Huge whiffs of desperation in Washington now

BY: Martin Love 

Meanwhile, especially of late, once can quite easily catch whiffs of desperation in Washington while the U.S. sinks slowly into a morass of its own making over the past three decades. The desperation is obvious.

NOURNEWS/NORTH CAROLINA - How grand that China and Iran have finally formalized, after several years of waiting, a 25 year (and likely more) “strategic agreement” that’s going to encompass not just trade and economies, but also cultural, educational, medical and other spheres, too. It’s all a part of what the U.S. despises most and is doing whatever it can to disrupt and halt – China’s peaceful Belt and Road initiative binding, if not absolutely cementing, expanded trade and mutually beneficial relations across Asian countries at least between China up towards Europe. And to boot, Russia and China are closer in spirit than they have ever been before, and both countries are working hard to pull away from what reliance they have had on the U.S. dollar.

Meanwhile, especially of late, once can quite easily catch whiffs of desperation in Washington while the U.S. sinks slowly into a morass of its own making over the past three decades. The desperation is obvious. For example, there’s the matter of the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline which is about 90 percent complete between Russia and Germany and the U.S. is desperate to stop it altogether and sell much more expensive LNG to Germany and Europe. Even a fool would wonder why Europe would ever buy the expensive gas if given a sound and reliable alternative supply, but again the U.S. is desperate to cast itself as Europe’s protector, its Big Daddy, as it has been generally or claimed to be since the end of World War 2, and as well demonize both Russia and China as dangers to Europe and even Africa, and they are anything but that in fact. The slow transition underway to a New World Order frightens the bejesus out of Washington and its efforts to shore up its relevance by insisting that the “order” it wants to maintain or further impose makes sense in a world that aches for multilateralism and peaceful relations after 30 years or more of bellicose disruptions largely spawned by the U.S. and its alleged NATO allies.

What are those garbage assertions from Washington about a “rules based” international order, as if it’s a principled goal? One must ask, “what rules”? The U.S. in fact abides by no “rules” but its own arrogance where anything especially military goes and nothing at all is fixed and reliable and honest. The idea of a “rules based” order sounds good on the surface but it’s really just a sham which anyone with an IQ of 90 and maybe even less ought to perceive. What could be witnessed this decade is a U.S. that like the huge cargo ship Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal temporarily, the U.S. could be similarly stuck and going nowhere permanently.

President Biden, in any case, had just put forth a rather lame notion that maybe the U.S. along with other countries create its own initiative to rival China’s Belt and Road to prevent China from becoming more powerful than it already is with an economy that by some metrics already equals or surpasses the U.S. He claims that the U.S. must mount rival infrastructure projects with allies like the U.K. to assist countries like China has been doing. Is this idea going to take off? Not likely. One reason why not is because America’s infrastructure is as shoddy as any Third World country and Biden must first attend to trying to upgrade the U.S., which does not, to cite just one aspect of it, have a single decent high-speed passenger rail line! Soon to be unveiled in Washington is an infrastructure plan costing several more trillions of dollars on top of the recent $2 trillion Covid relief outlays.

This is almost a joke because the U.S. is virtually broke with the Federal Reserve Bank literally conjuring up “money” out of thin air. It is, in fact, a race between getting anything done before the U.S. dollar and the U.S. itself virtually collapses into a burning dumpster of wildly inflated fiat “money” and broken dreams.

One must ask, how in the world can the U.S. accomplish much of anything positive unless the government raises taxes dramatically and cuts the Pentagon’s budget by at least two thirds and closes most of its 800 plus military bases scattered across the globe? The truth is, it can’t. A majority of the members of the U.S. Congress for one thing abhor tax raises because voting for them threatens their job tenure in Congress, and slashing the U.S. military footprint has long been off limits for purblind legislators who mistakenly believe that military might is the sine qua non of U.S. influence and power. It’s not, as China has demonstrated by not starting wars, and remember the U.S. has literally not won a war it has started or supported in decades, not even the war to topple little Syria and the Assad government there at Israel’s behest. Not to mention Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, etcetera, unless “winning” constitutes mayhem, death, destruction and chaos.

This latter concept of a “win” is something that Washington could never admit to because if it did the U.S. would destroy utterly what’s left of its respect and influence overseas. Already the U.S., to cite just one bad move, is backing away from its agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan to pull out troops in May. Australian writer Caitlin Johnstone put it most succinctly when she wrote recently: “U.S. intelligence agencies have warned the Biden Administration that if the U.S. withdraws its military presence from Afghanistan under current circumstances, the nation would be at severe risk of falling under the control of the people who actually live there.”