CLASH OF IMPERIALISTS: 21ST Century Competition and Confrontation by the Great Powers

Led by the US and NATO, the clash of imperialist powers accounts for the absence of stability not just in the Middle East and Africa, but also the Ukraine and parts of Asia. Behind the rhetoric of democracy, national security, and anti-terrorism there are direct diplomatic and indirect diplomatic efforts through government-financed and pro-business NGO’s. There are overt and covert military operations carried out by the US, EU, China, Russia and their less powerful allies motivated by aggressive intentions for spheres of influence and markets. Behind the “war on terror” and regional conflicts around the world rests the reality of an era characterized by a power struggle for spheres of influence not much differently than in the Age of Imperialism  (1870-1914). Those who have studied history know that the period 1870 to 1914 is also known as the “long fuse” that inevitably led to the Great War, followed by the Great Depression and another global war that was in many respects a continuation of the first. History does not repeat itself, but the similarity of patterns in the policies of the Great Powers have dangerous consequences in the early 21^st century as they did in the Age of Imperialism during the late 19^th and early 20^th century. 

The regional episode involving the shooting by Turkey of a Russian Jet fighter plane  on 24 November 2015 led to a serious rethinking about resolving the five-year old conflict in Syria that the US and its allies essentially instigated because they were seeking regime change. On grounds that it invaded Turkish air space for a few seconds along the border with Syria, Turkey destroyed the Russia jet, prompting Moscow to retaliate with a series of economic sanctions and a greater military presence in Syria at a time that the Europeans needed Russia to defeat the jihadist ISIL group that Turkey had been supporting along with Saudi Arabia, a number of the Gulf States and indirectly Western nations more interested in regime change than the aftermath of such change. 

 The Russia-Turkish confrontation is not a struggle between President Vladimir Putin who fashions himself as modern Russia’s Peter the Great (1672-1725) against Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan who is delusional enough to believe he is a modern-day Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) harboring ambitions to resurrect the old Ottoman Empire. Turkey is a NATO member and it really stretches credulity to imagine that Ankara acted completely alone without even informing US and its NATO partners before taking down the Russian jet. Immediately after the act, NATO, EU and US sided categorically with Ankara and against Moscow, although eventually Putin embarrassed Erdogan by accusing him of kneeling down to lick the private parts of the Americans in a desperate show of approval seeking.  

At the core this issue is not just Syria’s political future, but the balance of power in the Middle East and who would emerge as hegemonic. Syria has been a traditional Soviet, now Russian sphere of influence with Iran exerting influence directly and via Hezbollah. Because the US created a chaotic situation in Iraq after the invasion where Iran emerged as the dominant influential power, the goal in Syria was and remains to counterbalance Iran and push out Russia. Five years of war has proved the US goal failed.

No matter the efforts on the part of Western politicians and analysts to construct distractions from the core issue of the global power struggle that has become much more intense because China is on its way to replacing the US as the world’s most powerful economy, the issue remains that the inability of the US to achieve its goal in Syria after five years demonstrates the continued dwindling of Pax Americana. The mid-December US-Russia-China negotiations on this matter illustrate that unilateral military solutions, even when they drag along some EU and Arab allies do not work. One would think that Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya proved this very clearly, but then there are the militarist ideologues and of course the advocates of more spending on defense and intelligence that are determined to prove the impossible.  

For its part, Russia has been eager to revive the Tsarist Russian Empire within its historic spheres of influence in Eurasia and the Middle East, especially considering that the US has been expanding NATO as part of a containment policy to deprive Russia much influence outside of Eurasia. China has embarked on a long-term economic imperialist policy not just in Asia, but in Africa, Latin America and even in the Middle East. This is largely because it sees gaps it can easily fill with the US and EU weakening economically on a world scale. The EU led by Germany has been just as aggressive in its imperialist quest first by redefining the integration model within Europe so that the southern and earner EU members form in essence a “second tier” within the larger union where Germany is hegemonic.

The stakes are very high for economic and geopolitical advantage on a world scale and even lesser players like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey have been playing the imperialist game of the great powers as they compete for regional hegemony and try to undermine each other within the broader region through various alliances and alignments. Syria has played a catalytic role in the regional struggle to determine the balance of power, not only because of the competing ambitions of Turkey and Saudi Arabia that have been on the same side with the US and EU against the regime of Bashar al-Assad by backing various rebels that once included ISIL, but also Iran that has been on the same as Russia. True to its goal of economic expansionism, China has been keeping a more hands off policy on the matter but mostly siding with Moscow and Tehran rather than the US when it comes to UN voting and multilateral diplomatic negotiations.

