crypto Devastation Forces Miners To Literally Dump Mining Rigs
Cryptocurrencies have lost about $60 billion in less than a week following the collapse of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ether, and XRP, which hit their lowest levels since 2017. Bitcoin tumbled to $4,237, a 13-month low, before regaining some support in the late afternoon session. If $4,207 support is breached, Bitcoin could crash even more to the weekly 200sma at $3,130.
After months of low volatility and declining volume, everything has been flipped upside down, and cryptocurrency bulls are left scrambling after a 30% liquidity gap opened up in the last several weeks.
According to CoinMarketCap.com, digital assets have lost approximately $700 billion of market value since the crypto-mania peak in December 2017. Since the peak, Bitcoin has sustained 87% declines as hash rates have also taken a dip.
According to eToro senior analyst Mati Greenspan, Bitcoin hash rates have fallen to the lowest levels since August, and this has led some crypto miners to shut down their rigs.
Hash rates have been sliding since October, and the last time the Bitcoin hash rate printed 45,000,000 was in mid-August.
Greenspan pointed out that the Bitcoin hash rate might still be up from the start of the year, but the trend is now starting to reverse.
Meanwhile, the 2018 bear crypto market is forcing many miners to operate at a loss, “now it’s more economic to turn it off and take it off from the rack to reduce cost on electricity and opex,” tweeted Dovey Wan.
Wan shows alleged footage of a massive mining operation in China having difficult mining Bitcoin with depresses hash rates.
The video below shows a worker at one facility wheelbarrowing dozens of Avalon 741 7.3TH/s Asic Bitcoin Miners out of the building into a massive junk pile.
BRUTAL: this is what’s happening now in a China based mining site …. 😨😨 pic.twitter.com/gcN4lVTyBt
— Dovey Wan 🦖 (@DoveyWan) November 20, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Now, with the drop in Bitcoin hash rates, the difficulty to mine is also spreading to medium and small miners. They are now flooding their rigs on eBay as the crypto bubble collapses.
- America Has Built 800+ Military Bases Worldwide. So Why Can't It Build A Mexican Border Wall?
Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The US government has constructed at tremendous cost to its taxpayers some of the most impressive structures – both architectural and organizational – of all time. Yet somehow it has failed to build a viable wall on the Mexican border.
In 1931, during the Great Depression, the US government began construction of the Hoover Dam, one of the most ambitious civil engineering projects ever attempted. Employing thousands of US laborers, some 100 of whom reportedly lost their lives in the course of the project, the dam is mind-boggling due its sheer size, rivaling that of the pyramids.
At 726 feet tall, the wedge-shaped structure is 660 ft (200 m) thick at its base, narrowing to 45 ft (14 m) at the top, which provides enough room to accommodate a highway connecting Nevada and Arizona. The project required millions of cubic feet of concrete – said to be enough to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York – and tens of millions of pounds of steel.
Many decades later, the US government undertook another extensive project known as the US Embassy in Baghdad. Although rarely discussed in the US media, this 104-acre slice of American property in a foreign country is so immense that it rivals Vatican City in terms of size [the Vatican is an independent city-state, complete with its own euro-based currency and security detail, located inside of Rome].
Officially opened in 2009, the $750 million embassy, which is situated in Baghdad’s so-called Green Zone, is by far the most expansive and expensive embassy in the world. Why does a foreign nation need a footprint the size of a small country to house a few thousand diplomats and private contractors? That is a very good question, but one that was never really pursued by legislators when Congress approved plans in 2005 for the mega structure under the Bush administration.
To this day, much of the complex remains under heavy wraps due to “security concerns.” Yet this behemoth cash cow continues to suck money dry from government coffers; in 2012, just several years after its construction was finished, the Obama administration requested and got more than $100 million for a “massive” upgrade to the compound.
Speaking of Iraq, which suffered military conquest at the hands of US-led forces starting in 2003, the United States also managed to find ways to construct some 900+ military bases around the world. Needless to say, this is no cheap venture, and helps to explain why the US military budget is approaching $1 trillion dollars annually – more than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, United Kingdom, and Japan combined.
