A Review of Phantom of Apocalypse

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhGcIYqoWlc

 

Twilight of the West (Part 2): Global Balance of Power from the Early Cold War to the New Cold War

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0voTR6Py4D8

 

Twilight of West and Asian World Order (Part 1): Introduction to Pre-Cold War World Order Models

 

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbOVXSCJ8TM

RUSSIA THREATENS TO SEIZE FOREIGN ASSETS TO RETALIATE AGAINST WEST SEIZING RUSSIAN ASSETS

 One reason that Western banks and their lawyers lobbied Western governments not to engage in seizure of Russia assets is precisely because there is a great deal of Western capital in Russia and there is no end to this merry-go-round nonsense that the US has started in order to 'punish Russia' whose GDP this year will actually be at least half-a-percent higher than that of the US, according to the latest IMF projections.

Russia's entire economy is well integrated with the capitalist world economy and playing idiotic games with seizure of assets is a downward spiral. I am amazed that US lawyers at the Justice Department did not prevail in an administration whose foreign policy, as judged by results, so far is the worst of any president in postwar history, dragging down the US and world economy, as the latest US report shows on the new stagflation projections.

The US needs to focus on using the State Department to conduct diplomacy, as its mandate calls for, not as an extension of the Defense Department and the small circle of billionaire-supported neoconservative ideologues whose policy advice has sunk the country into domestic and international chaos without any prospect for resolving conflict through diplomacy.

The time has come to hire some professional foreign service people able to make clear-eyed rational and realistic decisions about the US role in the world, as current US economic and military power permit, and in relationship to both allies and rivals alike. The cowboy mentality that has prevailed in the White House and the halls of Congress has resulted in a $35 trillion public debt, rising social inequality, political polarization, and alienation from the vast majority of the world. Even if America's worst enemy were giving advice, this sort of chaotic mess would not take place, but the geniuses surrounding Biden have indeed managed to accomplish some nightmare scenarios in American foreign policy with very serious consequences at home.

WHY MASS GLOBAL PROTESTS AGAINST WESTERN-BACKED ISRAEL BUT NOT RUSSIA?

 

WHY MASS GLOBAL PROTESTS AGAINST WESTERN-BACKED ISRAEL BUT NOT RUSSIA?

More than two years of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and no global popular opposition, despite governments welcoming such protests and media constantly propagating against Russia. After all, much of the world was heavily indoctrinated to vilify Russia since the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), while Israel has enjoyed a rather favorable treatment since 1948, especially by the Western World.

One reason could be that the Russia-Ukraine war is a conventional conflict with US-led NATO behind Ukraine and Russia on the other. Another reason could be that the war in Ukraine is about the regional balance of power, and by extension a continuation of the old Cold War EAST-WEST rivalry. The rivals have been trying to settle zones of influence between NATO and Russia which NATO wants contained militarily and regimented, given that China is behind Russia.

Another reason could be that Russia has not targeted children and civilians, despite some civilian casualties including children. After a tw-year conventional war, it is estimated that 10,582 civilians killed, including 587 children. The majority have been killed by explosive weapons with wide area effects, and by mines and explosive remnants.

By contrast, Israel’s war between a conventional military and civilians in GAZA. In just six months, more than 42,000 civilians have been killed, with more than 14,000 children, while all of GAZA is demolished and waiting for reconstruction for which Israel fully expects the West and Arab nations to pay although it has also stated the region will be settled by Israelis.  

The ICJ has rendered a decision on Israeli genocide. No such decision has been handed down against Russia, despite efforts by the US and the West. While the overwhelming majority of governments in the world are on Russia’s side, the opposite holds true for Israel. While there have been no mass college student-faculty protests against Russia, or any other popular protests, the same is not true for Israel.

One could argue that the Western World is antisemitic and pro-Russian, except that public opinion polls do not support such a hypothesis, especially when considering that Jewish organizations and individuals have joined mass protests against Western-backed Israeli genocide. Could one reason for the anti-Zionist protests possibly be that the protesters identify Zionism with Western militarism and fault it as much for is taking place in Ukraine as in ISRAEL? Or, do the anti-war protesters express societal desire for peace and diplomatic solutions? Perhaps another reason could be that the mass protesters see on the part of Israel the glaring absence of observance of international law, human rights, and social justice, while they do not see the same for Russia which is hardly a favorite country for the West.