US policy of toppling the regime of President Assad and eliminating all of his institutions so that Syria’s dependency transfers from Russia and Iran to the US and EU has failed in the last five years of civil war. This is because of the emergence of jihadist extremist ISIL striking back at the West that was indirectly supporting it through Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The Saudi announcement of a Muslim coalition coming on the heels of the Paris bombing by ISIL operatives, and Western pressure that Muslims must themselves forge a coalition to fight domestically-grown terrorism, make it easier for the US to claim that the US is indeed serious about fighting terrorism across the board and not selectively as it has throughout the Obama administration in northern Africa during the rebel uprisings and in the Middle East – Yemen, Libya and especially Syria.

The absence of tangible results in Western-led coalition to destabilize Syria sufficiently so that there is regime change and sink into chaos has backfired both in terms of a massive refugee problem for which the EU must pay but also the continued strength of jihadists and their anti-Western campaign. These developments convinced Washington that a move closer to the Russia-Iranian position with which China agrees was necessary, especially given the massive evidence that ISIL oil and ammunitions operations in fact facilitated through Turkey, profiting Erdogan’s family and crony capitalists.

After spending more than $1 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US finds itself in the unusual position of watching the government in Baghdad under the hegemonic influence of Iran, adamantly opposed to Turkey and much closer to Russia than the State Department prefers. In short, the problem of spending billions and having absolutely nothing to show for it other than feeding the defense industry with more contracts while adding to the public deficit convinced the US that a diplomatic solution rather than a military one is much cheaper and beneficial in both the short term and the longer run.

The “Metternichian” (Austrian Prince Klemens von Metternich, 1773-1859) that Henry Kissinger introduced to US foreign policy during the Vietnam War, is now back under the Obama-Kerry team to resolve the impasse over Syria. Metternich was a conservative imperialist who wanted to prevent revolutionary changes and to maintain the balance of power in Europe. At least one scholar has argued that Vladimir Putin is a modern-day Metternich in so far as he respects the traditional spheres of influence, likes dealing with the Great Powers directly to resolve regional conflicts and is a conservative imperialist. Finding itself in a serious predicament with a failed Middle East policy, the Obama administration has been forced back to Metternich as well.

http://www.classicsofstrategy.com/2015/03/is-putin-another-metternich.html

On 16 December 2015, US Sec/State John Kerry announced that the US, Russia and China agreed that the institutions of the Assad regime must remain intact while during a transitional period President Assad would have to prepare his exit from power. The Saudis and the pro-Western rebel groups in Syria also agreed because they would have to convert into political factions and compete in the electoral process while the country would contain some of the dreadful refugee problem that is a nightmare for Syria’s neighbors and the EU. At the same time, the UN Security Council approved a US-Russia proposal to cut ISIL funding, something that requires the cooperation of governments around the world because ISL operates not just in Syria and Iraq, but Yemen, Libya and other countries, as does al-Qaeda that is included in this measure. Obviously, this means that Turkey would be the big loser despite its efforts to cover its tracks of back-door cooperation with ISIL by using various groups to fight Syria’s Assad government.

On 17 December 2015 that the US and Russia agreed to maintain the structure of the Assad regime but not the man in leadership, the UN Sec-General has stated that the solution of the Syrian crisis must not depend on the fate of a single man, Assad to the detriment of an entire nation. The UN statement provides the diplomatic cover for the US approach of multilateral foreign policy solution that includes Russia as a key player. This leaves Turkey in an odd position, scrambling to secure allies, including ameliorate relations with Israel after several years of a mini-Cold War and even Greek Cyprus where Russian oligarchs enjoy enormous economic influence and with which Russia has cordial relations.

Of course, anything can go wrong, as things have in the last five years without a peaceful solution so far. Similar multilateral solutions have been floated before, but the intense competition among the great powers seeking imperialist advantages in spheres of influence as well as the ambitions of lesser regional players preclude agreement. In an election year in the US, Obama wants a deal on Syria after ameliorating relations with Iran and Cuba, if for no other reasons than to save face and allow Hillary Clinton an advantage in 2016 by depriving the Republicans the number one issue on their platform which is terrorism and military solutions in the Middle East. In August 2013, the online journal Investors.com published a story entitled “Attack on Syria is About Saving Face, Not US” in which it claimed:  “A Turkish jihadist website 14 months ago claimed that Syrian opposition forces obtained chemical weapons equipment from a Syrian army base in the northwest city of Aleppo. And Syria's al-Qaida-linked Al Nusra Front has plotted sarin and mustard gas attacks, say recent reports out of Iraq and Turkey.”
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/082813-669057-politically-self-serving-attack-wont-deter-syria.htm#ixzz3uaUjtfYM
 

History will show whether the Obama administration manufactured stories and covered up evidence to destabilize Syria exactly as the Bush team did in declaring war on Iraq. The larger question that has been raised during the Obama presidency by various analysts is to what extent is the US willing to sacrifice resources pursuing militaristic foreign policy that in the end will fail as it did under George W. Bush? The US decision in mid-December to cut loses and run with a compromise deal that includes Russia but also Iran and China is an indication of lessons never learned from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan where military solutions also failed.   