In light of these monumental projects, it goes without saying that the United States certainly possesses the technical prowess and the financial wherewithal to perform the simple task of building a wall, and more specifically, a wall on the Mexican border. Yet thus far, and despite the fact that Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail that would be his first task in office, the wall remains – a bit like Barack Obama’s past promise to shut down Guantanamo Bay detention center – a pipe dream.
How did we Americans arrive at a place where such a fundamental element of nationhood – that is, the ability to control our borders from any and all outside illegal intruders – is considered a radical concept? Since when did the universally accepted idea of a strong national border become an issue for debate and contention among our legislators? Since when have weak, porous borders become a desired state of affairs for a global superpower, and especially one that has a habit of attacking sovereign states? Part of the answer seems to lie within the present atmosphere of political correctness and identity politics that has conflated the need for a strong border with racism and even white supremacist ideology. More on that in a moment.
Just this week, part of the South American ‘caravan’ that the US mainstream media had called a “myth” has turned up on America’s doorstep in the Mexican town of Tijuana. Images show dozens of young men straddling the top of the border fence with none of the US troops that Trump activated in sight. Now, if the US Democrats had their way, these thousands of illegal aliens would be awarded amnesty and shepherded into ‘sanctuary cities’ where these individuals would slip undetected into the fabric of American society. And for those – including the US president – who voice opposition to this invasion, they are casually branded as racist or a white supremacist. However, the real motivation for the Democrats behind such ad hominem attacks is raw political opportunism.
The Democrats are actually building part of their platform on awarding asylum to illegals, and despite the fact that many of these people are not suffering political repression back home. In fact, most of these people just want to improve their financial well-being. In other words, the great majority of these new arrivals – as was established by on-the-ground interviews – are economic migrants.
And who can blame anyone for wanting a better life? After all, it was the incentive of economic opportunity that first brought millions of migrants to America in the first place. However, the difference between the migrants from past generations and many of those arriving today is that the former went through a lengthy legal process for entering the country. Today, it’s even worse than just a matter of legality; it’s a matter of criminality on multiple fronts.
What the US mainstream media fails to inform the American public is that the overwhelming majority of people from this so-called ‘caravan’ are young, male and oftentimes dangerous. This much was confirmed by Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch, one of the only Western journalists to actually travel to South America and report on the march of migrants firsthand. In addition to reporting that, in his estimation, some 98 percent of the migrants were young and male, he added that some of them bore tattoos that identified them as members of the notorious MS13 international crime gang. To get a better understanding of this caravan and the true makeup of its participants I would encourage the reader to watch Farrell’s interview in its entirety.
Now this leads us to the question of constructing a wall on the US-Mexico border. To date, those efforts have gone fizzled. In March, Congress passed its trillion-dollar spending bill; glaringly missing from the numerous pages was funding for construction of Trump’s wall. Instead, $1.6 billion was put aside for “border security,” as well as replacing parts of the existing fence. In other words, nothing that will prevent illegals from entering the United States.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said this week that the Trump White House has one last chance – with a lame duck Republican Congress still in place – to secure funding for the US-Mexican border wall.
“We should be focused on that one main thing over the next several weeks as we still have a few weeks left while Republicans control all of government,” Jordan said in an interview.
Time is ticking like a bomb for the American people to restore control over its southern border, and there is no good excuse for not completing this monumental project. Americans should not be cowered by accusations of ‘racism,’ when the country itself has been founded on the blood, sweat and tears of migrants throughout history. Much of the so-called racism that exists in America is a figment of the media’s hyperactive imagination. Nor should the expense of the project – considering the price tag for so many other US adventures and misadventures, up to and including wars abroad – be a reason for preventing it.
The overall cost of failing to protect America’s border will far excel the total price of a wall if action is not taken now. It’s time for America to act like a real nation – a superpower with a backbone – and protect its border.
- "Nothing Is Working": Stunned Investors Observe The Market Carnage In Shock
Usually the excuse “nothing is working” is used by finance professionals when begging clients not to pull their money, desperate to explain woeful performance and when there are no other explanations left. Only in 2018, that excuse is absolutely correct.