US SUPPORT FOR MUSLIM HUMAN RIGHTS IN XINJIANG, CHINA, BUT NOT PALESTINE

 It is indeed the case that China is hardly Norway when it comes to the issue of religious and political tolerance. This includes the 11 million ethnic Yugur minority in the northwest province of Xinjiang. China's lack of pluralism notwithstanding, here is the problem of credibility with any Western politician using the Xinjiang minority population issue, especially an American politician carrying the legacy of a racist institutional structure.

1. As of November 2020, the last 10 poverty-stricken counties of Xinjiang had all completely eradicated absolute poverty. By contrast, US poverty rate rose across the US from 10.5% in 2019 to 11.5% in 2023, and the poverty rate among AMERICAN MINORITIES averages 6 points higher than the general population.

2. The largest Western multinational corporations, mostly US-based, operate in Xinjiang province because of cheap labor and proximity to markets. While the hypocritical political rhetoric about Chinese repressed minorities makes Western headlines, a closer look reveals that the Western capitalist class makes huge profits exploiting those minorities. Whereas China has a social development policy intended to benefit the working class across the country, including Xinjiang, social development policy in the US has been eroding since the Reagan era.

3. The UN, and the ICJ have clearly made their positions known about Israel's genocidal war. By contrast, there has been no international court ruling on the Xinjiang province minority. The only country in the world trying to build such a case has been the US, but the evidence is lacking and the multinational corporations operating there are uneasy about having their operations exposed to the world.

Blinken is visiting China knowing that he is going to hear complaints about American destabilization of the Middle East, Eastern Europe-Eurasia, and South China Sea. Having no defense for America's FOREVER WAR policy, and lacking in diplomatic training and any sort of foreign affairs depth, he decided to follow the cheap rightwing American neocon road of propaganda regarding the Muslim minority in Xinjiang province, a fruitless strategy against the background of genocide and forced famine which the US has made possible in Gaza.

GLOBAL BALANCE OF POWER SHIFTS AND THE US

 Among the elites and the masses alike, there was so much hope that America would remain on top of the world when the Soviet Bloc disintegrated in 1990-1991 and President George W. Bush announced the US-based unipolar 'NEW WORLD ORDER.' American academics, including Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington became celebrities promoting theoretical models that would have the US remain at the core of the global power structure, recapturing some of the lost glory since Truman promulgated the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.

All of these assumptions were built on the assumption that because the Soviet Bloc had collapsed and China had embraced a mixed economy reintegrating with the capitalist world, America's hegemonic role was guaranteed. Rather than analyzing the merits of the capitalist world economy under the neoliberal model and the place of the US as a core country within that model, carefully examining the economically multipolar power structure, combined with domestic US policies and their impact on the political economy, the focus was on the absence of an enemy as a guarantee that PAX AMERICANA would live forever.

It is indeed unfortunate that the exact same delusional mindset and mental constructs of the 1990s regarding "End of History" vacuous theories continues to persist in the mid-2020s. National mythology is very important to keep the consensus in a nation-state and loyal to the institutional structure. However, it is dangerous because the farther away from empirical reality analysis of institutional structures, the greater the difficulty to solve possible crises. Even more dangerous, the search for enemies to blame for internal decline necessarily reinforces delusions of grandeur and refusal to address systemic domestic problems.

According to the latest Gallup poll, only one-third of Americans have no problem with America's position in the world, down from two-thirds in 2000. This is at a time that US income inequality, poverty and homelessness has been rising while the government is now spending more on defense than the next eleven largest defense spenders combined and there are two major proxy wars - UKRAINE AND ISRAEL - contributing the the $34 trillion public debt that the US hopes China-led BRICS does not undermine because the US has been weaponizing the dollar.

The article below asks whether America's downturn is another dip in a long arc of non-linear, yet essentially upward, progress, or the first phase of steep and irreversible national decline. A bit more research would have shown that the decline actually started in the second Eisenhower administration when the IMF warned the US government that the chronic balance of payments deficits and dwindling gold reserves has resulted in a trend undermining the dollar's stability as a reserve currency. Not inevitable that the decline must follow, current policies make it inevitable.