Russia had repeated all along that it was not committed to Assad personally, implying it wanted a regime that would not lock out Moscow from its historic role in Syria as a sphere of influence. Russia’s angry response to Turkey’s downing its jet fighter is also another reason to de-escalate tensions by adopting the Metternich-Kissinger approach of having the Great Powers, all motivated by imperialist aims, solve conflicts at the regional level before such conflicts escalate into a major war.

To appease Israel, the US offered additional aid as a payoff and a virtual carte blanche on the Palestinians. This will not stop the endless propaganda war against the US-Iran deal, but it appeases the Jewish lobby in the US and the pro-Israeli elements that are the same ones advocating unilateral military solutions rather than a Metternichian diplomatic route. Meanwhile, the concession to Iran was the agreement between the US and Russia on saving the Assad institutions but not Assad who would finish serving out his term and not run for reelection or resign before the term expires. This allows Iran and Hezbollah to retain their influence in Syria.

The US-Russia rapprochement on Syria is a deal between imperialists and there were signs that it has been in the works as early as August 2015 when the US hinted that it would indeed compromise with Russia and Iran.

(http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2015/08/30/The-fate-of-President-Bashar-al-Assad.html)  Domestically, the Obama administration can claim that it prevailed on this issue against Republican calls for putting troops on the ground in Syria, a scenario that could potentially be much worse than Vietnam because Russia and Iran, backed by China would have to react diplomatically as well as militarily by supplying arms to the pro-Assad elements. 

The question that even Republicans have been asking is what would replace Assad? Would it be a regime even more hostile to the US than the existing one? After all, what replaced Hussein in Iraq but a regime beholden to Iran and increasingly at odds with the US. The following excerpt from an article by a CATO Institute member illustrates the skepticism of many about US foreign policy in the Middle East and specifically ISIL. “The Obama administration's war against the Islamic State is turning into another interminable conflict that serves the interests of other nations far more than America. U.S. policy has been impossibly incoherent, attempting to do everything: oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, shove aside next door Iran, defeat vicious jihadist insurgents, promote ineffectual "moderate" forces, convince the Gulf States to act against the extremists they've been supporting, promote diplomacy without participation by Damascus and Tehran, and convince Turkey to serve U.S. rather than Islamic interests.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-bandow/dump-new-ottomans-from na_b_8836998.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

The Paris bombing combined with the refugee crisis that EU has been facing was also another very serious dimension in the change of US policy from regime change to a Metternichian-style diplomatic solution of diving spheres of influence through negotiations and preserving the status quo threatened by jihadist rebels. After agreeing to pay off Turkey $3.3 billion to keep Syrian and Iraqi refugees from crossing over to the European continent in the aftermath of Turkey shooting down the Russian jet fighter, the flow of refugees remains the same prompting concerns on the part of Germany that Ankara has no intention of honoring the deal.

Turkey received other concessions, including easing of visa terms to allow Turks into the EU, as well as a more serious effort to induct Turkey into the European Union and open its markets for goods in the wake of Russia’s sanctions. In the end, Turkey’s imperial ambitions at the regional level mirror those of the Great Powers at the global level. However, just as Turkey was a pawn during the Cuban Missile crisis when the US placed missiles on its soil directed at the USSR, but then had to bargain them away, similarly Turkey today is between East and West and it constantly tries to play all sides for leverage. That it has an Islamist ruling party rather than a secular one based on Kemalist principles is not an advantage on the international scene at this point amid the war on terror targeting jihadists. The only option for Turkey is to adjust to the realities of the Great Powers’ imperialist interests and see what benefits it can derive.

Finally, human rights violations and the humanitarian crisis in Syria have been of concern to the UN that has accused the Assad government and the rebels for creating amid the civil war. The humanitarian crisis and human rights violations took place because of the weakened “state structure” in Syria, just as has taken place in other Islamic countries that suffered destabilization and externally-imposed regime change. Factors contributing to weakened state structures include a weak economy based on extreme uneven income distribution that leaves the vast majority in chronically poor status and in some cases receptive to support a jihadist organization. However, the anti-Islamic crusade on the part of the Western countries that simply dismisses all Muslims as suspects of “terrorism”, as well as the regional wars that the West has started along with regime change operations convince Muslims that racism on the basis of religion is deep-seated among Western Caucasian Christians who have no problem with the merciless apartheid state in Israel at the expense of the Palestnians.  

If the Metternichian route works for the US and Russia with China taking a back seat but supporting it, then it could become a model for regional conflict resolution in the future as the Great Powers will continue to struggle for spheres of influence and markets on a world scale. Imperialism is at the core of the problem and that does not seem to be vanishing any time soon. On the contrary, more and more it seems that we are back in the era of 1870-1914 when wars of imperialism took place around the world and eventually led to a global conflict. The only difference today is that the Great Powers possess nuclear weapons that themselves impose self-restraint, thus forcing governments to step back from the madness of total war.  