After another abysmal day, in which every single sector in the market closed in the red as stocks tumbled 2%, capping a dreadful two-month stretch since the S&P hit its all time highs exactly two months ago, which has seen both the S&P and the Dow turn red for the year with the Nasdaq just barely holding onto green, while oil crashed 6% slumping to a one year low, junk bonds matched a record streak of losses, the overall market just suffered one of its worst sessions in the past three years.
But what is most remarkable is the following chart from Bloomberg which shows the year-to-date return of the best performing asset between US and global equities, corporate bonds, Treasuries, gold and real cash, and according to which 2018 is shaping up as what may be the worst year on record for cross-asset investors. Indeed, nothing at all has worked this year!
The inability of any single asset class to escape the dismal black hole supergravity of devastating losses in a brutal post-BTFD catharsis that has mutated into an equal-opportunity rout, crushing returns across all assets, has left investors reeling, shellshocked and paralyzed, and dreading what may come tomorrow let alone next year when both the US economy and corporate earnings are expected to see their supercharged recent growth rates come crashing back down to earth.
“While there’s still no ‘panic in the streets,’ most traders are unconvinced that the selling will slow down anytime soon,” said Instinent’s head of trading Larry Weiss. “The flight to quality is now a flight to cash. It’s tough to convince anyone that now is the time to put money to work.”
Meanwhile, amid radiosilence of hope for the bulls as the market breaches one support level after the next, the Federal Reserve shows no sign of easing back on its tightening crusade or delaying the interest rate hikes that have become the source of nightmares for holders of some $5 trillion in corporate bonds that were sold by S&P 500 companies in the past decade, and whose proceeds were largely squandered in the pursuit of stock buybacks and fleeting shareholders gains and higher management compensations.
Beneath the turbulent surface of the stormy market, even stronger undercurrents threaten to tear apart what’s left of investor optimism. After a decade of outperformance by growth stocks, the sector has seen a historic flight as rotation into the unloved, largely forgotten value sector has emerged on a scale unseen in years.
Hedge funds, who hoped that “buy the dip” would work one last time and who rushed into the traditional “safety” of tech stocks at the end of October, were whipsawed, and turned net sellers this month, with the group accounting for the most selling among major industries according to Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, as if sensing the coming storm, Goldman writes that hedge fund net exposures steadily declined throughout 2018, including during 2Q and 3Q while the broad equity market rallied, leaving most investors in the cold. Net long exposure calculated based on 13-F filings and publicly-available short interest data registered 49% at the start of 4Q, a decline from 56% at the start of 2018, and one of the lowest in years.
Meanwhile, as Bloomberg writes, while the buzzword for the first half was rotation, the latest losses are taking on a troubling unanimity:
Every sector in the S&P 500 fell on Tuesday, a day after every member of the 67-company S&P 500 Information Technology Index dropped. Disparate corners of the stock market are seeing reversals, from the tech high-flyers like Apple and Alphabet that led the way up to higher-leverage names that have been trailing for months.
“There isn’t an industry that doesn’t have something wrong with it,” Fort Pitt senior portfolio manager Kim Forrest told Bloomberg. “Every industry is getting sold. Every industry has a little black mark on it – at least one. So everyone is selling those stocks that are tainted with bad news – everything.”
But the biggest harbinger of even more sorrow for equities is not even in the stock market, but in bonds. After years of relentless gains in both the investment grade and junk bond space, corporate credit has finally cracked, with both yields and spreads blowing out to multi-year highs. Indeed, after hitting near record tights just over a month ago, investment-grade bonds are on track for their worst year in terms of total returns since 2008 as the Fed continues to raise rates, while high yield spreads have exploded higher.
“You always must respect what the credit markets are signaling,” said Prudential’s chief market strategist, Quincy Krosby. “Very often it starts with the credit markets and works its way to the equity market. But this time, it’s suggestive of a credit market getting worried about the equity market, and more about the economy.”
What is perhaps scariest, is that at this moment the US economy is firing on all cylinders; this will change in 2019 and 2020 when Goldman forecasts US GDP will slide below 2.0% and grind to a crawl.
Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, one of the Fed’s biggest doves who’s repeatedly called for a stop to raising interest rates, repeated his warning and said further tightening could trigger a recession.
“One of my concerns is that if we preemptively raise interest rates, and it’s not in fact necessary, we might be the cause of ending the expansion” and triggering the next recession, Kashkari said in a National Public Radio interview posted online Tuesday.
Which, of course, will not come as a surprise to regular readers who know very well that every single Fed tightening – like the one right now – has resulted in a crisis.
It won’t be different this time.
- "The Whole Thing Is Crazy" – Doug Casey On The Migrant Caravan
Hundreds of migrants have showed up at the U.S.-Mexico border.
They’re part of a “caravan” that includes about 5,000 people from Central America. The rest of the caravan, as far as we know, is still in central Mexico. But make no mistake. They’ll show up at the border any day now.
And no one can agree on what to do with these people. Some say we should just let them into America. Other people, including President Trump, think we should keep the migrants out. In fact, Trump recently called the caravan an “invasion.” Not only that, he deployed thousands of U.S. troops to the border to keep these people from entering.
In short, it’s very controversial. So I called Doug Casey earlier this week to see what he thinks about this…
Justin: Doug, the migrant caravan has captured the attention of the mainstream media as well as Donald Trump. Why’s this such a big deal?
Doug: There are several things going on here. One is that the leftists believe that nation states shouldn’t exist. Now, I’m not a believer in the nation state either. It’s only been around since the 17th century; it’s not inscribed in the cosmic firmament. There are better ways to organize a society.
The United States, for one, is way too big to be a single country at this point. I’m pretty confident that over the next couple generations, the U.S. is going to break up into several different countries. But that’s a different question. The last thing it needs is another alien group trying to forcibly insert itself into the mix.
The Democrats and the leftists don’t really believe in freedom of movement and travel. That’s no more than a talking point, to make them seem righteous. They believe in State control of almost every area of life. Since when has the freedom to travel and cross borders been important to them?
Personally, I believe in freedom of movement and freedom of travel – but that doesn’t mean you can violate others’ property rights. If you have one person requesting legal entry, that’s one question. But if a group of 1,000 or 10,000 is looking to illegally and forcibly cross into a different political area, it’s a different question entirely.
The people abetting this migration are purposefully trying to force a confrontation.
Justin: Why make such a long trek?
Doug: Apparently, they presume that the U.S. government will roll over, and put the migrants up when they arrive. That’s not an unreasonable presumption. It’s well-known the U.S. government has no guiding principles.
The groups financing them are, I would say, trying to make a moral point with the gullible U.S. public. “These are poor helpless immigrants, like your own ancestors. So you have to do the right thing, and take care of them.” Of course that’s a lie from start to finish – except for the poor part. But it’s effective psychological warfare in today’s world.
They’re also trying to demoralize the Trump administration, showing they have no real power or support.
The migrants themselves are acting stupidly. I don’t mean they necessarily have low IQs – although the caravan certainly isn’t full of rocket scientists and brain surgeons. Nor am I using the word “stupid” in a necessarily pejorative way. A definition of the word that applies here is “an inability to predict, not just the immediate and direct consequences of an action, but its indirect and delayed consequences.”
What do they really think is going to happen after they leave Mexico, and try to enter the U.S.? They’ll be arrested, fingerprinted, and charged with a crime. Which means they’re not likely to ever get legal entrance to the U.S. in the future. The poor fools are just tools being used by the people organizing and financing the migration, to prove some points.
It’s very bold for thousands of migrants to show up and ask to be fed, sheltered, and clothed. But also occupied, employed, given medical treatment, and have their children cared for. They’ve done zero to deserve any favors. But it’s not only an economic problem. It’s a moral problem.
These people – or those who are encouraging them – think they have a right to impose themselves. And the U.S. government, and the U.S. public, never even question the ethics of all this – so they’re foredoomed to failure. The Americans, idiotically, just say it’s against the law. But laws are arbitrary, and can change. It’s really a question of what’s right and wrong. The leftists, however, cleverly say that they have morality on their side.
