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Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
A Book For Our Time, A Time That Perhaps Has Run Its Course
A Book For Our Time, A Time That Perhaps Has Run Its Course
Paul Craig Roberts
American post-WW 2 supremacy, writes Andrei Martyanov in his book, Losing Military Supremacy just published by Clarity Press, has been destroyed by America’s narcissism. https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Military-Supremacy-American-Strategic/dp/0998694754/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535577199&sr=1-1&keywords=andrei+martyanov
The arrogant hubris of American exceptionalism and the myths that sustain it are subjected to devastating analysis in this long overdue book. Martyanov has no patience with American strategic thinkers, Russian experts, American war myths, and General George S. Patton. No nation has ever assembled a greater collection of ignorant fools than the US and trusted them with the leadership of the country.
The consequence for America of the unreal image of itself in which the ruling elites live is a “very dangerous decline of American cognitive faculties” and “a complete loss of sound reasoning across the whole spectrum of national activities from foreign policy, to economics, to war, to culture.” The hegemony claimed and pursued by neoconservatives, liberal interventionists, and garrulous patriots is inconsistent with the incompetence and delusion of the ruling American elites.
Take something as simple as military power. Without a modern manufacturing and industrial base, a country has no prospects of being a military power. This fact escaped Wall Street, titans of American industry, and political leaders who enabled the offshoring of American manufacturing and industrial jobs to Asia, thereby building China’s might and deindustrializing the United States, an alleged “superpower” that is dependent on Russian rocket engines and titanium for its aircraft production.
It has also escaped the American elites that the sanctions applied to Russia have built up the capability and self-sufficiency of Russia. Washington’s sanctions make Russia more powerful.
Consider education. A modern military requires people capable in physics and advanced math, subjects in which Russians have always led, as US Admiral Hyman Rickover recognized as long ago as 1953. In pre-Putin Russia, Washington’s effort to “Westernize,” that is, to destroy, Russian education did not succeed. But it has succeeded in America, where politically correct demands for equal performance from a diverse student body with different talents and motivations has watered down course content. Everyone has to make the same grade, or heavens forbid, politically incorrect differences exist. In public high schools, standardized testing has produced memorization of the ruling shibboleths in place of ability to reason. Indeed, in the US the term, “public education,” has become an oxymoron. Jobs offshoring has also taken a toll on America’s technological cadre. Most people involved in digital activities in the US are probably people from India on work visas.
When a country’s elites see themselves as above others—remember the applause given to John McCain’s reference to Russia as a gas station pretending to be a country—they tend to dispense with diplomacy and rely instead on threats and coercion, such as the threat delivered to the President of Pakistan by a State Department official, “do as you are told or we will bomb you into the stone age.”
Washington cloaks its intentions in moral terms, presenting itself as a defender of democracy and human rights while it destroys in whole or part seven countries in the 21st century in its pursuit of hegemony culminating in an irresponsible and reckless assault on Russian national interest.
Martyanov finds incomprehensible the massive American military miscalculation that in dealing with Russia America is dealing with an insignificant military power. In fact, it is America that has invested the country’s wealth in a “hollow force,” while Russia has capabilities against which the United States has no defense whatsoever.
In a March 1, 2018, address to the Federal Assembly of Russia, President Vladimir Putin described some of this capability, some of which is currently deployed with the Russian forces that are present in Syria. The crux of the matter is this: Currently deployed Russian weapons make the entire US Navy, all the carrier fleets, everything, totally defenseless and obsolete. Russian superiority in the Syrian arena is so total, so complete, that the US cannot attack Syria without Putin’s permission.
Martyanov mentions the infatuation with “Western civilization” of a stratum of the Russian Elite, an elite created by American and Israeli influence. The question is whether this time Putin will permit, as he has in the past, another American strike against his ally that Russia has enabled to clear from Syrian territory the American organized and equipped forces sent to overthrow Syria.
In the past Putin, influenced perhaps by the American-worshipping Russian neoliberals, permitted Washington’s strikes, strikes that Washington justified by lies that Putin knew were lies.
The question is whether Putin will forever in his pointless desire to appease Washington again permit Washington’s strikes against Russia’s ally. Did he send to the combat arena Russian forces that can annihilate at will all American forces present at zezo cost to Russia to do the required job, or did he send them as a potential threat that he does not intend to exercise, hoping against hope that the Americans in their world of total unreality will realize their impotence and back off?
Bogdasarov says that the only thing that will stop the constant and increasing provocations against Russia is for Russia not only to destroy all incoming US missiles into Syria, but also to destroy every launching platform. https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/08/a-russian-response-to-a-new-us-attack-on-syria-should-include-sinking-the-carriers-not-just-shooting-at-their-missiles/
Bogdasarov is correct. Putin has let American gratuitous aggression go too far. It needs to be stopped now, before Putin’s only alternative is surrender of Russia to Washington or nuclear war.
The Russian military will not permit Putin to surrender Russia to Washington.
Nuclear war raises the question whether planet Earth survives.
If Putin backs down again over Syria, the prospects for nuclear war increase dramatically.
The most dangerous enemy that Russia and human life face is not Washington but the Western brainwashed, Western worshipping Atlanticist Integrationists in Russia. These utterly stupid people, unless they are eliminated, will destroy the world.