Is the US an OPEN SOCIETY? Political Opportunism and the Culture of Racism and Xenophobia in the 21st Century

Racism and Xenophobia in the American Mainstream

One could argue that the US remains an open society in comparison with China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries where the typical northwest European liberal bourgeois tradition rooted in Lockean political philosophy does not exist. The US has always presented itself and continues to do so as a liberal bourgeois society whose values are rooted in the Age of the Enlightenment. This despite all evidence that it is moving increasingly toward a model not very different from those it criticizes as authoritarian and despite the reality of policy and voting record in Congress rather than vacuous rhetoric and rationalizations for becoming authoritarian.

Considering that there is almost complete hegemony of markets over the state with corporations determining policy on the basis of their own best interests instead of the welfare of all people, to what degree is the US an open society in comparison to the northwest European countries? Even more important measured against its own values of Jeffersonian democracy, is the US an open society and has ever been, considering its slave-owning past, racism and xenophobia? If the American Dream in the 21^st century includes freedom for upward social mobility rather than a caste system determined by “corporatocracy” and the politics of racism and xenophobia, are Americans living in an open society or one that justifies downward socioeconomic mobility on the basis of overriding “safety and security” concerns?

The open society concept – socioeconomic mobility and political freedom without the need for very restrictive conformity and self-censorship as precondition to survive - is rapidly fading because the war on terror that is in fact a continuation of the Cold War, combined with a long-standing American tradition of racial and ethnic-based politics. Is the US an open society for black youth in the inner city where unemployment runs at 50% and where almost every week a police officer guns them down?  Is the open society among Latinos that Trump dismissed as drug dealers, criminals and rapists, rhetoric that propelled him to frontrunner position for president? Where exactly is the open society except among the wealthier class that wants to maintain its privileged status and could care less about Muslims, Latinos, blacks and working class whites that the institutional system precludes from enjoying the opportunity for upward socioeconomic mobility because of its elitist nature?

Henri Bergson and Karl Popper on the Open Society

Henri Bergson (The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, 1932) developed the philosophical concept of the open society concerned primarily with spiritual and intellectual openness that cannot take place of course unless there is an open or free political framework permitting it. Karl Popper (Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945) was a critique of Hegelian and Marxist historicism one which the USSR and new Communist regimes were based after the war. During the inter-war era when Stalin’s USSR regime, as well as German Nazism, Italian Fascism and varieties of authoritarian models across Europe posed a threat to the traditional 19^th century concept of a liberal bourgeois society. 

Because Popper was far more concerned with Communism than with Fascism, and because he is the philosopher on whose ideas the neoconservatives are rooted, he would have no problem with the considerable dilution of the open society today, justifying on the basis of “external threats” even though the state helps to exacerbate such threats. The assumption was that the open society was antithetical to totalitarian or authoritarian state. Considering all the empirical evidence about the surveillance state that exists in the US, the human rights and civil rights violations, the general trend toward adopting military solutions to solve problems abroad before giving diplomacy a chance, and police state methods at home as evidenced by the gunning down of black youth, can we still call the US an open society?

Cultivating the Politics of Fear with the Selective War on Terror

US history is not about the tradition immersed in the liberal tradition for all, but multifaceted that includes extreme right wing groups such as the KKK, xenophobic elements throughout its history, rightwing Evangelicals and Tea Party elements that want a society as close to Fascism as possible. All of these groups embrace aspects that resemble totalitarianism of the interwar era, aspects that are an integral part of the American political, social and cultural fabric. The prevailing Islamophobia hysteria in the US, but also EU, Canada and Australia is part of a racist past rooted in white Anglo-Saxon colonialism and imperialism in non-white lands.

The only way to understand the current hysteria is to place it in a historical context and not isolate it as though it is an aberration or the extreme views of one or more opportunistic politicians. In short, society gives rise to its best and its worst elements that move from the fringes of political life into the mainstream. For example, on the same day that Trump called for a ban on all Muslims coming into the US, the House of Representatives immediately voted for tighter control on visas from predominantly Muslim countries, taking special aim at Syrians and Iraqis. This was not a Republican vs. Democrat issue because the bill passed by a vote of 409 to 19, indicative that indeed Trump is the new American mainstream, regardless of the rhetoric to the contrary! If Trump is the aberration why did the overwhelming majority of the House vote for such racist legislation, justifying it on the basis of “the war on terror”?