It’s said that these people are from Honduras and El Salvador. But who knows? The quality of reporting in the media is so poor, that you can’t really know where they’re coming from or who they are. It’s said that they’re “families fleeing from violence.” That’s irrelevant. But from looking at video feed, they seem to be mostly young males, with a few women and children for cosmetic purposes. One report I’ve heard, from a man that was actually there, is that over 90% are young men.
The whole sideshow is full of unanswered questions. How is it that these people from Central American countries were able to cross the southern Mexican border? Did the Mexicans try to keep them out? How do poor people expect to march all the way up Mexico? We’re talking well over 1,000 miles. Who’s paying for their food? Are they just sleeping in the bushes on the roadsides every night? What happens when one of them gets sick? These are questions that need to be answered. The whole thing is crazy.
Justin: Do you think the migrants might be receiving outside help or funding? It wouldn’t be the first time that something like that’s happened. Non-governmental organizations [NGO] have transported migrants by the boatload from Africa to Europe.
If so, who might be helping them? And why?
Doug: Well, if I was really that interested, I would get on a plane, fly to Mexico and start interviewing these people to find out what the facts are. But there are about a hundred other things that are more important to me. That’s the job of a reporter, or a news organization. Where are they? They should be all over this. But whether you could trust the reporting is another question.
But the big question is how did these thousands of people get the idea that they could leave their homes in Honduras and El Salvador, walk up through Mexico, and enter the U.S.? Did they expect to be received with open arms, and get free food, shelter, and clothing for however long? Where did this idea come from?
I hate to bring up George Soros, who’s justifiably the bête noire of the right wing. But he, along with Hillary Clinton, has been quoted as saying that it’s time for a “Purple Revolution” in the U.S. “Purple” comes from a merging of the red and the blue. A Purple Revolution in the U.S. might be similar to the Arab Spring revolution and the colored revolutions of Eastern Europe – very unpleasant, with unpredictable results. Perhaps it’s already underway; there’s plenty of antagonism, actual hatred, and irreconcilable views in evidence.
I believe the migrants are being led and financed; they have to be. It takes money to turn theory into practice. Whether it’s Soros and his NGOs or a bunch of other NGOs is irrelevant. Elements of the Democratic Party could be financing this stuff, helping the peasants organize, and just seeing how much it embarrasses Trump. It’s definitely not a spontaneous movement.
But suppose this is just a test run. If 5,000 – what’s guessed as the current number – people show up at the border, you could stop them. What if 100,000 well-financed and well-organized people show up at the border next time? How are you going to stop them? You couldn’t, unless you shoot them. They’ll just walk across as a human wave.
It’s the same problem that Europeans are going to face with the Africans in the years to come. Over the next generation or two, the population of Africa is set to double and triple. At the same time, Europe’s population is shrinking and getting very old. More important, Europeans no longer have any backbone, or belief in the value of their civilization. When the Africans – mostly Mohammedans – show up it won’t be just 100,000 or 200,000 as was the case a couple summers ago. We’re talking about a million… two million… or tens of millions. It’s going to change the whole character of the continent.
Justin: So what do you make of Trump’s handling of this situation? He’s reportedly sent more than 5,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to defend what he’s calling an “invasion.”
Doug: As I mentioned a moment ago, embarrassing Trump is undoubtedly one reason why this march was organized and financed. They realize that it presents Trump with a real conundrum. What are the troops going to do? Are they going to be issued live ammunition? And at what point will they be given the orders to fire? Rifles don’t even have bayonet attachments anymore. Will it just turn into a pushing and shoving contest?
What the caravan may do is put their token women and children up front because it’s very bad PR to shoot or club women and kids. Perhaps they’ll try to push the fence down and then walk across the border. More likely they’ll try to walk through the border station, where hundreds of cars are lined up.
How are you going stop them? Well, if there are only a few thousand, you can arrest them. But then they’re in the U.S. And you don’t want them in the U.S. Now, you have another problem. How are you going to get rid of them? In any event, soldiers are completely ineffectual and unsuited for the job.