When a reporter asked (8 Dec. 2015) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump if the internment of (120,000) Japanese-Americans represented the values of the country, and how he would feel if the Japanese had followed the same policy, there was no answer from the Republican candidate. That the US reached the point in 2015 so close to that of World War II xenophobic and racist conditions is attributed to the “war on terror” campaign that Bush and Obama globalized and it is now out of control and continuously expanding and becoming a bigger threat because of US and allied policy that sometimes punishes and provokes and at other times indirectly supports terrorists because they happen to be on the same side as the US – “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mindset. This is what took place in Yemen. Saudi-backed militias are spearheading efforts to roll back Houthi gains and reinstate the government that the rebels drove into exile in neighboring Saudi Arabia. But they have turned to Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.  (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-u-s-and-al-qaeda-are-on-the-same-side-in-yemen/) The US was also on the same side as al-Qaeda in Libya because it wanted to bring down Muammar Qaddafi and it has been following the same policy of backing terrorists in Syria to bring down pro-Russian president Assad. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2610598/Group-US-switched-sides-War-Terror-facilitating-500-MILLION-weapons-deliveries-Libyan-al-Qaeda-militias-leading-Benghazi-attack.html and

While pursuing a war on terror and collaboration with terrorists selectively, the US has been experiencing a rise in fear of terrorism and xenophobia. The same is true in EU, Canada and Australia where there is a rising tide of xenophobia and rightwing populism rooted in anti-Islam tendencies that are rooted in the war on terror. Contrary to public pronouncements, the goal is to keep people in fear so that they conform politically and not focus on overriding social and economic issues, but on “the enemy”, which ironically the very policies adopted constantly feed. If the goal is to end terrorism, there are many methods to accomplish it and they most certainly do not include direct and indirect collaboration in everything from weapons and truck sales to money laundering for terrorists or fighting against governments opposed to terrorists.

Europe is not that far from the US, partly because extreme right wing political parties are waiting in the wings to take power from the two-party (Conservative and Socialist alternating power every few years). On 8 December 2015, Martin Schultz, European Parliament President and German politician, argued that the EU is in danger as a result of terrorism and Muslim migrants flooding the continent, prompting each country to revert to nationalism. Just one day before Schultz issued that warning about the integrity of the EU, Republican presidential candidate Trump called for a ban on all Muslims trying to immigrate or visit the US until a policy reassessment can be undertaken. Indeed, the wave of xenophobia with Muslims as the main target is very strong inside Europe, forcing the Conservative and Socialist parties increasingly toward a rightist populist orientation so they can retain power, while also continue to feed their defense industries just as the US does with the war on terror. 

In the US there is the surface appearance of real differences on the war on terror, when in fact we will see below that Obama started out promising a complete reversal of the George W. Bush policy, but he increasingly became tied down to Bush policies and we are now back to Bush under a black Democrat president selling his message as “progressive”. While many are embarrassed by the blatant racism and xenophobia of Trump, he is the Republican frontrunner and he represents the mainstream more so than people would admit publicly if it were not for the constraints of political correctness. It is in fact a reality that the culture of fear with Muslim terrorists as the pretext is the driving political force behind a general anti-Islam wave across the US, as well as EU, Canada and Australia where hate crimes and series of anti-Muslim attacks have been taking place. The odd thing about all of this is that it plays into the hands of militant Muslims recruiting disgruntled youth into their ranks, and this is well known to the West. Why then adopt positions that actually strengthen terrorism while all along claiming the only goal is to defeat terrorism.

On 6 December 2015, President Obama addressed the nation on the issue of the tragic mass killing in San Bernardino in the hands of a radicalized Muslim couple inspired by the teachings of radical Islam. By linking the killing of 14 people in San Bernardino to the Paris ISIS attacks that were entirely of a different mode f operation, and by arguing that all of this is an extension of the 9/11 attacks, the president argued that the Islamic terror campaign has now “evolved” into a new phase but the US is “winning”. How is the US ‘winning’ and how it is possible to “defeat” terrorism that exists in about one-third of the countries around the world, he offered no specifics any more than any other US politician.  However, he did ask Muslims to work in combating terrorism by helping with the US counter-terrorism campaign. 

Indicative of the confidence investors have that anything will change in the status quo regarding gun control, the day after Obama’s speech on terrorism and guns, the market dropped sharply but the shares of handgun companies Smith and Wesson and Sturm Ruger rose sharply. In fact, while in 2015 the US stock market is relatively flat, Smith and Wesson has risen 115%, indicative that  investors are confident more people will be buying guns because the culture of fear the media and politicians are creating drives people to arm themselves in a culture already very friendly to guns. After all, Liberty University President Jerry Fallwell, Jr. urged the college campus  to apply for gun permits because: "I always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walk in and kill."

 

On 7 December 2015, Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” until the country’s representatives can “figure out what is going on.” While most Republicans and Democrats went through the rhetorical political correctness formality of criticizing Trump as counterproductive because the US is a pluralistic society, they voted in the House to tighten visa controls on Muslims and agreed more is needed in the name of fighting terrorism. This mindset did not just emerge out of nowhere in 2015 amid a presidential race. It has deep xenophobic and racist roots, specifically for Muslims dating to the Palestinian Question in which the US always sided with Israel.
 
Racism and xenophobia toward Muslims intensified after 1979 with the Iranian revolution and became institutionalized after 9/11. The wind is blowing toward the racist and xenophobia camp and all politicians know it, so they are moving to the right, so much so that as far as many Republicans are concerned a Rockefeller Republican is a “leftist”! The politically correct Democrats are much closer to the Republican rightwing position of xenophobia than they project to the public, remaining committed to the concept of an open society only in rhetoric while voting to move society toward a closed authoritarian model.  What annoyed politicians and the conservative socioeconomic elites about Trump's blatant racism is that he deviated from the long-standing path of political correctness, itself a thin veneer concealing institutional racism and xenophobia.

All of this is justified to the public on the basis of the war on terror. But is the US fighting terrorism, not as other nations or the UN defines it, but as it defines it, or is it selectively targeting certain groups while directly and indirectly collaborating or at least inadvertently assisting others? When Democrat Senators brought up amendments to curb gun sales to individuals on the terror watch list, Republicans voted against it. This was a few days after the tragedy of the mass shootings in San Bernardino, CA by two radicalized Muslims apparently inspired by ISIS. The proposed legislation for expanded background checks was similar to that of 2013 following the Sandy Hook (Newtown, CT December 2012) shooting tragedy. 

Here was a very concrete step to fight terrorism at home by depriving those on the “terror watch” list of FBI and other agencies, but the majority of US legislators rejected it. At the same time, these same individuals proclaim that they want to fight terrorism, while they are not interested in depriving suspects of weapons they could potentially use in terrorist activities. In fact, they do not even want to deprive those forbidden from boarding a plane to have the right to gun ownership. This flagrant contradiction could lead a rational person to conclude that elected officials are in fact interested in promoting terrorism because they have no problem with suspected terrorists buying weapons. 

US and EU planes have been targeting Syrian government targets and civilians instead of ISIS, thus sending the signal to ISIS that the West along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia are more interested in removing Assad from power than removing ISIS. “Syria's government said coalition planes had carried out a deadly air strike on the Syrian camp. The United States denied the allegation and a U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was certain that Russia was responsible.”  (Reuters 8 December 2015) 

Although it is hardly a secret that Russia has been supporting Assad and it would be absurd that it would target Syrian government forces, the US has been following the same line of blatant propaganda as Turkey that has been supporting ISIS buying its oil, as hard evidence is now provided not only by Russia, but also Iran, Iraq and even by Turkish political opposition. Before the Paris bombing by ISIS operatives, France had been hitting Syrian government targets just as had the US and Turkey. In the aftermath of the Paris bombing, France decided to change its policy and side with Russia, considering that its pre-Paris bombing campaign of hitting Assad’s forces did nothing to deter ISIS from targeting French civilians. 

When Obama ran for president in 2008, he promised to make America more popular with the rest of the world, to help lessen anti-Americanism that was at its highest under George W. Bush, and to pursue diplomatic solutions to political problems in a multilateral manner rather than unilateral military solutions that cost enormous resources, do not solve the problem and in most cases make it worse. He was referring to terrorism and the Middle East where the US has chosen to focus because of oil from the Truman presidency to the present.  

1.      Close down Guantanamo prison, because it was a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda. The prison remains open, despite a Senate Intelligence report calling it an example of US human rights violation.

2.      End Iraq war within 16 months after taking office. The US remains active in Iraq, despite the fact that the US-imposed government in Baghdad has turned to Iran and Russia for support against rebel groups whose goal is to lay claim to parts of the country, and which groups the US supports.

3.      "Launch an aggressive diplomatic effort to reach a comprehensive compact on the stability of Iraq and the region…including all of Iraq's neighbors - Iran and Syria. While there has been progress to restoring relations with Iran because it is simply too powerful in the region for the US to destabilize, the Obama pledge of working with Iraq has not been kept. On the contrary, destabilization has been the only goal in that country and remains so with the Republicans as well. 

4.      Provide $30 billion to Israel, the largest US aid recipient that has benefited from an Obama green light to more Israeli settlements, demolish the Palestinians in the Gaza and force as many as possible from the West Bank to either leave or capitulate to the apartheid status quo.

While the US and its 19 coalition partners have been telling the world that they want to eliminate ISIS and al-Qaeda, they have been hitting targets in Syria and Iraq that have weakened the governments and strengthened the jihadists that the US is supposedly interested in eliminating. From August 2014 until the present, more than 23,000 strikes at a cost of more than $4 billion have been devoted to taking down ISIS when in fact the target for the most part has been civilian and Syrian government installations. When Russia decided to intervene in Syria to fight ISIS in November 2015, the US warned Iraqi government that if it opted to ask Russian support to fight ISIS, then the US would withdraw its support from the Iraqi government. The Iraqis promised Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that they would stay with the US, but warned that Turkey, a NATO ally was facilitating ISIS transport of oil while fighting against Kurdish rebels who were on the same side as Iraq against ISIS.  (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-iraq-chose-between-american-and-russian-airstrikes-in-isis-fight/)