How can you get them back into Mexico, once they’ve crossed the border? At most of the California official crossings, there’s a “no man’s land,” a neutral zone. You’re out of Mexico, but not really in the U.S. The Mexicans don’t want them back. So, either the U.S. will have 5,000 people milling around, or it’s going to have to incarcerate them. Then they’re definitely in the U.S.
Justin: What would you do if putting troops on the border isn’t the answer?
Doug: I’ve said before that two things could solve this problem.
Number one, there should be absolutely zero welfare benefits to anyone. Ideally that includes U.S. citizens – however that’s totally impossible at this point. But certainly for non-U.S. citizens, so there’s nothing to draw these people in. Benefits draw in the wrong kind of person. That’s the most important difference between today’s migrants, and the legitimate immigrants of the past. Before the 1960s, they had to pay their own way to get here, and support themselves once they arrived.
Number two, all property in the U.S. should be privately owned, so there aren’t any bridges for them to sleep under, or unowned sidewalks where they can panhandle. No government-owned parks where they can camp out. If you can’t pay the rent for wherever you are, or if the owner of the sidewalk or road doesn’t want you on it, you’ve got to go elsewhere. That would solve the problem. But neither is feasible in today’s America.
It should be up to individual property owners to defend their property. In other words, they should be the ones making the decisions. And if they need to use force to defend their property, that should be perfectly acceptable and within the law. Of course, you want to minimize the use of force. But we simply cannot let people, in effect, confiscate your property.
What I’m saying is this shouldn’t even be a government problem. The government is no better at solving this problem than they are at solving any other problem. As a result, it’s just going to get worse.
I suspect this caravan is just a trial balloon. The next time they’ll make sure there are 50,000 or 100,000 people at the border. We’re not going to be able to keep them out. And once they’re in, unless you just let them go anywhere they want, they’ve got to be incarcerated. And once they’re incarcerated, what are you going to do with them? You can’t send them back across the Mexican border. The Mexicans aren’t going to want them. How are you going to sort them out and fly them back to whatever country they came from? I doubt any of them have passports.
The present system is totally incapable of coping with the problem of mass migration, and the problem will get bigger. Once Trump is out of office in 2020, some hardcore leftist will be elected. Presumably they’ll welcome these people. Or maybe not. They’ll see them as a real welfare burden – penniless, devoid of skills, and unable to even speak English. On the other hand, they’ll be a boon to MS-13 and other gangs.
At that point, we’re going to witness a major change in the demography of the U.S. We’re already in the middle stages of the transformation. As late as the ’60s, the U.S. was about 85% people of European extraction, and 15% “other.” Now it’s 60-40. Soon the U.S. will be truly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural. They’ll all be voting, to garner bennies for their own groups, at the expense of others. It will make for a highly unstable situation, with lots of resentment. Explosive, actually.
Justin: Doug, I read that the bulk of the caravan is in Mexico City now and headed for Tijuana next before crossing into San Diego.
Do you find it interesting that the caravan would head for California rather than taking a more direct route into Texas? Supposedly, this is the safest route available.
But I can’t help but wonder if California was chosen because it might be a more welcoming environment. What are your thoughts?
Doug: That’s an interesting point. I suppose it ties into Trump’s idea of building a wall, because there is actually a serviceable fence at Tijuana. My guess is that they’ll attempt to get arrested at the Customs and Immigration booths and get into the U.S. that way. California won’t use the state troopers to arrest them, nor will the local municipality use their police. It will be up to Washington.
It would be too hard to have this motley crew of migrants try to walk through the Mexican desert to swim across the Rio Grande. Which is why they aren’t choosing Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona.
Maybe their intention is just to go through the actual border crossing, and just push their way through there. I can’t wait to see what their strategy is. Again, it’s a sign of how bad the reporting is that no news man, no journalist has gone down there to ask these questions and get the answers from the horse’s mouth. All we can do is speculate.
But look at the bright side. This is free entertainment.
Justin: Thanks for your time, Doug.
Doug: You’re welcome.
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