Even more alarming, Iraqi government claims that it has video evidence of U.S. helicopters providing military assistance to ISIS jihadist rebels. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqis-think-the-us-is-in-cahoots-with-isis-and-it-is-hurting-the-war/2015/12/01/d00968ec-9243-11e5-befa-99ceebcbb272_story.html) Among other organizations, the Syrian Network for Human Rights claims that the US airstrikes and those of its allies have been targeting civilians exacerbating the migrant crisis that has spilled over to Europe.  (http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/the-us-led-coalition-bombing-syria-has-killed-more-civilians#.op1mwVbwNk)

Conclusions

What is the ordinary American citizen to make when comparing the empirical evidence of US rhetoric about the war on terror and the actual record as mentioned above showing that in fact ISIS is growing stronger in no small part because the goal of the US is to topple Assad and not eliminate ISIS. Let us assume that Assad is gone, just as other dictators of Islamic countries left with the help of the US and its allies –Libya and Iraq. What exactly would the US gain from regime change even if Russia is no longer a player in Syria?
The only real beneficiaries at the regional level would be Iran and Israel, while at the global level China would benefit economically as it has in Afghanistan. Under the best case scenario, the US would secure a military base but toward what end, considering that its economy is weakening and projected to weaken even more in comparison to China currently dumping US Treasury bills along with Japan as the Chinese currency is now part of the world’s elite hard currencies thanks to the IMF. In short, geopolitical advantages would be limited and short lived as they were in Iraq and Afghanistan and the militarists in the US would be back demanding the next place to intervene.

The political cost for such reckless policies that are justified in the name of the war on terror will be continued drift toward a more racist and xenophobic orientation at home to the degree that the open society will continue to wither away. Of course, the apologists of the concept will be too ashamed and too clever to call American society what it is and will continue arguing it is a democracy where freedom and the American Dream are still cherished. Political polarization with very few on the progressive side and the majority moving toward a conservative direction will mean that the historical cycle of America moving from a conservative to liberal era - from the Gilded Age to the Age of Progressivism, from the conservative 1920s to the New Deal of the 1930s, from the conservative 1950s to the liberal 1960s – will end as it has since the Reagan era that now looks more progressive than the Obama administration in many respects because there was not as much capital concentration and inequality.  

Will the future of America be closer to the open society concept and values of the Enlightenment era in the 18^th century or will it resemble some combination of the Fascist and Nazi regimes of the 1930s? Clearly, the US today is not Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, but the political, business and social elites are certainly heading in that direction while claiming they represent values of pluralism, democracy and everything that characterizes an open bourgeois society. As bourgeois society sinks into crisis because of immense capital concentration, the tilt toward an increasingly authoritarian direction is inevitable so that the elites are able to retain their privileged positions.  

EXPORTING INEQUALITY: AMERICAN WEALTH CONCENTRATION

According to the latest statistics, including the CIA, the US suffers the worst level of inequality of any advanced nation and ranks among some of the most unequal societies on the planet, while its politicians, business leaders, media and pundits proudly promote it as “democratic” rather than a plutocratic which in reality reflects reality. If the CIA publicly states in its reports that the US is more unequal than Nicaragua and Venezuela, both countries that the US has covertly tried to undermine in the past because they were “less democratic”, what does this say about the US and its ‘democracy’? 

Has the US in fact become a “banana Republic” as the statistics of the CIA and every other agency compiling such statistics? Given that this is the case, what political or moral authority does the US have to lecture other nations about democracy and equality? Is the US exporting democracy, freedom and equality as it claims when intervening in the Middle East, Ukraine and around the world militarily and economically, or is it actually exporting inequality to reflect what is happening at home? 

It is no secret that the US has been heading toward wealth concentration since the end of WWII, a trend that rapidly accelerated after Reagan’s tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans in the 1980s, combined with massive government subsidies to corporations that account for the phenomenon of the corporate welfare state we have today. For example, in 1970 the worker to corporate CEO wage gap was $45 (for the CEO) to $1 for the worker. In 2014 the CEO-worker wage gap is $830 to $1, thanks to the fiscal policy that both Republicans and Democrats have been pursuing. 

According to the latest statistics by the Institute for Policy Studies, a mere 20 individuals own $732 billion or more than 152 million people own combined. If we consider that the 400 wealthiest people control $2.34 trillion in an economy totaling $17 trillion, it hardly takes a genius to figure out that this kind of wealth concentration is the result of a fiscal policy that transfers wealth from the bottom income earners and shifts it to the top.  According to The Guardian: “The top 0.1% of families now own roughly the same share of wealth as the bottom 90%. The picture actually improved in the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression, with wealth inequality falling through to the late 1970s. It then started to rise again, with the share of total household wealth owned by the top 0.1% rising to 22% in 2012 from 7% in the late 1970s.” (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-inequality-top-01-worth-as-much-as-the-bottom-90)

The result has been an anemic economy and a social fabric breaking apart with very dim prospects for the future, considering that both Republican and Democrat politicians favor the top 1% of the richest Americans who are the ones able to buy influence through various means, including lobbying and direct campaign contributions. It is estimated that 62% of the American people have savings of under $1000, while 21% have zero in their savings. This at a time of a ticking time bomb with regard to college loans amounting to about $1.2 trillion, with the bottom one-third finding it difficult to ever repay them because the economy of wealth concentration is not producing new jobs and certainly not high paying ones to allow college graduates the opportunity to meet their obligations. Of the 62% Americans with under $1000 in savings, the reality is that they would be unable to meet any kind of emergency – medical, large home or car repair, etc. The interest fact here is that 62% with under $1000 in savings is the highest since the Great Depression, a number that rose sharply after the deep recession of 2008 when the percentage was 57. 

In one survey after the other, the majority of Americans expect their children to be worse off than they were. One third of Generation X (35 to 55 years old) have zero savings, while about 28% of the baby boomers (55-65) and millennials (18-34) surveyed have zero savings. In short, the problem is not generational but class based. Apologists for the existing political economy based on corporate welfare where the state transfers income through various means but essentially the fiscal structure from the bottom income earners to the top, argue that this is needed to help investment and make the economy more competitive. 

Considering that the US economy is an integral part of a world capitalist system, the US through various international institutions, especially the IMF, spreads its neoliberal policies on a world scale. Therefore, inequality has been rising not just in the US in the last four decades, but also in Europe, although the Scandinavian countries remain the most equal in the world. When US-based multinational corporations, such as Pfizer refuse to pay taxes at home and take their profits overseas using non-US based companies to shield profits from taxes, this impacts the host country’s fiscal structure overseas that must provide safe haven for Pfizer, thus burdening its genera taxpayer as much as the US does. 

Has the US become more or less competitive as wealth concentration rose from the 1980s to the present? The reality is that we have witnessed rapid deindustrialization and along with that phenomenon there has been downward socioeconomic mobility owing to steady income drop in working class and middle class incomes. In other words, the exact opposite of what Nobel Prize winning economists, politicians and the media has argued is what is taking place. People know all of this not by looking at the real economy, but examining their own situation and the prospects for their children. 

Apologists of the grossly unequal system, which compares with Third World countries instead of Western Europe, Canada and Australia, further argue that the whole thing is just cyclical and eventually there will be upward mobility. Again, when we look at statistics from 1970 to the present, the trend is very clear that this is systemic and has absolutely nothing to do with cycles. In short, the neoliberal policies of using the state as a vehicle to strengthen the private sector at the expense of the public sector, the working class and the middle class is one that has deep roots and it is here to stay because the top 10% of income earners, and especially the top 1% who actually decide the course of policies, are adamant about not changing course toward any policy mix that would redistribute wealth from the top down to stimulate economic expansion in an economy dependent on consumer spending at the rate of three-fourths of GDP.

The International Monetary Fund has now inducted China’s currency – yuan – into the basket of reserve currencies, putting pressure on the euro and the dollar, and reflecting the reality that China is indeed well on its way to forging ahead as the world’s number one economy – already there if we measure it in terms of PPP index.  Both Republican and Democrat parties have every intention of strengthening the already super-wealthy one percent of Americans to the detriment of the 99%, thus sinking the economy into more frequent and deeper recessions that would in turn create even greater wealth gaps than already exist.    

Whether Hillary Clinton or any Republican candidate wins control of the White House in 2016, they will pursue the same fiscal policies that have brought America to the present situation where 20 individuals own more wealth than 50% of the population. They will continue with corporate welfare that redistributes wealth from the workers and the middle class and they will most certainly continue to pour money into the parasitic defense sector, hoping that the US can retain its global competitive edge when in fact all empire of the past 2000 years have declined and fallen because of excessive defense spending and reckless militarist adventures. While people may feel good that NATO is string and keep adding new members that surround Russia, this only adds to socioeconomic inequality at home because more money is devoted to the parasitic defense sector and does absolutely nothing about creating new and high paying jobs to allow young college graduates to repay their student loans. 

Contrary to what the media and pundits argue that the destiny of the country rests on the people, the reality is that the media and the entire institutional structure determine what people think about public policy, everything from corporate welfare to black youth unemployment and the war on terror that has been used to engender sociopolitical conformity and distract from socioeconomic inequality comparable to Third World country. The political reaction to take the country even more toward a rightwing orientation with underlying racist and overtly xenophobic messages finds an audience among a segment of the population that wants someone to blame, other than the Democratic and Republican party conducting policy to strengthen even more the very rich and weaken even more the workers and the middle class. 

This is a prescription for sociopolitical polarization. Already using the war on terror to forge a police state, the future of America with banana Republic socioeconomic inequality as the CIA describes it entails erosion of democracy and even more authoritarian policies while continuing to hold on to claims of defending democracy that no longer has any meaning in the lives of the bottom 90% of the population. Exporting inequality is inherent in any imperialist system and not unique to the US in the contemporary period. What makes it unique is the public campaign of the US that its mandate from God is to spread democracy, equality and freedom when in fact its only goal is to export inequality that mirrors the domestic socioeconomic structure.